The Project Gutenberg eBook of Phemie Keller, vol. 2 of 3
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Title: Phemie Keller, vol. 2 of 3a novel
Author: F.G. Trafford
Release date: August 6, 2023 [eBook #71358]
Language: English
Original publication: United Kingdom: Tinsley Brothers, 1866
Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHEMIE KELLER, VOL. 2 OF 3 ***
PHEMIE KELLER.
A Novel.
BY F. G. TRAFFORD,
AUTHOR OF “GEORGE GEITH,” “CITY AND SUBURB,” “MAXWELL DREWITT,” “TOO
MUCH ALONE,” “WORLD AND THE CHURCH,” “RACE FOR WEALTH.”
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1866.
[_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved._]
LONDON
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.— BASIL 1
II.— THE NEXT HEIR 30
III.— VISITORS 49
IV.— SUMMER HOLIDAYS 68
V.— KNOWLEDGE 90
VI.— FROM LESS TO MORE 112
VII.— THE DOWNWARD ROAD 141
VIII.— JEALOUSY 164
IX.— STRANGE TIDINGS 177
X.— BASIL DECIDES 200
XI.— THE MARCH OF EVENTS 231
XII.— THE SOCIAL RACK 254
XIII.— PARTED 283
PHEMIE KELLER.
CHAPTER I.
BASIL.
After so long an absence, it would have seemed only natural for his
tenantry to greet Captain Stondon’s return with “three times three,”
with arches, with banners; and most probably Phemie’s heart might have
been gladdened by some ceremonial of this kind, had not Montague
Stondon’s suicide rendered all thoughts of rejoicing out of the
question.
As it was, the pair came home through lonely roads to the park gates,
where an old woman admitted them; and in the gathering evening twilight
Phemie looked at the elms and the fir-trees till the loneliness
oppressed her—till she felt thankful to escape at last from the avenue,
and reach the house which she had never seen but once before.
It was one of those houses every man thinks he should like to own—large
enough for any income—comfortable enough never to appear stately: a
house that the sun’s beams seemed always to fall on warmly: a house in
which it was easy to fancy blazing fires in the winter—cool rooms in the
summer: a house that the eye turned to look back upon as it might on a
pleasant face: a house that was a home: a house that Phemie came to love
passionately.
It was built of red brick, and ivy and creepers and roses twined up the
sun-burnt walls, covering them with stem and branch and leaf and flower.
The drawing-room was at the back of the house, and its windows
overlooked the flower-garden that sloped away from the hill on which the
house was built to the flat lands below.
Many an English mansion is spoiled by its site. Marshlands was made by
the eminence it occupied. Yet if the place had a fault, it was this:
whichever way your glance turned, you could see nothing but
Marshlands—its gardens, its fields, its park, its fountains, its
avenues, its long belt of plantation: Marshlands was everywhere; and as
a natural consequence, some people tired of Marshlands after a season;
tired of the firs, the elms, the smooth-cut lawns, the deer, the
shrubberies. Half the timber wanted clearing away, and views being thus
obtained of the surrounding country; but on this latter point Marshlands
was inexorable. You might walk till you were weary, but still you could
see nothing save the park and great belts of plantation, clumps of firs,
avenues of elms, hedgerows in which trees were growing as thick as
blackberries.
The day arrived when Phemie felt those masses of foliage, those banks of
branch and leaf, those never-ending plantations, those inexorable
stately trees, oppress her soul. Mountain-reared, she longed for greater
freedom—for a country over which her eye could wander free and
unconfined: she longed for the hill-side, for the desolate seashore: but
on the evening when she returned home again, after years spent in
travelling from place to place, England—any part of it—seemed a
possession gained, a good secured, and Mrs. Stondon rejoiced to cross
the threshold of Marshlands, and hear words of welcome spoken in her
native tongue.
Like a child she wandered from room to room; like a child, too, after
dinner, she insisted on going out and walking about the place by
moonlight, compelling Captain Stondon, who would much have preferred
remaining indoors, to accompany her along the garden paths, past the
lakes, under the shadow of the elms, to a point where further progress
seemed stopped by a plantation of fir-trees.
“I wonder,” remarked Phemie, as she paused to listen to the coming and
going of the summer wind through the branches, “I wonder how you could
stay away so long, with such a property as this in England. Is not it
worth all the palaces and châteaux abroad put together?”
“As a possession, perhaps,” answered Captain Stondon; “as a residence, I
am doubtful: that is I am doubtful whether you will like it; if you do,
I shall be content to live and die here—quite content.”
But Captain Stondon sighed, even while he made this statement, and
Phemie looked up at the branches overhead with an expression in her face
which made it in the moonlight look almost disagreeable. She knew what
Captain Stondon was thinking about. The children that had come to them,
dead and dead—children that had come, not to make her a softer or a
better woman, but merely, as it seemed, to develop the taint an
over-prosperous life had infused into her character.
What shall I call this taint? Jealous selfishness—exacting egotism—a
fretful impatience of anything which stood between herself and the
affection and admiration of those around her. I should like to find one
word to express what I mean; I wish I could discover some sentence that
might embody at once what was so natural and yet so unpleasant. She was
prosperous; why should she fret? why should he fret? Had she not had to
fight for her own life because of those dead heirs? those heirs who had
never existed.
She did not fret; why should he? Would he rather have had the children
than her? Supposing she had died and they lived; would he have been
satisfied then? Supposing they had lived and she lived too; would the
sons have been greater than their mother? That was the set of questions
that always made Phemie’s face change when she saw Captain Stondon
thinking about who should come after him. Had not he her while he was
living; was not that enough for him? Mrs. Stondon’s creed had grown to
be of this nature, at any rate. She was to be everything, and no other
person ought to stand even near her. It was horribly unamiable, it was
detestably selfish, and yet—and yet it was only because she was so
solitary that she was so unwomanly. She gave nothing, and therefore she
sought to receive all homage. Her love was cold, and therefore she
exacted love as though it had been a debt owing to her, and she
insisting on payment to the uttermost farthing.
Her life had been too prosperous, too easy. She had not had to live on
crumbs of affection, to beg for love with wistful eyes, as a dog begs
for notice from its master. Every one seemed to think it was so good of
her to be fond of Captain Stondon. Mistress Phemie herself was so young,
so attractive, so altogether unique, that the world was rather apt to
imply she had made a mistake in wedding her husband at all. She was
pampered—I think that was the English of the matter; and she needed to
find her level once again, before she could become a woman about whom it
is altogether agreeable to write.
She did not look pleasant standing in the moonlight with that strange
expression on her countenance; for in the moonlight her face seemed to
belong to some one without a heart to feel, without a heart to be
broken.
Could she have looked forward then, I wonder what change the moon would
have seen come swiftly over her. Under the fir-trees she would have wept
and sobbed; she would have fallen to the earth humbled and stricken; she
would have turned to her husband with the pride and the vanity and the
selfishness and the sarcasm beaten out of her lovely face, and prayed
him love her less, trust her less, give her less, so as to preserve her
from the sorrow and the evil to come.
But as she stood there, she was simply what his pride and his devotion
had made her. The Phemie he married among the hills—ignorant, childish,
unsophisticated, had given place to another Phemie, to a self-possessed,
ladylike, accomplished woman, who walked gracefully, who had a stately
carriage, who wore her beauty like a queen. The half her lifetime she
once spoke of had been best part lived out. Five years of the eight were
gone, and this was the result. Had she not finished her task? Was not
Captain Stondon proud of her as well as fond? Was he not satisfied with
her in every respect? Did she not give him as much love as she had to
give to any one? Had he been of a jealous temperament, which he was not,
her conduct must yet have seemed without spot or blemish.
Othello himself could have taken no exception to her. She was docile,
she was grateful, she was easily pleased. She liked to visit, she liked
to stay at home, she liked company, and yet she delighted in such
rambles as that under the moonlight at Marshlands, when not a sound save
the light breeze stirring among the trees broke the stillness.
Yes, if he had but children, Captain Stondon thought his life would be
almost too happy, too round and perfect in its complete content. And if
he sighed to think that there were no little feet pattering through the
rooms and along the corridors, who may blame him? For a man owning a
large property to be childless is to convert his freehold estate into a
mere leasehold, terminable with his own life. He improves his lands for
others; he sows that strangers may reap; the very backbone is taken out
of his existence, and he loses interest in the place of which he is a
tenant-at-will.
And yet Captain Stondon only repined at times at this want in the full
measure of his happiness. He was in the main a good man and a just; and
he needed no divine to tell him that if children were from the Lord, the
lonely hearth was of Him likewise.
And for this reason, if Phemie continued to like Marshlands, he would
wander no more. He would cure himself of the restless fever which had
for so long weakened his energies, destroyed his usefulness; he would do
his best to make her love her home, and enable her to be happy there. A
great prize had fallen to him in the lottery of life, and he would be
grateful for it. Under the fir-trees he vowed that vow to himself and to
his God: under the fir-trees, when his heart brake in twain, he
remembered that vow, and sobbed like a child to think that his love and
his tenderness and his gratitude had all been as strength spent for
nought.
And yet not so; the end of the battle is not here; the last of the
witnesses are never called on earth; and when the great day arrives, in
which all human reckonings are to be finally settled, we shall surely
find that love and tenderness have never been lost, though to our eyes
their streams of blessing may have seemed but as water wasted upon weed
and rush and reed.
As for Phemie—naturally, as though she had been born in the purple—she
took her rightful place at last as mistress of Marshlands.
She was enchanted to be back in England once again; she was a wanderer
on the face of the earth no longer; she was a woman known to every one
save those of her own kin and her own country no more.
She was coming home really to enjoy life; to assume her proper position
in society; to show off her accomplishments; to be admired for her
beauty; to be spoiled, petted, ruined, if you will.
Visitors came; visits were returned. Norfolk was glad to have Captain
Stondon back on any terms. No matter whom he might have married—his wife
was young; his wife liked company; his wife would give parties;
Marshlands had long wanted a mistress, and here was one whom any county
might be proud to receive with open arms.
What if she had been poor? Was she not a Keller? Was she not half a
century or so younger than Captain Stondon? Was she not pretty and
ladylike and accomplished?—and, beyond all, when once the days of
mourning for that disreputable vagabond Montague were accomplished, had
she not promised fathers and mothers, and the dancing young men and the
dancing young women, parties to their hearts’ content?
Altogether it was very delicious to fill the position she did; and
Phemie, as the days went by, felt more and more satisfied that she had
made a very good thing of life, and that she had acted in a praiseworthy
manner when she secured at one stroke a good kind husband and a fine
estate.
She had benefited herself; she was benefiting her family.
Duncan was with Messrs. Hoyle and Hoyle, the great London engineers, and
Helen was at school, and the pair spent their holidays at Marshlands
that summer, when the Stondons returned to England; and Mr. Aggland came
likewise, and passed a fortnight with his niece, during which time he
arrived at the conclusion that Phemie was altered and not improved.
“She is not half so good as her husband,” thought the farmer. “I suppose
too hot a sun is as bad as too keen a frost—prosperity seems to have
withered up her buds, at any rate.” And then straightway Mr. Aggland
tried to find out what soft spots Phemie had left, what troubled her,
what wishes she had, what aims, what objects.
Here he was puzzled: it was for the day and herself—for the pleasures
and the joys and the vanities of the day, that Mrs. Stondon existed.
“It is a bright life,” remarked her uncle; “but, my dear, the winter
must come to the happiest of us. Have you thought of that?”
“It will be time enough to think of the winter when the autumn arrives,”
she answered, gaily; “besides, why should enjoying the bright days unfit
one for enduring the dark? Sometimes, uncle, I think you are sorry I am
so happy.” And Phemie, standing on the terrace, with the evening sun
streaming on her, pouted as she said this.
“Are you really happy, Phemie?” he asked; “happy in yourself; contented
and satisfied; or is it all as the crackling of thorns under the pot, a
blaze and a sparkle, and then out, leaving no heat, no light behind?”
“I am perfectly happy,” she replied, gathering up the skirts of her
light flowing muslin dress, and preparing to re-enter the house; “and
why you should think I am not happy, or why you should fancy I ought not
to be happy, I cannot imagine.”
“You have had trouble, dear,” he said, hesitatingly; “the children——”
And at that point he stopped in his speech and Phemie stopped in her
walk to deliver her sentiments on the subject.
“Can I bring them back again?” she asked, almost fiercely. “Could I help
their dying?—did I kill them? Why should I spend my existence fretting
over what is irremediable—over what I am not sure I should care to
remedy if I could? Captain Stondon would like a son to inherit this
place; but as it seems he is not to have a living son, there can be no
use in his constantly thinking about it. Have we not Marshlands? Have we
not every happiness, every comfort? Have we not wood and field and lake
and water? If we had fifty sons, could we have more out of the place?
Why should I sit down and be miserable because children whom I never
knew, whom I never heard speak, who might as well never have been born,
were not spared perhaps to grow up curses to us? Sometimes I think,”
went on Phemie, with the tears starting into her eyes, “that you and
Captain Stondon both, would rather the boys had lived and I had
died—anything for a son, any sacrifice for an heir.” And without waiting
for an answer, Phemie swept into the drawing-room, leaving her uncle to
think over what she had said.
“There is reason in it if there be not rhyme,” he muttered, as he walked
up and down the terrace; “and yet there is something out of joint in
Phemie’s life; there must be something wrong in any life that makes a
woman talk like that. She was too young,” finished Mr. Aggland, looking
away down the garden towards the flat lands beyond; “she was too young,
and she does not love the man she has married. God grant she may never
find it out. It is better for her to be anything rather than
dissatisfied. It is better for her to be a fine lady than a miserable
woman.” And Mr. Aggland still strained his eyes down the garden,
thinking he would give all his worldly possessions to see once more the
Phemie who had left him when she plighted her troth to Captain Stondon,
and cried because Davie stood at the church porch to bid her his dumb
farewell.
Yet there were still some things about his niece which touched Mr.
Aggland unspeakably. To him she never changed; she never forgot to ask
after the poorest farmer in Tordale; she remembered where each flower
grew, and would speak about the hyacinths and the anemones, about the
heather and the thyme, as though she had never seen the shores of the
Mediterranean, or wandered through earth’s loveliest scenes abroad.
She made no close friends. Among all her acquaintance she found no one
to love as she had loved Helen; she took no new pets; she who had always
chosen some lamb, or foal, or calf, or kitten for herself, never now
stretched out her hand towards any animal caressingly.
“Would you care to have Davie?” asked her uncle, the day before his
departure; and for a moment Phemie looked pleased and wistful, but then
the look faded out of her face, and she said:
“Davie would not be happy here. He is not handsome enough to be in the
house, and he would miss the warm fireside and the children stroking
him. I should like him, uncle, but he would not like this. When I can, I
will go and see him and the Hill Farm and Tordale, but he had better
stay in Tordale than come here.”
Many a time, after he returned to Cumberland, Mr. Aggland thought about
this speech, and wondered whether Phemie wished she had stayed in
Tordale too; but he might have spared himself the trouble of
speculating, for Phemie never for a moment repented her marriage; she
was perfectly content to be the mistress of Marshlands, to be flattered,
courted, sought after; and day by day, as he saw how she comported
herself in her new position, as he heard her admired, and beheld how
much she was liked, Captain Stondon grew more and more proud of the wife
he had chosen, and allowed her to do more and more as she liked.
And what Phemie liked was to have plenty of society—to have balls and
parties and picnics continually, and to balls and parties and picnics
Captain Stondon (who was not so young-looking as when we first met him
turning into the valley of Tordale), went about with her, content that
she was satisfied—pleased with her pleasure. He would watch her dancing;
he would listen to her singing; he loved to see her turn her face
beaming with happiness towards him.
“I wonder was ever man so blessed?” he thought, one evening, as he stood
looking at Phemie from afar; and even while he thought this, a lady
touched him with her fan, and said—
“I suppose you do not recollect me, Captain Stondon? but my memory is
better. I must see whether your wife recognizes me.” And with a smile
flung back to Captain Stondon, she crossed the room, and said to Phemie—
“I am going to ask you to do me a great favour, Mrs. Stondon—it is six
years after, and I want you to sing, ‘Then you’ll remember,’ for me.”
“Miss Derno!” exclaimed Phemie, and the two laughed outright. “Where did
you come from? With whom are you staying?” asked Mrs. Stondon.
“I am staying with the Hurlfords, and I come from wandering to and fro
upon the earth—as you do also for that matter; and I am delighted to see
you looking so well.”
And Miss Derno looked delighted, and held Phemie’s hand in hers while
she spoke of the last time they had met, of the period which had elapsed
since that night when——
“When I broke down,” finished Mrs. Stondon, with as much readiness as
could have been expected from Miss Derno herself. “I can do better than
that now, and if you come over to Marshlands I shall be happy to prove
the fact to you.”
“No time like time present,” remarked Miss Derno. “I am sorry to take
you from among the dancers, but I claim a song as my right.” And she
drew Phemie gently away towards the music-room, saying as they passed
along,
“There is a pet of mine here to-night that I want you to take graciously
to. I will introduce him when you have finished my song—that is, if you
give me leave to do so. You must have noticed him, I think—a young man
who danced with Miss Maria Hurlford?”
“I know,” answered Mrs. Stondon: “dark-haired, dark-eyed,
indolent-looking. He was talking to Captain Stondon when we left the
other room. Who is he?”
“He is Montague Stondon’s son, Basil.”
Phemie was touching the keys of the piano as Miss Derno spoke. When Miss
Derno finished her sentence, Mrs. Stondon took her hands off the notes
and looked up at her companion quickly and strangely.
“What brings him here?” she asked. And the question sounded almost
defiant.
“He is staying, like myself, with the Hurlfords.”
“Oh!” said Mistress Phemie, and straightway she began her song.
The room was empty of company when she commenced—ere she had finished,
it was full of people.
Whenever Mrs. Stondon sang, guests flocked round her as children might
to a show. It was her gift—it was her talent, and she had cultivated her
voice, and practised; she had laboured, and tried to become an
accomplished vocalist, with such success that even Miss Derno stood
astonished—stood with the tears in her eyes listening silently.
“Who is the sweet singer?” said some one in a low tone.
“Mrs. Stondon,” whispered back Miss Derno. And Basil Stondon, for it was
he who asked the question, drew back at her answer, and left the room.
“An amiable pair,” thought Miss Derno. “She is jealous of the possible
possessor of Marshlands; he looks with unfavourable eyes on the present
mistress of that desirable property.” And while other friends gathered
round Mrs. Stondon, praying her to sing again, to sing another song, and
another still, Miss Derno vanished also, and followed Basil Stondon into
the garden, where he was leaning over a stone balustrade, and looking
disconsolately at the moon.
“How very stupid you must be, Basil,” said the lady, “to spoil your
chances in this way. If you want to reach Captain Stondon you must reach
him through his wife; and instead of waiting to be introduced to her you
run away as if you were a schoolboy ordered up for punishment.”
“It is a punishment to me to see her at all,” answered the young man.
“But for her my father might now be alive—but for her I might have been
making some thousands a year, instead of going begging after government
appointments.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Basil Stondon,” said Miss Derno, impatiently; “you
would never have made thousands a year anywhere: you have not energy
enough in you ever to have made money for yourself at all, you are only
fit for a government clerk, you are too genteel and too lazy and too
fine a gentleman ever to push your own way up. For which reasons take my
advice: let bygones be bygones, and strive to get into Captain Stondon’s
good-will by conciliating his wife.”
“I have got his good-will already,” was the calm reply. “I went up to
him diffidently; but he received me, so to speak, with open arms; he
asked me to call at Marshlands to-morrow. He inquired what I was
doing—he wanted to know why I had not come to him before—he remarked
that something must be done for me—and he would have talked on for an
hour had some General Sheen not broken in upon our conversation with
original observations about the weather and the state of the crops.”
“Then you followed us into the music-room,” suggested Miss Derno.
“Then hearing some woman singing like an angel, I went to ascertain who
had come down from heaven. When I saw the hair, however, my heart
misgave me. As we know the devil by his cloven hoof, so I knew Mrs.
Stondon by her glory of auburn hair.”
“But it is beautiful hair, Basil; and because it is beautiful, and she
is beautiful, and you admire all things that are beautiful, you must try
to be friends with her. She is lovely enough to come up even to your
standard, surely.”
“I do not admire fair women,” he answered, coldly. “I like sunshine
better than moonlight. I like warmth better than ice.”
“You like talking folly,” retorted Miss Derno; “and if you persist in
being so silly I shall withdraw the inestimable blessing of my
friendship from you. Come and be introduced to Mrs. Stondon like a
rational being. Come and see—not your relative’s wife—but merely a very
beautiful and accomplished woman.”
“At some future time,” he said; “but to-night there is a dark mood on
me, and I cannot face her. Can you not stay here?” he pleaded, as his
companion turned to go away; “you are the only person on earth who talks
frankly to me. You are the only being whose voice I care to hear.”
“Mr. Basil Stondon, I am honoured,” replied Miss Derno; and under the
moonlight she made him a sweeping curtsey; “but society has its
prejudices, and its prejudices we must study. You and I know we are not
in love with one another, but the world might think we were, and for
that reason I cannot remain with you talking about the best opera and
the last new book.” Having finished which frank statement, Miss Derno
would have gone in, but that Mr. Stondon caught her hand and kept her.
“Why cannot we love one another?” he asked. “Why do you say we know we
do not love one another? I have never seen a woman equal to you. I have
never felt the same attachment for any one as I have for you.”
Then Miss Derno laughed.
“It is a blessing, Basil,” she said, “that I am not a woman to take you
at your word; it is a mercy, God knows it is, that I am not so anxious
to be settled, as to snap at the possible heir of Marshlands; for you do
not love me, and it would not be natural that you should love a woman so
much older than yourself. Have we not gone over all this ground before?
Have I not told you, what I do not proclaim in the market-place, that my
heart is dead, and that there is no man who could ever make it thrill
with joy and love and pleasure and life again?” And as the woman—for she
was all a woman at that moment—said this, a light seemed to come from
that far-away past—a light that illumined her features and softened
them.
“I would I had been born sooner for your sake,” whispered Basil,
tenderly.
“I would that you had a little more sense for your own,” she retorted.
“Are there not girls enough in England that you should persist in making
love to a woman for whom you do not care, and who had passed through a
perfect sea of trouble while you were still busy with the multiplication
table?”
“It is easy for you to laugh,” he answered; “you who have always some
one to love you: who have so many friends; but a lonely man like
myself—a man lonely and poor, must love any one who is so good and true
and beautiful as you: and if I must love afar off,” added Mr. Stondon,
“why, I shall still love on.”
“Love me as your friend, as your mother, sister, grandmother, what you
please,” answered Miss Derno, “but not as your love. Lonely and poor!”
she went on; “no man who can work ought ever to be poor—no human being
can ever be called lonely who has his life all before him, and who has
not left everything worth living for behind him by the way. Lonely and
poor! Basil, you have talked sentiment to the moon long enough. Come in
and say what is civil to the only woman who can now really better your
condition. For _I_ do not advise you to marry an heiress. I recommend
you to let Captain Stondon advance your interest, if he will. And he
will, I am sure of it. Come.”
But Basil would not. He stayed behind in the moonlight, thinking of Miss
Derno and Mrs. Stondon and Marshlands—whilst ever and anon there came
over him a vague instinctive feeling—very dreamy, very unpleasant, very
indefinable—that he had that night said something, done something, seen
something, which should influence every hour and moment of his future
life.
CHAPTER II.
THE NEXT HEIR.
That night, as they drove home, Captain Stondon talked about Basil
Stondon to his wife, about the young man whom he had met with apparently
accidentally, and who had never by word or sign or letter acknowledged
the existence of his wealthy relative since his father’s death.
“Poor fellow,” said Captain Stondon, “it is very sad for him, upon my
word it is.” And he waited for Phemie to answer, but Phemie held her
peace.
She was wiser in her generation than her husband; it might be that she
was less amiable too; and she knew just as well as though she had been
present at the enemy’s council of war that Mr. Basil Stondon’s rencontre
with his kinsman was anything rather than the result of chance.
She had not liked Mr. Montague Stondon, she had not liked Mrs. Montague
Stondon, and it was not likely she should like the son who now stood—and
it was this which broke on Mistress Phemie Stondon with a shock, as
though the idea were quite new to her—in the position of heir to
Marshlands.
The fact had never come home till that moment. He would inherit—he was
young; he would come after Captain Stondon and own woods and lawns and
lake and park, because she was childless. It was she who now held the
place merely as a tenant on lease of one life, and that her husband’s.
If her son had lived, this man would, socially, be nowhere; as it was,
Phemie perceived that socially he would take precedence of herself.
She had been philosophical on the subject so long as she did not
comprehend how the want of children might some day affect her own
happiness. Almost a child herself, she had not understood how the
failure of direct heirs would ultimately affect her position.
She had been glad to get away from Mrs. Aggland’s babies: her youth had
been spent in hushing refractory imps to sleep, in amusing cross
infants, in learning to nurse cleverly and keep the brats from crying;
and it was therefore not altogether unnatural that Phemie should
consider there was a reverse side to the pleasure of having a family,
and, particularly when her life had twice trembled in the balance,
rejoice rather than lament because no more children seemed likely to be
born, to die.
Hitherto she had been rather vexed to see how much Captain Stondon
desired a direct heir—now, Phemie, a child no longer, but a worldly,
selfish woman if you will, found that there was rising up from the
bottom of her heart an exceeding bitter cry of lamentation for the dead
sons whose loss she had never greatly mourned before, for the children
she had passed through the valley of the shadow of death to bring into
the world, for naught.
Looking out into the moonlight, Phemie, to whom all strong passions had
hitherto been strangers, found that her eyes were filling with angry
tears. She disliked this Basil Stondon, to whom she had never yet spoken
a word. She hated to hear her husband praising his appearance and his
manners. She felt sure he and Miss Derno were in league together. “Her
pet, indeed!” thought Phemie; “I have no doubt they are engaged. Her
pet! I daresay he is.” And Phemie smiled to think she was no longer the
girl whom Miss Derno had met six years before; but a woman quite Miss
Derno’s match in penetration and knowledge of the world.
She had eaten her apple, and left primitive simplicity a long way behind
her; and Phemie felt glad to think that it was so. They could not impose
on her now. Her eyes were opened, and she saw, as all such people do
see, more evil than good upon the earth. She had tasted of the tree of
knowledge, and this was the result. It had been pleasant to the eye, it
had seemed good for food, it had been a thing to be desired; and behold
this was the end attained—selfishness and envy and uncharitableness.
A character to be disliked rather than admired; and yet have patience,
reader, for there came a day of reckoning to Phemie Stondon, when she
had to settle for every fault, for every shortcoming!
She was vain;—grievous suffering crushed all vanity out of her: she
claimed love as a right, and thought little of all the tenderness that
was lavished upon her—when the time arrived that the love of her own
heart broke it,—Phemie remembered; she thought she stood firm, and it
was only when she lay humbled in the dust that she acknowledged how weak
is the strength of man; she was proud of her accomplishments, yet in the
future she turned from their exhibition with loathing; she rejoiced in
her own cleverness—she could not avoid knowing how much cleverer she was
than her husband—than the man who had taken her from poverty and
drudgery to make her the mistress of Marshlands;—is it too early now to
tell of the hour when all her talents, all her attainments, all her
gifts of beauty and manners, seemed to be but as sand, as earth, beside
his truth, his forbearance, his devotion?
That night was the turning point in the life story of Phemie Keller—that
night, when she sat beside her husband, listening while he told her how
glad he felt at the prospect of being able to do anything for poor
Montague’s son, how much pleased he was that Basil had promised to call
the next day at Marshlands.
“He really is a very fine young fellow,” finished Captain Stondon, “and
we must try to keep him from going to rack and ruin as his father did.
It is high time he was doing something now. He must be five-and-twenty I
should say.”
And Mr. Basil Stondon’s relative was quite right. He was
five-and-twenty—a man with eyes dark, dreamy, and sadly tender—a man
whom women raved concerning—a desperate flirt—and a dangerous flirt,
because while the fit was on him he really did care for the person who
had excited his admiration.
He danced like an angel—so the ladies said. There were few games either
of chance or skill at which he had not tried his hand. He could hunt
over the worst country if his friends would only give him a mount. If
his horse could take the leaps, Basil could sit his horse. It did not
matter to him if an animal were quiet or the reverse. Find him a strong
bit, and let the girths be tight, and the young man would fight the
question of temper out at his leisure.
He was a good oarsman, a good swimmer, a capital fellow at a picnic. He
had quite a genius for making salads and mixing sherry cobbler.
He knew very little about literature, but the number of his
acquaintances was something to stare at.
He had forgotten the little he ever learned at school and college; but
he could talk about the opera and the theatres, about the new prima
donna and the favourite danseuse, with an intimate fluency that moved
his listeners oftentimes to admiration.
Further, he was not conceited; he did not vaunt his talents. He was not
boastful, he was not a bore; he was amiable, he was pitiful, he was
generous, he was swift to forgive and repentant for having erred; but he
was weak and he was self-indulgent; he was weak as water, as uncertain
as the weather, as changeable as an April day; a vacillating creature
whose purposes ebbed and flowed like the sea, who had no fixed
principles, whether bad or good, and who came and went and went and came
wheresoever his impulses carried him.
And it was this man, with his handsome face, with his careless, easy,
engaging manner, who came the next day by special invitation to call at
Marshlands.
He did not call alone. He had not courage enough for that, he told the
Hurlfords, laughingly; so Mrs. Hurlford and Miss Derno and young Frank
Hurlford accompanied him, nothing loth, for Miss Derno and Mrs. Hurlford
had “taken the young man up,” and decided that it was a great pity of
him, that it was all nonsense for him to keep aloof from his relatives
because his father had cut his throat, and that, in fine, Captain
Stondon should know him, like him, and do something for him.
Women were always taking Basil up—were always, dear souls, planning and
plotting to advance his interests. In London he was perpetually being
introduced to some great man who promised to find a vacant post. In the
country he was continually being put in the way of marrying some sweet
creature—some heiress, some widow—somebody who would make him happy, or
push him on, or bring him a fortune.
There was no end to the roads that opened out before Basil Stondon; but
by a curious fatality they all led nowhere; and the most sensible thing
that ever was proposed for his benefit was to bring him and Captain
Stondon together, and to get the owner of Marshlands to give his next of
kin a helping hand on in the world.
“All he wants, my dear,” said Mrs. Hurlford to Miss Derno, “is a fair
start and a sensible wife—a wife just like yourself.”
“Only ten years younger,” added Miss Derno.
“Now, what would _he_ do with a young girl?” demanded Mrs. Hurlford.
“Why, they would be lost out in the world like the babes in the wood. He
ought to have a woman, a strong-minded, clear-headed woman, who could
manage for him and tell him how to go on, and see that he was not
imposed on.”
“A kind of keeper,” suggested Miss Derno.
“How absurd you are. You know what I mean perfectly well. Even for his
sake you ought to play your cards better; and for your own, I can tell
you, Olivia, Marshlands is a very nice property, and has a very nice
rent-roll attached to it.”
“What a pity I cannot get Basil to think of me excepting as his mother!”
observed Miss Derno.
“What a pity,” answered Mrs. Hurlford, who was a distant relation to her
visitor, “that you will not believe any woman may marry any man.
Propinquity, my dear, it is all propinquity. I heard a very clever lady
say once she would undertake to bring any man to a proposal if she were
thrown with him for a fortnight at a country house, and I am positive
she could have done it too.”
“How glad I am, not to be a man,” remarked Miss Derno. “If I were, I
would never venture beyond the gas-lamps.”
“But it would be for his good, for his happiness, you ridiculous
creature!” persisted the lady; and so confident did she feel of the
ultimate success of her manœuvres, that she absolutely decided on the
colour of the dress she should wear at the wedding, and saw the very
bracelet she intended to present as a cousinly offering to the bride.
Entertaining these views, it is not to be wondered at that she eagerly
offered to accompany Mr. Stondon to Marshlands.
“We owe Mrs. Stondon a visit,” she remarked, “and it will make it a less
formidable affair for Basil if we all go over together.”
“Poor Basil!” said Miss Derno, “I wonder if he will ever be brave enough
to go over there alone?”
“It is not Captain Stondon I dislike meeting,” he replied, “it is his
wife.”
“I think her perfectly charming!” broke in Mrs. Hurlford, with
enthusiasm. “And as for Mr. Hurlford, you should hear him rave about
her!”
“I really should not allow it, Laura,” said Miss Derno. “Mr. Hurlford
ought not to rave about other men’s wives.”
“I cannot imagine what any man can see in copper-coloured hair and blue
eyes to get spoony over,” observed Basil. At which remark Mrs. Hurlford
shot a glance towards her cousin, who retorted—
“I have seen you spoony about every colour, from white to black, Basil.
When you were only twelve years old I remember your being in love with a
little Irish girl whose hair was exactly the colour of tow; and as for
eyes—do you recollect Miss Smyth, whose eyes were red?—if you do not, I
do.”
“Now, Mrs. Hurlford, I appeal to you!” exclaimed Basil. “Is it fair for
the sins of the boy to be visited on the man? How should you like me,
Miss Derno, to commence telling tales?”
“If they were entertaining, I should like it of all things,” she
answered; “but to return to Mrs. Stondon—she really is beautiful, and
she never looks so beautiful as when she is talking. If you do not
recant before you leave Marshlands this afternoon I will give you such a
scolding,” finished Miss Derno, flushing a little as she caught Basil’s
eyes fixed upon her with an expression which was quite as intelligible
to her as it was to Mrs. Hurlford.
“He will propose before the week is over,” thought that lady, little
dreaming that the ceremony had been gone through two or three times
already. “She must be married from here, but it will be very miserable
for her travelling in the winter. However, she does not dislike
travelling,” reflected Mrs. Hurlford, while she went upstairs to prepare
for her visit to Mrs. Stondon. “Only if they could be married at once,
and get away in the summer, how much nicer it would be.”
From which speech the reader will see that Providence had been very good
to the male sex in denying Mrs. Hurlford daughters. She had sons, but
then “sons are not daughters, Heaven be praised!” said a gentleman of
her acquaintance.
“It is a beautiful property,” remarked Mrs. Hurlford, as they drove
under the elms and the fir-trees up to Marshlands House.
Basil Stondon had been thinking the same thing, and he had been thinking
of other things as well, that made him look a little sadder than usual
when he crossed the threshold of his kinsman’s house.
“We have come to take you by storm, Mrs. Stondon,” said Mrs. Hurlford.
And then Phemie assured her she was very glad to see them whatever their
intentions might be: and Miss Derno, remembering the shy, blushing girl
of six years before, looked on and marvelled.
“The spring cannot last for ever,” reflected that lady, philosophically,
“and yet summer has set in very early with her.” And Miss Derno watched,
and Miss Derno listened, and the more she watched and the more she
listened, the more astonished she felt.
Mrs. Stondon inquired after the health of Mrs. Montague Stondon calmly
and politely, as though she had never sat on thorns in that dreary
drawing-room in Chapel Street. She made her visitors stay for luncheon,
and went with them about the grounds in a bewitching straw hat, laughing
and talking as they walked.
The girl Miss Derno remembered had vanished, but the fascination which
had hung about the girl had been retained somehow by the woman. For the
first ten minutes people might not like Mrs. Stondon; but the longer
Miss Derno watched her the more satisfied she grew that there was a
charm about her which no one who knew her intimately could resist.
Under the polish, under the easy manner, under the graceful
indifference, there lay heart and passion and feeling and conscience.
Under the rocks we find iron and coal, and the iron is firm to endure
and the coal has warmth and heat. Whose fault is it if the mines are
never worked,—if the hidden treasures lie buried for ages? Is it the sin
of the earth that holds them? Is it the crime of the breast where they
remain dormant?
After all, was it Phemie’s fault that she seemed a well-bred,
passionless woman? Had she not done her best in the station of life in
which she had been placed, and was her best not what her guests found
her—ladylike, unimpulsive, attentive, a trifle sarcastic perhaps, but
still graceful and well-educated?
“I recant,” said Basil Stondon to Miss Derno, when Marshlands was left
behind. “I think Mrs. Stondon as beautiful as ice in sunshine, as snow
in summer. She is as polished as marble, as cold as steel.” And the
young man went through a pantomime of shivering as he spoke.
“And how do you like Captain Stondon?” asked Miss Derno.
“He is one of the most delightful old men that was ever ruled by a young
wife,” answered Basil Stondon, laughing. “How did she happen to marry
him? Why, a woman like that might have aspired to a coronet.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Miss Derno. “Excuse me, Basil, but really men are so
very foolish. They see a well-dressed woman, with a pretty face, and
fall down and worship forthwith, and talk such nonsense about her as
might make the very angels weep.”
“Granted,” said Basil; “but what has that to do with Mrs. Stondon?”
“Why, only this much:—you see Mrs. Stondon mistress of Marshlands, and
say she might have aspired to a coronet: so she might if she could start
in the race matrimonial now; but Mrs. Stondon of Marshlands and Miss
Keller of nowhere are two very distinct people. Miss Keller did
exceedingly well when she married Captain Stondon.”
“But she was a Keller,” insisted Basil.
“True, but she was a poor Keller, and she is now a rich Stondon, and she
has made, in my opinion, an extremely good match, beautiful though she
may be.”
“How very vehement you are, Olivia, my dear,” said Mrs. Hurlford, as a
reminder.
“I am vehement because I do think she has done very well for herself.
Setting aside his wealth, Captain Stondon is a husband any wife might be
proud of. He is just the man I should have liked to marry myself.”
“I shall really have to speak to Mrs. Stondon,” remarked Mrs. Hurlford,
while Basil laughed, and said that he was sure Mrs. Stondon would feel
greatly flattered could she hear all the remarks they had made on
herself and her husband.
“I am going over there again one day next week, and I shall be able to
make mischief, Miss Derno,” he finished; whereupon Mrs. Hurlford at once
replied she hoped he would make some favourable impression on her,
“because,” she concluded, “I did not think her manner at all cordial to
you to-day.”
“It is not likely,” said Basil Stondon, “there can ever be much
cordiality between us.” And the conversation dropped.
CHAPTER III.
VISITORS.
Time went on, and as it went Basil Stondon grew to know his way over
from the Abbey to Marshlands so well that he could have walked the road
blindfold.
Mrs. Stondon never grew cordial, but that was no drawback to the young
man’s enjoyment. He had been so accustomed to women who liked and made
much of him, that to meet a woman who did not like him, and who was
merely civil, seemed only a pleasant variety—nothing more.
It amused him to watch Phemie’s devices for getting rid of him, and to
circumvent them; it delighted him to see her face vary and change while
he vexed and tormented her. Especially was he pleased when Phemie grew
angry, as she sometimes did, and turned upon him. When her eyes flashed,
when her cheeks flushed, she certainly did look beautiful; and no one
could bring the colour into her face and the lightning into her eyes
like Basil Stondon.
She would sit and think about those dead children if he annoyed her,
hour after hour. Had there been a boy upstairs, this young man, this
stranger, this Eliezer, would not have been wandering about the grounds
with Captain Stondon, riding with him, walking with him, getting to be
unto him as a son.
Phemie could not bear it; she got pale, she got irritable, watching the
pair. She grew beyond all things doubtful of herself, doubtful whether
she had ever made her husband entirely happy.
If he were happy now, he could not have been so before. If he loved her
as she once thought he did, he ought to know by intuition that she did
not like Basil being so constantly at Marshlands. And yet was not there
something wrong about herself? Was she not, after all, as the dog in the
manger? She never really desired anything till she saw another hand
stretched out to seize it. She had not cared for her own children to
inherit, and yet she grudged that another woman’s son should own the
broad lands of Marshlands. She knew that had her will been paramount
Basil should never have entered the park gates, either as guest or
master; but she could no more hinder her husband asking him to the
house, and learning to like him as he did, than she could hinder him
succeeding to the estates.
For who could help liking Basil Stondon? Basil, who was so easy, so
good-natured, so forgetful of injury, fancied or real, that long before
Mrs. Stondon had ever begun to question whether it was right for her to
hate him as she did, he had forgotten his feud with her, forgotten that
he and his mother had always laid his father’s death at the door of this
strange woman, forgotten everything save her youth, her beauty, and her
marvellous voice.
He had no remark now to make about blue eyes and auburn hair. He did not
now inform Miss Derno that he liked Marshlands but hated its mistress;
on the contrary, the oftener he visited his kinsfolk the pleasanter his
visits seemed to be, till at last he found he was so far reconciled to
Phemie as to be able to endure to stay under the same roof with her.
“Of course,” said Captain Stondon, in answer to the young man’s faint
remonstrances, “you must do something; but meantime, till you find
something to do, make Marshlands your headquarters.” And, nothing loth
to fall into such good quarters, Basil bade good-bye to the Hurlfords,
packed up his portmanteau at the Abbey, and unpacked it again in a house
that soon seemed more to him like home than any in which he had ever
previously set foot.
“I suppose Captain Stondon means to adopt you,” remarked Miss Derno. “I
hope you will not be spoiled at Marshlands; but it is not the lot I
should have chosen for you could I have had my wish.”
“It is not the lot I should have chosen for myself,” returned Mr. Basil,
tenderly. “If you could have cared for me, Olivia, how different in
every respect——”
“You do not know your own mind,” interrupted Miss Derno, hastily; “you
cannot read your own heart. You fancied you cared for me, and that fancy
has passed, or is passing away; you have only dreamed another dream and
wakened from it. How many women I have seen you in love with!” she went
on, a little bitterly. “I wonder, I often wonder, who will fix the
wandering heart at last, and keep it prisoner for life.”
“You might have done,” he answered; “you might have made anything you
chose of me. I would have worked for you, striven for you, died for you.
It may seem a laughing matter to you, but it is death to me. A man can
love but once, and I have loved you.”
“A man can love but once, and you have not loved me,” she retorted. “You
will turn to the first pretty girl you meet at Marshlands and love her,
or think you love her, and so you will go on—on—on—till you find some
one strong enough to take your heart, and hold it fast for ever.” And so
they parted—on friendly terms, it is true, and yet not quite good
friends—for Basil could not be blind to the fact that the way in which
things had turned out did not meet with Miss Derno’s approval.
She thought Captain Stondon would have done better to get his kinsman a
Government appointment rather than let him idle about Marshlands. She
thought so, and she said so; and although Basil carried off his
annoyance with a laugh, still he was annoyed at her idea of idleness
being so bad for him.
“May a fellow not enjoy this lovely weather without a thought of work?”
he asked. “I shall have enough to do doubtless before the winter.”
“I shall be glad to hear of it,” answered Miss Derno, drily. And she was
very glad when the news came that Basil Stondon was going to be busy at
last.
She had a long time to wait first, however, and many things happened
before he began to earn his living.
As for Phemie, she disliked the idea of Basil taking up his abode at
Marshlands, more even than Miss Derno, and showed her aversion to the
project so openly that Captain Stondon felt grieved and hurt.
It was natural, he thought, that she should not care much about Basil,
and yet it was only right and Christian that families should live at
peace with one another.
He was so happy himself that he wanted to make those about him happy
also; added to which there could be no question but that Basil supplied
in a great measure the want in his life to which I have before alluded.
He was getting fond of the man who would in the ordinary course of
nature succeed to the property after him—they had a joint interest in
the lands and woods and fields. Basil was not a wasteful, extravagant
man like Montague. Basil had been kept so short from boyhood of money by
his father, he had always been obliged to look so closely after his few
sovereigns, that he was quite as economical as any young man need to be.
He had ridden, he had shot, he had pulled in many a match, but he had
always been indebted to some friend for a mount; he had never shot over
his own preserves with his own dogs; he had never owned a yacht; he had
never kept his own hunters.
His training had not tended to make him either very proud or very
independent, but it had made him careful. Save that he dressed well, he
had not a single extravagance. Altogether Captain Stondon often
marvelled where Montague had got such a son, and wished Providence had
given Basil to him instead of to the reckless ne’er-do-well who ended
all his earthly troubles in so ghastly a fashion.
“I am certain, love,” he said to his wife, when he saw how coldly she
took the intelligence that Basil was coming to spend a month at
Marshlands, “you will, for my sake, try to like him a little better. He
is so different from his father, and it would be such a comfort to me to
be able to do something for him; and I cannot do anything for him unless
I first see what he is fit for. You will try to make the house pleasant
to him, dearest, will you not?” And Phemie answered—
“I am doing my best; only he is so constantly here, and one has to be so
perpetually doing one’s best, that there is no time left for rest.
However,” she added, noticing the look of annoyance on her husband’s
face—and it was a sign of amendment in Phemie when she noticed annoyance
in any one—“I will strive to be pleasanter to him, I will, indeed.”
Which promise so delighted Captain Stondon that he called her the most
amiable of women, the delight of his life, the blessing of his
existence, the only happiness he had ever known.
“And I am so afraid of happiness making me selfish, my dearest,” he
finished, “that I should like to do as much as I can for others. Perhaps
if I had been more lenient to Montague’s faults he might never——. It was
a money question,” he went on, “and it seemed terrible for the want of
money to bring about such a tragedy. Blood is thicker than water, after
all, Phemie; and I should never forgive myself if Basil went wrong too.
You will help me, love, will you not? But you have said you will, and
that is enough. He is so young, and he has all his lifetime before him
still, and it would be a sin not to help him at this juncture, when he
most needs assistance from some one.”
Captain Stondon sighed as he said this. It seemed such a fine thing for
a man to have his lifetime before him, and not to be tasting his first
cup of happiness when the evening shadows were stealing on!
“You have helped my people,” said Phemie, gratefully, “and I will try to
help yours. Henry, I have been very wrong.”
Whereupon Captain Stondon stooped down and kissed her, as if she had
conferred some benefit upon him.
Then Phemie noticed—what she had never observed previously—how grey he
was getting. She did not know why she had not seen this before, she
could never tell why she saw it then; she only felt that his manner, and
that changing hair, gave her a pang such as had never yet passed through
her heart. He was growing old, and she had, perhaps, not done what she
might for him. She had taken her own pleasure, and grudged him the
happiness of having one of his own blood to benefit. He who had done so
much for her; he who, never forgetful of her wishes, asked if she was
not going to write and ask Helen and Duncan to spend some time with
them.
“And if your uncle would come too, we might all go down to the sea-side
together. Should you not like it?”
Like it! Next to the hills, or, indeed, better, perhaps, than the hills,
Phemie loved the sea. To her it always seemed singing the songs she had
listened to in her childhood; to her it was mother, father, home,
friends. Phemie knew no loneliness while she sate and watched the waves
rippling in on the sand, or breaking upon the rocks. Already she had
grown a little weary of the monotonous Norfolk scenery, and she longed
for the sight of a more open country, of the far off mountains; or,
better than all else on earth, of the restless, murmuring, sorrowing,
passionate sea.
Helen came first to Marshlands. She was young, pretty, simple; very
proud of the prizes she had won at school; greatly interested in new
pieces of music; rapturous concerning fancy work; deferential towards
her rich cousin Phemie; and stood in great awe of Duncan, who was now a
hard-headed, hard-working, somewhat plain young man, following the bent
of his inclinations among steam-engines and boilers and forges and
wrought iron and cast iron and moulds and patterns and a general flare
and glare of furnaces and sputter of sparks and din of hammers and
blowing of bellows.
A young man possessed of that pleasant turn of mind which made him, in
the capacity of a worker, look on all idlers with distrust and contempt.
There was war between him and Basil Stondon for some days, till Mr.
Aggland appeared on the scene, and rated his son soundly for his
rudeness.
“He wanted to know what I did,” answered Duncan, stoutly, “and I would
not tell him. What business was it of his?”
“What business was it of yours, Duncan, asking him whether he would be
afraid to take Mayday over the bullfinch at the bottom of the home
park?” inquired Phemie.
“So you are taking his part next,” said Duncan, “and I thought you did
not like him.”
“I like fair play,” answered Phemie, “and he has as much right to ask in
whose office you are as you have to ask him, as I heard you ask him the
other day, where he lived when he was at home, and if it was play with
him and not work all the year round.”
“I earn my living, and he never did an hour’s work since he was born,”
returned the engineer.
“If you earn your living, you know who put you in the way of earning
it,” broke in Mr. Aggland. “The same man who buttered your bread—which
you would have had to eat stale and dry many a day but for him—chooses
to have this young gentleman staying here; and if you will not behave
towards him as you ought to do, you shall clear out of this house and
spend your holiday where you can.”
“Besides, Duncan,” added his cousin, “Mr. Stondon did not intend to vex
you, I know he did not. He asked about your employer and your work
merely from politeness, just as Miss Derno asked Helen how she got on at
school, and what new music she had been learning.”
“You ought to scold him well, Phemie,” remarked her uncle; “if he is to
do any good out in the world, he must learn not to be so thin-skinned.
He should write out Shakspeare’s axiom, and lay it to heart—‘Use every
man after his deserts, and who shall ’scape whipping?’ He would not, I
can tell him that. He forgets all he owes to Captain Stondon—his
education, his present position, his chances of future advancement. It
is all very well to talk about independence, Duncan, but a man can never
be independent who does not know how to be grateful, because an
ungrateful man is a slave to his own selfishness and pride. ‘I hate
ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,’”
said Mr. Aggland, by way of a neat ending to his sentence.
“It is to be hoped Duncan will not take you literally,” remarked Phemie,
laughing; and Mr. Aggland laughed himself, while he answered that he
hoped whatever Duncan did he would not spoil their holiday.
“I need a truce myself,” he added, “from care and pelf;
‘And I will have it in cool lanes,
O’er-arching like cathedral fanes,
With elm and beech of sturdy girth,
Or on the bosom of green earth
Amid the daisies.’”
“We all mean to enjoy ourselves,” said Phemie; “and to ensure Duncan’s
happiness as well, I intend to ask Miss Derno to join our party. Duncan
has lost his heart to her already, uncle. See how he blushes.”
“Well, it is enough to make anyone get red to hear how you talk,”
retorted Duncan. “You should remember there was a time you did not like
to be laughed at yourself; when you used to go about the house crying
because you had to leave us, you couldn’t bear to have a word said to
you in jest. It is not right of you, Phemie, and you have set Mr.
Stondon at me now. If he tries it on again I will break his head for
him, I will; and as for Miss Derno, I wish you would let her stay where
she is; I am sure I never care to set eyes on her again.”
“It is very naughty for children to tell fibs,” answered his cousin; and
the very same day she drove over to the Abbey and asked Miss Derno to
accompany them to Cromer, to the infinite delight of Mrs. Hurlford, who
declared to her cousin that she thought Mrs. Stondon was the sweetest
woman that ever lived.
“Only to think of it!” exclaimed Mrs. Hurlford, “only to think of her
asking you, although she has got that young girl staying with her. I may
tell you now that I trembled when I heard she and Basil were to be in
the same house together. Why, Mrs. Stondon might make up a marriage
between them as easily as I could walk across the room; for if he began
to flirt with her, he could not back out of that without offending
Captain Stondon. Make the most of your time, Olivia; at any rate keep
him from making love to that chit, for she must go back to school before
long, and then you can have the field to yourself.”
“Why should he not make love to her if he please?” asked Miss Derno,
gravely.
“Why should he not? Good gracious, Olivia, are you losing your senses?
Are you turning into an idiot? Can he marry both of you? I only put it
to you, can he?”
“Certainly not; indeed it does not seem to me that Basil Stondon is in a
position to marry any one at present.”
“He told you so?” This was interrogative.
“I believe he did make some sensible speech to that effect,” answered
Miss Derno.
“Then you are as good as engaged,” was Mrs. Hurlford’s immediate
deduction. “I think, Olivia, considering our relationship, and the
position in which we stand to one another, you might have told me this
before.”
“When I am engaged to him you may be quite certain I shall not keep the
news back from you for a moment,” replied Miss Derno, and she left the
room a little out of temper.
CHAPTER IV.
SUMMER HOLIDAYS.
That was a happy time—the happiest Phemie ever knew. It was the bright
summer holiday of her life, and not even when, a child, she built her
perishable houses of sand and shells on the seashore—not even when, a
girl, she had wandered over the Cumberland hills gathering flowers and
wreathing them into garlands for her hair, had Phemie been so happy as
she was in those swiftly-passing hours that sped by, rapidly,
noiselessly, like a wild bird on the wing.
Considering how much happiness this world holds for even the wretchedest
among us, it is strange that we so rarely get it unalloyed.
The inevitable “but” that seems to dog our pleasures is incessantly
trampling on the heels of happiness; and thus it comes about that
whenever we can manage to outstrip our haunting shadow, whenever we do
chance to drain a draught which leaves no bitter after-taste behind, we
remember those pleasant hours, that delicious vintage, for ever and for
ever.
The enjoyment may not be so great when we come to analyse it, but it has
been perfect of its kind; the diamond may not be large, but it is
without flaw or blemish. We have known no drawback, we have had no mist,
no cloud, no cold, no sorrow. We have enjoyed—wholly and entirely—for
once we have basked in the warmth of complete happiness; and the memory
of that glory of sunshine which has flooded our lives, and forced its
way into the darkest chambers of our hearts, can never be effaced by the
darkness of the tempestuous days that follow.
Do we forget the summer in the winter? Do we forget the flowers when the
frost is covering the ground? We have enjoyed the summer, we have loved
the flowers, and we can no more cease to recollect the sunshine and the
gay parterres than we can forget to remember the warm grasp of a hand
that may now be cold enough—than we can lay the coffin-lid over the face
of the dead, and shut out by that act the recollection of the smiles,
the tears, the tones whose immortality has commenced for us on earth.
Did Phemie forget? My friends, if one of you stood for a time in
Paradise, should you be likely to let that part of your existence slip
out of your memory? If you have ever for a moment stood in the Garden of
Eden, without knowing there was a tempter in it; eaten of the pleasant
fruit, without thinking there was a worm lying at the very core; drank
of the waters of gladness, without dreaming there was poison in the
draught, death in their sweetness; I can only say you have felt what
Phemie Stondon felt in those days which were happy as heaven unto her.
And as the spot where you lay down and took your rest will remain green
in your heart till the end, so the memory of that happy summer holiday,
through all the after years, faded not away.
Whether they took long excursions into the country, whether they walked
on the sands, whether they sate by the beach, whether under the
moonlight their boat glided over the sea, while the dipping oars kept
time to the sweet voices of the fair singers, whether they were talking,
or laughing, or silent, they were happy. If there had been no such
things as sin and care and sorrow, they could not have enjoyed
themselves more. Had there been no to-morrow in life, to-day could not
have seemed brighter. Mr. Aggland, from his farm, from his isolated
existence, from his uncongenial home; Duncan, from his hard work in the
heart of London; Helen, from her lessons; Phemie, from company; Miss
Derno, from her relations; Captain Stondon, from the cares of ownership;
Basil, from anxieties concerning his future,—took holiday.
They carried no skeleton, they left no one at home that they wished at
the seashore with them, and they enjoyed—if I were to write for ever I
could never hope to tell how fully they enjoyed that time!
As for Phemie, in those happy, happy days, she forgot her rise in the
world—she forgot her accomplishments—she forgot that Basil was to come
after her husband—she forgot everything that had made her womanhood so
much less lovely than her girlhood, and grew softer, gentler, sweeter.
Away from the familiar family circle—always on her guard before
strangers—she had grown worldly and selfish, and self-conscious; but by
the lonely seashore, where the waves sung the dear song she had listened
to in her childhood, Phemie changed once again—not to the girl who had
won Captain Stondon’s heart among the Cumberland hills, but to something
far different—to a woman who might have won any man’s heart. Alas! for
Phemie!
In those days she grew pliable as wax in the hand of the moulder; she
grew loving and loveable, and tender; she would sit with her uncle’s
hand in hers, listening to his discourses, smiling at his quotations,
pleased to hear him say how happy he was, how for years and years and
years he had never enjoyed himself so much before.
She would talk to Duncan about his future life—about his plans, his
hopes, his prospects, for hours at a time, while the waves kept
rippling, rippling at their feet. She delighted to have Helen beside
her, and the old caressing attitude, so long discontinued, came back
naturally to them both. Her admiration for Miss Derno woke to life once
more; and best of all, there came into her manner towards her husband a
graceful thoughtfulness, a grateful appreciation, that comforted Mr.
Aggland exceedingly.
Phemie! Phemie! my love, my darling!—Phemie of the blue eyes, of the
auburn hair!—vain, fanciful, exacting, jealous Phemie!—if I were to
leave you now sitting by the seashore, leave you at the acme of your
happiness, and close the book, and clasp the rest of the story within
its leaves, would the world like you, as I have done, I wonder!
Rather would you not seem a mere sketch, a fair faint outline, an
unfinished portrait, beautiful though you may be, lingering in the
sunlight of those bright summer days, when your life was full—full to
overflowing—of prosperity and happiness, and love. And love, poor
child—and love! It was the dream-hero come too late, for the Phemie
Keller who had waited for him by the tarn and the waterfall, who had
listened for his footsteps over the hills, was free no longer to greet
his appearing. She had owned but one life—but one, and this was what she
had made of it. Never to be able to love sinlessly, never to be able to
love openly, never to be able to whisper the sweet secret to herself
save with tears of bitterness, with pangs of anguish. This was what “I
will” had meant for her when she uttered the words in Tordale
church—where the everlasting hills looked down on the beautiful valley
below.
Never, O God! never—so long as the sun shone—so long as the rivers
flowed to the sea—as the birds sang—as the snow fell—as the rain
descended—never!
And yet the waves rippled, and the sunbeams danced on the waters, and
the green leaves rustled in the summer breeze, and the earth looked
lovely in its robes of green all broidered and festooned with flowers,
and Phemie came to love the man she had disliked, and was happy,
unknowing what such happiness meant.
Knowledge came to her soon enough; but not in those sunshiny days when
she walked by the seashore, and rejoiced in the summer gladness, when
she “grew,” as she said to herself, “to like Basil better,” and to
wonder less at his popularity.
Poor Phemie! with careful hands and loving hearts all around, was there
no one to see whither you were drifting? No one to notice the rock
whereon your poor ship went to pieces?
It was holiday time, and all seem too busy taking their ease, enjoying
their hours of idleness, to think of danger or of distress. Besides, we
do not ordinarily dream of ice catching fire, of purity itself dragging
her garments through the mire. She was innocent. How should knowledge of
sin ever enter into such a home as Phemie’s? And yet, oh, reader! given
this position: on the one hand duty and an unsatisfied heart, a heart
that the love of man had never filled, that the faithlessness of man had
never broken, that was as inexperienced as the heart of a child; and on
the other, temptation, youth, romance—how was it likely to end?
Can one pass through the fire unscorched? Is it virtue, never having
even seen the furnace, to reach the end of life with no smell of burning
on our garments?
Had sin never stood in the path before her, how would it have been with
Phemie Keller—who can tell? And who can tell either, oh, friends, how it
would fare with any of us if at some point of our journey we had to
buckle on our armour, and wage war with the devil and his legions?
It is one thing to be a criminal and another to be a judge. I pray you
to remember this, you who from the heights of virtue look down on these
pages, and read therein the story of Phemie’s struggle.
Slowly as the waves steal in upon the shore, as the leaves come upon the
bare branches, crept this love into Mrs. Stondon’s heart.
That the sky seemed clearer, that the days were shorter, that the whole
earth appeared more beautiful, that there was a stillness on the sea, a
glory over the landscape such as she had never before dreamed of, Phemie
knew; but that the brightness and the beauty, the calm and the glory,
were all born of love she did not suspect till she wakened from her
slumber—till, like the gold and the silver of a fairy tale, her
happiness turned to misery, her rejoicing to despair.
But at the time of which I am speaking, what did love mean to a woman
who had never felt its power? It meant nothing. No more than religion
means to the infidel—than the Word of God signifies to the atheist. She
had never believed in it; she had treated it as an idea, a folly, a
delusive dream. Children put faith in stories of dwarfs and giants, of
enchanted castles, of magicians, of sprites and gnomes; boys and girls,
in a similar manner, placed confidence in love tales, in romantic
legends, in sentimental songs; but when children grew up to be boys and
girls, and when boys and girls grew up to be men and women, they
abandoned their old superstitions, and became like unto Phemie herself,
a wise individual who believed in nothing out of the common course of
events, who thought that marriage meant no more than what the
prayer-book said it did, who would have gone before a magistrate and
sworn to the fact, had such testimony been desired of her who laughed at
love, and whose firm opinion was, that love between a man and a woman
not related to one another by blood meant either folly or sin.
Folly! In the day of her bitterest distress, she learnt that the
strongest love may be the highest wisdom. Sin! I think Phemie, through
much suffering, came to understand that there may be as much sin in
loving too little as in loving too much.
Till she had eaten of that tree, however, how was she to distinguish
between good and evil? Till she had felt danger, how was she to arm
herself against harm? Are the blind to be blamed for walking on straight
towards a precipice? Was Phemie a sinner, then, because she rejoiced in
the sunlight on the waters, because she delighted to hear the birds
sing, because she thought the country had never before looked so
beautiful, because she looked with dreamy eyes up at the pure blue
summer sky, because the floating clouds were lovely to her imagination,
because there was a glory on the sea, on the land, on the fields, on the
woods, because she was happy, unknowing why?
Was she to blame? Was she a worse woman, then, in the day of her
temptation, than she had been in that of her prosperity? Was the dead
heart holier than the erring one? Who may answer? I can only tell the
story as it came to pass—only show how the error produced fruit of
sorrow, how her fault brought forth trouble and remorse.
They were all talking on this subject one Sunday evening after their
return to Marshlands. Talking, I mean, about how his sin finds a man out
even in this world. How the fault committed and forgotten by the
creature is not forgotten by the Creator; how it is rather like seed
cast into the ground, sure to spring up, and to bring forth abundantly
sooner or later after its kind—either private sorrow or public shame,
when Captain Stondon remarked—
“The last time I heard a sermon on the same text as that this afternoon
was among the Cumberland hills. Do you remember Mr. Conbyr’s ‘Wages of
Sin,’ Phemie?” he added, turning to his wife: “the day I first saw
you—the day I first saw Tordale—the day I sat on the side of Helbeck,
and watched the sun set among the mountains—the day I broke my arm and
sprained my ankle—that day Mr. Conbyr told us that the wages of sin is
death?”
“And have you seen any reason since to believe that he told you what was
not true?” asked Mr. Aggland.
“I am afraid I have never thought about the subject from that day to
this,” answered Captain Stondon. “Sin seems so strong a word, so utterly
outside the ordinary experience of an everyday life.”
“Perhaps so,” was Mr. Aggland’s reply; “yet still we acknowledge every
Sunday that we are sinners. What does that signify? I only ask for
information,” went on Phemie’s uncle. “What is the sin of which the
wages is death, if it be one which we can ward off with a fine house,
good fires, and purple and fine linen? And if we are not all offenders,
if we are not every day committing some fault, what do we mean by
confessing we are miserable sinners? We either attribute some meaning to
the words, or we do not. Which is it?”
There was a moment’s pause before any one answered. Then Miss Derno
said—
“I think you and Captain Stondon are traversing different mental lines.
You are taking sin in its broadest sense; you are thinking of sins of
omission, and sins of commission, of sins of temper, of sins of
selfishness, of sins of which the law of the land takes no cognizance;
while Captain Stondon was speaking of those that are punished by
Calcraft, or by fine, or by imprisonment.”
“Which are not usually committed in well-regulated households,” put in
Basil Stondon.
“As, for instance, theft, murder, and so on,” added Captain Stondon.
“But the text refers to death in the next world, not in this,” remarked
Phemie. They were talking the matter over, just as people do talk such
matters over—neither theologically nor philosophically—not pursuing any
distinct line of argument, but speaking out whatever thought chanced to
come uppermost at the moment.
“I should rather say death in the next world _or_ in this,” amended Mr.
Aggland.
“Will you explain your meaning a little more clearly?” asked Miss Derno.
It was an interesting group on which the beams of the departing sun fell
aslant—interesting because of the beauty of the women, of the faces of
the men; because of the way in which the light wandered in and out among
the trees that overshadowed the talkers; because of the golden track
that lay upon the grass; because of the stillness of that holy summer’s
evening; because, taking sin in the sense we generally use the word, it
seemed so strange a subject for such a “well-ordered household,” to
quote Basil Stondon, to have selected for conversation.
Sin! If a select party, standing about the bar of a public-house in
Whitechapel had commenced such a discussion, it would have appeared only
natural. If rags and filth and vice had been able to tell all about it,
we should only have said it was right and proper for the natives to
speak of a plant indigenous to their soil. But twice now Captain Stondon
had heard the same text preached from, under circumstances that had
impressed it on his mind. Both times the preacher had addressed himself
not to the men and the women from contact with whom virtue in this world
shrinks decorously. In Tordale, Captain Stondon had wondered for a short
space as to what sin the farmers among the hills were likely to commit;
at Marshlands, when the clergyman had not above twenty of a
congregation, the text grew almost personal.
Sin! The rector had discoursed to them about all sorts of sin—about the
sins of idolatry, and the sins of disobedience; about the sins of the
Israelites—about the sins of Ahab—about the sins of Jeroboam, the son of
Nebat—about the sins of Saul, and the sins of David, and the sins of
Gehazi, and the sins of the Jews, and all the offences which are counted
as sins in the New Testament. He had told them how “sin when it is
finished bringeth forth death.” And now they were discussing the
subject, and Mr. Aggland said sin brought death in this world or in the
next or in both.
“Unrepented sin,” he observed, in answer to Miss Derno, “may bring death
in the next world; being no divine, however, that is a point I should
prefer not meddling with; but any man has a right to speak of what he
has seen in this world—he has a right, I mean, to talk of the ways of
Providence, so far as he has been able to trace them on this side of the
grave; and I have seen even in this world that the wages of sin is
death.”
“Death by disease or violence—which?” demanded Basil Stondon.
“Neither,” replied Mr. Aggland; “but death to every hope, to every wish;
death to peace and contentment, to every pleasant memory, to the
happiness of every passing hour. ‘We have all our vices,’ says Horace,
and Baxter advises us to kill them before they kill us. ‘Use sin’ are
his words, ‘as it will use you—spare it not, for it will not spare you:
use it therefore as a murderer should be used, and though it kill your
bodies, it shall not be able to kill your souls; though it bring you to
the grave, it shall not be able to keep you there.’”
“I am still at a loss,” remarked Captain Stondon, “to understand what
sin could produce such effects as you speak of. What sin, for instance,
as any among us would be likely to commit?”
“What sin did Dives commit?” asked Mr. Aggland in reply. And the evening
sun fell, as he spoke, on his strange face, on his hollow cheeks, on his
tangled hair, on his thoughtful eyes, on his mouth, which he opened
wider than ever while he put his question—“What sin did Dives commit? He
was a rich man, and not a bad man. So far as we can see, he wore purple
and fine linen; he lived in a grand house; he fared sumptuously every
day. No death came to him in this world, but hell fire in the next. Look
over the Bible for yourself, and you will find it is not sin which the
law of the land punishes the most severely that we are warned against
with the greatest frequency. It would be a hard thing if it were more
difficult for the poor to reach heaven than the rich—for Lazarus than
for Dives. It would be an awful thing if God despised the poor as we do;
if there were ‘respect in the next world for him who weareth the gay
clothing, who enters the assembly with a gold ring, and in goodly
apparel.’ (You look at me, Miss Derno, as though you did not know I am
quoting Scripture.) Though we go to the grave in a carriage with nodding
plumes; though we are followed thither by the wealthy and titled of the
land; though we lie down and take our rest in a coffin covered with
velvet and lined with silk, yet we shall all have to enter heaven as
paupers. Happy will he be in that day who, finding himself naked, shall
yet not be ashamed.”
And Mr. Aggland looked up to the western sky, all crimson and purple and
gold, as he concluded his little sermon,—looked up as though he there
saw what he had been talking about, while Miss Derno said—
“You give us the truth naked enough, at any rate, Mr. Aggland.”
“For anatomical purposes clothing is unnecessary, Miss Derno,” he
answered. At which remark they all laughed, excepting Phemie, who,
sitting a little apart, was looking, like her uncle, at the pomp and
splendour that surrounded the setting sun.
“Does not some one say something about our sins resembling our shadows,
uncle?” she asked, with a sad, thoughtful expression on her lovely face.
“Suckling does,” he answered. “His idea is that in our noon they, like
our shadows,
‘When our day’s in its glory—scarce appear;
Towards our evening—how great! how monstrous!’”
“And it is evening now, and too late for us to sit talking here much
longer,” observed Captain Stondon, offering his arm to Miss Derno.
Mr. Aggland arose, and followed after Basil Stondon and his niece.
Before he passed into the house he paused, and looked once again towards
the west, and as he looked, sighed.
That was the last night of their happy holiday, and their talk had been
of sin!
CHAPTER V.
KNOWLEDGE.
Time went by—it was autumn—it was winter—it was spring—and still Captain
Stondon found some good reason why Basil should remain at Marshlands.
Nothing loth, Basil stayed on; stayed to be always with Phemie and her
husband, to go with them everywhere; stayed till people forgot the time
when he had never been seen in Norfolk, and came to consider him not
merely the heir, but the child of the house.
A child in comparison to Captain Stondon, perhaps; but how about Phemie?
Phemie, who was younger ever so much than he; Phemie of the blue eyes,
and the auburn hair, and the divine voice; Phemie, who was growing to be
all the world to him, who was becoming fonder, and fonder, and fonder of
him—fonder and fonder as the days went by.
“That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarcely worth the
sentinel,” says the Vicar of Wakefield; and yet I doubt whether, in this
case, it had not been better for Captain Stondon to have trusted Basil a
little less, to have thought of consequences a little more.
We watch the woman whose purity we suspect; we leave perfect purity to
be sullied if it choose. Is not this locking the stable door after the
steed is gone? Is not this being “wise afterwards” with a vengeance?
Time, as I have said, went by; but to Basil and to Phemie the months
seemed days, for they had entered into that dreamland where, as in
eternity, there is no account taken of the passing hours. They were
happy, for Phemie did not dream of danger, and Basil would not think of
it. He liked the river, and he wilfully shut his eyes to the fact that
it was flowing to the sea; besides, if there were any harm done, it
would be only to himself. Mrs. Stondon, “of course,” was safe. Of
course; ah! well-a-day!
A young man who from his earliest boyhood had been in love with some
one, was scarcely likely not to know that he cared for Phemie more than
it was quite in the proper order of things for him to care for another
person’s wife; in fact, by the time the primroses were blooming on the
banks and under the hedgerows, he knew perfectly well that his fancy for
Miss Derno was gone, and that an attachment for Mrs. Stondon had taken
its place. He knew it, but he would not acknowledge it. He was like a
man who, feeling every hour in the day twinges and pangs that are the
premonitory symptoms of a mortal malady, will yet not even whisper to
himself that he is sick. He has not courage to turn from the sunlight
and look down into the grave. Basil Stondon was for once in his life
afraid to think of his new love. All his wounds before had been trifling
in comparison to this cancer, that he dared not show to mortal.
Not even to the woman who was to “fix the wandering heart at last,”
durst he show by word or look or sign what she had become to him. He had
to know and suffer in silence; he had to bear his pain with a smile on
his lips; for he understood well enough that if once he spoke he would
be cast out of his earthly Eden; and though there might be a serpent in
it—a serpent stinging him every day—still it was Eden for all that.
“The battle between evil and good,” says a living preacher, “is
perpetually being fought in silence.”
Have you ever thought about this, my reader? ever laid it to heart that,
under all the decorum of our nineteenth-century life, the old, old
warfare that began so many thousands of years since is still being
waged? that the devil is defied, that the devil is triumphant, that
temptations are resisted, that tragedies are acted out with no
spectator, save God, looking on the while?
Smooth and bright may be the surface of the waters, but what about their
depths?
Happy and peaceful seemed that Norfolk household: there were pleasant
walks about the grounds, there were drives through the narrow lanes,
there were rides across the breezy commons; within sight of the quarries
where the “crags” were hewn out; beside marshy pools, from the margin of
which geese stretched out their long necks and hissed at the strangers
as they paused to look; there were parties at Marshlands, and at the
houses of friends and neighbours. There was the usual routine of an
English country life; its calm, its contentment, its want of excitement,
its affluence, its propriety, its monotony; but there was something else
besides, something that was changing Phemie and altering Basil, that was
eating the heart out of that happy life; eating, eating at the core of
that rich ripe fruit, and changing all its former sweetness to
bitterness and decay.
He should have gone when he first learnt how dear she was growing; he
should have left her, “loved her and left her—left her for ever.” He had
friends; he might have visited them. He had a mother; he might have
resided with her. Had he pressed the point, Captain Stondon would have
got him some appointment; but even supposing none of these roads open,
he ought to have left Phemie; ought to have been man enough to say, “I
will not bring sorrow on her; let the future hold what it may for me.”
A man can get away from temptation, but a woman cannot. Without telling
any one, without asking advice or seeking assistance or making a
disturbance, a man may always turn his face north, east, south, or west,
at a moment’s notice. He can cease visiting at a house; he can walk
where he is certain not to meet the woman he loves best; he can do, in
fact, what Basil Stondon ought to have done—leave her.
But this was just what Basil Stondon did not do. He would pay a flying
visit to London, or go to see his mother, or accept an invitation to
stay for a day or two with a friend here, or another friend there, but
he always came back to Marshlands, hungering and thirsting for a sight
of the woman whom he ought never to have seen more.
His mother would not come to Marshlands. It was well for Basil to remain
there if he liked, she said, but she could not forget her husband, which
was the less praiseworthy of Mrs. Montague Stondon, as Marshlands would
have killed her in a month.
“How you bear the monotony,” she remarked, “I cannot imagine.” To which
Basil made answer that men were different from women; “we can ride and
hunt and shoot,” he explained.
“And she” (the “she” meant Mrs. Stondon), “she, you say, is really
presentable. I have heard the same thing from other sources, but I can
scarcely credit it. She was so dreadfully unformed when I first saw
her.”
“You would not think so now,” answered her son.
“Those kind of people,” said Mrs. Montague, “soon learn our ways—that
is, if they are clever; and she is clever, Miss Derno tells me.”
“I suppose she is,” replied Basil, who found his mother expected him to
make some answer.
“And that cousin. Now, my dear Basil, I do not wish to put ideas into
your head, but pray be on your guard, pray—pray. You who may marry so
well—you who will have such a property—do not let any one entrap you
into marrying that girl. Whenever you told me ‘she’ was getting more
civil, I suspected her reason. As she has no children, she would like
one of her own family to marry the next heir. Be on your guard,
therefore, I entreat, be on your guard.”
Basil very solemnly promised her that he would, and remarked that if she
would only come to Marshlands when Helen Aggland next visited it, she
might see for herself how little danger there was of his falling in love
with such a chit of a child; but his mother would not believe in his
safety.
“I cannot forget, if you can,” she answered. “If Captain Stondon had
only done half as much for your father as he is doing for you, I should
not now be a widow.” Upon which Mrs. Montague began to cry, and Basil
changed the subject, for he knew he had altered his opinion about that
matter entirely, and that he did not now consider either Phemie or her
husband had any share in his father’s suicide.
“Blameable share, of course, I mean,” said the young man to Miss Derno,
and Miss Derno remarked she was glad to find he was growing so sensible.
This was in the spring, when Miss Derno came down into Norfolk again, to
stay with the Hurlfords, who meant to have quite a gay time of it, in
honour of a General Sir Samuel Hurlford, who having done great things in
India, had returned thence, been knighted, and was now making a tour of
his relations prior to returning to India in the beginning of the new
year. He was a very wonderful man, so everybody said, and the Hurlfords
were naturally proud to have, and anxious to exhibit him, as well as his
daughter, Miss Georgina Hurlford. This young lady had been educated in
England, and after having been brought out (unsuccessfully) in London,
under the most excellent auspices, was about to accompany General Sir
Samuel back to India.
Money and fame had not quite kept pace together in the General’s case,
and prudent friends thought it was quite possible Miss Hurlford might
marry better on the other side of the equator. At any rate Miss Georgina
meant to try.
She had not found the husband crop plentiful in her season, but she
hoped matters would be different in India. She was just the girl to “go
off” there, her acquaintance said—lively, good-natured, ladylike. She
liked the idea of travelling; she did not mind the sea; she did not care
for the heat; she thought it would be something new; and besides, she
could then be always with “dear papa.”
Dear papa was very fond of Georgina; very proud of her hair, which
curled naturally; of her eyes, that were a light cold brown; of her
cheeks, which were round and rosy; of her mouth, which was small and
pretty.
He admired his child excessively, but when he said she “is like her poor
dear mamma,” he sighed.
There were those who knew that “poor dear mamma” had led the worthy
General a pretty dance before she reluctantly left a world that seemed
to her a very desirable one to inhabit; but no one in Norfolk, unless,
indeed, it might be Miss Derno, was aware of this, and the sigh was put
down to regret for the dead, not to solicitude for the living.
Miss Georgina had been most carefully educated, so the General’s sisters
assured him. She had spent eight years of her life at a school where
there were masters for everything, extras in abundance, a pew in church,
and a clergyman once a week to catechize the young ladies.
Her vacations she had spent with one or other of her aunts; either with
her aunt in town, or her aunt in the country; either at Kensington, or
at an old Grange in Berkshire. In London she learned the value of a good
settlement; at the Grange, how to sit close to her saddle, and not to
ride on the reins. Miss Georgina was an apt pupil, and gave great
satisfaction to all who were kind enough to instruct her. A most
discreet young person, who could dance well, sing German songs, talk
French with any one, take her fences, interpret Schulhoff and Chopin,
play waltzes and quadrilles, and who withal was pleasant-mannered and
agreeable. What more could a man and a father desire? particularly as
Georgina was prudent, which her poor dear mamma had never been.
She had met Basil Stondon before, in London; as who, indeed, among the
upper middle class had not? She liked him greatly (they danced together
many evenings); and if I may say such a thing of a young lady brought up
as Miss Georgina Hurlford had been brought up, she loved him.
There are some men whom all women seem to like or to love, and Basil
Stondon was one of them.
The dear creatures have a fancy for extremes—extreme of strength or
extreme of weakness.
It is your medium man whose love goes a begging, in whose face the door
is shut unceremoniously.
Without fortune, Basil might have looked long enough for a wife, but he
need not have walked abroad to look for love and affection.
Women were very fond of this young fellow; women who, it is to be hoped,
met with husbands calculated to make them happier in course of time; and
one of the girls who liked him excessively was Miss Georgina Hurlford.
To General Sir Samuel, Captain Stondon took amazingly, as in duty bound;
they talked about India together all the day long. In a small and
friendly community any strange face is welcome, providing it be a
pleasant one; and Mrs. Stondon made quite as cordial advances to Miss
Hurlford as her husband did to Miss Georgina’s father.
Here was an opportunity not to be despised, and Miss Hurlford was not
above availing herself of it. She met Mrs. Stondon half way, more than
half way; and after the curious manner of the gentle sex, fell in love
with her straightway.
If a man had paid her half the compliments that fell from Miss
Hurlford’s lips, Mrs. Stondon would have thought him deranged. Hero
worship! What was any hero worship in comparison to such heroine worship
as Miss Georgina offered to her new friend? It was incense all the day
long; and Phemie never, because of the smoke, could see the meaning of
it.
Everybody joined together in making much of her; and Phemie was pleased
to be made much of, and basked in the sunshine.
She was happy; ah, heaven! she was so happy: she was so innocent; she
was still so young. This girl, fresh from a boarding-school, was wiser
in her generation than the seven years’ wife, and wound Mrs. Stondon
round her finger like packthread; but there was a balance! the sun and
the wind and the rain could never talk to the one as they did to the
other; the voices of the night never spoke to Miss Hurlford as they did
to Phemie. Never since she was a child had Georgina looked at anything
with the same guileless eyes as those with which Mrs. Stondon stood
gazing through the calm twilight of a summer’s evening at the woods and
the fields, on the last night when she and perfect truth and unsullied
purity walked through life together.
For ever—for ever, the Phemie we have travelled with so far in poverty
and riches departed, and another Phemie came and stood in her place.
It was as though the calm, self-possessed, unimpressionable nature set
with the sun; as though the night, the cool, calm night, took her in its
soothing embrace, took her away and hid her, and gave back with the
dawning day—not the same, ah! no, but another—a passionate, sorrowful,
despairing woman, who knew why the hours had sped by, why time had
seemed to fly instead of to travel at ordinary speed; why a glory had
all at once come over her life; why she had appeared to be always living
in the sunshine; she knew all this, I say, and knew at the same moment
that the sun had set, that the glory was departed—the illusion
dispelled—the happiness passed to return no more—no more.
Knowledge came to her thus—came in the twilight as she stood under the
verandah, watching the night steal on.
She had never felt so happy before, I think; and as she leaned against
one of the pillars of the verandah, and drank in the thousand perfumes
that arose from the garden beneath, she gave herself up to the full
enjoyment of the moment, to that sensuous enjoyment which is produced on
the minds of some by the scent of flowers, by the fading light, by the
trees standing dark and silent in the distance, by the balminess of the
air, by the lights and shadows on a landscape.
The roses were blooming beside her; the honeysuckle was lying against
her cheek; the night air fanned her forehead. They had no company that
evening save General and Mr. Hurlford, and Miss Derno. Dear Georgina had
not been able to accompany her papa: so at that present moment Captain
Stondon was doing the agreeable to General Sir Samuel and Mr. Hurlford;
being assisted in his laudable efforts by Mr. Basil Stondon.
Miss Derno, who had been staying for a few days at Marshlands, was, to
the best of Mrs. Stondon’s belief, writing a letter in her
dressing-room, and Phemie had consequently the twilight and her reverie
to herself.
It was getting dark—darker, but still Phemie stood leaning against the
pillar, with her dress concealed by the trailing creepers that covered
the low light trellis-work dividing the balcony from the terrace,
thinking dreamily and happily, until it suddenly occurred to her that
under the distant elm-trees she could see something moving.
If we fancy anything of this kind we watch, and Phemie therefore only
did what her neighbours would have done under the circumstances—she
strained her eyes to see if she were right in her conjecture.
She was not frightened, she was hardly curious; she thought it might be
some of the servants; and though the servants had no business to be
making love under the elm-trees, still Phemie was not likely to speak
harshly about their having done so.
“It must be two of the servants.” Phemie said this to herself over and
over, as the shadows changed to figures, and came slowly on.
“It must be the servants,” and her heart began to beat quicker.
“It must be the servants,” she repeated, and she could have struck
herself for refusing to believe her own words. She knew well enough who
it was. She knew even in that dim light the sweep of Miss Derno’s dress,
the gracefulness of her walk, the lithe beauty of her figure. She
knew—she would have known it among a thousand—the pleading softness of
Basil’s voice, the whispered music of the tones that came to her through
the stillness.
She plucked a rose from its stem, and pulled the flower to pieces in her
nervous irritability. She dropped the leaves from the naked stem, and
the thorns pricked her soft dainty fingers.
They came nearer—nearer still, and then they paused for a moment, and
spoke earnestly and eagerly together. After that they turned on to the
grass, and walked across the turf closer and closer to where she stood,
till Phemie could almost hear their words rising to her in the
stillness.
Then they paused again, and one sentence reached Phemie.
“I could never doubt you, never misinterpret you: if all the rest of the
world proved false, I should still believe you true till the end.”
It was Basil who spoke—who, stooping over Miss Derno’s outstretched
hand, kissed it ere they parted.
He walked down towards the fir plantation where he smoked a solitary
cigar: she went round to the conservatory, and re-entered the house that
way.
It was all past, and that was all, and yet Phemie, kneeling in her own
room—kneeling with her face buried in her hands, wept such tears that
night as had never fallen from her eyes before. Passionate tears,
jealous tears, tears of shame, of anguish, of despair.
She knew all about it now—knew that the foe she had mocked at was her
conqueror—knew there was such a thing as love in the world, and that she
loved—knew she had been walking along the road leading to
destruction—knew that she was fonder of this man than she had ever grown
to be of the husband who had raised her to what she was.
To what she was! Alas! was it for this he had taken her from the sinless
quiet of her former life? for this he had given wealth and rank and
position? Had she passed from the peace of that tranquil valley, so far
away in point of distance, so much further away in memory and feeling,
to be sobbing her heart out all alone in the dark?
She had wept once looking down the valley of Tordale, but not like this;
she had shed tears before, but not like these; she had looked out on
life then—on an ideal, an untried life; she was facing its realities
now; the wells of her heart were open at last, the secret chambers were
unlocked after all, and with an exceeding bitter cry Phemie woke to a
full knowledge of what nature had dimly foreshadowed to her before
marriage.
She had never loved her husband—never. She loved this other man who
could never be anything to her—never. Among the hills she had owned one
life—among the hills she had pledged that life away. She could not go
back to the hills now, and begin existence in the new. She had sinned;
she had sinned in marrying; she had sinned in loving; she could never be
happy, but she could be true; she could, though her sorrow killed her;
she could, though her tears fell ceaselessly; she could and she would.
Poor child! poor wife! poor Phemie!
CHAPTER VI.
FROM LESS TO MORE.
For two days Mrs. Stondon kept her room. She said she had a headache,
that she had caught cold, that she was too ill to see any one excepting
her husband, and yet she would not allow Captain Stondon to send for a
doctor. She was afraid a doctor might guess her malady to be more mental
than physical, and so she refused to do anything except lie on a sofa in
her dressing-room, while her maid bathed her forehead with
eau-de-cologne and water, and brought her up morning and night a cup of
tea.
On the evening of the second day Phemie went down stairs, lest her
husband’s anxiety, her husband’s tenderness, should kill her.
She had thought over the matter during those two days till she was
almost mad. She had loved a man not her husband—a man who loved another
woman. She had loved unsought, unwooed. She had planted without hope of
gathering. She had loved unasked, but, thank God, unknown.
Well, she could bury her own dead without the help of man; she could
destroy this curse which had come to her in the guise of a blessing; she
could hate Basil as she hated herself; she could leave him and Miss
Derno to settle their love affairs to their own liking. She could keep
her secret, her shameful, disgraceful secret, to herself, and mortal
should not wring it from her. It was known but to herself and her God,
and He would have pity.
Thinking all these good thoughts, having formed all these good
resolutions, Phemie left her room and rejoined the family circle, and
answered all inquiries about her health with a disagreeable politeness
which she had laid down for the rule of her future life.
Ill enough she looked to have satisfied any doubt that might have been
entertained about her sudden indisposition. She was pale, she was weak,
she was weary; she spoke as though it was a trouble to her to talk, and
though both Miss Derno and Basil Stondon saw she was trying her best to
keep up before her husband, they took private occasion of advising him
to send for a doctor whether she liked it or not.
“You seemed so well at dinner on Tuesday night,” said Miss Derno.
“But we had a long walk over Wildmoor, you remember,” remarked Basil,
“and Mrs. Stondon complained then of being tired. Do you not recollect
her sitting down to rest as we came back?”
Miss Derno did remember perfectly, and she remembered something else
which she had scarcely noticed at the time, namely, how concerned Basil
seemed about Mrs. Stondon’s weariness.
The coming of light is often felt before its actual advent. Miss Derno
had not arrived at putting two and two together yet, but she had begun
to perceive that somehow there was a two and two, and Basil’s anxiety
about Mrs. Stondon’s indisposition set her wondering. It was not
ordinary anxiety, it was not ordinary interest. To have heard Captain
Stondon, any one might have thought his wife sick to death with some
mortal malady, but to see Mr. Basil was more astonishing still.
Nothing would serve him but to mount his horse and ride off for a
doctor. He would trust no messenger, he would listen to no
remonstrances. After he once saw Phemie’s face, he never rested till he
got leave from Captain Stondon to fetch medical advice, and through the
twilight he galloped away to seek it.
“How very much Basil takes your illness to heart!” remarked Miss Derno
as he left the room; and Phemie, from among the sofa pillows answered,
“He is very kind.”
Very kind! he was indeed too kind; and Phemie, noticing it, felt that
her own love might not be the only battle she should have to fight—felt
dimly that she had not loved without return, that heart had answered but
to heart, and spirit to spirit.
Poor Phemie!—poor soul!—what could a doctor do for her? He could order
her back to her own room, and send her draughts, and prescribe quietness
and arrowroot; no fatigue, and beef tea; no excitement, and after a few
days a couple of glasses of Madeira; but the fever that was on Phemie he
could not conquer; the heat and the cold, the alterations and the
changes, he could neither see nor control.
She knew when he said she was better that he was mistaken. She felt that
from day to day the struggle must continue—the fight go on. She
confessed to her own heart, when she came down stairs for good, and
began to walk and drive and ride once more, that the old disease was
still unsubdued, that she was no stronger than ever she had been, but
weaker by far.
Day by day the battle grew worse; the more she absented herself from
Basil the more eagerly he welcomed her when she did come. Though she did
not now like Miss Derno, still she entreated her to stay rather than go
back to the old life—the sweet life that had been so full of pleasure
and of peril. She asked Miss Hurlford, Mrs. Hurlford; she filled the
house with company; she seemed never happy save in a crowd; she grew
restless, impatient, irritable; she answered Basil shortly, and, as Miss
Derno thought, sometimes not over civilly.
“I have it!” exclaimed that clever lady to herself one day; “Basil has
been simpleton enough to fall in love with Mrs. Stondon’s bright eyes,
and she thinks it necessary to assume the grand matron with him. Heaven
help the woman! If she knew as much of him as I do, she would not attach
much importance to it.”
Which only shows how greatly deceived even the wisest women may be.
Could Basil have married Phemie, he might not have cared for her; had
she been eligible, he might have found his love damped by considerations
of ways and means—of the butcher, baker, and grocer; but as it was—as
Phemie was perfectly unattainable—Basil lost his senses about her. God
help any woman who being loved by such a one loves him back! There are
times in a woman’s life when it is better to fall into the hands of the
wicked rather than of the foolish. I think Phemie would have known what
to do with a villain, but she did not know what to do with Basil, who
was not sinner enough to think of bringing misery to her, who was not
man enough to leave her, who had not sense enough to see what the end
might be, but who, torturing himself by Phemie’s change of manner, by
Phemie’s pale face and fretful answers, stayed on, tormenting her with
his presence, with anxious inquiries about her health, about her
spirits, about her varying moods.
“I am ill,” she said one day, when he had persistently followed her
about till she could keep her temper no longer. “I am ill—cannot you see
that for yourself? I want to be alone—I want rest—I want quietness——”
“And yet you fill your house with visitors. That is a strange way of
compassing the desired end,” he answered.
“If Captain Stondon be satisfied, I suppose it cannot signify to you
what I do,” she retorted.
“Anything signifies to me that affects your health or happiness,” he
replied, a little tenderly.
“I am surely the best judge of what does affect my health and
happiness,” answered Phemie.
“You say you want rest,” he began.
“So I do,” she interrupted; “rest from being asked perpetually how I
am.”
“You say you are ill, as any one, indeed, may see for himself. Why do
you not have some advice?”
“I have had advice, but found it did me no good.”
“Why not go to town with Captain Stondon, and consult some first-rate
physician? We are thinking of running up to London for a few days next
week.”
“I know you are,” answered Phemie.
“Well, will you consider the matter, and come with us?”
She stood silent for a minute or two, and then answered,
“Any physician who knew exactly what was the matter with me would order
rest and change. I may think about that while you are away, but I will
not go to London.”
“Perhaps, however,” urged Basil, “you do not know what is the matter
with you?”
“Perhaps not,” answered Phemie, shortly; “but I believe I do.”
This was the way he followed her about; before strangers he kept at a
distance; even when Miss Derno chanced to be present he had learned to
be prudent; but for all that he pursued Phemie like her shadow; he was
always pleading and praying that she would take care of her health; he
was always telling her how, for his sake, for Captain Stondon’s sake,
for the sake of all her friends, she should give up so much company, and
live quietly, and keep early hours, “as we used to do,” finished Basil,
who longed with a terrible longing for the days to come back again—that
could never come back more.
“We cannot live to-day as we lived yesterday,” was Phemie’s answer.
“What was pleasant in the past might kill one in the present.”
“Would that quiet home-life which we enjoyed so thoroughly until just
lately kill you if it could come again?” he asked.
“It would,” replied Mrs. Stondon. “I could not bear it now. It was all
very well while it lasted, but I could not go back to it for all that.”
And then knowing that leaving those days against the monotony of which
she was inveighing, had been to her like leaving heaven for earth,
Phemie went off to her own room and cried—cried till her head was aching
and her heart weary.
“If he would but leave me alone,” she thought. But when he did leave her
alone, as he sometimes did—for Basil occasionally grew angry at her
answers and left her in a rage—matters were no better.
Phemie would watch him talking to other women, smiling his smiles for
them, speaking his tenderest, looking his handsomest, until she grew
sick with jealousy, until she went almost mad to think how she must
always keep him at a distance—how it ought to be her greatest happiness
to see him angry with her, indifferent to her, fond of some one else.
She could not help speculating as to whether he cared for her. The one
battle of her own love she might have fought, but the many battles of
her own love and his doubtful love, of his tender care, of her own
overpowering jealousy, of her own despairing remorse, made Phemie little
better than a rudderless boat on a turbulent sea.
“O’er billows of temptation” the poor child tossed day by day in safety;
but she felt the struggle was an unequal one; that the day must come
when Basil would know her coldness, her indifference was all put
on—unless he went away, or she went away—unless they were separated
altogether.
While he and Captain Stondon were in London, she had nothing to contend
against save her own sad loneliness and her constant desire to hear his
voice, to see his face, to feel his presence in the house.
It was so easy to be good away from him that Phemie took her resolution.
She would leave Marshlands; she would flee to the mountains, and stay
there till she grew strong again, till she had conquered herself, till
he, perhaps, had got something to do, or decided on marrying Miss Derno.
She would leave—and Mrs. Stondon straightway ventured on the first
decided step she had ever taken in her life; and, without consulting
Captain Stondon on the subject, started for Carlisle, accompanied by her
maid and a man servant, in whose care she sent back Miss Jennings to
Marshlands.
At Carlisle her uncle met her; and after years—after long years of
travel and success and happiness—Phemie returned to the dear old valley,
to the sweet beauty of the familiar landscape, a delicate, unhappy
woman.
“Why did your husband not accompany you?” asked Mr. Aggland, who was
uneasy lest something had happened.
“I thought I told you in my letter,” she answered, listlessly. “He was
in London and I at Marshlands. The notion took hold of me that I should
like to sleep in my old bed, to look at the waterfall, to walk over the
heather once again; and when the fit came on I could not rest, I could
not wait. I felt I must get away from those trees, from those fields,
from those trim gardens, or die. And I am so ill, uncle, I am so ill.”
“Ought you not to have gone to London for advice?” said Mr. Aggland.
“No, I ought to have come here,” she answered; “I want the mountain air
and the mountain scenery and rest and quiet—rest and quiet.” And she
closed her eyes as she spoke, and leaned back in the carriage which her
uncle had provided.
Mr. Aggland looked at her; he did not understand the cause of this
sudden freak, and he was just the man to dislike whatever he could not
understand.
“Phemie,” he said, “I suppose I need not ask you whether there is
anything amiss at home? Captain Stondon would not, I am certain, be
unkind——”
“Unkind!” she burst out, “unkind! He is far too good and kind. You do
not know, I never could tell you, how good he is, how tender, how
devoted. It is not that, uncle; it is only that I am ill; bear with me
as he has done. Let me be at peace for a while, let me go as I like,
come as I like, and if I am cross and irritable and out of spirits,
think I shall be different soon.” And she put out her hand and stroked
his face with an imploring gentleness which made Mr. Aggland feel
sorrowful.
This was not the Phemie of the Hill Farm—this was not the Phemie of
Marshlands—this was a beseeching, dependent, exhausted Phemie, who
might, for aught he could tell to the contrary, have come home from the
midst of all her wealth and luxury to the old place to die.
He thought of her mother, he thought of those terrible illnesses abroad,
when she had fought for her life, fought so hard to keep it! What if
this passion for the hills and the mountains was but a morbid sickness
to see earth’s best-remembered places ere passing away from earth for
ever?
He took the poor hand—now so thin—and felt her pulse. He prided himself
on being half a doctor, and said,
“Irritable and weak; you will require wine, Phemie; I must send down and
ask Mr. Conbyr to let me have some old port out of his cellar.” But
Phemie answered—
“I want no wine except the wine of the mountain air—the bouquet of the
wild thyme and the heather. Have not I come, uncle,” she said, “from a
place where everything money can buy has been able to do nothing for me?
It is not eating or drinking that can make me well, but the sight of the
dear old hills—of the sky as we see it reflected in Strammer Tarn (I
have never seen such a sky since)—of Scotland from the top of
Skillanscar—if I ever get strong enough to climb it or Helbeck. I have
grown weary of the Lowlands,” she added, with a sigh, “and I have come
to the Highlands for you to make me well.” And the soft hand stroked his
cheek once more, and Mr. Aggland could have wept because of her words
and manner.
“She must be going as her mother went,” he thought; “I will send Johnny
over for Mr. Fagg in the morning. He may not be very first-rate, but he
will be able to tell me that.”
Now “that,” in Mr. Aggland’s vocabulary, meant, were Phemie’s lungs
sound—was she in a consumption? And he sat pondering on what could be
the matter with her, if it were not consumption, while his niece lay
back in the carriage, watching for the old familiar faces of the
hills—watching, with her uncle’s hand clasped tight in hers, with a
terrible sorrow tearing at her heart, with a sickening remorse
oppressing her conscience.
“There they are! there are the dear old mountains!” she exclaimed at
last; and then she burst into a passion of tears, which frightened her
uncle, who could not understand what was the matter with her.
“You will make yourself worse, Phemie,” he remonstrated; but it was all
the same to Phemie.
Whether tears made her worse or better, she could not help remembering
what she had been when she left those hills—what she was now.
“If he but knew,” thought Phemie, “it would break his heart too!” And I
fancy Phemie was right, and that had Mr. Aggland suspected what was
really the matter with his niece, he would sooner have seen her in her
grave than coming back burdened with such a secret to the place where
she had dwelt in innocence and purity for so long.
And yet never a sweeter, gentler creature trod those lonely hills, those
mountain fastnesses, than Phemie Stondon, who revisited each
well-remembered haunt—each tarn and stream, and crag, sorrowing.
With her long dress trailing among the heather, she walked slowly over
the moors day after day, thinking thoughts such as had never passed
through her mind before. She would sit beside the trickling waterfall,
where the ferns and the grass bent down the stream just as they used to
do, and with her hand leaning upon some mossy stone, would weep tears
that, had she shed them before marriage instead of after, might have
made her life more useful and more happy.
She had a kind word and a sweet smile for every one; she was vain and
fanciful no more; she was subdued, and quiet and humble to such a
degree, that the farmers and the farmers’ wives looked after her in
amazement, and marvelled among themselves whether that could be the
Phemie Keller, the saucy, flighty, conceited Phemie who had gone away to
be made a grand lady of all at once.
“She does not think as much of her silks and satins now as she used to
do of her old muslin gowns,” said one.
“And is she not homely like and kind?” added another.
“She took the baby in her arms the other day,” remarked a farmer’s wife,
“and the tears came into her eyes when she told me she had never a
living one of her own.”
“And oh! my bairn, my bairn!” mourned Peggy M‘Nab, “what hae ye dune wi’
the heartsome life that was in ye? and whaur hae ye gotten that mournfu’
luik that it gars me greet till see? Yer mither had the same when she
came back hame amang us; but——”
“But I have no reason for looking like what she did, is that what you
mean, Peggy?” asked Mrs. Stondon. “Perhaps it is only because I am ill
that I am mournful, as you call it.”
“But ye’re no _that_ ill,” remarked Peggy.
“I may feel as ill,” answered Phemie, who was only too glad in those
days to make her health appear as bad as possible. She laid all sins,
all shortcomings, to sickness; and she was ill enough to make Mr.
Aggland seriously uneasy, to urge him to grave discourse with Mr.
Fagg—now a married man and the father of three children.
“I cannot tell what is the matter with her,” said that gentleman,
frankly, “unless it be, as she declares—exhaustion. You see,” went on
Mr. Fagg, “Mrs. Stondon is one of those women who keep up for a long
time and then drop all at once. She would scarcely feel she was
overtaxing her strength till the stock was completely gone. You must
have known yourself many a man who never felt fatigue while walking, and
yet who gave way in a moment when the distance was accomplished. His
spirit kept him up, and then, when the motive for exertion was over, the
reaction came on. Now that is what it seems to me is the matter with
Mrs. Stondon—reaction, and perhaps her longing for the hills. Her
passion for this solitude is probably nothing more nor less than
nature’s voice telling us what will cure her. One thing I know,”
finished Mr. Fagg, “that I can do nothing for her, and I do not believe
any man in England could.”
Mr. Fagg was right; the fever that was on Phemie was beyond the power of
man to cure, and it was beyond the power of nature either. Beside the
waterfall among the heather, pacing the valley with Davie—now old and
sedate—following the mistress he loved so well, Phemie came to
understand all she had pledged away in the church among the mountains.
She knew now why she had wept that night when the wind blew and the rain
beat against the windows, when, through the wind and the rain, Captain
Stondon came up from the vicarage to hear her decision.
She had forgotten that night until lately—forgotten her tears, her
doubts, her hesitation; but, as at the day of judgment the scroll of our
lives will be unfolded before us, so even in this world there are times
when part of the history is remembered by us, when the thoughts and the
resolutions of the long ago, appear before us like unwelcome ghosts.
Her life had been her own then, but it was too late now—too late—too
late!
And among the broom and the ferns, and the thyme and the heather, Phemie
would take out her husband’s letters—the long loving letters he sent her
each day from London, and read them till she forgot her own misery in
thinking of the misery knowledge of her fault would bring to him.
Could there have been anything worse for such a woman than solitude?
when she never knew peace day or night for thinking of Basil, and for
reproaching herself for thinking of him.
She was sitting one afternoon by Strammer Tarn, on the very spot where
she had been wont to twine wreaths and garlands for her hair in the old
days departed—sitting looking at the dark waters, at the frowning rocks,
at the expanse of moor and mountain.
It was the glory of the summer time, it was the noon of the year, and
she had walked slowly over from the Hill Farm, drinking in the full
beauty of the season, the perfection of the scenery, with a strange sad
thirst. There was not a thing during the progress of that walk she
overlooked—the moss growing upon the stones, the heather budding into
flower, the wild thyme blooming upon sunny spots, the trailing brambles,
the chirp of the grasshopper, the humming of the bees, the great grey
boulders lying on the grass, the springing of the turf beneath her feet,
the little pools of water in which Davie slaked his thirst, the very
insects that winged their way past her—all these things Phemie noticed
and remembered afterwards.
She remembered when she sat by Strammer Tarn—how Davie lay stretched at
her feet—how with her face resting on her hand she had been looking for
ever and ever so long into the dark deep waters, when suddenly Davie
sprang up, and with all his short bristly hair standing on end, growled
at one who came brushing his way through the heather towards her.
It was Basil! She had barely time to rise from her seat, and with breath
coming quick and short, and colour deepening and fading, make sure it
was he, ere he was beside her—ere he held her hands in his—ere he was
pouring out almost unintelligible words of joy.
Why had she run away and left him to come home to a desert? Did she
think he could exist away from her? Did she think he knew peace, or
rest, or comfort where she was not? Ah, Heaven! did he not see in the
woman’s face all she thought, all she had suffered? Had he not noticed
the red and the white, the blush and the pallor? All alone there, could
he not tell her the tale of his love at last—tell her, sure that his
love was returned—that she had fled less from him than from herself?
He had not come there to tell her his story, he had only come craving to
see her—to speak to her—to be near her once again. But—well—well—love,
holy or unholy, finds a vent for itself sometime: and it was among the
lonely mountains, under the summer sky, that Basil yielded to the
temptation and spoke of his.
And Phemie. Ah! reader, be pitiful, be merciful, if you have ever known
what it is to have the man you love best on earth tell you that you are
all the world to him—be lenient to this poor sinner whose dream-hero had
come to her beside the tarn—too late—too late!
She could not help it: she had never felt before what it is to love—to
be beloved: her heart gave a great leap of triumph, and then it stood
still with agony.
She went mad with happiness, and then the misery of her position made
her sane.
She tore herself out of his arms and fell to the ground and wept; she
lay with her face buried in the turf, sobbing till her heart was fit to
break. In the stillness of that mountain solitude, the voice of
lamentation seemed to rise through the air and float away and away,
while the bee hummed, and the rocks frowned, and the flowers sprang,
unmindful of passion, unsympathetic with woe.
Her beauty, her accomplishments, her wealth—everything of which she had
been proud, of which she had been ambitious—had brought her to this.
Then she rose up and bade him go: with his kisses on her lips, with the
tears streaming down her cheeks, she reminded him of her position and of
his.
She told him how, so long as the sun rose and set, she could never be
anything to him; she told him she honoured her husband beyond all men on
earth, and that sooner than hurt him or disgrace him, she would die a
hundred times over.
She felt strong now, stronger than she had ever been; she spoke of all
her husband had done for her—of how he had taken her from poverty and
given her wealth—of how he had fulfilled his part of the compact—of how
he had loved and trusted her always.
“And he has been kind and good to you, and this is how you repay him!”
she went on. “God give me strength to despise you as I ought.”
He stood silent till she had done—till, having panted out her last
reproach, she ceased to speak—then he said,
“Oh! if _I_ had but met you then—if _I_ had come here instead of him——”
“You would have left me here,” she retorted.
“I would not! I could never have seen you and not loved you.”
At which Phemie laughed scornfully.
“You see me a lady now,” she said; “but I was only a poor country girl
then. You would have been much too fine a gentleman to have looked at
such as I was, or if you had looked, it would not have been with honest
eyes like his. I did not know the world in those days, but I have seen
enough of it since; and what I have seen has taught me that there is not
one man in ten thousand—not one man in a million—who would have married
me as he did.”
“I would,” said Basil.
“You would not,” answered Phemie, and she turned away; but Basil stopped
her.
“Phemie,” he began—it was the first time he had called her by her name,
and it sounded strangely sweet in her ears—“Phemie, can we never be
anything to one another? I will wait years—I will wait till my hair is
grey—only say you love me.”
“Basil Stondon,” said Phemie, facing round, “I know what you mean—I know
what you would say; but put that out of your mind once and for ever. I
will never step across a grave to happiness. I have made my bed, I will
lie in it. If I am ever a widow, if I should have the misfortune to
outlive my husband, I will outlive him single. When I pledged my troth
to him among these hills, I did so for better or worse—the worse has
come to me, but that cannot alter our position. We can never be anything
to one another—for I chose my life before I ever saw you. Never.”
Never! He was a poorer creature even than Phemie thought him, for as he
walked up and down Tordale valley that night, recalling to his memory
her every word, her every gesture, he vowed to himself that she should
be something to him—that he would be something to her.
He was in for the race and he must strive for the winning-post. He had
loved this woman, and he could love no other woman in the future like
Phemie, his kinsman’s wife.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DOWNWARD ROAD.
Basil Stondon had come to fetch Phemie home. Before he knew of her
departure for Cumberland, Captain Stondon had invited some of the
friends of his bachelor days to stay at Marshlands, and he accordingly
wrote to his wife, begging her, if she felt at all well enough, to
return to Norfolk.
“And later on in the season,” continued Captain Stondon, “if you,
dearest, wish it, we can take a house for a month or so beside
Derwentwater or Windermere, which surely would be pleasanter for you
than the Hill Farm.”
To this Phemie had agreed, so far as returning home was concerned. She
only begged her husband to allow her to remain as long as possible. “If
you let me hear from you one day, when your friends are certainly
coming, I shall be ready to start the next,” were her words; and when
Captain Stondon read them out to Basil with the comment that he thought
she ought to return at once, the young man proposed going to Cumberland
to fetch her.
“I have never seen the lakes,” said Mr. Basil, “and I should like to
take a look at them.”
“Very well,” agreed Captain Stondon, “only do not fall down the side of
a mountain as I did.”
“It proved a very lucky fall for you though, I believe, sir,” remarked
Basil. To which Captain Stondon answered that it had, little dreaming
what was passing in his companion’s mind at the moment.
Thus it came about that Basil Stondon found his way to Cumberland and to
the Hill Farm, from which place Mrs. Aggland showed him the path to take
to reach Strammer Tarn.
Mrs. Aggland had grown fat and unwieldy in her later life, and offered
no temptations for a _tête-à-tête_.
“One of the children can run with you to show you the way,” she
volunteered; but Basil declined her politeness.
“He could find Strammer Tarn, no doubt, thanks to her explicit
directions; and if he did not find it he would turn back when he thought
he had walked far enough.”
All of which he said with such courtesy and politeness that Mrs. Aggland
was quite taken with him, and greeted her husband on his return with a
glowing account of the “nice young gentleman” who had come to take
Phemie home.
“So pleasant-mannered and genteel,” she said, “and as handsome as a
picture, too; but what are we to do with him here, Daniel? He’ll never
put up with our house.”
“Then he must go to Grassenfel,” was Mr. Aggland’s reply. And he went
out to the top of the hill to watch for their coming.
“I can offer you but poor hospitality, Mr. Stondon,” he said. “If you
think you can sleep in so humble a dwelling I shall be only too proud to
do my best to make you comfortable; but at the same time I must tell you
we are very plain people, and that I am sure Mr. Conbyr would give you a
hearty welcome at the vicarage.”
“Thank you,” answered Basil, simply, “I had much rather remain at the
Hill Farm. I have heard of it so constantly that it seems like the
realization of a dream to sleep beneath its roof.”
For which speech Phemie hated him. According to her ideas he ought to
have left her then and there—left her for ever. After her explicit
answer, was not all over between them? Could not he take his “No,” and
go, and leave her to return to Marshlands under her uncle’s escort?
“You can make a tour of the lakes, and stay away until you have decided
on your future plans,” was Phemie’s suggestion; to which Basil listened
in silence, without the remotest intention of following her advice.
No programme, indeed, was ever more altered than that sketched out by
Phemie for his guidance. Had there been no lakes in England—no Skiddaw
to climb, no Stockghyll Force to see, no Langbourne to visit, Basil
could not have stayed on more contentedly at the Hill Farm.
What Captain Stondon had done before him Basil did now. He walked over
the hills, he sate by the tarns, he drank of the waterfall, and wished
that he might keep Phemie’s heart till his own was cold. He visited Mr.
Conbyr and talked with him of the outer world; he sate in the same pew
in church where Captain Stondon had sate beside the ill-dressed girl who
was now as stately-looking as any princess in the land. He leaned over
the wall of the graveyard, and looked at the rivulet wandering away and
away. He lay on the grass where the mountain stream came tumbling over
the rocks and dropped into the basin beneath; he looked at the ivy and
the lichens, the foxgloves and the broom, the grass and the ferns, the
mossy stones and the trees that waved their branches over him. He stood
in the garden at the Hill Farm and gazed down the valley—the sweet
valley of Tordale; he went about with Mr. Aggland and won golden
opinions from all men—particularly from all women.
He was so frank, so pleasant, so kind, and so handsome, that he won upon
the inhabitants of that remote spot, as he had won upon the inhabitants
of very different places.
“An amazingly fine young fellow,” remarked Mr. Aggland to his niece,
when he saw that Basil really did not care about his inner man, that
luxuries were indifferent to him, and that he made himself as much at
home in the parlour of the Hill Farm as he might in Captain Stondon’s
drawing-room. “An amazingly fine young fellow. I wonder, Phemie, that
you have never taken to him kindly.”
To which speech Phemie answered—
“One never does like the next heir cordially, does one, uncle?”
“Shame, shame!” exclaimed Mr. Aggland; “I never thought, Phemie, to hear
you make a speech like that. When you have enjoyed fully yourself, you
ought not to grudge another the chance of enjoying fully in his turn
likewise.”
“Still one never does like an heir, unless he be of one’s own blood,”
persisted Phemie, who never missed an opportunity of throwing dust in
her uncle’s eyes.
“Can she be grieving because she has no children?” wondered Mr. Aggland.
“Does she dislike this young man because he occupies the place that
might have been more happily filled by one of her own sons? I should
like greatly to know now,” thought her uncle, “if it be envy and hatred
and all uncharitableness that is the matter with poor Phemie after all.
‘As rust corrupts iron, so envy corrupts man,’ says Antisthenes. Solomon
declares it is the ‘rottenness of the bones,’ and Cowley calls envy ‘of
all hell’s throngs the direfulest.’ According to Socrates it is a poison
which drieth up the marrow of the bones and consumeth the flesh.
Daughter of pride, he calls envy. Now Phemie was always proud,—a little,
I mean,” modified Mr. Aggland, “and she has never been the same—at least
judging by her letters—since this young man came to the house. I
remember her expressing strong dislike to him before we went to Cromer.
It may be that she is jealous.” And for years afterwards Mr. Aggland
believed that Phemie cordially hated Basil Stondon—that she hated him
because he stood where her children might have stood, and that she was
pining and fretting because she had no living sons—no prospect of having
sons who might oust the intruder out. Of which idea Phemie herself, I am
sorry to say, took no pains to disabuse his mind, but rather encouraged
his notion, and led him to believe she was very sorry Basil must inherit
after her husband, when the real truth was, that if Phemie had been able
to shower gold and property on him, she would have done it.
“You should not dislike him, Phemie,” Mr. Aggland said one day; “it is
not right. Though you are my own niece, and he a stranger, I cannot say
that I think you treat him properly at all.”
“Now pray, pray, uncle,” entreated Phemie, “leave that Basil Stondon
question alone; you cannot tell in the least what you might do if you
were in my place.”
“I know what I should do if I were in his,” retorted Mr. Aggland; “I
should not endure your manner, Phemie. I declare I hear you speaking to
him sometimes as I should not speak to the poorest labourer I employ.”
“Well, you can address your labourers in whatever form of language you
think best, uncle,” she said, a little flippantly; “but I mean to talk
to Basil as I choose.”
“Phemie!” was Mr. Aggland’s only remonstrance.
“I am not a child any longer,” she burst out, passionately; “I will say
what I like, as I like it. If people think I am wrong, they may think
it; but they shall not tell me. I know what my own sorrows are; but I
will not let anybody intermeddle with them. I know my own business, but
I will not have anybody interfere with it; not even you, uncle,” she
added, “not even you.”
“I cannot imagine what has come to you, Phemie,” he said. “I think you
must be mad; one day you are as docile as a lamb, and the next you are
rabid.”
“There is a pleasure sure in being mad,” she answered; but when he
turned away, pained and wearied, she followed him into the garden, and
hanging on his arm, said coaxingly,—
“Forgive me, uncle; the things I would not say, I speak; the things I
would speak, never, somehow, pass my lips. Does not some wise man say
that clocks will go as they are set; but that we will not? That is the
way with me, I want winding up. I want new works. I want sending to the
jeweller and seeing to. It is not my fault, uncle; it is my misfortune.”
“Phemie, dear, you are ill; you ought to have first-rate advice; you
must go abroad.”
“I never want to see ‘abroad’ again,” she answered; “I should like to
stay in the hills with you always. I should like to go to Scotland and
see the coast I loved when I was a better girl than I have ever been
since.”
And Phemie dropped her uncle’s arm as she spoke, and sate down on the
grass, saying she was tired.
I should think she was tired! The conversation that ought, in her
opinion, to have ended the subject of love between her and Basil, proved
only to have been the commencement of her troubles. He would not leave
her alone; he could not let her be; she had fled from Marshlands to be
rid of him; she must return to Marshlands to see if she could escape
from him there.
She felt like a hunted creature; she felt every day that her strength
was decreasing—that his power over her was increasing. His words sounded
sweet in her ears; she grew weary of struggling; she learned to listen
to his poor sophistry and believe it.
He was taking nothing from Captain Stondon that had ever belonged to
him; he only wanted Phemie’s love—only a kind look, a pleasant word.
There was no sin in speaking civilly to him, surely; there could be
nothing wrong in talking quietly and gently as she used to do. If he had
said anything to offend her he was sorry; if she had not run away from
Marshlands and left him desolate he would never have told her how he
loved her—never. He would have borne any pain rather than wound her—she
ought not to be so unkind when his very heart was breaking for her sake.
And at that, somehow, the words of that old, old song she had sung when
she was still free, came into Phemie’s mind.
Oh! if she could only go back—only be a girl again—what happiness might
not be hers!
Alas! the happiness might be, but the misery was.
Who can travel a dangerous road and keep clear of the pitfalls? Who can
begin descending and not slip? Who can touch pitch and not be defiled?
Who can handle sin without becoming less virtuous? Who can drink of the
wine cup and keep his head perfectly clear?
Phemie could not at any rate. She was quaffing in a draught that was
stealing through her veins like poison. She had her times of
repentance—her seasons of despairing remorse—her hours when the sound of
Basil’s voice was hateful to her—when she detested her own weakness in
listening to him; but after all, what did this signify—what good did
this effect?
When purity is sullied, who may make it otherwise than soiled?
“The fleece that has been by the dyer stained,
Never again its native whiteness gained;”
and the man whose hands are guilty may not wash them in innocency.
I have no excuse to offer for Phemie, save that the heat and burden of
the day was too much for her; that she had not strength enough to
extricate herself from the net; that she had no one to help her; that
she was not called upon to resist absolute sin, such as the world frowns
on. He did not ask her to leave her husband; he never again spoke of a
future in which she might be his wife. He only prayed for love that it
was no wrong for her to give him, because she had never given it to any
one else.
“It belongs to me, Phemie,” he said; “though you are another man’s wife;
though you may never be my wife, yet I own the love of your heart; and
whether you try to keep that love from me or not, you cannot prevent my
having it.”
He was right: Phemie could not prevent his having all the love of which
her nature was capable. She could not help the tears with which she
watered her pillow; she could not help her thoughts, her regrets, her
misery.
“I will go back to Marshlands,” she said, “and get rid of you; it will
be impossible for you to say these things to me under the same roof with
him.” And Phemie turned from the mountains and the valley, and, weary
and wretched, travelled home.
How shall I tell of the time that followed?—of the torture that woman
passed through—of the frantic projects she formed—of the resolutions she
took—of the plans she devised?
She would go away, where neither Basil nor Captain Stondon could find
her. She would tell her husband—and she would have told him, too, but
that she dared not even think of the anguish her fault would cause him.
She would try to get rid of Basil; but Captain Stondon did not want
Basil to leave Marshlands. She would never be alone with him. How was it
possible for her always to have some one at her elbow?
And besides, it was so hard—so hard! He loved her so much; better than
Captain Stondon had ever done! Better? Down on your knees, Phemie, and
pray God to deliver you from such love that would drag you down to hell.
Better? There is a love which can love a woman better than itself; but
of such a love Basil Stondon knew nothing.
It was not in his nature to be thoughtful for others, unselfish towards
himself. He did not care about its being the road to perdition along
which he was leading Phemie, because he chanced to fancy travelling it
himself.
He had no mercy, because he was weak; he had no pity, because he was
foolish; he had no forbearance, because he had no principle: so he
tortured the woman he professed to love; he put her on a mental rack,
and tormented her every hour in the day.
“I cannot leave you, for I love you,” he said once.
“You will not leave me, because you love yourself,” she answered. And
yet still his love, whatever it might be, was sweet to her. She was
making a journey from which few ever return in safety; she was trying an
experiment from which no heart ever came forth pure.
She was endeavouring to love two men; she was striving to serve two
masters: and still she was slipping—slipping towards the precipice over
which no one who fell ever came back.
She loved her husband no less than ever; nay, rather, she loved him
more. She was so repentant, so wretched, so angry with herself, so sorry
for him, that there came into her manner a tenderness—a thoughtfulness
which it had always lacked before; and many and many a time Captain
Stondon would follow her with his eyes, and wonder, with the wonder of
old increased and magnified, if any man was ever so fortunate as he—so
blessed in home and wife and friends.
“If my darling’s health were only better,” he said one day to Miss
Derno, “I should not have a care or anxiety in life; but she looks so
ill, and her spirits are so wretched, that I cannot help feeling anxious
about her.”
“I am afraid she is not strong,” answered the lady, who was a great
favourite with her host. “Let us talk about her,” she suddenly added:
“come down to the lake, and I will tell you my opinion of your wife. She
wants rest; she is wearing herself out: all these people may be very
pleasant, but she ought not to be among them. You should take her
abroad, or winter in the south of England, and send Basil away. He is
strong himself, and he thinks fresh air and exercise is all she
requires; and so she goes out walking and riding and driving, when she
had a great deal better be lying quietly on the sofa. Get Basil an
appointment. In Mrs. Stondon’s state of health she ought to have no
strangers near her: and besides, Basil will not take kindly to work
after all this idleness. He was lazy enough when he came here; what he
will be after this long holiday I am afraid to think.”
“But Basil is the next heir, Miss Derno,” answered Captain Stondon; “I
do not see why he should work. I will speak to him about dragging Phemie
out. She need not stand on ceremony with him as though he were a
stranger. It is only his anxiety for her to get well that makes him urge
her to be constantly in the open air.”
Miss Derno beat her foot impatiently against the ground.
“Do you think idleness good for any one?” she asked. “Do you think it
well for a man to have all the advantages of a large property, without
having any of its anxieties and responsibilities? This is a Castle of
Indolence for him; and if I were his mother I should like to see him
usefully employed.”
“Was it not about my wife we were talking, Miss Derno?” inquired Captain
Stondon.
“Yes; but I have long wanted to speak to you about Basil. He is an old
pet of mine, you know. I know his faults and his virtues better,
perhaps, than anybody else on earth, and I am confident this idle
existence is not good for him: it would be trying to any man; and it is
doubly trying to a man like Basil.”
There was truth in what she said, and Captain Stondon admitted it.
“The same idea occurred to me the other day,” he said; “and I have been
considering whether I could not give him the management of some portion
of the property.”
“Will you be angry if I put a question to you?” inquired Miss Derno. She
was leaning on his arm, and she stooped forward and looked up in his
face as she spoke.
She could see that its expression changed a little; but he answered
kindly and courteously as ever,
“It must be a very singular question, or series of questions, Miss
Derno, that could make me angry with you.”
“You are bringing up Basil as your heir,” she said; “suppose you had a
son; how would it fare with this idle young man then?”
For a moment Captain Stondon remained silent. The idea was one which he
did not think she ought to have suggested. He did not consider it at all
in Miss Derno’s department to talk about such possibilities to him. He
felt it was inconsiderate of her to open up the old sore. He believed
that it was nothing to her whether he had sons or whether he had not;
but still he replied, quietly and calmly,
“If such an extremely improbable event were to happen, I should provide
handsomely for Basil—be sure of that.”
“But still you would not give him Marshlands.”
“I could not if I would,” was the reply; “I would not if I could.”
“And yet you will not make him independent of Marshlands altogether?”
“Should such a necessity as you have named arise, I should do my best to
push him on in the world.”
“Expecting him, doubtless, to be satisfied with a dry morsel, after he
had been regaling himself on the stalled ox?”
Miss Derno could put things as unpleasantly as possible when she had a
mind; and she succeeded in making Captain Stondon uncomfortable for the
moment.
“The fact is,” he answered, “I am very fond of Basil. Having no son, I
like to forget that he is not my son. I should miss him sadly if he were
to leave me; and I do not think it is well to deprive oneself of
pleasure in the present, because of the chance of what may happen in the
future. However, Miss Derno, I will think over what you have said. I
will give the matter my maturest consideration.”
She was grateful to him for what he said. She felt, all things taken
into account, that he had borne her interference as few men would; and
so, with all her heart in her face, with all the earnestness of her
nature thrown into her manner, she spoke her thanks.
“If I have seemed impertinent,” she said, “pardon me; if I have seemed
intrusive, think that I am not really so.” And Captain Stondon assured
her he could never think of her otherwise than as she would wish him to
do; and the pair walked on beside the lake where the lilies floated, and
then back beneath the lime-trees to the house.
“Miss Derno seems to be almost as fond of your husband as she is of Mr.
Basil Stondon,” remarked Miss Georgina Hurlford, who was standing beside
Phemie in the garden.
“Yes, I think she likes them both greatly,” answered Phemie; and the
conversation dropped. But Miss Hurlford noticed that the blood came
rushing into Mrs. Stondon’s face one moment, and that the next she was
pale as death.
CHAPTER VIII.
JEALOUSY.
Marshlands had never been so gay before as during the August of the year
concerning which I am now writing.
The house had never been so full of company; there had never been so
many parties, so much visiting, and such innumerable picnics in the
memory of that part of Norfolk. Young girls and staid matrons walked
about the grounds; in all the bye-lanes in all the cross-roads,
sprinkled over the commons, were ladies mounted on glossy steeds,
attended by cavaliers who seemed to think that the whole duty of man was
flirting and pleasure.
Flirting and pleasure was the order of the day at Marshlands; and every
one agreed the Stondons were delightful people to know.
Mrs. Stondon was such a thoughtful hostess, mothers and daughters both
agreed. She never spoiled sport; she never put either herself or Helen
forward; she exacted no attention; she conversed, by preference, with
white-haired old gentlemen, who called her “a delightful woman.”
“To see Captain and Mrs. Stondon,” said an old bachelor, “is enough to
make one think seriously of marriage.”
“Talk of May and December,” observed a man who had served out in India
with Captain Stondon; “I tell you what, sir, I never saw May and June
agree so well as my dear old friend and his young wife. Charming!—I
should think she was charming! All I am afraid of, sir, is that she will
leave him a widower. She is getting thinner and paler every day.”
Major Brooks was not the only person who felt uneasy about Phemie. Miss
Derno made effort after effort to induce her friend to take more care of
herself, but her entreaties, listened to at first coldly, were at last
replied to sharply and angrily.
Mrs. Stondon would go out in the night air if she chose; she would ride,
if riding gave her any pleasure; she would walk when she took a fancy
for doing so; and she would attend to no remonstrances on the subject.
“What can it signify to any one what I do?” she said one day to Basil,
when they were out driving together. “I would rather die than live. If
any doctor came to me now and said, ‘You cannot last two months,’ I
should be glad.”
“But you ought to think of others,” he answered. “You ought to think of
me.”
“Of you!” she echoed; “what would you care if I were dead to-morrow? You
would look after any pretty girl you met, out of the window of the
mourning-coach, though it is you who have brought me to this,” and she
took off her glove and stretched out her hand before him. “You make love
to others before my eyes. I do not want your love,” she went on. “I do
not wish you to cease holding this girl’s bridle rein; to cut no more
bouquets; to beg no more flowers; to stay indoors instead of walking in
the moonlight with Miss Derno. I do not want you to do this, only be
honest. Do not harass my life out one moment, and then make me jealous
the next. Leave me to go my way, and I will never follow you or yours.
And do not talk to me about my health, for you and Miss Derno both would
be only too glad to see me in my coffin.”
“Phemie, how can you make such an assertion?” They had reached a very
lonely part of the road, and he laid his hand gently on hers, but she
shook it off and answered—
“Keep your hands for the reins; I will not have them touch mine. Every
word I say is true. You do flirt; you are a flirt; you make every girl
you meet think you are in love with her. You know when you were trying
to make me care for you that you were engaged to Miss Derno. You know
while you are talking to me now that you are engaged to her still.”
“Who told you that falsehood?” asked Basil.
“Miss Hurlford.”
“Miss Hurlford be damned,” said the young man, laying his whip not over
lightly on the near pony, which at once began to plunge and kick.
“You need not upset us because you are angry at my hearing it,” remarked
Phemie. “It does not matter to me whom you marry; but you shall cease
persecuting me, you shall. I will ask my husband to send you away. I
will tell him it is not pleasant to have a stranger in the house. I came
out with you to-day solely to be able to say this to you. I am not
double-faced, if you are. I cannot do one thing and pretend another.”
“I know that,” said Basil, sneeringly. “You never professed to dislike
me before people; you never answered me as though you hated me while
your uncle was present; you never hang about Captain Stondon as though
you liked him better than all the world; you never pretended anything,
did you, Phemie?”
Then Phemie broke out.
“If I ever pretended, it was not of my own free will. I am no hypocrite
with my husband. I do love him, and honour and trust him more than any
other man on earth; and if I seem not to like to be with you before
people, you cannot say that I like any better to be with you alone. It
is you who are a hypocrite; it is you who pretend; it is you who want to
have every woman you meet in love with you. But this I tell you, Basil,”
she added, sitting bolt upright in the phaeton as she spoke; “you have
chosen to make my life wretched, and I will make yours. You never shall
love anybody as you have loved me; you shall never forget me; you shall
never love girl, or woman, or wife as you have loved me. When you are
standing in the twilight you shall remember me; when you are lying awake
in the darkness you shall think of me; when we are far apart you shall
not forget me. I can never be anything to you as another woman may; but
I can be near to you for all that, and I will. You may try to make me
jealous now, if you like; I do not care.”
And Phemie dropped back in the carriage, whilst her companion vainly
endeavoured to convince her she was mistaken; that he had never tried to
make her jealous, that he had never thought of caring for any one but
herself.
“Will you attend to your driving, Basil?” she said, “and not talk any
more about the matter. It is a light thing for you, I dare say; you can
go out and never think about the misery you have brought on me. You
fancy this will form but an episode in your life, though it has taken
all the sunshine out of mine; but you are mistaken. Good gracious,
Basil, what are you doing with those ponies? There, now, I told you so.”
They had come out of the lanes, and were driving over a road that led
across Wildmoor Common. As Phemie spoke, the near pony shied at a flock
of geese, and Basil, glad to vent his annoyance on anything, lashed it
savagely.
The creature reared and plunged and kicked; then it got its head down
and the bit between its teeth, and both ponies were off.
“Sit still—sit still; for God’s sake don’t jump out!” said Basil.
“Never mind me, attend to them,” was Phemie’s answer.
They were tearing across the common now; over the little unevennesses of
the ground the carriage went rocking like a cradle.
Basil was a fair whip, but he could do nothing. What man ever did do
anything with a pair of mad ponies harnessed to a low light phaeton?
The bays had it all their own way over the grass. They dashed through
stagnant pools; they flew past bush and bramble; the horses grazing on
the common galloped hither and thither, making the brutes more
unmanageable still. The sun was shining on the bare, flat Norfolk
landscape, and Phemie could see in the distance farmhouses, with their
tiled roofs; homesteads, where the new hay had just been stacked; trees
standing dark and clear against the sky; she could see all this as they
dashed along; see it even while she was sick with terror, while she was
wondering what would bring them up at last.
She knew Basil never could stop them; what would? what! She saw the
walls of a house in the distance, shining in the sun; she thought of the
flints that were in it, and then she screamed out—
“Oh! Basil, the quarry; keep them away from that.”
He stood up and pulled with might and main at the reins. He sawed the
ponies’ mouths. With all the strength he had he tried to pull them in,
to turn them aside. For a moment he had the mastery; then the phaeton
tilted up on one side over a mound of earth, and he was jerked out.
He made an effort to retain the reins, but they were torn from him,
leaving his hands bleeding and raw. Phemie tried to seize them, but
failing to do so, shut her eyes.
She knew what was going to bring them up now. With a crash ponies and
phaeton and Phemie went down into the quarry together, and when Basil
Stondon came to the edge and looked below, he could see nothing but a
confused heap of broken woodwork, of struggling horses, of blood, and
muslin.
For a moment his courage failed him, then he jumped down after them.
Let life bring what it might to Basil Stondon, it never could bring a
bitterer moment than that.
He would not go for help, he did not call for assistance; living or
dead, he would do what he could for her himself.
From under the phaeton he somehow managed to extricate her; then he took
the dear burden in his arms and carried her on to the common and laid
her on the grass.
By that time people, who having seen the runaways had hurried after
them, came up, and asked was the lady killed?
He could not tell; he knew nothing of medicine; he only saw she had
moved no finger, made no sign; that she was covered with blood; that she
was shockingly cut and mangled.
Never since his boyhood had any human being seen Basil Stondon weep, but
he cried like a child then.
He had made her life wretched; they had been quarrelling all the
morning; he had tried to make her jealous; he knew she had only spoken
the simple truth. When she tried to do right, he had endeavoured to
roughen her way as much as possible. Her last words before the ponies
ran away were full of upbraiding. It was his fault that the animals had
started at all. Half an hour before he had taunted her; he had been
unmanly, mean, angry; and now she lay before him, apparently dead, while
he knelt beside her, sobbing in his passionate despair.
“I do not think, sir,” said one of the men, “that the lady is dead. If
you would only sprinkle some water over her, and let one of us go for a
doctor, and bring her into the farmhouse yonder, and see what the women
can do for her. Will you, sir? will you?” and he approached to raise
Phemie up, and carry her away.
But Basil would not permit it. He lifted her himself, and holding her
close to his heart, bore her across the common; and as he walked under
the sunshine, with everything around him looking its brightest and its
gayest, his tears fell thick over the face of the woman he loved best on
earth.
“My darling! my darling! I was cruel to you; my darling, I have killed
you!” and so he kept moaning and whispering till he felt the feeblest
pressure of the fingers that lay beside his hand.
She could not speak, she could not open her eyes; but she could show him
by this mute sign that she was still alive.
In a moment he saw the sunshine and the sky; in an instant hope revived
within him.
She was not dead; she might not be fatally injured. She might recover,
and he might have opportunity given him of atoning for all the past.
Stumbling across the common, dizzy with his own fall, bruised and shaken
and hurt, half stupefied by the events of the last few minutes, Basil
Stondon prayed to God as he had never prayed in all his life before.
He prayed that she might live, that he might have opportunity for making
atonement to her; that he might not have to bear the sight of Captain
Stondon’s agony; that he might not have to go on—on through the years
without her.
With all his heart and with all his soul he prayed, and the prayer was
granted; but in the future—in the sad, sad future—he often marvelled
whether it would not have been better for him and for her had she died
on Wildmoor Common, and never lived to face the dreary after years to
come.
CHAPTER IX.
STRANGE TIDINGS.
There was silence in the house which had lately been so full of
merriment; the guests were gone; the rooms deserted; the sweet laughter
of women was heard no more echoing round and about Marshlands; the
sunshine had given place to gloom—gaiety to sadness; for Phemie lay in a
darkened room, struggling for life as the young only can
struggle—fighting, fighting for the victory.
She had not been strong from childhood; but there are some weak
constitutions that have a wonderful hold on existence; and though Phemie
had a hard battle for life, still she won the day at last, and came
forth from her chamber after weeks, white as spring lilies, delicate and
beautiful, fragile and weak as they.
Weak, mentally and physically. God help us! in the great day, will not
the Lord Omnipotent—the Judge of all the earth, remember how feeble His
creatures are? how frail His servant was at this point and at that? Has
He not, think you, more knowledge and more pity than we? Will He, who
took our poor humanity upon Him, not have mercy upon us, and bid many
poor sinners pass into Heaven who have gone with weary feet far astray
on earth?
Will He not be merciful? Friends, dear friends—I say nothing against the
righteousness of the world’s verdict in cases grievous and terrible;
but, after all, may the world not oftentimes be but God’s officer, who
brings the accused before His bar to be judged on higher evidence, to be
pardoned because of fuller knowledge?
It may be right—it is right—in the plan of the Almighty that men and
women should suffer here; but it is comforting to think that, maimed and
bleeding, many a man and many a woman may stand up for judgment at the
last day, when He who sits on the Great White Throne, knowing what they
have suffered, shall wipe the tears from their eyes, and bid them enter,
wanderers though they may have been, into the joy of their Lord.
I think, hard and lonely, sorrowful and desolate as Phemie’s life was,
still that the Almighty ordered every step of her way and brought her to
Himself by paths which, though weary to travel, led ultimately to the
beautiful city whose maker and builder He is.
Phemie never sinned. Let me say this much before going farther—never
sinned as the world views sin—never “fell,” as society puts it—never, I
may even go this far, trod the edge of the precipice of vice
voluntarily.
There is many a woman at this present moment whom the world talks well
of standing at the very mouth of the pit of hell—many a woman, wise,
discreet, decorous, keeping herself straight with society, believing in
no sin except the sin which is found out, and forgetful that there is
another bar besides that of a certain “set” in fashionable society,
before which things that have been hidden shall be made manifest, and
all that has been concealed shall be brought to light.
There is many a woman worse by far than Phemie ever was, who yet knows
nothing of the pangs of remorse, of the agony of the self-reproach, of
the prickings of conscience, of the fierceness of the battle through
which she had passed, ere wearied and worn, ere faint and exhausted, she
ceased to struggle against her fate, and, lying between life and death,
considered that, after all, love was very sweet; that to her, who had
always stood without in the cold darkness, the warmth and the brightness
of loving and being loved was something wonderful.
For a moment they had been close to one another, close as people are
who, with all the conventionalities and fashions and artifices of
society stripped off them, draw near, soul answering unto soul.
To Phemie that moment was a revelation—the “might have been”—the
certainty of the awful mistake she had made—the assurance of Basil’s
love—the hopelessness of that love—its very uselessness, and the
impossibility of it ever bringing happiness to either of them—all
conspired to weaken her resistance of evil—all caused her to lie
bruised, and shattered, and suffering, hugging this sinful affection to
her heart, while she wished for death, while she prayed for no better
boon than to be taken away from the struggle and to pass out of life,
carrying her love with her.
Only to float thus away—only to glide down the stream, away from the
duties which had become intolerable, from the affection for which she
was ungrateful, from the ties which were now unendurable—only to float
with the sweet music she had listened to sounding in her ears—only to
touch his hand before passing away for ever—only to feel his lips press
hers once more, with a knowledge that all necessity for battle was
over—only to leave her memory with him, and then to sink to rest.
Reader, pity her! for though she might be a grievous sinner to wish to
enter eternity burdened with a love which she found too heavy to carry
through time, still her ways had not been ways of pleasantness; she was
very young—she was very weak—the sunshine was very beautiful, and that
fair land wherein even the very birds seem to be singing the old old
story was lovely in her eyes.
It was a dream, shall we say?—a sad, sweet dream, in which the slave
imagined herself free, in which the prisoner thought her chains were
unloosed, her fetters struck off, her dungeon doors opened. It was a
dream, and Phemie woke to find that reality’s cold grey shadows were
stealing in on her life; that she had to come off the shining river, and
return to the shore she once hoped she should have to tread no more—that
Death holds back from those who court his embrace; and that there
remained for her in the future only what the past had held—duty and
struggle—a colder duty, a fiercer struggle, and repentance and despair.
When she was well enough to travel they all went together to the sea—to
Hastings—a place Phemie had never previously visited, and which, it
being the very height of the season, was full of youth and beauty, of
fashion and frivolity, of sickness and sorrow, of age and infirmity.
Had she not a happy time there? I am afraid she was dangerously happy
then—that in the midst of her weakness there was a subtle sense of
pleasure and triumph tipping the moments as they fled by with sunshine,
making her poor, cold, narrow life seem wide and beautiful. She was
taking her heart’s holiday—the working days were all to come. Out over
the sea she looked, but she must return to the woods and the fields of
Marshlands for all that. She sat and listened to the music; but the
years were advancing when the drip, drip of the rain, and the falling of
her own tears would be the sole music of her life. She passed among
crowds, and was amused and interested by the variety of characters, by
the succession of fresh faces. She beat time to the waltzes, as in a
state of delicious convalescence she leaned back and hearkened to the
band on the Parade. Under the moonlight she saw gay groups standing: she
beheld the visitors walking up and down: to the laughter of children, to
the happy voices of the young, and beautiful, she inclined her ear.
Night after night she walked slowly up and down, up and down the Parade,
with her husband on one side of her, and Basil on the other, while the
music rose and fell, and the feet of many people hurried by, and the
faces of the young and the old, of men and women, succeeded to each
other as the scene changes in a panorama, and the moon sailed high over
the East Cliff, and the waves came washing up on the shore—now
advancing—now receding, and the sound of the waters fell on the ear like
a subdued accompaniment to the noisy melody of human fears and hopes
that was being sung continually on the strand.
To Phemie, who was dreamy and fanciful, it seemed that the Parade was
the stage, the visitors the performers, the sea the orchestra, herself
the one solitary spectator. She seemed to do nothing save listen and
feel; and yet there was at times a tone in the great sea which woke an
answering chord in her heart, and caused her vaguely to marvel whether
in the dim future every string in her nature might not be tried and
tested; whether she should not some day understand more fully the
meaning of that eternal murmur which never ceased by day nor by night;
which went on just the same, whether men stood on the shore or left the
coast desolate; which took no heed of human sorrow or of human joy;
which had gone on through the ages, and which should continue through
the ages, till there was no more sea—till the heavens were rolled up
like a scroll—till time was merged in eternity, and the great problem of
existence solved at last.
Life! She was beginning vaguely to think, not merely about her own life,
but about all lives—about all those men and women who went hurrying
along within sound of the great sea. She was commencing to understand
that there was a lesson to be learnt out of these things somehow, though
she had never conned a line of that lesson yet herself. It was all very
vague—it was all very sweet, but there was a terrible sadness in it
notwithstanding—a minor that brought tears into Phemie’s eyes
oftentimes, she scarcely knew why or wherefore.
Yet it was a happy time—sinfully happy to the poor misguided woman—until
the Hurlfords and Miss Derno arrived at Hastings also. Then in a day all
seemed changed; the liveliest tunes sounded sad to Phemie; the sweetest
airs grew wearisome; she tired of the rush of the hurrying feet; the
moon ceased to rise over the East Cliff; there was no longer any track
of silver light on the waters; the evenings felt chilly; the sun did not
shine the same as formerly.
It was all as when a man puts a sprig of some bitter herb into the
wine-cup, and bids his neighbour drink—the flavour of the wine is lost,
and he turns from the rich juice of the grape, because of the
disagreeable taste of the herb. Phemie’s visit to Hastings was spoilt.
“Well, let it be!” she said, wearily to herself. “What does it matter?”
What! though she could not see the waves for tears; though she sat alone
indoors while they went about enjoying themselves?
Mrs. Stondon was not strong enough to bear the rocking of a boat. She
grew dizzy when the little vessel was tossed about on the waters. She
was unable to ride for very weakness, and so in time it came to pass
that—as she was not selfish at this advanced period of her story—as her
affection would not let her keep Captain Stondon always at home for her
sake, as her pride would not allow her to make any sign to Basil, she
was often lying on the sofa solitary, whilst the Hurlfords, and Miss
Derno, and Basil, and her husband were riding, or boating, or walking.
In most lives there are such pauses, when the musicians are silent—when
the voices of the singers are hushed—when there is a time between the
lights—when we lay down the volume of experience, and think, tearfully
it may be, of all we have read out of it. Happy the man or the woman
who, unlike Phemie, think to some good purpose; who can trace the
meaning of the life story; who can resolve that the future shall not be
as unprofitable as the past.
Wearily, she thought, ah! wearily—grievously she misjudged the best
friend God could have sent her—a woman who loved and pitied the poor
wife.
There was nothing Miss Derno did that seemed right at that time in
Phemie’s eyes.
Dressed in mourning for the aunt she had spent best part of her life
with, Mrs. Stondon considered her a hypocrite.
“People who have been left handsome legacies can afford rich mourning,”
Miss Georgina Hurlford suggested; and that was a view of the question
upon which the invalid thought it pleasant to dwell.
If Miss Derno offered to remain at home with her friend, Phemie viewed
her kindness as a piece of deception. If she went out riding or boating,
walking or driving, Phemie still thought she was playing her cards—doing
her best to win Basil.
And supposing she did win Basil, what then? Had Phemie not said she
never would step over a grave to happiness? Could she expect him to
remain single for her sake all his life?
“Can you guess the course Miss Derno is urging me to adopt?” Basil said
one day as he leaned against the window, looking out over the sea. “She
wants me to accept General Hurlford’s offer, and go out to India.”
“Perhaps she would not object to accompany you herself,” Phemie
answered.
For a moment Basil, though a gentleman, hesitated; he knew Phemie’s weak
point, and his power through it, then he answered—
“Miss Derno would not marry a poor beggar like myself even were I
inclined to ask her.”
“The heir to Marshlands cannot be considered a beggar,” Mrs. Stondon
answered, coldly.
“Phemie!” it was the only word he uttered, but their eyes met, and she
turned hers aside abashed, but, woman-like, she held to her opinion, and
brooded over it.
“You will go, Basil,” she suggested.
“And leave you?” he replied.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” she entreated; “don’t, for God’s sake.
Leave me and seek your own life—that which a man at any point, at any
age, can make it. Leave me—my life is gone. I ask nothing but to be let
do my duty which I have neglected. Take his offer, Basil—take it, and
go;” and then she buried her head in the sofa pillow while he answered—
“And you think I could do this—you think a man’s love is no more
constant than all that comes to. You imagine I could go away and
forget—forget you, Phemie—forget you”—
Then with all the strength of her nature Mrs. Stondon uprose, and said—
“I think, Basil Stondon, that if in the book of a man’s life there are
two wicked pages, he should paste them together, and go on and make a
better of the leaves that are to come. I think that if I were in your
shoes I should flee from temptation, and not remain even within sight of
dishonour. I do not think I could eat a man’s bread, and be conscious
all the time that I loved his wife. I do not believe—woman though I am,
weak though I may be—that could I go, as you can go, I should stay.”
“Shall I take General Hurlford’s offer, then?” he asked. But she had
exhausted her strength, and was lying weeping in the very extremity of
her physical weakness. God help us! again I say, when the weakness of
our bodies is sometimes able to subdue the strength of our souls. God
help men and God help women, for we are all poor frail sinners alike!
“I did not think,” said Miss Georgina Hurlford to Mrs. Stondon, “that
Olivia would have counselled Mr. Stondon to accept my father’s offer;
but I suppose her aunt’s death has made all the difference? It cannot
matter to her now whether she marries in England or goes abroad.”
In her desperation Mrs. Stondon turned to Miss Derno. “I suppose,” she
said, “your aunt’s death will make a difference in your future plans?”
“Most assuredly,” was the reply. “I have some idea of taking a cottage
near Marshlands; I feel that I should like to be near you.”
“If Basil remains in England, you remain, I conclude?” answered Mrs.
Stondon, and at her remark Miss Derno flushed scarlet.
“I am at a loss,” she replied, “to imagine how Basil’s future plans can
influence mine.”
Whereupon Phemie laughed. “That is what we all say,” she answered, and
the laugh grew hysterical.
“We! Ah, heaven,” thought Miss Derno, “what can she know about the
matter?—she who has never felt what it is to love honestly and
passionately all her life long—whose purest love can never more be
anything but sin—who, if she had only known Basil Stondon first, and her
husband afterwards, might have loved her husband with all her soul and
strength and might, but who can never love anything but this poor weak,
unstable young man—never, for ever—for ever, never.”
Was she right in this, my reader? No. For there came an hour when Phemie
was able to put the two men in the scales together, and weigh their
merits impartially—when she knew which of them had been true and
faithful, which false and fickle—when, for the second time, she could
make her heart’s choice, and took the better man.
But according to her then light, Miss Derno argued—according to her then
light, Phemie judged.
“You think,” answered Miss Derno, “that _I_ mean to go to India with
Basil if he accept Sir Samuel’s offer—that I intend to take a place near
Marshlands if he do not—and in both ideas you are wrong—how wrong you
may know, perhaps, hereafter. Meantime, I can only say this much:—I
shall not—much as I should prize your friendship, greatly as I should
like to be near you—take a cottage in Norfolk at all. I will flee to the
uttermost parts of the earth—to Wales, to Ireland, to the
Highlands—(what does it matter to me?)” she added vehemently; and Phemie
remembered she had uttered words like them. “I have promised to remain
for a month with my cousin; at the end of that month, farewell, my dear,
a long farewell; for it is ten chances to one if you and I ever meet
again on this side heaven.”
“Where do you mean to go, then?” asked Phemie; “you told me long ago
everybody met somewhere in the end—that there was no ‘never’ in
society.”
“There is no ‘never’ in life, Mrs. Stondon,” was the reply; “there is no
‘never’ in eternity—unless——”
“Unless what?” Phemie inquired.
“Never mind,” was the reply. “I detest religious discussions; this
present life ought surely to be enough for us, without wanting to
penetrate the mysteries of the next, before our time.”
“But we live here for the next,” said Phemie, who could not forget the
teachings of that old Scottish manse; of that lonely house among the
hills.
“Do we?” retorted Miss Derno; “I should not have thought it. Forgive
me,” she added next moment, as Phemie broke into a fit of
weeping—“forgive me, I was thinking more of myself than of you—I was
indeed—I was, upon my word—forgive me, dear—forgive.”
But, somehow, Phemie’s forgiveness was a thing not readily granted in
those days. Phemie, what with her beauty, and her delicate health, and
her devoted husband, and her fine position, was rather a great lady, and
as she had not been born great, she was not perhaps magnanimous: let
this be as it may, she did not accord her forgiveness readily, and
within a few days she and Miss Derno were removed further than ever from
each other, namely, by a visit from one of Mrs. Stondon’s relations, the
first who had favoured her with word, or call, or letter since her
marriage.
Mrs. Keller prefaced her visit with a letter, skilfully worded, penned
in the most beautiful of handwritings on the best of note-paper.
The Stondons were in Hastings; she dated from St. Leonards. They were,
after a fashion, strangers. She was a regular comer, well known and
respected. Captain Stondon was from Norfolk, a place as it might be in
the Antipodes; Roundwood was in Sussex, and every Hastings tradesman,
livery-stable keeper, and lodging-house lady knew Mrs. Keller, and Mr.
Keller her husband, and the young ladies her daughters.
Mrs. Keller had a very bright pair of black eyes, that were capable of
seeing any object at any distance; further, she had a very clear head,
out of which she planned a letter to Mrs. Stondon.
“What does it mean?” Phemie asked, listlessly handing her aunt’s epistle
up for Captain Stondon’s judgment. “I cannot understand what she is
driving at. What does it mean?” And she turned towards her husband, who,
after reading the letter placed it before Basil.
“It means,” said the latter gentleman, “that Mrs. Keller has no
sons,—that there are no more brothers,—that failing direct male heirs,
the estates revert to the female branch,—and that you are the next
heir.”
“I?” and Phemie’s pale cheek grew paler.
“Yes, you,” went on Basil. “Mr. Keller cannot live twelve months, so the
doctors say. Miss Keller is dead. Mrs. Stondon will inherit Roundwood,
and become a greater lady than ever,—so great a lady, in fact, that we
shall all have to approach her hat in hand.”
“Then, if my father had lived,” interrupted Phemie, “he would have
inherited Roundwood before this Mr. Keller?”
“Undoubtedly, after General Keller’s death.”
“And you are certain you are not mistaken?—you are satisfied all that
property will some day be mine?”
“Perfectly satisfied, unless, indeed, Mrs. Keller takes it into her head
to have a son at the eleventh hour, which, considering this note, is
scarcely probable. There now,” added Basil Stondon, “what have I said,
what have I done?” And repressing the strong impulse which made him long
to take Phemie in his arms, and kiss away her tears, and hold her to his
heart, he stood aside while Captain Stondon sat down beside his wife,
and drew her lovely head on to his breast, and let her cry out her heart
there—sobbing—sobbing passionately.
Her life—it was that she was considering—poor disloyal Phemie—weak,
traitorous, unworthy wife—with her head against his breast, with her
face against the heart which held no thought save for her—she was yet
reflecting what a happy lot hers might have been, had this news come
before marriage instead of after. She might have had Basil then, instead
of Captain Stondon—might have had the tinsel instead of the pure gold,
the coloured glass in lieu of the precious gem!
CHAPTER X.
BASIL DECIDES.
“And I am so sorry, my dear, never to have been able to call upon you
before.” It was Mrs. Keller who said this, as she and Phemie sat in the
drawing-room that looked out over the sea. “But, of course, as long as
poor Miss Keller lived she was so bitter on the subject of her brother’s
marriage, that it would have been impossible for us to take any step of
the kind without offending her. Had we made any advances towards you, we
would always have thought our opposition was the reason of her
iniquitous will, and I am certain that would have made you most
uncomfortable; so, perhaps, it is all better as it is. Her will, my
dear? Is it possible you never heard about it? She had not a living
relative except her cousin, my husband, our children, and yourself; and
she had an immense fortune from her mother—a fortune that would have
enabled us to live without anxiety for ever.
“Well—would you believe it?—she turned Dissenter, and left everything
she had in the world to building chapels, and sending out missionaries,
and we were never one sixpence the better of her death, except fifty
pounds, which she said my husband was to spend in buying a mourning
ring. Ring, indeed! it did not pay quarter of the expenses of the
mourning. Jacqueline, my youngest daughter, had a horrid set of amethyst
ornaments—hideous things—that might have been worn by Queen Philippa;
but she bequeathed her diamonds to some society, and they were sent up
to London—absolutely sent up and sold by auction for the benefit of some
penitentiary, or reformatory, or whatever it was.”
Phemie laughed. The misfortunes of her relations clearly did not affect
her as they ought.
“I suppose Miss Keller thought she had a right to do what she liked with
her own,” she suggested.
“But she had not a right,” returned Mrs. Keller; “she induced my
husband to join General Keller in effecting a mortgage on the
property—Roundwood, I mean—and told him she would make it up to him
someday; and she never made it up; and to this hour we are paying
interest on the mortgage, and unless we live like beggars, we can save
nothing, absolutely nothing; and there is not an insurance office in
England will take Mr. Keller’s life; so there is a predicament for us;
and the property goes after his death.”
“I suppose that is really the most disagreeable part of the business?”
Phemie remarked.
“It would be useless to deny it,” answered Mrs. Keller, with charming
sincerity; “but as it is to go away from us, I am glad it is to pass to
you.”
“Why?” asked Mrs. Stondon, and she leaned a little forward in her chair
as she uttered the word.
“Why? because, of course, one would rather have to do with a woman than
with a man.”
“Should you?” interrupted Phemie; “notwithstanding your experience of
Miss Keller?”
“But then all women are not like her,” answered Mrs. Keller; “indeed,
she was as unlike a woman as anything I ever saw in my life—not in the
least like you, at any rate: and in the next place, you are married, and
would not want to turn us out of Roundwood in a minute if anything did
unfortunately happen.”
“Well, what else?” asked Phemie, as Mrs. Keller paused.
“Nothing else. I have said all I meant to say——”
“Though not all you were thinking,” laughed Phemie, once again. “It is
something to have for next heir a woman without children, whom your
eldest daughter may one day succeed in——”
“My dear Mrs. Stondon, I assure you——”
“My dear Mrs. Keller, I assure you,” interrupted Phemie, “that I know
you know a great deal too little of me, and a great deal too much of the
world, to be indifferent to such considerations. There is but a life
standing between you and Roundwood, and I cannot blame you for seeing
that this life is not a good one; still it is only fair for me to assure
you that my present illness is the result of accident, not of
constitutional delicacy. In a general way I am as strong as my
neighbours.” Having concluded which pleasant little speech, Phemie sank
back in her chair, and looked straight in Mrs. Keller’s face, with a
sweet smile.
“Godfrey,” said Mrs. Keller, on her return to St. Leonards, “that woman
frightens me. She knew what I was thinking of; she is worse than her
aunt ever was—cooler, more collected, keener. Talk about Captain Stondon
having married an innocent, unsophisticated girl! Folly! Depend upon it,
she is far more worldly-wise than he, and knew all about his property,
and the position he would be enabled to give her. Guileless, indeed! A
designing minx, like her mother, doubtless.”
“Her mother had not any great amount of guile about her,” answered Mr.
Keller. “I remember seeing her in Paris, just before Mrs. Stondon was
born; and a prettier creature I never beheld.”
“There you are, man—man—man all over,” retorted Mrs. Keller; “a pretty
face and a soft manner deceive the wisest of you. It has evidently taken
in Captain Stondon, who is certainly one of the very nicest old
gentlemen I ever met—such frank, kindly manners: so courteous, so
considerate. He came in from Battle while I was there; and to see him
speaking to her was really as good as any comedy. Had she been a queen
he could not have treated her more reverentially. How was she? and had
she felt lonely until I came in? and did she feel inclined to take a
drive or a walk? and had she eaten any lunch, and was she certain she
had taken her wine? and had the doctor called? and did she think she was
really better, really, really? Those are the kind of things that annoy
me in this world,” finished Mrs. Keller; “the perfect idiots men make of
themselves about women, as if they belonged to some superior order of
being.”
“Well, don’t you think that you do, Honoria?” asked Mr. Keller; “it has
often occurred to me that you must entertain some idea of the kind.”
“I entertain no idea of the kind, Godfrey, so don’t be ridiculous. I
hate to see men humbling themselves before women, more especially before
such a piece of languid superiority as Mrs. Stondon. And she is just the
same to everybody; she orders that young Stondon—what is his name? Basil
Stondon—about as though he were not next heir to Marshlands; and he
comes and goes at her beck and call just as a dog fetches and carries;
he does, indeed.”
“It is very sad, is it not?” answered Mr. Keller; “but perhaps, my love,
if you were as young and handsome as Mrs. Stondon, people might fetch
and carry for you, too.”
“Now that is precisely what I meant about Captain Stondon. _He_ would
never have made a speech like that even to his own wife; he would never
be rude, unmanly, brutal. And as for Mrs. Stondon,” burst out Mrs.
Keller in an accession of indignation, “some people might call her
handsome, but I don’t. She has not an atom of colour in her face, nor a
bit of flesh on her bones. I wonder she does not rouge. It would make
her look a little less like a ghost.”
“Did she express any wish to see the girls?” asked Mr. Keller, who, as
was natural, felt some paternal anxiety on the subject.
“Could you imagine the Queen expressing a wish to see them?” asked Mrs.
Keller, facing suddenly round. “When you meet Mrs. Stondon you will have
some idea of the woman she is, but not till then. I asked her to come to
Roundwood, but she declined. ‘My mother was not received there,’ she
said, ‘and I shall certainly not visit at a house, the doors of which
were shut in her face.’
“‘But they were not shut by us, my dear,’ said I.
“‘No,’ she admitted, ‘but that could not make any difference. Her
relations had not taken any notice of her (Mrs. Stondon) either, and
would probably not have taken any notice to the end of the chapter, but
that she chanced to be the next heir. As for children,’ she added, ‘she
could not bear them; girls, more particularly, she disliked. Some day,
perhaps, she would be able to see my girls, but not till she grew
stronger.’ And there she sat in the arm-chair all the time,” went on
Mrs. Keller, “as though she were an empress, and I a subject paying her
homage.”
“Then on the whole your visit was not a productive one?” suggested Mr.
Keller.
“It was, so far as Captain Stondon could make it so,” answered his wife.
“He is going to call upon you, and he hoped he should see us at
Marshlands; which I intend he shall. And upon the whole I don’t think
she disliked me; but then she seems to care for nothing. I cannot make
her out at all.”
“And neither can I,” declared Miss Georgina Hurlford, to whom Mrs.
Keller confided this opinion a few days subsequently. “When first I went
to Marshlands, I thought Mrs. Stondon the most beautiful and charming
woman I ever beheld, but she is quite changed lately. It is not the
effect of that terrible accident, for she was changed before it
happened. Now do, Mrs. Keller, use your penetration, and see if you can
discover for what she wishes, or whether she wishes for anything; of
whom she is fond, or whether she is fond of any one. I am dying to
understand Mrs. Stondon. Sometimes I think she is too happily married,
for such a husband I never saw. I am sure if I could meet with any one
like him, I should not mind having to beg my bread for his sake.”
And Miss Hurlford fell into a little fit of rapture over Captain
Stondon’s perfections, while Mrs. Keller, who had sense enough to see
Miss Georgina did not look much like a young lady who would relish
begging her bread, even in company with a model husband, ventured to
suggest that Mr. Basil Stondon, who was eligible, would probably make a
wife quite as happy as his relative.
“Basil!” repeated Miss Georgina, with a curl of her lip, “Basil thinks
far too much of himself ever to be like his uncle. Besides which, he is
engaged. Did you not know it? Ah! really, now, you are jesting. I
thought every one knew that, although they keep it so quiet—Miss Derno
and he have been engaged for years, at least so I am told; but Mrs.
Stondon cannot, it is said, bear the match, and wishes it broken off.”
“Why, what possible business can it be of hers?” asked Mrs. Keller, in
astonishment.
“That is what we all want to know,” returned Miss Hurlford. “Some people
say she hates the notion of Basil having Marshlands at all; others that
she wants him to marry some relative of her own—a pretty girl, Helen
Aggland, have you ever seen her? (her father is the funniest old man
possible); in fact, no one seems to be able to tell what to think——”
“But surely Miss Derno must be much older than Mr. Basil Stondon?”
“A few years. She is the kind of wife, though, he ought to have—at least
so everybody says—clever and experienced, and able to take the lead, and
keep him in order,” rattled off Miss Hurlford.
“Has he not been offered an appointment in India?” asked Mrs. Keller.
“In Ceylon, I think it is. No person thinks it can be good for him
living in idleness at Marshlands, and so when papa heard of this vacant
post, he said, ‘Now that is just the thing for young Stondon;’ but
Captain Stondon won’t hear of it. Miss Derno, of course, wants him to
accept papa’s offer, because it would enable them to marry; and now her
aunt is dead, she may go abroad if she likes any day. I am sure I cannot
tell how it will be,” finished Miss Georgina thoughtfully, while Mrs.
Keller returned to the bosom of her family, thinking—
“She seems a frank enough kind of girl, but for all her frankness I have
an idea she wants Basil Stondon for herself.”
Wherein Mrs. Keller chanced to be right, only matters were not
progressing at all to Miss Hurlford’s satisfaction. Boating, riding,
driving, walking, listening to the music on the Parade, wandering over
the East Cliff, climbing up the Castle Hill, she was not an inch nearer
her object than ever.
Phemie had him heart and soul. She was the love of his life, and since
the accident he had loved her more despairingly than ever. From all
other women he turned to her. He would have asked nothing better than to
sit at her side, to walk with her along the shore, to drive her through
the pleasant lanes, to look in her pale face, and to feel her soft hand
lying still and warm and quiet in his. The man’s very nature seemed
changed; he was fickle no more, he was importunate no more; he loved her
entirely, and he knew she loved him, and he was content to wait—that was
what he said to himself—till she was a widow, when they would marry and
be happy.
He ate Captain Stondon’s bread, and yet still thought this; he addressed
his relative respectfully, and spoke of him in terms of the highest
admiration and affection, and yet all the time he would have taken his
ewe lamb from him—all the time he was thinking, “Captain Stondon is
getting old, Captain Stondon’s health is failing, Captain Stondon’s
spirits are beginning to flag,” which observation chanced to be quite
correct. Phemie’s husband was altering every day. He was growing less
cheerful, he was getting sadder, and not all his wife’s tenderness, not
all her remonstrances, could clear away a gloom that seemed to be
settling down upon him.
From the time General Hurlford mentioned the Ceylon appointment to him,
a change seemed to come over Captain Stondon. At first it was but a
shade, but the merest cloud; but as time wore on the cloud grew blacker,
and people began to think that the idea of Basil deserting Marshlands
had seriously hurt and grieved him.
“I will give you an answer, so far as I am concerned, when we return to
Norfolk,” he said to Sir Samuel; “though, after all, it is a question
for Basil to decide.”
“But Basil says he will do whatever you think best,” answered the
General.
“I cannot expect any man to build his house on my plan,” replied Captain
Stondon; “it would not be right for me to do so, and perhaps I have
already been selfish in keeping Basil so much at Marshlands. I will
think the matter out there, and talk it over with him.”
“He ought soon to make his mind up on the matter,” said General Sir
Samuel, a little pompously, for he thought—naturally perhaps—that his
offer had not been accepted so promptly as it ought, and that the amount
of gratitude felt by both Captain Stondon and Basil fell infinitely
short of that which he considered his due.
“It is not with my good-will that he has hesitated for so long,”
answered Captain Stondon. “I wished him to refuse your kind proposal at
once—for reasons which I have explained more than once.”
“But consider the opening, my dear sir.”
“Consider the distance—consider the climate. It is an excellent opening
for men in the position we occupied at one time, but certainly not for
Basil. We had our way to make, his is made for him. There is no reason
that I can see, why he should risk his life out there, when he might
just as well stay at home. In fact,” went on Captain Stondon, “I confess
there is something I cannot understand in the persistency with which all
Basil’s friends urge him to do something for himself. One would think
that a man could desire no better home than a place like Marshlands,
which will be his own in the ordinary course of nature. Do you all think
I am going to turn him out some day? Can it be that you fancy I shall
not deal fairly by him so long as I live? Tell me frankly why his
friends are making themselves so busy in his affairs. Tell me, for
instance, why _you_ think Basil should go to India.”
“Well, in the way you put it—I really can see no reason why he should go
at all; but still, as you say, all his friends seem to think he ought
not to be dependent on your bounty, or charity, indeed, as Miss Derno
puts it. The moment the appointment was vacant everybody cried out—“Why,
that is the very thing for Basil Stondon;” and so, of course, I offered
it to him; and as they still keep saying he is mad to refuse, I keep
offering it to him still. That is all I have got to say about the
matter—it is, upon my word and honour.”
And Sir Samuel who had uttered all this in the teeth of a north-east
wind, blew his nose violently, and buttoned up his brown top-coat with a
tremendous show of dignity.
“It is very singular,” remarked Captain Stondon.
“It is indeed—as you observe, it is very singular.”
But at this point Sir Samuel, who was descending the steps that led down
from the West Cliff to the old town of Hastings, past St. Clement’s
Church, stopped as if he had been shot.
“An idea has just occurred to me,” he said. “I remember a remark Mr.
Hurlford once made, that may serve to throw a little light on the
matter. It was to the effect that Basil could not marry without your
approval; for although you kept him you might not feel inclined to keep
his wife and children also. Do you think we have solved the enigma at
last?” inquired the General, whose nose was blue and whose cheeks were
black from the cold cutting breeze that seemed to be trying to cut him
through and through.
“Thank you, I think you have,” answered Captain Stondon, simply; and he
took Sir Samuel’s hand and shook it heartily—gratefully. “If that is
all, I believe we can get over the difficulty; but does Basil want to
marry any one? Is there anybody to whom he is attached?”
“Such things are not much in my way,” answered Sir Samuel; “but you know
people do talk about him and Miss Derno.”
“Miss Derno! you amaze me. If I had thought at all on the subject I
should have guessed very differently; but I will talk to my wife about
it. Women, you know, generally are sharper in affairs of this kind than
we are.”
“May I inquire,” asked the General, on whose comprehension a faint
glimmering of light was just dawning, “where your guess would have
fallen? I do not ask from idle curiosity, believe me.”
“It was only a passing idea,” answered Captain Stondon. “I thought for a
moment of my wife’s cousin, Helen Aggland.”
“Certainly—yes, to be sure.” And the light that had been struggling into
General Sir Samuel’s brain was suddenly extinguished.
That very evening Captain Stondon talked to Phemie about Basil. He told
her what he had heard, he asked her what she thought. He opened the
subject so unexpectedly that Phemie blessed the twilight in which they
sat for hiding her face while she listened. She felt it flush—that poor
face usually so pale and white—and she grew faint and sick, as her
husband inquired whether it had ever occurred to her that Basil was
attached to Miss Derno.
“I have thought so for a long time,” she answered. “I once heard they
were positively engaged, and I remember teasing Basil about it.”
Teasing!—it was an easy, simple word, far enough removed from any
feeling she had ever experienced in the matter. Had she said tortured
herself—had she said tormented her spirit—lacerated her heart—she would
have been much nearer the mark; but as it was, she merely declared that
she had teased him, and Captain Stondon asked—
“What did he say?”
“Oh! he denied it, of course; and then I tried Miss Derno, and she
denied it also.”
“And what is your opinion, Phemie?”
There was a great silence in the room; outside on the shore the waves
came rolling up against the Parade; over the sea the grey twilight was
settling down into darkness; there was a wild night at hand; and all
these things together seemed to speak to Phemie of a time when the waves
would be talking to her with a different voice—of an evening when the
twilight would be merging into a deeper darkness—of a night, wilder,
colder, more dreary, that would come to her if she were not wise in due
season, if she did not confess and repent, and turn back, ere the
tempest was unloosed, ere the rain beat and the wind blew upon her.
“Tell him now,” was the murmur that filled her ears; “tell him now,”
said the holy voices of the night; “tell him frankly and truthfully that
you believe Miss Derno cares for him, but that you know he cares for
you. Tell him the truth—now in the silence—now in the gathering
darkness, with the evening shadows hiding your shame from him, with the
night concealing his anguish from you—take courage and begin—be honest
and be true.”
And there arose in the poor wife’s heart a terrible longing to burst out
and tell him what I have written. She would have given her life then to
be able to speak the first word—to take the first step back to loyalty
and peace. If she could but have been sure he would not ask her how it
was all the time with her, she might have spoken; and even as it was,
she hesitated—hesitated too long.
“I asked you what was your opinion, love,” Captain Stondon gently
repeated; and the opportunity was lost; the wave had receded, the
precious moment had slipped back among its fellows.
“I have always thought she cared for him.”
“And he, Phemie?”
“I cannot tell. I fancy he must be fond of her still.”
“And you imagine she wishes him to accept this appointment, so that they
may get married?”
“It is very likely.”
“Then he must not accept the appointment; we can do better for them
here.”
Her punishment was beginning; she put her hand to her heart, while a
pain, sharp and terrible as the thrust of a sword, seemed to pass
through her breast. Could she see them married, and live? Could she go
through the years of the existence his love had made wretched, bearing
and making no sign? She thought of the lonely hours, and days, and
weeks, and months; and as she leaned back in her chair tears, hot and
scalding, rolled down her cheeks slowly and silently.
Deep wounds do not bleed much—the worst of all bleed internally; and so
in like manner deep grief weeps little, and the bitterest tears are
those that never wet the eyeballs.
Could she live if he left her? Could she live if he deserted her? And
the pain grew sharper, and the agony greater.
This was love—this was that which she had walked on through the years to
meet—unholy, jealous, passionate love, that was draining away her
heart’s blood drop by drop. It was killing her. She had mocked at love,
and behold love had taken her unawares—taken her captive.
Only to die—only to be sure of dying; and she turned her tired eyes
towards the window, from which she could just discern the sea tossing
and moaning.
“I wish I were out there,” she said, aloud. “It would be free and
pleasant.”
In a moment her husband’s arm was about her waist. “Out where, my
darling?” he asked. “I am afraid it is too cold a night for you to
venture on the Parade.”
“I did not mean that,” she answered. “I meant out on the sea. I never
seem to want to be on it except when the night is coming on, and the
waves are rough and crested with white foam. Then I think I should like
to be out on them without a boat, going away and away to the ocean.”
“My love, I am afraid you are not so well to-night,” he said anxiously.
“Yes, I am,” she answered; “only when I sit in the twilight I begin
thinking—and when I begin thinking, I want to be away—away in the body,
or out of the flesh, I suppose. Shall we soon be going home?” she asked.
“I believe I want to return to Marshlands.”
“We can return whenever you please,” he replied, and then she nestled
her head down on his shoulder, and thanked him; and so it was settled
that they should go back to Norfolk immediately, and Captain Stondon
begged his wife to ask Miss Derno, and Miss Georgina Hurlford, and
General Sir Samuel, and Mr. and Mrs. Hurlford to return there with them.
“I want to see Basil and Miss Derno together,” said Captain Stondon, who
considered that his penetration had been sadly at fault; and
accordingly, when the October woods were arrayed in their most brilliant
colours of brown and yellow, and red and russet green, guests again
assembled in the old Norfolk house, and Phemie played the hostess
there—for the last time but one.
On the whole it was not a successful attempt at gaiety. Phemie proved a
less charming entertainer than formerly; the whole party seemed somehow
at sixes and sevens. Everybody was continually taking somebody else into
inner chambers, into remote parts of the grounds, into dark walks, into
shrubberies where the leaves were lying ancle-deep, into woods that were
fast getting bare and cheerless, and talking confidentially to him or
her for half an hour or so at a time. In the evenings nobody would sing
or play: the gentlemen sat long over their wine, the ladies yawned a
great deal, and talked about fancy work and the new clergyman. There
were too many guests for anyone to be able to do as he liked; there were
too few for any entertainment to be got out of them. Altogether, it was,
as Miss Derno remarked, a little slow—a little like a Quaker-meeting, in
which every member of the assembled company was waiting for some one
else to make a diversion in the proceedings.
As for Basil, he wished the Hurlfords and Miss Derno at New Zealand; he
wished India still further; and he seized on the chance Captain Stondon
gave him of escape with avidity.
“He did not want to go to India,” he said; “he had no desire to leave
Marshlands; but if his friends thought he ought to do so, why, he would
be guided entirely by their advice. He felt he must be sometimes in the
way; he knew he owed everything he possessed to Captain Stondon’s
goodness and kindness; and goodness and kindness were not things to be
unduly encroached on. Did Captain Stondon really wish him to remain?
then he would remain, only too gladly; should he tell General Sir Samuel
the matter might be considered settled, and his offer gratefully
refused?”
“There is one thing more I want to speak to you about, Basil,” said
Captain Stondon, when they had definitively settled this point. “It has
been suggested to me that your position here prevents your marrying.
Now, should such be the case, I wish to say that in all respects I
desire to treat you as though you were my own son. If you desire to
marry, I will——” but at this point Basil interrupted his relation.
“I have not the slightest wish to marry,” he said; “I am too happy as I
am.”
“Have you no attachment——” Captain Stondon felt he was putting the
question awkwardly; and so perhaps did Basil, for he changed colour, and
bent his eyes on the ground.
“I want to be plain with you, Basil,” went on Captain Stondon, “so
forgive me if I am abrupt. Is it Miss Derno?”
“Certainly not;” and Basil lifted his eyes, and laughed with a secret
sense of relief.
“Have you never given her any reason to think—?” suggested his relative.
“I have given her every reason to think,” was the bold reply. “I
proposed to Miss Derno years ago, and she refused me. I have no
intention of proposing to her again; you may be quite satisfied about
that.”
“But do you suppose she—that is, are you quite certain there was no
misunderstanding—that she was not influenced by her comparatively
dependent position?”
“I conclude you mean, would she marry me now if I wished her? No, she
would not; and if you doubt the fact, you can ascertain the truth from
Miss Derno herself. She never cared for me. Even when I had a fancy for
her, she had none for me; and for the rest,” added Basil, with a sudden
appearance of frankness, “if I do care for anyone, it is a hopeless
love—one that may be buried with me in my coffin; for nothing can ever
come of it in this world.”
“Are you serious, Basil? could money not help you—could my assistance be
of no avail?”
Then for a moment Basil Stondon stood conscience-stricken, looking
straight into the face of the man he had wronged.
“Had I all the gold in the vaults of the Bank of England,” he said
slowly, “it would not mend my case. That is the only thing that would
take me to India; but it is as easy to bury a love here as in the East.”
“And easier, perhaps, to get a new one,” said Captain Stondon, with an
attempt at _badinage_; but Basil shook his head.
“My fate met me one day,” he answered, “and my fate was too much for
me;” and as if in mockery while he spoke, a gust of wind came through
the wood, stripping the leaves off the trees, and casting them at his
feet. “I will try to repay you hereafter for all your goodness to me,”
he added, and he meant what he said—meant it fully and faithfully, every
word. Captain Stondon’s generosity and unsuspiciousness had touched his
heart.
“I will try,” he repeated to his own soul; and he swore to himself with
a great oath that he would strive to conquer his passion, and—meeting
Phemie every day, make-believe that he had ceased to love her.
Staying on at Marshlands, he was bound to make this vow to himself; but
it is one thing to make a vow, and another to keep it; and so Mr. Basil
Stondon discovered.
CHAPTER XI.
THE MARCH OF EVENTS.
No sooner was Basil’s decision made known to the circle at Marshlands,
than dissatisfaction appeared in the faces of two of that circle at any
rate. Phemie, who really in some things was “changeful as the weather,”
took a private occasion of telling Basil that he had done very
wrong—that an opportunity had been presented to him of “getting away
from temptation, and relieving her of a burden (such was the flattering
manner in which she conveyed her meaning), of which he might have
availed himself.”
“And I think it very wicked of you,” she added. “I know if anybody had
offered such a chance to me, I should have snapped at it.”
“But I assure you, Phemie, upon my honour—upon my soul, I will not
persecute you any more. Let bygones be bygones, and forget and forgive.
We can be friends—can we not, dearest?”—over which last word he lingered
so lovingly, that Mrs. Stondon knew perfectly well the struggle was not
ended—that there was more misery in store for her—that he had no
intention, no real intention I mean, of ceasing to persecute her. Well,
she must only try to do her part,—and she would, she would, so help her
God!
As for Miss Derno, she was something more than dissatisfied,—she was
indignant. Miss Derno knew all about the matter now—knew that Basil
loved Mrs. Stondon—knew that poor Phemie loved him. She had kept her
eyes open, and she saw, moreover, that other people’s eyes were
beginning to be opened too, and that Phemie’s reputation was not safe
from hour to hour.
She loved Mrs. Stondon, loved her as women oftentimes love those of
their own sex who are much younger and weaker than themselves—loved her
tenderly, compassionately, faithfully; and at length decided to take the
first opportunity that offered, and throw light on Captain Stondon’s
understanding.
After a time the opportunity arrived. She was walking over from the
Abbey, and Captain Stondon overtook her, riding. Spite of her
remonstrances, he dismounted, and leading his horse by the bridle,
proceeded by her side along one of the interminable high-banked, sandy
Norfolk bye-roads, which seem to stand to the inhabitants in lieu of
footpaths. They talked about politics; they talked about the weather,
about the soil, about the county generally, about other English
counties; about Miss Derno’s future plans, and then she said—
“I only wish I were a man, like Basil, a man with the opportunity for
pushing my way in the world, which he seems able to throw aside. It is a
great pity you do not use your authority, and make him go abroad. It
would be so good for him.”
“But he does not wish to go.”
“Children never wish to go to bed, and yet no rational parent allows his
child to sit up with his playthings all night. England chances to hold
Basil’s latest toy; but for that very reason perhaps he ought especially
to be sent abroad.”
“You speak in enigmas, Miss Derno.”
“Do I? Let me speak plain English then. From his youth upwards Basil has
been in love, and the more unattainable his love, the more constant he
has usually proved.”
“Human nature,” suggested Captain Stondon.
“It was his human nature, at all events,” answered Miss Derno. “I have
known him all his life, and I know pretty nearly every woman with whose
hair or eyebrows, or finger-nails, or dimples he has fallen in love. I
chance to know his latest “possession,” and he wants a change of climate
to cure him of his passion.”
She was very pale, and she began walking very fast. Captain Stondon
detained her by laying a hand on her arm.
“Would it be wrong for me,” he asked, “to share a secret which seems to
have been confided to you so fully?”
“It was not confided to me,” she answered; “but I have observed signs
and tokens in Basil which I should recommend you to observe likewise.
Heaven forgive me if I am making mischief,” she went on, vehemently;
“but some one ought to tell you, and why not I? All the disagreeable
things in life have always fallen to me to do or to say! It is your own
wife, Captain Stondon, whom Basil loves. I have spoken.”
She had spoken with a vengeance. A man standing in her shoes would have
measured his length in the road; but a woman was as safe with Captain
Stondon from retort as from injury.
“You must be mistaken, Miss Derno,” he said, when he could speak, and
those were the only words he uttered. She never made him an answer; and
they parted when they stood in front of Marshlands without another
sentence being spoken.
He had looked once, indeed, in her face entreatingly while they passed
up the avenue; and she, understanding the meaning of that look, had
replied to it mutely. She was to say nothing more, and he was to use his
own discretion. Phemie’s prudence, Phemie’s goodness, Phemie’s purity
had not been called in question, thank God! About Basil he would think:
he would do nothing rashly.
And yet it was time some person interfered, for the struggle had got too
much for Phemie. Basil had kept to his resolution for a couple of days;
and then finding he could endure such a separation no longer, he became
worse for his very forbearance, more desperate in his importunity.
She avoided him, and he followed her; she treated him with cold
indifference, and he grew mad; she would have nothing to do with him;
she eschewed all places where he was likely to be; she behaved at that
time, as Captain Stondon himself, who was silently watching her
behaviour, could not but perceive, unexceptionably; and if he thought
this, what must not the woman have been suffering, the woman who was
fighting two battles—the battle of duty, and the battle of love?
For she loved Basil still, and he knew it.
“We cannot go on this way,” she said, one day, when he chanced to be
left alone with her in the great drawing-room, the windows of which
opened out on the terrace.
“I know we cannot,” he answered; “will you leave Norfolk with me? It is
misery for both of us as it is; and Captain Stondon would give you a
divorce at once; I know he would. Then, at last, we might be happy,
Phemie. Only speak the word.”
But she would not speak; she bent her head down on the chimney-piece,
and her great sin rose before her. He had spoken lightly of divorce,
lightly of the great love the one man felt for her, who would, “he
knew,” grant her this boon at once; but, oh, God! the desolate home, and
the lonely hearth; the rooms without her—one less on the path to heaven;
one more traversing the road to hell—that was what Phemie saw while she
remained silent—such pictures as conscience never painted for the
preservation of the poor, weak sinner who stood beside her.
“Phemie, dearest—the one love of my life—will you put an end to all this
struggle and misery?” and he bent down his head over her, and kissed the
once rich hair, that was now short and unlovely.
Then with a start she turned upon him. “I will never leave my husband. I
swear that to you, Basil Stondon, before God!”
As she spoke the door opened, and Miss Georgina Hurlford entered. At a
glance she took in the whole situation, and a sudden rage came over her
as she did so.
“I will be revenged,” she thought, and she was. Before the guests
separated for the night, she heard Phemie say to Basil:
“To-morrow, at six, in the pine plantation.”
For hours she sat and wrote after she went to her own room, and next
morning the housemaid found a perfect hecatomb of burnt paper under and
about the grate in Miss Hurlford’s room.
“She’s been a-burning of love-letters I’ll be bound,” soliloquized the
housemaid; but she happened to be wrong.
Miss Georgina had been simply inditing a little note, which came to
Marshlands next day by the hands of a strange lad:—
“If you wish to know what keeps Mr. Basil Stondon in England, be near
the pine plantation this evening at six.
“A WELL-WISHER.”
Have you ever had an anonymous letter, dear reader? if you ever have,
perhaps you can understand with what feelings Captain Stondon read the
above epistle, and with what cheerfulness and unconcern he turned him to
the duties and employments of the day.
Phemie was coming to be talked about, that was his first idea; his next
was—had his darling given any occasion for scandal? He would save her,
he would; he would stand between her and the world; he would keep her
from all sin and from all danger. Was this the substance of the shadow
that had been brooding over him? Was this the reality of the dread which
had been haunting him? Could Phemie—his Phemie—Phemie of the auburn
hair, of the pure heart, of the innocent mind, have been deceiving him?
He would not believe it; but still I am not ashamed to add that, in the
solitude of his own chamber, Captain Stondon covered his face with his
hands and wept bitterly.
He had been happy, and happiness was over for him for ever; he had
loved, and she whom he loved was “talked about” and suspected.
He guessed, now, what Phemie had been thinking of that night when they
sat together at Hastings. Oh! if she had only told him then; only told
him herself; only let the knowledge come to him from her own lips,
uttered by the music of her own voice.
Life—life; if we could only seize your opportunities as they slip by us;
if we could only see the end of the paths we blindly pursue; if we could
only understand that there are cases in which silence is not wisdom, in
which speech is golden—I think and believe even this world might be
happier than it is, freer from misunderstanding, more perfect in its
bliss. As it was, Phemie, even at the eleventh hour, did not trust her
husband; did not throw herself on his charity, his forbearance, his
trust; but went wandering away through the twilight to keep her tryst, a
mistaken woman, a lonely wife.
The heart has its diary, which it keeps more faithfully than the hand
can ever do. Ink may fade, but flesh and blood cannot forget. Lines
which have been traced by the pen may in time suggest merely the
faintest shadows to the memory; but the story which has been traced by
either joy or sorrow, the photograph which has been burnt into the heart
by passion or despair, remains stamped there indelibly till the end.
And not the one grand event merely either: every trifling accessory is
photographed as well as the principal figure, and the odds and ends
about a room, the floating clouds in the heavens, the ivy climbing up
the wall, the folds of a dress, the straggling branch, the scattered
leaves of a flower—all these things which we never could have imagined
would have found themselves in the picture, are there, and will remain
there till the heart is cold and its pulses still for ever.
Phemie found it so, at any rate. Did she ever forget, could she ever
forget, that walk down to the pine plantation? The wind was high, and
seemed to be chasing the clouds into the night. Looking up, she could
see the pine-trees tossing their dark foliage against the grey sky;
banks of clouds swiftly changing their position, changing and shifting
as the breeze bore them hither and thither; some leaves whirling past;
beds in which geraniums were blooming late; heliotropes still scenting
the air; fir-cones under foot; the dry grass rustling beneath her
tread—what did these things say to Phemie from that night on,
henceforth? What did she see when she walked out at that season, at that
hour, in such weather afterwards? She saw a man and a woman standing
beneath the firs, hand clasped in hand, heart talking to heart, soul
laid bare to soul. She heard low, broken sentences, and then louder
words of entreaty, of pleading, of reproach, while the wind, after
thundering and blustering among the further-off plantations, paused for
a moment by the firs to listen, and then went sobbing away through the
trees—sobbing and moaning farewell, farewell!
Could she say it? She had come to try. She felt so sure of herself now,
she felt so strong to cleave to the right at last, that she was there by
her own appointment, in the dusk of that autumn evening, to meet the man
whom, loving beyond all other men, she had hitherto avoided—to bid the
only man she had ever loved leave her.
He was there, he was waiting for her; he had no thought for the lonely
husband he was trying to disgrace, for the hearth he was striving to
make desolate. He remembered only himself and Phemie; he felt only the
strength and the might of the curse she had laid upon him. “You shall
love me for ever! You will never be able to love another woman as you
love me—never.”
And it was true: he felt in every throbbing pulse, in every beat of his
heart, in every nerve of his body, that she had told him only the simple
truth. He should never love another. Weak and false and feeble and
unstable he might be in regard to everything else in life;—but
Phemie—while the streams flowed to the sea—while the sun shone—while the
flowers bloomed—while the grass sprang—while the earth brought forth her
increase, and the rain fell, and the dews descended, he could love none
other—none—but this woman whom he wanted to make wretched—whom he wanted
to destroy, body and soul—whom he took in his arms and kissed over and
over again. Oh, woe for Phemie!
“You have come, my own darling, my own only love!”
“Yes, Basil, I have come.” And she released herself, and stood with her
one hand against a fir-tree and the other pressed hard upon her heart.
“I have come, for, as I have often told you, we must part.”
“Why, Phemie?”
“Because I cannot bear it—I won’t bear it,” she answered; “because the
deception is too great, the burden heavier than I can carry; because I
had rather go to him and tell him all—how I never loved him—how I have
loved you—than be a hypocrite any more, than listen to the things you
say to me any longer.”
“I love you.” It was all the excuse he could make.
“You love me!” she repeated. “Yes, and you love yourself; you love your
own love better than you love me. Is it right, Basil?” she went on,
passionately; “is it right for a woman to be stronger than a man? Is it
for a woman to show a man the path he ought to tread, and force him into
it?”
“You do not know what love is,” he said, “or you would not talk in that
ridiculous way.”
“I do,” she answered; “I do, God pardon me. Having once married my
husband, I ought not to have known—I ought to have lived the decorous,
untempted existence that falls to the lot of many a woman; but I met
you, Basil Stondon—met you and disliked you—met you and loved you—met
you and almost lost my soul for your sake! Not know what love is!” she
cried, despairingly. “Basil, if I were to go through hell could I burn
your kisses off my lips? Could I forget the touch of your hand? Could I
come out pure as I have been? Is there any physician who could undo the
past—who could take the scars of your unholy love off my soul, Basil!
Basil?”
She was not crying. Phemie had outlived that state of simplicity in
which a woman weeps because she suffers; when the vessel bursts that
destroys life, we do not bleed externally; when our hearts are breaking
no tears flow from our eyes. She was not crying, but there was an agony
in her voice which wrung even Basil Stondon’s soul, and made him answer—
“Phemie, dearest, I have sinned—what can I do?”
“You can go,” she said; “you can take General Hurlford’s offer, and
leave me; you can remember how good and kind my husband has been to you,
and quit tempting me. I cannot help having loved you, Basil Stondon, but
I can help being false to him, and I will be true, I will.”
“You ought to have thought of that before—you led me on,” he said,
sullenly.
“Led you on!” she flashed out. “I lead you on! What knowledge had I—what
arts could I use—what wiles did I practise? Whatever wrong I may have
done, it has not been to you. Did I ask your love—did I want your love?
What has your love brought to me? I was happy, and I am wretched, and it
is through no forbearance or generosity of yours that I am not more
wretched still. Led you on!—it would be no great trouble to any woman to
drag you down, but—I—I have tried to keep you up; I have striven hard,
you know I have, and this is the way you thank me. You bless me with
reproaches, you repay me with falsehood.”
“Forgive me, Phemie, I did not mean it. It has been all my fault.”
“It has not been all your fault,” she said; “but it will be yours if you
stay on here when you have the chance given you of leaving. Did you not
promise me that we should be friends—but friends—and what did you ask me
yesterday?—to go away with you, Basil, to live with you in sin, to leave
the husband who has been good to me lonely and dishonoured. God pardon
you, Basil, and God pardon me, for ever having fallen so low that you
could say and that I could listen to such things.”
“Where is the sin?” he retorted. “I love you and you love me. You do not
love your husband.”
“But I respect him—ay, and I love him too much to bring sorrow to his
door by any act of mine. Where is the sin?” she repeated; “where—oh,
Lord in heaven!” and she clasped her hands together, “if this man be so
blinded that he cannot see his sin, open Thou his eyes; give sight to
him as Thou alone canst.”
“Phemie.”
“Yes, Basil.”
“What is the use of all that rubbish? You do not believe in it, you
cannot believe in it. How can a man and a woman, who have felt as we
have felt, pray to God, if there be a God?”
With a cry of despair she fell on her knees.
“I am here before Him, Basil,” she answered; “He can remember, better
than I, every thought of mine since I first met you, every thought of
yours since you first set eyes on me, and yet I feel He has not forsaken
me. I know the day must come when you will feel He has not forsaken
you.”
She put that thought between him and his sin. She put the thought of her
God, she put purity and perfection so great, that it could afford to
look without turning aside on impurity, between her and temptation. The
old lessons learned so many a year before in the manse, within sound of
the mourning and murmuring sea, came to her help then. The God who had
been her grandfather’s Father in that old innocent life was her Father
now, and to Him in that hour she appealed.
“Oh! Lord,” she went on, “in so far as I have sinned give me my wages
and I will take them without a murmur, but let me sin no more, and keep
me out of temptation.”
“She lifted her hands clasped above her head as she spoke the last
words—spoke them almost with a sob—and, from among the pine-trees, it
seemed as though her sobs were echoed back.
“Was that the wind, Basil,” she asked, springing to her feet—“or has
somebody been listening to us?”
“Who would come here to listen?” he answered sulkily; “are you going to
talk to me rationally now, at last?”
“No,” was the answer, “never will I talk to you what you call rationally
again. I know all you want—I know all you would say—I know how weak I am
for good—how strong you are for evil—and for all these reasons, I say we
must part. If you will not go, I shall have to find some means of making
you go. I am willing to leave the ‘how’ in your hands, Basil, but the
result I cannot have changed. You must go, or I will tell my husband—I
was once very nearly confessing everything; and I would rather confess
everything, than live the life of misery and deception I have done for
fifteen months past. I came to tell you this—I have told it to you—so
good-bye.”
He would have detained her, but she fled from him—he would, had it been
possible, have carried her off there and then, but Phemie’s will was
stronger than his purpose. “Good-bye,” she said, and the wind took the
words and carried them up into the branches of the pine-trees.
He answered her with a muttered oath—and the wind took that likewise and
bore it away.
When Phemie and Basil had both left the pine plantation, the sob which
attracted Mrs. Stondon’s attention was repeated once again.
Amongst those pines a man’s heart had that night been broken—his dream
was dispelled, his trust destroyed. She had never loved him—she had
loved Basil; and Captain Stondon, who had played the spy for the first
time in his life, heard her words and took them home to brood over.
Was it for this he had wished when he drank of the waters that fell over
the rocks at Tordale?—was it for this he had married a young wife in the
church that looked adown the sweet valley under the shadow of the
everlasting hills?
CHAPTER XII.
THE SOCIAL RACK.
The real tragedies of life are, as a rule, played out behind the scenes,
and the men and the women who have received the severest wounds—who have
wept the bitterest tears—who have passed through the fiercest fires,
come forth with serene faces, and enact those comedies which society
loves to see, on the conventional boards of the drawing-room theatre.
Society hates tragedy, and it is perhaps only fair that it should do so,
since tragic actors, on their part, detest society. They hate the
boisterous sympathy of the people, who fill the galleries of that great
playhouse, the world; they loathe the surprised ignorance of the upper
boxes, and with the keenest dislike they writhe under the critical
appreciativeness of the stalls and dress-circle.
Comedy, comedy, wit, gaiety, for the social audience! youth, beauty, the
brilliant dress, the smiling face for strangers, acquaintances, and even
friends! but the ghastly wound, the eating cancer, the deathly disease,
the tear-stained face, the contrite prayer, the repentant heart—when the
lonely chamber is reached and the door closed.
It was so at Marshlands. The guests there had each his or her little
tragedy hidden away from sight—tragedy past or present; and yet to have
seen the company assembled round the dinner-table, and to have heard the
gay chatter in the drawing-room, no one would have suspected the
existence of the mental haircloth each in the little circle wore
underneath the fine linen and the shining satin. With some, long years
had rubbed away all the painful points, and left the trouble and the
endurance, a memory—nothing more; but with others the garment was new,
and caused the lips, wreathed with smiles, to tremble occasionally
because of the pain to which, as the years went by, they were to grow
accustomed.
It was a pretty drawing-room, and pretty women moved hither and thither
about it. Besides Miss Derno and Miss Georgina Hurlford, there were
perhaps seven or eight ladies in the apartment, girls and matrons, who
looked at sketches, and the new magazines, who stood together beside the
wood fire, or near the centre table, talking about their children, about
their governesses, about their houses, their favourite horses, dogs,
books, pursuits, gossiping away the half-hour after dinner till the
gentlemen should come in and create a diversion.
“You look tired,” said Miss Derno to Phemie, as Mrs. Stondon at length
turned away from the group by the fire, and sat down on a sofa near one
of the windows.
“I am tired of that insufferable woman,” answered Phemie, pettishly,
referring to a Mrs. Chichelee, who had been entertaining her hostess
with an account of the ailments, peculiarities, and special virtues of
each one of her nine children: “she always does weary me to death.” And
Phemie leaned her head back on the pillow while Miss Derno said—
“Any person might have thought you found her conversation interesting,
you listened to it so earnestly.”
“One has to be civil,” was the reply; “that is the worst of living—one
has to be civil to _everybody_.” And Phemie laid a stress on the last
word, which was not strictly complimentary to her hearer. “Sometimes I
wish I were dead; but then I remember there will be even more people in
the next world than in this.”
“You ought to buy some solitary island, and retire there with some fowls
and a goat,” suggested Miss Derno.
“I think I shall; but then those horrid women with tribes of children
would always be visiting me under pretext of giving the little wretches
change of air. For twenty minutes Mrs. Chichelee has been entertaining
us with the biographies of her children from their birth up to the
present hour—how Gwenny had the measles, and Harry broke his arm——”
“Pity it had not been his neck,” interposed Miss Derno, “for a more
detestable brat could not be found in all Norfolk.”
“And how Ada knew her letters at three years old, and how Rupert, when
he was in his nurse’s arms, was always calling out, ‘horse, horse.’ I
confess it is a perfect enigma to me how any woman can imagine such talk
can be interesting to another woman, not the aunt, or grandmother, or
great-grandmother of her precious progeny.”
“When it is all a woman is able to tell about,” was the reply; “when her
life is passed in the nursery and the schoolroom with her babies and
their nurses—when the care of her children is the one absorbing
occupation of her life—her profession in fact—I am not certain that one
ought to blame her.”
“Are you not?” answered Phemie; “well, then, I am. Out of your mouth I
will convict you. Is it good taste for a man to talk of his profession
or trade? What should we think of an artist who made his friends’ lives
a weariness unto them because of the multitude of pictures he had
painted? May a musician speak by the hour about the pieces he has
composed, or an author bore one about his stupid books? Following the
same rule, if it be the sole business of a woman’s life to bring
children into the world, and fill her husband’s quiver full to
overflowing with boys and girls, I think she ought, when she comes out
visiting, to leave her shop behind her.”
“What treason are you two concocting?” demanded Miss Georgina Hurlford,
coming softly up to where Mrs. Stondon was seated. “Is it a secret, or
may I come and listen to you?”
“We were talking about trades and professions,” answered Phemie; “as we
are all after a fashion workers in this world, so I suppose we may all
be said to be in business.”
“Then yours is making yourself agreeable it is only fair to conclude,”
said Miss Georgina, who had a neat way of “putting things.”
“It must be,” was the reply, “because I dislike the occupation so much,
and I have always heard men dislike that which is the business of their
lives.”
“That rule would not appear to hold good with regard to women,” remarked
Miss Derno.
“How do you make that out?” asked Miss Georgina.
“Why, the two great employments of our sex seem not to be unpleasant to
the majority—rearing sons and daughters and looking out for good
settlements.” Having concluded which sentence, Miss Derno looked
straight at Miss Hurlford, who answered without a change of colour—
“Your experience is doubtless greater than mine, but I should have
thought the latter occupation, at all events, most wearisome and
unprofitable.”
“It is early in the day for you to cry out that the land is barren,” was
Miss Derno’s not over civil retort; but the entrance of the gentlemen at
this juncture did away with all necessity for reply from Miss Georgina
Hurlford, who was only too happy to allow the conversation to drop.
Coffee and tea were handed round; the young ladies brightened up, the
matrons looked relieved; the ten minutes’ interval was over, and the
curtain again drew up; the sketches were studied with more interest than
ever, for were there not wiser heads bending over the sketches too, able
to point out their especial merits to the girls whose minds were
supposed to be still lying fallow?
“Your evenings are _so_ delightful, my dear Mrs. Stondon,” said plump
little Mrs. Enmoor, who had the pleasure of seeing her eldest daughter
airing her small knowledge of botany in the sun of Mr. Ralph Chichelee’s
admiring smiles. (Mr. Ralph Chichelee was nephew to the happy father of
nine waxy-faced, pug-nosed children, and next heir to a baronetage.
Judge, then, of the maternal pleasure.) “As I often say to Mr. Enmoor,
if Marshlands were thirty miles distant instead of eight, I do not think
I could resist one of Mrs. Stondon’s cordial invitations.”
Mrs. Stondon looked round the room, took in the position at a glance,
and then said, with the smile which was her stereotyped company smile,
and nothing that had ever belonged to Phemie Keller, “You are very
kind.”
“It is you who are kind,” returned Mrs. Enmoor, in a little ecstasy of
enthusiasm; “and it is because you are kind, and because your house is
like one’s own home—only pleasanter, I think—that your friends are so
fond of coming here.”
Phemie put out her hand and touched Mrs. Enmoor’s round white arm.
Somehow the little lady’s heartiness and gratitude touched her, although
she knew the heartiness was not quite genuine nor the gratitude wholly
retrospective. There was a great yearning in the poor desolate heart at
times for something to love—something to pour out its treasures upon
sinlessly; and when women spoke kindly and tenderly to her, she often
thought she could love a woman very much indeed. After all, why should
she not help on these little feminine schemes a little? Men and women
must marry. Why should she not assist at the ceremony? Lily Enmoor was
rather a nice specimen of a young lady. Phemie thought she could grow in
time fond of Lily, and, after all, might such a marriage not be better
than sending poor Basil away to India, where she would be always
fancying some dreadful thing was happening to him—either being dead of
fever, or being eaten by wild beasts, or wounded or maimed in some way.
Basil had, however, never once looked even admiringly on Lily Enmoor, or
perhaps Phemie might not have said, in answer to Mrs. Enmoor’s remark—
“Thank you so much. I wish you would allow your daughter to spend a week
or two with me. I want to know more of her.”
And then seeing how Mrs. Enmoor’s eyes sparkled with pleasure, Phemie
wished the words unspoken; and looking back, thought that after all the
old life on the hill-side had been best, where, without diplomacy or the
interference of friends, or the “helping-on” of acquaintances, Jack
courted Jenny in the gloaming; and the farmers’ sons wooed the farmers’
daughters, the parents having no hand in the matter till consent was
asked, and the whole affair merely wanted, to make its happiness
complete, the blessings of father and mother on the young and loving
couple.
Mrs. Stondon had known another and a simpler life than that in which she
now moved and had her being; a simpler life, and perhaps a happier; but
she had not been content then, and longed to leave it. Had her game
proved worth the candle? she asked herself, bitterly. Does any human
game, when the last card is played or the last stake gathered in, seem
worth all that we have spent to gain it? Does it? Oh reader—you who have
just pocketed your winnings, and risen from your chair, answer—has your
game turned out altogether profitable? has nothing come with success to
dim the colour of the gold—to dull the bright tints of the picture—to
cause a discord in the sweet melody—to make fame insipid—happiness
regret? Is any game worth the candle? that was what Phemie sat
considering while Mrs. Enmoor answered her invitation with—
“You are really too good, Mrs. Stondon; but I am afraid Lily would be in
your way, with so large a party already. No? then I am certain she will
be delighted: you are her model of everything beautiful and charming—her
ideal of perfection. I will not tell you all Lily says about you, for it
might sound like flattery, though it would be only the simple truth—the
simple honest truth, as we often declare at home.”
Phemie knew it—knew that as she had once admired Miss Derno, so many and
many a young girl now admired her. She had gained ease and grace of
manner, she had employed her talents, she had acquired accomplishments,
she had learnt how to show off her beauty to the greatest advantage, and
yet still how to wear her beauty like a garment. Everything she resolved
years before to conquer, so that her husband might be fond of her and
not ashamed, she had now made her own. To what end? Misery. What had she
done with her gifts? Gained Basil Stondon’s heart and lost her own. What
signified the beauty and the accomplishments and the grace and the ease
and the knowledge of the world? what had all these profited her?
Oh! for the old life—for the pure soul—for the unsophisticated
nature—for the unspotted innocence—for the girlish trust—for the
faithful heart—for the loving, guileless, unsuspicious spirit that had
been her own, but which might be hers again—no more, alas! no more.
Miss Derno was at the piano by this time, playing one of those old
pieces of which people never seem to tire. That mad polacca of Weber’s,
somewhat resembling in its insane abruptness the Tarantellas of the
present day, chanced to be the music on which she was literally
expending her strength, when from one of the company there came one of
those excessively mal à propos requests which cause us frequently to
think people must have some intuitive knowledge of a disagreeable
subject—some secret information as to an unpleasant topic.
“Pray, Miss Derno,” inquired Mr. Ralph Chichelee, who considered himself
rather a master, not merely of botany but of thorough-bass, “do you know
that little ‘Farewell’ song written by Motherwell, which has just been
published?—set to music I mean, for the words are as old as the hills.”
“Scarcely, I should think,” answered Miss Derno, as, having completed
her polacca, she sat with her hands folded, looking up in Mr.
Chichelee’s face. “Motherwell was not in the Garden of Eden with Adam
and Eve, or else we are talking of two different men.”
“I am speaking of the—of, in fact, a Scotch Motherwell,” was the reply.
“Precisely so,” said Miss Derno, “and I am speaking of a Scotch
Motherwell who was born towards the end of the last century and who died
some twenty years since. If you mean that ‘Farewell’ of his, I can sing
it, of course.”
And Miss Derno sang Motherwell’s “Farewell,” two verses of which are as
follows:—
“’Twas not in cold and measur’d phrase
We gave our passion name,
Scorning such tedious eloquence,
Our heart’s fond flame,
And long imprison’d feelings pent
In deep sobs came—
Farewell!
“Would that our love had been the love
That merest worldlings know,
When passion’s draught to our doomed lips
Turns utter woe;
And our poor dream of happiness
Vanishes so!
Farewell!”
Olden memories, olden hopes, olden sorrows, go to make a singer’s
singing pathetic; and olden memories, olden hopes, olden sorrows, all
contributed in this instance to make Miss Derno’s rendering of the words
and music perfect. Miss Georgina Hurlford stole a look towards Mrs.
Stondon as the last two lines of the song rose and fell with a
despairing cadence impossible to convey the meaning of in any mere form
of words—
“And our poor dream of happiness
Vanishes so!
Farewell!”
Vanishes so!—oh! poet sweet and tender, vague and beautiful, it was wise
to express the universal feeling briefly, leaving it to each man and to
each woman whose dream has been broken in upon to supply the hiatus.
Vanishes so!—it was all passing away from Phemie then—vanishing like a
vision after which it was vain to stretch out her feeble hands.
Vanishing—oh! Lord, she had dreamt—and behold now she was awake, and the
realities and the duties and the trammels of everyday life were around
her. Vanishing—vanishing like the faint colour from her cheeks—like the
strength from her limbs. Vanishing so!
“Dear Mrs. Stondon, are you ill?”—it was Miss Georgina who addressed
her—“can I bring you a glass of water? will you not come and sit down?”
But Phemie put her aside a little impatiently, and with a short “No,
thank you, I am quite well. What an exquisite song!” she went on
speaking to Miss Derno. “I am so fond of those Scottish ballads, they
always seem to me to have a second accompaniment—the sobbing of the sea;
the rippling of the waves; the plash, plash of the ocean; can you
recollect any more? I think they are perfectly beautiful.”
Miss Derno looked up at Phemie as she spoke—looked into the face which
was now flushed, into the eyes that were tearless.
“I do not know any more of the same class of songs,” she answered,
rising; “in fact, it was quite by accident I knew that.” And she lifted
her gloves and bouquet from the piano while she said this, and would
have drawn Phemie back, but that Phemie would not stir.
“I am so sorry,” she remarked, “it is so rarely one hears a really
beautiful song.”
“I know one of Motherwell’s,” broke in Miss Georgina, with that manner
of ease and frankness which so tried Miss Derno’s patience. “If I can
give you any pleasure it will make me so happy—it is one of Miss Derno’s
songs though, so you must make my peace with her.”
And without more invitation Miss Georgina seated herself at the piano,
and sang “The Midnight Wind,” with which Mr. Chichelee was so enchanted
that he begged her to try if she could not recollect something
else—something, anything. Upon which the young lady, putting her finger
to her dimpled chin, considered. What did she know? what could she sing?
It was so provoking, whenever she was asked to sing, directly she forgot
every song she knew, and she knew fifty—oh, far more than fifty—two
hundred; yes, she was certain she could sing two hundred for her papa,
but now she was unable to recollect anything.
“What, not one?” whispered Mr. Chichelee in his softest tenor. He had a
way of speaking to young ladies as though he were executing a very low
recitative, intoning is perhaps a better expression, which, as a rule,
produced its due effect.
Apparently it produced its due effect on the occasion in question, for
Miss Hurlford took her finger from her chin, and thought she could
remember a very pretty song indeed—“one quite in Mrs. Stondon’s style, I
am happy to say. I do so love to do anything which can give her the
slightest pleasure.”
There is no accounting for the things that are capable of pleasing some
people—so perhaps Mrs. Stondon did derive some satisfaction from the
song Miss Georgina selected. Remembering the circumstances of her life,
reader—judge whether the melody struck on any of the minor chords in
Phemie’s nature; whether the old times and the new did not mingle
together; whether past and present did not mix and swim confusedly
before her. Phemie dear! Phemie, my love! society had taught you much, I
think, when it enabled you to listen to all those songs without a tear
springing to your eyes—without your flinching from the torture.
“O think it not strange that my soul is shaken
By every note of thy simple song,
These tears, like a summoning spell, awaken
The shades of feeling that slumber’d long;
There’s a hawthorn tree near a low-roofed dwelling,
A meadow green and a river clear,
A bird that its summer tale is telling,
And a form unforgotten—they all are here.
“They are here with dark recollections laden,
From a sylvan scene o’er the weary sea,
They speak of a time when I parted that maiden,
By the spreading boughs of the hawthorn tree.
We sever’d in wrath—to her low-roofed dwelling
She turned with a step which betray’d her pain,
She knew not the love that was fast dispelling,
The gloom of his pride who was hers in vain.
“We met never more, and her faith was plighted
To one who could not her value know:
The curse that still clings to affections blighted,
Tinctured her life’s cup with deepest woe.
And these are the thoughts which thy tones awaken,
The shades of feeling that slumber’d long;
Then think it not strange that my soul is shaken,
By every note of thy simple song.”
There were some things which even Miss Georgina Hurlford could not do,
and one of these chanced to be putting a natural expression into music.
She could play _piano_, and she could play _forte_, but she lacked the
soul that made Phemie’s simplest airs steal their way into the hearer’s
heart.
In the former days Phemie’s singing had been a revelation of the love
and the passion which was at some future time to make her life wretched.
Knowing what he now knew, thinking what he now thought, Captain Stondon
felt the tones of his wife’s voice thrill through him as she carolled a
little French song, at Miss Georgina’s earnest request for her to do so.
He turned sick as he listened—sick because of his great love and his
great pity. He could see all his mistake now—from the height of his age
he could look down on her youth. He had been warned before—not by
man—not by sense—not by any act of his own reason, but by instinct—that,
though he might love Phemie, she could never give him that love which
was the only one he wanted from her. He could see it all now; he
comprehended at last the meaning of the feelings that had passed through
his mind that night when he heard Phemie sing for the first time “Alice
Grey.”
He was in the Hill Farm again: the blazing fire, the closed curtains,
Phemie with her guitar, Mr. Aggland with his strongly-marked features,
with his wild hair, with his deep-set eyes, the boys listening
open-mouthed to their cousin’s singing—these things were before him once
again. He was making his choice; he was deciding on his future life—all
the time instinct was whispering to him, “Leave her, or it will be worse
for both of you”—all the time that voice never was silent; and yet he
shut his ears, and made her his wife.
He took the young thing from her mountain home; he brought her to a new
and an untried life; he matched her teens to his almost threescore
years; he had taken her faith for granted, and he had left her in the
way of temptation. He had been so sure—oh, he had been _so_ sure of a
heart he never owned! And now he knew, he understood all she had
suffered, all she had resisted, all the wrong she had done to him, all
the perils through which she had passed in safety. He knew—ah, well,
when such an hour as that comes to any man who has married a wife, and
loved her through all the years of her wedded life, God help him! God
strengthen him!
After all their stranger guests had departed, after all their visitors
had retired for the night, after she had done everything which could be
demanded of her as a hostess and the mistress of Marshlands, Phemie
stood alone by her dressing-room window, looking out into the night.
Long before she had dismissed her maid, and she now stood, as I have
said, looking out into the autumn night.
It was not very dark, and she could see the pines and the elms and the
beeches tossing their branches mournfully to the sky. She was weary; she
was sick of the struggle. She had spent her last strength in trying to
keep up during the course of the evening, and the old longing to get
away, to be out on the sea, to be travelling from billow to billow, came
over her once again. She thought it would be nice to lie with her hands
clasped, and let the waves toss her hither and thither, wheresoever they
listed; that she would love to feel the ocean breezes fanning her
cheeks, that she would like to be out on the sea in the darkness alone.
She never thought of drowning; she never felt it would be possible for
her to sink; and yet she could not bear the idea of Basil adopting the
very course she had been so lately urging upon him. She felt if he went
away his ship would founder, and that he would go down, down among the
foam and billows over which she desired to float.
What should she do, save die? How otherwise could she ever untie this
knot, release herself from fetters that were entering into her very
soul? She did not want him to stay; she did not want him to go; she did
not wish him to marry; she did not desire that he should stay to make
existence a misery—life something worse than useless. Would he go? If he
did not go, how should she ever endure the struggle longer? She was
faint and weary; she had borne the heat and the burden of this her day,
and was sinking under it. What should she do? Would no one help her? Was
there no one to whom she could turn for advice or assistance? Should she
go to the old Hill Farm and tell her uncle everything? It would break
her husband’s heart. Should she feign sickness, or would he go—would
he——?
And then she sobbed a prayer—sobbed it with her cheek leaning against
the window-frame the while, looking with her great, sorrowful eyes at
the night and the flying clouds and the mourning trees—that God would
help and strengthen her, and enable her, spite of pain, and spite of
temptation, to reject the evil, and to cleave to the right.
“Phemie, dearest,”—it was her husband who spoke, and Mrs. Stondon
started—“Phemie, dearest, you will catch cold standing by the open
window.” And he closed the window, and drew her away towards the fire.
“Tell him now,” her better angel whispered to Phemie; “tell him all,”
added conscience; but Captain Stondon left her no time for confidences.
He only kissed her gravely, and would have turned away, only that Phemie
flung herself on his neck, and with her arms twined round him, lay with
her head on his shoulder, weeping despairingly.
Had he spoken to her then—had he asked her any question, she could have
told him all; but Captain Stondon had decided that no human being, not
even Phemie, should ever again speak to him about his wife’s imperilled
honour—about the disgrace which had swept by her name. He knew—who
better?—all that was passing through that poor heart then; he knew why
she wept, why she clung to him, why she touched his grey hairs so
lovingly, why she concealed her face so resolutely. The depths of her
nature had been sounded at last, not by him, it is true; but yet the
waters so long pent up having found a vent, she could not help but pour
out some tenderness on the man whose love she was now able to estimate,
whose truth and faith and honesty and trustfulness she had learned to
appreciate through the very extremity of her own treason.
She could not love him best, but she loved him more then than she had
ever done since they were married. She had suffered, and suffering is a
great teacher. She felt more loving then than I could ever hope to
explain: gratitude, repentance, affection, contempt of her own weakness,
all struggled together, and caused her to cling despairingly to the man
whose confidence she had abused.
And all he kept saying to her was, “My poor child! my poor darling! you
have done too much this evening, you are thoroughly worn out!”
That was the _rôle_ he had laid out for their future life. He could keep
her from harm; and yet to her he would ignore the possibility of harm.
He could not unmarry her; he could not give her back the chances of
possessing an early love which she had lost for ever in marrying him;
but he could save her. He could end the struggle, and she never be the
wiser as to his motive for doing so.
He was a just man and a good; and yet still, I think, he made the
mistake all people must make when they treat a woman as they would treat
a man. It may not be any luxury for one of the lords of creation to
acknowledge his misdemeanours, and enjoy the pleasure of a good talk
over his shortcomings; but no one of the daughters of Eve is happy till
she has acknowledged her transgressions; in which respect, so far as any
information we have on the subject goes, the daughters do not resemble
their mother.
But according to his light, Captain Stondon judged, and as he judged, he
acted; and it was many a day before Phemie knew that, notwithstanding
all her errors, he had loved her better than himself—better than houses
and lands—better than anything in creation, excepting purity and
virtue—excepting her honour and his own.
CHAPTER XIII.
PARTED.
“Basil,” said Captain Stondon the next day to his relative, “I am going
to ride over to Disley before luncheon, will you come with me?”
To which request, never doubting but that his opinion was desired on
some question of renewing leases or felling timber, Mr. Basil at once
agreed.
As for the General, he was deep in the mysteries of letter-writing. The
Indian mail was going out the next day, and he always sent a budget of
manuscript by it. Miss Hurlford also had her home correspondence to
attend to.
“I often think,” remarked Miss Derno to Phemie, “that hostesses must
bless Rowland Hill a hundred times a week. I have frequently tried to
fancy what a visit could have been like a hundred years ago, when people
did not write letters, when ladies did not use up quires of note-paper
and scores of envelopes of a morning. How the mistresses of households
bore it, more especially those mistresses who prepared medicines for the
bites of mad dogs, and such like useful mixtures, in the still-room, I
am at a loss to imagine.”
“Probably,” said Phemie, “people did not pay visits in those days.”
“And you are wishing in your heart at this present moment that they did
not pay visits in these. I agree with you; if ever I have a house of my
own I do not think I shall fill it full of people, even though they
promise to write letters by the hour. Just look at the General—only look
at him. One would think the whole of the management of India was resting
on his own high shoulders! Are you recommending another protégé for the
Ceylon appointment, Sir Samuel?” Miss Derno inquired, walking up to the
table where the officer sat engrossed in his correspondence.
Very much astonished at being spoken to, Sir Samuel looked up.
“I am—no—that is, Miss Derno, Captain Stondon requested me not to write
to my friend until the last moment, as he rather fancied Mr. Stondon had
changed his mind, and would be glad to accept.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” answered Miss Derno; “delighted also to
learn on such good authority that Basil had a mind to change; only,”
added the lady, “I am afraid it is much too good news to be true.” And
she shot, as she finished, a look first towards Phemie and then towards
Miss Hurlford, which glance told her, that with regard to the latter
lady the news was hoped for, yet not expected, and that Phemie did not
hope, and yet half-expected, while at the same time the news astonished
and startled her.
“He has taken me at my word; he does not care about leaving me—he will
marry her—he is offended. He has never loved me as I have loved him.”
Could Phemie help all this passing through her mind faster than I can
write it? Could the poor creature help the jealousy which had tormented
and harassed her so often? Do you blame her because the veins of her
heart broke out bleeding afresh at the thought of parting with him for
ever? She had been very wrong; she knew it was a sin, and yet—and
yet—ah! reader, he had been all the world to her, he had possessed all
the love she was ever to feel for man, and it was hard. The punishment
might have been deserved, but the lash fell none the lighter for all
that.
Meantime the two men who loved her most on earth, who loved her perhaps
equally though differently, rode on side by side towards Disley. When
they had left Marshlands a couple of miles behind them, Captain Stondon
pulled his horse up into a walk, and began,
“I asked you to come with me this morning, Basil, because I want to
speak to you where we can be secure from eavesdroppers. There is at
least one spy at Marshlands.”
Involuntarily Basil tightened his grasp of the bridle, and his horse, a
well-trained one, stopped dead; the next moment he sprang forward with a
bound, while the younger man answered—
“Indeed! I am sorry to hear you say so.”
“Not more sorry than I am to say it,” was the reply; “but all this is
beside the question. What I want to talk to you about is the Ceylon
appointment. I have been reconsidering that matter, and it seems to me
that we have perhaps been hasty in declining General Hurlford’s offer.
Sometimes I think, Basil,” went on the old man, with his head bowed over
the saddle-tree—bowed to conceal his emotion, “that it is possible you
may feel I am in the way, that I am keeping you too long out of
Marshlands.”
He spoke all this very slowly and at intervals; but still when Basil
would have answered, he held up his hand and motioned him to keep
silence while he proceeded.
“I am afraid I have considered myself too much, and others too little. I
was so happy; I forgot others might not be happy too. What I am going to
tell you now, Basil, I wish you not to repeat to any one, especially
to—to—my wife.”
It was more by intuition than with the help of his ears that the young
man gathered Captain Stondon’s meaning. The hour Phemie had always
dreaded was at hand, and he partly understood what Captain Stondon
desired should be the nature of the compact between them. The knowledge,
and the shame, and the punishment, and the suffering were to be theirs;
she was to be kept out of the business altogether. Vaguely comprehending
this, he promised, and then waited for the rest.
“I know all,” Captain Stondon went on, and he looked straight into
Basil’s face as he spoke, “and that is why I say you ought to accept
General Hurlford’s offer, and leave England. No honourable man, feeling
as you felt, placed as you were placed, would have refused that offer. I
say nothing about the past, however,” he continued, “for I cannot recall
it—would to God I could!—only you must not remain at Marshlands for the
future, and I should prefer that you went abroad. I have a right, I
think, to demand that you shall go abroad. It will be best for all of us
that you should do so.”
“I will go,” Basil answered, and answered sullenly. He never tried to
defend himself, he never uttered a word of excuse or apology; he simply
said, “I will go,” feeling himself a very ill-used man all the time; and
the pair rode on in silence till they reached Disley, where Captain
Stondon had some business to transact.
When he completed it, they turned their horses’ heads eastward, towards
Marshlands, and trotted back mile after mile without exchanging a word.
Till, in fact, they came in view of the pines and the elms; and then
Basil, thinking of all he had promised, of all he should have to
sacrifice, burst out in anger against both his sentence and his judge.
“Will nothing satisfy you but my going thousands of miles away?” he
began. “Will you believe no promise? will you accept no oath? If I swear
never to come near her, if I leave Norfolk, if I never darken your doors
again, will that not satisfy you? What is the use of my leaving England?
If we are parted, what can the distance you put between us signify?”
Captain Stondon turned in his saddle, and looked at the speaker in
amazement.
He could no more understand a man hesitating in an affair of this kind
than he could have comprehended a man hanging back in battle. He had no
more toleration for a moral coward than for a soldier deficient in
physical bravery. The thing was to be done; why should he show the white
flag about the matter?
He had loved Basil: he had been gentle with him because of his love and
of his sorrow; but now there was as much contempt as pity in his tone
when he answered—
“A moth may wish to stay near the candle, but we put him out of the room
and close the window, notwithstanding. Just so I desire to put it out of
your power to see my wife. I do not want to have to watch you. When it
was in your own power to flee from temptation you did not flee; you
stayed on and tempted her. I want now to remove you from temptation. In
one word, I mean to have no more tampering with her honour and with
mine. When I think of it all, when I remember how you took advantage of
my blindness, and tried to bring misery to her and to me, I feel as if I
could not forgive you. But go, now—only go, Basil, and I will not
reproach you; I will try to remember my own folly and forgive yours.”
It was over, and Basil felt it. This was not a husband to be deluded
into any false security again. His very love would make him strong to
protect Phemie; watchful, for her sake; a very Argus concerning his
young wife. So perfect had been his trust, that now it was once broken
nothing could ever mend it again—nothing. It was over; he should see her
no more; he must leave her; he should never feel the soft hand trembling
in his; he should never see the colour rush up into her cheek; the
troubled look pass over her face, the tears dimming her dear eyes again.
He would not be able to torment her in the future. Words of love, words
of reproach, words of entreaty, words of passionate sorrow, of
despairing regret—for all these there must hereafter be substituted the
silence of separation, the agony of loneliness. She could be nothing to
him in the days and the weeks and the months and the years to come. In
that far-away country there would be no Phemie; in England there would
be no Basil Stondon; and but for very shame the man could have cried
aloud in his anguish. Parted! parted! he and she, who had loved one
another so exceedingly. Parted! he and she, who could never love husband
or wife with the same passion of attachment as she had loved Basil! as
he had loved Phemie!
“I cannot do it; I cannot bear it,” Basil thought. “I will shoot
myself.” And he remembered his father’s end, and considered that his
father had been right.
“They will be sorry then,” he decided in his own mind; “they will wish
they had not driven me to it.” And he resolved that directly he went up
into his dressing-room he would blow out his brains, and make Phemie and
her husband wretched for the remainder of their lives.
But Basil Stondon was not the man to blow out his brains. “I would not
do it if she would go away with me,” he reflected, putting back his
pistol in its case, and he determined accordingly to give Phemie one
other chance.
“If she be fond of me, she never can let me leave England alone,” he
argued. And all the time General Hurlford was talking about the
appointment, its duties, its salary, the climate, the country, the
society, Basil was wondering whether Phemie would see that strange land
with him, whether, hand in hand, they would walk through that earthly
Eden sinfully together.
He thought he should have many opportunities of speaking to her before
he left England, but in this idea he was mistaken.
He had to go to London to provide his outfit: it was of course necessary
for him to bid his mother farewell. Time slipped by, and still he had
never seen Phemie alone; so at last, living in the same house, he wrote
to her, and bade Phemie’s maid give her mistress the letter before she
went down to dinner on the evening preceding that on which he was to
start for London to join the Hurlfords.
He prayed her in that letter to grant him one more interview, to give
him one more chance.
A selfish man can always write eloquently when the subject is his own
sorrow, and because the letter was very touching, and because she
herself was very miserable, Phemie cried over it till she could cry no
more.
But nevertheless she would not see him, would not contrive that one
opportunity he craved.
Although it was for her sake, as she believed, he was going—although it
was at her instance, as she had no reason to doubt, he was leaving his
native land, still she distrusted her own heart too much to yield to his
prayer. She had vowed, by all the lessons of old, by all the teachings
of her earlier youth, by all the truths she had learned in the days of
her innocence, that she would put herself into the way of temptation no
more. She had prayed to be kept from evil, and she would not walk into
evil with her eyes open; for all which reasons, when Basil held her hand
that night in adieu—when he looked imploringly into her face—when his
eyes asked for a reply to the question he dared not frame into words,
Phemie’s mouth formed the monosyllable “No.” Phemie, with her fingers
clasping his, with her blue eyes swimming in tears, with her dear face
pale and sorrowful, shook her head. It could not be, it could not, and
Basil cursed her in his heart. Till he has tasted all the bitterness of
the very dregs of the cup of sin, there is nothing a man of Basil
Stondon’s stamp hates like virtue, and for this reason he detested
Phemie Stondon then.
But once in London he relented; and as he would not or could not write
to her direct, he enclosed a letter to Mrs. Stondon under cover of one
to Miss Derno, stating that he would be in the plantation the next
evening at six o’clock, and praying her to meet him there.
He was mad. I do think at that crisis of his life, the fact of the toy
being beyond his reach, the grapes too well guarded, made him insane.
He felt he must try to see her once again, and he might perhaps have
compassed his end, for Phemie was not stronger than her neighbours, but
for this, that she never received his letter.
Miss Derno knew Basil Stondon well, none better; and knowing him—knowing
his selfish weakness, his thoughtless disregard of consequences—she put
the letter he enclosed into the fire, and saved Phemie from one
temptation more.
All that evening he wandered round and about Marshlands till he had
hardly time to catch the last up-train from Disley; he waited in the
plantation, and watched the house which held her whose heart was only
too full of love for him.
Then he went—with his soul full of bitterness, with his mouth full of
curses.
“She loves herself too well,” he thought; “she loves ease and social
position, and her fine house and the life she leads at Marshlands too
much even to come out and bid a poor devil, who has only sinned in being
fond of her, good-bye. Farewell, then, Mrs. Stondon,” he hastily
finished, pausing on his way towards Disley, and taking off his hat to
make a low mocking bow in the direction of Marshlands. “Farewell. I
wonder where you will be when I return to England—where you will be when
I ask you next time to meet me. Farewell, then, Phemie, my Phemie of the
blue eyes and the auburn eyes—my Phemie—my darling—mine no more!”
The man’s heart was breaking. All his heart had been given to this
woman, and now the woman was prudent. She would sacrifice nothing, so he
put it, for his sake. Well, he would go, and the time might come, yes,
it might, when Phemie would pray to him as he had prayed to her, and
pray in vain.
He looked on the new life and the new country differently now; perhaps
when he was gone quite beyond her reach, she would repent. He rejoiced,
therefore, to consider she soon could not recall him; that he would be
in twenty-four hours more beyond the possibility of aught save regret.
And yet when the twenty-four hours were gone, and he was steaming down
the Channel, all the bitterness departed from his heart. He would have
given all the hopes of his future life to look upon her dear face once
more—to hold her to his breast—to kiss the sweet, pure lips—to stroke
and smooth the soft hair that he had touched with fear and trembling in
the days that were gone. Standing by the ship’s side, gazing down into
the sea over which he was passing further and further from her, the
man’s eyes grew oftentimes dim, thinking of the woman he had loved. Not
all Miss Georgina’s prattle, not all Sir Samuel’s wise and improving
discourse, could chase away _that_ memory, could make the beauty of that
far-away face seem faint, or blurred, or indistinct.
The old things of his life were put on one side, and he could not even
flirt. How terrible must have been that wound which prevented Basil
Stondon seeking consolation for the frowns of one woman in the smiles of
another! How wonderful the power of that love which could still retain a
hold over him when he was travelling on—on—over the sea, away from the
smiles and the tears and the weakness and the strength of Phemie, who
had said, “You shall never forget me—never love girl, nor woman, nor
wife as you have loved me. When you are lying awake in the darkness you
shall think of me; when you are standing in the twilight you shall
remember me. I can never be anything to you as another woman may; but I
can be near to you for all that, and I will.”
And was she not near to him?
Further and further the vessel bore him from England, but still Phemie
bore him company. She was with him in the desert; night and day he
thought of her; he wished to be with her; his heart went travelling out
to meet her form, and brought it back to lodge in his bosom. He wept for
her—he sickened after her—he hated her one moment—he prayed for her the
next.
“If my being away gives her happiness,” he would think when his softest
moods were upon him, “it is well for me to be away; but let me die, oh
God! let me die.” And then through the darkness he could still see her
standing among the pines, her hands clasped above her head, crying with
a sob—
“In so far as I have sinned, give me my wages; but let me sin no more.”
Should such wages be given to her and not to him? Should the fruit of
the tree they had planted never be tasted by him? Was she to bear all
the pain—to weep all the tears? Was she to suffer for both, and he to
get off scot free? No; and Basil felt, in some vague kind of way, that
his punishment was beginning; that his money had still to be paid him;
that in the future he would be able to answer out of his own experience
whether it was a fiction or a simple truth, that the wages of sin is
death.
They were parted; the world knew nothing of their struggles, of their
errors, of their misery.
Thousands of miles lay between them, the great sea, and the lonely
desert, and more sea, and a foreign land, gay with tropical flowers,
bright with sunshine, presenting at every turn something new and fresh
and interesting to a stranger’s eye, separated the man and the woman. To
their fellows they were as though they had never thought much of one
another: he went on his way and she continued on hers. They never heard
directly from one another, and yet day after day their hearts were
constantly mocking at time and space, flitting over the ocean, setting
at nought the sandy desert and the desolate plain; they were
crossing—crossing—his to England, hers to India; faithful both—sinfully
faithful still.
END OF VOL. II.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TINSLEY BROTHERS’ NEW WORKS.
TEN YEARS IN SARÁWAK. By CHARLES BROOKE, the Tuan-Mudah of Saráwak.
With an Introduction by H.H. the Rajah SIR JAMES BROOKE, and
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A TRIP TO BARBARY BY A ROUNDABOUT ROUTE. By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. In 1
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MODERN CHARACTERISTICS: A Series of Essays from the _Saturday Review_,
revised by the Author. In 1 vol. handsomely printed, and bevelled
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CONTENTS.
1. False Steps.
2. The Uses of Dignity.
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7. Minor Tribulations.
8. Thrift.
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10. Culpability and Degradation.
11. Husbands.
12. The Companions of our Pleasures.
13. Clever Men’s Wives.
14. New Ideas.
15. Cynical Fallacies.
16. Friendly Infatuation.
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18. The Theory of Life from Below Stairs.
19. Needy Men.
20. Philosophers and Politicians.
21. Authors and Books.
22. Literary Industry.
23. Nineteenth Century Sadness.
24. Weakness of Public Opinion.
25. Pagan Patriotism.
26. Occasional Cynicism.
27. Praise and Blame.
28. The Artisan and his Friends.
29. The Terrors of Intellect.
LIFE OF GEORGE THE THIRD: from Published and Unpublished Sources. By
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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