CHAPTER XLI.
PHILIP’S DECISION.
SOME one else got down from the break after Lucy had been carefully handed out by Bertie, and followed her silently in the rain and dark to the door. He went in after her, with a passing nod of good-night to Bertie, who was somewhat discomfited when he turned round and almost stumbled upon the dark figure of Lucy’s cousin, who went in after her with the ease of relationship without any preliminaries. Bertie was discomfited by this apparition, and felt that a cousin was of all things in the world the most inconvenient at this special moment. But he could do nothing but retire, when the door was closed, and return to his sister, who was waiting for him. He could not bid Philip begone, or forbid him to interfere. Philip had a right, whereas Bertie had none. But he went away reluctantly, much disposed to grumble at Katie, who awaited him very quietly at the corner of the road. Katie’s heart was not so light as usual, any more than her brother’s. Why did Mr. Rainy leave her without a word when, following Bertie and Lucy, he had helped her out of the crowded carriage? They had been together almost all the day, and Katie had not minded the rain; why had he left her now so hastily, without anything but a good-night, instead of taking the opportunity of going with her to the White House, as he had done before? Two heads under one umbrella can sometimes make even the mud and wet of a dark road supportable, and Katie had expected this termination to the day with a little quickening of her heart. But he had put up his umbrella over her, and had left her, following up her brother with troubled haste, leaving Katie wounded and disappointed, and a little angry. It was not even civil, she said to herself, and one or two hot tears came to her eyes in the darkness. When Bertie joined her, she said nothing, nor did he. They crossed the road and stumbled through the mud and darkness to the White House, where Katie did not expect a very cheerful reception; for she knew, having her faculties sharpened by regard for her brother’s interest, that something had happened to St. Clair, who had gone so abruptly away.
“What does Rainy want going in there at this time of night?” Bertie said, as they slid along the muddy way.
“How should I know?” Katie said, sharply. “I am not Mr Rainy’s keeper.”
Poor girl, she did not mean to be disagreeable: but it was hard to be deserted, and then have her attention thus called to the desertion.
“Is he after Lucy, too?” said her brother. Oh, how blind men are! not to see that if he were after Lucy he was guilty of the most shameful deceit to another.
“Oh, I suppose you are all after Lucy! she turns all your heads,” Katie cried, with a harsh laugh. Money! that was the only thing they thought of; and what a fool she had been to think that it was possible that anybody could care for her with Lucy in the way!
As for Philip, he went in, following Lucy, with scarcely a word to any one. Mrs. Ford came out as usual, disposed to scold, but she stopped when she saw Philip behind. “I have something to say to Lucy,” he said, passing her with a nod, and following Lucy upstairs. This made Mrs. Ford forget that bedtime was approaching, and that it was full time to bolt and bar all the windows. She went into her parlor and sat down, and listened with all the breathless awe that surrounds a great event. What could he be going to say? what but the one thing that would finish all doubt? Mrs. Ford had always been a partisan of Philip. And though she fully valued Lucy’s fortune, it did not occur to her that a girl could refuse “a good offer,” for no reason at all. That girls do still refuse “good offers,” in the very face of the statistics which point out to them the excess of womankind and unlikelihood of marriage, is one of those contradictions of human nature which puzzle the philosopher. Mrs. Ford thought that it was Lucy’s first experience of the kind, and though she was anxious, she can not be said to have much fear. She put out her gas, all but one light, and waited, alive to every sound.
It would be hard to say why it was that Philip Rainy followed Lucy home. He had perceived his mistake the last time they had been together, and the folly of the constant watch which he had kept upon her; it had done him harm, he felt—it had made him “lose caste,” which was the most dreadful penalty he could think of. And the result of this conviction was that on being asked late, and he felt only on Lucy’s account, to this second party, he had made up his mind that this time he would possess his soul in silence. The thought that Lucy’s money might go to make some blockhead happy, some fool who had nothing to do with the Rainys, was no less intolerable to him than ever; but he began to feel that he could not prevent this by interfering with Lucy’s amusements, and that on the other hand he lost friends, so far as he was himself concerned. Therefore, he had carefully kept away from Lucy during the whole day; and—what else was there to do?—he fell immediately into the still more serious Charybdis which balanced this Scylla—that is to say, he found himself involuntarily, almost unwillingly, by the side of Katie Russell. Not much had been seen of them all the day; they had not minded the threatening of the rain. When the party was starting to go away they had been found at the very last under the same umbrella, leisurely making their way under the thickest of the trees, and keeping the whole party waiting. Between that moment and the arrival of the break at the Terrace Philip could not have given a very clear account of what had happened. It had been a kind of troubled elysium, a happiness darkened only by the thought which would occur now and then that it was an unlawful pleasure, and out of the question. He had no right to be happy—at least in that way. What he ought to have done would have been to make himself useful to everybody, to please the givers of the feast, and to show himself the popular useful young man, worthy of all confidence, which he had been hitherto believed to be. This, or else to secure Lucy the heiress-cousin, whom he had the best right to please—to carry her off triumphantly before everybody’s eyes, and to show all the small great people who patronized him how entirely superior he was to their patronage. But this latter was a step that it would only have been safe to take had he been entirely assured of its success; and he was not at all assured of its success either on one side or the other. Lucy did not want him, and he did not want Lucy. This was the fact, he felt; it was a fact that filled him with vexation unspeakable. Why should not he want Lucy? why should he want somebody quite different—a little girl without a sixpence, without interest or connection? Could anything be so perverse, so disappointing! but he could not explain or analyze it. He was forced to confess the fact, and that was all. He did not want Lucy; the question remained, should he compel himself to like her, and after that compel her to like him, notwithstanding this double indifference? The titter with which his late appearance had been received when he returned to the party, and when Katie, all shamefaced and blushing, had been helped into the overcrowded carriage, amid smiles, yet general impatience, for the rain was coming down, and everybody was anxious to get home, had shown him how far astray from the path of wisdom he had gone. Perhaps this conviction would have worn off had he been by Katie’s side crowded up into a corner, and feeling himself enveloped in that atmosphere of her which confused all his faculties with happiness, whenever he was with her, yet was not capable of being explained. But Philip was thrust into an already too large cluster of men on the box, and, crowded there amid the dripping of the umbrellas, had time to turn over in his mind many a troublesome thought. Whither was he going? what had he been doing? was he mad altogether to forget all his interests, to cast prudence behind him, and laugh at all that was necessary in his circumstances? The bitter predominated over the sweet as he chewed the cud of thought, seated on an inch of space among the bags and hampers, and umbrellas of other men, with the confused babble of the break behind him, which was all one mass of damp creatures, under a broken firmament of umbrellas where a few kept up a spasmodic fire of gloomy gayety, while all the rest were wrapped in still more gloomy silence. He heard Katie’s voice now and then among the others, and was partially wounded by the sound of it; then took himself to task and did his best to persuade himself that he was glad she could talk and get some pleasure out of it, and had not, like himself, dropped into a nether-world of gloom from that foolish paradise in which they had lost themselves. Much better if she did not care! he said to himself, with a bitter smile, and this thought helped to bring out and increase his general sense of discomfiture. The whole business must be put a stop to, he said to himself, with angry energy. And this it was which, when the break stopped to set down Lucy, suggested to him the step he had now taken. Katie was making her way out between the knees of the other passengers, from the place at the upper end of the carriage, where she had been all but suffocated, when Philip jumped down. He caught, by the light of the lamp, a grin on the countenance of the man who was helping her out, as he said, “Oh, here’s Rainy.” But for that he would most likely have gone off with her to the White House and snatched a few moments of fearful joy in the teeth of his own resolution. But that grin drove him wild. He put up his umbrella over her head, and left her abruptly. “I must see Lucy to-night,” he said, leaving her there, waiting for her brother. It was brutal, he felt, after all that had passed, but what, unless he wanted to compromise himself utterly, what could he do? He took no time to think, as he followed his cousin and her companion through the rain.
But when he had followed Lucy silently upstairs he did not know quite what to do or say next. Lucy stopped on her way to her room to change her habit, and looked round upon him with surprise. “Is it you, Philip?” she asked, wondering; then added, “I am glad to see you, I have scarcely seen you all day;” and led the way into the pink drawing-room. Philip sat down as he was told, but he did not know why he had come there, or what he wanted to say.
“The party has been rather spoiled by the rain,” she said.
“I suppose so,” he answered, vaguely. “Did you like it? Sometimes one does not mind the rain.”
“I minded it very much,” said Lucy, with a sigh; then, feeling that she was likely to commit herself if she pursued this subject, she added, “I am rather glad the time is over for these parties; they are—a trouble. The first one is pleasant—the others—”
Then she paused, and Philip’s mind went back to the first one, and to this which was just over. He had not enjoyed the first, except the end of it, when he took Katie home. And this he had enjoyed, but not the end. His imagination escaped from the present scene, and he seemed to see Katie going along the muddy road, under his umbrella, but without him. What could she think? that he had abandoned her? or would she care whether he abandoned her or not?
“That depends,” said Philip, oracularly, and, like Lucy, with a sigh; though the sigh was from a different cause. Then he looked at her across the table. She had not seated herself, but stood in her habit, looking taller and more graceful than usual, more high-bred too; for the girls whom Philip was in the habit of meeting did not generally indulge in such an expensive exercise as that of riding. He looked at her with a sort of spectator air, as though balancing her claims against those of the others. “I should not wonder,” he said, “if you would like your season at Farafield to be over altogether, and to be free to go back to your fine friends.”
“Why should you say my fine friends?” said Lucy, with gentle indignation; and then more softly, but also with a sigh, for she had been left for a long time without any news of one at least of them, whom she began to think her only real friend; “but indeed you are right, and I should be very glad to get back—all was so quiet there.”
“So quiet! If you are not quiet in Farafield where should you know tranquillity?” cried Philip, with a little mock laugh. He felt that she must intend this for a joke, and in his present temper it seemed to him a very bad joke.
Lucy looked at him with a momentary inquiry in her eyes—a question which had a great deal of wistfulness and anxiety in it. Could she tell her troubles to him? He was her kinsman—who so well qualified to advise her? But then she shook her head, and turned away from him with an impatient sigh.
“What is it you mean?” he said, with some excitement. His mind was in a turmoil, which he could not tell how to still. He felt himself at the mercy of his impulses, not knowing what he might be made to do in the next five minutes. It was the merest “toss-up” what he would do. Never had he felt himself so entirely irresponsible, so without independent meaning, so ready to be hurried in any direction. He did not feel in him the least spark of love for Lucy. He felt impatient with her, wroth with all the world for making so much of her, indignant that she should be preferred too—others. But with all that he did not know what he might find himself saying to her the next moment. The only thing was that it would not be his doing, it would be the force of the current of Fate, on which he felt himself whirling along—to be tossed over the rapids or dashed against the rocks, he did not know how or when. “What do you mean?” he repeated; “you look mysterious, as if you had something to tell—what is it? I have seen nothing of you the whole day. We have been nominally at the same party, and we are cousins, though you don’t seem to remember it much, and we once were friends; but I have scarcely seen you. You have been absorbed by other attractions, other companions.”
“Philip!” said Lucy, faltering and growing pale. Was he going to desert her, too?
“Yes,” he said, “it is quite true. I am one that it might have been supposed likely you would turn to. Natural feeling should have made you turn to me. I have always tried to stand by you; and you have got what would have enriched the whole family—all to yourself. Nature pointed to me as your nearest; and yet you have never,” he said, pausing to give additional bitterness to his words, and feeling himself caught in an eddy, and whirling round in that violent stream without any power of his own, “never shown the slightest inclination to turn or to cling to me.”
“Indeed, indeed, Philip—” Lucy began.
“Why should you say indeed, indeed? What is indeed, indeed? Just what I tell you. You have never singled me out, whoever might be your favorite. All your family have been put at a disadvantage for you; but you never singled me out, never showed me any preference—which would have been the best way of setting things right.”
There was a look of alarm on Lucy’s face.
“If it is my money, Philip, I wish you had the half of it, or the whole of it,” she said. “I wish I could put it all away, and stand free.”
“It is not your money,” he said, “it is your—” And here he stopped short, and looked at her with staring troubled eyes. The eddy had nearly whirled him away, when he made a grasp at the bank, and felt himself, all at once, to recover some mastery of his movements. He did not know very well what he had been going to say; “your—” what? love? It was not love surely. Not such a profanation as that. He looked at her with a sudden suspicious threatening pause. Then he burst again into a harsh laugh. “What was I going to say? I don’t know what I was going to say.”
“What is the matter with you, Philip? I am your friend and your cousin; there is something wrong—tell me what it is.” Lucy came up to him full of earnest sympathy, and put her hand on his shoulder, and looked with hectic anxiety in his face. “Tell me what it is,” she said, with a soft tone of entreaty. “I am as good as your sister, Philip. If I could not do anything else I could be sorry for you at least.”
He looked up at her with the strangest staring look, feeling his head go round and round; and then he gave another loud sudden laugh, which alarmed her more. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “yes, I’ll tell you. It is the best thing I can do. I was going—to make love to you, Lucy—love!—for your money.”
She patted him softly on the shoulder, soothing him as if he had been a child confessing a fault. “No, no, Philip, no. I am sure you were not thinking of anything so unkind.”
“Lucy!” he said, seizing her hand, the other hand. She never even removed the one which lay softly, soothing him, on his shoulder. “You are a good girl. You don’t deserve to have a set of mean hounds round you as we all are. And yet—there are times when I feel as if I could not endure to see you give your fortune, the great Rainy fortune, to some—other fellow. There! that is the truth.”
“Poor Philip!” she said, shaking her head, and still moving her hand softly on his shoulder, with a little consolatory movement, calming him down. Then she added, with a smile, “You need not be in any trouble for that, for I am not going to give it to any—fellow. I never can by the will.”
“I don’t put any trust in that,” he said, “no one would put any trust in that. You will marry, of course, and then—it will be as Providence ordains, or your husband. He will take the command of it, and it will be his, whatever you may think now.”
“I do not think so,” said Lucy, with a smile, “and, besides, there is no such person. You need not trouble yourself about that.”
Then Philip wrung her hand again, looking up at her in such deadly earnest that it took from him all sense of honor. “Lucy, if I could have fallen in love with you, and you with me, that would have been the best thing of all,” he said.
“But you see it has not happened, Philip; it is not our fault.”
“No, I suppose not,” he said, gloomily, with a sigh; “it is not my fault. I have tried my best; but things were too many for me.” Here he got up, shaking off unceremoniously Lucy’s hand. “Good-night! you must be damp in your habit, and I’ve got wet feet,” he said.
Mrs. Ford lay in wait for him as he came down-stairs, but he only said a hasty good-night to her as he went away. His feet were wet, and he realized the possibility of taking cold, which would be very awkward now that the duties of the school in Kent’s Lane had recommenced. Nevertheless, instead of going home, he crossed the road, and went stumbling among the mud toward the White House. What did he want there? he had a dim recollection of his umbrella, but it was not his umbrella he wanted. And Philip was fortunate, though, perhaps, he did not deserve it. A light flashed suddenly out from the White House as he reached the door. Bertie had taken his sister back, and had gone in, where he met but a poor reception. And Katie had come out to the door to see her brother depart. When she saw the other figure appearing in the gleam of light from the door, she gave a little shriek of mingled pleasure and malice. “It is Mr. Rainy come for his umbrella! Here it is!” she said, diving into the hall and reappearing with the article in question, all wet and shining. She held it out to him, with a laugh in which there was a good deal of excitement, for Katie had not been without her share in the agitations of the evening. “Here is your umbrella, Mr. Rainy. I was so glad to have it, and it is so good of you to save me the trouble of sending it back.” Philip stepped close up to the door, close to her as she stood on the threshold. “It was not for the umbrella I came,” he said as he took it from her. “I came only to look at the house you were in.” It was a strange place to make a declaration, with Bertie within hearing, the dark and humid night on one side, the blazing unsympathetic light of the hall on the other. But he was excited, too, and it seemed a necessity upon him to commit himself, to go beyond the region of prudence, the place from which he could draw back. Katie grew suddenly pale, then blushed crimson, and drew away from the door, with a wavering, hesitating consent. “That was not much worth the while,” she said, hurriedly. “Are you coming my way, Rainy?” said Bertie, who did not understand anything about it, and had his head full of other thoughts.