That Fortune Part 31

Mr. Ault paused, his strong, dark face working with pa.s.sion, as the memory of his outlawed boyhood revived. Is it possible that this pirate of the Street had a bit of sentiment at the bottom of his heart? After a moment he continued:

"That was the spot to which my mother took me when I was knee-high. I've bought it, bought the whole hillside. Next summer we will put up a house there, not a very big house, just a long, low sort of a Moorish pavilion, the architect calls it. I wish she could see it."

Mrs. Ault rose, with tears in her gentle eyes, stood by her husband's chair a moment, ran her fingers through his heavy black locks, bent down and kissed him, and went away without a word.

There was another bit of property that was not included in the wreck.

It belonged to Mrs. Mavick. This was a little house in Irving Place, in which Carmen Esch.e.l.le lived with her mother, in the days before the death of Henderson's first wife, not very happy days for that wife.

Carmen had a fancy for keeping it after her marriage. Not from any sentiment, she told Mr. Mavick on the occasion of her second marriage, oh, no, but somehow it seemed to her, in all her vast possessions left to her by Henderson, the only real estate she had. It was the only thing that had not pa.s.sed into the absolute possession and control of Mavick.

The great town house, with all the rest, stood in Mavick's name. What secret influence had he over her that made her submit to such a foolish surrender?

It was in this little house that the reduced family stowed itself after the downfall. The little house, had it been sentient, would have been astonished at the entrance into it of the furniture and the remnants of luxurious living that Mrs. Mavick was persuaded belonged to her personally. These reminders of former days were, after all, a mockery in the narrow quarters and the pinched economy of the bankrupt. Yet they were, for a time useful in preserving to Mrs. Mavick a measure of self-respect, her self-respect having always been based upon what she had and not what she was. In truth, the change of lot was harder for Mrs. Mavick than for Evelyn, since the world in which the latter lived had not been destroyed. She still had her books, she still had a great love in her heart, and hope, almost now a sure hope, that her love would blossom into a great happiness.

But where was Philip? In all this time why did he make no sign? At moments a great fear came over her. She was so ignorant of life. Could he know what misery she was in, the daily witness of her father's broken condition, of her mother's uncertain temper?

XXVI

Is justice done in this world only by a succession of injustices? Is there any law that a wrong must right a wrong? Did it rebuke the means by which the vast fortune of Henderson was acc.u.mulated, that it was defeated of any good use by the fraud of his wife? Was her action punished by the same unscrupulous tactics of the Street that originally made the fortune? And Ault? Would a stronger pirate arise in time to despoil him, and so act as the Nemesis of all violation of the law of honest relations between men?

The comfort is, in all this struggle of the evil powers, masked as justice, that the Almighty Ruler of the world does not forget his own, and shows them a smiling face in the midst of disaster. There is no mystery in this. For the n.o.ble part in man cannot be touched in its integrity by such vulgar disasters as we are considering. In those days when Evelyn saw dissolving about her the material splendors of her old life, while the Golden House was being dismantled, and she was taking sad leave of the scenes of her girlhood, so vivid with memory of affection and of intellectual activity, they seemed only the sh.e.l.l, the casting-off of which gave her freedom. The sun never shone brighter, there was never such singing in her heart, as on the morning when she was free to go to Mrs. Van Cortlandt's and throw herself into the arms of her dear governess and talk of Philip.

Why not? Perhaps she had not that kind of maidenly shyness, sometimes called conventional propriety, sometimes described as 'mauvaise honte'

which a woman of the world would have shown. The impulses of her heart followed as direct lines as the reasoning of her brain. Was it due to her peculiar education, education only in the n.o.blest ideas of the race, that she should be a sort of reversion, in our complicated life, to the type of woman in the old societies (we like to believe there was such a type as the poets love, the Nausicaas), who were single-minded, as frank to avow affection as opinion?

"Have you seen him?" she asked.

"No, but he has written."

"And you think he--" the girl had her arms around her friend's neck again, and concealed her blushing face, "don't make me say it, McDonald."

"Yes, dear, I am sure--I know he does."

There was a little quiver in her form, but it was not of agony; then she put her hands on the shoulders of her governess, and, looking in her eyes, said:

"When you did see him, how did he look--how did he look?--pretty sad?"

"How could he help it?"

"The dear! But was he well?"

"Splendidly, so he said. Like his old self."

"Tell me," said the girl.

And Miss McDonald went into delightful details, how he looked, how he walked, how his voice sounded, how he talked, how melancholy he was, and how full of determination he was, his eyes were so kindly, and his smile was never so sweet as now when there was sadness in it.

"It is very long since," drearily murmured the girl. And then she continued, partly to herself, partly to Miss McDonald: "He will come now, can't he? Not to that house. Never would I wish him to set foot in it. But he is not forbidden to come to the place where we are going.

Soon, you think? Perhaps you might hint--oh no, not from me--just your idea. Wouldn't it be natural, after our misfortune? Perhaps mamma would feel differently after what has happened. Oh, that Montague! that horrid little man! I think--I think I shall receive him coolly at first, just to see."

But it was not immediately that the chance for a guileless woman to show her coolness to her lover was to occur. This postponement was not due to the coolness or to the good sense of Philip. When the catastrophe came, his first impulse was that of a fireman who plunges into a burning building to rescue the imperiled inmates. He pictured in his mind a certain n.o.bility of action in going forward to the unfortunate family with his sympathy, and appearing to them in the heroic att.i.tude of a man whose love has no alloy of self-interest. They should speedily understand that it was not the heiress, but the woman, with whom he was in love.

But Miss McDonald understood human nature better than that, at least the nature of Mrs. Mavick. People of her temperament, humiliated and enraged, are best left alone. The fierceness with which she would have turned upon any of her society friends who should have presumed to offer her condolence, however sweetly the condescension were concealed, would have been vented without mercy upon the man whose presence would have reminded her of her foolish rudeness to him, and of the bitter failure of her schemes for her daughter. "Wait, wait," said the good counselor, "until the turmoil has subsided, and the hard pressure of circ.u.mstances compels her to look at things in their natural relations. She is too sore now in--the wreck of all her hopes."

But, indeed, her hopes were not all surrendered in a moment. She had more spirit than her husband in their calamity. She was, in fact, a born gambler; she had the qualities of her temperament, and would not believe that courage and luck could not retrieve, at least partially, their fortune. It seemed incredible in the Street that the widow of Henderson should have given over her property so completely to her second husband, and it was a surprise to find that there was very little of value that the a.s.signment of Mavick did not carry with it. The Street did not know the guilty secret between Mavick and his wife that made them cowards to each other. Nor did it understand that Carmen was the more venturesome gambler of the two, and that gradually, for the success of promising schemes, she had thrown one thing after another into the common speculation, until practically all the property stood in Mavick's name. Was she a fool in this, as so many women are about their separate property, or was she cheated?

The palace on Fifth Avenue was not even in her name. When she realized that, there was a scene--but this is not a history of the quarrels of Carmen and her husband after the break-down.

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 circ.u.mstances 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, b.u.t.toned 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."