Phemie Keller

That night, as they drove home, Captain Stondon talked about Basil Stondon to his wife, about the young man whom he had met with apparently accidentally, and who had never by word or sign or letter acknowledged the existence of his wealthy relative since his father’s death.

“Poor fellow,” said Captain Stondon, “it is very sad for him, upon my word it is.” And he waited for Phemie to answer, but Phemie held her peace.

She was wiser in her generation than her husband; it might be that she was less amiable too; and she knew just as well as though she had been present at the enemy’s council of war that Mr. Basil Stondon’s rencontre with his kinsman was anything rather than the result of chance.

She had not liked Mr. Montague Stondon, she had not liked Mrs. Montague Stondon, and it was not likely she should like the son who now stood—and it was this which broke on Mistress Phemie Stondon with a shock, as though the idea were quite new to her—in the position of heir to Marshlands.

The fact had never come home till that moment. He would inherit—he was young; he would come after Captain Stondon and own woods and lawns and lake and park, because she was childless. It was she who now held the place merely as a tenant on lease of one life, and that her husband’s. If her son had lived, this man would, socially, be nowhere; as it was, Phemie perceived that socially he would take precedence of herself.

She had been philosophical on the subject so long as she did not comprehend how the want of children might some day affect her own happiness. Almost a child herself, she had not understood how the failure of direct heirs would ultimately affect her position.

She had been glad to get away from Mrs. Aggland’s babies: her youth had been spent in hushing refractory imps to sleep, in amusing cross infants, in learning to nurse cleverly and keep the brats from crying; and it was therefore not altogether unnatural that Phemie should consider there was a reverse side to the pleasure of having a family, and, particularly when her life had twice trembled in the balance, rejoice rather than lament because no more children seemed likely to be born, to die.

Hitherto she had been rather vexed to see how much Captain Stondon desired a direct heir—now, Phemie, a child no longer, but a worldly, selfish woman if you will, found that there was rising up from the bottom of her heart an exceeding bitter cry of lamentation for the dead sons whose loss she had never greatly mourned before, for the children she had passed through the valley of the shadow of death to bring into the world, for naught.

Looking out into the moonlight, Phemie, to whom all strong passions had hitherto been strangers, found that her eyes were filling with angry tears. She disliked this Basil Stondon, to whom she had never yet spoken a word. She hated to hear her husband praising his appearance and his manners. She felt sure he and Miss Derno were in league together. “Her pet, indeed!” thought Phemie; “I have no doubt they are engaged. Her pet! I daresay he is.” And Phemie smiled to think she was no longer the girl whom Miss Derno had met six years before; but a woman quite Miss Derno’s match in penetration and knowledge of the world.

She had eaten her apple, and left primitive simplicity a long way behind her; and Phemie felt glad to think that it was so. They could not impose on her now. Her eyes were opened, and she saw, as all such people do see, more evil than good upon the earth. She had tasted of the tree of knowledge, and this was the result. It had been pleasant to the eye, it had seemed good for food, it had been a thing to be desired; and behold this was the end attained—selfishness and envy and uncharitableness.

A character to be disliked rather than admired; and yet have patience, reader, for there came a day of reckoning to Phemie Stondon, when she had to settle for every fault, for every shortcoming!

She was vain;—grievous suffering crushed all vanity out of her: she claimed love as a right, and thought little of all the tenderness that was lavished upon her—when the time arrived that the love of her own heart broke it,—Phemie remembered; she thought she stood firm, and it was only when she lay humbled in the dust that she acknowledged how weak is the strength of man; she was proud of her accomplishments, yet in the future she turned from their exhibition with loathing; she rejoiced in her own cleverness—she could not avoid knowing how much cleverer she was than her husband—than the man who had taken her from poverty and drudgery to make her the mistress of Marshlands;—is it too early now to tell of the hour when all her talents, all her attainments, all her gifts of beauty and manners, seemed to be but as sand, as earth, beside his truth, his forbearance, his devotion?

That night was the turning point in the life story of Phemie Keller—that night, when she sat beside her husband, listening while he told her how glad he felt at the prospect of being able to do anything for poor Montague’s son, how much pleased he was that Basil had promised to call the next day at Marshlands.

“He really is a very fine young fellow,” finished Captain Stondon, “and we must try to keep him from going to rack and ruin as his father did. It is high time he was doing something now. He must be five-and-twenty I should say.”

And Mr. Basil Stondon’s relative was quite right. He was five-and-twenty—a man with eyes dark, dreamy, and sadly tender—a man whom women raved concerning—a desperate flirt—and a dangerous flirt, because while the fit was on him he really did care for the person who had excited his admiration.

He danced like an angel—so the ladies said. There were few games either of chance or skill at which he had not tried his hand. He could hunt over the worst country if his friends would only give him a mount. If his horse could take the leaps, Basil could sit his horse. It did not matter to him if an animal were quiet or the reverse. Find him a strong bit, and let the girths be tight, and the young man would fight the question of temper out at his leisure.

He was a good oarsman, a good swimmer, a capital fellow at a picnic. He had quite a genius for making salads and mixing sherry cobbler.

He knew very little about literature, but the number of his acquaintances was something to stare at.

He had forgotten the little he ever learned at school and college; but he could talk about the opera and the theatres, about the new prima donna and the favourite danseuse, with an intimate fluency that moved his listeners oftentimes to admiration.

Further, he was not conceited; he did not vaunt his talents. He was not boastful, he was not a bore; he was amiable, he was pitiful, he was generous, he was swift to forgive and repentant for having erred; but he was weak and he was self-indulgent; he was weak as water, as uncertain as the weather, as changeable as an April day; a vacillating creature whose purposes ebbed and flowed like the sea, who had no fixed principles, whether bad or good, and who came and went and went and came wheresoever his impulses carried him.

And it was this man, with his handsome face, with his careless, easy, engaging manner, who came the next day by special invitation to call at Marshlands.

He did not call alone. He had not courage enough for that, he told the Hurlfords, laughingly; so Mrs. Hurlford and Miss Derno and young Frank Hurlford accompanied him, nothing loth, for Miss Derno and Mrs. Hurlford had “taken the young man up,” and decided that it was a great pity of him, that it was all nonsense for him to keep aloof from his relatives because his father had cut his throat, and that, in fine, Captain Stondon should know him, like him, and do something for him.

Women were always taking Basil up—were always, dear souls, planning and plotting to advance his interests. In London he was perpetually being introduced to some great man who promised to find a vacant post. In the country he was continually being put in the way of marrying some sweet creature—some heiress, some widow—somebody who would make him happy, or push him on, or bring him a fortune.

There was no end to the roads that opened out before Basil Stondon; but by a curious fatality they all led nowhere; and the most sensible thing that ever was proposed for his benefit was to bring him and Captain Stondon together, and to get the owner of Marshlands to give his next of kin a helping hand on in the world.

“All he wants, my dear,” said Mrs. Hurlford to Miss Derno, “is a fair start and a sensible wife—a wife just like yourself.”

“Only ten years younger,” added Miss Derno.

“Now, what would he do with a young girl?” demanded Mrs. Hurlford. “Why, they would be lost out in the world like the babes in the wood. He ought to have a woman, a strong-minded, clear-headed woman, who could manage for him and tell him how to go on, and see that he was not imposed on.”

“A kind of keeper,” suggested Miss Derno.

“How absurd you are. You know what I mean perfectly well. Even for his sake you ought to play your cards better; and for your own, I can tell you, Olivia, Marshlands is a very nice property, and has a very nice rent-roll attached to it.”

“What a pity I cannot get Basil to think of me excepting as his mother!” observed Miss Derno.

“What a pity,” answered Mrs. Hurlford, who was a distant relation to her visitor, “that you will not believe any woman may marry any man. Propinquity, my dear, it is all propinquity. I heard a very clever lady say once she would undertake to bring any man to a proposal if she were thrown with him for a fortnight at a country house, and I am positive she could have done it too.”

“How glad I am, not to be a man,” remarked Miss Derno. “If I were, I would never venture beyond the gas-lamps.”

“But it would be for his good, for his happiness, you ridiculous creature!” persisted the lady; and so confident did she feel of the ultimate success of her manœuvres, that she absolutely decided on the colour of the dress she should wear at the wedding, and saw the very bracelet she intended to present as a cousinly offering to the bride.

Entertaining these views, it is not to be wondered at that she eagerly offered to accompany Mr. Stondon to Marshlands.

“We owe Mrs. Stondon a visit,” she remarked, “and it will make it a less formidable affair for Basil if we all go over together.”

“Poor Basil!” said Miss Derno, “I wonder if he will ever be brave enough to go over there alone?”

“It is not Captain Stondon I dislike meeting,” he replied, “it is his wife.”

“I think her perfectly charming!” broke in Mrs. Hurlford, with enthusiasm. “And as for Mr. Hurlford, you should hear him rave about her!”

“I really should not allow it, Laura,” said Miss Derno. “Mr. Hurlford ought not to rave about other men’s wives.”

“I cannot imagine what any man can see in copper-coloured hair and blue eyes to get spoony over,” observed Basil. At which remark Mrs. Hurlford shot a glance towards her cousin, who retorted—

“I have seen you spoony about every colour, from white to black, Basil. When you were only twelve years old I remember your being in love with a little Irish girl whose hair was exactly the colour of tow; and as for eyes—do you recollect Miss Smyth, whose eyes were red?—if you do not, I do.”

“Now, Mrs. Hurlford, I appeal to you!” exclaimed Basil. “Is it fair for the sins of the boy to be visited on the man? How should you like me, Miss Derno, to commence telling tales?”

“If they were entertaining, I should like it of all things,” she answered; “but to return to Mrs. Stondon—she really is beautiful, and she never looks so beautiful as when she is talking. If you do not recant before you leave Marshlands this afternoon I will give you such a scolding,” finished Miss Derno, flushing a little as she caught Basil’s eyes fixed upon her with an expression which was quite as intelligible to her as it was to Mrs. Hurlford.

“He will propose before the week is over,” thought that lady, little dreaming that the ceremony had been gone through two or three times already. “She must be married from here, but it will be very miserable for her travelling in the winter. However, she does not dislike travelling,” reflected Mrs. Hurlford, while she went upstairs to prepare for her visit to Mrs. Stondon. “Only if they could be married at once, and get away in the summer, how much nicer it would be.”

From which speech the reader will see that Providence had been very good to the male sex in denying Mrs. Hurlford daughters. She had sons, but then “sons are not daughters, Heaven be praised!” said a gentleman of her acquaintance.

“It is a beautiful property,” remarked Mrs. Hurlford, as they drove under the elms and the fir-trees up to Marshlands House.

Basil Stondon had been thinking the same thing, and he had been thinking of other things as well, that made him look a little sadder than usual when he crossed the threshold of his kinsman’s house.

“We have come to take you by storm, Mrs. Stondon,” said Mrs. Hurlford. And then Phemie assured her she was very glad to see them whatever their intentions might be: and Miss Derno, remembering the shy, blushing girl of six years before, looked on and marvelled.

“The spring cannot last for ever,” reflected that lady, philosophically, “and yet summer has set in very early with her.” And Miss Derno watched, and Miss Derno listened, and the more she watched and the more she listened, the more astonished she felt.

Mrs. Stondon inquired after the health of Mrs. Montague Stondon calmly and politely, as though she had never sat on thorns in that dreary drawing-room in Chapel Street. She made her visitors stay for luncheon, and went with them about the grounds in a bewitching straw hat, laughing and talking as they walked.

The girl Miss Derno remembered had vanished, but the fascination which had hung about the girl had been retained somehow by the woman. For the first ten minutes people might not like Mrs. Stondon; but the longer Miss Derno watched her the more satisfied she grew that there was a charm about her which no one who knew her intimately could resist.

Under the polish, under the easy manner, under the graceful indifference, there lay heart and passion and feeling and conscience. Under the rocks we find iron and coal, and the iron is firm to endure and the coal has warmth and heat. Whose fault is it if the mines are never worked,—if the hidden treasures lie buried for ages? Is it the sin of the earth that holds them? Is it the crime of the breast where they remain dormant?

After all, was it Phemie’s fault that she seemed a well-bred, passionless woman? Had she not done her best in the station of life in which she had been placed, and was her best not what her guests found her—ladylike, unimpulsive, attentive, a trifle sarcastic perhaps, but still graceful and well-educated?

“I recant,” said Basil Stondon to Miss Derno, when Marshlands was left behind. “I think Mrs. Stondon as beautiful as ice in sunshine, as snow in summer. She is as polished as marble, as cold as steel.” And the young man went through a pantomime of shivering as he spoke.

“And how do you like Captain Stondon?” asked Miss Derno.

“He is one of the most delightful old men that was ever ruled by a young wife,” answered Basil Stondon, laughing. “How did she happen to marry him? Why, a woman like that might have aspired to a coronet.”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed Miss Derno. “Excuse me, Basil, but really men are so very foolish. They see a well-dressed woman, with a pretty face, and fall down and worship forthwith, and talk such nonsense about her as might make the very angels weep.”

“Granted,” said Basil; “but what has that to do with Mrs. Stondon?”

“Why, only this much:—you see Mrs. Stondon mistress of Marshlands, and say she might have aspired to a coronet: so she might if she could start in the race matrimonial now; but Mrs. Stondon of Marshlands and Miss Keller of nowhere are two very distinct people. Miss Keller did exceedingly well when she married Captain Stondon.”

“But she was a Keller,” insisted Basil.

“True, but she was a poor Keller, and she is now a rich Stondon, and she has made, in my opinion, an extremely good match, beautiful though she may be.”

“How very vehement you are, Olivia, my dear,” said Mrs. Hurlford, as a reminder.

“I am vehement because I do think she has done very well for herself. Setting aside his wealth, Captain Stondon is a husband any wife might be proud of. He is just the man I should have liked to marry myself.”

“I shall really have to speak to Mrs. Stondon,” remarked Mrs. Hurlford, while Basil laughed, and said that he was sure Mrs. Stondon would feel greatly flattered could she hear all the remarks they had made on herself and her husband.

“I am going over there again one day next week, and I shall be able to make mischief, Miss Derno,” he finished; whereupon Mrs. Hurlford at once replied she hoped he would make some favourable impression on her, “because,” she concluded, “I did not think her manner at all cordial to you to-day.”

“It is not likely,” said Basil Stondon, “there can ever be much cordiality between us.” And the conversation dropped.