JEALOUSY.
Marshlands had never been so gay before as during the August of the year
concerning which I am now writing.
The house had never been so full of company; there had never been so
many parties, so much visiting, and such innumerable picnics in the
memory of that part of Norfolk. Young girls and staid matrons walked
about the grounds; in all the bye-lanes in all the cross-roads,
sprinkled over the commons, were ladies mounted on glossy steeds,
attended by cavaliers who seemed to think that the whole duty of man was
flirting and pleasure.
Flirting and pleasure was the order of the day at Marshlands; and every
one agreed the Stondons were delightful people to know.
Mrs. Stondon was such a thoughtful hostess, mothers and daughters both
agreed. She never spoiled sport; she never put either herself or Helen
forward; she exacted no attention; she conversed, by preference, with
white-haired old gentlemen, who called her “a delightful woman.”
“To see Captain and Mrs. Stondon,” said an old bachelor, “is enough to
make one think seriously of marriage.”
“Talk of May and December,” observed a man who had served out in India
with Captain Stondon; “I tell you what, sir, I never saw May and June
agree so well as my dear old friend and his young wife. Charming!—I
should think she was charming! All I am afraid of, sir, is that she will
leave him a widower. She is getting thinner and paler every day.”
Major Brooks was not the only person who felt uneasy about Phemie. Miss
Derno made effort after effort to induce her friend to take more care of
herself, but her entreaties, listened to at first coldly, were at last
replied to sharply and angrily.
Mrs. Stondon would go out in the night air if she chose; she would ride,
if riding gave her any pleasure; she would walk when she took a fancy
for doing so; and she would attend to no remonstrances on the subject.
“What can it signify to any one what I do?” she said one day to Basil,
when they were out driving together. “I would rather die than live. If
any doctor came to me now and said, ‘You cannot last two months,’ I
should be glad.”
“But you ought to think of others,” he answered. “You ought to think of
me.”
“Of you!” she echoed; “what would you care if I were dead to-morrow? You
would look after any pretty girl you met, out of the window of the
mourning-coach, though it is you who have brought me to this,” and she
took off her glove and stretched out her hand before him. “You make love
to others before my eyes. I do not want your love,” she went on. “I do
not wish you to cease holding this girl’s bridle rein; to cut no more
bouquets; to beg no more flowers; to stay indoors instead of walking in
the moonlight with Miss Derno. I do not want you to do this, only be
honest. Do not harass my life out one moment, and then make me jealous
the next. Leave me to go my way, and I will never follow you or yours.
And do not talk to me about my health, for you and Miss Derno both would
be only too glad to see me in my coffin.”
“Phemie, how can you make such an assertion?” They had reached a very
lonely part of the road, and he laid his hand gently on hers, but she
shook it off and answered—
“Keep your hands for the reins; I will not have them touch mine. Every
word I say is true. You do flirt; you are a flirt; you make every girl
you meet think you are in love with her. You know when you were trying
to make me care for you that you were engaged to Miss Derno. You know
while you are talking to me now that you are engaged to her still.”
“Who told you that falsehood?” asked Basil.
“Miss Hurlford.”
“Miss Hurlford be damned,” said the young man, laying his whip not over
lightly on the near pony, which at once began to plunge and kick.
“You need not upset us because you are angry at my hearing it,” remarked
Phemie. “It does not matter to me whom you marry; but you shall cease
persecuting me, you shall. I will ask my husband to send you away. I
will tell him it is not pleasant to have a stranger in the house. I came
out with you to-day solely to be able to say this to you. I am not
double-faced, if you are. I cannot do one thing and pretend another.”
“I know that,” said Basil, sneeringly. “You never professed to dislike
me before people; you never answered me as though you hated me while
your uncle was present; you never hang about Captain Stondon as though
you liked him better than all the world; you never pretended anything,
did you, Phemie?”
Then Phemie broke out.
“If I ever pretended, it was not of my own free will. I am no hypocrite
with my husband. I do love him, and honour and trust him more than any
other man on earth; and if I seem not to like to be with you before
people, you cannot say that I like any better to be with you alone. It
is you who are a hypocrite; it is you who pretend; it is you who want to
have every woman you meet in love with you. But this I tell you, Basil,”
she added, sitting bolt upright in the phaeton as she spoke; “you have
chosen to make my life wretched, and I will make yours. You never shall
love anybody as you have loved me; you shall never forget me; you shall
never love girl, or woman, or wife as you have loved me. When you are
standing in the twilight you shall remember me; when you are lying awake
in the darkness you shall think of me; when we are far apart you shall
not forget me. I can never be anything to you as another woman may; but
I can be near to you for all that, and I will. You may try to make me
jealous now, if you like; I do not care.”
And Phemie dropped back in the carriage, whilst her companion vainly
endeavoured to convince her she was mistaken; that he had never tried to
make her jealous, that he had never thought of caring for any one but
herself.
“Will you attend to your driving, Basil?” she said, “and not talk any
more about the matter. It is a light thing for you, I dare say; you can
go out and never think about the misery you have brought on me. You
fancy this will form but an episode in your life, though it has taken
all the sunshine out of mine; but you are mistaken. Good gracious,
Basil, what are you doing with those ponies? There, now, I told you so.”
They had come out of the lanes, and were driving over a road that led
across Wildmoor Common. As Phemie spoke, the near pony shied at a flock
of geese, and Basil, glad to vent his annoyance on anything, lashed it
savagely.
The creature reared and plunged and kicked; then it got its head down
and the bit between its teeth, and both ponies were off.
“Sit still—sit still; for God’s sake don’t jump out!” said Basil.
“Never mind me, attend to them,” was Phemie’s answer.
They were tearing across the common now; over the little unevennesses of
the ground the carriage went rocking like a cradle.
Basil was a fair whip, but he could do nothing. What man ever did do
anything with a pair of mad ponies harnessed to a low light phaeton?
The bays had it all their own way over the grass. They dashed through
stagnant pools; they flew past bush and bramble; the horses grazing on
the common galloped hither and thither, making the brutes more
unmanageable still. The sun was shining on the bare, flat Norfolk
landscape, and Phemie could see in the distance farmhouses, with their
tiled roofs; homesteads, where the new hay had just been stacked; trees
standing dark and clear against the sky; she could see all this as they
dashed along; see it even while she was sick with terror, while she was
wondering what would bring them up at last.
She knew Basil never could stop them; what would? what! She saw the
walls of a house in the distance, shining in the sun; she thought of the
flints that were in it, and then she screamed out—
“Oh! Basil, the quarry; keep them away from that.”
He stood up and pulled with might and main at the reins. He sawed the
ponies’ mouths. With all the strength he had he tried to pull them in,
to turn them aside. For a moment he had the mastery; then the phaeton
tilted up on one side over a mound of earth, and he was jerked out.
He made an effort to retain the reins, but they were torn from him,
leaving his hands bleeding and raw. Phemie tried to seize them, but
failing to do so, shut her eyes.
She knew what was going to bring them up now. With a crash ponies and
phaeton and Phemie went down into the quarry together, and when Basil
Stondon came to the edge and looked below, he could see nothing but a
confused heap of broken woodwork, of struggling horses, of blood, and
muslin.
For a moment his courage failed him, then he jumped down after them.
Let life bring what it might to Basil Stondon, it never could bring a
bitterer moment than that.
He would not go for help, he did not call for assistance; living or
dead, he would do what he could for her himself.
From under the phaeton he somehow managed to extricate her; then he took
the dear burden in his arms and carried her on to the common and laid
her on the grass.
By that time people, who having seen the runaways had hurried after
them, came up, and asked was the lady killed?
He could not tell; he knew nothing of medicine; he only saw she had
moved no finger, made no sign; that she was covered with blood; that she
was shockingly cut and mangled.
Never since his boyhood had any human being seen Basil Stondon weep, but
he cried like a child then.
He had made her life wretched; they had been quarrelling all the
morning; he had tried to make her jealous; he knew she had only spoken
the simple truth. When she tried to do right, he had endeavoured to
roughen her way as much as possible. Her last words before the ponies
ran away were full of upbraiding. It was his fault that the animals had
started at all. Half an hour before he had taunted her; he had been
unmanly, mean, angry; and now she lay before him, apparently dead, while
he knelt beside her, sobbing in his passionate despair.
“I do not think, sir,” said one of the men, “that the lady is dead. If
you would only sprinkle some water over her, and let one of us go for a
doctor, and bring her into the farmhouse yonder, and see what the women
can do for her. Will you, sir? will you?” and he approached to raise
Phemie up, and carry her away.
But Basil would not permit it. He lifted her himself, and holding her
close to his heart, bore her across the common; and as he walked under
the sunshine, with everything around him looking its brightest and its
gayest, his tears fell thick over the face of the woman he loved best on
earth.
“My darling! my darling! I was cruel to you; my darling, I have killed
you!” and so he kept moaning and whispering till he felt the feeblest
pressure of the fingers that lay beside his hand.
She could not speak, she could not open her eyes; but she could show him
by this mute sign that she was still alive.
In a moment he saw the sunshine and the sky; in an instant hope revived
within him.
She was not dead; she might not be fatally injured. She might recover,
and he might have opportunity given him of atoning for all the past.
Stumbling across the common, dizzy with his own fall, bruised and shaken
and hurt, half stupefied by the events of the last few minutes, Basil
Stondon prayed to God as he had never prayed in all his life before.
He prayed that she might live, that he might have opportunity for making
atonement to her; that he might not have to bear the sight of Captain
Stondon’s agony; that he might not have to go on—on through the years
without her.
With all his heart and with all his soul he prayed, and the prayer was
granted; but in the future—in the sad, sad future—he often marvelled
whether it would not have been better for him and for her had she died
on Wildmoor Common, and never lived to face the dreary after years to
come.