Part 32 (2/2)

”Then I want you to stay with me,” said old Mr. Clifford eagerly; ”I'm a lonely man, seventy-seven years old, with neither kith nor kin, and it seems a long and dreary road to the grave. I want one to sit beside me in these long evenings, and to take care of me as a son takes care of his old father. Could you do it, Jean Merle? I beseech you, if it is possible, give me your services in my old age.”

”It will be hard for you,” pleaded Phebe in a low voice, ”harder than going out alone to my little home. But you would do more good here; you could save us from anxiety, for we are often very anxious and sorrowful about Mr. Clifford. I can take care that you should always know before Felix and Hilda come down. Felicita never comes.”

How much harder it would be for him even Phebe could not guess. To dwell within reach of his old home was altogether different from living in it, with its countless memories, and the unremitting stings of conscience.

To have about him all that he had lost and made desolate; the empty home, from which all the familiar faces and beloved voices had vanished; this lot surely was harder than the humble, laborious life of old Marlowe on the hills. Yet if any one living had a claim upon him for such self-sacrifice, it was this feeble, tottering old man, who was gazing up into his face with urgent and imploring eyes.

”I will stay here and be your servant,” he answered, ”if there appears no reason against it when we have given it more thought.”

CHAPTER XXI.

PHEBE'S SECRET.

For the first time in her life those who were about Phebe Marlowe felt that she was under a cloud. The sweet sunny atmosphere, as of a clear and peaceful day, which seemed to surround her, had fled. She was absent and depressed, and avoided society, even that of Hilda, who had been like her own child to her. Towards Felicita there was a subtle change in Phebe's manner, which could not fail to impress deeply her sensitive temperament. She felt that Phebe shrank from her, and that she was no longer welcome to the studio, which of all places in the world had been to her a place of repose, and of brief cessation of troubled thought.

Phebe's direct and simple nature, free from all guile and worldliness, had made her a perfect sympathizer with any true feeling. And Felicita's feeling with regard to her past most sorrowful life had been absolutely real; if only Phebe had known all the circ.u.mstances of it as she had always supposed she did.

Phebe was, moreover, fearful of some accident betraying to Felicita the circ.u.mstance of Jean Merle living at Riversborough. There had never been any direct correspondence between Felicita and Mr. Clifford, except on purely business matters; and Felix was too much engrossed with his own affairs to find time to run down to Riversborough, or to keep up an animated interchange of letters with his old friend there. The intercourse between them had been chiefly carried on through Phebe herself, who was the old man's prime favorite. Neither was he a man likely to let out anything he might wish to conceal. But still she was nervous and afraid. How far from improbable it was that through some unthought-of channel Felicita might hear that a stranger, related to Madame Sefton, had entered the household of Mr. Clifford as his confidential attendant, and that this stranger's name was Jean Merle.

What would happen then?

She was burdened with a secret, and her nature abhorred a secret. There was gladness, almost utterly pure, to her in the belief that there was One being who could read the inmost recesses of her heart, and see, with the loving-kindness of an Allwise Father, its secret faults, the errors which she did not herself understand. That she had nothing to tell to G.o.d, which He did not know of her already, was one of the deepest foundations of her spiritual life. And in some measure, in all possible measure, she would have had it so with those whom she loved. She did not shrink from showing to them her thoughts, and motives, and emotions. It was the limit of expression, so quickly reached, so impa.s.sable, that chafed her; and she was always searching for fresh modes of conveying her own feeling to other souls. Possibly the enforced speechlessness in which she had pa.s.sed her early years had aided in creating this pa.s.sionate desire to impart herself to those about her in unfettered communion, and she ardently delighted in the same unreserved confidence in those who conversed with her. But now she was doomed to bear the burden of a secret fraught with strange and painful consequences to those whom she loved, if time should ever divulge it.

The winter months pa.s.sed away cheerlessly, though she worked with more persistent energy than ever before, partly to drive away the thoughts that troubled her. She heard from Mr. Clifford, but not more frequently than usual, and Jean Merle did not venture upon sending her a line of his hand-writing. Mr. Clifford spoke in guarded terms of the comfort he found in the companions.h.i.+p of his attendant, in spite of his being a sad and moody man. Now and then he told Phebe that this attendant of his had gone for a day or two to her solitary little house on the uplands, of which Mr. Clifford kept the key, and that he stayed there a day or two, finis.h.i.+ng the half-carved blocks of oak her father had left incomplete.

It would have been a happier existence, she knew, for himself, if Jean Merle had gone to dwell there altogether; but it was along this path of self-sacrifice and devotion alone lay the road back to a Christian life.

One point troubled Phebe's conscience more than any other. Ought she not at least to tell Canon Pascal what she knew? She could not help feeling that this second fraud would seem worse in his estimation than the first one. And Felicita, the very soul of truth and honor, had connived at it!

It seemed immeasurably more terrible in Phebe's own eyes. To her money had so small a value, it lay on so low a level in the scale of life, that a crime in connection with it had far less guilt than one against the affections. And how unutterable a sin against all who loved him had Roland and Felicita fallen into! She recalled his mother's mourning for him through many long years, and her belief in death that she was going soon to rejoin the beloved son whom she had lost. Her own grief she put aside, but there was the deep, boyish sorrow of Felix, and even little Hilda's fatherlessness, as the children had grown up through the various stages of childhood. It might have been bad for them to bear the stigma of their father's shame, but still Phebe believed it would have been better for every one of them to have gone bravely forward to bear the just consequences of sin.

She went down into Ess.e.x to spend a day or two at Christmas, carrying with her the fitful spirit so foreign to her. The perfect health that had been hers. .h.i.therto was broken; and Mrs. Pascal, a confirmed invalid, to whom Phebe's physical vigor and evenness of temper had been a constant source of delight and invigoration, felt the change in her keenly.

”She has something on her mind,” she said to her husband; ”you must try and find it out, or she will be ill.”

”I know she has a secret,” he answered, ”but it is not her own. Phebe Marlowe is as open as the day; she will never have a secret of her own.”

But he made no effort to find out her secret. His searching, kindly eyes met hers with the trustfulness of a frank and open nature that recognized a nature akin to its own, and Phebe never shrank from his gaze, though her lips remained closed. If it was right for her to tell him anything of the stranger who had been about to make him his confessor, she would do it. Canon Pascal would not ask any questions.

”Felix and Alice are growing more and more deeply in love with each other,” he said to her; ”there is something beautiful and pleasant in being a spectator of these palmy days of theirs. Felicita even felt something of their happiness when she was here last, and she will not withhold her full approbation much longer.”

”And you,” answered Phebe, with an eager flush on her face, ”you do not repent of giving Alice to the son of a man who might have been a convict?”

”I believe Alice would marry Felix if his father had been a murderer,”

replied Canon Pascal; ”it is too late to alter it now. Besides, I know Felix through and through, he is himself; he is no longer the son of any person, but a true man, one of the sons of G.o.d.”

The strong and emphatic tone of Canon Pascal's words brought great consolation to Phebe's troubled mind. She might keep silence with a good conscience, for the duty of disclosing all to Canon Pascal arose simply from the possibility that his conduct would be altered by this further knowledge of Roland and Felicita.

”But this easy country life is not good for Felix,” she said in a more cheerful tone; ”he needs a difficult parish to develop his energies. It is not among your people he will become a second Felix Merle.”

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