Chapter IV (5)

The Millstone, who had been sauntering up and down the corridors in Beverly’s absence, received them as they emerged.

“Oh,” she said, and peered at them over the rim of her circular fan.

“Allow me to present your cousin,” said Beverly, gravely.

“Cousin Marguerite,” simpered the Millstone. “Can this be the little boy I used to know?” she continued, holding out her hand. “You used to wear knickerbockers.” Billy drew the drapery of his striped blanket more closely about him. Shaking hands was quite out of the question. “Dear me, how you’ve changed.”

“I’m very glad to see you,” gasped Billy. “I--I wish I had my clothes on. If you’ll just wait with Mr. Beverly a minute--” he turned to Beverly. “You’re not in a hurry, are you?”

“Yes, I am,” said the other, frankly. “I have to go to my room and then catch a train.” Billy gave him the look of an offended water-spaniel.

“If I could rest somewhere until you come,” suggested Cousin Marguerite.

“Couldn’t you take her to your room, if you’re going there anyhow?” pleaded Billy, with a tragic “I’ll-do-something-for-you-some-day” expression. “If you’re going there anyhow,” he repeated. And once more Beverly took up his burden and set out.

He went to Beck by back streets; and he walked as fast as he possibly could, because it was hot and dusty--there were no sidewalks and no shade--and he wished to give Cousin Marguerite pain. He didn’t actually want to kill her, he told himself, and marvelled, as he did so, at his own sweetness of disposition. But he hoped to succeed in disabling her in some way, by the time they reached his room, “give her a headache or break something,” so that she couldn’t go to the Tree, or to the Beck spread, or to Memorial Hall. For he felt that otherwise she would go to them all, and he would, for some hideous reason he couldn’t then foresee, have to escort her. So he tore along, with Cousin Marguerite panting hoarsely at his elbow, until her shoes became untied, and he had to kneel in the dust at her feet. He tied them up again--with three hard, vicious knots in each, and hurried on. Every time she placed a restraining hand on his arm, he drew out his watch, showed it to her silently, and then remarked, “my train.” He dragged her past Plympton Street, around by Bow Street, up the little hill back of Quincy, across to Beck, up the stairs two at a time and into his room, where she fell exhausted on his divan.

“Now I am going to leave you,” he announced, triumphantly. She motioned to him feebly with her hand, and opened her mouth as if to speak.

“You just ought to see my room at home,” she whispered, breathlessly. “It’s a perfect bower of crimson.” But Beverly didn’t wait to hear about it. He ran out, slamming the door behind him, and never stopped nor looked behind until he reached the club, where he called for the longest, coldest drink the steward could make.

“I shall never, never, see that woman again,” he said. But he did.

The club was deserted except for Lauriston, who didn’t really belong there. Lauriston was asleep on a divan. He had a wisp of pink mosquito netting in his button-hole, and when Beverly roused him, he was unable to tell where every one had gone to so suddenly. He blinked a moment in the light, as if he didn’t even know where he was himself, and then went to sleep again. He was, as Beverly said, “unfit for publication.”

Just as Beverly became comfortably settled with a gin fizz on a small table in front of him, and a palm-leaf fan in his hand, Billy, in cap and gown, fluttered into the club.

“Awfully good of you to take my cousin down to your room,” he said, nervously. He knew with what joy Beverly must have escorted her, although he couldn’t very well allude to it.

“Don’t mention it--charming woman--charming,” murmured Beverly, politely.

“I’m sure I don’t know who she can be,” went on Billy; “unless she was on the list of people my mother sent me to invite. I know I never asked her. Are you walking down that way?” he ventured, casually. Somehow or other, Cousin Marguerite seemed to him to belong as much to Beverly as to himself.

“Certainly not,” answered the other, with decision. “I shall sit here until it’s time to catch the midnight train.”

“And not go to the Tree or Beck or the Yard in the evening?”

“I have spoken,” said Beverly, placidly.

“Well, then, good-bye.” Billy held out his hand, “And don’t forget you’re coming to us on the tenth.” He looked troubled, and left reluctantly to find his cousin.

Beverly, true to his word, sat there fanning himself, and listening to the faint music of the band in the Yard, all the afternoon. From time to time, men dashed in to leave or get tickets, to eat something, or to find some one who never was there. They always said:--

“You here on Class Day, Beverly? I thought you weren’t going to stay.” Then they would rush out into the heat again to find their families and take them to the Tree. Occasionally fellows brought their fathers in to see the club and rest awhile. It amused Beverly to watch the “infants” do the honours. Prescott--six feet two--saying, “What’ll you have, Papa?” to a nice, little, old bald-headed thing, was almost as irresistible as Prescott père, when he patted his head with his handkerchief and replied, apologetically:--

“The day has been so fatiguing, and we have so much more to do later on, that I think I should like a little, a very little, rye whiskey and water.”

Sears Wolcott, followed by an astonishingly young-looking gentleman who might have been Sears’s older brother, if he hadn’t happened to be his father, was characteristic when he remarked indifferently:--

“I suppose you want something to drink?”

Mr. Wolcott’s answer struck Beverly as being equally in character:--

“Yes,” he said, with a twinkle, “give me some champagne in a long glass with ice, if you think you can afford it; I can’t.”

No one stayed long, and by six o’clock the club, except for Beverly and the sleeping Lauriston, was again deserted. When the steward came in to draw the curtains and turn on the lights, Lauriston awoke and asked vaguely if it was time to go to Beck.

“I suppose so,” answered Beverly. “Everybody seems to have gone somewhere.”

“Then I must go too,” mused Lauriston, fumbling sleepily at his disordered necktie, and making a feeble attempt to smooth his hair.

“Oh, I wouldn’t run away and leave me,” suggested Beverly, “I’m all alone.” He wasn’t in the least anxious for Lauriston’s society, but for the public good he was willing to endure it. Lauriston’s nap hadn’t proved as beneficial as it might have; the fellow was in no condition to go to Beck and talk to people.

“Sorry, old man. Can’t stay. Got to find my mothers and sisters, and give them ‘Morial tickets.” He searched his pockets, and drew out an envelope. Then he arose laboriously from the divan, and, standing before Beverly, said something that sounded like “Delookawrite.” Beverly adjusted his glasses:--

“No, candidly, you don’t look all right,” he declared, “and if you’re going out to hunt for your mother and sisters, I sincerely trust you won’t find them.” Lauriston stared stupidly at the tickets in his hand.

“Got to havvem. Promised,” he muttered. Beverly gently extracted the tickets from his fingers.

“I’ll see that they get them,” he said. He had some difficulty in persuading Lauriston that he knew Mrs. Lauriston intimately, and would have no trouble in finding her; for the fellow insisted that his mother was a most reserved woman whom very few people knew intimately.

“She’s a reserved woman without a parasol,” he said by way of identification, when he finally allowed Beverly to depart with the tickets.

The crowd on the lawn at Beck was less objectionable to Beverly, only because it was unhoused. He stopped at the top of the steps leading down to the little enclosure packed with white frocks and the startling flora and fauna of summer millinery. It wasn’t easy to recognise any one in the soft half light of the lanterns swinging in long festoons overhead; and it took him some time to discover Mrs. Lauriston and the girls seated around a table very near him at the foot of the steps on which he was standing. They had seen him the moment he appeared. The Millstone, sitting just behind them at the next table, with two freshmen,--distant cousins of Billy’s,--also saw him.

“So you decided not to catch the train,” said Mrs. Lauriston when Beverly went down to her.

“It’s harder to tear one’s self away from Class Day than I thought,” he said, feelingly, for he had just caught sight of Cousin Marguerite. But he made Mrs. Lauriston a nice little bow as he spoke.

“That’s very pretty,” the lady smiled up at him; “but I should remember it longer if we’d seen anything of you all day.” Beverly was about to reply with the least inane of the two inanities that came into his mind when one of Cousin Marguerite’s freshmen stood up and delivered a message in a low tone.

“Tell her I’m very sorry, but I can’t,” answered Beverly, changing his position to one that defied the laws of optics to make his eyes meet those of the Millstone. The freshman, he noticed, passed rapidly on up the steps and out of Beck. Beverly went on talking to Mrs. Lauriston. He gave her the tickets, and explained her son’s failure to appear as glibly as he could; but he was filled with horrid apprehensions,--Cousin Marguerite’s penetrating voice rose and fell coquettishly behind him without a pause,--and he became noticeably ill at ease. When, in a very few minutes, he heard the Millstone call his own name with all the sickening languor and affectation its three syllables could carry, he ignored the summons, and felt himself growing rigid with anger. She called him again, a trifle louder this time--and pronounced the word “Bevaleh.”

“Some one wishes to speak to you,” said Mrs. Lauriston. Beverly didn’t turn. “It’s the lady you were with at the Pudding; she’s sitting just behind you, and has called you twice. Don’t let me keep you.” Beverly turned and bowed stiffly.

“_Mauvais sujet_,” said Cousin Marguerite. Mrs. Lauriston and the girls glanced at her involuntarily. Beverly left them abruptly and stood near the Millstone. If she would insist on talking to him, he preferred her playful sallies to be inaudible to the whole of Boston and its adjacent suburbs. As she turned to tap the vacant chair on her left invitingly with her red fan, the second freshman stole craftily away.

“Are you waiting for Billy?” asked Beverly in a tone that just escaped being savage.

“I wasn’t waiting for Billy,” she answered. Her voice was liquid with subtle meaning. “I sent him away,--dear Billy. I’m to meet him at Memorial Hall in a quarter of an hour. He hesitated to leave me alone and introduced two cousins of his--sweet boys. Then I drove him off. And now you come; kismet, I suppose.”

“I came because you called me,” said Beverly, bluntly. “Thank you, no, I prefer to stand; I can only stay a moment.” He couldn’t bring himself to the point of being deliberately rude to any woman,--much less to a cousin of Billy’s. But he was very much annoyed at this fatuous bore, and couldn’t help showing it. His manner was decidedly icy. Whether the Millstone realised that he was thoroughly in earnest when he declared he couldn’t stay, or whether Class Day had really been too much for her, Beverly couldn’t make up his mind until afterwards; at any rate Cousin Marguerite suddenly let fall her fan, gave a little gasp, and proceeded to faint. Beverly sprang forward to prevent the rickety chair on which she sat from upsetting, and, this done, he looked helplessly about, as if for suggestions. He had a hazy idea that he ought to do something to her hands and feet, and pour water down the front of her dress; he had once seen that done with success. But Cousin Marguerite’s feet were down in the grass under the table somewhere; her hands too seemed rather inaccessible,--she had fallen forward and hidden them. If he should leave her to go for a glass of water, she would undoubtedly slide off her chair and get walked on. In his distress, Beverly called to Mrs. Lauriston. Mrs. Lauriston brought some apollinaris from her table, held it to the Millstone’s lips, and dabbed it on her temples with a handkerchief.

“Oughtn’t I--oughtn’t you to ‘loosen something’?” asked Beverly, giving the crimson necktie a wrench. Cousin Marguerite’s eyelids fluttered with returning life. All she needed was air, she said, looking about her in bewilderment.

“If Mr. Beverly will kindly take me to the street--to the open--How very stupid of me; I haven’t done it since I was a girl,” she added. So Beverly thanked Mrs. Lauriston hastily, and left the Beck spread with Cousin Marguerite on his arm. Outside she leaned against the great red letter-box on the corner, gasped a little, arranged her necktie and dried her temples. Then she passed her arm through Beverly’s again and started for Memorial--to find Billy. Consciousness had returned, but it had not brought to the Millstone strength enough to enable her to walk alone. There was simply no pretext on which Beverly could leave Billy’s cousin now. For although he was convinced that her indisposition was what he called “a cheap bluff at dying,” he couldn’t very well act on that assumption. He accepted the fact that he would have to stay by her, maddening as she was, until they found Billy.

She was maddening. She insisted on going to Memorial by way of the Yard, and loitered shamelessly on the way--she said she felt strangely faint--to enjoy the crowd, the music, and the glow of the lanterns among the elms. She watched the dancing at Memorial until Beverly wondered audibly why Billy didn’t come; at which she announced blandly:--

“He said he would meet me at the steps--right near the mandolins and banjos. I haven’t seen any, have you?”

The mandolins and banjos were, of course, on the steps of the Law School, as Cousin Marguerite very well knew.

“I wish you had told me that sooner,” said Beverly, controlling himself. “Billy has probably tired of waiting and gone away.”

“Oh, well--” she sighed. Ever since the two had left Beck, the Millstone had hovered shrewdly between apoplexy and intense enjoyment of everything she saw; she relied on the one to disarm criticism of the other. Billy wasn’t in front of the Law School; but his cousin thought it best to wait a few minutes longer for him, besides, the Mandolin Club was just about to play. She closed her eyes when the music began--the piece was a Spanish something or other through which a tambourine shivered at intervals--and clung to Beverly’s arm.

“The Italians are so passionate,” she murmured at the end.

“Billy isn’t coming,” said Beverly.

“I’m afraid we’ve missed him,” she assented.

“And the evening is almost over; you’ve seen everything,” Beverly went on. “It _is_ over,” he added joyously; a drop of rain had fallen on his hand.

“Class Day is dead; the angels weep,” mused Cousin Marguerite, sentimentally. “‘I warmed both hands before the fire of life. It sinks--’”

“And are you ‘ready to depart’?” asked Beverly, eagerly; Cousin Marguerite had shied at the really vital clause of the quotation.

“‘Come, chaos--I have seen the best,’” was her answer.

But Beverly didn’t consider that he had seen the best, until the bridge car that was to bear away Cousin Marguerite appeared in Harvard Square. He would have rushed off--the rain had begun in earnest--as soon as his companion of the afternoon and evening was seated, had she not extended her plump hand for a last, lingering pressure.

“Good-bye,” she said, softly. “There are some things one cannot express; they are here,” she touched her chest lightly with the finger-tips of her left hand. “Good-bye. Oh,--I forgot to tell you,” she added abruptly, in another tone; “Billy and I discovered that we don’t spell our names the same way. We spell ours with an ‘e.’ We found it out just after he had refreshed me at Beck Hall and introduced those two sweet boys. So you see, Billy is more than a cousin; he is a friend.”

The Millstone’s good-bye smile was an inscrutable performance, in which Beverly thought he detected pity, amusement, and a sort of devilish self-satisfaction. He turned, without a word, to find Billy.

THE END

THIS BOOK IS PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS
DURING DECEMBER 1897

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

He was probaby feeling=> He was probably feeling {pg 85}

I was glad we’d bitched=> I was glad we’d ditched {pg 223}

him away to somebody’s else room=> him away to somebody else’s room {pg
228}