Arthur would bring Phœbe bundles of newspapers and magazines in which his pictures were criticised. And Phœbe would blush with delight over the praises there bestowed upon her lover, and look dreadfully astonished when any critic threw in some adverse suggestion or observation. The Pyrotechnic said Arthur Phillips was at the head of his profession; no previous artist had combined landscape and figure painting with the success which had crowned his efforts: he was Salvator Rosa and Wilkie in one. Happily the higher class journals and the art magazines were more judicious in their commendations than this, but they all agreed that Mr. Phillips had a genius for painting, and knew how to put that genius into his pictures; so the artist was not only on the high-road to lasting fame, but to monetary competence. He therefore talked to Phœbe of their future with confidence, and Mrs. Somerton was not a little pleased to learn that after all her daughter would be the wife of a thriving man.
There was something prophetic, Arthur thought, in his title of that picture which had given the finishing touch to his professional reputation; and Phœbe pressed his arm as he said so whilst they were walking up to the summer-house on those dear Berne Hills. Something quite prophetic! That gleam of inspiration which had fallen upon him in connection with those poor emigrants could only have been a stroke of Destiny: the tide was at the flood, and Fate pointed in the right direction. “Seeking New Homes!” It was the key-note to all the recent events in their history. They were all on the eve of seeking new homes: Mr. Somerton, Mrs. Somerton, Paul Somerton, Miss Tallant, and Phœbe, and himself. New homes! What a pleasant, happy ring there was in the words! Arthur drew all sorts of imaginary word-pictures of their home in the future; and it was a paradise indeed, with such a studio, where Phœbe should have an easel, too,—such a home, the home of Love and Art!
If Arthur grew enthusiastically poetic in the contemplation of this future, who could feel surprised? Walking abroad with Phœbe Somerton hanging on his arm, betrothed to him, almost mated like the birds that were building their nests all round about them. Was it not a poetic time? Is there any period of the year more eloquent to lovers, more fairy-like, more hopeful than Spring?
And Spring in that Berne Hill country! Alike in every other season you saw all the special beauties of the time in the neighbourhood of Barton Hall. Standing near the summer-house (where Richard Tallant played the eaves-dropper to that naïve conversation, of which he reminded his sister so recently), Arthur and Phœbe may well feel that their lines have been cast in pleasant places; that Heaven is dealing tenderly with them; that the future will be a blessed time like this. The sky above them is full of blue and white,—great silver mountains piled upon each other in an azure sea. A lark is mounting upwards, with a cheery song that is answered by a thousand wood-notes in the grove beneath. Far away on every side stretch the green fields dotted with homesteads and villages, past which winds the river sparkling in the sun. Old church towers and steeples peep over the tree-tops in quiet glades, and white wreaths of smoke in the distance mark the course of railway trains hurrying on their way to London. A misty cloud, half-penetrated by the sun, hangs over the Linktown Hills, and envelopes the sharp outlines that come out here and there in undulating curves, picturesque indications of their graceful lines of beauty. How eloquently Arthur dwelt upon the glories of this great picture of Nature’s own painting!
The trees were clothed with delicate verdant tints, through which the graceful shapes of the budding branches were seen, and the white birch did indeed stand out like the fair lady of the woods, nodding her pretty head and shaking her tresses to the music of the birds. Phœbe hushed Arthur’s voice at the piping of a nightingale in a copse hard by, and the artist recalled old Izaak Walton’s exclamation, “Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth!”
Whether it was the associations of the place with former times or the words “bad men” that set Phœbe thinking of the time when the wickedness of Richard Tallant was first strongly put before her, listeth not; but she began to talk of Amy and of Lionel Hammerton.
“Do you think Mr. Hammerton was really fond of Amy?” she asked.
“I do, indeed,” said Arthur.
“Were they engaged to be married?”
“Oh no, I think not; there was nothing so serious between them as that.”