"'Come now,' the Master Builder cried,
'The twenty years of work are done;
Flaunt forth the Flag, and crown with pride
The Glory of the Coping-Stone.'"
Jack Dunquerque was to "slack off" his visits to Twickenham. That is
to say, as he interpreted the injunction, he was not wholly to
discontinue them, in order not to excite suspicion. But he was not to
haunt the house; he was to make less frequent voyages up the silver
Thames; he was not to ride in leafy lanes side by side with
Phillis--without having Phillis by his side he cared little about
leafy lanes, and would rather be at the club; further, by these
absences he was to leave off being necessary to the brightness of her
life.
It was a hard saying. Nevertheless, the young man felt that he had
little reason for complaint. Other fellows he knew, going after other
heiresses, had been quite peremptorily sent about their business for
good, particularly needy young men like himself. All that Colquhoun
extorted of him was that he should "slack off." He felt, in a manner,
grateful, although had he been a youth of quicker perception, he would
have remembered that the lover who "slacks off" can be no other than
the lover who wishes he had not begun. But nobody ever called Jack a
clever young man.
He was not to give her up altogether. He was not even to give up
hoping. He was to have his chance with the rest. But he was warned
that no chance was to be open to him until the young lady should enter
upon her first season.
Not to give up seeing her. That was everything. Jack Dunquerque had
hitherto lived the life of all young men, careless and _insouciant_,
with its little round of daily pleasures. He was only different from
other young men that he had learned, partly from a sympathetic nature
and partly by travel, not to put all his pleasure in that life about
town and in country houses which seems to so many the one thing which
the world has to offer. He who has lived out on the Prairies for weeks
has found that there are other pleasures besides the gas-light joys of
Town. But his life had been without thought and purposeless--a very
chaos of a life. And now he felt vaguely that his whole being was
changed. To be with Phillis day after day, to listen to the
outpourings of her freshness and innocence, brought to him the same
sort of refreshment as sitting under the little cataract of a mountain
stream brings to one who rambles in a hot West Indian island. Things
for which he once cared greatly he now cared for no more; the
club-life, the cards, and the billiards ceased to interest him; he
took no delight in them. Perhaps it was a proof of a certain weakness
of nature in Jack Dunquerque that he could not at the same time love
things in which Phillis took no part and the things which made the
simple pleasures of her every-day life.
He might have been weak, and yet, whether he was weak or strong, he
knew that she leaned upon him. He was so sympathetic; he seemed to
know so much; he decided so quickly; he was in his way so masterful,
that the girl looked up to him as a paragon of wisdom and strength.
I think she will always so regard him, because the knowledge of her
respect raises Jack daily in moral and spiritual strength, and so her
hero approaches daily to her ideal. What is the highest love worth if
it have not the power of lifting man and woman together up to the
higher levels, where the air is purer, the sunshine brighter, the
vision clearer?
But Colquhoun's commands had wrought a further change in him; that
ugly good-looking face of his, which Agatha L'Estrange admired so
much, and which was wont to be wreathed with a multitudinous smile,
was now doleful. To the world of mankind--male mankind--the chief
charm of Jack Dunquerque, the main cause of his popularity--his
unvarying cheerfulness--was vanished.
"You ought to be called Doleful Jack," said Ladds. "Jack of Rueful
Countenance."
"You don't know, Tommy," replied the lover, sorrowfully wagging his
head. "I've seen Colquhoun; and he won't have it. Says I must wait."
"He's waited till forty. I've waited to five and thirty, and we're
both pretty jolly. Come, young un, you may take courage by our
examples."
"You never met Phil when you were five and twenty," said Jack. "Nobody
ever saw a girl like Phillis."
Five and thirty seems so great an age to five and twenty. And at five
and thirty one feels so young, that it comes upon the possessor of so
many years like a shock of cold water to be reminded that he is really
no longer young.
One good thing--Lawrence Colquhoun did not reproach him. Partly
perhaps because, as a guardian, he did not thoroughly realize Jack's
flagitious conduct; partly because he was an easy-going man, with a
notion in his head that he had nothing to do with the work of Duennas
and Keepers of the Gynæceum. He treated the confessions of the
remorseful lover with a cheery contempt--passed them by; no great harm
had been done; and the girl was but a child.
His own conscience it was which bullied Jack so tremendously. One day
he rounded on his accuser like the poor worm in the proverb, who might
perhaps have got safe back to its hole but for that ill-advised
turning. He met the charges like a man. He pleaded that, criminal as
he had been, nefarious and inexcusable as his action was, this action
had given him a very high time; and that, if it was all to do over
again, he should probably alter his conduct only in degree, but not in
kind; that is to say, he would see Phillis oftener and stay with her
longer. Conscience knocked him out of time in a couple of rounds; but
still he did have the satisfaction of showing fight.
Of course he would do the same thing again. There has never been found
by duenna, by guardian, by despotic parent, or by interested relation,
any law of restraint strong enough to keep apart two young people of
the opposite sex and like age, after they have once become attracted
towards each other. Prudence and prudery, jealousy and interest, never
have much chance. The ancient dames of duennadom may purse their
withered lips and wrinkle their crow's-footed eyes; Love, the
unconquered, laughs and conquers again.
It is of no use to repeat long explanations about Phillis. Such as she
was, we know her--a law unto herself; careless of prohibitions and
unsuspicious of danger. Like Una, she wandered unprotected and
fearless among whatever two-legged wolves, bears, eagles, lions,
vultures and other beasts and birds of prey might be anxiously waiting
to snap her up. Jack was the great-hearted lion who was to bear her
safely through the wistful growls of the meaner beasts. The lion is
not clever like the fox or the beaver, but one always conceives of him
as a gentleman, and therefore fit to be entrusted with such a
beautiful maiden as Una or Phillis. And if Jack was quietly allowed to
carry off his treasure it was Agatha L'Estrange who was chiefly to
blame; and she, falling in love with Jack herself, quite in a motherly
way, allowed the wooing to go on under her very nose. "A bad, bad
woman," as Lawrence Colquhoun called her.
But such a wooing! Miss Ethel Citybredde, when she sees Amandus making
a steady but not an eagerly impetuous advance in her direction at a
ball, feels her languid pulses beat a little faster. "He is coming
after Me," she says to herself, with pride. They snatch a few moments
to sit together in a conservatory. He offers no remark worthy of
repetition, nor does she; yet she thinks to herself, "He is going to
ask me to marry him; he will kiss me; there will be a grand wedding;
everybody will be pleased; other girls will be envious; and I shall be
delighted. Papa knows that he is well off and well connected. How
charming!"
Now Phillis allowed her lover to woo her without one thought of love
or marriage, of which, indeed, she knew nothing. But if the passion
was all on one side, the affection was equally divided. And when Jack
truly said that Phillis did not love him, he forgot that she had given
him already all that she knew of love; in that her thoughts, which on
her first emancipation leaped forth, bounding and running in all
directions with a wild yearning to behold the Great Unknown, were now
returning to herself, and mostly flowed steadily, like streams of
electric influence, in the direction of Jack; inasmuch as she referred
unconsciously everything to Jack, as she dressed for him, drew for
him, pored diligently over hated reading-books for him, and told him
all her thoughts.
I have not told, nor can I tell, of the many walks and talks these two
young people had together. Day after day Jack's boat--that comfortable
old tub, in which he could, and often did, cut a crab without spilling
the contents into the river--lay moored off Agatha's lawn, or rolled
slowly up and down the river, Jack rowing, while Phillis steered,
sang, talked, and laughed. This was pleasant in the morning; but it
was far more pleasant in the evening, when the river was so quiet, so
still and so black, and when thoughts crowded into the girl's brain,
which fled like spirits when she tried to put them into words.
Or they rode together along the leafy roads through Richmond Park, and
down by that unknown region, far away from the world, where heron rise
up from the water's edge, where the wild fowl fly above the lake in
figures which remind one of Euclid's definitions, and the deer collect
in herds among great ferns half as high as themselves. There they
would let the horses walk, while Phillis, with the slender curving
lines of her figure, her dainty dress which fitted it so well, and her
sweet face, made the heart of her lover hungry; and when she turned to
speak to him, and he saw in the clear depths of her eyes his own face
reflected, his passion grew almost too much for him to bear.
A delicate dainty maiden, who was yet of strong and healthy
_physique_; one who did not disdain to own a love for cake and
strawberries, cream and ices, and other pleasant things; who had no
young-ladyish affectations; who took life eagerly, not languidly. And
not a coward, as many maidens boast to be; she ruled her horse with a
rein as firm as Jack Dunquerque, and sat him as steadily; she clinched
her little fingers and set her lips hard when she heard a tale of
wrong; her eyes lit up and her bosom heaved when she heard of heroic
gest; she was strong to endure and to do. Not every girl would, as
Phillis did, rise in the morning at five to train her untaught eyes
and hand over those little symbols by which we read and write; not
every girl would patiently begin at nineteen the mechanical drudgery
of the music-lesson. And she did this in confidence, because Jack
asked her every day about her lessons, and Agatha L'Estrange was
pleased.
The emotion which is the next after, and worse than that of love, is
sympathy. Phillis passed through the stages of curiosity and knowledge
before she arrived at the stage of sympathy. Perhaps she was not far
from the highest stage of all.
She learned something every day, and told Jack what it was. Sometimes
it was an increase in her knowledge of evil. Jack, who was by no means
so clever as his biographer, thought that a pity. His idea was the
common one--that a maiden should be kept innocent of the knowledge of
evil. I think Jack took a prejudiced, even a Philistine, view of the
case. He put himself on the same level as the Frenchman who keeps his
daughter out of mischief by locking her up in a convent. It is not the
knowledge of evil that hurts, any more than the knowledge of
black-beetles, earwigs, slugs, and other crawling things; the pure in
spirit cast it off, just as the gardener who digs and delves among his
plants washes his hands and is clean. The thing that hurts is the
suspicion and constant thought of evil; the loveliest and most divine
creature in the world is she who neither commits any ill, nor thinks
any, nor suspects others of ill--who has a perfect pity for
backsliders, and a perfect trust in the people around her. Unfortunate
it is that experience of life turns pity to anger, and trust into
hesitation.
Or they would be out upon Agatha's lawn, playing croquet, to which
that good lady still adhered, or lawn-tennis, which she tolerated.
There would be the curate--he had abandoned that design of getting up
_all_ about Laud, but was madly, ecclesiastically madly, in love
with Phillis; there would be occasionally Ladds, who, in his heavy,
kindly way, pleased this young May Queen. Besides, Ladds was fond of
Jack. There would be Gilead Beck in the straightest of frock coats,
and on the most careful behaviour; there would be also two or three
young ladies, compared with whom Phillis was as Rosalind at the court
of her uncle, or as Esther among the damsels of the Persian king's
seraglio, so fresh and so incomparably fair.
"Mrs. L'Estrange," Jack whispered one day, "I am going to say a rude
thing. Did you pick out the other girls on purpose to set off
Phillis?"
"What a shame, Jack!" said Agatha, who like the rest of the world
called him by what was not his Christian name. "The girls are very
nice--not so pretty as Phillis, but good-looking, all of them. I call
them as pretty a set of girls as you would be likely to see on any
lawn this season."
"Yes," said Jack; "only you see they are all alike, and Phillis is
different."
That was it--Phillis was different. The girls were graceful, pleasant,
and well bred. But Phillis was all this, and more. The others followed
the beaten track, in which the strength of life is subdued and its
intensity forbidden. Phillis was in earnest about everything, quietly
in earnest; not openly bent on enjoyment, like the young ladies who
run down Greenwich Hill, for instance, but in her way making others
feel something of what she felt herself. Her intensity was visible in
the eager face, the mobile flashes of her sensitive lips, and her
brightening eyes. And, most unlike her neighbours, she even forgot her
own dress, much as she loved the theory and practice of dress, when
once she was interested, and was careless about theirs.
It was not pleasant for the minor stars. They felt in a vague
uncomfortable way that Phillis was far more attractive; they said to
each other that she was strange; one who pretended to know more French
than the others said that she was _farouche_.
She was not in the least _farouche_, and the young lady her
calumniator did not understand the adjective; but _farouche_ she
continued to be among the maidens of Twickenham and Richmond.
Jack Dunquerque heard the epithet applied on one occasion, and burst
out laughing.
Phillis _farouche_! Phillis, without fear and without suspicion!
But then they do teach French so badly at girls' schools. And so poor
Phillis remained ticketed with the adjective which least of any
belonged to her.
A pleasant six weeks from April to June, while the late spring
blossomed and flowered into summer; a time to remember all his life
afterwards with the saddened joy which, despite Dante's observation,
does still belong to the memory of past pleasures.
But every pleasant time passes, and the six weeks were over.
Jack was to "slack off." The phrase struck him, applied to himself and
Phillis, as simply in bad taste; but the meaning was plain. He was to
present himself at Twickenham with less frequency.
Accordingly he began well by going there the very next day. The new
_régime_ has to be commenced somehow, and Jack began his at once.
He pulled up in his tub. It was a cloudy and windy day; drops of rain
fell from time to time; the river was swept by sudden gusts which came
driving down the stream, marked by broad black patches; there were no
other boats out, and Jack struggled upwards against the current; the
exercise at least was a relief to the oppression of his thoughts.
What was he to do with himself after the "slacking off" had
begun--after that day, in fact? The visits might drop to twice a week,
then once a week, and then? But surely Colquhoun would be satisfied
with such a measure of self-denial. In the intervals--say from
Saturday to Saturday--he could occupy himself in thinking about her.
He might write to her--would that be against the letter of the law? It
was clearly against the spirit. And--another consideration--it was no
use writing unless he wrote in printed characters, and in words of not
more than two syllables. He thought of such a love-letter, and of
Phillis gravely spelling it out word by word to Mrs. L'Estrange. For
poor Phillis had not as yet accustomed herself to look on the printed
page as a vehicle for thought, although Agatha read to her every day.
She regarded it as the means of conveying to the reader facts such as
the elementary reading-book delights to set forth; so dry that the
adult reader, if a woman, presently feels the dust in her eyes, and if
a man, is fain to get up and call wildly for quarts of bitter beer.
No; Phillis was not educated up to the reception of a letter.
He would, he thought, sit in the least-frequented room of his
club--the drawing-room--and with a book of some kind before him, just
for a pretence, would pass the leaden hours in thinking of Phillis's
perfections. Heavens! when was there a moment, by day or by night,
that he did not think of them?
Bump! It was the bow of the ship, which knew by experience very well
when to stop, and grounded herself without any conscious volition on
his part at the accustomed spot.
Jack jumped out, and fastened the painter to the tree to which Phillis
had once tied him. Then he strode across the lawns and flower-beds,
and made for the little morning-room, where he hoped to find the
ladies.
He found one of them. Fortune sometimes favors lovers. It was the
younger one--Phillis herself.
She was bending over her work with brush and colour-box, looking as
serious as if all her future depended on the success of that
particular picture; beside her, tossed contemptuously aside, lay the
much-despised Lesson-Book in Reading; for she had done her daily task.
She did not hear Jack step in at the open window, and went on with her
painting.
She wore a dress made of that stuff which looks like brown holland
till you come close to it, and then you think it is silk, but are not
quite certain, and I believe they call it Indian tussore. Round her
dainty waist was a leathern belt set in silver with a châtelaine, like
a small armoury of deadly weapons; and for colour she had a crimson
ribbon about her neck. To show that the ribbon was not entirely meant
for vanity, but had its uses, Phillis had slung upon it a cross of
Maltese silver-work, which I fear Jack had given her himself. And
below the cross, where her rounded figure showed it off, she had
placed a little bunch of sweet peas. Such a dainty damsel! Not content
with the flower in her dress, she had stuck a white jasamine-blossom
in her hair. All these things Jack noted with speechless admiration.
Then she began to sing in a low voice, all to herself, a little French
ballad which Mrs. L'Estrange had taught her--one of the sweet old
French songs.
She was painting in the other window, at a table drawn up to face it.
The curtains were partly pulled together, and the blind was half drawn
down, so that she sat in a subdued light, in which only her face was
lit up, like the faces in a certain kind of photograph, while her hair
and figure lay in shadow. The hangings were of some light-rose hue,
which tinted the whole room, and threw a warm colouring over the
old-fashioned furniture, the pictures, the books, the flowers on the
tables, and the ferns in their glasses. Mrs. L'Estrange was no
follower after the new school. Neutral tints had small charms for her;
she liked the warmth and glow of the older fashion in which she had
been brought up.
It looked to Jack Dunquerque like some shrine dedicated to peace and
love, with Phillis for its priestess--or even its goddess. Outside the
skies were grey; the wind swept down the river with driving rain; here
was warmth, colour, and brightness. So he stood still and watched.
And as he waited an overwhelming passion of love seized him. If the
world was well lost for Antony when he threw it all away for a queen
no longer young, and the mother of one son at least almost grown up,
what would it have been had his Cleopatra welcomed him in all the
splendour of her white Greek beauty at sweet seventeen? There was no
world to be lost for this obscure cadet of a noble house, but all the
world to be won. His world was before his eyes; it was an unconscious
maid, ignorant of her own surpassing worth, and of the power of her
beauty. To win her was to be the lord of all the world he cared for.
Presently she laid down her brush, and raised her head. Then she
pushed aside the curtains, and looked out upon the gardens. The rain
drove against the windows, and the wind beat about the branches of the
lilacs on the lawn. She shivered, and pulled the curtains together
again.
"I wish Jack were here," she said to herself.
"He is here, Phil," Jack replied.
She looked round, and darted across the room, catching him by both
hands.
"Jack! Oh, I am glad! There is nobody at home. Agatha has gone up to
town, and I am quite alone. What shall we do this afternoon?"
Clearly the right thing for him to propose was that he should
instantly leave the young lady, and row himself back to Richmond.
This, however, was not what he did propose. On the contrary, he kept
Phillis's hands in his, and held them tight, looking in her upturned
face, where he saw nothing but undisguised joy at his appearance.
"Shall we talk? Shall I play to you? Shall I draw you a picture? What
shall we do, Jack?"
"Well, Phil, I think--perhaps--we had better talk."
Something in his voice struck her; she looked at him sharply.
"What has happened, Jack? You do not look happy."
"Nothing, Phil--nothing but what I might have expected." But he looked
so dismal that it was quite certain he had not expected it.
"Tell me, Jack."
He shook his head.
"Jack, what _is_ the good of being friends if you won't tell me
what makes you unhappy?"
"I don't know how to tell you, Phil. I don't see a way to begin."
"Sit down, and begin somehow." She placed him comfortably in the
largest chair in the room, and then she stood in front of him, and
looked in his face with compassionate eyes. The sight of those
deep-brown orbs, so full of light and pity, smote her lover with a
kind of madness. "What is it makes people unhappy? Are you ill?"
He shook his head, and laughed.
"No, Phil; I am never ill. You see, I am not exactly unhappy----"
"But Jack, you look so dismal."
"Yes, that is it; I am a little dismal. No. Phil--no. I am really
unhappy, and you are the cause."
"I the cause? But, Jack, why?"
"I had a talk with your guardian, Lawrence Colquhoun, yesterday. It
was all about you. And he wants me--not to come here so often, in
fact. And I musn't come."
"But why not? What does Lawrence mean?"
"That is just what I cannot explain to you. You must try to forgive
me."
"Forgive you, Jack?"
"You see, Phil, I have behaved badly from the beginning. I ought not
to have called upon you as I did in Carnarvon Square; I ought not to
have let you call me Jack, nor should I have called you Phil. It is
altogether improper in the eyes of the world."
She was silent for a while.
"Perhaps I have known, Jack, that it was a little unusual. Other girls
haven't got a Jack Dunquerque, have they? Poor things! That is all you
mean, isn't it, Jack?"
"Phil, don't look at me like that! You don't know--you can't
understand--No; it is more than unusual; it is quite wrong."
"I have done nothing wrong," the girl said proudly. "If I had, my
conscience would make me unhappy. But I do begin to understand what
you mean. Last week Agatha asked me if I was not thinking too much
about you. And the curate made me laugh because he said, quite by
himself in a corner, you know, that Mr. Dunquerque was a happy man;
and when I asked him, why he turned very red, and said it was because
I had given to him what all the world would long to have. He meant,
Jack----"
"I wish he was here," Jack cried hotly, "for me to wring his neck!"
"And one day Laura Herries----"
"That's the girl who said you were _farouche_, Phil. Go on."
"Was talking to Agatha about some young lady who had got compromised
by a gentleman's attentions. I asked why, and she replied quite
sharply that if I did not know, no one could know. Then she got up and
went away. Agatha was angry about it, I could see; but she only said
something about understanding when I come out."
"Miss Herries ought to have her neck wrung, too, as well as the
curate," said Jack.
"Compromise--improper." Phil beat her little foot on the floor. "What
does it all mean? Jack, tell me--what is this wrong thing that you and
I have done?"
"Not you, Phil; a thousand times not you."
"Then I do not care much what other people say," she replied simply.
"Do you know, Jack, it seems to me as if we never ought to care for
what people, besides people we love, say about us."
"But it is I who have done wrong," said Jack.
"Have you, Jack? Oh, then I forgive you. I think I know you. You
should have come to me with an unreal smile on your face, and
pretended the greatest deference to my opinion, even when you knew it
wasn't worth having. That is what the curate does to young ladies. I
saw him yesterday taking Miss Herries's opinion on Holman Hunt's
picture. She said it was 'sweetly pretty.' He said, 'Do you really
think so?' in such a solemn voice, as if he wasn't quite sure that the
phrase summed up the whole picture, but was going to think it over
quietly. Don't laugh, Jack, because I cannot read like other people,
and all I have to go by is what Mr. Dyson told me, and Agatha tells
me, and what I see--and--and what you tell me, Jack, which is worth
all the rest to me."
The tears came into her eyes, but only for a moment, and she brushed
them aside.
"And I forgive you, Jack, all the more because you did not treat me as
you would have treated the girls who seem to me so lifeless and
languid, and--Jack, it may be wrong to say it, but Oh, so small! What
compliment could you have paid me better than to single me out for
your friend--you who have seen so much and done so much--my
friend--mine? We were friends from the first, were we not? And I have
never since hidden anything from you, Jack, and never will."
He kept it down still, this mighty yearning that filled his heart, but
he could not bear to look her in the face. Every word that she said
stabbed him like a knife, because it showed her childish innocence and
her utter unconsciousness of what her words might mean.
And then she laid her little hand in his.
"And now you have compromised me, as they would say? What does it
matter Jack? We can go on always just the same as we have been doing,
can we not?"
He shook his head and answered huskily, "No, Phil. Your guardian will
not allow it. You must obey him. He says that I am to come here less
frequently; that I must not do you--he is quite right, Phil--any more
mischief; and that you are to have your first season in London without
any ties or entanglements."
"My guardian leaves me alone here with Agatha. It is you who have been
my real guardian, Jack. I shall do what you tell me to do."
"I want to do what is best for you, Phil--but--Child"--he caught her
by the hands, and she half fell, half knelt at his feet, and looked up
in his eyes with her face full of trouble and emotion--"child, must I
tell you? Could not Agatha L'Estrange tell you that there is something
in the world very different from friendship? Is it left for me to
teach you? They call it Love, Phil."
He whispered the last words.
"Love? But I know all about it, Jack."
"No, Phil, you know nothing. It isn't the love that you bear to Agatha
that I mean."
"Is it the love I have for you, Jack?" she asked in all innocence.
"It may be, Phil. Tell me only"--he was reckless now, and spoke fast
and fiercely--"tell me if you love me as I love you. Try to tell me. I
love you so much that I cannot sleep for thinking of you; and I think
of you all day long. It seems as if my life must have been a long
blank before I saw you; all my happiness is to be with you; to think
of going on without you maddens me."
"Poor Jack!" she said softly. She did not offer to withdraw her hands,
but let them lie in his warm and tender grasp.
"My dear, my darling--my queen and pearl of girls--who can help loving
you? And even to be with you, to have you close to me, to hold your
hands in mine, that isn't enough."
"What more--O Jack, Jack! what more?"
She began to tremble, and she tried to take back her hands. He let
them go, but before she could change her position he bent down, threw
his arms about her, and held her face close to his while he kissed it
a thousand times.
"What more? My darling, my angel, this--and this! Phil, Phil! wake at
last from your long childhood; leave the Garden of Eden where you have
wandered so many years, and come out into the other world--the world
of love. My dear, my dear! can you love me a little, only a little, in
return? We are all so different from what you thought us; you will
find out some day that I am not clever and good at all; that I have
only one thing to give you--my love. Phil, Phil, answer me--speak to
me--forgive me!"
He let her go, for she tore herself from him and sprang to her feet,
burying her face in her hands and sobbing aloud.
"Forgive me--forgive me!" It was all that he could say.
"Jack, what is it? what does it mean? O Jack!"--she lifted her face
and looked about her, with hands outstretched as one who feels in the
darkness; her cheeks were white and her eyes wild--"what does it mean?
what is it you have said? what is it you have done?"
"Phil!"
"Yes! Hush! don't speak to me--not yet, Jack. Wait a moment. My brain
is full of strange thoughts"--she put out trembling hands before her,
like one who wakes suddenly in a dream, and spoke with short, quick
breath. "Something seems to have come upon me. Help me, Jack! Oh, help
me! I am frightened."
He took her in his arms and soothed and caressed her like a child,
while she sobbed and cried.
"Look at me, Jack," she said presently. "Tell me, am I the same? Is
there any change in me?"
"Yes, Phil; yes, my darling. You are changed. Your sweet eyes are full
of tears, like the skies in April; and your cheeks are pale and white.
Let me kiss them till they get their own colour again."
He did kiss them, and she stood unresisting. But she trembled.
"I know, Jack, now," she said softly. "It all came upon me in a
moment, when your lips touched mine. O Jack, Jack! it was as if
something snapped; as if a veil fell from my eyes. I know now what you
meant when you said just now that you loved me."
"Do you, Phil? And can you love me, too?"
"Yes, Jack. I will tell you when I am able to talk again. Let me sit
down. Sit with me, Jack."
She drew him beside her on the sofa and murmured low, while he held
her hands.
"Do you like to sit just so, holding my hands? Are you better now,
Jack?
"Do you think, Jack, that I can have always loved you--without knowing
it all--just as you love me? O my poor Jack!
"My heart beats so fast. And I am so happy. What have you said to me,
Jack, that I should be so happy?
"See, the sun has come out--and the showers are over and gone--and the
birds are singing--all the sweet birds--they are singing for me, Jack,
for you and me--Oh, for you and me!"
Her voice broke down again, and she hid her face upon her lover's
shoulder, crying happy tears.
He called her a thousand endearing names; he told her that they would
be always together; that she had made him the happiest man in all the
world; that he loved her more than any girl ever had been loved in the
history of mankind; that she was the crown and pearl and queen of all
the women who ever lived; and then she looked up, smiling through her
tears.
Ah, happy, happy day! Ah, day for ever to be remembered even when, if
ever, the years shall bring its fiftieth anniversary to an aged pair,
whose children and grandchildren stand around their trembling feet?
Ah, moments that live for ever in the memory of a life! They die, but
are immortal. They perish all too quickly, but they bring forth the
precious fruits of love and constancy, of trust, affection, good
works, peace, and joy, which never perish.
"Take me on the river, Jack," she said presently. "I want to think it
all over again, and try to understand it better."
He fetched cushion and wrapper, for the boat was wet, and placed her
tenderly in the boat. And then he began to pull gently up the stream.
The day had suddenly changed. The morning had been gloomy and dull,
but the afternoon was bright; the strong wind was dropped for a light
cool breeze; the swans were cruising about with their lordly pretence
of not caring for things external; and the river ran clear and bright.
They were very silent now; the girl sat in her place, looking with
full soft eyes on the wet and dripping branches or in the cool depths
of the stream.
Presently they passed an old gentleman fishing in a punt; he was the
same old gentleman whom Phillis saw one morning--now so long ago--when
he had that little misfortune we have narrated, and tumbled backwards
in his ark. He saw them coming, and adjusted his spectacles.
"Youth and Beauty again," he murmured. "And she's been crying. That
young fellow has said something cruel to her. Wish I could break his
head for him. The pretty creature! He'll come to a bad end, that young
man." Then he impaled an immense worm savagely and went on fishing.
A very foolish old gentleman this.
"I am trying to make it all out quite clearly, Jack," Phillis
presently began. "And it is so difficult." Her eyes were still bright
with tears, but she did not tremble now, and the smile was back upon
her lips.
"My darling, let it remain difficult. Only tell me now, if you can,
that you love me."
"Yes, Jack," she said, not in the frank and childish unconsciousness
of yesterday, but with the soft blush of a woman who is wooed. "Yes,
Jack, I know now that I do love you, as you love me, because my heart
beat when you kissed me, and I felt all of a sudden that you were all
the world to me."
"Phil, I don't deserve it. I don't deserve you."
"Not deserve me? O Jack, you make me feel humble when you say that!
And I am so proud.
"So proud and so happy," she went on, after a pause. "And the girls
who know all along--how do they find it out?--want every one for
herself this great happiness, too. I have heard them talk and never
understood till now. Poor girls! I wish they had their--their own
Jack, not my Jack."
Her lover had no words to reply.
"Poor boy! And you went about with your secret so long. Tell me how
long, Jack?"
"Since the very first day I saw you in Carnarvon Square, Phil."
"All that time? Did you love me on that day--not the first day of all,
Jack? Oh, surely not the very first day?"
"Yes; not as I love you now--now that I know you so well, my
Phillis--mine--but only then because you were so pretty."
"Do men always fall in love with a girl because she is pretty?"
"Yes, Phil. They begin because she is pretty, and they love her more
every day when she is so sweet and so good as my darling Phil."
All this time Jack had been leaning on his oars, and the boat was
drifting slowly down the current. It was now close to the punt where
the old gentleman sat watching them.
"They have made it up," he said. "That's right." And he chuckled.
She looked dreamy and contented; the tears were gone out of her eyes,
and a sweet softness lay there, like the sunshine on a field of grass.
"She is a rose of Sharon and a lily of the valley," said this old
gentleman. "That young fellow ought to be banished from the State for
making other people envious of his luck. Looks a good-tempered rogue,
too."
He observed with delight that they were thinking of each other while
the boat drifted nearer to his punt. Presently--bump--bump!
Jack seized his sculls and looked up guiltily. The old gentleman was
nodding and smiling to Phillis.
"Made it up?" he asked most impertinently. "That is right, that is
right. Give you joy, sir, give you joy. Wish you both happiness. Wish
I had it to do all over again. God bless you, my dear!"
His jolly red face beamed like the setting sun under his big straw
hat, and he wagged his head and laughed.
Jack laughed too; at other times he would have thought the old angler
an extremely impertinent person. Now he only laughed.
Then he turned the boat's head, and rowed his bride swiftly homewards.
"Phil, I am like Jason bringing home Medea," he said, with a faint
reminiscence of classical tradition. I have explained that Jack was
not clever.
"I hope not," said Phil; "Medea was a dreadful person."
"Then Paris bringing home Helen--No, Phil; only your lover bringing
home the sweetest girl that ever was. And worth five and thirty
Helens."
When they landed, Agatha L'Estrange was on the lawn waiting for them.
To her surprise, Phillis, on disembarking, took Jack by the arm, and
his hand closed over hers. Mrs. L'Estrange gasped. And in Phillis's
tear-bright eyes, she saw at last the light and glow of love; and in
Phillis's blushing face she saw the happy pride of the celestial Venus
who has met her only love.
"Children--children!" she said, "what is this?"
Phillis made answer, in words which Abraham Dyson used to read to her
from a certain Book, but which she never understood till now--made
answer with her face upturned to her lover--
"I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me."
They were a quiet party that evening. Jack did not want to talk. He
asked Phillis to sing; he sat by in a sort of rapture while her voice,
in the songs she most affected, whispered and sang to his soul not
words, but suggestions of every innocent delight. She recovered
something of her gaiety, but their usual laughter was hushed as if by
some unexpressed thought. It will never come back to her again, that
old mirth and light heart of childhood. She felt while she played as
if she was in some great cathedral; the fancies of her brain built
over her head a pile more mystic and wonderful than any she had seen.
Its arches towered to the sky; its aisles led far away into dim space.
She was walking slowly up the church hand-in-hand with Jack, towards a
great rose light in the east. An anthem of praise and thanksgiving
echoed along the corridors, and pealed like thunder among the million
rafters of the roof. Round them floated faces which looked and smiled.
And she heard the voice of Abraham Dyson in her ear--
"Life should be two-fold, not single. That, Phillis, is the great
secret of the world. Every man is a priest; every woman is a
priestess; it is a sacrament which you have learned of Jack this day.
Go on with him in faith and hope. Love is the Universal Church and
Heaven is everywhere. Live in it; die in it; and dying begin your life
of love again."
"Phil," cried Jack, "what is it? You look as if you had seen a
vision."
"I have heard the voice of Abraham Dyson," she said solemnly. "He is
satisfied and pleased with us, Jack."
That was nothing to what followed, for presently there occurred a
really wonderful thing.
On Phillis's table--they were all three sitting in the pleasant
morning-room--lay among her lesson-books and drawing materials a
portfolio. Jack turned it over carelessly. There was nothing at all in
it except a single sheet of white paper, partly written over. But
there had been other sheets, and these were torn off.
"It is an old book full of writing," said Phillis carelessly. "I have
torn out all the leaves to make rough sketches at the back. There is
only one left now."
Jack took it up and read the scanty remnant.
"Good heavens!" he cried. "Have you really destroyed all these pages,
Phil?"
Then he laughed.
"What is it, Jack? Yes I have torn them all out, drawn rough things on
them, and then burnt them, every one."
"Is it anything important?" asked Mrs. L'Estrange.
"I should think it was important!" said Jack. "Ho, ho! Phillis has
destroyed the whole of Mr. Dyson's lost chapter on the Coping-stone.
And now his will is not worth the paper it is written on."
It was actually so. Bit by bit, while Joseph Jagenal was leaving no
corner unturned in the old house at Highgate in search of the precious
document, without which Mr. Dyson's will was so much waste paper, this
young lady was contentedly cutting out the sheets one by one and using
them up for her first unfinished groups. Of course she could not read
one word of what was written. It was a fitting Nemesis to the old
man's plans that they were frustrated through the very means by which
he wished to regenerate the world.
And now nothing at all left but a tag end, a bit of the peroration,
the last words of the final summing-up. And this was what Jack read
aloud--
"... these provisions and no other. Thus will I have my College for
the better Education of Women founded and maintained. Thus shall it
grow and develop till the land is full of the gracious influence of
womankind at her best and noblest. The Coping-stone of a girl's
Education should be, and must be, Love. When Phillis Fleming, my ward,
whose example shall be taken as the model for my college, feels the
passion of Love, her education is finally completed. She will have
much afterwards to learn. But self-denial, sympathy, and faith come
best through Love. Woman is born to be loved; that woman only
approaches the higher state who has been wooed and who has loved. When
Phillis loves, she will give herself without distrust and wholly to
the man who wins her. It is my prayer, my last prayer for her, that he
may be worthy of her." Here Jack's voice faltered for a moment. "Her
education has occupied my whole thoughts for thirteen years. It has
been the business of my later years. Now I send her out into the world
prepared for all, except treachery, neglect, and ill treatment.
Perhaps her character would pass through these and come out the
brighter. But we do not know; we cannot tell beforehand. Lord, lead
her not into temptation; and so deal with her lover as he shall deal
with her."
"Amen," said Agatha L'Estrange.
But Phillis sprang to her feet and threw up her arms.
"I have found it!" she cried. "Oh, how often did he talk to me about
the Coping-stone. Now I have nothing more to learn. O Jack, Jack!" she
fell into his arms, and lay there as if it was her proper place. "We
have found the Coping-stone--you and I between us--and it is here, it
is here!"