IN HIS FATHER'S HOUSE.
When Phebe entered Westminster Abbey the next day the morning service
was already begun. Upon the bench nearest the door sat a working-man,
in worn-out clothes, whose gray hair was long and ragged, and whose
whole appearance was one of poverty and suffering. She was passing by,
when a gleam of recognition in the dark and sunken eyes of this poor man
arrested her. Could he possibly be Roland Sefton? The night before she
had seen him only in a friendly obscurity, which concealed the ravages
time, and sorrow, and labor had effected; but now the daylight, in
revealing them, cast a chill shadow of doubt into her heart. It was his
voice she had known and acknowledged the night before; but now he was
silent, and, revealed by the daylight, she felt troubled and
distrustful. Such a man she might have met a thousand times without once
recalling to her memory the handsome, manly presence and prosperous
bearing of Roland Sefton.
Yet she sat down beside him in answer to that appealing gleam in his
eyes, and as his well-known voice joined hers in the responses to the
prayers, she acknowledged him again in her heart of hearts. And now all
thought of the sacred place, and of the worship she was engaged in, fled
from her mind. She was a girl at home again, dwelling in the silent
society of her dumb father, with this voice of Roland Sefton's coming to
break the stillness from time to time, and to fill it with that sweetest
music, the sound of human speech. If he had lost every vestige of
resemblance to his former self, his voice only, calling "Phebe" as he
had done the evening before, must have betrayed him to her. Not an
accent of it had been forgotten.
To Jean Merle Phebe Marlowe was little altered, save that she had grown
from a simple rustic maiden into a cultivated and refined woman. The
sweet and gentle face beside him, with the deep peaceful blue of her
eyes, and the sensitive mouth so ready to break into a smile, was the
same he had seen when, on that terrible evening so many years ago, he
had craved her help to escape from his dreaded punishment. "I will help
you, even to dying for you and yours," she had said. He remembered
vividly how mournfully the girlish fervor of her manner had impressed
him. Even now he had no one else to help him; this woman's little hand
alone could reach him in the gulf where he lay; only the simple, pitiful
wisdom of her faithful heart could find a way for him out of this misery
of his into some place of safety and peace. He was willing to follow
wherever she might guide him.
"I can see only one duty before us," she said, when the service was
over, and they stood together before one of the monuments in the Abbey;
"I think Mr. Clifford ought to know."
"What will he do, Phebe?" asked Jean Merle. "God knows if I had only
myself to think of I would go into a convict-prison as thankfully as if
it was the gate of heaven. It would be as the gate of heaven to me if I
could pay the penalty of my crime. But there are Felicita and my
children; and the greater shock and shame to them of my conviction now."
"Yet if Mr. Clifford demanded the penalty it must even now be paid,"
answered Phebe; "but he will not. One reason why he ought to know is
that he mourns over you still, day and night, as if he had been the
chief cause of your death. He reproaches himself with his implacability
both towards you and his son. But even if the old resentment should
awaken, it is right you should run the risk. Why need it be known to any
one but us two that Felicita knew you were still alive?"
"If we could save her and the children I should be satisfied," said Jean
Merle.
"It would kill her to know you were here," answered Phebe, looking round
her with a terrified glance, as if she expected to see Felicita; "she is
not strong, and a sudden agitation and distress might cause her death
instantly. No, she must never know. And I am not afraid of Mr. Clifford;
he will forgive you with all his heart; and he will be made glad in his
old age. I will go down with you this evening. There is a train at four
o'clock, and we shall reach Riversborough at eight. Be at the station to
meet me."
"You know," said Jean Merle, "that the lapse of years does not free one
from trial and conviction? Mr. Clifford can give me into the hands of
the police at once; and to-night may see me lodged in Riversborough
jail, as if I had been arrested fourteen years ago. You know this,
Phebe?"
"Yes, I know it, but I am not afraid of it," she answered.
She had not the slightest fear of old Mr. Clifford's vindictiveness. As
she travelled down to Riversborough, with Jean Merle in a third-class
carriage of the same train, her mind was very busy with troubled
thoughts. There was an unquiet joy stirring in the secret depths of her
heart, but she was too full of anxiety and bewilderment to be altogether
aware of it. Though it was not more than twenty-four hours since she had
known otherwise, it seemed to her as if she had never believed that
Roland Sefton was dead, and it appeared incredible that the report of
his death should have received such full acceptance as it had everywhere
done. Yet though he had come back, there could be no welcome for him. To
her and to old Mr. Clifford only could this return from the grave
contain any gladness. And was she glad? she asked herself, after a long
deliberation over the difficulties surrounding this strange
reappearance. She had sorrowed for him and comforted his mother in her
mourning, and talked of him as one talks fondly of the dead to his
children; and all the sacred healing of time had softened the grief she
once felt into a tranquil and grateful memory of him, as of the friend
she had loved most, and whose care for her had most widely influenced
her life. But she could not own yet that she was glad.
Old Mr. Clifford was sitting in the wainscoted dining-room, his favorite
room, when Phebe opened the door silently, and looked in with a pale and
anxious face. His sight was dim, and a blaze of light fell upon the
dark, old panels, and the old-fashioned silver tankards and bright brass
salvers on the carved sideboard. Two or three of Phebe's sunniest
pictures hung against the oaken panels. There was a blazing fire on the
hearth, and the old man, with his elbows resting on the arms of his
chair, and his hands clasped lightly, was watching the play and dance of
the flames as they shot up the chimney. Some new books lay on a table
beside him, but he was not reading. He was sitting there in utter
loneliness, with no companionship except that of his own fading
memories. Phebe's tenderness for the old man was very great; and she
paused on the threshold gazing at him pitifully; whilst Jean Merle,
standing in the hall behind her, caught a glimpse of the hearth so
crowded with memories for him, but occupied now by one desolate old man,
before the door was closed, and he was left without.
"Why, it's little Phebe Marlowe!" cried Mr. Clifford gladly, looking
round at the light sound of a footstep, very different from Mrs. Nixey's
heavy tread; "my dear child, you can't tell what a pleasure this is to
me."
He had risen up, and stood holding both her hands and looking fondly
into her face.
"This moment I was thinking of you, my dear," he said; "I was inditing a
long letter to you in my head, which these lazy old fingers of mine
would have refused to write. Sandon, the bookseller, has been in here,
bringing these books; and he told me a queer story enough. He says that
in August last a relation of Madame Sefton's was here, in Riversborough;
and told him who he was, in his shop, where he bought one of Felicita's
books. Why didn't Sandon come here at once and tell us then, so that you
could have found him out, Phebe? You and Felix and Hilda were here. He
was a poor man, and seemed badly off; and I guess he came to inquire
after Madame. Sandon says he reminded him of Roland--poor Roland! Why,
I'd have given the poor fellow a welcome for the sake of that
resemblance; and I was just thinking how Phebe's tender heart would have
been touched by even so faint a likeness."
"Yes," she murmured.
"And we could have lifted him up a little; quite a poor man, Sandon
says," continued Mr. Clifford; "but sit down, my dear. There is no one
in the wide world would be so welcome to me as little Phebe Marlowe, who
refused to be my adopted daughter."
He had drawn a chair close beside his own, for he would not loose her
hand, but kept it closely grasped by his thin and crooked fingers.
"You have altogether forgiven Roland?" she said tremulously.
"Altogether, my dear," he answered.
"As Christ forgives us, bearing away our sins Himself?" she said.
"As Christ forgave us," he replied, bowing his head solemnly.
"And if it was possible--think it possible," she went on, "that he could
come back again, that the grave in Engelberg could give up its dead, he
would be welcome to you?"
"If my old friend Sefton's son, could come back again," he said, "he
would be more welcome to me than you are, Phebe. How often do I fancy
him sitting yonder in Sefton's chair, watching me with his dear eyes!"
"But suppose he had deceived us all," she continued, "if he had escaped
from your anger by another fraud; a worse fraud! If he had managed so as
to bury some one else in his name, and go on living under a false one!
Could you forgive that?"
"If Roland could come back a repentant man, I would forgive him every
sin," answered Mr. Clifford, "and rejoice that I had not driven him to
seek death. But what do you mean, Phebe? why do you ask?"
"Because," she answered, speaking almost in a whisper, with her face
close to his, "Roland did not die. That man, who was here in August, and
called himself Jean Merle, is Roland himself. He saw you, and all of us,
and did not dare to make himself known. I can tell you all about it.
But, oh! he has bitterly repented; and there is no place of repentance
for him in this world. He cannot come back amongst us, and be Roland
Sefton again."
"Where is he?" asked the old man, trembling.
"He is here; he came with me. I will go and fetch him," she answered.
Mr. Clifford leaned back in his arm-chair, and gazed towards the
half-open door. His memory had gone back twenty years, to the last time
he had seen Roland Sefton, in the prime of his youth, handsome, erect,
and happy, who had made his heart ache as he thought of his own
abandoned son, lying buried in a common grave in Paris. The man whom he
saw entering slowly and reluctantly into the room behind Phebe, was
gray-headed, bent, and abject. This man paused just within the doorway,
looking not at him but round the room, with a glance full of grief and
remembrance. The eager, questioning eyes of old Mr. Clifford did not
arrest his attention, or divert it from the aspect of the old familiar
place.
"No, no, Phebe!" exclaimed Mr. Clifford, "he's an impostor, my dear.
That's not my old friend's son Roland."
"Would to God I were not!" cried Jean Merle bitterly, "would to God I
stood in this room as a stranger! Phebe Marlowe, this is very hard; my
punishment is greater than I can bear. All my life comes back to me
here. This place, of all other places in the world, brings my sin and
folly to remembrance."
He sank down on a chair, and buried his face in his hands, to shut out
the hateful sight of the old home. He was inside his Paradise again; and
behold, it was a place of torment. There was no room in his thoughts for
Mr. Clifford, it was nothing to him that he should be called an
impostor. He came to claim nothing, not even his own name. But the
avenging memories of the past claimed him and held him fast bound. Even
last night, when in the chill darkness of the November night he had
watched the house which held Felicita and their children, his pain had
been less poignant than now, within these walls, where all his happy
life had been passed. He was unconscious of everything but his pain. He
could not hear Phebe's voice speaking for him to Mr. Clifford. He saw
and felt nothing, until a gentle and trembling hand pressing on his
shoulder feebly and as tenderly as his mother's made him look up into
the gray and agitated face of Mr. Clifford bending over him.
"Roland! Roland!" he said, in a voice broken by sobs, "my old friend's
son, forgive me as I forgive you. God be thanked, you have come back
again in time for me to see you and bid you welcome. I bless God with
all my heart. It is your own home, Roland, your own home."
With his feeble but eager old hands he drew him to the hearth, and
placed him in the chair close beside his own, where Phebe had been
sitting, and kept his hand upon his arm, lest he should vanish out of
his sight.
"You shall tell me nothing more to-night," he said; "I am old, and this
is enough for me. It is enough that to-night you and I have pardoned
one another from 'the low depths of our hearts.' Tell me nothing else
to-night."
Phebe had slipped away from them to help Mrs. Nixey to prepare a room
for Jean Merle. It was the one that had been Roland Sefton's nursery,
and the nursery of his children, and it was still occupied by Felix,
when he visited his old home. The homely hospitable occupation was a
relief to her; but in the room that she had left the two men sat side by
side in unbroken silence.