CHAPTER XXXIII.
A VILLAGE "FESTA."
Philip went down to the presbytery and had a short interview with the padre. Chiara was dying at last; the sacraments had been administered to her, and her life could not linger on through many hours. What did the English signore propose to do for his penniless countryman?
Philip answered briefly that he would take steps to restore him to his family. He then went to the telegraph office and dispatched another message to his father. "Received yours. Urgent reasons for your presence here."
He would accompany his mother to-morrow to Toblach; but he could not quit the neighborhood until something could be decided about his brother. His brother! He stood still abruptly in the village street, with a half laugh of stupefied amazement. His brother! It must be some egregious blunder of his own imagination; his brain had been weakened by the fever. He turned away into a by-road and cautiously took out the letter and the morocco case. No, that was his father's portrait; he recognized it too well. The eyes looking out of the faded daguerreotype resembled the sad, frank, frightened eyes of the oppressed and persecuted outcast.
He did not venture indoors again until dinner time, and immediately after dinner he complained of fatigue. Margaret went to his room before going to bed herself, entering very softly through the door between their two chambers lest he should be sleeping. He knew she stood for a minute or two beside him, shading the lamp with her hand; but he dared not move or speak. She bent over him and laid her lips on his hair that she might run no risk of awakening him. He had never loved her so much as at this moment, and he longed to throw his arms round her neck and tell her what was troubling him, as he had done when he was a boy not so very long ago. But he could not tell her this sorrow; would it not crush her to death? Would to God he could die if his death would save her!
The morning was wonderfully bright and sunny, and through the transparent thinness of the air the most distant peaks shone clearly, with their soft colors and delicate tracery of snow. The festa began early with the ringing of bells and the firing of musketry. Long files of peasantry came down in troops along the narrow tracks leading from the valley to the mountains. Margaret and Dorothy hurried over their coffee and rolls to hasten down to the church. But it was already full, and hundreds of women and children were kneeling outside the western door, and a similar crowd of men outside the northern door. Some women sitting on a bench offered a seat to Margaret, whose beautiful face was lit up with an expression of sympathy with their devotion. The women, like the men, were praying with their hats in their hands, bareheaded under a burning sun. Margaret shared a prayer book with the peasant woman beside her, and read the prayers and meditations in Italian; while here and there the woman marked with her thumb some special words, and looked up into her face to see if she was "sympatica"; and she and her companions smiled as they saw Margaret's lips move with the uttering of the same prayers they were themselves repeating.
Presently, amid the ringing of the bells and to the music of a brass band, a procession was formed, and all the congregation thronged out of the church, and those who had been praying without fell into their places—men, and women, and children. There were altars erected in the streets, at which mass was to be celebrated; and the long procession filed away with many banners fluttering along it. Last of all, and at a little distance from the rest, there came a man whom Margaret had already noticed as standing aloof, half hidden behind a corner of a wall. He was an uncouth creature, tall and ungainly, with uncut, matted hair, and a coarse beard; yet there was something in his whole appearance that reminded her of somebody she knew.
"Why!" exclaimed Dorothy in accents of surprise. "Look! look! How like that poor fellow is to Andrew Goldsmith!"
Yes, that was it. This awkward Tyrolean peasant, who hardly knew how to use his great limbs, was like Andrew—oddly like him; he might have been Andrew's own son. She smiled at the oddity of such a resemblance; but apart from this, the man's solitariness and aloofness interested her greatly. She turned to the old woman beside her, who was sitting still, waiting for the procession to accomplish part of its route before she joined it.
"Who is that poor man?" she inquired.
"He is English," replied the woman, "an Englishman who was born here in the very hotel itself where the signora is staying. Will she wish to hear all the circumstances? Because I know; I was a servant there when Martino was born."
"Is his name Martino?" asked Margaret.
"Yes, signora," she went on eagerly; "I will tell the English lady. It is nearly thirty years ago, a little later than this festa. An English signore and signora came to the hotel, and the name written in the register by the signore was Martino. So when the child was born he was named Martin; and Saint Martin is his patron, but the saint has done nothing for him, because his parents were heretics, and not Christians."
"Martin!" repeated Margaret, with growing interest; "but what became of the parents?"
"The little mother died, poor soul, in giving him birth," said the old woman, "and lies buried yonder in the cemetery, and Chiara took the boy for her own. Chiara was the head servant in the hotel, and folks say she made money by it in some way; but there was not much money in the signora's trunks—only enough to bury her; or if there was money, it never did Chiara any good, poor soul! They say she lies dying this morning up yonder in a hut on the hills, and all she will hear of the festa is the ringing of the bells and the firing of the cannon. She's no older than I am; and you behold me!"
"But the father of Martino," said Margaret, "what became of him?"
"An old story," she answered; "he had forsaken her three or four weeks before the boy was born. He was a fine, handsome signore, and she worshiped him. But what then? Young signori cannot trouble themselves about girls. Why should they? Girls are too plentiful. He went off one fine day, and nobody ever saw him again."
"But did no one try to find him on account of his child?" asked Margaret.
"Once," said the woman, "about six years after, a strange Englishman came here in the winter, and made inquiries, and saw the boy. But he went away again, and no more was heard of him. Chiara brought the boy up to be her servant. Her servant? Her slave! His life was worse than a dog's. We are poor here, signora, but Martino is the poorest creature of us all. He never had as much as he could eat; not once in his life. Old Chiara is a skinflint."
The procession was out of sight, but the monotonous chant droned by thousands of voices came plainly to their ears. Margaret listened to the strange sound, with eyes dim with tears for the poor fellow, whose life was so desolate and hard.
"Will the lady wish to see the grave of the pretty English girl?" asked the woman, with an eye to a possible gratuity. "It is not far off in the cemetery, and we shall be there before the procession passes."
"I will go," said Margaret in a pitying voice. "Dorothy, stay and bring Philip to me."
The murmur of the chanted prayers filled the quiet air as they passed down a side lane toward the cemetery, broken only by the clashing of the bells and the firing of cannon at the moment when the Host was elevated. This triumphal burst of noisy sound came as they passed through the gates of the neglected burial ground, and Margaret's guide fell down on her knees and waited until the chant was renewed. Then she led the way to the corner, apart from the other graves, and somewhat more overgrown with weeds and nettles, where Sophy lay buried.
There was a rude cross at the head of the grave, made of two bits of wood nailed clumsily together; and round it lay an outline of white pebbles. To-day, a handful of blue gentians lay upon it. There was a pathetic sadness about these awkward efforts to care for the grave, as if some bungler had done his best to express his grief, and had scarcely known what to do. The tears fell fast from Margaret's eyes as she laid her hand reverently on the rough wood of the cross.
"Has that poor fellow done this?" she asked.
"Yes, signora," was the answer, "it's his mother's grave. The pretty English girl is buried here. I can recollect her well, with blue eyes and gold hair, and a skin like roses and lilies. He called her Sophy."
Margaret started. A sudden pang shot through her heart. After all these years was she to discover the fate of the poor girl, whose loss she had mourned so long, in this remote spot? Could this be Sophy Goldsmith's grave? And oh! how sorrowful beyond all their fears must her sad lot have been! Dying, alone, deserted; leaving behind her a child who had grown into this miserable pariah of the mountains. Swiftly the thought of Andrew Goldsmith, and his dark, deep grief when he learnt all, passed through her mind.
The refrain of the chant came nearer, and the long procession had reached the doors of the church close to the cemetery. Suddenly the peasant woman broke the silence with which she had respected Margaret's tears.
"Will the signora pardon me if I leave her?" she asked. "They are going into church now. God!" she cried in a tone of terror, "here is the young English signore himself! the signore who forsook the poor English girl. Oh, my God!"
Margaret turned round, with a sickening sensation of terror, such as she had never felt before, as if she would be compelled to see some dreaded vision. Coming slowly toward them down the weedy path of the cemetery was Philip, with Dorothy at his side. Both looked grave, as if they felt the desolation of the neglected spot; but there was an air of moody preoccupation about Philip, as though his thoughts were dealing with some subject a thousandfold more sad than the uncared-for dead.
"No, no," continued the woman, "it cannot be! The signore would be an old man now; it is thirty years ago. But just so he looked, and just so he walked. Did the signora know the poor girl who is buried here called Sophy, Martino's mother?"
"Hush! hush!" cried Margaret, in an agony of apprehension; "say nothing more now. This is my son. Go away to church, and I will see you again some time soon."
A moment afterward Philip was standing opposite to her, looking down on the rudely outlined grave and the rough cross. Neither of them spoke. He did not ask whose grave it was; and her parched lips could have given him no answer.
"It looks like a God-forsaken spot," said Dorothy, pityingly. "Oh, how can people leave their dear ones in such a desolate graveyard? I always fancy 'the field to bury strangers in,' which was bought with the money Judas flung away, must have been such a place as this."
But neither Margaret nor Philip answered her, and she looked up in surprise. Margaret's face was like that of one stunned and almost paralyzed by a sudden shock; her eyes were fixed, and her lips half open, as if she was gazing on some sight of horror. It was but for a brief half minute; then she sighed heavily, and tears fell fast and thick down her pale cheeks.
"O Philip!" cried his mother, "let us go away quickly from this place. Let us start at once. I am not myself here. Take me away as quickly as we can go."
"Yes, mother," he answered, drawing her hand tenderly through his arm. He did not dare to ask her any question. He guessed whose grave this was by which she was standing, and felt sure that she knew something of the dread secret that oppressed himself. But it was impossible for him to ask her. She stood nearer to his father even than he did. The close, inseparable, sacred nature of the tie that unites man and wife struck him as it had never done before. Any sin of her husband would be an intolerable burden to her.
He hurried their departure from the hotel, though it was difficult to get a carriage on a festa day like this. But at length they started, and he felt that every step taking them away from Cortina was a gain. They passed little groups of peasants going homeward; and the sound of church bells ringing joyous peals pursued them for several miles. But they left the valley behind them after a time. The drive they were hurrying over was one of the most beautiful in Europe, but only Dorothy saw it that day. Once, when she saw a red peak, with clouds rolling across it, and the spots of crimson gleaming like flames beneath the vapor, and a pale gray rock close by looking ghostlike beside it, she turned to Margaret with a low exclamation of delight. But Margaret's eyes were closed, and her ears were deaf. A vague, undefined terror in her soul had almost absolute rule over her. She must have been blind and deaf to the glories of heaven itself, with that fear of an almost impossible crime in her husband which was haunting her.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
A FORCED CONFESSION.
In fleeing as swiftly as she could from Cortina, Margaret had no intention of deserting Sophy's son. But it seemed essential to her to get away from the spot for a little while, that her brain might be clear enough for thought. They stopped, then, at Toblach, at the entrance of the Ampezzo Valley, and only half a day's journey from Cortina. It was a relief to her to hear that Philip had already telegraphed for his father, and as he must pass through Toblach they waited for him there.
The tumult in Margaret's mind calmed a little, but still she shrank from gathering up the threads of what she had heard at Cortina and weaving them together. Sophy Goldsmith lay buried there, and her son was living and bore the name of Martin. Philip had been recognized as being like the man who had deserted her and left her to die. Her mind constantly recurred to these points. She reproached herself vehemently for suffering any doubt of Sidney to invade her love for him. Her love was so deep and vital that it seemed impossible for doubt to undermine it. If any human being could know another, she felt that she must know her husband's nature; and treachery and vice were abhorrent to it. She did not call him faultless, but she had seen none besides the little flaws and errors which must always hang about frail humanity—such as she was herself guilty of. "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults," was a prayer often in Margaret's heart; and she had never been prone to mark little sins, such as men and women outgrow, if their path be upward. Sidney's whole life lay before her in the clear and searching light of their mutual love and close companionship; and looking at it thus she refused to believe any evil of him, and tried to shut her eyes to the black cloud dimming her horizon.
But there could not but be times when doubt and suspicion stole like traitors into her heart. There was no doubt in her clear brain that it was Sophy Goldsmith who was lying in that forsaken grave, and that the wretched pariah she had seen was Andrew Goldsmith's grandson. That was terrible enough; a most mournful discovery to come upon after so many years of faint hope, and of constant grief. But if the man who wrought all this misery, and was guilty of this base treachery, should prove to be Sidney! It was incredible; it was madness to believe it.
All this time Margaret did not cease to trust in the love of God, and in his love toward all men. Though fierce tempests troubled the very depths of her soul, below them was a deeper depth, not of her own soul, but of that Eternal Spirit in whom she lived, and moved, and had her being. She was conscious of resting in this love. But a child resting in its mother's arms, and on her breast, may suffer agonies of pain. So Margaret suffered.
Sidney was in London when Philip dispatched his first message from Cortina. It was evening when he sent it, and the first thing the next morning it reached his father's hands. Margaret had written from Venice as soon as their departure had been decided upon; but Sidney had not as yet received the letter. Philip's telegram, therefore, came upon him like a thunderbolt falling out of a clear blue sky. He had felt no forewarning of this danger. Their route on their return from Venice had been settled before he left them, and so accustomed was he to arrange and direct the movements of all about him, that no apprehension of any change of plan had crossed his mind. It was only of late that the conviction that his son was a man, and one who would assert and enjoy the freedom of manhood, had been thrust upon him. It was evident that Philip had felt himself man enough to change his route homeward as it pleased him.
They were in Cortina; but if they were merely passing through there was but little risk of them learning Sophy's fate. He must get them away from the dangerous place immediately. For a few minutes he was at a loss how to do this. Then the plan of setting off himself for Munich on business occurred to him; and to ensure Philip's prompt compliance he resolved to take Phyllis with him. He sent a messenger to bring her hurriedly to London, and they started at night, Phyllis in a whirl of delight and triumph at Sidney's surrender to her. They were well on their way to Munich before Philip's second telegram reached London.
But when they arrived at Munich, instead of his wife and son awaiting him at his hotel, he found Philip's message repeated in a telegram from his confidential clerk. Then his heart sank and was troubled. This summons to Cortina indicated too plainly that his sin had found him out. His sin! From one point of view—the lenient judgment of a man of the world—it did not seem a very grievous one. It was nothing worse than the too close concealment of a boyish blunder. His first wife had been dead years before he married Margaret; and he had confessed this secret marriage to her father. With most women there would be tears and reproaches, followed by forgiveness. But Margaret would have a point of view of her own. What would she feel about the ugly fact when she learned that Sophy had died alone and deserted? Still more, what would she feel about the prolonged concealment as it affected Andrew Goldsmith and her favorite maid, Rachel? But for these things he might have reckoned upon her full pardon.
Phyllis was traveling with him, and demanded a good deal of his attention. She was a little exacting as a companion, and could not sit in silence for an hour together. Her spirits were high, for she felt that now indeed Sidney's objections to her marriage with Philip were overcome, and that he must consent to an early date for it. When she kept silence for half an hour she was settling weighty questions about her trousseau, and wondering if Sidney could not be managed in such a way as to be persuaded to give her a handsome sum toward the purchase of it. She knew her father could not spare her a tenth of the money she would wish for. How delicious it was to be rich! Sidney never gave a second thought to any of the expenses of their luxurious mode of traveling; and before long this would be her own experience. "Sovereigns will be like shillings to me," she said to herself, and the thought made her very happy. Every whim of her heart would be gratified when she was Philip's wife.
In the meanwhile Philip was suffering less than his mother, but with more certain knowledge of facts. There was no conflict in his mind between love and suspicion. His love for his father, whom until lately he had loved passionately, seemed to be scorched up in the fierce fire of his indignation. He had been guilty of the meanest perfidy, and all his after life had been one of shameful hypocrisy. As Philip wandered solitarily about the beautiful pine woods at Toblach, he wore himself out with thinking of old Andrew Goldsmith, and his lifelong grief, with his loyal devotion to the man who was dealing treacherously with him, who month after month, and year after year, had let him hunger and thirst for the knowledge of his daughter's fate, and had withheld the truth from him. He thought of his mother, too, whose steadfast, tender affection for his father had been his ideal of a happy married love. How would these two, who were most closely concerned with it, bear the discovery? How would their lives go on after they knew it?
When Sidney and Phyllis arrived at the little station at Toblach they found Philip and Dorothy there to meet them. Dorothy welcomed him with her usual frank delight at seeing him, and she received Phyllis with shy friendliness. But Sidney saw in an instant that, as far as Philip was concerned, his worst fears were realized. He looked as if years had passed over him; and not even the coming of Phyllis brought a gleam of pleasure to his face.
She unwound the long gauze veil in which she had enveloped her head, and looked up at Philip with a coquettish grace.
"All this way have I traveled to see you," she said archly, "thousands and thousands of miles, and you look as grim as if I was a horrible fright."
"No, no, Phyllis," he answered, taking both of her hands in his. "If I could feel glad at anything it would be to see you again. But my mother is ill——"
"Ill?" interrupted his father. "Your mother ill? Take me to her at once."
"I have something to tell you first," said Philip in a low voice. "Dorothy will take Phyllis to the hotel; and, if you are not too tired, will you come with me a little way along the road yonder?"
"I am not tired," answered Sidney.
They walked away from the station toward the entrance of the Ampezzo Valley. Every step of the road was familiar to Sidney, for it was at Toblach he had waited for Sophy, when he had left her in a boyish passion so many years ago. The boy walking beside him was the very image of what he had been then. He glanced at him again and again, in the promise of his immature manhood, scarcely a man yet, but full of a force and vigor, both of mind and body, not yet tempered and solidified by the experience that later years would bring. Philip strode along with the sternness of a youthful judge. His heart was very hot within him. It was his father on whom he sat in judgment, or he would have poured out his wrath in uncontrolled vehemence. He did not know how to begin to speak to his father.
"Well, Philip," said his father, at last, when they were quite out of sight and hearing of their fellow-men.
They had wandered down to the margin of a little lake, in which the pale gray peaks were reflected faultlessly. The wind moaned sadly in the topmost branches of the fir trees surrounding them, and overhead a vulture was flying slowly from crest to crest, and uttered a wild, piercing cry as Sidney's voice broke the silence.
"Philip!" he repeated, looking imploringly into his son's face.
"Father," he said, "I have found out what became of Sophy Goldsmith."
They were simple words, and Sidney expected to hear them, yet they came like a deathblow from his son's lips. There was in Philip's voice so much grief and wonder, such contempt and indignation, that his father shrank from him as if he had given him physical pain. If his sin had but found him out in any other way than this! For Philip was dearer to him than all else—except, perhaps, Margaret. His love, and pride, and ambition, centered in his son. He had discovered how precious he was to him during that long journey to Venice, when the dread of his death had traveled with him. And now it was Philip who spoke in those unmerciful tones, whose stern face was turned away, as if he could not endure to look at him. The bitterness of the future would more than balance the prosperity of the past if his son was alienated from him.
"Philip," he said in hesitating words, "I loved her—just as you love Phyllis. I was as old as you. I could not give her up. And my uncle would never have consented. It was a boyish infatuation. I did not love her as I love your mother—my Margaret!" he cried with a sharp of pain in his voice; "but just as you love Phyllis, I loved Sophy, and I dared not run the risk of losing her. I cannot cut you off from your inheritance, let you marry as you please, but my uncle could have thrust me upon the world a penniless man."
"Do you think I could ever forsake Phyllis?" asked Philip with scorn.
"Not as you are; probably never," answered his father; "for she could never be so unfitted to be your daily companion as Sophy was to be mine. To be linked with a woman who is immeasurably your inferior is a worse fate than any words can tell. She was not like her father, or Rachel. She was vain and ignorant, vulgar and passionate. We had terrible scenes together before we parted; and I did not intend to forsake her. Listen, and I will tell you how it came about."
"I was but a boy, no older than yourself," he said as he finished his account.
"But when did you know that she was dead?" inquired Philip.
"Not till after I knew your mother and loved her," he answered. "I let things drift till then, always dreading that Sophy would make her appearance and claim a position as my wife. Then I sent out a confidential man to make inquiries, and he learned her sad fate. I sinned, Philip; but my punishment will be harder than I can bear if I lose the love of my wife and children."
"But why did you desert your son?" Philip asked.
"My son?" he repeated.
"Yes," continued Philip bitterly, "your first-born son, the child of Sophy Goldsmith! How often you have called me your first-born son! Oh, father, why did you desert my elder brother?"
Sidney stood speechless. His first-born son, the child of Sophy Goldsmith! This beloved boy here, in whom he had taken so deep a pride; who had been all he could wish for in a son; his heir, for whom he had worked and striven so hard to make for him a great place and a great name in the world, was not his first-born. There was an Ishmael risen up to dispute his inheritance with him.
"Philip!" he exclaimed, "you are deceived, cheated. There was no living child."
"But I have seen him," persisted Philip. "He is living near Cortina still. And I recognize a likeness to you. All the people know that he is the son of the English girl who died there thirty years ago. I have a letter here from Sophy Goldsmith; and there are no proofs missing to establish Martin's claims."
He gave the letter into his father's hands, and strolled away along the margin of the lake, that Sidney might be alone as he read it. Philip felt how terrible a moment this must be in his father's life; and a new and pacifying sense of compassion sprang up amid the fierce fire of his indignation. It was no longer a man in the prime of life, with the shrewdness, and wisdom, and experience of life, who had been guilty of this base act, but a youth like himself, who had drifted into it through the adverse current of circumstances. When he heard his father's voice calling to him presently, he went back with a feeling of fellowship toward him. His father's face was gray and drawn, as if he could hardly bear his anguish, and his voice was low and broken.
"My boy," he cried, "forgive me! Have pity upon me!"
"Oh, I do!" said Philip, clasping his hand and holding it in a grasp like a vise, while the tears came into his eyes. "I pity you, father; I pity you with all my heart!"
"Does your mother know all this?" inquired Sidney after a while.
"She knows something," he answered, "but not through me; and she has not spoken to me. I made up my mind to see you and tell you all before you met her."
"That was right," said Sidney.
There was another silence, for their hearts were too full for words, and their thoughts were busy. It was Sidney who spoke first.
"It would break your mother's heart to know all," he said, "and we must not acknowledge this man as my son. Listen to me before you speak. He is a man now; and he would be miserable if we took him away from all his old surroundings, his home, and his friends. It would be good for him to remain as he is. I will make him a rich man; richer than any of his neighbors. But he must not come to England; he cannot take your place. Does anyone but you know that he is my son?"
"No," answered Philip.
"Then for the sake of everyone concerned we must keep this secret to ourselves," continued his father. "I would not ask you to do it if we had to sacrifice this man's happiness or welfare; but he would be tenfold happier and better off here, in his own place, than in England as my son and heir. That must not be, Philip. Do you think he could be otherwise than wretched in England?"
"He is wretched now," said Philip, as the recollection of the poor, persecuted outcast of the little hamlet came vividly to his mind.
"I will make him a rich man," said his father, "rich and prosperous. He shall have all his heart can desire; but I cannot acknowledge him as my son."
"Oh, father!" exclaimed Philip, "no money can undo the wrong you have done him. He has led the life of a brute, and is as ignorant as a brute. He has been browbeaten and trampled on all his life. They have made a slave of him, and money will do him no good. It is we who must lift him out of his misery, and care for him, and teach him all that a man of thirty can learn. Don't think of me. Surely I can bear this burden; I have no dread of being a poor man. But I could never forsake my brother. If he is your son, he is my brother, and I owe him a brother's duty."
"Your mother must know, then?" said Sidney in a tone of entreaty.
"Yes," he answered.
"It will break her heart!" exclaimed his father.
"My mother would rather have her heart broken than that any wrong should be done," replied Philip.
CHAPTER XXXV.
BEGINNING TO REAP.
Sidney found himself too unprepared for an immediate interview with Margaret to return with Philip to the hotel. He felt that he must be alone to realize the full meaning of his position. It was a matter almost of life and death to him. The country round was familiar to him, though it was thirty years since he had seen it, and he soon found a path which led him away to such a solitude as he sought. Busy as his brain was, he was at the same time intensely alive to all the impressions of nature. He felt the scorching heat of the sun, and saw the shapes of the lofty peaks surrounding him, and heard the humming of insects, and the trickling of little brooks down the mountain side. It was a magnificent day, he said to himself. Yet all the while his mind was plotting as to how he could arrest the storm that was beating against that fair edifice, which he had been building for himself and for Philip through so many years. It was a house without a foundation, built upon the sand, and he, the architect, was discovering too late that there was no foundation to it. But it must not be. If he could only bend Margaret to his will, convincing her reason—for she was a reasonable woman—he did not fear failure with Philip. It was so easy and so rational a thing to leave this man where he had been brought up, of course providing amply for him. It would be so difficult and so inexpedient to acknowledge him, and to place him in the position of heir to large estates. Surely Margaret would see how irrational, how impossible it was to deprive Philip of that which had been his birthright for so many years, in favor of one who was ignorant that he had any birthright at all, and who would be placed in a miserably false position if it was granted to him.
He argued the question over with himself till he was satisfied of the ground on which he based it. It was not for himself, but for their first-born son, he would plead. Surely she would keep this secret for Philip's sake if not for his.
He turned back along the mountain path down into the valley, amazed to see that it was already the hour of sunset. Margaret must have been wondering what had kept him so long away from her. Was it possible that she could have been so near to him, after an absence of some weeks too, and he had not yet seen her? He thought of the strong, smooth current of their love for one another, which had known hitherto no break or interruption, no suspicion or shadow of disappointment. She had been more to him than he had ever dreamed that a wife could be. She was a thousandfold dearer to him now than when she became his wife twenty-three years ago. If she was estranged from him, what would his life be worth?
He saw Dorothy and Phyllis sitting together in their little balcony overhead, and heard them chattering and laughing together with the light-hearted laughter of young girls. This reassured him; for Dorothy would not be so merry if Margaret was very ill or very sad. He passed on to her room and entered it. She sat in the twilight alone, her hands grasping the arms of her chair as if for support, and her face, ashy pale, turned toward him, with no smile or look of gladness upon it. He stood still at some distance, looking across at her as if a great gulf lay between them.
"Margaret!" he cried at last.
Her face quivered and her lips trembled, but she did not speak; only her dark eyes gazed searchingly on him, as if she longed to understand him without words. She shrank from hearing his confession.
"Margaret," he said, "you have discovered the fate of Sophy Goldsmith!"
The color mounted swiftly to her white face, and she bent her head; but she kept silence. Sidney felt that he must still remain at a distance from her.
"My darling!" he said mournfully, "you were only a child when I married her; I was little more than a boy myself, not older than Philip."
"You married her?" she asked, lifting up her head with a deep sigh of relief; "oh, how much better it will be for her poor father and my Rachel!"
"Yes, she was my wife," he replied, "but I never loved her as I have loved you, Margaret."
"But why did you not tell?" she asked; "why did you not let me have your boy to bring up with my own? How could you live with me hiding such a secret from me? I let you read the inmost thoughts of my heart. How could you hide this secret from me?"
"I told your father," he answered, "and he agreed it was better kept secret."
"How many more secret chambers in your past are there which I must never enter?" she said. "And this secret, the most sacred of them all, that you were a father before I knew you—how could you keep this from me?"
"But I did not know it," he replied. "I concealed my marriage out of fear of being disinherited by my uncle. Sophy had driven me mad by her temper, and I left her at Cortina, but I stayed here for some days expecting her to follow me. She had plenty of money, and knew very well how to manage for herself. Though I went on without her I left at each place a letter directing her where to go and what to do. Certainly I ought to have gone back, but I thought she was sulking with me. I know she was but a girl; I also was but a boy. I could not feel toward her as a man feels toward his wife; she was more like a playmate, who, if she took offense, made me offended. Then I let things drift on, afraid always of my uncle discovering my secret. But I never knew till this day that her child had lived."
"But you knew that she was dead?" asked Margaret.
"Good Heavens! yes!" he exclaimed. "I loved you the first moment I saw you, but I could never have owned it before learning that she was dead. The messenger I sent here wrote to me that she was dead, though he said nothing about a child. I suppose he intended to tell me on his arrival, but he was killed in an accident to the diligence crossing the Arlberg pass. I knew nothing of this until Philip told me just now."
"But oh! if you had but seen Sophy's son!" cried Margaret with tears, "the most miserable, the most degraded of all these peasants; a drudge, a slave to them. O Sidney! how can we atone to him for all this misery? We can never give him back his lost years."
"No," he said in a faltering voice, "nothing could ever fit him now for an English life; it would be all misery to him. We must make him happy in the only way happiness is possible for him. I will make him a rich and happy man in his own sphere, here among the people who know him. They will exalt him into a little king when he is the richest of them all, instead of the poorest. Do not speak, Margaret; listen to my reasons. He can never fill the place for which we have trained Philip so carefully. How could he be a good landlord and magistrate? How could he become the husband of such a woman as ought to be our daughter-in-law, and the mother of my heirs? It would be for his good as well as ours to leave him here. Think of Philip, of me, of the poor fellow himself. No one knows this secret except ourselves; let it be as it has always been. I cannot think of Sophy as my wife. I implore you for my sake, for Philip's sake, our first-born son, let this secret be kept."
He was still standing where he had first arrested himself, as if a gulf lay between them; and she was looking across at him with infinite sadness in her eyes. There was something miserable in her steadfast gaze, blended with profound reproach.
"And what of Andrew Goldsmith?" she asked, "the poor old man who will never cease to mourn and wonder over the fate of his lost child. Do you think I could bear for him to go into the next life, and hear for the first time, perhaps from her own lips, the story of your treachery and mine? Would not that tempt him to hatred and revenge even there? And my dear friend Rachel. Could I look her in the face and feel my heart saying, 'I know now all the sad secret that has troubled you,' and not utter it in words? O Sidney! how can you lay such a burden upon me? God is the judge of our conduct, and we are not more His children than this poor old father and your deserted son. No, we cannot keep such a secret! We must take the neglected outcast into our very hearts, and see what atonement we can make."
In all their past life Margaret had yielded her judgment to his; but Sidney felt that from what she had now said she would never swerve. It was useless to appeal to her on the score of the malignant gossip and painful dishonor he must bear himself; it was equally useless to represent the loss to Philip of rank and fortune. These were worldly considerations, and Margaret would not stoop to notice them. He must seize the only weapon of defense which lay at home.
"I cannot bear it," he said, lashing himself into a rage. "I will disown the marriage, and defy the Goldsmiths to prove it. Philip shall be my heir. This base-born son of mine shall never take his place!"
"And I," said Margaret, with a tremor in her sweet voice, "will never live with you again until you own your son. I will own him; and Philip, when he knows of his existence, will own him as his elder brother."
Her face was white with grief as his was with rage. She rose from her seat and stood looking at him for a moment, as if they were about to separate forever. He had just returned to her after one of the rare absences which had come but seldom during their married life. She could not recognize in him the husband she had loved so perfectly and trusted so implicitly. There was baseness and selfishness, treachery and utter worldliness, in this man; she acknowledged it, though it broke her heart to do so. Her grief was too great for words; and with a silent gesture of farewell she went away into an inner room, leaving him in a stupor of dismay.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
IN THE PINE WOODS.
After Philip left his father on the shore of the little lake he, too, wandered about in loneliness for the rest of the day, unable to bear his anxiety and trouble in Phyllis's presence, and equally unable to conceal them. She and Dorothy concluded that he was gone with his father on some hurried excursion. But early the next morning he knocked at the door of the room where the two girls were sleeping, and begged Phyllis to get up and go out with him into the pine woods lying behind the hotel. She grumbled a little, telling Dorothy in a sleepy tone that she could not bear going out before breakfast; at his urgent and reiterated entreaties, she relented, and, after keeping him waiting for nearly an hour, she made her appearance in a very becoming and very elaborate morning costume.
They were soon out of sight and hearing of the hotel, wandering slowly along the soft, dewy glades of the beautiful pine woods, with the morning sunlight streaming in long pencils through the openings of the green roof far above them. Here and there, through the rough, tawny trunks of the trees, they caught a glimpse of the great gray pinnacles of rock, with their fretwork of snow, rising high into the deep blue of the sky. Phyllis was enchanted with everything except the dew, which was spoiling the hem of her pretty dress, and taking the gloss off her little shoes.
"It is as beautiful as the scenery in the Midsummer Night's Dream at the Lyceum," she said. "Do you remember it, and that delicious music of Mendelssohn's? If it was moonlight I should expect to meet Oberon and Titania."
Phyllis felt that she was making herself very charming. Philip was an ardent admirer of Shakspere, and what could she say more agreeable to him than this allusion to one of his favorite plays? But, to her great surprise, he seemed not to hear what she was saying.
"My Phyllis," he said, "I have something really terrible to tell you."
"Not that they are going to separate us again!" she cried. "I thought your father must have taken me into favor once more, or he would not have brought me all this way with him. He is not going to be tiresome again?"
"No, no!" he answered, pressing her hand, and keeping it in his own as they sauntered on; "we shall have no more trouble on that score. We need not fear any more opposition from my father. That is the one good thing in this trouble, for if I am not my father's heir, he will not expect me to marry an heiress."
"What do you mean?" she asked in a tone of excitement.
"I mean that my father has another son older than I am," continued Philip. "You know all about poor Sophy Goldsmith as well as I do. Phyllis, it was my father who ran away with her, when he was no older than I am; and they had a son, who has been living not far from here, at Cortina, ever since. He is eight years older than I am."
"Philip!" she exclaimed, standing still, and fastening her eyes upon his face with an air of incredulity, ready to break into a laugh as soon as the joke was repeated.
"I cannot bear to speak of it, even to you," he said gravely. "I wish to God it was not true. But I have read Sophy's last letter to Rachel Goldsmith, and there is no mistake. It is undeniably true. What is worse, my mother is going away this morning. She sent for me last night, and said I must take her away by the first train this morning. She looked as if it would kill her. She wishes to go, and I see it is best. It is best for her and my father to be separated for a while."
"Separated!" ejaculated Phyllis. "Your father and mother!"
"For a time only, I trust," said Philip. "It has been too great a blow for her. Don't you understand, my Phyllis? She has loved the Goldsmiths so much, and she remembers Sophy quite well, and has always been deeply interested in the mystery of her disappearance. And now the sudden discovery of this secret of my father's is too much for her. I have telegraphed for Rachel to come to Berne, and I am going to take my mother there at once, and then come back here to you and Dorothy."
"But are you quite sure there is a son living?" inquired Phyllis.
"I have seen him, and spoken to him," he replied. "He has some resemblance to my father, and he is very like old Andrew. Dorothy saw the likeness in a moment. The worst of it is that he has lived among the lowest of the people, and seems almost imbecile. He is about thirty years of age, and is as ignorant as a savage. Poor fellow! poor fellow!"
His voice fell, and the tears smarted under his eyelids. Phyllis's finely penciled eyebrows were knitted together with a quite new expression of profound and painful thought. He said to himself he had never seen her look so pretty and charming, and he bent his head to kiss the furrow between her eyebrows.
"You are sure it is all true?" she asked. "You are not inventing it?"
"How could I invent anything so horrible?" he said in amazement. "Think of what it means! Think of what my father has done! If it were not for you and my mother, I should wish I had never been born."
"Then you will never be Philip Martin of Brackenburn," she continued, "and Brackenburn will not be your estate. It will belong to this other son?"
"Of course," he answered, "the estate goes to the eldest son. But I do not care about being a poor man. They have christened him Martino. Martino Martin he will be."
"Gracious Heavens!" she ejaculated.
"So there will be no more opposition to our love for each other," he went on in a more cheerful manner; "and I must set to work now to earn a living for you and myself. It will be very pleasant to work for one another—I for you, and you for me. You will wait for me, Phyllis?"
There was no tone of doubt in the half question; it was only asked that some sweet answer might be given. He was as sure of her love as of his own; for had they not grown up for one another?
"But there is Apley," she said, after a short pause. "If this man takes your estate, you will take Hugh's. It is Hugh who must work for his living."
"Oh, no!" he replied; "Apley is settled on my mother's second son, so it belongs to Hugh. My father had no idea that he had a son living, and it seemed fair for Apley to go to the second son."
"But is it quite certain that they were married?" asked Phyllis, with all the premature knowledge of a country clergyman's daughter. "If they were not legally married, this man could not take your place."
Philip dropped the hand he still held. She had struck hard upon a chord in his nature which vibrated under her touch in utter discordance. Now and then she had jarred slightly upon him, and he had hastened to forget it, but here was a discord that would turn all his life's music into harshness.
"Phyllis, you do not know what you are saying," he cried.
"Oh! yes, I do," she answered, half petulantly and half playfully. "It is not likely that your father would marry a girl like Sophy Goldsmith. And if he did not, you will still be the heir, and some day I shall be Mrs. Martin of Brackenburn."
Philip walked on beside her in silence, his eyes fixed on the ground.
"That is the first thing to find out," continued Phyllis shrewdly. "I don't believe there was a legal marriage, or if there was, the Goldsmith's must prove it. Of course, your mother will be very mad about it for a while, but it will come right in the end; and 'All's well that ends well,' you know. But isn't it strange that, after all these years, we should find out about Sophy Goldsmith? And your father knew all along, the naughty, naughty man!"
So smooth hitherto had been the current of their short lives that Philip had never seen Phyllis in any circumstances of great trouble or difficulty. She was still a young girl, and how shame or sorrow would affect her no one could have foretold. But at this crisis, with all his own nature overwrought with shame for his father and sorrow for his mother, he felt how vast was the distance between them. They were dwelling in different worlds. Was it a premonition of this disparity between them which had made his mother oppose their marriage?
He turned back abruptly toward the hotel, and they did not talk much on their way. Phyllis's brain was busy, too busy for much speaking. If this terrible thing could possibly be true—though she rejected such a supposition—then, indeed, she must bid farewell to all the bright schemes she had laid for her future life. Philip would be a poor nobody, and she really was not fitted to be a poor man's wife. She loved him, of course, and it would be intense misery to give him up. How she could part from him she did not know; her mother must manage it for her, if the necessity ever arose. But to be plain Mrs. Martin, of nowhere in particular, living on a few hundreds a year! That would be impossible. Still, what folly it was to be looking forward to things which would never happen! She turned a bright face to Philip as he left her at the hotel door.
"Take courage, and be comforted," she said. "It has all got to be proved first."
He turned away with a feeling of utter discouragement. All his world seemed shaken to its very foundations. His father had been guilty of a deed of the deepest baseness, and his intended wife was blind to that baseness. But he had no time for musing on it. Dorothy's voice arrested him, and, looking up, he saw her coming quickly to him, dressed as for a journey. Her face was troubled, and she spoke to him in imploring tones.
"Your mother is leaving here by the first train," she said, "and she says I must not go with her. Something has made her very unhappy; her face grieves me more than I can say. Persuade her to let me go. She ought not to travel alone."
"I shall be with her," he answered, "and Rachel Goldsmith will meet her in Berne. No, Dorothy, it would be a greater comfort to my mother if you stay here with my father. He is very fond of you, and he, too, is unhappy. You must stay with him and comfort him."
"Yes," she said, weeping; "what has happened I do not know, but I will do what you and Mrs. Martin think best. I do not know which I love the most. Is it anything very dreadful?"
"Yes," he replied.
"Is there nothing I can do besides staying with your father?" she asked. "Philip, we all know how very, very rich I shall be—too rich. If any money is wanted, tell him to recollect how much there is of mine, more than any girl could use. But money losses would not make you miserable."
"No," he said; "no loss of money would break my mother's heart."
"That is how she looks," resumed Dorothy, "as if her heart was broken; and oh! I cannot bear to lose sight of her. If I was her own child she would tell me all about it, and I could comfort her. But now, at the very worst moment, I feel what a stranger I am among you all."
"No, dear Dorothy," he answered; "you are as dear as a daughter to her and my father. You will know all by and by, and you will see then you were of more use staying here than going away with my mother."
"And is Phyllis going with you?" she asked.
"Phyllis? Oh, no!" he said.
"I'm afraid I was feeling a little jealous of Phyllis," she said, smiling through her tears. "Of course, I know she is nearer and dearer to you all, except Mr. Martin, than I am; but I think she could not bear trouble as I can do."
"Trouble!" he repeated, "yes; but could you bear shame?"
"Willingly," she answered.
"Not shame only, but sin. Could you help us to bear our sins?" he asked.
"Yes," she said gravely; "if our Lord came into the world to take away our sins by bearing them himself, surely we ought to bear the burden of one another's sins—we, who are all alike sinful. Have you any such burden to bear? But I shall not have to bear either shame or sin for your father or mother—or for you," she added softly, after a moment's pause.
"Thank you, Dorothy," he said.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
REMORSE.
Sidney was unaware of Margaret's intention, and was only awaiting some message from her to see her again, and try once more what persuasion, backed by authority, could do to break down her resolution. The morning train came in and steamed away again, carrying Margaret and Philip in it, before he returned from a miserable stroll through the well remembered pine forests. Dorothy met him on her return from the station, with traces of tears on her face, and was the first to tell him that Margaret was gone.
"She need not have done that," he said to himself bitterly.
But when he entered the room where he had seen her the night before, a great dread seized him. He felt as he would have done if she had been dead. There was the chair she sat in only last night; that was the book she had laid down; those flowers she had gathered and arranged for herself; and now she was gone! There was something of the desolation of death about the vacant place.
A letter lay upon the table, and he seized it eagerly. Margaret was not one who used many words of endearment, or many caresses. She thought that love, like religion, should show itself in deeds, not speeches. Hitherto she had never begun her letters to him in any other way than the almost formal one of "My dear Sidney." This was different.
"My beloved husband," it ran, "it is because you are dearer to me than any other human being, dearer than my own life a hundredfold, dearer even than my own soul, that I cannot just now bear your presence. How I love you I cannot find words to tell; my love for you is myself, my life. There is no bitterness in my heart toward you; only an immense grief—an abyss of gloom and heaviness, which nothing but God's love can fill. All my life, since I first saw you, you have seemed to me one of Christ's true followers; in the world but not of it; a real disciple, a faithful soldier of the cross. I never saw in you the shadow of a lie. You were to me truth and faithfulness personified.
"And now it would be difficult, almost impossible, to see clearly what you have been, as long as I am near to you. My brain is confused; and it is necessary for me to get away, lest my feebleness should enfeeble you in doing what is right. There can be only one right way; and I hope to stand beside you in the sorrowful years that are coming. I promise to do this—to come back and hold your hand, and walk by your side, sharing the burden with you. But do not think to avoid this burden, and these sad years. The harvest of a seed sown long ago is come, and we must reap it, whether we do it humbly or defiantly. But I must go away now from you, my dearest one—from whom I never thought to separate till death should part us.—MARGARET."
Sidney read these lines through again and again; at first in such a paroxysm of anger as he had never felt since he had deserted Sophy, when he was in his early manhood. Was there not a kind of fanaticism in his wife's religion—that blindness which is said to prevent devotees from seeing a thing in its own light? She demanded of him to encounter the gossip and wonder of the vast circle of his acquaintances in the City and in society, to bring a slur on his fair fame, and, worse than all, to place his low born son in the position which her own boy had hitherto occupied as his heir. She asked him to doom Philip to the life of a comparatively poor and obscure man. And for what? That an old man and woman, who for thirty years had lived in suspense about their child's fate, should at last hear that all this time she had been lying in her grave. If he could bring Sophy back to life, it would be different. It must make Andrew and Rachel Goldsmith more miserable to learn the truth since the truth was what it was.
Margaret did not think of the dishonor this discovery would bring upon religion. For he was distinguished in the City, and in Parliament, both as a philanthropist and a religious man. He had been both since he had known her, and this sin, committed in his boyish indifference to all religious matters, must fling the shadow of a total eclipse upon his career. Why should he make his fellow-Christians ashamed? No scandal has so much charm as a scandal against a prominent Christian. And how easy it was to avoid it if Margaret would but consent! No one would be any the worse, for he would keep his promise of making his eldest son a rich man in the station now belonging to him. Nothing but misery could come of any other course.
Yet as he read again Margaret's letter, with its strong and mournful expressions of her love, his anger subsided, and the idea of denying the legality of his first marriage grew slowly more and more repugnant to him. He saw, too, quite clearly, that he must lose Margaret if he pursued this plan. What measures she would adopt, if he carried out such a purpose, he could not tell. But in any case he would lose her; she would never live with him again if he denied his marriage with Sophy Goldsmith. Still he would not decide definitely what he would do till he had seen Sophy's son.
There was still time to reach Cortina that day, and after a hasty meal he set out, taking Dorothy and Phyllis with him. He should see this eldest son of his in time to telegraph to Margaret, before Rachel Goldsmith could join her at Berne; and she would not refuse his entreaty to keep silence, at least for a few days. He was pondering over this new step, as they drove through the wonderful valley, where the clouds resting upon the crests of the mountains caught, in many-colored hues, the rays of the evening sun. It was twilight when they reached the hotel; but the twilight is long there, for the sun sets early behind the rocky walls which hem in the valley. The village lay tranquilly in a soft, gray light. How well he remembered it! He shrank from entering the hotel, for it seemed almost certain that Sophy herself was awaiting his arrival there.
Yonder lay the broad pathway through the fields, leading to the half ruined fortress where he had last parted with her. He turned down the familiar track as if urged by some irresistible impulse. It was about the same season of the year; the same flowers and weeds were in bloom, and the crops were at nearly the same stage of growth. It might have been the same evening. Was the past blotted out, then? Would that he could take up his life again as it was thirty years ago, and sow the seed of the future—oh, how differently!
But even now he turned with aversion from the idea of a life spent with Sophy Goldsmith. He fancied he could see her sitting on the flight of steps which led up to the church door, and that he could hear her shrill voice bidding him go away, and never return. Yet if he had been a true man, as Philip was, he could not have forsaken her. If Philip had found himself caught in such a mistake, a mistake so fatal to all happiness, he would have accepted the consequences, and done what he could to make the best of the future. But he had built all his life on a blunder and a lie. "I have pierced myself through with many sorrows," he said to himself.
He was standing still, pondering over this long forgotten and very dreary past, and now as he uttered these words he lifted up his head and saw that he had paused under a wooden crucifix, one which he remembered distinctly. The image of the Lord hanging upon it was worn and weather-beaten, the wood was bleached and pallid as if it had stood there long centuries; yet still the bowed head, with its crown of thorns, possessed a pathetic sadness, as if this man also, Christ Jesus the Lord, had been pierced through with many sorrows—yes, with one vast sorrow unlike any other sorrow. He felt, as he had never felt before, that this grief beyond compare, this crucifixion of the soul as well as of the body, was his own doing. They were his sins which the Lord had borne in his own body on the tree; and what he planned to do would crucify the Son of God afresh.
"God be merciful to me, a sinner!" he cried.
It was late before he returned to the hotel; but his mind was fully made up now. If he had never been a Christian before, he would be so from this hour, and whatever it might cost him, there should be no more hypocrisy, no more playing of a part, in his life. A bitter harvest was before him, but he would reap it unflinchingly to its last grain. The sting of his sin was that he could not save others from reaping it with him. And how large was the number of reapers! Directly or indirectly how many persons must suffer from this early sin of his!
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHIARA'S HUT.
Phyllis was gone to bed, but Dorothy was waiting for Sidney in the bare and comfortless dining room of the hotel. She looked up wistfully as he entered, for all day her thoughts had been anxious and troubled by the mystery which had so suddenly surrounded her; and seeing his pale and haggard face she ran to meet him, and put her arms round his neck, kissing him fondly as a daughter might have done. He kept her hand in his as he sank down weariedly into the chair next to him, and he bowed his head upon the small, fond fingers, and she felt his tears falling on them. Presently he looked up at her.
"Dorothy," he said, "you will never forsake me!"
"Never!" she exclaimed vehemently, "never! not if all the world forsook you."
"Even if you heard I was a base scoundrel, a selfish villain?" he asked.
"Oh, but you are not that!" she answered, kissing him again; "there would be some mistake. But if it was true, I should never forsake you; you would want me all the more."
"That is true," he said.
"There has been a priest here," she continued, after a pause, "asking for Philip, and saying he must see him about some letter, and a man called Martino."
"I know all about it," said Sidney, "and I will send him a message."
At sunrise the next morning Sidney set out for the hamlet where Chiara had lived. It was the fourth day since she died. Martino had followed the funeral procession, which he was not allowed to join, and had stood aloof seeing the coffin laid in the open grave. This woman had never been kind to him, she had led him the life of a dog, but she was the only person to whom he had in any way belonged. He knew no other home than the squalid hut, in which all his life had passed. In a dim sense it was as dear to him as a den is to a wild creature that inhabits it. The litter of leaves and straw in the corner where he always slept seemed the only place where he could sleep. Chiara's hand had been the hand that fed him. There was a void left by her death, a blank that his dull mind could in no way imagine filled up. But he was shrewd enough to know that his enemies would not let him return to the hut if they could help it, and as soon as he saw Chiara's coffin lowered into the grave, he stole away from the cemetery, and hastening up the mountain he secured possession of the wretched hovel, barricading the door, which was the only means of entrance. Here he remained deaf and dumb to the threats of his neighbors and to the entreaties and commands of the priest. The long years of persecution and tyranny which he had undergone had produced the ordinary result of a dull and embruted nature. Those among whom he lived were little better than savages, with the lowest conceptions of duty and religion. Of humanity either to man or beast they knew nothing. Some of them were less cruel and harsh toward Martino than the rest; there were women who had never struck him; but he had been the miserable butt of the others until his bodily strength was great enough for his own defense, excepting from the brute force of men stronger than himself.
At the bottom of his soul there was a profound sadness, a certain susceptibility inherited from his educated and civilized parentage, which had made him less callous under tyranny, than he would have been if he had been a foundling of their own race. In his childhood this susceptibility had displayed itself in bursts of passion and almost insane excitement; in his manhood it changed to long fits of dumb and sullen lethargy. Since Chiara's funeral he had lain motionless on the litter of straw in the hut, regarding the attacks of his neighbors outside with as much indifference as he would have felt under one of the terrific thunderstorms which now and then threatened the little hamlet with imminent destruction. His benumbed mind was almost as lethargic as his body. But this morning his enemies had exhausted their small stock of patience, which so far had been eked out by the presence of the padre, who wished to enter the hut alone and peacefully, in order to make sure that Chiara had given up the whole of her penurious savings to the Church. He had urged upon her in the last solemn moments before death the duty of withholding no portion of her beloved booty; but he knew the peasant nature too well to trust implicitly even to the power of superstition where money was concerned, and he was anxious to search for himself among the accumulated rubbish of her last home. He had been compelled, however, to return to Cortina the night before, leaving strict commands that Martino should be left unmolested.
When Sidney entered the high, secluded valley and the hamlet came in sight, a strange scene lay before him. Round one of the wretched hovels the whole population was assembled in a wild circle of yelling savages, attacking it in every direction. There were not more than five or six men, but there was twice the number of women, as muscular and sinewy as the men, and a host of children. All of them were scantily clothed and their sunburnt limbs looked as hard as iron. A heap of enormous stones was piled up near the door of the hut, and the heavy thud as they were flung against it by brawny arms was echoed by the wall of rock behind. Sidney was still at a little distance when a loud shout of triumph reached his ears. One of the women was coming out of a neighboring hut with a lighted fagot in her hand, which she thrust up into the dried thatch of the roof. In another minute half a dozen other fagots were fetched from the hearths, and the reek of the smoke rose up in a column in the pure morning air.
Sidney hurried forward, wondering if he should find his son amid this maddened crew, when the door of the hovel was flung open suddenly from within, and a man stood in the low doorway—a man, a wild beast rather! His long, matted hair hung about his face like a mane, and his bare limbs, scorched almost black with heat, and frost-bitten into long furrows by cold, looked hardly human. He was gasping for air, as if all but smothered by the suffocating smoke; and as he stood there, blinded by the sudden light, a sharp stone flung by one of the women struck him on the temple. A yell of mingled exultation and abhorrence followed the successful blow, and the miserable creature would have been stoned to death like a dangerous wild beast if Sidney had not cried out in a tone of authority, to the utter surprise of the assailants.
The lull would have lasted only a moment if Sidney had not bethought himself of a ready and effective means of diverting the angry mob. He thrust his hand into his pocket and flung into the midst of them a handful of bronze and silver coins. There was an instant diversion and scramble for the money, and before any of them gave heed to him Martin rushed away, and with the speed of a scared and hunted animal fled up the precipitous rocks near at hand. When all the coins were picked up his enemies looked round for him in vain.
"I have no more money with me now," said Sidney in Italian, "but there is plenty more in Cortina for those who come down for it; and the man who tells me where Martino is, Martino who was Chiara's adopted son, shall have a golden——-"
"Martino!" interrupted the most intelligent looking of the men, "that was Martino we were burning out."
"Oh, my God!" cried Sidney, staggering as if he had been struck by a blow as heavy as that which had wounded his son. For a moment or two he felt faint and stunned, unable to move or speak, and the circle of faces and figures around him appeared to whirl dizzily about him. He was conscious of the stare of their inquisitive and savage eyes, which were fastened upon him with unfriendly gaze, and he could hear the muttering of their uncouth voices. The hovel was blazing behind them, and the thick smoke was blown down in clouds upon him and them. He felt almost suffocated. Was it possible that he was about to die here among these terrible men and women? He made a superhuman effort to shake off the deadness that was creeping over him.
With his consciousness there returned to him the habit of authority and command. He drew himself up and looked round at them all with a keen gaze, from which they shrank a little, sulkily and abjectly. His knowledge of their language came back fluently to his aroused brain, and made it easy to address them.
"Your padre told me I should find Martino here, in Chiara's house. What right have you to set that house on fire? It is not yours."
"He would not come out," answered one of the women, for all the men were silent. Certainly they had no right to destroy the hut, and the law was stern on offenders such as they were.
"And why did you want him to come out?" asked Sidney.
"Because he shall not live among us any longer," replied the man who had spoken to him before; "he is accursed, and he has the evil eye. His mother is in hell, and no mass can be said for her soul; and he does not belong to us. No man of us will give him a hand, and no woman will give him a look. Would any woman here be the wife of Martino?"
There was a roar of contempt and abhorrence, a laugh such as Sidney had never heard before.
"But where is he gone?" he asked.
"Up yonder," answered the man, pointing to a peak standing high and clear in the morning sky; "there is a cave up there good enough for a wolf like him. Let him stop there."
"I am come here to take him away," said Sidney; "he is my son."
The words sounded in his own ears as if spoken by some other voice. This poor, hunted, despised and wounded outcast his son! It seemed as if before him was unrolled the record of the sad, desolate, neglected, most unhappy years through which his first-born son had passed, while every year of them had been crowned with prosperity and happiness to himself. The thought of it passed swiftly though vividly through his brain, as such remembrances do in the hour of death. A profound and uneasy silence had fallen upon the crowd around him. This rich Englishman had caught them in an unlawful act, and had witnessed their savage treatment of Martino. They knew how much influence such wealthy foreigners had with the mayor in the town below, where such men were treated with servile respect, and they were in dread of some terrible vengeance for their treatment of his son.
"I did not know he was living till the day before yesterday," said Sidney at last, speaking to himself rather than to them.
Was it only so short a time ago? It appeared to be ages. He had lived through a century of troubled emotion since he reached Toblach.
"I will reward any man well who brings him to me," he added, "and now you had better put out this blazing thatch, if you wish to save your own huts."