PHIL MAKES AN APPEAL
The youth who stood before her now, however, was not the Phil Barbara
had seen at Mukojima. There was no hint of spruce grooming in his
attire; it was overlaid with the dust and grime of the road. The jaunty,
self-satisfied look was ravaged by something cringing, that suggested
sleeplessness and undefined anxiety. Why should he come at such an
hour--and to her? The distaste which her first view of him had inspired
returned with added force as she felt the touch of his hand and heard
herself say:
"So this is 'Phil.' I have often heard of you from your brother. Have
you seen him?"
"No," he said. "I don't want him to know I'm here--yet. I--I came to see
you." He paused, twisting his cloth cap in his fingers.
He was in a desperate strait. His brother's silence since his visit to
the house in Aoyama (of which Phil had learned from the servant) had
seemed to mean the worst. The place had contained sufficient documents
in evidence as to his mode of living, and the reflection opened gloomy
vistas of poverty from which he turned with abject fear and dread. There
was one alternative, and this, a grisly shadow, had stalked beside him
since an evening when he had dined with Bersonin. It had peopled his
sleep with terrifying visions which even Haru and the brandy had been
unable to banish, and his waking hours had been haunted by the expert's
yellowish eyes. Between devil and deep sea, he had heard of his
brother's engagement, and the wild thought of appealing to him through
Barbara had come to him as a forlorn hope. Now, face to face with her,
he found the words difficult to say.
"Won't you sit down?" she said, and took a chair opposite him, looking
at him inquiringly.
"I ought to apologize for a rig like this," he went on, glancing at his
sorry raiment, "but I came in a friend's motor, and I'm going back
to-night. I thought you wouldn't mind, now--now that you are engaged to
marry Austen. You are, aren't you?"
She inclined her head. "Yes," she said slowly, "I have promised to marry
him."
"Then you know him pretty well, and you know that he--that he doesn't
altogether approve of me."
"I have never heard him say that," she interrupted quickly.
"It's true, though," he rejoined bitterly. "He's always been down on me.
I'm not staid enough for him. He made his money by grubbing, and he
thinks everybody else ought to do the same. It's--it's the matter of
money I want to speak to you about."
He paused again. "Yes?" she said.
"Since I left college," he went on, "Austen has always made me an
allowance. But I've been out here a year now, and I--well, you know what
the East is. I've had to live as other young fellows do, and I've spent
more than he gives me. I've--played some, too, and then this spring I
got hit hard at the races. It was just a run of bad luck, when I had
expected to square myself."
He was eager and voluble now. She seemed to be considering--he was
making an impression. He might come out all right after all! His
volatile spirits rose.
"You see," he said, "Austen never overlooks anything. He's as likely as
not to cut me off entirely and leave me high and dry. I--I thought
perhaps you would--you might get him to do the decent thing and help me
out of the hole. If I once got straight I'd stay so, but I want a fair
allowance. It isn't as if he had to work for what I spend. He ought to
give it to me. I can't go on as I am; I'm in debt--in deep. I can't take
up my _chits_ at the club. I'm living in Tokyo now--in a Japanese house
in Aoyama that a friend has loaned me--because I haven't the face to
show myself in Yokohama!"
He twirled his cap and looked up at her. "That reminds me," he said,
with a sudden recollection. "Austen was there the other day when I was
away, and afterward I found something of yours which he must have
dropped. Here it is. It has your name on it." He handed her a small
locket with a broken chain.
She took it with an exclamation. She was staring at him strangely. "This
house you speak of--whose is it?"
"It belongs to Mr. Daunt."
"You mean--you say--that you have been living in it?"
"Yes. Why?"
She had risen slowly to her feet, her face hotly suffused. "Then--then
Haru--" She spoke in a dry whisper.
He started, looking at her with quick, resentful suspicion. "What do you
know about Haru?"
"Never mind! Never mind that! I want to know. Haru--she is--Mr. Daunt
was not--"
"He never saw her in his life so far as I know," he answered sulkily.
"What has that to do with it?"
For an instant she looked at him without a word, her fingers working.
Then she began to laugh, in a low tone, wildly, chokingly. "Of course!
Of course! What has that to do with it? What you want is more money,
isn't it! That is all you came to tell me!"
He, too, was on his feet now, uncertain and mistrustful. Was she making
game of him? He saw Barbara's gaze go past him--to fasten on something
in the background. He turned. In the doorway with its maple-leaf
portière stood Austen Ware.
Barbara's laugh had fallen in a shuddering breath that was like a sob.
"Here is your brother now," she said. "Austen, Phil and I have been
getting acquainted. And what do you think? He has found my lost locket."
She held it up toward him.
He had come toward them. In the dim light his face looked very white,
and his eyes glittered like quicksilver. He held out his hand.
"Why, Phil!" he exclaimed. "This is a great surprise. When did you
arrive, and are you at this hotel?"
Phil had stood shamefaced. At the tone, however, which seemed an earnest
of renewed favor, he flushed with relief. "I've just come," he
answered--"in a friend's motor, and I must go back at once. But I'll
come up again by train to-morrow, if you'd like me to."
"Very well," was Ware's reply. "We'll wait till then for our talk. I'll
come and see you off." Neither of the others caught the tense repression
in the tone or realized that his smile was forced and unnatural, as he
added: "We must put a ban on late hours, Barbara, if you are to climb
Nantai-Zan to-morrow."
She went to the door, her thoughts in a tumult, a wild exhilaration
possessing her. She wanted to laugh and to cry. The black, cold mist
that had enveloped her had broken, and the warm sunlight was looking
again into her heart.
"Good night, Phil," she said. "Thank you so much for--for bringing me
the locket. You can't guess how much it meant to me!"
As the silk drapery fell behind her, the self-control dropped from
Austen Ware's face, and a hell of hatred sprang into it. Chance had
given Phil the one card that spelled disaster, and chance had prompted
him to play it. In Barbara's mind Daunt stood absolved! He saw the
castle he had been building tottering to its fall. He turned on his
brother a countenance convulsed with a fury of passion from which Phil
shrank startled.
"Come," he said in a muffled voice. "We can't talk here." He led the way
through the hall and across the foot-bridge to the hillside, gloomy now,
for the incandescents in the trees had been extinguished.
Phil followed, his face gone white. A rack stood at the outer door, and
his fingers, slipping along it as he passed, closed on a riding-crop.
On the shrubberied slope Ware turned. One twitching hand dropped on his
brother's shoulder; the other pointed down the path.
"Go, damn you!" he said, "and never show your face to me again! Not one
cent shall you have from me! Now nor hereafter--I have taken care of
that!"
Phil lifted the crop and struck him across the head--two savage, heavy
blows. Ware staggered and fell backward down the steep declivity, his
weight crashing through the bushes with a dull, sickening sound.
There was a silence in which Phil did not breathe. The stars seemed
suddenly very bright. From an open window came a woman's shrill,
careless laugh, threading the hushed roar of the water below. The
lighted _shoji_ across the river seemed to be drifting nearer. He could
see the glow of a forge in a native smithy, like an angry, red-lidded
eye. The crop fell from his grasp. He leaned over, staring into the
dark.
"Austen!" he whispered hoarsely. "Austen!"
There was no response. As he gazed fearfully into the shadow, the rising
moon, peeping through a bank of cloud, deluged the landscape with a
misty gossamer. The light fell on the phonograph. Phil recoiled, for its
long metal trumpet seemed a rigid arm stretched to seize him. With a low
cry he turned and fled.
He skirted the hill to the hotel stables, where Bersonin's huge
motor-car stood silent. The Japanese chauffeur was curled up in the
tonneau, fast asleep.
Five minutes later Barbara heard the throb of the great mechanism
speeding down the shadowy cryptomeria road.