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.
Passing through the gates, Andrew approached this wild figure with
somewhat slow and hesitating steps. No one else was in sight to whom
he could speak, and all the sunny house seemed asleep, except this
strange, uncouth man. But there was something in the sad, marred face
which appealed to his very heart; a dumb, pathetic appealing gaze, such
as looks out of the eyes of a dog, and that seems yearning to express
in words the feelings that lie forever imprisoned in his almost human
nature. The eyes of the stranger, gleaming from under his shaggy
eyebrows, looked into his own with a gaze that was familiar to him. It
shook Andrew to his inmost soul.
"Who are you?" he asked hurriedly. "You cannot be anybody I ever saw
before. I am come to see Mr. Martin, Sidney Martin's eldest son.
Where is he?"
The man rose to his feet and lifted up his hand in salutation, standing
before him in an almost abject attitude. The skin on his bare arms and
breast was tanned to a deep brown and covered with short hair. He
mumbled some indistinct syllables in reply, but not a word that Andrew
could comprehend.
"Who are you? what's your name?" asked Andrew, raising his voice as if
he fancied the foreigner was deaf. In another minute footsteps were
heard in the silent house, and Philip himself stepped out of the hall
into the porch.
"Andrew Goldsmith!" he exclaimed.
"Yes, me, Mr. Philip," said Andrew excitedly, "I'm come to claim my
grandson, the child of my only daughter, my poor lost girl Sophy. I
know all about it, Mr. Philip, and my lady herself told Rachel. Why
didn't he come straight home with them to Apley Hall? What is he
hidden away here for? What are you going to do with him? I am his
grandfather, and have a right to know. Next to his father, he belongs
to me, and his interests are mine. Why did you bring him here?"
"Look at him, Andrew," said Philip.
Martin was standing a little way off, intently watching his brother,
with such a look of faithful love on his face as an intelligent dog
might have. Philip smiled at him, a sad smile enough, but it made
Martin laugh with delight. So dreary and insane was this sound, as if
Martin's lips had never been taught to laugh, that it always made
Philip's heart ache to hear it.
"No, no!" cried Andrew, retreating from the two brothers with an
expression of terror, "that cannot be my Sophy's son! No, Mr. Philip,
it is impossible. He's a savage, a Hottentot! he isn't my grandson.
Why! the poor fellow is almost an idiot. He can't be my Sophy's boy.
Tell me you're only playing a joke upon me."
"He is my brother," said Philip. "See! I will tell him so."
He said a few words in a language strange to Andrew, and Martin seized
his hand and held it to his lips, covering it with kisses. Then he
fell back into his customary attitude of abject submission.
"Sit down, Andrew," said Philip in a tone of authority. The old man's
face was pallid, and he was swaying to and fro as though unable to
stand; but he caught the sense of Philip's words, and stretched out his
hands like one groping in the dark. He felt it seized in Philip's
strong grasp.
"Sit here," he said, drawing him into the porch, "and when you are
yourself again I will explain it all."
It seemed to Andrew as if the hour of death was come. He had lived to
have the desire of his heart, had lived to know his girl's fate and to
see her child with his own eyes. Now let him die. Not as Simeon died
when he said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace." He
was about to depart in bitterness and desolation of soul, having seen
that which he had longed for; and behold! the sight was a horror and a
curse to him. There was a thick darkness gathering around him. Why,
then, did he not die? Philip's strong young hand was grasping his, and
his clear voice was speaking to him.
"O Andrew!" he said, "I was coming down to Apley to tell you, and
prepare you for seeing Martin, and then to bring you back here with me.
He is neither a savage nor an idiot. He is improving rapidly, and by
and by we shall bring him to Apley. But you would not have him there
at present, would you?"
Andrew felt his heart beat again, and the darkness began to give place
to the familiar light of day. He opened his eyes, and the ashy
paleness passed from his aged face. Now he looked up into Philip's
face, that face which had been so dear to him for many years.
"I will tell Martin who you are," he said.
But Martin seemed incapable of understanding it. He knew well that he
had had a mother, for had not everyone about him, from his earliest
childhood, given him an extra kick because she was lost in hell? But
that this unhappy mother should have had a father, who was still alive,
was more than he could comprehend. He stood looking vacantly at the
old man for a minute or two, and then crept away bareheaded and
barefooted to the gates. As soon as he was through them he set off at
a run, and they watched his tall, bent figure scudding over the
moorland till they could see him no longer.
"Yes, Mr. Philip," cried Andrew, with a groan, "yes, you're doing the
best for him and me. But I shall never lift up my head again, never
more."