Chapter 203

This polite note was felt to be a slap in the face, but the effect of it was softened a little later by a cordial and appreciative letter from Miss McDonald, telling the author what great delight and satisfaction they had had in reading it, and thanking him for a prose idyl that showed in the old-fashioned way that common life was not necessarily vulgar.

The critics seemed to Philip very slow in letting the public know of the birth of the book. Presently, however, the little notices, all very much alike, began to drop along, longer or shorter paragraphs, commonly in undiscriminating praise of the beauty of the story, the majority of them evidently written by reviewers who sat down to a pile of volumes to be turned off, and who had not more than five or ten minutes to be lost. Rarely, however, did any one condemn it, and that showed that it was harmless. Mr. Brad had given it quite a lift in the Spectrum. The notice was mainly personal--the first work of a brilliant young man at the bar who was destined to go high in his profession, unless literature should, fortunately for the public, have stronger attractions for him. That such a country idyl should be born amid law-books was sufficiently remarkable. It was an open secret that the scene of the story was the birthplace of the author--a lovely village that was brought into notice a summer ago as the chosen residence of Thomas Mavick and his family.

Eagerly looked for at first, the newspaper notices soon palled upon Philip, the uniform tone of good-natured praise, unanimous in the extravagance of unmeaning adjectives. Now and then he welcomed one that was ill-natured and cruelly censorious. That was a relief. And yet there were some reviews of a different sort, half a dozen in all, and half of them from Western journals, which took the book seriously, saw its pathos, its artistic merit, its failure of construction through inexperience. A few commended it warmly to readers who loved ideal purity and could recognize the noble in common life. And some, whom Philip regarded as authorities, welcomed a writer who avoided sensationalism, and predicted for him an honorable career in letters, if he did not become self-conscious and remained true to his ideals. The book clearly had not made a hit, the publishers had sold one edition and ordered half another, and no longer regarded the author as a risk. But, better than this, the book had attracted the attention of many lovers of literature. Philip was surprised day after day by meeting people who had read it. His name began to be known in a small circle who are interested in the business, and it was not long before he had offers from editors, who were always on the lookout for new writers of promise, to send something for their magazines. And, perhaps more flattering than all, he began to have society invitations to dine, and professional invitations to those little breakfasts that publishers give to old writers and to young whose names are beginning to be spoken of. All this was very exhilarating and encouraging. And yet Philip was not allowed to be unduly elated by the attention of his fellow-craftsmen, for he soon found that a man's consequence in this circle, as well as with the great public, depended largely upon the amount of the sale of his book. How else should it be rated, when a very popular author, by whom Philip sat one day at luncheon, confessed that he never read books?

"So," said Mr. Sharp, one morning, "I see you have gone into literature, Mr. Burnett."

"Not very deep," replied Philip with a smile, as he rose from his desk.

"Going to drop law, eh?"

"I haven't had occasion to drop much of anything yet," said Philip, still smiling.

"Oh well, two masters, you know," and Mr. Sharp passed on to his room.

It was not, however, Mr. Sharp's opinion that Philip was concerned about. The polite note from Mrs. Mavick stuck in his mind. It was a civil way of telling him that all summer debts were now paid, and that his relations with the house of Mavick were at an end. This conclusion was forced upon him when he left his card, a few days after the reception, and had the ill luck not to find the ladies at home. The situation had no element of tragedy in it, but Philip was powerless. He could not storm the house. He had no visible grievance. There was nothing to fight. He had simply run against one of the invisible social barriers that neither offer resistance nor yield. No one had shown him any discourtesy that society would recognize as a matter of offense. Nay, more than that, it could have no sympathy with him. It was only the case of a presumptuous and poor young man who was after a rich girl. The position itself was ignoble, if it were disclosed.

Yet fortune, which sometimes likes to play the mischief with the best social arrangements, did give Philip an unlooked-for chance. At a dinner given by the lady who had been Philip's only partner at the Mavick reception, and who had read his story and had written to "her partner" a most kind little note regretting that she had not known she was dancing with an author, and saying that she and her husband would be delighted to make his acquaintance, Philip was surprised by the presence of the Mavicks in the drawing-room. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Mavick seemed especially pleased when they encountered him, and in fact his sole welcome from the family was in the eyes of Evelyn.

The hostess had supposed that the Mavicks would be pleased to meet the rising author, and in still further carrying out her benevolent purpose, and with, no doubt, a sympathy in the feelings of the young, Mrs. Van Cortlandt had assigned Miss Mavick to Mr. Burnett. It was certainly a natural arrangement, and yet it called a blank look to Mrs. Mavick's face, that Philip saw, and put her in a bad humor which needed an effort for her to conceal it from Mr. Van Cortlandt. The dinner-party was large, and her ill-temper was not assuaged by the fact that the young people were seated at a distance from her and on the same side of the table.

"How charming your daughter is looking, Mrs. Mavick!" Mr. Van Cortlandt began, by way of being agreeable. Mrs. Mavick inclined her head. "That young Burnett seems to be a nice sort of chap; Mrs. Van Cortlandt says he is very clever."

"Yes?"

"I haven't read his book. They say he is a lawyer."

"Lawyer's clerk, I believe," said Mrs. Mavick, indifferently.

"Authors are pretty plenty nowadays."

"That's a fact. Everybody writes. I don't see how all the poor devils live." Mr. Van Cortlandt had now caught the proper tone, and the conversation drifted away from personalities.

It was a very brilliant dinner, but Philip could not have given much account of it. He made an effort to be civil to his left-hand neighbor, and he affected an ease in replying to cross-table remarks. He fancied that he carried himself very well, and so he did for a man unexpectedly elevated to the seventh heaven, seated for two hours beside the girl whose near presence filled him with indescribable happiness. Every look, every tone of her voice thrilled him. How dear she was! how adorable she was! How radiantly happy she seemed to be whenever she turned her face towards him to ask a question or to make a reply!

At moments his passion seemed so overmastering that he could hardly restrain himself from whispering, "Evelyn, I love you." In a hundred ways he was telling her so. And she must understand. She must know that this was not an affair of the moment, but that there was condensed in it all the constant devotion of months and months.

A woman, even any girl with the least social experience, would have seen this. Was Evelyn's sympathetic attention, her evident enjoyment in talking with him, any evidence of a personal interest, or only a young girl's enjoyment of her new position in the world? That she liked him he was sure. Did she, was she beginning in any degree to return his passion? He could not tell, for guilelessness in a woman is as impenetrable as coquetry.

Of what did they talk? A stenographer would have made a meagre report of it, for the most significant part of this conversation of two fresh, honest natures was not in words. One thing, however, Philip could bring away with him that was not a mere haze of delicious impressions. She had been longing, she said, to talk to him about his story. She told him how eagerly she had read it, and in talking about its meaning she revealed to him her inner thought more completely than she could have done in any other way, her sympathy with his mind, her interest in his work.

"Have you begun another?" she asked, at last.

"No, not on paper."

"But you must. It must be such a world to you. I can't imagine anything so fine as that. There is so much about life to be said. To make people see it as it is; yes, and as it ought to be. Will you?"

"You forget that I am a lawyer."

"And you prefer to be that, a lawyer, rather than an author?"

"It is not exactly what I prefer, Miss Mavick."

"Why not? Does anybody do anything well if his heart is not in it?"

"But circumstances sometimes compel a man."

"I like better for men to compel circumstances," the girl exclaimed, with that disposition to look at things in the abstract that Philip so well remembered.

"Perhaps I do not make myself understood. One must have a career."

"A career?" And Evelyn looked puzzled for a moment. "You mean for himself, for his own self?" There is a lawyer who comes to see papa. I've been in the room sometimes, when they don't mind. Such talk about schemes, and how to do this and that, and twisting about. And not a word about anything any of the time. And one day when he was waiting for papa I talked with him. You would have been surprised.

I told papa that I could not find anything to interest him. Papa laughed and said it was my fault, he was one of the sharpest lawyers in the city. Would you rather be that than to write?"

"Oh, all lawyers are not like that. And, don't you know, literature doesn't pay."

"Yes, I have heard that." And then she thought a minute and with a quizzical look continued: "That is such a queer word, 'pay.' McDonald says that it pays to be good. Do you think, Mr. Burnett, that law would pay you?"

Evidently the girl had a standard of judging people that was not much in use.

Before they rose from the table, Philip asked, speaking low, "Miss Mavick, won't you give me a violet from your bunch in memory of this evening?"

Evelyn hesitated an instant, and then, without looking up, disengaged three, and shyly laid them at her left hand. "I like the number three better."

Philip covered the flowers with his hand, and said, "I will keep them always."

"That is a long time," Evelyn answered, but still without looking up. But when they rose the color mounted to her cheeks, and Philip thought that the glorious eyes turned upon him were full of trust.

"It is all your doing," said Carmen, snappishly, when Mavick joined her in the drawing-room.

"What is?"

"You insisted upon having him at the reception."

"Burnett? Oh, stuff, he isn't a fool!"

There was not much said as the three drove home. Evelyn, flushed with pleasure and absorbed in her own thoughts, saw that something had gone wrong with her mother and kept silent. Mr. Mavick at length broke the silence with:

"Did you have a good time, child?"

"Oh, yes," replied Evelyn, cheerfully, "and Mrs. Van Cortlandt was very sweet to me. Don't you think she is very hospitable, mamma?"

"Tries to be," Mrs. Mavick replied, in no cordial tone. "Good-natured and eccentric. She picks up the queerest lot of people. You can never know whom you will not meet at her house. Just now she goes in for being literary."

Evelyn was not so reticent with McDonald. While she was undressing she disclosed that she had had a beautiful evening, that she was taken out by Mr. Burnett, and talked about his story.

"And, do you know, I think I almost persuaded him to write another."

"It's an awful responsibility," dryly said the shrewd Scotch woman, "advising young men what to do."

XVIII

Upon the recollection of this dinner Philip maintained his hope and courage for a long time. The day after it, New York seemed more brilliant to him than it had ever been. In the afternoon he rode down to the Battery. It was a mild winter day, with a haze in the atmosphere that softened all outlines and gave an enchanting appearance to the harbor shores. The water was silvery, and he watched a long time the craft plying on it--the businesslike ferry-boats, the spiteful tugs, the great ocean steamers, boldly pushing out upon the Atlantic through the Narrows or cautiously drawing in as if weary with the buffeting of the waves. The scene kindled in him a vigorous sense of life, of prosperity, of longing for the activity of the great world.

Clearly he must do something and not be moping in indecision. Uncertainty is harder to bear than disaster itself. When he thought of Evelyn, and he always thought of her, it seemed cowardly to hesitate. Celia, after her first outburst of enthusiasm, had returned to her cautious advice. The law was much surer. Literature was a mere chance. Why not be content with his little success and buckle down to his profession? Perhaps by-and-by he would have leisure to indulge his inclination. The advice seemed sound.

But there was Evelyn, with her innocent question.

"Would the law pay you?" Evelyn? Would he be more likely to win her by obeying the advice of Celia, or by trusting to Evelyn's inexperienced discernment? Indeed, what chance was there to win her at all? What had he to offer her?

His spirits invariably fell when he thought of submitting his pretensions to the great man of Wall Street or to his worldly wife. Already it was the gossip of the clubs that Lord Montague was a frequent visitor at the Mavicks', that he was often seen in their box at the opera, and that Mrs. Mavick had said to Bob Shafter that it was a scandal to talk of Lord Montague as a fortune-hunter. He was a most kind-hearted, domestic man. She should not join in the newspaper talk about him. He belonged to an old English family, and she should be civil to him. Generally she did not fancy Englishmen, and this one she liked neither better nor worse because he had a title. And when you came to that, why shouldn't any American girl marry her equal?

As to Montague, he was her friend, and she knew that he had not the least intention at present of marrying anybody. And then the uncharitable gossip went on, that there was the Count de l'Auney, and that Mrs. Mavick was playing the one off against the other.

As the days went on and spring began to appear in the light, fleeting clouds in the blue sky and in the greening foliage in the city squares, Philip became more and more restless. The situation was intolerable. Evelyn he could never see. Perhaps she wondered that he made no effort to see her. Perhaps she never thought of him at all, and simply, like an obedient child, accepted her mother's leading, and was getting to like that society life which was recorded in the daily journals. What did it matter to him whether he stuck to the law or launched himself into the Bohemia of literature, so long as doubt about Evelyn haunted him day and night? If she was indifferent to him, he would know the worst, and go about his business like a man. Who were the Mavicks, anyway?

Alice had written him once that Evelyn was a dear girl, no one could help loving her; but she did not like the blood of father and mother. "And remember, Phil--you must let me say this--there is not a drop of mean blood in your ancestors."

Philip smiled at this. He was not in love with Mrs. Mavick nor with her husband. They were for him simply guardians of a treasure he very much coveted, and yet they were to a certain extent ennobled in his mind as the authors of the being he worshiped. If it should be true that his love for her was returned, it would not be possible even for them to insist upon a course that would make their daughter unhappy for life. They might reject him--no doubt he was a wholly unequal match for the heiress--but could they, to the very end, be cruel to her?

Thus the ingenuous young man argued with himself, until it seemed plain to him that if Evelyn loved him, and the conviction grew that she did, all obstacles must give way to this overmastering passion of his life. If he were living in a fool's paradise he would know it, and he ventured to put his fortune to the test of experiment. The only manly course was to gain the consent of the parents to ask their daughter to marry him; if not that, then to be permitted to see her. He was nobly resolved to pledge himself to make no proposals to her without their approval.

This seemed a very easy thing to do until he attempted it. He would simply happen into Mr. Mavick's office, and, as Mr. Mavick frequently talked familiarly with him, he would contrive to lead the conversation to Evelyn, and make his confession. He mapped out the whole conversation, and even to the manner in which he would represent his own prospects and ambitions and his hopes of happiness. Of course Mr. Mavick would evade, and say that it would be a long time before they should think of disposing of their daughter's hand, and that--well, he must see himself that he was in no position to support a wife accustomed to luxury; in short, that one could not create situations in real life as he could in novels, that personally he could give him no encouragement, but that he would consult his wife.

This dream got no further than a private rehearsal. When he called at Mr. Mavick's office he learned that Mr. Mavick had gone to the Pacific coast, and that he would probably be absent several weeks. But Philip could not wait. He resolved to end his torture by a bold stroke. He wrote to Mrs. Mavick, saying that he had called at Mr. Mavick's office, and, not finding him at home, he begged that she would give him an interview concerning a matter of the deepest personal interest to himself.

Mrs. Mavick understood in an instant what this meant. She had feared it. Her first impulse was to write him a curt note of a character that would end at once all intercourse. On second thought she determined to see him, to discover how far the affair had gone, and to have it out with him once for all. She accordingly wrote that she would have a few minutes at half past five the next day.

As Philip went up the steps of the Mavick house at the appointed hour, he met coming out of the door--and it seemed a bad omen--Lord Montague, who seemed in high spirits, stared at Philip without recognition, whistled for his cab, and drove away.

Mrs. Mavick received him politely, and, without offering her hand, asked him to be seated. Philip was horribly embarrassed. The woman was so cool, so civil, so perfectly indifferent. He stammered out something about the weather and the coming spring, and made an allusion to the dinner at Mrs. Van Cortlandt's. Mrs. Mavick was not in the mood to help him with any general conversation, and presently said, looking at her watch:

"You wrote me that you wanted to consult me. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"It was a personal matter," said Philip, getting control of himself.

"So you wrote. Mr. Mavick is away, and if it is in regard to anything in your office, any promotion, you know, I don't understand anything about business." And Mrs. Mavick smiled graciously.

"No, it is not about the office. I should not think of troubling my friends in that way. It is just that--"

"Oh, I see," Mrs. Mavick interrupted, with good-humor, "it's about the novel. I hear that it has sold very well. And you are not certain whether its success will warrant your giving up your clerkship. Now as for me," and she leaned back in her chair, with the air of weighing the chances in her mind, "it doesn't seem to me that a writer--"

"No, it is not that," said Philip, leaning forward and looking her full in the face with all the courage he could summon, "it is your daughter."

"What!" cried Mrs. Mavick, in a tone of incredulous surprise.

"I was afraid you would think me very presumptuous."

"Presumptuous! Why, she is a child. Do you know what you are talking about?"

"My mother married at eighteen," said Philip, gently.

"That is an interesting piece of information, but I don't see its bearing. Will you tell me, Mr. Burnett, what nonsense you have got into your head?"

"I want," and Philip spoke very gently--"I want, Mrs. Mavick, permission to see your daughter."

"Ah! I thought in Rivervale, Mr. Burnett, that you were a gentleman. You presume upon my invitation to this house, in an underhand way, to--What right have you?"

Mrs. Mavick was so beside herself that she could hardly speak. The lines in her face deepened into wrinkles and scowls. There was something malevolent and mean in it. Philip was astonished at the transformation. And she looked old and ugly in her passion.

"You!" she repeated.

"It is only this, Mrs. Mavick," and Philip spoke calmly, though his blood was boiling at her insulting manner--"it is only this--I love your daughter."

"And you have told her this?"

"No, never, never a word."

"Does she know anything of this absurd, this silly attempt?"

"I am afraid not."

"Ah! Then you have spared yourself one humiliation. My daughter's affections are not likely to be placed where her parents do not approve. Her mother is her only confidante. I can tell you, Mr. Burnett, and when you are over this delusion you will thank me for being so plain with you, my daughter would laugh at the idea of such a proposal. But I will not have her annoyed by impecunious aspirants."

"Madam!" cried Philip, rising, with a flushed face, and then he remembered that he was talking to Evelyn's mother, and uttered no other word.

"This is ended." And then, with a slight change of manner, she went on: "You must see how impossible it is. You are a man of honor.

"I should like to think well of you. I shall trust to your honor that you will never try, by letter or otherwise, to hold any communication with her."

"I shall obey you," said Philip, quite stiffly, "because you are her mother. But I love her, and I shall always love her."

Mrs. Mavick did not condescend to any reply to this, but she made a cold bow of dismissal and turned away from him. He left the house and walked away, scarcely knowing in which direction he went, anger for a time being uppermost in his mind, chagrin and defeat following, and with it the confused feeling of a man who has passed through a cyclone and been landed somewhere amid the scattered remnants of his possessions.

As he strode away he was intensely humiliated. He had been treated like an inferior. He had voluntarily put himself in a position to be insulted. Contempt had been poured upon him, his feelings had been outraged, and there was no way in which he could show his resentment. Presently, as his anger subsided, he began to look at the matter more sanely. What had happened? He had made an honorable proposal. But what right had he to expect that it would be favorably considered? He knew all along that it was most unlikely that Mrs. Mavick would entertain for a moment idea of such a match. He knew what would be the unanimous opinion of society about it. In the case of any other young man aspiring to the hand of a rich girl, he knew very well what he should have thought.

Well, he had done nothing dishonorable. And as he reviewed the bitter interview he began to console himself with the thought that he had not lost his temper, that he had said nothing to be regretted, nothing that he should not have said to the mother of the girl he loved. There was an inner comfort in this, even if his life were ruined.