CHAPTER XIXCOLONEL LANE GOES OFF GUARD
Philip Barrimore did not have to undergo the annoyance of sitting at table with the man who had dared to want to marry this young man’s mother—not, at any rate, on the occasion of Dan Webster’s arrival at Hawk’s Nest.
Colonel Lane had sent round a letter to Mrs. Barrimore to apologize and to explain.
“My dear Friend,” it began, “the last of my old comrades—Colonel Henderson—is dying at Dulwich, and he has expressed a wish to see me. You will understand that I am going at once, and kindly forgive me for breaking my engagement with you to-night under the sorrowful circumstances. Poor Henderson has been on his back for years, and has characteristically hidden himself, being poor. Indeed, I had thought he must be dead! Now he has sent for me, and I shall remain with him, if he desires it, to the end.“Will you, dear friend, be so sweet as to take Phyllis into your home till I return? She does not get on well with Mrs. Ransom—and—there are other reasons. With you, I shall feel sure my child will be safe.”
“My dear Friend,” it began, “the last of my old comrades—Colonel Henderson—is dying at Dulwich, and he has expressed a wish to see me. You will understand that I am going at once, and kindly forgive me for breaking my engagement with you to-night under the sorrowful circumstances. Poor Henderson has been on his back for years, and has characteristically hidden himself, being poor. Indeed, I had thought he must be dead! Now he has sent for me, and I shall remain with him, if he desires it, to the end.
“Will you, dear friend, be so sweet as to take Phyllis into your home till I return? She does not get on well with Mrs. Ransom—and—there are other reasons. With you, I shall feel sure my child will be safe.”
The letter ended conventionally, but for all that to Mrs. Barrimore it was a love-letter.
“He trusts me—he flies to me always as a refuge,” she told herself, and her kind eyes were bright with tears.
It did not occur to this simple, loving woman that there might be danger for Phyllis within the haven of her home.
Dan Webster with a shade over his eyes was one person; Dan Webster without the shade was very much another person! His eyes were blue as forget-me-nots—merry eyes, loving eyes, eyes which women raved about.
Dan himself was full of charm. He was possessed also of that rare virtue—gratitude.
He had never forgotten how sweet Phyllis had been to him in his blindness, and he had often longed to show her his gratitude in some way that she would understand. He was unfeignedly glad whenMr.Burns, who had met him at Hastings Station, told him that “little Phil” was come to stay at Hawk’s Nest.
Dan had an idea that Colonel Lane was a little too much “down” on Phyllis. He was too strict for so high-spirited yet innocent a girl. “Phyllis is just a kiddie,” Dan had once remarked to Mrs. Barrimore, “she means no harm.”
And Mrs. Barrimore had thoroughly agreed with the young painter’s view of the case.
But as Colonel Lane had entrusted Phyllis to the care of his “dear friend,” she felt that she was on her honor to prevent Phyllis from flirting with Dan. Colonel Lane had known that Dan would be staying at Hawk’s Nest, so he had shown great trust in Mrs. Barrimore when he had asked her to take his daughter into her home.
So it happened that whileMr.Burns was escortingDan from the station (Dan had insisted on walking as he wanted to “stretch his legs”), Mrs. Barrimore was reading a gentle lecture to her wilful young guest.
“You won’t flirt with Dan, will you, dear?” she began nervously. “Your father would not like it, and now that he has trusted you by sending you here—don’t you think—”
“What I think is that you are a dear darling!” exclaimed the girl impulsively, kissing the tame lecturer, “and you want to please father—oh! I know! and you are looking absolutely lovely!”
Mrs. Barrimore had blushed that beautiful pink at the girl’s words.
“How do you do it?” asked Phyllis with a critical gaze. “Now I don’t blush. I wish I could! I get a savage red when dad scolds me, and that is the nearest to blushing I can get at. But don’t worry! I will be demure and well-behaved for your sweet sake. It will be hard, you know, for I do so like a bit of fun. There isn’t a great deal of fun at home, you know!” she added wistfully.
Annie Barrimore laughed brightly and naturally. “Come! Come!” she ejaculated. “You do get a good deal of fun out of life!”
“You wouldn’t think so if you knew everything.”
“What is there to know, then?” inquired the elder woman. She remembered painfully that Colonel Lane had suspected Phyllis of hiding something.
“There are things even older people can’t understand,” answered Phyllis enigmatically.
There was a strained silence, followed happily by the voices of Uncle Robert and Dan in the garden.
“One always hears Robert a mile off,” remarked Mrs. Barrimore. “Come, we must welcome Dan.”
The two women found Philip in the entrance hall.
Philip was disposed to be very pleasant to-night. He embraced his mother with more than usual affection, and greeted Phyllis with a compliment on her frock, which greatly gratified that young woman, as Philip so rarely said “nice things.”
“You will scarcely believe it,” said Philip as he hung up his hat, “but I drove in in Thomas Alvin’s trap. He was passing the bungalow, and I was in the garden. He spoke quite affably, and I chanced to say I was going into Hastings when he offered me a seat in his trap, which I accepted. I did not want to ride in—in fact, Soda has got something wrong with her hock. I was going to cycle over, and I hate cycling.”
“How nice ofMr.Alvin!” said Mrs. Barrimore. “But where are your uncle and Dan?”
“Just behind,” said Philip. “I left them talking to some parson at the gate. I did not know him, and I came in for fear of an introduction. I never hit it off with parsons somehow!”
During dinner Philip astonished everyone by speaking freely of the Alvins: speaking as if he had never been so intimately, so tragically near to them. Mrs. Barrimore admired what she thought his splendid self-control. Dan was hurt at what he considered the man’s callousness. Uncle Robert said to himself: “I was right. The wound is healed.” Phyllis was too much interested in watching Dan to attend to Philip’s remarks.
“I think,” said Philip, in his “laying-down-the-law” tone, “that Alvin ought to leave the neighborhoodnow Miss Le Breton has recovered her reason, and give her a chance. Here everyone knows of her former condition.”
“I quite agree with you, dear Philip,” said his mother. (When did she not agree with dear Philip?) “No one will call on them, because Miss Le Breton is so beautiful, and they would be afraid for their sons. The poor girl should scarcely marry.”
“She is beautiful,” rejoined Philip critically, “but not necessarily a danger on that account. Men like to toy with a beautiful woman, but those who are sensible think twice about marrying them. For my part, I think if ever I chose to marry, it would not be a beautiful woman I should make my wife.”
“How bravely he hides his wound!” thought Mrs. Barrimore.
“Old Alvin is not the brute I imagined,” went on Philip to the table generally. “He talked to me as we drove along, almost entirely of Miss Le Breton. He is profoundly anxious about her future. He seemed very fond of her, I thought. After all, those two women have no claim on him whatever. He can’t be a bad sort to voluntarily burden himself with them.”
“I entirely disagree with you on that point, Philip,” broke out Uncle Robert. “Both women had a natural claim on the money Thomas Alvin has become possessed of. I am glad Alvin had the grace to see it.”
“The odd thing is,” went on Philip, ignoring somewhat impolitely his uncle’s observation. “The odd thing is, that Miss Le Breton is fond of this uncouth Colonial—I gathered that.”
“Poor girl!” put in Dan, “she has no sweetheart to be fond of, or has lost him.”
“Quand on n’a pas ce qu’on aime, il faut aimer ce qu’on a,” said Philip lightly.
Philip’s tone, rather than the words themselves, was somewhat of a shock to his hearers. Everyone remembered the grave in the Canadian prairie. Would Philip, too, philosophically having lost what he had loved, console himself by loving what he had?
Philip had certainly changed a good deal from the boy who had rushed off to the North-West broken-hearted, to visit a little mound of earth near Qu’Appelle, and had come back announcing that he should for ever remain a bachelor. He was not melancholy now, he was quite evidently in excellent spirits. Even the sight of the girl at the White House, who was, as he himself said, the living image of the lost Eweretta, failed to fan the old flame.
He spoke of Miss Le Breton quite freely.
Turning to Dan he said: “You should get a sight of Miss Le Breton. Perhaps Alvin could give you a commission to paint her. She is wonderful.”
“What is she like?” inquired Dan.
Philip considered.
“Black hair, blue eyes—that often look dark,” he said, and paused.
“She has wonderful eyes, heavily-fringed,” he went on. “Her skin is pale and clear.”
Suddenly he broke off, and applied himself to his dinner.
Perhaps the face he had called up affected him, after all.
Uncle Robert caught his sister’s eye. She was looking towards him with a certain triumph.
She knew quite well that her brother had beenthinking Philip callous, and she was not sorry that a sudden betrayal of feeling on the boy’s part had undeceived his uncle.
“I must begin your portrait to-morrow,Mr.Burns,” Dan said, to fill an awkward silence.
“The sooner the better, my boy!” exclaimed Uncle Robert. “You ought to get my picture in the New Gallery next year, as you did old Lord What’s-his-name’s this year.”
Dan laughed. “I was lucky,” he said.
Phyllis was behaving with great discretion. She certainly looked at Dan a good deal, but none of her glances had the usual coquetry, and Dan, who had also looked at her, never liked her so much as during this hour.
He thought about her as a sort of under-current of contemplation while he talked of other things. He remembered her little coquettish ways of the past, and saw, or fancied he saw, them in a truer, clearer light. She had been sweet to him and made much of him and flattered him because he had been under a cloud. It had not been, as he had then imagined, wilful flirting—wilful flirting which to him had nevertheless been very pleasant at the time.
Now that he was himself, Phyllis had become the demure, modest, even shy maiden, which to him was infinitely more attractive.
“How did I behave, darling?” Phyllis demanded of Mrs. Barrimore when they were alone in the drawing-room waiting for the men to join them.
“Beautifully, dear!” said her mentor with enthusiasm.
During the walk to Gissing (Philip, to everyone’s amazement, had elected to walk back to the bungalow!), he pondered over the demure behavior ofPhyllis, and was much exercised as to the motive of this transformation.
“She never attempted to flirt once,” he mentally commented. “Perhaps she is learning some common sense at last.”