"You needn"t worry about her being here, Mr. Locke," he said. "I know better than that! But she has to come to me; it"s her right, don"t you think? I"ll promise you to take her to a better place as soon as I can manage."
"What kind of a place?"
"I"m saving to get a place in the country," he answered diffidently.
"I"m a countryman, and Phillida thinks she"d like it."
"You?" I exclaimed, unable to smother my derision and unbelief. My glance summed up his fastidious apparel and grooming, the gloss on his curling dark hair and the dubious diamond on his little finger.
He reddened through his clear, dark skin, but his eyes were not those of a man taken in a lie.
"Did you take notice of what I do here?" He asked me, with the first touch of humility I had seen in him. "I couldn"t dance or sing or do parlor tricks. I wasn"t bred to parlors or indoors. But I learned to skate pretty fancy from a boy up. My folks" farm was on one side of a lake and the schoolhouse on the other. About November that lake used to freeze solid. My brother and I used to skate five miles to school, and back again, before we were six years old. We lived on skates about half the year, I guess. Well--you don"t care about the rest; how the farm was just about big enough to support my elder brother and his family, and I came to New York. Nor how I found New York pretty well filled up with folks who knew considerably more than I did. It was the manager of this place who advertised for expert skaters, who dressed me up like this, and paid me the first living wages I"d had in the city. All the same, I was bred a farmer, and I mean to get back to it. Always have! You"re a man, Mr. Locke, and I"d hate you to think I was a shimmy dancer on ice and nothing else, or I wouldn"t mention it. My father would have taken the buggy-whip to me, I guess, if he"d lived to see me in this rig. Soon as I"ve enough put by, I"ll shed this perfumed suit and the cheap jewelry and take my wife where she can have a chance to forget I ever wore them."
"But I _like_ them," put in Phillida ardently. "Please do not fuss so, Ethan; because I really do."
"Do you?" I turned upon her. "Are you sure, then, that it is not all this cabaret glamour you really are in love with? Would you care for him as an ordinary, hard-working fellow in a pair of overalls and a flannel shirt? No applause, no lights, no stage?"
She laughed up at me.
"You have forgotten that I met Ethan while he was on a vacation from his work here, and roughing it. When I married him, I had hardly seen him in anything except his Navy flannel shirt, scrubby trousers, and funny blunt-toed shoes."
"You served in the war?" I asked him.
He nodded.
"Yes. On a submarine chaser. Got pneumonia from exposure and was invalided home just before the Armistice."
"And you came back here?"
"I came here," he corrected me. "I enlisted from Maine. I was discharged in New York. That was when I couldn"t find anything I could do, until this skating trick came along."
I sat thinking for a time; as long thoughts as I could command. The obvious course was to send for Phillida"s father. Yet what could that vague and learned gentleman do that I could not? I visioned the Professor standing in this riotous, gaudy restaurant, swinging his eye-gla.s.ses by their silk ribbon and peering at Vere in helpless distaste and consternation. It was practically certain that Phil would refuse to go home with him.
What if she did go home? I could picture the scene there, when the truth came out. The mortification of her people, the gossip in the little town, her outcast position among the girls and boys with whom she had grown up--what a martyrdom for a sensitive spirit! Of course, the only possible thing considered by Aunt Caroline would be a prompt divorce.
If Phillida refused to consent to a divorce, how could she live at home as the wife of a man her parents had p.r.o.nounced unfit to receive? If she yielded and gave up Vere, would she be much better off? An embarra.s.sment to her family, the heroine of a stolen marriage and Reno freedom, what chance of happiness would she have in her conventional circle?
Especially as she neither was a beauty nor the dashing type of girl who might make capital of such a reputation. Probably she would bury herself in nunlike seclusion, stay in her room when callers came, and wear a veil when she went out to walk.
Meanwhile, she would break her heart for Vere.
Could matters be any worse if she tried life with him, even if the experiment eventually proved a failure and ended in a divorce instead of beginning there? Might not her parents be spared much they most dreaded, if their friends could be told simply that Phillida had made a love match and was with her husband?
Finally, Phillida was a human creature with the right to manage her own life. Had any of us the right to lay hands upon her existence and mould it to our fancy?
I looked up from my revery to find the eyes of both of them fixed on me as if I held their doom balanced upon my palm. Perhaps, in a sense, I did.
"Phil, will you come home to your father and mother, and consider all this a bit more before you decide?" I asked her.
I thought I knew the answer to this, and I did.
"No, Cousin Roger," she refused firmly. "Please forgive me. I know how kind you mean to be, but--no! I shall stay with Ethan. If ever you love anyone, you will understand."
I accepted the decision. There was no reason why I should think of the woman who had spoken to me across the darkness in a voice of melody and power, or why I should seem to feel again the exquisite, live softness of her braid within my hand. But it was so.
"Very well," I said. "Vere, it is to you, then, as Phillida"s husband, that I must address any plans. I do not pretend to like the course she has taken. I do not know what action her parents may take, although I believe they will listen to my advice. Putting all that aside, she refuses to come with me and you agree that she cannot stay here.
"I have just bought a farm in Connecticut, intending to use it as a summer home. There are some alterations and repairs being made, but little is to be changed inside the house and it is in perfectly livable shape. Here is my offer. Take Phillida there, and I will make you manager of the place. I will pay all reasonable expenses of putting the land into proper condition and getting such stock and equipment as you judge best; all expenses and up-keep of the house and whatever salary usually is drawn by such managers of small estates. I shall be there, on and off, but you and Phillida must take charge of everything. I am neither a farmer nor a housekeeper, and do not wish to be either. I bought the place only because New York is too hot to work in during three months of the year, and I hate summer resorts. Keep my room ready, and you will find I disturb you little. Of course, hire what servants are necessary.
"Now, if you make the place self-supporting inside of five years, I will deed the whole thing to you two. To put it better, if you succeed in making the farm pay a living for yourselves, I will make it over to you and withdraw. If you fail--well, I suppose you will be no worse off than you are now!"
They were stricken speechless. Perhaps my att.i.tude had not pointed to such a conclusion of our interview. Phillida told me long afterward that she expected me to bid them good-evening and abandon them forever, as my mildest course; with alternative possibilities such as summoning a policeman and having Vere haled to prison. Seeing their condition, I rose.
"I will stroll about and leave you a chance to talk it over," I declared; although there are few ordeals I dislike more than displaying my limp about such public rooms.
Vere stopped me, rising as I rose.
"No need of that, for us," he answered, facing me across the little table. "About giving us your farm, Mr. Locke, that"s for the future!
Just now, the manager"s job is plenty big enough to thank you for. I wish I could say it better. If you"ll stay here with Phillida for ten minutes, until I can get back, I"ll be obliged."
"Where are you going?"
"To resign here, and get my outfit into a suitcase."
He had taken up my challenge like a man, at least. There were none of the hesitations and excuses to stay in town that I had half expected. It pleased me that he decided for Phil as well as himself. Some of my ideas about marriage are antiquated, I admit. I nodded to him, and sat down again.
It is unnecessary to record the childish things Phillida tried to say to me, while he was gone.
"I am so happy," was her apology for threatened tears. "I never knew anyone--except Ethan--could be so kind. And--and, will you tell Father and Mother?"
"Yes." I winced, though, at that prospect. "Give me that little bag you carry on your wrist."
She obeyed, wide-eyed.
"You do tote a powder-puff. I did not know whether Aunt Caroline permitted it. Rub it on your nose," I advised, pa.s.sing the bit of fluff to her.
While she complied, almost like a normally frivolous girl, I used the moment to transfer a few banknotes to the bag, so some need might not find her penniless.
Vere came back in not much more than the promised ten minutes. He had changed to gray street clothes and carried a suitcase. I noted that the diamond had disappeared from his finger and his curly head looked as if it had been held under a water-faucet and vigorously toweled to lessen the brilliantine gloss.
"If you"ll tell us where your farm is, Mr. Locke, we"ll start," he volunteered.
Phillida looked up at him with eyes of adoring trust.
"I had the porter at the Terminal check my suitcase to be called for. We shall have to get it, dear."
In spite of myself, I smiled at their amazing prompt.i.tude. There was both rea.s.surance and pathos in its unconscious youth. All this eagerness pressing forward--where? They did not know, nor I. Certainly we did not dream how strange a goal awaited one of us three, or on what weird, desolate path that traveler"s foot was already set.
"You had better go to a good hotel for tonight," I modified their plan.
"Tomorrow is time enough to go out to the farm, by daylight. Phil has had enough excitement for one day. I will write full directions for the trip, Vere, on the back of this timetable of the railroad you must take."