FAILURES.
Sidney's disappointment at the failure of this new scheme almost
equaled Andrew's. He had built a good many hopes on the chance of
Martin's marriage, for Margaret dwelt much on the humanizing influence
a wife and children would have upon him. But Rachel secretly rejoiced
in her brother's discomfiture; and Mary, who could not be brought to
fall into the scheme, watched its failure gladly. Neither of them
could believe it would be a good thing for Philip.
Nothing could be more melancholy than Martin's life became. At Cortina
he had been miserably oppressed, every man's hand being against him;
but he had been so fully occupied by the heavy tasks exacted from him
by Chiara that time had never hung heavily on his hands. The very
hatred and tyranny he had suffered from, and the deprivations he had to
undergo, supplied that spice of excitement without which existence is a
tedious monotony. A deep disgust of life took hold of his half
awakened mind. In former days the struggle for existence had occupied
him. That hunger, which hardened him to a long and patient effort, as
he stealthily followed and trapped some wild animal, was no longer
felt; his food was brought to him oftener than he needed it, and he ate
more than was good for him out of sheer want of employment. The sound,
dreamless sleep that came to him on his heap of straw in Chiara's hut
did not visit the soft, comfortable bed, which his aunt Mary took care
to make herself every morning, that the feathers might be kept downy.
Even his outdoor life was no longer a perilous climbing of peaks with
deep precipices and abysses, which compelled him to give a strained
attention to every step; it was a dull loitering over a safe plain,
with an old man always jogging on beside him, and a smooth horizon
bounding his view. He was too ignorant to know what was ailing him,
body and mind; but nostalgia held him in its dread embrace, and life
was becoming an insufferable burden to him.
Now and then the heavy cloud lifted, and a gleam of light reached him.
Philip came down as often as he could spare a day or two, and his
flying visits were Martin's only sunshine. He was at last beginning to
realize that this grand signore was indeed his brother. If he knew
when he was to come he watched all day for the moment when he could set
out to meet him. If Philip came unawares his transport of gladness
more than once brought the tears to Philip's eyes. But his father's
visits produced in him a feeling of anxiety, and almost of terror. He
was afraid of him, and this fear flung him back into his original
moroseness and barbarism in his father's presence.
His longing to see Margaret and Dorothy was intense, but he never gave
expression to it. Only when kneeling before the crucifix, near the
entrance of his cave, did he utter either of their names. In this
place alone did he find any moments of comparative freedom from the
mysterious malady which was consuming him. The damp, rocky roof and
walls, the hard, rough floor, the utter stillness and wildness of the
place were like a bit of his old life when he sought refuge in his cave
on the mountains. Sometimes, when he managed to elude the vigilance of
his grandfather, he made his way to this spot, and felt, for an hour or
two, something of the restful, satisfied feelings we all enjoy when we
are at home. When, as he stood at the low mouth of the cave, and
lifted up his heavy eyes to the worn, grotesque, pathetic figure of
Christ upon the cross, that familiar sight on which his childish gaze
had so often rested, then he could almost fancy that a step or two
would bring him out upon the sharp, ice-bound peaks, where the biting
wind would string up his relaxed frame, and send the blood tingling
through his languid veins.
The summer and autumn passed by, but Margaret and Dorothy did not
return to Brackenburn. Sidney intended to keep Christmas there again,
and their visit was reserved for the winter. Philip and Hugh also,
though they spent a week now and then shooting on the moors, did not
give up the whole of the long vacation to Martin, as they had done the
year before. Some of the time was spent at Apley, where their
intercourse with their cousins at the Rectory had returned to its
former channel, excepting with Phyllis, whose absence when Philip was
staying at the Hall was as regular as his presence there.
Laura was for once perplexed and uncertain. She could not forget that
though Philip was at present only a medical student he might some day
be a millionaire. She had means of setting an inquiry afloat as to
Sidney's position in the city; but the answers she got were
contradictory, and in consequence unsatisfactory. Ought she, in
Phyllis's interests, to attach him once more to her? or should she see
him carry off a rich heiress like Dorothy before her very eyes? She
could not forgive herself for having been too precipitate in breaking
off his long engagement with Phyllis, but she did not think it would be
impossible to renew it.
She summoned Phyllis home early in October, while Philip was still at
Apley, in order to see how the young people would conduct themselves
toward one another. But fortune did not favor her. Philip and Dorothy
met Phyllis unexpectedly in the avenue between the Hall and the
Rectory. The color mounted up to Philip's face, and there was a slight
embarrassment in his manner; but Phyllis was quite self-possessed, and
spoke to him in a cordial and cousinly tone.
"Why! Philip, it is ages since I saw you," she said gayly, "and now
you have quite a professional air. Pray do not ask me after my health,
dear Dr. Martin. I cannot let you feel my pulse, or look at my tongue."
"I need not," he answered; "you never had anything the matter with you,
and you have not now. I wish some of our poor hospital patients had
your chances of keeping well."
"He talks of the hospital immediately," she rejoined, tossing her head,
"and he smells of his drugs. O Philip! Philip! that you should come
to this! You are a lost man."
"I suppose I am," he said, laughing; "I am lost to my old life, but I
like the new one as much. Phyllis, it seems like a hundred years since
I saw you."
"That is what makes you look so old," she retorted; "a hundred years,
added to the twenty-three I know of, must make a tremendous difference.
How much more aged you are than me!"
"Do you think he looks older?" asked Dorothy rather anxiously. "Mrs.
Martin is afraid he works too hard, and she is troubled a little about
it."
"So are you," rejoined Phyllis.
"Yes, I am," she replied steadily, yet a little shyly. She was more
disturbed by this unexpected meeting than either of the other two were.
It seemed to her that it must be inexpressibly painful to them both,
and that it would be better for her to go away.
"Well, good-by," said Phyllis airily; "here is the gate. Open it for
me, and shut it behind me, or we shall have your Scotch cattle in our
glebe. We shall see you at the Rectory soon, Philip?"
Philip opened the gate, and he and Dorothy stood in silence watching
her, until, as she turned a corner that would hide her from their
sight, she looked round and kissed her hand to them.
"How pretty she is!" exclaimed Philip. It astonished him that he felt
so little agitation upon seeing her for the first time. She was very
pretty; very fair. "But if she be not fair for me, what care I how
fair she be?" he said to himself, feeling the very spirit of Wither's
old poem. The face beside him, not so faultless as Phyllis's, was more
beautiful to him for its expression of almost timid sympathy with his
supposed grief. Dorothy's eyes looked wistfully into his.
"I cannot understand how or why I loved her," he went on in a low tone.
"I suppose it was because I grew up with the idea that she was to be my
wife. Not at home, but at the Rectory she was always called my little
wife. So it grew with my growth."
"It must have been a great sorrow to you," murmured Dorothy.
"It was the uprooting of a fancy, not a sorrow," he said; "I am
thankful it was torn up like the weed it was. A weed! Yes; and it
would have been a noxious weed, poisoning my whole life. It is
compensation enough for losing the position for which Phyllis would
have married me."
They walked on under the overarching trees, with the setting sun
throwing long shadows before them as they moved side by side. A few
fallen leaves lay upon the road, or whirled merrily around them in the
evening wind.
"There is only one girl who is like my mother," he said suddenly, "and
if I could hope to win her--if it was in years to come--if she would
wait for me----"
"Who is it?" asked Dorothy tremulously, as he paused; and she looked up
into his face with a pained expression. So soon to have forgotten his
love to Phyllis--and to love again!
"Why, Dorothy!" he exclaimed, "there is nobody in the world like my
mother but you! Don't you feel it? My father is always pointing it
out. Will you not some day forget my foolish fancy for Phyllis, and
believe that I love you, and only you, with all my heart? I have loved
you ever since we were at Cortina and found out poor Martin."
Dorothy made no answer. Her heart beat so quickly that she knew she
could not control her voice or her tears if she attempted to speak.
Her love for him dated farther back than his for her.
"You think me fickle, and that I fall in love too easily," he said in
tones of deprecating earnestness, "but set me a time, let me prove
myself in earnest. I had not seen you when I was inextricably bound to
Phyllis. Oh! I love you quite differently; I think of you as if you
were my conscience. I try to see myself as you see me; and when I do I
feel how unworthy I am of you."
"No, no," she answered, between laughing and sobbing; "unworthy of me!"
"Then you will give me time to prove that I love you," he said, "and to
give me a chance of winning your love."
"There is no need of that," she whispered.
"Is that true?" he cried, seizing her hands, and gazing eagerly into
her face. "Do you mean that you have loved me, blind idiot that I was?
Do you mean that you were not disgusted by me when I was playing the
forlorn lover, and must needs be sent abroad to cure me of my folly? O
Dorothy! if I could only make you forget what a fool I made of myself!"
"I was so sorry for you," she said pityingly, "and I would have done
all I could to save you from your sorrow. But it is best as it is,
perhaps."
"A thousand times best!" he exclaimed. "Ever since we were at Cortina
you have been in my heart of hearts; and I understand a little now the
sacred mystery that a true marriage must be."