"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, embarra.s.sed 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 h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociations."
"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 pa.s.sage-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."