"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."
"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 una.s.suming, 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.
THEIR PILGRIMAGE
By Charles Dudley Warner
I