PHYLLIS THE MARTYR!
October had come, still Colonel Lane did not return.
Mr. Burns’s portrait was finished, but Dan was still an inmate of
Hawk’s Nest, for not only had Eweretta consented to sit to him for his
Madonna, but he had been commissioned by Alvin to do another portrait
of her for himself.
Philip had read some chapters of his new novel to the inmates of
the White House, as desired, but it had not been received with the
enthusiasm he had confidently expected.
In this novel Philip had embodied part of his own story. The first
part, dealing with the love romance, was charmingly told, but it went
on to show how the hero entered upon a new life after the death of the
heroine, and saw that, after all, she would not have been the best
wife for him. He needed a woman who could advance his interests--a
society personage, and searched for and found her. Now and then some
poetic allusion would be made to the first love after the marriage with
the lady of quality, but the keynote of the book was, that a marriage
of convenience worked best, that early loves were as a beautiful
springtime which must give place to summer, and that the summer was the
real full life of a man, in which the real purposes of his existence
occupied his horizon.
Philip had been disappointed, his vanity had been wounded by the
reception his story got at the White House. He had not expected
appreciation from the rough Colonial, or from the commonplace Mrs.
Le Breton, but he had wrongly imagined that Miss Le Breton would
be different. All she had said was that the language was beautiful
and that no doubt the story was true to life, but that it was very
depressing.
Now Philip considered the book exactly the reverse to depressing. He
thought it was inspiriting the way the hero rose above his early sorrow
and made a success of his life.
However, after that one evening he did not visit his neighbors. He did
not say he would never visit them again, even in his own mind, but he
had no inclination to go. He shut himself inside his bungalow, working
on and improving his novel. A little later on he meant to spend a few
weeks in London. He had done this occasionally for the past few years,
and it had been on one of the visits that he had met Eweretta, who was
staying with her father at the same hotel.
Shut in the bungalow, Philip often found himself reverting to Aimée Le
Breton.
No, he decided, she was not nearly so interesting as he had at first
thought her. Moreover, the likeness to Eweretta was only skin deep.
In fact, it was scarcely that. This girl had a totally different
expression--the outcome of a totally different set of thoughts--from
Eweretta.
Eweretta had not been in any sense critical. Aimée Le Breton _was_
critical. Eweretta had been frankly outspoken; this girl was wrapped
about with reserve. The thing that puzzled him most in her was her
intelligence. It seemed impossible that she could ever have been
mentally deficient.
Dan looked in at the bungalow always on his way home from the White
House, and his extravagant admiration for Aimée Le Breton left no room
for anxiety in Philip’s mind lest Dan, thrown as he was so constantly
with Phyllis, should begin to care for her in a way not allowable.
Phyllis rode over on her cycle to pour forth complaints into Philip’s
ear, and to weep, and call herself hard names, reserving even harder
ones for Captain Arbuthnot for having consented to the proposal to be
married secretly.
Philip rated and petted the girl by turns.
One thing he insisted upon, and that was that she should, under his eye
and direction, write affectionately to her husband.
“You can’t want to be so cruel as to make him suffer more, when he is
having such a hard time already,” Philip told her. “You have made him
marry you, and you’ve just got to make the best of it.”
“And I--I breaking my heart all the time because I have found _the_ man
I _could_ love too late!”
“Breaking your fiddle-sticks!” said Philip with irony. “Your heart
isn’t worth calling a heart! But you’ve got a head, and I recommend you
to use it. Believe me, love is an infantile ailment like measles, and
when you’ve had it you’re immune. In my opinion you have never had it
at all, but will be immune all the same.”
“That is just as good as calling me shallow and heartless,” said
Phyllis resentfully.
“No,” rejoined Philip reflectively. “You are sowing your wild oats
after a feminine fashion, that is all. Possibly--mind, I say
possibly--you will grow what they call a heart some time, and that
husband of yours shall know nothing of the interval between if I can
prevent it.”
Phyllis stamped her small foot petulantly. “Can’t you see, Philip,” she
cried, “that it will be _impossible_ for me to live with Charlie when
he comes back?”
“No, I can’t!” snapped Philip.
It was just when this last sentence in this particular interview had
been uttered, that Dan himself came in unannounced.
He smiled as he saw the receding skirt passing through the door which
led to another room.
“I am not going to make a visitation, old man,” said Dan breezily.
“Just looked in to say ‘How-do-you-do’ and be off.”
“Sit down and have a smoke,” said Philip, “you can’t be in a hurry.”
“It is awfully good of you,” replied Dan (who was inwardly admiring
what he thought was the mastery of hospitality over inclination), “but
I must get back. Mr. Burns and I are going over to Winchelsea after
luncheon, and I must cycle back quickly.”
“Now I shall have to stop longer or I shall overtake him,” said
Phyllis, who had emerged from the inner room as soon as she heard Dan
depart.
Philip yawned. He was getting a little tired of the business.
“Wait half an hour then,” he said.
“No! you are so cross to-day. I shall go and ride round here for a bit
and then go home,” said Phyllis.
“Good-bye, then!”
“You are glad to get rid of me!”
“You say so.”
“You think so.”
Philip laughed--not very pleasantly.
Phyllis walked out of the bungalow with her small nose in the air,
glancing back over her shoulder, however, to see if Philip had come to
the window to call her back.
Not seeing him, she mounted her cycle and rode off.
After a little dallying, she took the road to Hastings.
She had ridden about half a mile when she came upon Dan, who was doing
something to his cycle. Naturally she slowed up to ask him what was
wrong.
“It’s all right now,” said Dan cheerfully, “we can ride on together.
Have you been to the bungalow?” he added with a twinkle in his eye.
“Oh, yes,” answered Phyllis, “and Philip was _so_ disagreeable!”
“You interfered with his work, I expect,” laughed Dan. “That is a sure
and certain way of making an author disagreeable.”
They rode on for a time without speaking, for the snorting of a
motor-car made itself heard, and all their wits were needed to keep
well out of the way of the monster.
When the motor had passed Dan said: “I am sad to think I shall soon be
going away, Miss Lane. My work at the White House is nearly finished.”
Phyllis felt her throat suddenly constricted. She averted her head. She
could not answer.
“Possibly I may see your father,” went on Dan, swerving a little to
avoid some sharp stones. “You see, East Dulwich is not far from Dulwich
village, where I live.”
“Father will be glad to see you,” she said coldly--the more coldly that
she had so much warmth to hide.
“I shall be glad enough to see him anyway, if I get the chance,” went
on Dan. “Take care, Miss Lane! you very nearly went into the ditch!”
“How stupid of me!” said Phyllis tonelessly. “There is room enough in
this road, too.”
She knew that by some inward wilfulness she had kept her cycle as far
as she could from that of her companion.
“It will be strange to be back at home,” Dan next said. “It is a
pretty home, too, in its way--a big, old, _really_ old, cottage, with
little latticed windows with diamond-shaped panes. There is a porch
with two seats in it, and that and all the cottage is covered with
creepers--not Virginian--the tool house is covered with that--but rose,
and honeysuckle, and blue clematis, and a grape-vine. The garden is
pretty, too, quite a cottage garden, with vegetables and fruit trees
and borders of flowers.”
“Is there anywhere to paint?” asked Phyllis.
“Surely Philip has told you of my gem of a studio in the garden?” asked
the surprised Dan.
“Oh, I remember now,” said Phyllis. “You have leopard skins on the
floor, and some old furniture that Philip said was quite beautiful.”
“I got it for a song at a sale at one of the big old-fashioned Dulwich
houses. My sister Isabel corrects exercise-books there in the evenings.
She brings them home from the James Allen School, you know. She can’t
do them in the same room with Aunt Lizzie and my mother. Aunt Lizzie
talks without stopping, and my mother chirps in now and then.”
Phyllis put a question now and then to keep Dan on this topic. She had
a mortal dread that if he began to rave about the beauty and sweetness
of Miss Le Breton, she should betray herself.
It chimed a quarter past one as the cyclists reached Blacklands Church.
“We shall be quite in time,” said Dan.
“Oh, yes, we shall be quite in time,” echoed Phyllis in a tired voice.
Dan noticed then for the first time that his companion was growing
thinner, and that her face was pale in spite of the brisk ride.
“Do you not feel well?” he asked suddenly, and in a very sympathetic
voice.
“Oh, _please_ don’t pity me!” cried Phyllis, flushing up to the roots
of her hair. “That is the last thing I could stand from _you_.”
Dan was much troubled, and not a little puzzled.
“I am sorry,” was all he found to say.
“I am well enough,” broke out Phyllis, “but I have troubles--like other
people.”
Dan was bewildered. The tone in which the girl spoke hinted at
something serious. A lover’s “tiff” was a trifling matter. If she and
Philip had fallen out they would fall in again.
“Take long views, my dear girl,” he said kindly. “Clouds pass, you
know.”
She laughed a bitter little laugh.
“Clouds do,” she said in a hard voice, “but tragedy doesn’t. There are
things that last all one’s life.”
“Good God!” ejaculated Dan. “You can’t mean that you have a trouble so
very serious?”
“Say no more about it,” said Phyllis; “as I told you, pity is the last
thing I could bear from _you_.”
If Dan had been furnished with the usual amount of vanity possessed by
good-looking and attractive young men, he might have guessed the truth.
But he was not. He was singularly free from vanity. The emphasis on the
pronoun was quite lost upon him. All he grasped was that she objected
to pity. So he remained silent.
Happily they soon reached Hawk’s Nest, and Phyllis was able to hurry to
her room.
Once there, she wept with rage that she had spoken as she had. She felt
she could not endure it if Dan should guess the state of her heart,
especially as she was sure--yes, perfectly sure--that he cared nothing
for her beyond what he cared for that sister Isabel of whom he talked.
Of course, if Dan had cared differently, it would all have been equally
hopeless, but still she wanted him to care. She foolishly imagined that
she could take up what she called her “cross,” if only she could know
that Dan loved her.
And Philip! He had made her a hypocrite, she told herself savagely. He
had made her write affectionately to her husband when she had not meant
a word she wrote.
Phyllis considered herself a downright martyr.