OLD FRIENDS AND OLD PLACES.
Time went by, and still Phemie remained unmarried.
Suitors had come, and suitors had gone; but to each and all the widow’s
answer was the same. She would never take a second husband. And so time
went on, and she was still, as I have said, unmarried.
But the years had in other respects worked great changes in her. She was
not the Phemie we have seen in the pages that have been written. She was
outwardly a changed Phemie; a woman who, finding that neither work nor
solitude availed to bring her peace, went in for distraction, and was to
be met with at every concert, flower-show, pic-nic, what you will.
It was Duncan Aggland who had greatly contributed to bring about this
alteration; Duncan, who, seeming to imagine he owned a kind of
reversionary interest in his cousin, had wanted her to cast her fortunes
with his, and when she declined to do so, remarked that she was staying
single for the sake of Basil Stondon—that he knew she was, and that
everybody said (oh! the horror of that everybody) no young woman would
mew herself up at Roundwood as she did if she had not been disappointed
by some one; and that further, he (the speaker) had not been so blind as
perhaps she imagined to the state of affairs at Marshlands.
Mr. Duncan Aggland was very angry, or perhaps he would never have
uttered such very disagreeable truths; and, like all people who are
angry, he got the worst of the encounter, for Phemie thanked him for his
engaging frankness, and begged that for the future he would not consider
Roundwood so much his home as formerly.
“Because,” she finished, “I purpose taking a house in town, and I might
see more of you then than would be at all agreeable if you continued to
visit me as often as you have done.”
“But I am doing so well, Phemie,” he pleaded, becoming submissive in a
moment. “I am to be taken into partnership next year, and——”
“No one can be more delighted to hear of your worldly advancement than
I,” broke in Phemie. “I am charmed to know you are doing so well, and I
have not the least doubt of your ability to maintain a wife; but on
principle I object to the marriage of cousins, and whomsoever I may
choose hereafter to marry, be quite sure it will not be you.”
“That is plain at any rate,” said the young man.
“I meant it to be so,” she answered; “obscurity can serve no good
purpose on either side; you have made a mistake, that is all, and it
would be unkind in me not to undeceive you. Now, good-bye, and when you
meet with any one you consider worthy to become Mrs. Duncan Aggland, I,
as the female head of your family, shall be most happy to call upon
her.” With which speech, Mrs. Stondon dismissed her admirer, and from
that day forth devoted herself, so far as any mere observer could
discover, heart and soul to amusement and frivolity.
People who had seen the widow during her time of mourning marvelled to
behold her, when that time was over, emerging from her seclusion,
accepting all invitations, appearing here and there and everywhere,
seeming to care very little what was thought about her, providing only
she could pass the time and make the hours fly quicker.
“What a flirt that woman is,” some one said, casually, to Basil Stondon,
when speaking of his relative.
“Yes,” thought Basil, as he walked home, “what a flirt! Hang her, she
never was anything but a flirt. If she had, my life might have been a
different one.”
So, when men stumble over a pebble they are apt to blame the pebble
instead of their own stupidity; so, when they fall into a hole they are
in the habit of anathematising the hole for being there instead of their
own blindness which was unable to see it; and so on precisely the same
principle Basil accused Phemie of causing misfortunes which had been
brought about entirely by himself.
As for the life she led—the heartless, purposeless, unsatisfying
life—what can we say but this, that there are some people who when they
are in trouble take to dram-drinking, while others prefer opium; and in
like manner there are men and women who mentally seek the oblivion of
excitement, while others court the deadening monotony of seclusion.
Which is worst—providing the patient must run to either extreme—to one
the wine cup, or to another the opium? They are both so injurious, you
answer, that it would be impossible to make a choice, and yet for Phemie
I think the intoxication of society was the least hurtful of the twain.
To a temperament like hers—secure against disappointment, against love,
against expectations that could never be realised—excitement was surely
less fatal than inaction, the round of gaiety than the round of
endurance.
The world was, as usual, critical and not over kind in its remarks upon
her: some people saying she was seeking for a coronet, others that a
title would content her, even if the title were no higher than that of
baronet.
As to her views and wishes, if she had any, all her own relatives were
at fault, even Mr. Aggland, who only once ventured to say—
“Be cautious, my dear, remember,
That lovely face will fail;
Beauty’s sweet—but beauty’s frail—
’Tis sooner past—’tis sooner done,
Than summer’s rain or summer’s sun
Most fleeting when it is most dear,
’Tis gone while we but say ’tis here.”
To which Phemie answered by putting her hand over his mouth, and saying—
“Ah, uncle, it went long ago; no need to remind me of how fast youth and
beauty pass away.”
They were rather unique, this uncle and niece, and much sought after in
London society accordingly. Every grace of manner, every art and
conventionality Mrs. Stondon had acquired so dearly, she put forth now
to win her popularity and regard.
Her little affectations were brought out once again—brought out and
aired after years. She fenced, she rallied, she retorted, she laughed,
she looked grave, according to the rules she had taken so much trouble
to learn.
Well, well, life is strange, and women are the strangest part of life,
and Phemie could not have given a reason for what she did save this,
that she hoped some day to meet Basil Stondon and his wife in society,
and astonish them with her cold bright wit, her unimpassioned manner,
her worldly ideas, and her unromantic views of life.
And so the years went on, as I have said, and still there was only one
suitor who hung back, one man who felt that a woman like this was not
calculated to make his life happy, his home a peaceful one.
Obedient to the last request her lips had framed, Major Morrice never
through the years lost sight of his dead love’s friend, but visited her,
talked with her, walked with her, and had been so near proposing many
times that the world had almost ground for its gossip when it said at
last they were engaged.
Never, however, even within sight of that shore came they: the woman was
serious—she really did not intend to marry again. When her friends
fancied she was in jest, she spoke in sober earnest.
Had she been as one of those with whom she was associating, she might
have buried not one but twenty husbands, and assisted at the obsequies
of the last with cheerful resignation. But life with its sorrows, was an
earnest affair to Phemie, and its troubles were matters of serious
import to her.
“I suppose you think I like this whirl,” she said, one day, to Major
Morrice; and he answered,
“It is impossible for me to think otherwise, seeing how thoroughly you
seem to enjoy it.”
“One must live,” Mrs. Stondon asserted, a little defiantly.
“True; but is it necessary always to live in public?” he replied.
“It is to me,” she said; “it is to me.”
“Would it be impertinent if I asked why?” and he spoke with a tone of
pity in his voice such as Phemie had not heard previously in the voice
of any one unconnected with her by blood or kinship.
“Because I have no home ties,” she returned; “because I have neither
father nor mother, brother nor sister, husband nor children; because I
am lonely—lonely beyond all power of description. There, you have made
me talk about myself; now forget me. Let us talk about something else.”
“May I talk about myself?” he asked, drawing a little nearer to her.
“Yes; that is always a welcome topic,” she answered. And he went on—
“I, too, am lonely in the world. Why should we not cast our loneliness
together. Will you take me—knowing all the past—for your husband? I will
strive to prove myself worthy of the trust——”
She was astonished—too much astonished perhaps at first to answer; but
at last she slowly said—
“Major Morrice, you do not know what you are saying; you do not know
what you are asking——”
“I am praying you to be my wife,” he replied. “Having loved your friend
as far as man can love, I am beseeching her friend to make me happy.”
She laid her hand on his shoulder, and looked steadily in his face while
she answered—
“Major Morrice, you may know how much the past has taken from me when I
say I cannot accept a husband even like you. I think I may truly affirm
that I love and honour you more than any man on earth; but I cannot
marry you. I would not give one like you the mere husk of a love out of
which the heart was eaten long and long ago.”
Very tenderly he talked to her, but it was of no use. Very earnestly he
pleaded that he had affection enough and to spare for both. Phemie was
resolute.
“You are worthy a better fate,” she said. “I have done harm enough in my
life, let me be fair and true and honest now.”
And she was all these, though it may have been that for the moment she
felt tempted to flee from the awful loneliness of her purposeless
existence—from the cold selfishness of the world to the warmth and the
welcome of his love.
But it was not to be—it was never to be. She had toiled for her wages in
the years which were gone, and her wages were now being paid to her by
no niggardly hand.
That which we contract for we must fulfil—that which we agree blindly,
or with our eyes open, to receive, we must content ourselves withal.
“The wages of sin is death.” She had sinned, and death fell on every
blade of grass near her—on every shrub—on every flower.
It was the summer time, and a great longing came over her to see the
hills and the mountains and the valleys and the wild dale country once
more.
“I should like to go to Cumberland for a month,” she said, one day; and
accordingly she and her uncle and Helen set forth together on that long
northern journey which wearied Phemie even before she reached the old
“Salutation” Inn, which has greeted so many a tourist entering the Lake
District.
But, spite of her weariness, she could not rest in the hotel. Tired and
exhausted, Helen went off to bed, while Mr. Aggland and his niece walked
along the road which leads from Ambleside to Rydal.
They walked in silence; he was busy with his thoughts, she with hers.
They had come back to the old country again, though not to the old
place. They had crossed the frontier and passed out of the flat, rich
southern lands into the lake district, where mountains rose to the sky
and streams came down the hill sides; and the traveller, wandering
solitary over the fells, heard the plash of distant waterfalls alone
breaking the desolate silence.
They had come back from the bustle of great towns, from intercourse with
many men, from the life which always grows more rapid and more exciting
the nearer people draw towards London—to the old quiet home, to the
tarns, to the heather, to the mountains, to the valleys, which were all
the same as when Phemie had dwelt among them, the adopted daughter of
the owner of the Hill Farm.
She had left the wild mountain country when the sun was shining
brightly; in the noontide, in the light; she returned to walk through it
once more, but the grey evening shadows were settling down over the
landscape, as the shadows had settled upon her life. She left it to
become a great lady, and she had achieved that object. She had gained
wealth and position, and she was now wondering, as she looked to right
and left, what wealth and position availed.
They walked on, and the pure sweet air coming down from among the hills
seemed to put fresh life into her, to restore something of the
elasticity of her youth. Side by side, still in silence, they passed by
Rydal Hill, through Rydal village, and so on till they came within sight
of a house which most tourists in that part of England must have paused
to admire. It is a cottage set back a little from the road, looking over
Rydal Lake, with Nab Scar and Helm Crag overshadowing it, with the sweet
greenery of that lovely country swelling away from it on all sides, with
the summer flowers giving forth their sweetest perfume around it, with
climbers and creepers trailing over it—a delightful spot in which to
live, a sad place in which to die.
There are nooks on the earth that seem too beautiful to leave; there are
seasons when everything in nature is so perfect, when her skies are so
soft, her woods so leafy, her sunsets so gorgeous, her mornings so
bright and gladsome, her streams so clear, her lakes so calm, her
flowers and shrubs so fragrant, that it seems impossible for man to go
away from all this beauty and brightness, to close his eyes on the face
of this lovely world, and never to open them in time again.
Some thought of this kind came across Phemie’s mind as she stood looking
at the lake and the landscape, which now lay bathed and steeped in
moonlight. For the first time for years she felt that there was a
happiness in the mere fact of existence; that no human being can have
quite done with life so long as he remains in the flesh. It came upon
her suddenly that she had been wrong, that she had done wrong, in
suffering herself to grow so weary of so beautiful a world; and as out
of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh, so out of her heart
dropped the sentence,
“I think one might grow almost happy again, uncle, living in a place
like this.”
Then they turned and retraced their steps, talking as they went, talking
under the moonlight of many things about which they had held their peace
for years; and it was getting late when they found themselves in
Ambleside once more, and entering the Salutation, at the door of which
hotel some excursionists were just alighting.
“Mother, and father, and children,” decided Phemie, as she passed them
by; and she would have gone upstairs and thought no more of them but for
a voice which she fancied she knew, exclaiming,
“Don’t run in so rudely, Harry; keep back, sir.” Whereupon at once the
lady said, “You are always snubbing that boy, Basil.”
The person so addressed never turned to answer; he caught the child, who
was rushing past Phemie, with one hand, while with the other he raised
his hat and apologised for his son’s forwardness.
“You need not apologise to me,” answered Phemie; “we are too old friends
to stand on ceremony.” And she put out her hand and clasped his again
after years—after years.
“Well, I declare,” cried Mrs. Basil Stondon, while they all stood
grouped together in the hall; “if this is not a pleasant surprise. Who
would have thought of meeting you here?”
“There is nothing extraordinary in meeting me,” Phemie answered; “the
wonder is meeting you.”
“It was a fancy of Basil’s,” that gentleman’s wife replied. “He wanted
to come north—and so we came north; we have been here, in Westmoreland I
mean, ten days, and I for one was getting terribly sick of it; but now
you are in the same place it will make a difference. It is so horrid
being among strangers, not having a soul one knows to speak to.”
Phemie agreed that to be so placed must indeed be distressing; and they
all adjourned upstairs, and having arranged to spend the evening
together, the ladies took off their bonnets while the gentlemen ordered
tea.
“And you positively look younger than when I saw you last,” remarked
Mrs. Basil Stondon, querulously; “but it is easy for you to look young:
free from care and without children, and surrounded by every blessing
and comfort, why should you not keep your beauty?”
“I have not kept it,” answered Phemie, and she sighed as she spoke;
though the past with its vanities, and its temptations, and its sorrows
and its repentance seemed like a dream to her at the moment. “I have not
kept it, and there is no reason why I should have kept it. Youth cannot
stay with us for ever, Georgina; if it did, girls would have small
chance of ever being either wooed or wed.”
There was a little side blow in this sentence, and Georgina felt it. Her
youth had helped her to secure Basil, a prize she often told him was
scarcely worth the trouble, to which remark he had a habit of retorting—
“You did not think so at one time, at least, judging by the trouble you
took,” for Basil never hesitated to remind his wife of the efforts she
had made to win him, and was not over delicate about recapitulating to
her all the advantages she had gained for herself by the match.
They lived such a life that the presence of any stranger seemed a
relief; and accordingly both husband and wife eagerly pressed Mr.
Aggland, and Phemie, and Helen to join them in their various excursions,
and to make up parties for visiting Keswick, and Coniston, and
Ullswater, and many a lovely spot much more accessible from Ambleside
than those just enumerated.
Day after day they passed together, evening after evening they spent,
talking in the moonlight or across the tea-table; but the more Phemie
saw of Basil and his wife, the more wretched she felt satisfied they
were.
Georgina had not found the game all profit, and was disappointed in some
way. Basil did not care for the woman he had married, and took no pains
to conceal that the only creature for whom he now lived, and moved, and
had his being, was Harry, his son and heir, whom his mother spoiled past
redemption, and encouraged in all acts of disobedience and rebellion,
possibly to annoy his father.
As for the little girl, she went to the wall entirely; neither father
nor mother seemed to recognise her as belonging to the same species as
Master Harry, who was for ever up to some mischief, and being
perpetually called to account for his misdeeds by Basil, who “snubbed
the child,” so said his wife.
“And I do hope,” exclaimed Georgina, when the day of separation came at
last, “that you will come and spend a long time with me in Norfolk. It
would be a real charity, for Basil is scarcely ever in the house. He
leaves me alone from morning till night. Now do come, will you?”
“Do you really wish me to come, Georgina?” asked Mrs. Stondon, who had
latterly begun to doubt whether she heard and saw correctly. “Are you
speaking honestly and truly, when you say you wish I would do so?”
“Honestly and truly, and there is my hand on it,” laughed Georgina.
“And your husband?”
“Oh! my husband must answer for himself. I never presume to understand
what may be the state of Basil’s mind on any subject. If you wish him to
invite you also, I will ask him to write you a letter requesting the
honour, et cetera; but I should have thought my invitation sufficient.
You are such a great lady now, though, there is no knowing how to deal
with you.”
“I will come,” answered Phemie, suddenly, “sometime in the autumn, when
the trees are looking their best.”
“That is a dear good creature,” remarked Mrs. Basil Stondon, mentally
adding, “now that will drive Mrs. Montague away; and if I once get her
out of the house, I will take precious good care she never enters it
again.”
From which speech it will be perceived that Georgina Stondon was not a
particularly different individual from Georgina Hurlford, but rather
that she was capable of planning and scheming a little still.
Late in the season Phemie returned to Roundwood; but she had not been
long settled there before a letter arrived from Marshlands entreating
her not to forget her promise, but to come as soon as ever she could,
and bring her uncle with her.
His part of the performance Mr. Aggland emphatically declined, and he
could not quite resist saying to his niece—
“Phemie, do you think it is right for you to go? Are you safe—are you
strong—are you not mad, think you, to fling yourself into such peril
again?”
They were standing in the drawing-room at Roundwood as he spoke thus, he
on one side of the centre table, she on the other; and the light of the
wax candles fell full on her face as she remained for a moment silent
ere she answered—
“I am safe—I am strong—and I am not mad—and I place myself in no peril.
I am speaking the truth,” she added, with a smile. “I have no feeling
now for Basil Stondon except that of friendship and pity. Seeing him as
he is—not as I fancied him, but as he actually is—has done more towards
curing me than all my punishment—than all my resolution.”
And she put her hand in his, and he felt that it did not tremble—that
every finger lay passive—that every nerve seemed still.
“A woman’s mind is one of the inscrutable mysteries of this earth to
me,” decided Mr. Aggland, as he thought over the puzzle of Phemie’s
conduct in his own apartment. “I reared that woman—I watched her in
childhood, girlhood—and best part of her womanhood I have spent by her
side—and yet I know no more about her than if she were the greatest
stranger upon earth. Well, she seems resolved to put herself in danger,
but it is not my fault. Now, heaven and earth,” finished the perplexed
philosopher, “is it?”
Down to Disley, Phemie travelled—over the old familiar ground the train
swept on; and she took off her bonnet, and, drawing the blue curtain so
as to shade her eyes from the glare of the light, looked out across the
country just as she had done that day when she returned to Norfolk after
her long sojourn abroad.
The fields were the same—the stations—the towns—the hedgerows—the
poplars. Everything seemed unchanged excepting herself.
There was a great hush in the still autumn afternoon—a strange quietness
in the air. Phemie thought of that journey afterwards, and remembered
how often a calm precedes a storm. She was travelling down into Norfolk,
all unconsciously, to fulfil a mission; and as the train sped on she
tried to account to herself for the desire she felt to revisit
Marshlands and to spend a few weeks with Basil and his wife.
It was no love for Basil. She knew that. She had examined her heart, and
found the idol in possession no longer. Her youth had gone, and the
passionate attachment of her youth with it. And yet something
remained—some tie of memory, or association, or affection, or pity,
which was strong enough to bring the woman back to Marshlands—to the
dear home where she had been so happy and so wretched.
There came a point in that journey, however—at Cambridge, I think—when
Phemie, unable fully to analyse her own sensations, turned coward, and
would fain have gone back again.
She dreaded the sight of the old place, of the familiar rooms, the
resurrection of the thousand-and-one recollections. She did not know
whether, after all, she could be quite brave when the pines and the elms
appeared standing clear against the sky as of yore. One by one the
details of the picture which had been blurred and destroyed a little by
the lapse of years came out clearly and distinctly before her view.
Only one thing she could not realise fully. Basil master of Marshlands,
Georgina mistress, she herself their guest; children’s voices echoing
about the place, and those very children leaving their games and their
amusements, their father and their mother, to come to her.
Was that the bait which lured the lonely woman back to her old home? I
do not know how she could have blinded and deluded herself into
ignorance on this point when she knew that the only gentle, womanly
tears she had shed for years fell over the face of Basil’s little girl.
She had never desired children—she had always held them away from her at
arm’s length, and yet now she would have liked to carry “Fairy,” as she
called her, back to Roundwood, whether for love of the little creature,
or for love of its father, or simply because she wanted to have
something all to herself, who can say? Only one fact is certain—the only
pleasant hours she passed in Marshlands were those when she and Fairy
wandered about the grounds hand-in-hand—when the child came to her room
and listened to story and legend and song—when the little feet came
running to meet her, making sweet pattering music by the way—when the
soft arms were stretched out to “Mamma Phemie,” to “dear, dear Mamma
Phemie,” who came at last to the conclusion it was best for her to leave
Marshlands before Basil saw what an idiot she had grown.
But Basil saw it all—saw how his children turned from his wife to the
woman he still loved better than his wife, and he grew angry at Georgina
for having asked Phemie to the house, and words at last waxed hot
between them on the subject.
For ever and for ever they were quarrelling, so far as difference of
opinion was concerned, and wrangling over their differences. Phemie’s
presence or Phemie’s absence signified little, only the quarrels became
more vehement. Basil accused Georgina of striving to hurt and annoy him,
Georgina declared that he had by his temper driven away every old
acquaintance they possessed, and that she was determined to have
somebody to speak to.
“If Mrs. Stondon were the devil,” she remarked, with somewhat unladylike
vehemence, “I would cultivate her. I mean to go and stay with her. I
intend to be asked to her house in town, and I do not intend to live any
longer with your mother.”
“If you mean to have your own way in everything, then,” retorted Basil,
“you had better put in your list that you will have to live without me.”
“That would be no loss—a decided gain,” replied Georgina. And thus the
battle terminated for the time, only to be resumed the next day about
Harry, who, young though he was, should, his father declared, be sent to
school forthwith, unless his mother would have him kept out of the
stable-yard, and away from the horse’s heels.
“I tell you now what it is,” said Basil, collecting all the men and
women servants together, and addressing them _en masse_, “the first time
I find Master Harry in the stables, or out about the grounds anywhere by
himself, I will discharge you every one. Take this for notice, for by ——
I will keep my word.”
“What a milksop you would make of the boy,” sneered Mrs. Basil Stondon.
“What must the servants think of you?”
“They cannot think less of me than I do of myself for ever having been
such a cursed fool as to marry you,” retorted Basil. Whereupon one word
led, as usual, to more, and the quarrel terminated in Basil flinging a
few things into a portmanteau and starting for a friend’s house, as was
his wont whenever matrimony and the cares thereof grew too much for him.
Fain would Phemie have followed his example and taken flight also, but
Georgina entreated her so earnestly to remain, that Mrs. Stondon
yielded, and wrote to her uncle not to expect her at Roundwood for a
week or ten days.
“Now I hope to heaven,” was Mr. Aggland’s secret thought, “she is not
getting too fond of that place again, nor of its owner.” And his hope
was fulfilled.
Phemie had grown perfectly sick of the place, but she stayed on as a
matter of kindness to Georgina, and perhaps, also, with some faint hope
of opening the misguided woman’s eyes, and making his home more
comfortable for Basil.
“It is of no use talking,” remarked Georgina, one morning; “he ought to
have married you, that is the whole secret of the affair, and—and——” She
turned her head sharply away, and Phemie heard her sob. She had packed
the cards, she had won all she asked for, and this was the result—a
wretched home, a neglectful husband, a cat and dog existence. How could
Phemie help—spite of all the misery Georgina had wrought her—feeling
sorry for the unhappy wife?
“You might surely make a better thing of your life still,” she said,
gently, “if you would only agree to bear and forbear; if you would only
bring up Harry as his father wishes; if you would only just try for a
little time, the effect of meeting his views instead of thwarting them,
I am certain you might be a great deal more comfortable. I am confident
Basil would pay back every concession with interest.”
“He would not,” she answered, slowly. “You may think you know Basil, but
you do not. He has never forgiven me, and he never will. He might not
have cared much for you had you been married to him, but as you were
not, he thinks he only required you to make him the happiest man on
earth. I thought I could have made him love me once,” she went on,
speaking more rapidly; “but I was mistaken. The way to make a man like
my husband hate you, is to belong to him. I ought not to show you what
an escape you had,” she added; “but I owe you a good turn for the bad
one I did you when I was a girl; and for all the rest, I have forgiven
you long ago, I have indeed.”
“You are very kind,” answered Phemie; “but I have not the slightest idea
what you had to forgive.”
“Have you not? I may tell you some day, but not at present.” And
Georgina walked, as she spoke, to the window, opened it, and stepped out
on the balcony mentioned in the earlier portion of this story.
She remained leaning over it for a few minutes, turning every now and
then to address some sentence to Phemie, who stood behind her in the
drawing-room. She talked much about Miss Derno, and how greatly she had
disliked her, how firmly she had believed in her designs on Basil.
“I really thought at the time,” she was proceeding, when she suddenly
stopped.
“What—what is it?” she broke out. “What are they bringing? Mrs.
Stondon—quick—look, do you see that?”
Phemie ran, at the words, into the balcony, and then as instantly left
it, and rushed from the drawing-room, and out at the front door, and
round the house, and through the shrubberies, to a point where she met
the men who had attracted Georgina’s attention.
“What is the matter?” she asked, with a quick look behind to see if
Georgina were following. “What is it?” And the group parted in silence
and let her look for herself.
Involuntarily she cried out, and the cry was repeated at her elbow by
the wretched mother, who shrieked—
“I knew it was Harry. Bring him in and send for the doctor. Ride for
your lives. Why do you all stand there doing nothing?” she went on
fiercely, for the men never moved, but looked either down to the ground,
or else each in his fellow’s face. “Do you hear me? Go for the doctor.
Give me my son.”
“Give him to me,” Phemie said, and they put the child into her arms. His
little hand dropped limp as they did so, and his head fell back.
“Ride for the doctor,” Phemie ordered, “for your mistress.” And she led
the way into the house, carrying the dead heir of all those broad lands,
of all that fine property, while the men lifted Georgina from the
ground, where she had dropped, not absolutely fainting, but down in an
incapable heap, and bore her in after the boy, for whose sake she had
once forgotten her pain and her travail, and rejoiced that there was a
man-child born into the world!