Half Brothers

by Hesba Stretton

And now! Philip could not face the horror of the thought that was waiting to take possession of his mind. He roused himself angrily, and stood up, crushing the letter and the portraits into his pocket. A path went beyond the hamlet, leading upward toward the crest of a pass lying between two ranges of mountains. He strode hastily along it, as if he were pursued by an enemy, passing through pine woods, and over torrents of stones, which many a storm had swept down from the precipices above him. Some massive thunderclouds had gathered in the north, and the snowy peaks gleamed out pale and ghost-like against the leaden sky. But his eyes were blinded, and his ears deafened. Yet he was not thinking; he dared not think. A miserable dread was dogging his footsteps along an unknown path; and presently he must summon courage to turn round and confront this dread.

He reached at last the top of the pass, where three crosses stood out strongly and clearly against the sky. Three crosses! Not only that on which the Lord died, but those on which every man must hang, weary and ashamed, at some moment of his life. He sat down beneath the central one, and leaned against the foot of it. It was his Lord's cross; but on each side stood the cross of a fellow-man—the man of sorrows, and the man of sins. He, too, was come to the hour when he must be lifted up upon his cross. He must be crucified upon it, perhaps in the sight of men, certainly in the sight of God. He had come to it straight from the conviction of the presence of God; and looking up to the three empty crosses, he cried out, "Lord, remember me."

Then, with hands that shook, and with dazed eyes, he read the long letter, which Sophy had written years before he was born. And as he read he found the burden less intolerable than he had dreaded it would be. His father had not been as base as his first miserable suspicion had vaguely pictured him. Sophy Goldsmith had been his wife; and Philip, counting how many years were passed, saw his father a young man like himself, loving her as he loved Phyllis, but with far less hope of ever gaining the consent of his friends to such a marriage. He, too, would have married Phyllis, in spite of all opposition; only not in secret.

His brain grew clearer with this gleam of comfort. Then the thought came that the miserable, half savage peasant whom he had seen that morning, being Sophy's child, must be his father's first-born son, and his own brother. It was his father's eyes he had seen, and partly recognized, when he first looked into Martin's face. His brother Martin! He thought of his brother Hugh, between whom and himself there existed the strongest and most loyal brotherhood. Hugh had stood by him through all his difficulties about Phyllis, and approved of his choice of her with the warmest approbation. But this barbarous, degraded, forlorn wretch, an outcast among the lowest people—how could he feel a brother's love for him?

If the eldest son—then the heir! The estates in Yorkshire were strictly entailed upon Sir John Martin's male heirs, as his mother's lands were settled upon Hugh. This man, scarcely higher than a brute, must take from him the inheritance which had seemed to be his all his life. Why! he, Philip Martin, would be a poor man, a man who must work for his living. This was a new aspect of the case, and one which aroused him from the deeper depths of his dismay. This discovery suddenly and completely changed his whole life.

It was not he who would some day be Philip Martin of Brackenburn—nothing would be his. Now he could marry Phyllis without opposition, for he would be as poor as she was. He was not afraid of poverty; he had no practical acquaintance with it, and Margaret had trained her sons into a fine contempt of mere wealth. There would be a worthy object in setting to work now, for he would have a wife and family to maintain. That was far better than simply making more money to invest or to speculate with.

But what ought he to do? This was a secret of momentous importance concealed by his father for nearly thirty years. It had come suddenly to his knowledge; and what must he do with it? And now, his heart having shaken off the worst of its burden, his mind was clear enough to recognize the hideous and insane selfishness of his father's conduct. Before he knew who it was that had deserted this young girl and her unborn child, he had felt a strong indignation at his baseness and cowardice. What could have made his father, who seemed the soul of honor, act in such a manner? He had been guilty of a great crime, and the man sent to discover it was his own son.

Lifting up his eyes from the ground, on which they had been gloomily bent, Philip saw the uncouth figure of his elder brother crouching and half hidden under one of the thieves' crosses. His bare feet had brought him noiselessly along the road; and he shrank a little from his observation, as if he was afraid of some sharp rebuff. The deep-set eyes glowered at him much as a dog's will do when he is not sure of what reception he will get. There was something wild and desolate about this solitary figure which touched Philip's inmost heart; and yet he could give him no welcome to a place there.

Must he tell his mother? It would be like piercing her to the soul with a sword. He knew well what keen and tender sympathy she had felt for the Goldsmiths, both when Sophy first disappeared and during all the succeeding years of alternating hope and despair. It was this sympathy that had won Rachel Goldsmith's profound devotion to her beloved mistress. How his mother must suffer when she learned that the husband she loved and honored so perfectly had been living a base and cruel lie at her side, witnessing all the sorrow of the family he had wronged, and pretending to share in it. He could imagine her bearing his father's death, but he could not imagine her bearing his dishonor. His mother must suffer more than he did.

Philip roused himself at last to go down into the valley; the afternoon was passing by, and his mother would be getting anxious at his absence. He said "Addio" to his silent companion; but he was conscious, without looking back, that Martino was following him. He felt glad when he reached Cortina, on glancing round, to see that he was at last alone. Dorothy was standing on the balcony outside his mother's bedroom, and she leaned over, with a laughing face, to reproach him for being away so long.