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.