"Your father," wrote Mrs. Carmichael, "will be the only one of the Family to have had his career cut short, if this illness presages early retirement. And this with you nearly grown-up and Peter becoming more expensive every term...!"
Ferlie could have foretold that, apart from the question of expense, Peter, at the moment, was unlikely to exercise a soothing influence on his mother's shattered nerves. She had an idea that Aunt Brillianna would prove the only satisfactory exponent of his case, but Peter had not been moved to confide in Aunt B.
* * * * * *
His parents came, heard, but found themselves unable to conquer him. Peter was a stauncher supporter of truth than of tact. His mother took refuge in unlimited tears; his father in the only ethics he favoured, i.e., those founded on the honour of the House of Carmichael. Decently-bred people simply "did not do" these things. Peter hotly denied that his bodily functions were at variance with those of the organ-grinder. This was the most unkindest cut of all. No Carmichael had ever ground an organ for a living and the comparison was odious.
Peter wanted to introduce Phyllis to them as his wife in the eyes of whatever God the Family severally worshipped. His father adopted the time-honoured attitude which forbade his son to bring That Woman in contact with the crystal purity of mother and sister. Ferlie, holding to the view that "better a little lie than much great unhappiness," refrained from publishing it abroad that she had already been subjected to the contamination of Phyllis.
Peter and his latch-key departed the house and were no more seen, and his irate father's emotions were presently smothered in a whirl of soft-footed nurses and suavely-smiling physicians.
"If Peter could only have waited!" wailed his mother. But Youth waits on nobody.
Once free of the Nursing Home Mr. Carmichael took a practical line: Peter found his allowance stopped. Then it was that he diabolically exemplified his theories regarding the common Brotherhood of Man by obtaining an organ and a particularly chilly-looking monkey who danced to the tune of "O solo mio," thus rendered by a Carmichael outside the paternal library window. No one could have guessed how the farce would end.
The last act was exclusively organized by Phyllis. The very opposition had lent Phyllis a fictitious value in Peter's eyes and his philosophy became for him the bread of life. To Ferlie, alone, he brought his accounts of Phyllis's unfathomable comprehension of his own soul. "Mixed into me as honey in wine," etc., etc.
Phyllis assumed the same proportions for Peter as had Muriel Vane for Cyprian; she was the Perfect Mate. And then Phyllis met a well-to-do surgeon, with reputation already established, who was not merely ruling an ethereally beautiful Kingdom in the Clouds. To Ferlie came Peter, wild-eyed and incredulous.