PHEMIE KELLER.
PHEMIE KELLER.
PHEMIE KELLER.
PHEMIE KELLER.
CHAPTER I.BASIL.
After so long an absence, it would have seemed only natural for his tenantry to greet Captain Stondon’s return with “three times three,” with arches, with banners; and most probably Phemie’s heart might have been gladdened by some ceremonial of this kind, had not Montague Stondon’s suicide rendered all thoughts of rejoicing out of the question.
As it was, the pair came home through lonely roads to the park gates, where an old woman admitted them; and in the gathering evening twilight Phemie looked at the elms and the fir-trees till the loneliness oppressed her—till she felt thankful to escape at last from the avenue,and reach the house which she had never seen but once before.
It was one of those houses every man thinks he should like to own—large enough for any income—comfortable enough never to appear stately: a house that the sun’s beams seemed always to fall on warmly: a house in which it was easy to fancy blazing fires in the winter—cool rooms in the summer: a house that the eye turned to look back upon as it might on a pleasant face: a house that was a home: a house that Phemie came to love passionately.
It was built of red brick, and ivy and creepers and roses twined up the sun-burnt walls, covering them with stem and branch and leaf and flower. The drawing-room was at the back of the house, and its windows overlooked the flower-garden that sloped away from the hill on which the house was built to the flat lands below.
Many an English mansion is spoiled by its site. Marshlands was made by the eminence it occupied. Yet if the place had a fault, it was this:whichever way your glance turned, you could see nothing but Marshlands—its gardens, its fields, its park, its fountains, its avenues, its long belt of plantation: Marshlands was everywhere; and as a natural consequence, some people tired of Marshlands after a season; tired of the firs, the elms, the smooth-cut lawns, the deer, the shrubberies. Half the timber wanted clearing away, and views being thus obtained of the surrounding country; but on this latter point Marshlands was inexorable. You might walk till you were weary, but still you could see nothing save the park and great belts of plantation, clumps of firs, avenues of elms, hedgerows in which trees were growing as thick as blackberries.
The day arrived when Phemie felt those masses of foliage, those banks of branch and leaf, those never-ending plantations, those inexorable stately trees, oppress her soul. Mountain-reared, she longed for greater freedom—for a country over which her eye could wander free and unconfined: she longed for the hill-side, for the desolate seashore:but on the evening when she returned home again, after years spent in travelling from place to place, England—any part of it—seemed a possession gained, a good secured, and Mrs. Stondon rejoiced to cross the threshold of Marshlands, and hear words of welcome spoken in her native tongue.
Like a child she wandered from room to room; like a child, too, after dinner, she insisted on going out and walking about the place by moonlight, compelling Captain Stondon, who would much have preferred remaining indoors, to accompany her along the garden paths, past the lakes, under the shadow of the elms, to a point where further progress seemed stopped by a plantation of fir-trees.
“I wonder,” remarked Phemie, as she paused to listen to the coming and going of the summer wind through the branches, “I wonder how you could stay away so long, with such a property as this in England. Is not it worth all the palaces and châteaux abroad put together?”
“As a possession, perhaps,” answered Captain Stondon; “as a residence, I am doubtful: that is I am doubtful whether you will like it; if you do, I shall be content to live and die here—quite content.”
But Captain Stondon sighed, even while he made this statement, and Phemie looked up at the branches overhead with an expression in her face which made it in the moonlight look almost disagreeable. She knew what Captain Stondon was thinking about. The children that had come to them, dead and dead—children that had come, not to make her a softer or a better woman, but merely, as it seemed, to develop the taint an over-prosperous life had infused into her character.
What shall I call this taint? Jealous selfishness—exacting egotism—a fretful impatience of anything which stood between herself and the affection and admiration of those around her. I should like to find one word to express what I mean; I wish I could discover some sentencethat might embody at once what was so natural and yet so unpleasant. She was prosperous; why should she fret? why should he fret? Had she not had to fight for her own life because of those dead heirs? those heirs who had never existed.
She did not fret; why should he? Would he rather have had the children than her? Supposing she had died and they lived; would he have been satisfied then? Supposing they had lived and she lived too; would the sons have been greater than their mother? That was the set of questions that always made Phemie’s face change when she saw Captain Stondon thinking about who should come after him. Had not he her while he was living; was not that enough for him? Mrs. Stondon’s creed had grown to be of this nature, at any rate. She was to be everything, and no other person ought to stand even near her. It was horribly unamiable, it was detestably selfish, and yet—and yet it was only because she was so solitary that she was so unwomanly.She gave nothing, and therefore she sought to receive all homage. Her love was cold, and therefore she exacted love as though it had been a debt owing to her, and she insisting on payment to the uttermost farthing.
Her life had been too prosperous, too easy. She had not had to live on crumbs of affection, to beg for love with wistful eyes, as a dog begs for notice from its master. Every one seemed to think it was so good of her to be fond of Captain Stondon. Mistress Phemie herself was so young, so attractive, so altogether unique, that the world was rather apt to imply she had made a mistake in wedding her husband at all. She was pampered—I think that was the English of the matter; and she needed to find her level once again, before she could become a woman about whom it is altogether agreeable to write.
She did not look pleasant standing in the moonlight with that strange expression on her countenance; for in the moonlight her faceseemed 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 theresult. 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 toconvert 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 brakein 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 offher 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 theposition 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 troubledher, 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, gatheringup 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 downand 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 betterfor 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, orkitten 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 shecomported 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 asmile 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 toMarshlands 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 offthe notes and looked up at her companion quickly and strangely.
“What brings him here?” she asked. And the question sounded almost defiant.
“He is staying, like myself, with the Hurlfords.”
“Oh!” said Mistress Phemie, and straightway she began her song.
The room was empty of company when she commenced—ere she had finished, it was full of people.
Whenever Mrs. Stondon sang, guests flocked round her as children might to a show. It was her gift—it was her talent, and she had cultivated her voice, and practised; she had laboured, and tried to become an accomplished vocalist, with such success that even Miss Derno stood astonished—stood with the tears in her eyes listening silently.
“Who is the sweet singer?” said some one in a low tone.
“Mrs. Stondon,” whispered back Miss Derno.And Basil Stondon, for it was he who asked the question, drew back at her answer, and left the room.
“An amiable pair,” thought Miss Derno. “She is jealous of the possible possessor of Marshlands; he looks with unfavourable eyes on the present mistress of that desirable property.” And while other friends gathered round Mrs. Stondon, praying her to sing again, to sing another song, and another still, Miss Derno vanished also, and followed Basil Stondon into the garden, where he was leaning over a stone balustrade, and looking disconsolately at the moon.
“How very stupid you must be, Basil,” said the lady, “to spoil your chances in this way. If you want to reach Captain Stondon you must reach him through his wife; and instead of waiting to be introduced to her you run away as if you were a schoolboy ordered up for punishment.”
“It is a punishment to me to see her at all,”answered the young man. “But for her my father might now be alive—but for her I might have been making some thousands a year, instead of going begging after government appointments.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Basil Stondon,” said Miss Derno, impatiently; “you would never have made thousands a year anywhere: you have not energy enough in you ever to have made money for yourself at all, you are only fit for a government clerk, you are too genteel and too lazy and too fine a gentleman ever to push your own way up. For which reasons take my advice: let bygones be bygones, and strive to get into Captain Stondon’s good-will by conciliating his wife.”
“I have got his good-will already,” was the calm reply. “I went up to him diffidently; but he received me, so to speak, with open arms; he asked me to call at Marshlands to-morrow. He inquired what I was doing—he wanted to know why I had not come to him before—he remarked that something must bedone 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 shallwithdraw 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 thatMr. 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 fromthat 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 workought 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. ForIdo 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.