A Great Change
After the victims of the disaster had been buried in the village
churchyard, Philip bade farewell to the little cottage which he had
called home, and a great lump gathered in his throat as he turned from
the scene of so many happy days, realizing that the past was now a
closed book, and that he belonged henceforth to his father’s people.
He lay back listlessly in the carriage beside Mrs. Norton, his eyes
closed, and a great round tear rolling now and then down his pale,
sad little face. Dash, who was his greatest comforter, lay snuggled
up close beside him on the seat, his watchful eyes fastened intently
on his young master, whose grief he seemed fully to understand and
appreciate. Mrs. Norton said but little to the sorrowful boy, but she
made him as comfortable as possible with cushions and shawls, and once
or twice she pressed his hand with tender sympathy. There had been some
discussion as to where Philip’s home should be henceforth, but Aunt
Delia had urged her claim for her dear dead nephew’s boy so warmly that
it was decided that for the present at least he should stop at the
rectory.
The surprise of Marion Norton and her sisters was unbounded when they
had heard as much of Philip’s story as it was thought best to tell
them, and great was their curiosity to see this new cousin, of whose
existence, even, they had never heard before, and who was suddenly to
be introduced to the family circle. They held many discussions among
themselves concerning him.
“He is just about your age,” said Marion to Rose and Lillie, her two
younger sisters.
“Then he is eleven,” said Rose, with dignity.
“Yes, but what do you think? Peter says he does not know how to read.”
“How very stupid he must be!” remarked Rose, with an air of superior
knowledge. “I shall not play with him.”
“But mamma said we must be kind to him,” said Lillie, “and love him.”
“I shall be kind to him of course,” said Marion; “but I can never love
him, because I consider him a disgrace to the family. I am so thankful
that he is to live here instead of with us, as mamma thought at first
that he might do. I wouldn’t have people in town know that we had such
a relative for the whole world.”
Rose was much impressed by Marion’s sentiments, but Lillie looked
troubled. Her mother had told them that the little orphan was sick and
sad, and her tender heart ached for him. He had been carried into the
house and straight to the little room which Aunt Delia had prepared
for him next her own; but Dr. Norton did not think him well enough to
see his young cousins yet; so Lillie begged a little nosegay from the
gardener, and, arranging it herself with the greatest care, sent it
to him by Peter, charging him to say that one of his little cousins
sent it with her love. For several days the graceful act was repeated,
and Philip, lying on the lounge in his pretty little room, learned to
watch and wait eagerly for the daily token of this unknown cousin’s
thoughtfulness. He endured no pain, but suffered greatly from nervous
prostration caused by the great shock he had undergone. For hours he
would lie with his eyes closed, and so still that Aunt Delia thought
him sleeping; but his brain was active, and at such times he was
thinking of his past life, and of the strange, hardly to be understood
change in his circumstances.
He had been provided with clothes befitting his new condition in life,
and when, after a few days’ confinement to his bed, he was able to put
them on and lie on the lounge, Aunt Delia wanted to bring the little
girls in to make his acquaintance; but the proposal threw him into an
agony of shy terror. He was full of curiosity to see them, but the idea
of facing strangers was insupportable; so his elder relatives decided
that it would be best to let him have his own way for the present,
hoping that, as he grew stronger, his desire for solitude would
disappear.
One day when Mrs. Norton, who had been sitting by him, was called away,
he fell, according to his custom, into one of his dreamy reveries,
from which he was startled by a sound so wonderfully strange and sweet
that in his ecstatic surprise he thought he must have died and gone to
heaven. Forgetting his shyness and weakness, he rose from the sofa,
and, following the sound that attracted him, went through several rooms
to the drawing-room, where Marion sat playing a plaintive Scotch air
upon the piano.
It was an old instrument and rather out of tune, and Marion was not
a skilful performer; but to Philip’s ears the music was heavenly. He
had never even heard of a piano, and the only instrument besides his
flute which he had ever listened to was a violin cruelly ill-used in
the hands of one of the miners. The genius which in his father had
developed into a talent for painting had in Philip taken the form of
a passion for music, and now as the girl, unconscious of a listener,
played fragments of waltzes and snatches of airs for her own amusement,
he sank upon his knees and buried his face in the cushions of an
easy-chair, unable to stand, and scarce knowing whether it was pain or
pleasure that thrilled through him and shook his frame with convulsive
sobs.
It was Aunt Delia’s voice that roused him from his trance of emotion,
and startled Marion into the knowledge that he was in the room. The
dear old lady had come in to see if it was by her father’s permission
that Marion was playing, as hitherto the house had been kept perfectly
quiet on the invalid’s account.
“Oh, Marion dear,” she said, “are you sure the playing won’t disturb
your little cousin? But, dear, dear, what’s this?” she exclaimed,
almost falling over Philip in the half-light of the room.
“Oh, please,” said the boy, lifting a tearful face, “don’t stop her,
and do please let me stay and hearken to her.”
But Aunt Delia saw that his strength was gone, and was firm in
insisting upon helping him back to his room, where he lay upon the
lounge entirely overcome by his effort and excess of emotion.
From that time he began to mend rapidly, and instead of the dreary
musings that had absorbed him, memory fed his poetic fancy with rapt
recollections of the wonderful harmony and the beautiful young girl,
like an angel she seemed to him, who from the strange unmusical-looking
instrument drew such wonderfully melodious sounds. He begged so hard
for more music that every day while they stopped with their uncle the
sisters played, and if it was only the practice of their scales and
other exercises to which he listened, his delight was unbounded.
He no longer resisted Aunt Delia’s desire to make him acquainted with
his cousins, and so they were brought into his room by their mother.
Marion, to gratify her curiosity, came eagerly when first permitted,
and being, in spite of her mother’s wise training, excessively fond of
admiration, vastly enjoyed the dazzled adoration of poor Philip for her
beauty and accomplishments. But after the novelty of that wore off she
began to show some of the unlovely traits of her nature, and to assume
a cold and forbidding manner toward her cousin, who, she had decided on
first learning of his existence, was a disgrace to the family.
Rose, who systematically copied her elder sister as nearly as
possible, followed her lead in her treatment of Philip, and became,
after the first, cold and haughty to him in the same proportion.
So it was left to Lillie to show him how loving and lovable a cousin
may be. To atone for her sisters’ slights, which his utter ignorance of
the world kept him from fully comprehending, she devoted every spare
moment to his amusement. She talked to him for hours of her home and of
the life she and her sisters led there--of their books, their studies,
their amusements, and every detail. It was like a fairy tale to the
boy--so much of whose short life had been spent under-ground. His lips
were sealed about that dark past, which some instinct of his sensitive
nature forbade his mentioning in the new sphere in which he found
himself.
Perhaps it would have been better if, instead of burying thoughts,
feelings, and experiences in his heart, he had frankly thrown himself
upon the sympathy of his cousin Lillie, who, without receiving any
confidence from him, felt the tenderest pity for the lonely orphan, and
tried in every way in her power to make him forget the shadows that had
overcast his young life.
One day her mother and sisters had gone to drive, leaving Lillie, by
her own request, to sit with Philip. She came smilingly into his room
after watching the carriage drive off, but Philip was not there.
Not much surprised, as lately he had walked about the house when he
felt disposed, she sat down to wait for his return. Presently she heard
the piano in the drawing-room touched gently and uncertainly, as if by
an unaccustomed hand, then more confidently and firmly, and at last
with energy--not at random, but harmoniously. She went to the door,
and from there, unseen by him, she saw Philip seated at the instrument,
his head turned bird-like upon one side, and his fingers actually
bringing music from the keys. As she listened in surprise--for she knew
he was playing for the first time in his life--she heard him say to
himself, in a half whisper:
“Oh, it sings for me! it sings for me!”
He did not, as far as she could tell, attempt any tune, but the
notes that he struck were in harmony, and in a sort of cadence,
very different from what the usual performance of a child without
instruction would naturally be.
Astonished and almost frightened by what she had heard, Lillie crept
back without having been seen, and went to her aunt’s room to tell her
of her surprise, leaving the door ajar that she, too, might hear the
sounds that Philip was making, unconscious that they fell upon any ear
but his own. They returned together to the drawing-room. It was some
time before Philip noticed their presence; when he did so he stopped
playing at once, his face crimson with embarrassment.
“My dear boy,” said Aunt Delia, putting her arm about him in a motherly
way she had, “I did not know the old piano had so much music in it. You
must have a teacher, my Philip.”
“Oh, Aunt Delia,” cried the boy, with shining eyes, “do you suppose I
should ever be able to learn to play like my cousin Marion?”
Aunt Delia smiled at the boy’s simplicity.
“My dear,” she said, “you will undoubtedly learn to play far better
than your cousin, but first you must grow quite well and strong. What
you need now is to play and romp in the open air. Let us make an
agreement. Peter has not time to attend properly to my flower-garden.
If you will dig all the weeds out of my tulip-bed, I will see if I
cannot persuade your uncle to have you taught to play the piano.”
Philip’s answer was an ecstatic hug which left the dear old lady
quite out of breath, and from that day the boy spent all his spare
time hoeing and digging in the old-fashioned garden behind the house;
and very soon the pale, slender, sickly-looking lad was transformed
into a brown, sturdy, long-legged boy whose happy laugh mingled with
the merry voices of his cousins as they played happily together in
the old garden, while Aunt Delia, watching them unobserved from an
upper window, would follow him lovingly with her eyes, saying: “How
wonderfully like his father the boy grows!”