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.