CONFESSIONS.
The months went by, and there were changes at Roundwood; such changes as
Phemie had prophesied. If Major Morrice’s wooing was long, his wedding
was speedy; and early in the ensuing year he took his wife to her new
abode.
Was Olivia Derno forgotten? you ask, and I answer No; but the man had
his life to live though she was dead, and he felt it no slight on her
memory to marry one who had known and loved her.
It was a very good match for Helen. “Very wonderful,” said Mrs. Keller,
with her nose in the air, “for a poor farmer’s daughter.”
“Never mind, Mrs. Keller,” observed Phemie, with that terrible knack of
reading people’s thoughts which her relative had noticed on the occasion
of her first visit. “Major Morrice would have been almost too old a
husband for any of your girls, and we will see what we can do for them
yet. I think I have been a rather successful match-maker.”
At this Mrs. Keller bridled, and wondered what Mrs. Stondon was talking
about.
“About your daughters,” answered Phemie quietly. “You do not want them
to live single all their lives, I suppose; and if eligible husbands
offer, you will not say them nay. Had I daughters, I should give them
every opportunity of falling in love I could devise——”
“My dear Mrs. Stondon!”
“My dear Mrs. Keller!”
“Is it not time enough,” said the latter lady, “to consider these
matters when a gentleman proposes?”
“And treat marriage as an alliance between two high and mighty powers,
instead of an affair between man and woman,” answered Phemie. “Just as
you will. Let the girls come down here and stay, taking their chance of
meeting a good husband, as they might of meeting a desirable
acquaintance; or keep them away, it is immaterial to me; only, had I
girls, I should give them an opportunity of making their choice, and
deciding whom they loved best, before the irrevocable words were
spoken—the matrimonial Rubicon crossed.”
Mrs. Keller laughed, and said her hostess was eccentric; but for all
that she let her girls be among the number of Helen’s bridemaids, and
felt quite a maternal flutter when she heard a bachelor baronet was one
of Major Morrice’s dearest friends and his nearest neighbour.
To the surprise of every one interested in the matter, however, Duncan
Aggland conceived a most violent affection for the second Miss Keller,
and begged her mother to consider his request favourably.
He was not a baronet, and he was in business, but still the lady
consented to ignore his trade for the sake of his income.
“There are many engineers Members of Parliament,” she remarked
meditatively to Mrs. Stondon, at which observation Phemie laughed till
she was weary.
“Pray do not put that idea into Duncan’s mind,” she said, “or he will
never attend to his business;” and Mrs. Keller took the advice and held
her peace.
“The birds are all on the wing, uncle,” she said to Mr. Aggland one day,
“and we shall soon be left solitary;” but it was in a more cheerful tone
than formerly Phemie spoke. The days brought their duties with them, and
the due discharge of daily duties ultimately ensures happiness to the
man or woman who tries to act aright.
“And it will soon be summer again,” Phemie proceeded; “where shall we go
this year?”
They sat in the twilight of the spring evening talking about this place,
and about that; and then as the darkness drew on the night became
cloudy, and the rain began to patter against the window-panes. The wind
rose also, and they could hear the angry rush of the waves as they came
rolling up louder and louder upon the shore.
“Heaven have mercy on those who are out at sea,” said Mr. Aggland,
looking forth into the gathering darkness, “for it is going to be a wild
night;” and at the words Phemie shivered with the strange shivering of
old.
She moved to the piano and played the first few bars of Handel’s “Lord,
what is man?” then she rose again and stirred the fire into a blaze, and
pulled the chairs into comfortable positions, and turned the lamp up to
a desirable height, and then stood before the hearth meditatively.
“Sing for me, Phemie dear, if you are not tired,” said her uncle, who
knew that when these restless moods came on, music was the best and,
indeed, the only sedative. “Sing for me a song or a hymn, a ballad or a
psalm—what you will, only sing.”
Obediently she walked across the room and began making melody. Now she
sang, and again she played; now it was “_Ave Verum_,” and then she
stopped abruptly and drew her hands from the instrument, only to
commence that sonata of Beethoven’s which contains within its leaves the
Funeral march upon the death of a Hero.
“What a night it is!” she broke off at last to say, “do you hear the
rain?”
“And how the wind is howling!” answered Mr. Aggland; “it puts me in mind
of the way it used to come up the valley at Tordale, running like a
racehorse between the hills, and then flinging itself against our door.
Do you remember how it beat for admittance—how it rattled against the
windows—how it screamed and shrieked, as if it were a living thing, to
be let in—only to be let in?”
“Yes,” Phemie said, pursuing the same idea; “and how it used to go away,
sobbing and moaning like one in great pain, across the moor to Strammer
Tarn. I often thought in those days I should have loved to be beside the
Tarn when the night wind came home there; I always felt as though it
lived among those great rocks and boulders. Do you not wonder whether it
is as rough a night up in the Cumberland Hills as it is down here by the
coast? Do you wonder who is living in the old place now, and whether
they are gathered close round the fire as we had a way of gathering when
the wind was howling at the door?”
“I often think about the old place, Phemie,” he said. “When I am sitting
quietly here by your fireside, dear, in such peace and comfort as I once
thought never to know, my fancy turns many and many a time back to
Tordale; it was a sweet spot—ay, you might travel far to find one
lovelier—beautiful as Roundwood is, I never can fancy it so perfect as
Tordale. I wish we had a drawing of the valley. I think I shall ask
Duncan, next time he is in the north, to bring me a sketch of it.”
She turned a little from the piano, and, leaning her elbow on the keys,
bade him go on and talk to her about their Cumberland home—
“Which I supposed we shall love best of all,” she finished, “to the
end.”
“Yes,” Mr. Aggland replied, “probably, for—
‘This fond attachment to the well-known place,
Whence first we started into life’s long race,
Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,
We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.’
—But, mercy on us! how the rain is coming down! I do not think I ever
heard heavier rain even in Cumberland;” and he rose as he spoke, and,
putting the curtains aside, looked out into the night.
Just then there came a ring at the front door—a peal, hurried, loud, and
yet conveying the idea of the bell having been pulled by an unsteady
hand.
“Who on earth can it be at this hour, and in such a storm?”
Phemie had started up as the peal echoed through the house, and uncle
and niece stood looking apprehensively in each other’s faces for a
moment, wondering what could be wrong.
“It must be a message from one of the boys,” said Mr. Aggland, hurrying
next instant to the drawing-room door; but before he could reach it a
servant announced Mr. Basil Stondon, and that gentleman entered.
“What a night for you to choose,” exclaimed Mr. Aggland.
“What have you got there?” asked Phemie, pointing to something which lay
hidden under Basil’s coat.
“A trifle for you to take care of for me,” he answered, “if you will;”
and he put the rough covering gently aside, and showed her Fay lying
fast asleep in his arms.
“Basil”—Phemie could not find another word to say to him.
“What is the meaning of it?” Mr. Aggland asked. “Is your wife ill—are
you mad—or is she dead?”
“She is dead to me,” Basil answered; “take my child, Phemie, and let me
go; I only came to ask you to be kind to her.”
The water was absolutely dripping off him as he spoke—he stood in a
little pool in the centre of the room—outside, the rain was pouring down
in torrents, and mingling with the noise of the rain was the howling of
the wind and the rushing sound upon the shore, of the not far distant
sea.
“Go up to my uncle’s room and change your clothes directly,” was
Phemie’s unromantic comment on this explanation; “give me the child.
Basil, you are mad.”
For some time he stood it out with her that he would neither change his
dripping garments nor remain in Roundwood even for the night.
“Where are you going?” asked Phemie.
“I have no plan; I am not sure; I do not know.”
“Well, then, I do,” she interrupted. “You will go direct off to bed, and
take something at once to prevent your catching your death of cold.”
“He was not cold,” he persisted. “He was burning with heat—he had walked
over from the station carrying Fay—and——”
“Took off your top-coat to keep her dry,” again interrupted Phemie; “the
consequence of which will be that if you do not take immediate care of
yourself, you will be seriously ill.”
“He did not mind that—he should like to be ill—he should like to die. If
it had not been for Fay, he would first have shot Georgina, and then
himself.”
“What has she done?” asked Phemie, hushing the child, who, having been
awakened by the light and the talking, had begun to cry.
“She has been false to me,” he answered.
“Nonsense,” retorted Phemie. “Basil, you are mad, as I said before.”
“Perhaps so; but a thing like that is enough to make a man feel a little
discomposed;” and he thrust a letter into her hand, which she held
unopened while she said:—
“Now be reasonable, and listen to me. Standing in your wet clothes, or
wandering about the country, will not mend matters in the least. Unless
you do what I ask you, I will not take care of Fay; I will not even put
her to bed, nor take charge of her for a single night.”
“But why should I remain?” he began; which sentence Phemie cut short by
directing a meaning glance towards her uncle, who at once laid his hand
on Mr. Stondon’s arm and led him from the room.
Then Phemie rang for her maid, and gave Fay into her charge, after which
she unfolded the missive Basil had left with her, and read one of the
most glowing and tender loveletters it had ever fallen to her lot to
peruse.
Her first idea was that her senses must be playing her some trick; her
next was a purely feminine wonder as to what manner of man could have
become so desperately enamoured of Georgina Stondon.
“After that,” said Mistress Phemie to herself, “I will never disbelieve
in witchcraft again;” and she remained standing beside the fire, not so
much shocked as astonished—lost, in fact, in such a labyrinth of
amazement and conjecture as completely bewildered her senses.
“I would not have believed it, Basil,” she said, “if I had not seen it;
and I do not believe it yet.”
Mr. Aggland brought their unexpected guest downstairs again to the
drawing-room, and then left him and his niece to talk the matter over
together.
“I quite agree with you, Phemie, that he is mad,” he whispered ere he
went; “but he will be better in the morning if you can only induce him
to eat something and go quietly to bed. Let him talk—it will do him
good.”
Having received which piece of advice, Phemie went back to the man she
had once loved so passionately, and spoke to him the words I have
written.
“I would not have believed it had I not seen it, and I do not believe it
yet.”
He looked up at her with a sad, hopeless expression in his face.
“She did not deny it, and I gave her the chance of doing so.”
What could any one say in reply to this? Even Phemie stood mute; while
he went on angrily:—
“What did I ever do, that she should have played me false? Have I not
been a good husband to her? Has she not had wealth and standing? Was she
not poor, and did I not make her rich? If we did quarrel at times, it
was all her own fault. Since—since Harry died, I swear to you, Phemie, I
never have spoken a cross word to her—never. I have tried to live at
peace with her. If I had been like other husbands——”
“Oh, Basil, stop!—oh, Basil, stop!” Phemie cried out shrilly, like one
in some bodily pain; for, as he spoke, there came up before her the
memory of another husband very unlike Basil indeed—a husband who had
taken a young girl from poverty and drudgery to raise her to wealth and
station—a husband who had never looked coldly on her—a husband who stood
between his wife and the world—who had been so careful of her reputation
that he would not acknowledge even to her that her purity was in
peril—who removed the stumbling-block from her path, and the snare from
her feet—and then grew suddenly old and infirm, and died bearing his
burden of sorrow to the grave with him patiently.
Till she heard this man vaunting himself—this poor, weak, selfish sinner
thanking God that he was not as other sinners—it had never fully come
home to her what a great heart it was he and she had mutually
broken—what a grand nature they had tricked and deceived.
But the dagger had found the vulnerable point at last, and every nerve
in Phemie’s body thrilled with pain as she implored of him to stop.
For a moment he stared at her in surprise, but then he knew how he had
hurt her—how and where; and a dead silence ensued—a silence like that
which fell between them when she took her place opposite to his in the
railway carriage, and told him there was no need to hurry.
During that pause each fought out a mental battle, and then, when they
had waged their conflict, beaten down separately the phantoms that came
up to reproach them, Phemie turned to Basil and said calmly, as though
that cry of irrepressible agony had never escaped her lips:
“There is no name. Have you any idea who it is?”
“Not the least,” he answered; “but I will know; I will find it out; I
will free myself and my child from her—I will.”
“No, you shall not,” Phemie interrupted. “Let Georgina be what she may,
you shall not do this thing until, at all events, you have had time to
think over the matter calmly and justly. You shall hold your peace about
her; you shall make no scandal; you have been mad enough in coming here
in this fashion to-night, and bringing Fairy with you, and talking
before the child as you have done; but that is all the more reason why
you should be quiet and prudent now.”
She calmed him down by degrees, and after a time, although she could not
get him to go to bed, she did induce him to eat something, and to sit
down before the fire, “like a rational being,” as she observed.
When he thought Mr. Stondon must have had ample time to say his say, Mr.
Aggland re-entered the room, and urged upon him the desirability of his
at once swallowing a certain decoction of herbs, which would, so that
gentleman assured him, prevent his having to retire into what Charles
Lamb calls “that regal solitude, sickness.”
“I should like to be sick,” retorted the other, pettishly.
“Should you?” said Mr. Aggland; “’twould be a pity, then, to balk so
reasonable a fancy;” and he leaned back in his chair and gave over the
patient, who remained looking steadfastly at the fire, while from a
little distance Phemie contemplated him.
He was a young man no longer; his youth, like her own, had flitted by,
leaving no outward traces of its former presence. He was not the Basil
Stondon who had come to her beside Strammer Tarn, brushing his way
through the heather to the spot she occupied. He was middle-aged, and
worn and haggard, not in the least resembling the dream-hero who had
crossed the hills too late—too late.
When she thought of that hero, Phemie could see the man no more for the
tears that blinded her.
Dreams, friends—dreams! I wonder if we ever shed such bitter tears when
the realities of our lives are destroyed and the once sure earth cut
from beneath our feet, as we do when, in a mist-wreath, the air-castle
vanishes—when the once limitless lands of our fairy kingdom disappear in
the depths of the ocean, and are lost to our sight for ever.
Prosperous as her life had proved, Phemie at any rate found it hard to
look back upon the dreams and fantasies of her girlish days with
equanimity.
She had been thinking much of Tordale and the Hill Farm—of the old old
life—of the beauty of that secluded valley—of the Church—of the
waterfall, of the mountains and the fells—before Basil broke in upon her
reminiscences; and now she could not help bringing his figure as she
remembered it into the mental picture likewise—she could not avoid
recalling _that_ day—when, among the glorious sights and sounds of
summer, he crossed the hills in order to tell her all his love.
Strammer Tarn at that moment was more real to her than her luxuriously
furnished room at Roundwood. Basil—the dream-hero Basil, the careless,
handsome, thoughtless, wicked, and yet not intentionally wicked
sinner—was more real to her than Georgina’s husband. She, herself, was
for the moment no widow—no worn, changed woman—but a wife in the full
flush of her beauty, resisting the temptation to which that very beauty
had exposed her, trying to stand firm against his love and her own.
It was all like a story to her that night, like a real tale of another
person’s life, and I think the Phemie who was no longer young, and who
had passed through much suffering, and who knew that no temptation could
come to her to shake her more, felt sorry for that far-away figure
which, crouching among the heather and the grass and the wild thyme,
wept passionately.
Does the tale grow wearisome, reader?—are these particulars too minute?
If they be, bear with me still a little, I pray, for the story is
drawing to its end; the last page will soon be reached, the final touch
given to the figures we have been studying, the volume completed, the
book closed and laid aside; and before that end is reached, I would have
you take in the retrospect of Phemie Keller’s life as she took it in,
and regard her, as for one moment she regarded the girl, and the woman,
she beheld standing young and fanciful and foolish—young and beautiful
and tempted—pityingly.
But not one half so much pity did she feel for that former self, as she
did for the man who sat by her hearth, whose punishment had fallen upon
him so late.
Thinking of the Basil she had known—thinking of all he might have made
of his life—of his opportunities—of his position—of his friends—of his
winning manners—of his frank, free, generous disposition—Phemie thought
her heart must break for very pity, for very remorse, to remember she
had ever a hand in bringing about so poor an ending to a once promising
story.
How might a woman like herself, had she only been true, and kept him
from loving her, or changed his unholy love into respect and trust and
admiration, not have moulded such a nature.
He had loved Miss Derno, and yet Miss Derno came in time to be the best
friend, the most faithful adviser his manhood ever knew.
“Oh! if I had only loved him less, or loved my husband more,” thought
the poor soul, as a finish to her own bitter reflections; “_this_ need
never have come upon him; he might have stayed in England and married a
different wife, and been happy instead of wretched; useful in his
generation, instead of a mere cumberer of the ground.”
When she had arrived at this point in her argument, Basil came back from
his mental journey, wherever it had taken him, and speaking like a man
wakened suddenly from sleep, said that he thought he should like to bid
her goodnight, that he was beginning to feel very chilly.
“You had better take my prescription,” observed Mr. Aggland; and Basil
did take the dose, which proved impotent, however, to work the cure its
discoverer promised it should effect, for next morning he was so ill he
could not rise, and before the following night fever set in, and for a
time all his troubles were forgotten.
He raved frantically indeed, but not about his sorrows; as is often the
case, his mutterings contained no reference to the cause of his illness;
he wandered in imagination, not through the night carrying his child
with him, not across the seas to seek his fortune, not over the hills to
find Phemie, blue-eyed and auburn-haired; but backwards and forwards—to
and fro in a land full of strange fancies—of mad vagaries—of unreal
horrors—of fearful delusions—of horrible spectres.
Very rapidly he got worse, so rapidly, indeed, that before Mrs. Montague
Stondon could be written to and arrive from Paris, which capital she was
then honouring with her presence, the doctors had begun to look very
grave, and, to adapt an old saying to present use, although they hoped
the best, evidently believed the worst.
When it came to that, Phemie declared that, let the consequences be what
they might, she should send for his wife; and Georgina was sent for
accordingly.
Almost before Phemie thought it possible she could arrive, Mrs. Basil
Stondon reached Roundwood, reached it with the cold hardness, with the
insolent sarcasm beaten and pinched out of her face.
“Why did you not write to me before?” she asked, almost fiercely.
“Because I was not certain whether I ought to write at all,” Phemie
replied.
“Then he came straight to you: I might have known he would; and Fay is
here also, I suppose; and—he showed you the letter.”
“He did, but we will not talk about that now.”
“But we will talk of it, if you please. You believed in that letter, I
suppose—you mourned over my shortcomings—you sympathised with a man who
was tied to so wicked a wife—you dreamed perhaps of a divorce, and
thought it within the bounds of probability that Basil Stondon and
Euphemia Stondon might one day stand before the altar. Did you? I hope
you did, for the letter was a sham! Ay, you may look at me,” she went on
with a hysterical laugh. “I wrote it every word myself, and I left it in
his way on purpose to see if I could rouse any feeling in him.”
“What an idiot you must be, Georgina,” exclaimed Phemie, indignantly;
“what a senseless, wicked, foolish, childish trick it was. If he dies,
his death will be at your door. How could you do it?—how came such a
plan ever to enter your mind?”
“One cannot live near ice and not desire to thaw it,” was the reply;
“may I see him?” she added, more humbly; “would it do him any harm if I
spoke to him for a moment?”
“He will not know who you are,” the elder woman answered; and she led
the way to where Basil lay, his wife following.
Then for the first time Phemie understood that Georgina loved her
husband with all her heart, and soul, and strength; that all through
their married life the attachment had been on her side, that she would
have done anything to secure his affection, had she known how; that it
would, as she declared, kill her if his illness proved fatal.
“I did more to win his heart than ever you could have done,” she said,
when at last Phemie had dragged her from the sick-chamber. “I would have
gone through fire and water for him, but he never loved me—never!”
“He must have loved you, or he would not have married you,” Phemie
answered.
“I made him marry me,” was the reply. “He married me because I loved
him; do you understand that, Mrs. Stondon—you, who were so cold, and so
prudent, and so selfish? If I had been in your place, if I had been
married fifty times, I would have left my husband for his sake. If he
had loved me as he loved you, I would have quitted Marshlands had he
held up his finger for me to come. I nursed him,”—she continued,
speaking hurriedly and excitedly,—“I nursed him all through that illness
he had in India. I brought him back from death. He could not have lived
but for my care. It is no light thing, let me tell you, tending a man
through a long sickness out in that climate, and when he got better I
was like a ghost; but he knew I loved him,—knew no woman could have done
what I did had she not loved him, and he married me, and I thought I had
won the battle at last.”
“And afterwards,” Phemie suggested, as the speaker paused.
“Afterwards!” repeated Mrs. Basil Stondon. “You want me to go on and
tell you how you beat me at every move—how it was your men on the board
prevented my winning the game. So be it. The game has not been all
profit to you either, so I must rest satisfied.”
“For pity’s sake,” entreated Phemie, “forget that he ever was fond of
me; let the dead past lie: it was never so fair or pleasant that you
need be continually taking off the coffin-lid to look at it.”
“Don’t talk to me about coffins,” exclaimed Georgina, with a shudder,
“and he so ill; and as for your request, I would let the past lie if I
could. I would bury it half a mile deep, and never desire to hear of it
again, if you and he would only let me; but is it in a woman’s
nature—cold as you are, I put it to you, would it be even in yours—to
see a stranger preferred before you—to feel that she is seated in the
innermost chamber while you are shivering outside on the doorstep?”
“It would not,” Phemie answered; “but then I am not in the innermost
chamber, so there is no use in making yourself miserable about the
matter.”
“If you are not, who is?” demanded Mrs. Basil Stondon; and Phemie
remained silent for very want of the ability to answer the question. “If
you had not been, would he have come to you with that letter?—would he
have rushed straight as he did from me to you? Go back over your own
life. When Captain Stondon found out that you and Basil were so fond of
one another, what did he do? Did he fly from you as he might from a
pestilence? Did he publish the story to Miss Derno, or any other miss or
madam in the kingdom? Did he?”
“No,” replied Phemie; “but then my husband was a very different man to
yours.”
“True,” said Mrs. Basil Stondon, “he was a very different man, and a
very much better. You had a good husband, if you had only known how to
value him; but still, good or not, different or not different, had Basil
loved me he never would have come to you. It was my last attempt; now I
throw up the cards.”
And when Georgina concluded, she made a movement as of flinging
something from her, and turned sullenly aside.
Finding, however, that Phemie did not speak, she faced round again and
asked,—
“Have you got nothing to remark on all that? When Basil gave you his
version you were surely not so dumb?” But still Phemie made no reply.
She was wondering whether she should ever be able to reconcile this
pair—whether any interference of hers might produce some good
result—whether, if he lived, she could bring about some better
understanding—whether, if he died, he would first recover sufficiently
to speak kindly to his wife ere he departed.
“Are you going to open your lips again to-day?” persisted Mrs. Basil
Stondon; and at last Phemie answered, while she rose and laid her hand
gently on Georgina:—
“Yes. I am going to ask you, why you will persist in regarding me as
your enemy? When I followed Basil into Yorkshire—when I brought him home
with me—when I broke the bad news to him in such a way that he never had
an angry feeling towards you in consequence, was I your enemy? Was I
not, at all events, only doing your bidding—only trying to accomplish
what you wanted, to the best of my ability?”
“Yes; but it seemed so hard for such interference to be necessary,” said
Georgina, softening a little.
“Was that my fault? He married you; why he married you is quite beside
the question; he did marry you, and for years you had him all to
yourself. I should not care if a man had loved fifty women before he
made me his wife. If I could not turn them all out, and keep the citadel
against them, I should say I did not deserve to have it.”
“And does the same rule hold good with regard to husbands, Mrs.
Stondon?” asked the other, maliciously.
“We were talking of wives, not of husbands,” answered Phemie; and
continued: “Feeling as you did towards me, why did you ever ask me to
Marshlands?—why did you press me to stay there?”
“Because I was weary of my life—because you were better than
nobody—because it looked well—because it tormented Basil—stop; let me go
back to the beginning, where you interrupted my story. I do not mind
showing you my hand, now the game is over. We were married, as I told
you; the mutiny broke out, and we were bound still closer by the feeling
of a common danger; besides, he was grateful to me. Oh! yes, he was
grateful, for he set great store by his life, and I had saved it! My
father was killed, as you heard, and Basil was sorry for my loss.
Altogether, though I knew he did not love me even then, still we got on
very well for a time, and the only quarrel we had originated in his
obstinate refusal to write to Captain Stondon and tell him of his
marriage.”
“‘You are afraid of _him_ letting _her_ know, I suppose,’ I was provoked
at last into saying. That was my first downrightly bad move, and you
were the occasion of it.
“‘It was your doing, then, that I had to leave Marshlands,’ he answered
on the instant, almost indeed before I had time to wish my own words
unspoken, ‘how did you manage it?’
“I told him all—I did really—all that you have assured me came to your
knowledge after you were left a widow. I could not help writing that
note. I would have done anything to part you—anything to get him out to
India with us—I was so fond of him; but he put it all down to love of
Marshlands; and so, when at last news came to us of your husband’s
death, he turned to me and said, ‘You have got that which you schemed
for so well and so long; I wish you joy of it.’
“There was something else, though, in his mind at the moment—something I
read out of his face that I knew he would not have put into words for
anything; but I did for him. I said, ‘You are thinking she is free, and
I am bound. I am bound, and she is free!’”
“Have mercy, Georgina!”—It was Phemie who entreated this boon. She was
turning faint and sick at such a thought being put before him in its
naked deformity; but Georgina’s answer made her stand erect and defiant
once more.
“Do you think, if I had not mercy on him, I am going to take pity on
you?” she asked. “I told him his thought in so many words. I taunted him
with it, and then we had a fearful quarrel—the first of our new series,
which has never ceased from that day to this. It was then he informed me
of the pleasant ban you had laid upon him—almost exultingly he spoke of
how your words had come true—of how, although you might never be to him
what I was, yet that still you would always be something nearer and
dearer by far. He did not spare me a pang, you may depend upon it. Then
I learned what was in my husband; I have never unlearned that knowledge
since.”
“I am very sorry,”—Phemie uttered this sentence humbly—“forgive me,
Georgina, my share in your misery. What you tell me is very terrible—it
must have been dreadful for you to bear.”
“I did not bear it,” was the quick reply; “I did not even regard it as
payment for breaking the heart of a better man, than ever you were a
woman. I battled against it; I was hard, and he was harder; I would not
accept my position, and he scoffed at me when I tried to alter it. We
came back to England, and he wanted to travel down to Marshlands alone;
but I had a suspicion we should find you there, and I was resolved not
to lose the sight of that interview at any rate. I had the advantage, so
far as he was concerned, for he really felt afraid to meet you, and it
was a triumph for the time being. Next to getting the thing one wants
for one’s self, the greatest pleasure in life is seeing another
disappointed in getting it also. Altogether,” proceeded Mrs. Basil
Stondon, “I fancy I got the best in that matter. Had I not been present,
there would have been opportunity for some tender passages between Basil
and yourself. What is wrong, now?” she added, as Phemie suddenly moved
aside, and drew her hand away, and shook her dress, seeming to think
there must be contagion in the very touch of her companion’s garments.