Arms and the Woman | Page 2

us, and the even tenor of my way
ceased to be. I appreciated how far she was above me; so I worshipped
her silently and from afar. I told her my ambitions, confidences so
welcome to feminine ears, and she rewarded me with a small exchange.
She, too, was an orphan, and lived with her uncle, a rich banker, who,
as a diversion, consented to represent his country at foreign courts. Her
given name was Phyllis. I had seen the name a thousand times in print;
the poets had idealised it, and the novelists had embalmed it in tender
phrases. It was the first time I had ever met a woman by the name of
Phyllis. It appealed to my poetic instinct. Perhaps that was the cause of
it all. And then, she was very beautiful. In the autumn of that year we
became great friends; and through her influence I began to see beyond
the portals of the mansions of the rich. Matthew Prior's Chloes and Sir
John Suckling's Euphelias lost their charms. Henceforth my muse's

name became Phyllis. I took her to the opera when I didn't know where
I was going to breakfast on the morrow. I sent her roses and went
without tobacco, a privation of which woman knows nothing.
Often I was plunged into despair at my distressed circumstances.
Money to her meant something to spend; to me it meant something to
get. Her income bothered her because she could not spend it; my
income was mortgaged a week in advance, and did not bother me at all.
This was the barrier at my lips. But her woman's intuition must have
told her that she was a part and parcel of my existence.
I had what is called a forlorn hope: a rich uncle who was a planter in
Louisiana. His son and I were his only heirs. But this old planter had a
mortal antipathy to my side of the family. When my mother, his sister,
married Alfred Winthrop in 1859, at the time when the North and
South were approaching the precipice of a civil war, he considered all
family ties obliterated. We never worried much about it. When mother
died he softened to the extent of being present at the funeral. He took
small notice of my father, but offered to adopt me if I would assume his
name. I clasped my father's hand in mine and said nothing. The old
man stared at me for a moment, then left the house. That was the first
and last time I ever saw him. Sometimes I wondered if he would
remember me in his will. This, of course, was only when I had taken
Phyllis somewhere, or when some creditor had lost patience. One
morning in January, five years after my second meeting with Phyllis, I
sat at my desk in the office. It was raining; a cold thin rain. The
window was blurred. The water in the steam-pipes went banging away.
I was composing an editorial which treated the diplomatic relations
between this country and England. The roar of Park Row distracted me.
Now and then I would go to the window and peer down on the living
stream below. A dense cloud of steam hung over all the city. I swore
some when the copy boy came in and said that there was yet a column
and a half to fill, and that the foreman wanted to "close up the page
early." The true cause of my indisposition was due to the rumors rife in
the office that morning. Rumors which emanate from the managing
editor's room are usually of the sort which burden the subordinate ones
with anxiety. The London correspondent was "going to pieces." He had

cabled that he was suffering from nervous prostration, supplementing a
request for a two months' leave of absence. For "nervous prostration"
we read "drink." Our London correspondent was a brilliant journalist;
he had written one or two clever books; he had a broad knowledge of
men and affairs; and his pen was one of those which flashed and burned
at frequent intervals; but he drank. Dan's father had been a victim of the
habit. I remember meeting the elder Hillars. He was a picturesque
individual, an accomplished scholar, a wide traveller, a diplomatist, and
a noted war correspondent. His work during the Franco-Prussian war
had placed him in the front rank. After sending his son Dan to college
he took no further notice of him. He was killed while serving his paper
at the siege of Alexandria, Egypt. Dan naturally followed his father's
footsteps both in profession and in habits. He had been my classmate at
college, and no one knew him better than I, except it was himself. The
love of adventure and drink