"I cannot come in this evening," Phebe answered; "but Felix is there, and Canon Pascal is coming. You will do very well without me."
She breathed more freely when Felicita was gone. The dimly-lighted studio, with the canvases she was at work upon, and the pictures she had painted hanging on the walls, and her easels standing as she had left them three or four hours ago, when the early dusk came on, soothed her agitated spirit now she was alone. She moved slowly about, putting everything into its place, and feeling as if her thoughts grew more orderly as she did so. When all was done she opened the outer door stealthily, and peeped out. Yes; he was there, leaning against the railings, and looking up at the brilliantly-lighted windows. Carriages were driving up and setting down Felicita"s guests. Phebe"s heart cried out against the contrast between the lives of these two. She longed to run out and stand beside him in the darkness and dampness of the November night. But what good could she do? she asked bitterly. She did not dare even to ask him in to sit beside her studio fire. The same roof could not cover him and Felicita, without unspeakable pain to him.
It was late before the house was quiet, and long after midnight when the last light was put out. That was in Phebe"s bedroom, and once again she looked out, and saw the motionless figure, looking black amidst the general darkness, as if it had never stirred since she had seen it first. But whilst she was gazing, with quivering mouth and tear-dimmed eyes, a policeman came up and spoke to Jean Merle, giving him an authoritative shake, which seemed to arouse him. He moved gently away, closely followed by the policeman till he pa.s.sed out of her sight.
There was no sleep for Phebe; she did not want to sleep. All night long her brain was awake and busy; but it found no way out of the coil. Who can make a crooked thing straight? or undo that which has been done?
CHAPTER XIX.
IN HIS FATHER"S HOUSE.
When Phebe entered Westminster Abbey the next day the morning service was already begun. Upon the bench nearest the door sat a working-man, in worn-out clothes, whose gray hair was long and ragged, and whose whole appearance was one of poverty and suffering. She was pa.s.sing by, when a gleam of recognition in the dark and sunken eyes of this poor man arrested her. Could he possibly be Roland Sefton? The night before she had seen him only in a friendly obscurity, which concealed the ravages time, and sorrow, and labor had effected; but now the daylight, in revealing them, cast a chill shadow of doubt into her heart. It was his voice she had known and acknowledged the night before; but now he was silent, and, revealed by the daylight, she felt troubled and distrustful. Such a man she might have met a thousand times without once recalling to her memory the handsome, manly presence and prosperous bearing of Roland Sefton.
Yet she sat down beside him in answer to that appealing gleam in his eyes, and as his well-known voice joined hers in the responses to the prayers, she acknowledged him again in her heart of hearts. And now all thought of the sacred place, and of the worship she was engaged in, fled from her mind. She was a girl at home again, dwelling in the silent society of her dumb father, with this voice of Roland Sefton"s coming to break the stillness from time to time, and to fill it with that sweetest music, the sound of human speech. If he had lost every vestige of resemblance to his former self, his voice only, calling "Phebe" as he had done the evening before, must have betrayed him to her. Not an accent of it had been forgotten.
To Jean Merle Phebe Marlowe was little altered, save that she had grown from a simple rustic maiden into a cultivated and refined woman. The sweet and gentle face beside him, with the deep peaceful blue of her eyes, and the sensitive mouth so ready to break into a smile, was the same he had seen when, on that terrible evening so many years ago, he had craved her help to escape from his dreaded punishment. "I will help you, even to dying for you and yours," she had said. He remembered vividly how mournfully the girlish fervor of her manner had impressed him. Even now he had no one else to help him; this woman"s little hand alone could reach him in the gulf where he lay; only the simple, pitiful wisdom of her faithful heart could find a way for him out of this misery of his into some place of safety and peace. He was willing to follow wherever she might guide him.
"I can see only one duty before us," she said, when the service was over, and they stood together before one of the monuments in the Abbey; "I think Mr. Clifford ought to know."
"What will he do, Phebe?" asked Jean Merle. "G.o.d knows if I had only myself to think of I would go into a convict-prison as thankfully as if it was the gate of heaven. It would be as the gate of heaven to me if I could pay the penalty of my crime. But there are Felicita and my children; and the greater shock and shame to them of my conviction now."
"Yet if Mr. Clifford demanded the penalty it must even now be paid,"
answered Phebe; "but he will not. One reason why he ought to know is that he mourns over you still, day and night, as if he had been the chief cause of your death. He reproaches himself with his implacability both towards you and his son. But even if the old resentment should awaken, it is right you should run the risk. Why need it be known to any one but us two that Felicita knew you were still alive?"
"If we could save her and the children I should be satisfied," said Jean Merle.
"It would kill her to know you were here," answered Phebe, looking round her with a terrified glance, as if she expected to see Felicita; "she is not strong, and a sudden agitation and distress might cause her death instantly. No, she must never know. And I am not afraid of Mr. Clifford; he will forgive you with all his heart; and he will be made glad in his old age. I will go down with you this evening. There is a train at four o"clock, and we shall reach Riversborough at eight. Be at the station to meet me."
"You know," said Jean Merle, "that the lapse of years does not free one from trial and conviction? Mr. Clifford can give me into the hands of the police at once; and to-night may see me lodged in Riversborough jail, as if I had been arrested fourteen years ago. You know this, Phebe?"
"Yes, I know it, but I am not afraid of it," she answered.
She had not the slightest fear of old Mr. Clifford"s vindictiveness. As she travelled down to Riversborough, with Jean Merle in a third-cla.s.s carriage of the same train, her mind was very busy with troubled thoughts. There was an unquiet joy stirring in the secret depths of her heart, but she was too full of anxiety and bewilderment to be altogether aware of it. Though it was not more than twenty-four hours since she had known otherwise, it seemed to her as if she had never believed that Roland Sefton was dead, and it appeared incredible that the report of his death should have received such full acceptance as it had everywhere done. Yet though he had come back, there could be no welcome for him. To her and to old Mr. Clifford only could this return from the grave contain any gladness. And was she glad? she asked herself, after a long deliberation over the difficulties surrounding this strange reappearance. She had sorrowed for him and comforted his mother in her mourning, and talked of him as one talks fondly of the dead to his children; and all the sacred healing of time had softened the grief she once felt into a tranquil and grateful memory of him, as of the friend she had loved most, and whose care for her had most widely influenced her life. But she could not own yet that she was glad.
Old Mr. Clifford was sitting in the wainscoted dining-room, his favorite room, when Phebe opened the door silently, and looked in with a pale and anxious face. His sight was dim, and a blaze of light fell upon the dark, old panels, and the old-fashioned silver tankards and bright bra.s.s salvers on the carved sideboard. Two or three of Phebe"s sunniest pictures hung against the oaken panels. There was a blazing fire on the hearth, and the old man, with his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, and his hands clasped lightly, was watching the play and dance of the flames as they shot up the chimney. Some new books lay on a table beside him, but he was not reading. He was sitting there in utter loneliness, with no companionship except that of his own fading memories. Phebe"s tenderness for the old man was very great; and she paused on the threshold gazing at him pitifully; whilst Jean Merle, standing in the hall behind her, caught a glimpse of the hearth so crowded with memories for him, but occupied now by one desolate old man, before the door was closed, and he was left without.
"Why, it"s little Phebe Marlowe!" cried Mr. Clifford gladly, looking round at the light sound of a footstep, very different from Mrs. Nixey"s heavy tread; "my dear child, you can"t tell what a pleasure this is to me."
He had risen up, and stood holding both her hands and looking fondly into her face.
"This moment I was thinking of you, my dear," he said; "I was inditing a long letter to you in my head, which these lazy old fingers of mine would have refused to write. Sandon, the bookseller, has been in here, bringing these books; and he told me a queer story enough. He says that in August last a relation of Madame Sefton"s was here, in Riversborough; and told him who he was, in his shop, where he bought one of Felicita"s books. Why didn"t Sandon come here at once and tell us then, so that you could have found him out, Phebe? You and Felix and Hilda were here. He was a poor man, and seemed badly off; and I guess he came to inquire after Madame. Sandon says he reminded him of Roland--poor Roland! Why, I"d have given the poor fellow a welcome for the sake of that resemblance; and I was just thinking how Phebe"s tender heart would have been touched by even so faint a likeness."
"Yes," she murmured.
"And we could have lifted him up a little; quite a poor man, Sandon says," continued Mr. Clifford; "but sit down, my dear. There is no one in the wide world would be so welcome to me as little Phebe Marlowe, who refused to be my adopted daughter."
He had drawn a chair close beside his own, for he would not loose her hand, but kept it closely grasped by his thin and crooked fingers.
"You have altogether forgiven Roland?" she said tremulously.
"Altogether, my dear," he answered.
"As Christ forgives us, bearing away our sins Himself?" she said.
"As Christ forgave us," he replied, bowing his head solemnly.
"And if it was possible--think it possible," she went on, "that he could come back again, that the grave in Engelberg could give up its dead, he would be welcome to you?"
"If my old friend Sefton"s son, could come back again," he said, "he would be more welcome to me than you are, Phebe. How often do I fancy him sitting yonder in Sefton"s chair, watching me with his dear eyes!"
"But suppose he had deceived us all," she continued, "if he had escaped from your anger by another fraud; a worse fraud! If he had managed so as to bury some one else in his name, and go on living under a false one!
Could you forgive that?"
"If Roland could come back a repentant man, I would forgive him every sin," answered Mr. Clifford, "and rejoice that I had not driven him to seek death. But what do you mean, Phebe? why do you ask?"
"Because," she answered, speaking almost in a whisper, with her face close to his, "Roland did not die. That man, who was here in August, and called himself Jean Merle, is Roland himself. He saw you, and all of us, and did not dare to make himself known. I can tell you all about it.
But, oh! he has bitterly repented; and there is no place of repentance for him in this world. He cannot come back amongst us, and be Roland Sefton again."
"Where is he?" asked the old man, trembling.
"He is here; he came with me. I will go and fetch him," she answered.
Mr. Clifford leaned back in his arm-chair, and gazed towards the half-open door. His memory had gone back twenty years, to the last time he had seen Roland Sefton, in the prime of his youth, handsome, erect, and happy, who had made his heart ache as he thought of his own abandoned son, lying buried in a common grave in Paris. The man whom he saw entering slowly and reluctantly into the room behind Phebe, was gray-headed, bent, and abject. This man paused just within the doorway, looking not at him but round the room, with a glance full of grief and remembrance. The eager, questioning eyes of old Mr. Clifford did not arrest his attention, or divert it from the aspect of the old familiar place.
"No, no, Phebe!" exclaimed Mr. Clifford, "he"s an impostor, my dear.
That"s not my old friend"s son Roland."
"Would to G.o.d I were not!" cried Jean Merle bitterly, "would to G.o.d I stood in this room as a stranger! Phebe Marlowe, this is very hard; my punishment is greater than I can bear. All my life comes back to me here. This place, of all other places in the world, brings my sin and folly to remembrance."
He sank down on a chair, and buried his face in his hands, to shut out the hateful sight of the old home. He was inside his Paradise again; and behold, it was a place of torment. There was no room in his thoughts for Mr. Clifford, it was nothing to him that he should be called an impostor. He came to claim nothing, not even his own name. But the avenging memories of the past claimed him and held him fast bound. Even last night, when in the chill darkness of the November night he had watched the house which held Felicita and their children, his pain had been less poignant than now, within these walls, where all his happy life had been pa.s.sed. He was unconscious of everything but his pain. He could not hear Phebe"s voice speaking for him to Mr. Clifford. He saw and felt nothing, until a gentle and trembling hand pressing on his shoulder feebly and as tenderly as his mother"s made him look up into the gray and agitated face of Mr. Clifford bending over him.
"Roland! Roland!" he said, in a voice broken by sobs, "my old friend"s son, forgive me as I forgive you. G.o.d be thanked, you have come back again in time for me to see you and bid you welcome. I bless G.o.d with all my heart. It is your own home, Roland, your own home."
With his feeble but eager old hands he drew him to the hearth, and placed him in the chair close beside his own, where Phebe had been sitting, and kept his hand upon his arm, lest he should vanish out of his sight.
"You shall tell me nothing more to-night," he said; "I am old, and this is enough for me. It is enough that to-night you and I have pardoned one another from "the low depths of our hearts." Tell me nothing else to-night."
Phebe had slipped away from them to help Mrs. Nixey to prepare a room for Jean Merle. It was the one that had been Roland Sefton"s nursery, and the nursery of his children, and it was still occupied by Felix, when he visited his old home. The homely hospitable occupation was a relief to her; but in the room that she had left the two men sat side by side in unbroken silence.
CHAPTER XX.