Part 67

"No, no," said Philip, seating himself.

"I've not seen much of you lately, anywhere," said Millard, making a new start. "But that is my fault. I've pretty much cut general society this spring, and I think for good. I've been busy and tired, and to tell the truth, I don't care much for society any more. You still go out a good deal. Is there anything interesting?"

"Oh, no," said Gouverneur.

Seeing that Philip was preoccupied and that all attempts to give him direction and set him in motion were likely to prove futile, Charley concluded to let him start himself in whatever direction his mood might lead him. He did this the more readily that he himself found talking hard work in his present mood. But by way of facilitating the start, Millard held out to Philip a bronze tray containing some cigars.

"No, thank you, Charley. I don't feel like smoking."

To Millard's mind nothing could have been more ominous than for Philip Gouverneur to refuse to smoke.

"I suppose I might as well begin at once," said Philip. "If I wait I never shall get the courage to say what I want to say. I ought to have waited till morning, but if I once put off a good resolution it is never carried out. So I came down here pell-mell, Charley, resolved not to give myself time to think what a piece of impertinent impudence I was going to be guilty of." Then after a pause he said: "If you turn me out of the apartment neck and heels, I sha'n't be surprised."

"Pshaw, Philip, you excite my curiosity," said Millard, trying to smile, but yet a little aghast at seeing his old friend in this unusual mood, and divining that the subject would be disagreeable.

"I come to speak about Phillida," said Philip.

Ever since Millard's hopes had received their quietus from Mrs. Callender's note in which Phillida declined to receive a visit from him, he had recognized the necessity for getting Phillida out of his mind if he were ever again to have any sane contentment in life. If Phillida did not any longer care for him, it would be unmanly for him to continue brooding over the past. But he found that exhorting himself to manliness would not cure a heartache. There was nothing he could have dreaded so much at this time as a conversation about Phillida, and, of all people he most disliked to speak of her with Philip Gouverneur. He made no reply at all to Philip's blunt statement of the subject on which he proposed to converse. But Gouverneur was too much absorbed in holding himself to his plan of action to take note of his companion's lack of responsiveness.

"I want to ask whether you still love her or not, Charley," said Philip, with a directness that seemed brutal, his gaze fixed on the wall.

"I have no claims upon her," said Millard, "if that is what you want to know."

"That isn't what I want to know. I asked if you still loved her?"

"I don't know whether even you have a right to ask that question," said Millard with manifest annoyance.

"I am her cousin," said Philip, looking up at Millard with eyes strangely unsteady and furtive.

"If there were any charge that I had wronged her, you, as her cousin, might have a right to inquire," said Millard, who fancied that Gouverneur had a personal end in making the inquiry, and who at any rate did not care to be known as a discarded and broken-hearted lover. "I'll tell you plainly that it is a subject on which I don't wish to speak with anybody. Besides it's hardly fair to come to me as Phillida's cousin, when there is reason to believe your feelings toward her are more than cousinly. I have no claims on Phillida, no expectation of a renewal of our engagement, and I certainly have no complaint to make of her. Nobody has any right to inquire further."

Charley Millard got up and walked the floor in excitement as he said this.

"You're plaguey cross, Charley. I never saw you so impolite before. Didn't know you could be. I suppose you're right, by Jupiter! I went too straight at the mark, and you had a right to resent it. But I had to go at it like a man having a tooth pulled, for fear I'd back out at the last moment."

There was a ten seconds' pause, during which Millard sat down. Then Philip spoke again.

"I know, Charley; you have misunderstood. You think I wish to get a disclaimer that will clear the way for me. Charley--" Philip spoke now in a voice low and just a little husky,--"if I loved Phillida and believed she could love me, do you think I'd wait to ask your permission? If I wished to marry her and she loved me, I wouldn't ask any man's permission! And I came here not in my own interest, nor in your interest either. I am here only for Phillida's sake and as her cousin, and I want to know whether you love her."

"If you want me to do anything for her, I am ready. That is all I ought to be required to say," said Millard, softened by Philip's evident emotion, but bent on not betraying his own feelings.

"I suppose that means that you don't care for her," said Gouverneur. Then he went on, looking into the fireplace: "Well, that's an end of it. What an idiot she has been! She has thrown you over and alienated your affections, and made herself the talk of the streets. You wouldn't think such a fine-looking woman could make herself so utterly ridiculous. She is a mortification to her relations, and--"

"Now, Philip, stop," said Millard, with heat. "You are in my house. No man shall say a word against that woman in my hearing while I live. I tell you that even her mistakes are noble. If her relatives are ashamed of such as she is, I am sorry for her relatives." Millard made an effort to say more, but his utterance was choked.

Philip laughed a sardonic little laugh.

"Charley, before God, I was not sincere in a word I said against Phillida. I lied with deliberate purpose. Now I know that you love her. That's what I wanted to find out. I only denounced her to get at your feelings. You wouldn't tell me, I had to resort to a ruse."

"Do you think it--do you think it's the thing to pry into my feelings?" said Millard, still speaking hotly.

"Yes, I do, under the circumstances. In return I'll tell you something worth your listening to, if you'll only cool off enough to hear it."

Millard's curiosity was excited by this, but he made no reply; he only sat still with Philip's eyes fixed upon him.