April Hopes - William Dean Howells

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yet in solution; nothing has been precipitated in word or fact. The parties to it even reserve a final construction of what they themselves say or do; they will not own to their hearts that they mean exactly this or that. It is this phase which in its perfect freedom is the most American of all; under other conditions it is an instant, perceptible or imperceptible; under ours it is a distinct stage, unhurried by any outside influences.

      The nearest approach to a definition of the situation was in a walk between Mavering and Mrs. Pasmer, and this talk, too, light and brief, might have had no such intention as her fancy assigned his part of it.

      She recurred to something that had been said on Class Day about his taking up the law immediately, or going abroad first for a year.

      “Oh, I've abandoned Europe altogether for the present,” he said laughing. “And I don't know but I may go back on the law too.”

      “Indeed! Then you are going to be an artist?”

      “Oh no; not so bad as that. It isn't settled yet, and I'm off here to think it over a while before the law school opens in September. My father wants me to go into his business and turn my powers to account in designing wall-papers.”

      “Oh, how very interesting!” At the same time Mrs. Pasmer ran over the whole field of her acquaintance without finding another wall-paper maker in it. But she remembered what Mrs. Saintsbury had said: it was manufacturing. This reminded her to ask if he had seen the Saintsburys lately, and he said, No; he believed they were still in Cambridge, though.

      “And we shall actually see a young man,” she said finally, “in the act of deciding his own destiny!”

      He laughed for pleasure in her persiflage. “Yes; only don't give me away. Nobody else knows it.”

      “Oh no, indeed. Too much flattered, Mr. Mavering. Shall you let me know when you've decided? I shall be dying to know, and I shall be too high-minded to ask.”

      It was not then too late to adapt 'Pinafore' to any exigency of life, and Mavering said, “You will learn from the expression of my eyes.”

      XIII.

      The witnesses of Mavering's successful efforts to make everybody like him were interested in his differentiation of the attentions he offered every age and sex from those he paid Alice. But while they all agreed that there never was a sweeter fellow, they would have been puzzled to say in just what this difference consisted, and much as they liked him, the ladies of her cult were not quite satisfied with him till they decided that it was marked by an anxiety, a timidity, which was perfectly fascinating in a man so far from bashfulness as he. That is, he did nice things for others without asking; but with her there was always an explicit pause, and an implicit prayer and permission, first. Upon this condition they consented to the glamour which he had for her, and which was evident to every one probably but him.

      Once agreeing that no one was good enough for Alice Pasmer, whose qualities they felt that only women could really appreciate, they were interested to see how near Mavering could come to being good enough; and as the drama played itself before their eyes, they pleased themselves in analysing its hero.

      “He is not bashful, certainly,” said one of a little group who sat midway of the piazza while Alice and Mavering walked up and down together. “But don't you think he's modest? There's that difference, you know.”

      The lady addressed waited so long before answering that the young couple came abreast of the group, and then she had to wait till they were out of hearing. “Yes,” she said then, with a tender, sighing thoughtfulness, “I've felt that in him. And really think he is a very loveable nature. The only question would be whether he wasn't too loveable.”

      “Yes,” said the first lady, with the same kind of suspiration, “I know what you mean. And I suppose they ought to be something more alike in disposition.”

      “Or sympathies?” suggested the other.

      “Yes, or sympathies.”

      A third lady laughed a little. “Mr. Mavering has so many sympathies that he ought to be like her in some of them.”

      “Do you mean that he's too sympathetic—that he isn't sincere?” asked the first—a single lady of forty-nine, a Miss Cotton, who had a little knot of conscience between her pretty eyebrows, tied there by the unremitting effort of half a century to do and say exactly the truth, and to find it out.

      Mrs. Brinkley, whom she addressed, was of that obesity which seems often to incline people to sarcasm. “No, I don't think he's insincere. I think he always means what he says and does—Well, do you think a little more concentration of good-will would hurt him for Miss Pasmer's purpose—if she has it?”

      “Yes, I see,” said Miss Cotton. She waited, with her kind eyes fixed wistfully upon Alice, for the young people to approach and get by. “I wonder what the men think of him?”

      “You might ask Miss Anderson,” said Mrs. Brinkley.

      “Oh, do you think they tell her?”

      “Not that exactly,” said Mrs. Brinkley, shaking with good-humoured pleasure in her joke.

      “Her voice—oh yes. She and Alice are great friends, of course.”

      “I should think,” said Mrs. Stamwell, the second speaker, “that Mr. Mavering would be jealous sometimes—till he looked twice.”

      “Yes,” said Miss Cotton, obliged to admit the force of the remark, but feeling that Mr. Mavering had been carried out of the field of her vision by the turn of the talk. “I suppose,” she continued, “that he wouldn't be so well liked by other young men as she is by other girls, do you think?”

      “I don't think, as a rule,” said Mrs. Brinkley, “that men are half so appreciative of one another as women are. It's most amusing to see the open scorn with which two young fellows treat each other if a pretty girl introduces them.”

      All the ladies joined in the laugh with which Mrs. Brinkley herself led off. But Miss Cotton stopped laughing first.

      “Do you mean,”, she asked, “that if a gentleman were generally popular with gentlemen it would be—”

      “Because he wasn't generally so with women? Something like that—if you'll leave Mr. Mavering out of the question. Oh, how very good of them!” she broke off, and all the ladies glanced at Mavering and Alice where they had stopped at the further end of the piazza, and were looking off. “Now I can probably finish before they get back here again. What I do mean, Miss Cotton, is that neither sex willingly accepts the favourites of the other.”

      “Yes,” said Miss Cotton admissively.

      “And all that saves Miss Pasmer is that she has not only the qualities that women like in women, but some of the qualities that men, like in them. She's thoroughly human.”

      A little sensation, almost a murmur, not wholly of assent, went round that circle which had so nearly voted Alice a saint.

      “In the first place, she likes to please men.”

      “Oh!” came from the group.

      “And that makes them like her—if it doesn't go too far, as her mother says.”

      The ladies all laughed, recognising a common turn of phrase in Mrs. Pasmer.

      “I should think,” said Mrs. Stamwell, “that she would believe a little in heredity if she noticed that in her daughter;” and the ladies laughed again.

      “Then,” Mrs. Brinkley resumed concerning Alice, “she has a very pretty face—an extremely pretty face; she has a tender voice, and she's very, very graceful—in rather an odd way; perhaps it's only a fascinating awkwardness. Then she dresses—or her mother dresses her—exquisitely.” The ladies, with another sensation, admitted the perfect accuracy with

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