PHEMIE KELLER.
A Novel.
BY F. G. TRAFFORD,
AUTHOR OF “GEORGE GEITH,” “CITY AND SUBURB,” “MAXWELL DREWITT,” “TOO
MUCH ALONE,” “WORLD AND THE CHURCH,” “RACE FOR WEALTH.”
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
1866.
[_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved._]
LONDON
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.— BASIL 1
II.— THE NEXT HEIR 30
III.— VISITORS 49
IV.— SUMMER HOLIDAYS 68
V.— KNOWLEDGE 90
VI.— FROM LESS TO MORE 112
VII.— THE DOWNWARD ROAD 141
VIII.— JEALOUSY 164
IX.— STRANGE TIDINGS 177
X.— BASIL DECIDES 200
XI.— THE MARCH OF EVENTS 231
XII.— THE SOCIAL RACK 254
XIII.— PARTED 283
PHEMIE KELLER.
CHAPTER I.
BASIL.
After so long an absence, it would have seemed only natural for his
tenantry to greet Captain Stondon’s return with “three times three,”
with arches, with banners; and most probably Phemie’s heart might have
been gladdened by some ceremonial of this kind, had not Montague
Stondon’s suicide rendered all thoughts of rejoicing out of the
question.
As it was, the pair came home through lonely roads to the park gates,
where an old woman admitted them; and in the gathering evening twilight
Phemie looked at the elms and the fir-trees till the loneliness
oppressed her—till she felt thankful to escape at last from the avenue,
and reach the house which she had never seen but once before.
It was one of those houses every man thinks he should like to own—large
enough for any income—comfortable enough never to appear stately: a
house that the sun’s beams seemed always to fall on warmly: a house in
which it was easy to fancy blazing fires in the winter—cool rooms in the
summer: a house that the eye turned to look back upon as it might on a
pleasant face: a house that was a home: a house that Phemie came to love
passionately.
It was built of red brick, and ivy and creepers and roses twined up the
sun-burnt walls, covering them with stem and branch and leaf and flower.
The drawing-room was at the back of the house, and its windows
overlooked the flower-garden that sloped away from the hill on which the
house was built to the flat lands below.
Many an English mansion is spoiled by its site. Marshlands was made by
the eminence it occupied. Yet if the place had a fault, it was this:
whichever way your glance turned, you could see nothing but
Marshlands—its gardens, its fields, its park, its fountains, its
avenues, its long belt of plantation: Marshlands was everywhere; and as
a natural consequence, some people tired of Marshlands after a season;
tired of the firs, the elms, the smooth-cut lawns, the deer, the
shrubberies. Half the timber wanted clearing away, and views being thus
obtained of the surrounding country; but on this latter point Marshlands
was inexorable. You might walk till you were weary, but still you could
see nothing save the park and great belts of plantation, clumps of firs,
avenues of elms, hedgerows in which trees were growing as thick as
blackberries.
The day arrived when Phemie felt those masses of foliage, those banks of
branch and leaf, those never-ending plantations, those inexorable
stately trees, oppress her soul. Mountain-reared, she longed for greater
freedom—for a country over which her eye could wander free and
unconfined: she longed for the hill-side, for the desolate seashore: but
on the evening when she returned home again, after years spent in
travelling from place to place, England—any part of it—seemed a
possession gained, a good secured, and Mrs. Stondon rejoiced to cross
the threshold of Marshlands, and hear words of welcome spoken in her
native tongue.
Like a child she wandered from room to room; like a child, too, after
dinner, she insisted on going out and walking about the place by
moonlight, compelling Captain Stondon, who would much have preferred
remaining indoors, to accompany her along the garden paths, past the
lakes, under the shadow of the elms, to a point where further progress
seemed stopped by a plantation of fir-trees.
“I wonder,” remarked Phemie, as she paused to listen to the coming and
going of the summer wind through the branches, “I wonder how you could
stay away so long, with such a property as this in England. Is not it
worth all the palaces and châteaux abroad put together?”
“As a possession, perhaps,” answered Captain Stondon; “as a residence, I
am doubtful: that is I am doubtful whether you will like it; if you do,
I shall be content to live and die here—quite content.”
But Captain Stondon sighed, even while he made this statement, and
Phemie looked up at the branches overhead with an expression in her face
which made it in the moonlight look almost disagreeable. She knew what
Captain Stondon was thinking about. The children that had come to them,
dead and dead—children that had come, not to make her a softer or a
better woman, but merely, as it seemed, to develop the taint an
over-prosperous life had infused into her character.
What shall I call this taint? Jealous selfishness—exacting egotism—a
fretful impatience of anything which stood between herself and the
affection and admiration of those around her. I should like to find one
word to express what I mean; I wish I could discover some sentence that
might embody at once what was so natural and yet so unpleasant. She was
prosperous; why should she fret? why should he fret? Had she not had to
fight for her own life because of those dead heirs? those heirs who had
never existed.
She did not fret; why should he? Would he rather have had the children
than her? Supposing she had died and they lived; would he have been
satisfied then? Supposing they had lived and she lived too; would the
sons have been greater than their mother? That was the set of questions
that always made Phemie’s face change when she saw Captain Stondon
thinking about who should come after him. Had not he her while he was
living; was not that enough for him? Mrs. Stondon’s creed had grown to
be of this nature, at any rate. She was to be everything, and no other
person ought to stand even near her. It was horribly unamiable, it was
detestably selfish, and yet—and yet it was only because she was so
solitary that she was so unwomanly. She gave nothing, and therefore she
sought to receive all homage. Her love was cold, and therefore she
exacted love as though it had been a debt owing to her, and she
insisting on payment to the uttermost farthing.
Her life had been too prosperous, too easy. She had not had to live on
crumbs of affection, to beg for love with wistful eyes, as a dog begs
for notice from its master. Every one seemed to think it was so good of
her to be fond of Captain Stondon. Mistress Phemie herself was so young,
so attractive, so altogether unique, that the world was rather apt to
imply she had made a mistake in wedding her husband at all. She was
pampered—I think that was the English of the matter; and she needed to
find her level once again, before she could become a woman about whom it
is altogether agreeable to write.
She did not look pleasant standing in the moonlight with that strange
expression on her countenance; for in the moonlight her face seemed to
belong to some one without a heart to feel, without a heart to be
broken.
Could she have looked forward then, I wonder what change the moon would
have seen come swiftly over her. Under the fir-trees she would have wept
and sobbed; she would have fallen to the earth humbled and stricken; she
would have turned to her husband with the pride and the vanity and the
selfishness and the sarcasm beaten out of her lovely face, and prayed
him love her less, trust her less, give her less, so as to preserve her
from the sorrow and the evil to come.
But as she stood there, she was simply what his pride and his devotion
had made her. The Phemie he married among the hills—ignorant, childish,
unsophisticated, had given place to another Phemie, to a self-possessed,
ladylike, accomplished woman, who walked gracefully, who had a stately
carriage, who wore her beauty like a queen. The half her lifetime she
once spoke of had been best part lived out. Five years of the eight were
gone, and this was the result. Had she not finished her task? Was not
Captain Stondon proud of her as well as fond? Was he not satisfied with
her in every respect? Did she not give him as much love as she had to
give to any one? Had he been of a jealous temperament, which he was not,
her conduct must yet have seemed without spot or blemish.
Othello himself could have taken no exception to her. She was docile,
she was grateful, she was easily pleased. She liked to visit, she liked
to stay at home, she liked company, and yet she delighted in such
rambles as that under the moonlight at Marshlands, when not a sound save
the light breeze stirring among the trees broke the stillness.
Yes, if he had but children, Captain Stondon thought his life would be
almost too happy, too round and perfect in its complete content. And if
he sighed to think that there were no little feet pattering through the
rooms and along the corridors, who may blame him? For a man owning a
large property to be childless is to convert his freehold estate into a
mere leasehold, terminable with his own life. He improves his lands for
others; he sows that strangers may reap; the very backbone is taken out
of his existence, and he loses interest in the place of which he is a
tenant-at-will.
And yet Captain Stondon only repined at times at this want in the full
measure of his happiness. He was in the main a good man and a just; and
he needed no divine to tell him that if children were from the Lord, the
lonely hearth was of Him likewise.
And for this reason, if Phemie continued to like Marshlands, he would
wander no more. He would cure himself of the restless fever which had
for so long weakened his energies, destroyed his usefulness; he would do
his best to make her love her home, and enable her to be happy there. A
great prize had fallen to him in the lottery of life, and he would be
grateful for it. Under the fir-trees he vowed that vow to himself and to
his God: under the fir-trees, when his heart brake in twain, he
remembered that vow, and sobbed like a child to think that his love and
his tenderness and his gratitude had all been as strength spent for
nought.
And yet not so; the end of the battle is not here; the last of the
witnesses are never called on earth; and when the great day arrives, in
which all human reckonings are to be finally settled, we shall surely
find that love and tenderness have never been lost, though to our eyes
their streams of blessing may have seemed but as water wasted upon weed
and rush and reed.
As for Phemie—naturally, as though she had been born in the purple—she
took her rightful place at last as mistress of Marshlands.
She was enchanted to be back in England once again; she was a wanderer
on the face of the earth no longer; she was a woman known to every one
save those of her own kin and her own country no more.
She was coming home really to enjoy life; to assume her proper position
in society; to show off her accomplishments; to be admired for her
beauty; to be spoiled, petted, ruined, if you will.
Visitors came; visits were returned. Norfolk was glad to have Captain
Stondon back on any terms. No matter whom he might have married—his wife
was young; his wife liked company; his wife would give parties;
Marshlands had long wanted a mistress, and here was one whom any county
might be proud to receive with open arms.
What if she had been poor? Was she not a Keller? Was she not half a
century or so younger than Captain Stondon? Was she not pretty and
ladylike and accomplished?—and, beyond all, when once the days of
mourning for that disreputable vagabond Montague were accomplished, had
she not promised fathers and mothers, and the dancing young men and the
dancing young women, parties to their hearts’ content?
Altogether it was very delicious to fill the position she did; and
Phemie, as the days went by, felt more and more satisfied that she had
made a very good thing of life, and that she had acted in a praiseworthy
manner when she secured at one stroke a good kind husband and a fine
estate.
She had benefited herself; she was benefiting her family.
Duncan was with Messrs. Hoyle and Hoyle, the great London engineers, and
Helen was at school, and the pair spent their holidays at Marshlands
that summer, when the Stondons returned to England; and Mr. Aggland came
likewise, and passed a fortnight with his niece, during which time he
arrived at the conclusion that Phemie was altered and not improved.
“She is not half so good as her husband,” thought the farmer. “I suppose
too hot a sun is as bad as too keen a frost—prosperity seems to have
withered up her buds, at any rate.” And then straightway Mr. Aggland
tried to find out what soft spots Phemie had left, what troubled her,
what wishes she had, what aims, what objects.
Here he was puzzled: it was for the day and herself—for the pleasures
and the joys and the vanities of the day, that Mrs. Stondon existed.
“It is a bright life,” remarked her uncle; “but, my dear, the winter
must come to the happiest of us. Have you thought of that?”
“It will be time enough to think of the winter when the autumn arrives,”
she answered, gaily; “besides, why should enjoying the bright days unfit
one for enduring the dark? Sometimes, uncle, I think you are sorry I am
so happy.” And Phemie, standing on the terrace, with the evening sun
streaming on her, pouted as she said this.
“Are you really happy, Phemie?” he asked; “happy in yourself; contented
and satisfied; or is it all as the crackling of thorns under the pot, a
blaze and a sparkle, and then out, leaving no heat, no light behind?”
“I am perfectly happy,” she replied, gathering up the skirts of her
light flowing muslin dress, and preparing to re-enter the house; “and
why you should think I am not happy, or why you should fancy I ought not
to be happy, I cannot imagine.”
“You have had trouble, dear,” he said, hesitatingly; “the children——”
And at that point he stopped in his speech and Phemie stopped in her
walk to deliver her sentiments on the subject.
“Can I bring them back again?” she asked, almost fiercely. “Could I help
their dying?—did I kill them? Why should I spend my existence fretting
over what is irremediable—over what I am not sure I should care to
remedy if I could? Captain Stondon would like a son to inherit this
place; but as it seems he is not to have a living son, there can be no
use in his constantly thinking about it. Have we not Marshlands? Have we
not every happiness, every comfort? Have we not wood and field and lake
and water? If we had fifty sons, could we have more out of the place?
Why should I sit down and be miserable because children whom I never
knew, whom I never heard speak, who might as well never have been born,
were not spared perhaps to grow up curses to us? Sometimes I think,”
went on Phemie, with the tears starting into her eyes, “that you and
Captain Stondon both, would rather the boys had lived and I had
died—anything for a son, any sacrifice for an heir.” And without waiting
for an answer, Phemie swept into the drawing-room, leaving her uncle to
think over what she had said.
“There is reason in it if there be not rhyme,” he muttered, as he walked
up and down the terrace; “and yet there is something out of joint in
Phemie’s life; there must be something wrong in any life that makes a
woman talk like that. She was too young,” finished Mr. Aggland, looking
away down the garden towards the flat lands beyond; “she was too young,
and she does not love the man she has married. God grant she may never
find it out. It is better for her to be anything rather than
dissatisfied. It is better for her to be a fine lady than a miserable
woman.” And Mr. Aggland still strained his eyes down the garden,
thinking he would give all his worldly possessions to see once more the
Phemie who had left him when she plighted her troth to Captain Stondon,
and cried because Davie stood at the church porch to bid her his dumb
farewell.
Yet there were still some things about his niece which touched Mr.
Aggland unspeakably. To him she never changed; she never forgot to ask
after the poorest farmer in Tordale; she remembered where each flower
grew, and would speak about the hyacinths and the anemones, about the
heather and the thyme, as though she had never seen the shores of the
Mediterranean, or wandered through earth’s loveliest scenes abroad.
She made no close friends. Among all her acquaintance she found no one
to love as she had loved Helen; she took no new pets; she who had always
chosen some lamb, or foal, or calf, or kitten for herself, never now
stretched out her hand towards any animal caressingly.
“Would you care to have Davie?” asked her uncle, the day before his
departure; and for a moment Phemie looked pleased and wistful, but then
the look faded out of her face, and she said:
“Davie would not be happy here. He is not handsome enough to be in the
house, and he would miss the warm fireside and the children stroking
him. I should like him, uncle, but he would not like this. When I can, I
will go and see him and the Hill Farm and Tordale, but he had better
stay in Tordale than come here.”
Many a time, after he returned to Cumberland, Mr. Aggland thought about
this speech, and wondered whether Phemie wished she had stayed in
Tordale too; but he might have spared himself the trouble of
speculating, for Phemie never for a moment repented her marriage; she
was perfectly content to be the mistress of Marshlands, to be flattered,
courted, sought after; and day by day, as he saw how she comported
herself in her new position, as he heard her admired, and beheld how
much she was liked, Captain Stondon grew more and more proud of the wife
he had chosen, and allowed her to do more and more as she liked.
And what Phemie liked was to have plenty of society—to have balls and
parties and picnics continually, and to balls and parties and picnics
Captain Stondon (who was not so young-looking as when we first met him
turning into the valley of Tordale), went about with her, content that
she was satisfied—pleased with her pleasure. He would watch her dancing;
he would listen to her singing; he loved to see her turn her face
beaming with happiness towards him.
“I wonder was ever man so blessed?” he thought, one evening, as he stood
looking at Phemie from afar; and even while he thought this, a lady
touched him with her fan, and said—
“I suppose you do not recollect me, Captain Stondon? but my memory is
better. I must see whether your wife recognizes me.” And with a smile
flung back to Captain Stondon, she crossed the room, and said to Phemie—
“I am going to ask you to do me a great favour, Mrs. Stondon—it is six
years after, and I want you to sing, ‘Then you’ll remember,’ for me.”
“Miss Derno!” exclaimed Phemie, and the two laughed outright. “Where did
you come from? With whom are you staying?” asked Mrs. Stondon.
“I am staying with the Hurlfords, and I come from wandering to and fro
upon the earth—as you do also for that matter; and I am delighted to see
you looking so well.”
And Miss Derno looked delighted, and held Phemie’s hand in hers while
she spoke of the last time they had met, of the period which had elapsed
since that night when——
“When I broke down,” finished Mrs. Stondon, with as much readiness as
could have been expected from Miss Derno herself. “I can do better than
that now, and if you come over to Marshlands I shall be happy to prove
the fact to you.”
“No time like time present,” remarked Miss Derno. “I am sorry to take
you from among the dancers, but I claim a song as my right.” And she
drew Phemie gently away towards the music-room, saying as they passed
along,
“There is a pet of mine here to-night that I want you to take graciously
to. I will introduce him when you have finished my song—that is, if you
give me leave to do so. You must have noticed him, I think—a young man
who danced with Miss Maria Hurlford?”
“I know,” answered Mrs. Stondon: “dark-haired, dark-eyed,
indolent-looking. He was talking to Captain Stondon when we left the
other room. Who is he?”
“He is Montague Stondon’s son, Basil.”
Phemie was touching the keys of the piano as Miss Derno spoke. When Miss
Derno finished her sentence, Mrs. Stondon took her hands off the notes
and looked up at her companion quickly and strangely.
“What brings him here?” she asked. And the question sounded almost
defiant.
“He is staying, like myself, with the Hurlfords.”
“Oh!” said Mistress Phemie, and straightway she began her song.
The room was empty of company when she commenced—ere she had finished,
it was full of people.
Whenever Mrs. Stondon sang, guests flocked round her as children might
to a show. It was her gift—it was her talent, and she had cultivated her
voice, and practised; she had laboured, and tried to become an
accomplished vocalist, with such success that even Miss Derno stood
astonished—stood with the tears in her eyes listening silently.
“Who is the sweet singer?” said some one in a low tone.
“Mrs. Stondon,” whispered back Miss Derno. And Basil Stondon, for it was
he who asked the question, drew back at her answer, and left the room.
“An amiable pair,” thought Miss Derno. “She is jealous of the possible
possessor of Marshlands; he looks with unfavourable eyes on the present
mistress of that desirable property.” And while other friends gathered
round Mrs. Stondon, praying her to sing again, to sing another song, and
another still, Miss Derno vanished also, and followed Basil Stondon into
the garden, where he was leaning over a stone balustrade, and looking
disconsolately at the moon.
“How very stupid you must be, Basil,” said the lady, “to spoil your
chances in this way. If you want to reach Captain Stondon you must reach
him through his wife; and instead of waiting to be introduced to her you
run away as if you were a schoolboy ordered up for punishment.”
“It is a punishment to me to see her at all,” answered the young man.
“But for her my father might now be alive—but for her I might have been
making some thousands a year, instead of going begging after government
appointments.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Basil Stondon,” said Miss Derno, impatiently; “you
would never have made thousands a year anywhere: you have not energy
enough in you ever to have made money for yourself at all, you are only
fit for a government clerk, you are too genteel and too lazy and too
fine a gentleman ever to push your own way up. For which reasons take my
advice: let bygones be bygones, and strive to get into Captain Stondon’s
good-will by conciliating his wife.”
“I have got his good-will already,” was the calm reply. “I went up to
him diffidently; but he received me, so to speak, with open arms; he
asked me to call at Marshlands to-morrow. He inquired what I was
doing—he wanted to know why I had not come to him before—he remarked
that something must be done for me—and he would have talked on for an
hour had some General Sheen not broken in upon our conversation with
original observations about the weather and the state of the crops.”
“Then you followed us into the music-room,” suggested Miss Derno.
“Then hearing some woman singing like an angel, I went to ascertain who
had come down from heaven. When I saw the hair, however, my heart
misgave me. As we know the devil by his cloven hoof, so I knew Mrs.
Stondon by her glory of auburn hair.”
“But it is beautiful hair, Basil; and because it is beautiful, and she
is beautiful, and you admire all things that are beautiful, you must try
to be friends with her. She is lovely enough to come up even to your
standard, surely.”
“I do not admire fair women,” he answered, coldly. “I like sunshine
better than moonlight. I like warmth better than ice.”
“You like talking folly,” retorted Miss Derno; “and if you persist in
being so silly I shall withdraw the inestimable blessing of my
friendship from you. Come and be introduced to Mrs. Stondon like a
rational being. Come and see—not your relative’s wife—but merely a very
beautiful and accomplished woman.”
“At some future time,” he said; “but to-night there is a dark mood on
me, and I cannot face her. Can you not stay here?” he pleaded, as his
companion turned to go away; “you are the only person on earth who talks
frankly to me. You are the only being whose voice I care to hear.”
“Mr. Basil Stondon, I am honoured,” replied Miss Derno; and under the
moonlight she made him a sweeping curtsey; “but society has its
prejudices, and its prejudices we must study. You and I know we are not
in love with one another, but the world might think we were, and for
that reason I cannot remain with you talking about the best opera and
the last new book.” Having finished which frank statement, Miss Derno
would have gone in, but that Mr. Stondon caught her hand and kept her.
“Why cannot we love one another?” he asked. “Why do you say we know we
do not love one another? I have never seen a woman equal to you. I have
never felt the same attachment for any one as I have for you.”
Then Miss Derno laughed.
“It is a blessing, Basil,” she said, “that I am not a woman to take you
at your word; it is a mercy, God knows it is, that I am not so anxious
to be settled, as to snap at the possible heir of Marshlands; for you do
not love me, and it would not be natural that you should love a woman so
much older than yourself. Have we not gone over all this ground before?
Have I not told you, what I do not proclaim in the market-place, that my
heart is dead, and that there is no man who could ever make it thrill
with joy and love and pleasure and life again?” And as the woman—for she
was all a woman at that moment—said this, a light seemed to come from
that far-away past—a light that illumined her features and softened
them.
“I would I had been born sooner for your sake,” whispered Basil,
tenderly.
“I would that you had a little more sense for your own,” she retorted.
“Are there not girls enough in England that you should persist in making
love to a woman for whom you do not care, and who had passed through a
perfect sea of trouble while you were still busy with the multiplication
table?”
“It is easy for you to laugh,” he answered; “you who have always some
one to love you: who have so many friends; but a lonely man like
myself—a man lonely and poor, must love any one who is so good and true
and beautiful as you: and if I must love afar off,” added Mr. Stondon,
“why, I shall still love on.”
“Love me as your friend, as your mother, sister, grandmother, what you
please,” answered Miss Derno, “but not as your love. Lonely and poor!”
she went on; “no man who can work ought ever to be poor—no human being
can ever be called lonely who has his life all before him, and who has
not left everything worth living for behind him by the way. Lonely and
poor! Basil, you have talked sentiment to the moon long enough. Come in
and say what is civil to the only woman who can now really better your
condition. For _I_ do not advise you to marry an heiress. I recommend
you to let Captain Stondon advance your interest, if he will. And he
will, I am sure of it. Come.”
But Basil would not. He stayed behind in the moonlight, thinking of Miss
Derno and Mrs. Stondon and Marshlands—whilst ever and anon there came
over him a vague instinctive feeling—very dreamy, very unpleasant, very
indefinable—that he had that night said something, done something, seen
something, which should influence every hour and moment of his future
life.