CHAPTER XXI.
PLATO AND PAUL.
Phebe's nearest neighbor, except the farm-laborer who did an occasional day's labor for her father, was Mrs. Nixey, the tenant of a farmhouse, which lay at the head of a valley running up into the range of hills. Mrs. Nixey had given as much supervision to Phebe's motherless childhood as her father had permitted, in his jealous determination to be everything to his little daughter. Of late years, ever since old Marlowe in the triumph of making an investment had communicated that important fact to her on his slate, she had indulged in a day-dream of her own, which had filled her head for hours while sitting beside her kitchen fire busily knitting long worsted stockings for her son Simon.
Simon was thirty years of age, and it was high time she found a wife for him. Who could be better than Phebe, who had grown up under her own eyes, a good, strong, industrious girl, with six hundred pounds and Upfold Farm for her fortune? As she brooded over this idea, a second thought grew out of it. How convenient it would be if she herself married the dumb old father, and retired to the little farmstead, changing places with Phebe, her daughter-in-law. She would still be near enough to come down to her son's house at harvest-time and pig-killing, and when the milk was abundant and cheese and butter to make. And the little house on the hills was built with walls a yard thick, and well lined with good oak wainscoting; she could keep it warm for herself and the old man. The scheme had as much interest and charm for her as if she had been a peeress looking out for an eligible alliance for her son.
But it had always proved difficult to take the first steps toward so delicate a negotiation. She was not a ready writer; and even if she had been, Mrs. Nixey felt that it would be almost impossible to write her day-dream in bold and plain words upon old Marlowe's slate. If Marlowe was deaf, Phebe was singularly blind and dull. Simon Nixey had played with her when she was a child, but it had been always as a big, grown-up boy, doing man's work; and it was only of late that she had realized that he was not almost an old man. For the last year or two he had lingered at the church door to walk home with her and her father, but she had thought little of it. He was their nearest neighbor, and made himself useful in giving her father hints about his little farm, besides sparing his laborer to do them an occasional day's work. It seemed perfectly natural that he should walk home with them across the moors from their distant parish church.
But as soon as the roads were passable Mrs. Nixey made her way up to the solitary farmstead. The last time she had seen old Marlowe he had been ailing, yet she was quite unprepared for the rapid change that had passed over him. He was cowering in the chimney-corner, his face yellow and shrivelled, and his eyes, once blue as Phebe's own, sunken in their sockets, and glowering dimly at her, with the strange intensity of gaze in the deaf and dumb. There was a little oak table before him, with his copy of Plato's Dialogues and a black leather Bible that had belonged to his forefathers, lying upon it; but both of them were closed, and he looked drowsy and listless.
"Good sakes! Phebe," cried Mrs. Nixey, "whatever ails thy father? He looks more like dust and ashes than a livin' man. Hast thou sent for no physic for him?"
"I didn't know he was ill," answered Phebe. "Father always feels the winter long and trying. He'll be all right when the spring comes."
"I'll ask him what's the matter with him," said Mrs. Nixey, drawing his slate to her, and writing in the boldest letters she could form, as if his deafness made it needful to write large.