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The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York, a novel by Edward Eggleston |
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Chapter 39. Philip Improves An Opportunity |
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_ CHAPTER XXXIX. PHILIP IMPROVES AN OPPORTUNITY The intimacy between Millard and Philip Gouverneur had long languished. Philip was naturally critical of Charley after he became the accepted lover of Phillida, and their relations were not bettered by the breaking off of the engagement. Phillida's cousin felt that he owed it to her not to seem to condemn her in the matter by a too great intimacy with the lover who had jilted or been jilted by her, nobody could tell which, not even the pair themselves. Moreover Philip had for years taken a faint pleasure in considering himself as a possible suitor to Phillida. He found the enjoyment of a solitary cigar enhanced by his ruminations regarding the possibilities of a life glorified--no weaker word could express his thought--by the companionship of Phillida, little as he had ever hoped for such a culmination of his wishes. But this love for Phillida served to complicate his relations with Millard. So that it had now been long since he had visited The Graydon. Nevertheless on this evening of his sudden and dinnerless departure from home, the night clerk remembered him and let him go up to apartment 79 without the ceremony of sending his card. Millard, who was writing, received Philip with some surprise and a curiosity mixed with solicitude regarding the purpose of his call. But he put up his pen and spoke with something of the old cordial manner that had won the heart of Gouverneur some years before. "I'm glad to see you again, Philip. I began to think you were not coming any more. Sit down," said Millard. "How is book-collecting? Anything startling lately?" he added by way of launching the talk, as he usually did on the favorite subject of his companion. "No, no," said Philip, seating himself. "I've not seen much of you lately, anywhere," said Millard, making a new start. "But that is my fault. I've pretty much cut general society this spring, and I think for good. I've been busy and tired, and to tell the truth, I don't care much for society any more. You still go out a good deal. Is there anything interesting?" "Oh, no," said Gouverneur. Seeing that Philip was preoccupied and that all attempts to give him direction and set him in motion were likely to prove futile, Charley concluded to let him start himself in whatever direction his mood might lead him. He did this the more readily that he himself found talking hard work in his present mood. But by way of facilitating the start, Millard held out to Philip a bronze tray containing some cigars. "No, thank you, Charley. I don't feel like smoking." To Millard's mind nothing could have been more ominous than for Philip Gouverneur to refuse to smoke. "I suppose I might as well begin at once," said Philip. "If I wait I never shall get the courage to say what I want to say. I ought to have waited till morning, but if I once put off a good resolution it is never carried out. So I came down here pell-mell, Charley, resolved not to give myself time to think what a piece of impertinent impudence I was going to be guilty of." Then after a pause he said: "If you turn me out of the apartment neck and heels, I sha'n't be surprised." "Pshaw, Philip, you excite my curiosity," said Millard, trying to smile, but yet a little aghast at seeing his old friend in this unusual mood, and divining that the subject would be disagreeable. "I come to speak about Phillida," said Philip. Ever since Millard's hopes had received their quietus from Mrs. Callender's note in which Phillida declined to receive a visit from him, he had recognized the necessity for getting Phillida out of his mind if he were ever again to have any sane contentment in life. If Phillida did not any longer care for him, it would be unmanly for him to continue brooding over the past. But he found that exhorting himself to manliness would not cure a heartache. There was nothing he could have dreaded so much at this time as a conversation about Phillida, and, of all people he most disliked to speak of her with Philip Gouverneur. He made no reply at all to Philip's blunt statement of the subject on which he proposed to converse. But Gouverneur was too much absorbed in holding himself to his plan of action to take note of his companion's lack of responsiveness. "I want to ask whether you still love her or not, Charley," said Philip, with a directness that seemed brutal, his gaze fixed on the wall. "I have no claims upon her," said Millard, "if that is what you want to know." "That isn't what I want to know. I asked if you still loved her?" "I don't know whether even you have a right to ask that question," said Millard with manifest annoyance. "I am her cousin," said Philip, looking up at Millard with eyes strangely unsteady and furtive. "If there were any charge that I had wronged her, you, as her cousin, might have a right to inquire," said Millard, who fancied that Gouverneur had a personal end in making the inquiry, and who at any rate did not care to be known as a discarded and broken-hearted lover. "I'll tell you plainly that it is a subject on which I don't wish to speak with anybody. Besides it's hardly fair to come to me as Phillida's cousin, when there is reason to believe your feelings toward her are more than cousinly. I have no claims on Phillida, no expectation of a renewal of our engagement, and I certainly have no complaint to make of her. Nobody has any right to inquire further." Charley Millard got up and walked the floor in excitement as he said this. "You're plaguey cross, Charley. I never saw you so impolite before. Didn't know you could be. I suppose you're right, by Jupiter! I went too straight at the mark, and you had a right to resent it. But I had to go at it like a man having a tooth pulled, for fear I'd back out at the last moment." There was a ten seconds' pause, during which Millard sat down. Then Philip spoke again. "I know, Charley; you have misunderstood. You think I wish to get a disclaimer that will clear the way for me. Charley--" Philip spoke now in a voice low and just a little husky,--"if I loved Phillida and believed she could love me, do you think I'd wait to ask your permission? If I wished to marry her and she loved me, I wouldn't ask any man's permission! And I came here not in my own interest, nor in your interest either. I am here only for Phillida's sake and as her cousin, and I want to know whether you love her." "If you want me to do anything for her, I am ready. That is all I ought to be required to say," said Millard, softened by Philip's evident emotion, but bent on not betraying his own feelings. "I suppose that means that you don't care for her," said Gouverneur. Then he went on, looking into the fireplace: "Well, that's an end of it. What an idiot she has been! She has thrown you over and alienated your affections, and made herself the talk of the streets. You wouldn't think such a fine-looking woman could make herself so utterly ridiculous. She is a mortification to her relations, and--" "Now, Philip, stop," said Millard, with heat. "You are in my house. No man shall say a word against that woman in my hearing while I live. I tell you that even her mistakes are noble. If her relatives are ashamed of such as she is, I am sorry for her relatives." Millard made an effort to say more, but his utterance was choked. Philip laughed a sardonic little laugh. "Charley, before God, I was not sincere in a word I said against Phillida. I lied with deliberate purpose. Now I know that you love her. That's what I wanted to find out. I only denounced her to get at your feelings. You wouldn't tell me, I had to resort to a ruse." "Do you think it--do you think it's the thing to pry into my feelings?" said Millard, still speaking hotly. "Yes, I do, under the circumstances. In return I'll tell you something worth your listening to, if you'll only cool off enough to hear it." Millard's curiosity was excited by this, but he made no reply; he only sat still with Philip's eyes fixed upon him. "Phillida loves you," said Philip. Millard looked steadily at the smallish figure of his old friend, not shrunken into the chair as usual now, but sitting upright and looking straight at him with a strange look he had never seen before. "Philip," he said softly, "how do you know this? Tell me, for God's sake!" "I must not betray confidence," said Philip. "You know me, your friend and Phillida's. I am here to-night--I might say heart-broken, I can hardly say disappointed. I don't blame Phillida for not caring for me except as a cousin, or for preferring you. On the whole, if I were in her place I'd do the same, by George!" Philip laughed again, that little laugh which pained his friend. "Why did you come to tell me this, Philip?" Millard was sitting now with his elbows on the table, and the fingers of his right hand supporting his cheek, as he regarded Philip steadily. "Well, if one can not contrive to do what one wants, he should, I suppose, do the second best thing. The only thing for me to do--the thing that'll be a comfort for me to look back on--is to render Phillida some service. In short, to save her life and make her happy." "How do you propose to do that?" asked Millard. "I've already done it, old fellow," said Philip, with a mixture of triumph and regret in his voice. "Dr. Gunstone said to Aunt Callender, after talking with Phillida, that unless her engagement with you were renewed she would probably not recover. I wouldn't have told you this for the world if I had found you didn't love her. She'd better die now than marry you and discover that you married her from pity." Millard went to his desk and took out the note from Mrs. Callender in which Phillida had refused to see him. He handed it to Philip. "I got that last week, and it seemed final," he said huskily. "I have found life almost more than I could carry since, Philip." Philip read the note and then returned it to Millard. "That's some of her confounded scruples," he said. "She told me that she had ruined your life. She thinks you wish to marry her from pity, and she'd rather die like a brave girl than consent to that. But she loves you and nobody else." "I wish I were sure of it," said Millard. Philip sat a good while silent. "Charley," he said, "the end I have in view justifies the breach of confidence, I hope. I have the assurance of her feelings toward you from her own lips, and that not many hours ago. She would have died rather than tell me had she thought it possible I would tell you. And I would have died rather than betray her if I hadn't believed your feelings toward her unchanged." Saying this he helped himself to a cigar from the tray on the table and lighted it, and then rose to leave. "What can I do, Philip? I seem absolutely shut out from making any further advances by this note," demanded Millard. "You mustn't expect any further aid or advice from me. I've done all you can expect," said Gouverneur. "Good-by." And without shaking hands he went out of the door into the main hall. Millard followed him and, as they reached the elevator, said with emotion: "Philip, you have done one of the bravest acts." "Pshaw! Charley," said Philip, half-peevishly and looking over his shoulder at his companion as he pressed the button, "don't put any heroics on it. There isn't enough of me to play such a part. Such talk makes me feel myself more ridiculous than ever." _ |
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