"I am delighted, my lord, that you could make room in your engagements to come."

"Ah, Mrs. Mavick, I wouldn't have missed it," said my lord, with easy assurance; "I'd have thrown over anything to have come. And, do you know" (looking about him coolly), "it's quite English, 'pon my honor, quite English—St. James and that sort of thing."

"You flatter me, my lord," replied the lady of the house, with a winning smile.

"No, I do assure you, it's bang-up. Ah, Miss Mavick, delighted, delighted. Most charming. Lucky for me, wasn't it? I'm just in time."

"You've only recently come over, Lord Montague?" asked Evelyn.

"Been here before—Rockies, shooting, all that. Just arrived now —beastly trip, beastly."

"And so you were glad to land?"

"Glad to land anywhere. But New York suits me down to the ground. It goes, as you say over here. You know Paris?"

"We have been in Paris. You prefer it?"

"For some thing. Paris as it was in the Empire. For sport, no. For horses, no. And" (looking boldly into her face) "when you speak of American women, Paris ain't in it, as you say over here."

And the noble lord, instead of passing on, wheeled about and took a position near Evelyn, so that he could drop his valuable observations into her ear as occasion offered.

To Philip Mrs. Mavick was civil, but she did not beam upon him, and she did not detain him longer than to say, "Glad to see you." But Evelyn —could Philip be deceived?—she gave him her hand cordially and looked into his eyes trustfully, as she had the habit of doing in the country, and as if it were a momentary relief to her to encounter in all this parade a friend.

"I need not say that I am glad you could come. And oh" (there was time only for a word), "I saw the announcement. Later, if you can, you will tell me more about it."

Lord Montague stared at him as if to say, "Who the deuce are you?" and as Philip met his gaze he thought, "No, he hasn't the manner of a stable boy; no one but a born nobleman could be so confident with women and so supercilious to men."

But my lord, was little in his thought. It was the face of Evelyn that he saw, and the dainty little figure; the warmth of the little hand still thrilled him. So simple, and only a bunch of violets in her corsage for all ornament! The clear, dark complexion, the sweet mouth, the wonderful eyes! What could Jenks mean by intimating that she was plain?

Philip drifted along with the crowd. He was very much alone. And he enjoyed his solitude. A word and a smile now and then from an acquaintance did not tempt him to come out of his seclusion. The gay scene pleased him. He looked for a moment into the ballroom. At another time he would have tried his fortune in the whirl. But now he looked on as at a spectacle from which he was detached. He had had his moment and he waited for another. The voluptuous music, the fascinating toilets, the beautiful faces, the graceful forms that were woven together in this shifting kaleidoscope, were, indeed, a part of his beautiful dream. But how unreal they all were! There was no doubt that Evelyn's eyes had kindled for him as for no one else whom she had greeted. She singled him out in all this crush, her look, the cordial pressure of her hand, conveyed the feeling of comradeship and understanding. This was enough to fill his thought with foolish anticipations. Is there any being quite so happy, quite so stupid, as a lover? A lover, who hopes everything and fears everything, who goes in an instant from the heights of bliss to the depths of despair.

When the "reception" was over and the company was breaking up into groups and moving about, Philip again sought Evelyn. But she was the centre of a somewhat noisy group, and it was not easy to join it.

Yet it was something that he could feast his eyes on her and was rewarded by a look now and then that told him she was conscious of his presence. Encouraged by this, he was making his way to her, when there was a movement towards the supper-room, and Mrs. Mavick had taken the arm of the Count de l'Auney, and the little lord was jauntily leading away Evelyn. Philip had a pang of disgust and jealousy. Evelyn was actually chatting with him and seemed amused. Lord Montague was evidently laying himself out to please and exerting all the powers of his subtle humor and exploiting his newly acquired slang. That Philip could hear as they moved past him. "The brute!" Philip said to himself, with the injustice which always clouds the estimate of a lover of a rival whose accomplishments differ from his own.

In the supper-room, however, in the confusion and crowding of it, Philip at length found his opportunity to get to the side of Evelyn, whose smile showed him that he was welcome. It was in that fortunate interval when Lord Montague was showing that devotion to women was not incompatible with careful attention to terrapin and champagne. Philip was at once inspired to say:

"How lovely it is! Aren't you tired?"

"Not at all. Everybody is very kind, and some are very amusing. I am learning a great deal," and there was a quizzical look in her eyes, "about the world."

"Well," said Philip, "t's all here."

"I suppose so. But do you know," and there was quite an ingenuous blush in her cheeks as she said it, "it isn't half so nice, Mr. Burnett, as a picnic in Zoar."

"So you remember that?" Philip had not command of himself enough not to attempt the sentimental.

"You must think I have a weak memory," she replied, with a laugh. "And the story? When shall we have it?"

"Soon, I hope. And, Miss Mavick, I owe so much of it to you that I hope you will let me send you the very first copy from the press."

"Will you? And do you Of course I shall be pleased and" (making him a little curtsy) "honored, as one ought to say in this company."

Lord Montague was evidently getting uneasy, for his attention was distracted from the occupation of feeding.

"No, don't go Lord Montague, an old friend, Mr. Burnett."

"Much pleased," said his lordship, looking round rather inquiringly at the intruder. "I can't say much for the champagne—ah, not bad, you know—but I always said that your terrapin isn't half so nasty as it looks." And his lordship laughed most good-humoredly, as if he were paying the American nation a deserved compliment.

"Yes," said Philip, "we have to depend upon France for the champagne, but the terrapin is native."

"Quite so, and devilish good! That ain't bad, 'depend upon France for the champagne!' There is nothing like your American humor, Miss Mavick."

"It needs an Englishman to appreciate it," replied Evelyn, with a twinkle in her eyes which was lost upon her guest.

In the midst of these courtesies Philip bowed himself away. The party was over for him, though he wandered about for a while, was attracted again by the music to the ballroom, and did find there a dinner acquaintance with whom he took a turn. The lady must have thought him a very uninteresting or a very absent-minded companion.

As for Lord Montague, after he had what he called a "go" in the dancing-room, he found his way back to the buffet in the supper-room, and the historian says that he greatly enjoyed himself, and was very amusing, and that he cultivated the friendship of an obliging waiter early in the morning, who conducted his lordship to his cab.



XVII

The morning after The Puritan Nun was out, as Philip sat at his office desk, conscious that the eyes of the world were on him, Mr. Mavick entered, bowed to him absent-mindedly, and was shown into Mr. Hunt's room.

Philip had dreaded to come to the office that morning and encounter the inquisition and perhaps the compliments of his fellow-clerks. He had seen his name in staring capitals in the book-seller's window as he came down, and he felt that it was shamefully exposed to the public gaze, and that everybody had seen it. The clerks, however, gave no sign that the event had disturbed them. He had encountered many people he knew on the street, but there had been no recognition of his leap into notoriety. Not a fellow in the club, where he had stopped a moment, had treated him with any increased interest or deference. In the office only one person seemed aware of his extraordinary good fortune. Mr. Tweedle had come to the desk and offered his hand in his usual conciliatory and unctuous manner.

"I see by the paper, Mr. Burnett, that we are an author. Let me congratulate you. Mrs. Tweedle told me not to come home without bringing your story. Who publishes it?"

"I shall be much honored," said Philip, blushing, "if Mrs. Tweedle will accept a copy from me."

"I didn't mean that, Mr. Burnett; but, of course, gift of the author —Mrs. Tweedle will be very much pleased."

In half an hour Mr. Mavick came out, passed him without recognition, and hurried from the office, and Philip was summoned to Mr. Hunt's room.

"I want you to go to Washington immediately, Mr. Burnett. Return by the night train. You can do without your grip? Take these papers to Buckston Higgins—you see the address—who represents the British Argentine syndicate. Wait till he reads them and get his reply. Here is the money for the trip. Oh, after Mr. Higgins writes his answer, ask him if you can telegraph me 'yes' or 'no.' Good-morning."

While Philip was speeding to Washington, an important conference was taking place in Murad Ault's office. He was seated at his desk, and before him lay two despatches, one from Chicago and a cable from London. Opposite him, leaning forward in his chair, was a lean, hatchet-faced man, with keen eyes and aquiline nose, who watched his old curbstone confidant like a cat.

"I tell you, Wheatstone," said Mr. Ault, with an unmoved face, bringing his fist down on the table, "now is the time to sell these three stocks."

"Why," said Mr. Wheatstone, with a look of wonder, "they are about the strongest on the list. Mavick controls them."

"Does he?" said Ault. "Then he can take care of them."

"Have you any news, Mr. Ault?"

"Nothing to speak of," replied Ault, grimly. "It just looks so to me. All you've got to do is to sell. Make a break this afternoon, about two or three points off."

"They are too strong," protested Mr. Wheatstone.

"That is just the reason. Everybody will think something must be the matter, or nobody would be fool enough to sell. You keep your eye on the Spectrum this afternoon and tomorrow morning. About Organization and one or two other matters."

"Ah, they do say that Mavick is in Argentine up to his neck," said the broker, beginning to be enlightened.

"Is he? Then you think he would rather sell than buy?"

Mr. Wheatstone laughed and looked admiringly at his leader. "He may have to."

Mr. Ault took up the cable cipher and read it to himself again. If Mr. Hunt had known its contents he need not have waited for Philip to telegraph "no" from Washington.

"It's all right, Wheatstone. It's the biggest thing you ever struck. Pitch 'em overboard in the morning. The Street is shaky about Argentine. There'll be h—-to pay before half past twelve. I guess you can safely go ten points. Lower yet, if Mavick's brokers begin to unload. I guess he will have to unless he can borrow. Rumor is a big thing, especially in a panic, eh? Keep your eye peeled. And, oh, won't you ask Babcock to step round here?"

Mr. Babcock came round, and had his instructions when to buy. He had the reputation of being a reckless broker, and not a safe man to follow.

The panic next day, both in London and New York, was long remembered. In the unreasoning scare the best stocks were sacrificed. Small country "investors" lost their stakes. Some operators were ruined. Many men were poorer at the end of the scrimmage, and a few were richer. Murad Ault was one of the latter. Mavick pulled through, though at an enormous cost, and with some diminution of the notion of his solidity. The wise ones suspected that his resources had been overestimated, or that they were not so well at his command as had been supposed.

When he went home that night he looked five years older, and was too worn and jaded to be civil to his family. The dinner passed mostly in silence. Carmen saw that something serious had happened. Lord Montague had called.

"Eh, what did he want?" said Mavick, surlily.

Carmen looked up surprised. "What does anybody after a reception call for?"

"The Lord only knows."

"He is the funniest little man," Evelyn ventured to say.

"That is no way, child, to speak of the son of a duke," said Mavick, relaxing a little.

Carmen did not like the tone in which this was said, but she prudently kept silent. And presently Evelyn continued:

"He asked for you, papa, and said he wanted to pay his respects."

"I am glad he wants to pay anything," was the ungracious answer. Still Evelyn was not to be put down.

"It was such a bright day in the Park. What were you doing all day, papa?"

"Why, my dear, I was engaged in Research; you will be pleased to know. Looking after those ten millions."

When the dinner was over, Carmen followed Mr. Mavick to his study.

"What is the matter, Tom?"

"Nothing uncommon. It's a beastly hole down there. The Board used to be made up of gentlemen. Now there are such fellows as Ault, a black-hearted scoundrel."

"But he has no influence. He is nothing socially," said Carmen.

"Neither is a wolf or a cyclone. But I don't care to talk about him. Don't you see, I don't want to be bothered?"

While these great events were taking place Philip was enjoying all the tremors and delights of expectation which attend callow authorship. He did not expect much, he said to himself, but deep down in his heart there was that sweet hope, which fortunately always attends young writers, that his would be an exceptional experience in the shoal of candidates for fame, and he was secretly preparing himself not to be surprised if he should "awake one morning and find himself famous."

The first response was from Celia. She wrote warm-heartedly. She wrote at length, analyzing the characters, recalling the striking scenes, and praising without stint the conception and the working out of the character of the heroine. She pointed out the little faults of construction and of language, and then minimized them in comparison with the noble motive and the unity and beauty of the whole. She told Philip that she was proud of him, and then insisted that, when his biography, life, and letters was published, it would appear, she hoped, that his dear friend had just a little to do with inspiring him. It was exactly the sort of letter an author likes to receive, critical, perfectly impartial, and with entire understanding of his purpose. All the author wants is to be understood.

The letter from Alice was quite of another sort, a little shy in speaking of the story, but full of affection. "Perhaps, dear Phil," she wrote, "I ought not to tell you how much I like it, how it quite makes me blush in its revelation of the secrets of a New England girl's heart. I read it through fast, and then I read it again slowly. It seemed better even the second time. I do think, Phil, it is a dear little book. Patience says she hopes it will not become common; it is too fine to be nosed about by the ordinary. I suppose you had to make it pathetic. Dear me! that is just the truth of it. Forgive me for writing so freely. I hope it will not be long before we see you. To think it is done by little Phil!"

The most eagerly expected acknowledgment was, however, a disappointment. Philip knew Mrs. Mavick too well by this time to expect a letter from her daughter, but there might have been a line. But Mrs. Mavick wrote herself. Her daughter, she said, had asked her to acknowledge the receipt of his very charming story. When he had so many friends it was very thoughtful in him to remember the acquaintances of last summer. She hoped the book would have the success it deserved.

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

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

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

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

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

"Going to drop law, eh?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes?"

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

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

"Authors are pretty plenty nowadays."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, not on paper."

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

"You forget that I am a lawyer."

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

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

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

"But circumstances sometimes compel a man."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is?"

"You insisted upon having him at the reception."

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

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

"Did you have a good time, child?"

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

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

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

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

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



XVIII

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

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

But there was Evelyn, with her innocent question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You!" she repeated.

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

"And you have told her this?"

"No, never, never a word."

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

"I am afraid not."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.