Could this be true? thought Laura with a sinking heart. George might easily be mistaken, but then again it was quite probable that Sidney had made a large fortune by trade. Enormous fortunes were made in the city, and Sidney was always spoken of as a very successful man. Suppose he should be a millionaire! There was not the shadow of a doubt which of his sons his money would go to. Hugh was well provided for, and Martin would not get a shilling, more than was entailed upon him. Philip as a millionaire would be a better match than even an English landlord with a Yorkshire estate, worth only £10,000 a year. She wished she had been less hasty in breaking off Phyllis's engagement. It was that folly of Philip becoming a medical student which had led her astray. But then, would Philip be a millionaire?
CHAPTER LIII.
ANDREW'S HOPE.
A few weeks after Margaret and Dorothy left Brackenburn, a telegram reached Sidney in town from Martin's tutor: "Martin lost since dawn yesterday; searching moors."
The sense of loneliness and separation became intolerable to Martin after Dorothy was gone. The homesickness, if it could be called so in one who had never had a home, made him uncontrollably restless. There was not in all this vast expanse of moorland an object that could distract his brooding memory, and in the old house, with its now empty rooms, there was no one who could speak in his own language except the tutor, a kindly man enough, but with no special interest in his uncouth charge. Martin had borne his exile as long as he could. Now he would make his way down to London where Dorothy and Philip lived. His father also was there, and that beautiful, gracious signora, who called herself his mother, and who always looked at him with wonderful kindness in her eyes. When he saw them he would make them understand that he could not live in England any longer, and they would let him go back to Ampezzo, and buy him a farm there among the old familiar faces. No one would ill treat him any more when they saw how rich he was.
He set off in the clear gray of the dawn, just as the twitter of the birds began in every tree and hedgerow, and the silver drops of dew hung upon every leaf. It was barely a year since he had been taken from his mountain home, and his life of misery and oppression there; but to him it was as long as centuries. He recollected well enough what he had suffered; still he felt vaguely that, though his sufferings were different, they were not less in this strange country. He was like a blind man whose sight is partially restored, and behold! everything is dim, and monstrous, and full of terror; he dare not move lest he should come in contact with these menacing forms. All the new world to which Martin had been brought was out of keeping with him. He had no place in it. If he could only live like the farmers in the Ampezzo Valley, a hardy, sturdy, stalwart life, where his sinewy, clumsy limbs would be of service to him, there would be a chance of his being happy.
These impressions, like all others, were vague, but not on that account less powerful. He could not shape them into language, but he fancied if he could see Philip or Dorothy he could make them understand. But they were gone, these only beloved ones, and he did not know when he should see them again. He must follow them, or he would die. His wanderings took a southerly direction. It was natural to him to avoid passing through the streets of any town, and when he came near to one he turned aside and took a roundabout road. There was no hardship to him in sleeping out of doors at this time of the year, and he felt no inconvenience from the fact that he could not maintain a decent appearance. In the villages he passed through, buying food with the few shillings he possessed, he was taken for a foreign tramp, and well watched. The children sometimes hooted at him, but that was nothing; it was almost welcome, and he paid no attention to it beyond a flickering smile.
Meanwhile, in all the local papers, and very quickly in the London papers also, there appeared sensational paragraphs describing the disappearance of and search made for the son and heir of Sidney Martin. The whole story, with the old scandal, came to the front again. In the course of a few days the fugitive was found, and brought back to Brackenburn, whither his father and brother had hurried upon receiving the news. It was in vain to reproach him. He was a man, with a man's right to freedom, and not even his father was justified in keeping him under restraint as if he was a madman. A man who suffered from no sense of hardship when he was living out of doors, with little food besides wild berries and field vegetables, might spend the greater part of his time in these fitful wanderings, relapsing more and more into his original barbarism.
"Your mother and Dorothy cannot live here altogether to be his keeper," said Sidney to Philip, "yet it is evident his grandfather has no control over him. What more can we do?"
"You have done all you could, father," answered Philip, "and now I say, let him go back to Cortina, if he is so bent upon it; and we should not lose sight of him. It would be nothing to buy him a farm there."