Chapter XIII
Lord Ashden’s Plan
THAT was the first of many happy days which Philip was to spend at Ashden. Lord Ashden would drive over to Lowdown two or three times a week and carry him off for the day, appearing to find real pleasure in the boy’s society; and Aunt Delia was overjoyed to notice that the sad fits of despondency to which he had been subject since the death of his young wife seemed to have grown less frequent since he had made a companion of Philip. The boy seemed to fit perfectly into his moods, and very soon learned to understand when his companion wished to be diverted, or when he cared only to sit quietly in the boat, or under a tree, with a book, which at such times Philip noticed he only pretended to be reading, while his thoughts were far away.
The boy knew then that he was thinking of her, and his loving heart longed to comfort his friend. And, indeed, his affection and sympathy did comfort Lord Ashden, love being a wonderful balsam for wounded hearts. Sometimes the sad and lonely man would talk to Philip of his young wife, of her radiant beauty, which was but the outward expression of her singularly sweet and noble nature, of her winning grace of manner and the thousand varying moods which made her society a continual delight to her husband; and then one day he spoke to Philip of that awful day when he had raised her in his arms from the roadside, so white and still, and when he had prayed that he might die too. It is a tragic sight to see a strong man weep as Lord Ashden did that afternoon, and Philip held him close in his loving arms, as his mother had been used to do with him when he was struggling with some childish grief.
From that day the two friends seemed to be drawn more closely together; Lord Ashden talked often to Philip of his friendship with the latter’s father, and Philip told him some things his mother had told him of the years after his marriage, when he had withdrawn so completely from his old associates and friends.
“Dear old Phil!” Lord Ashden would exclaim. “I shall never forgive myself for not having insisted upon seeing him; and yet it would doubtless have caused him real humiliation and pain to have been sought out by his old friends, in such altered conditions. Well, at least I can try to make up for it all by doing what I can for little Philip, eh, my lad? And now,” he would say, jumping up suddenly, “let us go indoors for a little music. What shall it be this afternoon, your favorite Mendelssohn or some more Schubert?”
This was the way in which, after a morning spent out-of-doors, their afternoons were pretty sure to be passed. Lord Ashden had had a fine musical education, and he possessed the keen appreciation of genius which is itself a kind of genius; he soon discovered that Philip possessed a most unusual aptitude for the violin, and he set himself to the task of teaching him to play, at first for the diversion which it afforded himself, and then for the real delight which he felt in the boy’s progress.
One afternoon, late in the summer, when he had been accompanying his pupil on the piano through a very difficult concerto, he stopped suddenly and, wheeling about on the piano-stool, laid his hands on Philip’s shoulders.
“See here, my boy,” he said, “I can’t teach you any more; an interpretation like that is not learned, but gained by direct intuition; you have lots of work to do yet, of course, and your bowing is not perfect by any means; but—well, you just keep on practising while I think out a scheme of my own.”