Just after this I went home for a week’s holiday. Everything was
prospering there; my father’s new partnership gave evident satisfaction
to both parties. There was no display of increased wealth in our modest
household; but my mother had a few extra comforts provided for her by
her husband. I made acquaintance with Mr and Mrs Ellison, and first saw
pretty Margaret Ellison, who is now my wife. When I returned to Eltham,
I found that a step was decided upon, which had been in contemplation
for some time; that Holdsworth and I should remove our quarters to
Hornby; our daily presence, and as much of our time as possible, being
required for the completion of the line at that end.
Of course this led to greater facility of intercourse with the Hope
Farm people. We could easily walk out there after our day’s work was
done, and spend a balmy evening hour or two, and yet return before the
summer’s twilight had quite faded away. Many a time, indeed, we would
fain have stayed longer—the open air, the fresh and pleasant country,
made so agreeable a contrast to the close, hot town lodgings which I
shared with Mr Holdsworth; but early hours, both at eve and morn, were
an imperative necessity with the minister, and he made no scruple at
turning either or both of us out of the house directly after evening
prayer, or “exercise”, as he called it. The remembrance of many a happy
day, and of several little scenes, comes back upon me as I think of
that summer. They rise like pictures to my memory, and in this way I
can date their succession; for I know that corn harvest must have come
after hay-making, apple-gathering after corn-harvest.
The removal to Hornby took up some time, during which we had neither of
us any leisure to go out to the Hope Farm. Mr Holdsworth had been out
there once during my absence at home. One sultry evening, when work was
done, he proposed our walking out and paying the Holmans a visit. It so
happened that I had omitted to write my usual weekly letter home in our
press of business, and I wished to finish that before going out. Then
he said that he would go, and that I could follow him if I liked. This
I did in about an hour; the weather was so oppressive, I remember, that
I took off my coat as I walked, and hung it over my arm. All the doors
and windows at the farm were open when I arrived there, and every tiny
leaf on the trees was still. The silence of the place was profound; at
first I thought that it was entirely deserted; but just as I drew near
the door I heard a weak sweet voice begin to sing; it was cousin
Holman, all by herself in the house-place, piping up a hymn, as she
knitted away in the clouded light. She gave me a kindly welcome, and
poured out all the small domestic news of the fortnight past upon me,
and, in return, I told her about my own people and my visit at home.
“Where were the rest?” at length I asked.
Betty and the men were in the field helping with the last load of hay,
for the minister said there would be rain before the morning. Yes, and
the minister himself, and Phillis, and Mr Holdsworth, were all there
helping. She thought that she herself could have done something; but
perhaps she was the least fit for hay-making of any one; and somebody
must stay at home and take care of the house, there were so many tramps
about; if I had not had something to do with the railroad she would
have called them navvies. I asked her if she minded being left alone,
as I should like to go and help; and having her full and glad
permission to leave her alone, I went off, following her directions:
through the farmyard, past the cattle-pond, into the ashfield, beyond
into the higher field with two holly-bushes in the middle. I arrived
there: there was Betty with all the farming men, and a cleared field,
and a heavily laden cart; one man at the top of the great pile ready to
catch the fragrant hay which the others threw up to him with their
pitchforks; a little heap of cast-off clothes in a corner of the field
(for the heat, even at seven o“clock, was insufferable), a few cans and
baskets, and Rover lying by them panting, and keeping watch. Plenty of
loud, hearty, cheerful talking; but no minister, no Phillis, no Mr
Holdsworth. Betty saw me first, and understanding who it was that I was
in search of, she came towards me.
“They’re out yonder—agait wi’ them things o’ Measter Holdsworth’s.” So
“out yonder” I went; out on to a broad upland common, full of red
sand-banks, and sweeps and hollows; bordered by dark firs, purple in
the coming shadows, but near at hand all ablaze with flowering gorse,
or, as we call it in the south, furze-bushes, which, seen against the
belt of distant trees, appeared brilliantly golden. On this heath, a
little way from the field-gate, I saw the three. I counted their heads,
joined together in an eager group over Holdsworth’s theodolite. He was
teaching the minister the practical art of surveying and taking a
level. I was wanted to assist, and was quickly set to work to hold the
chain. Phillis was as intent as her father; she had hardly time to
greet me, so desirous was she to hear some answer to her father’s
question. So we went on, the dark clouds still gathering, for perhaps
five minutes after my arrival. Then came the blinding lightning and the
rumble and quick-following rattling peal of thunder right over our
heads. It came sooner than I expected, sooner than they had looked for:
the rain delayed not; it came pouring down; and what were we to do for
shelter? Phillis had nothing on but her indoor things—no bonnet, no
shawl. Quick as the darting lightning around us, Holdsworth took off
his coat and wrapped it round her neck and shoulders, and, almost
without a word, hurried us all into such poor shelter as one of the
overhanging sand-banks could give. There we were, cowered down, close
together, Phillis innermost, almost too tightly packed to free her arms
enough to divest herself of the coat, which she, in her turn, tried to
put lightly over Holdsworth’s shoulders. In doing so she touched his
shirt.
“Oh, how wet you are!” she cried, in pitying dismay; “and you’ve hardly
got over your fever! Oh, Mr Holdsworth, I am so sorry!” He turned his
head a little, smiling at her.
“If I do catch cold, it is all my fault for having deluded you into
staying out here!” but she only murmured again, “I am so sorry.” The
minister spoke now. “It is a regular downpour. Please God that the hay
is saved! But there is no likelihood of its ceasing, and I had better
go home at once, and send you all some wraps; umbrellas will not be
safe with yonder thunder and lightning.”
Both Holdsworth and I offered to go instead of him; but he was
resolved, although perhaps it would have been wiser if Holdsworth, wet
as he already was, had kept himself in exercise. As he moved off,
Phillis crept out, and could see on to the storm-swept heath. Part of
Holdsworth’s apparatus still remained exposed to all the rain. Before
we could have any warning, she had rushed out of the shelter and
collected the various things, and brought them back in triumph to where
we crouched. Holdsworth had stood up, uncertain whether to go to her
assistance or not. She came running back, her long lovely hair floating
and dripping, her eyes glad and bright, and her colour freshened to a
glow of health by the exercise and the rain.
“Now, Miss Holman, that’s what I call wilful,” said Holdsworth, as she
gave them to him. “No, I won’t thank you” (his looks were thanking her
all the time). “My little bit of dampness annoyed you, because you
thought I had got wet in your service; so you were determined to make
me as uncomfortable as you were yourself. It was an unchristian piece
of revenge!”
His tone of badinage (as the French call it) would have been palpable
enough to any one accustomed to the world; but Phillis was not, and it
distressed or rather bewildered her. “Unchristian” had to her a very
serious meaning; it was not a word to be used lightly; and though she
did not exactly understand what wrong it was that she was accused of
doing, she was evidently desirous to throw off the imputation. At first
her earnestness to disclaim unkind motives amused Holdsworth; while his
light continuance of the joke perplexed her still more; but at last he
said something gravely, and in too low a tone for me to hear, which
made her all at once become silent, and called out her blushes. After a
while, the minister came back, a moving mass of shawls, cloaks, and
umbrellas. Phillis kept very close to her father’s side on our return
to the farm. She appeared to me to be shrinking away from Holdsworth,
while he had not the slightest variation in his manner from what it
usually was in his graver moods; kind, protecting, and thoughtful
towards her. Of course, there was a great commotion about our wet
clothes; but I name the little events of that evening now because I
wondered at the time what he had said in that low voice to silence
Phillis so effectually, and because, in thinking of their intercourse
by the light of future events, that evening stands out with some
prominence. I have said that after our removal to Hornby our
communications with the farm became almost of daily occurrence. Cousin
Holman and I were the two who had least to do with this intimacy. After
Mr Holdsworth regained his health, he too often talked above her head
in intellectual matters, and too often in his light bantering tone for
her to feel quite at her ease with him. I really believe that he
adopted this latter tone in speaking to her because he did not know
what to talk about to a purely motherly woman, whose intellect had
never been cultivated, and whose loving heart was entirely occupied
with her husband, her child, her household affairs and, perhaps, a
little with the concerns of the members of her husband’s congregation,
because they, in a way, belonged to her husband. I had noticed before
that she had fleeting shadows of jealousy even of Phillis, when her
daughter and her husband appeared to have strong interests and
sympathies in things which were quite beyond her comprehension. I had
noticed it in my first acquaintance with them, I say, and had admired
the delicate tact which made the minister, on such occasions, bring the
conversation back to such subjects as those on which his wife, with her
practical experience of every-day life, was an authority; while
Phillis, devoted to her father, unconsciously followed his lead,
totally unaware, in her filial reverence, of his motive for doing so.
To return to Holdsworth. The minister had at more than one time spoken
of him to me with slight distrust, principally occasioned by the
suspicion that his careless words were not always those of soberness
and truth. But it was more as a protest against the fascination which
the younger man evidently exercised over the elder one more as it were
to strengthen himself against yielding to this fascination—that the
minister spoke out to me about this failing of Holdsworth’s, as it
appeared to him. In return Holdsworth was subdued by the minister’s
uprightness and goodness, and delighted with his clear intellect—his
strong healthy craving after further knowledge. I never met two men who
took more thorough pleasure and relish in each other’s society. To
Phillis his relation continued that of an elder brother: he directed
her studies into new paths, he patiently drew out the expression of
many of her thoughts, and perplexities, and unformed theories—scarcely
ever now falling into the vein of banter which she was so slow to
understand.
One day—harvest-time—he had been drawing on a loose piece of
paper-sketching ears of corn, sketching carts drawn by bullocks and
laden with grapes—all the time talking with Phillis and me, cousin
Holman putting in her not pertinent remarks, when suddenly he said to
Phillis,—
“Keep your head still; I see a sketch! I have often tried to draw your
head from memory, and failed; but I think I can do it now. If I succeed
I will give it to your mother. You would like a portrait of your
daughter as Ceres, would you not, ma’am?”
“I should like a picture of her; yes, very much, thank you, Mr
Holdsworth; but if you put that straw in her hair,” (he was holding
some wheat ears above her passive head, looking at the effect with an
artistic eye,) “you’ll ruffle her hair. Phillis, my dear, if you’re to
have your picture taken, go up-stairs, and brush your hair smooth.”
“Not on any account. I beg your pardon, but I want hair loosely
flowing.” He began to draw, looking intently at Phillis; I could see
this stare of his discomposed her—her colour came and went, her breath
quickened with the consciousness of his regard; at last, when he said,
“Please look at me for a minute or two, I want to get in the eyes,” she
looked up at him, quivered, and suddenly got up and left the room. He
did not say a word, but went on with some other part of the drawing;
his silence was unnatural, and his dark cheek blanched a little. Cousin
Holman looked up from her work, and put her spectacles down.
“What’s the matter? Where is she gone?”
Holdsworth never uttered a word, but went on drawing. I felt obliged to
say something; it was stupid enough, but stupidity was better than
silence just then.
“I’ll go and call her,” said I. So I went into the hall, and to the
bottom of the stairs; but just as I was going to call Phillis, she came
down swiftly with her bonnet on, and saying, “I’m going to father in
the five-acre,” passed out by the open “rector,” right in front of the
house-place windows, and out at the little white side-gate. She had
been seen by her mother and Holdsworth, as she passed; so there was no
need for explanation, only cousin Holman and I had a long discussion as
to whether she could have found the room too hot, or what had
occasioned her sudden departure. Holdsworth was very quiet during all
the rest of that day; nor did he resume the portrait-taking by his own
desire, only at my cousin Holman’s request the next time that he came;
and then he said he should not require any more formal sittings for
only such a slight sketch as he felt himself capable of making. Phillis
was just the same as ever the next time I saw her after her abrupt
passing me in the hall. She never gave any explanation of her rush out
of the room.
So all things went on, at least as far as my observation reached at the
time, or memory can recall now, till the great apple-gathering of the
year. The nights were frosty, the mornings and evenings were misty, but
at mid-day all was sunny and bright, and it was one mid-day that both
of us being on the line near Heathbridge, and knowing that they were
gathering apples at the farm, we resolved to spend the men’s
dinner-hour in going over there. We found the great clothes-baskets
full of apples, scenting the house, and stopping up the way; and an
universal air of merry contentment with this the final produce of the
year. The yellow leaves hung on the trees ready to flutter down at the
slightest puff of air; the great bushes of Michaelmas daisies in the
kitchen-garden were making their last show of flowers. We must needs
taste the fruit off the different trees, and pass our judgment as to
their flavour; and we went away with our pockets stuffed with those
that we liked best. As we had passed to the orchard, Holdsworth had
admired and spoken about some flower which he saw; it so happened he
had never seen this old-fashioned kind since the days of his boyhood. I
do not know whether he had thought anything more about this chance
speech of his, but I know I had not—when Phillis, who had been missing
just at the last moment of our hurried visit, re-appeared with a little
nosegay of this same flower, which she was tying up with a blade of
grass. She offered it to Holdsworth as he stood with her father on the
point of departure. I saw their faces. I saw for the first time an
unmistakable look of love in his black eyes; it was more than gratitude
for the little attention; it was tender and beseeching—passionate. She
shrank from it in confusion, her glance fell on me; and, partly to hide
her emotion, partly out of real kindness at what might appear
ungracious neglect of an older friend, she flew off to gather me a few
late-blooming China roses. But it was the first time she had ever done
anything of the kind for me.
We had to walk fast to be back on the line before the men’s return, so
we spoke but little to each other, and of course the afternoon was too
much occupied for us to have any talk. In the evening we went back to
our joint lodgings in Hornby. There, on the table, lay a letter for
Holdsworth, which had been forwarded to him from Eltham. As our tea was
ready, and I had had nothing to eat since morning, I fell to directly
without paying much attention to my companion as he opened and read his
letter. He was very silent for a few minutes; at length he said,
“Old fellow! I’m going to leave you!”
“Leave me!” said I. “How? When?”
“This letter ought to have come to hand sooner. It is from Greathed the
engineer” (Greathed was well known in those days; he is dead now, and
his name half-forgotten); “he wants to see me about some business; in
fact, I may as well tell you, Paul, this letter contains a very
advantageous proposal for me to go out to Canada, and superintend the
making of a line there.”
I was in utter dismay.
“But what will our company say to that?”
“Oh, Greathed has the superintendence of this line, you know; and he is
going to be engineer in chief to this Canadian line; many of the
shareholders in this company are going in for the other, so I fancy
they will make no difficulty in following Greathed’s lead. He says he
has a young man ready to put in my place.”
“I hate him,” said I.
“Thank you,” said Holdsworth, laughing.
“But you must not,” he resumed; “for this is a very good thing for me,
and, of course, if no one can be found to take my inferior work, I
can’t be spared to take the superior. I only wish I had received this
letter a day sooner. Every hour is of consequence, for Greathed says
they are threatening a rival line. Do you know, Paul, I almost fancy I
must go up to-night? I can take an engine back to Eltham, and catch the
night train. I should not like Greathed to think me luke-warm.”
“But you’ll come back?” I asked, distressed at the thought of this
sudden parting.
“Oh, yes! At least I hope so. They may want me to go out by the next
steamer, that will be on Saturday.” He began to eat and drink standing,
but I think he was quite unconscious of the nature of either his food
or his drink.
“I will go to-night. Activity and readiness go a long way in our
profession. Remember that, my boy! I hope I shall come back, but if I
don’t, be sure and recollect all the words of wisdom that have fallen
from my lips. Now where’s the portmanteau? If I can gain half an hour
for a gathering up of my things in Eltham, so much the better. I’m
clear of debt anyhow; and what I owe for my lodgings you can pay for me
out of my quarter’s salary, due November 4th.”
“Then you don’t think you will come back?” I said, despondingly.
“I will come back some time, never fear,” said he, kindly. “I may be
back in a couple of days, having been found in-competent for the
Canadian work; or I may not be wanted to go out so soon as I now
anticipate. Anyhow you don’t suppose I am going to forget you, Paul
this work out there ought not to take me above two years, and, perhaps,
after that, we may be employed together again.” Perhaps! I had very
little hope. The same kind of happy days never returns. However, I did
all I could in helping him: clothes, papers, books, instruments; how we
pushed and struggled—how I stuffed. All was done in a much shorter time
than we had calculated upon, when I had run down to the sheds to order
the engine. I was going to drive him to Eltham. We sate ready for a
summons. Holdsworth took up the little nosegay that he had brought away
from the Hope Farm, and had laid on the mantel-piece on first coming
into the room. He smelt at it, and caressed it with his lips.
“What grieves me is that I did not know—that I have not said good-bye
to—to them.”
He spoke in a grave tone, the shadow of the coming separation falling
upon him at last.
“I will tell them,” said I. “I am sure they will be very sorry.” Then
we were silent.
“I never liked any family so much.”
“I knew you would like them.”
“How one’s thoughts change,—this morning I was full of a hope, Paul.”
He paused, and then he said,—
“You put that sketch in carefully?”
“That outline of a head?” asked I. But I knew he meant an abortive
sketch of Phillis, which had not been successful enough for him to
complete it with shading or colouring.
“Yes. What a sweet innocent face it is! and yet so—Oh, dear!” He sighed
and got up, his hands in his pockets, to walk up and down the room in
evident disturbance of mind. He suddenly stopped opposite to me.
“You’ll tell them how it all was. Be sure and tell the good minister
that I was so sorry not to wish him good-bye, and to thank him and his
wife for all their kindness. As for Phillis,—please God in two years
I’ll be back and tell her myself all in my heart.”
“You love Phillis, then?” said I.
“Love her! Yes, that I do. Who could help it, seeing her as I have
done? Her character as unusual and rare as her beauty! God bless her!
God keep her in her high tranquillity, her pure innocence.—Two years!
It is a long time.—But she lives in such seclusion, almost like the
sleeping beauty, Paul,”—(he was smiling now, though a minute before I
had thought him on the verge of tears,)—“but I shall come back like a
prince from Canada, and waken her to my love. I can’t help hoping that
it won’t be difficult, eh, Paul?”
This touch of coxcombry displeased me a little, and I made no answer.
He went on, half apologetically,—
“You see, the salary they offer me is large; and beside that, this
experience will give me a name which will entitle me to expect a still
larger in any future undertaking.”
“That won’t influence Phillis.”
“No! but it will make me more eligible in the eyes of her father and
mother.” I made no answer.
“You give me your best wishes, Paul,” said he, almost pleading. “You
would like me for a cousin?”
I heard the scream and whistle of the engine ready down at the sheds.
“Ay, that I should,” I replied, suddenly softened towards my friend now
that he was going away. “I wish you were to be married to-morrow, and I
were to be best man.”
“Thank you, lad. Now for this cursed portmanteau (how the minister
would be shocked); but it is heavy!” and off we sped into the darkness.
He only just caught the night train at Eltham, and I slept, desolately
enough, at my old lodgings at Miss Dawsons’, for that night. Of course
the next few days I was busier than ever, doing both his work and my
own. Then came a letter from him, very short and affectionate. He was
going out in the Saturday steamer, as he had more than half expected;
and by the following Monday the man who was to succeed him would be
down at Eltham. There was a P.S., with only these words:—“My nosegay
goes with me to Canada, but I do not need it to remind me of Hope
Farm.”
Saturday came; but it was very late before I could go out to the farm.
It was a frosty night, the stars shone clear above me, and the road was
crisping beneath my feet. They must have heard my footsteps before I
got up to the house. They were sitting at their usual employments in
the house-place when I went in. Phillis’s eyes went beyond me in their
look of welcome, and then fell in quiet disappointment on her work.
“And where’s Mr Holdsworth?” asked cousin Holman, in a minute or two.
“I hope his cold is not worse,—I did not like his short cough.”
I laughed awkwardly; for I felt that I was the bearer of unpleasant
news.
“His cold had need be better—for he’s gone—gone away to Canada!”
I purposely looked away from Phillis, as I thus abruptly told my news.
“To Canada!” said the minister.
“Gone away!” said his wife. But no word from Phillis.
“Yes!” said I. “He found a letter at Hornby when we got home the other
night—when we got home from here; he ought to have got it sooner; he
was ordered to go up to London directly, and to see some people about a
new line in Canada, and he’s gone to lay it down; he has sailed to-day.
He was sadly grieved not to have time to come out and wish you all
good-by; but he started for London within two hours after he got that
letter. He bade me thank you most gratefully for all your kindnesses;
he was very sorry not to come here once again.” Phillis got up and left
the room with noiseless steps.
“I am very sorry,” said the minister.
“I am sure so am I!” said cousin Holman. “I was real fond of that lad
ever since I nursed him last June after that bad fever.”
The minister went on asking me questions respecting Holdsworth’s future
plans; and brought out a large old-fashioned atlas, that he might find
out the exact places between which the new railroad was to run. Then
supper was ready; it was always on the table as soon as the clock on
the stairs struck eight, and down came Phillis—her face white and set,
her dry eyes looking defiance to me, for I am afraid I hurt her
maidenly pride by my glance of sympathetic interest as she entered the
room. Never a word did she say—never a question did she ask about the
absent friend, yet she forced herself to talk.
And so it was all the next day. She was as pale as could be, like one
who has received some shock; but she would not let me talk to her, and
she tried hard to behave as usual. Two or three times I repeated, in
public, the various affectionate messages to the family with which I
was charged by Holdsworth; but she took no more notice of them than if
my words had been empty air. And in this mood I left her on the Sabbath
evening.
My new master was not half so indulgent as my old one. He kept up
strict discipline as to hours, so that it was some time before I could
again go out, even to pay a call at the Hope Farm.
It was a cold misty evening in November. The air, even indoors, seemed
full of haze; yet there was a great log burning on the hearth, which
ought to have made the room cheerful. Cousin Holman and Phillis were
sitting at the little round table before the fire, working away in
silence. The minister had his books out on the dresser, seemingly deep
in study, by the light of his solitary candle; perhaps the fear of
disturbing him made the unusual stillness of the room. But a welcome
was ready for me from all; not noisy, not demonstrative—that it never
was; my damp wrappers were taken off; the next meal was hastened, and a
chair placed for me on one side of the fire, so that I pretty much
commanded a view of the room. My eye caught on Phillis, looking so pale
and weary, and with a sort of aching tone (if I may call it so) in her
voice. She was doing all the accustomed things—fulfilling small
household duties, but somehow differently—I can’t tell you how, for she
was just as deft and quick in her movements, only the light spring was
gone out of them. Cousin Holman began to question me; even the minister
put aside his books, and came and stood on the opposite side of the
fire-place, to hear what waft of intelligence I brought. I had first to
tell them why I had not been to see them for so long—more than five
weeks. The answer was simple enough; business and the necessity of
attending strictly to the orders of a new superintendent, who had not
yet learned trust, much less indulgence. The minister nodded his
approval of my conduct, and said,—“Right, Paul! ‘Servants, obey in all
things your master according to the flesh.’ I have had my fears lest
you had too much licence under Edward Holdsworth.”
“Ah,” said cousin Holman, “poor Mr Holdsworth, he’ll be on the salt
seas by this time!”
“No, indeed,” said I, “he’s landed. I have had a letter from him from
Halifax.” Immediately a shower of questions fell thick upon me. When?
How? What was he doing? How did he like it? What sort of a voyage? &c.
“Many is the time we have thought of him when the wind was blowing so
hard; the old quince-tree is blown down, Paul, that on the right-hand
of the great pear-tree; it was blown down last Monday week, and it was
that night that I asked the minister to pray in an especial manner for
all them that went down in ships upon the great deep, and he said then,
that Mr Holdsworth might be already landed; but I said, even if the
prayer did not fit him, it was sure to be fitting somebody out at sea,
who would need the Lord’s care. Both Phillis and I thought he would be
a month on the seas.” Phillis began to speak, but her voice did not
come rightly at first. It was a little higher pitched than usual, when
she said,—
“We thought he would be a month if he went in a sailing-vessel, or
perhaps longer. I suppose he went in a steamer?”
“Old Obadiah Grimshaw was more than six weeks in getting to America,”
observed cousin Holman.
“I presume he cannot as yet tell how he likes his new work?” asked the
minister.
“No! he is but just landed; it is but one page long. I’ll read it to
you, shall I?—
“‘Dear Paul,—We are safe on shore, after a rough passage. Thought you
would like to hear this, but homeward-bound steamer is making signals
for letters. Will write again soon. It seems a year since I left
Hornby. Longer since I was at the farm. I have got my nosegay safe.
Remember me to the Holmans.—Yours, E. H.’”
“That’s not much, certainly,” said the minister. “But it’s a comfort to
know he’s on land these blowy nights.”
Phillis said nothing. She kept her head bent down over her work; but I
don’t think she put a stitch in, while I was reading the letter. I
wondered if she understood what nosegay was meant; but I could not
tell. When next she lifted up her face, there were two spots of
brilliant colour on the cheeks that had been so pale before. After I
had spent an hour or two there, I was bound to return back to Hornby. I
told them I did not know when I could come again, as we—by which I mean
the company—had undertaken the Hensleydale line; that branch for which
poor Holdsworth was surveying when he caught his fever.
“But you’ll have a holiday at Christmas,” said my cousin. “Surely
they’ll not be such heathens as to work you then?”
“Perhaps the lad will be going home,” said the minister, as if to
mitigate his wife’s urgency; but for all that, I believe he wanted me
to come. Phillis fixed her eyes on me with a wistful expression, hard
to resist. But, indeed, I had no thought of resisting. Under my new
master I had no hope of a holiday long enough to enable me to go to
Birmingham and see my parents with any comfort; and nothing could be
pleasanter to me than to find myself at home at my cousins’ for a day
or two, then. So it was fixed that we were to meet in Hornby Chapel on
Christmas Day, and that I was to accompany them home after service, and
if possible to stay over the next day.
I was not able to get to chapel till late on the appointed day, and so
I took a seat near the door in considerable shame, although it really
was not my fault. When the service was ended, I went and stood in the
porch to await the coming out of my cousins. Some worthy people
belonging to the congregation clustered into a group just where I
stood, and exchanged the good wishes of the season. It had just begun
to snow, and this occasioned a little delay, and they fell into further
conversation. I was not attending to what was not meant for me to hear,
till I caught the name of Phillis Holman. And then I listened; where
was the harm?
“I never saw any one so changed!”
“I asked Mrs Holman,” quoth another, “‘Is Phillis well?’ and she just
said she had been having a cold which had pulled her down; she did not
seem to think anything of it.”
“They had best take care of her,” said one of the oldest of the good
ladies; “Phillis comes of a family as is not long-lived. Her mother’s
sister, Lydia Green, her own aunt as was, died of a decline just when
she was about this lass’s age.”
This ill-omened talk was broken in upon by the coming out of the
minister, his wife and daughter, and the consequent interchange of
Christmas compliments. I had had a shock, and felt heavy-hearted and
anxious, and hardly up to making the appropriate replies to the kind
greetings of my relations. I looked askance at Phillis. She had
certainly grown taller and slighter, and was thinner; but there was a
flush of colour on her face which deceived me for a time, and made me
think she was looking as well as ever. I only saw her paleness after we
had returned to the farm, and she had subsided into silence and quiet.
Her grey eyes looked hollow and sad; her complexion was of a dead
white. But she went about just as usual; at least, just as she had done
the last time I was there, and seemed to have no ailment; and I was
inclined to think that my cousin was right when she had answered the
inquiries of the good-natured gossips, and told them that Phillis was
suffering from the consequences of a bad cold, nothing more. I have
said that I was to stay over the next day; a great deal of snow had
come down, but not all, they said, though the ground was covered deep
with the white fall. The minister was anxiously housing his cattle, and
preparing all things for a long continuance of the same kind of
weather. The men were chopping wood, sending wheat to the mill to be
ground before the road should become impassable for a cart and horse.
My cousin and Phillis had gone up-stairs to the apple-room to cover up
the fruit from the frost. I had been out the greater part of the
morning, and came in about an hour before dinner. To my surprise,
knowing how she had planned to be engaged, I found Phillis sitting at
the dresser, resting her head on her two hands and reading, or seeming
to read. She did not look up when I came in, but murmured something
about her mother having sent her down out of the cold. It flashed
across me that she was crying, but I put it down to some little spirt
of temper; I might have known better than to suspect the gentle, serene
Phillis of crossness, poor girl; I stooped down, and began to stir and
build up the fire, which appeared to have been neglected. While my head
was down I heard a noise which made me pause and listen—a sob, an
unmistakable, irrepressible sob. I started up.
“Phillis!” I cried, going towards her, with my hand out, to take hers
for sympathy with her sorrow, whatever it was. But she was too quick
for me, she held her hand out of my grasp, for fear of my detaining
her; as she quickly passed out of the house, she said,—
“Don’t, Paul! I cannot bear it!” and passed me, still sobbing, and went
out into the keen, open air.
I stood still and wondered. What could have come to Phillis? The most
perfect harmony prevailed in the family, and Phillis especially, good
and gentle as she was, was so beloved that if they had found out that
her finger ached, it would have cast a shadow over their hearts. Had I
done anything to vex her? No: she was crying before I came in. I went
to look at her book—one of those unintelligible Italian books. I could
make neither head nor tail of it. I saw some pencil-notes on the
margin, in Holdsworth’s handwriting.
Could that be it? Could that be the cause of her white looks, her weary
eyes, her wasted figure, her struggling sobs? This idea came upon me
like a flash of lightning on a dark night, making all things so clear
we cannot forget them afterwards when the gloomy obscurity returns. I
was still standing with the book in my hand when I heard cousin
Holman’s footsteps on the stairs, and as I did not wish to speak to her
just then, I followed Phillis’s example, and rushed out of the house.
The snow was lying on the ground; I could track her feet by the marks
they had made; I could see where Rover had joined her. I followed on
till I came to a great stack of wood in the orchard—it was built up
against the back wall of the outbuildings,—and I recollected then how
Phillis had told me, that first day when we strolled about together,
that underneath this stack had been her hermitage, her sanctuary, when
she was a child; how she used to bring her book to study there, or her
work, when she was not wanted in the house; and she had now evidently
gone back to this quiet retreat of her childhood, forgetful of the clue
given me by her footmarks on the new-fallen snow. The stack was built
up very high; but through the interstices of the sticks I could see her
figure, although I did not all at once perceive how I could get to her.
She was sitting on a log of wood, Rover by her. She had laid her cheek
on Rover’s head, and had her arm round his neck, partly for a pillow,
partly from an instinctive craving for warmth on that bitter cold day.
She was making a low moan, like an animal in pain, or perhaps more like
the sobbing of the wind. Rover, highly flattered by her caress, and
also, perhaps, touched by sympathy, was flapping his heavy tail against
the ground, but not otherwise moving a hair, until he heard my approach
with his quick erected ears. Then, with a short, abrupt bark of
distrust, he sprang up as if to leave his mistress. Both he and I were
immovably still for a moment. I was not sure if what I longed to do was
wise: and yet I could not bear to see the sweet serenity of my dear
cousin’s life so disturbed by a suffering which I thought I could
assuage. But Rover’s ears were sharper than my breathing was noiseless:
he heard me, and sprang out from under Phillis’s restraining hand.
“Oh, Rover, don’t you leave me, too,” she plained out.
“Phillis!” said I, seeing by Rover’s exit that the entrance to where
she sate was to be found on the other side of the stack. “Phillis, come
out! You have got a cold already; and it is not fit for you to sit
there on such a day as this. You know how displeased and anxious it
would make them all.”
She sighed, but obeyed; stooping a little, she came out, and stood
upright, opposite to me in the lonely, leafless orchard. Her face
looked so meek and so sad that I felt as if I ought to beg her pardon
for my necessarily authoritative words.
“Sometimes I feel the house so close,” she said; “and I used to sit
under the wood-stack when I was a child. It was very kind of you, but
there was no need to come after me. I don’t catch cold easily.”
“Come with me into this cow-house, Phillis. I have got something to say
to you; and I can’t stand this cold, if you can.”
I think she would have fain run away again; but her fit of energy was
all spent. She followed me unwillingly enough that I could see. The
place to which I took her was full of the fragrant breath of the cows,
and was a little warmer than the outer air. I put her inside, and stood
myself in the doorway, thinking how I could best begin. At last I
plunged into it.
“I must see that you don’t get cold for more reasons than one; if you
are ill, Holdsworth will be so anxious and miserable out there” (by
which I meant Canada)—
She shot one penetrating look at me, and then turned her face away with
a slightly impatient movement. If she could have run away then she
would, but I held the means of exit in my own power. “In for a penny,
in for a pound,” thought I, and I went on rapidly, anyhow.
“He talked so much about you, just before he left—that night after he
had been here, you know—and you had given him those flowers.” She put
her hands up to hide her face, but she was listening now—listening with
all her ears. “He had never spoken much about you before, but the
sudden going away unlocked his heart, and he told me how he loved you,
and how he hoped on his return that you might be his wife.”
“Don’t,” said she, almost gasping out the word, which she had tried
once or twice before to speak; but her voice had been choked. Now she
put her hand backwards; she had quite turned away from me, and felt for
mine. She gave it a soft lingering pressure; and then she put her arms
down on the wooden division, and laid her head on it, and cried quiet
tears. I did not understand her at once, and feared lest I had mistaken
the whole case, and only annoyed her. I went up to her. “Oh, Phillis! I
am so sorry—I thought you would, perhaps, have cared to hear it; he did
talk so feelingly, as if he did love you so much, and somehow I thought
it would give you pleasure.”
She lifted up her head and looked at me. Such a look! Her eyes,
glittering with tears as they were, expressed an almost heavenly
happiness; her tender mouth was curved with rapture—her colour vivid
and blushing; but as if she was afraid her face expressed too much,
more than the thankfulness to me she was essaying to speak, she hid it
again almost immediately. So it was all right then, and my conjecture
was well-founded! I tried to remember something more to tell her of
what he had said, but again she stopped me.
“Don’t,” she said. She still kept her face covered and hidden. In half
a minute she added, in a very low voice, “Please, Paul, I think I would
rather not hear any more I don’t mean but what I have—but what I am
very much obliged—Only—only, I think I would rather hear the rest from
himself when he comes back.”
And then she cried a little more, in quite a different way. I did not
say any more, I waited for her. By-and-by she turned towards me—not
meeting my eyes, however; and putting her hand in mine just as if we
were two children, she said,—
“We had best go back now—I don’t look as if I had been crying, do I?”
“You look as if you had a bad cold,” was all the answer I made.
“Oh! but I am quite well, only cold; and a good run will warm me. Come
along, Paul.”
So we ran, hand in hand, till, just as we were on the threshold of the
house, she stopped,—
“Paul, please, we won’t speak about that again.”