“STRONG IN WAR, BUT WEAK IN LOVE”
Alone with Mrs. Barrimore in the dimly-lighted drawing-room, Colonel
Lane did not begin to press his suit as might be imagined. He had
accepted her decree as final.
They sat at a little distance from each other, she on a low couch, and
he in a basket-chair. A table, on which stood a pink-shaded lamp, was
between them. He began to speak of Phyllis.
“I wish the child would confide in you, dear Mrs. Barrimore,” he said.
“She gives me no confidence. It is probably my fault, but I do my best.
It seems to me that it is a woman’s work. I am only a grim old soldier.”
“Phyllis has probably nothing to confide,” Mrs. Barrimore told him
soothingly. “Young, innocent girls like Phyllis don’t have weighty
secrets.”
“Yet I have a suspicion that Phyllis is hiding something,” said the
Colonel uneasily.
“What could she have to hide?” inquired his companion.
“That’s just it--what?” answered the Colonel. “She made a terrible
fuss when I would not allow her to become engaged to young Arbuthnot,
but she got over it with surprising quickness. It would never have
done--that engagement, you know--for Phyllis will be in and out of
love a dozen times yet. I am sorry for the man, though, for he was in
earnest, and he is gone out to quell a native rising and may lose
his life. A fine soldier, young Arbuthnot! If Phyllis had stuck to
her guns, I might have given my consent when he came back--if he ever
did, poor fellow! But she has apparently got over it already. I hoped
she had reverted to Langridge, but no! She began flirting with young
Webster almost at once. She has been somewhere to-day and won’t say
where.”
“That is the spirit of mischief in her,” said Mrs. Barrimore. “She
likes to tease. She told me where she had been. She went over and saw
Philip.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Colonel.
“I told her she ought not to have done so,” went on Mrs. Barrimore,
“unless I had been with her. But Philip is a safe friend for her. Poor
Philip! he will never get over the loss of Eweretta!”
“I don’t know so much about that,” the Colonel affirmed. “In these days
young folks don’t love as faithfully as when I was young. I question if
real love ever comes to the very young nowadays--lasting love.”
Mrs. Barrimore’s cheeks flushed with that delicate pink at these words.
Colonel Lane saw the color come and go, and loved her the more for the
pure heart which made those pretty blushes possible at her age. It was
this purity of nature which more than anything else kept Mrs. Barrimore
so young. Her grey eyes were as guileless as a child’s.
She answered hastily as if to ward off more intimate words.
“Oh, but Philip is not like others,” she said. “He never was, even as a
child.”
Colonel Lane agreed. No, Philip was not like other men, he
acknowledged, but mentally he judged it good for the others that
he was not. Philip, in his opinion, was upright and honorable, but
conceited and arrogant. It galled the Colonel not a little to note the
way in which this young man patronized and criticized and ordered his
beautiful mother.
Perhaps she had been weak in her boy’s early years. She had been too
fond, too kind and indulgent. But Philip grown to be a man ought to
understand and recompense her love better.
The Colonel was too wise, however, to ventilate his views on Philip to
his mother.
He began to talk of Herbert Langridge.
“I really thought Phyllis meant to accept Herbert Langridge this second
time,” he said. “But she has lost her last chance in that direction.
Langridge told me quite frankly he should not ask her again--or
willingly meet her any more.”
“But surely,” broke in Mrs. Barrimore, “you would not wish little Phil
to make a loveless marriage?”
“Heavens! no!” he answered. “But I thought at one time she _was_ in
love with him.”
“Won’t you smoke?” said Mrs. Barrimore. “You know you can; and I think
a man looks much more comfortable smoking.”
The Colonel pulled out a pipe.
“Thank you,” he said; “but I am comfortable here with you. It is so
good to chat familiarly with a dear friend--and there is no friend like
you.”
Again that pretty flush.
“Why don’t you come oftener, then?” she asked. “I am always so glad to
see you.”
“How sweet of you to be glad!” he said.
Then a silence fell.
The Colonel lit his pipe.
“Home is pretty lonely,” he said. “A housekeeper isn’t like a wife; and
Mrs. Ransom is a particularly hard, dull woman. She is more like an old
maid than a widow. But she keeps the house well.”
“Well, that is what you want her for, isn’t it?” Mrs. Barrimore said
smiling. “And Robert and I would be glad if you spent all your evenings
with us. Come in as you used to. There is no reason why you should not!”
What strange creatures women were! Could not Annie Barrimore see what
a fierce restraint the Colonel must put on himself if he were to be
constantly in the presence of the woman he so loved, so desired?
Apparently not! To her it seemed natural that she and he should fall
into the ranks of mere friends. But her frank eyes told him that to
her, at least, it would be a joy to see him every day, so he promised
to come as usual. He did not doubt her love for him. She could not
dissemble if she would. But he knew that she would obey what seemed to
her to be the call of duty. She felt it to be her duty to stand by that
boy of hers, that boy who had suffered so great a loss, and needed her.
That he, the Colonel, thought the sacrifice uncalled for and undeserved
did not lessen his admiration for the unselfish, devoted motherhood
which he saw exemplified in Mrs. Barrimore.
They chatted on till voices made themselves heard from the garden. The
trio had returned.
“Shan’t I just take a rise out of young Philip!” came in Uncle Robert’s
voice. “He sniffed at my verses and said I should never get the book
published.”
Mrs. Barrimore smiled. “Has he told you?” she asked the Colonel.
“Told me what?”
“He has found a publisher for his poems. But don’t mistake his remark
about Philip. Philip didn’t ‘sniff,’ as Robert calls it. He said
publishers fought shy of verses.”
But Philip had “sniffed,” for all that, and perhaps not without reason.
Robert Burns the second could rhyme, but he was not the poet he
imagined himself, and it had required the aid of a golden key to unlock
the heart of a publisher.
The trio entered the drawing-room, Uncle Robert exclaiming
boisterously: “You have won your bet, Annie! I couldn’t keep my secret.
I’ve told Dan and Phyllis, and now we’ll all drink success to ‘Wings
and Winds.’ Ah, you’ve won your bet, Annie! What was it?--a dozen of
gloves?”
“And when is ‘Wings and Winds’ to come out, Burns?” inquired the
Colonel. “I congratulate you heartily.”
“This autumn, my friend,” said Uncle Robert, beaming, “and Dan is going
to work round some of those Johnnies who put your portrait in the
illustrateds.”
Mrs. Barrimore now led the way to the dining-room, where a silver tray
with glasses was placed of an evening.
Uncle Robert following with the Colonel, whispered: “Can I congratulate
you too? Been making hay while the sun shines? Eh, what?”
The Colonel shook his head. The evening had been possibly one of those
lost opportunities which we all know about.
“Cheer up, Cupid!” whispered Uncle Robert. “‘Between a woman’s Yes and
No, There is not room for a pin to go.’”
But Colonel Lane did not take comfort. Brave in war he had shown
himself, but he was timorous in love.
So sacred was this woman in his eyes, that he felt like entering a
temple when he came into her presence; and she had forbidden--albeit
gently--his nearer approach.