Certainly it was not likely that this young man would proceed further in the path of irregularity—which leads to repentance—than he had hitherto done. He had now to confess before the young lady's guardian something of the part he played.
Looked at dispassionately, and unsoftened by the haze of illusion, this part had, as he acknowledged with groans, an appearance far from pleasing to the Christian moralist.
He had taken advantage of the girl's total ignorance to introduce himself at the house where she was practically alone for the whole day; he found her like a child in the absence of the reserve which girls are trained to; he stepped at once into the position of a confidential friend; he took her about for walks and drives, a thing which might have compromised her seriously; he allowed Joseph Jagenal, without, it is true, stating it in so many words, to believe him an old friend of Phillis's; he followed her to Twickenham and installed himself at Mrs. L'Estrange's as an ami de famille; he had done so much to make the girl's life bright and happy, he was so dear to her, that he felt there was but one step to be taken to pass from a brother to a lover.
It was a black record to look at, and it was poor consolation to think that any other man would have done the same.
Jack Dunquerque, like Phillis herself, was changed within a month. Somehow the fun and carelessness which struck Gilead Beck as so remarkable in a man of five-and-twenty were a good deal damped. For the first time in his life he was serious; for the first time he had a serious and definite object before him. He was perfectly serious in an unbounded love for Phillis. Day by day the sweet beauty of the girl, her grace, her simple faith, her child-like affection, sank into his heart and softened him. Day after day, as he rowed along the meadows of the Thames, or lazied under the hanging willows by the shore, or sat with her in the garden, or rode along the leafy roads by her side, the sincerity of her nature, as clear and cloudless as the blue depths of heaven; its purity, like the bright water that leaps and bubbles and flows beneath the shade of Lebanon; its perfect truthfulness, like the midday sunshine in June; the innocence with which, even as another Eve, she bared her very soul for him to read—these things, when he thought of them, brought the unaccustomed tears to his eyes, and made his spirit rise and bound within him as to unheard of heights. For love, to an honest man, is like Nature to a poet or colour to an artist—it makes him see great depths, and gives him, if only for once in his life, a Pisgah view of a Land far, far holier, a life far, far higher, a condition far, far sweeter and nobler than anything in this world can give us—except the love of a good woman. In such a vision the ordinary course of our life is suspended; we move on air; we see men as trees walking, and regard them not. Happy the man who once in his life has been so lifted out of the present, and knows not afterwards whether he was in the flesh or out of the flesh.
Jack, with the influence of this great passion upon him, was transformed. Fortunately for us this emotion had its ebb and flow. Else that great dinner to Literature had never come off. But at all times he was under its sobering influence. And it was in a penitent and humble mood that he sought Lawrence Colquhoun, in the hope of "squaring it" with him as Ladds advised. Good fellow, Tommy; none better; but wanting in the higher delicacy. Somehow the common words and phrases of every-day use applied to Phillis jarred upon him. After all, one feels a difficulty in offering a princess the change for a shilling in coppers. If I had to do it, I should fall back on a draught upon the Cheque Bank.
Lawrence was full of his own annoyances—most of us always are, and it is one of the less understood ills of life that one can never get, even for five minutes, a Monopoly of Complaint. But he listened patiently while Jack—Jack of the Rueful Countenance—poured out his tale of repentance, woe, and prayer.
"You see," he said, winding up, "I never thought what it would come to. I dropped into it by accident and then—then——"
"When people come to flirt they stay to spoon," said Lawrence. "In other words, my dear fellow, you are in love. Ah!"
Jack wondered what was meant by the interjection. In all the list of interjections given by Lindley Murray, or the new light Dr. Morris, such as Pish! Phaw! Alas! Humph! and the rest which are in everybody's mouth, there is none which blows with such an uncertain sound as this. Impossible to tell whether it means encouragement, sympathy, or cold distrust.