Chapter XLIII: 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.