THE RECTOR'S TROUBLE.
It was quite true that Sidney loved Dorothy next to Margaret. From the
first she had been more at ease with him than with anyone else. He had
liked to have Phyllis about the house, with her pretty girlish ways,
and ready to sparkle with delight if he brought some dress or trinket
for her from town. But Phyllis had a father of her own; and her
daughter-like smiles and kisses belonged of right to George, not to
himself. There was no other man to whom Dorothy owed any demonstration
of girlish tenderness and devotion, or who could have felt he was
yielding an indulgence, when she watched for his return home, and ran
to meet him, greeting him with the frank and innocent delight of a
little daughter. Often she was waiting for him at the lodge, with two
or three of her great mastiffs about her; and he would leave the
carriage to walk up the avenue, listening to her bright and quaint
chatter. For she was talkative to him, however silent she might be to
Philip. She was growing prettier every day; Sidney found her as pretty
as Phyllis herself, and far more natural. He declared to himself that
she was as like Margaret when she was a girl as if she had been
Margaret's own child. Only one drop was lacking to make his cup of
happiness full, and that was to see Dorothy the wife of his eldest son.
This keen desire made him more clear-sighted with regard to Phyllis.
He could not imagine how he could have been so blind hitherto to the
danger of letting so close an intimacy exist between her and Philip.
When Phyllis was not at the Hall, Philip was sure to be at the Rectory.
Dorothy's shyness with him made Phyllis more his companion. As Sidney
began to notice them more closely, he detected an air of appropriation
in Phyllis's manner toward Philip which disturbed him greatly. How
long had this been going on? It was useless to call Margaret's
attention to the matter, as she would look upon it from quite a
different point of view from his own. But his son and heir must make a
better match than with a poor clergyman's daughter. He must put a stop
at once to any such love affair, if it existed.
There was no difficulty in taking a first step in pursuit of this
object. The rector was accustomed to dine regularly at the Hall on a
Monday night, which he looked upon as his leisure time. George greatly
enjoyed these occasions, especially when Sidney and he were alone.
They had been brought up by their uncle almost as brothers, and the old
boyish love still lived in his heart. He had never seen any reason to
dethrone Sidney from the first place he held in his esteem. George was
one of the few fortunate mortals who had possessed an ideal all his
life, and at fifty could still place faith in it. Sidney and his
career had been a ceaseless pleasure and pride to him.
"George," said Sidney one Monday evening, as they lingered alone
together in the comfortable dining room, "my boy Philip will be of age
now in a few weeks."
"My boy Dick was of age a few weeks ago," replied George, with a smile.
"Ah, yes!" went on Sidney, "and a very fine fellow he is. He will
distinguish himself in the world more than Philip will do. Your boys
have genius, and will make their mark. It would be hardly fair if
Philip had every advantage."
"Philip has riches," rejoined the rector, "but Margaret and I agree
that money is not one of God's great gifts."
"But he has other gifts besides money," said Sidney.
"Many, many!" replied George warmly; "he has a noble, unselfish nature
like Margaret's, and a steadfast, faithful heart. He is less worldly
than my boys. I do not think he could make for himself a brilliant
place in this world, any more than I could. But he would stand high in
the kingdom of heaven, as his mother's son should do."
Sidney made no immediate answer. George had spoken the truth, but it
was an unpalatable truth. Philip was all he could desire in a son,
except that he had no ambition, and was absolutely contented with his
position and prospects in the world.
"I hope," he said after a pause, "that Philip will make my little
Dorothy my real daughter. He is young yet; too young to know his own
mind. But under Margaret's training Dorothy is growing all I should
wish in Philip's wife. And when I think of how happy my life has been
made by Margaret I cannot help coveting the same happiness for my boy.
You spoke of God's gifts, George. If God will give Philip a wife like
Margaret it would be his best gift."
George leaned back in his chair, staring intently into the fire, with
an expression of perplexity and trouble on his usually placid face.
How it was he did not know, and now he was trying to find out; but
there was a vague impression on his mind that long, long ago it had
been an understood thing that Philip was to marry Phyllis. True, he
could not recall any conversation on the subject; the children were too
young. But it seemed to him that he had always been led to expect it.
But who had so led him? Certainly not Sidney, for he clearly knew
nothing of it, and had no idea of such a thing. Was it possible he had
been mistaken? Could he have been merely dreaming a pleasant dream
that his dear child's future welfare was secure? For nothing could
have given him greater happiness than intrusting her to the care of a
man he knew so well as Philip, who was in fact like one of his own
sons. Phyllis had her faults, but they were trifles, said the
indulgent father to himself; and she cared more for worldly advantages
and worldly show than she ought; but Philip's unworldliness would check
all that. He found this hope so firmly rooted in his heart that he
could not believe it was only a dream of his own.
"Yes, Philip must marry Dorothy," pursued Sidney, in a tone of friendly
confidence, "but it will be soon enough in four or five years' time.
Then she will be all he can wish for. If I am not mistaken, Dorothy is
not indifferent to him. I can see no brighter future for them both
than to be man and wife. They are very equally matched in money."
"But if Philip loved someone else?" began the rector gently.
"He does not, he cannot," interrupted Sidney; "surely his mother and I
would be the first to know it. He has no intimacy with any girl except
Phyllis; and that is the intimacy of brother and sister. They love
each other as brother and sister; nothing more."
"Phyllis thinks more of Philip than she does of her brothers," said the
rector, with a sigh. If it was painful to him to be suddenly awakened
from a dream, there was possibly the same pain in store for his little
daughter also.
"Oh, it is nothing but a girl's fancy," answered Sidney lightly, "even
if it is so. She has seen no other young men; and we must get her out
more, away from this too quiet spot. Laura can easily manage that.
She and Philip are quite too young to have set their hearts upon one
another; so do not trouble yourself. And George, old friend, though I
love your girl for her own sake as well as for yours, I could never
receive her as Philip's wife."
"I don't say that Phyllis loves your son," said the rector, "or that he
loves her. It is enough for me to know that it would displease you to
set me on my guard lest such a misfortune should occur. I will set
Laura on her guard too."
"No, no! much better not," replied Sidney, with one of the genial
smiles which had never failed to win George's cordial assent to what he
said; "we are two old simpletons to be so near quarreling about
nothing. I simply confide to you my hopes for Philip as I always talk
to you of my plans. They are all children yet; and will make up their
minds and change them a dozen times in the next few years. Let us keep
our gossip to ourselves. I do not tell Margaret. Why should you tease
Laura?"
But the rector went home that night with an anxious and a troubled
spirit. The more he considered it the more certain he felt that Philip
and Phyllis believed that they were destined for one another. Laura
always spoke, vaguely indeed, but with reiterated persistence, of the
two together, as if there was no question of them ever being separated.
The boys, too, seemed to think of nothing else; and Phyllis was always
left to Philip as his special companion, when he came daily to the
Rectory. There were small jests and hints, nods and shrugs, all
meaning the same things, among the boys, when Philip made his
appearance. He had himself never doubted their love for one another.
But how this state of affairs had come about he did not know; it had
grown up so slowly and surely. It was an inexpressible shock to him to
discover that Sidney and Margaret knew nothing of it. Was it not
dishonorable toward these, his dearest and oldest friends, to have thus
allowed so close an intimacy to exist between his daughter and their
son? Had he taken advantage of their noble, generous friendship, which
had embraced his children almost as if they were their own? How deeply
he was in their debt for all that made life tranquil and free from
cares! And he was going to repay them by basely entrapping their
eldest son and Sidney's heir into a marriage with his portionless
daughter!
The rector was very miserable, and there was no one to whom he could
confide his misery. Instinctively he shrank from confessing it to his
wife; and of course he could not tell Margaret. It was a high delight
to him to speak with Margaret of those spiritual experiences, which she
seemed to comprehend almost without words, but which Laura altogether
failed to understand. Of this painful and perplexing anxiety he could
not speak. Once or twice he tried to approach the subject, hoping that
Margaret might utter some word indicating that she, too, was aware of
the attachment between Philip and Phyllis. But Margaret gave no sign
that she had ever dreamed of such a thing. Though the idea of it
seemed natural and familiar at the Rectory, it was quite unthought of
at the Hall.
But one plain duty lay before him--to separate his little Phyllis from
Philip as much as possible. He faintly hoped that he was mistaken, and
that she had not already given her heart to him.