Part 37

"Part friends?"

Phillida, pale and speechless, took his hand a moment, and then he went out. She leaned her head against the window-jamb, lifted the shade, and watched his form retreating through the drizzly night until he disappeared from view, and then she turned out the lights. But instead of returning to her mother and Agatha in the basement, she threw herself on the floor, resting her arms on the sofa while she sobbed in utter wretchedness. All her courage was spent; all her faith had fled; helpless, wounded, wretched as a soul in bottomless perdition, she could see neither life nor hope in any future before her. She had believed herself able to go on alone and to bear any sacrifice. But in losing him she had lost even the power to pray.

About an hour after Millard's departure, Mrs. Callender came up the stairs and called gently:

"Phillida!"

Then she entered the parlor. The shutters were not closed, and the room was faintly lighted by rays that came through the shades from the lamp on the other side of the street.

"I'm here, mother," said Phillida, rising and coming toward her. Then, embracing her mother, she said, "And I'm so unhappy, mother, so utterly wretched."

Such an appeal for sympathy on the part of the daughter was an occurrence almost unknown. She had been the self-reliant head of the family, but now she leaned helplessly upon her mother and whispered, "It's all over between Charley and me."

XXV.

MRS. FRANKLAND'S REPENTANCE.

For some time after Phillida had left Mrs. Frankland resting on the lounge that lady had felt an additional exaltation in contemplating this new and admirable instance of faith and devotion--an instance that seemed to owe much to the influence of her own teachings. Her mind had toyed with it as a brilliant having many facets. She had unconsciously reduced it to words; she could only get the virtue out of anything when she had phrased it. Phillida she had abstracted into a "young woman of a distinguished family," "beautiful as the day," "who had all the advantages of high associations," and "who might have filled to the brim the cup of social enjoyment." The lover, whose name and circumstances she did not know, she yet set up in her mind as "an accomplished young man of splendid gifts and large worldly expectations." It would have been a serious delinquency in him had he failed to answer to this personal description, for how else could this glorious instance be rounded into completeness? Incapable of intentional misrepresentation, Mrs. Frankland could never help believing that the undisclosed portion of any narrative conformed to the exigencies of artistic symmetry and picturesque effect. She set the story of Phillida's sacrifice before her now in one and now in another light, and found in contemplating it much exhilaration--spiritual joy and gratitude in her phraseology. How charmingly it would fit into an address!

But as the hours wore on the excitement of her oratorical effort subsided and a natural physical reaction began. Her pulses, which had been beating so strenuously as to keep her brain in a state of combustion, were now correspondingly below their normal fullness and rapidity, and the exhausted nerves demanded repose. It was at such times as these that Mrs. Frankland's constitutional buoyancy of spirit sank down on an ebb tide; it was at such times that her usually sunny temper chafed under the irritations of domestic affairs. On this evening, when the period of depression set in, Mrs. Frankland's view of Phillida's case suffered a change. She no longer saw it through the iridescent haze of excited fancy. She began to doubt whether it was best that Phillida should break with her lover for the mere sake of being a shining example. In this mood Mrs. Frankland appreciated for the first time the fact that Phillida could hardly feel the same exultation in slaughtering her affections and hopes that Mrs. Frankland had felt in advising such a course of spiritual discipline. Just a little ripple of remorse flecked the surface of her mind, but she found consolation in a purpose to make the matter right by seeing Phillida the next day and inquiring more fully into the matter. Her natural hopefulness came to her rescue, and Mrs. Frankland slept without disturbance from regrets.

When she awaked in the morning it was with a dull sense that there was something which needed to be righted. She had to rummage her memory awhile to discover just what it was. Having placed it at length in Phillida's affair, she suddenly reflected that perhaps Mrs. Hilbrough could throw light on it, and she would postpone seeing Phillida until after her drive with Mrs. Hilbrough in the afternoon. "It is better to give counsel advisedly," was the phrase with which she ticketed this decision and sustained it.

The day was fine, and the drive in Mrs. Hilbrough's easy-rolling open carriage was exhilarating, and in that sort of bird-chatter about nothing in particular in which two people enjoying motion are prone to engage Mrs. Frankland was in danger of forgetting her purpose to inquire about Phillida Callender, until at length, when the carriage was fairly within the Park, Mrs. Hilbrough, whose businesslike brain never let go its grasp on a main purpose, said:

"Mrs. Frankland, I wanted to speak to you about Miss Callender."

"The very person I wished to ask your advice about," said Mrs. Frankland. "She called on me yesterday late in the afternoon."

"Did she?" Mrs. Hilbrough asked this with internal alarm. "Did she say anything to you about her love affair?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Frankland; "I suppose I ought not to repeat what she said, but you are her friend and you will be able to advise me in the matter. I'm afraid I didn't say just the right thing--I mean that I didn't advise her as fully as I should have done. It's hard to know what to say about other people's affairs. I felt worried about her, and I came near going to see her this morning. But I remembered that you were her friend, and I thought it best to see what you would say. It's always best to give counsel advisedly, I think."

"May I ask what you said to her?" said Mrs. Hilbrough, characteristically refusing to be shunted from the main line of her purpose.

Mrs. Frankland winced at the question, and especially at the straightforward thrust with which it was asked. But she said: "I only advised her in a very general way. It was just after I had finished speaking, and I wasn't able to take up the matter as carefully as I should have liked to do, you know, until after I had rested."

"Did you advise her to break her engagement?" The steadiness with which Mrs. Hilbrough pushed her inquiry was disagreeable to her companion, who liked to find refuge from an unpleasant subject in vagueness of statement. But at least she was not driven to bay yet; she had not definitely advised Phillida to break with her lover.

"No; not that. I only gave her general advice to be faithful to her convictions."

Mrs. Frankland's avoidance of the explicit confirmed Mrs. Hilbrough's suspicion as to the tenor of the advice given. The latter blamed herself for having moved too slowly, and she was impatient, moreover, with Mrs. Frankland; for one is apt to be vexed when a person very clever in one way is conspicuously stupid in other regards. When Mrs. Hilbrough spoke again a trace of irritation showed itself.

"Phillida is the only person I know to whom I think your Bible readings may do harm."

"My Bible readings?" queried Mrs. Frankland. She had been used so long to hear her readings spoken of in terms not of praise but rather of rapture, as though they were the result of a demi-divine inspiration, that this implied censure or qualification of the universality of their virtue and application came to her, not exactly as a personal offense, but with the shock of something like profanation; and she reddened with suppressed annoyance.

"I don't mean that it is your fault," said Mrs. Hilbrough, seeking to get on a more diplomatic footing with her companion. "Phillida is very peculiar and enthusiastic in her nature, and she knows nothing of the world. She is prone to take all exhortations rather too literally."

"But my words have often encouraged Phillida," said Mrs. Frankland, who had been touched to the quick. "You would rob me of one of the solid comforts of my life if you took from me the belief that I have been able to strengthen her for her great work."

"I am sure you have encouraged her to go on," said Mrs. Hilbrough, desirous not to antagonize Mrs. Frankland. "But she also needs moderating. She is engaged to an admirable man, a man getting to be very well off, and who will be made cashier of our bank very soon. He is kind-hearted, liberal with his money, and universally beloved and admired in society."

Mrs. Frankland was not the person to undervalue such a catalogue of qualities when presented to her in the concrete. True, on her theory, a Christian young woman ought to be ready in certain circumstances to throw such a lover over the gunwale as ruthlessly as the sailors pitched Jonah headlong. That is to say, a Christian young woman in the abstract ought to be abstractly willing to discard a rich lover in the abstract. But presented in this concrete and individual way the case was different. She was a little dazzled at the brightness of Phillida's worldly prospects, now that they were no longer merely rhetorical, but real, tangible, and, in commercial phrase, convertible.