CHAPTER XXVII.
WHO WILL GIVE WAY?
The conflict which Laura Martin had foreseen years ago was at last begun between herself and Sidney, and she was prepared for it. But she was not prepared to meet with two firm opponents in her husband and Margaret. Her plans had been based on the assumption that these two, Philip's mother and Phyllis's father, in their complete unworldliness and contempt for money, would be on her side; and Sidney would be left practically alone. But now the rector's eyes were open they saw matters in a very clear light; and his soul was filled with shame. He was invulnerable to all attacks; even to the tears of his precious child, and to Laura's repeated assurances that Phyllis would break her heart if she could not marry Philip. The rector was almost crushed under this heavy trouble, but he did not yield his position for a moment. He could not give his approval or consent to the marriage until Sidney gave his. Nor would he have Philip coming to the rectory. Margaret was equally firm. She knew Phyllis's nature thoroughly. The girl was dear to her; for her wide charity, which strove to love all that God loved—and did not God love every soul of man?—embraced this child, whom she had known from her birth, with a special and very close affection. But she knew her to be of the world—very emphatically of the world. She believed her to be destitute of real spiritual life. As a clergyman's daughter Phyllis was fairly orthodox, though with her, as with many clergymen's children, there was a great lack of reverence for sacred subjects; she made a jest of many things which, to Margaret, were full of mystery and solemnity. But Margaret attached little importance to outer forms and rites, and it was at the spirit of Phyllis's life she looked. That spirit was distinctly selfish and worldly. Margaret knew that she could not make Philip happy as his wife, and she refused to sacrifice his future welfare to the gratification of the moment. The question of Phyllis's fortune or station never crossed Margaret's mind.
But Laura was not to be daunted. Philip and Phyllis were as obstinate in maintaining their position as she could wish them to be. There was no concealment now. Philip formally announced their engagement to his personal friends and to the people at Apley. Sidney was amazed and angry to discover how it was taken as a matter of course by these nearest spectators of his domestic drama. They had witnessed the side-play distinctly, while his own eyes were hoodwinked. Andrew Goldsmith was the first to speak to him about it.
"They've grown up for one another, sir," he said, "and we've seen it all along; and I trust they will be happy. But Rachel and me, we've often thought of late how much better Miss Dorothy would have suited him, if she'd only been in Miss Phyllis's place. Rachel says Miss Dorothy is growing up to be the very copy of my lady, true to the life of her. And what could we have wished more for Mr. Philip?"
"Goldsmith," answered Sidney, "I will tell you, and you may tell others, that I disapprove of my son's engagement, and will never give my consent to this marriage."
"But it's a hard thing to choose another man his wife, sir," urged Andrew, who knew perfectly well the conflict now raging between the Hall and the Rectory. "I've thought often enough of that when I've been thinking of my poor girl. I was an austere father, though I loved her as my own soul; and she was afraid to tell me who it was she loved. It would have been better for her, if she'd lived ever so miserably, to have our love to comfort her. Now we are lost to one another altogether. If Miss Phyllis shouldn't make Mr. Philip very happy, he would still have you, and his mother, and Mr. Hugh. Ah! I'd rather see my Sophy a miserable wife than know nothing about her. There's an aching void here in my heart, and must be forever in this world; and I pray God you and my lady may never feel the same."
"You have not forgotten her yet," said Sidney in a tone of pain that went straight to the old man's heart.
"Nor never shall," he answered; "first thing in the morning and last thing at night, a voice says to me, 'Sophy!' Ay! I should have gone crazy but for you and yours. It's the kindness and friendship you and Miss Margaret have shown to me that has kept my reason for me. And my reason says, 'Mr. Martin ought not to break with his first-born son because he has chosen a wife for himself. No man can know the heart of another man. And life is short; and death may cut us off at any minute.' I don't say as I would give way so as to let them marry in a hurry, for they are young and don't know their own minds yet. But set them a time to wait, and let him serve for her as Jacob did for Rachel; and if they love one another truly, and are faithful for the season you fix upon, then give your consent to their being happy in their own way. We can't be happy in other people's way."
"I will think of it, Goldsmith," Sidney promised.
He watched the old man going down the road toward the village street, for they had returned to Apley, and his mind dwelt, almost involuntarily, on the unknown tie which united them. Philip was exactly of the age he himself was when he contracted his foolish and secret marriage. He recalled his own hot passion for the pretty village girl, and how impossible it would have been for any argument to convince him that such love as his would quickly burn itself out, and leave behind it only darkness, disgust, and misery. He had risked all, when he had all to risk, to gratify his boyish infatuation. But Philip would risk only the chance of poverty during his father's lifetime; and Sidney knew well he could, if he would, raise money on his future inheritance of an entailed estate. Moreover, Philip's love was given to one of his own rank in life, a girl of equal cultivation with himself. It was not a brilliant match, but no one would be surprised at it. It seemed probable that he might in the end be compelled to make some terms with his son; and would it not be politic to make them at once?
He went slowly homeward, haunted by more vivid remembrances of his early marriage than any that had troubled him for many years. The dead past had buried its dead; but there is no stone rolled upon the sepulcher to make us sure of no resurrection. Suppose Philip had been Sophy's son! How widely different his training and his whole character must have been! How different he himself would be at this moment, if Sophy had been his constant, intimate companion in the place of Margaret. He thought of it with a shudder of disgust. His love for Margaret had never known decrease or ebb; it had grown stronger and deeper every year, but there was an element of almost sacred awe mingled with it. She was as much above him as Sophy had been below him. Not that she felt this herself; there was always in her a deference to his will which a prouder woman would not have shown. But he recognized her as a purer, nobler, truer soul than himself. His marriage with her was no more an equal one than his marriage with Sophy. To-day he felt more nearly on a level with Sophy than with Margaret.
She was standing in the pretty oriel window of her sitting room as he approached the house, and smiled down upon him with something of sadness in her smile, as he stood below looking up to her. She had never seemed more lovely in his eyes, or more distant. After all their married life of twenty-two years he knew himself a stranger to her, and he felt that he could get no nearer to her. What icy barrier was it existing between them, growing denser and stronger year after year, and which could not be melted by the warmth of their love? For they loved one another—Sidney did not doubt that; Margaret's first love had been his. Yet there was a great gulf between them; and his spirit could not go to her, nor hers come to him.
He went upstairs and received a fond welcome from her, as he sat down beside her on a sofa. She laid her hand on his, and he lifted it to his lips; and then he felt her kiss upon his forehead, a caressing, almost maternal touch, such as she might have given to her son Philip. Both of these beloved ones were wounded, and both came to her for consolation. Sidney told her what old Andrew Goldsmith had been saying.
"Perhaps he is right," said Margaret thoughtfully; "we should remember that Philip is something more than our son. He is a man and has rights with which we ought not to interfere. Dearest, it is a bitter disappointment to me to think of Phyllis as my boy's wife. But who can tell? If she truly loves him it may be her salvation; and if he truly loves her, no one else, not an angel from heaven, could be his wife as she would be, and as I am yours. We may be striving against God's will, whose love for Philip is infinitely greater and wiser than ours can be."
"But, my darling," he remonstrated, "you speak of God's will; and all this is but the outcome of Laura's machinations. That is only too plain. If I believed it to be a simple, true, enduring love on both sides, I would not oppose it so strongly. And it would be an extreme mortification to let Laura triumph."
"We must not think of that," she said, smiling. "I have felt it, too, Sidney; but the mortification has passed over. It is natural enough they should love one another; they are both very attractive, and they have seen no one else. Let us do as Andrew suggests, fix a time for them to wait and test their attachment. And let Philip have a year or two abroad, as you had when you were his age. His mind will be enlarged. We have kept him too much at home; and home has been too dear for him to care to wander from it. But he is not so happy now, and he will be willing to go away for awhile."
"He shall," assented Sidney; "and I will make him promise not to correspond with Phyllis during his absence."
But Philip would make no such promise. He maintained that it was an unworthy course to adopt toward his future wife. He was willing to wait any reasonable number of years that his parents thought right to ask from him, but in no way would he separate himself from Phyllis. It would be easier, he declared, to cut off his right hand, or pluck out his right eye. He left home for a long and indefinite absence, and his letters came to Phyllis as regularly and as frequently as to his mother. To his father he did not write.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HOMESICKNESS.
From this first break in the perfect union of their home Margaret suffered less than she would have done but for the companionship of Dorothy. The girl's nature was one of strong, simple, and pure impulses; and her mind, though uncultivated in the ordinary acceptation of the word, was clear and intelligent. Margaret could speak to her, more fully than to anyone else, of the exceptional spiritual life she was living. There were thoughts and feelings in her soul, inmost impressions, to which she found it was impossible to give utterance. It was a life hid with Christ in God. But Dorothy seemed able to comprehend something of these workings of her mind, if only she caught a syllable here and there, which told of Margaret's profound realization of the love in which all men lived and moved. Probably Dorothy's long years of solitary childhood spent on the open moors, in contact with simple and grand aspects of nature, had kept her spirit open to such impressions as Margaret's mysticism, if it could be called mysticism, produced upon her. These two, like exiles in a strange land, clung to one another with an intense sympathy and love.
But this attachment to Margaret did not diminish Dorothy's devotion to Sidney. There was a touch of romance in this devotion. He seemed to her to be the deliverer who had opened her prison doors and brought her out into a happy freedom. In these first hours of his disappointment in Philip, her presence in his home tended to soften the bitterness of his vexation. Laura thought that she kept Phyllis out of her proper place; but it was, in fact, due to Dorothy that Phyllis continued to visit at the Hall. She would not let Philip's future wife be banished from his parents' house. The girlish acquaintance which had hitherto existed between them ripened into a girlish intimacy; and Phyllis was almost as often at the Hall as formerly. It was a comfort to Margaret that it should be so; and even Sidney felt it was wiser to maintain a certain degree of intercourse with his future daughter-in-law. He could not blame her as he blamed Laura.
In all this Laura felt that her schemes so far had not miscarried. She had never expected Sidney to welcome an engagement between his son and her daughter; it was too poor a match, and here Laura sympathized with him. But his opposition to it was less violent than she might have anticipated. All was going well with Phyllis; and now if Dick would only woo and win the young heiress she would be perfectly content. Dick was quite willing to fall into her plans. She spent many really happy hours in forecasting and arranging for them. Though Margaret was younger than herself, and in perfect health, and Sidney no older than her husband, and more likely than not to outlive all his contemporaries, she frequently thought of them both as dead, and Philip possessing the estates, and Phyllis reigning in Margaret's place. She expected to behold these things with her own eyes, and share in the glory of them. That she herself might grow old and die, while Philip and her daughter were still in comparative poverty and dependent upon Sidney, very seldom occurred to her. It was a contingency she could not bear to think of.
It was a much quieter winter at Apley than usual. There was no political excitement to occupy Sidney, and Hugh was visiting some of his Oxford friends during the short Christmas vacation. A few guests, staying two or three days each, came to Apley Hall. But there was no special festivity at which Laura could have made an open display of her daughter as betrothed to the son and heir. The few friends who came were fully aware of the circumstance, and sympathized very cordially with the disapprobation felt by Sidney and Margaret. Philip was wandering about Italy, and wrote frequently to Phyllis. The opposition to his love, of which he had never dreamed, naturally deepened it. He felt aggrieved and amazed that his father and mother should see any defect in her; and this made him exaggerate her charms and good qualities, until she seemed perfect in his eyes. Yet her letters were poor and meager, betraying an empty head, and an almost equally empty heart.
In spite of the novelty of the impressions crowding upon him, especially in Rome, this winter was, on the whole, a dreary—a very dreary—time to him. For the first time he was separated from everybody whom he loved; even Dick could not spare a year of his life to travel about with him. He saw no one but strangers, until he longed to see some one familiar face. He began to feel himself banished; and at times he suffered from genuine homesickness. His mother wrote long letters to him; letters as precious in his eyes as Phyllis's; to any other eyes as gold to tinsel. But his father did not write; it was the only sign of his displeasure. The checks sent out to him were liberal beyond his requirements; but no message came with them. There was a silent strife between his father and himself, a warfare of their wills, both of them strong and unyielding. It was as great a grief to Philip as to Sidney.
The spring came in early, and with unusual heat, in Italy. Much rain had fallen in February and March, and with the sudden outburst of heat there was an unwholesome season and a good deal of fever. Down in Sicily, and even in Naples, there were some fatal cases of cholera. A few of the English visitors, thronging to Rome for Easter, died of malaria; probably not a larger number than usual, but they happened to be persons of some note, whose deaths were reported in the daily papers, with a few lines of comment. Sidney read the notes from the Italian correspondents before looking at any other column of the Times. Laura and Phyllis grew anxious, and professed their anxiety loudly. But Philip wrote regularly, though in his now wonted strain of low spirits; and Sidney could see no reason for shortening his term of banishment. He had not been away four months yet; and there was no sign of any decrease of his infatuation.
Philip sent word he was going north to Venice, where the weather was reported as cool and fine. But about the end of April there came a letter from him complaining of low fever; and after that there was silence for a few days, a silence which filled them with apprehension. Then arrived a note from an American doctor, living in Venice, saying that he was attending Mr. Philip Martin, and that he was suffering from a combined attack of nostalgia and malaria, which might, not improbably, take a serious turn, and which could be best counteracted by the presence of his father or mother, or one equally dear to him.
"I must go to him, at once," cried Margaret. "I was expecting this. I knew it would come sooner or later; and, O Sidney, it is I who must go. He fancies he loves Phyllis best, but his love for me will be strongest now, for a time at least. And Phyllis cannot nurse him as I can; his own mother! I can be ready in an hour."
"You shall go," answered Sidney, "and I will take you. I would give my life for his. Is not he my first-born child as well as yours?"
As he made the hurried arrangements—looking out the trains, giving orders at home, and sending telegrams up to the City—his brain was full of remembrances of his son. It seemed but yesterday that he was a boy at school, idolizing his father; not longer than the day before yesterday that he was a little child, venturing on its first perilous journey across the floor from its mother's arms to its father's. He felt that the fibers of his heart were all interwoven with his son's life; and there was a new and terrible pain there. What if Philip should cut the knot of their estrangement by dying?
The carriage was ready to take them to the station, and Margaret was seated in it, when the rector and his wife came breathlessly up to it. Laura was wringing her hands in excitement and terror.
"Oh! you must wait for Phyllis!" she exclaimed. "You cannot go without her; and she went only this morning to Leamington on a short visit. She will be back to-night, in time to start first thing to-morrow morning. It will break her heart if you go without her."
"We cannot wait ten minutes," answered Sidney, "it is impossible. But I will telegraph as soon as we reach Venice; and if there is any danger," and his voice faltered as he uttered the word, "George must bring her out at once."
"Oh! if she could only go with you!" cried Laura.
At this moment Dorothy appeared in a traveling dress. For some years past Rachel Goldsmith had been too old to travel, and Margaret, who was always independent of a maid, had not engaged anyone in her place. There was a smile on Dorothy's face as she ran down the steps to the carriage.
"I am coming to take care of my lady," she said. "Rachel quite approves of it. She was almost beside herself till I said I would go. You must let me come. Perhaps Phyllis ought to go instead, but she could not wait on Mrs. Martin as I can. Besides, I am ready."
She looked pleadingly into Sidney's face; and he stood aside for her to enter the carriage where Margaret was sitting.
"Yes, yes," he said, "jump in; there's no time to lose. Good-by, George. I will telegraph if Phyllis is wanted."
Laura watched the carriage rolling out of sight, with a new and unwelcome misgiving. She had not been afraid of Dorothy before; but she could not be blind to the great improvement in her since she had been under Margaret's care. And now she was going out to share in nursing Philip as an invalid, and amusing him as a convalescent. But this must not be. George should start immediately in their wake; and Phyllis with him.
Here, however, Laura was doomed to disappointment. The rector would not listen to reason. When he had once made up his mind upon any worldly matter he was an obstinate man; and he was irrevocably resolved that he would play no part in furthering the marriage of his daughter to Sidney's son and heir. When Sidney telegraphed "Bring Phyllis," then he would take her; but not till then.
It was well for both Sidney and Margaret that Dorothy was with them. Unlike her usual self, Margaret was despondent, and convinced that they could not reach Venice in time to find Philip alive; and Sidney, seeing her so lost to hope, was stricken with a miserable dread. They made no pause for rest on the long journey; and, but for Dorothy, they would hardly have taken food. It was an immense relief to her when, after many hours of traveling, she saw afar off, in the midst of its shallow sea, the white domes and towers of Venice glistening in the sunlight. Sidney and Margaret had been there before; and for them there was but one point of interest, their son lying ill, perhaps dying, under one of those glittering roofs. But Dorothy gazed out of the windows at the lagoons over which the strange railway was carrying her. She was very weary, and her eyelids were heavy and swollen with long wakefulness; but the stretches of silvery water, with its low banks of soft sea-green weeds, were too beautiful not to arouse her. There were no trees or fields in sight: all around her lay a pale, tremulous plain of water, quivering under a clear vault of sky, and reflecting on its surface the deep blue, flecked with little clouds, which over-arched it.
They had telegraphed beforehand to Daniele's, where Philip was staying, and a servant awaited the arrival of the train. The young English signore was better; he had begun to recover as soon as he heard that his father and mother were on their way to come to him. The message was delivered in the hurry of passengers descending from the train; but the relief it brought was instantaneous. They were led through a common-place station; but as soon as they had passed through the great gates and stood on the top of a flight of broad steps, Dorothy could not restrain a cry of pleasure. Below them lay a busy crowd of gondolas, swinging and floating lightly on the water, and passing to and fro with the swiftness and accuracy of so many carriages, with neither collision or delay. There was no noise of wheels or the trampling of horses' feet, only the cries of the gondoliers and the shouts of the officials who overlooked them. As soon as she found herself seated in one of them it threaded its way out of the throng with a skill that delighted her. Margaret sat back in the shelter of the awning, with tears of thankful gladness stealing now and then down her cheeks; but Sidney, with the load suddenly rolled off his heart, took a place beside Dorothy, and pointed out to her the palaces and churches he knew so well.
Dorothy was left alone when they reached Daniele's, and she stood leaning on the cushioned window-sill of her room, and looked out on the gay and busy quay below her, with all sense of weariness gone from her vigorous young frame. The air was very fresh and sweet, and the sparkling water-roads stretched before her, with black gondolas flitting noiselessly to and fro, bringing to her ears the merry chatter of voices, in other cities drowned by the noise of wheels. Opposite to her a church of white marble delicately veined seemed to float upon the water, and beyond it stretched a shallow sea, rippling under the sunshine. It looked like a city of enchantment to her.
Presently Margaret came in, pale and weary with the long journey, but with the light of happiness in her eyes. Philip was better than she could have hoped; there would be no real danger, the doctor said, now that she was there to satisfy his longing to look upon some dear, familiar face.
"He is not even grieved that Phyllis is not come," she said gladly, "he is just satisfied, with a perfect satisfaction, to see his father and me. After all there are seasons when no love contents us save a father's love. We are but children, every one of us."
Late in the evening, after a long rest, Margaret sat beside Philip's bed again, holding his nerveless hand in her own. She could hardly believe that this pale, almost wasted face and languid frame was her strong young son, who had said farewell to her only a few months ago. He seemed to have grown years older. He was graver and more thoughtful. His manner toward her and his father was at once more independent and more full of a manly deference. His smile, as he looked into her face, was that of one who was more her equal than he had been when he parted from her. He had suffered, and suffering had lifted him nearer to her level.
"I understand you and my father better than I did," he said. "I see why you wonder at my love for Phyllis; yes, and I see why I love her. Possibly I should not love her now, if I saw her for the first time. But it has grown with my growth, and been secretly fostered and cherished, unknown to you both. Still I thought you knew; and I love her, and she loves me. We must venture upon life together, and if it is not as perfect a union as yours and my father's, why, it is the most perfect I can make. I could not sacrifice Phyllis now, even to your reasonable objections."
"You love her enough to make you ill when you are away from her," said his mother, sighing, "so we must withdraw our objections."
"Yes, I love her," he replied; "but that is not so much the question as whether she loves me as much as ever. Think, dear mother. She has regarded herself as mine ever since we were little children together; and with all her vivacity and charming spirits she has never even thought of attracting anyone else, or of being loved by any other man. She is all my own. If I could give up my engagement out of love and obedience to you, I could not run the risk of breaking Phyllis's high spirit—perhaps her heart. I dare not act like a scoundrel, even to please my father."
"Your father would never wish you to act like a scoundrel," said Margaret in a pained tone; "but he withdraws his objections, and says you must come home again. Only we wish you not to marry for three years longer. But oh, my boy! surely you can be happy at home as you were before, seeing her as you used to see her. You will yield to us this much? You will not force us to consent to an earlier marriage?"
Philip drew his mother's hand to his lips, and kissed it in silence. This was no moment of triumph to him, because he knew it to be one of pain to her. She had not demanded a great concession from him, and she had asked it doubtingly, almost humbly. It was amazing that his mother should petition him for anything, and he not to be able to rejoice in granting it.
"Yes, we will wait," he said; "we are both young enough to wait, but three years is a long time."
CHAPTER XXIX.
IN VENICE.
Philip's recovery from the combined effects of low fever and homesickness progressed so favorably that Sidney soon felt at liberty to leave him in his mother's care, and return to London, where his presence was becoming necessary. Venice was too much haunted by painful reminiscences for him to care to linger in it, even if he had the leisure to do so. He had been there once with Margaret, and had found it so hateful that he had hurried her away after a day or two, unable to endure its associations. There was no dread of this early marriage coming to light; it was now nearly thirty years ago, and the past had given no sign yet of rising in judgment against him. It was only in a place like this, crowded with associations, and occasionally when old Andrew Goldsmith spoke of her, that he ever thought of Sophy. But the streets of Venice, singularly unlike the streets of any other city—and it was the last city they were in—brought the recollection of her to his mind with startling and sickening frequency. As soon as Philip was pronounced convalescent, he could bear it no longer.
It was still the month of May, and Venice was at its loveliest. The air was light, and soft, and warm, without too great heat. The little party left behind by Sidney had nothing to do but float about the border canals and the lagoons leading out to the sea all day long. More often than anywhere else, they sailed to the Lido, and sat on the sand-banks to breathe the keener and purer breezes blowing off the Adriatic. They could not grow weary of watching for hours the fleet of fishing boats flitting to and fro on the green waters, most of them carrying gorgeous yellow sails with brown patterns on them, and stripes of pale yellow and white along the edges—sails that were heirlooms in the fishermen's families. Now and then a sail of the clearest white or the faintest primrose was seen; and far away on the horizon, where the sky was bluish gray, the distant sails looked of a deep bronze and purple. All of them fluttered hither and thither as if they were large and gorgeous butterflies hovering over the waves. It was a sight they never wearied of. There was a rapture of delight in it for Dorothy which caught Margaret and Philip into a keen participation in her enjoyment; and the days passed by as if there was nothing else for them to do but to glide slowly about in their gondola and see the churches and palaces floating on the tranquil water, which so faithfully reflected them in form and color.
It was but a brief pleasure, for as the month drew to an end a sudden outburst of heat came on, bringing with it the danger of a return of Philip's fever. Margaret called in the American doctor, and he ordered an immediate retreat to the mountains.
"You will find it bracing enough in the Tyrol," he said, "and you cannot do better than go for a month or so to the Ampezzo Valley. In two days' time you will find yourself at Cortina, where you will obtain fairly comfortable quarters. Or you might go to the Italian Lakes, if you thought better."
"No; let us go to the Austrian Tyrol," said Philip.
"You must go to-morrow morning," continued the doctor.
"It only seems like a day since we came here," said Dorothy regretfully, "one long beautiful day. I do not feel as if I had ever been asleep."
"It is quite time then for you to be off," remarked the doctor; "you will be falling ill if you stay much longer. Take my word for it, you will enjoy the mountains as much as Venice when you get among them. There is nothing like the Dolomites."
But when the doctor was gone Dorothy entreated for one more sail in a gondola. The sun was set, and the heated air was fast growing cool. The moon was at the full, and as they floated toward the lagoons, the lights of the city behind them shone like jewels. The sound of music reached their ears, softened by distance, from gayly illuminated gondolas bearing bands of musicians up and down the Grand Canal. As soon as they were beyond this sound, and only the faintest ripple of the water against their gondola could be heard, Dorothy began to sing snatches of old north-country ballads and simple old-fashioned songs, in a soft undertone, with now and then a cadence of sadness in it, which seemed to chime in with the pale light of the moon, and the dim waters, and the dusky outlines of the city behind them. Margaret and Philip listened in silence, for they were afraid she would stop if they praised her.
"I feel so happy," she exclaimed, suddenly checking herself, as if she had forgotten she was not alone.
"So am I," said Philip, laughing, with such a boyish laugh as his mother had not heard for many months.
"And so am I," assented Margaret. "Oh! how good life is, even in this world!"
"But why are we so seldom happy?" asked Philip.
"Why are you happy now?" she rejoined.
"I will tell you why I am happy," said Dorothy, leaning toward them, as they sat opposite to her, and they saw her dark eyes shining in the moonlight. "I am thinking of nothing but this one moment, and everything is very good. The moon up there, and the little clouds in the sky, and these waves rippling round us, and the happy air; and you two whom I love and who love me. There is nothing here but what is good."
"Why should we not oftener live in the present moment," said Margaret, "instead of burdening it with the past and the future? God would have us do so, as children do who have a father to care for them. He gives us to-day; to-morrow he will give us another day, different, but as much his gift as this. If we would only take them as he sends them, one at a time, we should not be so seldom happy."
"I promise to try to do it," cried Dorothy, stretching out her hands toward Margaret, but without touching her. "Philip, let us enter into an agreement to be happy. Let us take each day singly as it comes, and look upon it as a gift straight from God."
Philip did not speak, but Margaret said, as if to herself:
"My God! Thou art all love.
Not one poor minute 'scapes Thy breast
But brings a favor from above."
"I will try to believe it," said Philip; "but there is so much in life that is not good. There are few days and hours like this."
They returned to the quay almost in silence, but not less happy because their happiness had taken a tinge of solemnity. As they landed, and the light of a lamp fell upon Margaret's face, there was a look of serene gladness on it, such as neither Dorothy nor Philip had seen before. It looked to them like the face of an angel, both strong and happy.
CHAPTER XXX.
A MYSTERY.
They started by the earliest train to Victoria, and were half-way to Pieve di Cadore before nightfall, taking great delight, each one of them, in the wonderful beauty of the scenery through which they were traveling. Philip was in that delicious state of convalescence, the last stage of it, when health seems renewed to greater and fresher vigor than before the illness came. He was in high spirits, and in his inmost heart, if he had looked there, he would have discovered no regret that Phyllis was absent. Her presence, charming as it was, with the thousand little attentions she would have demanded from him, would have interfered with the perfect freedom he enjoyed in the companionship of his mother and Dorothy. They exacted nothing from him, and were good travelers, complaining of no discomfort or inconvenience. There was a good deal of discomfort which would have fretted Phyllis considerably. But Dorothy was like a pleasant comrade, whose society added another charm to the picturesque scenery. When Margaret was too tired to leave the carriage, Dorothy was always ready to climb the steep paths with him, by which they escaped the tedious zigzags of the dusty roads.
To Dorothy, accustomed to a low horizon and wide sweep of upland with a broad field of sky above it, the lofty peaks of gray rock rising for thousands of feet into the sky, and hanging over the narrow valleys with a threatening aspect, were at first oppressive. But the profusion of flowers on the nearer slopes, which were in places blue with forget-me-nots and gentians, and yellow with large buttercups, was delightful to her, and she soon lost the sense of oppression.
It was the evening of the second day when they reached Cortina, having crossed the Austrian frontier a few miles from it. They were the first tourists of the season, said the custom-house officer, and would be very welcome. The snow was not yet melted off the strangely shaped rocks, towering upward so precipitously that it could lodge only in the little niches and rough ledges of the surface, tracing with white network the lines scored upon it by alternate frost and sunshine. The valley was more open than those through which they had traveled, and little groups of cottages were dotted about it, and for some distance up the lower slopes of the mountains. The air was sharply cold and nipping, for the sun was gone down behind the high ridge of rock, and they were glad to get inside the hotel, and into the small, bare dining room, which was the only room, except the kitchen, not used as a bedchamber. They intended to stay here for some days, and Margaret, who had written from Venice to Sidney, informing him of their proposed journey, sent Philip to telegraph to him that they had reached Cortina.
It was a little town, and was quickly traversed. To Margaret's telegram he added that they were all well and happy, smiling to himself as he thought how his father would shake his head at the needless extravagance of sending these two words. But Philip felt there was something special in his sense of well-being which demanded explicit acknowledgment. The young woman who copied his telegram looked at him with an air of curiosity and interest.
"The signore is English?" she inquired.
"Yes, signora," he replied.
"The first English of the year," she continued, "and I must send word to the padre. He was here yesterday, and at all the hotels, to say he must speak with the first of the English who come to Cortina. Perhaps the signore has heard so already?"
"No," answered Philip; "but I have not seen my landlord yet; he was out of the way when we arrived."
He had learned Italian sufficiently to carry on a simple conversation; but he was not very fluent, and he was obliged to pause and think over his sentences.
"We are going to stay here some days," he resumed, "or possibly some weeks. Is it necessary for me to call upon the priest? or will you tell him where I am staying?"
"I will call him; it is urgent, I believe," she said, hastening to the door, and running across a small, open space to a house near the church. In a few minutes she returned, accompanied by a young priest in a shabby cassock and worn-out broad-brimmed hat.
"I have the honor to speak to an English signore," said the priest, bowing profoundly.
"I shall be most happy to serve the padre," answered Philip.
The young priest bade the telegraph clerk a courteous good-night, and drew him a little on one side. A steep lane led down to the brawling river which ran through the valley, and they descended it until they were quite beyond any chance of being overheard. He then addressed Philip in a low voice, and in tolerably good English.
"It is an affair of the confessional," he said slowly, and with an evident effort of memory, as if he was repeating a statement he had carefully composed beforehand; "it is the case of an old woman, a very respectable old person. She dies at this moment, and she wills, before dying, to behold a true Englishman, and to betray to him one great secret, one important secret. I desired all the persons in the town to announce to me the arrival of the first Englishman touring to this place, and lo, it is the signore!"
It was great luck, thought Philip, to come in so immediately upon a mystery. No young man would shrink, as older men might do, from being intrusted with a secret, which might involve them in much trouble and worry.
"I am ready to go with you at once," he said, smiling.
"Not to-night," answered the priest, "it is two hours up the mountain, and it is already night. She dies not to-night; perhaps not to-morrow. In the morning, if the signore will condescend his favor."
"What time shall I be with you?" asked Philip.
"At six o'clock; will that do?" replied the priest. "I take the—what you call the Sacrament—the Lord's Supper, is it? to the respectable old person, and I cannot have any food till she receives it from my hands. Will the hour of six be too early for the signore?"
"No, no!" he answered; "but I shall breakfast before starting on a two hours' walk up the mountain."
"That, of course," said the priest, laughing low; "you are not a padre. Moreover, the Protestants have the good things in this life, mark my words!"
Margaret had already retired to her room when Philip returned to the hotel; and when he knocked at her door to bid her good-night, she called to him to come in. It was an immense chamber, with a red brick floor, and several windows; but a fire had been kindled in a large white-tiled stove in one corner of it, and a pleasant heat was diffused through the room. His mother was lying down on a red velvet sofa, which threw a tinge of rosy color upon her face, yet she looked to him somewhat pale and sad.
"I may be a little overtired," she said, in answer to his anxious question, "and I am somehow depressed—oddly depressed. We have been so gay and happy these last few days, that I can hardly bear to feel myself going down to a lower level. I feel a great longing for your father to be with me. Philip, do you ever feel as if you had been in some place before, even if you knew for certain that you never can have been there?"
"I have felt it once," he replied.
"I feel it here," she continued, sighing; "I feel it very strongly. I feel, too, as if your father had been here; of course that is possible, though he never mentioned it to me. It seems almost as if I could see him passing to and fro, and sitting here by my side, just as you are sitting. And I have another sensation—as if for years I had been traveling unconsciously toward one spot, and it is here, this valley, this room. You know I am not superstitious, but if I cannot shake off this feeling, we must go on somewhere else. It is foolish of me, but I cannot stay here. I am positively afraid of going to bed, for I shall not sleep. Look at that great bed in the corner; it frightens me. Yet I never am afraid."
"You are overdone, mother," he said tenderly. "I have not taken care of you, but left myself to be taken care of. Let Dorothy come and sleep with you; you would not be afraid with her sweet, happy face beside you."
"It is sweet and happy," answered Margaret, with a smile. "Yes, I will have a bed made up for her here, and if I lie awake in the night I can look across at her, sleeping as if she felt herself under the shadow of God's wings."
"Ah, mother!" he cried, "if you only loved my Phyllis as you love Dorothy!"
"I may do some day," she replied. "When she is your wife and my daughter-in-law, she will be nearer to me even than Dorothy."
He put his arm round her and kissed her gratefully, but in silence. He knew that she could never love Phyllis as she loved Dorothy. Phyllis, with her little petulancies, her pretty maneuvers, her arch plottings to get her own way, her love of ornament and display, all her pleasures and her purposes, was too unlike Margaret ever to become the daughter of her heart. But he must make up to Phyllis by a deeper devotion, a more single attention to her wishes, even when they were opposed to his own. Marrying her against the will and judgment of his father and mother, he must make it evident to her, as well as to them, that he never regretted acting on his own decision.
"I am going up the mountains to-morrow morning," he said before leaving her, "with a priest, to hear some great secret from an old woman who is dying. Some tale of robbery, I expect. We start at six, and it is two hours' up the mountain; but I shall get back for twelve o'clock breakfast."
The clock in the bell tower struck twelve before Margaret could resolve upon lying down in the great square bed in the corner, which stood almost as high as her own head. Dorothy had been fast asleep for some time on the little bed that had been moved into the room, and the girl's sweet, tranquil slumber in some measure dispelled her own nervous fears. But the night was sleepless to her. She heard, every quarter of an hour, the loud, single boom of the great bell, which reassured the inhabitants of the valley that their watchman was awake on his chilly tower, and looking out for any cause of alarm. Was it possible that she had never listened to it before, so familiar the sound was? Could this be the first night she had lain awake in this weary chamber, longing for Sidney's presence, and watching with weary eyes the gray light of the morning stealing through the chinks of the shutters? Had she never wept before as she did now, with tears slowly forcing themselves beneath her heavy eyelids? It was all a nervous illusion, she told herself, proceeding from overstrain and fatigue; but if it continued through the day, she must go on to some other place. There would be no chance of rest for her here.
She lay as still almost as if she had been stretched out in death, her arms folded across her breast, and her eyelids closed. If she could not take rest in sleep, she would commune with her own heart upon her bed, and be still. "Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell in safety," she said. She reminded herself that nothing could befall her that God had not willed. Death she had never feared since the day when she had all but crossed the threshold of another life. The death of her beloved ones would be an unspeakable sorrow to her, but not an unendurable one. What else, then, was there to dread?
CHAPTER XXXI.
MARTINO.
The jagged crests of the eastern rocks were fringed with light from the sun still lingering behind them, when Philip stepped out into the frosty air of the morning, which made his veins tingle with a pleasant glow. He enjoyed the prospect of this novel expedition, and felt glad that he was the first English tourist of the season. All the town was astir already, and the priest, with an acolyte, was awaiting him at the church door, where mass was just over, and the congregation, chiefly of women, was dispersing to their labors in the fields. Very soon the sun was shining down on the mountain track they were taking, and the whole valley lay below their eyes, lit up in its beams. The fields wore the vivid green of early spring, after the melting of the snows and before the scorching of the summer skies of brass. There were no song birds; but once the harsh cry of a vulture startled Philip as it soared above them, uttering its scream of anger. On the fir trees the crimson flowers were hardening into cones, which would soon be empurpled and bronzed by the sun, where they hung in great clusters on the boughs just beyond his reach. He must bring Dorothy to see them, he thought. As they mounted higher they came here and there upon broad patches of gentian, so thickly grown that not a blade of green peeped among the deep blue of the blossom. Spring flowers were blooming in profusion, and their path lay once through a field of forget-me-nots, where the grass was hidden under a mantle of pale, heavenly blue. Certainly he would bring his mother and Dorothy to see such a pretty sight.
Higher up the mountain path, which he could not have found without the priest as a guide, the road grew rougher and more stony, and presently they passed under the chill shadow of a long, high wall of rock. Here the snow lay unmelted in great masses, as if it had fallen in avalanches from the steep precipices above. But a path had been trodden over them, hard and slippery as frosty roads are on mountain passes where winter still reigns. Beyond these, in a valley lying high up on the mountain side, was a group of miserable hovels. From every roof there rose a cloud of smoke, as if they were all smoldering from fire, and a volume of smoke issued from each open doorway. There was neither chimney nor window in any of the rude dwellings.
"Will the signore arrest himself here till I turn again?" asked the priest courteously.
Philip strolled on a little through a mass of broken rocks, split by the frost from the precipices, and interspersed with tiny plots of cultivated ground, wherever a handful of soil could be found. But in a few minutes he heard shouts and yells from what might be called the village street, and he turned back to see what was going on. The priest, attended by his acolyte, had entered one of the huts; and now, stealing away from it, Philip could see the gaunt and wretched figure of a man, at whom the children were hooting loudly, though they kept at a safe distance from him. He came on toward Philip with a shambling gait, and with round, bowed shoulders, as if he had never stood upright. His shaggy hair was long and matted together, and his beard had been clumsily cut, not shaved, giving to him almost the aspect of a wild beast. His clothes were rags of the coarsest texture. Yet there was something—what could it be? not altogether strange and unfamiliar in his face as he drew near. There was a deep glance in his gray eyes, which lay sunken under heavy eyebrows, that seemed to speak some intelligible language to him, as if he knew the same expression in a well known face. The peasant passed by, muttering, and stopping immediately behind him, as if using him as a screen, he picked up an enormous piece of rock and flung it at the yelping children.
"Martino! Martino!" they shrieked as they ran for refuge to their miserable dens; and at the clamorous outcry a crew of dirty, half naked women, who looked barely human, rushed out into the street, as if to take vengeance on the irritated man; but at the sight of Philip they paused for an instant, and then fled back again, banging their doors behind them, as if fearful of an attack.
At the sound of the cry "Martino," Philip for a moment fancied they were calling to him; but quickly recalling to his mind where he was, he felt how impossible it was for any creature here to know his name. This poor fellow must bear it—an unlucky, pitiable namesake. He must be a dangerous madman, he thought; yet when he looked round he saw the man crouching quietly under a rock at a little distance, his shaggy head buried in his hands. Philip's whole heart was stirred. He approached him cautiously, saying, "Good-morning," and the peasant lifted up his head and fixed his deep-set and mournful eyes upon him.
"Here is a lira for you," said Philip, by way of opening up a friendly feeling between them. The man turned it about in his rough hands, with something like a smile on his rugged face. Then he crouched down at Philip's feet, with his hands upon the ground—the attitude of a brute.
"The good signore!" he exclaimed.
The two young men presented a striking contrast. The one a handsome, thoroughbred, refined Englishman, whose culture had been pushed to the highest point, with all his powers of mind and body carefully trained, full of pity and kindliness toward the almost savage and imbecile creature, all but prostrate at his feet, who had grown up an outcast and a thrall among barbarians. Philip compelled him to rise from his knees.
"What is your name?" he asked, speaking slowly and clearly.
"Martino," he answered in a mumbling voice.
"That is one of my names too," said Philip, with a light laugh. He himself was struck with the utter contrast between them. The man was the same height as himself, only his head hung low, and his shoulders were rounded. Coarse and brutish as this Austrian peasant was, he felt a peculiar kindness toward him, and looked at him with the eye of a future patron and benefactor. If he had only been cared for sooner, these large limbs might have made a fine man, and his head was not a bad shape. Now he saw him near at hand there were possibilities about him which would have made him quite another creature if he had been taken in hand a few years earlier. It was too late now.
They stood opposite to one another with friendliness in both faces, but with the accursed barrier of different languages making it impossible to communicate their kindly feelings. The peasant kept looking at the coin in his grimy palm, and back again at Philip's compassionate face, but he did not try to speak. Philip was about to make another effort, when the priest approached and addressed a few sharp words to Martino, who immediately shambled off, dragging his bare and horny feet along over the stones and ice, in the direction of Cortina.
"The respectable old person is now ready to receive the signore," said the priest to Philip.
He conducted him into the dark interior of one of the hovels, into which no ray of light entered, except through the nick between the doorpost and the door, which he left purposely ajar. Coming out of the strong, clear light of the mountain side, for a minute or two Philip could discern nothing; but by and by, in the darkness, there appeared slowly and dimly a haggard, yellow face, wrinkled in a thousand lines, with cunning eyes grown bleared and red, which wandered restlessly between him and the priest. All else was dark and indistinguishable. The black roof lay low, almost touching his head, and the black walls hemmed him in closely. On the hearth a fire of dry dung was smoldering, but gave no light; and the noisome smoke rose in wreaths and columns which found a partial escape through the roof and doorway. Philip took silent note of it all, with the calm interest of an accidental bystander.
"This person wishes to disclose a strange circumstance to the English signore," said the priest with grave deliberation; "he understands the Italian a little, I think so."
"Only a little," answered Philip; "but if you will repeat to me slowly what she says, I shall make out most of the meaning. And you can help me, for you know more English than I do Italian."
The priest bowed with a smile. There was, indeed, great difficulty to make out the whole story, as Chiara told it in patois; but her manner was intensely earnest, and Philip bent all his mind to catch the meaning of her confession. It seemed an obscure and painful story of some young English girl, who had been deserted by her lover at Cortina, when she was about to become a mother, and who gave birth to the poor unfortunate creature whom he had just seen. This man was half an Englishman, the son of an English mother. This, then, was the secret of his strange feeling of being almost akin to him.
"Why did she not try to send him as a child to England?" he asked, feeling a great rush of compassion toward the man who had been thus deprived of his birthright.
There was some hesitation about the reply. Chiara had confessed her theft to the priest, but she had also left the stolen money to the church for masses to be said for her soul. She had derived no benefit from it during her lifetime, having grown to love it with all a miser's infatuation, and she was not willing to sacrifice the good it might do her in the life to which she was hastening. She could not run the risk of having to give up her idolized plunder. The priest, also, was unwilling for the church to lose any portion of its revenues.
"Chiara took charge of the child," he said, "and sent it up here to be nursed by her sister. When her sister died ten years ago she came to live in this place herself, and Martino worked for her. It was fair for Martino to work for her, when she paid for all he had."
"Yes," answered Philip; "but did this woman take no measures to find the father who deserted his child so basely?"
"Not possible," exclaimed the priest; "there were few English tourists passing this way thirty years ago. And Chiara began to love the boy, and could not part with him."
"But why does she tell the story now—now, when it is too late?" asked Philip with a tone of passion in his voice.
"She would not tell now," said the priest, "but she dies, as you behold. She is poor, and there will be nothing for Martino. When she is gone the other people here will stone him, or kill him in some way. For his mother was a heretic, and they believe she is in hell, and Martino is not a good Christian, though he was permitted to be baptized. He is very savage, like a wild beast, and the women are frightened of him. The men will kill him like a wild beast."
"She wants to find a friend and protector for him," responded Philip pitifully. "Well, I will take care of the poor fellow. Did the poor girl leave nothing behind her which might give me some clew as to who she belonged to? Martino may have some relations in England."
"There is this little packet of papers in English," said the priest; "I have not read them yet, for this person did not give them to me only a moment ago. No person has ever read them, for she kept them safe and secret all these years. She wishes the English signore to read them, and say what can be done for Martino."
"I cannot read them here," replied Philip, taking the yellow, time-stained packet from his hand; "but if you will come to my hotel this evening I will tell you the contents."
"Very good," said the priest.
CHAPTER XXXII.
AN OLD LETTER.
Philip left the stifling atmosphere of the hovel, and, with a deep-drawn breath of relief, stepped into the open air. The wonderful landscape stretched before him in clear sunlight, dazzling to his eyes. He was nearly two thousand feet above the valley, and the mountains, which were foreshortened to the sight there, now seemed to tower into the cloudless sky with indescribable grandeur and beauty. It was a perfect day, and the light was intense. The colors of these rocks were exceedingly soft, with a bloom upon them like the bloom upon a peach. Tender shades of purple and red, with blue and orange, pale yellow and green, blended together, and formed such delicate tints as would drive an artist to despair. Tall pinnacles of these cliffs rose behind the dun-colored mountains of porphyry, and seemed to look down upon him, as if their turrets and parapets were filled with spectators of the trivial affairs of man. Thin clouds were floating about them, hanging in mist upon their peaks or slowly gliding across from one snow-veined crest to another. Immediately above him, just beyond the hamlet, lay a vast hollow, in which the snowdrift was melting in the heat of the sun, which had at last risen behind its rough screen of crags; and a stream of icy-cold water was falling noisily down a steep and stony channel, which it had worn out for itself through many centuries of spring thaws. The heat was very great; and Philip made his way to some little distance from the huts, and sat down on the ledge of a rock, which commanded a splendid view of the groups of mountains, and the valleys lying between them. He was not, as yet, so interested in the packet in his hand as to be indifferent to the romantic scenery surrounding him. These letters had been written thirty years ago; they could well wait a few minutes longer.
Yet he was indignant; and he was full of compassion toward his unfortunate fellow-countryman. But at that moment he was enjoying the sensation of an almost perfectly full life. He felt himself in faultless health; his mind was on the stretch, with a sense of vigor and power which was delightful to him after the low spirits of the last few months; and beneath this strong sensation of mental and physical life lay a clearer, keener, diviner conviction of the presence of God than he had ever known before. It seemed to him as if he could all but hear a voice calling to him, "This is holy ground!" In spite of the miserable homes of men and women close by, and in spite of the degraded man whose life had been one long wretchedness in this place, Philip felt that it was a temple of God himself.
With this strength, and in the consciousness of unusual energy, he turned away at last from the sublime landscape, to read the faded paper in his hands. It bore no name or address; and it was not sealed, only tied together with a ribbon. A very, very long letter of several pages, written in almost undecipherable lines, for the ink was faded, and the paper stained. But there was another packet, and opening it he found a daguerreotype glass. There were two portraits on it, one of a girl with a very pretty face, and the other—but whose could this portrait be?
Philip's healthy pulse ceased to beat for a moment. Who could it be? How perfectly he seemed to know it! There had been an old daguerreotype lying about in the nursery at Apley, which he had seen and played with as soon as he was old enough to recognize it in its morocco case. Was it possible that this portrait was the same as that?
He shut the case softly, feeling as if dead hands were closing it. A terrible foreboding of some dire calamity came all at once into the sunshine, and the sweet air, and the sound of hurrying waters. He unfolded the time-stained letter, and began to read; and as he read, the dreadful truth, the whole truth, as he thought, broke upon him, and overwhelmed him with dismay and horror.
One of his earliest remembrances was the story of the lost girl, Rachel Goldsmith's niece, who had gone away secretly from home and had never again been heard of. As a boy he had often thought of how he would go forth to find her, and bring her home again to his oldest friend, Andrew Goldsmith. It had been his boyish vision of knight-errantry. As a young man he had learned what such a loss meant; not the simple loss he had fancied it as a boy. It had become in later years a subject he could no longer mention to her father, or his own mother. Philip's ideal of a man's duty toward a woman was of the purest and most chivalrous devotion.
And now! Philip could not face the horror of the thought that was waiting to take possession of his mind. He roused himself angrily, and stood up, crushing the letter and the portraits into his pocket. A path went beyond the hamlet, leading upward toward the crest of a pass lying between two ranges of mountains. He strode hastily along it, as if he were pursued by an enemy, passing through pine woods, and over torrents of stones, which many a storm had swept down from the precipices above him. Some massive thunderclouds had gathered in the north, and the snowy peaks gleamed out pale and ghost-like against the leaden sky. But his eyes were blinded, and his ears deafened. Yet he was not thinking; he dared not think. A miserable dread was dogging his footsteps along an unknown path; and presently he must summon courage to turn round and confront this dread.
He reached at last the top of the pass, where three crosses stood out strongly and clearly against the sky. Three crosses! Not only that on which the Lord died, but those on which every man must hang, weary and ashamed, at some moment of his life. He sat down beneath the central one, and leaned against the foot of it. It was his Lord's cross; but on each side stood the cross of a fellow-man—the man of sorrows, and the man of sins. He, too, was come to the hour when he must be lifted up upon his cross. He must be crucified upon it, perhaps in the sight of men, certainly in the sight of God. He had come to it straight from the conviction of the presence of God; and looking up to the three empty crosses, he cried out, "Lord, remember me."
Then, with hands that shook, and with dazed eyes, he read the long letter, which Sophy had written years before he was born. And as he read he found the burden less intolerable than he had dreaded it would be. His father had not been as base as his first miserable suspicion had vaguely pictured him. Sophy Goldsmith had been his wife; and Philip, counting how many years were passed, saw his father a young man like himself, loving her as he loved Phyllis, but with far less hope of ever gaining the consent of his friends to such a marriage. He, too, would have married Phyllis, in spite of all opposition; only not in secret.
His brain grew clearer with this gleam of comfort. Then the thought came that the miserable, half savage peasant whom he had seen that morning, being Sophy's child, must be his father's first-born son, and his own brother. It was his father's eyes he had seen, and partly recognized, when he first looked into Martin's face. His brother Martin! He thought of his brother Hugh, between whom and himself there existed the strongest and most loyal brotherhood. Hugh had stood by him through all his difficulties about Phyllis, and approved of his choice of her with the warmest approbation. But this barbarous, degraded, forlorn wretch, an outcast among the lowest people—how could he feel a brother's love for him?
If the eldest son—then the heir! The estates in Yorkshire were strictly entailed upon Sir John Martin's male heirs, as his mother's lands were settled upon Hugh. This man, scarcely higher than a brute, must take from him the inheritance which had seemed to be his all his life. Why! he, Philip Martin, would be a poor man, a man who must work for his living. This was a new aspect of the case, and one which aroused him from the deeper depths of his dismay. This discovery suddenly and completely changed his whole life.
It was not he who would some day be Philip Martin of Brackenburn—nothing would be his. Now he could marry Phyllis without opposition, for he would be as poor as she was. He was not afraid of poverty; he had no practical acquaintance with it, and Margaret had trained her sons into a fine contempt of mere wealth. There would be a worthy object in setting to work now, for he would have a wife and family to maintain. That was far better than simply making more money to invest or to speculate with.
But what ought he to do? This was a secret of momentous importance concealed by his father for nearly thirty years. It had come suddenly to his knowledge; and what must he do with it? And now, his heart having shaken off the worst of its burden, his mind was clear enough to recognize the hideous and insane selfishness of his father's conduct. Before he knew who it was that had deserted this young girl and her unborn child, he had felt a strong indignation at his baseness and cowardice. What could have made his father, who seemed the soul of honor, act in such a manner? He had been guilty of a great crime, and the man sent to discover it was his own son.
Lifting up his eyes from the ground, on which they had been gloomily bent, Philip saw the uncouth figure of his elder brother crouching and half hidden under one of the thieves' crosses. His bare feet had brought him noiselessly along the road; and he shrank a little from his observation, as if he was afraid of some sharp rebuff. The deep-set eyes glowered at him much as a dog's will do when he is not sure of what reception he will get. There was something wild and desolate about this solitary figure which touched Philip's inmost heart; and yet he could give him no welcome to a place there.
Must he tell his mother? It would be like piercing her to the soul with a sword. He knew well what keen and tender sympathy she had felt for the Goldsmiths, both when Sophy first disappeared and during all the succeeding years of alternating hope and despair. It was this sympathy that had won Rachel Goldsmith's profound devotion to her beloved mistress. How his mother must suffer when she learned that the husband she loved and honored so perfectly had been living a base and cruel lie at her side, witnessing all the sorrow of the family he had wronged, and pretending to share in it. He could imagine her bearing his father's death, but he could not imagine her bearing his dishonor. His mother must suffer more than he did.
Philip roused himself at last to go down into the valley; the afternoon was passing by, and his mother would be getting anxious at his absence. He said "Addio" to his silent companion; but he was conscious, without looking back, that Martino was following him. He felt glad when he reached Cortina, on glancing round, to see that he was at last alone. Dorothy was standing on the balcony outside his mother's bedroom, and she leaned over, with a laughing face, to reproach him for being away so long.
"The very first day, too!" she said. "And oh! if you only knew how vexed I am! There is a telegram from your father, very pleasant for you, but most disagreeable to me."
He ran upstairs at hearing this news, no longer afraid of meeting his mother, and she gave to him the telegram.
"Going to Munich on business," it ran; "proceed immediately—meet there. Taking Phyllis."
"But there is a great festa in the village to-morrow," said Dorothy, "and as it is too late to proceed immediately, we are going to stay for the morning and go on to Toblach in the afternoon. We shall reach Munich before your father and Phyllis can be there. And oh, Philip! the bells are ringing carillons as if they were chimes in heaven."