FATHER AND SON.
Sidney had not seen his son since his arrival in England. There had
been no necessity for doing so; and he shrank from the great pain of
coming again into close contact with him. But this meeting could not
be avoided forever, and Margaret, who felt a keen sympathy with her
husband while recognizing his duty toward his eldest son and heir,
urged her plan of spending Christmas in Yorkshire. Nearly six months
had elapsed, and she hoped that Martin would be in some degree
reclaimed from his almost brute condition.
For days before the arrival of the family the old Manor House was
undergoing a process of cleaning and beautifying which was bewildering
and irritating to Martin. Carpets were laid down on all the floors,
and large fires were kept burning in every room. Flowers were blooming
everywhere, and ingenious decorations of holly and ivy and mistletoe
hung upon all the walls. His tutor was gone away for the holidays, and
Andrew had disappeared. The small, stagnant pool of his existence was
being stirred to its depths, and this fretted him. He did not know at
all what it meant; and on the day when the family were expected, when
everybody was ten-fold busier than before, he wandered off early in the
morning, and his absence was not noticed by the occupied household.
It had been dark for an hour or two, when Martin shambled across the
forecourt and into the porch on his return. The large glass doors
which separated the porch from the hall were uncurtained, and he crept
in without noise to look through them cautiously. The place was
altogether transformed. There was a huge fire of logs and coal burning
brightly on the hearth, with a many-colored square of carpet laid
before it, and chairs drawn up into the light and heat. Great bunches
of red holly and pots of scarlet geranium gave bright color to the
hall. A woman, grander and more beautiful than he had ever seen,
richly clad in purple velvet, sat in one of the high-backed chairs, and
standing near to her was the English signore, who called himself his
father. It seemed to his dull and troubled mind, as he stood outside
in the dark, that this must be the other world, where the saints dwelt,
of which the padre had sometimes spoken. Could this be the Paradiso to
which Christians went after masses had been said to get them out of the
Purgatorio? There was the Inferno, where his mother was, and the
Purgatorio, and the Paradiso. But this place was too beautiful to be
anything but the Paradiso; and these grand and beautiful beings were
the inhabitants of it. He was gazing, with a vague sense of it being
impossible for him to enter in, when he saw other figures descending
the broad, shallow staircase slowly, side by side. The one was the
gracious and radiant vision he had seen in Cortina, the other was his
lost friend, his brother, his master, Philippo.
His joy was the joy of a dumb animal on seeing a beloved master
suddenly reappear after a mysterious, inexplicable absence. He burst
open the door impetuously, and rushed in, covered with the snowflakes
that had been lodging half frozen in his hair and beard for the last
hour or two. He flung himself before Philip clasping his knees with
his arms, and uttering uncouth cries of delight and welcome. For the
moment he had relapsed into the savage again; the heavy, clumsy frame,
the ragged face, down which the melting snow was running, the bare feet
and head, inarticulate cries, all seemed to show that no training, no
process of civilizing, could make him other than the confirmed savage
that he was.
"Margaret, I cannot bear it!" exclaimed Sidney, as if appealing to her
for strength.
"It is only for the moment," she said softly; "he is excited now. And
see how fond he is of Philip. That is a good thing for him. Remember
how short a time six months is to undo the work of thirty years. And
Mary Goldsmith tells me he has no great faults, such as he might have
had. She thinks he is learning every day to be something more like
other people. He is your son, Sidney--our son; speak to him."
She had not seen him since the festa at Cortina, and she regarded him
now with intense interest. His face was certainly more intelligent
than it was then; the scared look upon it was gone, and it bore a
stronger likeness to Andrew Goldsmith. There was even a slight
resemblance to Philip, by whom he was now standing, and on whose face
his eyes were riveted with an expression of contentment. His hair and
beard were cut short and trimmed, not hanging in matted locks, as when
she saw him first. He wore a rough shooting suit, not unsuitable for
Philip; and the chief points of oddity in his appearance were his bare
head and feet. But Mary was right, thought Margaret; in time he would
look like other people.
"Martin!" said his father in a raised voice, louder than he was himself
aware of. Martin started and turned away from Philip, approaching
Sidney with a cowed yet dogged air. He did not take his outstretched
hand.
"Do you know who I am?" asked Sidney in Italian.
"Yes, signore," he answered, "my father."
They stood looking at one another. The one man was twenty-two years
older than the other, yet they seemed almost of the same age. Martin
was prematurely aged, broken down by persecution, and weatherworn by
exposure and want; his father was unbent, strong, and vigorous in mind
and body, still in his prime, and only during the last six months
showing any sign of his fifty-two years being a burden to him. There
was something so pitiful in the contrast, that Philip walked away out
into the porch; and Margaret and Dorothy clasped each other's hands and
looked on with tear-filled eyes.
"Oh, my father!" said Martin, speaking as if his soul had at length
found an outlet in words, "this is the Paradise, and I am not fit for
it. I know nothing. You are a great signore, and I am nothing. We
are far away from one another. My mother is in the Inferno; Chiara and
the padre said it; no masses can be said for her soul. Let me go back
to the mountains. I am not fit to live with great signori. My mother
calls to me here," and he laid his hand on his heart, "'Come back,
Martin, come back!' and I must go. Send me back to the mountains."
Dorothy loosed Margaret's hand and stepped swiftly to Sidney's side,
putting her hand fondly through his arm. He looked down on her with an
expression of irretrievable sadness.
"Listen to me, my son," he said, speaking very slowly and distinctly.
"I did a great wrong when I left your mother, and I did a greater wrong
in not seeking to know if you lived or not. I never knew you were
born. If I had known it, you would have lived with me; and now you
would be as Philip is, like him in every way. Look round you. When I
die this house will be yours, and you will be a rich man. Do you
understand?"
"Yes, signore," he answered, with excited gestures, "I shall have much
money and much land. But now I have nothing. Give me some of the
money now, and let me go back and buy a farm in Ampezzo. They will be
my servants now; nobody will pelt me with stones, and shout after me,
and turn me out of the church. They will give me a chair there, and
the padre will take off his hat to me. Perhaps they will say masses
for the soul of my mother, when I am a rich man. Send me back, oh, my
father!"
"Will you go away and leave your brother Philip?" asked Dorothy in
hesitating accents. For though she had been diligently learning
Italian for some months, she was afraid Martin would not understand
her. He looked at her in amazement, and a gleam lighted up his
furrowed face.
"The signora knows what I say!" he exclaimed; "these other people here
know nothing. I want to speak, and they stare at me. I am a fool in
their eyes. But I can speak now to the signora, and to my father, and
to Philippe. It is better now."
"Martin," said Sidney, "you must stay here, in England, till you are
more like an Englishman. In a year or two I will take you back to
Cortina, and you shall choose where you will live. But this house and
these lands are yours, and they will be your son's when you die. It is
best for you to live in your own house and your own country."
"Stay with us," pleaded Dorothy, looking compassionately into his sad
eyes. "Nobody loves you there, and we love you. I will teach you to
be like your brother Philip. I used to live here, and I will show you
places you have never seen. Stay with us, Martin."
"But my mother calls me," he answered. "They will say no masses for
her soul if they do not know I am a rich man."
"I will send them money for it," replied Dorothy. "Besides, it is a
mistake, Martin; your mother is not in the Inferno."
He listened to her as if she had been the Madonna he had fancied her
when he first saw her. A heavy sob broke through his lips, and then a
cry of exultation. The chief burden that had weighed upon his spirit
slipped away and fell from him. The deepest stigma of his life was
removed; and in this he was like other men, that his mother, whom he
had never seen, was dwelling in the same place as the mothers of other
men.