CHAPTER II

ETHEL’S VICTORY

Phil, ever since the day of the hunt, had also been living in a dream.

He was sure that Ethel knew nothing of his past. He even suspected the events to which she had alluded, for he knew Will’s story well. Moreover, she had since then shown herself more amiable than ever to him. He might have thought himself more encouraged than ever to pay her court and to forget Helia more and more. But just the contrary happened. Within himself he felt a passion storm going on, with sudden illumination of vivid lightning flashes. Then all sank back into shadow.

He no longer dared look Helia in the face. Under Ethel’s clear eyes his conscience had awakened.

One evening, weary of the ideas that beset him, Phil had thrown himself on a sofa in the music-room, when he saw Ethel enter, seat herself, and absently take up a book which chanced to be lying there. She cut one page and looked through it, two pages, ten pages. Then, suddenly, she arose angrily. Phil was astounded.

“Do you understand?” Ethel asked him. “He dares to offer me this filthy book with the author’s compliments! I have only read a few lines, and it nauseates me.”

“Of what book are you speaking, Miss Rowrer?” Phil asked.

“Of ‘The House of Glass,’ which Caracal has dared to offer me.” And Ethel showed Phil the volume, with its modern-style cover decorated by creeping plants and monkeys’ tails.

“Would you believe it?” Ethel continued. “The poor fool is trying to be gallant with me. Every day he composes a sonnet in my honor. There’s no great harm in that; but since he is the author of ‘The House of Glass,’ it has another meaning. Here, Phil, take the book, I beg of you, and throw it overboard. But, wait a minute, we’ll throw to-day’s sonnet with it. Only give me time to open the envelop—you’ll see how grotesque it is.”

Ethel opened the envelop, but she had scarcely glanced through the letter it contained when she grew pale with wrath and pride.

“What an outrage!” she exclaimed, in her fury. “See, Phil, Caracal made a mistake in addressing his envelop. He has sent the sonnet on to Paris and put here, instead of it, a letter to Vieillecloche. Richard the Lion-hearted! Those attacks which vexed me so,—they came from him. He has a family arrangement for it with Vieillecloche. Look, Phil, read, read! What do you think of that? Is it not infamous? He attacks us for pay!”

Phil was indignant. The letter left no possible doubt. He already could see Caracal disembarked in a hurry at the first port, and going down the gangway crushed by his shame.

“But he also attacked you once, Phil. How is it you didn’t pull his ears?”

“That was my great desire!” answered Phil.

“But you did not do it!”

“Let me tell you—”

“You did not do it!”

Phil, without changing a detail, told the whole story—the rage which had pushed him on to hunt for Caracal, and his feelings at sight of the poor creature a prey to his own dreams, with anguish on his tear-stained face.

“That is why I did not do it, Miss Rowrer,” said Phil.

“Ah!” Ethel exclaimed, as she looked at Phil.

There was a moment of silence.

“Throw book and letter into the sea,” Ethel concluded. “And, I beseech you, not a word of all this to any one!”

Phil went away, and Ethel remained alone. Within her there was something like a hurricane. What! those men, those man-monkeys who had been harassing her ever since she came to Paris,—it was all to make her buy their silence. How infamous! It humiliated her to see such obscure names mixed up with her life. And one of them was under obligations to her, living under her roof and sitting at her table! And it was he who offered her a book which might have been written by a drunken ape! Ah! if she had only known of his special talents, he would not be there now—that public malefactor, that little round-shouldered wretch, who dared to write her sonnets! What should she do with Caracal? Abandon him on a desert island? Or simply throw him into the water? No, not that. Hang him to the mast like a pirate? Come, now—she would not trouble her brain hunting condign punishments for him. She left the music-room, and walked on the deck; and at last, as if to wind up her long monologue with herself, she concluded: “Caracal is crazy!”

This idea, which put anger to one side and left room for pity, restored to Ethel her self-possession. “I will deal with him later on,” she said.

The immense distance between herself and such a man appeared to her all at once. Caracal seemed very little to her. And what moral wretchedness! All his energy was aimed at obtaining money, and he did not even succeed! And how punished he would be some day, when he should see his bad actions taking root and growing, and their poison doing its work.

Could she even understand the case? Who could ever know the extreme need, the passions which urge on a man like Caracal? Perhaps his was not consummate vice; perhaps he would repent some day. He was poor and alone, and she was powerful and rich, and perhaps might be a reigning duchess to-morrow—if she would only say yes with a nod. Yet here she was allowing herself to be embittered by the snarling of a poor fool. A queen, and she could not pardon! Phil had been more generous and humane than she!

She made a great effort to conquer her remorseless attitude—and won.