Phemie Keller

It was drawing towards the close of the year 1856 (there may be some among my readers who can recollect what a dull, foggy, cheerless ending that year had), when one morning the post to Marshlands brought with it an Indian letter for Captain Stondon.

The post often brought Indian letters there—long letters (for though the writer addressed his epistles to Captain Stondon, he knew they would be read by Phemie), full of descriptions of the country, of his occupations, of his prospects, of his hopes.

Nearly three years had elapsed since Basil’s departure, but time made no difference in the regularity of his correspondence. Let him be busy or the reverse, the young man still found leisure to despatch his budget of news. Perhaps he felt that on those letters Phemie lived; that her existence was only rendered supportable by the excitement of waiting for his missives, and hearing them read aloud; that she loved the sight of his handwriting as she had once loved the sight of himself; that she counted up the days as they came and went—counted how long it was since the arrival of his last letter, how long it would be before the advent of his next. The time had passed with her somehow; she was no longer the girl Phemie; she had changed from the young wife, from the beautiful gracious hostess, to a quiet, undemonstrative woman, who tried with all her heart and all her soul to do her duty.

It had come to that—for lack of explanation—even because of her husband’s excessive tenderness and consideration, she found she could only give him duty, never love. Her lover was gone from her—she had driven him away! Her lover, who had not married Miss Derno after all, who had loved her, her only—Phemie Stondon, who now sat with her hands folded, and her untasted breakfast before her, waiting for the news which Captain Stondon appeared unusually loth to communicate.

When he went away she vowed she would never ask a question concerning him, and so far she never had; but now she saw something in her husband’s face which impelled her to say—

“Is Basil ill—is there anything the matter?”

Captain Stondon looked at his wife as she spoke, and seeing her pale, anxious countenance—her eager, earnest expression, turned sick as he answered—“He is ill; he is coming back to England. You see what he says.” And he tossed the letter over to her, and then got up and walked to the window, and looked out, with such feelings of bitterness swelling in his heart as were only imagined by God and himself.

He made no man his confidant; but the knowledge that had come to him among the pines, while the autumn wind moaned through the branches, and went sobbing away into the night, had whitened his hair, and bowed his head, and taken the pride and the trust and the happiness out of his heart. He had his wife safe—as the world calls safety; there was no speck on her honour, so far as the world knew. Yet no time could ever make her seem to him as she had been—the Phemie he had held to his heart among the hills. The pure, innocent, guileless Phemie had gone, and left him in her stead a woman, whose thoughts morning, noon, and night, were wandering over the sea; who loved Basil as she had never loved him; whom he could not accuse of perfidy, because she had not been false; to whom he dared not speak of his sorrow, because he dreaded seeing her face change and change at finding her secret discovered, her trouble known.

And all the time Phemie was wishing that by any means he and she could come nearer to each other again—that she could show him more love, more attention, greater attachment. She was very wretched, and she wanted some one to comfort her; it made her miserable to notice his whitening hair, his bent head, his feeble steps, his failing health; she thought of him now with a tenderness such as she had never felt for him in the years before any one came between them; and if she could by any will or act of her own have kept her thoughts from wandering away to that man in the far-off land, she would have done so.