“For my own part, I hope things will go on peaceably. I think they will. There is a more settled feeling here than there was. I am not a coward, I hope; but war for its own sake is not to my liking, and the chances are that, if all goes on comfortably for another year, I shall be with you for a month or two, with my dear Katy, in your flat but fertile county.
“I am glad to hear such good news from Mr. Phillips, and it is just as it should be that Phœbe and her husband should be living at Barton Hall: I should like to see that well-known district once again, and sincerely hope to do so before another year is at an end.”
It is summer, we said, o’er all the land, and these are summer scenes, these closing scenes of ours. The winter of fickle Fortune has been with us in many of these pages. Our story has had more to do with storm than sunshine; this closing scene is the greenest and sunniest spot in our journey. We stand where we did at the opening of our story, within the shadow of Berne Hills. You know that modern mansion in the smiling vale of Avonworth, with its long gravelly drive, its half a mile of velvety lawn, its splendid park; its groups of cedars, birch trees, ash and sycamore; its ornamental lake, and those glorious bits of distant hill and dale in the ever-changing lights of this western land. Here, where we first saw that sweet, fair, spirituel face, with the parted lips and the flowing hair; here, where we took you, dear reader, by the button-hole, to direct your attention to all that was picturesque and lovely in the hills and the valleys; here, where we introduced you to the leading people in our story; here, where we paused to mourn over that fine old merchant, dead of his golden sorrow; here, where we saw those love-passages between Lionel and Amy, and where we have sat beside the artist whilst he has limned those wood-side bits of beauty, heightened by his dreams of love; here, in this glorious summer-time, with all the familiar associations of the place upon us: here we call upon the prompter to whistle down that sombre-coloured scene and bring this poor drama to an end.
In the room above the portico, looking down the drive and commanding the full range of those Berne Hills, we find Arthur Phillips in his new studio. Far different to that work-a-day room in the cathedral close, wealth has stepped in here to make art luxurious. This studio is a painting-room, drawing-room, library, all in one, as if the whole house had been ransacked for contributions to the master’s pet room. Cabinets, couches, statues, vases, rich curtains, a piano, curious clocks, mirrors, books in elaborate bindings, great portfolios, and a host of things that might in imagination have graced the room of some grand old Venetian painter of the classic days. From one corner, these many treasures are excluded by means of curtains of a neutral tint, which shut in a space where the artist works with whatever light he pleases, with the Berne Hills before him, or with nothing but the light of day upon his canvas—so perfect and unique are his arrangements.
Here we leave our artist at work finishing a picture which he is painting, with a loving fidelity, worthy of the subject. A beautiful woman like that vignette which we saw in the College Green (when Arthur Phillips discovered that he had not a rival in Lionel Hammerton) is sitting beside a cradle where a baby lies fast asleep, with one of its little round arms outside the lace coverlet. By the mother’s knee is a curly-headed boy, making his first acquaintance with picture-books. This study from life represents the artist’s wife and children.
Whilst he is putting in the finishing touches to the accessories Mrs. Phillips is playing a rippling, dreamy sonata on the piano close by.
In at the open window comes the warm breath of the summer wind laden with rare perfumes, the music of birds, the faint tinkle of sheep-bells, and full of suggestive whisperings about the summer fields of rustling corn, and the newly gathered hay, the wild flowers in the green and sunny lanes, the clear rippling brooks that glide by luxurious hedge-rows, and all the multifarious rural beauties that are known to summer winds.
Free from all the ordinary cares of the world, with faculties cultivated and imagination influenced and softened by the loving study of art, blessed in the love of the one woman who had been the dream of his life, as husband and father, Arthur Phillips had realised far more than all his dearest hopes.
And Phœbe,—that frank, confiding girl who had loved him all along, and told him so when he had been courageous enough to ask the question,—her life was as near an approach to the perfect happiness of which we spoke in some preceding pages as it is possible for mortal existence to be.