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.