"The very first day, too!" she said. "And oh! if you only knew how vexed I am! There is a telegram from your father, very pleasant for you, but most disagreeable to me."
He ran upstairs at hearing this news, no longer afraid of meeting his mother, and she gave to him the telegram.
"Going to Munich on business," it ran; "proceed immediately—meet there. Taking Phyllis."
"But there is a great festa in the village to-morrow," said Dorothy, "and as it is too late to proceed immediately, we are going to stay for the morning and go on to Toblach in the afternoon. We shall reach Munich before your father and Phyllis can be there. And oh, Philip! the bells are ringing carillons as if they were chimes in heaven."
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A VILLAGE "FESTA."
Philip went down to the presbytery and had a short interview with the padre. Chiara was dying at last; the sacraments had been administered to her, and her life could not linger on through many hours. What did the English signore propose to do for his penniless countryman?
Philip answered briefly that he would take steps to restore him to his family. He then went to the telegraph office and dispatched another message to his father. "Received yours. Urgent reasons for your presence here."
He would accompany his mother to-morrow to Toblach; but he could not quit the neighborhood until something could be decided about his brother. His brother! He stood still abruptly in the village street, with a half laugh of stupefied amazement. His brother! It must be some egregious blunder of his own imagination; his brain had been weakened by the fever. He turned away into a by-road and cautiously took out the letter and the morocco case. No, that was his father's portrait; he recognized it too well. The eyes looking out of the faded daguerreotype resembled the sad, frank, frightened eyes of the oppressed and persecuted outcast.
He did not venture indoors again until dinner time, and immediately after dinner he complained of fatigue. Margaret went to his room before going to bed herself, entering very softly through the door between their two chambers lest he should be sleeping. He knew she stood for a minute or two beside him, shading the lamp with her hand; but he dared not move or speak. She bent over him and laid her lips on his hair that she might run no risk of awakening him. He had never loved her so much as at this moment, and he longed to throw his arms round her neck and tell her what was troubling him, as he had done when he was a boy not so very long ago. But he could not tell her this sorrow; would it not crush her to death? Would to God he could die if his death would save her!