QUITE ALONE.
It was early in June, and the days were at the longest. Never before had
Phebe found the daylight too long, but now it shone upon dismantled and
disordered rooms, which reminded her too sharply of the separation and
departure they indicated. The place was no longer a home: everything was
gone which was made beautiful by association; and all that was left was
simply the bare framework of a living habitation, articles that could be
sold and scattered without regret. Her own studio was a scene of litter
and confusion, amid which it would be impossible to work; and it was
useless to set it in order, for at midsummer she would leave the house,
now far too large and costly for her occupation.
What was she to do with herself? Quite close at hand was the day when
she would be absolutely homeless; but in the absorbing interest with
which she had thrown herself into the affairs of those who were gone she
had formed no plans for her own future. There was her profession, of
course: that would give her employment, and bring in a larger income
then she needed with her simple wants. But how was she to do without a
home--she who most needed to fill a home with all the sweet charities
of life?
She had never felt before what it was to be altogether without ties of
kinship to any fellow-being. This incompleteness in her lot had been
perfectly filled up by her relationship with the whole family of the
Seftons. She had found in them all that was required for the full
development and exercise of her natural affections. But she had lost
them. Death and the chance changes of life had taken them from her, and
there was not one human creature in the world on whom she possessed the
claim of being of the same blood.
Phebe could not dwell amid the crowds of London with such a thought
oppressing her. This heart-sickness and loneliness made the busy streets
utterly distasteful to her. To be here, with millions around her, all
strangers to her, was intolerable. There was her own little homestead,
surrounded by familiar scenes, where she would seek rest and quiet
before laying any plans for herself. She put her affairs into the hands
of a house-agent, and set out alone upon her yearly visit to her farm,
which until now Felix and Hilda had always shared.
She stayed on her way to spend a night at Riversborough--her usual
custom, that she might reach the unprepared home on the moors early in
the day. But she would not prolong her stay; there was a fatigue and
depression about her which she said could only be dispelled by the sweet
fresh air of her native moorlands.
"Felix and Hilda have been more to me than any words could tell," she
said to Mr. Clifford and Jean Merle, "and now I have lost them I feel as
if more than half my life was gone. I must get away by myself into my
old home, where I began my life, and readjust it as well as I can. I
shall do it best there with no one to distract me. You need not fear my
wishing to be too long alone."
"We ought to have let you go," answered Mr. Clifford. "Jean Merle said
we ought to have let you go with them. But how could we part with you,
Phebe?"
"I should not have been happy," she said, sighing, "as long as you need
me most--you two. And I owe all I am to Jean Merle himself."
The little homely cottage with its thatched roof and small lattice
windows was more welcome to her than any other dwelling could have been.
Now her world had suffered such a change, it was pleasant to come here,
where nothing had been altered since her childhood. Both within and
without the old home was as unchanged as the beautiful outline of the
hills surrounding it and the vast hollow of the sky above. Here she
might live over again the past--the whole past. She was a woman, with a
woman's sad experience of life; but there was much of the girl, even of
the child, left in Phebe Marlowe still; and no spot on earth could have
brought back her youth to her as this inheritance of hers. There was an
unspoiled simplicity about her which neither time nor change could
destroy--the childlikeness of one who had entered into the kingdom of
heaven.
It was a year since she had been here last, with Hilda in her first
grief for her mother's death; and everywhere she found traces of Jean
Merle's handiwork. The half-shaped blocks of wood, left unfinished for
years in her father's workshop, were completed. The hawk hovering over
its prey, which the dumb old wood-carver had begun as a symbol of the
feeling of vengeance he could not give utterance to when brooding over
Roland Sefton's crime, had been brought to a marvellous perfection by
Jean Merle's practised hand, and it had been placed by him under the
crucifix which old Marlowe had fastened in the window-frame, where the
last rays of daylight fell upon the bowed head hidden by the crown of
thorns. The first night that Phebe sat alone, on the old hearth, her
eyes rested upon these until the daylight faded away, and the darkness
shut them out from her sight. Had Jean Merle known what he did when he
laid this emblem of vengeance beneath this symbol of perfect love and
sacrifice?
But after a few days, when she had visited every place of yearly
pilgrimage, knitting up the slackened threads of memory, Phebe began to
realize the terrible solitude of this isolated home of hers. To live
again where no step passed by and no voice spoke to her, where not even
the smoke of a household hearth floated up into the sky, was intolerable
to her genial nature, which was only satisfied in helpful and pleasant
human intercourse. The utter silence became irksome to her, as it had
been in her girlhood; but even then she had possessed the companionship
of her dumb father: now there was not only silence, but utter
loneliness.
The necessity of forming some definite plan for her future life became
every day a more pressing obligation, whilst every day the needful
exertion grew more painful to her. Until now she had met with no
difficulty in deciding what she ought to do: her path of duty had been
clearly traced for her. But there was neither call of duty now nor any
strong inclination to lead her to choose one thing more than another.
All whom she loved had gone from London, and this small solitary home
had grown all too narrow in its occupations to satisfy her nature. Mr.
Clifford himself did not need her constant companionship as he would
have done if Jean Merle had not been living with him. She was perfectly
free to do what she pleased and go where she pleased, but to no human
being could such freedom be more oppressive than to Phebe Marlowe. She
had sauntered out one evening, ankle-deep among the heather, aimless in
her wanderings, and a little dejected in spirits. For the long summer
day had been hot even up here on the hills, and a dull film had hidden
the landscape from her eyes, shutting her in upon herself and her
disquieting thoughts. "We are always happy when we can see far enough,"
says Emerson; but Phebe's horizon was all dim and overcast. She could
see no distant and clear sky-line. The sight of Jean Merle's figure
coming towards her through the dull haziness brought a quick throb to
her pulse, and she ran down the rough wagon track to meet him.
"A letter from Felix," he called out before she reached him. "I came out
with it because you could not have it before post-time to-morrow, and I
am longing to have news of him and of Hilda."
They walked slowly back to the cottage, side by side, reading the
letter together; for Felix could have nothing to say to Phebe which his
father might not see. There was nothing of importance in it; only a
brief journal dispatched by a homeward-bound vessel which had crossed
the path of their steamer, but every word was read with deep and silent
interest, neither of them speaking till they had read the last line.
"And now you will have tea with me," said Phebe joyfully.
He entered the little kitchen, so dark and cool to him after his sultry
walk up the steep, long lanes, and sat watching her absently, yet with a
pleasant consciousness of her presence, as she kindled her fire of dry
furze and wood, and hung a little kettle to it by a chain hooked to a
staple in the chimney, and arranged her curious old china, picked up
long years ago by her father at village sales, upon the quaintly carved
table set in the coolest spot of the dusky room. There was an air of
simple busy gladness in her face and in every quick yet graceful
movement that was inexpressibly charming to him. Maybe both of them
glanced back at the dark past when Roland Sefton had been watching her
with despairing eyes, yet neither of them spoke of it. That life was
dead and buried. The present was altogether different.
Yet the meal was a silent one, and as soon as it was finished they went
out again on to the hazy moorland.
"Are you quite rested yet, Phebe?" asked Jean Merle.
"Quite," she answered, with unconscious emphasis.
"And you have settled upon some plan for the future?" he said.
"No," she replied; "I am altogether at a loss. There is no one in all
the world who has a claim upon me, or whom I have a claim upon; no one
to say to me 'Go' or 'Come.' When the world is all before you and it is
an empty world, it is difficult to choose which way you will take in
it."
She had paused as she spoke; but now they walked on again in silence,
Jean Merle looking down on her sweet yet somewhat sad face with
attentive eyes. How little changed she was from the simple,
faithful-hearted girl he had known long ago! There was the same candid
and thoughtful expression on her face, and the same serene light in her
blue eyes, as when she stood beside him, a little girl, patiently yet
earnestly mastering the first difficulties of reading. There was no one
in the wide world whom he knew as perfectly as he knew her; no one in
the wide world who knew him as perfectly as she did.
"Tell me, Phebe," he said gravely, "is it possible that you have lived
so long and that no man has found out what a priceless treasure you
might be to him?"
"No one," she answered, with a little tremor in her voice; "only Simon
Nixey," she added, laughing, as she thought of his perseverance from
year to year. Jean Merle stopped and laid his hand on Phebe's arm.
"Will you be my wife?" he asked.
The brief question escaped him before he was aware of it. It was as
utterly new to him as it was to her; yet the moment it was uttered he
felt how much the happiness of his life depended upon it. Without her
all the future would be dreary and lonely for him. With her--Jean Merle
did not dare to think of the gladness that might yet be his.
"No, no," cried Phebe, looking up into his face furrowed with deep
lines; "it is impossible! You ought not to ask me."
"Why?" he said.
She did not move or take away her eyes from his face. A rush of sad
memories and associations was sweeping across her troubled heart. She
saw him as he had been long ago, so far above her that it had seemed an
honor to her to do him the meanest service. She thought of Felicita in
her unapproachable loveliness and stateliness; and of their home, so
full to her of exquisite refinement and luxury. In the true humility of
her nature she had looked up to them as far above her, dwelling on a
height to which she made no claim. And this dethroned king of her early
days was a king yet, though he stood before her as Jean Merle, still
fast bound in the chains his sins had riveted about him.
"I am utterly unworthy of you," he said; "but let me justify myself if I
can. I had no thought of asking you such a question when I came up
here. But you spoke mournfully of your loneliness; and I, too, am
lonely, with no human being on whom I have any claim. It is so by my own
sin. But you, at least, have friends; and in a year or two, when my last
friend, Mr. Clifford, dies, you will go out to them, to my children,
whom I have forfeited and lost forever. There is no tie to bind me
closely to my kind. I am older than you--poorer; a dishonor to my
father's house! Yet for an instant I fancied you might learn to love me,
and no one but you can ever know me for what I am; only your faithful
heart possesses my secret. Forgive me, Phebe, and forget it if you can."
"I never can forget it," she answered, with a low sob.
"Then I have done you a wrong," he went on; "for we were friends, were
we not? And you will never again be at home with me as you have hitherto
been. I was no more worthy of your friendship than of your love, and I
have lost both."
"No, no," she cried, in a broken voice. "I never thought--it seems
impossible. But, oh! I love you. I have never loved any one like you.
Only it seems impossible that you should wish me to be your wife."
"Cannot you see what you will be to me," he said passionately. "It will
be like reaching home after a weary exile; like finding a fountain of
living waters after crossing a burning wilderness. I ought not to ask it
of you, Phebe. But what man could doom himself to endless thirst and
exile! If you love me so much that you do not see how unworthy I am of
you, I cannot give you up again. You are all the world to me."
"But I am only Phebe Marlowe," she said, still doubtfully.
"And I am only Jean Merle," he replied.
Phebe walked down the old familiar lanes with Jean Merle, and returned
to the moorlands alone whilst the sun was still above the horizon. But a
soft west wind had risen, and the hazy heat was gone. She could see the
sun sinking low behind Riversborough, and its tall spires glistened in
the level rays, while the fine cloud of smoke hanging over it this
summer evening was tinged with gold. Her future home lay there, under
the shadow of those spires, and beneath the soft, floating veil
ascending from a thousand hearths. The home Roland Sefton had forfeited
and Felicita had forsaken had become hers. There was deep sadness
mingled with the strange, unanticipated happiness of the present hour;
and Phebe did not seek to put it away from her heart.