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CHAPTER III.
“Master Philip.”

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“A Knight there was, and that a worthy man,

That from the tyme that he first bigan

To ryden out, he loved chyvalrie,

Truth and honour, freedom and curtesie.

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With him ther was his sone, a yong Squyer,

A lovyer and a lusty bachelor,

With lockkes crulle, as they were laid in press.

Of twenty year he was of age, I guess.”

Chaucer.

THE brief spring day had faded into night. Nathan Blyth raked out his smithy fire, laid aside his leather apron, locked up the forge, and after an extensive and enjoyable ablution, was seated by the little round table in the cosy kitchen, discussing the tea and muffins which Lucy had prepared for their joint repast. That young lady presented a very piquant and attractive picture. In what her winsomeness consisted it would be difficult to say: certainly, she was possessed of unusual charms of face and form, but it is equally certain that these constituted only a minor element in the glamour of a beauty which commanded unstinted admiration. With much wisdom and at much self-sacrifice, Nathan Blyth had sent his daughter to a distant and noted school for several years, and thanks to this and her own clear intellect and singular diligence, she had obtained an education altogether in advance of most girls of her age in a much higher rank of social life. Her pleasant manners and maidenly behaviour made her justly popular among the villagers, and many a farmer’s son in and around Nestleton would have gone far and given much for a preferential glance from her lustrous hazel eyes, and for the reward of a smile and a word from lips which had no parallels amid the budding beauties of Waverdale.

Lucy’s mother, a quiet, unpretentious woman, whose solid qualities and amiable disposition her daughter had inherited, had died some five years before the opening of my story; but the well-kept grave, the perpetual succession of flowers planted there, and the fresh-cut grave-stone at its head, gave proof enough that the widower and orphan kept her memory green.

For a long time after his wife’s death Nathan Blyth had lived a lonely and a shadowed life. His anvil rang as loudly, because his hammer was wielded as lustily as before, but his grand, clear, tenor voice was seldom lifted in cheerful song. Time, however, that merciful healer of sore hearts, had gradually extracted the sting of his bereavement, and loving memories, sweet and tender, took the place of the aching vacuum which had been so hard to bear. In his blooming daughter, lately returned from school in all the fair promise of beautiful womanhood, Nathan saw the express image of his sainted wife. So now again his home was lighted up with gladness, and from the hearthstone, long gloomy in its solitude, the shadows flitted: for as Lucy tripped around, performing her domestic duties with pleasant smile and cheery song, Nathan waxed content and happy, and no words can describe the joy the sweet girl felt as she heard the old anvil-music ringing at the forge and saw the olden brightness beaming on his face. And so it should ever be:—

Be sure that those we mourn, whom God has taken,

Have added joys, the more our sorrows die;

They would not have us live of peace forsaken,

While they are joysome in their home on high.

Could we but hear again their loving voices,

Comfort and cheer upon our hearts would fall;

Be sure each sainted friend the more rejoices,

The more we can the olden joy recall.

Down look they on us from their regal glory,

Or, by Divine permit, come hov’ring near;

Fain would they tell us all the golden story

Of their high bliss our mournful hearts to cheer.

Nor are they voiceless—spiritual whispers

In sweetly silent music thrill the breast;

Then soul communes with soul, exchanges Mizpahs,

And their soft saint-song bids us, “Be at rest!”

“Father,” said Lucy, as the pleasant meal proceeded, “What has become of Master Philip? Before I went to school he used to come riding up to the forge on his little white pony nearly every day. You and he were great friends, I remember, and I have never seen him since I came back.”

“Why, little lassie,” said Nathan, “you and he were quite as good friends as we were. Indeed, I’m pretty sure that his visits were quite as much for your sake as mine. At any rate, Master Philip would never turn his pony’s head towards Waverdale Park until he had seen ‘his little sweetheart,’ as he called you, and I’m bound to say, Miss Lucy, that you were quite as well pleased to see his handsome face and to hear the ring of his merry voice as ever I was—though I did not mean to make you blush by saying so.”

The concluding words only served to deepen and prolong the ingenuous blush which now dyed the face of Lucy with a rosy red.

“Well, father,” said Lucy, laughing, “I own I liked the bright open-hearted boy, who brought me flowers from his papa’s conservatory, and gave me many a ride on his long-maned pony, but I was only a little girl then”——

“And now you are a big woman, and as old as Methusaleh, you withered little witch,” said Blithe Natty, as he drew his heart’s idol to his side, and planted a kiss upon her brow. “Well, Master Philip went to college soon after you went to school, and his visits to Nestleton have been few and far between. He has grown into a fine young man now, and they tell me that he has borne off all the honours of the university. The old squire is as proud of his son as a hen with one chick, and small blame to him for that. He has just returned home for good; but,” said he, in a tone so serious as to surprise the unconscious maiden, “my little lassie must not expect any more pony rides or accept hothouse flowers from his hands again.”

“Of course not,” said my lady, arching her neck and fixing her dark eyes on her father in innocent amaze, “I don’t think Lucy Blyth is likely to forget herself or bring a cloud on ‘daddy’s’ face.”

“Neither do I, my darling,” said Nathan, as another and still another osculatory process proclaimed a perfect understanding between the doting father and his motherless girl.

Master Philip, the subject of the foregoing conversation, was the only son and heir of Ainsley Fuller, Esq., of Waverdale Park, who owned nearly all the village of Nestleton, many a farm round, and half the town of Kesterton into the bargain. The squire, as he was called, was rich in worldly wealth, but poor in human sympathies and the more enduring treasures of the heart. In early life he had essayed to run a political career; but his first constituency turned their backs upon him, and on the second he turned his back, disgusted at the pressure brought to bear upon him by a predominant radicalism. Unfortunate in his wooing, his first and only true love was taken from him by death, and a lady to whom he was subsequently betrothed was stolen from him by a successful rival on the eve of the bridal day. After living to middle age, and developing a disposition half cynical and accepting a creed half sceptical, he had suddenly and unwisely married a youthful wife, whose tastes and habits of life were altogether foreign to his own. A brief span of unhappy married life was closed by the death of that lady, leaving the new-born babe to the sole guardianship of the seemingly cold and irascible father, whose whole affection, small in store apparently, was fixed on the infant squire—the Master Philip of this story.

Those, however, who depreciated the measure of Squire Fuller’s love for his only son were much mistaken. His immobile features and piercing eyes, peering from beneath the bushy brows of silver grey, told nothing of the mighty love that lurked within. Nor did Philip himself, for a long time, at all discern, beneath his father’s cold exterior, how the old man really doted on his boy. That remained to a great extent a secret, until a strangely potent key was inserted among the hidden wards of the parental heart, and a rude wrench flung wide the flood-gates, and set free the imprisoned stream.