‘And how are you here, my girl? Have you run away from her Ladyship and the influenza?’
‘Yes, sir—with Philip Meadowes, sir,’ said Carrie, whose downright nature equalled her father’s.
Phil held his breath to hear what Sebastian would reply.
‘And where is Philip Meadowes?’ he heard Sebastian say. A minute later Carrie came into the parlour, leading her father by the hand. There fell a moment of ominous silence. Neither of the men spoke, but Carrie, as she took a hand of each, and looked from one to the other in puzzled, pretty confusion, was the first to speak.
‘This is Philip, sir,’ she said; ‘and indeed I am sure you cannot choose but love him.’
‘There may be two opinions on that point mayhap,’ said Sebastian grimly.
For all the antagonism of their mutual relations at the moment, Phil, with his extraordinarily sensitive nature, felt a sudden impulse of liking to this man, Carrie’s father. ‘Why have I not a father like that?’ he thought—‘some one to rely on without a shadow of distrust.’ Poor Philip, for all his charm, was sadly alone in the difficult places of life, and youth, in spite of all its self-assertion, is conscious enough of its own need. Beside this resolute masterful man, Phil felt himself, of a sudden, boyish and foolish, as he had never felt before. But, assuming a great deal more self-confidence than he felt, he bowed to Dr. Shepley and ‘feared the circumstances of their meeting would scarce conduce to an agreeable acquaintance between them.’
The older man did not reply to this remark; but drew back the window-curtain so that the light might fall full across Phil’s face, and gazed intently at him for a few moments. Annie’s son! Flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone—and Annie cold in her grave these twenty years! How say some among us that there is no resurrection? This is, instead, a world of resurrections, in which that man or woman is fortunate who can succeed in burying the past so deep that it cannot rise. Phil and Carrie, hot with their own impatient young desires, were only irritated by Sebastian’s silence. How could they guess at that blinding back-flash of memory that held him silent at sight of Phil? How could they hear the voice Sebastian heard—an urgent tearful voice, ‘Phil, that hath gotten half my soul’; and again, ‘If ever you can help Phil you’ll do it, because I gave him half my soul,’ . . . and . . . ‘God give Phil a white heart,’ . . . and . . . ‘Come, Sebastian?’
‘Sir, sir, speak!’ cried Carrie, catching hold again of her father’s hand.
At the touch of her hand, at the sound of her voice, Sebastian came back to the present—the important present.