observed Brinkley, with some hazy notion of saying a pleasant rallying thing to the young man. He wondered at the glare his wife gave him. With those panned oysters before him he had forgotten all about Dan"s love affair with Miss Pasmer.
Mrs. Brinkley hastened to make the mention of Miss Anderson as impersonal as possible.
"It was so nice to meet her again. She is such an honest, wholesome creature, and so bright and full of sense. She always made me think of the broad daylight. I always liked that girl."
"Yes; isn"t she jolly?" said Dan joyously. "She seems to know everybody here. It"s a great piece of luck for me. They"re going to take a house in Washington next winter."
"Yes; I know that stage," said Mrs. Brinkley. "Her aunt"s an amusingly New-York respectability. I don"t think you"d find just such Miss Mitford curls as hers in all Boston."
"Yes, they are like the portraits, aren"t they?" said Dan; delighted.
"She"s very nice, don"t you think?"
"Very. But Miss Anderson is more than that. I was disposed to be critical of her at Campobello for a while, but she wore extremely well.
All at once you found yourself admiring her uncommon common-sense.
"Yes. That"s just it," cried Dan. "She is so sensible!"
"I think she"s very pretty," said Mrs. Brinkley.
"Well, her nose," suggested Dan. "It seems a little capricious."
"It"s a trifle bizarre, I suppose. But what beautiful eyes! And her figure! I declare that girl"s carriage is something superb."
"Yes, she has a magnificent walk."
"Walks with her carriage," mused Brinkley aloud.
His wife did not regard him. "I don"t know what Miss Anderson"s principles are, but her practices are perfect. I never knew her do an unkind or shabby thing. She seems very good and very wise. And that deep voice of hers has such a charm. It"s so restful. You feel as if you could repose upon it for a thousand years. Well! You will get down before we leave?"
"Yes, I will," said Dan. "I"m here after a man who"s after a patent, and as soon as I can finish up my business with him I believe I will run down to Fortress Monroe."
"This eleven-o"clock train will get you there at six," said Brinkley.
"Better telegraph for your rooms."
"Or, let us know," said Mrs. Brinkley, "and we"ll secure them for you."
"Oh, thank you," said Dan.
He went away, feeling that Mrs. Brinkley was the pleasantest woman he ever met. He knew that she had talked Miss Anderson so fully in order to take away the implication of her husband"s joke, and he admired her tact. He thought of this as he loitered along the street from Wormley"s to the Arlington, where he was going to find Miss Anderson, by an appointment of the night before, and take a walk with her; and thinking of tact made him think of Mrs. Pasmer. Mrs. Pasmer was full of tact; and how kind she had always been to him! She had really been like a mother to him; he was sure she had understood him; he believed she had defended him; with a futility of which he felt the pathos, he made her defend him now to Alice. Alice was very hard and cold, as when he saw her last; her mother"s words fell upon her as upon a stone; even Mrs. Pasmer"s tears, which Dan made her shed, had no effect upon the haughty girl. Not that he cared now.
The blizzard of the previous days had whirled away; the sunshine lay still, with a warm glisten and sparkle, on the asphalt which seemed to bask in it, and which it softened to the foot. He loitered by the gate of the little park or plantation where the statue of General Jackson is riding a c.o.c.k-horse to Banbury Cross, and looked over at the French-Italian cla.s.sicism of the White House architecture with a pensive joy at finding pleasure in it, and then he went on to the Arlington.
Miss Anderson was waiting for him in the parlour, and they went a long walk up the avenues and across half the alphabet in the streets, and through the pretty squares and circles, where the statues were sometimes beautiful and always picturesque; and the sparrows made a vernal chirping in the naked trees and on the green gra.s.s. In two or three they sat down on the iron benches and rested.
They talked and talked--about the people they knew, and of whom they found that they thought surprisingly alike, and about themselves, whom they found surprisingly alike in a great many things, and then surprisingly unlike. Dan brought forward some points of ident.i.ty which he, and Alice had found in themselves; it was just the same with Miss Anderson. She found herself rather warm with the seal-skin sacque she had put on; she let him carry it on his arm while they walked, and then lay it over her shoulders when they sat down. He felt a pang of self-reproach, as if he had been inconstant to Alice. This was an old habit of feeling, formed during the months of their engagement, when, at her inspiration, he was always bringing himself to book about something.
He replied to her bitterly, in the colloquy which began to hold itself in his mind, and told her that she had no claim upon him now; that if his thoughts wandered from her it was her fault, not his; that she herself had set them free. But in fact he was like all young men, with a thousand, potentialities of loving. There was no aspect of beauty that did not tenderly move him; he could not help a soft thrill at the sight of any pretty shape, the sound of any piquant voice; and Alice had merely been the synthesis of all that was most charming to this fancy. This is a truth which it is the convention of the poets and the novelists to deny; but it is also true that she might have remained the sum of all that was loveliest if she would; or if she could.
It was chiefly because she would not or could not that his glance recognised the charm of Miss Anderson"s back hair, both in its straying gossamer and in the loose ma.s.s in which it was caught up under her hat, when he laid her sacque on her shoulders. They met that afternoon at a Senator"s, and in the house of a distinguished citizen, to whose wife Dan had been presented at Mrs. Whittington"s, and who had somehow got his address, and sent him a card for her evening. They encountered here with a jocose old friendliness, and a profession of being tired of always meeting Miss Anderson and Mr. Mavering. He brought her salad and ice, and they made an appointment for another walk in the morning, if it was fine.
He carried her some flowers. A succession of fine days followed, and they walked every morning. Sometimes Dan was late, and explained that it was his patent-right man had kept him. She was interested in the patent-right man, whom Dan began to find not quite so simple as at first, but she was not exacting with him about his want of punctuality; she was very easy-going; she was not always ready herself. When he began to beat about the bush, to talk insincerities, and to lose himself in intentionless plausibilities, she waited with serene patience for him to have done, and met him on their habitual ground of frankness and reality as if he had not left it. He got to telling her all his steps with his patent-right man, who seemed to be growing mote and more slippery, and who presently developed a demand for funds. Then she gave him some very shrewd, practical advice, and told him to go right into the hotel office and telegraph to his father while she was putting on her bonnet.
"Yes," he said, "that"s what I thought of doing." But he admired her for advising him; he said to himself that Miss Anderson was the kind of girl his father would admire. She was good, and she was of the world too; that was what his father meant. He imagined himself arriving home and saying, "Well father, you know that despatch I sent you, about Lafflin"s wanting money?" and telling him about Miss Anderson. Then he fancied her acquainted with his sisters and visiting them, and his father more and more fond of her, and perhaps in declining health, and eager to see his son settled in life; and he pictured himself telling her that he had done with love for ever, but if she could accept respect, fidelity, grat.i.tude, he was ready to devote his life to her. She refused him, but they always remained good friends and comrades; she married another, perhaps Boardman, while Dan was writing out his telegram, and he broke into whispered maledictions on his folly, which attracted the notice of the operator.
One morning when he sent up his name to Miss Anderson, whom he did not find in the hotel parlour, the servant came back with word that Miss Van Hook would like to have him come up to their rooms. But it was Miss Anderson who met him at the door.
"It seemed rather formal to send you word that Miss Van Hook was indisposed, and Miss Anderson would be unable to walk this morning, and I thought perhaps you"d rather come up and get my regrets in person. And I wanted you to see our view."
She led the way to the window for it, but they did not look at it, though they sat down there apparently for the purpose. Dan put his hat beside his chair, and observed some inattentive civilities in inquiring after Miss Van Hook"s health, and in hearing that it was merely a bad headache, one of a sort in which her niece hated to leave her to serve herself with the wet compresses which Miss Van Hook always bore on her forehead for it.
"One thing: it"s decided us to be off for Fortress Monroe at last. We shall go by the boat to-morrow, if my aunt"s better."
"To-morrow?" said Dan. "What"s to become of me when you"re gone?"
"Oh, we shall not take the whole population with us," suggested Miss Anderson.
"I wish you would take me. I told Mrs. Brinkley I would come while she was there, but I"m afraid I can"t get off. Lafflin is developing into all sorts of strange propositions."
"I think you"d better look out for that man," said Miss Anderson.
"Oh, I do nothing without consulting my father. But I shall miss you."
"Thank you," said the girl gravely.
"I don"t mean in a business capacity only."
They both laughed, and Dan looked about the room, which he found was a private hotel parlour, softened to a more domestic effect by the signs of its prolonged occupation by two refined women. On a table stood a leather photograph envelope with three cabinet pictures in it. Along the top lay a spray of withered forceythia. Dan"s wandering eyes rested on it. Miss Anderson went and softly closed the door opening into the next room.
"I was afraid our talking might disturb my aunt," she said, and on her way back to him she picked up the photograph case and brought it to the light. "These are my father and mother. We live at Yonkers; but I"m with my aunt a good deal of the time in town--even when I"m at home." She laughed at her own contradictory statement, and put the case back without explaining the third figure--a figure in uniform. Dan conjectured a military brother, or from her indifference perhaps a militia brother, and then forgot about him. But the partial Yonkers residence accounted for traits of unconventionality in Miss Anderson which he had not been able to reconcile with the notion of an exclusively New York breeding. He felt the relief, the sympathy, the certainty of intelligence which every person whose life has been partly spent in the country feels at finding that a suspected c.o.c.kney has also had the outlook into nature and simplicity.
On the Yonkers basis they became more intimate, more personal, and Dan told her about Ponkwa.s.set Falls and his mother and sisters; he told her about his father, and she said she should like to see his father; she thought he must be like her father.
All at once, and for no reason that he could think of afterward, except, perhaps, the desire to see the case with her eyes, he began to tell her of his affair with Alice, and how and why it was broken off; he told the whole truth in regard to that, and did not spare himself.
She listened without once speaking, but without apparent surprise at the confidence, though she may have felt surprised. At times she looked as if her thoughts were away from what he was saying.
He ended with, "I"m sure I don"t know why I"ve told you all this. But I wanted you to know about me. The worst."
Miss Anderson said, looking down, "I always thought she was a very conscientious giyl." Then after a pause, in which she seemed to be overcoming an embarra.s.sment in being obliged to speak of another in such a conviction, "I think she was very moybid. She was like ever so many New England giyls that I"ve met. They seem to want some excuse for suffering; and they must suffer even if it"s through somebody else. I don"t know; they"re romantic, New England giyls are; they have too many ideals."
Dan felt a balm in this; he too had noticed a superfluity of ideals in Alice, he had borne the burden of realising some of them; they all seemed to relate in objectionable degree to his perfectionation. So he said gloomily, "She was very good. And I was to blame."
"Oh yes!" said Miss Anderson, catching her breath in a queer way; "she seyved you right."
She rose abruptly, as if she heard her aunt speak, and Dan perceived that he had been making a long call.
He went away dazed and dissatisfied; he knew now that he ought not to have told Miss Anderson about his affair, unless he meant more by his confidence than he really did--unless he meant to follow it up.
He took leave of her, and asked her to make his adieux to her aunt; but the next day he came down to the boat to see them off. It seemed to him that their interview had ended too hastily; he felt sore and restless over it; he hoped that something more conclusive might happen. But at the boat Miss Anderson and her aunt were inseparable. Miss Van Hook said she hoped they should soon see him at the Hygeia, and he replied that he was not sure that he should be able to come after all.