CHAPTER XXII.

HE HAD EXPLAINED TO PHYLLIS ONCE THAT HE THOUGHT OF GOD ONLY AS A PRINCIPLE.

The sound of the hansom wheels died away before the father and daughter exchanged a word. Mr. Ayrton was the first to speak.

“It seems to have been a night of mischance,” said he.

“I am very glad that Mr. Linton has returned,” said she.

“What? Now, why should you be glad of that very ordinary incident?”

“Why? Oh, papa, I am so fond of her!”

“She may be fond of him, after all.”

Mr. Ayrton spoke musingly.

“Of course she is,” said Phyllis, with a positiveness that was designed to convince herself that she believed her own statement.

“And he may be fond of her—yes, at times,” resumed Mr. Ayrton. “That toilet of hers seems to have been the only happy element in the game of cross-purposes which was played to-night.”

“Ah,” whispered the girl.

“Yes; it was in inspiration. She could not have expected her husband to-night. What a dress! Even a husband would be compelled to admit its fascination. And she said she meant to wear it at the opera to-night. It was scarcely an opera toilet, was it?”

“Ella’s taste is never at fault, papa.”

“I suppose not. I wonder if he is capable of appreciating the—the—let us say, the inspiration of that toilet. Is that, I wonder, the sort of dress that a man likes his wife to wear when she welcomes him home after an absence of some months? No matter it was exquisite in every detail. Curious, her coming here and waiting after she had learned that you were out, was it not; from nine o’clock—that fateful hour!—to-night.”

“I think she must have felt—lonely,” said Phyllis. “She seemed so glad to see me—so relieved. She meant to stay with me all night, poor thing! Oh, why should her husband stay away from her for months at a time? It is quite disgraceful!”

“I think that we had better go to bed,” said her father. “If we begin to discuss abstract questions of temperament we may abandon all hope of sleep tonight. We might as well try to fathom Herbert Courtland’s reasons for going to yacht with so uncongenial a party as Lord Earlscourt’s. Good-night, my dear!”

He kissed her and went upstairs. She did not follow him immediately. She stood in the center of the room, and over her sweet face a puzzled expression crept, as a single breath of wind passes over the smooth surface of a lake on a day when no wind stirs a leaf.

She thought first of Herbert Courtland, which of itself was a curious incident. How did it come that he had yielded so easily to the invitation of Lord Earlscourt to accompany him on his cruise in the yacht Water Nymph? (Lord Earlscourt’s imagination in the direction of the nomenclature of his boats as well as his horses was not unlimited.)

But this was just the question which her father had suggested as an example of a subject of profitless discussion. She remembered this, and asked herself if it was likely that she, having at her command fewer data than her father bearing upon this case, should make a better attempt than he made at its solution. Her father had seen Herbert Courtland since he had agreed to go on the cruise, and was therefore in the better position to arrive at a reasonable conclusion in regard to the source of the impulse upon which Mr. Courtland had acted; so much she thought certain. And yet her father had suggested the profitless nature of such an investigation, and her father was certainly right.

Only for a single moment did it occur to her that something she had said to Herbert Courtland when he was sitting there, there in that chair beside her, might have had its influence upon him—only for a single moment, however; then she shook her head.

No, no! that supposition was too, too ridiculous to be entertained for a moment. He had, to be sure, shown that he felt deeply the words which she had quoted as they came from Mrs. Haddon; but what could those words have to do with his sudden acceptance of Lord Earlscourt’s invitation to go to Norway?

She made up her mind that it was nothing to her what course Herbert Courtland had pursued, consequently the endeavors to fathom his reason for adopting such a course would be wholly profitless. But the question of the singular moods suggested by the conduct and the words of her friend Ella Linton stood on a very different basis. Ella was her dearest friend, and nothing that she had said or done should be dismissed as profitless.

What on earth had Ella meant by appearing in that wonderful costume that night? It was not a toilet for the opera, even on a Melba night; even on a “Romeo and Juliet” night, unless, indeed, the wearer meant to appear on the stage as Juliet, was the thought which occurred to the girl. Her fantastic thought—she thought it was a fantastic thought—made her smile. Unless——

And then another thought came to her which, not being fantastic, banished her smile.

Unless——

She got to her feet—very slowly—and walked very slowly—across the room. She seated herself on the sofa where Ella had sat, and she remained motionless for some minutes. Then she made a motion with one of her hands as if sweeping from before her eyes some flimsy repulsiveness—the web of an unclean thing flashing in the air. In another instant she had buried her face in the pillow that still bore the impress of Ella’s face.

“Oh, God—my God, forgive me—forgive me—forgive me!” was her silent, passionate prayer as she lay there sobbing. “How could I ever have such a thought, so terrible a thought. She is my friend—my sister—and she put herself into her husband’s arms and kissed him! Oh, God, forgive me!”

That was her prayer for the greater part of the night as she lay in her white bed.

She felt that she had sinned grievously in thought against her friend, when she recalled the way in which her friend had thrown herself into the arms of her husband. That was the one action which the girl felt should entitle Ella Linton to be the subject of no such horrid thought as had been for a shocking instant forced upon her mind, when she reflected upon the strange passion which had tingled through Ella’s repetition of the fiery words of Juliet.

She recalled every strange element in the incident of Ella’s appearance in the drawing room: the way in which Ella had kissed her and clung to her as a child might have done on finding someone to protect it; she recalled the wild words which Ella had uttered, and, finally, the terrible expression which had appeared on her face as she whispered that reckless answer to Phyllis’ question, when she had picked up her wrap and flung it around her just before the sound of footsteps had come to their ears. All that she recalled in connection with that extraordinary visit of Ella’s was quite intelligible to her; but the mystery of all was more than neutralized by her recollection of the way Ella had thrown herself into her husband’s arms. That action should, she felt, be regarded as the one important factor, as it were, in the solution of the problem of Ella’s mood—Ella’s series of moods. Nothing else that she had done, nothing that she had said, was worthy of being taken account of, alongside that dominant act of the true wife.

The little whisper which suggested to her that there was a good deal that was mysterious in the incident of her friend’s visit she refused to regard as rendering it less obligatory on her—Phyllis—to pray that she might be forgiven that horrid suspicion which, for an instant, had come to her; and so she fell asleep praying to God to forgive her for her sin (in thought) against her friend.

And while Phyllis was praying her prayer, her friend, the True Wife, was praying with her face down upon her pillow, and her bare arms stretched out over the white lace of the bed:

“Forgive me, O God; forgive me! and keep him away from me—forever and ever and ever. Amen.”

And while both these prayers were being prayed, Herbert Courtland was sitting on one of the deck stools of the yacht Water Nymph, looking back at the many lights that gleamed in clusters along the southern coast of England, now far astern; for a light breeze was sending the boat along with a creaming, quivering wake. In the bows a youth was making the night hideous through the agency of a banjo and a sham negro melody. Amidships, Lord Earlscourt and two other men were playing, by the light of a lantern slung from the backstay, a game called poker; Lord Earlscourt, at every fresh deal, trying to make the rest understand how greatly the worry of being held responsible, as the patron of the living of St. Chad’s, for the eccentricities of his rector, had affected his nerves—a matter upon which his friends assured him, with varied degrees of emphasis, they were in no way interested.

Within a few feet of these congenial shipmates Herbert Courtland sat looking across the shining ripples to the shining lights of the coast; wondering how he came to be on the sea instead of on the shore. Was this indeed the night over which his imagination had gloated for months? Was it indeed possible that this was the very night following the day—Thursday—for which he had engaged himself in accordance with the letter that he still carried in his pocket?

How on earth did it come that he was sitting with his arm over the bulwarks of a yacht instead of——Oh, the thing was a miracle—a miracle! He could think of it in no other light than that of a miracle.

Well, if it were a miracle, it had been the work of God, and God had to be thanked for it. He had explained to Phyllis once that he thought of God only as a Principle—as the Principle which worked in opposition to the principle of nature. That was certainly the God which had been evolved out of modern civilization. The pagan gods had been just the opposite. They had been founded on natural principles. The Hebrew tradition that God had made man in his own image was the reverse of the scheme of the pagan man who had made God after his own image; in the image of man created he God.

But holding the theory that he held—that God was the sometimes successful opponent to the principles of nature (which he called the Devil)—Herbert Courtland felt that this was the very God to whom his thanks were due for the miracle that had been performed on his behalf.

“Thank God—thank God—thank God!” he murmured, looking out over the rippling waters, steel gray in the soft shadow of the summer’s night.

But then he held that “thank God” was but a figure of speech.

“Tinky-tink, tinky-tink, tinky-tinky-tinky-tinky-tinky-tinky-tink,” went the youth with the banjo in the bows.