Phyllis of Philistia Part 28

"You mean to say that you left him standing in the middle of the room while you went away?"

"I told you that I was rude."

"Rude, yes; but it's one thing to omit to leave cards upon a hostess, and quite another to stare her in the face when she bows to you in the street. It's one thing to omit sending a man a piece of your bridescake, and quite another to knock off his hat in the street. Rude, oh, my dear Phyllis!"

"If you knew what he said about--about someone whom I love--if you knew how angry I was, you would not say that I acted so atrociously, after all."

"Oh! Did he say something more about Ruth?"

"He said too much--far too much; I cannot tell you. If any other man said so much I would treat him in the same way. You must not ask me anything further, please."

"Rude and unrepentant, shocking and not ashamed. This is terrible.

But perhaps it's better that you should be rude when you're young and beautiful; later on, when you're no longer young, it will not be permitted in you. I'll question you no further. Only how about Sunday?"

"I have promised Ella to go with her party to The Mooring for a week."

"That will get over the matter of the church, but only for one Sunday.

How about the next Sundays--until the prorogation? Now, don't say the obvious 'sufficient unto the Sunday is the sermon thereof.'"

"I certainly will not. I have done forever with St. Chad's, unless the bishop interferes and we get a new rector."

"Then that's settled. And so we can drink our coffee in the drawing room with easy minds. Rude! Great Heavens!"

CHAPTER XXVII.

THAT'S WHY WOMEN DO NOT MAKE GOOD PHILOSOPHERS.

She had prayed to G.o.d that he might be kept away from her; but immediately afterward, as has already been stated, when she began to think over the situation of the hour, she came to the conclusion that she had been a little too precipitate in her pet.i.tion. She felt that she would like to ask him how it had come about that he had played that contemptible part. Such a contemptible part! Was it on record, she wondered, that any man had ever played that contemptible part? To run away! And she had designed and worn that wonderful toilet; such a toilet as Helen might have worn (she thought); such a toilet as Cleopatra might have worn (she fancied); such a toilet as--as Sarah Bernhardt (she was certain) would wear when impersonating a woman who had lost her soul for the love of a man. Oh, had ever woman been so humiliated! She thought of the way Sarah Bernhardt would act the part of one of those women if her lover had run away from her outstretched arms,--and such a toilet,--only it was not on record that the lover of any one of them had ever run away. The lovers had been only too faithful; they had remained to be hacked to pieces with a mediaeval knife sparkling with jewels, or to swallow some curious poison out of a Byzantine goblet. She would have a word or two to say to Herbert Courtland when he returned. She would create the part of the woman whose lover has humiliated her.

This was her thought until her husband told her that he had sent that letter to Herbert Courtland, and he would most likely dine with them on the evening of his return.

Then it was it occurred to her that Herbert Courtland might by some curious mischance--mischances occurred in many of Sarah Bernhardt's plays--have come to hear that she had paid that rather singular visit to Phyllis Ayrton, just at the hour that she had named in that letter which she had written to him. What difference did that make in regard to his unparalleled flight? He was actually aboard the yacht _Water Nymph_ before she had rung for her brougham to take her to Phyllis'. He had been the first to fly.

Then she began to think, as she had thought once before, of her husband's sudden return,--the return of a husband at the exact hour named in the letter to a lover was by no means an unknown incident in a play of Sarah Bernhardt's,--and before she had continued upon this course of thought for many minutes, she had come to the conclusion that she would not be too hard on Herbert Courtland.

She was not too hard on him.

He had an interview with Mr. Linton at the city offices of the great Taragonda Creek Mine. (The mine had, as has already been stated, been discovered by Herbert Courtland during his early explorations in Australia, and he had acquired out of his somewhat slender resources--he had been poor in those days--about a square mile of the wretched country where it was situated, and had then communicated his discovery to Stephen Linton, who understood the science and arts necessary for utilizing such a discovery, the result being that in two years everyone connected with the Taragonda Mine was rich. The sweepings of the crus.h.i.+ng rooms were worth twenty thousand pounds a year: and Herbert Courtland had spent about ten thousand pounds--a fourth of his year's income--in the quest of the meteor-bird to make a feather fan for Ella Linton.) And when the business for which he had been summoned to London had been set _en train_, he had paid a visit to his publishers. (They wondered could he give them a novel on New Guinea. If he introduced plenty of dialect and it was sufficiently unintelligible it might thrust the kail yard out of the market; but the novel must be in dialect, they a.s.sured him.) After promising to give the matter his attention, he paid his visit to Phyllis, and then went to his rooms to dress; for when Stephen Linton had said:

"Of course you'll dine with us to-night: I told Ella you would come."

He had said, "Thanks; I shall be very pleased."

"Come early; eight sharp," Mr. Linton had added.

And thus it was that at five minutes to eight o'clock Herbert found himself face to face alone with the woman whom he had so grossly humiliated.

Perhaps she was hard on him after all: she addressed him as Mr.

Courtland. She felt that she, at any rate, had returned to the straight path of duty when she had done that. (It was Herbert Courtland who had talked to Phyllis of the modern philosopher--a political philosopher or a philosophical politician--who, writing against compromise, became the leading exponent of that science, and had hoped to solve the question of a Deity by using a small g in spelling G.o.d. On the same principle Ella had called Herbert "Mr. Courtland.")

He felt uneasy. Was he ashamed of himself, she wondered?

"Stephen will be down in a moment, Mr. Courtland," she said.

He was glad to hear it.

"How warm it has been all day!" she added. "I thought of you toiling away over figures in the city, when you might have been breathing the lovely air of the sea. It was too bad of Stephen to bring you back."

"I a.s.sure you I was glad to get his letter at Leith," said he. "I was thinking for the two days previous how I could best concoct a telegram to myself at Leith in order that I might have some excuse for running away."

"That is a.s.suming that running away needs some excuse," said she.

There was a considerable pause before he said, in a low tone:

"Ella, Ella, I know everything--that night. We were saved."

At this moment Mr. Linton entered the room. He was, after all, not late, he said: it wanted a minute still of being eight o'clock. He had just been at the telephone to receive a reply regarding a box at Covent Garden. In the earlier part of the day none had been vacant, he had been told; but the people at the box office promised to telephone to him if any became vacant in the course of the afternoon. He had just come from the telephone, and had secured a good enough box on the first tier. He hoped that Ella would not mind "Carmen"; there was to be a new _Carmen_.

Ella a.s.sured him that she could not fail to be interested in any _Carmen_, new or old. It was so good of him to take all that trouble for her, knowing how devoted she was to opera. She hoped that Herbert--she called him Herbert in the presence of her husband--was in a _Carmen_ mood.

"I'm always in a mood to study anything that's unreservedly savage,"

said he.

"There's not much reservation about our little friend _Carmen_," said Mr. Linton. "She tells you her philosophy in her first moment before you."

He hummed the habanera.

"There you are: _Misteroso e l'amore_--that's the philosophy of your pretty savage, Herbert."

"Yes," said Herbert; "it's that philosophy which consists in an absence of philosophy--not the worst kind, either, it seems to me. It's the philosophy of impulse."

"I thought that the aim of all philosophy was to check every impulse,"

said Ella.

"So it is; that's why women do not make good philosophers," said her husband.

"Or, for that matter, good mothers of philosophers," said Herbert.

"That's rather a hard saying, isn't it?" said the other man.

"No," said his wife; "it's as transparent as air."

"London air in November?" suggested her husband.

"He means that there's no such thing."