Phemie Keller

The real tragedies of life are, as a rule, played out behind the scenes, and the men and the women who have received the severest wounds—who have wept the bitterest tears—who have passed through the fiercest fires, come forth with serene faces, and enact those comedies which society loves to see, on the conventional boards of the drawing-room theatre.

Society hates tragedy, and it is perhaps only fair that it should do so, since tragic actors, on their part, detest society. They hate the boisterous sympathy of the people, who fill the galleries of that great playhouse, the world; they loathe the surprised ignorance of the upper boxes, and with the keenest dislike they writhe under the critical appreciativeness of the stalls and dress-circle.

Comedy, comedy, wit, gaiety, for the social audience! youth, beauty, the brilliant dress, the smiling face for strangers, acquaintances, and even friends! but the ghastly wound, the eating cancer, the deathly disease, the tear-stained face, the contrite prayer, the repentant heart—when the lonely chamber is reached and the door closed.

It was so at Marshlands. The guests there had each his or her little tragedy hidden away from sight—tragedy past or present; and yet to have seen the company assembled round the dinner-table, and to have heard the gay chatter in the drawing-room, no one would have suspected the existence of the mental haircloth each in the little circle wore underneath the fine linen and the shining satin. With some, long years had rubbed away all the painful points, and left the trouble and the endurance, a memory—nothing more; but with others the garment was new, and caused the lips, wreathed with smiles, to tremble occasionally because of the pain to which, as the years went by, they were to grow accustomed.

It was a pretty drawing-room, and pretty women moved hither and thither about it. Besides Miss Derno and Miss Georgina Hurlford, there were perhaps seven or eight ladies in the apartment, girls and matrons, who looked at sketches, and the new magazines, who stood together beside the wood fire, or near the centre table, talking about their children, about their governesses, about their houses, their favourite horses, dogs, books, pursuits, gossiping away the half-hour after dinner till the gentlemen should come in and create a diversion.

“You look tired,” said Miss Derno to Phemie, as Mrs. Stondon at length turned away from the group by the fire, and sat down on a sofa near one of the windows.

“I am tired of that insufferable woman,” answered Phemie, pettishly, referring to a Mrs. Chichelee, who had been entertaining her hostess with an account of the ailments, peculiarities, and special virtues of each one of her nine children: “she always does weary me to death.” And Phemie leaned her head back on the pillow while Miss Derno said—

“Any person might have thought you found her conversation interesting, you listened to it so earnestly.”

“One has to be civil,” was the reply; “that is the worst of living—one has to be civil to everybody.” And Phemie laid a stress on the last word, which was not strictly complimentary to her hearer. “Sometimes I wish I were dead; but then I remember there will be even more people in the next world than in this.”

“You ought to buy some solitary island, and retire there with some fowls and a goat,” suggested Miss Derno.

“I think I shall; but then those horrid women with tribes of children would always be visiting me under pretext of giving the little wretches change of air. For twenty minutes Mrs. Chichelee has been entertaining us with the biographies of her children from their birth up to the present hour—how Gwenny had the measles, and Harry broke his arm——”

“Pity it had not been his neck,” interposed Miss Derno, “for a more detestable brat could not be found in all Norfolk.”

“And how Ada knew her letters at three years old, and how Rupert, when he was in his nurse’s arms, was always calling out, ‘horse, horse.’ I confess it is a perfect enigma to me how any woman can imagine such talk can be interesting to another woman, not the aunt, or grandmother, or great-grandmother of her precious progeny.”

“When it is all a woman is able to tell about,” was the reply; “when her life is passed in the nursery and the schoolroom with her babies and their nurses—when the care of her children is the one absorbing occupation of her life—her profession in fact—I am not certain that one ought to blame her.”

“Are you not?” answered Phemie; “well, then, I am. Out of your mouth I will convict you. Is it good taste for a man to talk of his profession or trade? What should we think of an artist who made his friends’ lives a weariness unto them because of the multitude of pictures he had painted? May a musician speak by the hour about the pieces he has composed, or an author bore one about his stupid books? Following the same rule, if it be the sole business of a woman’s life to bring children into the world, and fill her husband’s quiver full to overflowing with boys and girls, I think she ought, when she comes out visiting, to leave her shop behind her.”

“What treason are you two concocting?” demanded Miss Georgina Hurlford, coming softly up to where Mrs. Stondon was seated. “Is it a secret, or may I come and listen to you?”

“We were talking about trades and professions,” answered Phemie; “as we are all after a fashion workers in this world, so I suppose we may all be said to be in business.”

“Then yours is making yourself agreeable it is only fair to conclude,” said Miss Georgina, who had a neat way of “putting things.”

“It must be,” was the reply, “because I dislike the occupation so much, and I have always heard men dislike that which is the business of their lives.”

“That rule would not appear to hold good with regard to women,” remarked Miss Derno.

“How do you make that out?” asked Miss Georgina.

“Why, the two great employments of our sex seem not to be unpleasant to the majority—rearing sons and daughters and looking out for good settlements.” Having concluded which sentence, Miss Derno looked straight at Miss Hurlford, who answered without a change of colour—

“Your experience is doubtless greater than mine, but I should have thought the latter occupation, at all events, most wearisome and unprofitable.”

“It is early in the day for you to cry out that the land is barren,” was Miss Derno’s not over civil retort; but the entrance of the gentlemen at this juncture did away with all necessity for reply from Miss Georgina Hurlford, who was only too happy to allow the conversation to drop.

Coffee and tea were handed round; the young ladies brightened up, the matrons looked relieved; the ten minutes’ interval was over, and the curtain again drew up; the sketches were studied with more interest than ever, for were there not wiser heads bending over the sketches too, able to point out their especial merits to the girls whose minds were supposed to be still lying fallow?

“Your evenings are so delightful, my dear Mrs. Stondon,” said plump little Mrs. Enmoor, who had the pleasure of seeing her eldest daughter airing her small knowledge of botany in the sun of Mr. Ralph Chichelee’s admiring smiles. (Mr. Ralph Chichelee was nephew to the happy father of nine waxy-faced, pug-nosed children, and next heir to a baronetage. Judge, then, of the maternal pleasure.) “As I often say to Mr. Enmoor, if Marshlands were thirty miles distant instead of eight, I do not think I could resist one of Mrs. Stondon’s cordial invitations.”

Mrs. Stondon looked round the room, took in the position at a glance, and then said, with the smile which was her stereotyped company smile, and nothing that had ever belonged to Phemie Keller, “You are very kind.”

“It is you who are kind,” returned Mrs. Enmoor, in a little ecstasy of enthusiasm; “and it is because you are kind, and because your house is like one’s own home—only pleasanter, I think—that your friends are so fond of coming here.”

Phemie put out her hand and touched Mrs. Enmoor’s round white arm. Somehow the little lady’s heartiness and gratitude touched her, although she knew the heartiness was not quite genuine nor the gratitude wholly retrospective. There was a great yearning in the poor desolate heart at times for something to love—something to pour out its treasures upon sinlessly; and when women spoke kindly and tenderly to her, she often thought she could love a woman very much indeed. After all, why should she not help on these little feminine schemes a little? Men and women must marry. Why should she not assist at the ceremony? Lily Enmoor was rather a nice specimen of a young lady. Phemie thought she could grow in time fond of Lily, and, after all, might such a marriage not be better than sending poor Basil away to India, where she would be always fancying some dreadful thing was happening to him—either being dead of fever, or being eaten by wild beasts, or wounded or maimed in some way. Basil had, however, never once looked even admiringly on Lily Enmoor, or perhaps Phemie might not have said, in answer to Mrs. Enmoor’s remark—

“Thank you so much. I wish you would allow your daughter to spend a week or two with me. I want to know more of her.”

And then seeing how Mrs. Enmoor’s eyes sparkled with pleasure, Phemie wished the words unspoken; and looking back, thought that after all the old life on the hill-side had been best, where, without diplomacy or the interference of friends, or the “helping-on” of acquaintances, Jack courted Jenny in the gloaming; and the farmers’ sons wooed the farmers’ daughters, the parents having no hand in the matter till consent was asked, and the whole affair merely wanted, to make its happiness complete, the blessings of father and mother on the young and loving couple.

Mrs. Stondon had known another and a simpler life than that in which she now moved and had her being; a simpler life, and perhaps a happier; but she had not been content then, and longed to leave it. Had her game proved worth the candle? she asked herself, bitterly. Does any human game, when the last card is played or the last stake gathered in, seem worth all that we have spent to gain it? Does it? Oh reader—you who have just pocketed your winnings, and risen from your chair, answer—has your game turned out altogether profitable? has nothing come with success to dim the colour of the gold—to dull the bright tints of the picture—to cause a discord in the sweet melody—to make fame insipid—happiness regret? Is any game worth the candle? that was what Phemie sat considering while Mrs. Enmoor answered her invitation with—

“You are really too good, Mrs. Stondon; but I am afraid Lily would be in your way, with so large a party already. No? then I am certain she will be delighted: you are her model of everything beautiful and charming—her ideal of perfection. I will not tell you all Lily says about you, for it might sound like flattery, though it would be only the simple truth—the simple honest truth, as we often declare at home.”

Phemie knew it—knew that as she had once admired Miss Derno, so many and many a young girl now admired her. She had gained ease and grace of manner, she had employed her talents, she had acquired accomplishments, she had learnt how to show off her beauty to the greatest advantage, and yet still how to wear her beauty like a garment. Everything she resolved years before to conquer, so that her husband might be fond of her and not ashamed, she had now made her own. To what end? Misery. What had she done with her gifts? Gained Basil Stondon’s heart and lost her own. What signified the beauty and the accomplishments and the grace and the ease and the knowledge of the world? what had all these profited her?

Oh! for the old life—for the pure soul—for the unsophisticated nature—for the unspotted innocence—for the girlish trust—for the faithful heart—for the loving, guileless, unsuspicious spirit that had been her own, but which might be hers again—no more, alas! no more.

Miss Derno was at the piano by this time, playing one of those old pieces of which people never seem to tire. That mad polacca of Weber’s, somewhat resembling in its insane abruptness the Tarantellas of the present day, chanced to be the music on which she was literally expending her strength, when from one of the company there came one of those excessively mal à propos requests which cause us frequently to think people must have some intuitive knowledge of a disagreeable subject—some secret information as to an unpleasant topic.

“Pray, Miss Derno,” inquired Mr. Ralph Chichelee, who considered himself rather a master, not merely of botany but of thorough-bass, “do you know that little ‘Farewell’ song written by Motherwell, which has just been published?—set to music I mean, for the words are as old as the hills.”

“Scarcely, I should think,” answered Miss Derno, as, having completed her polacca, she sat with her hands folded, looking up in Mr. Chichelee’s face. “Motherwell was not in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, or else we are talking of two different men.”

“I am speaking of the—of, in fact, a Scotch Motherwell,” was the reply.

“Precisely so,” said Miss Derno, “and I am speaking of a Scotch Motherwell who was born towards the end of the last century and who died some twenty years since. If you mean that ‘Farewell’ of his, I can sing it, of course.”

And Miss Derno sang Motherwell’s “Farewell,” two verses of which are as follows:—

Olden memories, olden hopes, olden sorrows, go to make a singer’s singing pathetic; and olden memories, olden hopes, olden sorrows, all contributed in this instance to make Miss Derno’s rendering of the words and music perfect. Miss Georgina Hurlford stole a look towards Mrs. Stondon as the last two lines of the song rose and fell with a despairing cadence impossible to convey the meaning of in any mere form of words—

Vanishes so!—oh! poet sweet and tender, vague and beautiful, it was wise to express the universal feeling briefly, leaving it to each man and to each woman whose dream has been broken in upon to supply the hiatus.

Vanishes so!—it was all passing away from Phemie then—vanishing like a vision after which it was vain to stretch out her feeble hands. Vanishing—oh! Lord, she had dreamt—and behold now she was awake, and the realities and the duties and the trammels of everyday life were around her. Vanishing—vanishing like the faint colour from her cheeks—like the strength from her limbs. Vanishing so!

“Dear Mrs. Stondon, are you ill?”—it was Miss Georgina who addressed her—“can I bring you a glass of water? will you not come and sit down?” But Phemie put her aside a little impatiently, and with a short “No, thank you, I am quite well. What an exquisite song!” she went on speaking to Miss Derno. “I am so fond of those Scottish ballads, they always seem to me to have a second accompaniment—the sobbing of the sea; the rippling of the waves; the plash, plash of the ocean; can you recollect any more? I think they are perfectly beautiful.”

Miss Derno looked up at Phemie as she spoke—looked into the face which was now flushed, into the eyes that were tearless.

“I do not know any more of the same class of songs,” she answered, rising; “in fact, it was quite by accident I knew that.” And she lifted her gloves and bouquet from the piano while she said this, and would have drawn Phemie back, but that Phemie would not stir.

“I am so sorry,” she remarked, “it is so rarely one hears a really beautiful song.”

“I know one of Motherwell’s,” broke in Miss Georgina, with that manner of ease and frankness which so tried Miss Derno’s patience. “If I can give you any pleasure it will make me so happy—it is one of Miss Derno’s songs though, so you must make my peace with her.”

And without more invitation Miss Georgina seated herself at the piano, and sang “The Midnight Wind,” with which Mr. Chichelee was so enchanted that he begged her to try if she could not recollect something else—something, anything. Upon which the young lady, putting her finger to her dimpled chin, considered. What did she know? what could she sing? It was so provoking, whenever she was asked to sing, directly she forgot every song she knew, and she knew fifty—oh, far more than fifty—two hundred; yes, she was certain she could sing two hundred for her papa, but now she was unable to recollect anything.

“What, not one?” whispered Mr. Chichelee in his softest tenor. He had a way of speaking to young ladies as though he were executing a very low recitative, intoning is perhaps a better expression, which, as a rule, produced its due effect.

Apparently it produced its due effect on the occasion in question, for Miss Hurlford took her finger from her chin, and thought she could remember a very pretty song indeed—“one quite in Mrs. Stondon’s style, I am happy to say. I do so love to do anything which can give her the slightest pleasure.”

There is no accounting for the things that are capable of pleasing some people—so perhaps Mrs. Stondon did derive some satisfaction from the song Miss Georgina selected. Remembering the circumstances of her life, reader—judge whether the melody struck on any of the minor chords in Phemie’s nature; whether the old times and the new did not mingle together; whether past and present did not mix and swim confusedly before her. Phemie dear! Phemie, my love! society had taught you much, I think, when it enabled you to listen to all those songs without a tear springing to your eyes—without your flinching from the torture.

There were some things which even Miss Georgina Hurlford could not do, and one of these chanced to be putting a natural expression into music. She could play piano, and she could play forte, but she lacked the soul that made Phemie’s simplest airs steal their way into the hearer’s heart.

In the former days Phemie’s singing had been a revelation of the love and the passion which was at some future time to make her life wretched. Knowing what he now knew, thinking what he now thought, Captain Stondon felt the tones of his wife’s voice thrill through him as she carolled a little French song, at Miss Georgina’s earnest request for her to do so. He turned sick as he listened—sick because of his great love and his great pity. He could see all his mistake now—from the height of his age he could look down on her youth. He had been warned before—not by man—not by sense—not by any act of his own reason, but by instinct—that, though he might love Phemie, she could never give him that love which was the only one he wanted from her. He could see it all now; he comprehended at last the meaning of the feelings that had passed through his mind that night when he heard Phemie sing for the first time “Alice Grey.”

He was in the Hill Farm again: the blazing fire, the closed curtains, Phemie with her guitar, Mr. Aggland with his strongly-marked features, with his wild hair, with his deep-set eyes, the boys listening open-mouthed to their cousin’s singing—these things were before him once again. He was making his choice; he was deciding on his future life—all the time instinct was whispering to him, “Leave her, or it will be worse for both of you”—all the time that voice never was silent; and yet he shut his ears, and made her his wife.

He took the young thing from her mountain home; he brought her to a new and an untried life; he matched her teens to his almost threescore years; he had taken her faith for granted, and he had left her in the way of temptation. He had been so sure—oh, he had been so sure of a heart he never owned! And now he knew, he understood all she had suffered, all she had resisted, all the wrong she had done to him, all the perils through which she had passed in safety. He knew—ah, well, when such an hour as that comes to any man who has married a wife, and loved her through all the years of her wedded life, God help him! God strengthen him!

After all their stranger guests had departed, after all their visitors had retired for the night, after she had done everything which could be demanded of her as a hostess and the mistress of Marshlands, Phemie stood alone by her dressing-room window, looking out into the night. Long before she had dismissed her maid, and she now stood, as I have said, looking out into the autumn night.

It was not very dark, and she could see the pines and the elms and the beeches tossing their branches mournfully to the sky. She was weary; she was sick of the struggle. She had spent her last strength in trying to keep up during the course of the evening, and the old longing to get away, to be out on the sea, to be travelling from billow to billow, came over her once again. She thought it would be nice to lie with her hands clasped, and let the waves toss her hither and thither, wheresoever they listed; that she would love to feel the ocean breezes fanning her cheeks, that she would like to be out on the sea in the darkness alone. She never thought of drowning; she never felt it would be possible for her to sink; and yet she could not bear the idea of Basil adopting the very course she had been so lately urging upon him. She felt if he went away his ship would founder, and that he would go down, down among the foam and billows over which she desired to float.

What should she do, save die? How otherwise could she ever untie this knot, release herself from fetters that were entering into her very soul? She did not want him to stay; she did not want him to go; she did not wish him to marry; she did not desire that he should stay to make existence a misery—life something worse than useless. Would he go? If he did not go, how should she ever endure the struggle longer? She was faint and weary; she had borne the heat and the burden of this her day, and was sinking under it. What should she do? Would no one help her? Was there no one to whom she could turn for advice or assistance? Should she go to the old Hill Farm and tell her uncle everything? It would break her husband’s heart. Should she feign sickness, or would he go—would he——?

And then she sobbed a prayer—sobbed it with her cheek leaning against the window-frame the while, looking with her great, sorrowful eyes at the night and the flying clouds and the mourning trees—that God would help and strengthen her, and enable her, spite of pain, and spite of temptation, to reject the evil, and to cleave to the right.

“Phemie, dearest,”—it was her husband who spoke, and Mrs. Stondon started—“Phemie, dearest, you will catch cold standing by the open window.” And he closed the window, and drew her away towards the fire.

“Tell him now,” her better angel whispered to Phemie; “tell him all,” added conscience; but Captain Stondon left her no time for confidences. He only kissed her gravely, and would have turned away, only that Phemie flung herself on his neck, and with her arms twined round him, lay with her head on his shoulder, weeping despairingly.

Had he spoken to her then—had he asked her any question, she could have told him all; but Captain Stondon had decided that no human being, not even Phemie, should ever again speak to him about his wife’s imperilled honour—about the disgrace which had swept by her name. He knew—who better?—all that was passing through that poor heart then; he knew why she wept, why she clung to him, why she touched his grey hairs so lovingly, why she concealed her face so resolutely. The depths of her nature had been sounded at last, not by him, it is true; but yet the waters so long pent up having found a vent, she could not help but pour out some tenderness on the man whose love she was now able to estimate, whose truth and faith and honesty and trustfulness she had learned to appreciate through the very extremity of her own treason.

She could not love him best, but she loved him more then than she had ever done since they were married. She had suffered, and suffering is a great teacher. She felt more loving then than I could ever hope to explain: gratitude, repentance, affection, contempt of her own weakness, all struggled together, and caused her to cling despairingly to the man whose confidence she had abused.

And all he kept saying to her was, “My poor child! my poor darling! you have done too much this evening, you are thoroughly worn out!”

That was the rôle he had laid out for their future life. He could keep her from harm; and yet to her he would ignore the possibility of harm.

He could not unmarry her; he could not give her back the chances of possessing an early love which she had lost for ever in marrying him; but he could save her. He could end the struggle, and she never be the wiser as to his motive for doing so.

He was a just man and a good; and yet still, I think, he made the mistake all people must make when they treat a woman as they would treat a man. It may not be any luxury for one of the lords of creation to acknowledge his misdemeanours, and enjoy the pleasure of a good talk over his shortcomings; but no one of the daughters of Eve is happy till she has acknowledged her transgressions; in which respect, so far as any information we have on the subject goes, the daughters do not resemble their mother.

But according to his light, Captain Stondon judged, and as he judged, he acted; and it was many a day before Phemie knew that, notwithstanding all her errors, he had loved her better than himself—better than houses and lands—better than anything in creation, excepting purity and virtue—excepting her honour and his own.