PHILIP ST. LEGER.
Duncan Lisle, at once thoroughly aroused, laid his sleeping child upon
the lounge, and then hastily opening the door, which led upon the
veranda, encountered the bronzed face and flashing eyes of his
brother-inlaw, Philip St. Leger. Now this gentleman from Turkey was not
a ghost, nor had he rained down. A staunch ship had brought him from
Constantinople to New York; a week he had spent with his friends at
Troy; the lightning express, then so-called, from the latter city to
Richmond; thence a stage had set him down at Flat-Rock; here, public
conveyance went no farther. The best and only means of transportation
was on horseback. The roads were in too wretched a condition for the
"Bald Eagle's" one rickety carriage to attempt to plough through.
The returned missionary, almost distracted with care and fatigue, made a
virtue of necessity. With black Sam as guide, he set off amid the rain
and darkness for Kennons.
"It were better," he said, mentally, "that I should myself remain until
the morning; but having come so far, so near, I should be on thorns; I
must go."
Philip St. Leger was not a Virginian by birth. He was a native of the
city at whose distinguished school Della Lisle had graduated. Only on
the day of graduation and at the time of her marriage had the brother
and husband of Della met.
It was a sad meeting now, on this dreary night. These men, still in the
flush of manhood, clasped hands, and looked into each others' eyes, with
a despairing, inquiring eagerness.
Their chill fingers were scarce unlocked when Duncan asked:
"And did you come alone?"
"I brought her child; but Della-- I left her sleeping beneath the
shadow of the minarets."
Duncan stamped his foot. His cup of sorrow had been full. He had quaffed
with what patience possible its bitter draughts, and still were they
poured in afresh.
"I wrote you particulars of her death a year ago: I learned at Flat-Rock
that you never have received the mournful tidings. I learned also"--but
his voice trembled, and he could not go on.
"Of the sudden death of my wife. Good God! it may as well be spoken.
Yes, she was to-day buried out of my sight."
"O, my friend, speak not with such wildness."
"But all is gone--all but dreary, wretched, useless life. O, what a
world!"
"See here, my good brother," said the missionary, in a more cheerful
tone, "I have come a long journey; I am tired to death, wet through,
hungry, and cold."
Before he had finished, Duncan's hand had rang the bell violently. His
right-hand man, Grandison, appeared. In a brief space of time, the fire
was replenished, dry clothes produced, a small table of refreshments
spread in the same cheery room, and the missionary, with commendable
zeal, proceeded to refresh the inner man.
Duncan paced the floor in a desperate manner. The missionary paused
amidst his slices of cold chicken and ham, and thus addressed him:
"My friend, I am greatly distressed for you, but that helps you nothing.
I have been through the same fiery trial; and I not only believed, but
wished I might not survive the ordeal. I would not eat nor sleep, but
grieved incessantly. It was so sudden, so unforeseen. Was it not
singular that Della and Ellice, loving each other so well, should have
gone so near each other and in the same way? That is hardest of all;
martyrs were they in a true sense. But I had a friend, who aroused,
warned, and induced me to eat, sleep, and go on with the duties of life.
After one first great effort it is easier. If one must suffer, he may
assuage his pain by bearing it bravely. The over-tending of a wound may
produce worst consequences. Exposure to the air, frequent ablutions,
occasional frictions, create healing processes, reduce sensitiveness,
and restore somewhat of the old life and vigor. I dare say you have not
eaten a mouthful to-day; come eat, drink with me. I will not preach you
a sermon, but let us philosophize like sensible men."
Thus solicited, Duncan drew up his chair opposite his friend. With
evident disgust he swallowed the first mouthful, but this morsel seemed
to awaken appetite, and he made a respectable meal.
Having thus broken his involuntary fast, he felt, in a sense, refreshed,
and producing some fine cigars, the friends sat down before the fire,
where, looking through the blue wreaths, they seemed to gain a soothing
and an inspiration. The missionary gave to his host a brief history of
his life with Della, of her sickness and death, and then incidentally
gave a sketch here and there of his own youth. We will commence where he
left off, giving but the substance in brief, instead of his own words,
so often interspersed with irrelevant allusions and interrupted by
remark and question.
Philip St. Leger was the son of a sea captain. His youth, of course, he
spent mostly at school, its monotony varied more than once by a
prolonged voyage with his father at sea. His mother was a woman of
society, and left her children much to the care of servants.
Consequently, she had much trouble with them in after years. Philip was
the oldest child. He was naturally good-dispositioned and tractable;
but, owing to a false system of training, became headstrong and
altogether beyond maternal control.
At the age of nineteen, after a wild and fruitless career at college,
and after repeated suspensions, he was really expelled near the
beginning of the senior year. To his parents this was a severe
mortification, and his father, being at that moment at home, sent him to
some distant cousins, who lived among the white hills of New Hampshire.
Colonel Selby, in whose family Philip found himself domiciled, was a
fine specimen of the country gentleman. Genial, hospitable, full of wit
and anecdote, he was also a member of the Baptist Church, an ex-Senator
of the United States, and ex-Governor of his own State. His eldest son
was married, his youngest still in college, and his only daughter, about
the age of twenty-two, was still an almost idolized child beneath her
father's roof. The mother of these children had died a few years
previously, and a widow from the city had supplied her place in the
father's home and heart.
Philip St. Leger, black-haired, black-eyed, melancholy and romantic in
look, cityfied and aristocratic in air and manner, attracted much
attention among the simple people of the quiet town of Newberg. He could
not help perceiving that, for the first time in his life, he had become
a veritable lion. The very fact that he was Col. Selby's guest and
relative gave to him importance; another fact, that he was the son of a
wealthy sea captain from a distant city, was all-powerful.
It had indeed crept out somehow that he had been wild and extravagant,
that he had been sent to rusticate among rocks and hills so sterile
there would be little chance for his wild acts to take root; but then,
to some old ladies and young ones too, this rumor lent but additional
interest.
"Poor boy! what else could one expect? With such comeliness of person,
endless wealth, unlimited advantages--the only wonder was he was not
completely ruined." And he was compassionated and pitied for being
obliged to remain in so old-fashioned and out-of-the-way country town as
insignificant Newberg.
This pity was quite thrown away. Philip St. Leger was in his element; he
had never been so happy in his life; Newberg was made up of hills, in
the midst of grander mountains; it nestled in the western shadow of
Keansarge; and King's Hill and Sunapee reared loftily around her their
bold bleak fronts. A beautiful lake of the same name lay blue and clear
at Sunapee's foot. "Pleasant Lake" lay in another direction, famous for
its delicious trout and fragrant pond lilies.
Philip, the young scapegrace from city and from college, was in an
ecstacy; he had never beheld skies so blue, lakes so fair, landscapes so
lovely; with every breath he seemed to draw in life, vigor, and a new
sense of beauty. Every morning he was up at sunrise, scouring the
country upon the back of Nellie, a graceful, fleet young mare which Col.
Selby had generously set aside for his use. Maids, matrons, and small
boys stood in gaping amaze, stool in one hand and milk pail in the
other, watching half-fearfully, half-admiringly, the fearless young
equestrian, who shot by like a comet, his long, black hair streaming in
the wind.
It was Philip's delight to create this stare and wonder, to which poor
Nellie was obliged to contribute still more than her young master's
pleasure. If he could leap over some low garden wall, dart over a famous
strawberry bed, or amidst the melon patch, he thought he had done
something splendid. The owner's dismay, not alone at the ruin, but at
the untamed spirit that dared it, gave him peculiar delight.
Those old ladies who found their fattest goose dangling half-dead from
the apple-bough in the early morning, or who looked in vain for patient
cows within the yard, whose bars had mysteriously disappeared, began
less to admire this youthful metropolitan.
Complaints poured in upon Col. Selby. At first he laughed and made light
of them; then he consulted his wife. She was a staid, proper person,
careful of the family's good name and popularity. It would never do.
Philip ought to have some sense of what was due to his host; since he
had not, he must be put in mind of it. She would undertake the task
herself.
This she did, but without effect. Philip had promised sorrow and
amendment with a long face, but inwardly he laughed, and after, became
seven times worse than before.
Complaints multiplied. Not only were geese and cows interfered with, but
dogs and horses were found tied to saplings or shut up in most
unimaginable places. Burdocks and thistles appeared in meeting-house
pews, where they surely had never before been known spontaneously to
spring; teachers in the Sunday school were shocked to learn that they
had distributed dime novels with books and tracts. The minister, one
morning in the pulpit, solemnly opened his Bible, and unexpectedly
beholding a most ludicrous picture, laughed outright, to the great
scandal of every looker-on.
Now this was too much. Mrs. Selby had passed by stories of green-apple
showers falling upon homeward-bound school children's heads; she had
even smilingly held her peace when laughingly assured that a troop of
dogs and cats had gone madly wailing and howling through the streets, a
miniature world flaming with fire attached by means of wires to each
caudal appendage--even that was too much decidedly. But this tampering
with the meeting-house! Mrs. Selby consulted first her husband, as in
duty bound; that is, she called him aside, told him the latest pranks of
their protege, and emphatically added that there should be an end of
them.
"But wife, I cannot turn the boy out of my house."
"You need not, my dear; that is my privilege, particularly since he is
_my_ relative, not yours. Forbearance now would cease to be a virtue;
there is a limit to human endurance; there shall at once be an end to
this boy's mad pranks. He is on the piazza, perhaps studying some new
mischief; send him in to me, please."
"But are you not too hasty, wife?" urged the soft-hearted ex-Governor,
who remembered his own follies and frolics of long ago.
"Too hasty, when we have all borne so much? Gov. Selby"--with a
smile--"allow your wife to command you; send that naughty boy hither."
An hour later, Philip having sought her in house and garden, stood in
presence of Mary Selby, at last discovered in her attic studio.
"Your mother has banished me; she has already spoken the fatal words; I
must leave Newberg, this garden spot of God's glorious earth--most of
all, I must leave you, cousin Mary, and I shall be lost, forever lost,"
exclaimed this strange youth, in tones melodramatic.
Mary laid aside her palette and brushes.
"Why then, cousin Phil, haven't you done better, after so many repeated
warnings?"
"It is easy for _you_ to ask that question, and you can answer it better
than can I. Why do you not ask the wind why and whence it blows? Why do
the waters overflow their banks, why ocean waves engulf life-freighted
ships?"
"No, Philip, there is no analogy. Be reasonable; you are a being of
will; you can do or not do. He is only a child who exercises no
self-control, who is governed only by caprice, whim, or whatever passion
of the moment. These follies, of which my mother makes account, and
rightly, are beneath one of your age. There is in them nothing
ennobling, charming; nothing that should gratify a mind that has the
faintest conception of the good, the beautiful, and the true."
"I suppose so, cousin. But I have so long indulged in this fun-loving
propensity"--
"That it has grown into an inveterate habit. Is this, then, a part of
your better nature? Is there no depth beneath this evanescent
surface--froth and foam? I believe there is. But in order that it may be
discovered to the light and made fit for cultivation, this trivial
surface-crust must be turned under, kept down, lest light and heat
nourish its weeds into luxuriance."
"Why have you not talked to me thus before? _You_ could do anything with
me, cousin Mary."
"I will tell you the truth, Philip, because I think I owe it you. I went
not with you to ride or walk, I have kept myself aloof from you, because
my parents thought you too wild for my association."
"I am not a bear, and I might be better than I seem," said the proud
boy, humbly.
"Yes, Philip, I believe you. And I have often thought I might do you
good. Had you been my brother I should not have hesitated; but I had a
suspicion that you might regard any persuasions or lectures from me as a
piece of self-righteousness, for which you might have, as do I, supreme
contempt."
"O, no, cousin. You are the best woman in the world. I would do anything
for you."
"Leave off all of those mischievous pranks which are the cause of your
present disgrace?"
"Yes, even that--and more. But it is too late now. I go to-morrow."
The result of this and still further conversation to the same effect
produced a conviction upon the mind of Mary that the spoiled child was
not beyond hope of redemption. She laid the case before her parents,
and, with the aid of her father, obtained a reluctant consent from her
mother that one more trial might be given the recreant Philip.
Even without this Mary would have gained her point, for on the next
morning Philip, burning with fever, was unable to leave his bed.
A severe attack of typhoid ensued.
When Philip St. Leger, after a dangerous illness of many weeks, became
convalescent, he was a changed person. Not alone through the influence
of Mary, but Colonel Selby, and especially his wife, were brought to
realize how prone they had been to reproach and condemn without having
made the slightest efforts to reform. A neglected, untutored,
un-Christianized young man had been placed in their care--was it too
late to redeem the past? No effort was left untried, though exercised
with the greatest delicacy to bring the young heathen's mind to a proper
state of its former unhealthfulness, of its present pressing needs.
Mary read to him biographies of the good and great. She read ennobling
works of poetry and counsel. She brought before his mind by example how
superior was earnestness to trivialty, strict integrity to knavery and
falsehood, goodness and piety to wickedness and infidelity. As she read
and commented, her voice became to Philip as the voice of an angel. Her
work was indeed accomplished when, after having listened to her
rendering of St. Paul's grand epistles, there sprang up in his heart,
first: "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian;" then this full,
heart-swelling sympathy with the Apostle's words:
"For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any creature, shall be able to separate us from
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."