Delphi complete works of.., p.351
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells, page 351
“They never get hurt,” said Mrs. Saintsbury. “Oh, look! There’s Dan Mavering!”
The crowd at the foot of the tree had closed densely, and a wilder roar went up from all the students. A tall, slim young fellow, lifted on the shoulders of the mass below, and staying himself with one hand against the tree, rapidly stripped away the remnants of the wreath, and flung them into the crowd under him. A single tuft remained; the crowd was melting away under him in a scramble for the fallen flowers; he made a crooked leap, caught the tuft, and tumbled with it headlong.
“Oh!” breathed the ladies on the Benches, with a general suspiration lost in the ‘rahs and clappings, as Mavering reappeared with the bunch of flowers in his hand. He looked dizzily about, as if not sure, of his course; then his face, flushed and heated, with the hair pulled over the eyes, brightened with recognition, and he advanced upon Mrs. Saintsbury’s party with rapid paces, each of which Mrs. Pasmer commentated with inward conjecture.
“Is he bringing the flowers to Alice? Isn’t it altogether too conspicuous? Has he really the right to do it? What will people think? Will he give them to me for her, or will he hand them directly to her? Which should I prefer him to do? I wonder if I know?”
When she looked up with the air of surprise mixed with deprecation and ironical disclaimer which she had prepared while these things were passing through her mind, young Mavering had reached them, and had paused in a moment’s hesitation before his father. With a bow of affectionate burlesque, from which he lifted his face to break into laughter at the look in all their eyes, he handed the tattered nosegay to his father.
“Oh, how delightful! how delicate! how perfect!” Mrs. Pasmer confided to herself.
“I think this must be for you, Mrs. Pasmer,” said the elder Mavering, offering her the bouquet, with a grave smile at his son’s whim.
“Oh no, indeed!” said Mrs. Pasmer. “For Mrs. Saintsbury, of course.”
She gave it to her, and Mrs. Saintsbury at once transferred it to Miss Pasmer.
“They wished me to pass this to you, Alice;” and at this consummation Dan Mavering broke into another happy laugh.
“Mrs. Saintsbury, you always do the right thing at once,” he cried.
“That’s more than I can say of you, Mr. Mavering,” she retorted.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Mavering!” said the girl, receiving the flowers. It was as if she had been too intent upon them and him to have noticed the little comedy that had conveyed them to her.
VIII.
As soon after Class Day as Mrs. Pasmer’s complaisant sense of the decencies would let her, she went out from Boston to call on Mrs. Saintsbury in Cambridge, and thank her for her kindness to Alice and herself. “She will know well enough what I come for,” she said to herself, and she felt it the more important to ignore Mrs. Saintsbury’s penetration by every polite futility; this was due to them both: and she did not go till the second day after.
Mrs. Saintsbury came down into the darkened, syringa-scented library to find her, and give her a fan.
“You still live, Jenny,” she said, kissing her gaily.
They called each other by their girl names, as is rather the custom in Boston with ladies who are in the same set, whether they are great friends or not. In the more changeful society of Cambridge, where so many new people are constantly coming and going in connection with the college, it is not so much the custom; but Mrs. Saintsbury was Boston born, as well as Mrs. Pasmer, and was Cantabrigian by marriage — though this is not saying that she was not also thoroughly so by convincement and usage she now rarely went into Boston society.
“Yes, Etta — just. But I wasn’t sure of it,” said Mrs. Pasmer, “when I woke yesterday. I was a mere aching jelly!”
“And Alice?”
“Oh; I don’t think she had any physical consciousness. She was a mere rapturous memory!”
“She did have a good time, didn’t she?” said Mrs. Saintsbury, in a generous retrospect. “I think she was on her feet every moment in the evening. It kept me from getting tired, to watch her.”
“I was afraid you’d be quite worn out. I’d no idea it was so late. It must have been nearly half past seven before we got away from the Beck Hall spread, and then by the time we had walked round the college grounds — how extremely pretty the lanterns were, and how charming the whole effect was! — it must have been nine before the dancing began. Well, we owe it all to you, Etta.”
“I don’t know what you mean by owing. I’m always glad of an excuse for Class Day. And it was Dan Mavering who really managed the affair.”
“He was very kind,” said Mrs. Pasmer, with a feeling which was chiefly gratitude to her friend for bringing in his name so soon. Now that it had been spoken, she felt it decorous to throw aside the outer integument of pretense, which if it could have been entirely exfoliated would have caused Mrs. Pasmer morally to disappear, like an onion stripped of its successive laminae.
“What did you mean,” she asked, leaning forward, with, her face averted, “about his having the artistic temperament? Is he going to be an artist? I should hope not.” She remembered without shame that she had strongly urged him to consider how much better it would be to be a painter than a lawyer, in the dearth of great American painters.
“He could be a painter if he liked — up to a certain point,” said Mrs. Saintsbury. “Or he could be any one of half-a-dozen other things — his last craze was journalism; but you know what I mean by the artistic temperament: it’s that inability to be explicit; that habit of leaving things vague and undefined, and hoping they’ll somehow come out as you want them of themselves; that way of taking the line of beauty to get at what you wish to do or say, and of being very finicking about little things and lag about essentials. That’s what I mean by the artistic temperament.”
“Yes; that’s terrible,” sighed Mrs. Pasmer, with the abstractly severe yet personally pitying perception of one whose every word and act was sincere and direct. “I know just what you mean. But how does it apply to Mr. Mavering?”
“It doesn’t, exactly,” returned her friend. “And I’m always ashamed when I say, or even think, anything against Dan Mavering. He’s sweetness itself. We’ve known him ever since he came to Harvard, and I must say that a more constant and lovely follow I never saw. It wasn’t merely when he was a Freshman, and he had that home feeling hanging about him still that makes all the Freshmen so appreciative of anything you do for them; but all through the Sophomore and Junior years, when they’re so taken up with their athletics and their societies and their college life generally that they haven’t a moment for people that have been kind to them, he was just as faithful as ever.”
“How nice!” cried Mrs. Pasmer.
“Yes, indeed! And all the allurements of Boston society haven’t taken him from us altogether. You can’t imagine how much this means till you’ve been at home a while and seen how the students are petted and spoiled nowadays in the young society.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of it,” said Mrs. Pasmer. “And is it his versatility and brilliancy, or his amiability, that makes him such a universal favourite?”
“Universal favourite? I don’t know that he’s that.”
“Well, popular, then.”
“Oh, he’s certainly very much liked. But, Jenny, there are no universal favourites in Harvard now, if there ever were: the classes are altogether too big. And it wouldn’t be ability, and it wouldn’t be amiability alone, that would give a man any sort of leadership.”
“What in the world would it be?”
“That question, more than anything else, shows how long you’ve been away, Jenny. It would be family — family, with a judicious mixture of the others, and with money.”
“Is it possible? But of course — I remember! Only at their age one thinks of students as being all hail-fellow-well-met with each other—”
“Yes; it’s hard to realise how conventional they are — how very much worldlier than the world — till one sees it as one does in Cambridge. They pique themselves on it. And Mr. Saintsbury” — she was one of those women whom everything reminds of their husbands “says that it isn’t a bad thing altogether. He says that Harvard is just like the world; and even if it’s a little more so, these boys have got to live in the world, and they had better know what it is. You may not approve of the Harvard spirit, and Mr. Saintsbury doesn’t sympathise with it; he only says it’s the world’s spirit. Harvard men — the swells — are far more exclusive than Oxford men. A student, ‘comme il faut’, wouldn’t at all like to be supposed to know another student whom we valued for his brilliancy, unless he was popular and well known in college.”
“Dear me!” cried Mrs. Pasmer. “But of course! It’s perfectly natural, with young people. And it’s well enough that they should begin to understand how things really are in the world early; it will save them from a great many disappointments.”
“I assure you we have very little to teach Harvard men in those matters. They could give any of us points. Those who are of good family and station know how to protect themselves by reserves that the others wouldn’t dare to transgress. But a merely rich man couldn’t rise in their set any more than a merely gifted man. He could get on to a certain point by toadying, and some do; but he would never get to be popular, like Dan Mavering.”
“And what makes him popular? — to go back to the point we started from,” said Mrs. Pasmer.
“Ah, that’s hard to say. It’s — quality, I suppose. I don’t mean social quality, exactly; but personal charm. He never had a mean thought; of course we’re all full of mean thoughts, and Dan is too; but his first impulse is always generous and sweet, and at his age people act a great deal from impulse. I don’t suppose he ever met a human being without wanting to make him like him, and trying to do it.”
“Yes, he certainly makes you like him,” sighed Mrs. Pasmer. “But I understand that he can’t make people like him without family or money; and I don’t understand that he’s one of those ‘nouveaux riches’ who are giving Harvard such a reputation for extravagance nowadays.”
There was an inquiring note in Mrs. Pasmer’s voice; and in the syringa-scented obscurity, which protected the ladies from the expression of each other’s faces, Mrs. Saintsbury gave a little laugh of intelligence, to which Mrs. Pasmer responded by a murmur of humorous enjoyment at being understood.
“Oh no! He isn’t one of those. But the Maverings have plenty of money,” said Mrs. Saintsbury, “and Dan’s been very free with it, though not lavish. And he came here with a reputation for popularity from a very good school, and that always goes a very great way in college.”
“Yes?” said Mrs. Pasmer, feeling herself getting hopelessly adrift in these unknown waters; but reposing a pious confidence in her pilot.
“Yes; if a sufficient number of his class said he was the best fellow in the world, he would be pretty sure to be chosen one of the First Ten in the ‘Dickey’.”
“What mysteries!” gasped Mrs. Pasmer, disposed to make fun of them, but a little overawed all the same. “What in the world is the ‘Dickey’?”
“It’s the society that the Freshmen are the most eager to get into. They’re chosen, ten at a time, by the old members, and to be one of the first ten — the only Freshmen chosen — is something quite ineffable.”
“I see.” Mrs. Pasmer fanned herself, after taking a long breath. “And when he had got into the —— —”
“Then it would depend upon himself, how he spent his money, and all that, and what sort of society success he was in Boston. That has a great deal to do with it from the first. Then another thing is caution — discreetness; not saying anything censorious or critical of other men, no matter what they do. And Dan Mavering is the perfection of prudence, because he’s the perfection of good-nature.”
Mrs. Pasmer had apparently got all of these facts that she could digest. “And who are the Maverings?”
“Why, it’s an old Boston name—”
“It’s too old, isn’t it? Like Pasmer. There are no Maverings in Boston that I ever heard of.”
“No; the name’s quite died out just here, I believe: but it’s old, and it bids fair to be replated at Ponkwasset Falls.”
“At Ponk—”
“That’s where they have their mills, or factories, or shops, or whatever institution they make wall-paper in.”
“Wall-paper!” cried Mrs. Pasmer, austerely. After a moment she asked: “And is wall-paper the ‘thing’ now? I mean—” She tried to think of some way of modifying the commonness of her phrase, but did not. After all, it expressed her meaning.
“It isn’t the extreme of fashion, of course. But it’s manufacturing, and it isn’t disgraceful. And the Mavering papers are very pretty, and you can live with them without becoming anaemic, or having your face twitch.”
“Face twitch?” echoed Mrs. Pasmer.
“Yes; arsenical poisoning.”
“Oh! Conscientious as well as aesthetic. I see. And does Mr. Mavering put his artistic temperament into them?”
“His father does. He’s a very interesting man. He has the best taste in certain things — he knows more about etchings, I suppose, than any one else in Boston.”
“Is it possible! And does he live at Ponkwasset Falls? It’s in Rhode Island, isn’t it?”
“New Hampshire. Yes; the whole family live there.”
“The whole family? Are there many of them? I’d fancied, somehow, that Mr. Mavering was the only —— Do tell me about them, Etta,” said Mrs. Pasmer, leaning back in her chair, and fanning herself with an effect of impartial interest, to which the dim light of the room lent itself.
“He’s the only son. But there are daughters, of course — very cultivated girls.”
“And is he — is the elder Mr. Mavering a — I don’t know what made me think so — a widower?”
“Well, no — not exactly.”
“Not exactly! He’s not a grass-widower, I hope?”
“No, indeed. But his wife’s a helpless invalid, and always has been. He’s perfectly devoted to her; and he hurried home yesterday, though he wanted very much to stay for Commencement. He’s never away from her longer than he can help. She’s bedridden; and you can see from the moment you enter it that it’s a man’s house. Daughters can’t change that, you know.”
“Have you been there?” asked Mrs. Pasmer, surprised that she was getting so much information, but eager for more. “Why, how long have you known them, Etta?”
“Only since Dan came to Harvard. Mr. Saintsbury took a fancy to him from the start, and the boy was so fond of him that they were always insisting upon a visit; and last summer we stopped there on our way to the mountains.”
“And the sisters — do they stay there the whole year round? Are they countrified?”
“One doesn’t live in the country without being countrified,” said Mrs. Saintsbury. “They’re rather quiet girls, though they’ve been about a good deal — to Europe with friends, and to New York in the winter. They’re older than Dan; they’re more like their father. Are you afraid of that draught at the windows?”
“Oh no; it’s delicious. And he’s like the mother?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s the father who has the artistic taste — he gets that from him; and the mother who has the—”
“Temperament — yes.”
“How extremely interesting! And so he’s going to be a lawyer. Why lawyer, if he’s got the talent and the temperament of an artist? Does his father wish him to be a lawyer?”
“His father wishes him to be a wall-paper maker.”
“And the young man compromises on the law. I see,” said Mrs. Pasmer. “And you say he’s been going into Boston a great deal? Where does he go?”
The ladies entered into this social inquiry with a zest which it would be hard to make the reader share, or perhaps to feel the importance of. It is enough that it ended in the social vindication of Dan Mavering. It would not have been enough for Mrs Pasmer that he was accepted in the best Cambridge houses; she knew of old how people were accepted in Cambridge for their intellectual brilliancy or solidity, their personal worth, and all sorts of things, without consideration of the mystical something which gives vogue in Boston.
“How superb Alice was!” Mrs. Saintsbury broke off abruptly. “She has such a beautiful manner. Such repose.”
“Repose! Yes,” said her mother, thoughtfully. “But she’s very intense. And I don’t see where she gets it. Her father has repose enough, but he has no intensity; and I’m all intensity, and no repose. But I’m no more like my mother than Alice is like me.”
“I think she has the Hibbins face,” said Mrs. Saintsbury.
“Oh! she’s got the Hibbins face,” said Mrs Pasmer, with a disdain of tone which she did not at all feel; the tone was mere absent-mindedness.
She was about to revert to the question of Mavering’s family, when the door-bell rang, and another visitor interrupted her talk with Mrs. Saintsbury.
IX.
Mrs. Pasmer’s husband looked a great deal older than herself, and, by operation of a well-known law of compensation, he was lean and silent, while she was plump and voluble. He had thick eyebrows, which remained black after his hair and beard had become white, and which gave him an aspect of fierceness, expressive of nothing in his character. It was from him that their daughter got her height, and, as Mrs. Pasmer freely owned, her distinction.
Soon after their marriage the Pasmers had gone to live in Paris, where they remained faithful to the fortunes of the Second Empire till its fall, with intervals of return to their own country of a year or two years at a time. After the fall of the Empire they made their sojourn in England, where they lived upon the edges and surfaces of things, as Americans must in Europe everywhere, but had more permanency of feeling than they had known in France, and something like a real social status. At one time it seemed as if they might end their days there; but that which makes Americans different from all other peoples, and which finally claims their allegiance for their own land, made them wish to come back to America, and to come back to Boston. After all, their place in England was strictly inferior, and must be. They knew titles, and consorted with them, but they had none themselves, and the English constancy which kept their friends faithful to them after they had become an old story, was correlated with the English honesty which never permitted them to mistake themselves for even the lowest of the nobility. They went out last, and they did not come in first, ever.
