That Fortune

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> That Fortune


The reader would not be interested--the public of the time were not--in
the adjustment of Mavick and his wife to their new conditions.
The broken-down, defeated bankrupt is no novelty in Wall Street, the man
struggling to keep his foothold in the business of the Street, and
descending lower and lower in the scale. The shrewd curbstone broker may
climb to a seat in the Stock Exchange; quite as often a lord of the
Board, a commander of millions, may be reduced to the seedy watcher of
the bulletin-board in a bucket-shop.

At first, in the excitement and the confusion, amid the debris of so much
possible wealth, Mavick kept a sort of position, and did not immediately
feel the pinch of vulgar poverty. But the day came when all illusion
vanished, and it was a question of providing from day to day for the
small requirements of the house in Irving Place.

It was not a cheerful household; reproaches are hard to bear when
physical energy is wanting to resist them. Mavick had visibly aged
during the year. It was only in his office that he maintained anything
of the spruce appearance and 'sang froid' which had distinguished the
diplomatist and the young adventurer. At home he had fallen into the
slovenliness that marks a disappointed old age. Was Mrs. Mavick peevish
and unreasonable? Very likely. And had she not reason to be? Was she,
as a woman, any more likely to be reconciled to her fate when her mirror
told her, with pitiless reflection, that she was an old woman?

Philip waited. Under the circumstances would not both Philip and Evelyn
have been justified in disregarding the prohibition that forbade their
meeting or even writing to each other? It may be a nice question, but it
did not seem so to these two, who did not juggle with their consciences.
Philip had given his word. Evelyn would tolerate no concealments; she
was just that simple-minded in her filial notions.

The girl, however, had one comfort, and that was the knowledge of Philip
through Miss McDonald, whom she saw frequently, and to whom even Mrs.
Mavick was in a manner reconciled. She was often in the little house in
Irving Place. There was nothing in her manner to remind Mrs. Mavick that
she had done her a great wrong, and her cheerfulness and good sense made
her presence and talk a relief from the monotony of the defeated woman's
life.

It came about, therefore, that one day Philip made his way down into the
city to seek an interview with Mr. Mavick. He found him, after some
inquiry, in a barren little office, occupying one of the rented desks
with three or four habitues of the Street, one of them an old man like
himself, the others mere lads who did not intend to remain long in such
cramped quarters.

Mr. Mavick arose when his visitor stood at his desk, buttoned up his
frock-coat, and extended his hand with a show of business cordiality, and
motioned him to a chair. Philip was greatly shocked at the change in Mr.
Mavick's appearance.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "for disturbing you in business hours."

"No disturbance," he answered, with something of the old cynical smile on
his lips.

"Long ago I called to see you on the errand I have now, but you were not
in town. It was, Mr. Mavick," and Philip hesitated and looked down, "in
regard to your daughter."

"Ah, I did not hear of it."

"No? Well, Mr. Mavick, I was pretty presumptuous, for I had no foothold
in the city, except a law clerkship."

"I remember--Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle; why didn't you keep it?"

"I wasn't fitted for the law."

"Oh, literature? Does literature pay?"

"Not in itself, not for many," and Philip forced a laugh. "But it led to
a situation in a first-rate publishing house--an apprenticeship that has
now given me a position that seems to be permanent, with prospects
beyond, and a very fair salary. It would not seem much to you,
Mr. Mavick," and Philip tried to laugh again.

"I don't know," replied Mr. Mavick. "If a fellow has any sort of salary
these times, I should advise him to hold on to it. By-the-way,
Mr. Burnett, Hunt's a Republican, isn't he?"

"He was," replied Philip, "the last I knew."

"Do you happen to know whether he knows Bilbrick, the present Collector?"

"Mr. Bilbrick used to be a client of his."

"Just so. I think I'll see Hunt. A salary isn't a bad thing for a--for
a man who has retired pretty much from business. But you were saying,
Mr. Burnett?"

"I was going to say, Mr. Mavick, that there was a little something more
than my salary that I can count on pretty regularly now from the
magazines, and I have had another story, a novel, accepted, and--you
won't think me vain--the publisher says it will go; if it doesn't have a
big sale he will--"

"Make it up to you?"

"Not exactly," and Philip laughed; "he will be greatly mistaken."

"I suppose it is a kind of lottery, like most things. The publishers
have to take risks. The only harm I wish them is that they were
compelled to read all the stuff they try to make us read. Ah, well. Mr.
Burnett, I hope you have made a hit. It is pretty much the same thing in
our business. The publisher bulls his own book and bears the other
fellow's. Is it a New York story?"

"Partly; things come to a focus here, you know."

"I could give you points. It's a devil of a place. I guess the
novelists are too near to see the romance of it. When I was in Rome I
amused myself by diving into the mediaeval records. Steel and poison
were the weapons then. We have a different method now, but it comes to
the same thing, and we say we are more civilized. I think our way is
more devilishly dramatic than the old brute fashion. Yes, I could give
you points."

"I should be greatly obliged," said Philip, seeing the way to bring the
conversation back to its starting point; "your wide experience of life
--if you had leisure at home some time."

"Oh," replied Mavick, with more good-humor in his laugh than he had shown
before, "you needn't beat about the bush. Have you seen Evelyn?"

"No, not since that dinner at the Van Cortlandts'."

"Huh! for myself, I should be pleased to see you any time, Mr. Burnett.
Mrs. Mavick hasn't felt like seeing anybody lately. But I'll see, I'll
see."

The two men rose and shook hands, as men shake hands when they have an
understanding.

"I'm glad you are doing well," Mr. Mavick added; "your life is before
you, mine is behind me; that makes a heap of difference."

Within a few days Philip received a note from Mrs. Mavick--not an
effusive note, not an explanatory note, not an apologetic note, simply a
note as if nothing unusual had happened--if Mr. Burnett had leisure,
would he drop in at five o'clock in Irving Place for a cup of tea?

Not one minute by his watch after the hour named, Philip rang the bell
and was shown into a little parlor at the front. There was only one
person in the room, a lady in exquisite toilet, who rose rather languidly
to meet him, exactly as if the visitor were accustomed to drop in to tea
at that hour.

Philip hesitated a moment near the door, embarrassed by a mortifying
recollection of his last interview with Mrs. Mavick, and in that moment
he saw her face. Heavens, what a change! And yet it was a smiling face.

There is a portrait of Carmen by a foreign artist, who was years ago the
temporary fashion in New York, painted the year after her second marriage
and her return from Rome, which excited much comment at the time. Philip
had seen it in more than one portrait exhibition.

Its technical excellence was considerable. The artist had evidently
intended to represent a woman piquant and fascinating, if not strictly
beautiful. Many persons said it was lovely. Other critics said that,
whether the artist intended it or not, he had revealed the real character
of the subject. There was something sinister in its beauty. One artist,
who was out of fashion as an idealist, said, of course privately, that
the more he looked at it the more hideous it became to him--like one of
Blake's objective portraits of a "soul"--the naked soul of an evil woman
showing through the mask of all her feminine fascinations--the possible
hell, so he put it, under a woman's charm.

It was this in the portrait that Philip saw in the face smiling a
welcome--like an old, sweetly smiling Lalage--from which had passed away
youth and the sustaining consciousness of wealth and of a place in the
great world. The smile was no longer sweet, though the words from the
lips were honeyed.

"It is very good of you to drop in in this way, Mr. Burnett," she said,
as she gave him her hand. "It is very quiet down here."

"It is to me the pleasantest part of the city."

"You think so now. I thought so once," and there was a note of sadness
in her voice. "But it isn't New York. It is a place for the people who
are left."

"But it has associations."

"Yes, I know. We pretend that it is more aristocratic. That means the
rents are lower. It is a place for youth to begin and for age to end.
We seem to go round in a circle. Mr. Mavick began in the service of the
government, now he has entered it again--ah, you did not know?--a place
in the Custom-House. He says it is easier to collect other people's
revenues than your own. Do you know, Mr. Burnett, I do not see much
use in collecting revenues anyway--so far as New York is concerned
the people get little good of them. Look out there at that cloud of dust
in the street."

Mrs. Mavick rambled on in the whimsical, cynical fashion of old ladies
when they cease to have any active responsibility in life and become
spectators of it. Their remaining enjoyment is the indulgence of frank
speech.

"But I thought," Philip interrupted, "that this part of the town was
specially New York."

"New York!" cried Carmen, with animation. "The New York of the
newspapers, of the country imagination; the New York as it is known in
Paris is in Wall Street and in the palaces up-town. Who are the kings of
Wall Street, and who build the palaces up-town? They say that there are
no Athenians in Athens, and no Romans in Rome. How many New-Yorkers are
there in New York? Do New-Yorkers control the capital, rule the
politics, build the palaces, direct the newspapers, furnish the
entertainment, manufacture the literature, set the pace in society? Even
the socialists and mobocrats are not native. Successive invaders, as in
Rome, overrun and occupy the town.

"No, Mr. Burnett, I have left the existing New York. How queer it is to
think about it. My first husband was from New Hampshire. My second
husband was from Illinois. And there is your Murad Ault. The Lord knows
where he came from.

"Talk about the barbarians occupying Rome! Look at that Ault in a
palace! Who was that emperor--Caligula?--I am like the young lady from a
finishing-school who said she never could remember which came first in
history, Greece or Rome--who stabled his horses with stalls and mangers
of gold? The Aults stable themselves that way. Ah, me! Let me give you
a cup of tea. Even that is English."

"It's an innocent pastime," she continued, as Philip stirred his tea, in
perplexity as to how he should begin to say what he had to say--"you
won't object if I light a cigarette? One ought to retain at least one
bad habit to keep from spiritual pride. Tea is an excuse for this. I
don't think it a bad habit, though some people say that civilization is
only exchanging one bad habit for another. Everything changes."

"I don't think I have changed, Mrs. Mavick," said Philip, with
earnestness.

"No? But you will. I have known lots of people who said they never
would change. They all did. No, you need not protest. I believe in you
now, or I should not be drinking tea with you. But you must be
tired of an old woman's gossip. Evelyn has gone out for a walk; she
didn't know. I expect her any minute. Ah, I think that is her ring. I
will let her in. There is nothing so hateful as a surprise."

She turned and gave Philip her hand, and perhaps she was sincere--she had
a habit of being so when it suited her interests--when she said, "There
are no bygones, my friend."

Philip waited, his heart beating a hundred to the minute. He heard
greetings and whisperings in the passage-way, and then--time seemed to
stand still--the door opened and Evelyn stood on the threshold, radiant
from her walk, her face flushed, the dainty little figure poised in timid
expectation, in maidenly hesitation, and then she stepped forward to meet
his advance, with welcome in her great eyes, and gave him her hand in the
old-fashioned frankness.

"I am so glad to see you."

Philip murmured something in reply and they were seated.

That was all. It was so different from the meeting as Philip had a
hundred times imagined it.

"It has been very long," said Philip, who was devouring the girl with his
eyes, "very long to me."

"I thought you had been very busy," she replied, demurely. Her composure
was very irritating.

"If you thought about it at all, Miss Mavick."

"That is not like you, Mr. Burnett," Evelyn replied, looking up suddenly
with troubled eyes.

"I didn't mean that," said Philip, moving uneasily in his chair,
"I--so many things have happened. You know a person can be busy and not
happy."

"I know that. I was not always happy," said the girl, with the air of
making a confession. "But I liked to hear from time to time of the
success of my friends," she added, ingenuously. And then, quite
inconsequently, "I suppose you have news from Rivervale?"

Yes, Philip heard often from Alice, and he told the news as well as he
could, and the talk drifted along--how strange it seemed!--about things
in which neither of them felt any interest at the moment.
Was there no way to break the barrier that the little brown girl had
thrown around herself? Were all women, then, alike in parrying and
fencing? The talk went on, friendly enough at last, about a thousand
things. It might have been any afternoon call on a dear friend. And at
length Philip rose to go.

"I hope I may see you again, soon."

"Of course," said Evelyn, cheerfully. "I am sure father will be
delighted to see you. He enjoys so little now."

He had taken both her hands to say good-by, and was looking hungrily into
her eyes.

"I can't go so. Evelyn, you know, you must know, I love you."

And before the girl comprehended him he had drawn her to him and pressed
his lips upon hers.

The girl started back as if stung, and looked at him with flashing eyes.

"What have you done, what have you done to me?"

Her eyes were clouded, and she put her hands to her face, trembling, and
then with a cry, as of a soul born into the world, threw herself upon
him, her arms around his neck--

"Philip, Philip, my Philip!"



XXVII

Perhaps Philip's announcement of his good-fortune to Alice and to Celia
was not very coherent, but his meaning was plain. Perhaps he was
conscious that the tidings would not increase the cheerfulness of Celia's
single-handed struggle for the ideal life; at least, he would rather
write than tell her face to face.

However he put the matter to her, with what protestations of affectionate
friendship and trust he wrapped up the statement that he made as matter
of fact as possible, he could not conceal the ecstatic state of his mind.

Nothing like it certainly had happened to anybody in the world before.
All the dream of his boyhood, romantic and rose-colored, all the
aspirations of his manhood, for recognition, honor, a place in the life
of his time, were mere illusions compared to this wonderful crown of
life--a woman's love. Where did it come from into this miserable world,
this heavenly ray, this pure gift out of the divine beneficence, this
spotless flower in a humanity so astray, this sure prophecy of the final
redemption of the world? The immeasurable love of a good woman! And to
him! Philip felt humble in his exaltation, charitable in his selfish
appropriation. He wanted to write to Celia--but he did not--that he
loved her more than ever. But to Alice he could pour out his wealth
of affection, quickened to all the world by this great love, for he knew
that her happiness would be in his happiness.

The response from Alice was what he expected, tender, sweet, domestic,
and it was full of praise of Evelyn, of love for her. "Perhaps, dear
Phil," she wrote, "I shall love her more than I do you. I almost think
--did I not remember what a bad boy you could be sometimes--that each one
of you is too good for the other. But, Phil, if you should ever come to
think that she is not too good for you, you will not be good enough for
her. I can't think she is perfect, any more than you are perfect--you
will find that she is just a woman--but there is nothing in all life so
precious as such a heart as hers. You will come here, of course, and at
once, whenever it is. You know that big, square, old-fashioned corner
chamber, with the high-poster. That is yours. Evelyn never saw it. The
morning and the evening sun shoot across it, and the front windows look
on the great green crown of Mount Peak. You know it. There is not such
a place in the world to hear the low and peaceful murmur of the river,
all night long, rushing, tumbling, crooning, I used to think when I was a
little girl and dreamed of things unseen, and still going on when the
birds begin to sing in the dawn. And with Evelyn! Dear Phil!"

It was in another strain, but not less full of real affection, that Celia
wrote:

"I am not going to congratulate you. You are long past the need of that.
But you know that I am happy in having you happy. You thought I never
saw anything? I wonder if men are as blind as they seem to be? And I
had fears. Do you know a man ought to build his own monument. If he
goes into a monument built for him, that is the end of him. Now you can
work, and you will. I am so glad she isn't an heiress any more. I guess
there was a curse on that fortune. But she has eluded it. I believe all
you tell me about her. Perhaps there are more such women in the world
than you think. Some day I shall know her, and soon. I do long to see
her. Love her I feel sure I shall.

"You ask about myself. I am the same, but things change. When I get my
medical diploma I shall decide what to do. My little property just
suffices, with economy, and I enjoy economy. I doubt if I do any general
practice for pay. There are so many young doctors that need the money
for practice more than I do. And perhaps taking it up as a living would
make me sort of hard and perfunctory. And there is so much to do in this
great New York among the unfortunate that a woman who knows medicine can
do better than any one else.

"Ah, me, I am happy in a way, or I expect to be. Everybody--it isn't
because I am a woman I say this--needs something to lean on now and then.
There isn't much to lean on in the college, nor in many of my zealous and
ambitious companions there. There is more faith in the poor people down
in the wards where I go. They are kind to each other, and most of them,
not all, believe in something. They, have that, at any rate, in all
their trials and poverty. Philip, don't despise the invisible. I have
got into the habit of going into a Catholic church down there, when I am
tired and discouraged, and getting the peace of it. It is a sort of open
door! You need not jump to the conclusion that I am 'going over.' Maybe
I am going back. I don't know. I have always you know, been looking for
something.

"I like to sit there in that dim quiet and think of things I can't think
of elsewhere. Do you think I am queer? Philip, all women are queer.
They haven't yet been explained. That is the reason why the novelists
find it next to impossible, with all the materials at hand, to make a
good woman--that is a woman. Do you know what it is to want what you
don't want? Longing is one thing and reason another.

"Perhaps I have depended too much on my reason. If you long to go to a
place where you will have peace, why should you let what you call your
reason stand in the way? Perhaps your reason is foolishness. You will
laugh a little at this, and say that I am tired. No. Only I am not so
sure of things as I used to be. Do you remember when we children used to
sit under that tree by the Deerfield, how confident I was that I
understood all about life, and my airs of superiority?

"Well, I don't know as much now. But there is one thing that has survived
and grown with the years, and that, Philip, is your dear friendship."

What was it in this unassuming, but no doubt sufficiently conceited and
ambitious, young fellow that he should have the affection, the love, of
three such women?

Is affection as whimsically, as blindly distributed as wealth? It is the
experience of life that it is rare to keep either to the end, but as a
man is judged not so much by his ability to make money as to keep it, so
it is fair to estimate his qualities by his power to retain friendship.
New York is full of failures, bankrupts in fortune and bankrupts in
affection, but this melancholy aspect of the town is on the surface, and
is not to be considered in comparison with the great body of moderately
contented, moderately successful, and on the whole happy households. In
this it is a microcosm of the world.

To Evelyn and Philip, judging the world a good deal by each other,
in those months before their marriage, when surprising perfection and new
tenderness were daily developed, the gay and busy city seemed a sort of
paradise.

Mysterious things were going on in the weeks immediately preceding the
wedding. There was a conspiracy between Miss McDonald and Philip in the
furnishing and setting in order a tiny apartment on the Heights,
overlooking the city, the lordly Hudson, and its romantic hills.
And when, after the ceremony, on a radiant afternoon in early June, the
wedded lovers went to their new home, it was the housekeeper, the old
governess, who opened the door and took into her arms the child she had
loved and lost awhile.

This fragment of history leaves Philip Burnett on the threshold of his
career. Those who know him only by his books may have been interested in
his experiences, in the merciful interposition of disaster, before he
came into the great fortune of the love of Evelyn Mavick.