Chapter XVIHome again
“DEAR me!” said Philip, with a long-drawn sigh, as the anchor slipped from the bow of the yacht in the harbor at Nice. “It is all nearly over.”
“But you are not really sorry to be going home, are you?” asked Lord Ashden, who was standing beside him watching the sailors as they made their preparations for putting the party ashore on the following morning.
“Oh, no!” cried the boy, his face all aglow; “only I have thought so much about going back to England that it hardly seems possible that it is so close at hand; I have to pinch myself sometimesto reassure myself that it is all really true.”
“What a queer thing life is anyway!” said Lord Ashden, musing, as he looked into the deep blue water that rippled all around them. “Be we never so happy in the present, we are always looking forward to something just ahead of us; and it is fortunate indeed that we cannot penetrate the veil which hides the future from our eyes. I can remember so well, when I was your age, looking forward with just the same eagerness to what was just beyond, and often when it came—but what’s the matter, Philip, my boy?—you look as though you were seeing ghosts, too. Come, let us have a brisk walk on the deck together, and perhaps we shall succeed in feeling more cheerful.”
But Philip did not smile with his usual gayety, and when his friend looked down in surprise he saw that the boy’seyes were full of tears. “Do you know,” he said, in a low voice, “much as I long to go to England, something makes me half dread it; is it not a strange feeling?”
Just at this moment the owner of the yacht poked his head out of the companionway.
“See here, Philip,” he said, “it’s our last night on board, you know, and we may all be excused, I think, for feeling a little sentimental: why can’t we have a little music in the cabin? Shall I tell Marvin to fetch your violin?”
“Oh, yes!” said Philip eagerly; “I will get it myself,” and he ran off to bring his beloved instrument from the bottom of its travelling box, in which it had been carefully packed to preserve it from the effects of the salt air.
“What shall I play?” he said, as he stood, bow in hand, under the swinging lamp in the luxurious cabin.
“Anything you like,” said their host, making himself comfortable in a corner of a sofa; “something of a soft and dreamy kind, you know;” and Philip began to play. He was always at his best when he could improvise and wander on at will, with no set programme to follow, and to-night he quite astonished his hearers with the brilliancy of his performance, playing on and on until the lamp burned low, and at last flickered and went out, and Lord Ashden sprang up, saying:
“By Jove! It must be getting rather late.”
“Ah,” said his friend, with a long sigh, “I could have listened all night—I never heard anything like it; but see here, Philip, come here a moment, my boy, and let me look at you. Are you the same Philip I heard laughing and shouting on the deck to-day? Whatdo you know, a veritable baby like you, about the sorrow and anguish and pain of life? Your music to-night was full of it; but how did it get there, that’s what I want to know?”
“Was it so very sad, then?” asked the boy, with simple regret. “I am sorry. I did not mean to make it so, but I did feel it all for a little while—it was terrible,” and he raised his eyes, full of a distress which he did not understand himself, to his friend’s face.
“Why, my dear little man, this will never do. Come now, scamper off to bed, and don’t let me catch you lying awake thinking of solemn and disagreeable things, or I shall never let you come aboard my yacht again,never, do you understand?”
“There is something uncanny about that boy,” he muttered, as he went up on deck for a walk before turning in for the night. “I would not tell Ashdenso, of course, but I am not so sure that hisprotégéwill live to grow up and be the comfort and pleasure to him which he expects he is going to be. Poor Ashden!”
As for Philip, he was the first one on deck next morning, and by breakfast-time was ravenously hungry and in the best of spirits, notwithstanding his regret at leaving the yacht, which they were to do in time to catch the morning train for Paris. His high spirits continued during the journey, and he chattered and laughed, and teased Marvin, the staid old man-servant, until Lord Ashden was obliged to bribe him to be quiet while he took a nap. The passage from Calais to Dover was unusually rough, but even the qualms of seasickness did not altogether dampen the boy’s spirits.
“We are going home, we are going home,” he kept repeating. “In twenty-fourhours we shall see Uncle Seldon and Aunt Delia and the Nortons and Dash. Dear old Dash—oh, I hope he has not forgotten me!”
When they arrived at Dover they found a telegram from Dr. Norton, saying that the rector and his wife had come down to London to meet the travellers, and that they were all awaiting their arrival with breathless interest. Philip held the telegram in his hand all the way to London, and during the long trip in the cab to Kensington, where the Nortons lived, he was half sorry that they were not going directly to Lowdown; but, after all, that would have delayed the meeting just so much longer.
The cab at last drew up before a brightly lighted house, and some one within must have been listening for the sound of wheels, for before the man could leave his box, the front door wasthrown open, letting a broad blaze of light out on the pavement.
To Philip’s dazzled eyes it seemed as if the hallway was crowded with airy figures pressing forward to greet them as they entered, but it was only Lillie, Rose, and the governess, in whom, to his joy, he recognized his own old friend, Miss Acton. She had changed but little, but he never would have known in any other place the two tall girls who came forward with rather shy cordiality to greet him. Aunt Delia folded him in her arms, saying, “My darling boy, my own boy, how glad I am to have you here with me again, I have longed for you so!”
Dr. Norton and his wife were delighted to see him, and the girls presently forgot their first shyness in the excitement of asking and answering questions. It was a very merry party which gathered around the supper-table,and Philip was touched to see that Mrs. Norton had planned to have all the dainties of which she remembered Philip to have been particularly fond in the old days at Lowdown. Rose and Lillie fluttered about the room, too happy to sit down quietly with the others, and they kept heaping delicacies on Philip’s plate until he was obliged to assure them laughingly that he did not possess the appetite and digestion of an ostrich, and then suddenly he stopped, with a buttered crumpet half way to his mouth, to ask where Marion was.
Miss Acton explained that she had gone with friends to spend a few days at a country house; she would be back very shortly though, and perhaps might not have gone had she known that Lord Ashden and her cousin were coming so soon.
That supposition was evidently addedto soothe a little disappointment that was visible in Aunt Delia’s face. As for Philip, he felt almost relieved that he was not to meet Marion immediately. His old admiration for her beauty had not faded, but equally fresh was his vivid remembrance of her scorn of the little cousin she used to consider a disgrace to the family.
He was very happy for the next few days, giving himself up to the enjoyment of being carried about to all sorts of places by the twins and Miss Acton.
“How nice it is to have a cousin with us!” said Rose; “mamma won’t let us go anywhere alone with Miss Acton since we have grown so big, but with you for a protector we can have no end of larks.”
“Cousin Philip may not fancy going everywhere with a B. B. party,” said Lillie, rather mischievously.
“I have no idea,” said Philip, “what a B. B. party is, but I shall be only too happy to go anywhere with you,” and he glanced affectionately at Miss Acton as if to include her.
“B. B. is short for bread-and-butter party,” explained Rose; “that’s what papa calls Miss Acton and Lillie and me when we do get leave to go off to the park, or the Zoo, or anything, because we take our lunch with us so as not to shock the proprieties by going into any of those lovely, darling restaurants for a bite.”
“Perhaps my uncle wouldn’t mind letting you go into a restaurant if you took me along for an escort,” said Philip, eager to please them.
“The idea!” said Rose pertly; “why, he’d think we were crazy to ask him; but maybe he would let us go into a pastry-cook’s and have a Bath bun; even that would be exciting, comparedto getting round behind people to gobble lunch out of a paper bag.”
After this, lunch at the pastry-cook’s became a daily occurrence, and on one seraphic day, when Aunt Delia was persuaded to join the party, they celebrated the old lady’s birthday by actually dining at a restaurant, to the unutterable delight of Rose, who had suggested that form of dissipation as being, in her mind, more ineffably jolly than any other that was open to them.
Rest and recreation were so new to Philip that he entered with all the zest of a child into these simple pleasures, and for a few days would not even think of music. But as soon as the week he had allowed himself to devote to pleasure was over, he presented himself with his letters from the old maestro, from Lord Ashden, and from the managers in Milan, to a notable musical leader in London. Such powerful recommendations,and a private hearing of his playing upon both violin and piano, accomplished the result he desired, and an appearance was arranged for him at a concert in which a wonderful new tenor and a celebrated prima donna were to take part.
Even if he had been less talented, his success might have been considered certain, for Lord Ashden had written a long letter to a prominent patron of music and art, urging her to manifest an interest in hisprotégé. The lady, a wealthy widowed duchess, with a fine musical talent of her own, and a great fancy for discovering and patronizing young and unknown genius, responded promptly to Lord Ashden’s request by sending her card to Philip with an appointment for him to call on the following morning.
A desire from such a quarter was equal to a command, so Philip presentedhimself at the residence of Her Grace, and was received most kindly. He played, that was of course, and the lady was enchanted—honestly so—and kept him at it till he feared he must be wearying her. He must make his Englishdébutat her house; she should insist upon having the glory of being the first to exhibit this pearl she had discovered. Such flattering interest from such a source would have turned some older heads than his, but Philip accepted it all with a grave simplicity that was irresistibly charming to his patroness. It seemed to him that the compliments were to the music, not to himself; he was simply the medium that evoked it; as well praise the instrument for giving it as him for drawing it out. As quietly as he had received her praise, but with becoming gratitude, he accepted her invitation to play for her and a fewfriends on an evening before the concert. The promise was given, however, subject to the approval of the professional leader, whose consent the lady undertook to obtain herself.