Read Ebook: Half Brothers by Stretton Hesba

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Ebook has 1640 lines and 121808 words, and 33 pages

"Go home, my boy," answered his uncle, "and take a holiday. We can do very well without you."

Sidney was glad to get away. This unopened letter--which he had not dared to open in his uncle's presence--seemed of burning importance. Yet he felt sure it was nothing but the letter of directions he had left for Sophy when he quitted Innsbruck. All these months her fate had been a mystery to him. She had disappeared so completely out of his life, that sometimes it seemed to him positively that his marriage had been only a dream. From the moment of his return to England, he had been incessantly worried by the dread of her arrival, either at his uncle's house or at the offices in the City. More than once he had been on the point of telling his uncle all about his fatal mistake, but his courage always failed him at the right moment. Sometimes he felt angry at Sophy's obstinate silence, but more often he was glad of it. He felt so free without her. His understanding and intellect, his very soul, seemed to have thrown off some stifling incubus. He could enjoy art and music again. There was no silly girl to be jealous of his books. The brief, boyish passion he had felt was dead, and there could be no resurrection of it. It appeared monstrous to him that his whole life should be blighted for one foolish and mad act. If he only knew once for all what had become of her, and that she would never trouble him again, no regret would burden his emancipated spirit.

Instead of going home this morning, he took the train for Apley, a small town lying between London and Oxford, where he had first seen Sophy. On the way down he read his own letter to her, giving her minute directions for her journey. Yes, he had been very thoughtful, very considerate for her; if she had obeyed him, she would now have been awaiting his visit to Apley. He felt a great throb of gladness, however, that it was not so; and then the thought crossed his mind, like a thunderbolt, that possibly she had acted in the very manner he had suggested in the letter he held in his hand, all but his final instruction of letting him know of her safe arrival. If so, his wife and his child were now dwelling in the country town which he had just entered.

This idea opened up to him a great gulf, in which all his future life would be swallowed up. He did not feel any yearning toward his unknown child; it seemed but yesterday since he was a child himself--and yet what ages since! He walked slowly down the almost deserted High Street, and past the shop where he had first seen her. It was a small saddler's shop, with a man at work in the bow-window, and a show of bridles and reins festooned about the panes of glass. There were three steps up to the door; and he recollected well how Sophy looked as she stood, smiling and blushing, to receive his orders about the saddle he wanted repaired. He was staying then with Colonel Cleveland at Apley Hall, his uncle's oldest friend. How long ago it seemed--yet it was not three years! Oh! what a fool he had been!

He opened the closed door, and set a little bell tinkling loudly. The workman in the window took no notice of him, but a woman came forward from a back room. She was of middle age, and her face bore a strong resemblance to Sophy's. She looked at him with a faint, pleasant smile, though her eyes were sad, and her face pale. There was a gentleness and sweetness about her manner that made him feel uncomfortable and guilty.

"Can you tell me if any of the Clevelands are at home?" he inquired. He knew they were not, or he would not have ventured down to Apley.

"No, sir," answered Rachel Goldsmith, in a clear though low voice; "Colonel Cleveland is in Germany, I believe, with Miss Cleveland."

"I almost fancy," continued Sidney, "that I owe you a few shillings. I ought to pay interest if I do, for the debt has run on for three years or so. I was staying at Apley Hall, and had my saddle mended here. Do you know if it was paid for?"

"What date was it, sir?" she asked, opening a ledger that lay on a desk on the counter.

"Nearly three years ago," he replied, "as near as I can guess. A young lady took my orders; perhaps she may remember the date."

His voice trembled somewhat, but Rachel Goldsmith did not notice it. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly turn over the leaves.

"Is she at home? Cannot you ask her?" he inquired; and his pulse seemed to stand still as he waited for her reply.

"Sir," she said, closing the ledger, "we have lost my niece."

"Lost her!" he repeated, and the blood bounded through his veins again, and the color came back to his pallid face. Sophy, then, was not here!

"Yes," she said, with quivering lips, "but not by death. I could bear that and be thankful. But when those you love disappear, oh! nobody knows what the misery is. We do not know if she is dead or alive. I loved her as if she had been my own child; but she did not feel as if she owed me the duty of a child; and, when I thwarted her, she went away, and left a letter saying she was gone to London. We have never, never heard of her since, and it is now over a year ago. She is lost in London."

Rachel Goldsmith's voice was broken with sobs. But before Sidney spoke again, for he was slow in answering, she went on, with a glimmer of a smile at herself.

"You'll excuse me, sir," she said. "I tell everybody, for when you have lost anything no one knows who may come across it, or hear of it. Not that a young gentleman like you could have any chance; and my trouble cannot interest you."

"Oh! I am more interested than you think," he answered; "I cannot say how much."

"I have her photo here," she continued, "and it might chance that you should see her in London some day. And whatever she has been doing, oh! we'll welcome her home like a lost lamb. She's only a young, giddy girl, sir, and she'll make a good woman by and by. Not that I'm certain she's in London. For I've got a little scrap of writing from her three months after she went away, and it was posted in Rome. But she said she was only traveling, and when she came back she would live in London. I'm sorely afraid she has been deceived and led astray. But here is her likeness, sir, if you'd please to see it, and the note she wrote."

With a hand that shook visibly, she drew from her pocket a worn and soiled envelope and handed it to Sidney. He turned his back upon her, and went to the half-glass door to look at the contents. There was a fading photograph of Sophy, her pretty features set in a simper, and her slight figure posed in an affected attitude. But it was Sophy's face; and a pang of remorse, and almost of a love not quite dead, shot through his heart. He would have given half the fortune he was heir to never to have seen that face.

"Please read the note, sir," persisted Rachel Goldsmith.

It was an untidy scrawl, and there was a mistake or two in spelling; but Sidney felt the tears smart under his eyelids as he read the words.

"Dear father," wrote Sophy, "don't go to be fretting after me. I'm as happy as a queen all day, and living grander than you could ever think of. It has been a strange time since I saw you, but I shall come and tell you all about it as soon as ever I can. We are going to live in London when we come back; and my husband is a gentleman you never saw, nor never knew. You'll be as glad as I am when you know all.--Your loving Sophy."

"And that is all you know about her?" he asked, after a long pause, when he could control himself enough to speak with no more sympathy than should be shown by a kind-hearted stranger.

"All, sir, every word." she answered, wiping the tears from her eyes. "Of course, I shall never give up hope; and if prayers will bring her back, my prayers shall. Her father is my brother, and has his name over the shop, 'James Goldsmith'; and sometimes he's nearly mad about it, and sometimes he says she's married to surprise us all, and will come back a grand lady. Well! thank you kindly, sir, for listening to me: but I tell everybody, for who knows who may come across her some day?"

Sidney bade her good-by, and went his way. There was no trace here of Sophy; and as he traveled back to town he came to the conclusion that it was best to let the matter rest, and wait for any chance that time might bring. He had ruined his life; but, until the fatal moment of discovery came, he might still act as if he were not a married man. A reprieve had been granted to him, and he would live as if he were not a criminal.

WINNING THE WORLD.

Sidney Martin kept his resolve. He blotted out that fatal mistake he had made. Above it he built a fair edifice of energy, integrity, and honor. His uncle's heart delighted in him, and he won golden opinions from all his uncle's old friends. When John Martin died, he left Sidney not only his share as head of the firm, but landed estates in Yorkshire bringing in some thousands a year--all entailed upon his next heir male.

It was a brilliant position for a man under thirty, but no one could have stepped into it with more dignity and grace than did Sidney Martin. His co-executor was his uncle's old friend, Colonel Cleveland, who had lived chiefly abroad for the last ten years, and who naturally left everything in his hands. There were a few complimentary legacies, and some pensions left to old servants. Sidney was munificent in his payment of these bequests, adding gifts of his own to them as he paid them to his uncle's poorer legatees. On his cousin, George Martin, he settled at once the sum of ?10,000, and gave ?5000 each to George's married sisters. Their gratitude was very moderately expressed, but George's feeling of obligation to his cousin was sincere and deep. This provision would enable him to marry without longer waiting for a living. At present he was a curate in the East of London, with the modest stipend of ?100 a year.

Sidney possessed an unusual degree of energy and ardor, and these had found ample scope in the affairs of his firm. He had traveled almost all over the known world, except in the interior of the great continents, and he had greatly enjoyed his travels. He was not merely a fortune-hunter; he was a close and interested observer both of man and nature. He lived very much outside of himself, filling his mind with impressions from without, rather than seeking to understand and deepen the principles of his own nature. There had been a consciousness of a hidden sin waiting to be dragged out and repented of, which prevented him from looking too closely at himself. At eight and twenty he was a very different being from the boy, fresh from college, who had flung away his future in a rash marriage. Yet, with an instinct working almost unconsciously within him, he avoided all intimacy and close acquaintance with the women with whom he came in contact. His uncle had never married, and the establishment had been a bachelor one, but there were families and houses enough where Sidney was made effusively welcome. He gained the reputation of being a cynical woman-hater. In fact, their society was too full of peril for him to enjoy it with an ordinary degree of pleasure. That buried secret of his, over which the grass was growing, must be dug up and brought to light if he thought of marrying; and with an intuitive dread of the necessary investigations, he shrank from forming any fresh attachment. At the same time, his life hitherto had been too full of other interests for him to feel the loss of home ties.

"All the world tells me you are not a marrying man, Sidney," said Colonel Cleveland, one evening, when they stood for a minute on the steps for their club, before parting for the night. Colonel Cleveland had come back to England soon after hearing of his old friend's death, and several interviews had taken place between him and Sidney, but he had never invited Sidney to his home.

"Yes; I shall remain a bachelor, like my uncle," said Sidney, with a pleasant smile, "and adopt one of George Martin's boys, as Sir John adopted me. There's less responsibility than with sons of one's own."

"If that's true, you may come and see my daughter Margaret," replied Colonel Cleveland, "and I put you on your honor. She is all I have, is Margaret, and I want to keep her to myself as long as I can. The child knows hardly anybody but me, and she is as happy as the day. All the women I know pester me to let her come out, as they call it. But I say women are best at home, and I'm not going to have my one girl made into a fashionable fool."

"Is there any risk of that?" asked Sidney, laughing.

"Not at present," he answered; "but there's no knowing what a girl of twenty might become. Leave her in my hands till she's thirty, and I'll turn her out a sensible woman. She was fond of your uncle, Sidney, and he was very fond of her. I declare, we might have done you an ill turn if we have been more worldly wise. But they had not met for years when he died."

"You have kept her too much at home," said Sidney.

"No woman can be kept too much at home," he continued. "I would have more Eastern customs in England if I could, and not suffer women to go gadding about in public, blocking up the streets, and hindering business in the shops, and sowing seeds of mischief wherever they go. Busy bodies, gossips, tattlers! 'Speaking things which they ought not,' as Paul says, in his wisdom. Margaret is none of them, I can tell you. I should keep women back--back. That is their place, well in the background, you know. Kindly treated, of course, and their rights secured, only secured by men. Come and see how my plan has worked with Margaret."

"Certainly, with pleasure," replied Sidney.

But he was in no hurry to go. There were many things to be done a hundredfold more interesting to him than an interview with an eccentric man's childish daughter. He scarcely gave Colonel Cleveland's invitation a second thought. Day after day slipped by, and the idea of going did not cross his preoccupied mind. Nor did Colonel Cleveland recur to the subject of his daughter when they met in the city to transact necessary business. Possibly he had been alarmed at his own rashness.

But one afternoon a note reached Sidney by post. It was written in a hand as clear and legible as a clerk's and was quite as brief, and to the point. He read it with a smile.

SIR: My father, Colonel Cleveland, has met with an accident. He bids me ask you if you can come to-night and see him at his house? MARGARET CLEVELAND.

"No superfluous words here," he thought; "no empty compliments; no conventional forms. If every woman wrote notes like this, a good deal of time would be saved. It is like a telegram."

COLONEL CLEVELAND.

The house where Colonel Cleveland was for the present living stood alone on Wimbledon Common, surrounded by a large garden, which was completely walled in on every side. Sidney rode toward it in the twilight of an autumn evening. A yellow light in the western sky shone through the delicate net-work of silver beech trees, where a few leaves were still clinging to the slender branches. All around him there were the forewarnings of the coming winter, and the lingering traces of the dead summer. The pale gray of the low sky overhead was sad; and sad was the fluttering of the brown leaves as they floated to the ground. A robin was singing its mournful little song, as if all the other birds had forsaken the land, and left it to bear alone the burden of song through the winter. A few solitary ramblers, looking as if they had lost their way in the gathering mist, were passing to and fro along the sodden paths. The scent of dying fern filled the air.

Sidney was the more open to all the impressions of nature because of his busy life in the city. This almost deserted, open common, looking like a stretch of distant moorland, was all the more touching and pathetic to him because an hour ago he had been threading his way through the crowded labyrinths of London. The yellow light shining through the beech stems was more lovely, because for half the day his eyes had seen nothing but gaslights burning amid the fog.

He let his horse's pace fall into a slow walk, and lingered to watch the evening star grow brighter as the golden glow died out in the west. There was little anxiety in his mind about Colonel Cleveland's accident. At any rate, for this moment he would enjoy the calm and silence of nature after the noise and hurry of the day. It was a wonderful thing, this stillness of the broad heath, and of the quiet heavens above him, throbbing with life and appealing to his inmost soul with a strange and delicate appeal. It seemed to him as if a voice were speaking, and speaking to him from the sky, and the blue mists, and the vague shadows, and the silent stars overhead; but what the voice said he did not know.

"A little more, and I should be as fanciful as a poet," he said to himself, with a laugh. There had been a time when he had thought himself a poet, or at least a lover of poetry. But that was when he was a boy, before the spell of the world had been cast over him; and before he had yielded to a selfish passion which he could not altogether forget.

It was in a very softened mood that he turned from the Common into Colonel Cleveland's grounds. He felt almost like a boy again. The life led in the city, the keen competition and cruel strife for fortune, seemed to him, as it had once seemed, to be ignoble, sordid, and barbarous. There were better things than money; things which money could never buy. There was something almost pleasant to him in this vague disdain he felt for the cares and trammels of business. He was inwardly glad that he was not a slave to Mammon. "Not yet," said conscience, entering an unheeded protest.

He was shown into a library, where a lamp, with a shade over it, filled the room with strong lights and deep shadows. It was unoccupied; but in a minute or two the door opened, and a girl entered with a quiet step. She approached him with her hand stretched out, as if he were a well-known friend, and spoke eagerly with a frank, sweet voice, the sweetest voice, he thought at the first sound of it, that he had ever heard.

"My father wants you so much," she said. "Oh! he is so dreadfully hurt."

Her face was in shadow, but he could see that it was pale and troubled; her eyelids were a little red with weeping, and her mouth quivered. It was a lovely face, he felt; and the eyes she lifted up to him seemed, like her voice, to be more beautiful than any he had ever known. She was a tall, slender girl; and the soft white dress she wore hung about her in long and graceful folds. He held her hand for a moment or two in a firm grasp.

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