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That Fortune

by Charles Dudley Warner · English · Gutenberg #3105 · 498,676 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: That Fortune

Author: Charles Dudley Warner


        
Release date: October 10, 2004 [eBook #3105]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3105

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THAT FORTUNE ***



Produced by David Widger





THAT FORTUNE

By Charles Dudley Warner




I

On a summer day, long gone among the summer days that come but to go,
a lad of twelve years was idly and recklessly swinging in the top of a
tall hickory, the advance picket of a mountain forest. The tree was on
the edge of a steep declivity of rocky pasture-land that fell rapidly
down to the stately chestnuts, to the orchard, to the cornfields in
the narrow valley, and the maples on the bank of the amber river, whose
loud, unceasing murmur came to the lad on his aerial perch like the
voice of some tradition of nature that he could not understand.

He had climbed to the topmost branch of the lithe and tough tree in
order to take the full swing of this free creature in its sport with the
western wind. There was something exhilarating in this elemental battle
of the forces that urge and the forces that resist, and the harder
the wind blew, and the wider circles he took in the free air, the more
stirred the boy was in the spring of his life. Nature was taking him
by the hand, and it might be that in that moment ambition was born to
achieve for himself, to conquer.

If you had asked him why he was there, he would very likely have said,
“To see the world.” It was a world worth seeing. The prospect might
be limited to a dull eye, but not to this lad, who loved to climb this
height, in order to be with himself and indulge the dreams of youth. Any
pretense would suffice for taking this hour of freedom: to hunt for
the spicy checker-berries and the pungent sassafras; to aggravate the
woodchucks, who made their homes in mysterious passages in this gravelly
hillside; to get a nosegay of columbine for the girl who spelled against
him in school and was his gentle comrade morning and evening along
the river road where grew the sweet-flag and the snap-dragon and the
barberry bush; to make friends with the elegant gray squirrel and the
lively red squirrel and the comical chipmunk, who were not much afraid
of this unarmed naturalist. They may have recognized their kinship to
him, for he could climb like any squirrel, and not one of them could
have clung more securely to this bough where he was swinging, rejoicing
in the strength of his lithe, compact little body. When he shouted in
pure enjoyment of life, they chattered in reply, and eyed him with a
primeval curiosity that had no fear in it. This lad in short trousers,
torn shirt, and a frayed straw hat above his mobile and cheerful face,
might be only another sort of animal, a lover like themselves of the
beech-nut and the hickory-nut.

It was a gay world up here among the tossing branches. Across the river,
on the first terrace of the hill, were weather-beaten farmhouses, amid
apple orchards and cornfields. Above these rose the wooded dome of Mount
Peak, a thousand feet above the river, and beyond that to the left
the road wound up, through the scriptural land of Bozrah, to high and
lonesome towns on a plateau stretching to unknown regions in the south.
There was no bar to the imagination in that direction. What a gracious
valley, what graceful slopes, what a mass of color bathing this lovely
summer landscape! Down from the west, through hills that crowded on
either side to divert it from its course, ran the sparkling Deerfield,
from among the springs and trout streams of the Hoosac, merrily going on
to the great Connecticut. Along the stream was the ancient highway, or
lowway, where in days before the railway came the stage-coach and the
big transport-wagons used to sway and rattle along on their adventurous
voyage from the gate of the Sea at Boston to the gate of the West at
Albany.

Below, where the river spread wide among the rocks in shallows, or
eddies in deep, dark pools, was the ancient, long, covered, wooden
bridge, striding diagonally from rock to rock on stone columns, a
dusky tunnel through the air, a passage of gloom flecked with glints of
sunlight, that struggled in crosscurrents through the interstices of
the boards, and set dancing the motes and the dust in a golden haze, a
stuffy passage with odors a century old--who does not know the pungent
smell of an old bridge?--a structure that groaned in all its big timbers
when a wagon invaded it. And then below the bridge the lad could see the
historic meadow, which was a cornfield in the eighteenth century, where
Captain Moses Rice and Phineas Arms came suddenly one summer day to
the end of their planting and hoeing. The house at the foot of the hill
where the boy was cultivating his imagination had been built by Captain
Rice, and in the family burying-ground in the orchard above it lay the
body of this mighty militia-man, and beside him that of Phineas Arms,
and on the headstone of each the legend familiar at that period of our
national life, “Killed by the Indians.” Happy Phineas Arms, at the age
of seventeen to exchange in a moment the tedium of the cornfield for
immortality.

There was a tradition that years after, when the Indians had disappeared
through a gradual process of intoxication and pauperism, a red man had
been seen skulking along the brow of this very hill and peering down
through the bushes where the boy was now perched on a tree, shaking his
fist at the hated civilization, and vengefully, some said pathetically,
looking down into this valley where his race had been so happy in the
natural pursuits of fishing, hunting, and war. On the opposite side of
the river was still to be traced an Indian trail, running to the western
mountains, which the boy intended some time to follow; for this highway
of warlike forays, of messengers of defiance, along which white maidens
had been led captive to Canada, appealed greatly to his imagination.

The boy lived in these traditions quite as much as in those of the
Revolutionary War into which they invariably glided in his perspective
of history, the redskins and the redcoats being both enemies of his
ancestors. There was the grave of the envied Phineas Arms--that ancient
boy not much older than he--and there were hanging in the kitchen the
musket and powder-horn that his great-grandfather had carried at Bunker
Hill, and did he not know by heart the story of his great-grandmother,
who used to tell his father that she heard when she was a slip of a
girl in Plymouth the cannonading on that awful day when Gage met his
victorious defeat?

In fact, according to his history-book there had been little but wars
in this peaceful nation: the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the incessant
frontier wars with the Indians, the Kansas War, the Mormon War, the War
for the Union. The echoes of the latter had not yet died away. What a
career he might have had if he had not been born so late in the world!
Swinging in this tree-top, with a vivid consciousness of life, of his
own capacity for action, it seemed a pity that he could not follow the
drum and the flag into such contests as he read about so eagerly.

And yet this was only a corner of the boy's imagination. He had many
worlds and he lived in each by turn. There was the world of the Old
Testament, of David and Samson, and of those dim figures in the dawn of
history, called the Patriarchs. There was the world of Julius Caesar and
the Latin grammar, though this was scarcely as real to him as the Old
Testament, which was brought to his notice every Sunday as a necessity
of his life, while Caesar and AEneas and the fourth declension were made
to be a task, for some mysterious reason, a part of his education. He
had not been told that they were really a part of the other world which
occupied his mind so much of the time, the world of the Arabian Nights
and Robinson Crusoe, and Coleridge and Shelley and Longfellow, and
Washington Irving and Scott and Thackeray, and Pope's Iliad and
Plutarch's Lives. That this was a living world to the boy was scarcely
his fault, for it must be confessed that those were very antiquated
book-shelves in the old farmhouse to which he had access, and the news
had not been apprehended in this remote valley that the classics of
literature were all as good as dead and buried, and that the human mind
had not really created anything worth modern notice before about the
middle of the nineteenth century. It was not exactly an ignorant valley,
for the daily newspapers were there, and the monthly magazine, and the
fashion-plate of Paris, and the illuminating sunshine of new science,
and enough of the uneasy throb of modern life. Yet somehow the books
that were still books had not been sent to the garret, to make room for
the illustrated papers and the profound physiological studies of sin and
suffering that were produced by touching a scientific button. No, the
boy was conscious in a way of the mighty pulsation of American life,
and he had also a dim notion that his dreams in his various worlds would
come to a brilliant fulfillment when he was big enough to go out and win
a name and fame. But somehow the old books, and the family life, and the
sedate ways of the community he knew, had given him a fundamental and
not unarmed faith in the things that were and had been.

Every Sunday the preacher denounced the glitter and frivolity and
corruption of what he called Society, until the boy longed to see this
splendid panorama of cities and hasting populations, the seekers of
pleasure and money and fame, this gay world which was as fascinating as
it was wicked. The preacher said the world was wicked and vain. It did
not seem so to the boy this summer day, not at least the world he knew.
Of course the boy had no experience. He had never heard of Juvenal nor
of Max Nordau. He had no philosophy of life. He did not even know
that when he became very old the world would seem to him good or bad
according to the degree in which he had become a good or a bad man.

In fact, he was not thinking much about being good or being bad, but
of trying his powers in a world which seemed to offer to him infinite
opportunities. His name--Philip Burnett--with which the world, at least
the American world, is now tolerably familiar, and which he liked to
write with ornamental flourishes on the fly-leaves of his schoolbooks,
did not mean much to him, for he had never seen it in print, nor been
confronted with it as something apart from himself. But the Philip that
he was he felt sure would do something in the world. What that something
should be varied from day to day according to the book, the poem, the
history or biography that he was last reading. It would not be difficult
to write a poem like “Thanatopsis” if he took time enough, building up a
line a day. And yet it would be better to be a soldier, a man who could
use the sword as well as the pen, a poet in uniform. This was a pleasing
imagination. Surely his aunt and his cousins in the farmhouse would
have more respect for him if he wore a uniform, and treat him with more
consideration, and perhaps they would be very anxious about him when
he was away in battles, and very proud of him when he came home between
battles, and went quite modestly with the family into the village
church, and felt rather than saw the slight flutter in the pews as he
walked down the aisle, and knew that the young ladies, the girl comrades
of the district school, were watching him from the organ gallery,
curious to see Phil, who had gone into the army. Perhaps the preacher
would have a sermon against war, and the preacher should see how
soldierlike he would take this attack on him. Alas! is such vanity at
the bottom of even a reasonable ambition? Perhaps his town would be
proud of him if he were a lawyer, a Representative in Congress, come
back to deliver the annual oration at the Agricultural Fair. He could
see the audience of familiar faces, and hear the applause at his witty
satires and his praise of the nobility of the farmer's life, and it
would be sweet indeed to have the country people grasp him by the hand
and call him Phil, just as they used to before he was famous. What he
would say, he was not thinking of, but the position he would occupy
before the audience. There were no misgivings in any of these dreams of
youth.




II

The musings of this dreamer in a tree-top were interrupted by the
peremptory notes of a tin horn from the farmhouse below. The boy
recognized this not only as a signal of declining day and the
withdrawal of the sun behind the mountains, but as a personal and urgent
notification to him that a certain amount of disenchanting drudgery
called chores lay between him and supper and the lamp-illumined pages of
The Last of the Mohicans. It was difficult, even in his own estimation,
to continue to be a hero at the summons of a tin horn--a silver clarion
and castle walls would have been so different--and Phil slid swiftly
down from his perch, envying the squirrels who were under no such
bondage of duty.

Recalled to the world that now is, the lad hastily gathered a bouquet
of columbine and a bunch of the tender leaves and the red berries of the
wintergreen, called to “Turk,” who had been all these hours watching a
woodchuck hole, and ran down the hill by leaps and circuits as fast as
his little legs could carry him, and, with every appearance of a lad who
puts duty before pleasure, arrived breathless at the kitchen door, where
Alice stood waiting for him. Alice, the somewhat feeble performer on the
horn, who had been watching for the boy with her hand shading her eyes,
called out upon his approach:

“Why, Phil, what in the world--”

“Oh, Alice!” cried the boy, eagerly, having in a moment changed in
his mind the destination of the flowers; “I've found a place where the
checker-berries are thick as spatter.” And Phil put the flowers and the
berries in his cousin's hand. Alice looked very much pleased with this
simple tribute, but, as she admired it, unfortunately asked--women
always ask such questions:

“And you picked them for me?”

This was a cruel dilemma. Phil was more devoted to his sweet cousin than
to any one else in the world, and he didn't want to hurt her feelings,
and he hated to tell a lie. So he only looked a lie, out of his
affectionate, truthful eyes, and said:

“I love to bring you flowers. Has uncle come home yet?”

“Yes, long ago. He called and looked all around for you to unharness the
horse, and he wanted you to go an errand over the river to Gibson's. I
guess he was put out.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He asked if you had weeded the beets. And he said that you were the
master boy to dream and moon around he ever saw.” And she added, with
a confidential and mischievous smile: “I think you'd better brought a
switch along; it would save time.”

Phil had a great respect for his uncle Maitland, but he feared him
almost more than he feared the remote God of Abraham and Isaac. Mr.
Maitland was not only the most prosperous man in all that region, but
the man of the finest appearance, and a bearing that was equity itself.
He was the first selectman of the town, and a deacon in the church, and
however much he prized mercy in the next world he did not intend to have
that quality interfere with justice in this world. Phil knew indeed that
he was a man of God, that fact was impressed upon him at least twice a
day, but he sometimes used to think it must be a severe God to have
that sort of man. And he didn't like the curt way he pronounced the holy
name--he might as well have called Job “job.”

Alice was as unlike her father, except in certain race qualities of
integrity and common-sense, as if she were of different blood. She was
the youngest of five maiden sisters, and had arrived at the mature age
of eighteen. Slender in figure, with a grace that was half shyness, soft
brown hair, gray eyes that changed color and could as easily be sad
as merry, a face marked with a moving dimple that every one said was
lovely, retiring in manner and yet not lacking spirit nor a sly wit of
her own. Now and then, yes, very often, out of some paradise, no doubt,
strays into New England conditions of reticence and self-denial such a
sweet spirit, to diffuse a breath of heaven in its atmosphere, and
to wither like a rose ungathered. These are the New England nuns, not
taking any vows, not self-consciously virtuous, apparently untouched by
the vanities of the world. Marriage? It is not in any girl's nature not
to think of that, not to be in a flutter of pleasure or apprehension
at the attentions of the other sex. Who has been able truly to read
the thoughts of a shrinking maiden in the passing days of her youth and
beauty? In this harmonious and unselfish household, each with decided
individual character, no one ever intruded upon the inner life of the
other. No confidences were given in the deep matters of the heart,
no sign except a blush over a sly allusion to some one who had been
“attentive.” If you had stolen a look into the workbasket or the secret
bureau-drawer, you might have found a treasured note, a bit of ribbon, a
rosebud, some token of tenderness or of friendship that was growing
old with the priestess who cherished it. Did they not love flowers, and
pets, and had they not a passion for children? Were there not moonlight
evenings when they sat silent and musing on the stone steps, watching
the shadows and the dancing gleams on the swift river, when the air
was fragrant with the pink and the lilac? Not melancholy this, nor
poignantly sad, but having in it nevertheless something of the pathos
of life unfulfilled. And was there not sometimes, not yet habitually,
coming upon these faces, faces plain and faces attractive, the shade of
renunciation?

Phil loved Alice devotedly. She was his confidante, his defender, but
he feared more the disapproval of her sweet eyes when he had done wrong
than the threatened punishment of his uncle.

“I only meant to be gone just a little while,” Phil went on to say.

“And you were away the whole afternoon. It is a pity the days are so
short. And you don't know what you lost.”

“No great, I guess.”

“Celia and her mother were here. They stayed all the afternoon.”

“Celia Howard? Did she wonder where I was?”

“I don't know. She didn't say anything about it. What a dear little
thing she is!”

“And she can say pretty cutting things.”

“Oh, can she? Perhaps you'd better run down to the village before dark
and take her these flowers.”

“I'm not going. I'd rather you should have the flowers.” And Phil spoke
the truth this time.

Celia, who was altogether too young to occupy seriously the mind of a
lad of twelve, had nevertheless gained an ascendancy over him because of
her willful, perverse, and sometimes scornful ways, and because she was
different from the other girls of the school. She had read many more
books than Phil, for she had access to a library, and she could tell
him much of a world that he only heard of through books and newspapers,
which latter he had no habit of reading. He liked, therefore, to be
with Celia, not withstanding her little airs of superiority, and if she
patronized him, as she certainly did, probably the simple-minded young
gentleman, who was unconsciously bred in the belief that he and his
own kin had no superiors anywhere, never noticed it. To be sure they
quarreled a good deal, but truth to say Phil was never more fascinated
with the little witch, whom he felt himself strong enough to protect,
than when she showed a pretty temper. He rather liked to be ordered
about by the little tyrant. And sometimes he wished that Murad Ault,
the big boy of the school, would be rude to the small damsel, so that
he could show her how a knight would act under such circumstances. Murad
Ault stood to Phil for the satanic element in his peaceful world. He
was not only big and strong of limb and broad of chest, but he was very
swarthy, and had closely curled black hair. He feared nothing, not even
the teacher, and was always doing some dare-devil thing to frighten
the children. And because he was dark, morose, and made no friends, and
wished none, but went solitary his own dark way, Phil fancied that he
must have Spanish blood in his veins, and would no doubt grow up to be
a pirate. No other boy in the winter could skate like Murad Ault, with
such strength and grace and recklessness--thin ice and thick ice were
all one to him, but he skated along, dashing in and out, and sweeping
away up and down the river in a whirl of vigor and daring, like a black
marauder. Yet he was best and most awesome in the swimming pond in
summer--though it was believed that he dared go in in the bitter winter,
either by breaking the ice or through an air-hole, and there was a story
that he had ventured under the ice as fearless as a cold fish. No one
could dive from such a height as he, or stay so long under water; he
liked to stay under long enough to scare the spectators, and then appear
at a distance, thrashing about in the water as if he were rescuing
himself from drowning, sputtering out at the same time the most
diabolical noises--curses, no doubt, for he had been heard to swear.
But as he skated alone he swam alone, appearing and disappearing at the
swimming-place silently, with never a salutation to any one. And he was
as skillful a fisher as he was a swimmer. No one knew much about him.
He lived with his mother in a little cabin up among the hills, that had
about it scant patches of potatoes and corn and beans, a garden fenced
in by stumproots, as ill-cared for as the shanty. Where they came from
no one knew. How they lived was a matter of conjecture, though the
mother gathered herbs and berries and bartered them at the village
store, and Murad occasionally took a hand in some neighbor's hay-field,
or got a job of chopping wood in the winter. The mother was old and
small and withered, and they said evil-eyed. Probably she was no more
evil-eyed than any old woman who had such a hard struggle for existence
as she had. An old widow with an only son who looked like a Spaniard and
acted like an imp! Here was another sort of exotic in the New England
life.

Celia had been brought to Rivervale by her mother about a year before
this time, and the two occupied a neat little cottage in the village,
distinguished only by its neatness and a plot of syringas, and pinks,
and marigolds, and roses, and bachelor's-buttons, and boxes of the
tough little exotics, called “hen-and-chickens,” in the door-yard, and
a vigorous fragrant honeysuckle over the front porch. She only dimly
remembered her father, who had been a merchant in a small way in
the city, and dying left to his widow and only child a very moderate
fortune. The girl showed early an active and ingenious mind, and an
equal love for books and for having her own way; but she was delicate,
and Mrs. Howard wisely judged that a few years in a country village
would improve her health and broaden her view of life beyond that of
cockney provincialism. For, though Mrs. Howard had more refinement
than strength of mind, and passed generally for a sweet and inoffensive
little woman, she did not lack a certain true perception of values, due
doubtless to the fact that she had been a New England girl, and, before
her marriage and emigration to the great city, had passed her life among
unexciting realities, and among people who had leisure to think out
things in a slow way. But the girl's energy and self-confidence had no
doubt been acquired from her father, who was cut off in mid-career of
his struggle for place in the metropolis, or from some remote ancestor.
Before she was eleven years old her mother had listened with some wonder
and more apprehension to the eager forecast of what this child intended
to do when she became a woman, and already shrank from a vision of Celia
on a public platform, or the leader of some metempsychosis club. Through
her affections only was the child manageable, but in opposition to her
spirit her mother was practically powerless. Indeed, this little sprout
of the New Age always spoke of her to Philip and to the Maitlands as
“little mother.”

The epithet seemed peculiarly tender to Philip, who had lost his father
before he was six years old, and he was more attracted to the timid and
gentle little widow than to his equable but more robust Aunt Eusebia,
Mrs. Maitland, his father's elder sister, whom Philip fancied not a bit
like his father except in sincerity, a quality common to the Maitlands
and Burnetts. Yet there was a family likeness between his aunt and a
portrait of his father, painted by a Boston artist of some celebrity,
which his mother, who survived her husband only three years, had
saved for her boy. His father was a farmer, but a man of considerable
cultivation, though not college-bred--his last request on his death-bed
was that Phil should be sent to college--a man who made experiments in
improving agriculture and the breed of cattle and horses, read papers
now and then on topics of social and political reform, and was the only
farmer in all the hill towns who had what might be called a library.

It was all scattered at the time of the winding up of the farm estate,
and the only jetsam that Philip inherited out of it was an annotated
copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Young's Travels in France, a
copy of The Newcomes, and the first American edition of Childe
Harold. Probably these odd volumes had not been considered worth any
considerable bid at the auction. From his mother, who was fond of books,
and had on more than one occasion, of the failure of teachers, taught
in the village school in her native town before her marriage, Philip
inherited his love of poetry, and he well remembered how she used to try
to inspire him with patriotism by reading the orations of Daniel Webster
(she was very fond of orations), and telling him war stories about
Grant and Sherman and Sheridan and Farragut and Lincoln. He distinctly
remembered also standing at her knees and trying, at intervals, to
commit to memory the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He had learned it all
since, because he thought it would please his mother, and because there
was something in it that appealed to his coming sense of the mystery
of life. When he repeated it to Celia, who had never heard of it, and
remarked that it was all made up, and that she never tried to learn a
long thing like that that wasn't so, Philip could see that her respect
for him increased a little. He did not know that the child got it out
of the library the next day and never rested till she knew it by heart.
Philip could repeat also the books of the Bible in order, just as glibly
as the multiplication-table, and the little minx, who could not brook
that a country boy should be superior to her in anything, had surprised
her mother by rattling them all off to her one Sunday evening, just as
if she had been born in New England instead of in New York. As to the
other fine things his mother read him, out of Ruskin and the like;
Philip chiefly remembered what a pretty glow there was in his mother's
face when she read them, and that recollection was a valuable part of
the boy's education.

Another valuable part of his education was the gracious influence in
his aunt's household, the spirit of candor, of affection, and the sane
common-sense with which life was regarded, the simplicity of its faith
and the patience with which trials were borne. The lessons he learned in
it had more practical influence in his life than all the books he read.
Nor were his opportunities for the study of character so meagre as
the limit of one family would imply. As often happens in New England
households, individualities were very marked, and from his stern uncle
and his placid aunt down to the sweet and nimble-witted Alice, the
family had developed traits and even eccentricities enough to make it a
sort of microcosm of life. There, for instance, was Patience, the maiden
aunt, his father's sister, the news-monger of the fireside, whose
powers of ratiocination first gave Philip the Greek idea and method of
reasoning to a point and arriving at truth by the process of exclusion.
It did not excite his wonder at the time, but afterwards it appeared to
him as one of the New England eccentricities of which the novelists make
so much. Patience was a home-keeping body and rarely left the premises
except to go to church on Sunday, although her cheerfulness and social
helpfulness were tinged by nothing morbid. The story was--Philip learned
it long afterwards--that in her very young and frisky days Patience had
one evening remained out at some merry-making very late, and in fact had
been escorted home in the moonlight by a young gentleman when the
tall, awful-faced clock, whose face her mother was watching, was on the
dreadful stroke of eleven. For this delinquency her mother had reproved
her, the girl thought unreasonably, and she had quickly replied,
“Mother, I will never go out again.” And she never did. It was in fact a
renunciation of the world, made apparently without rage, and adhered to
with cheerful obstinacy.

But although for many years Patience rarely left her home, until the
habit of seclusion had become as fixed as that of a nun who had
taken the vows, no one knew so well as she the news and gossip of
the neighborhood, and her power of learning or divining it seemed to
increase with her years. She had a habit of sitting, when her household
duties permitted, at a front window, which commanded a long view of the
river road, and gathering the news by a process peculiar to herself.
From this peep-hole she studied the character and destination of all the
passers-by that came within range of her vision, and made her comments
and deductions, partly to herself, but for the benefit of those who
might be listening.

“Why, there goes Thomas Henry,” she would say (she always called people
by their first and middle names). “Now, wherever can he be going this
morning in the very midst of getting in his hay? He can't be going
to the Browns' for vegetables, for they set great store by their own
raising this year; and they don't get their provisions up this way
either, because Mary Ellen quarreled with Simmons's people last year.
No!” she would exclaim, rising to a climax of certainty on this point,
“I'll be bound he is not going after anything in the eating line!”

Meantime Thomas Henry's wagon would be disappearing slowly up the
sandy road, giving Patience a chance to get all she could out of it, by
eliminating all the errands Thomas Henry could not possibly be going to
do in order to arrive at the one he must certainly be bound on.

“They do say he's courting Eliza Merritt,” she continued, “but Eliza
never was a girl to make any man leave his haying. No, he's never going
to see Eliza, and if it isn't provisions or love it's nothing short
of sickness. Now, whoever is sick down there? It can't be Mary Ellen,
because she takes after her father's family and they are all hearty. It
must be Mary Ellen's little girls, and the measles are going the rounds.
It must be they've all got the measles.”

If the listeners suggested that possibly one of the little girls might
have escaped, the suggestion was decisively put aside.

“No; if one of them had been well, Mary Ellen would have sent her for
the doctor.”

Presently Thomas Henry's cart was heard rumbling back, and sure enough
he was returning with the doctor, and Patience hailed him from the gate
and demanded news of Mary Ellen.

“Why, all her little girls have the measles,” replied Thomas Henry, “and
I had to leave my haying to fetch the doctor.”

“I want to know,” said Patience.

Being the eldest born, Patience had appropriated to herself two rooms
in the rambling old farmhouse before her brother's marriage, from which
later comers had never dislodged her, and with that innate respect
for the rights and peculiarities of others which was common in the
household, she was left to express her secluded life in her own way. As
the habit of retirement grew upon her she created a world of her own,
almost as curious and more individually striking than the museum of
Cluny. There was not a square foot in her tiny apartment that did not
exhibit her handiwork. She was very fond of reading, and had a passion
for the little prints and engravings of “foreign views,” which she wove
into her realm of natural history. There was no flower or leaf or fruit
that she had seen that she could not imitate exactly in wax or paper.
All over the walls hung the little prints and engravings, framed in
wreaths of moss and artificial flowers, or in elaborate square frames
made of pasteboard. The pasteboard was cut out to fit the picture, and
the margins, daubed with paste, were then strewn with seeds of corn and
acorns and hazelnuts, and then the whole was gilded so that the effect
was almost as rich as it was novel. All about the rooms, in nooks and on
tables, stood baskets and dishes of fruit-apples and plums and peaches
and grapes-set in proper foliage of most natural appearance, like enough
to deceive a bird or the Sunday-school scholars, when on rare occasions
they were admitted into this holy of holies. Out of boxes, apparently
filled with earth in the corners of the rooms, grew what seemed to be
vines trained to run all about the cornices and to festoon the pictures,
but which were really strings, colored in imitation of the real vine,
and spreading out into paper foliage. To complete the naturalistic
character of these everlasting vines, which no scale-bugs could assail,
there were bunches of wonderful grapes depending here and there to
excite the cupidity of both bird and child. There was no cruelty in
the nature of Patience, and she made prisoners of neither birds
nor squirrels, but cunning cages here and there held most lifelike
counterfeits of their willing captives. There was nothing in the room
that was alive, except the dainty owner, but it seemed to be a museum
of natural history. The rugs on the floor were of her own devising and
sewing together, and rivaled in color and ingenuity those of Bokhara.

But Patience was a student of the heavens as well as of the earth, and
it was upon the ceiling that her imagination expanded. There one could
see in their order the constellations of the heavens, represented by
paper-gilt stars, of all magnitudes, most wonderful to behold. This part
of her decorations was the most difficult of all. The constellations
were not made from any geography of the heavens, but from actual nightly
observation of the positions of the heavenly bodies. Patience confessed
that the getting exactly right of the Great Dipper had caused her most
trouble. On the night that was constructed she sat up till three o'clock
in the morning, going out and studying it and coming in and putting up
one star at a time. How could she reach the high ceiling? Oh, she took
a bean-pole, stuck the gilt star on the end of it, having paste on the
reverse side, and fixed it in its place. That was easy, only it was
difficult to remember when she came into the house the correct positions
of the stars in the heavens. What the astronomer and the botanist and
the naturalist would have said of this little kingdom is unknown, but
Patience herself lived among the glories of the heavens and the beauties
of the earth which she had created. Probably she may have had a humorous
conception of this, for she was not lacking in a sense of humor. The
stone step that led to her private door she had skillfully painted with
faint brown spots, so that when visitors made their exit from this part
of the house they would say, “Why, it rains!” but Patience would laugh
and say, “I guess it is over by now.”




III

“I'm not going to follow you about any more through the brush and
brambles, Phil Burnett,” and Celia, emerging from the thicket into a
clearing, flung herself down on a knoll under a beech-tree.

Celia was cross. They were out for a Saturday holiday on the hillside,
where Phil said there were oceans of raspberries and blueberries,
beginning to get ripe, and where you could hear the partridges drumming
in the woods, and see the squirrels.

“Why, I'm not a bit tired,” said Phil; “a boy wouldn't be.” And he threw
himself down on the green moss, with his heels in the air, much more
intent on the chatter of a gray squirrel in the tree above him than on
the complaints of his comrade.

“Why don't you go with a boy, then?” asked Celia, in a tone intended to
be severe and dignified.

“A boy isn't so nice,” said Philip, with the air of stating a general
proposition, but not looking at her.


“Oh,” said Celia, only half appeased, “I quite agree with you.” And
she pulled down some beech leaves from a low, hanging limb and began to
plait a wreath.

“Who are you making that for?” asked Philip, who began to be aware that
a cloud had come over his holiday sky.

“Nobody in particular; it's just a wreath.” And then there was silence,
till Philip made another attempt.

“Celia, I don't mind staying here if you are tired. Tell me something
about New York City. I wish we were there.”

“Much you know about it,” said Celia, but with some relaxation of
her severity, for as she looked at the boy in his country clothes and
glanced at her own old frock and abraded shoes, she thought what a funny
appearance the pair would make on a fashionable city street.

“Would you rather be there?” asked Philip. “I thought you liked living
here.”

“Would I rather? What a question! Everybody would. The country is a good
place to go to when you are tired, as mamma is. But the city! The big
fine houses, and the people all going about in a hurry; the streets all
lighted up at night, so that you can see miles and miles of lights; and
the horses and carriages, and the lovely dresses, and the churches full
of nice people, and such beautiful music! And once mamma took me to
the theatre. Oh, Phil, you ought to see a play, and the actors, all
be-a-u-ti-fully dressed, and talking just like a party in a house, and
dancing, and being funny, and some of it so sad as to make you cry, and
some of it so droll that you had to laugh--just such a world as you read
of in books and in poetry. I was so excited that I saw the stage all
night and could hardly sleep.” The girl paused and looked away to
the river as if she saw it all again, and then added in a burst of
confidence:

“Do you know, I mean to be an actress some day, when mamma will let me.”

“Play-actors are wicked,” said Phil, in a tone of decision; “our
minister says so, and my uncle says so.”

“Fudge!” returned Celia. “Much they know about it. Did Alice say so?”

“I never asked her, but she said once that she supposed it was wrong,
but she would like to see a play.”

“There, everybody would. Mamma says the people from the country go to
the theatre always, a good deal more than the people in the city go.
I should like to see your aunt Patience in a theatre and hear what she
said about it. She's an actress if ever there was one.”

Philip opened his eyes in protest.

“Mamma says it is as good as a play to hear her go on about people, and
what they are like, and what they are going to do, and then her little
rooms are just like a scene on a stage. If they were in New York
everybody would go to see them and to hear her talk.”

This was such a new view of his home life to Philip that he could
neither combat it nor assent to it, further than to say, that his aunt
was just like everybody else, though she did have some peculiar ways.

“Well, she acts,” Celia insisted, “and most people act. Our minister
acts all the time, mamma says.” Celia had plenty of opinions of her own,
but when she ventured a startling statement she had the habit of going
under the shelter of “little mother,” whose casual and unconsidered
remarks the girl turned to her own uses. Perhaps she would not have
understood that her mother merely meant that the minister's sacerdotal
character was not exactly his own character. Just as Philip noticed
without being able to explain it that his uncle was one sort of a man in
his religious exercises and observances and another sort of man in his
dealings with him. Children often have recondite thoughts that do not
get expression until their minds are more mature; they even accept
contradictory facts in their experience. There was one of the deacons
who was as kind as possible, and Philip believed was a good and
pious man, who had the reputation of being sharp and even tricky in a
horse-trade. And Philip used to think how lucky it was for him that he
had been converted and was saved!

“Are you going to stay here always?” asked Philip, pursuing his own
train of thought about the city.

“Here? I should think not. If I were a boy I wouldn't stay here, I can
tell you. What are you going to do, Phil, what are you going to be?”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Philip, turning over on his back and looking
up into the blue world through the leaves; “go to college, I suppose.”
 Children are even more reticent than adults about revealing their inner
lives, and Philip would not, even to Celia, have confessed the splendid
dreams about his career that came to him that day in the hickory-tree,
and that occupied him a great deal.

“Of course,” said this wise child, “but that's nothing. I mean, what
are you going to do? My cousin Jim has been all through college, and he
doesn't do a thing except wear nice clothes and hang around and talk. He
says I'm a little chatter-box. I hate the sight of him.”

“If he doesn't like you, then I don't like him,” said Philip, as if he
were making a general and not a personal assertion. “Oh, I should like
to travel.”

“So should I, and see things and find things. Jim says he's going to be
an explorer. He never will. He wouldn't find anything. He twits me,
and wants to know what is the good of my reading about Africa and such
things. Phil, don't you love to read about Africa, and the desert, and
the lions and the snakes, and bananas growing, and palm-trees, and the
queerest black men and women, real dwarfs some of them? I just love it.”

“So do I,” said Philip, “as far as I have read. Alice says it's awful
dangerous--fevers and wild beasts and savages and all that. But I
shouldn't mind.”

“Of course you wouldn't. But it costs like everything to go to Africa,
or anywhere.”

“I'd make a book about it, and give lectures, and make lots of money.”

“I guess,” said Celia, reflecting upon this proposition, “I'd be an
engineer or a railroad man, or something like that, and make a heap of
money, and then I could go anywhere I liked. I just hate to be poor.
There!”

“Is Jim poor?”

“No; he can do what he pleases. I asked him, then, why he didn't go to
Africa, and he wanted to know what was the good of finding Livingstone,
anyway. I'll bet Murad Ault would go to Africa.”

“I wish he would,” said Philip; and then, having moved so that he could
see Celia's face, “Do you like Murad Ault?”

“No,” replied Celia, promptly; “he's horrid, but he isn't afraid of
anything.”

“Well, I don't care,” said Philip, who was nettled by this implication.
And Celia, who had shown her power of irritating, took another tack.

“You don't think I'd be seen going around with him? Aren't we having a
good time up here?”

“Bully!” replied Philip. And not seeing the way to expand this topic any
further, he suddenly said:

“Celia, the next time I go on our hill I'll get you lots of sassafras.”

“Oh, I love sassafras, and sweet-flag!”

“We can get that on the way home. I know a place.” And then there was a
pause. “Celia, you didn't tell me what you are going to do when you grow
up.”

“Go to college.”

“You? Why, girls do, don't they? I never thought of that.”

“Of course they do. I don't know whether I'll write or be a doctor. I
know one thing--I won't teach school. It's the hatefulest thing there
is! It's nice to be a doctor and have your own horse, and go round like
a man. If it wasn't for seeing so many sick people! I guess I'll write
stories and things.”

“So would I,” Philip confessed, “if I knew any.”

“Why, you make 'em up. Mamma says they are all made up. I can make 'em
in my head any time when I'm alone.”

“I don't know,” Philip said, reflectively, “but I could make up a story
about Murad Ault, and how he got to be a pirate and got in jail and was
hanged.”

“Oh, that wouldn't be a real story. You have got to have different
people in it, and have 'em talk, just as they do in books; and somebody
is in love and somebody dies, and the like of that.”

“Well, there are such stories in The Pirate's Own Book, and it's awful
interesting.”

“I'd be ashamed, Philip Burnett, to read such a cruel thing, all about
robbers and murders.”

“I didn't read it through; Alice said she was going to burn it up. I
shouldn't wonder if she did.”

“Boys make me tired!” exclaimed this little piece of presumption; and
this attitude of superiority exasperated Philip more than anything else
his mentor had said or done, and he asserted his years of seniority by
jumping up and saying, decidedly, “It's time to go home. Shall I carry
your wreath?”

“No, I thank you!” replied Celia, with frigid politeness.

“Down in the meadow,” said Philip, making one more effort at
conciliation, “we can get some tigerlilies, and weave them in and make a
beautiful wreath for your mother.”

“She doesn't like things fussed up,” was the gracious reply. And then
the children trudged along homeward, each with a distinct sense of
injury.




IV

Traits that make a child disagreeable are apt to be perpetuated in the
adult. The bumptious, impudent, selfish, “hateful” boy may become a
man of force, of learning, of decided capacity, even of polish and
good manners, and score success, so that those who know him say how
remarkable it is that such a “knurly” lad should have turned out
so well. But some exigency in his career, it may be extraordinary
prosperity or bitter defeat, may at any moment reveal the radical traits
of the boy, the original ignoble nature. The world says that it is
a “throwing back”; it is probably only a persistence of the original
meanness under all the overlaid cultivation and restraint.

Without bothering itself about the recondite problems of heredity or
the influence of environment, the world wisely makes great account of
“stock.” The peasant nature, which may be a very different thing from
the peasant condition, persists, and shows itself in business affairs,
in literature, even in the artist. No marriage is wisely contracted
without consideration of “stock.” The admirable qualities which make a
union one of mutual respect and enduring affection--the generosities,
the magnanimities, the courage of soul, the crystalline truthfulness,
the endurance of ill fortune and of prosperity--are commonly the
persistence of the character of the stock.

We can get on with surface weaknesses and eccentricities, and even
disagreeable peculiarities, if the substratum of character is sound.
There is no woman or man so difficult--to get on with, whatever his
or her graces or accomplishments, as the one “you don't know where to
find,” as the phrase is. Indeed, it has come to pass that the highest
and final eulogy ever given to a man, either in public or private life,
is that he is one “you can tie to.” And when you find a woman of that
sort you do not need to explain to the cynical the wisdom of the Creator
in making the most attractive and fascinating sex.

The traits, good and bad, persist; they may be veneered or restrained,
they are seldom eradicated. All the traits that made the great Napoleon
worshiped, hated, and feared existed in the little Bonaparte, as
perfectly as the pea-pod in the flower. The whole of the First Empire
was smirched with Corsican vulgarity. The world always reckons with
these radical influences that go to make up a family. One of the first
questions asked by an old politician, who knew his world thoroughly,
about any man becoming prominent, when there was a discussion of his
probable action, was, “Whom did he marry?”

There are exceptions to this general rule, and they are always
noticeable when they occur--this deviation from the traits of the
earliest years--and offer material fox some of the subtlest and most
interesting studies of the novelist.

It was impossible for those who met Philip Burnett after he had left
college, and taken his degree in the law-school, and spent a year, more
or less studiously, in Europe, to really know him if they had not known
the dreaming boy in his early home, with all the limitations as well as
the vitalizing influences of his start in life. And on the contrary, the
error of the neighbors of a lad in forecasting his career comes from the
fact that they do not know him. The verdict about Philip would probably
have been that he was a very nice sort of a boy, but that he would never
“set the North River on fire.” There was a headstrong, selfish, pushing
sort of boy, one of Philip's older schoolmates, who had become one of
the foremost merchants and operators in New York, and was already talked
of for mayor. This success was the sort that fulfilled the rural idea of
getting on in the world, whereas Philip's accomplishments, seen through
the veneer of conceit which they had occasioned him to take on, did not
commend themselves as anything worth while. Accomplishments rarely do
unless they are translated into visible position or into the currency
of the realm. How else can they be judged? Does not the great public
involuntarily respect the author rather for the sale of his books than
for the books themselves?

The period of Philip's novitiate--those most important years from his
acquaintance with Celia Howard to the attainment of his professional
degree--was most interesting to him, but the story of it would not
detain the reader of exciting fiction. He had elected to use his little
patrimony in making himself instead of in making money--if merely
following his inclination could be called an election. If he had
reasoned about it he would have known that the few thousands of dollars
left to him from his father's estate, if judiciously invested in
business, would have grown to a good sum when he came of age, and he
would by that time have come into business habits, so that all he would
need to do would be to go on and make more money. If he had reasoned
more deeply he would have seen that by this process he would become
a man of comparatively few resources for the enjoyment of life, and a
person of very little interest to himself or to anybody else. So perhaps
it was just as well that he followed his instincts and postponed the
making of money until he had made himself, though he was to have a good
many bitter days when the possession of money seemed to him about the
one thing desirable.

It was Celia, who had been his constant counselor and tormentor, about
the time when she was beginning to feel a little shy and long-legged,
in her short skirts, who had, in a romantic sympathy with his tastes,
opposed his going into a “store” as a clerk, which seemed to the boy at
one time an ideal situation for a young man.

“A store, indeed!” cried the young lady; “pomatum on your hair, and a
grin on your face; snip, snip, snip, calico, ribbons, yard-stick; 'It's
very becoming, miss, that color; this is only a sample, only a remnant,
but I shall have a new stock in by Friday; anything else, ma'am, today?'
Sho! Philip, for a man!”

Fortunately for Philip there lived in the village an old waif, a
scholarly oddity, uncommunicative, whose coming to dwell there had
excited much gossip before the inhabitants got used to his odd ways.

Usually reticent and rough of speech--the children thought he was an old
bear--he was nevertheless discovered to be kindly and even charitable
in neighborhood emergencies, and the minister said he was about the most
learned man he ever knew. His history does not concern us, but he was
doubtless one of the men whose talents have failed to connect with
success in anything, who had had his bout with the world, and retired
into peaceful seclusion in an indulgence of a mild pessimism about the
world generally.

He lived alone, except for the rather neutral presence of Aunt Hepsy,
who had formerly been a village tailoress, and whose cottage he had
bought with the proviso that the old woman should continue in it as
“help.” With Aunt Hepsy he was no more communicative than with anybody
else. “He was always readin', when he wasn't goin' fishin' or off in the
woods with his gun, and never made no trouble, and was about the easiest
man to get along with she ever see. You mind your business and he'll
mind his'n.” That was the sum of Aunt Hepsy's delivery about the
recluse, though no doubt her old age was enriched by constant “study”
 over his probable history and character. But Aunt Hepsy, since she had
given up tailoring, was something of a recluse herself.

The house was full of books, mostly queer books, “in languages nobody
knows what,” as Aunt Hepsy said, which made Philip open his eyes when he
went there one day to take to the old man a memorandum-book which he had
found on Mill Brook. The recluse took a fancy to the ingenuous lad when
he saw he was interested in books, and perhaps had a mind not much more
practical than his own; the result was an acquaintance, and finally an
intimacy--at which the village wondered until it transpired that Philip
was studying with the old fellow, who was no doubt a poor shack of a
school-teacher in disguise.

It was from this gruff friend that Philip learned Greek and Latin enough
to enable him to enter college, not enough drill and exact training in
either to give him a high stand, but an appreciation of the literatures
about which the old scholar was always enthusiastic. Philip regretted
all his life that he had not been severely drilled in the classics and
mathematics, for he never could become a specialist in anything. But
perhaps, even in this, fate was dealing with him according to his
capacities. And, indeed, he had a greater respect for the scholarship of
his wayside tutor than for the pedantic acquirements of many men he came
to know afterwards. It was from him that Philip learned about books
and how to look for what he wanted to know, and it was he who directed
Philip's taste to the best. When he went off to college the lad had not
a good preparation, but he knew a great deal that would not count in the
entrance examinations.

“You will need all the tools you can get the use of, my boy, in the
struggle,” was the advice of his mentor, “and the things you will need
most may be those you have thought least of. I never go fishing without
both fly and bait.”

Philip was always grateful that before he entered college he had a fine
reading knowledge of French, and that he knew enough German to read and
enjoy Heine's poems and prose, and that he had read, or read in, pretty
much all the English classics.

He used to recall the remark of a lad about his own age, who was on a
vacation visit to Rivervale, and had just been prepared for college
at one of the famous schools. The boys liked each other and were much
together in the summer, and talked about what interested them during
their rambles, carrying the rod or the fowling-piece. Philip naturally
had most to say about the world he knew, which was the world of
books--that is to say, the stored information that had accumulated in
the world. This more and more impressed the trained student, who one day
exclaimed:

“By George! I might have known something if I hadn't been kept at school
all my life.”

Philip's career in college could not have been called notable. He was
not one of the dozen stars in the class-room, but he had a reputation
of another sort. His classmates had a habit of resorting to him if they
wanted to “know anything” outside the text-books, for the range of his
information seemed to them encyclopaedic. On the other hand, he escaped
the reputation of what is called “a good fellow.” He was not so much
unpopular as he was unknown in the college generally, but those who did
know him were tolerant of the fact that he cared more for reading than
for college sports or college politics. It must be confessed that he
added little to the reputation of the university, since his name was
never once mentioned in the public prints--search has been made since
the public came to know him as a writer--as a hero in any crew or team
on any game field. Perhaps it was a little selfish that his muscle
developed in the gymnasium was not put into advertising use for the
university. The excuse was that he had not time to become an athlete,
any more than he had time to spend three years in the discipline of the
regular army, which was in itself an excellent thing.

Celia, in one of her letters--it was during her first year at a woman's
college, when the development of muscle in gymnastics, running, and
the vigorous game of ball was largely engaging the attention of this
enthusiastic young lady--took him to task for his inactivity. “This is
the age of muscle,” she wrote; “the brain is useless in a flabby body,
and probably the brain itself is nothing but concentrated intelligent
muscle. I don't know how men are coming out, but women will never get
the position they have the right to occupy until they are physically the
equals of men.”

Philip had replied, banteringly, that if that were so he had no desire
to enter in a physical competition with women, and that men had better
look out for another field.

But later on, when Celia had got into the swing of the classics, and was
training for a part in the play of “Antigone,” she wrote in a different
strain, though she would have denied that the change had any relation to
the fact that she had strained her back in a rowing-match. She did not
apologize for her former advice, but she was all aglow about the Greek
drama, and made reference to Aspasia as an intellectual type of what
women might become. “I didn't ever tell you how envious I used to be
when you were studying Greek with that old codger in Rivervale, and
could talk about Athens and all that. Next time we meet, I can tell
you, it will be Greek meets Greek. I do hope you have not dropped the
classics and gone in for the modern notion of being real and practical.
If I ever hear of your writing 'real' poetry--it is supposed to be real
if it is in dialect or misspelled! never will write you again, much less
speak to you.”

Whatever this decided young woman was doing at the time she was sure was
the best for everybody to do, and especially for Master Phil.

Now that the days of preparation were over, and Philip found himself
in New York, face to face with the fact that he had nowhere to look for
money to meet the expense of rent, board, and clothes except to his own
daily labor, and that there was another economy besides that which he
had practiced as to luxuries, there were doubtless hours when his faith
wavered a little in the wisdom of the decision that had invested all his
patrimony in himself. He had been fortunate, to be sure, in securing a
clerk's desk in the great law-office of Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle, and he
had the kindly encouragement of the firm that, with close application to
business, he would make his way. But even in this he had his misgivings,
for a great part of his acquirements, and those he most valued, did not
seem to be of any use in his office-work. He had a lofty conception of
his chosen profession, as the right arm in the administration of justice
between man and man. In practice, however, it seemed to him that
the object was to win a case rather than to do justice in a case.
Unfortunately, also, he had cultivated his imagination to the extent
that he could see both sides of a case. To see both sides is indeed the
requisite of a great lawyer, but to see the opposite side only in order
to win, as in looking over an opponent's hand in a game of cards. It
seemed to Philip that this clear perception would paralyze his efforts
for one side if he knew it was the wrong side. The argument was that
every cause a man's claim or his defense--ought to be presented in
its fullness and urged with all the advocate's ingenuity, and that the
decision was in the bosom of an immaculate justice on the bench and
the unbiased intelligence in the jury-box. This might be so. But Philip
wondered what would be the effect on his own character and on his
intellect if he indulged much in the habit of making the worse appear
the better cause, and taking up indifferently any side that paid. For
himself, he was inclined always to advise clients to “settle,” and he
fancied that if the occupation of the lawyer was to explain the case
to people ignorant of it, and to champion only the right side, as
it appeared to an unprejudiced, legally trained mind, and to compose
instead of encouraging differences, the law would indeed be a noble
profession, and the natural misunderstandings, ignorance, and different
points of view would make business enough.

“Stuff!” said Mr. Sharp. “If you begin by declining causes you
disapprove of, the public will end by letting you alone in your
self-conceited squeamishness. It's human nature you've got to deal with,
not theories about law and justice. I tell you that men like litigation.
They want to have it out with somebody. And it is better than
fisticuffs.”

From Mr. Hunt, who moved in the serener upper currents of the law,
Philip got more satisfaction.

“Of course, Mr. Burnett, there are miserable squabbles in the law
practice, and contemptible pettifoggers and knaves, and men who will
sell themselves for any dirty work, as there are in most professions and
occupations, but the profession could not exist for a day if it was not
on the whole on the side of law and order and justice.

“No doubt it needs from time to time criticism and reformation. So does
the church. You look at the characters of the really great lawyers! And
there is another thing. In dealing with the cases of our complex life,
there is no accomplishment, no learning in science, art, or literature,
that the successful practitioner will not find it very advantageous to
possess. And a lawyer will never be eminent who has not imagination.”

Philip thought he had a very good chance of exercising his imagination
in the sky chamber where he slept--a capital situation from which to
observe the world. There could not have been an uglier view created--a
shapeless mass of brick and stone and painted wood, a collected,
towering monstrosity of rectangular and inharmonious lines, a realized
dream of hideousness--but for the splendid sky, always changing and
doing all that was possible in the gleams and shadows and the glowing
colors of morning and evening to soften the ambitious work of man; but
for the wide horizon, with patches of green shores and verdant flats
washed by the kindly tide; but for the Highlands and Staten Island,
the gateway to the ocean; but for the great river and the mighty bay
shimmering and twinkling and often iridescent, and the animated life
of sails and steamers, the leviathans of commerce and the playthings of
pleasure, and the beetle-like, monstrous ferry-boats that pushed
their noses through all the confusion, like intelligent, business-like
saurians that knew how to keep an appointed line by a clumsy courtesy
of apparent yielding. Yes, there was life enough in all this, and
inspiration, if one only knew what to be inspired about.

When Philip came home from the office at sunset, through the bustling
streets, and climbed up to his perch, he insensibly brought with him
something of the restless energy and strife of the city, and in this
mood the prospect before him took on a certain significance of
great things accomplished, of the highest form of human energy and
achievement; he was a part of this exuberant, abundant life, to succeed
in the struggle seemed easy, and for the moment he possessed what he
saw.

The little room had space enough for a cot bed, a toilet-stand, a couple
of easy-chairs--an easy-chair is the one article of furniture absolutely
necessary to a reflecting student--some well-filled book-shelves, a
small writing-desk, and a tiny closet quite large enough for a wardrobe
which seemed to have no disposition to grow. Except for the books and
the writing-desk, with its heterogeneous manuscripts, unfinished or
rejected, there was not much in the room to indicate the taste of its
occupant, unless you knew that his taste was exhibited rather by what he
excluded from the room than by what it contained. It must be confessed
that, when Philip was alone with his books and his manuscripts, his
imagination did not expand in the directions that would have seemed
profitable to the head of his firm. That life of the town which was
roaring in his ears, that panorama of prosperity spread before him,
related themselves in his mind not so much as incitements to engage
in the quarrels of his profession as something demanding study and
interpretation, something much more human than processes and briefs
and arguments. And it was a dark omen for his success that the world
interested him much more for itself than for what he could make out
of it. Make something to be sure he must--so long as he was only a law
clerk on a meagre salary--and it was this necessity that had much to do
with the production of the manuscripts. It was a joke on Philip in his
club--by-the-way, the half-yearly dues were not far off--that he was
doing splendidly in the law; he already had an extensive practice in
chambers!

The law is said to be a jealous mistress, but literature is a young lady
who likes to be loved for herself alone, and thinks permission to adore
is sufficient reward for her votary. Common-sense told Philip that the
jealous mistress would flout him and land him in failure if he gave
her a half-hearted service; but the other young lady, the Helen of
the professions, was always beckoning him and alluring him by the most
subtle arts, occupying all his hours with meditations on her grace and
beauty, till it seemed the world were well lost for her smile. And the
fascinating jade never hinted that devotion to her brought more drudgery
and harassment and pain than any other service in the world. It would
not have mattered if she had been frank, and told him that her promise
of eternal life was illusory and her rewards commonly but a flattering
of vanity. There was no resisting her enchantments, and he would rather
follow her through a world of sin and suffering, pursuing her radiant
form over bog and moor, in penury and heartache, for one sunrise smile
and one glimpse of her sunset heaven, than to walk at ease with a
commonplace maiden on any illumined and well-trod highway.




V

It is the desire of every ambitious soul to, enter Literature by the
front door, and the few who have patience and money enough to live
without the aid of the beckoning Helen may enter there. But a side
entrance is the destiny of most aspirants, even those with the golden
key of genius, and they are a long time in working their way to be seen
coming out, of the front entrance. It is true that a man can attract
considerable and immediate attention by trying to effect an entrance
through the sewer, but he seldom gains the respect of the public whom he
interests, any more than an exhibitor of fireworks gains the reputation
of an artist that is accorded to the painter of a good picture.

Philip was waiting at the front door, with his essays and his prose
symphonies and his satirical novel--the satire of a young man is apt to
be very bitter--but it was as tightly shut against him as if a publisher
and not the muse of literature kept the door.

There was a fellow-boarder with Philip, whose acquaintance he had made
at the common table in the basement, who appeared to be free of the
world of letters and art. He was an alert, compact, neatly dressed
little fellow, who had apparently improved every one of his twenty-eight
years in the study of life, in gaining assurance and confidence in
himself, and also presented himself as one who knew the nether world
completely but was not of it. He would have said of himself that he knew
it profoundly, that he frequented it for “material,” but that his home
was in another sphere. The impression was that he belonged among those
brilliant guerrillas of both sexes, in the border-land of art and
society, who lived daintily and talked about life with unconventional
freedom. Slight in figure, with very black hair, and eyes of cloudy
gray, an olive complexion, and features trained to an immobility proof
against emotion or surprise, the whole poised as we would say in the
act of being gentlemanly, it is needless to say that he took himself
seriously. His readiness, self-confidence, cocksureness, Philip thought
all expressed in his name--Olin Brad.

Mr. Brad was not a Bohemian--that is, not at all a Bohemian of the
recognized type. His fashionable dress, closely trimmed hair, and dainty
boots took him out of that class. He belonged to the new order, which
seems to have come in with modern journalism--that is, Bohemian in
principle, but of the manners and apparel of the favored of fortune. Mr.
Brad was undoubtedly clever, and was down as a bright young man in the
list of those who employed talent which was not dulled by conscientious
scruples. He had stood well in college, during three years in Europe
he had picked up two or three languages, dissipated his remaining small
fortune, acquired expensive tastes, and knowledge, both esoteric and
exoteric, that was valuable to him in his present occupation. Returning
home fully equipped for a modern literary career, and finding after some
bitter experience that his accomplishments were not taken or paid for
at their real value by the caterers for intellectual New York, he had
dropped into congenial society on the staff of the Daily Spectrum, a
mighty engine of public opinion, which scattered about the city and
adjacent territory a million of copies, as prodigally as if they had
been auctioneers' announcements. Fastidious people who did not read it
gave it a bad name, not recognizing the classic and heroic attitude of
those engaged in pitchforking up and turning over the muck of the Augean
stables under the pretense of cleaning them.

Mr. Brad had a Socratic contempt for this sort of fault-finding. It was
answer enough to say, “It pays. The people like it or they wouldn't buy
it. It commands the best talent in the market and can afford to pay
for it; even clergymen like to appear in its columns--they say it's
a providential chance to reach the masses. And look at the 'Morning
GooGoo' (this was his nickname for one of the older dailies), it
couldn't pay its paper bills if it hadn't such a small circulation.”

Mr. Brad, however, was not one of the editors, though the acceptance
of an occasional short editorial, sufficiently piquant and impudent and
vivid in language--to suit, had given him hopes. He was salaried, but
under orders for special service, and was always in the hope that the
execution of each new assignment would bring him into popular notice,
which would mean an advance of position and pay.

Philip was impressed with the ready talent, the adaptable talent, and
the facility of this accomplished journalist, and as their acquaintance
improved he was let into many of the secrets of success in the
profession.

“It isn't an easy thing,” said Mr. Brad, “to cater to a public that gets
tired of anything in about three days. But it is just as well satisfied
with a contradiction as with the original statement. It calls both news.
You have to watch out and see what the people want, and give it to
'em. It is something like the purveying of the manufacturers and the
dry-goods jobber for the changing trade in fashions; only the newspaper
has the advantage that it can turn a somersault every day and not have
any useless stock left on hand.

“The public hasn't any memory, or, if it has, this whirligig process
destroys it. What it will not submit to is the lack of a daily surprise.
Keep that in your mind and you can make a popular newspaper. Only,”
 continued Mr. Brad, reflectively, “you've got to hit a lot of different
tastes.”

“You'd laugh,” this artist in emotions went on, after a little pause,
“at some of my assignments. There was a run awhile ago on elopements,
and my assignment was to have one every Monday morning. The girl must
always be lovely and refined and moving in the best society; elopement
with the coachman preferred, varied with a teacher in a Sunday-school.
Invented? Not always. It was surprising how many you could find ready
made, if you were on the watch. I got into the habit of locating them in
the interior of Pennsylvania as the safest place, though Jersey seemed
equally probable to the public. Did I never get caught? That made it
all the more lively and interesting. Denials, affidavits, elaborate
explanations, two sides to any question; if it was too hot, I could
change the name and shift the scene to a still more obscure town. Or it
could be laid to the zeal of a local reporter, who could give the most
ingenious reasons for his story. Once I worked one of those imaginary
reporters up into such prominence for his clever astuteness that my boss
was taken in, and asked me to send for him and give him a show on the
paper.

“Oh, yes, we have to keep up the domestic side. A paper will not go
unless the women like it. One of the assignments I liked was 'Sayings of
Our Little Ones.' This was for every Tuesday morning. Not more than
half a column. These always got copied by the country press solid. It is
really surprising how many bright things you can make children of five
and six years say if you give your mind to it. The boss said that I
overdid it sometimes and made them too bright instead of 'just cunning.'

“'Psychological Study of Children' had a great run. This is the age of
science. Same with animals, astronomy--anything. If the public wants
science, the papers will give it science.

“After all, the best hold for a lasting sensation is an attack upon
some charity or public institution; show up the abuses, and get all
the sentimentalists on your side. The paper gets sympathy for its
fearlessness in serving the public interests. It is always easy to find
plenty of testimony from ill-used convicts and grumbling pensioners.”

Undoubtedly Olin Brad was a clever fellow, uncommonly well read in the
surface literatures of foreign origin, and had a keen interest in what
he called the metaphysics of his own time. He had many good qualities,
among them friendliness towards men and women struggling like himself to
get up the ladder, and he laid aside all jealousy when he advised Philip
to try his hand at some practical work on the Spectrum. What puzzled
Philip was that this fabricator of “stories” for the newspaper should
call himself a “realist.” The “story,” it need hardly be explained, is
newspaper slang for any incident, true or invented, that is worked up
for dramatic effect. To state the plain facts as they occurred, or
might have occurred, and as they could actually be seen by a competent
observer, would not make a story. The writer must put in color, and
idealize the scene and the people engaged in it, he must invent dramatic
circumstances and positions and language, so as to produce a “picture.”
 And this picture, embroidered on a commonplace incident, has got the
name of “news.” The thread of fact in this glittering web the reader
must pick out by his own wits, assisted by his memory of what things
usually are. And the public likes these stories much better than the
unadorned report of facts. It is accustomed to this view of life, so
much so that it fancies it never knew what war was, or what a battle
was, until the novelists began to report them.

Mr. Brad was in the story stage of his evolution as a writer. His light
facility in it had its attraction for Philip, but down deep in his
nature he felt and the impression was deepened by watching the career of
several bright young men and women on the press--that indulgence in it
would result in such intellectual dishonesty as to destroy the power of
producing fiction that should be true to life. He was so impressed by
the ability and manifold accomplishments of Mr. Brad that he thought it
a pity for him to travel that road, and one day he asked him why he did
not go in for literature.

“Literature!” exclaimed Mr. Brad, with some irritation; “I starved on
literature for a year. Who does live on it, till he gets beyond the
necessity of depending on it? There is a lot of humbug talked about it.
You can't do anything till you get your name up. Some day I will make
a hit, and everybody will ask, 'Who is this daring, clever Olin Brad?'
Then I can get readers for anything I choose to write. Look at
Champ Lawson. He can't write correct English, he never will, he uses
picturesque words in a connection that makes you doubt if he knows what
they mean. But he did a dare-devil thing picturesquely, and now the
publishers are at his feet. When I met him the other day he affected
to be bored with so much attention, and wished he had stuck to the
livery-stable. He began at seventeen by reporting a runaway from the
point of view of the hostler.”

“Well,” said Philip, “isn't it quite in the line of the new movement
that we should have an introspective hostler, who perhaps obeys Sir
Philip Sidney's advice, 'Look into your heart and write'? I chanced
the other night in a company of the unconventional and illuminated, the
'poster' set in literature and art, wild-eyed and anaemic young women
and intensely languid, 'nil admirari' young men, the most advanced
products of the studios and of journalism. It was a very interesting
conclave. Its declared motto was, 'We don't read, we write.' And
the members were on a constant strain to say something brilliant,
epigrammatic, original. The person who produced the most outre sentiment
was called 'strong.' The women especially liked no writing that was not
'strong.' The strongest man in the company, and adored by the women, was
the poet-artist Courci Cleves, who always seems to have walked straight
out of a fashion-plate, much deferred to in this set, which affects
to defer to nothing, and a thing of beauty in the theatre lobbies. Mr.
Cleves gained much applause for his well-considered wish that all
that has been written in the world, all books and libraries, could be
destroyed, so as to give a chance to the new men and the fresh ideas of
the new era.”

“My dear sir,” said Brad, who did not like this caricature of his
friends, “you don't make any allowance for the eccentricities of
genius.”

“You would hit it nearer if you said I didn't make allowance for the
eccentricities without genius,” retorted Philip.

“Well,” replied Mr. Brad, taking his leave, “you don't understand your
world. You go your own way and see where you will come out.”

And when Philip reflected on it, he wondered if it were not rash to
offend those who had the public ear, and did up the personals and minor
criticisms for the current prints. He was evidently out of view.
No magazine paper of his had gained the slightest notice from these
sublimated beings, who discovered a new genius every month.

A few nights after this conversation Mr. Brad was in uncommon spirits at
dinner.

“Anything special turned up?” asked Philip.

“Oh, nothing much. I've thrown away the chance of the biggest kind of a
novel of American life. Only it wouldn't keep. You look in the Spectrum
tomorrow morning. You'll see something interesting.”

“Is it a--” and Philip's incredulous expression supplied the word.

“No, not a bit. And the public is going to be deceived this time, sure,
expecting a fake. You know Mavick?”

“I've heard of him--the operator, a millionaire.”

“A good many times. Used to be minister or consul or something at Rome.
A great swell. It's about his daughter, Evelyn, a stunning girl about
sixteen or seventeen--not out yet.”

“I hope it's no scandal.”

“No, no; she's all right. It's the way she's brought up--shows what
we've come to. They say she's the biggest heiress in America and
a raving beauty, the only child. She has been brought up like the
Kohinoor, never out of somebody's sight. She has never been alone one
minute since she was born. Had three nurses, and it was the business of
one of them, in turn, to keep an eye on her. Just think of that. Never
was out of the sight of somebody in her life. Has two maids now--always
one in the room, night and day.”

“What for?”

“Why, the parents are afraid she'll be kidnapped, and held for a big
ransom. No, I never saw her, but I've got the thing down to a dot.
Wouldn't I like to interview her, though, get her story, how the world
looks to her. Under surveillance for sixteen years! The 'Prisoner of
Chillon' is nothing to it for romance.”

“Just the facts are enough, I should say.”

“Yes, facts make a good basis, sometimes. I've got 'em all in, but of
course I've worked the thing up for all it is worth. You'll see. I kept
it one day to try and get a photograph. We've got the house and Mavick,
but the girl's can't be found, and it isn't safe to wait. We are going
to blow it out tomorrow morning.”




VI

The Mavick mansion was on Fifth Avenue in the neighborhood of Central
Park. It was one of the buildings in the city that strangers were always
taken to see. In fact, this was a palace not one kind of a palace, but
all kinds of a palace. The clever and ambitious architect of the house
had grouped all the styles of architecture he had ever seen, or of which
he had seen pictures. Here was not an architectural conception, like a
sonnet or a well-constructed novel, but if all the work could have been
spread out in line, in all its variety, there would have been produced
a panorama. The sight of the mansion always caused wonder and generally
ignorant admiration. Its vastness and splendor were felt to be somehow
typical of the New World and of the cosmopolitan city.

The cost, in the eyes of the spectators, was a great part of its merits.
No doubt this was a fabulous sum. “You can form a little idea of it,”
 said a gentleman to his country friend, “when I tell you that that
little bit there, that little corner of carving and decoration, cost two
hundred thousand dollars! I had this from the architect himself.”

“My!”

The interior was as fully representative of wealth and of the ambition
to put under one roof all the notable effects of all the palaces in the
world. But it had, what most palaces have not, all the requisites for
luxurious living. The variety of styles in the rooms was bewildering.
Artists of distinction, both foreign and native, had vied with each
other in the decoration of the rooms given over to the display of
their genius. All paganism and all Christianity, history, myth, and the
beauties of nature were spread upon the walls and ceilings. Rare woods,
rare marbles, splendid textures, the product of ancient handiwork and
modern looms, added a certain dignity to the more airy creations of the
artists. Many of the rooms were named from the nations whose styles
of decoration and furnishing were imitated in them, but others had the
simple designation of the gold room, the silver room, the lapis-lazuli
room, and so on. It was not only the show-rooms, the halls, passages,
stairways, and galleries (both of pictures and of curios) that were thus
enriched, but the boudoirs, retiring-rooms, and more private apartments
as well. It was not simply a house of luxury, but of all the comfort
that modern invention can furnish. It was said that the money lavished
upon one or two of the noble apartments would have built a State-house
(though not at Albany), and that the fireplace in the great hall cost
as much as an imitation mediaeval church. These were the things talked
about, and yet the portions of this noble edifice, rich as they were,
habitually occupied by the family had another character--the attractions
and conveniences of what we call a home. Mrs. Mavick used to say that
in her apartments she found refuge in a sublimated domesticity. Mavick's
own quarters--not the study off the library where he received visitors
whom it was necessary to impress--had an executive appearance, and were,
in the necessary appliances, more like the interior bureau of a board
of trade. In fact, the witty brokers who were admitted to its mysteries
called it the bucket-shop.

Mr. Brad's article on “A Prisoned Millionaire” more than equaled
Philip's expectations. No such “story” had appeared in the city press
in a long time. It was what was called, in the language of the period, a
work of art--that is, a sensation, heightened by all the words of color
in the language, applied not only to material things, but to states and
qualities of mind, such as “purple emotions” and “scarlet intrepidity.”
 It was also exceedingly complimentary. Mavick himself was one of the
powers and pillars of American society, and the girl was an exquisite
exhibition of woodland bloom in the first flush of spring-time. As he
read it over, Philip thought what a fine advertisement it is to every
impecunious noble in Europe.

That morning, before going to his office, Philip strolled up Fifth
Avenue to look at that now doubly, famous mansion. Many others, it
appeared, were moved by the same curiosity. There was already a crowd
assembled. A couple of policemen, on special duty, patrolled the
sidewalk in front in order to keep a passage open, and perhaps to
prevent a too impudent inspection. Opposite the house, on the sidewalk
and on door-steps, was a motley throng, largely made up of toughs and
roughs from the East Side, good-natured spectators who merely wanted to
see this splendid prison, and a moving line of gentlemen and ladies who
simply happened to be passing that way at this time. The curbstone was
lined with a score of reporters of the city journals, each with his
note-book. Every window and entrance was eagerly watched. It was hoped
that one of the family might be seen, or that some servant might appear
who could be interviewed. Upon the windows supposed by the reporters
to be those from which the heiress looked, a strict watch was kept. The
number, form, and location of these windows were accurately noted, the
stuff of the curtains described in the phrase of the upholsterer, and
much good language was devoted to the view from these windows. The
shrewdest of the reporters had already sought information as to the
interior from the flower dealers, from upholsterers, from artists who
had been employed in the decorations, and had even assailed, in the name
of the rights of the public whom they represented, the architects of the
building; but their chief reliance was upon the waiters furnished by the
leading caterers on occasions of special receptions and great dinners,
and milliners and dress-makers, who had penetrated the more domestic
apartments. By reason of this extraordinary article in the newspaper,
the public had acquired the right to know all about the private life of
the Mavick family.

This right was not acknowledged by Mr. Mavick and his family. Of course
the object of the excitement was wholly ignorant of the cause of it,
as no daily newspaper was ever seen by her that had not been carefully
inspected by the trusted and intelligent governess. The crowd in front
of the mansion was accounted for by the statement that a picture of
it had appeared in one of the low journals, and there was naturally
a curiosity to see it. And Evelyn was told that this was one of the
penalties a man paid for being popular.

Mrs. Mavick, who seldom lost her head, was thoroughly frightened and
upset, and it was a rare occasion that could upset the equanimity of
the late widow, Mrs. Carmen Henderson. She gave way to her passion and
demanded that the offending editor should be pursued with the utmost
rigor of the law. Mr. Mavick was not less annoyed and angry, but he
smiled when his wife talked of pursuing the press with the utmost rigor
of the law, and said that he would give the matter prompt attention.
That day he had an interview with the editor of the Daily Spectrum;
which was satisfactory to both parties. The editor would have said that
Mavick behaved like a gentleman. The result of the interview appeared in
the newspaper of the following morning.

Mr. Mavick had requested that the offending reporter should be
cautioned; he was too wise to have further attention called to the
matter by demanding his dismissal. Accordingly the reporter was severely
reprimanded, and then promoted.

The editorial, which was written by Mr. Olin Brad, and was in his best
Macaulay style, began somewhat humorously by alluding to the curious
interest of the public in ancient history, citing Mr. Froude and
Mr. Carlyle, and the legend of Casper Hauser. It was true, gradually
approaching the case in point, that uncommon precautions had been taken
in the early years of the American heiress, and it was the romance of
the situation that had been laid before the readers of the Spectrum.
But there had been really no danger in our chivalrous, free American
society, and all these precautions were long a thing of the past (which
was not true). In short, with elaboration and great skill, and some
humor, the exaggerations of the former article were minimized, and put
in an airy and unsubstantial light. And then this friend of the people,
this exposer of abuses and champion of virtue, turned and justly scored
the sensational press for prying into the present life of one of the
first families in the country.

Incidentally, it was mentioned that the ladies of the family had before
this incident bespoken their passage for their annual visit to Europe,
and that this affair had not disturbed their arrangements (which also
was not true). This casual announcement was intended to draw away
attention from the Fifth Avenue house, and to notify the roughs that it
would be useless to lay any plans.

The country press, which had far and wide printed the interesting
story, softened it in accordance with the later development. Possibly
no intelligent person was deceived, but in the estimation of the mass
of the people the Spectrum increased its reputation for enterprise and
smartness and gave also an impression of its fairness. The manager,
told Mr. Brad that the increased sales of the two days permitted the
establishment to give him a vacation of two weeks on full pay, and
during these weeks the manager himself set up a neat and modest
brougham.

All of which events, only partially understood, Mr. Philip Burnett
revolved in his mind, and wondered if what was called success was worth
the price paid for it.




VII

The name of Thomas Mavick has lost the prominence and significance it
had at the time the events recorded in this history were taking place.
It seems incredible that the public should so soon have lost interest in
him. His position in the country was most conspicuous. No name was more
frequently in the newspapers. No other person not in official life was
so often interviewed. The reporters instinctively turned to him for
information in matters financial, concerning deals, and commercial,
which were so commonly connected with political, enterprises. No loan
was negotiated without consulting him, no operation was considered safe
without knowing how he was affected towards it, and to ascertain what
Mavick was doing or thinking was a constant anxiety in the Street. Of
course the opinion of a man so powerful was very important in politics,
and any church or sect would be glad to have his support. The fact that
he and his family worshiped regularly at St. Agnes's was a guarantee of
the stability of that church, and incidentally marked the success of the
Christian religion in the metropolis.

But the condition of the presence in the public mind of the name of a
great operator and accumulator of money who is merely that is either
that he go on accumulating, so that the magnitude of his wealth has few
if any rivals, or that his name become synonymous with some gigantic
cleverness, if not rascality, so that it is used as an adjective after
he and his wealth have disappeared from the public view. It is different
with the reputation of an equally great financier who has used his
ability for the service of his country. There is no Valhalla for the
mere accumulators of money. They are fortunate if their names are
forgotten, and not remembered as illustrations of colossal selfishness.

Mavick may have been the ideal of many a self-made man, but he did
not make his fortune--he married it. And it was suspected that the
circumstances attending that marriage put him in complete control of it.
He came into possession, however, with cultivated shrewdness and tact
and large knowledge of the world, the world of diplomacy as well as of
business. And under his manipulation the vast fortune so acquired was
reported to have been doubled. It was at any rate almost fabulous in the
public estimation.

When the charming widow of the late Rodney Henderson, then sojourning in
Rome, placed her attractive self and her still more attractive fortune
in the hands of Mr. Thomas Mavick, United States Minister to the Court
of Italy, she attained a position in the social world which was in
accord with her ambition, and Mavick acquired the means of making the
mission, in point of comparison with the missions of the other powers
at the Italian capital, a credit to the Great Republic. The match was
therefore a brilliant one, and had a sort of national importance.

Those who knew Mrs. Mavick in the remote past, when she was the
fascinating and not definitely placed Carmen Eschelle, and who also knew
Mr. Mavick when he was the confidential agent of Rodney Henderson, knew
that their union was a convenient and material alliance, in which the
desire of each party to enjoy in freedom all the pleasures of the world
could be gratified while retaining the social consideration of the
world. Both had always been circumspect. And it may be added, for the
information of strangers, that they thoroughly knew each other, and were
participants in a knowledge that put each at disadvantage, so that their
wedded life was a permanent truce. This bond of union was not ideal, and
not the best for the creation of individual character, but it avoided an
exhibition of those public antagonisms which so grieve and disturb the
even flow of the current of society, and give occasion to so much witty
comment on the institution of marriage itself.

When, some two years after Mr. Mavick relinquished the mission to Italy
to another statesman who had done some service to the opposite party,
an heiress was born to the house of Mavick, her appearance in the
world occasioned some disappointment to those who had caused it.
Mavick naturally wished a son to inherit his name and enlarge the gold
foundation upon which its perpetuity must rest; and Mrs. Mavick as
naturally shrank from a responsibility that promised to curtail freedom
of action in the life she loved. Carmen--it was an old saying of the
danglers in the time of Henderson--was a domestic woman except in her
own home.

However, it is one of the privileges of wealth to lighten the cares
and duties of maternity, and the enlarged household was arranged upon a
basis that did not interfere with the life of fashion and the charitable
engagements of the mother. Indeed, this adaptable woman soon found that
she had become an object of more than usual interest, by her latest
exploit, in the circles in which she moved, and her softened manner and
edifying conversation showed that she appreciated her position. Even
the McTavishes, who were inclined to be skeptical, said that Carmen was
delightful in her new role. This showed that the information Mrs. Mavick
got from the women who took care of her baby was of a kind to touch the
hearts of mothers and spinsters.

Moreover, the child was very pretty, and early had winning ways. The
nurse, before the baby was a year old, discovered in her the cleverness
of the father and the grace and fascination of the mother. And it must
be said that, if she did not excite passionate affection at first, she
enlisted paternal and maternal pride in her career. It dawned upon both
parents that a daughter might give less cause for anxiety than a son,
and that in an heiress there were possibilities of an alliance that
would give great social distinction. Considering, therefore, all that
she represented, and the settled conviction of Mrs. Mavick that she
would be the sole inheritor of the fortune, her safety and education
became objects of the greatest anxiety and precaution.

It happened that about the time Evelyn was christened there was a
sort of epidemic of stealing children, and of attempts to rob tombs of
occupants who had died rich or distinguished, in the expectation of
a ransom. The newspapers often chronicled mysterious disappearances;
parents whose names were conspicuous suffered great anxiety, and
extraordinary precautions were taken in regard to the tombs of public
men. And this was the reason that the heiress of the house of Mavick
became the object of a watchful vigilance that was probably never before
exercised in a republic, and that could only be paralleled in the case
of a sole heir-apparent of royalty.

These circumstances resulted in an interference with the laws of nature
which it must be confessed destroyed one of the most interesting studies
in heredity that was ever offered to an historian of social life. What
sort of a child had we a right to expect from Thomas Mavick, diplomatist
and operator, successor to the rights and wrongs of Rodney Henderson,
and Carmen Mavick, with the past of Carmen Eschelle and Mrs. Henderson?
Those who adhered to the strictest application of heredity, in
considering the natural development of Evelyn Mavick, sought refuge
in the physiological problem of the influence of Rodney Henderson, and
declared that something of his New England sturdiness and fundamental
veracity had been imparted to the inheritor of his great fortune.

But the visible interference took the form of Ann McDonald, a Scotch
spinster, to whom was intrusted the care of Evelyn as soon as she was
christened. It was merely a piece of good fortune that brought a person
of the qualifications of Ann McDonald into the family, for it is not to
be supposed that Mrs. Mavick had given any thought to the truth that
the important education of a child begins in its cradle, or that in
selecting a care-taker and companion who should later on be a governess
she was consulting her own desire of freedom from the duties of a
mother. It was enough for her that the applicant for the position had
the highest recommendations, that she was prepossessing in appearance,
and it was soon perceived that the guardian was truthful, faithful,
vigilant, and of an affectionate disposition and an innate refinement.

Ann McDonald was the only daughter of a clergyman of the Scotch Church,
and brought up in the literary atmosphere common in the most cultivated
Edinburgh homes. She had been accurately educated, and always with the
knowledge that her education might be her capital in life. After the
death of her mother, when she was nineteen, she had been her father's
housekeeper, and when in her twenty-fourth year her father relinquished
his life and his salary, she decided, under the advice of influential
friends, to try her fortune in America. And she never doubted that it
was a providential guidance that brought her into intimate relations
with the infant heiress. It seemed probable that a woman so attractive
and so solidly accomplished would not very long remain a governess, but
in fact her career was chosen from the moment she became interested in
the development of the mind and character of the child intrusted to her
care. It is difficult to see how our modern life would go on as well as
it does if there were not in our homes a good many such faithful souls.
It sometimes seems, in this shifting world, that about the best any of
us can do is to prepare some one else for doing something well.

Miss McDonald had a pretty comprehensive knowledge of English literature
and history, and, better perhaps than mere knowledge, a discriminating
and cultivated taste. If her religious education had twisted her view
of the fine arts, she had nevertheless a natural sympathy for the
beautiful, and she would not have been a Scotchwoman if she had not
had a love for the romances of her native land and at heart a “ballad”
 sentiment for the cavaliers. If Evelyn had been educated by her in
Edinburgh, she might have been in sentiment a young Jacobite. She had
through translations a sufficient knowledge of the classics to give her
the necessary literary background, and her study of Latin had led her
into the more useful acquisition of French.

If she had been free to indulge her own taste, she would have gone far
in natural history, as was evident from her mastery of botany and her
interest in birds.

She inspired so much confidence by her good sense, clear-headedness, and
discretion, that almost from the first Evelyn was confided to her sole
care, with only the direction that the baby was never for an instant,
night or day, to be left out of the sight of a trusty attendant. The
nurse was absolutely under her orders, she selected the two maids, and
no person except the parents and the governess could admit visitors to
the nursery. This perfect organization was maintained for many years,
and though it came to be relaxed in details, it was literally true that
the heiress was never alone, and never out of the sight of some
trusted person responsible for her safety. But whatever the changes or
relaxation, in holidays, amusements, travel, or education, the person
who formed her mind was the one who had taught her to obey, to put words
together into language, and to speak the truth, from infancy.

It is not necessary to consider Ann McDonald as a paragon. She was
simply an intelligent, disciplined woman, with a strong sense of duty.
If she had married and gone about the ordinary duties of life at the
age of twenty-four, she would probably have been in no marked way
distinguished among women. Her own development was largely due to the
responsibility that was put upon her in the training of another person.
In this sense it was true that she had learned as much as she had
imparted. And in nothing was this more evident than in the range of her
literary taste and judgment. Whatever risks, whatever latitude she might
have been disposed to take with regard to her own mind, she would not
take as to the mind of another, and as a consequence her own standards
rose to meet the situation. That is to say, in a conscientious selection
of only the best for Evelyn, she became more fastidious as to the food
for her own mind. Or, to put it in still another way, in regard to
character and culture generally, the growth of Miss McDonald could be
measured by that of Evelyn.

When, from the time Evelyn was seven years old, it became necessary
in her education to call in special tutors in the languages and
in mathematics, and in certain arts that are generally called
accomplishments, Miss McDonald was always present when the lessons were
given, so that she maintained her ascendency and her influence in the
girl's mind. It was this inseparable companionship, at least in all
affairs of the mind, that gave to this educational experiment an
exceptional interest to students of psychology. Nothing could be more
interesting than to come into contact with a mind that from infancy
onward had dwelt only upon what is noblest in literature, and from which
had been excluded all that is enervating and degrading. A remarkable
illustration of this is the familiar case of Helen Keller, whose
acquisitions, by reason of her blindness and deafness, were limited to
what was selected for her, and that mainly by one person, and she was
therefore for a long time shielded from a knowledge of the evil side of
life. Yet all vital literature is so close to life, and so full of its
passion and peril, that it supplies all the necessary aliment for the
growth of a sound, discriminating mind; and that knowledge of the world,
as knowledge of evil is euphemistically called, can be safely left
out of a good education. This may be admitted without going into the
discussion whether good principles and standards in literature and
morals are a sufficient equipment for the perils of life.

This experiment, of course, was limited in Evelyn's case. She came
in contact with a great deal of life. Her little world was fairly
representative, for it contained her father, her mother, her governess,
the maids and the servants, and occasional visitors, whom she saw freely
as she grew older. The interesting fact was that she was obliged to
judge this world according to the standards of literature, morals, and
manners that had been implanted in her mainly by the influence of one
person. The important part of this experiment of partial exclusion,
in which she was never alone' an experiment undertaken solely for
her safety and not for her training-was seen in her when she became
conscious of its abnormal character, and perceived that she was always
under surveillance. It might have made her exceedingly morbid,
aside from its effect of paralyzing her self-confidence and power of
initiation, had it not been for the exceptionally strong and cheerful
nature of her companion. A position more hateful, even to a person not
specially socially inclined, cannot be imagined than that of always
being watched, and never having any assured privacy. And under such a
tutelage and dependence, how in any event could she be able to take care
of herself? What weapons had this heiress of a great fortune with
which to defend herself? What sort of a girl had this treatment during
seventeen years produced?




VIII


To the private apartment of Mr. Mavick, in the evening of the second
eventful day, where, over his after-dinner cigar, he was amusing himself
with a French novel, enters, after a little warning tap, the mistress of
the house, for, what was a rare occurrence, a little family chat.

“So you didn't horsewhip and you didn't prosecute. You preferred to
wriggle out!”

“Yes,” said Mavick, too much pleased with the result to be belligerent,
“I let the newspaper do the wriggling.”

“Oh, my dear, I can trust you for that. Have you any idea how it got
hold of the details?”

“No; you don't think McDonald--”

“McDonald! I'd as soon suspect myself. So would you.”

“Well, everybody knew it already, for that matter. I only wonder that
some newspaper didn't get on to it before. What did Evelyn say?”

“Nothing more than what you heard at dinner. She thought it amusing
that there should be such a crowd to gaze at the house, simply because
a picture of it had appeared in a newspaper. She thought her father must
be a very important personage. I didn't undeceive her. At times, you
know, dear, I think so myself.”

“Yes, I've noticed that,” said Mavick, with a good-natured laugh, in
which Carmen joined, “and those times usually coincide with the times
that you want something specially.”

“You ought to be ashamed to take me up that way. I just wanted to talk
about the coming-out reception. You know I had come over to your opinion
that seventeen was perhaps better than eighteen, considering Evelyn's
maturity. When I was seventeen I was just as good as I am now.”

“I don't doubt it,” said Mavick, with another laugh.

“But don't you see this affair upsets all our arrangements? It's very
vexatious.”

“I don't see it exactly. By-the-way, what do you think of the escape
suggested by the Spectrum, in the assertion that you and Evelyn had
arranged to go to Europe? The steamer sails tomorrow.”

“Think!” exclaimed Carmen. “Do you think I am going to be run, as you
call it, by the newspapers? They run everything else. I'm not politics,
I'm not an institution, I'm not even a revolution. No, I thank you. It
answers my purpose for them to say we have gone.”

“I suppose you can keep indoors a few days. As to the reception, I
had arranged my business for it. I may be in Mexico or Honolulu the
following winter.”

“Well, we can't have it now. You see that.”

“Carmen, I don't care a rap what the public thinks or says. The child's
got to face the world some time, and look out for herself. I fancy she
will not like it as much as you did.”

“Very likely. Perhaps I liked it because I had to fight it. Evelyn never
will do that.”

“She hasn't the least idea what the world is like.”

“Don't you be too sure of that, my dear; you don't understand yet what
a woman feels and knows. You think she only sees and thinks what she is
told. The conceit of men is most amusing about this. Evelyn is deeper
than you think. The discrimination of that child sometimes positively
frightens me--how she sees into things. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if
she actually knew her father and mother!”

“Then she beats me,” said Mavick, with another laugh, “and I've been at
it a long time. Carmen, just for fun, tell me a little about your early
life.”

“Well”--there was a Madonna-like smile on her lips, and she put out the
toe of her slender foot and appeared to study it for a moment--“I was
intended to be a nun.”

“Spanish or French?”

“Just a plain nun. But mamma would not hear of it. Mamma was just a bit
worldly.”

“I never should have suspected it,” said Mavick, with equal gravity.
“But how did you live in those early days, way back there?”

“Oh!” and Carmen looked up with the most innocent, open-eyed expression,
“we lived on our income.”

“Naturally. We all try to do that.” The tone in Mavick's voice showed
that he gave it up.

“But, of course,” and Carmen was lively again, “it's much nicer to have
a big income that's certain than a small one that is uncertain.”

“It would seem so.”

“Ah, deary me, it's such a world! Don't you think, dear, that we have
had enough domestic notoriety for one year?”

“Quite. It would do for several.”

“And we will put it off a year?”

“Arrange as you like.” And Mavick stretched up his arms, half yawned,
and took up another cigar.

“It will be such a relief to McDonald. She insisted it was too soon.”
 And Carmen whirled out of her chair, went behind her husband, lifted
with her delicate fingers a lock of grayish hair on his forehead,
deposited the lightest kiss there--“Nobody in the world knows how good
you are except me,” and was gone.

And the rich man, who had gained everything he wanted in life except
happiness, lighted his cigar and sought refuge in a tale of modern life,
that was, however, too much like his own history to be consoling.

It must not be supposed from what she said that Mrs. Mavick stood in
fear of her daughter, but it was only natural that for a woman of the
world the daily contact of a pure mind should be at times inconvenient.
This pure mind was an awful touchstone of conduct, and there was a fear
that Evelyn's ignorance of life would prevent her from making the proper
allowances. In her affectionate and trusting nature, which suspected
little evil anywhere, there was no doubt that her father and mother had
her entire confidence and love. But the likelihood was that she would
not be pliant. Under Miss McDonald's influence she had somewhat abstract
notions of what is right and wrong, and she saw no reason why these
should not be applied in all cases. What her mother would have called
policy and reasonable concessions she would have given different names.
For getting on in the world, this state of mind has its disadvantages,
and in the opinion of practical men, like Mavick, it was necessary to
know good and evil. But it was the girl's power of discernment that
bothered her mother, who used often to wonder where the child came from.

On the other hand, it must not be supposed that the singular training of
Evelyn had absolutely destroyed her inherited tendencies, or made her as
she was growing into womanhood anything but a very real woman, with the
reserves, the weaknesses, the coquetries, the defenses which are the
charm of her sex. Nor was she so ignorant of life as such a guarded
personality might be thought. Her very wide range of reading had
liberalized her mind, and given her a much wider outlook upon the
struggles and passions and failures and misery of life than many another
girl of her age had gained by her limited personal experience. Those who
hold the theory that experience is the only guide are right as a matter
of fact, since every soul seems determined to try for itself and not to
accept the accumulated wisdom of literature or of experienced advisers;
but those who come safely out of their experiences are generally sound
by principle which has been instilled in youth. But it is useless to
moralize. Only the event could show whether such an abnormal training as
Evelyn had received was wise.

When Mrs. Mavick went to her daughter's apartments she found Evelyn
reading aloud and Miss McDonald at work on an elaborate piece of
Bulgarian embroidery.

“How industrious! What a rebuke to me!”

“I don't see, mamma, how we could be doing less; I've only an audience
of one, and she is wasting her time.”

“Well, carissima, it is settled. It's off for a year.”

“The reception? Why so?”

“Your father cannot arrange it. He has too much on hand this season, and
may be away.”

“There, McDonald, we've got a reprieve,” and Evelyn gave a sigh of
relief.

The Scotch woman smiled, and only said, “Then I shall have time to
finish this.”

Evelyn jumped up, threw herself into her mother's lap, and began to
smooth her hair and pet her. “I'm awfully glad. I'd ever so much rather
stay in than come out. Yes, dear little mother.”

“Little?”

“Yes.” And the girl pulled her mother from her chair, and made her stand
up to measure. “See, McDonald, almost an inch taller than mamma, and
when I do my hair on top!”

“And see, mamma”--the girl was pirouetting on the floor--“I can do those
steps you do. Isn't it Spanish?”

“Rather Spanish-American, I guess. This is the way.”

Evelyn clapped her hands. “Isn't that lovely!”

“You are only a little brownie, after all.” Her mother was holding her
at arm's--length and studying her critically, wondering if she would
ever be handsome.

The girl was slender, but not tall. Her figure had her mother's grace,
but not its suggestion of yielding suppleness. She was an undoubted
brunette--complexion olive, hair very dark, almost black except in the
sunlight, and low on her forehead-chin a little strong, and nose piquant
to say the least of it. Certainly features not regular nor classic. The
mouth, larger than her mother's, had full lips, the upper one short, and
admirable curves, strong in repose, but fascinating when she smiled. A
face not handsome, but interesting. And the eyes made you hesitate
to say she was not handsome, for they were large, of a dark hazel and
changeable, eyes that flashed with merriment, or fell into sadness under
the long eyelashes; and it would not be safe to say that they could not
blaze with indignation. Not a face to go wild about, but when you felt
her character through it, a face very winning in its dark virgin purity.

“I do wonder where she came from?” Mrs. Mavick was saying to herself,
as she threw herself upon a couch in her own room and took up the latest
Spanish novel.




IX

Celia Howard had been, in a way, Philip's inspiration ever since the
days when they quarreled and made up on the banks of the Deer field. And
a fortunate thing for him it was that in his callow years there was a
woman in whom he could confide. Her sympathy was everything, even if
her advice was not always followed. In the years of student life
and preparation they had not often met, but they were constant and
painstaking correspondents. It was to her that he gave the running
chronicle of his life, and poured out his heart and aspirations.
Unconsciously he was going to school to a woman, perhaps the most
important part of his education. For, though in this way he might never
hope to understand woman, he was getting most valuable knowledge of
himself.

As a guide, Philip was not long in discovering that Celia was somewhat
uncertain. She kept before him a very high ideal; she expected him to be
distinguished and successful, but, her means varied from time to time.
Now she would have him take one path and now another. And Philip learned
to read in this varying advice the changes in her own experience. There
was a time when she hoped he would be a great scholar: there was no
position so noble as that of a university professor or president. Then
she turned short round and extolled the business life: get money, get a
position, and then you can study, write books, do anything you like
and be independent. Then came a time--this was her last year in
college--when science seemed the only thing. That was really a benefit
to mankind: create something, push discovery, dispel ignorance.

“Why, Phil, if you could get people to understand about ventilation, the
necessity of pure air, you would deserve a monument. And, besides--this
is an appeal to your lower nature--science is now the thing that pays.”
 Theology she never considered; that was just now too uncertain in its
direction. Law she had finally approved; it was still respectable; it
was a very good waiting-ground for many opportunities, and it did not
absolutely bar him from literature, for which she perceived he had a
sneaking fondness.

Philip wondered if Celia was not thinking of the law for herself. She
had tried teaching, she had devoted herself for a time to work in a
College Settlement, she had learned stenography, she had talked of
learning telegraphy, she had been interested in women's clubs, in a
civic club, in the political education of women, and was now a professor
of economics in a girl's college.

It finally dawned upon Philip, who was plodding along, man fashion, in
one of the old ruts, feeling his way, like a true American, into the
career that best suited him, that Celia might be a type of the awakened
American woman, who does not know exactly what she wants. To be sure,
she wants everything. She has recently come into an open place, and she
is distracted by the many opportunities. She has no sooner taken up
one than she sees another that seems better, or more important in the
development of her sex, and she flies to that. But nothing, long, seems
the best thing. Perhaps men are in the way, monopolizing all the best
things. Celia had never made a suggestion of this kind, but Philip
thought she was typical of the women who push individualism so far as
never to take a dual view of life.

“I have just been,” Celia wrote in one of her letters, when she was
an active club woman, “out West to a convention of the Federation of
Women's Clubs. Such a striking collection of noble, independent women!
Handsome, lots of them, and dressed--oh, my friend, dress is still a
part of it! So different from a man's convention! Cranks? Yes, a few
left over. It was a fine, inspiring meeting. But, honestly, I could not
exactly make out what they were federating about, and what they were
going to do when they got federated. It sort of came over me, I am such
a weak sister, that there is such a lot of work done in this world with
no object except the doing of it.”

A more recent letter:--“Do you remember Aunt Hepsy, who used to keep
the little thread-and-needle and candy shop in Rivervale? Such a dear,
sweet, contented old soul! Always a smile and a good word for every
customer. I can see her now, picking out the biggest piece of candy in
the dish that she could afford to give for a little fellow's cent. It
never came over me until lately how much good that old woman did in the
world. I remember what a comfort it was to go and talk with her. Well, I
am getting into a frame of mind to want to be an Aunt Hepsy. There is
so much sawdust in everything--No, I'm not low-spirited. I'm just
philosophical--I've a mind to write a life of Aunt Hepsy, and let the
world see what a real useful life is.”

And here is a passage from the latest:--“What an interesting story your
friend--I hope he isn't you friend, for I don't half like him--has made
out of that Mavick girl! If I were the girl's mother I should want to
roast him over the coals. Is there any truth in it?

“Of course I read it, as everybody did and read the crawl out, and
looked for more. So it is partly our fault, but what a shame it is,
the invasion of family life! Do tell me, if you happen to see her--the
girl--driving in the Park or anywhere--of course you never will--what
she looks like. I should like to see an unsophisticated millionaire-ess!
But it is an awfully interesting problem, invented or not I'm pretty
deep in psychology these days, and I'd give anything to come in contact
with that girl. You would just see a woman, and you wouldn't know. I'd
see a soul. Dear me, if I'd only had the chance of that Scotch woman!
Don't you see, if we could only get to really know one mind and soul, we
should know it all. I mean scientifically. I know what you are thinking,
that all women have that chance. What you think is impertinent--to the
subject.”

Indeed, the story of Evelyn interested everybody. It was taken up
seriously in the country regions. It absorbed New York gossip for two
days, and then another topic took possession of the mercurial city; but
it was the sort of event to take possession of the country mind. New
York millionaires get more than their share of attention in the country
press at all times, but this romance became the subject of household
talk and church and sewing-circle gossip, and all the women were eager
for more details, and speculated endlessly about the possible character
and career of the girl.

Alice wrote Philip from Rivervale that her aunt Patience was very much
excited by it. “'The poor thing,' she said, 'always to have somebody
poking round, seeing every blessed thing you do or don't do; it would
drive me crazy. There is that comfort in not having anything much--you
have yourself. You tell Philip that I hope he doesn't go there often.
I've no objection to his being kind to the poor thing when they meet,
and doing neighborly things, but I do hope he won't get mixed up with
that set.' It is very amusing,” Alice continued, “to hear Patience
soliloquize about it and construct the whole drama.

“But you cannot say, Philip, that you are not warned (!) and you know
that Patience is almost a prophet in the way she has of putting things
together. Celia was here recently looking after the little house that
has been rented ever since the death of her mother. I never saw her look
so well and handsome, and yet there was a sort of air about her as if
she had been in public a good deal and was quite capable of taking care
of herself. But she was that way when she was little.

“I think she is a good friend of yours. Well, Phil, if you do ever
happen to see that Evelyn in the opera, or anywhere, tell me how she
looks and what she has on--if you can.”

The story had not specially interested Philip, except as it was
connected with Brad's newspaper prospects, but letters, like those
referred to, received from time to time, began to arouse a personal
interest. Of course merely a psychological interest, though the talk
here and there at dinner-tables stimulated his desire, at least, to see
the subject of them. But in this respect he was to be gratified, in the
usual way things desired happen in life--that is, by taking pains to
bring them about.

When Mr. Brad came back from his vacation his manner had somewhat
changed. He had the air of a person who stands on firm ground. He felt
that he was a personage. He betrayed this in a certain deliberation of
speech, as if any remark from him now might be important. In a way he
felt himself related to public affairs.

In short, he had exchanged the curiosity of the reporter for the
omniscience of the editor. And for a time Philip was restrained from
intruding the subject of the Mavick sensation. However, one day after
dinner he ventured:

“I see, Mr. Brad, that your hit still attracts attention.” Mr. Brad
looked inquiringly blank.

“I mean about the millionaire heiress. It has excited a wide interest.”

“Ah, that! Yes, it gave me a chance,” replied Brad, who was thinking
only of himself.

“I've had several letters about it from the country.”

“Yes? Well, I suppose,” said Brad, modestly, “that a little country
notoriety doesn't hurt a person.”

Philip did not tell his interlocutor that, so far as he knew, nobody in
the country had ever heard the name of Olin Brad, or knew there was such
a person in existence. But he went on:

“Certainly. And, besides, there is a great curiosity to know about the
girl. Did you ever see her?”

“Only in public. I don't know Mavick personally, and for reasons,” and
Mr. Brad laughed in a superior manner. “It's easy enough to see her.”

“How?”

“Watch out for a Wagner night, and go to the opera. You'll see where
Mavick's box is in the bill. She is pretty sure to be there, and her
mother. There is nothing special about her; but her mother is still
a very fascinating woman, I can tell you. You'll find her sure on a
'Carmen' night, but not so sure of the girl.”

On this suggestion Philip promptly acted. The extra expense of an
orchestra seat he put down to his duty to keep his family informed of
anything that interested them in the city. It was a “Siegfried” night,
and a full house. To describe it all would be very interesting to Alice.
The Mavick box was empty until the overture was half through. Then
appeared a gentleman who looked as if he were performing a public duty,
a lady who looked as if she were receiving a public welcome, and seated
between them a dark, slender girl, who looked as if she did not see the
public at all, but only the orchestra.

Behind them, in the shadow, a middle-aged woman in plainer attire. It
must be the Scotch governess. Mrs. Mavick had her eyes everywhere about
the house, and was graciously bowing to her friends. Mr. Mavick coolly
and unsympathetically regarded the house, quite conscious of it, but
as if he were a little bored. You could not see him without being aware
that he was thinking of other things, probably of far-reaching schemes.
People always used to say of Mavick, when he was young and a clerk in a
Washington bureau, that he looked omniscient. At least the imagination
of spectators invested him with a golden hue, and regarded him through
the roseate atmosphere that surrounds a many-millioned man. The girl had
her eyes always on the orchestra, and was waiting for the opening of
the world that lay behind the drop-curtain. Philip noticed that all the
evening Mrs. Mavick paid very little attention to the stage, except when
the rest of the house was so dark that she could distinguish little in
it.

Fortunately for Philip, in his character of country reporter, the Mavick
box was near the stage, and he could very well see what was going on
in it, without wholly distracting his attention from Wagner's sometimes
very dimly illuminated creation.

There are faces and figures that compel universal attention and
admiration. Commonly there is one woman in a theatre at whom all glances
are leveled. It is a mystery why one face makes only an individual
appeal, and an appeal much stronger than that of one universally
admired. The house certainly concerned itself very little about the shy
and dark heiress in the Mavick box, having with regard to her only a
moment's curiosity. But the face instantly took hold of Philip. He found
it more interesting to read the play in her face than on the stage. He
seemed instantly to have established a chain of personal sympathy with
her. So intense was his regard that it seemed as if she must, if there
is anything in the telepathic theory of the interchange of feeling,
have been conscious of it. That she was, however, unconscious of any
influence reaching her except from the stage was perfectly evident.
She was absorbed in the drama, even when the drama was almost lost in
darkness, and only an occasional grunting ejaculation gave evidence that
there was at least animal life responsive to the continual pleading,
suggesting, inspiring strains of the orchestra. In the semi-gloom
and groping of the under-world, it would seem that the girl felt that
mystery of life which the instruments were trying to interpret.

At any rate, Philip could see that she was rapt away into that other
world of the past, to a practical unconsciousness of her immediate
surroundings. Was it the music or the poetic idea that held her? Perhaps
only the latter, for it is Wagner's gift to reach by his creations
those who have little technical knowledge of music. At any rate, she was
absorbed, and so perfectly was the progress of the drama repeated in her
face that Philip, always with the help of the orchestra, could trace it
there.

But presently something more was evident to this sympathetic student
of her face. She was not merely discovering the poet's world, she was
finding out herself. As the drama unfolded, Philip was more interested
in this phase than in the observation of her enjoyment and appreciation.
To see her eyes sparkle and her cheeks glow with enthusiasm during the
sword-song was one thing, but it was quite another when Siegfried began
his idyl, that nature and bird song of the awakening of the whole being
to the passion of love. Then it was that Evelyn's face had a look
of surprise, of pain, of profound disturbance; it was suffused with
blushes, coming and going in passionate emotion; the eyes no longer
blazed, but were softened in a melting tenderness of sympathy, and her
whole person seemed to be carried into the stream of the great life
passion. When it ceased she sank back in her seat, and blushed still
more, as if in fear that some one had discovered her secret.

Afterwards, when Philip had an opportunity of knowing Evelyn Mavick, and
knowing her very well, and to some extent having her confidence, he used
to say to himself that he had little to learn--the soul of the woman was
perfectly revealed to him that night of “Siegfried.”

As the curtain went down, Mrs. Mavick, whose attention had not been
specially given to the artists before, was clapping her hands in a great
state of excitement.

“Why don't you applaud, child?”

“Oh, mother,” was all the girl could say, with heaving breast and
downcast eyes.




X

All winter long that face seemed to get between Philip and his work. It
was an inspiration to his pen when it ran in the way of literature,
but a distinct damage to progress in his profession. He had seen Evelyn
again, more than once, at the opera, and twice been excited by a passing
glimpse of her on a crisp, sunny afternoon in the Mavick carriage in
the Park-always the same bright, eager face. So vividly personal was
the influence upon him that it seemed impossible that she should not be
aware of it--impossible that she could not know there was such a person
in the world as Philip Burnett.

Fortunately youth can create its own world. Between the secluded
daughter of millions and the law clerk was a great gulf, but this did
not prevent Evelyn's face, and, in moments of vanity, Evelyn herself,
from belonging to Philip's world. He would have denied--we have a habit
of lying to ourselves quite as much as to others--that he ever dreamed
of possessing her, but nevertheless she entered into his thoughts and
his future in a very curious way. If he saw himself a successful lawyer,
her image appeared beside him. If his story should gain the public
attention, and his occasional essays come to be talked of, it was
Evelyn's interest and approval that he caught himself thinking about.
And he had a conviction that she was one to be much more interested
in him as a man of letters than as a lawyer. This might be true. In
Philip's story, which was very slowly maturing, the heroine fell in love
with a young man simply for himself, and regardless of the fact that he
was poor and had his career to make. But he knew that if his novel ever
got published the critics would call it a romance, and not a transcript
of real life. Had not women ceased to be romantic and ceased to indulge
in vagaries of affection?

Was it that Philip was too irresolute to cut either law or literature,
and go in, single-minded, for a fortune of some kind, and a place? Or
was it merely that he had confidence in the winning character of his
own qualities and was biding his time? If it was a question of making
himself acceptable to a woman--say a woman like Evelyn--was it not
belittling to his own nature to plan to win her by what he could make
rather than by what he was?

Probably the vision he had of Evelyn counted for very little in his
halting decision. “Why don't you put her into a novel?” asked Mr. Brad
one evening. The suggestion was a shock. Philip conveyed the idea pretty
plainly that he hadn't got so low as that yet. “Ah, you fellows think
you must make your own material. You are higher-toned than old Dante.”
 The fact was that Philip was not really halting. Every day he was
less and less in love with the law as it was practiced, and, courting
reputation, he would much rather be a great author than a great lawyer.
But he kept such thoughts to himself. He had inherited a very good stock
of common-sense. Apparently he devoted himself to his office work, and
about the occupation of his leisure hours no one was in his confidence
except Celia, and now and then, when he got something into print, Alice.
Professedly Celia was his critic, but really she was the necessary
appreciator, for probably most writers would come to a standstill if
there was no sympathetic soul to whom they could communicate, while they
were fresh, the teeming fancies of their brains.

The winter wore along without any incident worth recording, but still
fruitful for the future, as Philip fondly hoped. And one day chance
threw in his way another sensation. Late in the afternoon of a spring
day he was sent from the office to Mavick's house with a bundle of
papers to be examined and signed.

“You will be pretty sure to find him,” said Mr. Sharp, “at home about
six. Wait till you do see him. The papers must be signed and go to
Washington by the night mail.”

Mr. Mavick was in his study, and received Philip very civilly, as the
messenger of his lawyers, and was soon busy in examining the documents,
flinging now and then a short question to Philip, who sat at the table
near him.

Suddenly there was a tap at the door, and, not waiting for a summons, a
young girl entered, and stopped after a couple of steps.

“Oh, I didn't know--”

“What is it, dear?” said Mr. Mavick, looking up a moment, and then down
at the papers.

“Why, about the coachman's baby. I thought perhaps--” She had a paper in
her hand, and advanced towards the table, and then stopped, seeing that
her father was not alone.

Philip rose involuntarily. Mr. Mavick looked up quickly. “Yes,
presently. I've just now got a little business with Mr. Burnett.”

It was not an introduction. But for an instant the eyes of the young
people met. It seemed to Philip that it was a recognition. Certainly the
full, sweet eyes were bent on him for the second she stood there, before
turning away and leaving the room. And she looked just as true and sweet
as Philip dreamed she would look at home. He sat in a kind of maze
for the quarter of an hour while Mavick was affixing his signature and
giving some directions. He heard all the directions, and carried away
the papers, but he also carried away something else unknown to the
broker. After all, he found himself reflecting, as he walked down the
avenue, the practice of the law has its good moments!

What was there in this trivial incident that so magnified it in
Philip's mind, day after day? Was it that he began to feel that he had
established a personal relation with Evelyn because she had seen him?
Nothing had really happened. Perhaps she had not heard his name, perhaps
she did not carry the faintest image of him out of the room with her.
Philip had read in romances of love at first sight, and he had personal
experience of it. Commonly, in romances, the woman gives no sign of it,
does not admit it to herself, denies it in her words and in her conduct,
and never owns it until the final surrender. “When was the first moment
you began to love me, dear?” “Why, the first moment, that day; didn't
you know it then?” This we are led to believe is common experience with
the shy and secretive sex. It is enough, in a thousand reported cases,
that he passed her window on horseback, and happened to look her way.
But with such a look! The mischief was done. But this foundation was too
slight for Philip to build such a hope on.

Looking back, we like to trace great results to insignificant, momentary
incidents--a glance, a word, that turned the current of a life. There
was a definite moment when the thought came to Alexander that he
would conquer the world! Probably there was no such moment. The great
Alexander was restless, and at no initial instant did he conceive his
scheme of conquest. Nor was it one event that set him in motion. We
confound events with causes. It happened on such a day. Yes, but it
might have happened on another. But if Philip had not been sent on that
errand to Mavick probably Evelyn would never have met him. What
nonsense this is, and what an unheroic character it makes Philip! Is it
supposable that, with such a romance as he had developed about the girl,
he would not some time have come near her, even if she had been locked
up with all the bars and bolts of a safety deposit?

The incident of this momentary meeting was, however, of great
consequence. There is no such feeder of love as the imagination. And
fortunate it was for Philip that his romance was left to grow in the
wonder-working process of his own mind. At first there had been merely
a curiosity in regard to a person whose history and education had been
peculiar. Then the sight of her had raised a strange tumult in his
breast, and his fancy began to play about her image, seen only at a
distance and not many times, until his imagination built up a being of
surpassing loveliness, and endowed with all the attractions that the
poets in all ages have given to the sex that inspires them. But this
sort of creation in the mind becomes vague, and related to literature
only, unless it is sustained by some reality. Even Petrarch must
occasionally see Laura at the church door, and dwell upon the veiled
dreamer that passed and perhaps paused a moment to regard him with sad
eyes. Philip, no doubt, nursed a genuine passion, which grew into an
exquisite ideal in the brooding of a poetic mind, but it might in
time have evaporated into thin air, remaining only as an emotional and
educational experience. But this moment in Mr. Mavick's library had
given a solid body to his imaginations, and a more definite turn to his
thought of her.

If, in some ordinary social chance, Philip had encountered the heiress,
without this previous wonderworking of his imagination in regard to
her, the probability is that he would have seen nothing especially to
distinguish her from the other girls of her age and newness in social
experience. Certainly the thought that she was the possessor of
uncounted millions would have been, on his side, an insuperable barrier
to any advance. But the imagination works wonders truly, and Philip
saw the woman and not the heiress. She had become now a distinct
personality; to be desired above all things on earth, and that he should
see her again he had no doubt.

This thought filled his mind, and even when he was not conscious of
it gave a sort of color to life, refined his perceptions, and gave him
almost sensuous delight in the masterpieces of poetry which had formerly
appealed only to his intellectual appreciation of beauty.

He had not yet come to a desire to share his secret with any confidant,
but preferred to be much alone and muse on it, creating a world which
was without evil, without doubt, undisturbed by criticism. In this so
real dream it was the daily office work that seemed unreal, and the
company and gossip of his club a kind of vain show. He began to frequent
the picture-galleries, where there was at least an attempt to express
sentiment, and to take long walks to the confines of the city-confines
fringed with all the tender suggestions of the opening spring. Even the
monotonous streets which he walked were illumined in his eyes, glorified
by the fullness of life and achievement. “Yes,” he said again and again,
as he stood on the Heights, in view of the river, the green wall of
Jersey and the great metropolis spread away to the ocean gate, “it is a
beautiful city! And the critics say it is commonplace and vulgar.”
 Dear dreamer, it is a beautiful city, and for one reason and another a
million of people who have homes there think so. But take out of it one
person, and it would have for you no more interest than any other
huge assembly of ugly houses. How, in a lover's eyes, the woman can
transfigure a city, a landscape, a country!

Celia had come up to town for the spring exhibitions, and was lodging at
the Woman's Club. Naturally Philip saw much of her, indeed gave her all
his time that the office did not demand. Her company was always for him
a keen delight, an excitement, and in its way a rest. For though
she always criticised, she did not nag, and just because she made no
demands, nor laid any claims on him, nor ever reproached him for want of
devotion, her society was delightful and never dull. They dined together
at the Woman's Club, they experimented on the theatres, they visited the
galleries and the picture-shops, they took little excursions into
the suburbs and came back impressed with the general cheapness and
shabbiness, and they talked--talked about all they saw, all they had
read, and something of what they thought. What was wanting to make this
charming camaraderie perfect? Only one thing.

It may have occurred to Philip that Celia had not sufficient respect for
his opinions; she regarded them simply as opinions, not as his.

One afternoon, in the Metropolitan Picture-Gallery, Philip had been
expressing enthusiasm for some paintings that Celia thought more
sentimental than artistic, and this reminded her that he was getting
into a general way of admiring everything.

“You didn't use, Philip, to care so much for pictures.”

“Oh, I've been seeing more.”

“But you don't say you like that? Look at the drawing.”

“Well, it tells the story.”

“A story is nothing; it's the way it's told. This is not well told.”

“It pleases me. Look at that girl.”

“Yes, she is domestic. I admit that. But I'm not sure I do not prefer
an impressionistic girl, whom you can't half see, to such a thorough
bread-and-butter miss as this.”

“Which would you rather live with?”

“I'm not obliged to live with either. In fact, I'd rather live with
myself. If it's art, I want art; if it's cooking and sewing, I want
cooking and sewing. If the artist knew enough, he'd paint a woman
instead of a cook.”

“Then you don't care for real life?”

“Real life! There is no such thing. You are demonstrating that. You
transform this uninteresting piece of domesticity into an ideal woman,
ennobling her surroundings. She doesn't do it. She is level with them.”

“It would be a dreary world if we didn't idealize things.”

“So it would. And that is what I complain of in such 'art' as this. I
don't know what has got into you, Phil. I never saw you so exuberant.
You are pleased with everything. Have you had a rise in the office? Have
you finished your novel?”

“Neither. No rise. No novel. But Tweedle is getting friendly. Threw
an extra job in my way the other day. Do you think I'd better offer my
novel, when it is done, to Tweedle?”

“Tweedle, indeed!”

“Well, one of our clients is one of the great publishing firms, and
Tweedle often dines with the publisher.”

“For shame, Phil!”

Philip laughed. “At any rate, that is no meaner than a suggestion of
Brad's. He says if I will just weave into it a lot of line scenery, and
set my people traveling on the great trunk, stopping off now and then at
an attractive branch, the interested railroads would gladly print it and
scatter it all over the country.”

“No doubt,” said Celia, sinking down upon a convenient seat. “I begin to
feel as if there were no protection for anything. And, Phil, that great
monster of a Mavick, who is eating up the country, isn't he a client
also?”

“Occasionally only. A man like Mavick has his own lawyers and judges.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“Just glimpses.”

“And that daughter of his, about whom such a fuss was made, I suppose
you never met her?”

“Oh, as I wrote you, at the opera; saw her in her box.”

“And--?”

“Oh, she's rather a little thing; rather dark, I told you that; seems
devoted to music.”

“And you didn't tell what she wore.”

“Why, what they all wear. Something light and rather fluffy.”

“Just like a man. Is she pretty?”

“Ye-e-s; has that effect. You'd notice her eyes.” If Philip had been
frank he would have answered,

“I don't know. She's simply adorable,” and Celia would have understood
all about it.

“And probably doesn't know anything. Yes, highly educated? I heard that.
But I'm getting tired of 'highly educated'; I see so many of them. I've
been making them now for years. Perhaps I'm one of them. And where am
I? Don't interrupt. I tell you it is a relief to come across a sweet,
womanly ignoramus. What church does she go to?”

“Who?”

“That Mavick girl.”

“St. Thomas', I believe.”

“That's good--that's devotional. I suppose you go there too, being
brought up a Congregationalist?”

“At vespers, sometimes. But, Celia, what is the matter with you? I
thought you didn't care--didn't care to belong to anything?”

“I? I belong to everything. Didn't I write you reams about my studies in
psychology? I've come to one conclusion. There are only two persons in
the world who stand on a solid foundation, the Roman Catholic and the
Agnostic. The Roman Catholic knows everything, the Agnostic doesn't know
anything.”

Philip was never certain when the girl was bantering him; nor, when she
was in earnest, how long she would remain in that mind and mood. So he
ventured, humorously:

“The truth is, Celia, that you know too much to be either. You are what
they call emancipated.”

“Emancipated!” And Celia sat up energetically, as if she were now really
interested in the conversation. “Become the slave of myself instead
of the slave of somebody else! That's the most hateful thing to be,
emancipated. I never knew a woman who said she was emancipated who
wasn't in some ridiculous folly or another. Now, Phil, I'm going to tell
you something. I can tell you. You know I've been striving to have a
career, to get out of myself somehow, and have a career for myself.
Well, today--mind, I don't say tomorrow”--(and there was a queer little
smile on her lips)--“I think I will just try to be good to people and
things in general, in a human way.”

“And give up education?”

“No, no. I get my living by education, just as you do, or hope to do, by
law or by letters; it's all the same. But wait. I haven't finished what
I was going to say. The more I go into psychology, trying to find out
about my mind and mind generally, the more mysterious everything is. Do
you know, Phil, that I'm getting into the supernatural? You can't help
running into it. For me, I am not side-tracked by any of the nonsense
about magnetism and telepathy and mind-reading and other psychic
imponderabilities. Isn't it queer that the further we go into science
the deeper we go into mystery?

“Now, don't be shocked, I mean it reverently, just as an illustration.
Do you think any one knows really anything more about the operation in
the world of electricity than he does about the operation of the Holy
Ghost? And yet people talk about science as if it were something they
had made themselves.”

“But, Celia--”

“No, I've talked enough. We are in this world and not in some other, and
I have to make my living. Let's go into the other room and see the
old masters. They, at least, knew how to paint--to paint passion and
character; some of them could paint soul. And then, Phil, I shall be
hungry. Talking about the mind always makes me hungry.”




XI

Philip was always welcome at his uncle's house in Rivervale. It was, of
course, his home during his college life, and since then he was always
expected for his yearly holiday. The women of the house made much of
him, waited on him, deferred to him, petted him, with a flattering
mingling of tenderness to a little boy and the respect due to a man who
had gone into the world. Even Mr. Maitland condescended to a sort of
equality in engaging Philip in conversation about the state of the
country and the prospects of business in New York.

It was July. When Philip went to sleep at night--he was in the front
chamber reserved for guests--the loud murmur of the Deerfield was in his
ears, like a current bearing him away into sweet sleep and dreams in a
land of pleasant adventures. Only in youth come such dreams. Later on
the sophisticated mind, left to its own guidance in the night, wanders
amid the complexities of life, calling up in confusion scenes long
forgotten or repented of, images only registered by a sub-conscious
process, dreams to perplex, irritate, and excite.

In the morning the same continuous murmur seemed to awake him into a
peaceful world. Through the open window came in the scents of summer,
the freshness of a new day. How sweet and light was the air! It was
indeed the height of summer. The corn, not yet tasseled, stood in green
flexible ranks, moved by the early breeze. In the river-meadows haying
had just begun. Fields of timothy and clover, yellowing to ripeness,
took on a fresh bloom from the dew, and there was an odor of new-mown
grass from the sections where the scythes had been. He heard the call
of the crow from the hill, the melody of the bobolink along the
meadow-brook; indeed, the birds of all sorts were astir, skimming along
the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the
garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching
their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from
the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the
grindstone. No such vivid realization of summer as that.

Philip stole out the unused front door without disturbing the family.
Whither? Where would a boy be likely to go the first thing? To the
barn, the great cavernous barn, its huge doors now wide open, the stalls
vacant, the mows empty, the sunlight sifting in through the high shadowy
spaces. How much his life had been in that barn! How he had stifled and
scrambled mowing hay in those lofts! On the floor he had hulled heaps of
corn, thrashed oats with a flail--a noble occupation--and many a rainy
day had played there with girls and boys who could not now exactly
describe the games or well recall what exciting fun they were. There
were the racks where he put the fodder for cattle and horses, and there
was the cutting-machine for the hay and straw and for slicing the frozen
turnips on cold winter mornings.

In the barn-yard were the hens, just as usual, walking with measured
step, scratching and picking in the muck, darting suddenly to one side
with an elevated wing, clucking, chattering, jabbering endlessly about
nothing. They did not seem to mind him as he stood in the open door.
But the rooster, in his oriental iridescent plumage, jumped upon a
fence-post and crowed defiantly, in warning that this was his preserve.
They seemed like the same hens, yet Philip knew they were all strangers;
all the hens and flaunting roosters he knew had long ago gone to
Thanksgiving. The hen is, or should be, an annual. It is never made a
pet. It forms no attachments. Man is no better acquainted with the hen,
as a being, than he was when the first chicken was hatched. Its business
is to live a brief chicken life, lay, and be eaten. And this reminded
Philip that his real occupation was hunting hens' eggs. And this he
did, in the mows, in the stalls, under the floor-planks, in every hidden
nook. The hen's instinct is to be orderly, and have a secluded nest of
her own, and bring up a family. But in such a communistic body it is a
wise hen who knows her own chicken. Nobody denies to the hen maternal
instincts or domestic proclivities, but what an ill example is a hen
community!

And then Philip climbed up the hill, through the old grass-plot and the
orchard, to the rocks and the forest edge, and the great view. It had
more meaning to him than when he was a boy, and it was more beautiful.
In a certain peaceful charm, he had seen nothing anywhere in the world
like it. Partly this was because his boyish impressions, the first fresh
impressions of the visible world, came back to him; but surely it was
very beautiful. More experienced travelers than Philip felt its unique
charm.

When he descended, Alice was waiting to breakfast with him. Mrs.
Maitland declared, with an approving smile on her placid, aging face,
that he was the same good-for-nothing boy. But Alice said, as she sat
down to the little table with Philip, “It is different, mother, with us
city folks.” They were in the middle room, and the windows opened to the
west upon the river-meadows and the wooded hills beyond, and through one
a tall rose-bush was trying to thrust its fragrant bloom.

What a dainty breakfast! Alice flushed with pleasure. It was so good of
him to come to them. Had he slept well? Did it seem like home at all?
Philip's face showed that it was home without the need of saying so.
Such coffee-yes, a real aroma of the berry! Just a little more, would he
have? And as Alice raised the silver pitcher, there was a deep dimple
in her sweet cheek. How happy she was! And then the butter, so fresh and
cool, and the delicious eggs--by the way, he had left a hatful in the
kitchen as he came in. Alice explained that she did not make the eggs.
And then there was the journey, the heat in the city, the grateful
sight of the Deerfield, the splendid morning, the old barn, the
watering-trough, the view from the hill everything just as it used to
be.

“Dear Phil, it is so nice to have you here,” and there were tears in
Alice's eyes, she was so happy.

After breakfast Philip strolled down the country road through the
village. How familiar was every step of the way!--the old houses jutting
out at the turns in the road; the glimpse of the river beyond the little
meadow where Captain Rice was killed; the spring under the ledge over
which the snap-dragon grew; the dilapidated ranks of fence smothered
in vines and fireweeds; the cottages, with flower-pots in front; the
stores, with low verandas ornamented with boxes and barrels; the academy
in its green on the hill; the old bridge over which the circus elephant
dared not walk; the new and the old churches, with rival steeples; and,
not familiar, the new inn.

And he knew everybody, young and old, at doorways, in the fields or
gardens, and had for every one a hail and a greeting. How he enjoyed it
all, and his self-consciousness added to his pleasure, as he swung along
in his well-fitting city clothes, broad-shouldered and erect--it is
astonishing how much a tailor can do for a man who responds to his
efforts. It is a pleasure to come across such a hero as this in real
life, and not have to invent him, as the saying is, out of the whole
cloth. Philip enjoyed the world, and he enjoyed himself, because it was
not quite his old self, the farmer's boy going on an errand. There must
be knowledge all along the street that he was in the great law office of
Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle. And, besides, Philip's name must be known to all
the readers of magazines in the town as a writer, a name in more than
one list of “contributors.” That was fame. Translated, however, into
country comprehension it was something like this, if he could have heard
the comments after he had passed by:

“Yes, that's Phil Burnett, sure enough; but I'd hardly know him; spruced
up mightily. I wonder what he's at?”

“I heard he was down in New York trying to law it. I heard he's been
writin' some for newspapers. Accordin' to his looks, must pay a durn
sight better'n farmin'.”

“Well, I always said that boy wa'n't no skeezics.”

Almost the first question Philip asked Alice on his return was about the
new inn, the Peacock Inn.

“There seemed a good deal of stir about it as I passed.”

“Why, I forgot to tell you about it. It's the great excitement.
Rivervale is getting known. The Mavicks are there. I hear they've taken
pretty much the whole of it.”

“The Mavicks?

“Yes, the New York Mavicks, that you wrote us about, that were in the
paper.”

“How long have they been there?”

“A week. There is Mrs. Mavick and her daughter, and the governess, and
two maids, and a young fellow in uniform--yes, livery--and a coachman in
the same, and a stableful of horses and carriages. It upset the village
like a circus. And they say there's a French chef in white cap and
apron, who comes to the side-door and jabbers to the small boys like
fireworks.”

“How did it come about?”

“Naturally, I guess; a city family wanting a quiet place for summer in
the country. But you will laugh. Patience first discovered it. One day,
sitting at the window, she saw a two-horse buggy driven by the landlord
of the Peacock, and a gentleman by his side. 'Well, I wonder who that
is-city man certainly. And wherever is he going? May be a railroad man.
But there is nothing the matter with the railroad. Shouldn't wonder
if he is going to see the tunnel. If it was just that, the landlord
wouldn't drive him; he'd send a man. And they keep stopping and pointing
and looking round. No, it isn't the railroad, it's scenery. And what can
a man like that want with scenery?

“He does look like a railroad man. It may be tunnel, but it isn't all
tunnel. When the team came back in the afternoon, Patience was again
at the window; she had heard meantime from Jabez that a city man was
stopping at the Peacock. There he goes, and looking round more than
ever. They've stopped by the bridge and the landlord is pointing out.
It's not tunnel, it's scenery. I tell you, he is a city boarder. Not
that he cares about scenery; it's for his family. City families are
always trying to find a grand new place, and he has heard of Rivervale
and the Peacock Inn. Maybe the tunnel had something to do with it.”

“Why, it's like second sight.”

“No, Patience says it's just judgment. And she generally hits it. At any
rate, the family is here.”

The explanation of their being there--it seemed to Philip
providential--was very simple. Mr. Mavick had plans about the Hoosac
Tunnel that required him to look at it. Mrs. Mavick took advantage of
this to commission him to look at a little inn in a retired village of
which she had heard, and to report on scenery and climate. Warm days and
cool nights and simplicity was her idea. Mavick reported that the place
seemed made for the family.

Evelyn was not yet out, but she was very nearly out, and after the late
notoriety Mrs. Mavick dreaded the regular Newport season. And, in the
mood of the moment, she was tired of the Newport palace. She always said
that she liked simplicity--a common failing among people who are not
compelled to observe it. Perhaps she thought she was really fond of
rural life and country ways. As she herself said,

“If you have a summer cottage at Newport or Lenox, it is necessary to
go off somewhere and rest.” And then it would be good for Evelyn to
live out-of-doors and see the real country, and, as for herself, as she
looked in the mirror, “I shall drink milk and go to bed early. Henderson
used to say that a month in New Hampshire made another woman of me.”

Oh, to find a spot where we could be undisturbed, alone and unknown.
That was the program. But Carmen simply could not be anywhere content
if she were unnoticed. It was not so easy to give up daily luxury, and
habits of ease at the expense of attendants, or the ostentation which
had become a second nature. Therefore the “establishment” went along
with her to Rivervale, and the shy, modest little woman, who had dropped
down into the country simplicity that she so dearly loved, greatly
enjoyed the sensation that her coming produced. It needed no effort
on her part to produce the sensation. The carriage, and coachman and
footman in livery, would have been sufficient; and then the idea of one
family being rich enough to take the whole hotel!

The liveries, the foreign cook in his queer cap and apron, and all the
goings-on at the Peacock were the inexhaustible topic of talk in every
farmhouse for ten miles around. Rivervale was a self-respecting town,
and principled against luxury and self-indulgence, and judged with
a just and severe judgment the world of fashion and of the grasping,
wicked millionaires. And now this world with all its vain show had
plumped down in the midst of them. Those who had traveled and seen
the ostentation of cities smiled a superior smile at the curiosity
and wonder exhibited, but even those who had never seen the like were
cautious about letting their surprise appear. Especially in the presence
of fashion and wealth would the independent American citizen straighten
his backbone, reassuring himself that he was as good as anybody. To be
sure, people flew to windows when the elegant equipage dashed by, and
everybody found frequent occasion to drive or walk past the Peacock Inn.
It was only the novelty of it, in a place that rather lacked novelties.

And yet there prevailed in the community a vague sense that millions
were there, and a curious expectation of some individual benefit from
them. All the young berry-pickers were unusually active, and poured
berries into the kitchen door of the inn. There was not a housewife who
was not a little more anxious about the product of her churning; not a
farmer who did not think that perhaps cord-wood would rise, that
there would be a better demand for garden “sass,” and more market for
chickens, and who did not regard with more interest his promising colt.
When he drove to the village his rig was less shabby and slovenly in
appearance. The young fellows who prided themselves upon a neat buggy
and a fast horse made their turnouts shine, and dashed past the inn with
a self-conscious air. Even the stores began to “slick up” and arrange
their miscellaneous notions more attractively, and one of them boldly
put in a window a placard, “Latest New York Style.” When the family
went to the Congregational church on Sunday not the slightest notice
was taken of them--though every woman could have told to the last detail
what the ladies wore--but some of the worshipers were for the first time
a little nervous about the performance of the choir, and the deacons
heard the sermon chiefly with reference to what a city visitor would
think of it.

Mrs. Mavick was quite equal to the situation. In the church she
was devout, in the village she was affable and friendly. She made
acquaintances right and left, and took a simple interest in everybody
and everything. She was on easy terms with the landlord, who declared,
“There is a woman with no nonsense in her.” She chatted with the farmers
who stopped at the inn door, she bought things at the stores that she
did not want, and she speedily discovered Aunt Hepsy, and loved to sit
with her in the little shop and pick up the traditions and the gossip
of the neighborhood. And she did not confine her angelic visits to
the village. On one pretense and another she made her way into every
farmhouse that took her fancy, penetrated the kitchens and dairies, and
got, as she told McDonald, into the inner life of the people.

She must see the grave of Captain Moses Rice. And on this legitimate
errand she one day carried her fluttering attractiveness and patchouly
into the Maitland house. Mrs. Maitland was civil, but no more. Alice
was civil but reserved--a great many people, she said, came to see the
graves in the old orchard. But Mrs. Mavick was not a bit abashed. She
expressed herself delighted with everything. It was such a rest, such
a perfectly lovely country, and everybody was so hospitable! And Aunt
Hepsy had so interested her in the history of the region! But it was
difficult to get her talk responded to.

However, when Miss Patience came in she made better headway. She had
heard so much of Miss Maitland's apartments. She herself was interested
in decorations. She had tried to do something in her New York home. But
there were so many ideas and theories, and it was so hard to be natural
and artificial at the same time. She had no doubt she could get some
new ideas from Miss Maitland. Would it be asking too much to see her
apartments? She really felt like a stranger nowhere in Rivervale.
Patience was only too delighted, and took her into her museum of natural
history, art, religion, and vegetation.

“She might have gone to the grave-yard without coming into the house,”
 Alice remarked.

“Oh, well,” said her mother, “I think she is very amusing. You shouldn't
be so exclusive, Alice.”

“Mother, I do believe she paints.”

With Patience, Mrs. Mavick felt on surer ground.

“How curious, how very curious and delightful it is! Such knowledge of
nature, such art in arrangement.”

“Oh, I just put them up,” said Patience, “as I thought they ought by
rights to be put up.”

“That's it. And you have combined everything here. You have given me
an idea. In our house we have a Japan room, and an Indian room, and a
Chinese room, and an Otaheite, and I don't know what--Egyptian, Greek,
and not one American, not a really American. That is, according to
American ideas, for you have everything in these two rooms. I shall
write to Mr. Mavick.” (Mr. Mavick never received the letter.)

When she came away it was with a profusion of thanks, and repeated
invitations to drop in at the inn. Alice accompanied her to the first
stone that marked the threshold of the side door, and was bowing her
away, when Mr. Philip swung over the fence by the wood-shed, with a
shot-gun on his shoulder, and swinging in his left hand a gray squirrel
by its bushy tail, and was immediately in front of the group.

“Ah!” involuntarily from Mrs. Mavick. An introduction was inevitable.

“My cousin, Mr. Burnett, Mrs. Mavick.” Philip raised his cap and bowed.

“A hunter, I see.”

“Hardly, madam. In vacations I like to walk in the woods with a gun.”

“Then you are not--”

“No,” said Philip, smiling, “unfortunately I cannot do this all the
time.”

“You are of the city, then?”

“With the firm of Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle.”

“Ah, my husband knows them, I believe.”

“I have seen Mr. Mavick,” and Philip bowed again.

“How lucky!”

Mrs. Mavick had an eye for a fine young fellow--she never denied
that--and Philip's manly figure and easy air were not lost on her.
Presently she said:

“We are here for a good part of the summer. Mr. Mavick's business keeps
him in the city and we have to poke about a good deal alone. Now, Miss
Alice, I am so glad I have met your cousin. Perhaps he will show us some
of the interesting places and the beauties of the country he knows so
well.” And she looked sideways at Philip.

“Yes, he knows the country,” said Alice, without committing herself.

“I am sure I shall be delighted to do what I can for you whenever you
need my services,” said Philip, who had reasons for wishing to know the
Mavicks which Alice did not share.

“That's so good of you! Excursions, picnics oh, we will arrange. You
must come and help me arrange. And I hope,” with a smile to Alice, “you
can persuade your cousin to join us sometimes.”

Alice bowed, they all bowed, and Mrs. Mavick said au revoir, and went
swinging her parasol down the driveway. Then she turned and called
back, “This is the first long walk I have taken.” And then she said to
herself, “Rather stiff, except the young man and the queer old maid.
But what a pretty girl the younger must have been ten years ago! These
country flowers!”




XII

Mrs. Mavick thought herself fortunate in finding, in the social
wilderness of Rivervale, such a presentable young gentleman as
Philip. She had persuaded herself that she greatly enjoyed her simple
intercourse with the inhabitants, and she would have said that she was
in deep sympathy with their lives. No doubt in New York she would relate
her summer adventures as something very amusing, but for the moment this
adaptable woman seemed to herself in a very ingenuous, receptive, and
sympathetic state of mind. Still, there was a limit to the entertaining
power of Aunt Hepsy, which was perceived when she began to repeat her
annals of the neighborhood, and to bring forward again and again the
little nuggets of wisdom which she had evolved in the small circle of
her experience. And similarly Mrs. Mavick became aware that there was
a monotony in the ideas brought forward by the farmers and the farmers'
wives, whether in the kitchen or the best room, which she lighted up
by her gracious presence, that it was possible to be tired of the most
interesting “peculiarities” when once their novelty was exhausted,
and that so-called “characters” in the country fail to satisfy the
requirements of intimate or long companionship. Their world is too
narrowly circumscribed.

The fact that Philip was a native of the place, and so belonged to a
world that was remote from her own, made her free to seek his aid in
making the summer pass agreeably without incurring any risk of social
obligations. Besides, when she had seen more of him, she experienced a
good deal of pleasure in his company. His foreign travel, his reading,
his life in the city, offered many points of mutual interest, and it
was a relief to her to get out of the narrow range of topics in the
provincial thought, and to have her allusions understood. Philip, on
his part, was not slow to see this, or to perceive that in the higher
intellectual ranges, the serious topics which occupied the attention of
the few cultivated people in the neighborhood, Mrs. Mavick had little
interest or understanding, though there was nothing she did not profess
an interest in when occasion required. Philip was not of a suspicious
nature, and it may not have occurred to him that Mrs. Mavick was simply
amusing herself, as she would do with any agreeable man, young or old,
who fell in her way, and would continue to do so if she reached the age
of ninety.

On the contrary, it never seemed to occur to Mrs. Mavick, who was
generally suspicious, that Philip was making himself agreeable to
the mother of Evelyn. In her thought Evelyn was still a child, in
leading-strings, and would be till she was formally launched, and the
social gulf between the great heiress and the law clerk and poor writer
was simply impassable. All of which goes to show that the most astute
women are not always the wisest.

To one person in Rivervale the coming of Mrs. Mavick and her train of
worldliness was unwelcome. It disturbed the peaceful simplicity of the
village, and it was likely to cloud her pleasure in Philip's visit. She
felt that Mrs. Mavick was taking him away from the sweet serenity of
their life, and that in everything she said or did there was an element
of unrest and excitement. She was careful, however, not to show any
of this apprehension to Philip; she showed it only by an increased
affectionate interest in him and his concerns, and in trying to make the
old home more dear to him. Mrs. Mavick was loud in her praise of Alice
to her cousin, and sought to win her confidence, but she was, after all,
a little shy of her, and probably would have characterized her to a city
friend as a sort of virgin in the Bible.

It so happened that day after day went by without giving Philip anything
more than passing glimpses of Evelyn, when she was driving with her
mother or her governess. Yet Rivervale never seemed so ravishingly
beautiful to all his senses. Surely it was possessed by a spirit of
romance and poetry, which he had never perceived before, and he wasted
a good deal of time in gazing on the river, on the gracious meadows, on
the graceful contours of the hills. When he was a lad, in the tree-top,
there had been something stimulating and almost heroic in the scene,
which awakened his ambition. Now it was the idyllic beauty that took
possession of him, transformed as it was by the presence of a woman,
that supreme interpreter of nature to a youth. And yet scarcely
a woman--rather a vision of a girl, impressible still to all the
influences of such a scene and to the most delicate suggestions of
unfolding life. Probably he did not analyze this feeling, but it was
Evelyn he was thinking of when he admired the landscape, breathed with
exhilaration the fresh air, and watched the white clouds sail along the
blue vault; and he knew that if she were suddenly to leave the valley
all the light would go out of it and the scene would be flat to his eyes
and torturing to his memory.

Mrs. Mavick he encountered continually in the village. He had taken many
little strolls with her to this or that pretty point of view, they had
exchanged reminiscences of foreign travel, and had dipped a little into
current popular books, so that they had come to be on easy, friendly
terms. Philip's courtesy and deference, and a certain wit and humor of
suggestion applied to ordinary things, put him more and more on a good
footing with her, so much so that she declared to McDonald that really
young Burnett was a genuine “find” in the country.

It seems a pity that the important events in our lives are so
commonplace. Philip's meeting with Evelyn, so long thought of and
dramatized in his mind, was not in the least as he had imagined it. When
one morning he went to the Peacock Inn at the summons of Mrs. Mavick, in
order to lay out a plan of campaign, he found Evelyn and her governess
seated on the veranda, with their books. It was Evelyn who rose first
and came forward, without, so far as Philip could see, the least
embarrassment of recognition.

“Mr. Burnett? Mamma will be here in a moment. This is our friend, Miss
McDonald.”

The girl's morning costume was very simple, and in her short
walking-skirt she seemed younger even than in the city. She spoke and
moved--Philip noticed that--without the least self-consciousness, and
she had a way of looking her interlocutor frankly in the eyes, or, as
Philip expressed it, “flashing” upon him.

Philip bowed to the governess, and, still standing and waving his hand
towards the river, hoped they liked Rivervale, and then added:

“I see you can read in the country.”

“We pretend to,” said Evelyn, who had resumed her seat and indicated a
chair for Philip, “but the singing of that river, and the bobolinks in
the meadow, and the light on the hills are almost too much for us. Don't
you think, McDonald, it is like Scotland?”

“It would be,” the governess replied, “if it rained when it didn't mist,
and there were moors and heather, and--”

“Oh, I didn't mean all that, but a feeling like that, sweet and retired
and sort of lonesome?”

“Perhaps Miss McDonald means,” said Philip, “that there isn't much to
feel here except what you see.”

Miss McDonald looked sharply around at Philip and remarked: “Yes, that's
just it. It is very lovely, like almost any outdoors, if you will give
yourself up to it. You remember, Evelyn, how fascinating the Arizona
desert was? But there was a romantic addition to the colored desolation
because the Spaniards and the Jesuits had been there. Now this place
lacks traditions, legends, romance. You have to bring your romance with
you.”

“And that is the reason you read here?”

“One reason. Especially romances. This charming scenery and the summer
sounds of running water and birds make a nice accompaniment to the
romance.”

“But mamma says,” Evelyn interrupted, “there is plenty of legend here,
and tradition and flavor, Indians and early settlers, and even Aunt
Hepsy.”

“Well, I confess they don't appeal to me. And as for Indians, Parkman's
descriptions of those savages made me squirm. And I don't believe
there was much more romance about the early settlers than about their
descendants. Isn't it true, Mr. Burnett, that you must have a human
element to make any country interesting?”

Philip glanced at Evelyn, whose bright face was kindled with interest
in the discussion, and thought, “Good heavens! if there is not human
interest here, I don't know where to look for it,” but he only said:

“Doubtless.”

“And why don't you writers do something about it? It is literature that
does it, either in Scotland or Judea.”

“Well,” said Philip, stoutly, “they are doing something. I could name
half a dozen localities, even sections of country, that travelers visit
with curiosity just because authors have thrown that glamour over them.
But it is hard to create something out of nothing. It needs time.”

“And genius,” Miss McDonald interjected.

“Of course, but it took time to transform a Highland sheep-stealer into
a romantic personage.”

Miss McDonald laughed. “That is true. Take a modern instance. Suppose
Evangeline had lived in this valley! Or some simple Gretchen about whose
simple story all the world is in sympathy!”

“Or,” thought Philip, “some Evelyn.” But he replied, looking at Evelyn,
“I believe that any American community usually resents being made the
scene of a romance, especially if it is localized by any approach to
reality.”

“Isn't that the fault mostly of the writer, who vulgarizes his
material?”

“The realists say no. They say that people dislike to see themselves as
they are.”

“Very likely,” said Miss McDonald; “no one sees himself as others see
him, and probably the poet who expressed the desire to do so was simply
attitudinizing.--[Robert Burns: 'O wha gift the Giftie gie us; to see
o'rselves as others see us.' Ed.]--By the way, Mr. Burnett, you know
there is one place of sentiment, religious to be sure, not far from
here. I hope we can go some day to see the home of the 'Mountain
Miller.'”

“Yes, I know the place. It is beyond the river, up that steep road
running into the sky, in the next adjoining hill town. I doubt if you
find any one there who lays it much to heart. But you can see the mill.”

“What is the Mountain Miller?” asked Evelyn.

“A tract that, when I was a girl,” answered Miss McDonald, “used to be
bound up with 'The Dairyman's Daughter' and 'The Shepherd of Salisbury
Plain.' It was the first thing that interested me in New England.”

“Well,” said Philip, “it isn't much. Just a tract. But it was written by
Parson Halleck, a great minister and a sort of Pope in this region
for fifty years. It is, so far as I know, the only thing of his that
remains.”

This tractarian movement was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Mavick.

“Good-morning, Mr. Burnett. I've been down to see Jenkins about his
picnic wagon. Carries six, besides the driver and my man, and the
hampers. So, you see, Miss Alice will have to go. We couldn't go
rattling along half empty. I'll go up and see her this afternoon. So,
that's settled. Now about the time and place. You are the director.
Let's sit down and plan it out. It looks like good weather for a week.”

“Miss McDonald says she wants to see the Mountain Miller,” said Philip,
with a smile.

“What's that? A monument like your Pulpit Rock?”

“No, a tract about a miller.”

“Ah, something religious. I never heard of it. Well, perhaps we had
better begin with something secular, and work round to that.”

So an excursion was arranged for the next day. And as Philip walked
home, thinking how brilliant Evelyn had been in their little talk, he
began to dramatize the excursion.

All excursions are much alike, exhilarating in the outset, rarely up to
expectation in the object, wearisome in the return; but, nevertheless,
delightful in the memory, especially if attended with some hardship
or slight disaster. To be free, in the open air, and for a day
unconventional and irresponsible, is the sufficient justification of
a country picnic; but its common attraction is in the opportunity for
bringing young persons of the opposite sex into natural and unrestrained
relations. To Philip it was the first time in his life that a picnic had
ever seemed a defensible means of getting rid of a day.

The two persons to whom this excursion was most novel and exciting
were Evelyn and the elder maiden, Alice, who sat together and speedily
developed a sympathy with each other in the enjoyment of the country,
and in a similar poetic temperament, very shy on the part of Alice and
very frank on the part of Evelyn. The whole wild scene along the river
was quite as novel to Alice as to the city girl, because, although she
was familiar with every mile of it and had driven through it a hundred
times, she had never in all her life before, of purpose, gone to see
it. No doubt she had felt its wildness and beauty, but now for the first
time she looked at it as scenery, as she might have looked at a picture
in a gallery. And in the contagion of Evelyn's outspoken enthusiasm she
was no longer afraid to give timid expression to the latent poetry in
her own soul. And daring to express this, she seemed to herself for the
first time to realize vividly the nobility and grace of the landscape.
And yet there was a difference in the appreciation of the two. More
widely read and traveled, Evelyn's imagination took a wider range of
comparison and of admiration, she was appealed to by the large features
and the grandiose effects; while Alice noted more the tenderer aspects,
the wayside flowers and bushes, the exotic-looking plants, which she
longed to domesticate in what might be called the Sunday garden on the
terraces in front of her house. For it is in these little cultivated
places by the door-step, places of dreaming in the summer hours after
meeting and at sunset, that the New England maiden experiences something
of that tender religious sentiment which was not much fed in the
barrenness of the Congregational meeting-house.

The Pulpit Rock, in the rough pasture land of Zoar, was reached by a
somewhat tedious climb from the lonely farmhouse, in a sheltered nook,
through straggling woods and gray pastures. It was a vast exposed
surface rising at a slight angle out of the grass and undergrowth. Along
the upper side was a thin line of bushes, and, pushing these aside, the
observer was always startled at the unexpected scene--as it were the
raising of a curtain upon another world. He stood upon the edge of
a sheer precipice of a thousand feet, and looked down upon a green
amphitheatre through the bottom of which the brawling river, an amber
thread in the summer foliage, seemed trying to get an outlet from this
wilderness cul de sac. From the edge of this precipice the first impulse
was to start back in surprise and dread, but presently the observer
became reassured of its stability, and became fascinated by the lonesome
wildness of the scene.

“Why is it called Pulpit Rock?” asked Mrs. Mavick; “I see no pulpit.”

“I suppose,” said Philip, “the name was naturally suggested to a
religious community, whose poetic images are mainly Biblical, and who
thought it an advantageous place for a preacher to stand, looking down
upon a vast congregation in the amphitheatre.”

“So it is,” exclaimed Evelyn. “I can see John the Baptist standing here
now, and hear his voice crying in the wilderness.”

“Very likely,” said Mrs. Mavick, persisting in her doubt, “of course in
Zoar. Anywhere else in the world it would be called the Lover's Leap.”

“That is odd,” said Alice; “there was a party of college girls came here
two years ago and made up a story about it which was printed, how an
Indian maiden pursued by a white man ran up this hill as if she had been
a deer, disappeared from his sight through these bushes, and took the
fatal leap. They called it the Indian Maiden's Rock. But it didn't take.
It will always be Pulpit Rock.”

“So you see, Miss McDonald,” said Philip, “that writers cannot graft
legends on the old stock.”

“That depends upon the writer,” returned the Scotch woman, shortly. “I
didn't see the schoolgirl's essay.”

When the luncheon was disposed of, with the usual adaptation to nomadic
conditions, and the usual merriment and freedom of personal comment, and
the wit that seems so brilliant in the open air and so flat in print,
Mrs. Mavick declared that she was tired by the long climb and the
unusual excitement.

“Perhaps it is the Pulpit,” she said, “but I am sleepy; and if you young
people will amuse yourselves, I will take a nap under that tree.”

Presently, also, Alice and the governess withdrew to the edge of the
precipice, and Evelyn and Philip were left to the burden of entertaining
each other. It might have been an embarrassing situation but for the
fact that all the rest of the party were in sight, that the girl had not
the least self-consciousness, having had no experience to teach her
that there was anything to be timid about in one situation more than in
another, and that Philip was so absolutely content to be near Evelyn and
hear her voice that there was room for nothing else in his thought. But
rather to his surprise, Evelyn made no talk about the situation or
the day, but began at once with something in her mind, a directness of
mental operation that he found was characteristic of her.

“It seems to me, Mr. Burnett, that there is something of what Miss
McDonald regards as the lack of legend and romance in this region in our
life generally.”

“I fancy everybody feels that who travels much elsewhere. You mean life
seems a little thin, as the critics say?”

“Yes, lacks color and background. But, you see, I have no experience.
Perhaps it's owing to Miss McDonald. I cannot get the plaids and tartans
and Jacobins and castles and what-not out of my head. Our landscapes are
just landscapes.”

“But don't you think we are putting history and association into them
pretty fast?”

“Yes, I know, but that takes a long time. I mean now. Take this lovely
valley and region, how easily it could be made romantic.”

“Not so very easy, I fancy.”

“Well, I was thinking about it last night.” And then, as if she saw
a clear connection between this and what she was going to say, “Miss
McDonald says, Mr. Burnett, that you are a writer.”

“I? Why, I'm... I'm--a lawyer.”

“Of course, that's business. That reminds me of what papa said once:
'It's lucky there is so much law, or half the world, including the
lawyers, wouldn't have anything to do, trying to get around it and evade
it.' And you won't mind my repeating it--I was a mite of a girl--I said,
'Isn't that rather sophistical, papa?' And mamma put me down'--It seems
to me, child, you are using pretty big words.'”

They both laughed. But suddenly Evelyn added:

“Why don't you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Write a story about it--what Miss McDonald calls 'invest the region
with romance.'”

The appeal was very direct, and it was enforced by those wonderful eyes
that seemed to Philip to discern his powers, as he felt them, and his
ambitions, and to express absolute confidence in him. His vanity was
touched in its most susceptible spot. Here seemed to be a woman, nay,
a soul, who understood him, understood him even better than Celia, the
lifelong confidante. It is a fatal moment for men and women, that in
which they feel the subtle flattery of being understood by one of the
opposite sex. Philip's estimation of himself rose 'pari passu' with his
recognition of the discernment and intellectual quality of the frank and
fascinating girl who seemed to believe in him. But he restrained himself
and only asked, after a moment of apparent reflection upon the general
proposition:

“Well, Miss Mavick, you have been here some time. Have you discovered
any material for such use?”

“Why, perhaps not, and I might not know what to do with it if I had.
But perhaps you don't mean what I mean. I mean something fitting the
setting. Not the domestic novel. Miss McDonald says we are vulgarized in
all our ideals by so much domesticity. She says that Jennie Deans would
have been just an ordinary, commonplace girl but for Walter Scott.”

“Then you want a romance?”

“No. I don't know exactly what I do want. But I know it when I see it.”
 And Evelyn looked down and appeared to be studying her delicate little
hands, interlacing her taper, ivory fingers--but Philip knew she did not
see them--and then looked up in his face again and said:

“I'll tell you. This morning as we came up I was talking all the way
with your cousin. It took some time to break the ice, but gradually she
began to say things, half stories, half poetic, not out of books; things
that, if said with assurance, in the city would be called wit. And
then I began to see her emotional side, her pure imagination, such a
refinement of appreciation and justice--I think there is an immovable
basis of justice in her nature--and charity, and I think she'd be
heroic, with all her gentleness, if occasion offered.”

“I see,” said Philip, rather lightly, “that you improved your time in
finding out what a rare creature Alice is. But,” and this more gravely,
“it would surprise her that you have found it out.”

“I believe you. I fancy she has not the least idea what her qualities
are, or her capacities of doing or of suffering, and the world will
never know--that is the point-unless some genius comes along and reveals
them.”

“How?”

“Why, through a tragedy, a drama, a story, in which she acts out her
whole self. Some act it out in society. She never will. Such sweetness
and strength and passion--yes, I have no doubt, passion under all the
reserve! I feel it but I cannot describe it; I haven't imagination to
make you see what I feel.”

“You come very near it,” said Philip, with a smile. And after a moment
the girl broke out again:

“Materials! You writers go searching all round for materials, just as
painters do, fit for your genius.”

“But don't you know that the hardest thing to do is the obvious, the
thing close to you?”

“I dare say. But you won't mind? It is just an illustration. I went the
other day with mother to Alice's house. She was so sort of distant and
reserved that I couldn't know her in the least as I know her now. And
there was the rigid Puritan, her father, representing the Old Testament;
and her placid mother, with all the spirit of the New Testament; and
then that dear old maiden aunt, representing I don't know what, maybe
a blind attempt through nature and art to escape out of Puritanism; and
the typical old frame farmhouse--why, here is material for the sweetest,
most pathetic idyl. Yes, the Story of Alice. In another generation
people would come long distances to see the valley where Alice lived,
and her spirit would pervade it.”

There could be but one end to such a burst of enthusiasm, and
both laughed and felt a relief in a merriment that was, after all,
sympathetic. But Evelyn was a persistent creature, and presently she
turned to Philip, again with those appealing eyes.

“Now, why don't you do it?”

Philip hesitated a moment and betrayed some embarrassment under the
questioning of the truthful eyes.

“I've a good mind to tell you. I have--I am writing something.”

“Yes?”

“Not that exactly. I couldn't, don't you see, betray and use my own
relatives in that way.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“It isn't much. I cannot tell how it will come out. I tell you--I don't
mean that I have any right to ask you to keep it as a secret of mine,
but it is this way: If a writer gives away his imagination, his idea,
before it is fixed in form on paper, he seems to let the air of all the
world upon it and it disappears, and isn't quite his as it was before to
grow in his own mind.”

“I can understand that,” Evelyn replied.

“Well--” and Philip found himself launched. It is so easy to talk about
one's self to a sympathetic listener. He told Evelyn a little about his
life, and how the valley used to seem to him as a boy, and how it seemed
now that he had had experience of other places and people, and how
his studies and reading had enabled him to see things in their proper
relations, and how, finally, gradually the idea for a story in this
setting had developed in his mind. And then he sketched in outline
the story as he had developed it, and left the misty outlines of its
possibilities to the imagination.

The girl listened with absorbing interest, and looked the approval which
she did not put in words. Perhaps she knew that a bud will never come
to flower if you pull it in pieces. When Philip had finished he had a
momentary regret for this burst of confidence, which he had never
given to any one else. But in the light of Evelyn's quick approval and
understanding, it was only momentary. Perhaps neither of them thought
what a dangerous game this is, for two young souls to thus unbosom
themselves to each other.

A call from Mrs. Mavick brought them to their feet. It was time to go.
Evelyn simply said:

“I think the valley, Mr. Burnett, looks a little different already.”

As they drove home along the murmuring river through the golden sunset,
the party were mostly silent. Only Mrs. Mavick and Philip, who sat
together, kept up a lively chatter, lively because Philip was elated
with the event of the day, and because the nap under the beech-tree
in the open air had brightened the wits of one of the cleverest women
Philip had ever met.

If the valley did seem different to Evelyn, probably she did not think
so far as to own to herself whether this was owing to the outline of the
story, which ran in her mind, or to the presence of the young author.

Alice and Philip were set down at the farmhouse, and the company parted
with mutual enthusiasm over the success of the excursion.

“She is a much more interesting girl than I thought,” Alice admitted.
“Not a bit fashionable.”

“And she likes you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, your ears would have burned.”

“Well, I am glad, for I think she is sincere.”

“And I can tell you another thing. I had a long talk while you were
taking your siesta. She takes an abstract view of things, judging the
right and wrong of them, without reference to conventionalities or
the practical obstacles to carrying out her ideas, as if she had been
educated by reading and not by society. It is very interesting.”

“Philip,” and Alice laid her hand on his shoulder, “don't let it be too
interesting.”




XIII

When Philip said that Evelyn was educated in the world of literature and
not in the conflicts of life he had hit the key-note of her condition
at the moment she was coming into the world and would have to act for
herself. The more he saw of her the more was he impressed with the fact
that her discrimination, it might almost be called divination, and her
judgment were based upon the best and most vital products of the
human mind. A selection had evidently been made for her, until she had
acquired the taste, or the habit rather, of choosing only the best for
herself. Very little of the trash of literature, or the ignoble--that is
to say, the ignoble view of life--had come into her mind. Consequently
she judged the world as she came to know it by high standards. And her
mind was singularly pure and free from vulgar images.

It might be supposed that this sort of education would have its
disadvantages. The word is firmly fixed in the idea that both for its
pleasure and profit it is necessary to know good and evil. Ignorance of
the evil in the world is, however, not to be predicated of those who are
familiar only with the great masterpieces of literature, for if they
are masterpieces, little or great, they exhibit human nature in all its
aspects. And, further than this, it ought to be demonstrable, a priori,
that a mind fed on the best and not confused by the weak and diluted, or
corrupted by images of the essentially vulgar and vile, would be morally
healthy and best fitted to cope with the social problems of life. The
Testaments reveal about everything that is known about human nature, but
such is their clear, high spirit, and their quality, that no one ever
traced mental degeneration or low taste in literature, or want of
virility in judgment, to familiarity with them. On the contrary, the
most vigorous intellects have acknowledged their supreme indebtedness to
them.

It is not likely that Philip made any such elaborate analysis of
the girl with whom he was in love, or attempted, except by a general
reference to the method of her training, to account for the purity of
her mind and her vigorous discernment. He was in love with her more
subtle and hidden personality, with the girl just becoming a woman, with
the mysterious sex that is the inspiration of most of the poetry and a
good part of the heroism in the world. And he would have been in love
with her, let her education have been what it might. He was in love
before he heard her speak. And whatever she would say was bound to have
a quality of interest and attraction that could be exercised by no other
lips. It might be argued--a priori again, for the world is bound to go
on in its own way--that there would be fewer marriages if the illusion
of the sex did not suffice for the time to hide intellectual poverty,
and, what is worse, ignobleness of disposition.

It was doubtless fortunate for this particular lovemaking, though it
did not seem so to Philip, that it was very much obstructed by lack of
opportunities, and that it was not impaired in its lustre by too much
familiarity. In truth, Philip would have said that he saw very little
of Evelyn, because he never saw her absolutely alone. To be sure he was
much in her presence, a welcome member of the group that liked to idle
on the veranda of the inn, and in the frequent excursions, in which
Philip seemed to be the companion of Mrs. Mavick rather than of her
daughter. But she was never absent from his thought, his imagination
was wholly captive to her image, and the passion grew in these hours of
absence until she became an indispensable associate in all that he was
or could ever hope to be. Alice, who discerned very clearly Mrs. Mavick
and her ambition, was troubled by Philip's absorption and the cruel
disappointment in store for him. To her he was still the little boy, and
all her tenderness for him was stirred to shield him from the suffering
she feared.

But what could she do? Philip liked to talk about Evelyn, to dwell upon
her peculiarities and qualities, to hear her praised; to this extent
he was confidential with his cousin, but never in regard to his own
feeling. That was a secret concerning which he was at once too humble
and too confident to share with any other. None knew better than he the
absurd presumption of aspiring to the hand of such a great heiress, and
yet he nursed the vanity that no other man could ever appreciate and
love her as he did.

Alice was still more distracted and in sympathy with Philip's evident
aspirations by her own love for Evelyn and her growing admiration for
the girl's character. It so happened that mutua

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