Phemie Keller

When trouble came upon her, Phemie was not left alone to bear it. Kind hearts and loving sympathised with her—friendly hands clasped hers—true men and women were near to give what comfort they could, or, at all events, to share in her distress.

Mr. Aggland and Duncan, and Helen and Miss Derno, were all with Phemie when the end came. Norfolk was importunate in its inquiries—Norfolk, professing to feel very sorry about Captain Stondon’s death, wondered who would succeed to the property, and whom Phemie would marry.

Mr. Ralph Chichelee had hopes—intentions, rather, would perhaps be a better word; but then other people had intentions also, so perhaps it is scarcely fair to mention his in particular.

Phemie was still beautiful enough to attract admiration—still young enough to love and be loved—still fascinating enough to choose a second husband and rule over a new home. The prospect opened out before Phemie by Captain Stondon’s death seemed to society like a vision of fairyland. She might marry an earl. The Duke of Seelands had inquired particularly who she was one day when he beheld her driving from the Disley Station. How would Phemie like the strawberry leaves? Norfolk began forthwith to wonder, while the man who had loved her so well was lying dead in one of the pleasant rooms at Marshlands. Concerning “that young man Aggland” the gossips had also something to say; they marvelled if, instead of marrying for rank, Phemie’s uncle would trap her into wedding her cousin. Where would she live? What would she do? She possessed a fine property of her own, and doubtless Captain Stondon had done well pecuniarily by his wife.

Was not this a dainty dish for a county to feast on and speculate over? while the flavouring was supplied by an all-devouring curiosity to know who was the next heir male. Remote relations, unheard of before, came from the uttermost parts of the earth to claim the property. Stondons who had gone down in the world—Stondons who had gone up in the social scale—arrived at Disley when the news of Captain Stondon’s death was noised abroad. There was no near heir, and every man of the connection consequently claimed to be next-of-kin. Who would be master? What would Phemie do? Whom would Phemie marry? What a pity she had no children—what a sad thing it was Mr. Basil Stondon had gone abroad! These were the questions and remarks everybody made and everybody asked.

As for Phemie, she grieved for her dead husband with a sorrow which was neither conventional nor circumscribed. The best friend woman ever possessed he had been to her through all the years of her married life.

Through that part of her existence when she may be said to have lived he had stood beside her.

In sickness, in sorrow, in prosperity, he had thought of her, and of her only. No one in the after time could ever be so fond or proud of her as he had been; no one could ever step in and fill his place. She had never had to think for herself—to take any trouble which his love could keep from her; he had been true and faithful and tender, and the return she had made would have broken the heart of the man who now lay so still and stiff, could he have known it.

“Better so,” she thought, “better so. I would rather see him thus”—and she kissed the cold brow and lips—“than imagine his grief, could he have guessed what I was—I whom he trusted—too well, too well!” And she wept through the hours beside his coffin till her friends forcibly removed her.

“I never loved him enough—I never knew till now how much I loved him,” were the contradictory sentences she kept constantly repeating; and then Miss Derno, who could guess so well wherein the worst sting of this death lay, drew the poor weary head on to her breast and rested it there.

“And I was once very unjust to you,” Phemie went on, sobbing out her confession. “There was a time when I thought I did not like you, and it was wicked of me to misjudge you as I did. You forgive me, dear, don’t you? and you will not ask me why I misjudged you?”

“I forgive and I will not ask. Shall we be friends now—true friends for evermore?” And she bent down till her curls swept Phemie’s face, and then the poor trembling lips touched hers, and the widow broke out sobbing more passionately than ever.

So the days wore on—the weary days with death in the house—till at last the morning came when all that was mortal of Captain Stondon passed out of the gates of Marshlands and on to the churchyard at the other end of the hamlet. He had gone for ever. Phemie realised that fact when she stole to the room where he had lain—when she understood that she had looked on his face for the last time in this world—when she turned desperately towards the future, and confronted it without his help—without his supporting hand—without his encouraging voice—alone—wholly and entirely, so far as the close companionship, as the watchful care given to her by Captain Stondon was concerned.

She had not valued him living, and now he was dead.

She had sorrowed for that man lying under the sea, and there was treason in her sorrow towards the husband just taken from her. Even indeed in that bitter hour she could not put the memory of Basil aside—could not help thinking how hard it was he had been taken in his youth and hope away from earth, away from Marshlands!

She thought this, and then, with a despairing moan, knelt down in the room where she should never more see her husband, and cried till the fountain of her tears seemed exhausted, till, for very faintness and weariness, she could cry no more.

When Captain Stondon’s will came to be read, it was found that he had indeed remembered his wife with the most generous and ungrudging trustfulness.

He had saved and purchased—purchased this little estate and that small farm; invested in some paying companies, and accumulated money for her benefit. With the exception of an annuity to Mrs. Montague Stondon, and some few legacies, he left Phemie the entire of his personal property, all he had been able to put by during the years since he came into possession of Marshlands. There was no condition attached; he said nothing about a second marriage, he made no proviso, he attached no restrictions, he left almost everything he owned in the world, to Phemie absolutely after his death, just as in life he had given her his heart and his substance, wholly and unconditionally.

As for Marshlands, of course it had to go to the next heir—but who was the next heir?

There were not wanting claimants in abundance. Stondons from Devonshire, Stondons from Perth, Stondons from Ireland, Stondons from abroad, were eager in pressing their separate claims. Old men and young, men who looked as though they had been buried for a hundred years and then dug up again, and let out for a day to state where they were born, and who had been their father—men again who were worn and haggard, to whom even a few acres of the great estate would have been ease and competence—men who had all their lives long been fighting the battle of poverty, and probably pawned some of their goods to defray the expenses of the journey—men fresh from their oxen and their ploughshares, who had come “parly,” with a sharp country practitioner: all these laid siege to Marshlands, and strove to make their title appear good; and whilst they were wrangling and disputing over the matter, Phemie still clung to the old walls like a cat, reluctant to quit the place where fires had once blazed cheerfully for her.

She wrote to her late husband’s lawyers, begging them to give her timely notice when the new owner might be expected, and the answer which came back sounded to her like the voices of the dead.

They enclosed a letter which, “as she would perceive,” Captain Stondon had instructed them to forward to her a month after his decease, whenever that might occur, and they begged to assure her she should have full information whenever anything definitive was settled. They (Messrs. Gardner, Snelling, and Co.) thought it was useless considering the claims of any other person until the fact of Mr. Basil Stondon’s death was proved past doubt.

“Proved past doubt.” Oh, heavens! is it not hard to think that what is evidence sufficient for love is not evidence sufficient for law? Till that instant Phemie had never for a moment doubted the accuracy of the tidings which had reached England, but now, with a bound, hope sprung to life again.

It had been so easy to remain true to her husband with Basil dead; but Basil living! Over and over and over she conned the lines suggesting this probability, while the other letter—the enclosure, the message from the newly-made grave—lay unheeded beside her.

To do Phemie justice, she did not couple together the sentences—Basil is living, and I am free. She had never thought of marrying him, and she did not now; but she had loved him, and, as I have said, the old love never dies; it is the one thing in this mutable world which is immutable; it is the one temporal possession of our mortality which is immortal. She could not kill it, she could not bury it; the winter’s frosts and the winter’s snows had lain upon it, yet here it was, springing up fresh and green and fair and beautiful as ever.

If he were but alive! and then all at once her eyes fell on her black dress, and she remembered with a shock the man who was but too surely dead. There lay his letter, with this written on the outside—“To be given to my wife one month after my death in case she survives me; to be burnt in the event of her dying before me.”

It always seems a solemn and a strange thing when the idea of his or her own death is presented as a precautionary possibility to the mind of a person in health.

Insurance forms, for instance, appear to put a matter about which most people, I suppose, think sometimes after a fashion, in a new light before the senses of an intending insurer.

There is a regular debit and credit statement. You may die—you may not die; you are such an age, and inasmuch as you are such an age, the chances are against the length of the years to come; on the other hand, you are healthy, active, temperate. It is not a sermon, it is not a warning, it is not a mere possibility; it is a rule-of-three sum worked out, not very accurately it may be, but still calmly and dispassionately. You may die, you may not die, and you are rated accordingly; you may live, you may not live, and the law and common sense take precautions in consequence.

When that letter was written the future lay shrouded from view, that future was the present now, and he had died; but she might as well have died, and then—why that letter would have been burnt, and she never a bit the wiser.

Life’s firmest ground is insecure, its strongest fortresses powerless against the touch of the great destroyer. Vaguely this idea took root in Phemie’s mind as she read the lines I have copied, ere breaking the outer seals and taking out the letter folded inside.

“Mrs. Stondon” was the direction on the cover, but on the actual envelope were traced the words—“To my dear wife,” and the paper that envelope contained began—“My dearest Phemie.” His! The hand that penned the sentence, that had been warm when the letter was folded, sealed, and directed, was cold enough now.

Well-a-day!—ah, well-a-day!—there are many bitter hours in life, and one of those hours was striking for Phemie then. In the twilight she sat reading, while her tears fell fast and hot on the paper; in the twilight she understood at last the nature of the man she had loved so lightly—the man who, in the time of his fiercest trial, wrote thus to the wife whose heart he found had never throbbed with love for him.

“My dearest Phemie,—When you receive this I shall be lying in my quiet grave, and you will be my widow. To you, my widow, I write that which I could never have said to my wife. It seems to me at this moment that I am almost writing these words from another world, for the old things bear new forms, and life itself is changed to me within the last few hours. My love, my wife, my child, I know all now—your strength, your weakness, your secret; and if I could give you happiness at this moment by any personal sacrifice, God is my witness—God in whose presence I shall stand when you read this—that I would try to do so; but, my darling, it is impossible. I cannot undo the past: let me try to make amends in the future.

“I did wrong, Phemie—I did wrong; but it is only within the last twenty-four hours that I see this. I was old, and you were young; I was rich in money and love, and you in youth, beauty, virtue, the power of winning affection. In your inexperience, my darling, I took you unto myself, away from all chance of happy love—away to the temptation to which I have exposed you. Blind! blind! blind! I thought I could have made you so happy, Phemie, and I have learned that it was not in my power to do so. Forgive me, dear—forgive,—for I am very penitent, and very miserable!

“What I want to say to you, my darling, is this. If, when you read these lines, you think Basil can be to you all I tried to be, marry him after what the world thinks a prudent and fitting interval. Let no thought of me come between you and him, save this, that if it seems good to you to cast your lot with his, I wish you to do so. You have done your uttermost to give the old man your love. I know by what I heard last night that you have not hurt his honour, and I would in the years to come you should give your hand where your heart is now. Give it, remembering that if I had any need to pardon I have pardoned; that I have done my best to repair my error, and secure for you freedom from temptation during my lifetime, and happiness after my death. I never suspected you; I never spied upon you; all my knowledge came from others. The enclosed told me of your intended meeting with Basil this evening. I leave it for you to see, as perhaps you may guess who sent it (I cannot), and be on your watch against a secret enemy when I am here to guard you no longer. This is the last thing I can do for you. God grant it may turn out for your welfare here and hereafter.

In the twilight she read it; when the summer night came, she still sat on thinking with a terrible despair, with a sickening remorse about the irreparable past—about the hopeless future. He had known—he had known how fond she was of Basil; but he could never know now how fond she had been of him! And Phemie would have given all the years of her future life for ten minutes from the past—ten minutes to explain, to confess, to weep out her repentance, and then, if need be, to part.

But amid all her grief there was another and perhaps a stronger feeling—anger against the person who enlightened Captain Stondon, who had driven Basil across the seas.

She could have fought out her fight alone, she thought. Had she not done so? She could have spoken herself to her husband when she found the burden of the day too much, the heat of the battle too fierce. How came it she had never suspected interference before? How could she ever have forgiven Miss Derno, and varied in her opinion concerning her?

“She wrote that letter.” Thus Phemie ended the mental argument. “She fancied she would get him for herself, and she did not care what misery she brought to any one else—a double-faced hypocrite! Well, Miss Derno, you have played your last game out with me.” And Phemie folded up the letters, and put them aside in a drawer, resolving to make no mention of their contents to any one.

She felt wretchedly ill. Her head was burning, her hands and feet were cold as ice. When her maid came to know if she would wish her tea brought up into her dressing-room, she said, “No,” and bade the woman say to Mr. Aggland that she desired to see him.

“Uncle,” she began, when he obeyed the summons, “I have had a great shock to-night, and I fear I am going to have a bad illness. Count that,” and she laid his fingers on her pulse; “promise me that if I should be delirious you will get a nurse from London. I do not want Helen nor any of the servants to come near me, and, beyond everything, keep Miss Derno away.”

Whereupon Mr. Aggland went downstairs, and sending off straightway for a doctor, told Miss Derno he thought Phemie must be “lightheaded;” acting upon which information, Miss Derno went upstairs, and knocked at Mrs. Stondon’s door, which was opened by Mrs. Stondon’s maid, who said her mistress had gone to bed with a bad headache.

“Is that Miss Derno?” cried out Phemie; “let her come in—I wish to speak to her; and you may go away, Marshall. Are you there?” she exclaimed, as the door closed behind the woman. “Come near to me. That will do. Now then, what do you want?”

“I want to know how you are, dear,” said Miss Derno, approaching the bed, and trying to take one of Phemie’s hands in hers, but Phemie pulled it away.

“I will be fair and frank with you, Miss Derno,” she began; “I will speak freely to you now, as I once thought never to speak freely to mortal. Within the last few hours I have learnt all; I have learned who sent Basil Stondon to India; who told my husband that I—that he——”

“That Basil loved you,” supplied Miss Derno, “If you mean that, I certainly plead guilty; but, Mrs. Stondon, was I wrong?”

“Wrong or right what business had you to come between my husband and me?” retorted Phemie, sitting bolt upright in bed; while the loosened waves of her hair, that she wore ordinarily braided so closely under her cap, rippled down over throat and shoulders and pillows. “Could you not have left me to deal with Basil without breaking the heart of as good a man as ever possessed an unworthy wife?”

“I never told Captain Stondon that I thought you loved Basil,” was the reply.

“But you sent him where he could hear it for himself,” answered Phemie. “You told him to go to the pine plantation that night when Basil and I parted.”

Here Mrs. Stondon stopped: there seemed to come around her as she spoke the twilight of the autumn evening, the moaning of the wind, the leaves beneath her feet. She could not go on, and so she paused, while Miss Derno said—

“I never did—I never even knew till this moment that Basil and you had a parting interview, or that Captain Stondon was present at it.”

“You cannot expect me to believe that,” was the retort; “you wanted Basil for yourself; you thought if once he were separated from me, he would marry you. No means seemed too treacherous to secure such a prize.”

“Now heaven help the woman!” broke in Miss Derno. “Mrs. Stondon,” she continued, “are you mad? Can you think that I should scheme to win Basil Stondon? I, who refused him twice before he ever lost his heart to you?”

Hearing that, Phemie fell back on her pillow.

If Miss Derno thought to make peace by such a sentence, she mistook the nature of the woman she was speaking to.

There was no balm in Gilead for a wound like this. To have given her own love, to have deceived her husband, to have wasted her affection on a man who had loved another before her! It seemed like the very bitterness of death, and Phemie struggled against conviction.

“If you did not wish to marry Basil; if you did not write that letter, who did?” she said, half turning her face towards Miss Derno.

“I cannot tell; I cannot be sure, though I may guess——”

“That is only half an answer,” persisted Phemie.

“Well, then, I guess Georgina Hurlford wrote it. She would have had no objection to become Mrs. Basil Stondon; and I believe she was capable of committing any meanness, if by so doing she could compass her own ends.”

For a moment Phemie paused; then she said—

“You confess you told my husband Basil cared for me?”

“I do; and I told him so in all honour and honesty of purpose. I knew you would not tell him. I saw Basil would never leave Marshlands of himself, and it was best I did speak to Captain Stondon. Though going to India cost Basil his life, it was best for you both that he did go. You cannot deny the truth of what I am saying.”

“I do deny it,” retorted Phemie, fiercely. “I would have gone through fire and water; I would have suffered tortures; I would have died myself cheerfully before letting him guess the miserable truth he learnt that night among the pines. It is no use my making any secret of what you already know. I tell you, hating you all the time for your knowledge, that I did love Basil Stondon—God forgive me—more than I ever loved any man on earth. I loved him, detesting myself for loving him; I loved him more than my husband, but I loved my husband better; and because I loved him better—because he trusted, idolized, and believed I was as good and true as a wife ought to be, I had rather have fought my own battle out to the end. I would rather have borne twenty times as much as I did bear than that he should have come to share any part of the trouble with me. Oh Lord!” finished Phemie, passionately, “will my punishment never end? Will there come no day that shall see the last of this my sin?”

“Mrs. Stondon!” And Miss Derno laid a beseeching hand on Phemie, but Phemie again shook it off.

“You put division between us—you meddled in that which did not concern you—you sent Basil to India—you embittered the last days of my husband’s life. I know now, I know now,” she wailed out, “what made him look at me as he often did, and I will never forgive you, never—if you were dying this minute I would not—if I were dying I would not; and I do not believe Basil ever cared for you much, and I do believe you wrote that note. If you meddled in one part, why not in the other?”

“It is of no use, I suppose, striving to argue with you,” answered Miss Derno. “There is only one thing I will say, however; not very long ago you told me you were sorry ever to have misjudged me. You are misjudging me now, and you will be sorry for having done so hereafter.”

“I shall have to bear that sorrow then as I have had to bear others,” was Phemie’s reply. “You came here professing to be fond of me—professing to like me better than any other woman in the world, and all the time you were scheming against me and mine; you were trying to put division between me and my husband; you thought perhaps nothing would kill him so soon as to tell him I was too fond of Basil; very likely you hoped to get Basil and Marshlands together. I am saying exactly what I think—I cannot be a hypocrite, though you are one.”

“Mrs. Stondon, I never told any one you were too fond of Basil, and I never sent Captain Stondon to any place where he was likely to hear that fact for himself. What is the cause of all this excitement? who has been putting ideas into your mind? from whom have you heard?”

“I have heard from the dead,” answered Phemie; “and they, I suppose, may be trusted to speak the truth. You came spying here, watching my every word and look and movement, and then, having somehow guessed the truth, you went and informed my husband that Basil loved me. That is on your own confession—out of your own mouth I convict you. After that you expect me to believe you did not go further, and tell him I loved Basil. Do you imagine I am an idiot? do you think I have lost my senses altogether? No, no, Miss Derno, there is a point at which credulity ceases, and you could never make me credit Georgina Hurlford wrote that note, unless I heard it from her own lips.”

“Which it is not very probable you will do, in this world at all events,” said Miss Derno; “for I have not the slightest idea that she is still living. Let that be as it may, however, I can only repeat what I have said, I did not try to do you any harm. I did not desire that Basil should marry me. I have tried to be your friend, and though you will not be my friend, I shall never change to you. Do not let our last word be one of anger. Good-by.”

But Phemie only turned her head aside, and the great mass of her hair was all Miss Derno could see of her.

“Good-by,” repeated Miss Derno, putting her hand over Phemie’s shoulder, but Phemie would take no notice.

“Good-by,” she said for the third time, and she stooped and kissed the shining tresses which had first caught Captain Stondon’s fancy. “God knows whether or not we shall ever meet again, but may He keep and bless you!”

And turning away she left the room slowly, and returning to Mr. Aggland, told him his niece was not at all delirious.

“But she has taken offence at something she fancies I have done,” added Miss Derno; “and it will be best for me to leave here to-morrow morning. Do not try to make peace between us; in time she will discover her mistake, and till then I can be patient.”