Wenderholme: A Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

He had long ceased to treat Philip Stanburne with coldness or distrust. His manner with his young friend was now quite gentle, and even affectionate, tenderly and sadly genial. The one point on which they disagreed was no longer a sore point for either of them. One day, when they were together, they met a religious procession, with splendid sacerdotal costumes and banners, and Philip kneeled as the host was carried by. Their conversation, thus briefly interrupted, was resumed without embarrassment, and Mr. Stedman asked some questions about the especial purpose of the procession, without the slightest perceptible expression of contempt for it. He began to take an interest in the charities of the place, and having visited the hospital, said he thought he should like to give something, and actually left a bank-note for five hundred francs, though the managers of the institution, and the nurses, and the patients, were Romanists without exception. Meanwhile, he read his Bible very diligently every day, and the prayers of the little household, in which Philip willingly joined.

During one of Mr. Stedman's frequent absences on the little scientific missions ordered by his daughter Alice, she and Philip had a conversation which he ever afterwards remembered.

"Philip," she said, "do you ever think much about what might have been, if just one circumstance had been otherwise? I have been thinking a great deal lately, almost constantly, about what might have been, for us two, if my health had been strong and good. People say that love such as ours is only an illusion—only a short dream—but I cannot believe that. It might have changed, as our features change, with time, but it would have remained with us all our lives. Do you ever fancy us a quiet respectable old couple, living at the Tower, and coming sometimes to Sootythorn together? I do. I fancy that, and all sorts of things that might have been—and some of them would have been, too—if I had lived. There's one thing vexes me, and that is, that I never saw the Tower. I wish I had just seen it once, so that I might fancy our life there more truly. How glad dear papa would have been to come and stay with us, and botanize and geologize amongst your rocks there! You would have let him come, wouldn't you, dear?—I am sure you would have been very kind to him. You will be kind to him, won't you, my love, when he has no longer his poor little Lissy to take care of him? Don't leave him altogether by himself. I am afraid his old age will be very sad and lonely. It grieves me to think of that, for he will be old in a few years now, and his poor little daughter will not be near him to keep him cheerful. Fancy him coming home every evening from the mill, and nobody but servants in the house! Go and stay with him sometimes, dear, at Chesnut Hill, and get him to go to the Tower, and you will sometimes talk together about Alice, and it will do you both good."

Philip had kept up manfully as long as he was able, but the vivid picture that these words suggested of a world without Alice was too much for him to bear, and he burst into passionate tears. As for Alice, she remained perfectly calm, but when she spoke again it was with an ineffable tenderness. She took his hand in hers, and drew him towards her, and kissed him. Again and again she kissed him, smoothing his hair caressingly with her fingers—gentle touches that thrilled through his whole being. "You don't know, my darling," she said, "how much I love you, and how miserable it made me when I thought we must be separated in this world. It isn't so hard to be separated by death; but to live both of us in the same world, seeing the same sun, and moon, and stars, even the same hills, and not to be together, but always living out of sight and hearing of each other, and yet so near—it would have been a trial beyond my strength! And isn't it something, my love, to be together as we are now for the last few weeks and days? You don't know how happy it makes me to see you and papa getting on so nicely as you do. Isn't he nice, now? I don't believe he thinks a bit the worse of you for being a Catholic. We shall all meet again, darling—shall we not?—in the same heaven, and then we shall have the same perfect knowledge, and our errors and differences will be at an end for ever."

She was a good deal exhausted with saying this, and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes for a while. Philip gradually recovered his usual melancholy tranquillity, and they sat thus without speaking, he holding both her hands in his, and gently chafing and caressing them. He had not courage to speak to Alice—indeed, in all their saddest and most serious conversations, the courage was mainly on her side.

Whilst they were sitting thus, the sky became suddenly overcast, and there came a few pattering drops of rain. Alice started suddenly, and seemed to be agitated by an unknown terror. She grasped Philip's hand in a nervous way, and complained of a strange suffering and foreboding. "I felt so calm and peaceful all the morning," she said; "I wish I could feel so now."

The agitation increased, and it was evident to Philip that a great change had taken place. Alice threw her arms round him, and clasped him to her. "O Philip!" she cried, wildly, "don't leave me now—don't leave me even for a minute! Stay, darling, stay; it is coming, coming!"

The pattering of the rain had ceased. It had been nothing but a few drops—scarcely even a shower—and it had ceased.

But the air was not clearer after the rain. On the contrary, it had been clearer before it than it was now. The snowy summit of Mount Ventoux was hidden in an opaque, thick atmosphere; mist it was not, as we northerns understand mist, but a substantial thickening of the air.

Soon there was the same thickening, the same opacity in the atmosphere of the remote plain that stretched to the mountain's foot. It was invisible now, the Mount Ventoux, the Mountain of the Winds.