SATISFIED.
Having won Phemie Keller, the next thing Captain Stondon desired was to
wed her. It might have made the heart of many a matchmaking mother ache
with envy to hear how the man hammered on at that one string.
It was the refrain of every sentence. Mr. Aggland and he never separated
without the subject being mooted by this fortunate lover. Vainly did the
farmer assert that the girl was too young, that there was time enough,
that nobody was going to run away with her. Captain Stondon would listen
to no objections. Christmas was coming on, and he must get back to
Norfolk immediately, and he wanted to have something definite decided on
before he went away.
To all of which Mr. Aggland listened gravely ere he replied—
“Then I tell you what, Captain Stondon: let me go to Norfolk with you,
and there we will talk about the future. You must not think,” proceeded
Mr. Aggland, hastily, “that because I say this I am ‘a kind of burr—I
shall stick.’ I do not mean to intrude. I have no intention of forcing
myself upon you. Once let me see the place where Phemie is going to, the
home in which she is to live, and you need never fear sign or token of
me again.”
“But I hope and trust that I shall,” answered Captain Stondon: “I do not
want to separate Phemie from her friends. I have no wish to do anything
of the kind. You surely have not thought me so forgetful—so ungrateful
as all that comes to?” cried the officer, growing quite vehement over
the matter.
But Mr. Aggland shook his head and answered, “I do not think you either
ungrateful or forgetful, only I know that, when once you and Phemie are
married, the less she and you are troubled with any of us the better it
will be for her. It is never a pleasant thing for a woman to be
constantly reminded whence she has been transplanted, and Phemie is
young enough to take kindly to a new soil and root herself firmly in it.
Further, sir; though I was once humble companion to a gentleman’s son, I
hope I never wore
‘The rags of any great man’s looks, nor fed
Upon their after meals.’
And because I am so sure of my own mind in this matter—so positive that
I do not want Phemie to feel anyone belonging to her a burden, I have no
scruple in asking you to let me go to Norfolk. I shall be able to give
her away with a lighter heart when I have once looked on the house that
is to be her home.”
Doubtless Mr. Aggland was right; but Captain Stondon, with his heart
full of generous projects, with a vivid memory of all he owed to the
farmer’s care and kindness, felt that this constant assertion of
independence—this everlasting refusal to come up and stand on the same
level with himself—was irritating in the extreme.
It is so hard to have one’s best intention doubted—to see people
thinking they are wiser and better than everybody else on earth—to have
good gifts tossed back in one’s face, that Captain Stondon often felt
inclined to tell Mr. Aggland that independence may be carried far too
far; that there is an extreme point at which every virtue touches a
vice; and that the most dangerous pride is, after all, the pride that
“apes humility.”
But as often as he felt inclined he refrained. He remembered that, to a
man like Mr. Aggland, poverty was the most severe trial to which his
character could have been subjected; and he recollected likewise that,
if an ungenial climate had made the fruit of his life somewhat bitter,
it had not rendered it unwholesome.
Besides, he, Captain Stondon, was so happy that he could afford to be
tolerant of the short-comings of others; and accordingly he answered,
good-humouredly—
“You will know me better some day, Aggland. Meantime, come to Norfolk,
and we can arrange about settlements and other matters when once we get
there.”
“One thing more,” said Mr. Aggland. “I pay my own expenses.”
“Agreed,” replied Captain Stondon, laughing; “so long as you do not ask
me to send you in a bill for board and lodging at Marshlands, you can
pay what you like.”
And so the matter was settled; and for letting Mr. Aggland have his own
way the officer received his reward.
Never had the Hill Farm been made pleasanter to him than it was during
the week which intervened between the time the journey was proposed and
the hour they started.
Everyone seemed now to feel that matters were finally settled, and that
there was, therefore, nothing more to be done except to put on holiday
faces, and make matters agreeable for Phemie and Captain Stondon.
What if the boys did tease their cousin? It only made a little more life
about the Farm. What if Johnny King had the audacity to answer Captain
Stondon’s question as to whether Mr. Aggland was at home with a wink and
a shrug, and a hand pointed over his shoulder, and “No, he is not; but
Phemie is in there; and father says she is all you want at the Hill
Farm!” The officer only boxed the young monkey’s ears, and went on his
way with a light step, whilst Phemie’s whole time was taken up in
expostulating and remonstrating.
“Uncle, are they to torment me? Uncle, is Duncan to say the things he
does? Is he to go about the house singing, ‘Woo’d, and married, and
a’?’—more particularly when Captain Stondon is here. It is enough to put
a person from being married at all.”
“The lassie is glaikit wi’ pride,” remarked Duncan, from a safe
distance.
“The Lord has been very good to her to put such a chance in her way,”
added Mrs. Aggland, sanctimoniously.
“Blest if I don’t think Phemie is right, and that it is enough to
prevent her marrying at all, hearing so much about it,” said Mr.
Aggland; but for all that the boys would teaze, and Mrs. Aggland would
talk concerning the wedding clothes, and Peggy M‘Nab would spend hours
tracing out a brilliant future for her darling. On the whole, that
future was by no means one to be scoffed at by a country girl whose
entire fortune was under a couple of hundred pounds, and whose well-born
relations refused to recognise her. It was very pleasant to become in a
moment a person of importance—very charming to be the sun round which
the whole household revolved—very delightful to have Mrs. Aggland
alternately fawning upon her and making envious speeches.
Already Phemie was beginning to feel the beneficial change in her
position, and from the height she had attained she was able clearly to
see the inferiority of the station from which Captain Stondon had raised
her. Distant, and more distant still, grew the heroes of her romantic
visions. They were real men to her no more; and she could even smile to
herself as she repeated a verse of Carrick’s “Rose of the Canongate,” a
song she had learned in the old manse by the sea-shore:—
“She dream’d of lords, of knights, of squires,
And men of high degree;
But lords were scarce and knights were shy,
So ne’er a joe had she.”
Perhaps a letter Mr. Aggland received from her aunt, Miss Keller, in
answer to one he wrote informing the Keller family of Captain Stondon’s
proposals, and Phemie’s acceptance of them, had a little to do with this
desirable change in her sentiments. “Miss Keller presented her
compliments to Mr. Aggland, and on behalf of herself and her brother,
General Keller, begged to inform Mr. A. that they were happy to hear the
young person referred to in his letter was likely to be comfortably
provided for. At the same time, as Lieutenant Keller’s unhappy marriage
had severed all ties of relationship between them, General and Miss
Keller trusted that Mr. Aggland would not think it necessary to enter
into any further correspondence, as it was impossible for either General
or Miss Keller to recognise in any way the child of such a degrading and
ill-assorted union.”
“Never mind, my darling,” said Captain Stondon, when Phemie showed him
this gracious epistle. “You can do without them, I hope;” and the girl
was grateful for the tone in which the words were spoken, and thought
more and more that things were not so bad as they seemed at first, and
that she had great cause for thankfulness.
She had to keep a guard on her lips and refrain from wishing for
anything, for so surely as she said she would fancy this, or something
else, so surely it was purchased for her. If she had expressed a desire
for the moon, Captain Stondon would straightway have set to work
thinking how he might best procure it; and Phemie could often have
bitten a piece off her tongue after she had exclaimed—
“I should like this. I wish I had that.”
“It seems as if I were always taking—taking, and I cannot bear it,” she
said once, piteously; and Mr. Aggland coming to the rescue, said he
could not bear it either.
“The girl will forget how to say any other word than ‘thank you’” he
added; “you are making a perfect parrot of her. Give her what you like
when once she is your wife, but hold your hand now;” and Captain Stondon
agreed to do what they asked him on condition that the Norfolk journey
was undertaken without delay.
“When once she is my wife she shall not need to wish,” he said; from
which speech it will be seen that Phemie’s future husband had laid
himself out to spoil her completely, if he could; and meantime he made
so much of her—was so patient, so good, and kind, that Phemie, poor
child, cried when he went away, and caused the man to fall more
rapturously in love with her than ever.
If the weather had been better, the journey to London could have left
nothing to be desired; but as it was, with the snow on the ground,
Captain Stondon acknowledged to himself that, but for Mr. Aggland, he
should have found the way between Carlisle and Euston Square of the
longest.
Having Mr. Aggland, the time passed rapidly enough. They talked a good
deal, they slept a good deal; and by-and-by, when they both awoke about
Stafford, Mr. Aggland roused himself thoroughly, and began to show his
companion what really was in him.
He told tales of his own long ago: his boyhood’s scrapes, his manhood’s
chances, the various adventures he had met with in the course of an
irregular rambling life. The excitement of travelling, the sight of so
many strange faces, the change and variety of going back after years to
London, seemed to make a different creature of the individual who had
always hitherto seemed to Captain Stondon a clever, eccentric “wild man
of the hills.”
“If he would but shave himself and get his hair cut, and buy a
respectable suit of clothes, he might pass anywhere,” thought the
officer; but he would as soon have dreamed of suggesting any alteration
in his attire to the Commander-in-Chief as to Mr. Aggland, for which
reason, though every one they met, stared at the man as they might at a
maniac, Captain Stondon appeared perfectly unconscious of the fact; and
for any remark he made, Phemie’s uncle might have been “got up” like the
greatest dandy that ever walked down Bond Street.
Only—he told the cabman to drive to an hotel in the City instead of to
the “Burlington,” where he usually stopped, alleging as his reason that
he wanted to be near the Shoreditch Station, so as to get on to Norfolk
betimes the next morning.
When the next morning came, however, Mr. Aggland asked whether his
companion would object to putting off their journey for a few hours.
“I see,” he said, “there is an afternoon train which arrives at Disley
about nine o’clock in the evening. If that would suit you equally well,
I should prefer it.”
“I have no objection,” answered Captain Stondon. “I must telegraph down,
though, for them to meet us at the nine train, for otherwise I do not
see exactly how we should ever get over from Disley to Marshlands.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Aggland; “and would you—would you—mind my leaving
you alone for a short time?”
The man actually coloured as he asked this and after he had departed,
Captain Stondon fell to wondering where his companion could be gone—on
what secret mission he could have departed by himself.
“He surely has not seen some pretty woman and fallen in love with her,”
soliloquised the officer; and then his thoughts went back to the pretty
girl he had fallen in love with in Cumberland, and whom he hoped to have
all to himself when next he passed through London.
How little he expected, when he was in town before, ever to marry—ever
to see anybody again for whom he could care in the least; and now he was
lying on a sofa in one of the sitting-rooms in the Castle and Falcon,
building all kinds of beautiful edifices, while the City traffic
thundered along Aldersgate Street, till finally, with its very monotony,
it lulled him to sleep.
How long he slept he did not know, but at last he awoke with a start,
and found a stranger sitting opposite to the sofa he occupied—a
stranger, yet not a stranger—a person who was unknown to him, and yet
whose face seemed familiar. Captain Stondon raised himself on his elbow
to inquire who his visitor might be, but in the same moment recognised
him, and exclaimed—
“Good heavens, Aggland! what have you been doing to yourself? I could
not, for the life of me, think who you were.”
And indeed it was no marvel that Captain Stondon had been mystified; for
Mr. Aggland who entered the Castle and Falcon at one o’clock was
certainly remarkably unlike the Mr. Aggland who walked out of it at
eleven. He had gone to a hair-dresser’s, he had gone to a tailor, and
the consequence was that he came back another person. Hitherto his head
had looked like the wings of an old raven that is moulting; now
dexterous hands had brushed and smoothed his hair till it seemed really
to be human hair, and not the mane of a wild colt. His moustache had
been as the bristles of a well-worn hearth-broom; and heaven only knows
through what torments of fixatrice he had passed in order to get it into
decent trim. His whiskers had resembled nothing so much as long, bare,
straggling branches of the hop plant; but the barber’s skill having
pruned away all the impoverishing suckers, the original hair on his
cheeks remained trim and neat as could have been desired.
At his clothes Captain Stondon stared in amazement. About the legs and
shoulders, about his feet and arms, Mr. Aggland was now as other men.
Excepting that he still wore his shirt-collar turned down—a fashion
which in those days was not in vogue—the farmer looked quite like
ordinary mortals. He had compassed that metamorphosis which Captain
Stondon so earnestly desired to see; and having compassed this end, it
is only fair to add that Mr. Aggland looked desperately ashamed of
himself.
But he had thought it right to give heed to such vanities for Phemie’s
sake; and a sense of duty consequently supported him through his trial.
“I did not care to go to your place looking an old guy,” he explained,
awkwardly enough; “and as I should have had, sooner or later, to buy a
few things for the wedding, I have bought them sooner instead of
later—that is all.”
“You do my place too much honour,” answered Captain Stondon; but he
wished, even as he said it, that he could be quite sure Mr. Aggland had
not guessed what was passing through his mind as they journeyed
southward together.
He had forgotten what keen vision living among the hills insures; he had
not thought of the quick sensitiveness which catches at an idea from a
look, a movement, a chance glance.
However, Mr. Aggland was all the more presentable for the change in his
attire, and as he proceeded to say, how he had thought the day might
come when somebody in Norfolk would know he was Phemie’s uncle, and that
therefore—and to do such credit as he could to Captain Stondon—he wanted
to make the best of himself, the officer was quite touched by the man’s
unselfish thoughtfulness, by the love and affection which had compelled
him to make an exertion that a weaker nature would have been ashamed to
confess.
Everything he saw about the farmer made him regret more and more that
his life had proved so hard an one for himself, so profitless an one for
others; and this feeling made him treat his new friend in a manner which
induced Mr. Aggland afterwards to declare to Phemie—
“If I had been a king, child, he could not have made more of me.”
Nor was Mr. Aggland, who had seen some fine estates in his lifetime,
less impressed with the stateliness of Marshlands than with the courtesy
of its owner.
The house was “far and away grander than Worton Court,” he told his
niece, and if Mr. Aggland had entertained any doubts on the subject of
Captain Stondon’ s social standing, his visit to Marshlands completely
undeceived him.
He passed a week there—a whole week, though he had declared he “couldna,
shouldna, daurna stay for more than a couple of days;” and many a long
talk had he and Captain Stondon, sitting over the library fire, whilst
dessert remained untouched beside them, and each forgot to pass the
decanter which contained some of that “inimitable ’24 port.”
It was great promotion for Phemie. The longer Mr. Aggland stayed at
Marshlands, and the more he saw of the master of Marshlands, the more
unreal the whole affair seemed; and he went meekly back to Cumberland,
feeling that neither he nor his could ever have made the girl half so
happy as it was in both the power and the will of this rich gentleman to
do.
The marriage was to take place in the spring, and Captain Stondon wanted
to provide Phemie’s trousseau; but on this point Mr. Aggland was firm.
“There is no use in the child bringing her two or three halfpence in her
hand to you,” he said, not without a certain sadness; “and so we may
just as well spend her little fortune on the only thing she is ever
likely to have to provide for herself. She shall not disgrace any of us,
I promise you that; and till she is your wife, I would rather she was
not indebted to you for anything.”
As usual, there was so much sense in what Mr. Aggland said, that Captain
Stondon had to yield the point; and the consequence was that the farmer
returned from London with such a quantity of luggage as caused his wife
to stand aghast.
“Oh! Peggy; oh! Peggy,” cried Phemie Keller. “Those boxes are like
something out of fairyland: there are silks and laces, and muslins and
ribbons, and the most enchanting kid shoes, and kid gloves, Peggy—French
gloves, like Lady Wauthrope’s. And whatever more I want, uncle says is
to be ordered from Liverpool; but I shall never wear all those things
out. I could not do it if I were to live for a thousand years. Come and
look at them, and then tell me if you believe I am Phemie Keller. It is
something like what we used to talk about, Peggy. Do you remember how we
used to talk?”
“Ay, bairn, I mind it weel.” The time Miss Phemie dreamed her dreams was
not so very far remote but that any one could recollect it. “And it
seems to me, when I’m thinking ower it a’, that the Yerl has come across
the hills to tak’ my darling frae me.”
“But you shall come too. I asked him about it, and he said, ‘Yes, of
course;’ so you must get a trousseau, Peggy, and travel with us wherever
we go.”
“Ye dinna want an auld fule like me to wait on ye,” answered Peggy; “an
if ye did, I’d rather stay i’ the house I ken sae weel, wi’ the maister
who has been aye sae gude to me, than gang roamin’ about the warld. But
when ye are a great lady, mind I always said this would come to pass;
for if he is not an yerl, he is as rich as one, I’ll be bound.”
“And I am sure he is kinder to me than any duke in the land could be,”
agreed Phemie; but Phemie sighed for all that—a deep sigh—for the
vanished hopes, for the dream hero that could return to her no more!