Half Brothers

by Hesba Stretton

Martin's tutor conscientiously spent a regular number of hours in attempting to teach him; and he did his best to make him sit down to the table at meals and take his food like other people. But Martin was both obstinate and obtuse. In his childhood he had not been permitted to imitate the children about him; and the imitative faculties continued dormant in his manhood.

Occasionally, to please Philip, he had consented to sit down with him and Hugh to a meal, and tried to do what they told him, but for nobody else was it worth while to take so much trouble. He was learning, with the slow and weary progress of an adult, the difficult accomplishment of writing, his crooked and frost-bitten fingers traveling laboriously over the paper, forming characters he did not understand. He was learning, a little more easily, how to read; but here again his progress was hindered by his want of comprehension. For, wisely or not, he was being taught in English, and, as yet, English was a tongue without meaning to him.

The best time for Andrew was when Martin accompanied him on the moors. The old man was still hale and strong, and could pass all the hours of the day out of doors, provided he was not always in movement. Martin, too, was only happy in the open air, and he liked lounging about, sitting for long spells under some moss-grown rock, as he had been accustomed to do when he was tending Chiara's herds. Like savages, he was capable of prolonged and extreme muscular exertion when necessary; but necessity alone could drive him to make any effort, excepting when a wild impulse possessed him to try his great physical strength. Usually he was content to loiter about, with a pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, the impersonation of sluggish laziness. For hours together these strange kinsmen—the vigorous old man, with his hot heart of indignant love beating in his time-worn frame, and his grandson, with all his faculties and affections undeveloped—strolled about the wide moorland, unable to exchange a word, and communicating with one another only by looks and gestures.

To Martin, all that had happened to him had the incoherence and marvel of a dream. Chiara's death had first broken the melancholy monotony of his life, and immediately followed this extraordinary change in his circumstances. He accepted it, but he could not comprehend it. He found himself supplied with all he wanted, without any effort of his own; he no longer worked for many long hours for coarse food in scanty quantities, nor was he roughly roused from his sleep at the first dawn of the morning. No voice spoke in angry tones to him, and no face scowled upon him. Yet he did not enjoy the dainty meals set before him at regular and stated intervals, instead of being snatched and devoured with a watchful, and anxious, and savage glee. He was called upon to submit to incomprehensible restraints upon all his actions. Moreover, he was sensible that there was a vast difference between himself and these strange people who surrounded him; a far greater difference than he had felt when living among the petty tyrants, whom he hated, but who were familiar to him. There had been a certain zest and enjoyment in hatred, which was missing in this new life, where there were no enemies or oppressors. Besides this, though he had never consciously felt the spell of the mountain peaks among which he dwelt, the broad, wide sweep of the moorland, rising gradually up to a softly undulating line against the sky, was irksome and painful to him; why, he knew not. A deep, passive dejection fell upon his spirit, and drove every thought of his slowly awakening mind inward. There was nothing in him of the child's spontaneous action of the mind outward. He had suffered from tyranny and persecution; he was now suffering from nostalgia, and utter weariness of his uncongenial life.

The first day the snow began to fall Andrew's vigilant eye detected the tears falling down the rugged cheeks of his grandson. He ran out into the forecourt and stood still for the soft flakes to fall upon his bare head, and hands stretched out as if to give them a welcome—the welcome we give to messengers from a beloved land. He looked down at the print of his feet on the white carpet, and immediately took off his boots, and trod upon it barefooted, as if with reverence of its purity. All day long he wandered about the moors, his face lit up with an expression that was almost a smile. Andrew, who did not care to accompany him into the frosty air and bitter north wind, watched him from a garret window, now taking long and rapid strides across the snow-clad uplands, and now standing motionless for many minutes, his bare head bowed down and his arms hanging listlessly by his sides, until the snowflakes had covered him from head to foot. What was he thinking of, this poor son of Sophy's? What did he remember? Was he really of sound mind; or was it true, as all the country folks were saying, that he was a poor, witless innocent? Could nothing be done to arouse him, mind and soul? Was there no way of undoing the wrong that had been done?

So the dark months of November and part of December passed by, and Rachel wrote that Mr. Martin and all the family were coming to keep Christmas at Brackenburn instead of Apley. To meet Sidney again, and stay under his roof almost like a guest, was more than Andrew could brook; so he took himself away to Apley to spend a lonely Christmas in his old home.

CHAPTER L.
FATHER AND SON.

Sidney had not seen his son since his arrival in England. There had been no necessity for doing so; and he shrank from the great pain of coming again into close contact with him. But this meeting could not be avoided forever, and Margaret, who felt a keen sympathy with her husband while recognizing his duty toward his eldest son and heir, urged her plan of spending Christmas in Yorkshire. Nearly six months had elapsed, and she hoped that Martin would be in some degree reclaimed from his almost brute condition.

For days before the arrival of the family the old Manor House was undergoing a process of cleaning and beautifying which was bewildering and irritating to Martin. Carpets were laid down on all the floors, and large fires were kept burning in every room. Flowers were blooming everywhere, and ingenious decorations of holly and ivy and mistletoe hung upon all the walls. His tutor was gone away for the holidays, and Andrew had disappeared. The small, stagnant pool of his existence was being stirred to its depths, and this fretted him. He did not know at all what it meant; and on the day when the family were expected, when everybody was ten-fold busier than before, he wandered off early in the morning, and his absence was not noticed by the occupied household.