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.