CHAPTER XIII.PARTED.
“Basil,” said Captain Stondon the next day to his relative, “I am going to ride over to Disley before luncheon, will you come with me?”
To which request, never doubting but that his opinion was desired on some question of renewing leases or felling timber, Mr. Basil at once agreed.
As for the General, he was deep in the mysteries of letter-writing. The Indian mail was going out the next day, and he always sent a budget of manuscript by it. Miss Hurlford also had her home correspondence to attend to.
“I often think,” remarked Miss Derno to Phemie, “that hostesses must bless RowlandHill a hundred times a week. I have frequently tried to fancy what a visit could have been like a hundred years ago, when people did not write letters, when ladies did not use up quires of note-paper and scores of envelopes of a morning. How the mistresses of households bore it, more especially those mistresses who prepared medicines for the bites of mad dogs, and such like useful mixtures, in the still-room, I am at a loss to imagine.”
“Probably,” said Phemie, “people did not pay visits in those days.”
“And you are wishing in your heart at this present moment that they did not pay visits in these. I agree with you; if ever I have a house of my own I do not think I shall fill it full of people, even though they promise to write letters by the hour. Just look at the General—only look at him. One would think the whole of the management of India was resting on his own high shoulders! Are you recommending another protégé for the Ceylon appointment, Sir Samuel?”Miss Derno inquired, walking up to the table where the officer sat engrossed in his correspondence.
Very much astonished at being spoken to, Sir Samuel looked up.
“I am—no—that is, Miss Derno, Captain Stondon requested me not to write to my friend until the last moment, as he rather fancied Mr. Stondon had changed his mind, and would be glad to accept.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” answered Miss Derno; “delighted also to learn on such good authority that Basil had a mind to change; only,” added the lady, “I am afraid it is much too good news to be true.” And she shot, as she finished, a look first towards Phemie and then towards Miss Hurlford, which glance told her, that with regard to the latter lady the news was hoped for, yet not expected, and that Phemie did not hope, and yet half-expected, while at the same time the news astonished and startled her.
“He has taken me at my word; he does notcare about leaving me—he will marry her—he is offended. He has never loved me as I have loved him.”
Could Phemie help all this passing through her mind faster than I can write it? Could the poor creature help the jealousy which had tormented and harassed her so often? Do you blame her because the veins of her heart broke out bleeding afresh at the thought of parting with him for ever? She had been very wrong; she knew it was a sin, and yet—and yet—ah! reader, he had been all the world to her, he had possessed all the love she was ever to feel for man, and it was hard. The punishment might have been deserved, but the lash fell none the lighter for all that.
Meantime the two men who loved her most on earth, who loved her perhaps equally though differently, rode on side by side towards Disley. When they had left Marshlands a couple of miles behind them, Captain Stondon pulled his horse up into a walk, and began,
“I asked you to come with me this morning, Basil, because I want to speak to you where we can be secure from eavesdroppers. There is at least one spy at Marshlands.”
Involuntarily Basil tightened his grasp of the bridle, and his horse, a well-trained one, stopped dead; the next moment he sprang forward with a bound, while the younger man answered—
“Indeed! I am sorry to hear you say so.”
“Not more sorry than I am to say it,” was the reply; “but all this is beside the question. What I want to talk to you about is the Ceylon appointment. I have been reconsidering that matter, and it seems to me that we have perhaps been hasty in declining General Hurlford’s offer. Sometimes I think, Basil,” went on the old man, with his head bowed over the saddle-tree—bowed to conceal his emotion, “that it is possible you may feel I am in the way, that I am keeping you too long out of Marshlands.”
He spoke all this very slowly and at intervals; but still when Basil would have answered, he heldup 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 acceptGeneral 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 hehad 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; butnow 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 veryArgus 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 wifewith 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 whetherPhemie would see that strange land with him, whether, hand in hand, they would walk through that earthly Eden sinfully together.
He thought he should have many opportunities of speaking to her before he left England, but in this idea he was mistaken.
He had to go to London to provide his outfit: it was of course necessary for him to bid his mother farewell. Time slipped by, and still he had never seen Phemie alone; so at last, living in the same house, he wrote to her, and bade Phemie’s maid give her mistress the letter before she went down to dinner on the evening preceding that on which he was to start for London to join the Hurlfords.
He prayed her in that letter to grant him one more interview, to give him one more chance.
A selfish man can always write eloquently when the subject is his own sorrow, and because the letter was very touching, and because she herself was very miserable, Phemie cried over it till she could cry no more.
But nevertheless she would not see him, would not contrive that one opportunity he craved.
Although it was for her sake, as she believed, he was going—although it was at her instance, as she had no reason to doubt, he was leaving his native land, still she distrusted her own heart too much to yield to his prayer. She had vowed, by all the lessons of old, by all the teachings of her earlier youth, by all the truths she had learned in the days of her innocence, that she would put herself into the way of temptation no more. She had prayed to be kept from evil, and she would not walk into evil with her eyes open; for all which reasons, when Basil held her hand that night in adieu—when he looked imploringly into her face—when his eyes asked for a reply to the question he dared not frame into words, Phemie’s mouth formed the monosyllable “No.” Phemie, with her fingers clasping his, with her blue eyes swimming in tears, with her dear face pale and sorrowful, shook her head. It could not be, it could not, and Basil cursed her in his heart. Tillhe has tasted all the bitterness of the very dregs of the cup of sin, there is nothing a man of Basil Stondon’s stamp hates like virtue, and for this reason he detested Phemie Stondon then.
But once in London he relented; and as he would not or could not write to her direct, he enclosed a letter to Mrs. Stondon under cover of one to Miss Derno, stating that he would be in the plantation the next evening at six o’clock, and praying her to meet him there.
He was mad. I do think at that crisis of his life, the fact of the toy being beyond his reach, the grapes too well guarded, made him insane.
He felt he must try to see her once again, and he might perhaps have compassed his end, for Phemie was not stronger than her neighbours, but for this, that she never received his letter.
Miss Derno knew Basil Stondon well, none better; and knowing him—knowing his selfish weakness, his thoughtless disregard of consequences—she put the letter he enclosed into the fire, and saved Phemie from one temptation more.
All that evening he wandered round and about Marshlands till he had hardly time to catch the last up-train from Disley; he waited in the plantation, and watched the house which held her whose heart was only too full of love for him.
Then he went—with his soul full of bitterness, with his mouth full of curses.
“She loves herself too well,” he thought; “she loves ease and social position, and her fine house and the life she leads at Marshlands too much even to come out and bid a poor devil, who has only sinned in being fond of her, good-bye. Farewell, then, Mrs. Stondon,” he hastily finished, pausing on his way towards Disley, and taking off his hat to make a low mocking bow in the direction of Marshlands. “Farewell. I wonder where you will be when I return to England—where you will be when I ask you next time to meet me. Farewell, then, Phemie, my Phemie of the blue eyes and the auburn eyes—my Phemie—my darling—mine no more!”
The man’s heart was breaking. All his hearthad 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 passingfurther 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 awaythatmemory, 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 anotherwoman 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 hadplanted 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 timeand 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.
END OF VOL. II.BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
END OF VOL. II.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.