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.
By this time Sophy, and that boyish error of his, had almost slipped
out of his memory. His life had been very full since then, and he had
passed from boyhood into manhood. He had devoted himself with keen
interest to his uncle's business; and, in the close emulation of a
vast-reaching commerce, stretching out its hands to the farthest region
of the habitable globe, he had ceased to be conscious of the peril ever
hanging over his head as long as his uncle lived. Now his uncle's
death altered his position, and it would no longer be ruin to him for
his disastrous marriage to be discovered. But he was in no way
inclined to confess his early blunder.
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."