The Thirteenth Man

By MRS. COULSON KERNAHAN Author of “Under Seal of the Confessional,” “The Gate of Sinners,” “The Fraud,” “Trewinnot of Guy’s,” “An Artist’s Model,” etc., etc.

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

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Copyright, 1910, by G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

THE THIRTEENTH MAN

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TO MISS M. BETHAM-EDWARDS Whom all the world admires as poet, novelist and essayist, and all who [Pg 5]know her personally love and reverence as true woman and dear friend.

CHAPTER IWHICH INTRODUCES A YOUNG AUTHOR

A strange, mournful song broke the stillness of a hot July afternoon, and caused two pedestrians to come to a halt in a lane on which dust lay thick.

On either side were high banks, surmounted by unclipped hedges.

One of the pedestrians, a young and athletic man, had climbed the bank nearer to him in a second, and was peering through a gap in the hedge, where nothing met his gaze but miles of smiling country, dotted by farms at long intervals, a bungalow covered with rambler roses, and a white house on the border of a wood.

“Can you see anybody, sir?” asked the man in the lane, who was dressed as a farmer.

The weird singing rose again.

“I should take it for a sea-gull, sir,” said the puzzled farmer, “except that we are a good five miles from the sea here.”

The young man sprang back into the lane, causing a cloud of white dust to rise. His clean-shaven face had a troubled expression.

“It sounded to me like a woman chanting a dirge.”

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“I expect it is some rascal of a boy amusing himself,” said the farmer reassuringly. “A most unholy noise to make, I call it.”

He looked uneasily at his companion. If Mr. Barrimore were a nervous sort of man he might not take the bungalow, and the farmer wanted to let it.

The bungalow looked lovely now, covered by roses, but it was undeniably lonely at any time, and in winter desolate enough. He followed up his remark:

“If you come to live in the country, Mr. Barrimore, you will have to get used to queer noises. The owls at night hoot, and the way they breathe would almost make you believe it was a human being. But you soon get to take no heed to country sounds. If book-writing is your trade, you couldn’t find a better place to carry it on in than my bungalow. Wonderfully pretty it looks now, with the roses out. We shall be coming to it at the turn of the road.”

“I saw it just now, Mr. Pickett, from the top of the bank,” said Barrimore. “It looked charming. But I can’t get that sad singing out of my head. It was to me a heart-break set to music. But”—(Barrimore smiled, and for the first time his companion noted that the young man was good-looking)—“but authors are imaginative, and I am willing to accept your view of the case. You seem to think I am nervous!” (He smiled again.) “But I have never had that character. Here we are!”

On the right stood the big red-tiled bungalow, with its white verandah and its wealth of red rambler roses.

Pickett jingled a bunch of keys as he approached the padlocked gate.

“You see, sir, that the garden is in good order,”[Pg 9] he remarked, as he unfastened the gate. “And the water in the well is beautiful, and cold as can be, even this weather. The painter-chap who built it spared no expense, and there’s flooring put down in yonder clear space for a stable, if you should like me to put one up, which I will do, if you take the bungalow for three years.”

“I think I can promise to do that if I like the place,” said Barrimore rather absently. “One can always shut it up, you know.”

Pickett stared. He could not understand the wastefulness suggested by the idea of paying rent and shutting up the place. However, it was all right so far as he personally was concerned, and this well-dressed young man, who carried a gold cigar-case, had probably a big banking account.

The interior of the bungalow turned out to be ideal. There were six rooms in all—two reception-rooms, three bedrooms and a kitchen. The scheme of decoration was charming, and had evidently been carefully thought out by the “painter-chap” Pickett had referred to.

Above all, there was a splendid bathroom.

This last item decided Barrimore to take the bungalow. To him who revelled in a cold morning tub it was of no consequence that there was no means of heating the bath.

“You may start on the stable as soon as you like,” he said to the delighted farmer. “I shall come in with a manservant next week. I suppose I can put up a saddle-horse at your farm till the stable is ready? I shall need to ride into Hastings frequently at first.”

“Oh, certainly, sir. I have plenty of stable room,” responded Pickett.

While the farmer was locking the door, Barrimore,[Pg 10] took out a penknife and cut some roses to take back for his mother, who loved little attentions.

“Poor old mummy!” he said to himself. “She is a bit sore about my wanting to be away from home, but I can’t stand Uncle Robert’s quotations!”

Barrimore had walked the whole five miles from Hastings to Pickett’s Farm at Gissing, having seen an advertisement of the bungalow, and he was going to walk the whole distance back, to get rid of the irritability caused by Uncle Robert’s quotations.

Uncle Robert was his mother’s brother, and had been christened Robert because his surname was Burns, and he had evidently conceived the idea that the mantle of the poet after whom he was named had descended upon him. He read incessantly, and remembered all he read. It was not his fault if everyone else did not remember it also. He also wrote verse.

Uncle Robert had made his home with his sister since she had been a widow, and Philip Barrimore, who had taken up literature as a career, found at last that home was an impossible place to work in.

If Uncle Robert was a nuisance, he was sublimely ignorant of the fact. He was of a singularly cheerful disposition, and it was impossible to ruffle his sweet temper. Even this last fact was an annoyance to Barrimore, for had Uncle Robert fired up occasionally, his nephew would have felt less of a pig (as he expressed it) in snubbing him.

Mrs. Barrimore, a sweet little woman, over forty, and looking less, had been much exercised in spirit to keep her idolized and only son from wounding her idolized and only brother; hence, she had consented to Philip’s plan of getting a little place in the country to work in. He would be near enough for[Pg 11] frequent visits, and would have the conditions he craved for his work.

Nevertheless, she felt sad that he should not reside under her roof.

Barrimore reached the West Hill at Hastings as the sun was setting. The sky was flooded with exquisite color. The sea, calm and unruffled, and of a lovely blue, was dotted over with sailing craft.

It was low tide, and within the harbor (so called, though it had never been completed) little naked boys ran, throwing pink reflections on the wet sand, while fishermen lounged against their boats, which they would soon be getting ready for the night’s work.

“I shall miss the sea,” thought Barrimore regretfully; “but, after all, I can soon ride in from Gissing.”

Before making his way to Hawk’s Nest (his mother’s house), which was situated near the Alexandra Park, he walked across the hill to the point where the entrance to St. Clement’s Caves is situated, and looked down at the old town, with its quaint red-roofed houses, and then across to the little churchyard of All Saints on the slope of the East Hill.

As his eyes rested on this churchyard they suddenly dimmed.

Under a white cross, like one he now saw, rested the woman he had loved. Woman? Eweretta Alvin had been but a girl when she had suddenly ceased to be, and his heart lay buried with her away in Canada.

At five-and-twenty Barrimore had vowed himself to bachelorhood, which was his only point of resemblance to his Uncle Robert Burns.

Never again would he love, he told himself, for which reason he allowed himself a certain freedom with the women-folk who gathered about his mother. Some of these were pretty girls, too, and charming enough[Pg 12] to stir any ordinary man’s pulses. Phyllis Lane, for instance, was bewitching, if not exactly pretty.

Barrimore suddenly remembered that on this particular day there had been a garden-party at his mother’s, and Phyllis and her father, Colonel Lane, were staying on to dinner. He must hurry or he would be late.

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CHAPTER IIA CONFESSION

“Well, Philip, what about the bungalow?” asked Uncle Robert, as Barrimore entered the dining-room, where all the others were already seated.

Barrimore was flushed and cross, owing to a struggle with his collar.

“I have taken it for three years,” answered the young man, going round to greet his mother’s guests before taking his place at table.

“Ah, well,” rejoined Uncle Robert, beaming. “Dryden says: ‘There is a pleasure sure in being mad, which none but madmen know.’ ‘The Spanish Friar’ it occurs in, I believe. It is a mad act going to live alone in the country, but no doubt you will find a pleasure that we know not of.”

“Mr. Barrimore won’t get interrupted at his work, and that will be a pleasure,” put in Phyllis Lane, darting a bright glance at Philip, whose seat was next to hers.

“What is the new book to be about?” inquired the Colonel, “if it is not a crime to ask.”

“I scarcely know myself yet,” replied Barrimore. “My stories grow under my pen. None of my stories turn out what I expected at first.”

“‘Invention breeds invention,’ as Emerson says,” chimed in Uncle Robert. “Ideas are like yeast, and multiply before your eyes.”

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“Mine don’t,” retorted Philip crossly. “I have been in a blind alley for a week or more.”

“Never mind, dear,” said Mrs. Barrimore cheerfully. “You have got your bungalow, so you will have peace and quietness. But we shall miss you. We did to-day, didn’t we, Phyllis?”

Mrs. Barrimore turned her sweet eyes on the girl at her son’s side. Phyllis was fresh as a flower.

“We did miss you,” Phyllis admitted, with another bright glance at Philip. “But Mr. Burns played tennis in your place.”

Her face broke into roguish dimples and her eyes danced.

That Phyllis was making fun of Uncle Robert was patent to everyone—to Uncle Robert himself even. It was not her words, but the tone in which they were uttered. But only one person noted that Mrs. Barrimore’s sweet mouth grew a little rigid, while her eyes, usually so dove-like, had for a moment sparks of angry fire in their clear grey—and that person was Colonel Lane; but he had a way of noting every transient expression that changed for a moment the habitual sweetness and gentleness of that particular face. The mother of Phyllis had not been sweet or gentle, and her death, some years since, had brought the first lull in the turmoil of Colonel Lane’s life.

“Miss Phyllis is getting at me,” observed Uncle Robert, with perfect good humor. “Horace says: ‘The years, as they come, bring with them many things to our advantage.’ They also sometimes bring an overplus of fat! Beware, Miss Phyllis! One day you may have a double chin!”

He hitched his falling table-napkin into his capacious waistcoat. Uncle Robert was certainly stout.

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“I think it was very sweet of my brother to play tennis on this hot day, rather than let the game fall through,” said Mrs. Barrimore, with an affectionate glance at Uncle Robert.

“I am sure Mr. Burns played very well,” Phyllis hastened to say, feeling that Mrs. Barrimore, of whom she was very fond, was angry with her.

“My dear little girl,” said Uncle Robert, “I know I look like an exaggerated tennis ball myself, and if I amuse you by my antics, so much the better. There is no duty we so much under-rate as the duty of being happy; Stevenson says that. Be happy, my dear, even if laughing at me makes you so!”

“Oh, but I wasn’t laughing at you, Mr. Burns,” protested Phyllis. “I admired your pluck in playing on such a roasting day—and you are a little stout, you know.”

Phyllis spoke so seriously that everyone laughed except her father. Colonel Lane frowned. He thought his daughter’s allusion to the stoutness of Mr. Burns in bad taste, and meant to tell her so when they should be alone.

“Tell us about the bungalow, Philip,” said Mrs. Barrimore, to change the conversation. (She had caught sight of the Colonel’s frown.)

“It is a jolly little place,” said Philip; “covered with rambler roses. I brought you some. There are no houses near—not very near. The nearest has a big field between it and the bungalow. There is a fir plantation in front, on the other side of the road. They are going to build me a stable, and I shall hire a horse from Dick Russel, so that I can ride over and see you. Yes, I shall hire it. I don’t mean to buy another now poor Jingo is dead. I can’t bring myself to replace an old favorite.”

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The mother looked at her son with critical sadness. She was thinking of Eweretta in her grave in Canada. She did want him to replace Eweretta—and Phyllis was a charming girl.

Certainly, Captain Arbuthnot paid a good deal of court to Phyllis, but it was inconceivable to Mrs. Barrimore that Phyllis could prefer anyone to Philip.

Mrs. Barrimore saw in Phyllis a good, dutiful and very charming wife, suitable in every way to this son of hers. Phyllis might not be decidedly pretty, but she was very good-looking; and, what counted for more, was quite above deception of any kind. She was the kind of “open” girl one could read like a book.

So thought Mrs. Barrimore.

It was after dinner, in the sweet, old-fashioned garden, that a conversation took place between Philip and Phyllis, which, had Mrs. Barrimore heard it, would have shaken her faith in judgment of character for ever.

Philip had gone out to smoke on the croquet lawn—a lawn raised above the rest of the garden and having great veteran oaks at one end, and banks of flowers on either side that smelt deliciously. A hammock was slung under one of the oaks, and Philip was about to get into it and enjoy his cigar, while Colonel Lane and Uncle Robert finished their wine, when a white-clad figure ran down the rustic steps that led from the terrace under the drawing-room windows to the lawn.

Philip walked back to meet Phyllis, who ran lightly over the soft turf.

“I do want a talk with you, Philip,” she said breathlessly. “I am just bursting with something I can tell no one but you.”

The moon lit her eager face as she looked up at him,[Pg 17] and he saw that her news, whatever it might be, was at least very important to her.

“I am honored, Miss Lane,” he told her, smiling. “What is the great secret?”

“Oh, I do hope you won’t be angry and scold me! You must be my friend and pacify father!”

She linked her arm in his confidingly.

“We are such old friends, you and I, you know,” she went on, “and now it is all over I feel so frightened!”

“Well, tell me this dreadful thing you have done,” he said, laughing a little at her earnestness, for he did not expect any very important revelation to follow.

“You know father refused to let me marry Captain Arbuthnot?”

She paused.

“You want me to plead for you, little Phyllis, I suppose?” he said.

“I am married,” she answered tragically. “That’s it! and now I’ve told you.”

Barrimore looked grave enough now.

“I would not have believed this of Arbuthnot,” was what he said. “When did this happen?”

“The day before yesterday, early in the morning, at St. Clement’s Church. Charlie got a special license. I came back to breakfast as usual.”

She looked very appealing and very childish in her simple white frock, Barrimore thought, and very sweet too. But he was angry with her, all the same. She was twenty-one, though she only looked sixteen.

Phyllis was quick to note the change in the young man’s tone.

“Now look here!” she said. “Father would not consent even to an engagement. Charlie and I love one another, and he was told he had to go right off to India. He sailed yesterday” (there was a catch[Pg 18] in her voice here)—“some outbreak among natives in some hole-and-corner place, and Charlie knew the language, and that was why he was sent. Now, what could we do but make sure of each other? It wasn’t all roses to part at the church door, was it? And we don’t know in the very least when we shall meet again.”

“And you want me to break this to Colonel Lane?” he answered.

“Oh, no! no! no!” she repeated. “I want you to pacify him, if he finds out.”

“But surely you are not going to keep this a secret?” he asked reprovingly.

“I am,” she answered, “if I can.”

“But why?”

“Because the old uncle (or aunt) of Charlie may die at any time, and he is to have all the money; and it was chiefly because Charlie had only his pay that father objected. He won’t make half the fuss if Charlie has that money. But if father finds out, promise me to take my part.”

Barrimore could do no less than give the promise, though he disliked the idea exceedingly.

He blamed Captain Arbuthnot most, but he could not consider Phyllis blameless. Surely some other way could have been found by the lovers out of their difficulty, considering the self-sacrificing devotion of the old Colonel, who had been both father and mother to his child since his wife’s death.

“I will be your advocate, Phyllis,” Barrimore told her reluctantly. “But you must not suppose that I approve of this business, and I consider that you ought to tell your father at once. I think it was not worthy of a gentleman and a soldier to have proposed a clandestine marriage to you.”

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“But Charlie didn’t propose it,” announced Phyllis. “It was I who did that. I told him I would be married to him before he went away, and I told you that father wouldn’t allow even an engagement. Father said that I might be twenty-one, but that I was a child, all the same, and that I should change my mind, and that I must not be bound. But I knew all the time that it was money he was thinking of, so I begged and prayed of Charlie to marry me and make sure, and I told him father would come around all right after. And, you know, Charlie is most awfully fond of me, and I can turn him round my finger. But he didn’t like marrying that way. He didn’t think it straightforward, which is nonsense; for all’s fair in love and war. So I told him if he didn’t get the license and marry me at St. Clement’s before breakfast, I would never marry him at all. That did it.”

She paused for breath.

Barrimore glanced over her head towards the drawing-room windows, and saw Colonel Lane and Uncle Robert making their way along the terrace to join his mother. She—simple soul that she was—had been watching the young people on the lawn furtively. Hopes were rising. Her Philip was so young to have his heart buried with Eweretta in Canada.

“We must go in now,” said Barrimore. “Your father and my uncle are gone to the drawing-room.”

Uncle Robert’s voice reached them where they stood.

“Ah, yes, Colonel, as Granville says:

“Oh, Love! thou bane of the most generous souls, Thou doubtful pleasure, and thou certain pain.”

And Barrimore thought his uncle’s quotation singularly appropriate.

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CHAPTER IIIAN ALARMING SUGGESTION

The quotation Uncle Robert made, and which was overheard by Philip in the garden, was a wind-up to a conversation relative to Phyllis and Captain Arbuthnot.

Colonel Lane had been confiding in Mr. Burns, and perhaps it would be as well to give the gist of their conversation, as it bears upon the disclosures of the foregoing chapter.

As soon as Philip, refusing wine, had sallied forth to smoke in the garden, Colonel Lane began to open his heart—part of it, at least; there was another part where a very tender secret lay hidden—to his friend.