heart! Why should I forgive him?"
"Because you pray to God to forgive you as you forgive others," she said.
"But I've never trespassed against God," he answered, "as this man has trespassed against me, God Himself being the judge. Let me be for a while. Perhaps some day, when I see my grandson riding by with gentlemen like himself, rich, and prosperous, and happy, and, maybe, a member of Parliament, then I may by chance forgive his father. But I cannot do it now—not now. I've a great deal to sum up and get over before I can forgive him."
Late on in the night Andrew Goldsmith was poring and brooding over every word in Sophy's letter. He lived over again the years of distraction, bordering upon insanity, which had intervened between Sophy's disappearance and the return of Colonel Cleveland to the Hall with his daughter Margaret and her husband Sidney Martin. He called back the memory of the singular fascination Mr.
Martin had exercised over him; and his old, troubled heart was very sore as he thought of all his loyal friendship to the man who had so deeply wronged him. "And he was my son-in-law all the time," he said to himself. If he had owned his marriage, and brought his son to his own house to be educated as his heir, Andrew would gladly have kept in the background, content with an occasional sight of his grandson. But now he would spread the story far and wide. Mr. Martin, who had been ashamed of his lowly marriage, should be more bitterly ashamed of his treacherous secrecy. His love for Margaret and her sons was swallowed up in his hatred of her husband, his own son-in-law.
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."