Cousin Phillis (10 page)

'I am very sorry,' said the minister.

'I am sure so am I!' said cousin Holman. 'I was real fond of that lad
ever since I nursed him last June after that bad fever.'

The minister went on asking me questions respecting Holdsworth's future
plans; and brought out a large old-fashioned atlas, that he might find
out the exact places between which the new railroad was to run. Then
supper was ready; it was always on the table as soon as the clock on
the stairs struck eight, and down came Phillis—her face white and set,
her dry eyes looking defiance to me, for I am afraid I hurt her
maidenly pride by my glance of sympathetic interest as she entered the
room. Never a word did she say—never a question did she ask about the
absent friend, yet she forced herself to talk.

And so it was all the next day. She was as pale as could be, like one
who has received some shock; but she would not let me talk to her, and
she tried hard to behave as usual. Two or three times I repeated, in
public, the various affectionate messages to the family with which I
was charged by Holdsworth; but she took no more notice of them than if
my words had been empty air. And in this mood I left her on the Sabbath
evening.

My new master was not half so indulgent as my old one. He kept up
strict discipline as to hours, so that it was some time before I could
again go out, even to pay a call at the Hope Farm.

It was a cold misty evening in November. The air, even indoors, seemed
full of haze; yet there was a great log burning on the hearth, which
ought to have made the room cheerful. Cousin Holman and Phillis were
sitting at the little round table before the fire, working away in
silence. The minister had his books out on the dresser, seemingly deep
in study, by the light of his solitary candle; perhaps the fear of
disturbing him made the unusual stillness of the room. But a welcome
was ready for me from all; not noisy, not demonstrative—that it never
was; my damp wrappers were taken off; the next meal was hastened, and a
chair placed for me on one side of the fire, so that I pretty much
commanded a view of the room. My eye caught on Phillis, looking so pale
and weary, and with a sort of aching tone (if I may call it so) in her
voice. She was doing all the accustomed things—fulfilling small
household duties, but somehow differently—I can't tell you how, for
she was just as deft and quick in her movements, only the light spring
was gone out of them. Cousin Holman began to question me; even the
minister put aside his books, and came and stood on the opposite side
of the fire-place, to hear what waft of intelligence I brought. I had
first to tell them why I had not been to see them for so long—more
than five weeks. The answer was simple enough; business and the
necessity of attending strictly to the orders of a new superintendent,
who had not yet learned trust, much less indulgence. The minister
nodded his approval of my conduct, and said,—'Right, Paul! "Servants,
obey in all things your master according to the flesh." I have had my
fears lest you had too much licence under Edward Holdsworth.'

'Ah,' said cousin Holman, 'poor Mr Holdsworth, he'll be on the salt
seas by this time!'

'No, indeed,' said I, 'he's landed. I have had a letter from him from
Halifax.' Immediately a shower of questions fell thick upon me. When?
How? What was he doing? How did he like it? What sort of a voyage? &c.

'Many is the time we have thought of him when the wind was blowing so
hard; the old quince-tree is blown down, Paul, that on the right-hand
of the great pear-tree; it was blown down last Monday week, and it was
that night that I asked the minister to pray in an especial manner for
all them that went down in ships upon the great deep, and he said then,
that Mr Holdsworth might be already landed; but I said, even if the
prayer did not fit him, it was sure to be fitting somebody out at sea,
who would need the Lord's care. Both Phillis and I thought he would be
a month on the seas.' Phillis began to speak, but her voice did not
come rightly at first. It was a little higher pitched than usual, when
she said,—

'We thought he would be a month if he went in a sailing-vessel, or
perhaps longer. I suppose he went in a steamer?'

'Old Obadiah Grimshaw was more than six weeks in getting to America,'
observed cousin Holman.

'I presume he cannot as yet tell how he likes his new work?' asked the
minister.

'No! he is but just landed; it is but one page long. I'll read it to
you, shall I?—

'"Dear Paul,—We are safe on shore, after a rough passage. Thought you
would like to hear this, but homeward-bound steamer is making signals
for letters. Will write again soon. It seems a year since I left
Hornby. Longer since I was at the farm. I have got my nosegay safe.
Remember me to the Holmans.—Yours, E. H."'

'That's not much, certainly,' said the minister. 'But it's a comfort to
know he's on land these blowy nights.'

Phillis said nothing. She kept her head bent down over her work; but I
don't think she put a stitch in, while I was reading the letter. I
wondered if she understood what nosegay was meant; but I could not
tell. When next she lifted up her face, there were two spots of
brilliant colour on the cheeks that had been so pale before. After I
had spent an hour or two there, I was bound to return back to Hornby. I
told them I did not know when I could come again, as we—by which I
mean the company—had undertaken the Hensleydale line; that branch for
which poor Holdsworth was surveying when he caught his fever.

'But you'll have a holiday at Christmas,' said my cousin. 'Surely
they'll not be such heathens as to work you then?'

'Perhaps the lad will be going home,' said the minister, as if to
mitigate his wife's urgency; but for all that, I believe he wanted me
to come. Phillis fixed her eyes on me with a wistful expression, hard
to resist. But, indeed, I had no thought of resisting. Under my new
master I had no hope of a holiday long enough to enable me to go to
Birmingham and see my parents with any comfort; and nothing could be
pleasanter to me than to find myself at home at my cousins' for a day
or two, then. So it was fixed that we were to meet in Hornby Chapel on
Christmas Day, and that I was to accompany them home after service, and
if possible to stay over the next day.

I was not able to get to chapel till late on the appointed day, and so
I took a seat near the door in considerable shame, although it really
was not my fault. When the service was ended, I went and stood in the
porch to await the coming out of my cousins. Some worthy people
belonging to the congregation clustered into a group just where I
stood, and exchanged the good wishes of the season. It had just begun
to snow, and this occasioned a little delay, and they fell into further
conversation. I was not attending to what was not meant for me to hear,
till I caught the name of Phillis Holman. And then I listened; where
was the harm?

'I never saw any one so changed!'

'I asked Mrs Holman,' quoth another, '"Is Phillis well?" and she just
said she had been having a cold which had pulled her down; she did not
seem to think anything of it.'

'They had best take care of her,' said one of the oldest of the good
ladies; 'Phillis comes of a family as is not long-lived. Her mother's
sister, Lydia Green, her own aunt as was, died of a decline just when
she was about this lass's age.'

This ill-omened talk was broken in upon by the coming out of the
minister, his wife and daughter, and the consequent interchange of
Christmas compliments. I had had a shock, and felt heavy-hearted and
anxious, and hardly up to making the appropriate replies to the kind
greetings of my relations. I looked askance at Phillis. She had
certainly grown taller and slighter, and was thinner; but there was a
flush of colour on her face which deceived me for a time, and made me
think she was looking as well as ever. I only saw her paleness after we
had returned to the farm, and she had subsided into silence and quiet.
Her grey eyes looked hollow and sad; her complexion was of a dead
white. But she went about just as usual; at least, just as she had done
the last time I was there, and seemed to have no ailment; and I was
inclined to think that my cousin was right when she had answered the
inquiries of the good-natured gossips, and told them that Phillis was
suffering from the consequences of a bad cold, nothing more. I have
said that I was to stay over the next day; a great deal of snow had
come down, but not all, they said, though the ground was covered deep
with the white fall. The minister was anxiously housing his cattle, and
preparing all things for a long continuance of the same kind of
weather. The men were chopping wood, sending wheat to the mill to be
ground before the road should become impassable for a cart and horse.
My cousin and Phillis had gone up-stairs to the apple-room to cover up
the fruit from the frost. I had been out the greater part of the
morning, and came in about an hour before dinner. To my surprise,
knowing how she had planned to be engaged, I found Phillis sitting at
the dresser, resting her head on her two hands and reading, or seeming
to read. She did not look up when I came in, but murmured something
about her mother having sent her down out of the cold. It flashed
across me that she was crying, but I put it down to some little spirt
of temper; I might have known better than to suspect the gentle, serene
Phillis of crossness, poor girl; I stooped down, and began to stir and
build up the fire, which appeared to have been neglected. While my head
was down I heard a noise which made me pause and listen—a sob, an
unmistakable, irrepressible sob. I started up.

'Phillis!' I cried, going towards her, with my hand out, to take hers
for sympathy with her sorrow, whatever it was. But she was too quick
for me, she held her hand out of my grasp, for fear of my detaining
her; as she quickly passed out of the house, she said,—

'Don't, Paul! I cannot bear it!' and passed me, still sobbing, and went
out into the keen, open air.

I stood still and wondered. What could have come to Phillis? The most
perfect harmony prevailed in the family, and Phillis especially, good
and gentle as she was, was so beloved that if they had found out that
her finger ached, it would have cast a shadow over their hearts. Had I
done anything to vex her? No: she was crying before I came in. I went
to look at her book—one of those unintelligible Italian books. I could
make neither head nor tail of it. I saw some pencil-notes on the
margin, in Holdsworth's handwriting.

Could that be it? Could that be the cause of her white looks, her weary
eyes, her wasted figure, her struggling sobs? This idea came upon me
like a flash of lightning on a dark night, making all things so clear
we cannot forget them afterwards when the gloomy obscurity returns. I
was still standing with the book in my hand when I heard cousin
Holman's footsteps on the stairs, and as I did not wish to speak to her
just then, I followed Phillis's example, and rushed out of the house.
The snow was lying on the ground; I could track her feet by the marks
they had made; I could see where Rover had joined her. I followed on
till I came to a great stack of wood in the orchard—it was built up
against the back wall of the outbuildings,—and I recollected then how
Phillis had told me, that first day when we strolled about together,
that underneath this stack had been her hermitage, her sanctuary, when
she was a child; how she used to bring her book to study there, or her
work, when she was not wanted in the house; and she had now evidently
gone back to this quiet retreat of her childhood, forgetful of the clue
given me by her footmarks on the new-fallen snow. The stack was built
up very high; but through the interstices of the sticks I could see her
figure, although I did not all at once perceive how I could get to her.
She was sitting on a log of wood, Rover by her. She had laid her cheek
on Rover's head, and had her arm round his neck, partly for a pillow,
partly from an instinctive craving for warmth on that bitter cold day.
She was making a low moan, like an animal in pain, or perhaps more like
the sobbing of the wind. Rover, highly flattered by her caress, and
also, perhaps, touched by sympathy, was flapping his heavy tail against
the ground, but not otherwise moving a hair, until he heard my approach
with his quick erected ears. Then, with a short, abrupt bark of
distrust, he sprang up as if to leave his mistress. Both he and I were
immovably still for a moment. I was not sure if what I longed to do was
wise: and yet I could not bear to see the sweet serenity of my dear
cousin's life so disturbed by a suffering which I thought I could
assuage. But Rover's ears were sharper than my breathing was noiseless:
he heard me, and sprang out from under Phillis's restraining hand.

'Oh, Rover, don't you leave me, too,' she plained out.

'Phillis!' said I, seeing by Rover's exit that the entrance to where
she sate was to be found on the other side of the stack. 'Phillis, come
out! You have got a cold already; and it is not fit for you to sit
there on such a day as this. You know how displeased and anxious it
would make them all.'

She sighed, but obeyed; stooping a little, she came out, and stood
upright, opposite to me in the lonely, leafless orchard. Her face
looked so meek and so sad that I felt as if I ought to beg her pardon
for my necessarily authoritative words.

'Sometimes I feel the house so close,' she said; 'and I used to sit
under the wood-stack when I was a child. It was very kind of you, but
there was no need to come after me. I don't catch cold easily.'

'Come with me into this cow-house, Phillis. I have got something to say
to you; and I can't stand this cold, if you can.

I think she would have fain run away again; but her fit of energy was
all spent. She followed me unwillingly enough that I could see. The
place to which I took her was full of the fragrant breath of the cows,
and was a little warmer than the outer air. I put her inside, and stood
myself in the doorway, thinking how I could best begin. At last I
plunged into it.