"Many a name's been up longer than yours," replied Mr. Blodgett in a comforting voice. "You don't seem to realize that the Philomathean's a pretty stiff club to get into."

"But I've been posted for over three years, while here Dr. Hartzmann is elected within four months of his proposing."

"Well, the doctor has the great advantage of being a sort of natural Philomath, you see," Mr. Blodgett explained genially. "He was born that way, and so is ripe for membership without any closet mellowing."

"But my reputation as a writer is greater than Dr."--began Mr. Whitely; but a laugh from Mr. Blodgett made him halt.

"Oh come, now, Whitely!"

"What's the matter?" asked my employer.

"Once St. Peter and St. Paul stopped at a tavern to quench their thirst," said Mr. Blodgett, "and when the time came to pay, they tossed dice for it. Paul threw double sixes, and smiled. Peter smiled back, and threw double sevens. What do you suppose Paul said, Whitely?"

"What?"

"'Oh, Peter, Peter! No miracles between friends.'"

"I don't follow you," rejoined Mr. Whitely.

Mr. Blodgett turned and said to me, "I'm going West for two months, and while I'm gone the Twelfth-night revel at the Philomathean is to come off. Will you see that the boss and Agnes get cards?" Then he faced about and remarked, "Whitely, I'd give a big gold certificate to know what nerve food you use!" and went out, laughing.

When I took the invitations to Mrs. Blodgett, I found you all with your heads full of a benefit for the Guild, to be given at your home,--a musical evening, with several well-known stars as magnets, and admission by invitation as an additional attraction. Mrs. Blodgett said to me in her decisive way, "Dr. Hartzmann, the invitations are five dollars each, and you are to take one."

I half suspected that it was only a device to get me within your doors, though every society woman feels at liberty to whitemail her social circle to an unlimited degree. But the fact that the entertainment was to be in your home, even more than my poverty, compelled me to refuse to be a victim of her charitable kindness or her charitable greed. I merely shook my head.

"Oh, but you must," she urged. "It will be a delightful evening, and then it's such a fine object."

"Do not ask it of Dr. Hartzmann," you protested, coming to my aid. "No one"--

"I'm sure it's very little to ask," remarked Mrs. Blodgett, in a disappointed way.

"Mrs. Blodgett," I said, in desperation, "for years I have denied myself every luxury and almost every comfort. I have lived at the cheapest of boarding-houses; I have walked down-town, rain or shine, to save ten cents a day; I have"--I stopped there, ashamed of my outbreak.

"I suppose, Dr. Hartzmann," retorted Agnes, with no attempt to conceal the irritation she felt toward me, "that the Philomathean is one of your ten-cent economies?"

Before I could speak you changed the subject, and the matter was dropped,--I hoped for all time. It was, however, to reappear, and to make my position more difficult and painful than ever.

At Mrs. Blodgett's request, made that very day, I sent you an invitation to the Philomathean ladies' day. It was with no hope of being there myself, since my editorial duties covered the hours of the exhibition; but good or bad fortune aided me, for Mr. Whitely asked me for a ticket, and his absence from the office set me free. The crowd was great, but, like most people who try for one thing only, I attained my desire by quickly finding you, and we spent an enjoyable hour together, studying the delicious jokes and pranks of our artist members. The truly marvelous admixture of absurdity and cleverness called out the real mirth of your nature, and our happiness and gayety over the pictures strangely recalled to me our similar days spent in Paris and elsewhere.

You too, I think, remembered the same experience, for when we had finished, and were ascending the stairs to the dining-room, you remarked to me, "I never dreamed that one could be so merry after one had ceased to be a child. For the last hour I have felt as if teens were yet unventured lands."

I confess I sought a secluded spot in an alcove, hoping still to keep you to myself; but the project failed, for when I returned from getting you an ice, I found that Mr. Whitely had joined you. The pictures, of course, were the subject of discussion, and you asked him, "Are all the other members as clever in their own professions as your artists have shown themselves to be?"

"The Philomathean is made up of an able body of men," replied Mr.

Whitely in a delightfully patronizing tone. "Some few of the very ablest, perhaps, do not care to be members; but of the second rank, you may say, broadly speaking, that it includes all men of prominence in this city."

"But why should the abler men not belong?"

"They are too occupied with more vital matters," explained my employer.

"Yet surely they must need a club, and what one so appropriate as this?"

"It is natural to reason so," a.s.sented the would-be member. "But as an actual fact, some of the most prominent men in this city are not members," and he mentioned three well-known names.

The inference was so unjust that I observed, "Should you not add, Mr.

Whitely, that they are not members either because they know it is useless to apply, or because they have applied in vain; and that their exclusion, though superficially a small affair, probably means to them, by the implication it carries, one of the keenest mortifications of their lives?"

"You mean that the Philomathean refuses to admit such men as Mr. Whitely named?" you asked incredulously.

I smiled. "The worldly reputation and the professional reputation of men occasionally differ very greatly, Miss Walton. We do not accept a man here because his name appears often in the newspapers, but because of what the men of his own calling know and think of him."

"And of course they are always jealous of a man who has surpa.s.sed them,"

contended Mr. Whitely.

"There must be something more against a man than envy of his confreres to exclude him," I answered. "My loyalty to the Philomathean, Miss Walton, is due to the influence it exerts in this very matter. Errors are possible, but the intention is that no man shall be of our brotherhood who is not honestly doing something worth the doing, for other reasons than mere money-making. And for that very reason, we are supposed, within these walls, to be friends, whether or not there is acquaintance outside of them. We are the one club in New York which dares to trust its membership list implicitly to that extent.

Charlatanry and dishonesty may succeed with the world, but here they fail. Money will buy much, but the poorest man stands on a par here with the wealthiest."

"You make me envious of you both," you sighed, just as Mrs. Blodgett and Agnes joined us.

"What are you envying them?" asked Agnes, as she shook hands with you,--"that they were monopolizing you? How selfish men are!"

"In monopolizing this club?"

"Was that what you envied them?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Blodgett. "I for one am glad there's a place to which I can't go, where I can send my husband when I want to be rid of him." Then she turned to Mr. Whitely, and with her usual directness remarked, "So they've let you in? Mr. Blodgett told me you would surely be rejected."

Mr. Whitely reddened and bit his lip, for which he is hardly to be blamed. But he only bowed slightly in reply, leaving the inference in your minds that he was a Philomath. How the man dares so often to--

The striking clock tells me it is later than I thought, and I must stop.

Good-night, dear heart.

XXI

_March 12._ Our talk at the Philomathean and Mr. Whitely's tacit a.s.sumption of membership had their penalty for me,--a penalty which, to reverse the old adage, I first thought an undisguised blessing. When we separated, he asked me to dinner the following evening, to fill in a place unexpectedly left vacant; and as I knew, from a chance allusion, that you were to be there, I accepted a courtesy at his hands.

Although there were several celebrities at the meal, it fell to my lot to sit on your right; my host, who took you down, evidently preferring to have no dangerous rival in your attention. But Mrs. Blodgett, who sat on his other side, engaged him as much as she chose, and thus gave me more of your time than I should otherwise have had. If you knew how happy it made me that, whenever she interrupted his monopoly of you, instead of making a trialogue with them, you never failed to turn to me!

"I have just re-read Mr. Whitely's book," you remarked, in one of these interruptions, "and I have been trying to express to him my genuine admiration for it. I thought of it highly when first I read it, last autumn, but on a second reading I have become really an enthusiast."

I suppose my face must have shown some of the joy your words gave me, for you continued, "Clearly, you like it too, and are pleased to hear it praised. But then it's notorious that writers are jealous of one another! Tell me what you think of it?"

I tried to keep all bitterness out of my voice as I laughed. "Think how unprofessional it would be in me to discuss my employer's book: if I praised it, how necessary; if I disparaged it, how disloyal!"

"You are as unsatisfactory as Mr. Whitely," you complained. "I can't get him to speak about it, either. He smiles and bows his head to my praise, but not a word can he be made to say. Evidently he has a form of modesty--not stage fright, but book fright--that I never before encountered. Every other author I have met was fatiguingly anxious to talk about his own writings."

"Remember in our behalf that a book stands very much in the same relation to a writer that a baby does to its mother. We are tolerant of her admiration; be equally lenient to the author's harmless prattle."