'I shall take Robert and put him in a post of command. Thomas is all agog to come also, but he is too young and weakly, though he would rave if he heard me call him so. He shall follow in good time. There is a brave spirit in Thomas which is almost too great for his body, and he is not prone to be so lavish as Robert, who has the trick of getting into debt, out of which I have again and again helped to free him. In my youth I too had not learned to suit my wants to my means, but the lesson is now, I pray, got by heart. A husband and father must needs look well to the money which is to provide all things for these weak and defenceless ones who lean on him.'
'You speak of your youth as past, Philip,' Mary said. 'It makes me laugh. You look, yes, far younger than some five or six years ago.'
'Happiness has a power to smooth out wrinkles, I know, sweet sister. Witness your face, on which time refuses to leave a trace, and,' he added earnestly, 'happiness—rather a peaceful and contented mind—has come to me at last. When my tender wife, loyal and true, looks up at me with her guileless eyes, full of love and trust, I feel I am thrice blest in possessing her. And, Mary, the sight of our babe thrilled me strangely. The little crumpled bit of humanity, thrusting out her tiny hands, as if to find out where she was. That quaint smile, which Frances says, is meant for her; that feeble little bleating cry—all seemed like messages to me to quit myself as a man should, and, protecting my child in her infancy, leave to her and her mother a name which will make them proud to have been my wife and my daughter.'
'And that name you will surely leave, Philip.'
'Be it sooner or later, God grant it,' was the fervent reply.
The Countess soon after went into the house to make some arrangements for departure, and to write a letter to her sister-in-law, with a beautiful christening present, which she was to send by her brother's hand.
Sir Philip lingered still in the familiar grounds of Wilton, which were dear to him from many associations. The whole place was familiar to him, and with a strange presage of farewell, a last farewell, he trod all the old paths between the closely-clipped yew hedges, and scarcely left a nook or corner unvisited.
The country lying round Wilton was also familiar to him. Many a time he had ridden to Old Sarum, and, giving his horse to his groom, had wandered about in that city of the dead past, which with his keen poetical imagination he peopled with those who had once lived within its walls, of which but a few crumbling stones, turf-covered, remain. A stately church once stood there; voices of prayer and praise rose to God, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, gay young life, and sorrowful old age, had in times long since past been 'told as a tale' in the city on the hill, as now in the city in the valley, where the spire of the new Cathedral rises skyward.
New! Only by comparison, for old and new are but relative terms after all, and it is hard, as we stand under the vaulted roof of Salisbury Cathedral, to let our thoughts reach back to the far-off time when the stately church stood out as a new possession to take the place of the ruined temple, which had once lifted its head as the centre of Old Sarum.
Sir Philip Sidney had left several of his servants at Salisbury, and, when he had bidden the Countess good-bye, till they met again in a few days at Penshurst, he rode back to the city, and, leaving his horse at the White Hart, he passed under St Anne's Gateway, and crossed the close to the south door of the Cathedral.