Fennel and Rue Part 3

Mrs. Verrian's eyes were suffused with pride and fondness. "And you can always think, Philip, that this has come to you without the least lowering of your standard, without forsaking your ideal for a moment."

"That is certainly a satisfaction."

She kept her proud and tender gaze upon him. "No one will ever know as I do how faithful you have been to your art. Did any of the newspapers recognize that--or surmise it, or suspect it?"

"No, that isn't the turn they take. They speak of the strong love interest involved in the problem. And the abundance of incident. I looked out to keep something happening, you know. I'm sorry I didn't ask Armiger to let me bring the notices home to you. I'm not sure that I did wisely not to subscribe to that press-clippings bureau."

His mother smiled. "You mustn't let prosperity corrupt you, Philip.

Wouldn't seeing what the press is saying of it distract you from the real aim you had in your story?"

"We're all weak, of course. It might, if the story were not finished; but as it is, I think I could be proof against the stupidest praise."

"Well, for my part, I'm glad you didn't subscribe to the clippings bureau. It would have been a disturbing element." She now looked down at the letters as if she were going to take them up, and he followed the direction of her eyes. As if reminded of the fact by this, he said:

"Armiger asked me if I had ever heard anything more from that girl."

"Has he?" his mother eagerly asked, transferring her glance from the letters to her son's face.

"Not a word. I think I silenced her thoroughly."

"Yes," his mother said. "There could have been no good object in prolonging the affair and letting her confirm herself in the notion that she was of sufficient importance either to you or to him for you to continue the correspondence with her. She couldn't learn too distinctly that she had done--a very wrong thing in trying to play such a trick on you."

"That was the way I looked at it," Verrian said, but he drew a light sigh, rather wearily.

"I hope," his mother said, with a recurrent glance at the letters, "that there is nothing of that silly kind among these."

"No, these are blameless enough, unless they are to be blamed for being too flattering. That girl seems to be sole of her kind, unless the girl that she 'got together with' was really like her."

"I don't believe there was any other girl. I never thought there was more than one."

"There seemed to be two styles and two grades of culture, such as they were."

"Oh, she could easily imitate two manners. She must have been a clever girl," Mrs. Verrian said, with that admiration for any sort of cleverness in her s.e.x which even very good women cannot help feeling.

"Well, perhaps she was punished enough for both the characters she a.s.sumed," Verrian said, with a smile that was not gay.

"Don't think about her!" his mother returned, with a perception of his mood. "I'm only thankful that she's out of our lives in every sort of way."

VI.

Verrian said nothing, but he reflected with a sort of gloomy amus.e.m.e.nt how impossible it was for any woman, even a woman so wide-minded and high-principled as his mother, to escape the personal view of all things and all persons which women take. He tacitly noted the fact, as the novelist notes whatever happens or appears to him, but he let the occasion drop out of his mind as soon as he could after it had dropped out of his talk.

The night when the last number of his story came to them in the magazine, and was already announced as a book, he sat up with his mother celebrating, as he said, and exulting in the future as well as the past.

They had a little supper, which she cooked for him in a chafing-dish, in the dining-room of the tiny apartment where they lived together, and she made some coffee afterwards, to carry off the effect of the Newburg lobster. Perhaps because there was nothing to carry off the effect of the coffee, he heard her, through the part.i.tion of their rooms, stirring restlessly after he had gone to bed, and a little later she came to his door, which she set ajar, to ask, "Are you awake, Philip?"

"You seem to be, mother," he answered, with an amus.e.m.e.nt at her question which seemed not to have imparted itself to her when she came in and stood beside his bed in her dressing-gown.

"You don't think we have judged her too harshly, Philip?"

"Do you, mother?"

"No, I think we couldn't be too severe in a thing like that. She probably thought you were like some of the other story-writers; she couldn't feel differences, shades. She pretended to be taken with the circ.u.mstances of your work, but she had to do that if she wanted to fool you. Well, she has got her come-uppings, as she would probably say."

Verrian replied, thoughtfully, "She didn't strike me as a country person--at least, in her first letter."

"Then you still think she didn't write both?"

"If she did, she was trying her hand in a personality she had invented."

"Girls are very strange," his mother sighed. "They like excitement, adventure. It's very dull in those little places. I shouldn't wish you to think any harm of the poor thing."

"Poor thing? Why this magnanimous compa.s.sion, mother?"

"Oh, nothing. But I know how I was myself when I was a girl. I used almost to die of hunger for something to happen. Can you remember just what you said in your letter?"

Verrian laughed. "NO, I can't. But I don't believe I said half enough.

You're nervous, mother."

"Yes, I am. But don't you get to worrying. I merely got to thinking how I should hate to have anybody's unhappiness mixed up with this happiness of ours. I do so want your pleasure in your success to be pure, not tainted with the pain of any human creature."

Verrian answered with light cynicism: "It will be tainted with the pain of the fellows who don't like me, or who haven't succeeded, and they'll take care to let me share their pain if ever they can. But if you mean that merry maiden up country, she's probably thinking, if she thinks about it at all, that she's the luckiest girl in the United States to have got out of an awful sc.r.a.pe so easily. At the worst, I only had fun with her in my letter. Probably she sees that she has nothing to grieve for but her own break."

"No, and you did just as you should have done; and I am glad you don't feel bitterly about it. You don't, do you?"

"Not the least."

His mother stooped over and kissed him where he lay smiling. "Well, that's good. After all, it's you I cared for. Now I can say good-night."

But she lingered to tuck him in a little, from the persistence of the mother habit. "I wish you may never do anything that you will be sorry for."

"Well, I won't--if it's a good action."

They laughed together, and she left the room, still looking back to see if there was anything more she could do for him, while he lay smiling, intelligently for what she was thinking, and patiently for what she was doing.

VII.

Even in the time which was then coming and which now is, when successful authors are almost as many as millionaires, Verrian's book brought him a pretty celebrity; and this celebrity was in a way specific. It related to the quality of his work, which was quietly artistic and psychological, whatever liveliness of incident it uttered on the surface. He belonged to the good school which is of no fas.h.i.+on and of every time, far both from actuality and unreality; and his recognition came from people whose recognition was worth having. With this came the wider notice which was not worth having, like the notice of Mrs.

Westangle, since so well known to society reporters as a society woman, which could not be called recognition of him, because it did not involve any knowledge of his book, not even its t.i.tle. She did not read any sort of books, and she a.s.similated him by a sort of atmospheric sense. She was sure of nothing but the attention paid him in a certain very goodish house, by people whom she heard talking in unintelligible but unmistakable praise, when she said, casually, with a liquid glitter of her sweet, small eyes, "I wish you would come down to my place, Mr.

Verrian. I'm asking a few young people for Christmas week. Will you?"

"Why, thank you--thank you very much," Verrian said, waiting to hear more in explanation of the hospitality launched at him. He had never seen Mrs. Westangle till then, or heard of her, and he had not the least notion where she lived. But she seemed to have social authority, though Verrian, in looking round at his hostess and her daughter, who stood near, letting people take leave, learned nothing from their common smile. Mrs. Westangle had glided close to him, in the way she had of getting very near without apparently having advanced by steps, and she stood gleaming and twittering up at him.

"I shall send you a little note; I won't let you forget," she said. Then she suddenly shook hands with the ladies of the house and was flas.h.i.+ngly gone.