JOPPA'S TRIAL.
It was the night before Gerald's departure, and a number of people
strayed into Mrs. Lane's parlor to bid the fair traveller god-speed. She
had not been at all a popular guest, but that was no reason why Joppa
should lack in any possible courtesy toward her, little as she
appreciated the magnanimity of its conduct.
"Very sorry to lose you, very," said Mr. Hardcastle, taking her hand in
the soft, warm grasp that Gerald so particularly detested. "But maybe
it's as well you are going. Joppa isn't the place it used to be. Here's
Mr. Anthony's got the fever to-night, and there's a poor family down in
the village as have all got it, Dennis says; and I noticed that little
Nellie Atterbury had monstrous red cheeks when Dick and I passed her
to-night, and indeed I crossed the street to avoid her in case she might
be going to have the fever too. Where one has a family one has duties
one would never feel for one's self. So I say, my dear, it's as well
you're going, if only on account of that boy of yours. We must all learn
early to sacrifice ourselves for our children."
"Olly isn't my child," said Gerald, twisting her handkerchief around her
hand to efface the remembrance of Mr. Hardcastle's touch.
"Hey? Ah, yes, to be sure, he's your brother; but it's all one. You stand
in the light of a parent to him just now, my dear." He was actually going
to pat Gerald paternally on the shoulder, but she moved abruptly aside,
and he pulled Olly's ear instead. It was necessary to do something with
his outstretched hand before drawing it back. Olly was playing
cat's-cradle with the good-natured Mr. Upjohn, and merely kicked out at
his caresser, as a warning that he was not to be interrupted.
"Fine spirited boy," muttered Mr. Upjohn under his breath. "Very fine.
Will make a man some day."
"Not so big as you, though, I won't be when I'm a man," declared Olly.
"You're too fat."
"Now just hear him!" exclaimed Mr. Upjohn, shaking all over with
corpulent mirth. "Maybe you would rather be like Mr. Webb then?"
"No, I wouldn't neither," retorted Olly, nothing deterred by that
gentleman's presence from a frank exposure of his sentiments. "He's too
lean. He's leaner than any thing. He's just like the blade of my
pocket-knife with clothes on. Oh, crickey!"
It was conveniently discovered at this crisis that it was Olly's bedtime,
and he was with some difficulty conveyed from the parlor, followed by an
angry glare from Gerald and a severely truthful comment from Mrs. Upjohn.
De Forest outstayed the rest of the leave-takers. Phebe thought it hard,
when she so wanted to have Gerald all to herself on this last evening;
and she wondered too that Halloway had not come to say good-by. He came
in, however, at last, flushed and tired, apologizing for the lateness of
his call, saying he had been sent for by two of his parishioners who were
also down with the fever.
"It looks something like an epidemic," remarked Gerald. "I am really
rather glad we are going."
"You have no ambition to remain and turn Florence Nightingale then?"
asked De Forest.
"Not in the slightest. It is a role I am eminently unfitted for. I detest
sick people."
"Not always, I think, Gerald," said Phebe, with a grateful glance, which
Gerald returned with one of real though undemonstrative tenderness.
"Your case was very different, Phebe."
"I should think it would be extremely difficult to detest Miss Phebe
under even the must aggravating circumstances," said Halloway, smiling
frankly at her. "Hallo, who is this?"
It was Olly, bootless and coatless, whom the sound of Halloway's voice
had brought down from the midst of his slow preparations for bed, to bid
his friend good-by, and who sprang upon him with a rush of suffocating
affection.
"What would Mrs. Upjohn say!" drawled De Forest.
Gerald rose at once to send off the child with a reprimand, and
remained standing after he had gone. De Forest rose too and slowly came
toward her.
"I suppose I had better leave you to follow Olly up-stairs. I wish you
to be fresh to entertain me during to-morrow's tedious journey."
"What, do you go back to-morrow too?" asked Gerald, in surprise. "I
thought you were to stay till next week."
"I am afraid of the fever," pronounced De Forest with great gravity, his
handsome eyes fastened on her face. "I am running away from it. I don't
think it safe to stay another day in the place."
Gerald colored a little,--not at his words, but his look. "Then I suppose
I need not bid you good-by," she said, turning away. She seemed almost
embarrassed. "Good-night."
"Oh, but Gerald,--Mr. Halloway, you must say good-by to him you know,"
said Phebe, distressed.
"Surely. I forgot," replied Gerald, with uncomplimentary sincerity. She
turned back, the faint shade of confusion quite disappearing. "Good-by,
Mr. Halloway. I wish you success in finding all the Nightingales that you
may require."
"Thank you," answered Denham, shortly. "Good-by."
Phebe glanced up at him quickly. She noticed a shade of bitterness in
his voice for the first time. He said nothing more, and dropped Gerald's
hand almost immediately. De Forest bent forward and raised it. "Am I to
be defrauded of a good-night, Miss Vernor, simply because it is not my
good-by? _Au revoir_."
It seemed to Phebe that he held Gerald's hand an instant longer when she
would have withdrawn it, and that she permitted or at least did not
resent it, and before releasing it he stooped and touched her fingers
lightly with his lips. "_Au revoir_," he said again.
Halloway turned abruptly to Phebe. "Good-night." He spoke almost
brusquely, and went directly away, without offering his hand or looking
at any of them again.
Phebe followed Gerald into her room when the two girls went up-stairs,
and sat watching her friend's quick movements as she completed some last
arrangements for the journey. It was strangely unlike Phebe not to offer
to help her, but somehow Gerald looked so strong and able and
self-sufficient, and she herself felt so tired and weak to-night.
"How quiet you are!" said Gerald, folding a soft shawl smoothly over the
top of a tray. "Haven't you any last message to give me? Isn't there any
thing you would like me to do for you in New York?"
"Nothing, thank you."
"You are sure? Well, now I am through and mustn't keep you up longer. You
have all been exceedingly kind, Phebe, both to myself and that
troublesome Olly. I appreciate it, even though I don't say as much about
it as perhaps some would."
"Have you really enjoyed it here, Gerald? Have you been happy? Will you
miss us a little--just a little--when you are gone?"
"I shall miss _you_, child, of course. You constitute Joppa to me, you
know. And indeed I have enjoyed it here very much, and it has done Olly a
world of good. Good-night, dear."
Phebe had her arms about her friend at once, clasping her close. "O
Gerald, Gerald, I think it is almost better to have no friends at all,
it is so hard--so cruelly hard--to part with them, and--and to lose
them! O Gerald!"
"Parting with them isn't losing them, you foolish sentimentalist,"
returned Gerald, gently unclasping Phebe's arms. "Now go to bed. You look
worn out."
"Just tell me once first, Gerald, that you love me. I haven't many to
love me. I need all your love."
"Of course I love you," said Gerald. "You know it without my saying so.
And don't talk so foolishly. I never knew a girl with more friends. Now
good-night."
Phebe kissed her very quietly, and then crept into Olly's room, and sat
down on his bed. "Olly, dear," she murmured, "are you asleep?"
The little fellow sprang up and flung his arms closely around her neck,
embracing collar, ruffles, and ribbon in one all-comprehensive
destruction.
"Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?" whispered Phebe, half
laughing and half crying, as she strained him to her heart. "Oh, Olly
dear, I do want some one just to say so!"
"I do, I do, I do, and I do!" said Olly, with a bear's hug at each
assertion. "Blest if I don't. That's what Mr. Upjohn said when I asked
him if he didn't want some taffy. 'Blest if I don't.' I guess it's a
swear, 'cause he said I mustn't tell Mrs. Upjohn he said so, not to the
longest day I lived. The longest day won't come now till next year, the
twenty-first of June. That's the longest day, ain't it? Mr. Halloway
taught me that. My, don't he know a lot! I'm going to be like him when
I'm a man. That's who I'm going to be like. And I'm going to love you
always. He loves you too, doesn't he, Pheeb?"
"No, dear," answered Phebe, still laughing and crying together, and
rocking gently back and forth with the boy in her arms; "he doesn't at
all. There doesn't any body really love me, I think, but just you. But
you do, don't you, dear?"
"Bet on it!" said Olly, with forcible vulgarity.
"God bless you," said Phebe, very softly, as she put the boy back in the
bed, and laid her wet cheek on his. "God bless you now and always."
"Forever and ever, amen," whispered Olly back, with an impression that
Phebe was saying her prayers over him. "And oh, I say, Pheeb, can't you
let us have some of that jelly cake with raisins in it, to take with us
for luncheon to-morrow?"
And Phebe promised she would, and laughed and went away feeling, somehow,
a little comforted.
And so Gerald and Olly and De Forest all disappeared from the scene
together, and shortly after the Dexters went to Morocco on a visit, and
the Masters adjourned to Bethany to do their fall shopping; and there
were whisperings around that something was wrong; there was more and more
talk of the fever; of how it ought to be checked, and why it had not been
checked, and what would be the dire consequences if it were not checked.
The summer guests all slipped quietly away, leaving Joppa alone to its
growing trouble. Every day brought some new case, sometimes a death, and
people began to look suspiciously at each other in the streets and to
avoid each other on the flimsiest pretexts. Miss Lydia cried helplessly
in her room and said she was sure she should take it and die of it. Mr.
Hardcastle found he was too busy at home to have time for neighborly
visits, and went around the block rather than pass a door where he saw
the doctor's gig. When one has a family, one owes it duties that should
not be neglected. Mrs. Upjohn declared the panic to be ridiculous. _She_
shouldn't be scared away by a red flag, like a crow from a cornfield.
There had never been a case of typhoid known in Joppa, and places were
like people, they never broke out with diseases that were not already in
their constitutions. It was all arrant nonsense. However, she was
perfectly willing that Maria should make that proposed visit to her aunt
in Boston if she liked, and it was quite proper that Mr. Upjohn, in the
character of gallant father, should escort her there; the girl couldn't
go alone. So every day saw some new flight from the village. The doctors
began to look overworked and very grave, and Mr. Hardcastle appeared less
and less outside his gates, and took to walking always in the middle of
the streets, whence he could wave a salutation to his passing friends
without stopping to speak to them. Dick said he'd like to see the fever
catch _him_, and pursued the rough tenor of his ways fearlessly as of
old, though he assured his anxious father that it was wholly because
Nellie Atterbury lived in the healthiest quarter of the town, that he
spent so much of his time at her house. There was no use denying or
qualifying it. An epidemic of typhoid fever had stolen upon Joppa as a
thief in the night, and there was no knowing what house it would not
enter next, to rob it of its dearest and best.
Through all this slowly increasing alarm, Phebe Lane had been living as
in a dream. It was as if she found herself back in that old life before
she knew Halloway, when people bored her, and when there seemed nothing
worth doing or worth looking forward to, though the days were so full of
duties. She had been at the rectory but once since Gerald left, and that
was to the Bible-class, and when Mrs. Whittridge had tried to detain her
afterward, she had pleaded some pressing business at home, though
chancing to look out of her window a little later, Soeur Angélique was
almost sure that through the closed shutters in Phebe's room, she saw a
dim shadow of the girl's head laid down listlessly on her folded arms on
the sill. But when the epidemic reached its height, Phebe seemed
suddenly to awaken from her languor and rouse herself to action. Here was
something worth doing at last. Once more her soft, sweet whistling
sounded bird-like through the house. The spring came back to her step,
the brightness to her eyes, and more than the old tenderness to her
voice, as she went from one shunned sick-room to another like a living
sunbeam, bringing the freshness of a May morning with her, and seeming
always to come solely for her own pure pleasure. And when poor motherless
Janet Mudge was struck down too with the dreaded disease, and had no one
but servants to care for her, her own aunt, who lived in Joppa, being
afraid to so much as go to the house to ask after her, it seemed
perfectly natural to everybody that Phebe Lane, who had no cares at home
and no one really dependent upon her, should quietly install herself as
Janet's nurse. It was a very proper and natural thing for Phebe to do,
everybody said, and thought no more about it. It was so manifestly a duty
sent direct from Heaven, labelled "For Phebe Lane."
"I met Dr. Dennis to-day," said Halloway one afternoon, coming into his
sister's room and throwing himself wearily down on the sofa. "He says
Janet Mudge is better,--is really going to get well."
Soeur Angélique put aside her work and came to sit by the sofa and stroke
her boy's head. If the doctors were overworked and spent, so too was he.
The hour of trial had not found him wanting. His unambitious, simple
spirit, that sought no wider duty than merely to fulfil the moment's call
as he best could, met and conquered a stress of work that would have
disheartened many a bolder hero. He never thought of it in the light of
duty at all. There was nothing heroic or high-minded about it. It was
simply what in the nature of things he was bound to do. Wherever he was
wanted he went, and because where he went he brought such sunny cheer,
and such sympathetic help, and such bright, kindly ways, he was wanted
everywhere; not only those of his own parish, but those of the other
churches too came to look to Mr. Halloway as the one whose visit helped
them the most in any season of trial. Among the poor he was held a
ministering angel, and supplemented by Soeur Angélique as an unseen
force, often proved one in truth, while his bright face did them more
good, they said, than a power of sermons; and no one ever thought the
less of him because he seemed so much more the friend than the pastor,
and did no preaching at all.
"So Janet is better," said Soeur Angélique, toying caressingly with the
wavy brown hair tossed over his forehead. "Now I hope we shall see more
of our Phebe again. What a little heroine she is!"
"A perfectly unconscious one," answered Halloway, lazily submitting
himself to the fondling hand. "She thinks it the most matter-of-fact
thing in the world that she should play Sister of Charity to other
people's sick, and never expect so much as a thank-you from them."
"She is a lovely character," said Mrs. Whittridge, warmly.
"She is indeed," assented her brother. "A rare character. She is one in a
thousand."
"I cannot but compare her sometimes with her friend, Gerald Vernor,"
continued Mrs. Whittridge. "And despite Miss Vernor's beauty and her
power, which makes itself felt even by me, still it is always to Phebe's
advantage."
Halloway got up and began slowly pacing the room, with an odd smile upon
his lips. "Always to Phebe's advantage," he repeated. "Yes, she is by far
the more amiable, the more unselfish, the more lovable, the better worth
loving of the two. She is all heart. She is brimming over with affection,
and must speak it or die, while Gerald is colder than stone,--than ice.
She is so cold she burns. She reminds one of stars in mid-winter, of
icicles in the moonlight, of any thing eminently frigid and brilliant and
remote. I daresay, despite all her beauty and her talent and even with
her wealth thrown in, she will have comparatively few lovers, yet those
few will be truer to her through all her coldness and her disfavor than
the lovers of many a sweeter girl. Did I say Phebe was one in a thousand?
Well Miss Vernor is one in nine hundred and ninety-nine,--or one in ten
thousand,--I don't know which."
"You said Phebe was the better worth loving of the two," said Mrs.
Whittridge, coming to walk up and down the room with him and clasping
her hands over his arm. "I used to think,--I fancied you cared for the
child,--that you would care for her."
Denham stood still and faced his sister very gravely, "I was growing to
care for her, Soeur Angélique," he said. "I believe I would have loved
her if,--if Gerald Vernor had not come here when she did."
"Oh, Denham!"
"Yes, Soeur Angélique. It is a humiliating confession, is it not, that
one has wilfully thrown away something that perhaps one might have had,
for something that one knows one can never have? It is sheerest folly.
And to do it with one's eyes open is the maddest folly of all. Gerald
Vernor is as indifferent to me as it is possible for one human creature
to be to another. I hold no more place in her thoughts than had I never
existed. And yet, Soeur Angélique, I am fool enough,--or helpless
enough,--whichever you please, to love her. I love her not for what she
is to me, but for what she is in herself, for what she really is, rather
than for what she seems,--for the strength and the heroism of her heart,
which I see through all the glaring, commonplace faults, which she is at
no pains to hide. Or perhaps I only love her because it was meant that I
should. Be it as it may, I do love her, and as passionately, as entirely,
and as hopelessly as it is possible for man to love."
"O Denham, Denham, my boy!"
Denham laid his hand lightly on his sister's lips. "Now we have had a
sufficiency of heroics for once, indeed for always," he said, with a
wholly altered voice. "Life has enough of solemnity in it and in spare,
without our adding aught to it. We will not speak of this again, if you
please. Folly is always best forgotten. But Soeur Angélique, if you
imagine me to be a blighted being, if you think I walk the floor in the
dead of night, tearing my hair and calling on all the stars to witness
the unearthly gloom in my racked bosom, you are utterly mistaken. I do
nothing of the kind. I am not blighted at all. My damask cheek is not
going to be preyed upon, nor shall I take to an excess of tobacco and
poetry. I have made a mistake, but I mean to sing over it,--not weep over
it,--and to become a stronger and better man, if possible, for having
been so weak a one."
"And Phebe?" said Soeur Angélique. Great tears stood in her eyes.
"I hoped--"
Denham placed both hands on his sister's shoulders. "Soeur Angélique, you
must bury those hopes in the grave. Loving Gerald Vernor, never, now, or
in the future, shall I have one word of love for any other woman. But for
her, I should have come perhaps to love Phebe with this same love;
perhaps,--who knows?--Phebe might so have loved me. As it is--Soeur
Angélique you know what I am. You know if I am likely to deceive myself.
Gerald Vernor has changed my life for always. What might have been, now
can never be."
He stood still a moment, looking full at her. It was wonderful how
resolute and firm and yet brave and gentle too those merry brown eyes of
his could become. Soeur Angélique sighed and shook her head softly. He
stooped and kissed her, then turned away saying: "Now that chapter has
been read through to the end. Woe be to him who turns back the page! And
it is time I went to call on poor Widow Brown."
Soeur Angélique stood in the window as a moment later he passed by. He
kissed his hand to her with a gay smile and went on. But she still stood
there with the tears welling and welling in her eyes till they fell
gently over upon her cheeks. She did not heed them, she was so busy with
her thoughts. "Poor Phebe," she said softly to herself. "My poor little
Phebe! But perhaps,--with time--"