That Fortune by Charles Dudley Warner (page 4)

“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.

Mrs. Mavick, on the contrary, had not so good reason to be satisfied with herself. It was a principle of her well-ordered life never to get into a passion, never to let herself go, never to reveal herself by intemperate speech, never to any one, except occasionally to her husband when his cold sarcasm became intolerable. She felt, as soon as the door closed on Philip, that she had made a blunder, and yet in her irritation she committed a worse one. She went at once to Evelyn’s room, resolved to make it perfectly sure that the Philip episode was ended. She had had suspicions about her daughter ever since the Van Cortlandt dinner. She would find out if they were justified, and she would act decidedly before any further mischief was done. Evelyn was alone, and her mother kissed her fondly several times and then threw herself into an easy-chair and declared she was tired.

“My dear, I have had such an unpleasant interview.”

“I am sorry,” said Evelyn, seating herself on the arm of the chair and putting her arm round her mother’s neck. “With whom, mamma?”

“Oh, with that Mr. Burnett.” Mrs. Mavick felt a nervous start in the arm that caressed her.

“Here?”

“Yes, he came to see your father, I fancy, about some business. I think he is not getting on very well.”

“Why, his book–“

“I know, but that amounts to nothing. There is not much chance for a lawyer’s clerk who gets bitten with the idea that he can write.”

“If he was in trouble, mamma,” said Evelyn, softly, “then you were good to him.”

“I tried to be,” Mrs. Mavick half sighed, “but you can’t do anything with such people” (by ‘such people’ Mrs. Mavick meant those who have no money) “when they don’t get on. They are never reasonable. And he was in such an awful bad temper. You cannot show any kindness to such people without exposing yourself. I think he presumes upon his acquaintance with your father. It was most disagreeable, and he was so rude” (a little thrill in the arm again)–“well, not exactly rude, but he was not a bit nice to me, and I am afraid I showed by my looks that I was irritated. He was just as disagreeable as he could be.

“He met Lord Montague on the steps, and he had something spiteful to say about him. I had to tell him he was presuming a good deal on his acquaintance, and that I considered his manner insulting. He flung out of the house very high and mighty.”

“That was not a bit like him, mamma.”

“We didn’t know him. That is all. Now we do, and I am thankful we do. He will never come here again.”

Evelyn was very still for a moment, and then she said: “I’m very sorry for it all. It must be some misunderstanding.”

“Of course, it is dreadful to be so disappointed in people. But we have to learn. I don’t know anything about his misunderstanding, but I did not misunderstand what he said. At any rate, after such an exposition we can have no further intercourse with him. You will not care to see any one who treated your mother in this way? If you love me, you cannot be friendly with him. I know you would not like to be.”

Evelyn did not reply for a moment. Her silence revealed the fact to the shrewd woman that she had not intervened a day too soon.

“You promise me, dear, that you will put the whole thing out of your mind?” and she drew her daughter closer to her and kissed her.

And then Evelyn said slowly: “I shall not have any friends whom you do not approve, but, mamma, I cannot be unjust in my mind.”

And Mrs. Mavick had the good sense not to press the question further. She still regarded Evelyn as a child. Her naivete, her simplicity, her ignorance of social conventions and of the worldly wisdom which to Mrs. Mavick was the sum of all knowledge misled her mother as to her power of discernment and her strength of character. Indeed, Mrs. Mavick had only the slightest conception of that range of thought and feeling in which the girl habitually lived, and of the training which at the age of eighteen had given her discipline, and great maturity of judgment as well. She would be obedient, but she was incapable of duplicity, and therefore she had said as plainly as possible that whatever the trouble might be she would not be unjust to Philip.

The interview with her mother left her in a very distressed state of mind. It is a horrible disillusion when a girl begins to suspect that her mother is not sincere, and that her ideals of life are mean. This knowledge may exist with the deepest affection–indeed, in a noble mind, with an inward tenderness and an almost divine pity. How many times have we seen a daughter loyal to a frivolous, worldly-minded, insincere mother, shielding her and exhibiting to the censorious world the utmost love and trust!

Evelyn was far from suspecting the extent of her mother’s duplicity, but her heart told her that an attempt had been made to mislead her, and that there must be some explanation of Philip’s conduct that would be consistent with her knowledge of his character. And, as she endeavored to pierce this mystery, it dawned upon her that there had been a method in throwing her so much into the society of Lord Montague, and that it was unnatural that such a friend as Philip should be seen so seldom–only twice since the days in Rivervale. Naturally the very reverse of suspicious, she had been dreaming on things to come in the seclusion of her awakening womanhood, without the least notion that the freedom of her own soul was to be interfered with by any merely worldly demands. But now things that had occurred, and that her mother had said, came back to her with a new meaning, and her trustful spirit was overwhelmed. And there, in the silence of her chamber, began the fierce struggle between desire and what she called her duty–a duty imposed from without.

She began to perceive that she was not free, that she was a part of a social machine, the power of which she had not at all apprehended, and that she was powerless in its clutch. She might resist, but peace was gone. She had heretofore found peace in obedience, but when she consulted her own heart she knew that she could not find peace in obedience now. To a girl differently reared, perhaps, subterfuge, or some manoeuvring justified by the situation, might have been resorted to. But such a thing never occurred to Evelyn. Everything looked dark before her, as she more clearly understood her mother’s attitude, and for the first time in years she could do nothing but give way to emotions.

“Why, Evelyn, you have been crying!” exclaimed the governess, who came to seek her. “What is the matter?”

Evelyn arose and threw herself on her friend’s neck for a moment, and then, brushing away the tears, said, with an attempt to smile, “Oh, nothing; I got thinking, thinking, thinking, and Don’t you ever get blue, McDonald?”

“Not often,” said the Scotchwoman, gravely. “But, dear, you have nothing in the world to make you so.”

“No, no, nothing;” and then she broke down again, and threw herself upon McDonald’s bosom in a passion of sobbing. “I can’t help it. Mamma says Phil–Mr. Burnett–is never to come to this house again. What have I done? And he will think–he will think that I hate him.”

McDonald drew the girl into her lap, and with uncommon gentleness comforted her with caresses.

“Dear child,” she said, “crosses must come into our lives; we cannot help that. Your mother is no doubt doing what she thinks best for your own happiness. Nothing can really hurt us for long, you know that well, except what we do to ourselves. I never told you why I came to this country–I didn’t want to sadden you with my troubles–but now I want you to understand me better. It is a long story.”

But it was not very long in the telling, for the narrator found that what seemed to her so long in the suffering could be conveyed to another in only a few words. And the story was not in any of its features new, except to the auditor. There had been a long attachment, passionate love and perfect trust, long engagement, marriage postponed because both were poor, and the lover struggling into his profession, and then, it seemed sudden and unaccountable, his marriage with some one else. “It was not like him,” said the governess in conclusion; “it was his ambition to get on that blinded him.”

“And he, was he happy?” asked Evelyn.

“I heard that he was not” (and she spoke reluctantly); “I fear not. How could he be?” And the governess seemed overwhelmed in a flood of tender and painful memories. “That was over twenty years ago. And I have been happy, my darling, I have had such a happy life with you.

“I never dreamed I could have such a blessing. And you, child, will be happy too; I know it.”

And the two women, locked in each other’s arms, found that consolation in sympathy which steals away half the grief of the world. Ah! who knows a woman’s heart?

For Philip there was in these days no such consolation. It was a man’s way not to seek any, to roll himself up in his trouble like a hibernating bear. And yet there were times when he had an intolerable longing for a confidant, for some one to whom he could relieve himself of part of his burden by talking. To Celia he could say nothing. Instinct told him that he should not go to her. Of the sympathy of Alice he was sure, but why inflict his selfish grief on her tender heart? But he was writing to her often, he was talking to her freely about his perplexities, about leaving the office and trusting himself to the pursuit of literature in some way. And, in answer to direct questions, he told her that he had seen Evelyn only a few times, and, the fact was, that Mrs. Mavick had cut him dead. He could not give to his correspondent a very humorous turn to this situation, for Alice knew–had she not seen them often together, and did she not know the depths of Philip’s passion? And she read between the lines the real state of the case. Alice was indignant, but she did not think it wise to make too much of the incident. Of Evelyn she wrote affectionately–she knew she was a noble and high-minded girl. As to her mother, she dismissed her with a country estimate. “You know, Phil, that I never thought she was a lady.”

But the lover was not to be wholly without comfort. He met by chance one day on the Avenue Miss McDonald, and her greeting was so cordial that he knew that he had at least one friend in the house of Mavick.

It was a warm spring day, a stray day sent in advance, as it were, to warn the nomads of the city that it was time to move on. The tramps in Washington Square felt the genial impulse, and, seeking the shaded benches, began to dream of the open country, the hospitable farmhouses, the nooning by wayside springs, and the charm of wandering at will among a tolerant and not too watchful people. Having the same abundant leisure, the dwellers up-town–also nomads–were casting in their minds how best to employ it, and the fortunate ones were already gathering together their flocks and herds and preparing to move on to their camps at Newport or among the feeding-hills of the New-England coast.

The foliage of Central Park, already heavy, still preserved the freshness of its new birth, and invited the stroller on the Avenue to its protecting shade. At Miss McDonald’s suggestion they turned in and found a secluded seat.

“I often come here,” she said to Philip; “it is almost as peaceful as the wilderness itself.”

To Philip also it seemed peaceful, but the soothing influence he found in it was that he was sitting with the woman who saw Evelyn hourly, who had been with her only an hour ago.

“Yes,” she said, in reply to a question, “everybody is well. We are going to leave town earlier than usual this summer, as soon as Mr. Mavick returns. Mrs. Mavick is going to open her Newport house; she says she has had enough of the country. It is still very amusing to me to see how you Americans move about with the seasons, just like the barbarians of Turkestan, half the year in summer camps and half the year in winter camps.”

“Perhaps,” said Philip, “it is because the social pasturage gets poor.”

“Maybe,” replied the governess, continuing the conceit, “only the horde keeps pretty well together, wherever it is. I know we are to have a very gay season. Lots of distinguished foreigners and all that.”

“But,” said Philip, “don’t England and the Continent long for the presence of Americans in the season in the same way?”

“Not exactly. It is the shop-keepers and hotels that sigh for the Americans. I don’t think that American shop-keepers expect much of foreigners.”

“And you are going soon? I suppose Miss Mavick is eager to go also,” said Philip, trying to speak indifferently.

Miss McDonald turned towards him with a look of perfect understanding, and then replied, “No, not eager; she hasn’t been in her usual spirits lately–no, not ill–and probably the change will be good for her. It is her first season, you know, and that is always exciting to a girl. Perhaps it is only the spring weather.”

It was some moments before either of them spoke again, and then Miss McDonald looked up–“Oh, Mr. Burnett, I have wanted to see you and have a talk with you about your novel. I could say so little in my note. We read it first together and then I read it alone, rather to sit in judgment on it, you know. I liked it better the second time, but I could see the faults of construction, and I could see, too, why it will be more popular with a few people than with the general public. You don’t mind my saying–“

“Go on, the words of a friend.”

“Yes, I know, are sometimes hardest to bear. Well, it is lovely, ideal, but it seems to me you are still a little too afraid of human nature. You are afraid to say things that are common. And the deep things of life are pretty much all common. No, don’t interrupt me. I love the story just as it is. I am glad you wrote it as you did. It was natural, in your state of experience, that you should do it. But in your next, having got rid of what was on top of your mind, so to speak, you will take a firmer, more confident hold of life. You are not offended?”

“No, indeed,” cried Philip. “I am very grateful. No doubt you are right. It seems to me, now that I am detached from it, as if it were only a sort of prelude to something else.”

“Well, you must not let my single opinion influence you too much, for I must in honesty tell you another thing. Evelyn will not have a word of criticism of it. She says it is like a piece of music, and the impudent thing declares that she does not expect a Scotchwoman to understand anything but ballad music.”

Philip laughed at this, such a laugh as he had not indulged in for many days. “I hope you don’t quarrel about such a little thing.”

“Not seriously. She says I may pick away at the story–and I like to see her bristle up–but that she looks at the spirit.”

“God bless her,” said Philip under his breath.

Miss McDonald rose, and they walked out into the Avenue again. How delightful was the genial air, the light, the blue sky of spring! How the brilliant Avenue, now filling up with afternoon equipages, sparkled in the sunshine!

When they parted, Miss McDonald gave him her hand and held his a moment, looking into his eyes. “Mr. Burnett, authors need some encouragement. When I left Evelyn she was going to her room with your book in her hand.”

XIX

Why should not Philip trust the future? He was a free man. He had given no hostages to fortune. Even if he did not succeed, no one else would be involved in his failure. Why not follow his inclination, the dream of his boyhood?

He was at liberty to choose for himself. Everybody in America is; this is the proclamation of its blessed independence. Are we any better off for the privilege of following first one inclination and then another, which is called making a choice? Are they not as well off, and on the whole as likely to find their right place, who inherit their callings in life, whose careers are mapped out from the cradle by circumstance and convention? How much time do we waste in futile experiment? Freedom to try everything, which is before the young man, is commonly freedom to excel in nothing.

There are, of course, exceptions. The blacksmith climbs into a city pulpit. The popular preacher becomes an excellent insurance agent. The saloon-keeper develops into the legislator, and wears the broadcloth and high hat of the politician. The brakeman becomes the railway magnate, and the college graduate a grocer’s clerk, and the messenger-boy, picking up by chance one day the pen, and finding it run easier than his legs, becomes a power on a city journal, and advises society how to conduct itself and the government how to make war and peace. All this adds to the excitement and interest of life. On the whole, we say that people get shaken into their right places, and the predetermined vocation is often a mistake. There is the anecdote of a well-known clergyman who, being in a company with his father, an aged and distinguished doctor of divinity, raised his monitory finger and exclaimed, “Ah, you spoiled a first-rate carpenter when you made a poor minister of me.”

Philip thought he was calmly arguing the matter with himself. How often do we deliberately weigh such a choice as we would that of another person, testing our inclination by solid reason? Perhaps no one could have told Philip what he ought to do, but every one who knew him, and the circumstances, knew what he would do. He was, in fact, already doing it while he was paltering with his ostensible profession. But he never would have confessed, probably he would then have been ashamed to confess, how much his decision to break with the pretense of law was influenced by the thought of what a certain dark little maiden, whose image was always in his mind, would wish him to do, and by the very remarkable fact that she was seen going to her room with his well-read story in her hand. Perhaps it was under her pillow at night!

Good-luck seemed to follow his decision–as it often does when a man makes a questionable choice, as if the devil had taken an interest in his downward road to prosperity. But Philip really gained a permanent advantage. The novel had given him a limited reputation and very little money. Yet it was his stepping-stone, and when he applied to his publishers and told them of his decision, they gave him some work as a reader for the house. At first this was fitful and intermittent, but as he showed both literary discrimination and tact in judging of the market, his services were more in request, and slowly he acquired confidential relations with the house. Whatever he knew, his knowledge of languages and his experience abroad, came into play, and he began to have more confidence in himself, as he saw that his somewhat desultory education had, after all, a market value.

The rather long period of his struggle, which is a common struggle, and often disheartening, need not be dwelt on here. We can anticipate by saying that he obtained in the house a permanent and responsible situation, with an income sufficient for a bachelor without habits of self-indulgence. It was not the crowning of a noble ambition, it was not in the least the career he had dreamed of, but it gave him support and a recognized position, and, above all, did not divert him from such creative work as he was competent to do. Nay, he found very soon that the feeling of security, without any sordid worry, gave freedom to his imagination. There was something stimulating in the atmosphere of books and manuscripts and in that world of letters which seems so large to those who live in it. Fortunately, also, having a support, he was not tempted to debase his talent by sensational ventures. What he wrote for this or that magazine he wrote to please himself, and, although he saw no fortune that way, the little he received was an encouragement as well as an appreciable addition to his income.

There are two sorts of success in letters as in life generally. The one is achieved suddenly, by a dash, and it lasts as long as the author can keep the attention of the spectators upon his scintillating novelties. When the sparks fade there is darkness. How many such glittering spectacles this century has witnessed!

There is another sort of success which does not startlingly or at once declare itself. Sometimes it comes with little observation. The reputation is slowly built up, as by a patient process of nature. It is curious, as Philip wrote once in an essay, to see this unfolding in Lowell’s life. There was no one moment when he launched into great popularity–nay, in detail, he seemed to himself not to have made the strike that ambition is always expecting. But lo! the time came when, by universal public consent, which was in the nature of a surprise to him, he had a high and permanent place in the world of letters.

In anticipating Philip’s career, however, it must not be understood that he had attained any wide public recognition. He was simply enrolled in the great army of readers and was serving his apprenticeship. He was recognized as a capable man by those who purvey in letters to the entertainment of the world. Even this little foothold was not easily gained in a day, as the historian discovered in reading some bundles of old letters which Philip wrote in this time of his novitiate to Celia and to his cousin Alice.

It was against Celia’s most strenuous advice that he had trusted himself to a literary career. “I see, my dear friend,” she wrote, in reply to his announcement that he was going that day to Mr. Hunt to resign his position, “that you are not happy, but whatever your disappointment or disillusion, you will not better yourself by surrendering a regular occupation. You live too much in the imagination already.”

Philip fancied, with that fatuity common to his sex, that he had worn an impenetrable mask in regard to his wild passion for Evelyn, and did not dream that, all along, Celia had read him like an open book. She judged Philip quite accurately. It was herself that she did not know, and she would have repelled as nonsense the suggestion that her own restlessness and her own changing experiments in occupation were due to the unsatisfied longings of a woman’s heart.

“You must not think,” the letter went on, “that I want to dictate, but I have noticed that men–it may be different with women–only succeed by taking one path and diligently walking in it. And literature is not a career, it is just a toss up, a lottery, and woe to you if you once draw a lucky number–you will always be expecting another . . . You say that I am a pretty one to give advice, for I am always chopping and changing myself. Well, from the time you were a little boy, did I ever give you but one sort of advice? I have been constant in that. And as to myself, you are unjust. I have always had one distinct object in life, and that I have pursued. I wanted to find out about life, to have experience, and then do what I could do best, and what needed most to be done. Why did I not stick to teaching in that woman’s college? Well, I began to have doubts, I began to experiment on my pupils. You will laugh, but I will give you a specimen. One day I put a question to my literature class, and I found out that not one of them knew how to boil potatoes. They were all getting an education, and hardly one of them knew how much the happiness of a home depends upon having the potatoes mealy and not soggy. It was so in everything. How are we going to live when we are all educated, without knowing how to live? Then I found that the masses here in New York did not know any better than the classes how to live. Don’t think it is just a matter of cooking. It is knowing how, generally, to make the most of yourself and of your opportunities, and have a nice world to live in, a thrifty, self-helpful, disciplined world. Is education giving us this? And then we think that organization will do it, organization instead of self-development. We think we can organize life, as they are trying to organize art. They have organized art as they have the production of cotton.

“Did I tell you I was in that? No? I used to draw in school, and after I had worked in the Settlement here in New York, and while I was working down on the East Side, it came over me that maybe I had one talent wrapped in a napkin; and I have been taking lessons in Fifty-seventh Street with the thousand or two young women who do not know how to boil potatoes, but are pursuing the higher life of art. I did not tell you this because I knew you would say that I am just as inconsistent as you are. But I am not. I have demonstrated the fact that neither I nor one in a hundred of those charming devotees to art could ever earn a living by art, or do anything except to add to the mediocrity of the amazing art product of this free country.

“And you will ask, what now? I am going on in the same way. I am going to be a doctor. In college I was very well up in physiology and anatomy, and I went quite a way in biology. So you see I have a good start. I am going to attend lectures and go into a hospital, as soon as there is an opening, and then I mean to practice. One essential for a young doctor I have in advance. That is patients. I can get all I want on the East Side, and I have already studied many of them. Law and medicine are what I call real professions.”

However Celia might undervalue the calling that Philip had now entered on, he had about this time evidence of the growing appreciation of literature by practical business men. He was surprised one day by a brief note from Murad Ault, asking him to call at his office as soon as convenient.

Mr. Ault received him in his private office at exactly the hour named. Evidently Mr. Ault’s affairs were prospering. His establishment presented every appearance of a high-pressure business perfectly organized. The outer rooms were full of industrious clerks, messengers were constantly entering and departing in a feverish rapidity, servants moved silently about, conducting visitors to this or that waiting-room and answering questions, excited speculators in groups were gesticulating and vociferating, and in the anteroom were impatient clients awaiting their turn. In the inner chamber, however, was perfect calm. There at his table sat the dark, impenetrable operator, whose time was exactly apportioned, serene, saturnine, or genial, as the case might be, listening attentively, speaking deliberately, despatching the affair in hand without haste or the waste of a moment.

Mr. Ault arose and shook hands cordially, and then went on, without delay for any conventional talk.

“I sent for you, Mr. Burnett, because I wanted your help, and because I thought I might do you a good turn. You see” (with a grim smile) “I have not forgotten Rivervale days. My wife has been reading your story. I don’t have much time for such things myself, but her constant talk about it has given me an idea. I want to suggest to you the scene of a novel, one that would be bound to be a good seller.

“I could guarantee a big circulation. I have just become interested in one of the great transcontinental lines.” He named the most picturesque of them–one that he, in fact, absolutely controlled. “Well, I want a story, yes, I guess a good love-story–a romance of reality you might call it–strung on that line. You take the idea?”

“Why,” said Philip, half amused at the conceit and yet complimented by the recognition of his talent, “I don’t know anything about railroads –how they are run, cost of building, prospect of traffic, engineering difficulties, all that–nothing whatever.”

“So much the better. It is a literary work I want, not a brag about the road or a description of its enterprise. You just take the line as your scene. Let the story run on that. The company, don’t you see, must not in any way be suspected with having anything to do with it, no mention of its name as a company, no advertisement of the road on a fly-leaf or cover. Just your own story, pure and simple.”

“But,” said Philip, more and more astonished at this unlooked-for expansion of the literary field, “I could not embark on an enterprise of such magnitude.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Ault, complacently, “that will be all arranged. Just a pleasure trip, as far as that goes. You will have a private car, well stocked, a photographer will go along, and I think–don’t you? a water- color artist. You can take your own time, stop when and where you choose–at the more stations the better. It ought to be profusely illustrated with scenes on the line–yes, have colored plates, all that would give life and character to your story. Love on a Special, some such title as that. It would run like oil. I will arrange to have it as a serial in one of the big magazines, and then the book would be bound to go. The company, of course, can have nothing to do with it, but I can tell you privately that it would rather distribute a hundred thousand copies of a book of good literature through the country than to encourage the railway truck that is going now.

“I shouldn’t wonder, Mr. Burnett, if the public would be interested in having the Puritan Nun take that kind of a trip.” And Mr. Ault ended his explanation with an interrogatory smile.

Philip hesitated a moment, trying to grasp the conception of this business use of literature. Mr. Ault resumed:

“It isn’t anything in the nature of an advertisement. Literature is a power. Why, do you know–of course you did not intend it–your story has encouraged the Peacock Inn to double its accommodations, and half the farmhouses in Rivervale are expecting summer boarders. The landlord of the Peacock came to see me the other day, and he says everything is stirred up there, and he has already to enlarge or refuse application.”

“It is very kind in you, Mr. Ault, to think of me in that connection, but I fear you have over-estimated my capacity. I could name half a dozen men who could do it much better than I could. They know how to do it, they have that kind of touch. I have been surprised at the literary ability engaged by the great corporations.”

Mr. Ault made a gesture of impatience. “I wouldn’t give a damn for that sort of thing. It is money thrown away. If I should get one of the popular writers you refer to, the public would know he was hired. If you lay your story out there, nobody will suspect anything of the sort. It will be a clean literary novel. Not travel, you understand, but a story, and the more love in it the better. It will be a novelty. You can run your car sixty miles an hour in exciting passages, everything will work into it. When people travel on the road the pictures will show them the scenes of the story. It is a big thing,” said Mr. Ault in conclusion.

“I see it is,” said Philip, rising at the hint that his time had expired. “I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Ault, for your confidence in me. But it is a new idea. I will have to think it over.”

“Well, think it over. There is money in it. You would not start till about midsummer. Good-day.”

A private car! Travel like a prince! Certainly literature was looking up in the commercial world. Philip walked back to his publishers with a certain elasticity of step, a new sense of power. Yes, the power of the pen. And why not? No doubt it would bring him money and spread his name very widely. There was nothing that a friendly corporation could not do for a favorite. He would then really be a part of the great, active, enterprising world. Was there anything illegitimate in taking advantage of such an opportunity? Surely, he should remain his own master, and write nothing except what his own conscience approved. But would he not feel, even if no one else knew it, that he was the poet-laureate of a corporation?

And suddenly, as he thought how the clear vision of Evelyn would plunge to the bottom of such a temptation, he felt humiliated that such a proposition should have been made to him. Was there nothing, nobody, that commercialism did not think for sale and to be trafficked in?

Nevertheless, he wrote to Alice about it, describing the proposal as it was made to him, without making any comment on it.

Alice replied speedily. “Isn’t it funny,” she wrote, “and isn’t it preposterous? I wonder what such people think? And that horrid young pirate, Ault, a patron of literature! My dear, I cannot conceive of you as the Pirate’s Own. Dear Phil, I want you to succeed. I do want you to make money, a lot of it. I like to think you are wanted and appreciated, and that you can get paid better and better for what you do. Sell your manuscripts for as good a price as you can get. Yes, dear, sell your manuscripts, but don’t sell your soul.”

XX

Did Miss McDonald tell Evelyn of her meeting with Philip in Central Park? The Scotch loyalty to her service would throw a doubt upon this. At the same time, the Scotch affection, the Scotch sympathy with a true and romantic passion, and, above all, the Scotch shrewdness, could be trusted to do what was best under the circumstances. That she gave the least hint of what she said to Mr. Burnett concerning Evelyn is not to be supposed for a moment. Certainly she did not tell Mrs. Mavick. Was she a person to run about with idle gossip? But it is certain that Evelyn knew that Philip had given up his situation in the office, that he had become a reader for a publishing house, that he had definitely decided to take up a literary career. And somehow it came into her mind that Philip knew that this decision would be pleasing to her.

According to the analogy of other things in nature, it would seem that love must have something to feed on to sustain it. But it is remarkable upon how little it can exist, can even thrive and become strong, and develop a power of resistance to hostile influences. Once it gets a lodgment in a woman’s heart, it is an exclusive force that transforms her into a heroine of courage and endurance. No arguments, no reason, no considerations of family, of position, of worldly fortune, no prospect of immortal life, nothing but doubt of faith in the object can dislodge it. The woman may yield to overwhelming circumstances, she may even by her own consent be false to herself, but the love lives, however hidden and smothered, so long as the vital force is capable of responding to a true emotion. Perhaps nothing in human life is so pathetic as this survival in old age of a youthful, unsatisfied love. It may cease to be a passion, it may cease to be a misery, it may have become only a placid sentiment, yet the heart must be quite cold before this sentiment can cease to stir it on occasion–for the faded flower is still in the memory the bloom of young love.

They say that in the New Education for women love is not taken into account in the regular course; it is an elective study. But the immortal principle of life does not care much for organization, and says, as of old, they reckon ill who leave me out.

In the early season at Newport there was little to distract the attention and much to calm the spirit. Mrs. Mavick was busy in her preparation for the coming campaign, and Evelyn and her governess were left much alone, to drive along the softly lapping sea, to search among the dells of the rocky promontory for wild flowers, or to sit on the cliffs in front of the gardens of bloom and watch the idle play of the waves, that chased each other to the foaming beach and in good-nature tossed about the cat- boats and schooners and set the white sails shimmering and dipping in the changing lights. And Evelyn, drinking in the beauty and the peace of it, no doubt, was more pensive than joyous. Within the last few months life had opened to her with a suddenness that half frightened her.

It was a woman who sat on the cliffs now, watching the ocean of life, no longer a girl into whose fresh soul the sea and the waves and the air, and the whole beauty of the world, were simply responsive to her own gayety and enjoyment of living. It was not the charming scene that held her thought, but the city with its human struggle, and in that struggle one figure was conspicuous. In such moments this one figure of youth outweighed for her all that the world held besides. It was strange. Would she have admitted this? Not in the least, not even to herself, in her virgin musings; nevertheless, the world was changed for her, it was more serious, more doubtful, richer, and more to be feared.

It was not too much to say that one season had much transformed her. She had been so ignorant of the world a year ago. She had taken for granted all that was abstractly right. Now she saw that the conventions of life were like sand-dunes and barriers in the path she was expected to walk. She had learned for one thing what money was. Wealth had been such an accepted part of her life, since she could remember, that she had attached no importance to it, and had only just come to see what distinctions it made, and how it built a barrier round about her. She had come to know what it was that gave her father position and distinction; and the knowledge had been forced upon her by all the obsequious flattery of society that she was, as a great heiress, something apart from others. This position, so much envied, may be to a sensitive soul an awful isolation.

It was only recently that Evelyn had begun to be keenly aware of the circumstances that hedged her in. They were speaking one day as they sat upon the cliffs of the season about to begin. In it Evelyn had always had unalloyed, childish delight. Now it seemed to her something to be borne.

“McDonald,” the girl said, abruptly, but evidently continuing her line of thought, “mamma says that Lord Montague is coming next week.”

“To be with us?”

“Oh, no. He is to stay with the Danforth-Sibbs. Mamma says that as he is a stranger here we must be very polite to him, and that his being here will give distinction to the season. Do you like him?” There was in Evelyn still, with the penetration of the woman, the naivete of the child.

“I cannot say that he is personally very fascinating, but then I have never talked with him.”

“Mamma says he is very interesting about his family, and their place in England, and about his travels. He has been in the South Sea Islands. I asked him about them. He said that the natives were awfully jolly, and that the climate was jolly hot. Do you know, McDonald, that you can’t get anything out of him but exclamations and slang. I suppose he talks to other people differently. I tried him. At the reception I asked him who was going to take Tennyson’s place. He looked blank, and then said, ‘Er–I must have missed that. What place? Is he out?'”

Miss McDonald laughed, and then said, “You don’t understand the classes in English life. Poetry is not in his line. You see, dear, you couldn’t talk to him about politics. He is a born legislator, and when he is in the House of Lords he will know right well who is in and who is out. You mustn’t be unjust because he seems odd to you and of limited intelligence. Just that sort of youth is liable to turn up some day in India or somewhere and do a mighty plucky thing, and become a hero. I dare say he is a great sportsman.”

“Yes, he quite warmed up about shooting. He told me about going for yak in the snow mountains south of Thibet. Bloody cold it was. Nasty beast, if you didn’t bring him down first shot. No, I don’t doubt his courage nor his impudence. He looks at me so, that I can’t help blushing. I wish mamma wouldn’t ask him.”

“But, my dear, we must live in the world as it is. You are not responsible for Lord Montague.”

“And I know he will come,” the girl persisted in her line of thought.

“When he called the day before we came away, he asked a lot of questions about Newport, about horses and polo and golf, and all that, and were the roads good. And then, ‘Do you bike, Miss Mavick?’

“I pretended not to understand, and said I was still studying with my governess and I hadn’t got all the irregular verbs yet. For once, he looked quite blank, and after a minute he said, ‘That’s very good, you know!’ McDonald, I just hate him. He makes me so uneasy.”

“But don’t you know, child,” said Miss McDonald, laughing, “that we are required to love our enemies?”

“So I would,” replied the girl, quickly, “if he were an enemy and would keep away. Ah, me! McDonald, I want to ask you something. Do you suppose he would hang around a girl who was poor, such a sweet, pretty, dear creature as Alice Maitland, who is a hundred times nicer than I am?”

“He might,” said Miss McDonald, still quizzically. “They say that like goes to like, and it is reported that the Duke of Tewkesbury is as good as ruined.”

“Do be serious, McDonald.” The girl nestled up closer to her and took her hand. “I want to ask you one question more. Do you think–no, don’t look at me, look away off at that sail do you-think that, if I had been poor, Mr. Burnett would have seen me only twice, just twice, all last season?”

Miss McDonald put her arm around Evelyn and clasped the little figure tight. “You must not give way to fancies. We cannot, as life is arranged, be perfectly happy, but we can be true to ourselves, and there is scarcely anything that resolution and patience cannot overcome. I ought not to talk to you about this, Evelyn. But I must say one thing: I think I can read Philip Burnett. Oh, he has plenty of self-esteem, but, unless I mistake him, nothing could so mortify him as to have it said that he was pursuing a girl for the sake of her fortune.”

“And he wouldn’t!” cried the girl, looking up and speaking in an unsteady voice.

“Let me finish. He is, so I think, the sort of man that would not let any fortune, or anything else, stand in the way when his heart was concerned. I somehow feel that he could not change–faithfulness, that is his notion. If he only knew–“

“He never shall! he never shall!” cried the girl in alarm–“never!”

“And you think, child, that he doesn’t know? Come! That sail has been coming straight towards us ever since we sat here, never tacked once. That is omen enough for one day. See how the light strikes it. Come!”

The Newport season was not, after all, very gay. Society has become so complex that it takes more than one Englishman to make a season. Were it the business of the chronicler to study the evolution of this lovely watering-place from its simple, unconventional, animated days of natural hospitality and enjoyment, to its present splendid and palatial isolation of a society–during the season–which finds its chief satisfaction in the rivalry of costly luxury and in an atmosphere of what is deemed aristocratic exclusiveness, he would have a theme attractive to the sociologist. But such a noble study is not for him. His is the humble task of following the fortunes of certain individuals, more or less conspicuous in this astonishing flowering of a democratic society, who have become dear to him by long acquaintance.

It was not the fault of Mrs. Mavick that the season was so frigid, its glacial stateliness only now and then breaking out in an illuminating burst of festivity, like the lighting-up of a Montreal ice-palace. Her spacious house was always open, and her efforts, in charity enterprises and novel entertainments, were untiring to stimulate a circulation in the languid body of society.

This clever woman never showed more courage or more tact than in this campaign, and was never more agreeable and fascinating. She was even popular. If she was not accepted as a leader, she had a certain standing with the leaders, as a person of vivacity and social influence. Any company was eager for her presence. Her activity, spirit, and affability quite won the regard of the society reporters, and those who know Newport only through the newspapers would have concluded that the Mavicks were on the top of the wave. She, however, perfectly understood her position, and knew that the sweet friends, who exchanged with her, whenever they met, the conventional phrases of affection commented sarcastically upon her ambitions for her daughter. It was, at the same time, an ambition that they perfectly understood, and did not condemn on any ethical grounds. Evelyn was certainly a sweet girl, rather queerly educated, and never likely to make much of a dash, but she was an heiress, and why should not her money be put to the patriotic use of increasing the growing Anglo-American cordiality?

Lord Montague was, of course, a favorite, in demand for all functions, and in request for the private and intimate entertainments. He was an authority in the stables and the kennels, and an eager comrade in all the sports of the island. His easy manner, his self-possession everywhere, even his slangy talk, were accepted as evidence that he was above conventionalities. “The little man isn’t a beauty,” said Sally McTabb, “but he shows ‘race.'” He might be eccentric, but when you came to know him you couldn’t help liking the embryo duke in him.

In fact, things were going very well with Mrs. Mavick, except in her own household. There was something there that did not yield, that did not flow with her plans. With Lord Montague she was on the most intimate and confidential relations. He was almost daily at the house. Often she drove with him; frequently Evelyn was with them. Indeed, the three came to be associated in the public mind. There could be no doubt of the intentions of the young nobleman. That he could meet any opposition was not conceived.

The noble lord, since they had been in Newport, had freely opened his mind to Mrs. Mavick, and on a fit occasion had formally requested her daughter’s hand. Needless to say that he was accepted. Nay, more, he felt that he was trusted like a son. He was given every opportunity to press his suit. Somewhat to his surprise, he did not appear to make much headway. He was rarely able to see her alone, even for a moment. Such evasiveness in a young girl to a man of his rank astonished him. There could be no reason for it in himself; there must be some influence at work unknown to his social experience.

He did not reproach Mrs. Mavick with this, but he let her see that he was very much annoyed.

“If I had not your assurance to the contrary, Mrs. Mavick,” he said one day in a pet, “I should think she shunned me.”

“Oh, no, Lord Montague, that could not be. I told you that she had had a peculiar education; she is perfectly ignorant of the world, she is shy, and–well, for a girl in her position, she is unconventional. She is so young that she does not yet understand what life is.”

“You mean she does not know what I offer her?”

“Why, my dear Lord Montague, did you ever offer her anything?”

“Not flat, no,” said my lord, hesitating. “Every time I approach her she shies off like a young filly. There is something I don’t understand.”

“Evelyn,” and Mrs. Mavick spoke with feeling, “is an affectionate and dutiful child. She has never thought of marriage. The prospect is all new to her. But I am sure she would learn to love you if she knew you and her mind were once turned upon such a union. My lord, why not say to her what you feel, and make the offer you intend? You cannot expect a young girl to show her inclination before she is asked.” And Mrs. Mavick laughed a little to dispel the seriousness.

“By Jove! that’s so, good enough. I’ll do it straight out. I’ll tell her to take it or leave it. No, I don’t mean that, of course. I’ll tell her that I can’t live without her–that sort of thing, you know. And I can’t, that’s just the fact.”

“You can leave it confidently to her good judgment and to the friendship of the family for you.”

Lord Montague was silent for a moment, and seemed to be looking at a problem in his shrewd mind. For he had a shrewd mind, which took in the whole situation, Mrs. Mavick and all, with a perspicacity that would have astonished that woman of the world.

“There is one thing, perhaps I ought not to say it, but I have seen it, and it is in my head that it is that–I beg your pardon, madam–that damned governess.”

The shot went home. The suggestion, put into language that could be more easily comprehended than defended, illuminated Mrs. Mavick’s mind in a flash, seeming to disclose the source of an opposition to her purposes which secretly irritated her. Doubtless it was the governess. It was her influence that made Evelyn less pliable and amenable to reason than a young girl with such social prospects as she had would naturally be. Besides, how absurd it was that a young lady in society should still have a governess. A companion? The proper companion for a girl on the edge of matrimony was her mother!

XXI

This idea, once implanted in Mrs. Mavick’s mind, bore speedy fruit. No one would have accused her of being one of those uncomfortable persons who are always guided by an inflexible sense of justice, nor could it be said that she was unintelligently unjust. Facile as she was, in all her successful life she had never acted upon impulse, but from a conscience keenly alive to what was just to herself. Miss McDonald was in the way. And Mrs. Mavick had one quality of good generalship–she acted promptly on her convictions.

When Mr. Mavick came over next day to spend Sunday in what was called in print the bosom of his family, he looked very much worn and haggard and was in an irritated mood. He had been very little in Newport that summer, the disturbed state of business confining him to the city. And to a man of his age, New York in midsummer in a panicky season is not a recreation.

The moment Mrs. Mavick got her husband alone she showed a lively solicitude about his health.

“I suppose it has been dreadfully hot in the city?”

“Hot enough. Everything makes it hot.”

“Has anything gone wrong? Has that odious Ault turned up again?”

“Turned up is the word. Half the time that man is a mole, half the time a bull in a china-shop. He sails up to you bearing your own flag, and when he gets aboard he shows the skull and cross-bones.”

“Is it so bad as that?”

“As bad as what? He is a bad lot, but he is just an adventurer–a Napoleon who will get his Waterloo before fall. Don’t bother about things you don’t understand. How are things down here?”

“Going swimmingly.” “So I judged by the bills. How is the lord?”

“Now don’t be vulgar, Tom. You must keep up your end. Lord Montague is very nice; he is a great favorite here.”

“Does Evelyn like him?”

“Yes, she likes him; she likes him very much.”

“She didn’t show it to me.”

“No, she is awfully shy. And she is rather afraid of him, the big title and all that. And then she has never been accustomed to act for herself. She is old enough to be independent and to take her place in the world. At her age I was not in leading-strings.”

“I should say not,” said Mavick.

“Except in obedience to my mother,” continued Carmen, not deigning to notice the sarcasm. “And I’ve been thinking that McDonald–“

“So you want to get rid of her?”

“What a brutal way of putting it! No. But if Evelyn is ever to be self- reliant it is time she should depend more on herself. You know I am devoted to McDonald. And, what is more, I am used to her. I wasn’t thinking of her. You don’t realize that Evelyn is a young lady in society, and it has become ridiculous for her to still have a governess. Everybody would say so.”

“Well, call her a companion.”

“Ah, don’t you see it would be the same? She would still be under her influence and not able to act for herself.”

“What are you going to do? Turn her adrift after eighteen–what is it, seventeen?–years of faithful service?”

“How brutally you put it. I’m going to tell McDonald just how it is. She is a sensible woman, and she will see that it is for Evelyn’s good. And then it happens very luckily. Mrs. Van Cortlandt asked me last winter if I wouldn’t let her have McDonald for her little girl when we were through with her. She knew, of course, that we couldn’t keep a governess much longer for Evelyn. I am going to write to her. She will jump at the chance.”

“And McDonald?”

“Oh, she likes Mrs. Van Cortlandt. It will just suit her.”

“And Evelyn? That will be another wrench.” Men are so foolishly tender- hearted about women.

“Of course, I know it seems hard, and will be for a little. But it is for Evelyn’s good, I am perfectly sure.”

Mr. Mavick was meditating. It was a mighty unpleasant business. But he was getting tired of conflict. There was an undercurrent in the lives of both that made him shrink from going deep into any domestic difference. It was best to yield.

“Well, Carmen, I couldn’t have the heart to do it. She has been Evelyn’s constant companion all the child’s life. Ah, well, it’s your own affair. Only don’t stir it up till after I am gone. I must go to the city early Monday morning.”

Because Mavick, amid all the demands of business and society, and his ambitions for power in the world of finance and politics, had not had much time to devote to his daughter, it must not be supposed that he did not love her. In the odd moments at her service she had always been a delight to him; and, in truth, many of his ambitions had centred in the intelligent, affectionate, responsive child. But there had been no time for much real comradeship.

This Sunday, however, and it was partly because of pity for the shock he felt was in store for her, he devoted himself to her. They had a long walk on the cliff, and he talked to her of his life, of his travels, and his political experience. She was a most appreciative listener, and in the warmth of his confidence she opened her mind to him, and rather surprised him by her range of intelligence and the singular uprightness of her opinions, and more still by her ready wit and playfulness. It was the first time she had felt really free with her father, and he for the first time seemed to know her as she was in her inner life. When they returned to the house, and she was thanking him with a glow of enthusiasm for such a lovely day, he lifted her up and kissed her, with an emotion of affection that brought tears to her eyes.

A couple of days elapsed before Mrs. Mavick was ready for action. During this time she had satisfied herself, by apparently casual conversation with her daughter and Miss McDonald, that the latter would be wholly out of sympathy with her intentions in regard to Evelyn. Left to herself she judged that her daughter would look with more favor upon the brilliant career offered to her by Lord Montague. When, therefore, one morning the governess was summoned to her room, her course was decided on. She received Miss McDonald with more than usual cordiality. She had in her hand a telegram, and beamed upon her as the bearer of good news.

“I have an excellent offer for you, Miss McDonald.”

“An offer for me?”

“Yes, from Mrs. Van Cortlandt, to be the governess of her daughter, a sweet little girl of six. She has often spoken about it, and now I have an urgent despatch from her. She is in need of some one at once, and she greatly prefers you.”

“Do you mean, Mrs. Mavick, that–you–want–that I am to leave Evelyn, and you?” The room seemed to whirl around her.

“It is not what we want, McDonald,” said Mrs. Mavick calmly and still beaming, “but what is best. Your service as governess has continued much longer than could have been anticipated, and of course it must come to an end some time. You understand how hard this separation is for all of us. Mr. Mavick wanted me to express to you his infinite obligation, and I am sure he will take a substantial way of showing it. Evelyn is now a young lady in society, and of course it is absurd for her to continue under pupilage. It will be best for her, for her character, to be independent and learn to act for herself in the world.”

“Did she–has Evelyn–“

“No, I have said nothing to her of this offer, which is a most advantageous one. Of course she will feel as we do, at first.”

“Why, all these years, all her life, since she was a baby, not a day, not a night, Evelyn, and now–so sweet, so dear–why Mrs. Mavick!” And the Scotch woman, dazed, with a piteous appeal in her eyes, trying in vain to control her face, looked at her mistress.

“My dear McDonald, you must not take it that way. It is only a change. You are not going away really, we shall all be in the same city. I am sure you will–like your new home. Shall I tell Mrs. Van Cortlandt?”

“Tell Mrs. Van Cortlandt? Yes, tell her, thanks. I will go–soon–at once. In a little time, to get-ready. Thanks.” The governess rose and stood a moment to steady herself. All her life was in ruins. The blow crushed her. And she had been so happy. In such great peace. It seemed impossible. To leave Evelyn! She put out her hand as if to speak. Did Mrs. Mavick understand what she was doing? That it was the same as dragging a mother away from her child? But she said nothing. Words would not come. Everything seemed confused and blank. She sank into her chair.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Mavick, I think I am not very strong this morning.” And presently she stood on her feet again and steadied herself. “You will please tell Evelyn before–before I see her.” And she walked out of the room as one in a trance.

The news was communicated to Evelyn, quite incidentally, in the manner that all who knew Mrs. Mavick admired in her. Evelyn had just been in and out of her mother’s room, on one errand and another, and was going out again, when her mother said:

“Oh, by-the-way, Evelyn, at last we have got a splendid place for McDonald.”

Evelyn turned, not exactly comprehending. “A place for McDonald? For what?”

“As governess, of course. With Mrs. Van Cortlandt.”

“What! to leave us? “The girl walked back to her mother’s chair and stood before her in an attitude of wonder and doubt. “You don’t mean, mamma, that she is going away for good?”

“It is a great chance for her. I have been anxious for some time about employment for her, now that you do not need a governess–haven’t really for a year or two.”

“But, mamma, it can’t be. She is part of us. She belongs to the family; she has been in it almost as long as I have. Why, I have been with her every day of my life. To go away? To give her up? Does she know?”

“Does she know? What a child! She has accepted Mrs. Van Cortlandt’s offer. I telegraphed for her this morning. Tomorrow she goes to town to get her belongings together. Mrs. Van Cortlandt needs her at once. I am sorry to see, my dear, that you are thinking only of yourself.”

“Of myself?” The girl had been at first confused, and, as the idea forced itself upon her mind, she felt weak, and trembled, and was deadly pale. But when the certainty came, the enormity and cruelty of the dismissal aroused her indignation. “Myself!” she exclaimed again. Her eyes blazed with a wrath new to their tenderness, and, stepping back and stamping her foot; she cried out: “She shall not go! It is unjust! It is cruel!”

Her mother had never seen her child like that. She was revealing a spirit of resistance, a temper, an independence quite unexpected. And yet it was not altogether displeasing. Mrs. Mavick’s respect for her involuntarily rose. And after an instant, instead of responding with severity, as was her first impulse, she said, very calmly:

“Naturally, Evelyn, you do not like to part with her. None of us do. But go to your room and think it over reasonably. The relations of childhood cannot last forever.”

Evelyn stood for a moment undecided. Her mother’s calm self-control had not deceived her. She was no longer a child. It was a woman reading a woman. All her lifetime came back to her to interpret this moment. In the reaction of the second, the deepest pain was no longer for herself, nor even for Miss McDonald, but for a woman who showed herself so insensible to noble feeling. Protest was useless. But why was the separation desired? She did not fully see, but her instinct told her that it had a relation to her mother’s plans for her; and as life rose before her in the society, in the world, into which she was newly launched, she felt that she was alone, absolutely alone. She tried to speak, but before she could collect her thoughts her mother said:

“There, go now. It is useless to discuss the matter. We all have to learn to bear things.”

Evelyn went away, in a tumult of passion and of shame, and obeyed her impulse to go where she had always found comfort.

Miss McDonald was in her own room. Her trunk was opened. She had taken her clothes from the closet. She was opening the drawers and laying one article here and another there. She was going from closet to bureau, opening this door and shutting that in her sitting-room and bedroom, in an aimless, distracted way. Out of her efforts nothing had so far come but confusion. It seemed an impossible dream that she was actually packing up to go away forever.

Evelyn entered in a haste that could not wait for permission.

“Is it true?” she cried.

McDonald turned. She could not speak. Her faithful face was gray with suffering. Her eyes were swollen with weeping. For an instant she seemed not to comprehend, and then a flood of motherly feeling overcame her. She stretched out her arms and caught the girl to her breast in a passionate embrace, burying her face in her neck in a vain effort to subdue her sobbing.

What was there to say? Evelyn had come to her refuge for comfort, and to Evelyn the comforter it was she herself who must be the comforter. Presently she disengaged herself and forced the governess into an easy chair. She sat down on the arm of the chair and smoothed her hair and kissed her again and again.

“There. I’m going to help you. You’ll see you have not taught me for nothing.” She jumped up and began to bustle about. “You don’t know what a packer I am.”

“I knew it must come some time,” she was saying, with a weary air, as she followed with her eyes the light step of the graceful girl, who was beginning to sort things and to bring order out of the confusion, holding up one article after another and asking questions with an enforced cheerfulness that was more pathetic than any burst of grief.

“Yes, I know. There, that is laid in smooth.” She pretended to be thinking what to put in next, and suddenly she threw herself into McDonald’s lap and began to talk gayly. “It is all my fault, dear; I should have stayed little. And it doesn’t make any difference. I know you love me, and oh, McDonald, I love you more, a hundred times more, than ever. If you did not love me! Think how dreadful that would be. And we shall not be separated-only by streets, don’t you know. They can’t separate us. I know you want me to be brave. And some day, perhaps” (and she whispered in her ear–how many hundred times had she told her girl secrets in that way!), “if I do have a home of my own, then–“

It was not very cheerful talk, however it seemed to be, but it was better than silence, and in the midst of it, with many interruptions, the packing was over, and some sort of serenity was attained even by Miss McDonald. “Yes, dear heart, we have love and trust and hope.” But when the preparations were all made, and Evelyn went to her own room, there did not seem to be so much hope, nor any brightness in the midst of this first great catastrophe of her life.

XXII

The great Mavick ball at Newport, in the summer long remembered for its financial disasters, was very much talked about at the time. Long after, in any city club, a man was sure to have attentive listeners if he, began his story or his gossip with the remark that he was at the Mavick ball.

It attracted great attention, both on account of the circumstances that preceded it and the events which speedily followed, and threw a light upon it that gave it a spectacular importance. The city journals made a feature of it. They summoned their best artists to illustrate it, and illuminate it in pen-and-ink, half-tones, startling colors, and photographic reproductions, sketches theatrical, humorous, and poetic, caricatures, pictures of tropical luxury and aristocratic pretension; in short, all the bewildering affluence of modern art which is brought to bear upon the aesthetic cultivation of the lowest popular taste. They summoned their best novelists to throw themselves recklessly upon the English language, and extort from it its highest expression in color and lyrical beauty, the novelists whose mission it is, in the newspaper campaign against realism, to adorn and dramatize the commonest events of life, creating in place of the old-fashioned “news” the highly spiced “story,” which is the ideal aspiration of the reporter.

Whatever may be said about the power of the press, it is undeniable that it can set the entire public thinking and talking about any topic, however insignificant in itself, that it may elect to make the sensation of the day–a wedding, a murder, a political scandal, a divorce, a social event, a defalcation, a lost child, an unidentified victim of accident or crime, an election, or–that undefined quickener of patriotism called a casus belli. It can impose any topic it pleases upon the public mind. In case there is no topic, it is necessary to make one, for it is an indefeasible right of the public to have news.

These reports of the Mavick ball had a peculiar interest for at least two people in New York. Murad Ault read them with a sardonic smile and an enjoyment that would not have been called altruistic. Philip searched them with the feverish eagerness of a maiden who scans the report of a battle in which her lover has been engaged.

All summer long he had lived upon stray bits of news in the society columns of the newspapers. To see Evelyn’s name mentioned, and only rarely, as a guest at some entertainment, and often in connection with that of Lord Montague, did not convey much information, nor was that little encouraging. Was she well? Was she absorbed in the life of the season? Did she think of him in surroundings so brilliant? Was she, perhaps, unhappy and persecuted? No tidings came that could tell him the things that he ached to know.

Only recently intelligence had come to him that at the same time wrung his heart with pity and buoyed him up with hope. He had not seen Miss McDonald since her dismissal, for she had been only one night in the city, but she had written to him. Relieved by her discharge of all obligations of silence, she had written him frankly about the whole affair, and, indeed, put him in possession of unrecorded details and indications that filled him with anxiety, to be sure, but raised his courage and strengthened his determination. If Evelyn loved him, he had faith that no manoeuvres or compulsion could shake her loyalty. And yet she was but a girl; she was now practically alone, and could she resist the family and the social pressure? Few women could, few women do, effectively resist under such circumstances. With one of a tender heart, duty often takes the most specious and deceiving forms. In yielding to the impulses of her heart, which in her inexperience may be mistaken, has a girl the right–from a purely rational point of view–to set herself against, nay, to destroy, the long-cherished ambitions of her parents for a brilliant social career for her, founded upon social traditions of success? For what had Mr. Mavick toiled? For what had Mrs. Mavick schemed all these years? Could the girl throw herself away? Such disobedience, such disregard for social law, would seem impossible to her mother.

Some of the events that preceded the Mavick ball throw light upon that interesting function. After the departure of Miss McDonald, Mrs. Mavick, in one of her confidential talks with her proposed son-in-law, confessed that she experienced much relief. An obstacle seemed to be removed.

In fact, Evelyn rather surprised her mother by what seemed a calm acceptance of the situation. There was no further outburst. If the girl was often preoccupied and seemed listless, that was to be expected, on the sudden removal of the companion of her lifetime.

But she did not complain. She ceased after a while to speak of McDonald. If she showed little enthusiasm in what was going on around her, she was compliant, she fell in at once with her mother’s suggestions, and went and came in an attitude of entire obedience.

“It isn’t best for you to keep up a correspondence, my dear, now that you know that McDonald is nicely settled–all reminiscent correspondence is very wearing–and, really, I am more than delighted to see that you are quite capable of walking alone. Do you know, Evelyn, that I am more and more proud of you every day, as my daughter. I don’t dare to tell you half the nice things that are said of you. It would make you vain.” And the proud mother kissed her affectionately. The letters ceased. If the governess wrote, Evelyn did not see the letters.

As the days went by, Lord Montague, in high and confident spirits, became more and more a familiar inmate of the house. Daily he sent flowers to Evelyn; he contrived little excursions and suppers; he was marked in his attentions wherever they went. “He is such a dear fellow,” said Mrs. Mavick to one of her friends; “I don’t know how we should get on without him.”

Only, in the house, owing to some unnatural perversity of circumstances, he did not see much of Evelyn, never alone for more than a moment. It is wonderful what efficient, though invisible, defenses most women, when they will, can throw about themselves.

That the affair was “arranged” Lord Montague had no doubt. It was not conceivable that the daughter of an American stock-broker would refuse the offer of a position so transcendent and so evidently coveted in a democratic society. Not that the single-minded young man reasoned about it this way. He was born with a most comfortable belief in himself and the knowledge that when he decided to become a domestic man he had simply, as the phrase is, to throw his handkerchief.

At home, where such qualities as distinguished him from the common were appreciated without the need of personal exertion, this might be true; but in America it did seem to be somehow different. American women, at least some of them, did need to be personally wooed; and many of them had a sort of independence in the bestowal of their affections or, what they understood to be the same thing, themselves that must be taken into account. And it gradually dawned upon the mind of this inheritor of privilege that in this case the approval of the family, even the pressure of the mother, was not sufficient; he must have also Evelyn’s consent. If she were a mature woman who knew and appreciated the world, she would perceive the advantages offered to her without argument. But a girl, just released from the care of her governess, unaccustomed to society, might have notions, or, in the vernacular of the scion, might be skittish.

And then, again, to do the wooer entire justice, the dark little girl, so much mistress of herself, so evidently spirited, with such an air of distinction, began to separate herself in his mind as a good goer against the field, and he had a real desire to win her affection. The more indifferent she was to him, the keener was his desire to possess her. His unsuccessful wooing had passed through several stages, first astonishment, then pique, and finally something very like passion, or a fair semblance of devotion, backed, of course, since all natures are more or less mixed, by the fact that this attractive figure of the woman was thrown into high relief by the colossal fortune behind her.

And Evelyn herself? Neither her mother nor her suitor appreciated the uncommon circumstances that her education, her whole training in familiarity with pure and lofty ideals, had rendered her measurably insensible to the social considerations that seemed paramount to them, or that there could be any real obstacle to the bestowal of her person. where her heart was not engaged. Yet she perfectly understood her situation, and, at times, deprived of her lifelong support, she felt powerless in it, and she suffered as only the pure and the noble can suffer. Day after day she fought her battle alone, now and then, as the situation confronted her, assailed by a shudder of fear, as of one awakening in the night from a dream of peril, the clutch of an assassin, or the walking on an icy precipice. If McDonald were only with her! If she could only hear from Philip! Perhaps he had lost hope and was submitting to the inevitable.

The opportunity which Lord Montague had long sought came one day unexpectedly, or perhaps it was contrived. They were waiting in the drawing-room for an afternoon drive. The carriage was delayed, and Mrs. Mavick excused herself to ascertain the cause of the delay. Evelyn and her suitor were left alone. She was standing by a window looking out, and he was standing by the fireplace watching the swing of the figure on the pendulum of the tall mantelpiece clock. He was the first to break the silence.

“Your clock, Miss Mavick, is a little fast.” No reply. “Or else I am slow.” Still no reply. “They say, you know, that I am a little slow, over here.” No reply. “I am not, really, you know. I know my mind. And there was something, Miss Mavick, something particular, that I wanted to say to you.”

“Yes?” without turning round. “The carriage will be here in a minute.”

“Never mind that,” and Lord Montague moved away from the fireplace and approached the girl; “take care of the minutes and the hours will take care of themselves, as the saying is.” At this unexpected stroke of brilliancy Evelyn did turn round, and stood in an expectant attitude. The moment had evidently come, and she would not meet it like a coward.

“We have been friends a long time; not so very long, but it seems to me the best part of my life,” he was looking down and speaking slowly, with the modest deference of a gentleman, “and you must have seen, that is, I wanted you to see, you know well, that is–er–what I was staying on here for.”

“Because you like America, I suppose,” said Evelyn, coolly.

“Because I like some things in America–that is just the fact,” continued the little lord, with more confidence. “And that is why I stayed. You see I couldn’t go away and leave what was best in the world to me.”

There was an air of simplicity and sincerity about this that was unexpected, and could not but be respected by any woman. But Evelyn waited, still immovable.

“It wasn’t reasonable that you should like a stranger right off,” he went on, “just at first, and I waited till you got to know me better. Ways are different here and over there, I know that, but if you came to know me, Miss Mavick, you would see that I am not such a bad sort of a fellow.” And a deprecatory smile lighted up his face that was almost pathetic. To Evelyn this humility seemed genuine, and perhaps it was, for the moment. Certainly the eyes she bent on, the odd little figure were less severe.

“All this is painful to me, Lord Montague.”

“I’m sorry,” he continued, in the same tone. “I cannot help it. I must say it. I–you must know that I love you.” And then, not heeding the nervous start the girl gave in stepping backward, “And–and, will you be my wife?”

“You do me too much honor, Lord Montague,” said Evelyn, summoning up all her courage.

“No, no, not a bit of it.”

“I am obliged to you for your good opinion, but you know I am almost a school-girl. My governess has just left me. I have never thought of such a thing. And, Lord Montague, I cannot return your feeling. That is all. You must see how painful this is to me.”

“I wouldn’t give you pain, Miss Mavick, not for the world. Perhaps when you think it over it will seem different to you. I am sure it will. Don’t answer now, for good.”

“No, no, it cannot be,” said Evelyn, with something of alarm in her tone, for the full meaning of it all came over her as she thought of her mother.

“You are not offended?”

“No,” said Evelyn.

“I couldn’t bear to offend you. You cannot think I would. And you will not be hard-hearted. You know me, Miss Mavick, just where I am. I’m just as I said.”

“The carriage is coming,” said Mrs. Mavick, who returned at this moment.

The group for an instant was silent, and then Evelyn said:

“We have waited so long; mamma, that I am a little tired, and you will excuse me from the drive this afternoon?”

“Certainly, my dear.”

When the two were seated in the carriage, Mrs. Mavick turned to Lord Montague:

“Well?”

“No go,” replied my lord, as sententiously, and in evident bad humor.

“What? And you made a direct proposal?”

“Showed her my whole hand. Made a square offer. Damme, I am not used to this sort of thing.”

“You don’t mean that she refused you?”

“Don’t know what you call it. Wouldn’t start.”

“She couldn’t have understood you. What did she say?”

“Said it was too much honor, and that rot. By Jove, she didn’t look it. I rather liked her pluck. She didn’t flinch.”

“Oh, is that all?” And Mrs. Mavick spoke as if her mind were relieved. “What could you expect from such a sudden proposal to a young girl, almost a child, wholly unused to the world? I should have done the same thing at her age. It will look different to her when she reflects, and understands what the position is that is offered her. Leave that to me.”

Lord Montague shook his head and screwed up his keen little eyes. His mind was in full play. “I know women, Mrs. Mavick, and I tell you there is something behind this. Somebody has been in the stable.” The noble lord usually dropped into slang when he was excited.

“I don’t understand your language,” said Mrs. Mavick, straightening herself up in her seat.

“I beg pardon. It is just a way of speaking on the turf. When a favorite goes lame the morning of the race, we know some one has been tampering with him. I tell you there is some one else. She has some one else in her mind. That’s the reason of it.”

“Nonsense.” cried Mrs. Mavick, with the energy of conviction. “It’s impossible. There is nobody, couldn’t be anybody. She has led a secluded life till this hour. She hasn’t a fancy, I know.”

“I hope you are right,” he replied, in the tone of a man wishing to take a cheerful view. “Perhaps I don’t understand American girls.”

“I think I do,” she said, smiling. “They are generally amenable to reason. Evelyn now has something definite before her. I am glad you proposed.”

And this was the truth. Mrs. Mavick was elated. So far her scheme was completely successful. As to Evelyn, she trusted to various influences she could bring to bear. Ultimate disobedience of her own wishes she did not admit as a possible thing.

A part of her tactics was the pressure of public opinion, so far as society represents it–that is, what society expects. And therefore it happened in a few days that a strong suspicion got about that Lord Montague had proposed formally to the heiress. The suspicion was strengthened by appearances. Mrs. Mavick did not deny the rumor. That there was an engagement was not affirmed, but that the honor had been or would be declined was hardly supposable.

In the painful interview between mother and daughter concerning this proposal, Evelyn had no reason to give for her opposition, except that she did not love him. This point Mrs. Mavick skillfully evaded and minimized. Of course she would love him in time. The happiest marriages were founded on social fitness and the judgment of parents, and not on the inexperienced fancies of young girls. And in this case things had gone too far to retreat. Lord Montague’s attentions had been too open and undisguised. He had been treated almost as a son by the house. Society looked upon the affair as already settled. Had Evelyn reflected on the mortification that would fall upon her mother if she persisted in her unreasonable attitude? And Mrs. Mavick shed actual tears in thinking upon her own humiliation.

The ball which followed these private events was also a part of Mrs. Mavick’s superb tactics. It would be in a way a verification of the public rumors and a definite form of pressure which public expectation would exercise upon the lonely girl.

The splendor of this function is still remembered. There were, however, features in the glowing descriptions of it which need to be mentioned. It was assumed that it was for a purpose, that it was in fact, if not a proclamation, at least an intimation of a new and brilliant Anglo-Saxon alliance. No one asserted that an engagement existed. But the prominent figures in the spectacle were the English lord and the young and beautiful American heiress. There were portraits of both in half-tone. The full names and titles expectant of Lord Montague were given, a history of the dukedom of Tewkesbury and its ancient glory, with the long line of noble names allied to the young lord, who was a social star of the first magnitude, a great traveler, a sportsman of the stalwart race that has the world for its field. (“Poor little Monte,” said the managing editor as he passed along these embellishments with his approval.)

On the other hand, the proposed alliance was no fall in dignity or family to the English house. The heiress was the direct descendant of the Eschelles, an old French family, distinguished in camp and court in the glorious days of the Grand Monarch.

XXIII

Probably no man ever wrote and published a book, a magazine story, or a bit of verse without an instant decision to repeat the experiment. The inclination once indulged becomes insatiable. It is not altogether the gratified vanity of seeing one’s self in print, for, before printing was, the composers and reciters of romances and songs were driven along the same path of unrest and anxiety, when once they had the least recognition of their individual distinction. The impulse is more subtle than the desire for wealth or the craving for political place. In some cases it is in simple obedience to the longing to create; in others it is a lower ambition for notoriety, for praise.

In any case the experiment of authorship, in however humble, a way, has an analogy to that other tempting occupation of making “investments” in the stock-market: the first trial is certain to lead to another. If the author succeeds in any degree, his spirit rises to another attempt in the hope of a wider recognition. If he fails, that is a reason why he should convince his fellows that the failure was not inherent in himself, but in ill-luck or a misdirection of his powers. And the experiment has another analogy to the noble occupation of levying toll upon the change of values–a first brilliant success is often a misfortune, inducing an overestimate of capacity, while a very moderate success, recognized indeed only as a trial, steadies a man, and sets him upon that serious diligence upon which alone, either in art or business, any solid fortune is built.

Philip was fortunate in that his first novel won him a few friends and a little recognition, but no popularity. It excited neither envy nor hostility. In the perfunctory and somewhat commercial good words it received, he recognized the good-nature of the world. In the few short reviews that dealt seriously with his work, he was able, when the excitement of seeing himself discussed had subsided, to read between the lines why The Puritan Nun had failed to make a larger appeal. It was idyllic and poetic, but it lacked virility; it lacked also simplicity in dealing with the simple and profound facts of life. He had been too solicitous to express himself, to write beautifully, instead of letting the human emotions with which he had to deal show themselves. One notice had said that it was too “literary”; by which, of course, the critic meant that he did not follow the solid traditions, the essential elements in all the great masterpieces of literature that have been created. And yet he had shown a quality, a facility, a promise, that had gained him a foothold and a support in the world of books and of the making of books. And though he had declined Mr. Ault’s tempting offer to illuminate his transcontinental road with a literary torch, he none the less was pleased with this recognition of his capacity and the value of his name.

To say that Philip lived on hope during this summer of heat, suspensions, and business derangement would be to allow him a too substantial subsistence. Evelyn, indeed, seemed, at the distance of Newport, more unattainable than ever, and the scant news he had of the drama enacted there was a perpetual notice to him of the social gulf that lay between them. And yet his dream was sustained by occasional assurances from Miss McDonald of her confidence in Evelyn’s belief in him, nay, of her trust, and she even went so far as to say affection. So he went on building castles in the air, which melted and were renewed day after day, like the transient but unfailing splendor of the sunset.

There was a certain exaltation in this indulgence of his passion that stimulated his creative faculties, and, while his daily tasks kept him from being morbid, his imagination was free to play with the construction of a new story, to which his recent experience would give a certain solidity and a knowledge of the human struggle as it is.

He found himself observing character more closely than before, looking for it not so much in books as in the people he met. There was Murad Ault, for instance. How he would like to put him into a book! Of course it would not do to copy a model, raw, like’ that, but he fell to studying his traits, trying to see the common humanity exhibited in him. Was he a type or was he a freak? This was, however, too dangerous ground until he knew more of life.

The week’s vacation allowed him by his house was passed in Rivervale. There, in the calmness of country life, and in the domestic atmosphere of affection which believed in him, he was far enough removed from the scene of the spectres of his imagination to see them in proper perspective, and there the lines of his new venture were laid down, to be worked out later on, he well knew, in the anxiety and the toil which should endue the skeleton with life. Rivervale, to be sure, was haunted by the remembrance of Evelyn; very often the familiar scenes filled him with an intolerable longing to see again the eyes that had inspired him, to hear the voice that was like no other in the world, to take the little hand that had often been so frankly placed in his, and to draw to him the form in which was embodied all the grace and tender witchery of womanhood. But the knowledge of what she expected of him was an inspiration, always present in his visions of her.

Something of his hopes and fears Alice divined, and he felt her sympathy, although she did not intrude upon his reticence by any questions. They talked about Evelyn, but it was Evelyn in Rivervale, not in Newport. In fact, the sensible girl could regard her cousin’s passion as nothing more than a romance in a young author’s life, and to her it was a sign of his security that he had projected a new story.

With instinctive perception of his need, she was ever turning his thoughts upon his literary career. Of course she and all the household seemed in a conspiracy to flatter and encourage the vanity of authorship. Was not all the village talking about the reputation he had conferred on it? Was it not proud of him? Indeed, it did imagine that the world outside of Rivervale was very much interested in him, and that he was already an author of distinction. The county Gazette had announced, as an important piece of news, that the author of The Puritan Nun was on a visit to his relatives, the Maitlands. This paragraph seemed to stand out in the paper as an almost immodest exposure of family life, read furtively at first, and not talked of, and yet every member of the family was conscious of an increase in the family importance. Aunt Patience discovered, from her outlook on the road, that summer visitors had a habit of driving or walking past the house and then turning back to look at it again.

So Philip was not only distinguished, but he had the power of conferring distinction. No one can envy a young author this first taste of fame, this home recognition. Whatever he may do hereafter, how much more substantial rewards he may attain, this first sweetness of incense to his ambition will never come to him again.

When Philip returned to town, the city was still a social desert, and he plunged into the work piled up on his desk, the never-ceasing accumulation of manuscripts, most of them shells which the workers have dredged up from the mud of the literary ocean, in which the eager publisher is always expecting to find pearls. Even Celia was still in the country, and Philip’s hours spared from drudgery were given to the new story. His days, therefore, passed without incident, but not without pleasure. For whatever annoyances the great city may have usually, it is in the dull season–that is, the season of its summer out-of-doors animation–a most attractive and, even stimulating place for the man who has an absorbing pursuit, say a work in creative fiction. Undisturbed by social claims or public interests, the very noise and whirl of the gay metropolis seem to hem him in and protect the world of his own imagination.

The first disturbing event in this serenity was the report of the Mavick ball, already referred to, and the interpretation put upon it by the newspapers. In this light his plans seemed the merest moonshine. What became of his fallacious hope of waiting when events were driving on at this rate? What chance had he in such a social current? Would Evelyn be strong enough to stem it and to wait also? And to wait for what? For the indefinite and improbable event of a poor author, hardly yet recognized as an author, coming into position, into an income (for that was the weak point in his aspirations) that would not be laughed at by the millionaire. When he coolly considered it, was it reasonable to expect that Mr. and Mrs. Mavick would ever permit Evelyn to throw away the brilliant opportunity for their daughter which was to be the crowning end of their social ambition? The mere statement of the proposition was enough to overwhelm him.

That this would be the opinion of the world he could not doubt. He felt very much alone. It was not, however, in any resolve to make a confidante of Celia, but in an absolute need of companionship, that he went to see if she had returned. That he had any personal interest in this ball he did not intend to let Celia know, but talk with somebody he must. Of his deep affection for this friend of his boyhood, there was no doubt, nor of his knowledge of her devotion to his interests. Why, then, was he reserved with her upon the absorbing interest of his life?

Celia had returned, before the opening of the medical college, full of a new idea. This was nothing new in her restless nature; but if Philip had not been blinded by the common selfishness of his sex, he might have seen in the gladness of her welcome of him something more than mere sisterly affection.

“Are you real glad to see me, Phil? I thought you might be lonesome by this time in the deserted city.”

“I was, horribly.” He was still holding her hand. “Without a chance to talk with you or Alice, I am quite an orphan.”

“Ah! You or Alice! “A shade of disappointment came over her face as she dropped his hand. But she rallied in a moment.

“Poor boy! You ought to have a guardian. What heroine of romance are you running after now?”

“In my new story?”

“Of course.”

“She isn’t very well defined in my mind yet. But a lovely girl, without anything peculiar, no education to speak of, or career, fascinating in her womanhood, such as might walk out of the Bible. Don’t you think that would be a novelty? But it is the most difficult to do.”

“Negative. That sort has gone out. Philip, why don’t you take the heroine of the Mavick ball? There is a theme.” She was watching him shrewdly, and saw the flush in his face as he hurriedly asked,

“Did you ever see her?”

“Only at a distance. But you must know her well enough for a literary purpose. The reports of the ball give you the setting of the drama.”

“Did you read them?”

“I should say I did. Most amusing.”

“Celia, don’t you think it would be an ungentlemanly thing to take a social event like that?”

“Why, you must take life as it is. Of course you would change the details. You could lay the scene in Philadelphia. Nobody would suspect you then.”

Philip shook his head. The conversation was not taking the turn that was congenial to him. The ball seemed to him a kind of maelstrom in which all his hopes were likely to be wrecked. And here was his old friend, the keenest-sighted woman he knew, looking upon it simply as literary material–a ridiculous social event. He had better change the subject.

“So the college is not open yet?”

“No, I came back because I had a new idea, and wanted time to look around. We haven’t got quite the right idea in our city missions. They have another side. We need country missions.”

“Aren’t they that now?”

“No, I mean for the country. I’ve been about a good deal all this vacation, and my ideas are confirmed. The country towns and villages are full of young hoodlums and toughs, and all sorts of wickedness. They could be improved by sending city boys up there–yes, and girls of tender age. I don’t mean the worst ones, not altogether. The young of a certain low class growing up in the country are even worse than the same class in the city, and they lack a civility of manner which is pretty sure to exist in a city-bred person.”

“If the country is so bad, why send any more unregenerates into it?”

“How do you know that anybody is always to be unregenerate? But I wouldn’t send thieves and imbeciles. I would select children of some capacity, whose circumstances are against them where they are, and I am sure they would make better material than a good deal of the young generation in country villages now. This is what I mean by a mission for the country. We have been bending all our efforts to the reformation of the cities. What we need to go at now is the reforming of the country.”

“You have taken a big contract,” said Philip, smiling at her enthusiasm. “Don’t you intend to go on with medicine?”

“Certainly. At least far enough to be of some use in breaking up people’s ignorance about their own bodies. Half the physical as well as moral misery comes from ignorance. Didn’t I always tell you that I want to know? A good many of my associates pretend to be agnostics, neither believe or disbelieve in anything. The further I go the more I am convinced that there is a positive basis for things. They talk about the religion of humanity. I tell you, Philip, that humanity is pretty poor stuff to build a religion on.”

The talk was wandering far away from what was in Philip’s mind, and presently Celia perceived his want of interest.

“There, that is enough about myself. I want to know all about you, your visit to Rivervale, how the publishing house suits you, how the story is growing.”

And Philip talked about himself, and the rumors in Wall Street, and Mr. Ault and his offer, and at last about the Mavicks–he could not help that–until he felt that Celia was what she had always been to him, and when he went away he held her hand and said what a dear, sweet friend she was.

And when he had gone, Celia sat a long time by the window, not seeing much of the hot street into which she looked, until there were tears in her eyes.

XXIV

There was one man in New York who thoroughly enjoyed the summer. Murad Ault was, as we say of a man who is free to indulge his natural powers, in his element. There are ingenious people who think that if the ordering of nature had been left to them, they could maintain moral conditions, or at least restore a disturbed equilibrium, without violence, without calling in the aid of cyclones and of uncontrollable electric displays, in order to clear the air. There are people also who hold that the moral atmosphere of the world does not require the occasional intervention of Murad Ault.

The conceit is flattering to human nature, but it is not borne out by the performance of human nature in what is called the business world, which is in such intimate alliance with the social world in such great centres of conflict as London, New York, or Chicago. Mr. Ault is everywhere an integral and necessary part of the prevailing system–that is, the system by which the moral law is applied to business. The system, perhaps, cannot be defended, but it cannot be explained without Mr. Ault. We may argue that such a man is a disturber of trade, of legitimate operations, of the fairest speculations, but when we see how uniform he is as a phenomenon, we begin to be convinced that he is somehow indispensable to the system itself. We cannot exactly understand why a cyclone should pick up a peaceful village in Nebraska and deposit it in Kansas, where there, is already enough of that sort, but we cannot conceive of Wall Street continuing to be Wall Street unless it were now and then visited by a powerful adjuster like Mr. Ault.

The advent, then, of Murad Ault in New York was not a novelty, but a continuation of like phenomena in the Street, ever since the day when ingenious men discovered that the ability to guess correctly which of two sparrows, sold for a farthing, lighting on the spire of Trinity Church, will fly first, is an element in a successful and distinguished career. There was nothing peculiar in kind in his career, only in the force exhibited which lifted him among the few whose destructive energy the world condones and admires as Napoleonic. He may have been an instrument of Providence. When we do not know exactly what to do with an exceptional man who is disagreeable, we call him an Instrument of Providence.

It is not, then, in anything exceptional that we are interested in the operations of Murad Ault, but simply on account of his fortuitous connection with a great fortune which had its origin in very much the same cyclonic conditions that Mr. Ault reveled in. Those who know Wall Street best, by reason of sad experience, say that the presiding deity there is not the Chinese god, Luck, but the awful pagan deity, Nemesis. Alas! how many innocent persons suffer in order to get justice done in this world.

Those who have unimpaired memories may recollect the fortune amassed, many years previous to this history, by one Rodney Henderson, gathered and enlarged by means not indictable, but which illustrate the wide divergence between the criminal code and the moral law. This fortune, upon the sudden death of its creator, had been largely diverted from its charitable destination by fraud, by a crime that would have fallen within the code if it had been known. This fortune had been enjoyed by those who seized it for many years of great social success, rising into acknowledged respectability and distinction; and had become the basis of the chance of social elevation, which is dear to the hearts of so many excellent people, who are compelled to wander about in a chaotic society that has no hereditary titles. It was this fortune, the stake in such an ambition, or perhaps destined in a new possessor to a nobler one, that came in the way of Mr. Ault’s extensive schemes.

It is not necessary to infer that Mr. Ault was originally actuated by any greed as to this special accumulation of property, or that he had any malevolence towards Mr. Mavick; but the eagerness of his personal pursuit led him into collisions. There were certain possessions of Mr. Mavick that were desirable for the rounding-out of his plans–these graspings were many of them understood by the public as necessary to the “development of a system”–and in this collision of interests and fierce strength a vindictive feeling was engendered, a feeling born, as has been hinted, by Mr. Mavick’s attempt to trick his temporary ally in a certain operation, so that Mr. Ault’s main purpose was to “down Mavick.” This was no doubt an exaggeration concerning a man with so many domestic virtues as Mr. Ault, meaning by domestic virtues indulgence of his family; but a fight for place or property in politics or in the Street is pretty certain to take on a personal character.

We can understand now why Mr. Ault read the accounts of the Mavick ball with a grim smile. In speaking of it he used the vulgar term “splurge,” a word especially offensive to the refined society in which the Mavicks had gained a foothold. And yet the word was on the lips of a great many men on the Street. The shifting application of sympathy is a very queer thing in this world. Mr. Ault was not a snob. Whatever else he was, he made few pretensions. In his first advent he had been resisted as an intruder and shunned as a vulgarian; but in time respect for his force and luck mingled with fear of his reckless talent, and in the course of events it began to be admitted that the rough diamond was being polished into one of the corner-stones of the great business edifice. At the time of this writing he did not altogether lack the sympathy of the Street, and an increasing number of people were not sorry to see Mr. Mavick get the worst of it in repeated trials of strength. And in each of these trials it became increasingly difficult for Mr. Mavick to obtain the assistance and the credit which are often indispensable to the strongest men in a panic.

The truth was that there were many men in the Street who were not sorry to see Mr. Mavick worried. They remembered perfectly well the omniscient snobbishness of Thomas Mavick when he held a position in the State Department at Washington and was at the same time a secret agent of Rodney Henderson. They did not change their opinion of him when, by his alliance with Mrs. Henderson, he stepped into control of Mr. Henderson’s property and obtained the mission to Rome; but later on he had been accepted as one of the powers in the financial world. There were a few of the old stagers who never trusted him. Uncle Jerry Hollowell, for instance, used to say, “Mavick is smart, smart as lightnin’; I guess he’ll make ducks and drakes of the Henderson property.” They are very superficial observers of Wall Street who think that character does not tell there. Mr. Mavick may have realized that when in his straits he looked around for assistance.

The history of this panic summer in New York would not be worthy the reader’s attention were not the fortunes of some of his acquaintances involved in it. It was not more intense than the usual panics, but it lasted longer on account of the complications with uncertain government policy, and it produced stagnation in social as well as business circles. So quiet a place as Rivervale felt it in the diminution of city visitors, and the great resorts showed it in increased civility to the small number of guests.

The summer at Newport, which had not been distinguished by many great events, was drawing to a close–that is, it was in the period when those who really loved the charming promenade which is so loved of the sea began to enjoy themselves, and those who indulge in the pleasures of hope, based upon a comfortable matrimonial establishment, are reckoning up the results of the campaign.

Mrs. Mavick, according to her own assertion, was one of those who enjoy nature. “Nature and a few friends, not too many, only those whom one trusts and who are companionable,” she had said to Lord Montague.

This young gentleman had found the pursuit of courtship in America attended by a good many incidental social luxuries. It had been a wise policy to impress him with the charm of a society which has unlimited millions to make it attractive. Even to an impecunious noble there is a charm in this, although the society itself has some of the lingering conditions of its money origin. But since the great display of the ball,