And thus Philip, almost in spite of himself, became installed in a bedesman’s house at St Sepulchre.

CHAPTER XLII

A FABLE AT FAULT

Philip took possession of the two rooms which had belonged to the dead Sergeant Dobson.  They were furnished sufficiently for every comfort by the trustees of the hospital.  Some little fragments of ornament, some small articles picked up in distant countries, a few tattered books, remained in the rooms as legacies from their former occupant.

At first the repose of the life and the place was inexpressibly grateful to Philip.  He had always shrunk from encountering strangers, and displaying his blackened and scarred countenance to them, even where such disfigurement was most regarded as a mark of honour.  In St Sepulchre’s he met none but the same set day after day, and when he had once told the tale of how it happened and submitted to their gaze, it was over for ever, if he so minded.  The slight employment his garden gave him—­there was a kitchen-garden behind each house, as well as the flower-plot in front—­and the daily arrangement of his parlour and chamber were, at the beginning of his time of occupation, as much bodily labour as he could manage.  There was something stately and utterly removed from all Philip’s previous existence in the forms observed at every day’s dinner, when the twelve bedesmen met in the large quaint hall, and the warden came in his college-cap and gown to say the long Latin grace which wound up with something very like a prayer for the soul of Sir Simon Bray.  It took some time to get a reply to ship letters in those times when no one could exactly say where the fleet might be found.

And before Dr Pennington had received the excellent character of Stephen Freeman, which his son gladly sent in answer to his father’s inquiries, Philip had become restless and uneasy in the midst of all this peace and comfort.

Sitting alone over his fire in the long winter evenings, the scenes of his past life rose before him; his childhood; his aunt Robson’s care of him; his first going to Foster’s shop in Monkshaven; Haytersbank Farm, and the spelling lessons in the bright warm kitchen there; Kinraid’s appearance; the miserable night of the Corneys’ party; the farewell he had witnessed on Monkshaven sands; the press-gang, and all the long consequences of that act of concealment; poor Daniel Robson’s trial and execution; his own marriage; his child’s birth; and then he came to that last day at Monkshaven:  and he went over and over again the torturing details, the looks of contempt and anger, the words of loathing indignation, till he almost brought himself, out of his extreme sympathy with Sylvia, to believe that he was indeed the wretch she had considered him to be.

He forgot his own excuses for having acted as he had done; though these excuses had at one time seemed to him to wear the garb of reasons.  After long thought and bitter memory came some wonder.  What was Sylvia doing now?  Where was she?  What was his child like—­his child as well as hers?  And then he remembered the poor footsore wife and the little girl she carried in her arms, that was just the age of Bella; he wished he had noticed that child more, that a clear vision of it might rise up when he wanted to picture Bella.