CHAPTER XXVIIA HALF-CONFIDENCE
About this time Annie Barrimore began to be anxious about the health of Phyllis. Phyllis was piqued; she lost her appetite; moreover, she had grown distinctly snappish, when she chose to talk at all. She was more often mopish.
Dan had departed for the vine-clad cottage in Dulwich Village. Colonel Lane still remained with his friend, who had “picked up” a little.
After vain and abortive questionings of Phyllis, Mrs. Barrimore wrote a rather distressed letter to the girl’s father, to which she received a characteristic reply:
“My dear Friend,—“Do not worry about Phyllis’s health. All you see is nothing physical. The symptoms are those of another love affair. Who is the manthistime? Surely notMr.Webster?”
“My dear Friend,—
“Do not worry about Phyllis’s health. All you see is nothing physical. The symptoms are those of another love affair. Who is the manthistime? Surely notMr.Webster?”
To which Mrs. Barrimore replied:
“No, it is certainly not Dan. Phyllis treated him with marked coldness. It cannot be anyone new either, for she sees no one but Philip, andyouknow that anything in that quarter isquiteout of the question. It is possible that she is fretting anew for Captain Arbuthnot. I wish she would trust me! I am very, very fond of her.”
“No, it is certainly not Dan. Phyllis treated him with marked coldness. It cannot be anyone new either, for she sees no one but Philip, andyouknow that anything in that quarter isquiteout of the question. It is possible that she is fretting anew for Captain Arbuthnot. I wish she would trust me! I am very, very fond of her.”
To this Colonel Lane replied by reiterating his former opinion.
“I know her better than you do, my dear friend,” he wrote. “She has a new fancy. She always behaves the same when she has a new fancy! Do not fear for her health. That is all right. But I think (if I may so far burden you, and I know I may!) that you should accompany her on her ‘supposed’ visits to Philip.”
“I know her better than you do, my dear friend,” he wrote. “She has a new fancy. She always behaves the same when she has a new fancy! Do not fear for her health. That is all right. But I think (if I may so far burden you, and I know I may!) that you should accompany her on her ‘supposed’ visits to Philip.”
This last letter worried Mrs. Barrimore not a little. She hated the suggestion of “spying” which the Colonel’s request involved. Yet she remembered having told Phyllis (on one of those summer afternoons when there was a garden-party at Hawk’s Nest) that she ought not to visit Philip alone.
Phyllis had been wilful. She had had her way; but Mrs. Barrimore had never approved of the visits to the bungalow. As a matter of fact, she was in ignorance of the frequency of these visits. She fully agreed with Colonel Lane’s desire that she should accompany the girl.
But it was actually repellent to this woman to “spy” or do anything that was not absolutely above-board.
For this reason, after a bewildering half-hour of racking thought, which left her head aching, she went in search of Phyllis to “have it out.”
Phyllis was certainly not gone out, for rain had been pouring down unceasingly since breakfast. But though Mrs. Barrimore visited the drawing-room, the dining-room, and finally the smoking-room (incidentally waking up Uncle Robert, who had gone to sleepover the fire—and theTimes), she failed to discover the girl. Mrs. Barrimore had passed Phyllis’s bedroom as she had come downstairs, and had seen through the open door that the room was empty.
Suddenly she recalled the fact that when last they had been together in Robertson Street, Phyllis had said: “Do you mind if while you go into Plummer’s, I run to that art shop in Wellington Place to get a few tubes of oil colors?”
She had meant to ask Phyllis afterwards what she wanted the colors for, but had forgotten it. She now thought that possibly Phyllis had been inspired by Dan’s painting to try her hand in secret, so she went up the flight of steep stairs that led to the big attic, which Uncle Robert had converted into a studio.
There, sure enough, she found the forlorn Phyllis, seated on Dan’s stool, at Dan’s easel, producing something on canvas, which brought a smile of amusement to Mrs. Barrimore’s face, which she quickly hid for fear of hurting the amateur artist’s feelings.
“I have been looking for you everywhere, dear,” began Mrs. Barrimore brightly. “I had no idea you had taken up painting.”
“One must do something,” said Phyllis petulantly, throwing down her brushes. “This weather is just detestable—rain—rain—rain—and everything’s so miserable! Oh, forgive me, dear Mrs. Barrimore! How horrid I am! and how ungrateful after all your kindness to talk so!”
Phyllis had caught sight of the pained look her first words had brought up on the gentle face of her friend and hostess, and had felt ashamed and sorry in a moment.
Mrs. Barrimore’s arms were protectingly round thewilful girl before half the apology had been uttered.
This was her dearest friend’s only child.
“Phyllis darling,” the elder woman said, affection shining in her eyes, “tell me what is the matter. You have no mother, can’t you trust me? I have been so troubled about you, and I am going to be quite frank and above-board with you. I have written to your father to say I don’t think you are well, and he—”
“What does dad say?” demanded Phyllis, drawing her head back from the friendly bosom, to gaze into the elder woman’s eyes.
“He thinks you have again fallen in love.”
Mrs. Barrimore felt a tremor run through the girl’s frame before she freed herself, and stood defiant, with parted lips through which the breath came quickly.
“And if I have!” the girl cried, “is it a crime? Can anyone help loving? But father need not trouble himself. I can never marry the man I love. I cannot even let him know I love him. I could not in any case. He does not love me, and his heart is another’s, and always will be. Oh, I know that quite well. At least, I can be allowed to grieve in peace!”
Mrs. Barrimore was deeply concerned. She did not ask who the man was; she thought she knew, and to her the love did not seem so altogether hopeless.
“My dear, take courage,” she said. “He may come to love you yet.”
Tears gushed from the girl’s eyes and fell unchecked.
“Oh, no! and if hedid, that would be worse than anything, for we could never marry!”
Mrs. Barrimore, thinking of Philip, believed that Phyllis thought that loyalty to Eweretta would cause him to remain unmarried.
It might be, after all, that Uncle Robert had been right when he had said that Philip had got over the loss of Eweretta. The mother devoutly hoped he had, or would as time went on, and since she could not marry the father, she would be glad—yes, glad—that Phyllis should become her daughter-in-law.
She wished she could sound Philip, but he was so unapproachable. There were tears in her own eyes as she again told Phyllis to hope and not despair.
“I don’t know what to hope for,” said Phyllis. “I have been a little fool, and now I am paying for it, and I shall go on paying for it! Father always said I didn’t know my own mind, but I do now—yes, I do! Father said he wouldn’t let me be engaged to Captain Arbuthnot till I had done sowing my wild oats. Fancy that! sowing wild oats!—as if girls ever did! and that brought all the trouble. If he had let me be engaged, then all this trouble would have been saved, for we should have soon quarrelled, and parted.”
Mrs. Barrimore could make nothing of this amazing statement. She put it down to the girl’s excited state—wild meaningless words these must be!
“Well, my dear,” she said quietly, “if we do what we believe to be right, all will be well with us. It is doing things we know to be wrong that brings all the real trouble.”
After Mrs. Barrimore had gone Phyllis nibbled the end of her paint brush, an angry frown spoiling her piquant face.
“I believe,” she said to herself with comical frankness, “that if Charlie were in love with someone else, and I hadn’t got him, I should want him.”
Then her eyes fell on the old studio coat which Dan had omitted to pack with the rest of his belongings,and her eyes filled with resentful tears. How Dan worshipped the girl he called his “Madonna!” What a tender light came into his blue eyes at the mere mention of her name!
Phyllis was horribly jealous, and horribly sorry for herself.
She remembered with annoyance that Miss Le Breton looked superb on a horse. She had one now, and rode with her uncle. Everyone was talking about that girl’s splendid horsemanship—just as if all Canadian girls didn’t ride well!
And she, Phyllis, had only a bicycle!
Girls never looked particularly well on bicycles—and they did on horses.
But Dan hadn’t seen Miss Le Breton on horseback. That was some comfort. He was gone away, too; that was another comfort.
Was it a comfort?
Didn’t she miss him every moment of the day?
All at once a sense of her own wickedness in thinking of Dan covered her with shame. She was Charlie’s wife, and she had no right to think of anyone but Charlie. She remembered how madly in love she had been with Charlie—poor Charlie! risking his life in that horrid native rising! If Charlie knew how fickle she had been, though it had only been in thought, would he cease to love her? She was not at all sure that she wanted Charlie to cease to love her. She was, on the whole, glad that Philip had insisted on her writing affectionately to her husband.
All at once Phyllis burst into a fit of hysterical laughter.
“I believe dad is right,” she told herself. “I don’t know my own mind! But where—whereshall I land?”
“Hallo!” came in the stentorian voice ofMr.Burns, from the bottom of the staircase. “What’s the joke?”
He mounted the stairs heavily and appeared in the doorway of the studio.
“What’s the joke?” he repeated.
“Look at my picture,Mr.Burns!” cried Phyllis with renewed laughter. “That chicken I have painted couldn’t walk in at the cottage door if he tried! See! he is close to the cottage and his head is level with the bedroom window!”
Uncle Robert adjusted his spectacles and looked at the work of art in question.
“It must be an antediluvian cock,” he decided. “Phyllis, I fear your talent does not lie in the direction of drawing.”
“It lies in the direction of my making a fool of myself,” she replied.
“Ah, well, little Phyll!” retorted Uncle Robert, smiling. “Horace says: ‘Dulce est desipere in loco,’ which being interpreted, is, ‘It is sweet to play the fool now and then, in the place for so doing.’ But draw the line athurting, little Phyll—either others or yourself. Then it does not much matter.”
“Mr.Burns, I have been hurting you and dear Mrs. Barrimore these last days. I have been a disagreeable pig.”
“Look here!” broke out Uncle Robert. “You are a bit moped. What do you say to the Hippodrome? Annie has a crusty old maid who is coming to spend the evening here. Supposing you and I go off on our own! We can get an early dinner, just for us two, and then be off before Miss Nightingale appears. Nightingale, indeed! She has a voice like a raven!”
Phyllis laughed naturally now. She was delightedto go out withMr.Burns, who always gave her a good time.
“How lovely!” she cried, pulling off a pinafore, with which she had tried to get a professional appearance, and flinging her picture in a corner. “But look at the weather!”
“What does that matter!” said Uncle Robert. “I shall order a cab. What says the proverb: ‘For the morning rain leave not your journey.’ I think it will clear up, but, anyway, get your bib and tucker ready. I’ll go and ask Annie to arrange our early dinner.”
“How good—how very good they all are to me!” Phyllis told herself whenMr.Burns had departed on his errand. “And what a horrid little wretch I am!”