“May be some day, friend Arthur,” said Lionel; “but not with Miss Tallant—not with Miss Tallant.”
“Thank God for that!” said the artist, sitting down and fixing his eyes upon the distant hills, which the sun was making golden.
Lionel’s manner of meeting Arthur’s half confession of love for Miss Tallant and fear of rivalry, did not for the moment please the artist, whose sensitive nature revolted at the apparently cool and critical treatment of his friend.
But when young Hammerton said, “Arthur, my boy, don’t fear me, go in and win,” the artist forgot his momentary displeasure, and smiled half sadly, half comically, at his friend; and then told him how he had been unable to struggle against his admiration for Miss Tallant, and how it had ripened into love.
Lionel promising not to betray Arthur’s confidence, laughed at the artist’s notion that he was indulging in an utterly hopeless and futile passion.
“I suppose you will be at the Festival of the Three Choirs to-morrow,” said Mr. Hammerton by-and-by, when they had changed the subject and he had lighted his last cigar.
“I shall be in some part of the building,” Arthur said. “I have the entrée you know by certain private doors; I am rather a favourite with the Dean and Chapter. I look down upon you from arches high up aloft, I listen to the music at various points. I should be too restless to sit all the time squeezed up amongst the audience.”
Severntown, you must know, was celebrated for its Festival Concerts in the cathedral, which had been originated as early as 1724, resulting in noble collections for charitable purposes, and of which the local journalist a hundred years ago exclaimed, “May God grant that all charitable undertakings may be carried on with that becoming zeal and Ardency of Affection which Matters of such allow’d Importance must always very justly claim!” Newspaper writers in those days, you see, said what they had to say briefly, and tersely, and to the point.
I mention these Severntown Festivals not with any intention of describing one of them, but simply because of the train of thought which the mention of the event by Mr. Hammerton excited in the mind of Arthur Phillips.
It was at the Festival, three years previously, that Arthur had first seen Phœbe Tallant, a mere girl, but of such striking beauty that the image was fixed in his mind, as if it belonged to the glorious music,—sanctified by the time, and the place, and the holy strains.