The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1897-03-12

hitherto obscured by the shadows of iii
health and morbidness. The Light WIS
hot altogether welcome, though it ma
terially lessened the distance betwe~ n
the ostensible Philip and Philip the
real For one thing, it belittled the M.
tive which was responsible for his
work. Allowing the prompt;ngs O,
common humanity their full weight
the fact remained that his enthusiasm
had for it's starting-point a desire q
win the approval of Elsie Iunca /.
That was the new ideal, and his sane
thought told him that it was wretched-
lyiInadequate; that it sprang from i'm
pulse and was degraded in the hour
of it's birth by unfaith. Unworthy as
it was, it was still an ideal, and Philip
lashed himself into a small fury OF
a.f-contempt when he discovered ~;
as no longer the motive FOR h
e.rs; that Elsie's appreciation 81
s wrongs were secorG
lions in comparison w h
strenuous urgings of a newly aroused
ambition squirting him on to wiring vic
tory out of defeat for victory's sake.
He kept his room at Duncan's and
rode often up the valley, both for the
sake of the intimacy which the patu-a
80 oees made impossible elstwher
ara: fee~uss re honestly wanted fe T..
'1n- a. the new ideal, and he WEI
L ft@pcr ord stayed longer wen h b
~. - rec) tae ground slipping fr,:
-. /. The small matter - ::,
- .- said rather bitterl
j. ust te }rue to something; "a
sho,l,t! lose what little self-resrec: =
ticl,le rrecipitancy had left h IL
suffered himself to swerve from the
plain path he had chosen in the day Of
illness.
For some of the doubts and much
of the dissatisfaction, Elsie was her
self answerable. She was frank with
out being confidential; she was affec
tionate and sympathetic, but she never
gave him an opportunity to add word
to those already spoken. She rejoced
frankly in his stubborn perseverance
in the Kilgrow affair, and she was
openly thankful when the tide of i'll
health began to ebb; but beyond all
his, Philip felt that there was a bar
Ter which he had never been permit
ed to pass. He told himself that it
was maidenly modesty-a nice refine
ment of womanly delicacy which de-
Tended her from the ambiguity of his
impulsive declarations; and in this be-
lief he went about, seeking the op-
portunity for palmer speech which
chance or something else persistently
denied him. Sometimes it was Elsie's
mood; oftener it was the presence of a
third person - either Duncan or his
wife, or Protheroe. After such BATTLE
mcnts Philip scourged himself dutiful-
ly, heaping abuse on his own head for
not overriding such trivial obstacles.
He insisted that he owed it to himself
no less than to Elsie that there should
be clear understanding between
them; driven into words, the thought
would have been that he would be-surer
of himself when there was no possibili-
ty of retreat.
Without doubt, and in the face of
much matter for thanlxfulness, Philip
was neither good enough nor bad
enough to he wholly comfortable. Like
most compromises, the compromising
with ones conscience leaves the main
question still unsettled; and as to ben.
Gifts, it was to the giver and not to the
receiver that the blessing was prom
Used. It is true that Philip had found
an employment that called out the best
there was in him, and that in the bat.
tln he had somehow stumbled into the
:. that led away from sickness and
dependency; but at times he was tor
aeEted by the thought that he had
.:aid too dearly for ambition and bet
ter health. It was if he had sold him.
self for an extension of life and the
W herewithal to make it worth the hav-
ing.
Two grains Of comfort he had man
aged to sift out of the summers chaff.
One was that Helen's sisterly letters
added no fuel to the fires of conscience;
and the other was the news that the
bank in which the Thorndyke money
was invested was in difficulties. He
smiled at the thought that he was
able to extract comfort from this, but
so it was; the threat Of disaster made
him throw himself with redoubled ar
dor into the case in equity. 1t might
easily happen that his attorneys fee
would be all that was left him when
the day of reckoning came, and under
the spur of this premonition he took
counsel of zeal and taxed his resources
yet more persistently.
And in the matter of resources Philip
had developed creditable measure of
that ingenuity which is usually but not
always the handmaiden of experience.
He had attempted through various
channels to make oyertures to Prag-
more. He had tried to trace Gates and
his convenient witness. He had ran
sacked the old town, ferreting out
everyone who could give him the slight
est information about Gates or Kilgrow,
the tenantry of the farm, the raid of the
revenue officers, and such other scraps
OF local history as might have bearing
on the case. He had ridden for days on
the mountain in a hopeless attempt to
find witnesses who could certify that
iNlgrow had not been in Allacoochee
on the Goth of May, 1885. And when all
these expedients had been pushed to
fruitless conclusion, he had secured the
services of New York detective, who,
after three weeks of painstaking inves-
tigation, threw up the case in disgust
and went back to the metronnlis