Cousin Phillis (12 page)

The ways of life were too simple at the Hope Farm for my coming to them
to make the slightest disturbance. I knew my room, like a son of the
house. I knew the regular course of their days, and that I was expected
to fall into it, like one of the family. Deep summer peace brooded over
the place; the warm golden air was filled with the murmur of insects
near at hand, the more distant sound of voices out in the fields, the
clear faraway rumble of carts over the stone-paved lanes miles away.
The heat was too great for the birds to be singing; only now and then
one might hear the wood-pigeons in the trees beyond the Ashfield. The
cattle stood knee-deep in the pond, flicking their tails about to keep
off the flies. The minister stood in the hay-field, without hat or
cravat, coat or waistcoat, panting and smiling. Phillis had been
leading the row of farm-servants, turning the swathes of fragrant hay
with measured movement. She went to the end—to the hedge, and then,
throwing down her rake, she came to me with her free sisterly welcome.
'Go, Paul!' said the minister. 'We need all hands to make use of the
sunshine to-day. "Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with all
thy might." It will be a healthy change of work for thee, lad; and I
find best rest in change of work.' So off I went, a willing labourer,
following Phillis's lead; it was the primitive distinction of rank; the
boy who frightened the sparrows off the fruit was the last in our rear.
We did not leave off till the red sun was gone down behind the
fir-trees bordering the common. Then we went home to
supper—prayers—to bed; some bird singing far into the night, as I
heard it through my open window, and the poultry beginning their
clatter and cackle in the earliest morning. I had carried what luggage
I immediately needed with me from my lodgings and the rest was to be
sent by the carrier. He brought it to the farm betimes that morning,
and along with it he brought a letter or two that had arrived since I
had left. I was talking to cousin Holman—about my mother's ways of
making bread, I remember; cousin Holman was questioning me, and had got
me far beyond my depth—in the house-place, when the letters were
brought in by one of the men, and I had to pay the carrier for his
trouble before I could look at them. A bill—a Canadian letter! What
instinct made me so thankful that I was alone with my dear unobservant
cousin? What made me hurry them away into my coat-pocket? I do not
know. I felt strange and sick, and made irrelevant answers, I am
afraid. Then I went to my room, ostensibly to carry up my boxes. I sate
on the side of my bed and opened my letter from Holdsworth. It seemed
to me as if I had read its contents before, and knew exactly what he
had got to say. I knew he was going to be married to Lucille Ventadour;
nay, that he was married; for this was the 5th of July, and he wrote
word that his marriage was fixed to take place on the 29th of June. I
knew all the reasons he gave, all the raptures he went into. I held the
letter loosely in my hands, and looked into vacancy, yet I saw the
chaffinch's nest on the lichen-covered trunk of an old apple-tree
opposite my window, and saw the mother-bird come fluttering in to feed
her brood,—and yet I did not see it, although it seemed to me
afterwards as if I could have drawn every fibre, every feather. I was
stirred up to action by the merry sound of voices and the clamp of
rustic feet coming home for the mid-day meal. I knew I must go down to
dinner; I knew, too, I must tell Phillis; for in his happy egotism, his
new-fangled foppery, Holdsworth had put in a P.S., saying that he
should send wedding-cards to me and some other Hornby and Eltham
acquaintances, and 'to his kind friends at Hope Farm'. Phillis had
faded away to one among several 'kind friends'. I don't know how I got
through dinner that day. I remember forcing myself to eat, and talking
hard; but I also recollect the wondering look in the minister's eyes.
He was not one to think evil without cause; but many a one would have
taken me for drunk. As soon as I decently could I left the table,
saying I would go out for a walk. At first I must have tried to stun
reflection by rapid walking, for I had lost myself on the high
moorlands far beyond the familiar gorse-covered common, before I was
obliged for very weariness to slacken my pace. I kept wishing—oh! how
fervently wishing I had never committed that blunder; that the one
little half-hour's indiscretion could be blotted out. Alternating with
this was anger against Holdsworth; unjust enough, I dare say. I suppose
I stayed in that solitary place for a good hour or more, and then I
turned homewards, resolving to get over the telling Phillis at the
first opportunity, but shrinking from the fulfilment of my resolution
so much that when I came into the house and saw Phillis (doors and
windows open wide in the sultry weather) alone in the kitchen, I became
quite sick with apprehension. She was standing by the dresser, cutting
up a great household loaf into hunches of bread for the hungry
labourers who might come in any minute, for the heavy thunder-clouds
were overspreading the sky. She looked round as she heard my step.

'You should have been in the field, helping with the hay,' said she, in
her calm, pleasant voice. I had heard her as I came near the house
softly chanting some hymn-tune, and the peacefulness of that seemed to
be brooding over her now.

'Perhaps I should. It looks as if it was going to rain.

'Yes; there is thunder about. Mother has had to go to bed with one of
her bad headaches. Now you are come in—

'Phillis,' said I, rushing at my subject and interrupting her, 'I went
a long walk to think over a letter I had this morning—a letter from
Canada. You don't know how it has grieved me. I held it out to her as I
spoke. Her colour changed a little, but it was more the reflection of
my face, I think, than because she formed any definite idea from my
words. Still she did not take the letter. I had to bid her to read it,
before she quite understood what I wished. She sate down rather
suddenly as she received it into her hands; and, spreading it on the
dresser before her, she rested her forehead on the palms of her hands,
her arms supported on the table, her figure a little averted, and her
countenance thus shaded. I looked out of the open window; my heart was
very heavy. How peaceful it all seemed in the farmyard! Peace and
plenty. How still and deep was the silence of the house! Tick-tick went
the unseen clock on the wide staircase. I had heard the rustle once,
when she turned over the page of thin paper. She must have read to the
end. Yet she did not move, or say a word, or even sigh. I kept on
looking out of the window, my hands in my pockets. I wonder how long
that time really was? It seemed to me interminable—unbearable. At
length I looked round at her. She must have felt my look, for she
changed her attitude with a quick sharp movement, and caught my eyes.

'Don't look so sorry, Paul,' she said. 'Don't, please. I can't bear it.
There is nothing to be sorry for. I think not, at least. You have not
done wrong, at any rate.' I felt that I groaned, but I don't think she
heard me. 'And he,—there's no wrong in his marrying, is there? I'm
sure I hope he'll be happy. Oh! how I hope it!' These last words were
like a wail; but I believe she was afraid of breaking down, for she
changed the key in which she spoke, and hurried on.

'Lucille—that's our English Lucy, I suppose? Lucille Holdsworth! It's
a pretty name; and I hope—I forget what I was going to say. Oh! it was
this. Paul, I think we need never speak about this again; only remember
you are not to be sorry. You have not done wrong; you have been very,
very kind; and if I see you looking grieved I don't know what I might
do;—I might breakdown, you know.' I think she was on the point of
doing so then, but the dark storm came dashing down, and the
thunder-cloud broke right above the house, as it seemed. Her mother,
roused from sleep, called out for Phillis; the men and women from the
hay-field came running into shelter, drenched through. The minister
followed, smiling, and not unpleasantly excited by the war of elements;
for, by dint of hard work through the long summer's day, the greater
part of the hay was safely housed in the barn in the field. Once or
twice in the succeeding bustle I came across Phillis, always busy, and,
as it seemed to me, always doing the right thing. When I was alone in
my own room at night I allowed myself to feel relieved; and to believe
that the worst was over, and was not so very bad after all. But the
succeeding days were very miserable. Sometimes I thought it must be my
fancy that falsely represented Phillis to me as strangely changed, for
surely, if this idea of mine was well-founded, her parents—her father
and mother—her own flesh and blood—would have been the first to
perceive it. Yet they went on in their household peace and content; if
anything, a little more cheerfully than usual, for the 'harvest of the
first-fruits', as the minister called it, had been more bounteous than
usual, and there was plenty all around in which the humblest labourer
was made to share. After the one thunderstorm, came one or two lovely
serene summer days, during which the hay was all carried; and then
succeeded long soft rains filling the ears of corn, and causing the
mown grass to spring afresh. The minister allowed himself a few more
hours of relaxation and home enjoyment than usual during this wet
spell: hard earth-bound frost was his winter holiday; these wet days,
after the hay harvest, his summer holiday. We sate with open windows,
the fragrance and the freshness called out by the soft-falling rain
filling the house-place; while the quiet ceaseless patter among the
leaves outside ought to have had the same lulling effect as all other
gentle perpetual sounds, such as mill-wheels and bubbling springs, have
on the nerves of happy people. But two of us were not happy. I was sure
enough of myself, for one. I was worse than sure,—I was wretchedly
anxious about Phillis. Ever since that day of the thunderstorm there
had been a new, sharp, discordant sound to me in her voice, a sort of
jangle in her tone; and her restless eyes had no quietness in them; and
her colour came and went without a cause that I could find out. The
minister, happy in ignorance of what most concerned him, brought out
his books; his learned volumes and classics. Whether he read and talked
to Phillis, or to me, I do not know; but feeling by instinct that she
was not, could not be, attending to the peaceful details, so strange
and foreign to the turmoil in her heart, I forced myself to listen, and
if possible to understand.

'Look here!' said the minister, tapping the old vellum-bound book he
held; 'in the first Georgic he speaks of rolling and irrigation, a
little further on he insists on choice of the best seed, and advises us
to keep the drains clear. Again, no Scotch farmer could give shrewder
advice than to cut light meadows while the dew is on, even though it
involve night-work. It is all living truth in these days.' He began
beating time with a ruler upon his knee, to some Latin lines he read
aloud just then. I suppose the monotonous chant irritated Phillis to
some irregular energy, for I remember the quick knotting and breaking
of the thread with which she was sewing. I never hear that snap
repeated now, without suspecting some sting or stab troubling the heart
of the worker. Cousin Holman, at her peaceful knitting, noticed the
reason why Phillis had so constantly to interrupt the progress of her
seam.

'It is bad thread, I'm afraid,' she said, in a gentle sympathetic
voice. But it was too much for Phillis.

'The thread is bad—everything is bad—I am so tired of it all!' And
she put down her work, and hastily left the room. I do not suppose that
in all her life Phillis had ever shown so much temper before. In many a
family the tone, the manner, would not have been noticed; but here it
fell with a sharp surprise upon the sweet, calm atmosphere of home. The
minister put down ruler and book, and pushed his spectacles up to his
forehead. The mother looked distressed for a moment, and then smoothed
her features and said in an explanatory tone,—'It's the weather, I
think. Some people feel it different to others. It always brings on a
headache with me.' She got up to follow her daughter, but half-way to
the door she thought better of it, and came back to her seat. Good
mother! she hoped the better to conceal the unusual spirt of temper, by
pretending not to take much notice of it. 'Go on, minister,' she said;
'it is very interesting what you are reading about, and when I don't
quite understand it, I like the sound of your voice.' So he went on,
but languidly and irregularly, and beat no more time with his ruler to
any Latin lines. When the dusk came on, early that July night because
of the cloudy sky, Phillis came softly back, making as though nothing
had happened. She took up her work, but it was too dark to do many
stitches; and she dropped it soon. Then I saw how her hand stole into
her mother's, and how this latter fondled it with quiet little
caresses, while the minister, as fully aware as I was of this tender
pantomime, went on talking in a happier tone of voice about things as
uninteresting to him, at the time, I very believe, as they were to me;
and that is saying a good deal, and shows how much more real what was
passing before him was, even to a farmer, than the agricultural customs
of the ancients.

I remember one thing more,—an attack which Betty the servant made upon
me one day as I came in through the kitchen where she was churning, and
stopped to ask her for a drink of buttermilk.

'I say, cousin Paul,' (she had adopted the family habit of addressing
me generally as cousin Paul, and always speaking of me in that form,)
'something's amiss with our Phillis, and I reckon you've a good guess
what it is. She's not one to take up wi' such as you,' (not
complimentary, but that Betty never was, even to those for whom she
felt the highest respect,) 'but I'd as lief yon Holdsworth had never
come near us. So there you've a bit o' my mind.' And a very
unsatisfactory bit it was. I did not know what to answer to the glimpse
at the real state of the case implied in the shrewd woman's speech; so
I tried to put her off by assuming surprise at her first assertion.