A JUDGMENT BY APPEARANCES
Phyllis Lane had become very exasperated. The Colonel’s irritability
was phenomenal since that particular evening on which he had been
rejected. He took his daughter severely to task for flirting with Dan
Webster, and expressed devoutly his wish that his daughter was safely
married, and to a man strong enough to keep her in order.
Miss Phyllis would toss her head saucily when she heard all this, and
answer with playful banter.
She was exasperated, all the same.
She began to realize now that the startling novelty was over; that it
was not altogether pleasant to be married secretly to a man who was
gone to India for no one could tell how long.
It would be ages, too, before she could even get a letter from him.
(She had, without consulting Philip, arranged that these letters should
be enclosed under cover to him.)
One morning, after a particularly sharp contest with the Colonel,
Phyllis got on her bicycle and rode over to Gissing, to see if perhaps
Philip had a letter for her.
She had told no one where she was going.
Philip, who had given up writing at night, having found the experiment
too wearing, was hard at work by the open window, when the aggressive
and continued ringing of a bicycle bell caused him to look up.
Dismounting at the gate, the fair Phyllis made straight for the window,
where Philip’s head was in full view.
She nodded with an air of _camaraderie_ as she fixed a button in her
white blouse.
“I’ve come!” she announced rather unnecessarily, it would seem.
She was looking very charming, though, having lost a few hairpins
during her ride, a tail of bright hair lay upon one shoulder.
She put her bicycle against the privet hedge and advanced to the open
window.
“I’m frightfully thirsty,” she remarked.
“Come in and have some lemonade,” he told her. “You don’t deserve any
for interrupting my work.”
“You ought not to be working on this hot day,” she said with decision,
“and I am Providence in disguise, come to save you from a horrid
headache.”
“You are more Fate than Providence,” Philip said laughing, “to more
than one, I suspect. But come in! Davis makes delicious lemonade. It is
kept in a refrigerator.”
Miss Phyllis made her way round the bungalow, and was soon in Philip’s
cool sitting-room, and making straight for the mirror, arranged her
hair, while she asked, with a pretty blush, which she saw reflected in
the glass: “Have you a letter from my husband for me?”
“I? How should I have one?” demanded the astonished young man.
“You see, I told Charlie to send my letters to you,” she answered
demurely.
“You have made me an accomplice in your crime, then, have you?” he
remarked, as he gathered up the sheets of his manuscript. “I shall
get into serious trouble with the Colonel. It will all come out, you
know, about this marriage when the vicar comes back and looks at the
register.”
Phyllis laughed.
“The vicar is not coming back for _ages_,” she said; “and another
strange man is taking duty now; and heaps of other people are getting
married at that church; and my name is quite a common one; and visitors
come here often to get married; and--can’t you see, silly! it is _most_
unlikely that that particular entry will get noticed? No one we know
saw us married. The witnesses were friends of Charlie’s, and were
soldiers, and soldiers never break their word. Oh! _do_ ask for the
lemonade!”
Philip felt as if he had been suddenly transported from a calm lake to
the maelstrom. Phyllis and calm were impossible to be considered in
conjunction. He resigned himself and rang the bell.
“I am going to stay on to luncheon,” announced this self-willed young
woman, “so you may as well tell Davis when you ask for the lemonade.”
“Are you aware that this conduct of yours is very irregular, young
woman?” inquired Philip with a whimsical smile.
“All my conduct is!” she affirmed, with wide, innocent-looking eyes
meeting his.
He did not contradict her. After all, as he had already decided, it was
better that Phyllis, the wayward and irrepressible, should play the
fool with him, out of the “danger area,” than with another. She would
inevitably play the fool.
“Bring some lemonade, Davis,” he said to the ex-soldier; “and Miss Lane
will stay on to luncheon.”
Davis saluted.
“After luncheon, you must show me the White House and Pickett’s Farm,”
Phyllis next said, “and the new stable.”
Philip glanced despairingly at his writing-table.
“You are not going to work till I am gone,” the girl said, noting the
glance.
“I am sure I am not,” he acknowledged.
The luncheon of cold chicken, with a salad and iced claret, proved much
to the young woman’s liking, and she did ample justice to it. Phyllis
had a good healthy appetite.
Afterwards they drank coffee in the verandah, and Philip smoked; then
Phyllis demanded that they should go out and see the White House and
the farm.
As they crossed the field, Phyllis linked her arm in that of her
companion and began to talk animatedly of Charlie.
Philip did not find all this particularly interesting. To hear another
person’s perfections dilated upon seldom is to anyone.
As they neared the White House, they saw Mrs. Le Breton walking with
Eweretta in the garden.
Both women saw them, and the elder quickly drew the younger one away.
“Was that poor Aimée Le Breton?” asked Phyllis with eager curiosity.
“Yes,” said Philip. “Come away!”
“What a pretty girl!” cried Phyllis, with generous admiration. “How Dan
would like to paint her!” Then lowering her voice to tones of sympathy,
she added: “Was Eweretta really like that?”
“So like, that it is nearly incredible,” said Philip. “We won’t talk
about it.”
“I am so sorry,” cried Phyllis hastily. “Forgive me, Philip.”
“See! they are carrying the corn over there. Let us go and see them.”
At the gate of the field Pickett came up to them, beaming.
“Lucky weather for me, sir,” he remarked. “Last year I didn’t get the
corn up till the first week in September, and it was none too dry, and
I had to thresh direct from the shocks, for I hadn’t straw to thatch
the ricks, or for bedding. Of course, there were advantages. The labor
of building ricks and undoing them all again was saved. But against
that, in threshing from the shocks the grain is a bit soft and juicy.
If put in heaps it is apt to heat and ferment. There’s a pile of things
to weigh with one another, sir. How is the Colonel, miss?”
“Very well, thank you,” replied Phyllis, a little annoyed to be
recognized, though it ought certainly not to have been any surprise,
for Colonel Lane and his daughter were old residents at Hastings, and
very well-known figures indeed.
“If Miss Lane would like to look round the farm, Mr. Barrimore, you
are welcome to go where you like. I’m a bit too busy to show the young
lady round myself, or I should be proud. The horses--that is, some
of them--are not working well. I’ve had them up from grass for the
harvest; they swell with grass feeding, and the change to oats always
upsets them. Well, good-day to you, sir! Good-day to you, miss!”
“What a talker Mr. Pickett is!” exclaimed Phyllis, as they left him.
“Yes, he does talk. He is in the way of being a gossip too,” said
Philip; “but he is a very good sort, for all that.”
Mr. Pickett proved Philip’s words to be true when he went home to
tea--that is, as to his being a gossip.
A friend from Hastings--a Mrs. Hannington--had come to tea with Mrs.
Pickett and Minnie, and the farmer entertained them all with his news
about Mr. Barrimore’s “young lady.”
“Them two are sweethearts, if I know anything,” he said with a
facetious smile. “Miss Lane had hold of his arm, and they seemed mighty
cosy.”
“Miss Lane is a flirt,” announced Mrs. Hannington with disapproval.
“I’ve seen her on the sea-front with one chap after another. It was
Captain Arbuthnot a bit ago, but he’s gone away. I suppose she’s taken
up with Mr. Barrimore for a spell. I wonder the Colonel lets her carry
on like she does! If she were a girl of mine she wouldn’t do it!”
Minnie tossed her head at this. She, too, had been the subject of Mrs.
Hannington’s disapproval before to-day.
“Miss Lane and Mr. Barrimore have been as good as brought up together,
the families being so friendly,” Minnie observed.
“And supposing they have!” broke out Mrs. Hannington. “It isn’t right
and proper for her to come to his house, with him all by himself like
he is! I don’t call it decent. And what men find in Miss Lane _I_ can’t
think. She isn’t pretty, so far as my eyes tell me. Now, that girl at
the White House _has_ looks. I saw her as I came by.”
“Look here, Minnie!” interrupted the farmer. “Have those fowl-houses
had a coat of limewash to-day?”
“Yes, father.”
“And was some paraffin mixed in with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, now, I asked you to see to that,” said Pickett reproachfully.
“I said to you this morning, ‘I want you to see to them fowl-houses
yourself, and mind there is paraffin put in the limewash,’ and I said
it was to be put on hot, and the runs scraped and cleaned, and coated
with lime, and the nest-boxes limewashed, and all the litter burned.
Them directions were plain enough, I should have thought!”
“Minnie has been plucking and trussing fowls for the market all day,”
put in Mrs. Pickett in defence. “She has done a good day’s work.”
“There won’t be any to truss if the fowl-houses are neglected,”
rejoined Pickett; “but let us have tea. I could drink the sea dry, I’m
that thirsty! and I daresay Mrs. Hannington is quite ready for a cup.”
“That I am,” acknowledged the lady with a broad smile. “It’s hotter
than I ever remember for years, anyway. But this house-place of yours
keeps cool. It’s the flagged floor, I suppose.”
Minnie, who brought in the teapot just then, looked hot enough. But the
weather had not much to do with it. Mrs. Hannington always irritated
the girl, and, besides, her father had reproved her. But evening would
come, and she would hear a whistle round by the rickyard, and would
slip out into the moonlight to meet someone. The thought came as sweet
balm to her spirits.
There was little balm, however, for the spirits of poor Eweretta.
Eweretta at that very time was watching from her chamber window,
watching her old lover and Phyllis Lane taking tea together on the
verandah.
How soon men forget!