COMING OF AGE.
There was great consternation in the tranquil Rectory, when the rector
declared with unwonted decision that neither he, nor his wife, nor
Phyllis would go north to the coming of age festivities of Philip.
These revels had been talked of for years; and since Dorothy had come
from Brackenburn she had been called upon to describe again and again
the old Manor House and its surroundings. Philip and Phyllis looked
forward to choosing the site of the new mansion together.
"You boys may go," said the rector; "you have been brought up as
brothers with Philip, and if he wishes it, it is only due to him and
his father that you should attend them. But no one else goes."
"What!" cried Dick in blunt astonishment; "not the future Mrs. Martin?"
"What do you mean?" asked the rector sternly.
"Why, Phyllis, of course!" he answered; and Phyllis laughed merrily,
and blushed a little, but did not show any resentment.
"I will have no such jests made here," said the rector with increased
sternness. "Philip and Phyllis are not children any longer."
"Children? no!" cried Dick; "and it is no jest either, father. They've
always been promised to one another. Of course they are engaged."
"Secretly?" said the rector, unable to utter another word.
"Oh, it's an open secret," pursued Dick. "You ask Philip. Ask uncle
or aunt Martin. Ask Dorothy. Ask Andrew Goldsmith. Everybody would
say they knew it, except you, dear old father."
"No, your uncle and aunt do not know," he replied in a tone of deep
depression and sadness. It seemed an unpardonable treachery that these
two should have entered into an engagement without asking the consent
of their parents. This base blow had been struck at Sidney in his
home, and by those that were dear to him. "A man's foes shall be they
of his own household," he said bitterly to himself, as he sat alone in
his study, after leaving all the members of his family in a state of
dismay and amazement. Philip came to him by and by, having been
summoned by Phyllis, and declared that he had never thought of keeping
his love a secret; that he was only waiting till he was of age to speak
openly of it to his father and mother; and that he did not for a moment
anticipate anything like disapproval from either of them. The rector
was too unhappy to take courage or comfort. But he could not be shaken
in his resolution that Phyllis should not join the party going north.
Philip's coming of age was to be celebrated merely by a gathering of
the tenants at Brackenburn Manor, a festivity which could not have
taken place at all but for the death of Mr. Churchill, an event which
had left the old house at Sidney's disposal. They were strangers on
their own estate, and had, therefore, no friendly neighbors to gather
about them. Now that the rector so firmly refused all invitations,
except for his sons, there was a small party only going northward.
Oddly enough, Sidney invited Andrew Goldsmith to accompany them. It
was a sudden impulse and freak for which he could not account to
himself. Rachel Goldsmith was accompanying Margaret, as she still held
the nominal post of her maid, and it did not seem altogether out of
place to ask her brother Andrew.
"It'll be a rare treat to me," said the old saddler, "for I've loved
Mr. Philip, as if he'd been my own flesh and blood, ever since my lady
brought him to my house as a little babe. Ah! if he'd been Sophy's boy
I couldn't have loved him more."
It was years since Sidney had heard Sophy's name; for, naturally, as
time went on, the memory of her, and of her strange disappearance and
silence, had withdrawn into the background of life, and only two or
three hearts, that had been stricken sorely by her loss, kept her in
remembrance. They had no hope now of finding her; but no day passed in
which her father and Rachel did not think of her, and still wonder,
with sad bewilderment, what could have become of her.
It was early in December: the few leaves left in the topmost branches
of the trees were brown and sere. The wide moors rising behind
Brackenburn were brown too, but there were purple and gray tints on
them--dun, soft tints that looked very beautiful under the low sky and
slowly drifting clouds. To Dorothy it was an unmingled pleasure to
revisit, in this manner, her birthplace, and to see its empty rooms
peopled by all those she had learned to love. The old familiar house,
with its latticed windows shining through the luxuriant tendrils of
ivy, which Sidney had left untrained, was quite unchanged; but when she
entered through the broad porch into the large old hall, she uttered a
cry of delight. It was a transformed and brilliant place; not the
bare, barnlike entrance she remembered. Soft skins and rugs lay on the
oak floor, and a large fire burned in the wide old chimney, which had
always looked to her, when a child, like the mouth of a black cavern.
On each side of the broad and shallow staircase there stood flowering
plants on every step. The place was the same; yet, oh, how different!
A rich color came into her face, and her dark eyes glowed with happy
excitement. Margaret was tired, and Dorothy, feeling almost like
mistress and hostess in her old home, conducted her to her room, where
Rachel was awaiting her lady's arrival.
Margaret was not in her usual health and spirits. There was always
mingled with her joy in Philip's birth, the memory of her father's
death the day afterward, and the solemn recollection of her own strange
experience of dying, as if she had actually passed out of this world,
and been sent back to it. Life had never been to her, since that
memorable time, the commonplace existence of her mere physical or
intellectual being. She had lived more by the soul than by the mind or
the body. These lower forms of life had possessed their fullness for
her. She had enjoyed the perfect health of her physical nature, with
all the rich pleasures coming through the senses, and she had in a
greater measure taken delight in intellectual pursuits. But,
pre-eminently, she had lived in the spirit, and just now her spirit was
overshadowed. There was a conflict coming near from which it shrank.
She was troubled about Phyllis. The girl was dear to her from old
associations and the intimacy of a lifetime; but she could not think of
her as Philip's wife. No word had been spoken to her yet about this
subject; but it had been in the air for the last fortnight, and she
could not be unconscious of it. She had guessed the reason of the
rector's firm resolution of not coming to Brackenburn, and not letting
Laura and Phyllis come. Sidney had not spoken of it; but she thought
he was troubled. But the most disquieting symptom of a coming storm
was that Philip kept silence, even to her. He never mentioned Phyllis;
but he was absent and low-spirited. This was the first sorrow, the
first shadow of a cloud, coming over Margaret from her relationship
with her husband and her son. Until now she had been able to speak as
she thought before them, with quiet, unrestrained freedom. But there
had sprung up, during the last few days, a novel feeling of restraint
and embarrassment. Neither Sidney nor Philip uttered the name of
Phyllis.
After Dorothy had seen Margaret comfortably established in her room,
she stole quietly and quickly out of the house, and hastened on to the
moors. There was yet half an hour of the short December day, and she
could not wait for the morrow. At the first low knoll she turned round
to look back upon the old Manor House, with its picturesque gables and
large stacks of chimneys. She knew now better than she used to do how
very beautiful it was. The sun was setting, and the low light shone
full upon the small diamond panes of the many windows, and cast deep
shadows from the eaves, and brought into stronger relief the antique
carvings on the heavy beams of oak. She felt proud of the place--as
proud as if it had been her own.
"Why did you never tell us how pretty it was?" asked Philip's voice;
and turning round, she saw him coming up to her over the soundless turf.
"I never knew," she answered, almost stammeringly; "I never thought it
was as lovely as this. Yet I've seen it from this very spot thousands
of times. Why did it look so sad to me then, and so beautiful now?"
She looked up into his face as if it was a very knotty question for him
to consider, and his grave expression relaxed a little as he answered
her.
"You were not very happy here then," he suggested.
"I never knew a happy day till I knew your father," she replied; "and
I've never known an unhappy one since. Is it happiness that makes a
place look lovely?"
If it was so, thought Philip, this place could have no beauty for him.
Phyllis was not there, and his heart was very heavy for her absence.
And not only for her absence, but from a growing dread of meeting with
an opposition he had not anticipated. It was significant to him of
trouble that his father and mother never spoke of Phyllis in his
presence; he did not know that they were equally silent with one
another. Though it was the rector who had prevented her from coming
north, he could not help guessing that it was his father who had, in
some way, been the real hinderer. The rector could have no objection
to himself as Phyllis's suitor, and he felt sure that he at least had
looked upon him as her future husband. Phyllis, too, was certain of
it, and so were the boys. He was only waiting till he came of age, and
stepped into his right of free and independent manhood, to tell his
father that he had chosen Phyllis as his wife.
"It is not only happiness that makes a place lovely," pursued Dorothy,
after a pause, "it is being with people one loves. Do you see that
window just touched by the end of a branch of those Scotch firs? Your
mother is in that room. I cannot see her, of course; but that window
is more beautiful to me because I know she is there. And I know all
the rooms, and how they will be occupied; and the whole house is full
of interest to my mind. So that even if it was an ugly place, it could
not be altogether ugly to me."
There was a pleasant ring in her voice which was new to Philip's ear,
He looked long and earnestly at the old house, which some day would
belong to him, unless it was pulled down to make room for a finer
mansion. It already belonged to him because it belonged to his father.
It was a beautiful old place, with the gray stones of the strong wall
surrounding it made warm with golden mosses; and the front of the house
covered with undipped ivy-branches, hanging in glistening festoons from
every point of vantage. Such a place could not be built or made. Why
should he be such a Goth as to erect a brand-new mansion, which could
possess no such charm and beauty until he, and generations of his sons,
were moldering in their graves?
"Wouldn't it be a pity to pull it down?" asked Dorothy, as if she read
his thoughts; "but Phyllis would find the rooms too small, and too low
for her. I described it to her one day, and drew a sort of plan of it;
and she said it was only a big rambling farmhouse, and you must build a
much grander place, because Sir John Martin left a large sum of money
to build it with. So I thought, was it quite impossible for me to buy
it, and you build a house somewhere near it? Then we should always be
neighbors; and it is very lonely here in the winter. Do you think
Phyllis would like to live here in the winter?"
It was sweet to him to hear Phyllis's name spoken in this way; no one
had uttered it in his presence for a fortnight except the boys, and
they spoke it with a sort of jeer, as brothers sometimes do. Dorothy's
gentle voice lingered shyly over it. He looked down into her shining
eyes with a smile in his own.
"We must not talk of Phyllis living here yet," he said, "not till the
day after to-morrow."
"Let us go a little higher up the moors," she said, "I know every
little track, and beck, and dingle for miles round. When I lived here
with my father, I used to sit an hour or two with him every day, on the
other side of the table, reading aloud, and answering the questions he
asked me. But he never talked to me, or took me on his knee, or kissed
me; and I thought all fathers were the same. The rest of the day I had
to myself, and I spent my time here, out of doors."
"And in the winter when there was snow or rain?" asked Philip.
"I read all day long," she went on. "See on the roof there, between
two gables, is a little dormer window. There my secret room is. I
really believe nobody knew of it but me; and I used to stay there till
I was nearly starved and famished. But there was no one to ask me
where I had been, or what I'd been doing."
"Poor child!" said Philip unconsciously. The color mounted to
Dorothy's face, and she turned away from him a little.
"It is all different now," she continued, after a momentary silence,
"you are all so kind and good to me. And I think sometimes that when
my father died he too went to a place where everyone is good and kind
to him and tries to make up to him for his life here; for he was more
lonely and unhappy than I was. I was only a child, and he was a man.
I should not like to feel that his death had made me so happy, if it
has not made him happy too."
"My mother has always told us that death itself comes to us out of the
love of God," said Philip.
He had followed Dorothy along a narrow track, and now they were out of
sight of the house. A wide, undulating upland, whose limits were
almost lost in the darkening sky, stretched as far as the eye could
see. The sun was gone down, but a frosty light lingered in the west.
The keen, sweet air played around them; and Dorothy drew in a deep
breath, and stretched out her arms, with a caressing gesture, to the
wide landscape. She looked more at home here than Phyllis would have
done. Phyllis would have seen but little beauty in so wild and
solitary a spot. Perhaps it was better that she had not seen her
future home for the first time in the winter.
Philip retraced his steps, with Dorothy beside him, in a more tranquil
frame of mind. She did not shun conversation about Phyllis; and though
nothing was acknowledged between them, he was sure she knew of their
love for one another. What was more likely than that Phyllis had told
her?
They went back to the house slowly through the deepening twilight,
Dorothy pointing out distant objects which neither of them could
distinguish in the darkness, though she fancied she saw them, so
familiar and so dear they were to her. He looked at the wide, open,
dusky landscape, and the broad sky above them, and the picturesque old
house, with light shining through the many windows, from Dorothy's
point of view. But what would Phyllis think of it, with her dainty,
fastidious ways, and her love of society?
As they passed through the great gates into the forecourt Andrew
Goldsmith met them.
"Well, Mr. Philip!" he said, "I don't think much of your place. The
saddle and harness room is almost in ruins; and the stables aren't fit
for anything better than cart horses. It's not to be compared with
Apley Hall; and the sooner you begin to build yourself a suitable
mansion the better."