She had been thinking much of Tordale and the Hill Farm—of the old old life—of the beauty of that secluded valley—of the Church—of the waterfall, of the mountains and the fells—before Basil broke in upon her reminiscences; and now she could not help bringing his figure as she remembered it into the mental picture likewise—she could not avoid recalling that day—when, among the glorious sights and sounds of summer, he crossed the hills in order to tell her all his love.
Strammer Tarn at that moment was more real to her than her luxuriously furnished room at Roundwood. Basil—the dream-hero Basil, the careless, handsome, thoughtless, wicked, and yet not intentionally wicked sinner—was more real to her than Georgina’s husband. She, herself, was for the moment no widow—no worn, changed woman—but a wife in the full flush of her beauty, resisting the temptation to which that very beauty had exposed her, trying to stand firm against his love and her own.
It was all like a story to her that night, like a real tale of another person’s life, and I think the Phemie who was no longer young, and who had passed through much suffering, and who knew that no temptation could come to her to shake her more, felt sorry for that far-away figure which, crouching among the heather and the grass and the wild thyme, wept passionately.
Does the tale grow wearisome, reader?—are these particulars too minute?
If they be, bear with me still a little, I pray, for the story is drawing to its end; the last page will soon be reached, the final touch given to the figures we have been studying, the volume completed, the book closed and laid aside; and before that end is reached, I would have you take in the retrospect of Phemie Keller’s life as she took it in, and regard her, as for one moment she regarded the girl, and the woman, she beheld standing young and fanciful and foolish—young and beautiful and tempted—pityingly.
But not one half so much pity did she feel for that former self, as she did for the man who sat by her hearth, whose punishment had fallen upon him so late.
Thinking of the Basil she had known—thinking of all he might have made of his life—of his opportunities—of his position—of his friends—of his winning manners—of his frank, free, generous disposition—Phemie thought her heart must break for very pity, for very remorse, to remember she had ever a hand in bringing about so poor an ending to a once promising story.
How might a woman like herself, had she only been true, and kept him from loving her, or changed his unholy love into respect and trust and admiration, not have moulded such a nature.
He had loved Miss Derno, and yet Miss Derno came in time to be the best friend, the most faithful adviser his manhood ever knew.
“Oh! if I had only loved him less, or loved my husband more,” thought the poor soul, as a finish to her own bitter reflections; “this need never have come upon him; he might have stayed in England and married a different wife, and been happy instead of wretched; useful in his generation, instead of a mere cumberer of the ground.”