FIVE YEARS LATER.
Five years after Mrs. Montague Stondon’s little party in Chapel Street,
the 3·55 express was tearing along the Eastern Counties line to Disley
under the glare of the afternoon sun.
“It was the hottest day that summer,” so every passenger said, and so
every passenger had abundant reason for thinking. The dust was
intolerable—the heat unendurable; if you kept the windows down you were
choked, blinded, and generally driven distracted with dust, grit, smoke,
and small gravel; if you pulled the windows up, you had dust still, and
were roasted, baked and boiled into the bargain.
When passengers got in, at the few stations where the train paused for
such refreshment as could be afforded to it by water for its boiler, and
oil for its wheels, each man and each woman seemed to bring a fire with
him or her into the carriage. If they had been furnaces, instead of
flesh and blood, they could not have added more to the discomfort of
their neighbours than was the case.
The soda-water and sherry, the lemonade, the ginger-beer, which
suffering humanity demanded at Cambridge as an alleviation of its
miseries, might have been poured from a boiling kettle, and then the
bell rang, and the passengers took their seats, and the train steamed
out of the station, and plunged into the open country once again,
routing up the gravel, and scattering stones and dust as it rushed
along.
To heat and to dust there were, however, two travellers who seemed
indifferent. Those two were Captain Stondon and his wife. After five
years of moving from place to place, of seeing foreign countries, of
living in hotels, in hired palaces, in Swiss châlets and French
châteaux, they were returning by the 3·55 express to take up their
head-quarters at Marshlands, and reside there for good.
With his back to the engine, with his hat off, with the warm breeze
tossing his hair about and filling it full of dust, with his feet on the
opposite seat, with the ‘Times’ lying beside him, Captain Stondon slept
the sleep of the just, happily oblivious of the heat, and unconscious
that Phemie was sitting in a direct draught.
She had taken off her bonnet, and drawn the blue silk curtain so as to
shelter her eyes from the full glare of the sun, and while the train
strained and throbbed along the rails, she looked out over the country
through which they were passing.
Should you know her? Scarcely. The hair is the same that the summer sun
shone down on in Tordale, but it is not the young hair that first
entangled Captain Stondon’s fancy. There is no part of us that ages like
the hair. Look at a child’s hair—a boy’s—a man’s. Watch the wind
stirring each of them, and you will see what I mean. Every year as it
passes by, lays its hands on our heads, and takes something of freshness
and of beauty from them. What is it? you ask. I do not know. But as we
see that the leaves in August are not the same as they were in April, so
we can perceive that the hair of a lad of nineteen is different from
what it will be at four-and-twenty. It is young, like himself, at
nineteen, and each year that comes and goes will make it, like himself,
older.
Well, then, that glory of auburn hair had lost something of its beauty,
or rather, perhaps, its beauty was different, just as Phemie’s own
loveliness was different.
She had been a girl then; she was a woman now—a woman in danger of
becoming cold and worldly through mere prosperity and absence of
trouble—a woman who disbelieved in broken hearts, in passionate love—who
looked down from immeasurable heights of superiority on what she called
boy and girl affection, and who thought of the dreams of her earlier
life, when by chance they recurred to her memory, as she might of a
foolish fairy tale, or of any other ridiculous fancy of her childish
days.
A change had come over her! and Phemie acknowledged to herself that she
was changed, as she looked out at the English scenery, which seemed so
strange and unfamiliar to her eyes.
Through Middlesex, and Hertford, and Essex the train dashed on: the line
passed first over the roofs of houses—over streets—over roads, and then
the engine, settling into express-pace, sped away northward, beside the
Lea, within sight of the prettily-wooded heights of Clapton, across the
market-gardens at Tottenham, and so on, past Edmonton, and Waltham, and
Broxbourne, and Elsenham to Audley End, through the grounds of which it
dashed remorselessly, as though there was no park there people wanted to
look at—no house they wished to see.
Then into the flat lands of Cambridgeshire, where each field seemed more
level than the last, where willows grew in abundance, where the line ran
beside swamps and osier beds, where there was nothing tall except the
poplar trees, nothing to break the monotony of the scenery except church
and cathedral towers.
After Cambridgeshire, Norfolk—great stretches of country, bare and
bleak, that the fancy could roam out over as a man can take a walk: a
country like Ireland, where you can dig peat and burn it, where you can
walk miles without hedge or ditch or fence, where three hours from
London you can imagine yourself at the world’s end, from whence the
express steamed rapidly on to the rich abbey-lands surrounding
Wymondham.
And as she looked, she thought—thought of the five years that had come
and gone—come and gone since she travelled from Wymondham to London
before. Shall I tell you of her life, my reader, during those five
years, before we go on to reach the end?
To be a kind mistress, a faithful steward, to occupy herself in good
works, to keep herself from vanity and idleness were, I think, all the
admonitions Mr. Aggland gave his niece when he parted from her among the
Cumberland mountains—excellent in their way, doubtless, but useless for
the sufficient reason that Mrs. Stondon had no household to order, no
wealth to squander, no opportunity of assisting others, no temptation to
be over-proud either of her beauty or her position.
He might as well have told a man without a stomach to be careful of what
he ate; but then Mr. Aggland had expected things to be different, and
so, for that matter, had Phemie herself.
She thought that after the Scottish tour, after a few months on the
Continent, she and her husband would return to Marshlands, and enter on
that home-life which is, I suppose, at some time or other, the temporal
heaven of most women’s imaginations.
She pictured to herself (in a vague, girlish way, of course,) the great
rooms filled with company, the manner in which she would manage her
establishment, the visits she would pay to the poor, the hours she would
devote to study, and behold, as the dream hero and the dream future had
faded out of her past life, so, when she was married, the dream of
usefulness and the dream of a settled home faded more swiftly still, out
of her present.
Captain Stondon did not much like England. Moreover, he desired that
before his wife entered into English society she should combine every
possible accomplishment, every grace of manner, every known knowledge of
_les convenances_ to her other charms.
As a matter of course, Phemie was ignorant of the world, ignorant of its
usages, ignorant of what was expected from her as the mistress of
Marshlands; and equally, perhaps, as a matter of course, Captain Stondon
desired that she should become acquainted with the importance of her own
position; with the world, with its usages, before he introduced her to
society; and he was confirmed in this desire by Phemie’s discomfiture at
Montague Stondon’s.
The girl was mountain bred, and had never been out to a party in her
life.
Every man has his own idea of wisdom, and Captain Stondon’s idea of the
correct thing under the circumstances was to take his wife abroad, and
keep her there.
In which idea he chanced to be wrong. Phemie would have learned more of
the conventionalities of society in a week at home than she could
possibly acquire during a twelvemonths’ residence on the Continent.
She was young enough to be moulded when he married her; she was old
enough to be a little “eccentric” when she returned to England for good.
Those who have been bred and brought up in society, think, and think
wrongly, that it is a difficult matter for a willing pupil to acquire
its accent.
It lays such store by trifles, that it forgets what trifles its usages
really are, how soon they are learnt. It forgets that habit is second
nature, and that if habits can be formed early, they become second
nature itself.
Captain Stondon forgot this, at any rate, and took Phemie abroad in
consequence.
He had found a gem among the Cumberland hills, and he wanted to have it
ground and polished before he presented it to English society.
He did not wish a speck to appear on its surface, a flaw to be even
hinted at. The more valuable he perceived it to be, the more anxious he
became that the world should not see it till no defect could be
perceived, till no exception could be taken to the jewel he had
discovered for himself, and discovering, had wed.
Captain Stondon, like most men who marry below their own station,
desired that his wife should be educated late rather than never; but
unlike the majority of his sex, his desires in this respect were
fulfilled, not disappointed.
With the whole force and strength of her nature, Phemie devoted herself
to learning. She had opportunities, and she embraced them; she had every
advantage of masters that money could procure, and money never was
better spent, than on so industrious and clever a pupil.
How she practised, how she studied, how she observed, no one ever knew
fully except by the result.
Was it easy? It was like going to school after marriage; but
nevertheless, with all her heart and with all her soul, Phemie tried to
improve herself.
Was it happiness? Well, not exactly. But, then, Phemie looked beyond the
drudgery to the reward; beyond the singing lessons to the time when she
could show off her accomplishments in society. As the painter works for
months in solitude, as the danseuse practises her most difficult steps
for hours and days together, as the writer toils to finish his work, as
the poet polishes and polishes his most musical lines, all for one end,
one purpose—fame; so Phemie read, and studied, and laboured, that she
might some day or other acquire social distinction.
Then she tired of it. Then suddenly, like a racer that has strained
every nerve, and racked every muscle to reach the winning post—strained
and racked beyond his strength—falls exhausted at last, a reaction set
in. She wearied of travel, she wearied of hotels, she wearied of change
of scene, wearied with an eternal longing, with a terrible
heart-sickness for home.
It was nature asserting itself. It was the old time, the better time
calling for her to come back ere she went too far ever to return; it was
a passion, it was a fever; and through the long nights Phemie would lie
awake and cry not the less bitterly, because silently, for home—for
home!
When the southern sun was glaring down upon the earth, she thought of
the mountain breezes, of the shady nooks among the hills, of the cool
tarns, of the trickling streams. As a man in the first stage of fever
dreams deliriously of gushing fountains, of flowing waters, so Phemie,
with that home sickness on her, dreamt from morning till night about
Tordale, about her own little room—her own no longer; about the heather,
and the moss, and the ferns; about the clouds floating above Helbeck;
about the mists enveloping Skillanscar.
Cumberland was rarely out of her mind; but when Cumberland faded away
for a moment, it was only that Marshlands might take its place.
She had seen Marshlands, and whenever Tordale seemed too remote a spot
to travel back to, whenever she wanted some nearer resting-place for her
fancy to alight on, she folded her wings there, and wandered up and down
under the elms and the fir-trees, through the gardens and the park, till
she grew weary of imagining, and longed to start for England on the
instant.
She did not like to say all that was in her heart about the matter.
Captain Stondon had so evidently little intention of returning home that
Phemie held her peace till she could refrain no longer.
Then, as is always the case with such natures, the stream burst its
bounds all at once.
“Take me home, Henry, take me home, or I shall die,” was her entreaty;
and without a word of inquiry or remonstrance, Captain Stondon agreed
that they should retrace their steps to England.
But they got no further than Paris. There the son Captain Stondon had
been hoping for was born—dead. There the doctor said that if Phemie
herself were to live, she must turn her face southward again; and with
the old fever not cured, only subdued, Mrs. Stondon agreed to spend
another winter abroad.
“Life was not worth having on the terms,” she told her physician; but
then, as that individual remarked, only in politer terms than I can
possibly translate—
“Her life was not quite her own to throw away for a mere whim. Her
husband—” And that was enough for Phemie. She was very grateful to
Captain Stondon; she would not have pained him for the world; she was
very fond of him; she thought she loved him; she did more, she was sure
she loved him, and so was everybody who saw them together. Her life was
his, and for him she turned her back on England, and within sight of the
promised land journeyed once again to the country, that was as a house
of bondage unto her.
We have all felt home sickness sometime or other; we have all hungered
for the sea, or the hills, or the sun, or the bracing mountain breezes,
with that mental hunger which is worse than any physical suffering; we
have all wanted something in the course of our lives which we could not
get; we have stretched out our hands unavailingly; we have sobbed
through the darkness; we have pined, we have sickened; but the passion
has ended at last, and we have sat down finally contented with our lot.
That was what Phemie did at any rate. She could not have continued
fretting, and lived; but she ceased fretting and grew strong, and when,
after all those years, she and her husband returned to England, there
was no tumult in her breast about anything.
She had forgotten her dreams; she had almost forgotten her past; she had
a kind and devoted husband; she had never repented her marriage; she had
done well; she had made a very good and a very happy thing of life, and
she was travelling down to Marshlands to take her proper place in
society, with no breath of sorrow dimming the bright cold mirror of her
existence.
Her sympathies had fallen to sleep with five years’ want of exercise;
her feelings had grown dull for very lack of sorrow; her intellect was
expanded, her heart narrowed. Scenery itself was not to her now what it
had once been; she looked on it as something which God had created for
the benefit and amusement of the rich; she did not understand people
being tempted; she did not comprehend people going wrong; a very
shocking thing had happened in her husband’s family—a thing which
society never mentioned before him, and Phemie, of course, had been
scandalised by it; but at the same time she could not comprehend how
Montague Stondon could first forge another man’s name, and then
deliberately cut his own throat.
She had not liked Montague Stondon. He had placed her at a disadvantage;
but it was shocking to think of a man committing suicide, and she felt
very sorry for his wife and only son.
At the same time she was unable to understand why Captain Stondon took
the matter so much to heart. He was not to blame. He had advanced money
over and over again, till he grew weary of doing so, and if Mr. Montague
Stondon liked to go and forge, how was her husband to know by intuition
that he had done so?
Was he to blame for declining to send 1000_l._ to the barrister by
return of post? He would have done it had his relative told him the
scrape he had got into, but he had not told him, and Captain Stondon
refused to make the advance, and Montague Stondon cut his throat, and
Captain Stondon paid the money after all.
Phemie thought about Mr. Stondon’s brown eyes and elaborate whiskers and
expensive dinner, as the train swept through the flat lands surrounding
Cambridge.
“How foolish they were to live beyond their means!” thought this wise
young woman, and she would have said and thought the same about any
other sin or shortcoming. That her fellow-creatures were but fallible;
that flesh and blood is prone to error; that to most the right is
difficult, the wrong easy; that the way to hell is broad, that the path
to heaven is narrow;—these were things Phemie had yet to learn; these
were the realities she was travelling home to meet; these were the
lessons she had still to con out of books she had never yet opened.
Intellect, study, knowledge of all abstract sciences, of what value are
they if we remain ignorant of the living volumes around us—if we have no
comprehension of the struggles and temptations, of the sins and the
sorrows, of the agony and the remorse, of the men and the women we meet
day after day?
What shall we learn from Greek or from Roman, if the lines which have
been traced by the hand of our God on the hearts of his creatures remain
to us but as the writing on the wall? What shall it profit a man if he
gain the whole world and lose his own soul? we are asked in the book
which cannot speak foolishly—“if,” as John Bunyan says, “the things of
this world lie too close to his heart; if the earth with its things has
bound up his roots; if he is an earth-bound soul wrapped up in thick
clay?” And, in like manner, it is surely not too much to affirm that all
knowledge and all power, all accomplishments, all grace, all wealth, are
useless, are merely as sounding brass and as tinkling cymbals, unless
there is joined to them a comprehension of the infirmities, temptations,
sufferings of humanity.
To all, prosperity is a trial and a snare; but it is a worse trial and a
worse snare to the young than to the old; for which reason prosperity
had not improved Mrs. Stondon. She had lived a purely selfish existence.
“Fortune had placed a bandage over her eyes.” Driving in a carriage
through the pleasantest roads of this world, she took no thought of
those who were limping along its roughest paths, its flintiest ways,
foot-sore and weary. Fate had been so good to her, it had appointed her
lot beside such cool streams, that she grew hard, and the Phemie who
went out of England was not the Phemie who came back to it five years
later.
And yet she was not changed quite past recognition. The old sweetness,
the old truthfulness, the old frankness, the old steadiness of principle
underlay the superstructure of selfishness and coldness which a too
happy life had reared.
Beneath the world’s burning suns, the flowers of her spring-time had
withered away; but the roots of the plants that had borne those flowers
were still deep in her heart ready to bring forth leaves and buds and
flowers again, and finally fruit if God saw fit; and full though her
existence might be of wealth and prosperity, still there was a vacant
chamber which had never been unlocked by mortal hand, and which all the
pomps and vanities, all the social successes, all the praises, all the
popularity, all the flattery, and all the favour of this world would
have been impotent to fill.
Sometimes when the twilight was stealing over the landscape—sometimes
when the fleecy clouds chased each other across the sky—when she sat
looking up at the great mountains, or from among myrtle bowers gazed out
over the sea—sometimes when she remained very still and very quiet—when
the rush of many feet was silent, when the sound of merriment died away,
when she was alone with herself, alone with her lonely life, with her
empty heart—I think she must have felt that there was a want in her
existence—that she had somehow missed the mark—that God never intended
the Phemie Keller who had danced across the hills to Strammer Tarn, who
had nursed the children at the farm, who had cried if a person only
looked crossly at her, who had been loved and cared for, who had been in
such trouble at leaving the old home faces behind her, to develop into
Phemie Stondon, who, without a pulse throbbing faster at the
anticipation, was travelling home to Marshlands to perform the duties of
her station, or to neglect them, as matters should turn out.
Nevertheless, she was glad to get back to England. The idea of a settled
abode was pleasant to her; she wanted to see her uncle, and Helen, and
Duncan; she thought, with society, that she and Captain Stondon had
stayed away from their duties long enough; she quite believed that court
gentlemen ought to reside for some portion of the year, at all events,
on their properties; and further, she was tired of the Continent, tired
of the heat, tired of the sun, tired of foreign languages, of strange
tongues, of residences which were not homes.
There was another reason why Phemie desired to settle in England: she
was tired of having Captain Stondon constantly at her elbow; but this,
of course, was not the way she put it to herself.
He had those duties to perform I have made mention of before, and he
ought to return to fulfil them. A man of property had scarcely a right
to spend year after year in climbing mountains, in looking at old ruins,
in making foreign friends, in spending money abroad. Phemie quite
thought he ought to take up his abode at Marshlands, and was very glad
when he said that he agreed with her.
Montague Stondon’s death had been a shock to him. It reminded him of
purposes unaccomplished in his own life, of negligence, unfaithfulness,
of good resolutions forgotten, of good intentions unfulfilled. He would
return and do better for the future; and accordingly he returned, and,
unmindful of heat and dust, slept on till the train reached Disley.
It was evening then, and while the carriage which met them at Disley
rolled along the level sandy roads, Phemie looked eagerly and longingly
for the woods surrounding Marshlands. She strained her eyes for them as
she had not strained them to catch a first sight of famous cities far
away, and yet when she beheld the firs and the elms reflected against
the sky, when she saw the trees lifting their heads to heaven, when she
caught the sunset glory bathing the whole scene in a flood of crimson
light, an indefinable feeling of sadness came over her, and her heart
grew heavy to remember that the landscape and the woods were the same as
they had been when she looked upon them soon after her marriage, but
that she was changed—that she was going back another Phemie from the
Phemie her husband had married, to her husband’s house.
END OF VOL. I.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. P. 31, changed “the clergyman looked out his sermon” to “the
clergyman took out his sermon”.
2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.