ARTHUR PHILLIPS HAS A HAPPY GLIMPSE OF
THE FUTURE.
Arthur stood irresolutely wondering what he should do next. He had
intended to ask Amy quietly to inform her friend of his presence here;
but she had given him little or no opportunity to do that, as you have
seen.
He looked round the library where the merchant had been accustomed to
sit at his desk. There was no change in the room. The light elegant
book-shelves were there. The grandly bound books were there as usual.
Pens and ink and blotting pads all in their places; and the leather
chair stood near the desk by the window; but the merchant lay quietly
in his grave.
Presently Arthur rang the bell, and summoned up courage enough to
send his card up to Phœbe Somerton, who presented herself almost
immediately.
She was a good deal changed; but her black clothes seemed only to add a
sort of refining touch to her beauty.
“I am so pleased to see you, Mr. Phillips,” she said frankly, putting
out her hand, “if one really ought to be pleased at anything,
considering that we have buried my father--I mean Mr. Tallant--to-day.”
Phœbe spoke with some restraint and hesitation, and Arthur was visibly
nervous and excited.
“I am sure you will pardon me,” said Arthur, “if with the view of
suppressing any embarrassment I tell you that I have been made
acquainted with all that has taken place. I came down here from London
yesterday, ignorant even of Mr. Tallant’s death; but I could not
return without venturing to say to you, personally, how deeply, how
respectfully, I sympathise with you in your troubles.”
There was a tone of deferential homage and sincere interest in Arthur’s
manner which did not fail to make an impression upon Phœbe.
“I am sure I thank you sincerely, Mr. Phillips, and appreciate, as I
hope I ought, your great kindness: I have frequently wondered why you
had deserted Barton,” said Phœbe.
“I shall hope to have an opportunity to explain to you one of these
days,” said Arthur.
“Nothing I hope ever occurred here to induce your absence?” said Phœbe.
“O no; on the contrary,” said Arthur, looking at the speaker with
undisguised emotion, “engagements of a pressing character have kept me
confined to my studio.”
Then the conversation dropped into matters of fact concerning the late
Mr. Tallant’s troubles, his illness and death; and eventually Phœbe
Somerton and Arthur shook hands, and Arthur asked permission to call
and see his fair pupil on an early day, which permission was readily
granted.
And so Arthur went back to Severntown, to his quiet house beneath the
shadow of the old cathedral, full of new hopes, a new man, and with the
future opening up to him bright and sunny.
He found several congratulatory letters at home about his work,
“Seeking New Homes,” and two offers of purchase, the highest being
fifteen hundred pounds.
This was cheerful; for though Arthur was by no means mercenary, he felt
that this was a practical tribute to the excellence of his work; and,
moreover, he had, as we have already learnt, been a heavy loser through
the recent bank failures.
He sat in the firelight with his happy dreams, listening to the roar
of the river without, and letting it bear away his thoughts on its
bosom. The cathedral chimes fell dreamily upon his ear, and he thought
of a merry village peal which might some day be rung in token of the
consummation of his wildest hopes.
Thoughts of the cold damp church, with the coffin in it, would crop up
now and then, but they had no abiding-place in his mind that night;
happier thoughts crowded in and dispersed them.
His long lonely life, with quiet grassy spots in it here and there,
and nooks of peace, dedicated to art, was before him. He travelled
over it again in the firelight. He saw himself a studious boy without
playmates, without companions; he saw himself verging into manhood
with a strangely awakened love of art and nature, and with only a poor
broken-down painter taking any interest in the mysterious signs which
his genius would make in spite of himself. He saw his humble home and
his toiling parent; a mother without one gleam of sympathy in common
with his aspirations, and who only bore querulously with his odd ways,
and a father whose besetting sin was the bottle, which was his ruin.
He thought of his early struggles, of his early privations, of the
burning passionate love of his art. It was a rugged, broken road at
the starting, and his first success had brought with it a bitter pang;
it would have gladdened his heart to have given his father and mother
this evidence of the practical correctness of his judgment, to have
shown them how honourable art is, and how it elevates the humble worker
into the highest rank, and places him on a level with princes.
A lonely, lowly road, but by-and-by covered with mosses and soft grass,
and sober flowers and shady ferns; and then umbrageous trees threw
their arms over it, and gleams of sunshine came through the branches.
Presently another figure appeared in this more cheerful path, but it
only seemed to mock the student with its beauty, and to lure him on
into hopes that would only strew his way again with broken rocks, and
thorns, and rough places.
All at once, however, the sun shone out full upon him, and the figure
held out its hand, and smiled with truthful human eyes. And something
said within him that he would have a companion at last to share his
journey, and that the happy, happy goal was near.
That same night Phœbe sat before the parlour-fire at the Hall Farm,
with Mrs. Somerton on one side and Luke on the other.
Her right hand lay quietly in her father’s, and she was talking
cheerfully to them both.
They had evidently had a long and affecting interview. The storm was
past; the rush of the tempest was over; and it had left Mrs. Somerton
gazing through tears at her daughter.
No words of rebuke, no complaint, had been uttered by Phœbe; she had
said nothing but what was kind and dutiful, nothing that could wound,
except that her kindness stung her mother more than hard words would
have done.
The remorseful woman had burst out into sobs and heart-breaking
lamentations at the first tender acts of filial forgiveness, and Luke
had hardly known how to master his own feelings when, in reply to some
remark of his conveying the thought that she would be ashamed of such
a father, she had flung herself into his arms and called him Father.
There was something hysterical at first in the whole proceeding; but
by-and-by the calm came, and then they all three sat and talked. Phœbe
was hardly herself, though she had made up her mind so fully how she
ought to act and how she would act.
A sense of duty had impelled her to come home to her father and mother,
and there was a vague, strange sense of happiness and safety in sitting
between them. The Hall without her sometime father seemed full of
desolation and shadows. Unaccustomed sounds had struck upon her ear,
she thought she heard the merchant’s voice and his footstep on the
stairs.
A sense of fear and loneliness had been upon her; and she had come home
to her father and her mother, and now there was a sweet lulling feeling
of peace at her heart which she had not felt for a long time past.
Had the visit of Arthur Phillips done anything to enhance that
sensation of quiet and repose? He had been in her thoughts more than
once, as she sat there with her hand in her father’s.
It was no use Luke or his wife expostulating with Phœbe; home she had
come, and at home she would stay. And when at length the wondering
domestic at the Hall Farm came to show her to the room which had been
always set apart for Amy’s use, Phœbe knelt and received her mother’s
blessing, bade Luke good-night, and called him “Father” again.
Luke and his wife had rarely sat up so late as upon this eventful
night, and so much good will sometimes come out of evil, and sins
confessed are so nearly atoned for--that Luke and his wife loved each
other now for the first time. There was a deep wondering pity in Luke’s
heart for his wife now that he saw the secret of her life, and looked
at the drooping head and the eyes filled with tears. Mrs. Somerton had
not expected such a generous forgiveness, and so much sympathy and
gentleness, at Luke’s hands. In the last few weeks she had suffered a
world of remorse for her past shrewish conduct, and now her gratitude
knew no bounds; gratitude and sympathy and pity, and memories of the
past, mingled together in these two hearts, and on the steady downward
path of life they came to love each other with a quiet calm love that
is nearest akin to a long-proved generous friendship.