CHAPTER XIIIA JUDGMENT BY APPEARANCES
Phyllis Lane had become very exasperated. The Colonel’s irritability was phenomenal since that particular evening on which he had been rejected. He took his daughter severely to task for flirting with Dan Webster, and expressed devoutly his wish that his daughter was safely married, and to a man strong enough to keep her in order.
Miss Phyllis would toss her head saucily when she heard all this, and answer with playful banter.
She was exasperated, all the same.
She began to realize now that the startling novelty was over; that it was not altogether pleasant to be married secretly to a man who was gone to India for no one could tell how long.
It would be ages, too, before she could even get a letter from him. (She had, without consulting Philip, arranged that these letters should be enclosed under cover to him.)
One morning, after a particularly sharp contest with the Colonel, Phyllis got on her bicycle and rode over to Gissing, to see if perhaps Philip had a letter for her.
She had told no one where she was going.
Philip, who had given up writing at night, having found the experiment too wearing, was hard at work by the open window, when the aggressive and continuedringing of a bicycle bell caused him to look up.
Dismounting at the gate, the fair Phyllis made straight for the window, where Philip’s head was in full view.
She nodded with an air ofcamaraderieas she fixed a button in her white blouse.
“I’ve come!” she announced rather unnecessarily, it would seem.
She was looking very charming, though, having lost a few hairpins during her ride, a tail of bright hair lay upon one shoulder.
She put her bicycle against the privet hedge and advanced to the open window.
“I’m frightfully thirsty,” she remarked.
“Come in and have some lemonade,” he told her. “You don’t deserve any for interrupting my work.”
“You ought not to be working on this hot day,” she said with decision, “and I am Providence in disguise, come to save you from a horrid headache.”
“You are more Fate than Providence,” Philip said laughing, “to more than one, I suspect. But come in! Davis makes delicious lemonade. It is kept in a refrigerator.”
Miss Phyllis made her way round the bungalow, and was soon in Philip’s cool sitting-room, and making straight for the mirror, arranged her hair, while she asked, with a pretty blush, which she saw reflected in the glass: “Have you a letter from my husband for me?”
“I? How should I have one?” demanded the astonished young man.
“You see, I told Charlie to send my letters to you,” she answered demurely.
“You have made me an accomplice in your crime, then, have you?” he remarked, as he gathered up thesheets of his manuscript. “I shall get into serious trouble with the Colonel. It will all come out, you know, about this marriage when the vicar comes back and looks at the register.”
Phyllis laughed.
“The vicar is not coming back forages,” she said; “and another strange man is taking duty now; and heaps of other people are getting married at that church; and my name is quite a common one; and visitors come here often to get married; and—can’t you see, silly! it ismostunlikely that that particular entry will get noticed? No one we know saw us married. The witnesses were friends of Charlie’s, and were soldiers, and soldiers never break their word. Oh!doask for the lemonade!”
Philip felt as if he had been suddenly transported from a calm lake to the maelstrom. Phyllis and calm were impossible to be considered in conjunction. He resigned himself and rang the bell.
“I am going to stay on to luncheon,” announced this self-willed young woman, “so you may as well tell Davis when you ask for the lemonade.”
“Are you aware that this conduct of yours is very irregular, young woman?” inquired Philip with a whimsical smile.
“All my conduct is!” she affirmed, with wide, innocent-looking eyes meeting his.
He did not contradict her. After all, as he had already decided, it was better that Phyllis, the wayward and irrepressible, should play the fool with him, out of the “danger area,” than with another. She would inevitably play the fool.
“Bring some lemonade, Davis,” he said to the ex-soldier; “and Miss Lane will stay on to luncheon.”
Davis saluted.
“After luncheon, you must show me the White House and Pickett’s Farm,” Phyllis next said, “and the new stable.”
Philip glanced despairingly at his writing-table.
“You are not going to work till I am gone,” the girl said, noting the glance.
“I am sure I am not,” he acknowledged.
The luncheon of cold chicken, with a salad and iced claret, proved much to the young woman’s liking, and she did ample justice to it. Phyllis had a good healthy appetite.
Afterwards they drank coffee in the verandah, and Philip smoked; then Phyllis demanded that they should go out and see the White House and the farm.
As they crossed the field, Phyllis linked her arm in that of her companion and began to talk animatedly of Charlie.
Philip did not find all this particularly interesting. To hear another person’s perfections dilated upon seldom is to anyone.
As they neared the White House, they saw Mrs. Le Breton walking with Eweretta in the garden.
Both women saw them, and the elder quickly drew the younger one away.
“Was that poor Aimée Le Breton?” asked Phyllis with eager curiosity.
“Yes,” said Philip. “Come away!”
“What a pretty girl!” cried Phyllis, with generous admiration. “How Dan would like to paint her!” Then lowering her voice to tones of sympathy, she added: “Was Eweretta really like that?”
“So like, that it is nearly incredible,” said Philip. “We won’t talk about it.”
“I am so sorry,” cried Phyllis hastily. “Forgive me, Philip.”
“See! they are carrying the corn over there. Let us go and see them.”
At the gate of the field Pickett came up to them, beaming.
“Lucky weather for me, sir,” he remarked. “Last year I didn’t get the corn up till the first week in September, and it was none too dry, and I had to thresh direct from the shocks, for I hadn’t straw to thatch the ricks, or for bedding. Of course, there were advantages. The labor of building ricks and undoing them all again was saved. But against that, in threshing from the shocks the grain is a bit soft and juicy. If put in heaps it is apt to heat and ferment. There’s a pile of things to weigh with one another, sir. How is the Colonel, miss?”
“Very well, thank you,” replied Phyllis, a little annoyed to be recognized, though it ought certainly not to have been any surprise, for Colonel Lane and his daughter were old residents at Hastings, and very well-known figures indeed.
“If Miss Lane would like to look round the farm,Mr.Barrimore, you are welcome to go where you like. I’m a bit too busy to show the young lady round myself, or I should be proud. The horses—that is, some of them—are not working well. I’ve had them up from grass for the harvest; they swell with grass feeding, and the change to oats always upsets them. Well, good-day to you, sir! Good-day to you, miss!”
“What a talkerMr.Pickett is!” exclaimed Phyllis, as they left him.
“Yes, he does talk. He is in the way of being a gossip too,” said Philip; “but he is a very good sort, for all that.”
Mr.Pickett proved Philip’s words to be true whenhe went home to tea—that is, as to his being a gossip.
A friend from Hastings—a Mrs. Hannington—had come to tea with Mrs. Pickett and Minnie, and the farmer entertained them all with his news aboutMr.Barrimore’s “young lady.”
“Them two are sweethearts, if I know anything,” he said with a facetious smile. “Miss Lane had hold of his arm, and they seemed mighty cosy.”
“Miss Lane is a flirt,” announced Mrs. Hannington with disapproval. “I’ve seen her on the sea-front with one chap after another. It was Captain Arbuthnot a bit ago, but he’s gone away. I suppose she’s taken up withMr.Barrimore for a spell. I wonder the Colonel lets her carry on like she does! If she were a girl of mine she wouldn’t do it!”
Minnie tossed her head at this. She, too, had been the subject of Mrs. Hannington’s disapproval before to-day.
“Miss Lane andMr.Barrimore have been as good as brought up together, the families being so friendly,” Minnie observed.
“And supposing they have!” broke out Mrs. Hannington. “It isn’t right and proper for her to come to his house, with him all by himself like he is! I don’t call it decent. And what men find in Miss LaneIcan’t think. She isn’t pretty, so far as my eyes tell me. Now, that girl at the White Househaslooks. I saw her as I came by.”
“Look here, Minnie!” interrupted the farmer. “Have those fowl-houses had a coat of limewash to-day?”
“Yes, father.”
“And was some paraffin mixed in with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, now, I asked you to see to that,” said Pickett reproachfully. “I said to you this morning, ‘I want you to see to them fowl-houses yourself, and mind there is paraffin put in the limewash,’ and I said it was to be put on hot, and the runs scraped and cleaned, and coated with lime, and the nest-boxes limewashed, and all the litter burned. Them directions were plain enough, I should have thought!”
“Minnie has been plucking and trussing fowls for the market all day,” put in Mrs. Pickett in defence. “She has done a good day’s work.”
“There won’t be any to truss if the fowl-houses are neglected,” rejoined Pickett; “but let us have tea. I could drink the sea dry, I’m that thirsty! and I daresay Mrs. Hannington is quite ready for a cup.”
“That I am,” acknowledged the lady with a broad smile. “It’s hotter than I ever remember for years, anyway. But this house-place of yours keeps cool. It’s the flagged floor, I suppose.”
Minnie, who brought in the teapot just then, looked hot enough. But the weather had not much to do with it. Mrs. Hannington always irritated the girl, and, besides, her father had reproved her. But evening would come, and she would hear a whistle round by the rickyard, and would slip out into the moonlight to meet someone. The thought came as sweet balm to her spirits.
There was little balm, however, for the spirits of poor Eweretta.
Eweretta at that very time was watching from her chamber window, watching her old lover and Phyllis Lane taking tea together on the verandah.
How soon men forget!