XXV.
She burst into the room where her mother sat looking over somehousekeeping accounts. His kiss and his name were upon her lips; hersoul was full of him.
"Mamma!" she panted.
Her mother did not look round. She could have had no premonition of thevital news that her daughter was bringing, and she went on comparing thefirst autumn month's provision bill with that of the last spring month,and trying to account for the difference.
The silence, broken by the rattling of the two bills in her mother'shands as she glanced from one to the other through her glasses, seemedsuddenly impenetrable, and the prismatic world of the girl's raptureburst like a bubble against it. There is no explanation of the effectoutside of temperament and overwrought sensibilities. She stared acrossthe room at her mother, who had not heard her, and then she broke into astorm of tears.
"Alice!" cried her mother, with that sanative anger which comes torescue women from the terror of any sudden shock. "What is the matterwith you?--what do you mean?" She dropped both of the provision bills tothe floor, and started toward her daughter.
"Nothing--nothing! Let me go. I want to go to my room." She tried toreach the door beyond her mother.
"Indeed you shall not!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "I will not have you behavingso! What has happened to you? Tell me. You have frightened me half outof my senses."
The girl gave up her efforts to escape, and flung herself on the sofa,with her face in the pillow, where she continued to sob. Her motherbegan to relent at the sight of her passion. As a woman and as a mothershe knew her daughter, and she knew that this passion, whatever it was,must have vent before there could be anything intelligible between them.She did not press her with further question, but set about making her alittle more comfortable on the sofa; she pulled the pillow straight, anddropped a light shawl over the girl's shoulders, so that she should nottake cold.
Then Mrs. Pasmer had made up her mind that Alice had met Maveringsomewhere, and that this outburst was the retarded effect of seeing him.During the last six weeks she had assisted at many phases of feeling inregard to him, and knew more clearly than Alice herself the meaning ofthem all. She had been patient and kind, with the resources that everywoman finds in herself when it is the question of a daughter's ordeal inan affair of the heart which she has favoured.
The storm passed as quickly as it came, and Alice sat upright castingoff the wraps. But once checked with the fact on her tongue, she foundit hard to utter it.
"What is it, Alice?--what is it?" urged her mother.
"Nothing. I--Mr. Mavering--we met--I met him at the Museum, and--we'reengaged! It's really so. It seems like raving, but it's true. He camewith me to the door; I wouldn't let him come in. Don't you believe it?Oh, we are! indeed we are! Are you glad, mamma? You know I couldn't havelived without him."
She trembled on the verge of another outbreak.
Mrs. Pasmer sacrificed her astonishment in the interest of sanity, andreturned quietly: "Glad, Alice! You know that I think he's the sweetestand best fellow in the world."
"O mamma!"
"But are you sure--"
"Yes, Yes. I'm not crazy; it isn't a dream he was there--and I methim--I couldn't run away--I put out my hand; I couldn't help it--Ithought I should give way; and he took it; and then--then we wereengaged. I don't know what we said: I went in to look at the 'Joan ofArc' again, and there was no one else there. He seemed to feel just asI did. I don't know whether either of us spoke. But we, knew we wereengaged, and we began to talk."
Mrs. Pasmer began to laugh. To her irreverent soul only the droll sideof the statement appeared.
"Don't, mamma!" pleaded Alice piteously.
"No, no; I won't. But I hope Dan Mavering will be a little more definiteabout it when I'm allowed to see him. Why couldn't he have come in withyou?"
"It would have killed me. I couldn't let him see me cry, and I knew Ishould break down."
"He'll have to see you cry a great many times, Alice," said her mother,with almost unexampled seriousness.
"Yes, but not yet--not so soon. He must think I'm very gloomy, and Iwant to be always bright and cheerful with him. He knows why I wouldn'tlet him come in; he knew I was going to have a cry."
Mrs. Pasmer continued to laugh.
"Don't, mamma!" pleaded Alice.
"No, I won't," replied her mother, as before. "I suppose he wasmystified. But now, if it's really settled between you, he'll be cominghere soon to see your papa and me."
"Yes--to-night."
"Well, it's very sudden," said Mrs. Pasmer. "Though I suppose thesethings always seem so."
"Is it too sudden?" asked Alice, with misgiving. "It seemed so to mewhen it was going on, but I couldn't stop it."
Her mother laughed at her simplicity. "No, when it begins once, nothingcan stop it. But you've really known each other a good while, and forthe last six weeks at least you've known you own mind about him prettyclearly. It's a pity you couldn't have known it before."
"Yes, that's what he says. He says it was such a waste of time. Oh,everything he says is perfectly fascinating!"
Her mother laughed and laughed again.
"What is it, mamma? Are you laughing at me?"
"Oh no. What an idea!"
"He couldn't seem to understand why I didn't say Yes the first time, ifI meant it." She looked down dreamily at her hands in her lap, andthen she said, with a blush and a start, "They're very queer, don't youthink?"
"Who?"
"Young men."
"Oh, very."
"Yes," Alice went on musingly. "Their minds are so different. Everythingthey say and do is so unexpected, and yet it seems to be just right."
Mrs. Pasmer asked herself if this single-mindedness was to go on forever, but she had not the heart to treat it with her natural levity.Probably it was what charmed Mavering with the child. Mrs. Pasmer hadthe firm belief that Mavering was not single-minded, and she respectedhim for it. She would not spoil her daughter's perfect trust and hope byany of the cynical suggestions of her own dark wisdom, but entered intoher mood, as such women are able to do, and flattered out of her everydetail of the morning's history. This was a feat which Mrs. Pasmerenjoyed for its own sake, and it fully satisfied the curiosity whichshe naturally felt to know all. She did not comment upon many of theparticulars; she opened her eyes a little at the notion of her daughtersitting for two or three hours and talking with a young man in thegalleries of the Museum, and she asked if anybody they knew had come in.When she heard that there were only strangers, and very few of them, shesaid nothing; and she had the same consolation in regard to the walkingback and forth in the Garden. She was so full of potential escapadesherself, so apt to let herself go at times, that the fact of Alice'sinnocent self-forgetfulness rather satisfied a need of her mother'snature; she exulted in it when she learned that there were only nursesand children in the Garden.
"And so you think you won't take up art this winter?" she said, when, inthe process of her cross-examination, Alice had left the sofa and got asfar as the door, with her hat in her hand and her sacque on her arm.
"No."
"And the Sisters of St. James--you won't join them either?"
The girl escaped from the room.
"Alice! Alice!" her mother called after her; she came back. "You haven'ttold me how he happened to be there."
"Oh, that was the most amusing part of it. He had gone there to keep anappointment with two ladies from Portland. They were to take him up intheir carriage and drive out to Cambridge, and when he saw me he forgotall about them."
"And what became of them?"
"We don't know. Isn't it ridiculous?"
If it appeared other or more than this to Mrs. Pasmer, she did notsay. She merely said, after a moment, "Well, it was certainly devoted,Alice," and let her go.