"But now I could see Phyllis again to-morrow," he went on, "and not feel grieved. Let us go back to Apley; at least you and Dorothy. You left home on my account; but it is too far away here. It would be better for my father to have you at home again, or in London. Come home again, mother."
"Poor Martin!" she said, with a troubled face.
But as she thought over what Philip had told her, Margaret felt that it was time to separate Martin from Dorothy. She took Rachel Goldsmith into her confidence, and she agreed with her. It seemed a preposterous thing to Rachel that Martin should deprive Philip of his birthright, and that so much importance should be attached to his education at so late a period of his life.
"The best thing for him," she said, "would be to set him up in a little farm, and give him cows and sheep and pigs to tend; he'd be ten times happier than here. There's no common sense in the laws, if they say our Sophy's son is to take the place of your son, my lady; and to his own misery too. I'd say nothing if anybody was the better for it. But it is just the ruin of my brother Andrew. And to think of him falling in love with Miss Dorothy! when the scullery maid would think twice before she married him!"
"Poor fellow!" sighed Margaret. "Poor fellow!" she said many times to herself during the next few days, as preparations were made for their departure. Dorothy also was full of pity for him, and devoted every hour of the day to him. She visited with him all their favorite haunts, which were growing to her more beautiful with the touch of spring upon them, though to him the vanishing of winter brought regret. She read to him once more the "Fioretti di San Francisco," and heard him read over and over again the first few chapters, which he had mastered under her tuition, or perhaps learned by heart merely. But Dorothy, though grieved and troubled for him, was glad to go south. Her spirits rose high at the thought of how short a distance would separate her from Philip, and the still more pleasant thought that he was willing to make Apley his home again, shrinking no more from the sight of Phyllis. It was with a light heart, saddened for a few minutes only by Martin's face of moody melancholy, that she quitted Brackenburn.
The old house fell back into its former dreary stillness. Andrew and Mary Goldsmith returned to take charge of it; and the tutor resumed his routine duties of educating and civilizing Martin. But Martin was duller and less apt than before. Dorothy had left with him her "Fioretti," telling him to ask his tutor to read to him, and to let him learn out of it. But the book was too precious to him; alone he spelt through the chapters she had taught him, but he would let no one else touch it. If he must learn to read it should be in English, out of his dog's-eared primer. But he could learn no more.
There was again nothing to do during the long days which the advancing spring brought. When the east winds blew bitterly over the moor he lay silent and still in the warmth of the fire; when the air was heated by the rays of the sun, which was mounting every day higher into the heavens, he basked, silent and still, in its warmth. Andrew again attached himself as the constant companion of Sophy's son, though between them must ever stand the barrier of different tongues—a barrier which neither of them could cross. There were a hundred things Andrew wanted to say to him, especially to warn him against cutting off the entail, when he was dead, but it could not be done. The two were seldom apart, though they could exchange no thoughts. The persistent, dogged affection of this old man, his grandfather, won its way some what into Martin's heart. He grew accustomed to his presence, and missed him if he was absent.
The one person who rejoiced most in Margaret's return to Apley was Sidney. She had been more separated from him these last few months than she had ever been since he first knew her. It struck Margaret that his burden pressed more heavily upon him than it did at first. The parliamentary session had been running its course, and he, who was an ardent politician, stood outside the arena. Many of his former colleagues, possessing only a partial knowledge of the events of the last years, treated him with thinly disguised contempt or studied neglect. Even in Apley and its neighborhood the faces of old friends were estranged, and their manner chilling. He was no longer the public favorite.
Sidney felt this change bitterly and profoundly. It had always been his aim to surround himself with kindly and smiling faces, which should meet his eye wherever he looked, even to the farthest circle of his sphere. His servants and dependents almost idolized him, and he had succeeded in gaining popularity among his equals. Now all faces seemed changed and critical. Even God's face was turned away from him. He was walking in heaviness and darkness of soul, such as he had not known before his sin had found him out, and while his conscience was satisfied with mechanical and superficial religion. His path was strait where it had once been broad and pleasant. Still, deeper down than this surface conscience of his, and this heaviness of soul, in his inmost spirit, touched by no other spirit than God's, there was a stirring of life and love such as he had never known before, which no words can shadow forth, and no mind save that which feels it can conceive.
It was a necessary consequence of this intrinsic change that he and Margaret should draw nearer to one another. He understood now what had been mysterious and incomprehensible in her. There was in a degree the same sense of closer union and mutual comprehension between him and the rector. While other faces were turned away, these two shone upon him with a diviner light of love and friendship. But there was no one else. Even Dorothy, with all her sweetness, was judging him, balancing the scales of justice with the severe evenhandedness of youth with a bandage over its eyes. Philip had passed beyond him, and stood higher than he in his youthful probity and honor. They were right; he had been guilty of a great wrong.