Chapter VIII

A Great Change

After the victims of the disaster had been buried in the village churchyard, Philip bade farewell to the little cottage which he had called home, and a great lump gathered in his throat as he turned from the scene of so many happy days, realizing that the past was now a closed book, and that he belonged henceforth to his father’s people. He lay back listlessly in the carriage beside Mrs. Norton, his eyes closed, and a great round tear rolling now and then down his pale, sad little face. Dash, who was his greatest comforter, lay snuggled up close beside him on the seat, his watchful eyes fastened intently on his young master, whose grief he seemed fully to understand and appreciate. Mrs. Norton said but little to the sorrowful boy, but she made him as comfortable as possible with cushions and shawls, and once or twice she pressed his hand with tender sympathy. There had been some discussion as to where Philip’s home should be henceforth, but Aunt Delia had urged her claim for her dear dead nephew’s boy so warmly that it was decided that for the present at least he should stop at the rectory.

The surprise of Marion Norton and her sisters was unbounded when they had heard as much of Philip’s story as it was thought best to tell them, and great was their curiosity to see this new cousin, of whose existence, even, they had never heard before, and who was suddenly to be introduced to the family circle. They held many discussions among themselves concerning him.

“He is just about your age,” said Marion to Rose and Lillie, her two younger sisters.

“Then he is eleven,” said Rose, with dignity.

“Yes, but what do you think? Peter says he does not know how to read.”

“How very stupid he must be!” remarked Rose, with an air of superior knowledge. “I shall not play with him.”

“But mamma said we must be kind to him,” said Lillie, “and love him.”

“I shall be kind to him of course,” said Marion; “but I can never love him, because I consider him a disgrace to the family. I am so thankful that he is to live here instead of with us, as mamma thought at first that he might do. I wouldn’t have people in town know that we had such a relative for the whole world.”

Rose was much impressed by Marion’s sentiments, but Lillie looked troubled. Her mother had told them that the little orphan was sick and sad, and her tender heart ached for him. He had been carried into the house and straight to the little room which Aunt Delia had prepared for him next her own; but Dr. Norton did not think him well enough to see his young cousins yet; so Lillie begged a little nosegay from the gardener, and, arranging it herself with the greatest care, sent it to him by Peter, charging him to say that one of his little cousins sent it with her love. For several days the graceful act was repeated, and Philip, lying on the lounge in his pretty little room, learned to watch and wait eagerly for the daily token of this unknown cousin’s thoughtfulness. He endured no pain, but suffered greatly from nervous prostration caused by the great shock he had undergone. For hours he would lie with his eyes closed, and so still that Aunt Delia thought him sleeping; but his brain was active, and at such times he was thinking of his past life, and of the strange, hardly to be understood change in his circumstances.

He had been provided with clothes befitting his new condition in life, and when, after a few days’ confinement to his bed, he was able to put them on and lie on the lounge, Aunt Delia wanted to bring the little girls in to make his acquaintance; but the proposal threw him into an agony of shy terror. He was full of curiosity to see them, but the idea of facing strangers was insupportable; so his elder relatives decided that it would be best to let him have his own way for the present, hoping that, as he grew stronger, his desire for solitude would disappear.

One day when Mrs. Norton, who had been sitting by him, was called away, he fell, according to his custom, into one of his dreamy reveries, from which he was startled by a sound so wonderfully strange and sweet that in his ecstatic surprise he thought he must have died and gone to heaven. Forgetting his shyness and weakness, he rose from the sofa, and, following the sound that attracted him, went through several rooms to the drawing-room, where Marion sat playing a plaintive Scotch air upon the piano.

It was an old instrument and rather out of tune, and Marion was not a skilful performer; but to Philip’s ears the music was heavenly. He had never even heard of a piano, and the only instrument besides his flute which he had ever listened to was a violin cruelly ill-used in the hands of one of the miners. The genius which in his father had developed into a talent for painting had in Philip taken the form of a passion for music, and now as the girl, unconscious of a listener, played fragments of waltzes and snatches of airs for her own amusement, he sank upon his knees and buried his face in the cushions of an easy-chair, unable to stand, and scarce knowing whether it was pain or pleasure that thrilled through him and shook his frame with convulsive sobs.

It was Aunt Delia’s voice that roused him from his trance of emotion, and startled Marion into the knowledge that he was in the room. The dear old lady had come in to see if it was by her father’s permission that Marion was playing, as hitherto the house had been kept perfectly quiet on the invalid’s account.

“Oh, Marion dear,” she said, “are you sure the playing won’t disturb your little cousin? But, dear, dear, what’s this?” she exclaimed, almost falling over Philip in the half-light of the room.

“Oh, please,” said the boy, lifting a tearful face, “don’t stop her, and do please let me stay and hearken to her.”

But Aunt Delia saw that his strength was gone, and was firm in insisting upon helping him back to his room, where he lay upon the lounge entirely overcome by his effort and excess of emotion.

From that time he began to mend rapidly, and instead of the dreary musings that had absorbed him, memory fed his poetic fancy with rapt recollections of the wonderful harmony and the beautiful young girl, like an angel she seemed to him, who from the strange unmusical-looking instrument drew such wonderfully melodious sounds. He begged so hard for more music that every day while they stopped with their uncle the sisters played, and if it was only the practice of their scales and other exercises to which he listened, his delight was unbounded.

He no longer resisted Aunt Delia’s desire to make him acquainted with his cousins, and so they were brought into his room by their mother. Marion, to gratify her curiosity, came eagerly when first permitted, and being, in spite of her mother’s wise training, excessively fond of admiration, vastly enjoyed the dazzled adoration of poor Philip for her beauty and accomplishments. But after the novelty of that wore off she began to show some of the unlovely traits of her nature, and to assume a cold and forbidding manner toward her cousin, who, she had decided on first learning of his existence, was a disgrace to the family.

Rose, who systematically copied her elder sister as nearly as possible, followed her lead in her treatment of Philip, and became, after the first, cold and haughty to him in the same proportion.

So it was left to Lillie to show him how loving and lovable a cousin may be. To atone for her sisters’ slights, which his utter ignorance of the world kept him from fully comprehending, she devoted every spare moment to his amusement. She talked to him for hours of her home and of the life she and her sisters led there--of their books, their studies, their amusements, and every detail. It was like a fairy tale to the boy--so much of whose short life had been spent under-ground. His lips were sealed about that dark past, which some instinct of his sensitive nature forbade his mentioning in the new sphere in which he found himself.

Perhaps it would have been better if, instead of burying thoughts, feelings, and experiences in his heart, he had frankly thrown himself upon the sympathy of his cousin Lillie, who, without receiving any confidence from him, felt the tenderest pity for the lonely orphan, and tried in every way in her power to make him forget the shadows that had overcast his young life.

One day her mother and sisters had gone to drive, leaving Lillie, by her own request, to sit with Philip. She came smilingly into his room after watching the carriage drive off, but Philip was not there.

Not much surprised, as lately he had walked about the house when he felt disposed, she sat down to wait for his return. Presently she heard the piano in the drawing-room touched gently and uncertainly, as if by an unaccustomed hand, then more confidently and firmly, and at last with energy--not at random, but harmoniously. She went to the door, and from there, unseen by him, she saw Philip seated at the instrument, his head turned bird-like upon one side, and his fingers actually bringing music from the keys. As she listened in surprise--for she knew he was playing for the first time in his life--she heard him say to himself, in a half whisper:

“Oh, it sings for me! it sings for me!”

He did not, as far as she could tell, attempt any tune, but the notes that he struck were in harmony, and in a sort of cadence, very different from what the usual performance of a child without instruction would naturally be.

Astonished and almost frightened by what she had heard, Lillie crept back without having been seen, and went to her aunt’s room to tell her of her surprise, leaving the door ajar that she, too, might hear the sounds that Philip was making, unconscious that they fell upon any ear but his own. They returned together to the drawing-room. It was some time before Philip noticed their presence; when he did so he stopped playing at once, his face crimson with embarrassment.

“My dear boy,” said Aunt Delia, putting her arm about him in a motherly way she had, “I did not know the old piano had so much music in it. You must have a teacher, my Philip.”

“Oh, Aunt Delia,” cried the boy, with shining eyes, “do you suppose I should ever be able to learn to play like my cousin Marion?”

Aunt Delia smiled at the boy’s simplicity.

“My dear,” she said, “you will undoubtedly learn to play far better than your cousin, but first you must grow quite well and strong. What you need now is to play and romp in the open air. Let us make an agreement. Peter has not time to attend properly to my flower-garden. If you will dig all the weeds out of my tulip-bed, I will see if I cannot persuade your uncle to have you taught to play the piano.”

Philip’s answer was an ecstatic hug which left the dear old lady quite out of breath, and from that day the boy spent all his spare time hoeing and digging in the old-fashioned garden behind the house; and very soon the pale, slender, sickly-looking lad was transformed into a brown, sturdy, long-legged boy whose happy laugh mingled with the merry voices of his cousins as they played happily together in the old garden, while Aunt Delia, watching them unobserved from an upper window, would follow him lovingly with her eyes, saying: “How wonderfully like his father the boy grows!”