Chapter 26

Agatha gave her mother the note to read, telling her, however, in advance that she proposed to manage the case herself. Mrs. Callender was full of all manner of anxieties at having so difficult a matter left to one so impetuous as Agatha. For herself she could not see just what was to be done, and two or three times she endeavored to persuade Agatha to let her consult Phillida about it. A consultation with Phillida had been her resort in difficulties ever since the death of her husband. But Agatha reminded her that Mr. Millard had intrusted the matter to her own keeping, and expressed her determination not to have any more of Phillida's nonsense.

Phillida observed that Agatha was not giving as much attention to preparations for the journey as she expected her to. Nor could Phillida understand why the parlor must be swept again before their departure, seeing it would be snowed under with dust when they got back. But Agatha put everything in perfect order, and then insisted on dressing her sister with a little more pains than usual.

"I wouldn't wonder if Mrs. Hilbrough calls this afternoon," said the young hypocrite. "Besides I think it is good for an invalid to be dressed up a little--just a little fixed up. It makes a person think of getting well and that does good, you know."

Agatha refrained from an allusion to faith-cure that rose to her lips, and finding that Phillida was growing curious she turned to a new subject.

"Did mama tell you what Miss Bowyer says about your case, Philly?"

"No."

"Mrs. Beswick told mama that she had it from Mr. Martin. Miss Bowyer told Mr. Martin the other day that she knew you would get well because she had been giving you absent treatment without your knowledge or consent. Didn't you feel her pulling you into harmony with the odylic emanations of the universe?"

Phillida smiled a little and Agatha insisted on helping her to creep into the parlor. She said she could not pack the trunk with Philly looking on. But when she got her sister into the parlor she did not seem to care to go back to the trunks.

The door-bell rang at three and Agatha met Charley in the hall.

"She doesn't know a word of your coming," said Agatha in a low voice. "I will go and tell her, to break the shock, and then bring you right in."

She left Millard standing by the hat table while she went in.

"Phillida, who do you think has come to see you? It's Charley Millard. I took the liberty of telling him you'd see him for a short time."

Then she added in a whisper: "Poor fellow, he seems to feel so bad."

Saying this she set a chair for him, and without giving Phillida time to recover from a confused rush of thought and feeling she returned to the hall saying, "Come right in, Charley."

To take off the edge, as she afterward expressed it, she sat for three minutes with them, talking chaff with Millard, and when she had set the conversation going about indifferent things, she remembered something that had to be done in the kitchen, and was instantly gone down-stairs.

The conversation ran by its own momentum for a while after Agatha's departure, and then it flagged.

"You're going away," said Millard after a pause.

"Yes."

"I know it is rude for me to call without permission, but I couldn't bear that you should leave until I had asked your forgiveness for things that I can never forgive myself for."

Phillida looked down a moment in agitation and then said, "I have nothing to forgive. The fault was all on my side. I have been very foolish."

"I wouldn't quarrel with you for the world," said Millard, "but the fault was mine. What is an error of judgment in a person of your noble unselfishness! Fool that I was, not to be glad to bear a little reproach for such a person as you are!"

To Phillida the world suddenly changed color while Charley was uttering these words. His affection was better manifested by what he had just said than if he had formally declared it. But the fixed notion that he was moved only by pity could not be vanquished in an instant.

"Charley," she said, "it is very good of you to speak such kind words to me. I am very weak, and you are very good-hearted to wish to comfort me."

"You are quite mistaken, Phillida. You fancy that I am disinterested. I tell you now that I am utterly in love with you. Without you I don't care for life. I have not had heart for any pursuit since that evening on which we parted on account of my folly. But if you tell me that you have ceased to care for me, there is nothing for me but to go and make the best of things."

Phillida was no longer heroic. Her sufferings, her mistakes, her physical weakness, and the yearning of her heart for Millard's affection were fast getting the better of all the reasons she had believed so conclusive against the restoration of their engagement. Nevertheless, she found strength to say: "I am quite unfit to be your wife. You are a man that everybody likes and you enjoy society, as you have a right to." Then after a pause and an evident struggle to control herself she proceeded: "Do you think I would weight you down with a wife that will always be remembered for the follies of her youth?"

Phillida did not see how Charley could answer this, but she was so profoundly touched by his presence that she hoped he might be able to put matters in a different light. When she had finished speaking he contracted his brows into a frown for a moment. Then he leaned forward with his left hand open on one knee and his right hand clinched and resting on the other.

"I know I gave you reason to think I was cowardly," he said; "but I hope I am a braver man than you imagine. Now if anybody should ever condemn you for a little chaff in a great granary of wheat it would give me pain only if it gave you pain. Otherwise it would give me real pleasure, because I would like to bear it in such a way that you'd say to yourself, 'Charley is a braver man than I ever thought him.'" Millard had risen and was standing before her as he finished speaking. There was a pause during which Phillida looked down at her own hands lying in her lap.

"Now, Phillida," he said, "I want to ask one thing--"

"Don't ask me anything just now, Charley," she said in a broken voice full of entreaty, at the same time raising her eyes to his. Then she reached her two hands up toward him and he came and knelt at her side while she put her arms about his neck and drew him to her, and whispered, "I never understood you before, Charley. I never understood you."

XLI.

AS YOU LIKE IT.

The next morning Agatha went over to Washington Square to let Philip know that the trip southward had been postponed for a week or so. And Philip knew that the trip southward would never take place at all, but that drives with Charley in Central Park would prove much better for the invalid.

"Oh, yes, it's all right then. I expected it," he said.

"Yes," said Agatha, "it's all right. I managed it myself, Cousin Philip. I brought them together."

"Did you, Agatha?" he said with a queer smile. "That was clever."

"Yes, and they have not thanked me for it. Phillida wishes to see you. She told me to tell you."

"I don't doubt she can wait," said Philip smiling, "seeing me is not important to her just now. Give her my love and congratulations, and tell her I'll come in the day before she starts to Hampton. There'll be time enough before she gets off, Agatha." This last was said with a laugh that seemed to Agatha almost happy.

Phillida's recovery was very rapid; it was all the effect of driving in the Park. Perhaps also the near anticipation of a trip to Europe had something to do with it, for Millard had engaged passage on the _Arcadia_ the first week in June. To Mrs. Callender this seemed too early; it gave the mother and her dressmaker no end of worry about the wardrobe.

Two weeks after her reconciliation with Charley, Phillida demonstrated her recovery by walking alone to her aunt's in Washington Square. She asked at the door to see Mr. Philip, and when she learned that he was in his book-room she sent to ask if she mightn't come up.

"Busy with my catalogue," said Philip as Phillida came in. He had been busy making a catalogue of his treasures for two years, but he could not get one to suit him. "I hate to print this till I get a complete 'De Bry,' and that'll be many a year to come, I'm afraid. I couldn't afford the cost of a complete set this year nor next, and it's hardly likely that there'll be one for sale in ten years to come. But it will give me something to look forward to."

All this he said hurriedly as though to prevent her saying something else. While speaking he set a chair for Phillida, but she did not sit down.

"Cousin Philip," she said, "you might just as well hear what I've got to say first as last."

"Hear? Oh, I'm all attention," he said, "but sit down," and he set the example, Phillida following it with hesitation.

"If you had pulled me out of the water," she began, "and saved my life, you'd expect me to say 'thank you,' at least. Charley has told me all about how you acted. We think you're just the noblest man we have ever known."

"Ah, now, Phillida," protested Philip, quite bewildered for want of a lighted cigar to relieve his embarrassment, "you make me feel like a fool. I'm no hero; it isn't in me to play any grand parts. I shall be known, after I'm dead, by the auction catalogue of my collection of rare books, and by nothing else. 'The Gouverneur Sale' will long be remembered by collectors. That sort of distinction fits me. But you and Charley are making me ridiculous with all this talk."

"Phil, you dear fellow," said Phillida, passionately, rising and putting her hands on his shoulder, "you saved me from life-long misery, and may be from death, at a fearful sacrifice of your own feelings. I'll remember it the longest day I live," and she leaned over and kissed him, and then turned abruptly away to go down-stairs.

Philip trembled from head to foot as he rose and followed Phillida to the top of the stairs, trying in vain to speak. At last he said huskily: "Phillida, I want to explain. I am no hero. I had made a fool of myself as I knew I should if I ever--ever spoke to you as I did that day. Now, of all things I don't like to be ridiculous. I thought that evening if I could be the means of bringing you two together it would take the curse off, so to speak. I mean that it would make me cut a less ridiculous figure than I did and restore my self-respect. I wanted to be able to think of you and Charley happy together without calling myself bad names, you know."

"Yes, yes," replied Phillida. "I know. You never did a generous thing in your life without explaining it away. But I know you too well to be imposed on. I shall always say to myself, 'There's one noble and disinterested man under the sky, and that's my brave Cousin Philip.' Good-by." And standing on the first step down she reached him her hand over the baluster rail, looked at him with a happy, grateful face which he never forgot, and pressed his hand, saying again, "Good-by, Philip," and then turned and went down-stairs.

And Philip went back and shut his library door and locked it, and was vexed with himself because for half an hour he could not see to go on with his cataloguing. And that evening his mother was pleased to hear him whistling softly an air from the "Mikado"--he had not whistled before in weeks. She was equally surprised when a little later he consented to act as Charley's best man. To her it seemed that Philip ought to feel as though he were a kind of pall-bearer at his own funeral. But he was quite too gay for a pall-bearer. He and Agatha had no end of fun at the wedding; she taking to herself all the credit for having brought it about.

In the middle of the August following, Philip, having come to town from Newport to attend to some affairs, found a notice from the custom-house of a box marked with his address. He hated the trouble of going down town to get it out of the hands of the United States. But when it was opened he found on top a note from Millard explaining that he and Phillida had chanced upon a complete set of "De Bry" at Quaritch's, and that they thought it would be a suitable little present for their best friend.

Philip closed the box and took it to Newport with him. He explained to himself that he did this in order to get an opinion on the set from two or three collectors whose acquaintance he had lately made in lounging about the Redwood Library. But the fact was, his Newport season would have been ruined had he left the volumes in town. The books were spread out on his table, where they held a sort of levee; every book-fancier in all Newport had to call and pay his respects to the rare volumes and to the choice English bindings.

"A nice present that," said Philip's father, as he sipped his champagne at dinner on the day after the son's return with the books. "I've been looking them over; they must have cost, binding and all, a hundred dollars, I should think, eh?"

"More than that," said Philip with a smile.

"About what?" demanded his father.

"Considering that the set includes both the Great and the Little Voyages, it couldn't have cost less than twenty times your estimate," said Philip.

"Millard must be richer than I supposed," said the father. "A man ought to have millions to make presents on that scale."

But after supper when Philip and his mother sat on the piazza she said: "I never could tell how things were managed between Charley Millard and Phillida. But since your books came I think I can guess who did it."

"Guess what you please, mother," he said, "I did improve my opportunity once in my life."

THE END.

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