Wakem in a New Light BEFORE three days had passed after the conversation you have just overheard between Lucy and her father, she had contrived to have a private interview with Philip during a pre-arranged absence of Maggie's at her aunt Glegg's.
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 thoroughly resolved on a course of action.He thought he saw before him now a possibility of altering his position with respect to Maggie 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 tactician.His plan was as bold as it was thoroughly calculated.Having watched for a moment when his father had nothing more urgent on his hands than the newspaper, he went behind him, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, `Father, will you come up into my sanctum, and look at my new sketches? I've arranged them now.'
`I'm 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 come along, then.'
`This is a nice place for you, isn't it, Phil? - a capital light that from the roof, eh?' was, as usual, the first thing he said on entering the painting room.He liked to remind himself and his son too that his fatherly indulgence had provided the accommodation.He had been a good father.Emily would have nothing to reproach him with there, if she came back again from her grave.
`Come, come,' he said, putting his double eye-glass over his nose, and seating himself to take a general view while he rested, `you've got a famous show here.Upon my word, I don't see that your things aren't as good as that London artist's - what's his name - that 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 counteract the sense of tremulousness.He watched his father get up, and walk slowly round, goodnaturedly dwelling on the pictures much longer than his amount of genuine taste for landscape would have prompted, till he stopped before a stand on which two pictures were placed - one much larger than the other - 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 you'd left off figures.Who are these?'
`They are the same person,' said Philip, with calm promptness, `at different ages.'
`And what person?' said Wakem, sharply, fixing his eyes with a growing look of suspicion on the larger picture.
`Miss Tulliver.The small one is something like what she was when Iwas at school with her brother at King's 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 watching the point of his pencil.
`And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any acquaintance with her since you came from abroad?' said Wakem, at last, with that vain effort which rage always makes, to throw as much punishment as it desires to inflict into words and tones, since blows are forbidden.
`Yes: I saw a great deal of her for a whole year before her father's death.We met often, in that thicket - the Red Deeps - near Dorlcote Mill.
I love her dearly: I shall never love any other woman.I have thought of her ever since she was a little girl.'
`Go on, sir! - And you have corresponded with her all this while?'
`No.I never told her I loved her till just before we parted, and she promised her brother not to see me again or to correspond with me.I am not sure that she loves me, or would consent to marry me.But if she would consent - if she did love me well enough - I should marry her.'
`And this is the return you make me for all the indulgences I've heaped on you?' said Wakem, getting white and beginning to tremble under an enraged sense of impotence before Philip's calm defiance and concentration of purpose.
`No, father,' said Philip, looking up at him for the first time.`Idon't regard it as a return.You have been an indulgent father to me -but I have always felt that it was because you had an affectionate wish to give me as much happiness as my unfortunate lot would admit of - not that it was a debt you expected me to pay by sacrificing all my chances of happiness to satisfy feelings of yours which I can never share.'
`I think most sons would share their father's feelings in this case,'
said Wakem, bitterly.`The girl's father was an ignorant mad brute, who was within an inch of murdering me - the whole town knows it.And the brother is just as insolent: only in a cooler way.He forbade her seeing you, you say: he'll break every bone in your body, for your greater happiness, if you don't take care.But you seem to have made up your mind: you have counted the consequences, I suppose.Of course you are independent of me: you can marry this girl tomorrow, if you like: you are a man of six-and-twenty - you can go your way, and I can go mine.We need have no more to do with each other.'
Wakem rose and walked towards the door, but something held him back, and instead of leaving the room he walked up and down it.Philip was slow to reply, and when he spoke, his tone had a more incisive quietness and clearness than ever.
`No: I can't marry Miss Tulliver, even if she would have me - if I have only my own resources to maintain her with.I have been brought up to no profession.I can't offer her poverty as well as deformity.'
