Part 46

“Are you real glad to see me, Phil? I thought you might be lonesome by this time in the deserted city.”

“I was, horribly.” He was still holding her hand. “Without a chance to talk with you or Alice, I am quite an orphan.”

“Ah! You or Alice!” A shade of disappointment came over her face as she dropped his hand. But she rallied in a moment.

“Poor boy! You ought to have a guardian. What heroine of romance are you running after now?”

“In my new story?”

“Of course.”

“She isn't very well defined in my mind yet. But a lovely girl, without anything peculiar, no education to speak of, or career, fascinating in her womanhood, such as might walk out of the Bible. Don't you think that would be a novelty? But it is the most difficult to do.”

“Negative. That sort has gone out. Philip, why don't you take the heroine of the Mavick ball? There is a theme.” She was watching him shrewdly, and saw the flush in his face as he hurriedly asked,

“Did you ever see her?”

“Only at a distance. But you must know her well enough for a literary purpose. The reports of the ball give you the setting of the drama.”

“Did you read them?”

“I should say I did. Most amusing.”

“Celia, don't you think it would be an ungentlemanly thing to take a social event like that?”

“Why, you must take life as it is. Of course you would change the details. You could lay the scene in Philadelphia. Nobody would suspect you then.”

Philip shook his head. The conversation was not taking the turn that was congenial to him. The ball seemed to him a kind of maelstrom in which all his hopes were likely to be wrecked. And here was his old friend, the keenest-sighted woman he knew, looking upon it simply as literary material--a ridiculous social event. He had better change the subject.

“So the college is not open yet?”

“No, I came back because I had a new idea, and wanted time to look around. We haven't got quite the right idea in our city missions. They have another side. We need country missions.”

“Aren't they that now?”

“No, I mean for the country. I've been about a good deal all this vacation, and my ideas are confirmed. The country towns and villages are full of young hoodlums and toughs, and all sorts of wickedness. They could be improved by sending city boys up there--yes, and girls of tender age. I don't mean the worst ones, not altogether. The young of a certain low class growing up in the country are even worse than the same class in the city, and they lack a civility of manner which is pretty sure to exist in a city-bred person.”

“If the country is so bad, why send any more unregenerates into it?”

“How do you know that anybody is always to be unregenerate? But I wouldn't send thieves and imbeciles. I would select children of some capacity, whose circumstances are against them where they are, and I am sure they would make better material than a good deal of the young generation in country villages now. This is what I mean by a mission for the country. We have been bending all our efforts to the reformation of the cities. What we need to go at now is the reforming of the country.”

“You have taken a big contract,” said Philip, smiling at her enthusiasm. “Don't you intend to go on with medicine?”

“Certainly. At least far enough to be of some use in breaking up people's ignorance about their own bodies. Half the physical as well as moral misery comes from ignorance. Didn't I always tell you that I want to know? A good many of my associates pretend to be agnostics, neither believe or disbelieve in anything. The further I go the more I am convinced that there is a positive basis for things. They talk about the religion of humanity. I tell you, Philip, that humanity is pretty poor stuff to build a religion on.”

The talk was wandering far away from what was in Philip's mind, and presently Celia perceived his want of interest.

“There, that is enough about myself. I want to know all about you, your visit to Rivervale, how the publishing house suits you, how the story is growing.”

And Philip talked about himself, and the rumors in Wall Street, and Mr. Ault and his offer, and at last about the Mavicks--he could not help that--until he felt that Celia was what she had always been to him, and when he went away he held her hand and said what a dear, sweet friend she was.

And when he had gone, Celia sat a long time by the window, not seeing much of the hot street into which she looked, until there were tears in her eyes.

XXIV