Chapter XLIX: Winter Gloom

Andrew and Mary Goldsmith left their old home in Apley, and went north to take charge of Sophy's son. It was a great change in the lives of people so old. Instead of their small, snug kitchen, and their shop, with its outlook on the familiar street, they dwelt in large, wainscoted rooms, separated by long, wandering passages and galleries, through which the autumn winds moaned incessantly, and from the windows they saw only the deserted moorland. The caretakers, who had been accustomed to have entire charge of the place, remained in it as gardener and cook; and a groom and housemaid had been hired for the extra work, caused, not by Martin, but by the tutor who had undertaken to teach him the bare elements of learning and the simplest customs of civilized society. Mary Goldsmith found herself at the head of this little establishment, not without some feelings of pride in the importance of her position; and Andrew was installed as master and guardian of his grandson. It was a great change from their homely life at Apley. Yet, with all the discomfort of the change, there was a lurking sense of pleasure in being the nearest of kin to the heir of the estate.

On the other hand, Martin was a source of constant anxiety and mortification to them both; but Andrew took the mortification most to heart. He loved his uncouth barbarian, who was Sophy's son, with a very deep though troubled love. There could be no interchange of ideas between them, except by gesture: for Andrew was too old to learn Martin's stammering patois, and Martin appeared quite unable to recollect the few English words his tutor tried to fix upon his memory. The tutor, who knew Italian well, though he was not versed in the patois of the frontier between Italy and Austria, soon learned Martin's very limited vocabulary, and also his narrow range of mental sensations. But between Andrew and his grandson there was no means whatever of communication by speech. The old man would sit patiently for hours watching the dull, coarse face of the clumsy peasant, whose favorite postures were lying huddled up on the ground, or squatting on his heels with his knees almost on a level with his ears. Sometimes he fancied his grandson responded to his wistful gaze with a gleam of intelligent affection in his eyes; and now and then Martin would offer him a pipe if he was not provided with one. There was a certain amount of friendliness in this act.

Martin's tutor conscientiously spent a regular number of hours in attempting to teach him; and he did his best to make him sit down to the table at meals and take his food like other people. But Martin was both obstinate and obtuse. In his childhood he had not been permitted to imitate the children about him; and the imitative faculties continued dormant in his manhood.

Occasionally, to please Philip, he had consented to sit down with him and Hugh to a meal, and tried to do what they told him, but for nobody else was it worth while to take so much trouble. He was learning, with the slow and weary progress of an adult, the difficult accomplishment of writing, his crooked and frost-bitten fingers traveling laboriously over the paper, forming characters he did not understand. He was learning, a little more easily, how to read; but here again his progress was hindered by his want of comprehension. For, wisely or not, he was being taught in English, and, as yet, English was a tongue without meaning to him.

The best time for Andrew was when Martin accompanied him on the moors. The old man was still hale and strong, and could pass all the hours of the day out of doors, provided he was not always in movement. Martin, too, was only happy in the open air, and he liked lounging about, sitting for long spells under some moss-grown rock, as he had been accustomed to do when he was tending Chiara's herds. Like savages, he was capable of prolonged and extreme muscular exertion when necessary; but necessity alone could drive him to make any effort, excepting when a wild impulse possessed him to try his great physical strength. Usually he was content to loiter about, with a pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, the impersonation of sluggish laziness. For hours together these strange kinsmen--the vigorous old man, with his hot heart of indignant love beating in his time-worn frame, and his grandson, with all his faculties and affections undeveloped--strolled about the wide moorland, unable to exchange a word, and communicating with one another only by looks and gestures.

To Martin, all that had happened to him had the incoherence and marvel of a dream. Chiara's death had first broken the melancholy monotony of his life, and immediately followed this extraordinary change in his circumstances. He accepted it, but he could not comprehend it. He found himself supplied with all he wanted, without any effort of his own; he no longer worked for many long hours for coarse food in scanty quantities, nor was he roughly roused from his sleep at the first dawn of the morning. No voice spoke in angry tones to him, and no face scowled upon him. Yet he did not enjoy the dainty meals set before him at regular and stated intervals, instead of being snatched and devoured with a watchful, and anxious, and savage glee. He was called upon to submit to incomprehensible restraints upon all his actions. Moreover, he was sensible that there was a vast difference between himself and these strange people who surrounded him; a far greater difference than he had felt when living among the petty tyrants, whom he hated, but who were familiar to him. There had been a certain zest and enjoyment in hatred, which was missing in this new life, where there were no enemies or oppressors. Besides this, though he had never consciously felt the spell of the mountain peaks among which he dwelt, the broad, wide sweep of the moorland, rising gradually up to a softly undulating line against the sky, was irksome and painful to him; why, he knew not. A deep, passive dejection fell upon his spirit, and drove every thought of his slowly awakening mind inward. There was nothing in him of the child's spontaneous action of the mind outward. He had suffered from tyranny and persecution; he was now suffering from nostalgia, and utter weariness of his uncongenial life.

The first day the snow began to fall Andrew's vigilant eye detected the tears falling down the rugged cheeks of his grandson. He ran out into the forecourt and stood still for the soft flakes to fall upon his bare head, and hands stretched out as if to give them a welcome--the welcome we give to messengers from a beloved land. He looked down at the print of his feet on the white carpet, and immediately took off his boots, and trod upon it barefooted, as if with reverence of its purity. All day long he wandered about the moors, his face lit up with an expression that was almost a smile. Andrew, who did not care to accompany him into the frosty air and bitter north wind, watched him from a garret window, now taking long and rapid strides across the snow-clad uplands, and now standing motionless for many minutes, his bare head bowed down and his arms hanging listlessly by his sides, until the snowflakes had covered him from head to foot. What was he thinking of, this poor son of Sophy's? What did he remember? Was he really of sound mind; or was it true, as all the country folks were saying, that he was a poor, witless innocent? Could nothing be done to arouse him, mind and soul? Was there no way of undoing the wrong that had been done?

So the dark months of November and part of December passed by, and Rachel wrote that Mr. Martin and all the family were coming to keep Christmas at Brackenburn instead of Apley. To meet Sidney again, and stay under his roof almost like a guest, was more than Andrew could brook; so he took himself away to Apley to spend a lonely Christmas in his old home.