第43章

"You'll see that it's all for the best; that you're well out of it. If she could throw you over, after leading you on--""But she didn't lead me on!" exclaimed Mavering. "Don't you understand that it was all my mistake from the first? If I hadn't been perfectly besotted I should have seen that she was only tolerating me. Don't you see? Why, hang it, Boardman, I must have had a kind of consciousness of it under my thick-skinned conceit, after all, for when I came to the point--when I did come to the point--I hadn't the sand to stick to it like a man, and I tried to get her to help me. Yes, I can see that I did now. I kept fooling about, and fooling about, and it was because I had that sort of prescience--of whatever you call it--that I was mistaken about it from the very beginning."He wished to tell Boardman about the events of the night before; but he could not. He said to himself that he did not care about their being hardly to his credit; but he did not choose to let Alice seem to have resented anything in them; it belittled her, and claimed too much for him. So Boardman had to proceed upon a partial knowledge of the facts.

"I don't suppose that boomerang way of yours, if that's what you mean, was of much use," he said.

"Use? It ruined me! But what are you going to do?" How are you going to presuppose that a girl like Miss Pasmer is interested in an idiot like you? I mean me, of course." Mavering broke off with a dolorous laugh.

"And if you can't presuppose it, what are you going to do when it comes to the point? You've got to shillyshally, and then you've got to go it blind. I tell you it's a leap in the dark.""Well, then, if you've got yourself to blame--""How am I to blame, I should like to know?" retorted Mavering, rejecting the first offer from another of the censure which he had been heaping upon himself: the irritation of his nerves spoke. "I did speak out at last--when it was too late. Well, let it all go," he groaned aimlessly.

"I don't care. But she isn't to blame. I don't think I could admire anybody very much who admired me. No, sir. She did just right. I was a fool, and she couldn't have treated me differently.""Oh, I guess it'll come out all right," said Boardman, abandoning himself to mere optimism.

"How come all right?" demanded Mavering, flattered by the hope he refused. "It's come right now. I've got my deserts; that's all.""Oh no, you haven't. What harm have you done? It's all right for you to think small beer of yourself, and I don't see how you could think anything else just at present. But you wait awhile. When did it happen?"Mavering took out his watch. "One day, one hour, twenty minutes, and fifteen seconds ago.""Sure about the seconds? I suppose you didn't hang round a great while afterward?""Well, people don't, generally," said Mavering, with scorn.

"Never tried it," said Boardman, looking critically at his fried potatoes before venturing upon them. "If you had stayed, perhaps she might have changed her mind," he added, as if encouraged to this hopeful view by the result of his scrutiny.

"Where did you get your fraudulent reputation for common-sense, Boardman?" retorted Mavering, who had followed his examination of the potatoes with involuntary interest. "She won't change her mind; she isn't one of that kind. But she's the one woman in this world who could have made a man of me, Boardman.""Is that so?" asked Boardman lightly. "Well, she is a good-looking girl.""She's divine!"

"What a dress that was she had on Class Day!""I never think what she has on. She makes everything perfect, and then makes you forget it.""She's got style; there's no mistake about that.""Style!" sighed Mavering; but he attempted no exemplification.

"She's awfully graceful. What a walk she's got!""Oh, don't, don't, Boardman! All that's true, and all that's nothing--nothing to her goodness. She's so good, Boardman! Well, I give it up!

She's religious. You wouldn't think that, may be; you can't imagine a pretty girl religious. And she's all the more intoxicating when she's serious; and when she's forgotten your whole worthless existence she's ten thousand times more fascinating than and other girl when she's going right for you. There's a kind of look comes into her eyes--kind of absence, rapture, don't you know--when she's serious, that brings your heart right into your mouth. She makes you think of some of those pictures--I want to tell you what she said the other day at a picnic when we were off getting blueberries, and you'll understand that she isn't like other girls--that she has a soul fall of--of--you know what, Boardman. She has high thoughts about everything. I don't believe she's ever had a mean or ignoble impulse--she couldn't have." In the business of imparting his ideas confidentially, Mavering had drawn himself across the table toward Boardman, without heed to what was on it.

"Look out! You'll be into my steak first thing you know.""0h, confound your steak?" cried Mavering, pushing the dish away. What difference does it make? I've lost her, anyway.""I don't believe you've lost her," said Boardman.

"What's the reason you don't?" retorted Mavering, with contempt.

"Because, if she's the serious kind of a girl you say she is, she wouldn't let you come up there and dangle round a whole fortnight without letting you know she didn't like it, unless she did like it. Now you just go a little into detail."Mavering was quite willing. He went so much into detail that he left nothing to Boardman's imagination. He lost the sense of its calamitous close in recounting the facts of his story at Campobello; he smiled and blushed and laughed in telling certain things; he described Miss Anderson and imitated her voice; he drew heads of some of the ladies on the margin of a newspaper, and the tears came into his eyes when he repeated the cruel words which Alice had used at their last meeting.

"Oh, well, you must brace up," said Boardman. "I've got to go now. She didn't mean it, of course.""Mean what?"