Chapter 210

"I was going to say, Mr. Mavick, that there was a little something more than my salary that I can count on pretty regularly now from the magazines, and I have had another story, a novel, accepted, and--you won't think me vain--the publisher says it will go; if it doesn't have a big sale he will--"

"Make it up to you?"

"Not exactly," and Philip laughed; "he will be greatly mistaken."

"I suppose it is a kind of lottery, like most things. The publishers have to take risks. The only harm I wish them is that they were compelled to read all the stuff they try to make us read. Ah, well. Mr. Burnett, I hope you have made a hit. It is pretty much the same thing in our business. The publisher bulls his own book and bears the other fellow's. Is it a New York story?"

"Partly; things come to a focus here, you know."

"I could give you points. It's a devil of a place. I guess the novelists are too near to see the romance of it. When I was in Rome I amused myself by diving into the mediaeval records. Steel and poison were the weapons then. We have a different method now, but it comes to the same thing, and we say we are more civilized. I think our way is more devilishly dramatic than the old brute fashion. Yes, I could give you points."

"I should be greatly obliged," said Philip, seeing the way to bring the conversation back to its starting point; "your wide experience of life --if you had leisure at home some time."

"Oh," replied Mavick, with more good-humor in his laugh than he had shown before, "you needn't beat about the bush. Have you seen Evelyn?"

"No, not since that dinner at the Van Cortlandts'."

"Huh! for myself, I should be pleased to see you any time, Mr. Burnett. Mrs. Mavick hasn't felt like seeing anybody lately. But I'll see, I'll see."

The two men rose and shook hands, as men shake hands when they have an understanding.

"I'm glad you are doing well," Mr. Mavick added; "your life is before you, mine is behind me; that makes a heap of difference."

Within a few days Philip received a note from Mrs. Mavick--not an effusive note, not an explanatory note, not an apologetic note, simply a note as if nothing unusual had happened--if Mr. Burnett had leisure, would he drop in at five o'clock in Irving Place for a cup of tea?

Not one minute by his watch after the hour named, Philip rang the bell and was shown into a little parlor at the front. There was only one person in the room, a lady in exquisite toilet, who rose rather languidly to meet him, exactly as if the visitor were accustomed to drop in to tea at that hour.

Philip hesitated a moment near the door, embarrassed by a mortifying recollection of his last interview with Mrs. Mavick, and in that moment he saw her face. Heavens, what a change! And yet it was a smiling face.

There is a portrait of Carmen by a foreign artist, who was years ago the temporary fashion in New York, painted the year after her second marriage and her return from Rome, which excited much comment at the time. Philip had seen it in more than one portrait exhibition.

Its technical excellence was considerable. The artist had evidently intended to represent a woman piquant and fascinating, if not strictly beautiful. Many persons said it was lovely. Other critics said that, whether the artist intended it or not, he had revealed the real character of the subject. There was something sinister in its beauty. One artist, who was out of fashion as an idealist, said, of course privately, that the more he looked at it the more hideous it became to him--like one of Blake's objective portraits of a "soul"--the naked soul of an evil woman showing through the mask of all her feminine fascinations--the possible hell, so he put it, under a woman's charm.

It was this in the portrait that Philip saw in the face smiling a welcome--like an old, sweetly smiling Lalage--from which had passed away youth and the sustaining consciousness of wealth and of a place in the great world. The smile was no longer sweet, though the words from the lips were honeyed.

"It is very good of you to drop in in this way, Mr. Burnett," she said, as she gave him her hand. "It is very quiet down here."

"It is to me the pleasantest part of the city."

"You think so now. I thought so once," and there was a note of sadness in her voice. "But it isn't New York. It is a place for the people who are left."

"But it has associations."

"Yes, I know. We pretend that it is more aristocratic. That means the rents are lower. It is a place for youth to begin and for age to end. We seem to go round in a circle. Mr. Mavick began in the service of the government, now he has entered it again--ah, you did not know?--a place in the Custom-House. He says it is easier to collect other people's revenues than your own. Do you know, Mr. Burnett, I do not see much use in collecting revenues anyway--so far as New York is concerned the people get little good of them. Look out there at that cloud of dust in the street."

Mrs. Mavick rambled on in the whimsical, cynical fashion of old ladies when they cease to have any active responsibility in life and become spectators of it. Their remaining enjoyment is the indulgence of frank speech.

"But I thought," Philip interrupted, "that this part of the town was specially New York."

"New York!" cried Carmen, with animation. "The New York of the newspapers, of the country imagination; the New York as it is known in Paris is in Wall Street and in the palaces up-town. Who are the kings of Wall Street, and who build the palaces up-town? They say that there are no Athenians in Athens, and no Romans in Rome. How many New-Yorkers are there in New York? Do New-Yorkers control the capital, rule the politics, build the palaces, direct the newspapers, furnish the entertainment, manufacture the literature, set the pace in society? Even the socialists and mobocrats are not native. Successive invaders, as in Rome, overrun and occupy the town.

"No, Mr. Burnett, I have left the existing New York. How queer it is to think about it. My first husband was from New Hampshire. My second husband was from Illinois. And there is your Murad Ault. The Lord knows where he came from.

"Talk about the barbarians occupying Rome! Look at that Ault in a palace! Who was that emperor--Caligula?--I am like the young lady from a finishing-school who said she never could remember which came first in history, Greece or Rome--who stabled his horses with stalls and mangers of gold? The Aults stable themselves that way. Ah, me! Let me give you a cup of tea. Even that is English."

"It's an innocent pastime," she continued, as Philip stirred his tea, in perplexity as to how he should begin to say what he had to say--"you won't object if I light a cigarette? One ought to retain at least one bad habit to keep from spiritual pride. Tea is an excuse for this. I don't think it a bad habit, though some people say that civilization is only exchanging one bad habit for another. Everything changes."

"I don't think I have changed, Mrs. Mavick," said Philip, with earnestness.

"No? But you will. I have known lots of people who said they never would change. They all did. No, you need not protest. I believe in you now, or I should not be drinking tea with you. But you must be tired of an old woman's gossip. Evelyn has gone out for a walk; she didn't know. I expect her any minute. Ah, I think that is her ring. I will let her in. There is nothing so hateful as a surprise."

She turned and gave Philip her hand, and perhaps she was sincere--she had a habit of being so when it suited her interests--when she said, "There are no bygones, my friend."

Philip waited, his heart beating a hundred to the minute. He heard greetings and whisperings in the passage-way, and then--time seemed to stand still--the door opened and Evelyn stood on the threshold, radiant from her walk, her face flushed, the dainty little figure poised in timid expectation, in maidenly hesitation, and then she stepped forward to meet his advance, with welcome in her great eyes, and gave him her hand in the old-fashioned frankness.

"I am so glad to see you."

Philip murmured something in reply and they were seated.

That was all. It was so different from the meeting as Philip had a hundred times imagined it.

"It has been very long," said Philip, who was devouring the girl with his eyes very long to me."

"I thought you had been very busy," she replied, demurely. Her composure was very irritating.

"If you thought about it at all, Miss Mavick."

"That is not like you, Mr. Burnett," Evelyn replied, looking up suddenly with troubled eyes.

"I didn't mean that," said Philip, moving uneasily in his chair, "I--so many things have happened. You know a person can be busy and not happy."

"I know that. I was not always happy," said the girl, with the air of making a confession. "But I liked to hear from time to time of the success of my friends," she added, ingenuously. And then, quite inconsequently, "I suppose you have news from Rivervale?"

Yes, Philip heard often from Alice, and he told the news as well as he could, and the talk drifted along--how strange it seemed!--about things in which neither of them felt any interest at the moment. Was there no way to break the barrier that the little brown girl had thrown around herself? Were all women, then, alike in parrying and fencing? The talk went on, friendly enough at last, about a thousand things. It might have been any afternoon call on a dear friend. And at length Philip rose to go.

"I hope I may see you again, soon."

"Of course," said Evelyn, cheerfully. "I am sure father will be delighted to see you. He enjoys so little now."

He had taken both her hands to say good-by, and was looking hungrily into her eyes.

"I can't go so. Evelyn, you know, you must know, I love you."

And before the girl comprehended him he had drawn her to him and pressed his lips upon hers.

The girl started back as if stung, and looked at him with flashing eyes.

"What have you done, what have you done to me?"

Her eyes were clouded, and she put her hands to her face, trembling, and then with a cry, as of a soul born into the world, threw herself upon him, her arms around his neck--

"Philip, Philip, my Philip!"

XXVII

Perhaps Philip's announcement of his good-fortune to Alice and to Celia was not very coherent, but his meaning was plain. Perhaps he was conscious that the tidings would not increase the cheerfulness of Celia's single-handed struggle for the ideal life; at least, he would rather write than tell her face to face.

However he put the matter to her, with what protestations of affectionate friendship and trust he wrapped up the statement that he made as matter of fact as possible, he could not conceal the ecstatic state of his mind.

Nothing like it certainly had happened to anybody in the world before. All the dream of his boyhood, romantic and rose-colored, all the aspirations of his manhood, for recognition, honor, a place in the life of his time, were mere illusions compared to this wonderful crown of life--a woman's love. Where did it come from into this miserable world, this heavenly ray, this pure gift out of the divine beneficence, this spotless flower in a humanity so astray, this sure prophecy of the final redemption of the world? The immeasurable love of a good woman! And to him! Philip felt humble in his exaltation, charitable in his selfish appropriation. He wanted to write to Celia--but he did not--that he loved her more than ever. But to Alice he could pour out his wealth of affection, quickened to all the world by this great love, for he knew that her happiness would be in his happiness.

The response from Alice was what he expected, tender, sweet, domestic, and it was full of praise of Evelyn, of love for her. "Perhaps, dear Phil," she wrote, "I shall love her more than I do you. I almost think --did I not remember what a bad boy you could be sometimes--that each one of you is too good for the other. But, Phil, if you should ever come to think that she is not too good for you, you will not be good enough for her. I can't think she is perfect, any more than you are perfect--you will find that she is just a woman--but there is nothing in all life so precious as such a heart as hers. You will come here, of course, and at once, whenever it is. You know that big, square, old-fashioned corner chamber, with the high-poster. That is yours. Evelyn never saw it. The morning and the evening sun shoot across it, and the front windows look on the great green crown of Mount Peak. You know it. There is not such a place in the world to hear the low and peaceful murmur of the river, all night long, rushing, tumbling, crooning, I used to think when I was a little girl and dreamed of things unseen, and still going on when the birds begin to sing in the dawn. And with Evelyn! Dear Phil!"

It was in another strain, but not less full of real affection, that Celia wrote:

"I am not going to congratulate you. You are long past the need of that. But you know that I am happy in having you happy. You thought I never saw anything? I wonder if men are as blind as they seem to be? And I had fears. Do you know a man ought to build his own monument. If he goes into a monument built for him, that is the end of him. Now you can work, and you will. I am so glad she isn't an heiress any more. I guess there was a curse on that fortune. But she has eluded it. I believe all you tell me about her. Perhaps there are more such women in the world than you think. Some day I shall know her, and soon. I do long to see her. Love her I feel sure I shall.

"You ask about myself. I am the same, but things change. When I get my medical diploma I shall decide what to do. My little property just suffices, with economy, and I enjoy economy. I doubt if I do any general practice for pay. There are so many young doctors that need the money for practice more than I do. And perhaps taking it up as a living would make me sort of hard and perfunctory. And there is so much to do in this great New York among the unfortunate that a woman who knows medicine can do better than any one else.

"Ah, me, I am happy in a way, or I expect to be. Everybody--it isn't because I am a woman I say this--needs something to lean on now and then. There isn't much to lean on in the college, nor in many of my zealous and ambitious companions there. There is more faith in the poor people down in the wards where I go. They are kind to each other, and most of them, not all, believe in something. They, have that, at any rate, in all their trials and poverty. Philip, don't despise the invisible. I have got into the habit of going into a Catholic church down there, when I am tired and discouraged, and getting the peace of it. It is a sort of open door! You need not jump to the conclusion that I am 'going over.' Maybe I am going back. I don't know. I have always you know, been looking for something.

"I like to sit there in that dim quiet and think of things I can't think of elsewhere. Do you think I am queer? Philip, all women are queer. They haven't yet been explained. That is the reason why the novelists find it next to impossible, with all the materials at hand, to make a good woman--that is a woman. Do you know what it is to want what you don't want? Longing is one thing and reason another.

"Perhaps I have depended too much on my reason. If you long to go to a place where you will have peace, why should you let what you call your reason stand in the way? Perhaps your reason is foolishness. You will laugh a little at this, and say that I am tired. No. Only I am not so sure of things as I used to be. Do you remember when we children used to sit under that tree by the Deerfield, how confident I was that I understood all about life, and my airs of superiority?

"Well, I don't know as much now. But there is one thing that has survived and grown with the years, and that, Philip, is your dear friendship."

What was it in this unassuming, but no doubt sufficiently conceited and ambitious, young fellow that he should have the affection, the love, of three such women?

Is affection as whimsically, as blindly distributed as wealth? It is the experience of life that it is rare to keep either to the end, but as a man is judged not so much by his ability to make money as to keep it, so it is fair to estimate his qualities by his power to retain friendship. New York is full of failures, bankrupts in fortune and bankrupts in affection, but this melancholy aspect of the town is on the surface, and is not to be considered in comparison with the great body of moderately contented, moderately successful, and on the whole happy households. In this it is a microcosm of the world.

To Evelyn and Philip, judging the world a good deal by each other, in those months before their marriage, when surprising perfection and new tenderness were daily developed, the gay and busy city seemed a sort of paradise.

Mysterious things were going on in the weeks immediately preceding the wedding. There was a conspiracy between Miss McDonald and Philip in the furnishing and setting in order a tiny apartment on the Heights, overlooking the city, the lordly Hudson, and its romantic hills. And when, after the ceremony, on a radiant afternoon in early June, the wedded lovers went to their new home, it was the housekeeper, the old governess, who opened the door and took into her arms the child she had loved and lost awhile.

This fragment of history leaves Philip Burnett on the threshold of his career. Those who know him only by his books may have been interested in his experiences, in the merciful interposition of disaster, before he came into the great fortune of the love of Evelyn Mavick.

THEIR PILGRIMAGE

By Charles Dudley Warner

I

FORTRESS MONROE

When Irene looked out of her stateroom window early in the morning of the twentieth of March, there was a softness and luminous quality in the horizon clouds that prophesied spring. The steamboat, which had left Baltimore and an arctic temperature the night before, was drawing near the wharf at Fortress Monroe, and the passengers, most of whom were seeking a mild climate, were crowding the guards, eagerly scanning the long facade of the Hygeia Hotel.

"It looks more like a conservatory than a hotel," said Irene to her father, as she joined him.

"I expect that's about what it is. All those long corridors above and below enclosed in glass are to protect the hothouse plants of New York and Boston, who call it a Winter Resort, and I guess there's considerable winter in it."

"But how charming it is--the soft sea air, the low capes yonder, the sails in the opening shining in the haze, and the peaceful old fort! I think it's just enchanting."

"I suppose it is. Get a thousand people crowded into one hotel under glass, and let 'em buzz around--that seems to be the present notion of enjoyment. I guess your mother'll like it."

And she did. Mrs. Benson, who appeared at the moment, a little flurried with her hasty toilet, a stout, matronly person, rather overdressed for traveling, exclaimed: "What a homelike looking place! I do hope the Stimpsons are here!"

"No doubt the Stimpsons are on hand," said Mr. Benson. "Catch them not knowing what's the right thing to do in March! They know just as well as you do that the Reynoldses and the Van Peagrims are here."

The crowd of passengers, alert to register and secure rooms, hurried up the windy wharf. The interior of the hotel kept the promise of the outside for comfort. Behind the glass-defended verandas, in the spacious office and general lounging-room, sea-coal fires glowed in the wide grates, tables were heaped with newspapers and the illustrated pamphlets in which railways and hotels set forth the advantages of leaving home; luxurious chairs invited the lazy and the tired, and the hotel-bureau, telegraph-office, railway-office, and post-office showed the new-comer that even in this resort he was still in the centre of activity and uneasiness. The Bensons, who had fortunately secured rooms a month in advance, sat quietly waiting while the crowd filed before the register, and took its fate from the courteous autocrat behind the counter. "No room," was the nearly uniform answer, and the travelers had the satisfaction of writing their names and going their way in search of entertainment. "We've eight hundred people stowed away," said the clerk, "and not a spot left for a hen to roost."

At the end of the file Irene noticed a gentleman, clad in a perfectly-fitting rough traveling suit, with the inevitable crocodile hand-bag and tightly-rolled umbrella, who made no effort to enroll ahead of any one else, but having procured some letters from the post-office clerk, patiently waited till the rest were turned away, and then put down his name. He might as well have written it in his hat. The deliberation of the man, who appeared to be an old traveler, though probably not more than thirty years of age, attracted Irene's attention, and she could not help hearing the dialogue that followed.

"What can you do for me?"

"Nothing," said the clerk.

"Can't you stow me away anywhere? It is Saturday, and very inconvenient for me to go any farther."

"Cannot help that. We haven't an inch of room."

"Well, where can I go?"

"You can go to Baltimore. You can go to Washington; or you can go to Richmond this afternoon. You can go anywhere."

"Couldn't I," said the stranger, with the same deliberation--"wouldn't you let me go to Charleston?"

"Why," said the clerk, a little surprised, but disposed to accommodate --"why, yes, you can go to Charleston. If you take at once the boat you have just left, I guess you can catch the train at Norfolk."

As the traveler turned and called a porter to reship his baggage, he was met by a lady, who greeted him with the cordiality of an old acquaintance and a volley of questions.

"Why, Mr. King, this is good luck. When did you come? have you a good room? What, no, not going?"

Mr. King explained that he had been a resident of Hampton Roads just fifteen minutes, and that, having had a pretty good view of the place, he was then making his way out of the door to Charleston, without any breakfast, because there was no room in the inn.

"Oh, that never'll do. That cannot be permitted," said his engaging friend, with an air of determination. "Besides, I want you to go with us on an excursion today up the James and help me chaperon a lot of young ladies. No, you cannot go away."

And before Mr. Stanhope King--for that was the name the traveler had inscribed on the register--knew exactly what had happened, by some mysterious power which women can exercise even in a hotel, when they choose, he found himself in possession of a room, and was gayly breakfasting with a merry party at a little round table in the dining-room.

"He appears to know everybody," was Mrs. Benson's comment to Irene, as she observed his greeting of one and another as the guests tardily came down to breakfast. "Anyway, he's a genteel-looking party. I wonder if he belongs to Sotor, King and Co., of New York?"

"Oh, mother," began Irene, with a quick glance at the people at the next table; and then, "if he is a genteel party, very likely he's a drummer. The drummers know everybody."

And Irene confined her attention strictly to her breakfast, and never looked up, although Mrs. Benson kept prattling away about the young man's appearance, wondering if his eyes were dark blue or only dark gray, and why he didn't part his hair exactly in the middle and done with it, and a full, close beard was becoming, and he had a good, frank face anyway, and why didn't the Stimpsons come down; and, "Oh, there's the Van Peagrims," and Mrs. Benson bowed sweetly and repeatedly to somebody across the room.