PARTED.
“Basil,” said Captain Stondon the next day to his relative, “I am going
to ride over to Disley before luncheon, will you come with me?”
To which request, never doubting but that his opinion was desired on
some question of renewing leases or felling timber, Mr. Basil at once
agreed.
As for the General, he was deep in the mysteries of letter-writing. The
Indian mail was going out the next day, and he always sent a budget of
manuscript by it. Miss Hurlford also had her home correspondence to
attend to.
“I often think,” remarked Miss Derno to Phemie, “that hostesses must
bless Rowland Hill a hundred times a week. I have frequently tried to
fancy what a visit could have been like a hundred years ago, when people
did not write letters, when ladies did not use up quires of note-paper
and scores of envelopes of a morning. How the mistresses of households
bore it, more especially those mistresses who prepared medicines for the
bites of mad dogs, and such like useful mixtures, in the still-room, I
am at a loss to imagine.”
“Probably,” said Phemie, “people did not pay visits in those days.”
“And you are wishing in your heart at this present moment that they did
not pay visits in these. I agree with you; if ever I have a house of my
own I do not think I shall fill it full of people, even though they
promise to write letters by the hour. Just look at the General—only look
at him. One would think the whole of the management of India was resting
on his own high shoulders! Are you recommending another protégé for the
Ceylon appointment, Sir Samuel?” Miss Derno inquired, walking up to the
table where the officer sat engrossed in his correspondence.
Very much astonished at being spoken to, Sir Samuel looked up.
“I am—no—that is, Miss Derno, Captain Stondon requested me not to write
to my friend until the last moment, as he rather fancied Mr. Stondon had
changed his mind, and would be glad to accept.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” answered Miss Derno; “delighted also to
learn on such good authority that Basil had a mind to change; only,”
added the lady, “I am afraid it is much too good news to be true.” And
she shot, as she finished, a look first towards Phemie and then towards
Miss Hurlford, which glance told her, that with regard to the latter
lady the news was hoped for, yet not expected, and that Phemie did not
hope, and yet half-expected, while at the same time the news astonished
and startled her.
“He has taken me at my word; he does not care about leaving me—he will
marry her—he is offended. He has never loved me as I have loved him.”
Could Phemie help all this passing through her mind faster than I can
write it? Could the poor creature help the jealousy which had tormented
and harassed her so often? Do you blame her because the veins of her
heart broke out bleeding afresh at the thought of parting with him for
ever? She had been very wrong; she knew it was a sin, and yet—and
yet—ah! reader, he had been all the world to her, he had possessed all
the love she was ever to feel for man, and it was hard. The punishment
might have been deserved, but the lash fell none the lighter for all
that.
Meantime the two men who loved her most on earth, who loved her perhaps
equally though differently, rode on side by side towards Disley. When
they had left Marshlands a couple of miles behind them, Captain Stondon
pulled his horse up into a walk, and began,
“I asked you to come with me this morning, Basil, because I want to
speak to you where we can be secure from eavesdroppers. There is at
least one spy at Marshlands.”
Involuntarily Basil tightened his grasp of the bridle, and his horse, a
well-trained one, stopped dead; the next moment he sprang forward with a
bound, while the younger man answered—
“Indeed! I am sorry to hear you say so.”
“Not more sorry than I am to say it,” was the reply; “but all this is
beside the question. What I want to talk to you about is the Ceylon
appointment. I have been reconsidering that matter, and it seems to me
that we have perhaps been hasty in declining General Hurlford’s offer.
Sometimes I think, Basil,” went on the old man, with his head bowed over
the saddle-tree—bowed to conceal his emotion, “that it is possible you
may feel I am in the way, that I am keeping you too long out of
Marshlands.”
He spoke all this very slowly and at intervals; but still when Basil
would have answered, he held up his hand and motioned him to keep
silence while he proceeded.
“I am afraid I have considered myself too much, and others too little. I
was so happy; I forgot others might not be happy too. What I am going to
tell you now, Basil, I wish you not to repeat to any one, especially
to—to—my wife.”
It was more by intuition than with the help of his ears that the young
man gathered Captain Stondon’s meaning. The hour Phemie had always
dreaded was at hand, and he partly understood what Captain Stondon
desired should be the nature of the compact between them. The knowledge,
and the shame, and the punishment, and the suffering were to be theirs;
she was to be kept out of the business altogether. Vaguely comprehending
this, he promised, and then waited for the rest.
“I know all,” Captain Stondon went on, and he looked straight into
Basil’s face as he spoke, “and that is why I say you ought to accept
General Hurlford’s offer, and leave England. No honourable man, feeling
as you felt, placed as you were placed, would have refused that offer. I
say nothing about the past, however,” he continued, “for I cannot recall
it—would to God I could!—only you must not remain at Marshlands for the
future, and I should prefer that you went abroad. I have a right, I
think, to demand that you shall go abroad. It will be best for all of us
that you should do so.”
“I will go,” Basil answered, and answered sullenly. He never tried to
defend himself, he never uttered a word of excuse or apology; he simply
said, “I will go,” feeling himself a very ill-used man all the time; and
the pair rode on in silence till they reached Disley, where Captain
Stondon had some business to transact.
When he completed it, they turned their horses’ heads eastward, towards
Marshlands, and trotted back mile after mile without exchanging a word.
Till, in fact, they came in view of the pines and the elms; and then
Basil, thinking of all he had promised, of all he should have to
sacrifice, burst out in anger against both his sentence and his judge.
“Will nothing satisfy you but my going thousands of miles away?” he
began. “Will you believe no promise? will you accept no oath? If I swear
never to come near her, if I leave Norfolk, if I never darken your doors
again, will that not satisfy you? What is the use of my leaving England?
If we are parted, what can the distance you put between us signify?”
Captain Stondon turned in his saddle, and looked at the speaker in
amazement.
He could no more understand a man hesitating in an affair of this kind
than he could have comprehended a man hanging back in battle. He had no
more toleration for a moral coward than for a soldier deficient in
physical bravery. The thing was to be done; why should he show the white
flag about the matter?
He had loved Basil: he had been gentle with him because of his love and
of his sorrow; but now there was as much contempt as pity in his tone
when he answered—
“A moth may wish to stay near the candle, but we put him out of the room
and close the window, notwithstanding. Just so I desire to put it out of
your power to see my wife. I do not want to have to watch you. When it
was in your own power to flee from temptation you did not flee; you
stayed on and tempted her. I want now to remove you from temptation. In
one word, I mean to have no more tampering with her honour and with
mine. When I think of it all, when I remember how you took advantage of
my blindness, and tried to bring misery to her and to me, I feel as if I
could not forgive you. But go, now—only go, Basil, and I will not
reproach you; I will try to remember my own folly and forgive yours.”
It was over, and Basil felt it. This was not a husband to be deluded
into any false security again. His very love would make him strong to
protect Phemie; watchful, for her sake; a very Argus concerning his
young wife. So perfect had been his trust, that now it was once broken
nothing could ever mend it again—nothing. It was over; he should see her
no more; he must leave her; he should never feel the soft hand trembling
in his; he should never see the colour rush up into her cheek; the
troubled look pass over her face, the tears dimming her dear eyes again.
He would not be able to torment her in the future. Words of love, words
of reproach, words of entreaty, words of passionate sorrow, of
despairing regret—for all these there must hereafter be substituted the
silence of separation, the agony of loneliness. She could be nothing to
him in the days and the weeks and the months and the years to come. In
that far-away country there would be no Phemie; in England there would
be no Basil Stondon; and but for very shame the man could have cried
aloud in his anguish. Parted! parted! he and she, who had loved one
another so exceedingly. Parted! he and she, who could never love husband
or wife with the same passion of attachment as she had loved Basil! as
he had loved Phemie!
“I cannot do it; I cannot bear it,” Basil thought. “I will shoot
myself.” And he remembered his father’s end, and considered that his
father had been right.
“They will be sorry then,” he decided in his own mind; “they will wish
they had not driven me to it.” And he resolved that directly he went up
into his dressing-room he would blow out his brains, and make Phemie and
her husband wretched for the remainder of their lives.
But Basil Stondon was not the man to blow out his brains. “I would not
do it if she would go away with me,” he reflected, putting back his
pistol in its case, and he determined accordingly to give Phemie one
other chance.
“If she be fond of me, she never can let me leave England alone,” he
argued. And all the time General Hurlford was talking about the
appointment, its duties, its salary, the climate, the country, the
society, Basil was wondering whether Phemie would see that strange land
with him, whether, hand in hand, they would walk through that earthly
Eden sinfully together.
He thought he should have many opportunities of speaking to her before
he left England, but in this idea he was mistaken.
He had to go to London to provide his outfit: it was of course necessary
for him to bid his mother farewell. Time slipped by, and still he had
never seen Phemie alone; so at last, living in the same house, he wrote
to her, and bade Phemie’s maid give her mistress the letter before she
went down to dinner on the evening preceding that on which he was to
start for London to join the Hurlfords.
He prayed her in that letter to grant him one more interview, to give
him one more chance.
A selfish man can always write eloquently when the subject is his own
sorrow, and because the letter was very touching, and because she
herself was very miserable, Phemie cried over it till she could cry no
more.
But nevertheless she would not see him, would not contrive that one
opportunity he craved.
Although it was for her sake, as she believed, he was going—although it
was at her instance, as she had no reason to doubt, he was leaving his
native land, still she distrusted her own heart too much to yield to his
prayer. She had vowed, by all the lessons of old, by all the teachings
of her earlier youth, by all the truths she had learned in the days of
her innocence, that she would put herself into the way of temptation no
more. She had prayed to be kept from evil, and she would not walk into
evil with her eyes open; for all which reasons, when Basil held her hand
that night in adieu—when he looked imploringly into her face—when his
eyes asked for a reply to the question he dared not frame into words,
Phemie’s mouth formed the monosyllable “No.” Phemie, with her fingers
clasping his, with her blue eyes swimming in tears, with her dear face
pale and sorrowful, shook her head. It could not be, it could not, and
Basil cursed her in his heart. Till he has tasted all the bitterness of
the very dregs of the cup of sin, there is nothing a man of Basil
Stondon’s stamp hates like virtue, and for this reason he detested
Phemie Stondon then.
But once in London he relented; and as he would not or could not write
to her direct, he enclosed a letter to Mrs. Stondon under cover of one
to Miss Derno, stating that he would be in the plantation the next
evening at six o’clock, and praying her to meet him there.
He was mad. I do think at that crisis of his life, the fact of the toy
being beyond his reach, the grapes too well guarded, made him insane.
He felt he must try to see her once again, and he might perhaps have
compassed his end, for Phemie was not stronger than her neighbours, but
for this, that she never received his letter.
Miss Derno knew Basil Stondon well, none better; and knowing him—knowing
his selfish weakness, his thoughtless disregard of consequences—she put
the letter he enclosed into the fire, and saved Phemie from one
temptation more.
All that evening he wandered round and about Marshlands till he had
hardly time to catch the last up-train from Disley; he waited in the
plantation, and watched the house which held her whose heart was only
too full of love for him.
Then he went—with his soul full of bitterness, with his mouth full of
curses.
“She loves herself too well,” he thought; “she loves ease and social
position, and her fine house and the life she leads at Marshlands too
much even to come out and bid a poor devil, who has only sinned in being
fond of her, good-bye. Farewell, then, Mrs. Stondon,” he hastily
finished, pausing on his way towards Disley, and taking off his hat to
make a low mocking bow in the direction of Marshlands. “Farewell. I
wonder where you will be when I return to England—where you will be when
I ask you next time to meet me. Farewell, then, Phemie, my Phemie of the
blue eyes and the auburn eyes—my Phemie—my darling—mine no more!”
The man’s heart was breaking. All his heart had been given to this
woman, and now the woman was prudent. She would sacrifice nothing, so he
put it, for his sake. Well, he would go, and the time might come, yes,
it might, when Phemie would pray to him as he had prayed to her, and
pray in vain.
He looked on the new life and the new country differently now; perhaps
when he was gone quite beyond her reach, she would repent. He rejoiced,
therefore, to consider she soon could not recall him; that he would be
in twenty-four hours more beyond the possibility of aught save regret.
And yet when the twenty-four hours were gone, and he was steaming down
the Channel, all the bitterness departed from his heart. He would have
given all the hopes of his future life to look upon her dear face once
more—to hold her to his breast—to kiss the sweet, pure lips—to stroke
and smooth the soft hair that he had touched with fear and trembling in
the days that were gone. Standing by the ship’s side, gazing down into
the sea over which he was passing further and further from her, the
man’s eyes grew oftentimes dim, thinking of the woman he had loved. Not
all Miss Georgina’s prattle, not all Sir Samuel’s wise and improving
discourse, could chase away _that_ memory, could make the beauty of that
far-away face seem faint, or blurred, or indistinct.
The old things of his life were put on one side, and he could not even
flirt. How terrible must have been that wound which prevented Basil
Stondon seeking consolation for the frowns of one woman in the smiles of
another! How wonderful the power of that love which could still retain a
hold over him when he was travelling on—on—over the sea, away from the
smiles and the tears and the weakness and the strength of Phemie, who
had said, “You shall never forget me—never love girl, nor woman, nor
wife as you have loved me. When you are lying awake in the darkness you
shall think of me; when you are standing in the twilight you shall
remember 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.”
And was she not near to him?
Further and further the vessel bore him from England, but still Phemie
bore him company. She was with him in the desert; night and day he
thought of her; he wished to be with her; his heart went travelling out
to meet her form, and brought it back to lodge in his bosom. He wept for
her—he sickened after her—he hated her one moment—he prayed for her the
next.
“If my being away gives her happiness,” he would think when his softest
moods were upon him, “it is well for me to be away; but let me die, oh
God! let me die.” And then through the darkness he could still see her
standing among the pines, her hands clasped above her head, crying with
a sob—
“In so far as I have sinned, give me my wages; but let me sin no more.”
Should such wages be given to her and not to him? Should the fruit of
the tree they had planted never be tasted by him? Was she to bear all
the pain—to weep all the tears? Was she to suffer for both, and he to
get off scot free? No; and Basil felt, in some vague kind of way, that
his punishment was beginning; that his money had still to be paid him;
that in the future he would be able to answer out of his own experience
whether it was a fiction or a simple truth, that the wages of sin is
death.
They were parted; the world knew nothing of their struggles, of their
errors, of their misery.
Thousands of miles lay between them, the great sea, and the lonely
desert, and more sea, and a foreign land, gay with tropical flowers,
bright with sunshine, presenting at every turn something new and fresh
and interesting to a stranger’s eye, separated the man and the woman. To
their fellows they were as though they had never thought much of one
another: he went on his way and she continued on hers. They never heard
directly from one another, and yet day after day their hearts were
constantly mocking at time and space, flitting over the ocean, setting
at nought the sandy desert and the desolate plain; they were
crossing—crossing—his to England, hers to India; faithful both—sinfully
faithful still.
END OF VOL. II.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
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