That Fortune Part 20

The letter from Alice was quite of another sort, a little shy in speaking of the story, but full of affection. "Perhaps, dear Phil," she wrote, "I ought not to tell you how much I like it, how it quite makes me blush in its revelation of the secrets of a New England girl's heart.

I read it through fast, and then I read it again slowly. It seemed better even the second time. I do think, Phil, it is a dear little book.

Patience says she hopes it will not become common; it is too fine to be nosed about by the ordinary. I suppose you had to make it pathetic. Dear me! that is just the truth of it. Forgive me for writing so freely.

I hope it will not be long before we see you. To think it is done by little Phil!"

The most eagerly expected acknowledgment was, however, a disappointment.

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

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

The critics seemed to Philip very slow in letting the public know of the birth of the book. Presently, however, the little notices, all very much alike, began to drop along, longer or shorter paragraphs, commonly in undiscriminating praise of the beauty of the story, the majority of them evidently written by reviewers who sat down to a pile of volumes to be turned off, and who had not more than five or ten minutes to be lost.

Rarely, however, did any one condemn it, and that showed that it was harmless. Mr. Brad had given it quite a lift in the Spectrum. The notice was mainly personal--the first work of a brilliant young man at the bar who was destined to go high in his profession, unless literature should, fortunately for the public, have stronger attractions for him. That such a country idyl should be born amid law-books was sufficiently remarkable. It was an open secret that the scene of the story was the birthplace of the author--a lovely village that was brought into notice a summer ago as the chosen residence of Thomas Mavick and his family.

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

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

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

"Going to drop law, eh?"

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

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

It was not, however, Mr. Sharp's opinion that Philip was concerned about. The polite note from Mrs. Mavick stuck in his mind. It was a civil way of telling him that all summer debts were now paid, and that his relations with the house of Mavick were at an end. This conclusion was forced upon him when he left his card, a few days after the reception, and had the ill luck not to find the ladies at home. The situation had no element of tragedy in it, but Philip was powerless.

He could not storm the house. He had no visible grievance. There was nothing to fight. He had simply run against one of the invisible social barriers that neither offer resistance nor yield. No one had shown him any discourtesy that society would recognize as a matter of offense.

Nay, more than that, it could have no sympathy with him. It was only the case of a presumptuous and poor young man who was after a rich girl. The position itself was ign.o.ble, if it were disclosed.

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

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

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

"Yes?"

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

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

"Authors are pretty plenty nowadays."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No, not on paper."

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

"You forget that I am a lawyer."

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

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

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

"But circ.u.mstances sometimes compel a man."

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

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

"A career?" And Evelyn looked puzzled for a moment. "You mean for himself, for his own self?" There is a lawyer who comes to see papa.

I've been in the room sometimes, when they don't mind. Such talk about schemes, and how to do this and that, and twisting about. And not a word about anything any of the time. And one day when he was waiting for papa I talked with him. You would have been surprised.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That is a long time," Evelyn answered, but still without looking up.

But when they rose the color mounted to her cheeks, and Philip thought that the glorious eyes turned upon him were full of trust.

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

"What is?"

"You insisted upon having him at the reception."