The intimacy between Millard and Philip Gouverneur had long languished.
Philip was naturally critical of Charley after he became the accepted
lover of Phillida, and their relations were not bettered by the breaking
off of the engagement. Phillida's cousin felt that he owed it to her not
to seem to condemn her in the matter by a too great intimacy with the
lover who had jilted or been jilted by her, nobody could tell which, not
even the pair themselves. Moreover Philip had for years taken a faint
pleasure in considering himself as a possible suitor to Phillida. He
found the enjoyment of a solitary cigar enhanced by his ruminations
regarding the possibilities of a life glorified--no weaker word could
express his thought--by the companionship of Phillida, little as he had
ever hoped for such a culmination of his wishes. But this love for
Phillida served to complicate his relations with Millard. So that it had
now been long since he had visited The Graydon. Nevertheless on this
evening of his sudden and dinnerless departure from home, the night
clerk remembered him and let him go up to apartment 79 without the
ceremony of sending his card.
Millard, who was writing, received Philip with some surprise and a
curiosity mixed with solicitude regarding the purpose of his call. But
he put up his pen and spoke with something of the old cordial manner
that had won the heart of Gouverneur some years before.
"I'm glad to see you again, Philip. I began to think you were not coming
any more. Sit down," said Millard. "How is book-collecting? Anything
startling lately?" he added by way of launching the talk, as he usually
did on the favorite subject of his companion.
"No, no," said Philip, seating himself.
"I've not seen much of you lately, anywhere," said Millard, making a new
start. "But that is my fault. I've pretty much cut general society this
spring, and I think for good. I've been busy and tired, and to tell the
truth, I don't care much for society any more. You still go out a good
deal. Is there anything interesting?"
"Oh, no," said Gouverneur.
Seeing that Philip was preoccupied and that all attempts to give him
direction and set him in motion were likely to prove futile, Charley
concluded to let him start himself in whatever direction his mood might
lead him. He did this the more readily that he himself found talking
hard work in his present mood. But by way of facilitating the start,
Millard held out to Philip a bronze tray containing some cigars.
"No, thank you, Charley. I don't feel like smoking."
To Millard's mind nothing could have been more ominous than for Philip
Gouverneur to refuse to smoke.
"I suppose I might as well begin at once," said Philip. "If I wait I
never shall get the courage to say what I want to say. I ought to have
waited till morning, but if I once put off a good resolution it is never
carried out. So I came down here pell-mell, Charley, resolved not to
give myself time to think what a piece of impertinent impudence I was
going to be guilty of." Then after a pause he said: "If you turn me out
of the apartment neck and heels, I sha'n't be surprised."
"Pshaw, Philip, you excite my curiosity," said Millard, trying to smile,
but yet a little aghast at seeing his old friend in this unusual mood,
and divining that the subject would be disagreeable.
"I come to speak about Phillida," said Philip.
Ever since Millard's hopes had received their quietus from Mrs.
Callender's note in which Phillida declined to receive a visit from him,
he had recognized the necessity for getting Phillida out of his mind if
he were ever again to have any sane contentment in life. If Phillida did
not any longer care for him, it would be unmanly for him to continue
brooding over the past. But he found that exhorting himself to manliness
would not cure a heartache. There was nothing he could have dreaded so
much at this time as a conversation about Phillida, and, of all people
he most disliked to speak of her with Philip Gouverneur. He made no
reply at all to Philip's blunt statement of the subject on which he
proposed to converse. But Gouverneur was too much absorbed in holding
himself to his plan of action to take note of his companion's lack of
responsiveness.
"I want to ask whether you still love her or not, Charley," said
Philip, with a directness that seemed brutal, his gaze fixed on the
wall.
"I have no claims upon her," said Millard, "if that is what you want to
know."
"That isn't what I want to know. I asked if you still loved her?"
"I don't know whether even you have a right to ask that question," said
Millard with manifest annoyance.
"I am her cousin," said Philip, looking up at Millard with eyes
strangely unsteady and furtive.
"If there were any charge that I had wronged her, you, as her cousin,
might have a right to inquire," said Millard, who fancied that
Gouverneur had a personal end in making the inquiry, and who at any rate
did not care to be known as a discarded and broken-hearted lover. "I'll
tell you plainly that it is a subject on which I don't wish to speak
with anybody. Besides it's hardly fair to come to me as Phillida's
cousin, when there is reason to believe your feelings toward her are
more than cousinly. I have no claims on Phillida, no expectation of a
renewal of our engagement, and I certainly have no complaint to make of
her. Nobody has any right to inquire further."
Charley Millard got up and walked the floor in excitement as he said
this.
"You're plaguey cross, Charley. I never saw you so impolite before.
Didn't know you could be. I suppose you're right, by Jupiter! I went too
straight at the mark, and you had a right to resent it. But I had to go
at it like a man having a tooth pulled, for fear I'd back out at the
last moment."
There was a ten seconds' pause, during which Millard sat down. Then
Philip spoke again.
"I know, Charley; you have misunderstood. You think I wish to get a
disclaimer that will clear the way for me. Charley--" Philip spoke now
in a voice low and just a little husky,--"if I loved Phillida and
believed she could love me, do you think I'd wait to ask your
permission? If I wished to marry her and she loved me, I wouldn't ask
any man's permission! And I came here not in my own interest, nor in
your interest either. I am here only for Phillida's sake and as her
cousin, and I want to know whether you love her."
"If you want me to do anything for her, I am ready. That is all I ought
to be required to say," said Millard, softened by Philip's evident
emotion, but bent on not betraying his own feelings.
"I suppose that means that you don't care for her," said Gouverneur.
Then he went on, looking into the fireplace: "Well, that's an end of it.
What an idiot she has been! She has thrown you over and alienated your
affections, and made herself the talk of the streets. You wouldn't think
such a fine-looking woman could make herself so utterly ridiculous. She
is a mortification to her relations, and--"
"Now, Philip, stop," said Millard, with heat. "You are in my house. No
man shall say a word against that woman in my hearing while I live. I
tell you that even her mistakes are noble. If her relatives are ashamed
of such as she is, I am sorry for her relatives." Millard made an
effort to say more, but his utterance was choked.
Philip laughed a sardonic little laugh.
"Charley, before God, I was not sincere in a word I said against
Phillida. I lied with deliberate purpose. Now I know that you love her.
That's what I wanted to find out. I only denounced her to get at your
feelings. You wouldn't tell me, I had to resort to a ruse."
"Do you think it--do you think it's the thing to pry into my feelings?"
said Millard, still speaking hotly.
"Yes, I do, under the circumstances. In return I'll tell you something
worth your listening to, if you'll only cool off enough to hear it."
Millard's curiosity was excited by this, but he made no reply; he only
sat still with Philip's eyes fixed upon him.
"Phillida loves you," said Philip.
Millard looked steadily at the smallish figure of his old friend, not
shrunken into the chair as usual now, but sitting upright and looking
straight at him with a strange look he had never seen before.
"Philip," he said softly, "how do you know this? Tell me, for God's
sake!"
"I must not betray confidence," said Philip. "You know me, your friend
and Phillida's. I am here to-night--I might say heart-broken, I can
hardly say disappointed. I don't blame Phillida for not caring for me
except as a cousin, or for preferring you. On the whole, if I were in
her place I'd do the same, by George!"
Philip laughed again, that little laugh which pained his friend.
"Why did you come to tell me this, Philip?" Millard was sitting now with
his elbows on the table, and the fingers of his right hand supporting
his cheek, as he regarded Philip steadily.
"Well, if one can not contrive to do what one wants, he should, I
suppose, do the second best thing. The only thing for me to do--the
thing that'll be a comfort for me to look back on--is to render Phillida
some service. In short, to save her life and make her happy."
"How do you propose to do that?" asked Millard.
"I've already done it, old fellow," said Philip, with a mixture of
triumph and regret in his voice. "Dr. Gunstone said to Aunt Callender,
after talking with Phillida, that unless her engagement with you were
renewed she would probably not recover. I wouldn't have told you this
for the world if I had found you didn't love her. She'd better die now
than marry you and discover that you married her from pity."
Millard went to his desk and took out the note from Mrs. Callender in
which Phillida had refused to see him. He handed it to Philip.
"I got that last week, and it seemed final," he said huskily. "I have
found life almost more than I could carry since, Philip."
Philip read the note and then returned it to Millard.
"That's some of her confounded scruples," he said. "She told me that she
had ruined your life. She thinks you wish to marry her from pity, and
she'd rather die like a brave girl than consent to that. But she loves
you and nobody else."
"I wish I were sure of it," said Millard.
Philip sat a good while silent.
"Charley," he said, "the end I have in view justifies the breach of
confidence, I hope. I have the assurance of her feelings toward you from
her own lips, and that not many hours ago. She would have died rather
than tell me had she thought it possible I would tell you. And I would
have died rather than betray her if I hadn't believed your feelings
toward her unchanged."
Saying this he helped himself to a cigar from the tray on the table and
lighted it, and then rose to leave.
"What can I do, Philip? I seem absolutely shut out from making any
further advances by this note," demanded Millard.
"You mustn't expect any further aid or advice from me. I've done all you
can expect," said Gouverneur. "Good-by."
And without shaking hands he went out of the door into the main hall.
Millard followed him and, as they reached the elevator, said with
emotion:
"Philip, you have done one of the bravest acts."
"Pshaw! Charley," said Philip, half-peevishly and looking over his
shoulder at his companion as he pressed the button, "don't put any
heroics on it. There isn't enough of me to play such a part. Such talk
makes me feel myself more ridiculous than ever."