VII.
"That is one thing," said Mrs. Saintsbury, looking swiftly round to seethat the elder Mavering was not within hearing, as she hurried aheadwith Mrs. Pasmer, "that I can't stand in Dan Mavering. Why couldn't hehave warned us that it was getting near the time? Why should he havegone on pretending that there was no hurry? It isn't insincerityexactly, but it isn't candour; no, it's uncandid. Oh, I suppose it's theartistic temperament--never coming straight to the point."
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Pasmer eagerly.
"I'll tell you sometime." She looked round and halted a little forAlice, who was walking detached and neglected by the preoccupation ofthe two elderly men. "I'm afraid you're tired," she said to the girl.
"Oh no."
"Of course not, on Class Day. But I hope we shall get seats. Whatweather!"
The sun had not been oppressive at any time during the day, though thecrowded building had been close and warm, and now it lay like a paintedlight on the grass and paths over which they passed to the entrance ofthe grounds around the Tree. Holden Chapel, which enclosed the space onthe right as they went in, shed back the sun from its brick-red flank,rising unrelieved in its venerable ugliness by any touch of the festivepreparations; but to their left and diagonally across from them highstagings supported tiers of seats along the equally unlovely red bulksof Hollis and of Harvard. These seats, and the windows in the storiesabove them, were densely packed with people, mostly young girls dressedin a thousand enchanting shades and colours, and bonneted and hatted tothe last effect of fashion. They were like vast terraces of flowers tothe swift glance, and here and there some brilliant parasol, spread tocatch the sun on the higher ranks, was like a flaunting poppy, risingto the light and lolling out above the blooms of lower stature. But theparasols were few, for the two halls flung wide curtains of shadeover the greater part of the spectators, and across to the foot of thechapel, while a piece of the carpentry whose simplicity seems part ofthe Class Day tradition shut out the glare and the uninvited public,striving to penetrate the enclosure next the street. In front of thisyellow pine wall; with its ranks of benches, stood the Class Day Tree,girded at ten or fifteen feet from the ground with a wide band offlowers.
Mrs. Pasmer and her friends found themselves so late that if somegentlemen who knew Professor Saintsbury had not given up their placesthey could have got no seats. But this happened, and the three ladieshad harmoniously blended their hues with those of the others in thatbank of bloom, and the gentlemen had somehow made away with theirobstructiveness in different crouching and stooping postures at theirfeet, when the Junior Class filed into the green enclosure amidst the'rahs of their friends; and sank in long ranks on the grass beside thechapel. Then the Sophomores appeared, and were received with cheersby the Juniors, with whom they joined, as soon as they were placed, inheaping ignominy upon the freshmen. The Seniors came last, grotesque inthe variety of their old clothes, and a fierce uproar of 'rahs andyells met them from the students squatted upon the grass as they looselygrouped themselves in front of the Tree; the men of the younger classesformed in three rings, and began circling in different directions aroundthem.
Mrs. Pasmer bent across Mrs. Saintsbury to her daughter: "Can you makeout Mr. Mavering among them, Alice?"
"No. Hush, mamma!" pleaded the girl.
With the subsidence of the tumult in the other classes, the Seniors hadbroken from the stoical silence they kept through it, and were nowwith an equally serious clamour applauding the first of a long listof personages, beginning with the President, and ranging through theirfavourites in the Faculty down to Billy the Postman. The leader whoinvited them to this expression of good feeling exacted the full tale ofnine cheers for each person he named, and before he reached the last the'rahs came in gasps from their dry throats.
In the midst of the tumult the marshal flung his hat at the elm; thenthe rush upon the tree took place, and the scramble for the flowers. Thefirst who swarmed up the trunk were promptly plucked down by the legsand flung upon the ground, as if to form a base there for the operationsof the rest; who surged and built themselves up around the elm in anirregular mass. From time to time some one appeared clambering overheads and shoulders to make a desperate lunge and snatch at the flowers,and then fall back into the fluctuant heap again. Yells, cries, andclappings of hands came from the other students, and the spectators inthe seats, involuntarily dying away almost to silence as some strongeror wilfuler aspirant held his own on the heads and shoulders of theothers, or was stayed there by his friends among them till he couldmake sure of a handful of the flowers. A rush was made upon him whenhe reached the ground; if he could keep his flowers from the hands thatsnatched at them, he staggered away with the fragments. The wreath beganto show wide patches of the bark under it; the surging and strugglingcrowd below grew less dense; here and there one struggled out of it andwalked slowly about, panting pitiably.
"Oh, I wonder they don't kill each other!" cried Mrs. Pasmer. "Isn't itterrible?" She would not have missed it on any account; but she liked toget all she could out of her emotions.
"They never get hurt," said Mrs. Saintsbury. "Oh, look! There's DanMavering!"
The crowd at the foot of the tree had closed densely, and a wilder roarwent up from all the students. A tall, slim young fellow, lifted on theshoulders of the mass below, and staying himself with one hand againstthe tree, rapidly stripped away the remnants of the wreath, and flungthem into the crowd under him. A single tuft remained; the crowd wasmelting away under him in a scramble for the fallen flowers; he made acrooked leap, caught the tuft, and tumbled with it headlong.
"Oh!" breathed the ladies on the Benches, with a general suspirationlost in the 'rahs and clappings, as Mavering reappeared with the bunchof flowers in his hand. He looked dizzily about, as if not sure, of hiscourse; then his face, flushed and heated, with the hair pulled overthe eyes, brightened with recognition, and he advanced upon Mrs.Saintsbury's party with rapid paces, each of which Mrs. Pasmercommentated with inward conjecture.
"Is he bringing the flowers to Alice? Isn't it altogether tooconspicuous? 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 deprecationand ironical disclaimer which she had prepared while these things werepassing through her mind, young Mavering had reached them, and hadpaused in a moment's hesitation before his father. With a bow ofaffectionate burlesque, from which he lifted his face to break intolaughter at the look in all their eyes, he handed the tattered nosegayto his father.
"Oh, how delightful! how delicate! how perfect!" Mrs. Pasmer confided toherself.
"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 MissPasmer.
"They wished me to pass this to you, Alice;" and at this consummationDan 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. Itwas as if she had been too intent upon them and him to have noticed thelittle comedy that had conveyed them to her.