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,
2and 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:
3whichever 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:
4but 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?”
5“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
6that 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.
7She 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
8seemed 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
9result. 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
10convert 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
11in 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
12her 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
13position 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
14her, 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
15up 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
16and 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
17for 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
18kitten 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
19comported 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
20smile 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
21Marshlands 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
22the 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.
23And 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,”
24answered 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
25done 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
26withdraw 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
27Mr. 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
28that 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
29ought 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.
30
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
31that 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
32children 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,
33for 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
34good 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
35could 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
36dark, 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
37school 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;
38so 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
39to 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
40me 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.
41Entertaining 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—
42“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.
43“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
44as 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.
45The 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
46guests 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.”
47“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.”
48“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.
49
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
50while 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
51not 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
52death 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
53you,” 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,
54but 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
55shall 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
56to 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
57had 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
58Captain 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
59first 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.
60“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
61was 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
62Duncan, “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
63did 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
64literally,” 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
65to 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
66Captain 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.”
67“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.
68
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
69pleasures 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
70have 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
71memory 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,
72and 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,
73and 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,
74leave 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
75everlasting 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
76the 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
77can 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
78happiness 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
79been 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,
80because 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
81text 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
82one 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.
83“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
84Basil 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
85about 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.”
86“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
87cheeks, 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
88we 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.
89“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.
90
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
91divine 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
92to 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
93wounds 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,
94that 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
95all 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.
96But 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.”
97“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
98there 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
99making 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;
100she 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
101had 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;
102as 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.
103To 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
104her; 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.
105It 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
106gave 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.
107It 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.
108“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
109almost 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
110there 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
111nature 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.
112
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.
113She 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
114disagreeable 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.
115The 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.”
116Very 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
117unsubdued, 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
118the 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
119followed 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,
120and 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;
121he 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.
122But 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
123struggle 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
124whose 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;
125“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
126stroked 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—
127“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
128a 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
129was 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
130every 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
131same 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
132gone. 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
133when 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
134a 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
135his 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
136all 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
137heart 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
138set, 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.”
139At 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
140say; 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.
141
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
142husband 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.
143Mrs. 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.
144“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.
145No 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
146that 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;
147“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.
148Daughter 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.
149Aggland 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
150it; 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.”
151“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
152struggling; 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.
153Who 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
154her; 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
155roof 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
156than 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
157was 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
158opinion 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
159makes 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.
160“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
161inconsiderate 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.
162“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
163floated, 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.
164
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.
165Mrs. 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
166to 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
167you 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.”
168“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?”
169Then 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.
170You 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;
171then 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;
172she 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.
173She 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?
174He 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
175doctor, 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
176injured. 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.
177
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
178weeks, 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
179and 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
180is 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.
181To 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
182over—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
183struggle—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
184music 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
185hopes 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.
186Life! 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.
187It 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.
188In 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
189question 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—
190“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”—
191Then 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
192to 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,
193“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 I194mean 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,”
195was 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
196born 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
197any 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
198Phemie, “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
199save 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.
200
“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
201heard 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
202relations 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
203is 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
204for 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.
205Talk 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.
206How 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
207and 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
208you 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.
209“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
210one 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.
211“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
212hear 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,
213to 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
214remonstrances, 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
215matter,” 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
216himself. 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
217teeth 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.
218“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.”
219“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
220nearer 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.
221“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
222precious 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
223tears, 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
224waist. “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,
225and 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
226to 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
227felt 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;
228and 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
229me. 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
230through 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.
231
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.”
232“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
233much 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.”
234“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.
235“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.
236He 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,
237could 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
238lonely 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.”
239For 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
240was 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
241come 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
242been 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
243which 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
244bid 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
245other—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.
246“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
247could 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
248I 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
249you, 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
250of 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
251almost 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
252months 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
253of 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.
254
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
255boxes, 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
256more; 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,”
257answered 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
258me 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
259profession 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,”
260answered 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,
261at 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
262the 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,
263although 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—
264“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
265game, 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.”
266Phemie 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.
267Miss 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
268face. “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!”
269Olden 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
270duties 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
271her 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;
272yes, 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
273Phemie’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.
274And 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
275man—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
276life; 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.
277It 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
278could 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,
279and 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
280knew—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
281child! 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
282goes, 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.
283
“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
284Hill 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?”
285Miss 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
286care 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,
287“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
288up 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
289General 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
290had 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
291now 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
292Argus 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
293with 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
294Phemie 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.
295But 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
296he 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.
297All 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
298had 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
299further 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
300woman 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
301planted 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
302and 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 numerous Illustrations.
Uniform with Captain Burton’s “Mission to Dahomey.” In 2 vols.
[Ready.
THE HISTORY OF FRANCE under the BOURBONS.
By CHARLES DUKE YONGE, Author of “The History of
the Royal Navy.” In 2 vols. 8vo.
[Ready.
THE REGENCY OF ANNE OF AUSTRIA, Queen
of France, Mother of Louis XIV. From Published and Unpublished
Sources. By Miss FREER, Author of “The Married Life of Anne of
Austria.” In 2 vols. 8vo.
[Shortly.
A TRIP TO BARBARY BY A ROUNDABOUT
ROUTE. By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. In 1 vol.
MODERN CHARACTERISTICS: A Series of Essays
from the Saturday Review, revised by the Author. In 1 vol. handsomely
printed, and bevelled boards.
[Ready.
CONTENTS.
1.
False Steps.
2.
The Uses of Dignity.
3.
Quarrels.
4.
Social Salamanders.
5.
Vague Aims.
6.
Falling Off.
7.
Minor Tribulations.
8.
Thrift.
9.
Domestic Autocracy.
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.
17.
Pithiness.
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 J. HENEAGE JESSE, Esq. In 3
vols. 8vo.
[Shortly.
BIOGRAPHIES OF CELEBRATED MEN and
WOMEN. By ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE. In 2 vols.
[Shortly.
MESSRS. TINSLEY BROTHERS’ NEW WORKS.
NEW EDITION, REVISED, OF EVERYDAY PAPERS.
EVERYDAY PAPERS. Reprinted from “All the
Year Round,” and adapted for Evening Reading at Mechanics’ Institutes,
Penny Reading Clubs, &c. By ANDREW HALLIDAY. In
1 vol.
ST. MARTIN’S EYE. By Mrs. H. WOOD, Author
of “East Lynne,” &c. In 3 vols.
[Ready.
PHEMIE KELLER. By the Author of “George
Geith,” “Maxwell Drewitt,” &c. In 3 vols.
[Shortly.
MAXWELL DREWITT: A Novel. By the Author
of “George Geith,” “City and Suburb.” In 3 vols.
[Ready this day.
SANS MERCI. By the Author of “Guy Livingstone,”
&c. In 3 vols.
[Ready.
CARLETON GRANGE: A Novel. By the Author
of “Abbot’s Cleve.” In 3 vols.
[Ready.
RUNNING THE GAUNTLET: A Novel. By
EDMUND YATES, Author of “Broken to Harness,” &c. In 3 vols.
[Ready.
WHAT MONEY CAN’T DO: A Novel. By the
Author of “Altogether Wrong.” In 3 vols.
[Ready.
HALF-A-MILLION OF MONEY: A Novel. By
AMELIA B. EDWARDS, Author of “Barbara’s History.” In 3
vols.
[Ready.
RHODA FLEMING: A Novel. By GEORGE
MEREDITH, Author of “The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,” &c. In
3 vols.
[Ready.
MISS FORRESTER: A Novel. By Mrs. EDWARDS,
Author of “The Morals of Mayfair,” &c. In 3 vols.
[Ready.
THE OLD LEDGER: A Novel. By G. L. M.
STRAUSS. In 3 vols.
[Ready.
JOHN NEVILLE; Soldier, Sportsman, and Gentleman: a
Novel. By Captain NEWALL. In 2 vols.
[Ready.
EMILY FOINDER: A new Novel. In 3 vols. By
F. DEVONSHIRE.
[Ready.
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.