I don't think I 've had a pen in my hand, except when I wrote a note to Berri, for more than two weeks. In the first place I left in such a hurry to meet the family in New York that, among the various things I forgot to pack at the last minute, my diary was one. (Even if I had taken it, I probably shouldn't have found time to record all we did.) Then, as I was with mamma and papa and Mildred during the entire vacation, there was no necessity for writing letters.
I did n't go to Washington with Berri for two reasons. The family naturally wanted me to spend the holidays with them, and I could n't help feeling that, if I refused Berri's kind invitation, he would be much more likely to stay, part of the time at least, in Cambridge and write his thesis. In a way I was right; for when I told him I simply could n't go with him, he said sort of listlessly,—
"Well, then I suppose I ought to stay here and finish that thing, oughtn't I?" which was an optimistic way of letting me know that it had n't even been begun. I did n't know what to answer exactly, because if I 'd agreed with him he would have thought me unsympathetic and looked hurt, and if I had advised him to let the whole matter slide, and forget about it, and have a good time (which was, of course, what he wanted me to do), I felt sure that he would eventually blame me for giving him bad advice. That's Berri all over. So I merely remarked, "You 'll have to be the judge; it 's too serious a matter for any one else to meddle with," and felt like a nasty little prig as I said it. He was restless and gloomy after that, and took a long walk all alone, during which I 'm convinced that he very nearly made up his mind to stay in Cambridge and slave. I say very nearly, because he didn't bring himself quite to the point of telling anybody about it. But the next afternoon (college closed with the last lecture of that day), when I turned into our street on the way to my room, there was a cab with a steamer trunk on it standing in front of our house; and as I opened the front door, Berri and a dress-suit case clattered down the stairs. He stopped just long enough to shake hands and exclaim, "Good-by, Granny—have a good time—I left a note for you on your desk. The train goes in less than an hour." Then he rushed out of the gate and jumped into the cab, slamming the door after him with that sharp, thrilling "Now they're off" clack that cabs, and cabs only, possess. That was the last I saw of him.
New York was a pleasing delirium of theatres and operas and automobile rides up and down Fifth Avenue, with just enough rows between Mildred and me, and papa and me and Mildred and mamma (the other possible combinations never scrap), to make us realize that the family tie was the same dear old family tie and had n't been in any way severed by my long absence. It took us three days to persuade mamma to ride in an automobile,—a triumph that we all lived bitterly to repent; for she ever afterwards refused to be transported from place to place by any other means,—which was not only inconvenient, but ruinous. She justified her extravagance by declaring that in an emergency she preferred to be the smasher to the smashed. I met lots of fellows I knew on the street, and some of them took me home with them to luncheon or to that curious five-o'clock-sit-around-and-don't-know-what-to-do-with-the-cup meal they call "tea." Meeting their families was very nice, and I felt as if I knew the fellows ever so much better than I did in Cambridge.
One incident might have ended in a tragedy if I hadn't happened to preserve a certain letter of mamma's. ("Never write anything and never burn anything—isn't it Talleyrand who tells us that?" as the friend of Berri's aunt would say.) It was the real reason of our spending the last two days of the vacation in Boston, and came about in the following way.
One day at luncheon (we were going to a matinée afterwards) I glanced at my watch to see how late we were, and mamma noticed, for the first time, that I was carrying a cheap nickel-plated alarm-clock sort of an affair instead of the gold-faced heirloom that has been reposing for lo! these many weeks in Mr. Hirsch's pawn-shop. Since our meeting she hadn't referred to this painful subject, and as I had become used to the dollar watch on the end of my chain, it never occurred to me to say anything about it. That day she looked at the watch and then at me, and finally she murmured, "Why, Tommy!" with the expression of one who seems to see the foundations of Truth, Respectability, and Honor crumbling to dust; and she finished her luncheon in silence, breathing in a resigned kind of way and studying the table-cloth with eyes like smitten forget-me nots. On the way upstairs I lagged behind, and Mildred said to me,—
"Mamma has on her early-Christian-martyr look. What on earth's the matter now?" But I was unable to enlighten her. Mamma had known from the first that the watch had been pawned; I could n't imagine why she was so upset.
All was explained, however, when I went to her room. Some time ago she had sent me a draft for thirty dollars. It came in a cheerful letter (no letter containing a draft for thirty dollars is sad) about nothing in particular. I remembered that at the time the postscript had puzzled me, for it said, "Of course I have told your father nothing about this," and there was no clew in the body of the letter to what "this" referred. The draft wasn't mentioned. It seems that mamma was under the impression she had written me several pages on the evils of extravagance, the horrors of debt, and the general desirability of redeeming one's watch as soon as possible,—which she hadn't at all. Not being a mind-reader, I assumed that her draft was a spontaneous outburst of maternal esteem, had it cashed with a loving grateful heart, and spent the money in three days. Therefore, when she caught sight of my tin timepiece (it keeps much better time, by the way, than the heirloom ever did), she had distressing visions of me indulging in a perfect carnival of embezzlement, and finally ending up with shorn locks, striped clothes, and a chain on my leg.
I never realized before that the human brain is perfectly capable, under certain circumstances, of harboring two distinct beliefs at the same time,—the truth of either one of which necessarily excludes the other. (There is probably a more technical way of stating this, but I haven't got that far in my philosophy course as yet.) Now, when I solemnly declared to mamma that she had never mentioned her check in connection with my watch or anything else in fact, I am sure she believed me. She said she believed me, and seemed greatly relieved. But, on the other hand, although she knew I was telling the truth, and rejoiced in the fact, I am certain that she was unable at the same time to abandon her equally strong conviction that she had written and sent precisely the letter she had intended to. I don't pretend to explain this mental phenomenon, and I discreetly refrained from discussing it with mamma, for in the midst of our talk I began to have a dim, delicious suspicion that her letter was at that moment reposing in my inside pocket. (When I am away from home, I always carry several plainly addressed letters in order that there may be as little trouble as possible in case anything should happen to me. I remembered having put the letter with the postscript into my coat-pocket instead of my desk, as I wished to refer to it when I next wrote home.) So, when mamma finally said, "Well, I believe you," and then added with an air of abstraction, "But I wish you had saved that letter," I thrust my hand into my pocket, glanced at several envelopes, and exclaimed dramatically as I showed her one of them,—
"Madam, your most idle whim is my inexorable law." Then we all went to the matinée.