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.