CHAPTER XXXIX.
AT BAY.
When Martino escaped from the burning hovel, he fled like a wild beast hunted by enemies. The precipitous rocks had ledges and stepping-stones familiar to him, and his naked feet took firm hold on every point of vantage ground. He was quickly beyond all chance of being captured. In his boyhood he had often taken refuge in an almost inaccessible cavern, which he had found for himself, and where he could hide like a wolf in its lair. In later times, when Chiara's hard yoke grew too galling, he had sometimes established himself in this den, and stayed in it till famine had driven him back to his miserable home. There was no means of getting food up there, for on the Dolomite rocks not even a blade of grass will grow; and Martino knew well that if he became a marauder on the scanty fields below, so difficult to keep in cultivation, his neighbors would shoot him down as relentlessly as they would destroy a wolf or a vulture. He had carried up there, with much trouble and at a great risk, a small store of wood and turf, and he had made for himself a rude litter of dried leaves and straw. As there was no vegetation there was no animal life on these barren rocks; there was no chance of catching a bird or a rabbit. But he could bear hunger for a long time, and here he was at least in safety.
He slept the long hours of the day away, and awoke toward night; then he went to the entrance of his cave and sat down on the ground, his knees being almost on a level with his shaggy head. Very far below him lay the valley and the twinkling lights of Cortina, glistening in the distance like so many glowworms. The stars sparkled in the sky above like little globes of light. The watchman was already on the clock tower, striking the quarters of the hour upon the great bell, and its clear note came up to his listening ear. A thousand feet beneath him, so vertically below that he could have cast a stone on any of the roofs, lay the hamlet where he was so much hated. Now and then he saw a figure carrying a lantern flitting uneasily from hut to hut. All the day he had heard voices calling, from time to time, "Martino! Martino!" but he had paid no heed to them in the depths of his cave. Now once more, before the people settled to their night's rest, he heard a voice, pitched to a high, piercing note; it was a woman's voice, a young woman, whom once he had loved in a rough fashion and who had scouted him as if he was indeed an outcast and a pariah.
"Martino!" she cried, "come down. We will not hurt you. Here is a rich English signore, and he says he is your father."
Martino laughed a low, cunning chuckle. They meant to snare him, and put him to death out of their way, and this woman thought she could betray him to them. He made no answer, and gave no sign of life. Presently all the lights were put out, and every sound ceased in the hamlet, save the bleat of a kid now and then as it pressed nearer its mother's side for warmth. Far away he could hear the howling of a wolf answered by the furious barking of a watchdog. A moon near the full was rising over the cliffs, and shed a white light on the sharp, needle-like peaks. There was an incessant play of summer lightning on the northern horizon, throbbing behind the long and jagged outlines of the mountains. All about him was solemn, impressive, and mysterious. If Philip had been there he would have been filled with the most profound admiration and awe. But Martino was too savage to feel either; the aspects of nature had little more effect upon him than upon a wolf. When all was at last still and dark, even in Cortina, he rose, and cautiously descended toward his old home.
The few watchdogs knew him too well to be disturbed by his soundless footsteps as he passed among the silent huts as if he had been a ghost. The foundations of the walls alone remained of Chiara's hovel, and there was still some warmth where the roof had been left smoldering on the ground. Martino squatted down in the midst of the ruins. It had been nothing but a squalid and dreary home to him, but it was the only one he had ever known. This was the one spot on earth that had been his dwelling-place, and his enemies had destroyed it with an utter destruction. There was no roof now to shelter him, no door he could shut in the face of his foes. He felt it with a vague bitterness, as some beast might feel the destruction of its hole, and tears filled his eyes, and rolled slowly down his rough and furrowed face.
He roused himself after a while, for he knew the nights were short; and, being fleet of foot, he ran down the steepest paths to Cortina, to pick up any food he could find for the coming day. There were roots growing in the fields there on which life could be sustained for some time, and his dull brain was untroubled by forebodings of the distant future. He prowled round the hotel, where Sidney was sleeping a troubled sleep, and picked up some fragments of food, which the wasteful servants had thrown through the window as the easiest way of getting rid of them. The dogs would have eaten them in the morning, but they were a Godsend to Martino, who carried them away in his ragged clothes. When he reached his cave at dawn, and the rising sun shot its earliest beams into it, they fell upon as poor a wretch as the sunlight would find out during the livelong day.
Once more he slumbered all day, hearing at intervals the attempts made to reach him in his fastness, and the voices calling to him repeatedly, all with one accord saying that his father was come and was searching for him. He laughed to scorn their attempts. Not a man among them would dare to scale the precipice; and he did not believe that there was anyone on earth who would claim him as a kinsman. His father! He had heard too often of his mother and her accursed fate, but no one had ever spoken of his father. His mother's grave he knew; and once, when there was in his heart a strange, confused springing up of tenderness—it was when he felt a sort of love for the girl who scorned and repulsed him so indignantly—he had reared a rude cross at the head of it and collected white pebbles from the river to mark its outline. But his father!
At night he stole down to Cortina again, and picked up any fragments thrown outside the doors for the scavenger dogs. But he did not go to the desolate ruins, which were no longer a shelter for him. And so two or three days and nights passed by, Martino living as wild a life as any wild and noxious beast, while Sidney used every means that could be thought of to capture him. Not Sidney alone. All the population of the Ampezzo Valley knew something of the errand that had brought the rich English signore to Cortina, and every man was eager to gain the reward he offered, but no one knew a safe approach to the cave, and, if Martino was on the watch, it seemed certain death to make any further attempt to seize him.
At last Sidney himself ascended as far as any man could climb on the almost sheer face of the peak, and drew as near to his son as was possible, calling to him in his pleasant and persuasive, but unfamiliar, voice, so different from the voices he was used to hear that there was some chance of his paying heed to it. But Martino was sleeping soundly at the time, and did not hear his father's voice; and, possibly, if he had heard it he would have thought it a fresh snare. Sidney retraced the perilous path, disheartened.
"He will die of famine," said the guide who was with him. "Perhaps he is dying now, and cannot move himself to answer."
It was a terrible thought to Sidney; yet it seemed only too likely. Sophy's son was perishing like a wounded creature that creeps for shelter into its den and dies a lingering death of famine.
"We must save him," he cried. "I will give anything you ask if you will save him."
"If we knew for certain he was dying," said the guide, scanning the rock carefully, "I would do it; but if Martino is not dying he is as strong as an ox. It would be death to any man who climbed up to his cave. We will get him when he is dead," he added cheerfully.
Sidney went down into the valley hopeless and heavy-hearted. Yet underneath the heaviness of his heart lay a vague and wordless impression that after all it would, perhaps, be best for Martin to die. For, if he lived, would it be possible ever to civilize this wild peasant, and bring him in any degree into harmony with the life of civilization and luxury to which he by birth belonged? The position and career for which Philip had been educated with so much care must be filled by this incapable, untrained, utterly ignorant savage. It would be impossible to fit him, at his age, for the position of an English farmer; he was below the level of the lowest English laborer. The sin of his father had been so visited upon him that nothing could atone to him for it in this life. Sidney acknowledged that it was his sin which fell so heavily on his son; he repented of it in bitter contrition of heart. But would it not be best for all if Martin was dead?
He had nearly reached Cortina, disheartened and perplexed beyond measure, when Dorothy's clear young voice roused him from his sad thoughts, and he saw her coming up the steep and stony path to meet him.
"Good news!" she cried blithely; "good news! Philip is come back. Mrs. Martin has sent Philip back to us. That is good news to bring you."
Good news, and yet unwelcome. For on no one more than Philip, excepting Martin, would the burden of his early error fall. If he could have borne all the penalty himself it would have been easier to bear; but he must see Philip crushed beneath it. Philip's speedy return was a sign that neither his wife nor son entertained any bitterness of anger against him, and so far it was good news. But their unselfish sympathy made his own conduct appear more base. It placed them too far apart from him. It seemed as if he could almost better have borne their resentment.
"He is coming after me," said Dorothy. "I only ran on to tell you."
She ran down again, leaving the father and son to meet each other alone; and she was not out of sight when Philip reached him. There was a subtle change about him; Sidney felt that he had lost him as a son, but gained him as a friend. He was his comrade, ready to help him in every difficulty, and loyal to him with an immovable loyalty. The grave yet cordial sympathy of his manner went to Sidney's heart; and yet it chilled him. This passionately loved boy of his was a man, looking at him with a man's eyes, and the feeling latent in this clear, affectionate gaze was pity, not reverence. The change was a subtle one hardly to be seen, yet very painful to him.
"Phyllis has told you?" he said.
"All she knows," answered Philip. "I conclude that my brother has made his escape to the mountains, and cannot be captured."
He uttered the words "my brother" simply, but Sidney winced on hearing them.
"I have not spoken of him to Phyllis or Dorothy," he said. "If they know anything it must be through the chambermaid. It was impossible to speak to them about it, though all the people in Cortina know."
"I told Phyllis I had an elder brother living," replied Philip. "I told her at Toblach."
"And what did she say?" he asked.
"She talked like a girl who has read nothing but novels," he replied, evading a more direct answer.
And now, as Sidney saw his son standing before him, such a son as his whole heart could take delight in, the thought of disinheriting him in favor of the untrained and probably untamable savage, who possessed his birthright, came back to his mind with irresistible force. It seemed impossible to do it. This boy, whom he loved with passionate ardor, to be displaced by a man whose existence was a shame and a sorrow to him! He himself was in the prime of life—too old to retrieve the past and shake off its burden, and too young to escape from its consequences for many years—years of comparative dishonor and of keen disappointment. His voice was broken as he spoke again to his son.
"Philip," he said, "must we sacrifice all? Is there a necessity to own this man?"
"Yes," he answered unhesitatingly.
"I cannot see it," said his father. "I am like one walking in darkness. My conscience says nothing, except that I have sinned. If I do this I act by your mother's conscience."
"And mine," responded Philip. "My mother and I have but one mind about it."
"I will yield to you," he said, "but my punishment is greater than I can bear."
They went on their way down into the valley; and Sidney told him of the perilous place in which Martin had taken refuge, and the opinion his guide had given that the poor fellow must be dying of famine. It was impossible to attempt anything that evening, but the next morning at sunrise, Philip said, a scaling party must go to the precipice and ascend it, under his own directions. He was a member of the Alpine Club; and to leave any fellow-creature perishing through hunger and faintness from wounds would be infamous. He must hasten to make his preparations, and learn who were the most courageous and adventurous guides.
CHAPTER XL.
PHYLLIS AND DOROTHY.
But as they passed the small public garden, lying on the steep slope of the river banks, Philip caught sight of Phyllis sitting alone on one of the benches. He had seen but little of her at Toblach, and that was after a separation of some months. It was an opportunity not to be missed, and his arrangements could very well be made an hour later. Though the sun was gone down behind the mountains, the air was still warm and balmy, and the sky was of that deep blue which is caused by the absence of mist and vapor. Far away on the highest peaks the sunlight lingered, making all their soft colors glow with a delicate bloom and luster. Phyllis's pretty face, as she looked up at his approach, was a little sulky.
"Your father is making a tremendous fuss about this man," she said, looking up into his face with a hard expression in her bright eyes; "all the world is talking of it here. Is it prudent?"
"My darling!" he answered fondly, "this man is my elder brother—my father's son. How can we make too much fuss, as you call it? We must do all we can to compensate him for the past."
"But you can never reclaim him from his savagery—never!" she rejoined. "A man of thirty! He must remain a monster all his life. Is it certain that your father really married Sophy Goldsmith?"
"My father says so," he answered shortly.
"But they could not prove it," she continued with eagerness, and a shrewd expression in her face which made it look almost hateful to him, "and he is not compelled to own it. Why could he not have left him here in peace? It is the only wise thing to do. I don't say leave him in such poverty and misery as you find him in; no! that would be cruel and unjust. It is not too late yet to act sensibly. Why do not you all quietly hush it up? The Goldsmiths need never know; and you can provide comfortably for him. You will only work misery all round by taking him to England as your father's eldest son and heir. A monster like that to become an English gentleman! Good gracious!"
Philip made no answer. Such considerations had presented themselves to his own mind, and he had dismissed them hastily, as hateful temptations arising from the evil that was in his nature. Now that Phyllis uttered them they seemed more hateful from her lips. He did not know what the future might bring, but the present brought to him a clear and simple duty. Justice must be done to Sophy Goldsmith's son.
"Is it too late, dearest Philip?" asked Phyllis persuasively, both of her hands clasping his own. "Will not your father listen to reason? Don't you see what an enormous, enormous difference it makes to us! To me as much as to any of you. You are sacrificing me. I have turned it over and over in my mind till I am sick and weary of it. Have you never thought of what such a change must mean for me?"
"I have thought of it, my dear one," he said gently. "You are always first in my thoughts. But I must act according to my conscience."
"I know you cannot say much about it," she urged, "but shall I tell your father that I know all, and reason with him? He may be too excited to act wisely. Let me speak to him."
"No! no!" he exclaimed, "there is but one course before us; my mother pointed it out clearly, but I hope I should have taken it of myself. Martin must come home with us to England, and we must do what we can to reclaim him, and fit him in some degree for the future. You must help us, Phyllis—you and Dorothy."
"You had better go and tell Dorothy of her fine task, then," said Phyllis peevishly.
Philip was not long in finding Dorothy, who had sauntered away, following the little tracks that crossed the open fields, to gather the wild flowers which were blooming in profusion. She saw him coming toward her, and retraced her steps to meet him. She had hardly spoken to him before, so eager had she been to carry the good news of his arrival to his father. Her face was lighted up with a very pleasant smile.
"How glad I am you are come back!" she exclaimed. "Your father has been so wretched and low-spirited. O Philip! is it true that Andrew Goldsmith's daughter is found at last? How did she come here? and is she dead? and what had Mr. Martin to do with it? If I might only know the truth I should be so thankful."
"I will tell you, Dorothy," he said. "My father married Sophy Goldsmith when he was a young man about as old as myself. Secretly, for fear of his uncle; and they came here, as we did, out of Italy, thirty years ago. They quarreled, and he left her, expecting her to follow him; but she died, leaving a child behind her, and he never knew it."
"He did not know that she was dead!" exclaimed Dorothy.
"He let things drift," answered Philip with an unconscious accent of scorn, "because he was afraid of his uncle discarding him. He made no inquiries after her till he wanted to marry my mother; and then his messenger sent him word that Sophy Goldsmith was dead, but said nothing about the birth of their son. And my father was satisfied! But the child grew up here among these peasants. He was the man you saw at the festa who was like Andrew Goldsmith."
Dorothy walked on beside him in silence, and, somewhat surprised by it, Philip looked down into her half averted face, and saw the tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Oh, poor Andrew!" she sobbed at last; "poor old man! And poor Sophy! How he has mourned for her! and how he has almost worshiped Mr. Martin! How will Andrew bear it, Philip? How can your father bear it?"
"He is all but broken-hearted," he replied, "and so is my mother. They look already years older, Dorothy. It is we younger ones who must go to their help now. We must make them feel that the future will not be a failure, even after this blow. Why cannot we in part reclaim my brother? He can never be an educated man, not a civilized man according to our notions. But after all, civilization is as much a fashion as reality. He need not remain a brute or a savage. The grandson of Andrew Goldsmith and my father's son must have something in him which will make him not altogether irreclaimable. You will help us, Dorothy?"
"Do you remember how wild and uneducated I was when your father found me?" she asked. "I know I can never have such dainty ways as Phyllis; and this poor fellow can never be like you. But he will improve as I have done."
Philip could not help laughing as he looked at her, and thought of the rough, uncouth man his brother was. The tears filled her eyes again.
"I have seen him," she continued, catching her breath, as if she could not quite control her sobs, "every night since we came back. Oh, how dreadful it is I cannot say; and I never thought he was Mr. Martin's son. He is just like a wild creature prowling about the houses. The first night I heard him I was awake, and I stole quite quietly on to the balcony, wondering if I should catch sight of a wolf down in the street, and there, in the moonlight, was a miserable man searching in the gutters for food. Ever since I have taken some bread from dinner and let it down to the ground just under my balcony, and he has come for it every night."
"Thank God!" cried Philip in an accent of unutterable pity and amazement; "then he is not dying of famine. And that is my brother!"
"I just spoke a word to him last night," she went on. "I spoke very softly. 'Poor man,' I said in Italian, and he lifted up his head and threw his hands above it. Then he ran away very swiftly, without making a sound."
"Oh, if my father had only known!" he said.
"I did not tell him, he seemed so absent," replied Dorothy; "but the poor fellow will come again to-night most likely. We will sit in the dark watching till he comes, and you can see him from my balcony. The moon rises later every night, but there will be light enough."
The vision he had seen the previous night had haunted Martin's dull brain all the day. He had stolen under the windows of the hotel, where he had never failed to find food from the first night he had sought it in the streets. Suddenly a white, quiet form, standing in the moonlight on the balcony above him, like some image of the Blessed Virgin, such as he had often seen in shrines and churches, spoke to him in a low, soft, sweet voice, such a voice as the Blessed Virgin might have. The vision hardly frightened him, and yet he fled from it, and hurried back to his place of refuge. He pondered over it in a confused way all through the day. Legends of the apparition of angels, but more often of demons, had been told to him and the other children in his earliest days. It was not strange that such a blessed vision should be seen, but it was strange that it appeared to him, whose mother was accursed in hell. Was it possible that this white angel had come to tell him better news of his mother? Why had he fled so swiftly, when he felt so little fear of it? Would he see it again if he went down into the valley?
CHAPTER XLI.
MARGARET'S CONFLICT.
Margaret had sent Philip back to the Ampezzo Valley as soon as she reached Berne, and before Rachel Goldsmith could join her there. The feeling that she had left her husband apparently in anger—though it was no ordinary anger that had possession of her—made her anxious that their son should return to him as soon as possible. Philip was disinclined to leave her; but they talked together quietly and fully of this terrible discovery, and of all its consequences, and she pointed out to him what, in her eyes, his path of duty clearly was. He must accept the past, with all its present outgrowth, and not make the harvest more bitter than it was by ineffectual reproaches and regrets. What did it really matter, for the brief span of this life, whether he passed through the world as a poor man or rich, distinguished or obscure? He was running the race set before him, and far other eyes than those of man were witnessing his career. Margaret, from her lofty point of view, was nearer Philip in his youthful idealism than Sidney could be, and his mother's counsels gave to him the courage and hopefulness which seemed to his father so strange and pathetic.
But Margaret herself was passing through the fiercest and most painful crisis of her life. The blow that had fallen had struck at the deepest roots of her being. It seemed as if she had linked her whole existence, down to its innermost fibers, with a nature absolutely at variance with it. This husband, whom she loved so perfectly, had been living all these years beside her a life of base treachery and dissimulation. She marveled as she thought of his daily intercourse with her maid Rachel, Sophy Goldsmith's aunt, and of his constant friendliness toward Andrew. How could he bear to see their grief and suspense, nay, even pretend to share it, and to pursue the search after their lost child? Was it possible that human nature contained such depths of duplicity? He had kept silence amid all their mourning, and made his silence seem full of sympathy. To be guilty of such infamy, for any reason whatever, seemed inexplicable to her. But to do it for the sake of money and position! If he had not owned it with his own lips, no force of accumulated evidence could have compelled her into belief.
Yet her heart was very tender toward him. His sin seemed to stain her own soul, so closely was she bound to him; for still she loved him. Rather she felt as if she loved him with a deeper fullness, because of her unutterable pity for his misery. She did not know for certain what he would do; but she would hope, even against hope, that he would pass through this gulf that lay between them, and reach her on the clear heights from which she looked down upon his wrong-doing. He was fallen indeed; but she would rather be his wife than fill any other position in the world. He could never be less dear to her than he had always been.
She blamed herself for her too great reticence and silence as to her own spiritual experience. It was so sacred, and yet so natural to her, that she had rarely attempted to put it into words. If she loved her husband's soul it must show itself in deeds, not speech. Her love to God, her discipleship toward Jesus Christ, must be displayed in the same way; if those around her could not see it in her daily life, it would be useless to proclaim it. What she felt herself she attributed to others. God was nearer to every soul than any fellow-creature could be, and his dealings with each soul was wrapped in a veil impenetrable to the understanding or comprehension even of those closest and dearest to it. What God was saying to her husband's soul she could not know. And no action of Sidney's life had taught her that they were worlds apart in their spiritual experience.
Now she saw in a new light that sin which Christ denounced above all sins—hypocrisy. In a book she had read a short time before she had come across these sentences: "Howbeit now I know well that Jesus came not to prophesy smooth things, but to teach us the truth. Therefore was it most needful that he should speak the truth, and nothing less than the truth, concerning the Pharisees, to the intent that the eyes of all mankind might be opened, even to the generation of generations, that they might discern that the sin of sins is hypocrisy. For other sins wound, but this sin slayeth, the conscience. Peradventure, also, Jesus foresaw that a time might come when certain even among his own disciples would err as the Pharisees erred, shutting their eyes against the truth, as being unfit and not convenient. He, also, that came to redeem all the children of men from all evil, was it not most necessary that he should make clear in the sight of all men what was the greatest evil? For if men knew it not, how could he redeem them from it?"
This had been Sidney's crowning sin. He had so acted a part that, unawares, he had grown to consider it his real nature; it had almost ceased to be hypocrisy, save in the sight of God, whose eye saw the false foundation on which the building was raised. For surely Sidney had not altogether feigned his enjoyment of the privileges and duties of Christianity. He had gone with her to the table of the Lord; he had given generously, not only of his wealth, but of his time and talents, to the service of his fellow-men. He had taken his stand in public life as a religious man. "Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." This was the condemnation of her Lord against the man who was dearer to her than her own soul.
She felt that she was right in facing this crisis alone, free from the distracting affection of Sidney. To have stayed near him would have taxed her strength too heavily; for all life was under an eclipse! Was it not an abiding darkness, which could not pass away on this side of the grave? Was he not in an abyss of gloom, into which she must go down, and dwell with him there? Gloom and sorrow and remorse she would share with him, but not the infamy of a new sin.
Even in the deepest abyss God would be with her. This was the hope she clung to. She recalled the vision she once had of the love of God. There was absolutely no limit, no change, in that Divine love, though it might take the form of an apparent vengeance. "Even in hell thou art there!" she said, and she felt strong enough to go down to the nethermost depths, if underneath her she were still to feel the Everlasting Arms.
The nethermost depth to her would be to separate herself from Sidney. But if he persisted in carrying out his threat, and being guilty of this new iniquity, even if her heart broke she would no longer live with him. She knew what the world would say of it: that it was only a foolish woman's jealousy and prejudice, a straining at a gnat, if she could not forgive so boyish a sin as that of which he would seem to have been guilty. But she took no account of the world. If he persisted in his threatened injustice to Sophy's memory, if he brought this bitter shame upon the heads of her dear old friends, it would be a base act of perfidy, showing him absolutely unrepentant toward God and man. It would be impossible to her to resume her former wifehood with him.
Rachel Goldsmith could not be ignorant of the fact that her beloved mistress was passing through some great sorrow. But she was a reticent woman, with great natural refinement, and she said nothing either to express her own sympathy or to lead Margaret to confide her troubles to her. She was older than her mistress by fifteen years, and she cared for no one in the world so much as for Margaret and her two sons. Philip and Hugh had grown up under her eyes, and she was almost like a second mother to them. To her strong affection was added that loyal and faithful respect with which an old servant looks upon the future masters.
Margaret spent most of her time in her own room in the hotel at Berne, through the windows of which she could see the wonderful range of snowy Alps, that stretched across the horizon, and, catching the evening light, looks so unearthly in its marvelous purity and beauty. It seemed to her as if beyond those white and rosy peaks lay "the land that is very far off." That strong yearning to be gone thither, safely shut in from the vanities and vexations of life, so often expressed in old Latin hymns, had taken possession of her, and it seemed to her as if she had only to will, to rise up, and cross over the invisible threshold of the other life. Should she go or stay? The choice was almost given to her. Would she depart at this moment, and be forever with the Lord? Or would she stay to fight the sore battle her beloved ones were engaged in? "Let me stay!" she said half aloud.
At that moment Rachel entered the room quietly with a letter. It was a thick packet, addressed to her in her husband's handwriting, and Margaret opened it with trembling fingers. A number of yellow, time-stained pages fell from it as she seized a little note written by Sidney.
"My Margaret," he said, "I have seen my son, and I will acknowledge him. But unless you stand by me my punishment will be greater than I can bear. I am like a man walking in darkness amid pitfalls, without guidance. I will be guided by you. Do not forsake me, my wife. The letter I enclose was written thirty years ago by Sophy to Rachel. Would to God it had been sent to her then! To-night we expect to find Martin, who has fled from us to the mountains."
Margaret gathered up the scattered leaves, and called to Rachel, who was just leaving her again alone.
"Rachel!" she cried, "I can tell you my sorrow and my secret now. It concerned you more than me, perhaps. And yet, no; it cannot, it cannot. We have found out what has become of Sophy."
"Oh, it is Mr. Martin!" exclaimed Rachel; "God bless him! I knew he would find it out some day; and how shall we ever thank him for it, Andrew and me?"
"Hush! hush!" said Margaret; "it is too dreadful. Rachel, he sends you this letter, which Sophy wrote to you before she died, thirty years ago, and he says, 'Would to God it had been sent to you then!' Take it away to read it: I cannot bear to see you reading it."
Rachel carried the faded letter away. She was an old woman now, with white hair, and eyes that were failing a little, and needing a brighter light than when Sophy had written that long letter. But she remembered Sophy's handwriting well, and tears blinded her dim eyes. Oh, what anguish of heart would have been saved them if this letter had but reached them thirty years ago! It was the suspense of the long, long years that had broken Andrew's spirit, and made an old man of him while still in the prime of life. Many fathers lose a beloved child by death, and they lay them in the grave, and go their way, and presently the sharp grief is healed. But he had lost her more cruelly, by that crudest way, an unaccountable and mysterious disappearance. It was well to make the discovery of her fate even now; but if it had only been made thirty years ago!
Rachel read the letter slowly, gathering in its many new impressions vaguely, like one puzzled and bewildered. It seemed a confusion to her. Who could this Sidney be of whom Sophy wrote—this young man who had deserted her in a passion, as it appeared, just the thoughtless passion of a young man? Sophy's temper had often been very provoking, and she freely confessed that she had provoked him out of all patience. Sidney? She knew only one man of that name.
And he was Sidney Martin, her master, the husband of her idolized mistress. He was the rich man, the magistrate, the member of Parliament, who belonged to quite another world from that lower world in which she and Andrew lived, the world to which Sophy had belonged. To think of him in connection with this young man, Sophy's husband, who had deserted her, was impossible; it was an unjustifiable liberty—a crime.
She put the letter down and took up some sewing, as if she could think more clearly while her fingers were busy. But her hands trembled too much, and a crowd of memories came rushing through her brain. O Sophy! Sophy! how sad an end to come to with your willful ways and foolish fancies! Dying there, alone, among strangers, who did not know what you were saying with your dying lips! No hand you knew to hold your hand as it grew cold, and no voice you could understand to speak words of comfort as you went down, step by step, into the chill river of death! Alone! utterly alone!
Then she read the letter again. And now the name came clearly to her—Sidney Martin. There must be some other man, then, of that name. It was incredible that Mr. Martin, who had joined them in their search and inquiry with such friendly sympathy, could have held the knowledge of her fate in his own heart. She thought of all his kindness to Andrew and herself—a kindness that had never failed. Yet—Sidney Martin! And a secret marriage! It was he, too, who had sent her this letter, and a strange message with it. If this could be true, what would be the end of it?
She made her way to Margaret's room with trembling limbs and a sinking heart. Margaret was still sitting where she had left her, with her face toward the window; but it was dark, and the long range of mountains, that seemed only a little while ago the glistening boundary of a brighter world, lay pallid as death against the somber sky.
"Miss Margaret!" cried Rachel in a voice of sorrowful uncertainty.
Margaret stood up and stretched out her arms, and the two women clung to one another in a passionate embrace, which seemed to knit together all the joys and sorrows of their lifelong affection. Rachel knew that her dreaded surmise was true.
CHAPTER XLII.
CAPTURED.
That night, at Cortina, Sidney was watching in the hope of capturing his son. Philip was with him, concealed in a dependance opposite to the hotel, ready to intercept Martin if he took fright, or to pursue him if he made his escape. Phyllis and Dorothy sat in their dark room, with the window open that they might step noiselessly on to the balcony.
Phyllis had not seen Martin; and no description given of him by Philip and Dorothy led her to imagine him in any way different from the peasants who inhabited the cottages near the little town. That he was rougher and less civilized did not for a moment enter her brain. She noticed these mountain laborers closely, wondering which of them would be most like her unknown cousin, who so greatly altered her own future prospects. It was plain to her that Philip and Margaret were Quixotic enough to acknowledge the claim of this deserted son of a lowborn mother to his rights as the eldest son and heir of his father, but she was not sure of what Sidney meant to do. He might still listen to reason and common sense. But she began to wonder, with a sinking heart as she thought of marrying a comparatively poor man, how soon and how much would this usurper acquire a fitness for his distinguished position.
To Sidney, the cheerful loyalty with which Philip came to aid him to rescue his son was full of reproach. He felt, too, that Dorothy and Philip were taking the affair out of his hands, and that his part was almost a passive one, that of a spectator. These young creatures who a few months ago looked up to him as an infallible oracle and the arbiter of their lives, now stood beside him, nay, even before him, covering with the strength of their youthful hopes, and their certainty of success, the feebleness of his own doubtful and perplexed judgment. They talked of Martin as though sure of redeeming him from his ignorance and savagery, and fitting him to fill the position he was born to; while Sidney could see in him only a man whose habits of mind and body were unalterably rooted, a monster to whom he had given life, and who was about to become his master. They, youthful and idealistic, with no knowledge of the world, and but little of their own nature, were ardently pursuing their object, blind to what he saw so clearly, the long monotony of slowly passing years to come, when Martin, with his ingrained savagery, would become a daily burden, full of care and shame to all of them. If only he could save Margaret and his boys from that burden!
The long, silent hours of watching passed on, and Phyllis grew fretful with the tedium of waiting. Every quarter of an hour sounding from the clock tower made the time seem longer. The stars glittered in the almost frosty sky; and the moon, now waning, threw a sad, white light upon the sleeping town. There had been no sound for an hour or more, when at last a stealthy, creeping footfall reached their straining ears. The two girls stole silently to the balcony, and leaned cautiously over the parapet. In the dim light Phyllis saw a wild, half naked creature, bare-headed, with long, rough hair matted about his face, scraping together the fragments of food thrown out into the street for the dogs. It was a horrible sight to her, and she uttered a low scream as she fled back into the room, which startled his frightened ears. He was darting away when Dorothy called to him: "Martino!"
It was his own name that this white vision of an angel was calling; and he hesitated in his intended flight, looking up again to see if she was still there, and did not vanish away.
"Martino!" she said again in her foreign accent, "we are your friends."
"Si, signora," he answered.
"Martino!" repeated a friendly voice beside him, and he felt a hand laid gently on his bare arm, "we are your friends."
He turned round with a start of terror; but the face he met was that of the young English gentleman whom he had seen a few days ago, before Chiara died, and who had given him the silver coin, which he carried carefully concealed in his rags. He knelt down again to him, laid his hands on his feet, muttering and mumbling his recognition and delight. Philip glanced round to the dark doorway where his father stood unseen. What must he be suffering in seeing such a sight as this?
"Get up, Martino," he said, trying to raise him from his abject posture, "we are your friends," he repeated, at a loss for words. "Father," he continued in a low voice, "come and speak to him. You know his language better than I do. Oh! if I could only make him understand how much my mother and I pity him!"
Sidney approached his sons cautiously. For a moment Martin stood as if about to take a sudden flight; but the sight of an Englishman alone pacified him; there was no need to be afraid of him. They were very rich, these English; Chiara had always said so; they could give him enough money to buy the right of building a little hut for himself in some place on the mountains, where he could keep goats and sheep. He stood quietly, therefore, watching them from under his shaggy eyebrows, while Philip still held him by a slight yet firm grasp, of which he was unconscious, so light his touch was. They waited, both of them in silence, for their father to speak.
But Sidney could not speak. He had seen Martin for only one moment before, when he fled past him from the infuriated mob that had burnt Chiara's hut over his head. Now he stood close beside him: a strongly built man, with thews and sinews of iron, yet worn looking, with bowed shoulders and stooping head, as though even his great strength had been overtaxed with too many labors and hardships. His squalid face, the almost brutish dullness of its expression, the untamed savagery of his whole appearance, were too revolting to Sidney. Here was his own folly, his own sin personified. He could have hated this monster but for the remembrance of Margaret.
"Mr. Martin," said Dorothy's clear young voice from the balcony overhead, "take him into the dependance, and tell him he must sleep there to-night, and you will talk to him in the morning. See, I have some food in this satchel. And Philip will keep watch lest he should try to escape. I am so glad we have found the poor fellow."
"The signora says you must stay here to-night," repeated Philip, as he saw Martin looking up at Dorothy, and listening attentively to her unknown language, "and to-morrow we will show you we are friends."
"Are the signori rich?" asked Martin.
"Very rich," answered Philip.
"Will the signori give money to me?" he asked again.
"As much as you like," said Sidney, "if you will obey me."
"As much money as Chiara had?" he rejoined.
"More," replied Sidney.
"Then I will obey you," he said, with a rough laugh.
CHAPTER XLIII.
A POOR MAN.
But now that Martin was captured, what was to be done with him? Sidney found that the immediate direction of affairs was taken out of his hands by these young people, who had been but children yesterday. Martin attached himself to Philip, as a dog attaches itself to some chosen master, and followed him about, obeying all his commands with a doglike fidelity. He squatted in a corner of the room while Philip took his meals, and the next night he stretched himself on the floor of Philip's bedroom across the doorway, as if to guard him. At Dorothy's sensible suggestion the garb of a peasant of the better class was procured for him, and he put it on with an air of pride in spite of its discomfort.
"It would be nonsense to dress him like you, Philip," she said sagaciously; "he would look ridiculous. It must all come by degrees, as it did to me. I was quite a wild girl when your father found me; and I know how miserable poor Martin will feel at first, especially when we go away from here. It will be like another world to him."
"We cannot go till Phyllis is quite well," said Philip anxiously.
For Phyllis had been overcome by the shock of finding Martin such a monster, and by the apparent determination of his father to own him as his heir. She was keeping to her room, and filling Philip's heart with dire anxiety and concern. Only Dorothy saw her, and to her she maintained an ominous silence.
"I think," said Dorothy, "that if he went to Brackenburn first, not to Apley, it would be best for him. There are so few people about, and the moors lie all around, where he could roam about just as he liked, and nobody to notice him. Brackenburn will belong to him some day, and he will grow accustomed to it. When he is a little more like an English gentleman he may go to Apley."
"I will suggest it to my father," replied Philip.
"He will go peaceably with you as your servant," resumed Dorothy, "and it is better to let him think himself so just at first. The sooner you start the better. But not with us; Sir Sidney will take care of Phyllis and me."
"I cannot start till Phyllis is well," he said.
But in a day or two Philip saw the necessity of taking Martin away immediately. All the valley became acquainted with the strange circumstance that Chiara's drudge was the son of a wealthy Englishman, who had come to claim him as soon as he heard of Chiara's death. Everyone sought an opportunity of seeing Martin, and of speaking to him. The richer people addressed him in a half joking manner; but the peasants, especially his old neighbors, paid him servile attention. The woman who had scorned and flouted at him as a pariah, when he dared to love her, haunted his footsteps. Martin himself strutted to and fro in the village street, proud of his new garb, and bearing heroically the pain his strong, high boots gave him; and the third night after they had captured him Philip found him lying dead drunk in one of the lowest inns in Cortina. It was full time to remove him from his old surroundings.
Sidney accepted the plans proposed by Philip and Dorothy with a sort of numb pain. He was no longer worthy to be their guide, and they were softly yet unconsciously setting him on one side. The burden was falling on their shoulders; and how readily, how courageously they were bearing it! There was as subtle a change in Dorothy as in Philip, inasmuch as there was an undertone of pity for him in all she said and did—a pity that was taking the place of the pride she had hitherto felt in him. She was very gentle and tender in her manner, hovering about him, and volunteering her companionship when he was setting out on the lonely walks with which he made away his time. But Sidney felt that all at once, in the prime of his life, his career was over. An ever increasing sense of separation and isolation crept over him: Sophy and her son stood between him and every other relationship. Possibly his public career would not greatly alter; his days in the city would pass pretty much as they had done. He would amass more money, and be thought well of as a rich man. But at home all was changed. His beloved son was no longer his firstborn; and even Margaret must feel keenly that Sophy had been his wife before she was.
The plan of traveling homeward in two parties was a wise one, for it would not do to subject two young girls like Phyllis and Dorothy to any annoyance from Martin's extreme savagery. Philip, too, acknowledged the prudence of Dorothy's suggestion, though it parted him from Phyllis, who gave him permission to see her on the eve of his departure with Martin.
She was sitting in a large, high-backed chair, covered with crimson velvet, against which her pale cheeks looked whiter, and her face more delicate, than they had ever done, and she spoke in a faint and languid voice, as if the exertion was too much for her.
"You will not be long after me, my darling?" he said anxiously. "I would have given all I have to have saved you this sorrow; and yet it is a comfort to me that you have been here. Now you know all about it, just as you have known all my life hitherto. There were never two people, not being brother and sister, who knew all about the other as you and I do."
"But, Philip," she asked languidly, "what do you suppose your future life will be now?"
"Oh! I must go into my father's business," he answered, "and set to work seriously. Or if my father would give his consent I should like most of all to walk the hospitals, and become a surgeon. I should like to be a famous surgeon."
"Good gracious, Philip!" she exclaimed, roused by such a proposition out of her listlessness; "and am I to be a doctor's wife? A doctor's wife, only having the brougham when you are not visiting your patients! And you would never be sure of going out with me. Perhaps I should not be in society at all!"
"Perhaps not," he replied, "but you will be my own Phyllis always."
"A fine compensation," she said, pouting and shrugging her shoulders. "I don't know what my mother will say about it all."
"But your father?" suggested Philip, with a smile.
She was silent for a minute, and her face clouded.
"He will say I am less worthy of you than ever," she replied gravely. "Oh, yes! my father will be on your side; he is as incautious as any of you. But I never thought your father would be so rash. You think you know me, Philip, but all you are doing proves that you are mistaken; you do not know me at all. I could never, never marry a poor man, however much I loved him. And you will be poor."
"Poor!" he repeated, "no, no! I shall not be a rich landowner, but I shall have ample means for all your wants and my own. We shall be poorer than my brothers, of course, but not as poor as yours. They have their living to get, and so have I."
"It is not all quite settled yet?" she said plaintively.
"What is not settled?" he inquired.
"Nobody knows yet but ourselves," she continued; "everything is not lost. No one can know unless you proclaim it. I have been thinking all day long while I have been lying ill, and I see all the ruin and misery it will bring upon you all. The monster himself will be wretched; if you wish to secure his happiness you should leave him here. Taking him off to England would be ridiculous."
"There is nothing else to be done," said Philip briefly.
But he left Cortina in charge of Martin with a heavier heart for this conversation with Phyllis. The clumsy form and uncouth gestures of Martin, who refused any other seat than the box of the carriage, struck him the more forcibly now they were starting on their way to England. He looked a middle-aged man, scarcely younger than his father. Would it be possible to mold him, even by little and little, by the slowest degrees, into anything like the form of an English gentleman? It was too late for that.
CHAPTER XLIV.
SOPHY'S SON.
Rachel Goldsmith heard the full story of Martin from Margaret's lips as far as she knew it herself. She listened to Margaret's description of the poor wretch, standing aloof from all his neighbors, and not daring to enter the church, or to join the procession in the great festa; and she shed many tears over the fate of Sophy's son. But it did not once enter her mind that this unknown nephew of hers would usurp the place of the young heir, whom she loved with a passionate devotion. When Margaret began to speak of it she interrupted her hurriedly.
"Oh, no, no!" she cried; "his grandfather and me would not hear a word of such a thing! It's a good thing that our Sophy was married rightly, and that's quite enough. That will satisfy Andrew and me. Let him come to us, poor fellow, and we will provide for him. Andrew has saved money, and so have I. It would never do, my lady, for Sophy's son to live at the Hall in Mr. Philip's place."
"But we cannot hinder it," said Margaret, smiling somewhat sadly; "since Martin is my husband's eldest son, he must inherit the estates entailed upon him. But, Rachel, it is not his poverty we must deliver him from, it is his ignorance. He has never known what love is, and we must make him know it. He knows nothing yet of God, and we must teach him. We have to reclaim him from heathen darkness, possibly from heathen sinfulness. All his past thirty years have to be atoned for, and no one can do it as we can—his father, and his brothers, and I."
"Couldn't Andrew and me do it?" asked Rachel.
"Do you think you can?" rejoined Margaret. "My husband was guilty of the wrong; who else can put it right?"
"Will you wait till I can speak to Andrew?" she asked again.
"It can make no difference," answered Margaret; "Andrew's grandson is my husband's eldest son."
But all the way homeward Rachel was pondering over the way in which she should tell Andrew these tidings, and in what manner it could be managed that Mr. Philip should not be dethroned. Though Margaret talked little about it, Rachel saw that her spirits flagged, and that she was more sorrowful than she had ever seen her before. Margaret and her boys filled all Rachel's heart. In early days Sophy had always been a trouble and perplexity to her, though the sadness and mystery of her fate had made her forget all these cares. Sophy's son was coming to be a still greater trouble and perplexity to her in her old age. By dint of casual questions asked of Margaret at odd times, Rachel drew to herself a picture of her great-nephew which filled her with dismay. A man who could neither read nor write, who went about in rags, bare-headed and barefooted—above all, a man who, if he prayed at all, prayed to images; such was the usurper who was about to seize Philip's birthright.
The evening of the day when Margaret and she arrived at Apley, Rachel set off to tell her brother of Sophy's fate. The little street, so familiar to her all her life, seemed to put on a strange aspect as she sometimes hurried, and sometimes lingered, along it, in the unusual tumult of her spirit, which was eager, yet afraid, to tell her news. At last, the small, low window of the shop, and the three hollowed stone steps leading to the door, were reached. The old journeyman, grown old and infirm in their service, was putting up the shutters, and the bell tinkled loudly as he went in and out through the half open door. She was just in time to enter and pass through the darkened shop unheard, to the kitchen behind it.
It looked very homelike and cozy to her, much more so than the grand rooms at the Hall. Though it was summer a clear fire was burning in the grate, and its dancing light flickered pleasantly on the polished oak of the dresser and the old clock, and on the brass candlesticks and pewter dishes, shining like silver, ranged on the dresser shelves. Andrew sat in a three-cornered chair inside the chimney nook, resting himself with an air of tranquil comfort now the shop was closed and the day's business done. He was a hale looking old man, with a good deal of strength in him still, though his hair, which had turned gray thirty years ago, was now of a silvery whiteness. In Rachel's eyes he looked little older, and far happier, than he had done thirty years ago.
"So you've come back again from foreign parts," said Andrew, greeting her cordially, after her sister Mary had kissed her again and again. "You're welcome back, Rachel; but it's been only a flying visit, not more than a week or so. I wonder the quality don't get worn out with flying about like that."
"It was business this time," she answered gravely, "not pleasure. You're quite well, Brother Andrew? You've got no rheumatism such weather as this?"
"Not a twinge of it," he said. "I never reckoned on being a strong old man like this. Thanks to the folks at the Hall, Mr. Martin, and Mr. Philip, and Mr. Hugh, and Miss Margaret most of all. If ever folks mended a broken heart, they've mended mine, God bless them!"
"Ay! God bless them," she echoed in a tremulous voice. "Brother Andrew, do you often think of Sophy now?"
"Often think of Sophy now!" he repeated; "ay! every day, every hour! When you came through the shop, I thought, 'Suppose that is my girl!' She may come home yet, Rachel. Some night, when all the shops are shut, and the neighbors safe indoors, she'll steal in and ask if she may come home again. If it wasn't for thinking she might do that, I'd have quitted the old house years ago; but I've stayed on for fear she might come back and find no home, and be ashamed of inquiring where we've gone to. I think of Sophy!" he murmured in a tone of wonder and reproach.
"She would be a gray-haired woman now, fifty years old," said Mary; "we should hardly know her."
"Then you don't give up the hopes of finding her?" asked Rachel.
"Never!" he answered. "I've asked Almighty God thousands and thousands of times to let me live till I knew what had become of her. And I've pleaded his promises with him, and I cannot think he'll disappoint me. I am sure I shall know before I die."
"But it might be best for you not to know," she suggested.
"But I chose to know it," he said, a gleam of almost insane excitement burning in his deep-set eyes, "I chose to know it. I did not leave it with God. I said, 'Let me know even if it kills me. Let me know if I go down to hell to find her.' I say so now. Rachel," he cried in a loud and agitated voice, "have you come to tell me something? Have you found her? Do you know anything about my girl?"
He sprang up and seized her hands in his own. They were both old people, with but few years to live, yet at this moment they felt as if they were thirty years younger, and in the early prime of their days, when Sophy had disappeared, and the trouble first crushed them. If she had opened the door and entered among them with her pretty face and saucy manner, they would have seen her without a shadow or touch of surprise.
"Yes, I have heard of her," said Rachel breathlessly.
Andrew fell back in his chair, and his withered face went ashy pale. He only cried, as if to himself, "My God! my God!"
"But, Brother Andrew," continued Rachel in a forced, monotonous manner, "she is dead. Sophy died thirty years ago."
"Sophy died thirty years ago!" he repeated, gazing at her with dim eyes, from which all the light had faded.
"Very far away, in foreign parts," went on Rachel; "and before she died—the very day before she died—she wrote a letter to me, a long letter, that was never sent."
"Died thirty years ago," murmured Andrew, as if his brain could understand nothing more.
"Rachel," said Mary eagerly, "just sit down and tell us all about it. Have you brought the letter? Was she married? Who did she run away with? Be quiet, and tell."
"First," answered Rachel, "I want to know if you can forgive the man who persuaded her to run away, Brother Andrew?"
"No! no!" he exclaimed.
"Not if he were a mere boy, like our Mr. Philip, who did not know the harm he did?" urged Rachel.
"If he married her," he said hesitatingly.
"Oh, he married her," replied Rachel.
Andrew's white head sank into his hands, and the tears trickled slowly down his face. Sophy had been married. For the sting of his sorrow had been the dread that his child had lost her innocence. The tears he shed were tears of gladness and thankfulness. True, she was dead; but he, too, would soon die, and he would meet her with no shame upon her head. He was not afraid of dying now, for the secret he dreaded had been revealed to him. Rachel drew out of her pocket Sophy's letter, and laid it on the little round table, where a candle was lighted.
"But who did she run away with?" asked Mary. "If you know she was married, you know who she was married to."
"Yes," she answered, sighing heavily; "he was no older than Mr. Philip, a mere boy, with no thought of the harm he did. He'd been visiting at the Hall, and saw our Sophy, and he ran away with her and married her. It was Mr. Martin himself."
"Mr. Martin!" exclaimed both Andrew and Mary at the same moment.
Across Andrew's mind came the recollections of the last twenty-three years. Sidney had seen and known all their sorrow and bewilderment; he had seemed to share it; he had diligently aided them in their inquiries, and all the time he knew! At any moment he could have rolled the burden off their hearts. He, who had seemed their friend and benefactor, had been the very enemy they were seeking. The gloomy and fierce light blazed again in Andrew's sunken eyes, and he raised his arm, trembling with excitement, and looked mournfully at it, as if he was stricken with palsy.
"Would to God my right arm was what it used to be!" he cried. "But I'm an old, worn-out, broken-down man, with no strength left. I've only strength to cry night and day upon God to avenge me. And he will avenge me."
"Hush! hush!" exclaimed Rachel. "In cursing him you curse those who are dear to us as Sophy was. You curse Philip and Hugh, and our own Miss Margaret. And you love them."
"Yes, I love them," he replied fiercely; "but not like my own girl. You don't know what it is to have given life to a child, and see her life destroyed by another man. It tugs at my very heartstrings. Oh, my Sophy!"
He dropped his head again so that they could not see his face. But his shrunk and trembling hands were clenched till the sinews stood out white and rigid, and his bent shoulders heaved with deep and bitter sobs. It was the treachery of his idolized master which was burning his wrongs into his very soul.
"But he is punished more than you could punish him," said Rachel, "for Sophy left a child behind her, a son, and my lady says he is heir in place of Mr. Philip."
"How can that be?" he asked, looking up with a puzzled gaze.
"Because Sophy was Mr. Martin's first wife," she continued, "before our Miss Margaret; and Sir John Martin's estates in Yorkshire are settled on his eldest son. Sophy's child is a man of thirty now, and my lady says he must be the squire when Mr. Martin dies."
"Sophy's son is my grandson," said Andrew, after a long pause.
"Yes," answered Mary.
"Then where is he?" he asked impatiently. "I want to see Sophy's son. I must see that he gets his rights. My grandson will be the squire some day. But I shall not live to see it, and then Mr. Martin will cheat him, as he has cheated me."
"No," said Rachel, "Mr. Martin owns him, and they are bringing him home from the far-off place where Mr. Philip found him. But, Brother Andrew, it would be best for him not to take Philip's place. Think of it! You and me aren't fit to be the grandfather and the aunt of Mr. Martin's heir. We shall have nothing to do with him; he cannot come and visit us here in this little house, and we couldn't go and visit him at the Hall. We shall all be upset, and he will be no more than a stranger to us, though he is Sophy's son."
"But I shall be proud of him," answered Andrew. "I shall like to see him ride past the shop window, like Mr. Philip does. And when he lifts his hat and smiles at me, as Mr. Philip does, I shall say, 'That's Sophy's son, my grandson.' Ah! and Mr. Martin will be finely punished. What is his name, Rachel?"
"They christened him Martino," she replied; "he will be Martino Martin."
"Martino Martin," he repeated; "that is my grandson! He will be squire of Brackenburn, but I shall never see it. I shall be dead before then; we shall all be gone. But he will be a rich man—richer than Mr. Philip."
"You always said you loved Mr. Philip as if he was your own," said Rachel sadly.
"Ay! but this is different," he answered; "this one is really my own flesh and blood. He belongs to me, and I belong to him. I shall see Sophy again in him. Mr. Philip calls me 'Goldsmith,' but he will call me 'grandfather.' As soon as he comes home, and has a horse to suit him, I will make him such a saddle as the highest gentleman in the land might covet. I long to see him—as fine a gentleman as them all."
"But you forgive Mr. Martin?" asked Rachel.
"Forgive him!" he exclaimed. "Forgive a traitor like him! A man who pretends to be your friend, and comforts you for the sorrow he is making! Forgive him for stealing away my only child, and hiding my grandson away in foreign parts! Forgive him all these years of grief which almost broke my heart! Why should I forgive him?"
"Because you pray to God to forgive you as you forgive others," she said.
"But I've never trespassed against God," he answered, "as this man has trespassed against me, God Himself being the judge. Let me be for a while. Perhaps some day, when I see my grandson riding by with gentlemen like himself, rich, and prosperous, and happy, and, maybe, a member of Parliament, then I may by chance forgive his father. But I cannot do it now—not now. I've a great deal to sum up and get over before I can forgive him."
Late on in the night Andrew Goldsmith was poring and brooding over every word in Sophy's letter. He lived over again the years of distraction, bordering upon insanity, which had intervened between Sophy's disappearance and the return of Colonel Cleveland to the Hall with his daughter Margaret and her husband Sidney Martin. He called back the memory of the singular fascination Mr. Martin had exercised over him; and his old, troubled heart was very sore as he thought of all his loyal friendship to the man who had so deeply wronged him. "And he was my son-in-law all the time," he said to himself. If he had owned his marriage, and brought his son to his own house to be educated as his heir, Andrew would gladly have kept in the background, content with an occasional sight of his grandson. But now he would spread the story far and wide. Mr. Martin, who had been ashamed of his lowly marriage, should be more bitterly ashamed of his treacherous secrecy. His love for Margaret and her sons was swallowed up in his hatred of her husband, his own son-in-law.
CHAPTER XLV.
BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT.
Nothing could exceed the rage of Andrew Goldsmith when he heard that his grandson was about to be taken to Yorkshire, instead of being brought to Apley. What measures he had expected Sidney Martin to take in order publicly to acknowledge Sophy's son he hardly knew. But to send him to so distant a spot, without any open recognition of his rights, was a step that filled the old man with suspicion. Sidney came back to Apley, but Andrew refused to see him, feeling that it was impossible to forgive his enemy, and equally impossible to control his impotent wrath. Sidney passed up and down the village street daily, but Andrew sat no longer in his shop, for fear of catching a passing sight of the prosperous traitor, whom he could not punish. He would not even see Margaret or Dorothy. He held himself altogether aloof even from his sister Rachel, who was so completely on his enemies' side.
In a few days after Sidney's return Mary told him that his grandson had reached Brackenburn, and that Philip was staying with him. His indignation and suspicion made him restless to see Sophy's son with his own eyes, and to confer with him as to the claiming of his rights. An attorney in the neighborhood, whose opinion he asked, advised him to go down into Yorkshire without letting the family know of his purpose. He told Mary that he was going away on business for a few days, and she and Rachel rejoiced that he could give his mind to business at such a time. They, too, were anxious and overcurious to see their great-nephew, but it did not occur to either of them that their brother should undertake any secret enterprise. By and by, when Martin was getting a little used to the change in his surroundings, Margaret intended to go to Brackenburn herself, taking Dorothy and Rachel with her. But for the present all agreed that it was best to leave Martin to free and unrestrained wanderings about the moors.
Andrew traveled northward with excited and extravagant visions of his grandson. He could think of Mr. Martin's eldest son and heir only as being like Philip and Hugh—young men whom he had always regarded with mingled deference, admiration, and affection. He had been proud of "the two young gentlemen from the Hall." This elder brother of theirs no doubt resembled them, though he was his grandson.
His heart was full of tenderness toward his lost Sophy's child, as passionate as the bitter resentment he felt against Sidney. It would be impossible to say which was the stronger. His whole nature was in a tumult. The keen and profound anger he felt against Sidney when his mind brooded over his treacherous friendship to himself, alternated with a still keener exultation as the thought flashed across him that he was Sidney's father-in-law, and the grandfather of his heir. He, the old saddler of Apley, insignificant and poor, was still the grandfather of the future squire. He wished that Sophy's son had been the heir to Apley, which was a finer place than Brackenburn. What a glory and a joy it would have been to pace down the village street and up the broad avenue to his grandson's Hall! Though this glory could never be his, his spirit was greatly exalted within him at the thought of his grandson being the owner of Brackenburn in the future.
He walked the few miles between the station and Brackenburn, for he was a vigorous old man, and not accustomed to hiring conveyances. But he was tired by the time he reached the point in the road from which the black and white, half timber house was first visible. It disappointed him more now than it had done before, when he visited it on Philip's coming of age. This old, irregular pile of buildings, with its many gables and the old golden-gray stone wall shutting it in, which so delighted Dorothy and Philip, contrasted unfavorably in Andrew's eyes with the massive frontage and mullioned windows of Apley Hall. It seemed more than ever a studied and suspicious injustice to hide his grandson out of the way in this solitary farmhouse.
From the point where he stood the great moors, putting on their robes of purple heather and golden gorse, could be seen stretching behind the house up to the horizon. It was early in July, and the midsummer sun lighted up the undulating ground, displaying every patch of bracken and of gorse, with the rough, jagged teeth of rock thrusting themselves upward everywhere in their midst. To Andrew's eyes, accustomed to southern cultivation, the moors seemed a dreary and wild desert, fit only for tramps and gypsies to squat in. He could see no path across them; the road on which he stood ran down to the house in the dingle, but stopped there. All the deserted region beyond was bare and trackless moorland. It seemed to check his exalted visions of his grandson's glory. This place was the inheritance of Sophy's son.
But he would see him righted, if Sidney meant to wrong him. This deserted child should not be cheated of his birthright. He strode down the long road in the hot afternoon sunshine, weary and sore at heart. But he was about to see his grandson, and to tell him, if no one had yet told him, of the prosperous future that lay before him, of the riches that had been accumulating for him, of the place he would take in England. All his suspicions and bitterness did not prevent his troubled heart from beating with high hopes, or his aged frame from trembling with eagerness to embrace his daughter's son.
He approached the house with some caution, for in spite of his love for Philip he could not shake off the misgiving that he would be willing to supplant his unwelcome elder brother. The high, gray wall which surrounded the house hid him from sight until he reached the double gates hung upon massive stone pillars. Beyond them lay the forecourt, paved with broad slabs of stone, and opposite to the gates stood the wide, hospitable wooden porch, which protected the heavy house door, studded with nails. Andrew paused for a minute or two, gazing through the iron gates. On the steps of the porch lay a man basking in the sunshine like a dog. He had kicked off his boots, which lay at a little distance from him, and his bare feet were stretched out on the heated pavement. They were bruised and scarred, as if they had never been protected against winter frosts, or the piercing of sharp rocks. This man's hands were even worse than his feet: misshapen, clumsy, frost-bitten, covered with warts and corns, one finger altogether gone, and his nails worn down into the hard skin. His face wore the same disfiguring marks of constant exposure to extreme changes of heat and frost. His front teeth were gone, and his skin furrowed with coarse wrinkles. His hair was cut short, but it was scanty, tangled, and matted. Many an English tramp would have looked a gentleman beside him. Andrew gazed at this strange figure with curiosity. Probably this man, if he belonged to the place, as he seemed to do, for he was comfortably smoking a pipe, was one of his grandson's foreign servants. Yet he looked too uncivilized, too savage to be even a servant. He ought not to be lying there in front of the house—the stables were too good for him. Down south, nearer London, no gentleman would put up with such a scarecrow about his place. But his clothes were good, though he had divested himself of most of them, and laid them under his head as a pillow. Martin must learn that such a rough fellow must not lie on his front doorstep.