Chapter XXIV: The Rector's Trouble

It was quite true that Sidney loved Dorothy next to Margaret. From the first she had been more at ease with him than with anyone else. He had liked to have Phyllis about the house, with her pretty girlish ways, and ready to sparkle with delight if he brought some dress or trinket for her from town. But Phyllis had a father of her own; and her daughter-like smiles and kisses belonged of right to George, not to himself. There was no other man to whom Dorothy owed any demonstration of girlish tenderness and devotion, or who could have felt he was yielding an indulgence, when she watched for his return home, and ran to meet him, greeting him with the frank and innocent delight of a little daughter. Often she was waiting for him at the lodge, with two or three of her great mastiffs about her; and he would leave the carriage to walk up the avenue, listening to her bright and quaint chatter. For she was talkative to him, however silent she might be to Philip. She was growing prettier every day; Sidney found her as pretty as Phyllis herself, and far more natural. He declared to himself that she was as like Margaret when she was a girl as if she had been Margaret's own child. Only one drop was lacking to make his cup of happiness full, and that was to see Dorothy the wife of his eldest son. This keen desire made him more clear-sighted with regard to Phyllis. He could not imagine how he could have been so blind hitherto to the danger of letting so close an intimacy exist between her and Philip. When Phyllis was not at the Hall, Philip was sure to be at the Rectory. Dorothy's shyness with him made Phyllis more his companion. As Sidney began to notice them more closely, he detected an air of appropriation in Phyllis's manner toward Philip which disturbed him greatly. How long had this been going on? It was useless to call Margaret's attention to the matter, as she would look upon it from quite a different point of view from his own. But his son and heir must make a better match than with a poor clergyman's daughter. He must put a stop at once to any such love affair, if it existed.

There was no difficulty in taking a first step in pursuit of this object. The rector was accustomed to dine regularly at the Hall on a Monday night, which he looked upon as his leisure time. George greatly enjoyed these occasions, especially when Sidney and he were alone. They had been brought up by their uncle almost as brothers, and the old boyish love still lived in his heart. He had never seen any reason to dethrone Sidney from the first place he held in his esteem. George was one of the few fortunate mortals who had possessed an ideal all his life, and at fifty could still place faith in it. Sidney and his career had been a ceaseless pleasure and pride to him.

"George," said Sidney one Monday evening, as they lingered alone together in the comfortable dining room, "my boy Philip will be of age now in a few weeks."

"My boy Dick was of age a few weeks ago," replied George, with a smile.

"Ah, yes!" went on Sidney, "and a very fine fellow he is. He will distinguish himself in the world more than Philip will do. Your boys have genius, and will make their mark. It would be hardly fair if Philip had every advantage."

"Philip has riches," rejoined the rector, "but Margaret and I agree that money is not one of God's great gifts."

"But he has other gifts besides money," said Sidney.

"Many, many!" replied George warmly; "he has a noble, unselfish nature like Margaret's, and a steadfast, faithful heart. He is less worldly than my boys. I do not think he could make for himself a brilliant place in this world, any more than I could. But he would stand high in the kingdom of heaven, as his mother's son should do."

Sidney made no immediate answer. George had spoken the truth, but it was an unpalatable truth. Philip was all he could desire in a son, except that he had no ambition, and was absolutely contented with his position and prospects in the world.

"I hope," he said after a pause, "that Philip will make my little Dorothy my real daughter. He is young yet; too young to know his own mind. But under Margaret's training Dorothy is growing all I should wish in Philip's wife. And when I think of how happy my life has been made by Margaret I cannot help coveting the same happiness for my boy. You spoke of God's gifts, George. If God will give Philip a wife like Margaret it would be his best gift."

George leaned back in his chair, staring intently into the fire, with an expression of perplexity and trouble on his usually placid face. How it was he did not know, and now he was trying to find out; but there was a vague impression on his mind that long, long ago it had been an understood thing that Philip was to marry Phyllis. True, he could not recall any conversation on the subject; the children were too young. But it seemed to him that he had always been led to expect it. But who had so led him? Certainly not Sidney, for he clearly knew nothing of it, and had no idea of such a thing. Was it possible he had been mistaken? Could he have been merely dreaming a pleasant dream that his dear child's future welfare was secure? For nothing could have given him greater happiness than intrusting her to the care of a man he knew so well as Philip, who was in fact like one of his own sons. Phyllis had her faults, but they were trifles, said the indulgent father to himself; and she cared more for worldly advantages and worldly show than she ought; but Philip's unworldliness would check all that. He found this hope so firmly rooted in his heart that he could not believe it was only a dream of his own.

"Yes, Philip must marry Dorothy," pursued Sidney, in a tone of friendly confidence, "but it will be soon enough in four or five years' time. Then she will be all he can wish for. If I am not mistaken, Dorothy is not indifferent to him. I can see no brighter future for them both than to be man and wife. They are very equally matched in money."

"But if Philip loved someone else?" began the rector gently.

"He does not, he cannot," interrupted Sidney; "surely his mother and I would be the first to know it. He has no intimacy with any girl except Phyllis; and that is the intimacy of brother and sister. They love each other as brother and sister; nothing more."

"Phyllis thinks more of Philip than she does of her brothers," said the rector, with a sigh. If it was painful to him to be suddenly awakened from a dream, there was possibly the same pain in store for his little daughter also.

"Oh, it is nothing but a girl's fancy," answered Sidney lightly, "even if it is so. She has seen no other young men; and we must get her out more, away from this too quiet spot. Laura can easily manage that. She and Philip are quite too young to have set their hearts upon one another; so do not trouble yourself. And George, old friend, though I love your girl for her own sake as well as for yours, I could never receive her as Philip's wife."

"I don't say that Phyllis loves your son," said the rector, "or that he loves her. It is enough for me to know that it would displease you to set me on my guard lest such a misfortune should occur. I will set Laura on her guard too."

"No, no! much better not," replied Sidney, with one of the genial smiles which had never failed to win George's cordial assent to what he said; "we are two old simpletons to be so near quarreling about nothing. I simply confide to you my hopes for Philip as I always talk to you of my plans. They are all children yet; and will make up their minds and change them a dozen times in the next few years. Let us keep our gossip to ourselves. I do not tell Margaret. Why should you tease Laura?"

But the rector went home that night with an anxious and a troubled spirit. The more he considered it the more certain he felt that Philip and Phyllis believed that they were destined for one another. Laura always spoke, vaguely indeed, but with reiterated persistence, of the two together, as if there was no question of them ever being separated. The boys, too, seemed to think of nothing else; and Phyllis was always left to Philip as his special companion, when he came daily to the Rectory. There were small jests and hints, nods and shrugs, all meaning the same things, among the boys, when Philip made his appearance. He had himself never doubted their love for one another. But how this state of affairs had come about he did not know; it had grown up so slowly and surely. It was an inexpressible shock to him to discover that Sidney and Margaret knew nothing of it. Was it not dishonorable toward these, his dearest and oldest friends, to have thus allowed so close an intimacy to exist between his daughter and their son? Had he taken advantage of their noble, generous friendship, which had embraced his children almost as if they were their own? How deeply he was in their debt for all that made life tranquil and free from cares! And he was going to repay them by basely entrapping their eldest son and Sidney's heir into a marriage with his portionless daughter!

The rector was very miserable, and there was no one to whom he could confide his misery. Instinctively he shrank from confessing it to his wife; and of course he could not tell Margaret. It was a high delight to him to speak with Margaret of those spiritual experiences, which she seemed to comprehend almost without words, but which Laura altogether failed to understand. Of this painful and perplexing anxiety he could not speak. Once or twice he tried to approach the subject, hoping that Margaret might utter some word indicating that she, too, was aware of the attachment between Philip and Phyllis. But Margaret gave no sign that she had ever dreamed of such a thing. Though the idea of it seemed natural and familiar at the Rectory, it was quite unthought of at the Hall.

But one plain duty lay before him--to separate his little Phyllis from Philip as much as possible. He faintly hoped that he was mistaken, and that she had not already given her heart to him.