"He can't be coming," I said.
Unfortunately Phyllida overheard me and interpreted this as an attack on Colonel Butler's good faith...
"He said he would come," she persisted. Over one shoulder, you know... With a toss of the head.
"Perhaps the car has broken down," I suggested. "There may have been an accident."
"He will come," said Phyllida.
At a quarter past nine Ruth was merciful enough to allow her guests to have a little food—one of those meals where, as my boy said very wittily, "everything was cold except the ice." A hideous dinner! I am not now referring to the food, but to the atmosphere. Phyllida refused to come in; Brackenbury wavered and wobbled, now going out to her, now coming back... And the one not very interesting topic of conversation: what had happened to Colonel Butler. By ten o'clock most of us had made up our minds that he was not coming...
By eleven I really believe some were wondering whether he had ever intended to come. He had invited himself, it is true. Or so we were told. But it really seemed as though the initiative came from Phyllida, that she might be forcing his hand, that he had suggested coming really as a means of ending the discussion at my dance. I did not know what letters had passed between them since. She might have been pressing and pressing him until he at last consented to come; then he may have seen that, once at the Hall, he would not be allowed to escape a second time. He may have invited himself with the reservation that he would stop away at the last moment and say that he had been called abroad. Phyllida is attractive, she is rich; for people who care about these things, she is the daughter of an earl. Undeniably young Butler had been glamoured by it all at first; but he may well have felt on reconsideration that it would not be a very suitable match, and I have yet to learn that a man thinks more highly of a girl because she throws herself at his head. That is a lesson which the rising generation will have to learn—at a heavy price.
I felt that some such thoughts must be passing through Spenworth's mind every time he said: "The fellow's not coming to-night. Can't some one persuade that child to have some food instead of giving herself a chill?" Brackenbury and Ruth, too, were beginning to doubt and to look very much concerned. If the young man had sheered off, they would never forgive themselves for allowing the unhappy girl to make such an exhibition of herself... In my heart of hearts I knew that Colonel Butler could be trusted as I would trust my own son. I was only afraid that there might have been an accident...
And I could fancy what poor Phyllida's feelings must be after assembling all the family to meet her soldier-hero, after telling me at the top of her very clear little voice that, if he did not propose to her, she would propose to him... Every one would say that he had run away and she had dragged him back and now he had run away again...
At half-past eleven we gave up hope.