“It does not occur to you that under those circumstances you are hardly the right tenants for a flat, but ought to be in a house of your own?”
“It occurs to me that we are the best judges of our own actions,” returned Philippa icily, fighting down the wild longing that arose, even as she spoke, for a place of their own—a nest, however small, where they might dwell in peace and freedom. “You are not the only tenant, Mr Neil, who has to endure disagreeables from his neighbours; we also might find ground for complaint, if we wished to be disagreeable. My sisters sleep above your study, and they say you keep poking the fire until two in the morning and waking them up with a start. Then, too, you have a hanging lamp or chandelier which you push up, and which makes a most unpleasant noise; and in the autumn evenings you smoked strong cigars on your balcony until we were poisoned with the smell. Oh, there are a thousand things which I could mention,” cried Philippa—though in truth she would have been puzzled to add one more complaint to her list—“but I would not stoop to it! It is too miserably petty and degrading to be everlastingly picking quarrels. I am sick of it.”
“Not more heartily than I am. I have lived in these buildings for nearly ten years and have only once before made a complaint—which, I may remark, was met in a very different spirit.” The Hermit was evidently growing ruffled in his turn, and could not resist a parting shot before he left the room. “As I said before, I should be sorry to have to complain at headquarters, but I do not intend to have my comfort ruined by new-comers who have no claim on the establishment. If it becomes impossible for us both to live under one roof, I have little doubt who would be asked to remain.”
He was gone. The door closed behind him, and Philippa sank into a chair with a sudden feeling of collapse. “Oh! oh!” she cried, and her hands went up to her head, and her breath grew short and strangled. All her pride and independence were swept aside by the remembrance of those last pregnant words: “Impossible for us both—little doubt in whose favour!” Suppose—oh, suppose, the Hermit complained to the committee, and she were served with a notice to quit! Suppose, with one set of bills barely settled, she were called upon to incur a second! With characteristic Charrington impetuosity she beheld ruin stalk towards her, and the faces of brothers and sisters filled with a pale reproach. Her head dropped forward on to the table; the tears rolled down her cheeks. She was just about to indulge in the luxury of a good cry, when suddenly there was a sound in the room, an exclamation of distress, and there stood the Hermit, picking up the hat which still lay on the table, and murmuring disconnected sentences of explanation.
“I forgot my hat. The door was still open; I forgot to shut it. I turned back—Crying! I hope that I—that nothing that I have said—I should be most distressed—”
Philippa stared at him helplessly. Her impulse was to deny the suggestion with scorn, but how was that possible with the tears rolling down her cheeks? She tried to control herself, to steady her voice sufficiently to reply, but the floodgates were open and could not be restrained. An agony of dread seized her lest she should humiliate herself still further, and, pointing to the door with childlike helplessness, she sobbed out a pitiful “Please, go—please, go!” and buried her face in her hands.
The Hermit crept back to his room, but he could not work. Between himself and his books rose the vision of a girl’s face, tremulous and tearful. The dark eyes looked into his with pathetic reproach. He called himself a brute and a coward for having dared to distress her.