Chapter 22

Mavering was too amiable not to feel Boardman's innocence of offence in his unperturbed behaviour. “There was no faithlessness about it, and you know it,” he went on, half laughing, half crying, in his excitement, and making Boardman the avenue of an appeal really addressed to Alice. “I was ready to do what either side decided.”

“Or both,” suggested Boardman.

“Yes, or both,” said Dan, boldly accepting the suggestion. “It wouldn't have cost me a pang to give up if I'd been in the place of either.”

“I guess that's what she could never understand,” Boardman mused aloud.

“And I could never understand how any one could fail to see that that was what I intended--expected: that it would all come out right of itself--naturally.” Dan was still addressing Alice in this belated reasoning. “But to be accused of bad faith--of trying to deceive any one--”

“Pretty rough,” said Boardman.

“Rough? It's more than I can stand!”

“Well, you don't seem to be asked to stand it,” said Boardman, and Mavering laughed forlornly with him at his joke, and then walked away and looked out of Boardman's dormer-window on the roofs below, with their dirty, smoke-stained February snow. He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped his face with it. When he turned round, Boardman looked keenly at him, and asked, with an air of caution, “And so it's all up?”

“Yes, it's all up,” said Dan hoarsely.

“No danger of a relapse?”

“What do you mean?”

“No danger of having my sympathy handed over later to Miss Pasmer for examination?”

“I guess you can speak up freely, Boardman,” said Dan, “if that's what you mean. Miss Pasmer and I are quits.”

“Well, then, I'm glad of it. She wasn't the one for you. She isn't fit for you.”

“What's the reason she isn't?” cried Dan. “She's the most beautiful and noble girl in the world, and the most conscientious, and the best--if she is unjust to me.”

“No doubt of that. I'm not attacking her, and I'm not defending you.”

“What are you doing then?”

“Simply saying that I don't believe you two would ever understand each other. You haven't got the same point of view, and you couldn't make it go. Both out of a scrape.”

“I don't know what you mean by a scrape,” said Dan, resenting the word more than the idea. Boardman tacitly refused to modify or withdraw it, and Dan said, after a sulky silence, in which he began to dramatise a meeting with his family: “I'm going home; I can't stand it here. What's the reason you can't come with me, Boardman?”

“Do you mean to your rooms?”

“No; to the Falls.”

“Thanks. Guess not.”

“Why not?”

“Don't care about being a fifth wheel.”

“Oh, pshaw, now, Boardman! Look here, you must go. I want you to go. I--I want your support. That's it. I'm all broken up, and I couldn't stand that three hours' pull alone. They'll be glad to see you--all of them. Don't you suppose they'll be glad to see you? They're always glad; and they'll understand.”

“I don't believe you want me to go yourself. You just think you do.”

“No. I really do want you, Boardman. I want to talk it over with you. I do want you. I'm not fooling.”

“Don't think I could get away.” Yet he seemed to be pleased with the notion of the Falls; it made him smile.

“Well, see,” said Mavering disconsolately. “I'm going round to my rooms now, and I'll be there till two o'clock; train's at 2.30.” He went towards the door, where he faced about. “And you don't think it would be of any use?”

“Any use--what?”

“Trying to--to--to make it up.”

“How should I know?”

“No, no; of course you couldn't,” said Dan, miserably downcast. All the resentment which Alice's injustice had roused in him had died out; he was suffering as helplessly and hopelessly as a child. “Well,” he sighed, as he swung out of the door.

Boardman found him seated at his writing-desk in his smoking-jacket when he came to him, rather early, and on the desk were laid out the properties of the little play which had come to a tragic close. There were some small bits of jewellery, among the rest a ring of hers which Alice had been letting him wear; a lock of her hair which he had kept, for the greater convenience of kissing, in the original parcel, tied with crimson ribbon; a succession of flowers which she had worn, more and more dry and brown with age; one of her gloves, which he had found and kept from the day they first met in Cambridge; a bunch of withered bluebells tied with sweet-grass, whose odour filled the room, from the picnic at Campobello; scraps of paper with her writing on them, and cards; several photographs of her, and piles of notes and letters.

“Look here,” said Dan, knowing it was Boardman without turning round, “what am I to do about these things?”

Boardman respectfully examined them over his shoulder. “Don't know what the usual ceremony is,” he said, he ventured to add, referring to the heaps of letters, “Seems to have been rather epistolary, doesn't she?”

“Oh, don't talk of her as if she were dead!” cried Dan. “I've been feeling as if she were.” All at once he dropped his head among these witnesses of his loss, and sobbed.

Boardman appeared shocked, and yet somewhat amused; he made a soft low sibilation between his teeth.

Dan lifted his head. “Boardman, if you ever give me away!”

“Oh, I don't suppose it's very hilarious,” said Boardman, with vague kindness. “Packed yet?” he asked, getting away from the subject as something he did not feel himself fitted to deal with consecutively.

“I'm only going to take a bag,” said Mavering, going to get some clothes down from a closet where his words had a sepulchral reverberation.

“Can't I help?” asked Boardman, keeping away from the sad memorials of Dan's love strewn about on the desk, and yet not able to keep his eyes off them across the room.

“Well, I don't know,” said Dan. He came out with his armful of coats and trousers, and threw them on the bed. “Are you going?”

“If I could believe you wanted me to.”

“Good!” cried Mavering, and the fact seemed to brighten him immediately. “If you want to, stuff these things in, while I'm doing up these other things.” He nodded his head side-wise toward the desk.

“All right,” said Boardman.

His burst of grief must have relieved Dan greatly. He set about gathering up the relics on the desk, and getting a suitable piece of paper to wrap them in. He rejected several pieces as inappropriate.

“I don't know what kind of paper to do these things up in,” he said at last.

“Any special kind of paper required?” Boardman asked, pausing in the act of folding a pair of pantaloons so as not to break the fall over the boot.

“I didn't know there was, but there seems to be,” said Dan.

“Silver paper seems to be rather more for cake and that sort of thing,” suggested Boardman. “Kind of mourning too, isn't it--silver?”

“I don't know,” said Dan. “But I haven't got any silver paper.”

“Newspaper wouldn't do?”

“Well, hardly, Boardman,” said Dan, with sarcasm.

“Well,” said Boardman, “I should have supposed that nothing could be simpler than to send back a lot of love-letters; but the question of paper seems insuperable. Manila paper wouldn't do either. And then comes string. What kind of string are you going to tie it up with?”

“Well, we won't start that question till we get to it,” answered Dan, looking about. “If I could find some kind of a box--”

“Haven't you got a collar box? Be the very thing!” Boardman had gone back to the coats and trousers, abandoning Dan to the subtler difficulties in which he was involved.

“They've all got labels,” said Mavering, getting down one marked “The Tennyson” and another lettered “The Clarion,” and looking at them with cold rejection.

“Don't see how you're going to send these things back at all, then. Have to keep them, I guess.” Boardman finished his task, and came back to Dan.

“I guess I've got it now,” said Mavering, lifting the lid of his desk, and taking out a large stiff envelope, in which a set of photographic views had come.

“Seems to have been made for it,” Boardman exulted, watching the envelope, as it filled up, expand into a kind of shapely packet. Dan put the things silently in, and sealed the parcel with his ring. Then he turned it over to address it, but the writing of Alice's name for this purpose seemed too much for him, in spite of Boardman's humorous support throughout.

“Oh, I can't do it,” he said, falling back in his chair.

“Let me,” said his friend, cheerfully ignoring his despair. He philosophised the whole transaction, as he addressed the package, rang for a messenger, and sent it away, telling him to call a cab for ten minutes past two.

“Mighty good thing in life that we move by steps. Now on the stage, or in a novel, you'd have got those things together and addressed 'em, and despatched 'em, in just the right kind of paper, with just the right kind of string round it, at a dash; and then you'd have had time to go up and lean your head against something and soliloquise, or else think unutterable things. But here you see how a merciful Providence blocks your way all along. You've had to fight through all sort of sordid little details to the grand tragic result of getting off Miss Pasmer's letters, and when you reach it you don't mind it a bit.”

“Don't I?” demanded Dan, in as hollow a voice as he could. “You'd joke at a funeral, Boardman.”

“I've seen some pretty cheerful funerals,” said Boardman. “And it's this principle of steps, of degrees, of having to do this little thing, and that little thing, that keeps funerals from killing the survivors. I suppose this is worse than a funeral--look at it in the right light. You mourn as one without hope, don't you? Live through it too, I suppose.”

He made Dan help get the rest of his things into his bag, and with one little artifice and another prevented him from stagnating in despair. He dissented from the idea of waiting over another day to see if Alice would not relent when she got her letters back, and send for Dan to come and see her.

“Relent a good deal more when she finds you've gone out of town, if she sends for you,” he argued; and he got Dan into the cab and off to the station, carefully making him an active partner in the whole undertaking, even to checking his own bag.

Before he bought his own ticket he appealed once more to Dan.

“Look here! I feel like a fool going off with you on this expedition. Be honest for once, now, Mavering, and tell me you've thought better of it, and don't want me to go!”

“Yes--yes, I do. Oh yes, you've got to go. I I do want you. I--you make me see things in just the right light, don't you know. That idea of yours about little steps--it's braced me all up. Yes--”

“You're such an infernal humbug,” said Boardman, “I can't tell whether you want me or not. But I'm in for it now, and I'll go.” Then he bought his ticket.

XLV.

Boardman put himself in charge of Mavering, and took him into the smoking car. It was impossible to indulge a poetic gloom there without becoming unpleasantly conspicuous in the smoking and euchre and profanity. Some of the men were silent and dull, but no one was apparently very unhappy, and perhaps if Dan had dealt in absolute sincerity with himself, even he would not have found himself wholly so. He did not feel as he had felt when Alice rejected him. Then he was wounded to the quick through his vanity, and now; in spite of all, in spite of the involuntary tender swaying of his heart toward her through the mere force of habit, in spite of some remote compunctions for his want of candour with her, he was supported by a sense of her injustice, her hardness. Related with this was an obscure sense of escape, of liberation, which, however he might silence and disown it, was still there. He could not help being aware that he had long relinquished tastes customs, purposes, ideals, to gain a peace that seemed more and more fleeting and uncertain, and that he had submitted to others which, now that the moment of giving pleasure by his submission was past, he recognised as disagreeable. He felt a sort of guilt in his enlargement; he knew, by all that he had, ever heard or read of people in his position, that he ought to be altogether miserable; and yet this consciousness of relief persisted. He told himself that a very tragical thing had befallen him; that this broken engagement was the ruin of his life and the end of his youth, and that he must live on an old and joyless man, wise with the knowledge that comes to decrepitude and despair; he imagined a certain look for himself, a gait, a name, that would express this; but all the same he was aware of having got out of something. Was it a bondage, a scrape, as Boardman called it? He thought he must be a very light, shallow, and frivolous nature not to be utterly broken up by his disaster.

“I don't know what I'm going home for,” he said hoarsely to Boardman.

“Kind of a rest, I suppose,” suggested his friend.

“Yes, I guess that's it,” said Dan. “I'm tired.”

It seemed to him that this was rather fine; it was a fatigue of the soul that he was to rest from. He remembered the apostrophic close of a novel in which the heroine dies after much emotional suffering. “Quiet, quiet heart!” he repeated to himself. Yes, he too had died to hope, to love, to happiness.

As they drew near their journey's end he said, “I don't know how I'm going to break it to them.”

“Oh, probably break itself,” said Boardman. “These things usually do.”

“Yes, of course,” Dan assented.

“Know from your looks that something's up. Or you might let me go ahead a little and prepare them.”

Dan laughed. “It was awfully good of you to come, Boardman. I don't know what I should have done without you.”

“Nothing I like more than these little trips. Brightens you up to sere the misery of others; makes you feel that you're on peculiarly good terms with Providence. Haven't enjoyed myself so much since that day in Portland.” Boardman's eyes twinkled.

“Yes,” said Dan, with a deep sigh, “it's a pity it hadn't ended there.”

“Oh, I don't know. You won't have to go through with it again. Something that had to come, wasn't it? Never been satisfied if you hadn't tried it. Kind of aching void before, and now you've got enough.”

“Yes, I've got enough,” said Dan, “if that's all.”

When they got out of the train at Ponkwasset Falls, and the conductor and the brakeman, who knew Dan as his father's son, and treated him with the distinction due a representative of an interest valued by the road, had bidden him a respectfully intimate good-night, and he began to climb the hill to his father's house, he recurred to the difficulty before him in breaking the news to his family. “I wish I could have it over in a flash. I wish I'd thought to telegraph it to them.”

“Wouldn't have done,” said Boardman. “It would have given 'em time to formulate questions and conjectures, and now the astonishment will take their breath away till you can get your second wind, and then--you'll be all right.”

“You think so?” asked Dan submissively.

“Know so. You see, if you could have had it over in a flash, it would have knocked you flat. But now you've taken all the little steps, and you've got a lot more to take, and you're all braced up. See? You're like rock, now--adamant.” Dan laughed in forlorn perception of Boardman's affectionate irony. “Little steps are the thing. You'll have to go in now and meet your family, and pass the time of day with each one, and talk about the weather, and account for my being along, and ask how they all are; and by the time you've had dinner, and got settled with your legs out in front of the fire, you'll be just in the mood for it. Enjoy telling them all about it.”

“Don't, Boardman,” pleaded Dan. “Boardy, I believe if I could get in and up to my room without anybody's seeing me, I'd let you tell them. There don't seem to be anybody about, and I think we could manage it.”

“It wouldn't work,” said Boardman. “Got to do it yourself.”

“Well, then, wait a minute,” said Dan desperately; and Boardman knew that he was to stay outside while Dan reconnoitred the interior. Dan opened one door after another till he stood within the hot brilliantly lighted hall. Eunice Mavering was coming down the stairs, hooded and wrapped for a walk on the long verandahs before supper.

“Dan!” she cried.

“It's all up, Eunice,” he said at once, as if she had asked him about it. “My engagement's off.”

“Oh, I'm so glad!” She descended upon him with outstretched arms, but stopped herself before she reached him. “It's a hoax. What do you mean? Do you really mean it, Dan?”

“I guess I mean it. But don't--Hold on! Where's Minnie?”

Eunice turned, and ran back upstairs. “Minnie! Min!” she called on her way. “Dan's engagement's off.”

“I don't believe it!” answered Minnie's voice joyously, from within some room. It was followed by her presence, with successive inquiries. “How do you know? Did you get a letter? When did it happen? Oh, isn't it too good?”

Minnie was also dressed for the verandah promenade, which they always took when the snow was too deep. She caught sight of her brother as she came down. “Why, Dan's here! Dan, I've been thinking about you all day.” She kissed him, which Eunice was now reminded to do too.

“Yes, it's true, Minnie,” said Dan gravely. “I came up to tell you. It don't seem to distress you much.”

“Dan!” said his sister reproachfully. “You know I didn't mean to say anything I only felt so glad to have you back again.”

“I understand, Minnie--I don't blame you. It's all right. How's mother? Father up from the works yet? I'm going to my room.”

“Indeed you're not!” cried Eunice, with elder sisterly authority. “You shall tell us about it first.”

“Oh no! Let him go, Eunice!” pleaded Minnie, “Poor Dan! And I don't think we ought to go to walk when--”

Dan's eyes dimmed, and his voice weakened a little at her sympathy. “Yes, go. I'm tired--that's all. There isn't anything to tell you, hardly. Miss Pasmer--”

“Why, he's pale!” cried Minnie. “Eunice!”

“Oh, it's just the heat in here.” Dan really felt a little sick and faint with it, but he was not sorry to seem affected by the day's strain upon his nerves.

The girls began to take off their wraps. “Don't. I'll go with you. Boardman's out there.”

“Boardman! What nonsense!” exclaimed Eunice.

“He'll like to hear your opinion of it,” Dan began; but his sister pulled the doors open, and ran out to see if he really meant that too.

Whether Boardman had heard her, or had discreetly withdrawn out of earshot at the first sound of voices, she could not tell, but she found him some distance away from the snow-box on the piazza. “Dan's just managed to tell us you were here,” she said, giving him her hand. “I'm glad to see you. Do come in.”

“Come along as a sort of Job's comforter,” Boardman explained, as he followed her in; and he had the silly look that the man who feels himself superfluous must wear.

“Then you know about it?” said Eunice, while Minnie Mavering and he were shaking hands.

“Yes, Boardman knows; he can tell you about it,” said Dan, from the hall chair he had dropped into. He rose and made his way to the stairs, with the effect of leaving the whole thing to them.

His sisters ran after him, and got him upstairs and into his room, with Boardman's semi-satirical connivance, and Eunice put up the window, while Minnie went to get some cologne to wet his forehead. Their efforts were so successful that he revived sufficiently to drive them out of his room, and make them go and show Boardman to his.

“You know the way, Mr. Boardman,” said Eunice, going before him, while Minnie followed timorously, but curious for what he should say. She lingered on the threshold, while her sister went in and pulled the electric apparatus which lighted the gas-burners. “I suppose Dan didn't break it?” she said, turning sharply upon him.

“No; and I don't think he was to blame,” said Boardman, inferring her reserved anxiety.

“Oh, I'm quite sure of that,” said Eunice, rejecting what she had asked for. “You'll find everything, Mr. Boardman. It was kind of you to come with Dan. Supper's at seven.”

“How severe you were with him!” murmured Minnie, following her away.

“Severe with Dan?”

“No--with Mr. Boardman.”

“What nonsense! I had to be. I couldn't let him defend Dan to me. Couple of silly boys!”

After a moment Minnie said, “I don't think he's silly.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Boardman.”

“Well, Dan is, then, to bring him at such a time. But I suppose he felt that he couldn't get here without him. What a boy! Think of such a child being engaged! I hope we shan't hear any more of such nonsense for one while again--at least till Dan's got his growth.”

They went down into the library, where, in their excitement, they sat down with most of their outdoor things on.

Minnie had the soft contrary-mindedness of gentle natures. “I should like to know how you would have had Dan bear it,” she said rebelliously.

“How? Like a man. Or like a woman. How do you suppose Miss Pasmer's bearing it? Do you suppose she's got some friend to help her?”

“If she's broken it, she doesn't need any one,” urged Minnie.

“Well,” said Eunice, with her high scorn of Dan unabated, “I never could have liked that girl, but I certainly begin to respect her. I think I could have got on with her--now that it's no use. I declare,” she broke off, “we're sitting here sweltering to death! What are we keeping our things on for?” She began to tear hers violently off and to fling them on chairs, scolding, and laughing at the same time with Minnie, at their absent-mindedness.

A heavy step sounded on the verandah without.

“There's father!” she cried vividly, jumping to her feet and running to the door, while Minnie, in a nervous bewilderment, ran off upstairs to her room. Eunice flung the door open. “Well, father, we've got Dan back again.” And at a look of quiet question in his eye she hurried on: “His engagement's broken, and he's come up here to tell us, and brought Mr. Boardman along to help.”

“Where is he?” asked the father, with his ruminant quiet, pulling off first one sleeve of his overcoat, and pausing for Eunice's answer before he pulled off the other.

XLVI.

“He's up in his room, resting from the effort.” She laughed nervously, and her father made no comment. He took off his articles, and then went creaking upstairs to Dan's room. But at the door he paused, with his hand on the knob, and turned away to his own room without entering.

Dan must have heard him; in a few minutes he came to him.

“Well, Dan,” said his father, shaking hands.

“I suppose Eunice has told you? Well, I want to tell you why it happened.”

There was something in his father that always steadied Dan and kept him to the point. He now put the whole case fairly and squarely, and his candour and openness seemed to him to react and characterise his conduct throughout. He did not realise that this was not so till his father said at the close, with mild justice, “You were to blame for letting the thing run on so at loose ends.”

“Yes, of course,” said Dan, seeing that he was. “But there was no intention of deceiving any one of bad faith--”

“Of course not.”

“I thought it could be easily arranged whenever it came to the point.”

“If you'd been older, you wouldn't have thought that. You had women to deal with on both sides. But if it's all over, I'm not sorry. I always admired Miss Pasmer, but I've been more and more afraid you were not suited to each other. Your mother doesn't know you're here?”

“No, sir, I suppose not. Do you think it will distress her?”

“How did your sisters take it?”

Dan gave a rueful laugh. “It seemed to be rather a popular move with them.”

“I will see your mother first,” said the father.

He left them when they went into the library after supper, and a little later Dan and Eunice left Boardman in charge of Minnie there.