Emily Sarah Holt

“ Mr Derwent took upon himself the responsibility of the kettle, and chatted pleasantly enough with Phoebe, to whom the other damsels were only too glad to leave all trouble. He walked home with her, insisting with playful persistence upon carrying her scarf and the little basket which she had brought for wild flowers; talked to her about his mother and sisters, his own future prospects as a younger son who must make his way in the world for himself, and took pains to make himself generally agreeable and interesting. Under his kindly notice Phoebe opened like a flower to the sun. ”

“ Oh, I say, Rhoda! you may have Marcus Welles, if you want him. There’s another fellow turned up, with a thousand a year more, that will suit me better.”
“Indeed! I thank you!” said Rhoda, with a little toss of her head.
“My dear Mrs Molly, you are so diverting,” smiled Madam.
“You don’t say so!” rejoined that fascinating young person. “You’ll put on your Sunday bombazine, Rhoda. We’re all going to be as fine as fiddlers. As for you”—and Molly’s bold eyes surveyed Phoebe, seeming to take in the whole at a glance—“it won’t matter. You aren’t an heiress, so you can come in rags.” ”

“ We cannot as concerns ourselves; how then shall we judge for others?”
“I wonder what Rhoda will do now?” suggested Phoebe, after a minute’s silence.
She looked up, and saw an expression, which was the mixture of pity and amusement, on Mrs Dorothy’s lips. The amusement died away, but the pity remained and grew deeper.
“Can you guess, Mrs Dolly?”
“‘Lord, and what shall this man do?’ You know the answer, Phoebe.”
“Yes, I know: but— Mrs Dorothy, would you not like to know the future?”
“Certainly not, dear child. I am very thankful for the mist which my Father hath cast as a veil over my eyes.” ”

“ Gatty’s grey eyes filled with tears.
“That is just what I do want, Mrs Dolly,” she said, “somewhere where I could be quiet, and be let alone, and just be myself and not somebody else.”
“Ah, my dear!” said Mrs Dorothy, shaking her head, “you never get let alone in this world. Satan won’t let you alone, if men do. But to be yourself—that is what God wants of you. At least ’tis one half of what He would have; the other half is that you should give yourself to Him.”
“’Tis no good praying,” said Gatty, as before. ”

“ Phoebe, you tell me,—did he mean that?”
“O Rhoda! poor Rhoda! I am afraid he did!” said Phoebe, as distinctly as tears would let her.
“But, my dear,” interposed Mrs Latrobe, remonstratingly, “surely you cannot be surprised? When Mr Welles engaged himself to you, it was (as he thought) to the heiress of a large estate. You could not expect him to encumber himself with a wife who brought him less than one year’s income of his own. ’Tis not reasonable, child. No man in his senses would do such a thing. We live in the world, my dear,—not in Utopia.” ”

“ Every man you come across is an avaricious, designing creature. Oh dear! ’tis a weary weary world, and ’tis no good living!”
“Yes, Rhoda dear, there is one good in living, and ’tis always left to us, whatever we may lose,” said Phoebe, earnestly. “Don’t you remember what the Lord Jesus said to His disciples—‘My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me?’ There is always that, Rhoda.” ”

“ Mrs Dorothy busied herself for a moment in putting the cups together on her little tea-tray. Then she came over to Phoebe.
“Little maid!” she said, lovingly, “there are some of us women for whom no love is safe, saving the love of Him that died for us. If we have it otherwise, we go wrong and set up idols in our hearts. Art thou one of those, Phoebe?”
“I don’t know!” sobbed Phoebe. “How can I know?”
“Dear child, He knows. Canst thou not trust Him? ‘Dieu est ton Berger.’ The Shepherd takes more care of the sheep, Phoebe, than the sheep take care of themselves. ”

“ Phoebe blushed. “I know you think I have it,” she replied. “But I should not wish to be like Mrs Marcella.”
“I think thy temptation lies that way, dear child. But thy disposition is not so light and frivolous as hers. However, we will not talk of our neighbours without we praise them.”
“Mrs Dorothy, Rhoda has engaged herself to Mr Marcus Welles. Madam sent me down to tell all of you.”
“She has, has she?” responded Mrs Dorothy, as if it were quite what she expected. “Well, I trust it may be for her good.” ”

“ Couldn’t you have kept rooms in the Abbey for yourself, and still have given all to your cousin?”
“I’d rather have this,” said Phoebe, with a smile. “I am more independent, you see; and I have kept what my grandmother meant me to have, so that, please God, I trust I shall never want, and can still help my friends when they need it. I can walk in the park, and enjoy the gardens, just as well as ever; and Rhoda will be glad to see me, I know, any time when I want a chat with her.”
“I should think so, indeed!” cried Mrs Jane. “Most thankless woman in the world if she wasn’t.” ”

“ A maid has no station in society!” said Rhoda, using a phrase which she had picked up from one of her grandfather’s books.
“My dear, your station is where God puts you. A maid has just as good a station as a wife; and a much pleasanter, to my thinking.”
“Pleasanter!” exclaimed Rhoda. “Why, Mrs Dolly, nobody thinks anything of an old maid, except to pity her.”
“They may keep their pity to themselves,” said Mrs Dorothy, with a little laugh. “We old maids can pity them back again, and with more reason.” ”

“ There is a great deal in giving names to things. So long as you call your pride self-respect and high spirit, you will reckon yourself much better than you are; and so long as you call your discontent low spirits or vapours, you will reckon yourself worse used than you are. Don’t split on that rock, Phoebe. The worst thing you can do with wounds is to keep pulling off the bandage to see how they are getting on; and the worst thing you can do with griefs and wrongs is to nurse them and brood over them. ”

“ Thou art but a young traveller; and such mostly long for some company. Yet, bethink thee, my dear, I can but be sorry for thee, while the Lord can help thee. He is the best to trust, child.”
“Yes, I know,” whispered Phoebe. “You are so good, Mrs Dorothy!”
“Now for the story!” said Rhoda, dancing into the little parlour. “You’ve had oceans of time to dry your eyes. I have been to Mrs Jane, and Mrs Clarissa, and my Lady Betty; and I’ve had a dish of tea with each one. I shall turn into a tea-plant presently. Now I’m ready, Mrs Dorothy; go on!” ”

“ Ah, child, one day thy heaviest cause of thankfulness may be that in this or that matter—perchance in the matter that most closely engaged thee in this life—thy Father did not give thee the desire of thine heart.”
“Yet that is promised as a blessing?” said Phoebe, interrogatively, looking up.
“As a blessing, dear child, when thy will is God’s will. Can it be any blessing, when thy will and His run contrary the one to the other?” ”

“ But He was tenderness itself.”
“I don’t think women always are tender,” said Phoebe.
“My dear,” said Mrs Dorothy, “you may laugh at me, but I am very much out of conceit with my own sex. A good woman is a very precious thing, Phoebe; the rather since ’tis so rare. But an empty, foolish, frivolous woman is a sad, sad sight to see. Methinks I could scarce bear with such, but for four words that I see, as it were, graven on their brows,—‘For whom Christ died.’”
“Very good!” said Mrs Latrobe. “I will not conceal from you, Phoebe, that I am extreme gratified with this decision of Lady Betty. ”

“ Madam, in a superb costume of black satin, trimmed with dark fur and white lace, took her seat in the place of honour. Rhoda, in a satin gown and hood, with a silk petticoat, all black, as became the day, sat on the small seat at one side of the door. But Rhoda sat with her face to the horses, while the yet lower place opposite was reserved for Phoebe, in her unpretending mourning. The great coach rumbled off, out of the grand gates, always opened when Madam was present, past the ruins of the Abbey Church, and drew up before a row of six little houses, fronted by six little gardens. ”

“ Dear child, how can you love any, and not know it?”
“But that is quite another sort of love!” cried Gatty.
“There is no sort but one, my dear. Love is love.”
“Oh, but we can’t love God!” said Gatty, as if the idea quite shocked her. “That means—it means reverence, you know, and duty, and so on. It can’t mean anything else, Mrs Dorothy.”
Mrs Dorothy knitted very fast for a moment. Phoebe saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
“Poor lost sheep!” she said, in a grieved voice. “Poor straying lamb, whom the wolf hath taught to be frightened of the Shepherd! ”

“ What is thy trouble?”
“I have two or three troubles,” said Phoebe, sighing. “You know Rhoda is going to-morrow to Delawarr Court; and I am to go with her. I wish I need not!”
“Why, dear child?”
“Well, I am afraid it must sound silly,” answered Phoebe, with a little laugh at herself; “but really, I can scarce tell why. Do you never feel thus unwilling to do a thing, Mrs Dorothy, almost without reason?”
“Ah, there is a reason,” said the old lady: “and it comes either from your body or your mind, Phoebe. If ’tis from your body, let your mind govern it in any matter you must do. ”

“ If we have lost Mr Welles, we have lost him; and we must try for some one else. Oh dear, how hot it is! Phoebe, I wonder when you will have any sense. I do beseech you, my dear, never to play the same game with anyone else. ”

“ Phoebe tasted, for the first time in her life, the flattering ease of being waited on, instead of waiting on others; the delicate pleasure of being listened to, instead of snubbed and disregarded; the intellectual treat of finding one who was willing to exchange ideas with her, rather than only to impart ideas to her. Was it any wonder if Osmund Derwent began to form a nucleus in her thoughts, round which gathered a floating island of fair fancies and golden visions, all the more beautiful because they were vague? ”

“ Madam was impulsive; she had already surprised people by taking up with Phoebe at all; and Rhoda might displease her. In consequence of these reflections, though Phoebe was generally left unnoticed, yet occasionally Lady Delawarr warmed into affability, and cultivated the girl who might, after all, come to be the heiress of Madam’s untold wealth. For Lady Delawarr’s mind was essentially of the earth, earthy; gold had for her a value far beyond goodness, and pleasantness of disposition or purity of mind were not for a moment to be set in comparison with a suite of pearls. ”

“ She contemplated the prospect of a month in that young lady’s company with unmitigated repugnance.
“Well, Mrs Molly, my dear,—as smart as ever!” remarked Madam, turning to Molly with a smile. “All right, old witch!” said Molly. And to Phoebe’s astonishment, Madam smiled on, and did not resent the impertinence.
“Well!—how do you like Gatty and Molly?” said Rhoda to Phoebe, when they were safe in their own room.
“Pretty well, Mrs Gatty,” replied Phoebe, leaving the question of Molly undecided.
“Don’t you like Molly?” demanded Rhoda, laughing. “Ah! I see. She’s rather too clever to please you.” ”

“ Well, there came an old lord,—a man of sixty or seventy,—who has led a wild rakish life all these years, and now he thinks ’tis time to settle down, and he wants me to help him to make people think he’s become respectable. And they say I shall marry him. Phoebe, they say I must,—there is to be no help for it. And I can’t bear him to look at me. If he touches my glove, I want to fling it into the fire when it comes off. And this one month, here, at White-Ladies, is my last quiet time. When I go home—if Betty be recovered of her distemper—I am to be married to this old man in a week’s time. ”

“ I feel as sure as if I had seen it.”
“O my dear!” came in a gently deprecating tone from Mrs Eleanor.
“Oh, I am positive!” repeated Mrs Clarissa, whose mind possessed the odd power of forcing conviction on itself by simple familiarity with an idea. “Everything discovers so many symptoms of it. I cannot but be infinitely certain. Down, Pug, down!” as Cupid’s successor, which was not a dog, but a very small monkey, endeavoured to jump into her lap.
“Well, till I know the truth is otherwise, I shall give Mrs Phoebe credit for all,” observed Mrs Eleanor. ”

“ You did not find that in the Bible, my dear.”
“Oh, but words don’t mean the same in the Bible!” urged Gatty. “Surely, Mrs Dorothy, ’twould be quite unreverent to think so.”
“Surely, my dear, it were more unreverent to think that God does not mean what He saith. When He saith, ‘I will punish you seven times for your sins,’ He means it, Mrs Gatty. And when He saith, ‘I will be a Father unto you,’ shall we say He doth not mean it? O my dear, don’t do Him such an injury as that!”
“Do God an injury!” said Gatty in an awed whisper.
“Ay, a cruel injury!” was the answer. “Men are always injuring God. ”

“ Before the last word was well out of Kitty’s lips, Molly’s small, bright scissors were snapped within an inch of Kitty’s nose.
“Perhaps you would have the goodness to say that again, Mrs Catherine Mainwaring!” observed that young person, in decidedly menacing tones.
“Thank you, no, I don’t care to do,” replied Kitty, laughing, but shrinking back from the scissors.
“When I say I will do a thing, I will do it, Madam!” retorted Molly.
“If you can, I suppose,” said Kitty, defending herself from another threatening snap. ”

“ But a will that was made before either you or me was born—” Rhoda’s grammar always suffered from her excitement—“can’t be your fault, nor anybody else’s. But ’tis a shame, for all that. She’d no business to let me go on all these years, expecting to have everything, and knew all the while her will wasn’t right made. ’Tis too bad! My Lady Betty!—Mrs Dorothy!—don’t you think so?”
“My dear,” said Lady Betty, “I am indeed grieved for your disappointment. But there is decorum, my dear Mrs Rhoda—there is decorum!” ”

“ And therefore cannot feel for a woman as though He had been,—is that thy meaning, dear? Nay, Phoebe, I believe He was the only creature that ever dwelt on earth in whom were the essential elements both of man and woman. He took His flesh of the woman only. The best part of each was in Him,—the strength and intelligence of the man, the love and tenderness of the woman. ’Tis modish to say women are tender, Phoebe; more modish than true. Many are soft, but few are tender. ”