ONLY AN INCIDENT
BY GRACE DENIO LITCHFIELD
1883
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. JOPPA
II. PHEBE
III. GERALD
IV. MRS. UPJOHN'S ENTERTAINMENT
V. FRIENDS
VI. THE PICNIC
VII. TRIED AS BY FIRE
VIII. GERALD OBEYS ORDERS
IX. JOPPA'S MINISTRATIONS TO THE SICK
X. AN APOLOGY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
XI. "MY SON DICK"
XII. WHY DO SUMMER ROSES FADE?
XIII. JOPPA'S TRIAL
XIV. PHEBE'S GOOD-BY
XV. ONLY AN INCIDENT
TO
GRACE HILL AND EDWIN C. LITCHFIELD.
TO HER FOR WHOSE DEAR SAKE THE STORY WAS PENNED, ALTHOUGH HER EYES HAVE
NEVER REST UPON ITS PAGES, AND TO HIM WHOSE TENDER WATCH OVER ITS GROWTH
HAS BEEN ITS VITAL INSPIRATION--TO THE TWO WHO ARE BUT ONE FOREVER IN THE
HEART OF THEIR DAUGHTER, THIS LITTLE FIRST BOOK IS MOST LOVINGLY
INSCRIBED.
ONLY AN INCODENT
CHAPTER I.
JOPPA.
Joppa was the very centre of all things. That was the opening clause in
the creed of every well-educated and right-thinking Joppite.
Geographically, however, it was not the centre of any thing, being
considerably off from the great lines of railway travel, but possessing
two little independent branch roads of its own, that connected it with
all the world, or rather that connected all the world with it. For though
there were larger places than Joppa even in the county in which it
condescended to find itself, and though New York, and Philadelphia, and
even Boston, were undeniably larger, as its inhabitants reluctantly
admitted when hard pressed, yet they were unanimous in agreeing,
nevertheless, that the sun rose and set wholly and entirely for the
benefit of their one little aristocratic community.
Yes; the world was created for Joppa, that the Joppites might live, move,
and have their being with as much convenience and as little trouble as
possible. Bethany, a considerable town near by, was built to be its
shopping emporium; Galilee, a little farther off, to accommodate its art
needs; Morocco, a more considerable town still farther off, to be the
birthplace of those ancestors who were so unfortunate as to come into the
world before there was any Joppa to be born in. Even New York was erected
mainly to furnish it with a place of comfortable resort once a year, when
it transplanted itself there bodily in a clan, consoling itself for its
temporary aberration of body by visiting exclusively and diligently back
and forth among its own people, and conforming life in all particulars as
far as possible to home rules, still doing when in New York, not as the
New Yorkers but as the Joppites did, and never for a moment abandoning
its proud position as the one only place in the world worth living in.
There certainly was much to say in favor of Joppa. In the first place,
it was remarkably salubrious. Its inhabitants died only of old
age,--seldom even of that,--or of diseases contracted wholly in other
localities. Measles had indeed been known to break out there once in the
sacred person of the President of the village, but had been promptly
suppressed; besides, it was universally conceded that being in his second
childhood he should be considered liable. The last epidemic of small-pox
even had swept by them harmless. Only two old and extremely ugly women
took it, whereas Bethany and Upper Jordan were decimated. So Joppa was
decidedly healthy, for one thing. For another, it was moral. There had
not been a murder heard of in ever so long, or a forgery, and the last
midnight burglar was such a nice, simple fellow that he did not know real
silver when he saw it, and ran off with the plated ware instead. And
Joppa was not only moral, but religious; went to church no end of times
on Sundays, and kept as many of the commandments as it conveniently
could. It had four churches: one Methodist, frequented exclusively by the
plebeians; one Baptist, of a mixed congregation; one Presbyterian, where
three fourths of the best people went; and one Episcopal, which the best
quarter of the best people attended, and which among the Presbyterians
was popularly supposed to be, if not exactly the entrance to the infernal
regions, yet certainly only one short step removed from it. And added to
all these good traits, Joppa was a beautiful place. There were a few
common, ugly little houses in it, of course, but they were all tucked
away out of sight at one end, constituting what was known as "the
village," while the real Joppa meant in the thoughts of the inhabitants
only the West End so to speak, where was a series of pretty villas and
commodious mansions running along a broad, handsome street, and
stretching for quite a distance along the border of the lake. For, oh!
best of all, Joppa had a lake. To speak of Joppa in the presence of a
Joppite, and not in the same breath to mention the lake with an
appreciative adjective, was to make as irrevocable a mistake as to be in
conversation with a poet and forget to quote from his latest poem; for
next to their wives, their dinners, and their ease, the Joppites loved
their beautiful little lake. And they had cause thus to love it, for
apart from its exquisite charm as the main feature of their landscape, it
gave them a substantial reason for existence. What could they have done
with their _dolce far niente_ lives, but for the fishing and rowing and
sailing and bathing and sliding and skating which it afforded them in
turn? It was all they had to keep them from settling down into a Rip Van
Winkle sleep, this dear little restless lake, that coaxed them out of
their land-torpor, and forced them occasionally to lend a manly hand to a
manly pursuit. For there was this distinguishing peculiarity about Joppa,
that no one in it seemed to need to work, or to have any manner of
business whatever. Its society, outside of the village, was formed wholly
of cultivated, refined, wealthy people, who had nothing in the world to
do, but idly to eat and drink up the riches of the previous generation.
It is a widely admitted truth, that one generation always gathers for
another, never for itself, and that the generation which is thus
generously gathered for, is invariably found willing to sacrifice without
a murmur any latent duty to harvest on its own account, consenting to
live out its life softly upon the hard-earned savings of its
predecessors, without regard to posterity, and calling itself "gentlemen"
where its fathers were content to be known as "men."
So this was Joppa, a place mighty in its own conceit, and high too in the
estimate of others, to whom it was becoming known as the gayest and the
prettiest of all dear little summer resorts; and thither strangers were
beginning to flock in considerable numbers each year, made warmly welcome
by the Joppites as an occasion for breaking out into an unending round of
parties and picnics and dinners and lunches and teas, and even breakfasts
when there was not room to crowd in any thing else. The summer was one
continual whirl from beginning to end. There were visitors and visits;
there was giving and receiving; there were flirtations and rumors of
flirtations; there was everything the human heart could desire in the way
of friendly hospitality and liveliest entertainment. Saratoga might be
well enough, and Newport would do in its way; but for solid perfection,
said the Joppites, there was no place in the world quite like Joppa.
But unknown to itself, Joppa nursed one apostate in its midst, one
unavowed but benighted little heretic, who so far from sharing these
sentiments and offering up nightly thanksgiving that despite her great
unworthiness she had been suffered to be born in Joppa, made it one of
her most fervent and reiterated petitions that she might not always have
to live there; that some time, if she were very good and very patient, it
might be granted her to go. She was so weary of it all: of the busy
idleness and the idle business, of the unthinking gayety and the gay
thoughtlessness, and of the nothingness that made up its all. She wanted,
she did not exactly know what, only something different; and to go, she
did not quite know where, only somewhere else. But she had been born in
Joppa, (quite without her permission,) and in Joppa she had lived for all
of twenty-four healthful, tranquil, uneventful years, spending
semi-occasional winters in New York, and, unlike all other Joppites,
returning always more and more discontented with her native place. Who
could ever have expected such treason in the heart of dear little Phebe
Lane? Of course it would not have mattered much had it been suspected,
since it was only Phebe Lane after all who entertained it,--little Phebe
Lane, whose ancestors, though good and well-born enough, did not hail
from Morocco, and who lived, not in the West End proper, but only on the
borders of it, in a street where one could not get so much as a side peep
at the lake. It was not a pretty house either where she lived. It was
square and clumsy and without any originality, and, moreover, faced plump
on the street, so that one could look right into its parlor and
sitting-room windows as one strolled along the wooden sidewalks. And
people were in the habit of looking in that way a good deal. Nothing was
ever going on in there that could not bear this sudden outside
inspection, and it was the shortest way to call Phebe when she was wanted
for any thing of a sudden,--to bear a fourth hand at whist, or to stone
raisins for Mrs. Adams the day before her luncheon, or to run on an
errand down town for some lazy body who preferred other people's legs to
her own for locomotion, or to relieve some wearied host in the
entertainment of his dull guest, or to help in some way or other, here,
there, and yonder. She was just the one to be called upon, of course, for
she was just the one who was always on hand, and always ready to go. She
never had any thing to keep her at home. Her father had long been dead,
and she lived alone with her step-mother and step-aunt in the house which
was left her by her mother, but in which the present Mrs. Lane still
ruled absolute, as she did when she first came into it in Phebe's
childish days. Mrs. Lane was strong and energetic and commonplace; and
she ran the little house from garret to cellar with a thoroughness that
left Phebe no part whatever to take in it, while the remainder of her
energy she devoted to nursing her invalid sister, Miss Lydia, a little
weak, complaining creature, who had had not only every ill that flesh is
heir to, but a great many ills besides that she was firmly persuaded no
other flesh had ever inherited, and who stood in an awe of her sister
Sophia only equalled by her intense admiration of her.
So what was there for Phebe to do? She was fond of music, and whistled
like a bird, but she had no piano and did not know one note from
another; and she did not care for books, which was fortunate, as their
wee library, all told, did not count a hundred volumes, most of which,
too, were Miss Lydia's, and were as weak and wishy-washy as that poor
little woman herself. And she did not care for sewing, though she made
nearly all her own clothes, besides attending at any number of
impromptu Dorcas meetings, where the needy were the unskilled rich
instead of the helpless poor, so that of course her labor did not count
at all as a virtue, since it was not doing good, but only obliging a
friend. And she did not care for parties, though she generally went and
was always asked, being such a help as regarded wall-flowers, while
none of the young girls dreaded her as a rival, it being a well known
fact that Phebe Lane, general favorite though she was, somehow or other
never "took" with the men, or at least not sufficiently to damage any
other enterprising girl's prospects. Why this was so, was hard to say.
Phebe was pretty, and lovable, and sweet tempered. If she was not
sparkling or witty, neither was she sarcastic; and bright enough she
was certainly, though not intellectual, and though she talked little
save with a few. It was strange. True as steel, possessed of that keen
sense of justice and honor so strangely lacking in many women, with a
passionate capability for love and devotion and self-sacrifice beyond
power of fathoming, and above all with a clinging womanly nature that
yearned for affection as a flower longs for light, she was yet the only
girl out of all her set who had never had any especial attention.
Perhaps it was because she was no flirt. Bell Masters said no girl
could get along who did not flirt. Perhaps because in her excessive
truthfulness she was sometimes blunt and almost brusque; it is
dreadfully out of place not to be able to lie a little at times. Even
Mrs. Upjohn, the female lay-head of the Presbyterians, who was a
walking Decalogue, her every sentence being a law beginning with Thou
shalt not, admitted practically, if not theoretically, that without
risk of damnation it was possible to swerve occasionally from a too
rigid Yea and Nay. Perhaps,--ah, well, there is no use in exhausting
the perhapses. The fact remained. Of girl-friends she had plenty, and
of men-friends she had plenty; but of lovers she had none.
And this was why when the Rev. Mr. Denham Halloway was called to the
vacant parish of St. Joseph's and fell down in its maidenly midst like a
meteor from an unexplored heaven,--a young, handsome divine, in every way
marriageable, though still unmarried, and in every way attractive, though
still to the best of hope and belief unattracted,--this was why no girl
of them all thought her own chances lessened in the least when he and
Phebe became such friends. No one gossiped. No one ah-ah'd, or oh-oh'd.
No one thought twice about it. What difference could it make? If it had
been anybody else now! But it was only Phebe Lane.