Chapter XXXIV: A Forced Confession

In fleeing as swiftly as she could from Cortina, Margaret had no intention of deserting Sophy's son. But it seemed essential to her to get away from the spot for a little while, that her brain might be clear enough for thought. They stopped, then, at Toblach, at the entrance of the Ampezzo Valley, and only half a day's journey from Cortina. It was a relief to her to hear that Philip had already telegraphed for his father, and as he must pass through Toblach they waited for him there.

The tumult in Margaret's mind calmed a little, but still she shrank from gathering up the threads of what she had heard at Cortina and weaving them together. Sophy Goldsmith lay buried there, and her son was living and bore the name of Martin. Philip had been recognized as being like the man who had deserted her and left her to die. Her mind constantly recurred to these points. She reproached herself vehemently for suffering any doubt of Sidney to invade her love for him. Her love was so deep and vital that it seemed impossible for doubt to undermine it. If any human being could know another, she felt that she must know her husband's nature; and treachery and vice were abhorrent to it. She did not call him faultless, but she had seen none besides the little flaws and errors which must always hang about frail humanity--such as she was herself guilty of. "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults," was a prayer often in Margaret's heart; and she had never been prone to mark little sins, such as men and women outgrow, if their path be upward. Sidney's whole life lay before her in the clear and searching light of their mutual love and close companionship; and looking at it thus she refused to believe any evil of him, and tried to shut her eyes to the black cloud dimming her horizon.

But there could not but be times when doubt and suspicion stole like traitors into her heart. There was no doubt in her clear brain that it was Sophy Goldsmith who was lying in that forsaken grave, and that the wretched pariah she had seen was Andrew Goldsmith's grandson. That was terrible enough; a most mournful discovery to come upon after so many years of faint hope, and of constant grief. But if the man who wrought all this misery, and was guilty of this base treachery, should prove to be Sidney! It was incredible; it was madness to believe it.

All this time Margaret did not cease to trust in the love of God, and in his love toward all men. Though fierce tempests troubled the very depths of her soul, below them was a deeper depth, not of her own soul, but of that Eternal Spirit in whom she lived, and moved, and had her being. She was conscious of resting in this love. But a child resting in its mother's arms, and on her breast, may suffer agonies of pain. So Margaret suffered.

Sidney was in London when Philip dispatched his first message from Cortina. It was evening when he sent it, and the first thing the next morning it reached his father's hands. Margaret had written from Venice as soon as their departure had been decided upon; but Sidney had not as yet received the letter. Philip's telegram, therefore, came upon him like a thunderbolt falling out of a clear blue sky. He had felt no forewarning of this danger. Their route on their return from Venice had been settled before he left them, and so accustomed was he to arrange and direct the movements of all about him, that no apprehension of any change of plan had crossed his mind. It was only of late that the conviction that his son was a man, and one who would assert and enjoy the freedom of manhood, had been thrust upon him. It was evident that Philip had felt himself man enough to change his route homeward as it pleased him.

They were in Cortina; but if they were merely passing through there was but little risk of them learning Sophy's fate. He must get them away from the dangerous place immediately. For a few minutes he was at a loss how to do this. Then the plan of setting off himself for Munich on business occurred to him; and to ensure Philip's prompt compliance he resolved to take Phyllis with him. He sent a messenger to bring her hurriedly to London, and they started at night, Phyllis in a whirl of delight and triumph at Sidney's surrender to her. They were well on their way to Munich before Philip's second telegram reached London.

But when they arrived at Munich, instead of his wife and son awaiting him at his hotel, he found Philip's message repeated in a telegram from his confidential clerk. Then his heart sank and was troubled. This summons to Cortina indicated too plainly that his sin had found him out. His sin! From one point of view--the lenient judgment of a man of the world--it did not seem a very grievous one. It was nothing worse than the too close concealment of a boyish blunder. His first wife had been dead years before he married Margaret; and he had confessed this secret marriage to her father. With most women there would be tears and reproaches, followed by forgiveness. But Margaret would have a point of view of her own. What would she feel about the ugly fact when she learned that Sophy had died alone and deserted? Still more, what would she feel about the prolonged concealment as it affected Andrew Goldsmith and her favorite maid, Rachel? But for these things he might have reckoned upon her full pardon.

Phyllis was traveling with him, and demanded a good deal of his attention. She was a little exacting as a companion, and could not sit in silence for an hour together. Her spirits were high, for she felt that now indeed Sidney's objections to her marriage with Philip were overcome, and that he must consent to an early date for it. When she kept silence for half an hour she was settling weighty questions about her trousseau, and wondering if Sidney could not be managed in such a way as to be persuaded to give her a handsome sum toward the purchase of it. She knew her father could not spare her a tenth of the money she would wish for. How delicious it was to be rich! Sidney never gave a second thought to any of the expenses of their luxurious mode of traveling; and before long this would be her own experience. "Sovereigns will be like shillings to me," she said to herself, and the thought made her very happy. Every whim of her heart would be gratified when she was Philip's wife.

In the meanwhile Philip was suffering less than his mother, but with more certain knowledge of facts. There was no conflict in his mind between love and suspicion. His love for his father, whom until lately he had loved passionately, seemed to be scorched up in the fierce fire of his indignation. He had been guilty of the meanest perfidy, and all his after life had been one of shameful hypocrisy. As Philip wandered solitarily about the beautiful pine woods at Toblach, he wore himself out with thinking of old Andrew Goldsmith, and his lifelong grief, with his loyal devotion to the man who was dealing treacherously with him, who month after month, and year after year, had let him hunger and thirst for the knowledge of his daughter's fate, and had withheld the truth from him. He thought of his mother, too, whose steadfast, tender affection for his father had been his ideal of a happy married love. How would these two, who were most closely concerned with it, bear the discovery? How would their lives go on after they knew it?

When Sidney and Phyllis arrived at the little station at Toblach they found Philip and Dorothy there to meet them. Dorothy welcomed him with her usual frank delight at seeing him, and she received Phyllis with shy friendliness. But Sidney saw in an instant that, as far as Philip was concerned, his worst fears were realized. He looked as if years had passed over him; and not even the coming of Phyllis brought a gleam of pleasure to his face.

She unwound the long gauze veil in which she had enveloped her head, and looked up at Philip with a coquettish grace.

"All this way have I traveled to see you," she said archly, "thousands and thousands of miles, and you look as grim as if I was a horrible fright."

"No, no, Phyllis," he answered, taking both of her hands in his. "If I could feel glad at anything it would be to see you again. But my mother is ill----"

"Ill?" interrupted his father. "Your mother ill? Take me to her at once."

"I have something to tell you first," said Philip in a low voice. "Dorothy will take Phyllis to the hotel; and, if you are not too tired, will you come with me a little way along the road yonder?"

"I am not tired," answered Sidney.

They walked away from the station toward the entrance of the Ampezzo Valley. Every step of the road was familiar to Sidney, for it was at Toblach he had waited for Sophy, when he had left her in a boyish passion so many years ago. The boy walking beside him was the very image of what he had been then. He glanced at him again and again, in the promise of his immature manhood, scarcely a man yet, but full of a force and vigor, both of mind and body, not yet tempered and solidified by the experience that later years would bring. Philip strode along with the sternness of a youthful judge. His heart was very hot within him. It was his father on whom he sat in judgment, or he would have poured out his wrath in uncontrolled vehemence. He did not know how to begin to speak to his father.

"Well, Philip," said his father, at last, when they were quite out of sight and hearing of their fellow-men.

They had wandered down to the margin of a little lake, in which the pale gray peaks were reflected faultlessly. The wind moaned sadly in the topmost branches of the fir trees surrounding them, and overhead a vulture was flying slowly from crest to crest, and uttered a wild, piercing cry as Sidney's voice broke the silence.

"Philip!" he repeated, looking imploringly into his son's face.

"Father," he said, "I have found out what became of Sophy Goldsmith."

They were simple words, and Sidney expected to hear them, yet they came like a deathblow from his son's lips. There was in Philip's voice so much grief and wonder, such contempt and indignation, that his father shrank from him as if he had given him physical pain. If his sin had but found him out in any other way than this! For Philip was dearer to him than all else--except, perhaps, Margaret. His love, and pride, and ambition, centered in his son. He had discovered how precious he was to him during that long journey to Venice, when the dread of his death had traveled with him. And now it was Philip who spoke in those unmerciful tones, whose stern face was turned away, as if he could not endure to look at him. The bitterness of the future would more than balance the prosperity of the past if his son was alienated from him.

"Philip," he said in hesitating words, "I loved her--just as you love Phyllis. I was as old as you. I could not give her up. And my uncle would never have consented. It was a boyish infatuation. I did not love her as I love your mother--my Margaret!" he cried with a sharp of pain in his voice; "but just as you love Phyllis, I loved Sophy, and I dared not run the risk of losing her. I cannot cut you off from your inheritance, let you marry as you please, but my uncle could have thrust me upon the world a penniless man."

"Do you think I could ever forsake Phyllis?" asked Philip with scorn.

"Not as you are; probably never," answered his father; "for she could never be so unfitted to be your daily companion as Sophy was to be mine. To be linked with a woman who is immeasurably your inferior is a worse fate than any words can tell. She was not like her father, or Rachel. She was vain and ignorant, vulgar and passionate. We had terrible scenes together before we parted; and I did not intend to forsake her. Listen, and I will tell you how it came about."

"I was but a boy, no older than yourself," he said as he finished his account.

"But when did you know that she was dead?" inquired Philip.

"Not till after I knew your mother and loved her," he answered. "I let things drift till then, always dreading that Sophy would make her appearance and claim a position as my wife. Then I sent out a confidential man to make inquiries, and he learned her sad fate. I sinned, Philip; but my punishment will be harder than I can bear if I lose the love of my wife and children."

"But why did you desert your son?" Philip asked.

"My son?" he repeated.

"Yes," continued Philip bitterly, "your first-born son, the child of Sophy Goldsmith! How often you have called me your first-born son! Oh, father, why did you desert my elder brother?"

Sidney stood speechless. His first-born son, the child of Sophy Goldsmith! This beloved boy here, in whom he had taken so deep a pride; who had been all he could wish for in a son; his heir, for whom he had worked and striven so hard to make for him a great place and a great name in the world, was not his first-born. There was an Ishmael risen up to dispute his inheritance with him.

"Philip!" he exclaimed, "you are deceived, cheated. There was no living child."

"But I have seen him," persisted Philip. "He is living near Cortina still. And I recognize a likeness to you. All the people know that he is the son of the English girl who died there thirty years ago. I have a letter here from Sophy Goldsmith; and there are no proofs missing to establish Martin's claims."

He gave the letter into his father's hands, and strolled away along the margin of the lake, that Sidney might be alone as he read it. Philip felt how terrible a moment this must be in his father's life; and a new and pacifying sense of compassion sprang up amid the fierce fire of his indignation. It was no longer a man in the prime of life, with the shrewdness, and wisdom, and experience of life, who had been guilty of this base act, but a youth like himself, who had drifted into it through the adverse current of circumstances. When he heard his father's voice calling to him presently, he went back with a feeling of fellowship toward him. His father's face was gray and drawn, as if he could hardly bear his anguish, and his voice was low and broken.

"My boy," he cried, "forgive me! Have pity upon me!"

"Oh, I do!" said Philip, clasping his hand and holding it in a grasp like a vise, while the tears came into his eyes. "I pity you, father; I pity you with all my heart!"

"Does your mother know all this?" inquired Sidney after a while.

"She knows something," he answered, "but not through me; and she has not spoken to me. I made up my mind to see you and tell you all before you met her."

"That was right," said Sidney.

There was another silence, for their hearts were too full for words, and their thoughts were busy. It was Sidney who spoke first.

"It would break your mother's heart to know all," he said, "and we must not acknowledge this man as my son. Listen to me before you speak. He is a man now; and he would be miserable if we took him away from all his old surroundings, his home, and his friends. It would be good for him to remain as he is. I will make him a rich man; richer than any of his neighbors. But he must not come to England; he cannot take your place. Does anyone but you know that he is my son?"

"No," answered Philip.

"Then for the sake of everyone concerned we must keep this secret to ourselves," continued his father. "I would not ask you to do it if we had to sacrifice this man's happiness or welfare; but he would be tenfold happier and better off here, in his own place, than in England as my son and heir. That must not be, Philip. Do you think he could be otherwise than wretched in England?"

"He is wretched now," said Philip, as the recollection of the poor, persecuted outcast of the little hamlet came vividly to his mind.

"I will make him a rich man," said his father, "rich and prosperous. He shall have all his heart can desire; but I cannot acknowledge him as my son."

"Oh, father!" exclaimed Philip, "no money can undo the wrong you have done him. He has led the life of a brute, and is as ignorant as a brute. He has been browbeaten and trampled on all his life. They have made a slave of him, and money will do him no good. It is we who must lift him out of his misery, and care for him, and teach him all that a man of thirty can learn. Don't think of me. Surely I can bear this burden; I have no dread of being a poor man. But I could never forsake my brother. If he is your son, he is my brother, and I owe him a brother's duty."

"Your mother must know, then?" said Sidney in a tone of entreaty.

"Yes," he answered.

"It will break her heart!" exclaimed his father.

"My mother would rather have her heart broken than that any wrong should be done," replied Philip.