Chapter XXXIX: 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.