Wakem in a New Light
BEFORE three days had passed after the versation you have just overheard between Lud her father, she had trived to have a private interview with Philip during a pre-arranged absenaggies at her aunt Gleggs. For a day and a night Philip turned over in his mind with restless agitation all that Lucy had told him in that interview, till he had thhly resolved on a course of a. He thought he saw before him noossibility of altering his position with respeaggie and removing at least one obstacle between them. He laid his plan and calculated all his moves with the fervid deliberation of a chess-player in the days of his first ardour, and was amazed himself at his sudden genius as a tacti. His plan was as bold as it was thhly calculated. Having watched for a moment when his father had nothing more urgent on his hands than the neer, he went behind him, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, `Father, will you e up into my sanctum, and look at my new sketches? Ive arrahem now.
`Im getting terribly stiff in the joints, Phil, for climbing those stairs of yours, said Wakem, looking kindly at his son as he laid down his paper. `But e along, then.
`This is a nice place for you, isnt it, Phil? - a capital light that from the roof, eh? was, as usual, the first thing he said oering the painting room. He liked to remind himself and his son too that his fatherly indulgence had provided the aodation. He had been a good father. Emily would have nothing to reproach him with there, if she came back again from her grave.
`e, e, he said, putting his double eye-glass over his nose, aing himself to take a general view while he rested, `youve got a famous show here. Upon my word, I dohat your things arent as good as that London artists - whats his hat Leyburn gave so much money for.
Philip shook his head and smiled. He had seated himself on his painting-stool, and had taken a lead pencil in his hand, with which he was making strong marks to teract the sense of tremulousness. He watched his father get up, and walk slowly round, goodnaturedly dwelling on the pictures much lohan his amount of geaste for landscape would have prompted, till he stopped before a stand on which two pictures were placed - one much larger thaher - the smaller one in a leather case.
`Bless me! what have you here? said Wakem, startled by a sudden transition from landscape to portrait. `I thought youd left off figures. Who are these?
`They are the same person, said Philip, with calm promptness, `at different ages.
`And erson? said Wakem, sharply, fixing his eyes with a growing look of suspi on the larger picture.
`Miss Tulliver. The small one is something like what she was when I was at school with her brother at Kings Lorton: the large one is not quite so good a likeness of what she was when I came from abroad.
Wakem turned round fiercely, with a flushed face, letting his eye-glass fall, and looking at his son with a savage expression for a moment as if he was ready to strike that daring feebleness from the stool. But he threw himself into the armchair again and thrust his hands into his trouser-pockets, still looking angrily at his son, however. Philip did not return the look but sat quietly watg the point of his pencil.
`And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any acquaintah her since you came from abroad? said Wakem, at last, with that vain effort which rage always makes, to throw as much punishme