Miss Phillips

“ Phillips was a lover. He was also a young man. He reverenced the lady who was mistress of his heart and queen. He also, as is the way of lovers very much in love, suffered from a conviction that she ought to be guarded and protected. It seemed to him wrong that she, with no other companion than Kalliope, should sleep in a great lonely house on an island where strange people lived. Thus young men, the best of them, show contempt for the courage and ability of the women they admire. The Queen herself laughed at his fears. ”

“ Will Phillips was much more of a person than she had been in Paris. Still, here as there, the woman in her was the first and last fact. She was thirty-seven, and in the very best of health. To one who did not lay exclusive emphasis on mere youth, the first bloom of the fruit, she was much more beautiful than when, as a raw girl from Ottumwa, she had married Willie Phillips. Sensitive, nervous, in the full tide of her physical life, she had what is euphemistically called to-day temperament. To this instinctive side of the woman, the handsome, strong young man had always appealed. ”

“ Born in the highest possible position in America, Mr. Phillips has all the advantages that birth can give to one in that country. Educated at the first University, graduating with all the honours which the College could bestow on him, and studying the law and becoming a member of the bar, he has all the accomplishments that these advantages can give to a man of a great mind. Nature has treated him as a favourite. His stature is not tall, but handsome; his expressive countenance paints and reflects every emotion of his soul. ”

“ She rose to obey—she in the general's purchases of filmy nightgown under a pale-pink silk dressing-gown.
He smiled with that curious noiseless mumbling and smacking of the thin lips. She sat down again.
"Don't keep me waiting. It's chilly," he said, advancing toward her.
"I shall sleep in here to-night—on the couch," said she. She was trembling with fright at her own audacity. She could see a fifty-centime piece and a copper dancing before her eyes. She felt horribly alone and weak, but she had no desire to retract the words with which she had thrown down the gauntlet. ”

“ Phillips shouted:
“Long live the Queen! long live the Queen!”
The Queen, still standing on the bottom step, gave a little cry of delight. The men in the boat sat still, with puzzled grins on their faces. Mr. Phillips bounded down to them, leaping the steps in threes and fours.
“Cheer, you blighters,” he said, “unless you want your silly skulls smashed. Cheer like billy-o. Long live the Queen!” ”

“ We may be deceiving ourselves. But I do not think so, Joan. I believe—and you do too, don’t you?—that there can be high thoughts in common between a man and a woman. I’m sure they can care in such a way that passion becomes like the fire, fusing two metals into one stronger and better than either by itself. And I think—I feel—yes, it seems to me I know, that it is so with us. Oh, Joan, he and I need each the other.”
Joan threw away her cigarette and rested her head upon her arms, so that her face was concealed from Emily. ”

“ He was of those men who do not go far on the journey without a woman, or long with the same woman. He abhorred monotony both in work and in love; a typical impressionist, he soon found one subject, whether for his mind or for his heart, exhausted and wearisome.
Emily in her loneliness and youth, yearning for love and companionship, was so frankly attracted that he at first thought her as easy a conquest as had been the women who dwelt in the many and brief chapters of the annals of his conquering career. ”

“ With many a secret smile he had observed that she thought herself perfect physically. This did not repel him; it never does repel a man—when and so long as he is under the enchantment of the charms the woman more or less exaggerates. But, while he had often seen women with inordinate physical vanity, so often that he had come to regarding it as an essential part of feminine character, never before had he seen one so content with her own good opinion of herself that she was indifferent to appreciation from others. ”

“ Ellersly trying to condescend to be “gracious,” and treating me as if I were some sort of museum freak or menagerie exhibit. I can see Anita. She was like a statue of snow; she spoke not a word; if she lifted her eyes, I failed to note it. And when I was leaving—I with my collar wilted from the fierce, nervous strain I had been enduring—Mrs. Ellersly, in that voice of hers into which I don't believe any shade of a real human emotion ever penetrated, said: “You must come to see us, Mr. Blacklock. We are always at home after five.” ”

“ She was proud of Sam’s wildness, full as proud as she was of her father’s sermons. She rattled cheerfully on until it was time for her to go and, as Emily and she were putting on their wraps at the same time, she kissed her impulsively, blushing a little, saying “You’re so beautiful. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Mind?” Emily laughed and kissed her. Evelyn wondered why there were tears in the eyes of this fascinating woman with the musical voice and the expression like a goddess of liberty’s. ”

“ Phillips, thrust ever between them, against the background of that hideous furniture, of those bilious wall papers—the loneliness that would ever walk with her, sit down beside her in the crowded restaurant, steal up the staircase with her, creep step by step with her from room to room—the ever unsatisfied yearning for a tender word, a kindly touch. ”

“ Had Phillips been older and wiser he would not have yielded so readily to despair; experience would have taught him that a woman's "No" is not a refusal; wisdom would have told him that the absolute does not exist. ”

“ Slowly, with his ludicrously pompous strut, he marched to the drawing-room door. She had not felt like smiling, but if there had been any such inclination it would have fled before the countenance that turned upon her at the threshold. It was the lean, little face with the funny toupee and needle-like mustache and imperial, but behind it lay a personality like the dull, cold, yellow eyes of the devil-fish ambushed in the hazy mass of dun-colored formlessness of collapsed body and tentacles. He said:
"You'd best be careful how you conduct yourself. ”

“ Six months after you’ve married Evelyn, you’ll be thankful you did it. You’d not like a woman so full of caprices and surprises as I am. But I will not argue it.”
“I wonder if you’ll ever fall in love?” he said wistfully.
“I don’t know, I’m sure. Probably I expect too much in a man. Again, I might care only for a man who was out of reach.”
“You’re too romantic, Emily, for this life. You forget that you’re more or less human after all, and have to deal with human beings.”
“I wish I could forget that I’m human.” Emily sighed. Edgar looked at her suspiciously. ”

“ One night they were driving in a hansom after a dinner on the Savoy balcony—he suddenly bent and kissed the long sleeve of her thin summer dress at the wrist. “You light a flame that goes dancing through my veins,” he said. “I wish I could find new words to put it in. But I’ve only the old ones, Emily—I love you and I want your love—I want you. This is an unconditional surrender and I’m begging you to receive it. You won’t say no, will you, Emily?” ”

“ When the last jeer had died away, when the figure of Joe McCaskey had disappeared into the misty twilight, Phillips drew a deep breath. What a day this had been, what a tumult he had lived through, what an experience he had undergone! This was an adventure! He had lived, he had made an enemy. Life had come his way, and the consciousness of that fact caused him to tingle. This would be something to talk about; what would the folks back home say to this? And the Countess—that wonderful woman of ice and fire! That superwoman who could sway the minds of men, whose wit was quicker than light. ”

“ The other is Phillips, the hunter.”
“Phillips! Phillips, did you say? Why, as much as he has been at our house, he has never dropt a word from which one could infer that you were not a perfect stranger to him.”
“I did not suppose he had. Phillips is a peaceable, close-mouthed fellow; pretends not to know any thing about anybody, when he thinks the parties concerned would rather have him ignorant; keeps a secret by never letting anybody know he has one; and never means to cross another man’s path. ”

“ Phillips argued, after a pause. "Diane is a married woman; she, too, is fighting a battle; she is restrained by every convention, every sense of right, every instinct of wifehood and womanhood. Now, then, you must sweep all that aside; your own fire must set her ablaze despite—"
"I? I must do all this?" mocked the other, furiously. "Why must I do it all? Make Norma play up to me. She underplays me all the time; she's not in my key. ”

“ Mary sat white and still. Sax stood behind her, his fiddle by his side, holding the bow like a sword. He was white and still, too, and looking up to where the moon was going out. Their backs were turned to the devilry that threatened us.
I stepped forward,—easy as possible, and spoke to her.
"You're not looking well, Mary," I said. "Hadn't you better go down?"
That was before my poker days. Playing a four-flush gives a man control of his face and voice. She heard what I wanted to hide at once, being naturally sharp as a needle and tuned high that night. ”

“ All that one needs to do is to keep calm and not try to hurry destiny. He’s sure to come into his own.” He hesitated, then [53] added. “And I think your ‘own’ is going to be worth while.”
They swung into the Riverside Drive—the sun was making the crest of the wooded Palisades look as if a forest fire were raging there; the Hudson, broad and smooth and still, was slowly darkening; the breeze mingled the freshness of the water and the fragrance of the trees. And Emily felt a burden, like an oppressively heavy garment, falling from her.
“What are you thinking?” asked Marlowe. ”

“ It was my mother's dying boast that no man, nor no woman, had ever seen her, a grown woman, except fully dressed."
"Really?" said Margaret absently. She stood up, surveyed herself in the triple mirror—back, front, sides. "So many women never look at themselves in the back," observed she, "or know how their skirts hang about the feet. I believe in dressing for all points of view."
"You certainly are just perfect," said the adoring Selina, not the least part of her admiring satisfaction due to the fact that the toilette was largely the creation of her own hands. ”

“ Phillips had shown unmistakable opposition to the acts of her liege lord. Elise had more than seconded her mother in haughty indignation; though with her superb training in obedience she could not be openly rebellious. When he had brought the quartette into his home Mr. Phillips could not fail to see the pain in his wife's eyes as she asked:
"Was that necessary?"
"Why, can you not see," he replied with some hot feeling in his tones, "that it was the only thing to be done? They are very respectable people, all of them. They are intelligent and well-bred, as you can see. ”

“ But for such as the Hollisters and the Clearwaters he remained a bumpkin, a demagogue, an impossible lower-class person.
Yet he had wrought the wondrous, proposal-fraught change in Miss Clearwater. And he had done it by impudently pausing at her phaeton in Harrison’s main street and telling her, with exasperating indifference to her icy manner, that he could marry her if he wished but that he had no place in his life for such a person as she.
Why had this transformed her? For two reasons, both important to those men who would fain have influence over one—or more—of the female sex. ”

“ It was impossible for any one to see into the living-rooms, for the house was built upon a slope and the front door was approached by a flight of steps. Just as Phillips was turning away a man emerged from behind a belt of shrubs, followed by a truculent-looking bull-terrier. He looked like a gardener, though there was in his appearance that faint, intangible something which suggested a close familiarity with the turf. He eyed Phillips sourly and suspiciously, and none too politely requested to know his business. ”

“ Mrs. Phillips, torn between her sense of duty and fear of losing this new happiness, would yield to the child’s coaxing. Often they would be left alone to discuss the nation’s needs uninterrupted. Conscientiously they would apply themselves to the task. Always to find that, sooner or later, they were looking at one another, in silence.
One day Phillips burst into a curious laugh. They had been discussing the problem of the smallholder. Joan had put a question to him, and with a slight start he had asked her to repeat it. ”

“ But all they heard was the interminable babble of the Khan, as he sat at the table shivering with fear and unable to eat a morsel of his food.
"You won't give me up!... I have been a good friend to the English.... All my life I have been a good friend to the English."
"We will do what we can," said Phillips, and he rose from the table and went up on to the roof. He lay down behind the low parapet and looked over towards the town. The house was a poor place to defend. At the back beyond the orchard the hill-side rose and commanded the roof. ”

“ If I'm in your power, you're in my power, too."
Moved by the same impulse both looked up the arbor toward the rear door of the house. There stood Selma Gordon, regarding them with an expression of anger as wild as the blood of the steppes that flowed in her veins. Victor, with what composure he could master, put out his hand in farewell to Jane. He had been too absorbed in the emotions raging between him and her to note Selma's expression. But Jane, the woman, had seen. ”