"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."