The Thirteenth Man

Alone with Mrs. Barrimore in the dimly-lighted drawing-room, Colonel Lane did not begin to press his suit as might be imagined. He had accepted her decree as final.

They sat at a little distance from each other, she on a low couch, and he in a basket-chair. A table, on which stood a pink-shaded lamp, was between them. He began to speak of Phyllis.

“I wish the child would confide in you, dear Mrs. Barrimore,” he said. “She gives me no confidence. It is probably my fault, but I do my best. It seems to me that it is a woman’s work. I am only a grim old soldier.”

“Phyllis has probably nothing to confide,” Mrs. Barrimore told him soothingly. “Young, innocent girls like Phyllis don’t have weighty secrets.”

“Yet I have a suspicion that Phyllis is hiding something,” said the Colonel uneasily.

“What could she have to hide?” inquired his companion.

“That’s just it—what?” answered the Colonel. “She made a terrible fuss when I would not allow her to become engaged to young Arbuthnot, but she got over it with surprising quickness. It would never have done—that engagement, you know—for Phyllis will be in and out of love a dozen times yet. I am sorry for the man, though, for he was in earnest, and he is gone out to quell a native rising and may lose his life. A fine soldier, young Arbuthnot! If Phyllis had stuck to her guns, I might have given my consent when he came back—if he ever did, poor fellow! But she has apparently got over it already. I hoped she had reverted to Langridge, but no! She began flirting with young Webster almost at once. She has been somewhere to-day and won’t say where.”

“That is the spirit of mischief in her,” said Mrs. Barrimore. “She likes to tease. She told me where she had been. She went over and saw Philip.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the Colonel.

“I told her she ought not to have done so,” went on Mrs. Barrimore, “unless I had been with her. But Philip is a safe friend for her. Poor Philip! he will never get over the loss of Eweretta!”

“I don’t know so much about that,” the Colonel affirmed. “In these days young folks don’t love as faithfully as when I was young. I question if real love ever comes to the very young nowadays—lasting love.”

Mrs. Barrimore’s cheeks flushed with that delicate pink at these words.

Colonel Lane saw the color come and go, and loved her the more for the pure heart which made those pretty blushes possible at her age. It was this purity of nature which more than anything else kept Mrs. Barrimore so young. Her grey eyes were as guileless as a child’s.

She answered hastily as if to ward off more intimate words.

“Oh, but Philip is not like others,” she said. “He never was, even as a child.”

Colonel Lane agreed. No, Philip was not like other men, he acknowledged, but mentally he judged it good for the others that he was not. Philip, in his opinion, was upright and honorable, but conceited and arrogant. It galled the Colonel not a little to note the way in which this young man patronized and criticized and ordered his beautiful mother.

Perhaps she had been weak in her boy’s early years. She had been too fond, too kind and indulgent. But Philip grown to be a man ought to understand and recompense her love better.

The Colonel was too wise, however, to ventilate his views on Philip to his mother.

He began to talk of Herbert Langridge.

“I really thought Phyllis meant to accept Herbert Langridge this second time,” he said. “But she has lost her last chance in that direction. Langridge told me quite frankly he should not ask her again—or willingly meet her any more.”

“But surely,” broke in Mrs. Barrimore, “you would not wish little Phil to make a loveless marriage?”

“Heavens! no!” he answered. “But I thought at one time she was in love with him.”

“Won’t you smoke?” said Mrs. Barrimore. “You know you can; and I think a man looks much more comfortable smoking.”

The Colonel pulled out a pipe.

“Thank you,” he said; “but I am comfortable here with you. It is so good to chat familiarly with a dear friend—and there is no friend like you.”

Again that pretty flush.

“Why don’t you come oftener, then?” she asked. “I am always so glad to see you.”

“How sweet of you to be glad!” he said.

Then a silence fell.

The Colonel lit his pipe.

“Home is pretty lonely,” he said. “A housekeeper isn’t like a wife; and Mrs. Ransom is a particularly hard, dull woman. She is more like an old maid than a widow. But she keeps the house well.”

“Well, that is what you want her for, isn’t it?” Mrs. Barrimore said smiling. “And Robert and I would be glad if you spent all your evenings with us. Come in as you used to. There is no reason why you should not!”

What strange creatures women were! Could not Annie Barrimore see what a fierce restraint the Colonel must put on himself if he were to be constantly in the presence of the woman he so loved, so desired? Apparently not! To her it seemed natural that she and he should fall into the ranks of mere friends. But her frank eyes told him that to her, at least, it would be a joy to see him every day, so he promised to come as usual. He did not doubt her love for him. She could not dissemble if she would. But he knew that she would obey what seemed to her to be the call of duty. She felt it to be her duty to stand by that boy of hers, that boy who had suffered so great a loss, and needed her.

That he, the Colonel, thought the sacrifice uncalled for and undeserved did not lessen his admiration for the unselfish, devoted motherhood which he saw exemplified in Mrs. Barrimore.

They chatted on till voices made themselves heard from the garden. The trio had returned.

“Shan’t I just take a rise out of young Philip!” came in Uncle Robert’s voice. “He sniffed at my verses and said I should never get the book published.”

Mrs. Barrimore smiled. “Has he told you?” she asked the Colonel.

“Told me what?”

“He has found a publisher for his poems. But don’t mistake his remark about Philip. Philip didn’t ‘sniff,’ as Robert calls it. He said publishers fought shy of verses.”

But Philip had “sniffed,” for all that, and perhaps not without reason. Robert Burns the second could rhyme, but he was not the poet he imagined himself, and it had required the aid of a golden key to unlock the heart of a publisher.

The trio entered the drawing-room, Uncle Robert exclaiming boisterously: “You have won your bet, Annie! I couldn’t keep my secret. I’ve told Dan and Phyllis, and now we’ll all drink success to ‘Wings and Winds.’ Ah, you’ve won your bet, Annie! What was it?—a dozen of gloves?”

“And when is ‘Wings and Winds’ to come out, Burns?” inquired the Colonel. “I congratulate you heartily.”

“This autumn, my friend,” said Uncle Robert, beaming, “and Dan is going to work round some of those Johnnies who put your portrait in the illustrateds.”

Mrs. Barrimore now led the way to the dining-room, where a silver tray with glasses was placed of an evening.

Uncle Robert following with the Colonel, whispered: “Can I congratulate you too? Been making hay while the sun shines? Eh, what?”

The Colonel shook his head. The evening had been possibly one of those lost opportunities which we all know about.

“Cheer up, Cupid!” whispered Uncle Robert. “‘Between a woman’s Yes and No, There is not room for a pin to go.’”

But Colonel Lane did not take comfort. Brave in war he had shown himself, but he was timorous in love.

So sacred was this woman in his eyes, that he felt like entering a temple when he came into her presence; and she had forbidden—albeit gently—his nearer approach.