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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cousin Phillis, by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Cousin Phillis
+
+Author: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2001 [eBook #4268]
+[Most recently updated: November 23, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Charles Aldarondo
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUSIN PHILLIS ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+Cousin Phillis
+
+by Elizabeth Gaskell (1863)
+
+Philip Hermongenes Calderon (1833-98)
+Broken Vows (1856)
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ PART I
+ PART II
+ PART III
+ PART IV
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+It is a great thing for a lad when he is first turned into the
+independence of lodgings. I do not think I ever was so satisfied and
+proud in my life as when, at seventeen, I sate down in a little
+three-cornered room above a pastry-cook’s shop in the county town of
+Eltham. My father had left me that afternoon, after delivering himself
+of a few plain precepts, strongly expressed, for my guidance in the new
+course of life on which I was entering. I was to be a clerk under the
+engineer who had undertaken to make the little branch line from Eltham
+to Hornby. My father had got me this situation, which was in a position
+rather above his own in life; or perhaps I should say, above the
+station in which he was born and bred; for he was raising himself every
+year in men’s consideration and respect. He was a mechanic by trade,
+but he had some inventive genius, and a great deal of perseverance, and
+had devised several valuable improvements in railway machinery. He did
+not do this for profit, though, as was reasonable, what came in the
+natural course of things was acceptable; he worked out his ideas,
+because, as he said, “until he could put them into shape, they plagued
+him by night and by day.” But this is enough about my dear father; it
+is a good thing for a country where there are many like him. He was a
+sturdy Independent by descent and conviction; and this it was, I
+believe, which made him place me in the lodgings at the pastry-cook’s.
+The shop was kept by the two sisters of our minister at home; and this
+was considered as a sort of safeguard to my morals, when I was turned
+loose upon the temptations of the county town, with a salary of thirty
+pounds a year.
+
+My father had given up two precious days, and put on his Sunday
+clothes, in order to bring me to Eltham, and accompany me first to the
+office, to introduce me to my new master (who was under some
+obligations to my father for a suggestion), and next to take me to call
+on the Independent minister of the little congregation at Eltham. And
+then he left me; and though sorry to part with him, I now began to
+taste with relish the pleasure of being my own master. I unpacked the
+hamper that my mother had provided me with, and smelt the pots of
+preserve with all the delight of a possessor who might break into their
+contents at any time he pleased. I handled and weighed in my fancy the
+home-cured ham, which seemed to promise me interminable feasts; and,
+above all, there was the fine savour of knowing that I might eat of
+these dainties when I liked, at my sole will, not dependent on the
+pleasure of any one else, however indulgent. I stowed my eatables away
+in the little corner cupboard—that room was all corners, and everything
+was placed in a corner, the fire-place, the window, the cupboard; I
+myself seemed to be the only thing in the middle, and there was hardly
+room for me. The table was made of a folding leaf under the window, and
+the window looked out upon the market-place; so the studies for the
+prosecution of which my father had brought himself to pay extra for a
+sitting-room for me, ran a considerable chance of being diverted from
+books to men and women. I was to have my meals with the two elderly
+Miss Dawsons in the little parlour behind the three-cornered shop
+downstairs; my breakfasts and dinners at least, for, as my hours in an
+evening were likely to be uncertain, my tea or supper was to be an
+independent meal.
+
+Then, after this pride and satisfaction, came a sense of desolation. I
+had never been from home before, and I was an only child; and though my
+father’s spoken maxim had been, “Spare the rod, and spoil the child”,
+yet, unconsciously, his heart had yearned after me, and his ways
+towards me were more tender than he knew, or would have approved of in
+himself could he have known. My mother, who never professed sternness,
+was far more severe than my father: perhaps my boyish faults annoyed
+her more; for I remember, now that I have written the above words, how
+she pleaded for me once in my riper years, when I had really offended
+against my father’s sense of right.
+
+But I have nothing to do with that now. It is about cousin Phillis that
+I am going to write, and as yet I am far enough from even saying who
+cousin Phillis was.
+
+For some months after I was settled in Eltham, the new employment in
+which I was engaged—the new independence of my life—occupied all my
+thoughts. I was at my desk by eight o“clock, home to dinner at one,
+back at the office by two. The afternoon work was more uncertain than
+the morning’s; it might be the same, or it might be that I had to
+accompany Mr Holdsworth, the managing engineer, to some point on the
+line between Eltham and Hornby. This I always enjoyed, because of the
+variety, and because of the country we traversed (which was very wild
+and pretty), and because I was thrown into companionship with Mr
+Holdsworth, who held the position of hero in my boyish mind. He was a
+young man of five-and-twenty or so, and was in a station above mine,
+both by birth and education; and he had travelled on the Continent, and
+wore mustachios and whiskers of a somewhat foreign fashion. I was proud
+of being seen with him. He was really a fine fellow in a good number of
+ways, and I might have fallen into much worse hands.
+
+Every Saturday I wrote home, telling of my weekly doings—my father had
+insisted upon this; but there was so little variety in my life that I
+often found it hard work to fill a letter. On Sundays I went twice to
+chapel, up a dark narrow entry, to hear droning hymns, and long
+prayers, and a still longer sermon, preached to a small congregation,
+of which I was, by nearly a score of years, the youngest member.
+Occasionally, Mr Peters, the minister, would ask me home to tea after
+the second service. I dreaded the honour, for I usually sate on the
+edge of my chair all the evening, and answered solemn questions, put in
+a deep bass voice, until household prayer-time came, at eight o“clock,
+when Mrs Peters came in, smoothing down her apron, and the
+maid-of-all-work followed, and first a sermon, and then a chapter was
+read, and a long impromptu prayer followed, till some instinct told Mr
+Peters that supper-time had come, and we rose from our knees with
+hunger for our predominant feeling. Over supper the minister did unbend
+a little into one or two ponderous jokes, as if to show me that
+ministers were men, after all. And then at ten o“clock I went home, and
+enjoyed my long-repressed yawns in the three-cornered room before going
+to bed. Dinah and Hannah Dawson, so their names were put on the board
+above the shop-door—I always called them Miss Dawson and Miss
+Hannah—considered these visits of mine to Mr Peters as the greatest
+honour a young man could have; and evidently thought that if after such
+privileges, I did not work out my salvation, I was a sort of modern
+Judas Iscariot. On the contrary, they shook their heads over my
+intercourse with Mr Holdsworth. He had been so kind to me in many ways,
+that when I cut into my ham, I hovered over the thought of asking him
+to tea in my room, more especially as the annual fair was being held in
+Eltham market-place, and the sight of the booths, the merry-go-rounds,
+the wild-beast shows, and such country pomps, was (as I thought at
+seventeen) very attractive. But when I ventured to allude to my wish in
+even distant terms, Miss Hannah caught me up, and spoke of the
+sinfulness of such sights, and something about wallowing in the mire,
+and then vaulted into France, and spoke evil of the nation, and all who
+had ever set foot therein, till, seeing that her anger was
+concentrating itself into a point, and that that point was Mr
+Holdsworth, I thought it would be better to finish my breakfast, and
+make what haste I could out of the sound of her voice. I rather
+wondered afterwards to hear her and Miss Dawson counting up their
+weekly profits with glee, and saying that a pastry-cook’s shop in the
+corner of the market-place, in Eltham fair week, was no such bad thing.
+However, I never ventured to ask Mr Holdsworth to my lodgings.
+
+There is not much to tell about this first year of mine at Eltham. But
+when I was nearly nineteen, and beginning to think of whiskers on my
+own account, I came to know cousin Phillis, whose very existence had
+been unknown to me till then. Mr Holdsworth and I had been out to
+Heathbridge for a day, working hard. Heathbridge was near Hornby, for
+our line of railway was above half finished. Of course, a day’s outing
+was a great thing to tell about in my weekly letters; and I fell to
+describing the country—a fault I was not often guilty of. I told my
+father of the bogs, all over wild myrtle and soft moss, and shaking
+ground over which we had to carry our line; and how Mr Holdsworth and I
+had gone for our mid-day meals—for we had to stay here for two days and
+a night—to a pretty village hard by, Heathbridge proper; and how I
+hoped we should often have to go there, for the shaking, uncertain
+ground was puzzling our engineers—one end of the line going up as soon
+as the other was weighted down. (I had no thought for the shareholders’
+interests, as may be seen; we had to make a new line on firmer ground
+before the junction railway was completed.) I told all this at great
+length, thankful to fill up my paper. By return letter, I heard that a
+second-cousin of my mother’s was married to the Independent minister of
+Hornby, Ebenezer Holman by name, and lived at Heathbridge proper; the
+very Heathbridge I had described, or so my mother believed, for she had
+never seen her cousin Phillis Green, who was something of an heiress
+(my father believed), being her father’s only child, and old Thomas
+Green had owned an estate of near upon fifty acres, which must have
+come to his daughter. My mother’s feeling of kinship seemed to have
+been strongly stirred by the mention of Heathbridge; for my father said
+she desired me, if ever I went thither again, to make inquiry for the
+Reverend Ebenezer Holman; and if indeed he lived there, I was further
+to ask if he had not married one Phillis Green; and if both these
+questions were answered in the affirmative, I was to go and introduce
+myself as the only child of Margaret Manning, born Moneypenny. I was
+enraged at myself for having named Heathbridge at all, when I found
+what it was drawing down upon me. One Independent minister, as I said
+to myself, was enough for any man; and here I knew (that is to say, I
+had been catechized on Sabbath mornings by) Mr Dawson, our minister at
+home; and I had had to be civil to old Peters at Eltham, and behave
+myself for five hours running whenever he asked me to tea at his house;
+and now, just as I felt the free air blowing about me up at
+Heathbridge, I was to ferret out another minister, and I should perhaps
+have to be catechized by him, or else asked to tea at his house.
+Besides, I did not like pushing myself upon strangers, who perhaps had
+never heard of my mother’s name, and such an odd name as it
+was—Moneypenny; and if they had, had never cared more for her than she
+had for them, apparently, until this unlucky mention of Heathbridge.
+Still, I would not disobey my parents in such a trifle, however irksome
+it might be. So the next time our business took me to Heathbridge, and
+we were dining in the little sanded inn-parlour, I took the opportunity
+of Mr Holdsworth’s being out of the room, and asked the questions which
+I was bidden to ask of the rosy-cheeked maid. I was either
+unintelligible or she was stupid; for she said she did not know, but
+would ask master; and of course the landlord came in to understand what
+it was I wanted to know; and I had to bring out all my stammering
+inquiries before Mr Holdsworth, who would never have attended to them,
+I dare say, if I had not blushed, and blundered, and made such a fool
+of myself.
+
+“Yes,” the landlord said, “the Hope Farm was in Heathbridge proper, and
+the owner’s name was Holman, and he was an Independent minister, and,
+as far as the landlord could tell, his wife’s Christian name was
+Phillis, anyhow her maiden name was Green.”
+
+“Relations of yours?” asked Mr Holdsworth.
+
+“No, sir—only my mother’s second-cousins. Yes, I suppose they are
+relations. But I never saw them in my life.”
+
+“The Hope Farm is not a stone’s throw from here,” said the officious
+landlord, going to the window. “If you carry your eye over yon bed of
+hollyhocks, over the damson-trees in the orchard yonder, you may see a
+stack of queer-like stone chimneys. Them is the Hope Farm chimneys;
+it’s an old place, though Holman keeps it in good order.”
+
+Mr Holdsworth had risen from the table with more promptitude than I
+had, and was standing by the window, looking. At the landlord’s last
+words, he turned round, smiling,—“It is not often that parsons know how
+to keep land in order, is it?”
+
+“Beg pardon, sir, but I must speak as I find; and Minister Holman—we
+call the Church clergyman here ‘parson,’ sir; he would be a bit jealous
+if he heard a Dissenter called parson—Minister Holman knows what he’s
+about as well as e’er a farmer in the neighbourhood. He gives up five
+days a week to his own work, and two to the Lord’s; and it is difficult
+to say which he works hardest at. He spends Saturday and Sunday
+a-writing sermons and a-visiting his flock at Hornby; and at five
+o“clock on Monday morning he’ll be guiding his plough in the Hope Farm
+yonder just as well as if he could neither read nor write. But your
+dinner will be getting cold, gentlemen.”
+
+So we went back to table. After a while, Mr Holdsworth broke the
+silence:—“If I were you, Manning, I’d look up these relations of yours.
+You can go and see what they’re like while we’re waiting for Dobson’s
+estimates, and I’ll smoke a cigar in the garden meanwhile.”
+
+“Thank you, sir. But I don’t know them, and I don’t think I want to
+know them.”
+
+“What did you ask all those questions for, then?” said he, looking
+quickly up at me. He had no notion of doing or saying things without a
+purpose. I did not answer, so he continued,—“Make up your mind, and go
+off and see what this farmer-minister is like, and come back and tell
+me—I should like to hear.”
+
+I was so in the habit of yielding to his authority, or influence, that
+I never thought of resisting, but went on my errand, though I remember
+feeling as if I would rather have had my head cut off. The landlord,
+who had evidently taken an interest in the event of our discussion in a
+way that country landlords have, accompanied me to the house-door, and
+gave me repeated directions, as if I was likely to miss my way in two
+hundred yards. But I listened to him, for I was glad of the delay, to
+screw up my courage for the effort of facing unknown people and
+introducing myself. I went along the lane, I recollect, switching at
+all the taller roadside weeds, till, after a turn or two, I found
+myself close in front of the Hope Farm. There was a garden between the
+house and the shady, grassy lane; I afterwards found that this garden
+was called the court; perhaps because there was a low wall round it,
+with an iron railing on the top of the wall, and two great gates
+between pillars crowned with stone balls for a state entrance to the
+flagged path leading up to the front door. It was not the habit of the
+place to go in either by these great gates or by the front door; the
+gates, indeed, were locked, as I found, though the door stood wide
+open. I had to go round by a side-path lightly worn on a broad grassy
+way, which led past the court-wall, past a horse-mount, half covered
+with stone-crop and the little wild yellow fumitory, to another
+door—“the curate”, as I found it was termed by the master of the house,
+while the front door, “handsome and all for show”, was termed the
+“rector”. I knocked with my hand upon the “curate” door; a tall girl,
+about my own age, as I thought, came and opened it, and stood there
+silent, waiting to know my errand. I see her now—cousin Phillis. The
+westering sun shone full upon her, and made a slanting stream of light
+into the room within. She was dressed in dark blue cotton of some kind;
+up to her throat, down to her wrists, with a little frill of the same
+wherever it touched her white skin. And such a white skin as it was! I
+have never seen the like. She had light hair, nearer yellow than any
+other colour. She looked me steadily in the face with large, quiet
+eyes, wondering, but untroubled by the sight of a stranger. I thought
+it odd that so old, so full-grown as she was, she should wear a
+pinafore over her gown.
+
+Before I had quite made up my mind what to say in reply to her mute
+inquiry of what I wanted there, a woman’s voice called out, “Who is it,
+Phillis? If it is any one for butter-milk send them round to the back
+door.”
+
+I thought I could rather speak to the owner of that voice than to the
+girl before me; so I passed her, and stood at the entrance of a room
+hat in hand, for this side-door opened straight into the hall or
+house-place where the family sate when work was done. There was a brisk
+little woman of forty or so ironing some huge muslin cravats under the
+light of a long vine-shaded casement window. She looked at me
+distrustfully till I began to speak. “My name is Paul Manning,” said I;
+but I saw she did not know the name. “My mother’s name was Moneypenny,”
+said I,—“Margaret Moneypenny.”
+
+“And she married one John Manning, of Birmingham,” said Mrs Holman,
+eagerly.
+
+“And you’ll be her son. Sit down! I am right glad to see you. To think
+of your being Margaret’s son! Why, she was almost a child not so long
+ago. Well, to be sure, it is five-and-twenty years ago. And what brings
+you into these parts?”
+
+She sate down herself, as if oppressed by her curiosity as to all the
+five-and-twenty years that had passed by since she had seen my mother.
+Her daughter Phillis took up her knitting—a long grey worsted man’s
+stocking, I remember—and knitted away without looking at her work. I
+felt that the steady gaze of those deep grey eyes was upon me, though
+once, when I stealthily raised mine to hers, she was examining
+something on the wall above my head.
+
+When I had answered all my cousin Holman’s questions, she heaved a long
+breath, and said, “To think of Margaret Moneypenny’s boy being in our
+house! I wish the minister was here. Phillis, in what field is thy
+father to-day?”
+
+“In the five-acre; they are beginning to cut the corn.”
+
+“He’ll not like being sent for, then, else I should have liked you to
+have seen the minister. But the five-acre is a good step off. You shall
+have a glass of wine and a bit of cake before you stir from this house,
+though. You’re bound to go, you say, or else the minister comes in
+mostly when the men have their four o“clock.”
+
+“I must go—I ought to have been off before now.”
+
+“Here, then, Phillis, take the keys.” She gave her daughter some
+whispered directions, and Phillis left the room.
+
+“She is my cousin, is she not?” I asked. I knew she was, but somehow I
+wanted to talk of her, and did not know how to begin.
+
+“Yes—Phillis Holman. She is our only child—now.”
+
+Either from that “now”, or from a strange momentary wistfulness in her
+eyes, I knew that there had been more children, who were now dead.
+
+“How old is cousin Phillis?” said I, scarcely venturing on the new
+name, it seemed too prettily familiar for me to call her by it; but
+cousin Holman took no notice of it, answering straight to the purpose.
+
+“Seventeen last May-day; but the minister does not like to hear me
+calling it May-day,” said she, checking herself with a little awe.
+“Phillis was seventeen on the first day of May last,” she repeated in
+an emended edition.
+
+“And I am nineteen in another month,” thought I, to myself; I don’t
+know why. Then Phillis came in, carrying a tray with wine and cake upon
+it.
+
+“We keep a house-servant,” said cousin Holman, “but it is churning day,
+and she is busy.” It was meant as a little proud apology for her
+daughter’s being the handmaiden.
+
+“I like doing it, mother,” said Phillis, in her grave, full voice.
+
+I felt as if I were somebody in the Old Testament—who, I could not
+recollect—being served and waited upon by the daughter of the host. Was
+I like Abraham’s servant, when Rebekah gave him to drink at the well? I
+thought Isaac had not gone the pleasantest way to work in winning him a
+wife. But Phillis never thought about such things. She was a stately,
+gracious young woman, in the dress and with the simplicity of a child.
+
+As I had been taught, I drank to the health of my newfound cousin and
+her husband; and then I ventured to name my cousin Phillis with a
+little bow of my head towards her; but I was too awkward to look and
+see how she took my compliment. “I must go now,” said I, rising.
+
+Neither of the women had thought of sharing in the wine; cousin Holman
+had broken a bit of cake for form’s sake.
+
+“I wish the minister had been within,” said his wife, rising too.
+Secretly I was very glad he was not. I did not take kindly to ministers
+in those days, and I thought he must be a particular kind of man, by
+his objecting to the term May-day. But before I went, cousin Holman
+made me promise that I would come back on the Saturday following and
+spend Sunday with them; when I should see something of “the minister”.
+
+“Come on Friday, if you can,” were her last words as she stood at the
+curate-door, shading her eyes from the sinking sun with her hand.
+Inside the house sate cousin Phillis, her golden hair, her dazzling
+complexion, lighting up the corner of the vine-shadowed room. She had
+not risen when I bade her good-by; she had looked at me straight as she
+said her tranquil words of farewell.
+
+I found Mr Holdsworth down at the line, hard at work superintending. As
+soon as he had a pause, he said, “Well, Manning, what are the new
+cousins like? How do preaching and farming seem to get on together? If
+the minister turns out to be practical as well as reverend, I shall
+begin to respect him.”
+
+But he hardly attended to my answer, he was so much more occupied with
+directing his work-people. Indeed, my answer did not come very readily;
+and the most distinct part of it was the mention of the invitation that
+had been given me.
+
+“Oh, of course you can go—and on Friday, too, if you like; there is no
+reason why not this week; and you’ve done a long spell of work this
+time, old fellow.” I thought that I did not want to go on Friday; but
+when the day came, I found that I should prefer going to staying away,
+so I availed myself of Mr Holdsworth’s permission, and went over to
+Hope Farm some time in the afternoon, a little later than my last
+visit. I found the “curate” open to admit the soft September air, so
+tempered by the warmth of the sun, that it was warmer out of doors than
+in, although the wooden log lay smouldering in front of a heap of hot
+ashes on the hearth. The vine-leaves over the window had a tinge more
+yellow, their edges were here and there scorched and browned; there was
+no ironing about, and cousin Holman sate just outside the house,
+mending a shirt. Phillis was at her knitting indoors: it seemed as if
+she had been at it all the week. The manyspeckled fowls were pecking
+about in the farmyard beyond, and the milk-cans glittered with
+brightness, hung out to sweeten. The court was so full of flowers that
+they crept out upon the low-covered wall and horse-mount, and were even
+to be found self-sown upon the turf that bordered the path to the back
+of the house. I fancied that my Sunday coat was scented for days
+afterwards by the bushes of sweetbriar and the fraxinella that perfumed
+the air. From time to time cousin Holman put her hand into a covered
+basket at her feet, and threw handsful of corn down for the pigeons
+that cooed and fluttered in the air around, in expectation of this
+treat.
+
+I had a thorough welcome as soon as she saw me. “Now this is kind—this
+is right down friendly,” shaking my hand warmly. “Phillis, your cousin
+Manning is come!”
+
+“Call me Paul, will you?” said I; “they call me so at home, and Manning
+in the office.”
+
+“Well, Paul, then. Your room is all ready for you, Paul, for, as I said
+to the minister, ‘I’ll have it ready whether he comes on Friday or
+not.’ And the minister said he must go up to the Ashfield whether you
+were to come or not; but he would come home betimes to see if you were
+here. I’ll show you to your room, and you can wash the dust off a bit.”
+
+After I came down, I think she did not quite know what to do with me;
+or she might think that I was dull; or she might have work to do in
+which I hindered her; for she called Phillis, and bade her put on her
+bonnet, and go with me to the Ashfield, and find father. So we set off,
+I in a little flutter of a desire to make myself agreeable, but wishing
+that my companion were not quite so tall; for she was above me in
+height. While I was wondering how to begin our conversation, she took
+up the words.
+
+“I suppose, cousin Paul, you have to be very busy at your work all day
+long in general.”
+
+“Yes, we have to be in the office at half-past eight; and we have an
+hour for dinner, and then we go at it again till eight or nine.”
+
+“Then you have not much time for reading.”
+
+“No,” said I, with a sudden consciousness that I did not make the most
+of what leisure I had.
+
+“No more have I. Father always gets an hour before going a-field in the
+mornings, but mother does not like me to get up so early.”
+
+“My mother is always wanting me to get up earlier when I am at home.”
+
+“What time do you get up?”
+
+“Oh!—ah!—sometimes half-past six: not often though;” for I remembered
+only twice that I had done so during the past summer.
+
+She turned her head and looked at me.
+
+“Father is up at three; and so was mother till she was ill. I should
+like to be up at four.”
+
+“Your father up at three! Why, what has he to do at that hour?”
+
+“What has he not to do? He has his private exercise in his own room; he
+always rings the great bell which calls the men to milking; he rouses
+up Betty, our maid; as often as not he gives the horses their feed
+before the man is up—for Jem, who takes care of the horses, is an old
+man; and father is always loth to disturb him; he looks at the calves,
+and the shoulders, heels, traces, chaff, and corn before the horses go
+a-field; he has often to whip-cord the plough-whips; he sees the hogs
+fed; he looks into the swill-tubs, and writes his orders for what is
+wanted for food for man and beast; yes, and for fuel, too. And then, if
+he has a bit of time to spare, he comes in and reads with me—but only
+English; we keep Latin for the evenings, that we may have time to enjoy
+it; and then he calls in the men to breakfast, and cuts the boys’ bread
+and cheese; and sees their wooden bottles filled, and sends them off to
+their work;—and by this time it is half-past six, and we have our
+breakfast. There is father,” she exclaimed, pointing out to me a man in
+his shirt-sleeves, taller by the head than the other two with whom he
+was working. We only saw him through the leaves of the ash-trees
+growing in the hedge, and I thought I must be confusing the figures, or
+mistaken: that man still looked like a very powerful labourer, and had
+none of the precise demureness of appearance which I had always
+imagined was the characteristic of a minister. It was the Reverend
+Ebenezer Holman, however. He gave us a nod as we entered the
+stubble-field; and I think he would have come to meet us but that he
+was in the middle of giving some directions to his men. I could see
+that Phillis was built more after his type than her mother’s. He, like
+his daughter, was largely made, and of a fair, ruddy complexion,
+whereas hers was brilliant and delicate. His hair had been yellow or
+sandy, but now was grizzled. Yet his grey hairs betokened no failure in
+strength. I never saw a more powerful man—deep chest, lean flanks,
+well-planted head. By this time we were nearly up to him; and he
+interrupted himself and stepped forwards; holding out his hand to me,
+but addressing Phillis.
+
+“Well, my lass, this is cousin Manning, I suppose. Wait a minute, young
+man, and I’ll put on my coat, and give you a decorous and formal
+welcome. But—Ned Hall, there ought to be a water-furrow across this
+land: it’s a nasty, stiff, clayey, dauby bit of ground, and thou and I
+must fall to, come next Monday—I beg your pardon, cousin Manning—and
+there’s old Jem’s cottage wants a bit of thatch; you can do that job
+to-morrow while I am busy.” Then, suddenly changing the tone of his
+deep bass voice to an odd suggestion of chapels and preachers, he
+added. “Now, I will give out the psalm, ‘Come all harmonious tongues’,
+to be sung to ‘Mount Ephraim’ tune.”
+
+He lifted his spade in his hand, and began to beat time with it; the
+two labourers seemed to know both words and music, though I did not;
+and so did Phillis: her rich voice followed her father’s as he set the
+tune; and the men came in with more uncertainty, but still
+harmoniously. Phillis looked at me once or twice with a little surprise
+at my silence; but I did not know the words. There we five stood,
+bareheaded, excepting Phillis, in the tawny stubble-field, from which
+all the shocks of corn had not yet been carried—a dark wood on one
+side, where the woodpigeons were cooing; blue distance seen through the
+ash-trees on the other. Somehow, I think that if I had known the words,
+and could have sung, my throat would have been choked up by the feeling
+of the unaccustomed scene.
+
+The hymn was ended, and the men had drawn off before I could stir. I
+saw the minister beginning to put on his coat, and looking at me with
+friendly inspection in his gaze, before I could rouse myself.
+
+“I dare say you railway gentlemen don’t wind up the day with singing a
+psalm together,” said he; “but it is not a bad practice—not a bad
+practice. We have had it a bit earlier to-day for hospitality’s
+sake—that’s all.”
+
+I had nothing particular to say to this, though I was thinking a great
+deal. From time to time I stole a look at my companion. His coat was
+black, and so was his waistcoat; neckcloth he had none, his strong full
+throat being bare above the snow-white shirt. He wore drab-coloured
+knee-breeches, grey worsted stockings (I thought I knew the maker), and
+strong-nailed shoes. He carried his hat in his hand, as if he liked to
+feel the coming breeze lifting his hair. After a while, I saw that the
+father took hold of the daughter’s hand, and so, they holding each
+other, went along towards home. We had to cross a lane. In it were two
+little children, one lying prone on the grass in a passion of crying,
+the other standing stock still, with its finger in its mouth, the large
+tears slowly rolling down its cheeks for sympathy. The cause of their
+distress was evident; there was a broken brown pitcher, and a little
+pool of spilt milk on the road.
+
+“Hollo! Hollo! What’s all this?” said the minister. “Why, what have you
+been about, Tommy,” lifting the little petticoated lad, who was lying
+sobbing, with one vigorous arm. Tommy looked at him with surprise in
+his round eyes, but no affright—they were evidently old acquaintances.
+
+“Mammy’s jug!” said he, at last, beginning to cry afresh.
+
+“Well! and will crying piece mammy’s jug, or pick up spilt milk? How
+did you manage it, Tommy?”
+
+“He” (jerking his head at the other) “and me was running races.”
+
+“Tommy said he could beat me,” put in the other.
+
+“Now, I wonder what will make you two silly lads mind, and not run
+races again with a pitcher of milk between you,” said the minister, as
+if musing. “I might flog you, and so save mammy the trouble; for I dare
+say she’ll do it if I don’t.” The fresh burst of whimpering from both
+showed the probability of this.
+
+“Or I might take you to the Hope Farm, and give you some more milk; but
+then you’d be running races again, and my milk would follow that to the
+ground, and make another white pool. I think the flogging would be
+best—don’t you?”
+
+“We would never run races no more,” said the elder of the two.
+
+“Then you’d not be boys; you’d be angels.”
+
+“No, we shouldn’t.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+They looked into each other’s eyes for an answer to this puzzling
+question. At length, one said, “Angels is dead folk.”
+
+“Come; we’ll not get too deep into theology. What do you think of my
+lending you a tin can with a lid to carry the milk home in? That would
+not break, at any rate; though I would not answer for the milk not
+spilling if you ran races. That’s it!”
+
+He had dropped his daughter’s hand, and now held out each of his to the
+little fellows. Phillis and I followed, and listened to the prattle
+which the minister’s companions now poured out to him, and which he was
+evidently enjoying. At a certain point, there was a sudden burst of the
+tawny, ruddy-evening landscape. The minister turned round and quoted a
+line or two of Latin.
+
+“It’s wonderful,” said he, “how exactly Virgil has hit the enduring
+epithets, nearly two thousand years ago, and in Italy; and yet how it
+describes to a T what is now lying before us in the parish of
+Heathbridge, county ——, England.”
+
+“I dare say it does,” said I, all aglow with shame, for I had forgotten
+the little Latin I ever knew.
+
+The minister shifted his eyes to Phillis’s face; it mutely gave him
+back the sympathetic appreciation that I, in my ignorance, could not
+bestow.
+
+“Oh! this is worse than the catechism,” thought I; “that was only
+remembering words.”
+
+“Phillis, lass, thou must go home with these lads, and tell their
+mother all about the race and the milk. Mammy must always know the
+truth,” now speaking to the children. “And tell her, too, from me that
+I have got the best birch rod in the parish; and that if she ever
+thinks her children want a flogging she must bring them to me, and, if
+I think they deserve it, I’ll give it them better than she can.” So
+Phillis led the children towards the dairy, somewhere in the back yard,
+and I followed the minister in through the “curate” into the
+house-place. “Their mother,” said he, “is a bit of a vixen, and apt to
+punish her children without rhyme or reason. I try to keep the parish
+rod as well as the parish bull.”
+
+He sate down in the three-cornered chair by the fire-side, and looked
+around the empty room.
+
+“Where’s the missus?” said he to himself. But she was there in a
+minute; it was her regular plan to give him his welcome home—by a look,
+by a touch, nothing more—as soon as she could after his return, and he
+had missed her now. Regardless of my presence, he went over the day’s
+doings to her; and then, getting up, he said he must go and make
+himself “reverend”, and that then we would have a cup of tea in the
+parlour. The parlour was a large room with two casemented windows on
+the other side of the broad flagged passage leading from the
+rector-door to the wide staircase, with its shallow, polished oaken
+steps, on which no carpet was ever laid. The parlour-floor was covered
+in the middle by a home-made carpeting of needlework and list. One or
+two quaint family pictures of the Holman family hung round the walls;
+the fire-grate and irons were much ornamented with brass; and on a
+table against the wall between the windows, a great beau-pot of flowers
+was placed upon the folio volumes of Matthew Henry’s Bible. It was a
+compliment to me to use this room, and I tried to be grateful for it;
+but we never had our meals there after that first day, and I was glad
+of it; for the large house-place, living room, dining-room, whichever
+you might like to call it, was twice as comfortable and cheerful. There
+was a rug in front of the great large fire-place, and an oven by the
+grate, and a crook, with the kettle hanging from it, over the bright
+wood-fire; everything that ought to be black and polished in that room
+was black and polished; and the flags, and window-curtains, and such
+things as were to be white and clean, were just spotless in their
+purity. Opposite to the fire-place, extending the whole length of the
+room, was an oaken shovel-board, with the right incline for a skilful
+player to send the weights into the prescribed space. There were
+baskets of white work about, and a small shelf of books hung against
+the wall, books used for reading, and not for propping up a beau-pot of
+flowers. I took down one or two of those books once when I was left
+alone in the house-place on the first evening—Virgil, Caesar, a Greek
+grammar—oh, dear! ah, me! and Phillis Holman’s name in each of them! I
+shut them up, and put them back in their places, and walked as far away
+from the bookshelf as I could. Yes, and I gave my cousin Phillis a wide
+berth, as though she was sitting at her work quietly enough, and her
+hair was looking more golden, her dark eyelashes longer, her round
+pillar of a throat whiter than ever. We had done tea, and we had
+returned into the house-place that the minister might smoke his pipe
+without fear of contaminating the drab damask window-curtains of the
+parlour. He had made himself “reverend” by putting on one of the
+voluminous white muslin neckcloths that I had seen cousin Holman
+ironing that first visit I had paid to the Hope Farm, and by making one
+or two other unimportant changes in his dress. He sate looking steadily
+at me, but whether he saw me or not I cannot tell. At the time I
+fancied that he did, and was gauging me in some unknown fashion in his
+secret mind. Every now and then he took his pipe out of his mouth,
+knocked out the ashes, and asked me some fresh question. As long as
+these related to my acquirements or my reading, I shuffled uneasily and
+did not know what to answer. By-and-by he got round to the more
+practical subject of railroads, and on this I was more at home. I
+really had taken an interest in my work; nor would Mr Holdsworth,
+indeed, have kept me in his employment if I had not given my mind as
+well as my time to it; and I was, besides, full of the difficulties
+which beset us just then, owing to our not being able to find a steady
+bottom on the Heathbridge moss, over which we wished to carry our line.
+In the midst of all my eagerness in speaking about this, I could not
+help being struck with the extreme pertinence of his questions. I do
+not mean that he did not show ignorance of many of the details of
+engineering: that was to have been expected; but on the premises he had
+got hold of; he thought clearly and reasoned logically. Phillis—so like
+him as she was both in body and mind—kept stopping at her work and
+looking at me, trying to fully understand all that I said. I felt she
+did; and perhaps it made me take more pains in using clear expressions,
+and arranging my words, than I otherwise should.
+
+“She shall see I know something worth knowing, though it mayn’t be her
+dead-and-gone languages,” thought I.
+
+“I see,” said the minister, at length. “I understand it all. You’ve a
+clear, good head of your own, my lad,—choose how you came by it.”
+
+“From my father,” said I, proudly. “Have you not heard of his discovery
+of a new method of shunting? It was in the Gazette. It was patented. I
+thought every one had heard of Manning’s patent winch.”
+
+“We don’t know who invented the alphabet,” said he, half smiling, and
+taking up his pipe.
+
+“No, I dare say not, sir,” replied I, half offended; “that’s so long
+ago.” Puff—puff—puff.
+
+“But your father must be a notable man. I heard of him once before; and
+it is not many a one fifty miles away whose fame reaches Heathbridge.”
+
+“My father is a notable man, sir. It is not me that says so; it is Mr
+Holdsworth, and—and everybody.”
+
+“He is right to stand up for his father,” said cousin Holman, as if she
+were pleading for me.
+
+I chafed inwardly, thinking that my father needed no one to stand up
+for him. He was man sufficient for himself.
+
+“Yes—he is right,” said the minister, placidly. “Right, because it
+comes from his heart—right, too, as I believe, in point of fact. Else
+there is many a young cockerel that will stand upon a dunghill and crow
+about his father, by way of making his own plumage to shine. I should
+like to know thy father,” he went on, turning straight to me, with a
+kindly, frank look in his eyes.
+
+But I was vexed, and would take no notice. Presently, having finished
+his pipe, he got up and left the room. Phillis put her work hastily
+down, and went after him. In a minute or two she returned, and sate
+down again. Not long after, and before I had quite recovered my good
+temper, he opened the door out of which he had passed, and called to me
+to come to him. I went across a narrow stone passage into a strange,
+many-cornered room, not ten feet in area, part study, part counting
+house, looking into the farm-yard; with a desk to sit at, a desk to
+stand at, a spittoon, a set of shelves with old divinity books upon
+them; another, smaller, filled with books on farriery, farming,
+manures, and such subjects, with pieces of paper containing memoranda
+stuck against the whitewashed walls with wafers, nails, pins, anything
+that came readiest to hand; a box of carpenter’s tools on the floor,
+and some manuscripts in short-hand on the desk.
+
+He turned round, half laughing. “That foolish girl of mine thinks I
+have vexed you”—putting his large, powerful hand on my shoulder.
+“‘Nay,’ says I, ‘kindly meant is kindly taken’—is it not so?”
+
+“It was not quite, sir,” replied I, vanquished by his manner; “but it
+shall be in future.”
+
+“Come, that’s right. You and I shall be friends. Indeed, it’s not many
+a one I would bring in here. But I was reading a book this morning, and
+I could not make it out; it is a book that was left here by mistake one
+day; I had subscribed to Brother Robinson’s sermons; and I was glad to
+see this instead of them, for sermons though they be, they’re . . .
+well, never mind! I took “em both, and made my old coat do a bit
+longer; but all’s fish that comes to my net. I have fewer books than
+leisure to read them, and I have a prodigious big appetite. Here it
+is.”
+
+It was a volume of stiff mechanics, involving many technical terms, and
+some rather deep mathematics. These last, which would have puzzled me,
+seemed easy enough to him; all that he wanted was the explanations of
+the technical words, which I could easily give.
+
+While he was looking through the book to find the places where he had
+been puzzled, my wandering eye caught on some of the papers on the
+wall, and I could not help reading one, which has stuck by me ever
+since. At first, it seemed a kind of weekly diary; but then I saw that
+the seven days were portioned out for special prayers and
+intercessions: Monday for his family, Tuesday for enemies, Wednesday
+for the Independent churches, Thursday for all other churches, Friday
+for persons afflicted, Saturday for his own soul, Sunday for all
+wanderers and sinners, that they might be brought home to the fold.
+
+We were called back into the house-place to have supper. A door opening
+into the kitchen was opened; and all stood up in both rooms, while the
+minister, tall, large, one hand resting on the spread table, the other
+lifted up, said, in the deep voice that would have been loud had it not
+been so full and rich, but without the peculiar accent or twang that I
+believe is considered devout by some people, “Whether we eat or drink,
+or whatsoever we do, let us do all to the glory of God.”
+
+The supper was an immense meat-pie. We of the house-place were helped
+first; then the minister hit the handle of his buck-horn carving-knife
+on the table once, and said,—
+
+“Now or never,” which meant, did any of us want any more; and when we
+had all declined, either by silence or by words, he knocked twice with
+his knife on the table, and Betty came in through the open door, and
+carried off the great dish to the kitchen, where an old man and a young
+one, and a help-girl, were awaiting their meal.
+
+“Shut the door, if you will,” said the minister to Betty.
+
+“That’s in honour of you,” said cousin Holman, in a tone of
+satisfaction, as the door was shut. “When we’ve no stranger with us,
+the minister is so fond of keeping the door open, and talking to the
+men and maids, just as much as to Phillis and me.
+
+“It brings us all together like a household just before we meet as a
+household in prayer,” said he, in explanation. “But to go back to what
+we were talking about—can you tell me of any simple book on dynamics
+that I could put in my pocket, and study a little at leisure times in
+the day?”
+
+“Leisure times, father?” said Phillis, with a nearer approach to a
+smile than I had yet seen on her face.
+
+“Yes; leisure times, daughter. There is many an odd minute lost in
+waiting for other folk; and now that railroads are coming so near us,
+it behoves us to know something about them.”
+
+I thought of his own description of his “prodigious big appetite” for
+learning. And he had a good appetite of his own for the more material
+victual before him. But I saw, or fancied I saw, that he had some rule
+for himself in the matter both of food and drink.
+
+As soon as supper was done the household assembled for prayer. It was a
+long impromptu evening prayer; and it would have seemed desultory
+enough had I not had a glimpse of the kind of day that preceded it, and
+so been able to find a clue to the thoughts that preceded the
+disjointed utterances; for he kept there kneeling down in the centre of
+a circle, his eyes shut, his outstretched hands pressed palm to
+palm—sometimes with a long pause of silence was anything else he wished
+to “lay before the Lord! (to use his own expression)—before he
+concluded with the blessing. He prayed for the cattle and live
+creatures, rather to my surprise; for my attention had begun to wander,
+till it was recalled by the familiar words.
+
+And here I must not forget to name an odd incident at the conclusion of
+the prayer, and before we had risen from our knees (indeed before Betty
+was well awake, for she made a practice of having a sound nap, her
+weary head lying on her stalwart arms); the minister, still kneeling in
+our midst, but with his eyes wide open, and his arms dropped by his
+side, spoke to the elder man, who turned round on his knees to attend.
+“John, didst see that Daisy had her warm mash to-night; for we must not
+neglect the means, John—two quarts of gruel, a spoonful of ginger, and
+a gill of beer—the poor beast needs it, and I fear it slipped out of my
+mind to tell thee; and here was I asking a blessing and neglecting the
+means, which is a mockery,” said he, dropping his voice.
+
+Before we went to bed he told me he should see little or nothing more
+of me during my visit, which was to end on Sunday evening, as he always
+gave up both Saturday and Sabbath to his work in the ministry. I
+remembered that the landlord at the inn had told me this on the day
+when I first inquired about these new relations of mine; and I did not
+dislike the opportunity which I saw would be afforded me of becoming
+more acquainted with cousin Holman and Phillis, though I earnestly
+hoped that the latter would not attack me on the subject of the dead
+languages.
+
+I went to bed, and dreamed that I was as tall as cousin Phillis, and
+had a sudden and miraculous growth of whisker, and a still more
+miraculous acquaintance with Latin and Greek. Alas! I wakened up still
+a short, beardless lad, with “tempus fugit” for my sole remembrance of
+the little Latin I had once learnt. While I was dressing, a bright
+thought came over me: I could question cousin Phillis, instead of her
+questioning me, and so manage to keep the choice of the subjects of
+conversation in my own power.
+
+Early as it was, every one had breakfasted, and my basin of bread and
+milk was put on the oven-top to await my coming down. Every one was
+gone about their work. The first to come into the house-place was
+Phillis with a basket of eggs. Faithful to my resolution, I asked,—
+
+“What are those?”
+
+She looked at me for a moment, and then said gravely,—
+
+“Potatoes!”
+
+“No! they are not,” said I. “They are eggs. What do you mean by saying
+they are potatoes?”
+
+“What do you mean by asking me what they were, when they were plain to
+be seen?” retorted she.
+
+We were both getting a little angry with each other.
+
+“I don’t know. I wanted to begin to talk to you; and I was afraid you
+would talk to me about books as you did yesterday. I have not read
+much; and you and the minister have read so much.”
+
+“I have not,” said she. “But you are our guest; and mother says I must
+make it pleasant to you. We won’t talk of books. What must we talk
+about?”
+
+“I don’t know. How old are you?”
+
+“Seventeen last May. How old are you?”
+
+“I am nineteen. Older than you by nearly two years,” said I, drawing
+myself up to my full height.
+
+“I should not have thought you were above sixteen,” she replied, as
+quietly as if she were not saying the most provoking thing she possibly
+could. Then came a pause.
+
+“What are you going to do now?” asked I.
+
+“I should be dusting the bed-chambers; but mother said I had better
+stay and make it pleasant to you,” said she, a little plaintively, as
+if dusting rooms was far the easiest task.
+
+“Will you take me to see the live-stock? I like animals, though I don’t
+know much about them.”
+
+“Oh, do you? I am so glad! I was afraid you would not like animals, as
+you did not like books.”
+
+I wondered why she said this. I think it was because she had begun to
+fancy all our tastes must be dissimilar. We went together all through
+the farm-yard; we fed the poultry, she kneeling down with her pinafore
+full of corn and meal, and tempting the little timid, downy chickens
+upon it, much to the anxiety of the fussy ruffled hen, their mother.
+She called to the pigeons, who fluttered down at the sound of her
+voice. She and I examined the great sleek cart-horses; sympathized in
+our dislike of pigs; fed the calves; coaxed the sick cow, Daisy; and
+admired the others out at pasture; and came back tired and hungry and
+dirty at dinner-time, having quite forgotten that there were such
+things as dead languages, and consequently capital friends.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+Cousin Holman gave me the weekly county newspaper to read aloud to her,
+while she mended stockings out of a high piled-up basket, Phillis
+helping her mother. I read and read, unregardful of the words I was
+uttering, thinking of all manner of other things; of the bright colour
+of Phillis’s hair, as the afternoon sun fell on her bending head; of
+the silence of the house, which enabled me to hear the double tick of
+the old clock which stood half-way up the stairs; of the variety of
+inarticulate noises which cousin Holman made while I read, to show her
+sympathy, wonder, or horror at the newspaper intelligence. The tranquil
+monotony of that hour made me feel as if I had lived for ever, and
+should live for ever droning out paragraphs in that warm sunny room,
+with my two quiet hearers, and the curled-up pussy cat sleeping on the
+hearth-rug, and the clock on the house-stairs perpetually clicking out
+the passage of the moments. By-and-by Betty the servant came to the
+door into the kitchen, and made a sign to Phillis, who put her
+half-mended stocking down, and went away to the kitchen without a word.
+Looking at cousin Holman a minute or two afterwards, I saw that she had
+dropped her chin upon her breast, and had fallen fast asleep. I put the
+newspaper down, and was nearly following her example, when a waft of
+air from some unseen source, slightly opened the door of communication
+with the kitchen, that Phillis must have left unfastened; and I saw
+part of her figure as she sate by the dresser, peeling apples with
+quick dexterity of finger, but with repeated turnings of her head
+towards some book lying on the dresser by her. I softly rose, and as
+softly went into the kitchen, and looked over her shoulder; before she
+was aware of my neighbourhood, I had seen that the book was in a
+language unknown to me, and the running title was L’Inferno. Just as I
+was making out the relationship of this word to “infernal”, she started
+and turned round, and, as if continuing her thought as she spoke, she
+sighed out,—
+
+“Oh! it is so difficult! Can you help me?” putting her finger below a
+line.
+
+“Me! I! I don’t even know what language it is in!”
+
+“Don’t you see it is Dante?” she replied, almost petulantly; she did so
+want help.
+
+“Italian, then?” said I, dubiously; for I was not quite sure.
+
+“Yes. And I do so want to make it out. Father can help me a little, for
+he knows Latin; but then he has so little time.”
+
+“You have not much, I should think, if you have often to try and do two
+things at once, as you are doing now.
+
+“Oh! that’s nothing! Father bought a heap of old books cheap. And I
+knew something about Dante before; and I have always liked Virgil so
+much. Paring apples is nothing, if I could only make out this old
+Italian. I wish you knew it.”
+
+“I wish I did,” said I, moved by her impetuosity of tone. “If, now,
+only Mr Holdsworth were here; he can speak Italian like anything, I
+believe.”
+
+“Who is Mr Holdsworth?” said Phillis, looking up.
+
+“Oh, he’s our head engineer. He’s a regular first-rate fellow! He can
+do anything;” my hero-worship and my pride in my chief all coming into
+play. Besides, if I was not clever and book-learned myself, it was
+something to belong to some one who was.
+
+“How is it that he speaks Italian?” asked Phillis.
+
+“He had to make a railway through Piedmont, which is in Italy, I
+believe; and he had to talk to all the workmen in Italian; and I have
+heard him say that for nearly two years he had only Italian books to
+read in the queer outlandish places he was in.”
+
+“Oh, dear!” said Phillis; “I wish—” and then she stopped. I was not
+quite sure whether to say the next thing that came into my mind; but I
+said it.
+
+“Could I ask him anything about your book, or your difficulties?”
+
+She was silent for a minute or so, and then she made reply,—
+
+“No! I think not. Thank you very much, though. I can generally puzzle a
+thing out in time. And then, perhaps, I remember it better than if some
+one had helped me. I’ll put it away now, and you must move off, for
+I’ve got to make the paste for the pies; we always have a cold dinner
+on Sabbaths.”
+
+“But I may stay and help you, mayn’t I?”
+
+“Oh, yes; not that you can help at all, but I like to have you with
+me.” I was both flattered and annoyed at this straightforward avowal. I
+was pleased that she liked me; but I was young coxcomb enough to have
+wished to play the lover, and I was quite wise enough to perceive that
+if she had any idea of the kind in her head she would never have spoken
+out so frankly. I comforted myself immediately, however, by finding out
+that the grapes were sour. A great tall girl in a pinafore, half a head
+taller than I was, reading books that I had never heard of, and talking
+about them too, as of far more interest than any mere personal
+subjects; that was the last day on which I ever thought of my dear
+cousin Phillis as the possible mistress of my heart and life. But we
+were all the greater friends for this idea being utterly put away and
+buried out of sight.
+
+Late in the evening the minister came home from Hornby. He had been
+calling on the different members of his flock; and unsatisfactory work
+it had proved to him, it seemed from the fragments that dropped out of
+his thoughts into his talk.
+
+“I don’t see the men; they are all at their business, their shops, or
+their warehouses; they ought to be there. I have no fault to find with
+them; only if a pastor’s teaching or words of admonition are good for
+anything, they are needed by the men as much as by the women.”
+
+“Cannot you go and see them in their places of business, and remind
+them of their Christian privileges and duties, minister?” asked cousin
+Holman, who evidently thought that her husband’s words could never be
+out of place.
+
+“No!” said he, shaking his head. “I judge them by myself. If there are
+clouds in the sky, and I am getting in the hay just ready for loading,
+and rain sure to come in the night, I should look ill upon brother
+Robinson if he came into the field to speak about serious things.”
+
+“But, at any rate, father, you do good to the women, and perhaps they
+repeat what you have said to them to their husbands and children?”
+
+“It is to be hoped they do, for I cannot reach the men directly; but
+the women are apt to tarry before coming to me, to put on ribbons and
+gauds; as if they could hear the message I bear to them best in their
+smart clothes. Mrs Dobson to-day—Phillis, I am thankful thou dost not
+care for the vanities of dress!” Phillis reddened a little as she said,
+in a low humble voice,—
+
+“But I do, father, I’m afraid. I often wish I could wear
+pretty-coloured ribbons round my throat like the squire’s daughters.”
+
+“It’s but natural, minister!” said his wife; “I’m not above liking a
+silk gown better than a cotton one myself!”
+
+“The love of dress is a temptation and a snare,” said he, gravely. “The
+true adornment is a meek and quiet spirit. And, wife,” said he, as a
+sudden thought crossed his mind, “in that matter I, too, have sinned. I
+wanted to ask you, could we not sleep in the grey room, instead of our
+own?”
+
+“Sleep in the grey room?—change our room at this time o’ day?” cousin
+Holman asked, in dismay.
+
+“Yes,” said he. “It would save me from a daily temptation to anger.
+Look at my chin!” he continued; “I cut it this morning—I cut it on
+Wednesday when I was shaving; I do not know how many times I have cut
+it of late, and all from impatience at seeing Timothy Cooper at his
+work in the yard.”
+
+“He’s a downright lazy tyke!” said cousin Holman. “He’s not worth his
+wage. There’s but little he can do, and what he can do, he does badly.”
+
+“True,” said the minister. “He is but, so to speak, a half-wit; and yet
+he has got a wife and children.”
+
+“More shame for him!”
+
+“But that is past change. And if I turn him off; no one else will take
+him on. Yet I cannot help watching him of a morning as he goes
+sauntering about his work in the yard; and I watch, and I watch, till
+the old Adam rises strong within me at his lazy ways, and some day, I
+am afraid, I shall go down and send him about his business—let alone
+the way in which he makes me cut myself while I am shaving—and then his
+wife and children will starve. I wish we could move to the grey room.”
+
+I do not remember much more of my first visit to the Hope Farm. We went
+to chapel in Heathbridge, slowly and decorously walking along the
+lanes, ruddy and tawny with the colouring of the coming autumn. The
+minister walked a little before us, his hands behind his back, his head
+bent down, thinking about the discourse to be delivered to his people,
+cousin Holman said; and we spoke low and quietly, in order not to
+interrupt his thoughts. But I could not help noticing the respectful
+greetings which he received from both rich and poor as we went along;
+greetings which he acknowledged with a kindly wave of his hand, but
+with no words of reply. As we drew near the town, I could see some of
+the young fellows we met cast admiring looks on Phillis; and that made
+me look too. She had on a white gown, and a short black silk cloak,
+according to the fashion of the day. A straw bonnet with brown ribbon
+strings; that was all. But what her dress wanted in colour, her sweet
+bonny face had. The walk made her cheeks bloom like the rose; the very
+whites of her eyes had a blue tinge in them, and her dark eyelashes
+brought out the depth of the blue eyes themselves. Her yellow hair was
+put away as straight as its natural curliness would allow. If she did
+not perceive the admiration she excited, I am sure cousin Holman did;
+for she looked as fierce and as proud as ever her quiet face could
+look, guarding her treasure, and yet glad to perceive that others could
+see that it was a treasure. That afternoon I had to return to Eltham to
+be ready for the next day’s work. I found out afterwards that the
+minister and his family were all “exercised in spirit,” as to whether
+they did well in asking me to repeat my visits at the Hope Farm, seeing
+that of necessity I must return to Eltham on the Sabbath-day. However,
+they did go on asking me, and I went on visiting them, whenever my
+other engagements permitted me, Mr Holdsworth being in this case, as in
+all, a kind and indulgent friend. Nor did my new acquaintances oust him
+from my strong regard and admiration. I had room in my heart for all, I
+am happy to say, and as far as I can remember, I kept praising each to
+the other in a manner which, if I had been an older man, living more
+amongst people of the world, I should have thought unwise, as well as a
+little ridiculous. It was unwise, certainly, as it was almost sure to
+cause disappointment if ever they did become acquainted; and perhaps it
+was ridiculous, though I do not think we any of us thought it so at the
+time. The minister used to listen to my accounts of Mr Holdsworth’s
+many accomplishments and various adventures in travel with the truest
+interest, and most kindly good faith; and Mr Holdsworth in return liked
+to hear about my visits to the farm, and description of my cousin’s
+life there—liked it, I mean, as much as he liked anything that was
+merely narrative, without leading to action.
+
+So I went to the farm certainly, on an average, once a month during
+that autumn; the course of life there was so peaceful and quiet, that I
+can only remember one small event, and that was one that I think I took
+more notice of than any one else: Phillis left off wearing the
+pinafores that had always been so obnoxious to me; I do not know why
+they were banished, but on one of my visits I found them replaced by
+pretty linen aprons in the morning, and a black silk one in the
+afternoon. And the blue cotton gown became a brown stuff one as winter
+drew on; this sounds like some book I once read, in which a migration
+from the blue bed to the brown was spoken of as a great family event.
+
+Towards Christmas my dear father came to see me, and to consult Mr
+Holdsworth about the improvement which has since been known as
+“Manning’s driving wheel”. Mr Holdsworth, as I think I have before
+said, had a very great regard for my father, who had been employed in
+the same great machine-shop in which Mr Holdsworth had served his
+apprenticeship; and he and my father had many mutual jokes about one of
+these gentlemen-apprentices who used to set about his smith’s work in
+white wash-leather gloves, for fear of spoiling his hands. Mr
+Holdsworth often spoke to me about my father as having the same kind of
+genius for mechanical invention as that of George Stephenson, and my
+father had come over now to consult him about several improvements, as
+well as an offer of partnership. It was a great pleasure to me to see
+the mutual regard of these two men. Mr Holdsworth, young, handsome,
+keen, well-dressed, an object of admiration to all the youth of Eltham;
+my father, in his decent but unfashionable Sunday clothes, his plain,
+sensible face full of hard lines, the marks of toil and thought,—his
+hands, blackened beyond the power of soap and water by years of labour
+in the foundry; speaking a strong Northern dialect, while Mr Holdsworth
+had a long soft drawl in his voice, as many of the Southerners have,
+and was reckoned in Eltham to give himself airs.
+
+Although most of my father’s leisure time was occupied with
+conversations about the business I have mentioned, he felt that he
+ought not to leave Eltham without going to pay his respects to the
+relations who had been so kind to his son. So he and I ran up on an
+engine along the incomplete line as far as Heathbridge, and went, by
+invitation, to spend a day at the farm.
+
+It was odd and yet pleasant to me to perceive how these two men, each
+having led up to this point such totally dissimilar lives, seemed to
+come together by instinct, after one quiet straight look into each
+other’s faces. My father was a thin, wiry man of five foot seven; the
+minister was a broad-shouldered, fresh-coloured man of six foot one;
+they were neither of them great talkers in general—perhaps the minister
+the most so—but they spoke much to each other. My father went into the
+fields with the minister; I think I see him now, with his hands behind
+his back, listening intently to all explanations of tillage, and the
+different processes of farming; occasionally taking up an implement, as
+if unconsciously, and examining it with a critical eye, and now and
+then asking a question, which I could see was considered as pertinent
+by his companion. Then we returned to look at the cattle, housed and
+bedded in expectation of the snow-storm hanging black on the western
+horizon, and my father learned the points of a cow with as much
+attention as if he meant to turn farmer. He had his little book that he
+used for mechanical memoranda and measurements in his pocket, and he
+took it out to write down “straight back”, small muzzle”, “deep
+barrel”, and I know not what else, under the head “cow”. He was very
+critical on a turnip-cutting machine, the clumsiness of which first
+incited him to talk; and when we went into the house he sate thinking
+and quiet for a bit, while Phillis and her mother made the last
+preparations for tea, with a little unheeded apology from cousin
+Holman, because we were not sitting in the best parlour, which she
+thought might be chilly on so cold a night. I wanted nothing better
+than the blazing, crackling fire that sent a glow over all the
+house-place, and warmed the snowy flags under our feet till they seemed
+to have more heat than the crimson rug right in front of the fire.
+After tea, as Phillis and I were talking together very happily, I heard
+an irrepressible exclamation from cousin Holman,—
+
+“Whatever is the man about!”
+
+And on looking round, I saw my father taking a straight burning stick
+out of the fire, and, after waiting for a minute, and examining the
+charred end to see if it was fitted for his purpose, he went to the
+hard-wood dresser, scoured to the last pitch of whiteness and
+cleanliness, and began drawing with the stick; the best substitute for
+chalk or charcoal within his reach, for his pocket-book pencil was not
+strong or bold enough for his purpose. When he had done, he began to
+explain his new model of a turnip-cutting machine to the minister, who
+had been watching him in silence all the time. Cousin Holman had, in
+the meantime, taken a duster out of a drawer, and, under pretence of
+being as much interested as her husband in the drawing, was secretly
+trying on an outside mark how easily it would come off, and whether it
+would leave her dresser as white as before. Then Phillis was sent for
+the book on dynamics about which I had been consulted during my first
+visit, and my father had to explain many difficulties, which he did in
+language as clear as his mind, making drawings with his stick wherever
+they were needed as illustrations, the minister sitting with his
+massive head resting on his hands, his elbows on the table, almost
+unconscious of Phillis, leaning over and listening greedily, with her
+hand on his shoulder, sucking in information like her father’s own
+daughter. I was rather sorry for cousin Holman; I had been so once or
+twice before; for do what she would, she was completely unable even to
+understand the pleasure her husband and daughter took in intellectual
+pursuits, much less to care in the least herself for the pursuits
+themselves, and was thus unavoidably thrown out of some of their
+interests. I had once or twice thought she was a little jealous of her
+own child, as a fitter companion for her husband than she was herself;
+and I fancied the minister himself was aware of this feeling, for I had
+noticed an occasional sudden change of subject, and a tenderness of
+appeal in his voice as he spoke to her, which always made her look
+contented and peaceful again. I do not think that Phillis ever
+perceived these little shadows; in the first place, she had such
+complete reverence for her parents that she listened to them both as if
+they had been St Peter and St Paul; and besides, she was always too
+much engrossed with any matter in hand to think about other people’s
+manners and looks.
+
+This night I could see, though she did not, how much she was winning on
+my father. She asked a few questions which showed that she had followed
+his explanations up to that point; possibly, too, her unusual beauty
+might have something to do with his favourable impression of her; but
+he made no scruple of expressing his admiration of her to her father
+and mother in her absence from the room; and from that evening I date a
+project of his which came out to me a day or two afterwards, as we sate
+in my little three-cornered room in Eltham. “Paul,” he began, “I never
+thought to be a rich man; but I think it’s coming upon me. Some folk
+are making a deal of my new machine (calling it by its technical name),
+and Ellison, of the Borough Green Works, has gone so far as to ask me
+to be his partner.”
+
+“Mr Ellison the Justice!—who lives in King Street? why, he drives his
+carriage!” said I, doubting, yet exultant.
+
+“Ay, lad, John Ellison. But that’s no sign that I shall drive my
+carriage. Though I should like to save thy mother walking, for she’s
+not so young as she was. But that’s a long way off; anyhow. I reckon I
+should start with a third profit. It might be seven hundred, or it
+might be more. I should like to have the power to work out some fancies
+o’ mine. I care for that much more than for th’ brass. And Ellison has
+no lads; and by nature the business would come to thee in course o’
+time. Ellison’s lasses are but bits o’ things, and are not like to come
+by husbands just yet; and when they do, maybe they’ll not be in the
+mechanical line. It will be an opening for thee, lad, if thou art
+steady. Thou’rt not great shakes, I know, in th’ inventing line; but
+many a one gets on better without having fancies for something he does
+not see and never has seen. I’m right down glad to see that mother’s
+cousins are such uncommon folk for sense and goodness. I have taken the
+minister to my heart like a brother; and she is a womanly quiet sort of
+a body. And I’ll tell you frank, Paul, it will be a happy day for me if
+ever you can come and tell me that Phillis Holman is like to be my
+daughter. I think if that lass had not a penny, she would be the making
+of a man; and she’ll have yon house and lands, and you may be her match
+yet in fortune if all goes well.”
+
+I was growing as red as fire; I did not know what to say, and yet I
+wanted to say something; but the idea of having a wife of my own at
+some future day, though it had often floated about in my own head,
+sounded so strange when it was thus first spoken about by my father. He
+saw my confusion, and half smiling said,—
+
+“Well, lad, what dost say to the old father’s plans? Thou art but
+young, to be sure; but when I was thy age, I would ha’ given my right
+hand if I might ha’ thought of the chance of wedding the lass I cared
+for—”
+
+“My mother?” asked I, a little struck by the change of his tone of
+voice.
+
+“No! not thy mother. Thy mother is a very good woman—none better. No!
+the lass I cared for at nineteen ne’er knew how I loved her, and a year
+or two after and she was dead, and ne’er knew. I think she would ha’
+been glad to ha’ known it, poor Molly; but I had to leave the place
+where we lived for to try to earn my bread and I meant to come back but
+before ever I did, she was dead and gone: I ha’ never gone there since.
+But if you fancy Phillis Holman, and can get her to fancy you, my lad,
+it shall go different with you, Paul, to what it did with your father.”
+
+I took counsel with myself very rapidly, and I came to a clear
+conclusion. “Father,” said I, “if I fancied Phillis ever so much, she
+would never fancy me. I like her as much as I could like a sister; and
+she likes me as if I were her brother—her younger brother.”
+
+I could see my father’s countenance fall a little.
+
+“You see she’s so clever she’s more like a man than a woman—she knows
+Latin and Greek.”
+
+“She’d forget “em, if she’d a houseful of children,” was my father’s
+comment on this.
+
+“But she knows many a thing besides, and is wise as well as learned;
+she has been so much with her father. She would never think much of me,
+and I should like my wife to think a deal of her husband.”
+
+“It is not just book-learning or the want of it as makes a wife think
+much or little of her husband,” replied my father, evidently unwilling
+to give up a project which had taken deep root in his mind. “It’s a
+something I don’t rightly know how to call it—if he’s manly, and
+sensible, and straightforward; and I reckon you’re that, my boy.”
+
+“I don’t think I should like to have a wife taller than I am, father,”
+said I, smiling; he smiled too, but not heartily.
+
+“Well,” said he, after a pause. “It’s but a few days I’ve been thinking
+of it, but I’d got as fond of my notion as if it had been a new engine
+as I’d been planning out. Here’s our Paul, thinks I to myself, a good
+sensible breed o’ lad, as has never vexed or troubled his mother or me;
+with a good business opening out before him, age nineteen, not so
+bad-looking, though perhaps not to call handsome, and here’s his
+cousin, not too near cousin, but just nice, as one may say; aged
+seventeen, good and true, and well brought up to work with her hands as
+well as her head; a scholar—but that can’t be helped, and is more her
+misfortune than her fault, seeing she is the only child of scholar—and
+as I said afore, once she’s a wife and a she’ll forget it all, I’ll be
+bound—with a good fortune in land and house when it shall please the
+Lord to take her parents to himself; with eyes like poor Molly’s for
+beauty, a colour that comes and goes on a milk-white skin, and as
+pretty a mouth—,
+
+“Why, Mr Manning, what fair lady are you describing?” asked Mr
+Holdsworth, who had come quickly and suddenly upon our tete-a-tete, and
+had caught my father’s last words as he entered the room. Both my
+father and I felt rather abashed; it was such an odd subject for us to
+be talking about; but my father, like a straightforward simple man as
+he was, spoke out the truth.
+
+“I’ve been telling Paul of Ellison’s offer, and saying how good an
+opening it made for him—”
+
+“I wish I’d as good,” said Mr Holdsworth. “But has the business a
+‘pretty mouth’?
+
+“You’re always so full of your joking, Mr Holdsworth,” said my father.
+“I was going to say that if he and his cousin Phillis Holman liked to
+make it up between them, I would put no spoke in the wheel.”
+
+“Phillis Holman!” said Mr Holdsworth. “Is she the daughter of the
+minister-farmer out at Heathbridge? Have I been helping on the course
+of true love by letting you go there so often? I knew nothing of it.”
+
+“There is nothing to know,” said I, more annoyed than I chose to show.
+“There is no more true love in the case than may be between the first
+brother and sister you may choose to meet. I have been telling father
+she would never think of me; she’s a great deal taller and cleverer;
+and I’d rather be taller and more learned than my wife when I have
+one.”
+
+“And it is she, then, that has the pretty mouth your father spoke
+about? I should think that would be an antidote to the cleverness and
+learning. But I ought to apologize for breaking in upon your last
+night; I came upon business to your father.”
+
+And then he and my father began to talk about many things that had no
+interest for me just then, and I began to go over again my conversation
+with my father. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I had
+spoken truly about my feelings towards Phillis Holman. I loved her
+dearly as a sister, but I could never fancy her as my wife. Still less
+could I think of her ever—yes, condescending, that is the
+word—condescending to marry me. I was roused from a reverie on what I
+should like my possible wife to be, by hearing my father’s warm praise
+of the minister, as a most unusual character; how they had got back
+from the diameter of driving-wheels to the subject of the Holmans I
+could never tell; but I saw that my father’s weighty praises were
+exciting some curiosity in Mr Holdsworth’s mind; indeed, he said,
+almost in a voice of reproach,—
+
+“Why, Paul, you never told me what kind of a fellow this
+minister-cousin of yours was!”
+
+“I don’t know that I found out, sir,” said I. “But if I had, I don’t
+think you’d have listened to me, as you have done to my father.”
+
+“No! most likely not, old fellow,” replied Mr Holdsworth, laughing. And
+again and afresh I saw what a handsome pleasant clear face his was; and
+though this evening I had been a bit put out with him—through his
+sudden coming, and his having heard my father’s open-hearted
+confidence—my hero resumed all his empire over me by his bright merry
+laugh.
+
+And if he had not resumed his old place that night, he would have done
+so the next day, when, after my father’s departure, Mr Holdsworth spoke
+about him with such just respect for his character, such ungrudging
+admiration of his great mechanical genius, that I was compelled to say,
+almost unawares,—
+
+“Thank you, sir. I am very much obliged to you.”
+
+“Oh, you’re not at all. I am only speaking the truth. Here’s a
+Birmingham workman, self-educated, one may say—having never associated
+with stimulating minds, or had what advantages travel and contact with
+the world may be supposed to afford—working out his own thoughts into
+steel and iron, making a scientific name for himself—a fortune, if it
+pleases him to work for money—and keeping his singleness of heart, his
+perfect simplicity of manner; it puts me out of patience to think of my
+expensive schooling, my travels hither and thither, my heaps of
+scientific books, and I have done nothing to speak of. But it’s
+evidently good blood; there’s that Mr Holman, that cousin of yours,
+made of the same stuff”
+
+“But he’s only cousin because he married my mother’s second cousin,”
+said I.
+
+“That knocks a pretty theory on the head, and twice over, too. I should
+like to make Holman’s acquaintance.”
+
+“I am sure they would be so glad to see you at Hope Farm,” said I,
+eagerly. “In fact, they’ve asked me to bring you several times: only I
+thought you would find it dull.”
+
+“Not at all. I can’t go yet though, even if you do get me an
+invitation; for the —— Company want me to go to the —— Valley, and look
+over the ground a bit for them, to see if it would do for a branch
+line; it’s a job which may take me away for some time; but I shall be
+backwards and forwards, and you’re quite up to doing what is needed in
+my absence; the only work that may be beyond you is keeping old Jevons
+from drinking.” He went on giving me directions about the management of
+the men employed on the line, and no more was said then, or for several
+months, about his going to Hope Farm. He went off into —— Valley, a
+dark overshadowed dale, where the sun seemed to set behind the hills
+before four o“clock on midsummer afternoon. Perhaps it was this that
+brought on the attack of low fever which he had soon after the
+beginning of the new year; he was very ill for many weeks, almost many
+months; a married sister—his only relation, I think—came down from
+London to nurse him, and I went over to him when I could, to see him,
+and give him “masculine news,” as he called it; reports of the progress
+of the line, which, I am glad to say, I was able to carry on in his
+absence, in the slow gradual way which suited the company best, while
+trade was in a languid state, and money dear in the market. Of course,
+with this occupation for my scanty leisure, I did not often go over to
+Hope Farm. Whenever I did go, I met with a thorough welcome; and many
+inquiries were made as to Holdsworth’s illness, and the progress of his
+recovery.
+
+At length, in June I think it was, he was sufficiently recovered to
+come back to his lodgings at Eltham, and resume part at least of his
+work. His sister, Mrs Robinson, had been obliged to leave him some
+weeks before, owing to some epidemic amongst her own children. As long
+as I had seen Mr Holdsworth in the rooms at the little inn at
+Hensleydale, where I had been accustomed to look upon him as an
+invalid, I had not been aware of the visible shake his fever had given
+to his health. But, once back in the old lodgings, where I had always
+seen him so buoyant, eloquent, decided, and vigorous in former days, my
+spirits sank at the change in one whom I had always regarded with a
+strong feeling of admiring affection. He sank into silence and
+despondency after the least exertion; he seemed as if he could not make
+up his mind to any action, or else that, when it was made up, he lacked
+strength to carry out his purpose. Of course, it was but the natural
+state of slow convalescence, after so sharp an illness; but, at the
+time, I did not know this, and perhaps I represented his state as more
+serious than it was to my kind relations at Hope Farm; who, in their
+grave, simple, eager way, immediately thought of the only help they
+could give.
+
+“Bring him out here,” said the minister. “Our air here is good to a
+proverb; the June days are fine; he may loiter away his time in the
+hay-field, and the sweet smells will be a balm in themselves—better
+than physic.”
+
+“And,” said cousin Holman, scarcely waiting for her husband to finish
+his sentence, “tell him there is new milk and fresh eggs to be had for
+the asking; it’s lucky Daisy has just calved, for her milk is always as
+good as other cows’ cream; and there is the plaid room with the morning
+sun all streaming in.” Phillis said nothing, but looked as much
+interested in the project as any one. I took it upon myself. I wanted
+them to see him; him to know them. I proposed it to him when I got
+home. He was too languid after the day’s fatigue, to be willing to make
+the little exertion of going amongst strangers; and disappointed me by
+almost declining to accept the invitation I brought. The next morning
+it was different; he apologized for his ungraciousness of the night
+before; and told me that he would get all things in train, so as to be
+ready to go out with me to Hope Farm on the following Saturday.
+
+“For you must go with me, Manning,” said he; “I used to be as impudent
+a fellow as need be, and rather liked going amongst strangers, and
+making my way; but since my illness I am almost like a girl, and turn
+hot and cold with shyness, as they do, I fancy.”
+
+So it was fixed. We were to go out to Hope Farm on Saturday afternoon;
+and it was also understood that if the air and the life suited Mr
+Holdsworth, he was to remain there for a week or ten days, doing what
+work he could at that end of the line, while I took his place at Eltham
+to the best of my ability. I grew a little nervous, as the time drew
+near, and wondered how the brilliant Holdsworth would agree with the
+quiet quaint family of the minister; how they would like him, and many
+of his half-foreign ways. I tried to prepare him, by telling him from
+time to time little things about the goings-on at Hope Farm.
+
+“Manning,” said he, “I see you don’t think I am half good enough for
+your friends. Out with it, man.”
+
+“No,” I replied, boldly. “I think you are good; but I don’t know if you
+are quite of their kind of goodness.”
+
+“And you’ve found out already that there is greater chance of
+disagreement between two ‘kinds of goodness’, each having its own idea
+of right, than between a given goodness and a moderate degree of
+naughtiness—which last often arises from an indifference to right?”
+
+“I don’t know. I think you’re talking metaphysics, and I am sure that
+is bad for you.”
+
+“‘When a man talks to you in a way that you don’t understand about a
+thing which he does not understand, them’s metaphysics.’ You remember
+the clown’s definition, don’t you, Manning?”
+
+“No, I don’t,” said I. “But what I do understand is, that you must go
+to bed; and tell me at what time we must start tomorrow, that I may go
+to Hepworth, and get those letters written we were talking about this
+morning.”
+
+“Wait till to-morrow, and let us see what the day is like,” he
+answered, with such languid indecision as showed me he was
+over-fatigued. So I went my way. The morrow was blue and sunny, and
+beautiful; the very perfection of an early summer’s day. Mr Holdsworth
+was all impatience to be off into the country; morning had brought back
+his freshness and strength, and consequent eagerness to be doing. I was
+afraid we were going to my cousin’s farm rather too early, before they
+would expect us; but what could I do with such a restless vehement man
+as Holdsworth was that morning? We came down upon the Hope Farm before
+the dew was off the grass on the shady side of the lane; the great
+house-dog was loose, basking in the sun, near the closed side door. I
+was surprised at this door being shut, for all summer long it was open
+from morning to night; but it was only on latch. I opened it, Rover
+watching me with half-suspicious, half-trustful eyes. The room was
+empty.
+
+“I don’t know where they can be,” said I. “But come in and sit down
+while I go and look for them. You must be tired.”
+
+“Not I. This sweet balmy air is like a thousand tonics. Besides, this
+room is hot, and smells of those pungent wood-ashes. What are we to
+do?”
+
+“Go round to the kitchen. Betty will tell us where they are.” So we
+went round into the farmyard, Rover accompanying us out of a grave
+sense of duty. Betty was washing out her milk-pans in the cold bubbling
+spring-water that constantly trickled in and out of a stone trough. In
+such weather as this most of her kitchen-work was done out of doors.
+
+“Eh, dear!” said she, “the minister and missus is away at Hornby! They
+ne’er thought of your coming so betimes! The missus had some errands to
+do, and she thought as she’d walk with the minister and be back by
+dinner-time.”
+
+“Did not they expect us to dinner?” said I.
+
+“Well, they did, and they did not, as I may say. Missus said to me the
+cold lamb would do well enough if you did not come; and if you did I
+was to put on a chicken and some bacon to boil; and I’ll go do it now,
+for it is hard to boil bacon enough.”
+
+“And is Phillis gone, too?” Mr Holdsworth was making friends with
+Rover.
+
+“No! She’s just somewhere about. I reckon you’ll find her in the
+kitchen-garden, getting peas.
+
+“Let us go there,” said Holdsworth, suddenly leaving off his play with
+the dog. So I led the way into the kitchen-garden. It was in the first
+promise of a summer profuse in vegetables and fruits. Perhaps it was
+not so much cared for as other parts of the property; but it was more
+attended to than most kitchen-gardens belonging to farm-houses. There
+were borders of flowers along each side of the gravel walks; and there
+was an old sheltering wall on the north side covered with tolerably
+choice fruit-trees; there was a slope down to the fish-pond at the end,
+where there were great strawberry-beds; and raspberry-bushes and
+rose-bushes grew wherever there was a space; it seemed a chance which
+had been planted. Long rows of peas stretched at right angles from the
+main walk, and I saw Phillis stooping down among them, before she saw
+us. As soon as she heard our cranching steps on the gravel, she stood
+up, and shading her eyes from the sun, recognized us. She was quite
+still for a moment, and then came slowly towards us, blushing a little
+from evident shyness. I had never seen Phillis shy before.
+
+“This is Mr Holdsworth, Phillis,” said I, as soon as I had shaken hands
+with her. She glanced up at him, and then looked down, more flushed
+than ever at his grand formality of taking his hat off and bowing; such
+manners had never been seen at Hope Farm before.
+
+“Father and mother are out. They will be so sorry; you did not write,
+Paul, as you said you would.”
+
+“It was my fault,” said Holdsworth, understanding what she meant as
+well as if she had put it more fully into words. “I have not yet given
+up all the privileges of an invalid; one of which is indecision. Last
+night, when your cousin asked me at what time we were to start, I
+really could not make up my mind.”
+
+Phillis seemed as if she could not make up her mind as to what to do
+with us. I tried to help her,—
+
+“Have you finished getting peas?” taking hold of the half-filled basket
+she was unconsciously holding in her hand; “or may we stay and help
+you?”
+
+“If you would. But perhaps it will tire you, sir?” added she, speaking
+now to Holdsworth.
+
+“Not a bit,” said he. “It will carry me back twenty years in my life,
+when I used to gather peas in my grandfather’s garden. I suppose I may
+eat a few as I go along?”
+
+“Certainly, sir. But if you went to the strawberry-beds you would find
+some strawberries ripe, and Paul can show you where they are.”
+
+“I am afraid you distrust me. I can assure you I know the exact fulness
+at which peas should be gathered. I take great care not to pluck them
+when they are unripe. I will not be turned off, as unfit for my work.”
+This was a style of half-joking talk that Phillis was not accustomed
+to. She looked for a moment as if she would have liked to defend
+herself from the playful charge of distrust made against her, but she
+ended by not saying a word. We all plucked our peas in busy silence for
+the next five minutes. Then Holdsworth lifted himself up from between
+the rows, and said, a little wearily,
+
+“I am afraid I must strike work. I am not as strong as I fancied
+myself.” Phillis was full of penitence immediately. He did, indeed,
+look pale; and she blamed herself for having allowed him to help her.
+
+“It was very thoughtless of me. I did not know—I thought, perhaps, you
+really liked it. I ought to have offered you something to eat, sir! Oh,
+Paul, we have gathered quite enough; how stupid I was to forget that Mr
+Holdsworth had been ill!” And in a blushing hurry she led the way
+towards the house. We went in, and she moved a heavy cushioned chair
+forwards, into which Holdsworth was only too glad to sink. Then with
+deft and quiet speed she brought in a little tray, wine, water, cake,
+home-made bread, and newly-churned butter. She stood by in some anxiety
+till, after bite and sup, the colour returned to Mr Holdsworth’s face,
+and he would fain have made us some laughing apologies for the fright
+he had given us. But then Phillis drew back from her innocent show of
+care and interest, and relapsed into the cold shyness habitual to her
+when she was first thrown into the company of strangers. She brought
+out the last week’s county paper (which Mr Holdsworth had read five
+days ago), and then quietly withdrew; and then he subsided into
+languor, leaning back and shutting his eyes as if he would go to sleep.
+I stole into the kitchen after Phillis; but she had made the round of
+the corner of the house outside, and I found her sitting on the
+horse-mount, with her basket of peas, and a basin into which she was
+shelling them. Rover lay at her feet, snapping now and then at the
+flies. I went to her, and tried to help her, but somehow the sweet
+crisp young peas found their way more frequently into my mouth than
+into the basket, while we talked together in a low tone, fearful of
+being overheard through the open casements of the house-place in which
+Holdsworth was resting.
+
+“Don’t you think him handsome?” asked I.
+
+“Perhaps—yes—I have hardly looked at him,” she replied “But is not he
+very like a foreigner?”
+
+“Yes, he cuts his hair foreign fashion,” said I.
+
+“I like an Englishman to look like an Englishman.”
+
+“I don’t think he thinks about it. He says he began that way when he
+was in Italy, because everybody wore it so, and it is natural to keep
+it on in England.”
+
+“Not if he began it in Italy because everybody there wore it so.
+Everybody here wears it differently.”
+
+I was a little offended with Phillis’s logical fault-finding with my
+friend; and I determined to change the subject.
+
+“When is your mother coming home?”
+
+“I should think she might come any time now; but she had to go and see
+Mrs Morton, who was ill, and she might be kept, and not be home till
+dinner. Don’t you think you ought to go and see how Mr Holdsworth is
+going on, Paul? He may be faint again.”
+
+I went at her bidding; but there was no need for it. Mr Holdsworth was
+up, standing by the window, his hands in his pockets; he had evidently
+been watching us. He turned away as I entered.
+
+“So that is the girl I found your good father planning for your wife,
+Paul, that evening when I interrupted you! Are you of the same coy mind
+still? It did not look like it a minute ago.”
+
+“Phillis and I understand each other,” I replied, sturdily. “We are
+like brother and sister. She would not have me as a husband if there
+was not another man in the world; and it would take a deal to make me
+think of her—as my father wishes” (somehow I did not like to say “as a
+wife”), “but we love each other dearly.”
+
+“Well, I am rather surprised at it—not at your loving each other in a
+brother-and-sister kind of way—but at your finding it so impossible to
+fall in love with such a beautiful woman.” Woman! beautiful woman! I
+had thought of Phillis as a comely but awkward girl; and I could not
+banish the pinafore from my mind’s eye when I tried to picture her to
+myself. Now I turned, as Mr Holdsworth had done, to look at her again
+out of the window: she had just finished her task, and was standing up,
+her back to us, holding the basket, and the basin in it, high in air,
+out of Rover’s reach, who was giving vent to his delight at the
+probability of a change of place by glad leaps and barks, and snatches
+at what he imagined to be a withheld prize. At length she grew tired of
+their mutual play, and with a feint of striking him, and a “Down,
+Rover! do hush!” she looked towards the window where we were standing,
+as if to reassure herself that no one had been disturbed by the noise,
+and seeing us, she coloured all over, and hurried away, with Rover
+still curving in sinuous lines about her as she walked.
+
+“I should like to have sketched her,” said Mr Holdsworth, as he turned
+away. He went back to his chair, and rested in silence for a minute or
+two. Then he was up again.
+
+“I would give a good deal for a book,” he said. “It would keep me
+quiet.” He began to look round; there were a few volumes at one end of
+the shovel-board. “Fifth volume of Matthew Henry’s Commentary,” said
+he, reading their titles aloud. “Housewife’s complete Manual; Berridge
+on Prayer; L’Inferno—Dante!” in great surprise. “Why, who reads this?”
+
+“I told you Phillis read it. Don’t you remember? She knows Latin and
+Greek, too.”
+
+“To be sure! I remember! But somehow I never put two and two together.
+That quiet girl, full of household work, is the wonderful scholar,
+then, that put you to rout with her questions when you first began to
+come here. To be sure, ‘Cousin Phillis!’ What’s here: a paper with the
+hard, obsolete words written out. I wonder what sort of a dictionary
+she has got. Baretti won’t tell her all these words. Stay! I have got a
+pencil here. I’ll write down the most accepted meanings, and save her a
+little trouble.”
+
+So he took her book and the paper back to the little round table, and
+employed himself in writing explanations and definitions of the words
+which had troubled her. I was not sure if he was not taking a liberty:
+it did not quite please me, and yet I did not know why. He had only
+just done, and replaced the paper in the book, and put the latter back
+in its place, when I heard the sound of wheels stopping in the lane,
+and looking out, I saw cousin Holman getting out of a neighbour’s gig,
+making her little curtsey of acknowledgment, and then coming towards
+the house. I went to meet her.
+
+“Oh, Paul!” said she, “I am so sorry I was kept; and then Thomas Dobson
+said if I would wait a quarter of an hour he would—But where’s your
+friend Mr Holdsworth? I hope he is come?”
+
+Just then he came out, and with his pleasant cordial manner took her
+hand, and thanked her for asking him to come out here to get strong.
+
+“I’m sure I am very glad to see you, sir. It was the minister’s
+thought. I took it into my head you would be dull in our quiet house,
+for Paul says you’ve been such a great traveller; but the minister said
+that dulness would perhaps suit you while you were but ailing, and that
+I was to ask Paul to be here as much as he could. I hope you’ll find
+yourself happy with us, I’m sure, sir. Has Phillis given you something
+to eat and drink, I wonder? there’s a deal in eating a little often, if
+one has to get strong after an illness.” And then she began to question
+him as to the details of his indisposition in her simple, motherly way.
+He seemed at once to understand her, and to enter into friendly
+relations with her. It was not quite the same in the evening when the
+minister came home. Men have always a little natural antipathy to get
+over when they first meet as strangers. But in this case each was
+disposed to make an effort to like the other; only each was to each a
+specimen of an unknown class. I had to leave the Hope Farm on Sunday
+afternoon, as I had Mr Holdsworth’s work as well as my own to look to
+in Eltham; and I was not at all sure how things would go on during the
+week that Holdsworth was to remain on his visit; I had been once or
+twice in hot water already at the near clash of opinions between the
+minister and my much-vaunted friend. On the Wednesday I received a
+short note from Holdsworth; he was going to stay on, and return with me
+on the following Sunday, and he wanted me to send him a certain list of
+books, his theodolite, and other surveying instruments, all of which
+could easily be conveyed down the line to Heathbridge. I went to his
+lodgings and picked out the books. Italian, Latin, trigonometry; a
+pretty considerable parcel they made, besides the implements. I began
+to be curious as to the general progress of affairs at Hope Farm, but I
+could not go over till the Saturday. At Heathbridge I found Holdsworth,
+come to meet me. He was looking quite a different man to what I had
+left him; embrowned, sparkles in his eyes, so languid before. I told
+him how much stronger he looked.
+
+“Yes!” said he. “I am fidging fain to be at work again. Last week I
+dreaded the thoughts of my employment: now I am full of desire to
+begin. This week in the country has done wonders for me.”
+
+“You have enjoyed yourself, then?”
+
+“Oh! it has been perfect in its way. Such a thorough country life! and
+yet removed from the dulness which I always used to fancy accompanied
+country life, by the extraordinary intelligence of the minister. I have
+fallen into calling him ‘the minister’, like every one else.”
+
+“You get on with him, then?” said I. “I was a little afraid.”
+
+“I was on the verge of displeasing him once or twice, I fear, with
+random assertions and exaggerated expressions, such as one always uses
+with other people, and thinks nothing of; but I tried to check myself
+when I saw how it shocked the good man; and really it is very wholesome
+exercise, this trying to make one’s words represent one’s thoughts,
+instead of merely looking to their effect on others.”
+
+“Then you are quite friends now?” I asked.
+
+“Yes, thoroughly; at any rate as far as I go. I never met with a man
+with such a desire for knowledge. In information, as far as it can be
+gained from books, he far exceeds me on most subjects; but then I have
+travelled and seen—Were not you surprised at the list of things I sent
+for?”
+
+“Yes; I thought it did not promise much rest.”
+
+“Oh! some of the books were for the minister, and some for his
+daughter. (I call her Phillis to myself, but I use euphuisms in
+speaking about her to others. I don’t like to seem familiar, and yet
+Miss Holman is a term I have never heard used.)”
+
+“I thought the Italian books were for her.”
+
+“Yes! Fancy her trying at Dante for her first book in Italian! I had a
+capital novel by Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi, just the thing for a
+beginner; and if she must still puzzle out Dante, my dictionary is far
+better than hers.”
+
+“Then she found out you had written those definitions on her list of
+words?”
+
+“Oh! yes”—with a smile of amusement and pleasure. He was going to tell
+me what had taken place, but checked himself.
+
+“But I don’t think the minister will like your having given her a novel
+to read?”
+
+“Pooh! What can be more harmless? Why make a bugbear of a word? It is
+as pretty and innocent a tale as can be met with. You don’t suppose
+they take Virgil for gospel?”
+
+By this time we were at the farm. I think Phillis gave me a warmer
+welcome than usual, and cousin Holman was kindness itself. Yet somehow
+I felt as if I had lost my place, and that Holdsworth had taken it. He
+knew all the ways of the house; he was full of little filial attentions
+to cousin Holman; he treated Phillis with the affectionate
+condescension of an elder brother; not a bit more; not in any way
+different. He questioned me about the progress of affairs in Eltham
+with eager interest.
+
+“Ah!” said cousin Holman, “you’ll be spending a different kind of time
+next week to what you have done this! I can see how busy you’ll make
+yourself! But if you don’t take care you’ll be ill again, and have to
+come back to our quiet ways of going on.
+
+“Do you suppose I shall need to be ill to wish to come back here?” he
+answered, warmly. “I am only afraid you have treated me so kindly that
+I shall always be turning up on your hands.”
+
+“That’s right,” she replied. “Only don’t go and make yourself ill by
+over-work. I hope you’ll go on with a cup of new milk every morning,
+for I am sure that is the best medicine; and put a teaspoonful of rum
+in it, if you like; many a one speaks highly of that, only we had no
+rum in the house.” I brought with me an atmosphere of active life which
+I think he had begun to miss; and it was natural that he should seek my
+company, after his week of retirement. Once I saw Phillis looking at us
+as we talked together with a kind of wistful curiosity; but as soon as
+she caught my eye, she turned away, blushing deeply.
+
+That evening I had a little talk with the minister. I strolled along
+the Hornby road to meet him; for Holdsworth was giving Phillis an
+Italian lesson, and cousin Holman had fallen asleep over her work.
+Somehow, and not unwillingly on my part, our talk fell on the friend
+whom I had introduced to the Hope Farm.
+
+“Yes! I like him!” said the minister, weighing his words a little as he
+spoke. “I like him. I hope I am justified in doing it, but he takes
+hold of me, as it were; and I have almost been afraid lest he carries
+me away, in spite of my judgment.”
+
+“He is a good fellow; indeed he is,” said I. “My father thinks well of
+him; and I have seen a deal of him. I would not have had him come here
+if I did not know that you would approve of him.”
+
+“Yes,” (once more hesitating,) “I like him, and I think he is an
+upright man; there is a want of seriousness in his talk at times, but,
+at the same time, it is wonderful to listen to him! He makes Horace and
+Virgil living, instead of dead, by the stories he tells me of his
+sojourn in the very countries where they lived, and where to this day,
+he says—But it is like dram-drinking. I listen to him till I forget my
+duties, and am carried off my feet. Last Sabbath evening he led us away
+into talk on profane subjects ill befitting the day.” By this time we
+were at the house, and our conversation stopped. But before the day was
+out, I saw the unconscious hold that my friend had got over all the
+family. And no wonder: he had seen so much and done so much as compared
+to them, and he told about it all so easily and naturally, and yet as I
+never heard any one else do; and his ready pencil was out in an instant
+to draw on scraps of paper all sorts of illustrations—modes of drawing
+up water in Northern Italy, wine-carts, buffaloes, stone-pines, I know
+not what. After we had all looked at these drawings, Phillis gathered
+them together, and took them. It is many years since I have seen thee,
+Edward Holdsworth, but thou wast a delightful fellow! Ay, and a good
+one too; though much sorrow was caused by thee!
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+Just after this I went home for a week’s holiday. Everything was
+prospering there; my father’s new partnership gave evident satisfaction
+to both parties. There was no display of increased wealth in our modest
+household; but my mother had a few extra comforts provided for her by
+her husband. I made acquaintance with Mr and Mrs Ellison, and first saw
+pretty Margaret Ellison, who is now my wife. When I returned to Eltham,
+I found that a step was decided upon, which had been in contemplation
+for some time; that Holdsworth and I should remove our quarters to
+Hornby; our daily presence, and as much of our time as possible, being
+required for the completion of the line at that end.
+
+Of course this led to greater facility of intercourse with the Hope
+Farm people. We could easily walk out there after our day’s work was
+done, and spend a balmy evening hour or two, and yet return before the
+summer’s twilight had quite faded away. Many a time, indeed, we would
+fain have stayed longer—the open air, the fresh and pleasant country,
+made so agreeable a contrast to the close, hot town lodgings which I
+shared with Mr Holdsworth; but early hours, both at eve and morn, were
+an imperative necessity with the minister, and he made no scruple at
+turning either or both of us out of the house directly after evening
+prayer, or “exercise”, as he called it. The remembrance of many a happy
+day, and of several little scenes, comes back upon me as I think of
+that summer. They rise like pictures to my memory, and in this way I
+can date their succession; for I know that corn harvest must have come
+after hay-making, apple-gathering after corn-harvest.
+
+The removal to Hornby took up some time, during which we had neither of
+us any leisure to go out to the Hope Farm. Mr Holdsworth had been out
+there once during my absence at home. One sultry evening, when work was
+done, he proposed our walking out and paying the Holmans a visit. It so
+happened that I had omitted to write my usual weekly letter home in our
+press of business, and I wished to finish that before going out. Then
+he said that he would go, and that I could follow him if I liked. This
+I did in about an hour; the weather was so oppressive, I remember, that
+I took off my coat as I walked, and hung it over my arm. All the doors
+and windows at the farm were open when I arrived there, and every tiny
+leaf on the trees was still. The silence of the place was profound; at
+first I thought that it was entirely deserted; but just as I drew near
+the door I heard a weak sweet voice begin to sing; it was cousin
+Holman, all by herself in the house-place, piping up a hymn, as she
+knitted away in the clouded light. She gave me a kindly welcome, and
+poured out all the small domestic news of the fortnight past upon me,
+and, in return, I told her about my own people and my visit at home.
+
+“Where were the rest?” at length I asked.
+
+Betty and the men were in the field helping with the last load of hay,
+for the minister said there would be rain before the morning. Yes, and
+the minister himself, and Phillis, and Mr Holdsworth, were all there
+helping. She thought that she herself could have done something; but
+perhaps she was the least fit for hay-making of any one; and somebody
+must stay at home and take care of the house, there were so many tramps
+about; if I had not had something to do with the railroad she would
+have called them navvies. I asked her if she minded being left alone,
+as I should like to go and help; and having her full and glad
+permission to leave her alone, I went off, following her directions:
+through the farmyard, past the cattle-pond, into the ashfield, beyond
+into the higher field with two holly-bushes in the middle. I arrived
+there: there was Betty with all the farming men, and a cleared field,
+and a heavily laden cart; one man at the top of the great pile ready to
+catch the fragrant hay which the others threw up to him with their
+pitchforks; a little heap of cast-off clothes in a corner of the field
+(for the heat, even at seven o“clock, was insufferable), a few cans and
+baskets, and Rover lying by them panting, and keeping watch. Plenty of
+loud, hearty, cheerful talking; but no minister, no Phillis, no Mr
+Holdsworth. Betty saw me first, and understanding who it was that I was
+in search of, she came towards me.
+
+“They’re out yonder—agait wi’ them things o’ Measter Holdsworth’s.” So
+“out yonder” I went; out on to a broad upland common, full of red
+sand-banks, and sweeps and hollows; bordered by dark firs, purple in
+the coming shadows, but near at hand all ablaze with flowering gorse,
+or, as we call it in the south, furze-bushes, which, seen against the
+belt of distant trees, appeared brilliantly golden. On this heath, a
+little way from the field-gate, I saw the three. I counted their heads,
+joined together in an eager group over Holdsworth’s theodolite. He was
+teaching the minister the practical art of surveying and taking a
+level. I was wanted to assist, and was quickly set to work to hold the
+chain. Phillis was as intent as her father; she had hardly time to
+greet me, so desirous was she to hear some answer to her father’s
+question. So we went on, the dark clouds still gathering, for perhaps
+five minutes after my arrival. Then came the blinding lightning and the
+rumble and quick-following rattling peal of thunder right over our
+heads. It came sooner than I expected, sooner than they had looked for:
+the rain delayed not; it came pouring down; and what were we to do for
+shelter? Phillis had nothing on but her indoor things—no bonnet, no
+shawl. Quick as the darting lightning around us, Holdsworth took off
+his coat and wrapped it round her neck and shoulders, and, almost
+without a word, hurried us all into such poor shelter as one of the
+overhanging sand-banks could give. There we were, cowered down, close
+together, Phillis innermost, almost too tightly packed to free her arms
+enough to divest herself of the coat, which she, in her turn, tried to
+put lightly over Holdsworth’s shoulders. In doing so she touched his
+shirt.
+
+“Oh, how wet you are!” she cried, in pitying dismay; “and you’ve hardly
+got over your fever! Oh, Mr Holdsworth, I am so sorry!” He turned his
+head a little, smiling at her.
+
+“If I do catch cold, it is all my fault for having deluded you into
+staying out here!” but she only murmured again, “I am so sorry.” The
+minister spoke now. “It is a regular downpour. Please God that the hay
+is saved! But there is no likelihood of its ceasing, and I had better
+go home at once, and send you all some wraps; umbrellas will not be
+safe with yonder thunder and lightning.”
+
+Both Holdsworth and I offered to go instead of him; but he was
+resolved, although perhaps it would have been wiser if Holdsworth, wet
+as he already was, had kept himself in exercise. As he moved off,
+Phillis crept out, and could see on to the storm-swept heath. Part of
+Holdsworth’s apparatus still remained exposed to all the rain. Before
+we could have any warning, she had rushed out of the shelter and
+collected the various things, and brought them back in triumph to where
+we crouched. Holdsworth had stood up, uncertain whether to go to her
+assistance or not. She came running back, her long lovely hair floating
+and dripping, her eyes glad and bright, and her colour freshened to a
+glow of health by the exercise and the rain.
+
+“Now, Miss Holman, that’s what I call wilful,” said Holdsworth, as she
+gave them to him. “No, I won’t thank you” (his looks were thanking her
+all the time). “My little bit of dampness annoyed you, because you
+thought I had got wet in your service; so you were determined to make
+me as uncomfortable as you were yourself. It was an unchristian piece
+of revenge!”
+
+His tone of badinage (as the French call it) would have been palpable
+enough to any one accustomed to the world; but Phillis was not, and it
+distressed or rather bewildered her. “Unchristian” had to her a very
+serious meaning; it was not a word to be used lightly; and though she
+did not exactly understand what wrong it was that she was accused of
+doing, she was evidently desirous to throw off the imputation. At first
+her earnestness to disclaim unkind motives amused Holdsworth; while his
+light continuance of the joke perplexed her still more; but at last he
+said something gravely, and in too low a tone for me to hear, which
+made her all at once become silent, and called out her blushes. After a
+while, the minister came back, a moving mass of shawls, cloaks, and
+umbrellas. Phillis kept very close to her father’s side on our return
+to the farm. She appeared to me to be shrinking away from Holdsworth,
+while he had not the slightest variation in his manner from what it
+usually was in his graver moods; kind, protecting, and thoughtful
+towards her. Of course, there was a great commotion about our wet
+clothes; but I name the little events of that evening now because I
+wondered at the time what he had said in that low voice to silence
+Phillis so effectually, and because, in thinking of their intercourse
+by the light of future events, that evening stands out with some
+prominence. I have said that after our removal to Hornby our
+communications with the farm became almost of daily occurrence. Cousin
+Holman and I were the two who had least to do with this intimacy. After
+Mr Holdsworth regained his health, he too often talked above her head
+in intellectual matters, and too often in his light bantering tone for
+her to feel quite at her ease with him. I really believe that he
+adopted this latter tone in speaking to her because he did not know
+what to talk about to a purely motherly woman, whose intellect had
+never been cultivated, and whose loving heart was entirely occupied
+with her husband, her child, her household affairs and, perhaps, a
+little with the concerns of the members of her husband’s congregation,
+because they, in a way, belonged to her husband. I had noticed before
+that she had fleeting shadows of jealousy even of Phillis, when her
+daughter and her husband appeared to have strong interests and
+sympathies in things which were quite beyond her comprehension. I had
+noticed it in my first acquaintance with them, I say, and had admired
+the delicate tact which made the minister, on such occasions, bring the
+conversation back to such subjects as those on which his wife, with her
+practical experience of every-day life, was an authority; while
+Phillis, devoted to her father, unconsciously followed his lead,
+totally unaware, in her filial reverence, of his motive for doing so.
+
+To return to Holdsworth. The minister had at more than one time spoken
+of him to me with slight distrust, principally occasioned by the
+suspicion that his careless words were not always those of soberness
+and truth. But it was more as a protest against the fascination which
+the younger man evidently exercised over the elder one more as it were
+to strengthen himself against yielding to this fascination—that the
+minister spoke out to me about this failing of Holdsworth’s, as it
+appeared to him. In return Holdsworth was subdued by the minister’s
+uprightness and goodness, and delighted with his clear intellect—his
+strong healthy craving after further knowledge. I never met two men who
+took more thorough pleasure and relish in each other’s society. To
+Phillis his relation continued that of an elder brother: he directed
+her studies into new paths, he patiently drew out the expression of
+many of her thoughts, and perplexities, and unformed theories—scarcely
+ever now falling into the vein of banter which she was so slow to
+understand.
+
+One day—harvest-time—he had been drawing on a loose piece of
+paper-sketching ears of corn, sketching carts drawn by bullocks and
+laden with grapes—all the time talking with Phillis and me, cousin
+Holman putting in her not pertinent remarks, when suddenly he said to
+Phillis,—
+
+“Keep your head still; I see a sketch! I have often tried to draw your
+head from memory, and failed; but I think I can do it now. If I succeed
+I will give it to your mother. You would like a portrait of your
+daughter as Ceres, would you not, ma’am?”
+
+“I should like a picture of her; yes, very much, thank you, Mr
+Holdsworth; but if you put that straw in her hair,” (he was holding
+some wheat ears above her passive head, looking at the effect with an
+artistic eye,) “you’ll ruffle her hair. Phillis, my dear, if you’re to
+have your picture taken, go up-stairs, and brush your hair smooth.”
+
+“Not on any account. I beg your pardon, but I want hair loosely
+flowing.” He began to draw, looking intently at Phillis; I could see
+this stare of his discomposed her—her colour came and went, her breath
+quickened with the consciousness of his regard; at last, when he said,
+“Please look at me for a minute or two, I want to get in the eyes,” she
+looked up at him, quivered, and suddenly got up and left the room. He
+did not say a word, but went on with some other part of the drawing;
+his silence was unnatural, and his dark cheek blanched a little. Cousin
+Holman looked up from her work, and put her spectacles down.
+
+“What’s the matter? Where is she gone?”
+
+Holdsworth never uttered a word, but went on drawing. I felt obliged to
+say something; it was stupid enough, but stupidity was better than
+silence just then.
+
+“I’ll go and call her,” said I. So I went into the hall, and to the
+bottom of the stairs; but just as I was going to call Phillis, she came
+down swiftly with her bonnet on, and saying, “I’m going to father in
+the five-acre,” passed out by the open “rector,” right in front of the
+house-place windows, and out at the little white side-gate. She had
+been seen by her mother and Holdsworth, as she passed; so there was no
+need for explanation, only cousin Holman and I had a long discussion as
+to whether she could have found the room too hot, or what had
+occasioned her sudden departure. Holdsworth was very quiet during all
+the rest of that day; nor did he resume the portrait-taking by his own
+desire, only at my cousin Holman’s request the next time that he came;
+and then he said he should not require any more formal sittings for
+only such a slight sketch as he felt himself capable of making. Phillis
+was just the same as ever the next time I saw her after her abrupt
+passing me in the hall. She never gave any explanation of her rush out
+of the room.
+
+So all things went on, at least as far as my observation reached at the
+time, or memory can recall now, till the great apple-gathering of the
+year. The nights were frosty, the mornings and evenings were misty, but
+at mid-day all was sunny and bright, and it was one mid-day that both
+of us being on the line near Heathbridge, and knowing that they were
+gathering apples at the farm, we resolved to spend the men’s
+dinner-hour in going over there. We found the great clothes-baskets
+full of apples, scenting the house, and stopping up the way; and an
+universal air of merry contentment with this the final produce of the
+year. The yellow leaves hung on the trees ready to flutter down at the
+slightest puff of air; the great bushes of Michaelmas daisies in the
+kitchen-garden were making their last show of flowers. We must needs
+taste the fruit off the different trees, and pass our judgment as to
+their flavour; and we went away with our pockets stuffed with those
+that we liked best. As we had passed to the orchard, Holdsworth had
+admired and spoken about some flower which he saw; it so happened he
+had never seen this old-fashioned kind since the days of his boyhood. I
+do not know whether he had thought anything more about this chance
+speech of his, but I know I had not—when Phillis, who had been missing
+just at the last moment of our hurried visit, re-appeared with a little
+nosegay of this same flower, which she was tying up with a blade of
+grass. She offered it to Holdsworth as he stood with her father on the
+point of departure. I saw their faces. I saw for the first time an
+unmistakable look of love in his black eyes; it was more than gratitude
+for the little attention; it was tender and beseeching—passionate. She
+shrank from it in confusion, her glance fell on me; and, partly to hide
+her emotion, partly out of real kindness at what might appear
+ungracious neglect of an older friend, she flew off to gather me a few
+late-blooming China roses. But it was the first time she had ever done
+anything of the kind for me.
+
+We had to walk fast to be back on the line before the men’s return, so
+we spoke but little to each other, and of course the afternoon was too
+much occupied for us to have any talk. In the evening we went back to
+our joint lodgings in Hornby. There, on the table, lay a letter for
+Holdsworth, which had been forwarded to him from Eltham. As our tea was
+ready, and I had had nothing to eat since morning, I fell to directly
+without paying much attention to my companion as he opened and read his
+letter. He was very silent for a few minutes; at length he said,
+
+“Old fellow! I’m going to leave you!”
+
+“Leave me!” said I. “How? When?”
+
+“This letter ought to have come to hand sooner. It is from Greathed the
+engineer” (Greathed was well known in those days; he is dead now, and
+his name half-forgotten); “he wants to see me about some business; in
+fact, I may as well tell you, Paul, this letter contains a very
+advantageous proposal for me to go out to Canada, and superintend the
+making of a line there.”
+
+I was in utter dismay.
+
+“But what will our company say to that?”
+
+“Oh, Greathed has the superintendence of this line, you know; and he is
+going to be engineer in chief to this Canadian line; many of the
+shareholders in this company are going in for the other, so I fancy
+they will make no difficulty in following Greathed’s lead. He says he
+has a young man ready to put in my place.”
+
+“I hate him,” said I.
+
+“Thank you,” said Holdsworth, laughing.
+
+“But you must not,” he resumed; “for this is a very good thing for me,
+and, of course, if no one can be found to take my inferior work, I
+can’t be spared to take the superior. I only wish I had received this
+letter a day sooner. Every hour is of consequence, for Greathed says
+they are threatening a rival line. Do you know, Paul, I almost fancy I
+must go up to-night? I can take an engine back to Eltham, and catch the
+night train. I should not like Greathed to think me luke-warm.”
+
+“But you’ll come back?” I asked, distressed at the thought of this
+sudden parting.
+
+“Oh, yes! At least I hope so. They may want me to go out by the next
+steamer, that will be on Saturday.” He began to eat and drink standing,
+but I think he was quite unconscious of the nature of either his food
+or his drink.
+
+“I will go to-night. Activity and readiness go a long way in our
+profession. Remember that, my boy! I hope I shall come back, but if I
+don’t, be sure and recollect all the words of wisdom that have fallen
+from my lips. Now where’s the portmanteau? If I can gain half an hour
+for a gathering up of my things in Eltham, so much the better. I’m
+clear of debt anyhow; and what I owe for my lodgings you can pay for me
+out of my quarter’s salary, due November 4th.”
+
+“Then you don’t think you will come back?” I said, despondingly.
+
+“I will come back some time, never fear,” said he, kindly. “I may be
+back in a couple of days, having been found in-competent for the
+Canadian work; or I may not be wanted to go out so soon as I now
+anticipate. Anyhow you don’t suppose I am going to forget you, Paul
+this work out there ought not to take me above two years, and, perhaps,
+after that, we may be employed together again.” Perhaps! I had very
+little hope. The same kind of happy days never returns. However, I did
+all I could in helping him: clothes, papers, books, instruments; how we
+pushed and struggled—how I stuffed. All was done in a much shorter time
+than we had calculated upon, when I had run down to the sheds to order
+the engine. I was going to drive him to Eltham. We sate ready for a
+summons. Holdsworth took up the little nosegay that he had brought away
+from the Hope Farm, and had laid on the mantel-piece on first coming
+into the room. He smelt at it, and caressed it with his lips.
+
+“What grieves me is that I did not know—that I have not said good-bye
+to—to them.”
+
+He spoke in a grave tone, the shadow of the coming separation falling
+upon him at last.
+
+“I will tell them,” said I. “I am sure they will be very sorry.” Then
+we were silent.
+
+“I never liked any family so much.”
+
+“I knew you would like them.”
+
+“How one’s thoughts change,—this morning I was full of a hope, Paul.”
+He paused, and then he said,—
+
+“You put that sketch in carefully?”
+
+“That outline of a head?” asked I. But I knew he meant an abortive
+sketch of Phillis, which had not been successful enough for him to
+complete it with shading or colouring.
+
+“Yes. What a sweet innocent face it is! and yet so—Oh, dear!” He sighed
+and got up, his hands in his pockets, to walk up and down the room in
+evident disturbance of mind. He suddenly stopped opposite to me.
+
+“You’ll tell them how it all was. Be sure and tell the good minister
+that I was so sorry not to wish him good-bye, and to thank him and his
+wife for all their kindness. As for Phillis,—please God in two years
+I’ll be back and tell her myself all in my heart.”
+
+“You love Phillis, then?” said I.
+
+“Love her! Yes, that I do. Who could help it, seeing her as I have
+done? Her character as unusual and rare as her beauty! God bless her!
+God keep her in her high tranquillity, her pure innocence.—Two years!
+It is a long time.—But she lives in such seclusion, almost like the
+sleeping beauty, Paul,”—(he was smiling now, though a minute before I
+had thought him on the verge of tears,)—“but I shall come back like a
+prince from Canada, and waken her to my love. I can’t help hoping that
+it won’t be difficult, eh, Paul?”
+
+This touch of coxcombry displeased me a little, and I made no answer.
+He went on, half apologetically,—
+
+“You see, the salary they offer me is large; and beside that, this
+experience will give me a name which will entitle me to expect a still
+larger in any future undertaking.”
+
+“That won’t influence Phillis.”
+
+“No! but it will make me more eligible in the eyes of her father and
+mother.” I made no answer.
+
+“You give me your best wishes, Paul,” said he, almost pleading. “You
+would like me for a cousin?”
+
+I heard the scream and whistle of the engine ready down at the sheds.
+
+“Ay, that I should,” I replied, suddenly softened towards my friend now
+that he was going away. “I wish you were to be married to-morrow, and I
+were to be best man.”
+
+“Thank you, lad. Now for this cursed portmanteau (how the minister
+would be shocked); but it is heavy!” and off we sped into the darkness.
+He only just caught the night train at Eltham, and I slept, desolately
+enough, at my old lodgings at Miss Dawsons’, for that night. Of course
+the next few days I was busier than ever, doing both his work and my
+own. Then came a letter from him, very short and affectionate. He was
+going out in the Saturday steamer, as he had more than half expected;
+and by the following Monday the man who was to succeed him would be
+down at Eltham. There was a P.S., with only these words:—“My nosegay
+goes with me to Canada, but I do not need it to remind me of Hope
+Farm.”
+
+Saturday came; but it was very late before I could go out to the farm.
+It was a frosty night, the stars shone clear above me, and the road was
+crisping beneath my feet. They must have heard my footsteps before I
+got up to the house. They were sitting at their usual employments in
+the house-place when I went in. Phillis’s eyes went beyond me in their
+look of welcome, and then fell in quiet disappointment on her work.
+
+“And where’s Mr Holdsworth?” asked cousin Holman, in a minute or two.
+“I hope his cold is not worse,—I did not like his short cough.”
+
+I laughed awkwardly; for I felt that I was the bearer of unpleasant
+news.
+
+“His cold had need be better—for he’s gone—gone away to Canada!”
+
+I purposely looked away from Phillis, as I thus abruptly told my news.
+
+“To Canada!” said the minister.
+
+“Gone away!” said his wife. But no word from Phillis.
+
+“Yes!” said I. “He found a letter at Hornby when we got home the other
+night—when we got home from here; he ought to have got it sooner; he
+was ordered to go up to London directly, and to see some people about a
+new line in Canada, and he’s gone to lay it down; he has sailed to-day.
+He was sadly grieved not to have time to come out and wish you all
+good-by; but he started for London within two hours after he got that
+letter. He bade me thank you most gratefully for all your kindnesses;
+he was very sorry not to come here once again.” Phillis got up and left
+the room with noiseless steps.
+
+“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.
+
+“I must see that you don’t get cold for more reasons than one; if you
+are ill, Holdsworth will be so anxious and miserable out there” (by
+which I meant Canada)—
+
+She shot one penetrating look at me, and then turned her face away with
+a slightly impatient movement. If she could have run away then she
+would, but I held the means of exit in my own power. “In for a penny,
+in for a pound,” thought I, and I went on rapidly, anyhow.
+
+“He talked so much about you, just before he left—that night after he
+had been here, you know—and you had given him those flowers.” She put
+her hands up to hide her face, but she was listening now—listening with
+all her ears. “He had never spoken much about you before, but the
+sudden going away unlocked his heart, and he told me how he loved you,
+and how he hoped on his return that you might be his wife.”
+
+“Don’t,” said she, almost gasping out the word, which she had tried
+once or twice before to speak; but her voice had been choked. Now she
+put her hand backwards; she had quite turned away from me, and felt for
+mine. She gave it a soft lingering pressure; and then she put her arms
+down on the wooden division, and laid her head on it, and cried quiet
+tears. I did not understand her at once, and feared lest I had mistaken
+the whole case, and only annoyed her. I went up to her. “Oh, Phillis! I
+am so sorry—I thought you would, perhaps, have cared to hear it; he did
+talk so feelingly, as if he did love you so much, and somehow I thought
+it would give you pleasure.”
+
+She lifted up her head and looked at me. Such a look! Her eyes,
+glittering with tears as they were, expressed an almost heavenly
+happiness; her tender mouth was curved with rapture—her colour vivid
+and blushing; but as if she was afraid her face expressed too much,
+more than the thankfulness to me she was essaying to speak, she hid it
+again almost immediately. So it was all right then, and my conjecture
+was well-founded! I tried to remember something more to tell her of
+what he had said, but again she stopped me.
+
+“Don’t,” she said. She still kept her face covered and hidden. In half
+a minute she added, in a very low voice, “Please, Paul, I think I would
+rather not hear any more I don’t mean but what I have—but what I am
+very much obliged—Only—only, I think I would rather hear the rest from
+himself when he comes back.”
+
+And then she cried a little more, in quite a different way. I did not
+say any more, I waited for her. By-and-by she turned towards me—not
+meeting my eyes, however; and putting her hand in mine just as if we
+were two children, she said,—
+
+“We had best go back now—I don’t look as if I had been crying, do I?”
+
+“You look as if you had a bad cold,” was all the answer I made.
+
+“Oh! but I am quite well, only cold; and a good run will warm me. Come
+along, Paul.”
+
+So we ran, hand in hand, till, just as we were on the threshold of the
+house, she stopped,—
+
+“Paul, please, we won’t speak about that again.”
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+When I went over on Easter Day I heard the chapel-gossips complimenting
+cousin Holman on her daughter’s blooming looks, quite forgetful of
+their sinister prophecies three months before. And I looked at Phillis,
+and did not wonder at their words. I had not seen her since the day
+after Christmas Day. I had left the Hope Farm only a few hours after I
+had told her the news which had quickened her heart into renewed life
+and vigour. The remembrance of our conversation in the cow-house was
+vividly in my mind as I looked at her when her bright healthy
+appearance was remarked upon. As her eyes met mine our mutual
+recollections flashed intelligence from one to the other. She turned
+away, her colour heightening as she did so. She seemed to be shy of me
+for the first few hours after our meeting, and I felt rather vexed with
+her for her conscious avoidance of me after my long absence. I had
+stepped a little out of my usual line in telling her what I did; not
+that I had received any charge of secrecy, or given even the slightest
+promise to Holdsworth that I would not repeat his words. But I had an
+uneasy feeling sometimes when I thought of what I had done in the
+excitement of seeing Phillis so ill and in so much trouble. I meant to
+have told Holdsworth when I wrote next to him; but when I had my
+half-finished letter before me I sate with my pen in my hand
+hesitating. I had more scruple in revealing what I had found out or
+guessed at of Phillis’s secret than in repeating to her his spoken
+words. I did not think I had any right to say out to him what I
+believed—namely, that she loved him dearly, and had felt his absence
+even to the injury of her health. Yet to explain what I had done in
+telling her how he had spoken about her that last night, it would be
+necessary to give my reasons, so I had settled within myself to leave
+it alone. As she had told me she should like to hear all the details
+and fuller particulars and more explicit declarations first from him,
+so he should have the pleasure of extracting the delicious tender
+secret from her maidenly lips. I would not betray my guesses, my
+surmises, my all but certain knowledge of the state of her heart. I had
+received two letters from him after he had settled to his business;
+they were full of life and energy; but in each there had been a message
+to the family at the Hope Farm of more than common regard; and a slight
+but distinct mention of Phillis herself, showing that she stood single
+and alone in his memory. These letters I had sent on to the minister,
+for he was sure to care for them, even supposing he had been
+unacquainted with their writer, because they were so clever and so
+picturesquely worded that they brought, as it were, a whiff of foreign
+atmosphere into his circumscribed life. I used to wonder what was the
+trade or business in which the minister would not have thriven,
+mentally I mean, if it had so happened that he had been called into
+that state. He would have made a capital engineer, that I know; and he
+had a fancy for the sea, like many other land-locked men to whom the
+great deep is a mystery and a fascination. He read law-books with
+relish; and, once happening to borrow De Lolme on the British
+Constitution (or some such title), he talked about jurisprudence till
+he was far beyond my depth. But to return to Holdsworth’s letters. When
+the minister sent them back he also wrote out a list of questions
+suggested by their perusal, which I was to pass on in my answers to
+Holdsworth, until I thought of suggesting direct correspondence between
+the two. That was the state of things as regarded the absent one when I
+went to the farm for my Easter visit, and when I found Phillis in that
+state of shy reserve towards me which I have named before. I thought
+she was ungrateful; for I was not quite sure if I had done wisely in
+having told her what I did. I had committed a fault, or a folly,
+perhaps, and all for her sake; and here was she, less friends with me
+than she had even been before. This little estrangement only lasted a
+few hours. I think that as soon as she felt pretty sure of there being
+no recurrence, either by word, look, or allusion, to the one subject
+that was predominant in her mind, she came back to her old sisterly
+ways with me. She had much to tell me of her own familiar interests;
+how Rover had been ill, and how anxious they had all of them been, and
+how, after some little discussion between her father and her, both
+equally grieved by the sufferings of the old dog, he had been
+remembered in the household prayers’, and how he had begun to get
+better only the very next day, and then she would have led me into a
+conversation on the right ends of prayer, and on special providences,
+and I know not what; only I “jibbed” like their old cart-horse, and
+refused to stir a step in that direction. Then we talked about the
+different broods of chickens, and she showed me the hens that were good
+mothers, and told me the characters of all the poultry with the utmost
+good faith; and in all good faith I listened, for I believe there was a
+good deal of truth in all she said. And then we strolled on into the
+wood beyond the ash-meadow, and both of us sought for early primroses,
+and the fresh green crinkled leaves. She was not afraid of being alone
+with me after the first day. I never saw her so lovely, or so happy. I
+think she hardly knew why she was so happy all the time. I can see her
+now, standing under the budding branches of the grey trees, over which
+a tinge of green seemed to be deepening day after day, her sun-bonnet
+fallen back on her neck, her hands full of delicate wood-flowers, quite
+unconscious of my gaze, but intent on sweet mockery of some bird in
+neighbouring bush or tree. She had the art of warbling, and replying to
+the notes of different birds, and knew their song, their habits and
+ways, more accurately than any one else I ever knew. She had often done
+it at my request the spring before; but this year she really gurgled,
+and whistled, and warbled just as they did, out of the very fulness and
+joy of her heart. She was more than ever the very apple of her father’s
+eye; her mother gave her both her own share of love, and that of the
+dead child who had died in infancy. I have heard cousin Holman murmur,
+after a long dreamy look at Phillis, and tell herself how like she was
+growing to Johnnie, and soothe herself with plaintive inarticulate
+sounds, and many gentle shakes of the head, for the aching sense of
+loss she would never get over in this world. The old servants about the
+place had the dumb loyal attachment to the child of the land, common to
+most agricultural labourers; not often stirred into activity or
+expression. My cousin Phillis was like a rose that had come to full
+bloom on the sunny side of a lonely house, sheltered from storms. I
+have read in some book of poetry,—
+
+A maid whom there were none to praise, And very few to love.
+
+And somehow those lines always reminded me of Phillis; yet they were
+not true of her either. I never heard her praised; and out of her own
+household there were very few to love her; but though no one spoke out
+their approbation, she always did right in her parents’ eyes out of her
+natural simple goodness and wisdom. Holdsworth’s name was never
+mentioned between us when we were alone; but I had sent on his letters
+to the minister, as I have said; and more than once he began to talk
+about our absent friend, when he was smoking his pipe after the day’s
+work was done. Then Phillis hung her head a little over her work, and
+listened in silence.
+
+“I miss him more than I thought for; no offence to you, Paul. I said
+once his company was like dram-drinking; that was before I knew him;
+and perhaps I spoke in a spirit of judgment. To some men’s minds
+everything presents itself strongly, and they speak accordingly; and so
+did he. And I thought in my vanity of censorship that his were not true
+and sober words; they would not have been if I had used them, but they
+were so to a man of his class of perceptions. I thought of the measure
+with which I had been meting to him when Brother Robinson was here last
+Thursday, and told me that a poor little quotation I was making from
+the Georgics savoured of vain babbling and profane heathenism. He went
+so far as to say that by learning other languages than our own, we were
+flying in the face of the Lord’s purpose when He had said, at the
+building of the Tower of Babel, that He would confound their languages
+so that they should not understand each other’s speech. As Brother
+Robinson was to me, so was I to the quick wits, bright senses, and
+ready words of Holdsworth.”
+
+The first little cloud upon my peace came in the shape of a letter from
+Canada, in which there were two or three sentences that troubled me
+more than they ought to have done, to judge merely from the words
+employed. It was this:—“I should feel dreary enough in this
+out-of-the-way place if it were not for a friendship I have formed with
+a French Canadian of the name of Ventadour. He and his family are a
+great resource to me in the long evenings. I never heard such delicious
+vocal music as the voices of these Ventadour boys and girls in their
+part songs; and the foreign element retained in their characters and
+manner of living reminds me of some of the happiest days of my life.
+Lucille, the second daughter, is curiously like Phillis Holman.” In
+vain I said to myself that it was probably this likeness that made him
+take pleasure in the society of the Ventadour family. In vain I told my
+anxious fancy that nothing could be more natural than this intimacy,
+and that there was no sign of its leading to any consequence that ought
+to disturb me. I had a presentiment, and I was disturbed; and I could
+not reason it away. I dare say my presentiment was rendered more
+persistent and keen by the doubts which would force themselves into my
+mind, as to whether I had done well in repeating Holdsworth’s words to
+Phillis. Her state of vivid happiness this summer was markedly
+different to the peaceful serenity of former days. If in my
+thoughtfulness at noticing this I caught her eye, she blushed and
+sparkled all over, guessing that I was remembering our joint secret.
+Her eyes fell before mine, as if she could hardly bear me to see the
+revelation of their bright glances. And yet I considered again, and
+comforted myself by the reflection that, if this change had been
+anything more than my silly fancy, her father or her mother would have
+perceived it. But they went on in tranquil unconsciousness and
+undisturbed peace.
+
+A change in my own life was quickly approaching. In the July of this
+year my occupation on the —— railway and its branches came to an end.
+The lines were completed, and I was to leave ——shire, to return to
+Birmingham, where there was a niche already provided for me in my
+father’s prosperous business. But before I left the north it was an
+understood thing amongst us all that I was to go and pay a visit of
+some weeks at the Hope Farm. My father was as much pleased at this plan
+as I was; and the dear family of cousins often spoke of things to be
+done, and sights to be shown me, during this visit. My want of wisdom
+in having told “that thing” (under such ambiguous words I concealed the
+injudicious confidence I had made to Phillis) was the only drawback to
+my anticipations of pleasure.
+
+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.
+
+“Amiss with Phillis! I should like to know why you think anything is
+wrong with her. She looks as blooming as any one can do.”
+
+“Poor lad! you’re but a big child after all; and you’ve likely never
+heared of a fever-flush. But you know better nor that, my fine fellow!
+so don’t think for to put me off wi’ blooms and blossoms and such-like
+talk. What makes her walk about for hours and hours o’ nights when she
+used to be abed and asleep? I sleep next room to her, and hear her
+plain as can be. What makes her come in panting and ready to drop into
+that chair,”—nodding to one close to the door,—“and it’s ‘Oh! Betty,
+some water, please’? That’s the way she comes in now, when she used to
+come back as fresh and bright as she went out. If yon friend o’ yours
+has played her false, he’s a deal for t’ answer for; she’s a lass who’s
+as sweet and as sound as a nut, and the very apple of her father’s eye,
+and of her mother’s too’ only wi’ her she ranks second to th’ minister.
+You’ll have to look after yon chap, for I, for one, will stand no wrong
+to our Phillis.”
+
+What was I to do, or to say? I wanted to justify Holdsworth, to keep
+Phillis’s secret, and to pacify the woman all in the same breath. I did
+not take the best course, I’m afraid.
+
+“I don’t believe Holdsworth ever spoke a word of—of love to her in all
+his life. I’m sure he didn’t.”
+
+“Ay. Ay! but there’s eyes, and there’s hands, as well as tongues; and a
+man has two o’ th’ one and but one o’ t’other.”
+
+“And she’s so young; do you suppose her parents would not have seen
+it?”
+
+“Well! if you axe me that, I’ll say out boldly, ‘No’. They’ve called
+her ‘the child’ so long—‘the child’ is always their name for her when
+they talk on her between themselves, as if never anybody else had a
+ewe-lamb before them—that she’s grown up to be a woman under their very
+eyes, and they look on her still as if she were in her long clothes.
+And you ne’er heard on a man falling in love wi’ a babby in long
+clothes!”
+
+“No!” said I, half laughing. But she went on as grave as a judge.
+
+“Ay! you see you’ll laugh at the bare thought on it—and I’ll be bound
+th’ minister, though he’s not a laughing man, would ha’ sniggled at th’
+notion of falling in love wi’ the child. Where’s Holdsworth off to?”
+
+“Canada,” said I, shortly.
+
+“Canada here, Canada there,” she replied, testily. “Tell me how far
+he’s off, instead of giving me your gibberish. Is he a two days’
+journey away? or a three? or a week?”
+
+“He’s ever so far off—three weeks at the least,” cried I in despair.
+“And he’s either married, or just going to be. So there.” I expected a
+fresh burst of anger. But no; the matter was too serious. Betty sate
+down, and kept silence for a minute or two. She looked so miserable and
+downcast, that I could not help going on, and taking her a little into
+my confidence.
+
+“It is quite true what I said. I know he never spoke a word to her. I
+think he liked her, but it’s all over now. The best thing we can do—the
+best and kindest for her—and I know you love her, Betty—”
+
+“I nursed her in my arms; I gave her little brother his last taste o’
+earthly food,” said Betty, putting her apron up to her eyes.
+
+“Well! don’t let us show her we guess that she is grieving; she’ll get
+over it the sooner. Her father and mother don’t even guess at it, and
+we must make as if we didn’t. It’s too late now to do anything else.”
+
+“I’ll never let on; I know nought. I’ve known true love mysel’, in my
+day. But I wish he’d been farred before he ever came near this house,
+with his ‘Please Betty’ this, and ‘Please Betty’ that, and drinking up
+our new milk as if he’d been a cat. I hate such beguiling ways.”
+
+I thought it was as well to let her exhaust herself in abusing the
+absent Holdsworth; if it was shabby and treacherous in me, I came in
+for my punishment directly.
+
+“It’s a caution to a man how he goes about beguiling. Some men do it as
+easy and innocent as cooing doves. Don’t you be none of “em, my lad.
+Not that you’ve got the gifts to do it, either; you’re no great shakes
+to look at, neither for figure, nor yet for face, and it would need be
+a deaf adder to be taken in wi’ your words, though there may be no
+great harm in em.” A lad of nineteen or twenty is not flattered by such
+an out-spoken opinion even from the oldest and ugliest of her sex; and
+I was only too glad to change the subject by my repeated injunctions to
+keep Phillis’s secret. The end of our conversation was this speech of
+hers,—
+
+“You great gaupus, for all you’re called cousin o’ th’ minister—many a
+one is cursed wi’ fools for cousins—d’ye think I can’t see sense except
+through your spectacles? I give you leave to cut out my tongue, and
+nail it up on th’ barn-door for a caution to magpies, if I let out on
+that poor wench, either to herself, or any one that is hers, as the
+Bible says. Now you’ve heard me speak Scripture language, perhaps
+you’ll be content, and leave me my kitchen to myself.”
+
+During all these days, from the 5th of July to the 17th, I must have
+forgotten what Holdsworth had said about cards. And yet I think I could
+not have quite forgotten; but, once having told Phillis about his
+marriage, I must have looked upon the after consequence of cards as of
+no importance. At any rate they came upon me as a surprise at last. The
+penny-post reform, as people call it, had come into operation a short
+time before; but the never-ending stream of notes and letters which
+seem now to flow in upon most households had not yet begun its course;
+at least in those remote parts. There was a post-office at Hornby; and
+an old fellow, who stowed away the few letters in any or all his
+pockets, as it best suited him, was the letter-carrier to Heathbridge
+and the neighbourhood. I have often met him in the lanes thereabouts,
+and asked him for letters. Sometimes I have come upon him, sitting on
+the hedge-bank resting; and he has begged me to read him an address,
+too illegible for his spectacled eyes to decipher. When I used to
+inquire if he had anything for me, or for Holdsworth (he was not
+particular to whom he gave up the letters, so that he got rid of them
+somehow, and could set off homewards), he would say he thought that he
+had, for such was his invariable safe form of answer; and would fumble
+in breast-pockets, waistcoat-pockets, breeches-pockets, and, as a last
+resource, in coat-tail pockets; and at length try to comfort me, if I
+looked disappointed, by telling me, “Hoo had missed this toime, but was
+sure to write to-morrow;” “Hoo” representing an imaginary sweetheart.
+
+Sometimes I had seen the minister bring home a letter which he had
+found lying for him at the little shop that was the post-office at
+Heathbridge, or from the grander establishment at Hornby. Once or twice
+Josiah, the carter, remembered that the old letter-carrier had trusted
+him with an epistle to “Measter”, as they had met in the lanes. I think
+it must have been about ten days after my arrival at the farm, and my
+talk to Phillis cutting bread-and-butter at the kitchen dresser, before
+the day on which the minister suddenly spoke at the dinner-table, and
+said,—
+
+“By-the-by, I’ve got a letter in my pocket. Reach me my coat here,
+Phillis.” The weather was still sultry, and for coolness and ease the
+minister was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. “I went to Heathbridge about
+the paper they had sent me, which spoils all the pens—and I called at
+the post-office, and found a letter for me, unpaid,—and they did not
+like to trust it to old Zekiel. Ay! here it is! Now we shall hear news
+of Holdsworth,—I thought I’d keep it till we were all together.” My
+heart seemed to stop beating, and I hung my head over my plate, not
+daring to look up. What would come of it now? What was Phillis doing?
+How was she looking? A moment of suspense,—and then he spoke again.
+“Why! what’s this? Here are two visiting tickets with his name on, no
+writing at all. No! it’s not his name on both. MRS Holdsworth! The
+young man has gone and got married.” I lifted my head at these words; I
+could not help looking just for one instant at Phillis. It seemed to me
+as if she had been keeping watch over my face and ways. Her face was
+brilliantly flushed; her eyes were dry and glittering; but she did not
+speak; her lips were set together almost as if she was pinching them
+tight to prevent words or sounds coming out. Cousin Holman’s face
+expressed surprise and interest.
+
+“Well!” said she, “who’d ha’ thought it! He’s made quick work of his
+wooing and wedding. I’m sure I wish him happy. Let me see”—counting on
+her fingers,—“October, November, December, January, February, March,
+April, May, June, July,—at least we’re at the 28th,—it is nearly ten
+months after all, and reckon a month each way off—”
+
+“Did you know of this news before?” said the minister, turning sharp
+round on me, surprised, I suppose, at my silence,—hardly suspicious, as
+yet.
+
+“I knew—I had heard—something. It is to a French Canadian young lady,”
+I went on, forcing myself to talk. “Her name is Ventadour.”
+
+“Lucille Ventadour!” said Phillis, in a sharp voice, out of tune.
+
+“Then you knew too!” exclaimed the minister. We both spoke at once. I
+said, “I heard of the probability of—and told Phillis.” She said, “He
+is married to Lucille Ventadour, of French descent; one of a large
+family near St. Meurice; am not I right?” I nodded “Paul told me,—that
+is all we know, is not it? Did you see the Howsons, father, in
+Heathbridge?” and she forced herself to talk more than she had done for
+several days, asking many questions, trying, as I could see, to keep
+the conversation off the one raw surface, on which to touch was agony.
+I had less self-command; but I followed her lead. I was not so much
+absorbed in the conversation but what I could see that the minister was
+puzzled and uneasy; though he seconded Phillis’s efforts to prevent her
+mother from recurring to the great piece of news, and uttering
+continual exclamations of wonder and surprise. But with that one
+exception we were all disturbed out of our natural equanimity, more or
+less. Every day, every hour, I was reproaching myself more and more for
+my blundering officiousness. If only I had held my foolish tongue for
+that one half-hour; if only I had not been in such impatient haste to
+do something to relieve pain! I could have knocked my stupid head
+against the wall in my remorse. Yet all I could do now was to second
+the brave girl in her efforts to conceal her disappointment and keep
+her maidenly secret. But I thought that dinner would never, never come
+to an end. I suffered for her, even more than for myself. Until now
+everything which I had heard spoken in that happy household were simple
+words of true meaning. If we had aught to say, we said it; and if any
+one preferred silence, nay if all did so, there would have been no
+spasmodic, forced efforts to talk for the sake of talking, or to keep
+off intrusive thoughts or suspicions.
+
+At length we got up from our places, and prepared to disperse; but two
+or three of us had lost our zest and interest in the daily labour. The
+minister stood looking out of the window in silence, and when he roused
+himself to go out to the fields where his labourers were working, it
+was with a sigh; and he tried to avert his troubled face as he passed
+us on his way to the door. When he had left us, I caught sight of
+Phillis’s face, as, thinking herself unobserved, her countenance
+relaxed for a moment or two into sad, woeful weariness. She started
+into briskness again when her mother spoke, and hurried away to do some
+little errand at her bidding. When we two were alone, cousin Holman
+recurred to Holdsworth’s marriage. She was one of those people who like
+to view an event from every side of probability, or even possibility;
+and she had been cut short from indulging herself in this way during
+dinner.
+
+“To think of Mr Holdsworth’s being married! I can’t get over it, Paul.
+Not but what he was a very nice young man! I don’t like her name,
+though; it sounds foreign. Say it again, my dear. I hope she’ll know
+how to take care of him, English fashion. He is not strong, and if she
+does not see that his things are well aired, I should be afraid of the
+old cough.”
+
+“He always said he was stronger than he had ever been before, after
+that fever.” “He might think so, but I have my doubts. He was a very
+pleasant young man, but he did not stand nursing very well. He got
+tired of being coddled, as he called it. I hope they’ll soon come back
+to England, and then he’ll have a chance for his health. I wonder now,
+if she speaks English; but, to be sure, he can speak foreign tongues
+like anything, as I’ve heard the minister say.” And so we went on for
+some time, till she became drowsy over her knitting, on the sultry
+summer afternoon; and I stole away for a walk, for I wanted some
+solitude in which to think over things, and, alas! to blame myself with
+poignant stabs of remorse.
+
+I lounged lazily as soon as I got to the wood. Here and there the
+bubbling, brawling brook circled round a great stone, or a root of an
+old tree, and made a pool; otherwise it coursed brightly over the
+gravel and stones. I stood by one of these for more than half an hour,
+or, indeed, longer, throwing bits of wood or pebbles into the water,
+and wondering what I could do to remedy the present state of things. Of
+course all my meditation was of no use; and at length the distant sound
+of the horn employed to tell the men far afield to leave off work,
+warned me that it was six o“clock, and time for me to go home. Then I
+caught wafts of the loud-voiced singing of the evening psalm. As I was
+crossing the Ashfield, I saw the minister at some distance talking to a
+man. I could not hear what they were saying, but I saw an impatient or
+dissentient (I could not tell which) gesture on the part of the former,
+who walked quickly away, and was apparently absorbed in his thoughts,
+for though he passed within twenty yards of me, as both our paths
+converged towards home, he took no notice of me. We passed the evening
+in a way which was even worse than dinner-time. The minister was
+silent, depressed, even irritable. Poor cousin Holman was utterly
+perplexed by this unusual frame of mind and temper in her husband; she
+was not well herself, and was suffering from the extreme and sultry
+heat, which made her less talkative than usual. Phillis, usually so
+reverently tender to her parents, so soft, so gentle, seemed now to
+take no notice of the unusual state of things, but talked to me—to any
+one, on indifferent subjects, regardless of her father’s gravity, of
+her mother’s piteous looks of bewilderment. But once my eyes fell upon
+her hands, concealed under the table, and I could see the passionate,
+convulsive manner in which she laced and interlaced her fingers
+perpetually, wringing them together from time to time, wringing till
+the compressed flesh became perfectly white. What could I do? I talked
+with her, as I saw she wished; her grey eyes had dark circles round
+them and a strange kind of dark light in them; her cheeks were flushed,
+but her lips were white and wan. I wondered that others did not read
+these signs as clearly as I did. But perhaps they did; I think, from
+what came afterwards, the minister did. Poor cousin Holman! she
+worshipped her husband; and the outward signs of his uneasiness were
+more patent to her simple heart than were her daughter’s. After a while
+she could bear it no longer. She got up, and, softly laying her hand on
+his broad stooping shoulder, she said,—
+
+“What is the matter, minister? Has anything gone wrong?”
+
+He started as if from a dream. Phillis hung her head, and caught her
+breath in terror at the answer she feared. But he, looking round with a
+sweeping glance, turned his broad, wise face up to his anxious wife,
+and forced a smile, and took her hand in a reassuring manner.
+
+“I am blaming myself, dear. I have been overcome with anger this
+afternoon. I scarcely knew what I was doing, but I turned away Timothy
+Cooper. He has killed the Ribstone pippin at the corner of the orchard;
+gone and piled the quicklime for the mortar for the new stable wall
+against the trunk of the tree—stupid fellow! killed the tree
+outright—and it loaded with apples!”
+
+“And Ribstone pippins are so scarce,” said sympathetic cousin Holman.
+
+“Ay! But Timothy is but a half-wit; and he has a wife and children. He
+had often put me to it sore, with his slothful ways, but I had laid it
+before the Lord, and striven to bear with him. But I will not stand it
+any longer, it’s past my patience. And he has notice to find another
+place. Wife, we won’t talk more about it.” He took her hand gently off
+his shoulder, touched it with his lips; but relapsed into a silence as
+profound, if not quite so morose in appearance, as before. I could not
+tell why, but this bit of talk between her father and mother seemed to
+take all the factitious spirits out of Phillis. She did not speak now,
+but looked out of the open casement at the calm large moon, slowly
+moving through the twilight sky. Once I thought her eyes were filling
+with tears; but, if so, she shook them off, and arose with alacrity
+when her mother, tired and dispirited, proposed to go to bed
+immediately after prayers. We all said good-night in our separate ways
+to the minister, who still sate at the table with the great Bible open
+before him, not much looking up at any of our salutations, but
+returning them kindly. But when I, last of all, was on the point of
+leaving the room, he said, still scarcely looking up,—
+
+“Paul, you will oblige me by staying here a few minutes. I would fain
+have some talk with you.”
+
+I knew what was coming, all in a moment. I carefully shut-to the door,
+put out my candle, and sate down to my fate. He seemed to find some
+difficulty in beginning, for, if I had not heard that he wanted to
+speak to me, I should never have guessed it, he seemed so much absorbed
+in reading a chapter to the end. Suddenly he lifted his head up and
+said,—
+
+“It is about that friend of yours, Holdsworth! Paul, have you any
+reason for thinking he has played tricks upon Phillis?” I saw that his
+eyes were blazing with such a fire of anger at the bare idea, that I
+lost all my presence of mind, and only repeated,—
+
+“Played tricks on Phillis!”
+
+“Ay! you know what I mean: made love to her, courted her, made her
+think that he loved her, and then gone away and left her. Put it as you
+will, only give me an answer of some kind or another—a true answer, I
+mean—and don’t repeat my words, Paul.”
+
+He was shaking all over as he said this. I did not delay a moment in
+answering him,—
+
+“I do not believe that Edward Holdsworth ever played tricks on Phillis,
+ever made love to her; he never, to my knowledge, made her believe that
+he loved her.”
+
+I stopped; I wanted to nerve up my courage for a confession, yet I
+wished to save the secret of Phillis’s love for Holdsworth as much as I
+could; that secret which she had so striven to keep sacred and safe;
+and I had need of some reflection before I went on with what I had to
+say.
+
+He began again before I had quite arranged my manner of speech. It was
+almost as if to himself,—“She is my only child; my little daughter! She
+is hardly out of childhood; I have thought to gather her under my wings
+for years to come her mother and I would lay down our lives to keep her
+from harm and grief.” Then, raising his voice, and looking at me, he
+said, “Something has gone wrong with the child; and it seemed to me to
+date from the time she heard of that marriage. It is hard to think that
+you may know more of her secret cares and sorrows than I do,—but
+perhaps you do, Paul, perhaps you do,—only, if it be not a sin, tell me
+what I can do to make her happy again; tell me.”
+
+“It will not do much good, I am afraid,” said I, “but I will own how
+wrong I did; I don’t mean wrong in the way of sin, but in the way of
+judgment. Holdsworth told me just before he went that he loved Phillis,
+and hoped to make her his wife, and I told her.”
+
+There! it was out; all my part in it, at least; and I set my lips tight
+together, and waited for the words to come. I did not see his face; I
+looked straight at the wall opposite; but I heard him once begin to
+speak, and then turn over the leaves in the book before him. How
+awfully still that room was! The air outside, how still it was! The
+open windows let in no rustle of leaves, no twitter or movement of
+birds—no sound whatever. The clock on the stairs—the minister’s hard
+breathing—was it to go on for ever? Impatient beyond bearing at the
+deep quiet, I spoke again,—
+
+“I did it for the best, as I thought.”
+
+The minister shut the book to hastily, and stood up. Then I saw how
+angry he was.
+
+“For the best, do you say? It was best, was it, to go and tell a young
+girl what you never told a word of to her parents, who trusted you like
+a son of their own?”
+
+He began walking about, up and down the room close under the open
+windows, churning up his bitter thoughts of me.
+
+“To put such thoughts into the child’s head,” continued he; “to spoil
+her peaceful maidenhood with talk about another man’s love; and such
+love, too,” he spoke scornfully now—“a love that is ready for any young
+woman. Oh, the misery in my poor little daughter’s face to-day at
+dinner—the misery, Paul! I thought you were one to be trusted—your
+father’s son too, to go and put such thoughts into the child’s mind;
+you two talking together about that man wishing to marry her.”
+
+I could not help remembering the pinafore, the childish garment which
+Phillis wore so long, as if her parents were unaware of her progress
+towards womanhood. Just in the same way the minister spoke and thought
+of her now, as a child, whose innocent peace I had spoiled by vain and
+foolish talk. I knew that the truth was different, though I could
+hardly have told it now; but, indeed, I never thought of trying to
+tell; it was far from my mind to add one iota to the sorrow which I had
+caused. The minister went on walking, occasionally stopping to move
+things on the table, or articles of furniture, in a sharp, impatient,
+meaningless way, then he began again,—
+
+“So young, so pure from the world! how could you go and talk to such a
+child, raising hopes, exciting feelings—all to end thus; and best so,
+even though I saw her poor piteous face look as it did. I can’t forgive
+you, Paul; it was more than wrong—it was wicked—to go and repeat that
+man’s words.”
+
+His back was now to the door, and, in listening to his low angry tones,
+he did not hear it slowly open, nor did he see Phillis, standing just
+within the room, until he turned round; then he stood still. She must
+have been half undressed; but she had covered herself with a dark
+winter cloak, which fell in long folds to her white, naked, noiseless
+feet. Her face was strangely pale: her eyes heavy in the black circles
+round them. She came up to the table very slowly, and leant her hand
+upon it, saying mournfully,—
+
+“Father, you must not blame Paul. I could not help hearing a great deal
+of what you were saying. He did tell me, and perhaps it would have been
+wiser not, dear Paul! But—oh, dear! oh, dear! I am so sick with shame!
+He told me out of his kind heart, because he saw—that I was so very
+unhappy at his going away.” She hung her head, and leant more heavily
+than before on her supporting hand.
+
+“I don’t understand,” said her father; but he was beginning to
+understand. Phillis did not answer till he asked her again. I could
+have struck him now for his cruelty; but then I knew all.
+
+“I loved him, father!” she said at length, raising her eyes to the
+minister’s face. “Had he ever spoken of love to you? Paul says not!”
+
+“Never.” She let fall her eyes, and drooped more than ever. I almost
+thought she would fall.
+
+“I could not have believed it,” said he, in a hard voice, yet sighing
+the moment he had spoken. A dead silence for a moment. “Paul! I was
+unjust to you. You deserved blame, but not all that I said.” Then again
+a silence. I thought I saw Phillis’s white lips moving, but it might
+have been the flickering of the candlelight—a moth had flown in through
+the open casement, and was fluttering round the flame; I might have
+saved it, but I did not care to do so, my heart was too full of other
+things. At any rate, no sound was heard for long endless minutes. Then
+he said,—“Phillis! did we not make you happy here? Have we not loved
+you enough?”
+
+She did not seem to understand the drift of this question; she looked
+up as if bewildered, and her beautiful eyes dilated with a painful,
+tortured expression. He went on, without noticing the look on her face;
+he did not see it, I am sure.
+
+“And yet you would have left us, left your home, left your father and
+your mother, and gone away with this stranger, wandering over the
+world.” He suffered, too; there were tones of pain in the voice in
+which he uttered this reproach. Probably the father and daughter were
+never so far apart in their lives, so unsympathetic. Yet some new
+terror came over her, and it was to him she turned for help. A shadow
+came over her face, and she tottered towards her father; falling down,
+her arms across his knees, and moaning out,—
+
+“Father, my head! my head!” and then slipped through his
+quick-enfolding arms, and lay on the ground at his feet.
+
+I shall never forget his sudden look of agony while I live; never! We
+raised her up; her colour had strangely darkened; she was insensible. I
+ran through the back-kitchen to the yard pump, and brought back water.
+The minister had her on his knees, her head against his breast, almost
+as though she were a sleeping child. He was trying to rise up with his
+poor precious burden, but the momentary terror had robbed the strong
+man of his strength, and he sank back in his chair with sobbing breath.
+
+“She is not dead, Paul! is she?” he whispered, hoarse, as I came near
+him. I, too, could not speak, but I pointed to the quivering of the
+muscles round her mouth. Just then cousin Holman, attracted by some
+unwonted sound, came down. I remember I was surprised at the time at
+her presence of mind, she seemed to know so much better what to do than
+the minister, in the midst of the sick affright which blanched her
+countenance, and made her tremble all over. I think now that it was the
+recollection of what had gone before; the miserable thought that
+possibly his words had brought on this attack, whatever it might be,
+that so unmanned the minister. We carried her upstairs, and while the
+women were putting her to bed, still unconscious, still slightly
+convulsed, I slipped out, and saddled one of the horses, and rode as
+fast as the heavy-trotting beast could go, to Hornby, to find the
+doctor there, and bring him back. He was out, might be detained the
+whole night. I remember saying, “God help us all!” as I sate on my
+horse, under the window, through which the apprentice’s head had
+appeared to answer my furious tugs at the night-bell. He was a
+good-natured fellow. He said,—
+
+“He may be home in half an hour, there’s no knowing; but I daresay he
+will. I’ll send him out to the Hope Farm directly he comes in. It’s
+that good-looking young woman, Holman’s daughter, that’s ill, isn’t
+it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“It would be a pity if she was to go. She’s an only child, isn’t she?
+I’ll get up, and smoke a pipe in the surgery, ready for the governor’s
+coming home. I might go to sleep if I went to bed again.”
+
+“Thank you, you’re a good fellow!” and I rode back almost as quickly as
+I came. It was a brain fever. The doctor said so, when he came in the
+early summer morning. I believe we had come to know the nature of the
+illness in the night-watches that had gone before. As to hope of
+ultimate recovery, or even evil prophecy of the probable end, the
+cautious doctor would be entrapped into neither. He gave his
+directions, and promised to come again; so soon, that this one thing
+showed his opinion of the gravity of the case.
+
+By God’s mercy she recovered, but it was a long, weary time first.
+According to previously made plans, I was to have gone home at the
+beginning of August. But all such ideas were put aside now, without a
+word being spoken. I really think that I was necessary in the house,
+and especially necessary to the minister at this time; my father was
+the last man in the world, under such circumstances, to expect me home.
+
+I say, I think I was necessary in the house. Every person (1 had almost
+said every creature, for all the dumb beasts seemed to know and love
+Phillis) about the place went grieving and sad, as though a cloud was
+over the sun. They did their work, each striving to steer clear of the
+temptation to eye-service, in fulfilment of the trust reposed in them
+by the minister. For the day after Phillis had been taken ill, he had
+called all the men employed on the farm into the empty barn; and there
+he had entreated their prayers for his only child; and then and there
+he had told them of his present incapacity for thought about any other
+thing in this world but his little daughter, lying nigh unto death, and
+he had asked them to go on with their daily labours as best they could,
+without his direction. So, as I say, these honest men did their work to
+the best of their ability, but they slouched along with sad and careful
+faces, coming one by one in the dim mornings to ask news of the sorrow
+that overshadowed the house; and receiving Betty’s intelligence, always
+rather darkened by passing through her mind, with slow shakes of the
+head, and a dull wistfulness of sympathy. But, poor fellows, they were
+hardly fit to be trusted with hasty messages, and here my poor services
+came in. One time I was to ride hard to Sir William Bentinck’s, and
+petition for ice out of his ice-house, to put on Phillis’s head.
+Another it was to Eltham I must go, by train, horse, anyhow, and bid
+the doctor there come for a consultation, for fresh symptoms had
+appeared, which Mr Brown, of Hornby, considered unfavourable. Many an
+hour have I sate on the window-seat, half-way up the stairs, close by
+the old clock, listening in the hot stillness of the house for the
+sounds in the sick-room. The minister and I met often, but spoke
+together seldom. He looked so old—so old! He shared the nursing with
+his wife; the strength that was needed seemed to be given to them both
+in that day. They required no one else about their child. Every office
+about her was sacred to them; even Betty only went into the room for
+the most necessary purposes. Once I saw Phillis through the open door;
+her pretty golden hair had been cut off long before; her head was
+covered with wet cloths, and she was moving it backwards and forwards
+on the pillow, with weary, never-ending motion, her poor eyes shut,
+trying in the old accustomed way to croon out a hymn tune, but
+perpetually breaking it up into moans of pain. Her mother sate by her,
+tearless, changing the cloths upon her head with patient solicitude. I
+did not see the minister at first, but there he was in a dark corner,
+down upon his knees, his hands clasped together in passionate prayer.
+Then the door shut, and I saw no more. One day he was wanted; and I had
+to summon him. Brother Robinson and another minister, hearing of his
+“trial”, had come to see him. I told him this upon the stair-landing in
+a whisper. He was strangely troubled.
+
+“They will want me to lay bare my heart. I cannot do it. Paul, stay
+with me. They mean well; but as for spiritual help at such a time—it is
+God only, God only, who can give it.
+
+So I went in with him. They were two ministers from the neighbourhood;
+both older than Ebenezer Holman; but evidently inferior to him in
+education and worldly position. I thought they looked at me as if I
+were an intruder, but remembering the minister’s words I held my
+ground, and took up one of poor Phillis’s books (of which I could not
+read a word) to have an ostensible occupation. Presently I was asked to
+“engage in prayer”, and we all knelt down; Brother Robinson “leading”,
+and quoting largely as I remember from the Book of Job. He seemed to
+take for his text, if texts are ever taken for prayers,
+
+“Behold thou hast instructed many; but now it is come upon thee, and
+thou faintest, it toucheth thee and thou art troubled.” When we others
+rose up, the minister continued for some minutes on his knees. Then he
+too got up, and stood facing us, for a moment, before we all sate down
+in conclave. After a pause Robinson began,—
+
+“We grieve for you, Brother Holman, for your trouble is great. But we
+would fain have you remember you are as a light set on a hill; and the
+congregations are looking at you with watchful eyes. We have been
+talking as we came along on the two duties required of you in this
+strait; Brother Hodgson and me. And we have resolved to exhort you on
+these two points. First, God has given you the opportunity of showing
+forth an example of resignation.” Poor Mr Holman visibly winced at this
+word. I could fancy how he had tossed aside such brotherly preachings
+in his happier moments; but now his whole system was unstrung, and
+“resignation” seemed a term which presupposed that the dreaded misery
+of losing Phillis was inevitable. But good stupid Mr Robinson went on.
+“We hear on all sides that there are scarce any hopes of your child’s
+recovery; and it may be well to bring you to mind of Abraham; and how
+he was willing to kill his only child when the Lord commanded. Take
+example by him, Brother Holman. Let us hear you say, ‘The Lord giveth
+and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!’”
+
+There was a pause of expectancy. I verily believe the minister tried to
+feel it; but he could not. Heart of flesh was too strong. Heart of
+stone he had not.
+
+“I will say it to my God, when He gives me strength,—when the day
+comes,” he spoke at last.
+
+The other two looked at each other, and shook their heads. I think the
+reluctance to answer as they wished was not quite unexpected. The
+minister went on “There are yet” he said, as if to himself. “God has
+given me a great heart for hoping, and I will not look forward beyond
+the hour.” Then turning more to them,—and speaking louder, he added:
+“Brethren, God will strengthen me when the time comes, when such
+resignation as you speak of is needed. Till then I cannot feel it; and
+what I do not feel I will not express; using words as if they were a
+charm.” He was getting chafed, I could see. He had rather put them out
+by these speeches of his; but after a short time and some more shakes
+of the head, Robinson began again,—
+
+“Secondly, we would have you listen to the voice of the rod, and ask
+yourself for what sins this trial has been laid upon you; whether you
+may not have been too much given up to your farm and your cattle;
+whether this world’s learning has not puffed you up to vain conceit and
+neglect of the things of God; whether you have not made an idol of your
+daughter?”
+
+“I cannot answer—I will not answer.” exclaimed the minister. “My sins I
+confess to God. But if they were scarlet (and they are so in His
+sight),” he added, humbly, “I hold with Christ that afflictions are not
+sent by God in wrath as penalties for sin.”
+
+“Is that orthodox, Brother Robinson?” asked the third minister, in a
+deferential tone of inquiry.
+
+Despite the minister’s injunction not to leave him, I thought matters
+were getting so serious that a little homely interruption would be more
+to the purpose than my continued presence, and I went round to the
+kitchen to ask for Betty’s help.
+
+“’Od rot “em!” said she; “they’re always a-coming at ill-convenient
+times; and they have such hearty appetites, they’ll make nothing of
+what would have served master and you since our poor lass has been ill.
+I’ve but a bit of cold beef in th’ house; but I’ll do some ham and
+eggs, and that “ll rout “em from worrying the minister. They’re a deal
+quieter after they’ve had their victual. Last time as old Robinson
+came, he was very reprehensible upon master’s learning, which he
+couldn’t compass to save his life, so he needn’t have been afeard of
+that temptation, and used words long enough to have knocked a body
+down; but after me and missus had given him his fill of victual, and
+he’d had some good ale and a pipe, he spoke just like any other man,
+and could crack a joke with me.”
+
+Their visit was the only break in the long weary days and nights. I do
+not mean that no other inquiries were made. I believe that all the
+neighbours hung about the place daily till they could learn from some
+out-comer how Phillis Holman was. But they knew better than to come up
+to the house, for the August weather was so hot that every door and
+window was kept constantly open, and the least sound outside penetrated
+all through. I am sure the cocks and hens had a sad time of it; for
+Betty drove them all into an empty barn, and kept them fastened up in
+the dark for several days, with very little effect as regarded their
+crowing and clacking. At length came a sleep which was the crisis, and
+from which she wakened up with a new faint life. Her slumber had lasted
+many, many hours. We scarcely dared to breathe or move during the time;
+we had striven to hope so long, that we were sick at heart, and durst
+not trust in the favourable signs: the even breathing, the moistened
+skin, the slight return of delicate colour into the pale, wan lips. I
+recollect stealing out that evening in the dusk, and wandering down the
+grassy lane, under the shadow of the over-arching elms to the little
+bridge at the foot of the hill, where the lane to the Hope Farm joined
+another road to Hornby. On the low parapet of that bridge I found
+Timothy Cooper, the stupid, half-witted labourer, sitting, idly
+throwing bits of mortar into the brook below. He just looked up at me
+as I came near, but gave me no greeting either by word or gesture. He
+had generally made some sign of recognition to me, but this time I
+thought he was sullen at being dismissed. Nevertheless I felt as if it
+would be a relief to talk a little to some one, and I sate down by him.
+While I was thinking how to begin, he yawned weariedly.
+
+“You are tired, Tim?” said I.
+
+“Ay,” said he. “But I reckon I may go home now.” “Have you been sitting
+here long?”
+
+“Welly all day long. Leastways sin’ seven i’ th’ morning.” “Why, what
+in the world have you been doing?” “Nought.”
+
+“Why have you been sitting here, then?”
+
+“T’ keep carts off.” He was up now, stretching himself, and shaking his
+lubberly limbs.
+
+“Carts! what carts?”
+
+“Carts as might ha’ wakened yon wench! It’s Hornby market day. I reckon
+yo’re no better nor a half-wit yoursel’.” He cocked his eye at me as if
+he were gauging my intellect.
+
+“And have you been sitting here all day to keep the lane quiet?”
+
+“Ay. I’ve nought else to do. Th’ minister has turned me adrift. Have
+yo’ heard how thv lass is faring to-night?”
+
+“They hope she’ll waken better for this long sleep. Good night to you,
+and God bless you, Timothy,” said I.
+
+He scarcely took any notice of my words, as he lumbered across a Stile
+that led to his cottage. Presently I went home to the farm. Phillis had
+stirred, had spoken two or three faint words. Her mother was with her,
+dropping nourishment into her scarce conscious mouth. The rest of the
+household were summoned to evening prayer for the first time for many
+days. It was a return to the daily habits of happiness and health. But
+in these silent days our very lives had been an unspoken prayer. Now we
+met in the house-place, and looked at each other with strange
+recognition of the thankfulness on all our faces. We knelt down; we
+waited for the minister’s voice. He did not begin as usual. He could
+not; he was choking. Presently we heard the strong man’s sob. Then old
+John turned round on his knees, and said,—
+
+“Minister, I reckon we have blessed the Lord wi’ all our souls, though
+we’ve ne’er talked about it; and maybe He’ll not need spoken words this
+night. God bless us all, and keep our Phillis safe from harm! Amen.”
+Old John’s impromptu prayer was all we had that night.
+
+“Our Phillis,” as he called her, grew better day by day from that time.
+Not quickly; I sometimes grew desponding, and feared that she would
+never be what she had been before; no more she has, in some ways.
+
+I seized an early opportunity to tell the minister about Timothy
+Cooper’s unsolicited watch on the bridge during the long summer’s day.
+
+“God forgive me!” said the minister. “I have been too proud in my own
+conceit. The first steps I take out of this house shall be to Cooper’s
+cottage.”
+
+I need hardly say Timothy was reinstated in his place on the farm; and
+I have often since admired the patience with which his master tried to
+teach him how to do the easy work which was henceforward carefully
+adjusted to his capacity. Phillis was carried down-stairs, and lay for
+hour after hour quite silent on the great sofa, drawn up under the
+windows of the house-place. She seemed always the same, gentle, quiet,
+and sad. Her energy did not return with her bodily strength. It was
+sometimes pitiful to see her parents’ vain endeavours to rouse her to
+interest. One day the minister brought her a set of blue ribbons,
+reminding her with a tender smile of a former conversation in which she
+had owned to a love of such feminine vanities. She spoke gratefully to
+him, but when he was gone she laid them on one side, and languidly shut
+her eyes. Another time I saw her mother bring her the Latin and Italian
+books that she had been so fond of before her illness—or, rather,
+before Holdsworth had gone away. That was worst of all. She turned her
+face to the wall, and cried as soon as her mother’s back was turned.
+Betty was laying the cloth for the early dinner. Her sharp eyes saw the
+state of the case.
+
+“Now, Phillis!” said she, coming up to the sofa; “we ha’ done a’ we can
+for you, and th’ doctors has done a’ they can for you, and I think the
+Lord has done a’ He can for you, and more than you deserve, too, if you
+don’t do something for yourself. If I were you, I’d rise up and snuff
+the moon, sooner than break your father’s and your mother’s hearts wi’
+watching and waiting till it pleases you to fight your own way back to
+cheerfulness. There, I never favoured long preachings, and I’ve said my
+say.”
+
+A day or two after Phillis asked me, when we were alone, if I thought
+my father and mother would allow her to go and stay with them for a
+couple of months. She blushed a little as she faltered out her wish for
+change of thought and scene.
+
+“Only for a short time, Paul. Then—we will go back to the peace of the
+old days. I know we shall; I can, and I will!”
+
+
+
+
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