Mrs. Brinkley came to breakfast feeling so much more haggard than she found either of the Pasmers looking, that she was able to throw off her lingering remorse for having told Mavering not to come. She had the advantage also of doubt as to her precise motive in having done so; she had either done so because she had judged it best for him not to see Miss Pasmer again, or else she had done so to relieve the girl from the pain of an encounter which her mother evidently dreaded for her. If one motive seemed at moments outrageously meddling and presumptuous, the other was so n.o.bly good and kind that it more than counterbalanced it in Mrs. Brinkley"s mind, who knew very well in spite of her doubt that she had, acted from a mixture of both. With this conviction, it was both a comfort and a pang to find by the register of the hotel, which she furtively consulted, that Dan had not arrived by the morning boat, as she groundlessly feared and hoped he might have done.
In any case, however, and at the end of all the ends, she had that girl on her hands more than ever; and believing as she did that Dan and Alice had only to meet in order to be reconciled, she felt that the girl whom she had balked of her prey was her innocent victim. What right had she to interfere? Was he not her natural prey? If he liked being a prey, who was lawfully to forbid him? He was not perfect; he would know how to take care of himself probably; in marriage things equalised themselves.
She looked at the girl"s thin cheeks and lack-l.u.s.tre eyes, and pitied and hated her with that strange mixture of feeling which our victims aspire in us.
She walked out on the verandah with the Pasmers after breakfast, and chatted a while about indifferent things; and Alice made an effort to ignore the event of the night before with a pathos which wrung Mrs.
Brinkley"s heart, and with a gay resolution which ought to have been a great pleasure to such a veteran dissembler as her mother. She said she had never found the air so delicious; she really believed it would begin to do her good now; but it was a little fresh just there, and with her eyes she invited her mother to come with her round the corner into that sheltered recess, and invited Mrs. Brinkley not to come.
It was that effect of resentment which is lighter even than a touch, the waft of the arrow"s feather; but it could wound a guilty heart, and Mrs.
Brinkley sat down where she was, realising with a pang that the time when she might have been everything to this unhappy girl had just pa.s.sed for ever, and henceforth she could be nothing. She remained musing sadly upon the contradictions she had felt in the girl"s character, the confusion of good and evil, the potentialities of misery and harm, the potentialities of bliss and good; and she felt less and less satisfied with herself. She had really presumed to interfere with Fate; perhaps she had interfered with Providence. She would have given anything to recall her act; and then with a flash she realised that it was quite possible to recall it. She could telegraph Mavering to come; and she rose, humbly and gratefully, as if from an answered prayer, to go and do so.
She was not at all a young woman, and many things had come and gone in her life that ought to have fortified her against surprise; but she wanted to scream like a little frightened girl as Dan Mavering stepped out of the parlour door toward her. The habit of not screaming, however, prevailed, and she made a tolerably successful effort to treat him with decent composure. She gave him a rigid hand. "Where in the world did you come from? Did you get my telegram?"
"No. Did you get my letter?"
"Yes."
"Well, I took a notion to come right on after I wrote, and I started on the same train with it. But they said it was no use trying to get into the Hygeia, and I stopped last night at the little hotel in Hampton.
I"ve just walked over, and Mr. Brinkley told me you were out here somewhere. That"s the whole story, I believe." He gave his nervous laugh, but it seemed to Mrs. Brinkley that it had not much joy in it.
"Hush!" she said involuntarily, receding to her chair and sinking back into it again. He looked surprised. "You know the Van Hooks are gone?"
He laughed harshly. "I should think they were dead from your manner, Mrs. Brinkley. But I didn"t come to see the Van Hooks. What made you think I did?"
He gave her a look which she found so dishonest, so really insincere, that she resolved to abandon him to Providence as soon as she could.
"Oh, I didn"t know but there had been some little understanding at Washington."
"Perhaps on their part. They were people who seemed to take a good many things for granted, but they could hardly expect to control other people"s movements."
He looked sharply at Mrs. Brinkley, as if to question how much she knew; but she had now measured him, and she said, "Oh! then the visit"s to me?"
"Entirely," cried Dan. The old sweetness came into his laughing eyes again, and went to Mrs. Brinkley"s heart. She wished him to be happy, somehow; she would have done anything for him; she wished she knew what to do. Ought she to tell him the Pasmers were there? Ought she to make up some excuse and get him away before he met them? She felt herself getting more and more bewildered and helpless. Those women might come round that corner any moment and then she know the first sight of Alice"s face would do or undo everything with Dan. Did she wish them reconciled? Did she wish them for ever parted? She no longer knew what she wished; she only knew that she had no right to wish anything. She continued to talk on with Dan, who grew more and more at ease, and did most of the talking, while Mrs. Brinkley"s whole being narrowed itself to the question. Would the Pasmers come back that way, or would they go round the further corner, and get into the hotel by another door?
The suspense seemed interminable; they must have already gone that other way. Suddenly she heard the pushing back of chairs in that recess. She could not bear it. She jumped to her feet.
"Just wait a moment, Mr. Mavering! I"ll join you again. Mr. Brinkley is expecting--I must--"
One morning of the following June Mrs. Brinkley sat well forward in the beautiful church where Dan and Alice were to be married. The lovely day became a still lovelier day within, enriched by the dyes of the stained windows through which it streamed; the still place was dim yet bright with it; the figures painted on the walls had a soft distinctness; a body of light seemed to irradiate from the depths of the dome like lamp-light.
There was a subdued murmur of voices among the people in the pews: they were in a sacred edifice without being exactly at church, and they might talk; now and then a m.u.f.fled, nervous laugh escaped. A delicate scent of flowers from the ma.s.ses in the chancel mixed with the light and the prevailing silence. There was a soft, continuous rustle of drapery as the ladies advanced up the thickly carpeted aisles on the arms of the young ushers and compressed themselves into place in the pews.
Two or three people whom she did not know were put into the pew with Mrs. Brinkley, but she kept her seat next the aisle; presently an usher brought up a lady who sat down beside her, and then for a moment or two seemed to sink and rise, as if on the springs of an intense excitement.
It was Miss Cotton, who, while this process of quiescing lasted, appeared not to know Mrs. Brinkley. When she became aware of her, all was lost again. "Mrs. Brinkley!" she cried, as well as one can cry in whisper. "Is it possible?"
"I have my doubts," Mrs. Brinkley whispered back. "But we"ll suppose the case."
"Oh, it"s all too good to be true! How I envy you being the means of bringing them together, Mrs. Brinkley!"
"Means?"
"Yes--they owe it all to you; you needn"t try to deny it; he"s told every one!"
"I was sure she hadn"t," said Mrs. Brinkley, remembering how Alice had marked an increasing ignorance of any part she might have had in the affair from the first moment of her reconciliation with Dan; she had the effect of feeling that she had sacrificed enough to Mrs. Brinkley; and Mrs. Brinkley had been restored to all the original strength of her conviction that she was a solemn little unconscious egotist, and Dan was as unselfish and good as he was unequal to her exactions.
"Oh no?" said Miss Cotton. "She couldn"t!" implying that Alice would be too delicate to speak of it.
"Do you see any of his family here?" asked Mrs. Brinkley.
"Yes; over there--up front." Miss Cotton motioned, with her eyes toward a pew in which Mrs. Brinkley distinguished an elderly gentleman"s down-misted bald head and the back of a young lady"s bonnet. "His father and sister; the other"s a bridemaid; mother bed-ridden and couldn"t come."
"They might have brought her in an-arm-chair," suggested Mrs. Brinkley ironically, "on such an occasion. But perhaps they don"t take much interest in such a patched-up affair."
"Oh yes, they do!" exclaimed Miss Cotton. "They idolise Alice."
"And Mrs. Pasmer and Mister, too?"
"I don"t suppose that so much matters."
"They know how to acquiesce, I"ve no doubt."
"Oh yes! You"ve heard? The young people are going abroad first with her family for a year, and then they come back to live with his--where the Works are."
"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Brinkley.
"Why, Mrs. Brinkley, do you still feel that way?" asked Miss Cotton, with a certain distress. "It seems to me that if ever two young people had the promise of happiness, they have. Just see what their love has done for them already!"
"And you still think that in these cases love can do everything?"
Miss Cotton was about to reply, when she observed that the people about her had stopped talking. The bridegroom, with his best man, in whom his few acquaintances there recognised Boardman with some surprise, came over the chancel from one side.
Miss Cotton bent close to Mrs. Brinkley and whispered rapidly: "Alice found out Mr. Mavering wished it, and insisted on his having him. It was a great concession, but she"s perfectly magnanimous. Poor fellow! how he does look!"
Alice, on her father"s arm, with her bridemaids, of whom the first was Minnie Mavering, mounted the chancel steps, where Mr. Pasmer remained standing till he advanced to give away the bride. He behaved with great dignity, but seemed deeply affected; the ladies in the front pews said they could see his face twitch; but he never looked handsomer.
The five clergymen came from the back of the chancel in their white surplices. The ceremony proceeded to the end.
The young couple drove at once to the station, where they were to take the train for New York, and wait there a day or two for Mrs. and Mr.
Pasmer before they all sailed.
As they drove along, Alice held Dan"s wrist in the cold clutch of her trembling little ungloved hand, on which her wedding ring shone. "O dearest! let us be good!" she said. "I will try my best. I will try not to be exacting and unreasonable, and I know I can. I won"t even make any conditions, if you will always be frank and open with me, and tell me everything."
He leaned over and kissed her behind the drawn curtains. "I will, Alice!
I will indeed! I won"t keep anything from you after this."
He resolved to tell her all about Julia Anderson at the right moment, when Alice was in the mood, and as soon as he thoroughly understood what he had really meant himself.