CHAPTER XXXVIIIIN THE DEPTHS OF DESPAIR
It was on the tenth of November that Philip Barrimore received a letter from Dan Webster. That was about a fortnight after the fire at the bungalow, and Philip, who had refused to go home to Hawk’s Nest while the damage to his place was being repaired, had been staying in Brighton. He was still there, and the letter had been forwarded by the repentant and forgiven Davis (who owned that he lit a pipe, throwing down the match, before leaving the bungalow).
Dan offered his sympathy, especially regarding the loss of the manuscript. He had only just heard about the fire fromMr.Burns.
“Itishard luck!” he wrote. “If my ‘Madonna’ had been so destroyed, I should have felt just suicidal. My ‘Madonna’! ah! it is to bring my good fortune! Sir Edwin Buckland has seen it, and declares it will not only be hung in the Academy, but will cause a sensation.Hehas a big voice in the hanging committee, as you know, so I am confident—I think justly. But it is not fair to flaunt my happiness in your face, when you must be so down in the dumps. I wish I could say something to really cheer you, old man! The only thing I can think of is that you are getting a rattling good advertisement out of the business. I have seen any number ofsympathetic ‘pars.’ How strange that you never discovered the origin of the fire. I expect Davis dropped a lighted match on the rug and it smouldered.
“I have just had a letter fromMr.Alvin, and, oddly enough, he makes no reference to the fire, thoughMr.Burns tells me Alvin extinguished it.
“PoorMr.Burns! he is getting some awful reviews of ‘Wings and Winds.’ I saw one that said the volume had certainly a good deal of ‘wind’ about it, but it was difficult to discover the evidence of any wings, for the verses never mounted, but contented themselves with a snail-like crawl. Rather too bad, I think. I am no judge of poetry myself, but I liked some of thoseMr.Burns showed to me. They appealed by their sheer simplicity. It will be a cruel disappointment to the poor fellow!
“By the way, I have an invitation to spend a week-end at the White House, so hope to see something of you, for you may be quite sure I shall accept so enticing an invitation.
“Shall I make a confession? I think I will. Very likely I shall wish I had not made such a fool of myself when this letter is posted—but here goes!
“I am in love with Miss Le Breton. The fact itself is natural enough. Who could be near her as I have been, so intimately, and not worship her? So beautiful! so altogether alluring! I think she likes me a little, too. If she could love me, I would not change with any man upon this earth! but—(oh, there is a big ‘but’)—how can such an angel care for a beggar like me? It is a presumption even to think of it! Yet (asMr.Burns would quote) ‘a cat may look at a king!’ so I may at least look on my divinity, worshipping at a distance, happy if she but give me one kindly glance.
“I can see your lip curl in sarcasm as you read; or, if perchance you be in a milder mood, you smile indulgently instead.
“I never was more astonished in my life than when I heard the amazing story about Miss Lane—Mrs. Arbuthnot, I should say. I really thought you and she were secretly engaged. This should be a lesson to me not to jump to conclusions!
“No wonder the poor little thing was not looking well! She must have been fretting her heart out for her husband. Mrs. Barrimore was quite worried about her when I was at Hawk’s Nest. But you rather took the law into your own hands, didn’t you? Didn’t you have a bad quarter of an hour with the old Colonel?”
Philip read the remaining few lines of the letter, placed it in his pocket, and looked out of the window of his sitting-room, on the ground floor of a house half-way up Cannon Place.
Gloom faced him. It was that dreary time just before the street lamps are lighted.
He would go out on the sea front and think. Think about what? He knew too well.
Of course, Miss Le Breton would learn to love sunny Dan, even if she did not do so already. Alvin evidently favored the idea, or why did he ask Dan to spend a week-end at the White House?
As Philip strode down Cannon Place, his cap over his eyes, he felt a sense of loneliness that was almost torture. He realized with a brutal frankness which came upon him at times when face to face with himself, that he was not lovable; that, indeed, there was something actually repellent about him at times.
Just now he took a savage pleasure in dissectinghimself. He looked for faults as carefully as a medical student searches for nerves in a fat “subject.”
He was fault-finding. He wounded people recklessly. He was ungrateful and overbearing and selfish and vain—but once, a pure young girl had loved him, loved him with all the strength of a first passion. To her innocent inexperience he had been a hero, a demi-god. She lay in her grave away in Qu’Appelle. Canada was frozen up now, and the great snows were burying Eweretta deeper and deeper still. Was she colder or more lonely in her prairie grave than he felt here in gay Brighton? Scarcely.
He came to the corner of Cannon Place and stood looking into the window of the big jeweller’s shop which is there. It was brilliantly lit now, and exquisite jewels shone on their satin and velvet beds.
It occurred to Philip for the first time to wonder what had become of the jewelry he remembered John Alvin to have bought for Eweretta in Bond Street. They had been pretty trinkets and had cost a good deal of money. John Alvin had rather vulgarly boasted of the fact.
Perhaps these trinkets had passed to Thomas Alvin with the rest on Eweretta’s death, and he might have turned them back into money.
Certainly Miss Le Breton did not seem to possess any jewelry. She never wore any, at all events.
The ring (it was a half-hoop of pearls) which he—Philip—had given to Eweretta, had been sent back to him by Thomas Alvin.
The young man had it still. It was a tiny ring, too small for a woman, he had thought, but it had slipped easily over the third finger of Eweretta’s hand, when he had placed it there in token of their betrothal.
Miss Le Breton’s hands were as small and delicate as her half-sister’s.
Philip began to think (he laughed at himself grimly for the thought) that he should like to see Miss Le Breton wearing Eweretta’s ring.
Philip crossed the road, dodging the rushing motorcars, and walked along the parade in the direction of Hove.
There was a sea mist coming up, and the air felt raw, but at the point opposite the Norfolk Hotel, “Blind Harry” was singing one of his ballads, playing a soft accompaniment upon his accordeon.
“Blind Harry’s” beautiful voice, familiar to every Brightonian, was new to Philip. He had never heard the man sing before.
The music moved him strangely, and gave him an increased sense of loneliness. Eweretta used to sing such ballads. She had a low, sweet voice of a marvellous clearness and purity—not unusual in Canadian singers. She sang without apparent effort, as “Blind Harry” was singing now.
Philip placed a coin in the blind man’s little box, and with a choking sensation turned back. It was high tide, and the waves broke sullenly upon the shingle.
“I can’t stand this any longer,” Philip told himself. “I must go back to Hastings. I, who have so sought solitude, feel now that it will drive me mad! I could even put up with Uncle Robert’s quotations to-night, rather than be alone.”
Lights gleamed from the “Metropole” through the mist.
“I will go there and get tea,” decided Philip. “It is bright in there, at any rate.” And he made his way into the lounge. There he saw to his joy a manhe knew. It was Dan Webster’s friend, Stanley Browne.
“Hallo! Barrimore!” cried Browne. “Who would have thought of seeing you! Where are you staying?”
“In Cannon Place,” answered Philip, grasping Browne’s hand vigorously. “Hotels are too noisy for me, so I am in rooms. I just looked in for tea here.”
“You drink tea, do you! you hardened reprobate! Well, you must forgive me if I do not join you. Tea plays the deuce with me. I am glad you came in, though! What are you doing this evening? We might go somewhere together if you have no engagement.”
“I have no engagement,” said Philip, “and shall be delighted to go anywhere you like—to something frivolous by preference. They have tragedies on at both theatres, I notice.”
“The Hippodrome, then?” suggested Browne.
“Yes, by all means!” agreed Philip. “There is always something amusing on there.”
Browne ordered tea for his friend, and the two men found a table near the welcome blaze of the fire and seated themselves.
“Seen Dan lately?” asked Browne.
“Not very lately,” answered Philip; “but I had a letter from him to-day.”
“Anything in it about the beautiful ‘Madonna?’”
“A good deal.”
“Ah! I thought so. It seems to me that Dan has lost his head over that young woman. Whoisshe?”
Philip looked up from the tea-cup he had started to fill, the dainty silver pot poised in his hand.
“That is it!—Whoisshe?” he said with a queer smile. “I can tell you who she is said to be.”
Browne eyed his friend a trifle anxiously, and cast a hasty glance round to see if any of the other occupants of tea-tables were noticing.
Philip lowered his voice when he next spoke.
“I stayed for a night at the White House recently—the White House is near my bungalow, and where Dan’s ‘Madonna’ lives with her mother and her uncle. I had a queer experience there, queer enough to make a man believe in the supernatural—or (and this is the only alternative) that his reason is losing balance.”
Browne was now all eager attention. He was tremendously interested in psychical matters.
“You know, Browne, that I was engaged to marry a lovely Canadian girl?”
Browne nodded sympathetically.
“Dan’s ‘Madonna’ is her half-sister. They were as alike as twins externally, but my old love, Eweretta, was intellectual, while her half-sister was said to be weak-minded. I begin to think that the weak-mindedness was an invention to excite the father’s pity. There is no sign of weak-mindedness about Aimée Le Breton—that is the ‘Madonna’s’ name. Well, of course, the amazing likeness to her sister will in your opinion explain what I am going to say to you. To me it is not an explanation. It was just when I was saying good-bye to Miss Le Breton that I swear to youI saw her dead sister’s soul looking out of her eyes. I shall never forget the experience as long as I live.”
“This is enormously interesting!” exclaimed Browne, the psychic enthusiast. “You say that Miss Le Breton was supposed to be weak-minded. Thebodies of such are very easily entered by spirits. It is more than possible that you did see the spirit of your lost love.”
“It is more than possible that my brain was not normal,” Philip observed. “But I have never been able to shake the feeling off. I was so moved at the time that I very nearly made a fool of myself. I had the greatest difficulty in preventing myself from catching the girl to my heart.”
“There would have been ructions with Dan if you had!” Browne told him.
“Shewould not have forgiven me,” Philip went on, unheeding the interruption. “She is very different from Eweretta in some ways, but at that one moment I say I saw Eweretta’s soul looking out ofhereyes.”
“Forgive me, now, for jumping in on yourmostinter-es-ting conversation,” came in a voice which made both men start.
The owner of the voice was a woman of about forty, whose ample figure was adorned by an undoubted Paris gown.