CHAPTER LI.
THE GROWTH OF A SOUL.
Dorothy gave herself up to the task of humanizing Martin with great enthusiasm. Her success was naturally greater and more rapid than that of the tutor or old Andrew. She undertook to teach him to read, and arguing it was best to teach him in Italian until he knew more of English, she began to teach him from a little book she had bought in Italy, one which was a great favorite of her own for its quaint and simple legends. It was the "Fioretti di San Francisco."
A pretty picture it was to all the other members of the household to see Dorothy seated in a high-backed oak chair on the hearth, with the fire light playing about her, while Martin, squatting on a low seat beside her, read diligently from the book on her lap, marking each word with his rude forefinger. Often she read aloud to him in hesitating accents, for the language was still strange to her; but the very slowness and difficulty of her utterance made it easier for him to comprehend. Sidney and Margaret themselves sat listening to the gentle and childlike beauty of these "Flowrets of S. Francisco," and watching the kindling intelligence of Martin's face. His soul was developing under Dorothy's tender care. On the snow-clad moors, also, Dorothy made herself his constant companion. In all weather, except when the snow was whirling in a bewildering network of closely falling flakes, she was ready to go out with him, and Philip, and Hugh, guiding them to places known only to herself. She could show them the winter dens of many a wild creature; and Martin learned from her that he was not to kill them. Once she led them to the edge of a deep, narrow dell, invisible from a little distance, and under the brow of it was a cave hewn out of the rock, a cave so similar to his place of refuge on the mountains, that Martin uttered a cry of mingled astonishment and delight. It was like a piece of home to him.
Later on, when the others had gone back to London, Dorothy persuaded Sidney to procure for him, from that far-off Austrian valley, one of the curious, quaint old crucifixes which stand at every point where crossroads meet. She had it placed near the entrance of this cave; for, she said, if it awoke a thought, or gave him a glimmer of religious light, it was right for him to have it. When he came upon it first, unexpectedly, he threw himself on his knees before it, and burst into a passion of tears. It was a symbol familiar to him from his earliest days; the only place of refuge, where, if he could reach it, he was safe from the blows of his tyrants.
So evident was Martin's rapid development, that Margaret decided to remain with Dorothy after Sidney and Philip had returned to London. She was deeply interested in this growth of a soul under her own eyes. Martin was learning to make broken sentences in English; and she marked his progress with constantly increasing pleasure in seeing him overcome difficulties.
To Martin these winter months were less wearisome than the summer and autumn had been. The snow made the moors a more familiar ground, and in these long, dark afternoons, if Dorothy was out of the way, he could creep into the kitchen, and crouch down in the chimney nook smoking a pipe, undisturbed by the servants, who were still busy at their work. Margaret and Dorothy sat chiefly in the great hall, which Martin liked next best to the kitchen; large screens were drawn round the hearth, and huge fires kept burning, and there Martin would lie on the warm bearskins, with Dorothy's dogs around him, while she read the "Fioretti di San Francisco." Most things were irksome to him still; he could never wear the shackles of civilization easily. But he was changing and developing. By and by they would reap the harvest of the seed they were sowing.
The Easter holidays brought back Philip for a few days. In his eyes the transformation was marvelous. Martin had submitted to wearing boots and a hat; at any rate, when he went out with Dorothy. He sat down with them to their meals, and could even make his wants known to the servants in intelligible words. He was learning to ride, and he was willing to sit in the carriage quietly when they drove to the nearest town. His eyes followed Dorothy, and he was obedient to her slightest sign. He watched her as if to see if he displeased her in any way. When she looked at him his dull face brightened with a rare smile, which had a strange and pathetic attraction in it, like a sudden and transient gleam of sunshine on a dreary, wintry day. The doglike allegiance he had displayed toward Philip was plainly transferred to her.
Was there any touch of jealousy in the uneasiness which Philip felt at this new phase of his brother's character? A vague, indefinable apprehension of some new danger took hold of him at the sight of this constant companionship between Martin and Dorothy. He recognized in his own mind that Martin was still a young man, and that there was a simple charm about Dorothy that few men of any rank in life could be indifferent to. Was Martin too dense a barbarian to feel it?
Though more civilized in other respects, Martin had not yet learned to sleep before he was sleepy. His hours of slumber were still as irregular as his hours of eating had been at first. Late one night, when all the rest of the household were long ago asleep, Philip found him on the hearth in the hall, sitting on his low stool beside Dorothy's chair. His deep-set eyes were glowing under his shaggy eyebrows like the embers on the hearth.