Chapter VI: 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.

"Tell me what I can do for you," he said in a low tone, as if afraid of startling her.

She met his gaze with an expression on her face full of relief and trust.

"I am so glad you are come," she said frankly, "my father has been asking for you so often. He was thrown on the Common this morning, and his back is injured, and he suffers, oh! so much pain. Will you come upstairs and see him at once?"

She led the way, running on before him with light and eager footsteps, and, when she had reached the last step on the staircase, looking back upon him with the simplicity of a child, she opened the door of her father's room softly, and beckoned to him to follow her.

"He is longing to see you," she said in a low voice.

It seemed to Sidney, when he thought of it afterward, that he had been so occupied in watching Margaret's movements, and listening to her voice, that he had hardly seen her father. He had an indistinct impression of seeing the gray head lying on a pillow, and the face drawn with pain as the injured man tried to stretch out his hand to welcome him. It was not till Margaret had gone away, after kissing her father's cheek fondly, that he came to himself, and could attend intelligently to what Colonel Cleveland was saying.

"The doctors are gone now, but they've a poor opinion of me, Sidney, a very poor opinion. Time, they say, may work wonders. 'How much time?' I asked. 'Three or four years, perhaps,' they said. And I'm to lie like a log for years! Good Heavens! is life worth living when it is like that?"

"But they do not always know," answered Sidney, in a voice full of sympathy. "How can they know in so short a time? This morning you were as strong as I am; and in a few weeks you may be nearly as strong as ever, in spite of the doctors."

"To lie like a log for years," repeated Colonel Cleveland, with a groan, "and to chain Margaret to me! Though she would not mind it, poor child. She'd nurse me, without a murmur or a sigh, till she was worn out and gray herself. I know what sort of a daughter she would be, and I am as sorry for her as I am for myself. I'd have let her have some pleasure in her life if I'd known it was coming to this."

"You must not begin to despair so soon," said Sidney; "it is not possible that anyone can judge so quickly of your state. Wait a few days, or weeks even, before you give up hope."

"But I cannot move," he answered, with a hopeless expression on his face, "I cannot stir myself by a hair's breadth. I feel as if I had been turned into stone; only there's such dreadful pain. Sidney, what shall I do? what can I do?"

He broke down into a passionate burst of tears, turning his head from side to side, as if seeking to hide his face from sight, but unable to lift his hand or to move. Sidney knelt down by the side of the bed, and with; as gentle a touch as a woman's wiped the tears away, whispering comforting words into his ear.

"It is too soon to despair," he repeated, "much too soon. And if it should be partly true, I will do all I can for you, as if I were your son. But it cannot be true. It is only for a little while. You are bruised and stiff now, but that will wear off by degrees. Hold fast to the hope of getting over it, for your own sake and Margaret's."

He lingered over Margaret's name as if it were a pleasure to utter it. But he was thinking chiefly of her father at this moment. It was a pitiful thing to witness a strong man suddenly stretched as helpless as a child. Sidney's heart was wrung for him, as he listened to his deep-drawn sobs, which gradually ceased, yet left heavy sighs, which were as disturbing as the sobs. Margaret came in noiselessly and stood by the fire at the other end of the room, her face turned wistfully toward her father. But she did not come nearer to him, and she neither spoke nor stirred until he opened his eyes and saw her.

"Come here, Margaret," he said.

She was beside him in a moment, gazing down at him with eyes full of tenderness and devotion, as if she were ready to give her life for his. He looked up at her with something like a smile upon his face.

"Margaret," he said, "I love you more than anything else in the world."

"Yes, father," she answered with clasped hands and fervent voice, "and I love you more than anything in the world."

"This is my old friend's adopted son," he went on, glancing from her to Sidney. "John Martin trusted him; so we can trust him. I wish you to look upon him as a friend, a trustworthy, straightforward, honorable friend. If you should ever want advice or help, go to him for it. There's no telling what may happen to me, Margaret, and I want you to know what to do. I shan't die any sooner for saying this to you, and I shall feel more content."

"If it will make you any happier," said Sidney, "I swear solemnly before Almighty God to help your daughter at all times, and to shield her from all possible harm, with my own life, if needful."

To himself, even more than to his listeners, there sounded an unusual solemnity in the oath he had so involuntarily taken. It seemed a pledge to enter upon some high and chivalrous vocation for the sake of this unknown girl. It imposed upon him an obligation, a bounden duty, from which he could never free himself. He felt glad of it. A glow of self-approbation suffused itself through his soul. He thought of the strong vows of allegiance and devotion taken by the knights of chivalry, at which it was the modern fashion to smile, and he felt astonished at his own earnestness and warmth. Would Margaret and her father see anything absurd in this conduct of his?

No; they were as grave as himself. They were in deep trouble, and Sidney's words did not sound too serious. They looked at him steadfastly; Margaret's dark eyes turning from her father to him with unaffected and unconscious earnestness. She held out her hand to him, and he took it reverentially.

"Yes, father," she said, "I will go to him whenever I want advice or help; I will think of him always as my friend."

"Go away now, Margaret," he said. She obeyed simply, and without appeal, turning round with a half smile upon her wistful face as Sidney opened the door for her. "I have brought her up on military discipline," said Colonel Cleveland; "I've taught her to do as she's told, and she will obey me even in my grave. It's happier for women so; they cannot guide themselves in this wilderness of a world. She'll look to you in the same way now, if anything happens to me. I thought I was dying six hours ago; and the bitterest thought was leaving my little girl with no counselor. She has got female cousins enough, but no trustworthy man belonging to her. Now that's all right, and you'll see to her as if you were her brother."

"As long as I live," answered Sidney with fervor.

It was after midnight when he rode away over the now dark and deserted Common. He was conscious that during the last few hours a crisis had come into his life; a difficulty which he had long foreseen and carefully avoided. He already loved this girl. But had he any right to love her? Was he free to win her heart? It was more than six years since he had last seen Sophy, and not a syllable of news from her had reached him. He shrank from letting down a sounding-line into the depths of these past years; it had been better to let them lie undisturbed. But why had he been such a fool as to marry Sophy Goldsmith?

The night was dark, but the sky was full of stars. Along the high roads crossing the Common lamps glimmered here and there, just tracing out the route, but leaving the open stretch of moorland as dark as if it had been hundreds of miles from any artificial light. The bushes and brushwood were black; and here and there lay small sinister-looking pools, lurking in treacherous hollows, and catching some gleam of light on their surface, which alone revealed them to the passers-by. A red gloom hung over London, throbbing as if it beat with the pulsations of the life underneath it. There were but few country sounds breaking the stillness, as there would have been on distant moorlands: but now and then the shriek of an engine and the rattling of a train jarred upon the silence; and to Sidney, when he reined in his horse and listened to it, a low roar, unlike any other sound, came from the busy and crowded streets stretching for many miles eastward. It was past midnight; and yet London was not asleep.