VISITORS.
Time went on, and as it went Basil Stondon grew to know his way over
from the Abbey to Marshlands so well that he could have walked the road
blindfold.
Mrs. Stondon never grew cordial, but that was no drawback to the young
man’s enjoyment. He had been so accustomed to women who liked and made
much of him, that to meet a woman who did not like him, and who was
merely civil, seemed only a pleasant variety—nothing more.
It amused him to watch Phemie’s devices for getting rid of him, and to
circumvent them; it delighted him to see her face vary and change while
he vexed and tormented her. Especially was he pleased when Phemie grew
angry, as she sometimes did, and turned upon him. When her eyes flashed,
when her cheeks flushed, she certainly did look beautiful; and no one
could bring the colour into her face and the lightning into her eyes
like Basil Stondon.
She would sit and think about those dead children if he annoyed her,
hour after hour. Had there been a boy upstairs, this young man, this
stranger, this Eliezer, would not have been wandering about the grounds
with Captain Stondon, riding with him, walking with him, getting to be
unto him as a son.
Phemie could not bear it; she got pale, she got irritable, watching the
pair. She grew beyond all things doubtful of herself, doubtful whether
she had ever made her husband entirely happy.
If he were happy now, he could not have been so before. If he loved her
as she once thought he did, he ought to know by intuition that she did
not like Basil being so constantly at Marshlands. And yet was not there
something wrong about herself? Was she not, after all, as the dog in the
manger? She never really desired anything till she saw another hand
stretched out to seize it. She had not cared for her own children to
inherit, and yet she grudged that another woman’s son should own the
broad lands of Marshlands. She knew that had her will been paramount
Basil should never have entered the park gates, either as guest or
master; but she could no more hinder her husband asking him to the
house, and learning to like him as he did, than she could hinder him
succeeding to the estates.
For who could help liking Basil Stondon? Basil, who was so easy, so
good-natured, so forgetful of injury, fancied or real, that long before
Mrs. Stondon had ever begun to question whether it was right for her to
hate him as she did, he had forgotten his feud with her, forgotten that
he and his mother had always laid his father’s death at the door of this
strange woman, forgotten everything save her youth, her beauty, and her
marvellous voice.
He had no remark now to make about blue eyes and auburn hair. He did not
now inform Miss Derno that he liked Marshlands but hated its mistress;
on the contrary, the oftener he visited his kinsfolk the pleasanter his
visits seemed to be, till at last he found he was so far reconciled to
Phemie as to be able to endure to stay under the same roof with her.
“Of course,” said Captain Stondon, in answer to the young man’s faint
remonstrances, “you must do something; but meantime, till you find
something to do, make Marshlands your headquarters.” And, nothing loth
to fall into such good quarters, Basil bade good-bye to the Hurlfords,
packed up his portmanteau at the Abbey, and unpacked it again in a house
that soon seemed more to him like home than any in which he had ever
previously set foot.
“I suppose Captain Stondon means to adopt you,” remarked Miss Derno. “I
hope you will not be spoiled at Marshlands; but it is not the lot I
should have chosen for you could I have had my wish.”
“It is not the lot I should have chosen for myself,” returned Mr. Basil,
tenderly. “If you could have cared for me, Olivia, how different in
every respect——”
“You do not know your own mind,” interrupted Miss Derno, hastily; “you
cannot read your own heart. You fancied you cared for me, and that fancy
has passed, or is passing away; you have only dreamed another dream and
wakened from it. How many women I have seen you in love with!” she went
on, a little bitterly. “I wonder, I often wonder, who will fix the
wandering heart at last, and keep it prisoner for life.”
“You might have done,” he answered; “you might have made anything you
chose of me. I would have worked for you, striven for you, died for you.
It may seem a laughing matter to you, but it is death to me. A man can
love but once, and I have loved you.”
“A man can love but once, and you have not loved me,” she retorted. “You
will turn to the first pretty girl you meet at Marshlands and love her,
or think you love her, and so you will go on—on—on—till you find some
one strong enough to take your heart, and hold it fast for ever.” And so
they parted—on friendly terms, it is true, and yet not quite good
friends—for Basil could not be blind to the fact that the way in which
things had turned out did not meet with Miss Derno’s approval.
She thought Captain Stondon would have done better to get his kinsman a
Government appointment rather than let him idle about Marshlands. She
thought so, and she said so; and although Basil carried off his
annoyance with a laugh, still he was annoyed at her idea of idleness
being so bad for him.
“May a fellow not enjoy this lovely weather without a thought of work?”
he asked. “I shall have enough to do doubtless before the winter.”
“I shall be glad to hear of it,” answered Miss Derno, drily. And she was
very glad when the news came that Basil Stondon was going to be busy at
last.
She had a long time to wait first, however, and many things happened
before he began to earn his living.
As for Phemie, she disliked the idea of Basil taking up his abode at
Marshlands, more even than Miss Derno, and showed her aversion to the
project so openly that Captain Stondon felt grieved and hurt.
It was natural, he thought, that she should not care much about Basil,
and yet it was only right and Christian that families should live at
peace with one another.
He was so happy himself that he wanted to make those about him happy
also; added to which there could be no question but that Basil supplied
in a great measure the want in his life to which I have before alluded.
He was getting fond of the man who would in the ordinary course of
nature succeed to the property after him—they had a joint interest in
the lands and woods and fields. Basil was not a wasteful, extravagant
man like Montague. Basil had been kept so short from boyhood of money by
his father, he had always been obliged to look so closely after his few
sovereigns, that he was quite as economical as any young man need to be.
He had ridden, he had shot, he had pulled in many a match, but he had
always been indebted to some friend for a mount; he had never shot over
his own preserves with his own dogs; he had never owned a yacht; he had
never kept his own hunters.
His training had not tended to make him either very proud or very
independent, but it had made him careful. Save that he dressed well, he
had not a single extravagance. Altogether Captain Stondon often
marvelled where Montague had got such a son, and wished Providence had
given Basil to him instead of to the reckless ne’er-do-well who ended
all his earthly troubles in so ghastly a fashion.
“I am certain, love,” he said to his wife, when he saw how coldly she
took the intelligence that Basil was coming to spend a month at
Marshlands, “you will, for my sake, try to like him a little better. He
is so different from his father, and it would be such a comfort to me to
be able to do something for him; and I cannot do anything for him unless
I first see what he is fit for. You will try to make the house pleasant
to him, dearest, will you not?” And Phemie answered—
“I am doing my best; only he is so constantly here, and one has to be so
perpetually doing one’s best, that there is no time left for rest.
However,” she added, noticing the look of annoyance on her husband’s
face—and it was a sign of amendment in Phemie when she noticed annoyance
in any one—“I will strive to be pleasanter to him, I will, indeed.”
Which promise so delighted Captain Stondon that he called her the most
amiable of women, the delight of his life, the blessing of his
existence, the only happiness he had ever known.
“And I am so afraid of happiness making me selfish, my dearest,” he
finished, “that I should like to do as much as I can for others. Perhaps
if I had been more lenient to Montague’s faults he might never——. It was
a money question,” he went on, “and it seemed terrible for the want of
money to bring about such a tragedy. Blood is thicker than water, after
all, Phemie; and I should never forgive myself if Basil went wrong too.
You will help me, love, will you not? But you have said you will, and
that is enough. He is so young, and he has all his lifetime before him
still, and it would be a sin not to help him at this juncture, when he
most needs assistance from some one.”
Captain Stondon sighed as he said this. It seemed such a fine thing for
a man to have his lifetime before him, and not to be tasting his first
cup of happiness when the evening shadows were stealing on!
“You have helped my people,” said Phemie, gratefully, “and I will try to
help yours. Henry, I have been very wrong.”
Whereupon Captain Stondon stooped down and kissed her, as if she had
conferred some benefit upon him.
Then Phemie noticed—what she had never observed previously—how grey he
was getting. She did not know why she had not seen this before, she
could never tell why she saw it then; she only felt that his manner, and
that changing hair, gave her a pang such as had never yet passed through
her heart. He was growing old, and she had, perhaps, not done what she
might for him. She had taken her own pleasure, and grudged him the
happiness of having one of his own blood to benefit. He who had done so
much for her; he who, never forgetful of her wishes, asked if she was
not going to write and ask Helen and Duncan to spend some time with
them.
“And if your uncle would come too, we might all go down to the sea-side
together. Should you not like it?”
Like it! Next to the hills, or, indeed, better, perhaps, than the hills,
Phemie loved the sea. To her it always seemed singing the songs she had
listened to in her childhood; to her it was mother, father, home,
friends. Phemie knew no loneliness while she sate and watched the waves
rippling in on the sand, or breaking upon the rocks. Already she had
grown a little weary of the monotonous Norfolk scenery, and she longed
for the sight of a more open country, of the far off mountains; or,
better than all else on earth, of the restless, murmuring, sorrowing,
passionate sea.
Helen came first to Marshlands. She was young, pretty, simple; very
proud of the prizes she had won at school; greatly interested in new
pieces of music; rapturous concerning fancy work; deferential towards
her rich cousin Phemie; and stood in great awe of Duncan, who was now a
hard-headed, hard-working, somewhat plain young man, following the bent
of his inclinations among steam-engines and boilers and forges and
wrought iron and cast iron and moulds and patterns and a general flare
and glare of furnaces and sputter of sparks and din of hammers and
blowing of bellows.
A young man possessed of that pleasant turn of mind which made him, in
the capacity of a worker, look on all idlers with distrust and contempt.
There was war between him and Basil Stondon for some days, till Mr.
Aggland appeared on the scene, and rated his son soundly for his
rudeness.
“He wanted to know what I did,” answered Duncan, stoutly, “and I would
not tell him. What business was it of his?”
“What business was it of yours, Duncan, asking him whether he would be
afraid to take Mayday over the bullfinch at the bottom of the home
park?” inquired Phemie.
“So you are taking his part next,” said Duncan, “and I thought you did
not like him.”
“I like fair play,” answered Phemie, “and he has as much right to ask in
whose office you are as you have to ask him, as I heard you ask him the
other day, where he lived when he was at home, and if it was play with
him and not work all the year round.”
“I earn my living, and he never did an hour’s work since he was born,”
returned the engineer.
“If you earn your living, you know who put you in the way of earning
it,” broke in Mr. Aggland. “The same man who buttered your bread—which
you would have had to eat stale and dry many a day but for him—chooses
to have this young gentleman staying here; and if you will not behave
towards him as you ought to do, you shall clear out of this house and
spend your holiday where you can.”
“Besides, Duncan,” added his cousin, “Mr. Stondon did not intend to vex
you, I know he did not. He asked about your employer and your work
merely from politeness, just as Miss Derno asked Helen how she got on at
school, and what new music she had been learning.”
“You ought to scold him well, Phemie,” remarked her uncle; “if he is to
do any good out in the world, he must learn not to be so thin-skinned.
He should write out Shakspeare’s axiom, and lay it to heart—‘Use every
man after his deserts, and who shall ’scape whipping?’ He would not, I
can tell him that. He forgets all he owes to Captain Stondon—his
education, his present position, his chances of future advancement. It
is all very well to talk about independence, Duncan, but a man can never
be independent who does not know how to be grateful, because an
ungrateful man is a slave to his own selfishness and pride. ‘I hate
ingratitude more in a man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,’”
said Mr. Aggland, by way of a neat ending to his sentence.
“It is to be hoped Duncan will not take you literally,” remarked Phemie,
laughing; and Mr. Aggland laughed himself, while he answered that he
hoped whatever Duncan did he would not spoil their holiday.
“I need a truce myself,” he added, “from care and pelf;
‘And I will have it in cool lanes,
O’er-arching like cathedral fanes,
With elm and beech of sturdy girth,
Or on the bosom of green earth
Amid the daisies.’”
“We all mean to enjoy ourselves,” said Phemie; “and to ensure Duncan’s
happiness as well, I intend to ask Miss Derno to join our party. Duncan
has lost his heart to her already, uncle. See how he blushes.”
“Well, it is enough to make anyone get red to hear how you talk,”
retorted Duncan. “You should remember there was a time you did not like
to be laughed at yourself; when you used to go about the house crying
because you had to leave us, you couldn’t bear to have a word said to
you in jest. It is not right of you, Phemie, and you have set Mr.
Stondon at me now. If he tries it on again I will break his head for
him, I will; and as for Miss Derno, I wish you would let her stay where
she is; I am sure I never care to set eyes on her again.”
“It is very naughty for children to tell fibs,” answered his cousin; and
the very same day she drove over to the Abbey and asked Miss Derno to
accompany them to Cromer, to the infinite delight of Mrs. Hurlford, who
declared to her cousin that she thought Mrs. Stondon was the sweetest
woman that ever lived.
“Only to think of it!” exclaimed Mrs. Hurlford, “only to think of her
asking you, although she has got that young girl staying with her. I may
tell you now that I trembled when I heard she and Basil were to be in
the same house together. Why, Mrs. Stondon might make up a marriage
between them as easily as I could walk across the room; for if he began
to flirt with her, he could not back out of that without offending
Captain Stondon. Make the most of your time, Olivia; at any rate keep
him from making love to that chit, for she must go back to school before
long, and then you can have the field to yourself.”
“Why should he not make love to her if he please?” asked Miss Derno,
gravely.
“Why should he not? Good gracious, Olivia, are you losing your senses?
Are you turning into an idiot? Can he marry both of you? I only put it
to you, can he?”
“Certainly not; indeed it does not seem to me that Basil Stondon is in a
position to marry any one at present.”
“He told you so?” This was interrogative.
“I believe he did make some sensible speech to that effect,” answered
Miss Derno.
“Then you are as good as engaged,” was Mrs. Hurlford’s immediate
deduction. “I think, Olivia, considering our relationship, and the
position in which we stand to one another, you might have told me this
before.”
“When I am engaged to him you may be quite certain I shall not keep the
news back from you for a moment,” replied Miss Derno, and she left the
room a little out of temper.