A CONFESSION
“Well, Philip, what about the bungalow?” asked Uncle Robert, as
Barrimore entered the dining-room, where all the others were already
seated.
Barrimore was flushed and cross, owing to a struggle with his collar.
“I have taken it for three years,” answered the young man, going round
to greet his mother’s guests before taking his place at table.
“Ah, well,” rejoined Uncle Robert, beaming. “Dryden says: ‘There is a
pleasure sure in being mad, which none but madmen know.’ ‘The Spanish
Friar’ it occurs in, I believe. It is a mad act going to live alone in
the country, but no doubt you will find a pleasure that we know not of.”
“Mr. Barrimore won’t get interrupted at his work, and that will be a
pleasure,” put in Phyllis Lane, darting a bright glance at Philip,
whose seat was next to hers.
“What is the new book to be about?” inquired the Colonel, “if it is not
a crime to ask.”
“I scarcely know myself yet,” replied Barrimore. “My stories grow under
my pen. None of my stories turn out what I expected at first.”
“‘Invention breeds invention,’ as Emerson says,” chimed in Uncle
Robert. “Ideas are like yeast, and multiply before your eyes.”
“Mine don’t,” retorted Philip crossly. “I have been in a blind alley
for a week or more.”
“Never mind, dear,” said Mrs. Barrimore cheerfully. “You have got your
bungalow, so you will have peace and quietness. But we shall miss you.
We did to-day, didn’t we, Phyllis?”
Mrs. Barrimore turned her sweet eyes on the girl at her son’s side.
Phyllis was fresh as a flower.
“We did miss you,” Phyllis admitted, with another bright glance at
Philip. “But Mr. Burns played tennis in your place.”
Her face broke into roguish dimples and her eyes danced.
That Phyllis was making fun of Uncle Robert was patent to everyone--to
Uncle Robert himself even. It was not her words, but the tone in which
they were uttered. But only one person noted that Mrs. Barrimore’s
sweet mouth grew a little rigid, while her eyes, usually so dove-like,
had for a moment sparks of angry fire in their clear grey--and that
person was Colonel Lane; but he had a way of noting every transient
expression that changed for a moment the habitual sweetness and
gentleness of that particular face. The mother of Phyllis had not been
sweet or gentle, and her death, some years since, had brought the first
lull in the turmoil of Colonel Lane’s life.
“Miss Phyllis is getting at me,” observed Uncle Robert, with perfect
good humor. “Horace says: ‘The years, as they come, bring with them
many things to our advantage.’ They also sometimes bring an overplus of
fat! Beware, Miss Phyllis! One day you may have a double chin!”
He hitched his falling table-napkin into his capacious waistcoat. Uncle
Robert was certainly stout.
“I think it was very sweet of my brother to play tennis on this hot
day, rather than let the game fall through,” said Mrs. Barrimore, with
an affectionate glance at Uncle Robert.
“I am sure Mr. Burns played very well,” Phyllis hastened to say,
feeling that Mrs. Barrimore, of whom she was very fond, was angry with
her.
“My dear little girl,” said Uncle Robert, “I know I look like an
exaggerated tennis ball myself, and if I amuse you by my antics, so
much the better. There is no duty we so much under-rate as the duty of
being happy; Stevenson says that. Be happy, my dear, even if laughing
at me makes you so!”
“Oh, but I wasn’t laughing at you, Mr. Burns,” protested Phyllis. “I
admired your pluck in playing on such a roasting day--and you _are_ a
little stout, you know.”
Phyllis spoke so seriously that everyone laughed except her father.
Colonel Lane frowned. He thought his daughter’s allusion to the
stoutness of Mr. Burns in bad taste, and meant to tell her so when they
should be alone.
“Tell us about the bungalow, Philip,” said Mrs. Barrimore, to change
the conversation. (She had caught sight of the Colonel’s frown.)
“It is a jolly little place,” said Philip; “covered with rambler roses.
I brought you some. There are no houses near--not very near. The
nearest has a big field between it and the bungalow. There is a fir
plantation in front, on the other side of the road. They are going to
build me a stable, and I shall hire a horse from Dick Russel, so that
I can ride over and see you. Yes, I shall hire it. I don’t mean to buy
another now poor Jingo is dead. I can’t bring myself to replace an old
favorite.”
The mother looked at her son with critical sadness. She was thinking
of Eweretta in her grave in Canada. She did want him to replace
Eweretta--and Phyllis was a charming girl.
Certainly, Captain Arbuthnot paid a good deal of court to Phyllis, but
it was inconceivable to Mrs. Barrimore that Phyllis could prefer anyone
to Philip.
Mrs. Barrimore saw in Phyllis a good, dutiful and very charming wife,
suitable in every way to this son of hers. Phyllis might not be
decidedly pretty, but she was very good-looking; and, what counted for
more, was quite above deception of any kind. She was the kind of “open”
girl one could read like a book.
So thought Mrs. Barrimore.
It was after dinner, in the sweet, old-fashioned garden, that a
conversation took place between Philip and Phyllis, which, had Mrs.
Barrimore heard it, would have shaken her faith in judgment of
character for ever.
Philip had gone out to smoke on the croquet lawn--a lawn raised above
the rest of the garden and having great veteran oaks at one end, and
banks of flowers on either side that smelt deliciously. A hammock was
slung under one of the oaks, and Philip was about to get into it and
enjoy his cigar, while Colonel Lane and Uncle Robert finished their
wine, when a white-clad figure ran down the rustic steps that led from
the terrace under the drawing-room windows to the lawn.
Philip walked back to meet Phyllis, who ran lightly over the soft turf.
“I do want a talk with you, Philip,” she said breathlessly. “I am just
bursting with something I can tell no one but you.”
The moon lit her eager face as she looked up at him, and he saw that
her news, whatever it might be, was at least very important to her.
“I am honored, Miss Lane,” he told her, smiling. “What is the great
secret?”
“Oh, I do hope you won’t be angry and scold me! You _must_ be my friend
and pacify father!”
She linked her arm in his confidingly.
“We are such old friends, you and I, you know,” she went on, “and now
it is all over I feel so frightened!”
“Well, tell me this dreadful thing you have done,” he said, laughing
a little at her earnestness, for he did not expect any very important
revelation to follow.
“You know father refused to let me marry Captain Arbuthnot?”
She paused.
“You want me to plead for you, little Phyllis, I suppose?” he said.
“_I am married_,” she answered tragically. “That’s it! and now I’ve
told you.”
Barrimore looked grave enough now.
“I would not have believed this of Arbuthnot,” was what he said. “When
did this happen?”
“The day before yesterday, early in the morning, at St. Clement’s
Church. Charlie got a special license. I came back to breakfast as
usual.”
She looked very appealing and very childish in her simple white frock,
Barrimore thought, and very sweet too. But he was angry with her, all
the same. She _was_ twenty-one, though she only looked sixteen.
Phyllis was quick to note the change in the young man’s tone.
“Now look here!” she said. “Father would not consent even to an
engagement. Charlie and I love one another, and he was told he had to
go right off to India. He sailed yesterday” (there was a catch in
her voice here)--“some outbreak among natives in some hole-and-corner
place, and Charlie knew the language, and that was why he was sent.
Now, what could we do but make sure of each other? It wasn’t all roses
to part at the church door, was it? And we don’t know in the very least
when we shall meet again.”
“And you want me to break this to Colonel Lane?” he answered.
“Oh, no! no! no!” she repeated. “I want you to pacify him, _if he finds
out_.”
“But surely you are not going to keep this a secret?” he asked
reprovingly.
“I am,” she answered, “if I can.”
“But _why_?”
“Because the old uncle (or aunt) of Charlie may die at any time, and he
is to have all the money; and it was chiefly because Charlie had only
his pay that father objected. He won’t make half the fuss if Charlie
has that money. But if father finds out, promise me to take my part.”
Barrimore could do no less than give the promise, though he disliked
the idea exceedingly.
He blamed Captain Arbuthnot most, but he could not consider Phyllis
blameless. Surely some other way could have been found by the lovers
out of their difficulty, considering the self-sacrificing devotion of
the old Colonel, who had been both father and mother to his child since
his wife’s death.
“I will be your advocate, Phyllis,” Barrimore told her reluctantly.
“But you must not suppose that I approve of this business, and I
consider that you ought to tell your father at once. I think it was
not worthy of a gentleman and a soldier to have proposed a clandestine
marriage to you.”
“But Charlie _didn’t_ propose it,” announced Phyllis. “It was I who did
that. I told him I _would_ be married to him before he went away, and I
told you that father wouldn’t allow even an engagement. Father _said_
that I might be twenty-one, but that I was a child, all the same, and
that I should change my mind, and that I must not be bound. But I knew
all the time that it was money he was thinking of, so I begged and
prayed of Charlie to marry me and make sure, and I told him father
would come around all right after. And, you know, Charlie is most
_awfully_ fond of me, and I can turn him round my finger. But he didn’t
like marrying that way. He didn’t think it straightforward, which is
nonsense; for all’s fair in love and war. So I told him if he didn’t
get the license and marry me at St. Clement’s before breakfast, I would
never marry him at all. That did it.”
She paused for breath.
Barrimore glanced over her head towards the drawing-room windows, and
saw Colonel Lane and Uncle Robert making their way along the terrace to
join his mother. She--simple soul that she was--had been watching the
young people on the lawn furtively. Hopes were rising. Her Philip was
so young to have his heart buried with Eweretta in Canada.
“We must go in now,” said Barrimore. “Your father and my uncle are gone
to the drawing-room.”
Uncle Robert’s voice reached them where they stood.
“Ah, yes, Colonel, as Granville says:
“_Oh, Love! thou bane of the most generous souls, Thou doubtful
pleasure, and thou certain pain._”
And Barrimore thought his uncle’s quotation singularly appropriate.