"You may do all you can to promote such a marriage," he replied; "and if Martin is married before next Christmas, we shall be only too glad."
He returned to Apley the next day with a sense of relief in the hopeful prospect which Mary's words had opened to him. It was not improbable that Martin would marry this girl, and if he did, he might lead a secluded and tolerably happy life in the old house at Brackenburn, and gradually fall into occupying himself on the farm that was attached to it. Once suitably married, Martin would be no longer so great an anxiety to them all, and he himself might live down the aspersions so lavishly cast upon his reputation. Martin's children should be brought to Apley at an early age, and, though he would not separate them too much from their parents, they should grow up under his own and Margaret's care. To them he might make that atonement which he could never make to his son.
Andrew Goldsmith rejoiced greatly in the success of his scheme, to which Mary had withdrawn all her opposition. Selina was brought to live at Brackenburn. She was something like Sophy—pretty, lively, and pettish. To exchange her drudgery at the small post office and shop, where she had been glad to earn fifteen pounds a year, for the grandeur of living at a manor house, with very little to do, seemed at first an immense step in life to her girlish ambition. Andrew had rather plainly hinted at what a height she might climb to if she chose, but to his intense disappointment and dismay, Selina seemed much more shocked at Martin's rough ways and bad manners than Miss Dorothy herself was. He had seen Dorothy carry Martin his food from the dining room to the porch, when he refused to sit down to the table, and many a time had Martin persisted in walking barefoot beside her on the turfy moors. But Selina declared she could not put up with his coarseness and vulgarity, and she seemed more inclined to devote herself to winning the admiration of Martin's tutor.
Andrew insisted upon Selina accompanying them often in their rambles on the moors, rambles irksome and tedious to her beyond measure. There was nothing to be seen there save earth and sky. Martin paid but little heed to her. Like all the rest, she could not talk to him. Those who knew his language were gone away, and how long it would be before they came again he did not know. This girl, whose voice was loud and shrill, and who laughed all the time a little giggling laugh, except when she was sulky, who had strange antics, shaking her head at him, and holding up her finger, and pointing here and there, was altogether unlike his signorina, or the gracious and stately lady who was now his father's wife. He liked his rambles best alone, though he could tolerate the companionship of the old man, his grandfather, who was always silent, but who looked at him often with loving eyes. It did not escape his notice that, since his foiled attempt to find his way to London, he was never left long alone but one or other of his guardians sought him out. The fancy took possession of him that Selina had been added to their number to be another spy upon him.
Andrew Goldsmith's impatience was extreme. He was angry with Selina for failing to win his grandson's love, and angry at the thought of Martin not marrying. That would be a triumph for his enemy. If he could only argue with Martin, he fancied something could be done, but all he had to say must be translated by the tutor, who was in Sidney's pay. This barrier of language between himself and Sophy's son was another of the wrongs Sidney had inflicted on him.
CHAPTER LIV.
FAILURES.
Sidney's disappointment at the failure of this new scheme almost equaled Andrew's. He had built a good many hopes on the chance of Martin's marriage, for Margaret dwelt much on the humanizing influence a wife and children would have upon him. But Rachel secretly rejoiced in her brother's discomfiture; and Mary, who could not be brought to fall into the scheme, watched its failure gladly. Neither of them could believe it would be a good thing for Philip.
Nothing could be more melancholy than Martin's life became. At Cortina he had been miserably oppressed, every man's hand being against him; but he had been so fully occupied by the heavy tasks exacted from him by Chiara that time had never hung heavily on his hands. The very hatred and tyranny he had suffered from, and the deprivations he had to undergo, supplied that spice of excitement without which existence is a tedious monotony. A deep disgust of life took hold of his half awakened mind. In former days the struggle for existence had occupied him. That hunger, which hardened him to a long and patient effort, as he stealthily followed and trapped some wild animal, was no longer felt; his food was brought to him oftener than he needed it, and he ate more than was good for him out of sheer want of employment. The sound, dreamless sleep that came to him on his heap of straw in Chiara's hut did not visit the soft, comfortable bed, which his aunt Mary took care to make herself every morning, that the feathers might be kept downy. Even his outdoor life was no longer a perilous climbing of peaks with deep precipices and abysses, which compelled him to give a strained attention to every step; it was a dull loitering over a safe plain, with an old man always jogging on beside him, and a smooth horizon bounding his view. He was too ignorant to know what was ailing him, body and mind; but nostalgia held him in its dread embrace, and life was becoming an insufferable burden to him.
Now and then the heavy cloud lifted, and a gleam of light reached him. Philip came down as often as he could spare a day or two, and his flying visits were Martin's only sunshine. He was at last beginning to realize that this grand signore was indeed his brother. If he knew when he was to come he watched all day for the moment when he could set out to meet him. If Philip came unawares his transport of gladness more than once brought the tears to Philip's eyes. But his father's visits produced in him a feeling of anxiety, and almost of terror. He was afraid of him, and this fear flung him back into his original moroseness and barbarism in his father's presence.