Half Brothers

by Hesba Stretton

To Sidney, the cheerful loyalty with which Philip came to aid him to rescue his son was full of reproach. He felt, too, that Dorothy and Philip were taking the affair out of his hands, and that his part was almost a passive one, that of a spectator. These young creatures who a few months ago looked up to him as an infallible oracle and the arbiter of their lives, now stood beside him, nay, even before him, covering with the strength of their youthful hopes, and their certainty of success, the feebleness of his own doubtful and perplexed judgment. They talked of Martin as though sure of redeeming him from his ignorance and savagery, and fitting him to fill the position he was born to; while Sidney could see in him only a man whose habits of mind and body were unalterably rooted, a monster to whom he had given life, and who was about to become his master. They, youthful and idealistic, with no knowledge of the world, and but little of their own nature, were ardently pursuing their object, blind to what he saw so clearly, the long monotony of slowly passing years to come, when Martin, with his ingrained savagery, would become a daily burden, full of care and shame to all of them. If only he could save Margaret and his boys from that burden!

The long, silent hours of watching passed on, and Phyllis grew fretful with the tedium of waiting. Every quarter of an hour sounding from the clock tower made the time seem longer. The stars glittered in the almost frosty sky; and the moon, now waning, threw a sad, white light upon the sleeping town. There had been no sound for an hour or more, when at last a stealthy, creeping footfall reached their straining ears. The two girls stole silently to the balcony, and leaned cautiously over the parapet. In the dim light Phyllis saw a wild, half naked creature, bare-headed, with long, rough hair matted about his face, scraping together the fragments of food thrown out into the street for the dogs. It was a horrible sight to her, and she uttered a low scream as she fled back into the room, which startled his frightened ears. He was darting away when Dorothy called to him: "Martino!"

It was his own name that this white vision of an angel was calling; and he hesitated in his intended flight, looking up again to see if she was still there, and did not vanish away.

"Martino!" she said again in her foreign accent, "we are your friends."

"Si, signora," he answered.

"Martino!" repeated a friendly voice beside him, and he felt a hand laid gently on his bare arm, "we are your friends."

He turned round with a start of terror; but the face he met was that of the young English gentleman whom he had seen a few days ago, before Chiara died, and who had given him the silver coin, which he carried carefully concealed in his rags. He knelt down again to him, laid his hands on his feet, muttering and mumbling his recognition and delight. Philip glanced round to the dark doorway where his father stood unseen. What must he be suffering in seeing such a sight as this?

"Get up, Martino," he said, trying to raise him from his abject posture, "we are your friends," he repeated, at a loss for words. "Father," he continued in a low voice, "come and speak to him. You know his language better than I do. Oh! if I could only make him understand how much my mother and I pity him!"

Sidney approached his sons cautiously. For a moment Martin stood as if about to take a sudden flight; but the sight of an Englishman alone pacified him; there was no need to be afraid of him. They were very rich, these English; Chiara had always said so; they could give him enough money to buy the right of building a little hut for himself in some place on the mountains, where he could keep goats and sheep. He stood quietly, therefore, watching them from under his shaggy eyebrows, while Philip still held him by a slight yet firm grasp, of which he was unconscious, so light his touch was. They waited, both of them in silence, for their father to speak.

But Sidney could not speak. He had seen Martin for only one moment before, when he fled past him from the infuriated mob that had burnt Chiara's hut over his head. Now he stood close beside him: a strongly built man, with thews and sinews of iron, yet worn looking, with bowed shoulders and stooping head, as though even his great strength had been overtaxed with too many labors and hardships. His squalid face, the almost brutish dullness of its expression, the untamed savagery of his whole appearance, were too revolting to Sidney. Here was his own folly, his own sin personified. He could have hated this monster but for the remembrance of Margaret.