“He had never spoken much about you before, but the sudden going away
unlocked his heart, and he told me how he loved you, and how he hoped on
his return that you might be his wife.”
“Don’t,” said she, almost gasping out the word, which she had tried once
or twice before to speak; but her voice had been choked. Now she put her
hand backwards; she had quite turned away from me, and felt for mine.
She gave it a soft lingering pressure; and then she put her arms down
on the wooden division, and laid her head on it, and cried quiet tears.
I did not understand her at once, and feared lest I had mistaken the
whole case, and only annoyed her. I went up to her. “Oh, Phillis, I am so
sorry—I thought you would, perhaps, have cared to hear it; he did talk so
feelingly, as if he did love you so much, and somehow I thought it would
give you pleasure.”
She lifted up her head and looked at me. Such a look! Her eyes,
glittering with tears as they were, expressed an almost heavenly
happiness; her tender mouth was curved with rapture—her colour vivid and
blushing; but as if she was afraid her face expressed too much, more
than the thankfulness to me she was essaying to speak, she hid it again
almost immediately. So it was all right then, and my conjecture was
well-founded. I tried to remember something more to tell her of what he
had said, but again she stopped me.
“Don’t,” she said. She still kept her face covered and hidden. In half
a minute she added, in a very low voice, “Please, Paul, I think I would
rather not hear any more—I don’t mean but what I have—but what I am very
much obliged—only—only, I think I would rather hear the rest from himself
when he comes back.”
And then she cried a little more, in quite a different way. I did not say
any more, I waited for her. By-and-by she turned towards me—not meeting
my eyes, however; and putting her hand in mine just as if we were two
children, she said, “We had best go back now—I don’t look as if I had
been crying, do I?”
“You look as if you had a bad cold,” was all the answer I made.
“Oh! but I am—I am quite well, only cold; and a good run will warm me.
Come along, Paul.”
So we ran, hand in hand, till, just as we were on the threshold of the
house, she stopped:
“Paul, please, we won’t speak about _that_ again.”
* * * * *
I never saw her so lovely, or so happy. I think she hardly knew why she
was so happy all the time. I can see her now, standing under the budding
branches of the grey trees, over which a tinge of green seemed to be
deepening day after day, her sunbonnet fallen back on her neck, her hands
full of delicate wood-flowers, quite unconscious of my gaze, but intent
on sweet mockery of some bird in neighbouring bush or tree. She had the
art of warbling, and replying to the notes of different birds, and knew
their song, their habits and ways, more accurately than anyone else I
ever knew. She had often done it at my request the spring before; but
this year she really gurgled, and whistled, and warbled just as they
did, out of the very fulness and joy of her heart. She was more than
ever the very apple of her father’s eye; her mother gave her both her
own share of love and that of the dead child, who had died in infancy.
I have heard Cousin Holman murmur, after a long dreamy look at Phillis,
and tell herself how like she was growing to Johnnie, and soothe herself
with plaintive, inarticulate sounds, and many gentle shakes of the head,
for the aching sense of loss she would never get over in this world. The
old servants about the place had the dumb loyal attachment to the child
of the land common to most agricultural labourers; not often stirred into
activity or expression. My Cousin Phillis was like a rose that had come
to full bloom on the sunny side of a lonely house, sheltered from storms.
I have read in some book of poetry:
“A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love.”
And somehow those lines always remind me of Phillis; yet they were
not true of her either. I never heard her praised; and out of her own
household there were very few to love her; but though no one spoke out
their appreciation, she always did right in her parents’ eyes, out of her
natural simple goodness and wisdom.