The next morning Dan Mavering knocked at Boardman's door before the reporter was up. This might have been any time before one o'clock, but it was really at half-past nine. Boardman wanted to know who was there, and when Mavering had said it was he, Boardman seemed to ponder the fact awhile before Mavering heard him getting out of bed and coming barefooted to the door. He unlocked it, and got back into bed; then he called out, "Come in," and Mavering pushed the door open impatiently. But he stood blank and silent, looking helplessly at his friend. A strong glare of winter light came in through the naked sash--for Boardman apparently not only did not close his window-blinds, but did not pull down his curtains, when he went to bed--and shone upon his gay, shrewd face where he lay, showing his pop-corn teeth in a smile at Mavering.
"Prefer to stand?" he asked by and by, after Mavering had remained standing in silence, with no signs of proposing to sit down or speak.
Mavering glanced at the only chair in the room: Boardman's clothes dripped and dangled over it. "Throw 'em on the bed," he said, following Mavering's glance.
"I'll take the bed myself," said Mavering; and he sat down on the side of it, and was again suggestively silent.
Boardman moved his head on the pillow, as he watched Mavering's face, with the agreeable sense of personal security which we all feel in viewing trouble from the outside: "You seem balled up about something."Mavering sighed heavily. "Balled up? It's no word for it. Boardman, I'm done for. Yesterday I was the happiest fellow in the world, and now--Yes, it's all over with me, and it's my own fault, as usual. Look; at that!"He jerked Boardman a note which he had been holding fast in his band, and got up and went to look himself at the wide range of chimney-pots and slated roofs which Boardman's dormer-window commanded.
"Want me to read it?" Boardman asked; and Mavering nodded without glancing round. It dispersed through the air of Boardman's room, as he unfolded it, a thin, elect perfume, like a feminine presence, refined and strict;and Boardman involuntarily passed his hand over his rumpled hair, as if to make himself a little more personable before reading the letter.
"DEAR MR. MAVERING,--I enclose the ring you gave me the other day, and Irelease you from the promise you gave with it. I am convinced that you wronged yourself in offering either without your whole heart, and I care too much for your happiness to let you persist in your sacrifice.
"In begging that you will not uselessly attempt to see me, but that you will consider this note final, I know you will do me the justice not to attribute an ungenerous motive to me. I shall rejoice to hear of any good that may befall you; and I shall try not to envy any one through whom it comes.--Yours sincerely," "ALICE PASMER.""P.S.--I say nothing of circumstances or of persons; I feel that any comment of mine upon them would be idle."Mavering looked up at the sound Boardman made in refolding the letter.
Boardman grinned, with sparkling eyes. "Pretty neat," he said.
"Pretty infernally neat," roared Mavering.
"Do you suppose she means business?"
"Of course she means business. Why shouldn't she?""I don't know. Why should she?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Boardman. I suppose I shall have to tell you if I'm going to get any good out of you; but it's a dose." He came away from the window, and swept Boardman's clothes off the chair preparatory to taking it.
Boardman lifted his head nervously from the pillow.
"Oh; I'll put them on the bed, if you're so punctilious!" cried Mavering.
"I don't mind the clothes," said Boardman. "I thought I heard my watch knock on the floor in my vest pocket. Just take it out, will you, and see if you've stopped it?""Oh, confound your old Waterbury! All the world's stopped; why shouldn't your watch stop too?" Mavering tugged it out of the pocket, and then shoved it back disdainfully. "You couldn't stop that thing with anything short of a sledgehammer; it's rattling away like a mowing-machine. You know those Portland women--those ladies I spent the day with when you were down there at the regatta--the day I came from Campobello--Mrs. Frobisher and her sister?" He agglutinated one query to another till he saw a light of intelligence dawn in Boardman's eye. "Well, they're at the bottom of it, I suppose. I was introduced to them on Class Day, and I ought to have shown them some attention there; but the moment I saw Alice--Miss Pasmer--I forgot all about 'em. But they didn't seem to have noticed it much, and I made it all right with 'em that day at Portland; and they came up in the fall, and I made an appointment with them to drive out to Cambridge and show them the place. They were to take me up at the Art Museum; but that was the day I met Miss Pasmer, and I--I forgot about those women again."Boardman was one of those who seldom laugh; but his grin expressed all the malicious enjoyment he felt. He said nothing in the impressive silence which Mavering let follow at this point.
"Oh, you think it was funny?" cried Mavering. "I thought it was funny too; but Alice herself opened my eyes to what I'd done, and I always intended to make it all right with them when I got the chance. I supposed she wished me too."Boardman grinned afresh.
"She told me I must; though she seemed to dislike my having been with them the day after she'd thrown me over. But if"--Mavering interrupted himself to say, as the grin widened on Boardman's face--"if you think it was any case of vulgar jealousy, you're very much mistaken, Boardman. She isn't capable of it, and she was so magnanimous about it that I made up my mind to do all I could to retrieve myself. I felt that it was my duty to her.
Well, last night at Mrs. Jim Bellingham's reception--"A look of professional interest replaced the derision in Boardman's eyes.
