Phemie Keller

It did not require any very great amount of pressing to induce Miss Derno to exchange her lodgings in Robertson Terrace for rooms at Roundwood. She was ready enough to make the attempt, at all events, for there is something in human nature which rebels at the idea of dying among strangers, and paying extra rent for a death.

“I shall only be a burden and a trouble to you,” she said, in answer to Phemie, “only be a nuisance in your house—you had better leave me where I am.” But still her eyes belied her lips; they looked wistfully at Mrs. Stondon, while she replied—

“I had not better leave you, and I will not. It is but little I can do for you now, but let me have the satisfaction of doing that little. Say you will come—it is all I ask, we will manage everything else, if only you can bear to leave Hastings and come with us.”

“But I have so many belongings,” hesitated the other; “my cousin, and maid, and—and—have you mentioned the matter to Major Morrice?”

“Yes, and he has agreed to make Roundwood his head-quarters for the present too,” answered Phemie, cheerfully; but as she said this, Miss Derno looked first in the sweet face bent down over her, and then turned away and sighed.

Would it ever come to that?—when she was lying cold and dead—would Gordon Morrice grow in time to love Phemie, and would Phemie learn to love him? The possibility of such a result flashed upon the poor invalid’s mind in a moment; and if tears did blind her eyes, who can wonder?

She had loved the man, and he could never be anything to her now; but another might be much to him, and if that other should be Mrs. Stondon, why better Mrs. Stondon than anyone else, for then her memory would not quite pass away; they would think of her sometimes in the quiet eventide—remember the woman who had loved them both.

There is many an idea that seems unpleasant enough at first, which yet grows, as time passes by, familiar and agreeable; the face of a possible contingency appears strange when it looks in suddenly through the windows of our soul, but by degrees that strangeness wears off, and we become accustomed to its presence, and should miss it were it to leave its wonted place.

Our plans and our ideas come to seem to us finally like friends; we sketch them, we fill them in, we add a touch here, make some improvement there, and then, when we have finished and perfected them, we cannot bear to part with our ideals—cannot endure that the touch of reality should level our dream-castles with the ground.

Miss Derno found this to be the truth, at any rate. At first the idea of Phemie and Gordon Morrice growing near and dear to one another disturbed and troubled her; but as the days went by—as she beheld the objectless routine of Mrs. Stondon’s life—as she saw how the sorrows she had passed through were graven on her heart—how deep the iron had entered into her soul; as she watched her flitting hither and thither, anticipating every want of her sick visitor, and moving heaven and earth to compass her recovery, Miss Derno began to hope—she who had done with hope in this world for herself—that some day Phemie might marry Gordon Morrice, and put the irremediable past, with its sin, its suffering, its repentance, away from her like a garment which, having been worn, is laid aside for ever.

That Phemie should not marry again—that in the very prime of her life she should thrust hope and love and joy aside—that she should live for other people’s children, and preside over a desolate and lonely household, seemed to Miss Derno terrible, and she took many an occasion to talk to Mrs. Stondon about the past and about the future, trying her mind on various subjects, but finding that only two strings in the instrument returned their full tone to her delicate touch.

She would speak fully about the past, about her husband, about—well, there is no use in standing over nice in the terms one employs—her lover; repentance, and affection; her regret for her husband, her regard for Basil.

“Why should I tell you any falsehood about the matter?” Phemie said, one day; “it is all dead and gone—the love, the shame, the struggle, the remorse. I did love Basil Stondon, but I love him no longer; the moment I saw his wife I was cured, and being cured, I wonder how any man can love another man’s wife. I could not love another woman’s husband. I could not,” she repeated, seeing a look of incredulity in Miss Derno’s face.

“And yet you say you have done with life?”

“What has that to do with the matter?”

“Much. No person has done with life till he has met with some fatal disappointment in it. If you shut yourself up here, seeing no one, visiting no one, receiving no one, not even your intimate acquaintances—both Basil and his wife will be apt to think you are a disappointed woman, and after a while the world may think so too.”

“What would you have me do?” Phemie inquired.

“I would have you act as if your life were before, not behind you; as though there were still some happiness left in existence, even though Basil be married, and Georgina mistress of Marshlands. I would not have you leave the world and take a kind of social veil, burying yourself among these cousins of yours, and forgetting that a woman of property has scarcely a right to reside in such strict privacy as you propose. When your time of mourning is over, go out, see people, visit, take an interest in what is going on around you, and you will find as the years pass that happiness comes with occupation, and that the worst remedy in the world for a wound is always to be keeping your hands upon it and pulling the sore open.”

“I have occupied myself,” Phemie answered. “I have planned schools. I have visited the poor. I have relieved the sick. I have devoted myself to my family.”

“My dear Mrs. Stondon, you must do more. You must amuse yourself. You must devote yourself to the good work of getting strong, mentally and bodily; of taking joy out of the days as they come and go; of being interested—really interested—in your fellows. Do it at first from pride. Put it out of anyone’s power to say Mrs. Stondon is a broken-hearted and a disappointed woman.”

“That can never be said with any truth of me,” answered Phemie, “for I am not disappointed, and I am not broken-hearted; and if Basil had never seen Georgina Hurlford, it would not have made any difference between us. After that—after that letter, I would never marry any one—I never would.” And Phemie covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud.

“What letter are you talking about?” asked Miss Derno.

“I am talking of the one my husband left for me. I will show it to you. I have never shown it before to any person.” And Mrs. Stondon rose and left the room, returning in a few minutes, however, with the letter, which has previously been copied into these pages.

“Read that,” she said, “and never speak again as if I could marry a second time. Oh! if I had but known; if I had but known!”

If she had but known! Ah, Phemie, not alone by you have those words been spoken. Tremblingly, despairingly, when it was too late, white lips have murmured that sentence—faltering tongues uttered it hopelessly.

If she had but known! Is not that the burden of most human lamentations, of most mortal regret? What might we not all, men and women alike, have made of our lives, which are now past and gone, squandered and lost to us, if we had but known—oh, God! if we had but known!

Silently Miss Derno folded up the letter and gave it back to her friend. Quietly and thoughtfully she looked out at the landscape which lay before her, clad in its autumn robes of gold and russet, of red and brown, then she said—

“Dear Phemie—let me call you Phemie—if he could speak to you now, he would bid you be happy; and you will try to be happy for our sakes—for his and for mine—for love of your dead husband and your dead friend.”

“I will try.”

“And supposing, Phemie, that in the future some good and faithful man should come, praying you to be his wife, and that you hesitate whether to say yea or nay, will you think of this letter and of me, and remember that both told you it would be no treachery to those you loved in the past for you to be happy in the future?”

Then in a moment Phemie’s grief broke out again.

“You will have it, then?” she said. “Well, then, you shall, only never mention the matter to me more. If I had loved less, I should have suffered less. Basil Stondon was so dear to me, that no man could ever win my heart again. This is the simple truth; and it is the truth, also, that I would not marry Basil Stondon were he single to-morrow, and came praying to me—praying as——”

She could not finish her sentence. The memory of all he had prayed—of the grief he had tried to bring upon her—of all the shame he had striven in his selfish recklessness to compass—rushed in a full tide through Phemie’s heart, and choked her utterance.

“She will think differently some day,” Miss Derno mentally argued; but the sick woman felt disappointed, nevertheless. She would have liked to join their hands, to speak out fully to both of them, to bid them be happy, yet not quite forgetful of her, and then, as such was God’s will, to go.

It was not to be, however; though Phemie grew to like Major Morrice greatly, though he learned to watch her coming and going and made such inquiries as induced Miss Derno to believe he suspected the truth, so far at least as Basil Stondon was concerned—it was not to be. The sick woman’s disease went on apace, but never a bit nearer to one another came the pair. The months went by—it was the dead time of the year, the days were dull and dark, and the roll of the sea as it came in on the shore could be heard all the night long at Roundwood. There were many storms, and it was a trying season altogether—trying even to those in health, to the dwellers in great cities, and doubly trying to the ailing and dying far away in the country, who had nothing to do save think about their ailments, and nothing to look at save nature dressed in her deepest suit of mourning.

At last the year turned: and one day, when the sun came struggling forth, Phemie said—

“We shall soon have spring here.”

“I wish I might live to see it—oh, I wish I might,” answered Miss Derno.

“Why, surely, dear, you have no expectation of leaving us so soon?” Mrs. Stondon began; but a look in her friend’s face made her stop and hesitate. “I had hoped,” she went on, “that the mild weather would do you good—that we perhaps might go abroad—and——”

“Ah, Phemie love, you must go abroad alone; only I wish I might live till the spring. I think I should go away more certain about the next world if I could only once again see the flowers springing and the leaves budding in this.”

Greatly Miss Derno took, in those days, to Mr. Aggland. He could supply her with a verse or an extract at any instant. He had the whole Bible almost off by heart, and was able to finish out whatever thought was trembling through her mind with text and quotation.

Sometimes Phemie would say, half-reproachfully, “I think you like better to have my uncle with you than me.” To which Miss Derno was wont to reply,

“You know you do not believe what you are saying; but still it is very pleasant to have everything put into shape for one in a moment. There is not a thought crosses my mind, not a doubt perplexes me, but I find the same thought has occupied and the same doubt perplexed some other human being long before I was born. Your uncle makes me not feel so lonely in my mind, Phemie—that is the secret of my liking to have him near me.”

And it was but natural that this should be so—that the texts, the quotations, the scraps of poetry, the verses of pathetic songs should, as Miss Derno said, render the mental road she was travelling less solitary and weary.

Long time had passed since Mr. Aggland led the quire at Tordale, and his voice was not so true or full as formerly; but still, in the evenings, the invalid loved to lie and listen to the hymns and the songs with which his memory was stored.

It is one thing to hear religious and serious subjects spoken of at great length, till the brain grows weary and the mind wandering—to have a full meal forced upon weak digestion at stated intervals—and another to have the cup of refreshment touch the lips whenever they are parched and feverish.

When there is too much thrust upon the patient the power of assimilation ceases, and the food which was intended to nourish turns to poison in the system; and, more especially when the act of dying is spread over a long period, the sufferer wearies of the constant recurrence to spiritual topics and longs for rest—longs for time to think out one fact ere another is placed before him for consideration.

This was Miss Derno’s case at all events. She could not have borne any one beside her who would constantly have been praying or constantly reading. This excitement, beneficial doubtless in some cases, would have driven her distracted; but she loved to talk in the evenings to Mr. Aggland on those subjects which had always dwelt next to his heart.

He had thought under the shadow of the everlasting hills about that land “where sorrow cometh never.” Walking round his farm, he had reflected on many things besides wheat and turnips, sheep and harvest time. He had considered his life, and felt, though at the period Carlyle was as a sealed book to him, life was no idle dream, but a solemn reality—his own—all, as the great writer says, “he had to front Eternity with.”

A man of this nature was just the person Miss Derno needed to be near her in the hour of her bitterest trial: one who could remind her that “God is better than his promise, if He takes from man a long lease and gives him a freehold of a greater value;” who never remained silent for lack of words, as so many of us do, but could always fit in the right sentence in the right place; whose “mynde to him a kyngdome was,” and who felt himself monarch over every idea it contained.

Who was more fitted to remind the dying woman that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever?” Who could better bring in the quotation, “Religion troubles you for an hour—it repays you by immortality?”

Did she shrink from the path before her—he was able to quote Moir—

Were she wavering and doubtful, he would say—

He could assure her, when she felt loth to leave the world—

Never weary was he of talking about the fair land where—

Never did he tire when his theme was of that City “whose inhabitants no census has numbered; through whose streets rush no tides of business; that city without grief or graves—sins or sorrows; whose walls are salvation, and whose gates are praise.”

Softly, in the firelight, while she leaned back in her chair, and listened to his voice, he would recite—

Was she timorous—“Death,” he assured her, “is but a shadow from the rock eternity.”

But why multiply examples? why go on to tell at greater length how the whole burden of his discourse was—

She had to travel a darksome road, but he brightened the way for her. He was so sure himself, concerning the certainty of the truths he uttered, that it seemed impossible for her to doubt. A man himself who had never much regarded the ways, nor manners, nor fashions of this present world, he was able to give her, who had lived in the world all her life, many hints as to where she was going astray, in what errors she was indulging.

He brought her the first snowdrop that put its head above ground; he searched all the banks and hedgerows for the “pale primrose;” he told her when and where the birds were building, and how many eggs there were in the blackbird’s nest.

Well, she had her wish! She lived to touch snowdrops and primroses; to hear the birds singing, and see the trees putting forth; she lived till nature put off her winter clothing, and the sun shone over the earth once more; then——

“Gordon, I feel I shall soon have to go now,” she said, one morning. “Thank you for staying with me to the last.”

She put her arms round his neck, and drew his face down to hers.

“If all had gone well,” she whispered, “we should now have been man and wife for sixteen years. I wonder would that have made this parting any easier?”

Over and over and over again Major Morrice kissed her, but it was a minute before he could steady his voice sufficiently to answer—

“You know I wanted you to be my wife even at the end.”

“I know it,” she sighed; “but Gordon, if you marry, as I hope you may, you will not feel it so hard to put another in the place I did not quite fill, as——”

“Oh, my love, my love! was it for my sake you refused?” and the man’s tears fell upon her like rain; “as if I could ever put another in your place; as though my life were not over to all intents and purposes now.”

“I want Phemie,” was the only answer she made, and Phemie drew near. “You will be friends when I am gone,” she went on, speaking thickly and with difficulty. “You will not grow to be quite strangers to one another as time goes by. You will let Gordon talk about me to you, won’t you, dearest. And Gordon,” he stooped his head, and Phemie drew back—“if ever you think—in time—do not let any thought of me—remember I wished——”

Fortunate was it for Phemie that she had no idea of what caused Major Morrice’s face to flush so painfully in an instant—what made him look aside as she arranged the pillows for her who would so soon have done with earth—for her who was passing swiftly to that land where no kindly offices avail—where love, and tenderness, and regret, and unselfishness are equally useless and vain.

All the day long they never left her; all the day long she lay waiting for death to come, and it was quite evening ere she went.

Beside her were some flowers, fresh gathered in the morning, withered and dying.

“The flower fadeth,” she said, feebly, turning towards Mr. Aggland; and, answering her thoughts, he answered—

“But the word of our God shall stand for ever.” A few minutes more and it was all over.

“Comfort him for me, Phemie,” were her last words; and with her hand clasped in that of the man she had loved so faithfully, she fell asleep.

She lived, as she had desired, till the flowers sprang and the trees budded; and she left this world certain about the next.

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” said Mr. Aggland, thoughtfully, as he lingeringly left the room.