Hubert's Wife Part 2

CHAPTER IV.

PHILIP ST. LEGER.

Duncan Lisle, at once thoroughly aroused, laid his sleeping child upon the lounge, and then hastily opening the door, which led upon the veranda, encountered the bronzed face and flashing eyes of his brother-inlaw, Philip St. Leger. Now this gentleman from Turkey was not a ghost, nor had he rained down. A staunch ship had brought him from Constantinople to New York; a week he had spent with his friends at Troy; the lightning express, then so-called, from the latter city to Richmond; thence a stage had set him down at Flat-Rock; here, public conveyance went no farther. The best and only means of transportation was on horseback. The roads were in too wretched a condition for the "Bald Eagle's" one rickety carriage to attempt to plough through.

The returned missionary, almost distracted with care and fatigue, made a virtue of necessity. With black Sam as guide, he set off amid the rain and darkness for Kennons.

"It were better," he said, mentally, "that I should myself remain until the morning; but having come so far, so near, I should be on thorns; I must go."

Philip St. Leger was not a Virginian by birth. He was a native of the city at whose distinguished school Della Lisle had graduated. Only on the day of graduation and at the time of her marriage had the brother and husband of Della met.

It was a sad meeting now, on this dreary night. These men, still in the flush of manhood, clasped hands, and looked into each others' eyes, with a despairing, inquiring eagerness.

Their chill fingers were scarce unlocked when Duncan asked:

"And did you come alone?"

"I brought her child; but Della-- I left her sleeping beneath the shadow of the minarets."

Duncan stamped his foot. His cup of sorrow had been full. He had quaffed with what patience possible its bitter draughts, and still were they poured in afresh.

"I wrote you particulars of her death a year ago: I learned at Flat-Rock that you never have received the mournful tidings. I learned also"--but his voice trembled, and he could not go on.

"Of the sudden death of my wife. Good G.o.d! it may as well be spoken.

Yes, she was to-day buried out of my sight."

"O, my friend, speak not with such wildness."

"But all is gone--all but dreary, wretched, useless life. O, what a world!"

"See here, my good brother," said the missionary, in a more cheerful tone, "I have come a long journey; I am tired to death, wet through, hungry, and cold."

Before he had finished, Duncan's hand had rang the bell violently. His right-hand man, Grandison, appeared. In a brief s.p.a.ce of time, the fire was replenished, dry clothes produced, a small table of refreshments spread in the same cheery room, and the missionary, with commendable zeal, proceeded to refresh the inner man.

Duncan paced the floor in a desperate manner. The missionary paused amidst his slices of cold chicken and ham, and thus addressed him:

"My friend, I am greatly distressed for you, but that helps you nothing.

I have been through the same fiery trial; and I not only believed, but wished I might not survive the ordeal. I would not eat nor sleep, but grieved incessantly. It was so sudden, so unforeseen. Was it not singular that Della and Ellice, loving each other so well, should have gone so near each other and in the same way? That is hardest of all; martyrs were they in a true sense. But I had a friend, who aroused, warned, and induced me to eat, sleep, and go on with the duties of life.

After one first great effort it is easier. If one must suffer, he may a.s.suage his pain by bearing it bravely. The over-tending of a wound may produce worst consequences. Exposure to the air, frequent ablutions, occasional frictions, create healing processes, reduce sensitiveness, and restore somewhat of the old life and vigor. I dare say you have not eaten a mouthful to-day; come eat, drink with me. I will not preach you a sermon, but let us philosophize like sensible men."

Thus solicited, Duncan drew up his chair opposite his friend. With evident disgust he swallowed the first mouthful, but this morsel seemed to awaken appet.i.te, and he made a respectable meal.

Having thus broken his involuntary fast, he felt, in a sense, refreshed, and producing some fine cigars, the friends sat down before the fire, where, looking through the blue wreaths, they seemed to gain a soothing and an inspiration. The missionary gave to his host a brief history of his life with Della, of her sickness and death, and then incidentally gave a sketch here and there of his own youth. We will commence where he left off, giving but the substance in brief, instead of his own words, so often interspersed with irrelevant allusions and interrupted by remark and question.

Philip St. Leger was the son of a sea captain. His youth, of course, he spent mostly at school, its monotony varied more than once by a prolonged voyage with his father at sea. His mother was a woman of society, and left her children much to the care of servants.

Consequently, she had much trouble with them in after years. Philip was the oldest child. He was naturally good-dispositioned and tractable; but, owing to a false system of training, became headstrong and altogether beyond maternal control.

At the age of nineteen, after a wild and fruitless career at college, and after repeated suspensions, he was really expelled near the beginning of the senior year. To his parents this was a severe mortification, and his father, being at that moment at home, sent him to some distant cousins, who lived among the white hills of New Hampshire.

Colonel Selby, in whose family Philip found himself domiciled, was a fine specimen of the country gentleman. Genial, hospitable, full of wit and anecdote, he was also a member of the Baptist Church, an ex-Senator of the United States, and ex-Governor of his own State. His eldest son was married, his youngest still in college, and his only daughter, about the age of twenty-two, was still an almost idolized child beneath her father's roof. The mother of these children had died a few years previously, and a widow from the city had supplied her place in the father's home and heart.

Philip St. Leger, black-haired, black-eyed, melancholy and romantic in look, cityfied and aristocratic in air and manner, attracted much attention among the simple people of the quiet town of Newberg. He could not help perceiving that, for the first time in his life, he had become a veritable lion. The very fact that he was Col. Selby's guest and relative gave to him importance; another fact, that he was the son of a wealthy sea captain from a distant city, was all-powerful.

It had indeed crept out somehow that he had been wild and extravagant, that he had been sent to rusticate among rocks and hills so sterile there would be little chance for his wild acts to take root; but then, to some old ladies and young ones too, this rumor lent but additional interest.

"Poor boy! what else could one expect? With such comeliness of person, endless wealth, unlimited advantages--the only wonder was he was not completely ruined." And he was compa.s.sionated and pitied for being obliged to remain in so old-fashioned and out-of-the-way country town as insignificant Newberg.

This pity was quite thrown away. Philip St. Leger was in his element; he had never been so happy in his life; Newberg was made up of hills, in the midst of grander mountains; it nestled in the western shadow of Keansarge; and King's Hill and Sunapee reared loftily around her their bold bleak fronts. A beautiful lake of the same name lay blue and clear at Sunapee's foot. "Pleasant Lake" lay in another direction, famous for its delicious trout and fragrant pond lilies.

Philip, the young scapegrace from city and from college, was in an ecstacy; he had never beheld skies so blue, lakes so fair, landscapes so lovely; with every breath he seemed to draw in life, vigor, and a new sense of beauty. Every morning he was up at sunrise, scouring the country upon the back of Nellie, a graceful, fleet young mare which Col.

Selby had generously set aside for his use. Maids, matrons, and small boys stood in gaping amaze, stool in one hand and milk pail in the other, watching half-fearfully, half-admiringly, the fearless young equestrian, who shot by like a comet, his long, black hair streaming in the wind.

It was Philip's delight to create this stare and wonder, to which poor Nellie was obliged to contribute still more than her young master's pleasure. If he could leap over some low garden wall, dart over a famous strawberry bed, or amidst the melon patch, he thought he had done something splendid. The owner's dismay, not alone at the ruin, but at the untamed spirit that dared it, gave him peculiar delight.

Those old ladies who found their fattest goose dangling half-dead from the apple-bough in the early morning, or who looked in vain for patient cows within the yard, whose bars had mysteriously disappeared, began less to admire this youthful metropolitan.

Complaints poured in upon Col. Selby. At first he laughed and made light of them; then he consulted his wife. She was a staid, proper person, careful of the family's good name and popularity. It would never do.

Philip ought to have some sense of what was due to his host; since he had not, he must be put in mind of it. She would undertake the task herself.

This she did, but without effect. Philip had promised sorrow and amendment with a long face, but inwardly he laughed, and after, became seven times worse than before.

Complaints multiplied. Not only were geese and cows interfered with, but dogs and horses were found tied to saplings or shut up in most unimaginable places. Burdocks and thistles appeared in meeting-house pews, where they surely had never before been known spontaneously to spring; teachers in the Sunday school were shocked to learn that they had distributed dime novels with books and tracts. The minister, one morning in the pulpit, solemnly opened his Bible, and unexpectedly beholding a most ludicrous picture, laughed outright, to the great scandal of every looker-on.

Now this was too much. Mrs. Selby had pa.s.sed by stories of green-apple showers falling upon homeward-bound school children's heads; she had even smilingly held her peace when laughingly a.s.sured that a troop of dogs and cats had gone madly wailing and howling through the streets, a miniature world flaming with fire attached by means of wires to each caudal appendage--even that was too much decidedly. But this tampering with the meeting-house! Mrs. Selby consulted first her husband, as in duty bound; that is, she called him aside, told him the latest pranks of their protege, and emphatically added that there should be an end of them.

"But wife, I cannot turn the boy out of my house."

"You need not, my dear; that is my privilege, particularly since he is _my_ relative, not yours. Forbearance now would cease to be a virtue; there is a limit to human endurance; there shall at once be an end to this boy's mad pranks. He is on the piazza, perhaps studying some new mischief; send him in to me, please."

"But are you not too hasty, wife?" urged the soft-hearted ex-Governor, who remembered his own follies and frolics of long ago.

"Too hasty, when we have all borne so much? Gov. Selby"--with a smile--"allow your wife to command you; send that naughty boy hither."

An hour later, Philip having sought her in house and garden, stood in presence of Mary Selby, at last discovered in her attic studio.

"Your mother has banished me; she has already spoken the fatal words; I must leave Newberg, this garden spot of G.o.d's glorious earth--most of all, I must leave you, cousin Mary, and I shall be lost, forever lost,"

exclaimed this strange youth, in tones melodramatic.

Mary laid aside her palette and brushes.

"Why then, cousin Phil, haven't you done better, after so many repeated warnings?"

"It is easy for _you_ to ask that question, and you can answer it better than can I. Why do you not ask the wind why and whence it blows? Why do the waters overflow their banks, why ocean waves engulf life-freighted ships?"

"No, Philip, there is no a.n.a.logy. Be reasonable; you are a being of will; you can do or not do. He is only a child who exercises no self-control, who is governed only by caprice, whim, or whatever pa.s.sion of the moment. These follies, of which my mother makes account, and rightly, are beneath one of your age. There is in them nothing enn.o.bling, charming; nothing that should gratify a mind that has the faintest conception of the good, the beautiful, and the true."