THE ENGAGEMENT RING.
From that day Phœbe's life in Parksides was, as Mrs. Pamflett had threatened, a torture, and had it not been that she was endowed with a reserved strength which lies latent in many gentle natures until a supreme occasion calls it forth, it is likely she could not have lived through the next three or four months. One day her father summoned her.
"It is time now," he said, "that our plans for your future should be finally settled. I have already waited too long."
Phœbe knew what was coming, and though she dreaded it, she had nerved herself to meet it.
"Cannot things remain as they are?" she asked.
It was impossible for her to speak with any show of affection. She had discovered that her father's wish that she should be his nurse was a mere pretence. Believing in it, she had endeavoured to carry it out and to perform her duty; but the stern repulses she met with had convinced her that she had been deceived and betrayed. The oaths she had sworn were binding upon her; she knew that she could not escape from them, and that her life's happiness was blasted; but she resolved not to be beguiled by any further treachery. So she suffered in silence, and with some fortitude, praying for strength, and in some small degree finding it; but she was growing daily thinner and paler, and sometimes an impression stole upon her that her life was slowly ebbing away. "It will be better that I should die," she thought; "then I shall see my mother, and my torture will be at an end."
It was a torture subtly carried out. Phœbe had gauged Mrs. Pamflett, and had rejected with quiet scorn all attempts at an affectionate intimacy. Mrs. Pamflett repaid her with interest.
"When you are my son's wife," she said, "you will be more tractable; you will know me better, and you will love me."
"I shall never know you better," Phœbe replied, "and I shall never love you."
"Proud spirits can be broken," said Mrs. Pamflett.
"Yes," sighed Phœbe; "but I am not proud—I am only faithful; and perhaps I shall soon die."
"You will be no loss," said Mrs. Pamflett; "but before you die you will be my daughter-in-law."
At this period Miser Farebrother had not spoken positively to Phœbe about Jeremiah; he had left it to the young villain to make his way, and, indeed, Jeremiah had attempted to do so. But Phœbe utterly baffled him. He brought her flowers, and at her father's command she received them from his hands. An hour afterward he saw them lying on the floor or in the grounds, where she had dropped or thrown them. He arrayed himself in new suits of clothes and laid himself out for admiration, which she never bestowed upon him. He strove to draw her into conversation, and if he managed to extract a word from her it was but a word—often not even that; a look of scorn and contempt was then his reward. At meals his offers of small courtesies were disregarded. By her father's order she sat at the head of the breakfast and tea table, but she would never pass Jeremiah's cup nor accept it from him. His mean nature resented this treatment in mean ways, and after a while he indulged in sarcasms, speaking at her instead of to her. This change passed unnoticed by her; she might have been deaf and blind to everything he said and did. Two or three weeks after the visit of her aunt and Fred Cornwall to Parksides, Phœbe went to her father with a letter.
"I wish to post this letter," she said. "May I do so?"
"You have sworn not to leave Parksides without my permission," he replied. "I will not allow you to go to the village."
"I had no intention of going without your permission," she said.
He kept her so strictly to her oath that she was virtually a prisoner in Parksides.
"I will have the letter posted for you," he said.
She gave it to him, and he opened it, read it, and burnt it. No answer, of course, could come to a letter that was not sent; but Aunt Leth, of her own accord, wrote to Phœbe, very careful in what she said, because she suspected treachery, and feared that her letter might not reach Phœbe's hands. It did not; nor did letters written by Fanny. They were all opened by Miser Farebrother, read, and burnt.
"Have any letters come for me?" asked Phœbe.
"None," replied her father. "Your precious friends have forgotten you. Now that they are convinced they cannot wring any money out of me, they will have nothing more to do with you."
She did not tell him that she knew he was guilty of an untruth. She had the firmest belief in her aunt's constancy, and this, to some extent, was a comfort to her; but the pain and the grief that lay in silence were very bitter. She never ceased thinking of her lover; that was the keenest torture of all. For when weeks had passed in this way she argued with herself, how could any young man, how could even Fred, be faithful to one who was as dead to him? Perhaps the greatest terror she experienced during these unhappy weeks arose out of a dream. She dreamt that her father was dead, and she woke up with a strange feeling of ease. Would she, then, rejoice in his death? "Am I growing wicked and revengeful?" she asked of herself, in the silence of the night. "Cruel as he is, he is still my father. Send death to me, and end this misery!" It was a prayer to God, and as she grew daily weaker and thinner it seemed as if her prayer would be answered.
So now when her father sent for her, and told her that it was time the plans he had formed for her future should be carried out, she answered, "Cannot things remain as they are?"
"They cannot," said Miser Farebrother. "Mr. Pamflett will come here this evening, and will sleep here to-night. To-morrow morning he will go to London to attend to the business, and in the evening he will return. Before to-morrow night is over you will accept him for your husband."
"I will never do that," said Phœbe.
"You have sworn to obey me," he said, sternly.
"I have not," she said, in as steady a voice as she could command. "I have sworn never to marry without your consent, and I will keep my oath. I have sworn not to leave Parksides unless you thrust me out, and I will keep my oath. There my obligation ends."
"What objection have you to Mr. Pamflett?" he asked.
"I hate and abhor him," said Phœbe, firmly. "He is not a man; he is a reptile."
The door opened, and Mrs. Pamflett appeared.
"Come in," cried Miser Farebrother, "and hear what this ungrateful child calls your son. Repeat it in her hearing," he said to Phœbe.
The girl did not speak.
"I will tell you," said Miser Farebrother, "and if she denies it she lies. I asked her what objection she had to Jeremiah, and she answered that she hated and abhorred him, and that he was not a man but a reptile."
"Did you say that?" exclaimed Mrs. Pamflett, with venom in her voice and eyes.
Phœbe was silent.
"That is the proof," said Miser Farebrother. "If she did not say it she would deny it."
"My son a reptile!" said Mrs. Pamflett; "then what am I—his mother? I shall remember it!"
"Do you want me any longer?" asked Phœbe of her father.
"No; you can go."
At tea time, Jeremiah having arrived, Miser Farebrother sent for his daughter. She sat at the table and poured out the tea. Dark rims were around her eyes, her lips were quivering; but there was no pity for her. They talked of business matters; according to Jeremiah, money was being made fast; profitable negotiations had been entered into that day, and the miser gloated as he jotted down figures and calculated interest.
"Things are looking up, Jeremiah," he said, in a tone of exultation.
"That they are, sir," said Jeremiah. "Everything is going on swimmingly."
Could the thoughts which were harassing him have been read, could his mind have been laid bare, Miser Farebrother would have been aghast. Jeremiah was in a sea of difficulties; he had spread nets for others, they were closing around himself. The accounts he presented to his master were false; the negotiations he had entered into were inventions; the bills he exhibited were forged. There were only two roads of safety for him—one, his speedy marriage with Phœbe; the other, his master's death. His mother was filled with apprehension, for, having a better knowledge of his guilty nature than the others, she divined that he was in some deep trouble.
After tea the miser said, "Jeremiah, you have something in your pocket for my daughter."
Jeremiah produced it—a piece of silver tissue-paper, from which he took a ring.
"It is an engagement ring," said Miser Farebrother. "Give it to Phœbe."
He offered it to her, and she did not raise her hand.
"Take it!" cried Miser Farebrother.
Phœbe took it, and flung it away.
Miser Farebrother rose slowly to his feet. One hand rested on the table, in the other he held his crutch stick.
"Pick it up!" he said, sternly.
Phœbe did not move.
"Pick it up!" he cried again.
Still Phœbe made no motion. Trembling with passion, he lifted his crutch stick and struck her across the neck. It was a cruel blow, and it left a long red streak upon the girl's fair flesh. She tottered, and almost fell to the ground, but she straightened herself, and uttered no word.
"If I were dead," he said, "you could marry your gentleman lawyer."
"If he would have me," Phœbe replied, in a low, firm tone. "I should then not be bound by my oath."
"You hear!" he exclaimed, appealing to Mrs. Pamflett and Jeremiah. "She wishes for my death, and would bring it about if she could in order that she might be free to disgrace me!"
They heard; but Phœbe did not. The pain of the blow was great, and she could scarcely bear it. Blinding tears rushed into her eyes.
"Go from my sight!" said Miser Farebrother. "And bear this in mind: my word is law. You will marry the gentleman I have chosen for you, or my curse shall rest upon you till your dying day! My death alone shall accomplish your guilty desire."
Thereafter there was no peace for her. There was something devilish in the ingenuity displayed by her enemies to torture her soul. There are women, strong women, whom it would have driven to madness; but from this despair Phœbe was mercifully saved. "I will bear it; I will bear it," she murmured, "till the end comes. I must preserve my reason. When I am dead, Aunt Leth will drop a flower on my grave. And Mr. Cornwall, perhaps, will think with sorrow of the poor girl whose heart is his for ever and ever!" She never thought of him now as "Fred;" he was too far removed from her; all was over between them, but she would be faithful to him to the last. She intrenched herself in silence, never opening her lips to Mrs. Pamflett and Jeremiah, and never to her father unless he addressed her and compelled her to reply. From the day he struck her she did not call him "father." She did not regard him as such; her heart was a heart of tenderness, but his merciless conduct had deadened it to him. She thought frequently of her mother, and prayed aloud to that pure spirit. "Take me, mother," she cried, "take your unhappy child from this hard world!" So months passed, her cross becoming harder to bear with every rising sun. Then it was that Phœbe began to fear that in the cruel, unequal fight her reason might be wrecked. At length a crisis came.
During the day her father had been more than usually savage toward her. In the evening he ordered her to her room. She went willingly, and undressing, retired to bed.
She did not know what time of the night it was when she heard her father's voice outside her door. He had tried the handle, but Phœbe never went to bed now without turning the key in the lock.
"Answer me! answer me!" cried her father.
"What do you want?" she asked, sitting up in bed.
"You! Dress this instant, and come out!"
She rose from her bed, and dressed hurriedly, without lighting a candle. Then she went to the door and opened it.
"Assist me to my room," he said, in his cold, cruel voice.
He leant upon her with such force that he almost bore her down. They reached his room.
"Attend to my words," he said, "they may be the last that will ever pass between us. There is ruin on all sides of me. Whom should I trust, if not you? Once more I ask if you will obey me."
"In everything," said Phœbe, "except—"
He did not allow her to finish.
"Except in the way I wish. I will put an end to this. You walk like a ghost about the house. I see you in my dreams. You come, you and your mother, who was like you, a pale, sickly creature, and stand by my bedside in the night. I saw her a few minutes since, and I will submit to it no longer. I will rid myself of you both, now and for ever! Again, will you obey me?"
"Not in the way you wish," replied Phœbe.
"In what other way can you satisfy me? You know well in no other way. You will not?"
"I will not."
With all his strength—with more than his ordinary strength, for he was excited to a furious pitch—he struck her in the face.
"Will you obey me?"
"No."
He struck her again, a frightful blow.
"I call down a curse upon you!" he cried. "You are no longer a child of mine. I drive you from my house. Go, this moment, or I shall kill you!"
She turned and fled without a word. Out into the passage, down the stairs, out of the house, and into the open, quivering, bleeding, and staggering blindly on through the darkness of night.