CHAPTER XII.
All that evening and all the next day I creep about as one oppressed with sin. As the hour approaches that shall lay bare my secret I feel positively faint, and heartily wish myself in my grave. I am as wretched as though some calamity had befallen me; and verily I begin to think it has. With what intense longing do I wish undone all that happened yesterday!
Almost as the hall-clock, with its customary uncouthness clangs out four strokes, Mr. Carrington rides up to the door.
As I sit in an upper chamber—like Elaine, but with what different emotions!—watching my lover's coming, I can see he is looking oppressively radiant, and is actually whistling. I begin to hate him. How detestable a man looks when whistling! Ploughboys whistle!
He knocks a loud, determined, and, as it seems to me in my morbid fright, a triumphant knock at the door, and rings the bell until it sends forth a merry peal that echoes through the passages. A funny empty sensation comes into the tops of my fingers and across my forehead, as though the blood was receding, and, rising swiftly, I hurry to my own room and lock the door.
Now he is in the hall, and Billy and he are laughing—at some stupid joke, no doubt. Now he is in the library; now he has told papa it is a fine day; and now it must be all over!
I am too frightened to cry. Half an hour, an hour, go by. I long, yet fear, to open the door. Another quarter of an hour elapses, and then mother's step comes slowly along the corridor outside.
"Phyllis, are you within, open the door."
It is mother's voice, but it sounds strangely cold. I open to her, and present a woebegone face to her inspection. She comes in and comforts me for a moment silently. Then she speaks.
"Phyllis, I never thought you deceitful," she says, as severely as it is in her to say anything, and with a look of reproach in her dear eyes that cuts me to the heart.
"Mother," I cry passionately, "don't look at me like that. Indeed, indeed I am not deceitful. I knew nothing about it when he asked me yesterday to marry him. I was a great deal more surprised than even you are now. I always thought it was Dora (and I wish with all my heart it was Dora); but, though I refused him at first, he said so much afterwards that I was induced to give in. Oh, mother, won't you believe me?"
"But you must have met him many times, Phyllis, before he asked you in marriage—many times of which we know nothing."
"I did not, indeed. Whenever I saw him I told you—except once, a long time ago when we met in the wood, with Billy. But I was climbing a nut-tree that day, and was afraid to say anything of it, lest I should get into disgrace. And when we went for that drive; and two or three times we met here; and that was all. I am sure I don't know what made him fall in love with me, and Dora so much prettier and more charming in every way. I don't believe he knows himself."
"It is certainly most extraordinary," says mother, "and, I must add, very unfortunate. You will acknowledge it looks suspicious. Your father is much disturbed about it and I really think Dora's heart must be broken, she is crying so bitterly. If we had not all made up our minds so securely about Dora it would not be so bad; but she was sure of it. And his visits here were so frequent. I really do think he has behaved very badly."
"It was a mistake altogether," I murmur feebly.
"Yes, and a most unhappy one. I am sure I don't know what is to be done about Dora. She insists upon it that you secretly encouraged and took him away from her; and your father appears to sympathize with her."
"That goes without telling," I reply bitterly.
Then there follows a pause, during which mother sighs heavily once or twice, and I do severe battle with my conscience. At the end of it I cry, suddenly,—-
"Mother, there is one thing for which I do blame myself, but at first it did not occur to me that it might be wrong. One day we were talking of photographs, Mr. Carrington and I, and—two days afterwards I gave him mine. He put it in his locket, and when Dora saw him down by the river it was it he was kissing. I never dreamed it could be mine until he showed it to me yesterday."
"I had forgotten to ask you about that. Dora and your father were discussing it just now, and Dora declared she was certain it had happened as you have now stated. Phyllis, if there has not been actual duplicity in your conduct, there has at least been much imprudence."
"I know that, mother," I return disconsolately.
"This will greatly add to your discredit in the affair: you must see that. Really," says mother, sinking into a chair, and sighing again, "this engagement, that should cause us all such pride and joy, is only a source of annoyance and pain."
"Then I won't marry him at all, mother," I cry, recklessly. "I don't want to one bit: and probably if I tell him to-morrow I hate and despise him he will not want to either. Or shall I write? A letter will go far quicker."
But mother is aghast at this daring proposal. Because he has disappointed her hopes in one quarter is no reason why she should lose him altogether as a son-in-law.
"No, no," she says in a slightly altered tone. "Let things remain as they now are. It is a good match for you in every sense of the word; and setting him free would give Dora no satisfaction. But I wish it had all come about differently."
With that she turns from me and goes towards the door. My heart feels breaking.
"Oh, mother, you are not going to leave me like this, are you?" I burst out, miserably. "When other girls get engaged, people are kind and say nice things to them; but nobody seems to care about me, nobody wishes me joy. Am I nothing to you? Am I to get only hard and cruel words?" Piteous sobs interrupt me. I cover my face with my hands.
Of course in another moment I am folded in mother's arms, and her soft hands press my graceless head down upon the bosom that never yet in all my griefs has failed me. Two of her tears fall upon my cheek.
"My darling child," she whispers, "have I been too unkind to you? I did not mean it, Phyllis; but I have been made so miserable by all I have heard."
"But you don't think me deceitful, mother?"
"No, not now—not at any time, I think; but I was greatly upset by poor Dora's disappointment. My darling, I hope you will be happy in your choice and in my heart I believe you will. At all events, he is not blind to the virtues of my dear girl. He loves you very dearly, Phyllis. Are you sure, my dearest, that you love him?"
"Did you love papa very much, darling, when you married him?"
"Of course, dear," with a faint blush.
"Oh, mother, did you really?" Then, with a reflective sigh, "At that rate I am glad I do not love Mr. Carrington."
"Phyllis! what are you saying? It is the first duty of every woman to love her husband. You must try to regard Mr. Carrington in that light."
"I like him, and that is better. You were blind to papa's faults because you loved him; that was a mistake. Now, I shall not be blind to Marmaduke's; and if he does anything very horrid, or develops unpleasant symptoms, I shall be able to give him up before it is too late. If you had been fully alive to papa's little tempers, mother, I don't suppose you would ever have married him; would you?"
"Phyllis, I cannot allow you to discuss your father in this manner. It is neither dutiful nor proper; and it vexes me very much."
"Then I won't vex you. But I read in a book the other day. 'It is better to respect your husband than to love him.'"
"One should do both, of course; but, oh, Phyllis, try to love him; that is the great softener in the married life. It is so easy to forgive when love urges. You are wrong, my pet, but you have a tender heart, and so I pray all may be well with you. Yet when I think of your leaving me to face the wide world I feel lonely. I fancy I could have better spared Dora than my own wild Phyllis."
She whispers this soothingly into my ear, kisses me as only a mother can kiss, and leaves me presently wholly comforted. If mother indeed loves me, the scapegrace, better than her model Dora, I have reason to feel glad and grateful.
Meanwhile the household is divided. "The boy Billee," as Roland calls him, has been sent for two hours into solitary confinement, because, on hearing the great news, he exclaimed, "Didn't I tell you all along how it would be?" in a heartless and triumphant manner, thus adding insult to Dora's injury.
Roly also is on my side, and comes upstairs to tell me so.
"You have twice the spirit, you know," he says, in a tone meant to compliment. "Dora is too dead-and-alive; no man born would be tormented with her. I am awfully glad, Phyllis."
And then he speaks of poor "Dora," and a moment later goes into convulsions of laughter over "poor Dora's" discomfiture.
"She made so sure, don't you know, and that; had upset and re-arranged Strangemore and Carrington and everything to her own entire satisfaction. Oh, by Jove, it is the best joke I ever heard in my life!" And so on.
When by chance during the evening papa and I meet, though his manner is frozen, he makes no offensive remarks; and, strange as it appears to me, I seem to have gained some dignity in his eyes. So the long hours of that day drag by, and night falls at last.
After dinner Dora comes creeping in, her eyelids red and swollen, her dainty cheeks bereft of their usual soft pink. Misery and despair are depicted in every line of her face and figure.
Papa rises ostentatiously and pushes an easy chair towards the fire for her (already the touch of winter is upon us.) Mamma pours out a glass of papa's own port. Even Billy proclaims a truce for the time being, and places a soft stool beneath my injured sister's feet, while I sit apart and feel myself a murderess.
I begin to vaguely wonder whether, were I in Dora's place, all these delicate attentions would be showered upon me. I also try to decide whether, if I had been slighted by my beloved, I would publish the fact upon the house-tops and come down to the bosom of my family with scarlet eyes and pallid face and hair effectively loosened: or whether I would hide my sorrow with my life and endure all in heroic silence. I have got so far as the Spartan boy in my meditations, when Roland, bringing his fingers to meet upon the fleshy part of my arm, causes me to spring from my seat and give utterance to an emphatic "Oh!" while Cheekie, the fox-terrier, who is crouching in her favorite position at my feet, coming in for a full share of my weight, sets up a corresponding howl, and altogether the confusion is complete.
When it has subsided there ensues an awful pause. Then papa speaks.
"It would be waste of time to appeal to your better feelings, Phyllis: you have none! But that you are hopelessly wanting in all delicacy of sentiment, you would understand that this is no time to indulge in a vulgar overflow of spirits. Do you not see how your sister is suffering? Your heartlessness is downright disgusting. Leave the room."
I instantly avail myself of the permission to withdraw only too glad of the excuse, and retire, followed closely by Roland, who I can see is choking with suppressed laughter.
"How could you do it?" I ask, reproachfully, as we gain the hall-door. "They are all angry enough as it is."
"I could not help it," returns Roly, still struggling with his merriment; "the solemnity of the whole thing was too much for me. I knew I was going to laugh out loud, so pinched you to draw off attention."
"I think you might have chosen Billy."
"He was too far off; you were the most convenient."
"And so you sacrificed me to save yourself?" I exclaim, indignantly.
Like all men, Roland is unutterably selfish; unlike all men, he is ever ready to make atonement, once the selfish act is accomplished.
"Even so," he says now. "But look here, Phyllis: I'll make it up to you. Here's ten bob." And he tries to force the money into my unwilling hand.
"No, keep it," I return, softened by the gift; "I can do without it, and I am sure you want it yourself."
"I don't really," says Roland, looking fair into my eyes. "I have plenty—for a while; and you know you said yesterday you had spent your last penny. When you are Mrs. Carrington you can stand to me. Here: no nonsense: if you don't take it this moment, I'll chuck it into the pond."
Thus threatened, I take it; and then together we stroll into the kitchen-garden, where Roland reduces his laughter-loving mind to order with the aid of the fragrant weed.