Captain Stondon

“ Phemie was pretty too; would she die young? Mr. Stondon, looking into her face, would have helped that selfish question presenting itself if he could; but if Phemie was nice, Marshlands was nicer; and though he did not blame Captain Stondon for marrying her, it was impossible for him to avoid speculating on what might yet be if she were to die.
“It would kill him,” considered the barrister. “How mercenary poverty makes a man! how good people who have plenty of money ought to be!” ”

“ Aggland was right; but Captain Stondon, with his heart full of generous projects, with a vivid memory of all he owed to the farmer’s care and kindness, felt that this constant assertion of independence—this everlasting refusal to come up and stand on the same level with himself—was irritating in the extreme.
205It is so hard to have one’s best intention doubted—to see people thinking they are wiser and better than everybody else on earth—to have good gifts tossed back in one’s face, that Captain Stondon often felt inclined to tell Mr. Aggland that independence may be carried far too far ”

“ And the young man went through a pantomime of shivering as he spoke.
“And how do you like Captain Stondon?” asked Miss Derno.
“He is one of the most delightful old men that was ever ruled by a young wife,” answered Basil Stondon, laughing. “How did she happen to marry him? Why, a woman like that might have aspired to a coronet.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Miss Derno. “Excuse me, Basil, but really men are so very foolish. ”

“ Every crag and peak of Skillanscar shone in the bright rays of the glory wherein the whole landscape was steeped; and Captain Stondon, who had sat himself down amongst the heather to watch to its close this sunset amid the mountains, acknowledged to his heart that he had never seen anything in the way of scenery which so thoroughly satisfied and filled his soul as the smiling valley and the desolate hills—the gloomy ravine and the grey rugged mountains, on all of which the sun poured his light as though he were blessing the green earth ere leaving her to darkness and repose. ”

“ All the disagreeable things in life have always fallen to me to do or to say! It is your own wife, Captain Stondon, whom Basil loves. I have spoken.”
She had spoken with a vengeance. A man standing in her shoes would have measured his length in the road; but a woman was as safe with Captain Stondon from retort as from injury.
“You must be mistaken, Miss Derno,” he said, when he could speak, and those were the only words he uttered. She never made him an answer; and they parted when they stood in front of Marshlands without another sentence being spoken. ”

“ Hitherto, though I have spoken of the promise of her beauty, I have said little of herself, and less of the kind of existence hers had been from childhood, until Captain Stondon met her in Tordale church. She is thinking of her past as she sits in the gathering darkness; thinking as she leans her head against the window-frame, and listens to the wind howling among the mountains, and the rain beating over the beautiful valley below—at one and the same moment of when she will be a woman, and of when she was a child. ”

“ There was a colour in her face which seemed to imply that she had heard likewise; but, half-an-hour afterwards, when she and all her cousins, Duncan included, accompanied their guest up the hill and over the heather to Strammer Tarn, her step was as light and her laugh rang out as clear as though there were no such thing as marrying or giving in marriage on earth.
“A nice fate truly,” thought Captain Stondon, savagely; “to keep a girl like that making butter and darning stockings all her life. Such hair, such features, such a complexion, such grace wasted on a raw-boned Cumberland lout. ”

“ My opinion is, that a man worth calling a man, ought to be able to say he owes all he owns, all he has enjoyed, to no other man living,—only to God and himself.”
“But God makes men his instruments,” suggested Captain Stondon.
“He may; but I doubt it,” replied Mr. Aggland; “at least, I think we have no right to say the instruments we deliberately choose for ourselves were put in our way by the Almighty. Look at me. Should not I have been a happier man had no one ever said to me, ‘Come out of your station, and be a gentleman, Aggland?’ A gentleman, good lack, a gentleman?” ”

“ Already Captain Stondon had found that the position of his wife’s family in the social scale placed him in an awkward dilemma. There are always certain embarrassments entailed by differences of rank which are felt by Love the moment he walks out of doors with the lady of his choice.
The world cares for Mammon, though Cupid may not. Society is apt to make merry over the ways and manners of those who are not the crême de la crême, while the happy pair are absorbed in one another. ”

“ Keller; “but perhaps, my love, if you were as young and handsome as Mrs. Stondon, people might fetch and carry for you, too.”
“Now that is precisely what I meant about Captain Stondon. He would never have made a speech like that even to his own wife; he would never be rude, unmanly, brutal. And as for Mrs. Stondon,” burst out Mrs. Keller in an accession of indignation, “some people might call her handsome, but I don’t. She has not an atom of colour in her face, nor a bit of flesh on her bones. I wonder she does not rouge. It would make her look a little less like a ghost.” ”

“ Had he pressed the point, Captain Stondon would have got him some appointment; but even supposing none of these roads open, he ought to have left Phemie; ought to have been man enough to say, “I will not bring sorrow on her; let the future hold what it may for me.” ”

“ The wedding at Tordale would have shocked the sensitive nerves of Captain Stondon’s intimates; and, accordingly, prudently and sensibly 227he refrained from making himself a laughing-stock among his friends.
When we are at Rome we do as Rome does. When we are in the world we conform to its usages; and though Captain Stondon was marrying out of the world, he still meant to return to the world and take his bride thither with him.
The absence of all hypercritical guests was best for both Phemie and her uncle. ”

“ She would try to get rid of Basil; but Captain Stondon did not want Basil to leave Marshlands. She would never be alone with him. How was it possible for her always to have some one at her elbow?
And besides, it was so hard—so hard! He loved her so much; better than Captain Stondon had ever done! Better? Down on your knees, Phemie, and pray God to deliver you from such love that would drag you down to hell. Better? There is a love which can love a woman better 156than itself; but of such a love Basil Stondon knew nothing. ”

“ Some thought of this kind passed through Captain Stondon’s mind even while he answered—
“Your argument will bear turning. A peer may be as happy as a peasant; the wife of a rich man as happy as the wife of a poor. If I have found my Bathmendi in Tordale, there is surely no reason why I should not carry it back with me to Marshlands. God knows I have waited long 141and travelled far. Do not send me out again into the world—desolate.” ”

“ By degrees she began to ask questions, and to listen with interest to his answers; almost imperceptibly she came to see that, though Captain Stondon might not be a lord, he was a grand personage—a wealthy gentleman for all that. He was doing her an honour, and a man has travelled a long way towards success when he makes a woman feel this.
“He could get many a great lady to marry him,” thought Phemie, and she felt grateful to him for choosing her. He would give her money to buy toys for the children—a microscope or a telescope for her uncle, and a gown for Peggy M‘Nab. ”

“ When a man goes out to India, he is expected to stay there, and he has no right to come back to stand in the way of his relations. I wish I was twenty years younger, I would show Captain Stondon how a man may get on without Marshlands: but Basil shall work. 255He shall not lead the life I have done. If I could but get rid of these cursed liabilities, I would think about him.”
“Perhaps Captain Stondon would do something,” suggested the lady.
“He only paid for his education when he was single,” retorted the barrister; “do you think he will do more now he is married?” ”

“ Captain Stondon looked across at Skillanscar, and along the defile to the broken stone bridge, ere he 132began to say, in a voice so low that it almost seemed as though he were telling some secret which he feared being overheard—
“I have not been quite frank with you, Mr. Aggland. I wish to do something for Duncan, but I want much more earnestly to do something for myself. Will you aid me in the matter? May I count on your help?” ”

“ He improves his lands for others; he sows that strangers may reap; the very backbone is taken out of his existence, and he loses interest in the place of which he is a tenant-at-will.
And yet Captain Stondon only repined at times at this want in the full measure of his happiness. He was in the main a good man and a just; and he needed no divine to tell him that if children were from the Lord, the lonely hearth was of Him likewise.
And for this reason, if Phemie continued to like Marshlands, he would wander no more. ”

“ The mysteries of human nature are inexplicable; its inconsistencies are never ending. For 7any outsider even to attempt to describe all Captain Stondon had thought and felt about his wife and Basil—about Basil and his mother—about himself and Phemie, would be useless. I can only say that he was sorry and he was glad at the news contained in Basil’s note. He had been wretched about the young man; Mrs. Montague Stondon made his life a weariness concerning her son. He felt that if Basil died abroad he should feel as though he had almost two deaths to answer for. ”

“ Aggland turned him to his work again, muttering Otway’s opinion, “‘The worst thing an old man can be is a lover.’”
It was not the worst thing imaginable, however, for Captain Stondon; it was well for him to have an object given to his objectless life; well for him to have some one to think of beside himself; well for him to have at last a definite hope in existence: 185and sitting all alone by the fire, the officer was dreaming some pleasant dreams, and thinking himself far from unfortunate, when Phemie turned the handle of the door and entered shyly. ”

“ It is no more trouble, and it is no more expense; and although Captain Stondon talks so much about not caring for society, I know he 260would not like to spend an evening tête-à-tête with us. That is the way with all those kind of men. They do not know what they want! If the bride acquits herself creditably he will be as proud as a peacock, and it shall not be my fault if she do not.”
“Nor mine,” added Mr. Stondon, for all which kind intentions Phemie would have been duly grateful had she only known of them. ”

“ Aggland. “Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits;” but the sentence did not flow glibly off his tongue, and the farmer stood for a moment after he had answered Captain Stondon, looking with his outward eyes it is true down the fair valley of Tordale, but trying with his mental vision to penetrate into the future which had suddenly become so misty and uncertain. ”

“ Even his wife was astonished into saying that if Phemie had done the socks, the 107other things could “let be;” while Captain Stondon, reading in his host’s face something of what was passing within, woke at the same moment to a vague kind of comprehension that he had dug up his heart from the dead woman’s grave, that he had swerved from the old allegiance at last, and that he was as hopelessly in love with a pair of bright eyes, with a glory of auburn hair, with a young, young girl, as the most foolish lad of nineteen.
Well! well! a man may catch a fever at any age. ”

“ Many people were already making inquiries as to the amount of personalty Captain Stondon had left behind him, and how he had disposed of it—whilst the value of Roundwood was known to a shilling. Those ladies who had brothers or sons anxious to marry a wife able to contribute her share towards the expenses of a household, ventured finally to remark to Mr. Aggland that they thought dear Mrs. Stondon was leading too much the life of a hermit, and that a little society, “not exactly society, but merely seeing a few intimate friends, would be extremely good for her.” ”

“ Get Basil an appointment. In Mrs. Stondon’s state of health she ought to have no strangers near her: and besides, Basil will not take kindly to work after all this idleness. He was lazy enough when he came here; what he will be after this long holiday I am afraid to think.”
“But Basil is the next heir, Miss Derno,” answered Captain Stondon; “I do not see why he should work. I will speak to him about dragging Phemie out. She need not stand on ceremony with him as though he were a stranger. It is only his anxiety for her to get well that 159makes him urge her to be constantly in the open air.” ”

“ Blood is thicker than water, after all, Phemie; and I should never forgive myself if Basil went wrong too. You will help me, love, will you not? But you have said you will, and that is enough. He is so young, and he has all his lifetime before him still, and it would be a sin not to help him at this juncture, when he most needs assistance from some one.”
Captain Stondon sighed as he said this. It seemed such a fine thing for a man to have his lifetime before him, and not to be tasting his 59first cup of happiness when the evening shadows were stealing on! ”