The Philosopher held up his hand.
“Now, Jack!—you see I call you ‘Jack’ quite familiarly—I never thought I should! That’s quite enough! Don’t harp on the subject! Remember I hate sentiment!”
Here he gulped down his tea with an ugly gurgle and passed his cup to Sylvia for more.
“I hate sentiment!” he repeated, then paused as old Dr. Maynard pointed a finger at him and said:
“Yes, you do!—when your own sentiment is not in question! Then it’s quite another matter! You’ll go any length for it! Yes, Craig!—you know you will! God bless me! Don’t I know it! I’ll give you away—sentiment and all!—yes, I will! I’ve been in your scheme all along—I’ve known your plot! Sentiment? I should think so! Why you’d do anything for Sylvia!”
There was a moment’s silence—an awkward pause. But the Philosopher was not embarrassed. On the contrary he lifted his head and looked round with quite a defiant air.
“Quite so!” he said. “You put it rather bluntly, Maynard!—but you’re right! I certainly would do anything for Sylvia! And—crusty and selfish old bear as I am—I’ve done my best!”
CHAPTER XVIII
IT is a curious, but undisputed fact that when our most ardent wishes are suddenly gratified, an unaccountable sense of dissatisfaction is apt to set in. Who can explain it? Anxiety is over—the tension of nerves is relaxed; and yet—and yet! We are all ungrateful creatures, often sad when there is no cause for sadness, and disappointed with good fortune when it smiles upon us,—we would always have a “something else” though we are unable to explain what that “something else” should be. It is a question of “temperament” we must suppose,—and probably it was a “temperamental” condition that moved pretty Sylvia Maynard to go, after the pleasant little tea-party was over and the men had retired to smoke in the old Doctor’s library, up to her own little bedroom and there give way to a passion of weeping. The tears and sobs came in a storm—a doctor would have said “hysteria” and advised the administration of cold water—but the emotional tempest in her mind was rather beyond physical remedy. She was brought face to face with the unexpected,—the Philosopher whom she had thought absorbed in self and the things of self had proved to be of different mettle altogether; and she now began to deplore the erroneous estimate she had made of his character. She had judged him by his crusty whims and cranks of temper, and had been unable to realise that these were not the real qualities of the man. But who could have imagined,—she demanded this quite desperately of herself—who could have imagined it possible for him to play the part he had taken in the rescue of Jack Durham, when all the time he was asserting that young man’s probable death, and rather sneering—yes, sneering! at her as a sort of prospective war widow! And not only that—he had practically proposed to her himself! It was a bewildering puzzle to her brain—though clear out of the tangle stood the fact that the Philosopher had assuredly justified himself as a friend and an unselfish one. And every now and again the poor little Sentimentalist was troubled by the thought—a wicked thought, she called it!—as to whether, after all, she had done wisely in refusing to marry him! Was Jack the better choice? At the very suggestion a hot blush burned her cheeks.
“Oh, what an ungrateful little wretch I am!” she said to herself, dashing away her tears. “I love Jack!—of course I love him!—and he loves me! After all, that is the great thing—his love for me!”