"You cannot do it," he repeated; "you have no notion of what you are undertaking to do. Mrs. Sefton, my dear young lady, I am come, with Lord Riversford's sanction, to ask you to return to your home again, to Madame's old home—your children's birth-place. I think, and Lord Riversford thinks, you should come back, and bring up Felix to take his grandfather's and father's place."
"His father's place!" interrupted Felicita. "No, my son shall never enter into business. I would rather see him a common soldier or sailor, or day-laborer, earning his bread by any honest toil. He shall have no traffic in money, such as his father had; he shall have no such temptations. Whatever my son is, he shall never be a banker."
"Good heavens, madam!" exclaimed Mr. Clifford. Felicita's stony quietude was gone, and in its place was such a passionate energy as he had never witnessed before in any woman.
"It was money that tempted Roland to defraud you and dishonor himself," she said; "it drove poor Acton to commit suicide, and it hardened your heart against your friend's son. Felix shall be free from it. He shall earn his bread and his place in the world in some other way, and till he can do that I will earn it for him. Every shilling I spend from henceforth shall be clean, the fruit of my own hands, not Roland's—not his, whether he be alive or dead."
Before Mr. Clifford could answer, the door was flung open, and Felix, breathless with rapid running, rushed into the room and flung himself into his mother's arms. No words could come at first; but he drew long and terrible sobs. The boy's upturned face was pale, and his eyes, tearless as her own had been, were fastened in an agony upon hers. She could not soothe or comfort him, for she knew his grief was wasted on a falsehood; but she looked down on her son's face with a feeling of terror.
"Oh, my father! my beloved father!" he sobbed at last. "Is he dead, mother? You never told me anything that wasn't true. He can't be dead, though Phebe says so. Is it true, mother?"
Felicita bent her head till it rested on the boy's uplifted face. His sobs shook her, and the close clasp of his arms was painful; but she neither spoke nor moved. She heard Phebe coming in, and knew that Roland's mother was there, and Hilda came to clasp her little arms about her as Felix was doing. But her heart had gone back to the moment when Roland had knelt beside her in the quiet little church, and she had said to him deliberately, "I choose your death." He was dead to her.
"Is it true, mother?" wailed Felix. "Oh, tell me it isn't true!"
"It is true," she answered. But the long, tense strain had been too much for her strength, and she sank fainting on the ground.
It was all in vain that Mr. Clifford tried to turn Felicita from her resolution. Phebe cordially upheld her, and gave her courage to persist against all arguments. Both of them cared little for poverty—Phebe because she knew it, Felicita because she did not know it. Felicita had never known a time when money had to be considered; it had come to her pretty much in the same way as the air she breathed and the food she ate, without any care or prevision of her own. Phebe, on the other hand, knew that she could earn her own living at any time by the work of her strong young arms, and her wants were so few that they could easily be supplied.
It was decided before Phebe went home again, and decided in the face of Mr. Clifford's opposition, that a small house should be taken in London, and partly furnished from the old house at Riversborough, where Felicita would be in closer and easier communication with the publishers. Mr. Clifford laughed to himself at the idea that she could gain a maintenance by literature, as all the literary people he had ever met or heard of bewailed their poverty. But there was Madame's little income of two hundred a year: that formed a basis, not altogether an insecure or despicable one. It would pay more than the rent, with the rates and taxes.
The yearly income from Felicita's marriage settlement, which no representations could persuade her to touch, was to go to the gradual repayment of Roland's debts, the poorest men being paid first, and Mr. Clifford, who reluctantly consented to the scheme, to receive his the last. Though Madame had never believed in her son's guilt, her just and simple soul was satisfied and set at rest by this arrangement. She had not been able to blame him, but it had been a heavy burden to her to think of others suffering loss through him. It was then almost with cheerfulness that she set herself to keep house for her daughter-in-law and her grand-children under such widely different circumstances.
Before Christmas a house was found for them in Cheyne Walk. The Chelsea Embankment was not then thought of, and the streets leading to it, like those now lying behind it, were mean and crowded. It was a narrow house, with rooms so small that when the massive furniture from their old house was set up in it there was no space for moving about freely. Madame had known only two houses—the old straggling, picturesque country manse in the Jura, with its walnut-trees shading the windows, and tossing up their branches now and then to give glimpses of snow-mountains on the horizon, and her husband's pleasant and luxurious house at Riversborough, with every comfort that could be devised gathered into it. There was the river certainly flowing past this new habitation, and bearing on its full and rapid tide a constantly shifting panorama of boats, of which the children never tired, and from Felicita's window there was a fair reach of the river in view, while from the dormer windows of the attic above, where Felix slept, there was a still wider prospect. But in the close back room, which Madame allotted to herself and Hilda, there was only a view of back streets and slums, with sights and sounds which filled her with dismay and disgust.
But Madame made the best of the woeful change. The deep, quiet love she had given to her son she transferred to Felicita, who, she well knew, had been his idol. She believed that the sorrows of these last few months had not sprung out of the ground, but had for some reason come down from God, the God of her fathers, in whom she put her trust. Her son had been called away by Him; but three were left, her daughter and her grand-children, and she could do nothing better in life than devote herself to them.
But to Felicita her new life was like walking barefoot on a path of thorns. Until now she had been so sheltered and guarded, kept from the wind blowing too roughly upon her, that every hour brought a sharp pin-prick to her. To have no carriage at her command, no maid to wait upon, her—not even a skilful servant to discharge ordinary household duties well and quickly—to live in a little room where she felt as if she could hardly breathe, to hear every sound through the walls, to have the smell of cooking pervade the house—these and numberless similar discomforts made her initiation into her new sphere a series of surprises and disappointments.
But she must bestir herself if even this small amount of comfort and well-being were to be kept up. Madame's income would not maintain their household even on its present humble footing. Felicita's first book had done well; it had been fairly reviewed by some papers, and flatteringly reviewed by other critics who had known the late Lord Riversford. On the whole it had been a good success, and her name was no longer quite unknown. Her publishers were willing to take another book as soon as it could be ready: they did more, they condescended to ask for it. But the £50 they had paid for the first, though it had seemed a sufficient sum to her when regarded from the stand-point of a woman surrounded by every luxury, and able to spend the whole of it on some trinket, looked small enough—too small—as the result of many weeks of labor, by which she and her children were to be fed. If her work was worth no more than that, she must write at least six such books in the year, and every year! Felicita's heart sank at the thought!
There seemed to be only one resource, since one of her publishers had offered an advance of £10 only, saying they were doing very well for her, and running a risk themselves. She must take her manuscript and offer it as so much merchandise from house to house, selling it to the best bidder. This was against all her instincts as an author, and if she had remained a wealthy woman she would not have borne it. She was too true and original an artist not to feel how sacred a thing earnest and truthful work like hers was. She loved it, and did it conscientiously. She would not let it go out of her hands disgraced with blunders. Her thoughts were like children to her, not to be sent out into the world ragged and uncouth, exposed to just ridicule and to shame.
Felicita and Madame set out on their search after a liberal publisher on a gloomy day in January. For the first time in her life Felicita found herself in an omnibus, with her feet buried in damp straw, and strange fellow-passengers crushing against her. In no part of London do the omnibuses bear comparison with the well-appointed carriages rich people are accustomed to; and this one, besides other discomforts, was crowded till there was barely room to move hand or foot.
"It is very cheap," said Madame cheerfully after she had paid the fare when they were set down in Trafalgar Square "and not so very inconvenient."
A fog filled the air and shrouded all the surrounding buildings in dull obscurity; while the fountains, rising and falling with an odd and ghostly movement as of gigantic living creatures, were seen dimly white in the midst of the gray gloom. The ceaseless stream of hurrying passers-by lost itself in darkness only a few paces from them. The chimes of unseen belfries and the roll of carriages visible only for a few seconds fell upon their ears. Felicita, in the secret excitement of her mood, felt herself in some impossible world, some phantasmagoria of a dream, which must presently disperse, and she would find herself at home again, in her quiet, dainty study at Riversborough, where most of the manuscript, which she held so closely in her hand, had been written. But the dream was dispelled when she found herself entering the publishing-house she had fixed upon as her first scene of venture. It was a quiet place, with two or three clerks busily engaged in some private conversation, too interesting to be abruptly terminated by the entrance of two ladies dressed in mourning, one of whom carried a roll of manuscript. If Felicita had been wise the manuscript would not have been there to betray her. It made it exceedingly difficult for her to obtain admission to the publisher, in his private room beyond; and it was only when she turned away to go, with a sudden outflashing of aristocratic haughtiness, that the clerk reluctantly offered to take her card and a message to his employer.
In a few moments Felicita was entering the dark den where the fate of her book was in the balance. Unfortunately for her she presented too close a resemblance to the well-known type of a distressed author. Her deep mourning, the thick veil almost concealing her face; a straw clinging to the hem of her dress and telling too plainly of omnibus-riding; her somewhat sad and agitated voice; Madame's widow's cap, and unpretending demeanor—all were against her chances of attention. The publisher, who had risen from his desk, did not invite them to be seated. He glanced at Felicita's card, which bore the simple inscription, "Mrs. Sefton."
"You know my name?" she asked, faltering a little before his keen-eyed, shrewd, business-like observation. He shook his head slightly.
"I am the writer of a book called 'Haughmond Towers,'" she added, "published by Messrs. Price and Gould. It came out last May."
"I never heard of it," he answered solemnly. Felicita felt as if he had struck her. This was an unaccountable thing; he was a publisher, and she an author; yet he had never heard of her book. It was impossible that she had understood him, and she spoke again eagerly.
"It was noticed in all the reviews," she said, "and my publishers assured me it was quite a success. I could send you the reviews of it."
"Pray do not trouble yourself," he answered; "I do not doubt it in the least. But there are hundreds of books published every season, and it is impossible for one head, even a publisher's, to retain all the titles and the names of the authors."
"But I hope mine was not like hundreds of others," remarked Felicita.
"Every author hopes so," he said; "and besides the mass that is printed, somehow, at some one's expense, there are hundreds of manuscripts submitted to us. Pardon me, but may I ask if you write for amusement or for remuneration."
"For my living," she replied, with a sorrowful inflection of her voice which alarmed the publisher. How often had he faced a widowed mother and her daughter, in mourning so deep as to suggest the recentness of their loss. There was a slight movement of his hand, unperceived by either of them, and a brisk rap was heard on the door behind them.
"In a moment," he said, looking over their heads. "I am afraid," he went on, "if I asked you to leave your manuscript on approbation, it might be months before our readers could look at it. We have scores, if not hundreds, waiting."
"Could you recommend any publisher to me?" asked Felicita.
"Why not go again to Price and Gould?" he inquired.
"I must get more money than they pay me," she answered ingenuously.
The publisher shrugged his shoulders. If her manuscript had contained Milton's "Paradise Lost" or Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," such an admission would have swamped it. There is no fate swift enough for an unknown author who asks for more money than that which a publisher's sense of justice awards to him.
"I am sorry I can do nothing for you," he said, "but my time is very precious. Good-morning—No thanks, I beg. It would be a pleasure, I am sure, if I could do anything."
Felicita's heart sank very low as she turned into the dismal street and trod the muddy pavement. A few illusions shrivelled up that wintry morning under that murky sky. The name she was so fearful of staining; the name she had fondly imagined as noised from mouth to mouth; the name for which she had demanded so great a sacrifice, and had sacrificed so much herself, was not known in those circles where she might most have expected to find it a passport to attention and esteem. It had travelled very little indeed beyond the narrow sphere of Riversborough.
The winter fogs which made London so gloomy did not leave the country sky clear and bright. All the land lay under a shroud of mist and vapor; and even on the uplands round old Marlowe's little farmstead the heavens were gray and cold, and the wide prospect shut out by a curtain of dim clouds.
The rude natural tracks leading over the moor to the farm became almost impassable. The thatched roof was sodden with damp, and the deep eaves shed off the water with the sound of a perpetual dropping. Behind the house the dark, storm-beaten, distorted firs, and the solitary yew-tree blown all to one side, grew black with the damp. The isolation of the little dwelling-place was as complete as if a flood had covered the face of the earth, leaving its two inmates the sole survivors of the human race.
Several months had passed since old Marlowe had executed his last piece of finished work. The blow that Rowland Sefton's dishonesty had inflicted upon him had paralyzed his heart—that most miserable of all kinds of paralysis. He could still go about, handle his tools, set his thin old fingers to work; but as soon as he had put a few marks upon his block of oak his heart died with him, and he threw down his useless tools with a sob as bitter as ever broke from an old man's lips.
There was no relief for him, as for other men, in speech easily, perhaps hastily uttered, in companionship with his fellows. Any solace of this kind was too difficult and too deliberate for him to seek it in writing his lamentations on a slate or spelling them off on his fingers, but his grief and anger struck inward more deeply.
Phebe saw his sorrow, and would have cheered him if she could; but she, too, was sorely stricken, and she was young. She tried to set him an example of diligent work, and placed her easel beside his carving, painting as long as the gray and fleeting daylight permitted. Now and then she attempted to sing some of her old merry songs, knowing that his watchful eyes would see the movement of her lips; but though her lips moved, her face was sad and her heart heavy. Sometimes, too, she forgot all about her, and fell into an absorbed reverie, brooding over the past, until a sob or half-articulate cry from her father aroused her. These outcries of his troubled her more than any other change in him. He had been altogether mute in the former tranquil and placid days, satisfied to talk with her in silent signs; but there was something in his mind to express now which quiet and dumb signs could not convey. At intervals, both by day and night, her affection for him was tortured by these hoarse and stifled cries of grief mingled with rage.
There was a certain sense of the duties of citizenship in old Marlowe's mind which very few women, certainly not a girl as young as Phebe, could have shared. Many years ago the elder Sefton had perceived that the companionless man was groping vaguely after many a dim thought, political and social, which few men of his class would have been troubled with. He had given to him several books, which old Marlowe had pondered over. Now he felt that, quite apart from his own personal ground of resentment, he had done wrong to the laws of his country by aiding an offender of them to escape and elude the just penalty. He felt almost a contempt for Roland Sefton that he had not remained to bear the consequences of his crime.
The news of Roland's death brought something like satisfaction to his mind; there was a chill, dejected sense of justice having been done. He had not prospered in his crime. Though he had eluded man's judgment, yet vengeance had not suffered him to live. There was no relenting toward him, as there was in Mr. Clifford's mind. Something like the old heathen conception of a divine righteousness in this arbitrary punishment of the evil-doer gave him a transient content. He did not object therefore to Phebe's hasty visit to Mrs. Sefton at the sea-side, in order to break the news to her. The inward satisfaction he felt sustained him, and he even set about a piece of work long since begun, a hawk swooping down upon his prey.
The evening on which Phebe reached home again he was more like his former self. He asked her many questions about the sea, which he had never seen, and told her what he had been doing while she was away. An old, well-thumbed translation of Plato's Dialogues was lying on the carved dresser behind him, in which he had been reading every night. Instead of the Bible, he said.
"It was him, Mr. Roland, that gave it to me," he continued; "and listen to what I read last night: 'Those who have committed crimes, great yet not unpardonable, they are plunged into Tartarus, where they go who betray their friends for money, the pains of which they undergo for a year. But at the end of the year they come forth again to a lake, over which the souls of the dead are taken to be judged. And then they lift up their voices, and call upon the souls of them they have wronged to have pity upon them, and to forgive them, and let them come out of their prison. And if they prevail they come forth, and cease from their troubles; but if not they are carried back again into Tartarus, until they obtain mercy of them whom they have wronged.' But it seems as if they have to wait until them they have wronged are dead themselves."
The brown, crooked fingers ceased spelling out the solemn words, and Phebe lifted up her eyes from them to her father's face. She noticed for the first time how sunken and sallow it was, and how dimly and wearily his eyes looked out from under their shaggy eyebrows. She buried her face in her hands, and broke down into a passion of tears. The vivid picture her father's quotation brought before her mind filled it with horror and grief that passed all words.
The wind was wailing round the house with a ceaseless moan of pain, in which she could almost distinguish the tones of a human voice lamenting its lost and wretched fate. The cry rose and fell, and passed on, and came back again, muttering and calling, but never dying away altogether. It sounded to her like the cry of a belated wanderer calling for help. She rose hastily and opened the cottage door, as if she could hear Roland Sefton's voice through the darkness and the distance. But he was dead, and had been in his grave for many days already. Was she to hear that lost, forlorn cry ringing in her ears forever? Oh, if she could but have known something of him between that night, when he walked beside her through the dark deserted roads, pouring out his whole sorrowful soul to her, and the hour when in the darkness again he had strayed from his path, and been swallowed up of death! Was it true that he had gone down into that great gulf of secrecy and silence, without a word of comfort spoken, or a ray of light shed upon its profound mystery?
The cold wind blew in through the open door, and she shut it again, going back to her low chair on the hearth. Through her blinding tears she saw her father's brown hands stretched out to her, and the withered fingers speaking eagerly.
"I shall be there before long," he said; "he will not have to wait very long for me. And if you bid me I will forgive him at once. I cannot bear to see your tears. Tell me: must I forgive him? I will do anything, if you will look up at me again and smile."
It was a strange smile that gleamed through Phebe's tears, but she had never heard an appeal like this from her dumb father without responding to it.
"Must I forgive him?" he asked.
"'If ye forgive men their trespasses,'" she answered, "'your heavenly Father will also forgive yours; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive yours.' It was our Lord Jesus Christ who said that, not your old Socrates, father."
"It is a hard saying," he replied.
"I don't think so," she said; "it was what Jesus Christ was doing every day he lived."
From that time old Marlowe did not mention Roland Sefton again, or his sin against him.
As the dark stormy days passed on he sometimes put a touch or two to the outstretched wings of his swooping hawk, but it did not get on fast. With a pathetic clinging to Phebe he seldom let her stay long out of his sight, but followed her about like a child, or sat on the hearth watching her as she went about her house-work. Only by those unconscious sobs and outcries, inaudible to himself, did he betray the grief that was gnawing at his heart. Very often did Phebe put aside her work, and standing before him ask such questions as the following on her swiftly moving fingers.
"Don't you believe in God, our Father in heaven, the Father Almighty, who made us?"
"Yes," he would reply by a nod.
"And in Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord, who lived, and died for us, and rose again?"
"Yes, yes," was the silent, emphatic answer.
"And yet you grieve and fret over the loss of money!" she would say, with a wistful smile on her young face.
"You are a child; you know nothing," he replied.
For without a sigh the old man was going forward consciously to meet death. Every morning when the dawn awoke him he felt weaker as he rose from his bed; every day his sight was dimmer and his hand less steady; every night the steep flight of stairs seemed steeper, and he ascended them feebly by his hands as well as feet. He could not bring himself to write upon his slate or to spell out upon his fingers the dread words, "I am dying;" and Phebe was not old or experienced enough to read the signs of an approaching death. That her father should be taken away from her never crossed her thoughts.
It was the vague, mournful prospect of soon leaving her alone in the wide world that made his loss loom more largely and persistently before the dumb old man's mind. Certainly he believed all that Phebe said to him. God loved her, cared for her, ordered her life; yet he, her father, could not reconcile himself to the idea of her being left penniless and friendless in the cold and cruel world. He could have left her more peacefully in God's hands if she had those six hundred pounds of his earnings to inherit.
The sad winter wore slowly away. Now and then the table-land around them put on its white familiar livery of snow, and old Marlowe's dim eyes gazed at it through his lattice window, recollecting the winters of long years ago, when neither snow nor storm came amiss to him. But the slight sprinkling soon melted away, and the dun-colored fog and cloudy curtain shut them in again, cutting them off from the rest of the world as if their little dwelling was the ark stranded on the hill's summit amid a waste of water.
Phebe's nearest neighbor, except the farm-laborer who did an occasional day's labor for her father, was Mrs. Nixey, the tenant of a farmhouse, which lay at the head of a valley running up into the range of hills. Mrs. Nixey had given as much supervision to Phebe's motherless childhood as her father had permitted, in his jealous determination to be everything to his little daughter. Of late years, ever since old Marlowe in the triumph of making an investment had communicated that important fact to her on his slate, she had indulged in a day-dream of her own, which had filled her head for hours while sitting beside her kitchen fire busily knitting long worsted stockings for her son Simon.
Simon was thirty years of age, and it was high time she found a wife for him. Who could be better than Phebe, who had grown up under her own eyes, a good, strong, industrious girl, with six hundred pounds and Upfold Farm for her fortune? As she brooded over this idea, a second thought grew out of it. How convenient it would be if she herself married the dumb old father, and retired to the little farmstead, changing places with Phebe, her daughter-in-law. She would still be near enough to come down to her son's house at harvest-time and pig-killing, and when the milk was abundant and cheese and butter to make. And the little house on the hills was built with walls a yard thick, and well lined with good oak wainscoting; she could keep it warm for herself and the old man. The scheme had as much interest and charm for her as if she had been a peeress looking out for an eligible alliance for her son.
But it had always proved difficult to take the first steps toward so delicate a negotiation. She was not a ready writer; and even if she had been, Mrs. Nixey felt that it would be almost impossible to write her day-dream in bold and plain words upon old Marlowe's slate. If Marlowe was deaf, Phebe was singularly blind and dull. Simon Nixey had played with her when she was a child, but it had been always as a big, grown-up boy, doing man's work; and it was only of late that she had realized that he was not almost an old man. For the last year or two he had lingered at the church door to walk home with her and her father, but she had thought little of it. He was their nearest neighbor, and made himself useful in giving her father hints about his little farm, besides sparing his laborer to do them an occasional day's work. It seemed perfectly natural that he should walk home with them across the moors from their distant parish church.
But as soon as the roads were passable Mrs. Nixey made her way up to the solitary farmstead. The last time she had seen old Marlowe he had been ailing, yet she was quite unprepared for the rapid change that had passed over him. He was cowering in the chimney-corner, his face yellow and shrivelled, and his eyes, once blue as Phebe's own, sunken in their sockets, and glowering dimly at her, with the strange intensity of gaze in the deaf and dumb. There was a little oak table before him, with his copy of Plato's Dialogues and a black leather Bible that had belonged to his forefathers, lying upon it; but both of them were closed, and he looked drowsy and listless.
"Good sakes! Phebe," cried Mrs. Nixey, "whatever ails thy father? He looks more like dust and ashes than a livin' man. Hast thou sent for no physic for him?"
"I didn't know he was ill," answered Phebe. "Father always feels the winter long and trying. He'll be all right when the spring comes."
"I'll ask him what's the matter with him," said Mrs. Nixey, drawing his slate to her, and writing in the boldest letters she could form, as if his deafness made it needful to write large.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Nothing, save old age," he answered in his small, neat hand-writing. There was a gentle smile on his face as he pushed the slate under the eyes of Mrs. Nixey and Phebe. He had sometimes thought he must tell Phebe he would not be long with her, but his hands refused to convey such sad warnings to his young daughter. He had put it off from day to day, though he was not sorry now to give some slight hint of his fears.
"Old! he's no older nor me," said Mrs. Nixey. "A pretty thing it'ud be if folks gave up at sixty or so. There's another ten years' work in you," she wrote on the slate.
"Ten years' work." How earnestly he wished it was true! He might still earn a little fortune for Phebe; for he was known all through the county, and beyond, and could get a good price for his carving. He stretched out his hand and took down his unfinished work, looking longingly at it.
Phebe's fingers were moving fast, so fast that he could not follow them. Of late he had been unable to seize the meaning of those swift, glancing finger-tips. He had reached the stage of a man who can no longer catch the lower tones of a familiar voice, and has to guess at the words thus spoken. If he lived long enough to lose his sight he would be cut off from all communion with the outer world, even with his daughter.
"Come close to me, and speak more slowly," he said to her. "I am growing old and dark. Yet I am only sixty, and my father lived to be over seventy. I was over forty when you were born. It was a sunny day, and I kept away from the house, in the shed, till I saw Mrs. Nixey there beckoning to me. And when I came in the house here she laid you in my arms. God was very good to me that day."
"He is always good," answered Phebe.
"So the parson teaches us," he continued; "but it was very hard for me to lose that money. It struck me a dreadful blow, Phebe. If I'd been twenty years younger I could have borne it; but when a man's turned sixty there's no chance. And he robbed me of more than money: he robbed me of love. I loved him next to you."
She knew that so well that she did not answer him. Her love for Roland Sefton lived still; but it was altogether changed from the bright, girlish admiration and trustful confidence it had once been. His conduct had altered life itself to her; it was colder and darker, with deeper and longer shadows in it. And now there was coming the darkest shadow of all.
"Read this," he said, opening the "Phædo," and pointing to some words with his crooked and trembling finger. She stooped her head till her soft cheek rested against his with a caressing and soothing touch.
"I go to die, you to live; but which is best God alone can know," she read. Her arm stole round his neck, and her cheek was pressed more closely against his. Mrs. Nixey's hard face softened a little as she looked at them; but she could not help thinking of the new turn affairs were taking. If old Marlowe died, it might be more convenient, on the whole, than for her to marry him. How snugly she could live up here, with a cow or two, and a little maid from the workhouse to be her companion and drudge!
Quite unconscious of Mrs. Nixey's plans, Phebe had drawn the old black leather Bible toward her, turning over the stained and yellow leaves with one hand, for she would not withdraw her arm from her father's neck. She did not know exactly where to find the words she wanted; but at last she came upon them. The gray shaggy locks of the old man and the rippling glossy waves of Phebe's brown hair mingled as they bent their heads again over the same page.
"For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living."
"That is better than your old Socrates," said Phebe, with tears in her eyes and a faint smile playing about her lips. "Our Lord has gone on before us, through life and death. There is nothing we can have to bear that He has not borne."
"He never had to leave a young girl like you alone in the world," answered her father.
For a moment Phebe's fingers were still, and old Marlowe looked up at her like one who has gained a miserable victory over a messenger of glad tidings.
"But He had to leave His mother, who was growing old, when the sword had pierced through her very soul," answered Phebe. "That was a hard thing to do."
The old man nodded, and his withered hands folded over each other on the open page before him. Mrs. Nixey, who could understand nothing of their silent speech, was staring at them inquisitively, as if trying to discover what they said by the expression of their faces.
"Ask thy father if he's made his will," she said. "I've heard say as land canno' go to a woman if there's no will; and it'ud niver do for Upfold to go to a far-away stranger. May be he reckons on all he has goin' to you quite natural. But there's law agen' it; the agent told me so years ago. I niver heard of any relations thy father had, but they'll find what's called an heir-at-law, take my word for it, if he doesn't leave iver a will."
But, instead of answering, Phebe rushed past her up the steep, dark staircase, and Mrs. Nixey heard her sobbing and crying in the little room above. It was quite natural, thought the hard old woman, with a momentary feeling of pity for the lonely girl; but it was necessary to make sure of Upfold Farm, and she drew old Marlowe's slate to her, and wrote on it, very distinctly, "Has thee made thy will?"
The dejected, miserable expression came back to his face, as his thoughts were recalled to the loss he had sustained, and he nodded his answer to Mrs. Nixey.
"And left all to Phebe?" she wrote again.
Again he nodded. It was all right so far, and Mrs. Nixey felt glad she had made sure of the ground. The little farm was worth £15 a year, and old Marlowe himself had once told her that his money brought him in £36 yearly, without a stroke of work on his part. How money could be gained in this way, with simply leaving it alone, she could not understand. But here was Phebe Marlowe with £50 a year for her fortune: a chance not to be lost by her son Simon. She hesitated for a few minutes, listening to the soft low sobs overhead, but her sense of judicious forestalling of the future prevailed over her sympathy with the troubled girl.
"Phebe'll be very lonesome," she wrote, and old Marlowe looked sadly into her face with his sunken eyes. There was no need to nod assent to her words.
"I've been like a mother to her," wrote Mrs. Nixey, and she rubbed both the sentences off the slate with her pocket-handkerchief, and sat pondering over the wording of her next communication. It was difficult and embarrassing, this mode of intercourse on a subject which even she felt to be delicate. How much easier it would have been if old Marlowe could hear and speak like other men! He watched her closely as she wrote word after word and rubbed them out again, unable to satisfy herself. At last he stretched out his hand and seized the slate, just as she was again about to rub out the sentence.
"Our Simon'd marry her to-morrow," was written upon it.
Old Marlowe sat looking at the words without raising his eyes or making any sign. He had never seen the man yet worthy of being the husband of his daughter, and Simon Nixey was not much to his mind. Still, he was a kind-hearted man, and well-to-do for his station; he kept a servant to wait on his mother, and he would do no less for his wife. Phebe would not be left desolate if she could make up her mind to marry him. But with a deep instinctive jealousy, born of his absolute separation from his kind, he could not bear the thought of sharing her love with any one. She must continue to be all his own for the little time he had to live.
"If Phebe likes to marry him when I'm gone, I've no objection," he wrote, and then, with a feeling of irritation and bitterness, he rubbed out the words with the palm of his hand and turned his back upon Mrs. Nixey.
All the next day Phebe remained very near to her father, leaving her house-work and painting to sit beside him on the low chair he had carved for her when she was a child. For the first time she noticed how slowly he caught her meaning when she spoke to him, and how he himself was forgetting how to express his thoughts on his fingers. The time might come when he could no longer hold any intercourse with her or she with him. There was unutterable sadness in this new dread.
"You used to laugh and sing," he said, "but you never do it now: never since he robbed me. He robbed me of that too. I'm a poor, helpless, deaf old man; and God never let me hear my child's voice. He used to tell me it was sweet and pleasant to hear; and your laugh made every one merry who heard it. But I could see you laugh, and now I never see it."
She could not laugh now, and her smile was sadder than tears; so she bent down her head and laid it against his knee where he could not see her face. By and by he touched her, and she lifted up her tear-dimmed eyes to his fingers.
"Promise me," he said, "not to sell this old place. It has belonged to the Marlowes from generation to generation. Who can tell but the dead come back to the place where they've lived so long? If you can, keep it for my sake."
"I promise it," she answered. "I will never sell it."
"Perhaps I shall lose my power to speak to you," he went on, "but don't you fret as if I did not forgive him as robbed me. He learnt to talk on his fingers for my sake, and I'll say 'God bless him' for your sake. If we meet one another in the next world I'll forgive him freely, and if need be I'll ask pardon for him. Phebe, I do forgive him."
As he spoke there was a brighter light in his sunken eyes, and a smile on his face such as she had not seen since the day he had helped Roland Sefton to escape. She took both of his hands into hers and kissed them fondly. But by and by, though it was yet clear day, he crept feebly up-stairs to his dark little loft under the thatched roof, and lay down on the bed where his father and grandfather had died before him.
At first he was able to talk a little in short, brief sentences; but very soon that which he had dreaded came upon him. His fingers grew too stiff to form the signs, and his eyes too dim to discern even the slowest movement of her dear hands. There was now no communication between them but that of touch, and he could not bear to miss the gentle clasp of Phebe's hand. When she moved away from him he tossed wearily from side to side, groping restlessly with his thin fingers. In utter silence and darkness, but hand to hand with her, he at last passed away.
The next few days was a strange and bewildering time to Phebe. Neighbors were coming and going, and taking the arrangements for the funeral into their own hands, with little reference to her. The clergyman of the parish, who lived three miles off, rode over the hills to hold a solemn interview with her. Mrs. Nixey would not leave her alone, and if she could have had her way would have carried her off to her own house. But this Phebe would not submit to; except the two nights she had been away when she went to the sea-side to break the news of Roland's death to Felicita and her mother, she had never been absent for a night from home. Why should she be afraid of that quiet, still form, which even in death was dearer to her than any other upon earth?
But Mrs. Nixey walked beside her, next the coffin, when the small funeral procession wound its way slowly over the uplands to the country churchyard, where the deaf and dumb old wood-carver was laid in a grave beside his wife. It was almost impossible to shake her off on their return, but Phebe could bear companionship no longer. She must walk back alone along the familiar fields, where the green corn was springing among the furrows, and under the brown hedgerows where all the buds were swelling, to the open moor lying clear and barren in an unbroken plain before her. How often had she walked along these narrow sheep-tracks with her father pacing on in front, speechless, but so full of silent sympathy with her that words were not missed between them. Their little homestead lay like an island in a sea of heather and fern, with no other dwelling in sight; but, oh, how empty and desolate it seemed!
The old house-dog crept up quietly to her, and whined softly; and the cow, as she went into the shed to milk her, turned and licked her hand gently, as if these dumb creatures knew her sorrow. There were some evening tasks to be performed, for the laborer, who had been to the funeral, was staying in the village with the other men who had helped to carry her father's coffin, to rest themselves and have some refreshment in the little inn there. She lingered over each duty with a dreary sense of the emptiness of the house haunting her, and of the silence of the hearth where all the long evening must be spent alone.
It was late in February, and though the fern and heather and gorse were not yet in bud, there was a purple tinge upon the moor fore-telling the quickly coming spring. The birds that had been silent all winter were chirping under the eaves, or fluttered up from the causeway where she had been scattering corn, at the sound of her footsteps across the little farm-yard. The sun, near its setting, was shining across the uplands, and throwing long shadows from every low bush and brake. Phebe mounted the old horse-block by the garden wicket, and looked around her, shading her eyes with her hands. The soft west wind, blowing over many miles of moor and meadows and kissing her cheek, seemed like the touch of a dear old friend, and the thin gray cloud overhead appeared only as a slight veil scarcely hiding a beloved face. It would not have startled her if she had seen her father come to the door, beckoning to her with his quiet smile, or if she had caught sight of Roland Sefton crossing the moor, with his swift, strong stride, and his face all aglow with the delight of his mountain ramble.
"But they are both dead," she said to herself. "If only Mr. Roland had been living in Riversborough he would have told me what to do."
She was too young to connect her father's death in any way with Roland Sefton's crime. They two were the dearest persons in the world to her; and both were now gone into the mysterious darkness of the next world, meeting there perhaps with all earthly discords forgiven and forgotten more perfectly than they could have been here. She remembered how her father's dull, joyless face used to brighten when Roland was talking to him—talking with slow, unaccustomed fingers, which the dumb man would watch intently, and catch the meaning of the phrase before it was half finished, flashing back an eager answer by signs and changeful expression of his features. There would be no need of signs and gestures where they had gone. Her father, perhaps, was speaking to him now.
Phebe had passed into a reverie, as full of pleasure as of pain, and she fancied she heard her father's voice—that voice which she had never heard. She started, and awoke herself. It was growing dusk, and she was faint with hunger and fatigue. The wintry sun had sunk some time since behind the brow of the hill, leaving only a few faint lines of clouds running across a clear amber light. She stepped down from the horse-block reluctantly, and with slow steps loitered up the garden-path to the deserted cottage.
It might have been better, she thought, if she had let Mrs. Nixey come home with her; but, oh, how tired she was of her aimless chatter, which seemed to din the ear and drive away all quiet thought from the heart. She had been very weary of all the fuss that had made a Babel of the little homestead since her father's death. But now she was absolutely alone, the loneliness seemed awful.
It was quite dark before the fire burned up and threw its flickering light over her old home. She sat down on the hearth opposite her father's empty chair, in her own place—the place which had been hers ever since she could remember. How long would it be hers? She knew that one volume of her life was ended and closed; the new volume was all hidden from her. She was not afraid of opening it, for there was a fund of courage and hope in her nature of which she did not know all the wealth. There was also the simple trust of a child in the goodness of God.
She had finished her tea and was sitting apparently idle, with her hands lying on her lap, when a sudden knock at the door startled and almost frightened her. Until this moment she had never thought of the loneliness of the house as possessing any element of danger; but now she turned her eyes to the uncurtained window, through which she had been so plainly visible, and wished that she had taken the precaution of putting the bar on the door. It was too late, for the latch was already lifted, and she had scarcely time to say with a tremulous voice, "Come in."
"It's me—Simon Nixey," said a loud, familiar voice, as the door opened and the tall ungainly figure of the farmer filled up the doorway. He had been at her father's funeral, and was still in his Sunday suit, standing sheepishly within the door and stroking the mourning-band round his hat, as he gazed at her with a shamefaced expression, altogether unlike the bluntness of his usual manner.
"Is there anything the matter, Mr. Nixey?" asked Phebe. "Have you time to take a seat?"
"Oh, ay! I'll sit down," he answered, stepping forward readily and settling himself down in her father's chair, in spite of her hasty movement to prevent it. "Mother thought as you'd be lonesome," he continued; "her and me've been talking of nothing else but you all evening. And mother said your heart'ud be sore and tender to-night, and more likely to take to comfort. And I'd my best clothes on, and couldn't go to fodder up, so I said I'd step up here and see if you was as lonesome as we thought. You looked pretty lonesome through the window. You wouldn't mind me staying a half hour or so?"
"Oh, no," said Phebe simply; "you're kindly welcome."
"That's what I'd like to be always," he went on, "and there's a deal about me to make me welcome, come to think on it. Our house is a good one, and the buildings they're all good; and I got the first prize for my pigs at the last show, and the second prize for my bull the show before that. Nobody can call me a poor farmer. You recollect painting my prize-bull for me, don't you, Phebe?"
"To be sure I do," she answered.
"Ay! and mother shook like a leaf when I told her you'd gone into his shed, and him not tied up. 'Never you mind, mother,' I says, 'there's neither man nor beast'ud hurt little Phebe.' You'd enjoy painting my prize-pigs, I know; and there'd be plenty o' time. Wouldn't you now?"
"Very much," she said, "if I have time."
"That's something to look forward to," he continued. "I'm always thinking what you'd like to paint, and make a picture of. I should like to be painted myself, and mother; and there'll be plenty o' time. For I'm not a man to see you overdone with work, Phebe. I've been thinking about it for the last five year, ever since you were a pretty young lass of fifteen. 'She'll be a good girl,' mother said, 'and if old Marlowe dies before you're wed, Simon, you'd best marry Phebe.' I've put it off, Phebe, over and over again, when there's been girls only waiting the asking; and now I'm glad I can bring you comfort. There's a home all ready for you, with cows and poultry for you to manage and get the good of, for mother always has the butter money and the egg money, and you'll have it now. And there's stores of linen, mother says, and everything that any farmer's wife could desire."
Phebe laughed, a low, gentle, musical laugh, which had surprise in it, but no derision. The sight of the gaunt embarrassed man opposite to her, his face burning red, and his clumsy hands twisting and untwisting as he uttered his persuasive sentences, drove her sadness away for the moment. Her pleasant, surprised laugh made him laugh too.
"Ay! mother was right; she always is," said Nixey, rubbing his great hands gleefully. "'There'll be scores of lads after her,' says mother, 'for old Marlowe has piles o' money in Sefton's Old Bank, everybody knows that.' But, Phebe, there aren't a many houses like mine for you to step right into. I'm glad I came to bring you comfort to-night."
"But father lost all his money in the Old Bank nine months ago," answered Phebe.
"Lost all his money!" repeated Nixey slowly and emphatically. There was a deep silence in the little house, while he gazed at her with open mouth and astonished eyes. Phebe had covered her face with her hands, forgetting him and everything else in the recollection of that bitter sorrow of hers nine months ago; worse than her sorrow now. Nixey spoke again after a few minutes, in a husky and melancholy voice.
"It shan't make no difference, Phebe," he said; "I came to bring you comfort, and I'll not take it away again. There they all are for you, linen and pigs, and cows and poultry. I don't mind a straw what mother'ill say. Only you wipe away those tears and laugh again, my pretty dear. Look up at Simon and laugh again."
"It's very good of you," she answered, looking up into his face with her blue eyes simply and frankly, "and I shall never forget it. But I could not marry you. I could not marry anybody."
"But you must," he said imperiously; "a pretty young girl like you can't live alone here in this lonesome place. Mother says it wouldn't be decent or safe. You'll want a home, and it had best be mine. Come, now. You'll never have a better offer if you've lost all your money. But your land lies nighest to my farm, and it's worth more to me than anybody else. It wouldn't be a bad bargain for me, Phebe; and I've waited five years for you besides. If you'll only say yes, I'll go down and face mother, and have it out with her at once."
But Phebe could not be brought to say yes, though Nixey used every argument and persuasion he could think. He went away at last, in dudgeon, leaving her alone, but not so sad as before. The new volume of her life had already been opened.
The next day Phebe locked up her house and rode down to Riversborough. As she descended into the valley and the open plain beyond her sorrowfulness fell away from her. Her social instincts were strong, and she delighted in companionship and in the help she could render to any fellow-creature. If she overtook a boy trudging reluctantly to school she would dismount from her rough pony and give him a ride; or if she met with a woman carrying a heavy load, she took the burden from her, and let her pony saunter slowly along, while she listened to the homely gossip of the neighborhood. Phebe was a great favorite along these roads, which she had traversed every week during summer to attend Riversborough market for the last eight years. Her spirits rose as she rode along, receiving many a kindly word, and more invitations to spend a little while in different houses than she could have accepted if she had been willing to give twelve months to visiting. It was market-day at Riversborough, and the greetings there were still more numerous, and, if possible, more kindly. Everybody had a word for Phebe Marlowe; especially to-day, when her pretty black dress told of the loss she had suffered.
She made her way to Whitefriars Road. The Old Bank was not so full as it had formerly been, for immediately after the panic last May a new bank had been opened more in the centre of the town, and a good many of the tradesmen and farmers had transferred their accounts to it. The outer office was fairly busy, but Phebe had not long to wait before being summoned to see Mr. Clifford. The muscles of his stern and careworn features relaxed into something approaching a smile as she entered, and he caught sight of her sweet and frank young face.
"Sit down, Phebe," he said. "I did not hear of your loss before yesterday; and I was just about to send for you to see your father's will. It is in our strong room. You are not one-and-twenty yet?"
"Not till next December, sir," she replied.
"Roland Sefton is the only executor appointed," he continued, his face contracting for an instant, as if some painful memory flashed across him; "and, since he is dead, I succeed to the charge as his executor. You will be my ward, Phebe, till you are of age."
"Will it be much trouble, sir?" she asked anxiously.
"None at all," he answered; "I hope it will be a pleasure; for, Phebe, it will not be fit for you to live alone at Upfold Farm; and I wish you to come here—to make your home with me till you are of age. It would be a great pleasure to me, and I would take care you should have every opportunity for self-improvement. I know you are not a fine young lady, my dear, but you are sensible, modest, and sweet-tempered, and we should get on well together. If you were happy with me I should regard you as my adopted daughter, and provide accordingly for you. Think of it for a few minutes while I look over these letters. Perhaps I seem a grim and surly old man to you; but I am not naturally so. You would never disappoint me."
He turned away to his desk, and appeared to occupy himself with his letters, but he did not take in a single line of them. He had set his heart once more on the hope of winning love and gratitude from some young wayfarer on life's rough road, whose path he could make smooth and bright. He had been bitterly disappointed in his own son and his friend's son. But if this simple, unspoiled, little country maiden would leave her future life in his keeping, how easy and how happy it should be!
"It's very good of you," said Phebe, in a trembling voice; "and I'm not afraid of you, Mr. Clifford, not in the least; but I could not keep from fretting in this house. Oh, I loved them so, every one of them; but Mr. Roland most of all. No one was ever so good to me as he was. If it hadn't been for him I should have learned nothing, and father himself would have been a dull, ignorant man. Mr. Roland learnt to talk to father, and nobody else could talk with him but me. I used to think it was as much like our Lord Jesus Christ as anything any one could do. Mr. Roland could not open father's ears, but he learned how to talk to him, to make him less lonely. That was the kindest thing any one on earth could do."
"Do you believe Mr. Roland was innocent?" asked Mr. Clifford.
"I know he was guilty," answered Phebe sadly. "He told me all about it himself, and I saw his sorrow. Before that he always seemed to me more like what I think Jesus Christ was than any one else. He could never think of himself while there were other people to care for. And I know," she went on, with simple sagacity, "that it was not Mr. Roland's sin that fretted father, but the loss of the money. If he had made six hundred pounds by using it without his consent, and said, 'Here, Marlowe, are twelve hundred pounds for you instead of six; I did not put your money up as you wanted, but used it instead;' why, father would have praised him up to the skies, and could never have been grateful enough."
Mr. Clifford's conscience smote him as he listened to Phebe's unworldly comment on Roland Sefton's conduct. If Roland had met him with the announcement of a gain of ten thousand pounds by a lucky though unauthorized speculation, he knew very well his own feeling would have been utterly different from that with which he had heard of the loss of ten thousand pounds. The world itself would have cried out against him if he had prosecuted a man by whose disregard of the laws he had gained so large a profit. Was it, then, a simple love of justice that had actuated him? Yet the breach of trust would have been the same.
"But if you will not come to live with me, my dear," he said, "what do you propose to do? You cannot live alone in your old home."
"May I tell you what I should like to do?" she asked.
"Certainly," he answered. "I am bound to know it."
"Those two who are dead," she said, "thought so much of my painting. Mr. Roland was always wishing I could go to a school of art, and father said when he was gone he should wish it too. But now we have lost our money, the next best thing will be for me to go to live as servant to some great artist, where I could see something of painting till I've saved enough money to go to school. I can let Upfold Farm for fifteen pounds a year to Simon Nixey, so I shall soon have money enough. I promised father I would never sell our farm, that has belonged to Marlowes ever since it was inclosed from the common. And if I go to London, I shall be near Madame and the children, and Mrs. Roland Sefton."
The color had come back to Phebe's face, and her voice was steady and musical again. There was a clear, frank shining in her blue eyes, looking so pleasantly into his, that Mr. Clifford sighed regretfully as he thought of his solitary and friendless life—self-chosen partly, but growing more dreary as old age, with its infirmities, crept on.
"No, no; you need not go into service," he said; "there is money enough of your own to do what you wish with. Mrs. Roland refuses to receive the income from her marriage settlement till every claim against her husband is paid off. I shall pay your claim off at the rate of one hundred a year, or more, if you like. You may have a sum sufficient to keep you at an art school as long as you need be there."
"Why, I shall be very rich!" exclaimed Phebe; "and father dreaded I should be poor."
"I will run up to London and see what arrangements I can make for you," he continued. "Perhaps Mrs. Roland Sefton could find a corner for you in her own house, small as it is, and Madame would make you as welcome as a daughter. You are more of a daughter to her than Felicita. Only I must make a bargain, that you and the children come down often to see me here in the old house. I should have grown very fond of you, Phebe; and then you would have married some man whom I detested, and disappointed me bitterly again. It is best as it is, I suppose. But if you will change your mind now, and stay with me as my adopted daughter, I'll run the risk."
"If it was anywhere else!" she answered with a wistful look into his face, "but not here. If Mrs. Roland Sefton could find room for me I'd rather live with them than anywhere else in the world. Only don't think I'm ungrateful because I can't stay here."
"No, no, Phebe," he replied; "it was for my own sake I asked it. As you grow older, child, you'll find out that the secret root of nine tenths of the benevolence you see is selfishness."
Six weeks later all the arrangements for Phebe leaving her old home and entering upon an utterly new life were completed. Simon Nixey, after vainly urging her to accept himself, and to give herself and her little farm and her restored fortune to him, offered to become her tenant at £10 a year for the land, leaving the cottage uninhabited; for Phebe could not bear the idea of any farm laborer and his family dwelling in it, and destroying or injuring the curious carvings with which her father had lined its walls. The spot was far out of the way of tramps and wandering vagabonds, and there was no danger of damage being done to it by the neighbors. Mrs. Nixey undertook to see that it was kept from damp and dirt, promising to have a fire lighted there occasionally, and Simon would see to the thatch being kept in repair, on condition that Phebe would come herself once a year to receive her rent, and see how the place was cared for. There was but a forlorn hope in Mrs. Nixey's heart that Phebe would ever have Simon now she was going to London; but it might possibly come about in the long run if he met with no girl to accept him with as much fortune.
Before leaving Upfold Farm Phebe received the following letter from Felicita: