CHAPTER XXXVIITHE HAND OF FATE
When Philip Barrimore had accepted Colonel Lane’s apology and his hand, it had been an act of weariness and pity rather than an accepting of new relations. He was so jaded by anger and resentment, to say nothing of getting Phyllis off, that peace at any price seemed the only thing that mattered for the moment.
Uncle Robert’s jubilation had been a little premature.
Mrs. Barrimore was the first to make the discovery.
Philip, late though it was, announced his intention of going back to Gissing on foot. Philip hated walking, and he was dog-tired, so the mother knew that the strife was not ended.
She did not oppose him. When did she ever oppose him?
What Philip wanted to do, that he did. It had always been so.
“Davis will come for my bag,” he said as he left, which showed his mother that he would not be coming in on the morrow.
She went with him to the door alone, hoping for some comforting word. She laid a gentle, timid hand on his arm and looked up at him.
“Oh, don’t, mother!” he ejaculated. “Women never know when a man wants to be left alone!”
The young man caught the last tram to Ore, whichhelped him a little on his way. Then he strode along in the darkness, communing with himself.
No one had ever been such a victim as he! Everyone misjudged him! He could not even be allowed to write his books in peace!
The thought of his book brought new disagreeable reflections. Aimée Le Breton had not liked it. Why the deuce should he care what Aimée Le Breton thought? Yet—yes, certainly, her opinion had put him out of favor with his work. Women were the devil’s own mischief.
And while he thought this, he unconsciously fought with an impulse which he felt to be mastering him, to go to Aimée Le Breton, and drink big draughts of the peace she distilled.
How she had calmed him that afternoon when he had gone to the White House, and told her of his “row” with the Colonel. It had not been her words. They had been few enough. It washerself. There was a calming atmosphere about her. He had seen and noted, more particularly afterwards, that her attitude towards him had changed for the better.
As he walked, his impulse to tell her all the rest of the story about Phyllis, took definite shape. He wanted her good opinion. He wished it was not so damnably late, he would go in and see her. If he could see her he would have refreshing sleep.
But he would cross the field, tired and worn out as he was, and look at the White House before entering the bungalow.
Davis was not expecting him, and had taken “french leave,” locked up the bungalow, and gone to Hastings, where friends persuaded him to stay the night.
This Philip was to find out later.
Reaching the gate of the bungalow, the young man paused to light a cigarette. “Pickett has been burning rubbish,” he said to himself, as he sniffed the odor of burning.
Leaving the road by a stile for the field, Philip fixed his eyes on the upstairs windows of the White House. In two of them lights were burning. Behind one of the two windows, probably, was the calm maiden who had been so strangely filling his thoughts. He vaguely wished he knew which.
Coming nearer, he saw the light of a lantern moving towards the little wood. Alvin was evidently not gone to bed.
What had he got in the little wood which he guarded so jealously and visited alone at night?
Philip, coming up to the garden gate, leaned upon it for a few moments. The air here was pungent with chrysanthemums and dead leaves. It was curious that the scent of Pickett’s rubbish fires was not evident here, yet the farm was nearer to the White House than to the bungalow.
With a big sigh of weariness Philip turned to go home, and noted that now a light was lying across his front garden.
Evidently Davis had heard his master’s footsteps and had lit up.
Ah, well! there would be the comfort of his own fireside awaiting him—a glass of grog (he could do with it hot, for the night was cold), and a pipe.
He entered his back garden by the little gate that led into the field, and was surprised to see no light in the kitchen window. Soda, too, was kicking about in the stable. Pickett’s rubbish fires smelt more strongly than ever.
Trying the back door, Philip found it locked, andafter vain hammering, he went round to the front, which was lit—yes, very well lit!
Taking out his latchkey, he opened the door, and was met by a cloud of suffocating smoke.
Thoroughly alive now to the situation, he made his way to his sitting-room. He knew quite well what he should find.
The smell of burning which he had noticed was not from Pickett’s rubbish fires, but from his own bungalow.
Through the thick smoke he saw that one of the window-curtains was blazing. All his papers which he had left scattered on table and chairs under the window were a charred heap. The writing-table was on fire, also the wicker chair near it, where Phyllis had thrown her hat on that memorable afternoon. He ran to the kitchen, shouting for Davis, and, of course, getting no reply. One or two cans of water from the well stood near the scullery sink. He took these and dashed them upon the burning furniture.
Then the hopelessness of the situation faced him. The place would burn down unless he could get help, for the drawing of water from the well was a long process.
He dashed out of the house and across the field towards the White House, and going to the side of the little wood shouted for Alvin.
Alvin quickly appeared, still carrying his lantern and calling: “Quit yelling! I’m coming!” He ran through the garden to Philip, whose voice he had at once recognized.
“Anything wrong?” he inquired.
“For God’s sake come and help me, my place is on fire!” cried Philip hoarsely. “That fool, Davis, has left the place, and it is on fire!”
“I’ve tackled worse fires, I’m thinking,” said the Colonial, putting on a speed which seemed almost miraculous for a man of his bulk.
The fire had got well ahead in these few minutes, and the smoke was so suffocating that it seemed almost impossible to do anything. But the Colonial set to work. He tore up the Turkey carpet and laid it over the burning mass—of what he did not know, and called to Philip to shut the front door.
But Philip did not answer. So jaded had he been, that the smoke overcame him, and he lay unconscious on his back, where he had fallen, just outside the dining-room door.
When he came to himself, Alvin was supporting him, and giving him something from a teacup. The fire was extinguished, and the only light was that of the lantern.
“It’s all right,” said Alvin cheerfully—“a deuce of a mess, that’s all. When you are through with this whisky, you will come back with me. We can make you comfortable, and I will send Pierre to take charge of this place.”
Philip could only gasp his thanks.
Almost in a dream, he once more crossed the field to the White House, but coming up to the garden gate he was roused into wakefulness. There were lights in the rooms downstairs, and there were voices. Aimée’s was one, he distinguished it, and it was the sound of it that brought him to the full possession of his senses.
The women had heard Philip’s call. They had heard his explanation to Alvin. They had dressed and come down to prepare for the guest that their instinct told them would come.
A wood fire was crackling and sending up myriadsof gay sparks in the dining-room. Lamps had been relighted, and Mattie (without cap and apron) was laying a cold repast.
Mrs. Le Breton was upstairs with Faith preparing a bedroom.
Alvin, having drawn up an easy chair for Philip near the fire, went away to remove the effects of his work with soap and water.
Philip was left alone with Eweretta.
To his amazement she did not ply him with questions. All the women he knew would have done this. She quietly (how quietly!) moved here and there, performing little womanly tasks for the general comfort. One of the lamps (hastily lighted) smoked a little. She put it right. She rearranged things on the table that the sleepy Mattie had laid awry. She got out decanters from the sideboard.
Philip silently watched her, and was again conscious of the peace her mere presence brought him. She was wearing a crimson wrapper, and her black hair, which had been braided in a long thick plait for the night, hung far below her waist.
At last he spoke. He spoke as a man speaks who dreams.
“I never saw Eweretta’s hair down,” he said. “She, too, had beautiful black hair like you. I think it must have been very long.”
The girl kept her back towards him as she fingered something on the sideboard.
“Yes, it was very long,” she answered.
“Lots of things in you remind me of her, besides your looks,” went on Philip. “Your voice is hers, and you have her trick of passing your hand across your forehead. But you are very different from her, nevertheless. She was always laughing. Do youever laugh, Miss Le Breton? I don’t think I have once heard you laugh. But you smile more than she did, and differently.”
“I am as you say, very different from Eweretta—from Eweretta, as you knew her,” she answered. “But I think we will not talk of her just now.”
“Miss Le Breton,” he broke out, “do you know my book—the book you did not like—is destroyed, and that I don’t think I am sorry?”
“Yet you said you put your heart into it,” she reminded him.
“I don’t think I knew,” he answered vaguely. “Not then. I have worked a lot on that book since I read some chapters to you, and I think I must have seen it with your eyes. I got not to like it.”
Eweretta’s heart was beating so wildly that she foolishly feared he might hear it. It was an absurd idea, but she thought it.
Philip’s voice, as he talked, was the old Philip’s, and not the voice which was hard and critical which she had noted when first she met him in her new character.
“It is very sad, tragic even, to have so much work destroyed,” she said, when she could command her voice.
She had sat down now, opposite to him, but at a distance from the fire.
He laughed softly.
“Yet I said I was not sorry,” he told her.
How exquisitely graceful she was! Just the same lines and curves which he had found so alluring in Eweretta.
“I have become self-centred and hard since—since Eweretta died,” he said. “If she had lived, I should not be the disagreeable brute I am. I put myself inthat book, and frankly, Miss Le Breton, I did not find the picture pleasing on revision. You made me see it as it was.”
“What did I say?” she asked him.
“Is speech a necessity between some people?” he asked her.
“Here I am!” exclaimed Alvin, coming in red and shiny from much soap and water. “It is like old days in the prairie to get an unexpected visitor. Now we will fall to and eat a good supper. It will be my second, but I figure that I have earned it.”
“I can never thank you sufficiently for all your kindness and hospitality,” said Philip.
“There is nothing to thank me for,” pronounced Alvin.
“I feel quite ashamed,” said Philip. “I have got you all out of your beds, and given no end of trouble.”
“Come and have supper,” was the rejoinder.