That Fortune

by Charles Dudley Warner

It would be difficult to conceive of a person more obviously up in the air than Philip at this moment. He went through his office duties intelligently and perfunctorily, but his heart was not in the work, and reason as he would his career did not seem to be that way. He was lured too strongly by that siren, the ever-alluring woman who sits upon the rocks and sings so deliciously to youth of the sweets of authorship. He who listens once to that song hears it always in his ears, through disappointment and success—and the success is often the greatest disappointment—through poverty and hope deferred and heart-sickness for recognition, through the hot time of youth and the creeping incapacity of old age. The song never ceases. Were the longing and the hunger it arouses ever satisfied with anything, money for instance, any more than with fame?

And if the law had a feeble hold on him, how much more uncertain was his grasp on literature. He had thrown his line, he had been encouraged by nibbles, but publishers were too wary to take hold. It seemed to him that he had literally cast his bread upon the waters, and apparently at an ebb tide, and his venture had gone to the fathomless sea. He had put his heart into the story, and, more than that, his hope of something dearer than any public favor. As he went over the story in his mind, scene after scene, and dwelt upon the theme that held the whole in unity, he felt that Evelyn would be touched by the recognition of her part in the inspiration, and that the great public must give some heed to it. Perhaps not the great public—for its liking now ran in quite another direction, but a considerable number of people like Celia, who were struggling with problems of life, and the Alices in country homes who still preserved in their souls a belief in the power of a noble life, and perhaps some critics who had not rid themselves of the old traditions. If the publishers would only give him a chance!

But if law and literature were to him little more than unsubstantial dreams, the love he cherished was, in the cool examination of reason, preposterous. What! the heiress of so many millions, brought up doubtless in the expectation of the most brilliant worldly alliance, the heiress with the world presently at her feet, would she look at a lawyer's clerk and an unsuccessful scribbler? Oh, the vanity of youth and the conceit of intellect!

Down in his heart Philip thought that she might. And he went on nursing this vain passion, knowing as well as any one can know the social code, that Mr. Mavick and Mrs. Mavick would simply laugh in his face at such a preposterous idea. And yet he knew that he had her sympathy in his ambition, that to a certain extent she was interested in him. The girl was too guileless to conceal that. And then suppose he should become famous—well, not exactly famous, but an author who was talked about, and becoming known, and said to be promising? And then he could fancy Mavick weighing this sort of reputation in his office scales against money, and Mrs. Mavick weighing it in her boudoir against social position. He was a fool to think of it. And yet, suppose, suppose the girl should come to love him. It would not be lightly. He knew that, by looking into her deep, clear, beautiful eyes. There were in them determination and tenacity of purpose as well as the capability of passion. Heavens and earth, if that girl once loved, there was a force that no opposition could subdue! That was true. But what had he to offer to evoke such a love?

In those days Philip saw much of Celia, who at length had given up teaching, and had come to the city to try her experiment, into which she was willing to embark her small income. She had taken a room in the midst of poverty and misery on the East Side, and was studying the situation.

“I am not certain,” she said, “whether I or any one else can do anything, or whether any organization down there can effect much. But I will find out.”

“Aren't you lonesome—and disgusted?” asked Philip.

“Disgusted? You might as well be disgusted with one thing as another. I am generally disgusted with the way things go. But, lonely? No, there is too much to do and to learn. And do you know, Philip, that people are more interesting over there, more individual, have more queer sorts of character. I begin to believe, with a lovely philanthropist I know, who had charge of female criminals, that 'wicked women are more interesting than good women.'”

“You have struck a rich mine of interest in New York, then.”

“Don't be cynical, Phil. There are different kinds of interest. Stuff! But I won't explain.” And then, abruptly changing the subject, “Seems to me you have something on your mind lately. Is it the novel?”