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 \\\\^ 
 
 \^
 
 PHEMIE KELLEE 
 
 $ ioljtl. 
 
 By F. G. TRAFFORD, 
 
 author of "george geith," "cit? and suburb," "maxwell drkwitt, 
 "too much alone," "world and the church," "race for WE^VLTH." 
 
 m THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 
 
 1866. 
 
 [llie Right of Translaiion and Reproduction is reserved. '\
 
 LONDON : 
 BEADBURT, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIAR8.
 
 
 00> 
 
 #• 
 
 I 
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. — AMONG THE HILLS 
 
 n. — TOEDALE . . 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 21 
 
 V IIL — IN DANGER ...*».. 35 
 
 ^ IV, — PHEMIE , . . . t . . 47 
 
 X V. — A COMPACT 57 
 
 VI. — BY STRAMMER TARN , . . . .71 
 ±^ Vn. — THE AGGLAND INTERIOR 90 
 
 Vm. — ALL THE DIFFERENCE 118 
 
 IX.— RETROSPECTIVE 147 
 
 X. — YES OR NO 17^ 
 
 XI.— SATISFIED 202
 
 V] CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XII. FOR LIFE 222 
 
 XIII. DISAPrOINTED « 242 
 
 XIV. — ON VIEW ,,...,, 259 
 
 XV. FIVE YEARS LATER 28 
 
 uf:
 
 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A3I0XG THE T .LS. 
 
 He had been toiliDg under the noontide heat 
 lip the narrow defile which led from Grassenfel 
 to Tordale. He had grown weary of the way, of 
 the rough path, of the rugged scenery. He had 
 looked to his right hand and to his left, and 
 behold on the one side stormy Skillanscar met 
 his view, whilst on the other the peaks of Hel- 
 beck rose towering to the summer sky. 
 
 He had looked straightforward, and there were 
 mountains still — mountains that seemed to hem 
 him in, and make him a prisoner in their rocky 
 fastnesses. 
 
 Toiling onward, he had been thinking how long 
 was the road ; how great the distance ; when all 
 
 YOL. I. B
 
 2 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 at once the path bore sharply round the base of 
 a projecting rock, and brought him suddenly 
 within view of Tordale Church. 
 
 With the everlasting hills overshadowing it, 
 with the murmuring waterfall singing ever and. 
 always beside it ; the sweet melody to which so 
 few came to listen — with the larches and the 
 pines waving their branches gently over the grassy 
 mounds in the graveyard, with the August sun 
 pouring his beams down the mountains on the 
 dancing rivulet, on the smooth velvety turf, Tor- 
 dale Church stood on a little mound commanding 
 a view of the valley, that broke like a revelation 
 of beauty on the traveller. 
 
 He had walked far to see this piece of God's 
 handiwork ; he had toiled wearily up the defile, 
 over the rocks, between the mountains, to find 
 this gem which was set so securely among the 
 hills, that the eye of stranger rarely rested on 
 it. He had walked far, and he felt that he was 
 not so young as formerly ; yet when the glorious 
 view opened before him Captain Henry Gower 
 Stondon forgot the distance, thought no longer
 
 A3I0NG THE HILLS. 3 
 
 of fatigue, but, pausing, di^ank in the loveliness 
 he beheld. 
 
 It was high noon among the Cumberland hills 
 — high noon on a Sunday in August — and the 
 mighty Sabbath hush pervaded all Nature, 
 whether animate or inanimate. 
 
 Far away down the valley, where the rivulet 
 trickled on slowly to join the Derwent, where the 
 grass was greenest, and the sun least scorching, 
 cows lay lazily chewing the cud — sheep browsed 
 the sweet herbage leisurely. There was a solemn 
 stillness amongst the mountains ; the sunbeams 
 rested in great patches where they had first 
 fallen ; the wind, as it came and went, and went 
 and came, stole through the tree-tops noiselessly; 
 no bird burst from the ivy or the broom, breaking 
 with sudden flight the stillness of that noontide 
 hour ; the wild bee was so deep in the fojcglove's 
 bell, that it had no time to tell of the treasures 
 lying there. Even the gi^asshoppers seemed to 
 have forgotten their song ; and but for the chm-ch 
 and the gi*aves, the stranger who now looked on 
 Tordale for the first time, might almost have 
 
 B 2
 
 4 PHEMIE KELLEE. 
 
 fancied that he had reached an uninhabited Eden, 
 never before trodden by the foot of man. 
 
 Very slowly he ascended the steps leading to 
 the graveyard — primitive steps they were, too, 
 Captain Stondon noticed, cut-out of the clay, — 
 with a piece of the stem of a fir-tree, split in two, 
 placed as a guard on each, — awkward and dan- 
 gerous steps for unaccustomed feet to essay ; but 
 it was only well accustomed and willing feet that, 
 as a rule, mounted them, for Tordale was far from 
 any town, quite out of the way of tourists, and 
 the men and the women who paced along the 
 mountain sides, and up the valley to the church 
 beside the waterfall, came not for any fashion's 
 sake, not to listen to strange words and strange 
 doctrines, but for love of the old story that 
 will be ever fresh to each succeeding generation, 
 as it was to the shepherds who first heard the 
 glad tidings of great joy. 
 
 "It all comes to this at last," thought the 
 stranger, as he sat him down in the church porch, 
 and looked at the green mounds, at the few mossy 
 headstones, at the one solitary attempt at a
 
 AMOXG THE HILLS. 5 
 
 monument ; " it all comes to this. Let us start 
 Avhere we will, let us go where we ma}^, let us 
 wander over the world where we like, we must 
 endvhere at last ; we must come to the inexorable 
 six feet by three, to the lonesome house prepared 
 for us before we were born. One might have 
 thought that death would have passed over such 
 a valley as this ; that sickness could never enter 
 here ; that there were scarcely any people to die 
 in such a nook, and yet — and yet it is just as full 
 as its fellows ; the graves are beginning to jostle 
 one another, and new headstones are fighting for 
 precedence with old. It is the same wherever 
 I go ; the road always ends in a churchyard, the 
 inhabitants are always to be found here." 
 
 And with a not unpleasing feeling of melan- 
 choly, the man who thought this, let his eyes 
 wander out, out, over the landscape on which the 
 sleepers around could never look more. 
 
 What did the thought signify to him ; what 
 did death mean to this man who had faced it so 
 often that it had no terrors left ? What was the 
 meaning of the reflection that passed through his
 
 6 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 mind as he sat in the church-porch, looking down 
 upon Tordale Valley ? Simply this, that though he 
 knew in an abstract kind of way he must die, 
 3?-et that the wandering life he had led, had made 
 the idea of when, and how, and where he should 
 meet his fate so very vague and shadowy, that 
 he never brought the subject really home to him- 
 self, never realised that six feet by three would 
 some day suffioe him as surely as it now sufficed 
 others who had wandered, perhaps, as far as he. 
 After looking on all manner of cemeteries ; after 
 seeing his comrades lying down to rest in India ; 
 after visiting the sepulchres in the East ; after 
 criticising Pere-la-Chaise ; after passing the Lon- 
 don pest-grounds ; after treading over pavements 
 beneath which generations slumbered peacefully ; 
 after entering country churchyards where, after 
 life's fitfal fever — after its mad delirium, after its 
 success, its disappointments, its joys, its sorrows, 
 its wild hopes, its unutterable agony — men and 
 women slept that sleep, of the mysteries whereof 
 we know so little, but which we may humbly 
 hope is dreamless — ^lie had come to think of death
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. 7 
 
 as a thing outside himself, as a fact which con- 
 cerned others more than it did him. 
 
 The rade forefathers of this hamlet knew where 
 their mortal remains would be laid. It was a 
 hundi'ed to one against their bodies being carried 
 out of the valley — even so far as Grassenfel. 
 
 Most probably, as they came Sunday after Sun- 
 day to service, their eyes rested on the spot 
 where, when they had held the plough for the 
 last time, when they had turned their last furrow, 
 scattered their last seed — ^reaped their last har- 
 vest — sold their last crops — they would be carried, 
 as their fathers before them had been carried, and 
 laid doAvn far away in the earth, beyond the cold 
 of the winter snows, beyond the heat of th-e sum- 
 mer suiL, out of the sight of the young spring 
 flowers — where the moaning of the autumn winds 
 and the rustle of the autumn leaves might never 
 disturb their repose. 
 
 " How close all this must bring death," thought 
 the traveller. " What a certainty they must feel 
 about it — what a strange feeling such people 
 must have on the subject" And Oaptain Hcury
 
 8 ^ PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Gower Stondon grew so interested in the idea 
 that he leaned his chin on his hand preparatory 
 to thinking out the matter with greater comfort. 
 
 " It must bring it very near. I do not know 
 that I should hke it;" and then he went on 
 to reflect fui-ther that it must be unpleasant also 
 to have the whole of life bounded by those hills, 
 by those frowning mountains; to have to play 
 out the whole drama of existence in that green 
 sequestered valley ; to have the horizon of ex- 
 ternal experience brought so near that an hour's 
 walk at any time would enable a man to lay his 
 hand upon it; to have his internal hopes, wishes,, 
 fears, joys, bound up in a few acres of land, in 
 a score or so of acquaintances ; to have Grassenfel 
 for his longest excursion ; to see those eternal 
 peaks for ever lifting their heads to the sky ; to 
 come Sunday after Sunday through the valle}', 
 up the steps, across the threshold, and so into the 
 little church, in the porch of which he was then 
 sitting ; to be christened there ; to be married 
 there ; to be buried in some nook of the graveyard 
 that sloped so sunnily towards the south ! Captain
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. D 
 
 Stondon, who had been a wanderer on the face of 
 the earth from his youth up, decided that he 
 should not like sach a lot at all ; and that such a 
 lot — the sole birthright of millions — was a curious 
 one to sit in the shade and strive to realise. 
 
 From the porch he could get a side view into 
 the church ; he could see some of the people about 
 whom he was speculating — a fine stalwart race 
 of men and women — a generation of handsome 
 giants, with faces hard and steady and impassive, 
 and enduring as the mountains under whose 
 shadow they dwelt. A people who had something 
 of the Scotch blood in them, who were not a fickle 
 and light-minded generation, but rather occa- 
 sionally be a trifle obstinate and stifFnecked. 
 
 Their very psalms were not as the spiritual 
 songs of the dwellers in cities, of the inhabitants 
 of the plains. There was a fierceness about the 
 old Cameronian hymn they were singing which 
 seemed in keeping with the loneliness, the desola- 
 tion, the unutterable grandeur and solitude of the 
 spot wherein tliis isolated band praised the Lord. 
 
 There was no oriran — a violin and a flute suf-
 
 10 PHEMIE KELLEE. 
 
 ficed to guide the choir ; and with all their hearts, 
 and "vvith all their souls, the congregation aided 
 the vocalists. The singdno: mio^ht be a little loud, 
 perhaps, but it was not discordant ; and suddenly, 
 at the third verse, as though she had been holding 
 back till the others got so thoroughly into the air 
 as to overlook her, some girl lifted up her young, 
 clear voice ; and while Captain Stondon almost 
 involuntarily rose to listen, mourned out, — 
 
 *' Our night is dreary, and dim is our day, 
 And if Thou shalt turn Thy face away, 
 "We are sinful, feeble, and helpless dust. 
 With none to look to, and none to trust." 
 
 " What a voice I — good Heavens, what a voice ! " 
 thought the officer ; and he drew more to the 
 inner door to see if he could discover the singer. 
 
 A chord or two from the violin, and the hymn 
 proceeded, — 
 
 *' The powers of darkness are all abroad, 
 They know no Savioiu", they fear no God ; 
 And we are trembling in dumb dismay — 
 Oh, turn not Thou Thy face away !" 
 
 He had entered the church by this time, and 
 found her. She was but three seats from the
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. 11 
 
 porch. He could have stretched out his arm and 
 touched her; but the sexton, honest old man, 
 just as though he divined the stranger's wishes, 
 opened the door of the pew she alone occupied, 
 and signed to Captain Stondon to enter, which 
 signal Captain Stondon, nothing loth, obeyed 
 accordingly, and with his face bent over his hat, 
 hearkened to the last verse, — 
 
 " Thine aid, mighty One, we crave, 
 j!s ot shortened is Thine arm to save ; 
 Let not Thine anger ever burn — 
 Keturn, Lord of Hosts, retm-n ! " 
 
 Then the officer, who, though he might be as 
 polite as most people, was not above feeling 
 human curiosity, turned and looked at the girl, 
 who owned a voice which seemed to him more 
 Uke the warbling of a bird than anjrthing he had 
 ever heard before in his life, — turned and looked 
 at Phemie Keller, at a girl dressed in a pink 
 muslin gown, which had evidently been bought 
 and made for some middle-aged woman, which 
 had been as evidently worn shabby by the older 
 individual, and cut down and altered for its prcr
 
 12 PHEMIE KELLEK. 
 
 sent wearer — a divinity in a washed-out, large- 
 patterned curiously befrilled dress, a Hebe in a 
 cottage bonnet trimmed with brown and white 
 checked ribbons — a beauty who wore thread 
 gloves, and had on a rusty-black silk cape that 
 might have belonged to Noah's grandmother. 
 
 But her face ! Such perfection of colour — such 
 delicacy of feature ! Where had this rustic stolen 
 her beauty ? Eyes of the deepest, softest, darkest 
 blue ; eyes that looked black when you looked at 
 them in the shade ; dark brows and lashes ; and 
 hair — without half a dozen paints to my hand to 
 mix together, and blend, and powder with gold 
 dust, I could never hope to show what Phemie's 
 hair was like ; and I could not then, because, as 
 she moved, the shade changed also. Now it was 
 sunny, now brown, now red, now bro^vn and sunny, 
 now red and brown ; and then red, and gold, and 
 brown, would all mix and shimmer together in 
 the varjdng light. 
 
 Hair to have made one of the old Venetian 
 painters go mad, first with rapture and then with 
 anger, because brush and palette could never hope
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. lo 
 
 to reproduce its colouring — hair that might well 
 (to recall the quaint conceit of other days) tangle 
 a lover in its meshes ; — hair such as Captain 
 Stondon had never seen before, though he had 
 mixed much with society, and been favoured with 
 locks, not a few, in the days when he was young, 
 in the days that were gone and fled. 
 
 In the matter of beauty, the officer had, his 
 whole life long, been possessed of a truly catholic 
 taste. Before loveliness he had always, figura- 
 tively speaking, bared his head, and bowed down 
 and worshipped. Dark locks and shining curls, 
 sorrowful eyes, dimpled cheeks, laughing girls, 
 thoughtful women, tall and stately, short and 
 fauylike, Captain Stondon had admired them all. 
 Given a woman, and pretty, and he would kneel 
 at any shrine. He would pay compliments, he 
 would flatter, he would lay all good gifts at the 
 feet of his divinity save love, and that in the years 
 departed he had given once to one woman, and 
 could offer no more, as he firmly believed, to any 
 living being. 
 
 That one woman had won his heart, worn it,
 
 14 PEGEMIE KELLER. 
 
 played with it, exhibited it, and then, weary of the 
 toy, had flung it under foot, and trampled it in 
 her wicked selfishness, in her unfeeling triumph. 
 
 She sold herself for money, for the pomps and 
 vanities of a world which courted her exceedingly, 
 and went and stayed at her house, and followed 
 her to the grave, and then strove, not without 
 success, to console her husband for her loss. She 
 had deserted the poor man for the rich ; but 
 though she had used the former despitefiilly, 
 though she had made him work hard for her sake, 
 though she had left his early manhood and middle 
 age lonely, he had been true to the love of his 
 youth, and loved no woman since. 
 
 He had admired, he had followed in the train 
 of many a queen of beauty, he had whispered soft 
 nothings, he had flirted, perhaps, but he had not 
 loved, he had not married. Matchmakers had 
 given him up in despair; manoeuvring mammas 
 valued Captain Stondon's opinion of their daugh- 
 ters, simply because it was the opinion of a con- 
 noisseur, not because it was that of a person who 
 might be expected to take any shares in the
 
 AilONG THE HILLS. 15 
 
 matrimonial market. He knew what was what, 
 in a word, and he consequently knew that the 
 young girl with the divine voice would grow up 
 into a most beautiful woman, 
 
 "Well dressed," thought the officer, critically 
 examining her, while the clergyman adjusted his 
 spectacles, and opened his sermon-case, and 
 coughed, and looked for his pocket-handkerchief, 
 — " well dressed, well instructed, with a clever 
 chaperone, what a sensation she would make 
 in a West End drawing-room ! What a pity that 
 she should have been bom to wear her grand- 
 mother's old gowns in a place like this, for " 
 
 " For the wages of sin is death," was the text 
 that terminated both his scrutiny and his soli- 
 loquy ; and if Captain Stondon had thought for a 
 moment that the young lady might be conscious 
 at once of her own beauty and of his admiration, 
 he was immediately undeceived by her handing 
 him her open Bible, his attention being called to 
 the passage in question by the finger of Miss 
 Keller's well-worn glove. 
 
 It was a shock ; it tried the officer's gravity for
 
 16 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 the moment; but his companion so evidently- 
 regarded him as a very common-place stranger, 
 to whom she Avas nevertheless bound to ofifer the 
 customary civility of the neighbourhood, that it 
 would have been difficult for him to help feeling 
 his vanity touched also. 
 
 Nevertheless, he took the book, and he looked 
 at the text, and he listened to the sermon, not a 
 bad one by the way, with the attention expected 
 from him ; and, when the service was over, he 
 walked out into the graveyard, where, taking 
 possession of a quiet corner, he watched the con- 
 gregation returning, some down the valley, some 
 under the shadow of the mountains, some up the 
 hill paths, to their respective homes. 
 
 If there were one figure the officer's eyes fol- 
 lowed longest, it was that of the girl beside whom 
 he sat in church. She had waited for a man 
 whom Captain Stondon recognised as the violinist 
 of the choir, and he now looked after the pair as 
 they climbed the side of Helbeck, and wended 
 their way — whither ? 
 
 Listening to the low murmur of the waterfall —
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. l7 
 
 looking idly now down the valley, now up to the 
 summit of the distant hills — Captain Stondon 
 stood with his arms resting on the churchyard 
 wall, cogitating whether he should return to Gras- 
 senfel, or inquire for some place near at hand in 
 which to rest and refresh himself, when he was 
 roused from his reverie by the clergyman, who, 
 passing through the graveyard, saw the stranger, 
 and spoke to him. 
 
 The place was so lonely — so few tourists pene- 
 trated to Tordale — that it seemed natural to the 
 clergjrman to accost the middle-aged individual 
 who had listened with much apparent attention 
 to his sermon. 
 
 Where people are few acquaintanceship is easy. 
 Perhaps also the clergyman saw something in the 
 bearing of the stranger which had been overlooked 
 by Miss Keller ; in any case, he paused to speak, 
 and then the two men walked down the steps 
 side by side, and, turning from the direct path, 
 strolled towards the waterfall together. 
 
 It was a picturesque spot : over the rock came 
 the mountain stream, dropping with a dull, mono- 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 18 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 tonous splash into the basin it had worn for itself 
 below, whence over moss-grown stones it trickled 
 off into the valley beyond. A few trees over- 
 shadowed the pool beside which Captain Stondon 
 and his companion stood for a moment in silence 
 looking at the Fall ; ivy and lichens covered the 
 face of the rocks, ferns and foxgloves grew 
 between the stones, and the water bathed the 
 green banks, and touched the familiar flowers, 
 and mosses, and blades of grass caressingly, ere it 
 left them behind for ever. 
 
 There were broom and gorse, and patches of 
 heather on the hill-side ; underfoot, the turf was 
 smooth as velvet; above their heads was the 
 clear blue sky ; around was loneliness and nature ; 
 and, as if reluctant to break the spell, the two 
 men held their peace, until Captain Stondon, 
 stepping from stone to stone in order to reach the 
 basin, declared he must have a draught of the 
 water, it looked so cool, and pui'e, and spark- 
 ling. 
 
 " While you drink you should wish," remarked 
 the clerg3niian, with a smile ; " and if it be, as I
 
 AMONG THE HILLS. 19 
 
 suppose, your first draught, your desire will surely 
 be gi-atified." 
 
 " Wish ! " repeated the other, seating himself 
 on a fragment of rock, " It is an important 
 moment. What shall I wish ? " 
 
 " You must not tell me, or wishing will be use- 
 less/' was the reply. 
 
 "What have I to wish for?" persisted the 
 officer ; " what is there left that I could wish to 
 come to pass, unless for the years of my youth to 
 be given back to me ? and I could scarcely wish 
 for that. Mine has been a happy lot as lots go ; 
 still, I do not know that I should like to travel 
 the road over again." 
 
 " Can you wish nothing for your wife ? " 
 
 " I have none. I have neither wife nor child, 
 sister nor brother, nephew nor niece," and as he 
 said this a change came over his face, and, 
 stooping towards the pool, he took a long, deej) 
 draught, as he did so silently wishing this wish, 
 or rather praying this prayer, " God, when Thy 
 good time comes, leave me not to die alone ! " 
 
 Then he stepped back on to the green turf, and
 
 20 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 the pair fell into conversation about the place and 
 its scenery, about the parish and its inhabitants, 
 about the church, and how long it had been built, 
 about Cumberland generally, and finally about the 
 world that, full of temptation and struggle and 
 pleasure and disappointment, lay outside those 
 mountains, far away from the green valley of 
 Tordale.
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 TORDALE. 
 
 It was so seldom that the Yicar of Tordale met 
 with any man able and willing to talk about the 
 outside world in which he had once played his 
 part, that he felt loth to lose his new acquaint- 
 ance, and insisted on Captain Stondon accompany- 
 ing him home, and acceping of such hospitality as 
 a widower's Tnenage could afford. 
 
 Finding the j)rospect of rest and refreshment 
 by no means disagreeable, the officer availed him- 
 self of the invitation, and before the afternoon 
 was ended, very friendly relations were established 
 between himself and his host. 
 
 Both were lonely men ; but there all similarity 
 between themselves or their antecedents stopped. 
 The one had lost ; the other had never possessed.
 
 22 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 The one had hoped much, and yet the low-ceiled 
 parlour of a country vicarage, which a stranger 
 rarely entered, to which there came few new 
 books, no excitement, no change, sufficed him 
 now ; the other had started in life with his way 
 to make, with no apparent future save what his 
 own right arm should win for him, and yet at 
 forty-five he came back from India to enter into 
 possession of Marshland Manor and four thousand 
 a yeaar. 
 
 The vicar had married young, and been the 
 father of many children ; the officer had never 
 married, and at fifty-six had no nearer relative 
 than Montague Stondon, barrister-at-law, who was 
 some fifteenth cousin of the owner of Marshlands, 
 and next heir to that desirable property and the 
 rents appertaining thereto. 
 
 Captain Stondon had done his best for his rela- 
 tive ; he had invited him to Marshlands ; he sent 
 him up presents of game and fruit and — money ; 
 he paid for the education of Montague Stondon's 
 only son ; and the thanks he got for all his kind- 
 ness was a morning and evening aspiration which
 
 TOKDALE. 23 
 
 the barrister never failed to utter for his speedy- 
 translation to a better world- 
 Montague Stondon would have driven his rela- 
 tive into matrimony years before, had it not been 
 for that little romantic corner of his heart, 
 wherein he had placed his young ideal of what 
 marriage should be — an ideal from which the 
 world and its ways had never estranged him ; and 
 so it was quite a settled matter with everybody 
 who knew anything about the property that 
 Captain Stondon would never have chick nor 
 child, and that if Montague Stondon outlived his 
 cousin, he might confidently expect to enter into 
 possession of the Norfolk estates, which were, by 
 the way, strictly entailed. 
 
 Without domestic ties, without household trea- 
 sures, it was natural that Captain Stondon should 
 reside but httle in Norfolk — that he should 
 remain indeed only for a very short period in any 
 place. 
 
 During the ten years that had elapsed since his 
 return from India he had visited many countries, 
 seen many and many a foreign town. His pass-
 
 24 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 ports would have bound up into quite a bulky 
 volume ; and whenever he started on a fresh pil- 
 grimage, Montague Stondon offered up his little 
 litany for him to be brought back to England a 
 corpse. 
 
 It might be excusable, and very probably was 
 excessively natural ; but still nobody could say 
 it was pleasant for a man to know, as Captain 
 Stondon knew perfectly well, that his cousin, 
 limping with bleeding feet along the flinty road to 
 ruin, was cursing him for wearing good shoes and 
 declining to take them off for his benefit. 
 
 Wherever he Avent, Captain Stondon felt that 
 he had his cousin's best wishes for some mis- 
 adventure to befall him ; and as he sat opposite to 
 the clergyman, and listened to his tale of how 
 this boy had been drowned, of how that one had 
 studied too hard to pass his examination, and died 
 three weeks afterwards of brain-fever ; of how his 
 only daughter had married happily, only to be 
 laid a twelvenionth afterwards in her coffin with 
 her baby on her breast — he thought that after all 
 it might be better to have these memories than
 
 TORDALE. 25 
 
 none at all — to have loved and lost, rather than 
 never to have had anything on earth to take 
 home and love and entreat the Lord to spare. 
 
 For these children were with the vicar still ; 
 their memories were green in his heart, and would 
 remain there till he went to join them; and it 
 seemed preferable to endure much misery rather 
 than know no happiness ; to bear partings on 
 earth, to the end that some friends might be 
 waiting to greet the wayfarer when he reached 
 the eternal shores. 
 
 To the vicar his children were not dead — they 
 slept ; they were not lost — merel}^ gone before. 
 
 " He had one boy in India," he said ; and 
 Captain Stondon at once inquired in what 
 part. 
 
 " Benares — he is buried there," explained the 
 clergyman, and he covered his face with his hands 
 for a moment, before he went on to tell how his 
 son had gone out to India full of youth, and hope, 
 and life — to die. 
 
 By degrees, when he had exhausted the tale of 
 his troubles, Mr. Conbyr gi'ew quite cheerful, and
 
 26 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 talked at large of his parisliioners, their peculiar 
 rities, their prejudices, their attachments. Like 
 all clergyTQen, he had his little budget of petty 
 annoyances to open and explain — how there was a 
 strong element of Dissent in Tordale ; how Metho- 
 dists from Grassenfel held house-to-house meet- 
 ings ; how the service was not conducted exactly 
 to his liking'; how he wanted a new collection of 
 psalms, and his congregation would have none of 
 it ; how the choir was poor, and required an organ 
 to back it ; how sorely Tordale stood in need of a 
 squire and squire's family to take a high hand in 
 the parish ; and how, in fact, Tordale required but 
 being altered in every particidar to become a 
 model valley — a valley for all England to hear of 
 and envy. 
 
 Then he retraced his steps, and praised his 
 people, their sturdy independence, their rough- 
 and-ready kindness, their thorough devotion, their 
 willingness to help one another ; and how long he 
 would have gone on lauding their virtues it is 
 impossible to say, had Captain Stondon, seizing 
 his opportunity, not inquired, —
 
 TORDALE. 27 
 
 " Pray what is the name of that young person 
 who was in the same pew with me to-day — a girl 
 with auburn hair, and a magnificent voice 1 " 
 
 " Oh ! you remarked her voice, did you 1 That 
 is the cousin, or niece, or niece by marriage, or 
 something, of the very singular individual who 
 plays the vioKn in church. • She is called Phemie 
 Keller — sings sweetly, I consider, and is pretty, 
 too. Do you not think so ? " 
 
 " Sings sweetly 1 What can the man be made 
 of," thought Captain Stondon, "to use such an 
 expression about the matter ? Sings sweetly ! 
 If the nightingale came outside his bedroom 
 window and trilled to him all the night long, he 
 would get up in the morning and say he had 
 heard a nice bird whistling. Pretty, too ! " 
 Straightway the ofiicer fell to wondering what 
 manner of woman the deceased Mrs. Conbyr had 
 been — whether she had black hair as coarse as a 
 horse's mane, and a E-oman nose, high cheek- 
 bones, and hard eyes; or whether she was a 
 washed-out looking creature, with the pink 
 of her face running into the white, and sandy-
 
 28 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 coloured corkscrew curls, and an anxious, fright- 
 ened expression of countenance. 
 
 He thought a person who called Miss Keller 
 only pretty must have very benighted ideas on 
 the subject of beauty ; and yet the fact was, Mr. 
 Conbyr had married quite a belle, a sparkling 
 brunette, whose friends all thought she threw her- 
 self away when she accepted a curate with only a 
 prospective living for his fortune. 
 
 Mrs. Conbyr had been a toast, a flirt, a very 
 captivating, winning little creature, and perhaps 
 it was no wonder that now she was dead, her 
 husband held to her memory as to his beau-ideal 
 of all which was most lovely and charming in 
 woman. Nevertheless even he admitted that Miss 
 Keller was pretty. 
 
 "And intelligent, too," he added; "if she 
 wouldn't giggle so much, and hadn't such stuck- 
 up ideas, and would dress herself more like a 
 farmer's niece, she might gi'ow into a superior 
 woman. But vanity is the besetting sin of the 
 whole household. Aggland himself tells you can- 
 didly he considers he understands the violin better-
 
 TORDALE. 29 
 
 than any man in the country, and he calls his 
 brother farmers, openly, fools and prejudiced 
 donkeys. As for me, he thinks me perfectly 
 ignorant of theology. He has a curious smatter- 
 ing of learning ; can talk French a little, German 
 a little, and quote some Latin passages. He 
 draws likewise, and formerly used to play on the 
 guitar. He has begun to build himself an organ, 
 which he offered to present to the church when 
 completed, if I would give him the sole manage- 
 ment of the choir. He had laid himself out to 
 have none but the members of his own family in 
 it, and depended on Phemie to lead ; but she 
 refused, and saved me the trouble and annoyance 
 of declining. ' Ah, there is the cloven foot peep- 
 ing out,' he said, as if delivering an oration ; ' the 
 taint of aristocracy, which hates to do anything for 
 the democracy, appearing.' " 
 
 " And what the deuce did he mean ? " asked 
 Captain Stondon, bewildered. 
 
 " Why, he meant, I suppose, that she didn't 
 care to sing, and that there was good blood in her 
 veins. I fancy she is illegitimate. He is always
 
 30 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 raA'ing against the better classes — quite a cha- 
 racter, I assure you." 
 
 " Do your mountains grow many such ? " asked 
 his guest. 
 
 "He is not a home product/' was the reply. 
 "Erratic genius of that description is not indige- 
 nous to the Cumberland soil. He is from Here- 
 ford, and his present wife is Lancashire, and his 
 niece Scotch. His first wife was Scotch also, I 
 fancy, and he has a tribe of young Agglands, 
 sturdy, independent children of the hills. It is a 
 strange household altogether, and one that, could 
 I persuade you to stay with me, I should take you 
 to see." 
 
 " Thank you," said Captain Stondon; "but I must 
 leave Cumberland to-morro^^^ I am going first to 
 Norfolk, and then abroad. I shall always think 
 pleasantly," he added, after a pause, " of the valley 
 of Tordale ; always retain a memoiy of the happy 
 Sunday afternoon I have spent with you." And 
 with that, as it was now getting on towards the 
 hour for evening service, and as he had far to 
 walk before he could reach Grassenfel and his inn
 
 TORDALE. 31 
 
 together, the officer rose to go, but his intention 
 was overruled by his host, 
 
 "I "will not ask you," he said, " to concie to 
 church, because, if yon must return to Grassenfel 
 to-night, it would throw you too late on the 
 road; but walk back with me to the waterfall, 
 and then I will show you a path which runs right 
 along the side of Helbeck for a couple of miles 
 at least. You can form no idea of the beauty 
 and grandeur of the defile till you have seen it 
 from above, and the path, an easy one, leads down 
 to the road you came by before you reach the 
 Broken Stone bridge. The view from the top is 
 worth seeing. I only wish this was Monday in- 
 stead of Sunday, so that I could go with you 
 myself." 
 
 Having made which frank confession the clergy- 
 man looked out his sermon, put on his hat, took 
 his stick, and announced his readiness to depart. 
 
 " I can accompany you a little way up the 
 path," he said ; and accordingly the pair sallied 
 out again together, and sauntered through the 
 green vale side by side.
 
 32 PHEMIE KELLEE. 
 
 If Tordale had looked lovely in the noon time, 
 it was more beautiful still in the soft evening 
 light. It wanted then nearly an hour to sunset, 
 but the western sky was already like molten 
 gold. Down the hill-sides long shadows were 
 lying ; still, sad, and stern looked the mountain 
 peaks, with each jagged projection — each shai-p 
 outline — clearly reflected against the evening 
 sky. A cloud frowned over Helbeck, which be- 
 tokened a storm, the clerg3rman thought. 
 
 " But it is scarcely warm enough for thunder," 
 he added ; " and unless the wind die away we 
 shall not have any rain before morning. Is not 
 our valley lovely, Captain Stondon ? When you 
 are abroad — when you are looking at what is 
 considered »far more magnificent scenery, — will 
 you ever think, I wonder, of our little nook hid- 
 den away among the Cumberland hills ? " 
 
 " I shall never forget Tordale," answered the 
 officer, truthfully enough ; but little knowing how 
 truthfully, for all that. 
 
 In the after days of joy and of sorrow which 
 he was then walking on, to pass through to reach
 
 TORDALE. 33 
 
 the end, he forgot the name of many a town — 
 he forgot the road by which he had travelled to 
 many a city ; mountain passes, smiling lakes, the 
 weariness of Indian marches, gorgeous Eastern 
 palaces, the brilliancy of Eastern flowers — these 
 things were forgotten, or remembered only as a 
 man remembers dreams. The Hindoo standing 
 by his sacred river, the Arabs in the desert, the 
 long line of foam that alone broke the eternity 
 of waters as the outward-bound ship cleft her 
 way to the Cape, the tramp of the sailors as they 
 paced the deck, the faces of his old comrades 
 faded, as the years stole on out of sight and out 
 of mind ; but clear and distinct, like the memory 
 of his mother's face — like the recollection of his 
 boyhood's home — Tordale stood out a picture hung 
 on the walls of his heart for ever. 
 
 He was never to forget it — never to forget the 
 glory of its noontide, the murmur of its water- 
 fall, the calm of its lonely graveyard, the ivy, the 
 ferns, the foxglove and the broom. In the lone- 
 liness and solitude of night he was to feel the 
 calm of that scene soothe his spirit once again. 
 
 VOL. L D
 
 34 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 He liad but to close his ej-es, and lie could hear 
 the dull plash of the waterfall, the rustling of the 
 leaves, the mourning farewell of the rivulet. He 
 could look at the long wet blades of grass bending 
 ever and always into the water, and turning down 
 the stream as though wanting to be pulled from 
 their roots, that they might float away and away 
 with the brook, first to the river and then to the 
 sea. He could hear the v/ater trickling among 
 the stones ; he could touch the moss with his 
 powerless fingers ; he could feel the cool drops 
 touching his parched lips ; he could remember 
 how he had drained a deep draught from the basin 
 in the rock ; and then he would think likewise, 
 if he hasted not to exorcise the evil thought, of 
 his unavailing petition, of the prayer which had 
 been granted to the letter, not in the spirit, to 
 add to his troubles rather than to increase his 
 
 joy-
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IN DANGER. 
 
 After parting from liis new friend, Captain 
 Stondon ascended the path that led past the 
 waterfall, across the little mountain stream, and 
 half way to the top of Helbeck. It was hard 
 work climbing up the track which wound now 
 through rocks, now over stones, till skirting the 
 side of the mountain it bore off straight towards 
 Grassenfel. 
 
 Heather, purple and glowing, bordered the 
 track — ^wild flowers grew beside it. The whole 
 earth was tinted with the hues of August. 
 The richest, the most luxuriant month of all the 
 year was sweeping, like a king in his glory, over 
 the hills and the valleys, decking the former in 
 their robes of state, clothing the latter with tlie 
 yeUow of the ripening corn and the emerald of 
 
 JD 2
 
 36 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 the aftermath. To the right lay Tordale, bathed 
 in the beams of the setting sun ; below him lay 
 the defile that led to Grassenfel ; and, like a 
 speck, he could discern the Broken Bridge which 
 he must cross on his way back to his inn. Every 
 crag and peak of Skillanscar shone in the bright 
 rays of the glory wherein the whole landscape 
 was steeped ; and Captain Stondon, who had sat 
 himself down amongst the heather to watch, to 
 its close this sunset amid the mountains, acknow- 
 ledged to his heart that he had never seen any- 
 thing in the way of scenery which so thoroughly 
 satisfied and filled his soul as the smiling valley 
 and the desolate hills — the gloomy ravine and the 
 grey rugged mountains, on all of which the sun 
 poured his light as though he were blessing the 
 gi'een earth ere leaving her to darkness and 
 repose. 
 
 At last, with more than his accustomed pomp 
 of red and gold and purple, he set behind the 
 hills ; and, as he did so, the cloud Mr. Conbyr 
 had noticed, rolled up from the east, covering 
 Helbeck with a dark curtain of doom. It was
 
 IN DANGER. 37 
 
 very grand to see Skillanscar reflecting back the 
 glory of the western sky, but it was by no means 
 agreeable to Captain Stondon to perceive a storm 
 brewing so near him. He knew he had lingered 
 too long on the road already ; for which reason 
 he quickened his pace, and hurried to reach the 
 point where the path began to descend into the 
 ravine below. If he could but get to the Broken 
 Stone bridge before the rain began, he thought 
 he should be better able to work his way to 
 Grassenfel. 
 
 It was not easy, however, to walk fast along 
 the narrow track he was following, and when he 
 at length commenced to descend, a flash of light- 
 ning heralded the approach of the coming storm. 
 If his life had depended on it, Captain Stondon 
 could not have helped halting to listen for the 
 first peal of the thunder. After a pause it came, 
 breaking the silence at first with a sullen roar 
 like that of a distant cannonade ; but with every 
 flash it drew nearer and nearer, echoing from 
 mountain to mountain, from summit to summit, 
 till one might almost have thought that height
 
 38 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 was defying height, and firing volley after volley 
 across the defile. 
 
 With the sun the wind had sunk to rest like- 
 wise, and as he stood watching the lightning 
 darting down the hill-sides, running along the 
 rocks, and leaping from crag to crag like a living 
 foe. Captain Stondon became conscious that the 
 air had suddenly become warm and oppressive, 
 and that a heat like that of a furnace seemed to 
 pervade the atmosphere. 
 
 " What an idiot I was to come this way at all," 
 he thought ; " what a still greater idiot to loiter 
 as I have done." And with the lightning racing 
 past him, with the thunder crashing and roaring 
 overhead, the officer turned his face steadily 
 towards the defile and pursued his road down- 
 wards. 
 
 But spite of all his haste he got on but slowly. 
 In places the descent was steep and the path 
 slippery ; wherever grass grew, or wherever rock 
 and stone mixed with the earth, it was difficult to 
 get a firm footing. What with the evening sha- 
 dows which were beginning to fall, and the dark-
 
 IN DANGER. 39 
 
 ness of the cloud overhead, and the dazzlmg 
 flashes of the lightning that made everj^thing 
 seem darker afterwards for their sudden brilliancy, 
 he soon found he was feeling his way rather than 
 seeing it — groping down the path rather than 
 pacing it securely. 
 
 " If I could but reach the road in the ravine," 
 he muttered, as he slipped and staggered and 
 recovered himself, and then slipped again. " If I 
 were only safe at the bottom I might " 
 
 He never completed that mental sentence, for 
 at the instant he stumbled over a loose stone and 
 rolled down the path, clutching as he went 
 at the short grass, at the heather, at the 
 brambles. 
 
 Fighting for dear life, he caught sticks and 
 stones ; he tried to save himself by grasping the 
 very earth itself; he saw as he went over and 
 over, the mountain peaks, the ravine, the road he 
 had been trying to reach, the track by which lie 
 had descended. He could see at that moment as 
 he could not have seen had he been standing 
 erect, with the noontide sun shining upon him.
 
 40 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Even in his struggle he found time to wonder 
 what would stop him — whether he should be 
 dashed to pieces ? Among the mountain peaks — 
 a hundred miles above him as it seemed — the 
 thunder was pealing. He heard it as he had 
 heard the roaring of cannon on battle-fields far 
 away. The lightning came flashing down among 
 the rocks, and he found time to remember it 
 resembled the flash which followed " Fire !" in 
 the days when he was fighting like the best ; and 
 then all at once he held out his arms instinctively 
 to save himself, and with a crash his descent was 
 arrested ; and stunned, and bruised, and battered 
 — he remembered no more. 
 
 When he came to his senses it was dark, and 
 the rain pouring in torrents ; the lightning had 
 ceased ; the thunder had rolled far away ; there 
 was not a sound to be heard save the rushing of 
 the rain, and the greedy noise which the dry earth 
 made as she drank the welcome moisture in. It 
 was some time before he could remember what 
 had happened, and then he tried to raise himself, 
 but fell back shrieking with pain.
 
 IN DANGER. 41 
 
 He shouted for help, but if help had been close 
 at hand, the noise of the pelting rain sweeping 
 down the mountains would have drowned his 
 feeble cries. Mercilessly, pitilessly the rain beat 
 upon him as he lay there powerless. With an 
 effort he turned his face towards the piece of rock 
 which had stayed his fall ; and while the large 
 drops fell on his unprotected head, he lay and 
 thought in a kind of half delirium about the end 
 that was to be. 
 
 Was he to die there ? Was he to die all alone 
 on the mountain side with the rain pouring down 
 upon him, alone in this solitude, amid the dark- 
 ness of night ? Before now he had lain wounded 
 on a battle-field, but that had not seemed so deso- 
 late as this. His comrades had sought him out 
 then, but here no one wo aid dream of looking for 
 him. His landlord at Grassenfel did not know 
 where he had gone ; he had no one to miss him — 
 to wonder at his absence ; no one in Cumberland 
 — no one on earth. 
 
 If Montague Stondon could only imagine where 
 he was lying, how happy he would be. Was he
 
 42 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 to die thus to gratify him? Was the life-story 
 (one which had been none too happy) to be 
 finished thus ? How long could he lie there and 
 live ? Was it likely any one would find him ? 
 Would his body ever be discovered, or would it 
 lie there for the winter's snows to fall on ? — for 
 the winter's wind to moan over ? 
 
 If he was not found, how soon could Montague 
 Stondon take possession of Marshlands? Was 
 there any chance of making himself heard ? How 
 far down the ravine did he lie 1 When the 
 morning dawned he should be able to see. His 
 arm was broken, he supposed, but the intolerable 
 pain in his ankle was harder to endure than that. 
 He tried once again to raise himself, and, spite of 
 what the effort cost, managed to get his back up 
 against the rock. He was drenched with rain ; a 
 pool had formed round about where he lay ; every 
 thread of his light summer clothes was saturated ; 
 and yet, though he was shivering with the damp 
 and the wet, the pain caused by the slightest 
 movement threw him into a violent heat. 
 
 He had not strength to keep himself against
 
 IN" DAITGER. 43 
 
 the rock, and ere long he slipped back on to the 
 earth, — back with a jar which made him scream 
 aloud once more. Then everything grew confused 
 — he was in India — ^lie was at sea — he was at 
 home, dreaming of being in some awful peril ; he 
 peopled the mountain sides with shapes of horror ; 
 the darkness did not seem like darkness, for he 
 could see phantoms and spectres flitting hither 
 and thither ceaselessly. At last they all came 
 rushing down on him, but the very horror of the 
 vision made him recall his scattered senses. 
 Where was he ? What had happened ? He 
 remembered, and then his mind wandered off 
 afresh. He was a boy again, robbing the first 
 bird's nest he had ever despoiled ; he was playing 
 truant, and looking for blackbemes with Bob 
 Sedgemore, and as they passed Farmer Gooday's 
 straw-yard they hunted Mrs. Gooday's favourite 
 cat Avith Bob's terrier up the bank of the little 
 stream, till the poor thing turned on her tor- 
 mentors, when Bob and he stoned her to death. 
 
 He had not thought about that tortoise-shell cat 
 for seven-and-forty years. What could make him
 
 44 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 remember her now ? The way she stretched out 
 her legs and turned up her eyes was horrid, and 
 yet Bob and he had not been affected by the 
 sight then. Bob merely kicked her into the 
 stream, after which agreeable interlude they went 
 on, and ate more blackberries. 
 
 Bob was dead. He had seen his corpse so 
 blackened with powder, so maimed, and mangled, 
 and mutilated, that the mother who bore him 
 would not have recognised her boy. He was dead 
 — everybody was dead ; the girl he had been 
 walking with only the other day, as it seemed, 
 beside the yew-hedge in her father's garden, was 
 dead and buried too. People came by their 
 deaths in every conceivable way, and why should 
 he not come to his on the side of a Cumberland 
 mountain, with the wet earth for his bed, and the 
 rain and darkness for companions 1 
 
 Heavens, how the rain poured down ! — how the 
 dead gathered round about him ! There were 
 the men and women of the long and long ago 
 walking along the path he had followed from 
 Tordale. He saw them looking down at him
 
 IN DANGER. 45 
 
 through the night. There was his mother ; could 
 she be looking for him ? Yes ; he could hear her 
 light footfall on the grass — she was coming to 
 fetch him. She put her cold hand on his cheek, 
 and Captain Stondon, with a shout for help, 
 fainted again. 
 
 After that he heard, as in a confused dream, 
 answering shouts coming up the valley ; he heard 
 dogs barking, and people talking, and knew that 
 he was lifted and carried a long distance to a 
 house, into which he was borne like a dead 
 man. 
 
 He remembered a vain attempt that was made 
 to get him to swallow something which they held 
 to his lips. He recollected subsequently the 
 scared look with which the bystanders started 
 back at the scream he uttered when an attempt 
 was made to pull off his right boot ; then all be- 
 came a blank ; for days and days he raved inces- 
 santly ; for days his life hung on a thread, and he 
 knew nothing of the patient care, of the devoted 
 nursing which brought him back from the Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death to the morning and the
 
 W PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 sunshine of life and health, — from the bleak hill- 
 side and the cold earth's breast, to such home 
 comfort, happiness, and contentment, as through 
 all the years of his pilgrimage he had never 
 known.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PHEMIE. 
 
 After many days Captain Stondon, with the 
 fever which had prostrated him subdued, awoke 
 from a quiet sleep, and looked as well as extreme 
 weakness would permit about the room he 
 occupied. 
 
 The apartment was small, clean, and scantily 
 furnished. There were white curtains to the bed, 
 white curtains to the latticed windows. 
 
 Without moving his head. Captain Stondon 
 could see, over the short muslin blind, the valley 
 of Tordale stretching away below ; he beheld the 
 mountains bounding the view, and then, remem- 
 bering what he had suffered amongst those 
 mountains, he closed his eyes again, and with a 
 sensation of luxurious weakness, fell asleep once 
 more.
 
 48 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 When next lie woke it was getting late in the 
 afternoon, and between him and the window next 
 the bed there sat a man, whose face he knew he 
 had seen before. This man was busily engaged 
 in cleaning a gun, and with a lazy interest 
 Captain Stondon watched him removing the 
 barrels, and washing the stock, and going through 
 the other ceremonies usually performed on an 
 occasion of the kind. As he rose to leave the 
 room, in which there was no fire, in order that he 
 might finish the operation in orthodox fashion 
 over some live coals, the man glanced at the bed, 
 and noticing that his patient's eyes were open, he 
 laid down the gun, and, stooping over the bed, 
 inquired how the invalid felt. 
 
 " I am better, I suppose," Captain Stondon 
 answered, feebly. " How long 1 " 
 
 " A fortnight," was the reply; and straight away 
 went Mr. Aggland to his wife. 
 
 " Beef tea, Priscilla," he commanded, " beef tea 
 of superlative strength and in unlimited quantity. 
 He is awake and sensible. Yes," soliloquised 
 Mr. Aggland, " he has come back to that ' stage
 
 PHEMIE. 49 
 
 where every man must play a part.' What have 
 you there ? Mutton broth ! Let him have some 
 of that. I did not save him from ' Such sheets of 
 fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, such groans of 
 roaring wind and rain/ to let him die of starva- 
 tion at last." 
 
 "Lor a mercy, Daniel, how you do talk," re- 
 marked his better half, as she obeyed his com- 
 mands. " Give you your own way, and I believe 
 you would stew do^vn a bullock for him." 
 
 " And why not, woman 1 " demanded her hus- 
 band : " why not a bullock ? What is the life of 
 a beast in comparison to the life of a man ; not 
 
 that I myself " At which point Mr. Aggland, 
 
 growing argumentative, was interrupted by a 
 little scream from his wife. 
 
 "For any sake, Daniel, don't turn its mouth 
 next me ! Put it down, or I won't take up the 
 broth at all." 
 
 " Mercy alive ! it has not a barrel on it. There 
 is not a thing about it to go off. It is as harmless 
 now as my walking-stick." * 
 
 "Well, harmless or not, I can't a-bear it nigh 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 me," answered Mrs. Aggland. " I had just as lief 
 see a lion in the room as a gun. How does the 
 gentleman seem, Daniel ? Has he spoken at 
 all 1 " 
 
 " Yes, but I don't want him to speak much till 
 he has eaten. What says Burns ? — 
 
 ' Food keeps us livin', 
 Tho' life's a gift no worth receivin'.' " 
 
 " Drat Bums ! " intei-posed Mrs. Aggland. "Ay, 
 and for that matter," she continued, ''drat all 
 them poets, say I. Here, take the broth, and I'll 
 send one of the boys over to Grassenfel in the 
 morning to see if we can get any beef. Won't I 
 go up to him ? Not I, indeed. Am I fit, Daniel, 
 am I fit — I put it to you — to be looked at by any 
 gentleman ? There's Phemie, — if you want any- 
 body to go and see him, ask her. She's always 
 dressed ; she always seems just to have come out 
 of a bandbox ; she has not to go mucking about 
 like your wife ; she is a lady, and can sit in her 
 parlour. Ask her." 
 
 "I will, my dear, as you wish it," replied Mr. 
 Aggland, and he went straight into the apartment
 
 PHEMIE. 51 
 
 his wife called the parlour, but which was in 
 reality the living room of the family, where sat 
 the apple of discord in the Aggland household, 
 with a pile of needlework before her that it would 
 have appalled the most skilful seamstress to attack. 
 If that was being a lady, Daniel Aggland 
 decided then, as he had decided many a time 
 before, the position was not one to be envied. 
 Rather the baking and brewing and cooking than 
 that eternal stitch — stitch I And, moreover, 
 had not Phemie to do many a thing about the 
 house besides stitching ? Whenever the bread 
 was best and lightest, had not Phemie kneaded 
 it ? When the butter was the colour of the 
 daffodil, had not Phemie's soft, white hands, that 
 no work made hard or coarse, taken it off the 
 churn ? Who dressed the children, and sent 
 them clean and tidy off to school? Phemie, to 
 be sure. Who helped them with their lessons, 
 and caused the three batches of children (the 
 Agglands by the first wife, the Agglands by the 
 second wife, and the Kings, whose mother had 
 brought them with her to the Cumberland farm, 
 
 e2 
 
 UNWtRSlTY Of ^'-^'^
 
 52 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 as her contribution to the general weal) to be 
 far ahead of all competitors in their respective 
 classes ? Who made and mended for them all ? 
 Phemie. Who sewed the buttons on Mr. Aggland's 
 shirts, and kept his clothes in the order he loved ? 
 Why, Phemie still, who now sat with her lovely- 
 hair reflecting back the sunbeams, plying her 
 needle busily. 
 
 She was not dressed in the finery to which Mr. 
 Conbyr had taken exception — finery that had 
 descended to her from Mrs. Aggland ; and there 
 was so gi'eat a contrast between her beauty and 
 her attire, that Mr. Aggland felt it strike him 
 painfully. 
 
 He loved the girl, and would have clothed her 
 in silks and satins if he could. With the memoiy 
 of all that was calmest, and best, and happiest in 
 his life, she was interwoven ; and he would have 
 liked to make her lot different, if only for the 
 affection he had borne to the dead woman who 
 was so fond of her. 
 
 Further, he admired beauty, and the beautiful, 
 in his opinion, had no business to be useful like-
 
 PHEMIE. 53 
 
 wise ; for both of which reasons Mr. Aggland, with 
 his wife's complaints of Phemie's "uppishness" 
 still ringing in his ears, could not help but pause 
 and look at the girl who, if Mrs. Aggland's oft- 
 repeated assertion might be believed, "was not 
 worth her salt." 
 
 A really pretty woman always looks prettier 
 without her bonnet, and Phemie Keller proved no 
 exception to this rule. The small well-shaped 
 head with its glory of luxuriant hair, the white 
 graceful neck, the shell-like ear ! — the bonnet 
 had concealed all these things from Captain Ston- 
 don's eyes, — and stripped of the old-fashioned 
 clothes which were her very best, and dressed in 
 a faded and well-darned mousseline de laine of 
 the smallest pattern imaginable, which de laine 
 had likewise descended to her from remote cen- 
 turies, with her soft round arms peeping from 
 below the open sleeves, with her snowy collar 
 fastened by a bow of dark brown ribbon, Phemie 
 Keller sitting in the sunshine with the pile of 
 unfinished work before her, looked every inch 
 what she was — a lady.
 
 54f PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 *' Will you carry this up to our patient, Phemie ?" 
 said her uncle ; and there was a tone in his voice 
 as he spoke which made the giii look at him won- 
 deringly. "He is awake now — awake and sen- 
 sible ; but we must keep plenty of oil in the lamp, 
 or it will go out after all our trouble." 
 
 " It won't go out, uncle, for want of oil while 
 you are in the house," she answered, laying down 
 her work and taking the tray from him. " Dun- 
 can had better run down to the Rectory when he 
 comes back from school, had he not, and tell Mr. 
 Conbyr the good news ? Do you remember how, 
 Avhen he was at the very worst, you used to say he 
 would do us credit yet ? Arn't you jDroud to have 
 saved him? I am." 
 
 That last speech, I am very sorry to say, had a 
 spice of antagonism in it. Mrs. Aggland had said, 
 whenever she got tired of the extra fuss and 
 trouble, that as the man was sure to die any-way, 
 he might better have died on the hill-side than 
 in the house of poor folks like themselves, for 
 which reason Phemie was triumphantly glad that 
 Captain Stondon had lived, " if only to spite the
 
 PHEmE. 55 
 
 cross old thing," the latter observation being 
 made in strict confidence to their only servant, 
 Peggy MacNab. 
 
 But for Mr. Aggland and Phemie it is indeed 
 more than likely that Mrs. Aggland's prophecies 
 might ^^have been fulfilled, and the pair had cer- 
 tainly cause for gratulation at the progress made 
 by their patient. 
 
 " It is positively refreshing to see you getting 
 on so well," remarked Mr. Aggland, as he took his 
 seat by the bedside again, and, the broth having 
 been swallowed, resumed his gun-cleaning per- 
 formance; "but you must not talk much — ^you 
 must not talk at all. The less you exert yourself, 
 and the more you sleep, the sooner you will be 
 able to go — 
 
 * Chasing the wild deer and following the roe,'" 
 
 finished Mr. Aggland, who probably felt at a loss 
 how to complete his sentence otherwise. 
 
 In compliance with this advice, Captain Stondon 
 refrained from speaking, and did not exert him- 
 self at all, unless, indeed, looking with half-closed 
 eyes at his host could be called exertion.
 
 56 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 To him Mr. Aggland was a never-ending, ever- 
 beginning source of wonder : dark, wild-looking 
 hair, that looked as though it had met with some 
 terrible surprise, hung over a face as strange and 
 weird as the face of man need to be ; hollow 
 cheeks, thoughtful, greenish-grey eyes, a large 
 mouth, a nose that seemed all nostril, a ragged 
 beard, a feeble attempt at a moustache ; lines 
 where lines never appeared in other men's faces ; 
 a general effect of cleverness and eccentricity. It 
 was this Captain Stondon took in by degrees, as 
 he lay between sleeping and waking, listening to 
 Mr. Aggland humming, in a low falsetto, 
 
 ** The Lord my pa-hasture sha-hall prepare, 
 And feed me wihith ha she-heperd's care." 
 
 Many a day afterwards, when he saw Phemie's 
 
 gravity completely upset by her uncle's melody, 
 
 he thought how weak he must have been that 
 
 night when he first heard his host speaking in 
 
 what he called his " natural language," music.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A COMPACT. 
 
 There is an Indian plant wliicli will grow and 
 flourish in any place, under any circumstances. 
 
 Earth it does not ask — care it does not demand. 
 Cut it off from all apparent means of support, and 
 it thrives notwithstanding. Detach a leaf from 
 the parent plant, suspend it by a thread from the 
 ceiling, and behold ! the leaf, receiving all the 
 nourishment it requires from the atmosphere 
 alone, puts out roots. 
 
 As he lay in bed wearily counting away the 
 long hours of convalescence ; as he sat in the 
 family sitting-room ; as he followed his host or 
 his host's children slowly around the farm, Captain 
 Stondon never ceased thinking about that strange 
 plant, and likening it to Mr. Aggland.
 
 58 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Cut off apparently from all temptation to eccen- 
 tricity — removed from contact with a world which, 
 galling sensitive natures, sometimes produces 
 curious mental sores and running humours in the 
 best — earning his bread in a primitive manner, 
 trying neither to his brain nor to his temper — 
 placed in a station that seems to have been 
 removed by Providence further from slight and 
 aggravation than any other under heaven, Mr. 
 Aggland was yet peculiar in his manners, habits, 
 and ideas, — ^peculiar to a degree. 
 
 Like the air plant, his oddities were self-sup- 
 porting and self-propagating ; the older he grew, 
 the more eccentric he became. Time only in- 
 creased his prejudices; years only brought his 
 peculiarities into more prominent relief; a large 
 family merely gave him endless opportunities of 
 airing his pet crotchets, of exhibiting his singular 
 stock of information. Never by any chance did 
 he do anything like other people. He had a way 
 and a fashion of his own — even of sowing seeds in 
 his garden ; and his ideas on the subject of train- 
 ing and education had produced as singular a
 
 A COMPACT. 5li 
 
 flock of argumentative cHldren as could have 
 been found in the length and breadth of " canny 
 Cumberlan'." 
 
 True offspring of the hills— sturdy, self-reliant, 
 self-opinionated, courageous — the Agglands and 
 the Kings composed a remarkable household ; one 
 in which, nevertheless, whenever he was able to 
 rise from his bed and limp about the place. Cap- 
 tain Stondon speedily found himself at home. 
 
 His first advances towards acquaintanceship had 
 been received by the juvenile fry with caution, not 
 to say suspicion. Distrust of a stranger being, 
 however, mingled with a feeling that they held 
 a kind of property in him, that he was the spoil 
 of their bow and arrow, of their sword and spear, 
 produced a certain — I cannot say graciousness — 
 but unbending of their usual ungraciousness in his 
 favour. They did not know what to make of 
 this " * gowk' who had been so feckless as to miss, 
 t' rod, and go sossing from wig to wa' down the 
 hul;" but the very fact of their dog *'Davy" 
 having found the injured man in a "soond," and 
 of their father having procured help and brought
 
 60 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 him home, and nursed him through his illness, 
 caused the lads to feel a kind of compassionate 
 interest in their new friend. 
 
 They had been kept so much out of the sick- 
 room that their curiosity had naturally been ex- 
 cited hkewise. Indeed, Captain Stondon's first 
 interview with Duncan, Mr. Aggland's eldest born, 
 was held under difficulties, while that young 
 gentleman stood with the chamber-door half open, 
 surveying the man who had lain in bed till they 
 all settled he was never going to rise again. 
 
 "Have you got anything to say to me, my 
 lad 1 " asked Captain Stondon, stretching out one 
 weak hand towards his visitor. 
 
 " No ; have you got anjrthing to say to me ? " 
 replied Duncan, clenching the handle of the door 
 tighter as he spoke. 
 
 " I do not know that I have," answered Captain 
 Stondon, who was rather taken aback by this 
 unexpected question. " Did you do well at school 
 .to-day?" 
 
 " You do not care to know that ; you have no 
 lessons to get," repUed Duncan, with the air of a
 
 A COMPACT. 61 
 
 bird far too old to be caught by such conversa- 
 tional chaff, but he took a step forward into the 
 room notwithstanding. 
 
 " Are you no dowly lying there so long ? " he 
 asked, after a pause. 
 
 " If you tell me what you mean by dowly, I will 
 answer your question," said Captain Stondon. 
 
 " Are you thinking long ? You know what 
 that is, I suppose," explained Duncan, who had 
 learnt the phrase from his Scotch mother. 
 
 " I am not exactly sure that I do ; but if you 
 want to know whether I am tired of being laid 
 up here, I must answer ' yes.' I shall feel very 
 glad to be out of bed, and walking about once 
 more." 
 
 " I will take you to see the Strammer Tarn, if 
 you like, when you are well," volunteered his 
 visitor. 
 
 " Now I tell you what it is, Duncan," broke in 
 Mr. Aggland at this juncture ; " if I ever catch 
 you here again without my permission, I will box 
 your ears. Indeed, I have a very great mind to 
 box them now."
 
 62 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 And straightway the father inflicted condign 
 punishment on his son, who retired howling from 
 the apartment, while Mr. Aggland walked to the 
 window, and looked out, muttering to himself, 
 half-apologetically — 
 
 " ' Be then to him 
 As was the former tenant of your age, 
 "When you were in the prologue of your time, 
 And he lay hid in you unconsciously, 
 Under his life.' " 
 
 Captain Stondon had not the remotest idea 
 what Mr. Aggland meant by his quotation, but he 
 knew that the man's face looked softened and 
 sorrowful when he turned from the window, and 
 remarked that "boys would be boys, and that 
 Duncan was his mother's son all over." 
 
 Of course it was impossible for Captain Stondon 
 to negative this statement, but he thought 
 Duncan greatly resembled his father for all that. 
 
 "You will excuse their ill-manners, sir," pro- 
 ceeded Mr. Aggland. " They see no one, poor 
 things. They can learn no better in a wilderness 
 like this. I do my best to bring them up honest 
 men and women, 'fearing God, honourins^ the
 
 A COMPACT. 63 
 
 Queen/ But for anything else ! What can I 
 teach them here in this ' cell of ignorance,' as 
 Guiderius happily calls the country." 
 
 "You can teach them what you know, doubt- 
 less," answered Captain Stondon. " Your educa- 
 tion seems to have been much better attended to 
 than that of most persons, whether in town or 
 country; and you can surely impart to your chil- 
 dren a portion at least of that which you once 
 learnt yourself" 
 
 " Superficial — all superficial," said Mr. Aggland, 
 with a sigh. "Here a little, there a little — a 
 mere smattering of education. Once, indeed, the 
 fields of learning lay open before me, but I would 
 not when I could ; and you know what is the fate 
 of people who trifle with their oppoi-tunities. 
 Afterwards I could not when I would ; and the 
 result is that I am here, and my children are here, 
 and here we shall all remain till the end of the 
 chapter. The boys, some of them, have fair abili- 
 ties, and with good fortune, it is probable they 
 
 may eventually hold the plough well," finished 
 
 Mr. Aggland, abruptly.
 
 64 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Truth was, tlie father had been going to end 
 his sentence very differently, but feeling that a 
 stranger could scarcely sympathise with his hopes, 
 and knowing that, between the future he desired 
 and the present in which he lived, there was a 
 gap broad as poverty, he substituted other words 
 for those he was about to speak, and before 
 Captain Stondon could reply to his remark, 
 hastened to change the subject. 
 
 " I should be sorry to go back into the world 
 again," he said, " though I do rail at times against 
 this wilderness, and, like Lamb, consign hills, 
 woods, lakes, mountains, to the eternal devil. I 
 abuse nature as men often show their tenderness 
 by speaking disparagingly of the women they 
 love best ; and I cannot understand the state of 
 that soul which should find its love of natural 
 scenery satisfied by the ' patches of long waving 
 orass and the stunted trees that blacken in the 
 old churchyard nooks which you may yet find 
 bordering on Thames Street.' " 
 
 " I never was in Thames Street, so far as I 
 recollect," remarked Captain Stondon, to whom it
 
 A COMPACT. 65 
 
 never occurred that Mr. Aggland was quoting 
 from a book ; " but I do not think the scenery to 
 be met with there would satisfy me. Neverthe- 
 less, I confess that for the future I shall like 
 mountains better at a distance. Of one thing I 
 am possitive, namely, that I shall be content here- 
 after to admire their beauties from below." 
 
 Mr. Aggland laughed. " You had a bad fall/' 
 he said, " and would have had a long lie of it but 
 for Mr. Conbyr and my dog Davy. Mr. Conbyr 
 could not rest in his bed till he had sent a man 
 over on his Galloway to see if you were safely 
 housed in your inn at Grassenfel ; and when the 
 news came back that you had not been heard of, 
 nothing would serve him but that I should turn 
 out and look for you. So Davy and I, and Jack 
 Holms, started on the search. Mr. Combyr 
 wanted to come with us, but I would have none 
 of him. Davy knew what we were out for as well 
 as if he had been a Christian." 
 
 " What breed is he ? " interrupted Captain 
 Stondon : " a St. Bernard ? " 
 
 " Not a bit of it," answered Mr. Aggland ; " he is
 
 66 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 something between a Coolie, a Skye, and a Scotch 
 terrier — ^but what I cannot tell you. Anyhow, he 
 knew what we were looking for, and just when 
 Jack and I thought we must give over the search, 
 he picks up your hat, sir, and brings it to us in 
 his teeth. Then we knew you must be some- 
 where in the neighbourhood, and Davy hunted 
 about, smelling up and down till he found you 
 behind the rock, and a nice pickle you were in 
 when found. I had no notion but that you were 
 dead. I tell you honestly now, sir, I no more 
 expected ever to hear you speak when we carried 
 you into this house, than I expect the Queen to 
 send for me and make me an earl." 
 
 "I do not think I ever should have spoken 
 much, again but for the good care you bestowed 
 upon me." 
 
 " Well, I flatter myself I am a tolerable nurse," 
 replied Mr. Aggland ; " 'tis a trick I learned in 
 my early youth. When Mr. Conbyr came here, 
 wanting to have you caiTied down to the Vicarage, 
 I said him gently nay. ' You'll excuse me, Mr. 
 Conbyr,' I remarked, ' but out of my house the
 
 A COMPACT. 67 
 
 gentleman does not stir till he is fit, to make a 
 choice for himself. You sent him up the hill- 
 path, with a storm brewing, as any child could 
 have told you, and I brought him off the moun- 
 tain side with the rain ^Douring down heavens 
 hard : so, with your leave, sir, I'll e'en see to the 
 curing of him myself.' I suppose, however, when 
 once you are able to limp about on a stick he will 
 have you away, and then — ' for ever and for ever 
 farewell' " 
 
 Here was the opening Captain Stondon had for 
 days been anticipating, and seizing his opportunity, 
 he assured Mr. Aggland he entertained no such 
 passionate friendship for the clergyman as would 
 cause him to desert the Hill Farm for the Vicar- 
 age. But at the same time Captain Stondon 
 hinted that sickness brought its attendant ex- 
 penses, that it entailed various and sundry incon- 
 veniences ; that, in short, unless Mr. Aggland, 
 who was blessed with a large family, agreedTto 
 permit the speaker, who had no children, to " 
 
 " In short," broke in Mr. Aggland at this point, 
 " you want to pay me ; you are, I presume, rich ;
 
 68 PHEMIE KELLER 
 
 I am, you presume, pooi' ; and there you chance 
 to be quite correct. Whatever troubles I have, 
 I am not ' perk'd up in a glistering grief ; ' I do 
 not 'wear a golden sorrow.' Yes, I am a poor 
 man. There is no use in my trying to deny the 
 fact." And Mr. Aggland took a halfpenny from 
 his pocket, tossed it in the air, then covered it 
 over with his hand, and turning towards Cap- 
 tain Standon a little defiantly, waited for his 
 answer. 
 
 " I do not want to pay you," said that gentle- 
 man ; " I never could pay you for the kindness 
 you have shown me. For my life, for the long 
 hours you have sat beside my bed, for all you have 
 done by me, I shall be your debtor always, and I 
 am not of so thankless a nature that I desire to 
 be out of your debt. All I meant was, that as 
 long as a man is alive you cannot keep him for 
 nothing — you must acknowledge the trutli of that 
 proposition, Mr. Aggland. There is not a child 
 you have but costs you something every day " 
 
 Up went the halfpenny once again, and once 
 again Mr. Aggland covered it with his hand.
 
 A COMPACT. 69 
 
 "I, a bachelor/' proceeded Captain Stondou, 
 " should not be a burden on you, that is all. If 
 you are willing to let me feel that I am not a 
 burden, I will stay here, with your leave, till I am 
 strong enough to go back to my own home ; but 
 if not, I must try to get over to Grassenfel as 
 soon as may be." 
 
 For the third time Mr. Aggland spun up the 
 halfpenny. " Heads thrice running," he said, and 
 pocketed the coin gravely. 
 
 "You have won, sir," was his answer to Cap- 
 tain Stondon's speech. " I am a poor man and 
 money is an object ; but for all that, I had rather 
 luck had turned the other way. So long as there 
 is independence, there may be friendship even 
 between a high man and an humble, but once 
 money passes from hand to hand, adieu to even 
 the semblance of equality." And with this speech 
 Mr. Aggland would have left the room, had not 
 Captain Stondon detained him. 
 
 "I have been a poor man myself," he said. 
 " For years life was a continual struggle ; and 
 those years are not so far behind me but that I
 
 7^ PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 can still feel more fellowship with, and friendship 
 for, a poor man, than a rich. Because I want to 
 be a little independent, do not think I wish to 
 prevent your being independent likewise." 
 
 And with that he held out his hand, which Mr. 
 Aggland took. 
 
 "Shall we be friends ?" asked the officer. 
 
 " It is a question for you to decide," answered 
 the other. " I am not a gentleman ; I make no 
 pretension to ever having been one ; still — 
 
 * The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
 The man's the gowd for a' that.' " 
 
 And straightway it was settled that Captain 
 Stondon should remain; that he should stay to 
 be conducted to Strammer Tarn by Duncan ; that 
 he should wait to see Davy, the wisest dog in 
 Cumberland ; that he should not leave the Hill 
 Farm for the Vicarage, or Grassenfel, or any 
 other place, till he was strong and well once more ; 
 that he should not, in one word, leave Tordale 
 till Tordale had become a part of himself — a 
 place destined to remain green in his memory 
 all his life long.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BY STRAMMER TARN. 
 
 It was tlie middle of October. The September 
 harvest had been reaped and carried ; the sickles 
 were laid aside for another year, and the bams 
 were full to overflowing ; it was getting late in 
 the season for any stranger to be lingering among 
 the hills, but still Captain S ton don remained on 
 at the Farm contentedly. Had there been no 
 outside world at all, — had there been no Norfolk 
 estates, no London clubs, no Paris, no Vienna, — 
 he could not have seemed better satisfied to stay, 
 more loth to stir than was the case. 
 
 Each week, it is true, he said he must soon be 
 
 journejdng southward ; but then each fresh week 
 
 found him still loitering across the valley to the 
 
 Parsonage ; still contemplating the effects of the 
 
 autumnal tints on heather, grass, and tree ; still
 
 72 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 watching the changing leaves on the branches 
 that overhung the waterfall ; still climbing the 
 mountain sides, or wending his way to Strammer 
 Tarn. 
 
 His arm had knit by this time, and although he 
 continued to carry a stick, his ankle was almost 
 strong again. He had drunk in a new draught 
 amid the hills ; he had gone back years, seated 
 by the ingle nook, wandering among the heather ; 
 he had forgotten the weary years of liis lonely 
 manhood ; and he was taking his youth — his 
 unenjoyed, unprofitable youth — once more in the 
 autumn of existence, and living it out again, 
 thoroughly, happily, among the mountains of 
 Cumberland. 
 
 He had found rest ; he had found contentment. 
 He had put the gloom of the shadow^ that for- 
 merly rested over his soul aside, and in that 
 strange household, surrounded by young people, 
 by nature, by activity, by life, and hope, and 
 strength, he grew light-hearted, and with boys 
 became as a boy, capable of enjoying each day 
 that daw^ned uj)on the earth.
 
 BY STRAMMER TARN. 73 
 
 To be sure, at first he found it no easy matter 
 either to understand what the lads said, or to 
 make them comprehend exactly what he said in 
 return. They had run so wild about the hills ; 
 they had mixed so much with the boys in the 
 valley ; they had grown up so entirely amid Cum- 
 berland sounds and Cumberland associations, that 
 their every sentence contained some word which 
 seemed strange and unaccustomed in the ear of 
 their guest. 
 
 But, as a rule, Phemie was close at hand to 
 comprehend and to explain. She it was who told 
 him what Duncan meant by a " bainer " way to 
 Strammer Tarn; by a "whang" of bread; by Mrs. 
 Aggland being in a "taaking," and by calling 
 Davy a '•' tyke." 
 
 With her lovely face turned up to his she would 
 laugh out at his perplexities, and then make dark- 
 ness clear before him. She would scold Duncan 
 in a pretty womanly way for using the Cumber- 
 land dialect, and then " draw him out " for the 
 officer's benefit. She would dance over the moors 
 and the heather, as Duncan sometimes told her;
 
 74 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 like a " rannigal/' and then she would sit down 
 quietly at the edge of the Black Tarn, and talk to 
 Captain Stondon about her childhood, while vshe 
 pulled off her bonnet and wreathed the broom 
 and the wild flowers into garlands for her hair. 
 
 It was not an exciting life, but it was peaceful, 
 without being solitary. Since his boyhood, since 
 the time which lay almost half a century behind 
 him. Captain Stondon had never kno^vn what it 
 was to enter any house, not even his own, and to 
 feel he was crossing the threshold of home. To 
 rest and be thankful ; to live and rejoice ; to look 
 on the merest excursion as a pleasure ; to under- 
 stand that leisure was never given to man solely 
 that he might employ his leisure in killing time, 
 — these things were to Captain Stondon almost 
 like revelations, and he accepted tlie new light 
 and lay down and basked in its glory joyfully. 
 
 Home ! What makes a home, I wonder ? 
 Looking back in the after days to tliat queer 
 old Cumberland farm-house across the sea, think- 
 ing of its quiet, and its happiness, even whilst 
 surrounded by the warmth, and the beauty, and
 
 BY STRAM^^IER TARN. 75 
 
 the gaiety of southern chmes, Captain Stondon 
 came to believe that home is not so much one 
 great fact, as the total of an aggregation of trifles ; 
 that the way the sunbeams steal into the windows, 
 the particular description of rose that is trained 
 round the casements, the scent of the honeysuckle 
 which climbs over the porch, the plan of the 
 house, the position of the doors, the placing of the 
 furniture, the eccentricities of the servants, the 
 tricks of the auimals, — all these odds and ends 
 frame and fit together so as to make one great 
 and perfect whole, which shall remain stamped on 
 the memory when the soul has sickened of lordly 
 mansions, and the brain refuses to remember the 
 cold bare discomfort of houses ^that are not homes, 
 that lack the thousand-and-one charms which often- 
 times form a chain strong enough to bind the heart 
 of some great man to the lowliest cottage standing 
 by the wayside of life. It is the sunlight on the 
 floor, it is the trees that overshadow the roof, it is 
 the springing of the turf under foot, it is the per- 
 fume of the flowers stealing in through the open 
 windows, it is the grouping of a circle round a
 
 76 PHEMIE KELLEK. 
 
 blazing fire, it is the tone of the voices, it is 
 a series of sensations which engi'oss the soul, 
 and forge fetters around the wisest and the 
 best. 
 
 The Hill Farm had every element of home 
 strong about it. The sunbeams seemed never 
 weary of shining on it, as if they loved the very 
 stones in its walls ; the roses put out buds and 
 bloomed even in the frost. There was no such 
 piece of grass in any nobleman's park as Mr. 
 Aggland boasted beneath his parlour windows. 
 Most part of the year the little garden was a blaze 
 of flowers, but specially in the autumn the place 
 seemed on fire with scarlet verbenas and Tom 
 Thumb geraniums, with nasturtiums, and stately 
 dahlias, and heliotropes, and fuchsias. 
 
 The poor man's flowers, when he takes care of 
 them, always bloom before the buds burst in the 
 parterre of his richer neighbour. As though God 
 loved best him to whom He gives the least. He 
 seems to send His sun and His rain with richer 
 blessing to the one than to the other, and the 
 little crop comes up more abundantly before the
 
 BY STRAJUMER TARN. 77 
 
 door of the cottager than the great crop is ever 
 seen to do in the broad fields that are owned by 
 his landlord and master the squire. It was thus 
 at any rate with the Agglands — wdiat they planted, 
 they gathered ; wdiat they watered and tended, 
 grew up to perfection. The great man of Gras- 
 senfel, Lord Wanthorpe, who kept six gardeners, 
 could not for w^ages obtain such efficient help as 
 Mr. Aggland brought round him after school-hours 
 every afternoon. 
 
 Delving and digging, w^atering and wheeling, 
 clearing and weeding, was fun to the lads — exer- 
 cise to their father. With all his quotations, he 
 did not bring them up in idleness : not one of the 
 boys but could clean a horse, harness and drive 
 him, saddle and ride him, as well as any gi'oom in 
 the country. 
 
 They could have bought and sold, those lads ; 
 you might have sent them to market, and trusted 
 their judgment of a drove of beasts as well as that 
 of any bailiff. They w^ould argue — Duncan more 
 particularly — witli their father, knotty points of 
 colour, vein, and shape ; they would stand with
 
 78 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 tlieir hands in tlieir pockets^ and criticise a two- 
 year-old as gravely as any habitue of Tattersall's. 
 They were great on sheep ; they were learned 
 about dogs ; occasionally they were pleased to drop 
 some words of Avisdom about hens and chickens for 
 the edification of Captain Stondon ; and concern- 
 ing geese and turkeys they were a vast deal better 
 informed than the person who took charge of 
 those interesting animals in the poultry yard at 
 Marshlands. 
 
 Altogether, brought up in the country, the boys 
 were au fait in matters appertaining to the 
 country. They knew all about soils ; they spoke 
 lovingly of manures. In advance of their fptrming 
 brethren in the matter of rotation crops, they were 
 apt, following their father's lead, to be a little 
 dogmatical and wearisome on the subject of ex- 
 hausting and recruiting the ground. 
 
 Mr. Aggland piqued himself on having brought 
 the " best ideas of all nations " into practical use 
 on his little farm ; and the days came when, 
 knowing more about the man, about the difficul- 
 ties he had surmounted, the troubles he had
 
 BY STRA^IilEU TARN. 79 
 
 struggled through, Captain Stondon acknowledged 
 that, possibly, no other individual could have 
 made as much of the Hill Farm as Mr. Aggland ; 
 that he had kept a large family well, and brought 
 them up respectably, where a different father 
 might have found it a hard struggle to provide 
 such a tribe of children with dry bread off so bare 
 and inhospitable a corner of the earth. 
 
 The Hill Farm was cheap, the Hill Farm was 
 picturesque, but it was likewise poor and inacces- 
 sible. 
 
 " No man before me was ever able to pay his 
 rent out of the ground," said Mr. Aggland, wdth 
 excusable vanity ; " each successive tenant planted 
 on the hill, as he would have planted in the valley, 
 and the result w^as disappointment and ruin. I, 
 who had never been a farmer, was looked upon as 
 a madman for supposing I should succeed where 
 practical men had failed ; but, remembering 
 Seneca's axiom, that 'Science is but one,' I 
 laboured on with patience and in hope. And 
 through all my labour I had pleasure. I have 
 been happier here than I was in the days when
 
 80 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 my prospects were brighter. Did you ever read 
 Burns' ' Twa Dogs/ sir 1 " 
 
 If Captain Stondon had thought saying " Yes " 
 would have saved him the quotation, he might 
 have replied falsely ; but, knowing that the verse 
 was sure to come in any case, he answered " No." 
 
 "The poem is neither more nor less than a 
 comparison between riches and j^o'^'erty," ex- 
 plained Mr. Aggland. " It is a conversation be- 
 tween two dogs ; between one whose 
 
 ** '—Locked, lettered, brass, braw collar, 
 Showed him the gentleman and. scholar,' 
 
 and another — 
 
 *' ' A ploughman's collie ... a glide and faithfu' tyke.' 
 
 The gentleman — ' Csesar ' — is made to say — 
 
 " ' I see how folk live that hae riches, 
 
 But surely poor folk maun be wretches.' 
 
 Was not it, sir, a clever notion putting in the 
 mouth of a dog the thought that passes so often 
 through the heart of a man ? " 
 
 " And what does the other answer ? " asked 
 Captain Stondon. 
 
 "He says with truth that 'they are nae sae
 
 BY STKAMMER TARX. 81 
 
 ^vretched 's ane wad think/ and then goes on to 
 what I was going to remark at first, — 
 
 ** ' An' tho' fatigued wi' close employment, 
 A blink o' rest 's a sweet enjoyment.' 
 
 That was it, sir. After I had done my day's work 
 
 I could enjoy rest as I had never enjoyed anything 
 
 in the time when I was idle and earning my 
 
 bread easily, and, as I think now, meanh'. And 
 
 even now I feel it a pleasure to see the seed I 
 
 have helped to sow springing up, and bearing 
 
 fruit in the Lord's due season. Although toil has 
 
 been my lot, I can sing, with the sweetest of our 
 
 modern poets, 
 
 ** * There is not a creature, from England's king 
 To the peasant that delves tlie soil, 
 That knows half the pleasure the seasons bring, 
 If he have not his share of toil.' 
 
 Look at the farm, sir. It was like moorland when 
 I came here first, and now I pay my rent and 
 keep my family off it, and I have a trifle besides 
 in the Grassenfel Bank. To be sure, if I were to 
 die, things might go liard with the wife and 
 children, but there arc few in any station who 
 can do more than support their boys and girls, and
 
 82 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 give them education. Duncan certainly might 
 soon take the farm, and Phemie would help him. 
 It may be that some day they will make a match, 
 and then " 
 
 " The man is come over from Grassenfel about 
 the sheep, uncle," interrupted Phemie at this 
 juncture ; and as Mr. Aggland left Captain Ston- 
 don to attend to business, the officer turned and 
 looked strangely at the girl whose probable future 
 he had just heard sketched out. 
 
 There was a colour in her face which seemed to 
 imply that she had heard likewise ; but, half-an- 
 hour afterwards, when she and all her cousins, 
 Dunoan included, accompanied their guest up the 
 hill and over the heather to Strammer Tarn, her 
 step was as light and her laugh rang out as clear 
 as though there were no such thing as marrying 
 or giving in marriage on earth. 
 
 '' A nice fate truly," thought Captain Stondon, 
 savagely ; " to keep a girl like that making butter 
 and darning stockings all her life. Such hair, 
 such features, such a complexion, such grace 
 wasted on a raw-boned Cumberland lout. Great
 
 BY STRAMMER TARN. 83 
 
 Heavens ! such sacrilege should not be permitted 
 in a Christian country. What would she like, I 
 wonder. It might be worth while trying to get 
 to know what she thinks on the subject." 
 
 But, frank as she seemed, what she hoped, what 
 she feared, what she dreamed, were things Phemie 
 Keller was never going to tell to Captain Ston- 
 don. In the world she had but one confidante ; 
 the hard-featured, high- cheeked, loud -voice 
 Scotchwoman, who had been with her from her 
 childhood, who had come with her from Scotland, 
 who had served the first Mrs. Aggland, and was 
 now serving the second, and who loved blue-eyed, 
 bright-haired, laughing, light-hearted Phemie 
 Keller with a love passing the love of woman. 
 
 Sitting on the boulders that lay near the edge of 
 the Strammer Tarn, with her cousin Helen's head 
 resting on her lap, with the clear October sky 
 above, with the black rocks frowning on her 
 girlish beauty, with the dark water at her feet, 
 Phemie talked to the stranger of everything save 
 the dreams she dreamed when she lay wide awake 
 in her little bed at ni^fht, save the romantic future
 
 84) PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 she and Peggy sketched out when " croonin' " to- 
 gether over the winter fire in the kitchen, or 
 basking in the glorious sunlight of some summer 
 Sunday afternoon. 
 
 Did he think the girl unconscious of her loveli- 
 ness ? — did he imagine that, though she might seem 
 merely " pretty " to her neighbours, Phemie Keller 
 did not know she was the making of as beautiful 
 a woman as ever turned men's heads and caused 
 honest hearts to ache for love of her 1 Is not 
 beauty a talent, and did not she know God had 
 given her that one talent, at any rate ? He had 
 lived long, and he had seen much, but he fell into 
 error here. Phemie was fully aware of the extent 
 of her own charms. All her earlier years she had 
 been "my bonnie, bonnie bairn" to somebody; 
 and now her glass, small though it might be, told 
 the little lady she was beautiful, whilst, if other 
 proof were wanting, Mr. Conbyr's entreaties that 
 she would set her face against vanity, and the 
 whispered compliments of young Mr. Fagg, the 
 surgeon, from Grassenfel, should have fully con- 
 vinced her of the fact.
 
 BY STRAMMER TARX. 85 
 
 And so while they talked together, and while 
 Captain Stondon thought he was reading this 
 girl's nature as though it were an easy book 
 Phemie was keeping back the dreams and tht? 
 visions that made her young life tolerable to her. 
 She could sit contentedly at work because au'^ 
 castles rose to the sky at her lightest bidding ; she 
 could go about the housework cheerily, thinking 
 of the future day which was to da^vn and free her 
 from all drudgery and all toil, and she could talk 
 frankly and naturally to this middle-aged man, who 
 tried to draw her out because he was as far from her 
 ideal of a lover, or a husband, or a hero as Mr. Fagg, 
 or even her hard-headed cousin Duncan himself. 
 
 " My father was an officer too," Phemie was 
 pleased to explain on the afternoon in question ; 
 "but he was only a lieutenant, — Lieutenant 
 Keller; I have got his portrait at the farm, if 
 you would like to see it. He looks so young and 
 so handsome," the girl added, with a tremor in her 
 voice, and she bent her head over her favourite 
 Helen, touching the child's dark locks lovingly as 
 she spoke.
 
 86 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 " You resemble him then, doubtless," suggested 
 Captain Stondon, gallantly. 
 
 " I believe I do," she said, apparently without 
 noticing the implied compliment ; " but my mother 
 was fair too. I remember her with such a colour in 
 her face that, if people had not known to the con- 
 trary, they would have said she was painted. She 
 died when she was only one-and-twenty ; but I 
 remember her. Uncle tells me they were both 
 little more than boy and girl — boy and girl," 
 Phemie repeated, with her eyes straining over the 
 Black Tarn, as though she saw the shadowy forms of 
 those dead parents standing on the opposite shore. 
 
 Up to that moment Captain Stondon had taken 
 Mr. Conbyr's statement for granted ; but now he 
 began to waver in his faith. If she were really 
 illegitimate, Phemie's uncle would never have 
 spoken to her about her parents so unreservedly ; 
 she would never have been suffered to retain the 
 portrait of which she had just made mention. 
 
 Hitherto the question of her birth had been 
 one studiously avoided by the officer; but sud- 
 denly he became desirous to know all about Miss
 
 BY STRAJIMER TARX. 87 
 
 Kellers parents, and began to insinuate questions 
 accordingly. 
 
 " Was her father dead or abroad ? " he ven- 
 tured, after a pause. 
 
 " Oh, he died before my mother," Phemie an- 
 swered ; " and she never held up her head after, 
 Peggy says. It was at Malta we were then, and 
 my mother brought his body back to his own 
 people, and then returned to her father's house 
 with me." 
 
 " Why did she not remain with her husband\s 
 family ? " asked Captain Stondon. 
 
 "Because they would not have her remain, and 
 because she thought a Scotch Duncan as good a,s 
 an English Keller any day, and would not be 
 looked down on by them. The Kellers are 
 great folks somewhere, or think themselves 
 great folks ; and they never forgave my father 
 for marrying a poor minister's daughter. He 
 told her to go to them after his death for 
 my sake, and she went because he bade 
 her; but they turned her from the door, and — 
 and "
 
 80 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Phemie bowed her head and sobbed aloud as 
 she tried to finish her sentence. She had heard 
 her mother's wrongs so often spoken of, — she had 
 heard Peggy M'Nab tell so pathetically how that 
 young creature, repulsed by her husband's kin- 
 dred, had travelled home to the old manse to die, 
 that she could not speak without weeping as she 
 recalled the story. 
 
 Home to die ' home to the familiar places she 
 had left so few years before to look her last on 
 them ere she passed from earth for ever ; — home 
 to the lonely manse by the desolate sea-shore ; — 
 home to the well-remembered rooms where she 
 could lie and listen to the long roll of the Atlantic 
 waves as they came booming up against the rocky 
 coast ;— home to the haunts and the friends of 
 her girlhood ; — home — or, as Peggy said so plain- 
 tively — 
 
 " Hame, hame, puir thing, to dee." 
 
 Phemie could not talk of it calmly ; Phemie 
 could scarcely talk of the manse itself calmly, let 
 alone of her mother ; and whilst Captain Stondon 
 retraced his steps towards Tordale in the gathering
 
 BY STRAM^IER TARX. 80 
 
 twilight, with Duncan and Helen and Phemie 
 beside him, and the other children running on 
 towards home as fast as their little legs could 
 carry them, he made up his mind to have some 
 talk with Mr. Aggjand, and discover how he might 
 best advance that eccentric individual's views, 
 and do something at the same time for Phemie 
 Keller.
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 THE AGGLAND INTEKIOE. 
 
 The sliort October day was drawing to a close 
 when the party reached home ; and it had gi'own 
 so dark by the time they reached the Hill Farm, 
 that candles were lighted and curtains drawn, and 
 the tea-things set, awaiting their arrival. Amaz- 
 ingly cozy looked the parlour, with sofa pulled 
 round beside the fire, a steaming kettle on the 
 hob, and coals piled high blazing up the chimney. 
 
 Though the furniture was of the plainest, the 
 room seemed homelike and cheerful to Captain 
 Stondon, who was greeted by Mr. Aggland with — 
 
 "You must have found Strammer Tarn un- 
 usually attractive this afternoon. Were you 
 watching 'Autumn like a faint old man sit 
 down — by the wayside a-weary ? ' Have you 
 brought an appetite back with you from the
 
 THE AGGLAXD INTERIOR. 91 
 
 hills ? Mr. Conbyr has been here begging that 
 you will dine with him to-morrow. So, in common 
 courtesy, you are in for two sermons — t^vo of his 
 sermons — good lack 1 Nevertheless 'tis a good 
 man ' Gray, wdth his eyes uplifted to Heaven.' I 
 do think Mr. Conbyr does try to keep both eyes 
 and soul uplifted ; for which reason I make the 
 children write down his sermons as well as they 
 can after they come from church. In a literary 
 point of view, what he says may not be super- 
 excellent, but the words of a good man must 
 always hold something worth remembering. Now, 
 Phemie, let us have some tea," finished Mr. Agg- 
 land, with the air of a person wdio felt that, having 
 delivered himself of a Christian sentiment, he 
 deserved some refreshment after it. 
 
 Dutifully obedient, the girl poured out the tea, 
 and when he had handed a cup to his wife, who 
 sat knitting by the fire, and another to Captain 
 Stondon, who was contemplating Phemie, Mr. 
 Aggland duly and solemnly stirred up the sugar 
 from the bottom, and then tasted the infusion. 
 
 "Wormwood! wormwood ! " he exclaimed, sur-
 
 92 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 veying the tea with astonishment and Phemie 
 with reproach. " There's rue for you," he added, 
 turning to Captain Stondon, " and here's some for 
 me. We may call it herb of gi'ace o' Sundays, 
 but it is quite a different matter to drink it any 
 evening in the week. What the deuce, child, 
 have you done to it 1 Salts and senna — soda and 
 bark ! ugh ! " and Mr. Aggiand began putting all 
 the cups back on the tray. 
 
 "I will keep mine," said Mrs. Aggiand defiantly. 
 "If yours does not please you, have some more 
 made. As Phemie was out w^asting ner time as 
 usual on the hills, I wet the tea; but I won't wet 
 it again — w^hat I brew never contents you." 
 
 Having concluded this pleasant sentence, Mrs. 
 Aggiand resumec^ her knitting, while Mr. Agg- 
 iand, having muttered something that sounded 
 very like " Damn the tea ! " directed his conversa- 
 tion towards his guest, who had long doubted the 
 prudence of the farmer's second choice, and who 
 felt more and more convinced of the fact of its 
 imprudence every day he passed in the house. 
 
 Not a virago was Mrs. Aggiand ; not a noisy,
 
 THE AGGLAND INTERIOR. 93 
 
 headstrong, passionate woman. There was no 
 quarrelHng and making up with her. She did 
 not fly into a passion one moment, and cahn 
 down the next. She simply ''nagged." There is 
 no other word that I know of to express her mode 
 of proceeding, or I would use it. 
 
 Man could not delight her, nor Avoman neither, 
 if the man and the woman chanced to be of her 
 own household. From the time she rose in the 
 morning till she laid her pinched, discontented 
 face on the pillow at night, the thing was never 
 done, by child or adult, that pleased her ; and the 
 person who seemed able to displease her most was 
 Phemie Keller. 
 
 In her youth, which takes us back to a some- 
 what remote period, Mrs. Aggland had been 
 reckoned rather a beauty by the young men in 
 her own class of life. She was a belle of the 
 genteel sentimental style ; laced tight, minced 
 her words, drank vinegar to keep herself j^ale, 
 wore her ugly drab hair in curls, held her head on 
 one side, simpered like a fool when spoken to, 
 and was altogether a superior young person, wlio
 
 S4 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 married, in her two-and-thirtieth year, Mr. King, 
 a struggling grocer in Lancaster. 
 
 Mr. King survived the unhappy event for five 
 years, at the end of which time he died, leaving 
 her a small business and four children. When or 
 how Mr. Aggland first became acquainted with 
 the widow, he never informed his neighbours. 
 All any one could say for certain was, that he 
 took her to wife, and that she brought him some 
 money and the children aforesaid. So much the 
 world knew ; but Mr. Aggland knew, besides, 
 that he had made a bad bargain, an irreparable 
 blunder, that life had been a harder struggle with 
 him than ever during the six years which had 
 elapsed since his second marriage. 
 
 There were already three young pledges of 
 affection — two aged five years, and a burly child 
 just able to run about alone — born to him of this 
 ill-assorted union. 
 
 What the future held, it might be difficult for 
 him to say, but if it held many more children, 
 Mr. Aggland confessed to his own heart that the 
 prospect was not inviting. Had it not been for
 
 THE AGGLAND INTERIOR. 95 
 
 Phemie, lie scarcely knew liow the house would 
 have gone on at all; and Mrs. Aggland hated 
 Phemie for reasons which I am about to tell. 
 
 Mrs. Aggland had been a beauty relatively, 
 Phemie was a beauty positively. Mrs. Aggland 
 had taken pains to make and keep herself 
 " genteel." Without any arts or devices Phemie 
 looked a lady even in her aunt's cast-off finery. 
 
 Mrs. Aggland had been given to melody in her 
 younger day^. Her rendering of pathetic songs, 
 such as, " Oh ! no, we never mention her," " The 
 Soldier's Tear," "The Banks of Allan Water," and 
 others of the same stamp, had won for her im- 
 mense applause from her numerous admirers. 
 The high note in the " Banks of Allan Water," 
 and the rallentando passage in the " Soldier's 
 Tear," when very softly and with the help of 
 quavers and semi-quavers the tear is wiped away, 
 used always to produce a sensation, and it was 
 therefore no wonder that Mrs. Aggland resented 
 Phemie's voice as a personal injury, and detested 
 her for possessing it. 
 
 Even the children liked best to hear their
 
 9G PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 cousin sing. They would leave the " Lass of 
 Gowrie" for "Love's Kitomella/' and "Young 
 Lochinvar " for " Allan-a-dale." It is not given 
 to eveiy 'prwut donna to make way for a 
 younger comer gracefully, and Mrs. Aggland was 
 only human ; for which reason, it may be, she 
 would not have repined against the decrees of 
 Providence if Phemie had caught bronchitis and 
 lost her voice. 
 
 Further, though Mrs. Aggland had brought her 
 husband some small dowry, she had brought him 
 incumbrances likewise ; and this girl — this Hagar 
 in the household — this Mordecai at the gate — 
 possessed her trifling portion too, a hundred 
 pounds, the principal and interest and com- 
 pound interest of which were to be hers on 
 coming of age, or on marriage. 
 
 Mr. Aggland could have used the money had 
 he liked — taken it in payment for her board and 
 lodging; but he had settled that not even in their 
 blackest distress was the girl's " tocher " to be 
 touched, and the money was kept intact ac- 
 cordingly.
 
 THE AGGLAXD INTERIOR. 07 
 
 Heaven help us ! perhaps the man had more 
 than hoped she and Duncan would spend it 
 together, and try and stock a small homestead 
 for themselves, where he could visit them, antl 
 smoke and quote and sing in peace. 
 
 Had he any other dream ? Did he think that 
 Duncan, with his turn for mechanics, with that 
 passion for making a pump and a steam-engine 
 which seems to be the besetting sin of English 
 lads — the snare and the delusion that Satan in 
 these latter days has devised for the disappoint- 
 ment and confusion of parents — with his dogged 
 perseverance, and his intensely Scotch hard- 
 headedness, might rise to eminence in the 
 future ? Perhaps that was the reason why he 
 kept the boy at school long after the age when 
 most farmers' sons had completed their education 
 and relapsed into boorishness for ever. 
 
 Mr. Aggland was so fond of talking about Watt, 
 Arkwright, Strutt, Foley, Petty, and a number of 
 other self-made men, as to suggest the idea that 
 far away down in his heart he was nourishing 
 ambitious hopes concerning his eldest son's 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 98 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 worldly advancement. One thing, however, was 
 certain. He wanted Phemie and Duncan to grow 
 up into lovers and to marry in due time, for which 
 rfeason he encouraged the visits of none of the 
 young men who would perhaps have thought 
 themselves good enough to aspire to the hand 
 of Miss Keller ; and consequently Miss Keller 
 had heard as few compliments and blushed as 
 little at pretty rustic speeches as the strictest 
 matron could have desired. 
 
 Nevertheless Phemie knew she was pretty, and 
 so did Mrs, Aggland, which mutual knowledge by 
 no means conduced to the maintenance of peace 
 and quietness between the pair. 
 
 Moreover, Phemie was far more clever than 
 Mrs. Aggland ; more clever and quick not merely 
 at catching up book learning, but at needlework, 
 at household duties, and in all other practical 
 affairs. Given opportunit}^, there could be no 
 doubt but that the girl would have been as ac- 
 complished and well-informed as she was pretty. 
 Even as matters stood, she had got a curious 
 smattering of knowledge into her head. She had
 
 THE AGGLAND IXTERIOR. 99 
 
 read and re-read all the books in her uncle's 
 singularly miscellaneous library. He had taught 
 her what he knew of French ; she had learned to 
 play the guitar almost without his help ; and Mrs. 
 Aggland, looking askance, prophesied that such 
 "goings on/' "such ways/' "such notioDs/' would 
 bring Phemie to ruin ; while there were not a few 
 in the neighbourhood — Mr. Conbyr himself, worthy 
 man, amongst the number — who s}Tnpathised with 
 Mrs. Aggland, and thought Phemie was being 
 fairly spoiled by her eccentric and imprudent 
 uncle. 
 
 "Even to the making of the tea," muttered 
 Mrs. Aggland, as she went on with her knitting, 
 and with one light-coloured eye watched Phemie 
 pouring out the fresh infusion, " I might as well 
 be nobody. He had better never have mamed at 
 all." 
 
 Which was undeniably true ; at any rate, he 
 had better never have married at all than married 
 her, and he was perhaps thinking something of 
 the kind even while he went on talking to Captain 
 Stondon about indifferent subjects. 
 
 h2
 
 100 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 All at once Mrs. Aggiand broke into the con- 
 versation. She did not like being left on one side 
 so completely. Even the pleasure of indulging 
 her bad temper, and seeing other people uncom- 
 fortable, was dearly purchased at the price of such 
 neglect ; therefore, when Captain Stondon was 
 making some remarks about the loneliness and 
 desolation of Strammer Tarn, she laid down her 
 knitting, a sure sign of truce, and observed that 
 she had not seen Strammer Tarn. "I have never 
 been to Grassenfel since I came home to this 
 house," she said ; " except to church once in a 
 way, and to a chance prayer-meeting at a neigh- 
 bour's, I never set foot across the threshold." 
 
 " You find so many home occupations, doubt- 
 less," suggested Captain Stondon. 
 
 " Yes, and it is the children," she replied. 
 " Where there is so much work to be done, and 
 so few to do it, where there are so many mouths 
 to fill, and so much planning needed to fill them, 
 it stands to sense I can't be running over the hills 
 like a girl. I can't leave things to go to wrack 
 and ruin by themselves."
 
 THE AGGLAND INTERIOR. 101 
 
 " I am certain," said Captain Stondon, gallantly, 
 ^' that nothing can go to ruin in the same house 
 with you." 
 
 " I am sure it is very good of you to think so. 
 It is not every one that would say as much, though 
 I do work early and late, though I can say wdth a 
 safe conscience I never eat the bread of idleness," 
 remarked Mrs. Aggland, darting a look towards 
 her husband, who coolly said : — 
 
 " If you mean me. Prissy, my dear, you are 
 quite mistaken. I am willing to say all Captain 
 Stondon said, and more ; I am willing to say all 
 you said, and more. You rise early, you take 
 your rest late, you do not eat the bread of idle- 
 ness, you eat that of carefulness — what more ? 
 ' The man in the world who shall report he has a 
 better wife, let him in nought be trusted.' " 
 
 "Capital, Mr. Aggland ! a most happy quotation," 
 remarked Captain Stondon. For Phemie's sake ; 
 for Phemie, who was now out of the room putting 
 the younger children to bed, he wanted to throw 
 oil on the waters, to calm the tempest that had 
 literally arisen in a teapot.
 
 102 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 " Many a one wondered," went on Mrs. Aggland, 
 " how I ever could think of marrying again after 
 losing the kind, good, blessed husband, for which 
 I w^ere a-wearing weeds when I met with Mr. A. 
 And, most of all, how I ever came to marry a man 
 with children. I had made up my mind never to 
 leave off Avidow's caps no more. I had set down 
 my foot against matrimony and every folly of the 
 sort, when Mr. Aggland came and persuaded me 
 to change my mind. To hear him talk now some- 
 times, nobody would think he had tried so hard to 
 get me, for I had a'most sworn never to put a 
 step-father over my boys ; but you see, sir, what 
 it is to be tempted," and Mrs. Aggland executed 
 an idiotic giggle, while Captain Stondon an- 
 swered : — 
 
 '' See, rather, madam, what it is to be tempting." 
 Which speech put the ci-devant beauty into a 
 seventh heaven of good temper, and straightway 
 the pair began a little skirmish of assertion and 
 retort. 
 
 " He, the captain, was only making fun of an 
 old woman like herself."
 
 THE AGGLAND INTERIOR. 103 
 
 " No, upon his honour, he had merely stated a 
 self-evident fact." 
 
 " Ten years before she might have been, at least 
 some folks had said so ; but now, with a growing- 
 up family about her " 
 
 "She failed to rate herself as highly as her 
 friends did," put in Captain Stondon. 
 
 " The care of children soon put all those kind 
 of foolish notions out of a woman's head ; not that 
 even in her youngest days she had been given to 
 vanities, and now she was a mother 
 
 " Ah, Captain Stondon," she finished pathe- 
 tically, "you don't know what it is to be a 
 mother " 
 
 "And he doesn't want to know, I am sure," 
 interrupted Mr. Aggland ; which statement was so 
 incontrovertibly true, that the officer could not for 
 the life of him help laughing at his host's way of 
 putting things. 
 
 Just then Phemie re-entered the room, carrying 
 a bonnet in one hand and her workbox in the 
 other. Having her little vanities too, she had 
 asked a neighbour to bring her some ribbon from
 
 104 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Grassenfel, and lier heart was set on trimming her 
 Lonnet that very Saturday night with the laud- 
 able view of wearing it the next morning in 
 church. 
 
 There was no absolute sinfulness, we will 
 conclude, in this desire ; but Mrs. Aggland 
 fired up on the spot to [denounce such wicked- 
 ness. 
 
 " Was it not enough that she had wasted her 
 whole afternoon ? was she going to waste the 
 evening as well ? With a hole in Duncan's 
 jacket ; with the pockets in her uncle's coat like 
 sieves ; with Helen's plaid dress wanting lining ; 
 Avith all the children needing stockings mended 
 for the morrow, was she going to sit down and 
 make up finery for herself ? She, Mrs. Aggland, 
 wondered how Phemie could have the face to go 
 to church after such selfishness. She wanted to 
 know what her Maker would think of her when 
 He saw her sitting there with new trimmings on 
 her bonnet, and the children's toes, poor dears, 
 coming through their socks." 
 
 " Phemie mended twenty pairs this morning,"
 
 THE AGGLAND INTERIOR. 105 
 
 said Duncan, who had followed his cousin into the 
 room ; " I counted them." 
 
 " Then she can get to Helen's frock," answered 
 Mrs. Aggland. 
 
 " Now let's have an end of this," broke in Mr. 
 Aggland, angrily. " I won't have the girl made a 
 slave of by anybody. Go on with your bonnet, 
 Phemie." 
 
 But the beauty had been taken off the ribbons 
 for the girl. She could not see them for tears ; 
 and so, putting all her little finery aside, she as- 
 sured her uncle that she did not care, that her 
 work could wait, that she had forgotten Helen's 
 frock, and would rather do it. 
 
 As she spoke, with the tears just trembling in 
 her voice, with her pretty hands putting the lace, 
 and ribbons, and net hurriedly on one side, with 
 her head bent down so that no one might see she 
 was crying, Mr. Aggland suddenly caught Captain 
 Stondon looking earnestly at her with an expres- * 
 sion in his face which made the farmer's heart 
 stand still. 
 
 The man loved her ! and if winter's snows had
 
 106 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 covered the green wheat in May, Mr. Aggland 
 could not have been more shocked or more sur- 
 prised. 
 
 For this he was staying among the hills — for this 
 he was putting up with such poor accommodation 
 as the farm afforded — for this he was complimen- 
 tary to Mrs. Aggland — for this he had a pleasant 
 word for every man, woman, and child about the 
 place. 
 
 For this How could he have been so bhnd ? 
 
 how could he have been such a fool ? What was 
 Mrs. Aggland's scolding in comparison to such a 
 discovery ? As to sit and talk without making a 
 fool of himself till he had leisure to think over the 
 matter, it was not to be attempted. 
 
 " Perhaps your aunt will give you a holiday to- 
 night, Phemie ? " he said ; " and let us have some 
 music." 
 
 It was Mr. Aggland who spoke ; but his voice 
 • soimded so strange and altered, that every one in 
 the room turned and looked at hun with involun- 
 tary surprise. Even his wife was astonished into 
 saying that if Phemie had done the socks, the
 
 THE AGGLAND INTERIOR. 107 
 
 other things could " let be ; " while Captain Ston- 
 don, reading in his host's face something of what 
 was passing within, woke at the same moment to 
 a vague kind of comprehension that he had dug 
 up his heart from the dead woman's grave, that 
 he had swerved from the old allegiance at last, 
 and that he was as hopelessly in love with a pair 
 of bright eyes, with a glory of auburn hair, with 
 a young, young girl, as the most foolish lad of 
 nineteen. 
 
 Well ! well ! a man may catch a fever at any 
 age. There is no law in the Statute Book, as far 
 as I am aware, which forbids or prevents his 
 doing so. 
 
 Meantime Duncan fetched in his father's violin, 
 and Duncan's brother, Donald, together with 
 Helen Aggiand and John and Prissy King, came 
 trooping into the room laden with music-books. 
 By degrees a younger Aggiand and two more 
 Kings straggled out of the kitchen into the par- 
 lour, and if the other children had not been satis- 
 factorily tucked up in bed, they would have 
 toddled down stairs also to hear " the singing."
 
 108 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 When a man's natural language chances to be 
 music, like Mr. Aggland's, the household generally 
 is apt to hear a little more melody than proves 
 agreeable. At the Hill Farm, however, every- 
 body's language seemed to be music. Peggy 
 crooned Scotch ballads all day long in the kitchen ; 
 Mrs. Aggland's shrill treble was to be heard up- 
 lifted in " The Maid of Llangollen," '' He was a 
 Knight of low degree," and other songs of the 
 same style and period. Duncan for everlasting- 
 was shouting OLit, " Sing, sing, sing — who sings ? " 
 which performance he occasionally varied with 
 " The Pilgrim Fathers," while the lesser fry chirped 
 out snatches of old airs, mixing up hymns and 
 Jacobite tunes in the strangest way imaginable. 
 Mr. Aggland himself generally went through his 
 daily duties to the tune of ''The Himdredth 
 Psalm," and swore at his refractory labourers 
 between the bars. 
 
 "All people that on earth" was, accordingly, 
 what he selected to lead off with when he had 
 screwed up his violin, and his wife kindly took the 
 treble, which would perhaps have sounded all the
 
 THE AGGLAXD INTERIOR. 109 
 
 better had she not occasionally inteiTupted her 
 performance to box some of the children's ears, to 
 " drat their noise," and to wonder if any woman 
 ever was so plagued as she. With the tears wiped 
 off her cheeks, with her lovely eyes bright as ever, 
 Phemie, stitching away at Helen's frock, some- 
 times interposed a sweet second, sometimes, when 
 her sense of the ludicrous was touched, looked 
 mischievously across at Captain Stondon, and made 
 him smile and turn away his head in spite of 
 himself. 
 
 " What the devil are you about. Prissy ! " was 
 one of Mr. Aggland's most usual sentences in the 
 middle of a hymn ; and when every now and then 
 he hit Duncan a rap over the head for singing a 
 false note, the punishment tested the officer's 
 gravity severely. 
 
 It would have been a curious scene that for 
 any stranger to look in on. By the fire sat Mrs. 
 Aggland, with her cap a little awry, with the cor- 
 ners of her eyes drawn down, with her mouth wide 
 open, with her head on one side. Excepting Mr. 
 Aggland, no one, I think, ever pulled such absurdly
 
 110 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Ugly faces while singing as the mistress of the Hill 
 Farm ; but the master eclipsed her ; every hair 
 on his head quivered as he sang ; not a muscle 
 remained still as he shook, and quavered, and in- 
 dulged in extempore roulades. The way he swung 
 himself about, the manenr in which he swayed 
 from side to side, the perfect desperation with 
 which he sang, the earnestness with which he 
 cursed, — these things all tended to make Phemie 
 misbehave herself, all conduced to fits of coughing, 
 and to suspicious attention to Helen's frock. 
 
 " Ech, Lord save us !" Peggy was ejaculating in 
 the kitchen ; " Maister 'ull burst his pipes, surely. 
 He ought to bring roun' the forty-foot ladder if 
 he wants to get up to that. My certy, he is at it 
 again 1 " And Peggy absolutely paused in her 
 work to listen. 
 
 A little back from the fire sat Captain Stondon, 
 with a batch of the children round him, thinkinsr 
 of the long ago past, of the pleasant, yet fleeting, 
 present. For his years .he was a young-looking 
 man ; he carried his fifty-five summers lightty, 
 and stooped no more under them than if fifteen
 
 THE AGGLAXD INTERIOR. Ill 
 
 had been subtracted from their nnmber. India 
 had not aged him. There was still about him 
 something of the same dash and honhomonie 
 which had won friends and gained love for the 
 young lieutenant of, say, thirty years before. His 
 brown hair was as yet unmixed with grey, his 
 light-blue eyes had not lost their keenness of 
 vision, their honesty of expression. If there was 
 nothing romantic about his appearance, there was 
 something which yet made any one with whom he 
 Came in contact feel instinctively that he was true ; 
 if he was not handsome, he was not plain. He 
 looked like what he was, an English squire, of 
 good birth, in easy circumstances, strong, hearty, 
 middle-aged. He had grown younger since he came 
 to the HiU Farm. Perhaps the children climb- 
 ing up his knees, perhaps the total rest, perhaps 
 the long idle days spent in watching Davy stand 
 on his hind legs smoking ; in seeing Duncan get- 
 ting bare-back on unbroken colts, and gallop them 
 round the fields ; in laughing at the tosses the 
 younger fry got while riding a favourite ram and 
 an ill-conditioned calf up and down the paddock ;
 
 112 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 and in wandering over the hills to Strammer Tarn, 
 had contributed to this result : but in any case 
 the fact was undeniable, Captain Stondon had re- 
 trogi'aded in years ; and if all went on well, he 
 bade fair to retrogTade a few more. He would 
 have liked the singing to continue for ever, so 
 that he might look at Phemie's white hands, and 
 snowy neck, and pretty face, without let or hin- 
 drance. But all earthly things must come to an 
 end ; and after Mr. Aggland had indulged the com- 
 pany with the serenade from "Don Pasquale" 
 solo, and the assembled congregation had sung the 
 " Evening Hymn," in no one line of which Phemie 
 could join, for fear of laughing out loud at her uncle, 
 the concert would have concluded, but for this. 
 
 " Johnny," whispered Captain Stondon to one 
 of the young Kings while the " Evening Hymn " 
 was still in progi*ess, " get your cousin to sing 
 something alone to the guitar, and I will send you 
 down the strongest knife I can find in London — 
 one with four blades. Ask her yourself, you know." 
 
 Whereupon the young imp struck his closed 
 mouth with his hand, and the moment Mr. Aggland
 
 THE AGGLAND INTERIOR. 113 
 
 put aside the violin, began tormenting Phemie 
 for one song — only one — onty — only — only 
 
 Which request Captain Stondon seconded, of 
 course, and Duncan then joined in, telling their 
 guest he should hear Phemie singing "Alice 
 Gray." 
 
 "You just ought; " he added, a sentence that of 
 course raised the officer's curiosity to fever pitch. 
 
 " I may never hear it," he pleaded, " if you do 
 not sing it to-night, for I shall probably have to 
 leave early in the week ; " and thus urged, Phemie, 
 blushing a good deal, took the guitar, and after 
 tuning it began — 
 
 '* She's all my fancy painted her, 
 
 She's lovely, she's divine ; 
 But her heart it is another's, 
 
 And it never can be mine. 
 Yet loved I as man never loved, 
 
 A love without decay — 
 Oh ! my heart, my heart is breaking 
 
 For the love of Alice Gray." 
 
 I dare say there are few who read these pages 
 that know anything of the old ballads which were 
 sung by the grandmothers of the present genera- 
 tion. New words and new music have succeeded 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 114 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 to the simple airs and the homely verses that yet 
 had strength enough in them to make many a 
 man's heart throb faster as he heard ; and it is very 
 rarely — once in a dozen years or so — that any one 
 strikes the well-remembered chords and wakes 
 the old harmony once more. Half a lifetime had 
 gone over Captain Stondon's head since the ballad 
 Phemie Keller sung had sounded in his ears be- 
 fore ; but the years seemed to fade away from 
 his memory as he listened, and he was young 
 again, sitting back in a crowded drawing-room, 
 that he might hide the tears he could not help 
 shedding. Ah me ! ah me ! that men's hearts 
 should keep so young, whilst their bodies gi'ow so 
 old — that the pains of youth should stay with us 
 when the hopeful buoyancy of youth is gone — 
 that a touch should make the blood flow out fast 
 as ever, when there is no sap left behind to enable 
 the bare tree to put forth green leaves and bright 
 buds of promise — that tears should well up into 
 the eyes when the capacity for smiling has left 
 the lips — that we should live through ail the fever 
 and trouble, and fret and worry, we thought left
 
 THE AGGLAND IXTEPJOR. 115 
 
 SO far behind, at the tone of a voice, at the sound 
 of an air. 
 
 The man's heart had not broken then ; was it 
 to be broken now ? 
 
 Had he kept the toy, defaced and battered 
 though it might be, all these years, to the end that 
 a girl should destroy it at last ? Was it only the 
 olden memories that made him pause for a mo- 
 ment ere he thanked Phemie for her song ? Was 
 it not rather that a new Alice Gray had crossed 
 his path, more fair, more divine, than the Alice 
 Gray of old ? A young, fresh, ingenuous Alice, 
 with the truest eyes, the most exquisite hair, the 
 most heavenly voice, man had ever conceived of ? 
 If he should love this Alice, would liis heart not 
 break ? With nothing before, with everything 
 behind him, what would the hereafter of his life 
 prove, if he had to leave that sweet face amid the 
 Cumberland hills while he went back again into 
 the dreary, lonely world, solitary and objectless. 
 He would win her love, he would make her love 
 him. Surely his position, his wealth, his personal 
 appearance, liis manners, were far above anything 
 
 i2
 
 116 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Miss Keller was likely to meet with at the Hill 
 Farm. He would be so good to her and hers ; he 
 would be so tender with her, so thoughtful, that for 
 very gratitude she must learn to love him. He 
 would take her away, he would show her foreign 
 countries, he would surround her with ever}^- luxury. 
 She should walk "in silk attire." Rich and rare 
 should be the gems wherewith he would deck 
 her ; life to her should be as a fairy tale ; money 
 and lands would be of value to* him at last ; 
 everything he possessed — name, station, wealth — 
 should be put to a use for her^— for this Cinde- 
 rella, whom he meant to convert into a princess, 
 if it pleased her to let him do so. All the old 
 tales, all the old ballads, came into his head the 
 wrong way at the same moment, for alas ! lie was 
 the rich suitor, and not the young penniless wooer ; 
 it was he who was thinking of offering the " rigs of 
 land, the sheep and the kye, the gowd and the 
 siller," which never ought to be owned by fortu- 
 nate lovers. He was reading the poems of all 
 times with an inverted meaning, and he might 
 have gone to bed that night happy, and dreamed
 
 THE AGGLAND INTERIOR. 117 
 
 the sweet dreams of the long and long ago but 
 for Mr. Aggland. 
 
 " Phemie," said that gentleman, Avith a certain 
 viciousness of manner, " since you have sung 
 about one of the Grays for Duncan, will you sing 
 about another for me ? ' Auld Robin,' my dear." 
 
 What were the officer's thoughts after that, as 
 he lay awake counting the weary hours that 
 seemed to him to be walking slowly and linger- 
 ingly, like living things, backwards and forwards, 
 over the eternal hills ? 
 
 My reader, I scarcely know ; but one thing is 
 certain, that they were only a degree more bitter 
 than those indulged in by Phemie's uncle, who, 
 with eyes wide open, watched through the dark- 
 ness his air castle vanishing away.
 
 CHAPTER YIIL 
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE.. 
 
 " You are right/' said Mr. Aggland. " Home- 
 keeping youth have ever homely wits ;" but the 
 sentence did not flow glibly off his tongue, and 
 the farmer stood for a moment after he had an- 
 swered Captain Stondon, looking with his outward 
 eyes it is true down the fair valley of Tordale, but 
 trying with his mental vision to penetrate into 
 the future which had suddenly become so misty 
 and uncertain. 
 
 It was early in the week following that Satur- 
 day night when knowledge had come to two at 
 least of the party at the Hill Farm. Captain Ston- 
 don was going to spend a few days at the Rectory 
 before turning his back on Cumberland, and ere 
 leaving the man who had been his friend in such 
 sore need, he was trying to show his gratitude for
 
 ALL THE DIFFERE^X*E. 119 
 
 the past, and to secure Mr. Aggland's services in 
 the future— a double purpose which fettered his 
 speech a little, and placed at once a certain em- 
 barrassment between himself and his host. 
 
 He was pleading to be allowed to do something 
 for Duncan ; to be permitted to hold out a help- 
 ing hand at this the turning point of his w4iole 
 life. 
 
 " He has abilities," remarked Captain Stondon. 
 " Why should he not have an opportunity of 
 taming them to account ? He has brains ; why 
 keep him here, where he will never have a chance 
 of making a fortune out of them 1 Let the boy 
 go away and see the world. He will learn more 
 in six months outside these mountains than he 
 •could leaiTL in as many years under their shadow." 
 
 And in reply Mr. Aggland remarked, as already 
 stated : " You are right. Home-keeping youth 
 have ever homely wits. And yet " ho pro- 
 ceeded after a moment's pause, "judging from 
 my own experience, I think it better for people 
 who must content themselves with an humble 
 sphere, never to be lifted above it. It is happier
 
 120 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 to be independent than rich ; it is a fine thing to 
 rise in the world, but it is a cursed thing to be 
 patronised. My opinion is, that a man worth 
 calling a man, ought to be able to say he owes all 
 he owns, all he has enjoyed, to no other man 
 living, — only to God and himself." 
 
 "But God makes men his instruments," sug- 
 gested Captain Stondon. 
 
 " He may ; but I doubt it,'' replied Mr. Ag- 
 gland ; " at least, I think we have no right to say 
 the instruments we deliberately choose for our- 
 selves were put in our way by the Almighty. 
 Look at me. Should not I have been a happier 
 man had no one ever said to me, ' Come out of 
 your station, and be a gentleman, Aggland ? ' A 
 gentleman, good lack, a gentleman?" and the, 
 firmer drew his hand up and down the sleeve of 
 his threadbare coat, and looked at his jDatched 
 shoes, at his coarse grey stockings, at his well- 
 worn trousers, contemptuously as he spoke. 
 
 " Should you dislike telling me your story ? '' 
 asked Captain Stondon, after a moment's hesita- 
 tion. " Pardon me, if I seem impertinent ; but
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENX'E. 121 
 
 your boy's case might be anything rather than 
 analogous to your own." 
 
 " You are right again," was the reply, '' since 
 no two lives are ever precisely analogous, and 3'et 
 each man who precedes us leaves his warning- 
 signal behind, showing where possible danger is 
 lurking. Now, my life was cursed by patronage ; 
 and you offer patronage to my lad. You see my 
 argument ? My story, certainly. I will tell thee 
 tales — 
 
 *' ' Of woful ages long ago betid : ' 
 
 I will tell you the 'lamentable fall of me,' albeit 
 
 it may be — 
 
 ** ' A tale told by an idiot, 
 Signifying nothing.' " 
 
 *' Let me be the judge of that," answered 
 Captain Stondon, smiling in spite of himself; 
 " let me hear your experience first, and then we 
 can talk of Duncan's future afterwards." 
 
 "I must begin at the beginning, I suppose," 
 said Mr. Aggland. " If you are not weary, shall 
 we walk along the hill path while we talk ? 
 Where was I ? oh, at my own birtli, which hap-
 
 122 PHEMIE KELLEE. 
 
 pened on the sixth of April, eighteen hundred 
 and one ; you can reckon that up, sir, hereafter, 
 and find how old a man I am." 
 
 The blow was not intended, but Captain 
 Stondon winced. He had made his debut on this 
 world's stage on . the fourteenth of June, seven- 
 teen hundred and ninety, and it did not take 
 him long to calculate how much older than Mr. 
 Aggland that fact made him. Meantime the 
 farmer proceeded : — 
 
 " I was not bom of prosperous parents ; I was, 
 on the contrary, born in 'poverty's low barren 
 vale,' which is not nearly so desirable a vale to 
 inhabit as poets usually imply. My father was a 
 country schoolmaster, one who might have sat to 
 Goldsmith for his picture. He loved children, he 
 loved teaching, he loved learning ; but neither 
 teaching, learning, nor children brought him 
 much money. I can see him now," went on Mr. 
 Aggland ; " see him sitting just where the sun- 
 beams had cleared a space out for themselves in 
 the middle of the dusty floor. The boys and 
 girls are all quiet at their sums ; he is holding a
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. I'Zo 
 
 slate, and explaining the Rule of Three to a child 
 who stands beside him. That child was myself. 
 I never knew him to be other than patient and 
 gentle with me, for I was the youngest of a 
 large family, the Benjamin of his age to him." 
 
 Mr. Aggland paused. For a moment the Cum- 
 berland hills faded from his eyes, and the old 
 home, left so long before, yet remembered so 
 distinctly, arose out of the years, and stood by 
 the roadside, with the elder-tree shading it, with 
 the duck-pond in front of it, with the half-acre of 
 garden all a-glow with flowers surrounding it. 
 He could see the sycamore under which he had 
 lain whilst conning his Yirgil and labouring 
 through Ovid ; and then the whole vision passed 
 away, and he was looking at the reality of his 
 life on a fine October morning, with Skillanscar 
 and Helbeck towering to the sky, and the man 
 whose life he had saved amongst those very rocks 
 and crags walking beside him, waiting for him to 
 proceed. 
 
 " He knew more than is usual with persons of 
 his class," went on Mr. Aggland, " and he taught
 
 124 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 me to love learning as lie did — to love it for its- 
 own sake, not for the sake of any money it might 
 bring, of any advantage that might accrue from 
 it. What he meant me to be, whether a school- 
 master like himself, or a clerk, or a labourer, I do 
 not know, for at sixteen I had the misfortune to 
 meet with a rich gentleman who took an interest 
 in me. It happened in this way. My father had 
 a brother living in a little seaport in Wales. He 
 was a tailor, and pretty well to do, and he used 
 to make us welcome to spend a week with him 
 every summer, as the holidays came round. It 
 was the last day of our stay, and I was hanging 
 about the shore loth to leave the sea, for I loved 
 it, when all at once there was a cry and a shout, 
 and I saw a boy who had been bathing washed 
 away by a wave and disappear. I guessed in a 
 minute how it was ; the lad had gone out beyond 
 his depth, and could not swim. There were 
 places where the sea deepened suddenly, and he 
 had dropped on one of them. I did not know^ 
 who he was, and if I had it would have made no 
 difference; one life is as valuable as another I
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. * 125 
 
 think now, and I suppose I tliought the same 
 then, if I thought at all. One boy is as good as 
 another, whether he be the son of a king or the 
 son of a peasant. I did not know who he was, 
 and God is witness that, not knowing, I risked 
 my life to save him willingly." 
 
 " And you did save him ? " asked Captain 
 Stondon. 
 
 " I ran a race with the sea for him," answered 
 Mr. Aggland, a flush overspreading his hollow 
 cheeks ; " I fought for him, I got mad with the 
 waves for trying to beat me out. Though it is 
 thirty years since — thirty years within a trifle — I 
 can remember, as if it was but yesterday, looking 
 out over the waves seaward, and thinking I could 
 follow him to Ireland, if need were, sooner 
 than the waters should beat me. He went down 
 twice. As he rose the third time I had him. I 
 stretched my ami out over a wave and caught 
 him. I could not have brought him back to 
 land ; but looking over the water, not towards 
 Ireland this time, I saw help coming ; and I kept 
 liim up till we were both pulled into the boat
 
 126 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 that had pushed off after me. I liked the sea up 
 to that minute, sir ; I have hated it ever since. I 
 could not put into words what I thought about it 
 as I struggled to keep him and myself afloat till 
 the boat came. I have never had a bad illness 
 since, when that minute has not been reproduced 
 for my benefit. I suppose it was fear came over 
 me ; but I seemed to be in the power of some 
 cruel enemy, with whom I could not reason, 
 against whom I could not struggle ; I felt as if I 
 was alone in the world out there — alone with the 
 waters round and about me. I remember trying 
 to hold on by the waves, and then after that 
 there was a blank." 
 
 " Did they recover both of you ? " asked 
 Captain Stondon. 
 
 " Yes — but they had hard work bringing the boy 
 to life again. He was a small delicate lad, though 
 two years older than myself; a motherless lad, 
 an only son — the heir to a great property. His 
 name was Worton ; and from the time he opened 
 his eyes that day when I fought for him with the 
 sea, till the hour when I closed the lids over
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 127 
 
 them in Ischia, he never could bear me to leave 
 him. And I never did leave him. 
 
 " Mr. Worton, who had seen the whole of the 
 accident, was grateful, more grateful than there 
 was any necessity for, and he offered to take me- 
 and bring me up with his own boy and provide 
 for me, and allow my father a small annuity. 
 
 " If we had asked half his fortune, I think he 
 would have given it to us, when he heard his son 
 speak again. He need not have been so liberal 
 as he was, and I have often wished since he had 
 let us alone; but it seemed a fine thing to us 
 then, and I went back with them to Worton 
 Court as Master Reginald's friend — companion — 
 what you will. 
 
 "We led an awfully idle life. All Mr. 
 Worton's time was devoted to thinking what 
 would best please his son ; all Master Reginald's 
 time was taken up trying to keep himself out of 
 the grave. As Burns says, 'he met every face 
 with a greeting like that of Balak to Balaam : 
 " Come, curse me that East wind, and come, 
 defy me the North."' It was such a labour to
 
 128 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 him to live, that I have often wondered since 
 he did not wish to 
 
 " ' Set up Lis everlasting rest. 
 And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars 
 From his world-wearied llesh. ' 
 
 But he desired nothing of the kind. He enjoyed 
 existence as much as I have ever known any 
 one. He used to Hke lying on the sofa in the 
 winter time ; lying on the grass in the summer. 
 He liked being read to, he liked to hear music ; 
 he was fond of travelling by very slow stages, 
 in a very easy carriage ; he enjoyed society, and 
 he loved me. 
 
 " We loved one another," went on Mr. Aggland, 
 after a pause. " ' We were so mixed as meeting 
 streams, for he was I, I he.' The day came when 
 they tried to separate us, tried to make me 
 believe he would be better without me — tried to 
 make him believe I was no fit companion for 
 him ; but we could not part till death took him, 
 and then I stood in the world alone. They had 
 made me what I was. Reginald had a tutor, but 
 we never learnt anything — never were expected
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 129 
 
 to learn. All my life had been for eight years 
 spent in keeping him alive ; for eight years I did 
 nothing but that ; for eight years I read, but 
 never studied. I amused him, but never worked 
 myself. I stood between him and a woman who 
 wanted to become his stepmother ; and at the 
 end of that time, at twenty-four years of age, I 
 was cast adrift, with a fair library of books, and 
 fifty pounds in my pocket. The poor fellow had 
 left me all his mother's small property, four thou- 
 sand pounds ; but there were such things said of 
 me by that cruel woman, and Reginald's deluded 
 father, that I flung the legacy to them, and, 
 shaking the dust from my feet, left the house for 
 ever. Mr. AVorton would have had me back. He 
 offered me money, he offered me any apology I 
 chose to ask. He offered to ' advance my views ; ' 
 but I cursed him and his patronage too, cursed 
 the day he took me from my own station, and 
 gave me a taste for luxuries I could never 
 command. 
 
 " ' You have had the best years of my life/ I 
 finished ; ' you have unfitted me for work ; you
 
 130 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 have made me as useless as if I had been born a 
 gentleman. You let them try to turn your son's 
 heart against me ; and when they failed in that, 
 you allow them to saddle his legacy with such 
 slanders as force me, for my own credit's sake, to 
 go out into the world a beggar, rather than be 
 beholden to the bounty of my dead friend. And 
 all for what ? All because a woman wants to 
 many you ; all because you want an heir to Wor- 
 ton Court — an heir that I hope, and pray, and 
 believe will never be born to you. For God is 
 just, and He will not forget Reginald, and He 
 will not forget me.' " 
 
 " Hard words," said his auditor, 
 
 " They Avere too hard," answered Mr. Aggland, 
 — " too hard to speak to a misguided, childish old 
 man. I thought about them afterwards, till I 
 could bear the recollection no longer, and wrote to 
 apologise, to retract. Madam returned the letter, 
 with a note, stating that ' Mr. Worton appreciated 
 my present regret as highly as my former ser- 
 vices ; and concluding want of money had pro- 
 cured him the honour of my communication,
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 131 
 
 inclosed me a cheque for a hundred pounds, the 
 acknowledgment of which she begged might end 
 the correspondence.' I sent back the cheque, and 
 have since fought out my fight alone. What I 
 have done during the years which have come and 
 gone between this time and that could scarcely 
 interest you. There are few things I have not 
 tried my hand at ; I have prospered in life, and 
 was able moreover to keep my father without let- 
 ting him take another sixpence from Mr. Worton ; 
 but it was hard work, beginning existence, as one 
 may say, with soft hands — no profession, no useful 
 learning — at four-and-twenty. Now, sir, you know 
 why I do not desire patronage for my son — why I 
 had rather see hun earning his bread by the sweat 
 of his brow than eating it, as I did, at a rich man's 
 table. Going over my own story has made me 
 see clearly that which is best for him ; and I 
 decline your offer, sir, though I thank you most 
 heartily for it." 
 
 There was an awkward silence after this. Cap- 
 tain Stondon looked across at Skillanscar, and 
 along the defile to the broken stone bridge, ere he 
 
 K 2
 
 132 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 began to say, in a voice so low that it almost 
 seemed as though he were telling some secret 
 which he feared being overheard — 
 
 "I have not been quite frank with you, Mr. 
 Aggland. I wish to do something for Duncan, 
 but I want much more earnestly to do something 
 for myself. Will you aid me in the matter ? May 
 I count on your help ? " 
 
 " What is it ? What help do you need ? " And 
 the two men stopped and faced each other, seeing 
 nothing for the moment but the shadowy future, 
 Avhich was coming towards them both as a reality 
 and a substance, with giant strides across the 
 hills. 
 
 " Can you not guess ? " asked Captain Stondon. 
 
 " I would rather be certain," answered Mr. 
 Aggland, drily. 
 
 " Well, then, it is this," said Captain Stondon, 
 plunging desperately into his confession. " I 
 want to marry your niece. I love her. I will try 
 to make her happy ; I will " 
 
 "Stop a moment," interrupted Mr. Aggland, 
 and he sat him down on a stone by the side of
 
 ALL THE DIFFEKENCE. 133 
 
 the path, and turned his face away from his com- 
 panion, while he watched the hopes and the plans 
 of his later life frustrated, the last fragment of his 
 fancy castle levelled with the ground. If Phemie 
 married this man she was lost to him and his. 
 No matter how well Duncan got on in the years 
 to come, Phemie might never be wife to him ; 
 there would be no cozy farm-house among the 
 hills, to which he could wend his steps when the 
 summer glory was lying on tree and grass and 
 heather ; there would be no ingle nook in the 
 dark winter days to come, where he might be 
 always sure of being greeted with looks of love 
 and words of welcome. The doors of the modest 
 house he had imagined for the pair were shut 
 violently in his face. But for Phemie ? while he 
 stood without in the cold, there were other doors 
 opened for her to pass through : she might be 
 rich, she might become a great lady. Had he any 
 right to stand between her and such a future ? 
 Dare he condemn her to seclusion certainly, to 
 poverty possibly ? Could he tell her to go afoot 
 through life, whilst there was a carriage waiting
 
 134 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 to take her easily and pleasantly along the 
 highways of a world, where struggles for daily 
 bread and anxieties for the moiTOw were un- 
 known? 
 
 Should he, for any selfish feeling — for any dread 
 of losing her — for any personal consideration — 
 stand between her and the prospect her beauty 
 had opened out for her? Mr. Aggland thought 
 he would try to be disinterested both ways : he 
 thought he would try to forget, on the one hand, 
 that if Captain Stondon married Phemie he 
 should lose her, and he deteraiined, on the other, 
 that he would not sell the girl for any benefit 
 likety to accrue to him or his from her change of 
 position. He would think of Phemie, and Phemie 
 alone. He would try to do his duty by her, and 
 listen to all Captain Stondon had to say, quietly 
 and dispassionately. Having made up his mind 
 to which prudent course, Mr. Aggland turned to 
 his companion, and said : — 
 
 " I was beginning to fear this ; you perhaps 
 think I ought to have seen it before, but I did 
 not. Not even a suspicion crossed my mind until
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 135 
 
 Saturday night, and I have been trying ever 
 since to get rid of that suspicion. I mean no- 
 thing ungracious, sir ; but I msh anybody else 
 rather than myself had picked you up from 
 
 there " and Mr. Aggland flung a stone down 
 
 the path to the exact spot where Davy discovered 
 the traveller ; " and I Avish it had pleased you to 
 fall in love with any other girl in Cumberland 
 sooner than with Phemie Keller." 
 
 " You need not distress yourself about the 
 matter," answered the officer: "tell me to go, 
 and I "s\all go. Though it would have been better 
 for me had you left me to die on the hill-side, 
 still, tell me to give up all hopes of future hap- 
 piness, all chance of domestic contentment, and 
 I wail do it. I will pay you for my life with my 
 happiness, and though the bargain be a hard one, 
 hold to it honestly." 
 
 " I believe you would," said Mr. Aggland, look- 
 ing with a certain admiration at the man who 
 made this offer. " I believe you would. I believe 
 you to be honest and honourable, generous and 
 tme, and that makes it all the harder for me to
 
 136 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 say what I want to say. I am between two stools 
 — I am on the horns of a dilemma — 
 
 • I am a heavy stone 
 Eoll'd up a hill by a weak child : I move 
 A little up, and tumble back again.'" 
 
 '' Let me speak first, then," suggested Captain 
 Stondon, seating himself as he spoke on a piece of 
 rock close by Mr. Aggland. " Let me tell you I 
 have not run into temptation wittingly — that I 
 have not remained in your house, eaten your 
 bread, partaken of your hospitality, with any deli- 
 berate intention of frustrating your wishes, and 
 taking your niece from you. Knowledge has 
 come upon me as it has come upon you, suddenly ; 
 all I ask is for you to consider my proposal well 
 before you give me any answer. I know what 
 you have desired ; I know you want Miss Keller 
 to become your son's wife. I see you have set 
 your heart on this match ; but I entreat you not 
 to prejudice her mind against me on this account. 
 I implore you not to influence her against me, 
 because you wish her to marry him." 
 
 Then Mr. Aggland tossed back his hair, — his
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 137 
 
 hair which was like the mane of a wild horse, — 
 and said, " ' Is thy servant a dog that he should do 
 this thing ? ' Do yon think I am ' moulded of 
 such coarse metal ' as all that comes to ? Do you 
 imagine I have no love for anything but myself 
 — that, though I have reared her as my own child 
 — though I do not deny that the idea of her 
 leavino^ me, of her marrvino^ you, is ' like the 
 tyrannous breathing of the north,' which ' shakes 
 all our buds from growing,' — that I cannot still 
 desire her happiness, and try for her sake — for 
 the sake of the dead and gone — to 'see clearly ? 
 I see two things : I see you can give her wealth 
 and position ; but " 
 
 " But what ? " asked Captain Stondon, as the 
 farmer paused. 
 
 " She is little more than a child," said Mr. 
 Aggland, hesitatingly, " and you are middle- 
 aged." 
 
 " A man can love in middle age as well as in 
 his earliest youth," answered Captain Stondon. 
 
 " True ; but can a girl love that man ? " asked tlic 
 other. " I could not think of any one of Phemie's
 
 138 PHEMIE KELLEE. 
 
 age except as a daughter, and I should say that 
 you are as old as I am." 
 
 " If he only knew/' thought Captain Stondon. 
 
 " It is too like May and December for my 
 taste/' Mr. Aggland went on, firmly. " She is in 
 the very earliest springtime of life ; she has got 
 her April and May — her glorious summer-tide — 
 all before her ; and you, like myself, are travelling 
 on towards the frosts and snows of winter. Is it 
 a right thing, I ask you ? I put it dispassion- 
 ately — is it right ? " 
 
 " Love takes no account of years," replied the 
 officer. 
 
 " On the one side. I am talking of the other side. 
 Phemie is but little over sixteen, and you are, say 
 five-and-forty. Look at that, sir ; thirty years — 
 half a life-time — between you. Only think of 
 it — thirty years at the wi'ong end; bad enough 
 between thirty and sixty, but downright madness 
 between twenty and fifty. And she will not 
 be even twenty for more than three years to 
 come ! She is too young, sir, far and away too 
 young."
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 139 
 
 "The difference is on the right side, replied 
 Captain Stondon. "Does not your favourite 
 Shakespeare advise — 
 
 * Let still the woman take 
 An elder than herself ? ' " 
 
 " Yes ; but I am not aware that Shakespeare 
 advises a woman in any case to marry her father," 
 retorted Mr. Aggland. 
 
 " She is older than Duncan, and you would 
 have had her marry him," persisted Captain Ston- 
 don. "You would give her to him without a 
 regret ; you would shut her within the walls of 
 this mountain prison for ever, and never sigh over 
 such a waste of grace and beauty. You could see 
 her working about her husband's house — working 
 like a servant — and never wish she had been born 
 to a different lot." 
 
 " You are wrong in some of your statements," 
 answered Mr. Aggland ; " yet she might be happy 
 among these hills ; and, if she were happy, I do 
 not know that I ought to desire anything more for 
 her. The Queen on her throne can be but that. 
 If the peasant be happy, he is as prosperous a
 
 140 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 man as the peer ; for happiness is the acme of 
 earthly bhss. It is the Bathmendi of the Persian 
 tale which we wander all over the world to find, 
 while it lies awaiting us in some sequestered nook 
 like Tordale." 
 
 Leaning his elbow on his knee, supporting his 
 chin on his hand, Mr. Aggland looked thought- 
 fully and sorrowfully down the defile as he 
 spoke. 
 
 All truth contains an echo of sadness ; and it is 
 for this reason, I suppose, because it is sad as well 
 as solemn, that a man never speaks it either to 
 his ovm heart or to his fellow without feeling 
 graver for the utterance. 
 
 Some thought of this kind passed through 
 Captain Stondon's mind even while he an- 
 swered — 
 
 "Your argument will bear turning. A peer 
 may be as happy as a peasant ; the wife of a rich 
 man as happy as the wife of a poor. If I have 
 found my Bathmendi in Tordale, there is surely 
 no reason why I should not carry it back with me 
 to Marshlands. God knows I have waited long
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 141 
 
 and travelled far. Do not send me out again into 
 the world — desolate." 
 
 And gi'owing eloquent in the very extremity of 
 his fear that he should be cast forth from this 
 earthly heaven into which he had strayed all un- 
 wittingly, Captain Stondon told the story of his 
 life — of his cold, cheerless, lonely life — to his 
 attentive auditor. He told of the years he had 
 lived unloved ; he spoke of the romantic affection 
 of his boyhood — of the attachment he had che- 
 rished — of the end which had come to it, and to 
 all the dreams of his youth. He told how he had 
 never thought to love again — never thought to 
 marry, or settle down, or hear the prattle of 
 children, or look for an heir to all the broad acres 
 of Marshlands. As a man he appealed to a man. 
 There was nothing he said with which Mr. Agg- 
 land could not sympathise ; and, as he proceeded, 
 the farmer began to see more and more that the 
 match would be a good one for Phemie ; that if 
 she could but love him, she had every chance of 
 happiness. 
 
 A just man and a true, a faithful man and a
 
 142 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 forbearing ; a man whose heart was as young as a 
 boy's^ who would be a husband, a lover, a friend, 
 all in one ; who would feel for the girlish thing he 
 was takinof from amono- the mountains to the 
 bustle and stir of the world ; who would take 
 thought for her inexperience ; who would stand 
 by her in trouble ; who would be staunch till 
 death ; who did not consider love a light thing, or 
 woman a toy, but who would take Phemie as a 
 sacred trust, for the care of which he should have 
 to answer before the throne of God. 
 
 And further — for it would be but half-telling a 
 story to keep back any of the truth — Mr. Aggland 
 could not be blind to the fact that, in a worldly 
 point of view. Captain Stondon was a most excel- 
 lent i^arti. He had thought his guest well-off, 
 but he had never known lioiv well-off he was, till 
 the officer spoke at length of his position, of the 
 value of Marshlands, of the nature of the settle- 
 ments he could make ; of the extent of the pro- 
 perty his son — if he had one — would inherit. 
 
 " I see," he said, at last, " that, putting aside 
 the one obstacle, it would be a wonderful match
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 143 
 
 for Phemie to make. Though she is well born, 
 she has no fortune, and a pretty face is a poor 
 substitute for a dowry anywhere. I know she 
 will never get such an offer again, and if you can 
 win her, wear her. Take her from us, for you can 
 do better for her, I fear, than we can. The chil- 
 dren mil break their hearts to be parted from 
 her, but that cannot be helped." 
 
 " Why should they be parted- ? " asked Captain 
 Stondon. 
 
 " Because, though Phemie has walked with us 
 long," answered Mr. Aggland, '' we have come to 
 the cross-roads now, and her way lies different 
 from ours. That is, it will lie different if she elect 
 to go with you." 
 
 And, having uttered this sentence, which he 
 spoke mournfully, the farmer rose to go back 
 along the mountain path, cherishing no hope in 
 his mind that Phemie would refuse her wealthy 
 suitor, feeling a conviction that the girl would 
 soon be leaving Tordale — leaving the old familiar 
 scenes far behind her for ever. 
 
 But he did not interfere — he did not advise ;
 
 144 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 there were plenty of people to tell her what a 
 great match she might make, what a grand lady 
 she might become, without his opening his lips on 
 the subject. Gradually the neighbours began to 
 talk. The young surgeon from Grassenfel twitted 
 Phemie when he met her in the valley about 
 having grown proud and distant. He supposed it 
 was that fine gentleman lover of hers who had 
 made her turn up her nose at humble suitors like 
 himself. Then Mr. Conbyr threw out some hints 
 in a decorous, clerical kind of manner, which 
 showed that he evidently thought Miss Keller an 
 amazingly lucky young person ; not long after 
 that, Duncan grew sulky, and Mrs. Aggland defe- 
 rential ; and Peggy, ay, even Peggy M'Nab, began 
 to sound Captain Stondon's praises in her darling's 
 ears. 
 
 Phemie had her senses. Phemie could not be 
 blind — she knew what was coming ; and when at 
 last it did come, and she took counsel with her 
 uncle, the pair cried in each, other's arms, and 
 then decided that Phemie should think the 
 matter over, and give Captain Stondon an answer
 
 ALL THE DIFFERENCE. 145 
 
 when she had thought it out quietly, and 
 alone. 
 
 Sitting up in her little bed that night, with the 
 ghostly white draperies looking still more white 
 and ghostly in the moonlight, her head on Peggy's 
 shoulder, her tears falling on Peggy's bosom, 
 Phemie talked about Captain Stondon and his 
 offer till she grew sick and weary. I think if 
 Peggy had remained firm to the creed in which 
 she was answerable for having brought her nurse- 
 ling up, Phemie would scarcely have relinquished 
 her dream husband without a greater struggle ; 
 but, as it was, Peggy turned traitor, and, in the 
 face of reality, scouted the vision she had so often 
 conjured up. 
 
 " I dare say he is very good," finished Phemie, 
 "and I do like him very well ; but he is not in 
 the least like the lord you promised should come 
 for me in a coach-and-four whenever I errew tall 
 enough to be married." 
 
 " That was na' to be expectit," answered Peggy 
 McNab, oracularly ; and who may say but that 
 Peggy's observation Avas strictly true ? Pcrliaps 
 
 VOL. I. T,
 
 146 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 its very truth made the remark all tlie more irri- 
 tating to Phemie, who, laying her head on her 
 pillow, cried herself to sleep, feeling that between 
 the romance of her life and the reality there was 
 indeed all the difference 1
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 
 
 During the greater part of the next day, Phemie 
 mended stockings as if her life depended on the 
 rapidity with which she worked. She would not 
 eat — she would not talk — she would not play with 
 the children — but she would stitch on hour after 
 hour, never lifting her eyes except to look out at 
 the rain, which was pelting down in torrents. 
 
 Every one in the house knew as a matter of 
 course that Phemie was making her choice ; even 
 the youngest child contemplated her with a vague 
 kind of wonder, dimly conscious that Phemie was 
 thinking of something in which it could have no 
 part or lot — something which separated her from 
 the remainder of the household for the time being, 
 which rendered it necessary for all conversation 
 held in her presence to be unnatural and con-
 
 148 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 strained, and which forced Daniel Aggland, junior 
 — the baby above mentioned — to sit down on the 
 carpet and stare at Phemie for a full half-hour 
 without winking. 
 
 There it sat, holding its shoeless foot mth its 
 right hand, while sucking the thumb of its left — 
 there it sat, the child looking at the girl to whom 
 the woman's question, man'iage, had come to be 
 solved so soon, until, having exhausted its wonder- 
 ment, it began to take offence at Phemie's un- 
 usual silence and at last burst out into a paroxj^sm 
 of indignant screams. 
 
 Then Phemie laid aside her work and comforted 
 it. She had grown so accustomed to nursing that, 
 young though she was, she could hush and quiet a 
 child's distress as cleverly as any matron in the 
 county. She had such a sweet voice, that instinc- 
 tively the baby ceased crying to listen to its tones. 
 She had such a beautiful face, that the little 
 hands unclenched naturally in order to stroke it. 
 She had such divine hair, that infant eyes instinc- 
 tively opened wide to watch the light flickering 
 and rippling over the braids.
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 149 
 
 She had such a way of gathering a child to her, 
 that the tiny creature could not choose but lie 
 still, nestling close to her heart. Dear Phemie 
 Keller ! pretty, vain, gay, fanciful, dreamy Phemie 
 — thinking of you as you walked up and down 
 that little sitting-room, hushing the child into 
 quietness, it seems to me that Captain Stondon 
 might well be excused for forgetting his own age 
 and your youth, and remembering only the 
 beauty which he saw, and the true, faithful 
 nature that he had penetration enough to know 
 you possessed. 
 
 "Poor baby Danny," muttered Mrs. Aggland 
 sotto voce, as she watched the o^irl soothinf]: the 
 child's distress ; " you won't have her long to coo 
 over you and humour you at every turn ; you'll be 
 a poor forsaken baby soon, for mother won't have 
 time to be waiting upon you as Phemie has done." 
 
 All of which Phemie heard, as Mrs. Aggland 
 intended she should ; truth being that Mrs. Agg- 
 land had a burning desire to know for certain 
 what she was thinking about. 
 
 " It is the most unnatural thing I ever heard
 
 150 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 of/' said the mistress of the Hill Farm to Peggy 
 M'Nab. " Instead of taking counsel with one and 
 another, and being uplifted at the notion of being 
 made a grand lady of for life, she sits like a statute 
 mending them old stockings, not opening her lips 
 to a soul, not even talking about her wedding 
 clothes. Anybody might think it was sentence 
 of death that had come instead of an offer of 
 marriage." 
 
 " Marriage is an unco' serious thing," answered 
 Peggy M'Nab. 
 
 " You may say that, Pegg}^," replied Mrs. Agg- 
 land ; " not that you can know much about the 
 matter from your own experience ; but still it is 
 not so serious a thing as a funeral ; and Phemie 
 sits there with as solemn a face as if she was at a 
 bui7ing, sighing every now and then as though 
 her heart was like to burst." 
 
 " Maybe she's no on for taking him," suggested 
 ^^ggy ; " though he's weel enough, weel favoured 
 and kindly spoken, he's no young, mistress. He's 
 nearer a match for you or me, nor for such a bairn 
 as Phemie."
 
 EETEOSPECTIVE. 151 
 
 " As for that, Peggy M'Nab," said Mrs. Aggiand, 
 " I will thank you to keep your distance, and not 
 talk of your age and mine in the same sentence, 
 when anybody with half an eye can see you might 
 be my mother twice over." 
 
 " I would have had to begin young, then," re- 
 marked Peggy, parenthetically. 
 
 " And with regard to Captain Stondon," went 
 on Mrs. Aggiand, unheeding the interruption, 
 " what does the few years' difference between him 
 and Phemie signify ? Won't she have everything 
 she wants ? Won't she have money, and leisure, 
 and diess, and servants, and carriages and horses, 
 and goodness only can tell what besides ? And 
 don't you know those are just the things Phemie 
 has been hankering after all her life ? Is she not 
 the making of a fine lady ?" 
 
 " She is bonny enough for one, at ony rate," put 
 in Peggy. 
 
 " Some may think her so. I know I think her 
 conceity enough for anything ; and if she wants 
 all this — if she wishes to be made a princess 
 just at once, why need she look so miserable now
 
 152 PHEMIE KELLEE. 
 
 it is all put in her way — by the act of Providence, 
 as one may say ? Does she think she will ever get 
 such a chance again ? Does she think it snows, 
 and hails, and rains husbands on the hills ? Does 
 she think a poor country girl can pick and choose 
 like some great heiress ? Does she imagine all 
 the lords and dukes in the country are coming 
 down to Cumberland to make her a peeress out of 
 hand ? If she thinks that, Peggy M'Nab, she is 
 mistaken, and so I tell you." 
 
 Nobody knew better than Peggy that Phemie 
 was mistaken. Nobody knew better than the old 
 Scotch woman that there is deal of difference be- 
 tween a fairy tale and everyday life ; betwesn the 
 lover of a winter evening's story and the suitor 
 who, in the broad daylight, comes in his proper 
 flesh and blood to ask for the fair maiden's hand. 
 Since the suitor had come across the hills — since 
 such astonishing good fortune had fallen to 
 Phemie's lot as to secure a real live gentleman for 
 her lover — Peggy M'Nab had seen light. It was 
 very well to keep back the farmers' sons, and the 
 young tradesmen who sometimes came from the
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 153 
 
 neighbouring to^vns to see their parents at Tordale ; 
 but to reject Captain Stondon — to repulse this 
 middle-aged Robin Gray, when there was not a 
 Jamie at all in the question, Peggy saw would be 
 midsummer madness. Was not he, as she often 
 said, a " braw man," tall and erect, and gentleman- 
 looking, and of gentle bluid into the bargain ? 
 Had not he given her, Peggy, as much money in 
 one handful as she earned for wages in the course 
 of a year ? Was not he quiet spoken ? not a rant- 
 ing, shouting devil like the young surgeon from 
 Grassenfel, who alternately cursed Peggy for a fool, 
 and slapped her on the back, saying she was a great 
 old girl for all that. He did not drink spirits raw, 
 like Mr. Fagg. He did not come into the house 
 like a company of dragoons. You never heard 
 him say a wry word about his food ; whatever was 
 set before him he eat, let it be loaf-bread or oat- 
 meal, haggis or a joint. Was it not better to be 
 an old man's darling than a young man's slave ? 
 Spite of the fairy tales, and the lord's son, and the 
 carriage and four, was not Captaia Stondon's offer 
 better than any reality Peggy had ever thought
 
 IM PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 likely to come in her nurseling's way ? Vague 
 visions are one thing — tangible success is another ; 
 and there is no use in den3dng that the tangible 
 success which had come to Phemie Keller asto- 
 nished every person who knew that young lady, 
 except, indeed, the young lady herself, who, having 
 pacified the child at last, laid it down in its 
 mother's lap, and then gathering up her work, 
 went off to her own room, where, having locked 
 her door, she drew a chair up to the window, and 
 sat down to look out upon the valley of Tordale, 
 whilst she thought of her o^vii present — of her own 
 future. 
 
 She was but a young thing after all, dear reader, 
 to be thinking about the whole of her life to come 
 — but a young, ignorant girl, to be brought in a 
 moment face to face, with that which was to de- 
 termine the weal or the woe of every future hour ; 
 and as she gazed down the valley her tears fell 
 faster than the driving rain, and she leaned her 
 head against the window-frame and cried as though 
 her heart were breaking, at the choice she was 
 called upon to make so suddenly.
 
 KETROSPECTIVE. 155 
 
 It is not much to read about this man's mistake, 
 about that woman's error ; the book is closed, the 
 tale forgotten, and the reader goes on his own 
 path contentedly. Even when soul talking to soul 
 some one tells his neighbour where and how he 
 lost himself — how he went ^vrong — where he dug 
 deep graves — where he laid down his heart in the 
 coffin beside some frail human body, the listener, 
 sympathizing though he may be, is apt to over- 
 look what loss all this wrong and suffering- 
 involved. 
 
 Do you know when he has finished what it all 
 meant ? As he turns away, do you understand 
 what he has been talking about ? It was his life, 
 man ; and he had but one. But one, good God ! 
 and that is what none of these happy, prosperous 
 people can be made to comprehend. He has 
 spoiled his horn ; he has not made his spoon. 
 Other people have lives to live out and make the 
 most of, but he has marred his : it may not signify 
 much to you, my friend, but it signifies everything 
 to him, because he cannot go back and begin de 
 novo ; it has been all loss, and in this world there
 
 156 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 may never come a profit to compensate for that 
 which he has left behind. 
 
 Some idea of this kind, very vague and very 
 shadowy, passed through Phemie's mind as she sat 
 at the window lookino^ throuo^h blindinsf tears at 
 the famihar landscape, at the mountains that had 
 been her friends for years. It might not be very 
 much she was considering ; but it was her all, 
 nevertheless. Her little investment in the world's 
 great lottery might be a mere bagatelle ; but it 
 was the whole of her capital, notwithstanding. 
 
 It was her life ; it was what I have been trying 
 to talk about ; it was everything she possessed of 
 value on earth, that she sat thinking of as the 
 evening darkness gathered down upon Tordale 
 church ; upon the wet graves where the dead, 
 who had lived out their lives before she was born, 
 were sleeping quietly ; upon the waterfall ; upon 
 the trees ; upon the distant valley ; upon the 
 parsonage house, in the dining-room whereof Cap- 
 tain Stondon was standing at that very moment, 
 thinking, in the flickering firelight, of her. 
 - As the seed-time is to the harvest ; as the acorn
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 157 
 
 iS to the oak ; as the blossom is to the fruit, so 
 was this vague thought to Phemie Keller, in com- 
 parison to what the same thought grew to, clear 
 and tangible, in the after years, which were then 
 all before her. It was instinct ; it- was an uncer- 
 tain glimmering of an eternal truth. With the 
 same shadowy indistinctness — with the same un- 
 reasoning terror as that of a child coming in 
 contact for the first time with death — did Phemie 
 Keller look out for the first time from her little 
 bed-chamber on life. 
 
 Hitherto, though I have spoken of the promise 
 of her beauty, I have said little of herself, and 
 less of the kind of existence hers had been from 
 childhood, until Captain Stondon met her in 
 Tordale church. She is thinking of her past as 
 she sits in the gathering darkness ; thinking as 
 she leans her head against the window-frame, and 
 listens to the wind howling among the mountains, 
 and the rain beating over the beautiful valley 
 below — at one and the same moment of when 
 she will be a woman, and of when she was a 
 child. She is wondering, if she leaves Tordale,
 
 158 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 with what eyes she will look upon it again ; what 
 she Avill have to pass through, ere, in years to 
 come, she returns to look upon it once more ; and 
 as she wonders, her memoiy casts back to the 
 days that are gone, and she is a child in the old 
 manse by the sea-shore, listening to the roar of 
 the ever-restless ocean, lying in her bed with 
 the waves singing her lullaby, wandering on the 
 beach and building up palaces on the sand — 
 palaces ornamented with shells, and set out with 
 sea-weed that the next flood-tide destroyed ! 
 
 What more did she see ? what more did memory 
 give back to her, as the waves cast up drift on the 
 shore? Out of the past there came again to her 
 the self she had been, the child she could never 
 be more. 
 
 A child with a clear white skin, through which 
 the veins appeared blue and distinct — a delicate 
 child with a faint colour in her cheeks, with 
 golden hair, who was mostly dressed in white, 
 who had dainty muslin frocks, who had soft lace, 
 edging her short sleeves, who was her grand- 
 father's pet, who was the life and soul of the
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 159 
 
 manse ; with her old-fashioned talk ; with her 
 loving, clinging, twining, cheery, tender ways. A 
 child who, being always with grown-up people, 
 learned to think long before her proper time — a 
 child who had never lain down to sleep when a 
 storm was raging without praying God to bring 
 those who were on sea, safe to land — a young 
 thing who had seen women wringing their hands 
 and mourning for the dead — ^who having lost both 
 father and mother herself could understand the 
 meaning of the word orphan, and cry with the 
 fatherless children as they talked about the 
 parents who might never again come home. 
 
 Right and wrong ! She had learnt what both 
 words signified in early days in that old manse by 
 the sea-shore. From the time she could toddle, 
 she had been wont to shake her head gravely at 
 temptation, and to draw back her fingers from 
 desired objects, lisping to herself, "Musn't ; 
 granpa's father in heaven wouldn't be pleased," 
 and then she would mount on a chair, and, sitting 
 cross-legged upon it, argue out the rest of the 
 question to her own satisfaction.
 
 J 60 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 There never was a better child than Phemie ! 
 Save for the way she cried when the wind was 
 high, and the sea rough ; save for the trick she 
 had of stripping herself half naked in order to 
 clothe any beggar brat who might happen to be 
 complaining of the cold; save for huffy fits she 
 took when her grandfather was too busy to notice 
 her ; save for the unaccountable and unanswer- 
 able questions she was in the habit of propounding 
 suddenly — Phemie — little Phemie, I mean, had 
 not a fault. 
 
 The most terrible battle she and the household 
 at the manse ever fought was over the body of a 
 dead kitten, which she kept from decent burial 
 for a whole day, and which was at length taken 
 from her arms only when she had cried herself to 
 sleep over the loss of her pet. To grandfather 
 and servants, to the fishermen and their wives, 
 to the shepherds on the moors, to the children by 
 the roadside, Phemie Keller — little soft-hearted 
 Phemie — was an object of the tenderest interest 
 and affection. 
 
 The courtship of her father and mother was
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 161 
 
 talked of by the side of many a winter fire. The 
 young things — boy and girl — who had fallen in 
 love at first sight, who had met secretly by the 
 sea-shore, who had been seen by the shepherds 
 walking hand in hand together among the hea- 
 ther, who had wanted the old minister to marry 
 them, and who had bound themselves together as 
 man and wife before a couple of witnesses when 
 he refused to let them wed unless the consent of 
 the lover's family were first obtained, who had 
 gone away out into the world together — all the 
 story was repeated over and over whenever 
 Phemie's name was mentioned in the lonely cot- 
 tages scattered here and there through the thinly- 
 peopled district. 
 
 The love-story with its sorrowful end; the 
 love-story, finis to which was written on a moss- 
 covered headstone in the quiet kirkyard close by! 
 They had known her a girl, and she came back to 
 them a widow — came back, "wi' her wee bit 
 bairn, Phemie, to dee." 
 
 Was it not natural that a certain romance 
 should be associated with Phemie in the minds 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 PHEMIE KELLEE. 
 
 of those who could remember her parents so 
 well ? Was it to be wondered at, if they made, 
 perhaps, too much of the child ; if they speculated 
 as to her future lot, foolishly ? 
 
 Anyhow, Phemie was loved, and petted ; and 
 never a princess ruled more absolutely over her 
 subjects, than did the young child rule over 
 the household at the manse. It was always who 
 could please Phemie most, who could make her 
 look prettiest, who could get sitting by her till 
 she went to sleep, who could make time to take 
 the child on her lap, and tell her the stories she 
 liked best to hear. 
 
 All the old tales of fairies and brownies, of 
 second sight, of witches and warlocks, were fami- 
 liar to Phemie as her ABC. Old ballads were 
 recited to her; old songs were sung to her, till 
 her head was as full of romantic nari'ative as it 
 could hold. 
 
 There was not a blast that blew over the hills 
 but touched an answering note in the child's 
 heart. The poetry lying there always uttered 
 some responsive tone in answer to the elements —
 
 RETKOSPECTIVE. 1 63 
 
 sunshine and shower, storm and calm, the wind 
 whistHng across the moors or sobbing through 
 the fir-trees, the snow covering the earth, or the 
 spring flowers decking the fields — all these things 
 had a double meaning for Phemie ; like a face 
 reflected from glass to glass, every object in 
 nature was projected into the child's heart from 
 the heart of some one else who had basked in the 
 summer glory, and braved the winter tempest 
 before she was thought of. 
 
 Then came Death to the manse once more ; 
 and this time he took the old minister from 
 among his people to the kirkyard, within sound 
 of the mourning and murmuring sea. Thoughtful 
 hearts tried to keep Phemie from seeing him in 
 his coffin, but Phemie's thoughtfulness exceeded 
 theirs. 
 
 Her love made her cunning ; and then the 
 episode of the kitten was repeated with the grief 
 intensified, with the despair more terrible. 
 
 She was taken away to a friend's house, and 
 kept there till the funeral was over. All the day 
 they watched her; but at night, in the dead of
 
 164 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 the winter time, she seized her opportunity and 
 tracked her way across the moors to the manse, 
 sobbing through the darkness as she toiled 
 along. 
 
 At the manse they watched her again, and 
 again she eluded their vigilance, and stole out 
 to the lonely kirkyard, where she was found 
 tearing up the wet mould with her little 
 hands; scratching at the newly-made grave like 
 a dog. 
 
 After that, grievous sickness — sickness almost 
 unto death, and then removal by slow stages to 
 the house of the only living relative willing to 
 receive her — Mrs. Aggland, her mother's sister. 
 The Agglands had children of their own ; but 
 yet at the Hill Farm it was the old story enacted 
 once again by fresh performers. Her aunt could 
 not be too kind to her. Mr. Aggland might 
 punish his own daughter, but he never dreamt 
 of saying a cross word to Phemie Keller. She 
 was privileged : by reason of her desolateness, by 
 reason of her story, by reason of her sensitive 
 heart, that reproof and harshness would have
 
 EETROSPECTIVE. 165 
 
 broken, Phemie had carte blanche to do as she 
 liked, and if she did not grow up indolent and 
 selfish, it was simply because there are some 
 natures that cannot be made indolent or selfish 
 by kindness and indulgence. 
 
 And yet it may fairly be questioned whether 
 Phemie would ever have developed into a useful 
 character, but for the death of her aunt. Whilst 
 Mrs. Aggland lived the girl had always some one to 
 think for her ; see to her ; love her. When once 
 her aunt died, out of very gratitude, for very pity, 
 Phemie was forced to think for others ; see to 
 others ; and give love, and care, and affection, 
 back. 
 
 " It was sic a sair sicht to see the puir maister 
 frettin' after his wife," as Peggy M'Nab asserted, 
 that by common consent Peggy M'Nab and Phemie 
 Keller joined together to make him feel his loss 
 in the trifles of every-day life as little as might 
 be. Phemie was still a child, a mere child, but 
 yet she could do something for the widower ; she 
 could nurse the baby and keep its cries from 
 troubling its father; she could help Peggy in a
 
 166 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 thousand little ways; she could amuse the little 
 ones by repeating to them the stories she had 
 heard told in broad Scotch, where the Scottish 
 moors stretched away lone and desolate towards 
 the north ; she could read to him ; she could 
 •work for him ; she could stand at the door look- 
 ing for his return ; she could talk to him in the 
 twilight; and she could make the sight of her 
 bright pretty face as welcome to the solitary man 
 as the flowers in May. 
 
 After his second marriage, Phemie proved more 
 useful still. As she grew older, she grew not 
 merely cleverer, but wiser — wise to hold her 
 tonge, wise to keep unpleasantness in the back- 
 ground, wise to do the work she had to do with 
 a cheerful countenance and a brave heart, wise 
 towards everybody but herself, for she dreamed 
 dreams and built castles all the day long. 
 
 Aided and abetted therein by Peggy M'Nab, 
 who was never weary of telling Phemie about her 
 father, about the great family he belonged to, 
 about the grand folks, somewhere or other, with 
 whom Phemie could claim kith and kin.
 
 EETROSPECTIVE. 1 67 
 
 If Mrs. Aggland were cross, if Phemie wearied 
 over her making and mending, if the girl ever 
 took to fretting about the days departed, straight 
 away Peggy told her nursling " to whisht." 
 
 " Canna ye quet yer greetin' — canna ye tak 
 patience for a bit ? Dinna ye ken that if ye 
 wunna thraw that bonnie face o' yours, some braw 
 laird will come ben when ye hae leest thocht o' 
 him, and mak ye a gentle for life 1 He'll come 
 in the gloamin' over the hills speerin' for ane 
 Phemie Keller, and he'll tak ye awa', my bairn — 
 he'll tak ye frae thrawn words and cross looks, 
 and frae yer auld daft nurse wha canna bear to 
 see ye forfoughten." 
 
 And then Phemie would declare she was not 
 fretting, and that no laird, not even the Duke 
 of Argyll himself, should take her from Peggy 
 M'Nab. 
 
 "Wherever I go, ye shall go," Phemie was 
 wont to declare ; " and I'd like to take Duncan, 
 and Helen, and the rest of uncle's children, and 
 we could leave Mrs. Aggland her children, and 
 make him come with us. Where should we go
 
 168 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Peggy, and how should we go ? Tell me all about 
 it." 
 
 Thus exhorted, Peggy would conjure up quite 
 a royal procession for Phemie's edification. 
 
 With her darling's lovely head resting in her 
 lap, with the girl's soft white fingers stroking her 
 hard brown hands, Peggy was wont to talk of a 
 hero so handsome and good and clever as to 
 border on the impossible ; of estates and houses 
 that might have made an auctioneer's fortune ; 
 of furniture that sounded like an inventory taken- 
 of the domestic goods and chattels of some esta- 
 blishment in fairyland ; of horses that could never 
 have been foaled on earth, so great was their 
 speed, so extraordinary their beauty ; the crown- 
 ing gem of the whole programme being the car- 
 riage, which, I am afraid, Peggy would have 
 described as precisely similar to the state chariot 
 of the Lord Mayor of London, had she ever 
 been so blest as to behold that functionary's 
 progress on the 9th of November through the 
 City streets. 
 
 It was for long a vexed question between
 
 EETROSPECTIVE. 169 
 
 Phemie and her nurse, whether the Kellers, or a 
 distracted lover were to come for her. 
 
 Peggy held to the Kellers, but Phemie pre- 
 ferred the lover, who was to right her wrongs, to 
 take her from the cinders, and dance with her at 
 the ball, and get her the property of her ances- 
 tors, and live happily with her for ever after. 
 She did not want to owe anything to her father's 
 family. She preferred the idea of some dark- 
 haired, dark-eyed nobleman coming to the Hill 
 Farm like a flash of lightning, and rescuing her 
 from stocking-mending and cast-off clothes, after 
 the fashion of a hero of romance. 
 
 Sometimes in her fancy she would be proud 
 and distant, sometimes indifferent, sometimes 
 cruel and unkind ; but however she began the 
 stoiy, it had never but one end, and that end was 
 not suicide and distraction, but a grand wedding, 
 and joy, and confidence, and love all the days of 
 their lives. 
 
 They would build a castle on the site of the 
 Hill Farmhouse, and come and spend some por- 
 tion of every summer at Tordale. Mr. Conbyr
 
 170 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 should have his organ, and she would bestow such 
 magnificent presents on the wives of the farmers 
 she had known ! She would even give Mrs. 
 Aggland a satin dress, and a brooch, and a bon- 
 net, and everybody should be happy, and all 
 should go joyous as a marriage bell. 
 
 As for the nobleman, he was to be something 
 between Fergus M'lvor, the lover of the poor 
 Bride of Lammermoor, and Percy, as described in 
 Otterboume. Whichever of these desirable models 
 he most resembled, there was yet one thing in 
 which he never varied — his devoted affection for 
 herself. Phemie experienced no pangs of jea- 
 lousy : she had no mental misgivings about a pre- 
 vious attachment, about any former lady love. It 
 was to be first love with him as well as with her ; 
 it was to be first love and last love with both. 
 Heaven help her ! though these dreams may 
 sound worldly and calculating, they were never- 
 theless pure and innocent, and it was the shock 
 of coming down from the contemplation of such 
 a lover and such a fortune, to the flat level of 
 accepting or rejecting a middle-aged and unro-
 
 EETROSPECTIVE. 171 
 
 mantic suitor that proved too mucli for Phemie's 
 equanimity, and made her — sitting by the window- 
 looking down over Tordale valley — so sad and 
 thoughtful 
 
 For the touch of reality had done two things : 
 it had wakened her at once from a land of plea- 
 sant visions, to the certainties of existence ; it 
 showed her she had been asleep and dreaming ; 
 it proved to her she must wake and bestir 
 herseK 
 
 She could not go on after this, picturing to her- 
 self the advent of an ideal lover. Like one 
 arising from a long sweet slumber, she looked 
 out over the plains of life, and saw her actual 
 position for the first time. 
 
 She was bom — not to be run after Hke a dam- 
 sel of romance, but to darn stockings, and to be 
 considered an amazingly fortunate girl if a rich 
 prosaic man feU in love with and married her. 
 She had overrated her goods ; she had been like a 
 man with a clever invention, who never thinks of 
 making hundreds out of it, but always millions, 
 until some one offers him, say a thousand pounds,
 
 172 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 with which all his friends consider he ought to 
 believe himself overpaid. 
 
 So long as her little possessions were kept out 
 of the market she placed a price on them far and 
 away above their actual value ; but now, when she 
 saw the precise sum at which she was rated by 
 other people, her spirits sank to zero. 
 
 If it were so wonderful a thing for this com- 
 monplace stranger to ask her to marry him, what 
 chance was there of the lord coming across the 
 hills to woo ? Was it likely she should ever meet 
 Lord Ronald Clanronald by Strammer Tarn 1 
 And if she did meet him, was it at all probable 
 he would take her back with him to his home ? 
 Lizzie Lindsay had skirts of green satin, but 
 Phemie Keller had only three dresses in the 
 world, and none of them much to boast of ! 
 
 Further, it was evident her uncle had laid her 
 out to marry Duncan. He had mentioned it, and 
 she had told him that might never be. Having 
 told him so, what was she to do — stay on mend- 
 ing old clothes and dreaming her dreams — dreams 
 that might never seem realities again — or go
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 173 
 
 away and become a lady, as every one told her 
 she might by speaking only one word ? 
 
 Suppose, after all this to-do, after all this 
 respect, after all this disturbance, she subsided 
 again into the Phemie of six months previously, 
 should she be able to lead the old life again 
 
 o 
 
 patiently? Could she endure Mrs. Aggland's 
 scolding, and the incessant work, work, slave, 
 slave, drive, drive, after this chance of freedom ? 
 Suppose poverty came again : she had seen bad 
 seasons at the Hill Farm, and felt the nipping of 
 scarcity like the rest, and these bad seasons might 
 return, and then, instead of being able to help, 
 she would only prove an incumbrance. 
 
 If she accepted Captain Stondon, her hero 
 would have to be turned with his face to the 
 wall ; but if she did not accept him, why, then, 
 still the hero might never come, after all. 
 
 What should she do ? " Oh, what shall I do ?" 
 sobbed Phemie, by way of a climax to her reverie ; 
 and, as if in answer to her question, Helen tapped 
 at her cousin's door, and said : 
 
 " Captain Stondon is in the parlour, Phemie,
 
 174 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 and father says, will you come doAvn and see 
 him ? " 
 
 " An' I hev brought ye up a candle, my bairn/' 
 added Peggy M'Nab; "redd up yer hair, and 
 wash the tears aff yer face, for he'll no be 
 pleased to see ye looking like a ghaist."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 YES OR NO. 
 
 The grief must have been terrible, the anxiety 
 intense, that could have made Phemie Keller 
 indifferent to her personal appearance ; and, ac- 
 cordingly, in spite of all her sorrow and indeci- 
 sion, the young lady took Peggy's advice kindly, 
 and — followed it. She bathed her face, and then 
 removed the traces of tears by breathing on her 
 handkerchief and holding it to her eyes ; she un- 
 fastened her hair, and let it fall down in thick 
 luxuriant waves, which she combed and brushed 
 caressingly. 
 
 She was veiy proud of her hair; her own 
 beauty was a great pleasure to this mountain- 
 reared maiden. Perhaps she would have been a 
 more perfect character had she not taken such 
 delight in her own loveliness ; but then she
 
 176 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 would not have been Phemie Keller. She would 
 not have been the girl who, full of innocent 
 vanity, stood before her little glass, arranging 
 her plaits and braids in the most becoming 
 manner she could devise. 
 
 I have read a good many books, but I never 
 recollect meeting in one of them with an ac- 
 count of a heroine who made herself look ugly 
 in order to let down a rejected lover easily, nor 
 among my o^vn acquaintance have I ever kno-vsm 
 a woman forget, when discarding a suitor, to put 
 on her best looks for the occasion. 
 
 It may be cruel, but is it not natural ? Would 
 you have Lesbia leave off her padding and stays, 
 and her robe of gold, so that she might send 
 the poor wretch away disenchanted ? "Would 
 you have Nora Creina bind up her dishevelled 
 locks, which are no doubt amazingly becoming 
 to her, though they do not suit Lesbia, and put 
 on a stiff robe of state, instead of the pictu- 
 resque costume which floats as wild as mountain 
 breezes, when she trips across the lea to say No, 
 sir, no? Would you have Hebe push back her
 
 YES OR NO. 177 
 
 liair from her charming face, and make herself 
 look a fright ? Would you have Miss, with the 
 fine forehead and Roman nose, wear lackadaisical 
 curls over her temples ? "Would you have Dru- 
 silla uncover her scraggy shoulders, or Lavinia 
 veil her snow-white neck ? Can you expect the 
 dear creatures to send the man away, wondering 
 at his own unutterable want of taste ? Is it not 
 most natural that they should wish him to de- 
 part in a frame of mind bordering on insanity, 
 possessed by seven fierce devils of loveliness, 
 who make his last state worse by far than his 
 first. 
 
 And finally, although the success she had 
 achieved might not be that precise kind of success 
 which Phemie's little heart desired to compass, 
 was it not natural that, having gained a certain 
 worldly triumph, auburn hair and dark-blue eyes 
 should want to look their best over the matter ? 
 
 For all of which reasons, and more especially 
 because the girl's vanity was as genuine as her 
 grief, Phemie Keller brushed and smoothed and 
 braided her hair as daintily as though she had 
 
 TOL. I. N
 
 178 PHEMIE KELLER 
 
 been going down stairs to meet the hero of her 
 dreams. 
 
 All women cannot go to the queen's drawing- 
 room, though they may all wish to do so ; but, 
 spite of that, they put on their best dresses, and 
 adopt the newest style of head decoration, when 
 invited to a select tea-party at the squire's just 
 outside the village. 
 
 Even for Mr. Fagg's benefit, even to gladden 
 Mr. Conbyr's failing sight, Phemie would have 
 made the best of herself, and as it was — so it was 
 — this innocent, unsophisticated beauty took as 
 much pains in arraying herself for the campaign 
 as though she had been born and bred amongst 
 those ancient ladies who wore tires on their heads 
 and pillows to their arms, and went mincingly, 
 making a tinkling as they went. 
 
 On the whole, the result was satisfactory. At 
 sweet sixteen, tears are not altogether unbecoming. 
 Rain, in the summer-time, produces a different 
 effect on the landscape to rain in the winter ; 
 and, in like manner, it is one thing when tears wet 
 the sweet buds of youth, and hang heavy on the
 
 YES OR NO. 179 
 
 roses of girlhood ; and quite another when they 
 roll heavily down the worn cheeks of middle age, 
 and mingle with the snows of later life. 
 
 All the sweeter did Phemie Keller look for the 
 shower so lately fallen. There was a certain lan- 
 guor about her eyes, a certain pallor in her cheeks, 
 which made her beauty irresistible ; and as she 
 turned to leave the room, the girl felt perfectly 
 satisfied with her o^Yn appearance, and equally 
 certain that Captain Stondon would be satisfied 
 with it too. 
 
 And yet, spite of this conviction, there was a 
 sick, faint feeling about Phemie's heart while she 
 went slowly along the passage to decide her fate. 
 How fearfully prosaic ! how horribly matter- 
 of-fact ! how terribly real seemed this ques- 
 tion which she was called upon to decide ! 
 There was no haze of love — there was no wild 
 attachment — no passionate hero worship. She 
 had never listened for his step with hand laid on 
 heart to still its throbbings ; his voice had never 
 sent the blood rushing to cheek and brow ; she 
 had never thought of him througli the day, and 
 
 N 2
 
 180 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 dreamed of him by night ; she had never walked 
 with him hand-in-hand among the flowers of that 
 enchanted garden which is the only Eden man 
 ever now enters upon earth ; the whispers of love 
 were not in her ear, urging her footsteps on. It 
 was a hard, cold bargain, and though Phemie did 
 not, could not reason all this out for herself, as I 
 have done for you, reader, still she instinctively 
 hung back, and delayed the evil moment as long 
 as possible. 
 
 " I am going down now, uncle," she said, open- 
 ing the door of Mr. Aggland's private sanctum, a 
 room filled with books, ornamented with fire-arms, 
 littered with fishing-tackle, into which none of the 
 household were privileged to enter excepting 
 Phemie herself. " I am going down now," and 
 she stood in the doorway, looking as if she never 
 wished to go down, but wanted to stay there for 
 ever ; while Mr. Aggland, who was busy among the 
 pipes of the organ referred to on one occasion by 
 Mr. Conbyr, lifted his head, and bade her come in. 
 " I do not tell you to do anything, Phemie," he 
 said ; " remember that," and he laid his hand on
 
 YES OR NO. 181 
 
 her shoulder while he spoke. " So far as .1 see, 
 you need not even make up your own mind just at 
 present. Do not be in a hurry to say either yea 
 or nay. 'Hasty marriage seldom proveth well,' 
 Shakespeare says, as you know, and further — 
 
 ' AVhat is wedlock forced, but a hell, 
 An age of discord and perpetual strife ? ' 
 
 For which reason, do not let anyone over-persuade 
 
 you in this matter. 
 
 * For marriage is a matter of more worth 
 Than to be dealt in by attorneyship.' " 
 
 " I know as much about my mind now as I shall 
 ever know," answered Phemie. "I have been 
 thinking, thinking all day, till I am sick of think- 
 ing. Advise me, uncle," she added, with sudden 
 vehemence ; " tell me what I ought to do." 
 
 " Seneca says — " began Mr. Aggland. 
 
 " Oh ! never mind what Seneca says," inter- 
 rupted Phemie ; " I want to hear what you say." 
 
 '' Well, then, my opinion is exactly his," per- 
 sisted her uncle ; " that no man should presume 
 to give advice to others who has not first given 
 good counsel to himself."
 
 182 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 " You are playing with me," she said, pettishly. 
 " I want advice, and you give me old saws instead : 
 I want help, and you will not hold out a finger 
 towards me." 
 
 "Because I cannot," he answered. "You are 
 coming for advice to a man who, never having 
 followed any rule of reason in his own life, is in- 
 competent to show the wisest course to another. 
 I have been led by impulse for so long that I be- 
 lieve I have forgotten there is such a thing as 
 prudence. All my life long I have lacked ' good 
 sense ; ' 
 
 ' Which only is the gift of heav6ii ; 
 And though no science, fairly worth the seven.' 
 
 It was but the other day I was reading what 
 
 William Finlay wrote about himself, and I thought 
 
 then that the picture might have been drawn from 
 
 me." 
 
 And Mr. Aggland hummed — 
 
 ' ' ' While others have been busy bustling 
 
 After wealth and fame, 
 And wisely adding house to house, 
 
 And Baillie to their name ; 
 I, like a thoughtless prodigal, 
 
 Have wasted precious time, 
 And followed lying vanities, 
 
 To string them up in rh}ane.' "
 
 YES OR NO. 183 
 
 "Uncle, if you asked me for anything, I would 
 give it to yon," said Phemie, reproachfully. 
 
 " And so would I give you anything but advice," 
 he answered. 
 
 "Anything except what I want," she said — 
 "anything but that;" and at the words, Mr. 
 Aggland rose up, startled. 
 
 " Phemie, child," he exclaimed, " do you know 
 what it is you are asking from me ? do you think 
 what it is you want me to decide ? It is your 
 future ; it is the whole of that which I once 
 owned, but which is now behind me for ever ; and 
 I have made such a wretched thing of life, that I 
 cannot tell you what to do. I am no judge, my 
 dear ; I am no judge." 
 
 " But I have nobody else," she said, piteously, 
 " and I cannot keep him waiting all night, and I 
 do not know what to say, and — and my heart is 
 breaking." At which point, Phemie's composure 
 gave way, and she covered her face with her hands 
 and sobbed aloud. 
 
 " Damn marriage ! " w^as Mr. Aggland's remark, 
 and he uttered it in all sincerity. " I wish we
 
 184 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 were in heaven, Phemie, where there is neither 
 
 marrying nor giving in marriage ; where there are 
 
 no bad crops, and no anxieties concerning the 
 
 future. I cannot advise you whether or no to take 
 
 Captain Stondon's offer ; but I do advise you to 
 
 hear what he has got to say about the matter. He 
 
 is a good man, and a true : 
 
 * Nature might stand up 
 And say to all the world, this was a man.' 
 
 You may find some one whom you could love 
 better, Phemie, but you would never find anybody 
 better. And, because I believe this, I bid you go 
 and listen to him first, and afterwards, if you like, 
 we will talk together." 
 
 And with this safe counsel, having dismissed his 
 niece, Mr. Aggland turned him to his work again, 
 muttering Otway's opinion, " ' The worst thing an 
 old man can be is a lover.' " 
 
 It was not the worst thing imaginable, however, 
 for Captain Stondon ; it was well for him to have 
 an object given to his objectless life ; well for him 
 to have some one to think of beside himself ; well 
 for him to have at last a definite hope in existence ;
 
 YES OR NO. 185 
 
 and sitting all alone by the fire, the officer was 
 dreaming some pleasant dreams, and thinking him- 
 self far from unfortunate, when Phemie turned the 
 handle of the door and entered shyly. 
 
 But as she did so — as she came slowly out of 
 the darkness into the light, something like a 
 shadow seemed to come out of the darkness more 
 swiftly than she and stand between them. It was 
 not a doubt, and yet Captain Stondon felt him- 
 self remain iiTesolute for a moment; it was not 
 fear, and yet he had experienced the same sen- 
 sation before entering a battle from which he 
 had been afterwards carried wounded : it was a 
 cloud thrown for a moment over a landscape, 
 fair to see, lovely to contemplate ; it was one of 
 those intangible messengers of evil who, fleet of 
 foot, rush through our hearts in the midst of our 
 joy, bidding us prepare for the sorrows that are 
 following more slowly after into our lives. 
 
 It just came between them for a moment and 
 departed, and next instant Captain Stondon was 
 holding the girl's hands in his, and praying her 
 forgiveness for his over-haste. In one sentence
 
 186 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 he told her, he had not been able to rest at the 
 vicarage ; that he could not sit patiently waiting 
 to hear his fate : in the next, he begged her to 
 believe he was in no hurry ; that he would not 
 hasten her decision ; that whenever she chose to 
 give him an answer, would be the time he should 
 like best to hear it. 
 
 " All this day," he went on, " I have been think- 
 ing of you. I have been longing to be at the Hill 
 Farm once more. I have been wishing for the 
 sound of your voice. I know I ought not to have 
 come here this evening ; but I could not live 
 without seeing you. Do not say anything to me 
 if you would rather not. Send me away again 
 now, and I will go through the darkness and 
 the rain, content to have looked in your face once 
 more." 
 
 It was needful for him to do all the talking, for 
 Phemie never opened her lips. She never helped 
 him in the least, but stood with one hand resting 
 on the stone chimney-piece, looking intently into 
 the fire. If she had been born deaf and dumb, 
 she could not have made less sign, and yet still all
 
 YES OR NO. 187 
 
 the time she was stiiiggling to find words to tell 
 him what was passing through her heart ; she 
 was trying to discover what she was feeling, so 
 that she might show him honestly all that was in 
 her mind. 
 
 He might not be a hero, but he loved her ; he 
 might not have black hair and piercing eyes, but 
 he was not beyond the pale of humanity on that 
 account. All the strength of feeling — all the 
 power of affection he had never, since his earliest 
 youth, lavished on any human being,^ he was now 
 wasting upon her, as the sea lays its treasures 
 upon some bare and thankless strand : and even 
 as the waves of that same sea, meeting some tiny 
 stream, force back the waters of the rivulet and 
 prevent it mingling with the ocean, so, the very 
 force and vehemence of this man's passion 
 stopped Phemie's utterance and made her shrink 
 back into herself 
 
 She felt as one standing out unsheltered in a 
 hurricane — she felt powerless to speak — to lift up 
 her voice and protest against marrpng him solely 
 because he wished to marry her. She felt what
 
 188 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 many an older woman has felt — ^that she had got 
 into a mess, out of which it was impossible to 
 extricate herself Through no wish — through no 
 striving — through no desire of her own — this man 
 had fallen in love with her, and she would never 
 have the courage to bid him go : she could do 
 nothing but what she did do — lift her lovely, 
 pleading eyes to his and burst into tears. 
 
 Then he knew — then the shadow fell between 
 them again — then he paused before he took the 
 girl gently to him and soothed her grief, and 
 calmed her agitation as though he had been her 
 father. He had deceived himself; he had 
 thought this young thing could love him ; he 
 had thought, because he was still able to feel 
 affection, that the power of winning the heart 
 of a creature in her teens was left also. He 
 had remembered his lands and his houses, his 
 gold and his silver; but he had forgotten what 
 mere gewgaws these things seem in the eyes of a 
 girl unless she has some one dearer to her than 
 aught else on earth — to hold and to spend with 
 her.
 
 YES OR NO. 189 
 
 He had deceived himself, and he awakened to 
 the knowledge with a pang, and then straight 
 away he fe!l to deceiving himself again, and 
 thought that if once he could get her to say yes 
 — if once he could induce her to marry him — 
 he would earn her love; he would purchase it 
 by his tenderness, by his forbearance, by his 
 devotion. 
 
 Anything rather than give her up — anything 
 sooner than lose auburn hair and blue eyes for 
 ever — any trouble — any sorrow — any pain — if 
 trouble, sorrow, and pain, could hinder his going 
 out again into the wide world without Phemie 
 Keller by his side. 
 
 And never had Phemie seemed so charming 
 to him as she did at that moment ; never in 
 her gayest mood had he loved her so much as 
 he did when she stood there passive, letting 
 him stroke her hair, and draw her hands away 
 from her tear-stained face, as though she had 
 been a child. 
 
 Everything which strikes us as most beautiful 
 in girlhood adorned Phemie Keller then : inno-
 
 190 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 cence, timidity, dependence, guilelessness — the man 
 could have knelt down and worshipped her. She 
 was so young, so fresh, so lovely, so different from 
 anything he had ever seen before, that Captain 
 Stondon felt his pulses grow still as he looked 
 at her — felt the spell of her purity and beauty 
 laid upon him soothingly. 
 
 He could not give her up ; he told her so more 
 calmly than he had spoken any sentence yet. 
 He knew that in many respects he was not the 
 lover to win a young gdrl's fancy, but he would 
 prove none the worse husband for that. 
 
 She should have as long a time as she liked to 
 think the matter over ; he would not hurry her ; 
 the winds of heaven should not breathe upon her 
 too roughly if she manied him ; they would 
 travel. He would take her to Paris and Rome ; 
 they would go to Switzerland and Spain. She 
 should see all the places of which she had read. 
 He would make her uncle's position more com- 
 fortable. 
 
 Duncan should be sent to school, and Helen 
 also ; and Helen should come and spend her
 
 YES OR NO. 191 
 
 vacations at Marshlands. As for Phemie, if his 
 love, if his care, if his wealth, if his devotion 
 could keep trouble from crossing her path, life 
 should to her be but as a long pleasant summer's 
 day ; and then Captain Stondon went on to tell 
 her how he had never loved but once before, and 
 of what a desert his life had been since. 
 
 "But you can make it a heaven upon earth 
 now, if you will," he said ; " you can make me 
 either the happiest or the most miserable of 
 mortals." 
 
 Yet still she never spoke. 
 
 " Am I to go away without one word ? " he 
 said. " Will you not say anything to me before I 
 return to the vicarage ? " 
 
 But Phemie never answered. 
 
 "Am I to take silence as consent so far ?" he 
 went on. 
 
 In answer to which question the girl remained 
 resolutely mute. 
 
 " May I think that you are not averse to me ? " 
 he persisted ; but the sweet lips never opened, 
 the lovely face never was turned towards him.
 
 192 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 " Do not send me away without even a smile," 
 he said at last. "Well, well, I will not teaze 
 you," and he made a feint of turning to leave the 
 room. 
 
 Then all at once Phemie found words, and 
 cried — 
 
 " Do not go, Captain Stondon ; I 'want to 
 speak to you. I have something to say — do not 
 go!" 
 
 "Nobody will advise me," went on the girl, 
 passionately : " if I was to inquire of any person 
 I know, what I ought to do, they would tell me 
 what I could tell them ; that you have done me a 
 great honour ; that it is a wonderful thing for a 
 gentleman like you to have asked a girl like me. 
 I went to my uncle, and he bade me come to 
 you ; and I do come to you, sir. What am I 
 to do ? oh ! what am I to do ? " 
 
 It was his turn to be silent now, and he 
 stood looking at Phemie, at her clasped hands, at 
 her beseeching attitude, at her eyes which were 
 swimming with tears, for a minute before he 
 answered —
 
 YES OR NO. 193 
 
 *' My poor child, how can I tell you what to do 1 
 I, to whom ' yes ' will be life, and ' no' death, to 
 every plan and hope, and desire of my future 
 existence. All I can say is, do not many me if 
 you think it will not be for your happiness to do 
 so ; and, above all, do not marry me if you care 
 for anyone else." 
 
 He put such a constraint upon himself as he 
 said this, that Phemie, though she caught their 
 sense, could scarcely hear his words. 
 
 She did not know anything of the storm which 
 was sweeping through his heart ; but she had a 
 vague idea that he was fighting some kind of 
 battle when he went on — 
 
 " I love you so well that you will be safe in 
 making me your friend. If anyone else is fond 
 of you, if you are fond of any other person, tell 
 me, and I must try to be disinterested — try to 
 see my duty and do it. Have you any attach- 
 ment — any preference ? Answer me frankly, dear, 
 for God's sake, for it may save us both much 
 misery hereafter." 
 
 Tlie pretty head drooped lower, and the flushed 
 
 VOL I. O
 
 194 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 cheeks grew redder; but the sweet lips parted 
 for all that, and Phemie whispered — " No." 
 
 " You are certain ? " he said, and he raised her 
 lovely face, so that he might see the story it had 
 to tell. 
 
 This time Phemie lifted her eyes to his shyly, 
 yet trustingly, while she replied — 
 " I am quite sure, sir — quite." 
 That was a comfort, at any rate : terrible 
 jealousy of Mr. Fagg — grave doubts concerning 
 one or two young men he had met in the valley — 
 suspicions of some secret lover, whose very exist- 
 ence was unknown to anyone but Phemie — had 
 all conspired together to make the officer's life a 
 weariness to him during the last few minutes : 
 but there was no mistaking Phemie' s face and 
 Phemie's manner. She had no clandestine 
 attachment — no attachment of any kind — not 
 even for him. 
 
 There was the misery — there was the next 
 difficulty he had to face, but Captain Stondon did 
 face it for all that, and said — 
 
 '' I am afraid that you do not care for me ? "
 
 YES OR NO. 195 
 
 "I do not know, sir." What an aggravating 
 chit it was with its uncertain answers — ^^vith its 
 frightened manners and averted face ! 
 
 " Do you dishke me, Phemie ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 It was on the tip of Captain Stondon's tongue 
 to say, " Then what do you do ? " but he re- 
 frained, and proceeded : " Could you learn to 
 love me ? " 
 
 " I do not know ; " and the officer struck 
 his heel impatiently against the floor at her 
 reply. 
 
 What was the use of catechising her thus ? 
 What is the use of asking a child who does not 
 know its ABC, questions about reading, writ- 
 ing, and arithmetic ? And was not all the alpha- 
 bet of love a terra incognita to Phemie Keller ? 
 Like a baby, she knew fairy tales ; but she was 
 ignorant of her letters. Practical love was a 
 thing of which she knew as little as chubby five- 
 years-old knows of Hebrew. The right master to 
 teach her had never crossed her path ; and 
 though Captain Stondon was perfectly up in the
 
 196 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 subject himself, he lacked the power to impart 
 information to her. 
 
 She might many him — she might be fond 
 enough of him — she might bear him sons and 
 daughters ; but she could never feel for the hus- 
 band she was bound to — love, such we mean 
 when we talk about " The dream of Life's young 
 day." 
 
 It was natural, however, that Captain Stondon 
 should blind himself to this fact — natural that, 
 loving her so much, he should forget everything 
 except that she was free — that it was possible for 
 him to gain her — that he might hope to see her 
 mistress of Marshlands yet. 
 
 He might win this young thing for his wife ; 
 and as he thought of this — thought it was only 
 her youth which made her answers vague — her 
 inexperience which caused her uncertainty — his 
 impatience vanished, and sweet visions arose of 
 an angel walking side by side with him upon the 
 ojw'th. He saw her flitting from room to room in 
 tlie great house that had always hitherto seemed 
 to him so deserted ; on the lawn, in the gardens,
 
 YES OR NO. 197 
 
 he beheld bhie e3'es and auburn hair — pleasant 
 pictures of home-life — home-life, such as he had 
 often read about in books, were before his eyes ; 
 that which he had dreamed of so many, many 
 years before was all commg true at last. She did 
 not dislike him : for the rest — " She did not 
 know." He would be satisfied with that for the 
 present ; and instead of pressing the unsatisfac- 
 tory part of the subject, he would talk to Phemie 
 about what she could understand, viz., her posi- 
 tion as Mrs. Stondon, in comparison to her posi- 
 tion as Miss Keller. 
 
 Wherein Captain Stondon was wise. Phemie 
 possessed as much common sense as her cousins. 
 Setting the lord out of the question, and putting 
 the Kellers along with the lord, she knew exactly 
 how vshe was situated to a T ; and if the officer 
 did put the actual state of matters in plain English 
 before her, Phemie had quite sufficient knowledge 
 to understand that all he said contained neither 
 more nor less than the truth. 
 
 Mr. Aggland was not rich. If he died — and 
 Phemie had seen enougli of death to convince her
 
 198 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 disease might visit the Hill Farm any day — the 
 girl would have no home, no friends, no money. 
 Or if sickness came — sickness and bad seasons — 
 how were the family to be supported ? 
 
 Again, if all Avent well, did she think she could 
 be content to spend all her life in Cumberland ? 
 Would she not like to go abroad, to mix in society, 
 to have plenty of money with which to help her 
 relations, and to repay some portion of what had 
 been done for her ? 
 
 As a man of the world. Captain Stondon could 
 not but know that the match would be a capital 
 one for Phemie ; and though he would have given 
 all he possessed ten times over cheerfully to get 
 her for his own, he still placed his social advan- 
 tages in their best light before her. 
 
 And Phemie listened, and Phemie thought, and 
 the longer she listened and the more she thought, 
 the stronger grew the idea that she should marry 
 this man — that she would be somehow throw- 
 ing away her best chance if she refused to take 
 him. 
 
 She did not like saying Yes ; and yet she was
 
 YES OR NO. 199 
 
 afraid the day might come when she would rue 
 saying No. He was very good — he was very 
 patient — he was very kind — he was very generous 
 — why should she not be happy 1 
 
 If an infant be crying its eyes out, a skilful 
 nurse has but to dangle a bunch of beads before 
 it, and straightway the tears are dried, the sobs 
 cease, and with a crow of delight feeble little 
 hands are stretched out to seize the glittering 
 prize. 
 
 Somewhat after the same fashion, Phemie 
 Keller had been crying for that which she could 
 not get ; and now, partly because she was weary 
 of weeping, and greatly because the world's 
 vanities looked tempting as Captain Stondon 
 presented them for her contemplation, she gra- 
 dually forgot to shed any more tears, and began to 
 listen with interest to what he was saying. 
 
 He told her about Marshlands — about its fine 
 timber, about its old-fashioned rooms, its endless 
 corridors, its lovely gardens. 
 
 Carriages, horses, visitors, servants — all these 
 things, which are doubtless as valueless to you,
 
 200 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 my reader, as the string of beads are to the adult, 
 looked very tempting to Phemie Keller. 
 
 She had not been used to such vanities, and 
 people who have not known luxuries are apt to 
 overrate the happiness of their possession. By 
 degrees she began to ask questions, and to listen 
 with interest to his answers; almost imperceptibly 
 she caine to see that, though Captain Stondon 
 might not be a lord, he was a grand personage — 
 a wealthy gentleman for all that. He was doing 
 her an honour, and a man has travelled a long 
 way towards success when he makes a woman feel 
 this. 
 
 ''He could get many a great lady to marry 
 him," thought Phemie, and she felt grateful to him 
 for choosing her. He would give her money to 
 buy toys for the children — a microscope or a tele- 
 scope for her uncle, and a gown for Peggy McNab. 
 
 She would have to darn no more stockinsfs, but 
 he would very probably let her get as much 
 Berlin wool and canvas as would enable her to 
 work a sofa-pillow like one there was down at the 
 Vicarage. She should go to London, and perhaps
 
 YES OR NO. 201 
 
 see the Queen. Altogether, she did not feel so 
 very miserable after he had been talking to her 
 for half-an-hour, and though she was still resolute 
 not to say Yes in a hurry, she promised to speak 
 to her uncle. 
 
 Of course Captain Stondon knew by this time 
 that her consent was a mere question of time. 
 His Avooing might be tedious, but it could not be 
 difficult ; and as he took his way down the valley, 
 he found himself thinking about the marriage 
 service, and picturing to himself how exquisite 
 Phemie would look as a bride. 
 
 Ere a week was over, she had promised, re- 
 luctantly possibly, but still faithfully, to become 
 his wife some day ; and the officer went about in a 
 seventh heaven of ecstacy, whilst Mr. Aggland sat 
 gravely looking on, and Duncan sang in a broad 
 Scotch dialect, which was fortunately unintelli- 
 gible to the lover, though Phemie understood it 
 all too well — 
 
 " He wandered liame wearie — the nicht it was dreaiie, 
 And thowless he tint his gate 'mang the deep snaw ; 
 The owlet was screamin', wliile Johnnie cried, 'Women 
 Wad marry aiild Nick if he'd keep them aye braw.' "
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 SATISFIED. 
 
 Having won Phemie Keller, the next thing 
 Captain Stondon desired was to wed her. It 
 might have made the heart of many a match- 
 making mother ache with envy to hear how the 
 man hammered on at that one string. 
 
 It was the refrain of every sentence. Mr. Agg- 
 land and he never separated without the subject 
 being mooted by this fortunate lover. Vainly did 
 the farmer assert that the girl was too young, that 
 there was time enough, that nobody was going to 
 run away with her. Captain Stondon would listen 
 to no objections. Christmas was coming on, and 
 he must get back to Norfolk immediately, and he 
 Vv^anted to have something definite decided on 
 before he went away.
 
 SATISFIED. 203 
 
 To all of which Mr. Aggland listened gravely 
 ere he replied — 
 
 " Then I tell you what, Captain Stondon : let 
 me go to Norfolk with you, and there we will talk 
 about the future. You must not think," pro- 
 ceeded Mr. Aggland, hastily, " that because I say 
 this I am 'a kind of burr — I shall stick.' I do 
 not mean to intrude. I have no intention of 
 forcing myself upon you. Once let me see the 
 place where Phemie is going to, the home in 
 which she is to live, and you need never fear 
 sign or token of me again." 
 
 " But I hope and trust that I shall," answered 
 Captain Stondon : "I do not want to separate 
 Phemie from her friends. I have no wish to do 
 anything of the kind. You surely have not 
 thought me so forgetful — so ungrateful as all 
 that comes to ? " cried the ofl&cer, growing quite 
 vehement over the matter. 
 
 But Mr. Aggland shook his head and answered, 
 "I do not think you either ungrateful or forgetful, 
 only I know that, when once you and Phemio 
 are married, the less she and you are troubled
 
 204 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 with any of us the better it will be for her. It is 
 never a pleasant thing for a woman to be con- 
 stantly reminded whence she has been trans- 
 planted, and Phemie is young enough to take 
 kindly to a new soil and root herself firmly in it. 
 Further, sir ; though I was once humble com- 
 panion to a gentleman's son, I hope I never wore 
 
 * The rags of any great man's looks, nor fed 
 Upon tlieir after meals.' 
 
 And because I am so sure of my own mind in 
 this matter — so positive that I do not want Phemie 
 to feel anyone belonging to her a burden, I have 
 no scruple in asking you to let me go to Norfolk. 
 I shall be able to give her away with a lighter 
 heart when I have once looked on the house that 
 is to be her home." 
 
 Doubtless Mr. Aggland was right ; but Captain 
 Stondon, with his heart full of generous projects, 
 with a vivid memory of all he owed to the farmer's 
 care and kindness, felt that this constant assertion 
 of independence — this everlasting refusal to come 
 up and stand on the same level with himself — w^as 
 irritating in the extreme.
 
 SATISFIED. 205 
 
 It is so hard to have one's best intention 
 doubted — to see people thinking they are wiser 
 and better than everybody else on earth — to have 
 good gifts tossed back in one's face, that Captain 
 Stondon often felt inclined to tell Mr. Aggland 
 that independence may be carried far too far ; 
 that there is an extreme point at which every 
 virtue touches a vice ; and that the most dan- 
 gerous pride is, after all, the pride that "apes 
 humility." 
 
 But as often as he felt inclined he refrained. 
 He remembered that, to a man Hke Mr. Asfo-land, 
 poverty was the most severe trial to which his 
 character could have been subjected ; and he re- 
 collected likewise that, if an ungenial climate had 
 made the fruit of his life somewhat bitter, it had 
 not rendered it unwholesome. 
 
 Besides, he, Captain Stondon, was so happy 
 that he could afford to be tolerant of the short- 
 comings of others ; and accordingly he answered, 
 good-humouredly — 
 
 " You will know me better some day, Aggland. 
 Meantime, come to Norfolk, and we can arran<je
 
 206 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 about settlements and other matters when once 
 we get there." 
 
 " One thing more/' said Mr. Aggland. " I pay 
 my own expenses." 
 
 "Agreed/' rephed Captain Stondon, laughing ; 
 " so long as you do not ask me to send you in a 
 bill for board and lodging at Marshlands, you can 
 pay what you like." 
 
 And so the matter was settled ; and for letting 
 Mr. Aggland have his own way the officer received 
 his reward. 
 
 Never had the Hill Farm been made pleasanter 
 to him than it was during the week which inter- 
 vened between the time the journey was proposed 
 and the hour they started. 
 
 Everyone seemed now to feel that matters were 
 finally settled, and that there was, therefore, 
 nothing more to be done except to put on 
 holiday faces, and make matters agreeable for 
 Phemie and Captain Stondon, 
 
 What if the boys did tease their cousin? It 
 only made a little more life about the Farm. 
 What if Johnny King had the audacity to answer
 
 SATISFIED. 207 
 
 Captain Stondon's question as to whether 
 Mr. Aggland was at home with a wink and 
 a shrug, and a hand pointed over his shoulder, 
 and 
 
 " No, he is not ; but Phemie is in there ; and 
 father says she is all you want at the Hill Farm !" 
 The officer only boxed the young monkey's ears, 
 and went on his way with a light step, whilst 
 Phemie's whole time was taken up in expostula- 
 ting and remonstrating. 
 
 " Uncle, are they to torment me ? Uncle, is 
 Duncan to say the things he does ? Is he to go 
 about the house singing, 'Woo'd, and married, 
 and a' ? ' — more particularly when Captain Ston- 
 don is here. It is enough to put a person from 
 being married at all." 
 
 " The lassie is glaikit wi' pride," remarked 
 Duncan, from a safe distance. 
 
 " The Lord has been very good to her to put 
 such a chance in her way," added Mrs. Aggland, 
 sanctimoniously. 
 
 "Blest if I don't think Phemie is right, and 
 that it is enough to prevent her marrying at all,
 
 208 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 hearing so mucli about it," said Mr. Aggiand ; but 
 for all that the boys would teaze, and Mrs. Agg- 
 iand would talk concerning the wedding-clothes, 
 and Peggy M'Nab would spend hours tracing out 
 a brilliant future for her darling. On the whole, 
 that future was by no means one to be scoffed at 
 by a country girl whose entire fortune was under 
 a couple of hundred pounds, and whose well-born 
 relations refused to recognise her. It was very 
 pleasant to become in a moment a person of im- 
 portance — very charming to be the sun round 
 which the whole household revolved — very de- 
 lightful to have Mrs. Aggiand alternately fawn- 
 ing upon her and making envious speeches. 
 
 Already Phemie was beginning to feel the 
 beneficial change in her position, and from the 
 height she had attained she was able clearly to 
 see the inferiority of the station from which Cap- 
 tain Stondon had raised her. Distant, and more 
 distant still, grew the heroes of her romantic 
 visions. They were real men to her no more ; 
 and she could even smile to herself as she re- 
 peated a verse of Carrick's " Rose of the Canon-
 
 SATISFIED. 209 
 
 gate," a song she had learned in the old manse by 
 
 the sea-shore : — 
 
 " Slie dream'd of lords, of knights, of squires, 
 And men of high degree ; 
 But lords were scarce and knights were shy. 
 So ne'er a joe had she." 
 
 Perhaps a letter Mr. Aggland received from her 
 aunt, Miss Keller, in answer to one he ^vrote in- 
 forming the Keller family of Captain Stondon's 
 proposals, and Phemie's acceptance of them, had 
 a little to do with this desirable chano^e in her 
 sentiments. " Miss Keller presented her compli- 
 ments to Mr. Aggland, and on behalf of herself 
 and her brother, General Keller, begged to inform 
 Mr. A. that they were happy to hear the young 
 person referred to in his letter was likely to be 
 comfortably provided for. At the same time, as 
 Lieutenant Keller's unhappy marriage had severed 
 all ties of relationship between them, General and 
 Miss Keller trusted that Mr. Aggland would not 
 think it necessary to enter into any further cor- 
 respondence, as it Avas impossible for either Gene- 
 ral or Miss Keller to recognise in any way the 
 child of such a degrading and ill-assorted union." 
 
 VOL, I. p
 
 210 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 "Never mind, my darling," said Captain Ston- 
 dpn, when Phemie showed him this gracious 
 epistle. " You can do without them, I hope ;" 
 and the girl was grateful for the tone in which 
 the words were spoken, and thought more and 
 more that things were not so bad as they seemed 
 at first, and that she had great cause for thank- 
 fulness. 
 
 She had to keep a guard on her lips and refrain 
 from wishing for anything, for so surely as she said 
 she would fancy this, or something else, so surely it 
 v/as purchased for her. If she had expressed a 
 desire for the moon, Captain Stondon would 
 straightway have set to work thinking how hu 
 might best procure it ; and Phemie could often 
 have bitten a piece off her tongue after she had 
 exclaimed — 
 
 " I should like this. I wish I had that." 
 
 " It seems as if I were always taking — taking, 
 and I cannot bear it," she said once, piteously ; 
 and Mr. Aggland coming to the rescue, said he 
 could not bear it either. 
 
 " The girl will forget how to say any other word
 
 SATISFIED. 211 
 
 than ' thank 3^ou/ " he added ; " you are making 
 a perfect parrot of her. Give her what you like 
 when once she is your wife, but hold your hand 
 now ;" and Captain Stondon agreed to do what 
 they asked him on condition that the Norfolk 
 journey was undertaken without delay. 
 
 " When once she is my wife she shail not need 
 to wish/' he said ; from which speech it will be 
 seen that Phemie's future husband had laid him- 
 self out to spoil her completely, if he could ; and 
 meantime he made so much of her — was so patient, 
 so good, and kind, that Phemie, poor child, cried 
 when he went away, and caused the man to fall 
 more rapturously in love with her than ever. 
 
 If the weather had been better, the journey to 
 London could have left nothing to be desired ; 
 but as it was, Avith the snow on the ground, Captain 
 Stondon acknowledged to himself tliat, but for 
 Mr. Aggland, he should have found the way be- 
 tween Carlisle and Euston Square of the longest. 
 
 Having Mr. Aggland, the time passed rapidly 
 enough. They talked a good deal, they slept a 
 good deal ; and by-and-by, when they both awoke 
 
 r 2
 
 212 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 about Stafford, Mr. Ao^o^land roused himself tho- 
 roughly, and began to show his companion what 
 really was in him. 
 
 He told tales of his own long-ago : his boy- 
 hood's scrapes, his manhood's chances, the various 
 adventures he had met with in the course of an 
 irregular rambling life. The excitement of tra- 
 velling, the sight of so many strange faces, the 
 change and variety of going back after years to 
 London, seemed to make a different creature of 
 the individual who had always hitherto seemed to 
 Captain Stondon a clever, eccentric " wild man of 
 the hills." 
 
 " If he would but shave himself and get his 
 liair cut, and buy a respectable suit of clothes, he 
 might pass anywhere," thought the officer ; but 
 he would as soon have dreamed of suggesting any 
 alteration in his attire to the Commander-in-Chief 
 as to Mr. Aggland, for which reason, though every 
 one they met, stared at the man as they might at 
 a maniac, Captain Stondon appeared perfectly un- 
 conscious of the fact ; and for any remark he 
 made, Phemie's uncle might have been " got up "
 
 SATISFIED. 213 
 
 like the greatest dandy that ever walked down 
 Bond Street. 
 
 Only — he told the cabman to drive to an hotel 
 in the City instead of to the " Burlington/' where 
 he usually stopped, alleging as his reason that he 
 wanted to be near the Shoreditch Station, so as 
 to get on to Norfolk betimes the next morning. 
 
 When the next morning came, however, Mr. 
 Aggland asked whether his companion would ob- 
 ject to putting off their journey for a few hours. 
 
 " I see," he said, " there is an afternoon train 
 which arrives at Disley about nine o'clock in the 
 evening. If that would suit you equally well, I 
 should prefer it." 
 
 " I have no objection," answered Captain Ston- 
 don. " I must telegraph down, though, for them 
 to meet us at the nine train, for otherwise I do not 
 see exactly how we should ever get over from Disley 
 to Marshlands." 
 
 " Thank you," said Mr. Aggland ; " and would 
 you — ^would you — mind my leaving you alone for 
 a short time ? " 
 
 The man actually coloured as he asked this
 
 214 PHEMIE KELLEK. 
 
 and after he had departed, Captain Stondon fell 
 to wondering where his companion could be gone 
 — on what secret mission he could have departed 
 by himself. 
 
 " He surely has not seen some pretty woman 
 and fallen in love wi*th her," soliloquised the 
 officer ; and then his thoughts went back to the 
 pretty girl he had fallen in love with in Cumber- 
 land, and whom he hoped to have all to himself 
 when next he passed through London. 
 
 How little he expected, when he was in town 
 before, ever to marry — ever to see anybody again 
 for whom he could care in the least ; and now he 
 was lying on a sofa in one of the sitting-rooms in 
 the Castle and Falcon, building all kinds of beau- 
 tiful edifices, while the Cit}^ traffic thundered along 
 Aldersgate Street, till finally, with its very mono- 
 tony, it lulled him to sleep. 
 
 How long he slept he did not know, but at last 
 he awok^ with a start, and found a stranger sit- 
 ting opposite to the sofa he occupied — a stranger, 
 yet not a stranger — a person who was unkno^\Ti to 
 him, and yet whose face seemed familiar. Cap-
 
 SATISFIED. 215 
 
 tain Stondon raised himself on his elbow to in- 
 quire who his visitor might be, but in the same 
 moment recognised him, and exclaimed — 
 
 " Good heavens, Aggiand ! what have you been 
 doing to yourself? I could not, for the life of 
 me, think who you were." 
 
 And indeed it was no marvel that Captain 
 Stondon had been mystified ; for Mr. Aggiand 
 who entered the Castle and Falcon at one o'clock 
 was certainly remarkably unlike the Mr. Aggiand 
 who walked out of it at eleven. He had gone to a 
 hair-dresser's, he had gone to a tailor, and the con- 
 sequence was that he came back another person, 
 ffitherto his head had looked like the wings of an 
 old raven that is moulting ; now dexterous hands 
 had brushed and smoothed his hair till it seemed 
 really to be human hair, and not the mane of a 
 wild colt. His moustache had been as the bristles' 
 of a well-worn hearth-broom ; and heaven only 
 knows through what torments of fixatrice he had 
 passed in order to get it into decent trim. His 
 whiskers had resembled nothinc: so much as lonc^ 
 bare, straggling branches of the hop plant ; but
 
 216 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 the barber's skill having pruned away all the 
 impoverishing suckers, the original hair on his 
 cheeks remained trim and neat as could have 
 been desired. 
 
 At his clothes Captain Stondon stared in 
 amazement. About the legs and shoulders, about 
 his feet and arms, Mr. Aggland was now as other 
 men. 
 
 Excepting that he still wore his shirt-collar 
 turned down — a fashion which in those days was 
 not in vogue — the farmer looked quite like ordi- 
 nary mortals. He had compassed that metamor- 
 phosis which Captain Stondon so earnestly de- 
 sired to see ; and having compassed this end, it 
 is only fair to add that Mr. Aggland looked des- 
 perately ashamed of himself. 
 
 But he had thought it right to give heed to 
 such vanities for Phemie's sake ; and a sense 
 of duty consequently supported him through his 
 trial. 
 
 " I did not care to go to your place looking an 
 old guy," he explained, awkwardly enough ; " and 
 as I should have had, sooner or later, to buy a
 
 SATISFIED. 217 
 
 few things for the wedding, I have bought them 
 sooner instead of later — that is all." 
 
 " You do my place too much honour," answered 
 Captain Stondon ; but he wished, even as he said 
 it, that he could be quite sure Mr. Aggland had 
 not guessed what was passing through his mind 
 as they journeyed southward together. 
 
 He had forgotten what keen vision living 
 amonor the hiUs insures ; he had not thoudit of 
 the quick sensitiveness which catches at an idea 
 from a look, a movement, a chance glance. 
 
 However, Mr. Aggland was all the more pre- 
 sentable for the change in his attire, and as he 
 proceeded to say, how he had thought the day 
 might come when somebody in Norfolk would 
 know he was Phemie's uncle, and that therefore 
 — and to do such credit as he could to Captain 
 Stondon — he wanted to make the best of himself, 
 the officer was quite touclied by the man's unsel- 
 fish thoughtfulness, by the love and affection 
 which had compelled him to make an exertion 
 that a weaker nature would have been ashamed 
 to confess.
 
 218 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Everything lie saw about the farmer made him 
 regret more and more that his hfe had proved so 
 hard an one for himself, so profitless an one for 
 others ; and this feeling made him treat his new 
 friend in a manner which induced Mr. Aggland 
 afterwards to declare to Phemie — 
 
 " If I had been a king, child, he could not have 
 made more of me." 
 
 Nor was Mr. Aggland, who had seen some fine 
 estates in his lifetime, less impressed with the 
 stateliness of Marshlands than with the courtesy 
 of its owner. 
 
 The house was "far and away grander than 
 Worton Court," he told his niece, and if Mr. 
 Aggland had entertained any doubts on the sub- 
 ject of Captain Stondon's social standing, his visit 
 to Marshlands completely undeceived him. 
 
 He passed a week there — a whole week, though 
 he had declared he "couldna, shouldna, daurna 
 stay for more than a couple of days ;" and many 
 a long talk had he and Captain Stondon, sitting 
 over the library fire, whilst dessert remained 
 untouched beside them, and each forgot to pass
 
 SATISFIED. 219 
 
 the decanter which contained some of that 
 " inimitable '24 port." 
 
 It was great promotion for Phemie. The 
 longer Mr. Aggland stayed at Marshlands, and 
 the more he saw of the master of Marshlands, the 
 more unreal the whole affair seemed ; and he 
 went meekly back to Cumberland, feeling that 
 neither he nor his could ever have made the girl 
 half so happy as it was in both the power and the 
 will of this rich gentleman to do. 
 
 The marriage was to take place in the spring, 
 and Captain Stondon wanted to provide Phemie's 
 trousseau; but on this point Mr. Aggland was 
 firm. 
 
 " There is no use in the child bringing her two 
 or three halfpence in her hand to you," he said, 
 not without a certain sadness ; " and so we may 
 just as well spend her little fortune on the only 
 thing she is ever likely to have to provide for 
 herself. She shall not disgrace any of us, I pro- 
 mise you that ; and till she is your wife, I would 
 rather she was not indebted to you for any- 
 thing."
 
 220 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 As usual, there was so much sense in what Mr. 
 Aggland said, that Captain Stondon had to yield 
 the point; and the consequence was that the 
 farmer returned from London with such a quan- 
 tity of luggage as caused his wife to stand 
 aghast. 
 
 "Oh! Peggy; oh! Peggy," cried Phemie Keller. 
 " Those boxes are like something out of fairyland : 
 there are silks and laces, and muslins and ribbons, 
 and the most enchanting kid shoes, and kid 
 gloves, Peggy — French gloves, like Lady Wau- 
 thrope's. And whatever more I want, uncle says 
 is to be ordered from Liverpool ; but I shall never 
 wear all those things out. I could not do it if I 
 were to live for a thousand years. Come and 
 look at them, and then tell me if you believe I 
 am Phemie Keller. It is something like what we 
 used to talk about, Peggy. Do you remember 
 how we used to talk ? " 
 
 "Ay, bairn, I mind it weel." The time Miss 
 Phemie dreamed her dreams was not so very far 
 remote but that any one could recollect it. " And 
 it seems to me, when Pm thinking ower it a', that
 
 SATISFIED. 221 
 
 the Yerl has come across the hills to tak' my 
 darling frae me." 
 
 " But you shall come too. I asked him about 
 it, and he said, 'Yes, of course;' so you must 
 get a trousseau, Peggy, and travel with us where- 
 ever we go." 
 
 " Ye dinna want an auld fule like me to wait 
 on ye," answered Peggy ; " an' if ye did, I'd rather 
 stay i' the house I ken sae weel, wi' the maister 
 who has been aye sae gude to me, than gang 
 roamin* about the warld. But when ye are a 
 great lady, mind I always said this would come 
 to pass ; for if he is not an yerl, he is as rich as 
 one, I'll be bound." 
 
 " And I am sure he is kinder to me than any 
 duke in the land could be," agreed Phemie ; but 
 Phemie sighed for all that — a deep sigh — for the 
 vanished hopes, for the dream hero that could 
 return to her no more !
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 FOR LIFE. 
 
 Spring came to the sweet valley of Tordale — 
 came with its flowers and sunshine — its showers 
 — its springing grass — its budding trees — its 
 balmy winds — its wealth of promise — across the 
 hills and up the ravine. 
 
 By the dark green of the yarrow under foot — 
 by the anemones and hyacinths blooming beneath 
 the trees — by the soft cushions of lady's-fingers — 
 by the scent of the clover in the meadows — by 
 the ragged-robin trailing through the hedges — 
 by the saxifrage growing beside the waterfall — by 
 the ferns daintily unfolding their leaves — by the 
 delicate colour of the moss covering the boulders 
 — you could tell as you passed by that Spring 
 had come, and was decking herself in robes of
 
 FOR LIFE. 223 
 
 coolest verdure, to greet the richer beauty of the 
 summer. 
 
 When the young lambs were dotted about on 
 the mountain-sides — when marsh-marigolds and 
 go wans were to be gathered in handfuls — when 
 the streams and rills were dancing over the 
 stones and making sweet melody as they sped 
 along, thankful the winter snows were melted, 
 the winter frosts thawed — Phemie Keller was 
 married. 
 
 Ere ever the wild roses put forth buds — ere 
 ever the honeysuckle climbing among thorn and 
 briar and bramble began to scent the air with its 
 delicious fragrance — in the spring-time of lier 
 young life — in the first bloom and blush of her 
 rare loveliness — Phemie became a wife. 
 
 In the midst of the congregation, Captain 
 Stondon met her a stranger — from the midst of 
 the congregation he took her for himself. 
 
 Had he ever wanted to be rid of his bargain — 
 to back out of the engagement entered into, 
 where the Cumberland hills frowned down on 
 Tordale Church — he would have found it no easy
 
 224f PHEMIE KELLEE. 
 
 matter to do so, for tlie whole parish might have 
 been summoned as witnesses on Phemie's behalf. 
 
 The shepherds left their sheep to the tender 
 mercies of the coolies — the farmers put on their 
 best suits and plodded up the valley to Tordale 
 Church — the eggs were not collected — the milk 
 was not churned — the children did not go to 
 school on that fine spring morning when Phemie 
 Keller was man-ied. 
 
 Had privacy been desired, privacy would have 
 been in Tordale simply impossible ; and as no 
 secret was made of the day or the hour, as every- 
 body had known for weeks previously when the 
 ceremony was to take place, the church was 
 literally crammed. 
 
 Many a one who had never gone to hear Mr. 
 Conbyr preach went to hear him read the words 
 that made the bride and bridegroom one — went 
 to see the grand gentleman, who was popularly 
 supposed to have so much money that he did not 
 know what to do with it, taking to wife Daniel 
 Aggland's niece — bonnie Phemie, who, for all her 
 great fortune, for all her fine clothes, looked pale
 
 FOR LIFE. 225 
 
 and frightened, or, as one of tlie spectators 
 remarked, "flate." 
 
 " There is a most serious deal of difference," he 
 added, shaking his head solemnly; ''she's but a 
 bairn, with her glintin' hair, and her soft blue 
 eyes, and her jimp waist that I could 'most span 
 with my one hand. She's but a bairn, while he " 
 — and the man took a long look at Captain 
 Stondon, who was standing bare-headed, with the 
 sunshine streaming full upon him — "Go'nows 
 how old he is." 
 
 I should like to be able to sketch that interior 
 for you, my reader. I should like to show you 
 the men and the women and the children who 
 filled the church, and looked with grave, inter- 
 ested faces at the group standing before the altar. 
 I should like to paint for you the way the sun- 
 beams fell on Phemie's hair, turning each thread 
 to gold — how they showed her pale pure face to 
 every soul in the church — how in her white dress 
 she looked more lovely than ever. 
 
 The Agglands were there, all of them — all 
 Phemie's relations, excepting the Kellers — all her 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 friends — all her acquaintances — all who knew 
 anything about her — were gathered together on 
 that bright spring morning ; but Captain Stondon 
 had no one belonging to him present on the 
 occasion. Even his best man was no fine gen- 
 tleman from London, but merely a stray curate 
 from Grassenfel, who could not have seemed more 
 uncomfortable had he been going to be married 
 himself. 
 
 Already Captain Stondon had found that the 
 position of his wife's family in the social scale 
 placed him in an awkward dilemma. There are 
 always certain embarrassments entailed by differ- 
 ences of rank which are felt by Love the moment 
 he walks out of doors with the lady of his 
 choice. 
 
 The world cares for Mammon, though Cupid 
 may not. Society is apt to make merry over the 
 ways and manners of those who are not the crenie 
 de la creme, while the happy pair are absorbed in 
 one another. The wedding at Tordale would have 
 shocked the sensitive nerves of Captain Stondon's 
 intimates ; and, accordingly, prudently and sensibly
 
 FOR LIFE. 227 
 
 he refrained from making himself a laughing-stock 
 among his friends. 
 
 When we are at Eome we do as E-ome does. 
 When we are in the world we conform to its 
 usages ; and though Captain Stondon was marry- 
 ing out of the world, he still meant to return to 
 the world and take his bride thither mth him. 
 
 The absence of all hypercritical guests was best 
 for both Phemie and her uncle. They had ad- 
 mitted as much to one another ; and yet the fact 
 of none of the bridegroom's friends being present 
 hurt them, and showed them clearly, as if the 
 future had been spread out before their eyes, that 
 from all old associations — from all old friends — 
 from all old habits — Phemie Keller was passing 
 swiftly away. 
 
 As the shadow fades from the hill-side, leaving 
 no trace of where it has rested, so auburn hair and 
 blue eyes was passing away from the old familiar 
 life — from the rugged mountain scenery — from 
 the drip of the waterfall — from the calm peacefulr 
 ness — from the sweet monotony of that remote 
 valley for ever. 
 
 q2
 
 228 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 She might come back again, but never the 
 Phemie she had been ; never again might she look 
 out on life as she had done from the mndovvs 
 of her dream castle ; she might never more gaze 
 ■upon the mountains with the same eyes ; she 
 might never speak with the same thoughts and 
 wishes swelling in her heart. 
 
 She was going out to be another Phemie ; in 
 a different rank ; with different aims, and hopes, 
 and objects ; with a difficult part to play ; with a 
 difficult path to follow : no wonder that as the 
 farmers' wives saw the tears filling her eyes, and 
 rolling down her cheeks, they said, with an in- 
 tuitive, unreasoning pity, "God help her; and she 
 so young ! " 
 
 So young ; that was the string everybody harped 
 on. It never seemed to have occurred to them 
 before, that she was barely more than a child, till 
 they came to see her pledging her whole future 
 — all the long, long years she had in all human 
 probability before her— away. 
 
 Many a one present had not liked Phemie over 
 much in days gone by. They had thought her
 
 FOR LIFE. 229 
 
 conceited, fanciful, stuck up ; but now that she 
 was being made a lady of — now that the whole 
 country side had been bidden to a marriage feast 
 at the Hill Farm, and that the girl, in her sorrow 
 and trouble at leaving ever}d:hing behind her, had 
 Sfone to bid even the veriest virao^o in Tordale 
 good-bye — her short-comings were forgotten, and 
 nothing but her youth and beauty remembered. 
 
 Her fine clothes, that she had been so proud to 
 exhibit, were never thought of; the grand match 
 she was making, and of which some present had 
 been very jealous, faded out of recollection; and 
 for the time being her young face, her girlish 
 figure, filled every heart with a vague pity. 
 Something was wanting in that bridal group, and 
 the spectators felt the want as they looked at 
 the child giving herself to this man so long as he 
 lived or as she lived. 
 
 There was not a person present — unless, indeed, 
 it might be Mr. Aggland — who could have defined 
 his or her sensations ; but, nevertheless, every one 
 felt the absence of that intanfi^ible something: 
 which Phemie Keller misfht never now become
 
 280 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 acquainted with, sinlessly, through all the years 
 to come. 
 
 That was it — for better, for worse — she was 
 resigning all hope, all chance of happy love ; love 
 with its bliss and agony ; love with its doubts 
 and distractions ; love without which no life, be 
 it otherwise ever so symmetrical, can be perfect. 
 Attachment — affection — a calm, even, unruffled 
 existence is better, some tell you, than the hot and 
 the cold, the fever and the collapse, the mad pulse 
 and the shivering agony. It may be so. God 
 knows what is best for us : God knew what was 
 best for Phemie Keller ! 
 
 And yet as the " keld " comes darkling upon 
 the surface of the Cumberland lakes, mthout 
 cloud, without wind, without shadow, without rea- 
 son that we can trace, so in the middle of the 
 sunshine, in the middle of the prosperity, a "keld" 
 seemed to gather on the waters of Phemie's life ; 
 those clear waters that were as yet unruffled by- 
 passion, untroubled by regret. 
 
 For she was, as they all said, young. She 
 was such a child that her composure was dis-
 
 FOR LIFE. :231 
 
 turbed by Davie, avIio had thought it incumbent 
 upon him to come and see the ceremony, like his 
 neighbours. 
 
 A wise dog, he followed the wedding party from 
 the Hill Farm at a distance, and had slunk into 
 the church in an unassuming, undemonstrative 
 manner, with his tail between his legs, doubtless 
 hoping by this manoeuvre to escape observation. 
 
 But Mrs. Aggland, ever lynx-eyed, spied him 
 out, and bade Duncan take him home ; an order 
 which Duncan disputed in so loud a whisper that 
 the controversy attracted the attention of one of 
 the shepherds, who secured the dog, and placed 
 him between his legs, from which position Davie 
 surveyed the ceremony with sorrowful eyes. 
 
 When the company began to disperse, Davie 
 walked out with the first, but waited, like a Chris- 
 tian, in the church porch for Phemie. 
 
 He knew as well as anybody there that she was 
 going from him. Many a pleasant mile they had 
 walked together over the hills ; many a score times 
 she had called him to follow her to Strammer 
 Tarn ; many a morning they had run do^vn the
 
 232 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 liill-side and across the valley when the sun was 
 looking at them over Helbeck in the glad summer, 
 or in the dreary winter, when Phemie looked back 
 gleefully to see her footprints in the snow. They 
 had climbed together ; they had rested among the 
 heather; she had tvirined wild flowers round his 
 neck, an attention he had not then appreciated ; 
 she had loved him and been good to him ; and now 
 it was all over, and Davie knew it, and because he 
 knew it, he did not jump upon her, or fawn, or 
 gambol, or bark as she came out. 
 
 He onl}^ wagged his dilapidated tail from side 
 to side, and licked her hand, and looked up in 
 her face, and said farewell as plainly as a dumb 
 brute can. 
 
 At which performance Phemie — Phemie Keller 
 no longer — broke out crying, to the dismay of 
 Captain Stondon, who hurried her through the 
 churchyard and down the steps, inwardly anathe- 
 matizing Davie in particular, and the lookers on in 
 general. 
 
 " It's all along of you," remarked Mrs. Aggland, 
 giving Duncan a shake. " If you had taken the
 
 FOR LIFE. 233 
 
 dog back, as I told you, she would have been all 
 right. Was ever woman plagued as I am by a set 
 of disobedient, headstrong boys ? " 
 
 "Well, you wouldn't have liked to go home 
 yourself," retorted Duncan ; whilst Mr. Aggland, 
 with a troubled look in his face, muttered a-s 
 he walked along, leading Helen by the hand — 
 
 ** An auld head set on shouthers young, 
 The like was never seen ; 
 Tor bairnies -will be bairnies a3-e, 
 As they hae ever been." 
 
 But he was thinking of something else all the 
 while. He was thinking about Phemie ; think- 
 ing, as he had never thought before, of the future 
 she was going out to meet. 
 
 " Keep up, Phemie ; be brave," he found an 
 opportunity of whispering to her, and the girl 
 dried her tears, and smiled her best, and laughed 
 when her husband broke the bridecake over her 
 head, after the fashion of the country, while the 
 young men and the young women contended for 
 the very crumbs eagerly. 
 
 Then Captain Stondon was happy again. He
 
 234 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 forgave Duncan and he forgave the inhabitants of 
 Tordale, and he made himself so agi'eeable while 
 Phemie was getting ready for her departure, that 
 the bride's youth and the bride herself were 
 forgotten, and everybody joined in praises of the 
 officer, and wishes for his health, happiness, and 
 prosperity. 
 
 The guests were going to keep up the feast till 
 night, or at least so long as their heads remained 
 tolerably steady, but the bride and bridegroom had 
 to start early in the afternoon to catch the train 
 at Carlisle, from which place Phemie had elected 
 to go to Scotland to spend her honeymoon. 
 ;"" After that Captain Stondon proposed travelling, 
 on the Continent, and the gui did not know when 
 she should see her uncle or Cumberland again. 
 
 " I hope you will be happy, Phemie," he said ; 
 " I believe you will." 
 
 " I think I shall, uncle," she answered ; but the 
 tears were in her eyes as she spoke. 
 
 " I have something to say to you before you go," 
 he began ; " something that came into my mind 
 as I followed you home from church."
 
 FOR LIFE. 235 
 
 " What is it ? " she asked. " What is it ? " she 
 repeated, seeing that he paused and hesitated 
 
 " If I was sending Duncan out into the world," 
 he said, '' I should warn him that it is a sinful 
 world ; that though it may not be hard to keep 
 straight in a lonely place like this, it is not so 
 easy to be good with temptations surrounding us 
 on every side " 
 
 " Yes, uncle," agreed Phemie. 
 
 " Burns says," proceeded Mr. Aggland, " that — 
 
 ' Gentlemen an' ladies worst, 
 "Wi' ev'ndoTvn want o' wark are curst.' 
 
 Now you are going to be a lady, Phemie, and a 
 lady out in the world, and I do not want you to lose 
 your head in consequence ; I do not want you to 
 live an objectless, useless, idle life. Chaucer tells 
 us truly that — 
 
 * An ydil man is like an hous that liath nonie walls, 
 The deviles may enter on every syde ; * 
 
 and an idle woman's position is quite as bad, 
 Phemie, quite." 
 
 " But I shall not be idle," she pleaded. 
 
 "You will not have to work," he answered,
 
 236 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 " and that with many is synonymous with idle- 
 ness. You are going to you know not what, my 
 child," he went on ; " you are going into a strange 
 world, where there are strange fashions, strange 
 creeds, strange ideas of morality. Phemie, you 
 will keep yourself straight ; you won't forget 
 what I have tried to teach you ; you won't forget 
 what your grandfather taught you ; you won't 
 forget this world is not all, and that its fashions 
 and its pleasures pass swiftly away ? " 
 
 " I will try to be good, uncle." 
 
 " You will have servants under you," he con- 
 tinued. " Don't be hard with them, Phemie ; 
 don't be thoughtless. Kemember they have souls 
 to be saved as well as you. You have beauty. 
 It is an article much prized where you are going. 
 Don't be too vain of it. Remember God gave it 
 to you — a gift not to be abused. Never forget 
 that, unless allied to something better, it is 
 but— 
 
 * A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, 
 Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.' 
 
 You will be rich ; when you are so, ' be not 
 exalted,' as Cleobulus pithily puts it. Solomon
 
 FOR LIFE. 237 
 
 says, ' riches are not for ever ; ' remember that ; 
 
 and also that for the use you make of them while 
 
 you have them you will be held accountable. I 
 
 would have you emulate those — 
 
 * Great souls, who touch' d with warmth divine, 
 Give gold a price, and teach its heams to shine ; 
 All hoarded pleasures they repute a load, 
 Nor think their wealth their own, tiU well bestowed.' 
 
 But you are going into a world so new and 
 strange that all old counsels, all old teachings, 
 seem inapplicable to it." 
 
 And Mr. Aggland dropped his hand despair- 
 ingly on Phemie's shoulder as he concluded. 
 
 " I will try t« remember," she said. 
 
 " I would have you — 
 
 * Strive in youth 
 To save your age from care,'" 
 
 continued her uncle. "I would have you keep 
 every Christian grace, every womanly virtue. I 
 do not wish to see you a fashionable lady. Do 
 not at first be too confident, but proceed — 
 
 * Like one that on a lonesome road 
 Doth walk in fear and dread. ' 
 
 And yet I would not have you over-fearful, or
 
 238 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 cowardly, because I know ' that what begins in 
 fear usually ends in folly.' I want you to keep a 
 balance, Phemie, between bigotry and irreligion — 
 between virtue and prudery — between hard work 
 and idleness — between confidence and presump- 
 tion." 
 
 " I wish I had not to go away at all, uncle," 
 was her comment on this string of advice. 
 
 " If you had not to go away I should not have 
 to warn you," he answered. "And now good-bye, 
 and don't forget me, Phemie ; don't quite forget 
 me, if you can help it." 
 
 He was parting from the girl he had loved like 
 his own daughter ; parting from her who was 
 going forth on an untried, uncertain road ; and if 
 the tears did come into his eyes, if his voice did 
 tremble for a moment, I hope those who read 
 these pages will not think him the less a man for 
 all that. 
 
 As for Phemie, seeing him in such trouble, she 
 kept her own trouble back bravely. She would 
 not cry ; she would not unfit herself for saying 
 what she knew was the truth, that she could
 
 FOR LIFE. 239 
 
 never forget him, nor forget the Hill Farm ; and 
 she took his hand and kissed it ere he could pre- 
 vent her, while she whispered — 
 
 '* The mother may forget the child 
 
 That smiles sae sweetly on her knee, 
 But I'll remember thee, Glencairn , 
 And a' that thou hast done for me." 
 
 And then she broke do^vn — then she threw her- 
 self into his arms and lay sobbing there till 
 Helen came to remind her time was getting on, 
 and that railway trains wait for no one. 
 
 ** You must go now, Phemie," said her uncle ; 
 "do not think me unkind for hurrying you 
 away — 
 
 * I have too giieved a heart to take a tedious leave.' 
 
 There now. Let's not unnerve each other," and 
 he put her gently back from him. "And now 
 for my last words. Remember that you are 
 but an — 
 
 * Unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpractised. 
 Happy in this — you are not yet so old 
 But you may learn.' 
 
 Be a good wife to the man who has chosen you,
 
 24)0 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 and whom you liave chosen. 'Do him good, 
 and not evil, all the days of your life.' Now, 
 Phemie, now — now," and he unclasped the arms 
 she had thrown round him once again, and bade 
 her say what other farewells she had to say, as 
 it was high time they were off to Carlisle. 
 
 "I shall come back again," Phemie said to 
 each and all. " I shall come back again, Duncan. 
 I will indeed, Helen. Be sure I won't stay long 
 away, Peggy." 
 
 But Peggy M'Nab refused to be comforted. 
 She went into her kitchen after the happy pair 
 drove away, and covered her head with her 
 apron, and sobbed aloud. 
 
 '' Don't cry, Peggy ! — don't, don't ! " exclaimed 
 Helen, with the tears streaming down her own 
 cheeks ; " don't cry ; she will come back to us ; 
 you heard her say yourself that she would." 
 
 "Alake, Miss Helen," answered Peggy, from 
 behind her curtain of blue check, '' the child that 
 I carried in my airms — that I nursed in my lap — 
 I have not seen this mony a year, unless, maybe, 
 by an odd time in a dream ; and your cousin
 
 FOR LIFE. 241 
 
 Pheraie, who lias just gane awa^ neither you nor 
 me will ever set eyes on again till our deein' 
 day." 
 
 At which assurance Helen lifted up her voice 
 and wept aloud, for she did not understand the 
 exact meaning of the hard truth contained in 
 Peggy's pathetic words. And if she had, would 
 she have wept the less ? Would she have ceased 
 lamenting? Would it have been. any consolation 
 to her to know that another Phemie might come 
 back, but that the Phemie who had danced over 
 the heather, and sat by Strammer Tarn, and 
 assisted in all household duties ; who had been 
 gay and sad, happy and sorrowful, could return to 
 the Hill Farm — to the peace and quiet of the 
 valley below — to the rugged mountains — to the 
 murmuring waterfall — never more — ah, never ! 
 
 VO L. I.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 DISAPPOINTED. 
 
 Montague Stondon, Esquire, barrister-at-law, 
 heir presumptive to Marshlands, fifteenth, or 
 twentieth, or thirtieth cousin, or something 
 equally near of kin to the man who had just 
 taken unto himself a wife, lived in Chapel Street, 
 Grosvenor Place, in a house which commanded in 
 front a cheerful view of the other side of the way, 
 and at the back looked out over Tattersall's to St. 
 George's Hospital. 
 
 It was not a large house, it was not a convenient 
 one, it was far and away too expensive for Mr. 
 Stondon's means ; but it was sufficiently genteel, 
 it w^as within five minutes of the Row, it was close 
 to the Green Park, it touched elbows with Bel- 
 grave Square, and altogether suited the barrister
 
 DISAPPOINTED. ^43 
 
 as well as any house is ever likely to suit any man 
 who is overwhelmed with debt, and who, having 
 the tastes of a millionaire, is often at his wits' end 
 to know where to raise twenty pounds. 
 
 If you are not bidden to a banquet, I cannot see 
 the precise pleasure that accrues from beholding 
 others partaking of it. If you have not the means 
 to visit with his Grace the Dake, it is beyond my 
 capacity to understand why you should pay fabu- 
 lous rents for the mere enjoyment of living near 
 his Grace, and seeing her Grace's carriage pass 
 your door ; but Montague Stondon felt that there 
 was a satisfaction in residing within call of nobility, 
 and that their footmen, their equipages, their crests, 
 and coats of arms conferred a certain importance 
 on him. The earth would not be a very cheerful 
 dwelling-place if it were beyond reach of the sun's 
 rays, and in the opinion of Montague Stondon the 
 sun never rose except about Belgrave Square and 
 those other regions affected by the nobility and 
 gentry of England. 
 
 When he rode out on his hired horse, he could 
 be in the midst of rank and fashion immediately ;
 
 244 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 he could take his fine whiskers into the Park and 
 air them there, while he gnawed the handle of 
 his riding-whip, and wondered how the deuce he 
 was to carry on for a year or two longer. 
 ; When Mrs. Stondon, a faded fashionable woman, 
 who had brought her husband some fortune, " re- 
 ceived," she liked to think that the carriages of 
 her visitors and the carriages of the great people 
 hard by touched wheels in the street. 
 
 It was nice to lie on the sofa and listen to the 
 thundering double knocks powdered footmen were 
 giving in the neighbouring square ; it would have 
 been impossible to have ordered goods home, if 
 home had chanced to be outside the radius of 
 fashion ; it would have done Basil harm at scliool 
 had his parents not lived in a genteel quarter ; it 
 would have been fatal to him at college had the 
 parental letters been dated from any locality less 
 desirable than Chapel Street. 
 
 Fashion — even the flimsiest and falsest kind of 
 fashion — was a good to be purchased at any price, 
 at any risk. They had been used to it — they had 
 been accustomed to terrible dinner parties, ^to
 
 DISAPPOINTED. 245 
 
 r owJed assemblies, to boxes at the Opera, to all 
 the hundred weary pleasures which so many 
 Londoners consider necessary to their very exist- 
 ence ; and the consequence was that, as they 
 could not relinquish any of their usual indul- 
 gences, they got more and more involved while the 
 years went by, and less and less able to extricate 
 themselves from their embarrassments. 
 
 But for the hope of Marshlands, but for the idea 
 that some day they should have money in plenty, 
 life would scarcely have been supportable. As it 
 was, they went on their way, trusting that news 
 would soon come of Captain Stondon's death, and 
 of their own accession to fortune. 
 
 " What right has a man like that to own such 
 a property ? " demanded Mrs. Montague Stondon. 
 " He might just as well give it to us for all the 
 enjoyment he takes out of it. I am positive he 
 cannot spend more than five hundred a year ! " 
 and the lady sighed at the idea of Marshlands 
 belonging to a person who could so limit his 
 personal expenditure. 
 
 As for his profession, Montague Stondon made
 
 246 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 very little of it. If he possessed any natural 
 abilities he never used them. If there was money 
 to be earned at the Bar, scarcely any of it found 
 its way into his pocket. He was good company, 
 but he was not much of an opinion. He could 
 shoot better than he could plead ; he liked loung- 
 ing in his own drawing-room, cantering up the 
 Row, criticising the latest beauty, far more than 
 siittng in his chambers or cross-examining wit- 
 nesses. 
 
 His manners would have brought him business, 
 his address made him a favourite with the judges ; 
 but his intense dislike for work, his inordinate 
 love of pleasure, rendered his career a failure, his 
 whole existence but a race after amusement, a 
 longing for dead men's shoes, a staving -off 
 of duns, an incessant struggle with debt and 
 poverty. 
 
 It is astonishing how miserably poor, people 
 living in a respectable manner, inhabiting a house 
 in a desirable neighbourhood, keeping several 
 servants, eating of the best, sleeping on the softest, 
 may really be. The sempstress living in Bethnal
 
 DISAPPOINTED. 247 
 
 Green had not more anxiety for the morrow, more 
 care for the day, than Montague Stondon, Esq., 
 of Chapel Street, Grosvenor Place, who was over 
 head and ears in debt, and who spent that por- 
 tion of his life which he passed in the bosom of 
 his family in alternately cursing his luck and 
 praying for the death of his relative. 
 
 " If that fellow do not soon go home," he re- 
 marked one morning to his wife, "I shall have to 
 figure in the ' Gazette ;' we cannot carry on much 
 longer as we are doing now ! " and he flung down 
 letter after letter containing requests for debts re- 
 cently incurred, more pressing demands for bills of 
 longer standing, and threats of law from creditors 
 whose large stock of patience was at last fairly 
 exhausted. " I am sure I do not know what we 
 are to do unless we can retrench." 
 
 " Retrench ! " repeated Mrs. Stondon, raising 
 her light eyebrows at the very idea. " How are 
 we to do that ? If you can show me how it is 
 possible for us to retrench," she proceeded, with 
 quite a show of energy, " I am willing to begin." 
 And the lady went on opening her letters,^while
 
 248 PHEilTE KELLER. 
 
 Montague Stondon took refuge behind the 
 " Times/' muttering, as he did so, 
 
 "Willing or not, there will soon have to be 
 something done, I see that j^lainly." 
 
 Meantime Mrs. Stondon read her letters. They 
 were, as a rule, the customary letters w^hich ladies 
 write to ladies, crossed as if note-paper had been 
 ten guineas a quire and postage three shillings 
 the half ounce ; but occasionally there intervened 
 a shoii: curt note from some indignant milliner, 
 or a pathetic entreaty for money from a strug- 
 ghng dressmaker. 
 
 These Mrs. Stondon dropped as though they 
 had burnt her fingers ; but to the small gossip, 
 the petty tittle-tattle, the long rambling epistles 
 of her friendly coiTespondents, she devoted herself 
 with praiseworthy earnestness. 
 
 " Mary Monk is going to be married," — these 
 were the pieces of information to which she 
 treated her husband — " a very nice match, Mrs. 
 Monk says. Three thousand a year, and a most 
 lovely place in Derbyshire. So devotedly attached 
 to her, and so fond of all her family. Well, Mrs.
 
 DISAPPOINTED. 249 
 
 Monk is fortunate — she has got rid of four out of 
 the seven now. Juha Enon has another boy, so 
 there will be no want of heirs there ; and Sir John 
 Martingale has proposed for and been accepted 
 by a widow who has a hundred thousand pounds 
 fortune. Caroline wants us to go and stay with 
 her for a month before she leaves for the Conti- 
 nent, and Mrs. Leigh hopes we will not forget 
 them this summer. What a pleasant world this 
 would be if one had plenty of money 1 " sighed 
 Mrs. Stondon, laying down Mrs. Leigh's letter and 
 taking up another. 
 
 " I wonder who this is from ? " she said, turn- 
 ing it over ; " post-mark Grassenfel — who do we 
 know in Grassenfel, Montague ? " 
 
 "That is the place where Henr}^ was laid-up 
 at," answered her husband, his interest excited in 
 a moment. " I wish to heaven he had broken his 
 neck there ! " 
 
 " Hush ! you should not say such things," ex- 
 postulated his wife. 
 
 " Only think them, I suppose," was his reply. 
 " Well, what have you got ? What have you got,
 
 250 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 I say ? " and he snatched the enclosure out of his 
 wife's hand, and read — 
 
 *' Captain Stondon,— Mrs. Stondon." 
 
 " Damn him ! " said Mr. Montague Stondon, 
 when he had taken in what it all meant. " Damn 
 her — damn them both ! " 
 
 And having concluded this little commination 
 service, he looked at his wife, and his wife looked 
 at him ; and then they looked with one accord 
 at the bills and letters strewing the breakfast- 
 table. 
 
 "It is a cursed shame!" broke out Mr. Ston- 
 don, and his brown eyes seemed to grow black 
 with rage as he spoke ; " a man ought to be 
 locked up for doing such a thing — at his time of 
 life, too ! He must be mad — he has no right to 
 be at large ! " 
 
 "Some designing creature, doubtless," wept 
 Mrs. Stondqn. 
 
 "That cuts Basil out for ever," said Mr. 
 Stondon, with another oath. 
 
 " She may not have any children," observed
 
 DISAPPOINTED. 251 
 
 his wife, clutching at the only straw Avithin 
 reach. 
 
 " Won't she ? " answered the barrister, " won't 
 she ? by George I She'll have scores of them, and 
 Basil may go and enhst as soon as he likes, for 
 none of us will ever touch a penny of the Marsh- 
 lands rents now." 
 
 "I wonder who she is, Montague? Look in 
 the ' Times ' and see if it is there." 
 
 And it was there. 
 
 "At Tordale, by the Rev. Edward Conbyr, 
 Vicar — Henry Gower Stondon, Esq., late Captain 
 in the — ^th Hussars, to Euphemia, only daughter 
 of the late Ernest Keller, Esq., and niece of 
 General Keller, Roundwood, Sussex." 
 
 "How the deuce did he meet one of the 
 Roundwood Kellers at Grassenfel?" demanded Mr. 
 Stondon, and his wife said feebly that she really 
 did not know. 
 
 "Depend upon it," went on the barrister, 
 "there is something queer about the business, 
 otherwise he never would have kept it so quiet. 
 There is a screw loose somewhere, but that won't
 
 252 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 do us any good. He might just as well have 
 broken his neck." And Montague Stondon, aged 
 a dozen years in as many mmutes, tossed over his 
 bills with the air of a man who did not know 
 which way to turn for assistance. " It will bring 
 them all down upon me," he said ; and he began 
 swearing once again, when his wife suggested that 
 perhaps Captain Stondon would help him over his 
 difficulties and do something for Basil. 
 
 "You do not know what you are talking 
 about," was his reply ; " you do not know how 
 much we owe. It would not take a shilling less 
 than ten thousand pounds to put us straight, and 
 you do not expect him to give us that, I suppose, 
 with a wife in the present, and a tribe of children 
 coming? " 
 
 " She may not have any family," repeated Mrs. 
 Stondon. 
 
 " I tell you she will," answered her husband. 
 " Women always have children when you don't 
 want them to have any; and even if she have 
 not, what good will that be to us ? She will take 
 care of him now, and lie will live for — God only
 
 DISAPPOINTED. 253 
 
 knows how long." And Mr. Montague Stondon 
 thrust the ends of his whiskers into his mouth, 
 and chewed them savagely, while he wrought out 
 this problem to his own dissatisfaction. 
 
 For a minute some vague idea of setting to 
 work even at the eleventh hour — of struggling for 
 wealth, position, ease — crossed the barrister's 
 mind. 
 
 What was the good of such a life, after all ? 
 Where was the pleasure of running into debt ? 
 What did the opinion of the world signify? 
 What did it matter whether he met fifty fashion- 
 able people in the course of the day, who were 
 as perfectly indifferent to him as he was to 
 Ihem ? Was this weary game worth the price of 
 the candle which he was burning down and down, 
 day after day, and week after week ? Could he 
 do nothing to retrieve the past ? or was it too late 
 for everything but debt, and duns, and discon- 
 tent ? 
 
 " If he had any family pride, I would go into 
 trade to spite him," said the barrister at last 
 " I would take a shop and put on an apron, and
 
 254 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 paint Montague Stondon, grocer, up in the High 
 Street of Disley, as fast as I would walk into the 
 Park ; but he would only say he hoped I should 
 do a good business, and offer to pay my rent for 
 the first year, and tell me to send over half a 
 dozen pounds of tea to Marshlands. Hang him ! " 
 finished Mr. Stondon, with fervour. "I wish he 
 was being tried for his life at the Old Bailey, and 
 that I was for the Crown. He should die if he 
 had fifty lives ; he should swing from a gallows 
 as high as Haman's, if I had any voice in the 
 matter." 
 
 "My dear Montague!" entreated Mrs. Ston- 
 don. 
 
 " He might just as well and better have died 
 in India," proceeded her husband ; " nobody 
 would have missed him, and I should then have 
 succeeded to Marshlands. When a man goes out 
 to India, he is expected to stay there, and he has 
 no right to come back to stand in the way of his 
 relations. I wish I was twenty years younger, I 
 would show Captain Stondon how a man may 
 sfet on without Marshlands : but Basil shaU work.
 
 DISAPPOINTED. 'J 00 
 
 He shall not lead the life I have done. If I 
 could but get rid of these cursed liabilities, I 
 would think about him." 
 
 "Perhaps Captain Stondon would do some- 
 thing," suggested the lady. 
 
 " He only paid for his education when he was 
 single," retorted the bari'ister ; " do you think he 
 will do more now he is married ? " And Mrs. 
 Stondon had to take refuge in her private opinion, 
 which was that the very first time she had a 
 chance she would "humble herself," as she ex- 
 pressed it, to her kinsman, and ask him to help 
 Mr. Stondon, and to 23ush on her son. 
 
 "Only give me an opportunity," thought this 
 wise lady, " and I will improve it." 
 
 And without saying a word to her husband, the 
 very day she heard of Captain Stondon's arrival 
 in to^vn, she called upon the bride, whom she 
 offered to take with her to eveiy possible and 
 impossible place ; whom she kissed ; whom she 
 flattered; whom she treated as though Phemie 
 had been one of the blood royal, or a countess in 
 her own right.
 
 256 . PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Then she told Mr. Stondon that he must call 
 also, and Mr. Stondon called. 
 
 "The girl is pretty," he said, on his return 
 home, "and I do not think she has fooled him. 
 It is her face that has done it ; and somehow or 
 other, though how I can't imagine, it is a great 
 match for her. She has no manners ; she has no 
 confidence ; she is just an unfledged country- 
 wench whom he has fallen in love with on account 
 of her beauty ;" and Montague Stondon cursed 
 her beauty, and wished all women were born a 
 hundred years old and as ugly as witches. " She 
 will lead him a pretty dance before long," finished 
 the barrister ; " why there must be forty years 
 between them : he might be her gi^andfather. 
 Do you know how they happened to meet with 
 one another, and who made her marry him ? for, 
 of course, she never did it of her own free will." 
 
 "I know nothing," answered Mrs. Montague 
 Stondon. " I have never seen her alone ; he will 
 not trust her out of his sight. I said if he had 
 any business to attend to, before he went abroad, I 
 would try to amuse her ; but he said that he had
 
 DISAPPOINTED. 257 
 
 no business, and that he thought ' Phemie/ as he 
 calls her, would like best to go about with him. 
 And if you believe me, Montague," went on the 
 lady, " the girl said she did not want to go any- 
 where without him ; an^ungrateful minx ! and I 
 think she is fond of him ; positively, my dear, I 
 think she is." 
 
 " So should I be, if he gave me Marshlands," 
 answered Mr. Stondon. 
 
 " All ! but I mean without Marshlands. I 
 think she is one of those soft, pulpy, characterless 
 girls who like anybody who is fond of them. 
 Whatever he says, she agrees with. She does 
 nothing but blush and answer every question 
 through him. *I do not know what Captain 
 Stondon intends to do.' ' Henry, where shall we 
 be going to first V ' Shall we return to England this 
 year, Henry V It is Henry this, and Henry that, 
 and ' May I, Henry ? ' — perfectly disgusting, you 
 know; bad enough when the husband is a boy, 
 but simply ridiculous when he might be her 
 great-grandfather." 
 
 " I must try to get something more out of her 
 vol. I.
 
 258 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 when they dine here," remarked Mr. Stondon; 
 " you have asked them, have you not ? " 
 
 "Yes," answered Mrs. Stondon, "and what is 
 more, they are coming. I thought I never should 
 have persuaded Captain Stondon, but he ulti- 
 mately yielded. I suppose the bride knows 
 nothing of les convenances^ and that he is afraid 
 of her making some faux pas" 
 
 " Poor little soul ! " ejaculated the barrister. 
 
 " Little simpleton," remarked his wife.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ON VIEW. 
 
 When Mrs. Montague Stondon invited her 
 relations to dine with them in " a quiet way/' 
 she assured Captain Stondon that she would not 
 ask more than a couple, or so, of friends to 
 meet them. 
 
 " It will be only a family party," she declared, 
 and then forthwith she wrote notes to about 
 five-and-twenty people, of whom the one-half 
 had pleasure in accepting. 
 
 " I could not get through the dinner with 
 that pair alone," she informed her husband ; " and 
 if we have one or two, we may as well have a 
 dozen. It is no more trouble, and it is no more 
 expense ; and although Captain Stondon talks so 
 much about not caring for society, I know he 
 
 s 2
 
 260 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 would not like to spend an evening tete-a-tete 
 with us. That is the way with all those kind of 
 men. They do not know what they want ! If 
 the bride acquits herself creditably he will be as 
 proud as a peacock, and it shall not be my fault 
 if she do not." 
 
 " Nor mine/' added Mr, Stondon, for all which 
 kind intentions Phemie would have been duly 
 grateful had she only known of them. 
 
 As it was, she dreaded that visit as she had 
 never dreaded anything before in her life, and 
 the hints and instructions which Captain Stondon 
 thought it necessary to give only made her 
 original confusion worse. He told her she must 
 not do this, and that she must do something else. 
 He fidgeted about her dress ; he would not let 
 her maid arrange her hair, but sent for an indi- 
 vidual with elaborate whiskers, who made her 
 head ache, and sent her out unable to bend 
 her neck. 
 
 " I do not think going to Court could be much 
 worse than this ! " sighed Phemie, as she fitted 
 on her gloves ; but she felt comforted when her
 
 ON VIEW. 261 
 
 husband surveyed her proudly, and told her she 
 was the prettiest creature he had ever seen. 
 
 "Am I really pretty, Henry?" asked the girl, 
 who had begun to question her own good looks, 
 and to value her personal possessions at a much 
 more modest rate than formerly. 
 
 " Are you really what ? " he retorted, holding 
 her at arm's length from him, and proudly sur- 
 veying her from head to foot. " Are you really 
 what ? — oh, vanity ! vanity ! " and then Phemie 
 laughed and blushed to hear again and again that 
 she was beautiful. 
 
 But no consciousness of beauty could have 
 made that dinner-party other than a wretched 
 ordeal to the young wife. The faces of twelve 
 strangers whom she had never seen previously, 
 swam before her. Thirty eyes were always, as 
 she imagined, riveted on her. If Mr. Stondon 
 would only have let her alone ; if he had only not 
 tried to make her talk ; if the servants could 
 , only have believed that she was not famishing, 
 and that she did not want a glass of wine every 
 other minute ; if the light had not been so strong ;
 
 262 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 if the room Lad not been so close ; if everything 
 had been different, Phemie thought she could 
 have managed better : as it ^vas, she envied Mrs. 
 Stondon, she envied the servants, she envied 
 every person and any person who knew what was 
 what, and she envied, beyond all other persons, a 
 young lady who, owing to there being seven on a 
 side, sat next to her, and whose composure filled 
 Phemie with the most intense admiration, not to 
 say awe. 
 
 If she had upset her wine, if she had spilled 
 her soup, if she had taken mint sauce with duck, 
 if she had kept the Avhole table waiting, if she had 
 answered without being spoken to, if she had 
 dropped her fork, if she had appropriated her 
 neighbour's bread, that wonderful woman would 
 have shown no more sign of embarrassment than 
 if she had done everything decently and in 
 order. 
 
 Talkino' to a Q-entleman on her ris^ht hand, she 
 let a morsel of chicken fall from her fork, and the 
 misadventure made Phemie feel as though she 
 had coj:nmitted some sin herself
 
 ON VIEW. 263 
 
 " That was a gi'eat disappointment," remarked 
 the culprit to her, with a charming smile, and 
 then straightway she observed to her other neigh- 
 bour, " which shows people should not try to do 
 two things at once." 
 
 '' If I could learn to be like her," thought 
 Phemie, jealousl}^, "I should not mind paying a 
 thousand pounds, supposing I had the money." 
 
 Have patience, child, have patience — Rome 
 was not built in a day. If the gift be so valuable, 
 rest content, for it will come to you yet ; if ease 
 of manner and indifference to the opinions of 
 others be possessions worth coveting, rest satisfied, 
 for in the years now before you all diffidence will 
 vanish and fade away, and j^ou shall care no more 
 for speaking to a countess than you ever did to a 
 farmer's wife in Tordale. 
 
 But be not over eager, 'ina nnignonne, for the 
 human being has yet to be created who shall 
 retain a child's heart under a woman's manner. 
 Is it worth the price, Phemie ? Is the external 
 ease and grace and self-possession a fair exchange 
 for the internal suffering and loss that must first
 
 264 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 be incurred ? In this world do we get anything 
 cheaply ? On this side heaven can we secure any 
 prize without paying dearly for it 1 It is better 
 to be embarrassed at a dinner-party than to sit 
 nursing care o'nights. It is better that society 
 should have our worst than that we should be 
 miserable when the guests are gone and the doors 
 closed. The day may come when you will look 
 back to the blushing, timid, ignorant Phemie, 
 three parts through her teens, and wish you could 
 steal her back from the past to have and to hold 
 for ever — wish unavailingly, for along the road 
 you will then have travelled there is no return, 
 and the Phemie you can dimly remember — the 
 Phemie who was married while yet almost a child 
 in Tordale Church, may return to you in the 
 flesh, only when the rivers flow back to their 
 springs, when the grain ripens in December, and 
 the flowers and the trees bloom and look gi'een 
 among winter frosts and snows. 
 
 Nevertheless Phemie envied her companion, 
 and wished with all her heart that the calumet of 
 peace she and the Captain had come to smoke in
 
 ON VIEW. 265 
 
 Chapel Street had not assumed the form of a 
 dinner-party. 
 
 How could she guess that care was sitting 
 beside her hostess likewise ? — how could she 
 imagine, looking at the plate, the glass, the china, 
 the servants, the wines, the fruits, that Mrs. 
 Stondon had not found it easy to arrange her 
 materials ? that there was a terrible to-morrow, 
 and a more temble morrow after, coming to the 
 smiling woman at the head of the table ? How 
 could she foresee the end which came to Mon- 
 tague Stondon, to his debts, to his embarrass- 
 ments, to his dinners, to his hopes, to his schemes ? 
 When he took her under his especial protection 
 later on in the evening, and began " dra^ving her 
 out," she, looking at his fine figure, at his hand- 
 some face, never realised how stiff and stark 
 would be the one, how fixed and ghastly the 
 other, ere she set foot in England again. 
 
 If she could have turned over a few pages and 
 reaxl to the point where " the end " was -written 
 across his life, she would have been tolerant and 
 sorrowful ; as it was, she saw merely his brown
 
 266 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 eyes searching her through, she heard only his 
 soft voice asking her questions, which were full 
 of torture to her. 
 
 " She liked flowers, he Avas certain ; " so he 
 took her to see the conservatory, which was 
 always full of bloom, let who would, go without 
 money. ''You must not compare our plants 
 with those you are accustomed to at Roundwood," 
 he went on ; '' General Keller's gardens are 
 famous all over Sussex, I am told." 
 
 Phemie kept silence for a moment. She did 
 not know whether Captain Stondon would like 
 her to say she and the Kellers were far apart as 
 the poles ; and, on the other hand, she felt it 
 would not be truthful for her to let Mr. Stondon 
 think she had ever seen her father's birthplace. 
 
 She had not lived all the most impressionable 
 part of her life, however, with Mr. Aggland for 
 nothing, and accordingly she answered timidly, 
 though with the tell-tale colour that offended 
 Mrs. Stondon flushing her face — 
 
 "I think your flowers beautiful, and I have 
 never been at Round wood."
 
 ON VIEW. 267 
 
 " Then you have a pleasure more to come," 
 replied Mr. Stondon. " I suppose it is stale news 
 to you that your aunt is in town. I saw her in 
 the Park yesterday." 
 
 Phemie's thoughts flew back to the cruel letter 
 with which her aunt had severed all ties between 
 them ; and forgetting everything except that and 
 the contemptuous repulse her mother had received 
 from the Keller family, she retorted hotly — 
 
 " That she did not know anything about Miss 
 Keller, and did not want to know. She had never 
 seen her, and she hoped she never should see 
 her ; " after which statement, feeling she had com- 
 mitted herself, the girl gi'ew scarlet, and stooping 
 down over the flowers, commenced admiring 
 them insanely. 
 
 " What does your mamma say to the idea of 
 your staying away from her for so long a time ? " 
 asked Mr. Stondon, smiling. She was such a 
 foolish little fish, and he was so skilful an angler 
 (this was what he thought), that there was no use 
 in wasting valuable bait upon her. 
 
 " I have not any mamma," replied Phemic.
 
 268 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 " She has been dead ever since I can remember, I 
 was going to say ; but I can remember her, so 
 that would not be true. She has been dead ever 
 so many years — ever so many ; " and the bride 
 bent her head again, and Montague Stondon 
 knew it was to hide the tears that vv^ere brim- 
 ming in her eyes. 
 
 He was beginning to like her. If she had been 
 anybody else than his relation's wife, he would 
 have commenced a flirtation. She had di^dne 
 hair, she had sweet eyes, she had a delicious 
 voice, with the faintest, slightest Northern accent 
 to make it earnest and pathetic. She Avas soft 
 and pulpy, a*s Mrs. Montague Stondon said ; but 
 then men are not usually averse to even an 
 exaggeration of feminine perfections. 
 
 She was astonishingly pretty, and young, and 
 impulsive. The kind of girl it was possible to 
 fancy kissing a man out of gi'atitude if he had 
 done her a great service ; a charming girl, with 
 the tenderest expression, with the whitest skin, 
 with the frankest manner, with the most extra- 
 ordinary want of self-confidence.
 
 ON VIEW. 269 
 
 " I do not blame him," thouglit Montague 
 Stondon ; " though she may have a dozen brats, 
 and I lose Marshlands, I do not blame him." 
 
 " I did not mean to pain you," he said gently. 
 " I knew you had lost your father, but I did not 
 think you had lost your mother too ; forgive me." 
 And he looked so penitent that Phemie could not 
 choose but say — 
 
 " I have nothing to forgive, only it always 
 makes me sorry to talk about my mother. She 
 was so pretty, and she died so young." 
 
 Phemie was pretty too ; would she die young ? 
 Mr. Stondon, looking into her face, would have 
 helped that selfish question presenting itself if he 
 could ; but if Phemie was nice, Marshlands was 
 nicer ; and though he did not blame Captain 
 Stondon for marrying her, it was impossible for 
 him to avoid speculating on what might yet be if 
 she were to die. 
 
 " It would kill him," considered the barrister. 
 " How mercenary poverty makes a man ! how 
 good people who have plenty of money ought to 
 be ! " And then he said out loud, with a smile,
 
 270 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 " that he felt certain she had found some one to 
 take her mother's place." 
 
 "I have always found more fathers than 
 mothers/' answered Phemie ; and for all he tried 
 hard to avoid laughing, Mr. Stondon was obliged 
 to do so outright, while Phemie, her little hand 
 resting on his arm, stood wondering what she 
 could have said to amuse him, wondering if 
 she had made any mistake— done anything 
 wrong. 
 
 "My grandfather took care of me first," she 
 explained, " and then my uncle, and — don't you 
 think Captain Stondon may be wondering where 
 I am, and wanting me ? " added Phemie, conscious 
 she was getting into deep water, and feebly 
 struggling back to land. 
 
 " You mean your grandfather, Mr. Keller," sug- 
 gested Mr. Stondon, as he led her towards the 
 drawing-room. 
 
 '" No," answered Phemie, impatiently. " If the 
 Kellers had brought me up, I should have seen 
 Eoundwood ; but I had nothing to do with them ; 
 I lived with my mother's father, a clergyman, till
 
 ON VIEW. 271 
 
 he died, and after that with my uncle in Cum- 
 berland." 
 
 '' Is he a clergyman, too ? " demanded her host. 
 
 "No — he is — he is — " and Phemie, knowing 
 that Mr. Stondon's eyes were fixed upon her, 
 grew first hot and then cold, and then angry with 
 herself for fearing to say out openly in that gen- 
 teel London house how her honest uncle got his 
 living honestly. 
 
 With a bitter pang of shame she remembered 
 his kindness, and contrasted it with her cowardice. 
 In a moment it swept through her mind that it 
 was Hke disowning him not to stand up and do 
 battle, if need were, for the man who had been as 
 a father to her. 
 
 " He is a farmer," she finished, with a defiant 
 uplifting of her beautiful head. " He is a 
 farmer ; " and the evening light fell softly on 
 her face as she spoke. 
 
 The same light was lying across Tordale then ; 
 the shadows were creeping up Helbeck ; they 
 were darkling down on the valley. Almost un- 
 consciously Phemie, as she saw the expression
 
 272 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 which came over Mr. Stondon's face, turned and 
 looked back at Tordale with the eyes of her 
 heart, and as she looked she wished she was 
 standing beside the waterfall, or among the 
 flowers in her uncle's little garden, that she 
 knew were giving out their fullest sweetness in 
 that quiet evening hour. 
 
 " Shall we have to stay here long ? " she asked 
 her husband when she could escape from Mr. 
 Stondon, and get over to the other side of the 
 room. " I am so tired." 
 
 And she looked so tired that Captain Stondon 
 observed, pityingly, " Poor child ! " before he pro- 
 ceeded to say that Mrs. Stondon was most anxious 
 to hear her sing. "You must make allowances 
 for her," he added, turning to that lady; "she has 
 lived all her life in the country, and been unable 
 to receive proper instruction." 
 
 Whereupon Mrs. Montague Stondon declared 
 she was quite certain she should be charmed ; 
 and, indeed, to do her justice, she had made up 
 her mind to go into ecstacies if Phemie only 
 screamed like a ballad-singer in the street.
 
 ON VIEW. 273 
 
 Had not Captain Stondon promised to take 
 care Basil was not disappointed in his long-talked- 
 of trip to Norway, and did not she feel certain he 
 would give her husband a few hundreds to stay 
 the wolves for a time, at any rate ? 
 
 Altogether, Mrs. Montague Stondon had done 
 her work better than the barrister. If she could 
 have imagined the mess he had got into with 
 Phemie, she would have shaken him, weak 
 and languid though she professed to be. Had 
 she known how thoroughly the bride disliked 
 him, how perfectly she understood Mr. Stondon 
 thought her a "thing in the way," she would 
 scarcely have addressed herself so amiably to her 
 ofuest. 
 
 " What style of music do you prefer ? Did you 
 bring any of your songs with you 1 No ! well, 
 perhaps some of mine will suit your voice." And 
 Mrs. Stondon began turning over the pieces that 
 lay on the piano. 
 
 "What, none of them ?" exclaimed the hamster's 
 wife in despair. "What, none of them? Can you 
 not recollect anything ? Not one tiny ballad ? "
 
 274 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 and Mrs. Montague Stondon grew quite patlietic 
 about the matter. 
 
 "The difficulty is that Phefhie does not ac- 
 company herself," said Captain Stondon at this 
 juncture. 
 
 " Perhaps," suggested the lady who had excited 
 Phemie's envy at dinner, " perhaps I can smooth 
 away that difficulty, if Mrs. Stondon will only tell 
 me what she would like best to sing ; " and she 
 pulled off her gloves, and spread out her skirts, 
 and sat down to the piano, and ran over the notes, 
 triumphantly glancing up at poor, fluttering, con- 
 fused Phemie the while, with a look which said — 
 " Why are you not as I am ? There is nothing to 
 frighten you." 
 
 " What shall it be ? " she asked, playing with 
 -chords and scales and chromatic passages care- 
 lessly as she spoke. " Some one mentioned 
 ballads. Was it Scotch ballads — ' Jock o' Hazel- 
 dean,' for instance ? " and she just swept Phemie's 
 face with her dark eyes ere she bent them 
 on some music Captain Stondon placed before 
 her.
 
 ON VIEW. 275 
 
 " I know that/' the bride remarked in a low 
 voice. 
 
 "'You'll remember me,'" answered the lady. 
 "Sing it then by all means." And thus com- 
 manded, Phemie began. 
 
 But she never ended. She broke down hope- 
 lessly, ignominiously. She got frightened ; she 
 got confused. The strange room, the strange 
 faces, the unaccustomed accompaniment, the 
 novelty of her position, the very sound of her 
 own voice alarmed her. She did her best ; she 
 fought against her embarrassment ; she struggled 
 on ; she sang a false note ; she made a desperate 
 effort to recover herself ; then she wavered and 
 went wrong past redemption. 
 
 "It was all my fault," remarked her accom- 
 panist, cheerfully; "try the last verse." 
 
 " I cannot, I cannot, indeed," said Phemie, almost 
 crying, not daring to look round, mortified, angry, 
 and ashamed. " I shall never try to sing- 
 again. I cannot sing before any one. I shall never 
 try." 
 
 "Oh yes, you will," laughed her new friend. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 " You will go abroad ; you will have lessons ; you 
 will gain courage ; you will cease to be diffident ; 
 you will learn to be confident ; and finally, you 
 will return to England, and sing 'Then you'll 
 remember ' to me as often as I like to ask you. 
 Seriously, you have a splendid voice, and if it 
 were not breaking a commandment I should 
 covet it." 
 
 Looking at the speaker, Phemie straightway 
 did break the commandment, and envied her : 
 envied her beauty, her figure, her ease, and 
 grace. 
 
 What curls she had ! — what a magnificent 
 neck ! — what a lovely dress ! — what a way of 
 putting things ! 
 
 She was like a picture out of one of Heath's 
 " Books of Beauty." She was like a heroine of ro- 
 mance — with her long lashes — with her round arms 
 — with her flowing hair — with her smile half gay, 
 half pensive. Everything Phemie had ever dreamed 
 of as most lovely in her sex was there for her to 
 fall down before and worship, if she would ; but 
 instead of worshipping she envied — silly child —
 
 ON VIEW. 277 
 
 a woman who was not half so charming as her- 
 self. Is not auburn hair as beautiful as raven 
 curls ? — have not men sighed for a glance from 
 blue eyes as well as from black ? — has not seven- 
 teen its attractions — its young spring freshness — 
 its soft loveliness — though it cannot possess the 
 easy grace, the finished manner of five-and- 
 twenty ? And did not five-and-twenty, with all 
 her social advantages, look with a kind of specu- 
 lative interest — with a vague regret at seventeen, 
 who thought breaking down in a song the most 
 terrible misfortune that could happen to her, 
 and who wanted to get away and cry over her 
 mishap. 
 
 If she could only ever hope to acquire a tenth 
 portion of Miss Derno's self-possession she would 
 be satisfied. If she could only talk as she talked 
 — answer questions without a. change of colour — 
 play whatever she was requested to play — Phemie 
 thought she should have nothing more to ask 
 from heaven. And she sat and considered these 
 things in the corner of a distant sofa where Mrs. 
 Montague Stoudon had placed her, while that
 
 278 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 lady looked lier new relative over as she might 
 have done a piece of handsome silk in a draper's 
 shop. 
 
 All at once Phemie came hack from her 
 musings, or, rather, having followed them out to 
 a definite point, she looked up abruptly, and said, 
 
 " Can you tell me how old Miss Derno is ? " 
 
 Now there was a question to be put suddenly 
 to a well-bred hostess ! — and by a girl, too, whom 
 she had decided did not possess a second idea. 
 
 " "Why do you ask ? " inquired Mrs. Montague 
 Stondon, with one of her sweetest smiles. 
 
 ''Because I want to know," answered Phemie, 
 simply. 
 
 '' How very singular ! " exclaimed her hostess ; 
 "how very odd! How deliciously straightforward 
 you are ! Miss Derno cannot be more than iive- 
 and-twenty, though she looks nearly thirty. Now, 
 will you tell me why you wanted to know ? " 
 
 " Only that I might see how many years older 
 she is than I," replied Phemie. 
 
 " A great many, I imagine," laughed Mrs. 
 Stondon.
 
 ON VIEW. 279 
 
 " She is half my hfetime older," said the girl, 
 earnestly. 
 
 " I dare say she is ; but what then ? " 
 
 " Why, only that one may do ever so much in 
 half a lifetime." 
 
 " I know some one who might do anything she 
 chose," answered Mrs. Montague Stondon, and 
 Phemie coloured to the very roots of her hair at 
 having her own thoughts put into such exceed- 
 ingly plain English. 
 
 "Eight years! — what might she not do in 
 eight years ? That was what she began ponder- 
 ing and considering. She could learn — she could 
 o'ain knowledo^e — she could work hard — she could 
 acquire such information as might make the man 
 Avho had married her, proud of her instead of 
 ashamed. 
 
 For Phemie felt confident he must be ashamed 
 of her. It might have been all very well at Tor- 
 dale, but in London, and amongst all these grand 
 people (as the girl in her innocence considered 
 them), he must be ashamed of the wife he had 
 chosen.
 
 280 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 She felt her heart beat faster and the blood 
 rush up into her face as she recalled a glance that 
 she had seen exchanged between a pair of ladies 
 when she broke down in her song so hopelessly. 
 A raising of the eyebrows, a mere curl of the lips, 
 the slightest shrug of the shoulders, told Phemie 
 their thoughts as clearly as though they had 
 spoken them outright. 
 
 And it was so hard — so hard because she knew 
 she had a better voice than Miss Demo — and 
 singing was her sole accomplishment, and Captain 
 Stondon had been proud of it 1 He would never 
 ask her to sing again ; he would be afraid. He 
 would 
 
 " So you really are going to leave London in 
 two days," said Miss Derno at this juncture, 
 bi'eaking in suddenly on her reverie. " How I 
 envy you ! How I wish I was going through 
 Switzerland, and to Rome, and to Naples, instead 
 of down to a lonely country house on the borders 
 of civilization, wdiere we get letters about once a 
 week, and see a stranger only when a vessel is 
 wrecked on the coast ! "
 
 ON VIEW. 281 
 
 " I lived in a place as quiet as that," answered 
 Phemie, " and liked it." 
 
 " Possibly ; but you will like it no more. You 
 could never go back and like it again. Solitude 
 may be very charming, but society is more charm- 
 ing still. The world may be very hollow, but it 
 is made up of our fellow-creatures for all that ; 
 and we cannot live "without our fellow-creatures, 
 bad as they are, for the simple reason that we are 
 gi'egarious animals, and that angelic company is 
 not obtainable on earth. Added to which," finished 
 Miss Derno, " I think angels would be a little 
 dull." 
 
 " I wish," said Phemie, " you were going abroad 
 too. I should like it so much." 
 
 " So should I," answered Miss Derno, " but 
 duty calls me to the ends of the earth, and I obey 
 the summons. When you are in Paris, Vienna, 
 or in any one of the hundred towns Captain 
 Stondon says he intends taking you to see, think 
 of me killing time — or, rather, being killed by 
 time — in a place fifteen miles from everything — 
 from letters — from papers — from books — from a
 
 282 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 doctor — from a station. There is no necessary of 
 life near us excepting the churchyard, and we 
 have no society, unless a curate who wears thick 
 boots and spectacles, and his lame wife and about 
 twenty-seven children, can be called desirable 
 neighbours." 
 
 " What do you do all day ? " asked her auditor. 
 
 " We sleep a great deal, and we eat every hour 
 or so, and we Avatch the vessels passing, through a 
 telescope ; and we wonder where they are going. 
 Then we drive ; and I ride, and walk ; and some 
 one or other of the curate's children is always get- 
 ting maimed ; and when the doctor has happily 
 to be sent for, he calls at the great house, and 
 brings us news of the outer world — of the latest 
 suicide, of the most interesting murder. But 
 there is my aunt preparing for departure. I must 
 say good-bye. Au revow." 
 
 "I am afraid it will not be au revoir,'' said 
 Phemie. " We are to be away for so long a time 
 that it is not likely we shall see each other again 
 ever." 
 
 Miss Derno laughed. " There is no ' for ever '
 
 ON VIEW. 283 
 
 in society. Everybody meets every one sooner or 
 later ; and, recollect, when we do meet you are to 
 sing ' You'll remember ' without a mistake. If we 
 were to be parted for twenty years the first thing 
 I should say to you would be, ' That song, Mrs. 
 Stondon.' So do not forget.'* 
 
 And she pressed Phemie's hand in hers, and 
 was gone before the girl could answer.
 
 CHAPTER X^^ 
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 
 
 Five years after Mrs. Montague Ston don's little 
 party in Chapel Street, the 3*55 express was tear- 
 ing along the Eastern Counties line to Disley 
 under the glare of the afternoon sun. 
 
 " It was the hottest day that summer," so every 
 passenger said, and so every passenger had abun- 
 dant reason for thinking. The dust was intoler- 
 able — the heat unendurable ; if you kept the 
 windows down you were choked, blinded, and 
 generally driven distracted with dust, grit, smoke, 
 and small gravel ; if you pulled the windows up, 
 you had dust still, and were roasted, baked and 
 boiled into the bargain. 
 
 When passengers got in, at the few stations 
 where the train paused for such refreshment as
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 285 
 
 could be afforded to it by water for its boiler, and 
 oil for its wheels, each man and each woman 
 seemed to bring a fire with him or her into the 
 carriage. If they had been furnaces, instead of 
 flesh and blood, they could not have added more 
 to the discomfort of their neighbours than was the 
 case. 
 
 The soda-water and sherry, the lemonade, the 
 ginger-beer, which suffering humanity demanded 
 at Cambridge as an alleviation of its miseries, 
 might have been poured from a boiling kettle, and 
 then the bell rang, and the passengers took their 
 seats, and the train steamed out of the station, 
 and plunged into the open country once again, 
 routing up the gi^avel, and scattering stones and 
 dust as it rushed along. 
 
 To heat and to dust there were, however, two 
 travellers who seemed indifferent. Those two 
 were Captain Stondon and his wife. After five 
 years of moving from place to place, of seeing 
 foreign countries, of living in hotels, in hired pa- 
 laces, in Swiss chalets and French chateaux, they 
 were returning by the 355 express to take up
 
 286 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 their liead-quarters at Marshlands, and reside 
 there for good. 
 
 With his back to the engine, with his hat off, 
 with the warm breeze tossing his hair about and 
 filling it full of dust, with his feet on the opposite 
 seat, with the ' Times ' lying beside him, Captain 
 Stondon slept the sleep of the just, happily obli- 
 vious of the heat, and unconscious that Phemie 
 was sitting in a direct draught. 
 
 She had taken off her bonnet, and drawn the 
 blue silk curtain so as to shelter her eyes from the 
 full glare of the sun, and while the train strained 
 and throbbed along the rails, she looked out over 
 the country through which they were passing. 
 
 Should you know her ? Scarcely. The hair is 
 the same that the summer sun shone do"VMi on in 
 Tordale, but it is not the young hair that first en- 
 tangled Captain Stondon's fancy. There is no 
 part of us that ages like the hair. Look at a 
 child's hair- — a boy's — a man's. Watch the wind 
 stirring each of them, and you will see what I 
 mean. Every year as it passes by lays its hands 
 on our heads, and takes something of freshness
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 287 
 
 and of beauty from them. What is it ? you ask. 
 I do not know. But as we see that the leaves in 
 August are not the same as they were in April, so 
 we can perceive that the hair of a lad of nine- 
 teen is different from what it will be at four-and- 
 twenty. It is young, like himself, at nineteen, 
 and each year that comes and goes will make it, 
 like himself, older. 
 
 Well, then, that glory of auburn hair had lost 
 something of its beauty, or rather, perhaps, its 
 beauty was different, just as Phemie's own loveh- 
 ness was different. 
 
 She had been a girl then ; she was a woman 
 now — a woman in danger of becoming cold and 
 worldly through mere prosperity and absence of 
 trouble — a woman who disbelieved in broken 
 hearts, in passionate love — who looked down from 
 immeasureable heights of superiority on what she 
 called boy and girl affection, and who thought of 
 the dreams of her earlier life, when by chance 
 they recurred to her memory, as she might of a 
 foolish fairy tale, or of any other ridiculous fancy 
 of her childish days.
 
 288 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 A change had come over her ! and Phemie ac- 
 knowledged to herself that she was changed, as 
 she looked out at the English scenery, which 
 seemed so strange and unfamiliar to her eyes. 
 
 Through Middlesex, and Hertford, and Essex 
 the train dashed on : the line passed first over the 
 roofs of houses — over streets — over roads, and then 
 the engine, settling into express-pace, sped away 
 northward, beside the Lea, mthin sight of the 
 prettily-wooded heights of Clapton, across the 
 market-gardens at Tottenham, and so on, past Ed- 
 monton, and Waltham, and Broxbourne, and 
 Elsenham to Audley End, through the grounds of 
 which it dashed remorselessly, as though there was 
 no park there people wanted to look at — no house 
 they wished to see. 
 
 Then into the flat lands of Cambridgeshire, 
 where each field seemed more level than the last, 
 where willows grew in abundance, where the line 
 ran beside swamps and osier beds, where there was 
 nothing tall except the poplar trees, nothing to 
 break the monotony of the scenery except church, 
 and cathedral towers.
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 289 
 
 After Cambridgeshire, Norfolk — great stretches 
 of country, bare and bleak, that the fancy could 
 roam out over as a man can take a walk : a country 
 like Ireland, where you can dig peat and bum it, 
 where you can walk miles without hedge or ditch 
 or fence, where three hours from London you can 
 imagine yourself at the world's end, from whence 
 the express steamed rapidly on to the rich abbey- 
 lands surrounding Wymondham. 
 
 And as she looked, she thought — thought of 
 the five years that had come and gone — come and 
 gone since she travelled from Wymondham to 
 London before. Shall I tell you of her life, my 
 reader, during those five years, before we go on to 
 reach the end ? 
 
 To be a kind mistress, a faithful steward, to 
 occupy herself in good works, to keep herself from 
 vanity and idleness were, I think, all the admoni- 
 tions Mr. Aggland gave his niece when he parted 
 from her among the Cumberland mountains — 
 excellent in their way, doubtless, but useless for 
 the sufficient reason that Mrs. Stondon had no 
 household to order, no wealth to squander, no
 
 290 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 opportunity of assisting others, no temptation 
 to be over-proud either of her beauty or her 
 position. 
 
 He might as well have told a man without a 
 stomach to be careful of what he ate ; but then 
 Mr. Aggland had expected things to be different, 
 and so, for that matter, had Phemie herself 
 
 She thought that after the Scottish tour, after 
 a few months on the Continent, she and her 
 husband would return to Marshlands, and enter 
 on that home life which is, I suppose, at some 
 time or other, the temporal heaven of most 
 women's imaginations. 
 
 She pictured to herself (in a vague, girlish way, 
 of course,) the great rooms filled with company, the 
 manner in which she would manage her establish- 
 ment, the visits she would pay to the poor, the 
 hours she would devote to study, and behold, as 
 the dream hero and the dream future had faded 
 out of her past life, so, when she was mamed, 
 the dream of usefulness and the dream of a 
 settled home faded more swiftly still, out of her 
 present.
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 291 
 
 Captain Stondon did not much like England. 
 Moreover, he desired that before his wife entered 
 into English society she should combine every pos- 
 sible accomplishment, every gTace of manner, every 
 known knowledge of les convenances to her other 
 charms. 
 
 As a matter of course, Phemie was ignorant of 
 the world, ignorant of its usages, ignorant of what 
 was expected from her as the mistress of Marsh- 
 lands; and equally, perhaps, as a matter of 
 course, Captain Stondon desii'ed that she should 
 become acquainted with the importance of her 
 own position ; with the world, with its usages, be- 
 fore he introduced her to society ; and he was 
 confirmed in this desire by Phemie's discomfiture 
 at Montague Stondon's. 
 
 The girl was mountain bred, and had never been 
 out to a party in her life. 
 
 Every man has his own idea of wisdom, and 
 Captain Stondon's idea of the correct thing under 
 the circumstances was to take his wife abroad, and 
 keep her there. 
 
 In which idea he chanced to be wrong. Phemie 
 
 u 2
 
 292 PHEMIE KELLEK. 
 
 would have learned more of the conventionalities 
 of society in a week at home than she could pos- 
 sibly acquire during a twelvemonths' residence on 
 the Continent. 
 
 She was young enough to be moulded when he 
 married her; she was old enough to be a little 
 " eccentric " when she returned to England for 
 good. 
 
 Those who have been bred and brought up 
 in society, think, and think wrongly, that it is 
 a difficult matter for a willing pupil to acquire its 
 accent. 
 
 It lays such store by trifles, that it forgets what 
 trifles its usages really are, how soon they are 
 learnt. It forgets that habit is second nature, and 
 that if habits can be formed early, they become 
 second nature itself 
 
 Captain Stondon forgot this, at any rate, and 
 took Phemie abroad in consequence. 
 
 He had found a gem among the Cumberland 
 hills, and he wanted to have it gi'ound and polished 
 before he presented it to English society. 
 
 He did not wish a speck to appear on its sur-
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 293 
 
 face, a flaw to be even hinted at. The more 
 valuable he perceived it to be, the more anxious 
 he became that the world should not see it till no 
 defect could he perceived, till no exception could 
 be taken to the jewel he had discovered for him- 
 self, and discovering, had wed. 
 
 Captain Stondon, like most men who marry 
 below their own station, desired that his wife 
 should be educated late rather than never ; but 
 unlike the majority of his sex, his desires in this 
 respect were fulfilled, not disappointed. 
 
 With the whole force and strength of her nature, 
 Phemie devoted herself to learning. She had 
 opportunities, and she embraced them ; she had 
 every advantage of masters that money could 
 procure, and money never was better spent, than 
 on so industrious and clever a pupil. 
 
 How she practised, how she studied, how she 
 observed, no one ^ever knew fully except by the 
 result. 
 
 Was it easy ? It was like going to school after 
 marriage ; but nevertheless, with all her heart and 
 with all her soul, Phemie tried to improve herself.
 
 294 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 Was it happiness? Well, not exactly. But, 
 then, Phemie looked beyond the drudgery to the 
 reward ; beyond the singing lessons to the time 
 when she could show off her accomplishments in 
 society. As the painter works for months in 
 solitude, as the danseuse practises her most diffi- 
 cult steps for hours and days together, as the 
 writer toils to finish his work, as the poet polishes 
 and polishes his most musical lines, all for one end, 
 one purpose — fame ; so Phemie read, and studied, 
 and laboured, that she might some day or other 
 acquire social distinction. 
 
 Then she tired of it. Then suddenly, like a 
 racer that has strained every nerve, and racked 
 every muscle to reach the winning post — strained 
 and racked beyond his strength — falls exhausted 
 at last, a reaction set in. She wearied of travel, 
 she wearied of hotels, she wearied of change of 
 scene, wearied with an eternal longing, with a 
 terrible heart-sickness for home. 
 
 It was nature asserting itself It was the old 
 time, the better time calling for her to come back 
 ere she went too far ever to return; it was a
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 295 
 
 passion, it was a fever ; and through the long 
 nights Phemie would lie awake and cry not 
 the less bitterly, because silently, for home — for 
 home ! 
 
 When the southern sun was glaring down upon 
 the earth, she thought of the mountain breezes, of 
 the shady nooks among the hills, of the cool tarns, 
 of the trickling streams. As a man in the first 
 stage of fever dreams deliriously of gushing foun- 
 tains, of flowing waters, so Phemie, with that home 
 sickness on her, dreamt from morning till night 
 about Tordale, about her own little room — her 
 own no longer ; about the heather, and the moss, 
 and the ferns ; about the clouds floating above 
 Helbeck ; about the mists enveloping Skillenscar. 
 
 Cumberland was rarely out of her mind ; but 
 when Cumberland faded away for a moment, it 
 was only that Marshlands might take its place. 
 
 She had seen Marshlands, and whenever Tor- 
 dale seemed too remote a spot to travel back to, 
 whenever she wanted some nearer resting-place for 
 her fancy to alight on, she folded her wings there, 
 and wandered up and do^vnii under the elms and
 
 2.96 PHEMIE KELLEK. 
 
 the fir-trees, through the gardens and the park, 
 till she grew weary of imagining, and longed to 
 start for England on the instant. 
 
 She did not like to say all that was in her 
 heart about the matter. Captain Stondon had 
 so evidently little intention of returning home 
 that Phemie held her peace till she could refrain 
 no longer. 
 
 Then, as is always the case with such natures, 
 the stream burst its bounds all at once. 
 
 " Take me home, Henry, take me home, or I 
 shall die," was her entreaty ; and without a word 
 of inquiry or remonstrance. Captain Stondon 
 agreed that they should retrace their steps to 
 England. 
 
 But they got no further than Paris. There the 
 son Captain Stondon had been hoping for was 
 born — dead. There the doctor said that if Phemie 
 herself were to live, she must turn her face south- 
 ward again; and with the old fever not cured, 
 only subdued, Mrs. Stondon agreed to spend 
 another winter abroad. 
 
 " Life was not worth having on the terms," she
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 297 
 
 told her physician ; hut then, as that individual 
 remarked, only in politer terms than I can possibly 
 translate — 
 
 " Her life was not quite her own to throw away 
 for a mere whim. Her husband — " And that 
 was enough for Phemie. She was very grateful 
 to Captain Stondon ; she would not have pained 
 him for the world ; she was very fond of him ; 
 she thought she loved him ; she did more, she 
 was sure she loved him, and so was everybody who 
 saw them together. Her life was his, and for him 
 she turned her back on England, and within sight 
 of the promised land journeyed once again to the 
 country, that was as a house of bondage unto her. 
 
 We have all felt home- sickness sometime or 
 other ; we have all hungered for the sea, or the 
 hills, or the sun, or the bracing mountain breezes, 
 with that mental hunger which is worse than any 
 physical suffering ; we have all wanted something 
 in the course of our lives which wc could not get ; 
 we have stretched out our hands unavailingly ; 
 we have sobbed through the darkness ; we have 
 pined, we liave sickened ; but the jmssion has
 
 298 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 ended at last, and we have sat down finally con- 
 tented with, our lot. 
 
 That was what Phemie did at any rate. She 
 could not have continued fretting, and lived ; but 
 she ceased fretting and grew strong, and when, 
 after all those years, she and her husband re- 
 turned to England, there was no tumult in her 
 breast about anything. 
 
 She had forgotten her dreams ; she had almost 
 forgotten her past ; she had a kind and devoted 
 husband ; she had never repented her marriage ; 
 she had done well ; she had made a very good and 
 a very happy thing of life, and she was travelling 
 down to Marshlands to take her proper place in 
 society, with no breath of sorrow dimming the 
 bright cold mirror of her existence. 
 
 Her sympathies had fallen to sleep with five 
 years' want of exercise ; her feelings had grown 
 dull for very lack of sorrow ; her intellect was 
 expanded, her heart narrowed. Scenery itself 
 was not to her now what it had once been ; she 
 looked on it as something which God Jbad created 
 for the benefit and amusement of the rich : she
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 299 
 
 did not understand people being tempted ; she 
 did not comprehend people going wi'ong ; a vei7 
 shocking thing had happened in her husband's 
 family — a thing which society never mentioned 
 before him, and Phemie, of course, had been scan- 
 dalised by it ; but at the same time she could not 
 comprehend how Montague Stondon could first 
 forge another man's name, and then dehberately 
 cut his own throat. 
 
 She had not liked Montague Stondon. He had 
 placed her at a disadvantage ; but it was shocking 
 to think of a man committing suicide, and she 
 felt very sorry for his wife and only son. 
 
 At the same time she was unable to understand 
 why Captain Stondon took the matter so much to 
 heart. He was not to blame. He had advanced 
 money over and over again, till he grew weary 
 of doing so, and if Mr. Montague Stondon liked 
 to STO and forcje, how was her husband to know 
 by intuition that he had done so 1 
 
 Was he to blame for declining to send 1000/. 
 to the barrister by return of post ? He would 
 have done it had his relative told him tlij scrape
 
 300 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 he had got into, but he had not told him, and 
 Captain Stondon refused to make the advance, 
 and Montague Stondon cut his throat, and 
 Capta^in Stondon paid the money after all. 
 
 Phemie thought about Mr. Stondon's brown 
 eyes and elaborate whiskers and expensive dinner, 
 as the train swept through the flat lands sur- 
 rounding Cambridge. 
 
 " How foolish they were to live beyond their 
 means ! " thought this wise young woman, and 
 she would have said and thought the same about 
 any other sin or shortcoming. That her fellow- 
 creatures were but fallible; that flesh and blood 
 is prone to error ; that to most the right is 
 difficult, the wrong easy ; that the way to hell 
 is broad, that the path to heaven is narrow ; — 
 these were things Phemie had yet to learn ; 
 these were the realities she was travelling home 
 to meet ; these were the lessons she had still to 
 con out of books she had never yet opened. In- 
 tellect, study, knowledge of all abstract sciences, 
 of what value are they if we remain ignorant of 
 the living volumes around us — if we have no com-
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 301 
 
 prehension of the struggles and temptations, of 
 the sins and the son'ows, of the agony and the 
 remorse, of the men and the women we meet day 
 after day ? 
 
 What shall we I^ani from Greek or from 
 Roman, if the lines which have been traced by 
 the hand of our God on the hearts of his creatures 
 remain to us but as the writing on the wall ? 
 What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul ? we are asked in the 
 book which cannot speak foolishly — '' if," as John 
 Bunyan says, "the things of this world lie too 
 close to his heart ; if the earth with its things has 
 bound up his roots ; if he is an earth-bound soul 
 wrapped up in thick clay ? " And, in like man- 
 ner, it is surely not too much to affirm that all 
 knowledge and all power, all accomplishments, all 
 grace, all wealth, are useless, are merely as sounding 
 brass and as tinkling cymbals, unless there is joined 
 to them a comprehension of the infirmities, tempta- 
 tions, sufferings of humanity. 
 
 To all, prosperity is a trial and a snare ; but it 
 is a worse trial and a worse snare to the young
 
 302. PHEMIE KELLER., 
 
 than to the old ; for which reason prosperity had 
 not improved Mrs. Stondon. She had lived a 
 purely selfish existence. "Fortune had placed a 
 bandage over her eyes." Driving in a carriage 
 through the pleasantest roads of this world; she 
 took no thought of those who were limping along 
 its roughest paths, its flintiest ways, foot-sore and 
 weary. Fate had been so good to her, it had 
 appointed her lot beside such cool streams, that 
 she grew hard, and the Phemie who went out of 
 England was not the Phemie who came back to it 
 five years later. 
 
 And yet she was not changed quite past recog- 
 nition. The old sweetness, the old tiiithfulness, 
 the old frankness, the old steadiness of principle 
 underlay the superstructure of selfishness and 
 coldness which a too happy life had reared. 
 
 Beneath the world's burning suns, the flowers of 
 her spring-time had withered away ; but the roots 
 of the plants that had borne those flowers were still 
 deep in her heart ready to bring forth leaves and 
 buds and flowers again, and finally fruit if God 
 saw fit ; and full though her existence might be
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 303 
 
 of wealth and prosperity, still there was a vacant 
 chamber which had never been unlocked by mor- 
 tal hand, and which all the pomps and vanities, 
 all the social successes, all the praises, all the 
 popularity, all the flattery, and all the favour of 
 this world would have been impotent to fill. 
 
 Sometimes when the twilight was stealing over 
 the landscape — sometimes when the fleecy clouds 
 chased each other across the sky — when she sat 
 looking up at the great mountains, or from among 
 myrtle bowers gazed out over the sea — sometimes 
 when she remained very still and very quiet — 
 when the rush of many feet was silent, when 
 the sound of merriment died away, when she 
 was alone with herself, alone with her lonely life, 
 with her empty heart — I think she must have 
 felt that there was a want in her existence — that 
 she had somehow missed the mark — that God 
 never intended the Phemie Keller who had 
 danced across the hills to Strammer Tarn, who 
 had nursed the children at the faim, who had 
 cried if a person only looked crossly at her, who 
 had been loved and cared for, who had been in
 
 30-i PlIEMIE KELLER. 
 
 such trouble at leaving the old home faces be- 
 hind her, to develop into Phemie Stondon, who, 
 without a pulse throbbing faster at the antici- 
 pation, was travelling home to Marshlands to 
 perform the duties of her station, or to neglect 
 them, as matters should turn out. 
 
 Nevertheless, she was glad to get back to 
 England. The idea of a settled abode was plea- 
 sant to her; she wanted to see her uncle, and 
 Helen, and Duncan ; she thought, with society, 
 that she and Captain Stondon had stayed away 
 from their duties long enough ; she quite believed 
 that coui ^ gentlemen ought to reside for some 
 portion of the 3^ear, at all events, on their pro- 
 perties ; and further, she was tired of the Conti- 
 nent, tired of the heat, tired of the sun, tired of 
 foreign languages, of strange tongues, of resi- 
 dences which were not homes. 
 
 There was another reason why Phemie desired 
 to settle in England : she was tired of having 
 Captain Stondon constantly at her elbow ; but 
 this, of course, was not the way she put it to 
 herself.
 
 FIVE YEARS LATER. 305 
 
 He had those duties to perform I have made 
 mention of before, and he ought to return to 
 fulfil them. A man of property had scarcely a 
 right to spend year after year in climbing moun- 
 tains, in looking at old ruins, in making foreign 
 friends, in spending money abroad. Phemie 
 quite thought he ought to take up his abode at 
 Marshlands, and was very glad when he said that 
 he agreed with her. 
 
 Montague Stondon's death had been a shock 
 to him. It reminded him of purposes unaccom- 
 plished in his own life, of negligence, nfaith- 
 fulness, of good resolutions forgotten, of good 
 intentions unfulfilled. He would return and 
 do better for the future ; and accordingly he re- 
 turned, and, unmindful of heat and dust, slept on 
 till the train reached Disley. 
 
 It was evening then, and while the carriage 
 which met them at Disley rolled along the level 
 sandy roads, Phemie looked eagerly and longingly 
 for the woods surrounding Marshlands. She 
 strained her eyes for them as she had not strained 
 them to catch a first sight of famous cities far
 
 S06 PHEMIE KELLER. 
 
 away, and yet when she beheld the firs and the 
 elms reflected against the sky, when she saw the 
 trees lifting their heads to heaven, when she 
 caught the sunset glory bathing the whole scene 
 in a flood of crimson light, an indefinable feeling 
 of sadness came over her, and her heart grew 
 heavy to remember that the landscape and the 
 woods were the same as they had been when she 
 looked upon them soon after her marriage, but 
 that she was changed — that she was going back 
 another Phemie from the Phemie her husband 
 had married, to her husband's house. 
 
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