Chapter 199

"If you American students," she said one day when they were seated on a fallen tree in the forest, and she was expatiating on a rare plant she had found, "paid no more attention to the classics than to the world you live in, few of you would get a degree."

"Oh, some fellows go in for that sort of thing," Philip replied. "But I have noticed that all English women have some sort of fad--plants, shells, birds, something special."

"Fad!" exclaimed the Scotchwoman. "Yes, I suppose it is, if reading is a fad. It is one way of finding out about things. You admire what the Americans call scenery; we, since you provoke me to say it, love nature --I mean its individual, almost personal manifestations. Every plant has a distinct character of its own. I saw the other day an American landscape picture with a wild, uncultivated foreground. There was not a botanical thing in it. The man who painted it didn't know a sweetbrier from a thistle.

"Just a confused mass of rubbish. It was as if an animal painter should compose a group and you could not tell whether it was made up of sheep or rabbits or dogs or foxes or griffins."

"So you want things picked out like a photograph?"

"I beg your pardon, I want nature. You cannot give character to a bit of ground in a landscape unless you know the characters of its details. A man is no more fit to paint a landscape than a cage of monkeys, unless he knows the language of the nature he is dealing with down to the alphabet. The Japanese know it so well that they are not bothered with minutia, but give you character."

"And you think that science is an aid to art?"

"Yes, if there is genius to transform it into art. You must know the intimate habits of anything you paint or write about. You cannot even caricature without that. They talk now about Dickens being just a caricaturist. He couldn't have been that if he hadn't known the things he caricatured. That is the reason there is so little good caricature."

"Isn't your idea of painting rather anatomical?" Philip ventured to ask.

"Do you think that if Raphael had known nothing of anatomy the world would have accepted his Sistine Madonna for the woman she is?" was the retort.

"I see it is interesting," said Philip, shifting his ground again, "but what is the real good of all these botanical names and classifications?"

Miss McDonald gave a weary sigh. "Well, you must put things in order. You studied philology in Germany? The chief end of that is to trace the development, migration, civilization of the human race. To trace the distribution of plants is another way to find out about the race. But let that go. Don't you think that I get more pleasure in looking at all the growing things we see, as we sit here, than you do in seeing them and knowing as little about them as you pretend to?"

Philip said that he could not analyze the degree of pleasure in such things, but he seemed to take his ignorance very lightly. What interested him in all this talk was that, in discovering the mind of the governess, he was getting nearer to the mind of her pupil. And finally he asked (and Miss McDonald smiled, for she knew what this conversation, like all others with him, must ultimately come to):

"Does the Mavick family also take to botany?"

"Oh yes. Mrs. Mavick is intimate with all the florists in New York. And Miss Evelyn, when I take home these specimens, will analyze them and tell all about them. She is very sharp about such things. You must have noticed that she likes to be accurate?"

"But she is fond of poetry."

"Yes, of poetry that she understands. She has not much of the emotional vagueness of many young girls."

All this was very delightful for Philip, and for a long time, on one pretext or another, he kept the conversation revolving about this point. He fancied he was very deep in doing this. To his interlocutor he was, however, very transparent. And the young man would have been surprised and flattered if he had known how much her indulgence of him in this talk was due to her genuine liking for him.

When they returned to the inn, Mrs. Mavick began to rally Philip about his feminine taste in woodsy things. He would gladly have thrown botany or anything else overboard to win the good opinion of Evelyn's mother, but botany now had a real significance and a new meaning for him. Therefore he put in a defense, by saying:

"Botany, in the hands of Miss McDonald, cannot be called very feminine; it is a good deal more difficult to understand and master than law."

"Maybe that's the reason," said Mrs. Mavick, "why so many more girls are eager to study law now than botany."

"Law?" cried Evelyn; "and to practice?"

"Certainly. Don't you think that a bright, clever woman, especially if she were pretty, would have an advantage with judge and jury?"

"Not if judge and jury were women," Miss McDonald interposed.

"And you remember Portia?" Mrs. Mavick continued.

"Portia," said Evelyn; "yes, but that is poetry; and, McDonald, wasn't it a kind of catch? How beautifully she talked about mercy, but she turned the sharp edge of it towards the Jew. I didn't like that."

"Yes," Miss McDonald replied, "it was a kind of trick, a poet's law. What do you say, Mr. Burnett?"

"Why," said Philip, hesitating, "usually it is understood when a man buys or wins anything that the appurtenances necessary to give him full possession go with it. Only in this case another law against the Jew was understood. It was very clever, nothing short of woman's wit."

"Are there any women in your firm, Mr. Burnett?" asked Mrs. Mavick.

"Not yet, but I think there are plenty of lawyers who would be willing to take Portia for a partner."

"Make her what you call a consulting partner. That is just the way with you men--as soon as you see women succeeding in doing anything independently, you head them off by matrimony."

"Not against their wills," said the governess, with some decision.

"Oh, the poor things are easily hypnotized. And I'm glad they are. The funniest thing is to hear the Woman's Rights women talk of it as a state of subjection," and Mrs. Mavick laughed out of her deep experience.

"Rights, what's that?" asked Evelyn.

"Well, child, your education has been neglected. Thank McDonald for that."

"Don't you know, Evelyn," the governess explained, "that we have always said that women had a right to have any employment, or do anything they were fitted to do?"

"Oh, that, of course; I thought everybody said that. That is natural. But I mean all this fuss. I guess I don't understand what you all are talking about." And her bright face broke out of its look of perplexity into a smile.

"Why, poor thing," said her mother, "you belong to the down-trodden sex. Only you haven't found it out."

"But, mamma," and the girl seemed to be turning the thing over in her mind, as was her wont with any new proposition, "there seem to be in history a good many women who never found it out either."

"It is not so now. I tell you we are all in a wretched condition."

"You look it, mamma," replied Evelyn, who perfectly understood when her mother was chaffing.

"But I think I don't care so much for the lawyers," Mrs. Mavick continued, with more air of conviction; "what I can't stand are the doctors, the female doctors. I'd rather have a female priest about me than a female doctor."

This was not altogether banter, for there had been times in Carmen's career when the externals of the Roman Church attracted her, and she wished she had an impersonal confidant, to whom she could confess--well, not everything-and get absolution. And she could make a kind of confidant of a sympathetic doctor. But she went on:

"To have a sharp woman prying into all my conditions and affairs! No, I thank you. Don't you think so, McDonald?"

"They do say," the governess admitted, "that women doctors haven't as much consideration for women's whims as men." And, after a moment, she continued:

"But, for all that, women ought to understand about women better than men can, and be the best doctors for them."

"So it seems to me," said Evelyn, appealing to her mother. "Don't you remember that day you took me down to the infirmary in which you are interested, and how nice it was, nobody but women for doctors and nurses and all that? Would you put that in charge of men?"

"Oh, you child!" cried Mrs. Mavick, turning to her daughter and patting her on the head. "Of course there are exceptions. But I'm not going to be one of the exceptions. Ah, well, I suppose I am quite behind the age; but the conduct of my own sex does get on my nerves sometimes."

Evelyn was silent. She was often so when discussions arose. They were apt to plunge her into deep thought. To those who knew her history, guarded from close contact with anything but the world of ideas, it was very interesting to watch her mental attitude as she was day by day emerging into a knowledge of the actual world and encountering its crosscurrents. To Philip, who was getting a good idea of what her education had been, an understanding promoted by his knowledge of the character and attainments of her governess, her mental processes, it may be safely said, opened a new world of thought. Not that mental processes made much difference to a man in his condition, still, they had the effect of setting her personality still further apart from that of other women. One day when they happened to be tete-a-tete in one of their frequent excursions--a rare occasion--Evelyn had said:

"How strange it is that so many things that are self-evident nobody seems to see, and that there are so many things that are right that can't be done."

"That is the way the world is made," Philip had replied. She was frequently coming out with the sort of ideas and questions that are often proposed by bright children, whose thinking processes are not only fresh but undisturbed by the sophistries or concessions that experience has woven into the thinking of our race. "Perhaps it hasn't your faith in the abstract."

"Faith? I wonder. Do you mean that people do not dare go ahead and do things?"

"Well, partly. You see, everybody is hedged in by circumstances."

"Yes. I do begin to see circumstances. I suppose I'm a sort of a goose --in the abstract, as you say." And Evelyn laughed. It was the spontaneous, contagious laugh of a child. "You know that Miss McDonald says I'm nothing but a little idealist."

"Did you deny it?"

"Oh, no. I said, so were the Apostles, all save one--he was a realist."

It was Philip's turn to laugh at this new definition, and upon this the talk had drifted into the commonplaces of the summer situation and about Rivervale and its people. Philip regretted that his vacation would so soon be over, and that he must say good-by to all this repose and beauty, and to the intercourse that had been so delightful to him.

"But you will write," Evelyn exclaimed.

Philip was startled.

"Write?"

"Yes, your novel."

"Oh, I suppose so," without any enthusiasm.

"You must. I keep thinking of it. What a pleasure it must be to create a real drama of life."

So this day on the veranda of the inn when Philip spoke of his hateful departure next day, and there was a little chorus of protest, Evelyn was silent; but her silence was of more significance to him than the protests, for he knew her thoughts were on the work he had promised to go on with.

"It is too bad," Mrs. Mavick exclaimed; "we shall be like a lot of sheep without a shepherd."

"That we shall," the governess joined in. "At any rate, you must make us out a memorandum of what is to be seen and done and how to do it."

"Yes," said Philip, gayly, "I'll write tonight a complete guide to Rivervale."

"We are awfully obliged to you for what you have done." Mrs. Mavick was no doubt sincere in this. And she added, "Well, we shall all be back in the city before long."

It was a natural thing to say, and Philip understood that there was no invitation in it, more than that of the most conventional acquaintance. For Mrs. Mavick the chapter was closed.

There were the most cordial hand-shakings and good-bys, and Philip said good-by as lightly as anybody. But as he walked along the road he knew, or thought he was sure, that the thoughts of one of the party were going along with him into his future, and the peaceful scene, the murmuring river, the cat-birds and the blackbirds calling in the meadow, and the spirit of self-confident youth in him said not good-by, but au revoir.

XIV

Of course Philip wrote to Celia about his vacation intimacy with the Mavicks. It was no news to her that the Mavicks were spending the summer there; all the world knew that, and society wondered what whim of Carmen's had taken her out of the regular summer occupations and immured her in the country. Not that it gave much thought to her, but, when her name was mentioned, society resented the closing of the Newport house and the loss of her vivacity in the autumn at Lenox. She is such a hand to set things going, don't you know? Mr. Mavick never made a flying visit to his family--and he was in Rivervale twice during the season--that the newspapers did not chronicle his every movement, and attribute other motives than family affection to these excursions into New England. Was the Central system or the Pennsylvania system contemplating another raid? It could not be denied that the big operator's connection with any great interest raised suspicion and often caused anxiety.

Naturally, thought Celia, in such a little village, Philip would fall in with the only strangers there, so that he was giving her no news in saying so. But there was a new tone in his letters; she detected an unusual reserve that was in itself suspicious. Why did he say so much about Mrs. Mavick and the governess, and so little about the girl?

"You don't tell me," she wrote, "anything about the Infant Phenomenon. And you know I am dying to know."

This Philip resented. Phenomenon! The little brown girl, with eyes that saw so much and were so impenetrably deep, and the mobile face, so alert and responsive. If ever there was a natural person, it was Evelyn. So he wrote:

"There is nothing to tell; she is not an infant and she is not a phenomenon. Only this: she has less rubbish in her mind than any person you ever saw. And I guess the things she does not know about life are not worth knowing."

"I see," replied Celia; "poor boy! it's the moth and the star. [That's just like her, muttered Philip, she always assumed to be the older.] But don't mind. I've come to the conclusion that I am a moth myself, and some of the lights I used to think stars have fallen. And, seriously, dear friend, I am glad there is a person who does not know the things not worth knowing. It is a step in the right direction. I have been this summer up in the hills, meditating. And I am not so sure of things as I was. I used to think that all women needed was what is called education --science, history, literature--and you could safely turn them loose on the world. It certainly is not safe to turn them loose without education--but I begin to wonder what we are all coming to. I don't mind telling you that I have got into a pretty psychological muddle, and I don't see much to hold on to.

"I suppose that Scotch governess is pious; I mean she has a backbone of what they call dogma; things are right or wrong in her mind--no haziness. Now, I am going to make a confession. I've been thinking of religion. Don't mock. You know I was brought up religious, and I am religious. I go to church--well, you know how I feel and especially the things I don't believe. I go to church to be entertained. I read the other day that Cardinal Manning said: 'The three greatest evils in the world today are French devotional books, theatrical music, and the pulpit orator. And the last is the worst.' I wonder. I often feel as if I had been to a performance. No. It is not about sin that I am especially thinking, but the sinner. One ought to do something. Sometimes I think I ought to go to the city. You know I was in a College Settlement for a while. Now I mean something permanent, devoted to the poor as a life occupation, like a nun or something of that sort. You think this is a mood? Perhaps. There have always been so many things before me to do, and I wanted to do them all. And I do not stick to anything? You must not presume to say that, because I confide to you all my errant thoughts. You have not confided in me--I don't insinuate that you have anything to confide but I cannot help saying that if you have found a pure and clear-minded girl --Heaven knows what she will be when she is a woman I--I am sorry she is not poor."

But if Philip did not pour out his heart to his old friend, he did open a lively and frequent correspondence with Alice. Not about the person who was always in his thoughts--oh, no--but about himself, and all he was doing, in the not unreasonable expectation that the news would go where he could not send it directly--so many ingenious ways has love of attaining its object. And if Alice, no doubt, understood all this, she was nevertheless delighted, and took great pleasure in chronicling the news of the village and giving all the details that came in her way about the millionaire family. This connection with the world, if only by correspondence, was an outlet to her reserved and secluded life. And her letters recorded more of her character, of her feeling, than he had known in all his boyhood. When Alice mentioned, as it were by chance, that Evelyn had asked, more than once, when she had spoken of receiving letters, if her cousin was going on with his story, Philip felt that the connection was not broken.

Going on with his story he was, and with good heart. The thought that "she" might some day read it was inspiration enough. Any real creation, by pen or brush or chisel, must express the artist and be made in independence of the demands of a vague public. Art is vitiated when the commercial demand, which may be a needed stimulus, presides at the creation. But it is doubtful if any artist in letters, or in form or color, ever did anything well without having in mind some special person, whose approval was desired or whose criticism was feared. Such is the universal need of human sympathy. It is, at any rate, true that Philip's story, recast and reinspired, was thenceforth written under the spell of the pure divining eyes of Evelyn Mavick. Unconsciously this was so. For at this time Philip had not come to know that the reason why so many degraded and degrading stories and sketches are written is because the writers' standard is the approval of one or two or a group of persons of vitiated tastes and low ideals.

The Mavicks did not return to town till late in the autumn. By this time Philip's novel had been submitted to a publisher, or, rather, to state the exact truth, it had begun to go the rounds of the publishers. Mr. Brad, to whose nineteenth-century and newspaper eye Philip had shrunk from confiding his modest creation, but who was consulted in the business, consoled him with the suggestion that this was a sure way of getting his production read. There was already in the city a considerable body of professional "readers," mostly young men and women, to whom manuscripts were submitted by the publishers, so that the author could be sure, if he kept at it long enough, to get a pretty fair circulation for his story. They were selected because they were good judges of literature and because they had a keen appreciation of what the public wanted at the moment. Many of them are overworked, naturally so, in the mass of manuscripts turned over to their inspection day after day, and are compelled often to adopt the method of tea-tasters, who sip but do not swallow, for to drink a cup or two of the decoction would spoil their taste and impair their judgment, especially on new brands. Philip liked to imagine, as the weeks passed away--the story is old and need not be retold here--that at any given hour somebody was reading him. He did not, however, dwell with much delight upon this process, for the idea that some unknown Rhadamanthus was sitting in judgment upon him much more wounded his 'amour propre', and seemed much more like an invading of his inner, secret life and feeling, than would be an instant appeal to the general public. Why, he thought, it is just as if I had shown it to Brad himself--apiece of confidence that he could not bring himself to. He did not know that Brad himself was a reader for a well-known house--which had employed him on the strength of his newspaper notoriety--and that very likely he had already praised the quality of the work and damned it as lacking "snap."

It was, however, weary waiting, and would have been intolerable if his duties in the law office had not excluded other thoughts from his mind a good part of the time. There were days when he almost resolved to confine himself to the solid and remunerative business of law, and give up the vague aspirations of authorship. But those vague aspirations were in the end more enticing than the courts. Common-sense is not an antidote to the virus of the literary infection when once a young soul has taken it. In his long walks it was not on the law that Philip was ruminating, nor was the fame of success in it occupying his mind. Suppose he could write one book that should touch the heart of the world. Would he exchange the sweetness of that for the fleeting reputation of the most brilliant lawyer? In short, he magnified beyond all reason the career and reputation of the author, and mistook the consideration he occupies in the great world. And what a world it would be if there had not been a continuous line of such mistaken fools as he!

That it was not literature alone that inflated his dreams was evidenced by the direction his walks took. Whatever their original destination or purpose, he was sure to pass through upper Fifth Avenue, and walk by the Mavick mansion. And never without a lift in his spirits. What comfort there is to a lover in gazing at the blank and empty house once occupied by his mistress has never been explained; but Philip would have counted the day lost in which he did not see it.

After he heard from Alice that the Mavicks had returned, the house had still stronger attractions for him, for there was added the chance of a glimpse of Evelyn or one of the family. Many a day passed, however, before he mustered up courage to mount the steps and touch the button.

"Yes, sir," said the servant, "the family is returned, but they is h'out."

Philip left his card. But nothing came of it, and he did not try again. In fact, he was a little depressed as the days went by. How much doubt and anxiety, even suffering, might have been spared him if the historian at that moment could have informed him of a little shopping incident at Tiffany's a few days after the Mavicks' return.

A middle-aged lady and a young girl were inspecting some antiques. The girl, indeed, had been asking for ancient coins, and they were shown two superb gold staters with the heads of Alexander and Philip.

"Aren't they beautiful?" said the younger. "How lovely one would be for a brooch!"

"Yes, indeed," replied the elder, "and quite in the line of our Greek reading."

The girl held them in her hand and looked at one and the other with a student's discrimination.

"Which would you choose?"

"Oh, both are fine. Philip of Macedon has a certain youthful freshness, in the curling hair and uncovered head. But, of course, Alexander the Great is more important, and then there is the classic casque. I should take the Alexander." The girl still hesitated, weighing the choice in her mind from the classic point of view.

"Doubtless you are right. But"--and she held up the lovely head--"this is not quite so common, and--and--I think I'll take the Macedon one. Yes, you may set that for me," turning to the salesman.