FOR LIFE.
Spring came to the sweet valley of Tordale—came with its flowers and
sunshine—its showers—its springing grass—its budding trees—its balmy
winds—its wealth of promise—across the hills and up the ravine.
By the dark green of the yarrow under foot—by the anemones and hyacinths
blooming beneath the trees—by the soft cushions of lady’s-fingers—by the
scent of the clover in the meadows—by the ragged-robin trailing through
the hedges—by the saxifrage growing beside the waterfall—by the ferns
daintily unfolding their leaves—by the delicate colour of the moss
covering the boulders—you could tell as you passed by that Spring had
come, and was decking herself in robes of coolest verdure, to greet the
richer beauty of the summer.
When the young lambs were dotted about on the mountain sides—when
marsh-marigolds and gowans were to be gathered in handfuls—when the
streams and rills were dancing over the stones and making sweet melody
as they sped along, thankful the winter snows were melted, the winter
frosts thawed—Phemie Keller was married.
Ere ever the wild roses put forth buds—ere ever the honeysuckle climbing
among thorn and briar and bramble began to scent the air with its
delicious fragrance—in the spring-time of her young life—in the first
bloom and blush of her rare loveliness—Phemie became a wife.
In the midst of the congregation, Captain Stondon met her a
stranger—from the midst of the congregation he took her for himself.
Had he ever wanted to be rid of his bargain—to back out of the
engagement entered into, where the Cumberland hills frowned down on
Tordale Church—he would have found it no easy matter to do so, for the
whole parish might have been summoned as witnesses on Phemie’s behalf.
The shepherds left their sheep to the tender mercies of the coolies—the
farmers put on their best suits and plodded up the valley to Tordale
Church—the eggs were not collected—the milk was not churned—the children
did not go to school on that fine spring morning when Phemie Keller was
married.
Had privacy been desired, privacy would have been in Tordale simply
impossible; and as no secret was made of the day or the hour, as
everybody had known for weeks previously when the ceremony was to take
place, the church was literally crammed.
Many a one who had never gone to hear Mr. Conbyr preach went to hear him
read the words that made the bride and bridegroom one—went to see the
grand gentleman, who was popularly supposed to have so much money that
he did not know what to do with it, taking to wife Daniel Aggland’s
niece—bonnie Phemie, who, for all her great fortune, for all her fine
clothes, looked pale and frightened, or, as one of the spectators
remarked, “fiate.”
“There is a most serious deal of difference,” he added, shaking his head
solemnly; “she’s but a bairn, with her glintin’ hair, and her soft blue
eyes, and her jimp waist that I could ’most span with my one hand. She’s
but a bairn, while he”—and the man took a long look at Captain Stondon,
who was standing bare-headed, with the sunshine streaming full upon
him—“Go’nows _how_ old he is.”
I should like to be able to sketch that interior for you, my reader. I
should like to show you the men and the women and the children who
filled the church, and looked with grave, interested faces at the group
standing before the altar. I should like to paint for you the way the
sunbeams fell on Phemie’s hair, turning each thread to gold—how they
showed her pale pure face to every soul in the church—how in her white
dress she looked more lovely than ever.
The Agglands were there, all of them—all Phemie’s relations, excepting
the Kellers—all her friends—all her acquaintances—all who knew anything
about her—were gathered together on that bright spring morning; but
Captain Stondon had no one belonging to him present on the occasion.
Even his best man was no fine gentleman from London, but merely a stray
curate from Grassenfel, who could not have seemed more uncomfortable had
he been going to be married himself.
Already Captain Stondon had found that the position of his wife’s family
in the social scale placed him in an awkward dilemma. There are always
certain embarrassments entailed by differences of rank which are felt by
Love the moment he walks out of doors with the lady of his choice.
The world cares for Mammon, though Cupid may not. Society is apt to make
merry over the ways and manners of those who are not the _crême de la
crême_, while the happy pair are absorbed in one another. The wedding at
Tordale would have shocked the sensitive nerves of Captain Stondon’s
intimates; and, accordingly, prudently and sensibly he refrained from
making himself a laughing-stock among his friends.
When we are at Rome we do as Rome does. When we are in the world we
conform to its usages; and though Captain Stondon was marrying out of
the world, he still meant to return to the world and take his bride
thither with him.
The absence of all hypercritical guests was best for both Phemie and her
uncle. They had admitted as much to one another; and yet the fact of
none of the bridegroom’s friends being present hurt them, and showed
them clearly, as if the future had been spread out before their eyes,
that from all old associations—from all old friends—from all old
habits—Phemie Keller was passing swiftly away.
As the shadow fades from the hill-side, leaving no trace of where it has
rested, so auburn hair and blue eyes was passing away from the old
familiar life—from the rugged mountain scenery—from the drip of the
waterfall—from the calm peacefulness—from the sweet monotony of that
remote valley for ever.
She might come back again, but never the Phemie she had been; never
again might she look out on life as she had done from the windows of her
dream castle; she might never more gaze upon the mountains with the same
eyes; she might never speak with the same thoughts and wishes swelling
in her heart.
She was going out to be another Phemie; in a different rank; with
different aims, and hopes, and objects; with a difficult part to play;
with a difficult path to follow: no wonder that as the farmers’ wives
saw the tears filling her eyes, and rolling down her cheeks, they said,
with an intuitive, unreasoning pity, “God help her; and she so young!”
So young; that was the string everybody harped on. It never seemed to
have occurred to them before, that she was barely more than a child,
till they came to see her pledging her whole future—all the long, long
years she had in all human probability before her—away.
Many a one present had not liked Phemie over much in days gone by. They
had thought her conceited, fanciful, stuck up; but now that she was
being made a lady of—now that the whole country side had been bidden to
a marriage feast at the Hill Farm, and that the girl, in her sorrow and
trouble at leaving everything behind her, had gone to bid even the
veriest virago in Tordale good-bye—her short-comings were forgotten, and
nothing but her youth and beauty remembered.
Her fine clothes, that she had been so proud to exhibit, were never
thought of; the grand match she was making, and of which some present
had been very jealous, faded out of recollection; and for the time being
her young face, her girlish figure, filled every heart with a vague
pity. Something was wanting in that bridal group, and the spectators
felt the want as they looked at the child giving herself to this man so
long as he lived or as she lived.
There was not a person present—unless, indeed, it might be Mr.
Aggland—who could have defined his or her sensations; but, nevertheless,
every one felt the absence of that intangible something which Phemie
Keller might never now become acquainted with, sinlessly, through all
the years to come.
That was it—for better, for worse—she was resigning all hope, all chance
of happy love; love with its bliss and agony; love with its doubts and
distractions; love without which no life, be it otherwise ever so
symmetrical, can be perfect. Attachment—affection—a calm, even,
unruffled existence is better, some tell you, than the hot and the cold,
the fever and the collapse, the mad pulse and the shivering agony. It
may be so. God knows what is best for us: God knew what was best for
Phemie Keller!
And yet as the “keld” comes darkling upon the surface of the Cumberland
lakes, without cloud, without wind, without shadow, without reason that
we can trace, so in the middle of the sunshine, in the middle of the
prosperity, a “keld” seemed to gather on the waters of Phemie’s life;
those clear waters that were as yet unruffled by passion, untroubled by
regret.
For she was, as they all said, young. She was such a child that her
composure was disturbed by Davie, who had thought it incumbent upon him
to come and see the ceremony, like his neighbours.
A wise dog, he followed the wedding party from the Hill Farm at a
distance, and had slunk into the church in an unassuming,
undemonstrative manner, with his tail between his legs, doubtless hoping
by this manœuvre to escape observation.
But Mrs. Aggland, ever lynx-eyed, spied him out, and bade Duncan take
him home; an order which Duncan disputed in so loud a whisper that the
controversy attracted the attention of one of the shepherds, who secured
the dog, and placed him between his legs, from which position Davie
surveyed the ceremony with sorrowful eyes.
When the company began to disperse, Davie walked out with the first, but
waited, like a Christian, in the church porch for Phemie.
He knew as well as anybody there that she was going from him. Many a
pleasant mile they had walked together over the hills; many a score
times she had called him to follow her to Strammer Tarn; many a morning
they had run down the hill-side and across the valley when the sun was
looking at them over Helbeck in the glad summer, or in the dreary
winter, when Phemie looked back gleefully to see her footprints in the
snow. They had climbed together; they had rested among the heather; she
had twined wild flowers round his neck, an attention he had not then
appreciated; she had loved him and been good to him; and now it was all
over, and Davie knew it, and because he knew it, he did not jump upon
her, or fawn, or gambol, or bark as she came out.
He only wagged his dilapidated tail from side to side, and licked her
hand, and looked up in her face, and said farewell as plainly as a dumb
brute can.
At which performance Phemie—Phemie Keller no longer—broke out crying, to
the dismay of Captain Stondon, who hurried her through the churchyard
and down the steps, inwardly anathematizing Davie in particular, and the
lookers on in general.
“It’s all along of you,” remarked Mrs. Aggland, giving Duncan a shake.
“If you had taken the dog back, as I told you, she would have been all
right. Was ever woman plagued as I am by a set of disobedient,
headstrong boys?”
“Well, you wouldn’t have liked to go home yourself,” retorted Duncan;
whilst Mr. Aggland, with a troubled look in his face, muttered as he
walked along, leading Helen by the hand—
“An auld head set on shouthers young,
The like was never seen;
For bairnies will be bairnies aye,
As they hae ever been.”
But he was thinking of something else all the while. He was thinking
about Phemie; thinking, as he had never thought before, of the future
she was going out to meet.
“Keep up, Phemie; be brave,” he found an opportunity of whispering to
her, and the girl dried her tears, and smiled her best, and laughed when
her husband broke the bridecake over her head, after the fashion of the
country, while the young men and the young women contended for the very
crumbs eagerly.
Then Captain Stondon was happy again. He forgave Duncan and he forgave
the inhabitants of Tordale, and he made himself so agreeable while
Phemie was getting ready for her departure, that the bride’s youth and
the bride herself were forgotten, and everybody joined in praises of the
officer, and wishes for his health, happiness, and prosperity.
The guests were going to keep up the feast till night, or at least so
long as their heads remained tolerably steady, but the bride and
bridegroom had to start early in the afternoon to catch the train at
Carlisle, from which place Phemie had elected to go to Scotland to spend
her honeymoon.
After that Captain Stondon proposed travelling, on the Continent, and
the girl did not know when she should see her uncle or Cumberland again.
“I hope you will be happy, Phemie,” he said; “I believe you will.”
“I think I shall, uncle,” she answered; but the tears were in her eyes
as she spoke.
“I have something to say to you before you go,” he began; “something
that came into my mind as I followed you home from church.”
“What is it?” she asked. “What is it?” she repeated, seeing that he
paused and hesitated.
“If I was sending Duncan out into the world,” he said, “I should warn
him that it is a sinful world; that though it may not be hard to keep
straight in a lonely place like this, it is not so easy to be good with
temptations surrounding us on every side——”
“Yes, uncle,” agreed Phemie.
“Burns says,” proceeded Mr. Aggland, “that—
‘Gentlemen an’ ladies worst,
“Wi’ ev’ndown want o’ wark are curst.’
Now you are going to be a lady, Phemie, and a lady out in the world, and
I do not want you to lose your head in consequence; I do not want you to
live an objectless, useless, idle life. Chaucer tells us truly that—
‘An ydil man is like an hous that hath norne walls,
The deviles may enter on every syde;’
and an idle woman’s position is quite as bad, Phemie, quite.”
“But I shall not be idle,” she pleaded.
“You will not have to work,” he answered, “and that with many is
synonymous with idleness. You are going to you know not what, my child,”
he went on; “you are going into a strange world, where there are strange
fashions, strange creeds, strange ideas of morality. Phemie, you will
keep yourself straight; you won’t forget what I have tried to teach you;
you won’t forget what your grandfather taught you; you won’t forget this
world is not all, and that its fashions and its pleasures pass swiftly
away?”
“I will try to be good, uncle.”
“You will have servants under you,” he continued. “Don’t be hard with
them, Phemie; don’t be thoughtless. Remember they have souls to be saved
as well as you. You have beauty. It is an article much prized where you
are going. Don’t be too vain of it. Remember God gave it to you—a gift
not to be abused. Never forget that, unless allied to something better,
it is but—
‘A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.’
You will be rich; when you are so, ‘be not exalted,’ as Cleobulus
pithily puts it. Solomon says, ‘riches are not for ever;’ remember that;
and also that for the use you make of them while you have them you will
be held accountable. I would have you emulate those—
‘Great souls, who touch’d with warmth divine,
Give gold a price, and teach its teams to shine;
All hoarded pleasures they repute a load,
Nor think their wealth their own, till well bestowed.’
But you are going into a world so new and strange that all old counsels,
all old teachings, seem inapplicable to it.”
And Mr. Aggland dropped his hand despairingly on Phemie’s shoulder as he
concluded.
“I will try to remember,” she said.
“I would have you—
‘Strive in youth
To save your age from care,’”
continued her uncle. “I would have you keep every Christian grace, every
womanly virtue. I do not wish to see you a fashionable lady. Do not at
first be too confident, but proceed—
‘Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread.’
And yet I would not have you over-fearful, or cowardly, because I know
‘that what begins in fear usually ends in folly.’ I want you to keep a
balance, Phemie, between bigotry and irreligion—between virtue and
prudery—between hard work and idleness—between confidence and
presumption.”
“I wish I had not to go away at all, uncle,” was her comment on this
string of advice.
“If you had not to go away I should not have to warn you,” he answered.
“And now good-bye, and don’t forget me, Phemie; don’t quite forget me,
if you can help it.”
He was parting from the girl he had loved like his own daughter; parting
from her who was going forth on an untried, uncertain road; and if the
tears did come into his eyes, if his voice did tremble for a moment, I
hope those who read these pages will not think him the less a man for
all that.
As for Phemie, seeing him in such trouble, she kept her own trouble back
bravely. She would not cry; she would not unfit herself for saying what
she knew was the truth, that she could never forget him, nor forget the
Hill Farm; and she took his hand and kissed it ere he could prevent her,
while she whispered—
“The mother may forget the child
That smiles sae sweetly on her knee,
But I’ll remember thee, Glencairn,
And a’ that thou hast done for me.”
And then she broke down—then she threw herself into his arms and lay
sobbing there till Helen came to remind her time was getting on, and
that railway trains wait for no one.
“You must go now, Phemie,” said her uncle; “do not think me unkind for
hurrying you away—
‘I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.’
There now. Let’s not unnerve each other,” and he put her gently back
from him. “And now for my last words. Remember that you are but an—
‘Unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpractised.
Happy in this—you are not yet so old
But you may learn.’
Be a good wife to the man who has chosen you, and whom you have chosen.
‘Do him good, and not evil, all the days of your life.’ Now, Phemie,
now—now,” and he unclasped the arms she had thrown round him once again,
and bade her say what other farewells she had to say, as it was high
time they were off to Carlisle.
“I shall come back again,” Phemie said to each and all. “I shall come
back again, Duncan. I will indeed, Helen. Be sure I won’t stay long
away, Peggy.”
But Peggy M‘Nab refused to be comforted. She went into her kitchen after
the happy pair drove away, and covered her head with her apron, and
sobbed aloud.
“Don’t cry, Peggy!—don’t, don’t!” exclaimed Helen, with the tears
streaming down her own cheeks; “don’t cry; she will come back to us; you
heard her say yourself that she would.”
“Alake, Miss Helen,” answered Peggy, from behind her curtain of blue
check, “the child that I carried in my airms—that I nursed in my lap—I
have not seen this many a year, unless, maybe, by an odd time in a
dream; and your cousin Phemie, who has just gane awa’, neither you nor
me will ever set eyes on again till our deein’ day.”
At which assurance Helen lifted up her voice and wept aloud, for she did
not understand the exact meaning of the hard truth contained in Peggy’s
pathetic words. And if she had, would she have wept the less? Would she
have ceased lamenting? Would it have been any consolation to her to know
that another Phemie might come back, but that the Phemie who had danced
over the heather, and sat by Strammer Tarn, and assisted in all
household duties; who had been gay and sad, happy and sorrowful, could
return to the Hill Farm—to the peace and quiet of the valley below—to
the rugged mountains—to the murmuring waterfall—never more—ah, never!