Only an Incident Part 19

"I shall miss _you_, child, of course. You const.i.tute Joppa to me, you know. And indeed I have enjoyed it here very much, and it has done Olly a world of good. Good-night, dear."

Phebe had her arms about her friend at once, clasping her close. "O Gerald, Gerald, I think it is almost better to have no friends at all, it is so hard--so cruelly hard--to part with them, and--and to lose them! O Gerald!"

"Parting with them isn't losing them, you foolish sentimentalist,"

returned Gerald, gently unclasping Phebe's arms. "Now go to bed. You look worn out."

"Just tell me once first, Gerald, that you love me. I haven't many to love me. I need all your love."

"Of course I love you," said Gerald. "You know it without my saying so.

And don't talk so foolishly. I never knew a girl with more friends. Now good-night."

Phebe kissed her very quietly, and then crept into Olly's room, and sat down on his bed. "Olly, dear," she murmured, "are you asleep?"

The little fellow sprang up and flung his arms closely around her neck, embracing collar, ruffles, and ribbon in one all-comprehensive destruction.

"Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?" whispered Phebe, half laughing and half crying, as she strained him to her heart. "Oh, Olly dear, I do want some one just to say so!"

"I do, I do, I do, and I do!" said Olly, with a bear's hug at each a.s.sertion. "Blest if I don't. That's what Mr. Upjohn said when I asked him if he didn't want some taffy. 'Blest if I don't.' I guess it's a swear, 'cause he said I mustn't tell Mrs. Upjohn he said so, not to the longest day I lived. The longest day won't come now till next year, the twenty-first of June. That's the longest day, ain't it? Mr. Halloway taught me that. My, don't he know a lot! I'm going to be like him when I'm a man. That's who I'm going to be like. And I'm going to love you always. He loves you too, doesn't he, Pheeb?"

"No, dear," answered Phebe, still laughing and crying together, and rocking gently back and forth with the boy in her arms; "he doesn't at all. There doesn't any body really love me, I think, but just you. But you do, don't you, dear?"

"Bet on it!" said Olly, with forcible vulgarity.

"G.o.d bless you," said Phebe, very softly, as she put the boy back in the bed, and laid her wet cheek on his. "G.o.d bless you now and always."

"Forever and ever, amen," whispered Olly back, with an impression that Phebe was saying her prayers over him. "And oh, I say, Pheeb, can't you let us have some of that jelly cake with raisins in it, to take with us for luncheon to-morrow?"

And Phebe promised she would, and laughed and went away feeling, somehow, a little comforted.

And so Gerald and Olly and De Forest all disappeared from the scene together, and shortly after the Dexters went to Morocco on a visit, and the Masters adjourned to Bethany to do their fall shopping; and there were whisperings around that something was wrong; there was more and more talk of the fever; of how it ought to be checked, and why it had not been checked, and what would be the dire consequences if it were not checked.

The summer guests all slipped quietly away, leaving Joppa alone to its growing trouble. Every day brought some new case, sometimes a death, and people began to look suspiciously at each other in the streets and to avoid each other on the flimsiest pretexts. Miss Lydia cried helplessly in her room and said she was sure she should take it and die of it. Mr.

Hardcastle found he was too busy at home to have time for neighborly visits, and went around the block rather than pa.s.s a door where he saw the doctor's gig. When one has a family, one owes it duties that should not be neglected. Mrs. Upjohn declared the panic to be ridiculous. _She_ shouldn't be scared away by a red flag, like a crow from a cornfield.

There had never been a case of typhoid known in Joppa, and places were like people, they never broke out with diseases that were not already in their const.i.tutions. It was all arrant nonsense. However, she was perfectly willing that Maria should make that proposed visit to her aunt in Boston if she liked, and it was quite proper that Mr. Upjohn, in the character of gallant father, should escort her there; the girl couldn't go alone. So every day saw some new flight from the village. The doctors began to look overworked and very grave, and Mr. Hardcastle appeared less and less outside his gates, and took to walking always in the middle of the streets, whence he could wave a salutation to his pa.s.sing friends without stopping to speak to them. d.i.c.k said he'd like to see the fever catch _him_, and pursued the rough tenor of his ways fearlessly as of old, though he a.s.sured his anxious father that it was wholly because Nellie Atterbury lived in the healthiest quarter of the town, that he spent so much of his time at her house. There was no use denying or qualifying it. An epidemic of typhoid fever had stolen upon Joppa as a thief in the night, and there was no knowing what house it would not enter next, to rob it of its dearest and best.

Through all this slowly increasing alarm, Phebe Lane had been living as in a dream. It was as if she found herself back in that old life before she knew Halloway, when people bored her, and when there seemed nothing worth doing or worth looking forward to, though the days were so full of duties. She had been at the rectory but once since Gerald left, and that was to the Bible-cla.s.s, and when Mrs. Whittridge had tried to detain her afterward, she had pleaded some pressing business at home, though chancing to look out of her window a little later, Soeur Angelique was almost sure that through the closed shutters in Phebe's room, she saw a dim shadow of the girl's head laid down listlessly on her folded arms on the sill. But when the epidemic reached its height, Phebe seemed suddenly to awaken from her languor and rouse herself to action. Here was something worth doing at last. Once more her soft, sweet whistling sounded bird-like through the house. The spring came back to her step, the brightness to her eyes, and more than the old tenderness to her voice, as she went from one shunned sick-room to another like a living sunbeam, bringing the freshness of a May morning with her, and seeming always to come solely for her own pure pleasure. And when poor motherless Janet Mudge was struck down too with the dreaded disease, and had no one but servants to care for her, her own aunt, who lived in Joppa, being afraid to so much as go to the house to ask after her, it seemed perfectly natural to everybody that Phebe Lane, who had no cares at home and no one really dependent upon her, should quietly install herself as Janet's nurse. It was a very proper and natural thing for Phebe to do, everybody said, and thought no more about it. It was so manifestly a duty sent direct from Heaven, labelled "For Phebe Lane."

"I met Dr. Dennis to-day," said Halloway one afternoon, coming into his sister's room and throwing himself wearily down on the sofa. "He says Janet Mudge is better,--is really going to get well."

Soeur Angelique put aside her work and came to sit by the sofa and stroke her boy's head. If the doctors were overworked and spent, so too was he.

The hour of trial had not found him wanting. His unambitious, simple spirit, that sought no wider duty than merely to fulfil the moment's call as he best could, met and conquered a stress of work that would have disheartened many a bolder hero. He never thought of it in the light of duty at all. There was nothing heroic or high-minded about it. It was simply what in the nature of things he was bound to do. Wherever he was wanted he went, and because where he went he brought such sunny cheer, and such sympathetic help, and such bright, kindly ways, he was wanted everywhere; not only those of his own parish, but those of the other churches too came to look to Mr. Halloway as the one whose visit helped them the most in any season of trial. Among the poor he was held a ministering angel, and supplemented by Soeur Angelique as an unseen force, often proved one in truth, while his bright face did them more good, they said, than a power of sermons; and no one ever thought the less of him because he seemed so much more the friend than the pastor, and did no preaching at all.

"So Janet is better," said Soeur Angelique, toying caressingly with the wavy brown hair tossed over his forehead. "Now I hope we shall see more of our Phebe again. What a little heroine she is!"

"A perfectly unconscious one," answered Halloway, lazily submitting himself to the fondling hand. "She thinks it the most matter-of-fact thing in the world that she should play Sister of Charity to other people's sick, and never expect so much as a thank-you from them."

"She is a lovely character," said Mrs. Whittridge, warmly.

"She is indeed," a.s.sented her brother. "A rare character. She is one in a thousand."

"I cannot but compare her sometimes with her friend, Gerald Vernor,"

continued Mrs. Whittridge. "And despite Miss Vernor's beauty and her power, which makes itself felt even by me, still it is always to Phebe's advantage."

Halloway got up and began slowly pacing the room, with an odd smile upon his lips. "Always to Phebe's advantage," he repeated. "Yes, she is by far the more amiable, the more unselfish, the more lovable, the better worth loving of the two. She is all heart. She is br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with affection, and must speak it or die, while Gerald is colder than stone,--than ice.

She is so cold she burns. She reminds one of stars in mid-winter, of icicles in the moonlight, of any thing eminently frigid and brilliant and remote. I daresay, despite all her beauty and her talent and even with her wealth thrown in, she will have comparatively few lovers, yet those few will be truer to her through all her coldness and her disfavor than the lovers of many a sweeter girl. Did I say Phebe was one in a thousand?

Well Miss Vernor is one in nine hundred and ninety-nine,--or one in ten thousand,--I don't know which."

"You said Phebe was the better worth loving of the two," said Mrs.

Whittridge, coming to walk up and down the room with him and clasping her hands over his arm. "I used to think,--I fancied you cared for the child,--that you would care for her."

Denham stood still and faced his sister very gravely, "I was growing to care for her, Soeur Angelique," he said. "I believe I would have loved her if,--if Gerald Vernor had not come here when she did."

"Oh, Denham!"

"Yes, Soeur Angelique. It is a humiliating confession, is it not, that one has wilfully thrown away something that perhaps one might have had, for something that one knows one can never have? It is sheerest folly.

And to do it with one's eyes open is the maddest folly of all. Gerald Vernor is as indifferent to me as it is possible for one human creature to be to another. I hold no more place in her thoughts than had I never existed. And yet, Soeur Angelique, I am fool enough,--or helpless enough,--whichever you please, to love her. I love her not for what she is to me, but for what she is in herself, for what she really is, rather than for what she seems,--for the strength and the heroism of her heart, which I see through all the glaring, commonplace faults, which she is at no pains to hide. Or perhaps I only love her because it was meant that I should. Be it as it may, I do love her, and as pa.s.sionately, as entirely, and as hopelessly as it is possible for man to love."

"O Denham, Denham, my boy!"

Denham laid his hand lightly on his sister's lips. "Now we have had a sufficiency of heroics for once, indeed for always," he said, with a wholly altered voice. "Life has enough of solemnity in it and in spare, without our adding aught to it. We will not speak of this again, if you please. Folly is always best forgotten. But Soeur Angelique, if you imagine me to be a blighted being, if you think I walk the floor in the dead of night, tearing my hair and calling on all the stars to witness the unearthly gloom in my racked bosom, you are utterly mistaken. I do nothing of the kind. I am not blighted at all. My damask cheek is not going to be preyed upon, nor shall I take to an excess of tobacco and poetry. I have made a mistake, but I mean to sing over it,--not weep over it,--and to become a stronger and better man, if possible, for having been so weak a one."

"And Phebe?" said Soeur Angelique. Great tears stood in her eyes.

"I hoped--"

Denham placed both hands on his sister's shoulders. "Soeur Angelique, you must bury those hopes in the grave. Loving Gerald Vernor, never, now, or in the future, shall I have one word of love for any other woman. But for her, I should have come perhaps to love Phebe with this same love; perhaps,--who knows?--Phebe might so have loved me. As it is--Soeur Angelique you know what I am. You know if I am likely to deceive myself.

Gerald Vernor has changed my life for always. What might have been, now can never be."

He stood still a moment, looking full at her. It was wonderful how resolute and firm and yet brave and gentle too those merry brown eyes of his could become. Soeur Angelique sighed and shook her head softly. He stooped and kissed her, then turned away saying: "Now that chapter has been read through to the end. Woe be to him who turns back the page! And it is time I went to call on poor Widow Brown."

Soeur Angelique stood in the window as a moment later he pa.s.sed by. He kissed his hand to her with a gay smile and went on. But she still stood there with the tears welling and welling in her eyes till they fell gently over upon her cheeks. She did not heed them, she was so busy with her thoughts. "Poor Phebe," she said softly to herself. "My poor little Phebe! But perhaps,--with time--"

CHAPTER XIV.

PHEBE'S GOOD-BY.

When was it Phebe first fell ill? No one knew. Mr. Hardcastle had kept cautiously out of her way this long time past, but n.o.body else suspected that the brilliant cheeks and eyes which shone like stars were telltales of a hidden fire burning her life away. The fever was abating in the village. The doctors declared the epidemic virtually over, and mutually congratulated each other upon the success of their measures. Mr.

Hardcastle returned to the sidewalks; Mr. Upjohn brought back Maria; Miss Lydia said death had spared her this once, but next time it would be her turn to go; Mrs. Lane said she needn't make her will yet for all that; and everybody said how very much worse the fever would have been in any less peculiarly healthy spot than Joppa. How was it that at the very last, when there was no reason at all, when she had been apparently so perfectly well all along, Phebe Lane should suddenly take to her bed? Not only one doctor was called in, but both, and when they saw her they said the fever had been running a long time already, and then they looked very grave and shook their heads. She did not seem so ill. Most of their patients had had far more aggravated symptoms yet still they shook their heads as they looked at her, and murmured something about lack of vitality, a general giving way, a complete want of will power, etc.

People looked at each other aghast. Was it possible that little Phebe Lane was really going to die? n.o.body really believed it could be, excepting only Soeur Angelique. "Oh, my darling, my darling!" she cried out when she first heard of it, and then she instantly went over and installed herself in Phebe's room. And there she sat the slow days through, waiting and waiting with a breaking heart. Phebe suffered very little. She lay generally perfectly still, too weak to move, too weak to care to speak. People came and went noiselessly below, but no one was admitted to her room save her step-mother and Mrs. Whittridge. Mrs. Lane watched her with growing anxiety. The fever was so slight, why did she not rally from it? How was it credible she could fail so rapidly and so causelessly? And Mrs. Whittridge sat by with despair in her heart.

One day, late in the afternoon, as she sat so watching, Phebe suddenly opened her eyes. "Will you call him, please? I hear him."

"Who? Denham?" asked Soeur Angelique, with quick intuition. A finer ear than hers had caught the light step and low voice in the narrow hall below.

"Yes, Denham," said Phebe, softly. "Denham. I want to see him."

It pleased her to say his name so. She said it to herself over and over beneath her breath, while waiting for him to come. It was but a moment, and he was kneeling by the bedside, holding both her hands in his. She looked up in his face and smiled, and said his name again, lower still.