It was another article of the Joppian
creed, that there was no such thing possible as a
purely Platonic friendship between a young man and
a young woman; there must always be “something
in it”: either a mitten for him, or a disappointment
for her, or wedding-cake for all generally
and preferably, of course, the wedding-cake; and
belonging to such friendship as lawfully as a tail
belongs to a comet, was a great, wide-spreading area
of gossip. It was only in the case of Phebe Lane
that this universal and common-sense rule had its
one particular and unreasonable exception; and it
was acting upon a speedily acquired knowledge of this
by-law, that Mr. Halloway boldly pursued his plan for
metamorphosing his young friend, right under the open
eyes and ears of the Joppites. He lived so near
that it was the most natural thing in the world for
him to stop for a moment’s chat, as every one
else did, either inside or outside of the window as
he went by; and as he was always sure of meeting others,
call when he would, it certainly never could have been
asserted of him that he went there only to see Phebe.
Indeed, he often scarcely spoke with her at all when
he so dropped in, and yet out of these frequent and
informal meetings an intimacy had sprung up between
them such as Phebe at least had never known before.
She submitted herself to him docilely, reading his
books patiently even when they bored her unutterably,
as not seldom happened, and endeavoring to form her
opinion straitly upon his on all intellectual questions,
recognizing her own fallibility with a humility that
at once touched and charmed him. Real humility
is rare enough the world over, but nowhere is it less
conspicuously apparent than among the flourishing virtues
of Joppa; and it was not long before this fact was
discovered by Denham Halloway, who, with all his gayety
and light-heartedness, was a keen and discriminating
observer of character. He was one of those interesting
people whom all other people interest; one of those
who derive their peculiar charm more from what they
find in you than from what they show you of themselves,
though one might be ashamed to confess the truth so
baldly. These are the people who, without any
especial gift of either mind or person, wheedle your
secrets out of you before you know it, possessing all
your trust and your liking before they have given
any real evidence of deserving your confidence, and
yet, somehow or other, though rarely either great or
talented, or even heroically good, never for one moment
abusing it. Such characters are not at all unusual,
yet are generally accounted so; one of their chief
qualities, according to their friends, being that they
are so unlike everybody else. But Phebe certainly
had never met any one at all like Mr. Halloway, and
she was soon of the settled conviction that she should
never meet any one quite like him again. He was
true to his promise to help her; (he never made a
promise that he did not honestly try to keep;) and
he applied himself to the by no means thankless task
with the good-humored directness and energy that characterized
all his actions. There was quite a number of
young girls in his parish, more proportionately than
in the others. Bell Masters and Amy Duckworth
had long been hovering on its borders, and the advent
of so young and prepossessing a rector had instantly
removed their last scruples as to infant baptism,
and settled forever their doubts as to the apostolic
succession. They had come in at once. It
was even whispered that Maria Upjohn had in an incautious
moment confessed that she preferred the litany to
Mr. Webb’s spontaneous effusions, and had
been summarily sat upon by her mother, whose Bible
contained an eleventh commandment curiously omitted
from the twentieth chapter of Exodus in other versions,
and reading: “Thou shalt not become an Episcopalian,
and if possible, thou shalt not be born one.”
Then there were Nellie Atterbury, and Janet Mudge,
and Polly and Mattie Dexter; there certainly was no
lack of active young teachers for the Sunday-school,
and Phebe was well content to remain passively aside,
as of old. But, as Mrs. Lane remarked, there were
no drones allowed in Mr. Halloway’s hive, and
before long Phebe found herself insensibly drawn in
to be one of the workers too, with any amount of business
growing upon her hands, and herself, under this new
and wise guidance, becoming more and more capable for
it every day.
“A new broom sweeps clean,”
remarked Mrs. Upjohn, contemptuously, as she heard
of the stir and life in St. Joseph’s heretofore-dull
little parish. “For my part, I would rather
have Mr. White back if he weren’t
dead. He was a good, sensible old man, who knew
his place, and was contented to let his Church simmer
in the background, where it belongs. He didn’t
go flaunting his white gown in people’s faces
every Saint’s day he could trump up, let alone
the Wednesday and Friday services. Who’s
Mr. Halloway? What does anybody know about him
beyond that the Bishop recommended him, as if a Bishop
must know what’s what better than other people,
forsooth! Don’t tell me!” said Mrs.
Upjohn, in unutterable scorn. “He’s
a new broom, and he’s raising a big dust, and
I would liefer have Mr. White back and let the dust
lie, that’s all!”
But the Joppites were far from sharing
Mrs. Upjohn’s sentiments. Mr. Halloway
did, it is true, belong to the wrong Church, but there
was a strong suspicion among them that neither had
this man sinned, nor his parents, that he was born
to so grievous a fate. It was rather his misfortune.
And as for the rest, he was thoroughly a gentleman;
was excellently well educated; and was, moreover,
comely to look upon, and eminently agreeable in his
bearing. No; Joppa was far from begrudging Mr.
White his departure to the land of the blessed.
It was time the good old man went to his reward, they
said.
And as to Mrs. Whittridge, Mr. Halloway’s
sister, who kept house for him at the rectory, through
all the length and the breadth of Joppa there were
no two opinions with regard to her. She was a
woman of about fifty, enough older than her brother
to have been his mother, and she seemed indeed to
cherish almost a mother’s idolatrous affection
for him. She had lost her husband many years
before, and had been left with considerable fortune
and no family besides this one brother. So much
information, after repeated and unabashedly point-blank
questions, had the Joppites succeeded in extracting
from Mr. Halloway, who with all his apparent frankness
was the most difficult person in the world ever to
be brought to talk of himself and his own affairs.
But just to see Mrs. Whittridge, with her sweet face
and perfect manners, was to recognize her at once for
a gentlewoman in every sense of the word, while to
be in her society, if but for ten minutes, was to
come very nearly to loving her. The Joppites
saw but one fault in her; she did not and would not
visit. All who sought her out were made more
than welcome; but whether from the extreme delicacy
of her health, which rendered visiting a burden, or
because of her widow’s dress of deepest mourning,
which she had never laid aside, it came to be an accepted
thing that she went nowhere. It was a great disappointment
in Joppa; nevertheless it was impossible to harbor
ill-will toward this lovely, high-bred lady, who drew
all hearts to herself by the very way she had of seeming
never to think of herself at all. She won Phebe
Lane’s affection at once and forever with almost
her first words, spoken in the low, clear, sweet tones
that sounded always like Sunday-night’s music.
“Do you know, Mr. Halloway,”
Phebe said to him one day, “I think it does
me more good only to hear your sister’s voice
than to listen to the very best sermon ever preached.”
“Miss Phebe,” he rejoined,
with a merry twinkle in his brown eyes, “if
you propagate that doctrine largely, I am a ruined
man. I must hold you over to eternal secrecy.
But as regards the fact, there is my hand, I
am quite of your way of thinking! I am persuaded
an angel’s voice got into Soeur Angelique by
mistake.” Mrs. Whittridge’s baptismal
name was Angelica, but to her brother she had always
been “Soeur Angelique” and nothing else.
“Yes, and an angel’s soul too,”
said Phebe.
“Even that,” replied Mr.
Halloway. “She is all and more than you
can possibly imagine that she is. But I positively
forbid your putting her up on a pedestal and worshipping
her. In the first place, too great a sense of
her own holiness might mar her present admirable but
purely earthly management of our little household,
thus seriously interfering with my comforts.
And in the second place, I feel it my duty to warn
you from a habit of canonization, which, if too extensively
indulged in, will inevitably warp your powers of frank
and right judgment.”
Phebe laughed, but did not forget.
One afternoon, some time later, she
was at the rectory, whither she had gone, at Mrs.
Whittridge’s request, to explain a new and intricate
embroidery stitch. They were upstairs in that
lady’s charming little sitting-room, Phebe on
a low stool by her friend’s side, and Halloway
had just come in from a round of parochial visits
and joined them there.
“Mrs. Whittridge,” said
Phebe, suddenly, “do you think it is possible
to care too much for one’s friends? Mr.
Halloway says one can. I know he means that I
do.”
Mrs. Whittridge laid her hand caressingly
on the girl’s bonny brown hair. “How
can I judge, my child? I do not even know who
your friends are.”
“Who are they, in fact?”
said Denham, drawing up a chair and seating himself
in front of the group by the table. “Oh,
Miss Phebe is friends with the entire village in a
way. They all call her ‘Phebe,’ and
keep accurate track of her birthdays, from Dick Hardcastle
up. And I am sure she hasn’t an enemy in
the world. But there is this remarkable feature
in the case, that you could go over the entire population
of Joppa by name without eliciting a single thrill
of enthusiasm from this really enthusiastic young
lady.”
“I cannot help it,” Phebe
murmured, a little shamefacedly. “I bore
them, and they bore me.”
“That’s a point in your
education I am going to take up later,” remarked
Mr. Halloway, cheerfully. “The art of not
being bored by people. Once acquired, the other,
that of not boring them, follows of itself. Society
hangs on it.”
“I wish you would teach me that
right away,” said Phebe, earnestly. “I
believe I need that more than any thing else.”
“Well, I will, immediately, after
supper, that is. I am exhausted now with ministerial
duties. You have asked Miss Phebe to tea have
you not, Soeur Angelique? You cannot stay?
Oh, but of course you must.”
“Of course she will,”
said Mrs. Whittridge, with her tender smile.
“Phebe only lives to give pleasure to others.
Now tell me something about your friends. Who
are they?”
“I haven’t any here.
Mr. Halloway is quite right,” answered Phebe,
locking her hands over one of Mrs. Whittridge’s.
“Not real, real friends. As a child I had
ever so many, and Bell Masters and I quite grew up
together, but somehow we have all grown away from each
other, and oh, I don’t know! it
seems as if there wasn’t any thing in the girls
here. Not that there’s more in me.
They are brighter and better than I in every way,
but we don’t get on together; they don’t
seem to have any thing to give me, any thing they
can help me to. I can’t get at them.
Oh! Mr. Halloway is quite right. In all
Joppa I haven’t a single friend except
just you and him.”
“We are indeed your friends,”
said Mrs. Whittridge. “You need never doubt
that.”
The girl turned and threw her arms
impulsively around the other’s neck. “Oh,
no, no!” she said. “I could not doubt
it. I know it. I feel it! Oh,
you can’t guess what it is to me to know it!
I have so little in my life to make it grow to any
thing, and I want so much! And you can give me
all I want all, all; and it makes me so
happy when I think of it, that I have got
you and can have all I want!”
“And is this frantic outburst
meant exclusively for Soeur Angelique?” asked
Denham. “I am green with unutterable jealousy.
I thought I was your friend too, Miss Phebe.”
Phebe still knelt with her arms around
Mrs. Whittridge, but she looked up at him with her
frank, loving eyes and smiled. “You know
I meant you both,” she said softly.
An almost irresistible impulse came
over the young man to lay his hand, as his sister
had done, on the soft, bright-brown hair. Clergymen
are but human after all. He bent forward, but
only lifted one of his sister’s thin white hands
and held it a moment between his. “We must
both do our best by this foolish little girl who trusts
us so frankly with her friendship, must we not, Soeur
Angelique?” he said gravely.
“I for one am very glad to assume
the trust,” said Mrs. Whittridge.
“And won’t you ever tire
of me? ever? ever?” asked the girl.
“Not ever.”
“You won’t ever be tired
helping me, or tired of having me come to you for
help, or tired of my loving you?”
“Where is your faith gone, my child?”
Phebe drew a deep sigh of content.
“I am just as happy as can be,” she said.
“I don’t want any thing else now in the
world except just Gerald.”
“Ah, Gerald again. I expected
that,” said Mr. Halloway, raising his eyebrows
humorously.
“Gerald? Pray, who is Gerald?” inquired
Mrs. Whittridge.
Her brother lifted his hands in mock
amazement. “Is it possible you know Miss
Phebe so long and need ask who Gerald is? I will
tell you. Gerald is perfection individualized.
Gerald has all the qualities, mental, physical, and
spiritual, that it is possible to compress into the
limited compass of even an overgrown human frame.
Gerald, you must know, is intellectual to a degree,
beautiful as an archangel, adorable as as
you, Soeur Angelique, and clever almost as
myself.”
Phebe clapped her hands and nodded, “Yes, yes,
all that!”
“I can tell you all about Gerald,”
continued Halloway. “I have heard of nothing
else since I came. Gerald, my dear sister, is
Miss Phebe’s idol; I rather think she says her
prayers before Gerald’s picture every night.”
“Oh, please!” cried Phebe.
“But who is this Gerald?” asked Mrs. Whittridge.
“Does he live here?”
“No, Soeur Angelique, and by
the way he is not he at all, but she, and will be
known in history as Miss Geraldine Vernor. She
lives in New York, rolls in wealth, and is one of
a large family of whom she is the sun-flower.
Let me give you her portrait as I have it from fragmentary
but copious descriptions. She is, I should say,
five feet eleven and three quarter inches in height don’t
shake your head, Miss Phebe, and slender
in disproportion. She has the feet of a Chinese,
the hands of a baby, and the strength of a Jupiter
Ammon. She has hair six yards long and blacker
than Egyptian darkness. She has a forehead so
low it rests upon her eyebrows, which, by the way,
have been ruled straight across the immeasurable breadth
of it with a T square. She has eyes bluer one
minute than the grotto at Capri, greener the next than
grass in June, grayer the next than a November day,
and so on in turn through all the prismatic colors.
Her eyelashes are only not quite so long as her hair.
She has a mouth which would strike you as large, it
is five and a half inches across, but when
she speaks, and you hear the combined wisdom of Solomon,
and Plato, and Socrates, and Solon, and the rest of
the ancients (not to mention the moderns), falling
from her lips, your only wonder is that her mouth
keeps within its present limits. Her nose Miss
Phebe, can it be? Is it possible you have left
out her nose? Soeur Angelique, I am forced to
the melancholy conclusion that Gerald has none.
Miss Phebe would never have omitted mentioning it.”
“You may make all the fun of
her and of me that you like,” said Phebe, half
provoked. “But there is not anybody else
in the world like Gerald Vernor. Wait till you
see her. You will say then that I was right, only
that I did not say enough.”
“You shan’t tease her,
Denham. Tell me, Phebe, where did you know this
friend so well?”
“Three years ago, when she spent
a summer here, I saw a great deal of her, oh,
it made it such a happy summer, knowing her! and
I have corresponded with her ever since.”
“Without meeting her again?”
“Oh, no. I saw her twice
last summer. I went to the train both times to
see her as she passed through.”
“But our trains don’t pass through; they
stop here.”
“Yes, I know; but I went to
Galilee to meet her as she passed through there.”
“Would she have gone as far
as that to meet you, Miss Phebe?”
“That is very different, Mr.
Halloway,” answered Phebe, simply. “I
am not worth going so far for. Besides, I don’t
expect people ever to do as much for me as I would
for them.”
“Denham, you are cruel,”
said Mrs. Whittridge. “Phebe, my child,
your love for your friend is to me sufficient proof
that she must be lovely. I know I should love
her too.”
Phebe looked at her gratefully.
“Oh, you would, you would indeed!
You could not help it. You would admire her so
much. There is so much in her.”
“Ah, yes, I forgot,” interrupted
Denham, “I did not finish my portrait.
This marvellous being is an athlete. She can ride
any Bucephalus produced, and rather prefers to do
so bareback. She is a Michael Angelo at painting,
and has represented striking scenes from his ‘Last
Judgment’ on a set of after-dinner coffee cups.
She drives, she skates, she swims, she rows, she sails,
has a thorough knowledge of business, and is up in
stocks, is femininely masculine and masculinely feminine,
scorns novels, and can order a dinner, is a churchwoman,
and dresses always in the latest style. Is there
any thing else, Miss Phebe?”
“Only one thing else that I
think you have rather forgotten, Mr. Halloway:
I love her and she is my friend.”
“Miss Phebe,” cried the
young man in instant contrition, “have I hurt
you? Have I been thoughtless enough for that with
my foolish fun? You know I did not mean it.
Will you forgive me?” He held out his hand.
Phebe hesitated. “Will
you not make fun of her any more? And will you
like her if she comes? You know she may come here
this summer; there is just a chance of it. Will
you promise?”
“I can safely promise to like
any one whom you like, I know, Miss Phebe. Soeur
Angelique, make this stubborn child give me her hand.
It is not fitting that I crave absolution so abjectly.”
“You are two silly children
together,” said Soeur Angelique, rising and
laughing. “You may settle your quarrels
as you can while I order tea.”
“Miss Phebe, have I really vexed
you so much?” asked the young man, earnestly,
as his sister left the room. “You must know
I would not do that for the world.”
“I don’t think you could
hurt or vex me in any way,” said Phebe, “excepting
only through Gerald. For you don’t know
how I love her, Mr. Halloway. I love her with
all my heart and soul, I think, oh, more almost
more than any one else in the world.”
“I know you do,” he answered.
“It is a love to envy her.” Phebe
was still looking up at him from her low stool, her
face raised as if in appeal. She always looked
very young for her years, and now she seemed not more
than a child of sixteen in the waning light. He
could not help it this time; he laid his hand very
lightly for one briefest instant on her pretty hair.
“But you will not be less friends with me because
I like you best?”
“I will not ever be less friends
with you,” Phebe replied, soberly. “I
don’t change so.”
“No,” he said; “I know you do not.
Nor do I.”
And then he moved away from her, and
began telling an irresistibly comic story about a
call he had made on a poor woman that afternoon (he
could not for the life of him help seeing the ludicrous
side of every thing), and from one subject they passed
to another, and when Soeur Angelique summoned them
to tea, she found her reverend brother standing in
the middle of the room in the full swing of a chorus
from “The Pirates,” with Phebe whistling
the liveliest possible accompaniment, and both of them
gesticulating wildly. He stopped with a laugh
as his sister appeared in the door-way.
“Don’t be shocked, Soeur
Angelique. I shut the window lest Mrs. Upjohn
should chance to go by and hear me. She would
telegraph the Bishop. I am only resting.
It wore me out working for Miss Phebe’s pardon.
No; wait a moment, Soeur Angelique. Don’t
let’s go to tea instantly. I would rather
quiet down a little before I go in and say grace.”
He took up a chance book from the table, and turning
to the window to catch the light, read a few lines
to himself, then threw it down, and came forward with
a smile. “There, I am ready now. Take
my arm, Soeur Angelique. Miss Phebe, will you
come, please?”