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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/9259-8.txt b/9259-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d2e83c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/9259-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16651 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlotte's Inheritance, by M. E. Braddon + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Charlotte's Inheritance + +Author: M. E. Braddon + +Posting Date: August 8, 2012 [EBook #9259] +Release Date: November, 2005 +First Posted: September 15, 2003 +[Last updated: August 10, 2013] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan and Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE + + By + + M. E. Braddon + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +Book the First. + +DE PROFUNDIS. + + I. LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE + + II. IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE + + III. PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR + + IV. A DECREE OF BANISHMENT + + +Book the Second. + +DOWNHILL. + + I. THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE + + II. FORGIVEN TOO LATE + + III. GUSTAVE THE SECOND + + +Book the Third. + +THE HORATIAD. + + I. CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE + + II. EPISTOLARY + + III. TOO CLEVER FOR A CATSPAW + + IV. CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL + + V. THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR + + +Book the Fourth. + +GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND. + + I. HALCYON DAYS + + II. CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY + + III. WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I? + + IV. SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH + + +Book the Fifth. + +THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. + + I. TAKEN BY STORM + + II. FIRM AS A ROCK + + III. AGAINST WIND AND TIDE + + IV. DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY + + V. ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE + + +Book the Sixth. + +DIANA IN NORMANDY. + + I. AT CÔTENOIR + + +Book the Seventh. + +A CLOUD OF FEAR. + + I. THE BEGINNING OF SORROW + + II. FADING + + III. MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS + + IV. VALENTINE'S SKELETON + + V. AT HAROLD'S HILL + + VI. DESPERATE MEASURES + + +Book the Eighth. + +A FIGHT AGAINST TIME. + + I. A DREAD REVELATION + + II. PHOENICIANS ARE RISING + + III. THE SORTES VIRGILIANÆ + + +Book the Ninth. + +THROUGH THE FURNACE. + + I. SOMETHING TOO MUCH + + II. DR. JEDD'S OPINION + + III. NON DORMIT JUDAS + + IV. COUNTING THE COST + + V. THE BEGINNING OF THE END + + VI. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED + + VII. THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE + + +Book the Tenth. + +HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS. + + I. OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY + + II. AFTER THE WEDDING + + III. GREEK AGAINST GREEK + + IV. ONLY A DREAM + + V. BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE + + VI. BEYOND THE VEIL + + VII. BETTER THAN GOLD + +VIII. LOST SIGHT OF + + IX. ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES + + X. "ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS." + + + + +CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE + + + +Book the first. + + + +DE PROFUNDIS. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE. + +In the days when the Bourbon reigned over Gaul, before the "simple, +sensuous, passionate" verse of Alfred de Musset had succeeded the +_débonnaire_ Muse of Béranger in the affections of young France,--in days +when the site of the Trocadero was a remote and undiscovered country, and +the word "exposition" unknown in the Academic dictionary, and the Gallic +Augustus destined to rebuild the city yet an exile,--a young law-student +boarded, in common with other students, in a big dreary-looking house at +the corner of the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, abutting on the Place Lauzun, +and within some ten minutes walk of the Luxembourg. It was a very dingy +quarter, though noble gentlemen and lovely ladies had once occupied the +great ghastly mansions, and disported themselves in the gruesome gardens. +But the young students were in nowise oppressed by the ghastliness of +their abode. They sang their Béranger, and they pledged each other in +cheap Bordeaux, and clinked their glasses noisily in their boisterous +good-fellowship, and ate the messes compounded for them in a darksome +cupboard, known as the kitchen, by old Nanon the cook, purblind, +stone-deaf, and all but imbecile, and popularly supposed to be the +venerable mother of Madame Magnotte. The youngsters grumbled to each +other about the messes when they were unusually mysterious; and it must +be owned that there were _vol-au-vents_ and _fricandeaux_ consumed in +that establishment which were awful and wonderful in their nature; but +they ventured on no complaint to the mistress of the mansion. She was a +grim and terrible personage. Her terms were low, and she treated her +boarders _de haute en bas_. If they were not content with her viands, +they might go and find more agreeable viands elsewhere. + +Madame Magnotte was altogether mysterious and inscrutable. Some people +said that she was a countess, and that the wealth and lands of her family +had been confiscated by the committee of public unsafety in '93. Others +declared that she had been a popular actress in a small theatre in the +days of Napoleon. She was tall and thin--nay, of an exceptional +leanness--and her complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the +butter that appeared on her hospitable board; but she had flashing black +eyes, and a certain stateliness of gait and grandeur of manner that +impressed those young Bohemians, her boarders, with a kind of awe. They +talked of her as the "countess," and by that name she was known to all +inmates of the mansion; but in all their dealings with her they treated +her with unfailing respect. + +One of the quietest among the young men who enjoyed the privileges of +Madame Magnotte's abode was a certain Gustave Lenoble, a law-student, the +only son of a very excellent couple who lived on their own estate, near +an obscure village in Normandy. The estate was of the smallest; a +dilapidated old house, known in the immediate neighbourhood as "the +Château," and very dear to those who resided therein; a garden, in which +everything seemed to have run to seed; and about forty acres of the +poorest land in Normandy. These possessions constituted the patrimonial +estate of François Lenoble, _propriétaire_, of Beaubocage, near +Vevinordin, the department of Eure. + +The people amongst whom the good man lived his simple life called him M. +Lenoble de Beaubocage, but he did not insist upon this distinction; and +on sending out his only son to begin the battle of life in the great +world of Paris, he recommended the young man to call himself Lenoble, +_tout court_. + +The young man had never cherished any other design. He was of all +creatures the least presuming or pretentious. The father was Legitimist +to the very marrow; the son half Buonapartist, half republican. The +father and son had quarrelled about these differences of opinion +sometimes in a pleasantly disputatious manner; but no political +disagreement could lesser the love between these two. Gustave loved +his parents as only a Frenchman can venture to love his father and +mother--with a devotion for the gentleman that bordered on enthusiasm, +with a fond reverence for the lady that was the very essence of chivalry. +There was a sister, who regarded her brother Gustave as the embodiment of +all that is perfect in youthful mankind; and there were a couple of old +house-servants, a very stupid clumsy lad in the stables, and half a dozen +old mongrel dogs, born and bred on the premises, who seemed to share the +young lady's opinions. There was not a little discussion upon the subject +of Gustave Lenoble's future career; and it was not without difficulty +that the father could be persuaded to approve the choice of a profession +which the young man had made. The seigneur of Beaubocage cherished an +exaggerated pride of race little suspected by those who saw his simple +life, and were pleased by his kindly unaffected manners. The house of +Lenoble, at some remote and almost mythical period of history, had +distinguished itself in divers ways; and those bygone grandeurs, vague +and shadowy in the minds of all others, seemed very real to Monsieur +Lenoble. He assured his son that no Lenoble had ever been a lawyer. They +had been always lords of the soil, living on their own lands, which had +once stretched wide and far in that Norman province; a fact proved by +certain maps in M. Lenoble's possession, the paper whereof was worn and +yellow with age. They had stooped to no profession save that of arms. One +seigneur of Beaubocage had fought under Bayard himself; another had +fallen at Pavia, on that great day when all was lost _hormis l'honneur_; +another had followed the white plume of the Bernais; another--but was +there any need to tell of the glories of that house upon which Gustave +was so eager to inflict the disgrace of a learned profession? + +Thus argued the father; but the mother had spent her girlhood amidst the +clamour of the Buonapartist campaigns, and the thought of war was very +terrible to her. The memory of the retreat from Russia was not yet twenty +years old. There were men alive to tell the story, to depict those days +and nights of horror, that mighty march of death. It was she and her +daughter Cydalise who had helped to persuade Gustave that he was born to +distinguish himself in the law. They wanted him to study in Paris--the +young man himself had a wild desire to enjoy the delights of that +wondrous capital--and to return in a few years to set up for himself as +_avocat_ at the town of Vevinord, some half-dozen leagues from the +patrimonial estate. He was created to plead for the innocent, to denounce +the guilty, to be grand and brave and fiery-hot with enthusiasm in +defence of virtuous peasants charged unjustly with the stealing of sheep, +or firing of corn-ricks. It never struck these simple souls that he might +sometimes be called upon to defend the guilty, or to denounce the +innocent. + +It was all settled at last. Gustave was to go to Paris, and enter himself +as a student of law. There were plenty of boarding-houses in the +neighbourhood of the Ecole de Droit where a young man might find a home; +and to one of these Gustave was recommended by a friend of his family. It +was the Pension Magnotte to which they had sent him, the big dreary +house, _entre cour et jardin_, which had once been so grand and noble. A +printer now occupied the lower chambers, and a hand painted on the wall +pointed to the _Pension Magnotte, au premier. Tirez le cordon, s.v.p._ + +Gustave was twenty-one years of age when he came to Paris; tall, +stalwart, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with a fair frank face, +an auburn moustache, candid, kind blue eyes--a physiognomy rather Saxon +than Celtic. He was a man who made friends quickly, and was soon at home +among the students, roaring their favourite songs, and dancing their +favourite dances at the dancing-places of that day, joining with a +pleasant heartiness in all their innocent dissipations. For guilty +dissipation the young provincial had no taste. Did he not carry the +images of two kind and pure women about with him wherever he went, like +two attendant angels ever protecting his steps; and could he leave them +sorrowing on thresholds _they_ could not pass? Ah, no! He was loud and +boisterous and wild of spirits in those early days, but incapable of +meanness or vice. + +"It is a brave heart," Madame Magnotte said of him, "though for the +breaking of glasses a scourge--_un fléau_." + +The ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age +and unattractive appearance--two or three lonely spinsters, eking out +their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious +sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and +a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of +miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame +Magnotte told her gossips--an old woman with two furiously ugly +daughters, who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in +divers boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so many +strange bachelors, husbands for these two solitary ones must at last be +found. + +These, with a pale young lady who gave music lessons in the quarter, were +all the feminine inmates of the mansion; and amongst these Gustave +Lenoble was chief favourite. His tender courtesy for these lonely women +seemed in some manner an evidence of that good old blood whereof the +young man's father boasted. Francis the First, who listened with bent +knee and bare head to his mother's discourse, was not more reverential to +that noble Savoyarde than was Gustave to the shabby-genteel maiden ladies +of the Pension Magnotte. In truth, this young man had a heart pitiful and +tender as the heart of woman. To be unfortunate was to possess a sure +claim upon his pity and regard; to be poor and friendless was the best +appeal to his kindness. He spent his evenings sometimes in the great +dreary desert of a salon, and listened respectfully while Mademoiselle +Servin, the young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Grétry +on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of those +instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the very ghost of +music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour. To +him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young +men. + +"They mock themselves of everything--even the religion!" she exclaimed, +with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent. +But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of +the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I +cannot to them. I, who speak to you--I, too, come of a good old race, and +there is sympathy between we others." + +And then, after babbling to him of her lost station, the lady would +entertain him with some dainty little supper with which she was wont to +indulge herself and her lady boarders, when the students--who were +treated something after the manner of school-boys--were out of doors. + +For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian life--not +altogether idle, but not altogether industrious--amusing himself a great +deal, and learning very little; moderate in his expenditure, when +compared with his fellow-students, but no small drain upon the funds of +the little family at home. In sooth, this good old Norman family had in a +pecuniary sense sunk very low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down +house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful face, and +took things pleasantly. A very humble English farmer would have despised +the income which supported M. Lenoble's household; and it was only the +economy and skill of the matron and her daughter which sustained the +dignity of the small establishment. + +There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple-minded old +father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and that was the hope in the +grand things to be done, in the dim future, by Gustave, the son, the +heir, the pole-star of the household. + +Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad light of honour and +riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student. +On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to be +sustained. To him they looked, of him they thought, in the long dreary +winter evenings during which the mother nodded over her knitting, the +father slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at her +needle-work by her little table of _palissandre_. + +He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of study, +bringing with him life and light and gladness, as it seemed to the two +women who adored him; and now, in the winter of 1828, they expected +another visit. He was to be with them on the first day of the new year. +He was to stay with them till his Mother's fête--the 17th of January. + +The father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety. The +mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she who loved her +brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could be more anxious than +usual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, a dire conspiracy, of which +Gustave was to be the subject and victim, had been concocted beneath that +innocent-seeming roof. Father, mother, and sister, seated round the +family hearth, fatal as some domestic Parcæ, had hatched their horrid +scheme, while the helpless lad amused himself yonder in the great city, +happily unconscious of the web that was being woven to enmesh him. + +The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame held, the +needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were employed in the +fabrication of a matrimonial net. These unsophisticated conspirators +were bent upon bringing about the marriage of their victim, a marriage +which should at once elevate and enrich the Lenobles of Beaubocage, in +the person of Gustave. + +François Lenoble's best friend and nearest neighbour was a certain Baron +Frehlter, of Germanic origin, but for some generations past naturalised +to the Gallic soil. The Baron was proprietor of an estate which could +show ten acres for one of the lands of Beaubocage. The Baron boasted a +family tree which derived its root from a ramification of the +Hohenzollern pedigree; but, less proud and more prudent than the +Lenobles, the Frehlters had not scorned to intermingle their Prussian +blue blood with less pure streams of commercial France. The _épicier_ +element had prevailed in the fair brides of the house of Frehlter for the +last three or four generations, and the house of Frehlter had +considerably enriched itself by this sacrifice of its family pride. + +The present Baron had married a lady ten years his senior, the widow of a +Rouen merchant, alike wealthy and pious, but famous rather for these +attributes than for any personal charm. One only child, a girl, had +blessed this union. She was now a young person of something under twenty +years of age, newly emerged from her convent, and pining for some share +in the gaieties and delights of a worldly paradise, which had already +been open to many of her schoolfellows. + +Mademoiselle Frehlter's companions had, for the most part, left school to +be married. She had heard of the _corbeille_, the wedding dress, the +wedding festivities, and occasionally a word or two about that secondary +consideration the bridegroom. The young lady was therefore somewhat +inclined to take it ill of her father that he had not secured for her the +_éclat_ of an early marriage. Her departure from the convent of the Sacré +Coeur, at Vevinord, was flat and tame to an extreme degree. The future +lay before her, a dreary desert of home life, to be spent with a father +who gorged himself daily at a greasy and savoury banquet, and who slept +away the greater part of his existence; and with a mother who divided her +affections between a disagreeable poodle and a still more disagreeable +priest--a priest who took upon himself to lecture the demoiselle Frehlter +on the smallest provocation. + +The château of the Frehlters was a very grand abode as compared to the +tumble-down house of Beaubocage; but it was cold and stony to a +depressing degree, and the furniture must have been shabby in the days of +the Fronde. Faithful old servants kept the mansion in a state of spotless +purity, and ruled the Baron and his wife with a rod of iron. Mademoiselle +execrated these devoted retainers, and would have welcomed the sauciest +of modern domestics who would have released her from the bondage of these +servants of the old school. + +Mademoiselle had been at home a year--a year of discontent and +ill-humour. She had quarrelled with her father, because he would not take +her to Paris; with her mother, because she would not give her more new +gowns and bonnets and feathers and fur-belows; with the priest, the +poodle, with the autocracy below-stairs, with everybody and everything. +So at last the Baron decided that mademoiselle should marry, whereby he +might be rid of her, and of her complaints, vagaries, ill-tempers, and +general dissatisfaction. + +Having once made up his mind as to the wisdom of a matrimonial +arrangement, Baron Frehlter was not slow to fix upon a bridegroom. He was +a very rich man, and Madelon was his only child, and he was furthermore a +very lazy man; so, instead of looking far afield for a wealthy or +distinguished suitor for his daughter, he was inclined to take the first +that came to hand. It is possible that the Baron, who was of a somewhat +cynical turn of mind, may have cherished no very exalted idea of his +daughter's attractions, either personal or mental. However this might be, +it is certain that when the demoiselle had ill-treated the poodle, and +insulted the priest, and quarrelled with the cook--that high-priestess of +the kitchen who alone, in all Normandy, could concoct those messes which +the Baron loved--the master of Côtenoir decided on marrying his heiress +out of hand. + +He communicated this design to his old crony, François Lenoble, one day +when the Beaubocage family dined at Château Côtenoir. + +"I think of marrying my daughter," he said to his friend, when the ladies +were safely out of hearing at the other end of the long dreary saloon. +"Now thy son Gustave is a fine fellow--brave, handsome, and of a good +race. It is true he is not as rich as Madelon will be by-and-by; but I am +no huckster, to sell my daughter to the best bidder" ("and I doubt if +there would be many bidders for her, if I were so inclined," thought the +Baron, in parenthesis); "and if thy son should take a fancy to her, and +she to him, it would please me well enough, friend François." + +Friend François pricked up his ears, and in his old eyes flickered a +feeble light. Côtenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his son +Gustave! Lenoble of Beaubocage and Côtenoir--Lenoble of Côtenoir and +Beaubocage! So splendid a vision had never shone before his eyes in all +the dreams that he had dreamed about the only son of whom he was so +proud. He could not have shaped to himself so bold a project as the union +of those two estates. And here was the Baron offering it to him, with his +snuff-box, _en passant_. + +"It would be a great marriage," he said, "a very great marriage. For +Gustave I can answer without hesitation. He could not but be charmed by +such a union--so amiable a bride would enchant him." + +He looked down the room to the spot where Madelon and Cydalise were +standing, side by side, admiring Madame Frehlter's poodle. Madelon could +afford to be civil to the poodle before company. The contrast between the +two girls was sufficiently striking. Cydalise was fair and +bright-looking--Mademoiselle Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure, +swarthy of complexion, dark of brow. + +"He could not but be charmed," repeated the old man, with feeble +gallantry. + +He was thinking of the joining together of Beaubocage and Côtenoir; and +it seemed a very small thing to him that such a union of estates would +involve the joining of a man and woman, who were to hold to each other +and love each other until death should part them. + +"It shall be no marriage of convenience," said the Baron, in a generous +spirit; "my daughter is somewhat ill-tem--that is to say, my daughter +finds her life somewhat dull with her old father and mother, and I think +she might be happier in the society of a husband. I like your son; and +my wife, too, likes him better than any other young man of our +acquaintance. Madelon has seen a good deal of him when she has been home +from the convent in her holidays, and I have reason to think she does +not dislike him. If he likes her and she likes him, and the idea is +pleasing to you and madame, we will make a match of it. If not, let it +pass; we will say no more." + +Again the seigneur of Beaubocage assured his friend that Gustave would be +enchanted with the proposal; and again it was of Côtenoir that he +thought, and not of the heart or the inclinations of his son. + +This conversation took place late in autumn, and at the new year Gustave +was to come. Nothing was to be said to him about his intended wife until +he arrived; that was a point upon which the Baron insisted. + +"The young man may have fallen in love with some fine young person in +Paris," he said; "and in that case we will say nothing to him of Madelon. +But if we find him with the heart free, and inclined to take to my +daughter, we may give him encouragement." + +This was solemnly agreed between the two fathers. Nor was Mademoiselle +Frehlter to be told of the matrimonial scheme until it ripened. But after +this dinner at Côtenoir the household at Beaubocage talked of little else +than of the union of the two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what +happiness! Gustave the lord of Côtenoir! Poor Cydalise had never seen a +finer mansion than the old château, with its sugar-loaf towers and stone +terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient turret chambers, and +long dreary salon and _salle-à-manger_. She could picture to herself +nothing more splendid. For Gustave to be offered the future possession of +Côtenoir was as if he were suddenly to be offered the succession to a +kingdom. She could not bring herself to consider that Madelon was neither +agreeable nor attractive, and that, after all, the wife must count for +something in every marriage contract. She could see nothing, she could +think of nothing, but Côtenoir. The glory and grandeur of that estate +absorbed every other consideration. + +No one of those three conspirators feared any opposition on the part of +their victim. It was just possible that Gustave might have fallen in love +with some Parisian damsel, though his letters gave no hint of any such +calamity. But if such a misfortune had happened, he would, of course, +fall out of love again, return the damsel her troth and obtain the return +of his own, and straightway offer the second-hand commodity to +Mademoiselle Frehlter. + +The object of all these cares and hopes and dreams arrived at last, full +of life and spirits, with plenty to tell about Paris in general, and very +little to tell about himself in particular. The women questioned him +unmercifully. They insisted on a graphic description of every female +inmate of the boarding-house, and would scarcely believe that all except +the little music-mistress were elderly and unattractive. Of the +music-mistress herself they were inclined to be very suspicious, and were +not altogether reassured by Gustave's assertion that she was neither +pretty nor fascinating. + +"She is a dear, good, industrious little thing," he said, "and works +harder than I do. But she is no miracle of beauty; and her life is so +dreary that I often wonder she does not go into a convent. It would be +gayer and pleasanter for her than to live with those old women at the +Pension Magnotte." + +"I suppose there are many beautiful women in Paris?" said Cydalise, bent +upon knowing the worst. + +"Well, I dare say there are," Gustave answered frankly; "but we students +don't see much of them in our quarter. One sees a pretty little +milliner's girl now and then, or a washerwoman. In short, there are a +good many grisettes in our part of the world," added the young man, +blushing, but for no sin of his own. "We get a glimpse of a handsome +woman sometimes, rattling past in her carriage; but in Paris handsome +women do not go on foot. I have seen prettier girls at Vevinord than in +Paris." + +Cydalise was enchanted with this confession. + +"Yes," she exclaimed, "our Normandy is the place for pretty girls. +Madelon Frehlter, for example, is not she a very--amiable girl?" + +"I dare say she's amiable enough," answered Gustave; "but if there were +no prettier girls than Mademoiselle Frehlter in this part of the world, +we should have no cause to boast. But there are prettier girls, Cydalise, +and thou art thyself one of them." + +After this speech the young man bestowed upon his sister a resounding +kiss. Yes; it was clear that he was heart-whole. These noisy, boisterous +good spirits were not characteristic of a lover. Even innocent Cydalise +knew that to be in love was to be miserable. + +From this time mother and sister tormented their victim with the merits +and charms of his predestined bride. Madelon on the piano was miraculous; +Madelon's little songs were enchanting; Madelon's worsted-work was a +thing to worship; Madelon's devotion to her mother and her mother's +poodle was unequalled; Madelon's respectful bearing to the good Abbé St. +Velours--her mother's director--was positively beyond all praise. It was +virtue seraphic, supernal. Such a girl was too good for earth--too good +for anything except Gustave. + +The young man heard and wondered. + +"How you rave about Madelon Frehlter!" he exclaimed. "She seems to me the +most commonplace young person I ever encountered. She has nothing to say +for herself; she never appears to know where to put her elbows. I never +saw such elbows; they are everywhere at once. And her shoulders!--O +heaven, then, her shoulders!--it ought to be forbidden to wear low +dresses when one has such shoulders." + +This was discouraging, but the schemers bore up even against this. The +mother dwelt on the intellectual virtues of Madelon; and what were +shoulders compared to mind, piety, amiability--all the Christian graces? +Cydalise owned that dear Madelon was somewhat _gauche_; Gustave called +her _bête_. The father remonstrated with his son. Was it not frightful to +use a word of the barracks in connection with this charming young lady? + +At last the plot revealed itself. After a dinner at Côtenoir and a dinner +at Beaubocage, on both which occasions Gustave had made himself very +agreeable to the ladies of the Baron's household--since, indeed, it was +not in his nature to be otherwise than kind and courteous to the weaker +sex--the mother told her son of the splendid destiny that had been shaped +for him. It was a matter of surprise and grief to her to find that the +revelation gave Gustave no pleasure. + +"Marriage was the last thing in my thoughts, dear mother," he said, +gravely; "and Madelon Frehlter is the very last woman I should think of +for a wife. Nevertheless, I am gratified by the honour Monsieur le Baron +has done me. That goes without saying." + +"But the two estates!--together they would make you a great proprietor. +You would not surely refuse such fortune?" + +Cydalise gave a little scream of horror. + +"Côtenoir! to refuse Côtenoir! Ah, surely that would be impossible! But +figure to yourself, then, Gustave--" + +"Nay, Cydalise, you forget the young lady goes with the château; a +fixture that we cannot dispense with." + +"But she, so amiable, so pious--" + +"So plain, so stupid--" + +"So modest, so charitable--" + +"In short, so admirably adapted for a Sister of Charity," replied +Gustave. "But no, dear Cydalise. Côtenoir is a grand old place; but I +would as soon spend my life at Toulon, dragging a cannon-ball at my +heels, as in that dreary salon where Madame Frehlter nurses her maladies +and her poodle, and where the good-humoured, easy-going old Baron snores +away existence. 'Tis very well for those elderly folks, you see, my +sister, and for Madelon--for hers is an elderly mind in a youthful body; +but for a young man full of hope and gaiety and activity--bah! It would +be of all living deaths the worst. From the galleys there is always the +hope of escaping--an underground passage, burrowed out with one's +finger-nails in the dead of the night--a work lasting twenty years or so, +but with a feeble star of hope always glimmering at the end of the +passage. But from the salon, and mamma, and the poodle, and the good, +unctuous, lazy old director, and papa's apoplectic snoring, and the +plaintive little songs and monotonous embroideries of one's wife, there +would be no escape. Ah, bah!" + +Gustave shuddered, and the two women shuddered as they heard him. The +prospect was by no means promising; but Madame Lenoble and her daughter +did not utterly despair. Gustave's heart was disengaged. That was a great +point; and for the rest, surely persuasion might do much. + +Then came that phenomenon seen very often in this life--a +generous-minded, right-thinking young man talked into a position which of +all others is averse from his own inclinations. The mother persuaded, the +sister pleaded, the father dwelt dismally upon the poverty of Beaubocage, +the wealth of Côtenoir. It was the story of auld Robin Gray reversed. +Gustave perceived that his refusal to avail himself of this splendid +destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people who loved him +so fondly--whom he loved as fondly in return. Must he not be a churl to +disappoint hopes so unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent? And only +because Madelon was not the most attractive or the prettiest of women! + +The young man stood firm against all their arguments, he was unmoved by +all their pleading. It was only when his anxious kindred had given up the +battle for lost that Gustave wavered. Their mute despair moved him more +than the most persuasive eloquence; and the end was submission. He left +Beaubocage the plighted lover of that woman who, of all others, he would +have been the last to choose for his wife. It had all been settled very +pleasantly--the dowry, the union of the two estates, the two names. For +six months Gustave was to enjoy his freedom to finish his studies; and +then he was to return to Normandy for his marriage. + +"I have heard very good accounts of you from Paris," said the Baron. "You +are not like some young men, wild, mad-brained. One can confide in your +honour, your steadiness." + +The good folks of Beaubocage were in ecstacies. They congratulated +Gustave--they congratulated each other. A match so brilliant would be the +redemption of the family. The young man at last began to fancy himself +the favoured of the gods. What if Madelon seemed a little dull--a little +wanting in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous minds? she was +doubtless so much the more profound, so much the more virtuous. If she +was not bright and varied and beautiful as some limpid fountain dancing +in summer sunlight, she was perhaps changeless and steady as a rock; and +who would not rather have the security of a rock than the summer-day +beauty of a fountain? + +Before Gustave departed from his paternal home he had persuaded himself +that he was a very lucky fellow; and he had paid Mademoiselle Frehlter +some pretty little stereotyped compliments, and had listened with sublime +patience to her pretty little stereotyped songs. He left the young lady +profoundly impressed by his merits; he left his own household supremely +happy; and he carried away with him a heart in which Madelon Frehlter's +image had no place. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE. + +Gustave went back to his old life, and was not much disturbed by the +grandeur of his destiny as future seigneur of Côtenoir and Beaubocage. It +sometimes occurred to him that he had a weight upon his mind; and, on +consideration, he found that the weight was Madelon Frehlter. But he +continued to carry that burden very lightly, and his easy-going student +life went on, unbroken by thoughts of the future. He sent polite messages +to the demoiselle Frehlter in his letters to Cydalise; and he received +from Cydalise much information, more graphic than interesting, upon the +subject of the family at Côtenoir; and so his days went on with pleasant +monotony. This was the brief summer of his youth; but, alas, how near at +hand was the dark and dismal winter that was to freeze this honest joyous +heart! That heart, so compassionate for all suffering, so especially +tender for all womankind, was to be attacked upon its weaker side. + +It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the Luxembourg +every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle to the Ecole +de Droit. Sometimes, when he was earlier than usual, he carried a book +with him, and paced one of the more obscure alleys, reading for an odd +half-hour before he went to the daily mill-grinding in the big building +beyond those quiet gardens. + +Walking with his book one morning--it was a volume of Boileau, which +the student knew by heart, and the pages whereof did not altogether +absorb his attention--he passed and repassed a bench on which a lady +sat, pensive and solitary, tracing shapeless figures on the ground with +the point of her parasol. He glanced at her somewhat carelessly the +first time of passing, more curiously on the second occasion, and +the third time with considerable attention. Something in her +attitude--helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all +expressed in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle +characters on the gravel--enlisted the sympathies of Gustave Lenoble. He +had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrated the cavernous depths +of the capacious bonnet of those days; but one glimpse of the pale +plaintive face inspired him with compassion unspeakable. Never had he +seen despair more painfully depicted on the human countenance--a despair +that sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the +outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He +could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her +world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had +gone forth--that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion +of an accursed race there were to be none. + +He put Boileau into his pocket. That glimpse of a suffering human mind, +which had been unconsciously revealed to him, possessed an interest more +absorbing than the grandest flight of poet and satirist. As he passed for +the fifth time, he looked at the mournful lady still more searchingly, +and this time the sad eyes were lifted, and met his pitying looks. The +beautiful lips moved, and murmured something in tones so tremulous as to +be quite unintelligible. + +The student took off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as +knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his liege mistress. + +"In what can I have the happiness to be agreeable to you, madame?" + +"You are very good, monsieur," murmured the lady in very decent French, +but with an accent unmistakably foreign--English, as Gustave opined. +"I--I--am quite a stranger in Paris, and--and--I have heard there are +numerous lodging-houses in this quarter--where one may obtain a +lodging--cheaply. I have asked several nursemaids, and other women, in +the gardens this morning; but they seem very stupid, and can tell me +nothing; and I do not care to ask at the hotel where I am staying." + +Gustave pondered. Yes, there were many lodgings, he informed the lady. +And then he thought of Madame Magnotte. Was it not his duty to secure +this stray lodger for that worthy woman, if possible? + +"If madame has no objection to a boarding-house--" he began. + +Madame shook her head. "A boarding-house would suit me just as well," she +said; "but it must not be expensive. I cannot afford to pay much." + +"I know of a boarding-house very near this place, where madame might find +a comfortable home on very reasonable terms. It is, in point of fact, the +house in which I myself reside," added Gustave, with some timidity. + +"If you will kindly direct me to the house--" said the lady, looking +straight before her with sad unseeing eyes, and evidently supremely +indifferent as to the residence or non-residence of M. Lenoble in the +habitation referred to. + +"Nay, madame, if you will permit me to conduct you there. It is but a +walk of five minutes." + +The stranger accepted the courtesy with a gentle indifference that was +not ingratitude, but rather incapacity for any feeling except that one +great sorrow which seemed to absorb her mind. + +Gustave wondered what calamity could thus overwhelm one so young and +beautiful. + +The lady was quite silent during the little walk from the gardens to the +Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and Gustave observed her attentively as he +walked by her side. She was evidently not more than four-and-twenty years +of age, and she was certainly the prettiest woman he had ever seen. It +was a fair delicate English beauty, a little worn and faded, as if by +care, but idealized and sublimated in the process. At her brightest this +stranger must have been strikingly beautiful; in her sorrow she was +touchingly lovely. It was what Gustave's countrymen call a _beauté +navrante_. + +Gustave watched her, and wondered about her. The dress she wore was +sufficiently elegant, but had lost the gloss of newness. Her shawl, which +she carried as gracefully as a Frenchwoman, was darned. Gustave perceived +the neat careful stitches, and divined the poverty of the wearer. That +she should be poor was no subject for surprise; but that she, so +sorrowful, so lonely, should seek a home in a strange city, was an enigma +not easy to solve. + +To Madame Magnotte Gustave introduced the stranger. She gave just one +look round the dreary saloon; but to Gustave's fancy that one look seemed +eloquent. "Ah me!" it said; "is this the fairest home I am to find upon +this inhospitable earth?" + +"She does not seem to belong to this world," the young man thought, as +he went back to the garden where he had found his fair stranger, having +been very coolly dismissed by Madame Magnotte after his introduction had +been made. + +And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, remembered how a +lady had been found by a student sitting on the lowest steps of the +guillotine, desolate and helpless, at night; and how the student had +taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately +in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had +been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours +before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and +delusive. + +Was this English stranger whom Gustave had found in the gardens of the +Luxembourg twin sister to that ghostly lady of the familiar legend? Her +despair and her beauty seemed to him greater than earthly sorrow or +earthly beauty; and he was half inclined to wonder whether she could be +of the same race as Madelon Frehlter. And from this hour the sense of a +weight upon his mind, before so vague and intermittent, became an +enduring oppression, not to be shaken off by any effort of his will. + +All through that day he found himself thinking more of the unknown +Englishwoman than was consistent with a strict performance of his duties. +He was vexed with himself on account of this foolish distraction of mind. + +"What a frivolous fellow I must be," he said to himself, "to dwell upon +such a trifle! This comes of leading such a monotonous life." + +At dinner he looked for the lady; but she did not appear at the long +table, where the shrill old ladies, the epicurean old bachelors, the +noisy students, daily devoured and grumbled at the four or five courses +which old Nanon developed out of her inner consciousness and a rather +scantily furnished larder. He questioned Madame Magnotte after dinner, +and was told that the lady was in the house, but was too tired to dine +with the other inmates. + +"I have to thank thee for a new boarder, my friend," she said. "Madame +Meynell will not pay largely; but she seems a quiet and respectable +person, and we shall doubtless be well pleased with each other." + +"Madame Meynell!" repeated Gustave, congratulating himself on finding +that the Englishwoman was an inhabitant of the house he lived in. "She is +a widow, I suppose?" + +"Yes, she is a widow. I asked that question, and she answered, yes. +But she told me nothing of her late husband. She is not at all +communicative." + +This was all Gustave could obtain from Madame Magnotte. She was not +communicative. No; she was, indeed, scarcely less silent than that +ghostly lady who had been found sitting at the foot of the guillotine. +There was some kind of mystery involved in her sorrowful face, her silent +apathy. It was possibly the fact of this mystery which interested M. +Lenoble. Certain it is that the young man's interest had been aroused by +this unknown Englishwoman, and that his mind was more occupied by the +image of her whom he had seen but once than by that of his plighted wife. + +He waited anxiously for the next day; but on the next day Madame Meynell +still pleaded fatigue and illness. It was only on the third day that she +appeared at the noisy banquet, pale, silent, absent-minded, sheltering +herself under the wing of Madame Magnotte, who was disposed to be kind to +this helpless stranger. To Gustave the young English widow seemed like a +ghost at that crowded board. He looked at her every now and then from his +distant seat, and saw her always with the same hopeless far-away look in +her sad eyes. He himself was silent and _distrait_. + +"Of what dost thou dream, my droll one?" said his nearest neighbour. +"Thou art positively insupportable." + +M. Lenoble could not become vivacious or entertaining at the behest of +his fellow-student. The consciousness of that strange pale face haunted +and oppressed him. He hoped to have a few minutes' talk with the English +lady after dinner, but she disappeared before the removal of those +recondite preparations which in the Pension Magnotte went by the generic +name of "dessert." + +For more than a week she appeared thus at the dinner-table, eating very +little, speaking not at all, except such monosyllabic replies as the +hostess now and then extorted from her pale lips. A creature at once so +beautiful and so profoundly sad became an object of interest to others +besides Gustave; but in no breast was the sympathy which her sadness and +beauty excited so poignant as in his. Her face haunted him. The familiar +pleasures and amusements became distasteful to him. He spent his evenings +at home in the dismal salon, and was content to listen to the chatter of +the old women, the little music-mistress's dreary sonatas, the monotonous +roll of wheels on the distant quay--anything rather than the hackneyed +round of student-life that had once been agreeable to him. He did not +fail to write his weekly letter to Cydalise; but, for some reason or +other, he refrained from any allusion to the English stranger, although +it was his custom to relate all his adventures for the amusement of the +family at Beaubocage. + +An evening came at last on which Madame Meynell was persuaded to remain +with the other ladies after dinner. + +"It must be very cold and cheerless for you in your bedroom," said +Madame Magnotte; "why not spend your evening with us, in a pleasant and +social manner?" + +"You are very good, madame," murmured the Englishwoman, in the slow timid +accents that had so plaintive a sound to Gustave's ear; "if you wish it, +I will stay." + +She seemed to submit rather from utter weakness and inability to refuse +anything asked of her than from any hope of finding pleasure in the +society of the Magnotte salon. + +It was an evening in March--cold, blustrous, dreary. The east wind blew +clouds of dust athwart the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and the few +foot-passengers in that dull thoroughfare looked pinched and wretched. +The old ladies gathered round the great black stove, and gossipped in the +twilight; the music-mistress went to her feeble piano, and played, +unasked, unheeded; for Gustave, who was wont to turn the leaves, or sit +attentive by the piano, seemed this evening unconscious of the music. +Madame Meynell sat in one of the windows, alone, half-hidden by the faded +yellow damask curtains, looking out into the street. + +Something--some impulse which he tried to resist, but could not--drew +Gustave towards that lonely figure by the window. He went close up to the +strange lady. This evening, as in the gardens of the Luxembourg, she +seemed to him a living statue of despair. Now, as then, he felt an +interest in her sorrow which he was powerless to combat. He had a vague +idea that even this compassionate sympathy was in some manner an offence +against Madelon Frehlter, the woman to whom he belonged, and yet he +yielded to the fatal weakness. + +"Yes, I belong to her," he said to himself; "I belong to Madelon +Frehlter. She is neither pretty nor fascinating; but I have every reason +to believe her very good, very amiable; and she is the only woman, except +those of my own kindred, in whom I have any right to be interested." + +He did not say this in so many words; but this was the shape which his +thoughts assumed as he yielded to the tempter, and walked straight to the +distant window by which Madame Meynell had seated herself. + +She started slightly as he approached her, and then looked up and +recognized him as her acquaintance of the Luxembourg. + +"Good evening, monsieur," she said; "I have to thank you for having +helped me to find a comfortable home." + +Having said this in a low gentle voice, she looked out into the street +once more with her mournful unseeing eyes. It was evident that she had no +more to say to M. Lenoble. + +The student, however, had no idea of leaving the window just yet, +although he knew--yes, knew--that his presence there was a wrong done to +Madelon Frehlter; but a wrong so small, so infinitesimal, that it was +really not worth consideration. + +"I am enchanted to think that I was of some slight service to you, +madame," he said; "but I fear you will find this quarter of Paris +very dull." + +She did not take any notice of this remark until Gustave had repeated it, +and then she spoke as if suddenly awakened from a trance. + +"Dull?" she said. "No, I have not found it dull. I do not care for +gaiety." + +After this M. Lenoble felt that he could say no more. The lady relapsed +into her waking trance. The dust-clouds in the silent street seemed more +interesting to her than M. Lenoble of Beaubocage. He lingered a few +minutes in the neighbourhood of her chair, thoughtfully observant of the +delicate profile, the pale clear tints of a complexion that had lost its +bloom but not its purity, the settled sadness of the perfect mouth, the +dreamy pensiveness of the dark-grey eye, and then was fain to retire. + +After this, the English widow lady spent many evenings in Madame +Magnotte's salon. The old Frenchwoman gossipped and wondered about +her; but the most speculative could fashion no story from a page so +blank as this joyless existence. Even slander could scarcely assail +a creature so unobtrusive as the English boarder. The elderly ladies +shrugged their shoulders and pursed up their lips with solemn +significance. There must needs be something--a secret, a mystery, sorrow, +or wrong-doing--somewhere; but of Madame Meynell herself no one could +suspect any harm. + +Gustave Lenoble heard little of this gossip about the stranger, but she +filled his thoughts nevertheless. The vision of her face came between him +and his work; and when he thought of the future, and of the damsel who +had been allotted to him for a wife, his thoughts were very bitter. + +"Fate is like Laban," he said to himself; "a man works and does his duty +for seven years, and then Fate gives him Leah instead of Rachel. No doubt +Leah is a very good young woman; one has no complaint to make against +her, except that she is not Rachel." + +This was not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the destined +master of Côtenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious folks at +Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief and unsatisfactory. He +no longer gave ample details of his student-life--he no longer wrote in +his accustomed good spirits. His letters seemed stiff and constrained. + +"I am afraid he is studying too much," said the mother. + +"I daresay the rascal is wasting his time in dissipation," suggested +the father. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR." + +Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave +Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the +Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pension Magnotte had grown +accustomed to her presence, to her silence, her settled sadness, and +troubled themselves no further respecting herself or her antecedents. The +lapse of time had brought no improvement to her spirits; indeed, Gustave, +who watched her closely, perceived that she had grown paler and thinner +since that March morning when he met her in the public garden. Her life +must have been painfully monotonous. She very rarely went out of doors, +and on no occasion ventured beyond the gardens of the Luxembourg. No one +visited her. She neither wrote nor received any letters. She was wont to +make a pretence of reading as she sat in her retired corner of the salon; +but Gustave had discovered that she gave little attention to her book. +The open volume in her hand seemed no more than an excuse for brooding +upon her sorrows. + +If people, prompted by curiosity or by compassion, endeavoured to get +into conversation with this lonely lady, the result was always the same. +She would answer their questions in a low gentle voice, with a quiet +politeness; but she never assisted them in the smallest degree to +interchange thoughts with her. It seemed as if she sought neither friend +nor sympathizer, or as if her case was so entirely hopeless as to admit +of neither. She paid for her board and lodging weekly with a punctilious +exactness, though weekly payments were not the rule of the house. + +"My movements are uncertain," she said to Madame Magnotte. "I cannot +tell how long I may be with you. It will therefore be better for me to +pay you weekly." + +She had been in the house two months, dining every day at the public +table, spending all her evenings in the public saloon; and during that +time her settled gloom had never been broken by any outburst of grief or +passion. She might have been a creature of ice, a statue of despair +modelled in snow by a Michael Angelo. But one night the ice melted, the +statue of snow became in a moment a passionate, grief-stricken woman. + +It was one bright evening late in May. Ah, how near at hand was the +appointed date of those nuptials to which the household of Beaubocage +looked forward with supreme happiness! The old ladies of the Pension +Magnotte were for the most part out of doors. The long saloon was almost +empty. There were only Gustave, Madame Magnotte, and the little +music-mistress, who sat at her piano, with the western sunlight shining +full upon her, rosy-hued and glorious, surrounding her with its soft +radiance until she looked like a humble St. Cecilia. + +Madame Meynell had seated herself close to the piano, and was listening +to the music. Gustave hovered near, pretending to be occupied with a limp +little sheet of news published that evening. + +Mademoiselle Servin, the teacher of music, upon this occasion deserted +her favourite masters. She seemed in a somewhat dreamy and sentimental +humour, and played tender little melodies and simple plaintive airs, that +were more agreeable to Gustave than those grand examples of the +mathematics of counter-point which she so loved to interpret. + +"You like this melody of Grétry's," said the music-mistress, as M. +Lenoble seated himself close to the piano. "I do not think you care for +classic sonatas--the great works of Gluck, or Bach, or Beethoven?" + +"No," replied the young man frankly; "I do not care about anything I +can't understand. I like music that goes to one's heart." + +"And you, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" mademoiselle asked +of that lady, who was not wont to come so near the little piano, or to +pay so much attention to Mademoiselle Servin's performance. + +"O yes," murmured the Englishwoman, "I like such music as that." + +"And you, too, think that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive +airs--for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she +spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand +operas, like _Fidelio_. Have you never heard this by your scientific +Beethoven?" + +Hereupon she played "Hope told a flattering tale," with much tenderness +and delicacy. Her two hearers listened, mute and deeply moved. And then +from that familiar melody she glided softly into another, most musical, +most melancholy, which has been set to some of the sweetest verses that +Thomas Moore ever composed: + +"Those evening bells, those evening bells! +How many a tale their music tells +Of youth and home, and that sweet time +When last I heard their soothing chime!" + +All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those days. The +song was one which the Englishwoman had sung years ago in a happy home. +What recollections, what associations, were evoked by that plaintive +melody, who shall say? The words came back with the music to which they +have been eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces +of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the picture of the +peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music,--all these things arose +before her in a vision too painfully vivid; and the lonely boarder at the +Pension Magnotte covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud. + +The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes, +and rose to leave the room. + +"Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were +about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that +were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see +again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the +happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh, +I pray God I may never hear that melody again." + +There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new to Gustave +Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, and she passed out of +the salon quietly, like a ghost--the ghost of that bright young creature +who had once borne her shape, and been called by her name, in a pleasant +farmhouse among the Yorkshire wolds. + +"Ah, but how that poor soul must have suffered!" cried the sympathetic +Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the Englishwoman. "I did +not think it was in her to feel so deeply. I thought she was stone, and +now I begin to think it must be of such stone as Niobe--the +petrification of despair." + +Upon Gustave Lenoble this scene made a profound impression. He lay awake +during the greater part of that night, thinking of the lonely lady's +tears and anguish. The music of "Those evening bells" pervaded his +dreams. He rose unrefreshed, feverish, forgetful of Côtenoir and Madelon +Frehlter, as if that place and that person had never emerged from the +shapeless substances of chaos. He wanted to see _her_ again, to console +her, if that were possible. Oh, that it might be his privilege to console +her! He pitied her with a compassion so intense, that thus to +compassionate her woes, was himself to suffer a poignant anguish. He +pitied her. Yes, he told himself again and again that this sentiment +which so absorbed his heart and mind was no more than pity. But oh, if +this were pity, what were love? That was a question which also presented +itself to the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, of Beaubocage _in esse_, and +Côtenoir _in posse_. + +Madame Meynell rarely appeared at the common breakfast in the grim +dining-room of the Pension Magnotte. Gustave was therefore in nowise +surprised to miss her on this particular morning. He took a cup of +coffee, and hurried off to his daily duties. There was a fever on him +which he could neither understand nor shake off, and he hastened to the +gardens of the Luxembourg, as if there were some special necessity for +speed. So do men often hasten unconsciously to their predestined doom, +defiant of augury. Soothsayers may menace, and wives may dream dreams; +but when his hour comes, Cæsar will go to the appointed spot where the +daggers of his assassins await him. + +In the alley where he had first looked upon her sad face, beneath +the umbrage of young limes and chestnuts just bursting into bloom, +he saw the Englishwoman to-day, seated on the same bench, almost in +the same attitude. + +He went up to her, and bade her good morning; and then, intensely +conscious of his own temerity, seated himself by her side. + +"I did not expect to find you here so early." + +"No, I seldom come out so soon; but this morning I have to make some +inquiries upon a matter of business, and I am only resting here before +going to make them." + +She gave a little weary sigh at the end of this speech. It seemed a +strange manner of transacting business to rest in the Luxembourg gardens, +which were distant but a few hundred yards from her home. Gustave divined +that it was for very forlornness she lingered there, shrinking from some +difficult encounter that lay before her. + +"Can I not make the inquiries for you?" he asked. "Pray command me. It +will be my happiness to be useful to you." + +"You are very good. I cannot trouble you so much." + +"Pray do not talk of trouble. It can be no trouble to me to aid you in +any manner. Ah, madame, you do not know how much I would sacrifice to be +useful to you!" + +She must have been dull indeed had she failed to perceive the earnestness +of his tone. She did perceive it, and was vaguely conscious that in this +student of law she had a friend. + +"I want to know when the diligence for Calais leaves Paris, and from what +office," she said. "I am going back to England." + +She was surprised to see the young man's face blanch as she announced +this simple fact. The young man himself was surprised by the sudden +anguish inflicted by her announcement. It was in this moment that he +first discovered how completely he had given his heart into this strange +woman's keeping. + +"You are really going to leave Paris?--for ever?" he exclaimed. + +"Yes. I have been here too long already. I have no business here. I ought +to have gone back to England that day when I first met you here, but I +put off the day of my return. I can put it off no longer." + +"And you are going back to your friends?" Gustave asked, in a very +mournful tone. + +"I am going back to my friends? Yes!" Her lips quivered a little, and the +unbidden tears came to her eyes. + +Ah, what was the sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely creature? +What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain which consumed her? +Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk +of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day she talked +of going home to her friends: but O the bitterness of expression with +which she had spoken that word "friends!" + +"Are you going alone, Madame Meynell?" he inquired, after a pause. He +could not tear himself from that seat by her side. He could not be manly +or rational where she was concerned. The image of Madelon Frehlter rose +before his mental vision, reproachful, menacing; but a thick fog +intervened to obscure that unwelcome image. His whole life resolved +itself into those thrilling moments in which he sat here, on this common +garden bench, by this stranger's side; the entire universe was contracted +into this leafy walk where they two sat. + +"Yes, I am going alone," madame replied, with a little laugh. "Who should +I have to go with me? I am quite alone in the world. I think I had better +make these inquiries myself, M. Lenoble. There is no reason why I should +give you so much trouble." + +"There is no such thing as trouble. I will bring you all necessary +information to-day at dinner, if that will be soon enough." + +"Quite soon enough, I thank you, monsieur," she answered, with a sigh. "I +must ask you kindly to ascertain for me also the expense of the journey." + +"Most certainly, madame." + +This request set him wondering whether she were poor, and how poor. But +she had evidently no more to say to him; she had again become +impenetrable. He would fain have stayed, though honour and conscience +were clamorous in their demands for his departure. Happily for honour and +conscience, the lady was silent as death, impervious as marble; so M. +Lenoble presently bowed and departed. + +He thought of her all day long. The farce of pity was ended. He knew now +that he loved this Englishwoman with an affection at once foolish and +sinful,--foolish, since he knew not who or what this woman was; sinful, +since the indulgence of this passion involved the forfeiture of his +plighted word, the disappointment of those who loved him. + +"No, no, no," he said to himself; "I cannot do this base and wicked +thing. I must marry Madelon. All the hopes of my mother and father rest +on that marriage; and to disappoint them because this stranger's face has +bewitched me? Ah, no, it cannot be. And even if I were willing to trample +my honour in the dust, how do I know that she would value or accept the +sacrifice?" + +M. Lenoble made all necessary inquiries at the office of the Messageries, +and carried the intelligence to Madame Meynell. He could see that she +winced a little when he told her the cost of the journey, which in those +days was heavy. + +"She must certainly be poor," he said to himself; and it rent his heart +to think that even in this paltry matter he could be of no use to her. +The destined master of Beaubocage and Côtenoir was entirely without ready +money. He had his watch. He put his hand upon that clumsy timekeeper as +he talked to madame. + +"_Je te porterai chez ma tante, mon gars_," he said to himself. But he +doubted whether the high priests of the pious mountain--the Dordona of +Pauperism--would advance much upon this antique specimen of the +watchmaker's art. + +After this evening he looked forward daily, hourly, to the anguish of her +departure. She would vanish out of his life, intangible as a melted +snow-flake, and only memory would stay behind to tell him he had known +and loved her. Why should this be so hard to bear? If she stayed, he +dared not tell her she was dear to him; he dared not stretch forth his +hand to help her. In all the world there was no creature more utterly +apart from him than she, whether she lived in the same house with him or +was distant as the Antipodes. What did it matter, then, since she was +destined to disappear from his life, whether she vanished to-day or a +year hence? He argued with himself that it could be a question of no +moment to him. There was a death-blow that must descend upon him, cruel, +inevitable. Let it come when it would. + +Every day when he came home to dinner, M. Lenoble expected to behold a +vacant place by the side of his hostess; every day he was pleasantly +disappointed. The pale hopeless face was still to be seen, ghost-like, at +that noisy board. The face was more pale, more hopeless, as it seemed to +Gustave, every day he looked upon it. + +He asked Madame Magnotte when the English lady was going to leave, but +she could not tell. + +"She talks of leaving from day to day," said madame; "it will no doubt be +soon. I am sorry to lose her. She is very gentle, and gives no trouble to +any one. But she is sad--ah, how sad she is! She has suffered, monsieur." + +Gustave agreed to this. Yes, she had suffered; but what, and how? + +He watched her closely, but she was always the same. She no longer spent +her evenings in the salon, but in her own apartment. He saw her only at +dinner-time, and had no opportunity of speaking to her. + +At last the day came upon which he missed her at the usual hour. He sat +through the tedious meal without speaking; eating a little, drinking a +little, mechanically, but with no consciousness of what he ate or drank. +There was a mist before his eyes, a confusion of voices in his ears; but +the faculties of sight and hearing seemed suspended. The agony he +suffered during that miserable hour was bitter as death. + +"O, my God, how I love her!" he said to himself, while Raoul's bass roar +brayed in his ear on one side, and Leon's shrill squeal tortured him on +the other. + +He made his way to Madame Magnotte directly after dinner. + +"She is gone?" he exclaimed. + +"But who, my friend? Ah, yes; it is of that poor Madame Meynell you +speak. How you are interested in her! No, she is not gone, poor woman. +She remains always. She has the air of a person who knows not her own +mind. Yet I am sure she thinks of going. To-day, for the first time, she +has been writing letters. Reine came to tell me she had seen her occupied +in her own room for the first time. It is not her habit to occupy +herself." + +Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone; he might see her +again--if it were but a glimpse of her pale face looking out of the +diligence as it drove out of the Cour de Messageries. One look, one +glance; it would be something to carry in his heart all his life. All his +life! He looked forward and shuddered. What a dreary life it must needs +be! Côtenoir, Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to +study dry as dust books. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of +that dreary desert of existence--a life without her. + +She had been writing letters--doubtless letters to her friends to +announce her return. Her departure must be very near at hand. + +Gustave refused to go out that evening. His fellow-students were bent on +a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in vogue, where there would +be twinkling lamps and merry music under the May moon. The lamp-lit +parterres, the joyous waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble. He +haunted the dull salon, dim and dreary in the twilight; for Madame +Magnotte was chary of lamps and candles, and prolonged to its utmost +limits the pensive interval between day and night. He walked softly up +and down the room, unheeded by the ladies clustered in a group by one of +the windows. Restless and unhappy, he could neither go nor stay. She was +not coming down to the salon this evening. He had clung to the faint hope +that she might appear; but the faint hope died away in his breast as the +night deepened. What purpose could be served by his remaining in that +dismal room? He was no nearer her than he would have been in the +remotest wilds of Central America. He would go out--not to the odious +dancing-garden, but to the cool dark streets, where the night wind might +blow this fever from his brain. + +He left the room suddenly, and hurried downstairs. At the bottom of the +staircase he almost stumbled against a woman, who turned and looked at +him in the light of a little oil-lamp that hung over the door of the +portress's lodge. + +It was the Englishwoman, deadly pale, and with a wild look in her face +that Gustave had never seen there before. She gave him no sign of +recognition, but passed out of the courtyard, and walked rapidly away. +That unusual look in her face, the strangeness of the fact that she +should be leaving the house at this hour, inspired him with a vague +terror, and he followed her, not stealthily, without a thought that he +was doing any wrong by such an act--rather, indeed, with the conviction +that he had a right so to follow her. + +She walked very quickly--at a more rapid pace than Gustave would have +supposed possible for so fragile a creature. She chose the lonelier +streets, and Gustave had no difficulty in following her; she never looked +back, but went straight on her course, without pause or slackening of her +pace, as if with a settled purpose. + +"Where can she be going?" Gustave asked himself; and an answer, vague, +hideous, terrible, suggested itself to his mind. The idea that occurred +to him was one that would scarcely have occurred to an Englishman under +the same circumstances, but to a Frenchman it was a very familiar idea. + +It was dark now--the darkness that reigns between early sunset and late +moonrise. As the lonely woman went farther along the dreary streets +parallel with the quay, the dreadful suspicion grew stronger in Gustave's +mind. From that instant he had but one thought; in that moment he put +away from him for ever all sense of obligation to Madelon Frehlter; he +shook off father, mother, sister, old associations, home ties, ambition, +fortune--he lived alone for this woman, and the purpose of his life was +to save her from despair and death. + +They emerged upon the quay at last. The long stretch of pavement was +deserted. Ah, now she looked back--she looked on every side with wild +unseeing eyes--and now there could be little doubt as to the purpose that +brought her here. She crossed the road, and went upon the bridge, Gustave +following close; in the next minute she was standing on the stone bench, +a tremulous, fluttering figure, with arms stretched towards the water; in +a breath she was clasped to Gustave's breast, clasped by arms that meant +to hold her for ever. + +The shock of that surprise utterly unnerved the wretched creature. She +shivered violently, and struggled to free herself from those strong arms. + +"Let me go!" she cried in English. "Let me go!" And then, finding herself +powerless, she turned and looked at her captor. "M. Lenoble! O, why do +you persecute me? Why do you follow me?" + +"Because I want to save you." + +"To save me! To snatch me back when I was going to find rest--an end for +my weary life! O yes, I know that it is a sinful end; but my life has +been all sin." + +"Your life all sin! Foolish one, I will never believe that." + +"It is true," she cried, with passionate self-reproach. "The sin of +selfishness, and pride, and disobedience. There is no fate too hard for +me--but, O, my fate is very hard! Why did you keep me from that river? +You do not know how miserable my life is--you do not know. I paid my +last penny to Madame Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me +back to England, even if I dared go there--and I dare not. I have prayed +for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers have not been +heard; and there is nothing for me but to die. What would be the sin of +my throwing myself into that river! I must die; I shall die of +starvation in the streets." + +"No, no," cried Gustave passionately; "do you think I have dragged you +back from death to give you to loneliness and despair? My dear one, you +are mine--mine by right of this night. These arms that have kept you +from death shall shelter you,--ah, let them shelter you! These hands +shall work for you. My love, my love! you cannot tell how dear you are +to me. If there must be want or trouble for either of us, it shall come +to me first." + +He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and unresisting, and had +seated himself by her side. The fragile figure, shivering still, even in +the mild atmosphere of the spring night, was sustained by his encircling +arm. He felt that she was his, irrevocably and entirely--given to him by +the Providence which would have seemed to have abandoned her, but for the +love it had implanted for her in this one faithful heart. His tone had +all the pleading tenderness of a lover's, but it had something more--an +authority, a sense of possession. + +"Providence sent me here to save you," he said, with that gentle yet +authoritative tone; "I am your providence, am I not, dearest? Fate made +me love you--fondly, hopelessly, as I thought. Yesterday you seemed as +far away from me as those pale stars, shining up yonder--as +incomprehensible as that faint silvery mist above the rising moon--and +to-night you are my own." + +He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had indeed a vague +consciousness that the step which he was now taking would cause a +lifelong breach between himself and his father. But the time had gone by +in which he could count the cost. + +"Let me go back, M. Lenoble," the Englishwoman said presently. The +faintness of terror was passing away, and she spoke almost calmly. "Let +me go back to the house. It is you that have saved me from a dreadful +sin. I promise you that I will not again think of committing that deadly +sin. I will wait for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no, +no; do not detain me! Forget that you have ever known me." + +"That is not in my power. I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte +directly; but you must first promise to be my wife." + +"Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible." + +"Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful gravity. + +"Because I am not worthy of you." + +Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few +words. + +"You are worth all the stars to me. If I had them in my hands, those +lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, to hold you," said the +student passionately. "You cannot understand my love, perhaps. I seem a +stranger to you, and all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is +true as the heaven above us--true as life or death--death that was so +near you just now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March morning +on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees yonder. You held me +from that moment. I was subjugated--possessed--yours at once and for +ever. I would not confess even to myself that my heart had resigned +itself to you; but I know now that it was so from the first. Is there any +hope that you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love?" + +"You love me," the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the words were +almost beyond her comprehension,--"you love _me_, a creature so lost, so +friendless! Ah, but you do not know my wretched story!" + +"I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question--will you be my wife?" + +"You must be mad to offer your name, your honour to me." + +"Yes, I am mad--madly in love. And I am waiting for your answer. You +will be my wife? My angel, you will say yes! It is not much that I offer +you--a life of uncertainty, perhaps even of poverty; but a fond and +constant heart, and a head and hands that will work for you while God +gives them strength. It is better than the river." + +All that was thoughtless and hopeful in his disposition was expressed in +these words. The woman to whom he pleaded was weakened by sorrow, and +the devotion of this brave true heart brought her strength, comfort, +almost hope. + +"Will you be my friend?" she said gently. "Your words seem to bring me +back to life. I wanted to die because I was so wretched, so lonely. I +have friends in England--friends who were once all that is dear and kind; +but I dare not go to them. I think a cruel look from one of those friends +would kill me with a pain more bitter than any other death could give. +And I have no right to hope for kind looks from them. Yours are the only +words of friendship I have heard for a long time." + +"And you will give me the right to work for you--to protect you? You will +be my wife?" + +"I would rather be your servant," she answered, with sad humility. "What +right have I to accept so great a sacrifice? What folly can be so foolish +as your love for me--if it is indeed love, and not a wild fancy of +to-night!" + +"It is a fancy that will last my life." + +"Ah, you do not know how such fancies change." + +"I know nothing except that mine is changeless. Come, my love, it is +growing late and cold. Let me take you home. The portress will wonder. +You must slip past her quietly with your veil down. Did you give old +Margot your key when you came down stairs to-night?" + +"No, it is in my pocket. I was not thinking--I--" + +She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood that shudder; he +also shuddered. She had left her room that night possessed by the +suicide's madness; she had left it to come straight to death. Happily his +strong arm had come between her and that cruel grave by which they were +still lingering. + +They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle under the light of +the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman's wasted hand rested for the first +time on M. Lenoble's arm. She was his--his by the intervention and by the +decree of Providence! That became a conviction in the young man's mind. +He covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, engaging the +portress in conversation while the dark figure glided past in the dim +lamplight. On the staircase he paused to bid her good night. + +"You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow morning, +dearest," he said. "I have so much to say--so much. Until then, adieu!" + +He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her apartment, and +then went to his own humble bachelor's chamber, singing a little drinking +song in his deep manly voice, happy beyond all measure. + +They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The poor +lonely creature whom Gustave had rescued seemed already to look up to him +as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband. +It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it +was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had +subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute--penniless, +helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan +Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter. + +"Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she walked under the +chestnut-trees by her lover's side. "Let me tell you everything. And if, +when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give +me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not +speak to you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an outcast +I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know +how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand--you can +never know what you seem to me." + +And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told +him her story. + +"My father was a tradesman in the city of London," she said. "We were +very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy +such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and +discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the +city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now +and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to +me--my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness--I +feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since +then." + +She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too +profound for any conventional expression. He was listening to the story +of his future wife's youth. That there could be any passage in that +history which would hinder him from claiming this woman as his wife was a +possibility he did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame +involved in the story, as Madame Meynell's manner led him to suppose +there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since the shame must be +his, as she was his. + +"When my father and mother died, I went into Yorkshire to live with my +married sister. I cannot find words to tell you how kind they were to +me--my sister and her husband. I had a little money left me by my father, +and I spent the greater part of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents +to my sister and her children. I was happier in Yorkshire than I had been +in London; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and brighter +than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the brother of a nobleman +who lived in the neighbourhood of my sister's house. We met by accident +in a field on my brother-in-law's farm, where the gentleman was shooting; +and after that he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and +made some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very often, and +before long he asked me to marry him; and I promised to be his wife, with +my sister's knowledge and consent. She loved me so dearly, and was so +proud of me out of her dear love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this +engagement, especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of, +was a younger son, and by no means a rich man." + +Again she stopped, and waited a little before continuing her story. Only +by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand resting on his arm did Gustave +express his sympathy. + +"I cannot tell you, how happy I was in those days--so bright, so brief. I +cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that +time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a +background of darkness, with some strange vivid light shining upon it. It +was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as +soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of +the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville's, and an imprudent +marriage on his brother's part might have prevented the performance of +it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to +confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to +do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my +brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits to the farm. He +came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful +scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in +his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved +Montague Kingdon as you say you love me--foolishly, recklessly. I could +not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our +marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his +debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If +he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should +I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were +truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged +between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who +had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to +write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following +night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to +make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall +I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage +that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull. +From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and +misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I +had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to +be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to +love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was +no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with +debt and difficulty. We lived abroad--not for our pleasure, but because +Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord +Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood +invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his +slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient +drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years, +when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect +me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the +hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me." + +"My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave. "Do not tell +me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which +neglect gave place to desertion." + +"Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the +blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and +nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna +with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to +the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step. +He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorkshire. To go back!--as if +he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum +of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you +first met me here, I had not long received that letter." + +This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared +not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand +clasp hers, and knew that he was still her friend. This was all she asked +of Providence. + +To Gustave Lenoble the story had been unutterably painful. He had hoped +to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the shame was very bitter to +him. This woman whom he loved so fondly was no spotless martyr, the +victim of inevitable fate, beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She +was only a weak vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured +away from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace scoundrel. + +The story was common, the shame was common, but it seemed to M. Lenoble +that the woman by his side was his destiny; and then, prompt to the +rescue of offended pride, of outraged love--tortured to think that she, +so distant and pure a creature to him, should have been trampled in the +dust by another--came the white-winged angel Pity. By her weakness, by +her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity conjured him to +love her so much the more dearly. + +"My darling," he said softly, "it is a very sad story, and you and I will +never speak of it again. We will bury the memory of Montague Kingdon in +the deepest grave that was ever dug for bitter remembrances; and we will +begin a new life together." + +This was the end of M. Lenoble's wooing. He could not speak of his love +any more while the sound of Montague Kingdon's name had but lately died +away on Susan Meynell's lips. He had taken her to himself, with all her +sorrows and sins, in the hour in which he snatched her from death; and +between these two there was no need of passionate protestations or +sentimental rapture. + +M. Lenoble speedily discovered that the law had made no provision for the +necessities of a chivalrous young student eager to unite himself with a +friendless foreign woman, who could not produce so much as one of the +thirty witnesses required to establish her identity. A very little +consideration showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan +Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, and asked her +if she would trust him as she had trusted Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the +marriage might easily be solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to +stay there so long as the English law required for the solemnization of +their union? + +"Why should you take so much trouble about me?" said Susan, in her low +sad voice. "You are too good, too generous. I am not worth so much care +and thought from you." + +"Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susan?" + +"I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of miles from the +rest of mankind--with a happier life than mine. I have no feeling in my +heart but love for you, and faith in you." + +After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one +bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a +fortnight's sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the +bonds of matrimony. + +Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of +religion divided them no more than the difference of country. They came +back to Paris directly after the marriage, and M. Lenoble took a very +modest lodging for himself and his wife in a narrow street near the +Pantheon--a fourth story, very humbly furnished. M. Lenoble had provided +for himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage which +declares that a purse large enough for one is also large enough for two. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +A DECREE OF BANISHMENT. + +After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate +deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice +of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's tempest was raging, whispers grave +counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud, +sublime in the glare of the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face +in the clear, common light of day. + +Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble time and +reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love +which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a +passion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought could +reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very +desperate one. Before him lay an awful necessity--the necessity of going +to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had +been shattered by this deed of his. + +The letters from Cydalise--nay, indeed, more than one letter from his +mother, with whom letter-writing was an exceptional business--had of late +expressed much anxiety. In less than a month the marriage-contract would +be made ready for his signature. Every hour's delay was a new dishonour. +He told his wife that he must go home for a few days; and she prepared +his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to him like +the ministration of an angel. + +"My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the happiness you have brought +me!" he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish figure flitting about +the room, busy with the preparations for his journey. + +And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter--commonplace, stiff, and +unimpressionable--the most conventional of school-girls, heavy in face, +in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had seemed to him, despite his +sister's praises. + +He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of the +brilliant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk which he +ran of offending his father by that rash step. But to-night, when he +thought of Madelon's dulness and commonness, it seemed to him as if Susan +had in manner rescued him from a dreadful fate--as maidens were rescued +from sea-monsters in the days of Perseus and Heracles. + +"Madelon is not unlike a whale," he thought. "They tell us that whales +are of a sagacious and amiable temper,--and Cydalise was always talking +of Madelon's good sense and amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to +believe in the unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled +virtues of Madelon Frehlter." + +His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after a sad and +tender parting from his wife. The journey was a long one in those days, +when no express train had yet thundered across the winding Seine, +cleaving its iron way through the bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M. +Lenoble had ample time for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous +diligence; and his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering +vehicle approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was to make +his way to the paternal mansion as best he might. + +He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who carried his +portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in the quiet summer +evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the heart and perplexity +disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, and his spirits were in +nowise elevated by the walk. + +Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim garden at +Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a little pepper-castor +turret, his sister's room. The thought of their glad welcome smote his +heart. How could he shape the words that must inform them of their +disappointment? And then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the +Parisian lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and +submissive,--the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation, +as it seemed to his pious Catholic mind. The thought of this dear one +gave him courage. + +"I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, "but not the privilege +to sell me for money. The marriage they want to bring about would be a +sordid barter of my heart and my honour." + +In a few minutes after this he was standing in the little salon at +Beaubocage, with his mother and sister hanging about him and caressing +him, his father standing near, less demonstrative, but evidently well +pleased by this unexpected arrival of the son and heir. + +"I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, "and flew down from my +room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one can fly on these occasions. +And how thou art looking well, and how thou art handsome, and how I adore +thee!" cries the damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like +occasion. "Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee? +Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while thou didst +plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see thee again!" + +And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was spoken the dreaded +name of Madelon. She too would be glad--she too had been anxious. The +prodigal made no answer. He could not speak, his heart sank within him, +he grew cold and pale; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a +sharper pain than death. + +"Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest pale--thou +art ill! Look then, François, thy son is ill!" + +"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his +mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her +after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the +farewell kiss of her son. + +"I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave. + +The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He +led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some +dusty editions of the French classics, and where the master of Beaubocage +kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines. + +When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the open +windows, waiting for them. Without all was still. Distant lights +glimmered through the summer twilight, the lighted windows of Côtenoir. + +"How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards those +glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to believe that the +demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have +been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her +future sister-in-law. + +The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble +and Cydalise. The two women were curious--nay, indeed, somewhat anxious. + +"I fear he has made debts," said the mother, "and is telling thy father +of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, unless with the dowry +of Madelon, and that would seem a dishonourable use of her money." + +It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of that quiet +house. Twilight had thickened into night, when there came a banging of +doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of the salon was +opened, and M. Lenoble came in alone. At the same moment the outer door +closed heavily. + +M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed the Venetian +shutters. He went from thence to the second window, the shutters whereof +he fastened carefully, while the women stared at him wonderingly, for it +was not his habit to perform this office. + +"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice. + +"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed. + +"He is gone." + +"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?" + +"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English +adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine." + + + + +Book the Second. + + + +DOWNHILL. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE. + +Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which +Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy +five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and +chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a +forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever +known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown +fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only +for her husband and her child. + +The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he +cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years +no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the +prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A +narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with +fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had +been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that +joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against +the offender with a seal not to be broken, even had he come thither to +plead for pardon, which he did not. + +"My father would have sold me as negro slaves are sold _là-bas_," he said, +on those rare occasions when he opened his old wounds, which were to the +last unhealed: "I am glad that I escaped the contemptible barter." + +He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to him easier to +bear than the dreary prosperity of Côtenoir and a wife he could not have +loved. The distinguishing qualities of this man's mind were courage and +constancy. There are such noble souls born into the world, some to shine +with lustre supernal, many to burn and die in social depths, obscure as +ocean's deepest cavern. + +In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He +worked for her, he endured for her, he hoped against hope for her sake; +and it was only when bodily strength failed that this nameless +foot-soldier began to droop and falter in life's bitter battle. Things +had gone ill with him. He had tried his fate as an advocate in Paris, in +Caen, in Rouen--but clients would not come. He had been a clerk, now in +one counting-house, now in another, and Susan and he had existed somehow +during the seven years of their married life. + +They clung to each other with affection that seemed to grow with every +new sorrow; nor did love exhibit any inclination to spread his wings and +take flight from the window, though poverty came in every day at the +door, and sat by the hearth, a familiar companion and inevitable guest. + +The mother and sister contrived to help this poor castaway with the +veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old man, soured by his +great disappointment, grew sordid and covetous with increasing years, and +the lives of the women were hard and hopeless. By little cheats, and +petty contrivances, and pitiful falsifications of financial statements, +they managed to scrape together a few louis now and then for the +struggling exile; and to do this was the sole delight of their patient +lives. They contrived also to correspond secretly with Gustave, and were +informed of the birth of his son. + +"Ah, if thou couldst see how beautiful he is," wrote the father, "this +child of pure and true love, thou wouldst no longer regret my breach of +faith with Madelon Frehlter. I knew not until now how like infant +children are to angels. I knew not how true to nature are the angels in +the pictures of Raffaelle and Murillo. Thou knowest the print of +Murillo's Assumption; the picture is in the Louvre. If thou canst +remember that picture, dear mother, thou hast but to recall the face of +one of the cherubim about the feet of our Lady, and thou hast the +portrait of my boy. He opens his eyes, and looks at me as I write. Ah! +that he and I and my Susan were with thee in the little salon at +Beaubocage--my sister, Susan, you, and I united round this darling's +cradle. He has been born in poverty, but his birth has made us very +happy." + +The sentiment of this letter was no spurious or transient feeling. For +this child Gustave Lenoble evinced an unchanging fondness. It was indeed +no part of his nature to change. The little one was his comfort in +affliction, his joy during every brief interval of prosperity. When the +battle was well nigh fought, and he began to feel himself beaten; his +chief anxieties, his ever-returning fears, were for his wife and child. + +To Susan the thought of parting from him was a despair too deep for +tears. She would have been something less than woman if she had not loved +her husband with more than common affection. She watched the change that +illness brought in the frank face, the stalwart figure; and little by +little the awful truth came home to her. The hour was at hand in which +she must lose him. + +"If you could have rest, Gustave, better medical advice, more comforts, +you would soon be strong again. I am sure your father would not refuse to +forgive you now. Write to him, dearest. Go back to Beaubocage, and let +your mother and sister nurse you. I will stay here with the little one. +It shall be forgotten that you have a wife and child." + +"No, dear one; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy back my +father's love. I would rather be here with you than in the pleasantest +home without you. But we must face the future, Susan; we must be brave +and wise, for the little one's sake. You are not so strong that you can +afford to trust blindly in your power to protect him by-and-by. I have +written a letter to my father. He has proved himself a hard man to me, +cruel and obdurate beyond all my fears; but I know he is not altogether +heartless. When I am dead, you will take the letter in one hand, the +child in the other, and go to Beaubocage. I believe he will adopt the +boy, and that the little one will give him the comfort and happiness he +hoped from me. He must be very lonely; and I cannot doubt that his heart +will melt when he sees the child's face, and hears that he has no longer +a son. As for yourself, my poor girl, I see for you no hope except in the +old Yorkshire home, and the friends you fear to see again." + +"I no longer fear them," said his wife, with unwonted energy, "I could +not go to them seven years ago; but I can go to them as your wife." + +"Ah, thank God, the poor name is worth something for you." + +"Yes, dear; and I will go back to them--to-morrow." + +"To-morrow!" + +"To-morrow, Gustave. I have been selfish and cruel to delay so long. The +old dread of seeing my sister's reproachful face has been strong enough +to hold me back, when a little courage might have enabled me to help you. +The burden has been all on you, and I have done nothing. O, what a wretch +I must have been to sit idly by and see you suffer, and make no effort to +help you!" + +"But, my darling, you have not been idle. You have been the dearest and +most industrious of wives, and have helped me to bear my burden. You have +done more, dear--you have made my burden pleasant to me." + +"I will try to lighten it, Gustave," cried Susan, with excitement. "O, +why, why did I never try before! My sister and her husband are well +off--rich perhaps. If they are still living, if no cruel changes have +come to pass at Newhall, they could help us with a little money. They +might even give us a home. I will start for England to-morrow." + +"Nay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far alone. It +seems, indeed, a happy thought this of your rich relations; but you must +not undertake such a journey. You might write." + +"No, Gustave, I will trust to no letter; I will go. It will be no pain +for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go straight to my sister. I +know what a tender compassionate heart it is that I shall appeal to." + +There was much discussion; but Susan was resolute. To scrape together the +money for the journey she made efforts that were heroic in a nature so +weak as hers. She went to the Monte de Piété with the last of her little +treasures, that one dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger +was at the door--the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed upon +her finger before God's altar--the double symbolic circlet which bore on +one side her name, on the other her husband's. This dearest of all her +possessions she surrendered for a few francs, to make up the sum needful +for her journey. + +What it cost her to do this, what it cost her to tear herself away +from her sick husband and her only child, who shall say? There are +pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come within no +calculation--the infinite of pain. She went. Two kind souls, a labourer +and his wife, lodgers in the same garret-story, promised to care for +and help the invalid and child. There is no desolation in which a child +will not find a friend. + +The journey was long and fatiguing; the anguish of her poor aching heart +almost too much for endurance--a heart so heavy that even hope could +scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, though in the middle of +summer. The solitary traveller caught cold on the journey, and arrived in +London in a high fever. Ill, faint, and helpless, the great city seemed +to her unspeakably dismal--most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to +this wretched orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn +where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come _viâ_ Havre. +Here she sank prostrate, and had barely sufficient strength to write an +incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, of Newhall Farm, near +Huxter's Cross, Yorkshire. + +The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great northern road +could carry her. There was infinite joy in that honest sisterly heart +over this one sinner's repentance. Fourteen years had gone by since the +young city-bred beauty had fled with that falsest of men, and most +hardened of profligates, Montague Kingdon; and tidings from Susan were +unlooked for and thrilling as a message from the grave. + +Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell! The false step of her youth +had set her for ever wrong upon life's highway. When kind Mrs. Halliday +came, Gustave Lenoble's wife was past her help; wandering in her mind; a +girl again, but newly run away from her peaceful home; and with no +thought save of remorse for her misdeeds. + +The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out of her mind. +She raved of Montague Kingdon's baseness, of her own folly, her vain +regret, her yearning for pardon; but of the dying husband in the garret +at Rouen she uttered no word. And so, with her weary head upon her +sister's breast, she passed away, her story untold, no wedding-ring on +her wasted finger to bear witness that she died an honest man's wife; no +letters or papers in her poor little trunk to throw light on the fourteen +years in which she had been a castaway. + +Mrs. Halliday stayed in London to see the wanderer laid in the quiet city +churchyard where her family rested, and where for her was chosen an +obscure corner in which she might repose forgotten and unknown. + +But not quite nameless. Mrs. Halliday could not leave the grave unmarked +by any record of the sister she had loved. The stone above the grave of +Gustave's wife bore her maiden name, and the comforting familiar text +about the one sinner who repenteth. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FORGIVEN TOO LATE. + +For a week of long days and longer nights there was no step sounded on +the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old dilapidated house +where he lay languishing on the brink of an open grave, that did not move +Gustave Lenoble with a sudden emotion of hope. But the footsteps came and +went, the doors were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller +so waited, so hoped for did not return. + +The boy--the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that was noblest +and best in his father's nature--pined for his mother. The man endured a +martyrdom worse than the agony of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre. +What had befallen her? That she could desert him or his child was a +possibility that never shaped itself in his mind. _That_ drop of poison +was happily wanting in his cup; and the bitterness of death was sweet +compared to the scorpion-sting of such a supposition. + +She did not return. Calamity in some shape had overtaken her--calamity +dire as death; for, with life and reason, she could not have failed to +send some token, some tidings, to those she loved. The sick man waited a +week after the day on which he had begun to expect her return. At the end +of that time he rose, with death in his face, and went out to look for +her--to look for her in Rouen; for her whom the instinct of his heart +told him was far away from that city--as far as death from life. He went +to the Cour de Messageries, and loitered and waited amidst the bustle of +arriving and departing diligences, with a half-imbecile hope that she +would alight from one of them. The travellers came and went, pushing and +hustling him in their selfish haste. When night came he went back to his +garret. All was quiet. The boy slept with the children of his good +neighbour, and was comforted by the warmth of that strange hearth. + +Gustave lit his candle, a last remaining morsel. + +"You will last my time, friend," he said, with a wan smile. + +He seated himself at the little table, pushed aside the medicine-bottles, +searched for a stray sheet of letter-paper, and then began to write. + +He wrote to his mother, telling her that death was at hand, and that the +time had come in which she must succour her son's orphan child. With this +he enclosed a letter to his father--that letter of which he had spoken to +his wife, and which had been written in the early days of his illness. +This packet he directed to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There was no +longer need for secrecy. + +"When those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and past +forgiveness," he thought. + +In the morning he was dead. + +The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted and protected +the child for two days; and then there came a lady, very sad, very quiet, +who wept bitterly in the stillness of that attic chamber where Gustave +Lenoble lay; and who afterwards, with a gentle calmness of manner that +was very sweet to see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but +not a mean or ignominious, funeral. + +"He was my brother," she said to the good friends of the neighbouring +garret. "We did our best to help him, my mother and I; but we little +thought how bitterly he wanted help. The brave heart would not suffer us +to know that." + +And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their charity to the +dead man; and with these good people she went on foot through the narrow +streets of the city to see her brother laid in his grave. + +Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of +age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport +of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had +been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to +her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his +father; for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have +some shrine at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already she +was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow +also, for whose return she looked daily. + +For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days +after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably +established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a +home. No one but her mother and this friend, whom she could trust, knew +of the business that had brought her from Beaubocage. In seven years the +father had never uttered his only son's name; in all the seven years that +name had never been spoken in his hearing. + +When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England, +all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the +neighbours who had known the absent woman. + +"She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away," said the +labourer's wife, "as surely as it was on him that she left. I told her +she had no strength for the journey; but she would go: there was no +moving her from that. She had rich friends _là-bas_, who might help her +husband. It was for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind +of fever, and the strength of fever." + +"And there has come no letter--nothing?" + +"Nothing, mademoiselle." + +On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. She could not well +leave the child longer on the hands of these friendly people, even by +paying for his maintenance, which she insisted on doing, though they +would fain have shared their humble _pot-à-feu_ and coarse loaf with +him unrecompensed. She determined on a desperate step. She would take +her brother's orphan child back with her, and leave the rest to +Providence--to the chance of some sudden awakening of natural affection +in a heart that had long languished in a kind of torpor that was almost +death. + +The little fellow pined sadly for those dear familiar faces, those tender +soothing voices, that had vanished so suddenly from his life. But the +voice of his aunt was very sweet and tender, and had a tone that recalled +the father who was gone. With this kind aunt he left Rouen in the +lumbering old vehicle that plied daily betwixt that city and Vevinord. + +"Thou canst call me Cydalise for a while, my little one," she said to +him; for she did not wish the child to proclaim the relationship between +them yet awhile. + +Ah, what bitter tears the two women shed over the soft fair curls of that +little head, when they had the boy all to themselves in the turret +chamber at Beaubocage, on whose white walls the eyes of Cydalise had +opened almost every morning of her pure eventless life! + +"Why dost thou cry so, madame?" the child asked of his grandmother, as +she held him in her arms, kissing and weeping over him; "and what have +they done with my father--and mamma too? She went away one day, but she +told me that she would come back, so quickly, ah, so quickly! and the +days passed, and they shut papa in his room, and would not let me go to +him; and mamma did not come, though I asked the Blessed Virgin to send +her back to me." + +"Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place than this hard +world, where they had so much sorrow," Madame Lenoble answered, gently. + +"Yes, they were often sorry," murmured the boy thoughtfully. "It was +because of money; but then, when there was no money, mamma cried and +kissed me, and kissed papa, and the good papa kissed us both, and somehow +it always ended in happiness." + +François Lenoble was, happily, absent on this day of tribulation. The +women took their fill of sorrow, but it was sorrow mingled with a strange +bitter sweetness that was almost joy. The seigneur of Beaubocage had gone +to dine, as he still often did, with his old friend Baron Frehlter; for +the breach of faith which had caused a lifelong disunion of father and +son had not divided the two proprietors. Nay, indeed the Baron had been +generous enough to plead the cause of the castaway. + +"A man cannot dispose at will of his affections, my friend," he urged; +"and it was more generous in your son to break faith with my daughter +before marriage than after." + +Mademoiselle Frehlter had not broken her heart on account of her lover's +falsehood. She had been sufficiently indignant on the occasion, and had +been more impatient of her mother's pet priest and pet poodle during the +brief period in which she wore the willow. She had recovered her good +humour, however, on being wooed by a young subaltern in a cavalry +regiment stationed at Vevinord, the offshoot of a grander house than that +of Lenoble, and whose good looks and good lineage had ultimately +prevailed with the Baron. That gentleman had by no means too good an +opinion of the son-in-law thus forced upon him; but peace was the highest +good (with unlimited tobacco) to which his Germanic soul aspired; and for +the sake of peace in the present he was content to hazard his daughter's +happiness in the future. + +"_That_ is very brilliant," he said of M. Paul de Nérague, the young +lieutenant of light cavalry; "but it is not solid, like Gustave. Your son +is honest, candid--a brave heart. It is for that I would have given him +Madelon. But it is Providence which disposes of us, as our good father +St. Velours tells us often; and one must be content. Young Nérague +pleases my daughter, and I must swallow him, though for me he smells too +strong of the barracks: _ça flaire la caserne, mon ami_." + +That odour of the barracks which distinguished the sub-lieutenant Paul de +Nérague became more odious after his marriage with the virtuous Madelon, +when he was established--_niché_, as he himself called it--in very +comfortable, though somewhat gruesome, apartments at Côtenoir. His +riotous deportment, his hospitable disposition (as displayed in the +frequent entertainment of his brothers-in-arms at the expense of his +father-in-law), his Don Juan-like demeanour in relation to the housemaids +and kitchen-wenches of the château--innocent enough in the main, but on +that account so much the more audacious--struck terror to the hearts of +Madame Frehlter and her daughter; and the elder lady was much gratified +by that thirst for foreign territory which carried the greater part of +the French army and the regiment of the vivacious Paul to the distant +wilds of Algeria. + +The virtuous Madelon was too stolid to weep for her husband. But even her +stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and, +waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient +assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieutenant de Nérague. + +The young officer was yet absent at that period in which Cydalise +returned from Rouen with her brother's child. + +The little boy was sleeping peacefully in a cot beside his aunt's bed (it +had been his father's cot thirty years ago) when François Lenoble +returned from Côtenoir that night. + +It was not till the next day that he saw the child. He had been making +his usual morning's round in the gardens and orchards, when he came into +the salon, and saw the little boy seated near his grandmother's chair, +playing with some dominoes. Something--perhaps the likeness to his dead +son--the boy's black clothes, for Cydalise had contrived to dress him in +decent mourning--struck suddenly on the old man's heart. "Who is that +boy?" he asked, with a strange earnestness. + +"Your son Gustave's only child," answered his wife gently,--"his +orphan child." + +François Lenoble looked at her, and from her to the boy; tried to speak, +but could not; beckoned the child, and then dropped heavily into a chair +and sobbed aloud. Until this moment no one had ever seen him shed a tear +for the son he had put away from his home--and, as it had seemed, from +his heart. Not by one sigh, not by one mournful utterance of the familiar +name, had he betrayed the depth of that wound which he had endured, +silently, obstinately, in all these years. + +They suffered him to bemoan his dead son unhindered by stereotyped +consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied him in silence. The +little boy stared wonderingly, and at last crept up to the +sorrow-stricken father. "Why do you cry, poor old man?" he asked. "You +have not lost your papa and mamma, as I have lost mine, have you? I want +to stay with you and be your little boy, please. She told me to say +that," he added, pointing to Cydalise.--"And I have said it right, +haven't I?" he asked of the same lady.--"I think I shall love you, +because you are like my papa, only older and uglier," the little one +concluded, with angelic candour. + +The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort. +Beaubocage--Côtenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic +names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so +paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire! +He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts +bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed +that fair young brow; and it was his own son--the son whom he had +disowned--whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles +on his rugged chin. + +"My child," he murmured softly, "the fear is that I shall love thee too +well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I was wickedly stern +to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity than justice." + +This was said to himself rather than to the boy. + +"Tell me thy name, little one," he asked presently, after a few moments' +pensive meditation. + +"I have two names, monsieur." + +"Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names?" + +"François Gustave." + +"I shall call thee Gustave." + +"But papa always called me François, and mamma said it was the name of a +cruel man; but papa said he loved the name--" + +"Ah, no more, little one!" cried the lord of Beaubocage suddenly; +"thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost pierce this poor +old heart." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +GUSTAVE THE SECOND. + +The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as +rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may +be rich in love's pure white blossom. The existence of this child seemed +all happiness. He brought hope, and a sense of atonement, and all sweet +things, to the quiet family at Beaubocage; and as he grew from childhood +to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that household as if +the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from them. That +Orphic fable of Zagreus repeats itself in many households. For the one +bright creature lost another is given; and then comes a time when it is +almost difficult to separate the image of the missing one from the dear +substitute who so nearly fills his place. + +François Lenoble and his wife enjoyed a green old age, and the affection +of their grandson made the cup of life sweet for them to the very dregs. +There are, happily, some natures which indulgence cannot injure; some +luxuriant flowers which attain strength as well as beauty under the +influence of these tropical heats of affection. Gustave the second +possessed all the noble qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous, +brave, constant, affectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the failing +eyes of his kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal +Hercules. + +Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so passionately +desired are apt to be granted when the desire has grown somewhat cold and +dead. Thus it was with the ambition of François Lenoble. He lived to see +the lands of Côtenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his +grandson, who married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame +de Nérague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Côtenoir; but the +sons withered and faded in early boyhood, and even the daughter, though +considered a flourishing plant in that poor garden of weakling blossoms, +was but a fragile creature. + +The old people at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and châtelaine of +Côtenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery lieutenant, who fell +in Algeria without having attained his captaincy, or added any military +renown to the good old name of de Nérague in his own magnificent person. + +François saw his grandson established at Côtenoir before he died. He +expired with his hand in that of Gustave, whom, in the half-consciousness +of that last hour, he mistook for the son he had disowned. + +"What door was that that shut?" he asked, in an eager whisper. "Who said +I turned my son out of doors--my only son? It's false! I couldn't have +done it! Hark! there's the door shutting again! It sounds like the door +of a tomb." + +After this he dozed a little, and woke with a smile on his face. + +"I have been dreaming of thy father, Gustave," he said calmly. "I thought +that I saw him with a light shining in his face, and that he kissed and +forgave me." + +This was the end. The faithful wife was not slow to follow her husband to +the grave, and there was now only a placid maiden lady at Beaubocage, +Mademoiselle Cydalise Lenoble, whom everyone within ten leagues of +Vevinord knew and loved,--a lay abbess, a Sister of Mercy in all save the +robes; a tender creature, who lived only to do good. + +Ten years passed, and M. Lenoble of Côtenoir was a widower with two +fair young daughters at a convent school on the outskirts of Vevinord, +and a boisterous son at an academy in Rouen. Gustave had never followed +any profession; the lands of Beaubocage secured him a competence, +so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who +adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of +trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch +flower-garden. He was to live at Côtenoir, and look after his estate, and +smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his +wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came +natural to M. Lenoble. It was not in him to be otherwise than kind to +women and children. His invalid wife praised him as a model of marital +perfection. It was Gustave who wheeled her sofa from one room to another, +Gustave who prepared her medicines, Gustave whose careful hands adjusted +curtains and _portières_. The poor woman lived and died believing herself +the happiest of wives. She mistook kindness for love. + +M. Lenoble bore his wife's demise with Christian calmness. He was sorry +that the fragile creature should have been taken so early from the +pleasant home that was hers by right, but of passionate grief, or dreary +sense of irreparable loss, there was none in that manly heart. There were +times when the widower reproached himself for this want of feeling; but +in very truth Madame Lenoble, _jeune_, had lived and died a nonentity. +Her departure left no empty place; even her children scarcely missed her. +The father was all-in-all. + +Gustave had married at twenty years of age. He was twenty-nine when his +wife died. His eldest daughter, Clarice, eight; his second, Madelon, +seven; the boy, a spoilt young dog of five, not yet despatched to the +great school at Rouen. + +But in '65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very +charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of +the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was +looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very +pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness, +as the nuns told the master of Côtenoir. The demoiselles of Côtenoir +stood high in the estimation of pupils and mistress; they were a kind of +noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these young persons +with some pride when she described her establishment to a stranger. It +was a very comfortable little colony, a small world enclosed by high +walls. The good mothers who taught and cherished the children were for +the greater part ladies of superior and even exalted station; and there +was a gentleness, a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not +always to be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be +confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, and required a +good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher that convent school +would have afforded scope for curious study; for it is singular to +discover what exceptional vices the youthful mind can develop from its +inner consciousness, in homes as pure as this. There were black sheep +even in the convent of the Sacré Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that +meant "dangerous." + +Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the brightest and +the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him no trouble, except when +they asked him for a home. + +"It seems so dull and dreary at Côtenoir, papa," they said, "though you +are always so kind. It doesn't seem like home. Beaubocage is more +home-like. At Côtenoir, when you are out, there is no one to talk to; and +we have no little parties, no excursions into the country, none of those +pleasures which the other girls tell us they have during the holidays." + +This was the gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and +Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something +which was wanting to make Côtenoir a pleasant home. The girls could +complain of no restraint, or pine for no indulgence, since their father +was always prompt to gratify every whim. But there was some element of +happiness wanting, nevertheless; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so. +The life at Côtenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual +dawdling; a life of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, projects +begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, the household angel, +order, was wanting in that mansion. There was waste, dirt, destruction of +all kinds, in the rambling old château; old servants, too weak or too +lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of +imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right--for the +feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power +still flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of his lord. + +The servants at Côtenoir had gone their own ways with but little +interference since the death of Madame de Nérague, which occurred two +years before that of her daughter, Clarice Lenoble. Poor invalid Clarice +had been quite unable to superintend her household; and since her death +Mademoiselle Cydalise had been too feeble of health to assume any +authority in her nephew's establishment, even if the household of +Côtenoir would have submitted to interference from Beaubocage, which in +all likelihood they would not. + +Thus it happened that things had taken their own course at the château, +and the course had been somewhat erratic. There is nothing so costly as +muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late begun to perceive that he had the +maximum of expense with the minimum of comfort. Meanwhile the kind old +aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time +when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's +house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard +experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own +memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations +of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her +outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it +is probable that in the mass of documentary evidence which goes before +the Great Judge, Mademoiselle Lenoble's account-book will be placed on +the right side. + + + + +Book the Third. + + + +THE HORATIAD. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE. + +Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood, +after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London +Bridge terminus of the Brighton line. He was setting out upon an +adventure wild and impracticable as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts; +and this gallant captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous +and audacious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager +to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If the +Fates had allowed the accomplished Horatio to choose his own destiny, he +would have elected to live in the immediate neighbourhood of St. James's +Street, from the first day to the last of the London season, and to dine +artistically and discreetly at one of those older and more exclusive +clubs dear and familiar to him from the bright years of his youth. He was +by nature a _flâneur_, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and +frivolous pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought himself, +but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble +principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that +narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him +Cæsar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him +all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all +statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor +did Captain Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal +republic, unselfishness and earnestness would have rendered a man rather +a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men the +diplomatic Horatio was fully competent to deal; but some of his most +subtle combinations on the chess-board of life would have been checkmated +by an unexpected encounter with intractable virtue. + +The necessity of living was the paramount consideration to which this +gentleman had given his mind from the time when he found himself a +popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and +good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in +everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end +London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts and +lying devices. + +That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wits, is +subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the +miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his +pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in +which his spade turns up nothing but valueless clay, and the end of each +day's work leaves him with no better evidence of his wasted labour than +the aching limbs which he drags at nightfall to his dismal shanty. + +For some months Captain Paget had found Philip Sheldon a very useful +acquaintance. The stockbroker had been the secret inaugurator of two or +three joint-stock companies, though figuring to the outer world only as +director; and in the getting-up of these companies Horatio had been a +useful instrument, and had received liberal payment for his labours. +Unhappily, so serene an occupation as promoting cannot go on for ever; or +rather, cannot remain for ever in the same hands. The human mind is +naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infinitely more +audacious than the small larcenies of literature. The joint-stock company +market became day by day more crowded. No sooner did Philip Sheldon float +the Non-destructive Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which +would offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of lime and other +destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched a +colourable imitation thereof, in the Union-is-Strength Domestic Lavatory +Company, with a professor of chemistry specially retained as inspector of +wash-tubs. Thus it was that, after the profitable ripening of three such +schemes, Mr. Sheldon deemed it advisable to retire from the field, and +await a fitter time for the further exercise of his commercial genius. + +Captain Paget's relations with the stockbroker did not, however, +terminate with the cessation of his labours as secretary, +jack-of-all-trades, and promoter. Having found him, so far, clever, and +to all appearance trustworthy--and this was an important point, for no +man so much needs honourable service as a rogue--Philip Sheldon +determined upon confiding to Horatio the conduct of a more delicate +business than anything purely commercial. After that discovery of the +telegraphic message sent by his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst, +and the further discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed +wealth of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in +organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the expense of his +brother. + +"George refused to let me in for a share of chances when I showed myself +willing to help him," thought Philip. "He may discover by-and-by that I +have contrived to let myself into his secrets; and that he might have +played a better game by consenting to a partnership." + +A life devoted to his own interests, and a consistent habit of +selfishness, had rendered Mr. Sheldon, of the Lawn, Bayswater, and Stags +Court, City, very quick of apprehension in all matters connected, +immediately or remotely, with the making of money. The broken sentences +of the telegram betrayed by the blotting-pad told him a great deal. They +told him that there was a certain Goodge, in the town of Ullerton, who +possessed letters so valuable to George Sheldon, as to be bought by his +agent Valentine Hawkehurst. Letters for which Sheldon was willing to give +money must needs be of considerable importance, since money was a very +scarce commodity with that hunter of unconscious heirs-at-law. Again, a +transaction which required the use of so expensive a medium as the +electric telegraph rather than the penny post, might be fairly supposed a +transaction of some moment. The letters in question might relate to some +other estate than that of John Haygarth, for it was quite possible that +the schemer of Gray's Inn had other irons in the fire. But this was a +question of no moment to Philip Sheldon. + +If the letters--or the information contained therein--were likely to be +useful to George, they might be useful to him. If George found it worth +his while to employ an agent at Ullerton, why should not he (Philip) have +his agent in the same town? The pecuniary risk, which might be a serious +affair to George, was child's play for Philip, who had always plenty of +money, or, at any rate, the command of money. The whole business of +heir-at-law hunting seemed to the stockbroker a very vague and shadowy +piece of work, as compared to the kind of speculation that was familiar +to him; but he knew that men had made money in such a manner, and any +business by which money could be made, was interesting to him. Beyond +this, the notion of cutting the ground from under his brother's feet had +a certain attraction for him. George's manner to him had been somewhat +offensive to him on more than one occasion since--well, since Tom +Halliday's death. Mr. Sheldon had borne that offensiveness in mind, with +the determination to "take it out of" his brother on the earliest +opportunity. + +It seemed as if the opportunity had arrived, and Philip was not one of +those men who wait shivering on the shore when Fortune's tide is at the +flood. Mr. Sheldon launched his bark upon the rising waters, and within +two hours of his discovery in the telegraph-office was closeted with +Horatio Paget in the little parlour in Omega Street, making arrangements +for the Captain's journey to Ullerton. + +That Horatio was the right man for the work he wanted done, Mr. Sheldon +had been quick to perceive. + +"He knows Hawkehurst, and will be able to reckon up any manoeuvres of his +better than a stranger; and is, I think, altogether as deep an old +gentleman as one could hope to meet with, barring _the_ traditional +gentleman who did odd jobs for Dr. Faustus," the stockbroker said to +himself, as his hansom sped along Park Lane on its way to Chelsea. The +eagerness with which Captain Paget took up the idea of this business was +very agreeable to his patron. + +"This is an affair in which success hinges on time," said Mr. Sheldon; +"so, if you mean to go in for the business, you must start for Ullerton +by the two o'clock express. You'll have just time to throw your razors +and a clean shirt into a carpet-bag while I talk to you. I've got a cab +outside, and a good one, that will take you to Euston Square in half an +hour." + +The Captain showed himself prompt in action. His bedchamber was a small +apartment at the back of the parlour, and here he packed his bag while +conversing with his employer. + +"If you get upon the ground in time, you may obtain a look at the letters +before they are handed over to Hawkehurst, or you may outbid him for +them," said Mr. Sheldon; "but remember, whatever you do must be so done +as to keep Hawkehurst and George completely in the dark as to our +proceedings. If once they find out we are on their track, our chances +will be gone, for they have got the information and we haven't; and it's +only by following close in their footsteps we can hope to do anything." + +"That is understood," replied the Captain, stooping over his bag; "I +shall keep myself as close as possible, you may depend upon it. And it +shan't be my fault if Valentine sees me or hears of me. I shall want +money, by the bye; for one can't stir a step in this sort of affair +without ready cash." + +"I am quite aware of that. I stopped at the West-end branch of the Unitas +and cashed a cheque for forty pounds. You can do a good deal in the way +of bribery for forty pounds, in such a place as Ullerton. What you have +to do is to keep your eye on Hawkehurst, and follow up every channel of +information that he opens for you. He has the clue to the labyrinth, +remember, the reel of cotton, or whatever it was, that the young woman +gave that Roman fellow. All you have to do is to get hold of it, and +follow your leader." continued Philip, with his watch in his hand. "This +business of the letters will be sharp work, for the chances are against +us here, as it's more than likely the papers will have changed hands +before you can get to Ullerton. But if you can't buy the letters, you may +buy the information contained in them, and that is the next best thing. +Your first move will be to ferret out this man Goodge. Everybody knows +everybody else in such a place as Ullerton, large and busy as the town +is, and you won't find that difficult. When you see Goodge, you'll know +how to deal with him. The mode and manner of your dealing I leave to +yourself. You are a man of the world, and will know how to manipulate the +gentleman, whoever he may be. And now lock your bag and cut downstairs as +fast as you can. Time's up. Here's your money--three tens, two fives. +Good day." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +EPISTOLARY. + +_From Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + +Royal Hotel, Ullerton, Oct. 7, 186--. + +My dear sir,--I arrived here last evening just in time to run against +Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a provoking encounter at the +outset. He went further north by the same train that brought me from +London. This train only stops at three places after Ullerton--Slowport, +Black Harbour, and Manchester; and I shall take pains to discover which +of these towns was Hawkehurst's destination. There was one satisfaction +in seeing his departure by this train, inasmuch as it assured me that I +had the ground clear for my own operations. + +I had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of Goodge--_the_ +Goodge we want--and at eight o'clock was comfortably seated in that +gentleman's parlour, talking over the affair of the letters. Tolerably +quick work, I think you will allow, my dear sir, for a man whose years +have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. + +Mr. Goodge is a Methodist parson--a class of person I have always +detested. I found him peculiarly amenable to monetary influence. I need +scarcely tell you that I was careful to conceal my identity from this +person. I made so bold as to borrow the cognomen of an old-established +firm of solicitors in the Fields, and took a somewhat high tone +throughout the interview. I informed Mr. Goodge that the young man who +had called on him with reference to certain letters connected with the +affairs of the Haygarth family--and I perceived from Mr. Goodge's face +that we were on the right track--was a person of disreputable character, +engaged in an underhand transaction calculated to injure a respected +client of our house. I saw that the words "house" and "our" were +talismanic in their effect upon the Methodist parson. You see, my dear +sir, there is no one can manage this sort of thing so well as a +gentleman. It comes natural to him. Your vulgar diplomatist seldom knows +how to begin, and never knows when to stop. Here I had this low-bred +Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and collective +importance after five minutes' conversation. "But this comes too near the +praising of myself; therefore hear other things," as the bard observes. + +A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable. I found +that Hawkehurst had approached him in the character of your brother's +articled clerk, but under his own proper name. This is one point gained, +since it assures me that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned +name; and will enable me to shape my future inquiries about him +accordingly. I also ascertained Hawkehurst's whereabouts when in +Ullerton. He stays at a low commercial house called the Black Swan. It +appears that the man Goodge possesses a packet of letters written by a +certain Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth, wife of one Matthew Haygarth. In what +relationship this Matthew may stand to the intestate is to be discovered. +It is evident he is an important link in the chain, or your brother would +not want the letters. I need not trouble you with our conversation in +detail. In gross it amounted to this: Mr. Goodge had pledged himself to +hand over Mrs. Haygarth's letters, forty or so in number, to Hawkehurst +in consideration of twenty pounds. They would have been already in +Hawkehurst's possession, if Mr. Goodge had not objected to part with them +except for ready money. In consideration of a payment of twenty pounds +from me, he was willing to let me read all the letters, and select any +ten I pleased to take. This bargain was not arrived at without +considerable discussion, but it certainly struck me as a good one. + +I opened the packet of papers then and there, and sat up until six +o'clock the next morning, reading Mrs. Haygarth's letters in Mr. Goodge's +parlour. Very fatiguing occupation for a man of my years. Mr. Goodge's +hospitality began and ended in a cup of coffee. Such coffee! and I +remember the mocha I used to get at Arthur's thirty years ago,--a +Promethean beverage, that illumined the dullest smoking-room bore with a +flash of wit or a glimmer of wisdom. + +I enclose the ten letters which I have selected. They appear to me to +tell the history of Mrs. Haygarth and her husband pretty plainly; but +there is evidently something mysterious lurking behind the commonplace +existence of the husband. That is a matter for future consideration. All +I have to do in the present is to keep you as well informed as your +brother. It may strike you that the letters I forward herewith, which are +certainly the cream of the correspondence, and the notes I have made from +the remaining letters, are scarcely worth the money paid for them. In +reply to such an objection, I can only say that you get more for _your_ +money than your brother George will get for his. + +The hotel at which I have taken up my quarters is but a few paces from +the commoner establishment where Hawkehurst is stopping. He is to call on +Goodge for the letters to-day; so his excursion will be of brief +duration. I find that the name of Haygarth is not unknown in this town, +as there are a family of Judsons, some of whom call themselves Haygarth +Judson. I intend inviting my landlord--a very superior person for his +station--to discuss a bottle of wine with me after my chop this evening, +and hope to obtain some information from him. In the meantime I shall +keep myself close. It is of vital consequence that I should remain unseen +by Hawkehurst. I do not believe he saw me on the platform last night, +though we were as close to each other as we well could be. + +Let me know what you think of the letters, and believe me to be, my +dear sir, very faithfully yours, + +H. N. C. PAGET. + +PHILIP SHELDON, Esq., &c. &c. &c. + + * * * * * + +_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. + +Bayswater, Oct. 8,186-. + +DEAR PAGET,--The letters are mysterious, and I don't see my way to +getting much good out of them, but heartily approve your management of +matters, and give you _carte blanche_ to proceed, according to your own +lights. + +Yours truly, P.S. + + * * * * * + +_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + +Royal Hotel, Oct. 9, 186-. + +MY DEAR SIR,--The cultivation of my landlord has been very profitable. +The house is the oldest in the town, and the business has descended in a +direct line from father to son since the time of George the Second. This +man's grandfather entertained the officers of William Duke of Cumberland, +honoured by his contemporaries with the soubriquet of Billy the Butcher, +during the "forty-five." I had to listen to and applaud a good many +stories about Billy the Butcher before I could lead my landlord round to +the subject of the Haygarths. But he was not more prosy than many men I +have met at dinner-parties in the days when the highest circles in the +land were open to your humble servant. + +The Haygarth family, of which the intestate John Haygarth was the last +male descendant, were for a long period inhabitants of this town, and +obtained their wealth by trading as grocers and general dealers in a shop +not three hundred yards from the room in which I write. The building is +still standing, and a curious, old-fashioned-looking place it is. The +last of the Haygarths who carried on business therein was one Jonathan, +whose son Matthew was the father of that Reverend John Haygarth, lately +deceased, intestate. You will thus perceive that the letters I sent you +are of much importance, as they relate solely to this Matthew, father of +our intestate. + +My next inquiries related to the Judson family, who are, it appears, +descended from the issue of a certain Ruth Haygarth's marriage with one +Peter Judson. This Ruth Haygarth was the only sister of the Matthew +alluded to in the letters, and therefore was aunt of the intestate. It +would herefrom appear that in this Judson family we must naturally look +for the rightful claimant to the fortune of the deceased John Haygarth. +Possessed of this conviction, I proceeded to interrogate my landlord very +cautiously as to the status, &c. of the Judson family, and amongst other +questions, asked him with a complete assumption of indifference, whether +he had ever heard that the Judsons expected to inherit property from any +branch of the Haygarth family. + +This careless interrogatory produced information of, as I imagine, a very +valuable character. A certain Theodore Judson, attorney of this town, +calls himself heir-at-law to the Haygarth estates; but before he can +establish his claim, this Theodore must produce evidence of the demise, +without heirs, of one Peter Judson, eldest surviving grandson of Ruth +Haygarth's eldest son, a scamp and ne'er-do-well--if living, supposed to +be somewhere in India, where he went, as supercargo to a merchant vessel +about, the year '41--who stands prior to Theodore Judson in the +succession. I conclude that the said Theodore, who, as a lawyer, is +likely to do things _secundum artem_, is doing his _possible_ to obtain +the necessary evidence; but in the meantime he is at a dead lock, and the +whole affair appears to be in a charming condition for speculative +interference. I opine, therefore, that your brother really has hit upon a +good thing this time; and my only wonder is, that instead of allowing his +agent, Hawkehurst, to waste his time hunting up old letters of Matthew +Haygarth's (to all appearance valueless as documentary evidence), he does +not send Valentine to India to hunt for Peter Judson, who, if living, is +the rightful heir to the intestate's fortune, and who, as a reckless +extravagant fellow, would be likely to make very liberal terms with any +one who offered to procure him a large lump of money. + +I confess that I am quite at a loss to understand why your brother George +does not take this very obvious course, and why Valentine potters about +in this neighbourhood, when a gold mine is waiting to be _exploité_ on +the other side. + +I shall be very glad to have your views upon this subject, for at the +present moment I am fain to acknowledge that I do not see my way to +taking any further steps in this business, unless by commencing a search +for the missing Peter. + +I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours, + +H. N. C. PAGET. + + * * * * * + +_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. + +Bayswater, Oct. 10, 186--. + +DEAR PAGET,--When so old a stager as G. S. does not take the obvious +course, the inference is that there is a better course to be taken--_not_ +obvious to the uninitiated. + +You have done very well so far, but the information you have obtained +from your landlord is only such information as any one else may obtain +from the current gossip of Ullerton. You haven't yet got to the _dessous +des cartes_. Remember what I told you in London. G. S. _has_ the clue to +this labyrinth; and what you have to do is to hold on to the coat-tails +(in a figurative sense) of his agent, V. H. + +Don't put your trust in prosy old landlords, but continue to set a watch +upon that young man, and follow up his trail as you did in the matter of +the letters. + +If the Peter Judson who went to India three-and-twenty years ago were the +right man to follow, G.S. would scarcely give twenty pounds for the +letters of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth. It appears to me that G. must be +looking for an heir on the Haygarth side of the house; and if so, rely +upon it he has his reasons. Don't bewilder yourself by trying to +theorize, but get to the bottom of G.'s theory. + +Yours truly, P. S. + +_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + + * * * * * + +Royal Hotel, Oct. 12, 186.-- + +MY DEAR SIR,--Considering the advice contained in your last very good, I +lost no time in acting upon it. I need hardly tell you, that to employ +the services of a hired spy, and to degrade myself in some sort to the +level of a private inquirer, was somewhat revolting to a man, who, in the +decadence of his fortunes, has ever striven to place some limit on the +outrages which that hard taskmaster, poverty, may have from time to time +compelled him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of +a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since an +unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I submitted to this +temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and I trust that when the +time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which +I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded +self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium +may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you +that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after +duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the +movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person to play the spy +would be that class of man whose existence seems for the most part +devoted to the lounging at street corners, the chewing of straw, and that +desultory kind of industry known in the _patois_ of this race as +"fetching errands." This is the man, or boy, who starts up from the +pavement (as through a trap-door in the flags) whenever one alights from +or would enter any kind of vehicle. Unbidden, unrequired, and obnoxious, +the creature arises, and opens a door, or lays some rag of his wretched +attire on a muddy wheel, and then whines, piteous, for a copper. Such a +man, or such a boy, I felt convinced must exist among the hangers-on of +the Royal Hotel; nor was I mistaken. On inquiring for a handy lad, +capable of attending upon my needs at all hours in the day, and not a +servant in the hotel, but a person who would be wholly at my own +disposal, I was informed that the Boots had a younger brother who was +skilled in the fetching of errands, and who would be happy to wait upon +me for a very reasonable remuneration, or in the words of the waiter +himself, would be ready to leave it--i.e. the remuneration--to my own +generosity. I know that there are no people who expect so much as those +who leave the assessment of their claims to your own generosity; but +as I wanted good service, I was prepared to pay well. The younger Boots +made his appearance in due course--a sharp young fellow enough--and I +forthwith made him my slave by the promise of five shillings a day for +every day in which I should require his services. I then told him that it +was my misfortune to own--with a strong inclination to disown--a +reprobate nephew, now an inhabitant of that very town. This nephew, I had +reason to believe, was going at a very rapid rate to the dogs; but my +affectionate feelings would not allow him to consummate his own +destruction without one last effort to reclaim him. I had therefore +followed him to Ullerton, whither I believed him to be led by the worst +possible motives; and having done so, my next business was to keep myself +informed of his whereabouts. + +Seeing that the younger Boots accepted these statements with +unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal +to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and +watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my +recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the +limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad's intelligence was likely to be +equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or +complicated position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other +mischance. "Do you think you can watch the gentleman without being +observed?" I asked. "I'm pretty well sure I can, sir," answered the boy, +who is of an enterprising, and indeed audacious, temper. "Very well," +said I, "you will go to the Black Swan Inn. Hawkehurst is the name by +which my nephew is known there, and it will be your duty to find him +out." I gave the boy a minute account of Valentine's appearance, and +other instructions with which I need not trouble you. I further furnished +him with money, so that he might be able to follow Hawkehurst by rail, or +any other mode of conveyance, if necessary; and then despatched him, with +an order to come back to me when he had seen our man safely lodged in the +Black Swan after his day's perambulations. "And if he shouldn't go out at +all?" suggested the lad. "In that case you must stick to your post till +nightfall, and pick up all the information you can about my unfortunate +nephew from the hangers-on of the hotel," said I. "I suppose you know +some one at the Black Swan?" The boy informed me, in his untutored +language, that he knew "a'most all of 'em," and thereupon departed. + +At nine o'clock at night he again appeared before me, big with the +importance of his day's work. He had seen my nephew issue forth from the +Black Swan within an hour of leaving my presence, and had followed him, +first to Mr. William Judson's in Ferrygate, where he waited and hung +about nearly an hour, keeping himself well out of view round the corner +of Chalkin Street, a turning close to Mr. Judson's house. After leaving +this gentleman's house, my renegade nephew had proceeded--carrying a +letter in his hand, and walking as if in very good spirits (but that +fellow Hawkehurst would walk to the gallows in good spirits)--to the +Lancaster Road, where he was admitted into Lochiel Villa, a house +belonging, as my Mercury ascertained from a passing baker's boy, to Miss +Judson, sister of the William Judson of Ferrygate. You will perceive that +this town appears to teem with the Judson family. My messenger, with +praiseworthy art, contrived to engage in a game of tip-cat (what, I +wonder, _is_ a tip-cat?) with some vagrant boys disporting themselves in +the roadway, within view of Miss Judson's house. Hence, after the lapse +of more than an hour, Boots-Mercury beheld my recreant relative emerge, +and from this point followed him--always with extreme caution--back to +the Black Swan. Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close +acquaintance with the ostler, until eight o'clock in the evening, no +event of the smallest importance occurring during all those hours. But at +eight there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss Judson to Mr. +Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was sealed with red wax. This was +all my Mercury could ascertain respecting it; but this was something. + +I at once divined that this packet must needs contain letters. I asked +myself whether those letters or papers had been sold to Hawkehurst, or +only lent to him, and I immediately concluded that they could only have +been lent. It was all very well for Goodge, the Methodist parson, to +traffic in the epistles of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth, but it was to the last +degree unlikely that a well-to-do maiden lady would part with family +letters or papers for any pecuniary consideration whatever. "No," I said +to myself, "the documents have been lent, and will have to be returned;" +and thereupon I laid my plans for the next day's campaign, with a view to +obtaining a peep at those letters, by fair means or foul. I told the boy +to be at his post in the inn yard early the next morning, and if my +nephew did not leave the inn, my agent was to ascertain what he was +doing, and to bring me word thereof. "I'll tell you what it is, Boots," I +said; "I have reason to believe that sadly disposed nephew of mine has +some wicked intention with regard to Miss Judson, who is nearly related +to a young lady with whom that unprincipled young man is, or pretends to +be, in love; and I very much fear that he means to send her some letters, +written by this foolish niece of hers to my more foolish nephew, and +eminently calculated to wound the good lady's feelings. Now, in order to +prevent this very shameful conduct on his part, I want to intercept any +packet or letter which that mistaken youth may send to Miss Judson. Do +you feel yourself capable of getting hold of such a packet, on +consideration of a bonus of half-a-sovereign in addition to the five +shillings per diem already agreed upon?" + +This, in more direct and vulgar phraseology, was what I said to the boy; +and the boy departed, after pledging himself to bring me any packet which +Hawkehurst might despatch from the Swan Inn. The only fear was that +Hawkehurst might carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared +unpleasantly probable. + +Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out. He +intrusted Miss Hudson's packet to his waiter, the waiter confided it to +the Boots, the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy +Mercury, who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a +walk to the Lancaster Road. + +At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part +of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written +by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography; +but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been +somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble +citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal +personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would +provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the +crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems +a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of +princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati, +should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I +could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew +Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully +numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to +any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to +retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's +caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It +appears to me that these letters relate to some _liaison_ of the +gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to +discover that, even in a period notorious for looseness of morals, a man +should enter into such details in a correspondence with his sister. +_Autres temps, autres moeurs_. I have selected my extracts with great +care, and hope that you may be able to make more use of them than I can +at present imagine possible. I shall post this letter and enclosure with +my own hands, though in order to do so I must pass the Black Swan. I +shall despatch my messenger to Lochiel Villa, with Miss Judson's packet, +under cover of the darkness. + +In much haste, to catch the London mail, + +Truly yours, H.N.C.P. + + * * * * * + +_From Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. City, Oct. 12, 186-- + +Dear Paget,--Come back to town. You are only wasting money, time, and +trouble. Yours, P.S. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +TOO CLEVER, FOR A CATSPAW. + +Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by that sudden summons from his +patron, and eager to know what new aspect of affairs rendered his further +presence in Ullerton useless or undesirable. + +Horatio arrived in the great city half-a-dozen hours before his sometime +protégé, and was comfortably installed when Valentine returned to those +lodgings in Omega Street, Chelsea, which the two men occupied in common. + +Captain Paget went into the City to see Philip Sheldon on the day of his +return, but did not succeed in finding the stockbroker. The evening's +post brought him a letter from Philip, appointing an interview at +Bayswater, at three o'clock on the following day--the day after +Valentine's return from Ullerton. + +Punctual to the moment appointed by this letter, Captain Paget appeared +at the Lawn on the following day. He was ushered into Mr. Sheldon's +study, where he found that gentleman awaiting him, grave and meditative +of mood, but friendly, and indeed cordial, in his manner to the returning +traveller. + +"My dear Paget, sit down; I am delighted to see you. Your trip has made +you look five years younger, by Jove! I was sorry to find you had called +while I was out, and had waited for me upwards of an hour yesterday. I +have a good deal of worry on my shoulders just now; commerce is all +worry, you know. The Marquis of Lambeth has come into the market and +bought up two-thirds of the Astrakhan Grand Trunk debenture bonds, just +as our house had speculated for the fall. And since it has got wind that +the Marquis is sweet upon the concern, the bonds are going up like a +skyrocket. Such is life. I thought we had better have our little talk +here; it's quieter than in the City. Have some sherry and soda; you like +that Manzanilla of mine, I know." + +And the hospitable Philip rang the bell, without thinking it necessary to +wait for his guest's answer. + +There was a cordiality, a conciliating friendliness about the +stockbroker's manner which Horatio Paget did not like. + +"He's too civil by half," the Captain said to himself; "he means to do +me." + +"And now about this Ullerton business," Mr. Sheldon began, when the wine +and soda-water had been brought, and a tall tumbler of that refreshing +compound filled for the Captain; "you have really managed matters +admirably. I cannot too much applaud your diplomatic tact. You would have +put a what's-his-name--that fellow of Napoleon's--to the blush by your +management of the whole business. But, unfortunately, when it's all done +it comes to nothing; the whole affair is evidently, from beginning to +end, a mare's-nest. It is one of those wild geese which my brother George +has been chasing for the last ten years, and which never have resulted in +profit to him or anybody else; and I should be something worse than a +fool if I were to lend myself any longer to such a folly." + +"Humph," muttered the Captain, "here is a change indeed!" + +"Well, yes," Mr. Sheldon answered coolly. "I dare say my conduct does +seem rather capricious; but you see George put me out of temper the other +day, and I was determined, if he had got a good thing, to cut the ground +from under his feet. All your communications from Ullerton tend to show +me that he has not got hold of a good thing, and that in any attempt to +circumvent him I should only be circumventing myself, wasting your time, +and my own money. This Judson family seems numberless; and it is evident +to me that the Reverend John Haygarth's fortune will be a bone of +contention amongst the Judsons in the High Court of Chancery for any +indefinite number of years between this and the milennium. So I really +think, my dear Paget, we'd better consider this transaction finished. I +will give you whatever honorarium you think fit to name for your trouble, +and we'll close the affair. I shall find plenty more business as good, or +better, for you to do." + +"You are very good," replied the Captain, in nowise satisfied by this +promise. It was all too smooth, too conciliatory. And there was a +suddenness in this change of plan that was altogether mysterious. So +indeed might a capricious man be expected to drop a speculation he had +been eager to inaugurate, but Philip Sheldon was the last of men to be +suspected of caprice. + +"You must have taken an immense deal of trouble with those extracts, +now," said the stockbroker carelessly, as Horatio rose to depart, +offended and angry, but anxious to conceal his anger. "What, are you off +so soon? I thought you would stop and take a chop with us." + +"No, thanks; I have an engagement elsewhere. Yes, I took an +inordinate trouble with those extracts, and I am sorry to think they +should be useless." + +"Well, yes, it is rather provoking to you, I dare say. The extracts would +be very interesting from a social point of view, no doubt, to people who +care about such things; but in a legal sense they are waste-paper. I +can't understand why Hawkehurst was in Ullerton; for, as you yourself +suggested, that Peter Judson who went to India must be the Judson wanted +for this case." + +"Your brother may be in league with some other branch of the Judson +family. Or what if he is hunting for an heir on the Haygarth side?" asked +the Captain, with a very close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's face. Let the +stockbroker be never so skilful a navigator of the high seas of life, +there was no undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of +the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was +not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that +wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the +diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's +sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; +but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead the acute Horatio. + +"How about the Haygarth side of the house?" he asked again; for it had +seemed to him that at his first mention of the name of Haygarth Mr. +Sheldon had winced, ever so little. This time, however, he betrayed not +the faintest concern; but he was doubtless now on his guard. + +"Well, I don't see how there can be any claimant on that side of the +house," he said carelessly. "You see, according to your old landlord's +statement--which I take to be correct--Jonathan Haygarth had but one son, +a certain Matthew, who married one Rebecca So-and-so, and had, in his +turn one only son, the intestate John. Now, in that case, where is your +heir to come from, except through Matthew's sister Ruth, who married +Peter Judson?" + +"Isn't it just possible that Matthew Haygarth may have married twice, and +had other children? Those letters certainly suggest the idea of a secret +alliance of some kind on Haygarth's part, and the existence of a family, +to whom he appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this +affair was that it must have been a low _liaison_; but I could hardly +realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under any such +circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been. +Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at some mystery in her husband's +life. Is it not likely that this hidden family was a legitimate one?" + +"I can't quite see my way to that idea," Mr. Sheldon answered, in a +meditative tone. "It seems very unlikely that any marriage of Haygarth's +could have remained unknown to his townsmen; and even if it were so, I +doubt the possibility of our tracing the heirs from such a marriage. No, +my dear Paget, I have resolved to wash my hands of the business, and +leave my brother George in undisturbed possession of his ground." + +"In that case, perhaps, you will return my notes; they are +interesting to me." + +Here again the faintest indication of annoyance in the stockbroker's face +told its tale to Captain Paget. For your accomplished navigator of the +unknown seas there is no ocean bird, no floating weed, that has not a +language and a significance. + +"You can have your notes, if you want them," answered Mr. Sheldon; "they +are at my office. I'll hunt them up and send them to you; or you had +better look in upon me in the City early next week, and I can give you a +cheque at the same time." + +"Thanks. I will be sure and do so." + +"You say the orthography of the original letters was queer. I suppose +your copies were faithful in all matters except the orthography. And in +the names, you of course adhered to the original spelling?" + +"Most decidedly," replied Captain Paget, opening the door to depart, +and with a somewhat cynical smile upon his face, which was hidden from +Mr. Sheldon. + +"I suppose there is no doubt of your accuracy with regard to the name of +Meynell, now?" + +"Not the least. Good afternoon. Ah, there's our young friend Hawkehurst!" +exclaimed the Captain, in his "society" voice, as he looked out into the +hall, where Valentine was parting with Diana. + +He came and greeted his young friend, and they left the house together. + +This was the occasion upon which Valentine was startled by hearing the +name "Meynell" pronounced by the lips of Philip Sheldon. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL. + +Horatio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully +convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off the scent, +in order to follow up the chase alone, for his sole profit and advantage. + +"My last letter conveyed some intelligence that altered his whole plan of +action," thought the Captain; "that is perfectly clear. He was somewhat +wanting in tact when he recalled me so suddenly. But I suppose he thought +it would be easy to throw dust in my poor old eyes. What was the +intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question." +Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined +well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he +was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative +mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his +meditation was Philip Sheldon. + +"Yes," he murmured at last, "that is it. The charm is in the name of +Meynell. Why else should he question me about the orthography of that +name? I sent him information about Matthew Haygarth in the wife's +letters, and he took no special notice of that information. It was only +when the name of Meynell cropped up that he changed his tactics and tried +to throw me over. It seems to me that he must have some knowledge of this +Meynell branch, and therefore thinks himself strong enough to act alone, +and to throw me over the bridge. To throw me over," the Captain repeated +to himself slowly. "Well, we'll see about that. We'll see; yes, we'll +see." + +At noon on the following day Captain Paget presented himself again at the +Bayswater villa, where his daughter ate the bread of dependence. He +appeared this time in a purely paternal character. He came to call upon +his only child. Before paying this visit the Captain had improved the +shining hour by a careful study of the current and two or three back +volumes of the Post-Office and Trade Directories; but all his researches +in those interesting volumes had failed to reveal to him the existence of +any metropolitan Meynells. + +"The Meynells whom Sheldon knows may be in the heart of the country," he +said to himself, after these futile labours. + +It was a fine autumnal morning, and as Miss Paget was at home and +disengaged, her affectionate father suggested that she should take a walk +with him in Kensington Gardens. Such a promenade had very little +attraction for the young lady; but she had a vague idea that she owed a +kind of duty to her father not remitted by his neglect of all duties to +her; so she assented with a smile, and went out with him, looking very +handsome and stylish in her simple but fashionable attire, no part of +which had been provided by the parent she accompanied. + +The Captain surveyed her with some sense of family pride. "Upon my word, +my dear, you do me credit!" he exclaimed, with a somewhat patronising +kindness of tone and manner; "indeed any man might be proud of such a +daughter. You are every inch a Paget." + +"I hope not, papa," said the girl involuntarily; but the Captain's more +delicate instincts had been considerably blunted in the press and jostle +of life, and he did not feel the sting of this remark. + +"Well, perhaps you are right, my love," he replied blandly; "the Pagets +_are_ an unlucky family. Like those Grecian people, the Atri--, +what's-his-name--the man who was killed in his bath, you know. His wife, +or the other young person who had come to visit his daughters, made the +water too hot, you know--and that kind of thing. I am not quite clear +about the story, but it's one of those farragos of rubbish they make +young men learn at public schools. Yes, my dear, I really am amazingly +pleased by your improved appearance. Those Sheldon people dress you very +nicely; and I consider your residence in that family a very agreeable +arrangement for all parties. You confer a favour on the girl by your +society, and so on, and the mother provides you with a comfortable home; +All I wonder is that your good looks haven't made their mark before this +with some of Sheldon's rich stockbroking fellows." + +"We see very little of the stockbroking fellows, as you call them, at the +Lawn, papa." + +"Indeed! I thought Sheldon kept a great deal of company." + +"O no. He gives a dinner now and then, a gentleman's dinner usually; and +poor Mrs. Sheldon is very anxious that it should all go off well, as she +says; but I don't think he is a person who cares much for society." + +"Really, now?" + +"His mind seems completely occupied by his business, you see, papa. That +horrible pursuit of gain seems to require all his thoughts, and all his +time. He is always reading commercial papers, the _Money Market_ and _On +Change_, and the _Stockbrokers' Vade Mecum_, and publications of that +kind. When he is not reading he is thinking; and by his manner one would +fancy his thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a miserable, +hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that man for all the money +in the Bank of England. But it is a kind of treachery to tell these +things. Mr. Sheldon is very good to me. He lets me sit at his table and +share the comforts of his home, and I must be very ungrateful to speak +against him. I do _not_ mean to speak against him, you see, papa--I only +mean that a life devoted to money-making is in itself hateful." + +"My dear child, you may be assured that anything you say to _me_ will go +no further," said the Captain, with dignity; "and in whom should you +confide, if not in your father? I have a profound respect for Sheldon and +his family--yes, my love, a profound respect; and I think that girl +Sarah--no, I mean Charlotte--a very charming young person. I need +scarcely tell you that the smallest details of your life in that family +possess a keen interest for me. I am not without a father's feelings, +Diana, though circumstances have never permitted me to perform a father's +duties." + +And here the solitary tear which the accomplished Horatio could produce +at will trembled in his eye. This one tear was always at his command. For +the life of him he could not have produced a second; but the single drop +never failed him, and he found one tear as effective as a dozen, in +giving point and finish to a pathetic speech. + +Diana looked at him, and wondered, and doubted. Alas, she knew him only +too well! Any other creature in this wide world he might deceive, but not +her. She had lived with him; she had tasted the bitterness of dependence +upon him--ten times more bitter than dependence on strangers. She had +shown him her threadbare garments day after day, and had pleaded for a +little money, to be put off with a lying excuse. She could not forget +this. She had forgiven him long ago, being of too generous a nature to +brood upon past injuries. But she could not forget what manner of man he +was, and thank him for pretty speeches which she knew to be meaningless. + +They talked a little more of Mr. Sheldon and his family, but Diana did +not again permit herself to be betrayed into any vehement expressions of +her opinions. She answered all her father's questions without restraint, +for they were very commonplace questions, of a kind that might be +answered without any breach of faith. + +"Amongst the Sheldons' acquaintances did you ever hear of any people +called Meynell?" Captain Paget asked at length. + +"Yes," Diana replied, after a moment's thought; "the name is certainly +very familiar to me;" and then, after a pause, she exclaimed, "Why, the +Meynells were relations of Charlotte's! Yes, her grandmother was a Miss +Meynell; I perfectly remember hearing Mrs. Sheldon talk about the +Meynells. But I do not think there are any descendants of that family now +living. Why do you ask the question, papa? What interest have you in the +Meynells?" + +"Well, my dear, I have my reasons, but they in no manner concern Mr. +Sheldon or his family; and I must beg you to be careful not to mention +the subject in your conversation with those worthy people. I want to know +all about this Meynell family. I have come across some people of that +name, and I want to ascertain the precise relationship existing between +these people and the Sheldons. But the Sheldons must know nothing of this +inquiry for the present. The people I speak of are poor and proud, and +they would perish rather than press a relationship upon a rich man, +unless fully justified by the closeness of family ties. I am sure you +understand all this, Diana?" + +"Not very clearly, papa." + +"Well, my dear, it is a delicate position, and perhaps somewhat difficult +for the comprehension of a third party. All you need understand is the +one fact, that any information respecting the Meynell family will be +vitally interesting to my friends, and, through them, serviceable to me. +There is, in fact, a legacy which these friends of mine could claim, +under a certain will, if once assured as to the degree of their +relationship to your friend Charlotte's kindred on the Meynell side of +the house. To give them the means of securing this legacy would be to +help the ends of justice; and I am sure, Diana, you would wish to do +that." + +"Of course, papa, if I can do so without any breach of faith with my +employers. Can you promise me that no harm will result to the Sheldons, +above all to Charlotte Halliday, from any information I may procure for +you respecting the Meynell family?" + +"Certainly, Diana, I can promise you that. I repeat most solemnly, +that by obtaining such information for me you will be aiding the cause +of justice." + +If Horatio Paget might ever be betrayed into the inconsistency of a +truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that it was likely to be in +this moment. His words sounded like truth; and, on reflection, Diana +failed to perceive that she could by any possibility inflict wrong on her +friends by obliging her father in this small affair. + +"Let me think the matter over, papa," she said. + +"Nonsense, Diana; what thinking over can be wanted about such a trifle? I +never before asked you a favour. Surely you cannot refuse to grant so +simple a request, after the trouble I have taken to explain my reasons +for making it." + +There was some further discussion, which ended in Miss Paget consenting +to oblige her father. + +"And you will manage matters with tact?" urged the Captain, at parting. + +"There is no especial tact required, papa," replied Diana; "the matter is +easy enough. Mrs. Sheldon is very fond of talking about her own affairs. +I have only to ask her some leading question about the Meynells, and she +will run on for an hour, telling me the minutest details of family +history connected with them. I dare say I have heard the whole story +before, and have not heeded it: I often find my thoughts wandering when +Mrs. Sheldon is talking." + +Three days after this Captain Paget called on Mr. Sheldon in the City, +when he received a very handsome recompense for his labours at Ullerton, +and became repossessed of the extracts he had made from Matthew +Haygarth's letters, but not of the same Mr. Haygarth's autograph letter: +that document Mr. Sheldon confessed to having mislaid. + +"He has mislaid the original letter, and he has had ample leisure for +copying my extracts; and he thinks I am such a consummate fool as not to +see all that," thought Horatio, as he left the stockbroker's office, +enriched but not satisfied. + +In the course of the same day he received a long letter from Diana +containing the whole history of the Meynells, as known to Mrs. Sheldon. +Once set talking, Georgy had told all she could tell, delighted to find +herself listened to with obvious interest by her companion. + +"I trust that you have not deceived me, my dear father," Diana concluded, +after setting forth the Meynell history. "The dear good soul was so +candid and confiding, and seemed so pleased by the interest I showed in +her family affairs, that I should feel myself the vilest of wretches if +any harm could result to her, or those she loves, from the information +thus obtained." + +The information was very complete. Mrs. Sheldon had a kindly and amiable +nature, but she was not one of those sensitive souls who instinctively +shrink from a story of bitter shame or profound sorrow as from a cureless +wound. She told Diana, with many lamentations, and much second-hand +morality, the sad history of Susan Meynell's elopement, and of the +return, fourteen years afterwards, of the weary wanderer. Even the poor +little trunk, with the name of the Rouen trunk-maker, Mrs. Sheldon dwelt +upon with graphic insistence. A certain womanly delicacy had prevented +her ever telling this story in the presence of her brother-in-law, George +Sheldon, whose hard worldly manner in no way invited any sentimental +revelation. Thus it happened that George had never heard the name of +Meynell in connection with his friend Tom Halliday's family, or had heard +it so seldom as to have entirely forgotten it. To Horatio his daughter's +letter was priceless. It placed him at once in as good a position as +Philip Sheldon, or as George Sheldon and his coadjutor, Valentine +Hawkehurst. There were thus three different interests involved in the +inheritance of the Reverend John Haygarth. + +Captain Paget sat late by a comfortable fire, in his own bedchamber, that +night, enjoying an excellent cigar, and meditating the following jottings +from a pedigree:-- + +CHARLOTTE MEYNELL, married JAMES HALLIDAY. + | +THOMAS HALLIDAY, only son of above, married GEORGINA, now Mrs. SHELDON; + | had issue, +CHARLOTTE HALLIDAY. + +SUSAN MEYNELL, only and elder sister of the above-named Charlotte, ran +away from her home, in Yorkshire, with a Mr. Kingdon, brother to Lord +Darnsville. Fate unknown during fourteen years of her life. Died in +London, 1835. Buried under her maiden name; but no positive evidence to +show that she was unmarried. + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR. + +Once in possession of the connection between the intestate John Haygarth +and the Halliday family, Captain Paget's course was an easy one. He +understood now why his investigations had been so suddenly brought to a +standstill. Philip Sheldon had discovered the unexpected connection, and +was eager to put a stop to researches that might lead to a like discovery +on the part of his coadjutor. + +"And Sheldon expects to prove his stepdaughter's claim to this fortune?" +thought the Captain. "He will affect ignorance of the whole transaction +until his plans are ripe, and then spring them suddenly upon his brother +George. I wonder if there is anything to be made out of George by letting +him into the secret of his brother's interference? No; I think not. +George is as poor as a church mouse, and Philip must always be the more +profitable acquaintance." + +On the broad basis afforded by Diana's letter Captain Paget was able to +build up the whole scheme of the Haygarthian succession. The pedigree of +the Meynells was sufficiently simple, if their legitimate descent from +Matthew Haygarth could be fairly proved. Charlotte Halliday was +heiress-at-law to the fortune of John Haygarth, always provided that her +great-aunt Susan died without legitimate issue. + +Here was the one chance which appeared to the adventurous mind of Horatio +Paget worth some trouble in the way of research. Fourteen years of Susan +Meynell's life had been spent away from all who knew her. It was +certainly possible that in that time she might have formed some +legitimate alliance. + +This was the problem which Horatio set himself to solve. Your adventurer +is, of all manner of men, the most sanguine. Sir Walter Raleigh sees +visions of gold and glory where grave statesmen see only a fool's +paradise of dreams and fancies. To the hopeful mind of the Captain these +fourteen unrecorded years of Susan Meynell's life seemed a very Golconda. + +He did not, however, rest satisfied with the information afforded by +Diana's letter. + +"I will have the story of these Meynells at first-hand as well as at +second-hand," he said to himself; and he lost no time in presenting +himself again at the Villa--this time as a visitor to Mrs. Sheldon. + +With Georgy he had been always a favourite. His little stories of the +great world--the Prince and Perdita, Brummel and Sheridan--though by no +means novel to those acquainted with that glorious period of British +history, were very agreeable to Georgy. The Captain's florid flatteries +pleased her; and she contrasted the ceremonious manners of that gentleman +with the curt business-like style of her husband, very much to the +Captain's advantage. He came to thank her for her goodness to his child, +and this occasion gave him ample opportunity for sentiment. He had asked +to see Mrs. Sheldon alone, as his daughter's presence would have been +some hindrance to the carrying out of his design. + +"There are things I have to say which I should scarcely care to utter +before my daughter, you see, my dear Mrs. Sheldon," he said, with +pathetic earnestness. "I should not wish to remind the dear child of her +desolate position; and I need scarcely tell you that position is _very_ +desolate. A father who, at his best, cannot provide a fitting home for a +delicately nurtured girl, and who at any moment may be snatched away, is +but a poor protector. And were it not for your friendship, I know not +what my child's fate might be. The dangers and temptations that beset a +handsome young woman are very terrible, my dear Mrs. Sheldon." + +This was intended to lead up to the subject of Susan Meynell, but Georgy +did not rise to the bait. She only shook her head plaintively in assent +to the Captain's proposition. + +"Yes, madam; beauty, unallied with strength of mind and high principles, +is apt to be a fatal dower. In every family there are sad histories," +murmured the sentimental Horatio. + +Even this remark did not produce the required result; so the Captain drew +upon his invention for a specimen history from the annals of his own +house, which was a colourable imitation of Susan Meynell's story. + +"And what was the end of this lovely Belinda Paget's career, my dear Mrs. +Sheldon?" he concluded. "The gentleman was a man of high rank, but a +scoundrel and a dastard. Sophia's brother, a cornet in the First Life +Guards, called him out, and there was a meeting on Wimbledon Common, in +which Lavinia's seducer was mortally wounded. There was a trial, and the +young captain of Hussars, Amelia's brother, was sentenced to +transportation for life. I need scarcely tell you that the sentence was +never carried out. The young man fell gloriously at Waterloo, at the head +of his own regiment, the Scotch Fusiliers, and Lavinia--I beg pardon, +Amelia; nay, what am I saying? the girl's name was Belinda--embraced the +Roman Catholic faith, and expired from the effects of stigmata inflicted +by her own hands in a paroxysm of remorse for her brother's untimely +death at the hands of her seducer." + +This lively little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. Melted by the +woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or Amelia, or Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Sheldon was +moved to relate a sad event in her husband's family; and encouraged by +the almost tearful sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated every +detail of Susan Meynell's life, as known to her kindred. And as this +recital had flowed spontaneously from the good soul's lips, she would be +scarcely likely to allude to it afterwards in conversation with Mr. +Sheldon; more especially as that gentleman was not in the habit of +wasting much of his valuable time in small-talk with the members of his +own household. + +Captain Paget had duly calculated this, and every other hazard that +menaced the intricate path he had mapped out for himself. + +Satisfied by Mrs. Sheldon's repetition of Susan Meynell's story, and +possessed of all the information he could hope to obtain from that +quarter, Horatio set himself to consider what steps must next be taken. +Much serious reflection convinced even his sanguine mind that the +enterprise was a difficult one, and could scarcely be carried through +successfully without help from some skilled genealogist. + +"George Sheldon has given his lifetime to this sort of thing, and is a +skilled lawyer to boot," Captain Paget said to himself. "If I hope to go +in against him, I must have someone at my elbow as well versed in this +sort of business as he is." + +Having once admitted this necessity, the Captain set himself to consider +where he was to find the right person. A very brief meditation settled +this question. One among the numerous business transactions of Captain +Paget's life had brought him in contact with a very respectable little +French gentleman called Fleurus, who had begun his career as a notary, +but, finding that profession unprofitable, had become a hunter of +pedigrees and heirs-at-law--for the most part to insignificant legacies, +unclaimed stock, and all other jetsam and flotsam thrown up on the +shadowy shores of the Court of Chancery. M. Fleurus had not often been so +fortunate as to put his industrious fingers into any large pie, but he +had contrived to make a good deal of money out of small affairs, and had +found his clients grateful. + +"The man of men," thought Horatio Paget; and he betook himself to the +office of M. Fleurus early next day, provided with all documents relating +to the Haygarthian succession. + +His interview with the little Frenchman was long and satisfactory. On +certain conditions as to future reward, said reward to be contingent on +success, M. Fleurus was ready to devote himself heart and soul to the +interests of Captain Paget. + +"To begin: we must find legal evidence of this Matthew Haygarth's +marriage to the mother of this child C., who came afterwards to marry the +man Meynell; and after we will go to Susan Meynell. Her box came from +Rouen--that we know. Where her box came from she is likely to have come +from. So it is at Rouen, or near Rouen, we must look for her. Let me see: +she die in 1835! that is long time. To look for the particulars of her +life is like to dive into the ocean for to find the lost cargo of a ship +that is gone down to the bottom, no one knows where. But to a man really +expert in these things there is nothing of impossible. I will find you +your Susan Meynell in less than six months; the evidence of her marriage; +if she was married; her children, if she had children." + +In less than six months--the margin seemed a wide one to the impatient +Horatio. But he knew that such an investigation must needs be slow, and +he left the matters in the hands of his new ally with a sense that he had +done the best thing that could be done. Then followed for Horatio Paget +two months of patient attendance upon fortune. He was not idle during +this time; for Mr. Sheldon, who seemed particularly anxious to conciliate +him, threw waifs and strays of business into his way. Before the middle +of November M. Fleurus had found the register of Matthew Haygarth's +marriage, as George Sheldon had found it before him, working in the same +groove, and with the same order of intelligence. After this important +step M. Fleurus departed for his native shores, where he had other +business besides the Meynell affair to claim his attention. Meanwhile the +astute Horatio kept a close eye upon his young friend Valentine. He knew +from Diana that the young man had been in Yorkshire; and he guessed the +motive of his visit to Newhall, not for a moment supposing that his +presence in that farmhouse could have been accidental. The one turn of +affairs that utterly and completely mystified him was Mr. Sheldon's +sanction of the engagement between Valentine and Charlotte. This was a +mystery for which he could for some time find no solution. + +"Sheldon will try to establish his stepdaughter's claim to the fortune; +that is clear. But why does he allow her to throw herself away on a +penniless adventurer like Hawkehurst? If she were to marry him before +recovering the Haygarth estate, she would recover it as his wife, and the +fortune would be thrown unprotected into his hands." + +More deliberate reflection cast a faint light upon Philip Sheldon's +motives for so quixotic a course. + +"The girl had fallen in love with Val. It was too late to prevent that. +She is of age, and can marry whom she pleases. By showing himself opposed +to her engagement with Val, he might have hurried her into rebellion, and +an immediate marriage. By affecting to consent to the engagement, he +would, on the contrary, gain time, and the advantage of all those chances +that are involved in the lapse of time." + +Within a few days of Christmas came the following letter from M. +Fleurus:-- + + +_From Jacques Rousseau Fleurus to Horatio Paget_. + +Hotel de la Pucelle, place Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 21st December, 186--. + +MONSIEUR,--After exertions incalculable, after labours herculean, I come +to learn something of your Susan Meynell,--more, I come to learn of her +marriage. But I will begin at the beginning of things. The labours, the +time, the efforts, the courage, the patience, the--I will say it without +to blush--the genius which this enterprise has cost me, I will not +enlarge upon. There are things which cannot tell themselves. To commence, +I will tell you how I went to Rouen, how I advertised in the journals of +Rouen, and asked among the people of Rouen--at shops, at hotels, by the +help of my allies, the police, by means which you, in your inexperience +of this science of research, could not even figure to yourself--always +seeking the trace of this woman Meynell. It was all pain lost. Of this +woman Meynell in Rouen there was no trace. + +In the end I enraged myself. "Imbecile!" I said to myself, "why seek in +this dull commercial city, among this heavy people, for that which thou +shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? As the rivers go to the +ocean, so flow all the streams of human life to the one great central +ocean of humanity--PARIS! It is there the Alpha and the Omega--there the +mighty heart through which the blood of all the body must be pumped, and +is pumping always," I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the +sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in whose verse I find an echo of +my own soul, and whose compositions I flatter myself I could have +surpassed, if I had devoted to the Muses the time and the powers which I +have squandered on a _vilain_ metier, that demands the genius of a +Talleyrand, and rewards with the crust of an artisan. + +In Paris, then, I will seek the woman Meynell, and to Paris I go. In my +place an inexperienced person would advertise in the most considerable +papers; would invite Susan Meynell to hear of something to her +advantage; and would bring together a crowd of false Susan Meynells, +greedy to obtain the benefice. Me, I do nothing in this style there. On +the contrary, in the most obscure little journals of Paris I publish a +modest little advertisement as from the brother of Susan Meynell, who +implores his sister to visit him on his deathbed. + +Here are follies, you will say. Since Susan Meynell is dead it is thirty +years, and her brother is dead also. Ah, how you are dull, you insulars, +and how impossible for your foggy island to produce a Fouché, a Canler, a +genius of police, a Columbus of the subterranean darknesses of your city. + +The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead; and who will answer +that letter, think you? Some good Christian soul who has pity for the +sick man, and who will not permit him to languish in waiting the sister +who will come to him never. For us of the Roman Catholic religion the +duty of charity is paramount. You of the Anglican faith--bah, how you are +cold, how you are hard, how you are unpitiable! + +My notice appears once, my notice appears twice, three times, four times, +many times. I occupy myself about my other business, and I wait. I do not +wait unusefully. In effect, a letter arrives at last at the address of +the dying, from a lady who knew Susan Meynell _before her marriage with +M. Lenoble._ + +Think you not that to me this was a moment of triumph? _Before her +marriage with M. Lenoble!_ Those words appear under my eyes in the +writing of the unknown lady. "It is found!" I cry to myself; and then I +hasten myself to reply to the unknown lady. Will she permit me to see +her? + +With all politeness I make the request; with all politeness it is +answered. The lady calls herself Mademoiselle Servin. She resides in the +street Grande-Mademoiselle, at the corner of the Place Lauzun. It is of +all the streets of Paris the most miserable. One side is already removed. +In face of the windows of those houses that still stand they are making a +new Boulevard. Behind they are pulling down edifices of all kinds in the +formation of a new square. At the side there is a yawning chasm between +two tall houses, through which they pierce a new street. One sees the +interior of many rooms rising one above another for seven stories. Here +the gay hangings of an apartment of little master; there the still +gaudier decoration of a boudoir of these ladies. High above these +luxurious salons--ah, but how much more near to the skies!--one sees the +poor grey paper, blackened and smoky, of a garret of sempstress, or +workman, and the hearths black, deserted. These interiors thus exposed +tighten me the heart. It is the autopsy of the domestic hearth. + +I find the Mademoiselle Servin an old lady, grey and wan. The house where +she now resides is the house which she has inhabited five-and-thirty +years. They talk of pulling it down, and to her the idea of leaving it is +exquisite pain. She is alone, a teacher of music. She has seen +proprietors come and go. The _pension_ has changed mistresses many times. +Students of law and of medicine have come and passed like the shadows of +a magic lantern; but this poor soul has remained still in her little room +on the fourth, and has kept always her little old piano. + +It was here she knew Susan Meynell, and a young Frenchman who became in +love with her, for she was beautiful like the angels, this lady said to +me. + +Until we meet for all details. Enough that I come to discover where the +marriage took place, that I come to obtain a copy of the register, and +that I do all things in rule. Enough that the marriage is a good +marriage--a regular marriage, and that I have placed myself already in +communication with the heir of that marriage, who resides within some few +leagues of this city. + +My labours, my successes I will not describe. It must that they will be +recompensed in the future. I have dispensed much money during these +transactions. + +Agree, monsieur, that I am your devoted servitor, + +JACQUES ROUSSEAU FLEURUS. + + * * * * * + +It was in consequence of the receipt of this missive that the Captain +trusted himself to the winds and waves in the cheerless December weather. +He was well pleased to find that M. Fleurus had made discoveries so +important; but he had no idea of letting that astute practitioner absorb +all the power into his own hands. + +"I must see Susan Meynell's heir," he said to himself; "I must give him +clearly to understand that to me he owes the discovery of his claims, and +that in this affair the Frenchman Fleurus is no more than a paid agent." + + + + +Book the Fourth. + + + +GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +HALCYON DAYS. + +Once having offered up the fondest desires of her own heart on the +shrine of duty, Diana Paget was not a person to repent herself of the +pious sacrifice. After that Christmas night on which she had knelt at +Charlotte's feet to confess her sad secret, and to resign all claim to +the man she had loved so foolishly, so tenderly, with such a romantic +and unselfish devotion, Miss Paget put away all thought of the past from +her heart and mind. Heart and mind seemed empty and joyless without +those loved tenants, though the tenants had been only fair wraiths of +dreams that were dead. There was a sense of something missing in her +life--a blank, dull calm, which was at first very painful. But for +Charlotte's sake she was careful to hide all outward token of +despondency, and the foolish grief, put down by so strong a hand, was +ere long well-nigh stifled. + +Those dark days which succeeded Christmas were a period of halcyon peace +for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover came to the villa when he +pleased, but was still careful not to encroach on the license allowed +him. Once a week he permitted himself the delight of five-o'clock tea in +Mrs. Sheldon's drawing-room, on which occasions he brought Charlotte all +the news of his small literary world, and a good deal of useful +information out of the books he had been reading. When Mr. Sheldon +pleased to invite him to dinner on Sunday he gladly accepted the +invitation, and this Sunday dinner became in due course an established +institution. + +"You may as well make this your home on a Sunday," said Mr. Sheldon one +day, with careless cordiality; "I dare say you find Sunday dull in your +lodgings." + +"Yes, papa," cried Charlotte, "he does find it very dull--dreadfully +dull--don't you, Valentine?" + +And she regarded him with that pretty, tender, almost motherly look, +which young ladies who are engaged are apt to bestow on their affianced +lovers. + +Miss Halliday was very grateful to her stepfather for his kindness to her +landless adorer, and showed her appreciation of his conduct in many +pretty little caressing ways, which would have been infinitely bewitching +to a person of sentiment. + +Unfortunately Mr. Sheldon was not sentimental, and any exhibition of +feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were +times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as +from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear--what was it that +showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that +strange look was, it departed too quickly for analysis; and the +stockbroker thanked his stepdaughter for her little affectionate +demonstration with his wonted smile--the smile he smiled on Change, the +smile which was sometimes on his lips when his mind was a nest of +scorpions. + +To Valentine, in these rosy hours, life seemed full of hope and +brightness. He transferred his goods and chattels from Omega Street, +Chelsea, to the pleasant lodging in the Edgware Road, where he was nearer +Charlotte, and out of the way of his late patron Captain Paget, in the +event of that gentleman's return from the Continent. + +Fortune favoured him. The gaiety of heart which came with his happiness +lent a grace to his pen. Pleasant thoughts and fancies bedecked his +pages. He saw everything in the rosy light of love and beauty, and there +was a buoyant freshness in all he wrote. The Pegasus might be but a +common hackney, but the hack was young and fresh, and galloped gaily as +he scented the dewy morning air. It is not every poet whose Pegasus +clears at a bound a space as wide as all that waste of land and sea the +watchman views from his tall tower on the rock. + +Mr. Hawkehurst's papers on Lauzun, Brummel, Sardanapalus, Rabelais, Lord +Chesterfield, Erasmus, Beau Nash, Apelles, Galileo, and Philip of +Orleans, were in demand, and the reading public wondered at this prodigy +of book-making. He had begun to save money, and had opened a deposit +account at the Unitas Bank. How he gloated over the deposit receipts in +the stillness of the night, when he added a fresh one to his store! When +he had three, for sums amounting in all to forty pounds, he took them to +Charlotte, and she looked at them, and he looked at them, as if the poor +little bits of printed paper had been specimens of virgin ore from some +gold mine newly discovered by Mr. Hawkehurst. And then these foolish +lovers kissed each other, as William Lee and his wife may have embraced +after the penniless young student had perfected his invention of the +stocking-frame. + +"Forty pounds!" exclaimed Miss Halliday, "all won by your pen, and your +poor fingers, and your poor, poor head! How it must ache after a long +day's work! How clever you must be, Valentine!" + +"Yes, dear; amazingly clever. Clever enough to know that you are the +dearest girl in Christendom." + +"Don't talk nonsense, sir! You are not clever enough to have the +privilege of doing that yet awhile. I mean, how learned you must be to +know such lots of things, all about Erasmus, and Galileo, and--" + +"No, my darling, not Erasmus and Galileo. I knew all about Erasmus last +week; but I am working at my paper on Galileo now, an exhaustive review +of all the books that were ever written on the subject, in ten pages. I +don't ask other people to remember what I write, you know, my dear, and I +don't pledge myself to remember it. That sort of thing won't keep. There +is a kind of sediment, no doubt, in one's note-book; but the +effervescence of that vintage goes off rather quickly." + +"I only know that you are a very clever person, and that one obtains an +immensity of information from your writings," said Charlotte. + +"Yes, dearest, there is a kind of wine that must be made into negus for +such pretty little topers as you--the 'Wine of Cyprus,' as Mrs. Browning +called it. It is better for pretty girls to have the negus than to have +nothing, or only weak home-brewed stuff that results in head-ache. My +dearest, Fate has been very good to me, and I love my profession of +letters. I am sure that of all educational processes there is none better +than book-making; and the man who begins by making books must be a dolt, +dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by writing them. So you may yet +hope to see the morning that shall make your Valentine famous--for a +fortnight. What man can hope to be famous for _more_ than a fortnight in +such a railroad age as this?" + +During this halcyon period, in which Mr. Hawkehurst cultivated +alternately the society of the Muses and his mistress, he saw little or +nothing of George Sheldon. He had washed his hands of all share in the +work of establishing Charlotte Halliday's claim to the Reverend John +Haygarth's thousands. Indeed, since that interview in which Philip +Sheldon had made so light of his stepdaughter's chances, and ratified his +consent to her marriage with so humble a literary adventurer as himself, +Mr. Hawkehurst had come to consider the Haygarthian inheritance as +altogether a visionary business. If it were certain, or even probable, +that Charlotte was to inherit a hundred thousand pounds, was it likely +that Mr. Sheldon would encourage such an alliance? This question Mr. +Hawkehurst always answered in the negative; and as days and weeks went +by, and he heard no more of the Haygarth fortune, the idea of Charlotte's +wealth became more and more shadowy. + +If there were anything doing in this matter, the two brothers were now +working together, and George had no further need of Valentine's help. + +The two brothers were not working entirely together. Philip Sheldon had +taken the matter into his own strong hand, and George found it very +difficult to hold an inch of ground against that formidable antagonist. +The papers and information which George had boasted of to Valentine, and +the possession whereof was, as he asserted, the very keystone of the +arch, proved to be of such small account that he ultimately consented to +hand them over to his brother on the payment of expenses out of pocket, +and a bonus of one hundred and fifty pounds, together with a written +undertaking from Miss Halliday to pay him the fifth share of any fortune +recovered by means of those papers. + +This undertaking had been executed in the easiest manner. + +"My brother has taken it into his wise head that there is some unclaimed +stock standing in your grandfather's name which you are entitled to, +Lotta," Mr. Sheldon said one morning; "and he wants to recover the amount +for you, on condition of receiving a clear fifth when the sum is +recovered. Have you any objection to sign such an undertaking?" + +"Dear papa, how can I object?" cried Charlotte gaily. "Why, stocks are +money, are they not? How fortunate we are, and how rich we are getting!" + +"We!" + +"Valentine and I," murmured the girl, blushing. "I cannot help thinking +of him when any windfall of good fortune comes to me. What do you think, +papa? He has saved forty pounds in little more than three months--all +earned by his pen! + +"Behold +The arch-enchanter's wand! Itself a nothing; +But taking sorcery from the master-hand +To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike +The loud earth breathless!" + +And Miss Halliday spouted the glowing lines of the noble dramatist with +charming enthusiasm. She signed the required undertaking without looking +at it, and it was duly witnessed by her stepfather. + +"In your talk with your mother and Valentine, I should advise you to be +as silent about this small business as about your own little fortune," +Mr. Sheldon remarked presently. + +"Mustn't I tell Valentine?" cried Charlotte, making a wry face; "I should +so like to tell him--just about these stocks. I daresay _he_ knows what +stocks are; and it would be such cheering news for him, after he has +worked his poor brain so for that forty pounds. I don't so much care +about telling poor mamma; for she does exclaim and wonder so about +things, that it is quite fatiguing to hear her. But please let me tell +Valentine?" + +Miss Halliday pursed-up her lips and offered her stepfather one of those +kisses which she had of late been prompted to bestow on him out of the +gratitude of a heart overflowing with girlish joy. He took the kiss as he +might have taken a dose of medicine, but did not grant the request +preferred by it. + +"If you want to be a fool, you can tell your lover of this windfall; but +if you wish to prove yourself a sensible girl, you will hold your tongue. +He has saved forty pounds by hard work in the last three months, you say: +do you think he would have saved forty pence if he had known that you had +five thousand pounds at his disposal? I know that class of men; look at +Goldsmith, the man who wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield," and "Rasselas," +and "Clarissa Harlowe," and so on. I have read somewhere that he never +wrote except under coercion--that is to say, want of money." + +Charlotte acknowledged the wisdom of this argument, and submitted. She +was not what was called a strong-minded woman; and, indeed, strength of +mind is not a plant indigenous to the female nature, but an exceptional +growth developed by exceptional circumstances. In Charlotte's life there +had been nothing exceptional, and she was in all things soft and womanly, +ready to acknowledge, and to be guided by, the wisdom of her seniors. So +Valentine heard nothing of the undertaking executed by his lady-love. + +After this, Mr. Sheldon took counsel's opinion, and set to work in real +earnest to recover the estate of the deceased John Haygarth from the +yawning jaws of that tame but all-devouring monster, the Crown. The work +was slow, and the dry as dust details thereof need not be recorded here. +It had but just begun when Horatio Paget suddenly returned from his +Continental expedition, and established himself once more in the Omega +Street lodgings. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY. + +Captain Paget's return was made known to the Sheldon circle by a letter +from the returning wanderer to his daughter. The Captain was laid up with +rheumatic gout, and wrote quite piteously to implore a visit from Diana. +Miss Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her +side, even to this _père prodigue_, obeyed the summons promptly, with the +full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner. + +"And if you'd like to take your papa a bottle of Mr. Sheldon's old port, +Diana, remember it's at your disposal. I'm sure I've heard people say +that old port is good for the gout--or perhaps, by the bye, what I heard +was that it _wasn't_ good. I know old port and gout seem to run together +in my head somehow. But if there's anything in the house your papa would +like, Diana--wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet off the +spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an evening, or a new +novel--surely one couldn't forfeit one's subscription by lending a book +to a non-subscribing invalid?" + +While Georgy was suggesting the loan of almost every portable object in +the house as a specific for Captain Paget's gout, Charlotte sent for a +cab and made things smooth for her friend's departure. She wrapped her +warmly against the February blast, and insisted upon going out to see her +seated in the cab, whereby she offered to the pedestrians of that +neighbourhood a seraphic vision of loveliness with tumbled hair. +Charlotte had been always delightful, but Charlotte engaged to Valentine +Hawkehurst was a creature of supernal sweetness and brightness--a radiant +ministering angel, hovering lightly above a world too common for her foot +to rest upon. + +Miss Paget found her father suffering from a by no means severe attack of +a respectable family gout, a little peevish from the effects of this +affliction, but not at all depressed in mind. He had, indeed, the manner +of a man with whom things are going pleasantly. There was a satisfaction +in his tone, a placidity in his face, except when distorted for the +moment by a twinge of pain, that were new to Diana, who had not been +accustomed to behold the brighter side of her father's disposition. He +seemed grateful for his daughter's visit, and received her with unwonted +kindness of manner. + +"You have come very promptly, my dear, and I am gratified by your early +compliance with my request," he said with dignified affection, after he +had given his daughter the kiss of greeting. "I was a great sufferer last +night, Diana, a great sufferer, a prisoner to this chair, and the woman +below attempted to send me up a dinner--_such_ a dinner! One would think +a very small degree of education necessary for the stewing of a kidney, +but the things that woman gave me last night were like morsels of stewed +leather. I am not an epicure, Diana; but with such a constitution as +mine, good cooking is a vital necessity. Life in lodgings for a man of my +age is a sore trial, my dear. I wish you were well married, Diana, and +could give your father a humble corner at your fireside." + +Diana smiled. It was a somewhat bitter smile; and there was scorn of +herself, as well as scorn of her father in that bitterness. + +"I am not the sort of person to marry well, papa," she said. + +"Who knows? You are handsomer than nine-tenths of the women who marry +well." + +"No, papa; that is your sanguine manner of looking at your own property. +And even if I were married to some one to whom I might give obedience and +duty, and all that kind of thing, in exchange for a comfortable home, as +they say in the advertisements, would you be content with a peaceful +corner by my fireside? Do you think you would never pine for clubs and +gaming-tables--nay, even for creditors to--to diplomatize with, and +difficulties to surmount?" + +"No, my dear. I am an old man; the clubs and gaming-houses have done with +me, and I with them. I went to see a man at Arthur's a few months ago. I +had written to him on a little matter of business--in fact, to be candid +with you, my love, for the loan of a five-pound note--and I called at the +club for his reply. I caught sight of my face in a distant glass as I was +waiting in the strangers' room, and I thought I was looking at a ghost. +There comes a time towards the close of a long troublesome life in which +a man begins to feel like a ghost. His friends are gone, and his money is +gone, his health is gone, his good looks are gone; and the only mistake +seems to be that the man himself should be left behind. I remember an +observation of Lord Chesterfield's: 'Lord ---- and I have been dead for +the last two years, but we don't tell anyone so,' he said; and there are +few old men who couldn't say the same. But I am not down-hearted to-day, +my dear. No, the habit of hoping has never quite deserted me; and it is +only now and then that I take a dismal view of life. Come, my love, lay +aside your bonnet and things. Dear me! what a handsome black silk dress, +and how well you look in it!" + +"It is a present from Charlotte, papa. She has a very liberal allowance +of pocket-money, and is generosity itself. I don't like to take so much +from her, but I only wound her by a refusal." + +"Of course, my dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no +mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any +booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish +reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always +pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"--Diana winced as she remembered +her shabby hat and threadbare gown at Fôretdechêne--"and I am especially +pleased to see you elegantly attired this evening, as I expect a +gentleman by-and-by." + +"A gentleman, papa!" exclaimed Miss Paget, with considerable surprise; "I +thought that you had sent for me because you were ill and depressed and +lonely." + +"Well, yes, Diana, I certainly am ill; and I suppose it is scarcely +unnatural that a father should wish to see his only daughter." + +Diana was silent. A father's wish to see his daughter was indeed natural +and common; but that Captain Paget, who in no period of his daughter's +life had evinced for her the common affection of paternity, should be +seized all of a sudden with a yearning for her society, was somewhat +singular. But Diana's nature had been ennobled and fortified by the +mental struggle and the impalpable sacrifice of the last few months, and +she was in nowise disposed to repel any affectionate feeling of her +father's even at this eleventh hour. + +"_He_ tells us the eleventh hour is not too late," she thought. "If it is +not too late in the sight of that Divine Judge, shall it be thought too +late by an erring creature like me?" + +After a few minutes of thoughtful silence, she knelt down by her father's +chair and kissed him. + +"My dear father," she murmured softly, "believe me, I am very pleased to +think you should wish to see me. I will come to you whenever you like to +send for me. I am glad not to be a burden to you; but I should wish to be +a comfort when I can." + +The Captain shed his stock tear. It signified something nearer akin to +real emotion than usual. + +"My dear girl," he said, "this is very pleasing, very pleasing +indeed. The day may come--I cannot just now say when--and events may +arise--which--the nature of which I am not yet in a position to indicate +to you--but the barren fig-tree may not be always fruitless. In its old +age the withered trunk may put forth fresh branches. We will say no more +of this, my love; and I will only remark that you may not go unrequited +for any affection bestowed on your poor old father." + +Diana smiled, and this time it was a pensive rather than a bitter smile. +She had often heard her father talk like this before. She had often heard +these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate +future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a +schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope +and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle +to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since she had known him. + +So she set little value on his hopeful talk of this evening, but was +content to see him in good spirits. He contemplated her admiringly as she +knelt by his easy-chair, and smoothed the shining coils of her dark hair +with a gentle hand, as he looked downward at the thoughtful face--proud +and grave, but not ungentle. + +"You are a very handsome girl, Diana," he murmured, as much to himself as +to his daughter; "yes, very handsome. Egad, I had no idea how handsome!" + +"What has put such a fancy into your head to-night, papa?" asked Diana, +laughing. "I do not believe in the good looks you are so kind as to +attribute to me. When I see my face in the glass I perceive a pale gloomy +countenance that is by no means pleasing." + +"You may be out of spirits when you look in the glass. I hope you are not +unhappy at Bayswater." + +"Why should I be unhappy, papa? No sister was ever kinder or more loving +than Charlotte Halliday is to me. I should be very ungrateful to +Providence as well as to her if I did not appreciate such affection. How +many lonely girls, like me, go through life without picking up a sister?" + +"Yes, you are right, my dear. Those Sheldon people have been very useful +to you. They are not the kind of people I should have wished a daughter +of mine to be _liée_ with, if I were in the position my birth entitles me +to occupy; but as I am not in that position, I submit. That black silk +becomes you admirably. And now, my love, be so kind as to ring the bell +for lights and tea." + +They had been sitting in the firelight--the mystic magical capricious +firelight--which made even that tawdry lodging-house parlour seem a +pleasant chamber. The tea-tray was brought, and candles. Diana seated +herself at the table, and made tea with the contents of a little +mahogany caddy. + +"Don't pour out the tea just yet," said the Captain; "I expect a +gentleman. I don't suppose he'll take tea, but it will look more civil to +wait for him." + +"And who is this mysterious gentleman, papa?" + +"A Frenchman; a man I met while I was abroad." + +"_Really_ a gentleman?" + +"Certainly, Diana," replied her father, with offended dignity. "Do you +think I should admit any person to my friendship who is not a gentleman? +My business relations I am powerless to govern; but friendship is a +different matter. There is no man more exclusive than Horatio Paget. +M. Lenoble is a gentleman of ancient lineage and amiable character." + +"And rich, I suppose, papa?" asked Diana. She thought that her father +would scarcely speak of the gentleman in a tone so profoundly respectful +if he were not rich. + +"Yes, Diana. M. Lenoble is master of a very fair estate, and is likely to +be much richer before he dies." + +"And he has been kind to you, papa?" + +"Yes, he has shown me hospitality during my residence in Normandy. You +need not speak of him to your friends the Sheldons." + +"Not even to Charlotte?" + +"Not even to Charlotte. I do not care to have my affairs discussed by +that class of people." + +"But, dear papa, why make a mystery about so unimportant a matter. + +"I do not make a mystery; but I hate gossip. Mrs. Sheldon is an +incorrigible gossip, and I daresay her daughter is no better." + +"Charlotte is an angel, papa." + +"That is very possible. But I beg that you will refrain from discussing +my friend M. Lenoble in her angelic presence." + +"As you please, papa," said Diana gravely. She felt herself bound to obey +her father in this small matter; but the idea of this mystery and secrecy +was very unwelcome to her. It implied that her father's acquaintance with +this Frenchman was only a part of some new scheme. It was no honest +friendship, which the Captain might be proud to own, glad to show the +world that in these days of decadence he could still point to a friend. +It was only some business alliance, underhand and stealthy; a social +conspiracy, that must needs be conducted in darkness. + +"Why did papa summon me here if he wants his acquaintance with this man +kept secret?" she asked herself; and the question seemed unanswerable. + +She pictured this M. Lenoble to herself--a wizened, sallow-faced +Macchiavellian individual, whose business in England must needs be +connected with conspiracy, treason, commercial fraud, anything or +everything stealthy and criminal. + +"I wish you would let me go back to Bayswater before this gentleman +comes, papa," she said presently. "I heard it strike seven just now, and +I know I shall be expected early. I can come again whenever you like." + +"No, no, my love; you must stop to see my friend. And now tell me a +little about the Sheldons. Has anything been stirring since I saw them +last?" + +"Nothing whatever, papa. Charlotte is very happy; she always had a +happy disposition, but she is gayer than ever since her engagement +with--Valentine." + +"What an absurd infatuation!" muttered the Captain. + +"And he--Valentine--is very good, and works very hard at his literary +profession--and loves her very dearly." + +It cost her an effort to say this even now, even now when she fancied +herself cured of that folly which had once been so sweet to her. To speak +of him like this--to put him away out of her own life, and contemplate +him as an element in the life of another--could not be done without some +touch of the old anguish. + +There was a loud double-knock at the street-door as she said this, and a +step sounded presently in the passage; a quick, firm tread. There was +nothing stealthy about that, at any rate. + +"My friend Lenoble," said the Captain; and in the next instant a +gentleman entered the room, a gentleman who was in every quality the +opposite of the person whom Diana had expected to see. + +These speculative pictures are seldom good portraits. Miss Paget had +expected to find her father's ally small and shrivelled, old and ugly, +dried-up and withered in the fiery atmosphere of fraud and conspiracy; in +outward semblance a monkey, in soul a tiger. And instead of this +obnoxious creature there burst into the room a man of four-and-thirty +years of age, tall, stalwart, with a fair frank face, somewhat browned by +summer suns; thick auburn hair and beard, close trimmed and cropped in +the approved Gallic fashion--clear earnest blue eyes, and a mouth whose +candour and sweetness a moustache could not hide. Henry of Navarre, +before the white lilies of France had dazzled his eyes with their fatal +splendour, before the court of the Medici had taught the Bearnois to +dissemble, before the sometime Protestant champion had put on that +apparel of stainless white in which he went forth to stain his soul with +the sin of a diplomatic apostasy. + +Such a surprise as this makes a kind of crisis in the eventless record of +a woman's life. Diana found herself blushing as the stranger stood near +the door awaiting her father's introduction. She was ashamed to think of +the wrong her imagination had done him. + +"My daughter, Diana Paget--M. Lenoble. I have been telling Diana how much +I owed to your hospitality during my stay in Normandy," continued the +Captain, with his grandest air, "I regret that I can only receive you in +an apartment quite unworthy the seigneur of Côtenoir.--A charming place, +my dear Diana, which I should much like you to see on some future +occasion.--Will you take some tea, Lenoble?--Diana, a cup of tea.--The +Pagets are a fallen race, you see, my dear sir, and a cup of tea in a +lodging-house parlour is the best entertainment I can give to a friend. +The Cromie Pagets of Hertfordshire will give you dinner in gold plate, +with a footman standing behind the chair of every guest; but our branch +is a younger and a poorer one, and I, among others, am paying the price +of youthful follies." + +Gustave Lenoble looked sympathetic, but the glance of sympathy was +directed to Diana, and not to the male representative of the younger +Pagets. To pity the distressed damsel was an attribute of the Lenoble +mind; and Gustave had already begun to pity Miss Paget, and to wonder +what her fate in life would be, with no better protector than a father +who was confessedly a pauper. He saw that the young lady was very +handsome, and he divined, from some indefinable expression of her face, +that she was proud; and as he thought of his own daughters, and their +easy life and assured future, the contrast seemed to him very cruel. + +Chivalrous as the house of Lenoble might be by nature, he could scarcely +have felt so keen an interest in Captain Paget's daughter at the first +glance, if his sympathies had not been already enlisted for her. The +noble Horatio, though slow to act a father's part, had shown himself +quick to make capital out of his daughter's beauty and virtues when the +occasion offered. + +In his intercourse with the seigneur of Côtenoir, which had developed +from a mere business acquaintance into friendship, Captain Paget had +discoursed with much eloquence upon the subject of his motherless +daughter; and M. Lenoble, having daughters of his own, also motherless, +lent him the ear of sympathy. + +"I have heard much of you, Miss Paget," said Gustave presently, "and of +your devotion to your father. He has no more favourite theme than your +goodness." + +Diana blushed, and Diana's father blushed also. That skilled diplomatist +felt the awkwardness of the situation, and was prompt to the rescue. + +"Yes," he said, "my daughter has been a heroine. There are Antigones, +sir, who show their heroic nature by other service than the leading to +and fro of a blind father. From the earliest age my poor child has +striven to stand alone; too proud, too noble to be a burden on a parent +whose love would have given all, but whose means could give but little. +And now she comes to me from her home among strangers, to soothe my hour +of pain and infirmity. I trust your daughters may prove as worthy of your +love, M. Lenoble." + +"They are very dear girls," answered the Frenchman; "but for them life +has been all sunshine. They have never known a sorrow except the death of +their mother. It is the storm that tests the temper of the tree. I wish +they might prove as noble in adversity as Miss Paget has shown herself." + +This was more than Diana could bear without some kind of protest. + +"You must not take papa's praises _au pied de la lettre_, M. Lenoble," +she said; "I have been by no means brave or patient under adversity. +There are troubles which one must bear. I have borne mine somehow; but I +claim no praise for having submitted to the inevitable." + +This was spoken with a certain noble pride which impressed Gustave more +than all the father's florid eloquence had done. After this the +conversation became less personal. M. Lenoble talked of England. It was +not his first visit; but he had only the excursionist's knowledge of the +British Isles. + +"I have been to Scotland," he said. "Your Scotland is grand, +mountainous--all that there is of the most savage and poetic. It is a +Switzerland lined with Brittany. But that which most speaks to the heart +of a stranger is the peaceful beauty of your English landscape." + +"You like England, M. Lenoble?" said Diana. + +"Have I not reason? My mother was English. I was only five years old when +I lost her. She went out of my life like a dream; but I can still recall +a faint shadow of her face--an English face--a countenance of placid +sadness, very sweet and tender. But why do I talk of these things?" + +On this the Frenchman's talk took a gayer turn. This M. Lenoble showed +himself a lively and agreeable companion. He talked of Normandy, his +daughters and their convent, his little son at Rouen, his aunt Cydalise, +the quiet old lady at Beaubocage; his grandfather, his grandmother, the +old servants, and everything familiar and dear to him. He told of his +family history with boyish candour, untainted by egotism, and seemed much +pleased by Diana's apparent interest in his unstudied talk. He was quite +unconscious that the diplomatic Horatio was leading him on to talk of +these things, with a view to making the conversation supremely +interesting to him. That arch diplomatist knew that there is nothing a +man likes better than talking of his own affairs, if he can have a decent +excuse for such discourse. + +The clock struck nine while Diana was listening, really interested. This +glimpse of a life so far apart from her own was a relief, after the +brooding introspective reveries which of late had constituted so large a +portion of her existence. She started up at the sound of the clock. + +"What now, Cinderella?" cried her father. "Have you stopped beyond your +time, and will your fairy godmother be angry?" + +"No one will be angry, papa; but I did not mean to stay so late. I am +sorry your description of Normandy has been so interesting, M. Lenoble." + +"Come and see Vevinord and Côtenoir, and you will judge for yourself. The +town-hall of Vevinord is almost as fine as that of Louvain; and we have a +church that belongs to the time of Dagobert." + +"She shall see them before long," said the Captain; "I shall have +business in Rouen again before the next month is out; and if my daughter +is a good girl, I will take her over there with me." + +Diana stared at her father in utter bewilderment. What could be the +meaning of this sudden display of affection? + +"I should not be free to go with you, papa, even if you were able to take +me," she replied, somewhat coldly; "I have other duties." + +She felt assured that there was some lurking motive, some diplomatic art +at the bottom of the Captain's altered conduct, and she could not +altogether repress her scorn. The astute Horatio saw that he had gone a +little too far, and that his only child was not of the stuff to be +moulded at will by his dexterous hands. + +"You will come and see me again, Diana?" he said in a pleading tone: "I +am likely to be a prisoner in this room for a week or more." + +"Certainly, papa; I will come if you wish it. When shall I come?" + +"Well, let me see--to-day is Thursday; can you come on Monday?" + +"Yes, I will come on Monday." + +A cab was procured, and Miss Paget was conducted to that vehicle by her +new acquaintance, who showed a gallant anxiety for her comfort on the +journey, and was extremely careful about the closing of the windows. She +arrived at Bayswater before ten, but being forbidden to talk of M. +Lenoble, could give but a scanty account of her evening. + +"And was your papa kind, dear?" asked Charlotte, "and did he seem pleased +to see you?" + +"He was much kinder and more affectionate than usual, Lotta dear; so much +so, that he set me wondering. Now, if I were as confiding and eager to +think well of people as you are, I should be quite delighted by this +change. As it is, I am only mystified. I should be very glad if my father +and I could be drawn closer together; very glad if my influence could +bring about an amendment in his life." + +While Miss Paget was discussing her father's affectionate and novel +behaviour, the noble Horatio was meditating, by his solitary hearth, upon +the events of the evening. + +"I'm half-inclined to think he's hit already," mused the Captain. "I must +not allow myself to be deluded by manner. A Frenchman's gallantry rarely +means much; but Lenoble is one of those straightforward fellows whose +thoughts may be read by a child. He certainly seemed pleased with her; +interested and sympathetic, and all that kind of thing. And she is an +uncommonly handsome girl, and might marry any one if she had the +opportunity. I had no idea she was so handsome until to-night. I suppose +I never noticed her by candlelight before. By Jove! I ought to have made +her an actress, or singer, or something of that kind. And so I might, if +I'd known her face would light up as it does. I wish she wasn't so +impracticable--always cutting in with some awkward speech, that makes me +look like a fool, when, if she had an ounce of common sense, she might +see that I'm trying to make her fortune. Yes, egad, and such a fortune as +few girls drop into now-a-days! Some of your straitlaced church-going +people would call me a neglectful father to that girl, I daresay; but I +think if I succeed in making her the wife of Gustave Lenoble, I shall +have done my duty in a way that very few fathers can hope to surpass. +Such a high-principled fellow as Lenoble is too!--and _that_ is a +consideration." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I?" + +After that first summons to Chelsea, Diana went many times--twice and +three times a week--to comfort and tend her invalid father. Captain +Paget's novel regard for his only child seemed to increase with the +familiarity of frequent intercourse. "I have had very great pleasure in +making your acquaintance, my dear Diana," he said one day, in the course +of a _tête-à-tête_ with his daughter; "and I am charmed to find you +everything that a well-born and well-bred young woman ought to be. I am +sure you have excellent reason to be grateful to your cousin, Priscilla +Paget, for the excellent education you received in her abode; and you +have some cause to thank me for the dash and style imparted to your +carriage and manner by our foreign wanderings." + +The Captain said this with the air of a man who had accompanied his +daughter on the grand tour solely with a view to her intellectual +improvement. He really thought she had reason to be grateful to him for +those accidents of his nomadic life which had secured her a good accent +for French and German, and the art of putting on her shawl. + +"Yes, my dear child," he continued with dignity, "it affords me real +gratification to know you better. I need scarcely say that when you were +the associate of my pilgrimage, you were not of an age to be available as +a companion. To a man of the world like myself, a young person who has +not done growing must always savour somewhat of the schoolroom and the +nursery. I am not going to repeat the Byronic impertinence about +bread-and-butter; but the society of a girl of the hobbledehoy age is apt +to be insipid. You are now a young woman, and a young woman of whom any +father might with justice be proud." + +After a few such speeches as these, Diana began to think that it was just +possible her father might really experience some novel feeling of regard +for her. It might be true that his former coldness had been no more than +a prejudice against the awkwardness of girlhood. + +"I was shabby and awkward, I daresay, in those days," she thought; "and +then I was always asking papa for money to buy new clothes; and that may +have set him against me. And now that I am no burden upon him, and can +talk to him and amuse him, he may feel more kindly disposed towards me." + +There was some foundation for this idea. Captain Paget had felt himself +more kindly disposed towards his only child from the moment in which she +ceased to be an encumbrance upon him. Her sudden departure from +Forêtdechêne had been taken in very good part by him. + +"A very spirited thing for her to do, Val," he had said, when informed of +the fact by Mr. Hawkehurst; "and by far the best thing she could do, +under the circumstances." + +From that time his daughter had never asked him for a sixpence, and from +that time she had risen steadily in his estimation. But the feeling which +he now exhibited was more than placid approval; it was an affection at +once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his +daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence for +his declining years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a +sentiment inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical +assumption. Diana was, therefore, so much the more likely to be softened +and touched by it. + +She was softened, deeply touched by this late awakening of feeling. The +engagement of Valentine and Charlotte had left her own life very blank, +very desolate. It was not alone the man she loved who was lost to her; +Charlotte, the friend, the sister, seemed also slipping away from her. As +kind, as loving, as tender as of old, this dear friend and adopted sister +still might be, but no longer wholly her own. Over the hearts of the +purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt +to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has +descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will +burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's +supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly when the lamp is +shattered. + +For Charlotte, Valentine--and for Valentine, Charlotte--made the +sum-total of the universe at this time; or, at best, there was but a +small balance which included all the other cares and duties, affections +and pleasures, of life. Of this balance Diana had the lion's share; but +she felt that things had changed since those days of romantic school-girl +friendship in which Charlotte had talked of never marrying, and +travelling with her dearest friend Diana amongst all the beautiful scenes +they had read of, until they found the loveliest spot in the world, where +they would establish themselves in an ideal cottage, and live together +for the rest of their lives, cultivating their minds and their +flower-garden, working berlin-wool chairs for their ideal drawing-room, +and doing good to an ideal peasantry, who would be just poor enough to be +interesting, and sickly enough to require frequent gifts of calf's-foot +jelly and green tea. + +Those foolish dreams were done with now; and that other dream, of a life +to be spent with the reckless companion of her girlhood, was lost to +Diana Paget. There was no point to which she could look forward in the +future, no star to lure her onward upon life's journey. Her present +position was sufficiently comfortable; and she told herself that she must +needs be weak and wicked if she were not content with her lot. But beyond +the present she dared not look, so blank was the prospect--a desert, +without even the mirage; for her dreams and delusions were gone with her +hope. + +Possessed by such a sense of loneliness, it is scarcely strange if +there seemed to her a gleam of joy, a faint glimmer of hope, in the +newly awakened affection of her father. She began to believe him, and +to take comfort from the thought that he was drifting to a haven where +he might lie moored, with other battered old hulks of pirate and +privateer, inglorious and at rest. To work for him and succour him in his +declining years seemed a brighter prospect to this hopeless woman of +four-and-twenty than a future of lonely independence. "It is the nature +of woman to lean," says the masculine philosopher; but is it not rather +her nature to support and sustain, or else why to her is entrusted the +sublime responsibility of maternity? Diana was pleased to think that a +remorseful reprobate might be dependent on her toil, and owe his +reformation to her influence. She was indeed a new Antigone, ready to +lead him in his moral blindness to an altar of atonement more pure than +the ensanguined shrine of the Athenian Eumenides. + +Her visits to Omega Street were not entirely devoted to _tête-a-têtes_ +with her father. By reason of those coincidences which are so common to +the lives of some people, it generally happened that M. Lenoble dropped +in upon his invalid friend on the very day of Miss Paget's visit. M. +Lenoble was in London on business, and this business apparently +necessitated frequent interviews with Captain Paget. Of course such +interviews could not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was +wont, therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion +of the young lady's visit; and would even, with an inconsistent +gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay to its utmost limit. + +"It will always be time for my affairs, Miss Paget," he urged, "and I +know how your father values your society; and he well may value it. I +only hope my daughters will be as good to me, if I have the gout, +by-and-by." + +Diana had spent nearly a dozen evenings in Omega Street, and on each of +those evenings had happened to meet M. Lenoble. She liked him better on +every occasion of these accidental meetings. He was indeed a person whom +it was difficult for any one to dislike, and in the thirty-four years of +his life had never made an enemy. She had been pleased with him on the +first evening; his bright handsome face, his courteous reverence for her +sex--expressed in every word, every tone, every look--his sympathy with +all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, were calculated to charm +the coldest and most difficult of judges. Diana liked, and even admired +him, but it was from an abstract point of view. He seemed a creature as +remote from her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and +admired in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of her memory +to-morrow. + +There was only one point in connection with Gustave Lenoble which +occupied her serious thoughts; and this was the nature of his relations +with her father. + +This was a subject that sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the +future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her +father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster--now by one +species of falsehood and trickery, now by another--rarely incautious, +but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy +fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that +was spread for him? + +The talk of business, the frequent interviews, the evident elation of her +father's spirits, combined to assure her that some great scheme was in +progress, some commercial enterprise, perhaps not entirely dishonest--nay +even honest, when regarded from the sanguine speculator's point of view, +but involving the hazard of Gustave Lenoble's fortune. + +"It is quite as easy for my father to delude himself as it is for him to +delude others. This M. Lenoble is ignorant of English commerce, no doubt, +and will be ready to believe anything papa tells him. And he is so +candid, so trusting, it would be very hard if he were to be a loser +through his confidence in papa. His daughters, too; the hazard of his +fortune is peril to their future." Such doubts and fears, gradually +developed by reflection took stronger hold on Miss Paget's mind after +every fresh visit to Omega Street. She saw the Frenchman's light-hearted +confidence in all humanity, her father's specious manner and air of +quixotic honour. His sanguine tone, his excellent spirits, filled her +with intolerable alarm. Alas! when had she ever seen her father in good +spirits, except when some gentlemanly villany was in progress? + +Miss Paget endured this uneasiness of mind as long as she could, and then +determined to warn the supposed victim. She planned the mode of her +warning, and arranged for herself a diplomatic form which would reflect +the least possible discredit upon her father; and having once come to +this resolution, she was not slow to put it into effect. + +When her father was about to send for a cab to convey her back to +Bayswater, after her next visit to Omega Street, she surprised him by +intercepting his order. + +"There is a cab-stand in Sloane Square, papa," she said; "and if M. +Lenoble will be so kind as to take me there, I--I would rather get the +cab from the stand. The man charges more when he is fetched off the rank, +I believe." + +She could think of no better excuse for seeing Gustave alone than this +most sordid pretence. She blushed as she thought how mean a sound it must +have in the ears of the man for whose advantage she was plotting. Happily +M. Lenoble was not among the people who see nothing but meanness in the +desire to save sixpence. His aunt Cydalise had shown him the loveliness +of poverty; for there are vows of holy poverty that need no spoken +formula, and that are performed without the cloister. + +"Poor girl!" thought M. Lenoble; "I dare say even the cost of her coach +is a consideration with her; and one dare not pay the coachman." + +This was how Gustave read that blush of shame which for a moment dyed +Diana's cheek. Her father's was a very different reading. + +"The minx sees my game, and is playing into my hands," thought he. "So +demure as she is, too! I should never have supposed her capable of such +a clever manoeuvre to secure ten minutes' _tête-a-tête_ with an +eligible admirer." + +He bade his daughter good night with more than usual effusion. He began +to think that she might prove herself worthy of him after all. + +The district between Omega Street and Sloane Square is after dusk of all +places the most solitary. It is the border-land of Pimlico, or, to borrow +from Sidney Smith, the knuckle end of Belgravia. In these regions of +desolation and smoke-blackened stucco Diana and her companion were as +secure from the interruption of the jostling crowd as they might have +been in the primeval forests of Central America. + +Miss Paget's task was not a pleasant one. Shape her warning as she might, +it must reflect some discredit upon her father. He had of late been kind +to her; she felt this keenly to-night, and it seemed that the thing she +was about to do was a sort of parricide. Not against her father's life +was her cruel hand to be lifted; but her still more cruel tongue was to +slay her father's good name. + +"This M. Lenoble likes him and trusts him," she thought to herself. "What +a happiness for that poor broken-down old man to have so kind a friend! +And I am going to interfere in a manner that may put an end to this +friendship?" + +This is the shape which her thoughts assumed as she walked silently by +Gustave's side, with her hand lying lightly on his arm. He spoke to her +two or three times about the dulness of the neighbourhood, the coldness +of the night, or some other equally thrilling subject; but, finding by +her replies that she was thinking deeply, he made no further attempt at +conversation. + +"Poor child! she has some trouble on her mind, perhaps," he thought to +himself sadly, for his sympathy with this young lady was a very profound +feeling. This was the first occasion on which he had ever been alone +with her, and he wondered to find what a strange emotion was developed +by the novelty of the situation. He had married at twenty years of age, +and had never known those brief fancies or foolish passions which waste +the freshness of mind and heart. He had married a wife whom he never +learned to love; but his nature was so essentially a happy one, that he +had failed to discover the something wanting in his life. In all +relations--as grandson, husband, father, master--he had been "all simply +perfect," as Mademoiselle Cydalise pronounced him; and in a mind occupied +by cares for the welfare and happiness of others, he had never found that +blank which needed to be filled in order to make his own life completely +happy. Only of late, in his thirty-fourth year, had he come to the +knowledge of a feeling deeper than dutiful regard for an invalid wife, or +affectionate solicitude for motherless children; only of late had he felt +his heart stirred by a more thrilling emotion than that placid +resignation to the will of Providence which had distinguished his +courtship of Mademoiselle de Nérague. + +They had nearly reached Sloane Square before Diana took courage to broach +the subject so naturally repugnant to her. She had need to remember that +the welfare of M. Lenoble and all belonging to him might be dependent on +her fortitude. + +"M. Lenoble," she began at last, "I am going to say something I shall +find it most painful to utter, but which I feel it my duty to say to you. +I can only ask you to receive it in a generous spirit." + +"But, my dear Miss Paget, I pray you not to say anything that is +disagreeable to you. Why should you give yourself pain?--why--" + +"Because it is my duty to warn you of a danger which I know only too +well, and of which you may be quite ignorant. You are my father's friend, +M. Lenoble; and he has very few friends. I should be sorry if anything I +were to say should rob him of your regard." + +"Nothing that you say shall rob him of my friendship. But why should +you persist thus to say anything that is painful? What can you tell me +that I do not know, or that I cannot guess? Will you tell me that he is +poor? But I know it. That he is a broken-down gentleman? And that also +I know. What, then, would you tell me? That he has a daughter who is to +him a treasure without price? Ah, mademoiselle, what must I be if I did +not know that also?--I, who have contemplated that daughter so many +times--ah, so many!--when she could not know with what sympathy my eyes +watched her dutiful looks, with what profound emotion my heart +interpreted her life of affectionate sacrifice." + +There was a warmth, a tenderness in his tones which touched Diana's heart +as it had not been touched of late. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the full +meaning of those tender accents came home to her. The love that she had +once dreamed of from the lips of another spoke to her to-night in the +words of this stranger. The sympathy for which she had yearned long ago, +in the days of her wanderings with Valentine, was given to her to-night +without stint or measure. Unhappily it came too late; and it did not come +from the only lips which, as it seemed to her to-night, could make +sympathy precious or love divine. But to this lonely girl a good man's +affection seemed a treasure for which she must needs be deeply grateful. +It was something to discover that she could be loved. + +"I too," she said to herself,--"I, of whose presence Valentine is +scarcely conscious when he enters a room where Charlotte and I are +together; I, whom he greets day after day with the same careless words, +the same indifferent look; I, who might fade and waste day by day with +some slow disease, until I sank into the grave, before he would be +conscious of any change in my face,--is it possible that amongst the same +race of beings there can be any creature so widely different from +Valentine Hawkehurst as to love _me_?" + +This was the bitter complaint of her heart as she compared the tenderness +of this stranger with the indifference of the man to whom, for three long +years of her girlhood, she had given every dream, every thought, every +hope of her existence. She could not put him away from her heart all at +once. The weak heart still fondly clung to the dear familiar image. But +the more intensely she had felt the cold neglect of Valentine, the more +grateful to her seemed the unsought affection of Gustave Lenoble. + +"You know me as little as you know my father, M. Lenoble," she said, +after a long pause, during which they had walked to the end of the long +dull street, and were close to the square. "Let us go back a little way, +please; I have much more to say. I wish you to be my father's friend +always, but, if possible, without danger to yourself. My father is one of +those sanguine people who are always ready to embark in some new +enterprise, and who go on hoping and dreaming, after the failure of a +dozen schemes. He has no money, that I know of, to lose himself, and that +fact may make him, unconsciously, reckless of other people's money. I +have heard him speak of business relations with you, M. Lenoble, and it +is on that account I venture to speak so plainly. I do not want my poor +father to delude you, as he has often deluded himself. If you have +already permitted him to involve you in any speculation, I entreat you +to try to withdraw from it--to lose a little money, if necessary, rather +than to lose all. If you are not yet involved, let my warning save you +from any hazard." + +"My dear Miss Paget, I thank you a thousand times for your advice, your +noble thoughtfulness for others. But no, there is no hazard. The +business in which your father is occupied for me is not a speculation. It +involves no risk beyond the expenditure of a few thousand francs, which, +happily, I can afford to lose. I am not at liberty to tell you the nature +of the business in question, because I have promised your father to keep +that a secret. Dear young lady, you need have no fear for me. I am not a +rash speculator. The first years of my life were passed in extreme +poverty--the poverty that is near neighbour to starvation. That is a +lesson one cannot forget. How shall I thank you for your concern for +me?--so generous, so noble!" + +"It was only my duty to warn you of my poor father's weakness," replied +Diana. "If I needed thanks, your kindness to him is the only boon I could +ask. He has bitter need of a friend." + +"And he shall never lack one while I live, if only for your sake." The +last half of the sentence was spoken in lower tones than the first. Diana +was conscious of the lurking tenderness of those few words, and the +consciousness embarrassed her. Happily they had reached the end of the +quiet street by this time, and had emerged into the busier square. No +more was said till they reached the cab-stand, when Diana wished her +companion good night. + +"I am going back to Normandy in a week, Miss Paget; shall I see you again +before I leave England?" + +"I really don't know; our meetings are generally accidental, you see." + +"O yes, of course, always accidental," replied Gustave, smiling. + +"I am sorry you are going to leave London--for papa's sake." + +"And I, too, am sorry--for my own sake. But, you see, when one has +daughters, and a farm, and a chateau, one must be on the spot. I came to +England for one week only, and I have stayed six." + +"You have found so much to amuse you in London?" + +"Nay, mademoiselle, so much to interest me." + +"It is almost the same thing, is it not?" + +"A thousand times no! To be amused and to be interested--ah, what can be +so widely different as those two conditions of mind!" + +"Indeed! Good night, Mr. Lenoble. Please ask the cabman to drive as fast +as he can venture to do with consideration for his horse. I am afraid I +shall be late, and my friends will be anxious about me." + +"You will be late. You consider your friends at Bayswater, and you +consider even the cabman's horse. You are charity itself. Will you not +consider me a little also, Miss Paget?" + +"But how?" + +"Let me see you before I go back to Normandy. Your papa likes to see you +twice a week, I know. This is Monday night; will you come to see him on +Thursday?" + +"If he wishes it." + +"He does wish it. Ah, how he wishes it! You will come?" + +"If Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte can spare me." + +"They cannot spare you. No one can spare you. That cannot be. It +is amongst the things that are impossible. But they will have pity +upon--your father, and they will let you come." + +"Please ask the cabman to start. Indeed, I shall be late. Good night, +M. Lenoble." + +"Good night." + +He took her hand in his, and kissed it, with the grace of a Bayard. He +loved her, and took no trouble to conceal his passion. No shadow of doubt +darkened that bright horizon to which M. Lenoble looked with hopeful +eyes. He loved this penniless, motherless girl, as it was in the blood of +the Lenobles to love the poor and the helpless; especially when poverty +and helplessness presented themselves in the guise of youth and beauty. +He loved her, and she would love him. But why not? He was ten years her +senior, but that makes nothing. His auburn hair and beard, in the style +of Henry the Great, could show no streak of grey. His eyes had the +brightness of one-and-twenty; for the eyes of a man whose soul preserves +its youthfulness will keep their clear lustre for half a century. The +tall figure, straight as a dart; the frank handsome face which M. Lenoble +saw in the glass when he made his toilet, were not calculated to +dishearten a hopeful lover; and Gustave, by nature sanguine, enjoyed his +dream of happiness, untroubled by one morbid apprehension. + +He loved her, and he would ask her for his wife. She would accept his +offer; her father would rejoice in so fortunate an alliance; her friends +of Bayswater would felicitate a change so desirable. And when he returned +to Normandy he would take her with him, and say to his children, "Behold +your mother!" And then the great rambling mansion of Côtenoir would +assume a home-like aspect. The ponderous old furniture would be replaced +by lightsome appointments of modern fashion; except, of course, in the +grand drawing-room, where there were tapestries said to be from the +designs of Boucher, and chairs and sofas in the true Louis Quinze style, +of immovable bulkiness. + +There was but one trifling hitch in the whole scheme of happiness--Diana +was a Protestant. Ah, but what then! A creature so sweet, so noble, could +not long remain the slave of Anglican heresy. A little talk with +Cydalise, a week's "retreat" at the Sacré Coeur, and the thing would be +done. The dear girl would renounce her errors, and enter the bosom of the +Mother Church. Pouff! M. Lenoble blew the little difficulty away from his +finger-tips, and then wafted a kiss from the same finger-tips to his +absent beloved. + +"And this noble heart warned me against her own father!" M. Lenoble said +to himself, as he walked towards the hotel at Blackfriars where he had +taken up his abode, quite unconscious that the foot of Blackfriars Bridge +was not the centre of West End London. "How noble, how disinterested! +Poor old man! He is, no doubt, a speculator--something even of an +Adventurer. What then? He shall have an apartment at Côtenoir, his place +at the family table, his _fauteuil_ by the hearth; and there he can do no +harm." + + * * * * * + +There was a strange sentiment in Diana's mind after this evening's +conversation with Gustave Lenoble. To feel herself beloved, to know that +there was some one creature in the wide crowded world interested in, nay, +even attached to her, was a mystery, a surprise, and in some sort a +source of pleasure to her. That Gustave Lenoble could ever be any nearer +to her than he was at the present time did not occur to her as being +within the limits of possibility. She had thrust Valentine from her +heart, but the empty chamber could receive no new tenant. It was not +swept and garnished; nay, indeed, it was sadly littered with the shreds +and patches left by the late occupant. But, while this was so, to know +that she could be loved was in some manner sweet to her. + +"Ah, now I know that the poet is right," she said to herself. "There is +no creature so desolate but some heart responds unto its own. And I have +found the generous responsive heart that can pity and love me because +I seem so sorely to need love and pity. All my life--my blank, empty +life--I will remember and be grateful to him, the first good man who ever +called my father friend; the first of all mankind who thought this poor +hand worthy to be lifted to his lips." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH. + +Having pledged herself to visit Omega Street on Thursday, Diana +considered herself bound to perform that promise. She felt, however, that +there was some touch of absurdity in the position, for to keep a promise +so made was in a manner to keep an appointment with M. Lenoble. + +"I dare say he has a habit of falling in love with every young woman he +meets," she thought, when she considered his conduct from a more prosaic +standpoint than the grateful enthusiasm his generous sympathy had at +first awakened in her mind. "I have heard that it is a Frenchman's +faculty to consider himself irresistible, and to avow his adoration for a +new divinity every week. And I was so foolish as to fancy there was a +depth of feeling in his tone and manner! I am sure he is all that is good +and generous; but the falling in love is no doubt a national failing." + +She remembered the impertinent advances of divers unknown foreigners whom +she had encountered on pier or _digue_, kursaal or beach, in the +frequently unprotected hours of her continental wanderings. + +She had not seen the best side of the foreign mind in her character of +unattended and doubtfully attired English demoiselle. She knew that +Gustave Lenoble was of a very different stamp from those specimens of the +genus tiger whose impertinent admiration had often wounded and distressed +her; but she was inclined to attribute the fault of shallowness to a +nature so frank and buoyant as that of her father's friend. + +She walked from Bayswater to Chelsea on the appointed Thursday, for the +cost of frequent journeys in cabs was more than her purse could supply. +The walk across the Park was pleasant even in the bleak March weather, +and she entered the little parlour in Omega Street with the bloom of +damask roses upon her cheeks. + +"How do you do, papa dear?" she began, as she came into the dusky room; +but the figure sitting in her father's accustomed place was not that of +her father. It was M. Lenoble, who rose to welcome her. + +"Is papa worse?" she asked, surprised by the Captain's absence. + +"On the contrary, he is better, and has gone out in a hired carriage for +a breath of fresh air. I persuaded him to go. He will be back very +shortly." + +"I wrote to tell him I should be here to-day, but I am very glad he has +gone out, for I am sure the air will do him good. Was he well wrapped up, +do you know, M. Lenoble?" + +"Enveloped in railway-rugs and shawls to his very nose. I arranged all +that with my own hands. He looked like an ambassador from all the +Russias." + +"How kind of you to think of such things!" said Diana gratefully. + +"And tell me why should I not think of such things? Do you imagine that +it is not a pleasure to me to wait upon your father--for your sake?" + +There was some amount of awkwardness in this kind of thing. Diana busied +herself with the removal of her hat and jacket, which she laid neatly +upon a stony-hearted horsehair sofa. After doing this she placed herself +near the window, whence she contemplated the dusky street, appearing much +interested in the movements of the lamp lighter. + +"What an admirable way they have of lighting the lamps now," she +remarked, with the conversational brilliance which usually marks this +kind of situation; "how much more convenient it must be than the old +method with the ladder, you know!" + +"Yes, I have no doubt," said Gustave, bringing himself to her side with a +couple of steps, and planting himself deliberately in a chair next to +hers; "but don't you think, as I start for Normandy to-morrow, we might +talk of something more interesting than the lamplighter, Miss Paget?" + +"I am ready to talk of anything you like," replied Miss Paget, with that +charming assumption of unconsciousness which every woman can command on +these occasions. + +"You are very good. Do you know that when I persuaded your father to go +out for an airing, I was prompted by a motive so selfish as to render the +proceeding quite diabolical? Don't be alarmed! The doctor gave his +permission for the airing, or I should not have attempted such a thing. +Hypocrisy I am capable of, but not assassination. You cannot imagine the +diplomacy which I exhibited; and all to what end? Can you imagine that?" + +"No, indeed." + +"That I might secure one half-hour's uninterrupted talk with you; and, +unhappily, you are so late that I expect your father's return every +minute. He was to be back again before dusk, and the appearance of the +lamplighter demonstrates that the dusk has come. I have so much to say, +and so little time to say it; so much, Diane--" + +She started as he called her thus, as if in that moment of surprise she +would have risen from her chair by his side. She knew what was coming, +and having expected nothing so desperate, knew not how to arrest the +confession that she would fain have avoided hearing. M. Lenoble laid his +hand firmly on hers. + +"So much, Diane; and yet so little, that all can be told in three words. +I love you." + +"M. Lenoble!" + +"Ah, you are surprised, you wonder, you look at me with eyes of sweet +amazement! Dear angel, do you think it is possible to see you and not to +love you? To see you once is to respect, to admire, to bow the knee +before beauty and goodness; but to see you many times, as I have done, +the patient consoler of an invalid and somewhat difficult father--ah, my +sweet love, who is there so hard amongst mankind that he should escape +from loving you, seeing all that?" + +The question had a significance that the speaker knew not. Who amongst +mankind? Why, was there not one man for whom she would have been content +to be the veriest slave that ever abnegated every personal delight for +the love of a hard master? And he had passed her by, indifferent, +unseeing. She had worshipped him on her knees, as it seemed to her; and +he had left her kneeling in the dust, while he went on to offer himself, +heart and soul, at another shrine. + +She could not forget these things. The memory and the bitterness of them +came back with renewed poignancy at this moment, when the voice of a +stranger told her she was beloved. + +"My dear one, will you not answer me?" pleaded Gustave, in nowise alarmed +by Diana's silence, which seemed to him only the natural expression of a +maidenly emotion. "Tell me that you will give me measure for measure; +that you will love me as my mother loved my father--with a love that +trouble and poverty could never lessen; with a love that was strongest +when fate was darkest--a star which the dreary night of sorrow could not +obscure. I am ten years older than you by my baptismal register, Diane; +but my heart is young. I never knew what love was until I knew you. And +yet those who know me best will tell you that I was no unkind husband, +and that my poor wife and I lived happily. I shall never know love again, +except for you. The hour comes, I suppose, in every man's life; and the +angel of his life comes in that appointed hour. Mine came when I saw you. +I have spoken to your father, and have his warm approval. He was all +encouragement, and hinted that I might be assured of your love. Had he +sufficient justification for that half-promise, Diane?" + +"He had none," Miss Paget answered gravely, "none except his own wishes. +You have made me hear more than I wished to hear, M. Lenoble, for the +treasure you offer me is one that I cannot accept. With all my heart I +thank you for the love you tell me of. Even if it is, as I can but think +it, a passing fancy, I thank you, nevertheless. It is sweet to win the +love of a good man. I pray you to believe that with all my heart and mind +I honour your generous nature, your noble sympathy with the weak and +friendless. If you can give me your friendship, you shall find how I can +value a good man's regard, but I cannot accept your love." + +"Why not?" asked Gustave, aghast. + +"Because I cannot give you measure for measure, and I will not give you +less." + +"But in time, Diane, in time?" + +"Time cannot show me your character in a nobler light than that in which +I see it now. You do not lack the power to win a woman's heart, but I +have no heart to give. If you will be my friend, time will increase my +affection for you--but time cannot restore the dead." + +"Which means that your heart is dead, Diane?" + +"Yes," she answered, with unutterable sadness. + +"You love some one younger, happier than I?" + +"No, M. Lenoble, no one." + +"But you have loved? Yes!--a scoundrel, perhaps; a villain, who--" + +A spasm of pain contracted his face as he looked at the girl's drooping +head; her face, in that dim light, he could not see. + +"Tell me this, Diane," he said presently, in an altered voice; "there is +no barrier between us--no irrevocable obstacle that must part us for +ever? There is no one who can claim you by any right--" He paused; and +then added, in a lower voice, "by any wrong?" + +"No one," answered Miss Paget, lifting her head, and looking her lover +full in the face. Even in that uncertain light he could see the proud +steady gaze that seemed the fittest answer of all doubts. + +"Thank God!" he whispered. "Ah, how could I fear, even for one moment, +that you could be anything but what you seem--the purest among the pure? +Why, then, do you reject me? You do not love me, but you ask my +friendship; you offer me your friendship, even your affection. Ah, +believe me, if those are but real, time will ripen them into love. Your +heart is dead. Ah, why should that young heart be dead? It is not dead, +Diane; it needs but the fire of true love to warm it into life again. Why +should you reject me, since you tell me that you love me; unless you love +another? What should divide us?" + +"Shadows and memories," Diana replied mournfully,--"vague and foolish; +wicked, perhaps; but they come between you and me, M. Lenoble. And since +I cannot give you a whole heart, I will give you nothing." + +"You have loved some one, some one who did not value your love? Tell me +the truth, Diane; you owe me at least as much as that." + +"I do owe you the truth. Yes; I have been very foolish. For two or three +years of my life there was a person who was our daily companion. He +travelled with us--with my father and me; and we saw many changes and +troubles together. For a long time he was like my brother; and I doubt if +many brothers are as kind to their sisters as he was to me. In his heart +that feeling never changed. He was always equally kind, equally careless. +Once I deluded myself with the fancy that in his looks and tones, and +even in his words, there was some deeper feeling than this careless +brotherly kindness; but it was no more than a delusion. My eyes were +opened rudely enough. I saw his heart bestowed elsewhere. Do not think +that I am so weak, or so wicked, as to abandon myself to despair because +I have been awakened from my foolish dream. I can look the realities of +life in the face, M. Lenoble; and I have taught myself to wish all good +things for the dear girl who has won the heart that I once thought was +mine. The person I am speaking of can boast no superior graces of mind or +person. He is only a very commonplace young man, with a certain amount of +talent, a disposition inclined to good rather than to evil. But he was +the companion of my girlhood; and in losing him it seems to me as if I +had lost a part of my youth itself." + +To Diana's mind this seemed the end of the discussion. She expected M. +Lenoble to bow his head to the inevitable, to utter a friendly farewell, +and depart for his Norman home, convinced, if not satisfied. But the +light-hearted, easy-tempered Gustave was not a lover of the despairing +order, nor an easily answered suppliant. + +"And that is all!" he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of +your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory +of this unspeakable idiot--great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch +have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!--the memory of +this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for +ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel +without knowing it, is to lift its phantasmal hand and thrust me +aside--me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot? Ah, thus we blow him +to the uttermost end of the world!" cried M. Lenoble, blowing an +imaginary rival from the tips of his fingers. "Thus we dismiss him to the +Arctic regions, the torrid zone--to the Caucasus, where await vultures to +gnaw his liver--wherever earth is most remote and uncomfortable--he and +the bread-and-butter miss whom he prefers to my Diane!" + +This manner of taking things was quite unexpected by Diana. It was much +more pleasant than gloomy despair or sullen resentment; but it was, at +the same time, much more difficult to deal with. + +"He is gone!" cried Gustave presently; "he is on the topmost heights of +Caucasus, and the vultures are sharpening their beaks! And now, tell me, +Diane--you will be my wife, will you not? You will be a mother to my +children? You will transform the old chateau of Côtenoir into a pleasant +home? You will cease to live amongst strangers? You will come to those +who will love and cherish you as their own, their dearest and best and +brightest? You will give your poor old father a corner by your fireside? +He is old and needs a home for his last years. For his sake, Diane, for +mine, for my children, let your answer be yes! Ah, not so fast!" he +cried, as she was about to speak. "Why are you so quick to pronounce your +fatal judgment? Think how much depends on your reply--your father's +happiness, my children's, mine!" + +"It is of yours only I must think," Miss Paget answered earnestly. "You +fancy it is so easy for me to say no. Believe me, it would be much easier +to say yes. When you speak of my father's declining years, I, who know +his weary life so well, would be hard of heart indeed if I were not +tempted by the haven you offer. Every word that you say gives me some new +proof of your goodness, your generosity. But I will not wrong you because +you are generous. I shall always be your grateful friend, but you must +seek elsewhere for a wife, M. Lenoble. You will have little difficulty in +finding one worthier than I." + +"I will seek nowhere else for a wife; I will have no wife but you. I have +had a wife of other people's choosing; I will choose one for myself this +time. Let us be friends, Diane, since your decision is as irrevocable as +the laws of Draco. You are stone, you are adamant; but no matter, we can +be friends. Your father will be disappointed. But what then? He is no +doubt accustomed to disappointments. My daughters--for them it is a +profound affliction to be motherless, but they must support it. Côtenoir +must go to wreck and ruin a little longer--a few more rats behind the +panelling, a few more moths in the tapestry, that is all. My children +say, 'Papa, our home is not comfortable; all is upside-down;' and I +reply. 'But what will you, my children? A home without a wife is always +upside down.' And then I take them between my arms, in weeping. It is a +poignant picture to rend the heart. But what does it matter, Miss Paget? +What is that verse of your grand Will?-- + + Blow, blow, thou wintry wind; + And let go weep the stricken land, + While harts ungalled go play. + +Perhaps I have mixed him up somehow; but the meaning is clear." + +A hollow-sounding and somewhat awful cough heralded the approach of +Captain Paget, who entered the room at this juncture. If the Captain had +prolonged his first airing, after six weeks' confinement to the house, +until this late period of the afternoon, he would have committed an +imprudence which might have cost him dearly. Happily, he had done nothing +of the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana and +Gustave were conversing close to the window, having preferred to leave +his fly at the end of the street, rather than to incur the hazard of +interrupting a critical tête-à-tête. The interval that had elapsed since +his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in +the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment +and the parlour. What he had heard had been by no means satisfactory to +him; and if a look could annihilate, Miss Paget might have perished +beneath the Parthian glance which her father shot at her as he came +towards the window, with a stereotyped smile upon his lips and +unspeakable anger in his heart. + +He had heard just enough of the conversation to know that Gustave had +been rejected--Gustave, with Côtenoir and a handsome independence in the +present, and the late John Haygarth's fortune in the future. Rejected by +a penniless young woman, who at any moment might find herself without a +roof to shelter her from the winds of heaven! Was ever folly, madness, +wickedness supreme as this? + +Horatio trembled with rage as he took his daughter's hand. She had the +insolence to extend her hand for the customary salutation. The Captain's +greeting was a grip that made her wince. + +"Good-night, Miss Paget," said Gustave gravely, but with by no means the +despondent tone of a hopeless lover; "I--well, I shall see you again, +perhaps, before I go to Normandy. I doubt if I shall go to-morrow. I +have my own reasons for staying--unreasonable reasons, perhaps, but I +shall stay." + +All this was said in a tone too low to reach Captain Paget's ear. + +"Are you going to leave us, Lenoble?" he asked in a quavering voice. "You +will not stop and let Di give you a cup of tea as usual?" + +"Not to-night, Captain. Good-bye." + +He wrung the old man's hand and departed. Captain Paget dropped heavily +into a chair, and for some minutes there was silence. Diana was the +first to speak. + +"I am glad your doctor considered you well enough to go out for a drive, +papa," she said. + +"Indeed, my dear," answered her father with a groan; "I hope my next +drive may be in a different kind of vehicle--the last journey I shall +ever take, until they cart away my bones for manure. I believe they do +make manure from the bones of paupers in our utilitarian age." + +"Papa, how can you talk so horribly! You are better, are you not? M. +Lenoble said you were better." + +"Yes, I am better, God help me!" answered the old man, too weak alike in +mind and body to hide the passion that possessed, him. "That is one of +the contradictions of the long farce we call life. If I had been a rich +man, with a circle of anxious relations and all the noted men of Savile +Row dancing attendance round my bed, I dare say I should have died; but +as I happen to be a penniless castaway, with only a lodging-house drudge +and a half-starved apothecary to take care of me, and with nothing before +me but a workhouse, I live. It is all very well for a man to take things +easily when he is ill and helpless, too weak even to think. _That_ is not +the trying time. The real trial arrives when a little strength comes back +to him, and his landlady begins to worry him for her rent, and the +lodging-house drudge gets tired of pitying him, and the apothecary sends +in his bill, and the wretched high-road lies bare and broad before him, +and he hears the old order to move on. The moving-on time has come for +me, Di; and the Lord alone knows how little I know where I am to go." + +"Papa, you are not friendless; even I can give you a little help." + +"Yes," answered the Captain with a bitter laugh; "a sovereign once a +quarter--the scrapings of your pittance! That help won't save me from +the workhouse." + +"There is M. Lenoble." + +"Yes, there is M. Lenoble; the man who would have given me a home for my +old age: he told me so to-day--a home fit for a gentleman--for the +position he now occupies is nothing compared to that which he may occupy +a year hence. He would have received me as his father-in-law, without +thought or question of my antecedents; and if I have not lived like a +gentleman, I might have died like one. This is what he would have done +for me. But do you think I can ask anything of him now, after you have +refused him? I know of your refusal to be that man's wife. I heard--I saw +it in his face. You--a beggar, a friendless wretch, dependent on the +patronage of a stockbroker's silly wife--_you_ must needs give yourself +grand airs, and refuse such a man as that! Do you think such men go +begging among young ladies like you, or that they run about the streets, +like the roast pigs in the story, begad, with knives and forks in their +backs, asking to be eaten?" + +The Captain was walking up and down the room in a fever of rage. Diana +looked at him with sad wondering eyes. Yes, it was the old selfish +nature. The leopard cannot change his spots; and the Horatio Paget of the +present was the Horatio Paget of the past. + +"Pray don't be angry with me, papa," said Diana sorrowfully; "I believe +that I have done my duty." + +"Done your fiddlesticks!" cried the Captain, too angry to be careful of +his diction. "Your duty to whom? Did you happen to remember, miss, that +you owe some duty to me, your father, but for whom you wouldn't be +standing there talking of duty like a tragedy queen? By Jove! I suppose +you are too grand a person to consider my trouble in this matter; the +pains I took to get Lenoble over to England; the way I made the most of +my gout even, in order to have you about me; the way I finessed and +diplomatized to bring this affair to a successful issue. And now, when I +have succeeded beyond my hopes, you spoil everything, and then dare to +stand before me and preach about duty. What do you want in a husband, I +should like to know? A rich man? Lenoble is that. A handsome man? Lenoble +is that. A gentleman, with good blood in his veins? Lenoble comes of as +pure a race as any man in that part of France. A good man? Lenoble is one +of the best fellows upon this earth. What is it, then, that you want?" + +"I want to give my heart to the man who gives me his." + +"And what, in the name of all that's preposterous, is to prevent you +giving Gustave Lenoble your heart?" + +"I cannot tell you." + +"No, nor any one else. But let us have no more of this nonsense. If you +call yourself a daughter of mine, you will marry Gustave Lenoble. If +not--" + +The Captain found himself brought to a sudden stop in his unconscious +paraphrase of Signor Capulet's menace to his recalcitrant daughter, +Juliet. With what threat could the noble Horatio terrify his daughter to +obedience? Before you talk of turning your rebellious child out of doors, +you must provide a home from which to cast her. Captain Paget remembered +this, and was for the moment reduced to sudden and ignominious silence. +And yet there must surely be some way of bringing this besotted young +woman to reason. + +He sat for some minutes in silence, with his head leaning on his hand, +his face hidden from Diana. This silence, this attitude, so expressive of +utter despondency, touched her more keenly than his anger. She knew that +he was mean and selfish, that it was of his own loss he thought; and yet +she pitied him. He was old and helpless and miserable; so much the more +pitiable because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic soul +there is always some comfort; but for the grovelling nature suffering +knows no counterbalance. The ills that flesh is heir to seem utterly +bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate the flesh, and soar +triumphant above the regions of earthly pain. Captain Paget's mind, to +him, was not a kingdom. He could not look declining years of poverty in +the face; he was tired of work. The schemes and trickeries of his life +were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out, +and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from +Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance +of John Haygarth's estate. He wanted something more tangible than +this--he wanted immediate security; and his daughter's marriage with +Gustave would have given him that security, and still grander hopes for +the future. He had fancied himself reigning over the vassals of Côtenoir, +a far more important personage than the real master of that château. He +had pictured to himself a _pied-à-terre_ in Paris which it might be +agreeable for him to secure, for existence in Normandy might occasionally +prove _ennuyeux_. These things were what he meant when he talked of a +haven for his declining years; and against the daughter who, for some +caprice of her own, could hinder his possession of these things, he had +no feeling but anger. + +Diana compassionated this weak old man, to whose lips the cup of +prosperity had seemed so near, from whose lips her hand had thrust it. +He had been promised a home, comfort, respectability, friendship--"all +that should accompany old age"--and she had prevented the fulfilment of +the promise. Heaven knows how pure her motives had been; but as she +watched that drooping head, with its silvered hair, she felt that she +had been cruel. + +"Papa," she began presently, laying her hand caressingly upon her +father's neck; but he pushed aside the timid, caressing hand--"papa, you +think me very unkind, only because I have done what I believe to be +right; indeed it is so, papa dear. In what I said to Gustave Lenoble this +evening, I was governed only by my sense of right." + +"Indeed!" cried the Captain, with a strident laugh; "and where did you +pick up your sense of right, madam, I should like to know? From what +Methodist parson's hypocritical twaddle have you learnt to lay down the +law to your poor old father about the sense of right? 'Honour your father +and your mother, that your days may be long in the land,' miss, _that's_ +what your Bible teaches you; but the Bible has gone out of fashion, I +dare say, since I was a young man; and your model young woman of the +present generation taunts her father with her sense of right. Will your +sense of right be satisfied when you hear of your father rotting in the +old-men's ward of a workhouse, or dying on the London stones?" + +"I am not unfeeling, papa. With all my heart I pity you; but it is cruel +on your part to exaggerate the misery of your position, as I am sure you +must be doing. Why should your means of living fail because I refuse to +marry M. Lenoble? You have lived hitherto without my help, as I have +lived of late without yours. Nothing could give me greater happiness than +to know that you were exempt from care; and if my toil can procure you a +peaceful home in the future--as I believe it can, or education and will +to work must go for nothing--there shall be no lack of industry on my +part. I will work for you, I will indeed, papa--willingly, happily." + +"When your work can give me such a home as Côtenoir--a home that one word +of yours would secure for me--I will thank you." + +"If you will only wait, papa, if you will only have patience--" + +"Patience! Wait! Do you know what you are talking about? Do you prate of +patience, and waiting, and hope in the future to a man who has no +future--to a man whose days are numbered, and who feels the creeping +chills of death stealing over him every day as he sits beside his +wretched hearth, or labours through his daily drudgery? I can live as I +have always lived! Yes; but do you know, or care to know, that with every +day life becomes more difficult for me? Your fine friends at Bayswater +have done with me. I have spent the last sixpence I shall ever see from +Philip Sheldon. Hawkehurst has cut me, like the ungrateful hound he is. +When they have squeezed the orange, they throw away the rind. Didn't +Voltaire say that, when Frederick of Prussia gave him the go-by? Heaven +knows it's true enough; and now you, who by a word might secure yourself +a splendid position--yes, I say splendid for a poor drudge and dependent +like you, and insure a home for me--you, forsooth, must needs favour me +with your high-flown sentiments about your sense of right, and promise me +a home in the future, if I will wait and hope! No, Diana, waiting and +hoping are done with for me, and I can find a home in the bed of the +river without your help." + +"You would not be so wicked as to do that!" cried Diana, aghast. + +"I don't know about the wickedness of the act. But, rely upon it, when my +choice lies between the workhouse and the river, I shall prefer the +river. The modern workhouse is no inviting sanctuary, and I dare say many +a homeless wretch makes the same choice." + +For some minutes there was silence. Diana stood with her elbows resting +on the chimneypiece, her face covered with her hands. + +"O Lord, teach me to do the thing which is right!" she prayed, and in the +next breath acted on the impulse of the moment. + +"What would you have me do?" she asked. + +"What any one but an idiot would do of her own accord--accept the good +fortune that has dropped into your lap. Do you think such luck as yours +goes begging every day?" + +"You would have me accept Gustave Lenoble's offer, no matter what +falsehoods may be involved in my acceptance of it?" + +"I can see no reason for falsehood. Any one but an idiot would honour +such a man; any one but an idiot would thank Providence for such good +fortune." + +"Very well, papa," exclaimed Diana, with a laugh that had no mirthful +music, "I will not be the exceptional idiot. If M. Lenoble does me the +honour to repeat his offer--and I think from his manner he means to do +so--I will accept it." + +"He shall repeat it!" cried the Captain, throwing off his assumption of +the tragic father. The Oedipus Coloneus, the Lear--the venerable victim +of winter winds and men's ingratitude--was transformed in a moment into +an elderly Jeremy Diddler, lined with Lord Foppington. "He shall repeat +it; I will have him at your feet to-morrow. Yes, Di, my love, I pledge +myself to bring that about, without compromise to your maidenly pride or +the dignity of a Paget. My dear child, I ought to have known that +reflection would show you where your duty lies. I fear I have been +somewhat harsh, but you must forgive me, Di; I have set my heart on this +match, for your happiness as well as my own. I could not stand the +disappointment; though I admired, and still admire, the high feeling, +and all that kind of thing, which prompted your refusal. A school-girlish +sentimentality, child, but with something noble in it; not the +sentimentality of a vulgar schoolgirl. The blue blood will show itself, +my love; and now--no, no, don't cry. You will live to thank me for +to-night's work; yes, my child, to thank me, when you look round your +comfortable home by-and-by--when my poor old bones are mouldering in +their unpretending sepulchre--and say to yourself, 'I have my father to +thank for this. Adverse circumstances forbade his doing his duty as +happier fathers are allowed the privilege of doing theirs, but it was his +forethought, his ever-watchful care, which secured me an admirable +husband and a happy home.' Mark my words, the time will come when you +will say this, my dear." + +"I will try to think of you always kindly, papa," Miss Paget answered in +a low sad voice; "and if my marriage can secure your happiness and +Gustave Lenoble's, I am content. I only fear to take too much, and give +too little." + +"My love, you must certainly be the lineal descendant of Don Quixote. Too +much, and too little, forsooth! Let Lenoble find a handsomer woman, or a +more elegant woman, by gad, elsewhere! Such a woman as a duke might be +proud to make his duchess, by Jove! There shall be no sense of obligation +on our side, my love. Gustave Lenoble shall be made to feel that he gets +change for his shilling. Kiss me, child, and tell me you forgive me for +being a little rough with you, just now." + +"Forgive you?--yes, papa. I dare say you are wiser than I. Why should I +refuse M. Lenoble? He is good and kind, and will give us a happy home? +What more can I want? Do I want to be like Charlotte, to whom life seems +all poetry and brightness?" + +"And who is going to throw herself away upon a penny-a-liner, by Jove!" +interjected the Captain. + +"Can I hope to be like that girl, with her happy ignorance of life, her +boundless love and trust! O, no, no, papa; those things are not for me." + +She laid her head upon her father's breast, and sobbed like a child. This +was her second farewell to the man she had loved, the dreams she had +dreamed. The Captain comforted her with a paternal embrace, but was as +powerless to comprehend her emotion as if he had found himself suddenly +called upon to console the sorrows of a Japanese widow. + +"Hysterical," he murmured. "These noble natures are subject to that kind +of thing. And now, my love," he continued, in a more business-like tone, +"let us talk seriously. I think it would be very advisable for you to +leave Bayswater, and take up your abode in these humble lodgings with me +immediately." + +"Why, papa?" + +"The reason is sufficiently obvious, my love. It is not right that you +should continue to eat the bread of dependence. As the future wife of +Gustave Lenoble--and in this case, the word future means immediately--" + +"Papa," cried Diana suddenly, "you will not hurry me into this marriage? +I have consented for your sake. You will not be so ungenerous as to--" + +"As to hurry you? No, my dear, of course not. There shall be no indecent +haste. Your wishes, your delicate and disinterested motives, shall be +consulted before all things; yes, my love," cried the Captain, sorely +afraid of some wavering on the part of his daughter, and painfully +anxious to conciliate her, "all shall be in accordance with your wishes. +But I must urge your immediate removal from Bayswater; first, because M. +Lenoble will naturally wish to see you oftener than he can while you are +residing with people whose acquaintance I do not want him to make; and +secondly, because you have no further need of Mrs. Sheldon's patronage." + +"It has been kindness, affection, papa--never patronage. I could not +leave Mrs. Sheldon or Charlotte abruptly or ungraciously, upon any +consideration. They gave me a home when I most bitterly needed one. +They took me away from the dull round of schoolroom drudgery, that was +fast changing me into a hard hopeless joyless automaton. My first duty +is to them." + +The Captain's angry sniff alone expressed the indignation which this +impious remark inspired. + +"My next shall be to you and M. Lenoble. Let me give Mrs. Sheldon due +notice of the change in our plans." + +"What do you call due notice?" asked Horatio, peevishly. + +"A quarter's notice." + +"O, indeed! Then for three months you are to dance attendance upon Mrs. +Sheldon, while M. Lenoble is waiting to make you his wife." + +"I must consult the wishes of my friends, papa." + +"Very well, my dear," replied the Captain, with a sigh that was next of +kin to a groan; "you must please yourself and your friends, I suppose; +your poor old father is a secondary consideration." And then, timeously +mindful of the skirmish he had just had with his daughter, Captain Paget +made haste to assure her of his regard and submission. + +"All shall be as you please, my love," he murmured. "There, go into my +room, and smooth your hair, and bathe your eyes, while I ring for the +tea." + +Diana obeyed. She found eau-de-cologne and the most delicate of Turkey +sponges on her father's wash-handstand; jockey-club, and ivory-backed +brushes, somewhat yellow with age, but bearing crest and monogram, on his +dressing-table. The workhouse did not seem quite so near at hand as the +Captain had implied; but with these sanguine people it is but a step from +disappointment to despair. + +"What am I to tell Mrs. Sheldon, papa?" she asked, when she was pouring +out her father's tea. + +"Well, I think you had better say nothing, except that my circumstances +have somewhat improved, and that my failing health requires your care." + +"I hate secrets, papa." + +"So do I, my dear; but half-confidences are more disagreeable than +secrets." + +Diana submitted. She secretly reserved to herself the right to tell +Charlotte anything she pleased. From that dear adopted sister she would +hide nothing. + +"If M. Lenoble should repeat his offer, and I should accept it, I will +tell her all," she thought. "It will make that dear girl happy to know +that there is some one who loves me, besides herself." + +And then she thought of the strange difference of fate that gave to +this Charlotte Halliday, with her rich stepfather and comfortable +surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a lover, while to her, +the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, came a wealthy suitor. + +"Will hers be the dinner of herbs, and mine the stalled ox?" she thought. +"Ah, Heaven forbid! Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to +love too well?" + +She remembered the cynical French proverb, "When we can not have what +we love, we must love what we have." But the cynical proverb brought her +no comfort. + +She went back to Bayswater with a strange bewildered feeling; after +having promised her father to go to Omega Street whenever he sent for +her. There was no actual pain in her mind, no passionate desire to recall +her promise, no dread horror of the step to which she had pledged +herself. The feeling that oppressed her was the sense that such a step +should have been the spontaneous election of her grateful heart, proud of +a good man's preference, instead of a weak submission to a father's +helplessness. + + + + +Book the Fifth. + + + +THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +TAKEN BY STORM. + +Two days after her interview with Gustave Lenoble, Miss Paget received a +brief note from her father, summoning her again to Omega Street. + +"He has not gone back to Normandy," wrote the Captain. + +"My child, he positively worships the ground you walk upon. Ah, my love, +_it is something to have a father_! I need scarcely tell you that his +first idea of your excellence was inspired by those glowing descriptions +of your goodness, your beauty, your heroism, which I favoured him with, +_en passant_, during our conversations at Côtenoir, where the happy +accident of a business transaction first introduced me to him. The +interests of my only child have ever been near and dear to me; and where +a duller man would have perceived only a wealthy stranger, my paternal +instincts recognized at a glance the predestined husband of my daughter. +It needed my wide experience of life--and, as I venture to believe, my +subtle knowledge of the human heart--to understand that a man who had +lived for five-and-thirty years buried alive in a French province--a +charming place, my love, and for your refined taste replete with +interest--never seeing a mortal except his immediate neighbours, would be +the man of men to fall in love with the first attractive young woman he +met among strangers. Come to me this afternoon without fail, and come +early.--Yours, + +"H.N.C.P." + +Diana obeyed this summons submissively, but still troubled by that +strange sense of bewilderment which had affected her since her stormy +interview with Captain Paget. She was not quite certain of herself. The +old dreams--the sweet foolish girlish fancies--were not yet put away +altogether from her mind; but she knew that they were foolish, and she +was half-inclined to believe that there had been some wisdom in her +father's scorn. + +"What do I want more?" she asked herself. "He is good and brave and true, +and he loves me. If I were a princess, my marriage would be negotiated +for me by other people, and I should have reason to consider myself very +happy if the man whom the state selected for my husband should prove as +good a man as Gustave Lenoble. And he loves me; me, who have never before +had power over a man's heart!" + +She walked across Hyde Park on this occasion, as on the last; and her +thoughts, though always confused--mere rags and scraps of thought--were +not all unpleasant. There was a smile, half shy, half tender, on her face +as she went into the little sitting-room where Gustave was waiting for +her. She had seen his hat and overcoat in the passage, and knew that he +was there waiting for her. To this poor desolate soul there was something +sweet in the idea of being waited for. + +As she stood but a little within the doorway, blushing, almost trembling +with the sense of her changed position, her lover came across the room +and took her in his arms. The strong brave arms held her to his breast; +and in that one embrace he took her to his heart, and made her his own +for ever. + +In every story of life-long affection, there is one moment in which the +bond is sealed. Diana looked up at the frank tender face, and felt that +she had found her conqueror. Master, friend, protector, husband, adoring +and devoted lover, gallant and fearless champion--he was all; and she +divined his power and his worth as she glanced shyly upward, ashamed to +be so lightly won. + +"M. Lenoble," she faltered, trying to withdraw herself from the strong +encircling arm that held her, as if by right. + +"Gustave, now and for ever, my Diane! There shall be no more Monsieur +Lenoble. And in a few weeks it shall be 'my husband.' Your father has +given me to you. He tells me to laugh at your refusals your scruples; to +assail you like your Shakespeare's Petruchio assails his Katherine--with +audacious insolence that will not be denied. And I shall take his advice. +Look up into my face, dear angel, and defy me to take his advice." + +Happily the dear angel looked only downwards. But M Lenoble was resolved +to have an agreeable response. + +"See, then, thou canst not defy me!" he cried, in the only language he +spoke; and the "_tu_" for the first time sounded very tender, very sweet. +"Thou canst not tell me thou art angry with me. And the other--the +imbecile;--he is gone for ever, is he not? Ah, say yes!" + +"Yes, he is gone," said Diana, almost in a whisper. + +"Is he quite gone? The door of thine heart locked against him, his +luggage thrown out of the window?" + +"He is gone!" she murmured softly. "He could not hold his place against +you--you are so strong--so brave; and he was only a shadow. Yes, he is +gone." + +She said this with a little sigh of relief. It was in all sincerity that +she answered her suitor's question. She felt that a crisis had come in +her life--the first page of a new volume; and the old sad tear-blotted +book might be cast away. + +"Dear angel, wilt thou ever learn to love me?" asked Gustave, in a +half-whisper, bending down his bearded face till his lips almost touched +her cheek. + +"It is impossible not to love you," she answered softly. And indeed it +seemed to her as if this chivalrous Gaul was a creature to command the +love of women, the fear of men; an Achilles _en frac_; a Bayard without +his coat of mail; Don Quixote in his youth, generous, brave, +compassionate, tender, and with a brain not as yet distempered by the +reading of silly romances. + +Captain Paget emerged from his den as the little love scene ended. He +affected a gentlemanly unconsciousness of the poetry involved in the +situation, was pleasantly anxious about the tea-tray, the candles, and +minor details of life; and thus afforded the lovers ample time in which +to recover their composure. The Frenchman was in no wise discomposed; he +was only abnormally gay, with a little air of triumph that was not +unpleasing. Diana was pale; but there was an unwonted light in her eyes, +and she had by no means the appearance of a victim newly offered on the +sacrificial altar of filial duty. In sober truth, Miss Paget was happier +to-night than she had been for a long time. At three-and-twenty she was +girl enough to rejoice in the knowledge that she was truly loved, and +woman enough to value the sense of peace involved in the security of a +prosperous future. + +If she was grateful to her lover--and the affection he had inspired in +her heart had grown out of gratitude--it was no mercenary consideration +as to his income or position that made her grateful. She thanked him for +his love--that treasure which she had never expected to possess; she +thanked him because he had taken her by the hand, and led her out of the +ranks of lonely dependent womanhood, and seated her upon a throne, on the +steps whereof he was content to kneel. Whether the throne were a rushen +chair in some rustic cottage, or a gilded _fauteuil_ in a palace, she +cared very little. It was the subject's devotion that was new and sweet +to her. + +She went to Charlotte's room that night, when Mr. Sheldon's small +household was at rest; as she had gone on Christmas Eve to renounce her +lover and to bless her rival. This time it was a new confession she went +to make, and a confession that involved some shame. There is nothing so +hard to confess as inconstancy; and every woman is not so philosophic as +Rahel Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to love +the same person, but always to love some one. + +Miss Paget seated herself at Charlotte's feet, as she had done on that +previous occasion. The weather was still cold enough to make a fire very +pleasant, though it was more than two months since the Christmas bells +had rung out upon the frosty air. Diana sat on a low hassock, playing +with the tassels of her friend's dressing-gown, anxious to make her +confession, and solely at a loss for words in which to shape so +humiliating an avowal. + +"Charlotte," she began abruptly at last, "have you any idea when you and +Valentine are to be married?" + +Miss Halliday gave a little cry of surprise. + +"Why, of course not, Di! How can you ask such a question? Our marriage +is what uncle George calls a remote contingency. We are not to be married +for ages--not until Valentine has obtained a secure position in +literature, and an income that seems almost impossible. That was the +special condition upon which Mr. Sheldon--papa--gave his consent to our +engagement. Of course it was very proper and prudent of him to think of +these things; and as he has been very kind and liberal-minded in his +conduct to me throughout, I should be a most ungrateful person if I +refused to be guided by his advice." + +"And I suppose that means that your engagement is to be a long one?" + +"The longest of long engagements. And what can be happier than a long +engagement? One gets to know and understand the man one is to marry so +thoroughly. I think I know every turn of thought in Valentine's mind; +every taste, every fancy; and I feel myself every day growing to think +more and more like him. I read the books he reads, so as to be able to +talk to him, you know; but I am not so clever as you, Di, and Valentine's +favourite authors do sometimes seem rather dry to me. But I struggle on, +you know; and the harder I find the struggle, the more I admire my dear +love's cleverness. Think of him, Di--three different articles in three +different magazines last month! The paper on Apollodorus, in the +_Cheapside_, you know; and that story in the Charing Cross--'How I lost +my Gingham Umbrella, and gained the Acquaintance of Mr. Gozzleton.' _So_ +funny! And the exhaustive treatise on the Sources of Light, in the +_Scientific Saturday_. And think of the fuss they make about Homer, a +blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and +wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete +poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a +man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine +accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the reviewers +take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling him that he is +shallow and frivolous, I begin to think that literature must be going to +the dogs." + +And here Charlotte became meditative, absorbed in the contemplation of +Mr. Hawkehurst's genius. Diana had begun the conversation very artfully, +intending to proceed by a gentle transition from Charlotte's love affairs +to her own; but the conversation was drifting away from the subject into +a discussion upon literature, and the brilliant young essayist whose +first adventurous flights seemed grand as the soaring of Theban eagle to +this tender and admiring watcher of his skyward progress. + +"Lotta," said Miss Paget, after a pause, "should you be very sorry if I +were to leave you before your marriage?" + +"Leave me before my marriage, Diana! Is it not arranged that you are to +live with mamma, and be a daughter to her, when I am gone? And you will +come and stay with Valentine and me at our cottage; and you will advise +me about my house-keeping, and teach me how to be a sensible, useful, +economical wife, as well as a devoted one. Leave us, Di! What have I +done, or mamma, or Mr. Sheldon, or anybody, that you should talk of +anything so dreadful?" + +"What have you done, dear girl, dear friend, dear sister? Everything to +win my undying love and gratitude. You have changed me from a hard +disappointed bitter-minded woman--envious, at times, even of you--into +your loving and devoted friend. You have changed me from a miserable +creature into a contented and hopeful one. You have taught me to forget +that my childhood and youth were one long night of wretchedness and +degradation. You have taught me to forgive the father who suffered my +life to be what it was, and made no one poor effort to lift me out of the +slough of despond to which he had sunk. I can say no more, Charlotte. +There are things that cannot be told by words." + +"And you want to leave me!" said Charlotte, in accents half-wondering, +half-reproachful. + +"My father wants me to leave you, Lotta; and some one else--some one whom +you must know and like before I can be sure I like him myself." + +"Him!" cried Charlotte, with a faint shriek of surprise. "Diana, WHAT are +you going to tell me?" + +"A secret, Lotta; something which my father has forbidden me to tell any +one, but which I will not hide from you. My poor father has found a kind +friend--a friend who is almost as good to him as you are to me. How +merciful Heaven is in raising up friends for outcasts! And I have seen a +good deal of this gentleman who is so kind to papa, and the result is +that--chiefly for papa's sake, and because I know that he is generous and +brave and true, I mean papa's friend, M. Lenoble--I have consented to be +his wife." + +"Diana!" cried Charlotte, with a sternness of manner that was alarming in +so gentle a creature, "it shall never be!" + +"What dear?" + +"The sacrifice! No, dear, no! I understand it all. For your cruel +mercenary heartless designing father's sake, you are going to marry a man +whom you can't love. You are going to offer up your poor bruised desolate +heart on the altar of duty. Ah, dear, you can't think I forget what you +told me only two short months ago--though I seem selfish and frivolous, +and am always talking about _him_, and parading my happiness, as it must +seem to you, reckless of the wounds so newly healed in your noble +unselfish heart. But I do not altogether forget, Diana, and such a +sacrifice as this I will not allow. I know you have resigned him to me--I +know you have thrust him from your heart, as you told me that night. But +the hollow aching void that is left in your lonely heart shall be sacred, +Di. No stranger's image shall pollute it. You shall not sacrifice your +own peace to your father's selfishness. No, dear, no! With mamma and me +you will always have a home. You need stoop to no cruel barter such as +this marriage." + +And hereupon Miss Halliday wept over and caressed her friend, as the +confidante of Agamemnon's daughter may have wept over and caressed that +devoted young princess after the divination of Calchas had become common +talk in the royal household. + +"But if I think it my duty to accept M. Lenoble's offer, Lotta?" urged +Miss Paget with some embarrassment of manner. "M. Lenoble is as rich as +he is generous, and my marriage with him will secure a happy home for my +father. The foolish dreams I told you about on Christmas Eve had faded +from my mind before I dared to speak of them. I could only confess my +folly when I knew that I was learning to be wise. Pray do not think that +I am sordid or mercenary. It is not because M. Lenoble is rich that I am +inclined to marry him, it is because--" + +"Because you want to throw yourself away for the advantage of your +selfish heartless father," interjected Charlotte. "He has neglected you +all your life, and now wants to profit by the sacrifice of your +happiness. Be firm, Di, darling; your Charlotte will stand by you, and +find a home for you always, come what may. Who is this M. Lenoble? Some +horrible ugly old creature, I dare say." + +Miss Paget smiled and blushed. The vision of Gustave's frank handsome +face arose before her very vividly as Charlotte said this. + +"No, dear," she replied. "M. Lenoble is not an old +man--five-and-thirty at most." + +"Five-and-thirty!" repeated Charlotte, with a wry face; "you don't call +that young? And what is he like?" + +"Well, dear, I think he is the sort of man whom most people would call +handsome. I'm sure you would like him, Lotta. He is so candid, so +animated, so full of strength and courage. The sort of man to whom one +would naturally look in any emergency or danger; the sort of man in whose +company fear would be impossible." + +"Diana," cried Charlotte, suddenly, "you are in love with him!" + +"Lotta!" + +"Yes, dear, you are in love with him," repeated Miss Halliday, embracing +her friend with effusion; "yes, over head and ears in love with him. And +you are ashamed to confess the truth to me; and you are half ashamed to +confess it even to yourself--as if you could deceive an old stager like +me!" cried Charlotte, laughing. "Why, you dear inconstant thing, while I +have felt myself the guiltiest and most selfish creature in the world for +robbing you of Valentine, you have been quietly transferring your +affections to this M. Gustave Lenoble--who is very rich, and brave, and +true, and generous, and what most people would call handsome! Bless you, +a thousand times, my darling! You have made me so happy!" + +"Indeed, Lotta!" + +"Yes, dear. The thought that there was a blank in your life made a dark +cloud in mine. I know I have been very selfish, very thoughtless, but I +could never have been quite free from a sense of self-reproach. But now +there is nothing for me but happiness. O darling, I so long to see your +M. Lenoble!" + +"You shall see him, dear." + +"And in the meantime tell me what he is like." + +Miss Halliday insisted upon a full, true, and particular account of M. +Lenoble's personal appearance. Diana gave it, but not without some sense +of embarrassment. She could not bring herself to be enthusiastic about +Gustave Lenoble, though in her heart there was a warmth of feeling that +surprised her. "What a hypocrite you are, Di!" exclaimed Charlotte +presently. "I know you love this good Frenchman almost as dearly as I +love Valentine, and that the thought of his affection makes you happy; +and yet you speak of him in little measured sentences, and you won't be +enthusiastic even about his good looks." + +"It is difficult to pass from dreams to realities, Lotta. I have lived so +long among dreams, that the waking world seems strange to me." + +"That is only a poetical way of saying that you are ashamed of having +changed your mind. I will tell M. Lenoble what a lukewarm creature you +are, and how unworthy of his love!" + +"You shall tell him what you please. But remember, dear, my engagement +must not be spoken about yet awhile, not even to your mamma. Papa makes a +strong point of this, and I have promised to obey, though I am quite in +the dark as to his reasons." + +Miss Halliday submitted to anything her friend wished; only entreating +that she might be introduced to M. Lenoble. Diana promised her this +privilege; but it speedily transpired that Diana's promise was not all +that was wanted on this occasion. + +For some time past, in fact from the very commencement of Charlotte's +engagement, Mr. Sheldon had shown himself punctilious to an exceeding +degree with regard to his stepdaughter. The places to which she went, and +the people with whom she consorted, appeared to be matters of supreme +importance in his mind. When speaking of these things he gave those about +him to understand that his ideas had been the same from the time of +Charlotte's leaving school; but Diana knew that this was not true. Mr. +Sheldon's theories had been much less strict, and Mr. Sheldon's practice +had been much more careless, prior to Miss Halliday's engagement. + +No stately principal of a school for young ladies could have been more +particular as to the movements of her charges--more apprehensive of +wolf-in-sheep's-clothing in the shape of singing or drawing-master--than +Mr. Sheldon seemed to be in these latter days. Even those pleasant walks +in Kensington Gardens, which had been one of the regular occupations of +the day, were now forbidden. Mr. Sheldon did not like that his daughter +should walk in public with no better protector than Diana Paget. + +"There is something disreputable in two girls marching about those +gardens together according to my ideas," said this ultra-refined +stockbroker, one morning at the family breakfast-table. "I don't like to +see my stepdaughter do anything I should forbid my own daughter to do. +And if I had a daughter, I should most decidedly forbid all lonely +rambles in Kensington Gardens. You see, Lotta, two girls as attractive +as you and Miss Paget can't be too particular where you go, and what you +do. When you want air and exercise, you can get both in the garden; and +when you want change of scene, and a peep at the fashions, you can drive +out with Mrs. Sheldon." + +To this deprivation Charlotte submitted, somewhat unwillingly, but with +no sign of open rebellion. She thought her stepfather foolish and +unreasonable; but she always bore in mind the fact that he had been kind +and disinterested in the matter of her engagement, and she was content to +prove her gratitude by any little sacrifice of this kind. Was not her +lover permitted to spend his Sundays in her society, and to call on her, +at his discretion, during the week? And what were walks in Kensington +Gardens compared with the delight of his dear presence! It is true that +she had sometimes been favoured with Mr. Hawkehurst's society in the +course of her airing; but she knew that he sacrificed his hours of work +or study for the chance of half an hour in her society; and she felt that +there might be gain to him in her loss of liberty. + +She told him, when next they met, that the morning walks were forbidden; +and, so jealous a passion is love, that Mr. Hawkehurst was nowise sorry +to find that his pearl was strictly watched and carefully guarded. + +"Well, it seems very particular of Mr. Sheldon, of course," he said; +"but, upon my word, I think he's right. Such a girl as you oughtn't to go +about with no better protection than Diana can give you. Fellows will +stare so at a pretty girl, you know; and I can't bear to think my pearl +should be stared at by impertinent strangers." + +Mr. Hawkehurst did not, however, find the strict notions of his +lady-love's stepfather quite so agreeable when he wanted to take his +"pearl" to the winter exhibitions of pictures. He was told that Miss +Halliday could go nowhere, except accompanied by her mamma; and as Georgy +did not care about pictures, and found herself unequal to the fatigue of +attending the winter exhibitions, he was obliged to forego the delight of +seeing them with Lotta on his arm. He pronounced Mr. Sheldon on this +occasion to be a narrow-minded idiot; but withdrew the remark in a +contrite spirit when Charlotte reminded him of that gentleman's +generosity. + +"Yes, dear, he has certainly been very kind and very disinterested--more +disinterested than even you think; but, somehow, I can't make him out." + +It was very well for Miss Halliday that she had submitted to this novel +restriction with as good a grace, inasmuch as Mr. Sheldon had prepared +himself for active opposition. He had given orders to his wife, and +further orders to Mrs. Woolper to the effect that his step-daughter +should not be permitted to go out of doors, except in his own or her +mother's company. + +"She is a very good girl, you see, Nancy," he said to the old +housekeeper, "but she's young, and she's giddy; and of course I can't +take upon myself to answer for Miss Paget, who may or may not be a good +girl. She comes of a very bad stock, however; and I am bound to remember +that. Some people think that you can't give a girl too much liberty. My +ideas lean the other way. I think you can't take too much care of a very +pretty girl whom you are bound by duty to protect." + +All this sounded very noble and very conscientious. It sounded thus even +to Mrs. Woolper, who in her intercourse with Philip Sheldon could never +quite divest herself of one appalling memory. That memory was the death +of Tom Halliday, and the horrible thoughts and fears that had for a time +possessed her mind in relation to that death. The shadow of that old +ghastly terror sometimes came between her and Mr. Sheldon, even now, +though she had long ago assured herself that the terror had been alike +groundless and unreasonable. + +"Didn't I see my own nephew carried off by a fever twice as sudden as the +fever that carried off poor Mr. Halliday?" she said to herself; "and am I +to think horrid things of him as I nursed a baby, because a cup of greasy +beef-tea turned my stomach?" + +Convinced by such reasoning as this that she had done her master a +grievous wrong, and grateful for the timely shelter afforded in her old +age, Mrs. Woolper felt that she could not do too much in her benefactor's +service. She had already shown herself a clever managing housekeeper; had +reformed abuses, and introduced a new system of care and economy +below-stairs, to the utter bewilderment of poor Georgy, for whom the +responsibilities of the gothic villa had been an overwhelming burden. +Georgy was not particularly grateful to the energetic old Yorkshirewoman +who had taken this burden off her hands, but she was submissive. + +"I never felt myself much in the house, my dear," she said to Lotta; "but +I am sure since Ann Woolper has been here I have felt myself a cipher." + +Mrs. Woolper, naturally sharp and observant, was not slow to perceive +that Mr. Sheldon was abnormally anxious about his stepdaughter. She +ascribed this anxiety to a suspicious nature, an inherent distrust of +other people on the part of her master, and in some measure to his +ignorance of womankind. + +"He seems to think that she'd run away and get married on the sly, at a +word from that young man; but he doesn't know what a dear innocent soul +she is, and how sorry she'd be to displease any one that's kind to her. I +don't know anything about Miss Paget. She's more stand-offish than our +own Miss, though she is little better than a genteel kind of servant; +but she seems fair-spoken enough. As to our Miss, bless her dear heart! +she wants no watching, I'll lay. But I daresay those City folks, with +their stocks going up and going down, and always bringing about the ruin +of somebody or other, go which way they will, get their poor heads so +muddled with figures that they can't believe there's such a thing as +honesty in the world." + +This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's evening musing in the snug little +housekeeper's room at the Lawn. It was a very comfortable little room, +and held sacred to Mrs. Woolper; the three young females, and the boy in +buttons, who formed Mr. Sheldon's in-door establishment, preferring the +license of the kitchen to the strict etiquette of the housekeeper's room. + +This apartment, as well as every other room in the stockbroker's house, +bore the stamp of prosperity. A comfortable easy-chair reposed the limbs +of Mrs. Woolper; a bright little fire burned in a bright little grate, +and its ruddy light was reflected in a bright little fender. Prints of +the goody class adorned the walls; and a small round table, with a +somewhat gaudy cover, supported Mrs. Woolper's work-box and family Bible, +both of which she made it a point of honour to carry about with her, and +to keep religiously, through good fortune and through evil fortune; +neither of which, however, afforded her much employment. She felt herself +to be much nearer grace with the family Bible by her side than she would +have been without it; she felt, indeed, that the maintenance and due +exhibition of the family Bible was in itself a kind of religion. But that +she should peruse its pages was not in the bond. Her eyes were old and +weak--sharp enough to discover the short-comings of Mr. Sheldon's young +maid-servants, but too feeble even for long-primer. + +As she looked round that snug little chamber of an evening, when her +day's labours were ended, and her own particular Britannia-metal tea-pot +was basking in the fender, her own special round of toast frizzling on +the trivet, she was very grateful to the man to whom she owed these +comforts. + +"What should I be but for him?" she asked herself with a shudder; for +the vision of that darksome abode shut in by high black walls--the +metropolitan workhouse--arose before her. She did not know what +difficulties would have barred her entrance even to that dreary +asylum; she only thought of the horrors of that sanctuary, and she +blessed her master for the benevolence that had accepted the service +of her failing hands. + +This was the servant on whom Philip Sheldon relied. He saw that she was +grateful, and that she was ready to serve him with an almost slavish +devotion. He knew that she had suspected him in the past, and he saw that +she had outlived her suspicion. + +"There is a statute of limitations to these things as well as for debt," +he said to himself. "A man can live down anything, if he knows what he +is about." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FIRM AS A BOOK. + +After that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss Halliday's +bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa for two or three +days, during which the impulsive Charlotte, being forbidden to talk +openly of the change in her friend's position, was fain to give vent to +her feelings by furtive embraces and hand-squeezings, sly nods and +meaning becks, and mischievous twinkling of her arch grey eyes. + +She talked of Valentine more than ever now, feeling herself at liberty to +sing what pæans she pleased in praise of her hero, now that her friend +had also a fitting subject for pæans. + +"And now it's your turn to talk of M. Lenoble, dear," she would say +naïvely, when she had entertained Diana with the minute details of her +last conversation with her lover, or a lively sketch of the delights of +that ideal cottage which she loved to furnish and unfurnish in accordance +with the new fancy of the hour. + +Diana was pleased to listen to her girlish talk: to hang and rehang the +ideal draperies, to fill and refill the ideal bookcase, to plan and +replan the arrangements of that ideal existence which was to be all joy +and love and harmony; but when her turn came, and she was asked to be +rapturous about her own lover, she could say nothing: that which she felt +was too deep for words. The thought of her lover was strange to her; the +fact of his love was mysterious and wonderful. She could not talk of him +with the customary frivolous school-girl talk; and love for him had so +newly taken root in her heart that there were as yet no blossoms to be +gathered from that magical plant. + +"Don't ask me to talk of him, Lotta, dear;" she said. "I am not yet sure +that I love him; I only feel that it is sweet to be loved by him. I think +Providence must have sent him to me in pity for my desolation." + +This was almost the same fancy that had occurred to Susan Meynell +five-and-thirty years before this time, when Gustave the first had +rescued her from the suicide's unrepentable sin. + +That chivalrous turn of mind which was hereditary in the race of Lenoble +predisposed these men to pity loneliness and beauty, weakness and sorrow. +This pity for helplessness may have been indeed only an element of their +exceeding strength. Was not the rescue of weaklings and women an +unfailing attribute in the mighty men of old? Who so prompt as Hercules +to fly to the rescue of Hesione? Who so swift as Perseus to save +Andromeda? And what sea-monster more terrible than loneliness and +poverty? + +In a few days there came another letter from Captain Paget, containing a +fresh summons to Omega Street. + +"Lenoble positively returns to Normandy to-morrow," he wrote, "to see his +girls, and, no doubt, break the news of his approaching marriage. He much +wants to see you, and, as I have forbidden his calling on you at the +Lawn, can only meet you here. He is to drink tea with me at the usual +time to-morrow evening, and I shall expect to see you early in the +afternoon." + +This afforded an opportunity for that introduction to which Miss Halliday +looked forward with so much interest. + +"If Mr. Sheldon and your mamma will let you come with me this afternoon, +dear, I shall be very pleased to take you," said Diana; and she felt that +she would appear less in the character of a lamb led to the slaughter if +she could go to meet her betrothed accompanied by Charlotte. + +But in this matter both the young ladies were doomed to disappointment. +Mr. Sheldon showed himself a social Draco in all things relating to his +stepdaughter. Being forbidden to reveal the existence of Gustave Lenoble, +Charlotte could only urge a frivolous desire to accompany her friend in a +pilgrimage dictated by filial duty. To the practical mind of Philip +Sheldon this desire appeared altogether absurd and unreasonable, and he +did not hesitate to express himself to that effect in a _tête-a-tête_ +with his stepdaughter. + +"What good on earth can you do by going to see a gouty old man, who has +his own daughter to dance attendance upon him?" asked Mr. Sheldon. +"Really, Charlotte, I am surprised to hear such a proposition from a +girl of your good sense. Miss Paget is your companion, not your visitor. +It is her duty to indulge your whims, but it is not your place to give +way to hers." + +"But this is a whim of mine, papa; I should really like to spend the +afternoon at Chelsea. It would be a change, you know." + +Mr. Sheldon looked at his stepdaughter with a sharp and searching gaze, a +gaze in which there was suspicion as well as curiosity. + +"It is a very discreditable whim for a young lady in your position," +he said sternly; "and I beg that such a proposition may not be made to +me again." + +This was decisive. Charlotte submitted, and Diana went alone to Omega +Street. She found Gustave waiting for her. He proposed a walk, and +Captain Paget was enthusiastic upon the subject of fresh air, and the +benefits arising therefrom. So the lovers went out in the bleak winter +afternoon, and wandered in the dreary Pimlico region as far as St. +James's Park--Gustave delighted to have Diana's hand upon his arm, and +Diana almost bewildered by a sense of happiness, which seemed unreal by +reason of its very novelty. + +Gustave was all enthusiasm, full of plans for the future. He would have +had the marriage take place immediately, if such a thing had been +possible; but Diana showed him that it would not be possible. Her first +duty was to the only friends she had ever known. Gustave argued the point +resolutely for nearly an hour, during which time they made their way to +the very gates of St. James's Park, but Diana was more resolute still. + +"What a tyrannical wife I shall have by-and-by!" said Gustave. "I think +you care for these Sheldons more than for me, Diane." + +"These Sheldons have been so good to me in the past." + +"And I mean to be so good to you in the future," answered Gustave. "You +shall be the happiest wife in Normandy, if a foolish doting husband's +devotion can make you happy." + +"What have I done to deserve so much devotion?" Diana murmured +wonderingly. + +"What have you done? Nothing, less than nothing. You will not even run +the hazard of offending your family of Sheldon in order to make me happy. +But Fate has said, 'At the feet of that girl with the dark eyes and pale +proud face shall poor Lenoble of Côtenoir put down his heart.' Do you +know what I said to myself when I saw you first in the little parlour +yonder? Ah, no! How should you guess? 'She is there,' said I; 'behold +her! It is thy destiny, Lenoble, on which thou gazest!' And thou, love, +wert calm and voiceless as Fate. Quiet as the goddess of marble before +which the pagans offered their sacrifices, across whose cold knees they +laid their rich garments. I put my treasures in your lap, my love; my +heart, my hopes,--all the treasures I had to offer." + +This was all very sweet, but there was a sting even mingled with that +sweetness. Diana told herself that love like this should only be offered +on the purest shrine; and when she remembered the many stains upon her +father's honour, it seemed to her that a part of the shame must needs +cleave to her. + +"Gustave," she said presently, after an absent meditative mood, from +which her lover had vainly tried to beguile her, "does it not seem to you +that there is something foolish in this talk of love and confidence +between you and me; and that all your promises have been a little too +lightly made? What do you know of me? You see me sitting in my father's +room, and because my eyes happen to please you, or for some reason as +foolish as that, you ask me to be your wife. I might have been one of the +worst of women." + +"You might have been?--yes, dear, but you are not. And if you had been, +Gustave Lenoble would not have flung his heart into your lap, even if +your eyes had been sweeter than they are. We impulsive people are people +of quick perceptions, and know what we are doing better than our +reflective friends imagine. I did not need to be an hour in your company, +dear love, in order to know that you are noble and true. There are tones +in the voice, there are expressions of the face, that tell these things +better than words can tell them; for, you see, words can lie, while tones +and looks are apt to be true. Yes, my angel, I knew you from that first +night. My heart leapt across all conventional barriers, and found its way +straight to yours." + +"I can see that you think much better of me than I deserve; but even +supposing you not to be deceived as to myself, I fear you are much +deceived as to my surroundings." + +"I know that your father is poor, and that the burden of his poverty +weighs heavily on you. That is enough for me to know." + +"No, M. Lenoble; it is not enough for you to know. If I am to be your +wife, I will not enter your family as an impostor. I told you the truth +about myself the other day when you questioned me, and I am bound to tell +you the truth about my father." + +And then she told him, in the plainest frankest language, the story of +her father's life. She inflicted no unnecessary shame on Captain Paget; +she made no complaint of her neglected childhood and joyless youth; but +she told Gustave that her father had been an adventurer, keeping doubtful +company, and earning his bread by doubtful means. + +"I hope and believe that if a peaceful home could be secured for his +declining years, he would live the rest of his life like a gentleman and +a Christian; and that, the bitter struggle for existence being ended, he +would be sorry for the past. I doubt if the sense of shame ever deserted +him when he was living that wretched wandering life, leaving debts and +difficulties behind him everywhere--always harassed and hunted by +creditors, who had good cause to be angry. Yes, Gustave, I do believe +that if it should please Providence to give my father a peaceful home at +last, he will be thankful for God's mercy, and will repent the sins of +life. And now I have told you the kind of heritage I can bring my +husband." + +"My dear love, I will accept the heritage, for the sake of her who brings +it. I never meant to be less than a son to your father; and if he is not +the best of fathers, as regards the past, we will try to make him a +decent kind of father as regards the future. I have long understood that +Captain Paget is something--ever so little--of an adventurer. It was the +pursuit of fortune that brought him to me; and without knowing it, he +brought me my fortune in the shape of his daughter." + +Diana blushed as she remembered that Captain Paget had not been so +innocent of any design in this matter as the Frenchman imagined. + +"And you will receive even papa for my sake?" asked Diana. + +"With all my heart." + +"Ah, you are indeed a generous lover!" + +"A lover who is not generous is--bah! there is nothing in creation so +mean as the wretch whom love does not render generous. When one sees the +woman whom Fate intends for one's wife, is one to stop to inquire the +character of her father, her mother, her sister, her cousin?--for there +is no stopping when you begin that. A man who loves makes no inquiries. +If he finds his jewel in the gutter, he picks it out of the mud and +carries it away in his bosom, too proud of his treasure to remember where +he found it; always provided that the jewel is no counterfeit, but the +real gem, fit for a king's crown. And my diamond is of the purest water. +By-and-by we will try to drain the gutter--that is to say, we will try to +pay those small debts of which you speak, to lodging-house keepers, and +tradesmen who have trusted your father." + +"You would pay papa's debts!" cried Diana in amazement. + +"But why not? All these little debts, the thought of which is so bitter +to you, might be discharged for two or three thousand pounds. Your father +tells me I am to be very rich by-and-by." + +"My father tells you! Ah, then, you have allowed him to involve you in +some kind of speculation!" + +"He has involved me in no speculation, and in no risk that two or three +hundred pounds will not cover." + +"The whole business seems very mysterious, Gustave." + +"Perhaps; it has to do with a secret which I am pledged to keep. I will +not allow your father to lead me into any quagmire of speculation, +believe me, dear one." + +After this they went back to Omega Street in the winter gloaming, and +Diana loved and admired this man with all her heart and mind. A new life +lay before her, very bright and fair. There, where had been only the +barren desert, was now a fair landscape, shining in the sunlight of hope. + +"Do you think your children will ever love me, Gustave?" she asked, not +without some sense of wonder that this impulsive light-hearted lover +should be the owner of children. She fancied that a responsibility so +grave as paternity must needs have impressed some stamp of solemnity upon +the man who bore it. + +"Ever love thee!" cried Gustave. "Child, they will adore thee. They ask +only some one to love. Their hearts are gardens of flowers; and thou +shalt gather the flowers. But wilt thou be happy at Côtenoir, thou? It is +somewhat sad, perhaps--the grave old château with the long sombre +corridors. But thou shalt choose new furniture, new garnitures at Rouen, +and we will make all bright and gay, like the heart of thy affianced. Thou +wilt not be dull?" + +"Dull, with you and yours! I shall thank God for my happy home day and +night, as I never thought to thank Him a few months ago, when I was +dissatisfied, wicked, tired of my life." + +"And when you thought of that other one? Ah, how he was an imbecile, that +other one! But thou wilt never think of him again; it is a dream that is +past," said M. Lenoble. + +That self-confidence which was an attribute of his sanguine nature +rendered the idea of a rival not altogether unpleasant to him. He was +gratified by the idea of his own victory, and the base rival's +annihilation. + +"Diane, I want to show thee the home that is to be thine," he said +presently. "Your Sheldon family must give thee at least a holiday, if +they refuse to let thee go altogether. Thou wilt come to Normandy with +thy father. He is coming for a week or two, now that his gout is better. +I want to show thee Côtenoir--and Beaubocage, the place where my father +was born. It will seem dreary, perhaps, to thine English eyes; but to me +it is very dear." + +"Nothing that is dear to you shall appear dreary to me," said Diana. + +By this time they had arrived at Omega Street. Again Miss Paget made tea +for her lover. Strange to say, the operation seemed to grow more +agreeable with every repetition. While taking his tea from the hands of +his beloved, Gustave pressed the question of Diana's visit to Normandy. + +"About her Sheldon family she is adamant," he said to Captain Paget, who +sipped his tea and smiled at the lovers with the air of an aristocratic +patriarch. "There is to be no marriage till it pleases Mrs. Sheldon to +set her free. I consent to this only as man must consent to the +inevitable; but I say to her, can she not come to Normandy for a +fortnight--say but one short fortnight--to see her home? She will come +with you. She has but to ask a holiday of her friends, and it is done." + +"Of course," exclaimed the Captain, "she shall come with me. If +necessary, I myself will ask it of Sheldon.--But it will be best not to +mention where you are going, Diana. There are reasons, best known to our +friend Gustave and myself, which render secrecy advisable just at +present. You can say Rouen. That is quite near enough to the mark to come +within the limits of truth," added Horatio, with the tone of a man who +had never quite outstepped those limits. "Yes, Rouen. And you will come +with me." + +"With us," said Gustave. "I will put off my journey for a day or two for +the sake of going with you. You have to meet Fleurus in Rouen haven't +you?" + +"Yes; he is to be there on the fifth of March, and this is the last day +of February. I had a letter from him this morning. All goes swimmingly." + +Diana wondered what it could be which went swimmingly; but she was +obliged to content herself with her lover's assurance that he had not +allowed her father to involve him in any kind of speculation. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. + +Between Philip Sheldon and his brother there was at this time a state of +feeling somewhat akin to the relations between a subjugated country and +its conqueror. The vanquished is fain to accept whatever the victor is +pleased to give, though discontent and impotent rage may be gnawing his +entrails. George Sheldon had been a loser in that game in which the +Haygarthian inheritance was the stake. He had held good cards, and had +played them with considerable cleverness; but no play could prevail +against his antagonist's ace of trumps. The ace of trumps was Charlotte +Halliday; and as to his mode and matter of playing this card, Mr. Sheldon +was for the present profoundly mysterious. + +"I have known a good many inscrutable cards in my time," the solicitor of +Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the course of fraternal +converse; "but I think for inscrutability you put the topper on the lot. +What do you expect to get out of this Haygarth estate? Come, Phil, let us +have your figures in plain English. I am to have a fifth--that's all +signed and sealed. But how about your share? What agreement have you got +from Miss Halliday?" + +"None." + +"None!" + +"What would the world think of me if I extorted money, or the promise of +money, from my wife's daughter? Do you think I could enforce any deed +between her and me?" + +"Ah, I see; you go in for respectability. And you are going to leave the +settlement of your claims to your stepdaughter's generosity. You will let +her marry Hawkehurst, with her hundred thousand pounds; and then you will +say to those two, 'Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst, be so kind as to hand over my +share of the plunder.' That is not _like_ you, Phil." + +"Perhaps you will be good enough to spare yourself the trouble of +speculating about my motives. Go your way, and leave me to go mine." + +"But this is a case in which I have an interest. If Charlotte marries +Hawkehurst, I don't see how you are to profit, to any extent that you +would care about, by the Haygarth fortune. But, on the other hand, if she +should die unmarried, without a will, the money would go to your wife. O +my God! Philip Sheldon, is _THAT_ what you mean?" + +The question was so sudden, the tone of horror in which it was spoken so +undisguised, that Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker was for one moment thrown +off his guard. His breath thickened; he tried to speak, but his dry lips +could shape no word. It was only one moment that he faltered. In the next +he turned upon his brother angrily, and asked what he meant. + +"You've been promised _your_ reward," he said; "leave me to look after +mine. You'll take those papers round to Greenwood and Greenwood; they +want to talk to you about them." + +"Yes, I'll take the papers." + +Greenwood and Greenwood were Mr. Sheldon's own solicitors--a firm of some +distinction, on whose acumen and experience the stockbroker placed +implicit reliance. They were men of unblemished respectability, and to +them Mr. Sheldon had confided the care of his stepdaughter's interests, +always reserving the chief power in his own hands. These gentlemen +thought well of the young lady's prospects, and were handling the case in +that slow and stately manner which marks the handling of such cases by +eminent firms of the slow-and-stately class. + +Mr. Sheldon wished his brother good-day, and was about to depart, when +George planted himself suddenly before the door. + +"Look you here, Phil," he said, with an intensity of manner that was by +no means common to him; "I want to say a few words to you, and I will say +them. There was an occasion, ten years ago, on which I ought to have +spoken out, and didn't. I have never ceased to regret my cowardice. Yes, +by Jove! I hate myself for it; and there are times when I feel as if my +share in that wretched business was almost as bad as yours." + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"Of course not. That's your text, and you'll stick to it. But you _do_ +know what I mean, and you shall know what I mean, if plain words can tell +you. You and I had a friend, Phil. He was a good friend to me, and I +liked him as much as a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I +had been down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to +give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, 'George, here's a +cheque for you.' _That's_ my notion of a friend. And yet I stood by that +man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and knew what ailed him, and didn't +stretch out my hand to save him." + +"Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. Sheldon, livid to +the lips with smothered fury, but able to put on a bold front +nevertheless. "I didn't come here to listen to rhodomontade of this kind, +or to bandy words with you. Get out of my way." + +"Not till I've said my say. There shall be no rhodomontade this time. I +stood by and saw my best friend murdered--by you. I kept my counsel for +your sake, and when you had made your fortune--by his death--I asked you +for a little money. You know how much you gave me, and how graciously you +gave it. If you had given me twenty times the sum you gained by Tom +Halliday's death, I would give it back, and twenty times as much again, +to bring him back to life, and to feel that I had never aided and abetted +a murderer. Yes, by God, I would! though I'm not straitlaced or +over-scrupulous at the best of times. But that's past, and all the money +in the Bank of England wouldn't undo what you did in Fitzgeorge Street. +But if you try on any such tricks with Tom Halliday's daughter, if +_that's_ the scheme you've hatched for getting hold of this money, as +surely as we two live, I'll let in the light upon your doings, and save +the girl whose father you murdered. I will, Philip, let come what may. +You can't get _me_ out of the way when it suits you, you see. _I know +you._ That's the best antidote against your medicines." + +"If you'll be so good as to say these things on 'Change, I can bring an +action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. There's no good in +saying them here." + +Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated than his brother, +being of a harder nature, and less subject to random impulses of good or +evil. He caught his accuser by the collar of his coat, and flung him +violently from the doorway. Thus ended his visit to Gray's Inn. + +Boldly as he had borne himself during the interview, he went to his +office profoundly depressed and dispirited. + +"So I am to have him against me?" he said to himself. "He can do me no +real harm; but he can harass and annoy me. If he should drop any hint to +Hawkehurst?--but he'll scarcely do that. Perhaps I've ridden him a little +too roughly in the past. And yet if I'd been smoother, where would his +demands have ended? No; concession in these cases means ruin." + +He shut himself in his office, and sat down to his desk to confront +his difficulties. For a long time the bark which was freighted with +Philip Sheldon's fortunes had been sailing in troubled waters. He had +been an unconscious disciple of Lord Bacon, inasmuch as the boldness +inculcated by that philosopher had been the distinguishing characteristic +of his conduct in all the operations of life. As a speculator, his +boldness had served him well. Adventures from which timid spirits shrunk +appalled had brought golden harvests to this daring gamester. When some +rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up +signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the +crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the +valleys of death,--a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of +all-devouring Poseidon,--Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of +desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the +tempest and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and +waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon had +obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenture of railways that +were in bad odour; Unitas Bank shares, immediately after the discovery of +gigantic embezzlements by Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the +Mole-and-Burrow railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet +in the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the shares +in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buying _sub rosa_;--these, +and such as these, had employed Mr. Sheldon's capital; and from the +skilful manipulation of capital thus employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled +the fortune secured by his alliance with Tom Halliday's widow. + +It had been the stockbroker's fate to enter the money market at a time +when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the +most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities. He had +seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the +harridan's bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He +had made only one mistake--and that he made in common with many of his +fellow-players in the great game of speculation always going on eastward +of Temple Bar--he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had +imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements +of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was +abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the +transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean +kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred +privileges of "The House" more astounded by the change than Mr. Sheldon. + +The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. Sheldon a +speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and Amphiaräuses of the Stock +Exchange had agreed in declaring that a man who bought into consols at 90 +_must_ see his capital increased; and what was true of this chief among +securities was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and +from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85-1/2; +securities less secure sank with a rapidity corresponding with their +constitutional weakness. As during the ravages of an epidemic the weaker +are first to fall victims to the destroyer, so while this fever raged on +'Change, the feeble enterprises, the "risky" transactions, sank at an +appalling rate, some to total expiry. The man who holds a roaring lion by +the tail could scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these +troublous times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain +time might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in which it +would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast grows more and +more furious, and then to let go and be eaten up alive, is what many men +did in that awful crisis. + +If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been warned by the +first indication that marked the turning of the tide, he would have been +a considerable loser; but he would not accept his loss, and he would not +be warned by that early indication. He had implicit belief in his own +cleverness; and he fancied if every other bark in that tempest-tossed +ocean foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across the +harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a navigator. +It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt away in the payment of +contango, that he consented to the inevitable. The mistakes of one year +devoured the fruits of nine years' successful enterprise, and the Philip +Sheldon of this present year was no richer than the man who had stood by +Tom Halliday's bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that knows +no difference between the threshold of kingly palace or pauper refuge. +Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of +his existence--to remember which was a dull dead pain even to _him_--but +a man infinitely more heavily burdened. He had made for himself a certain +position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall, +the utter annihilation of all his chances in life. + +The stockbroker's fitful slumbers at this time began to be haunted by the +vision of a black board fixed against the wall of a public resort, a +black board on which appeared his own name. In what strange places +feverish dreams showed him this hideous square of painted deal!--Now it +was on the walls of the rooms he lived in; now on the door of a church, +like Luther's propositions; now at a street-corner, where should have +been the name of the street; now inky-black against the fair white +headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miserable man, for whom the +scraping together of sordid dross was life's only object, and who, in +losing money, lost all! + +This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending disgrace was +the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat +day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence +went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his +hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool +work than by the inner life of her husband; and Charlotte and her lover +contemplated existence from their own point of view, and cherished their +own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all things, as far away from +the moody meditator as if they had been natives of Upper India. + +The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was not immediate, +but it was not far off; the shadow of it already wrapped him in a +twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever and a safe man had left him. +He was described now as a daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads +as they talked of him. + +"One of the next to go will be Sheldon," said the wiseacres; but in these +days of commercial epidemic there was no saying who would be the first to +go. It was the end of the world in little. One was taken, and another +left. The Gazette overran its customary column like a swollen river, and +flooded a whole page of the Times newspaper; and men looked to the lists +of names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the trump of +archangels sounding the destruction of the universe. + +For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted those turbulent +waters had been made of paper. This was nothing. Paper boats were the +prevailing shipping in those waters; but Captain Sheldon's bark needed +refitting, and the captain feared a scarcity of paper, or, worse still, +the awful edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him there +should be no more paper. + +Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with ruin +complete and irredeemable. When all common expedients had been exhausted, +and his embarrassments had become desperate, he had found a desperate +expedient, and had extricated himself from those embarrassments. The time +had come in which a new means of extrication must be found as desperate +as the last, if need were. As Philip Sheldon had faced the situation +before, he faced it now--unshrinkingly, though with a gloomy anger +against destiny. It was hard for him that such a thing should have to be +repeated. If he pitied anybody, he pitied himself; and this kind of +compassion is very common with this kind of character. Do not the Casket +letters show us--if we may trust them to show us anything--that Mary +Stuart was very sorry for herself when she found herself called upon to +make an end of Darnley? In Mr. Swinburne's wonderful study in morbid +anatomy, there are perhaps no finer touches than those which reveal the +Queen's selfish compassion for her own heartlessness. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY. + +Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father's wish that she should leave +Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained the Captain's consent to +the revelation of her engagement to be married. + +"I don't like to leave them in a mysterious manner, papa," she said. "I +have told Charlotte a good deal already, under a promise of secrecy; but +I should like to tell Mrs. Sheldon that there is a real reason for my +leaving her." + +"Very well, my love, since you are so amazingly squeam--honourable," +interposed the Captain, remembering how much depended on his daughter's +marriage, and what a very difficult person he had found her. "Yes, my +dear, of course; I respect your honourable feeling; and--er--yes--you may +tell Mrs. Sheldon--and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the +lady is but an inoffensive cipher--that you are about to be married--to a +French gentleman of position. You will, of course, be obliged to mention +his name, and then will arise the question as to where and how you met +him; and, upon my word, it's confoundedly awkward that you should insist +on enlightening these people. You see, my dear girl, what I want to +avoid, for the present, is any chance of collision between the Sheldons +and Lenoble." + +"Papa!" exclaimed Diana, impatiently, "why must there be all this +scheming?" + +"O, very well, Miss Paget; tell them what you like!" cried the Captain, +aggravated beyond endurance by such inherent perversity. "All I can say +is, that a young woman who quarrels with her bread-and-butter is likely +to come to dry bread; and very little of that, perhaps. I wash my hands +of the business. Tell them what you like." + +"I will not tell them more than I feel to be actually necessary, papa," +the young lady replied calmly. "I do not think Mr. Sheldon will trouble +himself about M. Lenoble. He seems very much occupied by his own +affairs." + +"Humph! Sheldon seems harassed, anxious, does he?" + +"Well, yes, papa; I have thought so for the last few months. If I may +venture to judge by the expression of his face, as he sits at home in the +evening, reading the paper, or staring at the fire, I am sure he has many +anxieties--troubles even. Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte do not appear to +notice these things. They are accustomed to see him quiet and reserved, +and they don't perceive the change in him as I do." + +"O, there is a change, is there?" + +"Yes, a decided change." + +"Why the deuce couldn't you tell me this before!" + +"Why should I tell you that Mr. Sheldon seems anxious? I should not have +told you now, if you had not appeared to dread his interference in our +affairs. I can't help observing these things; but I don't want to play +the part of a spy." + +"No, you're so infernally punct--so delicate-minded, my love," said the +Captain, pulling himself up suddenly, for the second time. "Forgive me if +I was impatient just now. You look at these things from a higher point of +view than that of a battered old man of the world like me. But if you +should see anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct on another +occasion, my love, I should be obliged to you if you would be more +communicative. He and I have been allied in business, you see, and it is +important for me to know these things." + +"I have not seen anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct, papa; I +have only seen him thoughtful and dispirited. And I suppose anxieties are +common to every man of business." + +Georgy received Miss Paget's announcement with mingled lamentations and +congratulations. + +"I am sure I am heartily glad for your sake, Diana," she said; "but what +we shall do without you, I don't know. Who is to see to the drawing-room +being dusted every morning, when you are gone? I'm sure I tremble for the +glass shades. Don't imagine I'm not pleased to think you should settle in +life advantageously, my love. I'm not so selfish as that; though I will +say that there never was a girl with more natural talent for making-up +pretty little caps than you. The one I have on has been admired by +everybody. Even Ann Woolper this morning, when I was going into the +butcher's book with her--for I insist upon going into the butcher's book +with her weekly, whether she likes it or not; though the way that man +puts down the items is so bewildering that I feel myself a perfect baby +in her hands,--even Ann admired it, and said how young-looking it is. And +then she brought up the time in Fitzgeorge Street, and poor Tom's +illness, and almost upset me for the rest of the day. And now, dear, let +me offer you my sincere congratulations. Of course, you know that you +would always have had a home with me; but service, or at least +companionship, is no inheritance, as the proverb says; and for your own +sake I'm very glad to think that you are going to have a house of your +own. And now tell me what he is like, Monsieur what's-his-name?" + +Mrs. Sheldon had been told, but had not remembered the name. Her great +anxiety, as well as Charlotte's, was to know what manner of man the +affianced lover was. If Diana's future happiness had been contingent on +the shape of her husband's nose, or the colour of his eyes, these two +ladies could not have been more anxious upon the subject. + +"Has he long eyelashes, and a dreamy look in his eyes, like Valentine?" +asked Charlotte, secretly convinced that her lover had a copyright in +these personal graces. + +"Does he wear whiskers?" asked Georgy. "I remember, when I was quite a +girl, and went to parties at Barlingford, being struck by Mr. Sheldon's +whiskers. And I was quite offended with papa, who was always making +sarcastic remarks, for calling them mutton-chop whiskers; but they +really were the shape of mutton-cutlets at that time. He wears them +differently now." + +Mrs. Sheldon branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana +escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have +described him to Georgy. + +By-and-by she asked permission to leave Bayswater for a fortnight, in +order to see her lover's home and friends. + +"I will come back to you, and stay as long as you like, dear Mrs. +Sheldon," she said, "and make you as many caps as you please. And I will +make them for you by and by, when I am living abroad, and send them over +to you in a bandbox. It will be a great delight to me to be of some +little service to a friend who has been so kind. And perhaps you will +fancy the caps are prettier when they can boast of being French." + +"You darling generous-minded girl! And you won't go away for a fortnight +and never come back again, will you, dear? I had a cook who did that, and +left me with a large dinner-party hanging over my head; and how I got +through it--with a strange man-cook, who charged a guinea, and used fresh +butter, at twentypence, a pound, as if it had been dirt, and two strange +men to wait--I don't know. It all seemed like a dream. And since then we +have generally had everything from the confectioner's; and I assure you, +to feel that you can wash your hands of the whole thing, and sit down at +the head of your table with your mind as free from care as if you were a +visitor, is worth all the expense." + +Diana promised she would not behave like the cook; and two days after +this conversation left the London Bridge terminus with her father and +Gustave Lenoble. + +Mr. Sheldon troubled himself very little about this departure. He was +informed of Miss Paget's intended marriage; and the information awakened +neither surprise nor interest in his heavily-burdened mind. + +"A Frenchman, a friend of her father's!" he said; "some swindling +adventurer, no doubt," he thought. And this was as much consideration +as he could afford to bestow upon Miss Paget's love affairs at this +present time. + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE. + +On the day after Miss Paget's departure Mr. Sheldon came home from the +City rather earlier than usual, and found Charlotte alone in the +drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume from Mudie of an instructive and +edifying character, with a view to making herself clever, in order that +she might better understand that prodigy of learning, Mr. Hawkehurst. + +She was somewhat inclined to yawn over the big book, which contained a +graphic account of recent discoveries of an antiquarian nature. Her mind +was not yet attuned to the comprehension of the sublimer elements in such +discoveries. She saw only a dry as dust record of futile gropings in +desert sand for the traces of perished empires. Her imagination was not +cultivated to that point whereat the gift which Mr. Lewes calls "insight" +becomes the daily companion, nay, indeed, the ever-haunting and +nightmare-bringing influence of the dreamer. For her sands were only +sands, the stones were only stones. No splendour of fallen palaces, no +glory and pride of perished kings, no clash and clamour of vanished +courts, arose from those barren sands, with all their pomp and +circumstance, conjured into being by half a word on a broken pillar, or a +date upon a Punic monument. Miss Halliday looked up with a sigh of +fatigue as her stepfather came into the room. It was not a room that he +particularly affected, and she was surprised when he seated himself in +the easy-chair opposite her, and poked the fire, as if with the intention +of remaining. + +"You shouldn't read by firelight, my dear," he said; "it is most +destructive to the eyesight." + +"I dare say my sight will last my time, papa," the young lady replied +carelessly; "but it's very kind of you to think of it, and I won't read +any more." + +Mr. Sheldon made no reply to this observation. He sat looking at the +fire, with that steady gaze which was habitual to him--the gaze of the +man who plans and calculates. + +"My dear," he said by-and-by, "it seems that this money to which you may +or may not be entitled is more than we thought at first; in fact, it +appears that the sum is a considerable one. I have been, and still am, +particularly anxious to guard against disappointment on your part, as I +know the effect that such a disappointment is apt to produce upon a +person's life. The harassing slowness of Chancery proceedings is +proverbial; I am therefore especially desirous that you should not count +upon this money." + +"I shall never do that, papa. I should certainly like a fine edition of +the Encyclopædia Britannica for Valentine, by-and-by, as he says that is +essential for a literary man; and a horse, for people say literary men +ought to take horse exercise. But beyond that--" + +"We need scarcely go into these details, my dear. I want you to +understand the broad facts of the case. While, on the one hand, our +success in obtaining the inheritance which we are about to claim for you +is uncertain, on the other hand the inheritance is large. Of course, when +I presented you with the sum of five thousand pounds, I had no idea of +this possible inheritance." + +"O, of course not, papa." + +"But I now find that there is such a possibility as your becoming +a--well--a rich woman." + +"O papa!" + +"In which case I may conclude that your mother would benefit in some +measure from your good fortune." + +"Can you doubt that, papa? There should be no measure to her benefit from +any money obtained by me." + +"I do not doubt that, my dear. And it is with that idea that I wish to +make a proposition to you--for your mother's possible advantage." + +"I shall be happy to do anything you wish, papa." + +"It must be done as a spontaneous act of your own, Charlotte, not in +accordance with any wish of mine." + +"What is it that I am to do?" asked Charlotte. + +"Well, my dear, you see it is agreed between us that if you do get this +money, your mother is certain to benefit considerably. But unhappily the +proceedings are likely to drag on for an indefinite time; and in the +course of that time it comes within the limits of possibility that your +decease may precede that of your mother." + +"Yes, papa." + +"In which case your mother would lose all hope of any such advantage." + +"Of course, papa." + +Charlotte could not help thinking that there was something sordid in this +discussion--this calculation of possible gain or loss contingent on her +fresh young life. But she concluded that it was the nature of business +men to see everything from a debased standpoint, and that Mr. Sheldon was +no more sordid than other men of his class. + +"Well, papa?" she asked presently, after some moments of silence, during +which she and her stepfather had both been absorbed in the contemplation +of the fire. + +"Well, my dear," replied Mr. Sheldon slowly, "I have been thinking that +the natural and easy way of guarding against all contingencies would be +by your effecting an insurance on your life in your mother's favour." + +"No, no, papa!" cried Charlotte, with unwonted vehemence; "I would rather +do anything than that!" + +"What can be your objection to such a very simple arrangement?" + +"I dare say my objection seems foolish, childish even, papa; but I really +have a horror of life assurances. I always think of papa--my own poor +father, whom I loved so dearly. It seemed as if he put a price upon his +life for us. He was so anxious to insure his life--I remember hearing him +talk of it at Hyley, when I was a child--to make things straight, as he +said, for us; and, you see, very soon afterwards he died." + +"But you can't suppose the insurance of his life had anything to do with +his death?" + +"Of course not, I am not so childish as that; only--" + +"Only you have a foolish lackadaisical prejudice against the only means +by which you can protect your mother against a contingency that is so +remote as to be scarcely worth consideration. Let it pass." + +There was more anger in the tone than in the words. It was not that angry +tone, but the mention of her mother, that impressed Miss Halliday. She +began to consider that her objections were both foolish and selfish. + +"If you really think I ought to insure my life, I will do so," she said +presently. "Papa did as much for those he loved; why should I be less +thoughtful of others?" + +Having once brought Miss Halliday to this frame of mind, the rest was +easy. It was agreed between them that as Valentine Hawkehurst was to be +kept in ignorance of his betrothed's claim to certain moneys now in the +shadowy under-world of Chancery, so he must be kept in ignorance of the +insurance. + +It was only one more secret, and Charlotte had learned that it was +possible to keep a secret from her lover. + +"I suppose before we are married I shall able to tell him everything?" +she said. + +"Certainly, my dear. All I want is to test his endurance and his +prudence. If the course of events proves him worthy of being trusted, I +will trust him." + +"I am not afraid of that, papa." + +"Of course not, my dear. But, you see, I have to protect your interests; +and I cannot afford to see this gentleman with your eyes. I am compelled +to be prudent." + +The stockbroker sighed as he said this--a sigh of utter weariness. +Remorse was unknown to him; the finer fibres upon which that chord is +struck had not been employed in the fabrication of his heart. But there +is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the +anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration +of spirit--a sickness of heart and mind--a bitter longing to lie down and +die--the weariness of a beaten hound rather than of a baffled man. + +This was what Mr. Sheldon felt, as the threads of the web which he was +weaving multiplied, and grew daily and hourly more difficult of +manipulation. Success in the work which he had to do depended on so many +contingencies. Afar off glittered the splendid goal--the undisputed +possession of the late John Haygarth's hundred thousand pounds; but +between the schemer and that chief end and aim of all his plottings what +a sea of troubles! He folded his arms behind his head, and looked across +the girlish face of his companion into the shadow and the darkness. In +those calculations which were for ever working themselves out in this +man's brain, Charlotte Halliday was only one among many figures. She had +her fixed value in every sum; but her beauty, her youth, her innocence, +her love, her trust, made no unit of that fixed figure, nor weighed in +the slightest degree with him who added up the sum. Had she been old, +ugly, obnoxious, a creature scarcely fit to live, she would have +represented exactly the same amount in the calculations of Philip +Sheldon. The graces that made her beautiful were graces that he had no +power to estimate. He knew she was a pretty woman; but he knew also that +there were pretty women to be seen in any London street; and the +difference between his stepdaughter and the lowest of womankind who +passed him in his daily walks was to him little more than a social +prejudice. + +The insurance business being once decided on, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in +putting it into execution. Although he made a point of secrecy as +regarded Mr. Hawkehurst, he went to work in no underhand manner, but +managed matters after a highly artistic and superior fashion. He took his +stepdaughter to the offices of Greenwood and Greenwood, and explained her +wishes to one of those gentlemen in her presence. If he dwelt a little +more on Miss Halliday's anxiety for her mother's pecuniary advantage than +his previous conversation with Miss Halliday warranted, the young lady +was too confiding and too diffident to contradict him. She allowed him to +state, or rather to imply, that the proposed insurance was her +spontaneous wish, an emanation of her anxious and affectionate heart, the +natural result of an almost morbid care for her mother's welfare. + +Mr. Hargrave Greenwood, of Greenwood and Greenwood, seemed at first +inclined to throw cold water on the proposition, but after some little +debate, agreed that extreme caution would certainly counsel such a step. + +"I should imagine there was no better life amongst the inhabitants of +London," he said, "than Miss Shel--pardon me--Miss Halliday's. But, as +the young lady herself suggests, 'in the midst of life we are--'; and, as +the young lady herself has observed, these things are--ahem--beyond +human foresight. If there were any truth in the aphorisms of poets, I +should say Miss Halliday cannot insure too quickly; for the remark of +Cowper--or, stay, I believe Pope--'whom the gods love die young,' might +very well be supposed to apply to so charming a young lady. Happily, the +secretaries of insurance offices know very little about the poets, +unless, indeed, Miss Halliday were to go to the Royal Widow's and +Orphan's Hope, the secretary of which is the author of dramas that may +fairly rank with the works of Knowles and Lytton." + +Mr. Greenwood, an elderly gentleman of the ponderous and port-wine +school, laughed at his own small jokes, and took things altogether +pleasantly. He gave Mr. Sheldon a letter of introduction to the secretary +of his pet insurance company, the value of which to that gentleman was +considerable. Nor was this the only advantage derived from the interview. +The lawyer's approval of the transaction reassured Charlotte; and though +she had heard her own views somewhat misrepresented, she felt that an +operation which appeared wise in the sight of such a lawyer, standing on +such a Turkey hearthrug, commanding such gentlemanly-looking clerks as +those who came and went at Mr. Greenwood's bidding, must inevitably be a +proceeding at once prudent and proper. + +The business of the insurance was not quite so easy as the interview with +the lawyer. The doctor to whom Miss Halliday was introduced seemed very +well satisfied with that young lady's appearance of health and spirits, +but in a subsequent interview with Mr. Sheldon asked several questions, +and shook his head gravely when told that her father had died at +thirty-seven years of age. But he looked less grave when informed that +Mr. Halliday had died of a bilious fever. + +"Did Mr. Halliday die in London?" he asked. + +"He did." + +"I should like--ahem--if it were possible, to see the medical man who +attended him. These fevers rarely prove fatal unless there is some +predisposing cause." + +"In this case there was none." + +"You speak rather confidently, Mr. Sheldon, as a non-professional man." + +"I speak with a certain amount of professional knowledge. I knew Tom +Halliday for many years." + +Mr. Sheldon forebore to state that Tom Halliday had died in his house, +and had been attended by him. It is, perhaps, only natural that Philip +Sheldon, the stockbroker of repute, should wish to escape identification +with Philip Sheldon, the unsuccessful dentist of Bloomsbury. + +After a little more conversational skirmishing, the confidential +physician of the Prudential Step Assurance Company agreed to consider +that Mr. Halliday's constitution had been in no manner compromised by his +early death, and to pass Charlotte's life. The motives for effecting the +insurance were briefly touched upon in Mr. Greenwood's letter of +introduction, and appeared very proper and feasible in the eyes of the +directors; so, after a delay of a few days, the young lady found herself +accepted, and Mr. Sheldon put away among his more important papers a +large oblong envelope, containing a policy of assurance on his +stepdaughter's life for five thousand pounds. He did not, however, stop +here, but made assurance doubly sure by effecting a second insurance upon +the same young life with the Widow's and Orphan's Hope Society, within a +few days of the first transaction. + + + + +Book the Sixth. + + + +DIANA IN NORMANDY. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +AT CÔTENOIR. + +Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 15, 186--. + +My darling Lotta,--As you extorted from me a solemn pledge that I would +write you a full and detailed account of my adventures, I seat myself in +Mademoiselle Lenoble's pretty little turret-chamber, in the hope of +completing the first instalment of my work before papa or Gustave summons +me to prepare for a drive and visit to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, +which, I believe, has been planned for to-day. + +What am I to tell you, dear, and how shall I begin my story? Let me +fancy myself sitting at your feet before your bedroom fire, and you +looking down at me with that pretty inquisitive look in your dear grey +eyes. Do you know that M. Lenoble's eyes are almost the colour of yours, +Lotta? You asked me a dozen questions about his eyes the other day, and I +could give you no clear description of them; but yesterday, as he stood +at the window looking out across the garden, I saw their real colour. It +is grey, a deep clear grey, and his lashes are dark, like yours. How +shall I begin? That is the grand difficulty! I suppose you will want to +know something even about the journey. Everything was very pleasant, in +spite of the cold blusterous March weather. Do you know what my last +journey was like, Lotta? It was the long dreary journey from Forêtdechêne +to St. Katharine's Wharf, when Mr. Hawkehurst advised and arranged my +return to England. I had been sitting quite alone in a balcony +overlooking the little town. It was after midnight, but the lights were +still burning: I can see the lamplit windows shining through the night +mist as I write this, and the sense of the hopeless misery of that time +comes back to me like the breath of some freezing wind. I can find no +words to tell you how desolate I was that night, or how hopeless. + +I dared not think of my future life; or of the next day, that was to be +the beginning of that hopeless future. I was obliged to bind my thoughts +to the present and all its dreariness; and a kind of dull apathetic +feeling, which was too dull for despair, took possession of me that +night. While I was sitting there Mr. Hawkehurst came to me, and told me +that my father had become involved in a quarrel, under circumstances of a +very shameful nature, which I need not tell you, darling. He recommended +me to leave Forêtdechêne--indeed, almost insisted that I should do so. He +wanted to rescue me from that miserable life. Your lover had noble and +generous impulses even then, you see, dear; at his worst he was not all +bad, and needed only your gentle influence to purify and elevate his +character. He gave me all the money he possessed to pay the expenses of +my journey. Ah, what a dreary journey! I left Forêtdechêne in the chill +daybreak, and travelled third class, with dreadful Belgians who smelt of +garlic, to Antwerp. I slept at a very humble inn near the quay, and +started for England by the Baron Osy at noon next day. I cannot tell you +how lonely I felt on board the steamer. I had travelled uncomfortably +before, but never without my father and Valentine--and he had been always +kind to me. If we were shabbily dressed, and people thought ill of us, I +did not care. The spirit of Bohemianism must have been very strong with +me in those days. I remembered how we had sat together on the same boat +watching the sleepy shores of Holland, or making fun of our respectable +fellow-passengers. Now I was quite alone. People stared at me rudely and +unkindly, as I thought. I could not afford to dine or breakfast with the +rest; and I was weak enough to feel wounded by the idea that people would +guess my motive for shunning the savoury banquets that sent up such +horrid odours to the deck where I sat, trying to read a tattered +Tauchnitz novel. And the end of my journey? Ah, Charlotte, you can never +imagine what it is to travel like that, without knowing whether there is +any haven, any shelter for you at the end of your wanderings! I knew that +at a certain hour we were to arrive at St. Katharine's Dock, but beyond +that I knew nothing. I counted my money. There was just enough to pay for +a cab that would carry me to Hyde Lodge. I should land there penniless. +And what if my cousin Priscilla should refuse to receive me? For a moment +I fancied even that possible; and I pictured myself walking about London, +hungry and homeless. + +This was my last journey. I have dwelt upon it longer than I need have +done; but I want you to understand what it is that makes Gustave Lenoble +dear to me. If you could feel the contrast between the past and the +present as I felt it when I stood on the deck of the Dover packet with +him by my side, you would know why I love him, and am grateful to him. We +stood side by side, watching the waves and talking of our future, while +my father enjoyed a nap in one of the little deck cabins. To Gustave that +future seems very bright and clear; to me it seems unutterably strange +that the future _can_ be anything but a dismal _terra incognita_, from +the contemplation of which it is wise to refrain. + +Papa stays with Gustave at Côtenoir; but it had been arranged for me to +visit Mademoiselle Lenoble, Gustave's aunt, at Beaubocage, and to remain +with her during my stay in Normandy. I at once understood the delicate +feeling which prompted this arrangement. We dined at Rouen, and came to +Vevinord in a coach. At Vevinord a queer little countrified vehicle met +us, with a very old man, of the farm-servant class, as coachman. Gustave +took the reins from the old man's hand and drove to Beaubocage, where +Mademoiselle Lenoble received me with much cordiality. She is a dear old +lady, with silvery bands of hair neatly arranged under the prettiest of +caps. Her gown is black silk, and her collar and cuffs of snowy +whiteness; everything about her exquisitely neat, and of the fashion of +twenty, or perhaps thirty, years ago. + +And now, I suppose, you will want to know what Beaubocage is like. Well, +dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I must confess that her +ancestral mansion is neither grand nor pretty. It might have made a very +tolerable farmhouse, but has been spoiled by the architect's +determination to make it a château. It is a square white building, with +two pepper-castor-like turrets, in one of which I write this letter. +Between the garden and the high road there is a wall, surmounted with +plaster vases. The garden is for the greater part utilitarian; but in +front of the salon windows there is a grassplot, bordered by stiff +gravel-walks, and relieved by a couple of flower-beds. A row of tall +poplars alone screens the house from the dusty high road. At the back of +it there is an orchard; on one side a farmyard; behind the orchard lie +the fields that compose the farm of Beaubocage and the paternal estate of +the Lenoble family. All around the country is very flat. The people seem +to be kind and simple, and devotedly attached to "Mademoiselle." There is +a rustic peacefulness pervading everything which, for me, stands instead +of beauty. + +I am hypocrite enough to pretend to be pleased with everything, for I can +perceive how anxiously M. Lenoble watches me in order to discover whether +I like his native country. He was not born at Beaubocage, but in Paris. +Mademoiselle Lenoble told me the story of his childhood, and how she +brought him to Beaubocage, when quite a little fellow, from Rouen, where +his father died. About his mother there seems to have been some mystery. +Mademoiselle told me nothing of this, except that her brother, Gustave +the elder, made a love-match, and thereby offended his father. She has +the little crib in which her nephew, Gustave the younger, slept on the +night of his coming. It had been his father's little bed thirty years +before. She shed tears as she told me the story, and how she sat and +watched by the little fellow as he cried himself to sleep with his head +lying on her arm, and the summer moonlight shining full upon his face. + +I was deeply touched by her manner as she told me these things; and I +think, if I had not already learned to love M. Lenoble, I should love him +for the sake of his aunt. She is charming; a creature so innocent and +pure, that one considers one's words in speaking to her, almost as if she +were a child. She is about forty years older than I; yet for worlds I +would not tell her of the people and the scenes I have beheld at foreign +watering-places and gambling-rooms. She has spent the sixty years of her +life so completely out of the world, that she has retained the freshness +and sweetness of her youth untainted in the least degree. Can there be +magical philtre equal to this--a pure unselfish life, far away from the +clamour of cities? + +The old servant who waits upon me is seventy-five years of age, and +remembers Ma'amselle Cydalise from her childhood. She is always singing +the praises of her mistress, and she sees that I like to hear them. "Ah, +ma'amselle," she said to me, "to marry a Lenoble is to marry one of the +angels. I will not say that the old seigneur was not hard towards his +son. Ah, yes, but it was a noble heart. And the young monsieur--that one +who died in Rouen, the Poor!--ah, that he was kind, that he was gracious! +What of tears, what of regrets, when the Old chased him!" + +My position is quite recognised. I think the very cowboy in the +farmyard--a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured mindless face, and +prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes--even the cowboy knows that I +am to be Madame Lenoble of Côtenoir. Côtenoir is the Windsor Castle of +this district; Beaubocage is only Frogmore. Yes, dear, the bond is signed +and sealed. Even if I did not love M. Lenoble, I have bound myself to +marry him; but I do love him, and thank him with all my heart for having +given a definite end and aim to my life. Don't think I underrate your +kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could +give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and +Valentine will exact all his sweet young wife's love and care. + +I have written you a letter which I am sure will require double postage; +so I will say no more except goodbye. Take care of yourself, dear one. +Practise your part in our favourite duets; remember your morning walk in +the garden; and don't wear out your eyes over the big books that Mr. +Hawkehurst is obliged to read. + +Ever your affectionate + +DIANA. + + * * * * * + +_From Charlotte Halliday to Diana Paget_. + +The dullest house in Christendom, Monday. + +EVER DEAREST Di,--Your letter was a welcome relief to the weariness +of my existence. How I wish I were with you! But that is too bright a +dream. I am sure I should idolise Beaubocage. I should not mind the +dismal row of poplars, or the flat landscape, or the dusty road, or +anything, so long as it was not like Bayswater. I languish for a change, +dear. I have seen so little of the world, except the dear moorland +farmhouse at Newhall. I don't think I was ever created to be "cabined, +cribbed, confined," in such a narrow life as this, amid such a dull, +unchanging round of daily commonplace. Sometimes, when the cold spring +moon is shining over the tree-tops in Kensington-Gardens, I think of +Switzerland, and the snow-clad mountains and fair Alpine valleys we have +read of and talked of, until my heart aches at the thought that I may +never see them; and to think that there are people in whom the word +'Savoy' awakes no fairer image than a cabbage! Ah, my poor dear! isn't it +almost wicked of me to complain, when _you_ have had such bitter +experience of the hard cruel world? + +I am quite in love with your dear Mademoiselle Lenoble; almost as deeply +as I am in love with your magnanimous, chivalrous, generous, +audacious--everything ending in _ous_--Monsieur Lenoble. + +How dare you call him M. Lenoble, by the bye? I have counted the +occasions on which you write of him in your nice long letter, and for one +Gustave there are half a dozen M. Lenobles. It must be Gustave in future +to me, remember. + +What shall I tell you, dear? I have nothing to tell, really nothing. To +say that I wish you were with me is only to confess that I am very +selfish; but I _do_ wish for you, dear--my friend and adopted sister, +my old school companion, from whom, willingly, I have never concealed +one thought. + +Valentine called on Tuesday afternoon; but I have nothing to tell you +even about him. Mamma dozed in her corner after her cup of tea, and Val +and I sat by the fire talking over our future, just like you and M. +Lenoble on board the Calais boat. How much engaged people find to say +about the future! Is it our love that makes it seem so bright, so +different from all that has gone before? I cannot fancy life with +Valentine otherwise than happy. I strive to picture trials, and fancy +myself in prison with him, the wind blowing in at broken windows, the +rain coming through the dilapidated roof and pattering on the carpetless +floor; but the most dismal picture I can paint won't seem dismal if his +figure is a part of it. We would stop the broken windows with rags and +paper, we would wipe up the rain with our pocket-handkerchiefs, and sit +side by side and talk of the future, as we do now. Hope could never +abandon us while we were together. And then, sometimes, while I am +looking at Valentine, the thought that he might die comes to me suddenly, +like the touch of an icy hand upon my heart. + +I lie awake at night sometimes thinking of this, and of papa's early +death. He came home one night with a cold, and from that hour grew worse +until he died. Ah, think what misery for a wife to suffer! Happily for +mamma, she is not capable of suffering intensely. She was very sorry, and +even now when she speaks of papa she cries a little; but the tears don't +hurt her. I think, indeed, they give her a kind of pleasure. + +See, dear, what a long egotistical letter I have written, after all. I +will say no more, except that while I am delighted to think of your +pleasure among new friends and new scenes, my selfish heart still longs +for the hour that is to bring you back to me. + +Pray tell me all you can about your daughters that are to be. + +Ever and ever your loving CHARLOTTE. + + * * * * * + +_From Diana Paget to Charlotte Halliday_. + +Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 30, 186--. + +MY DEAR LOTTA,--In three days more I hope to be with you; but I suppose, +in the meantime, I must keep my promise, and send you a faithful account +of my life here. Everyone here is more kind to me than words can tell; +and I have nothing left to wish for, except that you were here to be +delighted, as I am sure you would be, with the freshness and the +strangeness of everything. If I ever do become Madame Lenoble--and even +yet I _cannot_ picture to myself that such a thing will be--you must come +to Côtenoir, you and Valentine. I was taken through every room in the old +château the day before yesterday, and I fixed in my own mind upon the +rooms I will give you, if these things come to pass. They are very old +rooms, and I can fancy what strange people must have lived in them, and +died in them perhaps, in the days that are gone. But if you come to them, +they shall be made bright and pretty, and we will chase the shadows of +the mediæval age away. There are old pictures, old musical instruments, +quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, tapestries that crumble as you +touch them--the ashes and relics of many generations. Gustave says we +will sweep these poor vestiges away, and begin a new life, when I come to +Côtenoir; but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace of +those dead feet that have come and gone in all the dusky passages of my +future home. + +And now I must tell you about my daughters that are to be--my daughter +that is, I may say of the elder--for I love her so well already that no +breach between Gustave and me could rob her of my affection. She is the +dearest, most loving of creatures; and she reminds me of you! I dare say +you will laugh at this, dear; and, mind, I do not say that Clarice +Lenoble is actually like you in complexion or feature--those common +attributes which every eye can see; the resemblance is far more subtle. +There is a look in this dear girl's face, a smile, an I-know-not-what, +which every now and then recalls your own bright countenance. You will +say this is mere fancy--and that is what I told myself at the first; but +I found afterwards that it is no fancy, but really one of those vague, +indefinable, accidental likenesses which one perceives so often. To me it +seems a very happy accident; for my first glance at my daughter's face +told me that I should love her for your sake. + +We went to the convent the day before yesterday. It is a curious old +place, and was once a stately château, the habitation of a noble family. +A little portress, in the black robes of a lay sister, admitted us, and +conducted us to the parlour, a fine old room, decorated with pictures of +a religious character, painted by members of the sisterhood. Here Gustave +and I were received by the superioress, an elderly woman, with a mild +holy face, and a quiet grace of manner which might become a duchess. She +sent for the demoiselles Lenoble, and after a delay of a quarter of an +hour--you remember the toilet the girls at Hyde Lodge were obliged to +make before they went to the drawing-room, Lotta--Mademoiselle Lenoble +came, a tall, slim, lovely and lovable girl, who reminded me of the +dearest friend I have in this world. She ran to her papa first, and +saluted him with an enthusiastic hug; and then she stood for a moment +looking shyly at me, confused and doubtful. It was only for a moment +she was left in doubt. Gustave bent down to whisper something in her +ear--something for which his letters had in some manner prepared her. The +fair young face brightened, the clear grey eyes looked up at me with a +sweet affectionate gaze, and she came to me and kissed me. "I shall love +you very much," she whispered. "And I love you very much already," I +answered, in the same confidential manner. And I think these few words, +that one pretty confiding look in her innocent eyes, made a tie between +us that it would take much to loosen. Ah, Lotta, what a wide gulf between +the Diana Paget who landed alone at St. Katharine's Wharf, in the dim +cheerless dawn, and uncertain where to find a shelter in all that busy +city, and the same creature redeemed by your affection, and exalted by +the love and trust of Gustave Lenoble! + +After this my second daughter appeared--a pretty young hoyden, with +lovable clinging ways; and then the superioress asked if I would like to +see the garden. Of course I said yes; and we were taken through the long +corridors, out into a fine old garden, where the pupils, who looked like +the Hyde Lodge girls translated into French, were prancing and scampering +about in the usual style. After the garden we went to the chapel, where +there were more pictures, and flower-bedecked altars, and pale twinkling +tapers burning here and there in the chill sunlight. Here there were +damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five years old upwards. They +send even the little ones to meditate, Clarice tells me; and there are +these infants kneeling before the flower-bedecked altars, rapt in +religious contemplation, like so many Thomas à Kempises. The young +meditators glanced shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me +everything of special interest in the pleasant old place, Clarice and +Madelon ran off to dress for walking, in order to accompany us to +Côtenoir, where we were to dine. + +It was quite a family party. Mademoiselle Lenoble was there, and papa. He +arrived at the château while Gustave and I were paying our visit to the +convent. He is in the highest spirits, and treats me with an amount of +affection and courtesy I have not been accustomed to receive at his +hands. Of course I know the cause of this change; the future mistress of +Côtenoir is a very different person from that wretched girl who was +nothing to him but a burden and an encumbrance. But even while I despise +him I cannot refuse to pity him. One forgives anything in old age. In +this, at least, it is a second childhood; and my father is very old, +Lotta. I saw the look of age in his face more plainly at Côtenoir, where +he assumed his usual _debonnaire_ man-of-the-world tone and manner, than +I had seen it in London, when he was a professed invalid. He is much +changed since I was with him at Forêtdechêne. It seems as if he had kept +Time at bay very long, and now at last, the common enemy will be held at +arm's-length no longer. He still braces himself up in the old military +manner, still holds himself more erect than many men of half his age; +but, in spite of all this, I can see that he is very feeble; shaken and +worn by a long life of difficulty. I am glad to think that there will be +a haven for him at last; and if I did not thank Gustave with my whole +heart for giving me a home and a place in the world, I should thank him +for giving a shelter to my father. + +And now, dear, as I hope to be with you so very soon, I shall say no +more. I am to spend a day in Rouen before we come back--papa and I, that +is to say; Gustave stays in Normandy to make some arrangements before he +comes back to England. I cannot comprehend the business relations between +him and papa; but there is some business going on--law business, as it +seems to me--about which papa is very important and elated. + +I am to see the cathedral and churches at Rouen, and I shall contrive to +see the shops, and to bring you something pretty. Papa has given me +money--the first he ever gave me unasked. I have very little doubt it +comes from Gustave; but I have no sense of shame in accepting it. M. +Lenoble's seems to me a royal nature, formed to bestow benefits and +bounties on every side. + +Tell Mrs. Sheldon that I shall bring her the prettiest cap I can find in +Rouen; and, + +with all love, believe me ever your affectionate +DIANA. + + + + +BOOK THE SEVENTH. + + + +A CLOUD OF FEAR. + + +CHAPTER I. + +THE BEGINNING OF SORROW. + +Who heeds the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a broad expanse of +blue ether? The faint, scarce perceptible menace of that one little cloud +is lost in the wide brightness of a summer sky. The traveller jogs on +contented and unthinking, till the hoarse roar of stormy winds, or the +first big drops of the thunder-shower, startle him with a sudden +consciousness of the coming storm. + +It was early May, and the young leaves were green in the avenues of +Kensington Gardens; Bayswater was bright and gay with fashionable people; +and Mrs. Sheldon found herself strong enough to enjoy her afternoon drive +in Hyde Park, where the contemplation of the bonnets afforded her +perennial delight. + +"I think they are actually smaller than ever this year," she remarked +every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did +indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully +less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet +resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but +was obviously tending thitherward. + +Charlotte and Diana accompanied Mrs. Sheldon in her drives. The rapture +of contemplating the bonnets was not complete unless the lady had some +sympathising spirit to share her delight. The two girls were very well +pleased to mingle in that brilliant crowd, and to go back to their own +quiet life when the mystic hour came, and that bright vision of colour +and beauty melted into the twilight loneliness. It had seemed just +lately, however, as if Charlotte was growing a little weary of the +gorgeous spectacle--the ever-changing, ever-splendid diorama of West End +life. She no longer exclaimed at the sight of each exceptional toilette; +she no longer smiled admiringly on the thoroughbred horses champing their +bits in the immediate neighbourhood of her bonnet; she no longer gave a +little cry of delight when the big drags came slowly along the crowded +ranks, the steel bars shining as they swung loosely in the low afternoon +sunlight, the driver, conscious of his glory, grave and tranquil, with +the pride that apes humility. + +"See, Lotta," said Miss Paget, upon an especially bright May evening, as +one of these gorgeous equipages went past Mr. Sheldon's landau, "there's +another drag. Did you see it?" + +"Yes, dear, I saw it." + +"And are you tired of four-in-hands? You used to admire them so much." + +"I admire them as much as ever, dear." + +"And yet you scarcely gave those four splendid roans a glance." + +"No," Charlotte answered, with a faint sigh. + +"Are you tired, Lotta?" Miss Paget asked, rather anxiously. There was +something in Charlotte's manner of late that had inspired her with a +vague sense of anxiety; some change which she could scarcely define--a +change so gradual that it was only by comparing the Charlotte of some +months ago with the Charlotte of the present that she perceived how real +a change it was. The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss +Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual listlessness. +"Are you tired, dear?" she repeated, anxiously; and Mrs. Sheldon looked +round from her contemplation of the bonnets. + +"No, Di, dearest, not tired; but--I don't feel very well this afternoon." + +This was the first confession which Charlotte Halliday made of a sense of +weakness and languor that had been creeping upon her during the last two +months, so slowly, so gradually, that the change seemed too insignificant +for notice. + +"You feel ill, Lotta dear?" Diana asked. + +"Well, no, not exactly ill. I can scarcely call it illness; I feel rather +weak--that is really all." + +At this point Mrs. Sheldon chimed in, with her eyes on a passing bonnet +as she spoke. + +"You see, you are so dreadfully neglectful of your papa's advice, Lotta," +she said, in a complaining tone. "Do _you_ like pink roses with mauve +areophane, Diana? I do not. Look at that primrose tulle, with dead +ivy-leaves and scarlet berries, in the barouche. I dare say you have not +taken your glass of old port this morning, Charlotte, and have only +yourself to thank if you feel weak." + +"I did take a glass of port this morning, mamma. I don't like it; but I +take it every morning." + +"Don't like old tawny port, that your papa bought at the sale of a bishop +of somewhere? It's perfectly absurd of you, Lotta, to talk of not liking +wine that cost fifteen shillings a bottle, and which your papa's friends +declare to be worth five-and-thirty." + +"I am sorry it is so expensive, mamma; but I can't teach myself to think +it nice," answered Charlotte, with a smile that sadly lacked the +brightness of a few weeks ago. "I think one requires to go into the City, +and become a merchant or a stockbroker, before one can like that sort of +wine. What was it Valentine quoted in the _Cheapside_, about some lady +whom somebody loved?--'To love her was a liberal education.' I think to +like old port is a commercial education." + +"I am sure such wine _ought_ to do you good," said Georgy, almost +querulously. She thought this bright blooming creature had no right to be +ill. The headaches, and little weaknesses and languors and ladylike +ailments, were things for which she (Georgy) had taken out a patent; and +this indisposition of her daughter's was an infringement of copyright. + +"I dare say the port will do me good, mamma, in time. No doubt I shall be +as strong as that person who strangled lions and snakes and dogs with +incalculable heads, and all that kind of thing." + +"I really wish you would not talk in that absurd manner, my dear," said +Mrs. Sheldon with offended dignity. "I think you really cannot be too +grateful for your papa's kind thoughtfulness and anxiety about you. I am +sure I myself am not so anxious as he is; but of course his medical +knowledge makes him doubly careful. Six weeks ago he noticed that you +wanted strength--tone is what he calls it. 'Georgina,' he said to me, +'Charlotte wants tone. She is beginning to stoop in a really lamentable +manner: we must make her take port or bark, or something of a +strengthening kind.' And then a day or two afterwards he decided on port, +and gave me the key of the cellar--which is a thing he rarely gives out +of his own hands--and told me the number of the bin from which I was to +take the wine--some old wine that he had laid by on purpose for some +special occasion; and no one is to have it but you, and you are to take a +glass daily at eleven o'clock. Mr. Sheldon is most particular about the +hour. The regularity of the thing is half the battle in these cases, he +says; and I am sure if you do not observe his wishes and mine, Charlotte, +it will be really ungrateful of you." + +"But, dear mamma, I do observe Mr.--papa's wishes. I take my glass of +port every morning at eleven. I go to your cupboard in the breakfast-room +and take out my special decanter, and my special glass, in the most +punctiliously precise manner. I don't like the wine, and I don't like the +trouble involved in the ceremony of drinking it; but I go through it most +religiously, to please you and papa." + +"And do you mean to say that you do not feel stronger after taking that +expensive old port regularly for nearly six weeks. + +"I am sorry to say that I do not, mamma. I think if there is any change, +it is that I am weaker." + +"Dear, dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldon captiously, "you are really a +most extraordinary girl." + +Mrs. Sheldon could almost have found it in her heart to say, a most +ungrateful girl. There did seem a kind of ingratitude in this futile +consumption of old port at fifteen shillings a bottle. + +"I'll tell you what it is, Lotta," she said presently, "I am convinced +that your illness--or your weakness--is all fancy." + +"Why so, mamma?" + +"Because, if it were real weakness, that old port must have made you +stronger. And the fact that the port does you no good, is a proof that +your weakness is only fancy. Girls of your age are so full of fancies. +Look at me, and the martyrdom I go through with my nervous headaches, +which perfectly prostrate me, after the least worry or excitement. The +nerves of my head, after going into the butcher's book, are perfect +agony. When you come to have a house to look after, and find what it is +to have the same saddle of mutton charged for twice over, with the most +daring impudence--or to have capers and currie-powder, that you _know_ +you've never had, staring at you from every page of your grocer's book, +and nothing but your memory between you and utter ruin--you'll discover +what it is to be really ill." + +In this easy manner did Mrs. Sheldon dismiss the subject of her daughter's +illness. But it was not so easily dismissed by Diana Paget, who loved her +friend with a profound and pure affection, than which no sister's love +was ever warmer or stronger. Even Valentine's preference for this happy +rival had not lessened Diana's love for her friend and benefactress. She +had been jealous of Charlotte's happier fate: but in the hour when this +jealousy was most bitter there had been no wavering in her attachment to +this one true and generous friend. + +Miss Paget was very silent during the homeward drive. She understood now +what that change had been in her friend which until now had so perplexed +her. It was a decay of physical strength which had robbed Lotta's smile +of its brightness, her laugh of its merry music. It was physical languor +that made her so indifferent to the things which had once awakened her +girlish enthusiasm. The discovery was a very painful one. Diana +remembered her experience of Hyde Lodge: the girls who had grown day by +day more listless, now in the doctor's hands for a day or two, now well +again and toiling at the old treadmill round of study, now sinking into +confirmed invalids; until the bitter hour in which parents are summoned, +and the doctor urges rest, and the fond mother carries her darling home, +assured that home comfort and tenderness will, speedily restore her. Her +schoolfellows cluster round the carriage to bid her "good-bye until next +half," full of hopeful talk about her swift recovery. But when the +vacation is over, and Black Monday comes, she is not amongst the +returning scholars. Has she not gone up to the higher school, and +answered _Adsum_ to the call of the Great Master? + +Diana remembered these old experiences with cruel pain. + +"Girls, as bright and lovable as she is, have drooped and faded away, +just when they seem brightest and happiest," she thought as she watched +Charlotte, and perceived to-day for the first time that the outline of +her fair young cheek had lost its perfect roundness. + +But in such a case love can do nothing except watch and wait. That night, +in the course of that girlish talk in Charlotte's bedroom, which had +become a habit with the two girls, Diana extorted from her friend a full +account of the symptoms which had affected her within the last few weeks. + +"Pray don't look so anxious, dear Di," she said gaily; "it is really +nothing worth talking of; and I knew that if I confessed to feeling ill +you and mamma would straightway begin to worry yourselves about me. I +have felt a little sick and faint sometimes; and now and then a sudden +dizziness has come over me. It is nothing of any consequence, and it +passes away very quickly. Sometimes I have a kind of torpid languid +feeling, which is scarcely unpleasant, only strange, you know. But what +does it all amount to, except that I am nervous?" + +"You must have change of air, Lotta," said Diana resolutely, "and change +of scene. Yes, no doubt you are nervous. You have been kept almost a +prisoner in the house through Mr. Sheldon's punctilious nonsense. You +miss our brisk morning walks in the Gardens, I dare say. If you were to +go to Yorkshire, now, to your friends at Newhall, you would like that +change, dear, wouldn't you?" + +"Yes, I should dearly like to see Aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe; but--" + +"But what, darling?" + +"I should scarcely like being at Newhall, unless--you'll think me very +foolish, Di--unless Valentine was with me. We were so happy there, you +see, dear; and it was there he first told me he loved me. No, Di, I +couldn't bear Newhall without him." + +"Poor Aunt Dorothy, poor uncle Joe! feathers when weighed in the scale +against a young man whom their niece has known less than a twelvemonth!" + +No more was said about Charlotte's illness; Diana was too prudent to +alarm her friend by any expression of uneasiness. She adopted a cheering +tone, and the conversation drifted into other channels. + +While Diana's concern for her friend's altered health was yet a new +feeling, she found herself called upon to attend her father once more +in the character of a ministering angel. And this time Captain Paget's +illness was something more than gout. It was, according to his +doctors--he had on this occasion two medical attendants--a general +breaking up of the system. The poor old wanderer,--the weary Odysseus, +hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures,--laid himself down to +rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned. + +He was very ill. Gustave Lenoble, who came back to London, did not +conceal from Diana that the illness threatened to end fatally. At his +instigation the Captain had been removed from Omega Street to pleasant +lodgings at the back of Knightsbridge Road, overlooking Hyde Park. This +was nearer Bayswater, and it was very pleasant for the fading old +worldling. He could see the stream of fashion flowing past as he sat in +his easy-chair, propped up with pillows, with the western sunlight on his +face. He pointed out the liveries and armorial bearings; and told many +scandalous and entertaining anecdotes of their past and present owners to +Gustave Lenoble, who devoted much of his time to the solacement of the +invalid. Everything that affection could do to smooth this dreary time +was done for the tired Ulysses. Pleasant books were read to him; earnest +thoughts were suggested by earnest words; hothouse flowers adorned his +cheerful sitting-room; hothouse fruits gladdened his eye by their rich +warmth of colour, and invited his parched lips to taste their cool +ripeness. Gustave had a piano brought in, so that Diana might sing to her +father in the dusky May evenings, when it should please him to hear her. +Upon the last feeble footsteps of this old man, whose life had been very +selfish and wicked, pity waited with a carefulness so fond and tender +that he might well mistake it for love. Was it fair that his last days +should be so peaceful and luxurious, when many a good man falls down to +die in the streets, worn out with the life-long effort to bear the burden +laid upon his weary shoulders? In the traditions of the Rabbins it is +written that those are the elect of God who suffer His chastisement in +the flesh. For the others, for those who on earth drain the goblet of +pleasure, and riot in the raptures of sin, for them comes the dread +retribution after death. They are plunged in the fire, and driven before +the wind; they take the shape of loathsome reptiles, and ascend by +infinitesimal degrees through all the grades of creation, until their +storm-tost wearied degraded souls re-enter human semblance once more. But +even then their old stand-point is not yet regained; their dread penance +not yet performed. As men they are the lowest and worst of men; slaves +toiling in the desert; dirt to be trampled under the feet of their +prosperous brethren. Inch by inch the wretched soul regains its lost +inheritance; cycles must elapse before the awful sentence is fulfilled. + +Our Christian faith knows no such horrors. Even for the penitent of the +eleventh hour there is promise of pardon. The most earnest desire of +Diana's heart was that her father should enroll himself amongst those +late penitents--those last among the last who crowd in to the marriage +feast, half afraid to show their shame-darkened faces in that glorious +company. + +If we forgive all things to old age, so much the more surely do we +forgive all injuries to the fading enemy. That she had suffered much +cruelty and neglect at the hands of her father, was a fact that Diana +could not forget, any more than she could forget the name which he had +given her. It was a part of her life not to be put off or done away with. +But in these last days, with all her heart she forgave and pitied him. +She pitied him for the crooked paths into which his feet had wandered at +the very outset of life, and from which so weak a soul could find no +issue. She pitied him for that moral blindness which had kept him +pleasantly unconscious of the supreme depth of his degradation--a social +Laplander, who never having seen a western summer, had no knowledge that +his own land was dark and benighted. + +Happily for Diana and her generous lover, the Captain was not a +difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost the capacity +and the need for sin, took very kindly to penitence, as a species of +sentimental luxury. + +"Yes, my dear," he said complacently--for even in the hour of his +penitence he insisted on regarding himself as a social martyr--"my life +has been a very hard one. Fortune has not been kind to me. In the words +of the immortal bard, my lines have _not_ been set in pleasant places. I +should have been glad if Providence had allowed me to be a better father +to you, a better husband to your poor mother--a better Christian, in +fact--and had spared me the repeated humiliation of going through the +Insolvent Debtors' Court. It is not always easy to understand the justice +of these things: and it has often appeared to me that something of the +favouritism which is the bane of our governments on earth must needs +obtain at a higher tribunal. One man enters life with an entailed estate +worth seventy thousand a-year, while another finds himself in the hands +of the Jews before he is twenty years of age. 'There's something in this +world amiss shall be unriddled by-and-by,' as the poet observes. The +circumstances of my own existence I have ever regarded as dark and +enigmatic. And, indeed, the events of this life are altogether +inexplicable, my love. There is that fellow Sheldon, now, who began +life as a country dentist, a man without family or connections, +who--well, I will not repine. If I am spared to behold my daughter +mistress of a fine estate, although in a foreign country, I can depart in +peace. But you must have a house in town, my dear. Yes, London must be +your head-quarters. You must not be buried alive in Normandy. There is no +place like London. Take the word of a man who has seen the finest +Continental cities, and lived in them--that is the point, my love--lived +in them. For a fine afternoon in the beginning of May, an apartment in +the Champs Elysées, or the Boulevard, is an earthly paradise; but the +Champs Elysées in a wet December--the Boulevard in a sweltering August! +London is the only spot upon earth that is never intolerable. And your +husband will be a rich man, my dear girl, a really wealthy man; and you +must see that he makes a fitting use of his wealth, and does his duty to +society. The parable of the Talents, which you were reading to me this +afternoon, is a moral lesson your husband must not forget." + +After this fashion did the invalid discourse. Gustave and Diana perceived +that he still hoped to have his share in their future life, still looked +to pleasant days to come in a world which he had loved, not wisely, but +too well. Nor could they find it in their hearts to tell him that his +journey was drawing to a close, and that on the very threshold of the +peaceful home which his diplomatic arts had helped to secure, he was to +abandon life's weary race. + +They indulged his hopes a little, in order to win him the more easily to +serious thoughts; but though at times quite ready to abandon himself to a +penitential mood that was almost maudlin, there were other times when the +old Adam asserted himself, and the Captain resented this intrusion of +serious subjects as a kind of impertinence. + +"I am not aware that I am at my last gasp, Diana," he said with dignity, +on one of these occasions; "or that I need to be talked to by my own +daughter as if I were on my deathbed. I can show you men some years my +senior driving their phætons-and-pairs in that Park. The Gospel is all +very well in its place--during Sunday-morning service, and after morning +prayers, in your good old county families, where the household is large +enough to make a fair show at the end of the dining-room, without +bringing in hulking lads who smell of the stables: but I consider that +when a man is ill, there is a considerable want of tact in bringing the +subject of religion before him in any obtrusive manner." + +Thus the Captain alternated from sentimental penitence to captious +worldliness, during many days and weeks. The business of the Haygarthian +inheritance was progressing slowly, but surely. Documents were being +prepared, attested copies of certificates of marriages, births, baptisms, +and burials were being procured, and all was tending towards the grand +result. Once, and sometimes twice a week, M. Fleurus came to see Captain +Paget, and discussed the great affair with that invalid diplomatist. The +Captain had long ago been aware that in entering upon an alliance with +that gentleman, he had invoked the aid of a coadjutor likely to prove too +strong for him. The event had justified his fears. M. Fleurus had +something of Victor Hugo's famous _Poulpe_ in his nature. Powerful as +flexible were the arms he stretched forth to grasp all prizes in the way +of heirs-at-law and disputed heritages, unclaimed railway-stock, and +forgotten consols. If the Captain had not played his cards very cleverly, +and contrived to obtain a personal influence over Gustave Lenoble, he +might have found himself thrust entirely out of the business by one of +the Frenchman's gelatinous arms. Happily for his own success, however, +the Captain did obtain a strong hold upon Gustave. This enabled him to +protect his own interests throughout the negotiation, and to keep the +insidious Fleurus at bay. + +"My good friend," he said, in his grand Carlton-House manner, "I am bound +to protect the interests of my friend M. Lenoble, in any agreement to be +entered upon in this matter. I cannot permit M. Lenoble's generosity or +M. Lenoble's inexperience to be imposed upon. My own interests are of +secondary importance. That I expect to profit by the extraordinary +discovery made by me--by ME--alone and unaided, I do not affect to deny. +But I will not profit at the expense of a too generous friend." + +"And what recompense am I to have for my work--a work at once painful and +impoverishing?" asked the little Frenchman, with an angry and suspicious +look. "Do you believe that I do that to amuse me? To run the streets, to +go by here, by there, in hunting the papers of that marriage, or this +baptism? Believe you that is so agreeable, Monsieur the Captain? No; I +desire to be paid for my work. I must have my part in the heritage which +I have help to win." + +"It is not won yet. We will talk of your recompense by-and-by." + +"We will talk of it this instant--upon the field. It must that I +comprehend where I am in this affair. I will not of mystifications, of +prevarications, of lies--" + +"M. Fleurus!" cried the Captain, with a hand stretched towards the bell. + +"You will sound--you will chase me! Ah, but no!--you cannot afford to +chase me yet. I have to find more papers of baptisms and burials. Go, +then, we will talk of this affair as friends." + +This friendly talk ended in Captain Paget's complete victory. M. Fleurus +consented to accept his costs out of pocket in the present, and three per +cent, of the heritage in the future. It was further agreed that the +Captain should select the English attorney who should conduct M. +Lenoble's case in the Court of Chancery. + +This conversation occurred at Rouen, and a day or two afterwards the +necessary document was drawn up. Gustave pledged himself to pay over a +fourth share of the Haygarthian fortune to Horatio Paget, and three +per cent, upon the whole amount to Jean François Fleurus. The document +was very formal, very complete; but whether such an agreement would +hold water, if Gustave Lenoble should choose to contest it, was open +to question. + +The solicitor to whom Horatio Paget introduced M. Lenoble was a Mr. +Dashwood, of the firm of Dashwood and Vernon; a man whom the Captain had +known in the past, and from whom he had received good service in some of +the most difficult crises of his difficult career. To this gentleman he +confided the conduct of the case; and explained his apprehensions with +regard to the two Sheldons. + +"You see, as the case now stands, they think they have the claimant to +this money in Miss Halliday--Sheldon's stepdaughter. But if they got an +inkling of Susan Meynell's marriage--and, in point of fact--the actual +state of the case--they might try to get hold of my friend, Gustave +Lenoble. They could _not_ get hold of him, mind you, Dashwood, but they +would try it on, and I don't want trying on of that kind." + +"Of course not. I know Sheldon, of Gray's Inn. He is rather--well, say +_shady_. That's hardly an actionable epithet, and it expresses what I +mean. Your friend's case seems to me tolerably clear. That little +Frenchman is useful, but officious. It is not a speculative affair, I +suppose? There is money to meet the current expenses of the business?" + +"Yes, there is money. Within reasonable limits my friend is prepared to +pay for the advancement of his claims." + +After this the Haygarthian business progressed, slowly, quietly. The work +was up to this point underground work. There were still papers +wanting--final links of the chain to be fitted together; and to the +fitting of these links Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon devoted themselves, in +conjunction with M. Fleurus. + +This was how matters stood when Captain Paget drooped and languished, and +was fain to abandon all active share in the struggle. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FADING. + +While the invalid in the pleasant lodgings overlooking Hyde Park +grew day by day weaker, there was a change as marked in the bright +young creature whose loving spirit had first brought the influence of +affection to bear upon Diana Paget's character. Charlotte Halliday was +ill--very ill. It was with everyday increasing anxiety that Diana watched +the slow change--slow in its progress, but awfully rapid to look back +upon. The pain, the regret, with which she noted her father's decay were +little indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart as she +perceived the alteration in this dear friend, the blighting of this fair +young flower. + +That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but natural, and +we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see +our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in +its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana +watched her father's decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but +there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end +of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte--with +that happy soul for whom life and love wore their brightest smile, before +whose light joyous footsteps stretched so fair a pathway! + +The illness, whatever it was--and neither Mr. Sheldon nor the portly and +venerable physician whom he called in could find a name for it--crept +upon the patient with stealthy and insidious steps. Dizziness, trembling, +faintness; trembling, faintness, dizziness; the symptoms alternated day +by day. Sometimes there was a respite of a few days; and Charlotte--the +youthful, the sanguine, the happy--declared that her enemy had left her. + +"I am sure mamma is right, Di," she said on these occasions. "My nerves +are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if I could get the better +of my nerves, I should be as well as ever. I don't wonder that the idea +of my symptoms makes mamma almost cross. You see, she has been accustomed +to have the symptoms all to herself; and for me to plagiarise them, as it +were, must seem quite an impertinence. For a strong young thing like me, +you know, Di dear--who have only just broken myself of plunging +downstairs two and three steps at a time, and plunging upstairs in the +same vulgar manner--to intrude on mamma's shattered nerves, and pirate +mamma's low spirits, is utterly absurd and abominable; so I have resolved +to look my nerves straight in the face, and get the better of them." + +"My darling, you will get the better of them if you try," said Diana, who +did at times beguile herself with the hope that her friend's ailments +were mental rather than bodily. "I dare say your monotonous life has +something to do with your altered health; you want change of scene, +dear." + +"Change of scene, when I have you and Valentine! No, Di. It would +certainly be very nice to have the background shifted now and then; to +see Capability Brown's prim gardens melt into Alpine heights or +southern vineyards, or even into Russian steppes or Hungarian forests. +One does get a little tired of _toujours_ Bayswater; and Mr. Sheldon; +and crimped skate; and sirloin of beef, and the inevitable discussion as +to whether it is in a cannibal state of rawness or burnt to a cinder; +and the glasses of pale sherry; and the red worsted doyleys and blue +finger-glasses; and the almonds and raisins, and crisp biscuits, that +nobody ever eats; and the dreary, dreary funereal business of dinner, +when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of +the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma's peevish +complaints about Ann Woolper's ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr. +Sheldon's perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the +evening through; and _such_ papers!--_Money Market Monitor, Stockholder's +Vade-Mecum_, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so +much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used never to feel +these things an annoyance, you know, dear, till I made the acquaintance +of my nerves; but from the moment I allowed my nerves to get the better +of me, all these trifles have worried and excruciated me. But I am happy +with you, darling; and I am happy with Valentine. Poor Valentine!" + +She pronounced his name with a sigh; and then, after a pause, repeated +mournfully, "Poor Valentine!" + +"Why do you speak of him so sadly, dear?" asked Diana, very pale. + +"Because--because we have planned such a happy life together, dear, +and--" + +"Is that a thing to be sad about, darling?" + +"And--if it should happen, after all, that we have to part, and he go on +alone, the world may seem so sad and lonely to him." + +"Charlotte!" cried Diana, with a laugh that was almost choked by a sob, +"is this looking your nerves in the face? Why, my dear one, this is +indeed plagiarism of your mamma's low spirits. Lotta, you shall have +change of air; yes, I am determined on that. The stately physician who +came in his carriage the other day, and who looked at your tongue, and +said 'Ah!' and then felt your pulse and said 'Ah!' again, and then called +for pen-and-ink and wrote a little prescription, is not the doctor we +want for you. We want Dr. Yorkshire; we want the breezes from the +Yorkshire moors, and the smell of the farmyard, and our dear Aunt +Dorothy's sillabubs, and our uncle Joe to take us for long walks across +his clover-fields." + +"I don't want to go to Newhall, Di. I couldn't bear to leave--him." + +"But what is to prevent your meeting _him_ at the white gate this time, +as you met him last October? Might not accident take _him_ to Huxter's +Cross again? The archæological work--of which we have heard no more, by +the bye--might necessitate further investigations in that district. If +you will go to Newhall, Lotta, I will pledge myself for Mr. Hawkehurst's +speedy appearance at the white gate you have so often described to me." + +"My dearest Di, you are all kindness; but even if I were inclined to go +to Newhall, I doubt if mamma or Mr. Sheldon would like me to go." + +"I am sure they would be pleased with any arrangement that was likely to +benefit your health. But I will talk to your mamma about it. I have set +my heart on your going to Newhall." + +Miss Paget lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took possession of +Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new stitch in _tricot_, and +succeeded in impressing her with the conviction that change of air was +necessary for Charlotte. + +"But you don't think Lotta really ill?" asked Mrs. Sheldon, nervously. + +"I trust she is not really ill, dear Mrs. Sheldon; but I am sure she is +much changed. In talking to her, I affect to think that her illness is +only an affair of the nerves; but I sadly fear that it is something more +than that." + +"But what is the matter with her?" exclaimed Georgy, with a piteous air +of perplexity; "that is the question which I am always asking. People +can't be ill, you know, Diana, without having something the matter with +them; and that is what I can't make out in Charlotte's case. Mr. Sheldon +says she wants tone; the physician who came in a carriage and pair, and +ought to know what he is talking about, says there is a lack of vigour. +But what does that all amount to? I'm sure I've wanted tone all my life. +Perhaps there never was a creature so devoid of tone as I am; and the +internal sinking I feel just before luncheon is something that no one but +myself can realize. I dare say Lotta is not so strong as she might be; +but I do not see that she can be ill, unless her illness is something +definite. My poor first husband's illness, now, was the kind of thing +that any one could understand--bilious fever. The merest child knows what +it is to be bilious, and the merest child knows what it is to be +feverish. There can be nothing mysterious in bilious fever." + +"But, dear Mrs. Sheldon," said Diana, gravely, "don't you think that the +weakness of constitution which rendered Charlotte's father liable to be +taken off in the prime of life by a fever is a weakness that Charlotte +may possibly have inherited?" + +"Good heavens, Diana!" cried Georgy, with sudden terror; "you don't mean +to say that you think my Charlotte is going to die?" + +It was but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic +alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened +fears as it had been to rouse her from absolute apathy. + +Change of air--yes, of course--Charlotte must have change of air that +instant. Let a cab be sent for immediately to take them to the terminus. +Change of air, of course. To Newhall--to Nice--to the Isle of Wight--to +Malta; Mrs. Sheldon had heard of people going to Malta. Where should they +go? Would Diana advise, and send for a cab, and pack a travelling bag +without an instant's delay? The rest of the things could be sent +afterwards. What did luggage matter, when Charlotte's life was at stake? + +At this point a flood of tears happily relieved poor Georgy's excited +feelings, and then common sense and Diana Paget came to the rescue. + +"My dear Mrs. Sheldon," she said, with a quiet cheerful tone that went +far to reassure the excited lady, "in the first place we must, above all +things, refrain from any appearance of alarm. Her illness may, after all, +be only an affair of the nerves; and there is certainly no cause for +immediate fear." + +Georgy was tranquillised, and agreed to take matters quietly. She +promised to arrange Charlotte's departure for Newhall, with Mr. Sheldon, +that evening. + +"Of course, you know, my dear, I like to consult him about everything," +she said, apologetically. "It is a duty which one owes one's husband, you +know, and a duty which, as a young woman about to marry, I cannot too +much impress upon you; but in this case it is quite a matter of form: Mr. +Sheldon never has objected to Charlotte's going to Newhall, and he is not +likely to object now." + +The event proved Mrs. Sheldon mistaken as to this matter. Georgy proposed +the visit to Newhall that evening, while the two girls were strolling +listlessly in the dusky garden, and Mr. Sheldon most decidedly rejected +the proposition. + +"If she wants change of air--and Dr. Doddleson recommended nothing of the +kind--Newhall is not the place for her." + +"Why not, dear?" + +"It is too cold. Northerly aspect--no shelter--three hundred feet above +York minster." + +"But Dorothy Mercer is such a kind motherly creature; she'd delight in +nursing Lotta." + +"Yes," answered Mr. Sheldon, with a laugh, "and in quacking her. I know +what those good motherly creatures are when they get an excuse for dosing +some unhappy victim with their quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to +Newhall, Mrs. Mercer would poi--would make her ten times worse than +she is with old woman's remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is +too cold. That is a conclusive argument, I suppose?" + +He said this with some impatience of tone and manner. There was a haggard +look in his face, a hurried harassed manner pervading him this evening, +which had been growing upon him of late. Georgy was too slow of +perception to remark this; but Diana Paget had remarked it, and had +attributed the change in the stockbroker's manner to a blending of two +anxieties. + +"He is anxious about money matters," she had said to herself, "and he is +anxious about Charlotte's health. His lips, moving in whispered +calculations, as he sits brooding by the fire, tell me of the first +anxiety; his eyes, wandering furtively to his step-daughter's face every +now and then, tell me of the second." + +This furtive anxiety of Mr. Sheldon's increased Diana Paget's anxiety. +This man, who had a certain amount of medical knowledge, could no doubt +read the diagnostics of that strange insidious illness, which had, as +yet, no name. Diana, furtively watching his furtive looks, told herself +that he read of danger. + +"If Charlotte wants change of air, let her go to Hastings," he said; +"that is the kind of place for an invalid. I want rest myself; and +there's such utter stagnation in the City nowadays that I can very well +afford to give myself a holiday. We'll run down to Hastings, or the +immediate neighbourhood of Hastings, for a week or two." + +"O Philip, how kind and considerate you are! I am sure, as I was +observing to Miss Paget only today, you--" + +"Ah, by the bye, there's Miss Paget. Is it absolutely necessary that Miss +Paget should go to Hastings with us?" + +"Well, dear, you see she has so kindly desired to remain with me for the +quarter, so as to give me time to turn round, you know, with regard to +caps and summer things, and so on--for, really, she has such taste, and +does strike out such excellent ideas about turning, and dipping, and +dyeing, that I don't know what will become of me when she leaves us; and +it would look so pointed to--" + +"Yes; she had better go with us. But why all this fuss about Charlotte? +Who put it into your head that she wants change of air?" + +Mr. Sheldon evidently considered it an established fact that any idea in +his wife's head must needs have been put there by someone or other. + +"Well, you see, Diana and I were talking of Lotta this afternoon, and +Diana quite alarmed me." + +"How so?" asked Mr. Sheldon, with a quick frown. + +"Why, she said it was evident, by the fact of poor dear Tom's dying of a +fever, that his constitution must have been originally weak. And she said +that perhaps Charlotte had inherited Tom's weak constitution--and +frightened me dreadfully." + +"There is no occasion for you to be frightened; Charlotte will get on +very well, I dare say, with care. But Miss Paget is a very sensible +young woman, and is right in what she says. Charlotte's constitution is +not strong." + +"O Philip!" said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice. + +"I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves," said Mr. +Sheldon, with a hard laugh. "Ah, here she is!" + +Here she was, coming towards the open window near which her stepfather +sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her sauntering walk, dressed in +white, and spectral in the gloaming. To the sad eyes of her mother she +looked like a ghost. To the eyes of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to +poetic fancies, she looked even more ghostlike. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS. + +Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the +object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several +people. That her stepfather had his anxieties about her--anxieties which +he tried to hide--was obvious to the one person in the Bayswater villa +who noted his looks, and tried to read the thoughts they indicated. + +Mrs. Sheldon's alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be lulled to rest. +And in Valentine Hawkehurst's heart there was an aching pain--a dull dead +load of care, which had never been lightened from the hour when he first +perceived the change in his dear one's face. + +There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater villa, who +watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care as unresting as the +care of mother or stepfather, bosom friend or plighted lover. This person +was Ann Woolper. Mrs. Woolper had come to the villa prepared to find in +Miss Halliday a frivolous self-satisfied young person, between whom and +an old broken-down woman like herself there could be no sympathy. She had +expected to be contemptuously--or, at the best, indifferently--entreated +by the prosperous well-placed young lady, whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of +as a good girl, as girls go; a vague species of commendation, which, to +the mind of Mrs. Woolper, promised very little. + +As clearly as Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes with regard to +Charlotte Halliday, he had expressed them to Ann Woolper. What he would +fain have said, was, "Watch my stepdaughter, and keep me well acquainted +with every step she takes." Thus much he dared not say; but by +insinuating that Tom Halliday's daughter was frivolous and reckless, and +that her lover was not to be trusted, he had contrived to put Mrs. +Woolper on the _qui vive_. + +"Mr. Philip's afraid she may go and marry this young man on the sly, +before he's got the means to support a wife," she said to herself, as she +meditated upon the meaning of her master's injunctions; "and well he may +be. There's no knowing what young women are up to nowadays; and the more +innocent and inexperienced a young woman is, the more she wants looking +after. And Miss Georgy Craddock always was a poor fondy, up to naught but +dressing herself fine, and streaming up and down Barlingford High Street +with her old schoolfellows. Such as she ain't fit to be trusted with a +daughter; and Mr. Philip knows that. He always was a deep one. But I'm +glad he looks after Missy: there's many men, having got fast hold of th' +father's brass, would let th' daughter marry Old Scratch, for the sake of +gettin' rid of her." + +This is how Mrs. Woolper argued the matter. She came of a prudent race; +and anything like prudence seemed to her a commendable virtue. She wished +to think well of her master; for her he had been a Providence in the hour +of calamity and old age. Where else could she look, if not to him? And to +suspect him, or think ill of him, was to reject the one refuge offered to +her distress. A magnanimous independence of spirit is not an easy virtue +for the old and friendless and poor. The drowning wretch will scarcely +question the soundness of the plank that sustains him upon the +storm-tossed billows; nor was Mrs. Woolper inclined to question the +motives of the man to whom she now owed her daily bread. + +It is possible that before invoking Mrs. Woolper from the ashes of the +past to take her seat by the hearthstone of the present, Mr. Sheldon may +have contemplated the question of her return in all its bearings, and +may have assured himself that she was his own, by a tie not easily +broken--his bond-slave, fettered hand and foot by the bondage of +necessity. + +"What choice can she have, except the choice between my house and the +workhouse?" he may naturally have asked himself; "and is it likely she +will quarrel with her bread-and-butter in order to fall back upon dry +bread?" Mr. Sheldon, contemplating this and all other questions from his +one unchanging standpoint, may reasonably have concluded that Mrs. +Woolper would do nothing opposed to her own interests; and that so long +as it suited her interest to remain at the Lawn, and to serve him, she +would there remain, his docile and unquestioning slave. + +The influence of affection, the force of generous impulse, were qualities +that did not come into Mr. Sheldon's calculations upon this subject. His +addition and subtraction, division and multiplication, were all based on +one system. + +That happy and unconscious art by which Charlotte Halliday made herself +dear to all who knew her had a speedy effect upon the old housekeeper. +The girl's amiable consideration for her age and infirmities; the pretty +affectionate familiarity with which she treated this countrywoman, who +had known her father, and who could talk to her of Yorkshire and +Yorkshire people, soon made their way to Nancy Woolper's heart of hearts. +For Miss Halliday to come to the housekeeper's room with some message +from her mother, and to linger for a few minutes' chat, was a delight to +Mrs. Woolper. She would have detained the bright young visitant for hours +instead of minutes, if she could have found any excuse for so doing. Nor +was there any treason against Mr. Sheldon in her growing attachment to +his stepdaughter. Whenever Nancy spoke of that master and benefactor, she +spoke with unfeigned gratitude and affection. + +"I nursed your step-papa as a baby, Miss Halliday," she said very often +on these occasions. "You wouldn't think, to look at him now, that he ever +was _that_, would you? But he was one of the finest babies you could wish +to see--tall, and strong, and with eyes that pierced one through, they +were so bright and big and black. He was rather stubborn-spirited with +his teething; but what baby isn't trying at such times? I had rare work +with him, I can tell you, Miss, walking him about of nights, and jogging +him till there wasn't a jog left in me, as you may say, from sleepiness. +I often wonder if he thinks of this now, when I see him looking so grave +and stern. But, you see, being jogged doesn't impress the mind like +having to jog; and though I can bring that time back as plain as if it +was yesterday, with the very nursery I slept in at Barlingford, and the +rushlight in a tall iron cage on the floor, and the shadow of the cage on +the bare whitewashed walls--it's clean gone out of his mind, I dare say." + +"I'm afraid it has, Nancy." + +"But, O, I was fond of him, Miss Halliday; and what I went through with +him about his teeth made me only the fonder of him. He was the first baby +I ever nursed, you see, and the last; for before Master George came to +town I'd taken to the cooking, and Mrs. Sheldon hired another girl as +nurse; a regular softy _she_ was, and it isn't her fault that Master +George has got anything christian-like in the way of a back, for the way +she carried that blessed child used to make my blood run cold." + +Thus would Mrs. Woolper discourse whenever she had a fair excuse for +detaining Miss Halliday in her comfortable apartment. Charlotte did not +perceive much interest in these reminiscences of Mr. Sheldon's infancy, +but she was much too kind to bring them abruptly to a close by any show +of impatience. When she could get Nancy to talk of Barlingford and Hyley, +and the people whom Charlotte herself had known as a child, the +conversation was really interesting; and these recollections formed a +link between the old woman and the fair young damsel. + +When the change arose in Charlotte's health and spirits, Mrs. Woolper was +one of the first to perceive it. She was skilled in those old woman's +remedies which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme contempt, and she would +fain have dosed the invalid with nauseous decoctions of hops, or +home-brewed quinine. Charlotte appreciated the kindness of the intent, +but she rebelled against the home-brewed medicines, and pinned her faith +to the more scientific and less obnoxious preparations procured from the +chemist's. + +For some time Nancy made light of the girl's ailments, though she watched +her with unfailing attention. + +"You ain't a-done growing yet, miss, I'll lay," she said. + +"But I'm more than twenty-one, Nancy. People don't grow after they're of +age, do they?" + +"I've known them as have, miss; I don't say it's common, but it has been +done. And then there's the weakness that comes after you've done growing. +Girls of your age are apt to be faint and lollopy-like, as you may say; +especially when they're stived up in a smoky place like London. You ought +to go to Hyley, miss, where you was born; that's the place to set you +up." + +The time had come when the change was no longer matter for doubt. Day by +day Charlotte grew weaker and paler; day by day that bright and joyous +creature, whose presence had made an atmosphere of youth and gladness +even in that prim dwelling-place, receded farther into the dimness of +the past; until to think of what she had been seemed like recalling the +image of the dead. Nancy marked the alteration with a strange pain, so +sharp, so bitter, that its sharpness and bitterness were a perpetual +perplexity to her. + +"If the poor dear young thing is meant to go, there's no need for me to +fret about it all day long, and wake up sudden in the night with cold +water standing out upon my forehead at the thought of it. I haven't known +her six months; and if she is pretty and sweet-spoken, it's not my place +to give way at the thoughts of losing her. She's not my own flesh and +blood; and I've sat by to watch them go, times and often, without feeling +as I do when I see the change in her day after day. Why should it seem so +dreadful to me?" + +Why indeed? This was a question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no +answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something +more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel. +A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of +reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness +as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been +liable to the suspicion of nocturnal careerings on broomsticks. + +"I'm sorry Mr. Philip's house should be unlucky to that sweet young +creature," she said to herself. "It was unlucky to the father; and now it +seems as if it was going to be unlucky to the daughter. And Mr. Philip +won't be any richer for her death. Mrs. Sheldon has told me times and +often that all Tom Halliday's money went to my master when she married +him, and he has doubled and trebled it by his cleverness. Miss +Charlotte's death wouldn't bring him a sixpence." + +This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's meditations very often nowadays. But +the strange sense of perplexity, the nameless fear, the vague horror, +were not to be banished from her mind. A sense of some shapeless presence +for ever at her side haunted her by day and night. What was it? What did +its presence portend? It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot, +was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not turn to +meet the horror face to face. Sometimes the phantom hand lifted a corner +of the veil, and the shade said, "Look at me! See who and what I am! You +have seen me before. I am here again! and this time you shall not refuse +to meet me face to face! I am the shadow of the horror you suspected in +the past!" + +The shadowy fears which oppressed Mrs. Woolper during this period did not +in any way lessen her practical usefulness. From the commencement of +Charlotte's slow decline she had shown herself attentive, and even +officious, in all matters relating to the invalid. With her own hands she +decanted the famous port which Georgy fetched from the particular bin in +Mr. Sheldon's carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called +in, and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper who +carried the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought back the +innocent potion, which might, peradventure, effect some slight good, and +was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. Charlotte duly appreciated all +this kindness; but she repeatedly assured the housekeeper that her +ailments were not worthy of so much care. + +It was Mrs. Woolper whom Mr. Sheldon employed to get lodgings for the +family, when it had been ultimately decided that a change to the seaside +was the best cure for Miss Halliday. + +"I am too busy to go to Hastings myself this week," he said; "but I +shall be prepared to spend a fortnight there after next Monday. What I +want you to do, Nancy, is to slip down tomorrow, with a second-class +return-ticket, and look about for a nice place for us. I don't care about +being in Hastings; there's too much cockneyism in the place at this time +of year. There's a little village called Harold's Hill, within a mile or +so of St. Leonard's--a dull, out-of-the-way place, but rustic and +picturesque, and all that kind of thing--the sort of place that women +like. Now, I'd rather stay at that place than at Hastings. So you can +take a fly at the station, drive straight to Harold's Hill, and secure +the best lodgings you can get." + +"You think as the change of air will do Miss Halliday good?" asked Mrs. +Woolper anxiously, after she had promised to do all her kind master +required of her. + +"Do I think it will do her good? Of course I do. Sea-air and +sea-bathing will set her up in no time; there's nothing particular the +matter with her." + +"No, Mr. Philip; that's what bothers me about the whole thing. There's +nothing particular the matter with her; and yet she pines and dwindles, +and dwindles and pines, till it makes one's heart ache to see her." + +Philip Sheldon's face darkened, and he threw himself back in his chair +with an impatient movement. If he had chosen to do so, he could have +prevented that darkening of his face; but he did not consider Mrs. +Woolper a person of sufficient importance to necessitate the regulation +of his countenance. What was she but an ignorant, obstinate old woman, +who would most probably perish in the streets if he chose to turn her out +of doors? There are men who consider their clerks and retainers such very +dirt, that they would continue the forging of a bill of exchange, or +complete the final touches of a murder, with a junior clerk putting coals +on the fire, or an errand-boy standing cap in hand on the threshold of +the door. They cannot realize the fact that dirt such as this is flesh +and blood, and may denounce them by-and-by in a witness-box. + +Of all contingencies Mr. Sheldon least expected that this old woman could +prove troublesome to him--this abject wretch, whose daily bread depended +on his will. He could not imagine that there are circumstances under +which such abject creatures will renounce their daily bread, and die of +hunger, rather than accept the means of life from one hateful hand. + +"If you want to know anything about Miss Halliday's illness," he said in +his hardest voice, and with his hardest look, "you had better apply to +Dr. Doddleson, the physician who has prescribed for her. I do not attend +her, you see, and I am in no way responsible for her health. When I was +attending her father you favoured me by doubting my skill, if I judged +rightly as to your tone and manner on one occasion. I don't want to be +brought to book by you, Mrs. Woolper, about Miss Halliday's altered looks +or Miss Halliday's illness; I have nothing to do with either." + +"How should I think you had, sir? Don't be angry with me, or hard upon +me, Mr. Phil. I nursed you when you was but a baby, and you're nearer and +dearer to me than any other master could be. Why, I have but to shut my +eyes now, and I can feel your little hand upon my neck, as it used to lie +there, so soft and dear. And then I look down at the hand on the table, +strong and dark, and clenched so firm, and I ask myself, Can it be the +same? For the sake of that time, Mr. Phil, don't be hard upon me. There's +nothing I wouldn't do to serve you; there's nothing you could do that +would turn me from you. There's no man living in this world, sir, that +oughtn't to be glad to know of one person that nothing can turn from +him." + +"That's a very fine sentiment, my good soul," replied Mr. Sheldon coolly; +"but, you see, it's only an _ex parte_ statement; and as the case stands +there is no opportunity for the display of those fine feelings you talk +about. You happen to want a home in your old age, and I happen to be able +to give you a home. Under such circumstances, your own good sense will +show you that all sentimental talk about standing by me, and not turning +away from me, is absolute bosh." + +The old woman sighed heavily. She had offered her master a fidelity which +involved the abnegation of all impulses of her own heart and mind, and he +rejected her love and her service. And then, after the first dreary sense +of his coldness, she felt better pleased that it should be so. The man +who spoke to her in this harsh uncompromising way could have no cause to +fear her. In the mind of such a man there could surely be no secret +chamber within which she had, with his knowledge, almost penetrated. + +"I won't trouble you any more, sir," she said mournfully. "I dare say I'm +a foolish old woman." + +"You are, Nancy. We don't get wiser as we grow older, you see; and when +we let our tongues wag, we're apt to talk nonsense. The quieter you keep +your tongue, the better for yourself, in more ways than one. To a useful +old woman about the place I've no objection; but a chattering old woman I +will not have at any price." + +After this everything was settled in the most agreeable manner. Nancy +Woolper's journey to Hastings was fully arranged; and early the next +morning she started, brisk and active, in spite of her sixty-eight years +of age. She returned at night, having secured very pleasant lodgings at +the village of Harold's Hill. + +"And a very sweet place it is, my dear Miss Lotta," she said to Charlotte +the next day, when she described her adventures. "The apartments are at a +farmhouse overlooking the sea; and the smell of the cows under your +windows, and the sea-breezes blowing across the farmyard, can't fail to +bring the colour back to your pretty cheeks, and the brightness back to +your pretty eyes." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +VALENTINE'S SKELETON. + +The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed delightful +to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still in town, and who +thought it a hard thing that he should be deprived of Diana's society +during an entire fortnight, for the sake of this sickly Miss Halliday. + +For the rest, there was hope and gladness in the thought of this change +of dwelling. Charlotte languished for fresher breezes and more rustic +prospects than the breezes and prospects of Bayswater; Diana looked to +the sea-air as the doctor of doctors for her fading friend; and Valentine +cherished the same hope. + +On Valentine Hawkehurst the burden of an unlooked-for sorrow had weighed +very heavily. To see this dear girl, who was the beginning, middle, and +end of all his hopes, slowly fading before his eyes, was, of all agonies +that could have fallen to his lot, the sharpest and most bitter. Not +Ugolino sitting silent amidst his famishing children--not Helen, when she +would fain that the tempest had swept her from earth's surface on that +evil day when she was born--not Penelope, when she cried on Diana, the +high-priestess of death, to release her from the weariness of her +days--not Agamemnon, when the fatal edict had gone forth, and his fair +young daughter looked into his face, and asked him if it was true that +she was to die--not one of these typical mourners could have suffered a +keener torture than that which rent this young man's heart, as he marked +the stealthy steps of the Destroyer drawing nearer and nearer the woman +he loved. Of all possible calamities, this was the last he had ever +contemplated. Sometimes, in moments of doubt or despondency, he had +thought it possible that poverty, the advice of friends, caprice or +inconstancy on the part of Charlotte herself, should sever them. But +among the possible enemies to his happiness he had never counted Death. +What had Death to do with so fair and happy a creature as Charlotte +Halliday? she who, until some two months before this time, might have +been the divine Hygieia in person--so fresh was her youthful bloom, so +buoyant her step, so bright her glances. Valentine's hardest penance was +the necessity for the concealment of his anxiety. The idea that +Charlotte's illness might be--nay, must be--for the greater part an +affair of the nerves was always paramount in his mind. He and Diana had +talked of the subject together whenever they found an opportunity for so +doing, and had comforted themselves with the assurance that the nerves +alone were to blame; and they were the more inclined to think this from +the conduct of Dr. Doddleson, on that physician's visits to Miss +Halliday. Mrs. Sheldon had been present on each occasion, and to Mrs. +Sheldon alone had the physician given utterance to his opinion of the +case. That opinion, though expressed with a certain amount of +professional dignity, amounted to very little. "Our dear young friend +wanted strength; and what we had to do was to give our dear young friend +strength--vital power. Yes--er--um, that was the chief point. And what +kind of diet might our dear young friend take now? Was it a light diet, a +little roast mutton--not too much done, but not underdone? O dear, no. +And a light pudding? what he would call--if he might be permitted to have +his little joke--a nursery pudding." And then the old gentleman had +indulged in a senile chuckle, and patted Charlotte's head with his fat +old fingers. "And our dear young friend's room, now, was it a large +room?--good! and what was the aspect now, south?--good again! nothing +better, unless, perhaps, south-west; but, of course, everyone's +rooms can't look south-west. A little tonic draught, and gentle daily +exercise in that nice garden, will set our dear young friend right again. +Our temperament is nervous we are a sensitive plant, and want care." And +then the respectable septuagenarian took his fee, and shuffled off to his +carriage. And this was all that Mrs. Sheldon could tell Diana, or Nancy +Woolper, both of whom questioned her closely about her interview with the +doctor. To Diana and to Valentine there was hope to be gathered from the +very vagueness of the physician's opinion. If there had been anything +serious the matter, the medical adviser must needs have spoken more +seriously. He came again and again. He found the pulse a little weaker, +the patient a little more nervous, with a slight tendency to hysteria, +and so on; but he still declared that there were no traces of organic +disease, and he still talked of Miss Halliday's ailments with a cheery +easy-going manner that was very reassuring. + +In his moments of depression Valentine pinned his faith upon Dr. +Doddleson. Without organic disease, he told himself, his darling could +not perish. He looked for Dr. Doddleson's name in the Directory, and took +comfort from the fact of that physician's residence in a fashionable West +End square. He took further comfort from the splendour of the doctor's +equipage, as depicted to him by Mrs. Sheldon; and from the doctor's age +and experience, as copiously described by the same lady. + +"There is only one fact that I have ever reproached myself with in +relation to my poor Tom," said Georgy, who, in talking to strangers of +her first husband, was apt to impress them with the idea that she was +talking of a favourite cat; "and that is, the youthfulness of the +doctor Mr. Sheldon employed. Of course I am well aware that Mr. Sheldon +would not have consulted the young man if he had not thought him +clever; but I could lay my head upon my pillow at night with a clearer +conscience if poor Tom's doctor had been an older and more experienced +person. Now, that's what I like about Dr. Doddleson. There's a gravity--a +weight--about a man of that age which inspires one with immediate +confidence. I'm sure the serious manner with which he questioned me about +Lotta's diet, and the aspect of her room, was quite delightful." + +In Dr. Doddleson, under Providence, Valentine was fain to put his trust. +He did not know that the worthy doctor was one of those harmless +inanities who, by the aid of money and powerful connections, are +sometimes forced into a position which nature never intended them to +occupy. Among the real working men of that great and admirable +brotherhood, the medical profession, Dr. Doddleson had no rank; but he +was the pet physician of fashionable dowagers suffering from chronic +laziness or periodical attacks of ill-humour. For the spleen or the +vapours no one was a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. He could afford +to waste half an hour upon the asking of questions which the fair +patient's maid might as well have asked, and the suggestions of remedies +which any intelligent abigail could as easily have suggested. Elderly +ladies believed in him because he was pompous and ponderous, lived in an +expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore +mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the +matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating, +declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian +angel of their frail lives during the last twenty years. + +This was the man who, of all the medical profession resident in London, +Mr. Sheldon had selected as his stepdaughter's medical adviser in a case +so beyond common experience, that a man of wide practice and keen +perception was especially needed for its treatment. + +Dr. Doddleson, accustomed to attribute the fancied ailments of +fashionable dowagers to want of tone, and accustomed to prescribe the +mildest preparations with satisfaction to his patients and profit to +himself dwelt upon the same want of tone, and prescribed the same +harmless remedies, in his treatment of Charlotte Halliday. When he found +her no better--nay, even worse--after some weeks of this treatment, he +was puzzled; and for one harmless remedy he substituted another harmless +remedy, and waited another week to see what effect the second harmless +remedy might have on this somewhat obstinate young person. + +And this was the broken reed to which Valentine clung in the day of +his trouble. + +Bitter were his days and sleepless were his nights in this dark period of +his existence. He went to the Bayswater villa nearly every day now. It +was no longer time for etiquette or ceremony. His darling was fading day +by day; and it was his right to watch the slow sad change, and, if it +were possible, to keep the enemy at arm's-length. Every day he came to +spend one too brief hour with his dear love; every day he greeted her +with the same fond smile, and beguiled her with the same hopeful talk. He +brought her new books and flowers, and any foolish trifle which he +fancied might beguile her thoughts from the contemplation of that +mysterious malady which seemed beyond the reach of science and Dr. +Doddleson. He sat and talked with her of the future--that future which in +their secret thoughts both held to be a sweet sad fable--the hyperborean +garden of their dreams. And after spending this too sweet, too bitter +hour with his beloved, Mr. Hawkehurst would diplomatise in order to have +a little talk with Diana as he left the house. Did Diana think his dear +girl better to-day, or worse--surely not worse? He had fancied she had +more colour, more of her old gaiety of manner. She had seemed a little +feverish; but that might be the excitement of his visit. And so on, and +so on, with sad and dreary repetition. + +And then, having gone away from that house with an aching heart, the +young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and plunged into the +dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which was to constitute his +monthly contribution to the _Cheapside_ or the _Charing Cross_. Gaiety, +movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the +_Cheapside_; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for +the _Charing Cross_. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the +young scribbler tripping! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea there, +and the _West End Wasp_ shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional note; or +the _Minerva_ published a letter from a correspondent in the Scilly +Islands, headed "Another Literary Jack Sheppard," to say that in his +"Imperial Dictionary" he had discovered with profound indignation a whole +column of words feloniously and mendaciously appropriated by the writer +of such and such an article in the _Cheapside_. While the sunlight of +hope had shone upon him, Mr. Hawkehurst had found the hardest work +pleasant. Was he not working for _her_ sake? Did not his future union +with that dear girl depend upon his present industry? It had seemed to +him as if she stood at his elbow while he wrote, as Pallas stood beside +Achilles at the council, invisible to all but her favourite. It was that +mystic presence which lent swiftness to his pen. When he was tired and +depressed, the thought of Charlotte had revived his courage and +vanquished his fatigue. Pleasant images crowded upon him when he thought +of her. What could be easier than for him to write a love-story? He had +but to create a shadowy Charlotte for his heroine, and the stream of +foolish lover's babble flowed from his pen perennial and inexhaustible. +To his reading she lent a charm and a grace that made the most perfect +poetry still more poetical. It was not Achilles and Helen who met on +Mount Ida, but Valentine and Charlotte; it was not Paolo and Francesca +who read the fatal book together, but Valentine and Charlotte, in an +unregenerate and mediæval state of mind. The mere coincidence of a name +made the "Sorrows of Werter" delightful. The all-pervading presence was +everywhere and in everything. His religion was not Pantheism, but +Charlottism. + +Now all was changed. A brooding care was with him in every moment. The +mystic presence was still close to him in every hour of his lonely days +and nights; but that image, which had been fair and blooming as the +incarnation of youth and spring-time, was now a pale shrouded phantom +which he dared not contemplate. He still wrote on--for it is marvellous +how the pen will travel and the mind will project itself into the +shadow-world of fancy while cankerous care gnaws the weary heart. Nay, it +is perhaps at these times that the imagination is most active; for the +world of shadows is a kind of refuge for the mind that dare not dwell +upon realities. Who can say what dull, leaden, care may have weighed down +the heart of William Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of +a poet's grand imaginings, Othello! There is the flavour of racking care +in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by a sordid +wretch; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable life wrecked for so +poor a motive; that sense of the "something in this world amiss," which +the poet, of all other creatures, feels most keenly. + +With grief and fear as his constant companions, Valentine Hawkehurst +toiled on bravely, patiently. Hope had not deserted him; but between hope +and fear the contest was unceasing. Sometimes hope had the best of it for +a while, and the toiler comforted himself with the thought that this dark +cloud would pass anon from the horizon of his life; and then he counted +his gains, and found that the fruit of his labours was increasing +monthly, as his name gained rank among the band of young _littérateurs_. +The day when he might count upon that income which Mr. Sheldon demanded +as his qualification for matrimony did not appear far distant. Given a +certain amount of natural ability, and the industrious and indefatigable +young writer may speedily emerge from obscurity, and take his place in +the great army of those gallant soldiers whose only weapon is the pen. +Whatever good fortune had come to Valentine Hawkehurst he had worked for +with all honesty of purpose. The critics were not slow to remark that he +worked at a white-hot haste, and must needs be a shallow pretender +because he was laborious and indefatigable. + +Before the beginning of Charlotte's slow decline he had fancied himself +the happiest of men. There were more deposit-receipts in his desk. The +nest-egg, about the hatching whereof there had been such cackling and +crowing some months ago, was now one of many eggs; for the hard-working +scribbler had no leisure in which to be extravagant, had he been so +minded. The purchase of a half-circlet of diamonds for his betrothed's +slim finger had been his only folly. + +Charlotte had remonstrated with him on the impropriety of such an +extravagance, and had exacted from him a promise that this wild and +Monte-Christo-like course should be pursued no further; but she was very +proud of her half-hoop of diamonds nevertheless, and was wont to press it +tenderly to her lips before she laid it aside for the night. + +"There must be no more such extravagance, sir," she said to her lover, +when he sat by her side twisting the ring round and round on her pretty +finger. Alas, how loose the ring had become since it had first been +placed there! + +"Consider the future, Valentine," continued the girl, hopeful of mood +while her hand rested in his. "Do you suppose we can furnish our cottage +at Wimbledon if we rush into such wild expenses as diamond rings? Do you +know that _I_ am saving money, Valentine? Yes, positively. Papa gives me +a very good allowance for my dresses, and bonnets, and things, you know, +and I used to be extravagant and spend it all. But now I have become the +most miserly creature; and I have a little packet of money upstairs which +you shall put in the Unitas Bank with the rest of your wealth. Diana and +I have been darning, and patching, and cutting, and contriving, in the +most praiseworthy manner. Even this silk has been turned. You did not +think that, did you, when you admired it so?" + +Mr. Hawkehurst looked at his beloved with a tender smile. The exact +significance of the operation of turning, as applied to silk dresses, was +somewhat beyond his comprehension; but he felt sure that to turn must be +a laudable action, else why that air of pride with which Charlotte +informed him of the fact? + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +AT HAROLD'S HILL. + +The summer sun shone upon the village of Harold's Hill when Charlotte +arrived there with Mrs. Sheldon and Diana Paget. Mr. Sheldon was to +follow them on the same day by a later train; and Valentine was to come +two days afterwards to spend the peaceful interval between Saturday and +Monday with his betrothed. He had seen the travellers depart from the +London Bridge terminus, but Mr. Sheldon had been there also, and there +had been no opportunity for confidential communication between the +lovers. + +Of all Sussex villages Harold's Hill is perhaps the prettiest. The grey +old Saxon church, the scattered farmhouses and pleasant rustic cottages, +are built on the slope of a hill, and all the width of ocean lies below +the rustic windows. The roses and fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem +all the brighter by contrast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh +breath of the salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all +the homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the blue vault +of heaven above the church, and over the blue of the sea the gull skims +white in the sunshine. The fisherman and the farm labourer have their +cottages side by side, nestling cosily to leeward of the hilly winding +road. + +This hilly winding road in the July afternoon seemed to Charlotte almost +like the way to Paradise. + +"It is like going to heaven, Di!" she cried, with her eyes fixed on the +square tower of the old grey church. She wondered why sudden tears sprang +to Diana's eyes as she said this. Miss Paget brushed the unbidden tears +away with a quick gesture of her hand, and smiled at her friend. + +"Yes, dear, the village is very pretty, isn't it?" + +"It looks awfully dull!" said Mrs. Sheldon, with a shudder; "and, Diana, +I declare there isn't a single shop. Where are we to get our provisions? +I told Mr. Sheldon St. Leonards would have been a better place for us." + +"O mamma, St. Leonards is the very essence of all that is tame and +commonplace, compared to this darling rural village! Look, do look, at +that fisherman's cottage, with the nets hanging out to dry in the +sunshine; just like a picture of Hook's!" + +"What's the use of going on about fishermen's cottages, Lotta?" Mrs. +Sheldon demanded, peevishly. "Fishermen's cottages won't provide us with +butcher's meat. Where are we to get your little bit of roast mutton? Dr. +Doddleson laid such a stress upon the roast mutton." + +"The sea-air will do me more good than all the mutton that ever was +roasted at Eton, mamma. O, dear, is this our farmhouse?" cried Charlotte, +as the vehicle drew up at a picturesque gate. "O, what a love of a house! +what diamond-paned windows! what sweet white curtains! and a cow staring +at me quite in the friendliest way across the gate! O, can we be so happy +as to live here?" + +"Diana," cried Mrs. Sheldon, in a solemn voice, "not a single shop have +we passed--not so much as a post-office! And as to haberdashery, I'm sure +you might be reduced to rags in this place before you could get so much +as a yard of glazed lining!" + +The farmhouse was one of those ideal homesteads which, to the dweller in +cities, seems fair as the sapphire-ceiled chambers of the house of +Solomon. Charlotte was enraptured by the idea that this was to be her +home for the next fortnight. + +"I wish it could be for ever, Di," she said, as the two girls were +inspecting the rustic, dimity-draperied, lavender-and-rose-leaf-perfumed +bedchambers. "Who would wish to go back to prim suburban Bayswater after +this? Valentine and I could lodge here after our marriage. It is better +than Wimbledon. Grand thoughts would come to him with the thunder of the +stormy waves; and on calm bright days like this the rippling water would +whisper pretty fancies into his ear. Why, to live here would make any one +a poet. I think I could write a novel myself, if I lived here long +enough." + +After this they arranged the pretty sitting-room, and placed an +easy-chair by the window for Charlotte, an arm-chair opposite this for +Mrs. Sheldon, and between the two a little table for the fancy work and +books and flowers, and all the small necessities of feminine existence. +And then--while Mrs. Sheldon prowled about the rooms, and discovered so +many faults and made so many objections as to give evidence of a fine +faculty for invention unsuspected in her hitherto--Charlotte and Diana +explored the garden and peeped at the farmyard, where the friendly cow +still stared over the white gate, just as she had stared when the fly +came to a stop, as if she had not yet recovered from the astonishment +created in her pastoral mind by that phenomenal circumstance. And then +Charlotte was suddenly tired, and there came upon her that strange +dizziness which was one of her most frequent symptoms. Diana led her +immediately back to the house, and established her comfortably in her +easy-chair. + +"I must be very ill," she said, plaintively; "for even the novelty of +this pretty place cannot make me happy long." + + * * * * * + +Mr. Sheldon arrived in the evening, bringing with him a supply of that +simple medicine which Charlotte took three times a day. He had remembered +that there was no dispensing chemist at Harold's Hill, and that it would +be necessary to send to St. Leonards for the medicine, and had therefore +brought with him a double quantity of the mild tonic. + +"It was very kind of you to think of it, though I really don't believe +the stuff does me any good," said Charlotte. "Nancy Woolper used to get +it for me at Bayswater. She made quite a point of fetching it from the +chemist's herself." + +"Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. "Nancy troubled herself about your +medicine, did she?" + +"Yes, papa; and about me altogether. If I were her own daughter she could +scarcely have seemed more anxious." + +The stockbroker made a mental note of this in the memorandum-book of his +brain. Mrs. Woolper was officious, was she, and suspicious?--altogether a +troublesome sort of person. + +"I think a few weeks of workhouse fare would be wholesome for that old +lady," he said to himself. "There are some people who never know when +they are well off." + +Saturday afternoon came in due course, after a long and dreary interval, +as it seemed to Charlotte, for whom time travelled very slowly, so +painful was the weariness of illness. Now and then a sudden flash of +excitement brought the old brightness to her face, the old gaiety to her +accents; but the brightness faded very soon, and the languor of illness +was very perceptible. + +Punctual to the hour at which he was expected, Mr. Hawkehurst appeared, +in radiant spirits, laden with new magazines, delighted with the village, +enraptured with the garden, enchanted with the sea; full of talk and +animation, with all sorts of news to tell his beloved. Such and such a +book was a failure, such and such a comedy was a fiasco; Jones's novel +had made a hit; Brown's picture was the talk of the year; and Charlotte +must see the picture that had been talked about, and the play that had +been condemned, when she returned to town. + +For an hour the lovers sat in the pretty farmhouse parlour talking +together thus, the summer sea and the garden flowers before them, and a +bird singing high in the calm blue heaven. Charlotte's talk was somewhat +languid, though it was perfect happiness for her to be seated thus, with +her betrothed by her side; but Valentine's gaiety of spirits never +flagged; and when Mrs. Sheldon hinted to him that too long a conversation +might fatigue the dear invalid, he left the parlour with a smile upon his +face, and a cheery promise to return after an hour's ramble. + +He did not ramble far. He went straight to a little wooden summer-house +in the remotest corner of the humble garden; and thither Diana Paget +followed him. She had learned the language of his face in the time of +their daily companionship, and she had seen a look as he left the house +which told her of the struggle his cheerfulness had cost him. + +"You must not be downhearted, Valentine," she said, as she went into the +summer-house, where he sat in a listless attitude, with his arms lying +loosely folded on the rustic table. + +He did not answer her. + +"You don't think her worse--much worse--do you, Valentine?" + +"Worse? I have seen death in her face to-day!" he cried; and then he let +his forehead fall upon his folded arms, and sobbed aloud. + +Diana stood by his side watching that outburst of grief. When the +passionate storm of tears was past, she comforted him as best she might. +The change so visible to him was not so plain to her. He had hoped that +the breath of the ocean would have magical power to restore the invalid. +He had come to Harold's Hill full of hope, and instead of the beginning +of an improvement he saw the progress of decay. + +"Why did not Sheldon send for the doctor," he asked, indignantly,--"the +physician who has attended her? He might have telegraphed to that man." + +"Charlotte is taking Dr. Doddleson's medicine," said Diana, "and all his +directions are most carefully obeyed." + +"What of that, if she grows worse? The doctor should see her daily, +hourly, if necessary. And if he cannot cure her, another doctor should be +sent for. Good heavens, Diana! are we to let her fade and sink from us +before our eyes? I will go back to London at once, and bring that man +Doddleson down by the night mail." + +"Your going back to London would grieve and alarm Charlotte. You can +telegraph for the doctor; or, at least, Mr. Sheldon can do so. It would +not do for you to interfere without his permission." + +"It would not do!" echoed Valentine, angrily. "Do you think that I +am going to stand upon punctilio, or to consider what will do or +will not do?" + +"Above all things, you must avoid alarming Charlotte," pleaded Diana. + +"Do you think I do not know that? Do you think I did not feel that just +now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish about books and plays +and pictures, while every stolen glance at my darling's face was like a +dagger thrust into my heart? I will not alarm her. I will consult Mr. +Sheldon--will do anything, everything, to save her! To save her! O my +God, has it come to that?" + +He grew a little calmer presently under Diana's influence, and went +slowly back to the house. He avoided the open window by which Charlotte +was sitting. He had not yet schooled himself to meet her questioning +looks. He went to the room where they were to dine, a duller and darker +apartment than the parlour, and here he found Mr. Sheldon reading a +paper, one of the eternal records of the eternal money-market. + +The stockbroker had been in and out of the house all day, now sauntering +by the sea-shore, now leaning moodily, with folded arms, on the garden +gate, meditative and silent as the cow that stared at Charlotte; now +pacing the garden walks, with his hands in his pockets and his head bent. +Diana, who in her anxiety kept a close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's +movements, had noted his restlessness, and perceived in it the sign of +growing anxiety on his part. She knew that he had once called himself +surgeon-dentist, and had some medical knowledge, if not so much as he +took credit for possessing. He must, therefore, be better able to judge +the state of Charlotte's health than utterly ignorant observers. If he +were uneasy, there must be real cause for uneasiness. It was on this +account, and on this account only, that Diana watched him. + +"He must love her better than I gave him credit for being able to love +any one," Miss Paget said to herself. "Dear girl! The coldest heart is +touched by her sweetness." + +Mr. Sheldon looked up from his newspaper as Valentine came into the room, +and saluted the visitor with a friendly nod. + +"Glad to see you, Hawkehurst," he said. "_Semper fidelis_, and that +kind of thing; the very model of devoted lovers. Why, man alive, how +glum you look!" + +"I think I have reason to look glum," answered Valentine, gravely; "I +have seen Charlotte." + +"Yes? And don't you find her improving?--gradually, of course. That +constitutional languor is not shaken off in a hurry. But surely you think +her improving--brightening--" + +"Brightening with the light that never shone on earth or sea. God help +me! I--I--am the merest child, the veriest coward, the--" He made a great +effort, and stifled the sob that had well-nigh broken his voice. "Mr. +Sheldon," he continued quietly, "I believe your stepdaughter is dying." + +"Dying! Good heavens!--my dear Hawkehurst, this alarm is most--most +premature. There is no cause for fear--at present, no cause--I give you +my word as a medical man." + +"No cause for alarm at present? That means my darling will not be taken +from me to-night, or to-morrow. I shall have a few days breathing-time. +Yes, I understand. The doom is upon us. I saw the shadow of death upon +her face to-day." + +"My dear Hawkehurst--" + +"My dear Sheldon, for pity's sake don't treat me as if I were a woman or +a child. Let me know my fate. If--if--this, the worst, most bitter of all +calamities God's hand--raised against me in punishment of past sins, +sinned lightly and recklessly, in the days when my heart had no stake in +the game of destiny--can inflict upon me; if this deadly sorrow is +bearing down upon me, let me meet it like a man. Let me die with my eyes +uncovered. O, my dearest, my fondest, redeeming angel of my ill-spent +life! have you been only a supernal visitant, after all, shining on me +for a little while, to depart when your mission of redemption is +accomplished?" + +"Powers above!" thought Mr. Sheldon, "what nonsense these sentimental +magazine-writers can talk!" + +He was in nowise melted by the lover's anguish, though it was very real. +Such a grief as this was outside the circle in which his thoughts +revolved. This display of grief was unpleasant to him. It grated +painfully upon his nerves, as some of poor Tom Halliday's little speeches +had done of old, when the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his +deathbed; and the young man's presence and the young man's anxiety were +alike inconvenient. + +"Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon," Valentine said presently, with +suppressed intensity. "Is there any hope for my darling, any hope?" + +Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied to this +question. He pursed-up his lips and bent his brows with the same air of +business-like deliberation that he might have assumed while weighing the +relative merits of the first and second debenture bonds of some doubtful +railway company. + +"You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst," he said at last. "If you ask +me plainly whether I like the turn which Charlotte's illness has taken +within the last few weeks, I must tell you frankly, I do not. There is a +persistent want of tone--a visible decay of vital power--which, I must +confess, has caused me some uneasiness. You see, the fact is, there is a +radical weakness of constitution--as Miss Paget, a very sensible girl and +acute observer--herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary weakness; and +against this medicine is sometimes unavailing. You need apprehend no +neglect on my part, Hawkehurst; all that can possibly be done is being +done. Dr. Doddleson's instructions are carefully obeyed, and--" + +"Is this Dr. Doddleson competent to grapple with the case?" asked +Valentine; "I never heard of him as a great man." + +"That fact proves how little you know of the medical profession." + +"I know nothing of it; I have had no need for doctors in my life. And you +think this Dr. Doddleson really clever?" + +"His position is a sufficient answer to that question." + +"Will you let me telegraph for him--this afternoon--immediately?" + +"You cannot telegraph from this place." + +"No, but from St. Leonards I can. Do you think I am afraid of a +five-mile walk?" + +"But why send for Dr. Doddleson? The treatment he prescribed is the +treatment we are now following to the letter. To summon him down here +would be the merest folly. Our poor Charlotte's illness is, so far, free +from all alarming symptoms." + +"You do not see the change in her that I can see," cried Valentine +piteously. "For mercy's sake, Mr. Sheldon, let me have my way in this. I +cannot stand by and see my dear one fading and do nothing--nothing to +save her. Let me send for this man. Let me see him myself, and hear what +he says. You can have no objection to his coming, since he is the man you +have chosen for Charlotte's adviser? It can only be a question of +expense. Let this particular visit be my affair." + +"I can afford to pay for my stepdaughter's medical attendance without any +help from your purse, Mr. Hawkehurst," said the stockbroker with offended +pride. "There is one element in the case which you appear to ignore." + +"What is that?" + +"The alarm which this summoning of a doctor from London must cause in +Charlotte's mind." + +"It need cause no alarm. She can be told that Dr. Doddleson has come to +this part of the world for a Sunday's change of air. The visit can appear +to be made _en passant._ It will be easy to arrange that with the doctor +before he sees her." + +"As you please, Mr. Hawkehurst," the stockbroker replied coldly. "I +consider such a visit to the last degree unnecessary; but if Dr. +Doddleson's coming can give you any satisfaction, by all means let him +come. The expense involved in summoning him is of the smallest +consideration to me. My position with regard to my wife's daughter is one +of extreme responsibility, and I am ready to perform all the obligations +of that position." + +"You are very good: your conduct in relation to Charlotte and myself has +been beyond all praise. It is quite possible that I am over-anxious; but +there was a look in that dear face--no--I cannot forget that look; it +struck terror to my heart. I will go at once to St. Leonards. I can tell +Charlotte that I am obliged to telegraph to the printer about my copy. +You will not object to that white lie?" + +"Not at all. I think it essential that Charlotte should not be alarmed. +You had better stop to dine; there will be time for the telegram after +dinner." + +"I will not risk that," answered Valentine. "I cannot eat or drink till I +have done something to lessen this wretched anxiety." + +He went back to the room where Charlotte was sitting by the open window, +through which there came the murmur of waves, the humming of drowsy bees, +the singing of birds, all the happy voices of happy nature in a +harmonious chorus. + +"O God, wilt thou take her away from such a beautiful world," he asked, +"and change all the glory of earth to darkness and desolation for me?" + +His heart rebelled against the idea of her death. To save her, to win her +back to himself from the jaws of death, he was ready to promise anything, +to do anything. + +"All my days will I give to Thy service, if Thou wilt spare her to me," +in his heart he said to his God. "If Thou dost not, I will be an infidel +and a pagan--the vilest and most audacious of sinners. Better to serve +Lucifer than the God who could so afflict me." + +And this is where the semi-enlightened Christian betrays the weakness of +his faith. While the sun shines, and the sweet gospel story reads to him +like some tender Arcadian idyl, all love and promise, he is firm in his +allegiance; but when the dark hour comes, he turns his face to the wall, +with anger and disappointment in his heart, and will have no further +commune with the God who has chastised him. His faith is the faith of the +grateful leper, who, being healed, was eager to return and bless his +divine benefactor. It is not the faith of Abraham or of Job, of Paul or +of Stephen. + +Valentine told his story about the printers and the copy for the +_Cheapside_ magazine, about which there had arisen some absurd mistake, +only to be set right by a telegram. + +It was not a very clear account; but Charlotte did not perceive the +vagueness of the story; she thought only of the one fact, that Valentine +must leave her for some hours. + +"The evening will seem so long without you," she said. "That is the worst +part of my illness; the time is so long--so weary. Diana is the dearest +and kindest of friends. She is always trying to amuse me, and reads to me +for hours, though I know she must often be tired of reading aloud so +long. But even the books I was once so fond of do not amuse me. The words +seem to float indistinctly in my brain, and all sorts of strange images +mix themselves up with the images of the people in the book. Di has been +reading "The Bride of Lammermoor" all this morning; but the pain and +weariness I feel seemed to be entangled with Lucy and Edgar somehow, and +the dear book gave me no pleasure." + +"My darling, you--you are too weak to listen to Diana's reading. It is +very kind of her to try to amuse you; but--but it would be better for you +to rest altogether. Any kind of mental exertion may help to retard your +recovery." + +He had placed himself behind her chair, and was bending over the pillows +to speak to her. Just now he felt himself unequal to the command of his +countenance. He bent his head until his lips touched the soft brown hair, +and kissed those loose soft tresses passionately. The thought occurred to +him that a day might come when he should again kiss that soft brown hair, +with a deeper passion, with a sharper pain, and when Charlotte would not +know of his kisses, or pity his pain. + +"O Valentine!" cried Charlotte, "you are crying; I can see your face in +the glass." + +He had forgotten the glass; the little rococo mirror, with an eagle +hovering over the top of the frame, which hung above the old-fashioned +chiffonier. + +"I am not so very ill, dear; I am not indeed," the girl continued, +turning in her chair with an effort, and clasping her lover's hands; "you +must not distress yourself like this, Valentine--dear Valentine! I shall +be better by-and-by. I cannot think that I shall be taken from you." + +He had broken down altogether by this time. He buried his face in the +pillows, and contrived to stifle the sobs that would come; and then, +after a sharp struggle, he lifted his face, and bent over the chair once +more to kiss the invalid's pale upturned forehead. + +"My dear one, you shall not, if love can guard and keep you. No, dear, +I _cannot_ believe that God will take you from me. Heaven may be your +fittest habitation; but such sweet spirits as yours are sorely needed +upon earth. I will be brave, dearest one; brave and hopeful in the +mercy of Heaven. And now I must go and telegraph to my tiresome +printer. _Au revoir_!" + +He hurried away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling pace along +the pleasant road, with green waving corn on his left, and broad blue +ocean on his right. + +"I can get a fly to bring me back from St. Leonard's" he thought; "I +should only lose time by hunting for a vehicle here." + +He was at St. Leonards station within an hour after leaving the farm. +He despatched the message in Mr. Sheldon's name, and took care to make +it urgent. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +DESPERATE MEASURES. + +Fitful and feverish were the slumbers which visited Mr. Hawkehurst on +that balmy summer's night. His waking hours were anxious and unhappy; but +his sleeping hours were still more painful. To sleep was to be the +feverish fool of vague wild visions, in which Charlotte and Dr. +Doddleson, the editor of the _Cheapside_, the officials of the British +Museum reading-room, Diana Paget, and the Sheldons, figured amidst +inextricable confusion of circumstances and places. Throughout these +wretched dreams he had some consciousness of himself and the room in +which he was lying, the July moon shining upon him, broad and bright, +through the diamond-paned lattice. And O, what torturing visions were +those in which Charlotte smiled upon him, radiant with health and +happiness; and there had been no such thing as her illness, no such thing +as his grief. And then came hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was +knocking at the farmhouse door, with the printer of the _Cheapside_. And +then he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman +amphitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, looking down +on the encounter of two other flies, and all the glory of an imperial +court only a little spot of purple and gold, gleaming afar in the +sunshine. To the dreamer it was no surprise that this unknown theatre of +his dreams should be vast as the gladiatorial arena. And then came the +deep thunderous music of innumerable bass-viols and bassoons: and some +one told him it was the first night of a great tragedy. He felt the +breathless hush of expectation; the solemn bass music sank deeper; dark +curtains were drawn aside, with a motion slow and solemn, like the waving +of mountain pines, and there appeared a measureless stage, revealing a +moonlit expanse, thickly studded with the white headstones of unnumbered +graves, and on the foremost of these--revealed to him by what power he +knew not, since mortal sight could never have reached a point so +distant--he read the name of Charlotte Halliday. He awoke with a sharp +cry of pain. It was broad day, and the waves were dancing gaily in the +morning sunlight. He rose and dressed himself. Sleep, such as he had +known that night, was worse than the weariest waking. He went out into +the garden by-and-by, and paced slowly up and down the narrow pathways, +beside which box of a century's growth rose dark and high. Pale yellow +lights were in the upper windows. He wondered which of those sickly +tapers flickered on the face he loved so fondly. + +"It is only a year since I first saw her," he thought: "one year! And to +love her has been my 'liberal education;' to lose her would be my +desolation and despair." + +To lose her! His thoughts approached that dread possibility, but could +not realize it; not even yet. + +At eight o'clock Diana came to summon him to breakfast. + +"Shall I see Charlotte?" he asked. + +"No; for some time past she has not come down to breakfast." + +"What kind of night has she had?" + +"A very quiet night, she tells me; but I am not quite sure that she tells +me the truth, she is so afraid of giving us uneasiness." + +"She tells you. But do you not sleep in her room, now that she is so +ill?" + +"No. I was anxious to sleep on a sofa at the foot of her bed, and +proposed doing so, but Mr. Sheldon objects to my being in the room. He +thinks that Charlotte is more quiet entirely alone, and that there is +more air in the room with only one sleeper. Her illness is not of a kind +to require attention of any sort in the night." + +"Still I should have thought it better for her to have you with her, to +cheer and comfort her. + +"Believe me, Valentine, I wished to be with her." + +"I am sure of that, dear," he answered kindly. + +"It was only Mr. Sheldon's authority, as a man of some medical +experience, that conquered my wish." + +"Well, I suppose he is right. And now we must go in to breakfast. Ah, the +dreary regularity of these breakfasts and dinners, which go on just the +same when our hearts are breaking!" + +The breakfast was indeed a dreary soul-dispiriting meal. Farmhouse +luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home-cured bacon, abounded; but +no one had any inclination for these things. Valentine remembered the +homestead among the Yorkshire hills, with all the delight that he had +known there; and the "sorrow's crown of sorrow" was very bitter. Mr. +Sheldon gave his Sabbath-morning meditations to the study of a +Saturday-evening share-list; and Georgy plunged ever and anon into the +closely printed pages of a Dissenting preacher's biography, which she +declared to be "comforting." + +Diana and Valentine sat silent and anxious; and after the faintest +pretence of eating and drinking, they both left the table, to stroll +drearily in the garden. The bells were ringing cheerily from the grey +stone tower near at hand; but Valentine had no inclination for church on +this particular morning. Were not all his thoughts prayers--humble +piteous entreaties--for one priceless boon? + +"Will you see the doctor when he comes, and manage matters so as not to +alarm Charlotte?" he asked of Mr. Sheldon. That gentleman agreed to do +so, and went out into the little front-garden to lie in wait for the +great Doddleson--"Dowager Doddleson" as he was surnamed by some +irreverent unbelievers. + +A St. Leonards fly brought the doctor while the bells were still ringing +for morning service. Mr. Sheldon received him at the gate; and explained +the motive of his summons. + +The doctor was full of pompous solicitude about "our sweet young +patient." + +"Really one of the most interesting cases I ever had upon my hands," +the West-end physician said blandly; "as I was remarking to a very +charming patient of mine--in point of fact, the amiable and +accomplished Countess of Kassel-Kumberterre, only last Tuesday +morning. A case so nearly resembling the Countess's own condition as to +be highly interesting to her." + +"I really ought to apologize for bringing you down," said Mr. Sheldon, as +he led the doctor into the house. "I only consented to your being sent +for in order to tranquillize this young fellow Hawkehurst, who is engaged +to my daughter; a rising man, I believe, in his own particular line, but +rather wild and impracticable. There is really no change for the worse, +absolutely none; and as we have not been here more than three days, there +has been positively no opportunity for testing the effect of change and +sea air, and so on." + +This seemed rather like giving the learned physician his cue. And there +were those among Dr. Doddleson's professional rivals who said that the +worthy doctor was never slow to take a cue so given, not being prejudiced +by any opinions of his own. + +Charlotte had by this time been established in her easy-chair by the open +window of the sitting-room, and here Dr. Doddleson saw her, in the +presence of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon; and here Dr. Doddleson went through the +usual Abracadabra of his art, and assented to the opinions advanced, with +all deference, by Mr. Sheldon. + +To Georgy this interview, in which Mr. Sheldon's opinions were pompously +echoed by the West-end physician, proved even more comforting than the +benignant career of the Dissenting minister, who was wont to allude to +that solemn passing hence of which the ancients spoke in dim suggestive +phrase, as "going upstairs." + +Diana and Valentine strolled in the garden while the physician saw his +patient. Dr. Doddleson's ponderous polysyllables floated out upon the +summer air like the droning of a humble-bee. It was a relief to Valentine +to know that the doctor was with his patient: but he had no intention to +let that gentleman depart unquestioned. + +"I will take no secondhand information," he thought; "I will hear this +man's opinion from his own lips." + +He went round to the front of the house directly the droning had ceased, +and was in the way when Dr. Doddleson and Mr. Sheldon came out of the +rose-hung porch. + +"If you have no objection," he said to Mr. Sheldon, "I should like to ask +Dr. Doddleson a few questions." + +"_I_ have no objection," replied the stockbroker; "but it is really +altogether such an unusual thing, and I doubt if Dr. Doddleson will +consent to--" + +And here he cast a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who should say, +"Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand so entirely unwarranted +by precedent?" + +Dowager Doddleson was eminently good-natured. + +"And this is our sweet young friend's _fiancé_," he said; "dear +me--dee-ar me!" + +And then he looked at Valentine with bland pale-blue eyes that twinkled +behind his gold-framed spectacles; while Valentine was taking his +measure, so far as the measure of any man's moral and intellectual force +can be taken by the eyes of another man. "And this is the man who is +chosen to snatch my darling from the jaws of death!" he said to himself, +with burning rage in his heart, while the amiable physician repeated +blandly: + +"And this is our sweet young patient's _fiancé_. Dee-ar me, how very +interesting!" + +The three men strolled round to the garden behind the house, Mr. Sheldon +close at the physician's elbow. + +"For God's sake tell me the truth, Dr. Doddleson!" said Valentine in a +low hoarse voice, directly they were beyond ear-shot of the house. "I am +a man, and I can steel myself to hear the worst you can tell." + +"But really, Hawkehurst, there is no occasion for this kind of thing," +interjected Philip Sheldon; "Dr. Doddleson agrees with me, that the case +is one of extreme languor, and no more." + +"Unquestionably," said the doctor in a fat voice. + +"And Dr. Doddleson also coincides with me in the opinion that all we can +do is to wait the reviving influence of sea-air." + +"Undoubtedly," said the doctor, with a solemn nod. + +"And is this all?" asked Valentine hopelessly. + +"My dear sir, what else can I say?" said the doctor; "as my good friend +Mr. Sheldon has just remarked, there is extreme languor; and as my good +friend Mr. Sheldon further observes, we must await the effect of change +of air. The--aw--invigorating sea-breezes, the--aw--enlivening influence +of new surroundings, and--aw--so forth. Dr. Poseidon, my dear sir, is a +very valuable coadjutor." + +"And you think your patient no worse, Dr. Doddleson?" + +"The doctor has just left Mrs. Sheldon much comforted by his assurance +that her daughter is better," said the stockbroker. + +"No, no!" exclaimed Dr. Doddleson; "no, no! _there_ my good friend Mr. +Sheldon somewhat misrepresents me. I said that our patient was not +obviously worse. I did not say that our patient was better. There is a +dilatation of the pupil of the eye which I don't quite understand." + +"Mental excitement," said Mr. Sheldon, somewhat hastily; "Charlotte is +nervous to an extreme degree, and your sudden arrival was calculated to +shake her nerves." + +"Undoubtedly," rejoined the doctor; "and it is unquestionable that such a +dilatation of the pupil might, under certain circumstances, be occasioned +by mental excitement. I am sorry to find that our patient's attacks of +dizziness--" + +"Which are purely the effect of fancy," interjected Mr. Sheldon. + +"Which are no doubt, in some measure, attributable to a hypochondriacal +condition of mind," continued the doctor in his fat voice. "I am sorry to +find that this periodical dizziness has been somewhat increased of late. +But here again we must look to Dr. Poseidon. Tepid sea-baths, if they can +be managed, in the patient's own room; and by-and-by a dip in the waves +yonder, may do wonders." + +Valentine asked no further questions; and the physician departed in the +St. Leonards fly, to turn his excursion to profitable use by calling on +two or three dowagers in Warrior Square and Marina, who would doubtless +be glad of an unexpected visit from their pet doctor. + +"Well, Hawkehurst," said Mr. Sheldon, when the fly had driven away, "I +hope you are satisfied now?" + +"Satisfied!" cried Valentine; "yes, I am satisfied that your stepdaughter +is being murdered!" + +"Murdered!" echoed the stockbroker, his voice thick and faint; but +Valentine did not heed the change in it. + +"Yes, murdered--sacrificed to the utter incompetence of that old idiot +who has just left us." + +Philip Sheldon drew a long breath. + +"What!" he exclaimed; "do you doubt Doddleson's skill?" + +"Do you believe in it? Do you? No; I cannot think that a man of your keen +perception in all other matters--half a medical man yourself--can be the +dupe of so shallow an impostor. And it is to that man's judgment my +darling's life has been confided; and it is to that man I have looked, +with hope and comfort in the thought of his power to save my treasure! +Good God! what a reed on which to rely! And of all the medical men of +London, this is the one you have chosen!" + +"I must really protest against this rant, Hawkehurst," said Philip +Sheldon. "I hold myself responsible for the selection which I made, and +will not have that selection questioned in this violent and outrageous +manner by you. Your anxiety for Charlotte's recovery may excuse a great +deal, but it cannot excuse this kind of thing; and if you cannot command +yourself better, I must beg you to absent yourself from my house until my +stepdaughter's recovery puts an end to all this fuss." + +"Do you believe in Dr. Doddleson's skill?" asked Valentine doggedly. He +wanted to have that question answered at any cost. + +"Most decidedly I do, with the rest of the medical world. My choice of +this gentleman as Charlotte's adviser was governed by his reputation as a +safe and conscientious man. His opinions are sound, trustworthy--" + +"His opinions!" cried Valentine with a bitter laugh; "what in heaven's +name do you call his opinions? The only opinions I could extract from him +to-day were solemn echoes of yours. And the man himself! I took the +measure of him before I asked him a question; and physiology is a lie if +that man is anything better than an impostor." + +"His position is the answer to that." + +"His position is no answer. He is not the first impostor who has attained +position, and is not likely to be the last. You must forgive me, if I +speak with some violence, Mr. Sheldon. I feel too deeply to remember the +conventionalities of my position. The dear girl yonder, hovering between +life and death, is my promised wife. As your stepdaughter she is very +dear to you, no doubt, and you are of course anxious to do your duty as +her stepfather. But she is all the world to me--my one sweet memory of +the past, my sole hope for the future. I will not trust her to the care +of Dr. Doddleson; I claim the right to choose another physician--as that +man's coadjutor, if you please. I have no wish to offend the doctor of +your choice." + +"This is all sheer nonsense," said Mr. Sheldon. + +"It is nonsense about which you must let me have my own way," replied +Valentine, resolutely. "My stake on this hazard is too heavy for careless +play. I shall go back to town at once and seek out a physician." + +"Do you know any great man?" + +"No; but I will find one." + +"If you go today, you will inevitably alarm Charlotte." + +"True; and disappoint her into the bargain. I suppose in such a case +tomorrow will do as well as to-day?" + +"Decidedly." + +"I can go by the first train, and return with my doctor in the afternoon. +Yes, I will go tomorrow." + +Mr. Sheldon breathed more freely. There are cases in which to obtain time +for thought seems the one essential thing--cases in which a reprieve is +as good as a pardon. + +"Pray let us consider this business quietly," he said, with a faint sigh +of weariness. "There is no necessity for all this excitement. You can go +to town to-morrow, by the first train, as you say. If it is any +satisfaction to you to bring down a physician, bring one; bring half a +dozen, if you please. But, for the last time, I most emphatically assure +you that anything that tends to alarm Charlotte is the one thing of all +others most sure to hinder her recovery." + +"I know that. She shall not be frightened; but she shall have a better +adviser than Dr. Doddleson. And now I will go back to the house. She will +wonder at my absence." + +He went to the bright, airy room where Charlotte was seated, her head +lying back upon the pillows, her face paler, her glances and tones more +languid than on the previous day as it seemed to Valentine. Diana was +near her, solicitous and tender; and on the other side of the window sat +Mrs. Sheldon, with her Dissenting minister's biography open on her lap. + +All through that day Valentine Hawkehurst played his part bravely: it was +a hard and bitter part to play--the part of hope and confidence while +unutterable fears were rending his heart. He read the epistle and gospel +of the day to his betrothed; and afterwards some chapters of St. +John--those profoundly mournful chapters that foreshadow the agonising +close. It was Charlotte who selected these chapters, and her lover could +find no excuse for disputing her choice. + +It was the first time that they had shared any religious exercise, and +the hearts of both were deeply touched by the thought of this. + +"How frivolous all our talk must have been, Valentine, when it seems so +new to us to be reading these beautiful words together?" + +Her head was half supported by the pillows, half resting on her lover's +shoulder, and her eyes travelled along the lines as he read, in a calm +low voice, which was unbroken to the end. + +Early in the evening Charlotte retired, worn out by the day's physical +weariness, in spite of Valentine's fond companionship. Later, when it was +dusk, Diana came downstairs with the news that the invalid was sleeping +quietly. Mrs. Sheldon was dozing in her arm-chair, the Dissenting +minister having fallen to the ground; and Valentine was leaning, with +folded arms, on the broad window-sill looking out into the shadowy +garden. Mr. Sheldon had given them very little of his society during that +day. He went out immediately after his interview with Valentine, on a +sea-coast ramble, which lasted till dinner-time. After dinner he remained +in the room where they had dined. He was there now. The light of the +candles, by which he read his papers, shone out upon the dusk. + +"Will you come for a stroll with me, Diana?" asked Valentine. + +Miss Paget assented promptly; and they went out into the garden, beyond +the reach of Mr. Sheldon's ears, had that gentleman been disposed to +place himself at his open window in the character of a listener. + +"I want to tell you my plans about Charlotte," Valentine began. "I am +going to London to-morrow to search for a greater physician than Dr. +Doddleson. I shall find my man in an hour or so; and, if possible, shall +return with him in the evening. There is no apparent reason to anticipate +any sudden change for the worse; but if such a change should take place, +I rely on you, dear, to give me the earliest tidings of it. I suppose you +can get a fly here, if you want one?" + +"I can get to St. Leonards, if that is what you mean," Miss Paget +answered promptly. "I dare say there is a fly to be had; if not, I can +walk there. I am not afraid of a few miles' walk, by day or night. If +there should be a change, Valentine--which God forbid--I will telegraph +the tidings of it to you." + +"You had better address the message to me at Rancy's, Covent Garden; the +house where the Ragamuffins have their rooms, you know, dear. That is a +more central point than my lodgings, and nearer the terminus. I will call +there two or three times in the course of the day." + +"You may trust my vigilance, Valentine. I did not think it was in my +nature to love any one as I love Charlotte Halliday." + +Gustave Lenoble's letters lying unanswered in her desk asserted the +all-absorbing nature of Diana's affection for the fading girl. She _was_ +fading. The consciousness of this made all other love sacrilege, as it +seemed to Diana. She sat up late that night to answer Gustave's last +letter of piteous complaint. + +"She had forgotten him. Ah, that he had been foolish--insensate--to +confide himself in her love! Was he not old and grey in comparison to +such youth--such freshness--a venerable dotard of thirty-five? What had +he with dreams of love and marriage? Fie, then. He humiliated himself in +the dust beneath her _mignon_ feet. He invited her to crush him with +those cruel feet. But if she did not answer his letters, he would come to +Harold's Hill. He would mock himself of that ferocious Sheldon--of a +battalion of Sheldons still more ferocious--of all the world, at +last--to be near her." + +"Believe me, dear Gustave, I do not forget," wrote Diana, in reply to +these serio-comic remonstrances. "I was truly sorry to leave town, on +your account and on my father's. But my dear adopted sister is paramount +with me now. You will not grudge her my care or my love, for she may not +long be with me to claim them. There is nothing but sorrow here in all +our hearts; sorrow, and an ever-present dread." + + + + +Book the Eighth. + + + +A FIGHT AGAINST TIME. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +A DREAD REVELATION. + +The early fast train by which Valentine Hawkehurst travelled brought him +into town at a quarter past nine o'clock. During the journey he had been +meditating on the way in which he should set to work when he arrived in +London. No ignorance could be more profound than his on all points +relating to the medical profession. Dimly floating in his brain there +were the names of doctors whom he had heard of as celebrated men--one for +the chest, another for the liver, another for the skin, another for the +eyes; but, among all these famous men, who was the man best able to cope +with the mysterious wasting away, the gradual, almost imperceptible +ebbing of that one dear life which Valentine wanted to save? + +This question must be answered by some one; and Valentine was sorely +puzzled as to who that some one must be. + +The struggling young writer had but few friends. He had, indeed, worked +too hard for the possibility of friendship. The cultivation of the +severer Muses is rarely compatible with a wide circle of acquaintances; +and Valentine, if not a cultivator of these severe ones, had been a hard +and honest worker during the later reputable portion of his life. His +friendships of the previous portion had been the friendships of the +railway-carriage and the smoking room, the _café_ and the gaming-table. +He could count upon his fingers the people to whom he could apply for +counsel in this crisis of his life. There was George Sheldon, a man for +whom he entertained a most profound contempt; Captain Paget, a man who +might or might not be able to give him good advice, but who would +inevitably sacrifice Charlotte Halliday's welfare to self-interest, if +self-interest could be served by the recommendation of an incompetent +adviser. + +"He would send me to some idiot of the Doddleson class, if he thought he +could get a guinea or a dinner by the recommendation," Valentine said to +himself, and decided that to Horatio Paget he would not apply. There were +his employers, the editors and proprietors of the magazines for which he +worked; all busy over-burdened workers in the great mill, spending the +sunny hours of their lives between a pile of unanswered letters and a +waste-paper basket; men who would tell him to look in the Post-office +Directory, without lifting their eyes from the paper over which their +restless pens were speeding. + +No. Amongst these was not the counsellor whom Valentine Hawkehurst needed +in this dire hour of difficulty. + +"There are some very good fellows among the Ragamuffins," he said to +himself, as he thought of the only literary and artistic club of which he +was a member; "fellows who stuck by me when I was down in the world, and +who would do anything to serve me now they know me for an honest worker. +But, unfortunately, farce writers and burlesque writers, and young +meerschaum-smoking painters, are not the sort of men to give good advice: +I want the advice of a medical man." + +Mr. Hawkehurst almost bounded from his seat as he said this. The advice +of a medical man? Yes; and was there not a medical man among the +Ragamuffins? and something more than a medical man? That very doctor, who +of all other men upon this earth could best give him counsel--the doctor +who had stood by the deathbed of Charlotte Halliday's father. + +He remembered the conversation that had occurred at Bayswater, on the +evening of Christmas day, upon this very subject. He remembered how from +the talk about ghosts they had drifted somehow into talking of Tom +Halliday; whereupon Mrs. Sheldon had been melted to tears, and had gone +on to praise Philip Sheldon's conduct to his dying friend, and to speak +of Mr. Burkham, the strange doctor, called in too late to save, or, it +might have been, incapable to save. + +"Sheldon seems to have a genius for calling in incapable doctors," he +thought bitterly. + +Incapable as Mr. Burkham might have been for the exigencies of this +particular case, he would at least be able to inform Valentine who among +the medical celebrities of London would be best adapted to advise in such +an illness as Charlotte Halliday's. + +"And if, as Diana has sometimes suggested, there is any hereditary +disease, this Burkham may be able to throw some light upon the nature of +it," thought Valentine. + +He went straight from the railway terminus to the quiet tavern upon the +first floor of which the Ragamuffins had their place of rendezvous. It +was not an hour for the encounter of many Ragamuffins. A meek-looking +young man, of clerical aspect, who had adapted a Palais Royal farce, and +had awoke in the morning to find himself famous, and eligible for +admission amongst the Ragamuffins, was sipping his sherry and soda-water +while he skimmed the morning papers. Him Mr. Hawkehurst saluted with an +absent nod, and went in search of the steward of the club, from whom he +obtained Mr. Burkham's address, with some little trouble in the way of +hunting through old and obscure documents. + +It was the old address; the old dingy, comfortable, muffin-bell-haunted +street in which Mr. Burkham had lived ten years before, when he was +summoned to attend the sick Yorkshire farmer. + +Mr. Burkham's career had not been brightened by the sunshine of +prosperity. He had managed to live somehow, and to find food and raiment +for his young wife, who, when she considered the lilies of the field, may +have envied their shining robes of pure whiteness, so dingy and dark was +her own apparel. When children came, the young surgeon contrived to find +food and raiment for them also, but not without daily and hourly +struggles with that grim wolf who haunts the thresholds of so many +dwellings, and will not be thrust from the door. Sometimes a little +glimmering ray of light illumined Mr. Burkham's pathway, and he was +humbly grateful to Providence for the brief glimpse of sunshine. But for +a meek fair-faced man, with a nervous desire to do well, a very poor +opinion of his own merits, and a diffident, not to say depressed manner, +the world is apt to be a hard battle-ground. + +Mr. Burkham sometimes found himself well-nigh beaten in the cruel strife; +and at such times, in the dead silence of the night, with mortal agonies, +and writhings as of Pythoness upon tripod, Mr. Burkham gave himself up to +the composition of a farce, adapted, not from the French, but from his +memories of Wright and Bedford in the jovial old student days, when the +pit of the Adelphi Theatre had been the pleasant resort of his evenings. +He could no longer afford the luxury of theatrical entertainments, except +when provided with a free admission. But from the hazy reminiscences +floating in his poor tired brain he concocted little pieces which he +fondly hoped might win him money and fame. + +With much effort and interest he contrived to get himself elected a +Ragamuffin; believing that to be a Ragmuffin was to secure a position as +a dramatic writer. But with one or two fortunate exceptions, his pieces +were refused. The managers would not have the poor little feeble +phantasmagoria of bygone fun, even supported by the whole clan of +Ragamuffins. So Mr. Burkham had gradually melted into the dimness of +Bloomsbury, and haunted the club-room of the Ragamuffins no more. + +A hansom carried Valentine Hawkehurst swiftly to these regions of +Bloomsbury. It was no time for the saving of cab-hire. The soldier +of fortune thought no longer of his nest-eggs--his Unitas Bank +deposit-notes. He was fighting with time and with death; foes dire and +dreadful, against whose encroachments the sturdiest of mortal warriors +can make but a feeble stand. He found the dingy-looking house in the +dingy-looking street; and the humble drudge who opened the door informed +him that Mr. Burkham was at home, and ushered him into a darksome and +dreary surgery at the back of the house, where a phrenological head, +considerably the worse for London smoke, surmounted a dingy bookcase +filled with the dingiest of books. A table, upon which were a +blotting-book and inkstand, and two shabby horsehair chairs, composed the +rest of the furniture. Valentine sent his card to the surgeon, and seated +himself on one of the horsehair chairs, to await that gentleman's +appearance. + +He came after a brief delay, which seemed long to his visitor. He came +from regions in the back of the house, rubbing his hands, which seemed +to have been newly washed, and the odour of senna and aloes hung about +his garments. + +"I doubt if you remember my name, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine; "but you +and I are members of the same club, and that a club among the members of +which considerable good feeling prevails. I come to ask a favour"--Mr. +Burkham winced, for this sounded like genteel begging, and for genteel +beggars this struggling surgeon had no spare cash--"which it will +scarcely cause you a moment's thought to grant. I am in great +distress"--Mr. Burkham winced again, for this sounded still more like +begging--"mental distress"--Mr. Burkham gave a little sigh of +relief--"and I come to you for advice." Mr. Burkham gave a more profound +sigh of relief. + +"I can assure you that my best advice is at your command," he said, +seating himself, and motioning to his visitor to be seated. "I am +beginning to remember your face amongst the members of the club, though +the name on your card did not strike me as familiar. You see, I have +never been able to afford much time for relaxation at the Ragamuffins', +though I assure you I found the agreeable conversation there, the +literary _on dits_, and so on, a very great relief. But my own little +efforts in the dramatic line were not successful, and I found myself +compelled to devote myself more to my profession. And now I have said +quite enough about myself; let me hear how I can be useful to you." + +"In the first place, let me ask you a question. Do you know anything of a +certain Dr. Doddleson?" + +"Of Plantagenet Square?" + +"Yes; of Plantagenet Square." + +"Well, not much. I have heard him called Dowager Doddleson; and I believe +he is very popular among hypochondriac old ladies who have more money +than they know what to do with, and very little common sense to regulate +their disposal of it." + +"Is Dr. Doddleson a man to whom you would intrust the life of your +dearest friend?" + +"Most emphatically no!" cried the surgeon, growing red with excitement. + +"Very well, Mr. Burkham; my dearest friend, a young lady--well, in plain +truth, the woman who was to have been my wife, and whom I love as it is +not the lot of every plighted wife to be loved--this dear girl has been +wasting away for the last two or three months under the influence of an +inscrutable malady, and Dr. Doddleson is the only man called to attend +her in all that time." + +"A mistake!" said Mr. Burkham, gravely; "a very great mistake! Dr. +Doddleson lives in a fine square, and drives a fine carriage, and has a +reputation amongst the class I have spoken of; but he is about the last +man I would consult as to the health of any one dear to me." + +"That is precisely the opinion which I formed after ten minutes' +conversation with him. Now, what I want from you, Mr. Burkham, is the +name and address of the man to whom I can intrust this dear girl's life." + +"Let me see. There are so many men, you know, and great men. Is it a case +of consumption?" + +"No, thank God!" + +"Heart-disease, perhaps?" + +"No; there is no organic disease. It is a languor--a wasting away." + +Mr. Burkham suggested other diseases whereof the outward sign was languor +and wasting. + +"No," replied Valentine; "according to Dr. Doddleson there is actually no +disease--nothing but this extreme prostration--this gradual vanishing of +vital power. And now I come to another point upon which I want your +advice. It has been suggested that this constitutional weakness may be +inherited; and here I think you can help me." + +"How so?" + +"You attended the lady's father." + +"Indeed!" cried Mr. Burkham, delighted. "This is really interesting. In +what year did I attend this gentleman? If you will allow me, I will refer +to some of my old case-books." + +He drew out a clumsy drawer in the clumsy table, in order to hunt for old +memoranda. + +"I am not quite certain as to the year," answered Valentine; "but it was +more than ten years ago. The gentleman died close by here, in Fitzgeorge +Street. His name was Halliday." + +Mr. Burkham had drawn out the drawer to its farthest extent. As Valentine +pronounced this name, he let it drop to the ground with a crash, and sat, +statue-like, staring at the speaker. All other names given to mortal man +he might forget; but this one never. Valentine saw the sudden horror in +his face, before he could recompose his features into something of their +conventional aspect. + +"Yes," he said, looking down at the fallen drawer with its scattered +papers and case-books, "yes, I have some recollection of the name of +Halliday." + +"Some very strange and agitating recollection it would seem by your +manner, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine, at once assured that there was +something more than common in the surgeon's look and gesture; and +determined to fathom the mystery, let it be what it might. + +"O dear no," said the surgeon nervously; "I was not agitated, only +surprised. It was surprising to me to hear the name of a patient so long +forgotten. And so the lady to whom you are engaged is a daughter of Mr. +Halliday's? The wife--Mrs. Halliday--is still living, I suppose?" + +"Yes; but the lady who was then Mrs. Halliday is now Mrs. Sheldon." + +"Of course; he married her," said Mr. Burkham. "Yes; I remember hearing +of the marriage." + +He had tried in vain to recover his old composure. He was white to the +lips, and his hand shook as he tried to arrange his scattered papers. + +"What does it mean?" thought Valentine. "Mrs. Sheldon talked of this +man's inexperience. Can it be that his incompetency lost the life of his +patient, and that he knows it was so?" + +"Mrs. Halliday is now Mrs. Sheldon," repeated the surgeon, in a feeble +manner. "Yes, I remember; and Mr. Sheldon--the dentist, who at that time +resided in Fitzgeorge Street--is he still living?" + +"He is still living. It was he who called in Dr. Doddleson to attend upon +Miss Halliday. As her stepfather, he has some amount of authority, you +see; not legal authority--for my dear girl is of age--but social +authority. He called in Doddleson, and appears to place confidence in +him; and as he is something of a medical man himself, and pretends to +understand Miss Halliday's case thoroughly--" + +"Stop!" cried Mr. Burkham, suddenly abandoning all pretence of calmness. +"Has he--Sheldon--any interest in his stepdaughter's death?" + +"No, certainly not. All her father's money went to him upon his marriage +with her mother. He can gain nothing by her death; on the contrary, he +may lose a good deal, for she is the heir-at-law to a large fortune." + +"And if she dies, that fortune will go--" + +"I really don't know where it will go," Valentine answered carelessly: +he thought the subject was altogether beside the question of Mr. +Burkham's agitation, and it was the cause of that agitation which he was +anxious to discover. + +"If Mr. Sheldon can gain by his stepdaughter's death, fear him!" +exclaimed the surgeon, with sudden passion; "fear him as you would fear +death itself--worse than death, for death is neither so stealthy nor so +treacherous as he is!" + +"What in Heaven's name do you mean?" + +"That which I thought my lips would never utter to mortal hearing--that +which I dare not publicly proclaim, at the hazard of taking the bread out +of the mouths of my wife and children. I have kept this hateful secret +for eleven years--through many a sleepless night and dreary day. I will +tell it to you; for if there is another life in peril, that life shall be +lost through no cowardice of mine." + +"What secret?" cried Valentine. + +"The secret of that poor fellow's death. My God! I can remember the clasp +of his hand, and the friendly look of his eyes, the day before he died. +He was poisoned by Philip Sheldon!" + +"You must be mad!" gasped Valentine, in a faint voice. + +For one moment of astonishment and incredulity he thought this man must +needs be a fool or a lunatic, so wildly improbable did the accusation +seem. But in the next instant the curtain was lifted, and he knew that +Philip Sheldon was a villain, and knew that he had never wholly trusted +him. + +"Never until to-day have I told this secret," said the surgeon; "not even +to my wife." + +"I thank you," answered Valentine, in the same faint voice; "with all my +heart, I thank you." + +Yes, the curtain was lifted. This mysterious illness, this slow silent +decay of bloom and beauty, by a process inscrutable as the devilry of +medieval poisoner or Hecate-serving witch--this was murder. Murder! The +disease, which had hitherto been nameless, had found its name at last. It +was all clear now. Philip Sheldon's anxiety; the selection of an utterly +incompetent adviser; certain looks and tones that had for a moment +mystified him, and had been forgotten in the next, came back to him with +a strange distinctness, with all their hidden meaning made clear and +plain as the broad light of day. + +But the motive? What motive could prompt the slow destruction of that +innocent life? A fortune was at stake, it is true; but that fortune, as +Valentine understood the business, depended on the life of Charlotte +Halliday. Beyond this point he had never looked. In all his consideration +of the circumstances relating to the Haygarthian estate, he had never +thought of what might happen in the event of Charlotte's decease. + +"It is a diabolical mystery," he said to himself. "There can be no +motive--_none_. To destroy Thomas Halliday was to clear his way to +fortune; to destroy Charlotte is to destroy his chance of fortune." + +And then he remembered the dark speeches of George Sheldon. + +"My God! and this was what he meant, as plainly as he dared tell me! He +did tell me that his brother was an unutterable scoundrel; and I turned a +deaf ear to his warning, because it suited my own interest to believe +that villain. For her dear sake I believed him. I would have believed in +Beelzebub, if he had promised me her dear hand. And I let myself be duped +by the lying promise, and left my darling in the power of Beelzebub!" + +Thoughts followed each other swift as lightning through his overwrought +brain. It seemed but a moment that he had been sitting with his +clenched hands pressed against his forehead, when he turned suddenly +upon the surgeon. + +"For God's sake, help me, guide me!" he said. "You have struck a blow +that has numbed my senses. What am I to do? My future wife is in that +man's keeping--dying, as I believe. How am I to save her?" + +"I cannot tell you. You may take the cleverest man in London to see her; +but it is a question if that man will perceive the danger so clearly as +to take prompt measures. In these cases there is always room for doubt; +and a man would rather doubt his own perceptions than believe the hellish +truth. It is by this natural hesitation so many lives are lost. While the +doctor deliberates, the patient dies. And then, if the secret of the +death transpires--by circumstantial evidence, perhaps, which never came +to the doctor's knowledge,--there is a public outcry. The doctor's +practice is ruined, and his heart broken. The outcry would have been +still louder if he had told the truth in time to save the patient, and +had not been able to prove his words. You think me a coward and a +scoundrel because I dared not utter my suspicion when I saw Mr. Halliday +dying. While it was only a suspicion it would have been certain ruin for +me to give utterance to it. The day came when it was almost a conviction. +I went back to that man Sheldon's house, determined to insist upon the +calling in of a physician who would have made that conviction certainty. +My resolution came too late. It is possible that Sheldon had perceived my +suspicions, and had hastened matters. My patient was dead before I +reached the house." + +"How am I to save her?" repeated Valentine, with the same helpless +manner. He could not bring himself to consider Tom Halliday's death. The +subject was too far away from him--remote as the dim shadows of departed +centuries. In all the universe there were but two figures standing out in +lurid brightness against the dense night of chaos--a helpless girl held +in the clutches of a secret assassin; and it was his work to rescue her. + +"What am I to do?" he asked. "Tell me what I am to do." + +"What it may be wisest to do I cannot tell you," answered Mr. Burkham, +almost as helplessly as the other had asked the question. "I can give you +the name of the best man to get to the bottom of such a case--a man who +gave evidence on the Fryar trial--Jedd. You have heard of Jedd, I +daresay. You had better go straight to Jedd, and take him down with you +to Miss Halliday. His very name will frighten Sheldon." + +"I will go at once. Stay--the address! Where am I to find Dr. Jedd?" + +"In Burlington Row. But there is one thing to be considered." + +"What?" + +"The interference of Jedd may only make that man desperate. He may hasten +matters now as he hastened matters before. If you had seen his coolness +at that time; if you had seen him, as I saw him, standing by that poor +fellow's deathbed, comforting him--yes, with friendly speeches--laughing +and joking, watching the agonising pain and the miserable sickness, and +all the dreary wretchedness of such a death, and _never_ swerving from +his work; if you had seen him, you would understand why I am afraid to +advise you. That man was as desperate as he was cool when he murdered his +friend. He will be more reckless this time." + +"Why?" + +"Because he has reached a higher stage in the science of murder. The +symptoms of that poor Yorkshireman were the symptoms of arsenical +poisoning; the symptoms of which you have told me to-day denote a +vegetable poison. _That_ affords very vague diagnosis, and leaves no +trace. That was the agent which enabled the Borgias to decimate Rome. +It is older than classic Greece, and simple as _a b c_, and will remain +so until the medical expert is a recognized officer of the law, the +faithful guardian of the bed over which the suspected poisoner +loiters--past-master of the science in which the murderer is rarely more +than an experimentalist, and protected from all the hazards of plain +speaking by the nature of his office." + +"Great Heaven, how am I to save her?" exclaimed Valentine. He could not +contemplate the subject in its broad social aspect; he could only think +of this one dear life at stake. "To send this Dr. Jedd might be to hasten +her death; to send a less efficient man would be mere childishness. WHAT +shall I do?" + +He looked despairingly at the surgeon, and in that one glance perceived +what a frail reed this was upon which he was leaning. And then, like +the sudden gleam of lightning, a name flashed across his mind,--George +Sheldon, the lawyer, the schemer, the man who of all the world best +knew this vile enemy and assassin against whom he was matched; he it +was of whom counsel should be asked in this crisis. Once perceiving +this, Valentine was prompt to act. It was the first flash of light in +the darkness. + +"You mean to stand by me in this, don't you?" he asked Mr. Burkham. + +"With all my heart and soul." + +"Good. Then you must go to Dr. Jedd instantly. Tell him all you know--Tom +Halliday's death; the symptoms of Charlotte's decline, as you have heard +them from me--_everything_; and let him hold himself in readiness to +start for Hastings directly he hears from or sees me. I am going to a man +who of all men can tell me how to deal with Philip Sheldon. I shall try +to be in Burlington Row in an hour from this time; but in any case you +will wait there till I come. I suppose, in a desperate case like this, +Dr. Jedd will put aside all less urgent work?" + +"No doubt of that." + +"I trust to you to secure his sympathy," said Valentine. + +He was in the darksome entrance-hall by this time. Mr. Burkham followed, +and opened the door for him. + +"Have no fear of me," he said. "Good bye." + +The two men shook hands with a grip significant as masonic sign-manual. +It meant on the one part hearty co-operation, on the other implicit +confidence. In the next moment Valentine sprang into the cab. + +"King's Road--entrance to Gray's Inn, and drive like mad!" he shouted to +the driver. The hansom rattled across the stones, dashed round corners, +struck consternation to scudding children in pinafores, all but +annihilated more than one perambulator, and in less than ten minutes +after leaving Mr. Burkham's door, ground against the kerbstone before the +little gate of Gray's Inn. + +"God grant that George Sheldon may be at home!" Valentine said to +himself, as he hurried towards that gentleman's office. George Sheldon +was at home. In this fight against time, Mr. Hawkehurst had so far found +the odds in his favour. + +"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the lawyer, looking up from his desk, as +Valentine appeared on the threshold of the door, pale and breathless; "to +what do I owe the unusual honour of a visit from Mr. Hawkehurst? I +thought that rising _littérateur_ had cut all old acquaintances, and gone +in for the upper circles." + +"I have come to you on a matter of life and death, George Sheldon," said +Valentine; "this is no time to talk of why I haven't been to you before. +When you and I last met, you advised me to beware of your brother Philip. +It wasn't the first, or the second, or the third time that you so warned +me. And now speak out like an honest man, and tell me what you meant by +that warning? For God's sake, speak plainly this time." + +"I cannot afford to speak more plainly than I have spoken half a dozen +times already. I told you to beware of my brother Phil, and I meant that +warning in its fullest significance. If you had chosen to take my advice, +you would have placed Charlotte Halliday's fortune, and Charlotte +Halliday herself, beyond his power, by an immediate marriage. You didn't +choose to do that, and there was an end of the matter. I have been a +heavy loser by your pigheaded obstinacy; and I dare say before you and +Phil Sheldon have done with each other, you too will find yourself a +loser." + +"God help me, yes!" cried Valentine, with a groan; "I stand to make the +heaviest loss that was ever made by man." + +"What do you mean?" exclaimed George. + +"Shall I tell you what you meant when you warned me against your own +brother? Shall I tell you why you so warned me? You know that Philip +Sheldon murdered Tom Halliday." + +"Great God!" + +"Yes; the secret is out. You knew it; how or when you discovered it I +cannot tell. You knew of that one hellish crime, and would have prevented +the commission of a second murder. You should have spoken more plainly. +To know what you knew, and to confine yourself to cautious hints and +vague suggestions, as you did, was to have part in that devilish work. If +Charlotte Halliday dies, her blood be upon your head--upon yours--as well +as upon his!" + +The young man had risen in his passion, and stood before George Sheldon +with uplifted hands, and eyes that flashed angry lightnings. It seemed +almost as if he would have called down the Divine vengeance upon this +man's head. + +"If Charlotte Halliday dies!" repeated George, in a horror-stricken +whisper; "why should you suggest such a thing?" + +"Because she is dying." + +There was a pause. Valentine flung himself passionately upon the chair +from which he had just risen, with his back to George Sheldon, and his +face bent over the back of the chair. The lawyer sat looking straight +before him, with a ghastly countenance. + +"I told him he meant _this_," he said to himself, in a hoarse whisper. "I +told him in this office not six months ago. Powers of hell, what a +villain he is! And there are people who do not believe there is a devil!" + +For a few moments Valentine gave free vent to his passion of grief. These +tears of rage, of agony the most supreme, were the first he had shed +since he had bent his face over Charlotte's soft brown hair, to hide the +evidence of his sorrow. When he had dashed these bitter drops away from +his burning eyes, he turned to confront George Sheldon, pale as death, +but very calm. And after this he gave way no more to his passion. He was +matched against Time, of all enemies the most pitiless and unrelenting, +and every minute wasted was a point scored by his foe. + +"I want your help, George Sheldon," he said. "If you have ever been sorry +that you made no effort to save Charlotte Halliday's father, prove +yourself his friend by trying to save her." + +"_If_ I have ever been sorry!" echoed the lawyer. "Why, my miserable +dreams have never been free from the horror of that man's face. You don't +know what it is--murder! Nobody knows who hasn't been concerned in it. +You read of murders in your newspapers. A shot B, or C poisoned D, and so +on, all through the letters of the alphabet, with a fresh batch for every +Sunday; but it never comes home to you. You think of the horror of it in +a shadowy kind of way, as you might think of having a snake twisted round +your waist and legs, like that blessed man and boys one never sees the +last of. But if you were to look at that plaster cast all your life, you +couldn't realize ten per cent of the horror you'd feel if the snake was +_there_, alive, crushing your bones, and hissing in your ear. I have been +face to face with murder, Valentine Hawkehurst; and if I were to live a +century, I should never forget what I felt when I stood by Tom Halliday's +deathbed, and it flashed upon me, all at once, that my brother Phil was +poisoning him." + +"And you did not try to save him--your friend?" cried Valentine. + +"Why, you see," replied the other, in a strange slow way, "it was too +late to save him: I knew that, and--I held my tongue. What could I do? +Against my own brother! That sort of thing in a family is ruin for every +one! Do you think anybody would have brought their business to me after +my brother had stood in the Old Bailey dock to take his trial for murder? +No; my only course was to keep my own counsel, and I kept it. Phil made +eighteen thousand pounds by his marriage with poor Tom's widow, and a +paltry hundred or two is all _I_ ever touched of that money." + +"And you _could_ touch that money?" cried Valentine, aghast. + +"Money carries no infection. Did you ever ask any questions about the +money you won at German gaming-tables. I dare say some of your napoleons +and ten-thaler notes could have told queer stories if they had been able +to talk. Taking Phil's money has never weighed upon my conscience. I'm +not very inquisitive about the antecedents of a five-pound note; but I'll +tell you what it is, Hawkehurst, I'd give all I have, and all I ever +hope to have, and would go out and sweep a crossing to-morrow, if I could +get Tom Halliday's face out of my mind, with the look that he turned upon +me the last time I saw him. 'Ah, George,' he said, 'in illness a man +feels the comfort of being among friends!' And he took my hand and +squeezed it, in his old hearty way. We had been boys together, +Hawkehurst, birds-nesting in Hyley Woods; on the same side in our +Barlingford cricket-matches. And I shook his hand, and went away, and +left him to die!" + +And here Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn, the Sheldon who was in with the +money-lenders, sharpest of legal prestigitators, most ruthless of +opponents, most unscrupulous of allies, buried his face in a flaming +bandanna, and fairly sobbed aloud. When the passion had passed, he got up +and walked hastily to the window, more ashamed of this one touch of +honest emotion than of all the falsehoods and chicaneries of his career. + +"I didn't think I could have been such an ass," he muttered sheepishly. + +"I did not hope that you could feel so deeply," answered Valentine. "And +now help me to save the only child of your ill-fated friend. I am sure +that you can help me." + +Without waiting to be questioned, Valentine related the circumstances of +Charlotte's illness, and of his interview with Mr. Burkham. + +"I did not even know that the poor girl was ill," said George Sheldon. "I +have not seen Phil for months. He came here one day, and I gave him a bit +of my mind. I told him if he tried to harm her I'd let the light in upon +him and his doings. And I'll keep my word." + +"But his motive? What, in the name of Heaven, can be his motive for +taking her innocent life? He knows of the Haygarth estate, and must hope +to profit by her fortune if she lives." + +"Yes, and to secure the whole of that fortune if she dies. Her death +would make her mother sole heir to that estate, and the mother is the +merest tool in his hands. He may even have induced Charlotte to make a +will in his favour, so that he himself may stand in her shoes." + +"She would not have made a will without telling me of it." + +"You don't know that. My brother Phil can do anything. It would be as +easy for him to persuade her to maintain secrecy about the transaction as +to persuade her to make the will. Do you suppose _he_ shrinks from +multiplying lies and forgeries and hypocrisies? Do you suppose anything +in that small way comes amiss to the man who has once brought his mind to +murder? Why, look at the Scotch play of that fellow Shakespeare's. At the +beginning, your Macbeth is a respectable trustworthy sort of person, +anxious to get on in life, and so on, and that's all; but no sooner has +he made an end of poor old Duncan, than he lays about him right and +left--Banquo, Fleance, anybody and everybody that happens to be in his +way. It was lucky for that Tartar of a wife of his that _she_ hook'd it, +or he'd soon have put a stop to her sleep-walking. There's no such wide +difference between a man and a tiger, after all. The tiger's a decent +fellow enough till he has tasted human blood; but when once he _has_, +Lord save the country-side from the jaws of the man-eater!" + +"For Heaven's sake let us waste no time in talk!" Valentine cried, +impetuously. "I am to meet Burkham in Burlington Row directly I have got +your advice." + +"What for?" + +"To see Dr. Jedd, and take him down to Hastings, if possible." + +"That won't do." + +"Why not?" + +"Because Jedd's appearance would give Phil the office. Jedd gave evidence +on the Fryar trial, and must be a marked man to him. All Jedd can tell +you is that Charlotte is being poisoned. You know that already. Of course +she'll want medical treatment, and so on, to bring her round; but she +can't get that under my brother's roof. What you have to do is to get her +away from that house." + +"You do not know how ill she is. I doubt if she could bear the removal." + +"Anything is better than to remain. _That_ is certain death." + +"But your brother would surely dispute her removal." + +"He would, and oppose it inch by inch. We must get him away, before we +attempt to remove her." + +"How?" + +"I will find the means for that. I know something of his business +relations, and can invent some false cry for luring him off the trail. We +_must_ get him away. The poor girl was not in actual danger when you left +her, was she?" + +"No, thank God, there was no appearance of immediate danger. But she was +very ill. And that man holds her life in his hand. He knows that I have +come to London in search of a doctor. What if--" + +"Keep yourself quiet, Hawkehurst. He will not hasten her death unless he +is desperate; for a death occurring immediately after your first +expression of alarm would seem sudden. He'll avoid any appearance of +suddenness, if he can, depend upon it. The first thing is to get him +away. But the question is, how to do it? There must be a bait. What bait? +Don't talk to me, Hawkehurst. Let me think it out, if I can." + +The lawyer leaned his elbows on the table, and abandoned himself to +profound cogitation, with his forehead supported by his clenched hands. +Valentine waited patiently while he thus cogitated. + +"I must go down to Phil's office," he said at last, "and ferret out some +of his secrets. Nothing but stock-exchange business, of an important +character, would induce him to leave Charlotte Halliday. But if I can +telegraph such a message as will bring him to town, I'll do it. Leave all +that to me. And now, what about your work?" + +"I am at a loss what to do, if I am not to take Dr. Jedd to Harold's +Hill." + +"Take him to St. Leonards; and if I get my brother out of the way, you +can have Charlotte conveyed to an hotel in St. Leonard's, where she can +stop till she picks up strength enough to come to London." + +"Do you think her mother will consent to her removal? + +"Do I think you will be such an idiot as to ask for her consent?" cried +George Sheldon impatiently. "My brother's wife is so weak a fool, that +the chances are she'd insist on her daughter stopping quietly, to be +poisoned. No; you must get Mrs. Sheldon out of the way somehow. Send her +to look at the shops, or to bathe, or to pick up shells on the beach, or +anything else equally inane. She's easy enough to deal with. There's that +young woman, Paget's daughter, with them still, I suppose? Yes. Very +well, then, you and she can get Charlotte away between you." + +"But for me to take those two girls to an hotel--the chance of scandal, +of wonder, of inquiry? There ought to be some other person--some nurse. +Stay, there's Nancy Woolper--the very woman! My darling has told me of +that old woman's affectionate anxiety about her health--an anxiety which +was singularly intense, it seemed to Lotta. Good God! do you think she, +Nancy Woolper, could have suspected the cause of Mr. Halliday's death?" + +"I dare say she did. She was in the house when he died, and nursed him +all through his illness. She's a clever old woman. Yes, you might take +her down with you; I think she would be of use in getting Charlotte +away." + +"I'll take her, if she will go." + +"I am not sure of that; our north-country folks have stiffish notions +about fidelity to old masters, and that kind of thing. Nancy Woolper +nursed my brother Phil." + +"If she knows or suspects the fate of Charlotte's father, she will try to +save Charlotte," said Valentine, with conviction. "And now, good bye! I +trust to you for getting your brother out of the way, George Sheldon; +remember that." + +He held out his hand; the lawyer took it with a muscular grip, which, on +this occasion, meant something more than that base coin of jolly good +fellowship which so often passes current for friendship's virgin gold. + +"You may trust me," George Sheldon said gravely. "Stop a moment, though; +I have a proposition to make. If my brother Philip has induced that girl +to make a will, as it is my belief he has, we must counter him. Come down +with me to Doctors' Commons. You've a cab? Yes; the business won't take +half an hour." + +"What business?" + +"A special licence for your marriage with Charlotte Halliday." + +"A marriage?" + +"Yes; her marriage invalidates her will, if she has made one, and does +away with Phil's motive. Come along; we'll get the licence." + +"But the delay?" + +"Exactly half an hour. Come!" + +The lawyer dashed out of his office. "At home in an hour," he shouted +to the clerk, and then ran downstairs, followed closely by Valentine, +and did not cease running until he was in the King's Road, where the +cab was waiting. + +"Newgate Street and Warwick Lane to Doctors' Commons!" he cried to the +cabman; and Valentine was fain to take his seat in the cab without +further remonstrance. + +"I don't understand--" he began, as the cabman drove away. + +"I do. It's all right; you'll put the licence in your pocket, and call at +the church nearest which you hang out, Edgware Road way, give notice of +the marriage, and so on; and as soon as Charlotte can bear the journey, +bring her to London and marry her. I told you your course six months ago. +Your obstinacy has caused the hazard of that young woman's life. Don't +let us have a second edition of it." + +"I will be governed by your advice," answered Valentine, submissively. +"It is the delay that tortures me." + +The delay was indeed torture to him. Everything and everybody in Doctors' +Commons seemed the very incarnation of slowness. The hansom cab might +tear and grind the pavement, the hansom cabman might swear until even +monster waggons swerved aside to give him passage; but neither tearing +nor swearing could move the incarnate stolidity of Doctors' Commons. When +he left that quaint sanctuary of old usages, he carried with him the +Archbishop of Canterbury's benign permission for his union with Charlotte +Halliday. But he knew not whether it was only a morsel of waste paper +which he carried in his pocket; and whether there might not ere long be +need of a ghastlier certificate, giving leave and licence for the +rendering back of "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." + +Valentine's first call, after leaving George Sheldon at the gate of +Doctors' Commons, was at the head-quarters of the Ragamuffins. His heart +sank as he ran into the bar of the hostelry to ask for the telegram which +might be waiting for him. + +Happily there was no telegram. To find no tidings of a change for the +worse seemed to him almost equivalent to hearing of a change for the +better. What had he not feared after his interview with the surgeon of +Bloomsbury! + +From Covent Garden the hansom bowled swiftly to Burlington Row. Here +Valentine found Mr. Burkham, pale and anxious, waiting in a little den of +a third room, on the ground-floor--a ghastly little room, hung with +anatomical plates, and with some wax preparations in jars, on the +mantelpiece, by way of ornament. To them presently came Dr. Jedd, as +lively and business-like as if Miss Halliday's case had been a question +of taking out a double-tooth. + +"Very sad!" he said; "these vegetable poisons--hands of unscrupulous man. +Very interesting article in the _Medical Quarterly_--speculative analysis +of the science of toxicology as known to the ancients." + +"You will come down to Harold's Hill at once, sir?" said Valentine, +imploringly. + +"Well, yes; your friend here, Mr. Burkham, has persuaded me to do so, +though I need hardly tell you that such a journey will be to the last +degree inconvenient." + +"It is an affair of life and death," faltered the young man. + +"Of course, my dear sir. But then, you see, I have half-a-dozen other +affairs of life and death on my hands at this moment. However, I have +promised. My consultations will be over in half an hour; I have a round +of visits after that, and by--well, say by the five o'clock express, I +will go to St. Leonards." + +"The delay will be very long," said Valentine. + +"It cannot be done sooner. I ought to go down to Hertfordshire this +evening--most interesting case--carbuncle--three operations in three +consecutive weeks--Swain as operator. At five o'clock I shall be at the +London Bridge station. Until then, gentlemen, good day. Lawson, the +door." + +Dr. Jedd left his visitors to follow the respectable white-cravatted +butler, and darted back to his consulting-room. + +Mr. Burkham and Valentine walked slowly up and down Burlington Row before +the latter returned to his cab. + +"I thank you heartily for your help," said Valentine to the surgeon; "and +I believe, with God's grace, we shall save this dear girl's life. It was +the hand of Providence that guided me to you this morning. I can but +believe the same hand will guide me to the end." + +On this they parted. Valentine told his cabman to drive to the Edgware +Road; and in one of the churches of the immediate neighbourhood of that +thoroughfare he gave notice of his intention to enter the bonds of holy +matrimony. He had some difficulty in arranging matters with the clerk, +whom he saw in his private abode and non-official guise. That functionary +was scarcely able to grasp the idea of an intending Benedick who would +not state positively when he wanted to be married. Happily, however, the +administration of half-a-sovereign considerably brightened the clerk's +perceptions. + +"I see what you want," he said. "Young lady a invalid, which she wants to +leave her home as she finds uncomfortable, she being over twenty-one +years of age and her own mistress. It's what you may call a runaway +match, although the parties ain't beholden to any one, in a manner of +speaking. _I_ understand. You give me half an hour's notice any morning +within the legal hours, and I'll have one of our young curates ready for +you as soon as you're ready for them; and have you and the young lady +tied up tight enough before you know where you are. We ain't very long +over _our_ marriages, unless it is something out of the common way." + +The clerk's familiarity was more good-natured than flattering to the +applicant's self-esteem; but Valentine was in no mood to object to this +easy-going treatment of the affair. He promised to give the clerk the +required notice; and having arranged everything in strictly legal manner, +hurried back to his cab, and directed the man to drive to the Lawn. + +It was now three o'clock. At five he was to meet Dr. Jedd at the station. +He had two hours for his interview with Nancy Woolper, and his drive from +Bayswater to London Bridge. + +He had tasted nothing since daybreak; but the necessity to eat and drink +never occurred to him. He was dimly conscious of feeling sick and faint, +but the reason of this sickness and faintness did not enter into his +thoughts. He took off his hat, and leant his head back against the +cushion of the hansom as that vehicle rattled across the squares of +Paddington. The summer day, the waving of green trees in those suburban +squares; the busy life and motion of the world through which he went, +mixed themselves into one jarring whirl of light and colour, noise and +motion. He found himself wondering how long it was since he left +Harold's Hill. Between the summer morning in which he had walked along +the dusty high-road, with fields of ripening corn upon his left, and all +the broad blue sea upon his right, and the summer afternoon in which he +drove in a jingling cab through the noisy streets and squares of +Bayswater, there seemed to him a gulf so wide, that his tried brain +shrank from scanning it. + +He struggled with this feeling of helplessness and bewilderment, and +overcame it. + +"Let me remember what I have to do," he said to himself; "and let me keep +my wits about me till that is done." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +PHOENICIANS ARE RISING. + +While Mr. Hawkehurst arranged his affairs with the clerk of St. +Matthias-in-the-fields, in the parish of Marylebone, George Sheldon sat +in his brother's office writing a letter to that distinguished +stockbroker. The pretext of writing a letter was the simplest pretext for +being alone in his brother's room; and to be alone in Philip Sheldon's +room was the first step in the business which George had to do. + +The room was distractingly neat, and as handsomely furnished as it is +possible for an office to be within the closest official limits. A +Spanish mahogany desk with a cylinder cover, and innumerable drawers +fitted with invisible Bramah locks, occupied the centre of the room; and +four ponderous Spanish mahogany chairs, with padded backs, and seats +covered with crimson morocco, were primly ranged against the wall. Upon +the mantelpiece ticked a skeleton clock; above which there hung the +sternest and grimmest of almanacks, on either whereof were fastened +divers lists and calendars of awful character, affected by gentlemen on +'Change. + +Before penetrating to this innermost and sacred chamber, George Sheldon +wasted some little time in agreeable gossip with a gentleman whom he +found yawning over the _Times_ newspaper in an outer and less richly +furnished apartment. This gentleman was Philip Sheldon's clerk, the +younger son of a rich Yorkshire farmer, who had come to London with the +intention of making his fortune on the Stock Exchange, and whose father +had paid a considerable sum in order to obtain for this young man the +privilege of reading the Times in Mr. Sheldon's office, and picking up +whatever knowledge might be obtained from the business transactions of +his employer. + +The career of Philip Sheldon had been watched with some interest by his +fellow-townsmen of Barlingford. They had seen him leave that town with a +few hundreds in his pocket, and they had heard of him twelve years +afterwards as a prosperous stockbroker, with a handsome house and a +handsome carriage, and the reputation of being one of the sharpest men in +the City. The accounts of him that came to Barlingford were all more or +less exaggerated; and the men who discussed his cleverness and his good +luck were apt to forget that he owed the beginning of his fortunes to Tom +Halliday's eighteen thousand pounds. The one fact that impressed Philip +Sheldon's townsmen was the fact that a Barlingford man had made money on +the Stock Exchange; and the one inference they drew therefrom was the +inference that other Barlingford men might do the same. + +Thus it had happened that Mr. Stephen Orcott, of Plymley Rise farm, near +Barlingford, being at a loss what to do with a somewhat refractory +younger son, resolved upon planting his footsteps in the path so +victoriously trodden by Philip Sheldon. He wrote to Philip, asking him to +receive the young man as clerk, assistant, secretary--anything, with a +view to an ultimate junior partnership; and Philip consented, upon +certain conditions. The sum he demanded was rather a stiff one, as it +seemed to Stephen Orcott, but he opined that such a sum would not have +been asked if the advantages had not been proportionately large. The +bargain was therefore concluded, and Mr. Frederick Orcott came to London. +He was a young man of horsey propensities, gifted with a sublime contempt +for any kind of business requiring application or industry, and with a +supreme belief in his own merits. + +George Sheldon had known Frederick Orcott as a boy, and had been in his +society some half-dozen times since his coming to London. He apprehended +no difficulty in obtaining from this young gentleman any information he +had the power to afford. + +"How do, Orcott?" he said, with agreeable familiarity. "My brother Phil +not come back yet?" + +"No," replied the other, sulkily. "There have been ever so many people +here bothering me about him. Where has he gone? and when will he be back? +and so on. I might as well be some d----d footman, if I'm to sit here +answering questions all day. High Wickham races are on to-day, and I +wanted to see Barmaid run before I put my money on her for Goodwood. She +was bred down our way, you see, and I know she's like enough to win the +cup, if she's fit. They don't know much about her this way, either, +though she's own sister to Boots, that won the Chester Cup last year, +owing to Topham's being swindled into letting him off with seven lbs. He +ran at the York Spring, you see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the +boy that rode him pulled his head half off--I saw him do it--and then he +won the Chester, and brought his owners a pot of money." + +This information was not exactly what George Sheldon wanted, but he +planted himself on the hearthrug in an easy attitude, with his back +against the mantelpiece, and appeared much interested in Mr. Orcott's +discourse. + +"Anything stirring in the City?" he asked presently. + +"Stirring? No--nothing stirring but stagnation, as some fellow said in a +play I saw the other night. Barlingford folks say your brother Philip has +made a heap of money on the Stock Exchange; but if he has, he must have +done a good deal more business before I came to him than he has done +lately. I can't see how a man is to develop into a Rothschild out of an +occasional two-and-sixpence per cent on the transfer of some old woman's +savings from railway stock to consols; and that's about the only kind of +business I've seen much of lately. Of course Phil Sheldon has got irons +of his own in the fire; for he's an uncommonly deep card, you see, that +brother of yours, and it isn't to be expected he'll tell _me_ all he's up +to. I know he's up to his eyebrows in companies, but I don't see how he's +to make his fortune out of _them_, for limited liability now-a-days seems +only another name for unlimited crash. However, I don't care. It pleased +my governor to get me into Sheldon's office, and it suited my book to +come to London; but if the author of my being thinks I'm going to addle +my blessed brains with the decline and fall of the money market, he's a +greater fool than I took him for--and that's saying a great deal." + +And here Mr. Frederick Orcott lapsed into admiring contemplation of his +boots, which were the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of a sporting bootmaker; boots +that were of the ring, ringy, and of the corner, cornery. + +"Ah," said George, "and Phil doesn't tell you much of his affairs, +doesn't he? That's rather a bad sign, I should think. Looks as if he was +rather down upon his luck, eh?" + +"Well, there's no knowing, you see, with that sort of close fish. He may +have made his book for a great haul, and may be keeping himself quiet +till the event comes off. He may be laying on to something with all his +might, you know, on safe information. But there's one thing I know he +stands to lose by." + +"What's that?" + +"The Phoenician Loan. He speculated in the bonds when they began to go +down; and I'm blessed if they haven't been dropping ever since, an +eighth a day, as regular as the day comes round. He bought them for the +March account, and has been paying contango since then, and holding on in +hopes of a rise. I don't know whether the purchase was a large one, but I +know he's been uncommonly savage about the drop. He bought on the +strength of private information from the other side of the Channel. The +Emperor was putting his own money into the Phoenician business, and it +was the best game out, and so on. But he seems to have been made a fool +of, for once in a way." + +"The bonds may steady themselves." + +"Yes, they _may_; but, on the other hand, they mayn't. There are the +Stock Exchange lists, with Phoenicians ticked off by your brother's own +pen. A steady drop, you see. 'Let me have a telegram if there's a sudden +rise,' said Sheldon to me the day he left London; 'they'll go up with +rush when they do move.' But they've been moving the other way ever +since; and I think if he stayed away till doomsday it would be pretty +much the same." + +"_Phoenicians are rising rapidly. Come back to town._" + +These were the words of the telegraphic despatch which shaped itself in +George Sheldon's brain, as his brother's clerk revealed the secrets of +his employer. + +It was found--the solution of the one great question as to how Philip +Sheldon was to be lured away from the bedside of his unconscious victim. +Here was the bait. + +"I knew I could do it; I knew I could get all I wanted to know out of +this shallow-brained idiot," he said to himself, triumphantly. + +And then he told the shallow-brained idiot that he thought he would write +a line to his brother; and on that pretence went into Philip's office. + +Here, use his eyes as he might, he could discover nothing; he could glean +no stray scrap of information. The secrets that could be guarded by +concealed Bramah locks and iron safes, with mystic words to be learned by +the man who would open them, Philip Sheldon knew how to protect. +Unhappily for himself, he had been compelled to confide some of his +secrets to human receptacles not to be guarded by Bramah locks or mystic +words. + +The lawyer did not waste much time in his brother's office. A very hasty +investigation showed him there was nothing to be learned from those bare +walls and that inviolable cylinder-topped desk. He scribbled a few lines +of commonplace at a table by the window, sealed and addressed his note, +and then departed to despatch his telegram, "Phoenicians are rising +rapidly," he wrote, and that was all. He signed the despatch Frederick +Orcott. + +"Phil and Orcott may settle the business between them," he said to +himself, as he forged the Yorkshireman's name. "What I have to do is to +get Phil away, and give Hawkehurst a chance of saving Tom Halliday's +daughter; and I shan't stand upon trifles in the doing of it." + +After having despatched this telegram, George Sheldon found himself much +too restless and excited for ordinary business. He, so renowned even +amongst cool hands for exceptional coolness, was on this occasion +thoroughly unnerved. He dropped into a City tavern, and refreshed himself +with a dram. But, amidst all the bustle and clatter of a crowded bar, the +face of Tom Halliday, haggard and worn with illness, was before his eyes, +and the sound of Tom Halliday's voice was in his ears. "I can't settle to +anything this afternoon," he said to himself. "I'll run down to +Bayswater, and see whether Hawkehurst has managed matters with Nancy +Woolper." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +THE SORTES VIRGILIANÆ. + +While George Sheldon was still in the depths of the City Valentine +Hawkehurst arrived at the gothic villa, where he asked to see Mrs. +Woolper. Of the woman herself he knew very little: he had seen her once +or twice when some special mission brought her to the drawing-room; and +from Charlotte he had heard much of her affectionate solicitude. To have +been kind to his Charlotte was the strongest claim to his regard. + +"This woman's help would be of inestimable service," he thought; "her +age, her experience of sickness, her familiarity with the patient, +especially adapt her for the office she will be required to fill. If Dr. +Jedd should order a nurse to watch by the sick-bed, here is the nurse. If +it should prove possible to remove the dear sufferer, here is the +guardian best calculated to protect and attend her removal." That the +desperate step of an immediate marriage would be a wise step Valentine +could not doubt, since it would at once annihilate Mr. Sheldon's chances, +and destroy his motive. But in contemplating this desperate step +Valentine had to consider the reputation as well as the safety of his +future wife. He was determined that there should be no opportunity for +scandal in the circumstances of his stolen marriage, no scope for future +mischief from the malignity of that baffled villain to whose schemes +their marriage would give the death-blow. He, who from his cradle had +been familiar with the darker side of life, knew how often the innocent +carry a lifelong burden, and perform a perpetual pennance for the sins or +the follies of others. And over his darling's life in the future, should +it please God that he might save her, he would have no shadow cast by +imprudence of his in the present. + +"This sharp-witted, sharp-tongued Yorkshirewoman will be the woman of +women to protect her," he thought, as he seated himself in Mr. Sheldon's +study, whither the prim parlour-maid had ushered him. + +"Mrs. Woolper have just gone upstairs to clean herself," she said; "which +we are a-having the dining-room and droring-room carpets up, while the +family are away. Would you please to wait?" + +Valentine looked at his watch. + +"I cannot wait very long," he said; "and I shall be obliged if you will +tell Mrs. Woolper that I wish to see her on very important business." + +The parlour-maid departed, and Valentine was left to endure the weariness +of waiting until Mrs. Woolper should have "cleaned herself." + +Mr. Sheldon's study at Bayswater did not offer much more to the eye of +the investigator than Mr. Sheldon's office in the City. There were the +handsomely bound books behind the inviolable plate-glass doors, and there +was the neat writing-table with the machine for weighing letters, and the +large business-like looking blotting-pad, and the ponderous brass-rimmed +inkstand, with no nonsense about it; and yonder, on a clumsy little oak +table with thick legs, appeared the copying machine, with a big black +iron lever, and a massive screw with which to screw all the spontaneous +feeling out of every letter that came beneath its crushing influence. + +Up and down this joyless den Valentine Hawkehurst paced, with the demon +of impatience raging in his breast. The July sunshine blazed hot upon the +window, and the voices of croquêt-players in adjacent gardens rose shrill +upon the summer air. And there were girls playing croquêt while she, his +"rose of the garden, garden of girls," lay sick unto death! O, why could +he not offer a hecatomb of these common creatures as a substitute for +that one fair spirit? + +He looked into the garden--the prim modern garden, but a few years +reclaimed from that abomination of desolation, the "eligible lot of +building land." Across the well-kept lawn there brooded no shadow of +Old-World cedar; no century-old espaliers divided flower and kitchen +ground; no box-edging of the early Hanoverian era bordered the beds of +roses and mignonette. From one boundary-wall to the other there was not a +bush old enough to hang an association upon. The stereotyped bed of +flaming yellow calceolaria balanced the conventional bed of flaming +crimson verbena; the lavender heliotrope faced the scarlet geranium, like +the four corners in a quadrille. The garden was the modern nurserymen's +ideal of suburban horticulture, and no more. But to Valentine this +half-acre of smooth lawn and Wimbledon gravel pathway had seemed fair as +those pleasure gardens of Semiramis, at the foot of the Bagistanos +mountain, the fame whereof tempted Alexander to turn aside from the +direct road, during his march from Chelone to the Nysaic horse pastures. + +To-day the contemplation of that commonplace garden gave him direful +pain. Should he ever walk there again with his dear love, or in any other +garden upon earth? + +And then he thought of fairer gardens, in supernal regions whither his +soul was slow to travel. "Not easy is the journey from earth to the +stars," says the sage; and from this young wanderer the stain of earthly +travel had yet to be washed away. + +"If she is taken from me, shall I ever be pure enough to follow her?" he +asked himself. "Will a life that began in such darkness ever rise to the +light which is her natural element? If she is taken, and I stay behind, +and bear my burden patiently in the hope to follow her, will there not be +a gate closed against me in the skies, beyond which I shall see her, +shining among her kindred spirits, in the white robes of perfect +innocence? Ah, my love, my love, as between us on this earth must for +ever be a gulf your pure soul cannot pass, so between us in the skies +will rise a barrier to sever me from your sweet company!" + +The thought of probable separation upon earth, of possible separation in +heaven, was too bitter to him. + +"I will not think of these things," he said to himself; "I will not +believe in that possibility of this sacrifice. Ah, no! she will be +saved. Against the bright young life the awful fiat has not gone +forth. Providence has been with me to-day. Providence will go with me +till the end." + +He thought how other men had so stood, as he was standing now, face to +face with the great uncertainty, the crisis, the turning-point--the pivot +on which life itself revolved. The pendulum of the mighty clock swings +solemnly to and fro; with every vibration a moment; with every moment +each man's shrouded fates move another step in their inexorable progress. +And the end? What was the goal towards which those dark relentless shapes +were moving? + +He thought of Rousseau, balancing the awful question of his soul's +salvation--his poor weak soul adrift upon a sea of doubt. + +"Behold yonder tree which faces me, as I sit and meditate the problem of +my destiny--the destiny of me, Jean Jacques Rousseau, self-conscious +genius, and future regenerator of my age. I pick up a pebble, and +poise it between my fingers before taking my aim. In another moment +the question will be answered. If the pebble hits the tree, I, Jean +Jacques, am reserved for salvation. If I miss--O awful, overwhelming +possibility!--my name will blaze upon that dreadful scroll which numbers +the damned." + +Happily the tree is bulky, and within but a few yards of the +speculator; and the great enigma of the Calvinistic church is answered +in favour of Madame de Warenne's protégé, whose propensities and +proclivities at that period did not very strongly indicate his claim to +a place among the elect. + +Valentine remembered the _sortes Virgilianæ_--the Wesleyan's drawing of +inferences from Bible texts. Ah, could he not find an answer to the +question that was the one thought of his mind? He would find some +answer--a lying oracle, perhaps. It might be a voice from heaven,--some +temporary assuagement of this storm of doubt that raged in his breast. "I +doubt if Mr. Sheldon owns either a Bible or an 'Æneid,'" he said to +himself, as he stopped in his rapid pacing of the room; "I will open the +first book I can put my hand upon, and from the first line my eye falls +on will draw an augury." + +He looked about the room. Behind the glazed doors of the mahogany +bookcase appeared Hume and Smollett, Scott and Shakespeare; and +conspicuous among these a handsome family Bible. But the glazed doors +were locked. In Mr. Sheldon's study there appeared to be no other books +than these few standard works. Yes, on some obscure little shelves, low +down in one of the recesses formed by the projection of the fireplace and +the chimney, there were three rows of large quarto volumes, in dingy +dark-green cloth cases. + +What these volumes might contain Valentine Hawkehurst knew not; and the +very fact of his ignorance rendered these books all the more suitable for +the purpose of augury. To dip for a sentence into any of these unknown +volumes would be a leap in darkness more profound than he could find in +the Bible or the "Æneid," where his own foreknowledge of the text might +unwittingly influence the oracle. He went over to the recess, bent down, +and ran his hand along the backs of the volumes, with his face turned +away from the books towards the window. + +"The first obstruction that arrests my hand shall determine my choice of +the volume," he said to himself. + +His hand ran easily along the volumes on the upper shelf--easily along +the volumes on the second shelf; and he began to doubt whether this mode +of determining his choice could be persisted in. But in its progress +along the third and lowest range of volumes, his hand was arrested midway +by a book which projected about half an inch beyond its fellows. + +He took this book out and carried it to the table, still without looking +at it. He opened it, or rather let its leaves fall open of their own +accord--still without looking at it; and then, with a strange +superstitious fear--mingled in his mind with the natural shame that +accompanied his conscious folly--he looked at the page before him. The +line on which he fixed his eye was the heading of a letter. It was in +larger type than the rest of the page, and it was very plain to him as he +stood a little way from the table, looking down at the open book. + +The line ran thus: + +"ON THE FALLIBILITY OF COPPER GAUZE AS A TEST FOR THE DETECTION OF +ARSENIC." + +The book was a volume of the _Lancet_; the date twenty years ago. + +"What an oracle!" thought Valentine, with a cynical laugh at his own +folly, and some slight sense of relief. In all feeble tamperings with +powers invisible there lurks a sense of terror in the weak human heart. +He had tempted those invisible ones, and the oracle he only half believed +in might have spoken to his confusion and dismay. He was glad to think +the oracle meant nothing. + +And yet, even in this dry as dust title of a scientific communication +from a distinguished toxicologist there was some sinister significance. +It was the letter of a great chemist, who demonstrated therein the +fallibility of all tests in relation to a certain poison. It was one of +those papers which, while they aid the cause of science, may also further +the dark processes of the poisoner, by showing him the forces he has to +encounter, and the weapons with which he may defend himself from their +power. It is needless to dwell here upon the contents of this letter--one +of a series on the same subject, or range of subjects. Valentine read it +with eager interest. For him it had a terrible importance in its relation +to the past and to the present. + +"I let the book fall open, and it opened at that letter," he thought to +himself. "Will it open there a second time, I wonder?" + +He repeated the experiment, and the book opened in the same place. Again; +and again the book opened as before. Again, many times, and the result +was still the same. + +After this he examined the book, and found that it had been pressed open +at this page, as by a reader leaning on the opened volume. He examined it +still more closely, and found here and there on the page faint +indications of a pencil, which had under-scored certain lines, and the +marks of which had been as far as possible erased. The deduction to be +drawn from these small facts seemed only too clear to Valentine +Hawkehurst. By some one reader the pages had been deliberately and +carefully studied. Could he doubt that reader to have been the man in +whose possession he found the book, the man whom that very day he had +heard plainly denounced as a poisoner? + +He drew out the previous volume, and in this a rapid search revealed to +him a second fact, significant as the last. + +An old envelope marked the place where appeared an article on the +coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain type of low fever and +the diagnostics of a certain class of poisons. Here the volume again +opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the page seemed to indicate that +the open book had been leant upon by a person engaged in making memoranda +of its contents. Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the +place had its own dismal significance. The postmark bore the date of the +year and the month in which Charlotte's father had died. + +While this volume was still open in his hand the door opened suddenly, +and Mrs. Woolper came into the room. + +She had kept Valentine waiting more than half an hour. He had little more +than half an hour at most in which to break the ice of absolute +strangeness, and sound the very depths of this woman's character. If she +had come to him earlier, when his plan of action was clear and definite, +his imagination in abeyance, he would have gone cautiously to work, with +slowness and deliberation. Coming to him now, when his mind, unsettled by +the discovery of fresh evidence against Philip Sheldon, was divided +between the past and the present, she took him off his guard, and he +plunged at once into the subject that absorbed all his thoughts. + +Mrs. Woolper looked from Valentine to the open books on the table with a +vague terror in her face. + +"I am sorry I was so long, sir; but I'd been polishing the grates and +fenders, and such like, and my hands and face were blacker than a +sweep's. I hope there's nothing wrong at the seaside, where Miss--" + +"There is much that's wrong, Mrs. Woolper--hopelessly, irrecoverably +wrong. Miss Halliday is ill, very ill--doomed to die, if she remain in +your master's keeping." + +"Lord help us, Mr. Hawkehurst! what do you mean?" + +The terror in her face was no longer a vague terror. It had taken a form +and substance, and was a terror unutterably hideous, if ever human +countenance gave expression to human thought. + +"I mean that your master is better skilled in the use of the agents that +kill than the agents that cure. Charlotte's father came to Philip +Sheldon's house a hale strong man, in the very prime of manhood. In that +house he sickened of a nameless disease, and died, carefully tended by +his watchful friend. The same careful watcher stands by Charlotte +Halliday's deathbed, and she is dying!" + +"Dying! O, sir, for God's sake, don't say that!" + +"She is dying, as her father died before her, by the hand of Philip +Sheldon." + +"O, sir! Mr. Hawkehurst!" cried the old woman, with clasped hands lifted +in piteous supplication towards her master's denouncer. "It's not true. +It is not true. For God's dear love don't tell me it is true! I nursed +him when he was a baby, sir; and there wasn't a little trouble I had to +bear with him that didn't make him all the dearer to me. I have sat up +all the night through, sir, times and often, when he was ill, and have +heard Barlingford church clock strike every hour of the long night; and +O, if I had known that this could ever come to him, I should have wished +him dead in the little crib where he lay and seemed so innocent. I tell +you, sir, it can't be true! His father and mother had been respected and +looked up to in Barlingford for many a year,--his grandfather and +grandmother before them. There isn't a name that stands better in those +parts than the name of Sheldon. Do you think such a man would poison his +friend?" + +"_I_ said nothing about poison, Mrs. Woolper," said Valentine, sternly. + +This woman had known all, and had held her tongue, like the rest, it +seemed. To Valentine there was unutterable horror in the thought that a +cold-blooded murder could be thus perpetrated in the sight of several +people, and yet no voice be raised to denounce the assassin. + +"And this is our modern civilization!" he said to himself. "Give me the +desert or the jungle. The sons of Bowanee are no worse than Mr. Sheldon, +and one might be on one's guard against them." + +Nancy Woolper looked at him aghast. He had said nothing about poison! +What, then--had she betrayed her master? + +He saw that she had known, or strongly suspected, the worst in the case +of Tom Halliday, and that she would easily be influenced to do all he +wanted of her. + +"Mrs. Woolper, you must help me to save Charlotte," he said, with +intensity. "You made no attempt to save her father, though you suspected +the cause of his death. I have this day seen Mr. Burkham, the doctor who +attended Mr. Halliday, and from his lips I have heard the truth. I want +you to accompany me to Hastings, and to take your place by Charlotte's +bed, as her nurse and guardian. If Mr. Sheldon suspects your knowledge of +the past, and I have little doubt that he does"--a look in the +housekeeper's face told him that he was right--"you are of all people +best fitted to guard that dear girl. Your part will not be a difficult +one. If we dare remove her, we will remove her beyond the reach of that +man's power. If not, your task will be to prevent food or medicine, that +his hand has touched, from approaching her lips. You _can_ do it. It will +only be a question of tact and firmness. We shall have one of the +greatest doctors in London for our guide. Will you come?" + +"I don't believe my master poisoned his friend," said Nancy Woolper, +doggedly; "nor I won't believe it. You can't force me to think bad of him +I loved when he was little and helpless, and I carried him in my arms. +What are you and your fine London doctor, Mr. Burkham--he was but a poor +fondy, as I mind well--that I should take your word against my master? If +that young man thought as Mr. Halliday was being poisoned, why didn't he +speak out, like a man, then? It's a fine piece of work to bring it up +against my master eleven years afterwards. As for young missy, she's as +sweet a young creature as ever lived, and I'd do anything to serve her. +But I won't think, and I can't think, that my master would hurt a hair of +her head. What would he gain by it?" + +"He has settled that with himself. He has gained by the death of Tom +Halliday, and depend upon it he has made his plans to gain by the death +of Tom Halliday's daughter." + +"I won't believe it," the old woman repeated in the same dogged tone. + +For such resistance as this Mr. Hawkehurst was in no manner prepared. He +looked at his watch. The half hour was nearly gone. There was little more +time for argument. + +"Great Heaven!" he said to himself, "what argument can I employ to +influence this woman's obdurate heart?" + +What argument, indeed? He knew of none stronger than those he had used. +He stood for some moments battled and helpless, staring absently at the +face of his watch, and wondering what he was to do next. + +As Valentine Hawkehurst stood thus, there came a loud ringing of the +bell, following quickly on the sound of wheels grinding against the +kerbstone. + +Mrs. Woolper opened the door and looked out into the hall. + +"It's master!" cried one of the maids, emerging from the disorganized +dining-room, "and missus, and Miss Halliday, and Mass Paget--and all the +house topsy-turvy!" + +"Charlotte here!" exclaimed Valentine. "You are dreaming, girl!" + +"And you told me she was dying!" said Mrs. Woolper, with a look of +triumph. "What becomes of your fine story now?" + +"It _is_ Miss Halliday!" cried the housemaid, as she opened the door. +"And O my!" she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, +"how bad she do look!" + +Valentine ran out to the gate. Yes; there were two cabs, one laden with +luggage, the two cabmen busy about the doors of the vehicles, a little +group of stragglers waiting to see the invalid young lady alight. It was +the next best thing to a funeral. + +"O, don't she look white!" cried a shrill girl with a baby in her arms. + +"In a decline, I dessay, pore young thing," said a matron, in an audible +aside to her companion. + +Valentine dashed amongst the group of stragglers. He pushed away the girl +with the baby, the housemaid who had run out behind him, Mr. Sheldon, the +cabman, every one; and in the next moment Charlotte was in his arms, and +he was carrying her into the house. + +He felt as if he had been in a dream; and all that exceptional force +which the dreamer sometimes feels he felt in this crisis. He carried his +dear burden into the study, followed by Mr. Sheldon and Diana Paget. The +face that dropped upon his shoulder showed deadly white against his +dark-blue coat; the hand which he clasped in his, ah, how listless and +feeble! + +"Valentine!" the girl said, in a low drowsy voice, lifting her eyes to +his face, "is this you? I have been so ill, so tired; and they would +bring me away. To be near the doctors, papa says. Do you think any +doctors will be able to cure me?" + +"Yes, dear, with God's help. I am glad he has brought you here. And now +I must run away," he said; when he had placed Charlotte in Mr. Sheldon's +arm-chair, "for a very little while, darling. I have seen a doctor, a +man in whom I have more confidence than I have in Dr. Doddleson. I am +going to fetch him, my dearest," he added tenderly, as he felt the +feeble hand cling to his; "I shall not be long. Do you think I shall not +hurry back to you? My dearest one, when I return, it will be to stay +with you--for ever." + +She was too ill to note the significance of his words; she only knew that +they gave her comfort. He hurried from the room. In less than an hour he +must be at the London Bridge terminus, or in all probability the five +o'clock train would carry Dr. Jedd to St. Leonards; and on Dr. Jedd his +chief hope rested. + +"Do you believe me now?" he asked of Mrs. Woolper as he went out +into the hall. + +"I do," she answered in a whisper; "and I will do what you want." + +She took his hand in her wrinkled horny palm and grasped it firmly. He +felt that in this firm pressure there was a promise sacred as any oath +ever registered on earth. He met Mr. Sheldon on the threshold, and +passed him without a word. The time might come in which he would have to +mask his thoughts, and stoop to the hateful hypocrisy of civility to +this man; but he had not yet schooled himself to do this. At the gate he +met George Sheldon. + +"What's up now?" asked the lawyer. + +"Did you send your message?" + +"Yes; I telegraphed to Phil." + +"It has been trouble wasted. He has brought her home." + +"What does that mean?" + +"Who knows? I pray God that he may have overreached himself. I have set a +watch upon my dear love, and no further harm shall come to her. I am +going to fetch Dr. Jedd." + +"And you are not afraid of Phil's smelling a rat?" + +"I am afraid of nothing that he can do henceforward. If it is not too +late to save her, I will save her." + +He waited for no more, but jumped into the cab. "London Bridge terminus! +You must get me there by a quarter to five," he said to the driver. + +George Sheldon went no further than the gate of his brother's domain. + +"I wonder whether the Harold's Hill people will send that telegram after +him," he thought. "It'll be rather unpleasant for Fred Orcott if they do. +But it's ten to one they won't. The normal condition of every seaside +lodging-house keeper in one degree removed from idiotcy." + + + + +Book the Ninth. + + + +THROUGH THE FURNACE + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +SOMETHING TOO MUCH. + +"Is that young man mad?" asked Philip Sheldon, as he went into his study +immediately after Valentine had passed him in the hall. + +The question was not addressed to any particular individual; and Diana, +who was standing near the door by which Mr. Sheldon entered, took upon +herself to answer it. + +"I think he is very anxious," she said in a half whisper. + +"What brought him here just now? He did not know we were coming home." + +Mrs. Woolper answered this question. + +"He came for something for Miss Charlotte, sir; some books as she'd had +from the library. They'd not been sent back; and he came to see about +their being sent." + +"What books?" murmured Charlotte. But a pressure from Mrs. Woolper's hand +prevented her saying more. + +"I never encountered any one with so little self-command," said Mr. +Sheldon. "If he is going to rush in and out of my house in that manner, I +must really put a stop to his visits altogether. I cannot suffer that +kind of thing. For Charlotte's welfare quiet is indispensable; and if Mr. +Hawkehurst's presence is to bring noise and excitement, Mr. Hawkehurst +must not cross this threshold." + +He spoke with suppressed anger; with such evident effort to restrain his +anger, that it would have seemed as if his indignation against Valentine +was no common wrath. + +Charlotte caught his last words. + +"Dear papa," she pleaded in her faint voice, "pray do not be angry with +Valentine; he is so anxious about me." + +"I am not angry with him; but while you are ill, I will have quiet--at +any price." + +"Then I'm sure you should not have brought Charlotte home," exclaimed +Georgy, in tones of wailing and lamentation; "for of all the miseries in +life, there is nothing worse than coming home in the very midst of a +general cleaning. It was agreed between Ann Woolper and me that there +should be a general cleaning while we were away at the seaside. We were +to be away a fortnight, and everything was to be as neat as a new pin +when we came home. But here we are back in less than a week, and +everything at sixes-and-sevens. Where we are to dine I know not; and as +for the carpets, they are all away at the beating-place, and Ann tells me +they won't be home till Friday." + +"We can exist without carpets," answered Mr. Sheldon, in a hard dry +voice. "I suppose they are seeing to Miss Halliday's room?" he added, +addressing himself to Mrs. Woolper. "Why don't you go and look after +them, Nancy?" + +"Sarah knows what she has to do. The bed-rooms was done first; and +there's not much amiss in Miss Charlotte's room." + +Mr. Sheldon dropped wearily into a chair. He looked pale and haggard. +Throughout the journey he had been unfailing in his attention to the +invalid; but the journey had been fatiguing; for Charlotte Halliday was +very ill--so ill as to be unable to avoid inflicting trouble upon +others. The weariness--the dizziness--the dull intervals of +semi-consciousness--the helpless tottering walk, which was like the +walk of intoxication rather than ordinary weakness--the clouded +sight--all the worst symptoms of this nameless disease, had every hour +grown more alarming. + +Against this journey to London Mrs. Sheldon and Diana had pleaded--Georgy +with as much earnestness as she could command; Diana as forcibly as she +dared argue a question in which her voice had so little weight. + +But upon this point Mr. Sheldon was adamant. + +"She will be better off in London," he said resolutely. "This trip to the +seaside was a whim of my wife's; and, like most other whims of my wife's, +it has entailed trouble and expense upon me. Of course I know that Georgy +did it for the best," he added, in reply to a reproachful "O Philip!" +from Mrs. Sheldon. "But the whole business has been a mistake. No sooner +are we comfortably settled down here, than Hawkehurst takes it into his +head to be outrageously alarmed about Charlotte, and wants to bring +half-a-dozen doctors round the poor girl's bed, to her inevitable peril; +for in an illness which begins and ends in mental depression, all +appearance of alarm is calculated to do mischief." + +Having said this, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in making arrangements for the +journey. A carriage was ordered; all possible preparations were made for +the comfort of the invalid--everything that care or kindness could do was +done; but the cruelty of the removal was not the less obvious. Georgy +wailed piteously about the sixes-and-sevens to which they were being +taken. Diana cared nothing about sixes-and-sevens; but she felt supreme +indignation against Charlotte's stepfather, and she did not attempt to +conceal her feelings. + +Nor was it without an effort to oppose Mr. Sheldon's authority that Miss +Paget succumbed to the force of circumstances. She appealed to his wife. + +"Dear Mrs. Sheldon, I beg you not to suffer Lotta's removal," she said +earnestly. "You do not know how ill she is--nor can Mr. Sheldon know, or +he would not take such a step. As her mother, your authority is superior +to his; you have but to say that she shall not be taken from this house +in her present state of prostration and sickness." + +"I have only to say!" cried Georgy, piteously. "O Diana, how can you say +such a thing? What would be Mr. Sheldon's feelings if I were to stand up +against him, and declare that Charlotte should not be moved? And he so +anxious too, and so clever. I'm sure his conduct about my poor dear Lotta +is positively beautiful. I never saw such anxiety. Why, he has grown ten +years older in his looks since the beginning of her illness. People go on +about stepfather this, and stepfather that, until a poor young widow is +almost frightened to marry again. But I don't believe a real father ever +was more thoughtful or more careful about a real daughter than Philip has +been about Lotta. And what a poor return it would be if I were to oppose +him now, when he says that the removal will be for Charlotte's good, and +that she will be near clever doctors--if she should require clever +doctors! You don't know how experienced he is, and how thoughtful. I +shall never forget his kindness to poor Tom." + +"Yes," exclaimed Miss Paget impatiently, "but Mr. Halliday died." + +"O Diana," whimpered Georgy, "I did not think you could be so unkind as +to remind me of that." + +"I only want to remind you that Mr. Sheldon is not infallible." + +Mr. Sheldon entered the room at this juncture, and Diana left it, +passionately indignant against the poor weak creature, to whom no crisis, +no danger, could give strength of mind or will. + +"A sheep would make some struggle for her lamb," she thought, angrily. +"Mrs. Sheldon is lower than a sheep." + +It was the first time she had thought unkindly of this weak soul, and her +anger soon melted to pity for the powerless nature which Mr. Sheldon held +in such supreme control. She made no further attempt at resistance after +this; but went to Charlotte's room and prepared for the journey. + +"O, why am I to be moved, dear?" the girl asked piteously. "I am too ill +to be moved." + +"It is for your good, darling. Mr. Sheldon wants you to be near the great +physicians, who can give you health and strength." + +"There are no physicians who can do that. Let me stay here, Di. Beg papa +to let me stay here." + +Diana hid her face upon the invalid's shoulder. Her tears choked her. To +repress her grief was agony scarcely endurable. But she did hide all +trace of anger and sorrow, and cheered the helpless traveller throughout +the weariness of the journey. + + * * * * * + +Charlotte was lying on a sofa in her bedroom, with Mrs. Woolper in +attendance upon her, when Dr. Jedd arrived. It was a quarter to six, and +the low western sunshine flooded the room. + +The physician came with Valentine, and did not ask to see Mr. Sheldon +before going to his patient's room. He told the housemaid who admitted +him to show the way to Miss Halliday's room. + +"The nurse is there, I suppose?" he said to the girl. + +"Yes, sir; leastways, Mrs. Woolper." + +"That will do." + +Mr. Sheldon heard the voice in the hall, and came out of the library as +the doctor mounted the step of the stairs. + +"Who is this? What is this?" he asked of Valentine Hawkehurst. + +"I told you I was not satisfied with Dr. Doddleson's opinion," answered +the young man coolly. "This gentleman is here by appointment with me." + +"And pray by what right do you bring a doctor of your own choosing to +visit my stepdaughter without previous consultation with me?" + +"By the right of my love for her. I am not satisfied as to the medical +treatment your stepdaughter has received in this house, Mr. Sheldon, and +I want to be satisfied. Miss Halliday is something more than your +stepdaughter, remember: she is my promised wife. Dr. Jedd's opinion will +be more assuring to me than the opinion of Dr. Doddleson." + +At the sound of Dr. Jedd's name Mr. Sheldon started slightly. It was a +name he knew only too well--a name he had seen among the medical +witnesses in the great Fryar trial, the record of which had for him +possessed a hideous fascination. He had fancied himself in the poisoner +Fryar's place; and the fancy had sent an icy chill through his veins. But +in the next minute he had said to himself, "I am not such a reckless fool +as that man Fryar was; and have run no such risks as he ran." + +At the name of Jedd the same icy shiver ran through his veins again. His +tone of suppressed anger changed to a tone of civility which was almost +sycophantic. + +"I have the honour to know Dr. Jedd by repute very well indeed, and I +withdraw my objection to your course of proceeding, my dear Hawkehurst; +though I am sure Dr. Jedd will agree with me that such a course is +completely against all professional etiquette, and that Dr. Doddleson +will have the right to consider himself aggrieved." + +"There are cases in which one hardly considers professional etiquette. I +shall be very happy to meet Dr. Doddleson to-morrow morning. But as Mr. +Hawkehurst was very anxious that I should see Miss Halliday to-night, I +consented to waive all ceremony, and come with him on the spot." + +"I cannot blame his anxiety to secure so valuable an opinion. I only +wonder what lucky star guided him to so excellent an adviser." + +Mr. Sheldon looked from Dr. Jedd to Valentine Hawkehurst as he said this. +The physician's face told him no more than he might have learnt from a +blank sheet of paper. Valentine's face was dark and gloomy; but that +gloomy darkness might mean no more than natural grief. + +"I will take you to my stepdaughter's room at once," he said to the +physician. + +"I think it will be better for me to see the young lady alone," the +doctor answered coolly: "that is to say, in the presence of her nurse +only." + +"As you please," Mr. Sheldon replied. + +He went back to his study. Georgy was sitting there, whimpering in a +feeble way at intervals; and near her sat Diana, silent and gloomy. A +settled gloom, as of the grave itself, brooded over the house. Mr. +Sheldon flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He had +sneered at the inconvenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was +beginning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two women +in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as if there was no room +in the house in which he could be alone; and just now he had bitter need +of solitary meditation. + +"Let them arrange the dining-room somehow, carpet or no carpet," he said +to his wife. "We must have some room to dine in; and I can't have you +here, Georgy; I have letters to write." + +Mrs. Sheldon and Diana were not slow to take the hint. + +"I'm sure I don't want to be here, or anywhere," exclaimed Georgy in +piteous accents; "I feel so miserable about Charlotte, that if I could +lie down and die, it would be a comfort to me. And it really seems a +mockery having dinner at such a time. It's just as it was during poor +Tom's illness; there were fowls and all sorts of things cooked, and no +one ever ate them." + +"For God's sake go away!" cried Mr. Sheldon passionately; "your perpetual +clack is torture to me." + +Georgy hurried from the room, followed closely by Diana. + +"Did you ever see any one more anxious?" Mrs. Sheldon asked, with +something like pride. + +"I would rather see Mr. Sheldon less anxious!" Diana answered gravely. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +DR. JEDD'S OPINION. + +Alone, Philip Sheldon breathed more freely. He paced the room, waiting +for the appearance of the doctor; and with almost every turn he looked at +the clock upon the chimneypiece. + +How intolerable seemed the slow progress of the moments! How long that +man Jedd was staying in the sick-room! And yet not long; it was he, +Philip Sheldon, who was losing count of time. Where was Valentine? He +opened the door of the room, and looked out. Yes, there was a figure on +the stairs. The lover was waiting the physician's verdict. + +A door on the landing above opened, and the step of the Doctor sounded on +the upper flight. Mr. Sheldon waited for Dr. Jedd's appearance. + +"I shall be glad to hear your opinion," he said quietly; and the Doctor +followed him into the study. Valentine followed the Doctor, to Mr. +Sheldon's evident surprise. + +"Mr. Hawkehurst is very anxious to hear what I have to say," said Dr. +Jedd; "and I really see no objection to his hearing it." + +"If you have no objection, I can have none," Mr. Sheldon answered. "I +must confess, your course of proceeding appears to me altogether +exceptional, and--" + +"Yes, Mr. Sheldon; but then, you see, the case is altogether an +exceptional case," said the physician, gravely. + +"You think so?" + +"Decidedly. The young lady is in extreme danger. Yes, Mr. Sheldon, in +extreme danger. The mistake involved in her removal to-day is a mistake +which I cannot denounce too strongly. If you had wanted to kill your +stepdaughter, you could scarcely have pursued a more likely course for +the attainment of your object. No doubt you were actuated by the most +amiable motives. I can only regret that you should have acted without +competent advice." + +"I believed myself to be acting for the best," replied Philip Sheldon, in +a strange mechanical way. + +He was trying to estimate the true meaning of the Doctor's address. Was +he merely expressing anger against an error of ignorance or stupidity, or +was there a more fatal significance in his words? + +"You overwhelm me," the stockbroker said presently; "you positively +overwhelm me by your view of my daughter's condition. Dr. Doddleson +apprehended no danger. He saw our dear girl on Sunday morning--yesterday +morning," added Mr. Sheldon, wonder-stricken to find that the interval +was so brief between the time in which he had walked with Valentine and +Dr. Doddleson in the garden at Harold's Hill and the present moment. To +Valentine it seemed still more wonderful. What a bridgeless gulf between +yesterday morning and to-night! All his knowledge of this man Sheldon, +all the horror involved in Tom Halliday's death, had come upon him in +that brief span. + +"I should like to see Dr. Doddleson's prescriptions," said Dr. Jedd, with +grave politeness. + +Mr. Sheldon produced them from his pocket-book with an unshaken hand. No +change of countenance, no tremulous hand, no broken voice, betrayed his +apprehension. The one distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent, +half-mechanical tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than +in the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, he was +at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. "The chances of +defeat, so much; the chances of detection--?" + +A rapid survey of his position told him what those chances were. +Detection by Dr. Jedd? Yes. That had come to him already perhaps. But +would any actual harm to him come of such detection? + +He calculated the chances for and against this--and the result was in his +favour. That Dr. Jedd should form certain opinions of Miss Halliday's +case was one thing; that he should give public utterance to those +opinions was another thing. + +"What can his opinion matter to me?" Mr. Sheldon asked himself; "opinion +cannot touch me in a case where there is no such thing as certainty. He +has seen the dilatation of the pupil--even that old fool Doddleson saw +it--and has taken fright. But no jury in England would hang a man on such +evidence as that; or if a jury could be found to put the rope round a +man's neck, the British public and the British press would be pretty sure +to get the rope taken off again." + +"Chloric æther, spirits of ammonia--hum, ha, hum--yes," muttered Dr. +Jedd, looking at one prescription. "Quinine, yes; aqua pura," he +murmured, looking at another. + +He threw them aside with a half-contemptuous gesture, and then took up a +pen and began to write. + +"My mode of treatment will be quite different from that adopted by Dr. +Doddleson," he said; "but I apprehend no difficulty in bringing that +gentleman round to my view of the case when we meet." + +As he wrote his prescription Philip Sheldon rose and looked over his +shoulder. + +The form of the prescription told him that Dr. Jedd knew--all! He had +suspected this from the first, and the confirmation of this suspicion did +not shake him. He grew firmer, indeed; for now he knew on what ground he +was standing, and what forces were arrayed against him. + +"I really do not understand the basis of your treatment," he said, still +looking over the physician's shoulder. + +Dr. Jedd turned his chair with a sudden movement, and faced him. + +"Am I talking to Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker, or Mr. Sheldon the +surgeon-dentist?" he asked. + +_This_ was a blow. This allusion to the past was a sharper stroke than +any that Philip Sheldon had before received. He looked at Valentine; from +Valentine to the physician. What did it mean, this mention of the past? +That blabbing fool George had talked to his friend of the days in +Fitzgeorge Street, no doubt; and Valentine had blabbed Mr. Sheldon's +antecedents to the physician. + +Was this what it all meant? Or did it mean more than this? Whatever it +might mean, he faced the hidden danger, and met the uncertainties of his +position as calmly as he met its certainties. + +"I have no desire to interfere with your treatment," he said, very +quietly; "but I have some knowledge of the Pharmacopoeia, and I confess +myself quite at a loss to understand your prescription." + +"Dr. Doddleson will understand it when he has heard my opinion. There is +no time to be lost--Mr. Hawkehurst, will you take this to the chemist, +and wait for the medicine? Miss Halliday cannot take it too soon. I shall +be here to-morrow at nine o'clock.--If you wish me to see Dr. Doddleson, +Mr. Sheldon, you will perhaps arrange an appointment with him for that +hour." + +"It is rather an early hour." + +"No hour is too early in a case attended with so much danger. Perhaps it +will be as well for me to call on Dr. Doddleson as I drive home. I shall +make a point of seeing Miss Halliday twice a day. I find your housekeeper +a very sensible person. She will remain in close attendance upon the +sick-room; and I must beg that there is no quackery--no home-made +remedies. I have given your housekeeper all directions as to treatment +and diet, and she has my orders to allow no one but herself in the +invalid's room. There is a marked tendency to delirium, and quiet is +indispensable." + +"I have said as much myself," answered Mr. Sheldon. + +"Mr. Hawkehurst will undertake to see to the making-up of my +prescriptions," continued Dr. Jedd, as he drew on his gloves. "He is very +anxious about the young lady, and it will afford him some relief of mind +to be employed in her service. No, thanks," he said, putting aside Mr. +Sheldon's hand as that gentleman offered him his fee. "I have already +received my honorarium from Mr. Hawkehurst." + +There was no more to be said. The physician wished the two men good +evening, and returned to his carriage, to be driven home to dinner by way +of Plantagenet Square, where he saw Dr. Doddleson, and appointed to meet +him next day, much to the delight of that individual, who was proud to be +engaged in a case with the great Jedd. + +Valentine left the house on the heels of the Doctor. He came back in +about twenty minutes with the medicine. He did not go to the principal +gate, but to a little side gate, near the offices of the gothic villa--a +gate to which butchers and bakers came with their wares in the morning. + +"I want to see Miss Paget," he said to the maid who answered his summons; +"and I want to see her without disturbing Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon. Do you +know where to find her?" + +"Yes, sir; she's in her own room. I took her a cup of tea there ten +minutes ago. She's got a headache with fretting about our poor young +lady, and she won't go down to dinner with master and missus." + +"Will you ask her to step out here and speak to me for a few minutes?" + +"Won't you come indoors and see her, sir?" + +"No; I'd rather see her in the garden." + +It was still daylight here, but it was growing shadowy among the avenues +in Kensington Gardens. The gate near which Valentine waited was not to be +seen from the windows of dining or drawing-room. + +The housemaid ran off to summon Miss Paget; and in less than five minutes +Diana appeared, dressed in her hat and garden jacket. + +"Will you come out into the road with me, dear?" asked Valentine. "I have +something serious to say to you." + +"And I am so anxious to hear what the Doctor has said," answered Diana, +as she took Valentine's arm. + +The road before the Lawn was very quiet at this hour of the evening, and +here they were safely beyond Mr. Sheldon's ken. + +"Tell me the Doctor's opinion, Valentine," Diana said, eagerly. "Does he +think the case very serious?" + +"He does. It is more serious than you or I could have imagined, if +Providence had not helped me to discover the truth." + +"What do you mean, Valentine?" + +He gave her in brief the story of his day's work. She listened to him +breathlessly, but uttered no exclamation until his story was finished. + +"It is most horrible," she said at last; "but I believe it is most true. +There has been so much in that man's conduct that has mystified me; and +_this_ explains all. But what earthly motive can have prompted this +hideous crime?" + +"He believes that he has a beneficial interest in her death. I cannot +fully understand his motive; but, rely upon it, there is a motive, and a +sufficient one. And I have let that man delude me into belief in his +honesty after I had been warned against him! But there is no time for +regrets. Diana, I look to you to help me in saving my dear love." + +"It is not too late to save her?" + +"Dr. Jedd will commit himself to no positive statement. He tells me she +is in danger, but he does not refuse all hope. Now listen, my dear. In +that house I have only two people to help me--Ann Woolper and yourself. +Ann Woolper I hold only by a feeble bond. I think she will be true to us; +but I am not sure of her. Sheldon's influence over her is a powerful one; +and God knows what concession he might extort from her. She is the +ostensible guardian of Charlotte's room; you must contrive to be the real +guardian. You must keep custody over the custodian. How is your room +situated in relation to Charlotte's room?" + +"The doors of the two rooms are exactly opposite." + +"Providence favours us there. Can you keep watch over Charlotte's door +from your room without making your guardianship too apparent?" + +"I can." + +"Day and night?" + +"Day and night." + +"God bless you, dear! Her life may be saved by your fidelity." + +"I would do as much to render her a smaller service." + +"My dear girl! And now go back to the house. Here is the medicine. You +will give that into Mrs. Woolper's hands; she has received her +instructions from Dr. Jedd, and those instructions leave no room for +doubt. If she permits Sheldon to tamper with the medicine or the food of +her patient, she will be the wilful accomplice of a murderer. I think she +may be trusted." + +"I will watch her." + +"The charge of procuring the medicine is mine. I shall come to this house +many times in the course of every day; but I am bound to prepare myself +for the hour in which Mr. Sheldon may forbid me his house. In that event +I shall come to this gate. I suppose the servants would stand by me if +you pleaded for me?" + +"I am sure they would." + +"And now, dear, go; the medicine is wanted. I shall come back in a few +hours to inquire if there is any change for the better. Go." + +They had returned to the gate ere this. He grasped the hand which she +held out to him, and stood by the little gate watching her till she had +disappeared through the door of the servants' quarters. When the door +closed, he walked slowly away. He had done all that it was possible for +him to do, and now came his worst misery. There was nothing left for him +but to wait the issue of events. + +What was he to do? Go home to his lodgings--eat, drink, sleep? Was it +possible for him to eat or to sleep while that precious life trembled in +the balance? He walked slowly along the endless roads and terraces in a +purposeless way. Careless people pushed against him, or he pushed against +them; children brushed past him as they ran. What a noisy, busy, +clattering world it seemed! And she lay dying! O, the droning, dreary +organs, and the hackneyed, common tunes, how excruciating they were to +him to-night! + +He emerged into the high road by-and-by, in all the bustle and riot of +Notting Hill. The crowded shops, the clamorous people, seemed strange to +him. It was like the clamour of a foreign city. He walked on past the +bustle and riot, by the quieter terraces near Holland Park, and still +held on to Shepherd's Bush, where he went into a little public-house and +called for some brandy. + +There was a bench on one side of the space in front of the bar, and +towards this he pushed his way. + +"Where are you shoving to, my young swell?" growled a sturdy cabman, +indignant at the outrage inflicted by Valentine's elbows; but in the next +moment the sturdy cabman dashed suddenly forward and caught the young +swell in his strong arms. + +"My eye, young un!" he cried; "where do you want to go to? Here, some one +bring a mug of cold water: I'm blest if he ain't in a fit!" + +Happily it was no fit, only a dead faint into which Mr. Hawkehurst had +fallen. He came back to consciousness presently, after a few spoonfuls of +brandy had been forced into his mouth, and looked about him with a +helpless stare. + +"I'm jiggered if I don't believe he's fainted for the want of wittles!" +cried the cabman. "They keeps up till they drop, sometimes, these seedy +swells--walks about, lookin' like so many Dossays, on a hempty stomach. +Here, some one bring a plate o' cold meat, and look sharp about it. I'll +stand sam." + +Valentine looked up with a faint smile. + +"And I'll stand sam for anything you like to order, my friend," he said, +holding out his hand to the good-natured cabman. "I've eaten nothing +since last night; but I haven't fasted for want of money. There are worse +troubles than an empty pocket,--and I'm not unacquainted with _that_." + +"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, sheepishly, very much +ashamed of his benevolence; "but, you see, it ain't the fust time I've +seen a swell come to the pavement with a cropper, in consequence of +having gone it too fast, and cleaned hisself out, in a manner of +speaking." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +NON DORMIT JUDAS. + +The summer darkness closed round the Bayswater villa, but of sleep there +was little for any one in that household during this sad night. Is there +not, in almost every household, a memory of such days and nights--dread +intervals in which the common course of life and time seems to be +suspended, and all the interests of the universe hang upon the fitful +breath of one dear sufferer? + +Lonely were the watchers in Mr. Sheldon's house. Georgy was in her own +room, forbidden to disturb the invalid by her restless presence--now +lying down, now pacing to and fro, now praying a little, now crying a +little--the very ideal of helpless misery. + +In the sick-room there was no one but the invalid and Ann Woolper. In +the room opposite watched Diana Paget, her door ajar, her senses +sharpened by anxiety, quick to hear the faintest sound of footfall on +the stairs, or to feel the slightest vibration from stealthily opened +door on the story below. + +Alone in the study sat Philip Sheldon, at the table where he was +accustomed to write--a blank sheet of paper before him, a pen held +loosely in his outstretched hand, and his eyes fixed in an unseeing gaze +upon the bookcase opposite--the living image of care. Now that the +turmoil of the day was done, and there was silence in the house, he had +set himself to face his position. It was no trifling task which he had to +perform. Not one difficulty, or one set of difficulties, had he to meet +and master. The armed enemies up-springing from the dragon's teeth which +he had sown were not to be set fighting amongst themselves, nor were they +to be smashed by any rocks that he could hurl amongst them. They stood +around him in an awful circle, and turn which way he would, he saw the +same appalling figure, armed to the teeth, and invincible as death. + +What had he to fear? + +Detection of a past crime? No, that was a fool's terror which shook him +at the sound of Tom Halliday's name--a child's fear of the nursery bogie. +Detection in the present was more to be dreaded. The work that he had +done was, according to his belief, work that could not be proved against +him. But there are crimes of which to be accused is to be condemned. +Lawyers may plead, and juries may acquit; but the fiat of public opinion +goes forth against the suspected wretch, and on _his_ forehead for ever +shows the dark brand of Cain. + +For the criminal of almost every shade of colour, save this one dread +hue, society has a sanctuary and earth a refuge. The forger may find a +circle in which the signing of another man's name, under the pressure of +circumstances, is held to be a misfortune rather than an offence. The +swindler has the gentlemanly brotherhood and sisterhood of Macaire for +his family, and need never be lonely. The thief may dance away his jovial +nights among kindred spirits, and be carried to his grave by sorrowing +fellow-artists. The coiner may be jolly in his hiding-place among his +chosen band of brother coiners. But for the murderer there is no such +thing as human sympathy; and, when the blood of Nancy dyes his cruel +hand, Bill Sykes may thank God if he has a dog that will follow him to +his wretched end, for from mankind he can hope nothing. + +Mr. Sheldon did not contemplate his position from any sentimental point +of view; but he told himself that to be suspected of having poisoned his +friend, and to be accused of poisoning, or attempting to poison, his +daughter, would be ruin--ruin social and commercial, ruin complete and +irretrievable. + +And having faced one of these dread armed antagonists, he passed on to +another shadowy enemy. + +What if Charlotte recovered, and he escaped the taint of uttered +suspicion--for Dr. Jedd's private opinion he cared very little--what +then? + +Then the grim antagonist lifted his visor, and showed him the countenance +of Commercial Disgrace. + +Unless within the next few weeks he could command from eight to ten +thousand pounds, his disgrace as a member of the Stock Exchange was +inevitable. Charlotte's death would give him the means of raising as much +upon the policies of assurance obtained by her, and which, by the terms +of her will, he would inherit. The life-insurance people might be +somewhat slow to settle his claims; but he had all possible facilities +for the raising of money upon any tangible security, and he could count +upon immediate cash, in the event of Charlotte's death. + +But what if she should not die? What if this nameless languor, this +mysterious atrophy, taken vigorously in hand by Dr. Jedd, should be +vanquished, and the girl should live? + +What indeed? A sharp spasm contracted the stockbroker's hard cold face as +he pictured to himself the result of failure. + +He saw the crowd of busy faces in the House, and heard the low hum of +many voices, and the dull sound of the big half-glass doors swinging to +and fro, and the constant tread of hurrying feet. He heard the buzz of +voices and the tramp of feet stop as suddenly as if that busy tide of +human life had been arrested by an enchanter's wand. The enchanter is no +other than the head-waiter of the Stock Exchange, who takes his position +by a stand in the midst of that great meeting-place, and removes his hat. + +After that sudden silence comes a faint sound of anxious whisperings; and +then again a second silence, still more profound, prevails in that +assembly. Three times, with wooden hammer sounding dull against the +woodwork of his stand, the waiter raps his awful rap. To some it is the +call of doom. The commercial Nemesis hides her awful countenance. Slow +and solemn sound those three deliberate strokes of the wooden hammer. You +can hear the stertorous breathing of an apoplectic stockbroker, the short +panting respiration of some eager speculator--the rest is silence. And +then the voice of the waiter--proxy for the commercial Nemesis--calmly +enunciates the dread decree. + +"Philip Sheldon begs to inform the members of the House that he cannot +comply with his bargains." + +A sudden flutter of the leaves of many note-books follows that awful +announcement. Voices rise loud in united utterance of surprise or +indignation. The doors swing to and fro, as hurrying members dash in and +out to scan the market and ascertain how far they may be affected by this +unlooked-for failure. + +This was the scene which the watcher pictured to himself; and for him +Fate could wear no aspect more terrible. Respectability, solvency, +success--these were the idols to which he had given worship and tribute +in all the days of his life. To propitiate these inexorable ones he had +sacrificed all the dearest and best blessings which earth and heaven +offer to mankind. Rest or happiness, as other men consider these +blessings, he had never known; the sense of triumph in success of the +present, the feverish expectation of success in the future--these had +stood to him in the place of love and hope, pleasure and idlesse, all the +joys and comforts of this lower world, and all the holy dreams of purer +pleasures in a world to come. + +One vague brief thought of all that he had sacrificed flashed across +his brain; and swift upon his track followed the thought of what he +stood to lose. + +Something more than his position upon the Stock Exchange was at stake. He +had done desperate things in the vain hope of sustaining that position +against the destroying sweep of Fortune's turning tide. Bills were afloat +which he must meet, or stand before the world a detected forger,--bills +drawn upon companies that were shadowy as the regions of their supposed +operations. Bills amounting to five thousand pounds, drawn, upon the +Honduras Mahogany Company, Limited; other bills amounting to upwards of +three thousand pounds, against the Pennsylvanian Anthracite Coal +Corporation, Limited. The sum he might raise on the policies of insurance +would about cover these bills; and, simultaneously with their withdrawal, +fresh bills might be floated, and the horse-leech cry of the brokers for +contango might be satisfied until there came a reaction in the City, and +the turning tide should float him into some harbour of safety. Beyond +this harbour shone a splendid beacon, the dead girl's inheritance--his, +to claim by right of the same will that would give him the sum insured +upon her life. + +Without this immediate ready money there was no extraction from the +hideous labyrinth. His position had been already too long sustained by +bills of exchange. There were people in the City who wanted, in vulgar +parlance, to see the colour of his money. He knew this--and knew how +frail the tenure by which he held his position, and how dire the crash +which would hurl him down to ruin. + +After the proclamation of his inability to meet his differences--the +Deluge: and, looking gloomily athwart the flood and tempest, he saw +neither ark nor Ararat. + +Charlotte's death was the one chance of redemption; and to that event he +looked as to a figure in a mathematical proposition. Of this girl +herself, with all her wealth of beauty and goodness, of hope and love, he +had scarcely any definite idea. She had so long been no more to him than +an important figure in the mathematics of his life, that he had lost the +power to behold her in any other light. + +The hardness of his nature was something lower than absolute cruelty of +heart. It was less human than the half-insane ferocity of a Nero. It was +a calm indifference to the waste of human life, which, displayed upon a +larger field of operation, would have made a monster cold and passionless +as Sphinx or Chimæra. + +"I must see Ann Woolper," he said to himself, presently, "she will not +dare to exclude me from that room." + +He listened to the striking of the Bayswater clocks. Two o'clock. Within +and without the house reigned a profound silence. The room immediately +over Mr. Sheldon's study was Charlotte's room, and here there had been +for a long time no sound of life or movement. + +"Asleep, I dare say," muttered Mr. Sheldon, "invalid and nurse both." + +He exchanged his boots for slippers, which he kept in a little cupboard +below the bookshelves, among old newspapers, and went softly from the +room. The gas was burning dimly on the stairs and on the landing above. +He opened the door of the invalid's room softly, and went in. + +Mrs. Woolper was seated beside the bed. She looked up at him with +unwinking eyes. + +"I thought you was abed, sir," she said. + +"No; I am too anxious to sleep." + +"I think every one is anxious, sir," Mrs. Woolper answered, gravely. + +"How is your patient?" + +The pretty white curtains of the little brass Arabian bedstead were +drawn. + +"She is asleep, sir. She sleeps a great deal. The doctor said that was +only natural." + +"She has taken her medicine, I suppose?" said Mr. Sheldon. + +He glanced round the room as he asked this question, but could see no +trace of medicine-bottle or glass. + +"Yes, sir; she has taken it twice, the poor dear." + +"Let me look at the medicine." + +"The strange doctor said as I was to let no one touch it, sir." + +"Very likely; but that direction doesn't apply to me." + +"He said no one, sir." + +"You are an old fool!" muttered Mr. Sheldon, savagely. + +"Ah no, sir," the housekeeper answered, with a profound sigh; "I am wiser +than I was when poor Mr. Halliday died." + +This answer, and the sigh, and the look of solemn sadness which +accompanied it, told him that this woman knew all. She had suspected him +long ago; but against her unsupported suspicion the mere force of his +character had prevailed. She was wiser now; for on this occasion +suspicion was confirmed by the voice of science. + +He stood for a few minutes looking at his old nurse, with a dark moody +face. What could he feel except supreme indignation against this woman, +who dared to oppose him when he had the best right to rely on her +faithful service? She had promised him her fidelity, and at the first +hint from a stranger she coolly deserted him and went over to the enemy. + +"Do you mean to say that you refuse to let me look at the medicine which +you have been giving to my stepdaughter?" he asked. + +"I mean to say that I will obey the orders given me by the strange +doctor," the old woman answered, with a calm sadness of tone, "even if it +turns you against me--you that have given me a comfortable home when +there was nothing before me but the workhouse; you that I carried in my +arms forty years ago. If it was anything less than her dear life that was +in danger, sir, and if I hadn't stood by her father's deathbed, I +couldn't stand against you like this. But knowing what I do, I will stand +firm as a rock between you and her; and think myself all the more truly +your faithful servant because I do not fear to offend you." + +"That's so much arrant humbug, Mrs. Woolper. I suppose you've made your +book with Miss Halliday and Miss Halliday's lover, and think you can +serve your turn best by sticking to them and throwing me over the bridge. +It's only the way of the world. You're genuine Yorkshire, and know how to +pack your cards for winning the trick. But suppose I were to spoil your +game by turning you out of doors neck and crop? What then?" + +"I don't think you'll do that, sir." + +"Why not, pray?" + +"I don't think you dare do it, in the face of that strange doctor." + +"You don't? And so Dr. Jedd is the master of this house, is he?" + +"Yes, sir. Till that poor dear young lady is well again, if ever that day +comes, I think Dr. Jedd will be the real master in this house." + +"By ----! Mrs. Woolper, you're a cool hand, I must say!" + +He could say no more. Of passionate or declamatory language he had no +command. The symbols of thought that obtained in his world were of a +limited and primitive range. + +"You're a cool hand," he repeated, under his breath. And then he turned +and left the room, opening and closing the door less cautiously than on +his entrance. + +The door of the opposite room was opened softly as he came out into +the corridor, and Diana Paget stood before him, dressed as she had +been in the day. + +"What!" he exclaimed, impatiently, "are you up too?" + +"Yes, Mr. Sheldon. I cannot sleep while Lotta is so ill." + +"Humph! I suppose you mean to get yourself on the sick-list, and give us +another invalid to nurse." + +"I will not trouble you to nurse me if I should be ill." + +"Ah!" growled the stockbroker, as he went to his own room, "you are a +pack of silly women altogether; and your fine friend Hawkehurst is more +womanish than the silliest of you. Goodnight." + +He went into his own room, where he found his wife still awake. Her weak +lamentings and bewailings were insupportable to him; and at three o'clock +he went downstairs, put on his boots and a light overcoat, and went out +into the dim regions of Bayswater, whence he saw the sun rise red above +the eastern roofs and chimneys, and where he walked until the first +clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels began to echo through the empty +streets, and, with faint distant cries of sweeps and milk-women, life's +chorus recommenced. + +It was seven o'clock when he went back to his house, and let himself in +softly with his latchkey. He knew that he had been walking a long time, +and that he had seen the sun rise; but what streets or squares he had +been walking in he did not know. He crept upstairs to his dressing-room +with stealthy footsteps, and made an elaborate toilet. At eight o'clock +he was seated at breakfast in the hastily-arranged dining-room, with the +newspapers by the side of his cup and saucer. At nine he went into the +hall to receive Dr. Jedd and Dr. Doddleson, who arrived almost +simultaneously. His carefully-arranged hair and whiskers, his well made +unpretentious clothes, his spotless linen, would have done credit to an +archbishop. Of all the cares and calculations of his long dreary night +there was no trace, except a certain dulness in his eyes, and the dark +half-circles below them. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +COUNTING THE COST. + +For four days and four nights there were fear and watching in Mr. +Sheldon's house; and in all that time the master never quitted it, except +stealthily, in the dead of the night, or at early daybreak, to roam in a +purposeless manner he knew not where. The doctors came and went--Dr. +Doddleson once a day, Dr. Jedd two or three times a day--and every one in +villas adjoining and villas opposite, and even in villas round the +corner, knew that the stockbroker's stepdaughter lay sick unto death; for +the white horses of Dr. Jedd's landau were as the pale horse of the Pale +Rider himself, and where they came was danger or death. Ah, thank God! to +some they have brought hope and blessing; not always the dread answer, +"You have called me in vain." + +Valentine Hawkehurst came many times in the day, but between him and Mr. +Sheldon there could be no safe meeting; and the lover came quietly to the +little gate, where a kindly housemaid gave him a little note from Diana +Paget. Miss Paget wrote half a dozen little notes of this kind in the +course of every day, but she never left her post in the room opposite the +sick-chamber. She complained of headache, or of some vague illness which +prevented her taking her meals in the dining-room, and Mr. Sheldon was +fain to be satisfied with this explanation of her conduct. + +She was on guard; and the wretched master of the house knew that she was +on guard, and that if Ann Woolper could be bought over, or frightened +into compliance with his wishes, this girl would still remain, faithful +as watchdog, by the door of her friend and companion. He asked himself +whether by violent or diplomatic process, he could rid himself of this +second watcher; and the answer was in the negative. The circle around him +was a circle not to be broken. + +His wife, as yet, had been told nothing of the suspicions that reigned in +the breasts of other people. He knew this; for in his wife's face there +was no token of that dark knowledge, and she, of all people, would be +least skilled to deceive his scrutinizing eyes. Nor had the younger +servants of his household any share in the hideous suspicion. He had +watched the countenance of the maid who waited on him, and had convinced +himself of this. + +It was something to know that even these were not yet leagued against +him; but he could not tell at what moment they too might be sworn into +that secret society which was growing up against him in his own house. +Power to carry out his own schemes in the face of these people he felt +that he had none. Upon the dark road which he had travelled until of late +without let or hindrance, there had arisen, all at once, an +insurmountable barrier, with the fatal inscription, Here there is no +Thoroughfare. + +Beyond this barrier he could not pass. Sudden as the dread arrest of +Lot's wife was the mandate which had checked his progress. He was brought +to a dead stop; and there was nothing for him to do but to wait the issue +of Fate. He stood, defiant, unabashed, face to face with the figure of +Nemesis, and calmly awaited the lifting of the veil. + +He hoped that Charlotte Halliday would die. If by her death he could tide +over his difficulties and drift into smooth water, it would be but a very +small thing to him that Dr. Jedd, and Dr. Doddleson enlightened by his +colleague, and Valentine Hawkehurst, and Diana Paget, and a stupid +pig-headed old Yorkshirewoman, should carry in their minds for the +remainder of their lives the suspicion that by his means that fair young +life had been brought to its early close. + +What would it amount to in the future of his own existence? Prudential +considerations would induce these people to lock the secret of this +suspicion in their own breasts. Dr. Jedd would bow to him somewhat +coldly, perhaps, if they met in the streets of London, or possibly might +refuse to make any return to his passing salutation; but the cut direct +from Dr. Jedd would not cast a shadow over his commercial career, or even +weaken his social position. If, by the loud folly of Hawkehurst, some +evil rumour about him should float as far eastward as the Stock Exchange, +who would be found to give credence to the dark report? Men would shrug +their shoulders and shake their heads incredulously; and one of these +wise men of the east would remark that, "A fellow in Sheldon's position +doesn't do that kind of thing, you know;" while another would say, "I +dined with him at Greenwich last summer, and a remarkably good dinner he +gave us. Dawkins, the great shipbuilder, and M'Pherson, of M'Pherson and +Flinders, the Glasgow merchants, were there. Very jolly affair, I assure +you. Deuced gentlemanly fellow, Phil Sheldon." And so the matter would +end. + +Would there be an inquest in the event of his stepdaughter's death? Well, +no. Jedd knew that in such a case all _post-mortem_ inquiry must end in +confusion and perplexity, statement and counter-statement from medical +witnesses, who would contradict one another persistently in the support +of their pet theories, and who would regard the investigation as a very +convenient opportunity for ventilating their own opinions and airing +their own importance. A considerable number of the canine race would be +slaughtered, perhaps, in the process of dilettante experiments; the broad +principles of chemical science would be discussed from every point of +view, in innumerable letters published in the _Zeus,_ and the _Diurnal +Hermes_; and the fact that an amiable and innocent young woman had been +foully murdered would be swept out of the minds of mankind before a +whirlwind of technical debate. Jedd was the last man to stake his +reputation upon such a hazard. No: Mr. Sheldon knew that he had played a +cautious game; and if he should ultimately lose the stake for which he +had ventured, it would be because he had been just a little too cautious. + +"These things are generally done too quickly," he said to himself. "My +mistake has been to make matters too slow." + +Come what might, of after-consequences to himself from Charlotte +Halliday's illness or death he had no apprehension. + +Thus it was that he met Dr. Jedd day after day with a face as calm as the +stony countenance of that distinguished physician himself. Such anxiety +as an affectionate stepfather should feel during the peril of his +stepdaughter Mr. Sheldon took care to express. Greater anxiety than this +by no look or gesture did he betray. He knew that he was watched; and +that the people about him were inimical to himself and to his interests; +and he was never off his guard. + +It had been necessary for him to come to London in order to be within +easy reach of that troubled sea, the money-market. But perilous though +the voyage of his bark across that tempestuous ocean was, he could not +guide the helm in person. He was obliged to confide matters to the care +of Mr. Frederick Orcott, whom he harassed with telegraphic despatches at +all hours of the day, and who at this period seemed to spend his life +between the stockbroker's office and Bayswater. + +It seemed as if Mr. Sheldon meant to hold his ground in that house until +the issue of events was determined. Valentine Hawkehurst and George +Sheldon met at the solicitor's offices, and there was a long and serious +consultation between them. + +"One thing seems pretty clear," said George, conclusively, "and that is, +that my brother Phil isn't to be got off the premises except by some very +deep move. The question is, what move can be deep enough to trap such a +man as he? He's a man who knows the inside of your mind better than you +do yourself; and can reckon you up as easily as the simplest sum in +arithmetic." + +The two men talked together very seriously for some time after this, and +on the same day Valentine lay in wait for Dr. Jedd as he left Philip +Sheldon's house, and was driven back to town in that gentleman's +carriage. On the road there was much serious talk between Miss Halliday's +physician and Miss Halliday's lover. Valentine was still very grave and +very anxious when he took his leave of Dr. Jedd; but he was more hopeful +than he had been for the last few days. + +On the same evening Gustave Lenoble received a brief epistle from his +plighted wife. + +"MY DEAR GUSTAVE,--I regret to find from your letter that the doctors +consider my father weaker than when I was last at Knightsbridge; but, +even knowing this, I cannot come to him just yet. The duty which detains +me here is even more sacred than his claim upon my care. And I know your +goodness to him, and feel that in you he has a better friend and +comforter than I could be to him. I thank you, dear, for your kindness to +this poor broken-down wanderer even more than for your generous devotion +to me. And now I am going to ask you a favour. It is, that you will +afford Mr. Hawkehurst, the person who will give you this letter, the help +of your friendship and counsel in very difficult and critical +circumstances, which he will explain to you. I have spoken to you of him +very little, though his devotion to my dear adopted sister, Charlotte +Halliday, brings him very near to me. Her long, and of late dangerous, +illness has been a bitter time of trial to him, even more than to me; but +the trial has proved him true as steel. I think your counsel may be of +some service to him just now, and I am sure your friendship will help to +support him in a period of acute anxiety. + +"Do not ask to see me, dear Gustave. I _cannot_ leave this house while +Charlotte is in danger; but if it please God to remove that danger, I +shall then be free to go where I please, and my future life shall be at +your disposal. Do not think me cold or ungrateful; I am only faithful to +the first friend I ever knew.--Yours always, with all affection, + +"DIANA PAGET." + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +THE BEGINNING OF THE END. + +Three days elapsed after the delivery of this letter. Upwards of a week +had gone by since the return of Mr. Sheldon and his family from Harold's +Hill: and as yet Philip Sheldon knew not what the issue of events was to +be. Very vague were the oracular sentences which his questioning extorted +from Dr. Jedd, and he had tried in vain to obtain a _tête-à-tête_ +interview with Dr. Doddleson. The physician of Burlington Row took care +that his feeble colleague should not fall alone and defenceless into the +pathway of Philip Sheldon. Of Charlotte's actual condition her +stepfather, therefore, knew very little. He was told that her state was +attended by danger; and the solemn faces which greeted him on every side +implied that the danger was extreme. From her room he was in a manner +excluded. If he went to her door to make some benevolent and paternal +inquiry, he was met on the threshold by Ann Woolper, the sleepless and +unresting. If he hinted a natural desire to see his invalid stepdaughter, +he was told that she had that moment fallen asleep, or that she was too +ill to see him. There was always some plausible reason why he should not +be admitted to her room; and finding that this was so, he did not press +the question. + +He had taken Mrs. Woolper's measure, and had found that she was too +strong for him; doubly strong since she was supported and sustained by +that second sleepless watcher, Diana Paget, whom Mr. Sheldon had long ago +pronounced to be a strong-minded and superior young person. + +From his wife he could obtain no real information--nothing but weepings +and lamentations; weak apprehensions of future woe, weaker retrospective +reflections on the fatal illness and untimely end of her first husband. +Georgy was admitted once or twice a day to the sick-room; but she emerged +therefrom no wiser than she entered it. Sorrow in the present, and the +fear of greater sorrow to come, had utterly prostrated this poor weak +soul. She believed what other people told her to believe, she hoped what +they told her to hope. She was the very incarnation and express image of +helpless misery. + +So, in utter darkness of mind, Mr. Sheldon awaited his destiny. The day +drew very near on which he must find certain sums of ready money, or must +accept the dreary alternative of ruin and disgrace. He had the policies +of assurance in his cash-box, together with the will which made him +Charlotte's sole legatee; he had fixed in his own mind upon the man to +whom he could apply for an advance of four thousand pounds on one of the +two policies, and he relied on getting his banker to lend him money on +the security of the second. But for the one needful event he had yet to +wait. That event was Charlotte Halliday's death. + +Of his dreary wanderings in the early morning the household knew nothing. +The time which he chose for these purposeless rambles was just the time +when no one was astir. The watchers in the two rooms above heard neither +his going out nor his coming in, so stealthy were his movements on every +occasion. But without this intermission from the dreadful concentration +of his life, without this amount of physical exercise and fresh air, +Philip Sheldon could scarcely have lived through this period. The +solitude of shipwrecked mariner cast upon a desolate island could hardly +be more lonely than this man's life had been since his return from +Harold's Hill. From his study to the dining-room, and from the +dining-room back to his study, was the only variety of his dreary days +and nights. He had an iron bedstead put up in his study, and there he lay +in the earlier hours of the night, taking such rest as he could from +fitful dozing that was scarcely sleep, or from brief intervals of heavy +slumber made horrible by torturing dreams. + +In this room he could hear every sudden movement in the hall, every +footstep on the stairs, every opening and shutting of the outer door. +Here, too, he could keep his watch, holding himself ready to counter the +movements of his enemies, should any opportunity arise for action on his +part, defensive or aggressive. + +To this room he stealthily returned one brilliant summer morning as the +clocks were striking six. He had been walking in the Bayswater Road, +amidst all the pleasant stir and bustle of early morning. Waggons coming +in from the country, milkwomen setting forth on their daily rounds, +clamorous young rooks cawing among the topmost branches of the elms, +song-birds chirruping and gurgling their glad morning hymn; and over all +things the glory and the freshness of the summer sunshine. + +But to Philip Sheldon it was as if these things were not. For the last +twelve or fifteen years of his life he had taken no heed of the change +of the seasons, except insomuch as the passage of time affected his +bill-book, or the condition of that commercial world which was the +beginning and end of his life. Now, less than ever, had he an ear for +the carolling of birds, or an eye for the glory of summer sunlight, or +the flickering shadows of summer leaves faintly stirred by the soft +summer wind. + +He re-entered his house with a half-dazed sense of the stir and life that +had been about him in the high road. It was a relief to him to escape +this life and brightness, and to take shelter in the gloom of his study, +where the shutters were closed, and only a faint glimmer of day crept +through a chink in the shrunken woodwork. + +For the first time since the beginning of this dreary period of idleness +and suspense he felt himself thoroughly beaten, and instead of going up +to his dressing-room for his careful morning toilet, as it was his habit +to do at this hour, he flung himself, dressed as he was, upon the low +iron bedstead, and fell into a heavy slumber. + +Yes, there they were--the familiar tortures of his slumbers, the +shadows of busy, eager faces; and upon all one universal expression of +mingled anger and surprise. The sound of a wooden hammer striking three +solemn strokes; the faint tones of Tom Halliday's voice, thanking him for +his friendly care; the dying look in Tom Halliday's face, turned to him +with such depth of trust and affection. And then across the shadowy +realm of dreams there swept the slow solemn progress of a funeral +_cortege_--plumed hearses, blacker than blackest night; innumerable +horses, with funereal trappings and plumed headgear waving in an icy +wind; long trains of shrouded figures stretching on into infinite space, +in spectral procession that knew neither beginning nor end. And in all +the solemn crowd passing perpetually with the same unceasing motion, +there was no sound of human footfall, no tramp of horse's hoof, only that +dismal waving of black plumage in an icy wind, and the deep boom of a +bell tolling for the dead. + +He awoke with a start, and exclaimed, "If this is what it is to sleep, I +will never sleep again!" + +In the next minute he recovered himself. He had been lying on his back. +The endless pageant, the dreadful tolling of the funeral bell, meant no +more than nightmare, the common torment of all humanity. + +"What a fool I must be!" he muttered to himself, as he wiped his +forehead, which had grown cold and damp in the agony of his dream. + +He opened the shutters, and then looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. +To his surprise he found that he had been sleeping three hours. It was +nine o'clock. He went upstairs to dress. There was an unusual stir in the +corridor above. Ann Woolper was standing there, with her hand on the door +of the sick-room, talking to Diana, who covered her face suddenly as he +approached, and disappeared into her own room. + +The beating of his heart quickened suddenly. Something had happened to +disturb the common course of events. Something? What was likely to +happen, except the one dread circumstance for which he hoped and waited +with such horrible eagerness? + +In Ann Woolper's solemn face he read an answer to his thought. For the +first time he was well nigh losing his self-possession. It was with an +effort that he steadied himself sufficiently to ask the usual +conventional question in the usual conventional tone. + +"Is she any better this morning, Ann?" + +"Yes, sir, she is much better," the Yorkshirewoman answered solemnly. +"She is where none can harm her now." + +Yes; it was the usual periphrase of these vulgar people. He knew all +their cant by heart. + +"You mean to say--she--is dead?" + +He no longer tried to conceal his agitation. It was a part of his duty to +be agitated by the news of his stepdaughter's untimely death. + +"O, sir, you may well be sorry," said the Yorkshirewoman, with deep +feeling. "She was the sweetest, most forgiving creature that ever came +into this world; and to the last no hard or cruel word ever passed her +innocent lips. Yes, sir, she is gone; she is beyond the power of any one +to harm her." + +"All that sort of stuff is so much hypocritical twaddle, Mrs. Woolper," +muttered Mr. Sheldon impatiently; "and I recommend you to keep it for the +chaplain of the workhouse in which you are likely to end your days. At +what time--did--did this--sad event--happen? + +"About an hour ago." + +In the very hour when, in his hideous dream, he had beheld the solemn +funeral train winding on for ever through the dim realms of sleep. Was +there some meaning in such foolish shadows, after all? + +"And why was I not sent for?" + +"You were asleep, sir. I came downstairs myself, and looked into your +room. You were fast asleep, and I wouldn't disturb you." + +"That was very wrong; but it was of a piece with the rest of your +conduct, which has been from first to last antagonistic to me. I suppose +I can see my stepdaughter now," Mr. Sheldon added, with a grim smile. +"There is no further excuse--about headache--or sleep." + +"No, sir, you cannot see her yet. In an hour, if you wish to come into +this room, you can come." + +"You are extremely obliging. I begin to doubt whether I am really in my +own house. In an hour, then, I will come. Where is my wife?" + +"In her own room, sir, lying down; asleep, I believe." + +"I will not disturb her. How about the registration, by-the-by? That +must be seen to." + +"Dr. Jedd has promised to attend to that, sir." + +"Has Dr. Jedd been here?" + +"He was here an hour ago." + +"Very good. And he will see to that," muttered Mr. Sheldon thoughtfully. + +The event for which he had been so long waiting seemed at the last a +little sudden. It had shaken his nerves more than he had supposed it +possible that they could be shaken. + +He went to his dressing-room, and on this occasion made a very hasty +toilet. The event had been tardy, and he had no time to lose in +discounting it now that it had come to pass. He went from his +dressing-room back to his study, took the jacket containing the policies +of assurance and the will from the deed-box, and left the house. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED. + +A cab conveyed Mr. Sheldon swiftly to a dingy street in the City--a +street which might have been called the pavement of wasted footsteps, so +many an impecunious wretch tramped to and fro upon those dreary flags in +vain. + +The person whom Mr. Sheldon came to see was a distinguished +bill-discounter, who had served him well in more than one crisis, and on +whose service he fancied he could now rely. + +Mr. Kaye, the bill-discounter, was delighted to see his worthy friend Mr. +Sheldon. He had just come up from his family at Brighton, and had quite a +little court awaiting him in an outer chamber, through which Mr. Sheldon +had been ushered to the inner office. + +"It's rather early for such a visitor as you," Mr. Kaye said, after a few +commonplaces. "I have not been in town half an hour." + +"My business is too important for any consideration about hours," +answered Mr. Sheldon, "or I should not be here at all. I have just come +from the deathbed of my wife's daughter." + +"Indeed!" exclaimed the bill-discounter, looking inexpressibly +shocked. Until that moment he had lived in supreme ignorance of the +fact that Mr. Sheldon had a stepdaughter; but his sorrow-stricken +expression of countenance might have implied that he had known and +esteemed the young lady. + +"Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Sheldon; "and something more than sad for +me. The poor girl had great expectations, and would have come into a very +fine fortune if she had lived a year or two longer." + +"Ha! dear me, how very unfortunate! Poor young lady!" + +"Jedd and Doddleson--you know them by repute, of course--have been +attending her for the last six weeks. There will be no end of expense for +me; and it has been all of no use." + +"Consumption, I suppose?" + +"Well, no; not pulmonary disease. A kind of atrophy. I scarcely know what +to call it. Now, look here, Kaye. This illness has thrown all my affairs +into a muddle. Taken in conjunction with the depressed state of the +money-market, it has been altogether an upset for me. I have been staying +at home looking after this poor girl and my wife--who of course is +dreadfully cut up, and that sort of thing--when I ought to have been in +the City. Luckily for me, and for my wife, in whose interests I acted, I +took the precaution to get her daughter's life insured eight or nine +months ago; in point of fact, immediately after finding she was +heir-at-law to a considerable fortune. The policy is for five thousand +pounds. I want you to give me four thousand immediately upon the strength +of the document and of my stepdaughter's will." + +"Give you four thousand!" exclaimed Mr. Kaye, with a little unctuous +laugh. "Do you suppose I keep such a balance as that at my banker's?" + +"I suppose that you can give me the money if you like." + +"I might be able to get it for you." + +"Yes; that's a kind of humbug a hundred years old. We've heard all about +little Premium and his friend in the City, and so on, from that man who +wrote plays and cut a figure in Parliament. You can give me the money on +the spot if you like, Kaye; and if I didn't want ready money very badly I +shouldn't come to you. The insurance company will give me five thousand +in a month or two. I can give you my bill at two months' date, and +deposit the policy in your hands as collateral security. I might get this +money from other quarters--from my bankers', for instance; but I don't +want to let them know too much." + +Mr. Kaye deliberated. He had assisted Mr. Sheldon's financial operations, +and had profited thereby. Money advanced upon such a security must be as +safe as money invested in Consols, unless there were anything doubtful in +the circumstances of the policy; and that, with a man of Mr. Sheldon's +respectability, was to the last degree unlikely. + +"When do you want this money?" he asked at last. + +"At the beginning of next week. On the twenty-fifth at latest." + +"And this is the twentieth. Sharp work." + +"Not at all. You could give me the money this afternoon, if you pleased." + +"Well, I'll think it over. It's a matter in which I feel myself bound to +take my solicitor's opinion. Suppose you meet him here to-morrow at +twelve o'clock? You can bring the necessary evidence to support the +claim--the doctor's and registrar's certificate, and so on?" + +"Yes," Mr. Sheldon answered, thoughtfully; "I will bring the documentary +evidence. To-morrow at twelve, then." + +Very little more was said. Mr. Sheldon left the will and the policy in +the bill-discounter's possession, and departed. Things had gone as +smoothly as he could fairly expect them to go. From Mr. Kaye's office he +went to the Unitas Bank, where he had a very friendly, but not altogether +satisfactory, interview with the secretary. He wanted the Unitas people +to advance him money on the strength of the second policy of assurance; +but his balance had been very low of late, and the secretary could not +promise compliance with his desires. Those Unitas shares valued at five +thousand pounds, which he had transferred to his beloved stepdaughter, +had been retransferred by the young lady some months before, with a view +to the more profitable investment of the money. + +This money, as well as all else that Philip Sheldon could command, had +gone to the same bottomless pit of unlucky speculation. From the bank the +stockbroker went to his office, where he saw Frederick Orcott, to whom he +announced his stepdaughter's death with all due appearance of sorrow. He +sat for an hour in his office, arranging his affairs for the following +day, then sent for another cab, and drove back to Bayswater. The noonday +press and noise of the City seemed strange to him, almost as they might +have seemed to a man newly returned from lonely wanderings in distant +wildernesses. + +The blinds were down at the Lawn. His own handsome bedchamber and +adjoining dressing-room faced the road, and it was at the windows of +these two rooms he looked. He fancied his weak foolish wife wailing and +lamenting behind those lowered blinds. + +"And I shall have to endure her lamentations," he thought, with a +shudder. "I shall have no further excuse for avoiding her. But, on the +other hand, I shall have the pleasure of giving Mrs. Woolper and Miss +Paget notice to quit." + +He derived a grim satisfaction from this thought. Yes; insolence from +those two women he would endure no longer. The time had come in which he +would assert his right to be master in his own house. The game had been +played against him boldly by Jedd and these people, and had been lost by +them. He was the winner. He could not dismiss doctors, nurse, friend, +lover. Charlotte Halliday's death made him master of the situation. + +He went into his house with the determination to assert his authority at +once. Within all was very quiet. He looked into the dining-room--it was +quite empty; into the study--also empty. He went slowly upstairs, +composing his face into the appropriate expression. At the door of that +chamber which to him should have seemed of all earthly chambers the most +awful, he knocked softly. + +There was no answer. + +He knocked a little louder, but there was still no answer. A little +louder again, and with the same result. + +"Is there no one there?" he asked himself. "No one, except--?" + +He opened the door, and went in, with unshaken nerves, to look upon that +one quiet sleeper whom his summons could not awaken, whom his presence +could not disturb. + +There was no nurse or watcher by the bed. Everything was arranged with +extreme neatness and precision; but it seemed to him that there were +objects missing in the room, objects that had been familiar to him during +the dead girl's illness, and which were associated with her presence,--the +clock that had stood on the table by her bed, a stand of books, a low +easy-chair, with embroidered cover worked by her mother and Diana Paget. +The room looked blank and empty without these things, and Mr. Sheldon +wondered what officious hand had removed them. + +Yonder stood the pretty little bedstead, shrouded by closely drawn white +curtains. Philip Sheldon walked slowly across the room, and drew aside +one of the curtains. He had looked upon the death-sleep of Charlotte +Halliday's father, why not upon hers? + +She was not there! Those closely drawn curtains shrouded only the bed on +which she had slept in the tranquil slumbers of her careless girlhood. +That cold lifeless form, whose rigid outline Philip Sheldon had steeled +himself to see, had no place here. + +He put his hand to his head, bewildered. "What does it mean?" he asked +himself; "surely she died in this room!" + +He went hurriedly to his wife's room. They had taken Charlotte there, +perhaps, shortly before her death. Some feverish fancy might have +possessed her with the desire to be taken thither. + +He opened the door and went in; but here again all was blank and empty. +The room was arranged after its usual fashion; but of his wife's presence +there was no token. His sense of mystification and bewilderment grew +suddenly into a sense of fear. What did it mean? What hellish fooling had +he been the dupe of? + +He went to Diana's room. That, too, was empty. A trunk and a portmanteau, +covered and strapped as if for removal, occupied the centre of the room. + +There was no other room upon this floor. Above this floor there were only +the rooms of the servants. + +He went downstairs to the dining-room and rang the bell The parlour-maid +came in answer to his summons. + +"Where is your mistress?" he asked. + +"Gone out, sir; she went at eight o'clock this morning. And O, if you +please, sir, Dr. Jedd called, and said I was to give you this--with the +certificate." + +The certificate! Yes, the certificate of Charlotte Halliday's death,--the +certificate which he must produce to-morrow, with other evidence, for the +satisfaction of the bill-discounter and his legal adviser. He stared at +the girl, still possessed by the sense of bewilderment which had come +upon him on seeing those empty rooms upstairs. He took the letter from +her almost mechanically, and tore it open without looking at the address. +The certificate dropped to the ground. He picked it up with a tremulous +hand, and for some moments stood staring at it with dazzled, unseeing +eyes. He could see that it was a document with dates and names written in +a clerkly hand. For some moments he could see no more. And then words and +names shone out of the confusion of letters that spun and whirled, like +motes in the sunshine, before his dazzled eyes. + +"Valentine Hawkehurst, bachelor, author, Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road, +son of Arthur Hawkehurst, journalist; Charlotte Halliday, spinster, of +the Lawn, Bayswater, daughter of Thomas Halliday, farmer." + +He read no more. + +It was a copy of a certificate of marriage--not a certificate of +death--that had been brought to him. + +"You can go," he said to the servant hoarsely. + +He had a vague consciousness that she was staring at him with curious +looks, and that it was not good for him to be watched by any one just +now. + +"About dinner, sir, if you please?" the young woman began timidly. + +"What do I know about dinner?" + +"You will dine at home, sir?" + +"Dine at home? Yes; Mrs. Woolper can give you your orders." + +"Mrs. Woolper has gone out, sir. She has gone for good, I believe, sir; +she took her boxes. And Miss Paget's luggage will be sent for, if you +please, sir. There's a letter, sir, that Mrs. Woolper left for you on the +mantelpiece." + +"She was very good. That will do; you can go." + +The girl departed, bewildered like her fellow-servants by the strangeness +of the day's proceedings, still more bewildered by the strangeness of her +master's manner. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +"THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE." + +When the servant was gone, Mr. Sheldon sat down and examined the document +she had given him. + +Yes, it was in due form. A certified copy of the certificate +of a marriage performed that morning at the church of St. +Matthias-in-the-fields, Paddington, and duly witnessed by the registrar +of that parish. If this document were indeed genuine, as to all +appearance it was, Valentine Hawkehurst and Charlotte Halliday had been +married that morning; and the will and the policy of assurance deposited +with Mr. Kaye the bill-discounter were so much waste-paper. + +And they had fooled him, Philip Sheldon, as easily as this! The furious +rage which he felt against all these people, and, more than against them, +against his own besotted folly for allowing himself to be so fooled, was +a sharper agony than had ever yet rent his cruel heart. He had been a +scoundrel all his life, and had felt some of the pains and penalties of +his position; but to be a defeated scoundrel was a new sensation to him; +and a savage impotent hate and anger against himself and the universe +took possession of his mind. + +He walked up and down the room for some time, abandoned wholly to the +ungovernable rage that consumed him, and with no thought beyond that +blind useless fury. And then there came upon him the feeling that was +almost a part of his mind--the consciousness that something must be done, +and promptly. Whatever his position was, he must face it. His hurried +pacing to and fro came to a sudden stop, and he took the crumpled +document from his packet, and examined it once more. + +There seemed little doubt that it was genuine; and a visit to the church +where the marriage was stated to have been performed would immediately +place the matter beyond all doubt. With the copy of the certificate, he +had taken from his pocket the letter that had enclosed it. He saw now +that the envelope was addressed in Hawkehurst's hand. + +"Favoured by Dr. Jedd," he had written in a corner of the envelope. + +Why should Dr. Jedd "favour" Mr. Hawkehurst's letter? Why, indeed, unless +there had been a conspiracy concocted by these men against his authority +and his interests? + +Valentine's letter was brief and business-like. + +"SIR,--With the full approbation of her mother and only near relation, my +dear Charlotte has this day become my wife. The enclosed attested copy of +the certificate of our marriage will afford you all particulars. I shall +refrain from entering upon any explanation of my conduct; and I believe +such explanation to be wholly unnecessary. You can scarcely fail to +understand why I have acted in this manner, and why I congratulate myself +and my dear wife on her departure from your house as on an escape from +imminent peril. It will be, I fear, little satisfaction to you to hear +that the doctors have pronounced your stepdaughter to be out of danger, +though still in very weak health. She is now comfortably established in a +temporary home, with her mother and Diana Paget; and in all probability +some months must elapse before she and I can begin our new life together. +To afford my darling girl the legal protection of marriage was the object +of this sudden and secret union. You, of all men, will most fully +comprehend how necessary such protection had become to ensure her safety. + +"Should you, however, require farther enlightenment as to the motives +that prompted this step, Dr. Jedd will be the fittest person to give you +such information; and has expressed his willingness to answer any +questions you may please to put to him. + +"For the rest, I beg to assure you that the rights of Mrs. Hawkehurst in +relation to the inheritance of the late John Haygarth's wealth will be as +carefully protected as those of Miss Halliday; nor will the hasty +marriage of this morning hinder the execution of any deed of settlement +calculated to guard her interests in the future. + +"With this assurance, I remain, sir, +Your obedient servant, +VALENTINE HAWKEHURST. +Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road." + +Enclosed with this there was a second letter--from his wife. + +He read it with a countenance that expressed mingled anger and contempt. + +"Fool!" he muttered; "this is about the only service she could do me." + +The letter was long and incoherent; blotted with tears--in places +completely illegible. Mr. Sheldon cared only to master the main facts +contained in it, which were these:--His wife had left him for ever. Dr. +Jedd and Valentine Hawkehurst had told her of something--something that +affected the safety of her darling and only child--and the knowledge of +which must separate her for ever from him. Of the money which she had +brought to him she claimed nothing. Even her jewels, which were in his +keeping, in the iron safe where he kept his papers, she did not attempt +to obtain from him. Valentine would not allow her to starve. The humblest +shelter, the poorest food, would suffice her in the future; but no home +of his providing could she ever inhabit again. + +"What I have suffered in this last few days is only known to myself and +to heaven," she wrote. "O Philip, how could you--how could you even shape +the thought of such a deed as this, which you have been doing, day after +day, for the last two months? I could not have believed what they have +told me, if I had not seen my child fade hour by hour under your care, +slowly, surely--and recover as surely directly you were excluded from any +part in our care of her. If it were possible not to believe these people, +I would disbelieve them, and would cling to you faithfully still; but the +voices against you are too many, the proofs against you are too strong. + +"Do not seek to see me. I am with my poor child, who was but just able to +bear the removal from your house, and to go through the ceremony that was +performed this morning. Little did I ever think my daughter would have +such a wedding. What a mockery all my plans seem now!--and I had chosen +the six bridesmaids, and arranged all the dresses in my own mind. To see +my dear girl dressed anyhow, in her oldest bonnet, standing before the +altar huddled up in a shawl, and given away by a strange doctor, who kept +looking at his watch in a most disrespectful manner during the ceremony, +was very bitter to me." + +Mr. Sheldon flung aside the letter with an oath. He had no time to waste +upon such twaddle as this. He tore open Nancy Woolper's letter. It was a +poor honest scrawl, telling him how faithfully she had served him, how +truly she had loved him in the past, and how she could henceforth serve +him no more. It exhorted him, in humble ill-spelt phrases, to repentance. +It might not yet be too late even for such a sinner as he had been. + +He tore these two epistles into infinitesimal fragments, and flung them +into the fireplace. Valentine Hawkehurst's letter he kept. It was a +document of some legal importance. + +For a moment there had flashed across his brain the thought that he might +punish these people for their interference with his affairs. He might +bring an action against Dr. Jedd for slander, and compel the physician to +prove the charges insinuated against him, or pay the penalty attendant +upon an unjustifiable accusation. He was well assured that Dr. Jedd could +prove very little; and a jury, if properly worked, might award him +exemplary damages. + +But on the other hand, the circumstantial evidence against him was very +strong; and evidence which might be insufficient to prove him guilty in a +trial for his life might be a sufficient defence for his enemies against +an action for slander; if, indeed, the course which Dr. Jedd and +Valentine Hawkehurst had taken did in itself constitute a slanderous and +malicious imputation. Nor could any such action invalidate the marriage +solemnized that morning; and that one fact comprised his utter ruin. +Charlotte's interests were merged in the interests of her husband. No +shadow of claim upon John Haygarth's wealth remained to him. + +His ruin was complete and dire. For a long time his circumstances had +been desperate--no avenue of escape open to him but the one dark way +which he had trodden; and now that last road was closed against him. The +day was very near at hand when his fictitious bills on shadowy companies +must be dishonoured; and with the dishonour of those bills came the end +of all things for him,--a complete revelation of all those dishonest +artifices by which he had kept his piratical bark afloat on the +commercial waters. + +He surveyed his position in every light, calmly and deliberately, and saw +there was no hope. The whole scheme of his existence was reduced to the +question of how much ready-money he could carry out of that house in his +pocket, and in what direction he should betake himself after leaving it. + +His first care must be to ascertain whether the marriage described in the +duplicate certificate had really taken place; his next, to repossess +himself of the papers left with Mr. Kaye. + +Before leaving the house he went to his study, where he examined his +banker's book. Yes, it was as they had told him at the bank. He was +overdrawn. Among the letters lying unopened on his writing-table he found +a letter from one of the officials of the Unitas, calling his attention, +politely and respectfully, to that oversight upon his part. He read the +letter, and crumpled it into his pocket with an angry gesture. + +"I am just about as well off now as I was twelve years ago, before Tom +Halliday came to Fitzgeorge Street," he said to himself; "and I have the +advantage of being twelve years older." + +Yes, this is what it all came to, after all. He had been travelling in a +circle. The discovery was humiliating. Mr. Sheldon began to think that +his line of life had not been a paying one. + +He opened his iron safe, and forced the lock of the jewel-case in which +his wife had kept the few handsome ornaments that he had given her in the +early days of their marriage, as a reward for being good--that is to say, +for allowing her second husband to dispose of her first husband's +patrimony without let or hindrance. The jewels were only a few rings, a +brooch, a pair of earrings, and a bracelet; but they were good of their +kind, and in all worth something like two hundred pounds. + +These, and the gold chronometer which he carried in his waistcoat-pocket, +constituted all the worldly wealth which Mr. Sheldon could command, now +that the volcanic ground upon which his commercial position had been +built began to crumble beneath his feet, and the bubbling of the crater +warned him of his peril. He put the trinkets into his pocket without +compunction, and then went upstairs to his dressing-room, where he +proceeded to pack his clothes in a capacious portmanteau, which in itself +might constitute his credentials among strangers, so eminently +respectable was its appearance. + +In this dread crisis of his life he thought of everything that affected +his own interests. To what was he going? That question was for the moment +unanswerable. In every quarter of the globe there are happy +hunting-grounds for the soldier of fortune. Some plan for the future +would shape itself in his mind by-and-by. His wife's desertion had left +him thoroughly independent. He had no tie to restrain his movements, +nothing to dread except such proceedings as might be taken against him by +the holders of those bills. And such proceedings are slow, while modern +locomotion is swift. + +What was he leaving? That was easily answered. A labyrinth of debt and +difficulty. The fine house, the handsome furniture, were held in the same +bondage of the law as his household goods in Fitzgeorge Street had been. +He had given a bill of sale upon everything he possessed six months +before, to obtain ready-money. The final terrible resource had not been +resorted to until all other means had been exhausted. Let this fact at +least be recorded to his credit. He was like the lady whom the poet +sings, who, + + "tolerably mild, + To make a wash would _hardly_ boil a child:" + +that is to say, she would try all other materials for her cosmetic +preparation first; and if they failed, would at last resort, unwillingly, +to the boiling of children. + +No; he had nothing to lose by flight--of that fact it was easy for him to +assure himself. + +He went downstairs, and rang for the servant. + +"I am going out," he said, "to join my wife and her daughter, and return +with them to the sea-side. There is a portmanteau upstairs in my room, +ready packed. You will give it to the messenger I shall send in the +course of the next day or two. At what time did Mrs. Sheldon and Miss +Halliday leave this morning?" + +"At eight o'clock, sir. Mr. Hawkehurst came to fetch them in a carriage. +They went out by the kitchen passage and the side gate, sir, because you +were asleep, Mrs. Woolper said, and was not to be disturbed." + +"At eight. Yes. And Mrs. Woolper and Miss Paget?" + +"They went a'most directly after you was gone out, sir. There was two +cabs to take Miss Halliday's and Mrs. Sheldon's things, and such +like,--just as there was when you came from Harold's Hill." + +"Yes; I understand." + +He was half inclined to ask the young woman if she had heard the +direction given to the drivers of these two cabs. But he refrained from +doing so. What could it profit him to know where his wife and +stepdaughter were to be found? Whether they were in the next street or at +the antipodes could matter very little to him, except so far as the +knowledge of their place of habitation might guide him in his avoidance +of them. Between him and them there was a gulf wider than all the waters +of the world, and to consider them was only foolish waste of time and +thought. He left the house, which for the last five years of his life had +been the outward and visible sign of his social status, fully conscious +that he left it for ever; and he left it without a sigh. For him the word +home had no tender associations, and the domestic hearth had never +inspired him with any sense of comfort or pleasure with which he might +not have been inspired by the luxurious fireside of a first-class +coffee-room. He was a man who would have chosen to spend his existence in +joint-stock hotels, if there had not been solidity of position to be +acquired from the possession of a handsome house. + +He went to the Paddington church. It was only five o'clock in the +afternoon by the clock of that edifice. The church was closely shut, but +Mr. Sheldon found the clerk, who, in consideration of a handsome +donation, took him to the vestry, and there showed him the register of +marriages--the last entry therein. + +Yes, there was Charlotte Halliday's signature, a little uncertain and +tremulous. + +"I suppose you are one of the young lady's relations, sir," said the +clerk. "It was rather a strange affair; but the young lady's ma was with +her; and the young lady was over age, so, you see, there's nothing to be +said against it." + +Mr. Sheldon had nothing to say against the marriage. If any false +statement of his, however base or cruel, could have invalidated the +ceremonial, he would have spared no pains to devise such a falsehood. If +he had been a citizen of the Southern States, he might have suborned +witnesses to prove that there was black blood in the veins of Valentine +Hawkehurst. If he had not been opposed to so strong an opponent as Dr. +Jedd, he might have tried to get a commission of lunacy to declare +Charlotte Halliday a madwoman, and thus invalidate her marriage. As it +was, he knew that he could do nothing. He had failed. All was said in +those three words. + +He wasted no time at the church, but hurried on to the City, where he was +just in time to catch Mr. Kaye leaving his office. + +"Have you sent those papers to your solicitor?" he asked. + +"No; I was just going to take them round to him. I have been thinking +that it will be necessary to ascertain that there is no will of Miss +Halliday's subsequent to this; and that will be rather difficult to find +out. Women never know when to leave off making wills, if they once begin +making them. They have a positive rage for multiplying documents, you +know. If the testator in that great codicil case had been a woman, a jury +would scarcely have refused to believe in the story of half a dozen +different codicils hidden away in half a dozen different holes and +corners. Women like that sort of thing. Of course, I quite understand +that you bring me the will in all good faith; but I foresee difficulties +in raising money upon such a security." + +"You need give yourself no further trouble about the matter," said Mr. +Sheldon coolly. "I find that I can do without the money, and I've come to +reclaim the papers." + +Mr. Kaye handed them to his client. He was not altogether pleased by this +turn of affairs; for he had expected to profit considerably by Mr. +Sheldon's necessities. That gentleman honoured him with no further +explanations, but put the papers in his pocket, and wished the +bill-discounter good day. + +And this was the last time that Philip Sheldon was ever seen in his +character of a solid and respectable citizen of London. He went from the +bill-discounter's office to a pawnbroker in the City, with whom he +pledged Georgy's trinkets and his own watch for the sum of a hundred and +twenty pounds. From the pawnbroker's he went back to Bayswater for his +portmanteau, and thence to the Euston Hotel, where he dined temperately +in the coffee-room. After dinner he went out into the dull back streets +that lurk behind Euston Square, and found an obscure little barber's +shop, where he had his whiskers shaved off, and his hyacinthine locks +cropped as close as the barber's big scissors could crop them. + +The sacrifice of these hirsute adornments made an extraordinary change +in this man. All the worst characteristics of his countenance came out +with a new force; and the face of Mr. Sheldon, undisguised by the +whiskers that had hidden the corners of his mouth, or the waving locks +that had given height and breadth to his forehead, was a face that no one +would be likely to trust. + +From the Euston Station he departed by the night mail for Liverpool, +under the cover of darkness. In that city he quietly awaited the +departure of the Cunard steamer for New York, and was so fortunate as to +leave England one day before that fatal date on which the first of his +fictitious bills arrived at maturity. + + + + +Book the Tenth. + + + +HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY. + +Not with pomp or with splendour, with rejoicing or strewing of summer +blossoms in the pathway of bride and bridegroom, had the marriage of +Valentine and Charlotte been solemnized. Simple and secret had been the +ceremonial, dark with clouds was the sky above them; and yet it is +doubtful if happier bridegroom ever trod this earth than Valentine +Hawkehurst as he went to his lonely lodging under the starry summer sky, +after leaving his young wife to her mother's care in the new home that +had been found for them. + +He had reason to rejoice; for he had passed through the valley of the +shadow of death. He had seen, very near, that dread presence before which +the angels of faith and love can avail nothing. Fearless as Alcides had +he gone down to the realms of darkness; triumphant and glad as the +demigod he returned from the under-world, bearing his precious burden in +his strong arms. The struggle had been dire, the agony of suspense a +supreme torture; but from the awful contest the man came forth a better +and a wiser man. Whatever strength of principle had been wanting to +complete the work of reformation inaugurated by love, had been gained by +Valentine Hawkehurst during the period of Charlotte's illness. His +promised wife, his redeeming angel, she for whose affection he had first +learned to render thanks to his God, had seemed to be slipping away from +him. In the happiest hour of his prosperous courtship he had known +himself unworthy of her, with no right, no claim, to so fair a prize, +except the right of pure and unselfish love. When the hour of trial came +to him he had said, "Behold the avenger!" and in that hour it seemed to +him that a lurking anticipation of future woe had been ever present with +him in the midst of his happiness,--it seemed so natural, so reasonable +that this treasure should be taken away from him. What had he done, that +he should go unpunished for all the errors and follies of his youth? + +He looked back, and asked himself if he had been so vile a sinner as in +these hours of self-reproach he was inclined to esteem himself? Could his +life have been otherwise? Had he not been set in a groove, his young feet +planted in the crooked ways, before he knew that life's journey might be +travelled by a straighter road? + +Alas, the answer given at the tribunal of conscience went against him! +Other men had come into this world amidst surroundings as bad, nay, +indeed, worse than the surroundings of his cradle. And of these men some +had emerged from their native mire spotless and pure as from newly-fallen +snow. The natural force of character which had saved these men had not +been given to him. His feet had been set in the crooked ways, and he had +travelled on, reckless, defiant, dimly conscious that the road was a bad +one, and that his garments were bespattered with more mud-stains than +would be agreeable to some travellers. + +It was only when the all-powerful influence of love was brought to bear +upon this plastic nature that Valentine Hawkehurst became fully awakened +to the degradation of his position, and possessed with an earnest desire +to emerge from the great dismal swamp of bad company. Then, and then +only, began the transformation which was ultimately to become so complete +a change. Some influence, even beyond that of happy love, was needed to +give force to this man's character; and in the great terror of the last +three months that influence had been found. The very foundations of +Valentine Hawkehurst's life had been shaken, and, come what might, he +could never be again what he had been. + +He had almost lost her. All was said in that. She had been almost taken +from him--she, who to this man was father, mother, wife, household, past, +present, future, glory, ambition, happiness--everything except that God +who ruled above and held her life and his peace in the hollow of His +hand. He had been face to face with death; and never, in all the years to +come--never in the brightest hour of future happiness, could he forget +the peril that had come upon him, and might come again. He had learned to +understand that he held her, not as a free gift, but as a loan--a +treasure to be reclaimed at any moment by the God who lent her. + +The darksome valley was past, and Valentine stood by his darling's side, +safe upon the sunlit uplands. + +The doctors had declared their patient safe. The hour of danger had been +passed in safety, and the mischief worked by the poisoner's slow process +had been well nigh counteracted by medical skill. + +"In six weeks' time you may take your wife for her honeymoon tour, Mr. +Hawkehurst, with her health and spirits thoroughly re-established," +said Dr. Jedd. + +"What is that you say about honeymoon tours?" cried Gustave Lenoble. +"Hawkehurst and his wife will spend their honeymoon at Côtenoir; is it +not, Diana?" + +Diana replied that it was to be, and must be so. + +It was impossible to imagine a happier party than that which met day +after day in those pleasant lodgings at Kilburn, wherein Georgy and Diana +and Charlotte had been established with much devotion and care on the +parts of Valentine and Gustave. Mr. Hawkehurst had chosen the apartments, +and M. Lenoble had spent the day before the wedding in rushing to and fro +between the West End and Kilburn, carrying hot-house flowers, comestibles +of all kinds from Fortnum and Mason's, bonbon boxes, perfumery, new +books, new music, and superintending the delivery of luxurious +easy-chairs, hired from expensive upholsterers, a grand piano, and a +harmonium. + +"We will have music in the evenings," he said to Diana, upon her +expressing surprise on beholding these arrangements, "when we are +assembled here, all. How thou dost open thine eyes on beholding these +nothings! Do you think it has been no pleasure to me to testify my +affection for one who has been so good to thee--thy friend, thine +adopted sister? I wished that all things should look bright around her, +when they brought her here, after that she had come to escape from the +jaws of death. And thou, was it not that thou wert also coming to make +thy home here for some days, until thy day of marriage? Thy father +astonishes himself to hear of such sudden events. Thou wilt go to see +him, soon, is it not?" + +"Yes, dear Gustave. I will go to-morrow." + +She went on the next day, and found Captain Paget much weaker than on her +last visit. + +It was evident that for him the end was very near. He was much changed +and subdued by his long illness; but the spirit of worldliness had not +been altogether exorcised even in this dismal period of self-communion. + +"What does it all mean, Diana?" he asked. "I don't understand being kept +in the dark like this. Here are you suddenly leaving Mr. Sheldon's house +without rhyme or reason, to take up your quarters in lodgings with Mrs. +Sheldon. Here is a mysterious marriage taking place at a time when I have +been given to understand that one of the parties is at death's door; and +here is Lenoble introduced to Valentine Hawkehurst, in express opposition +to my particular request that my future son-in-law should be introduced +to none of the Sheldon set." + +"Valentine is not one of the Sheldon set, papa. I do not think it likely +that he will ever see Philip Sheldon again." + +"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Captain Paget. "There has been something +serious going on, then, surely?" + +After this he insisted on an explanation, and Diana told him the story of +the last two or three weeks: Charlotte's increasing illness--so +mysterious and incurable; the sudden return from Harold's Hill; +Valentine's fears; Dr. Jedd's boldly-expressed opinion that the patient +was the victim of foul play; the systematic exclusion of Philip Sheldon +from the sick-room, followed immediately by symptoms of amelioration, +leading to gradual recovery. + +All this Captain Paget heard with an awe-stricken countenance. The +distance that divides the shedder of blood from all other wrong-doers is +so great, that the minor sinner feels himself a saint when he +contemplates the guilt of the greater criminal. + +"Great God! is this possible?" exclaimed the Captain, with a shudder. +"And I have taken that man's hand!" + +Later in the evening, when Diana had left him, and he had been thinking +seriously of his own career, and those many transactions of his troubled +life which, in the slang denomination of the day, would be called +"shady," he derived some scrap of comfort from one consideration. + +"I never hurt a worm," he murmured to himself, complacently. "No, I can +lay my hand upon my heart and say, I never hurt a worm." + +The Captain did not pause to reflect that some of the merit involved in +this amiable trait of character might have been referable to the fact, +that he had never happened to fall upon a state of society in which a +comfortable living was to be made by the hurting of worms. He thought +only of the story he had heard about Philip Sheldon; and he told himself +that not in the direst necessity of his life could his brain have +fashioned the thought of such a deed as that, in the doing of which this +man had persevered for nearly three months. + +For Charlotte Hawkehurst the summer days which succeeded her marriage +passed very quietly. She had not been told the real motive of that hasty +and stolen marriage which had given her to the man she loved and trusted +so completely. Valentine and Diana had between them contrived to mould +Mrs. Sheldon to their will; and it was at her request that Charlotte had +consented to so strange a step. + +The fable invented to account for this desire on the part of Mrs. Sheldon +was very innocent. The doctors had ordered a milder climate than England +for the dear convalescent--Madeira, Algeria, Malta--or some other equally +remote quarter of the globe. It was impossible that Mr. or Mrs. Sheldon +could take so long a journey; Mr. Sheldon being bound hand and foot to +the mill-wheel of City life, Mrs. Sheldon being the slave and helpmeet of +her husband. Nor could dear Charlotte go to Malta alone, or attended only +by faithful Diana Paget. In short, there was no course so obvious or so +prudent as a hasty marriage, which would enable the invalid to seek a +milder clime, accompanied and guarded by her natural protector--a +husband. + +"Consent, dearest, I entreat you," wrote Valentine, in the little note +which supported Mrs. Sheldon's request, "however strange our wishes may +seem to you. Believe that it is for the best, for your own sake, for the +sake of all who love you, and ask no questions. Say only yes." + +To the prayer in this letter, to the entreaties of her mother and Diana, +Charlotte yielded. She wondered why Mr. Sheldon avoided her, and asked +anxiously, on more than one occasion, why she did not see that gentleman. + +"Is papa ill," she asked, "that he never comes to see how I am?" + +"The doctors have forbidden many people in your room, dear." + +"Yes, a few days ago, when I was so very ill; but now that I am better, +papa might come. I want to thank him for all his anxious care of me, and +to be sure that _he_ consents to this marriage." + +"My darling, be assured the marriage is for the best," pleaded Diana. + +And the marriage took place. + +Charlotte's innocent soul was thus spared the pain of a revelation which +must have cast a dark shadow on the bright beginning of her wedded life. +Georgy pledged herself to keep the fatal secret from her daughter; and +Diana Paget rewarded her discretion by the most patient attention to her +piteous and prosy lamentations upon the iniquity of mankind in general, +and Philip Sheldon in particular. + +Of that hideous secret of the past, lately revealed by Mr. Burkham, Mrs. +Sheldon had been told nothing. No good end could have been served by such +a revelation. The criminal law has its statute of limitations--unwritten, +but not the less existent. A crime which would have been difficult of +proof at the time of its commission must after the lapse of twelve years +have travelled beyond the pale of justice. For three people to come +forward and declare that at the time of Mr. Halliday's death they had +suspected Mr. Sheldon of poisoning him, would be to prove nothing to the +minds of a British jury, except that the three people in question were +libellous and ill-disposed persons. The greater the issue, the wider the +chances of escape given to the accused; and a petty offender will be +condemned for picking a pocket upon much lighter grounds than will be +considered sufficient to prove a man guilty of blowing up the Houses of +Parliament. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +AFTER THE WEDDING. + +The manner in which Mr. Sheldon would act in the future was a matter of +considerable fear to his wife. She had a hazy idea that he would come to +the pleasant Kilburn lodgings to claim her, and insist upon her sharing +his dreary future. + +"If I could only have a divorce," she said piteously, when she discussed +the subject with her son-in-law. "There ought to be divorces for such +dreadful things; but I never heard of one before Sir Creswick, +or the new judge, whose name I can't remember. O Valentine, I cannot live +with him; I cannot sit down to dinner day after day with such a man as +that. And to think that I should have known him when I was the merest +girl, and have danced my very first polka with him when it first came in, +and people wore polka boots and polka jackets, and wrote their notes of +invitation upon polka paper, and sang polka songs, and worked polking +peasants in Berlin wool, and went on altogether in the most absurd +manner. And O Valentine, whom can one trust, if not the man one has known +all one's life!" + +Mr. Hawkehurst pledged himself to protect his mother-in-law from any +attempt at persecution upon the part of her husband. He did not know what +difficulties he might have to encounter in the performance of this +pledge; for, in his ignorance of the stockbroker's desperate +circumstances, he imagined that Philip Sheldon would make some attempt to +right himself in the eyes of the world, by compelling his wife to +reassume her position in his house. + +He went to George Sheldon's office within a few days after his marriage +to take counsel from that astute adviser. He found the lawyer hard at +work, and in very good spirits. It was by his advice the marriage had +been hurried on; Charlotte's stealthy removal from the house while Philip +Sheldon slumbered had been planned by him; and he was triumphant in the +thought that the plot had succeeded so well, and that Philip, the coolest +and deepest of schemers, had been so completely baffled. + +"That Ann Woolper is a treasure," he said; "I didn't think it was in her +to do what she has done. Nothing could be neater than the way she kept +Phil at bay; and nothing could be better than her tact and cleverness in +getting Charlotte and her mother quietly off the other morning while my +precious brother was in the land of nod." + +"Yes, she has been invaluable to us." + +"And that girl Paget, too; she has turned out a regular trump. I used to +think her a very stiff, consequential piece of goods when I saw her at +the Lawn; but, egad, she has shown herself the genuine metal all through +this business. Now that's a young woman I wouldn't mind making Mrs. +George Sheldon any day in the week." + +"You do her too much honour," said Valentine, with an internal shiver. +"Unhappily, a prior engagement will prevent Miss Paget's availing herself +of so excellent an opportunity." + +"It mayn't be such a very bad chance as you seem to think it, my friend," +George replied, with some indignation. "Whenever the Reverend John +Haygarth's estate drops in, I stand to win fifty thousand pounds. And +that's not so bad for a start in life. I suppose you haven't forgotten +that your wife is heir-at-law to a hundred thousand pounds?" + +"No, I have not forgotten her position in relation to the Haygarth +estate." + +"Humph! I should rather think not. People don't generally forget that +kind of thing. But you are uncommonly cool about the business." + +"Yes, I have passed through a fiery furnace in which all the bullion in +the Bank of England will not serve a man. That kind of ordeal upsets +one's old notions as to the value of money. And, again, I have never been +able to contemplate Charlotte's inheritance of that fortune as anything +but a remote contingency; the business is so slow." + +"Yes, but it has been going on. Affidavits have been made; the whole +affair is in progress." + +"I am glad to hear it. Don't think that I pretend not to value the +prospect of wealth; I have only learnt to know that money is not the +be-all and end-all of life. I could be very happy with my dear wife if +there were no prospect of this Haygarthian inheritance; but if it does +come to us, we shall, no doubt, be all the happier. The millionaire sees +the world from a very pleasant point of view. I should like my dear girl +to be the mistress of as fair a home as money can buy for her." + +"Yes, and you'd like to have your name stand high in the statistics of +Government stockholders. Don't be sentimental, Hawkehurst; that kind of +thing won't wash. Thank God, we managed to save poor Tom's daughter from +the fangs of my brother Phil. But you can't suppose that I am going to +shut my eyes to the fact that this affair has been a very good thing for +you, and that you owe your chances of a great fortune entirely to me? You +don't pretend to forget _that_, I suppose?" said George Sheldon, with +some acrimony. + +"Why should I pretend to forget that, or any circumstance of our business +relations? I am perfectly aware that you started the hunt of the +Haygarths, and that to your investigations is to be traced the discovery +that proves my wife a claimant to the estate now held by the Crown." + +"Very good; that's outspoken and honest, at any rate. And now, how about +our agreement? It's only a parole agreement, but an honest man's word is +as good as his bond." + +"Our agreement!" repeated Valentine, with a puzzled expression of +countenance. "Upon my word, I forget." + +"Ah, I thought it would come to that; I thought you would manage to +forget the terms agreed upon by you and me in the event of your marriage +with Charlotte Halliday. My memory is not so short as yours; and I can +swear to a conversation between you and me in this room, in which you +consented to my taking half the Haygarthian estate as the price of my +discovery and the fair reward of my labours." + +"Yes," said Valentine, "I remember that conversation; and I remember +saying that the demand was a stiff one, but that I, as Charlotte's future +husband, would not oppose such a demand." + +"You remember that?" + +"I do; and if my wife is willing to consent to your terms, I will hold to +my promise." + +"Your wife's consent is not wanted. She married you without a settlement, +and her rights are merged in yours. To all intents and purposes, _you_ +are heir-at-law to John Haygarth's estate." + +Valentine laughed aloud; the whole affair seemed a tremendous joke. He, +the homeless, penniless, friendless reprobate of but one year ago--he, +the son and heir of a man who had been always on the verge of social +shipwreck for want of five pounds--he, of all other men upon this earth, +claimant against the Crown for an estate worth one hundred thousand +pounds! + +"The whole affair seems ridiculously improbable," he said. + +"My brother wouldn't have done what he did if the whole thing had seemed +improbable to him. However, we needn't estimate the chances for or +against; all I want is a legal agreement between you and me, securing my +share of the plunder." + +"I am ready to execute any reasonable agreement; but I am bound to +protect my wife's interests, and I must have a solicitor to act for me in +this affair. Greek must meet Greek, you know." + +"Very good. I could have conducted the business myself without the +interference of strangers; but if you are going in for extreme caution, +you'd better leave your wife's affairs in the hands of Messrs. Greenwood +and Greenwood, who have acted for her hitherto, and have all papers +relating to the case in their possession." + +"Greenwood and Greenwood? My dear girl told me she had signed some +document, and had seen some lawyers; but she did not tell me the nature +of the document, or the name of the lawyers. I have forborne to speak to +her on business matters. The treatment that she has undergone has left +her very nervous, and we try to keep all unpleasant subjects out of her +mind." + +"Yes, that's all very well; but business is business, you know. You'd +better see Messrs. Greenwood and Greenwood at once. Tell them of your +marriage. You'll have to keep Phil's conduct dark, of course; that is +understood between us. You must say the marriage was a love-match +against my brother's wish, romantic, sentimental, and so on. They'll +raise no objections when they find you are willing to leave the case in +their hands." + +"You have heard nothing of your brother?" + +"Well, no--nothing, or next to nothing. I called at his office yesterday. +He has not been there since the beginning of Charlotte's illness, and +there has been no letter or message for Orcott since your wedding-day. +Things look rather piscatorial, altogether. Orcott hints that Phil's +affairs are in queer street; but he's a shallow-headed fool, and knows +very little. It seems, by his account, that Phil was a Bull, and that +the fall in every species of stock has been ruin to him. You see, when a +man once goes in for the Bull business, he never by any chance turns +Bear--and _vice versa_. There's a kind of infatuation in the thing, and a +man sticks to his line until he's cleaned out--at least, that's what +stockbrokers have told me--and I believe it's pretty near the truth." + +This was all that Valentine could ascertain about Mr. Sheldon at present. +Every knock fluttered Georgy; every accidental visitor at the Kilburn +villa seemed like the swooping of eagle on dovecote. + +"I cannot get over the feeling that he will come and take me away with +him," she said. "If Sir Wilde Creswick would only do something, so that +my second husband mayn't be able to insist upon my living in that +dreadful, dreadful house, where I suffered such nights and days of agony, +that I am convinced the sight of chintz curtains lined with pink will +make me wretched as long as I live!" + +"My dear Mrs. Sheldon, he shall not come," said Valentine. + +"If I could only go ever so far away from him, and feel that there was +the sea, or something of that kind, between us!" + +"We will take you away--across the British Channel, or further still, if +you like. Diana and M. Lenoble are to be married soon; and directly +Lotta is strong enough for the journey we are to go over to Normandy, to +their chateau." + +"Chateau, indeed!" Mrs. Sheldon exclaimed peevishly. "The idea of Diana +Paget, without a sixpence, and with a regular scamp of a father, marrying +a man with a chateau, while my poor Charlotte--! I don't wish to wound +your feelings, Mr. Hawkehurst, but it really does seem hard." + +"It is hard that Lotta should not have married a prince--all the +grandeurs of a prince in a fairy tale would only be her due; but it +happens fortunately, you see, dear Mrs. Sheldon, that our sweet girl has +simple tastes, and does not languish for jewels or palaces. If she should +ever become rich--" + +"Ah," sighed, Georgy despondently, "I don't expect that. I can't +understand anything about this idea of a fine fortune that Mr. Sheldon +had got into his head. I know that my husband's mother was a Miss +Meynell, the daughter of a carpet-warehouseman in the city, and I can't +see how any grand fortune is to come to Charlotte through her. And as for +the Hallidays--Hyley and Newhall farms were all the property they ever +owned within the memory of man." + +"The fortune for which Charlotte is a claimant comes from the maternal +ancestor of Christian Meynell. I do not count upon her possession of it +as a certain good in the future. If it comes we will be thankful." + +"Is it a very large sum of money?" + +"Well, yes; I believe it is a considerable sum." + +"Twenty thousand pounds, perhaps?" + +"I have been told that it is as much." + +He did not want Georgy's weak mind to become possessed of the idea of +shadowy wealth. He remembered what Philip Sheldon had said to him on the +Christmas night in which they had paced the little Bayswater garden +together, and he felt that there was a substratum of common sense in that +scoundrel's artful warning. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +GREEK AGAINST GREEK. + +Valentine Hawkehurst called upon Mr. Greenwood, of the firm of Greenwood +and Greenwood, within a week of his marriage, and exhibited the +certificate to that gentleman. Mr. Greenwood received the information +with much solemnity, and even severity, of manner. + +"Are you aware that this is a very serious step which you have taken, +Mr. Hawkehurst?" he demanded, sternly. "You entrap--that is to say, +you persuade a lady into a hasty marriage--without consultation with +her legal advisers, without settlements of any kind whatever--while at +the same time you are aware that the lady in question is heir-at-law +to a very large fortune, proceedings for the recovery of which are +now pending. Pardon me if I observe that there is a want of +delicacy--of--a--hem--right-mindedness in the transaction." + +"The imputation contained in your remarks is not a pleasant one, Mr. +Greenwood," Valentine remarked quietly; "but I am quite willing to pardon +any injustice which you may inflict upon me by your desire to protect the +interests of your client. I think you will speedily discover that those +interests are in no way endangered by the lady's marriage with me. There +are social complications which are not to be settled by either law or +equity. Miss Halliday's surroundings of the last few months were of a +very painful nature; so painful, that the legal protection of marriage +became the only means of saving her from imminent peril. I cannot enter +more fully into those painful circumstances. I can only assure you that I +married your client with the consent and approval of her only near +relation, and uninfluenced in the smallest degree by mercenary +considerations. Whatever post-nuptial settlement you please to make for +my wife's protection I shall promptly execute." + +"You express yourself in a very honourable and highly creditable manner, +Mr. Hawkehurst," exclaimed the lawyer, with sudden cordiality; "and I beg +distinctly to withdraw any offensive observations I may have made just +now. Your own affairs are, I conclude, in a sufficiently solvent state?" + +"I do not owe a sixpence." + +"Good; and Mr. Sheldon, the lady's stepfather and my client--had you his +approval for this hasty marriage?" + +"The marriage took place without Mr. Sheldon's knowledge or consent." + +"May I ask your reason for this secrecy?" + +"No, Mr. Greenwood; it is just that one reason that I cannot tell you. +Accept my assurance that it was an all-powerful reason." + +"I am compelled to do so, if you decline to confide in my discretion; but +as Mr. Sheldon is my client, I am bound to think of his interests as well +as those of Miss Halliday--er--Mrs. Hawkehurst. I am somewhat surprised +that he has not called upon me since the marriage. He has been made aware +of that circumstance, I suppose?" + +"Yes; I wrote to him immediately after the ceremony, enclosing him a copy +of the certificate." + +"The marriage will make a considerable difference to him." + +"In what manner?" + +"Well, in the event of his stepdaughter's death. If she had died +unmarried and intestate, this fortune would have gone to her mother; +besides which, there was the insurance on Miss Halliday's life." + +"An insurance!" + +"Yes. Were you not apprised of that fact? Mr. Sheldon, with very natural +precaution, insured his stepdaughter's life for a considerable sum--in +point of fact, as I believe, five thousand pounds; so that, in case of +her death prior to the recovery of the Haygarth estate, her mother might +receive some solatium." + +"He had insured her life!" said Valentine, under his breath. + +This, then, was the key to the mystery. The Haygarthian inheritance was +but a remote contingency, a shadowy prize, which could scarcely have +tempted the secret assassin; but the insurance had offered the prospect +of immediate gain. The one link wanting to complete the chain of evidence +against Philip Sheldon was found. There was no longer a question as to +his motive. + +"This man knows of one insurance on her life," Valentine thought to +himself; "there may have been more than one." + +After a brief silence, in which Mr. Hawkehurst had been lost in thought, +the lawyer proceeded to discuss the terms of the post-nuptial settlement +necessary for the protection of his client's interests. In the course of +this discussion Valentine explained his position in relation to George +Sheldon, and stated the demands of that sharp practitioner. + +Mr. Greenwood was utterly aghast upon hearing Mr. Hawkehurst's views on +this subject. + +"You mean to tell me that this man claims a clear half of the Haygarth +estate--fifty thousand pounds--in consideration of his paltry +discoveries!" + +"Such is the demand he has made, and which I have pledged myself not to +oppose. He certainly does open his mouth very wide; but we are bound to +consider that but for these discoveries of his, my wife and my wife's +relatives would in all probability have gone down to their graves in +ignorance of their claim to this estate." + +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Hawkehurst. If Mr. George Sheldon had not made +the discovery, some one else would have made it sooner or later, depend +upon it. There would have been a little loss of time, that is all. There +are plenty of men of George Sheldon's class always on the look-out for +such chances as this--and for very small chances in comparison to this. +Why, I know a fellow, a Frenchman, called Fleurus, who will take as much +trouble about a few hundred pounds' worth of unclaimed stock as this man, +George Sheldon, has taken about the Haygarth succession. And he has +really the impudence to claim fifty thousand pounds from you?" + +"A claim which I have pledged myself not to oppose." + +"But which you have not pledged yourself to support. My dear Mr. +Hawkehurst, this is a business which you must allow me to settle for you, +as your wife's legal adviser. We will consider you quite out of the +question, if you please; you will thus come out of your relations to Mr. +George Sheldon with perfectly clean hands. You will not oppose his claim; +but I shall oppose him in my character of legal adviser to your wife. +Why, are you aware that this man executed an agreement with his brother, +consenting to receive a fifth share of the estate, and costs out of +pocket, in complete acquittance of all claims? I have an abstract of the +agreement, amongst Miss Halliday's--Mrs. Hawkehurst's papers." + +After some further discussion, Valentine agreed to leave the whole matter +in Mr. Greenwood's hands. Greek must meet Greek. Gray's Inn and the +Fields must settle this business between themselves. + +"I am only prince consort," he said, with a smile. "I pretend to no +actual interest in my wife's estate. I doubt, indeed, whether I should +not have felt more complete happiness in our marriage if she had not been +heiress to so large a fortune." + +At this Mr. Greenwood laughed outright. + +"Come, come, Mr. Hawkehurst," he exclaimed, "that really won't do. I am +an old stager, you know--a man of the world;--and you mustn't ask me to +believe that the idea of your wife's expectations can afford you anything +but unqualified satisfaction." + +"You cannot believe? No, perhaps not," Valentine answered, thoughtfully. +"But you do not know how nearly these expectations have lost me my wife. +And even now, when she is mine by virtue of a bond that only death can +loosen, it seems to me as if her wealth would make a kind of division +between us. There are people who will always consider me a lucky +adventurer, and look at my marriage as the result of clever scheming. I +cannot advertise to the world the fact that I loved Charlotte Halliday +from the first hour in which I saw her, and asked her to be my wife three +days before I discovered her claim to John Haygarth's estate. A man can't +go through the world with his justification pinned upon his breast. I +think it will be my fate to be misjudged all my life. A twelvemonth ago I +cared very little about the opinions of my fellow-men; but I want to be +worthy of my wife in the esteem of mankind, as well as in the depths of +my own moral consciousness." + +"Go and finish your honeymoon," said the lawyer, digging his client in +the ribs with elephantine playfulness; "the moon must be in her first +quarter, I should think. Go along with you, and leave me to tackle Mr. +George Sheldon." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +ONLY A DREAM. + +"I say, Lenoble," Captain Paget began abruptly one afternoon when his +daughter and his future son-in-law were in attendance upon his sofa, +"when are you and Diana to be married? There is nothing to hinder your +marriage now, you know." + +Diana looked at the speaker with a grave countenance. + +"Dear papa, there can be no marriage while you are so ill," she said +gently. + +"And afterwards, when I'm gone, you won't like to marry within six months +of your father's funeral; and you will be left alone in the world. You +can't hang on to Hawkehurst and his wife. The best thing you can do, +Lenoble, is to marry her out of hand, and let me see her by my bedside as +Madame Lenoble of Côtenoir. It will be some consolation for me to see +that day. I thought to have shared your home, with a run to Paris +occasionally just to freshen myself up a little; but that's all over now. +It does seem rather hard to me sometimes; and I think of Moses, and his +forty years in the Desert with those ill-conditioned Israelites, who were +always getting into some scrape or other--setting up golden calves, and +that kind of thing--if he turned his back on them for twenty-four hours. +A pack of ungrateful beggars too, always ready for mutiny--regular +radicals, begad! And he went through it all: the sand, and the _toujours_ +quails, and the ingratitude; and after forty years of it, when he saw the +Promised Land stretched before him green and fertile on the other side of +the river--he died! I've been through my desert, the dreary wanderings +over the barren sand, and the ingratitude of men I've served. Yes, I've +gone through it all; and just as I catch a glimpse of Canaan, the curtain +drops." + +On this they comforted him; and sustained him with the promise of a +brighter Canaan than Côtenoir. + +"Yes," he said in a dreamy voice, "I read about it very often. A city +with foundations of jasper and chalcedony, emerald and sardonyx; gates of +pearl, pavements of gold. That's what St. John the Evangelist saw in his +vision; and we've only his word for it. But there's something that I can +believe and can understand: 'In my Father's house there are many +mansions.' There's more hope for a sinful man of the world in that +promise than in all St. John's dreams about gates of pearl and +foundations of emerald." + +The Captain was failing fast. He had exchanged his easy-chair for a sofa +now; and the time seemed near at hand when he must exchange the sofa for +his bed. After that there would remain but one last change, to the +contemplation whereof the sick man was becoming daily more reconciled. + +He had read his Gospel more diligently of late, and had taken comfort +from those sublime pages. Do they not contain consolation, hope, promise +for all--for the weary man of the world as well as for the saint? There +is to be found the only creed that can adapt itself to every condition +of life, and has a margin wide enough for every weakness of erring +humanity. Buddhism may contain a scheme of morality almost as perfect; +Mahomet may have expounded hopes that seem well-nigh as divine; but in +the Gospel is the only system that will adapt itself at once to the +culture of the spiritual man, and the active life of the practical +worker in this lower world. + +Gustave Lenoble was only too glad to claim his promised wife a little +sooner than he had hoped to claim her. "Thou hast put me off long enough, +cruel," he said; "and now it is thy father's wish that our marriage +should be soon. It shall be this week; I will take no longer thine +excuses. We shall be the sooner ready to receive thy friends, thy +Charlotte and her Hawkehurst." + +Diana smiled. + +"Dear Gustave, you are always kind," she said. + +It was very sweet to her to think that her new home would afford a +pleasant haven for that dear friend who had sheltered her. And with +Charlotte, the dear adopted sister, would come the man she had once +loved, to share whose cares had once been the brightest dream. + +She wondered at her own inconstancy on perceiving how completely the +dream had flown. Before the stern realities of life--before sickness and +sorrow and the dread shadow of death--that schoolgirl's vision had +utterly melted away. It is just possible that Gustave's manly outspoken +love may have helped to blot from the tablet of her mind the fantastic +picture of the life that might have been. She scarcely knew whether this +was so; but she did know that a new and happier existence began for her +from the hour in which she gave her heart in all truth and loyalty to +Gustave Lenoble. + +The wedding was arranged to take place within a week of Captain Paget's +expressly declared wish. It was to be solemnised at a church near +Knightsbridge, and again at a Catholic chapel in the neighbourhood of +Sloane-street; by which double ceremonial a knot would be tied that no +legal quibble could hereafter loosen. Charlotte was just sufficiently +recovered to obtain permission to be present at the ceremonial, after +some little exercise of her persuasive powers with the medical +practitioner to whose care Dr. Jedd had committed her when all danger was +past. + +The Captain protested, with an eager insistence, that the wedding +breakfast should be eaten at his domicile. + +"And Val," he said, "be sure Val is with you. I have a secret to tell +him--a kind of atonement to make; some news to give him that he won't +quite relish, perhaps. But that's no fault of mine." + +"No bad news, I hope, papa; for Charlotte's sake as well as for +Valentine's." + +"That depends upon how they both take it. Your friend Charlotte is not +particularly fond of money, is she?" + +"Fond of money, papa? A baby knows as much of the value of money as +Lotta. Except to give to beggars in the streets, or to buy pretty +frivolous presents for her friends, she has neither use nor desire for +money. She is the most generous, most disinterested of created beings." + +"I'm very glad to hear it," said the Captain, drily. "And how about +Hawkehurst, now? Do you think it was a real love-match, his marriage with +Miss Halliday? No _arrière pensée_--no looking out for the main chance at +the bottom of his romantic attachment, eh, Di?" + +"No, papa. I am sure there was never truer love than his. I saw him under +most trying circumstances, and I can pledge myself for the truth of his +devotion." + +"I am very glad to hear it. Be sure you bring Hawkehurst and his wife to +my little breakfast. A chicken, a pine, a bottle of sparkling hock, and +a fond father's blessing, are all I shall give you; but the chicken and +the hock will be from Gunter, and the blessing from the bottom of a +paternal heart." + + * * * * * + +Bright shone the day that gave Diana to her husband, and very beautiful +looked the bride in her simple dress. Gustave Lenoble's marriage was no +less quietly performed than that union which had secured the safety of +Charlotte Halliday and the happiness of Valentine Hawkehurst. The shadow +of death hovered very near bride and bridegroom; for they knew full well +that he who was to preside that day at their simple marriage-feast would +soon have tasted that last sacred cup which has no after-flavour of +bitterness. + +The breakfast promised by the Captain was arranged with much elegance. +Hothouse flowers and fruits; wines with the icedew sparkling on the dark +glass; chickens and tongue, idealized by the confectioner's art, and +scarcely recognizable beneath rich glazings and embellishments of jellies +and forcemeats; the airiest and least earthly of lobster salads, and a +pyramid of coffee-ice, testified to the glory of the Belgravian purveyor. +It had been pleasant to Captain Paget to send his orders to Gunter, +certain of funds to meet the bill. It was almost a glimpse of that land +of milk and honey, that Canaan in Normandy, which he was never to +inhabit. + +He was very weak, very ill; but the excitement of the occasion in some +measure sustained and revivified him. The man who had been engaged to +nurse and wait upon him had attired him with much care in a dressing-gown +as elegant as the robe in which he had disported himself, a penniless +young cornet, in his luxurious garrison quarters, some fifty years +before. His loose white locks were crowned with an embroidered +smoking-cap; his patrician instep was set off by a dainty scarlet +slipper. He had put away the Gospel, and all thoughts of that dread +reckoning which he had really some shadowy desire and hope to settle +satisfactorily, by some poor dividend which might discharge his +obligations to that merciful Creditor who forgives so many just debts. +To-day he was of the world, worldly. It was a kind of _ante-mortem_ +lying-in-state--his last levee; and he was equal to the occasion. + +The prettily adorned table was drawn near the sofa where the invalid host +reclined, supported by numerous pillows. His daughter and her husband, +Valentine, Charlotte, and Georgy, made a little circle about him. His own +man, and a clerical-looking person from Gunter's, assisted at the airy +banquet. Very little was eaten by any of the guests, and it was a relief +to every one when the clerical personage and Captain Paget's factotum +retired, after serving tea and coffee with funereal solemnity. + +Valentine Hawkehurst was all gentleness and cordiality towards his old +taskmaster. The wrong must indeed be dire which is considered in such an +hour as this. Valentine remembered only that with this old man he had +seen many troubled days; and that for him the end of all earthly +wanderings was very near. + +The little banquet was not served in Captain Paget's ordinary +sitting-room. For this distinguished occasion the landlady had lent a +dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, just deserted by a +fashionable bachelor lodger who had left town at the close of the season. +This drawing-room on the ground floor, like the room above, overlooked +the Park, and to this apartment the Captain requested his guests to +adjourn, with the exception of Mr. Hawkehurst, some little time after the +departure of the servants. + +"I want to have a few words with Val in private," he said; "I have a +secret to communicate. Diana, show Mrs. Hawkehurst the Drive. You can see +the Bow from my room, but not from these lower windows. There are a good +many carriages still, but it is too late for the _crême de la crême_. I +remember when the West End was a desert at this time of year; but I have +lived to see the levelling of all distinctions, those of time as well as +of class." + +Charlotte and Diana retired to the adjoining room with Mrs. Sheldon and +M. Lenoble. Valentine was at a loss to imagine what manner of +confidential communication his late patron and employer could desire to +impart to him. The cautious Horatio waited until the rest of the party +were quite out of hearing, talking gaily by the open window, beyond which +appeared all the fluttering life and motion of summer leaves, all the +brightness of summer green below, and deep blue sky above. When they +seemed to him to be quite engaged with their own conversation, Captain +Paget turned to his old companion. + +"Val," he said, "we have seen hard times together; we've roughed it among +strange places and strange people, you know and so on; and I think there +is a friendly kind of feeling between us?" + +He held out his poor wasted hand, and Valentine grasped it firmly in his +own with prompt cordiality. + +"My dear governor, I have no feeling in my heart that is not friendly to +you." + +This was perfectly true. + +"And even if I had been inclined to bear any grudge against you on +account of the old days, when, you know, you were a little apt to be +indifferent as to what scrape you left me in, provided you got off +scot-free yourself; if I had been inclined to remember that kind of thing +(which, on my honour, I am not), your daughter's noble courage and +devotion in the time of my dear wife's peril should have stood against +that old wrong. I cannot tell you how deeply I feel her goodness in that +bitter time." + +"She is a Paget," murmured the Captain, complacently. "_Noblesse +oblige._" + +Valentine could scarcely refrain from a smile as he remembered the many +occasions upon which the obligations of a noble lineage had weighed very +lightly on his aristocratic patron. + +"Yes, Val," the Captain resumed, in a dreamy tone, "we have seen many +strange things together. When I began my travels through this world, in +the palmy days of the Regency, I little thought what a weary journey it +was to be, and what queer people I was to encounter among my +fellow-passengers. However, I've come to the last stage of the long +journey now, and I thank Providence that it ends so comfortably." + +To this Valentine assented kindly, but he was at a loss to understand why +Captain Paget should have required the adjournment of the rest of the +party before giving utterance to these mild commonplaces. + +For some moments the invalid relapsed into thoughtful silence. Then, +rousing himself as if with an effort, he took a few sips of a cooling +drink that stood by his side, and began with a startling abruptness. + +"You remember your journey to Dorking, Val, last October, when you went +to see that mysterious old aunt of yours, eh?" + +Valentine blushed as the Captain recalled this cunningly-devised fable. + +"Yes," he said gravely; "I remember telling you that I was going to see +an aunt at Dorking." + +"An aunt who had a little bit of money, eh, Val?" asked the Captain, +with a grin. + +"Yes. I may have gone so far as to speak of a little bit of money." + +"And neither the aunt nor the bit of money ever existed, eh, Val? They +were mere figments of the brain; and instead of going to Dorking you went +to Ullerton, eh, Val? You stole a march upon me there. You wanted to +throw your old chum off the scent, eh? You thought you had got hold of a +good thing, and you were afraid your friend and companion might get a +share of it." + +"Well, you see, my friend and companion had a knack of getting the +lion's share. Besides, this good thing was not my own affair. I had to +protect the interest of another person--my employer, in point of fact; +and it was by his suggestion, and in compliance with his request, that +I invented that harmless fiction about Dorking. I don't think there +was any dishonourable dealing in the matter. We were soldiers of +fortune both; and the stratagem with which I protected myself against +you was a very innocent one. You would have employed any stratagem or +invented any fiction under the same circumstances. It was a case of +diamond cut diamond." + +"Precisely; and if the older soldier, if the free lance of many a +campaign, got the best of it in the long run, the younger freebooter +could hardly think himself ill-used--could he now, Val?" + +"Well, no, I suppose not," replied Valentine, puzzled by the significance +in the face of his old companion. That sly twinkle in the Captain's eyes, +that triumphant smile wreathing the Captain's lips, must surely mean +mischief. + +Valentine Hawkehurst remembered the vague suspicion that had flashed into +his mind on that Christmas Eve when Captain Paget and he had dined +together at a West End restaurant, and the Captain had toasted Charlotte +Halliday with a smile of sinister meaning. He began to anticipate some +startling and unpleasant revelation. He began to understand that in some +manner this inscrutible schemer had contrived to overreach him. + +"What are you going to tell me?" he asked. "I see there is some lurking +mischief in your mind. How was it you were at Ullerton when I was there? +I met you on the platform of the station, and I had a vague half +suspicion that you followed me up on more than one occasion. I saw a +glove in a man's parlour--a glove which I could have sworn to as yours. +But when I came back, you were so plausible with your talk of promoting +business, and so on, that I was fool enough to believe you. And I suppose +you cheated and tricked me after all?" + +"Cheated and tricked are hard words, my dear Val," said the Captain, with +delightful blandness. "I had as much right to transact imaginary business +in the promoting line at Ullerton as you had to visit a fictitious aunt +at Dorking. Self-interest was the governing principle in both cases. I do +not think you can have any right to consider yourself injured by me if I +did steal a march upon you, and follow close upon your heels throughout +that Ullerton business. I do not think that you can have, on moral +grounds, any justification for making a complaint against your old ally." + +"Well, I suppose you are right enough in that," said Valentine. + +"Shake hands upon it, then. I have not very long to live, and I want to +feel myself at peace with mankind. You see, if you had come to me in the +first place, in a frank and generous spirit, and had said, 'My dear +friend, here is a good thing; let us go into it together, and see what +there is to be made out of it,' you would have placed the matter on such +a footing that, as a man of honour, I should have been bound to regard +your interests as my own. But when you set up a separate interest, when +you try to throw dust in my eyes, to hoodwink me--me, Horatio Paget, +a man of the world, possessed of some little genius for social +diplomacy--you attempt to do that which no man ever yet succeeded in +doing, and you immediately release me from those obligations which an +honourable man holds sacred. It was my glove which you saw in Mr. +Goodge's parlour. I had a very satisfactory interview with that reverend +person while you were absent from Ullerton on some short excursion, as to +the purpose of which I am still in the dark. On certain terms Mr. Goodge +agreed to give me the privilege of selecting a stated number from the +letters of Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth. I have reason to believe that I made a +judicious choice; for the information thus obtained placed me at once +upon a track which I followed industriously until it led me to a +triumphant result." + +"I do not understand--" began Valentine; but the Captain did not allow +him time to say more. + +"You do not understand that there could be any other genealogical line +than that which you and George Sheldon fitted together so neatly. You +have neither of you the experience of life which alone gives wideness of +vision. You discovered the connections of the Haygarth and the Meynell +families in the past. That was a step in the right direction. The +discovery, so far as it went, was a triumph. You allowed the sense of +that triumph to intoxicate you. In a business which of all businesses +within the range of man's intellect most requires deliberation and +sobriety, you went to work in a fever of haste and excitement. Instead +of searching out _all_ the descendants of Christian Meynell, you pounce +upon the first descendant who comes to hand, and elect her, at your own +pleasure, sole heiress to the estate of the deceased John Haygarth. +You forget that there may be other descendants of the said Christian +Meynell--descendants standing prior to your wife Charlotte in the line of +succession." + +"I can imagine no such descendants existing," said Valentine, with a +puzzled manner. "You seem to have made yourself master of our business; +but there is one point upon which you are mistaken. George Sheldon and I +did not go to work in a fever of haste. We did fully and thoroughly +examine the pedigree of that person whom we--and legal advisers of +considerable standing--believe to be the sole heir-at-law to the Haygarth +estate; and we took good care to convince ourselves that there was no +other claimant in existence." + +"What do you call convincing yourselves?" + +"Christian Meynell had only three children--Samuel, Susan, and Charlotte. +The last, Charlotte, married James Halliday, of Newhall and Hyley farms; +the other two died unmarried." + +"How do you know that? How do you propose to demonstrate that Samuel and +Susan Meynell died unmarried?" + +"Susan was buried in her maiden name. Mrs. Halliday, her sister, was with +her when she died. There was no question of marriage; nor is there the +record of any marriage contracted by Samuel." + +"All that is no proof." + +"Indeed! I should have thought the evidence sufficient. But, in any case, +the _onus probandi_ is not upon us. Can you prove the marriage of the +Samuel Meynell who died at Calais, or of the Susan Meynell who died in +London?" + +"I can. Susan Meynell's legitimate son is in the next room. It's an +unpleasant kind of revelation to make, Val; as he, the son of one sister, +stands prior to your wife, the granddaughter of the other sister, in the +order of succession. AND HE TAKES ALL!" + +"He takes all!" repeated Valentine, bewildered. "He! Susan Meynell's +son?--in the next room? What does all this mean?" + +"It means that when Susan was deserted by the scoundrel who took her away +from her home, she found an honest fellow to marry her. The name of her +husband was Lenoble. Gustave Lenoble yonder, my daughter's husband, is +her only child by that marriage. A perfectly legal marriage, my dear +Val--everything _en regle_, I assure you. The business is in the hands of +Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon of Whitehall--a first-class firm; counsel's +opinion most decided as to Lenoble's position. They have been rather slow +about the preliminary steps; and, _entre nous_, I have not cared to hurry +them, for I wanted to get my daughter's marriage over quietly before we +began our proceedings in Chancery. It comes rather hard upon you, Val, I +allow; but, you see, if you had acted generously, not to say honourably, +towards me in the first instance, you'd have had the advantage of my +experience. As it is, you have been working in the dark. However, things +are not so bad as they might be. You might have married some ugly old +harridan for the sake of this Haygarth estate; you have secured a pretty +and amiable wife, and you mustn't be downhearted if you find yourself, +from a financial point of view, most outrageously sold." + +The Captain could not refrain from a laugh as he contemplated his young +friend's surprise. The laugh degenerated into a fit of coughing, and it +was some little time before the enfeebled Horatio was ready to resume the +interrupted conversation. In this pause Valentine had leisure to face +this new position. There was for the moment a sharp sense of +disappointment. It is not possible for humanity to be quite indifferent +to a hundred thousand pounds. So much of the "light and sweetness" of +life is attainable for that sum,--such pleasures, of the purest and +noblest, are in the power of the possessor. But in this moment Valentine +fully realized the fact that he had never taken the idea of this fortune +into his mind--never made it part and parcel of himself, to be plucked +out of his heart with anguish, and to leave a bleeding wound in the place +where it had grown. It seemed to him as if he had been wakened abruptly +from some bright bewildering dream; but the sharp pang of mercenary +desires disappointed, of sordid hopes suddenly reft, was not for him. + +Beyond this sense of uncertainty, which had made the Haygarthian fortune +seem at best such "stuff as dreams are made of," there had been ever +present in his mind of late the dismal association connected with this +money. For this, and to get power over this through the rights of his +weak wife, had Philip Sheldon plotted against the life of that sweet girl +who was but newly rescued from the jaws of the grave. The bitter memory +of those days and nights of suspense could never have been quite +dissociated from the money that had been the primary cause of all this +slow torture. + +"Do you think I shall love my wife any less because she has no claim to +the Haygarth estate?" he exclaimed presently, looking with +half-contemptuous indignation upon the broken-down Bohemer. "I loved her +long before I knew the name of Haygarth; I should have loved her if I had +found her a beggar in the London streets, a peasant-girl weeding for +sixpence a day in some dismal swamp of agricultural poverty and +ignorance. I am not going to say that this money would not have brought +us pleasure; pictures and gardens, and bright rooms, and books without +number, and intercourse with congenial acquaintance and delightful +journeyings to all the fairest places upon the earth, and the power to do +some good in our generation, and a sense of security for our future, and +by-and-by, perhaps, for the future of dear children, for whose prosperity +we should be more anxious than for our own. Pleasure the money would most +probably have brought for us in abundance; but I doubt if it could buy us +more perfect happiness than we may know in the simplest home that my toil +can support. Ah, Captain, I question if you ever knew the sweetest +sensation life can give--the delight of working for those we love." + +Captain Paget stared at his sometime protégé in a kind of rapture of +wonder, not entirely unmingled with admiration. + +"Egad!" he exclaimed, "I have read of this kind of thing in novels; but +in the whole course of my experience I never met with anything equal to +it. My son-in-law, Lenoble yonder, is a generous foo--fellow enough; but +then, since infancy, he has never known the want of money. And generosity +from that kind of man is no more of a virtue than the foolhardiness of a +child who pokes his finger into the candle, not knowing the properties of +the thing he has to deal with. But anything like generosity from you, +from a man reared as you were reared, is, I freely confess, a little +beyond my comprehension." + +"Yes; it is a transformation, is it not? But I don't think I was ever +inordinately fond of money. Your genuine Bohemian rarely is. He is too +well schooled in the art of living without cash, and he asks so little +here below. His pipe, his friend, his dog, his books, his garret, his +billiards, his beer. It is all a question of a few pounds a week. And if, +some day, the divine enchanter Love takes the poor fellow under his +guidance, and teaches him to do without billiards and beer, your Bohemian +settles down into the purest and best of men. Think what Goldy might have +been if some good woman had taken compassion upon him and married him, +and henpecked him ever afterwards. He might have written as many novels +as Sir Walter Scott, and died master of some Hibernian Abbotsford, some +fair domain among the bright green hills that look down upon broad +Shannon's silvery falls. No, Captain; your intelligence has not +annihilated me. I can face the future boldly with my dear young wife upon +my arm." + +"Upon my soul, Val, you're a very noble fellow!" exclaimed Horatio Paget, +with real enthusiasm; "and I am sorry I have kept you in the dark so +long." + +"You have kept me in the dark? Yes; to be sure. How long have you known +this--about Susan Meynell?" + +"Well, my dear boy, not very long." + +"But how long? A month--two months? Yes; you have known Lenoble's +position ever since you knew him; and Charlotte told me three months ago +of Diana's engagement to Lenoble. Do you know that if Sheldon had +succeeded, Charlotte's blood would have been upon your head? If you had +not concealed the truth, his villany would never have been attempted." + +"But, my dear Val," exclaimed the Captain piteously, "I was not to +know--" + +"No; you were not to know that there could be such a wretch as Philip +Sheldon upon this earth. We will say no more of that. I kept my secret, +you kept yours. Mischief unspeakable well-nigh came of all this underhand +work. But heaven has been merciful to us. We have passed through the +valley of the shadow of death; and if anything could make my wife dearer +to me than she was when first I won her promise to be mine, it would be +the sorrow of the last few months. And now I will go and shake hands with +Lenoble, my wife's kinsman. He is a fine fellow, and well deserves his +good fortune. Stay; one word. Did Diana know this? did she know that her +lover is heir to the Haygarth estate?" + +"She does not know it now. She has never heard the name of Haygarth. And, +between you and me, Val, it cost me a world of trouble to persuade her to +say yes to Lenoble's offer, though he is a very decent match for her, +even without reference to the Haygarth estate." + +"I am glad she knew nothing of this," said Valentine; "I am very glad." + +After this he again shook hands with Captain Paget, at that gentleman's +request, and the Captain expressed himself much relieved by the +conversation, and by his late protégé's very generous behaviour. He +called to his daughter and the rest presently, and they came at his +summons. + +"Is your long talk finished, papa?" asked Diana. + +"And is the secret told?" demanded Charlotte of her obedient husband +and slave. + +"Yes, dear, it is told," he answered gravely. + +"I hope it is a pleasant secret." + +"I do not think the knowledge of it will give you much pain, dearest. +You have learnt to think yourself a--a kind of an heiress of late, +have you not?" + +"Papa--Mr. Sheldon--told me that I had a claim to some money; but I have +not thought much about it, except that I should give you Grote and +Macaulay in dark-brown calf, with bevelled boards and red edges, like +that edition you saw at the auctioneer's in Bond Street, and have talked +about ever since; and a horse, perhaps; and a glass porch to our +cottage." + +"Well, darling, the books in dark-brown calf, and the horse, and the +glass porch, may all be ours in the future; but the money was only a +dream--it has melted away, dear." + +"Is that all?" asked Charlotte. "Why, I dare say the day will come when +you will be as rich as Sir Walter Scott." + +"In the meantime I have something to give you instead of the money." + +"Indeed!" + +"Yes; a cousin. Will that do as well, my love?" + +"A cousin? I shall like her very much if she is nice." + +"The cousin I mean is a gentleman." + +"But where is he to come from?" cried Charlotte, laughing. Has he +dropped from the moon? The only relations I have the world are Uncle and +Aunt Mercer. How can you pretend to find me a cousin?" + +"Do you remember telling me of your grandmother's only sister--Susan +Meynell?" + +"Yes," said Charlotte, with a sudden blush; "I remember." + +"That Miss Meynell married a gentleman of Normandy, and left one only +child, a son. His name is Gustave Lenoble, and he is standing by your +side. He is heir-at-law to a very large fortune, which it was once +supposed you could claim. Are you sorry, Lotta, to find a kinsman and +lose a fortune?--and are you contented to begin the world with no hope +except in your husband's patience and courage?" + +"And genius!" cried Charlotte, with enthusiasm. + +The sweet, blinding glamour of love shone upon this young scribbler, and +she believed that he was indeed worthy to take rank among the greatest of +that grand brotherhood of which he was so humble a member. She looked up +at him with the prettiest confidence; her clinging hand clasped his with +love and trust immeasurable. He felt and knew that love like this was a +treasure beside which the Reverend John Haygarth's hoarded thousands must +needs seem but sorry dross. + +After this there was much explanation and congratulation. Gustave Lenoble +was delighted to claim so fair a kinswoman. + +"Thou art like my eldest, my cousin," he said; "Diana saw the likeness at +the Sacré Coeur when she beheld my daughter; and I too saw my eldest's +look in thine eyes when I first met thee. Remember, it was convened +between us that Côtenoir should be a home for thee and for Hawkehurst +before I knew what link bound thee to the house of Lenoble. Now thou and +thy husband will be of our family." + +Diana was bewildered, grieved, indignant with the father who had deceived +her by his studious suppression of the truth. She found herself placed in +the position of rival to Charlotte, and the whole proceeding seemed to +her mean and treacherous. + +But it was no time for remonstrance or open expression of indignant +feeling. Her father's days were numbered. She knew this, and she held her +peace. Nor did Mrs. Sheldon utter any word of complaint, though the +disappointment she experienced upon hearing this revelation was very +keen. The idea of the four or five thousand pounds which were to come to +Charlotte had been a consolation to her in the midst of that confusion +and desolation which had newly come upon her life. She left Knightsbridge +that evening somewhat depressed in spirits, and half inclined to be angry +with Charlotte and her husband for their gaiety of manner, and evident +happiness in each other's society. + +"It seems hard to have to begin the world at my age," she murmured +hopelessly, "after being accustomed to have everything nice about me, as +I had at the Lawn; though I own that the trouble and care of the servants +was wearing me to the grave." + +"Dear mamma," exclaimed Charlotte tenderly, "there is no fear of trouble +or poverty for you or for us. Valentine has plenty of money, and is on +the high road to securing a comfortable income. Authors do not starve in +garrets now, you know, as they used to do, poor things, when Doctor +Johnson ate his dinner in a cave, or something dreadful of that kind; and +when Sir Richard Steele thought it quite a wonderful thing to get a pound +of tea for his wife. And Valentine's heart is in his profession, and he +will work for us." + +"As long as I have a hand that can write, and a brain that can guide my +pen," interposed Mr. Hawkehurst, gaily. "I have given hostages to +Fortune. I can face the hazard boldly. I feel as confident and as happy as +if we lived in the golden age, when there was neither care nor toil for +innocent mankind, and all the brightest things of earth were the +spontaneous gift of the gods." + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE. + +Monsieur and Madame Lenoble went to Brighton for their honeymoon. A +letter or a telegraphic message would bring them thence swiftly to the +bedside of the dying Captain, should the last fatal change set in +suddenly. Diana had wished to stay with her father, but Horatio insisted +upon the honeymoon trip, and that everything should be done in a correct +and gentlemanly manner. + +"You can engage rooms at the Albion," Captain Paget had said to his +son-in-law a few days before the quiet wedding. "The house is extremely +comfortable; and you will be received by a compatriot. The proprietor is +a Frenchman, and a very gentlemanly person, I assure you; the _cuisine_ +irreproachable. I remember the old Steyne when Mrs. FitzHerbert lived +close by, and received all the best people, in the days when the Cockney +had not yet taken possession of Brighthelmstone, and the Chinese dragons +and pagodas were bright and fresh in the Pavilion." + +To Brighton, therefore, the bride and bridegroom departed; Diana attended +by a maid, an appanage which the Captain had insisted upon. Poor Diana +was sorely puzzled as to what she should find for the maid to do when her +hair had been dressed early in the morning, and her costume laid out in +state for the day. + +"I think I must buy some handkerchiefs for her to hem," she said to +Gustave; "it will be quite dreadful for her to have nothing to do all +day long." + +The weather was warm and bright. The sea danced and sparkled under the +windows. Gustave was always in the same happy frame of mind. An elegant +landau had been secured for the period of their visit, and a pair of +capital horses carried them out on long and pleasant expeditions to the +pretty Sussex villages, or across the broad bare downs, beyond which the +sea stretched blue and bright. + +In the evening, when the lamp was lighted and the urn hissed gaily, Diana +felt that she and her husband were at home. It was the first home she had +known--the first time she had been sole mistress and centre of a +household. She looked back at all the old desolation, the dreary shifting +from lodging to lodging, the degradation, the self-abasement, the dull +apathy of despair; and then she looked across at her husband as he +lounged in his easy-chair, contemplating her with dreamy adoring eye, in +a kind of lazy worship; and she knew that for this man she was the centre +of the universe, the very keystone in the arch of life. + +She stretched out her hand to him with a smile, and he pressed it fondly +to his lips. There were twinkling jewels upon the slender fingers; for +the prettiest shop in Brighton--the brightest shop in Brighton--had been +ransacked that morning by the fond, frivolous, happy husband, as pleased +to bedeck his wife as a child to dress her last new doll. + +"How can I ever be worthy of so much affection, Gustave!" she exclaimed, +as he kissed the twinkling fingers. + +And it did indeed seem to her that for this free gift of love she could +never render a sufficient recompense. + +"Thou wilt make Côtenoir a home," he said; "thou knowest not how I have +sighed for a home. This room, with the lamplight shining on thy face, and +thy white hands moving about the teacups, and thy sweet smile, which +greets me every now and then when thou lookest by here,--it is more of +home than I have ever known since I left Beaubocage, that modest dwelling +where lived those two angels of kindness, my aunt and my grandmother." + +In one of those long pleasant drives to a distant village nestling under +the lee of a steep hill, the husband and wife had much serious talk about +the position of the former with reference to the Haygarth estate. The +result of that conversation was shown in a letter which Charlotte +Hawkehurst received the next day from her friend Diana Lenoble. + +"Albion Hotel, Brighton. + +"EVER DEAR LOTTA,--Gustave and I have discussed the Haygarth business +with great satisfaction to ourselves, since it transpired in the course +of our conversation that we are both of one mind in the matter. It is +agreed between us that, as he is very well off already, and as he never +hoped or expected to inherit a fortune from his maternal ancestor, it is +only just that he should divide this unlooked-for wealth with his dear +cousin, whose claim to that inheritance he recognizes as equal to his +own; the mere fact of seniority making only a legal and not a moral +difference in the degree of relationship to the Reverend John Haygarth. +Do you understand, darling?--_you_ are to have half this money. My +husband will not step in between you and good fortune. I cannot tell you +how happy this determination of Gustave's has made me. I felt myself in a +manner base and ungrateful when I thought I was to share wealth that +might have been yours; but I ought to have better understood the justice +of my husband's mind. And now, dearest, all will be arranged very simply; +Gustave will come to London and see his lawyers, and execute some kind of +deed, and the whole affair will be settled. + +"We have had some charming drive," &c. &c. + +Here the young wife branched off into a description of the simple +pleasures of their honeymoon holiday. + +This letter was answered by Valentine Hawkehurst in person. He came down +to Brighton to thank his friends for their generous desire to enrich his +wife, and to decline, on her part, any share in John Haygarth's wealth. + +It was in vain that Gustave and Diana argued the point, Mr. Hawkehurst +was fixed as fate. + +"Believe me, it is better as it is," he said. "Charlotte and I have +arrived at this conviction with all due thought and deliberation. We are +both young, and the world is all before us. There is much in the past +that I have to redeem, as Diana well knows. It is better that I should +fight the battle of life unaided, and rise from the ranks by right of my +merit as a soldier. If ever we have need of help--if ever I find myself +breaking down--you may be sure that it is to you I shall come. By and by, +if Providence gives me children to work for, I will refuse no bounty that +you may bestow on them. Their future may be rendered secure by your +generosity, if you please, Lenoble; they will be your kindred. But for an +alien like myself there is no discipline so wholesome as honest hard +work. I am as rich as John Milton when he set up a school in St. Bride's +Churchyard." + +To this resolution Mr. Hawkehurst adhered with a gentle firmness. + +"Thou art chivalrous like Don Quixote," said Gustave Lenoble; "but it +shall be as thou wouldest. Touch there." + +He offered his hand, which the other grasped with all heartiness. + +"I will be godfather to thy little first one, and I will settle on him +ten thousand pounds before he cuts his first tooth," said Gustave +decisively. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +BEYOND THE VEIL. + +Diana and her husband did not linger long at Brighton; they went back to +town in time to see the last of that old wayfarer whose troubled journey +came to so peaceful an ending. It was a very calm haven in which this +battered old privateer lay at anchor after life's tempestuous course; but +to the Captain himself it seemed a hard thing that he should not have +been permitted one brief cruise upon that summer sea which danced so +gaily beneath the keel of the Lenobles' prosperous bark. + +"We have shared adversity, my love," he said sadly, when he talked with +his daughter in the last few days; "but your prosperity I am to have no +share in. Well, I suppose I have no right to complain. My life has been +an erring one; but poverty is the most vicious companion that a man can +consort with. If I had come into six or seven thousand a year, I might +have been as starch in my notions as a bishop; but I have been obliged to +live, Diana--that was the primary necessity, and I learnt to accommodate +myself to it." + +That he had erred, the Captain was very ready to acknowledge. That he had +sinned deeply, and had much need to repent himself of his iniquity, he +was very slow to perceive. But sometimes, in the still watches of the +night, when the faint lamplight on the shadowy wall was more gloomy than +darkness, when the nurse, hired to assist his own man in these last days, +dozed in her comfortable chair, the truth came home to his shallow soul, +and Horatio Paget knew that he had been indeed a sinner, and very vile +among sinners. Then, for a moment, the veil of self-deception was lifted, +and he saw his past life as it had really been,--selfish, dishonourable, +cruel beyond measure in reckless injury of others. For a moment the awful +book was opened, and the sinner saw the fearful sum set against his name. + +"What can wipe out the dread account?" he asked himself. "Is there such a +thing as forgiveness for a selfish useless life--a life which is one long +offence against God and man?" + +In these long wakeful nights the dying man thought much of his wife. The +sweet tender face came back to him, with its mournful wondering look. He +knew, now, how his falsehoods and dishonours had wounded and oppressed +that gentle soul. He remembered how often she had pleaded for the right, +and how he had ridiculed her arguments, and set at naught her tender +pleadings. He had fancied her in a manner inimical to himself when she +urged the cause of some angry creditor or meek deluded landlady. Now, +with the light that is not upon earth or sea shining on the picture of +his past career, he could see and understand things as he had never seen +or understood them before. He knew now that it was for his own sake that +faithful and devoted wife had pleaded, his own interest that had been +near to her pitying heart, as well as the interest of bakers and +butchers, landladies and tailors. + +"She might have made a good man of me, if I had let her have her way," he +thought to himself. "I know that she is in heaven. Will she plead for me, +I wonder, at the foot of the Great Throne? I used to laugh at her bad +English, or fly in a passion with her sometimes, poor soul, when I wanted +her to pass for a lady, and she broke down outrageously. But there her +voice will be heard when mine appeals in vain. Dear soul! I wonder who +taught her to be so pure and unselfish, and trusting and faithful? She +was a Christian without knowing it. 'I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of +heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and +prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.'" + +He thought of his wife's lonely deathbed, and compared it with his own. +For him there was luxury; by him watched a devoted and all-forgiving +daughter, a generous friend and son-in-law. All that could be done to +soothe the painful descent was done for him. For her there had been +nothing but loneliness and sorrow. + +"But she might be certain of a speedy welcome in a better home," thought +Horatio; "and I--? Ah, dear kind creature, _there_ the difference was all +in her favour." + +As the closing scene grew nearer, he thought more and more of his gentle +low-born wife, whose hold upon him in life had been so slender, whose +memory had occupied until now so insignificant a place in his mind. His +daughter watched with him unceasingly in the last two days and nights. +His mind wandered. On the day of his death he mistook Diana for that +long-lost companion. + +"I have not been a kind husband, Mary, my dear," he faltered "but +the world has been hard upon me--debts--difficulties--crack +regiment--expensive mess--set of gamblers--no pity on a young man without +fortune--force of example--tied a millstone round my wretched neck before +I was twenty-one years of age." + +Later, when the doctor had felt his pulse for the last time, he cried out +suddenly, "I have made a statement of my affairs, the liabilities are +numerous--the assets nil; but I rely on the clemency of this court." + +These were his last words. He sank into a kind of stupor betwixt sleeping +and waking, and in this he died. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +BETTER THAN GOLD. + +The little fleet of paper boats which Mr. Sheldon had pioneered so +skilfully over the commercial seas came to grief very soon after the +disappearance of the admiral. A bill drawn upon the Honduras Mahogany +Company, Limited, was the first to reach maturity. The bill was referred +to the drawer--the drawer was not to be found. + +"I have not seen Sheldon for the last fortnight," Mr. Orcott informed the +gentleman who brought him the document. + +"Out of business for a fortnight?" + +"He has not been in business for a month. His stepdaughter has been very +ill--at death's door, and all that kind of thing, and my governor was +awfully cut up about it. There used to be a couple of doctors at the +house every day, and no end of fuss. I took Sheldon his letters, and +managed matters for him here, and so on. And one fine morning my young +lady runs off and gets married on the quiet; so I suspect there was a +good deal of shamming about the illness--and those old fogies, the +doctors, winked at it. Between them all, I fancy Sheldon was completely +sold; and he has turned savage and gone off somewhere in the sulks." + +"I wish he had chosen any other time for his sulks," said the holder of +the bill; "my partner and I have discounted several acceptances for him. +He gave us liberal terms, and we considered any paper of his as safe as a +Bank of England note; and now this confounded bill comes back to us +through our bankers, noted, 'Refer to drawer'--a most unpleasant thing, +you know, and very inconsiderate of Sheldon to leave us in such a fix." + +"He has forgotten the bill, I suppose," said Mr. Orcott. + +"Well, but you see, really now, a business man ought not to forget that +kind of thing. And so Miss Halliday has made a runaway match, has she? I +remember seeing her when I dined at Bayswater--an uncommonly fine girl. +And she has gone and thrown herself away upon some penniless scapegrace, +most likely? Now, by the bye, how about this Honduras Company, Mr. +Orcott; they don't seem to have any London offices?" + +"I believe not. We've some of their prospectuses somewhere about, I +think. Would you like to see one?" + +"I should, very much." + +Mr. Orcott opened two or three drawers, and after some little trouble +produced the required document. + +It was a very flourishing prospectus, setting forth the enormous +benefits to be derived by shareholders from the profitable dealings of the +company. Some good high-sounding names figured in the list of directors, +and the chairman was Captain H. N. Cromie Paget. The prospectus looked +well enough, but the holder of Mr. Sheldon's dishonoured bill was not +able to derive much comfort from high-sounding phrases and high-sounding +names. + +"I'll go down to Bayswater, and see if I can hear anything of your +governor," he said to Mr. Orcott. + +"He was not there yesterday when I called, and his servants could tell me +nothing of his whereabouts," the young Yorkshireman said very coolly. + +"Indeed!" cried the holder of the dishonoured bill in some alarm. "Now, +really, that is not right; a business man ought not to do that kind of +thing." + +He called a cab and drove to the Lawn. There was the smart gothic villa, +with its pointed gables, and florid chimneys, and oriel windows, and in +the Tudor casements of the ground-floor appeared the bills of a West-end +auctioneer, announcing in large letters that the lease of this charming +mansion, together with the nearly new furniture, linen, books, china, +plate, carefully-selected proof-prints after distinguished modern +artists, small cellar of choice wines, &c., &c., &c., would be disposed +of by auction on the following day. + +Mr. Sheldon's victim went into the house, where he found some men +preparing for the forthcoming sale. + +"What is the meaning of all this?" he asked, aghast. + +"A bill of sale, sir. Messrs. Napthali and Zabulon." + +This was enough. The holder of the bill went back to the City. Another +bill came due on the following day, and before the members of the Stock +Exchange took their luncheon, it was known that Philip Sheldon's credit +was among the things of the past. + +"I always thought he was out of his depth," said one set of talkers. + +"He was the last man I should have expected to see come to grief," said +another set of talkers. + +On settling-day came the awful proclamation--Philip Sheldon had +absconded, and would not meet his differences. + +On the same day came a terrible revelation to Mr. George Sheldon, of +Gray's Inn, solicitor, genealogist, and pedigree hunter. The first +official step in the advancement of Gustave Lenoble's claim against the +Crown was taken by Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon, the solicitors, of +Whitehall; and George Sheldon discovered that between Charlotte +Hawkehurst and the Haygarth estate there stood a prior claimant, whereby +all his toil, trouble, costs out of pocket, and wear and tear of body and +mind, had been wasted. + +"It is enough to make a man go and cut his throat," cried George, in his +first savage sense of utter disappointment. + +He went into his slovenly bedroom, and took out one of his razors, and +felt the corrugated surface of the left side of his neck meditatively. +But the razor was blunt, and the corrugated surface seemed very tough and +unmanageable; so George Sheldon decided that this kind of operation was +an affair which might be deferred. + +He heard the next day that his brother was _non est_, and, in his own +phraseology, that there was a pretty kettle of fish in the City. + +"Upon my word, Phil and I seem to have brought our pigs to a very nice +market," he said. "I dare say, wherever that fellow has gone, he has +carried a well-lined purse with him. But I wouldn't have his conscience +for all the wealth of the Rothschilds. It's bad enough to see Tom +Halliday's face as I see it sometimes. What must it be to _him_?" + +A little more than a year after this, and the yellow corn was waving on +the fertile plains of Normandy, fruit ripening in orchards on hillside +and in valley; merry holiday folks splashing and dabbling in the waves +that wash the yellow sands of Dieppe; horses coming to grief in Norman +steeplechases; desperate gamesters losing their francs and half-francs in +all kinds of frivolous games in the Dieppe _établissement_; and yonder, +in the heart of Normandy, beyond the tall steeples of Rouen, a happy +family assembled at the Chateau Côtenoir. + +One happy family--two happy families rather, but so closely united by the +bonds of love and friendship as to seem indeed one. Here are Gustave +Lenoble and his young wife Diana, with two tall slender damsels by their +side; and here is Valentine Hawkehurst, the successful young scribbler, +with his fair young wife Charlotte; and out on the terrace yonder are two +nurses walking with two babies, at that early, and, to some minds, +obnoxious stage of babyhood in which a perpetual rocking, and pacing to +and fro, and swaying backwards and forwards in the air, is necessary for +the preservation of anything approaching tranquillity. But to the minds +of the two young mothers and the two proud fathers, these small creatures +in their long white robes seem something too bright for earth. The united +ages of the babies do not amount to six months; but the mothers have +counted every gradual stage of these young lives, and to both it seems as +if there had been no time in which the children were not, with so firm a +hold have they possessed themselves of every thought in the foolish +maternal mind, of every impulse in the weak maternal heart. + +Mrs. Hawkehurst has brought her son to see his aunt Diana; for Diana has +insisted upon assuming that relationship by letters-patent, as it were. +Madame Lenoble's baby is a daughter, and this fact in itself seems to the +two friends to be a special interposition of Providence. + +"Would it not be delightful if they should grow up to love each other and +marry?" exclaimed Diana; and Charlotte agreed with her that such an event +in the future did indeed seem in a manner foreshadowed by the conduct of +the infants in the present. + +"He takes notice of her already!" she exclaimed, looking out at the +little creature in white muslin robes, held up against the warm blue sky; +"see, they are cooing at each other! I am sure that must be cooing." + +And then the two mothers went out upon the sunny terrace-walk and fondly +contemplated these domestic treasures, until the domestic treasures were +seized with some of the inexplicable throes and mysterious agonies of +early babyhood, and had to be borne off shrieking to their nurseries. + +"Dear angel," said Gustave, of his "little last one," "she has the very +shriek of Clarice here, poignant and penetrating, until to drown the +heart. Dost thou figure to thyself that thy voice was penetrating as +that, my beautiful, in the time?" + +He kissed his beautiful, and she ran off to join the procession following +the two babies,--alarmed nurses, distracted mammas, shrieking infants, +anxious damsels. + +"_C'est un vrai tourbillon_," as Gustave remarked to his companion +Valentine Hawkehurst; "these women, how they love their children! What of +saints, what of Madonnas, what of angels!" + +Whereupon he spouted Victor Hugo: + +"Lorsque l'enfant paraît, le cercle de famille +Applaudit à grands cris; son doux regard qui brille +Fait briller tous les yeux; +Et les plus tristes fronts, les plus souillés peut-être, +Se dérident soudain à voir l'enfant paraître, +Innocent et joyeux." + +All things had gone well for M. Lenoble. His direct descent from Matthew +Haygarth, the father of the intestate, had been proved to the +satisfaction of Crown lawyers and High Court of Chancery, and he had been +in due course placed in possession of the reverend intestate's estate, to +the profit and pleasure of his solicitors and M. Fleurus, and to the +unspeakable aggravation of George Sheldon, who washed his hands at once +and for ever of all genealogical research, and fell back in an embittered +and angry spirit upon the smaller profits to be derived from petty +transactions in the bill-discounting line, and a championship of +penniless sufferers of all classes, from a damsel who considered herself +jilted by a fickle swain, in proof of whose inconstancy she could produce +documentary evidence of the "pork-chop and tomato sauce" order, to a +pedestrian who knocked his head against a projecting shutter in the +Strand, and straightway walked home to Holloway to lay himself up for a +twelvemonth in a state of mental and bodily incapacity requiring large +pecuniary redress from the owner of the fatal shutter. To this noble +protection of the rights of the weak did George Sheldon devote his +intellect; and when malicious enemies stigmatized these Quixotic +endeavours as "speculative actions," or when, in the breaking-down of +some oppressed damsel's cause by reason of the slender evidence afforded +by some reticent lover's epistolary effusions, unjust judges told him +that he "ought to be ashamed of himself" for bringing such an action, the +generous attorney no doubt took consolation from an approving conscience, +and went forth from that court, to look for other oppressed damsels or +injured wayfarers, erect and unshaken. + +Some little profit Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn did derive from the Haygarth +estate; for at the request of Gustave Lenoble Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon +sent him a cheque for one thousand pounds, as the price of those early +investigations which had set the artful Captain upon the right track. He +wrote a ceremoniously grateful letter to Gustave Lenoble on receiving +this honorarium. It is always well to be grateful for benefits received +from a rich man; but in the depths of his heart he execrated the +fortunate inheritor of the Haygarthian thousands. + +Mr. Hawkehurst was not quite so vehement in the expression of his +feelings as that lively Celt, Gustave; but deep in his heart there was a +sense of happiness no less pure and exalted. + +Providence had given him more than he had ever dared to hope; not +John Haygarth's thousands; not a life of luxurious idleness, and +dinner-giving, and Derby days, and boxes on the grand tier, and +carriage-horses at five hundred guineas a pair; not a palace in +Belgravia, and a shooting-box in the Highlands, and a villa at Cowes; +not these things, in which he would once have perceived the _summum +bonum_; but a fair price for his labour, a dear young wife, a tranquil +home. + +Nor had his researches among the dusty records of the departed Haygarths +been profitless in a pecuniary sense to himself. Gustave Lenoble insisted +that he should accept that honorarium of three thousand pounds which had +been promised by George Sheldon as the reward of his success. + +"Captain Paget would never have been put on the right track if he had +not filched your secrets from you," said the son and heir of Susan +Meynell. "It is to your researches, in the first place, that I owe +this inheritance; and you cannot refuse to accept the agreed price of +your labour." + +Valentine did not refuse this fairly-earned reward, nor did he oppose the +settlement which Gustave made in favour of Charlotte's infant son. It +seemed to him only just that some share of the heritage should fall to +the descendant of poor Susan's younger sister and faithful friend. + +With this capital of three thousand pounds comfortably invested in +consols, and with the interest of that sum of ten thousand pounds settled +on his infant son, Mr. Hawkehurst began the world, in his new character +of a husband and a father, very pleasantly. + +Of his literary career very little need be said here. He was yet at the +beginning of the long dusty road that leads to the temple of Fame. It is +enough to state that he found the dusty high-road rather difficult +walking, and that he was pelted with more mud, flung by nameless +assailants hidden behind the hedges, than he had anticipated when he set +out upon the first stage of his journey. Happily, he found pleasant +fellow-travellers and kindly encouragement from an indulgent public, and +was thus able to accept the mud which bespattered his garments in a very +placid spirit, and to make light of all obstacles in the great highway. + +The cottage at Wimbledon was no longer a dream. It was a pleasant +reality, the pride and delight of Mrs. Sheldon and Ann Woolper. It was a +picturesque dwelling-place, half cottage, half villa, situated on the +broad high-road from London to Kingston, with all the woodland of +Richmond Park to be seen from the windows at the back. Only a wall +divided Mr. Hawkehurst's gardens from the coverts of the Queen. It was +like a royal demesne, Charlotte said; whereupon her husband insisted that +it should be christened by the name of a royal dwelling, and so called it +Charlottenburgh. + +Mr. Hawkehurst had secured this delightful abode for a considerable term +of years, and upon the furnishing and decoration of the pretty rustic +rooms Charlotte and he lavished unmeasured care. The delicious excitement +of "picking up," or, in more elegant parlance, "collecting," was to these +two happy people an inexhaustible source of pleasure. Every eccentric +little table, every luxurious chair, had its special history, and had +been the subject of negotiation and diplomacy that might have sufficed a +Burleigh in the reorganization of Western Europe. The little Dresden and +Vienna cups and saucers in the maple cabinet had been every one bought +from a different dealer. The figures on the mantelpiece were Old Chelsea, +of a quality that would have excited the envy of a Bernal or a Bonn, and +had only fallen to the proud possessors by a sequence of fortuitous +circumstances, the history of which was almost as thrilling as the +story of Boehmer's diamond-necklace. The curtains in the drawing-room +had draped the _portières_ of the lovely Lady Blessington, and had been +bought for a song by Valentine Hawkehurst, after passing through the +hands of brokers and dealers innumerable. The tapestry-covered +Louis-Quatorze chairs had belonged to Madame de Sévigné, and had +furnished that dull country house whence she wrote the liveliest letters +extant to her disreputable cousin, Bussy, Count of Babutin. These +inestimable treasures had been picked up by Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst from +a bric-à-brac merchant in a little court at the back of the Rue Vivienne, +whither the young couple had gone arm-in-arm to choose a bonnet on their +first pleasure-trip to Paris. The clock in the modest dining-room had +been secured from the repository of the same merchant, and was warranted +to have sounded the last domestic hours of Maximilian Robespierre in his +humble lodging _chez le Menuisier_. The inkstand into which Mr. +Hawkehurst dipped his rapid pen had served the literary career of +Voltaire; the blotting-book on which he wrote had been used by Balzac. + +To the plausible fictions of the second-hand dealer Mr. and Mrs. +Hawkehurst lent willing ears, and it seemed to them as if these +associations, for which they had paid somewhat dearly, imparted a new +grace to their home. + +The arrangement and superintendence of all these treasures gave poor +Georgy endless pleasure and employment; but in her heart of hearts she +believed in the prim splendours of the dismantled Lawn as much superior +to these second-hand objects of art and upholstery. Nor did Ann Woolper +regard the Chelsea figures and Dresden teacups and old black Albert-Dürer +engravings as anything better than an innocent eccentricity on the part +of the master of the house, for the saving of whose purse she managed and +economized as faithfully as she had done for that lost master whereof the +memory was so bitter. + +It will be seen, therefore, that Mr. Hawkehurst with a wife, a +mother-in-law, and a faithful old servant, was likely to be well taken +care of; a little spoiled perhaps by "much cherishing," but carefully +guarded from all those temptations which are supposed to assail the +bachelor man-of-letters, toiling alone and neglected in Temple chambers. +For him the days passed in a pleasant monotony of constant labour, +lightened always by the thought of those for whom he worked, cheered ever +by the fond hope of future fame. He was no longer a bookmaker. He had +written a book, the proceeds of which had enabled him to furnish the +Wimbledon villa; and he was engaged in writing a second book, the fruits +whereof would secure the needs of the immediate future. He had insured +his life for a considerable amount, and had shown himself in all things +prudent to a degree that verged upon Philistinism. But the policies taken +out on Charlotte's life by Mr. Sheldon had been suffered to lapse. +Valentine would have no money staked on that dear head. + +The steed which Charlotte had desired for her husband's pleasure, the +library which she had catalogued so often, were yet among the delights of +the future; but life has lost half its brightness when there is no +unfulfilled desire left to the dreamer; and the horse which Mr. +Hawkehurst was to ride in time to come, and the noble library which he +was to collect, were the pleasant themes of Charlotte's conversation very +often, as she and her husband walked on the heights of Wimbledon in the +twilight, when his day's work was done. + +These twilight walks were the happy holidays of his life, and a part of +his liberal education. He told his wife everything, every literary +scheme, every fancy, every shadowy outline of future work, every new +discovery in the boundless realms of Bookland. His enthusiasm; his +hero-worship; his setting-up of one favourite and knocking-down of +another; his unchristian pleasure in that awful slating of poor Jones in +this week's _Saturday_, or the flaying alive of Robinson in the _Bond +Street Backbiter_;--in a word, his "shop" never became wearisome to +Charlotte. She listened always with a like rapture and sympathy; she +worshipped his favourites of Bookland; she welcomed his friends and +fellow-workers with unvarying sweetness; she devised and superintended the +fitting-up of a smoking-room that was perfectly paradisaical, a glimpse +of the Alhambra in miniature; and that obnoxious dish, the cold shoulder, +was never served in Mr. Hawkehurst's dwelling. So sweet a wife, so +pleasant a home, popularized the institution of matrimony among the young +writer's bachelor friends; and that much-abused and cruelly maligned +member of the human race, the mother-in-law, was almost rehabilitated by +Mrs. Sheldon's easy good-nature and evident regard for the interests of +her daughter's husband. + +And after all the groping among dry as dust records of a bygone century, +after all the patient following of those faint traces on the sands of +time left by the feet of Matthew Haygarth, _this_ was Charlotte's +Inheritance,--a heart whose innocence and affection made home a kind of +earthly paradise, and gave to life's commonest things a charm that all +the gold ever found in California could not have imparted to them. This +was Charlotte's Inheritance,--the tender, unselfish nature of the +Haygarths and Hallidays; and thus dowered, her husband would not have +exchanged her for the wealthiest heiress whose marriage was ever +chronicled in _Court Circular_ or _Court Journal_. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +LOST SIGHT OF. + +A year and a half had passed since the disappearance of Philip Sheldon +from the circle in which he had been considered a person of some +importance. The repudiation of those bills by which he had sustained his +exhausted credit, or rather the discovery that the companies upon which +the bills pretended to be drawn were of all shadows the most shadowy, had +brought consternation upon many, and ruin upon some. Bitter and +unmeasured were the terms in which City men spoke of that Phil Sheldon +with whom they had eaten the sacred bait and quaffed the social moselle +in the taverns of Greenwich and Blackwall. + +There is a saying current on the Stock Exchange to the effect that the +man who fails, and disappears from among his fellows behind a curtain of +commercial cloud, is sure to return sooner or later to his old circle, +with a moustache and a brougham. For Philip Sheldon there was, however, +no coming back. The moustache and the brougham of the chastened and +penitent defaulter were not for him. By his deliberate and notorious +dishonour he had shut the door against the possibility of return. It may +be supposed that the defaulter knew this, for he did not come back; and +since he had no lack of moral courage, he would scarcely have refrained +from showing himself once more in his old haunts, if it had been possible +for him to face the difficulties of his position. + +Time passed, and there came no tidings of the missing man, though a +detective was despatched to America in search of him by one vengeful +sufferer among the many victims of the fictitious bills-of-exchange. It +was supposed that he must inevitably go to America, and thither went his +pursuer, but with no result except the expenditure of money and the +further exasperation of the vengeful sufferer. + +"What will you do with him, if you get him?" asked a philosophical friend +of the sufferer. "He has nothing to surrender. Zabulon had a bill-of-sale +on his furniture." + +"Furniture!" cried the infuriated victim; "I don't want his furniture. I +want his flesh and bones. I want to shut him up in Dartmoor Prison, or to +get him twenty years' hard labour at Portland Island." + +"That sort of man would get a ticket-of-leave in less than twelve +months," replied the philosophic friend. "I'm afraid you are only +throwing good money after bad." + +The event proved this gentleman but too able a seer. In the monster city +of New York Philip Sheldon had disappeared like a single drop of water +flung upon the Atlantic Ocean. There was no trace of him: too intangible +for the grasp of international law, he melted into the mass of humanity, +only one struggler the more in the great army perpetually fighting life's +desperate battle. + +From among all those who had known him this man had utterly vanished, +and not one sigh of regret followed him in his unknown wanderings--not +one creature amongst all those who had taken his hand and given him +friendly greeting thought of him kindly, or cared to know whither he +went or how he prospered. He had not left in the house that had +sheltered him for years so much as a dog to whine at his door or listen +for his returning footstep. + +This fact, if he had known it or considered it, would have troubled him +very little. He had played his game for a certain stake, and had lost it. +This he felt, and cursed his own too cautious play as the cause of his +defeat. That there were higher stakes for which he might have played an +easier game, was a fact that never occurred to him. In his philosophy +there was indeed nothing higher given to the hopes of man than worldly +success, and a dull, cold, prosperous life spent among prosperous +acquaintance. + +He was gone, and those who remembered him most keenly--Valentine +Hawkehurst, Diana Paget, Ann Woolper--remembered him with a shudder. The +old Yorkshirewoman thought of him sometimes as she bent over the little +muslin-bedecked cradle where the hope of the Hawkehursts slumbered, and +looked round fearfully in the gloaming, half expecting to see his dreaded +face glower upon her, dark and threatening, from between the curtains of +the window. + +It was a belief of all ancient races, nay indeed, a belief still current +amongst modern nations, that it is not given to man to behold the beings +of another world and live. The Arab who meets a phantom in the desert +goes home to his tent to die. He knows that the hand of doom is upon him. +He has seen that upon which, for mortal eyes, it is fatal to look. And it +is thus in some measure with those who are admitted within the dark +precincts of murder's dread sanctuary. Not swiftly does the curtain fall +which has once been lifted from the hidden horrors of that ghastly +temple. The revelations of an utterly wicked soul leave a lasting impress +upon the mind which unwillingly becomes recipient of those awful secrets. + +The circumstances of Tom Halliday's death and of Charlotte's illness were +not to be forgotten by Ann Woolper. The shadow of that dark cruel face, +which had lain upon her bosom forty years before, haunted many a peaceful +hour of her quiet old age. Her ignorance, and that faint tinge of +superstition which generally accompanies ignorance, exaggerated the +terror of those dark memories. The thought that Philip Sheldon still +lived, still had the power to plot and plan evil against the innocent, +was an ever-present source of terror to her. She could not understand +that such an element could exist among the forces of evil without fatal +result to some one. It seemed to her as if a devil were at large, and +there could be neither peace nor security until the evil spirit was +exorcised, the baneful presence laid in nethermost depths of unfathomable +sea. + +These feelings and these fears would scarcely have arisen in the old +woman's breast, had she alone been subject to the possible plottings of +that evil nature. For herself she had little fear. Her span of life was +nearly ended; very few were the sands that had yet to run; and, for her +own sake, she would have cared little if some rough hand had spilt them +untimely. But a new interest in life had been given to Mrs. Woolper just +as life drew near its close. That peerless child, the son and heir of the +Hawkehursts, had been intrusted to the old woman's care; and this infant +she loved with an affection much more intense than that which had once +made Philip Sheldon so dear to her. + +It was by the cradle of this much-treasured child that Ann Woolper nursed +her fear of her old master. She knew that he had been counter-plotted and +beaten ignominiously in that deadly game which he had played so boldly. +And she asked herself whether he was the man to submit to such utter +defeat without any effort to revenge himself upon those who had helped to +compass his failure. + +On that night when Charlotte Halliday had lain between life and death, +suffering on the one hand from the effects of a prolonged and gradual +course of poison, on the other from the violent measures taken to +eliminate that poisonous element from her system,--on that night when the +precious life yet trembled in the balance, Ann Woolper had seen murderous +looks in the face of the man whom she dared boldly to defy, and who knew +in that hour that his ghastly plot was discovered. Even now, secure in a +haven of safety, she could not forget that baneful look in Philip +Sheldon's eyes. She could not find perfect rest while she knew not where +that man might be, or what mischief he might be plotting against those +she loved. + +Her fears showed themselves in many ways. When she read of dark and +vengeful deeds in her newspaper, she thought of her old master, and how, +in such or such an act, his fatal hand might reveal itself. He might lie +in wait for Valentine some night on the dark road between Charlottenburgh +and the distant railway-station. She could fancy the young wife's agony +of terror as the night wore on, and her husband did not return; the +unspeakable horror that would come over all that happy household when the +news came that its young master had been found on the lonely road slain +by some unknown hand. Open utterance to her fears she was too wise to +give; but she warned Mr. Hawkehurst of the dangers on that dark road, and +besought him to arm himself with a trusty bludgeon wherewith to meet and +vanquish any chance assailant. Valentine laughed at her anxious warning; +but when Charlotte took up the cry he was fain to content her by the +purchase of a sturdy stick, which he swung cheerily to and fro as he +walked homewards in the gloaming, planning a chapter in his new book, and +composing powerful and eloquent sentences which eluded his mental grasp +when he tried to reduce his evening reverie to pen-and-ink. + +"When the air blows fresh across the common, and the distant lights +twinkle, and the bright stars peep out in the pale-yellow sky, my +language flows as it never does when I sit at my desk, Lotta," he said to +his wife. "I feel myself a Swift or a Junius out there; equal to the +tackling of any social question that ever arose upon this earth, from the +Wood halfpence to the policy of American taxation, and triennial +elections. At home I am only Valentine Hawkehurst, with an ever-present +consciousness that so many pages of copy are required from me within a +given time, and that my son-and-heir is cutting his teeth, and making +more fuss about it than I ever made about _my_ teeth; and that the man +about the water-rate is waiting to see me, please, and is desperately +anxious about making-up his books; and that I have the dearest wife in +Christendom, who opens my door, and puts her pretty head into my room +once in half an hour to see how I am getting on, or to ask whether I want +any more coals, or to borrow my ink to make-up her washing-book." + +"You mean, sir, that I prevent your becoming a Junius?" cried Charlotte, +with an enchanting _moue_. + +"Yes, dear. I begin to understand why Swift kept his poor ill-used wife +at a respectful distance. She would have made him too happy if he had +allowed her to be on the premises. She would have given the cruel +indignation no chance of lacerating his heart; and such writing as +Swift's is only produced by a man whose heart is so lacerated. No, my +darling, I shall never be a Swift or a Junius while your pretty head is +thrust into my room once or twice an hour; but I may hope to be something +better, if bright eyes can inspire bright thoughts, and innocent smiles +give birth to pleasant fancies." + +Upon this there was the usual little demonstration of affection between +this young couple; and Charlotte praised her husband as the most +brilliant and admirable of men; after which pleasing flattery she +favoured him with a little interesting information about the baby's last +tooth, and the contumacious behaviour of the new housemaid, between whom +and Mrs. Woolper there had been a species of disagreement, which the +Yorkshirewoman described as a "standfurther." + +Thus occupied in simple pleasures and simple cares, the lives of Mr. and +Mrs. Hawkehurst went on, untroubled by any fear of that crime-burdened +wretch whose image haunted the dreams and meditations of Ann Woolper. For +these two Mr. Sheldon was numbered among the dead. To Charlotte the +actual truth had never been revealed; but she had been, in the course of +time, given to understand that her stepfather had committed some +unpardonable sin, which must for ever separate him from herself and her +mother. She had been told as much as this, and had been told that she +must seek to know no more. To this she submitted without questioning. + +"I am very sorry for him," she said, "and for mamma." + +She concluded that the unpardonable offence must needs have been some sin +against her mother, some long-hidden infidelity brought suddenly to +light, with all the treachery and falsehood involved therein. She never +mentioned her stepfather after this but in her prayers the sinner was not +forgotten. + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES. + +George Sheldon went his ways, picking up as good a living as he could +from that chivalrous assertion of the rights of the weak which has been +already described; and the thought of his brother's sin-burdened soul +troubled him very little. He did think of Tom Halliday; for that last +grasp of the honest Yorkshireman's hand, that last look in his old +friend's face, were haunting memories which this sharp practitioner had +found himself powerless to exorcise. If his brother, after an absence of +many years in the remote regions of the East Indies, had come home to his +fatherland with a colossal fortune, and the reputation of having +strangled a few natives during the process of amassing that fortune, +George Sheldon would have welcomed the returning wanderer, and would, in +his own parlance, have "swallowed the natives." A few niggers, more or +less, sent untimely to Gehenna, would have seemed scarcely sufficient +cause for quarrel with a fraternal and liberally-disposed millionaire. +But the circumstances of Tom Halliday's death had brought all the horror +of crime and treachery home to the spectator of that deliberate +assassination, and had produced such an impression as no other +circumstances could on so hard a nature. + +It was some satisfaction to George Sheldon to know that his old friend's +daughter had found a happy home; and he was apt to take some credit from +his own share in his brother's discomfiture. He met Valentine sometimes +in the course of his peregrinations in the neighbourhood of the British +Museum, and the greeting between the two men was sufficiently cordial; +but Mr. Hawkehurst did not invite his old employer to Charlottenburgh, +and George was able to comprehend that to that household no one bearing +the name of Sheldon could be a welcome visitor. + +He jogged on comfortably enough in his own way; living in his chambers, +and consorting with a few chosen friends and kindred spirits of the +jolly-good-fellow class, whom he met at an old-established tavern in the +west-central district, and in whose society, and the society of the +subscription-ground in the Farringdon Road, he found the _summum bonum_ +in the way of social intercourse. He did a little speculation upon the +turf, and discounted the bills of needy bookmakers, or bought up their +bad debts, and thereby gained introductions to the noble patrons of the +humble "scums," and pushed his business into new grooves. He had no idea +that such an existence was in any way ignoble; nay, indeed, when he had +paid his rent, and his clerk, and his laundress, and his tavern score, +and "stood glasses round" amongst his friends, he lighted his cigar, and +thrust his hands into the depths of his pockets, and paced the flags of +Holborn happy in the belief that he had performed the whole duty of man. + +"There are men whose business obliges them to keep up an establishment, +and go to church twice a day, and all that kind of thing," he said; "and +I dare say they find it pay. My clients don't care a doit where I live, +or how I spend my Sundays; and I'd rather have five pounds a week and my +liberty than the best family connection in the Fields." + +The fate of that wretched man, who had dropped out of his old circle +and vanished no one knew whither, in no manner disturbed the peace of +George Sheldon. + +"Take my word for it, that gentleman has fallen on his feet," he said, on +the only occasion when the fate of Philip was discussed by Valentine and +himself. "He's doing well enough, somewhere or other, you may depend; but +I don't think he'll ever be able to show his nose in London after those +bill transactions. There's a very strong feeling against him on Change. +He's looked upon as a discredit to the order, and that sort of thing, you +see. It isn't often a member of the House goes to the bad like that. No, +I don't think Phil will ever show himself in London again; but such a man +as that can always find a platform somewhere--" + +"And go on to the end of his days unpunished, I suppose," remarked Mr. +Hawkehurst, with some bitterness. + +"Well, yes; I don't see what's to touch him in the future. Of course he +could be dropped upon for those bills, if he came in the way of being +dropped upon; but, as I said before, he's too deep a card for that." + +Thus did George Sheldon dismiss the subject. That his brother was an +exile for life from his native land he did not doubt; but he took it for +granted that in whatever distant spot of earth Philip had found a refuge, +he would there contrive to prosper and to show a bold front in the city +of his adoption. + +This belief Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn cherished until one snowy Christmas +Eve, a year and a half after that event, or series of events, which the +lawyer briefly designated "the burst-up at Bayswater." + +Bleak and bitter was that December, a December not long gone by. The +heart of the prosperous British nation melted as the heart of one man. +The columns of the _Zeus_ and the _Diurnal Hermes_, the _Flag_ and the +_Hesper_, overflowed with the record of subscriptions to charity funds; +and the leaders of the morning journals all preached the same kindly +sermon on the same Christian text. Thick lay the snow upon the housetops; +"thick and slab" the greasy slush upon the pavements of crowded +thoroughfares; merry the rogues and ragamuffins of the great city. The +ideal Christmas of our dreams seemed to have come at last, and the heart +of every true Briton rejoiced; while skaters in the parks made merry, and +cabmen demanded fabulous sums of helpless wayfarers; and luckless, +overworked, under-fed horses stumbled and fell at every turn, and the +familiar steep of Holborn was dangerous as Alpine mountain. + +To George Sheldon neither the weather nor the Christmas season made much +difference. The even current of his life was little disturbed by festive +pleasures or dissipations. An extra glass at his tavern, an invitation to +dinner from some friend in the bill-discounting line, were the most +exciting events the season was likely to bring him. He saw the shops +brighten suddenly with semi-supernal glories of crystallized fruits and +gorgeous bonbon-boxes, and he was aware of a kind of movement in the +streets that was brisker and gayer than the plodding hurry of everyday +life. He stood aside and let the mummeries go by him, and was glad when +these Christmas follies were done with, and the law-courts in full swing +once more. In the happiest and most innocent days of his youth, Christmas +had brought him no more than extraordinary indulgences in the way of +eating and drinking, swiftly followed by that dread avenger, the demon of +the bilious. + +Upon this particular occasion Mr. Sheldon had pledged himself to dine +with a horsey publican lately retired from business, and big with all the +pride and glory of a "place" at Hornsey. + +"Come down and see my place, Sheldon," this gentleman had said. "I don't +pretend to do the swell thing; but I force my own pines and grow my own +grapes, and can put as good a dessert on my table as you could buy in +Covent Garden for a five-pun' note. That's my missus's fad, that is, and +I can afford it; so why shouldn't I do it? You come and eat your +Christmas dinner with us, Sheldon. I've got a friend coming that can +sing as good a song as Reeves hisself, and might make a fortune, if he +wasn't above coming out at one of them music-halls. And I'll give you a +bottle of Madeira that you won't match at any nobleman's table, if +noblemen's tables was in your line of business, which you and I know +they ain't, old fellow." + +And then the jolly good fellow dug his fat fingers into George Sheldon's +ribs, and George accepted the invitation; not with any elation of +spirits, but sufficiently pleased to secure a good dinner with a man who +promised to be a profitable client, and whose house was within a +reasonable cab-fare from the west-central district. + +"The cabmen are trying it on, anyhow, just now," thought Mr. Sheldon; +"but I don't think they'll try it on with me. And if they do, there's the +Marylebone stage. I'm not afraid of a five-mile walk." + +Having accepted this invitation, and thus disposed of his Christmas-day, +George Sheldon refrained from the delights of social converse at his +tavern on Christmas-eve, and occupied himself with business. His clerk +left him at the usual hour; but the master sat, long after dark, writing +letters and reading law-papers, while the snow drifted against his +windows and whitened the quiet quadrangle below. + +He had just laid aside his papers and lighted a cigar, when he was +startled by a stealthy knocking at his door. He was not unaccustomed to +late visitors, as he was known to live at his chambers, and to work after +office-hours; but the knocking of to-night was not the loud rollicking +rat-a-tat of his jolly-good-fellow friends or clients. If he had been a +student of light literature, and imbued with the ghostly associations of +the season, he would have gone to his door expecting to behold a weird +figure clothed in the vestments of the last century; or an old woman in +ruff and martingale, whose figure in the flesh had once haunted those +legal precincts; or the ghostly semblance of the Baron of Verulam +himself, revisiting the glimpses of the moon and the avenue of elms that +were planted by his order. + +In George Sheldon's nature there was, however, no lurking dread of fiend +or phantom. His ideas in connection with ghosts were limited to a white +sheet, a broomstick, and a hollow turnip with a lighted candle inside it; +and he would have set down the most awful apparition that ever was +revealed to German ghost-seer, with a scornful grin, as a member of the +sheet and-hollow-turnip confraternity. + +"I know how it's done," he would have said, if the spectral form had +glowered upon him in midnight churchyard or ruined abbey. "You'd better +go and try it on somewhere else, my friend." + + * * * * * + +To a superstitious mind the THING which crept across the dark lobby +and dragged itself into the glare of the gas-lighted office might +have seemed, indeed, some creature too loathsome for humanity. A +plague-stricken corpse galvanized into a spasmodic life could scarcely +have lifted to the light a more awful countenance than that on which +George Sheldon looked with mingled anger and disgust. + +"What do you want here" he asked. "Do you take this for the workhouse?" + +"No," the creature answered, in a faint hoarse voice; "but I take you for +my brother." + +"WHAT!" cried George Sheldon, aghast. + +He bent down and looked at the awful face. Yes, from the cavernous +hollows of those sunken cheeks, beneath the shaggy penthouse of those +bony brows, the fierce black eyes of Philip Sheldon looked out at him +with a savage glare that he had never seen in them before--even when the +savage nature of the man had revealed itself most nakedly--the fierce +glare of fever and starvation. + +This walking horror, this mass of loathsome rags endued with motion, this +living disease, was the sometime prosperous stockbroker, the man whom it +had been impossible to think of except furnished with linen of spotless +whiteness, and the glossy broad-cloth, and well-made boots, and keyless +chronometer, and silk umbrella of commercial success. + +"Good God!" exclaimed George, horror-stricken, "is it you?" + +"Yes, it's I," answered the creature in his strange husky accents; and +the change--nay, indeed, the degradation, of the voice was as complete as +the degradation of the man. "Yes, George, it's I; your brother Phil. +You're surprised to see me fallen so low in the world, I suppose; but you +can't be more surprised than I am myself. I've tried hard enough to hold +my head above water. There's scarcely any trade that mortal man ever +tried to earn his bread by, that I haven't tried--and failed in. It has +been the experience of Fitzgeorge-street over and over again, in every +trade and every profession. I started as doctor in Philadelphia, and was +doing well;--till--till a patient died--and things went against me. I've +been clerk in more offices than you can count on your ten fingers; but +there was always something--my employer levanted, or was bankrupt, or +died, or dismissed me. I've been travelling-dentist, auctioneer, +commission-agent, tout, pedlar, out yonder; but it all came to the same +thing--ruin, starvation, the hospital, or the pauper's ward. I have swept +crossings in the city, and camped out in the wilderness among the bears +and opossums. One day I thought I'd come home. 'There's George,' I said +to myself; 'if I can get money enough to take me across the Atlantic, I +shall be all right. George will give me a lift.' I don't stand alone in +the world. A man's own flesh and blood won't let him starve--can't let +him starve. Blood's thicker than water, you know, George. So I came home. +I got the money; never you mind how. I needn't tell you what it cost me +to scrape half-a-dozen pounds together. When a man's as low down in the +world as I am, there's not a shilling he earns that doesn't cost him a +drop of his heart's blood; there's not a pound he gets together that +isn't bought by the discount of so much of his life. I found money enough +for my passage in an emigrant vessel; and here I am, ready for anything. +I'll work like your bought nigger. I'll do the work your clerk does for a +quarter of his wages. I'll sweep out your office, and run errands for +you. You'll give me something to keep body and soul together, won't you, +George?" + +Nothing could be more utterly abject than the tone of this most abject +wretch. + +This man, who in prosperity had been the very personification of hardness +and insolence, was transformed into a grovelling, cringing supplicant, +ready to lie face downward in the dust beneath the feet of that brother +whose patronage, or charity, he besought. + +Mr. Sheldon the younger contemplated the supplicant with looks of +undisguised gratification. He walked a few paces backward from the spot +where his brother had fallen, in a half-sitting, half-crouching attitude, +and where he remained, hugging himself in his rags, too abject to be +acutely conscious of his degradation. A year ago and he would have held +himself obstinately aloof from all old associations, and would have +declared himself ready to face starvation, rather than accept, still less +supplicate, relief from his younger brother. The events of that one year +had involved alternations and convulsions that change a year into a +cycle. He had faced starvation; he had walked with hunger for his +travelling companion; he had lain down night after night in such lairs +as the tramp can find for his refuge, with sickness and pain for his +bed-fellows. The crucible through which he had passed had left in him no +more of humanity than its outward semblance, and scarcely that; for when +the moral man sinks to the level of the beasts of prey, the physical man +undergoes an assimilative process only less marked than that which +transforms the mental nature. + +For six months this man had lived by fawning upon or threatening his +fellow-men; by violence or craft; by the degradation of the vagrant or +the audacity of the thief. There is no limit to man's capacity for infamy +which he had not touched. Vilest amongst the vile, he had been cast forth +from the haunts of beggars and reprobates, as no fitting company for +honourable thieves or cadgers of good repute. + +George Sheldon seated himself astride upon a chair, and, with his folded +arms resting on the back of it, contemplated this hideous spectacle. It +was a picture that he had never thought to see, and the feeling with +which he surveyed it was not unmingled with pleasure. + +"When you rode me rough-shod, my friend, I used to think how I should +enjoy taking my change out of you," he said; "but I never thought I +should have such an opportunity as this--never, by Jove! I thought you +would ride the high horse to the end of the journey; I didn't think your +steed would land you in the gutter. And so you've tried every move, have +you?--tumbled upon every platform?--and you've found all your cleverness +no go upon the other side of the three thousand miles of everlasting wet, +as my Yankee friends call the Atlantic; and you've come back whining to +me, and I'm to help you, am I, and to give you a fresh start in life, I +suppose, and make you my clerk, or my junior partner, eh?--that would be +better. Messrs. Sheldon and Sheldon wouldn't look bad on my door. That's +about what you mean when you talk of blood being thicker than water, +isn't it?" + +The abject wretch who had once been Philip Sheldon felt that his brother +was trifling with him, savouring to the last drop that cup of triumph +which the chances of fortune had offered to his lips. + +"Don't play the fool with me, George," he said piteously. "I don't ask +you much--a crust of bread, a corner to sleep in, and a cast-off suit of +clothes: that's not much for one brother to ask of another." + +"Perhaps not," replied George Sheldon; "but it's a great deal for you to +ask of me. You've had your turn, Phil; and you made the most of it, and +contrived to keep me at arm's length. My turn has come at last, and you +may depend upon it I shall contrive now to keep _you_ at arm's length." + +The vagrant stared at him aghast. Here he had felt secure of food and +shelter; and he had endured miseries and deprivations that reduce a man +to a state in which food and shelter seem to constitute the supreme good +that can be obtained in this life. + +"You won't refuse to do something for me, George," he whined piteously. + +"I will do nothing for you. Do you hear that, my man? Nothing! You taught +me that blood is not thicker than water twelve years ago, when you +married Tom Halliday's widow, and drew your purse-strings, after flinging +me a beggarly hundred as you'd throw a bone to a dog. You made me +understand that was all I should ever get out of your brotherly love, or +your fear of my telling the world what I knew. You gave me a dinner now +and then, because it suited you to keep your eye upon me; and you had +generally some piece of dirty work on hand that made the advice of a +sharp practitioner like me uncommonly useful to you. I don't believe that +you ever gave me so much as a dinner that you didn't take payment for in +meal or in malt. Don't come howling here now, trying to persuade me that +blood is thicker than water, or that brotherhood means anything more than +the accident of birth. And now I've said all I have to say; and the +sooner you make yourself scarce, the better for both of us." + +"George!" cried the miserable suppliant, clasping his bony hands +convulsively, and whimpering as he had whimpered when he begged his bread +in the streets of New York, "you can't mean to turn me out of doors on +such a night. Look at me. It was as much as I could do to crawl to this +room. I have walked every step of the way from Liverpool; my wretched +limbs have been frost-bitten, and ulcered, and bruised, and racked with +rheumatism, and bent double with cramp. I came over in an emigrant +vessel, with a herd of miserable creatures who had tried their luck on +the other side of the Atlantic, and had failed, like me, and were coming +home to their native workhouses. You don't know what some of your +emigrant ships are, perhaps. People talk about the Black Hole of +Calcutta, and the Middle Passage; but let them try the cabin of an +emigrant vessel, and they'll have a pretty fair idea of what human beings +have to suffer when Poverty drives the ship. I landed in Liverpool with +half-a-dollar in my pocket, and I've had neither decent food nor decent +shelter since I landed. Give me some hole to lie in, George, till you can +get me an order for the nearest hospital. It's a toss-up whether I ever +come out of it." + +"Do you think I'd sleep under the roof that sheltered you?" cried George. + +"Why not?" + +"Why not! Because I'm afraid of you. Because I'd as soon have a cobra +for my companion, or a wolf for my bedfellow. I know you. I've seen what +you can do, and how you can do it. And if you could do those things when +the only pressure upon you was one that you could have cast off by going +through the _Gazette_, what would you _not_ do now when you are as +desperate as a famished wolf, and governed by no better law than that +which governs a wolf--the law of self-preservation? Am I to trust a +tiger because he tells me he is hungry? No, Phil Sheldon; neither will I +trust you." + +"You will give me some money--enough to keep me alive for a week or two." + +"Not one sixpence. I'll establish no precedent; I'll acknowledge no tie +between us. You'd better march. I don't want to send for a policeman; but +if you won't go quietly, you must do the other thing." + +"You mean that?" + +"Most emphatically yes." + +"I didn't think it was in you to be so hard upon me," faltered the +wretch in that faint hoarse voice which had grown fainter and hoarser +during this interview. + +"Did you think that I would trust you?" cried George. "Trust _you_! You +call me hard because I won't give you a corner to lie in. And if I did, +you would creep out of your corner to poison me, or cut my throat. You +would crawl into my room in the dead of the night and put a pillow over +my face, and kneel upon it till you'd done the trick for me; and then +you'd walk off with as much as you could carry, and begin the same kind +of work over again with some one else. I tell you, Mr. Phil Sheldon, I +will hold no intercourse with you. You've escaped hanging, but there's +something that's worse than hanging, to my mind, and that is the state of +a man whom nobody will trust. You've come to that; and if you had a spark +of gentlemanly feeling, you'd have bought two-pennyworth of rope and hung +yourself rather than come cringing to me." + +"Suppose I don't cringe," said the outcast, dropping the fawning tone of +the mendicant for the threatening ferocity of the social wolf; "you'd +better give me a trifle to keep body and soul together for the next few +weeks. I'm a desperate man, George! You and I are alone up here. You are +pretty sure to have ready money about you. And there's your watch; that's +worth something. I didn't come here to go away empty-handed. AND I +WON'T!" + +He sprang to his feet, and in the next moment the lawyer heard the sharp +clicking noise made by the opening of a clasp-knife. + +"O," cried he, "that's what you want, is it!" + +He bent over his desk, with his eyes fixed on those other evil eyes that +still retained some likeness to his own, and with his left arm raised in +a boxer's defensive attitude, to guard his head, while his right hand +groped for something in a drawer. It was a moment's work. Philip had +seized that uplifted left arm, and was hanging on to it like a cat, with +his knife between his teeth, when George clapped the muzzle of a revolver +to his brow. + +"There are plenty of wild beasts in London besides you," he said, "and I +am not such a fool as to be without the means of settling a chance +visitor of your sort. Drop your knife, and march." + +The outcast dropped his knife submissively. He was too weak for anything +more than a spasmodic violence. + +"Take your pistol away from my head," he whined. + +"Certainly, when you are outside my door." + +"You might give me a handful of silver, George. I haven't a week's life +left in me." + +"All the better for society if you hadn't an hour's life in you. Be off. +I'm tired of holding this revolver to your head, and I don't mean to let +it go till you're off my premises." + +Philip saw that there was no hope. Food and shelter were all he had +hoped for; but even these blessings were not for him. He backed out of +the office, closely followed by George, holding the muzzle of the +revolver within an inch or so of the fraternal brains. Upon the +threshold only did he pause. + +"Tell me one thing," he said. "You won't give me sixpence to buy a loaf +of bread or a glass of gin. Give me one scrap of comfort. It need cost +you nothing. Tell me something bad of Valentine Hawkehurst: that he's +gone to the dogs, or drowned himself; that his wife has run away from +him, or his house been burned to the ground. Tell me that he's had a +taste of my luck; and that Ann Woolper has died in a workhouse. It will +be as good as meat and drink to me, and it will cost you nothing." + +"If I told you anything of the kind, I should tell you a lie; Valentine +Hawkehurst is doing uncommonly well, and has got one of the prettiest +little boxes between Wimbledon and Kingston. Ann Woolper lives with them, +and is in better feather than she ever was in your time." + +With this, Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn pushed his brother out on to the +staircase, and shut his door. Philip sat upon the stairs, and drew his +rags together a little, and rubbed his wretched limbs, while the bolts +and chains whereby the lawyer defended his citadel clanked close behind +him. + +"I wonder whether he'll pay Hawkehurst a visit," thought George, as he +bolted his door; and he had a kind of grim satisfaction in the idea that +Valentine's Christmas peace might be disturbed by the advent of that +grisly visitor. + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +"ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS." + +"Between Wimbledon and Kingston," muttered the tramp. "If I can drag +myself as far as that, I'll go there this night." + +He went down stairs and out into the pitiless cold and snow, and made his +way down Fetter Lane, and across Blackfriars Bridge to the Surrey side of +the water, stopping to beg here and there. + +Upon this snowy Christmas night there were plenty of people abroad; +and amongst them Philip Sheldon found pitying matrons, who explored +the depths of their capacious pockets to find him a halfpenny, and +good-natured young men, who flung the "copper" he besought with piteous +professional whine. + +When he had collected the price of a glass of gin, he went into the first +public-house he came to, and spent his money. He was too ill to stay the +cravings of his stomach with substantial food. Gin gave him temporary +warmth and temporary strength, and enabled him to push on vigorously for +a little while; and then came dreary periods of faintness and exhaustion, +in which every step was sheer pain and weariness. + +Something of his old self, some remnant of that hard strength of purpose +which had once characterized him, remained with him still, utterly fallen +and brutalized as he was. As a savage creature of the jungle might pursue +a given course, pushing always onward to that camp or village whence the +scent of human flesh and blood was wafted to his quivering nostrils, so +Philip Sheldon pushed on towards the dwelling-place of that man and that +woman whom of all creatures upon this earth he most savagely hated. + +"There's nothing left for me but to turn housebreaker," he said to +himself; "and the first house I'll try my hand upon shall be Valentine +Hawkehurst's." + +The idea of violence in such a creature was the idea of a madman. Weapon +he had none, nor the physical strength that would have enabled him to +grapple with a boy of twelve years old. Half intoxicated with the spirits +he had consumed on his long tramp, half delirious with fever, he had a +vague notion that he could make an entrance into some ill-defended house +under cover of night, and steal something that should procure him food +and shelter. And let the house be Valentine Hawkehurst's, the man who had +baffled his plans and crushed him! + +If blood must be shed, let the blood be his! Never was man better primed +for murder than the man who tramped across Wimbledon Common at eleven +o'clock this night, with the snow drifting against his face, and his +limbs shaken every now and then by an ague-fit. + +Happily for the interests of society, his hand lacked the power to +execute that iniquity which his heart willed. + +He reached a little wayside inn near the Robin Hood gate of Richmond +Park, just as the shutters were being closed, and asked a man if any one +of the name of Hawkehurst lived in that neighbourhood. + +"What do _you_ want with Mr. Hawkehurst?" asked the man, contemptuously. + +"I've got a letter for him." + +"Have you? A begging letter, I should think, from the look of you." + +"No; it's a business letter. You'd better show me where he lives, if he's +a customer of yours. The business is particular." + +"Is it? You're a queer kind of messenger to trust with particular +business. Mr. Hawkehurst's house is the third you come to on the opposite +side of the way. But I don't suppose you'll find anybody up as late as +this. Their lights are out by eleven, in a general way." + +The third house on the opposite side of the road was half a mile distant +from the little run. Lights shone bright in the lower windows as the +tramp dragged his tired limbs to the stout oaken gate. The gate was +fastened only by a latch, and offered no resistance to the intruder. He +crept with stealthy footsteps along the smooth gravel walk, sheltered by +dark laurels, on which the light flashed cheerily from those bright +windows. Sounds of laughter and of music pealed out upon the wintry air. +Shadows flitted across the blinds of the broad bay windows. Philip +Sheldon crept into a sheltered nook beside the rustic porch, and sank +down exhausted in the shadow of the laurels. + +He sat there in a kind of stupor. He had lost the power of thought, +somehow, on that dreary journey. It seemed almost as if he had left some +portion of his being out yonder in the cold and darkness. He had +difficulty in remembering why he had come to this place, and what that +deed was which he meant to do. + +"Hawkehurst," he muttered to himself--"Hawkehurst, the man who leagued +against me with Jedd! I swore to be even with him if ever I found the +opportunity--if ever! And George refused me a few shillings; my brother, +my only brother, refused to stand my friend!" + +Hawkehurst and George--his only brother--the images of these two men +floated confusedly in his brain: he could scarcely separate them. +Sometimes it seemed to him that he was still sitting outside his +brother's door, on the staircase in Gray's Inn, hugging himself in his +rags, and cursing his unnatural kinsman's cruelty; then in the next +moment he remembered where he was, and breathed bitter curses upon that +unconscious enemy whose laugh pealed out every now and then amid a chorus +of light-hearted laughter. + +There was a little Christmas party at Charlottenburgh. Two flys were +waiting in the laurel-avenue to convey Mr. Hawkehurst's guests to distant +abodes. The door was opened presently, and all the bustle of departure +made itself heard by that wretched wayfarer who found it so difficult to +keep his hold upon the consciousness of these things. + +"What is it?" he said to himself--"a party! Hawkehurst has been giving a +party." + +He had lived through too much degradation, he had descended into too deep +a gulf of wretchedness, to be conscious of the contrast between his +present situation and his position in those days when he had played the +host, and seen handsome carriages bear prosperous guests away from his +door. In that cycle of misery which he had endured, these things and the +memory of them had faded from him as completely as if they had been +obliterated by the passage of a century. The hapless wretch tried to give +sustained attention to all the animated discussion that attended the +departure of the merry guests. Half-a-dozen people seemed to be talking +at once. Valentine was giving his friends counsel about the way home. + +"You will keep to the lower road, you know, Fred. Lawsley's cab can +follow yours. You came a couple of miles out of your way. And tell that +fellow Battersea Bridge is a mistake." + +And then followed Charlotte's friendly questioning about wraps, and +hoods, and comforters, and other feminine gear. + +"And when are you coming to dine at Fulham?" cried one voice. + +"I shall certainly get those quadrilles of Offenbach's," said another. + +"How delightfully Mr. Lawsley sang that song of Santley's!" + +And anon a chorus of "Never enjoyed myself more!" "Most delightful +evening!" "Pray don't come out in the cold." "Thanks; well, yes, yours +are always capital." "No, I won't light up till I'm on the road." "Give +my book a lift in the _D.H._, eh, old fellow?" "Are you _quite_ sure that +shawl is warm enough?" "Take a rug for your feet." "Thanks, no." +"Good-night." "See you on Tuesday." "Don't forget the box for D.L." "All +right, old fellow!" "Lower Road, Roehampton Lane, Putney Bridge. +Good-night." + +Among the confusion of voices Philip Sheldon had recognized more than one +voice that was familiar to him. There were Charlotte's gentle tones, and +Valentine's hearty barytone, and another that he knew. + +Diana Paget! Yes, it was her voice. Diana Paget, whom he had cause to +hate for her interference with his affairs. + +"A beggar," he muttered to himself, "and the daughter of a beggar! She +was a nice young lady to set herself in opposition to the man who gave +her a home." + +The vehicles drove away, but there was still a little group in the rustic +porch. Valentine and Charlotte, with Monsieur and Madame Lenoble, who had +come to spend their Christmas with their English friends. + +"How we have been gay this evening!" cried Gustave. "There is nothing +like your English interior for that which you call the comfortable, the +jolly, you others. Thy friends are the jollity itself, Hawkehurst. And +our acting charades, when that we all talked at once, and with a such +emphasis on the word we would make to know. Was it not that our +spectators were cunning to divine the words? And your friend Lawsley--it +is a mixture of Got and Sanson. It is a true genius. Think, then, Diane, +while we were amusing ourselves, our girls were at the midnight mass at +the Sacré Coeur? Dear pious children, their innocent prayers ascended +towards the heavens for we who are absent. Come, Madame Hawkehurst, +Diane, it makes cold." + +"But we are sheltered here. And the stars are so bright after the snow," +said Charlotte. "Do you remember the Christmas-day you spent at the Lawn, +Valentine, when we walked in Kensington Gardens together, just when we +were first engaged?" the young wife added shyly. + +"Do I not remember? It was the first time the holiness of Christmas came +home to my heart. And now let us go back to the drawing-room, and sit +round the fire, and tell ghost stories. Lenoble shall give us the legends +of Côtenoir." + +"Valentine," murmured Charlotte, "do you know that it is nearly one +o'clock?" + +"And we must put in an appearance at church to-morrow morning. And +Lenoble has to walk to Kingston to early mass. We will postpone our ghost +stories to New-Year's eve. And Lenoble shall read Tennyson's _New Year_, +to demonstrate his improvement in the English language. Lead the way, +Mrs. Hawkehurst; your obedient slave obeys. Mamma is waiting for us in +the drawing-room, marvelling at our delay, no doubt. And Nancy Woolper +stalks ghost-like through the house, oppressed by the awful +responsibility of to-morrow's pudding." + +Anon came a clanking of bolts and bars; and Philip Sheldon, for the +second time that night, heard a door shut against him. As the voices died +away, his consciousness of external things died with him. He fancied +himself on the Gray's-Inn staircase. + +"Don't be so hard upon me, George," he muttered faintly. "If my own kith +and kin turn against me, whom shall I look to?" + +Mrs. Woolper opened the door early next day, when night was yet at odds +with morning. All through the night the silent snow-flakes had been +falling thick and fast; and they had woven the shroud of Philip Sheldon. +The woman who had watched his infant slumbers forty years before, was the +first to look upon him in that deeper sleep, of whose waking we know so +little. It was not until she had looked long and closely at the dead face +that she knew why it was that the aspect of that countenance had affected +her with so strange a pang. She did recognize that altered wretch, and +kept her counsel. + +Before the bells rang for morning service the tramp was lying in the +dead-house of Kingston Union, whither he had been conveyed very quietly +in the early morning, unknown to any one but the constable who +superintended the removal, and the servants of Mr. Hawkehurst's +household. Only the next day did Ann Woolper tell Valentine what had +happened. There was to be an inquest. It would be well that some one +should identify the dead man, and establish the fact of Philip Sheldon's +decease. + +Valentine was able to do this unaided. He attended the inquest, and made +arrangements for the outcast's decent burial; and in due course he gave +Mrs. Sheldon notice of her freedom. Beyond that nameless grave whose +fancy shall dare follow Philip Sheldon? He died and made no sign. And in +the last dread day, when the dead, small and great, from the sea and from +the grave, press together at the foot of the great white Throne, and the +books of doom are opened; when above shines the city whose light is the +glory of God, and below yawns the lake of fire,--what voice shall plead +for Philip Sheldon, what entreating cry shall Pity send forth that +sentence against him may be stayed? + +Surely none; unless it issue from the lips of that one confiding friend, +whose last words upon earth thanked and blessed him, and whose long +agonies he watched with unshaken purpose, conscious that in every +convulsive change in the familiar face, and every pang that shook the +stalwart form, he saw the result of his own work. + +Perhaps at that dread Judgment Day, when every other tongue is silent, +the voice of Tom Halliday may be heard pleading for the man who murdered +him. + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Charlotte's Inheritance, by M. E. 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Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/9259-8.zip b/9259-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d4cdc98 --- /dev/null +++ b/9259-8.zip diff --git a/9259.txt b/9259.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3fb573 --- /dev/null +++ b/9259.txt @@ -0,0 +1,16651 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Charlotte's Inheritance, by M. E. Braddon + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Charlotte's Inheritance + +Author: M. E. Braddon + +Posting Date: August 8, 2012 [EBook #9259] +Release Date: November, 2005 +First Posted: September 15, 2003 +[Last updated: August 10, 2013] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan and Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE + + By + + M. E. Braddon + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +Book the First. + +DE PROFUNDIS. + + I. LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE + + II. IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE + + III. PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR + + IV. A DECREE OF BANISHMENT + + +Book the Second. + +DOWNHILL. + + I. THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE + + II. FORGIVEN TOO LATE + + III. GUSTAVE THE SECOND + + +Book the Third. + +THE HORATIAD. + + I. CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE + + II. EPISTOLARY + + III. TOO CLEVER FOR A CATSPAW + + IV. CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL + + V. THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR + + +Book the Fourth. + +GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND. + + I. HALCYON DAYS + + II. CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY + + III. WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I? + + IV. SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH + + +Book the Fifth. + +THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. + + I. TAKEN BY STORM + + II. FIRM AS A ROCK + + III. AGAINST WIND AND TIDE + + IV. DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY + + V. ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE + + +Book the Sixth. + +DIANA IN NORMANDY. + + I. AT COTENOIR + + +Book the Seventh. + +A CLOUD OF FEAR. + + I. THE BEGINNING OF SORROW + + II. FADING + + III. MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS + + IV. VALENTINE'S SKELETON + + V. AT HAROLD'S HILL + + VI. DESPERATE MEASURES + + +Book the Eighth. + +A FIGHT AGAINST TIME. + + I. A DREAD REVELATION + + II. PHOENICIANS ARE RISING + + III. THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE + + +Book the Ninth. + +THROUGH THE FURNACE. + + I. SOMETHING TOO MUCH + + II. DR. JEDD'S OPINION + + III. NON DORMIT JUDAS + + IV. COUNTING THE COST + + V. THE BEGINNING OF THE END + + VI. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED + + VII. THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE + + +Book the Tenth. + +HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS. + + I. OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY + + II. AFTER THE WEDDING + + III. GREEK AGAINST GREEK + + IV. ONLY A DREAM + + V. BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE + + VI. BEYOND THE VEIL + + VII. BETTER THAN GOLD + +VIII. LOST SIGHT OF + + IX. ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES + + X. "ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS." + + + + +CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE + + + +Book the first. + + + +DE PROFUNDIS. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE. + +In the days when the Bourbon reigned over Gaul, before the "simple, +sensuous, passionate" verse of Alfred de Musset had succeeded the +_debonnaire_ Muse of Beranger in the affections of young France,--in days +when the site of the Trocadero was a remote and undiscovered country, and +the word "exposition" unknown in the Academic dictionary, and the Gallic +Augustus destined to rebuild the city yet an exile,--a young law-student +boarded, in common with other students, in a big dreary-looking house at +the corner of the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, abutting on the Place Lauzun, +and within some ten minutes walk of the Luxembourg. It was a very dingy +quarter, though noble gentlemen and lovely ladies had once occupied the +great ghastly mansions, and disported themselves in the gruesome gardens. +But the young students were in nowise oppressed by the ghastliness of +their abode. They sang their Beranger, and they pledged each other in +cheap Bordeaux, and clinked their glasses noisily in their boisterous +good-fellowship, and ate the messes compounded for them in a darksome +cupboard, known as the kitchen, by old Nanon the cook, purblind, +stone-deaf, and all but imbecile, and popularly supposed to be the +venerable mother of Madame Magnotte. The youngsters grumbled to each +other about the messes when they were unusually mysterious; and it must +be owned that there were _vol-au-vents_ and _fricandeaux_ consumed in +that establishment which were awful and wonderful in their nature; but +they ventured on no complaint to the mistress of the mansion. She was a +grim and terrible personage. Her terms were low, and she treated her +boarders _de haute en bas_. If they were not content with her viands, +they might go and find more agreeable viands elsewhere. + +Madame Magnotte was altogether mysterious and inscrutable. Some people +said that she was a countess, and that the wealth and lands of her family +had been confiscated by the committee of public unsafety in '93. Others +declared that she had been a popular actress in a small theatre in the +days of Napoleon. She was tall and thin--nay, of an exceptional +leanness--and her complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the +butter that appeared on her hospitable board; but she had flashing black +eyes, and a certain stateliness of gait and grandeur of manner that +impressed those young Bohemians, her boarders, with a kind of awe. They +talked of her as the "countess," and by that name she was known to all +inmates of the mansion; but in all their dealings with her they treated +her with unfailing respect. + +One of the quietest among the young men who enjoyed the privileges of +Madame Magnotte's abode was a certain Gustave Lenoble, a law-student, the +only son of a very excellent couple who lived on their own estate, near +an obscure village in Normandy. The estate was of the smallest; a +dilapidated old house, known in the immediate neighbourhood as "the +Chateau," and very dear to those who resided therein; a garden, in which +everything seemed to have run to seed; and about forty acres of the +poorest land in Normandy. These possessions constituted the patrimonial +estate of Francois Lenoble, _proprietaire_, of Beaubocage, near +Vevinordin, the department of Eure. + +The people amongst whom the good man lived his simple life called him M. +Lenoble de Beaubocage, but he did not insist upon this distinction; and +on sending out his only son to begin the battle of life in the great +world of Paris, he recommended the young man to call himself Lenoble, +_tout court_. + +The young man had never cherished any other design. He was of all +creatures the least presuming or pretentious. The father was Legitimist +to the very marrow; the son half Buonapartist, half republican. The +father and son had quarrelled about these differences of opinion +sometimes in a pleasantly disputatious manner; but no political +disagreement could lesser the love between these two. Gustave loved +his parents as only a Frenchman can venture to love his father and +mother--with a devotion for the gentleman that bordered on enthusiasm, +with a fond reverence for the lady that was the very essence of chivalry. +There was a sister, who regarded her brother Gustave as the embodiment of +all that is perfect in youthful mankind; and there were a couple of old +house-servants, a very stupid clumsy lad in the stables, and half a dozen +old mongrel dogs, born and bred on the premises, who seemed to share the +young lady's opinions. There was not a little discussion upon the subject +of Gustave Lenoble's future career; and it was not without difficulty +that the father could be persuaded to approve the choice of a profession +which the young man had made. The seigneur of Beaubocage cherished an +exaggerated pride of race little suspected by those who saw his simple +life, and were pleased by his kindly unaffected manners. The house of +Lenoble, at some remote and almost mythical period of history, had +distinguished itself in divers ways; and those bygone grandeurs, vague +and shadowy in the minds of all others, seemed very real to Monsieur +Lenoble. He assured his son that no Lenoble had ever been a lawyer. They +had been always lords of the soil, living on their own lands, which had +once stretched wide and far in that Norman province; a fact proved by +certain maps in M. Lenoble's possession, the paper whereof was worn and +yellow with age. They had stooped to no profession save that of arms. One +seigneur of Beaubocage had fought under Bayard himself; another had +fallen at Pavia, on that great day when all was lost _hormis l'honneur_; +another had followed the white plume of the Bernais; another--but was +there any need to tell of the glories of that house upon which Gustave +was so eager to inflict the disgrace of a learned profession? + +Thus argued the father; but the mother had spent her girlhood amidst the +clamour of the Buonapartist campaigns, and the thought of war was very +terrible to her. The memory of the retreat from Russia was not yet twenty +years old. There were men alive to tell the story, to depict those days +and nights of horror, that mighty march of death. It was she and her +daughter Cydalise who had helped to persuade Gustave that he was born to +distinguish himself in the law. They wanted him to study in Paris--the +young man himself had a wild desire to enjoy the delights of that +wondrous capital--and to return in a few years to set up for himself as +_avocat_ at the town of Vevinord, some half-dozen leagues from the +patrimonial estate. He was created to plead for the innocent, to denounce +the guilty, to be grand and brave and fiery-hot with enthusiasm in +defence of virtuous peasants charged unjustly with the stealing of sheep, +or firing of corn-ricks. It never struck these simple souls that he might +sometimes be called upon to defend the guilty, or to denounce the +innocent. + +It was all settled at last. Gustave was to go to Paris, and enter himself +as a student of law. There were plenty of boarding-houses in the +neighbourhood of the Ecole de Droit where a young man might find a home; +and to one of these Gustave was recommended by a friend of his family. It +was the Pension Magnotte to which they had sent him, the big dreary +house, _entre cour et jardin_, which had once been so grand and noble. A +printer now occupied the lower chambers, and a hand painted on the wall +pointed to the _Pension Magnotte, au premier. Tirez le cordon, s.v.p._ + +Gustave was twenty-one years of age when he came to Paris; tall, +stalwart, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with a fair frank face, +an auburn moustache, candid, kind blue eyes--a physiognomy rather Saxon +than Celtic. He was a man who made friends quickly, and was soon at home +among the students, roaring their favourite songs, and dancing their +favourite dances at the dancing-places of that day, joining with a +pleasant heartiness in all their innocent dissipations. For guilty +dissipation the young provincial had no taste. Did he not carry the +images of two kind and pure women about with him wherever he went, like +two attendant angels ever protecting his steps; and could he leave them +sorrowing on thresholds _they_ could not pass? Ah, no! He was loud and +boisterous and wild of spirits in those early days, but incapable of +meanness or vice. + +"It is a brave heart," Madame Magnotte said of him, "though for the +breaking of glasses a scourge--_un fleau_." + +The ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age +and unattractive appearance--two or three lonely spinsters, eking out +their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious +sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and +a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of +miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame +Magnotte told her gossips--an old woman with two furiously ugly +daughters, who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in +divers boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so many +strange bachelors, husbands for these two solitary ones must at last be +found. + +These, with a pale young lady who gave music lessons in the quarter, were +all the feminine inmates of the mansion; and amongst these Gustave +Lenoble was chief favourite. His tender courtesy for these lonely women +seemed in some manner an evidence of that good old blood whereof the +young man's father boasted. Francis the First, who listened with bent +knee and bare head to his mother's discourse, was not more reverential to +that noble Savoyarde than was Gustave to the shabby-genteel maiden ladies +of the Pension Magnotte. In truth, this young man had a heart pitiful and +tender as the heart of woman. To be unfortunate was to possess a sure +claim upon his pity and regard; to be poor and friendless was the best +appeal to his kindness. He spent his evenings sometimes in the great +dreary desert of a salon, and listened respectfully while Mademoiselle +Servin, the young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Gretry +on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of those +instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the very ghost of +music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour. To +him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young +men. + +"They mock themselves of everything--even the religion!" she exclaimed, +with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent. +But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of +the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I +cannot to them. I, who speak to you--I, too, come of a good old race, and +there is sympathy between we others." + +And then, after babbling to him of her lost station, the lady would +entertain him with some dainty little supper with which she was wont to +indulge herself and her lady boarders, when the students--who were +treated something after the manner of school-boys--were out of doors. + +For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian life--not +altogether idle, but not altogether industrious--amusing himself a great +deal, and learning very little; moderate in his expenditure, when +compared with his fellow-students, but no small drain upon the funds of +the little family at home. In sooth, this good old Norman family had in a +pecuniary sense sunk very low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down +house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful face, and +took things pleasantly. A very humble English farmer would have despised +the income which supported M. Lenoble's household; and it was only the +economy and skill of the matron and her daughter which sustained the +dignity of the small establishment. + +There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple-minded old +father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and that was the hope in the +grand things to be done, in the dim future, by Gustave, the son, the +heir, the pole-star of the household. + +Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad light of honour and +riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student. +On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to be +sustained. To him they looked, of him they thought, in the long dreary +winter evenings during which the mother nodded over her knitting, the +father slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at her +needle-work by her little table of _palissandre_. + +He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of study, +bringing with him life and light and gladness, as it seemed to the two +women who adored him; and now, in the winter of 1828, they expected +another visit. He was to be with them on the first day of the new year. +He was to stay with them till his Mother's fete--the 17th of January. + +The father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety. The +mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she who loved her +brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could be more anxious than +usual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, a dire conspiracy, of which +Gustave was to be the subject and victim, had been concocted beneath that +innocent-seeming roof. Father, mother, and sister, seated round the +family hearth, fatal as some domestic Parcae, had hatched their horrid +scheme, while the helpless lad amused himself yonder in the great city, +happily unconscious of the web that was being woven to enmesh him. + +The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame held, the +needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were employed in the +fabrication of a matrimonial net. These unsophisticated conspirators +were bent upon bringing about the marriage of their victim, a marriage +which should at once elevate and enrich the Lenobles of Beaubocage, in +the person of Gustave. + +Francois Lenoble's best friend and nearest neighbour was a certain Baron +Frehlter, of Germanic origin, but for some generations past naturalised +to the Gallic soil. The Baron was proprietor of an estate which could +show ten acres for one of the lands of Beaubocage. The Baron boasted a +family tree which derived its root from a ramification of the +Hohenzollern pedigree; but, less proud and more prudent than the +Lenobles, the Frehlters had not scorned to intermingle their Prussian +blue blood with less pure streams of commercial France. The _epicier_ +element had prevailed in the fair brides of the house of Frehlter for the +last three or four generations, and the house of Frehlter had +considerably enriched itself by this sacrifice of its family pride. + +The present Baron had married a lady ten years his senior, the widow of a +Rouen merchant, alike wealthy and pious, but famous rather for these +attributes than for any personal charm. One only child, a girl, had +blessed this union. She was now a young person of something under twenty +years of age, newly emerged from her convent, and pining for some share +in the gaieties and delights of a worldly paradise, which had already +been open to many of her schoolfellows. + +Mademoiselle Frehlter's companions had, for the most part, left school to +be married. She had heard of the _corbeille_, the wedding dress, the +wedding festivities, and occasionally a word or two about that secondary +consideration the bridegroom. The young lady was therefore somewhat +inclined to take it ill of her father that he had not secured for her the +_eclat_ of an early marriage. Her departure from the convent of the Sacre +Coeur, at Vevinord, was flat and tame to an extreme degree. The future +lay before her, a dreary desert of home life, to be spent with a father +who gorged himself daily at a greasy and savoury banquet, and who slept +away the greater part of his existence; and with a mother who divided her +affections between a disagreeable poodle and a still more disagreeable +priest--a priest who took upon himself to lecture the demoiselle Frehlter +on the smallest provocation. + +The chateau of the Frehlters was a very grand abode as compared to the +tumble-down house of Beaubocage; but it was cold and stony to a +depressing degree, and the furniture must have been shabby in the days of +the Fronde. Faithful old servants kept the mansion in a state of spotless +purity, and ruled the Baron and his wife with a rod of iron. Mademoiselle +execrated these devoted retainers, and would have welcomed the sauciest +of modern domestics who would have released her from the bondage of these +servants of the old school. + +Mademoiselle had been at home a year--a year of discontent and +ill-humour. She had quarrelled with her father, because he would not take +her to Paris; with her mother, because she would not give her more new +gowns and bonnets and feathers and fur-belows; with the priest, the +poodle, with the autocracy below-stairs, with everybody and everything. +So at last the Baron decided that mademoiselle should marry, whereby he +might be rid of her, and of her complaints, vagaries, ill-tempers, and +general dissatisfaction. + +Having once made up his mind as to the wisdom of a matrimonial +arrangement, Baron Frehlter was not slow to fix upon a bridegroom. He was +a very rich man, and Madelon was his only child, and he was furthermore a +very lazy man; so, instead of looking far afield for a wealthy or +distinguished suitor for his daughter, he was inclined to take the first +that came to hand. It is possible that the Baron, who was of a somewhat +cynical turn of mind, may have cherished no very exalted idea of his +daughter's attractions, either personal or mental. However this might be, +it is certain that when the demoiselle had ill-treated the poodle, and +insulted the priest, and quarrelled with the cook--that high-priestess of +the kitchen who alone, in all Normandy, could concoct those messes which +the Baron loved--the master of Cotenoir decided on marrying his heiress +out of hand. + +He communicated this design to his old crony, Francois Lenoble, one day +when the Beaubocage family dined at Chateau Cotenoir. + +"I think of marrying my daughter," he said to his friend, when the ladies +were safely out of hearing at the other end of the long dreary saloon. +"Now thy son Gustave is a fine fellow--brave, handsome, and of a good +race. It is true he is not as rich as Madelon will be by-and-by; but I am +no huckster, to sell my daughter to the best bidder" ("and I doubt if +there would be many bidders for her, if I were so inclined," thought the +Baron, in parenthesis); "and if thy son should take a fancy to her, and +she to him, it would please me well enough, friend Francois." + +Friend Francois pricked up his ears, and in his old eyes flickered a +feeble light. Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his son +Gustave! Lenoble of Beaubocage and Cotenoir--Lenoble of Cotenoir and +Beaubocage! So splendid a vision had never shone before his eyes in all +the dreams that he had dreamed about the only son of whom he was so +proud. He could not have shaped to himself so bold a project as the union +of those two estates. And here was the Baron offering it to him, with his +snuff-box, _en passant_. + +"It would be a great marriage," he said, "a very great marriage. For +Gustave I can answer without hesitation. He could not but be charmed by +such a union--so amiable a bride would enchant him." + +He looked down the room to the spot where Madelon and Cydalise were +standing, side by side, admiring Madame Frehlter's poodle. Madelon could +afford to be civil to the poodle before company. The contrast between the +two girls was sufficiently striking. Cydalise was fair and +bright-looking--Mademoiselle Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure, +swarthy of complexion, dark of brow. + +"He could not but be charmed," repeated the old man, with feeble +gallantry. + +He was thinking of the joining together of Beaubocage and Cotenoir; and +it seemed a very small thing to him that such a union of estates would +involve the joining of a man and woman, who were to hold to each other +and love each other until death should part them. + +"It shall be no marriage of convenience," said the Baron, in a generous +spirit; "my daughter is somewhat ill-tem--that is to say, my daughter +finds her life somewhat dull with her old father and mother, and I think +she might be happier in the society of a husband. I like your son; and +my wife, too, likes him better than any other young man of our +acquaintance. Madelon has seen a good deal of him when she has been home +from the convent in her holidays, and I have reason to think she does +not dislike him. If he likes her and she likes him, and the idea is +pleasing to you and madame, we will make a match of it. If not, let it +pass; we will say no more." + +Again the seigneur of Beaubocage assured his friend that Gustave would be +enchanted with the proposal; and again it was of Cotenoir that he +thought, and not of the heart or the inclinations of his son. + +This conversation took place late in autumn, and at the new year Gustave +was to come. Nothing was to be said to him about his intended wife until +he arrived; that was a point upon which the Baron insisted. + +"The young man may have fallen in love with some fine young person in +Paris," he said; "and in that case we will say nothing to him of Madelon. +But if we find him with the heart free, and inclined to take to my +daughter, we may give him encouragement." + +This was solemnly agreed between the two fathers. Nor was Mademoiselle +Frehlter to be told of the matrimonial scheme until it ripened. But after +this dinner at Cotenoir the household at Beaubocage talked of little else +than of the union of the two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what +happiness! Gustave the lord of Cotenoir! Poor Cydalise had never seen a +finer mansion than the old chateau, with its sugar-loaf towers and stone +terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient turret chambers, and +long dreary salon and _salle-a-manger_. She could picture to herself +nothing more splendid. For Gustave to be offered the future possession of +Cotenoir was as if he were suddenly to be offered the succession to a +kingdom. She could not bring herself to consider that Madelon was neither +agreeable nor attractive, and that, after all, the wife must count for +something in every marriage contract. She could see nothing, she could +think of nothing, but Cotenoir. The glory and grandeur of that estate +absorbed every other consideration. + +No one of those three conspirators feared any opposition on the part of +their victim. It was just possible that Gustave might have fallen in love +with some Parisian damsel, though his letters gave no hint of any such +calamity. But if such a misfortune had happened, he would, of course, +fall out of love again, return the damsel her troth and obtain the return +of his own, and straightway offer the second-hand commodity to +Mademoiselle Frehlter. + +The object of all these cares and hopes and dreams arrived at last, full +of life and spirits, with plenty to tell about Paris in general, and very +little to tell about himself in particular. The women questioned him +unmercifully. They insisted on a graphic description of every female +inmate of the boarding-house, and would scarcely believe that all except +the little music-mistress were elderly and unattractive. Of the +music-mistress herself they were inclined to be very suspicious, and were +not altogether reassured by Gustave's assertion that she was neither +pretty nor fascinating. + +"She is a dear, good, industrious little thing," he said, "and works +harder than I do. But she is no miracle of beauty; and her life is so +dreary that I often wonder she does not go into a convent. It would be +gayer and pleasanter for her than to live with those old women at the +Pension Magnotte." + +"I suppose there are many beautiful women in Paris?" said Cydalise, bent +upon knowing the worst. + +"Well, I dare say there are," Gustave answered frankly; "but we students +don't see much of them in our quarter. One sees a pretty little +milliner's girl now and then, or a washerwoman. In short, there are a +good many grisettes in our part of the world," added the young man, +blushing, but for no sin of his own. "We get a glimpse of a handsome +woman sometimes, rattling past in her carriage; but in Paris handsome +women do not go on foot. I have seen prettier girls at Vevinord than in +Paris." + +Cydalise was enchanted with this confession. + +"Yes," she exclaimed, "our Normandy is the place for pretty girls. +Madelon Frehlter, for example, is not she a very--amiable girl?" + +"I dare say she's amiable enough," answered Gustave; "but if there were +no prettier girls than Mademoiselle Frehlter in this part of the world, +we should have no cause to boast. But there are prettier girls, Cydalise, +and thou art thyself one of them." + +After this speech the young man bestowed upon his sister a resounding +kiss. Yes; it was clear that he was heart-whole. These noisy, boisterous +good spirits were not characteristic of a lover. Even innocent Cydalise +knew that to be in love was to be miserable. + +From this time mother and sister tormented their victim with the merits +and charms of his predestined bride. Madelon on the piano was miraculous; +Madelon's little songs were enchanting; Madelon's worsted-work was a +thing to worship; Madelon's devotion to her mother and her mother's +poodle was unequalled; Madelon's respectful bearing to the good Abbe St. +Velours--her mother's director--was positively beyond all praise. It was +virtue seraphic, supernal. Such a girl was too good for earth--too good +for anything except Gustave. + +The young man heard and wondered. + +"How you rave about Madelon Frehlter!" he exclaimed. "She seems to me the +most commonplace young person I ever encountered. She has nothing to say +for herself; she never appears to know where to put her elbows. I never +saw such elbows; they are everywhere at once. And her shoulders!--O +heaven, then, her shoulders!--it ought to be forbidden to wear low +dresses when one has such shoulders." + +This was discouraging, but the schemers bore up even against this. The +mother dwelt on the intellectual virtues of Madelon; and what were +shoulders compared to mind, piety, amiability--all the Christian graces? +Cydalise owned that dear Madelon was somewhat _gauche_; Gustave called +her _bete_. The father remonstrated with his son. Was it not frightful to +use a word of the barracks in connection with this charming young lady? + +At last the plot revealed itself. After a dinner at Cotenoir and a dinner +at Beaubocage, on both which occasions Gustave had made himself very +agreeable to the ladies of the Baron's household--since, indeed, it was +not in his nature to be otherwise than kind and courteous to the weaker +sex--the mother told her son of the splendid destiny that had been shaped +for him. It was a matter of surprise and grief to her to find that the +revelation gave Gustave no pleasure. + +"Marriage was the last thing in my thoughts, dear mother," he said, +gravely; "and Madelon Frehlter is the very last woman I should think of +for a wife. Nevertheless, I am gratified by the honour Monsieur le Baron +has done me. That goes without saying." + +"But the two estates!--together they would make you a great proprietor. +You would not surely refuse such fortune?" + +Cydalise gave a little scream of horror. + +"Cotenoir! to refuse Cotenoir! Ah, surely that would be impossible! But +figure to yourself, then, Gustave--" + +"Nay, Cydalise, you forget the young lady goes with the chateau; a +fixture that we cannot dispense with." + +"But she, so amiable, so pious--" + +"So plain, so stupid--" + +"So modest, so charitable--" + +"In short, so admirably adapted for a Sister of Charity," replied +Gustave. "But no, dear Cydalise. Cotenoir is a grand old place; but I +would as soon spend my life at Toulon, dragging a cannon-ball at my +heels, as in that dreary salon where Madame Frehlter nurses her maladies +and her poodle, and where the good-humoured, easy-going old Baron snores +away existence. 'Tis very well for those elderly folks, you see, my +sister, and for Madelon--for hers is an elderly mind in a youthful body; +but for a young man full of hope and gaiety and activity--bah! It would +be of all living deaths the worst. From the galleys there is always the +hope of escaping--an underground passage, burrowed out with one's +finger-nails in the dead of the night--a work lasting twenty years or so, +but with a feeble star of hope always glimmering at the end of the +passage. But from the salon, and mamma, and the poodle, and the good, +unctuous, lazy old director, and papa's apoplectic snoring, and the +plaintive little songs and monotonous embroideries of one's wife, there +would be no escape. Ah, bah!" + +Gustave shuddered, and the two women shuddered as they heard him. The +prospect was by no means promising; but Madame Lenoble and her daughter +did not utterly despair. Gustave's heart was disengaged. That was a great +point; and for the rest, surely persuasion might do much. + +Then came that phenomenon seen very often in this life--a +generous-minded, right-thinking young man talked into a position which of +all others is averse from his own inclinations. The mother persuaded, the +sister pleaded, the father dwelt dismally upon the poverty of Beaubocage, +the wealth of Cotenoir. It was the story of auld Robin Gray reversed. +Gustave perceived that his refusal to avail himself of this splendid +destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people who loved him +so fondly--whom he loved as fondly in return. Must he not be a churl to +disappoint hopes so unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent? And only +because Madelon was not the most attractive or the prettiest of women! + +The young man stood firm against all their arguments, he was unmoved by +all their pleading. It was only when his anxious kindred had given up the +battle for lost that Gustave wavered. Their mute despair moved him more +than the most persuasive eloquence; and the end was submission. He left +Beaubocage the plighted lover of that woman who, of all others, he would +have been the last to choose for his wife. It had all been settled very +pleasantly--the dowry, the union of the two estates, the two names. For +six months Gustave was to enjoy his freedom to finish his studies; and +then he was to return to Normandy for his marriage. + +"I have heard very good accounts of you from Paris," said the Baron. "You +are not like some young men, wild, mad-brained. One can confide in your +honour, your steadiness." + +The good folks of Beaubocage were in ecstacies. They congratulated +Gustave--they congratulated each other. A match so brilliant would be the +redemption of the family. The young man at last began to fancy himself +the favoured of the gods. What if Madelon seemed a little dull--a little +wanting in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous minds? she was +doubtless so much the more profound, so much the more virtuous. If she +was not bright and varied and beautiful as some limpid fountain dancing +in summer sunlight, she was perhaps changeless and steady as a rock; and +who would not rather have the security of a rock than the summer-day +beauty of a fountain? + +Before Gustave departed from his paternal home he had persuaded himself +that he was a very lucky fellow; and he had paid Mademoiselle Frehlter +some pretty little stereotyped compliments, and had listened with sublime +patience to her pretty little stereotyped songs. He left the young lady +profoundly impressed by his merits; he left his own household supremely +happy; and he carried away with him a heart in which Madelon Frehlter's +image had no place. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE. + +Gustave went back to his old life, and was not much disturbed by the +grandeur of his destiny as future seigneur of Cotenoir and Beaubocage. It +sometimes occurred to him that he had a weight upon his mind; and, on +consideration, he found that the weight was Madelon Frehlter. But he +continued to carry that burden very lightly, and his easy-going student +life went on, unbroken by thoughts of the future. He sent polite messages +to the demoiselle Frehlter in his letters to Cydalise; and he received +from Cydalise much information, more graphic than interesting, upon the +subject of the family at Cotenoir; and so his days went on with pleasant +monotony. This was the brief summer of his youth; but, alas, how near at +hand was the dark and dismal winter that was to freeze this honest joyous +heart! That heart, so compassionate for all suffering, so especially +tender for all womankind, was to be attacked upon its weaker side. + +It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the Luxembourg +every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle to the Ecole +de Droit. Sometimes, when he was earlier than usual, he carried a book +with him, and paced one of the more obscure alleys, reading for an odd +half-hour before he went to the daily mill-grinding in the big building +beyond those quiet gardens. + +Walking with his book one morning--it was a volume of Boileau, which +the student knew by heart, and the pages whereof did not altogether +absorb his attention--he passed and repassed a bench on which a lady +sat, pensive and solitary, tracing shapeless figures on the ground with +the point of her parasol. He glanced at her somewhat carelessly the +first time of passing, more curiously on the second occasion, and +the third time with considerable attention. Something in her +attitude--helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all +expressed in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle +characters on the gravel--enlisted the sympathies of Gustave Lenoble. He +had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrated the cavernous depths +of the capacious bonnet of those days; but one glimpse of the pale +plaintive face inspired him with compassion unspeakable. Never had he +seen despair more painfully depicted on the human countenance--a despair +that sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the +outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He +could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her +world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had +gone forth--that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion +of an accursed race there were to be none. + +He put Boileau into his pocket. That glimpse of a suffering human mind, +which had been unconsciously revealed to him, possessed an interest more +absorbing than the grandest flight of poet and satirist. As he passed for +the fifth time, he looked at the mournful lady still more searchingly, +and this time the sad eyes were lifted, and met his pitying looks. The +beautiful lips moved, and murmured something in tones so tremulous as to +be quite unintelligible. + +The student took off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as +knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his liege mistress. + +"In what can I have the happiness to be agreeable to you, madame?" + +"You are very good, monsieur," murmured the lady in very decent French, +but with an accent unmistakably foreign--English, as Gustave opined. +"I--I--am quite a stranger in Paris, and--and--I have heard there are +numerous lodging-houses in this quarter--where one may obtain a +lodging--cheaply. I have asked several nursemaids, and other women, in +the gardens this morning; but they seem very stupid, and can tell me +nothing; and I do not care to ask at the hotel where I am staying." + +Gustave pondered. Yes, there were many lodgings, he informed the lady. +And then he thought of Madame Magnotte. Was it not his duty to secure +this stray lodger for that worthy woman, if possible? + +"If madame has no objection to a boarding-house--" he began. + +Madame shook her head. "A boarding-house would suit me just as well," she +said; "but it must not be expensive. I cannot afford to pay much." + +"I know of a boarding-house very near this place, where madame might find +a comfortable home on very reasonable terms. It is, in point of fact, the +house in which I myself reside," added Gustave, with some timidity. + +"If you will kindly direct me to the house--" said the lady, looking +straight before her with sad unseeing eyes, and evidently supremely +indifferent as to the residence or non-residence of M. Lenoble in the +habitation referred to. + +"Nay, madame, if you will permit me to conduct you there. It is but a +walk of five minutes." + +The stranger accepted the courtesy with a gentle indifference that was +not ingratitude, but rather incapacity for any feeling except that one +great sorrow which seemed to absorb her mind. + +Gustave wondered what calamity could thus overwhelm one so young and +beautiful. + +The lady was quite silent during the little walk from the gardens to the +Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and Gustave observed her attentively as he +walked by her side. She was evidently not more than four-and-twenty years +of age, and she was certainly the prettiest woman he had ever seen. It +was a fair delicate English beauty, a little worn and faded, as if by +care, but idealized and sublimated in the process. At her brightest this +stranger must have been strikingly beautiful; in her sorrow she was +touchingly lovely. It was what Gustave's countrymen call a _beaute +navrante_. + +Gustave watched her, and wondered about her. The dress she wore was +sufficiently elegant, but had lost the gloss of newness. Her shawl, which +she carried as gracefully as a Frenchwoman, was darned. Gustave perceived +the neat careful stitches, and divined the poverty of the wearer. That +she should be poor was no subject for surprise; but that she, so +sorrowful, so lonely, should seek a home in a strange city, was an enigma +not easy to solve. + +To Madame Magnotte Gustave introduced the stranger. She gave just one +look round the dreary saloon; but to Gustave's fancy that one look seemed +eloquent. "Ah me!" it said; "is this the fairest home I am to find upon +this inhospitable earth?" + +"She does not seem to belong to this world," the young man thought, as +he went back to the garden where he had found his fair stranger, having +been very coolly dismissed by Madame Magnotte after his introduction had +been made. + +And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, remembered how a +lady had been found by a student sitting on the lowest steps of the +guillotine, desolate and helpless, at night; and how the student had +taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately +in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had +been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours +before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and +delusive. + +Was this English stranger whom Gustave had found in the gardens of the +Luxembourg twin sister to that ghostly lady of the familiar legend? Her +despair and her beauty seemed to him greater than earthly sorrow or +earthly beauty; and he was half inclined to wonder whether she could be +of the same race as Madelon Frehlter. And from this hour the sense of a +weight upon his mind, before so vague and intermittent, became an +enduring oppression, not to be shaken off by any effort of his will. + +All through that day he found himself thinking more of the unknown +Englishwoman than was consistent with a strict performance of his duties. +He was vexed with himself on account of this foolish distraction of mind. + +"What a frivolous fellow I must be," he said to himself, "to dwell upon +such a trifle! This comes of leading such a monotonous life." + +At dinner he looked for the lady; but she did not appear at the long +table, where the shrill old ladies, the epicurean old bachelors, the +noisy students, daily devoured and grumbled at the four or five courses +which old Nanon developed out of her inner consciousness and a rather +scantily furnished larder. He questioned Madame Magnotte after dinner, +and was told that the lady was in the house, but was too tired to dine +with the other inmates. + +"I have to thank thee for a new boarder, my friend," she said. "Madame +Meynell will not pay largely; but she seems a quiet and respectable +person, and we shall doubtless be well pleased with each other." + +"Madame Meynell!" repeated Gustave, congratulating himself on finding +that the Englishwoman was an inhabitant of the house he lived in. "She is +a widow, I suppose?" + +"Yes, she is a widow. I asked that question, and she answered, yes. +But she told me nothing of her late husband. She is not at all +communicative." + +This was all Gustave could obtain from Madame Magnotte. She was not +communicative. No; she was, indeed, scarcely less silent than that +ghostly lady who had been found sitting at the foot of the guillotine. +There was some kind of mystery involved in her sorrowful face, her silent +apathy. It was possibly the fact of this mystery which interested M. +Lenoble. Certain it is that the young man's interest had been aroused by +this unknown Englishwoman, and that his mind was more occupied by the +image of her whom he had seen but once than by that of his plighted wife. + +He waited anxiously for the next day; but on the next day Madame Meynell +still pleaded fatigue and illness. It was only on the third day that she +appeared at the noisy banquet, pale, silent, absent-minded, sheltering +herself under the wing of Madame Magnotte, who was disposed to be kind to +this helpless stranger. To Gustave the young English widow seemed like a +ghost at that crowded board. He looked at her every now and then from his +distant seat, and saw her always with the same hopeless far-away look in +her sad eyes. He himself was silent and _distrait_. + +"Of what dost thou dream, my droll one?" said his nearest neighbour. +"Thou art positively insupportable." + +M. Lenoble could not become vivacious or entertaining at the behest of +his fellow-student. The consciousness of that strange pale face haunted +and oppressed him. He hoped to have a few minutes' talk with the English +lady after dinner, but she disappeared before the removal of those +recondite preparations which in the Pension Magnotte went by the generic +name of "dessert." + +For more than a week she appeared thus at the dinner-table, eating very +little, speaking not at all, except such monosyllabic replies as the +hostess now and then extorted from her pale lips. A creature at once so +beautiful and so profoundly sad became an object of interest to others +besides Gustave; but in no breast was the sympathy which her sadness and +beauty excited so poignant as in his. Her face haunted him. The familiar +pleasures and amusements became distasteful to him. He spent his evenings +at home in the dismal salon, and was content to listen to the chatter of +the old women, the little music-mistress's dreary sonatas, the monotonous +roll of wheels on the distant quay--anything rather than the hackneyed +round of student-life that had once been agreeable to him. He did not +fail to write his weekly letter to Cydalise; but, for some reason or +other, he refrained from any allusion to the English stranger, although +it was his custom to relate all his adventures for the amusement of the +family at Beaubocage. + +An evening came at last on which Madame Meynell was persuaded to remain +with the other ladies after dinner. + +"It must be very cold and cheerless for you in your bedroom," said +Madame Magnotte; "why not spend your evening with us, in a pleasant and +social manner?" + +"You are very good, madame," murmured the Englishwoman, in the slow timid +accents that had so plaintive a sound to Gustave's ear; "if you wish it, +I will stay." + +She seemed to submit rather from utter weakness and inability to refuse +anything asked of her than from any hope of finding pleasure in the +society of the Magnotte salon. + +It was an evening in March--cold, blustrous, dreary. The east wind blew +clouds of dust athwart the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and the few +foot-passengers in that dull thoroughfare looked pinched and wretched. +The old ladies gathered round the great black stove, and gossipped in the +twilight; the music-mistress went to her feeble piano, and played, +unasked, unheeded; for Gustave, who was wont to turn the leaves, or sit +attentive by the piano, seemed this evening unconscious of the music. +Madame Meynell sat in one of the windows, alone, half-hidden by the faded +yellow damask curtains, looking out into the street. + +Something--some impulse which he tried to resist, but could not--drew +Gustave towards that lonely figure by the window. He went close up to the +strange lady. This evening, as in the gardens of the Luxembourg, she +seemed to him a living statue of despair. Now, as then, he felt an +interest in her sorrow which he was powerless to combat. He had a vague +idea that even this compassionate sympathy was in some manner an offence +against Madelon Frehlter, the woman to whom he belonged, and yet he +yielded to the fatal weakness. + +"Yes, I belong to her," he said to himself; "I belong to Madelon +Frehlter. She is neither pretty nor fascinating; but I have every reason +to believe her very good, very amiable; and she is the only woman, except +those of my own kindred, in whom I have any right to be interested." + +He did not say this in so many words; but this was the shape which his +thoughts assumed as he yielded to the tempter, and walked straight to the +distant window by which Madame Meynell had seated herself. + +She started slightly as he approached her, and then looked up and +recognized him as her acquaintance of the Luxembourg. + +"Good evening, monsieur," she said; "I have to thank you for having +helped me to find a comfortable home." + +Having said this in a low gentle voice, she looked out into the street +once more with her mournful unseeing eyes. It was evident that she had no +more to say to M. Lenoble. + +The student, however, had no idea of leaving the window just yet, +although he knew--yes, knew--that his presence there was a wrong done to +Madelon Frehlter; but a wrong so small, so infinitesimal, that it was +really not worth consideration. + +"I am enchanted to think that I was of some slight service to you, +madame," he said; "but I fear you will find this quarter of Paris +very dull." + +She did not take any notice of this remark until Gustave had repeated it, +and then she spoke as if suddenly awakened from a trance. + +"Dull?" she said. "No, I have not found it dull. I do not care for +gaiety." + +After this M. Lenoble felt that he could say no more. The lady relapsed +into her waking trance. The dust-clouds in the silent street seemed more +interesting to her than M. Lenoble of Beaubocage. He lingered a few +minutes in the neighbourhood of her chair, thoughtfully observant of the +delicate profile, the pale clear tints of a complexion that had lost its +bloom but not its purity, the settled sadness of the perfect mouth, the +dreamy pensiveness of the dark-grey eye, and then was fain to retire. + +After this, the English widow lady spent many evenings in Madame +Magnotte's salon. The old Frenchwoman gossipped and wondered about +her; but the most speculative could fashion no story from a page so +blank as this joyless existence. Even slander could scarcely assail +a creature so unobtrusive as the English boarder. The elderly ladies +shrugged their shoulders and pursed up their lips with solemn +significance. There must needs be something--a secret, a mystery, sorrow, +or wrong-doing--somewhere; but of Madame Meynell herself no one could +suspect any harm. + +Gustave Lenoble heard little of this gossip about the stranger, but she +filled his thoughts nevertheless. The vision of her face came between him +and his work; and when he thought of the future, and of the damsel who +had been allotted to him for a wife, his thoughts were very bitter. + +"Fate is like Laban," he said to himself; "a man works and does his duty +for seven years, and then Fate gives him Leah instead of Rachel. No doubt +Leah is a very good young woman; one has no complaint to make against +her, except that she is not Rachel." + +This was not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the destined +master of Cotenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious folks at +Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief and unsatisfactory. He +no longer gave ample details of his student-life--he no longer wrote in +his accustomed good spirits. His letters seemed stiff and constrained. + +"I am afraid he is studying too much," said the mother. + +"I daresay the rascal is wasting his time in dissipation," suggested +the father. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR." + +Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave +Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the +Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pension Magnotte had grown +accustomed to her presence, to her silence, her settled sadness, and +troubled themselves no further respecting herself or her antecedents. The +lapse of time had brought no improvement to her spirits; indeed, Gustave, +who watched her closely, perceived that she had grown paler and thinner +since that March morning when he met her in the public garden. Her life +must have been painfully monotonous. She very rarely went out of doors, +and on no occasion ventured beyond the gardens of the Luxembourg. No one +visited her. She neither wrote nor received any letters. She was wont to +make a pretence of reading as she sat in her retired corner of the salon; +but Gustave had discovered that she gave little attention to her book. +The open volume in her hand seemed no more than an excuse for brooding +upon her sorrows. + +If people, prompted by curiosity or by compassion, endeavoured to get +into conversation with this lonely lady, the result was always the same. +She would answer their questions in a low gentle voice, with a quiet +politeness; but she never assisted them in the smallest degree to +interchange thoughts with her. It seemed as if she sought neither friend +nor sympathizer, or as if her case was so entirely hopeless as to admit +of neither. She paid for her board and lodging weekly with a punctilious +exactness, though weekly payments were not the rule of the house. + +"My movements are uncertain," she said to Madame Magnotte. "I cannot +tell how long I may be with you. It will therefore be better for me to +pay you weekly." + +She had been in the house two months, dining every day at the public +table, spending all her evenings in the public saloon; and during that +time her settled gloom had never been broken by any outburst of grief or +passion. She might have been a creature of ice, a statue of despair +modelled in snow by a Michael Angelo. But one night the ice melted, the +statue of snow became in a moment a passionate, grief-stricken woman. + +It was one bright evening late in May. Ah, how near at hand was the +appointed date of those nuptials to which the household of Beaubocage +looked forward with supreme happiness! The old ladies of the Pension +Magnotte were for the most part out of doors. The long saloon was almost +empty. There were only Gustave, Madame Magnotte, and the little +music-mistress, who sat at her piano, with the western sunlight shining +full upon her, rosy-hued and glorious, surrounding her with its soft +radiance until she looked like a humble St. Cecilia. + +Madame Meynell had seated herself close to the piano, and was listening +to the music. Gustave hovered near, pretending to be occupied with a limp +little sheet of news published that evening. + +Mademoiselle Servin, the teacher of music, upon this occasion deserted +her favourite masters. She seemed in a somewhat dreamy and sentimental +humour, and played tender little melodies and simple plaintive airs, that +were more agreeable to Gustave than those grand examples of the +mathematics of counter-point which she so loved to interpret. + +"You like this melody of Gretry's," said the music-mistress, as M. +Lenoble seated himself close to the piano. "I do not think you care for +classic sonatas--the great works of Gluck, or Bach, or Beethoven?" + +"No," replied the young man frankly; "I do not care about anything I +can't understand. I like music that goes to one's heart." + +"And you, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" mademoiselle asked +of that lady, who was not wont to come so near the little piano, or to +pay so much attention to Mademoiselle Servin's performance. + +"O yes," murmured the Englishwoman, "I like such music as that." + +"And you, too, think that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive +airs--for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she +spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand +operas, like _Fidelio_. Have you never heard this by your scientific +Beethoven?" + +Hereupon she played "Hope told a flattering tale," with much tenderness +and delicacy. Her two hearers listened, mute and deeply moved. And then +from that familiar melody she glided softly into another, most musical, +most melancholy, which has been set to some of the sweetest verses that +Thomas Moore ever composed: + +"Those evening bells, those evening bells! +How many a tale their music tells +Of youth and home, and that sweet time +When last I heard their soothing chime!" + +All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those days. The +song was one which the Englishwoman had sung years ago in a happy home. +What recollections, what associations, were evoked by that plaintive +melody, who shall say? The words came back with the music to which they +have been eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces +of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the picture of the +peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music,--all these things arose +before her in a vision too painfully vivid; and the lonely boarder at the +Pension Magnotte covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud. + +The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes, +and rose to leave the room. + +"Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were +about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that +were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see +again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the +happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh, +I pray God I may never hear that melody again." + +There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new to Gustave +Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, and she passed out of +the salon quietly, like a ghost--the ghost of that bright young creature +who had once borne her shape, and been called by her name, in a pleasant +farmhouse among the Yorkshire wolds. + +"Ah, but how that poor soul must have suffered!" cried the sympathetic +Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the Englishwoman. "I did +not think it was in her to feel so deeply. I thought she was stone, and +now I begin to think it must be of such stone as Niobe--the +petrification of despair." + +Upon Gustave Lenoble this scene made a profound impression. He lay awake +during the greater part of that night, thinking of the lonely lady's +tears and anguish. The music of "Those evening bells" pervaded his +dreams. He rose unrefreshed, feverish, forgetful of Cotenoir and Madelon +Frehlter, as if that place and that person had never emerged from the +shapeless substances of chaos. He wanted to see _her_ again, to console +her, if that were possible. Oh, that it might be his privilege to console +her! He pitied her with a compassion so intense, that thus to +compassionate her woes, was himself to suffer a poignant anguish. He +pitied her. Yes, he told himself again and again that this sentiment +which so absorbed his heart and mind was no more than pity. But oh, if +this were pity, what were love? That was a question which also presented +itself to the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, of Beaubocage _in esse_, and +Cotenoir _in posse_. + +Madame Meynell rarely appeared at the common breakfast in the grim +dining-room of the Pension Magnotte. Gustave was therefore in nowise +surprised to miss her on this particular morning. He took a cup of +coffee, and hurried off to his daily duties. There was a fever on him +which he could neither understand nor shake off, and he hastened to the +gardens of the Luxembourg, as if there were some special necessity for +speed. So do men often hasten unconsciously to their predestined doom, +defiant of augury. Soothsayers may menace, and wives may dream dreams; +but when his hour comes, Caesar will go to the appointed spot where the +daggers of his assassins await him. + +In the alley where he had first looked upon her sad face, beneath +the umbrage of young limes and chestnuts just bursting into bloom, +he saw the Englishwoman to-day, seated on the same bench, almost in +the same attitude. + +He went up to her, and bade her good morning; and then, intensely +conscious of his own temerity, seated himself by her side. + +"I did not expect to find you here so early." + +"No, I seldom come out so soon; but this morning I have to make some +inquiries upon a matter of business, and I am only resting here before +going to make them." + +She gave a little weary sigh at the end of this speech. It seemed a +strange manner of transacting business to rest in the Luxembourg gardens, +which were distant but a few hundred yards from her home. Gustave divined +that it was for very forlornness she lingered there, shrinking from some +difficult encounter that lay before her. + +"Can I not make the inquiries for you?" he asked. "Pray command me. It +will be my happiness to be useful to you." + +"You are very good. I cannot trouble you so much." + +"Pray do not talk of trouble. It can be no trouble to me to aid you in +any manner. Ah, madame, you do not know how much I would sacrifice to be +useful to you!" + +She must have been dull indeed had she failed to perceive the earnestness +of his tone. She did perceive it, and was vaguely conscious that in this +student of law she had a friend. + +"I want to know when the diligence for Calais leaves Paris, and from what +office," she said. "I am going back to England." + +She was surprised to see the young man's face blanch as she announced +this simple fact. The young man himself was surprised by the sudden +anguish inflicted by her announcement. It was in this moment that he +first discovered how completely he had given his heart into this strange +woman's keeping. + +"You are really going to leave Paris?--for ever?" he exclaimed. + +"Yes. I have been here too long already. I have no business here. I ought +to have gone back to England that day when I first met you here, but I +put off the day of my return. I can put it off no longer." + +"And you are going back to your friends?" Gustave asked, in a very +mournful tone. + +"I am going back to my friends? Yes!" Her lips quivered a little, and the +unbidden tears came to her eyes. + +Ah, what was the sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely creature? +What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain which consumed her? +Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk +of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day she talked +of going home to her friends: but O the bitterness of expression with +which she had spoken that word "friends!" + +"Are you going alone, Madame Meynell?" he inquired, after a pause. He +could not tear himself from that seat by her side. He could not be manly +or rational where she was concerned. The image of Madelon Frehlter rose +before his mental vision, reproachful, menacing; but a thick fog +intervened to obscure that unwelcome image. His whole life resolved +itself into those thrilling moments in which he sat here, on this common +garden bench, by this stranger's side; the entire universe was contracted +into this leafy walk where they two sat. + +"Yes, I am going alone," madame replied, with a little laugh. "Who should +I have to go with me? I am quite alone in the world. I think I had better +make these inquiries myself, M. Lenoble. There is no reason why I should +give you so much trouble." + +"There is no such thing as trouble. I will bring you all necessary +information to-day at dinner, if that will be soon enough." + +"Quite soon enough, I thank you, monsieur," she answered, with a sigh. "I +must ask you kindly to ascertain for me also the expense of the journey." + +"Most certainly, madame." + +This request set him wondering whether she were poor, and how poor. But +she had evidently no more to say to him; she had again become +impenetrable. He would fain have stayed, though honour and conscience +were clamorous in their demands for his departure. Happily for honour and +conscience, the lady was silent as death, impervious as marble; so M. +Lenoble presently bowed and departed. + +He thought of her all day long. The farce of pity was ended. He knew now +that he loved this Englishwoman with an affection at once foolish and +sinful,--foolish, since he knew not who or what this woman was; sinful, +since the indulgence of this passion involved the forfeiture of his +plighted word, the disappointment of those who loved him. + +"No, no, no," he said to himself; "I cannot do this base and wicked +thing. I must marry Madelon. All the hopes of my mother and father rest +on that marriage; and to disappoint them because this stranger's face has +bewitched me? Ah, no, it cannot be. And even if I were willing to trample +my honour in the dust, how do I know that she would value or accept the +sacrifice?" + +M. Lenoble made all necessary inquiries at the office of the Messageries, +and carried the intelligence to Madame Meynell. He could see that she +winced a little when he told her the cost of the journey, which in those +days was heavy. + +"She must certainly be poor," he said to himself; and it rent his heart +to think that even in this paltry matter he could be of no use to her. +The destined master of Beaubocage and Cotenoir was entirely without ready +money. He had his watch. He put his hand upon that clumsy timekeeper as +he talked to madame. + +"_Je te porterai chez ma tante, mon gars_," he said to himself. But he +doubted whether the high priests of the pious mountain--the Dordona of +Pauperism--would advance much upon this antique specimen of the +watchmaker's art. + +After this evening he looked forward daily, hourly, to the anguish of her +departure. She would vanish out of his life, intangible as a melted +snow-flake, and only memory would stay behind to tell him he had known +and loved her. Why should this be so hard to bear? If she stayed, he +dared not tell her she was dear to him; he dared not stretch forth his +hand to help her. In all the world there was no creature more utterly +apart from him than she, whether she lived in the same house with him or +was distant as the Antipodes. What did it matter, then, since she was +destined to disappear from his life, whether she vanished to-day or a +year hence? He argued with himself that it could be a question of no +moment to him. There was a death-blow that must descend upon him, cruel, +inevitable. Let it come when it would. + +Every day when he came home to dinner, M. Lenoble expected to behold a +vacant place by the side of his hostess; every day he was pleasantly +disappointed. The pale hopeless face was still to be seen, ghost-like, at +that noisy board. The face was more pale, more hopeless, as it seemed to +Gustave, every day he looked upon it. + +He asked Madame Magnotte when the English lady was going to leave, but +she could not tell. + +"She talks of leaving from day to day," said madame; "it will no doubt be +soon. I am sorry to lose her. She is very gentle, and gives no trouble to +any one. But she is sad--ah, how sad she is! She has suffered, monsieur." + +Gustave agreed to this. Yes, she had suffered; but what, and how? + +He watched her closely, but she was always the same. She no longer spent +her evenings in the salon, but in her own apartment. He saw her only at +dinner-time, and had no opportunity of speaking to her. + +At last the day came upon which he missed her at the usual hour. He sat +through the tedious meal without speaking; eating a little, drinking a +little, mechanically, but with no consciousness of what he ate or drank. +There was a mist before his eyes, a confusion of voices in his ears; but +the faculties of sight and hearing seemed suspended. The agony he +suffered during that miserable hour was bitter as death. + +"O, my God, how I love her!" he said to himself, while Raoul's bass roar +brayed in his ear on one side, and Leon's shrill squeal tortured him on +the other. + +He made his way to Madame Magnotte directly after dinner. + +"She is gone?" he exclaimed. + +"But who, my friend? Ah, yes; it is of that poor Madame Meynell you +speak. How you are interested in her! No, she is not gone, poor woman. +She remains always. She has the air of a person who knows not her own +mind. Yet I am sure she thinks of going. To-day, for the first time, she +has been writing letters. Reine came to tell me she had seen her occupied +in her own room for the first time. It is not her habit to occupy +herself." + +Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone; he might see her +again--if it were but a glimpse of her pale face looking out of the +diligence as it drove out of the Cour de Messageries. One look, one +glance; it would be something to carry in his heart all his life. All his +life! He looked forward and shuddered. What a dreary life it must needs +be! Cotenoir, Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to +study dry as dust books. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of +that dreary desert of existence--a life without her. + +She had been writing letters--doubtless letters to her friends to +announce her return. Her departure must be very near at hand. + +Gustave refused to go out that evening. His fellow-students were bent on +a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in vogue, where there would +be twinkling lamps and merry music under the May moon. The lamp-lit +parterres, the joyous waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble. He +haunted the dull salon, dim and dreary in the twilight; for Madame +Magnotte was chary of lamps and candles, and prolonged to its utmost +limits the pensive interval between day and night. He walked softly up +and down the room, unheeded by the ladies clustered in a group by one of +the windows. Restless and unhappy, he could neither go nor stay. She was +not coming down to the salon this evening. He had clung to the faint hope +that she might appear; but the faint hope died away in his breast as the +night deepened. What purpose could be served by his remaining in that +dismal room? He was no nearer her than he would have been in the +remotest wilds of Central America. He would go out--not to the odious +dancing-garden, but to the cool dark streets, where the night wind might +blow this fever from his brain. + +He left the room suddenly, and hurried downstairs. At the bottom of the +staircase he almost stumbled against a woman, who turned and looked at +him in the light of a little oil-lamp that hung over the door of the +portress's lodge. + +It was the Englishwoman, deadly pale, and with a wild look in her face +that Gustave had never seen there before. She gave him no sign of +recognition, but passed out of the courtyard, and walked rapidly away. +That unusual look in her face, the strangeness of the fact that she +should be leaving the house at this hour, inspired him with a vague +terror, and he followed her, not stealthily, without a thought that he +was doing any wrong by such an act--rather, indeed, with the conviction +that he had a right so to follow her. + +She walked very quickly--at a more rapid pace than Gustave would have +supposed possible for so fragile a creature. She chose the lonelier +streets, and Gustave had no difficulty in following her; she never looked +back, but went straight on her course, without pause or slackening of her +pace, as if with a settled purpose. + +"Where can she be going?" Gustave asked himself; and an answer, vague, +hideous, terrible, suggested itself to his mind. The idea that occurred +to him was one that would scarcely have occurred to an Englishman under +the same circumstances, but to a Frenchman it was a very familiar idea. + +It was dark now--the darkness that reigns between early sunset and late +moonrise. As the lonely woman went farther along the dreary streets +parallel with the quay, the dreadful suspicion grew stronger in Gustave's +mind. From that instant he had but one thought; in that moment he put +away from him for ever all sense of obligation to Madelon Frehlter; he +shook off father, mother, sister, old associations, home ties, ambition, +fortune--he lived alone for this woman, and the purpose of his life was +to save her from despair and death. + +They emerged upon the quay at last. The long stretch of pavement was +deserted. Ah, now she looked back--she looked on every side with wild +unseeing eyes--and now there could be little doubt as to the purpose that +brought her here. She crossed the road, and went upon the bridge, Gustave +following close; in the next minute she was standing on the stone bench, +a tremulous, fluttering figure, with arms stretched towards the water; in +a breath she was clasped to Gustave's breast, clasped by arms that meant +to hold her for ever. + +The shock of that surprise utterly unnerved the wretched creature. She +shivered violently, and struggled to free herself from those strong arms. + +"Let me go!" she cried in English. "Let me go!" And then, finding herself +powerless, she turned and looked at her captor. "M. Lenoble! O, why do +you persecute me? Why do you follow me?" + +"Because I want to save you." + +"To save me! To snatch me back when I was going to find rest--an end for +my weary life! O yes, I know that it is a sinful end; but my life has +been all sin." + +"Your life all sin! Foolish one, I will never believe that." + +"It is true," she cried, with passionate self-reproach. "The sin of +selfishness, and pride, and disobedience. There is no fate too hard for +me--but, O, my fate is very hard! Why did you keep me from that river? +You do not know how miserable my life is--you do not know. I paid my +last penny to Madame Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me +back to England, even if I dared go there--and I dare not. I have prayed +for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers have not been +heard; and there is nothing for me but to die. What would be the sin of +my throwing myself into that river! I must die; I shall die of +starvation in the streets." + +"No, no," cried Gustave passionately; "do you think I have dragged you +back from death to give you to loneliness and despair? My dear one, you +are mine--mine by right of this night. These arms that have kept you +from death shall shelter you,--ah, let them shelter you! These hands +shall work for you. My love, my love! you cannot tell how dear you are +to me. If there must be want or trouble for either of us, it shall come +to me first." + +He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and unresisting, and had +seated himself by her side. The fragile figure, shivering still, even in +the mild atmosphere of the spring night, was sustained by his encircling +arm. He felt that she was his, irrevocably and entirely--given to him by +the Providence which would have seemed to have abandoned her, but for the +love it had implanted for her in this one faithful heart. His tone had +all the pleading tenderness of a lover's, but it had something more--an +authority, a sense of possession. + +"Providence sent me here to save you," he said, with that gentle yet +authoritative tone; "I am your providence, am I not, dearest? Fate made +me love you--fondly, hopelessly, as I thought. Yesterday you seemed as +far away from me as those pale stars, shining up yonder--as +incomprehensible as that faint silvery mist above the rising moon--and +to-night you are my own." + +He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had indeed a vague +consciousness that the step which he was now taking would cause a +lifelong breach between himself and his father. But the time had gone by +in which he could count the cost. + +"Let me go back, M. Lenoble," the Englishwoman said presently. The +faintness of terror was passing away, and she spoke almost calmly. "Let +me go back to the house. It is you that have saved me from a dreadful +sin. I promise you that I will not again think of committing that deadly +sin. I will wait for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no, +no; do not detain me! Forget that you have ever known me." + +"That is not in my power. I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte +directly; but you must first promise to be my wife." + +"Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible." + +"Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful gravity. + +"Because I am not worthy of you." + +Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few +words. + +"You are worth all the stars to me. If I had them in my hands, those +lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, to hold you," said the +student passionately. "You cannot understand my love, perhaps. I seem a +stranger to you, and all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is +true as the heaven above us--true as life or death--death that was so +near you just now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March morning +on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees yonder. You held me +from that moment. I was subjugated--possessed--yours at once and for +ever. I would not confess even to myself that my heart had resigned +itself to you; but I know now that it was so from the first. Is there any +hope that you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love?" + +"You love me," the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the words were +almost beyond her comprehension,--"you love _me_, a creature so lost, so +friendless! Ah, but you do not know my wretched story!" + +"I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question--will you be my wife?" + +"You must be mad to offer your name, your honour to me." + +"Yes, I am mad--madly in love. And I am waiting for your answer. You +will be my wife? My angel, you will say yes! It is not much that I offer +you--a life of uncertainty, perhaps even of poverty; but a fond and +constant heart, and a head and hands that will work for you while God +gives them strength. It is better than the river." + +All that was thoughtless and hopeful in his disposition was expressed in +these words. The woman to whom he pleaded was weakened by sorrow, and +the devotion of this brave true heart brought her strength, comfort, +almost hope. + +"Will you be my friend?" she said gently. "Your words seem to bring me +back to life. I wanted to die because I was so wretched, so lonely. I +have friends in England--friends who were once all that is dear and kind; +but I dare not go to them. I think a cruel look from one of those friends +would kill me with a pain more bitter than any other death could give. +And I have no right to hope for kind looks from them. Yours are the only +words of friendship I have heard for a long time." + +"And you will give me the right to work for you--to protect you? You will +be my wife?" + +"I would rather be your servant," she answered, with sad humility. "What +right have I to accept so great a sacrifice? What folly can be so foolish +as your love for me--if it is indeed love, and not a wild fancy of +to-night!" + +"It is a fancy that will last my life." + +"Ah, you do not know how such fancies change." + +"I know nothing except that mine is changeless. Come, my love, it is +growing late and cold. Let me take you home. The portress will wonder. +You must slip past her quietly with your veil down. Did you give old +Margot your key when you came down stairs to-night?" + +"No, it is in my pocket. I was not thinking--I--" + +She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood that shudder; he +also shuddered. She had left her room that night possessed by the +suicide's madness; she had left it to come straight to death. Happily his +strong arm had come between her and that cruel grave by which they were +still lingering. + +They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle under the light of +the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman's wasted hand rested for the first +time on M. Lenoble's arm. She was his--his by the intervention and by the +decree of Providence! That became a conviction in the young man's mind. +He covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, engaging the +portress in conversation while the dark figure glided past in the dim +lamplight. On the staircase he paused to bid her good night. + +"You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow morning, +dearest," he said. "I have so much to say--so much. Until then, adieu!" + +He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her apartment, and +then went to his own humble bachelor's chamber, singing a little drinking +song in his deep manly voice, happy beyond all measure. + +They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The poor +lonely creature whom Gustave had rescued seemed already to look up to him +as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband. +It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it +was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had +subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute--penniless, +helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan +Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter. + +"Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she walked under the +chestnut-trees by her lover's side. "Let me tell you everything. And if, +when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give +me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not +speak to you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an outcast +I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know +how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand--you can +never know what you seem to me." + +And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told +him her story. + +"My father was a tradesman in the city of London," she said. "We were +very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy +such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and +discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the +city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now +and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to +me--my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness--I +feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since +then." + +She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too +profound for any conventional expression. He was listening to the story +of his future wife's youth. That there could be any passage in that +history which would hinder him from claiming this woman as his wife was a +possibility he did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame +involved in the story, as Madame Meynell's manner led him to suppose +there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since the shame must be +his, as she was his. + +"When my father and mother died, I went into Yorkshire to live with my +married sister. I cannot find words to tell you how kind they were to +me--my sister and her husband. I had a little money left me by my father, +and I spent the greater part of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents +to my sister and her children. I was happier in Yorkshire than I had been +in London; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and brighter +than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the brother of a nobleman +who lived in the neighbourhood of my sister's house. We met by accident +in a field on my brother-in-law's farm, where the gentleman was shooting; +and after that he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and +made some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very often, and +before long he asked me to marry him; and I promised to be his wife, with +my sister's knowledge and consent. She loved me so dearly, and was so +proud of me out of her dear love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this +engagement, especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of, +was a younger son, and by no means a rich man." + +Again she stopped, and waited a little before continuing her story. Only +by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand resting on his arm did Gustave +express his sympathy. + +"I cannot tell you, how happy I was in those days--so bright, so brief. I +cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that +time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a +background of darkness, with some strange vivid light shining upon it. It +was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as +soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of +the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville's, and an imprudent +marriage on his brother's part might have prevented the performance of +it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to +confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to +do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my +brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits to the farm. He +came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful +scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in +his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved +Montague Kingdon as you say you love me--foolishly, recklessly. I could +not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our +marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his +debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If +he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should +I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were +truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged +between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who +had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to +write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following +night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to +make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall +I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage +that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull. +From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and +misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I +had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to +be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to +love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was +no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with +debt and difficulty. We lived abroad--not for our pleasure, but because +Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord +Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood +invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his +slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient +drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years, +when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect +me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the +hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me." + +"My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave. "Do not tell +me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which +neglect gave place to desertion." + +"Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the +blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and +nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna +with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to +the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step. +He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorkshire. To go back!--as if +he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum +of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you +first met me here, I had not long received that letter." + +This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared +not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand +clasp hers, and knew that he was still her friend. This was all she asked +of Providence. + +To Gustave Lenoble the story had been unutterably painful. He had hoped +to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the shame was very bitter to +him. This woman whom he loved so fondly was no spotless martyr, the +victim of inevitable fate, beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She +was only a weak vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured +away from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace scoundrel. + +The story was common, the shame was common, but it seemed to M. Lenoble +that the woman by his side was his destiny; and then, prompt to the +rescue of offended pride, of outraged love--tortured to think that she, +so distant and pure a creature to him, should have been trampled in the +dust by another--came the white-winged angel Pity. By her weakness, by +her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity conjured him to +love her so much the more dearly. + +"My darling," he said softly, "it is a very sad story, and you and I will +never speak of it again. We will bury the memory of Montague Kingdon in +the deepest grave that was ever dug for bitter remembrances; and we will +begin a new life together." + +This was the end of M. Lenoble's wooing. He could not speak of his love +any more while the sound of Montague Kingdon's name had but lately died +away on Susan Meynell's lips. He had taken her to himself, with all her +sorrows and sins, in the hour in which he snatched her from death; and +between these two there was no need of passionate protestations or +sentimental rapture. + +M. Lenoble speedily discovered that the law had made no provision for the +necessities of a chivalrous young student eager to unite himself with a +friendless foreign woman, who could not produce so much as one of the +thirty witnesses required to establish her identity. A very little +consideration showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan +Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, and asked her +if she would trust him as she had trusted Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the +marriage might easily be solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to +stay there so long as the English law required for the solemnization of +their union? + +"Why should you take so much trouble about me?" said Susan, in her low +sad voice. "You are too good, too generous. I am not worth so much care +and thought from you." + +"Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susan?" + +"I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of miles from the +rest of mankind--with a happier life than mine. I have no feeling in my +heart but love for you, and faith in you." + +After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one +bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a +fortnight's sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the +bonds of matrimony. + +Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of +religion divided them no more than the difference of country. They came +back to Paris directly after the marriage, and M. Lenoble took a very +modest lodging for himself and his wife in a narrow street near the +Pantheon--a fourth story, very humbly furnished. M. Lenoble had provided +for himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage which +declares that a purse large enough for one is also large enough for two. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +A DECREE OF BANISHMENT. + +After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate +deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice +of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's tempest was raging, whispers grave +counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud, +sublime in the glare of the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face +in the clear, common light of day. + +Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble time and +reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love +which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a +passion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought could +reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very +desperate one. Before him lay an awful necessity--the necessity of going +to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had +been shattered by this deed of his. + +The letters from Cydalise--nay, indeed, more than one letter from his +mother, with whom letter-writing was an exceptional business--had of late +expressed much anxiety. In less than a month the marriage-contract would +be made ready for his signature. Every hour's delay was a new dishonour. +He told his wife that he must go home for a few days; and she prepared +his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to him like +the ministration of an angel. + +"My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the happiness you have brought +me!" he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish figure flitting about +the room, busy with the preparations for his journey. + +And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter--commonplace, stiff, and +unimpressionable--the most conventional of school-girls, heavy in face, +in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had seemed to him, despite his +sister's praises. + +He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of the +brilliant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk which he +ran of offending his father by that rash step. But to-night, when he +thought of Madelon's dulness and commonness, it seemed to him as if Susan +had in manner rescued him from a dreadful fate--as maidens were rescued +from sea-monsters in the days of Perseus and Heracles. + +"Madelon is not unlike a whale," he thought. "They tell us that whales +are of a sagacious and amiable temper,--and Cydalise was always talking +of Madelon's good sense and amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to +believe in the unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled +virtues of Madelon Frehlter." + +His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after a sad and +tender parting from his wife. The journey was a long one in those days, +when no express train had yet thundered across the winding Seine, +cleaving its iron way through the bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M. +Lenoble had ample time for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous +diligence; and his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering +vehicle approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was to make +his way to the paternal mansion as best he might. + +He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who carried his +portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in the quiet summer +evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the heart and perplexity +disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, and his spirits were in +nowise elevated by the walk. + +Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim garden at +Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a little pepper-castor +turret, his sister's room. The thought of their glad welcome smote his +heart. How could he shape the words that must inform them of their +disappointment? And then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the +Parisian lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and +submissive,--the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation, +as it seemed to his pious Catholic mind. The thought of this dear one +gave him courage. + +"I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, "but not the privilege +to sell me for money. The marriage they want to bring about would be a +sordid barter of my heart and my honour." + +In a few minutes after this he was standing in the little salon at +Beaubocage, with his mother and sister hanging about him and caressing +him, his father standing near, less demonstrative, but evidently well +pleased by this unexpected arrival of the son and heir. + +"I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, "and flew down from my +room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one can fly on these occasions. +And how thou art looking well, and how thou art handsome, and how I adore +thee!" cries the damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like +occasion. "Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee? +Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while thou didst +plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see thee again!" + +And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was spoken the dreaded +name of Madelon. She too would be glad--she too had been anxious. The +prodigal made no answer. He could not speak, his heart sank within him, +he grew cold and pale; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a +sharper pain than death. + +"Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest pale--thou +art ill! Look then, Francois, thy son is ill!" + +"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his +mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her +after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the +farewell kiss of her son. + +"I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave. + +The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He +led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some +dusty editions of the French classics, and where the master of Beaubocage +kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines. + +When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the open +windows, waiting for them. Without all was still. Distant lights +glimmered through the summer twilight, the lighted windows of Cotenoir. + +"How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards those +glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to believe that the +demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have +been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her +future sister-in-law. + +The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble +and Cydalise. The two women were curious--nay, indeed, somewhat anxious. + +"I fear he has made debts," said the mother, "and is telling thy father +of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, unless with the dowry +of Madelon, and that would seem a dishonourable use of her money." + +It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of that quiet +house. Twilight had thickened into night, when there came a banging of +doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of the salon was +opened, and M. Lenoble came in alone. At the same moment the outer door +closed heavily. + +M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed the Venetian +shutters. He went from thence to the second window, the shutters whereof +he fastened carefully, while the women stared at him wonderingly, for it +was not his habit to perform this office. + +"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice. + +"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed. + +"He is gone." + +"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?" + +"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English +adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine." + + + + +Book the Second. + + + +DOWNHILL. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE. + +Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which +Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy +five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and +chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a +forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever +known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown +fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only +for her husband and her child. + +The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he +cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years +no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the +prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A +narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with +fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had +been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that +joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against +the offender with a seal not to be broken, even had he come thither to +plead for pardon, which he did not. + +"My father would have sold me as negro slaves are sold _la-bas_," he said, +on those rare occasions when he opened his old wounds, which were to the +last unhealed: "I am glad that I escaped the contemptible barter." + +He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to him easier to +bear than the dreary prosperity of Cotenoir and a wife he could not have +loved. The distinguishing qualities of this man's mind were courage and +constancy. There are such noble souls born into the world, some to shine +with lustre supernal, many to burn and die in social depths, obscure as +ocean's deepest cavern. + +In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He +worked for her, he endured for her, he hoped against hope for her sake; +and it was only when bodily strength failed that this nameless +foot-soldier began to droop and falter in life's bitter battle. Things +had gone ill with him. He had tried his fate as an advocate in Paris, in +Caen, in Rouen--but clients would not come. He had been a clerk, now in +one counting-house, now in another, and Susan and he had existed somehow +during the seven years of their married life. + +They clung to each other with affection that seemed to grow with every +new sorrow; nor did love exhibit any inclination to spread his wings and +take flight from the window, though poverty came in every day at the +door, and sat by the hearth, a familiar companion and inevitable guest. + +The mother and sister contrived to help this poor castaway with the +veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old man, soured by his +great disappointment, grew sordid and covetous with increasing years, and +the lives of the women were hard and hopeless. By little cheats, and +petty contrivances, and pitiful falsifications of financial statements, +they managed to scrape together a few louis now and then for the +struggling exile; and to do this was the sole delight of their patient +lives. They contrived also to correspond secretly with Gustave, and were +informed of the birth of his son. + +"Ah, if thou couldst see how beautiful he is," wrote the father, "this +child of pure and true love, thou wouldst no longer regret my breach of +faith with Madelon Frehlter. I knew not until now how like infant +children are to angels. I knew not how true to nature are the angels in +the pictures of Raffaelle and Murillo. Thou knowest the print of +Murillo's Assumption; the picture is in the Louvre. If thou canst +remember that picture, dear mother, thou hast but to recall the face of +one of the cherubim about the feet of our Lady, and thou hast the +portrait of my boy. He opens his eyes, and looks at me as I write. Ah! +that he and I and my Susan were with thee in the little salon at +Beaubocage--my sister, Susan, you, and I united round this darling's +cradle. He has been born in poverty, but his birth has made us very +happy." + +The sentiment of this letter was no spurious or transient feeling. For +this child Gustave Lenoble evinced an unchanging fondness. It was indeed +no part of his nature to change. The little one was his comfort in +affliction, his joy during every brief interval of prosperity. When the +battle was well nigh fought, and he began to feel himself beaten. His +chief anxieties, his ever-returning fears, were for his wife and child. + +To Susan the thought of parting from him was a despair too deep for +tears. She would have been something less than woman if she had not loved +her husband with more than common affection. She watched the change that +illness brought in the frank face, the stalwart figure; and little by +little the awful truth came home to her. The hour was at hand in which +she must lose him. + +"If you could have rest, Gustave, better medical advice, more comforts, +you would soon be strong again. I am sure your father would not refuse to +forgive you now. Write to him, dearest. Go back to Beaubocage, and let +your mother and sister nurse you. I will stay here with the little one. +It shall be forgotten that you have a wife and child." + +"No, dear one; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy back my +father's love. I would rather be here with you than in the pleasantest +home without you. But we must face the future, Susan; we must be brave +and wise, for the little one's sake. You are not so strong that you can +afford to trust blindly in your power to protect him by-and-by. I have +written a letter to my father. He has proved himself a hard man to me, +cruel and obdurate beyond all my fears; but I know he is not altogether +heartless. When I am dead, you will take the letter in one hand, the +child in the other, and go to Beaubocage. I believe he will adopt the +boy, and that the little one will give him the comfort and happiness he +hoped from me. He must be very lonely; and I cannot doubt that his heart +will melt when he sees the child's face, and hears that he has no longer +a son. As for yourself, my poor girl, I see for you no hope except in the +old Yorkshire home, and the friends you fear to see again." + +"I no longer fear them," said his wife, with unwonted energy, "I could +not go to them seven years ago; but I can go to them as your wife." + +"Ah, thank God, the poor name is worth something for you." + +"Yes, dear; and I will go back to them--to-morrow." + +"To-morrow!" + +"To-morrow, Gustave. I have been selfish and cruel to delay so long. The +old dread of seeing my sister's reproachful face has been strong enough +to hold me back, when a little courage might have enabled me to help you. +The burden has been all on you, and I have done nothing. O, what a wretch +I must have been to sit idly by and see you suffer, and make no effort to +help you!" + +"But, my darling, you have not been idle. You have been the dearest and +most industrious of wives, and have helped me to bear my burden. You have +done more, dear--you have made my burden pleasant to me." + +"I will try to lighten it, Gustave," cried Susan, with excitement. "O, +why, why did I never try before! My sister and her husband are well +off--rich perhaps. If they are still living, if no cruel changes have +come to pass at Newhall, they could help us with a little money. They +might even give us a home. I will start for England to-morrow." + +"Nay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far alone. It +seems, indeed, a happy thought this of your rich relations; but you must +not undertake such a journey. You might write." + +"No, Gustave, I will trust to no letter; I will go. It will be no pain +for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go straight to my sister. I +know what a tender compassionate heart it is that I shall appeal to." + +There was much discussion; but Susan was resolute. To scrape together the +money for the journey she made efforts that were heroic in a nature so +weak as hers. She went to the Monte de Piete with the last of her little +treasures, that one dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger +was at the door--the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed upon +her finger before God's altar--the double symbolic circlet which bore on +one side her name, on the other her husband's. This dearest of all her +possessions she surrendered for a few francs, to make up the sum needful +for her journey. + +What it cost her to do this, what it cost her to tear herself away +from her sick husband and her only child, who shall say? There are +pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come within no +calculation--the infinite of pain. She went. Two kind souls, a labourer +and his wife, lodgers in the same garret-story, promised to care for +and help the invalid and child. There is no desolation in which a child +will not find a friend. + +The journey was long and fatiguing; the anguish of her poor aching heart +almost too much for endurance--a heart so heavy that even hope could +scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, though in the middle of +summer. The solitary traveller caught cold on the journey, and arrived in +London in a high fever. Ill, faint, and helpless, the great city seemed +to her unspeakably dismal--most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to +this wretched orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn +where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come _via_ Havre. +Here she sank prostrate, and had barely sufficient strength to write an +incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, of Newhall Farm, near +Huxter's Cross, Yorkshire. + +The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great northern road +could carry her. There was infinite joy in that honest sisterly heart +over this one sinner's repentance. Fourteen years had gone by since the +young city-bred beauty had fled with that falsest of men, and most +hardened of profligates, Montague Kingdon; and tidings from Susan were +unlooked for and thrilling as a message from the grave. + +Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell! The false step of her youth +had set her for ever wrong upon life's highway. When kind Mrs. Halliday +came, Gustave Lenoble's wife was past her help; wandering in her mind; a +girl again, but newly run away from her peaceful home; and with no +thought save of remorse for her misdeeds. + +The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out of her mind. +She raved of Montague Kingdon's baseness, of her own folly, her vain +regret, her yearning for pardon; but of the dying husband in the garret +at Rouen she uttered no word. And so, with her weary head upon her +sister's breast, she passed away, her story untold, no wedding-ring on +her wasted finger to bear witness that she died an honest man's wife; no +letters or papers in her poor little trunk to throw light on the fourteen +years in which she had been a castaway. + +Mrs. Halliday stayed in London to see the wanderer laid in the quiet city +churchyard where her family rested, and where for her was chosen an +obscure corner in which she might repose forgotten and unknown. + +But not quite nameless. Mrs. Halliday could not leave the grave unmarked +by any record of the sister she had loved. The stone above the grave of +Gustave's wife bore her maiden name, and the comforting familiar text +about the one sinner who repenteth. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FORGIVEN TOO LATE. + +For a week of long days and longer nights there was no step sounded on +the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old dilapidated house +where he lay languishing on the brink of an open grave, that did not move +Gustave Lenoble with a sudden emotion of hope. But the footsteps came and +went, the doors were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller +so waited, so hoped for did not return. + +The boy--the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that was noblest +and best in his father's nature--pined for his mother. The man endured a +martyrdom worse than the agony of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre. +What had befallen her? That she could desert him or his child was a +possibility that never shaped itself in his mind. _That_ drop of poison +was happily wanting in his cup; and the bitterness of death was sweet +compared to the scorpion-sting of such a supposition. + +She did not return. Calamity in some shape had overtaken her--calamity +dire as death; for, with life and reason, she could not have failed to +send some token, some tidings, to those she loved. The sick man waited a +week after the day on which he had begun to expect her return. At the end +of that time he rose, with death in his face, and went out to look for +her--to look for her in Rouen; for her whom the instinct of his heart +told him was far away from that city--as far as death from life. He went +to the Cour de Messageries, and loitered and waited amidst the bustle of +arriving and departing diligences, with a half-imbecile hope that she +would alight from one of them. The travellers came and went, pushing and +hustling him in their selfish haste. When night came he went back to his +garret. All was quiet. The boy slept with the children of his good +neighbour, and was comforted by the warmth of that strange hearth. + +Gustave lit his candle, a last remaining morsel. + +"You will last my time, friend," he said, with a wan smile. + +He seated himself at the little table, pushed aside the medicine-bottles, +searched for a stray sheet of letter-paper, and then began to write. + +He wrote to his mother, telling her that death was at hand, and that the +time had come in which she must succour her son's orphan child. With this +he enclosed a letter to his father--that letter of which he had spoken to +his wife, and which had been written in the early days of his illness. +This packet he directed to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There was no +longer need for secrecy. + +"When those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and past +forgiveness," he thought. + +In the morning he was dead. + +The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted and protected +the child for two days; and then there came a lady, very sad, very quiet, +who wept bitterly in the stillness of that attic chamber where Gustave +Lenoble lay; and who afterwards, with a gentle calmness of manner that +was very sweet to see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but +not a mean or ignominious, funeral. + +"He was my brother," she said to the good friends of the neighbouring +garret. "We did our best to help him, my mother and I; but we little +thought how bitterly he wanted help. The brave heart would not suffer us +to know that." + +And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their charity to the +dead man; and with these good people she went on foot through the narrow +streets of the city to see her brother laid in his grave. + +Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of +age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport +of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had +been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to +her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his +father; for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have +some shrine at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already she +was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow +also, for whose return she looked daily. + +For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days +after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably +established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a +home. No one but her mother and this friend, whom she could trust, knew +of the business that had brought her from Beaubocage. In seven years the +father had never uttered his only son's name; in all the seven years that +name had never been spoken in his hearing. + +When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England, +all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the +neighbours who had known the absent woman. + +"She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away," said the +labourer's wife, "as surely as it was on him that she left. I told her +she had no strength for the journey; but she would go: there was no +moving her from that. She had rich friends _la-bas_, who might help her +husband. It was for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind +of fever, and the strength of fever." + +"And there has come no letter--nothing?" + +"Nothing, mademoiselle." + +On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. She could not well +leave the child longer on the hands of these friendly people, even by +paying for his maintenance, which she insisted on doing, though they +would fain have shared their humble _pot-a-feu_ and coarse loaf with +him unrecompensed. She determined on a desperate step. She would take +her brother's orphan child back with her, and leave the rest to +Providence--to the chance of some sudden awakening of natural affection +in a heart that had long languished in a kind of torpor that was almost +death. + +The little fellow pined sadly for those dear familiar faces, those tender +soothing voices, that had vanished so suddenly from his life. But the +voice of his aunt was very sweet and tender, and had a tone that recalled +the father who was gone. With this kind aunt he left Rouen in the +lumbering old vehicle that plied daily betwixt that city and Vevinord. + +"Thou canst call me Cydalise for a while, my little one," she said to +him; for she did not wish the child to proclaim the relationship between +them yet awhile. + +Ah, what bitter tears the two women shed over the soft fair curls of that +little head, when they had the boy all to themselves in the turret +chamber at Beaubocage, on whose white walls the eyes of Cydalise had +opened almost every morning of her pure eventless life! + +"Why dost thou cry so, madame?" the child asked of his grandmother, as +she held him in her arms, kissing and weeping over him; "and what have +they done with my father--and mamma too? She went away one day, but she +told me that she would come back, so quickly, ah, so quickly! and the +days passed, and they shut papa in his room, and would not let me go to +him; and mamma did not come, though I asked the Blessed Virgin to send +her back to me." + +"Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place than this hard +world, where they had so much sorrow," Madame Lenoble answered, gently. + +"Yes, they were often sorry," murmured the boy thoughtfully. "It was +because of money; but then, when there was no money, mamma cried and +kissed me, and kissed papa, and the good papa kissed us both, and somehow +it always ended in happiness." + +Francois Lenoble was, happily, absent on this day of tribulation. The +women took their fill of sorrow, but it was sorrow mingled with a strange +bitter sweetness that was almost joy. The seigneur of Beaubocage had gone +to dine, as he still often did, with his old friend Baron Frehlter; for +the breach of faith which had caused a lifelong disunion of father and +son had not divided the two proprietors. Nay, indeed the Baron had been +generous enough to plead the cause of the castaway. + +"A man cannot dispose at will of his affections, my friend," he urged; +"and it was more generous in your son to break faith with my daughter +before marriage than after." + +Mademoiselle Frehlter had not broken her heart on account of her lover's +falsehood. She had been sufficiently indignant on the occasion, and had +been more impatient of her mother's pet priest and pet poodle during the +brief period in which she wore the willow. She had recovered her good +humour, however, on being wooed by a young subaltern in a cavalry +regiment stationed at Vevinord, the offshoot of a grander house than that +of Lenoble, and whose good looks and good lineage had ultimately +prevailed with the Baron. That gentleman had by no means too good an +opinion of the son-in-law thus forced upon him; but peace was the highest +good (with unlimited tobacco) to which his Germanic soul aspired; and for +the sake of peace in the present he was content to hazard his daughter's +happiness in the future. + +"_That_ is very brilliant," he said of M. Paul de Nerague, the young +lieutenant of light cavalry; "but it is not solid, like Gustave. Your son +is honest, candid--a brave heart. It is for that I would have given him +Madelon. But it is Providence which disposes of us, as our good father +St. Velours tells us often; and one must be content. Young Nerague +pleases my daughter, and I must swallow him, though for me he smells too +strong of the barracks: _ca flaire la caserne, mon ami_." + +That odour of the barracks which distinguished the sub-lieutenant Paul de +Nerague became more odious after his marriage with the virtuous Madelon, +when he was established--_niche_, as he himself called it--in very +comfortable, though somewhat gruesome, apartments at Cotenoir. His +riotous deportment, his hospitable disposition (as displayed in the +frequent entertainment of his brothers-in-arms at the expense of his +father-in-law), his Don Juan-like demeanour in relation to the housemaids +and kitchen-wenches of the chateau--innocent enough in the main, but on +that account so much the more audacious--struck terror to the hearts of +Madame Frehlter and her daughter; and the elder lady was much gratified +by that thirst for foreign territory which carried the greater part of +the French army and the regiment of the vivacious Paul to the distant +wilds of Algeria. + +The virtuous Madelon was too stolid to weep for her husband. But even her +stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and, +waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient +assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieutenant de Nerague. + +The young officer was yet absent at that period in which Cydalise +returned from Rouen with her brother's child. + +The little boy was sleeping peacefully in a cot beside his aunt's bed (it +had been his father's cot thirty years ago) when Francois Lenoble +returned from Cotenoir that night. + +It was not till the next day that he saw the child. He had been making +his usual morning's round in the gardens and orchards, when he came into +the salon, and saw the little boy seated near his grandmother's chair, +playing with some dominoes. Something--perhaps the likeness to his dead +son--the boy's black clothes, for Cydalise had contrived to dress him in +decent mourning--struck suddenly on the old man's heart. "Who is that +boy?" he asked, with a strange earnestness. + +"Your son Gustave's only child," answered his wife gently,--"his +orphan child." + +Francois Lenoble looked at her, and from her to the boy; tried to speak, +but could not; beckoned the child, and then dropped heavily into a chair +and sobbed aloud. Until this moment no one had ever seen him shed a tear +for the son he had put away from his home--and, as it had seemed, from +his heart. Not by one sigh, not by one mournful utterance of the familiar +name, had he betrayed the depth of that wound which he had endured, +silently, obstinately, in all these years. + +They suffered him to bemoan his dead son unhindered by stereotyped +consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied him in silence. The +little boy stared wonderingly, and at last crept up to the +sorrow-stricken father. "Why do you cry, poor old man?" he asked. "You +have not lost your papa and mamma, as I have lost mine, have you? I want +to stay with you and be your little boy, please. She told me to say +that," he added, pointing to Cydalise.--"And I have said it right, +haven't I?" he asked of the same lady.--"I think I shall love you, +because you are like my papa, only older and uglier," the little one +concluded, with angelic candour. + +The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort. +Beaubocage--Cotenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic +names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so +paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire! +He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts +bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed +that fair young brow; and it was his own son--the son whom he had +disowned--whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles +on his rugged chin. + +"My child," he murmured softly, "the fear is that I shall love thee too +well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I was wickedly stern +to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity than justice." + +This was said to himself rather than to the boy. + +"Tell me thy name, little one," he asked presently, after a few moments' +pensive meditation. + +"I have two names, monsieur." + +"Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names?" + +"Francois Gustave." + +"I shall call thee Gustave." + +"But papa always called me Francois, and mamma said it was the name of a +cruel man; but papa said he loved the name--" + +"Ah, no more, little one!" cried the lord of Beaubocage suddenly; +"thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost pierce this poor +old heart." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +GUSTAVE THE SECOND. + +The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as +rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may +be rich in love's pure white blossom. The existence of this child seemed +all happiness. He brought hope, and a sense of atonement, and all sweet +things, to the quiet family at Beaubocage; and as he grew from childhood +to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that household as if +the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from them. That +Orphic fable of Zagreus repeats itself in many households. For the one +bright creature lost another is given; and then comes a time when it is +almost difficult to separate the image of the missing one from the dear +substitute who so nearly fills his place. + +Francois Lenoble and his wife enjoyed a green old age, and the affection +of their grandson made the cup of life sweet for them to the very dregs. +There are, happily, some natures which indulgence cannot injure; some +luxuriant flowers which attain strength as well as beauty under the +influence of these tropical heats of affection. Gustave the second +possessed all the noble qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous, +brave, constant, affectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the failing +eyes of his kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal +Hercules. + +Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so passionately +desired are apt to be granted when the desire has grown somewhat cold and +dead. Thus it was with the ambition of Francois Lenoble. He lived to see +the lands of Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his +grandson, who married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame +de Nerague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Cotenoir; but the +sons withered and faded in early boyhood, and even the daughter, though +considered a flourishing plant in that poor garden of weakling blossoms, +was but a fragile creature. + +The old people at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and chatelaine of +Cotenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery lieutenant, who fell +in Algeria without having attained his captaincy, or added any military +renown to the good old name of de Nerague in his own magnificent person. + +Francois saw his grandson established at Cotenoir before he died. He +expired with his hand in that of Gustave, whom, in the half-consciousness +of that last hour, he mistook for the son he had disowned. + +"What door was that that shut?" he asked, in an eager whisper. "Who said +I turned my son out of doors--my only son? It's false! I couldn't have +done it! Hark! there's the door shutting again! It sounds like the door +of a tomb." + +After this he dozed a little, and woke with a smile on his face. + +"I have been dreaming of thy father, Gustave," he said calmly. "I thought +that I saw him with a light shining in his face, and that he kissed and +forgave me." + +This was the end. The faithful wife was not slow to follow her husband to +the grave, and there was now only a placid maiden lady at Beaubocage, +Mademoiselle Cydalise Lenoble, whom everyone within ten leagues of +Vevinord knew and loved,--a lay abbess, a Sister of Mercy in all save the +robes; a tender creature, who lived only to do good. + +Ten years passed, and M. Lenoble of Cotenoir was a widower with two +fair young daughters at a convent school on the outskirts of Vevinord, +and a boisterous son at an academy in Rouen. Gustave had never followed +any profession; the lands of Beaubocage secured him a competence, +so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who +adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of +trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch +flower-garden. He was to live at Cotenoir, and look after his estate, and +smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his +wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came +natural to M. Lenoble. It was not in him to be otherwise than kind to +women and children. His invalid wife praised him as a model of marital +perfection. It was Gustave who wheeled her sofa from one room to another, +Gustave who prepared her medicines, Gustave whose careful hands adjusted +curtains and _portieres_. The poor woman lived and died believing herself +the happiest of wives. She mistook kindness for love. + +M. Lenoble bore his wife's demise with Christian calmness. He was sorry +that the fragile creature should have been taken so early from the +pleasant home that was hers by right, but of passionate grief, or dreary +sense of irreparable loss, there was none in that manly heart. There were +times when the widower reproached himself for this want of feeling; but +in very truth Madame Lenoble, _jeune_, had lived and died a nonentity. +Her departure left no empty place; even her children scarcely missed her. +The father was all-in-all. + +Gustave had married at twenty years of age. He was twenty-nine when his +wife died. His eldest daughter, Clarice, eight; his second, Madelon, +seven; the boy, a spoilt young dog of five, not yet despatched to the +great school at Rouen. + +But in '65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very +charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of +the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was +looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very +pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness, +as the nuns told the master of Cotenoir. The demoiselles of Cotenoir +stood high in the estimation of pupils and mistress; they were a kind of +noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these young persons +with some pride when she described her establishment to a stranger. It +was a very comfortable little colony, a small world enclosed by high +walls. The good mothers who taught and cherished the children were for +the greater part ladies of superior and even exalted station; and there +was a gentleness, a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not +always to be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be +confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, and required a +good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher that convent school +would have afforded scope for curious study; for it is singular to +discover what exceptional vices the youthful mind can develop from its +inner consciousness, in homes as pure as this. There were black sheep +even in the convent of the Sacre Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that +meant "dangerous." + +Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the brightest and +the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him no trouble, except when +they asked him for a home. + +"It seems so dull and dreary at Cotenoir, papa," they said, "though you +are always so kind. It doesn't seem like home. Beaubocage is more +home-like. At Cotenoir, when you are out, there is no one to talk to; and +we have no little parties, no excursions into the country, none of those +pleasures which the other girls tell us they have during the holidays." + +This was the gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and +Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something +which was wanting to make Cotenoir a pleasant home. The girls could +complain of no restraint, or pine for no indulgence, since their father +was always prompt to gratify every whim. But there was some element of +happiness wanting, nevertheless; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so. +The life at Cotenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual +dawdling; a life of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, projects +begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, the household angel, +order, was wanting in that mansion. There was waste, dirt, destruction of +all kinds, in the rambling old chateau; old servants, too weak or too +lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of +imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right--for the +feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power +still flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of his lord. + +The servants at Cotenoir had gone their own ways with but little +interference since the death of Madame de Nerague, which occurred two +years before that of her daughter, Clarice Lenoble. Poor invalid Clarice +had been quite unable to superintend her household; and since her death +Mademoiselle Cydalise had been too feeble of health to assume any +authority in her nephew's establishment, even if the household of +Cotenoir would have submitted to interference from Beaubocage, which in +all likelihood they would not. + +Thus it happened that things had taken their own course at the chateau, +and the course had been somewhat erratic. There is nothing so costly as +muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late begun to perceive that he had the +maximum of expense with the minimum of comfort. Meanwhile the kind old +aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time +when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's +house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard +experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own +memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations +of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her +outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it +is probable that in the mass of documentary evidence which goes before +the Great Judge, Mademoiselle Lenoble's account-book will be placed on +the right side. + + + + +Book the Third. + + + +THE HORATIAD. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE. + +Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood, +after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London +Bridge terminus of the Brighton line. He was setting out upon an +adventure wild and impracticable as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts; +and this gallant captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous +and audacious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager +to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If the +Fates had allowed the accomplished Horatio to choose his own destiny, he +would have elected to live in the immediate neighbourhood of St. James's +Street, from the first day to the last of the London season, and to dine +artistically and discreetly at one of those older and more exclusive +clubs dear and familiar to him from the bright years of his youth. He was +by nature a _flaneur_, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and +frivolous pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought himself, +but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble +principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that +narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him +Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him +all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all +statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor +did Captain Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal +republic, unselfishness and earnestness would have rendered a man rather +a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men the +diplomatic Horatio was fully competent to deal; but some of his most +subtle combinations on the chess-board of life would have been checkmated +by an unexpected encounter with intractable virtue. + +The necessity of living was the paramount consideration to which this +gentleman had given his mind from the time when he found himself a +popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and +good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in +everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end +London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts and +lying devices. + +That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wits, is +subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the +miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his +pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in +which his spade turns up nothing but valueless clay, and the end of each +day's work leaves him with no better evidence of his wasted labour than +the aching limbs which he drags at nightfall to his dismal shanty. + +For some months Captain Paget had found Philip Sheldon a very useful +acquaintance. The stockbroker had been the secret inaugurator of two or +three joint-stock companies, though figuring to the outer world only as +director; and in the getting-up of these companies Horatio had been a +useful instrument, and had received liberal payment for his labours. +Unhappily, so serene an occupation as promoting cannot go on for ever; or +rather, cannot remain for ever in the same hands. The human mind is +naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infinitely more +audacious than the small larcenies of literature. The joint-stock company +market became day by day more crowded. No sooner did Philip Sheldon float +the Non-destructive Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which +would offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of lime and other +destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched a +colourable imitation thereof, in the Union-is-Strength Domestic Lavatory +Company, with a professor of chemistry specially retained as inspector of +wash-tubs. Thus it was that, after the profitable ripening of three such +schemes, Mr. Sheldon deemed it advisable to retire from the field, and +await a fitter time for the further exercise of his commercial genius. + +Captain Paget's relations with the stockbroker did not, however, +terminate with the cessation of his labours as secretary, +jack-of-all-trades, and promoter. Having found him, so far, clever, and +to all appearance trustworthy--and this was an important point, for no +man so much needs honourable service as a rogue--Philip Sheldon +determined upon confiding to Horatio the conduct of a more delicate +business than anything purely commercial. After that discovery of the +telegraphic message sent by his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst, +and the further discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed +wealth of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in +organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the expense of his +brother. + +"George refused to let me in for a share of chances when I showed myself +willing to help him," thought Philip. "He may discover by-and-by that I +have contrived to let myself into his secrets; and that he might have +played a better game by consenting to a partnership." + +A life devoted to his own interests, and a consistent habit of +selfishness, had rendered Mr. Sheldon, of the Lawn, Bayswater, and Stags +Court, City, very quick of apprehension in all matters connected, +immediately or remotely, with the making of money. The broken sentences +of the telegram betrayed by the blotting-pad told him a great deal. They +told him that there was a certain Goodge, in the town of Ullerton, who +possessed letters so valuable to George Sheldon, as to be bought by his +agent Valentine Hawkehurst. Letters for which Sheldon was willing to give +money must needs be of considerable importance, since money was a very +scarce commodity with that hunter of unconscious heirs-at-law. Again, a +transaction which required the use of so expensive a medium as the +electric telegraph rather than the penny post, might be fairly supposed a +transaction of some moment. The letters in question might relate to some +other estate than that of John Haygarth, for it was quite possible that +the schemer of Gray's Inn had other irons in the fire. But this was a +question of no moment to Philip Sheldon. + +If the letters--or the information contained therein--were likely to be +useful to George, they might be useful to him. If George found it worth +his while to employ an agent at Ullerton, why should not he (Philip) have +his agent in the same town? The pecuniary risk, which might be a serious +affair to George, was child's play for Philip, who had always plenty of +money, or, at any rate, the command of money. The whole business of +heir-at-law hunting seemed to the stockbroker a very vague and shadowy +piece of work, as compared to the kind of speculation that was familiar +to him; but he knew that men had made money in such a manner, and any +business by which money could be made, was interesting to him. Beyond +this, the notion of cutting the ground from under his brother's feet had +a certain attraction for him. George's manner to him had been somewhat +offensive to him on more than one occasion since--well, since Tom +Halliday's death. Mr. Sheldon had borne that offensiveness in mind, with +the determination to "take it out of" his brother on the earliest +opportunity. + +It seemed as if the opportunity had arrived, and Philip was not one of +those men who wait shivering on the shore when Fortune's tide is at the +flood. Mr. Sheldon launched his bark upon the rising waters, and within +two hours of his discovery in the telegraph-office was closeted with +Horatio Paget in the little parlour in Omega Street, making arrangements +for the Captain's journey to Ullerton. + +That Horatio was the right man for the work he wanted done, Mr. Sheldon +had been quick to perceive. + +"He knows Hawkehurst, and will be able to reckon up any manoeuvres of his +better than a stranger; and is, I think, altogether as deep an old +gentleman as one could hope to meet with, barring _the_ traditional +gentleman who did odd jobs for Dr. Faustus," the stockbroker said to +himself, as his hansom sped along Park Lane on its way to Chelsea. The +eagerness with which Captain Paget took up the idea of this business was +very agreeable to his patron. + +"This is an affair in which success hinges on time," said Mr. Sheldon; +"so, if you mean to go in for the business, you must start for Ullerton +by the two o'clock express. You'll have just time to throw your razors +and a clean shirt into a carpet-bag while I talk to you. I've got a cab +outside, and a good one, that will take you to Euston Square in half an +hour." + +The Captain showed himself prompt in action. His bedchamber was a small +apartment at the back of the parlour, and here he packed his bag while +conversing with his employer. + +"If you get upon the ground in time, you may obtain a look at the letters +before they are handed over to Hawkehurst, or you may outbid him for +them," said Mr. Sheldon; "but remember, whatever you do must be so done +as to keep Hawkehurst and George completely in the dark as to our +proceedings. If once they find out we are on their track, our chances +will be gone, for they have got the information and we haven't; and it's +only by following close in their footsteps we can hope to do anything." + +"That is understood," replied the Captain, stooping over his bag; "I +shall keep myself as close as possible, you may depend upon it. And it +shan't be my fault if Valentine sees me or hears of me. I shall want +money, by the bye; for one can't stir a step in this sort of affair +without ready cash." + +"I am quite aware of that. I stopped at the West-end branch of the Unitas +and cashed a cheque for forty pounds. You can do a good deal in the way +of bribery for forty pounds, in such a place as Ullerton. What you have +to do is to keep your eye on Hawkehurst, and follow up every channel of +information that he opens for you. He has the clue to the labyrinth, +remember, the reel of cotton, or whatever it was, that the young woman +gave that Roman fellow. All you have to do is to get hold of it, and +follow your leader." continued Philip, with his watch in his hand. "This +business of the letters will be sharp work, for the chances are against +us here, as it's more than likely the papers will have changed hands +before you can get to Ullerton. But if you can't buy the letters, you may +buy the information contained in them, and that is the next best thing. +Your first move will be to ferret out this man Goodge. Everybody knows +everybody else in such a place as Ullerton, large and busy as the town +is, and you won't find that difficult. When you see Goodge, you'll know +how to deal with him. The mode and manner of your dealing I leave to +yourself. You are a man of the world, and will know how to manipulate the +gentleman, whoever he may be. And now lock your bag and cut downstairs as +fast as you can. Time's up. Here's your money--three tens, two fives. +Good day." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +EPISTOLARY. + +_From Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + +Royal Hotel, Ullerton, Oct. 7, 186--. + +My dear sir,--I arrived here last evening just in time to run against +Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a provoking encounter at the +outset. He went further north by the same train that brought me from +London. This train only stops at three places after Ullerton--Slowport, +Black Harbour, and Manchester; and I shall take pains to discover which +of these towns was Hawkehurst's destination. There was one satisfaction +in seeing his departure by this train, inasmuch as it assured me that I +had the ground clear for my own operations. + +I had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of Goodge--_the_ +Goodge we want--and at eight o'clock was comfortably seated in that +gentleman's parlour, talking over the affair of the letters. Tolerably +quick work, I think you will allow, my dear sir, for a man whose years +have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. + +Mr. Goodge is a Methodist parson--a class of person I have always +detested. I found him peculiarly amenable to monetary influence. I need +scarcely tell you that I was careful to conceal my identity from this +person. I made so bold as to borrow the cognomen of an old-established +firm of solicitors in the Fields, and took a somewhat high tone +throughout the interview. I informed Mr. Goodge that the young man who +had called on him with reference to certain letters connected with the +affairs of the Haygarth family--and I perceived from Mr. Goodge's face +that we were on the right track--was a person of disreputable character, +engaged in an underhand transaction calculated to injure a respected +client of our house. I saw that the words "house" and "our" were +talismanic in their effect upon the Methodist parson. You see, my dear +sir, there is no one can manage this sort of thing so well as a +gentleman. It comes natural to him. Your vulgar diplomatist seldom knows +how to begin, and never knows when to stop. Here I had this low-bred +Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and collective +importance after five minutes' conversation. "But this comes too near the +praising of myself; therefore hear other things," as the bard observes. + +A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable. I found +that Hawkehurst had approached him in the character of your brother's +articled clerk, but under his own proper name. This is one point gained, +since it assures me that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned +name; and will enable me to shape my future inquiries about him +accordingly. I also ascertained Hawkehurst's whereabouts when in +Ullerton. He stays at a low commercial house called the Black Swan. It +appears that the man Goodge possesses a packet of letters written by a +certain Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth, wife of one Matthew Haygarth. In what +relationship this Matthew may stand to the intestate is to be discovered. +It is evident he is an important link in the chain, or your brother would +not want the letters. I need not trouble you with our conversation in +detail. In gross it amounted to this: Mr. Goodge had pledged himself to +hand over Mrs. Haygarth's letters, forty or so in number, to Hawkehurst +in consideration of twenty pounds. They would have been already in +Hawkehurst's possession, if Mr. Goodge had not objected to part with them +except for ready money. In consideration of a payment of twenty pounds +from me, he was willing to let me read all the letters, and select any +ten I pleased to take. This bargain was not arrived at without +considerable discussion, but it certainly struck me as a good one. + +I opened the packet of papers then and there, and sat up until six +o'clock the next morning, reading Mrs. Haygarth's letters in Mr. Goodge's +parlour. Very fatiguing occupation for a man of my years. Mr. Goodge's +hospitality began and ended in a cup of coffee. Such coffee! and I +remember the mocha I used to get at Arthur's thirty years ago,--a +Promethean beverage, that illumined the dullest smoking-room bore with a +flash of wit or a glimmer of wisdom. + +I enclose the ten letters which I have selected. They appear to me to +tell the history of Mrs. Haygarth and her husband pretty plainly; but +there is evidently something mysterious lurking behind the commonplace +existence of the husband. That is a matter for future consideration. All +I have to do in the present is to keep you as well informed as your +brother. It may strike you that the letters I forward herewith, which are +certainly the cream of the correspondence, and the notes I have made from +the remaining letters, are scarcely worth the money paid for them. In +reply to such an objection, I can only say that you get more for _your_ +money than your brother George will get for his. + +The hotel at which I have taken up my quarters is but a few paces from +the commoner establishment where Hawkehurst is stopping. He is to call on +Goodge for the letters to-day; so his excursion will be of brief +duration. I find that the name of Haygarth is not unknown in this town, +as there are a family of Judsons, some of whom call themselves Haygarth +Judson. I intend inviting my landlord--a very superior person for his +station--to discuss a bottle of wine with me after my chop this evening, +and hope to obtain some information from him. In the meantime I shall +keep myself close. It is of vital consequence that I should remain unseen +by Hawkehurst. I do not believe he saw me on the platform last night, +though we were as close to each other as we well could be. + +Let me know what you think of the letters, and believe me to be, my +dear sir, very faithfully yours, + +H. N. C. PAGET. + +PHILIP SHELDON, Esq., &c. &c. &c. + + * * * * * + +_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. + +Bayswater, Oct. 8,186-. + +DEAR PAGET,--The letters are mysterious, and I don't see my way to +getting much good out of them, but heartily approve your management of +matters, and give you _carte blanche_ to proceed, according to your own +lights. + +Yours truly, P.S. + + * * * * * + +_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + +Royal Hotel, Oct. 9, 186-. + +MY DEAR SIR,--The cultivation of my landlord has been very profitable. +The house is the oldest in the town, and the business has descended in a +direct line from father to son since the time of George the Second. This +man's grandfather entertained the officers of William Duke of Cumberland, +honoured by his contemporaries with the soubriquet of Billy the Butcher, +during the "forty-five." I had to listen to and applaud a good many +stories about Billy the Butcher before I could lead my landlord round to +the subject of the Haygarths. But he was not more prosy than many men I +have met at dinner-parties in the days when the highest circles in the +land were open to your humble servant. + +The Haygarth family, of which the intestate John Haygarth was the last +male descendant, were for a long period inhabitants of this town, and +obtained their wealth by trading as grocers and general dealers in a shop +not three hundred yards from the room in which I write. The building is +still standing, and a curious, old-fashioned-looking place it is. The +last of the Haygarths who carried on business therein was one Jonathan, +whose son Matthew was the father of that Reverend John Haygarth, lately +deceased, intestate. You will thus perceive that the letters I sent you +are of much importance, as they relate solely to this Matthew, father of +our intestate. + +My next inquiries related to the Judson family, who are, it appears, +descended from the issue of a certain Ruth Haygarth's marriage with one +Peter Judson. This Ruth Haygarth was the only sister of the Matthew +alluded to in the letters, and therefore was aunt of the intestate. It +would herefrom appear that in this Judson family we must naturally look +for the rightful claimant to the fortune of the deceased John Haygarth. +Possessed of this conviction, I proceeded to interrogate my landlord very +cautiously as to the status, &c. of the Judson family, and amongst other +questions, asked him with a complete assumption of indifference, whether +he had ever heard that the Judsons expected to inherit property from any +branch of the Haygarth family. + +This careless interrogatory produced information of, as I imagine, a very +valuable character. A certain Theodore Judson, attorney of this town, +calls himself heir-at-law to the Haygarth estates; but before he can +establish his claim, this Theodore must produce evidence of the demise, +without heirs, of one Peter Judson, eldest surviving grandson of Ruth +Haygarth's eldest son, a scamp and ne'er-do-well--if living, supposed to +be somewhere in India, where he went, as supercargo to a merchant vessel +about, the year '41--who stands prior to Theodore Judson in the +succession. I conclude that the said Theodore, who, as a lawyer, is +likely to do things _secundum artem_, is doing his _possible_ to obtain +the necessary evidence; but in the meantime he is at a dead lock, and the +whole affair appears to be in a charming condition for speculative +interference. I opine, therefore, that your brother really has hit upon a +good thing this time; and my only wonder is, that instead of allowing his +agent, Hawkehurst, to waste his time hunting up old letters of Matthew +Haygarth's (to all appearance valueless as documentary evidence), he does +not send Valentine to India to hunt for Peter Judson, who, if living, is +the rightful heir to the intestate's fortune, and who, as a reckless +extravagant fellow, would be likely to make very liberal terms with any +one who offered to procure him a large lump of money. + +I confess that I am quite at a loss to understand why your brother George +does not take this very obvious course, and why Valentine potters about +in this neighbourhood, when a gold mine is waiting to be _exploite_ on +the other side. + +I shall be very glad to have your views upon this subject, for at the +present moment I am fain to acknowledge that I do not see my way to +taking any further steps in this business, unless by commencing a search +for the missing Peter. + +I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours, + +H. N. C. PAGET. + + * * * * * + +_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. + +Bayswater, Oct. 10, 186--. + +DEAR PAGET,--When so old a stager as G. S. does not take the obvious +course, the inference is that there is a better course to be taken--_not_ +obvious to the uninitiated. + +You have done very well so far, but the information you have obtained +from your landlord is only such information as any one else may obtain +from the current gossip of Ullerton. You haven't yet got to the _dessous +des cartes_. Remember what I told you in London. G. S. _has_ the clue to +this labyrinth; and what you have to do is to hold on to the coat-tails +(in a figurative sense) of his agent, V. H. + +Don't put your trust in prosy old landlords, but continue to set a watch +upon that young man, and follow up his trail as you did in the matter of +the letters. + +If the Peter Judson who went to India three-and-twenty years ago were the +right man to follow, G.S. would scarcely give twenty pounds for the +letters of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth. It appears to me that G. must be +looking for an heir on the Haygarth side of the house; and if so, rely +upon it he has his reasons. Don't bewilder yourself by trying to +theorize, but get to the bottom of G.'s theory. + +Yours truly, P. S. + +_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + + * * * * * + +Royal Hotel, Oct. 12, 186.-- + +MY DEAR SIR,--Considering the advice contained in your last very good, I +lost no time in acting upon it. I need hardly tell you, that to employ +the services of a hired spy, and to degrade myself in some sort to the +level of a private inquirer, was somewhat revolting to a man, who, in the +decadence of his fortunes, has ever striven to place some limit on the +outrages which that hard taskmaster, poverty, may have from time to time +compelled him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of +a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since an +unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I submitted to this +temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and I trust that when the +time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which +I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded +self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium +may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you +that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after +duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the +movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person to play the spy +would be that class of man whose existence seems for the most part +devoted to the lounging at street corners, the chewing of straw, and that +desultory kind of industry known in the _patois_ of this race as +"fetching errands." This is the man, or boy, who starts up from the +pavement (as through a trap-door in the flags) whenever one alights from +or would enter any kind of vehicle. Unbidden, unrequired, and obnoxious, +the creature arises, and opens a door, or lays some rag of his wretched +attire on a muddy wheel, and then whines, piteous, for a copper. Such a +man, or such a boy, I felt convinced must exist among the hangers-on of +the Royal Hotel; nor was I mistaken. On inquiring for a handy lad, +capable of attending upon my needs at all hours in the day, and not a +servant in the hotel, but a person who would be wholly at my own +disposal, I was informed that the Boots had a younger brother who was +skilled in the fetching of errands, and who would be happy to wait upon +me for a very reasonable remuneration, or in the words of the waiter +himself, would be ready to leave it--i.e. the remuneration--to my own +generosity. I know that there are no people who expect so much as those +who leave the assessment of their claims to your own generosity; but +as I wanted good service, I was prepared to pay well. The younger Boots +made his appearance in due course--a sharp young fellow enough--and I +forthwith made him my slave by the promise of five shillings a day for +every day in which I should require his services. I then told him that it +was my misfortune to own--with a strong inclination to disown--a +reprobate nephew, now an inhabitant of that very town. This nephew, I had +reason to believe, was going at a very rapid rate to the dogs; but my +affectionate feelings would not allow him to consummate his own +destruction without one last effort to reclaim him. I had therefore +followed him to Ullerton, whither I believed him to be led by the worst +possible motives; and having done so, my next business was to keep myself +informed of his whereabouts. + +Seeing that the younger Boots accepted these statements with +unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal +to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and +watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my +recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the +limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad's intelligence was likely to be +equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or +complicated position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other +mischance. "Do you think you can watch the gentleman without being +observed?" I asked. "I'm pretty well sure I can, sir," answered the boy, +who is of an enterprising, and indeed audacious, temper. "Very well," +said I, "you will go to the Black Swan Inn. Hawkehurst is the name by +which my nephew is known there, and it will be your duty to find him +out." I gave the boy a minute account of Valentine's appearance, and +other instructions with which I need not trouble you. I further furnished +him with money, so that he might be able to follow Hawkehurst by rail, or +any other mode of conveyance, if necessary; and then despatched him, with +an order to come back to me when he had seen our man safely lodged in the +Black Swan after his day's perambulations. "And if he shouldn't go out at +all?" suggested the lad. "In that case you must stick to your post till +nightfall, and pick up all the information you can about my unfortunate +nephew from the hangers-on of the hotel," said I. "I suppose you know +some one at the Black Swan?" The boy informed me, in his untutored +language, that he knew "a'most all of 'em," and thereupon departed. + +At nine o'clock at night he again appeared before me, big with the +importance of his day's work. He had seen my nephew issue forth from the +Black Swan within an hour of leaving my presence, and had followed him, +first to Mr. William Judson's in Ferrygate, where he waited and hung +about nearly an hour, keeping himself well out of view round the corner +of Chalkin Street, a turning close to Mr. Judson's house. After leaving +this gentleman's house, my renegade nephew had proceeded--carrying a +letter in his hand, and walking as if in very good spirits (but that +fellow Hawkehurst would walk to the gallows in good spirits)--to the +Lancaster Road, where he was admitted into Lochiel Villa, a house +belonging, as my Mercury ascertained from a passing baker's boy, to Miss +Judson, sister of the William Judson of Ferrygate. You will perceive that +this town appears to teem with the Judson family. My messenger, with +praiseworthy art, contrived to engage in a game of tip-cat (what, I +wonder, _is_ a tip-cat?) with some vagrant boys disporting themselves in +the roadway, within view of Miss Judson's house. Hence, after the lapse +of more than an hour, Boots-Mercury beheld my recreant relative emerge, +and from this point followed him--always with extreme caution--back to +the Black Swan. Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close +acquaintance with the ostler, until eight o'clock in the evening, no +event of the smallest importance occurring during all those hours. But at +eight there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss Judson to Mr. +Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was sealed with red wax. This was +all my Mercury could ascertain respecting it; but this was something. + +I at once divined that this packet must needs contain letters. I asked +myself whether those letters or papers had been sold to Hawkehurst, or +only lent to him, and I immediately concluded that they could only have +been lent. It was all very well for Goodge, the Methodist parson, to +traffic in the epistles of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth, but it was to the last +degree unlikely that a well-to-do maiden lady would part with family +letters or papers for any pecuniary consideration whatever. "No," I said +to myself, "the documents have been lent, and will have to be returned;" +and thereupon I laid my plans for the next day's campaign, with a view to +obtaining a peep at those letters, by fair means or foul. I told the boy +to be at his post in the inn yard early the next morning, and if my +nephew did not leave the inn, my agent was to ascertain what he was +doing, and to bring me word thereof. "I'll tell you what it is, Boots," I +said; "I have reason to believe that sadly disposed nephew of mine has +some wicked intention with regard to Miss Judson, who is nearly related +to a young lady with whom that unprincipled young man is, or pretends to +be, in love; and I very much fear that he means to send her some letters, +written by this foolish niece of hers to my more foolish nephew, and +eminently calculated to wound the good lady's feelings. Now, in order to +prevent this very shameful conduct on his part, I want to intercept any +packet or letter which that mistaken youth may send to Miss Judson. Do +you feel yourself capable of getting hold of such a packet, on +consideration of a bonus of half-a-sovereign in addition to the five +shillings per diem already agreed upon?" + +This, in more direct and vulgar phraseology, was what I said to the boy; +and the boy departed, after pledging himself to bring me any packet which +Hawkehurst might despatch from the Swan Inn. The only fear was that +Hawkehurst might carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared +unpleasantly probable. + +Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out. He +intrusted Miss Hudson's packet to his waiter, the waiter confided it to +the Boots, the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy +Mercury, who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a +walk to the Lancaster Road. + +At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part +of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written +by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography; +but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been +somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble +citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal +personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would +provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the +crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems +a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of +princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati, +should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I +could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew +Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully +numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to +any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to +retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's +caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It +appears to me that these letters relate to some _liaison_ of the +gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to +discover that, even in a period notorious for looseness of morals, a man +should enter into such details in a correspondence with his sister. +_Autres temps, autres moeurs_. I have selected my extracts with great +care, and hope that you may be able to make more use of them than I can +at present imagine possible. I shall post this letter and enclosure with +my own hands, though in order to do so I must pass the Black Swan. I +shall despatch my messenger to Lochiel Villa, with Miss Judson's packet, +under cover of the darkness. + +In much haste, to catch the London mail, + +Truly yours, H.N.C.P. + + * * * * * + +_From Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. City, Oct. 12, 186-- + +Dear Paget,--Come back to town. You are only wasting money, time, and +trouble. Yours, P.S. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +TOO CLEVER, FOR A CATSPAW. + +Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by that sudden summons from his +patron, and eager to know what new aspect of affairs rendered his further +presence in Ullerton useless or undesirable. + +Horatio arrived in the great city half-a-dozen hours before his sometime +protege, and was comfortably installed when Valentine returned to those +lodgings in Omega Street, Chelsea, which the two men occupied in common. + +Captain Paget went into the City to see Philip Sheldon on the day of his +return, but did not succeed in finding the stockbroker. The evening's +post brought him a letter from Philip, appointing an interview at +Bayswater, at three o'clock on the following day--the day after +Valentine's return from Ullerton. + +Punctual to the moment appointed by this letter, Captain Paget appeared +at the Lawn on the following day. He was ushered into Mr. Sheldon's +study, where he found that gentleman awaiting him, grave and meditative +of mood, but friendly, and indeed cordial, in his manner to the returning +traveller. + +"My dear Paget, sit down; I am delighted to see you. Your trip has made +you look five years younger, by Jove! I was sorry to find you had called +while I was out, and had waited for me upwards of an hour yesterday. I +have a good deal of worry on my shoulders just now; commerce is all +worry, you know. The Marquis of Lambeth has come into the market and +bought up two-thirds of the Astrakhan Grand Trunk debenture bonds, just +as our house had speculated for the fall. And since it has got wind that +the Marquis is sweet upon the concern, the bonds are going up like a +skyrocket. Such is life. I thought we had better have our little talk +here; it's quieter than in the City. Have some sherry and soda; you like +that Manzanilla of mine, I know." + +And the hospitable Philip rang the bell, without thinking it necessary to +wait for his guest's answer. + +There was a cordiality, a conciliating friendliness about the +stockbroker's manner which Horatio Paget did not like. + +"He's too civil by half," the Captain said to himself; "he means to do +me." + +"And now about this Ullerton business," Mr. Sheldon began, when the wine +and soda-water had been brought, and a tall tumbler of that refreshing +compound filled for the Captain; "you have really managed matters +admirably. I cannot too much applaud your diplomatic tact. You would have +put a what's-his-name--that fellow of Napoleon's--to the blush by your +management of the whole business. But, unfortunately, when it's all done +it comes to nothing; the whole affair is evidently, from beginning to +end, a mare's-nest. It is one of those wild geese which my brother George +has been chasing for the last ten years, and which never have resulted in +profit to him or anybody else; and I should be something worse than a +fool if I were to lend myself any longer to such a folly." + +"Humph," muttered the Captain, "here is a change indeed!" + +"Well, yes," Mr. Sheldon answered coolly. "I dare say my conduct does +seem rather capricious; but you see George put me out of temper the other +day, and I was determined, if he had got a good thing, to cut the ground +from under his feet. All your communications from Ullerton tend to show +me that he has not got hold of a good thing, and that in any attempt to +circumvent him I should only be circumventing myself, wasting your time, +and my own money. This Judson family seems numberless; and it is evident +to me that the Reverend John Haygarth's fortune will be a bone of +contention amongst the Judsons in the High Court of Chancery for any +indefinite number of years between this and the milennium. So I really +think, my dear Paget, we'd better consider this transaction finished. I +will give you whatever honorarium you think fit to name for your trouble, +and we'll close the affair. I shall find plenty more business as good, or +better, for you to do." + +"You are very good," replied the Captain, in nowise satisfied by this +promise. It was all too smooth, too conciliatory. And there was a +suddenness in this change of plan that was altogether mysterious. So +indeed might a capricious man be expected to drop a speculation he had +been eager to inaugurate, but Philip Sheldon was the last of men to be +suspected of caprice. + +"You must have taken an immense deal of trouble with those extracts, +now," said the stockbroker carelessly, as Horatio rose to depart, +offended and angry, but anxious to conceal his anger. "What, are you off +so soon? I thought you would stop and take a chop with us." + +"No, thanks; I have an engagement elsewhere. Yes, I took an +inordinate trouble with those extracts, and I am sorry to think they +should be useless." + +"Well, yes, it is rather provoking to you, I dare say. The extracts would +be very interesting from a social point of view, no doubt, to people who +care about such things; but in a legal sense they are waste-paper. I +can't understand why Hawkehurst was in Ullerton; for, as you yourself +suggested, that Peter Judson who went to India must be the Judson wanted +for this case." + +"Your brother may be in league with some other branch of the Judson +family. Or what if he is hunting for an heir on the Haygarth side?" asked +the Captain, with a very close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's face. Let the +stockbroker be never so skilful a navigator of the high seas of life, +there was no undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of +the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was +not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that +wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the +diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's +sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; +but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead the acute Horatio. + +"How about the Haygarth side of the house?" he asked again; for it had +seemed to him that at his first mention of the name of Haygarth Mr. +Sheldon had winced, ever so little. This time, however, he betrayed not +the faintest concern; but he was doubtless now on his guard. + +"Well, I don't see how there can be any claimant on that side of the +house," he said carelessly. "You see, according to your old landlord's +statement--which I take to be correct--Jonathan Haygarth had but one son, +a certain Matthew, who married one Rebecca So-and-so, and had, in his +turn one only son, the intestate John. Now, in that case, where is your +heir to come from, except through Matthew's sister Ruth, who married +Peter Judson?" + +"Isn't it just possible that Matthew Haygarth may have married twice, and +had other children? Those letters certainly suggest the idea of a secret +alliance of some kind on Haygarth's part, and the existence of a family, +to whom he appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this +affair was that it must have been a low _liaison_; but I could hardly +realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under any such +circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been. +Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at some mystery in her husband's +life. Is it not likely that this hidden family was a legitimate one?" + +"I can't quite see my way to that idea," Mr. Sheldon answered, in a +meditative tone. "It seems very unlikely that any marriage of Haygarth's +could have remained unknown to his townsmen; and even if it were so, I +doubt the possibility of our tracing the heirs from such a marriage. No, +my dear Paget, I have resolved to wash my hands of the business, and +leave my brother George in undisturbed possession of his ground." + +"In that case, perhaps, you will return my notes; they are +interesting to me." + +Here again the faintest indication of annoyance in the stockbroker's face +told its tale to Captain Paget. For your accomplished navigator of the +unknown seas there is no ocean bird, no floating weed, that has not a +language and a significance. + +"You can have your notes, if you want them," answered Mr. Sheldon; "they +are at my office. I'll hunt them up and send them to you; or you had +better look in upon me in the City early next week, and I can give you a +cheque at the same time." + +"Thanks. I will be sure and do so." + +"You say the orthography of the original letters was queer. I suppose +your copies were faithful in all matters except the orthography. And in +the names, you of course adhered to the original spelling?" + +"Most decidedly," replied Captain Paget, opening the door to depart, +and with a somewhat cynical smile upon his face, which was hidden from +Mr. Sheldon. + +"I suppose there is no doubt of your accuracy with regard to the name of +Meynell, now?" + +"Not the least. Good afternoon. Ah, there's our young friend Hawkehurst!" +exclaimed the Captain, in his "society" voice, as he looked out into the +hall, where Valentine was parting with Diana. + +He came and greeted his young friend, and they left the house together. + +This was the occasion upon which Valentine was startled by hearing the +name "Meynell" pronounced by the lips of Philip Sheldon. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL. + +Horatio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully +convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off the scent, +in order to follow up the chase alone, for his sole profit and advantage. + +"My last letter conveyed some intelligence that altered his whole plan of +action," thought the Captain; "that is perfectly clear. He was somewhat +wanting in tact when he recalled me so suddenly. But I suppose he thought +it would be easy to throw dust in my poor old eyes. What was the +intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question." +Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined +well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he +was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative +mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his +meditation was Philip Sheldon. + +"Yes," he murmured at last, "that is it. The charm is in the name of +Meynell. Why else should he question me about the orthography of that +name? I sent him information about Matthew Haygarth in the wife's +letters, and he took no special notice of that information. It was only +when the name of Meynell cropped up that he changed his tactics and tried +to throw me over. It seems to me that he must have some knowledge of this +Meynell branch, and therefore thinks himself strong enough to act alone, +and to throw me over the bridge. To throw me over," the Captain repeated +to himself slowly. "Well, we'll see about that. We'll see; yes, we'll +see." + +At noon on the following day Captain Paget presented himself again at the +Bayswater villa, where his daughter ate the bread of dependence. He +appeared this time in a purely paternal character. He came to call upon +his only child. Before paying this visit the Captain had improved the +shining hour by a careful study of the current and two or three back +volumes of the Post-Office and Trade Directories; but all his researches +in those interesting volumes had failed to reveal to him the existence of +any metropolitan Meynells. + +"The Meynells whom Sheldon knows may be in the heart of the country," he +said to himself, after these futile labours. + +It was a fine autumnal morning, and as Miss Paget was at home and +disengaged, her affectionate father suggested that she should take a walk +with him in Kensington Gardens. Such a promenade had very little +attraction for the young lady; but she had a vague idea that she owed a +kind of duty to her father not remitted by his neglect of all duties to +her; so she assented with a smile, and went out with him, looking very +handsome and stylish in her simple but fashionable attire, no part of +which had been provided by the parent she accompanied. + +The Captain surveyed her with some sense of family pride. "Upon my word, +my dear, you do me credit!" he exclaimed, with a somewhat patronising +kindness of tone and manner; "indeed any man might be proud of such a +daughter. You are every inch a Paget." + +"I hope not, papa," said the girl involuntarily; but the Captain's more +delicate instincts had been considerably blunted in the press and jostle +of life, and he did not feel the sting of this remark. + +"Well, perhaps you are right, my love," he replied blandly; "the Pagets +_are_ an unlucky family. Like those Grecian people, the Atri--, +what's-his-name--the man who was killed in his bath, you know. His wife, +or the other young person who had come to visit his daughters, made the +water too hot, you know--and that kind of thing. I am not quite clear +about the story, but it's one of those farragos of rubbish they make +young men learn at public schools. Yes, my dear, I really am amazingly +pleased by your improved appearance. Those Sheldon people dress you very +nicely; and I consider your residence in that family a very agreeable +arrangement for all parties. You confer a favour on the girl by your +society, and so on, and the mother provides you with a comfortable home; +All I wonder is that your good looks haven't made their mark before this +with some of Sheldon's rich stockbroking fellows." + +"We see very little of the stockbroking fellows, as you call them, at the +Lawn, papa." + +"Indeed! I thought Sheldon kept a great deal of company." + +"O no. He gives a dinner now and then, a gentleman's dinner usually; and +poor Mrs. Sheldon is very anxious that it should all go off well, as she +says; but I don't think he is a person who cares much for society." + +"Really, now?" + +"His mind seems completely occupied by his business, you see, papa. That +horrible pursuit of gain seems to require all his thoughts, and all his +time. He is always reading commercial papers, the _Money Market_ and _On +Change_, and the _Stockbrokers' Vade Mecum_, and publications of that +kind. When he is not reading he is thinking; and by his manner one would +fancy his thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a miserable, +hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that man for all the money +in the Bank of England. But it is a kind of treachery to tell these +things. Mr. Sheldon is very good to me. He lets me sit at his table and +share the comforts of his home, and I must be very ungrateful to speak +against him. I do _not_ mean to speak against him, you see, papa--I only +mean that a life devoted to money-making is in itself hateful." + +"My dear child, you may be assured that anything you say to _me_ will go +no further," said the Captain, with dignity; "and in whom should you +confide, if not in your father? I have a profound respect for Sheldon and +his family--yes, my love, a profound respect; and I think that girl +Sarah--no, I mean Charlotte--a very charming young person. I need +scarcely tell you that the smallest details of your life in that family +possess a keen interest for me. I am not without a father's feelings, +Diana, though circumstances have never permitted me to perform a father's +duties." + +And here the solitary tear which the accomplished Horatio could produce +at will trembled in his eye. This one tear was always at his command. For +the life of him he could not have produced a second; but the single drop +never failed him, and he found one tear as effective as a dozen, in +giving point and finish to a pathetic speech. + +Diana looked at him, and wondered, and doubted. Alas, she knew him only +too well! Any other creature in this wide world he might deceive, but not +her. She had lived with him; she had tasted the bitterness of dependence +upon him--ten times more bitter than dependence on strangers. She had +shown him her threadbare garments day after day, and had pleaded for a +little money, to be put off with a lying excuse. She could not forget +this. She had forgiven him long ago, being of too generous a nature to +brood upon past injuries. But she could not forget what manner of man he +was, and thank him for pretty speeches which she knew to be meaningless. + +They talked a little more of Mr. Sheldon and his family, but Diana did +not again permit herself to be betrayed into any vehement expressions of +her opinions. She answered all her father's questions without restraint, +for they were very commonplace questions, of a kind that might be +answered without any breach of faith. + +"Amongst the Sheldons' acquaintances did you ever hear of any people +called Meynell?" Captain Paget asked at length. + +"Yes," Diana replied, after a moment's thought; "the name is certainly +very familiar to me;" and then, after a pause, she exclaimed, "Why, the +Meynells were relations of Charlotte's! Yes, her grandmother was a Miss +Meynell; I perfectly remember hearing Mrs. Sheldon talk about the +Meynells. But I do not think there are any descendants of that family now +living. Why do you ask the question, papa? What interest have you in the +Meynells?" + +"Well, my dear, I have my reasons, but they in no manner concern Mr. +Sheldon or his family; and I must beg you to be careful not to mention +the subject in your conversation with those worthy people. I want to know +all about this Meynell family. I have come across some people of that +name, and I want to ascertain the precise relationship existing between +these people and the Sheldons. But the Sheldons must know nothing of this +inquiry for the present. The people I speak of are poor and proud, and +they would perish rather than press a relationship upon a rich man, +unless fully justified by the closeness of family ties. I am sure you +understand all this, Diana?" + +"Not very clearly, papa." + +"Well, my dear, it is a delicate position, and perhaps somewhat difficult +for the comprehension of a third party. All you need understand is the +one fact, that any information respecting the Meynell family will be +vitally interesting to my friends, and, through them, serviceable to me. +There is, in fact, a legacy which these friends of mine could claim, +under a certain will, if once assured as to the degree of their +relationship to your friend Charlotte's kindred on the Meynell side of +the house. To give them the means of securing this legacy would be to +help the ends of justice; and I am sure, Diana, you would wish to do +that." + +"Of course, papa, if I can do so without any breach of faith with my +employers. Can you promise me that no harm will result to the Sheldons, +above all to Charlotte Halliday, from any information I may procure for +you respecting the Meynell family?" + +"Certainly, Diana, I can promise you that. I repeat most solemnly, +that by obtaining such information for me you will be aiding the cause +of justice." + +If Horatio Paget might ever be betrayed into the inconsistency of a +truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that it was likely to be in +this moment. His words sounded like truth; and, on reflection, Diana +failed to perceive that she could by any possibility inflict wrong on her +friends by obliging her father in this small affair. + +"Let me think the matter over, papa," she said. + +"Nonsense, Diana; what thinking over can be wanted about such a trifle? I +never before asked you a favour. Surely you cannot refuse to grant so +simple a request, after the trouble I have taken to explain my reasons +for making it." + +There was some further discussion, which ended in Miss Paget consenting +to oblige her father. + +"And you will manage matters with tact?" urged the Captain, at parting. + +"There is no especial tact required, papa," replied Diana; "the matter is +easy enough. Mrs. Sheldon is very fond of talking about her own affairs. +I have only to ask her some leading question about the Meynells, and she +will run on for an hour, telling me the minutest details of family +history connected with them. I dare say I have heard the whole story +before, and have not heeded it: I often find my thoughts wandering when +Mrs. Sheldon is talking." + +Three days after this Captain Paget called on Mr. Sheldon in the City, +when he received a very handsome recompense for his labours at Ullerton, +and became repossessed of the extracts he had made from Matthew +Haygarth's letters, but not of the same Mr. Haygarth's autograph letter: +that document Mr. Sheldon confessed to having mislaid. + +"He has mislaid the original letter, and he has had ample leisure for +copying my extracts; and he thinks I am such a consummate fool as not to +see all that," thought Horatio, as he left the stockbroker's office, +enriched but not satisfied. + +In the course of the same day he received a long letter from Diana +containing the whole history of the Meynells, as known to Mrs. Sheldon. +Once set talking, Georgy had told all she could tell, delighted to find +herself listened to with obvious interest by her companion. + +"I trust that you have not deceived me, my dear father," Diana concluded, +after setting forth the Meynell history. "The dear good soul was so +candid and confiding, and seemed so pleased by the interest I showed in +her family affairs, that I should feel myself the vilest of wretches if +any harm could result to her, or those she loves, from the information +thus obtained." + +The information was very complete. Mrs. Sheldon had a kindly and amiable +nature, but she was not one of those sensitive souls who instinctively +shrink from a story of bitter shame or profound sorrow as from a cureless +wound. She told Diana, with many lamentations, and much second-hand +morality, the sad history of Susan Meynell's elopement, and of the +return, fourteen years afterwards, of the weary wanderer. Even the poor +little trunk, with the name of the Rouen trunk-maker, Mrs. Sheldon dwelt +upon with graphic insistence. A certain womanly delicacy had prevented +her ever telling this story in the presence of her brother-in-law, George +Sheldon, whose hard worldly manner in no way invited any sentimental +revelation. Thus it happened that George had never heard the name of +Meynell in connection with his friend Tom Halliday's family, or had heard +it so seldom as to have entirely forgotten it. To Horatio his daughter's +letter was priceless. It placed him at once in as good a position as +Philip Sheldon, or as George Sheldon and his coadjutor, Valentine +Hawkehurst. There were thus three different interests involved in the +inheritance of the Reverend John Haygarth. + +Captain Paget sat late by a comfortable fire, in his own bedchamber, that +night, enjoying an excellent cigar, and meditating the following jottings +from a pedigree:-- + +CHARLOTTE MEYNELL, married JAMES HALLIDAY. + | +THOMAS HALLIDAY, only son of above, married GEORGINA, now Mrs. SHELDON; + | had issue, +CHARLOTTE HALLIDAY. + +SUSAN MEYNELL, only and elder sister of the above-named Charlotte, ran +away from her home, in Yorkshire, with a Mr. Kingdon, brother to Lord +Darnsville. Fate unknown during fourteen years of her life. Died in +London, 1835. Buried under her maiden name; but no positive evidence to +show that she was unmarried. + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR. + +Once in possession of the connection between the intestate John Haygarth +and the Halliday family, Captain Paget's course was an easy one. He +understood now why his investigations had been so suddenly brought to a +standstill. Philip Sheldon had discovered the unexpected connection, and +was eager to put a stop to researches that might lead to a like discovery +on the part of his coadjutor. + +"And Sheldon expects to prove his stepdaughter's claim to this fortune?" +thought the Captain. "He will affect ignorance of the whole transaction +until his plans are ripe, and then spring them suddenly upon his brother +George. I wonder if there is anything to be made out of George by letting +him into the secret of his brother's interference? No; I think not. +George is as poor as a church mouse, and Philip must always be the more +profitable acquaintance." + +On the broad basis afforded by Diana's letter Captain Paget was able to +build up the whole scheme of the Haygarthian succession. The pedigree of +the Meynells was sufficiently simple, if their legitimate descent from +Matthew Haygarth could be fairly proved. Charlotte Halliday was +heiress-at-law to the fortune of John Haygarth, always provided that her +great-aunt Susan died without legitimate issue. + +Here was the one chance which appeared to the adventurous mind of Horatio +Paget worth some trouble in the way of research. Fourteen years of Susan +Meynell's life had been spent away from all who knew her. It was +certainly possible that in that time she might have formed some +legitimate alliance. + +This was the problem which Horatio set himself to solve. Your adventurer +is, of all manner of men, the most sanguine. Sir Walter Raleigh sees +visions of gold and glory where grave statesmen see only a fool's +paradise of dreams and fancies. To the hopeful mind of the Captain these +fourteen unrecorded years of Susan Meynell's life seemed a very Golconda. + +He did not, however, rest satisfied with the information afforded by +Diana's letter. + +"I will have the story of these Meynells at first-hand as well as at +second-hand," he said to himself; and he lost no time in presenting +himself again at the Villa--this time as a visitor to Mrs. Sheldon. + +With Georgy he had been always a favourite. His little stories of the +great world--the Prince and Perdita, Brummel and Sheridan--though by no +means novel to those acquainted with that glorious period of British +history, were very agreeable to Georgy. The Captain's florid flatteries +pleased her; and she contrasted the ceremonious manners of that gentleman +with the curt business-like style of her husband, very much to the +Captain's advantage. He came to thank her for her goodness to his child, +and this occasion gave him ample opportunity for sentiment. He had asked +to see Mrs. Sheldon alone, as his daughter's presence would have been +some hindrance to the carrying out of his design. + +"There are things I have to say which I should scarcely care to utter +before my daughter, you see, my dear Mrs. Sheldon," he said, with +pathetic earnestness. "I should not wish to remind the dear child of her +desolate position; and I need scarcely tell you that position is _very_ +desolate. A father who, at his best, cannot provide a fitting home for a +delicately nurtured girl, and who at any moment may be snatched away, is +but a poor protector. And were it not for your friendship, I know not +what my child's fate might be. The dangers and temptations that beset a +handsome young woman are very terrible, my dear Mrs. Sheldon." + +This was intended to lead up to the subject of Susan Meynell, but Georgy +did not rise to the bait. She only shook her head plaintively in assent +to the Captain's proposition. + +"Yes, madam; beauty, unallied with strength of mind and high principles, +is apt to be a fatal dower. In every family there are sad histories," +murmured the sentimental Horatio. + +Even this remark did not produce the required result; so the Captain drew +upon his invention for a specimen history from the annals of his own +house, which was a colourable imitation of Susan Meynell's story. + +"And what was the end of this lovely Belinda Paget's career, my dear Mrs. +Sheldon?" he concluded. "The gentleman was a man of high rank, but a +scoundrel and a dastard. Sophia's brother, a cornet in the First Life +Guards, called him out, and there was a meeting on Wimbledon Common, in +which Lavinia's seducer was mortally wounded. There was a trial, and the +young captain of Hussars, Amelia's brother, was sentenced to +transportation for life. I need scarcely tell you that the sentence was +never carried out. The young man fell gloriously at Waterloo, at the head +of his own regiment, the Scotch Fusiliers, and Lavinia--I beg pardon, +Amelia; nay, what am I saying? the girl's name was Belinda--embraced the +Roman Catholic faith, and expired from the effects of stigmata inflicted +by her own hands in a paroxysm of remorse for her brother's untimely +death at the hands of her seducer." + +This lively little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. Melted by the +woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or Amelia, or Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Sheldon was +moved to relate a sad event in her husband's family; and encouraged by +the almost tearful sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated every +detail of Susan Meynell's life, as known to her kindred. And as this +recital had flowed spontaneously from the good soul's lips, she would be +scarcely likely to allude to it afterwards in conversation with Mr. +Sheldon; more especially as that gentleman was not in the habit of +wasting much of his valuable time in small-talk with the members of his +own household. + +Captain Paget had duly calculated this, and every other hazard that +menaced the intricate path he had mapped out for himself. + +Satisfied by Mrs. Sheldon's repetition of Susan Meynell's story, and +possessed of all the information he could hope to obtain from that +quarter, Horatio set himself to consider what steps must next be taken. +Much serious reflection convinced even his sanguine mind that the +enterprise was a difficult one, and could scarcely be carried through +successfully without help from some skilled genealogist. + +"George Sheldon has given his lifetime to this sort of thing, and is a +skilled lawyer to boot," Captain Paget said to himself. "If I hope to go +in against him, I must have someone at my elbow as well versed in this +sort of business as he is." + +Having once admitted this necessity, the Captain set himself to consider +where he was to find the right person. A very brief meditation settled +this question. One among the numerous business transactions of Captain +Paget's life had brought him in contact with a very respectable little +French gentleman called Fleurus, who had begun his career as a notary, +but, finding that profession unprofitable, had become a hunter of +pedigrees and heirs-at-law--for the most part to insignificant legacies, +unclaimed stock, and all other jetsam and flotsam thrown up on the +shadowy shores of the Court of Chancery. M. Fleurus had not often been so +fortunate as to put his industrious fingers into any large pie, but he +had contrived to make a good deal of money out of small affairs, and had +found his clients grateful. + +"The man of men," thought Horatio Paget; and he betook himself to the +office of M. Fleurus early next day, provided with all documents relating +to the Haygarthian succession. + +His interview with the little Frenchman was long and satisfactory. On +certain conditions as to future reward, said reward to be contingent on +success, M. Fleurus was ready to devote himself heart and soul to the +interests of Captain Paget. + +"To begin: we must find legal evidence of this Matthew Haygarth's +marriage to the mother of this child C., who came afterwards to marry the +man Meynell; and after we will go to Susan Meynell. Her box came from +Rouen--that we know. Where her box came from she is likely to have come +from. So it is at Rouen, or near Rouen, we must look for her. Let me see: +she die in 1835! that is long time. To look for the particulars of her +life is like to dive into the ocean for to find the lost cargo of a ship +that is gone down to the bottom, no one knows where. But to a man really +expert in these things there is nothing of impossible. I will find you +your Susan Meynell in less than six months; the evidence of her marriage; +if she was married; her children, if she had children." + +In less than six months--the margin seemed a wide one to the impatient +Horatio. But he knew that such an investigation must needs be slow, and +he left the matters in the hands of his new ally with a sense that he had +done the best thing that could be done. Then followed for Horatio Paget +two months of patient attendance upon fortune. He was not idle during +this time; for Mr. Sheldon, who seemed particularly anxious to conciliate +him, threw waifs and strays of business into his way. Before the middle +of November M. Fleurus had found the register of Matthew Haygarth's +marriage, as George Sheldon had found it before him, working in the same +groove, and with the same order of intelligence. After this important +step M. Fleurus departed for his native shores, where he had other +business besides the Meynell affair to claim his attention. Meanwhile the +astute Horatio kept a close eye upon his young friend Valentine. He knew +from Diana that the young man had been in Yorkshire; and he guessed the +motive of his visit to Newhall, not for a moment supposing that his +presence in that farmhouse could have been accidental. The one turn of +affairs that utterly and completely mystified him was Mr. Sheldon's +sanction of the engagement between Valentine and Charlotte. This was a +mystery for which he could for some time find no solution. + +"Sheldon will try to establish his stepdaughter's claim to the fortune; +that is clear. But why does he allow her to throw herself away on a +penniless adventurer like Hawkehurst? If she were to marry him before +recovering the Haygarth estate, she would recover it as his wife, and the +fortune would be thrown unprotected into his hands." + +More deliberate reflection cast a faint light upon Philip Sheldon's +motives for so quixotic a course. + +"The girl had fallen in love with Val. It was too late to prevent that. +She is of age, and can marry whom she pleases. By showing himself opposed +to her engagement with Val, he might have hurried her into rebellion, and +an immediate marriage. By affecting to consent to the engagement, he +would, on the contrary, gain time, and the advantage of all those chances +that are involved in the lapse of time." + +Within a few days of Christmas came the following letter from M. +Fleurus:-- + + +_From Jacques Rousseau Fleurus to Horatio Paget_. + +Hotel de la Pucelle, place Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 21st December, 186--. + +MONSIEUR,--After exertions incalculable, after labours herculean, I come +to learn something of your Susan Meynell,--more, I come to learn of her +marriage. But I will begin at the beginning of things. The labours, the +time, the efforts, the courage, the patience, the--I will say it without +to blush--the genius which this enterprise has cost me, I will not +enlarge upon. There are things which cannot tell themselves. To commence, +I will tell you how I went to Rouen, how I advertised in the journals of +Rouen, and asked among the people of Rouen--at shops, at hotels, by the +help of my allies, the police, by means which you, in your inexperience +of this science of research, could not even figure to yourself--always +seeking the trace of this woman Meynell. It was all pain lost. Of this +woman Meynell in Rouen there was no trace. + +In the end I enraged myself. "Imbecile!" I said to myself, "why seek in +this dull commercial city, among this heavy people, for that which thou +shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? As the rivers go to the +ocean, so flow all the streams of human life to the one great central +ocean of humanity--PARIS! It is there the Alpha and the Omega--there the +mighty heart through which the blood of all the body must be pumped, and +is pumping always," I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the +sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in whose verse I find an echo of +my own soul, and whose compositions I flatter myself I could have +surpassed, if I had devoted to the Muses the time and the powers which I +have squandered on a _vilain_ metier, that demands the genius of a +Talleyrand, and rewards with the crust of an artisan. + +In Paris, then, I will seek the woman Meynell, and to Paris I go. In my +place an inexperienced person would advertise in the most considerable +papers; would invite Susan Meynell to hear of something to her +advantage; and would bring together a crowd of false Susan Meynells, +greedy to obtain the benefice. Me, I do nothing in this style there. On +the contrary, in the most obscure little journals of Paris I publish a +modest little advertisement as from the brother of Susan Meynell, who +implores his sister to visit him on his deathbed. + +Here are follies, you will say. Since Susan Meynell is dead it is thirty +years, and her brother is dead also. Ah, how you are dull, you insulars, +and how impossible for your foggy island to produce a Fouche, a Canler, a +genius of police, a Columbus of the subterranean darknesses of your city. + +The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead; and who will answer +that letter, think you? Some good Christian soul who has pity for the +sick man, and who will not permit him to languish in waiting the sister +who will come to him never. For us of the Roman Catholic religion the +duty of charity is paramount. You of the Anglican faith--bah, how you are +cold, how you are hard, how you are unpitiable! + +My notice appears once, my notice appears twice, three times, four times, +many times. I occupy myself about my other business, and I wait. I do not +wait unusefully. In effect, a letter arrives at last at the address of +the dying, from a lady who knew Susan Meynell _before her marriage with +M. Lenoble._ + +Think you not that to me this was a moment of triumph? _Before her +marriage with M. Lenoble!_ Those words appear under my eyes in the +writing of the unknown lady. "It is found!" I cry to myself; and then I +hasten myself to reply to the unknown lady. Will she permit me to see +her? + +With all politeness I make the request; with all politeness it is +answered. The lady calls herself Mademoiselle Servin. She resides in the +street Grande-Mademoiselle, at the corner of the Place Lauzun. It is of +all the streets of Paris the most miserable. One side is already removed. +In face of the windows of those houses that still stand they are making a +new Boulevard. Behind they are pulling down edifices of all kinds in the +formation of a new square. At the side there is a yawning chasm between +two tall houses, through which they pierce a new street. One sees the +interior of many rooms rising one above another for seven stories. Here +the gay hangings of an apartment of little master; there the still +gaudier decoration of a boudoir of these ladies. High above these +luxurious salons--ah, but how much more near to the skies!--one sees the +poor grey paper, blackened and smoky, of a garret of sempstress, or +workman, and the hearths black, deserted. These interiors thus exposed +tighten me the heart. It is the autopsy of the domestic hearth. + +I find the Mademoiselle Servin an old lady, grey and wan. The house where +she now resides is the house which she has inhabited five-and-thirty +years. They talk of pulling it down, and to her the idea of leaving it is +exquisite pain. She is alone, a teacher of music. She has seen +proprietors come and go. The _pension_ has changed mistresses many times. +Students of law and of medicine have come and passed like the shadows of +a magic lantern; but this poor soul has remained still in her little room +on the fourth, and has kept always her little old piano. + +It was here she knew Susan Meynell, and a young Frenchman who became in +love with her, for she was beautiful like the angels, this lady said to +me. + +Until we meet for all details. Enough that I come to discover where the +marriage took place, that I come to obtain a copy of the register, and +that I do all things in rule. Enough that the marriage is a good +marriage--a regular marriage, and that I have placed myself already in +communication with the heir of that marriage, who resides within some few +leagues of this city. + +My labours, my successes I will not describe. It must that they will be +recompensed in the future. I have dispensed much money during these +transactions. + +Agree, monsieur, that I am your devoted servitor, + +JACQUES ROUSSEAU FLEURUS. + + * * * * * + +It was in consequence of the receipt of this missive that the Captain +trusted himself to the winds and waves in the cheerless December weather. +He was well pleased to find that M. Fleurus had made discoveries so +important; but he had no idea of letting that astute practitioner absorb +all the power into his own hands. + +"I must see Susan Meynell's heir," he said to himself; "I must give him +clearly to understand that to me he owes the discovery of his claims, and +that in this affair the Frenchman Fleurus is no more than a paid agent." + + + + +Book the Fourth. + + + +GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +HALCYON DAYS. + +Once having offered up the fondest desires of her own heart on the +shrine of duty, Diana Paget was not a person to repent herself of the +pious sacrifice. After that Christmas night on which she had knelt at +Charlotte's feet to confess her sad secret, and to resign all claim to +the man she had loved so foolishly, so tenderly, with such a romantic +and unselfish devotion, Miss Paget put away all thought of the past from +her heart and mind. Heart and mind seemed empty and joyless without +those loved tenants, though the tenants had been only fair wraiths of +dreams that were dead. There was a sense of something missing in her +life--a blank, dull calm, which was at first very painful. But for +Charlotte's sake she was careful to hide all outward token of +despondency, and the foolish grief, put down by so strong a hand, was +ere long well-nigh stifled. + +Those dark days which succeeded Christmas were a period of halcyon peace +for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover came to the villa when he +pleased, but was still careful not to encroach on the license allowed +him. Once a week he permitted himself the delight of five-o'clock tea in +Mrs. Sheldon's drawing-room, on which occasions he brought Charlotte all +the news of his small literary world, and a good deal of useful +information out of the books he had been reading. When Mr. Sheldon +pleased to invite him to dinner on Sunday he gladly accepted the +invitation, and this Sunday dinner became in due course an established +institution. + +"You may as well make this your home on a Sunday," said Mr. Sheldon one +day, with careless cordiality; "I dare say you find Sunday dull in your +lodgings." + +"Yes, papa," cried Charlotte, "he does find it very dull--dreadfully +dull--don't you, Valentine?" + +And she regarded him with that pretty, tender, almost motherly look, +which young ladies who are engaged are apt to bestow on their affianced +lovers. + +Miss Halliday was very grateful to her stepfather for his kindness to her +landless adorer, and showed her appreciation of his conduct in many +pretty little caressing ways, which would have been infinitely bewitching +to a person of sentiment. + +Unfortunately Mr. Sheldon was not sentimental, and any exhibition of +feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were +times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as +from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear--what was it that +showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that +strange look was, it departed too quickly for analysis; and the +stockbroker thanked his stepdaughter for her little affectionate +demonstration with his wonted smile--the smile he smiled on Change, the +smile which was sometimes on his lips when his mind was a nest of +scorpions. + +To Valentine, in these rosy hours, life seemed full of hope and +brightness. He transferred his goods and chattels from Omega Street, +Chelsea, to the pleasant lodging in the Edgware Road, where he was nearer +Charlotte, and out of the way of his late patron Captain Paget, in the +event of that gentleman's return from the Continent. + +Fortune favoured him. The gaiety of heart which came with his happiness +lent a grace to his pen. Pleasant thoughts and fancies bedecked his +pages. He saw everything in the rosy light of love and beauty, and there +was a buoyant freshness in all he wrote. The Pegasus might be but a +common hackney, but the hack was young and fresh, and galloped gaily as +he scented the dewy morning air. It is not every poet whose Pegasus +clears at a bound a space as wide as all that waste of land and sea the +watchman views from his tall tower on the rock. + +Mr. Hawkehurst's papers on Lauzun, Brummel, Sardanapalus, Rabelais, Lord +Chesterfield, Erasmus, Beau Nash, Apelles, Galileo, and Philip of +Orleans, were in demand, and the reading public wondered at this prodigy +of book-making. He had begun to save money, and had opened a deposit +account at the Unitas Bank. How he gloated over the deposit receipts in +the stillness of the night, when he added a fresh one to his store! When +he had three, for sums amounting in all to forty pounds, he took them to +Charlotte, and she looked at them, and he looked at them, as if the poor +little bits of printed paper had been specimens of virgin ore from some +gold mine newly discovered by Mr. Hawkehurst. And then these foolish +lovers kissed each other, as William Lee and his wife may have embraced +after the penniless young student had perfected his invention of the +stocking-frame. + +"Forty pounds!" exclaimed Miss Halliday, "all won by your pen, and your +poor fingers, and your poor, poor head! How it must ache after a long +day's work! How clever you must be, Valentine!" + +"Yes, dear; amazingly clever. Clever enough to know that you are the +dearest girl in Christendom." + +"Don't talk nonsense, sir! You are not clever enough to have the +privilege of doing that yet awhile. I mean, how learned you must be to +know such lots of things, all about Erasmus, and Galileo, and--" + +"No, my darling, not Erasmus and Galileo. I knew all about Erasmus last +week; but I am working at my paper on Galileo now, an exhaustive review +of all the books that were ever written on the subject, in ten pages. I +don't ask other people to remember what I write, you know, my dear, and I +don't pledge myself to remember it. That sort of thing won't keep. There +is a kind of sediment, no doubt, in one's note-book; but the +effervescence of that vintage goes off rather quickly." + +"I only know that you are a very clever person, and that one obtains an +immensity of information from your writings," said Charlotte. + +"Yes, dearest, there is a kind of wine that must be made into negus for +such pretty little topers as you--the 'Wine of Cyprus,' as Mrs. Browning +called it. It is better for pretty girls to have the negus than to have +nothing, or only weak home-brewed stuff that results in head-ache. My +dearest, Fate has been very good to me, and I love my profession of +letters. I am sure that of all educational processes there is none better +than book-making; and the man who begins by making books must be a dolt, +dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by writing them. So you may yet +hope to see the morning that shall make your Valentine famous--for a +fortnight. What man can hope to be famous for _more_ than a fortnight in +such a railroad age as this?" + +During this halcyon period, in which Mr. Hawkehurst cultivated +alternately the society of the Muses and his mistress, he saw little or +nothing of George Sheldon. He had washed his hands of all share in the +work of establishing Charlotte Halliday's claim to the Reverend John +Haygarth's thousands. Indeed, since that interview in which Philip +Sheldon had made so light of his stepdaughter's chances, and ratified his +consent to her marriage with so humble a literary adventurer as himself, +Mr. Hawkehurst had come to consider the Haygarthian inheritance as +altogether a visionary business. If it were certain, or even probable, +that Charlotte was to inherit a hundred thousand pounds, was it likely +that Mr. Sheldon would encourage such an alliance? This question Mr. +Hawkehurst always answered in the negative; and as days and weeks went +by, and he heard no more of the Haygarth fortune, the idea of Charlotte's +wealth became more and more shadowy. + +If there were anything doing in this matter, the two brothers were now +working together, and George had no further need of Valentine's help. + +The two brothers were not working entirely together. Philip Sheldon had +taken the matter into his own strong hand, and George found it very +difficult to hold an inch of ground against that formidable antagonist. +The papers and information which George had boasted of to Valentine, and +the possession whereof was, as he asserted, the very keystone of the +arch, proved to be of such small account that he ultimately consented to +hand them over to his brother on the payment of expenses out of pocket, +and a bonus of one hundred and fifty pounds, together with a written +undertaking from Miss Halliday to pay him the fifth share of any fortune +recovered by means of those papers. + +This undertaking had been executed in the easiest manner. + +"My brother has taken it into his wise head that there is some unclaimed +stock standing in your grandfather's name which you are entitled to, +Lotta," Mr. Sheldon said one morning; "and he wants to recover the amount +for you, on condition of receiving a clear fifth when the sum is +recovered. Have you any objection to sign such an undertaking?" + +"Dear papa, how can I object?" cried Charlotte gaily. "Why, stocks are +money, are they not? How fortunate we are, and how rich we are getting!" + +"We!" + +"Valentine and I," murmured the girl, blushing. "I cannot help thinking +of him when any windfall of good fortune comes to me. What do you think, +papa? He has saved forty pounds in little more than three months--all +earned by his pen! + +"Behold +The arch-enchanter's wand! Itself a nothing; +But taking sorcery from the master-hand +To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike +The loud earth breathless!" + +And Miss Halliday spouted the glowing lines of the noble dramatist with +charming enthusiasm. She signed the required undertaking without looking +at it, and it was duly witnessed by her stepfather. + +"In your talk with your mother and Valentine, I should advise you to be +as silent about this small business as about your own little fortune," +Mr. Sheldon remarked presently. + +"Mustn't I tell Valentine?" cried Charlotte, making a wry face; "I should +so like to tell him--just about these stocks. I daresay _he_ knows what +stocks are; and it would be such cheering news for him, after he has +worked his poor brain so for that forty pounds. I don't so much care +about telling poor mamma; for she does exclaim and wonder so about +things, that it is quite fatiguing to hear her. But please let me tell +Valentine?" + +Miss Halliday pursed-up her lips and offered her stepfather one of those +kisses which she had of late been prompted to bestow on him out of the +gratitude of a heart overflowing with girlish joy. He took the kiss as he +might have taken a dose of medicine, but did not grant the request +preferred by it. + +"If you want to be a fool, you can tell your lover of this windfall; but +if you wish to prove yourself a sensible girl, you will hold your tongue. +He has saved forty pounds by hard work in the last three months, you say: +do you think he would have saved forty pence if he had known that you had +five thousand pounds at his disposal? I know that class of men; look at +Goldsmith, the man who wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield," and "Rasselas," +and "Clarissa Harlowe," and so on. I have read somewhere that he never +wrote except under coercion--that is to say, want of money." + +Charlotte acknowledged the wisdom of this argument, and submitted. She +was not what was called a strong-minded woman; and, indeed, strength of +mind is not a plant indigenous to the female nature, but an exceptional +growth developed by exceptional circumstances. In Charlotte's life there +had been nothing exceptional, and she was in all things soft and womanly, +ready to acknowledge, and to be guided by, the wisdom of her seniors. So +Valentine heard nothing of the undertaking executed by his lady-love. + +After this, Mr. Sheldon took counsel's opinion, and set to work in real +earnest to recover the estate of the deceased John Haygarth from the +yawning jaws of that tame but all-devouring monster, the Crown. The work +was slow, and the dry as dust details thereof need not be recorded here. +It had but just begun when Horatio Paget suddenly returned from his +Continental expedition, and established himself once more in the Omega +Street lodgings. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY. + +Captain Paget's return was made known to the Sheldon circle by a letter +from the returning wanderer to his daughter. The Captain was laid up with +rheumatic gout, and wrote quite piteously to implore a visit from Diana. +Miss Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her +side, even to this _pere prodigue_, obeyed the summons promptly, with the +full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner. + +"And if you'd like to take your papa a bottle of Mr. Sheldon's old port, +Diana, remember it's at your disposal. I'm sure I've heard people say +that old port is good for the gout--or perhaps, by the bye, what I heard +was that it _wasn't_ good. I know old port and gout seem to run together +in my head somehow. But if there's anything in the house your papa would +like, Diana--wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet off the +spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an evening, or a new +novel--surely one couldn't forfeit one's subscription by lending a book +to a non-subscribing invalid?" + +While Georgy was suggesting the loan of almost every portable object in +the house as a specific for Captain Paget's gout, Charlotte sent for a +cab and made things smooth for her friend's departure. She wrapped her +warmly against the February blast, and insisted upon going out to see her +seated in the cab, whereby she offered to the pedestrians of that +neighbourhood a seraphic vision of loveliness with tumbled hair. +Charlotte had been always delightful, but Charlotte engaged to Valentine +Hawkehurst was a creature of supernal sweetness and brightness--a radiant +ministering angel, hovering lightly above a world too common for her foot +to rest upon. + +Miss Paget found her father suffering from a by no means severe attack of +a respectable family gout, a little peevish from the effects of this +affliction, but not at all depressed in mind. He had, indeed, the manner +of a man with whom things are going pleasantly. There was a satisfaction +in his tone, a placidity in his face, except when distorted for the +moment by a twinge of pain, that were new to Diana, who had not been +accustomed to behold the brighter side of her father's disposition. He +seemed grateful for his daughter's visit, and received her with unwonted +kindness of manner. + +"You have come very promptly, my dear, and I am gratified by your early +compliance with my request," he said with dignified affection, after he +had given his daughter the kiss of greeting. "I was a great sufferer last +night, Diana, a great sufferer, a prisoner to this chair, and the woman +below attempted to send me up a dinner--_such_ a dinner! One would think +a very small degree of education necessary for the stewing of a kidney, +but the things that woman gave me last night were like morsels of stewed +leather. I am not an epicure, Diana; but with such a constitution as +mine, good cooking is a vital necessity. Life in lodgings for a man of my +age is a sore trial, my dear. I wish you were well married, Diana, and +could give your father a humble corner at your fireside." + +Diana smiled. It was a somewhat bitter smile; and there was scorn of +herself, as well as scorn of her father in that bitterness. + +"I am not the sort of person to marry well, papa," she said. + +"Who knows? You are handsomer than nine-tenths of the women who marry +well." + +"No, papa; that is your sanguine manner of looking at your own property. +And even if I were married to some one to whom I might give obedience and +duty, and all that kind of thing, in exchange for a comfortable home, as +they say in the advertisements, would you be content with a peaceful +corner by my fireside? Do you think you would never pine for clubs and +gaming-tables--nay, even for creditors to--to diplomatize with, and +difficulties to surmount?" + +"No, my dear. I am an old man; the clubs and gaming-houses have done with +me, and I with them. I went to see a man at Arthur's a few months ago. I +had written to him on a little matter of business--in fact, to be candid +with you, my love, for the loan of a five-pound note--and I called at the +club for his reply. I caught sight of my face in a distant glass as I was +waiting in the strangers' room, and I thought I was looking at a ghost. +There comes a time towards the close of a long troublesome life in which +a man begins to feel like a ghost. His friends are gone, and his money is +gone, his health is gone, his good looks are gone; and the only mistake +seems to be that the man himself should be left behind. I remember an +observation of Lord Chesterfield's: 'Lord ---- and I have been dead for +the last two years, but we don't tell anyone so,' he said; and there are +few old men who couldn't say the same. But I am not down-hearted to-day, +my dear. No, the habit of hoping has never quite deserted me; and it is +only now and then that I take a dismal view of life. Come, my love, lay +aside your bonnet and things. Dear me! what a handsome black silk dress, +and how well you look in it!" + +"It is a present from Charlotte, papa. She has a very liberal allowance +of pocket-money, and is generosity itself. I don't like to take so much +from her, but I only wound her by a refusal." + +"Of course, my dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no +mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any +booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish +reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always +pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"--Diana winced as she remembered +her shabby hat and threadbare gown at Foretdechene--"and I am especially +pleased to see you elegantly attired this evening, as I expect a +gentleman by-and-by." + +"A gentleman, papa!" exclaimed Miss Paget, with considerable surprise; "I +thought that you had sent for me because you were ill and depressed and +lonely." + +"Well, yes, Diana, I certainly am ill; and I suppose it is scarcely +unnatural that a father should wish to see his only daughter." + +Diana was silent. A father's wish to see his daughter was indeed natural +and common; but that Captain Paget, who in no period of his daughter's +life had evinced for her the common affection of paternity, should be +seized all of a sudden with a yearning for her society, was somewhat +singular. But Diana's nature had been ennobled and fortified by the +mental struggle and the impalpable sacrifice of the last few months, and +she was in nowise disposed to repel any affectionate feeling of her +father's even at this eleventh hour. + +"_He_ tells us the eleventh hour is not too late," she thought. "If it is +not too late in the sight of that Divine Judge, shall it be thought too +late by an erring creature like me?" + +After a few minutes of thoughtful silence, she knelt down by her father's +chair and kissed him. + +"My dear father," she murmured softly, "believe me, I am very pleased to +think you should wish to see me. I will come to you whenever you like to +send for me. I am glad not to be a burden to you; but I should wish to be +a comfort when I can." + +The Captain shed his stock tear. It signified something nearer akin to +real emotion than usual. + +"My dear girl," he said, "this is very pleasing, very pleasing +indeed. The day may come--I cannot just now say when--and events may +arise--which--the nature of which I am not yet in a position to indicate +to you--but the barren fig-tree may not be always fruitless. In its old +age the withered trunk may put forth fresh branches. We will say no more +of this, my love; and I will only remark that you may not go unrequited +for any affection bestowed on your poor old father." + +Diana smiled, and this time it was a pensive rather than a bitter smile. +She had often heard her father talk like this before. She had often heard +these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate +future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a +schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope +and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle +to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since she had known him. + +So she set little value on his hopeful talk of this evening, but was +content to see him in good spirits. He contemplated her admiringly as she +knelt by his easy-chair, and smoothed the shining coils of her dark hair +with a gentle hand, as he looked downward at the thoughtful face--proud +and grave, but not ungentle. + +"You are a very handsome girl, Diana," he murmured, as much to himself as +to his daughter; "yes, very handsome. Egad, I had no idea how handsome!" + +"What has put such a fancy into your head to-night, papa?" asked Diana, +laughing. "I do not believe in the good looks you are so kind as to +attribute to me. When I see my face in the glass I perceive a pale gloomy +countenance that is by no means pleasing." + +"You may be out of spirits when you look in the glass. I hope you are not +unhappy at Bayswater." + +"Why should I be unhappy, papa? No sister was ever kinder or more loving +than Charlotte Halliday is to me. I should be very ungrateful to +Providence as well as to her if I did not appreciate such affection. How +many lonely girls, like me, go through life without picking up a sister?" + +"Yes, you are right, my dear. Those Sheldon people have been very useful +to you. They are not the kind of people I should have wished a daughter +of mine to be _liee_ with, if I were in the position my birth entitles me +to occupy; but as I am not in that position, I submit. That black silk +becomes you admirably. And now, my love, be so kind as to ring the bell +for lights and tea." + +They had been sitting in the firelight--the mystic magical capricious +firelight--which made even that tawdry lodging-house parlour seem a +pleasant chamber. The tea-tray was brought, and candles. Diana seated +herself at the table, and made tea with the contents of a little +mahogany caddy. + +"Don't pour out the tea just yet," said the Captain; "I expect a +gentleman. I don't suppose he'll take tea, but it will look more civil to +wait for him." + +"And who is this mysterious gentleman, papa?" + +"A Frenchman; a man I met while I was abroad." + +"_Really_ a gentleman?" + +"Certainly, Diana," replied her father, with offended dignity. "Do you +think I should admit any person to my friendship who is not a gentleman? +My business relations I am powerless to govern; but friendship is a +different matter. There is no man more exclusive than Horatio Paget. +M. Lenoble is a gentleman of ancient lineage and amiable character." + +"And rich, I suppose, papa?" asked Diana. She thought that her father +would scarcely speak of the gentleman in a tone so profoundly respectful +if he were not rich. + +"Yes, Diana. M. Lenoble is master of a very fair estate, and is likely to +be much richer before he dies." + +"And he has been kind to you, papa?" + +"Yes, he has shown me hospitality during my residence in Normandy. You +need not speak of him to your friends the Sheldons." + +"Not even to Charlotte?" + +"Not even to Charlotte. I do not care to have my affairs discussed by +that class of people." + +"But, dear papa, why make a mystery about so unimportant a matter. + +"I do not make a mystery; but I hate gossip. Mrs. Sheldon is an +incorrigible gossip, and I daresay her daughter is no better." + +"Charlotte is an angel, papa." + +"That is very possible. But I beg that you will refrain from discussing +my friend M. Lenoble in her angelic presence." + +"As you please, papa," said Diana gravely. She felt herself bound to obey +her father in this small matter; but the idea of this mystery and secrecy +was very unwelcome to her. It implied that her father's acquaintance with +this Frenchman was only a part of some new scheme. It was no honest +friendship, which the Captain might be proud to own, glad to show the +world that in these days of decadence he could still point to a friend. +It was only some business alliance, underhand and stealthy; a social +conspiracy, that must needs be conducted in darkness. + +"Why did papa summon me here if he wants his acquaintance with this man +kept secret?" she asked herself; and the question seemed unanswerable. + +She pictured this M. Lenoble to herself--a wizened, sallow-faced +Macchiavellian individual, whose business in England must needs be +connected with conspiracy, treason, commercial fraud, anything or +everything stealthy and criminal. + +"I wish you would let me go back to Bayswater before this gentleman +comes, papa," she said presently. "I heard it strike seven just now, and +I know I shall be expected early. I can come again whenever you like." + +"No, no, my love; you must stop to see my friend. And now tell me a +little about the Sheldons. Has anything been stirring since I saw them +last?" + +"Nothing whatever, papa. Charlotte is very happy; she always had a +happy disposition, but she is gayer than ever since her engagement +with--Valentine." + +"What an absurd infatuation!" muttered the Captain. + +"And he--Valentine--is very good, and works very hard at his literary +profession--and loves her very dearly." + +It cost her an effort to say this even now, even now when she fancied +herself cured of that folly which had once been so sweet to her. To speak +of him like this--to put him away out of her own life, and contemplate +him as an element in the life of another--could not be done without some +touch of the old anguish. + +There was a loud double-knock at the street-door as she said this, and a +step sounded presently in the passage; a quick, firm tread. There was +nothing stealthy about that, at any rate. + +"My friend Lenoble," said the Captain; and in the next instant a +gentleman entered the room, a gentleman who was in every quality the +opposite of the person whom Diana had expected to see. + +These speculative pictures are seldom good portraits. Miss Paget had +expected to find her father's ally small and shrivelled, old and ugly, +dried-up and withered in the fiery atmosphere of fraud and conspiracy; in +outward semblance a monkey, in soul a tiger. And instead of this +obnoxious creature there burst into the room a man of four-and-thirty +years of age, tall, stalwart, with a fair frank face, somewhat browned by +summer suns; thick auburn hair and beard, close trimmed and cropped in +the approved Gallic fashion--clear earnest blue eyes, and a mouth whose +candour and sweetness a moustache could not hide. Henry of Navarre, +before the white lilies of France had dazzled his eyes with their fatal +splendour, before the court of the Medici had taught the Bearnois to +dissemble, before the sometime Protestant champion had put on that +apparel of stainless white in which he went forth to stain his soul with +the sin of a diplomatic apostasy. + +Such a surprise as this makes a kind of crisis in the eventless record of +a woman's life. Diana found herself blushing as the stranger stood near +the door awaiting her father's introduction. She was ashamed to think of +the wrong her imagination had done him. + +"My daughter, Diana Paget--M. Lenoble. I have been telling Diana how much +I owed to your hospitality during my stay in Normandy," continued the +Captain, with his grandest air, "I regret that I can only receive you in +an apartment quite unworthy the seigneur of Cotenoir.--A charming place, +my dear Diana, which I should much like you to see on some future +occasion.--Will you take some tea, Lenoble?--Diana, a cup of tea.--The +Pagets are a fallen race, you see, my dear sir, and a cup of tea in a +lodging-house parlour is the best entertainment I can give to a friend. +The Cromie Pagets of Hertfordshire will give you dinner in gold plate, +with a footman standing behind the chair of every guest; but our branch +is a younger and a poorer one, and I, among others, am paying the price +of youthful follies." + +Gustave Lenoble looked sympathetic, but the glance of sympathy was +directed to Diana, and not to the male representative of the younger +Pagets. To pity the distressed damsel was an attribute of the Lenoble +mind; and Gustave had already begun to pity Miss Paget, and to wonder +what her fate in life would be, with no better protector than a father +who was confessedly a pauper. He saw that the young lady was very +handsome, and he divined, from some indefinable expression of her face, +that she was proud; and as he thought of his own daughters, and their +easy life and assured future, the contrast seemed to him very cruel. + +Chivalrous as the house of Lenoble might be by nature, he could scarcely +have felt so keen an interest in Captain Paget's daughter at the first +glance, if his sympathies had not been already enlisted for her. The +noble Horatio, though slow to act a father's part, had shown himself +quick to make capital out of his daughter's beauty and virtues when the +occasion offered. + +In his intercourse with the seigneur of Cotenoir, which had developed +from a mere business acquaintance into friendship, Captain Paget had +discoursed with much eloquence upon the subject of his motherless +daughter; and M. Lenoble, having daughters of his own, also motherless, +lent him the ear of sympathy. + +"I have heard much of you, Miss Paget," said Gustave presently, "and of +your devotion to your father. He has no more favourite theme than your +goodness." + +Diana blushed, and Diana's father blushed also. That skilled diplomatist +felt the awkwardness of the situation, and was prompt to the rescue. + +"Yes," he said, "my daughter has been a heroine. There are Antigones, +sir, who show their heroic nature by other service than the leading to +and fro of a blind father. From the earliest age my poor child has +striven to stand alone; too proud, too noble to be a burden on a parent +whose love would have given all, but whose means could give but little. +And now she comes to me from her home among strangers, to soothe my hour +of pain and infirmity. I trust your daughters may prove as worthy of your +love, M. Lenoble." + +"They are very dear girls," answered the Frenchman; "but for them life +has been all sunshine. They have never known a sorrow except the death of +their mother. It is the storm that tests the temper of the tree. I wish +they might prove as noble in adversity as Miss Paget has shown herself." + +This was more than Diana could bear without some kind of protest. + +"You must not take papa's praises _au pied de la lettre_, M. Lenoble," +she said; "I have been by no means brave or patient under adversity. +There are troubles which one must bear. I have borne mine somehow; but I +claim no praise for having submitted to the inevitable." + +This was spoken with a certain noble pride which impressed Gustave more +than all the father's florid eloquence had done. After this the +conversation became less personal. M. Lenoble talked of England. It was +not his first visit; but he had only the excursionist's knowledge of the +British Isles. + +"I have been to Scotland," he said. "Your Scotland is grand, +mountainous--all that there is of the most savage and poetic. It is a +Switzerland lined with Brittany. But that which most speaks to the heart +of a stranger is the peaceful beauty of your English landscape." + +"You like England, M. Lenoble?" said Diana. + +"Have I not reason? My mother was English. I was only five years old when +I lost her. She went out of my life like a dream; but I can still recall +a faint shadow of her face--an English face--a countenance of placid +sadness, very sweet and tender. But why do I talk of these things?" + +On this the Frenchman's talk took a gayer turn. This M. Lenoble showed +himself a lively and agreeable companion. He talked of Normandy, his +daughters and their convent, his little son at Rouen, his aunt Cydalise, +the quiet old lady at Beaubocage; his grandfather, his grandmother, the +old servants, and everything familiar and dear to him. He told of his +family history with boyish candour, untainted by egotism, and seemed much +pleased by Diana's apparent interest in his unstudied talk. He was quite +unconscious that the diplomatic Horatio was leading him on to talk of +these things, with a view to making the conversation supremely +interesting to him. That arch diplomatist knew that there is nothing a +man likes better than talking of his own affairs, if he can have a decent +excuse for such discourse. + +The clock struck nine while Diana was listening, really interested. This +glimpse of a life so far apart from her own was a relief, after the +brooding introspective reveries which of late had constituted so large a +portion of her existence. She started up at the sound of the clock. + +"What now, Cinderella?" cried her father. "Have you stopped beyond your +time, and will your fairy godmother be angry?" + +"No one will be angry, papa; but I did not mean to stay so late. I am +sorry your description of Normandy has been so interesting, M. Lenoble." + +"Come and see Vevinord and Cotenoir, and you will judge for yourself. The +town-hall of Vevinord is almost as fine as that of Louvain; and we have a +church that belongs to the time of Dagobert." + +"She shall see them before long," said the Captain; "I shall have +business in Rouen again before the next month is out; and if my daughter +is a good girl, I will take her over there with me." + +Diana stared at her father in utter bewilderment. What could be the +meaning of this sudden display of affection? + +"I should not be free to go with you, papa, even if you were able to take +me," she replied, somewhat coldly; "I have other duties." + +She felt assured that there was some lurking motive, some diplomatic art +at the bottom of the Captain's altered conduct, and she could not +altogether repress her scorn. The astute Horatio saw that he had gone a +little too far, and that his only child was not of the stuff to be +moulded at will by his dexterous hands. + +"You will come and see me again, Diana?" he said in a pleading tone: "I +am likely to be a prisoner in this room for a week or more." + +"Certainly, papa; I will come if you wish it. When shall I come?" + +"Well, let me see--to-day is Thursday; can you come on Monday?" + +"Yes, I will come on Monday." + +A cab was procured, and Miss Paget was conducted to that vehicle by her +new acquaintance, who showed a gallant anxiety for her comfort on the +journey, and was extremely careful about the closing of the windows. She +arrived at Bayswater before ten, but being forbidden to talk of M. +Lenoble, could give but a scanty account of her evening. + +"And was your papa kind, dear?" asked Charlotte, "and did he seem pleased +to see you?" + +"He was much kinder and more affectionate than usual, Lotta dear; so much +so, that he set me wondering. Now, if I were as confiding and eager to +think well of people as you are, I should be quite delighted by this +change. As it is, I am only mystified. I should be very glad if my father +and I could be drawn closer together; very glad if my influence could +bring about an amendment in his life." + +While Miss Paget was discussing her father's affectionate and novel +behaviour, the noble Horatio was meditating, by his solitary hearth, upon +the events of the evening. + +"I'm half-inclined to think he's hit already," mused the Captain. "I must +not allow myself to be deluded by manner. A Frenchman's gallantry rarely +means much; but Lenoble is one of those straightforward fellows whose +thoughts may be read by a child. He certainly seemed pleased with her; +interested and sympathetic, and all that kind of thing. And she is an +uncommonly handsome girl, and might marry any one if she had the +opportunity. I had no idea she was so handsome until to-night. I suppose +I never noticed her by candlelight before. By Jove! I ought to have made +her an actress, or singer, or something of that kind. And so I might, if +I'd known her face would light up as it does. I wish she wasn't so +impracticable--always cutting in with some awkward speech, that makes me +look like a fool, when, if she had an ounce of common sense, she might +see that I'm trying to make her fortune. Yes, egad, and such a fortune as +few girls drop into now-a-days! Some of your straitlaced church-going +people would call me a neglectful father to that girl, I daresay; but I +think if I succeed in making her the wife of Gustave Lenoble, I shall +have done my duty in a way that very few fathers can hope to surpass. +Such a high-principled fellow as Lenoble is too!--and _that_ is a +consideration." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I?" + +After that first summons to Chelsea, Diana went many times--twice and +three times a week--to comfort and tend her invalid father. Captain +Paget's novel regard for his only child seemed to increase with the +familiarity of frequent intercourse. "I have had very great pleasure in +making your acquaintance, my dear Diana," he said one day, in the course +of a _tete-a-tete_ with his daughter; "and I am charmed to find you +everything that a well-born and well-bred young woman ought to be. I am +sure you have excellent reason to be grateful to your cousin, Priscilla +Paget, for the excellent education you received in her abode; and you +have some cause to thank me for the dash and style imparted to your +carriage and manner by our foreign wanderings." + +The Captain said this with the air of a man who had accompanied his +daughter on the grand tour solely with a view to her intellectual +improvement. He really thought she had reason to be grateful to him for +those accidents of his nomadic life which had secured her a good accent +for French and German, and the art of putting on her shawl. + +"Yes, my dear child," he continued with dignity, "it affords me real +gratification to know you better. I need scarcely say that when you were +the associate of my pilgrimage, you were not of an age to be available as +a companion. To a man of the world like myself, a young person who has +not done growing must always savour somewhat of the schoolroom and the +nursery. I am not going to repeat the Byronic impertinence about +bread-and-butter; but the society of a girl of the hobbledehoy age is apt +to be insipid. You are now a young woman, and a young woman of whom any +father might with justice be proud." + +After a few such speeches as these, Diana began to think that it was just +possible her father might really experience some novel feeling of regard +for her. It might be true that his former coldness had been no more than +a prejudice against the awkwardness of girlhood. + +"I was shabby and awkward, I daresay, in those days," she thought; "and +then I was always asking papa for money to buy new clothes; and that may +have set him against me. And now that I am no burden upon him, and can +talk to him and amuse him, he may feel more kindly disposed towards me." + +There was some foundation for this idea. Captain Paget had felt himself +more kindly disposed towards his only child from the moment in which she +ceased to be an encumbrance upon him. Her sudden departure from +Foretdechene had been taken in very good part by him. + +"A very spirited thing for her to do, Val," he had said, when informed of +the fact by Mr. Hawkehurst; "and by far the best thing she could do, +under the circumstances." + +From that time his daughter had never asked him for a sixpence, and from +that time she had risen steadily in his estimation. But the feeling which +he now exhibited was more than placid approval; it was an affection at +once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his +daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence for +his declining years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a +sentiment inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical +assumption. Diana was, therefore, so much the more likely to be softened +and touched by it. + +She was softened, deeply touched by this late awakening of feeling. The +engagement of Valentine and Charlotte had left her own life very blank, +very desolate. It was not alone the man she loved who was lost to her; +Charlotte, the friend, the sister, seemed also slipping away from her. As +kind, as loving, as tender as of old, this dear friend and adopted sister +still might be, but no longer wholly her own. Over the hearts of the +purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt +to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has +descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will +burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's +supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly when the lamp is +shattered. + +For Charlotte, Valentine--and for Valentine, Charlotte--made the +sum-total of the universe at this time; or, at best, there was but a +small balance which included all the other cares and duties, affections +and pleasures, of life. Of this balance Diana had the lion's share; but +she felt that things had changed since those days of romantic school-girl +friendship in which Charlotte had talked of never marrying, and +travelling with her dearest friend Diana amongst all the beautiful scenes +they had read of, until they found the loveliest spot in the world, where +they would establish themselves in an ideal cottage, and live together +for the rest of their lives, cultivating their minds and their +flower-garden, working berlin-wool chairs for their ideal drawing-room, +and doing good to an ideal peasantry, who would be just poor enough to be +interesting, and sickly enough to require frequent gifts of calf's-foot +jelly and green tea. + +Those foolish dreams were done with now; and that other dream, of a life +to be spent with the reckless companion of her girlhood, was lost to +Diana Paget. There was no point to which she could look forward in the +future, no star to lure her onward upon life's journey. Her present +position was sufficiently comfortable; and she told herself that she must +needs be weak and wicked if she were not content with her lot. But beyond +the present she dared not look, so blank was the prospect--a desert, +without even the mirage; for her dreams and delusions were gone with her +hope. + +Possessed by such a sense of loneliness, it is scarcely strange if +there seemed to her a gleam of joy, a faint glimmer of hope, in the +newly awakened affection of her father. She began to believe him, and +to take comfort from the thought that he was drifting to a haven where +he might lie moored, with other battered old hulks of pirate and +privateer, inglorious and at rest. To work for him and succour him in his +declining years seemed a brighter prospect to this hopeless woman of +four-and-twenty than a future of lonely independence. "It is the nature +of woman to lean," says the masculine philosopher; but is it not rather +her nature to support and sustain, or else why to her is entrusted the +sublime responsibility of maternity? Diana was pleased to think that a +remorseful reprobate might be dependent on her toil, and owe his +reformation to her influence. She was indeed a new Antigone, ready to +lead him in his moral blindness to an altar of atonement more pure than +the ensanguined shrine of the Athenian Eumenides. + +Her visits to Omega Street were not entirely devoted to _tete-a-tetes_ +with her father. By reason of those coincidences which are so common to +the lives of some people, it generally happened that M. Lenoble dropped +in upon his invalid friend on the very day of Miss Paget's visit. M. +Lenoble was in London on business, and this business apparently +necessitated frequent interviews with Captain Paget. Of course such +interviews could not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was +wont, therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion +of the young lady's visit; and would even, with an inconsistent +gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay to its utmost limit. + +"It will always be time for my affairs, Miss Paget," he urged, "and I +know how your father values your society; and he well may value it. I +only hope my daughters will be as good to me, if I have the gout, +by-and-by." + +Diana had spent nearly a dozen evenings in Omega Street, and on each of +those evenings had happened to meet M. Lenoble. She liked him better on +every occasion of these accidental meetings. He was indeed a person whom +it was difficult for any one to dislike, and in the thirty-four years of +his life had never made an enemy. She had been pleased with him on the +first evening; his bright handsome face, his courteous reverence for her +sex--expressed in every word, every tone, every look--his sympathy with +all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, were calculated to charm +the coldest and most difficult of judges. Diana liked, and even admired +him, but it was from an abstract point of view. He seemed a creature as +remote from her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and +admired in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of her memory +to-morrow. + +There was only one point in connection with Gustave Lenoble which +occupied her serious thoughts; and this was the nature of his relations +with her father. + +This was a subject that sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the +future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her +father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster--now by one +species of falsehood and trickery, now by another--rarely incautious, +but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy +fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that +was spread for him? + +The talk of business, the frequent interviews, the evident elation of her +father's spirits, combined to assure her that some great scheme was in +progress, some commercial enterprise, perhaps not entirely dishonest--nay +even honest, when regarded from the sanguine speculator's point of view, +but involving the hazard of Gustave Lenoble's fortune. + +"It is quite as easy for my father to delude himself as it is for him to +delude others. This M. Lenoble is ignorant of English commerce, no doubt, +and will be ready to believe anything papa tells him. And he is so +candid, so trusting, it would be very hard if he were to be a loser +through his confidence in papa. His daughters, too; the hazard of his +fortune is peril to their future." Such doubts and fears, gradually +developed by reflection took stronger hold on Miss Paget's mind after +every fresh visit to Omega Street. She saw the Frenchman's light-hearted +confidence in all humanity, her father's specious manner and air of +quixotic honour. His sanguine tone, his excellent spirits, filled her +with intolerable alarm. Alas! when had she ever seen her father in good +spirits, except when some gentlemanly villany was in progress? + +Miss Paget endured this uneasiness of mind as long as she could, and then +determined to warn the supposed victim. She planned the mode of her +warning, and arranged for herself a diplomatic form which would reflect +the least possible discredit upon her father; and having once come to +this resolution, she was not slow to put it into effect. + +When her father was about to send for a cab to convey her back to +Bayswater, after her next visit to Omega Street, she surprised him by +intercepting his order. + +"There is a cab-stand in Sloane Square, papa," she said; "and if M. +Lenoble will be so kind as to take me there, I--I would rather get the +cab from the stand. The man charges more when he is fetched off the rank, +I believe." + +She could think of no better excuse for seeing Gustave alone than this +most sordid pretence. She blushed as she thought how mean a sound it must +have in the ears of the man for whose advantage she was plotting. Happily +M. Lenoble was not among the people who see nothing but meanness in the +desire to save sixpence. His aunt Cydalise had shown him the loveliness +of poverty; for there are vows of holy poverty that need no spoken +formula, and that are performed without the cloister. + +"Poor girl!" thought M. Lenoble; "I dare say even the cost of her coach +is a consideration with her; and one dare not pay the coachman." + +This was how Gustave read that blush of shame which for a moment dyed +Diana's cheek. Her father's was a very different reading. + +"The minx sees my game, and is playing into my hands," thought he. "So +demure as she is, too! I should never have supposed her capable of such +a clever manoeuvre to secure ten minutes' _tete-a-tete_ with an +eligible admirer." + +He bade his daughter good night with more than usual effusion. He began +to think that she might prove herself worthy of him after all. + +The district between Omega Street and Sloane Square is after dusk of all +places the most solitary. It is the border-land of Pimlico, or, to borrow +from Sidney Smith, the knuckle end of Belgravia. In these regions of +desolation and smoke-blackened stucco Diana and her companion were as +secure from the interruption of the jostling crowd as they might have +been in the primeval forests of Central America. + +Miss Paget's task was not a pleasant one. Shape her warning as she might, +it must reflect some discredit upon her father. He had of late been kind +to her; she felt this keenly to-night, and it seemed that the thing she +was about to do was a sort of parricide. Not against her father's life +was her cruel hand to be lifted; but her still more cruel tongue was to +slay her father's good name. + +"This M. Lenoble likes him and trusts him," she thought to herself. "What +a happiness for that poor broken-down old man to have so kind a friend! +And I am going to interfere in a manner that may put an end to this +friendship?" + +This is the shape which her thoughts assumed as she walked silently by +Gustave's side, with her hand lying lightly on his arm. He spoke to her +two or three times about the dulness of the neighbourhood, the coldness +of the night, or some other equally thrilling subject; but, finding by +her replies that she was thinking deeply, he made no further attempt at +conversation. + +"Poor child! she has some trouble on her mind, perhaps," he thought to +himself sadly, for his sympathy with this young lady was a very profound +feeling. This was the first occasion on which he had ever been alone +with her, and he wondered to find what a strange emotion was developed +by the novelty of the situation. He had married at twenty years of age, +and had never known those brief fancies or foolish passions which waste +the freshness of mind and heart. He had married a wife whom he never +learned to love; but his nature was so essentially a happy one, that he +had failed to discover the something wanting in his life. In all +relations--as grandson, husband, father, master--he had been "all simply +perfect," as Mademoiselle Cydalise pronounced him; and in a mind occupied +by cares for the welfare and happiness of others, he had never found that +blank which needed to be filled in order to make his own life completely +happy. Only of late, in his thirty-fourth year, had he come to the +knowledge of a feeling deeper than dutiful regard for an invalid wife, or +affectionate solicitude for motherless children; only of late had he felt +his heart stirred by a more thrilling emotion than that placid +resignation to the will of Providence which had distinguished his +courtship of Mademoiselle de Nerague. + +They had nearly reached Sloane Square before Diana took courage to broach +the subject so naturally repugnant to her. She had need to remember that +the welfare of M. Lenoble and all belonging to him might be dependent on +her fortitude. + +"M. Lenoble," she began at last, "I am going to say something I shall +find it most painful to utter, but which I feel it my duty to say to you. +I can only ask you to receive it in a generous spirit." + +"But, my dear Miss Paget, I pray you not to say anything that is +disagreeable to you. Why should you give yourself pain?--why--" + +"Because it is my duty to warn you of a danger which I know only too +well, and of which you may be quite ignorant. You are my father's friend, +M. Lenoble; and he has very few friends. I should be sorry if anything I +were to say should rob him of your regard." + +"Nothing that you say shall rob him of my friendship. But why should +you persist thus to say anything that is painful? What can you tell me +that I do not know, or that I cannot guess? Will you tell me that he is +poor? But I know it. That he is a broken-down gentleman? And that also +I know. What, then, would you tell me? That he has a daughter who is to +him a treasure without price? Ah, mademoiselle, what must I be if I did +not know that also?--I, who have contemplated that daughter so many +times--ah, so many!--when she could not know with what sympathy my eyes +watched her dutiful looks, with what profound emotion my heart +interpreted her life of affectionate sacrifice." + +There was a warmth, a tenderness in his tones which touched Diana's heart +as it had not been touched of late. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the full +meaning of those tender accents came home to her. The love that she had +once dreamed of from the lips of another spoke to her to-night in the +words of this stranger. The sympathy for which she had yearned long ago, +in the days of her wanderings with Valentine, was given to her to-night +without stint or measure. Unhappily it came too late; and it did not come +from the only lips which, as it seemed to her to-night, could make +sympathy precious or love divine. But to this lonely girl a good man's +affection seemed a treasure for which she must needs be deeply grateful. +It was something to discover that she could be loved. + +"I too," she said to herself,--"I, of whose presence Valentine is +scarcely conscious when he enters a room where Charlotte and I are +together; I, whom he greets day after day with the same careless words, +the same indifferent look; I, who might fade and waste day by day with +some slow disease, until I sank into the grave, before he would be +conscious of any change in my face,--is it possible that amongst the same +race of beings there can be any creature so widely different from +Valentine Hawkehurst as to love _me_?" + +This was the bitter complaint of her heart as she compared the tenderness +of this stranger with the indifference of the man to whom, for three long +years of her girlhood, she had given every dream, every thought, every +hope of her existence. She could not put him away from her heart all at +once. The weak heart still fondly clung to the dear familiar image. But +the more intensely she had felt the cold neglect of Valentine, the more +grateful to her seemed the unsought affection of Gustave Lenoble. + +"You know me as little as you know my father, M. Lenoble," she said, +after a long pause, during which they had walked to the end of the long +dull street, and were close to the square. "Let us go back a little way, +please; I have much more to say. I wish you to be my father's friend +always, but, if possible, without danger to yourself. My father is one of +those sanguine people who are always ready to embark in some new +enterprise, and who go on hoping and dreaming, after the failure of a +dozen schemes. He has no money, that I know of, to lose himself, and that +fact may make him, unconsciously, reckless of other people's money. I +have heard him speak of business relations with you, M. Lenoble, and it +is on that account I venture to speak so plainly. I do not want my poor +father to delude you, as he has often deluded himself. If you have +already permitted him to involve you in any speculation, I entreat you +to try to withdraw from it--to lose a little money, if necessary, rather +than to lose all. If you are not yet involved, let my warning save you +from any hazard." + +"My dear Miss Paget, I thank you a thousand times for your advice, your +noble thoughtfulness for others. But no, there is no hazard. The +business in which your father is occupied for me is not a speculation. It +involves no risk beyond the expenditure of a few thousand francs, which, +happily, I can afford to lose. I am not at liberty to tell you the nature +of the business in question, because I have promised your father to keep +that a secret. Dear young lady, you need have no fear for me. I am not a +rash speculator. The first years of my life were passed in extreme +poverty--the poverty that is near neighbour to starvation. That is a +lesson one cannot forget. How shall I thank you for your concern for +me?--so generous, so noble!" + +"It was only my duty to warn you of my poor father's weakness," replied +Diana. "If I needed thanks, your kindness to him is the only boon I could +ask. He has bitter need of a friend." + +"And he shall never lack one while I live, if only for your sake." The +last half of the sentence was spoken in lower tones than the first. Diana +was conscious of the lurking tenderness of those few words, and the +consciousness embarrassed her. Happily they had reached the end of the +quiet street by this time, and had emerged into the busier square. No +more was said till they reached the cab-stand, when Diana wished her +companion good night. + +"I am going back to Normandy in a week, Miss Paget; shall I see you again +before I leave England?" + +"I really don't know; our meetings are generally accidental, you see." + +"O yes, of course, always accidental," replied Gustave, smiling. + +"I am sorry you are going to leave London--for papa's sake." + +"And I, too, am sorry--for my own sake. But, you see, when one has +daughters, and a farm, and a chateau, one must be on the spot. I came to +England for one week only, and I have stayed six." + +"You have found so much to amuse you in London?" + +"Nay, mademoiselle, so much to interest me." + +"It is almost the same thing, is it not?" + +"A thousand times no! To be amused and to be interested--ah, what can be +so widely different as those two conditions of mind!" + +"Indeed! Good night, Mr. Lenoble. Please ask the cabman to drive as fast +as he can venture to do with consideration for his horse. I am afraid I +shall be late, and my friends will be anxious about me." + +"You will be late. You consider your friends at Bayswater, and you +consider even the cabman's horse. You are charity itself. Will you not +consider me a little also, Miss Paget?" + +"But how?" + +"Let me see you before I go back to Normandy. Your papa likes to see you +twice a week, I know. This is Monday night; will you come to see him on +Thursday?" + +"If he wishes it." + +"He does wish it. Ah, how he wishes it! You will come?" + +"If Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte can spare me." + +"They cannot spare you. No one can spare you. That cannot be. It +is amongst the things that are impossible. But they will have pity +upon--your father, and they will let you come." + +"Please ask the cabman to start. Indeed, I shall be late. Good night, +M. Lenoble." + +"Good night." + +He took her hand in his, and kissed it, with the grace of a Bayard. He +loved her, and took no trouble to conceal his passion. No shadow of doubt +darkened that bright horizon to which M. Lenoble looked with hopeful +eyes. He loved this penniless, motherless girl, as it was in the blood of +the Lenobles to love the poor and the helpless; especially when poverty +and helplessness presented themselves in the guise of youth and beauty. +He loved her, and she would love him. But why not? He was ten years her +senior, but that makes nothing. His auburn hair and beard, in the style +of Henry the Great, could show no streak of grey. His eyes had the +brightness of one-and-twenty; for the eyes of a man whose soul preserves +its youthfulness will keep their clear lustre for half a century. The +tall figure, straight as a dart; the frank handsome face which M. Lenoble +saw in the glass when he made his toilet, were not calculated to +dishearten a hopeful lover; and Gustave, by nature sanguine, enjoyed his +dream of happiness, untroubled by one morbid apprehension. + +He loved her, and he would ask her for his wife. She would accept his +offer; her father would rejoice in so fortunate an alliance; her friends +of Bayswater would felicitate a change so desirable. And when he returned +to Normandy he would take her with him, and say to his children, "Behold +your mother!" And then the great rambling mansion of Cotenoir would +assume a home-like aspect. The ponderous old furniture would be replaced +by lightsome appointments of modern fashion; except, of course, in the +grand drawing-room, where there were tapestries said to be from the +designs of Boucher, and chairs and sofas in the true Louis Quinze style, +of immovable bulkiness. + +There was but one trifling hitch in the whole scheme of happiness--Diana +was a Protestant. Ah, but what then! A creature so sweet, so noble, could +not long remain the slave of Anglican heresy. A little talk with +Cydalise, a week's "retreat" at the Sacre Coeur, and the thing would be +done. The dear girl would renounce her errors, and enter the bosom of the +Mother Church. Pouff! M. Lenoble blew the little difficulty away from his +finger-tips, and then wafted a kiss from the same finger-tips to his +absent beloved. + +"And this noble heart warned me against her own father!" M. Lenoble said +to himself, as he walked towards the hotel at Blackfriars where he had +taken up his abode, quite unconscious that the foot of Blackfriars Bridge +was not the centre of West End London. "How noble, how disinterested! +Poor old man! He is, no doubt, a speculator--something even of an +Adventurer. What then? He shall have an apartment at Cotenoir, his place +at the family table, his _fauteuil_ by the hearth; and there he can do no +harm." + + * * * * * + +There was a strange sentiment in Diana's mind after this evening's +conversation with Gustave Lenoble. To feel herself beloved, to know that +there was some one creature in the wide crowded world interested in, nay, +even attached to her, was a mystery, a surprise, and in some sort a +source of pleasure to her. That Gustave Lenoble could ever be any nearer +to her than he was at the present time did not occur to her as being +within the limits of possibility. She had thrust Valentine from her +heart, but the empty chamber could receive no new tenant. It was not +swept and garnished; nay, indeed, it was sadly littered with the shreds +and patches left by the late occupant. But, while this was so, to know +that she could be loved was in some manner sweet to her. + +"Ah, now I know that the poet is right," she said to herself. "There is +no creature so desolate but some heart responds unto its own. And I have +found the generous responsive heart that can pity and love me because +I seem so sorely to need love and pity. All my life--my blank, empty +life--I will remember and be grateful to him, the first good man who ever +called my father friend; the first of all mankind who thought this poor +hand worthy to be lifted to his lips." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH. + +Having pledged herself to visit Omega Street on Thursday, Diana +considered herself bound to perform that promise. She felt, however, that +there was some touch of absurdity in the position, for to keep a promise +so made was in a manner to keep an appointment with M. Lenoble. + +"I dare say he has a habit of falling in love with every young woman he +meets," she thought, when she considered his conduct from a more prosaic +standpoint than the grateful enthusiasm his generous sympathy had at +first awakened in her mind. "I have heard that it is a Frenchman's +faculty to consider himself irresistible, and to avow his adoration for a +new divinity every week. And I was so foolish as to fancy there was a +depth of feeling in his tone and manner! I am sure he is all that is good +and generous; but the falling in love is no doubt a national failing." + +She remembered the impertinent advances of divers unknown foreigners whom +she had encountered on pier or _digue_, kursaal or beach, in the +frequently unprotected hours of her continental wanderings. + +She had not seen the best side of the foreign mind in her character of +unattended and doubtfully attired English demoiselle. She knew that +Gustave Lenoble was of a very different stamp from those specimens of the +genus tiger whose impertinent admiration had often wounded and distressed +her; but she was inclined to attribute the fault of shallowness to a +nature so frank and buoyant as that of her father's friend. + +She walked from Bayswater to Chelsea on the appointed Thursday, for the +cost of frequent journeys in cabs was more than her purse could supply. +The walk across the Park was pleasant even in the bleak March weather, +and she entered the little parlour in Omega Street with the bloom of +damask roses upon her cheeks. + +"How do you do, papa dear?" she began, as she came into the dusky room; +but the figure sitting in her father's accustomed place was not that of +her father. It was M. Lenoble, who rose to welcome her. + +"Is papa worse?" she asked, surprised by the Captain's absence. + +"On the contrary, he is better, and has gone out in a hired carriage for +a breath of fresh air. I persuaded him to go. He will be back very +shortly." + +"I wrote to tell him I should be here to-day, but I am very glad he has +gone out, for I am sure the air will do him good. Was he well wrapped up, +do you know, M. Lenoble?" + +"Enveloped in railway-rugs and shawls to his very nose. I arranged all +that with my own hands. He looked like an ambassador from all the +Russias." + +"How kind of you to think of such things!" said Diana gratefully. + +"And tell me why should I not think of such things? Do you imagine that +it is not a pleasure to me to wait upon your father--for your sake?" + +There was some amount of awkwardness in this kind of thing. Diana busied +herself with the removal of her hat and jacket, which she laid neatly +upon a stony-hearted horsehair sofa. After doing this she placed herself +near the window, whence she contemplated the dusky street, appearing much +interested in the movements of the lamp lighter. + +"What an admirable way they have of lighting the lamps now," she +remarked, with the conversational brilliance which usually marks this +kind of situation; "how much more convenient it must be than the old +method with the ladder, you know!" + +"Yes, I have no doubt," said Gustave, bringing himself to her side with a +couple of steps, and planting himself deliberately in a chair next to +hers; "but don't you think, as I start for Normandy to-morrow, we might +talk of something more interesting than the lamplighter, Miss Paget?" + +"I am ready to talk of anything you like," replied Miss Paget, with that +charming assumption of unconsciousness which every woman can command on +these occasions. + +"You are very good. Do you know that when I persuaded your father to go +out for an airing, I was prompted by a motive so selfish as to render the +proceeding quite diabolical? Don't be alarmed! The doctor gave his +permission for the airing, or I should not have attempted such a thing. +Hypocrisy I am capable of, but not assassination. You cannot imagine the +diplomacy which I exhibited; and all to what end? Can you imagine that?" + +"No, indeed." + +"That I might secure one half-hour's uninterrupted talk with you; and, +unhappily, you are so late that I expect your father's return every +minute. He was to be back again before dusk, and the appearance of the +lamplighter demonstrates that the dusk has come. I have so much to say, +and so little time to say it; so much, Diane--" + +She started as he called her thus, as if in that moment of surprise she +would have risen from her chair by his side. She knew what was coming, +and having expected nothing so desperate, knew not how to arrest the +confession that she would fain have avoided hearing. M. Lenoble laid his +hand firmly on hers. + +"So much, Diane; and yet so little, that all can be told in three words. +I love you." + +"M. Lenoble!" + +"Ah, you are surprised, you wonder, you look at me with eyes of sweet +amazement! Dear angel, do you think it is possible to see you and not to +love you? To see you once is to respect, to admire, to bow the knee +before beauty and goodness; but to see you many times, as I have done, +the patient consoler of an invalid and somewhat difficult father--ah, my +sweet love, who is there so hard amongst mankind that he should escape +from loving you, seeing all that?" + +The question had a significance that the speaker knew not. Who amongst +mankind? Why, was there not one man for whom she would have been content +to be the veriest slave that ever abnegated every personal delight for +the love of a hard master? And he had passed her by, indifferent, +unseeing. She had worshipped him on her knees, as it seemed to her; and +he had left her kneeling in the dust, while he went on to offer himself, +heart and soul, at another shrine. + +She could not forget these things. The memory and the bitterness of them +came back with renewed poignancy at this moment, when the voice of a +stranger told her she was beloved. + +"My dear one, will you not answer me?" pleaded Gustave, in nowise alarmed +by Diana's silence, which seemed to him only the natural expression of a +maidenly emotion. "Tell me that you will give me measure for measure; +that you will love me as my mother loved my father--with a love that +trouble and poverty could never lessen; with a love that was strongest +when fate was darkest--a star which the dreary night of sorrow could not +obscure. I am ten years older than you by my baptismal register, Diane; +but my heart is young. I never knew what love was until I knew you. And +yet those who know me best will tell you that I was no unkind husband, +and that my poor wife and I lived happily. I shall never know love again, +except for you. The hour comes, I suppose, in every man's life; and the +angel of his life comes in that appointed hour. Mine came when I saw you. +I have spoken to your father, and have his warm approval. He was all +encouragement, and hinted that I might be assured of your love. Had he +sufficient justification for that half-promise, Diane?" + +"He had none," Miss Paget answered gravely, "none except his own wishes. +You have made me hear more than I wished to hear, M. Lenoble, for the +treasure you offer me is one that I cannot accept. With all my heart I +thank you for the love you tell me of. Even if it is, as I can but think +it, a passing fancy, I thank you, nevertheless. It is sweet to win the +love of a good man. I pray you to believe that with all my heart and mind +I honour your generous nature, your noble sympathy with the weak and +friendless. If you can give me your friendship, you shall find how I can +value a good man's regard, but I cannot accept your love." + +"Why not?" asked Gustave, aghast. + +"Because I cannot give you measure for measure, and I will not give you +less." + +"But in time, Diane, in time?" + +"Time cannot show me your character in a nobler light than that in which +I see it now. You do not lack the power to win a woman's heart, but I +have no heart to give. If you will be my friend, time will increase my +affection for you--but time cannot restore the dead." + +"Which means that your heart is dead, Diane?" + +"Yes," she answered, with unutterable sadness. + +"You love some one younger, happier than I?" + +"No, M. Lenoble, no one." + +"But you have loved? Yes!--a scoundrel, perhaps; a villain, who--" + +A spasm of pain contracted his face as he looked at the girl's drooping +head; her face, in that dim light, he could not see. + +"Tell me this, Diane," he said presently, in an altered voice; "there is +no barrier between us--no irrevocable obstacle that must part us for +ever? There is no one who can claim you by any right--" He paused; and +then added, in a lower voice, "by any wrong?" + +"No one," answered Miss Paget, lifting her head, and looking her lover +full in the face. Even in that uncertain light he could see the proud +steady gaze that seemed the fittest answer of all doubts. + +"Thank God!" he whispered. "Ah, how could I fear, even for one moment, +that you could be anything but what you seem--the purest among the pure? +Why, then, do you reject me? You do not love me, but you ask my +friendship; you offer me your friendship, even your affection. Ah, +believe me, if those are but real, time will ripen them into love. Your +heart is dead. Ah, why should that young heart be dead? It is not dead, +Diane; it needs but the fire of true love to warm it into life again. Why +should you reject me, since you tell me that you love me; unless you love +another? What should divide us?" + +"Shadows and memories," Diana replied mournfully,--"vague and foolish; +wicked, perhaps; but they come between you and me, M. Lenoble. And since +I cannot give you a whole heart, I will give you nothing." + +"You have loved some one, some one who did not value your love? Tell me +the truth, Diane; you owe me at least as much as that." + +"I do owe you the truth. Yes; I have been very foolish. For two or three +years of my life there was a person who was our daily companion. He +travelled with us--with my father and me; and we saw many changes and +troubles together. For a long time he was like my brother; and I doubt if +many brothers are as kind to their sisters as he was to me. In his heart +that feeling never changed. He was always equally kind, equally careless. +Once I deluded myself with the fancy that in his looks and tones, and +even in his words, there was some deeper feeling than this careless +brotherly kindness; but it was no more than a delusion. My eyes were +opened rudely enough. I saw his heart bestowed elsewhere. Do not think +that I am so weak, or so wicked, as to abandon myself to despair because +I have been awakened from my foolish dream. I can look the realities of +life in the face, M. Lenoble; and I have taught myself to wish all good +things for the dear girl who has won the heart that I once thought was +mine. The person I am speaking of can boast no superior graces of mind or +person. He is only a very commonplace young man, with a certain amount of +talent, a disposition inclined to good rather than to evil. But he was +the companion of my girlhood; and in losing him it seems to me as if I +had lost a part of my youth itself." + +To Diana's mind this seemed the end of the discussion. She expected M. +Lenoble to bow his head to the inevitable, to utter a friendly farewell, +and depart for his Norman home, convinced, if not satisfied. But the +light-hearted, easy-tempered Gustave was not a lover of the despairing +order, nor an easily answered suppliant. + +"And that is all!" he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of +your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory +of this unspeakable idiot--great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch +have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!--the memory of +this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for +ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel +without knowing it, is to lift its phantasmal hand and thrust me +aside--me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot? Ah, thus we blow him +to the uttermost end of the world!" cried M. Lenoble, blowing an +imaginary rival from the tips of his fingers. "Thus we dismiss him to the +Arctic regions, the torrid zone--to the Caucasus, where await vultures to +gnaw his liver--wherever earth is most remote and uncomfortable--he and +the bread-and-butter miss whom he prefers to my Diane!" + +This manner of taking things was quite unexpected by Diana. It was much +more pleasant than gloomy despair or sullen resentment; but it was, at +the same time, much more difficult to deal with. + +"He is gone!" cried Gustave presently; "he is on the topmost heights of +Caucasus, and the vultures are sharpening their beaks! And now, tell me, +Diane--you will be my wife, will you not? You will be a mother to my +children? You will transform the old chateau of Cotenoir into a pleasant +home? You will cease to live amongst strangers? You will come to those +who will love and cherish you as their own, their dearest and best and +brightest? You will give your poor old father a corner by your fireside? +He is old and needs a home for his last years. For his sake, Diane, for +mine, for my children, let your answer be yes! Ah, not so fast!" he +cried, as she was about to speak. "Why are you so quick to pronounce your +fatal judgment? Think how much depends on your reply--your father's +happiness, my children's, mine!" + +"It is of yours only I must think," Miss Paget answered earnestly. "You +fancy it is so easy for me to say no. Believe me, it would be much easier +to say yes. When you speak of my father's declining years, I, who know +his weary life so well, would be hard of heart indeed if I were not +tempted by the haven you offer. Every word that you say gives me some new +proof of your goodness, your generosity. But I will not wrong you because +you are generous. I shall always be your grateful friend, but you must +seek elsewhere for a wife, M. Lenoble. You will have little difficulty in +finding one worthier than I." + +"I will seek nowhere else for a wife; I will have no wife but you. I have +had a wife of other people's choosing; I will choose one for myself this +time. Let us be friends, Diane, since your decision is as irrevocable as +the laws of Draco. You are stone, you are adamant; but no matter, we can +be friends. Your father will be disappointed. But what then? He is no +doubt accustomed to disappointments. My daughters--for them it is a +profound affliction to be motherless, but they must support it. Cotenoir +must go to wreck and ruin a little longer--a few more rats behind the +panelling, a few more moths in the tapestry, that is all. My children +say, 'Papa, our home is not comfortable; all is upside-down;' and I +reply. 'But what will you, my children? A home without a wife is always +upside down.' And then I take them between my arms, in weeping. It is a +poignant picture to rend the heart. But what does it matter, Miss Paget? +What is that verse of your grand Will?-- + + Blow, blow, thou wintry wind; + And let go weep the stricken land, + While harts ungalled go play. + +Perhaps I have mixed him up somehow; but the meaning is clear." + +A hollow-sounding and somewhat awful cough heralded the approach of +Captain Paget, who entered the room at this juncture. If the Captain had +prolonged his first airing, after six weeks' confinement to the house, +until this late period of the afternoon, he would have committed an +imprudence which might have cost him dearly. Happily, he had done nothing +of the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana and +Gustave were conversing close to the window, having preferred to leave +his fly at the end of the street, rather than to incur the hazard of +interrupting a critical tete-a-tete. The interval that had elapsed since +his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in +the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment +and the parlour. What he had heard had been by no means satisfactory to +him; and if a look could annihilate, Miss Paget might have perished +beneath the Parthian glance which her father shot at her as he came +towards the window, with a stereotyped smile upon his lips and +unspeakable anger in his heart. + +He had heard just enough of the conversation to know that Gustave had +been rejected--Gustave, with Cotenoir and a handsome independence in the +present, and the late John Haygarth's fortune in the future. Rejected by +a penniless young woman, who at any moment might find herself without a +roof to shelter her from the winds of heaven! Was ever folly, madness, +wickedness supreme as this? + +Horatio trembled with rage as he took his daughter's hand. She had the +insolence to extend her hand for the customary salutation. The Captain's +greeting was a grip that made her wince. + +"Good-night, Miss Paget," said Gustave gravely, but with by no means the +despondent tone of a hopeless lover; "I--well, I shall see you again, +perhaps, before I go to Normandy. I doubt if I shall go to-morrow. I +have my own reasons for staying--unreasonable reasons, perhaps, but I +shall stay." + +All this was said in a tone too low to reach Captain Paget's ear. + +"Are you going to leave us, Lenoble?" he asked in a quavering voice. "You +will not stop and let Di give you a cup of tea as usual?" + +"Not to-night, Captain. Good-bye." + +He wrung the old man's hand and departed. Captain Paget dropped heavily +into a chair, and for some minutes there was silence. Diana was the +first to speak. + +"I am glad your doctor considered you well enough to go out for a drive, +papa," she said. + +"Indeed, my dear," answered her father with a groan; "I hope my next +drive may be in a different kind of vehicle--the last journey I shall +ever take, until they cart away my bones for manure. I believe they do +make manure from the bones of paupers in our utilitarian age." + +"Papa, how can you talk so horribly! You are better, are you not? M. +Lenoble said you were better." + +"Yes, I am better, God help me!" answered the old man, too weak alike in +mind and body to hide the passion that possessed, him. "That is one of +the contradictions of the long farce we call life. If I had been a rich +man, with a circle of anxious relations and all the noted men of Savile +Row dancing attendance round my bed, I dare say I should have died; but +as I happen to be a penniless castaway, with only a lodging-house drudge +and a half-starved apothecary to take care of me, and with nothing before +me but a workhouse, I live. It is all very well for a man to take things +easily when he is ill and helpless, too weak even to think. _That_ is not +the trying time. The real trial arrives when a little strength comes back +to him, and his landlady begins to worry him for her rent, and the +lodging-house drudge gets tired of pitying him, and the apothecary sends +in his bill, and the wretched high-road lies bare and broad before him, +and he hears the old order to move on. The moving-on time has come for +me, Di; and the Lord alone knows how little I know where I am to go." + +"Papa, you are not friendless; even I can give you a little help." + +"Yes," answered the Captain with a bitter laugh; "a sovereign once a +quarter--the scrapings of your pittance! That help won't save me from +the workhouse." + +"There is M. Lenoble." + +"Yes, there is M. Lenoble; the man who would have given me a home for my +old age: he told me so to-day--a home fit for a gentleman--for the +position he now occupies is nothing compared to that which he may occupy +a year hence. He would have received me as his father-in-law, without +thought or question of my antecedents; and if I have not lived like a +gentleman, I might have died like one. This is what he would have done +for me. But do you think I can ask anything of him now, after you have +refused him? I know of your refusal to be that man's wife. I heard--I saw +it in his face. You--a beggar, a friendless wretch, dependent on the +patronage of a stockbroker's silly wife--_you_ must needs give yourself +grand airs, and refuse such a man as that! Do you think such men go +begging among young ladies like you, or that they run about the streets, +like the roast pigs in the story, begad, with knives and forks in their +backs, asking to be eaten?" + +The Captain was walking up and down the room in a fever of rage. Diana +looked at him with sad wondering eyes. Yes, it was the old selfish +nature. The leopard cannot change his spots; and the Horatio Paget of the +present was the Horatio Paget of the past. + +"Pray don't be angry with me, papa," said Diana sorrowfully; "I believe +that I have done my duty." + +"Done your fiddlesticks!" cried the Captain, too angry to be careful of +his diction. "Your duty to whom? Did you happen to remember, miss, that +you owe some duty to me, your father, but for whom you wouldn't be +standing there talking of duty like a tragedy queen? By Jove! I suppose +you are too grand a person to consider my trouble in this matter; the +pains I took to get Lenoble over to England; the way I made the most of +my gout even, in order to have you about me; the way I finessed and +diplomatized to bring this affair to a successful issue. And now, when I +have succeeded beyond my hopes, you spoil everything, and then dare to +stand before me and preach about duty. What do you want in a husband, I +should like to know? A rich man? Lenoble is that. A handsome man? Lenoble +is that. A gentleman, with good blood in his veins? Lenoble comes of as +pure a race as any man in that part of France. A good man? Lenoble is one +of the best fellows upon this earth. What is it, then, that you want?" + +"I want to give my heart to the man who gives me his." + +"And what, in the name of all that's preposterous, is to prevent you +giving Gustave Lenoble your heart?" + +"I cannot tell you." + +"No, nor any one else. But let us have no more of this nonsense. If you +call yourself a daughter of mine, you will marry Gustave Lenoble. If +not--" + +The Captain found himself brought to a sudden stop in his unconscious +paraphrase of Signor Capulet's menace to his recalcitrant daughter, +Juliet. With what threat could the noble Horatio terrify his daughter to +obedience? Before you talk of turning your rebellious child out of doors, +you must provide a home from which to cast her. Captain Paget remembered +this, and was for the moment reduced to sudden and ignominious silence. +And yet there must surely be some way of bringing this besotted young +woman to reason. + +He sat for some minutes in silence, with his head leaning on his hand, +his face hidden from Diana. This silence, this attitude, so expressive of +utter despondency, touched her more keenly than his anger. She knew that +he was mean and selfish, that it was of his own loss he thought; and yet +she pitied him. He was old and helpless and miserable; so much the more +pitiable because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic soul +there is always some comfort; but for the grovelling nature suffering +knows no counterbalance. The ills that flesh is heir to seem utterly +bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate the flesh, and soar +triumphant above the regions of earthly pain. Captain Paget's mind, to +him, was not a kingdom. He could not look declining years of poverty in +the face; he was tired of work. The schemes and trickeries of his life +were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out, +and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from +Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance +of John Haygarth's estate. He wanted something more tangible than +this--he wanted immediate security; and his daughter's marriage with +Gustave would have given him that security, and still grander hopes for +the future. He had fancied himself reigning over the vassals of Cotenoir, +a far more important personage than the real master of that chateau. He +had pictured to himself a _pied-a-terre_ in Paris which it might be +agreeable for him to secure, for existence in Normandy might occasionally +prove _ennuyeux_. These things were what he meant when he talked of a +haven for his declining years; and against the daughter who, for some +caprice of her own, could hinder his possession of these things, he had +no feeling but anger. + +Diana compassionated this weak old man, to whose lips the cup of +prosperity had seemed so near, from whose lips her hand had thrust it. +He had been promised a home, comfort, respectability, friendship--"all +that should accompany old age"--and she had prevented the fulfilment of +the promise. Heaven knows how pure her motives had been; but as she +watched that drooping head, with its silvered hair, she felt that she +had been cruel. + +"Papa," she began presently, laying her hand caressingly upon her +father's neck; but he pushed aside the timid, caressing hand--"papa, you +think me very unkind, only because I have done what I believe to be +right; indeed it is so, papa dear. In what I said to Gustave Lenoble this +evening, I was governed only by my sense of right." + +"Indeed!" cried the Captain, with a strident laugh; "and where did you +pick up your sense of right, madam, I should like to know? From what +Methodist parson's hypocritical twaddle have you learnt to lay down the +law to your poor old father about the sense of right? 'Honour your father +and your mother, that your days may be long in the land,' miss, _that's_ +what your Bible teaches you; but the Bible has gone out of fashion, I +dare say, since I was a young man; and your model young woman of the +present generation taunts her father with her sense of right. Will your +sense of right be satisfied when you hear of your father rotting in the +old-men's ward of a workhouse, or dying on the London stones?" + +"I am not unfeeling, papa. With all my heart I pity you; but it is cruel +on your part to exaggerate the misery of your position, as I am sure you +must be doing. Why should your means of living fail because I refuse to +marry M. Lenoble? You have lived hitherto without my help, as I have +lived of late without yours. Nothing could give me greater happiness than +to know that you were exempt from care; and if my toil can procure you a +peaceful home in the future--as I believe it can, or education and will +to work must go for nothing--there shall be no lack of industry on my +part. I will work for you, I will indeed, papa--willingly, happily." + +"When your work can give me such a home as Cotenoir--a home that one word +of yours would secure for me--I will thank you." + +"If you will only wait, papa, if you will only have patience--" + +"Patience! Wait! Do you know what you are talking about? Do you prate of +patience, and waiting, and hope in the future to a man who has no +future--to a man whose days are numbered, and who feels the creeping +chills of death stealing over him every day as he sits beside his +wretched hearth, or labours through his daily drudgery? I can live as I +have always lived! Yes; but do you know, or care to know, that with every +day life becomes more difficult for me? Your fine friends at Bayswater +have done with me. I have spent the last sixpence I shall ever see from +Philip Sheldon. Hawkehurst has cut me, like the ungrateful hound he is. +When they have squeezed the orange, they throw away the rind. Didn't +Voltaire say that, when Frederick of Prussia gave him the go-by? Heaven +knows it's true enough; and now you, who by a word might secure yourself +a splendid position--yes, I say splendid for a poor drudge and dependent +like you, and insure a home for me--you, forsooth, must needs favour me +with your high-flown sentiments about your sense of right, and promise me +a home in the future, if I will wait and hope! No, Diana, waiting and +hoping are done with for me, and I can find a home in the bed of the +river without your help." + +"You would not be so wicked as to do that!" cried Diana, aghast. + +"I don't know about the wickedness of the act. But, rely upon it, when my +choice lies between the workhouse and the river, I shall prefer the +river. The modern workhouse is no inviting sanctuary, and I dare say many +a homeless wretch makes the same choice." + +For some minutes there was silence. Diana stood with her elbows resting +on the chimneypiece, her face covered with her hands. + +"O Lord, teach me to do the thing which is right!" she prayed, and in the +next breath acted on the impulse of the moment. + +"What would you have me do?" she asked. + +"What any one but an idiot would do of her own accord--accept the good +fortune that has dropped into your lap. Do you think such luck as yours +goes begging every day?" + +"You would have me accept Gustave Lenoble's offer, no matter what +falsehoods may be involved in my acceptance of it?" + +"I can see no reason for falsehood. Any one but an idiot would honour +such a man; any one but an idiot would thank Providence for such good +fortune." + +"Very well, papa," exclaimed Diana, with a laugh that had no mirthful +music, "I will not be the exceptional idiot. If M. Lenoble does me the +honour to repeat his offer--and I think from his manner he means to do +so--I will accept it." + +"He shall repeat it!" cried the Captain, throwing off his assumption of +the tragic father. The Oedipus Coloneus, the Lear--the venerable victim +of winter winds and men's ingratitude--was transformed in a moment into +an elderly Jeremy Diddler, lined with Lord Foppington. "He shall repeat +it; I will have him at your feet to-morrow. Yes, Di, my love, I pledge +myself to bring that about, without compromise to your maidenly pride or +the dignity of a Paget. My dear child, I ought to have known that +reflection would show you where your duty lies. I fear I have been +somewhat harsh, but you must forgive me, Di; I have set my heart on this +match, for your happiness as well as my own. I could not stand the +disappointment; though I admired, and still admire, the high feeling, +and all that kind of thing, which prompted your refusal. A school-girlish +sentimentality, child, but with something noble in it; not the +sentimentality of a vulgar schoolgirl. The blue blood will show itself, +my love; and now--no, no, don't cry. You will live to thank me for +to-night's work; yes, my child, to thank me, when you look round your +comfortable home by-and-by--when my poor old bones are mouldering in +their unpretending sepulchre--and say to yourself, 'I have my father to +thank for this. Adverse circumstances forbade his doing his duty as +happier fathers are allowed the privilege of doing theirs, but it was his +forethought, his ever-watchful care, which secured me an admirable +husband and a happy home.' Mark my words, the time will come when you +will say this, my dear." + +"I will try to think of you always kindly, papa," Miss Paget answered in +a low sad voice; "and if my marriage can secure your happiness and +Gustave Lenoble's, I am content. I only fear to take too much, and give +too little." + +"My love, you must certainly be the lineal descendant of Don Quixote. Too +much, and too little, forsooth! Let Lenoble find a handsomer woman, or a +more elegant woman, by gad, elsewhere! Such a woman as a duke might be +proud to make his duchess, by Jove! There shall be no sense of obligation +on our side, my love. Gustave Lenoble shall be made to feel that he gets +change for his shilling. Kiss me, child, and tell me you forgive me for +being a little rough with you, just now." + +"Forgive you?--yes, papa. I dare say you are wiser than I. Why should I +refuse M. Lenoble? He is good and kind, and will give us a happy home? +What more can I want? Do I want to be like Charlotte, to whom life seems +all poetry and brightness?" + +"And who is going to throw herself away upon a penny-a-liner, by Jove!" +interjected the Captain. + +"Can I hope to be like that girl, with her happy ignorance of life, her +boundless love and trust! O, no, no, papa; those things are not for me." + +She laid her head upon her father's breast, and sobbed like a child. This +was her second farewell to the man she had loved, the dreams she had +dreamed. The Captain comforted her with a paternal embrace, but was as +powerless to comprehend her emotion as if he had found himself suddenly +called upon to console the sorrows of a Japanese widow. + +"Hysterical," he murmured. "These noble natures are subject to that kind +of thing. And now, my love," he continued, in a more business-like tone, +"let us talk seriously. I think it would be very advisable for you to +leave Bayswater, and take up your abode in these humble lodgings with me +immediately." + +"Why, papa?" + +"The reason is sufficiently obvious, my love. It is not right that you +should continue to eat the bread of dependence. As the future wife of +Gustave Lenoble--and in this case, the word future means immediately--" + +"Papa," cried Diana suddenly, "you will not hurry me into this marriage? +I have consented for your sake. You will not be so ungenerous as to--" + +"As to hurry you? No, my dear, of course not. There shall be no indecent +haste. Your wishes, your delicate and disinterested motives, shall be +consulted before all things; yes, my love," cried the Captain, sorely +afraid of some wavering on the part of his daughter, and painfully +anxious to conciliate her, "all shall be in accordance with your wishes. +But I must urge your immediate removal from Bayswater; first, because M. +Lenoble will naturally wish to see you oftener than he can while you are +residing with people whose acquaintance I do not want him to make; and +secondly, because you have no further need of Mrs. Sheldon's patronage." + +"It has been kindness, affection, papa--never patronage. I could not +leave Mrs. Sheldon or Charlotte abruptly or ungraciously, upon any +consideration. They gave me a home when I most bitterly needed one. +They took me away from the dull round of schoolroom drudgery, that was +fast changing me into a hard hopeless joyless automaton. My first duty +is to them." + +The Captain's angry sniff alone expressed the indignation which this +impious remark inspired. + +"My next shall be to you and M. Lenoble. Let me give Mrs. Sheldon due +notice of the change in our plans." + +"What do you call due notice?" asked Horatio, peevishly. + +"A quarter's notice." + +"O, indeed! Then for three months you are to dance attendance upon Mrs. +Sheldon, while M. Lenoble is waiting to make you his wife." + +"I must consult the wishes of my friends, papa." + +"Very well, my dear," replied the Captain, with a sigh that was next of +kin to a groan; "you must please yourself and your friends, I suppose; +your poor old father is a secondary consideration." And then, timeously +mindful of the skirmish he had just had with his daughter, Captain Paget +made haste to assure her of his regard and submission. + +"All shall be as you please, my love," he murmured. "There, go into my +room, and smooth your hair, and bathe your eyes, while I ring for the +tea." + +Diana obeyed. She found eau-de-cologne and the most delicate of Turkey +sponges on her father's wash-handstand; jockey-club, and ivory-backed +brushes, somewhat yellow with age, but bearing crest and monogram, on his +dressing-table. The workhouse did not seem quite so near at hand as the +Captain had implied; but with these sanguine people it is but a step from +disappointment to despair. + +"What am I to tell Mrs. Sheldon, papa?" she asked, when she was pouring +out her father's tea. + +"Well, I think you had better say nothing, except that my circumstances +have somewhat improved, and that my failing health requires your care." + +"I hate secrets, papa." + +"So do I, my dear; but half-confidences are more disagreeable than +secrets." + +Diana submitted. She secretly reserved to herself the right to tell +Charlotte anything she pleased. From that dear adopted sister she would +hide nothing. + +"If M. Lenoble should repeat his offer, and I should accept it, I will +tell her all," she thought. "It will make that dear girl happy to know +that there is some one who loves me, besides herself." + +And then she thought of the strange difference of fate that gave to +this Charlotte Halliday, with her rich stepfather and comfortable +surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a lover, while to her, +the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, came a wealthy suitor. + +"Will hers be the dinner of herbs, and mine the stalled ox?" she thought. +"Ah, Heaven forbid! Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to +love too well?" + +She remembered the cynical French proverb, "When we can not have what +we love, we must love what we have." But the cynical proverb brought her +no comfort. + +She went back to Bayswater with a strange bewildered feeling; after +having promised her father to go to Omega Street whenever he sent for +her. There was no actual pain in her mind, no passionate desire to recall +her promise, no dread horror of the step to which she had pledged +herself. The feeling that oppressed her was the sense that such a step +should have been the spontaneous election of her grateful heart, proud of +a good man's preference, instead of a weak submission to a father's +helplessness. + + + + +Book the Fifth. + + + +THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +TAKEN BY STORM. + +Two days after her interview with Gustave Lenoble, Miss Paget received a +brief note from her father, summoning her again to Omega Street. + +"He has not gone back to Normandy," wrote the Captain. + +"My child, he positively worships the ground you walk upon. Ah, my love, +_it is something to have a father_! I need scarcely tell you that his +first idea of your excellence was inspired by those glowing descriptions +of your goodness, your beauty, your heroism, which I favoured him with, +_en passant_, during our conversations at Cotenoir, where the happy +accident of a business transaction first introduced me to him. The +interests of my only child have ever been near and dear to me; and where +a duller man would have perceived only a wealthy stranger, my paternal +instincts recognized at a glance the predestined husband of my daughter. +It needed my wide experience of life--and, as I venture to believe, my +subtle knowledge of the human heart--to understand that a man who had +lived for five-and-thirty years buried alive in a French province--a +charming place, my love, and for your refined taste replete with +interest--never seeing a mortal except his immediate neighbours, would be +the man of men to fall in love with the first attractive young woman he +met among strangers. Come to me this afternoon without fail, and come +early.--Yours, + +"H.N.C.P." + +Diana obeyed this summons submissively, but still troubled by that +strange sense of bewilderment which had affected her since her stormy +interview with Captain Paget. She was not quite certain of herself. The +old dreams--the sweet foolish girlish fancies--were not yet put away +altogether from her mind; but she knew that they were foolish, and she +was half-inclined to believe that there had been some wisdom in her +father's scorn. + +"What do I want more?" she asked herself. "He is good and brave and true, +and he loves me. If I were a princess, my marriage would be negotiated +for me by other people, and I should have reason to consider myself very +happy if the man whom the state selected for my husband should prove as +good a man as Gustave Lenoble. And he loves me; me, who have never before +had power over a man's heart!" + +She walked across Hyde Park on this occasion, as on the last; and her +thoughts, though always confused--mere rags and scraps of thought--were +not all unpleasant. There was a smile, half shy, half tender, on her face +as she went into the little sitting-room where Gustave was waiting for +her. She had seen his hat and overcoat in the passage, and knew that he +was there waiting for her. To this poor desolate soul there was something +sweet in the idea of being waited for. + +As she stood but a little within the doorway, blushing, almost trembling +with the sense of her changed position, her lover came across the room +and took her in his arms. The strong brave arms held her to his breast; +and in that one embrace he took her to his heart, and made her his own +for ever. + +In every story of life-long affection, there is one moment in which the +bond is sealed. Diana looked up at the frank tender face, and felt that +she had found her conqueror. Master, friend, protector, husband, adoring +and devoted lover, gallant and fearless champion--he was all; and she +divined his power and his worth as she glanced shyly upward, ashamed to +be so lightly won. + +"M. Lenoble," she faltered, trying to withdraw herself from the strong +encircling arm that held her, as if by right. + +"Gustave, now and for ever, my Diane! There shall be no more Monsieur +Lenoble. And in a few weeks it shall be 'my husband.' Your father has +given me to you. He tells me to laugh at your refusals your scruples; to +assail you like your Shakespeare's Petruchio assails his Katherine--with +audacious insolence that will not be denied. And I shall take his advice. +Look up into my face, dear angel, and defy me to take his advice." + +Happily the dear angel looked only downwards. But M Lenoble was resolved +to have an agreeable response. + +"See, then, thou canst not defy me!" he cried, in the only language he +spoke; and the "_tu_" for the first time sounded very tender, very sweet. +"Thou canst not tell me thou art angry with me. And the other--the +imbecile;--he is gone for ever, is he not? Ah, say yes!" + +"Yes, he is gone," said Diana, almost in a whisper. + +"Is he quite gone? The door of thine heart locked against him, his +luggage thrown out of the window?" + +"He is gone!" she murmured softly. "He could not hold his place against +you--you are so strong--so brave; and he was only a shadow. Yes, he is +gone." + +She said this with a little sigh of relief. It was in all sincerity that +she answered her suitor's question. She felt that a crisis had come in +her life--the first page of a new volume; and the old sad tear-blotted +book might be cast away. + +"Dear angel, wilt thou ever learn to love me?" asked Gustave, in a +half-whisper, bending down his bearded face till his lips almost touched +her cheek. + +"It is impossible not to love you," she answered softly. And indeed it +seemed to her as if this chivalrous Gaul was a creature to command the +love of women, the fear of men; an Achilles _en frac_; a Bayard without +his coat of mail; Don Quixote in his youth, generous, brave, +compassionate, tender, and with a brain not as yet distempered by the +reading of silly romances. + +Captain Paget emerged from his den as the little love scene ended. He +affected a gentlemanly unconsciousness of the poetry involved in the +situation, was pleasantly anxious about the tea-tray, the candles, and +minor details of life; and thus afforded the lovers ample time in which +to recover their composure. The Frenchman was in no wise discomposed; he +was only abnormally gay, with a little air of triumph that was not +unpleasing. Diana was pale; but there was an unwonted light in her eyes, +and she had by no means the appearance of a victim newly offered on the +sacrificial altar of filial duty. In sober truth, Miss Paget was happier +to-night than she had been for a long time. At three-and-twenty she was +girl enough to rejoice in the knowledge that she was truly loved, and +woman enough to value the sense of peace involved in the security of a +prosperous future. + +If she was grateful to her lover--and the affection he had inspired in +her heart had grown out of gratitude--it was no mercenary consideration +as to his income or position that made her grateful. She thanked him for +his love--that treasure which she had never expected to possess; she +thanked him because he had taken her by the hand, and led her out of the +ranks of lonely dependent womanhood, and seated her upon a throne, on the +steps whereof he was content to kneel. Whether the throne were a rushen +chair in some rustic cottage, or a gilded _fauteuil_ in a palace, she +cared very little. It was the subject's devotion that was new and sweet +to her. + +She went to Charlotte's room that night, when Mr. Sheldon's small +household was at rest; as she had gone on Christmas Eve to renounce her +lover and to bless her rival. This time it was a new confession she went +to make, and a confession that involved some shame. There is nothing so +hard to confess as inconstancy; and every woman is not so philosophic as +Rahel Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to love +the same person, but always to love some one. + +Miss Paget seated herself at Charlotte's feet, as she had done on that +previous occasion. The weather was still cold enough to make a fire very +pleasant, though it was more than two months since the Christmas bells +had rung out upon the frosty air. Diana sat on a low hassock, playing +with the tassels of her friend's dressing-gown, anxious to make her +confession, and solely at a loss for words in which to shape so +humiliating an avowal. + +"Charlotte," she began abruptly at last, "have you any idea when you and +Valentine are to be married?" + +Miss Halliday gave a little cry of surprise. + +"Why, of course not, Di! How can you ask such a question? Our marriage +is what uncle George calls a remote contingency. We are not to be married +for ages--not until Valentine has obtained a secure position in +literature, and an income that seems almost impossible. That was the +special condition upon which Mr. Sheldon--papa--gave his consent to our +engagement. Of course it was very proper and prudent of him to think of +these things; and as he has been very kind and liberal-minded in his +conduct to me throughout, I should be a most ungrateful person if I +refused to be guided by his advice." + +"And I suppose that means that your engagement is to be a long one?" + +"The longest of long engagements. And what can be happier than a long +engagement? One gets to know and understand the man one is to marry so +thoroughly. I think I know every turn of thought in Valentine's mind; +every taste, every fancy; and I feel myself every day growing to think +more and more like him. I read the books he reads, so as to be able to +talk to him, you know; but I am not so clever as you, Di, and Valentine's +favourite authors do sometimes seem rather dry to me. But I struggle on, +you know; and the harder I find the struggle, the more I admire my dear +love's cleverness. Think of him, Di--three different articles in three +different magazines last month! The paper on Apollodorus, in the +_Cheapside_, you know; and that story in the Charing Cross--'How I lost +my Gingham Umbrella, and gained the Acquaintance of Mr. Gozzleton.' _So_ +funny! And the exhaustive treatise on the Sources of Light, in the +_Scientific Saturday_. And think of the fuss they make about Homer, a +blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and +wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete +poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a +man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine +accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the reviewers +take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling him that he is +shallow and frivolous, I begin to think that literature must be going to +the dogs." + +And here Charlotte became meditative, absorbed in the contemplation of +Mr. Hawkehurst's genius. Diana had begun the conversation very artfully, +intending to proceed by a gentle transition from Charlotte's love affairs +to her own; but the conversation was drifting away from the subject into +a discussion upon literature, and the brilliant young essayist whose +first adventurous flights seemed grand as the soaring of Theban eagle to +this tender and admiring watcher of his skyward progress. + +"Lotta," said Miss Paget, after a pause, "should you be very sorry if I +were to leave you before your marriage?" + +"Leave me before my marriage, Diana! Is it not arranged that you are to +live with mamma, and be a daughter to her, when I am gone? And you will +come and stay with Valentine and me at our cottage; and you will advise +me about my house-keeping, and teach me how to be a sensible, useful, +economical wife, as well as a devoted one. Leave us, Di! What have I +done, or mamma, or Mr. Sheldon, or anybody, that you should talk of +anything so dreadful?" + +"What have you done, dear girl, dear friend, dear sister? Everything to +win my undying love and gratitude. You have changed me from a hard +disappointed bitter-minded woman--envious, at times, even of you--into +your loving and devoted friend. You have changed me from a miserable +creature into a contented and hopeful one. You have taught me to forget +that my childhood and youth were one long night of wretchedness and +degradation. You have taught me to forgive the father who suffered my +life to be what it was, and made no one poor effort to lift me out of the +slough of despond to which he had sunk. I can say no more, Charlotte. +There are things that cannot be told by words." + +"And you want to leave me!" said Charlotte, in accents half-wondering, +half-reproachful. + +"My father wants me to leave you, Lotta; and some one else--some one whom +you must know and like before I can be sure I like him myself." + +"Him!" cried Charlotte, with a faint shriek of surprise. "Diana, WHAT are +you going to tell me?" + +"A secret, Lotta; something which my father has forbidden me to tell any +one, but which I will not hide from you. My poor father has found a kind +friend--a friend who is almost as good to him as you are to me. How +merciful Heaven is in raising up friends for outcasts! And I have seen a +good deal of this gentleman who is so kind to papa, and the result is +that--chiefly for papa's sake, and because I know that he is generous and +brave and true, I mean papa's friend, M. Lenoble--I have consented to be +his wife." + +"Diana!" cried Charlotte, with a sternness of manner that was alarming in +so gentle a creature, "it shall never be!" + +"What dear?" + +"The sacrifice! No, dear, no! I understand it all. For your cruel +mercenary heartless designing father's sake, you are going to marry a man +whom you can't love. You are going to offer up your poor bruised desolate +heart on the altar of duty. Ah, dear, you can't think I forget what you +told me only two short months ago--though I seem selfish and frivolous, +and am always talking about _him_, and parading my happiness, as it must +seem to you, reckless of the wounds so newly healed in your noble +unselfish heart. But I do not altogether forget, Diana, and such a +sacrifice as this I will not allow. I know you have resigned him to me--I +know you have thrust him from your heart, as you told me that night. But +the hollow aching void that is left in your lonely heart shall be sacred, +Di. No stranger's image shall pollute it. You shall not sacrifice your +own peace to your father's selfishness. No, dear, no! With mamma and me +you will always have a home. You need stoop to no cruel barter such as +this marriage." + +And hereupon Miss Halliday wept over and caressed her friend, as the +confidante of Agamemnon's daughter may have wept over and caressed that +devoted young princess after the divination of Calchas had become common +talk in the royal household. + +"But if I think it my duty to accept M. Lenoble's offer, Lotta?" urged +Miss Paget with some embarrassment of manner. "M. Lenoble is as rich as +he is generous, and my marriage with him will secure a happy home for my +father. The foolish dreams I told you about on Christmas Eve had faded +from my mind before I dared to speak of them. I could only confess my +folly when I knew that I was learning to be wise. Pray do not think that +I am sordid or mercenary. It is not because M. Lenoble is rich that I am +inclined to marry him, it is because--" + +"Because you want to throw yourself away for the advantage of your +selfish heartless father," interjected Charlotte. "He has neglected you +all your life, and now wants to profit by the sacrifice of your +happiness. Be firm, Di, darling; your Charlotte will stand by you, and +find a home for you always, come what may. Who is this M. Lenoble? Some +horrible ugly old creature, I dare say." + +Miss Paget smiled and blushed. The vision of Gustave's frank handsome +face arose before her very vividly as Charlotte said this. + +"No, dear," she replied. "M. Lenoble is not an old +man--five-and-thirty at most." + +"Five-and-thirty!" repeated Charlotte, with a wry face; "you don't call +that young? And what is he like?" + +"Well, dear, I think he is the sort of man whom most people would call +handsome. I'm sure you would like him, Lotta. He is so candid, so +animated, so full of strength and courage. The sort of man to whom one +would naturally look in any emergency or danger; the sort of man in whose +company fear would be impossible." + +"Diana," cried Charlotte, suddenly, "you are in love with him!" + +"Lotta!" + +"Yes, dear, you are in love with him," repeated Miss Halliday, embracing +her friend with effusion; "yes, over head and ears in love with him. And +you are ashamed to confess the truth to me; and you are half ashamed to +confess it even to yourself--as if you could deceive an old stager like +me!" cried Charlotte, laughing. "Why, you dear inconstant thing, while I +have felt myself the guiltiest and most selfish creature in the world for +robbing you of Valentine, you have been quietly transferring your +affections to this M. Gustave Lenoble--who is very rich, and brave, and +true, and generous, and what most people would call handsome! Bless you, +a thousand times, my darling! You have made me so happy!" + +"Indeed, Lotta!" + +"Yes, dear. The thought that there was a blank in your life made a dark +cloud in mine. I know I have been very selfish, very thoughtless, but I +could never have been quite free from a sense of self-reproach. But now +there is nothing for me but happiness. O darling, I so long to see your +M. Lenoble!" + +"You shall see him, dear." + +"And in the meantime tell me what he is like." + +Miss Halliday insisted upon a full, true, and particular account of M. +Lenoble's personal appearance. Diana gave it, but not without some sense +of embarrassment. She could not bring herself to be enthusiastic about +Gustave Lenoble, though in her heart there was a warmth of feeling that +surprised her. "What a hypocrite you are, Di!" exclaimed Charlotte +presently. "I know you love this good Frenchman almost as dearly as I +love Valentine, and that the thought of his affection makes you happy; +and yet you speak of him in little measured sentences, and you won't be +enthusiastic even about his good looks." + +"It is difficult to pass from dreams to realities, Lotta. I have lived so +long among dreams, that the waking world seems strange to me." + +"That is only a poetical way of saying that you are ashamed of having +changed your mind. I will tell M. Lenoble what a lukewarm creature you +are, and how unworthy of his love!" + +"You shall tell him what you please. But remember, dear, my engagement +must not be spoken about yet awhile, not even to your mamma. Papa makes a +strong point of this, and I have promised to obey, though I am quite in +the dark as to his reasons." + +Miss Halliday submitted to anything her friend wished; only entreating +that she might be introduced to M. Lenoble. Diana promised her this +privilege; but it speedily transpired that Diana's promise was not all +that was wanted on this occasion. + +For some time past, in fact from the very commencement of Charlotte's +engagement, Mr. Sheldon had shown himself punctilious to an exceeding +degree with regard to his stepdaughter. The places to which she went, and +the people with whom she consorted, appeared to be matters of supreme +importance in his mind. When speaking of these things he gave those about +him to understand that his ideas had been the same from the time of +Charlotte's leaving school; but Diana knew that this was not true. Mr. +Sheldon's theories had been much less strict, and Mr. Sheldon's practice +had been much more careless, prior to Miss Halliday's engagement. + +No stately principal of a school for young ladies could have been more +particular as to the movements of her charges--more apprehensive of +wolf-in-sheep's-clothing in the shape of singing or drawing-master--than +Mr. Sheldon seemed to be in these latter days. Even those pleasant walks +in Kensington Gardens, which had been one of the regular occupations of +the day, were now forbidden. Mr. Sheldon did not like that his daughter +should walk in public with no better protector than Diana Paget. + +"There is something disreputable in two girls marching about those +gardens together according to my ideas," said this ultra-refined +stockbroker, one morning at the family breakfast-table. "I don't like to +see my stepdaughter do anything I should forbid my own daughter to do. +And if I had a daughter, I should most decidedly forbid all lonely +rambles in Kensington Gardens. You see, Lotta, two girls as attractive +as you and Miss Paget can't be too particular where you go, and what you +do. When you want air and exercise, you can get both in the garden; and +when you want change of scene, and a peep at the fashions, you can drive +out with Mrs. Sheldon." + +To this deprivation Charlotte submitted, somewhat unwillingly, but with +no sign of open rebellion. She thought her stepfather foolish and +unreasonable; but she always bore in mind the fact that he had been kind +and disinterested in the matter of her engagement, and she was content to +prove her gratitude by any little sacrifice of this kind. Was not her +lover permitted to spend his Sundays in her society, and to call on her, +at his discretion, during the week? And what were walks in Kensington +Gardens compared with the delight of his dear presence! It is true that +she had sometimes been favoured with Mr. Hawkehurst's society in the +course of her airing; but she knew that he sacrificed his hours of work +or study for the chance of half an hour in her society; and she felt that +there might be gain to him in her loss of liberty. + +She told him, when next they met, that the morning walks were forbidden; +and, so jealous a passion is love, that Mr. Hawkehurst was nowise sorry +to find that his pearl was strictly watched and carefully guarded. + +"Well, it seems very particular of Mr. Sheldon, of course," he said; +"but, upon my word, I think he's right. Such a girl as you oughtn't to go +about with no better protection than Diana can give you. Fellows will +stare so at a pretty girl, you know; and I can't bear to think my pearl +should be stared at by impertinent strangers." + +Mr. Hawkehurst did not, however, find the strict notions of his +lady-love's stepfather quite so agreeable when he wanted to take his +"pearl" to the winter exhibitions of pictures. He was told that Miss +Halliday could go nowhere, except accompanied by her mamma; and as Georgy +did not care about pictures, and found herself unequal to the fatigue of +attending the winter exhibitions, he was obliged to forego the delight of +seeing them with Lotta on his arm. He pronounced Mr. Sheldon on this +occasion to be a narrow-minded idiot; but withdrew the remark in a +contrite spirit when Charlotte reminded him of that gentleman's +generosity. + +"Yes, dear, he has certainly been very kind and very disinterested--more +disinterested than even you think; but, somehow, I can't make him out." + +It was very well for Miss Halliday that she had submitted to this novel +restriction with as good a grace, inasmuch as Mr. Sheldon had prepared +himself for active opposition. He had given orders to his wife, and +further orders to Mrs. Woolper to the effect that his step-daughter +should not be permitted to go out of doors, except in his own or her +mother's company. + +"She is a very good girl, you see, Nancy," he said to the old +housekeeper, "but she's young, and she's giddy; and of course I can't +take upon myself to answer for Miss Paget, who may or may not be a good +girl. She comes of a very bad stock, however; and I am bound to remember +that. Some people think that you can't give a girl too much liberty. My +ideas lean the other way. I think you can't take too much care of a very +pretty girl whom you are bound by duty to protect." + +All this sounded very noble and very conscientious. It sounded thus even +to Mrs. Woolper, who in her intercourse with Philip Sheldon could never +quite divest herself of one appalling memory. That memory was the death +of Tom Halliday, and the horrible thoughts and fears that had for a time +possessed her mind in relation to that death. The shadow of that old +ghastly terror sometimes came between her and Mr. Sheldon, even now, +though she had long ago assured herself that the terror had been alike +groundless and unreasonable. + +"Didn't I see my own nephew carried off by a fever twice as sudden as the +fever that carried off poor Mr. Halliday?" she said to herself; "and am I +to think horrid things of him as I nursed a baby, because a cup of greasy +beef-tea turned my stomach?" + +Convinced by such reasoning as this that she had done her master a +grievous wrong, and grateful for the timely shelter afforded in her old +age, Mrs. Woolper felt that she could not do too much in her benefactor's +service. She had already shown herself a clever managing housekeeper; had +reformed abuses, and introduced a new system of care and economy +below-stairs, to the utter bewilderment of poor Georgy, for whom the +responsibilities of the gothic villa had been an overwhelming burden. +Georgy was not particularly grateful to the energetic old Yorkshirewoman +who had taken this burden off her hands, but she was submissive. + +"I never felt myself much in the house, my dear," she said to Lotta; "but +I am sure since Ann Woolper has been here I have felt myself a cipher." + +Mrs. Woolper, naturally sharp and observant, was not slow to perceive +that Mr. Sheldon was abnormally anxious about his stepdaughter. She +ascribed this anxiety to a suspicious nature, an inherent distrust of +other people on the part of her master, and in some measure to his +ignorance of womankind. + +"He seems to think that she'd run away and get married on the sly, at a +word from that young man; but he doesn't know what a dear innocent soul +she is, and how sorry she'd be to displease any one that's kind to her. I +don't know anything about Miss Paget. She's more stand-offish than our +own Miss, though she is little better than a genteel kind of servant; +but she seems fair-spoken enough. As to our Miss, bless her dear heart! +she wants no watching, I'll lay. But I daresay those City folks, with +their stocks going up and going down, and always bringing about the ruin +of somebody or other, go which way they will, get their poor heads so +muddled with figures that they can't believe there's such a thing as +honesty in the world." + +This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's evening musing in the snug little +housekeeper's room at the Lawn. It was a very comfortable little room, +and held sacred to Mrs. Woolper; the three young females, and the boy in +buttons, who formed Mr. Sheldon's in-door establishment, preferring the +license of the kitchen to the strict etiquette of the housekeeper's room. + +This apartment, as well as every other room in the stockbroker's house, +bore the stamp of prosperity. A comfortable easy-chair reposed the limbs +of Mrs. Woolper; a bright little fire burned in a bright little grate, +and its ruddy light was reflected in a bright little fender. Prints of +the goody class adorned the walls; and a small round table, with a +somewhat gaudy cover, supported Mrs. Woolper's work-box and family Bible, +both of which she made it a point of honour to carry about with her, and +to keep religiously, through good fortune and through evil fortune; +neither of which, however, afforded her much employment. She felt herself +to be much nearer grace with the family Bible by her side than she would +have been without it; she felt, indeed, that the maintenance and due +exhibition of the family Bible was in itself a kind of religion. But that +she should peruse its pages was not in the bond. Her eyes were old and +weak--sharp enough to discover the short-comings of Mr. Sheldon's young +maid-servants, but too feeble even for long-primer. + +As she looked round that snug little chamber of an evening, when her +day's labours were ended, and her own particular Britannia-metal tea-pot +was basking in the fender, her own special round of toast frizzling on +the trivet, she was very grateful to the man to whom she owed these +comforts. + +"What should I be but for him?" she asked herself with a shudder; for +the vision of that darksome abode shut in by high black walls--the +metropolitan workhouse--arose before her. She did not know what +difficulties would have barred her entrance even to that dreary +asylum; she only thought of the horrors of that sanctuary, and she +blessed her master for the benevolence that had accepted the service +of her failing hands. + +This was the servant on whom Philip Sheldon relied. He saw that she was +grateful, and that she was ready to serve him with an almost slavish +devotion. He knew that she had suspected him in the past, and he saw that +she had outlived her suspicion. + +"There is a statute of limitations to these things as well as for debt," +he said to himself. "A man can live down anything, if he knows what he +is about." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FIRM AS A BOOK. + +After that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss Halliday's +bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa for two or three +days, during which the impulsive Charlotte, being forbidden to talk +openly of the change in her friend's position, was fain to give vent to +her feelings by furtive embraces and hand-squeezings, sly nods and +meaning becks, and mischievous twinkling of her arch grey eyes. + +She talked of Valentine more than ever now, feeling herself at liberty to +sing what paeans she pleased in praise of her hero, now that her friend +had also a fitting subject for paeans. + +"And now it's your turn to talk of M. Lenoble, dear," she would say +naively, when she had entertained Diana with the minute details of her +last conversation with her lover, or a lively sketch of the delights of +that ideal cottage which she loved to furnish and unfurnish in accordance +with the new fancy of the hour. + +Diana was pleased to listen to her girlish talk: to hang and rehang the +ideal draperies, to fill and refill the ideal bookcase, to plan and +replan the arrangements of that ideal existence which was to be all joy +and love and harmony; but when her turn came, and she was asked to be +rapturous about her own lover, she could say nothing: that which she felt +was too deep for words. The thought of her lover was strange to her; the +fact of his love was mysterious and wonderful. She could not talk of him +with the customary frivolous school-girl talk; and love for him had so +newly taken root in her heart that there were as yet no blossoms to be +gathered from that magical plant. + +"Don't ask me to talk of him, Lotta, dear;" she said. "I am not yet sure +that I love him; I only feel that it is sweet to be loved by him. I think +Providence must have sent him to me in pity for my desolation." + +This was almost the same fancy that had occurred to Susan Meynell +five-and-thirty years before this time, when Gustave the first had +rescued her from the suicide's unrepentable sin. + +That chivalrous turn of mind which was hereditary in the race of Lenoble +predisposed these men to pity loneliness and beauty, weakness and sorrow. +This pity for helplessness may have been indeed only an element of their +exceeding strength. Was not the rescue of weaklings and women an +unfailing attribute in the mighty men of old? Who so prompt as Hercules +to fly to the rescue of Hesione? Who so swift as Perseus to save +Andromeda? And what sea-monster more terrible than loneliness and +poverty? + +In a few days there came another letter from Captain Paget, containing a +fresh summons to Omega Street. + +"Lenoble positively returns to Normandy to-morrow," he wrote, "to see his +girls, and, no doubt, break the news of his approaching marriage. He much +wants to see you, and, as I have forbidden his calling on you at the +Lawn, can only meet you here. He is to drink tea with me at the usual +time to-morrow evening, and I shall expect to see you early in the +afternoon." + +This afforded an opportunity for that introduction to which Miss Halliday +looked forward with so much interest. + +"If Mr. Sheldon and your mamma will let you come with me this afternoon, +dear, I shall be very pleased to take you," said Diana; and she felt that +she would appear less in the character of a lamb led to the slaughter if +she could go to meet her betrothed accompanied by Charlotte. + +But in this matter both the young ladies were doomed to disappointment. +Mr. Sheldon showed himself a social Draco in all things relating to his +stepdaughter. Being forbidden to reveal the existence of Gustave Lenoble, +Charlotte could only urge a frivolous desire to accompany her friend in a +pilgrimage dictated by filial duty. To the practical mind of Philip +Sheldon this desire appeared altogether absurd and unreasonable, and he +did not hesitate to express himself to that effect in a _tete-a-tete_ +with his stepdaughter. + +"What good on earth can you do by going to see a gouty old man, who has +his own daughter to dance attendance upon him?" asked Mr. Sheldon. +"Really, Charlotte, I am surprised to hear such a proposition from a +girl of your good sense. Miss Paget is your companion, not your visitor. +It is her duty to indulge your whims, but it is not your place to give +way to hers." + +"But this is a whim of mine, papa; I should really like to spend the +afternoon at Chelsea. It would be a change, you know." + +Mr. Sheldon looked at his stepdaughter with a sharp and searching gaze, a +gaze in which there was suspicion as well as curiosity. + +"It is a very discreditable whim for a young lady in your position," +he said sternly; "and I beg that such a proposition may not be made to +me again." + +This was decisive. Charlotte submitted, and Diana went alone to Omega +Street. She found Gustave waiting for her. He proposed a walk, and +Captain Paget was enthusiastic upon the subject of fresh air, and the +benefits arising therefrom. So the lovers went out in the bleak winter +afternoon, and wandered in the dreary Pimlico region as far as St. +James's Park--Gustave delighted to have Diana's hand upon his arm, and +Diana almost bewildered by a sense of happiness, which seemed unreal by +reason of its very novelty. + +Gustave was all enthusiasm, full of plans for the future. He would have +had the marriage take place immediately, if such a thing had been +possible; but Diana showed him that it would not be possible. Her first +duty was to the only friends she had ever known. Gustave argued the point +resolutely for nearly an hour, during which time they made their way to +the very gates of St. James's Park, but Diana was more resolute still. + +"What a tyrannical wife I shall have by-and-by!" said Gustave. "I think +you care for these Sheldons more than for me, Diane." + +"These Sheldons have been so good to me in the past." + +"And I mean to be so good to you in the future," answered Gustave. "You +shall be the happiest wife in Normandy, if a foolish doting husband's +devotion can make you happy." + +"What have I done to deserve so much devotion?" Diana murmured +wonderingly. + +"What have you done? Nothing, less than nothing. You will not even run +the hazard of offending your family of Sheldon in order to make me happy. +But Fate has said, 'At the feet of that girl with the dark eyes and pale +proud face shall poor Lenoble of Cotenoir put down his heart.' Do you +know what I said to myself when I saw you first in the little parlour +yonder? Ah, no! How should you guess? 'She is there,' said I; 'behold +her! It is thy destiny, Lenoble, on which thou gazest!' And thou, love, +wert calm and voiceless as Fate. Quiet as the goddess of marble before +which the pagans offered their sacrifices, across whose cold knees they +laid their rich garments. I put my treasures in your lap, my love; my +heart, my hopes,--all the treasures I had to offer." + +This was all very sweet, but there was a sting even mingled with that +sweetness. Diana told herself that love like this should only be offered +on the purest shrine; and when she remembered the many stains upon her +father's honour, it seemed to her that a part of the shame must needs +cleave to her. + +"Gustave," she said presently, after an absent meditative mood, from +which her lover had vainly tried to beguile her, "does it not seem to you +that there is something foolish in this talk of love and confidence +between you and me; and that all your promises have been a little too +lightly made? What do you know of me? You see me sitting in my father's +room, and because my eyes happen to please you, or for some reason as +foolish as that, you ask me to be your wife. I might have been one of the +worst of women." + +"You might have been?--yes, dear, but you are not. And if you had been, +Gustave Lenoble would not have flung his heart into your lap, even if +your eyes had been sweeter than they are. We impulsive people are people +of quick perceptions, and know what we are doing better than our +reflective friends imagine. I did not need to be an hour in your company, +dear love, in order to know that you are noble and true. There are tones +in the voice, there are expressions of the face, that tell these things +better than words can tell them; for, you see, words can lie, while tones +and looks are apt to be true. Yes, my angel, I knew you from that first +night. My heart leapt across all conventional barriers, and found its way +straight to yours." + +"I can see that you think much better of me than I deserve; but even +supposing you not to be deceived as to myself, I fear you are much +deceived as to my surroundings." + +"I know that your father is poor, and that the burden of his poverty +weighs heavily on you. That is enough for me to know." + +"No, M. Lenoble; it is not enough for you to know. If I am to be your +wife, I will not enter your family as an impostor. I told you the truth +about myself the other day when you questioned me, and I am bound to tell +you the truth about my father." + +And then she told him, in the plainest frankest language, the story of +her father's life. She inflicted no unnecessary shame on Captain Paget; +she made no complaint of her neglected childhood and joyless youth; but +she told Gustave that her father had been an adventurer, keeping doubtful +company, and earning his bread by doubtful means. + +"I hope and believe that if a peaceful home could be secured for his +declining years, he would live the rest of his life like a gentleman and +a Christian; and that, the bitter struggle for existence being ended, he +would be sorry for the past. I doubt if the sense of shame ever deserted +him when he was living that wretched wandering life, leaving debts and +difficulties behind him everywhere--always harassed and hunted by +creditors, who had good cause to be angry. Yes, Gustave, I do believe +that if it should please Providence to give my father a peaceful home at +last, he will be thankful for God's mercy, and will repent the sins of +life. And now I have told you the kind of heritage I can bring my +husband." + +"My dear love, I will accept the heritage, for the sake of her who brings +it. I never meant to be less than a son to your father; and if he is not +the best of fathers, as regards the past, we will try to make him a +decent kind of father as regards the future. I have long understood that +Captain Paget is something--ever so little--of an adventurer. It was the +pursuit of fortune that brought him to me; and without knowing it, he +brought me my fortune in the shape of his daughter." + +Diana blushed as she remembered that Captain Paget had not been so +innocent of any design in this matter as the Frenchman imagined. + +"And you will receive even papa for my sake?" asked Diana. + +"With all my heart." + +"Ah, you are indeed a generous lover!" + +"A lover who is not generous is--bah! there is nothing in creation so +mean as the wretch whom love does not render generous. When one sees the +woman whom Fate intends for one's wife, is one to stop to inquire the +character of her father, her mother, her sister, her cousin?--for there +is no stopping when you begin that. A man who loves makes no inquiries. +If he finds his jewel in the gutter, he picks it out of the mud and +carries it away in his bosom, too proud of his treasure to remember where +he found it; always provided that the jewel is no counterfeit, but the +real gem, fit for a king's crown. And my diamond is of the purest water. +By-and-by we will try to drain the gutter--that is to say, we will try to +pay those small debts of which you speak, to lodging-house keepers, and +tradesmen who have trusted your father." + +"You would pay papa's debts!" cried Diana in amazement. + +"But why not? All these little debts, the thought of which is so bitter +to you, might be discharged for two or three thousand pounds. Your father +tells me I am to be very rich by-and-by." + +"My father tells you! Ah, then, you have allowed him to involve you in +some kind of speculation!" + +"He has involved me in no speculation, and in no risk that two or three +hundred pounds will not cover." + +"The whole business seems very mysterious, Gustave." + +"Perhaps; it has to do with a secret which I am pledged to keep. I will +not allow your father to lead me into any quagmire of speculation, +believe me, dear one." + +After this they went back to Omega Street in the winter gloaming, and +Diana loved and admired this man with all her heart and mind. A new life +lay before her, very bright and fair. There, where had been only the +barren desert, was now a fair landscape, shining in the sunlight of hope. + +"Do you think your children will ever love me, Gustave?" she asked, not +without some sense of wonder that this impulsive light-hearted lover +should be the owner of children. She fancied that a responsibility so +grave as paternity must needs have impressed some stamp of solemnity upon +the man who bore it. + +"Ever love thee!" cried Gustave. "Child, they will adore thee. They ask +only some one to love. Their hearts are gardens of flowers; and thou +shalt gather the flowers. But wilt thou be happy at Cotenoir, thou? It is +somewhat sad, perhaps--the grave old chateau with the long sombre +corridors. But thou shalt choose new furniture, new garnitures at Rouen, +and we will make all bright and gay, like the heart of thy affianced. Thou +wilt not be dull?" + +"Dull, with you and yours! I shall thank God for my happy home day and +night, as I never thought to thank Him a few months ago, when I was +dissatisfied, wicked, tired of my life." + +"And when you thought of that other one? Ah, how he was an imbecile, that +other one! But thou wilt never think of him again; it is a dream that is +past," said M. Lenoble. + +That self-confidence which was an attribute of his sanguine nature +rendered the idea of a rival not altogether unpleasant to him. He was +gratified by the idea of his own victory, and the base rival's +annihilation. + +"Diane, I want to show thee the home that is to be thine," he said +presently. "Your Sheldon family must give thee at least a holiday, if +they refuse to let thee go altogether. Thou wilt come to Normandy with +thy father. He is coming for a week or two, now that his gout is better. +I want to show thee Cotenoir--and Beaubocage, the place where my father +was born. It will seem dreary, perhaps, to thine English eyes; but to me +it is very dear." + +"Nothing that is dear to you shall appear dreary to me," said Diana. + +By this time they had arrived at Omega Street. Again Miss Paget made tea +for her lover. Strange to say, the operation seemed to grow more +agreeable with every repetition. While taking his tea from the hands of +his beloved, Gustave pressed the question of Diana's visit to Normandy. + +"About her Sheldon family she is adamant," he said to Captain Paget, who +sipped his tea and smiled at the lovers with the air of an aristocratic +patriarch. "There is to be no marriage till it pleases Mrs. Sheldon to +set her free. I consent to this only as man must consent to the +inevitable; but I say to her, can she not come to Normandy for a +fortnight--say but one short fortnight--to see her home? She will come +with you. She has but to ask a holiday of her friends, and it is done." + +"Of course," exclaimed the Captain, "she shall come with me. If +necessary, I myself will ask it of Sheldon.--But it will be best not to +mention where you are going, Diana. There are reasons, best known to our +friend Gustave and myself, which render secrecy advisable just at +present. You can say Rouen. That is quite near enough to the mark to come +within the limits of truth," added Horatio, with the tone of a man who +had never quite outstepped those limits. "Yes, Rouen. And you will come +with me." + +"With us," said Gustave. "I will put off my journey for a day or two for +the sake of going with you. You have to meet Fleurus in Rouen haven't +you?" + +"Yes; he is to be there on the fifth of March, and this is the last day +of February. I had a letter from him this morning. All goes swimmingly." + +Diana wondered what it could be which went swimmingly; but she was +obliged to content herself with her lover's assurance that he had not +allowed her father to involve him in any kind of speculation. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. + +Between Philip Sheldon and his brother there was at this time a state of +feeling somewhat akin to the relations between a subjugated country and +its conqueror. The vanquished is fain to accept whatever the victor is +pleased to give, though discontent and impotent rage may be gnawing his +entrails. George Sheldon had been a loser in that game in which the +Haygarthian inheritance was the stake. He had held good cards, and had +played them with considerable cleverness; but no play could prevail +against his antagonist's ace of trumps. The ace of trumps was Charlotte +Halliday; and as to his mode and matter of playing this card, Mr. Sheldon +was for the present profoundly mysterious. + +"I have known a good many inscrutable cards in my time," the solicitor of +Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the course of fraternal +converse; "but I think for inscrutability you put the topper on the lot. +What do you expect to get out of this Haygarth estate? Come, Phil, let us +have your figures in plain English. I am to have a fifth--that's all +signed and sealed. But how about your share? What agreement have you got +from Miss Halliday?" + +"None." + +"None!" + +"What would the world think of me if I extorted money, or the promise of +money, from my wife's daughter? Do you think I could enforce any deed +between her and me?" + +"Ah, I see; you go in for respectability. And you are going to leave the +settlement of your claims to your stepdaughter's generosity. You will let +her marry Hawkehurst, with her hundred thousand pounds; and then you will +say to those two, 'Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst, be so kind as to hand over my +share of the plunder.' That is not _like_ you, Phil." + +"Perhaps you will be good enough to spare yourself the trouble of +speculating about my motives. Go your way, and leave me to go mine." + +"But this is a case in which I have an interest. If Charlotte marries +Hawkehurst, I don't see how you are to profit, to any extent that you +would care about, by the Haygarth fortune. But, on the other hand, if she +should die unmarried, without a will, the money would go to your wife. O +my God! Philip Sheldon, is _THAT_ what you mean?" + +The question was so sudden, the tone of horror in which it was spoken so +undisguised, that Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker was for one moment thrown +off his guard. His breath thickened; he tried to speak, but his dry lips +could shape no word. It was only one moment that he faltered. In the next +he turned upon his brother angrily, and asked what he meant. + +"You've been promised _your_ reward," he said; "leave me to look after +mine. You'll take those papers round to Greenwood and Greenwood; they +want to talk to you about them." + +"Yes, I'll take the papers." + +Greenwood and Greenwood were Mr. Sheldon's own solicitors--a firm of some +distinction, on whose acumen and experience the stockbroker placed +implicit reliance. They were men of unblemished respectability, and to +them Mr. Sheldon had confided the care of his stepdaughter's interests, +always reserving the chief power in his own hands. These gentlemen +thought well of the young lady's prospects, and were handling the case in +that slow and stately manner which marks the handling of such cases by +eminent firms of the slow-and-stately class. + +Mr. Sheldon wished his brother good-day, and was about to depart, when +George planted himself suddenly before the door. + +"Look you here, Phil," he said, with an intensity of manner that was by +no means common to him; "I want to say a few words to you, and I will say +them. There was an occasion, ten years ago, on which I ought to have +spoken out, and didn't. I have never ceased to regret my cowardice. Yes, +by Jove! I hate myself for it; and there are times when I feel as if my +share in that wretched business was almost as bad as yours." + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"Of course not. That's your text, and you'll stick to it. But you _do_ +know what I mean, and you shall know what I mean, if plain words can tell +you. You and I had a friend, Phil. He was a good friend to me, and I +liked him as much as a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I +had been down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to +give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, 'George, here's a +cheque for you.' _That's_ my notion of a friend. And yet I stood by that +man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and knew what ailed him, and didn't +stretch out my hand to save him." + +"Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. Sheldon, livid to +the lips with smothered fury, but able to put on a bold front +nevertheless. "I didn't come here to listen to rhodomontade of this kind, +or to bandy words with you. Get out of my way." + +"Not till I've said my say. There shall be no rhodomontade this time. I +stood by and saw my best friend murdered--by you. I kept my counsel for +your sake, and when you had made your fortune--by his death--I asked you +for a little money. You know how much you gave me, and how graciously you +gave it. If you had given me twenty times the sum you gained by Tom +Halliday's death, I would give it back, and twenty times as much again, +to bring him back to life, and to feel that I had never aided and abetted +a murderer. Yes, by God, I would! though I'm not straitlaced or +over-scrupulous at the best of times. But that's past, and all the money +in the Bank of England wouldn't undo what you did in Fitzgeorge Street. +But if you try on any such tricks with Tom Halliday's daughter, if +_that's_ the scheme you've hatched for getting hold of this money, as +surely as we two live, I'll let in the light upon your doings, and save +the girl whose father you murdered. I will, Philip, let come what may. +You can't get _me_ out of the way when it suits you, you see. _I know +you._ That's the best antidote against your medicines." + +"If you'll be so good as to say these things on 'Change, I can bring an +action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. There's no good in +saying them here." + +Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated than his brother, +being of a harder nature, and less subject to random impulses of good or +evil. He caught his accuser by the collar of his coat, and flung him +violently from the doorway. Thus ended his visit to Gray's Inn. + +Boldly as he had borne himself during the interview, he went to his +office profoundly depressed and dispirited. + +"So I am to have him against me?" he said to himself. "He can do me no +real harm; but he can harass and annoy me. If he should drop any hint to +Hawkehurst?--but he'll scarcely do that. Perhaps I've ridden him a little +too roughly in the past. And yet if I'd been smoother, where would his +demands have ended? No; concession in these cases means ruin." + +He shut himself in his office, and sat down to his desk to confront +his difficulties. For a long time the bark which was freighted with +Philip Sheldon's fortunes had been sailing in troubled waters. He had +been an unconscious disciple of Lord Bacon, inasmuch as the boldness +inculcated by that philosopher had been the distinguishing characteristic +of his conduct in all the operations of life. As a speculator, his +boldness had served him well. Adventures from which timid spirits shrunk +appalled had brought golden harvests to this daring gamester. When some +rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up +signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the +crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the +valleys of death,--a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of +all-devouring Poseidon,--Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of +desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the +tempest and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and +waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon had +obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenture of railways that +were in bad odour; Unitas Bank shares, immediately after the discovery of +gigantic embezzlements by Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the +Mole-and-Burrow railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet +in the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the shares +in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buying _sub rosa_;--these, +and such as these, had employed Mr. Sheldon's capital; and from the +skilful manipulation of capital thus employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled +the fortune secured by his alliance with Tom Halliday's widow. + +It had been the stockbroker's fate to enter the money market at a time +when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the +most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities. He had +seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the +harridan's bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He +had made only one mistake--and that he made in common with many of his +fellow-players in the great game of speculation always going on eastward +of Temple Bar--he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had +imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements +of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was +abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the +transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean +kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred +privileges of "The House" more astounded by the change than Mr. Sheldon. + +The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. Sheldon a +speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and Amphiaraeuses of the Stock +Exchange had agreed in declaring that a man who bought into consols at 90 +_must_ see his capital increased; and what was true of this chief among +securities was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and +from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85-1/2; +securities less secure sank with a rapidity corresponding with their +constitutional weakness. As during the ravages of an epidemic the weaker +are first to fall victims to the destroyer, so while this fever raged on +'Change, the feeble enterprises, the "risky" transactions, sank at an +appalling rate, some to total expiry. The man who holds a roaring lion by +the tail could scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these +troublous times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain +time might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in which it +would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast grows more and +more furious, and then to let go and be eaten up alive, is what many men +did in that awful crisis. + +If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been warned by the +first indication that marked the turning of the tide, he would have been +a considerable loser; but he would not accept his loss, and he would not +be warned by that early indication. He had implicit belief in his own +cleverness; and he fancied if every other bark in that tempest-tossed +ocean foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across the +harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a navigator. +It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt away in the payment of +contango, that he consented to the inevitable. The mistakes of one year +devoured the fruits of nine years' successful enterprise, and the Philip +Sheldon of this present year was no richer than the man who had stood by +Tom Halliday's bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that knows +no difference between the threshold of kingly palace or pauper refuge. +Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of +his existence--to remember which was a dull dead pain even to _him_--but +a man infinitely more heavily burdened. He had made for himself a certain +position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall, +the utter annihilation of all his chances in life. + +The stockbroker's fitful slumbers at this time began to be haunted by the +vision of a black board fixed against the wall of a public resort, a +black board on which appeared his own name. In what strange places +feverish dreams showed him this hideous square of painted deal!--Now it +was on the walls of the rooms he lived in; now on the door of a church, +like Luther's propositions; now at a street-corner, where should have +been the name of the street; now inky-black against the fair white +headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miserable man, for whom the +scraping together of sordid dross was life's only object, and who, in +losing money, lost all! + +This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending disgrace was +the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat +day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence +went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his +hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool +work than by the inner life of her husband; and Charlotte and her lover +contemplated existence from their own point of view, and cherished their +own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all things, as far away from +the moody meditator as if they had been natives of Upper India. + +The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was not immediate, +but it was not far off; the shadow of it already wrapped him in a +twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever and a safe man had left him. +He was described now as a daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads +as they talked of him. + +"One of the next to go will be Sheldon," said the wiseacres; but in these +days of commercial epidemic there was no saying who would be the first to +go. It was the end of the world in little. One was taken, and another +left. The Gazette overran its customary column like a swollen river, and +flooded a whole page of the Times newspaper; and men looked to the lists +of names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the trump of +archangels sounding the destruction of the universe. + +For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted those turbulent +waters had been made of paper. This was nothing. Paper boats were the +prevailing shipping in those waters; but Captain Sheldon's bark needed +refitting, and the captain feared a scarcity of paper, or, worse still, +the awful edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him there +should be no more paper. + +Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with ruin +complete and irredeemable. When all common expedients had been exhausted, +and his embarrassments had become desperate, he had found a desperate +expedient, and had extricated himself from those embarrassments. The time +had come in which a new means of extrication must be found as desperate +as the last, if need were. As Philip Sheldon had faced the situation +before, he faced it now--unshrinkingly, though with a gloomy anger +against destiny. It was hard for him that such a thing should have to be +repeated. If he pitied anybody, he pitied himself; and this kind of +compassion is very common with this kind of character. Do not the Casket +letters show us--if we may trust them to show us anything--that Mary +Stuart was very sorry for herself when she found herself called upon to +make an end of Darnley? In Mr. Swinburne's wonderful study in morbid +anatomy, there are perhaps no finer touches than those which reveal the +Queen's selfish compassion for her own heartlessness. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY. + +Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father's wish that she should leave +Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained the Captain's consent to +the revelation of her engagement to be married. + +"I don't like to leave them in a mysterious manner, papa," she said. "I +have told Charlotte a good deal already, under a promise of secrecy; but +I should like to tell Mrs. Sheldon that there is a real reason for my +leaving her." + +"Very well, my love, since you are so amazingly squeam--honourable," +interposed the Captain, remembering how much depended on his daughter's +marriage, and what a very difficult person he had found her. "Yes, my +dear, of course; I respect your honourable feeling; and--er--yes--you may +tell Mrs. Sheldon--and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the +lady is but an inoffensive cipher--that you are about to be married--to a +French gentleman of position. You will, of course, be obliged to mention +his name, and then will arise the question as to where and how you met +him; and, upon my word, it's confoundedly awkward that you should insist +on enlightening these people. You see, my dear girl, what I want to +avoid, for the present, is any chance of collision between the Sheldons +and Lenoble." + +"Papa!" exclaimed Diana, impatiently, "why must there be all this +scheming?" + +"O, very well, Miss Paget; tell them what you like!" cried the Captain, +aggravated beyond endurance by such inherent perversity. "All I can say +is, that a young woman who quarrels with her bread-and-butter is likely +to come to dry bread; and very little of that, perhaps. I wash my hands +of the business. Tell them what you like." + +"I will not tell them more than I feel to be actually necessary, papa," +the young lady replied calmly. "I do not think Mr. Sheldon will trouble +himself about M. Lenoble. He seems very much occupied by his own +affairs." + +"Humph! Sheldon seems harassed, anxious, does he?" + +"Well, yes, papa; I have thought so for the last few months. If I may +venture to judge by the expression of his face, as he sits at home in the +evening, reading the paper, or staring at the fire, I am sure he has many +anxieties--troubles even. Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte do not appear to +notice these things. They are accustomed to see him quiet and reserved, +and they don't perceive the change in him as I do." + +"O, there is a change, is there?" + +"Yes, a decided change." + +"Why the deuce couldn't you tell me this before!" + +"Why should I tell you that Mr. Sheldon seems anxious? I should not have +told you now, if you had not appeared to dread his interference in our +affairs. I can't help observing these things; but I don't want to play +the part of a spy." + +"No, you're so infernally punct--so delicate-minded, my love," said the +Captain, pulling himself up suddenly, for the second time. "Forgive me if +I was impatient just now. You look at these things from a higher point of +view than that of a battered old man of the world like me. But if you +should see anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct on another +occasion, my love, I should be obliged to you if you would be more +communicative. He and I have been allied in business, you see, and it is +important for me to know these things." + +"I have not seen anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct, papa; I +have only seen him thoughtful and dispirited. And I suppose anxieties are +common to every man of business." + +Georgy received Miss Paget's announcement with mingled lamentations and +congratulations. + +"I am sure I am heartily glad for your sake, Diana," she said; "but what +we shall do without you, I don't know. Who is to see to the drawing-room +being dusted every morning, when you are gone? I'm sure I tremble for the +glass shades. Don't imagine I'm not pleased to think you should settle in +life advantageously, my love. I'm not so selfish as that; though I will +say that there never was a girl with more natural talent for making-up +pretty little caps than you. The one I have on has been admired by +everybody. Even Ann Woolper this morning, when I was going into the +butcher's book with her--for I insist upon going into the butcher's book +with her weekly, whether she likes it or not; though the way that man +puts down the items is so bewildering that I feel myself a perfect baby +in her hands,--even Ann admired it, and said how young-looking it is. And +then she brought up the time in Fitzgeorge Street, and poor Tom's +illness, and almost upset me for the rest of the day. And now, dear, let +me offer you my sincere congratulations. Of course, you know that you +would always have had a home with me; but service, or at least +companionship, is no inheritance, as the proverb says; and for your own +sake I'm very glad to think that you are going to have a house of your +own. And now tell me what he is like, Monsieur what's-his-name?" + +Mrs. Sheldon had been told, but had not remembered the name. Her great +anxiety, as well as Charlotte's, was to know what manner of man the +affianced lover was. If Diana's future happiness had been contingent on +the shape of her husband's nose, or the colour of his eyes, these two +ladies could not have been more anxious upon the subject. + +"Has he long eyelashes, and a dreamy look in his eyes, like Valentine?" +asked Charlotte, secretly convinced that her lover had a copyright in +these personal graces. + +"Does he wear whiskers?" asked Georgy. "I remember, when I was quite a +girl, and went to parties at Barlingford, being struck by Mr. Sheldon's +whiskers. And I was quite offended with papa, who was always making +sarcastic remarks, for calling them mutton-chop whiskers; but they +really were the shape of mutton-cutlets at that time. He wears them +differently now." + +Mrs. Sheldon branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana +escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have +described him to Georgy. + +By-and-by she asked permission to leave Bayswater for a fortnight, in +order to see her lover's home and friends. + +"I will come back to you, and stay as long as you like, dear Mrs. +Sheldon," she said, "and make you as many caps as you please. And I will +make them for you by and by, when I am living abroad, and send them over +to you in a bandbox. It will be a great delight to me to be of some +little service to a friend who has been so kind. And perhaps you will +fancy the caps are prettier when they can boast of being French." + +"You darling generous-minded girl! And you won't go away for a fortnight +and never come back again, will you, dear? I had a cook who did that, and +left me with a large dinner-party hanging over my head; and how I got +through it--with a strange man-cook, who charged a guinea, and used fresh +butter, at twentypence, a pound, as if it had been dirt, and two strange +men to wait--I don't know. It all seemed like a dream. And since then we +have generally had everything from the confectioner's; and I assure you, +to feel that you can wash your hands of the whole thing, and sit down at +the head of your table with your mind as free from care as if you were a +visitor, is worth all the expense." + +Diana promised she would not behave like the cook; and two days after +this conversation left the London Bridge terminus with her father and +Gustave Lenoble. + +Mr. Sheldon troubled himself very little about this departure. He was +informed of Miss Paget's intended marriage; and the information awakened +neither surprise nor interest in his heavily-burdened mind. + +"A Frenchman, a friend of her father's!" he said; "some swindling +adventurer, no doubt," he thought. And this was as much consideration +as he could afford to bestow upon Miss Paget's love affairs at this +present time. + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE. + +On the day after Miss Paget's departure Mr. Sheldon came home from the +City rather earlier than usual, and found Charlotte alone in the +drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume from Mudie of an instructive and +edifying character, with a view to making herself clever, in order that +she might better understand that prodigy of learning, Mr. Hawkehurst. + +She was somewhat inclined to yawn over the big book, which contained a +graphic account of recent discoveries of an antiquarian nature. Her mind +was not yet attuned to the comprehension of the sublimer elements in such +discoveries. She saw only a dry as dust record of futile gropings in +desert sand for the traces of perished empires. Her imagination was not +cultivated to that point whereat the gift which Mr. Lewes calls "insight" +becomes the daily companion, nay, indeed, the ever-haunting and +nightmare-bringing influence of the dreamer. For her sands were only +sands, the stones were only stones. No splendour of fallen palaces, no +glory and pride of perished kings, no clash and clamour of vanished +courts, arose from those barren sands, with all their pomp and +circumstance, conjured into being by half a word on a broken pillar, or a +date upon a Punic monument. Miss Halliday looked up with a sigh of +fatigue as her stepfather came into the room. It was not a room that he +particularly affected, and she was surprised when he seated himself in +the easy-chair opposite her, and poked the fire, as if with the intention +of remaining. + +"You shouldn't read by firelight, my dear," he said; "it is most +destructive to the eyesight." + +"I dare say my sight will last my time, papa," the young lady replied +carelessly; "but it's very kind of you to think of it, and I won't read +any more." + +Mr. Sheldon made no reply to this observation. He sat looking at the +fire, with that steady gaze which was habitual to him--the gaze of the +man who plans and calculates. + +"My dear," he said by-and-by, "it seems that this money to which you may +or may not be entitled is more than we thought at first; in fact, it +appears that the sum is a considerable one. I have been, and still am, +particularly anxious to guard against disappointment on your part, as I +know the effect that such a disappointment is apt to produce upon a +person's life. The harassing slowness of Chancery proceedings is +proverbial; I am therefore especially desirous that you should not count +upon this money." + +"I shall never do that, papa. I should certainly like a fine edition of +the Encyclopaedia Britannica for Valentine, by-and-by, as he says that is +essential for a literary man; and a horse, for people say literary men +ought to take horse exercise. But beyond that--" + +"We need scarcely go into these details, my dear. I want you to +understand the broad facts of the case. While, on the one hand, our +success in obtaining the inheritance which we are about to claim for you +is uncertain, on the other hand the inheritance is large. Of course, when +I presented you with the sum of five thousand pounds, I had no idea of +this possible inheritance." + +"O, of course not, papa." + +"But I now find that there is such a possibility as your becoming +a--well--a rich woman." + +"O papa!" + +"In which case I may conclude that your mother would benefit in some +measure from your good fortune." + +"Can you doubt that, papa? There should be no measure to her benefit from +any money obtained by me." + +"I do not doubt that, my dear. And it is with that idea that I wish to +make a proposition to you--for your mother's possible advantage." + +"I shall be happy to do anything you wish, papa." + +"It must be done as a spontaneous act of your own, Charlotte, not in +accordance with any wish of mine." + +"What is it that I am to do?" asked Charlotte. + +"Well, my dear, you see it is agreed between us that if you do get this +money, your mother is certain to benefit considerably. But unhappily the +proceedings are likely to drag on for an indefinite time; and in the +course of that time it comes within the limits of possibility that your +decease may precede that of your mother." + +"Yes, papa." + +"In which case your mother would lose all hope of any such advantage." + +"Of course, papa." + +Charlotte could not help thinking that there was something sordid in this +discussion--this calculation of possible gain or loss contingent on her +fresh young life. But she concluded that it was the nature of business +men to see everything from a debased standpoint, and that Mr. Sheldon was +no more sordid than other men of his class. + +"Well, papa?" she asked presently, after some moments of silence, during +which she and her stepfather had both been absorbed in the contemplation +of the fire. + +"Well, my dear," replied Mr. Sheldon slowly, "I have been thinking that +the natural and easy way of guarding against all contingencies would be +by your effecting an insurance on your life in your mother's favour." + +"No, no, papa!" cried Charlotte, with unwonted vehemence; "I would rather +do anything than that!" + +"What can be your objection to such a very simple arrangement?" + +"I dare say my objection seems foolish, childish even, papa; but I really +have a horror of life assurances. I always think of papa--my own poor +father, whom I loved so dearly. It seemed as if he put a price upon his +life for us. He was so anxious to insure his life--I remember hearing him +talk of it at Hyley, when I was a child--to make things straight, as he +said, for us; and, you see, very soon afterwards he died." + +"But you can't suppose the insurance of his life had anything to do with +his death?" + +"Of course not, I am not so childish as that; only--" + +"Only you have a foolish lackadaisical prejudice against the only means +by which you can protect your mother against a contingency that is so +remote as to be scarcely worth consideration. Let it pass." + +There was more anger in the tone than in the words. It was not that angry +tone, but the mention of her mother, that impressed Miss Halliday. She +began to consider that her objections were both foolish and selfish. + +"If you really think I ought to insure my life, I will do so," she said +presently. "Papa did as much for those he loved; why should I be less +thoughtful of others?" + +Having once brought Miss Halliday to this frame of mind, the rest was +easy. It was agreed between them that as Valentine Hawkehurst was to be +kept in ignorance of his betrothed's claim to certain moneys now in the +shadowy under-world of Chancery, so he must be kept in ignorance of the +insurance. + +It was only one more secret, and Charlotte had learned that it was +possible to keep a secret from her lover. + +"I suppose before we are married I shall able to tell him everything?" +she said. + +"Certainly, my dear. All I want is to test his endurance and his +prudence. If the course of events proves him worthy of being trusted, I +will trust him." + +"I am not afraid of that, papa." + +"Of course not, my dear. But, you see, I have to protect your interests; +and I cannot afford to see this gentleman with your eyes. I am compelled +to be prudent." + +The stockbroker sighed as he said this--a sigh of utter weariness. +Remorse was unknown to him; the finer fibres upon which that chord is +struck had not been employed in the fabrication of his heart. But there +is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the +anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration +of spirit--a sickness of heart and mind--a bitter longing to lie down and +die--the weariness of a beaten hound rather than of a baffled man. + +This was what Mr. Sheldon felt, as the threads of the web which he was +weaving multiplied, and grew daily and hourly more difficult of +manipulation. Success in the work which he had to do depended on so many +contingencies. Afar off glittered the splendid goal--the undisputed +possession of the late John Haygarth's hundred thousand pounds; but +between the schemer and that chief end and aim of all his plottings what +a sea of troubles! He folded his arms behind his head, and looked across +the girlish face of his companion into the shadow and the darkness. In +those calculations which were for ever working themselves out in this +man's brain, Charlotte Halliday was only one among many figures. She had +her fixed value in every sum; but her beauty, her youth, her innocence, +her love, her trust, made no unit of that fixed figure, nor weighed in +the slightest degree with him who added up the sum. Had she been old, +ugly, obnoxious, a creature scarcely fit to live, she would have +represented exactly the same amount in the calculations of Philip +Sheldon. The graces that made her beautiful were graces that he had no +power to estimate. He knew she was a pretty woman; but he knew also that +there were pretty women to be seen in any London street; and the +difference between his stepdaughter and the lowest of womankind who +passed him in his daily walks was to him little more than a social +prejudice. + +The insurance business being once decided on, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in +putting it into execution. Although he made a point of secrecy as +regarded Mr. Hawkehurst, he went to work in no underhand manner, but +managed matters after a highly artistic and superior fashion. He took his +stepdaughter to the offices of Greenwood and Greenwood, and explained her +wishes to one of those gentlemen in her presence. If he dwelt a little +more on Miss Halliday's anxiety for her mother's pecuniary advantage than +his previous conversation with Miss Halliday warranted, the young lady +was too confiding and too diffident to contradict him. She allowed him to +state, or rather to imply, that the proposed insurance was her +spontaneous wish, an emanation of her anxious and affectionate heart, the +natural result of an almost morbid care for her mother's welfare. + +Mr. Hargrave Greenwood, of Greenwood and Greenwood, seemed at first +inclined to throw cold water on the proposition, but after some little +debate, agreed that extreme caution would certainly counsel such a step. + +"I should imagine there was no better life amongst the inhabitants of +London," he said, "than Miss Shel--pardon me--Miss Halliday's. But, as +the young lady herself suggests, 'in the midst of life we are--'; and, as +the young lady herself has observed, these things are--ahem--beyond +human foresight. If there were any truth in the aphorisms of poets, I +should say Miss Halliday cannot insure too quickly; for the remark of +Cowper--or, stay, I believe Pope--'whom the gods love die young,' might +very well be supposed to apply to so charming a young lady. Happily, the +secretaries of insurance offices know very little about the poets, +unless, indeed, Miss Halliday were to go to the Royal Widow's and +Orphan's Hope, the secretary of which is the author of dramas that may +fairly rank with the works of Knowles and Lytton." + +Mr. Greenwood, an elderly gentleman of the ponderous and port-wine +school, laughed at his own small jokes, and took things altogether +pleasantly. He gave Mr. Sheldon a letter of introduction to the secretary +of his pet insurance company, the value of which to that gentleman was +considerable. Nor was this the only advantage derived from the interview. +The lawyer's approval of the transaction reassured Charlotte; and though +she had heard her own views somewhat misrepresented, she felt that an +operation which appeared wise in the sight of such a lawyer, standing on +such a Turkey hearthrug, commanding such gentlemanly-looking clerks as +those who came and went at Mr. Greenwood's bidding, must inevitably be a +proceeding at once prudent and proper. + +The business of the insurance was not quite so easy as the interview with +the lawyer. The doctor to whom Miss Halliday was introduced seemed very +well satisfied with that young lady's appearance of health and spirits, +but in a subsequent interview with Mr. Sheldon asked several questions, +and shook his head gravely when told that her father had died at +thirty-seven years of age. But he looked less grave when informed that +Mr. Halliday had died of a bilious fever. + +"Did Mr. Halliday die in London?" he asked. + +"He did." + +"I should like--ahem--if it were possible, to see the medical man who +attended him. These fevers rarely prove fatal unless there is some +predisposing cause." + +"In this case there was none." + +"You speak rather confidently, Mr. Sheldon, as a non-professional man." + +"I speak with a certain amount of professional knowledge. I knew Tom +Halliday for many years." + +Mr. Sheldon forebore to state that Tom Halliday had died in his house, +and had been attended by him. It is, perhaps, only natural that Philip +Sheldon, the stockbroker of repute, should wish to escape identification +with Philip Sheldon, the unsuccessful dentist of Bloomsbury. + +After a little more conversational skirmishing, the confidential +physician of the Prudential Step Assurance Company agreed to consider +that Mr. Halliday's constitution had been in no manner compromised by his +early death, and to pass Charlotte's life. The motives for effecting the +insurance were briefly touched upon in Mr. Greenwood's letter of +introduction, and appeared very proper and feasible in the eyes of the +directors; so, after a delay of a few days, the young lady found herself +accepted, and Mr. Sheldon put away among his more important papers a +large oblong envelope, containing a policy of assurance on his +stepdaughter's life for five thousand pounds. He did not, however, stop +here, but made assurance doubly sure by effecting a second insurance upon +the same young life with the Widow's and Orphan's Hope Society, within a +few days of the first transaction. + + + + +Book the Sixth. + + + +DIANA IN NORMANDY. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +AT COTENOIR. + +Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 15, 186--. + +My darling Lotta,--As you extorted from me a solemn pledge that I would +write you a full and detailed account of my adventures, I seat myself in +Mademoiselle Lenoble's pretty little turret-chamber, in the hope of +completing the first instalment of my work before papa or Gustave summons +me to prepare for a drive and visit to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, +which, I believe, has been planned for to-day. + +What am I to tell you, dear, and how shall I begin my story? Let me +fancy myself sitting at your feet before your bedroom fire, and you +looking down at me with that pretty inquisitive look in your dear grey +eyes. Do you know that M. Lenoble's eyes are almost the colour of yours, +Lotta? You asked me a dozen questions about his eyes the other day, and I +could give you no clear description of them; but yesterday, as he stood +at the window looking out across the garden, I saw their real colour. It +is grey, a deep clear grey, and his lashes are dark, like yours. How +shall I begin? That is the grand difficulty! I suppose you will want to +know something even about the journey. Everything was very pleasant, in +spite of the cold blusterous March weather. Do you know what my last +journey was like, Lotta? It was the long dreary journey from Foretdechene +to St. Katharine's Wharf, when Mr. Hawkehurst advised and arranged my +return to England. I had been sitting quite alone in a balcony +overlooking the little town. It was after midnight, but the lights were +still burning: I can see the lamplit windows shining through the night +mist as I write this, and the sense of the hopeless misery of that time +comes back to me like the breath of some freezing wind. I can find no +words to tell you how desolate I was that night, or how hopeless. + +I dared not think of my future life; or of the next day, that was to be +the beginning of that hopeless future. I was obliged to bind my thoughts +to the present and all its dreariness; and a kind of dull apathetic +feeling, which was too dull for despair, took possession of me that +night. While I was sitting there Mr. Hawkehurst came to me, and told me +that my father had become involved in a quarrel, under circumstances of a +very shameful nature, which I need not tell you, darling. He recommended +me to leave Foretdechene--indeed, almost insisted that I should do so. He +wanted to rescue me from that miserable life. Your lover had noble and +generous impulses even then, you see, dear; at his worst he was not all +bad, and needed only your gentle influence to purify and elevate his +character. He gave me all the money he possessed to pay the expenses of +my journey. Ah, what a dreary journey! I left Foretdechene in the chill +daybreak, and travelled third class, with dreadful Belgians who smelt of +garlic, to Antwerp. I slept at a very humble inn near the quay, and +started for England by the Baron Osy at noon next day. I cannot tell you +how lonely I felt on board the steamer. I had travelled uncomfortably +before, but never without my father and Valentine--and he had been always +kind to me. If we were shabbily dressed, and people thought ill of us, I +did not care. The spirit of Bohemianism must have been very strong with +me in those days. I remembered how we had sat together on the same boat +watching the sleepy shores of Holland, or making fun of our respectable +fellow-passengers. Now I was quite alone. People stared at me rudely and +unkindly, as I thought. I could not afford to dine or breakfast with the +rest; and I was weak enough to feel wounded by the idea that people would +guess my motive for shunning the savoury banquets that sent up such +horrid odours to the deck where I sat, trying to read a tattered +Tauchnitz novel. And the end of my journey? Ah, Charlotte, you can never +imagine what it is to travel like that, without knowing whether there is +any haven, any shelter for you at the end of your wanderings! I knew that +at a certain hour we were to arrive at St. Katharine's Dock, but beyond +that I knew nothing. I counted my money. There was just enough to pay for +a cab that would carry me to Hyde Lodge. I should land there penniless. +And what if my cousin Priscilla should refuse to receive me? For a moment +I fancied even that possible; and I pictured myself walking about London, +hungry and homeless. + +This was my last journey. I have dwelt upon it longer than I need have +done; but I want you to understand what it is that makes Gustave Lenoble +dear to me. If you could feel the contrast between the past and the +present as I felt it when I stood on the deck of the Dover packet with +him by my side, you would know why I love him, and am grateful to him. We +stood side by side, watching the waves and talking of our future, while +my father enjoyed a nap in one of the little deck cabins. To Gustave that +future seems very bright and clear; to me it seems unutterably strange +that the future _can_ be anything but a dismal _terra incognita_, from +the contemplation of which it is wise to refrain. + +Papa stays with Gustave at Cotenoir; but it had been arranged for me to +visit Mademoiselle Lenoble, Gustave's aunt, at Beaubocage, and to remain +with her during my stay in Normandy. I at once understood the delicate +feeling which prompted this arrangement. We dined at Rouen, and came to +Vevinord in a coach. At Vevinord a queer little countrified vehicle met +us, with a very old man, of the farm-servant class, as coachman. Gustave +took the reins from the old man's hand and drove to Beaubocage, where +Mademoiselle Lenoble received me with much cordiality. She is a dear old +lady, with silvery bands of hair neatly arranged under the prettiest of +caps. Her gown is black silk, and her collar and cuffs of snowy +whiteness; everything about her exquisitely neat, and of the fashion of +twenty, or perhaps thirty, years ago. + +And now, I suppose, you will want to know what Beaubocage is like. Well, +dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I must confess that her +ancestral mansion is neither grand nor pretty. It might have made a very +tolerable farmhouse, but has been spoiled by the architect's +determination to make it a chateau. It is a square white building, with +two pepper-castor-like turrets, in one of which I write this letter. +Between the garden and the high road there is a wall, surmounted with +plaster vases. The garden is for the greater part utilitarian; but in +front of the salon windows there is a grassplot, bordered by stiff +gravel-walks, and relieved by a couple of flower-beds. A row of tall +poplars alone screens the house from the dusty high road. At the back of +it there is an orchard; on one side a farmyard; behind the orchard lie +the fields that compose the farm of Beaubocage and the paternal estate of +the Lenoble family. All around the country is very flat. The people seem +to be kind and simple, and devotedly attached to "Mademoiselle." There is +a rustic peacefulness pervading everything which, for me, stands instead +of beauty. + +I am hypocrite enough to pretend to be pleased with everything, for I can +perceive how anxiously M. Lenoble watches me in order to discover whether +I like his native country. He was not born at Beaubocage, but in Paris. +Mademoiselle Lenoble told me the story of his childhood, and how she +brought him to Beaubocage, when quite a little fellow, from Rouen, where +his father died. About his mother there seems to have been some mystery. +Mademoiselle told me nothing of this, except that her brother, Gustave +the elder, made a love-match, and thereby offended his father. She has +the little crib in which her nephew, Gustave the younger, slept on the +night of his coming. It had been his father's little bed thirty years +before. She shed tears as she told me the story, and how she sat and +watched by the little fellow as he cried himself to sleep with his head +lying on her arm, and the summer moonlight shining full upon his face. + +I was deeply touched by her manner as she told me these things; and I +think, if I had not already learned to love M. Lenoble, I should love him +for the sake of his aunt. She is charming; a creature so innocent and +pure, that one considers one's words in speaking to her, almost as if she +were a child. She is about forty years older than I; yet for worlds I +would not tell her of the people and the scenes I have beheld at foreign +watering-places and gambling-rooms. She has spent the sixty years of her +life so completely out of the world, that she has retained the freshness +and sweetness of her youth untainted in the least degree. Can there be +magical philtre equal to this--a pure unselfish life, far away from the +clamour of cities? + +The old servant who waits upon me is seventy-five years of age, and +remembers Ma'amselle Cydalise from her childhood. She is always singing +the praises of her mistress, and she sees that I like to hear them. "Ah, +ma'amselle," she said to me, "to marry a Lenoble is to marry one of the +angels. I will not say that the old seigneur was not hard towards his +son. Ah, yes, but it was a noble heart. And the young monsieur--that one +who died in Rouen, the Poor!--ah, that he was kind, that he was gracious! +What of tears, what of regrets, when the Old chased him!" + +My position is quite recognised. I think the very cowboy in the +farmyard--a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured mindless face, and +prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes--even the cowboy knows that I +am to be Madame Lenoble of Cotenoir. Cotenoir is the Windsor Castle of +this district; Beaubocage is only Frogmore. Yes, dear, the bond is signed +and sealed. Even if I did not love M. Lenoble, I have bound myself to +marry him; but I do love him, and thank him with all my heart for having +given a definite end and aim to my life. Don't think I underrate your +kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could +give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and +Valentine will exact all his sweet young wife's love and care. + +I have written you a letter which I am sure will require double postage; +so I will say no more except goodbye. Take care of yourself, dear one. +Practise your part in our favourite duets; remember your morning walk in +the garden; and don't wear out your eyes over the big books that Mr. +Hawkehurst is obliged to read. + +Ever your affectionate + +DIANA. + + * * * * * + +_From Charlotte Halliday to Diana Paget_. + +The dullest house in Christendom, Monday. + +EVER DEAREST Di,--Your letter was a welcome relief to the weariness +of my existence. How I wish I were with you! But that is too bright a +dream. I am sure I should idolise Beaubocage. I should not mind the +dismal row of poplars, or the flat landscape, or the dusty road, or +anything, so long as it was not like Bayswater. I languish for a change, +dear. I have seen so little of the world, except the dear moorland +farmhouse at Newhall. I don't think I was ever created to be "cabined, +cribbed, confined," in such a narrow life as this, amid such a dull, +unchanging round of daily commonplace. Sometimes, when the cold spring +moon is shining over the tree-tops in Kensington-Gardens, I think of +Switzerland, and the snow-clad mountains and fair Alpine valleys we have +read of and talked of, until my heart aches at the thought that I may +never see them; and to think that there are people in whom the word +'Savoy' awakes no fairer image than a cabbage! Ah, my poor dear! isn't it +almost wicked of me to complain, when _you_ have had such bitter +experience of the hard cruel world? + +I am quite in love with your dear Mademoiselle Lenoble; almost as deeply +as I am in love with your magnanimous, chivalrous, generous, +audacious--everything ending in _ous_--Monsieur Lenoble. + +How dare you call him M. Lenoble, by the bye? I have counted the +occasions on which you write of him in your nice long letter, and for one +Gustave there are half a dozen M. Lenobles. It must be Gustave in future +to me, remember. + +What shall I tell you, dear? I have nothing to tell, really nothing. To +say that I wish you were with me is only to confess that I am very +selfish; but I _do_ wish for you, dear--my friend and adopted sister, +my old school companion, from whom, willingly, I have never concealed +one thought. + +Valentine called on Tuesday afternoon; but I have nothing to tell you +even about him. Mamma dozed in her corner after her cup of tea, and Val +and I sat by the fire talking over our future, just like you and M. +Lenoble on board the Calais boat. How much engaged people find to say +about the future! Is it our love that makes it seem so bright, so +different from all that has gone before? I cannot fancy life with +Valentine otherwise than happy. I strive to picture trials, and fancy +myself in prison with him, the wind blowing in at broken windows, the +rain coming through the dilapidated roof and pattering on the carpetless +floor; but the most dismal picture I can paint won't seem dismal if his +figure is a part of it. We would stop the broken windows with rags and +paper, we would wipe up the rain with our pocket-handkerchiefs, and sit +side by side and talk of the future, as we do now. Hope could never +abandon us while we were together. And then, sometimes, while I am +looking at Valentine, the thought that he might die comes to me suddenly, +like the touch of an icy hand upon my heart. + +I lie awake at night sometimes thinking of this, and of papa's early +death. He came home one night with a cold, and from that hour grew worse +until he died. Ah, think what misery for a wife to suffer! Happily for +mamma, she is not capable of suffering intensely. She was very sorry, and +even now when she speaks of papa she cries a little; but the tears don't +hurt her. I think, indeed, they give her a kind of pleasure. + +See, dear, what a long egotistical letter I have written, after all. I +will say no more, except that while I am delighted to think of your +pleasure among new friends and new scenes, my selfish heart still longs +for the hour that is to bring you back to me. + +Pray tell me all you can about your daughters that are to be. + +Ever and ever your loving CHARLOTTE. + + * * * * * + +_From Diana Paget to Charlotte Halliday_. + +Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 30, 186--. + +MY DEAR LOTTA,--In three days more I hope to be with you; but I suppose, +in the meantime, I must keep my promise, and send you a faithful account +of my life here. Everyone here is more kind to me than words can tell; +and I have nothing left to wish for, except that you were here to be +delighted, as I am sure you would be, with the freshness and the +strangeness of everything. If I ever do become Madame Lenoble--and even +yet I _cannot_ picture to myself that such a thing will be--you must come +to Cotenoir, you and Valentine. I was taken through every room in the old +chateau the day before yesterday, and I fixed in my own mind upon the +rooms I will give you, if these things come to pass. They are very old +rooms, and I can fancy what strange people must have lived in them, and +died in them perhaps, in the days that are gone. But if you come to them, +they shall be made bright and pretty, and we will chase the shadows of +the mediaeval age away. There are old pictures, old musical instruments, +quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, tapestries that crumble as you +touch them--the ashes and relics of many generations. Gustave says we +will sweep these poor vestiges away, and begin a new life, when I come to +Cotenoir; but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace of +those dead feet that have come and gone in all the dusky passages of my +future home. + +And now I must tell you about my daughters that are to be--my daughter +that is, I may say of the elder--for I love her so well already that no +breach between Gustave and me could rob her of my affection. She is the +dearest, most loving of creatures; and she reminds me of you! I dare say +you will laugh at this, dear; and, mind, I do not say that Clarice +Lenoble is actually like you in complexion or feature--those common +attributes which every eye can see; the resemblance is far more subtle. +There is a look in this dear girl's face, a smile, an I-know-not-what, +which every now and then recalls your own bright countenance. You will +say this is mere fancy--and that is what I told myself at the first; but +I found afterwards that it is no fancy, but really one of those vague, +indefinable, accidental likenesses which one perceives so often. To me it +seems a very happy accident; for my first glance at my daughter's face +told me that I should love her for your sake. + +We went to the convent the day before yesterday. It is a curious old +place, and was once a stately chateau, the habitation of a noble family. +A little portress, in the black robes of a lay sister, admitted us, and +conducted us to the parlour, a fine old room, decorated with pictures of +a religious character, painted by members of the sisterhood. Here Gustave +and I were received by the superioress, an elderly woman, with a mild +holy face, and a quiet grace of manner which might become a duchess. She +sent for the demoiselles Lenoble, and after a delay of a quarter of an +hour--you remember the toilet the girls at Hyde Lodge were obliged to +make before they went to the drawing-room, Lotta--Mademoiselle Lenoble +came, a tall, slim, lovely and lovable girl, who reminded me of the +dearest friend I have in this world. She ran to her papa first, and +saluted him with an enthusiastic hug; and then she stood for a moment +looking shyly at me, confused and doubtful. It was only for a moment +she was left in doubt. Gustave bent down to whisper something in her +ear--something for which his letters had in some manner prepared her. The +fair young face brightened, the clear grey eyes looked up at me with a +sweet affectionate gaze, and she came to me and kissed me. "I shall love +you very much," she whispered. "And I love you very much already," I +answered, in the same confidential manner. And I think these few words, +that one pretty confiding look in her innocent eyes, made a tie between +us that it would take much to loosen. Ah, Lotta, what a wide gulf between +the Diana Paget who landed alone at St. Katharine's Wharf, in the dim +cheerless dawn, and uncertain where to find a shelter in all that busy +city, and the same creature redeemed by your affection, and exalted by +the love and trust of Gustave Lenoble! + +After this my second daughter appeared--a pretty young hoyden, with +lovable clinging ways; and then the superioress asked if I would like to +see the garden. Of course I said yes; and we were taken through the long +corridors, out into a fine old garden, where the pupils, who looked like +the Hyde Lodge girls translated into French, were prancing and scampering +about in the usual style. After the garden we went to the chapel, where +there were more pictures, and flower-bedecked altars, and pale twinkling +tapers burning here and there in the chill sunlight. Here there were +damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five years old upwards. They +send even the little ones to meditate, Clarice tells me; and there are +these infants kneeling before the flower-bedecked altars, rapt in +religious contemplation, like so many Thomas a Kempises. The young +meditators glanced shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me +everything of special interest in the pleasant old place, Clarice and +Madelon ran off to dress for walking, in order to accompany us to +Cotenoir, where we were to dine. + +It was quite a family party. Mademoiselle Lenoble was there, and papa. He +arrived at the chateau while Gustave and I were paying our visit to the +convent. He is in the highest spirits, and treats me with an amount of +affection and courtesy I have not been accustomed to receive at his +hands. Of course I know the cause of this change; the future mistress of +Cotenoir is a very different person from that wretched girl who was +nothing to him but a burden and an encumbrance. But even while I despise +him I cannot refuse to pity him. One forgives anything in old age. In +this, at least, it is a second childhood; and my father is very old, +Lotta. I saw the look of age in his face more plainly at Cotenoir, where +he assumed his usual _debonnaire_ man-of-the-world tone and manner, than +I had seen it in London, when he was a professed invalid. He is much +changed since I was with him at Foretdechene. It seems as if he had kept +Time at bay very long, and now at last, the common enemy will be held at +arm's-length no longer. He still braces himself up in the old military +manner, still holds himself more erect than many men of half his age; +but, in spite of all this, I can see that he is very feeble; shaken and +worn by a long life of difficulty. I am glad to think that there will be +a haven for him at last; and if I did not thank Gustave with my whole +heart for giving me a home and a place in the world, I should thank him +for giving a shelter to my father. + +And now, dear, as I hope to be with you so very soon, I shall say no +more. I am to spend a day in Rouen before we come back--papa and I, that +is to say; Gustave stays in Normandy to make some arrangements before he +comes back to England. I cannot comprehend the business relations between +him and papa; but there is some business going on--law business, as it +seems to me--about which papa is very important and elated. + +I am to see the cathedral and churches at Rouen, and I shall contrive to +see the shops, and to bring you something pretty. Papa has given me +money--the first he ever gave me unasked. I have very little doubt it +comes from Gustave; but I have no sense of shame in accepting it. M. +Lenoble's seems to me a royal nature, formed to bestow benefits and +bounties on every side. + +Tell Mrs. Sheldon that I shall bring her the prettiest cap I can find in +Rouen; and, + +with all love, believe me ever your affectionate +DIANA. + + + + +BOOK THE SEVENTH. + + + +A CLOUD OF FEAR. + + +CHAPTER I. + +THE BEGINNING OF SORROW. + +Who heeds the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a broad expanse of +blue ether? The faint, scarce perceptible menace of that one little cloud +is lost in the wide brightness of a summer sky. The traveller jogs on +contented and unthinking, till the hoarse roar of stormy winds, or the +first big drops of the thunder-shower, startle him with a sudden +consciousness of the coming storm. + +It was early May, and the young leaves were green in the avenues of +Kensington Gardens; Bayswater was bright and gay with fashionable people; +and Mrs. Sheldon found herself strong enough to enjoy her afternoon drive +in Hyde Park, where the contemplation of the bonnets afforded her +perennial delight. + +"I think they are actually smaller than ever this year," she remarked +every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did +indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully +less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet +resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but +was obviously tending thitherward. + +Charlotte and Diana accompanied Mrs. Sheldon in her drives. The rapture +of contemplating the bonnets was not complete unless the lady had some +sympathising spirit to share her delight. The two girls were very well +pleased to mingle in that brilliant crowd, and to go back to their own +quiet life when the mystic hour came, and that bright vision of colour +and beauty melted into the twilight loneliness. It had seemed just +lately, however, as if Charlotte was growing a little weary of the +gorgeous spectacle--the ever-changing, ever-splendid diorama of West End +life. She no longer exclaimed at the sight of each exceptional toilette; +she no longer smiled admiringly on the thoroughbred horses champing their +bits in the immediate neighbourhood of her bonnet; she no longer gave a +little cry of delight when the big drags came slowly along the crowded +ranks, the steel bars shining as they swung loosely in the low afternoon +sunlight, the driver, conscious of his glory, grave and tranquil, with +the pride that apes humility. + +"See, Lotta," said Miss Paget, upon an especially bright May evening, as +one of these gorgeous equipages went past Mr. Sheldon's landau, "there's +another drag. Did you see it?" + +"Yes, dear, I saw it." + +"And are you tired of four-in-hands? You used to admire them so much." + +"I admire them as much as ever, dear." + +"And yet you scarcely gave those four splendid roans a glance." + +"No," Charlotte answered, with a faint sigh. + +"Are you tired, Lotta?" Miss Paget asked, rather anxiously. There was +something in Charlotte's manner of late that had inspired her with a +vague sense of anxiety; some change which she could scarcely define--a +change so gradual that it was only by comparing the Charlotte of some +months ago with the Charlotte of the present that she perceived how real +a change it was. The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss +Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual listlessness. +"Are you tired, dear?" she repeated, anxiously; and Mrs. Sheldon looked +round from her contemplation of the bonnets. + +"No, Di, dearest, not tired; but--I don't feel very well this afternoon." + +This was the first confession which Charlotte Halliday made of a sense of +weakness and languor that had been creeping upon her during the last two +months, so slowly, so gradually, that the change seemed too insignificant +for notice. + +"You feel ill, Lotta dear?" Diana asked. + +"Well, no, not exactly ill. I can scarcely call it illness; I feel rather +weak--that is really all." + +At this point Mrs. Sheldon chimed in, with her eyes on a passing bonnet +as she spoke. + +"You see, you are so dreadfully neglectful of your papa's advice, Lotta," +she said, in a complaining tone. "Do _you_ like pink roses with mauve +areophane, Diana? I do not. Look at that primrose tulle, with dead +ivy-leaves and scarlet berries, in the barouche. I dare say you have not +taken your glass of old port this morning, Charlotte, and have only +yourself to thank if you feel weak." + +"I did take a glass of port this morning, mamma. I don't like it; but I +take it every morning." + +"Don't like old tawny port, that your papa bought at the sale of a bishop +of somewhere? It's perfectly absurd of you, Lotta, to talk of not liking +wine that cost fifteen shillings a bottle, and which your papa's friends +declare to be worth five-and-thirty." + +"I am sorry it is so expensive, mamma; but I can't teach myself to think +it nice," answered Charlotte, with a smile that sadly lacked the +brightness of a few weeks ago. "I think one requires to go into the City, +and become a merchant or a stockbroker, before one can like that sort of +wine. What was it Valentine quoted in the _Cheapside_, about some lady +whom somebody loved?--'To love her was a liberal education.' I think to +like old port is a commercial education." + +"I am sure such wine _ought_ to do you good," said Georgy, almost +querulously. She thought this bright blooming creature had no right to be +ill. The headaches, and little weaknesses and languors and ladylike +ailments, were things for which she (Georgy) had taken out a patent; and +this indisposition of her daughter's was an infringement of copyright. + +"I dare say the port will do me good, mamma, in time. No doubt I shall be +as strong as that person who strangled lions and snakes and dogs with +incalculable heads, and all that kind of thing." + +"I really wish you would not talk in that absurd manner, my dear," said +Mrs. Sheldon with offended dignity. "I think you really cannot be too +grateful for your papa's kind thoughtfulness and anxiety about you. I am +sure I myself am not so anxious as he is; but of course his medical +knowledge makes him doubly careful. Six weeks ago he noticed that you +wanted strength--tone is what he calls it. 'Georgina,' he said to me, +'Charlotte wants tone. She is beginning to stoop in a really lamentable +manner: we must make her take port or bark, or something of a +strengthening kind.' And then a day or two afterwards he decided on port, +and gave me the key of the cellar--which is a thing he rarely gives out +of his own hands--and told me the number of the bin from which I was to +take the wine--some old wine that he had laid by on purpose for some +special occasion; and no one is to have it but you, and you are to take a +glass daily at eleven o'clock. Mr. Sheldon is most particular about the +hour. The regularity of the thing is half the battle in these cases, he +says; and I am sure if you do not observe his wishes and mine, Charlotte, +it will be really ungrateful of you." + +"But, dear mamma, I do observe Mr.--papa's wishes. I take my glass of +port every morning at eleven. I go to your cupboard in the breakfast-room +and take out my special decanter, and my special glass, in the most +punctiliously precise manner. I don't like the wine, and I don't like the +trouble involved in the ceremony of drinking it; but I go through it most +religiously, to please you and papa." + +"And do you mean to say that you do not feel stronger after taking that +expensive old port regularly for nearly six weeks. + +"I am sorry to say that I do not, mamma. I think if there is any change, +it is that I am weaker." + +"Dear, dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldon captiously, "you are really a +most extraordinary girl." + +Mrs. Sheldon could almost have found it in her heart to say, a most +ungrateful girl. There did seem a kind of ingratitude in this futile +consumption of old port at fifteen shillings a bottle. + +"I'll tell you what it is, Lotta," she said presently, "I am convinced +that your illness--or your weakness--is all fancy." + +"Why so, mamma?" + +"Because, if it were real weakness, that old port must have made you +stronger. And the fact that the port does you no good, is a proof that +your weakness is only fancy. Girls of your age are so full of fancies. +Look at me, and the martyrdom I go through with my nervous headaches, +which perfectly prostrate me, after the least worry or excitement. The +nerves of my head, after going into the butcher's book, are perfect +agony. When you come to have a house to look after, and find what it is +to have the same saddle of mutton charged for twice over, with the most +daring impudence--or to have capers and currie-powder, that you _know_ +you've never had, staring at you from every page of your grocer's book, +and nothing but your memory between you and utter ruin--you'll discover +what it is to be really ill." + +In this easy manner did Mrs. Sheldon dismiss the subject of her daughter's +illness. But it was not so easily dismissed by Diana Paget, who loved her +friend with a profound and pure affection, than which no sister's love +was ever warmer or stronger. Even Valentine's preference for this happy +rival had not lessened Diana's love for her friend and benefactress. She +had been jealous of Charlotte's happier fate: but in the hour when this +jealousy was most bitter there had been no wavering in her attachment to +this one true and generous friend. + +Miss Paget was very silent during the homeward drive. She understood now +what that change had been in her friend which until now had so perplexed +her. It was a decay of physical strength which had robbed Lotta's smile +of its brightness, her laugh of its merry music. It was physical languor +that made her so indifferent to the things which had once awakened her +girlish enthusiasm. The discovery was a very painful one. Diana +remembered her experience of Hyde Lodge: the girls who had grown day by +day more listless, now in the doctor's hands for a day or two, now well +again and toiling at the old treadmill round of study, now sinking into +confirmed invalids; until the bitter hour in which parents are summoned, +and the doctor urges rest, and the fond mother carries her darling home, +assured that home comfort and tenderness will, speedily restore her. Her +schoolfellows cluster round the carriage to bid her "good-bye until next +half," full of hopeful talk about her swift recovery. But when the +vacation is over, and Black Monday comes, she is not amongst the +returning scholars. Has she not gone up to the higher school, and +answered _Adsum_ to the call of the Great Master? + +Diana remembered these old experiences with cruel pain. + +"Girls, as bright and lovable as she is, have drooped and faded away, +just when they seem brightest and happiest," she thought as she watched +Charlotte, and perceived to-day for the first time that the outline of +her fair young cheek had lost its perfect roundness. + +But in such a case love can do nothing except watch and wait. That night, +in the course of that girlish talk in Charlotte's bedroom, which had +become a habit with the two girls, Diana extorted from her friend a full +account of the symptoms which had affected her within the last few weeks. + +"Pray don't look so anxious, dear Di," she said gaily; "it is really +nothing worth talking of; and I knew that if I confessed to feeling ill +you and mamma would straightway begin to worry yourselves about me. I +have felt a little sick and faint sometimes; and now and then a sudden +dizziness has come over me. It is nothing of any consequence, and it +passes away very quickly. Sometimes I have a kind of torpid languid +feeling, which is scarcely unpleasant, only strange, you know. But what +does it all amount to, except that I am nervous?" + +"You must have change of air, Lotta," said Diana resolutely, "and change +of scene. Yes, no doubt you are nervous. You have been kept almost a +prisoner in the house through Mr. Sheldon's punctilious nonsense. You +miss our brisk morning walks in the Gardens, I dare say. If you were to +go to Yorkshire, now, to your friends at Newhall, you would like that +change, dear, wouldn't you?" + +"Yes, I should dearly like to see Aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe; but--" + +"But what, darling?" + +"I should scarcely like being at Newhall, unless--you'll think me very +foolish, Di--unless Valentine was with me. We were so happy there, you +see, dear; and it was there he first told me he loved me. No, Di, I +couldn't bear Newhall without him." + +"Poor Aunt Dorothy, poor uncle Joe! feathers when weighed in the scale +against a young man whom their niece has known less than a twelvemonth!" + +No more was said about Charlotte's illness; Diana was too prudent to +alarm her friend by any expression of uneasiness. She adopted a cheering +tone, and the conversation drifted into other channels. + +While Diana's concern for her friend's altered health was yet a new +feeling, she found herself called upon to attend her father once more +in the character of a ministering angel. And this time Captain Paget's +illness was something more than gout. It was, according to his +doctors--he had on this occasion two medical attendants--a general +breaking up of the system. The poor old wanderer,--the weary Odysseus, +hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures,--laid himself down to +rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned. + +He was very ill. Gustave Lenoble, who came back to London, did not +conceal from Diana that the illness threatened to end fatally. At his +instigation the Captain had been removed from Omega Street to pleasant +lodgings at the back of Knightsbridge Road, overlooking Hyde Park. This +was nearer Bayswater, and it was very pleasant for the fading old +worldling. He could see the stream of fashion flowing past as he sat in +his easy-chair, propped up with pillows, with the western sunlight on his +face. He pointed out the liveries and armorial bearings; and told many +scandalous and entertaining anecdotes of their past and present owners to +Gustave Lenoble, who devoted much of his time to the solacement of the +invalid. Everything that affection could do to smooth this dreary time +was done for the tired Ulysses. Pleasant books were read to him; earnest +thoughts were suggested by earnest words; hothouse flowers adorned his +cheerful sitting-room; hothouse fruits gladdened his eye by their rich +warmth of colour, and invited his parched lips to taste their cool +ripeness. Gustave had a piano brought in, so that Diana might sing to her +father in the dusky May evenings, when it should please him to hear her. +Upon the last feeble footsteps of this old man, whose life had been very +selfish and wicked, pity waited with a carefulness so fond and tender +that he might well mistake it for love. Was it fair that his last days +should be so peaceful and luxurious, when many a good man falls down to +die in the streets, worn out with the life-long effort to bear the burden +laid upon his weary shoulders? In the traditions of the Rabbins it is +written that those are the elect of God who suffer His chastisement in +the flesh. For the others, for those who on earth drain the goblet of +pleasure, and riot in the raptures of sin, for them comes the dread +retribution after death. They are plunged in the fire, and driven before +the wind; they take the shape of loathsome reptiles, and ascend by +infinitesimal degrees through all the grades of creation, until their +storm-tost wearied degraded souls re-enter human semblance once more. But +even then their old stand-point is not yet regained; their dread penance +not yet performed. As men they are the lowest and worst of men; slaves +toiling in the desert; dirt to be trampled under the feet of their +prosperous brethren. Inch by inch the wretched soul regains its lost +inheritance; cycles must elapse before the awful sentence is fulfilled. + +Our Christian faith knows no such horrors. Even for the penitent of the +eleventh hour there is promise of pardon. The most earnest desire of +Diana's heart was that her father should enroll himself amongst those +late penitents--those last among the last who crowd in to the marriage +feast, half afraid to show their shame-darkened faces in that glorious +company. + +If we forgive all things to old age, so much the more surely do we +forgive all injuries to the fading enemy. That she had suffered much +cruelty and neglect at the hands of her father, was a fact that Diana +could not forget, any more than she could forget the name which he had +given her. It was a part of her life not to be put off or done away with. +But in these last days, with all her heart she forgave and pitied him. +She pitied him for the crooked paths into which his feet had wandered at +the very outset of life, and from which so weak a soul could find no +issue. She pitied him for that moral blindness which had kept him +pleasantly unconscious of the supreme depth of his degradation--a social +Laplander, who never having seen a western summer, had no knowledge that +his own land was dark and benighted. + +Happily for Diana and her generous lover, the Captain was not a +difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost the capacity +and the need for sin, took very kindly to penitence, as a species of +sentimental luxury. + +"Yes, my dear," he said complacently--for even in the hour of his +penitence he insisted on regarding himself as a social martyr--"my life +has been a very hard one. Fortune has not been kind to me. In the words +of the immortal bard, my lines have _not_ been set in pleasant places. I +should have been glad if Providence had allowed me to be a better father +to you, a better husband to your poor mother--a better Christian, in +fact--and had spared me the repeated humiliation of going through the +Insolvent Debtors' Court. It is not always easy to understand the justice +of these things: and it has often appeared to me that something of the +favouritism which is the bane of our governments on earth must needs +obtain at a higher tribunal. One man enters life with an entailed estate +worth seventy thousand a-year, while another finds himself in the hands +of the Jews before he is twenty years of age. 'There's something in this +world amiss shall be unriddled by-and-by,' as the poet observes. The +circumstances of my own existence I have ever regarded as dark and +enigmatic. And, indeed, the events of this life are altogether +inexplicable, my love. There is that fellow Sheldon, now, who began +life as a country dentist, a man without family or connections, +who--well, I will not repine. If I am spared to behold my daughter +mistress of a fine estate, although in a foreign country, I can depart in +peace. But you must have a house in town, my dear. Yes, London must be +your head-quarters. You must not be buried alive in Normandy. There is no +place like London. Take the word of a man who has seen the finest +Continental cities, and lived in them--that is the point, my love--lived +in them. For a fine afternoon in the beginning of May, an apartment in +the Champs Elysees, or the Boulevard, is an earthly paradise; but the +Champs Elysees in a wet December--the Boulevard in a sweltering August! +London is the only spot upon earth that is never intolerable. And your +husband will be a rich man, my dear girl, a really wealthy man; and you +must see that he makes a fitting use of his wealth, and does his duty to +society. The parable of the Talents, which you were reading to me this +afternoon, is a moral lesson your husband must not forget." + +After this fashion did the invalid discourse. Gustave and Diana perceived +that he still hoped to have his share in their future life, still looked +to pleasant days to come in a world which he had loved, not wisely, but +too well. Nor could they find it in their hearts to tell him that his +journey was drawing to a close, and that on the very threshold of the +peaceful home which his diplomatic arts had helped to secure, he was to +abandon life's weary race. + +They indulged his hopes a little, in order to win him the more easily to +serious thoughts; but though at times quite ready to abandon himself to a +penitential mood that was almost maudlin, there were other times when the +old Adam asserted himself, and the Captain resented this intrusion of +serious subjects as a kind of impertinence. + +"I am not aware that I am at my last gasp, Diana," he said with dignity, +on one of these occasions; "or that I need to be talked to by my own +daughter as if I were on my deathbed. I can show you men some years my +senior driving their phaetons-and-pairs in that Park. The Gospel is all +very well in its place--during Sunday-morning service, and after morning +prayers, in your good old county families, where the household is large +enough to make a fair show at the end of the dining-room, without +bringing in hulking lads who smell of the stables: but I consider that +when a man is ill, there is a considerable want of tact in bringing the +subject of religion before him in any obtrusive manner." + +Thus the Captain alternated from sentimental penitence to captious +worldliness, during many days and weeks. The business of the Haygarthian +inheritance was progressing slowly, but surely. Documents were being +prepared, attested copies of certificates of marriages, births, baptisms, +and burials were being procured, and all was tending towards the grand +result. Once, and sometimes twice a week, M. Fleurus came to see Captain +Paget, and discussed the great affair with that invalid diplomatist. The +Captain had long ago been aware that in entering upon an alliance with +that gentleman, he had invoked the aid of a coadjutor likely to prove too +strong for him. The event had justified his fears. M. Fleurus had +something of Victor Hugo's famous _Poulpe_ in his nature. Powerful as +flexible were the arms he stretched forth to grasp all prizes in the way +of heirs-at-law and disputed heritages, unclaimed railway-stock, and +forgotten consols. If the Captain had not played his cards very cleverly, +and contrived to obtain a personal influence over Gustave Lenoble, he +might have found himself thrust entirely out of the business by one of +the Frenchman's gelatinous arms. Happily for his own success, however, +the Captain did obtain a strong hold upon Gustave. This enabled him to +protect his own interests throughout the negotiation, and to keep the +insidious Fleurus at bay. + +"My good friend," he said, in his grand Carlton-House manner, "I am bound +to protect the interests of my friend M. Lenoble, in any agreement to be +entered upon in this matter. I cannot permit M. Lenoble's generosity or +M. Lenoble's inexperience to be imposed upon. My own interests are of +secondary importance. That I expect to profit by the extraordinary +discovery made by me--by ME--alone and unaided, I do not affect to deny. +But I will not profit at the expense of a too generous friend." + +"And what recompense am I to have for my work--a work at once painful and +impoverishing?" asked the little Frenchman, with an angry and suspicious +look. "Do you believe that I do that to amuse me? To run the streets, to +go by here, by there, in hunting the papers of that marriage, or this +baptism? Believe you that is so agreeable, Monsieur the Captain? No; I +desire to be paid for my work. I must have my part in the heritage which +I have help to win." + +"It is not won yet. We will talk of your recompense by-and-by." + +"We will talk of it this instant--upon the field. It must that I +comprehend where I am in this affair. I will not of mystifications, of +prevarications, of lies--" + +"M. Fleurus!" cried the Captain, with a hand stretched towards the bell. + +"You will sound--you will chase me! Ah, but no!--you cannot afford to +chase me yet. I have to find more papers of baptisms and burials. Go, +then, we will talk of this affair as friends." + +This friendly talk ended in Captain Paget's complete victory. M. Fleurus +consented to accept his costs out of pocket in the present, and three per +cent, of the heritage in the future. It was further agreed that the +Captain should select the English attorney who should conduct M. +Lenoble's case in the Court of Chancery. + +This conversation occurred at Rouen, and a day or two afterwards the +necessary document was drawn up. Gustave pledged himself to pay over a +fourth share of the Haygarthian fortune to Horatio Paget, and three +per cent, upon the whole amount to Jean Francois Fleurus. The document +was very formal, very complete; but whether such an agreement would +hold water, if Gustave Lenoble should choose to contest it, was open +to question. + +The solicitor to whom Horatio Paget introduced M. Lenoble was a Mr. +Dashwood, of the firm of Dashwood and Vernon; a man whom the Captain had +known in the past, and from whom he had received good service in some of +the most difficult crises of his difficult career. To this gentleman he +confided the conduct of the case; and explained his apprehensions with +regard to the two Sheldons. + +"You see, as the case now stands, they think they have the claimant to +this money in Miss Halliday--Sheldon's stepdaughter. But if they got an +inkling of Susan Meynell's marriage--and, in point of fact--the actual +state of the case--they might try to get hold of my friend, Gustave +Lenoble. They could _not_ get hold of him, mind you, Dashwood, but they +would try it on, and I don't want trying on of that kind." + +"Of course not. I know Sheldon, of Gray's Inn. He is rather--well, say +_shady_. That's hardly an actionable epithet, and it expresses what I +mean. Your friend's case seems to me tolerably clear. That little +Frenchman is useful, but officious. It is not a speculative affair, I +suppose? There is money to meet the current expenses of the business?" + +"Yes, there is money. Within reasonable limits my friend is prepared to +pay for the advancement of his claims." + +After this the Haygarthian business progressed, slowly, quietly. The work +was up to this point underground work. There were still papers +wanting--final links of the chain to be fitted together; and to the +fitting of these links Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon devoted themselves, in +conjunction with M. Fleurus. + +This was how matters stood when Captain Paget drooped and languished, and +was fain to abandon all active share in the struggle. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FADING. + +While the invalid in the pleasant lodgings overlooking Hyde Park +grew day by day weaker, there was a change as marked in the bright +young creature whose loving spirit had first brought the influence of +affection to bear upon Diana Paget's character. Charlotte Halliday was +ill--very ill. It was with everyday increasing anxiety that Diana watched +the slow change--slow in its progress, but awfully rapid to look back +upon. The pain, the regret, with which she noted her father's decay were +little indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart as she +perceived the alteration in this dear friend, the blighting of this fair +young flower. + +That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but natural, and +we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see +our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in +its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana +watched her father's decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but +there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end +of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte--with +that happy soul for whom life and love wore their brightest smile, before +whose light joyous footsteps stretched so fair a pathway! + +The illness, whatever it was--and neither Mr. Sheldon nor the portly and +venerable physician whom he called in could find a name for it--crept +upon the patient with stealthy and insidious steps. Dizziness, trembling, +faintness; trembling, faintness, dizziness; the symptoms alternated day +by day. Sometimes there was a respite of a few days; and Charlotte--the +youthful, the sanguine, the happy--declared that her enemy had left her. + +"I am sure mamma is right, Di," she said on these occasions. "My nerves +are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if I could get the better +of my nerves, I should be as well as ever. I don't wonder that the idea +of my symptoms makes mamma almost cross. You see, she has been accustomed +to have the symptoms all to herself; and for me to plagiarise them, as it +were, must seem quite an impertinence. For a strong young thing like me, +you know, Di dear--who have only just broken myself of plunging +downstairs two and three steps at a time, and plunging upstairs in the +same vulgar manner--to intrude on mamma's shattered nerves, and pirate +mamma's low spirits, is utterly absurd and abominable; so I have resolved +to look my nerves straight in the face, and get the better of them." + +"My darling, you will get the better of them if you try," said Diana, who +did at times beguile herself with the hope that her friend's ailments +were mental rather than bodily. "I dare say your monotonous life has +something to do with your altered health; you want change of scene, +dear." + +"Change of scene, when I have you and Valentine! No, Di. It would +certainly be very nice to have the background shifted now and then; to +see Capability Brown's prim gardens melt into Alpine heights or +southern vineyards, or even into Russian steppes or Hungarian forests. +One does get a little tired of _toujours_ Bayswater; and Mr. Sheldon; +and crimped skate; and sirloin of beef, and the inevitable discussion as +to whether it is in a cannibal state of rawness or burnt to a cinder; +and the glasses of pale sherry; and the red worsted doyleys and blue +finger-glasses; and the almonds and raisins, and crisp biscuits, that +nobody ever eats; and the dreary, dreary funereal business of dinner, +when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of +the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma's peevish +complaints about Ann Woolper's ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr. +Sheldon's perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the +evening through; and _such_ papers!--_Money Market Monitor, Stockholder's +Vade-Mecum_, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so +much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used never to feel +these things an annoyance, you know, dear, till I made the acquaintance +of my nerves; but from the moment I allowed my nerves to get the better +of me, all these trifles have worried and excruciated me. But I am happy +with you, darling; and I am happy with Valentine. Poor Valentine!" + +She pronounced his name with a sigh; and then, after a pause, repeated +mournfully, "Poor Valentine!" + +"Why do you speak of him so sadly, dear?" asked Diana, very pale. + +"Because--because we have planned such a happy life together, dear, +and--" + +"Is that a thing to be sad about, darling?" + +"And--if it should happen, after all, that we have to part, and he go on +alone, the world may seem so sad and lonely to him." + +"Charlotte!" cried Diana, with a laugh that was almost choked by a sob, +"is this looking your nerves in the face? Why, my dear one, this is +indeed plagiarism of your mamma's low spirits. Lotta, you shall have +change of air; yes, I am determined on that. The stately physician who +came in his carriage the other day, and who looked at your tongue, and +said 'Ah!' and then felt your pulse and said 'Ah!' again, and then called +for pen-and-ink and wrote a little prescription, is not the doctor we +want for you. We want Dr. Yorkshire; we want the breezes from the +Yorkshire moors, and the smell of the farmyard, and our dear Aunt +Dorothy's sillabubs, and our uncle Joe to take us for long walks across +his clover-fields." + +"I don't want to go to Newhall, Di. I couldn't bear to leave--him." + +"But what is to prevent your meeting _him_ at the white gate this time, +as you met him last October? Might not accident take _him_ to Huxter's +Cross again? The archaeological work--of which we have heard no more, by +the bye--might necessitate further investigations in that district. If +you will go to Newhall, Lotta, I will pledge myself for Mr. Hawkehurst's +speedy appearance at the white gate you have so often described to me." + +"My dearest Di, you are all kindness; but even if I were inclined to go +to Newhall, I doubt if mamma or Mr. Sheldon would like me to go." + +"I am sure they would be pleased with any arrangement that was likely to +benefit your health. But I will talk to your mamma about it. I have set +my heart on your going to Newhall." + +Miss Paget lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took possession of +Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new stitch in _tricot_, and +succeeded in impressing her with the conviction that change of air was +necessary for Charlotte. + +"But you don't think Lotta really ill?" asked Mrs. Sheldon, nervously. + +"I trust she is not really ill, dear Mrs. Sheldon; but I am sure she is +much changed. In talking to her, I affect to think that her illness is +only an affair of the nerves; but I sadly fear that it is something more +than that." + +"But what is the matter with her?" exclaimed Georgy, with a piteous air +of perplexity; "that is the question which I am always asking. People +can't be ill, you know, Diana, without having something the matter with +them; and that is what I can't make out in Charlotte's case. Mr. Sheldon +says she wants tone; the physician who came in a carriage and pair, and +ought to know what he is talking about, says there is a lack of vigour. +But what does that all amount to? I'm sure I've wanted tone all my life. +Perhaps there never was a creature so devoid of tone as I am; and the +internal sinking I feel just before luncheon is something that no one but +myself can realize. I dare say Lotta is not so strong as she might be; +but I do not see that she can be ill, unless her illness is something +definite. My poor first husband's illness, now, was the kind of thing +that any one could understand--bilious fever. The merest child knows what +it is to be bilious, and the merest child knows what it is to be +feverish. There can be nothing mysterious in bilious fever." + +"But, dear Mrs. Sheldon," said Diana, gravely, "don't you think that the +weakness of constitution which rendered Charlotte's father liable to be +taken off in the prime of life by a fever is a weakness that Charlotte +may possibly have inherited?" + +"Good heavens, Diana!" cried Georgy, with sudden terror; "you don't mean +to say that you think my Charlotte is going to die?" + +It was but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic +alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened +fears as it had been to rouse her from absolute apathy. + +Change of air--yes, of course--Charlotte must have change of air that +instant. Let a cab be sent for immediately to take them to the terminus. +Change of air, of course. To Newhall--to Nice--to the Isle of Wight--to +Malta; Mrs. Sheldon had heard of people going to Malta. Where should they +go? Would Diana advise, and send for a cab, and pack a travelling bag +without an instant's delay? The rest of the things could be sent +afterwards. What did luggage matter, when Charlotte's life was at stake? + +At this point a flood of tears happily relieved poor Georgy's excited +feelings, and then common sense and Diana Paget came to the rescue. + +"My dear Mrs. Sheldon," she said, with a quiet cheerful tone that went +far to reassure the excited lady, "in the first place we must, above all +things, refrain from any appearance of alarm. Her illness may, after all, +be only an affair of the nerves; and there is certainly no cause for +immediate fear." + +Georgy was tranquillised, and agreed to take matters quietly. She +promised to arrange Charlotte's departure for Newhall, with Mr. Sheldon, +that evening. + +"Of course, you know, my dear, I like to consult him about everything," +she said, apologetically. "It is a duty which one owes one's husband, you +know, and a duty which, as a young woman about to marry, I cannot too +much impress upon you; but in this case it is quite a matter of form: Mr. +Sheldon never has objected to Charlotte's going to Newhall, and he is not +likely to object now." + +The event proved Mrs. Sheldon mistaken as to this matter. Georgy proposed +the visit to Newhall that evening, while the two girls were strolling +listlessly in the dusky garden, and Mr. Sheldon most decidedly rejected +the proposition. + +"If she wants change of air--and Dr. Doddleson recommended nothing of the +kind--Newhall is not the place for her." + +"Why not, dear?" + +"It is too cold. Northerly aspect--no shelter--three hundred feet above +York minster." + +"But Dorothy Mercer is such a kind motherly creature; she'd delight in +nursing Lotta." + +"Yes," answered Mr. Sheldon, with a laugh, "and in quacking her. I know +what those good motherly creatures are when they get an excuse for dosing +some unhappy victim with their quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to +Newhall, Mrs. Mercer would poi--would make her ten times worse than +she is with old woman's remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is +too cold. That is a conclusive argument, I suppose?" + +He said this with some impatience of tone and manner. There was a haggard +look in his face, a hurried harassed manner pervading him this evening, +which had been growing upon him of late. Georgy was too slow of +perception to remark this; but Diana Paget had remarked it, and had +attributed the change in the stockbroker's manner to a blending of two +anxieties. + +"He is anxious about money matters," she had said to herself, "and he is +anxious about Charlotte's health. His lips, moving in whispered +calculations, as he sits brooding by the fire, tell me of the first +anxiety; his eyes, wandering furtively to his step-daughter's face every +now and then, tell me of the second." + +This furtive anxiety of Mr. Sheldon's increased Diana Paget's anxiety. +This man, who had a certain amount of medical knowledge, could no doubt +read the diagnostics of that strange insidious illness, which had, as +yet, no name. Diana, furtively watching his furtive looks, told herself +that he read of danger. + +"If Charlotte wants change of air, let her go to Hastings," he said; +"that is the kind of place for an invalid. I want rest myself; and +there's such utter stagnation in the City nowadays that I can very well +afford to give myself a holiday. We'll run down to Hastings, or the +immediate neighbourhood of Hastings, for a week or two." + +"O Philip, how kind and considerate you are! I am sure, as I was +observing to Miss Paget only today, you--" + +"Ah, by the bye, there's Miss Paget. Is it absolutely necessary that Miss +Paget should go to Hastings with us?" + +"Well, dear, you see she has so kindly desired to remain with me for the +quarter, so as to give me time to turn round, you know, with regard to +caps and summer things, and so on--for, really, she has such taste, and +does strike out such excellent ideas about turning, and dipping, and +dyeing, that I don't know what will become of me when she leaves us; and +it would look so pointed to--" + +"Yes; she had better go with us. But why all this fuss about Charlotte? +Who put it into your head that she wants change of air?" + +Mr. Sheldon evidently considered it an established fact that any idea in +his wife's head must needs have been put there by someone or other. + +"Well, you see, Diana and I were talking of Lotta this afternoon, and +Diana quite alarmed me." + +"How so?" asked Mr. Sheldon, with a quick frown. + +"Why, she said it was evident, by the fact of poor dear Tom's dying of a +fever, that his constitution must have been originally weak. And she said +that perhaps Charlotte had inherited Tom's weak constitution--and +frightened me dreadfully." + +"There is no occasion for you to be frightened; Charlotte will get on +very well, I dare say, with care. But Miss Paget is a very sensible +young woman, and is right in what she says. Charlotte's constitution is +not strong." + +"O Philip!" said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice. + +"I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves," said Mr. +Sheldon, with a hard laugh. "Ah, here she is!" + +Here she was, coming towards the open window near which her stepfather +sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her sauntering walk, dressed in +white, and spectral in the gloaming. To the sad eyes of her mother she +looked like a ghost. To the eyes of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to +poetic fancies, she looked even more ghostlike. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS. + +Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the +object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several +people. That her stepfather had his anxieties about her--anxieties which +he tried to hide--was obvious to the one person in the Bayswater villa +who noted his looks, and tried to read the thoughts they indicated. + +Mrs. Sheldon's alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be lulled to rest. +And in Valentine Hawkehurst's heart there was an aching pain--a dull dead +load of care, which had never been lightened from the hour when he first +perceived the change in his dear one's face. + +There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater villa, who +watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care as unresting as the +care of mother or stepfather, bosom friend or plighted lover. This person +was Ann Woolper. Mrs. Woolper had come to the villa prepared to find in +Miss Halliday a frivolous self-satisfied young person, between whom and +an old broken-down woman like herself there could be no sympathy. She had +expected to be contemptuously--or, at the best, indifferently--entreated +by the prosperous well-placed young lady, whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of +as a good girl, as girls go; a vague species of commendation, which, to +the mind of Mrs. Woolper, promised very little. + +As clearly as Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes with regard to +Charlotte Halliday, he had expressed them to Ann Woolper. What he would +fain have said, was, "Watch my stepdaughter, and keep me well acquainted +with every step she takes." Thus much he dared not say; but by +insinuating that Tom Halliday's daughter was frivolous and reckless, and +that her lover was not to be trusted, he had contrived to put Mrs. +Woolper on the _qui vive_. + +"Mr. Philip's afraid she may go and marry this young man on the sly, +before he's got the means to support a wife," she said to herself, as she +meditated upon the meaning of her master's injunctions; "and well he may +be. There's no knowing what young women are up to nowadays; and the more +innocent and inexperienced a young woman is, the more she wants looking +after. And Miss Georgy Craddock always was a poor fondy, up to naught but +dressing herself fine, and streaming up and down Barlingford High Street +with her old schoolfellows. Such as she ain't fit to be trusted with a +daughter; and Mr. Philip knows that. He always was a deep one. But I'm +glad he looks after Missy: there's many men, having got fast hold of th' +father's brass, would let th' daughter marry Old Scratch, for the sake of +gettin' rid of her." + +This is how Mrs. Woolper argued the matter. She came of a prudent race; +and anything like prudence seemed to her a commendable virtue. She wished +to think well of her master; for her he had been a Providence in the hour +of calamity and old age. Where else could she look, if not to him? And to +suspect him, or think ill of him, was to reject the one refuge offered to +her distress. A magnanimous independence of spirit is not an easy virtue +for the old and friendless and poor. The drowning wretch will scarcely +question the soundness of the plank that sustains him upon the +storm-tossed billows; nor was Mrs. Woolper inclined to question the +motives of the man to whom she now owed her daily bread. + +It is possible that before invoking Mrs. Woolper from the ashes of the +past to take her seat by the hearthstone of the present, Mr. Sheldon may +have contemplated the question of her return in all its bearings, and +may have assured himself that she was his own, by a tie not easily +broken--his bond-slave, fettered hand and foot by the bondage of +necessity. + +"What choice can she have, except the choice between my house and the +workhouse?" he may naturally have asked himself; "and is it likely she +will quarrel with her bread-and-butter in order to fall back upon dry +bread?" Mr. Sheldon, contemplating this and all other questions from his +one unchanging standpoint, may reasonably have concluded that Mrs. +Woolper would do nothing opposed to her own interests; and that so long +as it suited her interest to remain at the Lawn, and to serve him, she +would there remain, his docile and unquestioning slave. + +The influence of affection, the force of generous impulse, were qualities +that did not come into Mr. Sheldon's calculations upon this subject. His +addition and subtraction, division and multiplication, were all based on +one system. + +That happy and unconscious art by which Charlotte Halliday made herself +dear to all who knew her had a speedy effect upon the old housekeeper. +The girl's amiable consideration for her age and infirmities; the pretty +affectionate familiarity with which she treated this countrywoman, who +had known her father, and who could talk to her of Yorkshire and +Yorkshire people, soon made their way to Nancy Woolper's heart of hearts. +For Miss Halliday to come to the housekeeper's room with some message +from her mother, and to linger for a few minutes' chat, was a delight to +Mrs. Woolper. She would have detained the bright young visitant for hours +instead of minutes, if she could have found any excuse for so doing. Nor +was there any treason against Mr. Sheldon in her growing attachment to +his stepdaughter. Whenever Nancy spoke of that master and benefactor, she +spoke with unfeigned gratitude and affection. + +"I nursed your step-papa as a baby, Miss Halliday," she said very often +on these occasions. "You wouldn't think, to look at him now, that he ever +was _that_, would you? But he was one of the finest babies you could wish +to see--tall, and strong, and with eyes that pierced one through, they +were so bright and big and black. He was rather stubborn-spirited with +his teething; but what baby isn't trying at such times? I had rare work +with him, I can tell you, Miss, walking him about of nights, and jogging +him till there wasn't a jog left in me, as you may say, from sleepiness. +I often wonder if he thinks of this now, when I see him looking so grave +and stern. But, you see, being jogged doesn't impress the mind like +having to jog; and though I can bring that time back as plain as if it +was yesterday, with the very nursery I slept in at Barlingford, and the +rushlight in a tall iron cage on the floor, and the shadow of the cage on +the bare whitewashed walls--it's clean gone out of his mind, I dare say." + +"I'm afraid it has, Nancy." + +"But, O, I was fond of him, Miss Halliday; and what I went through with +him about his teeth made me only the fonder of him. He was the first baby +I ever nursed, you see, and the last; for before Master George came to +town I'd taken to the cooking, and Mrs. Sheldon hired another girl as +nurse; a regular softy _she_ was, and it isn't her fault that Master +George has got anything christian-like in the way of a back, for the way +she carried that blessed child used to make my blood run cold." + +Thus would Mrs. Woolper discourse whenever she had a fair excuse for +detaining Miss Halliday in her comfortable apartment. Charlotte did not +perceive much interest in these reminiscences of Mr. Sheldon's infancy, +but she was much too kind to bring them abruptly to a close by any show +of impatience. When she could get Nancy to talk of Barlingford and Hyley, +and the people whom Charlotte herself had known as a child, the +conversation was really interesting; and these recollections formed a +link between the old woman and the fair young damsel. + +When the change arose in Charlotte's health and spirits, Mrs. Woolper was +one of the first to perceive it. She was skilled in those old woman's +remedies which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme contempt, and she would +fain have dosed the invalid with nauseous decoctions of hops, or +home-brewed quinine. Charlotte appreciated the kindness of the intent, +but she rebelled against the home-brewed medicines, and pinned her faith +to the more scientific and less obnoxious preparations procured from the +chemist's. + +For some time Nancy made light of the girl's ailments, though she watched +her with unfailing attention. + +"You ain't a-done growing yet, miss, I'll lay," she said. + +"But I'm more than twenty-one, Nancy. People don't grow after they're of +age, do they?" + +"I've known them as have, miss; I don't say it's common, but it has been +done. And then there's the weakness that comes after you've done growing. +Girls of your age are apt to be faint and lollopy-like, as you may say; +especially when they're stived up in a smoky place like London. You ought +to go to Hyley, miss, where you was born; that's the place to set you +up." + +The time had come when the change was no longer matter for doubt. Day by +day Charlotte grew weaker and paler; day by day that bright and joyous +creature, whose presence had made an atmosphere of youth and gladness +even in that prim dwelling-place, receded farther into the dimness of +the past; until to think of what she had been seemed like recalling the +image of the dead. Nancy marked the alteration with a strange pain, so +sharp, so bitter, that its sharpness and bitterness were a perpetual +perplexity to her. + +"If the poor dear young thing is meant to go, there's no need for me to +fret about it all day long, and wake up sudden in the night with cold +water standing out upon my forehead at the thought of it. I haven't known +her six months; and if she is pretty and sweet-spoken, it's not my place +to give way at the thoughts of losing her. She's not my own flesh and +blood; and I've sat by to watch them go, times and often, without feeling +as I do when I see the change in her day after day. Why should it seem so +dreadful to me?" + +Why indeed? This was a question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no +answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something +more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel. +A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of +reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness +as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been +liable to the suspicion of nocturnal careerings on broomsticks. + +"I'm sorry Mr. Philip's house should be unlucky to that sweet young +creature," she said to herself. "It was unlucky to the father; and now it +seems as if it was going to be unlucky to the daughter. And Mr. Philip +won't be any richer for her death. Mrs. Sheldon has told me times and +often that all Tom Halliday's money went to my master when she married +him, and he has doubled and trebled it by his cleverness. Miss +Charlotte's death wouldn't bring him a sixpence." + +This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's meditations very often nowadays. But +the strange sense of perplexity, the nameless fear, the vague horror, +were not to be banished from her mind. A sense of some shapeless presence +for ever at her side haunted her by day and night. What was it? What did +its presence portend? It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot, +was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not turn to +meet the horror face to face. Sometimes the phantom hand lifted a corner +of the veil, and the shade said, "Look at me! See who and what I am! You +have seen me before. I am here again! and this time you shall not refuse +to meet me face to face! I am the shadow of the horror you suspected in +the past!" + +The shadowy fears which oppressed Mrs. Woolper during this period did not +in any way lessen her practical usefulness. From the commencement of +Charlotte's slow decline she had shown herself attentive, and even +officious, in all matters relating to the invalid. With her own hands she +decanted the famous port which Georgy fetched from the particular bin in +Mr. Sheldon's carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called +in, and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper who +carried the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought back the +innocent potion, which might, peradventure, effect some slight good, and +was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. Charlotte duly appreciated all +this kindness; but she repeatedly assured the housekeeper that her +ailments were not worthy of so much care. + +It was Mrs. Woolper whom Mr. Sheldon employed to get lodgings for the +family, when it had been ultimately decided that a change to the seaside +was the best cure for Miss Halliday. + +"I am too busy to go to Hastings myself this week," he said; "but I +shall be prepared to spend a fortnight there after next Monday. What I +want you to do, Nancy, is to slip down tomorrow, with a second-class +return-ticket, and look about for a nice place for us. I don't care about +being in Hastings; there's too much cockneyism in the place at this time +of year. There's a little village called Harold's Hill, within a mile or +so of St. Leonard's--a dull, out-of-the-way place, but rustic and +picturesque, and all that kind of thing--the sort of place that women +like. Now, I'd rather stay at that place than at Hastings. So you can +take a fly at the station, drive straight to Harold's Hill, and secure +the best lodgings you can get." + +"You think as the change of air will do Miss Halliday good?" asked Mrs. +Woolper anxiously, after she had promised to do all her kind master +required of her. + +"Do I think it will do her good? Of course I do. Sea-air and +sea-bathing will set her up in no time; there's nothing particular the +matter with her." + +"No, Mr. Philip; that's what bothers me about the whole thing. There's +nothing particular the matter with her; and yet she pines and dwindles, +and dwindles and pines, till it makes one's heart ache to see her." + +Philip Sheldon's face darkened, and he threw himself back in his chair +with an impatient movement. If he had chosen to do so, he could have +prevented that darkening of his face; but he did not consider Mrs. +Woolper a person of sufficient importance to necessitate the regulation +of his countenance. What was she but an ignorant, obstinate old woman, +who would most probably perish in the streets if he chose to turn her out +of doors? There are men who consider their clerks and retainers such very +dirt, that they would continue the forging of a bill of exchange, or +complete the final touches of a murder, with a junior clerk putting coals +on the fire, or an errand-boy standing cap in hand on the threshold of +the door. They cannot realize the fact that dirt such as this is flesh +and blood, and may denounce them by-and-by in a witness-box. + +Of all contingencies Mr. Sheldon least expected that this old woman could +prove troublesome to him--this abject wretch, whose daily bread depended +on his will. He could not imagine that there are circumstances under +which such abject creatures will renounce their daily bread, and die of +hunger, rather than accept the means of life from one hateful hand. + +"If you want to know anything about Miss Halliday's illness," he said in +his hardest voice, and with his hardest look, "you had better apply to +Dr. Doddleson, the physician who has prescribed for her. I do not attend +her, you see, and I am in no way responsible for her health. When I was +attending her father you favoured me by doubting my skill, if I judged +rightly as to your tone and manner on one occasion. I don't want to be +brought to book by you, Mrs. Woolper, about Miss Halliday's altered looks +or Miss Halliday's illness; I have nothing to do with either." + +"How should I think you had, sir? Don't be angry with me, or hard upon +me, Mr. Phil. I nursed you when you was but a baby, and you're nearer and +dearer to me than any other master could be. Why, I have but to shut my +eyes now, and I can feel your little hand upon my neck, as it used to lie +there, so soft and dear. And then I look down at the hand on the table, +strong and dark, and clenched so firm, and I ask myself, Can it be the +same? For the sake of that time, Mr. Phil, don't be hard upon me. There's +nothing I wouldn't do to serve you; there's nothing you could do that +would turn me from you. There's no man living in this world, sir, that +oughtn't to be glad to know of one person that nothing can turn from +him." + +"That's a very fine sentiment, my good soul," replied Mr. Sheldon coolly; +"but, you see, it's only an _ex parte_ statement; and as the case stands +there is no opportunity for the display of those fine feelings you talk +about. You happen to want a home in your old age, and I happen to be able +to give you a home. Under such circumstances, your own good sense will +show you that all sentimental talk about standing by me, and not turning +away from me, is absolute bosh." + +The old woman sighed heavily. She had offered her master a fidelity which +involved the abnegation of all impulses of her own heart and mind, and he +rejected her love and her service. And then, after the first dreary sense +of his coldness, she felt better pleased that it should be so. The man +who spoke to her in this harsh uncompromising way could have no cause to +fear her. In the mind of such a man there could surely be no secret +chamber within which she had, with his knowledge, almost penetrated. + +"I won't trouble you any more, sir," she said mournfully. "I dare say I'm +a foolish old woman." + +"You are, Nancy. We don't get wiser as we grow older, you see; and when +we let our tongues wag, we're apt to talk nonsense. The quieter you keep +your tongue, the better for yourself, in more ways than one. To a useful +old woman about the place I've no objection; but a chattering old woman I +will not have at any price." + +After this everything was settled in the most agreeable manner. Nancy +Woolper's journey to Hastings was fully arranged; and early the next +morning she started, brisk and active, in spite of her sixty-eight years +of age. She returned at night, having secured very pleasant lodgings at +the village of Harold's Hill. + +"And a very sweet place it is, my dear Miss Lotta," she said to Charlotte +the next day, when she described her adventures. "The apartments are at a +farmhouse overlooking the sea; and the smell of the cows under your +windows, and the sea-breezes blowing across the farmyard, can't fail to +bring the colour back to your pretty cheeks, and the brightness back to +your pretty eyes." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +VALENTINE'S SKELETON. + +The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed delightful +to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still in town, and who +thought it a hard thing that he should be deprived of Diana's society +during an entire fortnight, for the sake of this sickly Miss Halliday. + +For the rest, there was hope and gladness in the thought of this change +of dwelling. Charlotte languished for fresher breezes and more rustic +prospects than the breezes and prospects of Bayswater; Diana looked to +the sea-air as the doctor of doctors for her fading friend; and Valentine +cherished the same hope. + +On Valentine Hawkehurst the burden of an unlooked-for sorrow had weighed +very heavily. To see this dear girl, who was the beginning, middle, and +end of all his hopes, slowly fading before his eyes, was, of all agonies +that could have fallen to his lot, the sharpest and most bitter. Not +Ugolino sitting silent amidst his famishing children--not Helen, when she +would fain that the tempest had swept her from earth's surface on that +evil day when she was born--not Penelope, when she cried on Diana, the +high-priestess of death, to release her from the weariness of her +days--not Agamemnon, when the fatal edict had gone forth, and his fair +young daughter looked into his face, and asked him if it was true that +she was to die--not one of these typical mourners could have suffered a +keener torture than that which rent this young man's heart, as he marked +the stealthy steps of the Destroyer drawing nearer and nearer the woman +he loved. Of all possible calamities, this was the last he had ever +contemplated. Sometimes, in moments of doubt or despondency, he had +thought it possible that poverty, the advice of friends, caprice or +inconstancy on the part of Charlotte herself, should sever them. But +among the possible enemies to his happiness he had never counted Death. +What had Death to do with so fair and happy a creature as Charlotte +Halliday? she who, until some two months before this time, might have +been the divine Hygieia in person--so fresh was her youthful bloom, so +buoyant her step, so bright her glances. Valentine's hardest penance was +the necessity for the concealment of his anxiety. The idea that +Charlotte's illness might be--nay, must be--for the greater part an +affair of the nerves was always paramount in his mind. He and Diana had +talked of the subject together whenever they found an opportunity for so +doing, and had comforted themselves with the assurance that the nerves +alone were to blame; and they were the more inclined to think this from +the conduct of Dr. Doddleson, on that physician's visits to Miss +Halliday. Mrs. Sheldon had been present on each occasion, and to Mrs. +Sheldon alone had the physician given utterance to his opinion of the +case. That opinion, though expressed with a certain amount of +professional dignity, amounted to very little. "Our dear young friend +wanted strength; and what we had to do was to give our dear young friend +strength--vital power. Yes--er--um, that was the chief point. And what +kind of diet might our dear young friend take now? Was it a light diet, a +little roast mutton--not too much done, but not underdone? O dear, no. +And a light pudding? what he would call--if he might be permitted to have +his little joke--a nursery pudding." And then the old gentleman had +indulged in a senile chuckle, and patted Charlotte's head with his fat +old fingers. "And our dear young friend's room, now, was it a large +room?--good! and what was the aspect now, south?--good again! nothing +better, unless, perhaps, south-west; but, of course, everyone's +rooms can't look south-west. A little tonic draught, and gentle daily +exercise in that nice garden, will set our dear young friend right again. +Our temperament is nervous we are a sensitive plant, and want care." And +then the respectable septuagenarian took his fee, and shuffled off to his +carriage. And this was all that Mrs. Sheldon could tell Diana, or Nancy +Woolper, both of whom questioned her closely about her interview with the +doctor. To Diana and to Valentine there was hope to be gathered from the +very vagueness of the physician's opinion. If there had been anything +serious the matter, the medical adviser must needs have spoken more +seriously. He came again and again. He found the pulse a little weaker, +the patient a little more nervous, with a slight tendency to hysteria, +and so on; but he still declared that there were no traces of organic +disease, and he still talked of Miss Halliday's ailments with a cheery +easy-going manner that was very reassuring. + +In his moments of depression Valentine pinned his faith upon Dr. +Doddleson. Without organic disease, he told himself, his darling could +not perish. He looked for Dr. Doddleson's name in the Directory, and took +comfort from the fact of that physician's residence in a fashionable West +End square. He took further comfort from the splendour of the doctor's +equipage, as depicted to him by Mrs. Sheldon; and from the doctor's age +and experience, as copiously described by the same lady. + +"There is only one fact that I have ever reproached myself with in +relation to my poor Tom," said Georgy, who, in talking to strangers of +her first husband, was apt to impress them with the idea that she was +talking of a favourite cat; "and that is, the youthfulness of the +doctor Mr. Sheldon employed. Of course I am well aware that Mr. Sheldon +would not have consulted the young man if he had not thought him +clever; but I could lay my head upon my pillow at night with a clearer +conscience if poor Tom's doctor had been an older and more experienced +person. Now, that's what I like about Dr. Doddleson. There's a gravity--a +weight--about a man of that age which inspires one with immediate +confidence. I'm sure the serious manner with which he questioned me about +Lotta's diet, and the aspect of her room, was quite delightful." + +In Dr. Doddleson, under Providence, Valentine was fain to put his trust. +He did not know that the worthy doctor was one of those harmless +inanities who, by the aid of money and powerful connections, are +sometimes forced into a position which nature never intended them to +occupy. Among the real working men of that great and admirable +brotherhood, the medical profession, Dr. Doddleson had no rank; but he +was the pet physician of fashionable dowagers suffering from chronic +laziness or periodical attacks of ill-humour. For the spleen or the +vapours no one was a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. He could afford +to waste half an hour upon the asking of questions which the fair +patient's maid might as well have asked, and the suggestions of remedies +which any intelligent abigail could as easily have suggested. Elderly +ladies believed in him because he was pompous and ponderous, lived in an +expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore +mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the +matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating, +declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian +angel of their frail lives during the last twenty years. + +This was the man who, of all the medical profession resident in London, +Mr. Sheldon had selected as his stepdaughter's medical adviser in a case +so beyond common experience, that a man of wide practice and keen +perception was especially needed for its treatment. + +Dr. Doddleson, accustomed to attribute the fancied ailments of +fashionable dowagers to want of tone, and accustomed to prescribe the +mildest preparations with satisfaction to his patients and profit to +himself dwelt upon the same want of tone, and prescribed the same +harmless remedies, in his treatment of Charlotte Halliday. When he found +her no better--nay, even worse--after some weeks of this treatment, he +was puzzled; and for one harmless remedy he substituted another harmless +remedy, and waited another week to see what effect the second harmless +remedy might have on this somewhat obstinate young person. + +And this was the broken reed to which Valentine clung in the day of +his trouble. + +Bitter were his days and sleepless were his nights in this dark period of +his existence. He went to the Bayswater villa nearly every day now. It +was no longer time for etiquette or ceremony. His darling was fading day +by day; and it was his right to watch the slow sad change, and, if it +were possible, to keep the enemy at arm's-length. Every day he came to +spend one too brief hour with his dear love; every day he greeted her +with the same fond smile, and beguiled her with the same hopeful talk. He +brought her new books and flowers, and any foolish trifle which he +fancied might beguile her thoughts from the contemplation of that +mysterious malady which seemed beyond the reach of science and Dr. +Doddleson. He sat and talked with her of the future--that future which in +their secret thoughts both held to be a sweet sad fable--the hyperborean +garden of their dreams. And after spending this too sweet, too bitter +hour with his beloved, Mr. Hawkehurst would diplomatise in order to have +a little talk with Diana as he left the house. Did Diana think his dear +girl better to-day, or worse--surely not worse? He had fancied she had +more colour, more of her old gaiety of manner. She had seemed a little +feverish; but that might be the excitement of his visit. And so on, and +so on, with sad and dreary repetition. + +And then, having gone away from that house with an aching heart, the +young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and plunged into the +dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which was to constitute his +monthly contribution to the _Cheapside_ or the _Charing Cross_. Gaiety, +movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the +_Cheapside_; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for +the _Charing Cross_. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the +young scribbler tripping! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea there, +and the _West End Wasp_ shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional note; or +the _Minerva_ published a letter from a correspondent in the Scilly +Islands, headed "Another Literary Jack Sheppard," to say that in his +"Imperial Dictionary" he had discovered with profound indignation a whole +column of words feloniously and mendaciously appropriated by the writer +of such and such an article in the _Cheapside_. While the sunlight of +hope had shone upon him, Mr. Hawkehurst had found the hardest work +pleasant. Was he not working for _her_ sake? Did not his future union +with that dear girl depend upon his present industry? It had seemed to +him as if she stood at his elbow while he wrote, as Pallas stood beside +Achilles at the council, invisible to all but her favourite. It was that +mystic presence which lent swiftness to his pen. When he was tired and +depressed, the thought of Charlotte had revived his courage and +vanquished his fatigue. Pleasant images crowded upon him when he thought +of her. What could be easier than for him to write a love-story? He had +but to create a shadowy Charlotte for his heroine, and the stream of +foolish lover's babble flowed from his pen perennial and inexhaustible. +To his reading she lent a charm and a grace that made the most perfect +poetry still more poetical. It was not Achilles and Helen who met on +Mount Ida, but Valentine and Charlotte; it was not Paolo and Francesca +who read the fatal book together, but Valentine and Charlotte, in an +unregenerate and state of mind. The mere coincidence of a name +made the "Sorrows of Werter" delightful. The all-pervading presence was +everywhere and in everything. His religion was not Pantheism, but +Charlottism. + +Now all was changed. A brooding care was with him in every moment. The +mystic presence was still close to him in every hour of his lonely days +and nights; but that image, which had been fair and blooming as the +incarnation of youth and spring-time, was now a pale shrouded phantom +which he dared not contemplate. He still wrote on--for it is marvellous +how the pen will travel and the mind will project itself into the +shadow-world of fancy while cankerous care gnaws the weary heart. Nay, it +is perhaps at these times that the imagination is most active; for the +world of shadows is a kind of refuge for the mind that dare not dwell +upon realities. Who can say what dull, leaden, care may have weighed down +the heart of William Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of +a poet's grand imaginings, Othello! There is the flavour of racking care +in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by a sordid +wretch; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable life wrecked for so +poor a motive; that sense of the "something in this world amiss," which +the poet, of all other creatures, feels most keenly. + +With grief and fear as his constant companions, Valentine Hawkehurst +toiled on bravely, patiently. Hope had not deserted him; but between hope +and fear the contest was unceasing. Sometimes hope had the best of it for +a while, and the toiler comforted himself with the thought that this dark +cloud would pass anon from the horizon of his life; and then he counted +his gains, and found that the fruit of his labours was increasing +monthly, as his name gained rank among the band of young _litterateurs_. +The day when he might count upon that income which Mr. Sheldon demanded +as his qualification for matrimony did not appear far distant. Given a +certain amount of natural ability, and the industrious and indefatigable +young writer may speedily emerge from obscurity, and take his place in +the great army of those gallant soldiers whose only weapon is the pen. +Whatever good fortune had come to Valentine Hawkehurst he had worked for +with all honesty of purpose. The critics were not slow to remark that he +worked at a white-hot haste, and must needs be a shallow pretender +because he was laborious and indefatigable. + +Before the beginning of Charlotte's slow decline he had fancied himself +the happiest of men. There were more deposit-receipts in his desk. The +nest-egg, about the hatching whereof there had been such cackling and +crowing some months ago, was now one of many eggs; for the hard-working +scribbler had no leisure in which to be extravagant, had he been so +minded. The purchase of a half-circlet of diamonds for his betrothed's +slim finger had been his only folly. + +Charlotte had remonstrated with him on the impropriety of such an +extravagance, and had exacted from him a promise that this wild and +Monte-Christo-like course should be pursued no further; but she was very +proud of her half-hoop of diamonds nevertheless, and was wont to press it +tenderly to her lips before she laid it aside for the night. + +"There must be no more such extravagance, sir," she said to her lover, +when he sat by her side twisting the ring round and round on her pretty +finger. Alas, how loose the ring had become since it had first been +placed there! + +"Consider the future, Valentine," continued the girl, hopeful of mood +while her hand rested in his. "Do you suppose we can furnish our cottage +at Wimbledon if we rush into such wild expenses as diamond rings? Do you +know that _I_ am saving money, Valentine? Yes, positively. Papa gives me +a very good allowance for my dresses, and bonnets, and things, you know, +and I used to be extravagant and spend it all. But now I have become the +most miserly creature; and I have a little packet of money upstairs which +you shall put in the Unitas Bank with the rest of your wealth. Diana and +I have been darning, and patching, and cutting, and contriving, in the +most praiseworthy manner. Even this silk has been turned. You did not +think that, did you, when you admired it so?" + +Mr. Hawkehurst looked at his beloved with a tender smile. The exact +significance of the operation of turning, as applied to silk dresses, was +somewhat beyond his comprehension; but he felt sure that to turn must be +a laudable action, else why that air of pride with which Charlotte +informed him of the fact? + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +AT HAROLD'S HILL. + +The summer sun shone upon the village of Harold's Hill when Charlotte +arrived there with Mrs. Sheldon and Diana Paget. Mr. Sheldon was to +follow them on the same day by a later train; and Valentine was to come +two days afterwards to spend the peaceful interval between Saturday and +Monday with his betrothed. He had seen the travellers depart from the +London Bridge terminus, but Mr. Sheldon had been there also, and there +had been no opportunity for confidential communication between the +lovers. + +Of all Sussex villages Harold's Hill is perhaps the prettiest. The grey +old Saxon church, the scattered farmhouses and pleasant rustic cottages, +are built on the slope of a hill, and all the width of ocean lies below +the rustic windows. The roses and fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem +all the brighter by contrast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh +breath of the salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all +the homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the blue vault +of heaven above the church, and over the blue of the sea the gull skims +white in the sunshine. The fisherman and the farm labourer have their +cottages side by side, nestling cosily to leeward of the hilly winding +road. + +This hilly winding road in the July afternoon seemed to Charlotte almost +like the way to Paradise. + +"It is like going to heaven, Di!" she cried, with her eyes fixed on the +square tower of the old grey church. She wondered why sudden tears sprang +to Diana's eyes as she said this. Miss Paget brushed the unbidden tears +away with a quick gesture of her hand, and smiled at her friend. + +"Yes, dear, the village is very pretty, isn't it?" + +"It looks awfully dull!" said Mrs. Sheldon, with a shudder; "and, Diana, +I declare there isn't a single shop. Where are we to get our provisions? +I told Mr. Sheldon St. Leonards would have been a better place for us." + +"O mamma, St. Leonards is the very essence of all that is tame and +commonplace, compared to this darling rural village! Look, do look, at +that fisherman's cottage, with the nets hanging out to dry in the +sunshine; just like a picture of Hook's!" + +"What's the use of going on about fishermen's cottages, Lotta?" Mrs. +Sheldon demanded, peevishly. "Fishermen's cottages won't provide us with +butcher's meat. Where are we to get your little bit of roast mutton? Dr. +Doddleson laid such a stress upon the roast mutton." + +"The sea-air will do me more good than all the mutton that ever was +roasted at Eton, mamma. O, dear, is this our farmhouse?" cried Charlotte, +as the vehicle drew up at a picturesque gate. "O, what a love of a house! +what diamond-paned windows! what sweet white curtains! and a cow staring +at me quite in the friendliest way across the gate! O, can we be so happy +as to live here?" + +"Diana," cried Mrs. Sheldon, in a solemn voice, "not a single shop have +we passed--not so much as a post-office! And as to haberdashery, I'm sure +you might be reduced to rags in this place before you could get so much +as a yard of glazed lining!" + +The farmhouse was one of those ideal homesteads which, to the dweller in +cities, seems fair as the sapphire-ceiled chambers of the house of +Solomon. Charlotte was enraptured by the idea that this was to be her +home for the next fortnight. + +"I wish it could be for ever, Di," she said, as the two girls were +inspecting the rustic, dimity-draperied, lavender-and-rose-leaf-perfumed +bedchambers. "Who would wish to go back to prim suburban Bayswater after +this? Valentine and I could lodge here after our marriage. It is better +than Wimbledon. Grand thoughts would come to him with the thunder of the +stormy waves; and on calm bright days like this the rippling water would +whisper pretty fancies into his ear. Why, to live here would make any one +a poet. I think I could write a novel myself, if I lived here long +enough." + +After this they arranged the pretty sitting-room, and placed an +easy-chair by the window for Charlotte, an arm-chair opposite this for +Mrs. Sheldon, and between the two a little table for the fancy work and +books and flowers, and all the small necessities of feminine existence. +And then--while Mrs. Sheldon prowled about the rooms, and discovered so +many faults and made so many objections as to give evidence of a fine +faculty for invention unsuspected in her hitherto--Charlotte and Diana +explored the garden and peeped at the farmyard, where the friendly cow +still stared over the white gate, just as she had stared when the fly +came to a stop, as if she had not yet recovered from the astonishment +created in her pastoral mind by that phenomenal circumstance. And then +Charlotte was suddenly tired, and there came upon her that strange +dizziness which was one of her most frequent symptoms. Diana led her +immediately back to the house, and established her comfortably in her +easy-chair. + +"I must be very ill," she said, plaintively; "for even the novelty of +this pretty place cannot make me happy long." + + * * * * * + +Mr. Sheldon arrived in the evening, bringing with him a supply of that +simple medicine which Charlotte took three times a day. He had remembered +that there was no dispensing chemist at Harold's Hill, and that it would +be necessary to send to St. Leonards for the medicine, and had therefore +brought with him a double quantity of the mild tonic. + +"It was very kind of you to think of it, though I really don't believe +the stuff does me any good," said Charlotte. "Nancy Woolper used to get +it for me at Bayswater. She made quite a point of fetching it from the +chemist's herself." + +"Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. "Nancy troubled herself about your +medicine, did she?" + +"Yes, papa; and about me altogether. If I were her own daughter she could +scarcely have seemed more anxious." + +The stockbroker made a mental note of this in the memorandum-book of his +brain. Mrs. Woolper was officious, was she, and suspicious?--altogether a +troublesome sort of person. + +"I think a few weeks of workhouse fare would be wholesome for that old +lady," he said to himself. "There are some people who never know when +they are well off." + +Saturday afternoon came in due course, after a long and dreary interval, +as it seemed to Charlotte, for whom time travelled very slowly, so +painful was the weariness of illness. Now and then a sudden flash of +excitement brought the old brightness to her face, the old gaiety to her +accents; but the brightness faded very soon, and the languor of illness +was very perceptible. + +Punctual to the hour at which he was expected, Mr. Hawkehurst appeared, +in radiant spirits, laden with new magazines, delighted with the village, +enraptured with the garden, enchanted with the sea; full of talk and +animation, with all sorts of news to tell his beloved. Such and such a +book was a failure, such and such a comedy was a fiasco; Jones's novel +had made a hit; Brown's picture was the talk of the year; and Charlotte +must see the picture that had been talked about, and the play that had +been condemned, when she returned to town. + +For an hour the lovers sat in the pretty farmhouse parlour talking +together thus, the summer sea and the garden flowers before them, and a +bird singing high in the calm blue heaven. Charlotte's talk was somewhat +languid, though it was perfect happiness for her to be seated thus, with +her betrothed by her side; but Valentine's gaiety of spirits never +flagged; and when Mrs. Sheldon hinted to him that too long a conversation +might fatigue the dear invalid, he left the parlour with a smile upon his +face, and a cheery promise to return after an hour's ramble. + +He did not ramble far. He went straight to a little wooden summer-house +in the remotest corner of the humble garden; and thither Diana Paget +followed him. She had learned the language of his face in the time of +their daily companionship, and she had seen a look as he left the house +which told her of the struggle his cheerfulness had cost him. + +"You must not be downhearted, Valentine," she said, as she went into the +summer-house, where he sat in a listless attitude, with his arms lying +loosely folded on the rustic table. + +He did not answer her. + +"You don't think her worse--much worse--do you, Valentine?" + +"Worse? I have seen death in her face to-day!" he cried; and then he let +his forehead fall upon his folded arms, and sobbed aloud. + +Diana stood by his side watching that outburst of grief. When the +passionate storm of tears was past, she comforted him as best she might. +The change so visible to him was not so plain to her. He had hoped that +the breath of the ocean would have magical power to restore the invalid. +He had come to Harold's Hill full of hope, and instead of the beginning +of an improvement he saw the progress of decay. + +"Why did not Sheldon send for the doctor," he asked, indignantly,--"the +physician who has attended her? He might have telegraphed to that man." + +"Charlotte is taking Dr. Doddleson's medicine," said Diana, "and all his +directions are most carefully obeyed." + +"What of that, if she grows worse? The doctor should see her daily, +hourly, if necessary. And if he cannot cure her, another doctor should be +sent for. Good heavens, Diana! are we to let her fade and sink from us +before our eyes? I will go back to London at once, and bring that man +Doddleson down by the night mail." + +"Your going back to London would grieve and alarm Charlotte. You can +telegraph for the doctor; or, at least, Mr. Sheldon can do so. It would +not do for you to interfere without his permission." + +"It would not do!" echoed Valentine, angrily. "Do you think that I +am going to stand upon punctilio, or to consider what will do or +will not do?" + +"Above all things, you must avoid alarming Charlotte," pleaded Diana. + +"Do you think I do not know that? Do you think I did not feel that just +now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish about books and plays +and pictures, while every stolen glance at my darling's face was like a +dagger thrust into my heart? I will not alarm her. I will consult Mr. +Sheldon--will do anything, everything, to save her! To save her! O my +God, has it come to that?" + +He grew a little calmer presently under Diana's influence, and went +slowly back to the house. He avoided the open window by which Charlotte +was sitting. He had not yet schooled himself to meet her questioning +looks. He went to the room where they were to dine, a duller and darker +apartment than the parlour, and here he found Mr. Sheldon reading a +paper, one of the eternal records of the eternal money-market. + +The stockbroker had been in and out of the house all day, now sauntering +by the sea-shore, now leaning moodily, with folded arms, on the garden +gate, meditative and silent as the cow that stared at Charlotte; now +pacing the garden walks, with his hands in his pockets and his head bent. +Diana, who in her anxiety kept a close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's +movements, had noted his restlessness, and perceived in it the sign of +growing anxiety on his part. She knew that he had once called himself +surgeon-dentist, and had some medical knowledge, if not so much as he +took credit for possessing. He must, therefore, be better able to judge +the state of Charlotte's health than utterly ignorant observers. If he +were uneasy, there must be real cause for uneasiness. It was on this +account, and on this account only, that Diana watched him. + +"He must love her better than I gave him credit for being able to love +any one," Miss Paget said to herself. "Dear girl! The coldest heart is +touched by her sweetness." + +Mr. Sheldon looked up from his newspaper as Valentine came into the room, +and saluted the visitor with a friendly nod. + +"Glad to see you, Hawkehurst," he said. "_Semper fidelis_, and that +kind of thing; the very model of devoted lovers. Why, man alive, how +glum you look!" + +"I think I have reason to look glum," answered Valentine, gravely; "I +have seen Charlotte." + +"Yes? And don't you find her improving?--gradually, of course. That +constitutional languor is not shaken off in a hurry. But surely you think +her improving--brightening--" + +"Brightening with the light that never shone on earth or sea. God help +me! I--I--am the merest child, the veriest coward, the--" He made a great +effort, and stifled the sob that had well-nigh broken his voice. "Mr. +Sheldon," he continued quietly, "I believe your stepdaughter is dying." + +"Dying! Good heavens!--my dear Hawkehurst, this alarm is most--most +premature. There is no cause for fear--at present, no cause--I give you +my word as a medical man." + +"No cause for alarm at present? That means my darling will not be taken +from me to-night, or to-morrow. I shall have a few days breathing-time. +Yes, I understand. The doom is upon us. I saw the shadow of death upon +her face to-day." + +"My dear Hawkehurst--" + +"My dear Sheldon, for pity's sake don't treat me as if I were a woman or +a child. Let me know my fate. If--if--this, the worst, most bitter of all +calamities God's hand--raised against me in punishment of past sins, +sinned lightly and recklessly, in the days when my heart had no stake in +the game of destiny--can inflict upon me; if this deadly sorrow is +bearing down upon me, let me meet it like a man. Let me die with my eyes +uncovered. O, my dearest, my fondest, redeeming angel of my ill-spent +life! have you been only a supernal visitant, after all, shining on me +for a little while, to depart when your mission of redemption is +accomplished?" + +"Powers above!" thought Mr. Sheldon, "what nonsense these sentimental +magazine-writers can talk!" + +He was in nowise melted by the lover's anguish, though it was very real. +Such a grief as this was outside the circle in which his thoughts +revolved. This display of grief was unpleasant to him. It grated +painfully upon his nerves, as some of poor Tom Halliday's little speeches +had done of old, when the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his +deathbed; and the young man's presence and the young man's anxiety were +alike inconvenient. + +"Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon," Valentine said presently, with +suppressed intensity. "Is there any hope for my darling, any hope?" + +Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied to this +question. He pursed-up his lips and bent his brows with the same air of +business-like deliberation that he might have assumed while weighing the +relative merits of the first and second debenture bonds of some doubtful +railway company. + +"You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst," he said at last. "If you ask +me plainly whether I like the turn which Charlotte's illness has taken +within the last few weeks, I must tell you frankly, I do not. There is a +persistent want of tone--a visible decay of vital power--which, I must +confess, has caused me some uneasiness. You see, the fact is, there is a +radical weakness of constitution--as Miss Paget, a very sensible girl and +acute observer--herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary weakness; and +against this medicine is sometimes unavailing. You need apprehend no +neglect on my part, Hawkehurst; all that can possibly be done is being +done. Dr. Doddleson's instructions are carefully obeyed, and--" + +"Is this Dr. Doddleson competent to grapple with the case?" asked +Valentine; "I never heard of him as a great man." + +"That fact proves how little you know of the medical profession." + +"I know nothing of it; I have had no need for doctors in my life. And you +think this Dr. Doddleson really clever?" + +"His position is a sufficient answer to that question." + +"Will you let me telegraph for him--this afternoon--immediately?" + +"You cannot telegraph from this place." + +"No, but from St. Leonards I can. Do you think I am afraid of a +five-mile walk?" + +"But why send for Dr. Doddleson? The treatment he prescribed is the +treatment we are now following to the letter. To summon him down here +would be the merest folly. Our poor Charlotte's illness is, so far, free +from all alarming symptoms." + +"You do not see the change in her that I can see," cried Valentine +piteously. "For mercy's sake, Mr. Sheldon, let me have my way in this. I +cannot stand by and see my dear one fading and do nothing--nothing to +save her. Let me send for this man. Let me see him myself, and hear what +he says. You can have no objection to his coming, since he is the man you +have chosen for Charlotte's adviser? It can only be a question of +expense. Let this particular visit be my affair." + +"I can afford to pay for my stepdaughter's medical attendance without any +help from your purse, Mr. Hawkehurst," said the stockbroker with offended +pride. "There is one element in the case which you appear to ignore." + +"What is that?" + +"The alarm which this summoning of a doctor from London must cause in +Charlotte's mind." + +"It need cause no alarm. She can be told that Dr. Doddleson has come to +this part of the world for a Sunday's change of air. The visit can appear +to be made _en passant._ It will be easy to arrange that with the doctor +before he sees her." + +"As you please, Mr. Hawkehurst," the stockbroker replied coldly. "I +consider such a visit to the last degree unnecessary; but if Dr. +Doddleson's coming can give you any satisfaction, by all means let him +come. The expense involved in summoning him is of the smallest +consideration to me. My position with regard to my wife's daughter is one +of extreme responsibility, and I am ready to perform all the obligations +of that position." + +"You are very good: your conduct in relation to Charlotte and myself has +been beyond all praise. It is quite possible that I am over-anxious; but +there was a look in that dear face--no--I cannot forget that look; it +struck terror to my heart. I will go at once to St. Leonards. I can tell +Charlotte that I am obliged to telegraph to the printer about my copy. +You will not object to that white lie?" + +"Not at all. I think it essential that Charlotte should not be alarmed. +You had better stop to dine; there will be time for the telegram after +dinner." + +"I will not risk that," answered Valentine. "I cannot eat or drink till I +have done something to lessen this wretched anxiety." + +He went back to the room where Charlotte was sitting by the open window, +through which there came the murmur of waves, the humming of drowsy bees, +the singing of birds, all the happy voices of happy nature in a +harmonious chorus. + +"O God, wilt thou take her away from such a beautiful world," he asked, +"and change all the glory of earth to darkness and desolation for me?" + +His heart rebelled against the idea of her death. To save her, to win her +back to himself from the jaws of death, he was ready to promise anything, +to do anything. + +"All my days will I give to Thy service, if Thou wilt spare her to me," +in his heart he said to his God. "If Thou dost not, I will be an infidel +and a pagan--the vilest and most audacious of sinners. Better to serve +Lucifer than the God who could so afflict me." + +And this is where the semi-enlightened Christian betrays the weakness of +his faith. While the sun shines, and the sweet gospel story reads to him +like some tender Arcadian idyl, all love and promise, he is firm in his +allegiance; but when the dark hour comes, he turns his face to the wall, +with anger and disappointment in his heart, and will have no further +commune with the God who has chastised him. His faith is the faith of the +grateful leper, who, being healed, was eager to return and bless his +divine benefactor. It is not the faith of Abraham or of Job, of Paul or +of Stephen. + +Valentine told his story about the printers and the copy for the +_Cheapside_ magazine, about which there had arisen some absurd mistake, +only to be set right by a telegram. + +It was not a very clear account; but Charlotte did not perceive the +vagueness of the story; she thought only of the one fact, that Valentine +must leave her for some hours. + +"The evening will seem so long without you," she said. "That is the worst +part of my illness; the time is so long--so weary. Diana is the dearest +and kindest of friends. She is always trying to amuse me, and reads to me +for hours, though I know she must often be tired of reading aloud so +long. But even the books I was once so fond of do not amuse me. The words +seem to float indistinctly in my brain, and all sorts of strange images +mix themselves up with the images of the people in the book. Di has been +reading "The Bride of Lammermoor" all this morning; but the pain and +weariness I feel seemed to be entangled with Lucy and Edgar somehow, and +the dear book gave me no pleasure." + +"My darling, you--you are too weak to listen to Diana's reading. It is +very kind of her to try to amuse you; but--but it would be better for you +to rest altogether. Any kind of mental exertion may help to retard your +recovery." + +He had placed himself behind her chair, and was bending over the pillows +to speak to her. Just now he felt himself unequal to the command of his +countenance. He bent his head until his lips touched the soft brown hair, +and kissed those loose soft tresses passionately. The thought occurred to +him that a day might come when he should again kiss that soft brown hair, +with a deeper passion, with a sharper pain, and when Charlotte would not +know of his kisses, or pity his pain. + +"O Valentine!" cried Charlotte, "you are crying; I can see your face in +the glass." + +He had forgotten the glass; the little rococo mirror, with an eagle +hovering over the top of the frame, which hung above the old-fashioned +chiffonier. + +"I am not so very ill, dear; I am not indeed," the girl continued, +turning in her chair with an effort, and clasping her lover's hands; "you +must not distress yourself like this, Valentine--dear Valentine! I shall +be better by-and-by. I cannot think that I shall be taken from you." + +He had broken down altogether by this time. He buried his face in the +pillows, and contrived to stifle the sobs that would come; and then, +after a sharp struggle, he lifted his face, and bent over the chair once +more to kiss the invalid's pale upturned forehead. + +"My dear one, you shall not, if love can guard and keep you. No, dear, +I _cannot_ believe that God will take you from me. Heaven may be your +fittest habitation; but such sweet spirits as yours are sorely needed +upon earth. I will be brave, dearest one; brave and hopeful in the +mercy of Heaven. And now I must go and telegraph to my tiresome +printer. _Au revoir_!" + +He hurried away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling pace along +the pleasant road, with green waving corn on his left, and broad blue +ocean on his right. + +"I can get a fly to bring me back from St. Leonard's" he thought; "I +should only lose time by hunting for a vehicle here." + +He was at St. Leonards station within an hour after leaving the farm. +He despatched the message in Mr. Sheldon's name, and took care to make +it urgent. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +DESPERATE MEASURES. + +Fitful and feverish were the slumbers which visited Mr. Hawkehurst on +that balmy summer's night. His waking hours were anxious and unhappy; but +his sleeping hours were still more painful. To sleep was to be the +feverish fool of vague wild visions, in which Charlotte and Dr. +Doddleson, the editor of the _Cheapside_, the officials of the British +Museum reading-room, Diana Paget, and the Sheldons, figured amidst +inextricable confusion of circumstances and places. Throughout these +wretched dreams he had some consciousness of himself and the room in +which he was lying, the July moon shining upon him, broad and bright, +through the diamond-paned lattice. And O, what torturing visions were +those in which Charlotte smiled upon him, radiant with health and +happiness; and there had been no such thing as her illness, no such thing +as his grief. And then came hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was +knocking at the farmhouse door, with the printer of the _Cheapside_. And +then he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman +amphitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, looking down +on the encounter of two other flies, and all the glory of an imperial +court only a little spot of purple and gold, gleaming afar in the +sunshine. To the dreamer it was no surprise that this unknown theatre of +his dreams should be vast as the gladiatorial arena. And then came the +deep thunderous music of innumerable bass-viols and bassoons: and some +one told him it was the first night of a great tragedy. He felt the +breathless hush of expectation; the solemn bass music sank deeper; dark +curtains were drawn aside, with a motion slow and solemn, like the waving +of mountain pines, and there appeared a measureless stage, revealing a +moonlit expanse, thickly studded with the white headstones of unnumbered +graves, and on the foremost of these--revealed to him by what power he +knew not, since mortal sight could never have reached a point so +distant--he read the name of Charlotte Halliday. He awoke with a sharp +cry of pain. It was broad day, and the waves were dancing gaily in the +morning sunlight. He rose and dressed himself. Sleep, such as he had +known that night, was worse than the weariest waking. He went out into +the garden by-and-by, and paced slowly up and down the narrow pathways, +beside which box of a century's growth rose dark and high. Pale yellow +lights were in the upper windows. He wondered which of those sickly +tapers flickered on the face he loved so fondly. + +"It is only a year since I first saw her," he thought: "one year! And to +love her has been my 'liberal education;' to lose her would be my +desolation and despair." + +To lose her! His thoughts approached that dread possibility, but could +not realize it; not even yet. + +At eight o'clock Diana came to summon him to breakfast. + +"Shall I see Charlotte?" he asked. + +"No; for some time past she has not come down to breakfast." + +"What kind of night has she had?" + +"A very quiet night, she tells me; but I am not quite sure that she tells +me the truth, she is so afraid of giving us uneasiness." + +"She tells you. But do you not sleep in her room, now that she is so +ill?" + +"No. I was anxious to sleep on a sofa at the foot of her bed, and +proposed doing so, but Mr. Sheldon objects to my being in the room. He +thinks that Charlotte is more quiet entirely alone, and that there is +more air in the room with only one sleeper. Her illness is not of a kind +to require attention of any sort in the night." + +"Still I should have thought it better for her to have you with her, to +cheer and comfort her. + +"Believe me, Valentine, I wished to be with her." + +"I am sure of that, dear," he answered kindly. + +"It was only Mr. Sheldon's authority, as a man of some medical +experience, that conquered my wish." + +"Well, I suppose he is right. And now we must go in to breakfast. Ah, the +dreary regularity of these breakfasts and dinners, which go on just the +same when our hearts are breaking!" + +The breakfast was indeed a dreary soul-dispiriting meal. Farmhouse +luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home-cured bacon, abounded; but +no one had any inclination for these things. Valentine remembered the +homestead among the Yorkshire hills, with all the delight that he had +known there; and the "sorrow's crown of sorrow" was very bitter. Mr. +Sheldon gave his Sabbath-morning meditations to the study of a +Saturday-evening share-list; and Georgy plunged ever and anon into the +closely printed pages of a Dissenting preacher's biography, which she +declared to be "comforting." + +Diana and Valentine sat silent and anxious; and after the faintest +pretence of eating and drinking, they both left the table, to stroll +drearily in the garden. The bells were ringing cheerily from the grey +stone tower near at hand; but Valentine had no inclination for church on +this particular morning. Were not all his thoughts prayers--humble +piteous entreaties--for one priceless boon? + +"Will you see the doctor when he comes, and manage matters so as not to +alarm Charlotte?" he asked of Mr. Sheldon. That gentleman agreed to do +so, and went out into the little front-garden to lie in wait for the +great Doddleson--"Dowager Doddleson" as he was surnamed by some +irreverent unbelievers. + +A St. Leonards fly brought the doctor while the bells were still ringing +for morning service. Mr. Sheldon received him at the gate; and explained +the motive of his summons. + +The doctor was full of pompous solicitude about "our sweet young +patient." + +"Really one of the most interesting cases I ever had upon my hands," +the West-end physician said blandly; "as I was remarking to a very +charming patient of mine--in point of fact, the amiable and +accomplished Countess of Kassel-Kumberterre, only last Tuesday +morning. A case so nearly resembling the Countess's own condition as to +be highly interesting to her." + +"I really ought to apologize for bringing you down," said Mr. Sheldon, as +he led the doctor into the house. "I only consented to your being sent +for in order to tranquillize this young fellow Hawkehurst, who is engaged +to my daughter; a rising man, I believe, in his own particular line, but +rather wild and impracticable. There is really no change for the worse, +absolutely none; and as we have not been here more than three days, there +has been positively no opportunity for testing the effect of change and +sea air, and so on." + +This seemed rather like giving the learned physician his cue. And there +were those among Dr. Doddleson's professional rivals who said that the +worthy doctor was never slow to take a cue so given, not being prejudiced +by any opinions of his own. + +Charlotte had by this time been established in her easy-chair by the open +window of the sitting-room, and here Dr. Doddleson saw her, in the +presence of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon; and here Dr. Doddleson went through the +usual Abracadabra of his art, and assented to the opinions advanced, with +all deference, by Mr. Sheldon. + +To Georgy this interview, in which Mr. Sheldon's opinions were pompously +echoed by the West-end physician, proved even more comforting than the +benignant career of the Dissenting minister, who was wont to allude to +that solemn passing hence of which the ancients spoke in dim suggestive +phrase, as "going upstairs." + +Diana and Valentine strolled in the garden while the physician saw his +patient. Dr. Doddleson's ponderous polysyllables floated out upon the +summer air like the droning of a humble-bee. It was a relief to Valentine +to know that the doctor was with his patient: but he had no intention to +let that gentleman depart unquestioned. + +"I will take no secondhand information," he thought; "I will hear this +man's opinion from his own lips." + +He went round to the front of the house directly the droning had ceased, +and was in the way when Dr. Doddleson and Mr. Sheldon came out of the +rose-hung porch. + +"If you have no objection," he said to Mr. Sheldon, "I should like to ask +Dr. Doddleson a few questions." + +"_I_ have no objection," replied the stockbroker; "but it is really +altogether such an unusual thing, and I doubt if Dr. Doddleson will +consent to--" + +And here he cast a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who should say, +"Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand so entirely unwarranted +by precedent?" + +Dowager Doddleson was eminently good-natured. + +"And this is our sweet young friend's _fiance_," he said; "dear +me--dee-ar me!" + +And then he looked at Valentine with bland pale-blue eyes that twinkled +behind his gold-framed spectacles; while Valentine was taking his +measure, so far as the measure of any man's moral and intellectual force +can be taken by the eyes of another man. "And this is the man who is +chosen to snatch my darling from the jaws of death!" he said to himself, +with burning rage in his heart, while the amiable physician repeated +blandly: + +"And this is our sweet young patient's _fiance_. Dee-ar me, how very +interesting!" + +The three men strolled round to the garden behind the house, Mr. Sheldon +close at the physician's elbow. + +"For God's sake tell me the truth, Dr. Doddleson!" said Valentine in a +low hoarse voice, directly they were beyond ear-shot of the house. "I am +a man, and I can steel myself to hear the worst you can tell." + +"But really, Hawkehurst, there is no occasion for this kind of thing," +interjected Philip Sheldon; "Dr. Doddleson agrees with me, that the case +is one of extreme languor, and no more." + +"Unquestionably," said the doctor in a fat voice. + +"And Dr. Doddleson also coincides with me in the opinion that all we can +do is to wait the reviving influence of sea-air." + +"Undoubtedly," said the doctor, with a solemn nod. + +"And is this all?" asked Valentine hopelessly. + +"My dear sir, what else can I say?" said the doctor; "as my good friend +Mr. Sheldon has just remarked, there is extreme languor; and as my good +friend Mr. Sheldon further observes, we must await the effect of change +of air. The--aw--invigorating sea-breezes, the--aw--enlivening influence +of new surroundings, and--aw--so forth. Dr. Poseidon, my dear sir, is a +very valuable coadjutor." + +"And you think your patient no worse, Dr. Doddleson?" + +"The doctor has just left Mrs. Sheldon much comforted by his assurance +that her daughter is better," said the stockbroker. + +"No, no!" exclaimed Dr. Doddleson; "no, no! _there_ my good friend Mr. +Sheldon somewhat misrepresents me. I said that our patient was not +obviously worse. I did not say that our patient was better. There is a +dilatation of the pupil of the eye which I don't quite understand." + +"Mental excitement," said Mr. Sheldon, somewhat hastily; "Charlotte is +nervous to an extreme degree, and your sudden arrival was calculated to +shake her nerves." + +"Undoubtedly," rejoined the doctor; "and it is unquestionable that such a +dilatation of the pupil might, under certain circumstances, be occasioned +by mental excitement. I am sorry to find that our patient's attacks of +dizziness--" + +"Which are purely the effect of fancy," interjected Mr. Sheldon. + +"Which are no doubt, in some measure, attributable to a hypochondriacal +condition of mind," continued the doctor in his fat voice. "I am sorry to +find that this periodical dizziness has been somewhat increased of late. +But here again we must look to Dr. Poseidon. Tepid sea-baths, if they can +be managed, in the patient's own room; and by-and-by a dip in the waves +yonder, may do wonders." + +Valentine asked no further questions; and the physician departed in the +St. Leonards fly, to turn his excursion to profitable use by calling on +two or three dowagers in Warrior Square and Marina, who would doubtless +be glad of an unexpected visit from their pet doctor. + +"Well, Hawkehurst," said Mr. Sheldon, when the fly had driven away, "I +hope you are satisfied now?" + +"Satisfied!" cried Valentine; "yes, I am satisfied that your stepdaughter +is being murdered!" + +"Murdered!" echoed the stockbroker, his voice thick and faint; but +Valentine did not heed the change in it. + +"Yes, murdered--sacrificed to the utter incompetence of that old idiot +who has just left us." + +Philip Sheldon drew a long breath. + +"What!" he exclaimed; "do you doubt Doddleson's skill?" + +"Do you believe in it? Do you? No; I cannot think that a man of your keen +perception in all other matters--half a medical man yourself--can be the +dupe of so shallow an impostor. And it is to that man's judgment my +darling's life has been confided; and it is to that man I have looked, +with hope and comfort in the thought of his power to save my treasure! +Good God! what a reed on which to rely! And of all the medical men of +London, this is the one you have chosen!" + +"I must really protest against this rant, Hawkehurst," said Philip +Sheldon. "I hold myself responsible for the selection which I made, and +will not have that selection questioned in this violent and outrageous +manner by you. Your anxiety for Charlotte's recovery may excuse a great +deal, but it cannot excuse this kind of thing; and if you cannot command +yourself better, I must beg you to absent yourself from my house until my +stepdaughter's recovery puts an end to all this fuss." + +"Do you believe in Dr. Doddleson's skill?" asked Valentine doggedly. He +wanted to have that question answered at any cost. + +"Most decidedly I do, with the rest of the medical world. My choice of +this gentleman as Charlotte's adviser was governed by his reputation as a +safe and conscientious man. His opinions are sound, trustworthy--" + +"His opinions!" cried Valentine with a bitter laugh; "what in heaven's +name do you call his opinions? The only opinions I could extract from him +to-day were solemn echoes of yours. And the man himself! I took the +measure of him before I asked him a question; and physiology is a lie if +that man is anything better than an impostor." + +"His position is the answer to that." + +"His position is no answer. He is not the first impostor who has attained +position, and is not likely to be the last. You must forgive me, if I +speak with some violence, Mr. Sheldon. I feel too deeply to remember the +conventionalities of my position. The dear girl yonder, hovering between +life and death, is my promised wife. As your stepdaughter she is very +dear to you, no doubt, and you are of course anxious to do your duty as +her stepfather. But she is all the world to me--my one sweet memory of +the past, my sole hope for the future. I will not trust her to the care +of Dr. Doddleson; I claim the right to choose another physician--as that +man's coadjutor, if you please. I have no wish to offend the doctor of +your choice." + +"This is all sheer nonsense," said Mr. Sheldon. + +"It is nonsense about which you must let me have my own way," replied +Valentine, resolutely. "My stake on this hazard is too heavy for careless +play. I shall go back to town at once and seek out a physician." + +"Do you know any great man?" + +"No; but I will find one." + +"If you go today, you will inevitably alarm Charlotte." + +"True; and disappoint her into the bargain. I suppose in such a case +tomorrow will do as well as to-day?" + +"Decidedly." + +"I can go by the first train, and return with my doctor in the afternoon. +Yes, I will go tomorrow." + +Mr. Sheldon breathed more freely. There are cases in which to obtain time +for thought seems the one essential thing--cases in which a reprieve is +as good as a pardon. + +"Pray let us consider this business quietly," he said, with a faint sigh +of weariness. "There is no necessity for all this excitement. You can go +to town to-morrow, by the first train, as you say. If it is any +satisfaction to you to bring down a physician, bring one; bring half a +dozen, if you please. But, for the last time, I most emphatically assure +you that anything that tends to alarm Charlotte is the one thing of all +others most sure to hinder her recovery." + +"I know that. She shall not be frightened; but she shall have a better +adviser than Dr. Doddleson. And now I will go back to the house. She will +wonder at my absence." + +He went to the bright, airy room where Charlotte was seated, her head +lying back upon the pillows, her face paler, her glances and tones more +languid than on the previous day as it seemed to Valentine. Diana was +near her, solicitous and tender; and on the other side of the window sat +Mrs. Sheldon, with her Dissenting minister's biography open on her lap. + +All through that day Valentine Hawkehurst played his part bravely: it was +a hard and bitter part to play--the part of hope and confidence while +unutterable fears were rending his heart. He read the epistle and gospel +of the day to his betrothed; and afterwards some chapters of St. +John--those profoundly mournful chapters that foreshadow the agonising +close. It was Charlotte who selected these chapters, and her lover could +find no excuse for disputing her choice. + +It was the first time that they had shared any religious exercise, and +the hearts of both were deeply touched by the thought of this. + +"How frivolous all our talk must have been, Valentine, when it seems so +new to us to be reading these beautiful words together?" + +Her head was half supported by the pillows, half resting on her lover's +shoulder, and her eyes travelled along the lines as he read, in a calm +low voice, which was unbroken to the end. + +Early in the evening Charlotte retired, worn out by the day's physical +weariness, in spite of Valentine's fond companionship. Later, when it was +dusk, Diana came downstairs with the news that the invalid was sleeping +quietly. Mrs. Sheldon was dozing in her arm-chair, the Dissenting +minister having fallen to the ground; and Valentine was leaning, with +folded arms, on the broad window-sill looking out into the shadowy +garden. Mr. Sheldon had given them very little of his society during that +day. He went out immediately after his interview with Valentine, on a +sea-coast ramble, which lasted till dinner-time. After dinner he remained +in the room where they had dined. He was there now. The light of the +candles, by which he read his papers, shone out upon the dusk. + +"Will you come for a stroll with me, Diana?" asked Valentine. + +Miss Paget assented promptly; and they went out into the garden, beyond +the reach of Mr. Sheldon's ears, had that gentleman been disposed to +place himself at his open window in the character of a listener. + +"I want to tell you my plans about Charlotte," Valentine began. "I am +going to London to-morrow to search for a greater physician than Dr. +Doddleson. I shall find my man in an hour or so; and, if possible, shall +return with him in the evening. There is no apparent reason to anticipate +any sudden change for the worse; but if such a change should take place, +I rely on you, dear, to give me the earliest tidings of it. I suppose you +can get a fly here, if you want one?" + +"I can get to St. Leonards, if that is what you mean," Miss Paget +answered promptly. "I dare say there is a fly to be had; if not, I can +walk there. I am not afraid of a few miles' walk, by day or night. If +there should be a change, Valentine--which God forbid--I will telegraph +the tidings of it to you." + +"You had better address the message to me at Rancy's, Covent Garden; the +house where the Ragamuffins have their rooms, you know, dear. That is a +more central point than my lodgings, and nearer the terminus. I will call +there two or three times in the course of the day." + +"You may trust my vigilance, Valentine. I did not think it was in my +nature to love any one as I love Charlotte Halliday." + +Gustave Lenoble's letters lying unanswered in her desk asserted the +all-absorbing nature of Diana's affection for the fading girl. She _was_ +fading. The consciousness of this made all other love sacrilege, as it +seemed to Diana. She sat up late that night to answer Gustave's last +letter of piteous complaint. + +"She had forgotten him. Ah, that he had been foolish--insensate--to +confide himself in her love! Was he not old and grey in comparison to +such youth--such freshness--a venerable dotard of thirty-five? What had +he with dreams of love and marriage? Fie, then. He humiliated himself in +the dust beneath her _mignon_ feet. He invited her to crush him with +those cruel feet. But if she did not answer his letters, he would come to +Harold's Hill. He would mock himself of that ferocious Sheldon--of a +battalion of Sheldons still more ferocious--of all the world, at +last--to be near her." + +"Believe me, dear Gustave, I do not forget," wrote Diana, in reply to +these serio-comic remonstrances. "I was truly sorry to leave town, on +your account and on my father's. But my dear adopted sister is paramount +with me now. You will not grudge her my care or my love, for she may not +long be with me to claim them. There is nothing but sorrow here in all +our hearts; sorrow, and an ever-present dread." + + + + +Book the Eighth. + + + +A FIGHT AGAINST TIME. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +A DREAD REVELATION. + +The early fast train by which Valentine Hawkehurst travelled brought him +into town at a quarter past nine o'clock. During the journey he had been +meditating on the way in which he should set to work when he arrived in +London. No ignorance could be more profound than his on all points +relating to the medical profession. Dimly floating in his brain there +were the names of doctors whom he had heard of as celebrated men--one for +the chest, another for the liver, another for the skin, another for the +eyes; but, among all these famous men, who was the man best able to cope +with the mysterious wasting away, the gradual, almost imperceptible +ebbing of that one dear life which Valentine wanted to save? + +This question must be answered by some one; and Valentine was sorely +puzzled as to who that some one must be. + +The struggling young writer had but few friends. He had, indeed, worked +too hard for the possibility of friendship. The cultivation of the +severer Muses is rarely compatible with a wide circle of acquaintances; +and Valentine, if not a cultivator of these severe ones, had been a hard +and honest worker during the later reputable portion of his life. His +friendships of the previous portion had been the friendships of the +railway-carriage and the smoking room, the _cafe_ and the gaming-table. +He could count upon his fingers the people to whom he could apply for +counsel in this crisis of his life. There was George Sheldon, a man for +whom he entertained a most profound contempt; Captain Paget, a man who +might or might not be able to give him good advice, but who would +inevitably sacrifice Charlotte Halliday's welfare to self-interest, if +self-interest could be served by the recommendation of an incompetent +adviser. + +"He would send me to some idiot of the Doddleson class, if he thought he +could get a guinea or a dinner by the recommendation," Valentine said to +himself, and decided that to Horatio Paget he would not apply. There were +his employers, the editors and proprietors of the magazines for which he +worked; all busy over-burdened workers in the great mill, spending the +sunny hours of their lives between a pile of unanswered letters and a +waste-paper basket; men who would tell him to look in the Post-office +Directory, without lifting their eyes from the paper over which their +restless pens were speeding. + +No. Amongst these was not the counsellor whom Valentine Hawkehurst needed +in this dire hour of difficulty. + +"There are some very good fellows among the Ragamuffins," he said to +himself, as he thought of the only literary and artistic club of which he +was a member; "fellows who stuck by me when I was down in the world, and +who would do anything to serve me now they know me for an honest worker. +But, unfortunately, farce writers and burlesque writers, and young +meerschaum-smoking painters, are not the sort of men to give good advice: +I want the advice of a medical man." + +Mr. Hawkehurst almost bounded from his seat as he said this. The advice +of a medical man? Yes; and was there not a medical man among the +Ragamuffins? and something more than a medical man? That very doctor, who +of all other men upon this earth could best give him counsel--the doctor +who had stood by the deathbed of Charlotte Halliday's father. + +He remembered the conversation that had occurred at Bayswater, on the +evening of Christmas day, upon this very subject. He remembered how from +the talk about ghosts they had drifted somehow into talking of Tom +Halliday; whereupon Mrs. Sheldon had been melted to tears, and had gone +on to praise Philip Sheldon's conduct to his dying friend, and to speak +of Mr. Burkham, the strange doctor, called in too late to save, or, it +might have been, incapable to save. + +"Sheldon seems to have a genius for calling in incapable doctors," he +thought bitterly. + +Incapable as Mr. Burkham might have been for the exigencies of this +particular case, he would at least be able to inform Valentine who among +the medical celebrities of London would be best adapted to advise in such +an illness as Charlotte Halliday's. + +"And if, as Diana has sometimes suggested, there is any hereditary +disease, this Burkham may be able to throw some light upon the nature of +it," thought Valentine. + +He went straight from the railway terminus to the quiet tavern upon the +first floor of which the Ragamuffins had their place of rendezvous. It +was not an hour for the encounter of many Ragamuffins. A meek-looking +young man, of clerical aspect, who had adapted a Palais Royal farce, and +had awoke in the morning to find himself famous, and eligible for +admission amongst the Ragamuffins, was sipping his sherry and soda-water +while he skimmed the morning papers. Him Mr. Hawkehurst saluted with an +absent nod, and went in search of the steward of the club, from whom he +obtained Mr. Burkham's address, with some little trouble in the way of +hunting through old and obscure documents. + +It was the old address; the old dingy, comfortable, muffin-bell-haunted +street in which Mr. Burkham had lived ten years before, when he was +summoned to attend the sick Yorkshire farmer. + +Mr. Burkham's career had not been brightened by the sunshine of +prosperity. He had managed to live somehow, and to find food and raiment +for his young wife, who, when she considered the lilies of the field, may +have envied their shining robes of pure whiteness, so dingy and dark was +her own apparel. When children came, the young surgeon contrived to find +food and raiment for them also, but not without daily and hourly +struggles with that grim wolf who haunts the thresholds of so many +dwellings, and will not be thrust from the door. Sometimes a little +glimmering ray of light illumined Mr. Burkham's pathway, and he was +humbly grateful to Providence for the brief glimpse of sunshine. But for +a meek fair-faced man, with a nervous desire to do well, a very poor +opinion of his own merits, and a diffident, not to say depressed manner, +the world is apt to be a hard battle-ground. + +Mr. Burkham sometimes found himself well-nigh beaten in the cruel strife; +and at such times, in the dead silence of the night, with mortal agonies, +and writhings as of Pythoness upon tripod, Mr. Burkham gave himself up to +the composition of a farce, adapted, not from the French, but from his +memories of Wright and Bedford in the jovial old student days, when the +pit of the Adelphi Theatre had been the pleasant resort of his evenings. +He could no longer afford the luxury of theatrical entertainments, except +when provided with a free admission. But from the hazy reminiscences +floating in his poor tired brain he concocted little pieces which he +fondly hoped might win him money and fame. + +With much effort and interest he contrived to get himself elected a +Ragamuffin; believing that to be a Ragmuffin was to secure a position as +a dramatic writer. But with one or two fortunate exceptions, his pieces +were refused. The managers would not have the poor little feeble +phantasmagoria of bygone fun, even supported by the whole clan of +Ragamuffins. So Mr. Burkham had gradually melted into the dimness of +Bloomsbury, and haunted the club-room of the Ragamuffins no more. + +A hansom carried Valentine Hawkehurst swiftly to these regions of +Bloomsbury. It was no time for the saving of cab-hire. The soldier +of fortune thought no longer of his nest-eggs--his Unitas Bank +deposit-notes. He was fighting with time and with death; foes dire and +dreadful, against whose encroachments the sturdiest of mortal warriors +can make but a feeble stand. He found the dingy-looking house in the +dingy-looking street; and the humble drudge who opened the door informed +him that Mr. Burkham was at home, and ushered him into a darksome and +dreary surgery at the back of the house, where a phrenological head, +considerably the worse for London smoke, surmounted a dingy bookcase +filled with the dingiest of books. A table, upon which were a +blotting-book and inkstand, and two shabby horsehair chairs, composed the +rest of the furniture. Valentine sent his card to the surgeon, and seated +himself on one of the horsehair chairs, to await that gentleman's +appearance. + +He came after a brief delay, which seemed long to his visitor. He came +from regions in the back of the house, rubbing his hands, which seemed +to have been newly washed, and the odour of senna and aloes hung about +his garments. + +"I doubt if you remember my name, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine; "but you +and I are members of the same club, and that a club among the members of +which considerable good feeling prevails. I come to ask a favour"--Mr. +Burkham winced, for this sounded like genteel begging, and for genteel +beggars this struggling surgeon had no spare cash--"which it will +scarcely cause you a moment's thought to grant. I am in great +distress"--Mr. Burkham winced again, for this sounded still more like +begging--"mental distress"--Mr. Burkham gave a little sigh of +relief--"and I come to you for advice." Mr. Burkham gave a more profound +sigh of relief. + +"I can assure you that my best advice is at your command," he said, +seating himself, and motioning to his visitor to be seated. "I am +beginning to remember your face amongst the members of the club, though +the name on your card did not strike me as familiar. You see, I have +never been able to afford much time for relaxation at the Ragamuffins', +though I assure you I found the agreeable conversation there, the +literary _on dits_, and so on, a very great relief. But my own little +efforts in the dramatic line were not successful, and I found myself +compelled to devote myself more to my profession. And now I have said +quite enough about myself; let me hear how I can be useful to you." + +"In the first place, let me ask you a question. Do you know anything of a +certain Dr. Doddleson?" + +"Of Plantagenet Square?" + +"Yes; of Plantagenet Square." + +"Well, not much. I have heard him called Dowager Doddleson; and I believe +he is very popular among hypochondriac old ladies who have more money +than they know what to do with, and very little common sense to regulate +their disposal of it." + +"Is Dr. Doddleson a man to whom you would intrust the life of your +dearest friend?" + +"Most emphatically no!" cried the surgeon, growing red with excitement. + +"Very well, Mr. Burkham; my dearest friend, a young lady--well, in plain +truth, the woman who was to have been my wife, and whom I love as it is +not the lot of every plighted wife to be loved--this dear girl has been +wasting away for the last two or three months under the influence of an +inscrutable malady, and Dr. Doddleson is the only man called to attend +her in all that time." + +"A mistake!" said Mr. Burkham, gravely; "a very great mistake! Dr. +Doddleson lives in a fine square, and drives a fine carriage, and has a +reputation amongst the class I have spoken of; but he is about the last +man I would consult as to the health of any one dear to me." + +"That is precisely the opinion which I formed after ten minutes' +conversation with him. Now, what I want from you, Mr. Burkham, is the +name and address of the man to whom I can intrust this dear girl's life." + +"Let me see. There are so many men, you know, and great men. Is it a case +of consumption?" + +"No, thank God!" + +"Heart-disease, perhaps?" + +"No; there is no organic disease. It is a languor--a wasting away." + +Mr. Burkham suggested other diseases whereof the outward sign was languor +and wasting. + +"No," replied Valentine; "according to Dr. Doddleson there is actually no +disease--nothing but this extreme prostration--this gradual vanishing of +vital power. And now I come to another point upon which I want your +advice. It has been suggested that this constitutional weakness may be +inherited; and here I think you can help me." + +"How so?" + +"You attended the lady's father." + +"Indeed!" cried Mr. Burkham, delighted. "This is really interesting. In +what year did I attend this gentleman? If you will allow me, I will refer +to some of my old case-books." + +He drew out a clumsy drawer in the clumsy table, in order to hunt for old +memoranda. + +"I am not quite certain as to the year," answered Valentine; "but it was +more than ten years ago. The gentleman died close by here, in Fitzgeorge +Street. His name was Halliday." + +Mr. Burkham had drawn out the drawer to its farthest extent. As Valentine +pronounced this name, he let it drop to the ground with a crash, and sat, +statue-like, staring at the speaker. All other names given to mortal man +he might forget; but this one never. Valentine saw the sudden horror in +his face, before he could recompose his features into something of their +conventional aspect. + +"Yes," he said, looking down at the fallen drawer with its scattered +papers and case-books, "yes, I have some recollection of the name of +Halliday." + +"Some very strange and agitating recollection it would seem by your +manner, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine, at once assured that there was +something more than common in the surgeon's look and gesture; and +determined to fathom the mystery, let it be what it might. + +"O dear no," said the surgeon nervously; "I was not agitated, only +surprised. It was surprising to me to hear the name of a patient so long +forgotten. And so the lady to whom you are engaged is a daughter of Mr. +Halliday's? The wife--Mrs. Halliday--is still living, I suppose?" + +"Yes; but the lady who was then Mrs. Halliday is now Mrs. Sheldon." + +"Of course; he married her," said Mr. Burkham. "Yes; I remember hearing +of the marriage." + +He had tried in vain to recover his old composure. He was white to the +lips, and his hand shook as he tried to arrange his scattered papers. + +"What does it mean?" thought Valentine. "Mrs. Sheldon talked of this +man's inexperience. Can it be that his incompetency lost the life of his +patient, and that he knows it was so?" + +"Mrs. Halliday is now Mrs. Sheldon," repeated the surgeon, in a feeble +manner. "Yes, I remember; and Mr. Sheldon--the dentist, who at that time +resided in Fitzgeorge Street--is he still living?" + +"He is still living. It was he who called in Dr. Doddleson to attend upon +Miss Halliday. As her stepfather, he has some amount of authority, you +see; not legal authority--for my dear girl is of age--but social +authority. He called in Doddleson, and appears to place confidence in +him; and as he is something of a medical man himself, and pretends to +understand Miss Halliday's case thoroughly--" + +"Stop!" cried Mr. Burkham, suddenly abandoning all pretence of calmness. +"Has he--Sheldon--any interest in his stepdaughter's death?" + +"No, certainly not. All her father's money went to him upon his marriage +with her mother. He can gain nothing by her death; on the contrary, he +may lose a good deal, for she is the heir-at-law to a large fortune." + +"And if she dies, that fortune will go--" + +"I really don't know where it will go," Valentine answered carelessly: +he thought the subject was altogether beside the question of Mr. +Burkham's agitation, and it was the cause of that agitation which he was +anxious to discover. + +"If Mr. Sheldon can gain by his stepdaughter's death, fear him!" +exclaimed the surgeon, with sudden passion; "fear him as you would fear +death itself--worse than death, for death is neither so stealthy nor so +treacherous as he is!" + +"What in Heaven's name do you mean?" + +"That which I thought my lips would never utter to mortal hearing--that +which I dare not publicly proclaim, at the hazard of taking the bread out +of the mouths of my wife and children. I have kept this hateful secret +for eleven years--through many a sleepless night and dreary day. I will +tell it to you; for if there is another life in peril, that life shall be +lost through no cowardice of mine." + +"What secret?" cried Valentine. + +"The secret of that poor fellow's death. My God! I can remember the clasp +of his hand, and the friendly look of his eyes, the day before he died. +He was poisoned by Philip Sheldon!" + +"You must be mad!" gasped Valentine, in a faint voice. + +For one moment of astonishment and incredulity he thought this man must +needs be a fool or a lunatic, so wildly improbable did the accusation +seem. But in the next instant the curtain was lifted, and he knew that +Philip Sheldon was a villain, and knew that he had never wholly trusted +him. + +"Never until to-day have I told this secret," said the surgeon; "not even +to my wife." + +"I thank you," answered Valentine, in the same faint voice; "with all my +heart, I thank you." + +Yes, the curtain was lifted. This mysterious illness, this slow silent +decay of bloom and beauty, by a process inscrutable as the devilry of +medieval poisoner or Hecate-serving witch--this was murder. Murder! The +disease, which had hitherto been nameless, had found its name at last. It +was all clear now. Philip Sheldon's anxiety; the selection of an utterly +incompetent adviser; certain looks and tones that had for a moment +mystified him, and had been forgotten in the next, came back to him with +a strange distinctness, with all their hidden meaning made clear and +plain as the broad light of day. + +But the motive? What motive could prompt the slow destruction of that +innocent life? A fortune was at stake, it is true; but that fortune, as +Valentine understood the business, depended on the life of Charlotte +Halliday. Beyond this point he had never looked. In all his consideration +of the circumstances relating to the Haygarthian estate, he had never +thought of what might happen in the event of Charlotte's decease. + +"It is a diabolical mystery," he said to himself. "There can be no +motive--_none_. To destroy Thomas Halliday was to clear his way to +fortune; to destroy Charlotte is to destroy his chance of fortune." + +And then he remembered the dark speeches of George Sheldon. + +"My God! and this was what he meant, as plainly as he dared tell me! He +did tell me that his brother was an unutterable scoundrel; and I turned a +deaf ear to his warning, because it suited my own interest to believe +that villain. For her dear sake I believed him. I would have believed in +Beelzebub, if he had promised me her dear hand. And I let myself be duped +by the lying promise, and left my darling in the power of Beelzebub!" + +Thoughts followed each other swift as lightning through his overwrought +brain. It seemed but a moment that he had been sitting with his +clenched hands pressed against his forehead, when he turned suddenly +upon the surgeon. + +"For God's sake, help me, guide me!" he said. "You have struck a blow +that has numbed my senses. What am I to do? My future wife is in that +man's keeping--dying, as I believe. How am I to save her?" + +"I cannot tell you. You may take the cleverest man in London to see her; +but it is a question if that man will perceive the danger so clearly as +to take prompt measures. In these cases there is always room for doubt; +and a man would rather doubt his own perceptions than believe the hellish +truth. It is by this natural hesitation so many lives are lost. While the +doctor deliberates, the patient dies. And then, if the secret of the +death transpires--by circumstantial evidence, perhaps, which never came +to the doctor's knowledge,--there is a public outcry. The doctor's +practice is ruined, and his heart broken. The outcry would have been +still louder if he had told the truth in time to save the patient, and +had not been able to prove his words. You think me a coward and a +scoundrel because I dared not utter my suspicion when I saw Mr. Halliday +dying. While it was only a suspicion it would have been certain ruin for +me to give utterance to it. The day came when it was almost a conviction. +I went back to that man Sheldon's house, determined to insist upon the +calling in of a physician who would have made that conviction certainty. +My resolution came too late. It is possible that Sheldon had perceived my +suspicions, and had hastened matters. My patient was dead before I +reached the house." + +"How am I to save her?" repeated Valentine, with the same helpless +manner. He could not bring himself to consider Tom Halliday's death. The +subject was too far away from him--remote as the dim shadows of departed +centuries. In all the universe there were but two figures standing out in +lurid brightness against the dense night of chaos--a helpless girl held +in the clutches of a secret assassin; and it was his work to rescue her. + +"What am I to do?" he asked. "Tell me what I am to do." + +"What it may be wisest to do I cannot tell you," answered Mr. Burkham, +almost as helplessly as the other had asked the question. "I can give you +the name of the best man to get to the bottom of such a case--a man who +gave evidence on the Fryar trial--Jedd. You have heard of Jedd, I +daresay. You had better go straight to Jedd, and take him down with you +to Miss Halliday. His very name will frighten Sheldon." + +"I will go at once. Stay--the address! Where am I to find Dr. Jedd?" + +"In Burlington Row. But there is one thing to be considered." + +"What?" + +"The interference of Jedd may only make that man desperate. He may hasten +matters now as he hastened matters before. If you had seen his coolness +at that time; if you had seen him, as I saw him, standing by that poor +fellow's deathbed, comforting him--yes, with friendly speeches--laughing +and joking, watching the agonising pain and the miserable sickness, and +all the dreary wretchedness of such a death, and _never_ swerving from +his work; if you had seen him, you would understand why I am afraid to +advise you. That man was as desperate as he was cool when he murdered his +friend. He will be more reckless this time." + +"Why?" + +"Because he has reached a higher stage in the science of murder. The +symptoms of that poor Yorkshireman were the symptoms of arsenical +poisoning; the symptoms of which you have told me to-day denote a +vegetable poison. _That_ affords very vague diagnosis, and leaves no +trace. That was the agent which enabled the Borgias to decimate Rome. +It is older than classic Greece, and simple as _a b c_, and will remain +so until the medical expert is a recognized officer of the law, the +faithful guardian of the bed over which the suspected poisoner +loiters--past-master of the science in which the murderer is rarely more +than an experimentalist, and protected from all the hazards of plain +speaking by the nature of his office." + +"Great Heaven, how am I to save her?" exclaimed Valentine. He could not +contemplate the subject in its broad social aspect; he could only think +of this one dear life at stake. "To send this Dr. Jedd might be to hasten +her death; to send a less efficient man would be mere childishness. WHAT +shall I do?" + +He looked despairingly at the surgeon, and in that one glance perceived +what a frail reed this was upon which he was leaning. And then, like +the sudden gleam of lightning, a name flashed across his mind,--George +Sheldon, the lawyer, the schemer, the man who of all the world best +knew this vile enemy and assassin against whom he was matched; he it +was of whom counsel should be asked in this crisis. Once perceiving +this, Valentine was prompt to act. It was the first flash of light in +the darkness. + +"You mean to stand by me in this, don't you?" he asked Mr. Burkham. + +"With all my heart and soul." + +"Good. Then you must go to Dr. Jedd instantly. Tell him all you know--Tom +Halliday's death; the symptoms of Charlotte's decline, as you have heard +them from me--_everything_; and let him hold himself in readiness to +start for Hastings directly he hears from or sees me. I am going to a man +who of all men can tell me how to deal with Philip Sheldon. I shall try +to be in Burlington Row in an hour from this time; but in any case you +will wait there till I come. I suppose, in a desperate case like this, +Dr. Jedd will put aside all less urgent work?" + +"No doubt of that." + +"I trust to you to secure his sympathy," said Valentine. + +He was in the darksome entrance-hall by this time. Mr. Burkham followed, +and opened the door for him. + +"Have no fear of me," he said. "Good bye." + +The two men shook hands with a grip significant as masonic sign-manual. +It meant on the one part hearty co-operation, on the other implicit +confidence. In the next moment Valentine sprang into the cab. + +"King's Road--entrance to Gray's Inn, and drive like mad!" he shouted to +the driver. The hansom rattled across the stones, dashed round corners, +struck consternation to scudding children in pinafores, all but +annihilated more than one perambulator, and in less than ten minutes +after leaving Mr. Burkham's door, ground against the kerbstone before the +little gate of Gray's Inn. + +"God grant that George Sheldon may be at home!" Valentine said to +himself, as he hurried towards that gentleman's office. George Sheldon +was at home. In this fight against time, Mr. Hawkehurst had so far found +the odds in his favour. + +"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the lawyer, looking up from his desk, as +Valentine appeared on the threshold of the door, pale and breathless; "to +what do I owe the unusual honour of a visit from Mr. Hawkehurst? I +thought that rising _litterateur_ had cut all old acquaintances, and gone +in for the upper circles." + +"I have come to you on a matter of life and death, George Sheldon," said +Valentine; "this is no time to talk of why I haven't been to you before. +When you and I last met, you advised me to beware of your brother Philip. +It wasn't the first, or the second, or the third time that you so warned +me. And now speak out like an honest man, and tell me what you meant by +that warning? For God's sake, speak plainly this time." + +"I cannot afford to speak more plainly than I have spoken half a dozen +times already. I told you to beware of my brother Phil, and I meant that +warning in its fullest significance. If you had chosen to take my advice, +you would have placed Charlotte Halliday's fortune, and Charlotte +Halliday herself, beyond his power, by an immediate marriage. You didn't +choose to do that, and there was an end of the matter. I have been a +heavy loser by your pigheaded obstinacy; and I dare say before you and +Phil Sheldon have done with each other, you too will find yourself a +loser." + +"God help me, yes!" cried Valentine, with a groan; "I stand to make the +heaviest loss that was ever made by man." + +"What do you mean?" exclaimed George. + +"Shall I tell you what you meant when you warned me against your own +brother? Shall I tell you why you so warned me? You know that Philip +Sheldon murdered Tom Halliday." + +"Great God!" + +"Yes; the secret is out. You knew it; how or when you discovered it I +cannot tell. You knew of that one hellish crime, and would have prevented +the commission of a second murder. You should have spoken more plainly. +To know what you knew, and to confine yourself to cautious hints and +vague suggestions, as you did, was to have part in that devilish work. If +Charlotte Halliday dies, her blood be upon your head--upon yours--as well +as upon his!" + +The young man had risen in his passion, and stood before George Sheldon +with uplifted hands, and eyes that flashed angry lightnings. It seemed +almost as if he would have called down the Divine vengeance upon this +man's head. + +"If Charlotte Halliday dies!" repeated George, in a horror-stricken +whisper; "why should you suggest such a thing?" + +"Because she is dying." + +There was a pause. Valentine flung himself passionately upon the chair +from which he had just risen, with his back to George Sheldon, and his +face bent over the back of the chair. The lawyer sat looking straight +before him, with a ghastly countenance. + +"I told him he meant _this_," he said to himself, in a hoarse whisper. "I +told him in this office not six months ago. Powers of hell, what a +villain he is! And there are people who do not believe there is a devil!" + +For a few moments Valentine gave free vent to his passion of grief. These +tears of rage, of agony the most supreme, were the first he had shed +since he had bent his face over Charlotte's soft brown hair, to hide the +evidence of his sorrow. When he had dashed these bitter drops away from +his burning eyes, he turned to confront George Sheldon, pale as death, +but very calm. And after this he gave way no more to his passion. He was +matched against Time, of all enemies the most pitiless and unrelenting, +and every minute wasted was a point scored by his foe. + +"I want your help, George Sheldon," he said. "If you have ever been sorry +that you made no effort to save Charlotte Halliday's father, prove +yourself his friend by trying to save her." + +"_If_ I have ever been sorry!" echoed the lawyer. "Why, my miserable +dreams have never been free from the horror of that man's face. You don't +know what it is--murder! Nobody knows who hasn't been concerned in it. +You read of murders in your newspapers. A shot B, or C poisoned D, and so +on, all through the letters of the alphabet, with a fresh batch for every +Sunday; but it never comes home to you. You think of the horror of it in +a shadowy kind of way, as you might think of having a snake twisted round +your waist and legs, like that blessed man and boys one never sees the +last of. But if you were to look at that plaster cast all your life, you +couldn't realize ten per cent of the horror you'd feel if the snake was +_there_, alive, crushing your bones, and hissing in your ear. I have been +face to face with murder, Valentine Hawkehurst; and if I were to live a +century, I should never forget what I felt when I stood by Tom Halliday's +deathbed, and it flashed upon me, all at once, that my brother Phil was +poisoning him." + +"And you did not try to save him--your friend?" cried Valentine. + +"Why, you see," replied the other, in a strange slow way, "it was too +late to save him: I knew that, and--I held my tongue. What could I do? +Against my own brother! That sort of thing in a family is ruin for every +one! Do you think anybody would have brought their business to me after +my brother had stood in the Old Bailey dock to take his trial for murder? +No; my only course was to keep my own counsel, and I kept it. Phil made +eighteen thousand pounds by his marriage with poor Tom's widow, and a +paltry hundred or two is all _I_ ever touched of that money." + +"And you _could_ touch that money?" cried Valentine, aghast. + +"Money carries no infection. Did you ever ask any questions about the +money you won at German gaming-tables. I dare say some of your napoleons +and ten-thaler notes could have told queer stories if they had been able +to talk. Taking Phil's money has never weighed upon my conscience. I'm +not very inquisitive about the antecedents of a five-pound note; but I'll +tell you what it is, Hawkehurst, I'd give all I have, and all I ever +hope to have, and would go out and sweep a crossing to-morrow, if I could +get Tom Halliday's face out of my mind, with the look that he turned upon +me the last time I saw him. 'Ah, George,' he said, 'in illness a man +feels the comfort of being among friends!' And he took my hand and +squeezed it, in his old hearty way. We had been boys together, +Hawkehurst, birds-nesting in Hyley Woods; on the same side in our +Barlingford cricket-matches. And I shook his hand, and went away, and +left him to die!" + +And here Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn, the Sheldon who was in with the +money-lenders, sharpest of legal prestigitators, most ruthless of +opponents, most unscrupulous of allies, buried his face in a flaming +bandanna, and fairly sobbed aloud. When the passion had passed, he got up +and walked hastily to the window, more ashamed of this one touch of +honest emotion than of all the falsehoods and chicaneries of his career. + +"I didn't think I could have been such an ass," he muttered sheepishly. + +"I did not hope that you could feel so deeply," answered Valentine. "And +now help me to save the only child of your ill-fated friend. I am sure +that you can help me." + +Without waiting to be questioned, Valentine related the circumstances of +Charlotte's illness, and of his interview with Mr. Burkham. + +"I did not even know that the poor girl was ill," said George Sheldon. "I +have not seen Phil for months. He came here one day, and I gave him a bit +of my mind. I told him if he tried to harm her I'd let the light in upon +him and his doings. And I'll keep my word." + +"But his motive? What, in the name of Heaven, can be his motive for +taking her innocent life? He knows of the Haygarth estate, and must hope +to profit by her fortune if she lives." + +"Yes, and to secure the whole of that fortune if she dies. Her death +would make her mother sole heir to that estate, and the mother is the +merest tool in his hands. He may even have induced Charlotte to make a +will in his favour, so that he himself may stand in her shoes." + +"She would not have made a will without telling me of it." + +"You don't know that. My brother Phil can do anything. It would be as +easy for him to persuade her to maintain secrecy about the transaction as +to persuade her to make the will. Do you suppose _he_ shrinks from +multiplying lies and forgeries and hypocrisies? Do you suppose anything +in that small way comes amiss to the man who has once brought his mind to +murder? Why, look at the Scotch play of that fellow Shakespeare's. At the +beginning, your Macbeth is a respectable trustworthy sort of person, +anxious to get on in life, and so on, and that's all; but no sooner has +he made an end of poor old Duncan, than he lays about him right and +left--Banquo, Fleance, anybody and everybody that happens to be in his +way. It was lucky for that Tartar of a wife of his that _she_ hook'd it, +or he'd soon have put a stop to her sleep-walking. There's no such wide +difference between a man and a tiger, after all. The tiger's a decent +fellow enough till he has tasted human blood; but when once he _has_, +Lord save the country-side from the jaws of the man-eater!" + +"For Heaven's sake let us waste no time in talk!" Valentine cried, +impetuously. "I am to meet Burkham in Burlington Row directly I have got +your advice." + +"What for?" + +"To see Dr. Jedd, and take him down to Hastings, if possible." + +"That won't do." + +"Why not?" + +"Because Jedd's appearance would give Phil the office. Jedd gave evidence +on the Fryar trial, and must be a marked man to him. All Jedd can tell +you is that Charlotte is being poisoned. You know that already. Of course +she'll want medical treatment, and so on, to bring her round; but she +can't get that under my brother's roof. What you have to do is to get her +away from that house." + +"You do not know how ill she is. I doubt if she could bear the removal." + +"Anything is better than to remain. _That_ is certain death." + +"But your brother would surely dispute her removal." + +"He would, and oppose it inch by inch. We must get him away, before we +attempt to remove her." + +"How?" + +"I will find the means for that. I know something of his business +relations, and can invent some false cry for luring him off the trail. We +_must_ get him away. The poor girl was not in actual danger when you left +her, was she?" + +"No, thank God, there was no appearance of immediate danger. But she was +very ill. And that man holds her life in his hand. He knows that I have +come to London in search of a doctor. What if--" + +"Keep yourself quiet, Hawkehurst. He will not hasten her death unless he +is desperate; for a death occurring immediately after your first +expression of alarm would seem sudden. He'll avoid any appearance of +suddenness, if he can, depend upon it. The first thing is to get him +away. But the question is, how to do it? There must be a bait. What bait? +Don't talk to me, Hawkehurst. Let me think it out, if I can." + +The lawyer leaned his elbows on the table, and abandoned himself to +profound cogitation, with his forehead supported by his clenched hands. +Valentine waited patiently while he thus cogitated. + +"I must go down to Phil's office," he said at last, "and ferret out some +of his secrets. Nothing but stock-exchange business, of an important +character, would induce him to leave Charlotte Halliday. But if I can +telegraph such a message as will bring him to town, I'll do it. Leave all +that to me. And now, what about your work?" + +"I am at a loss what to do, if I am not to take Dr. Jedd to Harold's +Hill." + +"Take him to St. Leonards; and if I get my brother out of the way, you +can have Charlotte conveyed to an hotel in St. Leonard's, where she can +stop till she picks up strength enough to come to London." + +"Do you think her mother will consent to her removal? + +"Do I think you will be such an idiot as to ask for her consent?" cried +George Sheldon impatiently. "My brother's wife is so weak a fool, that +the chances are she'd insist on her daughter stopping quietly, to be +poisoned. No; you must get Mrs. Sheldon out of the way somehow. Send her +to look at the shops, or to bathe, or to pick up shells on the beach, or +anything else equally inane. She's easy enough to deal with. There's that +young woman, Paget's daughter, with them still, I suppose? Yes. Very +well, then, you and she can get Charlotte away between you." + +"But for me to take those two girls to an hotel--the chance of scandal, +of wonder, of inquiry? There ought to be some other person--some nurse. +Stay, there's Nancy Woolper--the very woman! My darling has told me of +that old woman's affectionate anxiety about her health--an anxiety which +was singularly intense, it seemed to Lotta. Good God! do you think she, +Nancy Woolper, could have suspected the cause of Mr. Halliday's death?" + +"I dare say she did. She was in the house when he died, and nursed him +all through his illness. She's a clever old woman. Yes, you might take +her down with you; I think she would be of use in getting Charlotte +away." + +"I'll take her, if she will go." + +"I am not sure of that; our north-country folks have stiffish notions +about fidelity to old masters, and that kind of thing. Nancy Woolper +nursed my brother Phil." + +"If she knows or suspects the fate of Charlotte's father, she will try to +save Charlotte," said Valentine, with conviction. "And now, good bye! I +trust to you for getting your brother out of the way, George Sheldon; +remember that." + +He held out his hand; the lawyer took it with a muscular grip, which, on +this occasion, meant something more than that base coin of jolly good +fellowship which so often passes current for friendship's virgin gold. + +"You may trust me," George Sheldon said gravely. "Stop a moment, though; +I have a proposition to make. If my brother Philip has induced that girl +to make a will, as it is my belief he has, we must counter him. Come down +with me to Doctors' Commons. You've a cab? Yes; the business won't take +half an hour." + +"What business?" + +"A special licence for your marriage with Charlotte Halliday." + +"A marriage?" + +"Yes; her marriage invalidates her will, if she has made one, and does +away with Phil's motive. Come along; we'll get the licence." + +"But the delay?" + +"Exactly half an hour. Come!" + +The lawyer dashed out of his office. "At home in an hour," he shouted +to the clerk, and then ran downstairs, followed closely by Valentine, +and did not cease running until he was in the King's Road, where the +cab was waiting. + +"Newgate Street and Warwick Lane to Doctors' Commons!" he cried to the +cabman; and Valentine was fain to take his seat in the cab without +further remonstrance. + +"I don't understand--" he began, as the cabman drove away. + +"I do. It's all right; you'll put the licence in your pocket, and call at +the church nearest which you hang out, Edgware Road way, give notice of +the marriage, and so on; and as soon as Charlotte can bear the journey, +bring her to London and marry her. I told you your course six months ago. +Your obstinacy has caused the hazard of that young woman's life. Don't +let us have a second edition of it." + +"I will be governed by your advice," answered Valentine, submissively. +"It is the delay that tortures me." + +The delay was indeed torture to him. Everything and everybody in Doctors' +Commons seemed the very incarnation of slowness. The hansom cab might +tear and grind the pavement, the hansom cabman might swear until even +monster waggons swerved aside to give him passage; but neither tearing +nor swearing could move the incarnate stolidity of Doctors' Commons. When +he left that quaint sanctuary of old usages, he carried with him the +Archbishop of Canterbury's benign permission for his union with Charlotte +Halliday. But he knew not whether it was only a morsel of waste paper +which he carried in his pocket; and whether there might not ere long be +need of a ghastlier certificate, giving leave and licence for the +rendering back of "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." + +Valentine's first call, after leaving George Sheldon at the gate of +Doctors' Commons, was at the head-quarters of the Ragamuffins. His heart +sank as he ran into the bar of the hostelry to ask for the telegram which +might be waiting for him. + +Happily there was no telegram. To find no tidings of a change for the +worse seemed to him almost equivalent to hearing of a change for the +better. What had he not feared after his interview with the surgeon of +Bloomsbury! + +From Covent Garden the hansom bowled swiftly to Burlington Row. Here +Valentine found Mr. Burkham, pale and anxious, waiting in a little den of +a third room, on the ground-floor--a ghastly little room, hung with +anatomical plates, and with some wax preparations in jars, on the +mantelpiece, by way of ornament. To them presently came Dr. Jedd, as +lively and business-like as if Miss Halliday's case had been a question +of taking out a double-tooth. + +"Very sad!" he said; "these vegetable poisons--hands of unscrupulous man. +Very interesting article in the _Medical Quarterly_--speculative analysis +of the science of toxicology as known to the ancients." + +"You will come down to Harold's Hill at once, sir?" said Valentine, +imploringly. + +"Well, yes; your friend here, Mr. Burkham, has persuaded me to do so, +though I need hardly tell you that such a journey will be to the last +degree inconvenient." + +"It is an affair of life and death," faltered the young man. + +"Of course, my dear sir. But then, you see, I have half-a-dozen other +affairs of life and death on my hands at this moment. However, I have +promised. My consultations will be over in half an hour; I have a round +of visits after that, and by--well, say by the five o'clock express, I +will go to St. Leonards." + +"The delay will be very long," said Valentine. + +"It cannot be done sooner. I ought to go down to Hertfordshire this +evening--most interesting case--carbuncle--three operations in three +consecutive weeks--Swain as operator. At five o'clock I shall be at the +London Bridge station. Until then, gentlemen, good day. Lawson, the +door." + +Dr. Jedd left his visitors to follow the respectable white-cravatted +butler, and darted back to his consulting-room. + +Mr. Burkham and Valentine walked slowly up and down Burlington Row before +the latter returned to his cab. + +"I thank you heartily for your help," said Valentine to the surgeon; "and +I believe, with God's grace, we shall save this dear girl's life. It was +the hand of Providence that guided me to you this morning. I can but +believe the same hand will guide me to the end." + +On this they parted. Valentine told his cabman to drive to the Edgware +Road; and in one of the churches of the immediate neighbourhood of that +thoroughfare he gave notice of his intention to enter the bonds of holy +matrimony. He had some difficulty in arranging matters with the clerk, +whom he saw in his private abode and non-official guise. That functionary +was scarcely able to grasp the idea of an intending Benedick who would +not state positively when he wanted to be married. Happily, however, the +administration of half-a-sovereign considerably brightened the clerk's +perceptions. + +"I see what you want," he said. "Young lady a invalid, which she wants to +leave her home as she finds uncomfortable, she being over twenty-one +years of age and her own mistress. It's what you may call a runaway +match, although the parties ain't beholden to any one, in a manner of +speaking. _I_ understand. You give me half an hour's notice any morning +within the legal hours, and I'll have one of our young curates ready for +you as soon as you're ready for them; and have you and the young lady +tied up tight enough before you know where you are. We ain't very long +over _our_ marriages, unless it is something out of the common way." + +The clerk's familiarity was more good-natured than flattering to the +applicant's self-esteem; but Valentine was in no mood to object to this +easy-going treatment of the affair. He promised to give the clerk the +required notice; and having arranged everything in strictly legal manner, +hurried back to his cab, and directed the man to drive to the Lawn. + +It was now three o'clock. At five he was to meet Dr. Jedd at the station. +He had two hours for his interview with Nancy Woolper, and his drive from +Bayswater to London Bridge. + +He had tasted nothing since daybreak; but the necessity to eat and drink +never occurred to him. He was dimly conscious of feeling sick and faint, +but the reason of this sickness and faintness did not enter into his +thoughts. He took off his hat, and leant his head back against the +cushion of the hansom as that vehicle rattled across the squares of +Paddington. The summer day, the waving of green trees in those suburban +squares; the busy life and motion of the world through which he went, +mixed themselves into one jarring whirl of light and colour, noise and +motion. He found himself wondering how long it was since he left +Harold's Hill. Between the summer morning in which he had walked along +the dusty high-road, with fields of ripening corn upon his left, and all +the broad blue sea upon his right, and the summer afternoon in which he +drove in a jingling cab through the noisy streets and squares of +Bayswater, there seemed to him a gulf so wide, that his tried brain +shrank from scanning it. + +He struggled with this feeling of helplessness and bewilderment, and +overcame it. + +"Let me remember what I have to do," he said to himself; "and let me keep +my wits about me till that is done." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +PHOENICIANS ARE RISING. + +While Mr. Hawkehurst arranged his affairs with the clerk of St. +Matthias-in-the-fields, in the parish of Marylebone, George Sheldon sat +in his brother's office writing a letter to that distinguished +stockbroker. The pretext of writing a letter was the simplest pretext for +being alone in his brother's room; and to be alone in Philip Sheldon's +room was the first step in the business which George had to do. + +The room was distractingly neat, and as handsomely furnished as it is +possible for an office to be within the closest official limits. A +Spanish mahogany desk with a cylinder cover, and innumerable drawers +fitted with invisible Bramah locks, occupied the centre of the room; and +four ponderous Spanish mahogany chairs, with padded backs, and seats +covered with crimson morocco, were primly ranged against the wall. Upon +the mantelpiece ticked a skeleton clock; above which there hung the +sternest and grimmest of almanacks, on either whereof were fastened +divers lists and calendars of awful character, affected by gentlemen on +'Change. + +Before penetrating to this innermost and sacred chamber, George Sheldon +wasted some little time in agreeable gossip with a gentleman whom he +found yawning over the _Times_ newspaper in an outer and less richly +furnished apartment. This gentleman was Philip Sheldon's clerk, the +younger son of a rich Yorkshire farmer, who had come to London with the +intention of making his fortune on the Stock Exchange, and whose father +had paid a considerable sum in order to obtain for this young man the +privilege of reading the Times in Mr. Sheldon's office, and picking up +whatever knowledge might be obtained from the business transactions of +his employer. + +The career of Philip Sheldon had been watched with some interest by his +fellow-townsmen of Barlingford. They had seen him leave that town with a +few hundreds in his pocket, and they had heard of him twelve years +afterwards as a prosperous stockbroker, with a handsome house and a +handsome carriage, and the reputation of being one of the sharpest men in +the City. The accounts of him that came to Barlingford were all more or +less exaggerated; and the men who discussed his cleverness and his good +luck were apt to forget that he owed the beginning of his fortunes to Tom +Halliday's eighteen thousand pounds. The one fact that impressed Philip +Sheldon's townsmen was the fact that a Barlingford man had made money on +the Stock Exchange; and the one inference they drew therefrom was the +inference that other Barlingford men might do the same. + +Thus it had happened that Mr. Stephen Orcott, of Plymley Rise farm, near +Barlingford, being at a loss what to do with a somewhat refractory +younger son, resolved upon planting his footsteps in the path so +victoriously trodden by Philip Sheldon. He wrote to Philip, asking him to +receive the young man as clerk, assistant, secretary--anything, with a +view to an ultimate junior partnership; and Philip consented, upon +certain conditions. The sum he demanded was rather a stiff one, as it +seemed to Stephen Orcott, but he opined that such a sum would not have +been asked if the advantages had not been proportionately large. The +bargain was therefore concluded, and Mr. Frederick Orcott came to London. +He was a young man of horsey propensities, gifted with a sublime contempt +for any kind of business requiring application or industry, and with a +supreme belief in his own merits. + +George Sheldon had known Frederick Orcott as a boy, and had been in his +society some half-dozen times since his coming to London. He apprehended +no difficulty in obtaining from this young gentleman any information he +had the power to afford. + +"How do, Orcott?" he said, with agreeable familiarity. "My brother Phil +not come back yet?" + +"No," replied the other, sulkily. "There have been ever so many people +here bothering me about him. Where has he gone? and when will he be back? +and so on. I might as well be some d----d footman, if I'm to sit here +answering questions all day. High Wickham races are on to-day, and I +wanted to see Barmaid run before I put my money on her for Goodwood. She +was bred down our way, you see, and I know she's like enough to win the +cup, if she's fit. They don't know much about her this way, either, +though she's own sister to Boots, that won the Chester Cup last year, +owing to Topham's being swindled into letting him off with seven lbs. He +ran at the York Spring, you see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the +boy that rode him pulled his head half off--I saw him do it--and then he +won the Chester, and brought his owners a pot of money." + +This information was not exactly what George Sheldon wanted, but he +planted himself on the hearthrug in an easy attitude, with his back +against the mantelpiece, and appeared much interested in Mr. Orcott's +discourse. + +"Anything stirring in the City?" he asked presently. + +"Stirring? No--nothing stirring but stagnation, as some fellow said in a +play I saw the other night. Barlingford folks say your brother Philip has +made a heap of money on the Stock Exchange; but if he has, he must have +done a good deal more business before I came to him than he has done +lately. I can't see how a man is to develop into a Rothschild out of an +occasional two-and-sixpence per cent on the transfer of some old woman's +savings from railway stock to consols; and that's about the only kind of +business I've seen much of lately. Of course Phil Sheldon has got irons +of his own in the fire; for he's an uncommonly deep card, you see, that +brother of yours, and it isn't to be expected he'll tell _me_ all he's up +to. I know he's up to his eyebrows in companies, but I don't see how he's +to make his fortune out of _them_, for limited liability now-a-days seems +only another name for unlimited crash. However, I don't care. It pleased +my governor to get me into Sheldon's office, and it suited my book to +come to London; but if the author of my being thinks I'm going to addle +my blessed brains with the decline and fall of the money market, he's a +greater fool than I took him for--and that's saying a great deal." + +And here Mr. Frederick Orcott lapsed into admiring contemplation of his +boots, which were the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of a sporting bootmaker; boots +that were of the ring, ringy, and of the corner, cornery. + +"Ah," said George, "and Phil doesn't tell you much of his affairs, +doesn't he? That's rather a bad sign, I should think. Looks as if he was +rather down upon his luck, eh?" + +"Well, there's no knowing, you see, with that sort of close fish. He may +have made his book for a great haul, and may be keeping himself quiet +till the event comes off. He may be laying on to something with all his +might, you know, on safe information. But there's one thing I know he +stands to lose by." + +"What's that?" + +"The Phoenician Loan. He speculated in the bonds when they began to go +down; and I'm blessed if they haven't been dropping ever since, an +eighth a day, as regular as the day comes round. He bought them for the +March account, and has been paying contango since then, and holding on in +hopes of a rise. I don't know whether the purchase was a large one, but I +know he's been uncommonly savage about the drop. He bought on the +strength of private information from the other side of the Channel. The +Emperor was putting his own money into the Phoenician business, and it +was the best game out, and so on. But he seems to have been made a fool +of, for once in a way." + +"The bonds may steady themselves." + +"Yes, they _may_; but, on the other hand, they mayn't. There are the +Stock Exchange lists, with Phoenicians ticked off by your brother's own +pen. A steady drop, you see. 'Let me have a telegram if there's a sudden +rise,' said Sheldon to me the day he left London; 'they'll go up with +rush when they do move.' But they've been moving the other way ever +since; and I think if he stayed away till doomsday it would be pretty +much the same." + +"_Phoenicians are rising rapidly. Come back to town._" + +These were the words of the telegraphic despatch which shaped itself in +George Sheldon's brain, as his brother's clerk revealed the secrets of +his employer. + +It was found--the solution of the one great question as to how Philip +Sheldon was to be lured away from the bedside of his unconscious victim. +Here was the bait. + +"I knew I could do it; I knew I could get all I wanted to know out of +this shallow-brained idiot," he said to himself, triumphantly. + +And then he told the shallow-brained idiot that he thought he would write +a line to his brother; and on that pretence went into Philip's office. + +Here, use his eyes as he might, he could discover nothing; he could glean +no stray scrap of information. The secrets that could be guarded by +concealed Bramah locks and iron safes, with mystic words to be learned by +the man who would open them, Philip Sheldon knew how to protect. +Unhappily for himself, he had been compelled to confide some of his +secrets to human receptacles not to be guarded by Bramah locks or mystic +words. + +The lawyer did not waste much time in his brother's office. A very hasty +investigation showed him there was nothing to be learned from those bare +walls and that inviolable cylinder-topped desk. He scribbled a few lines +of commonplace at a table by the window, sealed and addressed his note, +and then departed to despatch his telegram, "Phoenicians are rising +rapidly," he wrote, and that was all. He signed the despatch Frederick +Orcott. + +"Phil and Orcott may settle the business between them," he said to +himself, as he forged the Yorkshireman's name. "What I have to do is to +get Phil away, and give Hawkehurst a chance of saving Tom Halliday's +daughter; and I shan't stand upon trifles in the doing of it." + +After having despatched this telegram, George Sheldon found himself much +too restless and excited for ordinary business. He, so renowned even +amongst cool hands for exceptional coolness, was on this occasion +thoroughly unnerved. He dropped into a City tavern, and refreshed himself +with a dram. But, amidst all the bustle and clatter of a crowded bar, the +face of Tom Halliday, haggard and worn with illness, was before his eyes, +and the sound of Tom Halliday's voice was in his ears. "I can't settle to +anything this afternoon," he said to himself. "I'll run down to +Bayswater, and see whether Hawkehurst has managed matters with Nancy +Woolper." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE. + +While George Sheldon was still in the depths of the City Valentine +Hawkehurst arrived at the gothic villa, where he asked to see Mrs. +Woolper. Of the woman herself he knew very little: he had seen her once +or twice when some special mission brought her to the drawing-room; and +from Charlotte he had heard much of her affectionate solicitude. To have +been kind to his Charlotte was the strongest claim to his regard. + +"This woman's help would be of inestimable service," he thought; "her +age, her experience of sickness, her familiarity with the patient, +especially adapt her for the office she will be required to fill. If Dr. +Jedd should order a nurse to watch by the sick-bed, here is the nurse. If +it should prove possible to remove the dear sufferer, here is the +guardian best calculated to protect and attend her removal." That the +desperate step of an immediate marriage would be a wise step Valentine +could not doubt, since it would at once annihilate Mr. Sheldon's chances, +and destroy his motive. But in contemplating this desperate step +Valentine had to consider the reputation as well as the safety of his +future wife. He was determined that there should be no opportunity for +scandal in the circumstances of his stolen marriage, no scope for future +mischief from the malignity of that baffled villain to whose schemes +their marriage would give the death-blow. He, who from his cradle had +been familiar with the darker side of life, knew how often the innocent +carry a lifelong burden, and perform a perpetual pennance for the sins or +the follies of others. And over his darling's life in the future, should +it please God that he might save her, he would have no shadow cast by +imprudence of his in the present. + +"This sharp-witted, sharp-tongued Yorkshirewoman will be the woman of +women to protect her," he thought, as he seated himself in Mr. Sheldon's +study, whither the prim parlour-maid had ushered him. + +"Mrs. Woolper have just gone upstairs to clean herself," she said; "which +we are a-having the dining-room and droring-room carpets up, while the +family are away. Would you please to wait?" + +Valentine looked at his watch. + +"I cannot wait very long," he said; "and I shall be obliged if you will +tell Mrs. Woolper that I wish to see her on very important business." + +The parlour-maid departed, and Valentine was left to endure the weariness +of waiting until Mrs. Woolper should have "cleaned herself." + +Mr. Sheldon's study at Bayswater did not offer much more to the eye of +the investigator than Mr. Sheldon's office in the City. There were the +handsomely bound books behind the inviolable plate-glass doors, and there +was the neat writing-table with the machine for weighing letters, and the +large business-like looking blotting-pad, and the ponderous brass-rimmed +inkstand, with no nonsense about it; and yonder, on a clumsy little oak +table with thick legs, appeared the copying machine, with a big black +iron lever, and a massive screw with which to screw all the spontaneous +feeling out of every letter that came beneath its crushing influence. + +Up and down this joyless den Valentine Hawkehurst paced, with the demon +of impatience raging in his breast. The July sunshine blazed hot upon the +window, and the voices of croquet-players in adjacent gardens rose shrill +upon the summer air. And there were girls playing croquet while she, his +"rose of the garden, garden of girls," lay sick unto death! O, why could +he not offer a hecatomb of these common creatures as a substitute for +that one fair spirit? + +He looked into the garden--the prim modern garden, but a few years +reclaimed from that abomination of desolation, the "eligible lot of +building land." Across the well-kept lawn there brooded no shadow of +Old-World cedar; no century-old espaliers divided flower and kitchen +ground; no box-edging of the early Hanoverian era bordered the beds of +roses and mignonette. From one boundary-wall to the other there was not a +bush old enough to hang an association upon. The stereotyped bed of +flaming yellow calceolaria balanced the conventional bed of flaming +crimson verbena; the lavender heliotrope faced the scarlet geranium, like +the four corners in a quadrille. The garden was the modern nurserymen's +ideal of suburban horticulture, and no more. But to Valentine this +half-acre of smooth lawn and Wimbledon gravel pathway had seemed fair as +those pleasure gardens of Semiramis, at the foot of the Bagistanos +mountain, the fame whereof tempted Alexander to turn aside from the +direct road, during his march from Chelone to the Nysaic horse pastures. + +To-day the contemplation of that commonplace garden gave him direful +pain. Should he ever walk there again with his dear love, or in any other +garden upon earth? + +And then he thought of fairer gardens, in supernal regions whither his +soul was slow to travel. "Not easy is the journey from earth to the +stars," says the sage; and from this young wanderer the stain of earthly +travel had yet to be washed away. + +"If she is taken from me, shall I ever be pure enough to follow her?" he +asked himself. "Will a life that began in such darkness ever rise to the +light which is her natural element? If she is taken, and I stay behind, +and bear my burden patiently in the hope to follow her, will there not be +a gate closed against me in the skies, beyond which I shall see her, +shining among her kindred spirits, in the white robes of perfect +innocence? Ah, my love, my love, as between us on this earth must for +ever be a gulf your pure soul cannot pass, so between us in the skies +will rise a barrier to sever me from your sweet company!" + +The thought of probable separation upon earth, of possible separation in +heaven, was too bitter to him. + +"I will not think of these things," he said to himself; "I will not +believe in that possibility of this sacrifice. Ah, no! she will be +saved. Against the bright young life the awful fiat has not gone +forth. Providence has been with me to-day. Providence will go with me +till the end." + +He thought how other men had so stood, as he was standing now, face to +face with the great uncertainty, the crisis, the turning-point--the pivot +on which life itself revolved. The pendulum of the mighty clock swings +solemnly to and fro; with every vibration a moment; with every moment +each man's shrouded fates move another step in their inexorable progress. +And the end? What was the goal towards which those dark relentless shapes +were moving? + +He thought of Rousseau, balancing the awful question of his soul's +salvation--his poor weak soul adrift upon a sea of doubt. + +"Behold yonder tree which faces me, as I sit and meditate the problem of +my destiny--the destiny of me, Jean Jacques Rousseau, self-conscious +genius, and future regenerator of my age. I pick up a pebble, and +poise it between my fingers before taking my aim. In another moment +the question will be answered. If the pebble hits the tree, I, Jean +Jacques, am reserved for salvation. If I miss--O awful, overwhelming +possibility!--my name will blaze upon that dreadful scroll which numbers +the damned." + +Happily the tree is bulky, and within but a few yards of the +speculator; and the great enigma of the Calvinistic church is answered +in favour of Madame de Warenne's protege, whose propensities and +proclivities at that period did not very strongly indicate his claim to +a place among the elect. + +Valentine remembered the _sortes Virgilianae_--the Wesleyan's drawing of +inferences from Bible texts. Ah, could he not find an answer to the +question that was the one thought of his mind? He would find some +answer--a lying oracle, perhaps. It might be a voice from heaven,--some +temporary assuagement of this storm of doubt that raged in his breast. "I +doubt if Mr. Sheldon owns either a Bible or an 'AEneid,'" he said to +himself, as he stopped in his rapid pacing of the room; "I will open the +first book I can put my hand upon, and from the first line my eye falls +on will draw an augury." + +He looked about the room. Behind the glazed doors of the mahogany +bookcase appeared Hume and Smollett, Scott and Shakespeare; and +conspicuous among these a handsome family Bible. But the glazed doors +were locked. In Mr. Sheldon's study there appeared to be no other books +than these few standard works. Yes, on some obscure little shelves, low +down in one of the recesses formed by the projection of the fireplace and +the chimney, there were three rows of large quarto volumes, in dingy +dark-green cloth cases. + +What these volumes might contain Valentine Hawkehurst knew not; and the +very fact of his ignorance rendered these books all the more suitable for +the purpose of augury. To dip for a sentence into any of these unknown +volumes would be a leap in darkness more profound than he could find in +the Bible or the "AEneid," where his own foreknowledge of the text might +unwittingly influence the oracle. He went over to the recess, bent down, +and ran his hand along the backs of the volumes, with his face turned +away from the books towards the window. + +"The first obstruction that arrests my hand shall determine my choice of +the volume," he said to himself. + +His hand ran easily along the volumes on the upper shelf--easily along +the volumes on the second shelf; and he began to doubt whether this mode +of determining his choice could be persisted in. But in its progress +along the third and lowest range of volumes, his hand was arrested midway +by a book which projected about half an inch beyond its fellows. + +He took this book out and carried it to the table, still without looking +at it. He opened it, or rather let its leaves fall open of their own +accord--still without looking at it; and then, with a strange +superstitious fear--mingled in his mind with the natural shame that +accompanied his conscious folly--he looked at the page before him. The +line on which he fixed his eye was the heading of a letter. It was in +larger type than the rest of the page, and it was very plain to him as he +stood a little way from the table, looking down at the open book. + +The line ran thus: + +"ON THE FALLIBILITY OF COPPER GAUZE AS A TEST FOR THE DETECTION OF +ARSENIC." + +The book was a volume of the _Lancet_; the date twenty years ago. + +"What an oracle!" thought Valentine, with a cynical laugh at his own +folly, and some slight sense of relief. In all feeble tamperings with +powers invisible there lurks a sense of terror in the weak human heart. +He had tempted those invisible ones, and the oracle he only half believed +in might have spoken to his confusion and dismay. He was glad to think +the oracle meant nothing. + +And yet, even in this dry as dust title of a scientific communication +from a distinguished toxicologist there was some sinister significance. +It was the letter of a great chemist, who demonstrated therein the +fallibility of all tests in relation to a certain poison. It was one of +those papers which, while they aid the cause of science, may also further +the dark processes of the poisoner, by showing him the forces he has to +encounter, and the weapons with which he may defend himself from their +power. It is needless to dwell here upon the contents of this letter--one +of a series on the same subject, or range of subjects. Valentine read it +with eager interest. For him it had a terrible importance in its relation +to the past and to the present. + +"I let the book fall open, and it opened at that letter," he thought to +himself. "Will it open there a second time, I wonder?" + +He repeated the experiment, and the book opened in the same place. Again; +and again the book opened as before. Again, many times, and the result +was still the same. + +After this he examined the book, and found that it had been pressed open +at this page, as by a reader leaning on the opened volume. He examined it +still more closely, and found here and there on the page faint +indications of a pencil, which had under-scored certain lines, and the +marks of which had been as far as possible erased. The deduction to be +drawn from these small facts seemed only too clear to Valentine +Hawkehurst. By some one reader the pages had been deliberately and +carefully studied. Could he doubt that reader to have been the man in +whose possession he found the book, the man whom that very day he had +heard plainly denounced as a poisoner? + +He drew out the previous volume, and in this a rapid search revealed to +him a second fact, significant as the last. + +An old envelope marked the place where appeared an article on the +coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain type of low fever and +the diagnostics of a certain class of poisons. Here the volume again +opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the page seemed to indicate that +the open book had been leant upon by a person engaged in making memoranda +of its contents. Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the +place had its own dismal significance. The postmark bore the date of the +year and the month in which Charlotte's father had died. + +While this volume was still open in his hand the door opened suddenly, +and Mrs. Woolper came into the room. + +She had kept Valentine waiting more than half an hour. He had little more +than half an hour at most in which to break the ice of absolute +strangeness, and sound the very depths of this woman's character. If she +had come to him earlier, when his plan of action was clear and definite, +his imagination in abeyance, he would have gone cautiously to work, with +slowness and deliberation. Coming to him now, when his mind, unsettled by +the discovery of fresh evidence against Philip Sheldon, was divided +between the past and the present, she took him off his guard, and he +plunged at once into the subject that absorbed all his thoughts. + +Mrs. Woolper looked from Valentine to the open books on the table with a +vague terror in her face. + +"I am sorry I was so long, sir; but I'd been polishing the grates and +fenders, and such like, and my hands and face were blacker than a +sweep's. I hope there's nothing wrong at the seaside, where Miss--" + +"There is much that's wrong, Mrs. Woolper--hopelessly, irrecoverably +wrong. Miss Halliday is ill, very ill--doomed to die, if she remain in +your master's keeping." + +"Lord help us, Mr. Hawkehurst! what do you mean?" + +The terror in her face was no longer a vague terror. It had taken a form +and substance, and was a terror unutterably hideous, if ever human +countenance gave expression to human thought. + +"I mean that your master is better skilled in the use of the agents that +kill than the agents that cure. Charlotte's father came to Philip +Sheldon's house a hale strong man, in the very prime of manhood. In that +house he sickened of a nameless disease, and died, carefully tended by +his watchful friend. The same careful watcher stands by Charlotte +Halliday's deathbed, and she is dying!" + +"Dying! O, sir, for God's sake, don't say that!" + +"She is dying, as her father died before her, by the hand of Philip +Sheldon." + +"O, sir! Mr. Hawkehurst!" cried the old woman, with clasped hands lifted +in piteous supplication towards her master's denouncer. "It's not true. +It is not true. For God's dear love don't tell me it is true! I nursed +him when he was a baby, sir; and there wasn't a little trouble I had to +bear with him that didn't make him all the dearer to me. I have sat up +all the night through, sir, times and often, when he was ill, and have +heard Barlingford church clock strike every hour of the long night; and +O, if I had known that this could ever come to him, I should have wished +him dead in the little crib where he lay and seemed so innocent. I tell +you, sir, it can't be true! His father and mother had been respected and +looked up to in Barlingford for many a year,--his grandfather and +grandmother before them. There isn't a name that stands better in those +parts than the name of Sheldon. Do you think such a man would poison his +friend?" + +"_I_ said nothing about poison, Mrs. Woolper," said Valentine, sternly. + +This woman had known all, and had held her tongue, like the rest, it +seemed. To Valentine there was unutterable horror in the thought that a +cold-blooded murder could be thus perpetrated in the sight of several +people, and yet no voice be raised to denounce the assassin. + +"And this is our modern civilization!" he said to himself. "Give me the +desert or the jungle. The sons of Bowanee are no worse than Mr. Sheldon, +and one might be on one's guard against them." + +Nancy Woolper looked at him aghast. He had said nothing about poison! +What, then--had she betrayed her master? + +He saw that she had known, or strongly suspected, the worst in the case +of Tom Halliday, and that she would easily be influenced to do all he +wanted of her. + +"Mrs. Woolper, you must help me to save Charlotte," he said, with +intensity. "You made no attempt to save her father, though you suspected +the cause of his death. I have this day seen Mr. Burkham, the doctor who +attended Mr. Halliday, and from his lips I have heard the truth. I want +you to accompany me to Hastings, and to take your place by Charlotte's +bed, as her nurse and guardian. If Mr. Sheldon suspects your knowledge of +the past, and I have little doubt that he does"--a look in the +housekeeper's face told him that he was right--"you are of all people +best fitted to guard that dear girl. Your part will not be a difficult +one. If we dare remove her, we will remove her beyond the reach of that +man's power. If not, your task will be to prevent food or medicine, that +his hand has touched, from approaching her lips. You _can_ do it. It will +only be a question of tact and firmness. We shall have one of the +greatest doctors in London for our guide. Will you come?" + +"I don't believe my master poisoned his friend," said Nancy Woolper, +doggedly; "nor I won't believe it. You can't force me to think bad of him +I loved when he was little and helpless, and I carried him in my arms. +What are you and your fine London doctor, Mr. Burkham--he was but a poor +fondy, as I mind well--that I should take your word against my master? If +that young man thought as Mr. Halliday was being poisoned, why didn't he +speak out, like a man, then? It's a fine piece of work to bring it up +against my master eleven years afterwards. As for young missy, she's as +sweet a young creature as ever lived, and I'd do anything to serve her. +But I won't think, and I can't think, that my master would hurt a hair of +her head. What would he gain by it?" + +"He has settled that with himself. He has gained by the death of Tom +Halliday, and depend upon it he has made his plans to gain by the death +of Tom Halliday's daughter." + +"I won't believe it," the old woman repeated in the same dogged tone. + +For such resistance as this Mr. Hawkehurst was in no manner prepared. He +looked at his watch. The half hour was nearly gone. There was little more +time for argument. + +"Great Heaven!" he said to himself, "what argument can I employ to +influence this woman's obdurate heart?" + +What argument, indeed? He knew of none stronger than those he had used. +He stood for some moments battled and helpless, staring absently at the +face of his watch, and wondering what he was to do next. + +As Valentine Hawkehurst stood thus, there came a loud ringing of the +bell, following quickly on the sound of wheels grinding against the +kerbstone. + +Mrs. Woolper opened the door and looked out into the hall. + +"It's master!" cried one of the maids, emerging from the disorganized +dining-room, "and missus, and Miss Halliday, and Mass Paget--and all the +house topsy-turvy!" + +"Charlotte here!" exclaimed Valentine. "You are dreaming, girl!" + +"And you told me she was dying!" said Mrs. Woolper, with a look of +triumph. "What becomes of your fine story now?" + +"It _is_ Miss Halliday!" cried the housemaid, as she opened the door. +"And O my!" she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, +"how bad she do look!" + +Valentine ran out to the gate. Yes; there were two cabs, one laden with +luggage, the two cabmen busy about the doors of the vehicles, a little +group of stragglers waiting to see the invalid young lady alight. It was +the next best thing to a funeral. + +"O, don't she look white!" cried a shrill girl with a baby in her arms. + +"In a decline, I dessay, pore young thing," said a matron, in an audible +aside to her companion. + +Valentine dashed amongst the group of stragglers. He pushed away the girl +with the baby, the housemaid who had run out behind him, Mr. Sheldon, the +cabman, every one; and in the next moment Charlotte was in his arms, and +he was carrying her into the house. + +He felt as if he had been in a dream; and all that exceptional force +which the dreamer sometimes feels he felt in this crisis. He carried his +dear burden into the study, followed by Mr. Sheldon and Diana Paget. The +face that dropped upon his shoulder showed deadly white against his +dark-blue coat; the hand which he clasped in his, ah, how listless and +feeble! + +"Valentine!" the girl said, in a low drowsy voice, lifting her eyes to +his face, "is this you? I have been so ill, so tired; and they would +bring me away. To be near the doctors, papa says. Do you think any +doctors will be able to cure me?" + +"Yes, dear, with God's help. I am glad he has brought you here. And now +I must run away," he said; when he had placed Charlotte in Mr. Sheldon's +arm-chair, "for a very little while, darling. I have seen a doctor, a +man in whom I have more confidence than I have in Dr. Doddleson. I am +going to fetch him, my dearest," he added tenderly, as he felt the +feeble hand cling to his; "I shall not be long. Do you think I shall not +hurry back to you? My dearest one, when I return, it will be to stay +with you--for ever." + +She was too ill to note the significance of his words; she only knew that +they gave her comfort. He hurried from the room. In less than an hour he +must be at the London Bridge terminus, or in all probability the five +o'clock train would carry Dr. Jedd to St. Leonards; and on Dr. Jedd his +chief hope rested. + +"Do you believe me now?" he asked of Mrs. Woolper as he went out +into the hall. + +"I do," she answered in a whisper; "and I will do what you want." + +She took his hand in her wrinkled horny palm and grasped it firmly. He +felt that in this firm pressure there was a promise sacred as any oath +ever registered on earth. He met Mr. Sheldon on the threshold, and +passed him without a word. The time might come in which he would have to +mask his thoughts, and stoop to the hateful hypocrisy of civility to +this man; but he had not yet schooled himself to do this. At the gate he +met George Sheldon. + +"What's up now?" asked the lawyer. + +"Did you send your message?" + +"Yes; I telegraphed to Phil." + +"It has been trouble wasted. He has brought her home." + +"What does that mean?" + +"Who knows? I pray God that he may have overreached himself. I have set a +watch upon my dear love, and no further harm shall come to her. I am +going to fetch Dr. Jedd." + +"And you are not afraid of Phil's smelling a rat?" + +"I am afraid of nothing that he can do henceforward. If it is not too +late to save her, I will save her." + +He waited for no more, but jumped into the cab. "London Bridge terminus! +You must get me there by a quarter to five," he said to the driver. + +George Sheldon went no further than the gate of his brother's domain. + +"I wonder whether the Harold's Hill people will send that telegram after +him," he thought. "It'll be rather unpleasant for Fred Orcott if they do. +But it's ten to one they won't. The normal condition of every seaside +lodging-house keeper in one degree removed from idiotcy." + + + + +Book the Ninth. + + + +THROUGH THE FURNACE + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +SOMETHING TOO MUCH. + +"Is that young man mad?" asked Philip Sheldon, as he went into his study +immediately after Valentine had passed him in the hall. + +The question was not addressed to any particular individual; and Diana, +who was standing near the door by which Mr. Sheldon entered, took upon +herself to answer it. + +"I think he is very anxious," she said in a half whisper. + +"What brought him here just now? He did not know we were coming home." + +Mrs. Woolper answered this question. + +"He came for something for Miss Charlotte, sir; some books as she'd had +from the library. They'd not been sent back; and he came to see about +their being sent." + +"What books?" murmured Charlotte. But a pressure from Mrs. Woolper's hand +prevented her saying more. + +"I never encountered any one with so little self-command," said Mr. +Sheldon. "If he is going to rush in and out of my house in that manner, I +must really put a stop to his visits altogether. I cannot suffer that +kind of thing. For Charlotte's welfare quiet is indispensable; and if Mr. +Hawkehurst's presence is to bring noise and excitement, Mr. Hawkehurst +must not cross this threshold." + +He spoke with suppressed anger; with such evident effort to restrain his +anger, that it would have seemed as if his indignation against Valentine +was no common wrath. + +Charlotte caught his last words. + +"Dear papa," she pleaded in her faint voice, "pray do not be angry with +Valentine; he is so anxious about me." + +"I am not angry with him; but while you are ill, I will have quiet--at +any price." + +"Then I'm sure you should not have brought Charlotte home," exclaimed +Georgy, in tones of wailing and lamentation; "for of all the miseries in +life, there is nothing worse than coming home in the very midst of a +general cleaning. It was agreed between Ann Woolper and me that there +should be a general cleaning while we were away at the seaside. We were +to be away a fortnight, and everything was to be as neat as a new pin +when we came home. But here we are back in less than a week, and +everything at sixes-and-sevens. Where we are to dine I know not; and as +for the carpets, they are all away at the beating-place, and Ann tells me +they won't be home till Friday." + +"We can exist without carpets," answered Mr. Sheldon, in a hard dry +voice. "I suppose they are seeing to Miss Halliday's room?" he added, +addressing himself to Mrs. Woolper. "Why don't you go and look after +them, Nancy?" + +"Sarah knows what she has to do. The bed-rooms was done first; and +there's not much amiss in Miss Charlotte's room." + +Mr. Sheldon dropped wearily into a chair. He looked pale and haggard. +Throughout the journey he had been unfailing in his attention to the +invalid; but the journey had been fatiguing; for Charlotte Halliday was +very ill--so ill as to be unable to avoid inflicting trouble upon +others. The weariness--the dizziness--the dull intervals of +semi-consciousness--the helpless tottering walk, which was like the +walk of intoxication rather than ordinary weakness--the clouded +sight--all the worst symptoms of this nameless disease, had every hour +grown more alarming. + +Against this journey to London Mrs. Sheldon and Diana had pleaded--Georgy +with as much earnestness as she could command; Diana as forcibly as she +dared argue a question in which her voice had so little weight. + +But upon this point Mr. Sheldon was adamant. + +"She will be better off in London," he said resolutely. "This trip to the +seaside was a whim of my wife's; and, like most other whims of my wife's, +it has entailed trouble and expense upon me. Of course I know that Georgy +did it for the best," he added, in reply to a reproachful "O Philip!" +from Mrs. Sheldon. "But the whole business has been a mistake. No sooner +are we comfortably settled down here, than Hawkehurst takes it into his +head to be outrageously alarmed about Charlotte, and wants to bring +half-a-dozen doctors round the poor girl's bed, to her inevitable peril; +for in an illness which begins and ends in mental depression, all +appearance of alarm is calculated to do mischief." + +Having said this, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in making arrangements for the +journey. A carriage was ordered; all possible preparations were made for +the comfort of the invalid--everything that care or kindness could do was +done; but the cruelty of the removal was not the less obvious. Georgy +wailed piteously about the sixes-and-sevens to which they were being +taken. Diana cared nothing about sixes-and-sevens; but she felt supreme +indignation against Charlotte's stepfather, and she did not attempt to +conceal her feelings. + +Nor was it without an effort to oppose Mr. Sheldon's authority that Miss +Paget succumbed to the force of circumstances. She appealed to his wife. + +"Dear Mrs. Sheldon, I beg you not to suffer Lotta's removal," she said +earnestly. "You do not know how ill she is--nor can Mr. Sheldon know, or +he would not take such a step. As her mother, your authority is superior +to his; you have but to say that she shall not be taken from this house +in her present state of prostration and sickness." + +"I have only to say!" cried Georgy, piteously. "O Diana, how can you say +such a thing? What would be Mr. Sheldon's feelings if I were to stand up +against him, and declare that Charlotte should not be moved? And he so +anxious too, and so clever. I'm sure his conduct about my poor dear Lotta +is positively beautiful. I never saw such anxiety. Why, he has grown ten +years older in his looks since the beginning of her illness. People go on +about stepfather this, and stepfather that, until a poor young widow is +almost frightened to marry again. But I don't believe a real father ever +was more thoughtful or more careful about a real daughter than Philip has +been about Lotta. And what a poor return it would be if I were to oppose +him now, when he says that the removal will be for Charlotte's good, and +that she will be near clever doctors--if she should require clever +doctors! You don't know how experienced he is, and how thoughtful. I +shall never forget his kindness to poor Tom." + +"Yes," exclaimed Miss Paget impatiently, "but Mr. Halliday died." + +"O Diana," whimpered Georgy, "I did not think you could be so unkind as +to remind me of that." + +"I only want to remind you that Mr. Sheldon is not infallible." + +Mr. Sheldon entered the room at this juncture, and Diana left it, +passionately indignant against the poor weak creature, to whom no crisis, +no danger, could give strength of mind or will. + +"A sheep would make some struggle for her lamb," she thought, angrily. +"Mrs. Sheldon is lower than a sheep." + +It was the first time she had thought unkindly of this weak soul, and her +anger soon melted to pity for the powerless nature which Mr. Sheldon held +in such supreme control. She made no further attempt at resistance after +this; but went to Charlotte's room and prepared for the journey. + +"O, why am I to be moved, dear?" the girl asked piteously. "I am too ill +to be moved." + +"It is for your good, darling. Mr. Sheldon wants you to be near the great +physicians, who can give you health and strength." + +"There are no physicians who can do that. Let me stay here, Di. Beg papa +to let me stay here." + +Diana hid her face upon the invalid's shoulder. Her tears choked her. To +repress her grief was agony scarcely endurable. But she did hide all +trace of anger and sorrow, and cheered the helpless traveller throughout +the weariness of the journey. + + * * * * * + +Charlotte was lying on a sofa in her bedroom, with Mrs. Woolper in +attendance upon her, when Dr. Jedd arrived. It was a quarter to six, and +the low western sunshine flooded the room. + +The physician came with Valentine, and did not ask to see Mr. Sheldon +before going to his patient's room. He told the housemaid who admitted +him to show the way to Miss Halliday's room. + +"The nurse is there, I suppose?" he said to the girl. + +"Yes, sir; leastways, Mrs. Woolper." + +"That will do." + +Mr. Sheldon heard the voice in the hall, and came out of the library as +the doctor mounted the step of the stairs. + +"Who is this? What is this?" he asked of Valentine Hawkehurst. + +"I told you I was not satisfied with Dr. Doddleson's opinion," answered +the young man coolly. "This gentleman is here by appointment with me." + +"And pray by what right do you bring a doctor of your own choosing to +visit my stepdaughter without previous consultation with me?" + +"By the right of my love for her. I am not satisfied as to the medical +treatment your stepdaughter has received in this house, Mr. Sheldon, and +I want to be satisfied. Miss Halliday is something more than your +stepdaughter, remember: she is my promised wife. Dr. Jedd's opinion will +be more assuring to me than the opinion of Dr. Doddleson." + +At the sound of Dr. Jedd's name Mr. Sheldon started slightly. It was a +name he knew only too well--a name he had seen among the medical +witnesses in the great Fryar trial, the record of which had for him +possessed a hideous fascination. He had fancied himself in the poisoner +Fryar's place; and the fancy had sent an icy chill through his veins. But +in the next minute he had said to himself, "I am not such a reckless fool +as that man Fryar was; and have run no such risks as he ran." + +At the name of Jedd the same icy shiver ran through his veins again. His +tone of suppressed anger changed to a tone of civility which was almost +sycophantic. + +"I have the honour to know Dr. Jedd by repute very well indeed, and I +withdraw my objection to your course of proceeding, my dear Hawkehurst; +though I am sure Dr. Jedd will agree with me that such a course is +completely against all professional etiquette, and that Dr. Doddleson +will have the right to consider himself aggrieved." + +"There are cases in which one hardly considers professional etiquette. I +shall be very happy to meet Dr. Doddleson to-morrow morning. But as Mr. +Hawkehurst was very anxious that I should see Miss Halliday to-night, I +consented to waive all ceremony, and come with him on the spot." + +"I cannot blame his anxiety to secure so valuable an opinion. I only +wonder what lucky star guided him to so excellent an adviser." + +Mr. Sheldon looked from Dr. Jedd to Valentine Hawkehurst as he said this. +The physician's face told him no more than he might have learnt from a +blank sheet of paper. Valentine's face was dark and gloomy; but that +gloomy darkness might mean no more than natural grief. + +"I will take you to my stepdaughter's room at once," he said to the +physician. + +"I think it will be better for me to see the young lady alone," the +doctor answered coolly: "that is to say, in the presence of her nurse +only." + +"As you please," Mr. Sheldon replied. + +He went back to his study. Georgy was sitting there, whimpering in a +feeble way at intervals; and near her sat Diana, silent and gloomy. A +settled gloom, as of the grave itself, brooded over the house. Mr. +Sheldon flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He had +sneered at the inconvenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was +beginning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two women +in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as if there was no room +in the house in which he could be alone; and just now he had bitter need +of solitary meditation. + +"Let them arrange the dining-room somehow, carpet or no carpet," he said +to his wife. "We must have some room to dine in; and I can't have you +here, Georgy; I have letters to write." + +Mrs. Sheldon and Diana were not slow to take the hint. + +"I'm sure I don't want to be here, or anywhere," exclaimed Georgy in +piteous accents; "I feel so miserable about Charlotte, that if I could +lie down and die, it would be a comfort to me. And it really seems a +mockery having dinner at such a time. It's just as it was during poor +Tom's illness; there were fowls and all sorts of things cooked, and no +one ever ate them." + +"For God's sake go away!" cried Mr. Sheldon passionately; "your perpetual +clack is torture to me." + +Georgy hurried from the room, followed closely by Diana. + +"Did you ever see any one more anxious?" Mrs. Sheldon asked, with +something like pride. + +"I would rather see Mr. Sheldon less anxious!" Diana answered gravely. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +DR. JEDD'S OPINION. + +Alone, Philip Sheldon breathed more freely. He paced the room, waiting +for the appearance of the doctor; and with almost every turn he looked at +the clock upon the chimneypiece. + +How intolerable seemed the slow progress of the moments! How long that +man Jedd was staying in the sick-room! And yet not long; it was he, +Philip Sheldon, who was losing count of time. Where was Valentine? He +opened the door of the room, and looked out. Yes, there was a figure on +the stairs. The lover was waiting the physician's verdict. + +A door on the landing above opened, and the step of the Doctor sounded on +the upper flight. Mr. Sheldon waited for Dr. Jedd's appearance. + +"I shall be glad to hear your opinion," he said quietly; and the Doctor +followed him into the study. Valentine followed the Doctor, to Mr. +Sheldon's evident surprise. + +"Mr. Hawkehurst is very anxious to hear what I have to say," said Dr. +Jedd; "and I really see no objection to his hearing it." + +"If you have no objection, I can have none," Mr. Sheldon answered. "I +must confess, your course of proceeding appears to me altogether +exceptional, and--" + +"Yes, Mr. Sheldon; but then, you see, the case is altogether an +exceptional case," said the physician, gravely. + +"You think so?" + +"Decidedly. The young lady is in extreme danger. Yes, Mr. Sheldon, in +extreme danger. The mistake involved in her removal to-day is a mistake +which I cannot denounce too strongly. If you had wanted to kill your +stepdaughter, you could scarcely have pursued a more likely course for +the attainment of your object. No doubt you were actuated by the most +amiable motives. I can only regret that you should have acted without +competent advice." + +"I believed myself to be acting for the best," replied Philip Sheldon, in +a strange mechanical way. + +He was trying to estimate the true meaning of the Doctor's address. Was +he merely expressing anger against an error of ignorance or stupidity, or +was there a more fatal significance in his words? + +"You overwhelm me," the stockbroker said presently; "you positively +overwhelm me by your view of my daughter's condition. Dr. Doddleson +apprehended no danger. He saw our dear girl on Sunday morning--yesterday +morning," added Mr. Sheldon, wonder-stricken to find that the interval +was so brief between the time in which he had walked with Valentine and +Dr. Doddleson in the garden at Harold's Hill and the present moment. To +Valentine it seemed still more wonderful. What a bridgeless gulf between +yesterday morning and to-night! All his knowledge of this man Sheldon, +all the horror involved in Tom Halliday's death, had come upon him in +that brief span. + +"I should like to see Dr. Doddleson's prescriptions," said Dr. Jedd, with +grave politeness. + +Mr. Sheldon produced them from his pocket-book with an unshaken hand. No +change of countenance, no tremulous hand, no broken voice, betrayed his +apprehension. The one distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent, +half-mechanical tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than +in the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, he was +at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. "The chances of +defeat, so much; the chances of detection--?" + +A rapid survey of his position told him what those chances were. +Detection by Dr. Jedd? Yes. That had come to him already perhaps. But +would any actual harm to him come of such detection? + +He calculated the chances for and against this--and the result was in his +favour. That Dr. Jedd should form certain opinions of Miss Halliday's +case was one thing; that he should give public utterance to those +opinions was another thing. + +"What can his opinion matter to me?" Mr. Sheldon asked himself; "opinion +cannot touch me in a case where there is no such thing as certainty. He +has seen the dilatation of the pupil--even that old fool Doddleson saw +it--and has taken fright. But no jury in England would hang a man on such +evidence as that; or if a jury could be found to put the rope round a +man's neck, the British public and the British press would be pretty sure +to get the rope taken off again." + +"Chloric aether, spirits of ammonia--hum, ha, hum--yes," muttered Dr. +Jedd, looking at one prescription. "Quinine, yes; aqua pura," he +murmured, looking at another. + +He threw them aside with a half-contemptuous gesture, and then took up a +pen and began to write. + +"My mode of treatment will be quite different from that adopted by Dr. +Doddleson," he said; "but I apprehend no difficulty in bringing that +gentleman round to my view of the case when we meet." + +As he wrote his prescription Philip Sheldon rose and looked over his +shoulder. + +The form of the prescription told him that Dr. Jedd knew--all! He had +suspected this from the first, and the confirmation of this suspicion did +not shake him. He grew firmer, indeed; for now he knew on what ground he +was standing, and what forces were arrayed against him. + +"I really do not understand the basis of your treatment," he said, still +looking over the physician's shoulder. + +Dr. Jedd turned his chair with a sudden movement, and faced him. + +"Am I talking to Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker, or Mr. Sheldon the +surgeon-dentist?" he asked. + +_This_ was a blow. This allusion to the past was a sharper stroke than +any that Philip Sheldon had before received. He looked at Valentine; from +Valentine to the physician. What did it mean, this mention of the past? +That blabbing fool George had talked to his friend of the days in +Fitzgeorge Street, no doubt; and Valentine had blabbed Mr. Sheldon's +antecedents to the physician. + +Was this what it all meant? Or did it mean more than this? Whatever it +might mean, he faced the hidden danger, and met the uncertainties of his +position as calmly as he met its certainties. + +"I have no desire to interfere with your treatment," he said, very +quietly; "but I have some knowledge of the Pharmacopoeia, and I confess +myself quite at a loss to understand your prescription." + +"Dr. Doddleson will understand it when he has heard my opinion. There is +no time to be lost--Mr. Hawkehurst, will you take this to the chemist, +and wait for the medicine? Miss Halliday cannot take it too soon. I shall +be here to-morrow at nine o'clock.--If you wish me to see Dr. Doddleson, +Mr. Sheldon, you will perhaps arrange an appointment with him for that +hour." + +"It is rather an early hour." + +"No hour is too early in a case attended with so much danger. Perhaps it +will be as well for me to call on Dr. Doddleson as I drive home. I shall +make a point of seeing Miss Halliday twice a day. I find your housekeeper +a very sensible person. She will remain in close attendance upon the +sick-room; and I must beg that there is no quackery--no home-made +remedies. I have given your housekeeper all directions as to treatment +and diet, and she has my orders to allow no one but herself in the +invalid's room. There is a marked tendency to delirium, and quiet is +indispensable." + +"I have said as much myself," answered Mr. Sheldon. + +"Mr. Hawkehurst will undertake to see to the making-up of my +prescriptions," continued Dr. Jedd, as he drew on his gloves. "He is very +anxious about the young lady, and it will afford him some relief of mind +to be employed in her service. No, thanks," he said, putting aside Mr. +Sheldon's hand as that gentleman offered him his fee. "I have already +received my honorarium from Mr. Hawkehurst." + +There was no more to be said. The physician wished the two men good +evening, and returned to his carriage, to be driven home to dinner by way +of Plantagenet Square, where he saw Dr. Doddleson, and appointed to meet +him next day, much to the delight of that individual, who was proud to be +engaged in a case with the great Jedd. + +Valentine left the house on the heels of the Doctor. He came back in +about twenty minutes with the medicine. He did not go to the principal +gate, but to a little side gate, near the offices of the gothic villa--a +gate to which butchers and bakers came with their wares in the morning. + +"I want to see Miss Paget," he said to the maid who answered his summons; +"and I want to see her without disturbing Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon. Do you +know where to find her?" + +"Yes, sir; she's in her own room. I took her a cup of tea there ten +minutes ago. She's got a headache with fretting about our poor young +lady, and she won't go down to dinner with master and missus." + +"Will you ask her to step out here and speak to me for a few minutes?" + +"Won't you come indoors and see her, sir?" + +"No; I'd rather see her in the garden." + +It was still daylight here, but it was growing shadowy among the avenues +in Kensington Gardens. The gate near which Valentine waited was not to be +seen from the windows of dining or drawing-room. + +The housemaid ran off to summon Miss Paget; and in less than five minutes +Diana appeared, dressed in her hat and garden jacket. + +"Will you come out into the road with me, dear?" asked Valentine. "I have +something serious to say to you." + +"And I am so anxious to hear what the Doctor has said," answered Diana, +as she took Valentine's arm. + +The road before the Lawn was very quiet at this hour of the evening, and +here they were safely beyond Mr. Sheldon's ken. + +"Tell me the Doctor's opinion, Valentine," Diana said, eagerly. "Does he +think the case very serious?" + +"He does. It is more serious than you or I could have imagined, if +Providence had not helped me to discover the truth." + +"What do you mean, Valentine?" + +He gave her in brief the story of his day's work. She listened to him +breathlessly, but uttered no exclamation until his story was finished. + +"It is most horrible," she said at last; "but I believe it is most true. +There has been so much in that man's conduct that has mystified me; and +_this_ explains all. But what earthly motive can have prompted this +hideous crime?" + +"He believes that he has a beneficial interest in her death. I cannot +fully understand his motive; but, rely upon it, there is a motive, and a +sufficient one. And I have let that man delude me into belief in his +honesty after I had been warned against him! But there is no time for +regrets. Diana, I look to you to help me in saving my dear love." + +"It is not too late to save her?" + +"Dr. Jedd will commit himself to no positive statement. He tells me she +is in danger, but he does not refuse all hope. Now listen, my dear. In +that house I have only two people to help me--Ann Woolper and yourself. +Ann Woolper I hold only by a feeble bond. I think she will be true to us; +but I am not sure of her. Sheldon's influence over her is a powerful one; +and God knows what concession he might extort from her. She is the +ostensible guardian of Charlotte's room; you must contrive to be the real +guardian. You must keep custody over the custodian. How is your room +situated in relation to Charlotte's room?" + +"The doors of the two rooms are exactly opposite." + +"Providence favours us there. Can you keep watch over Charlotte's door +from your room without making your guardianship too apparent?" + +"I can." + +"Day and night?" + +"Day and night." + +"God bless you, dear! Her life may be saved by your fidelity." + +"I would do as much to render her a smaller service." + +"My dear girl! And now go back to the house. Here is the medicine. You +will give that into Mrs. Woolper's hands; she has received her +instructions from Dr. Jedd, and those instructions leave no room for +doubt. If she permits Sheldon to tamper with the medicine or the food of +her patient, she will be the wilful accomplice of a murderer. I think she +may be trusted." + +"I will watch her." + +"The charge of procuring the medicine is mine. I shall come to this house +many times in the course of every day; but I am bound to prepare myself +for the hour in which Mr. Sheldon may forbid me his house. In that event +I shall come to this gate. I suppose the servants would stand by me if +you pleaded for me?" + +"I am sure they would." + +"And now, dear, go; the medicine is wanted. I shall come back in a few +hours to inquire if there is any change for the better. Go." + +They had returned to the gate ere this. He grasped the hand which she +held out to him, and stood by the little gate watching her till she had +disappeared through the door of the servants' quarters. When the door +closed, he walked slowly away. He had done all that it was possible for +him to do, and now came his worst misery. There was nothing left for him +but to wait the issue of events. + +What was he to do? Go home to his lodgings--eat, drink, sleep? Was it +possible for him to eat or to sleep while that precious life trembled in +the balance? He walked slowly along the endless roads and terraces in a +purposeless way. Careless people pushed against him, or he pushed against +them; children brushed past him as they ran. What a noisy, busy, +clattering world it seemed! And she lay dying! O, the droning, dreary +organs, and the hackneyed, common tunes, how excruciating they were to +him to-night! + +He emerged into the high road by-and-by, in all the bustle and riot of +Notting Hill. The crowded shops, the clamorous people, seemed strange to +him. It was like the clamour of a foreign city. He walked on past the +bustle and riot, by the quieter terraces near Holland Park, and still +held on to Shepherd's Bush, where he went into a little public-house and +called for some brandy. + +There was a bench on one side of the space in front of the bar, and +towards this he pushed his way. + +"Where are you shoving to, my young swell?" growled a sturdy cabman, +indignant at the outrage inflicted by Valentine's elbows; but in the next +moment the sturdy cabman dashed suddenly forward and caught the young +swell in his strong arms. + +"My eye, young un!" he cried; "where do you want to go to? Here, some one +bring a mug of cold water: I'm blest if he ain't in a fit!" + +Happily it was no fit, only a dead faint into which Mr. Hawkehurst had +fallen. He came back to consciousness presently, after a few spoonfuls of +brandy had been forced into his mouth, and looked about him with a +helpless stare. + +"I'm jiggered if I don't believe he's fainted for the want of wittles!" +cried the cabman. "They keeps up till they drop, sometimes, these seedy +swells--walks about, lookin' like so many Dossays, on a hempty stomach. +Here, some one bring a plate o' cold meat, and look sharp about it. I'll +stand sam." + +Valentine looked up with a faint smile. + +"And I'll stand sam for anything you like to order, my friend," he said, +holding out his hand to the good-natured cabman. "I've eaten nothing +since last night; but I haven't fasted for want of money. There are worse +troubles than an empty pocket,--and I'm not unacquainted with _that_." + +"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, sheepishly, very much +ashamed of his benevolence; "but, you see, it ain't the fust time I've +seen a swell come to the pavement with a cropper, in consequence of +having gone it too fast, and cleaned hisself out, in a manner of +speaking." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +NON DORMIT JUDAS. + +The summer darkness closed round the Bayswater villa, but of sleep there +was little for any one in that household during this sad night. Is there +not, in almost every household, a memory of such days and nights--dread +intervals in which the common course of life and time seems to be +suspended, and all the interests of the universe hang upon the fitful +breath of one dear sufferer? + +Lonely were the watchers in Mr. Sheldon's house. Georgy was in her own +room, forbidden to disturb the invalid by her restless presence--now +lying down, now pacing to and fro, now praying a little, now crying a +little--the very ideal of helpless misery. + +In the sick-room there was no one but the invalid and Ann Woolper. In +the room opposite watched Diana Paget, her door ajar, her senses +sharpened by anxiety, quick to hear the faintest sound of footfall on +the stairs, or to feel the slightest vibration from stealthily opened +door on the story below. + +Alone in the study sat Philip Sheldon, at the table where he was +accustomed to write--a blank sheet of paper before him, a pen held +loosely in his outstretched hand, and his eyes fixed in an unseeing gaze +upon the bookcase opposite--the living image of care. Now that the +turmoil of the day was done, and there was silence in the house, he had +set himself to face his position. It was no trifling task which he had to +perform. Not one difficulty, or one set of difficulties, had he to meet +and master. The armed enemies up-springing from the dragon's teeth which +he had sown were not to be set fighting amongst themselves, nor were they +to be smashed by any rocks that he could hurl amongst them. They stood +around him in an awful circle, and turn which way he would, he saw the +same appalling figure, armed to the teeth, and invincible as death. + +What had he to fear? + +Detection of a past crime? No, that was a fool's terror which shook him +at the sound of Tom Halliday's name--a child's fear of the nursery bogie. +Detection in the present was more to be dreaded. The work that he had +done was, according to his belief, work that could not be proved against +him. But there are crimes of which to be accused is to be condemned. +Lawyers may plead, and juries may acquit; but the fiat of public opinion +goes forth against the suspected wretch, and on _his_ forehead for ever +shows the dark brand of Cain. + +For the criminal of almost every shade of colour, save this one dread +hue, society has a sanctuary and earth a refuge. The forger may find a +circle in which the signing of another man's name, under the pressure of +circumstances, is held to be a misfortune rather than an offence. The +swindler has the gentlemanly brotherhood and sisterhood of Macaire for +his family, and need never be lonely. The thief may dance away his jovial +nights among kindred spirits, and be carried to his grave by sorrowing +fellow-artists. The coiner may be jolly in his hiding-place among his +chosen band of brother coiners. But for the murderer there is no such +thing as human sympathy; and, when the blood of Nancy dyes his cruel +hand, Bill Sykes may thank God if he has a dog that will follow him to +his wretched end, for from mankind he can hope nothing. + +Mr. Sheldon did not contemplate his position from any sentimental point +of view; but he told himself that to be suspected of having poisoned his +friend, and to be accused of poisoning, or attempting to poison, his +daughter, would be ruin--ruin social and commercial, ruin complete and +irretrievable. + +And having faced one of these dread armed antagonists, he passed on to +another shadowy enemy. + +What if Charlotte recovered, and he escaped the taint of uttered +suspicion--for Dr. Jedd's private opinion he cared very little--what +then? + +Then the grim antagonist lifted his visor, and showed him the countenance +of Commercial Disgrace. + +Unless within the next few weeks he could command from eight to ten +thousand pounds, his disgrace as a member of the Stock Exchange was +inevitable. Charlotte's death would give him the means of raising as much +upon the policies of assurance obtained by her, and which, by the terms +of her will, he would inherit. The life-insurance people might be +somewhat slow to settle his claims; but he had all possible facilities +for the raising of money upon any tangible security, and he could count +upon immediate cash, in the event of Charlotte's death. + +But what if she should not die? What if this nameless languor, this +mysterious atrophy, taken vigorously in hand by Dr. Jedd, should be +vanquished, and the girl should live? + +What indeed? A sharp spasm contracted the stockbroker's hard cold face as +he pictured to himself the result of failure. + +He saw the crowd of busy faces in the House, and heard the low hum of +many voices, and the dull sound of the big half-glass doors swinging to +and fro, and the constant tread of hurrying feet. He heard the buzz of +voices and the tramp of feet stop as suddenly as if that busy tide of +human life had been arrested by an enchanter's wand. The enchanter is no +other than the head-waiter of the Stock Exchange, who takes his position +by a stand in the midst of that great meeting-place, and removes his hat. + +After that sudden silence comes a faint sound of anxious whisperings; and +then again a second silence, still more profound, prevails in that +assembly. Three times, with wooden hammer sounding dull against the +woodwork of his stand, the waiter raps his awful rap. To some it is the +call of doom. The commercial Nemesis hides her awful countenance. Slow +and solemn sound those three deliberate strokes of the wooden hammer. You +can hear the stertorous breathing of an apoplectic stockbroker, the short +panting respiration of some eager speculator--the rest is silence. And +then the voice of the waiter--proxy for the commercial Nemesis--calmly +enunciates the dread decree. + +"Philip Sheldon begs to inform the members of the House that he cannot +comply with his bargains." + +A sudden flutter of the leaves of many note-books follows that awful +announcement. Voices rise loud in united utterance of surprise or +indignation. The doors swing to and fro, as hurrying members dash in and +out to scan the market and ascertain how far they may be affected by this +unlooked-for failure. + +This was the scene which the watcher pictured to himself; and for him +Fate could wear no aspect more terrible. Respectability, solvency, +success--these were the idols to which he had given worship and tribute +in all the days of his life. To propitiate these inexorable ones he had +sacrificed all the dearest and best blessings which earth and heaven +offer to mankind. Rest or happiness, as other men consider these +blessings, he had never known; the sense of triumph in success of the +present, the feverish expectation of success in the future--these had +stood to him in the place of love and hope, pleasure and idlesse, all the +joys and comforts of this lower world, and all the holy dreams of purer +pleasures in a world to come. + +One vague brief thought of all that he had sacrificed flashed across +his brain; and swift upon his track followed the thought of what he +stood to lose. + +Something more than his position upon the Stock Exchange was at stake. He +had done desperate things in the vain hope of sustaining that position +against the destroying sweep of Fortune's turning tide. Bills were afloat +which he must meet, or stand before the world a detected forger,--bills +drawn upon companies that were shadowy as the regions of their supposed +operations. Bills amounting to five thousand pounds, drawn, upon the +Honduras Mahogany Company, Limited; other bills amounting to upwards of +three thousand pounds, against the Pennsylvanian Anthracite Coal +Corporation, Limited. The sum he might raise on the policies of insurance +would about cover these bills; and, simultaneously with their withdrawal, +fresh bills might be floated, and the horse-leech cry of the brokers for +contango might be satisfied until there came a reaction in the City, and +the turning tide should float him into some harbour of safety. Beyond +this harbour shone a splendid beacon, the dead girl's inheritance--his, +to claim by right of the same will that would give him the sum insured +upon her life. + +Without this immediate ready money there was no extraction from the +hideous labyrinth. His position had been already too long sustained by +bills of exchange. There were people in the City who wanted, in vulgar +parlance, to see the colour of his money. He knew this--and knew how +frail the tenure by which he held his position, and how dire the crash +which would hurl him down to ruin. + +After the proclamation of his inability to meet his differences--the +Deluge: and, looking gloomily athwart the flood and tempest, he saw +neither ark nor Ararat. + +Charlotte's death was the one chance of redemption; and to that event he +looked as to a figure in a mathematical proposition. Of this girl +herself, with all her wealth of beauty and goodness, of hope and love, he +had scarcely any definite idea. She had so long been no more to him than +an important figure in the mathematics of his life, that he had lost the +power to behold her in any other light. + +The hardness of his nature was something lower than absolute cruelty of +heart. It was less human than the half-insane ferocity of a Nero. It was +a calm indifference to the waste of human life, which, displayed upon a +larger field of operation, would have made a monster cold and passionless +as Sphinx or Chimaera. + +"I must see Ann Woolper," he said to himself, presently, "she will not +dare to exclude me from that room." + +He listened to the striking of the Bayswater clocks. Two o'clock. Within +and without the house reigned a profound silence. The room immediately +over Mr. Sheldon's study was Charlotte's room, and here there had been +for a long time no sound of life or movement. + +"Asleep, I dare say," muttered Mr. Sheldon, "invalid and nurse both." + +He exchanged his boots for slippers, which he kept in a little cupboard +below the bookshelves, among old newspapers, and went softly from the +room. The gas was burning dimly on the stairs and on the landing above. +He opened the door of the invalid's room softly, and went in. + +Mrs. Woolper was seated beside the bed. She looked up at him with +unwinking eyes. + +"I thought you was abed, sir," she said. + +"No; I am too anxious to sleep." + +"I think every one is anxious, sir," Mrs. Woolper answered, gravely. + +"How is your patient?" + +The pretty white curtains of the little brass Arabian bedstead were +drawn. + +"She is asleep, sir. She sleeps a great deal. The doctor said that was +only natural." + +"She has taken her medicine, I suppose?" said Mr. Sheldon. + +He glanced round the room as he asked this question, but could see no +trace of medicine-bottle or glass. + +"Yes, sir; she has taken it twice, the poor dear." + +"Let me look at the medicine." + +"The strange doctor said as I was to let no one touch it, sir." + +"Very likely; but that direction doesn't apply to me." + +"He said no one, sir." + +"You are an old fool!" muttered Mr. Sheldon, savagely. + +"Ah no, sir," the housekeeper answered, with a profound sigh; "I am wiser +than I was when poor Mr. Halliday died." + +This answer, and the sigh, and the look of solemn sadness which +accompanied it, told him that this woman knew all. She had suspected him +long ago; but against her unsupported suspicion the mere force of his +character had prevailed. She was wiser now; for on this occasion +suspicion was confirmed by the voice of science. + +He stood for a few minutes looking at his old nurse, with a dark moody +face. What could he feel except supreme indignation against this woman, +who dared to oppose him when he had the best right to rely on her +faithful service? She had promised him her fidelity, and at the first +hint from a stranger she coolly deserted him and went over to the enemy. + +"Do you mean to say that you refuse to let me look at the medicine which +you have been giving to my stepdaughter?" he asked. + +"I mean to say that I will obey the orders given me by the strange +doctor," the old woman answered, with a calm sadness of tone, "even if it +turns you against me--you that have given me a comfortable home when +there was nothing before me but the workhouse; you that I carried in my +arms forty years ago. If it was anything less than her dear life that was +in danger, sir, and if I hadn't stood by her father's deathbed, I +couldn't stand against you like this. But knowing what I do, I will stand +firm as a rock between you and her; and think myself all the more truly +your faithful servant because I do not fear to offend you." + +"That's so much arrant humbug, Mrs. Woolper. I suppose you've made your +book with Miss Halliday and Miss Halliday's lover, and think you can +serve your turn best by sticking to them and throwing me over the bridge. +It's only the way of the world. You're genuine Yorkshire, and know how to +pack your cards for winning the trick. But suppose I were to spoil your +game by turning you out of doors neck and crop? What then?" + +"I don't think you'll do that, sir." + +"Why not, pray?" + +"I don't think you dare do it, in the face of that strange doctor." + +"You don't? And so Dr. Jedd is the master of this house, is he?" + +"Yes, sir. Till that poor dear young lady is well again, if ever that day +comes, I think Dr. Jedd will be the real master in this house." + +"By ----! Mrs. Woolper, you're a cool hand, I must say!" + +He could say no more. Of passionate or declamatory language he had no +command. The symbols of thought that obtained in his world were of a +limited and primitive range. + +"You're a cool hand," he repeated, under his breath. And then he turned +and left the room, opening and closing the door less cautiously than on +his entrance. + +The door of the opposite room was opened softly as he came out into +the corridor, and Diana Paget stood before him, dressed as she had +been in the day. + +"What!" he exclaimed, impatiently, "are you up too?" + +"Yes, Mr. Sheldon. I cannot sleep while Lotta is so ill." + +"Humph! I suppose you mean to get yourself on the sick-list, and give us +another invalid to nurse." + +"I will not trouble you to nurse me if I should be ill." + +"Ah!" growled the stockbroker, as he went to his own room, "you are a +pack of silly women altogether; and your fine friend Hawkehurst is more +womanish than the silliest of you. Goodnight." + +He went into his own room, where he found his wife still awake. Her weak +lamentings and bewailings were insupportable to him; and at three o'clock +he went downstairs, put on his boots and a light overcoat, and went out +into the dim regions of Bayswater, whence he saw the sun rise red above +the eastern roofs and chimneys, and where he walked until the first +clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels began to echo through the empty +streets, and, with faint distant cries of sweeps and milk-women, life's +chorus recommenced. + +It was seven o'clock when he went back to his house, and let himself in +softly with his latchkey. He knew that he had been walking a long time, +and that he had seen the sun rise; but what streets or squares he had +been walking in he did not know. He crept upstairs to his dressing-room +with stealthy footsteps, and made an elaborate toilet. At eight o'clock +he was seated at breakfast in the hastily-arranged dining-room, with the +newspapers by the side of his cup and saucer. At nine he went into the +hall to receive Dr. Jedd and Dr. Doddleson, who arrived almost +simultaneously. His carefully-arranged hair and whiskers, his well made +unpretentious clothes, his spotless linen, would have done credit to an +archbishop. Of all the cares and calculations of his long dreary night +there was no trace, except a certain dulness in his eyes, and the dark +half-circles below them. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +COUNTING THE COST. + +For four days and four nights there were fear and watching in Mr. +Sheldon's house; and in all that time the master never quitted it, except +stealthily, in the dead of the night, or at early daybreak, to roam in a +purposeless manner he knew not where. The doctors came and went--Dr. +Doddleson once a day, Dr. Jedd two or three times a day--and every one in +villas adjoining and villas opposite, and even in villas round the +corner, knew that the stockbroker's stepdaughter lay sick unto death; for +the white horses of Dr. Jedd's landau were as the pale horse of the Pale +Rider himself, and where they came was danger or death. Ah, thank God! to +some they have brought hope and blessing; not always the dread answer, +"You have called me in vain." + +Valentine Hawkehurst came many times in the day, but between him and Mr. +Sheldon there could be no safe meeting; and the lover came quietly to the +little gate, where a kindly housemaid gave him a little note from Diana +Paget. Miss Paget wrote half a dozen little notes of this kind in the +course of every day, but she never left her post in the room opposite the +sick-chamber. She complained of headache, or of some vague illness which +prevented her taking her meals in the dining-room, and Mr. Sheldon was +fain to be satisfied with this explanation of her conduct. + +She was on guard; and the wretched master of the house knew that she was +on guard, and that if Ann Woolper could be bought over, or frightened +into compliance with his wishes, this girl would still remain, faithful +as watchdog, by the door of her friend and companion. He asked himself +whether by violent or diplomatic process, he could rid himself of this +second watcher; and the answer was in the negative. The circle around him +was a circle not to be broken. + +His wife, as yet, had been told nothing of the suspicions that reigned in +the breasts of other people. He knew this; for in his wife's face there +was no token of that dark knowledge, and she, of all people, would be +least skilled to deceive his scrutinizing eyes. Nor had the younger +servants of his household any share in the hideous suspicion. He had +watched the countenance of the maid who waited on him, and had convinced +himself of this. + +It was something to know that even these were not yet leagued against +him; but he could not tell at what moment they too might be sworn into +that secret society which was growing up against him in his own house. +Power to carry out his own schemes in the face of these people he felt +that he had none. Upon the dark road which he had travelled until of late +without let or hindrance, there had arisen, all at once, an +insurmountable barrier, with the fatal inscription, Here there is no +Thoroughfare. + +Beyond this barrier he could not pass. Sudden as the dread arrest of +Lot's wife was the mandate which had checked his progress. He was brought +to a dead stop; and there was nothing for him to do but to wait the issue +of Fate. He stood, defiant, unabashed, face to face with the figure of +Nemesis, and calmly awaited the lifting of the veil. + +He hoped that Charlotte Halliday would die. If by her death he could tide +over his difficulties and drift into smooth water, it would be but a very +small thing to him that Dr. Jedd, and Dr. Doddleson enlightened by his +colleague, and Valentine Hawkehurst, and Diana Paget, and a stupid +pig-headed old Yorkshirewoman, should carry in their minds for the +remainder of their lives the suspicion that by his means that fair young +life had been brought to its early close. + +What would it amount to in the future of his own existence? Prudential +considerations would induce these people to lock the secret of this +suspicion in their own breasts. Dr. Jedd would bow to him somewhat +coldly, perhaps, if they met in the streets of London, or possibly might +refuse to make any return to his passing salutation; but the cut direct +from Dr. Jedd would not cast a shadow over his commercial career, or even +weaken his social position. If, by the loud folly of Hawkehurst, some +evil rumour about him should float as far eastward as the Stock Exchange, +who would be found to give credence to the dark report? Men would shrug +their shoulders and shake their heads incredulously; and one of these +wise men of the east would remark that, "A fellow in Sheldon's position +doesn't do that kind of thing, you know;" while another would say, "I +dined with him at Greenwich last summer, and a remarkably good dinner he +gave us. Dawkins, the great shipbuilder, and M'Pherson, of M'Pherson and +Flinders, the Glasgow merchants, were there. Very jolly affair, I assure +you. Deuced gentlemanly fellow, Phil Sheldon." And so the matter would +end. + +Would there be an inquest in the event of his stepdaughter's death? Well, +no. Jedd knew that in such a case all _post-mortem_ inquiry must end in +confusion and perplexity, statement and counter-statement from medical +witnesses, who would contradict one another persistently in the support +of their pet theories, and who would regard the investigation as a very +convenient opportunity for ventilating their own opinions and airing +their own importance. A considerable number of the canine race would be +slaughtered, perhaps, in the process of dilettante experiments; the broad +principles of chemical science would be discussed from every point of +view, in innumerable letters published in the _Zeus,_ and the _Diurnal +Hermes_; and the fact that an amiable and innocent young woman had been +foully murdered would be swept out of the minds of mankind before a +whirlwind of technical debate. Jedd was the last man to stake his +reputation upon such a hazard. No: Mr. Sheldon knew that he had played a +cautious game; and if he should ultimately lose the stake for which he +had ventured, it would be because he had been just a little too cautious. + +"These things are generally done too quickly," he said to himself. "My +mistake has been to make matters too slow." + +Come what might, of after-consequences to himself from Charlotte +Halliday's illness or death he had no apprehension. + +Thus it was that he met Dr. Jedd day after day with a face as calm as the +stony countenance of that distinguished physician himself. Such anxiety +as an affectionate stepfather should feel during the peril of his +stepdaughter Mr. Sheldon took care to express. Greater anxiety than this +by no look or gesture did he betray. He knew that he was watched; and +that the people about him were inimical to himself and to his interests; +and he was never off his guard. + +It had been necessary for him to come to London in order to be within +easy reach of that troubled sea, the money-market. But perilous though +the voyage of his bark across that tempestuous ocean was, he could not +guide the helm in person. He was obliged to confide matters to the care +of Mr. Frederick Orcott, whom he harassed with telegraphic despatches at +all hours of the day, and who at this period seemed to spend his life +between the stockbroker's office and Bayswater. + +It seemed as if Mr. Sheldon meant to hold his ground in that house until +the issue of events was determined. Valentine Hawkehurst and George +Sheldon met at the solicitor's offices, and there was a long and serious +consultation between them. + +"One thing seems pretty clear," said George, conclusively, "and that is, +that my brother Phil isn't to be got off the premises except by some very +deep move. The question is, what move can be deep enough to trap such a +man as he? He's a man who knows the inside of your mind better than you +do yourself; and can reckon you up as easily as the simplest sum in +arithmetic." + +The two men talked together very seriously for some time after this, and +on the same day Valentine lay in wait for Dr. Jedd as he left Philip +Sheldon's house, and was driven back to town in that gentleman's +carriage. On the road there was much serious talk between Miss Halliday's +physician and Miss Halliday's lover. Valentine was still very grave and +very anxious when he took his leave of Dr. Jedd; but he was more hopeful +than he had been for the last few days. + +On the same evening Gustave Lenoble received a brief epistle from his +plighted wife. + +"MY DEAR GUSTAVE,--I regret to find from your letter that the doctors +consider my father weaker than when I was last at Knightsbridge; but, +even knowing this, I cannot come to him just yet. The duty which detains +me here is even more sacred than his claim upon my care. And I know your +goodness to him, and feel that in you he has a better friend and +comforter than I could be to him. I thank you, dear, for your kindness to +this poor broken-down wanderer even more than for your generous devotion +to me. And now I am going to ask you a favour. It is, that you will +afford Mr. Hawkehurst, the person who will give you this letter, the help +of your friendship and counsel in very difficult and critical +circumstances, which he will explain to you. I have spoken to you of him +very little, though his devotion to my dear adopted sister, Charlotte +Halliday, brings him very near to me. Her long, and of late dangerous, +illness has been a bitter time of trial to him, even more than to me; but +the trial has proved him true as steel. I think your counsel may be of +some service to him just now, and I am sure your friendship will help to +support him in a period of acute anxiety. + +"Do not ask to see me, dear Gustave. I _cannot_ leave this house while +Charlotte is in danger; but if it please God to remove that danger, I +shall then be free to go where I please, and my future life shall be at +your disposal. Do not think me cold or ungrateful; I am only faithful to +the first friend I ever knew.--Yours always, with all affection, + +"DIANA PAGET." + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +THE BEGINNING OF THE END. + +Three days elapsed after the delivery of this letter. Upwards of a week +had gone by since the return of Mr. Sheldon and his family from Harold's +Hill: and as yet Philip Sheldon knew not what the issue of events was to +be. Very vague were the oracular sentences which his questioning extorted +from Dr. Jedd, and he had tried in vain to obtain a _tete-a-tete_ +interview with Dr. Doddleson. The physician of Burlington Row took care +that his feeble colleague should not fall alone and defenceless into the +pathway of Philip Sheldon. Of Charlotte's actual condition her +stepfather, therefore, knew very little. He was told that her state was +attended by danger; and the solemn faces which greeted him on every side +implied that the danger was extreme. From her room he was in a manner +excluded. If he went to her door to make some benevolent and paternal +inquiry, he was met on the threshold by Ann Woolper, the sleepless and +unresting. If he hinted a natural desire to see his invalid stepdaughter, +he was told that she had that moment fallen asleep, or that she was too +ill to see him. There was always some plausible reason why he should not +be admitted to her room; and finding that this was so, he did not press +the question. + +He had taken Mrs. Woolper's measure, and had found that she was too +strong for him; doubly strong since she was supported and sustained by +that second sleepless watcher, Diana Paget, whom Mr. Sheldon had long ago +pronounced to be a strong-minded and superior young person. + +From his wife he could obtain no real information--nothing but weepings +and lamentations; weak apprehensions of future woe, weaker retrospective +reflections on the fatal illness and untimely end of her first husband. +Georgy was admitted once or twice a day to the sick-room; but she emerged +therefrom no wiser than she entered it. Sorrow in the present, and the +fear of greater sorrow to come, had utterly prostrated this poor weak +soul. She believed what other people told her to believe, she hoped what +they told her to hope. She was the very incarnation and express image of +helpless misery. + +So, in utter darkness of mind, Mr. Sheldon awaited his destiny. The day +drew very near on which he must find certain sums of ready money, or must +accept the dreary alternative of ruin and disgrace. He had the policies +of assurance in his cash-box, together with the will which made him +Charlotte's sole legatee; he had fixed in his own mind upon the man to +whom he could apply for an advance of four thousand pounds on one of the +two policies, and he relied on getting his banker to lend him money on +the security of the second. But for the one needful event he had yet to +wait. That event was Charlotte Halliday's death. + +Of his dreary wanderings in the early morning the household knew nothing. +The time which he chose for these purposeless rambles was just the time +when no one was astir. The watchers in the two rooms above heard neither +his going out nor his coming in, so stealthy were his movements on every +occasion. But without this intermission from the dreadful concentration +of his life, without this amount of physical exercise and fresh air, +Philip Sheldon could scarcely have lived through this period. The +solitude of shipwrecked mariner cast upon a desolate island could hardly +be more lonely than this man's life had been since his return from +Harold's Hill. From his study to the dining-room, and from the +dining-room back to his study, was the only variety of his dreary days +and nights. He had an iron bedstead put up in his study, and there he lay +in the earlier hours of the night, taking such rest as he could from +fitful dozing that was scarcely sleep, or from brief intervals of heavy +slumber made horrible by torturing dreams. + +In this room he could hear every sudden movement in the hall, every +footstep on the stairs, every opening and shutting of the outer door. +Here, too, he could keep his watch, holding himself ready to counter the +movements of his enemies, should any opportunity arise for action on his +part, defensive or aggressive. + +To this room he stealthily returned one brilliant summer morning as the +clocks were striking six. He had been walking in the Bayswater Road, +amidst all the pleasant stir and bustle of early morning. Waggons coming +in from the country, milkwomen setting forth on their daily rounds, +clamorous young rooks cawing among the topmost branches of the elms, +song-birds chirruping and gurgling their glad morning hymn; and over all +things the glory and the freshness of the summer sunshine. + +But to Philip Sheldon it was as if these things were not. For the last +twelve or fifteen years of his life he had taken no heed of the change +of the seasons, except insomuch as the passage of time affected his +bill-book, or the condition of that commercial world which was the +beginning and end of his life. Now, less than ever, had he an ear for +the carolling of birds, or an eye for the glory of summer sunlight, or +the flickering shadows of summer leaves faintly stirred by the soft +summer wind. + +He re-entered his house with a half-dazed sense of the stir and life that +had been about him in the high road. It was a relief to him to escape +this life and brightness, and to take shelter in the gloom of his study, +where the shutters were closed, and only a faint glimmer of day crept +through a chink in the shrunken woodwork. + +For the first time since the beginning of this dreary period of idleness +and suspense he felt himself thoroughly beaten, and instead of going up +to his dressing-room for his careful morning toilet, as it was his habit +to do at this hour, he flung himself, dressed as he was, upon the low +iron bedstead, and fell into a heavy slumber. + +Yes, there they were--the familiar tortures of his slumbers, the +shadows of busy, eager faces; and upon all one universal expression of +mingled anger and surprise. The sound of a wooden hammer striking three +solemn strokes; the faint tones of Tom Halliday's voice, thanking him for +his friendly care; the dying look in Tom Halliday's face, turned to him +with such depth of trust and affection. And then across the shadowy +realm of dreams there swept the slow solemn progress of a funeral +_cortege_--plumed hearses, blacker than blackest night; innumerable +horses, with funereal trappings and plumed headgear waving in an icy +wind; long trains of shrouded figures stretching on into infinite space, +in spectral procession that knew neither beginning nor end. And in all +the solemn crowd passing perpetually with the same unceasing motion, +there was no sound of human footfall, no tramp of horse's hoof, only that +dismal waving of black plumage in an icy wind, and the deep boom of a +bell tolling for the dead. + +He awoke with a start, and exclaimed, "If this is what it is to sleep, I +will never sleep again!" + +In the next minute he recovered himself. He had been lying on his back. +The endless pageant, the dreadful tolling of the funeral bell, meant no +more than nightmare, the common torment of all humanity. + +"What a fool I must be!" he muttered to himself, as he wiped his +forehead, which had grown cold and damp in the agony of his dream. + +He opened the shutters, and then looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. +To his surprise he found that he had been sleeping three hours. It was +nine o'clock. He went upstairs to dress. There was an unusual stir in the +corridor above. Ann Woolper was standing there, with her hand on the door +of the sick-room, talking to Diana, who covered her face suddenly as he +approached, and disappeared into her own room. + +The beating of his heart quickened suddenly. Something had happened to +disturb the common course of events. Something? What was likely to +happen, except the one dread circumstance for which he hoped and waited +with such horrible eagerness? + +In Ann Woolper's solemn face he read an answer to his thought. For the +first time he was well nigh losing his self-possession. It was with an +effort that he steadied himself sufficiently to ask the usual +conventional question in the usual conventional tone. + +"Is she any better this morning, Ann?" + +"Yes, sir, she is much better," the Yorkshirewoman answered solemnly. +"She is where none can harm her now." + +Yes; it was the usual periphrase of these vulgar people. He knew all +their cant by heart. + +"You mean to say--she--is dead?" + +He no longer tried to conceal his agitation. It was a part of his duty to +be agitated by the news of his stepdaughter's untimely death. + +"O, sir, you may well be sorry," said the Yorkshirewoman, with deep +feeling. "She was the sweetest, most forgiving creature that ever came +into this world; and to the last no hard or cruel word ever passed her +innocent lips. Yes, sir, she is gone; she is beyond the power of any one +to harm her." + +"All that sort of stuff is so much hypocritical twaddle, Mrs. Woolper," +muttered Mr. Sheldon impatiently; "and I recommend you to keep it for the +chaplain of the workhouse in which you are likely to end your days. At +what time--did--did this--sad event--happen? + +"About an hour ago." + +In the very hour when, in his hideous dream, he had beheld the solemn +funeral train winding on for ever through the dim realms of sleep. Was +there some meaning in such foolish shadows, after all? + +"And why was I not sent for?" + +"You were asleep, sir. I came downstairs myself, and looked into your +room. You were fast asleep, and I wouldn't disturb you." + +"That was very wrong; but it was of a piece with the rest of your +conduct, which has been from first to last antagonistic to me. I suppose +I can see my stepdaughter now," Mr. Sheldon added, with a grim smile. +"There is no further excuse--about headache--or sleep." + +"No, sir, you cannot see her yet. In an hour, if you wish to come into +this room, you can come." + +"You are extremely obliging. I begin to doubt whether I am really in my +own house. In an hour, then, I will come. Where is my wife?" + +"In her own room, sir, lying down; asleep, I believe." + +"I will not disturb her. How about the registration, by-the-by? That +must be seen to." + +"Dr. Jedd has promised to attend to that, sir." + +"Has Dr. Jedd been here?" + +"He was here an hour ago." + +"Very good. And he will see to that," muttered Mr. Sheldon thoughtfully. + +The event for which he had been so long waiting seemed at the last a +little sudden. It had shaken his nerves more than he had supposed it +possible that they could be shaken. + +He went to his dressing-room, and on this occasion made a very hasty +toilet. The event had been tardy, and he had no time to lose in +discounting it now that it had come to pass. He went from his +dressing-room back to his study, took the jacket containing the policies +of assurance and the will from the deed-box, and left the house. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED. + +A cab conveyed Mr. Sheldon swiftly to a dingy street in the City--a +street which might have been called the pavement of wasted footsteps, so +many an impecunious wretch tramped to and fro upon those dreary flags in +vain. + +The person whom Mr. Sheldon came to see was a distinguished +bill-discounter, who had served him well in more than one crisis, and on +whose service he fancied he could now rely. + +Mr. Kaye, the bill-discounter, was delighted to see his worthy friend Mr. +Sheldon. He had just come up from his family at Brighton, and had quite a +little court awaiting him in an outer chamber, through which Mr. Sheldon +had been ushered to the inner office. + +"It's rather early for such a visitor as you," Mr. Kaye said, after a few +commonplaces. "I have not been in town half an hour." + +"My business is too important for any consideration about hours," +answered Mr. Sheldon, "or I should not be here at all. I have just come +from the deathbed of my wife's daughter." + +"Indeed!" exclaimed the bill-discounter, looking inexpressibly +shocked. Until that moment he had lived in supreme ignorance of the +fact that Mr. Sheldon had a stepdaughter; but his sorrow-stricken +expression of countenance might have implied that he had known and +esteemed the young lady. + +"Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Sheldon; "and something more than sad for +me. The poor girl had great expectations, and would have come into a very +fine fortune if she had lived a year or two longer." + +"Ha! dear me, how very unfortunate! Poor young lady!" + +"Jedd and Doddleson--you know them by repute, of course--have been +attending her for the last six weeks. There will be no end of expense for +me; and it has been all of no use." + +"Consumption, I suppose?" + +"Well, no; not pulmonary disease. A kind of atrophy. I scarcely know what +to call it. Now, look here, Kaye. This illness has thrown all my affairs +into a muddle. Taken in conjunction with the depressed state of the +money-market, it has been altogether an upset for me. I have been staying +at home looking after this poor girl and my wife--who of course is +dreadfully cut up, and that sort of thing--when I ought to have been in +the City. Luckily for me, and for my wife, in whose interests I acted, I +took the precaution to get her daughter's life insured eight or nine +months ago; in point of fact, immediately after finding she was +heir-at-law to a considerable fortune. The policy is for five thousand +pounds. I want you to give me four thousand immediately upon the strength +of the document and of my stepdaughter's will." + +"Give you four thousand!" exclaimed Mr. Kaye, with a little unctuous +laugh. "Do you suppose I keep such a balance as that at my banker's?" + +"I suppose that you can give me the money if you like." + +"I might be able to get it for you." + +"Yes; that's a kind of humbug a hundred years old. We've heard all about +little Premium and his friend in the City, and so on, from that man who +wrote plays and cut a figure in Parliament. You can give me the money on +the spot if you like, Kaye; and if I didn't want ready money very badly I +shouldn't come to you. The insurance company will give me five thousand +in a month or two. I can give you my bill at two months' date, and +deposit the policy in your hands as collateral security. I might get this +money from other quarters--from my bankers', for instance; but I don't +want to let them know too much." + +Mr. Kaye deliberated. He had assisted Mr. Sheldon's financial operations, +and had profited thereby. Money advanced upon such a security must be as +safe as money invested in Consols, unless there were anything doubtful in +the circumstances of the policy; and that, with a man of Mr. Sheldon's +respectability, was to the last degree unlikely. + +"When do you want this money?" he asked at last. + +"At the beginning of next week. On the twenty-fifth at latest." + +"And this is the twentieth. Sharp work." + +"Not at all. You could give me the money this afternoon, if you pleased." + +"Well, I'll think it over. It's a matter in which I feel myself bound to +take my solicitor's opinion. Suppose you meet him here to-morrow at +twelve o'clock? You can bring the necessary evidence to support the +claim--the doctor's and registrar's certificate, and so on?" + +"Yes," Mr. Sheldon answered, thoughtfully; "I will bring the documentary +evidence. To-morrow at twelve, then." + +Very little more was said. Mr. Sheldon left the will and the policy in +the bill-discounter's possession, and departed. Things had gone as +smoothly as he could fairly expect them to go. From Mr. Kaye's office he +went to the Unitas Bank, where he had a very friendly, but not altogether +satisfactory, interview with the secretary. He wanted the Unitas people +to advance him money on the strength of the second policy of assurance; +but his balance had been very low of late, and the secretary could not +promise compliance with his desires. Those Unitas shares valued at five +thousand pounds, which he had transferred to his beloved stepdaughter, +had been retransferred by the young lady some months before, with a view +to the more profitable investment of the money. + +This money, as well as all else that Philip Sheldon could command, had +gone to the same bottomless pit of unlucky speculation. From the bank the +stockbroker went to his office, where he saw Frederick Orcott, to whom he +announced his stepdaughter's death with all due appearance of sorrow. He +sat for an hour in his office, arranging his affairs for the following +day, then sent for another cab, and drove back to Bayswater. The noonday +press and noise of the City seemed strange to him, almost as they might +have seemed to a man newly returned from lonely wanderings in distant +wildernesses. + +The blinds were down at the Lawn. His own handsome bedchamber and +adjoining dressing-room faced the road, and it was at the windows of +these two rooms he looked. He fancied his weak foolish wife wailing and +lamenting behind those lowered blinds. + +"And I shall have to endure her lamentations," he thought, with a +shudder. "I shall have no further excuse for avoiding her. But, on the +other hand, I shall have the pleasure of giving Mrs. Woolper and Miss +Paget notice to quit." + +He derived a grim satisfaction from this thought. Yes; insolence from +those two women he would endure no longer. The time had come in which he +would assert his right to be master in his own house. The game had been +played against him boldly by Jedd and these people, and had been lost by +them. He was the winner. He could not dismiss doctors, nurse, friend, +lover. Charlotte Halliday's death made him master of the situation. + +He went into his house with the determination to assert his authority at +once. Within all was very quiet. He looked into the dining-room--it was +quite empty; into the study--also empty. He went slowly upstairs, +composing his face into the appropriate expression. At the door of that +chamber which to him should have seemed of all earthly chambers the most +awful, he knocked softly. + +There was no answer. + +He knocked a little louder, but there was still no answer. A little +louder again, and with the same result. + +"Is there no one there?" he asked himself. "No one, except--?" + +He opened the door, and went in, with unshaken nerves, to look upon that +one quiet sleeper whom his summons could not awaken, whom his presence +could not disturb. + +There was no nurse or watcher by the bed. Everything was arranged with +extreme neatness and precision; but it seemed to him that there were +objects missing in the room, objects that had been familiar to him during +the dead girl's illness, and which were associated with her presence,--the +clock that had stood on the table by her bed, a stand of books, a low +easy-chair, with embroidered cover worked by her mother and Diana Paget. +The room looked blank and empty without these things, and Mr. Sheldon +wondered what officious hand had removed them. + +Yonder stood the pretty little bedstead, shrouded by closely drawn white +curtains. Philip Sheldon walked slowly across the room, and drew aside +one of the curtains. He had looked upon the death-sleep of Charlotte +Halliday's father, why not upon hers? + +She was not there! Those closely drawn curtains shrouded only the bed on +which she had slept in the tranquil slumbers of her careless girlhood. +That cold lifeless form, whose rigid outline Philip Sheldon had steeled +himself to see, had no place here. + +He put his hand to his head, bewildered. "What does it mean?" he asked +himself; "surely she died in this room!" + +He went hurriedly to his wife's room. They had taken Charlotte there, +perhaps, shortly before her death. Some feverish fancy might have +possessed her with the desire to be taken thither. + +He opened the door and went in; but here again all was blank and empty. +The room was arranged after its usual fashion; but of his wife's presence +there was no token. His sense of mystification and bewilderment grew +suddenly into a sense of fear. What did it mean? What hellish fooling had +he been the dupe of? + +He went to Diana's room. That, too, was empty. A trunk and a portmanteau, +covered and strapped as if for removal, occupied the centre of the room. + +There was no other room upon this floor. Above this floor there were only +the rooms of the servants. + +He went downstairs to the dining-room and rang the bell The parlour-maid +came in answer to his summons. + +"Where is your mistress?" he asked. + +"Gone out, sir; she went at eight o'clock this morning. And O, if you +please, sir, Dr. Jedd called, and said I was to give you this--with the +certificate." + +The certificate! Yes, the certificate of Charlotte Halliday's death,--the +certificate which he must produce to-morrow, with other evidence, for the +satisfaction of the bill-discounter and his legal adviser. He stared at +the girl, still possessed by the sense of bewilderment which had come +upon him on seeing those empty rooms upstairs. He took the letter from +her almost mechanically, and tore it open without looking at the address. +The certificate dropped to the ground. He picked it up with a tremulous +hand, and for some moments stood staring at it with dazzled, unseeing +eyes. He could see that it was a document with dates and names written in +a clerkly hand. For some moments he could see no more. And then words and +names shone out of the confusion of letters that spun and whirled, like +motes in the sunshine, before his dazzled eyes. + +"Valentine Hawkehurst, bachelor, author, Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road, +son of Arthur Hawkehurst, journalist; Charlotte Halliday, spinster, of +the Lawn, Bayswater, daughter of Thomas Halliday, farmer." + +He read no more. + +It was a copy of a certificate of marriage--not a certificate of +death--that had been brought to him. + +"You can go," he said to the servant hoarsely. + +He had a vague consciousness that she was staring at him with curious +looks, and that it was not good for him to be watched by any one just +now. + +"About dinner, sir, if you please?" the young woman began timidly. + +"What do I know about dinner?" + +"You will dine at home, sir?" + +"Dine at home? Yes; Mrs. Woolper can give you your orders." + +"Mrs. Woolper has gone out, sir. She has gone for good, I believe, sir; +she took her boxes. And Miss Paget's luggage will be sent for, if you +please, sir. There's a letter, sir, that Mrs. Woolper left for you on the +mantelpiece." + +"She was very good. That will do; you can go." + +The girl departed, bewildered like her fellow-servants by the strangeness +of the day's proceedings, still more bewildered by the strangeness of her +master's manner. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +"THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE." + +When the servant was gone, Mr. Sheldon sat down and examined the document +she had given him. + +Yes, it was in due form. A certified copy of the certificate +of a marriage performed that morning at the church of St. +Matthias-in-the-fields, Paddington, and duly witnessed by the registrar +of that parish. If this document were indeed genuine, as to all +appearance it was, Valentine Hawkehurst and Charlotte Halliday had been +married that morning; and the will and the policy of assurance deposited +with Mr. Kaye the bill-discounter were so much waste-paper. + +And they had fooled him, Philip Sheldon, as easily as this! The furious +rage which he felt against all these people, and, more than against them, +against his own besotted folly for allowing himself to be so fooled, was +a sharper agony than had ever yet rent his cruel heart. He had been a +scoundrel all his life, and had felt some of the pains and penalties of +his position; but to be a defeated scoundrel was a new sensation to him; +and a savage impotent hate and anger against himself and the universe +took possession of his mind. + +He walked up and down the room for some time, abandoned wholly to the +ungovernable rage that consumed him, and with no thought beyond that +blind useless fury. And then there came upon him the feeling that was +almost a part of his mind--the consciousness that something must be done, +and promptly. Whatever his position was, he must face it. His hurried +pacing to and fro came to a sudden stop, and he took the crumpled +document from his packet, and examined it once more. + +There seemed little doubt that it was genuine; and a visit to the church +where the marriage was stated to have been performed would immediately +place the matter beyond all doubt. With the copy of the certificate, he +had taken from his pocket the letter that had enclosed it. He saw now +that the envelope was addressed in Hawkehurst's hand. + +"Favoured by Dr. Jedd," he had written in a corner of the envelope. + +Why should Dr. Jedd "favour" Mr. Hawkehurst's letter? Why, indeed, unless +there had been a conspiracy concocted by these men against his authority +and his interests? + +Valentine's letter was brief and business-like. + +"SIR,--With the full approbation of her mother and only near relation, my +dear Charlotte has this day become my wife. The enclosed attested copy of +the certificate of our marriage will afford you all particulars. I shall +refrain from entering upon any explanation of my conduct; and I believe +such explanation to be wholly unnecessary. You can scarcely fail to +understand why I have acted in this manner, and why I congratulate myself +and my dear wife on her departure from your house as on an escape from +imminent peril. It will be, I fear, little satisfaction to you to hear +that the doctors have pronounced your stepdaughter to be out of danger, +though still in very weak health. She is now comfortably established in a +temporary home, with her mother and Diana Paget; and in all probability +some months must elapse before she and I can begin our new life together. +To afford my darling girl the legal protection of marriage was the object +of this sudden and secret union. You, of all men, will most fully +comprehend how necessary such protection had become to ensure her safety. + +"Should you, however, require farther enlightenment as to the motives +that prompted this step, Dr. Jedd will be the fittest person to give you +such information; and has expressed his willingness to answer any +questions you may please to put to him. + +"For the rest, I beg to assure you that the rights of Mrs. Hawkehurst in +relation to the inheritance of the late John Haygarth's wealth will be as +carefully protected as those of Miss Halliday; nor will the hasty +marriage of this morning hinder the execution of any deed of settlement +calculated to guard her interests in the future. + +"With this assurance, I remain, sir, +Your obedient servant, +VALENTINE HAWKEHURST. +Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road." + +Enclosed with this there was a second letter--from his wife. + +He read it with a countenance that expressed mingled anger and contempt. + +"Fool!" he muttered; "this is about the only service she could do me." + +The letter was long and incoherent; blotted with tears--in places +completely illegible. Mr. Sheldon cared only to master the main facts +contained in it, which were these:--His wife had left him for ever. Dr. +Jedd and Valentine Hawkehurst had told her of something--something that +affected the safety of her darling and only child--and the knowledge of +which must separate her for ever from him. Of the money which she had +brought to him she claimed nothing. Even her jewels, which were in his +keeping, in the iron safe where he kept his papers, she did not attempt +to obtain from him. Valentine would not allow her to starve. The humblest +shelter, the poorest food, would suffice her in the future; but no home +of his providing could she ever inhabit again. + +"What I have suffered in this last few days is only known to myself and +to heaven," she wrote. "O Philip, how could you--how could you even shape +the thought of such a deed as this, which you have been doing, day after +day, for the last two months? I could not have believed what they have +told me, if I had not seen my child fade hour by hour under your care, +slowly, surely--and recover as surely directly you were excluded from any +part in our care of her. If it were possible not to believe these people, +I would disbelieve them, and would cling to you faithfully still; but the +voices against you are too many, the proofs against you are too strong. + +"Do not seek to see me. I am with my poor child, who was but just able to +bear the removal from your house, and to go through the ceremony that was +performed this morning. Little did I ever think my daughter would have +such a wedding. What a mockery all my plans seem now!--and I had chosen +the six bridesmaids, and arranged all the dresses in my own mind. To see +my dear girl dressed anyhow, in her oldest bonnet, standing before the +altar huddled up in a shawl, and given away by a strange doctor, who kept +looking at his watch in a most disrespectful manner during the ceremony, +was very bitter to me." + +Mr. Sheldon flung aside the letter with an oath. He had no time to waste +upon such twaddle as this. He tore open Nancy Woolper's letter. It was a +poor honest scrawl, telling him how faithfully she had served him, how +truly she had loved him in the past, and how she could henceforth serve +him no more. It exhorted him, in humble ill-spelt phrases, to repentance. +It might not yet be too late even for such a sinner as he had been. + +He tore these two epistles into infinitesimal fragments, and flung them +into the fireplace. Valentine Hawkehurst's letter he kept. It was a +document of some legal importance. + +For a moment there had flashed across his brain the thought that he might +punish these people for their interference with his affairs. He might +bring an action against Dr. Jedd for slander, and compel the physician to +prove the charges insinuated against him, or pay the penalty attendant +upon an unjustifiable accusation. He was well assured that Dr. Jedd could +prove very little; and a jury, if properly worked, might award him +exemplary damages. + +But on the other hand, the circumstantial evidence against him was very +strong; and evidence which might be insufficient to prove him guilty in a +trial for his life might be a sufficient defence for his enemies against +an action for slander; if, indeed, the course which Dr. Jedd and +Valentine Hawkehurst had taken did in itself constitute a slanderous and +malicious imputation. Nor could any such action invalidate the marriage +solemnized that morning; and that one fact comprised his utter ruin. +Charlotte's interests were merged in the interests of her husband. No +shadow of claim upon John Haygarth's wealth remained to him. + +His ruin was complete and dire. For a long time his circumstances had +been desperate--no avenue of escape open to him but the one dark way +which he had trodden; and now that last road was closed against him. The +day was very near at hand when his fictitious bills on shadowy companies +must be dishonoured; and with the dishonour of those bills came the end +of all things for him,--a complete revelation of all those dishonest +artifices by which he had kept his piratical bark afloat on the +commercial waters. + +He surveyed his position in every light, calmly and deliberately, and saw +there was no hope. The whole scheme of his existence was reduced to the +question of how much ready-money he could carry out of that house in his +pocket, and in what direction he should betake himself after leaving it. + +His first care must be to ascertain whether the marriage described in the +duplicate certificate had really taken place; his next, to repossess +himself of the papers left with Mr. Kaye. + +Before leaving the house he went to his study, where he examined his +banker's book. Yes, it was as they had told him at the bank. He was +overdrawn. Among the letters lying unopened on his writing-table he found +a letter from one of the officials of the Unitas, calling his attention, +politely and respectfully, to that oversight upon his part. He read the +letter, and crumpled it into his pocket with an angry gesture. + +"I am just about as well off now as I was twelve years ago, before Tom +Halliday came to Fitzgeorge Street," he said to himself; "and I have the +advantage of being twelve years older." + +Yes, this is what it all came to, after all. He had been travelling in a +circle. The discovery was humiliating. Mr. Sheldon began to think that +his line of life had not been a paying one. + +He opened his iron safe, and forced the lock of the jewel-case in which +his wife had kept the few handsome ornaments that he had given her in the +early days of their marriage, as a reward for being good--that is to say, +for allowing her second husband to dispose of her first husband's +patrimony without let or hindrance. The jewels were only a few rings, a +brooch, a pair of earrings, and a bracelet; but they were good of their +kind, and in all worth something like two hundred pounds. + +These, and the gold chronometer which he carried in his waistcoat-pocket, +constituted all the worldly wealth which Mr. Sheldon could command, now +that the volcanic ground upon which his commercial position had been +built began to crumble beneath his feet, and the bubbling of the crater +warned him of his peril. He put the trinkets into his pocket without +compunction, and then went upstairs to his dressing-room, where he +proceeded to pack his clothes in a capacious portmanteau, which in itself +might constitute his credentials among strangers, so eminently +respectable was its appearance. + +In this dread crisis of his life he thought of everything that affected +his own interests. To what was he going? That question was for the moment +unanswerable. In every quarter of the globe there are happy +hunting-grounds for the soldier of fortune. Some plan for the future +would shape itself in his mind by-and-by. His wife's desertion had left +him thoroughly independent. He had no tie to restrain his movements, +nothing to dread except such proceedings as might be taken against him by +the holders of those bills. And such proceedings are slow, while modern +locomotion is swift. + +What was he leaving? That was easily answered. A labyrinth of debt and +difficulty. The fine house, the handsome furniture, were held in the same +bondage of the law as his household goods in Fitzgeorge Street had been. +He had given a bill of sale upon everything he possessed six months +before, to obtain ready-money. The final terrible resource had not been +resorted to until all other means had been exhausted. Let this fact at +least be recorded to his credit. He was like the lady whom the poet +sings, who, + + "tolerably mild, + To make a wash would _hardly_ boil a child:" + +that is to say, she would try all other materials for her cosmetic +preparation first; and if they failed, would at last resort, unwillingly, +to the boiling of children. + +No; he had nothing to lose by flight--of that fact it was easy for him to +assure himself. + +He went downstairs, and rang for the servant. + +"I am going out," he said, "to join my wife and her daughter, and return +with them to the sea-side. There is a portmanteau upstairs in my room, +ready packed. You will give it to the messenger I shall send in the +course of the next day or two. At what time did Mrs. Sheldon and Miss +Halliday leave this morning?" + +"At eight o'clock, sir. Mr. Hawkehurst came to fetch them in a carriage. +They went out by the kitchen passage and the side gate, sir, because you +were asleep, Mrs. Woolper said, and was not to be disturbed." + +"At eight. Yes. And Mrs. Woolper and Miss Paget?" + +"They went a'most directly after you was gone out, sir. There was two +cabs to take Miss Halliday's and Mrs. Sheldon's things, and such +like,--just as there was when you came from Harold's Hill." + +"Yes; I understand." + +He was half inclined to ask the young woman if she had heard the +direction given to the drivers of these two cabs. But he refrained from +doing so. What could it profit him to know where his wife and +stepdaughter were to be found? Whether they were in the next street or at +the antipodes could matter very little to him, except so far as the +knowledge of their place of habitation might guide him in his avoidance +of them. Between him and them there was a gulf wider than all the waters +of the world, and to consider them was only foolish waste of time and +thought. He left the house, which for the last five years of his life had +been the outward and visible sign of his social status, fully conscious +that he left it for ever; and he left it without a sigh. For him the word +home had no tender associations, and the domestic hearth had never +inspired him with any sense of comfort or pleasure with which he might +not have been inspired by the luxurious fireside of a first-class +coffee-room. He was a man who would have chosen to spend his existence in +joint-stock hotels, if there had not been solidity of position to be +acquired from the possession of a handsome house. + +He went to the Paddington church. It was only five o'clock in the +afternoon by the clock of that edifice. The church was closely shut, but +Mr. Sheldon found the clerk, who, in consideration of a handsome +donation, took him to the vestry, and there showed him the register of +marriages--the last entry therein. + +Yes, there was Charlotte Halliday's signature, a little uncertain and +tremulous. + +"I suppose you are one of the young lady's relations, sir," said the +clerk. "It was rather a strange affair; but the young lady's ma was with +her; and the young lady was over age, so, you see, there's nothing to be +said against it." + +Mr. Sheldon had nothing to say against the marriage. If any false +statement of his, however base or cruel, could have invalidated the +ceremonial, he would have spared no pains to devise such a falsehood. If +he had been a citizen of the Southern States, he might have suborned +witnesses to prove that there was black blood in the veins of Valentine +Hawkehurst. If he had not been opposed to so strong an opponent as Dr. +Jedd, he might have tried to get a commission of lunacy to declare +Charlotte Halliday a madwoman, and thus invalidate her marriage. As it +was, he knew that he could do nothing. He had failed. All was said in +those three words. + +He wasted no time at the church, but hurried on to the City, where he was +just in time to catch Mr. Kaye leaving his office. + +"Have you sent those papers to your solicitor?" he asked. + +"No; I was just going to take them round to him. I have been thinking +that it will be necessary to ascertain that there is no will of Miss +Halliday's subsequent to this; and that will be rather difficult to find +out. Women never know when to leave off making wills, if they once begin +making them. They have a positive rage for multiplying documents, you +know. If the testator in that great codicil case had been a woman, a jury +would scarcely have refused to believe in the story of half a dozen +different codicils hidden away in half a dozen different holes and +corners. Women like that sort of thing. Of course, I quite understand +that you bring me the will in all good faith; but I foresee difficulties +in raising money upon such a security." + +"You need give yourself no further trouble about the matter," said Mr. +Sheldon coolly. "I find that I can do without the money, and I've come to +reclaim the papers." + +Mr. Kaye handed them to his client. He was not altogether pleased by this +turn of affairs; for he had expected to profit considerably by Mr. +Sheldon's necessities. That gentleman honoured him with no further +explanations, but put the papers in his pocket, and wished the +bill-discounter good day. + +And this was the last time that Philip Sheldon was ever seen in his +character of a solid and respectable citizen of London. He went from the +bill-discounter's office to a pawnbroker in the City, with whom he +pledged Georgy's trinkets and his own watch for the sum of a hundred and +twenty pounds. From the pawnbroker's he went back to Bayswater for his +portmanteau, and thence to the Euston Hotel, where he dined temperately +in the coffee-room. After dinner he went out into the dull back streets +that lurk behind Euston Square, and found an obscure little barber's +shop, where he had his whiskers shaved off, and his hyacinthine locks +cropped as close as the barber's big scissors could crop them. + +The sacrifice of these hirsute adornments made an extraordinary change +in this man. All the worst characteristics of his countenance came out +with a new force; and the face of Mr. Sheldon, undisguised by the +whiskers that had hidden the corners of his mouth, or the waving locks +that had given height and breadth to his forehead, was a face that no one +would be likely to trust. + +From the Euston Station he departed by the night mail for Liverpool, +under the cover of darkness. In that city he quietly awaited the +departure of the Cunard steamer for New York, and was so fortunate as to +leave England one day before that fatal date on which the first of his +fictitious bills arrived at maturity. + + + + +Book the Tenth. + + + +HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY. + +Not with pomp or with splendour, with rejoicing or strewing of summer +blossoms in the pathway of bride and bridegroom, had the marriage of +Valentine and Charlotte been solemnized. Simple and secret had been the +ceremonial, dark with clouds was the sky above them; and yet it is +doubtful if happier bridegroom ever trod this earth than Valentine +Hawkehurst as he went to his lonely lodging under the starry summer sky, +after leaving his young wife to her mother's care in the new home that +had been found for them. + +He had reason to rejoice; for he had passed through the valley of the +shadow of death. He had seen, very near, that dread presence before which +the angels of faith and love can avail nothing. Fearless as Alcides had +he gone down to the realms of darkness; triumphant and glad as the +demigod he returned from the under-world, bearing his precious burden in +his strong arms. The struggle had been dire, the agony of suspense a +supreme torture; but from the awful contest the man came forth a better +and a wiser man. Whatever strength of principle had been wanting to +complete the work of reformation inaugurated by love, had been gained by +Valentine Hawkehurst during the period of Charlotte's illness. His +promised wife, his redeeming angel, she for whose affection he had first +learned to render thanks to his God, had seemed to be slipping away from +him. In the happiest hour of his prosperous courtship he had known +himself unworthy of her, with no right, no claim, to so fair a prize, +except the right of pure and unselfish love. When the hour of trial came +to him he had said, "Behold the avenger!" and in that hour it seemed to +him that a lurking anticipation of future woe had been ever present with +him in the midst of his happiness,--it seemed so natural, so reasonable +that this treasure should be taken away from him. What had he done, that +he should go unpunished for all the errors and follies of his youth? + +He looked back, and asked himself if he had been so vile a sinner as in +these hours of self-reproach he was inclined to esteem himself? Could his +life have been otherwise? Had he not been set in a groove, his young feet +planted in the crooked ways, before he knew that life's journey might be +travelled by a straighter road? + +Alas, the answer given at the tribunal of conscience went against him! +Other men had come into this world amidst surroundings as bad, nay, +indeed, worse than the surroundings of his cradle. And of these men some +had emerged from their native mire spotless and pure as from newly-fallen +snow. The natural force of character which had saved these men had not +been given to him. His feet had been set in the crooked ways, and he had +travelled on, reckless, defiant, dimly conscious that the road was a bad +one, and that his garments were bespattered with more mud-stains than +would be agreeable to some travellers. + +It was only when the all-powerful influence of love was brought to bear +upon this plastic nature that Valentine Hawkehurst became fully awakened +to the degradation of his position, and possessed with an earnest desire +to emerge from the great dismal swamp of bad company. Then, and then +only, began the transformation which was ultimately to become so complete +a change. Some influence, even beyond that of happy love, was needed to +give force to this man's character; and in the great terror of the last +three months that influence had been found. The very foundations of +Valentine Hawkehurst's life had been shaken, and, come what might, he +could never be again what he had been. + +He had almost lost her. All was said in that. She had been almost taken +from him--she, who to this man was father, mother, wife, household, past, +present, future, glory, ambition, happiness--everything except that God +who ruled above and held her life and his peace in the hollow of His +hand. He had been face to face with death; and never, in all the years to +come--never in the brightest hour of future happiness, could he forget +the peril that had come upon him, and might come again. He had learned to +understand that he held her, not as a free gift, but as a loan--a +treasure to be reclaimed at any moment by the God who lent her. + +The darksome valley was past, and Valentine stood by his darling's side, +safe upon the sunlit uplands. + +The doctors had declared their patient safe. The hour of danger had been +passed in safety, and the mischief worked by the poisoner's slow process +had been well nigh counteracted by medical skill. + +"In six weeks' time you may take your wife for her honeymoon tour, Mr. +Hawkehurst, with her health and spirits thoroughly re-established," +said Dr. Jedd. + +"What is that you say about honeymoon tours?" cried Gustave Lenoble. +"Hawkehurst and his wife will spend their honeymoon at Cotenoir; is it +not, Diana?" + +Diana replied that it was to be, and must be so. + +It was impossible to imagine a happier party than that which met day +after day in those pleasant lodgings at Kilburn, wherein Georgy and Diana +and Charlotte had been established with much devotion and care on the +parts of Valentine and Gustave. Mr. Hawkehurst had chosen the apartments, +and M. Lenoble had spent the day before the wedding in rushing to and fro +between the West End and Kilburn, carrying hot-house flowers, comestibles +of all kinds from Fortnum and Mason's, bonbon boxes, perfumery, new +books, new music, and superintending the delivery of luxurious +easy-chairs, hired from expensive upholsterers, a grand piano, and a +harmonium. + +"We will have music in the evenings," he said to Diana, upon her +expressing surprise on beholding these arrangements, "when we are +assembled here, all. How thou dost open thine eyes on beholding these +nothings! Do you think it has been no pleasure to me to testify my +affection for one who has been so good to thee--thy friend, thine +adopted sister? I wished that all things should look bright around her, +when they brought her here, after that she had come to escape from the +jaws of death. And thou, was it not that thou wert also coming to make +thy home here for some days, until thy day of marriage? Thy father +astonishes himself to hear of such sudden events. Thou wilt go to see +him, soon, is it not?" + +"Yes, dear Gustave. I will go to-morrow." + +She went on the next day, and found Captain Paget much weaker than on her +last visit. + +It was evident that for him the end was very near. He was much changed +and subdued by his long illness; but the spirit of worldliness had not +been altogether exorcised even in this dismal period of self-communion. + +"What does it all mean, Diana?" he asked. "I don't understand being kept +in the dark like this. Here are you suddenly leaving Mr. Sheldon's house +without rhyme or reason, to take up your quarters in lodgings with Mrs. +Sheldon. Here is a mysterious marriage taking place at a time when I have +been given to understand that one of the parties is at death's door; and +here is Lenoble introduced to Valentine Hawkehurst, in express opposition +to my particular request that my future son-in-law should be introduced +to none of the Sheldon set." + +"Valentine is not one of the Sheldon set, papa. I do not think it likely +that he will ever see Philip Sheldon again." + +"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Captain Paget. "There has been something +serious going on, then, surely?" + +After this he insisted on an explanation, and Diana told him the story of +the last two or three weeks: Charlotte's increasing illness--so +mysterious and incurable; the sudden return from Harold's Hill; +Valentine's fears; Dr. Jedd's boldly-expressed opinion that the patient +was the victim of foul play; the systematic exclusion of Philip Sheldon +from the sick-room, followed immediately by symptoms of amelioration, +leading to gradual recovery. + +All this Captain Paget heard with an awe-stricken countenance. The +distance that divides the shedder of blood from all other wrong-doers is +so great, that the minor sinner feels himself a saint when he +contemplates the guilt of the greater criminal. + +"Great God! is this possible?" exclaimed the Captain, with a shudder. +"And I have taken that man's hand!" + +Later in the evening, when Diana had left him, and he had been thinking +seriously of his own career, and those many transactions of his troubled +life which, in the slang denomination of the day, would be called +"shady," he derived some scrap of comfort from one consideration. + +"I never hurt a worm," he murmured to himself, complacently. "No, I can +lay my hand upon my heart and say, I never hurt a worm." + +The Captain did not pause to reflect that some of the merit involved in +this amiable trait of character might have been referable to the fact, +that he had never happened to fall upon a state of society in which a +comfortable living was to be made by the hurting of worms. He thought +only of the story he had heard about Philip Sheldon; and he told himself +that not in the direst necessity of his life could his brain have +fashioned the thought of such a deed as that, in the doing of which this +man had persevered for nearly three months. + +For Charlotte Hawkehurst the summer days which succeeded her marriage +passed very quietly. She had not been told the real motive of that hasty +and stolen marriage which had given her to the man she loved and trusted +so completely. Valentine and Diana had between them contrived to mould +Mrs. Sheldon to their will; and it was at her request that Charlotte had +consented to so strange a step. + +The fable invented to account for this desire on the part of Mrs. Sheldon +was very innocent. The doctors had ordered a milder climate than England +for the dear convalescent--Madeira, Algeria, Malta--or some other equally +remote quarter of the globe. It was impossible that Mr. or Mrs. Sheldon +could take so long a journey; Mr. Sheldon being bound hand and foot to +the mill-wheel of City life, Mrs. Sheldon being the slave and helpmeet of +her husband. Nor could dear Charlotte go to Malta alone, or attended only +by faithful Diana Paget. In short, there was no course so obvious or so +prudent as a hasty marriage, which would enable the invalid to seek a +milder clime, accompanied and guarded by her natural protector--a +husband. + +"Consent, dearest, I entreat you," wrote Valentine, in the little note +which supported Mrs. Sheldon's request, "however strange our wishes may +seem to you. Believe that it is for the best, for your own sake, for the +sake of all who love you, and ask no questions. Say only yes." + +To the prayer in this letter, to the entreaties of her mother and Diana, +Charlotte yielded. She wondered why Mr. Sheldon avoided her, and asked +anxiously, on more than one occasion, why she did not see that gentleman. + +"Is papa ill," she asked, "that he never comes to see how I am?" + +"The doctors have forbidden many people in your room, dear." + +"Yes, a few days ago, when I was so very ill; but now that I am better, +papa might come. I want to thank him for all his anxious care of me, and +to be sure that _he_ consents to this marriage." + +"My darling, be assured the marriage is for the best," pleaded Diana. + +And the marriage took place. + +Charlotte's innocent soul was thus spared the pain of a revelation which +must have cast a dark shadow on the bright beginning of her wedded life. +Georgy pledged herself to keep the fatal secret from her daughter; and +Diana Paget rewarded her discretion by the most patient attention to her +piteous and prosy lamentations upon the iniquity of mankind in general, +and Philip Sheldon in particular. + +Of that hideous secret of the past, lately revealed by Mr. Burkham, Mrs. +Sheldon had been told nothing. No good end could have been served by such +a revelation. The criminal law has its statute of limitations--unwritten, +but not the less existent. A crime which would have been difficult of +proof at the time of its commission must after the lapse of twelve years +have travelled beyond the pale of justice. For three people to come +forward and declare that at the time of Mr. Halliday's death they had +suspected Mr. Sheldon of poisoning him, would be to prove nothing to the +minds of a British jury, except that the three people in question were +libellous and ill-disposed persons. The greater the issue, the wider the +chances of escape given to the accused; and a petty offender will be +condemned for picking a pocket upon much lighter grounds than will be +considered sufficient to prove a man guilty of blowing up the Houses of +Parliament. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +AFTER THE WEDDING. + +The manner in which Mr. Sheldon would act in the future was a matter of +considerable fear to his wife. She had a hazy idea that he would come to +the pleasant Kilburn lodgings to claim her, and insist upon her sharing +his dreary future. + +"If I could only have a divorce," she said piteously, when she discussed +the subject with her son-in-law. "There ought to be divorces for such +dreadful things; but I never heard of one before Sir Creswick, +or the new judge, whose name I can't remember. O Valentine, I cannot live +with him; I cannot sit down to dinner day after day with such a man as +that. And to think that I should have known him when I was the merest +girl, and have danced my very first polka with him when it first came in, +and people wore polka boots and polka jackets, and wrote their notes of +invitation upon polka paper, and sang polka songs, and worked polking +peasants in Berlin wool, and went on altogether in the most absurd +manner. And O Valentine, whom can one trust, if not the man one has known +all one's life!" + +Mr. Hawkehurst pledged himself to protect his mother-in-law from any +attempt at persecution upon the part of her husband. He did not know what +difficulties he might have to encounter in the performance of this +pledge; for, in his ignorance of the stockbroker's desperate +circumstances, he imagined that Philip Sheldon would make some attempt to +right himself in the eyes of the world, by compelling his wife to +reassume her position in his house. + +He went to George Sheldon's office within a few days after his marriage +to take counsel from that astute adviser. He found the lawyer hard at +work, and in very good spirits. It was by his advice the marriage had +been hurried on; Charlotte's stealthy removal from the house while Philip +Sheldon slumbered had been planned by him; and he was triumphant in the +thought that the plot had succeeded so well, and that Philip, the coolest +and deepest of schemers, had been so completely baffled. + +"That Ann Woolper is a treasure," he said; "I didn't think it was in her +to do what she has done. Nothing could be neater than the way she kept +Phil at bay; and nothing could be better than her tact and cleverness in +getting Charlotte and her mother quietly off the other morning while my +precious brother was in the land of nod." + +"Yes, she has been invaluable to us." + +"And that girl Paget, too; she has turned out a regular trump. I used to +think her a very stiff, consequential piece of goods when I saw her at +the Lawn; but, egad, she has shown herself the genuine metal all through +this business. Now that's a young woman I wouldn't mind making Mrs. +George Sheldon any day in the week." + +"You do her too much honour," said Valentine, with an internal shiver. +"Unhappily, a prior engagement will prevent Miss Paget's availing herself +of so excellent an opportunity." + +"It mayn't be such a very bad chance as you seem to think it, my friend," +George replied, with some indignation. "Whenever the Reverend John +Haygarth's estate drops in, I stand to win fifty thousand pounds. And +that's not so bad for a start in life. I suppose you haven't forgotten +that your wife is heir-at-law to a hundred thousand pounds?" + +"No, I have not forgotten her position in relation to the Haygarth +estate." + +"Humph! I should rather think not. People don't generally forget that +kind of thing. But you are uncommonly cool about the business." + +"Yes, I have passed through a fiery furnace in which all the bullion in +the Bank of England will not serve a man. That kind of ordeal upsets +one's old notions as to the value of money. And, again, I have never been +able to contemplate Charlotte's inheritance of that fortune as anything +but a remote contingency; the business is so slow." + +"Yes, but it has been going on. Affidavits have been made; the whole +affair is in progress." + +"I am glad to hear it. Don't think that I pretend not to value the +prospect of wealth; I have only learnt to know that money is not the +be-all and end-all of life. I could be very happy with my dear wife if +there were no prospect of this Haygarthian inheritance; but if it does +come to us, we shall, no doubt, be all the happier. The millionaire sees +the world from a very pleasant point of view. I should like my dear girl +to be the mistress of as fair a home as money can buy for her." + +"Yes, and you'd like to have your name stand high in the statistics of +Government stockholders. Don't be sentimental, Hawkehurst; that kind of +thing won't wash. Thank God, we managed to save poor Tom's daughter from +the fangs of my brother Phil. But you can't suppose that I am going to +shut my eyes to the fact that this affair has been a very good thing for +you, and that you owe your chances of a great fortune entirely to me? You +don't pretend to forget _that_, I suppose?" said George Sheldon, with +some acrimony. + +"Why should I pretend to forget that, or any circumstance of our business +relations? I am perfectly aware that you started the hunt of the +Haygarths, and that to your investigations is to be traced the discovery +that proves my wife a claimant to the estate now held by the Crown." + +"Very good; that's outspoken and honest, at any rate. And now, how about +our agreement? It's only a parole agreement, but an honest man's word is +as good as his bond." + +"Our agreement!" repeated Valentine, with a puzzled expression of +countenance. "Upon my word, I forget." + +"Ah, I thought it would come to that; I thought you would manage to +forget the terms agreed upon by you and me in the event of your marriage +with Charlotte Halliday. My memory is not so short as yours; and I can +swear to a conversation between you and me in this room, in which you +consented to my taking half the Haygarthian estate as the price of my +discovery and the fair reward of my labours." + +"Yes," said Valentine, "I remember that conversation; and I remember +saying that the demand was a stiff one, but that I, as Charlotte's future +husband, would not oppose such a demand." + +"You remember that?" + +"I do; and if my wife is willing to consent to your terms, I will hold to +my promise." + +"Your wife's consent is not wanted. She married you without a settlement, +and her rights are merged in yours. To all intents and purposes, _you_ +are heir-at-law to John Haygarth's estate." + +Valentine laughed aloud; the whole affair seemed a tremendous joke. He, +the homeless, penniless, friendless reprobate of but one year ago--he, +the son and heir of a man who had been always on the verge of social +shipwreck for want of five pounds--he, of all other men upon this earth, +claimant against the Crown for an estate worth one hundred thousand +pounds! + +"The whole affair seems ridiculously improbable," he said. + +"My brother wouldn't have done what he did if the whole thing had seemed +improbable to him. However, we needn't estimate the chances for or +against; all I want is a legal agreement between you and me, securing my +share of the plunder." + +"I am ready to execute any reasonable agreement; but I am bound to +protect my wife's interests, and I must have a solicitor to act for me in +this affair. Greek must meet Greek, you know." + +"Very good. I could have conducted the business myself without the +interference of strangers; but if you are going in for extreme caution, +you'd better leave your wife's affairs in the hands of Messrs. Greenwood +and Greenwood, who have acted for her hitherto, and have all papers +relating to the case in their possession." + +"Greenwood and Greenwood? My dear girl told me she had signed some +document, and had seen some lawyers; but she did not tell me the nature +of the document, or the name of the lawyers. I have forborne to speak to +her on business matters. The treatment that she has undergone has left +her very nervous, and we try to keep all unpleasant subjects out of her +mind." + +"Yes, that's all very well; but business is business, you know. You'd +better see Messrs. Greenwood and Greenwood at once. Tell them of your +marriage. You'll have to keep Phil's conduct dark, of course; that is +understood between us. You must say the marriage was a love-match +against my brother's wish, romantic, sentimental, and so on. They'll +raise no objections when they find you are willing to leave the case in +their hands." + +"You have heard nothing of your brother?" + +"Well, no--nothing, or next to nothing. I called at his office yesterday. +He has not been there since the beginning of Charlotte's illness, and +there has been no letter or message for Orcott since your wedding-day. +Things look rather piscatorial, altogether. Orcott hints that Phil's +affairs are in queer street; but he's a shallow-headed fool, and knows +very little. It seems, by his account, that Phil was a Bull, and that +the fall in every species of stock has been ruin to him. You see, when a +man once goes in for the Bull business, he never by any chance turns +Bear--and _vice versa_. There's a kind of infatuation in the thing, and a +man sticks to his line until he's cleaned out--at least, that's what +stockbrokers have told me--and I believe it's pretty near the truth." + +This was all that Valentine could ascertain about Mr. Sheldon at present. +Every knock fluttered Georgy; every accidental visitor at the Kilburn +villa seemed like the swooping of eagle on dovecote. + +"I cannot get over the feeling that he will come and take me away with +him," she said. "If Sir Wilde Creswick would only do something, so that +my second husband mayn't be able to insist upon my living in that +dreadful, dreadful house, where I suffered such nights and days of agony, +that I am convinced the sight of chintz curtains lined with pink will +make me wretched as long as I live!" + +"My dear Mrs. Sheldon, he shall not come," said Valentine. + +"If I could only go ever so far away from him, and feel that there was +the sea, or something of that kind, between us!" + +"We will take you away--across the British Channel, or further still, if +you like. Diana and M. Lenoble are to be married soon; and directly +Lotta is strong enough for the journey we are to go over to Normandy, to +their chateau." + +"Chateau, indeed!" Mrs. Sheldon exclaimed peevishly. "The idea of Diana +Paget, without a sixpence, and with a regular scamp of a father, marrying +a man with a chateau, while my poor Charlotte--! I don't wish to wound +your feelings, Mr. Hawkehurst, but it really does seem hard." + +"It is hard that Lotta should not have married a prince--all the +grandeurs of a prince in a fairy tale would only be her due; but it +happens fortunately, you see, dear Mrs. Sheldon, that our sweet girl has +simple tastes, and does not languish for jewels or palaces. If she should +ever become rich--" + +"Ah," sighed, Georgy despondently, "I don't expect that. I can't +understand anything about this idea of a fine fortune that Mr. Sheldon +had got into his head. I know that my husband's mother was a Miss +Meynell, the daughter of a carpet-warehouseman in the city, and I can't +see how any grand fortune is to come to Charlotte through her. And as for +the Hallidays--Hyley and Newhall farms were all the property they ever +owned within the memory of man." + +"The fortune for which Charlotte is a claimant comes from the maternal +ancestor of Christian Meynell. I do not count upon her possession of it +as a certain good in the future. If it comes we will be thankful." + +"Is it a very large sum of money?" + +"Well, yes; I believe it is a considerable sum." + +"Twenty thousand pounds, perhaps?" + +"I have been told that it is as much." + +He did not want Georgy's weak mind to become possessed of the idea of +shadowy wealth. He remembered what Philip Sheldon had said to him on the +Christmas night in which they had paced the little Bayswater garden +together, and he felt that there was a substratum of common sense in that +scoundrel's artful warning. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +GREEK AGAINST GREEK. + +Valentine Hawkehurst called upon Mr. Greenwood, of the firm of Greenwood +and Greenwood, within a week of his marriage, and exhibited the +certificate to that gentleman. Mr. Greenwood received the information +with much solemnity, and even severity, of manner. + +"Are you aware that this is a very serious step which you have taken, +Mr. Hawkehurst?" he demanded, sternly. "You entrap--that is to say, +you persuade a lady into a hasty marriage--without consultation with +her legal advisers, without settlements of any kind whatever--while at +the same time you are aware that the lady in question is heir-at-law +to a very large fortune, proceedings for the recovery of which are +now pending. Pardon me if I observe that there is a want of +delicacy--of--a--hem--right-mindedness in the transaction." + +"The imputation contained in your remarks is not a pleasant one, Mr. +Greenwood," Valentine remarked quietly; "but I am quite willing to pardon +any injustice which you may inflict upon me by your desire to protect the +interests of your client. I think you will speedily discover that those +interests are in no way endangered by the lady's marriage with me. There +are social complications which are not to be settled by either law or +equity. Miss Halliday's surroundings of the last few months were of a +very painful nature; so painful, that the legal protection of marriage +became the only means of saving her from imminent peril. I cannot enter +more fully into those painful circumstances. I can only assure you that I +married your client with the consent and approval of her only near +relation, and uninfluenced in the smallest degree by mercenary +considerations. Whatever post-nuptial settlement you please to make for +my wife's protection I shall promptly execute." + +"You express yourself in a very honourable and highly creditable manner, +Mr. Hawkehurst," exclaimed the lawyer, with sudden cordiality; "and I beg +distinctly to withdraw any offensive observations I may have made just +now. Your own affairs are, I conclude, in a sufficiently solvent state?" + +"I do not owe a sixpence." + +"Good; and Mr. Sheldon, the lady's stepfather and my client--had you his +approval for this hasty marriage?" + +"The marriage took place without Mr. Sheldon's knowledge or consent." + +"May I ask your reason for this secrecy?" + +"No, Mr. Greenwood; it is just that one reason that I cannot tell you. +Accept my assurance that it was an all-powerful reason." + +"I am compelled to do so, if you decline to confide in my discretion; but +as Mr. Sheldon is my client, I am bound to think of his interests as well +as those of Miss Halliday--er--Mrs. Hawkehurst. I am somewhat surprised +that he has not called upon me since the marriage. He has been made aware +of that circumstance, I suppose?" + +"Yes; I wrote to him immediately after the ceremony, enclosing him a copy +of the certificate." + +"The marriage will make a considerable difference to him." + +"In what manner?" + +"Well, in the event of his stepdaughter's death. If she had died +unmarried and intestate, this fortune would have gone to her mother; +besides which, there was the insurance on Miss Halliday's life." + +"An insurance!" + +"Yes. Were you not apprised of that fact? Mr. Sheldon, with very natural +precaution, insured his stepdaughter's life for a considerable sum--in +point of fact, as I believe, five thousand pounds; so that, in case of +her death prior to the recovery of the Haygarth estate, her mother might +receive some solatium." + +"He had insured her life!" said Valentine, under his breath. + +This, then, was the key to the mystery. The Haygarthian inheritance was +but a remote contingency, a shadowy prize, which could scarcely have +tempted the secret assassin; but the insurance had offered the prospect +of immediate gain. The one link wanting to complete the chain of evidence +against Philip Sheldon was found. There was no longer a question as to +his motive. + +"This man knows of one insurance on her life," Valentine thought to +himself; "there may have been more than one." + +After a brief silence, in which Mr. Hawkehurst had been lost in thought, +the lawyer proceeded to discuss the terms of the post-nuptial settlement +necessary for the protection of his client's interests. In the course of +this discussion Valentine explained his position in relation to George +Sheldon, and stated the demands of that sharp practitioner. + +Mr. Greenwood was utterly aghast upon hearing Mr. Hawkehurst's views on +this subject. + +"You mean to tell me that this man claims a clear half of the Haygarth +estate--fifty thousand pounds--in consideration of his paltry +discoveries!" + +"Such is the demand he has made, and which I have pledged myself not to +oppose. He certainly does open his mouth very wide; but we are bound to +consider that but for these discoveries of his, my wife and my wife's +relatives would in all probability have gone down to their graves in +ignorance of their claim to this estate." + +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Hawkehurst. If Mr. George Sheldon had not made +the discovery, some one else would have made it sooner or later, depend +upon it. There would have been a little loss of time, that is all. There +are plenty of men of George Sheldon's class always on the look-out for +such chances as this--and for very small chances in comparison to this. +Why, I know a fellow, a Frenchman, called Fleurus, who will take as much +trouble about a few hundred pounds' worth of unclaimed stock as this man, +George Sheldon, has taken about the Haygarth succession. And he has +really the impudence to claim fifty thousand pounds from you?" + +"A claim which I have pledged myself not to oppose." + +"But which you have not pledged yourself to support. My dear Mr. +Hawkehurst, this is a business which you must allow me to settle for you, +as your wife's legal adviser. We will consider you quite out of the +question, if you please; you will thus come out of your relations to Mr. +George Sheldon with perfectly clean hands. You will not oppose his claim; +but I shall oppose him in my character of legal adviser to your wife. +Why, are you aware that this man executed an agreement with his brother, +consenting to receive a fifth share of the estate, and costs out of +pocket, in complete acquittance of all claims? I have an abstract of the +agreement, amongst Miss Halliday's--Mrs. Hawkehurst's papers." + +After some further discussion, Valentine agreed to leave the whole matter +in Mr. Greenwood's hands. Greek must meet Greek. Gray's Inn and the +Fields must settle this business between themselves. + +"I am only prince consort," he said, with a smile. "I pretend to no +actual interest in my wife's estate. I doubt, indeed, whether I should +not have felt more complete happiness in our marriage if she had not been +heiress to so large a fortune." + +At this Mr. Greenwood laughed outright. + +"Come, come, Mr. Hawkehurst," he exclaimed, "that really won't do. I am +an old stager, you know--a man of the world;--and you mustn't ask me to +believe that the idea of your wife's expectations can afford you anything +but unqualified satisfaction." + +"You cannot believe? No, perhaps not," Valentine answered, thoughtfully. +"But you do not know how nearly these expectations have lost me my wife. +And even now, when she is mine by virtue of a bond that only death can +loosen, it seems to me as if her wealth would make a kind of division +between us. There are people who will always consider me a lucky +adventurer, and look at my marriage as the result of clever scheming. I +cannot advertise to the world the fact that I loved Charlotte Halliday +from the first hour in which I saw her, and asked her to be my wife three +days before I discovered her claim to John Haygarth's estate. A man can't +go through the world with his justification pinned upon his breast. I +think it will be my fate to be misjudged all my life. A twelvemonth ago I +cared very little about the opinions of my fellow-men; but I want to be +worthy of my wife in the esteem of mankind, as well as in the depths of +my own moral consciousness." + +"Go and finish your honeymoon," said the lawyer, digging his client in +the ribs with elephantine playfulness; "the moon must be in her first +quarter, I should think. Go along with you, and leave me to tackle Mr. +George Sheldon." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +ONLY A DREAM. + +"I say, Lenoble," Captain Paget began abruptly one afternoon when his +daughter and his future son-in-law were in attendance upon his sofa, +"when are you and Diana to be married? There is nothing to hinder your +marriage now, you know." + +Diana looked at the speaker with a grave countenance. + +"Dear papa, there can be no marriage while you are so ill," she said +gently. + +"And afterwards, when I'm gone, you won't like to marry within six months +of your father's funeral; and you will be left alone in the world. You +can't hang on to Hawkehurst and his wife. The best thing you can do, +Lenoble, is to marry her out of hand, and let me see her by my bedside as +Madame Lenoble of Cotenoir. It will be some consolation for me to see +that day. I thought to have shared your home, with a run to Paris +occasionally just to freshen myself up a little; but that's all over now. +It does seem rather hard to me sometimes; and I think of Moses, and his +forty years in the Desert with those ill-conditioned Israelites, who were +always getting into some scrape or other--setting up golden calves, and +that kind of thing--if he turned his back on them for twenty-four hours. +A pack of ungrateful beggars too, always ready for mutiny--regular +radicals, begad! And he went through it all: the sand, and the _toujours_ +quails, and the ingratitude; and after forty years of it, when he saw the +Promised Land stretched before him green and fertile on the other side of +the river--he died! I've been through my desert, the dreary wanderings +over the barren sand, and the ingratitude of men I've served. Yes, I've +gone through it all; and just as I catch a glimpse of Canaan, the curtain +drops." + +On this they comforted him; and sustained him with the promise of a +brighter Canaan than Cotenoir. + +"Yes," he said in a dreamy voice, "I read about it very often. A city +with foundations of jasper and chalcedony, emerald and sardonyx; gates of +pearl, pavements of gold. That's what St. John the Evangelist saw in his +vision; and we've only his word for it. But there's something that I can +believe and can understand: 'In my Father's house there are many +mansions.' There's more hope for a sinful man of the world in that +promise than in all St. John's dreams about gates of pearl and +foundations of emerald." + +The Captain was failing fast. He had exchanged his easy-chair for a sofa +now; and the time seemed near at hand when he must exchange the sofa for +his bed. After that there would remain but one last change, to the +contemplation whereof the sick man was becoming daily more reconciled. + +He had read his Gospel more diligently of late, and had taken comfort +from those sublime pages. Do they not contain consolation, hope, promise +for all--for the weary man of the world as well as for the saint? There +is to be found the only creed that can adapt itself to every condition +of life, and has a margin wide enough for every weakness of erring +humanity. Buddhism may contain a scheme of morality almost as perfect; +Mahomet may have expounded hopes that seem well-nigh as divine; but in +the Gospel is the only system that will adapt itself at once to the +culture of the spiritual man, and the active life of the practical +worker in this lower world. + +Gustave Lenoble was only too glad to claim his promised wife a little +sooner than he had hoped to claim her. "Thou hast put me off long enough, +cruel," he said; "and now it is thy father's wish that our marriage +should be soon. It shall be this week; I will take no longer thine +excuses. We shall be the sooner ready to receive thy friends, thy +Charlotte and her Hawkehurst." + +Diana smiled. + +"Dear Gustave, you are always kind," she said. + +It was very sweet to her to think that her new home would afford a +pleasant haven for that dear friend who had sheltered her. And with +Charlotte, the dear adopted sister, would come the man she had once +loved, to share whose cares had once been the brightest dream. + +She wondered at her own inconstancy on perceiving how completely the +dream had flown. Before the stern realities of life--before sickness and +sorrow and the dread shadow of death--that schoolgirl's vision had +utterly melted away. It is just possible that Gustave's manly outspoken +love may have helped to blot from the tablet of her mind the fantastic +picture of the life that might have been. She scarcely knew whether this +was so; but she did know that a new and happier existence began for her +from the hour in which she gave her heart in all truth and loyalty to +Gustave Lenoble. + +The wedding was arranged to take place within a week of Captain Paget's +expressly declared wish. It was to be solemnised at a church near +Knightsbridge, and again at a Catholic chapel in the neighbourhood of +Sloane-street; by which double ceremonial a knot would be tied that no +legal quibble could hereafter loosen. Charlotte was just sufficiently +recovered to obtain permission to be present at the ceremonial, after +some little exercise of her persuasive powers with the medical +practitioner to whose care Dr. Jedd had committed her when all danger was +past. + +The Captain protested, with an eager insistence, that the wedding +breakfast should be eaten at his domicile. + +"And Val," he said, "be sure Val is with you. I have a secret to tell +him--a kind of atonement to make; some news to give him that he won't +quite relish, perhaps. But that's no fault of mine." + +"No bad news, I hope, papa; for Charlotte's sake as well as for +Valentine's." + +"That depends upon how they both take it. Your friend Charlotte is not +particularly fond of money, is she?" + +"Fond of money, papa? A baby knows as much of the value of money as +Lotta. Except to give to beggars in the streets, or to buy pretty +frivolous presents for her friends, she has neither use nor desire for +money. She is the most generous, most disinterested of created beings." + +"I'm very glad to hear it," said the Captain, drily. "And how about +Hawkehurst, now? Do you think it was a real love-match, his marriage with +Miss Halliday? No _arriere pensee_--no looking out for the main chance at +the bottom of his romantic attachment, eh, Di?" + +"No, papa. I am sure there was never truer love than his. I saw him under +most trying circumstances, and I can pledge myself for the truth of his +devotion." + +"I am very glad to hear it. Be sure you bring Hawkehurst and his wife to +my little breakfast. A chicken, a pine, a bottle of sparkling hock, and +a fond father's blessing, are all I shall give you; but the chicken and +the hock will be from Gunter, and the blessing from the bottom of a +paternal heart." + + * * * * * + +Bright shone the day that gave Diana to her husband, and very beautiful +looked the bride in her simple dress. Gustave Lenoble's marriage was no +less quietly performed than that union which had secured the safety of +Charlotte Halliday and the happiness of Valentine Hawkehurst. The shadow +of death hovered very near bride and bridegroom; for they knew full well +that he who was to preside that day at their simple marriage-feast would +soon have tasted that last sacred cup which has no after-flavour of +bitterness. + +The breakfast promised by the Captain was arranged with much elegance. +Hothouse flowers and fruits; wines with the icedew sparkling on the dark +glass; chickens and tongue, idealized by the confectioner's art, and +scarcely recognizable beneath rich glazings and embellishments of jellies +and forcemeats; the airiest and least earthly of lobster salads, and a +pyramid of coffee-ice, testified to the glory of the Belgravian purveyor. +It had been pleasant to Captain Paget to send his orders to Gunter, +certain of funds to meet the bill. It was almost a glimpse of that land +of milk and honey, that Canaan in Normandy, which he was never to +inhabit. + +He was very weak, very ill; but the excitement of the occasion in some +measure sustained and revivified him. The man who had been engaged to +nurse and wait upon him had attired him with much care in a dressing-gown +as elegant as the robe in which he had disported himself, a penniless +young cornet, in his luxurious garrison quarters, some fifty years +before. His loose white locks were crowned with an embroidered +smoking-cap; his patrician instep was set off by a dainty scarlet +slipper. He had put away the Gospel, and all thoughts of that dread +reckoning which he had really some shadowy desire and hope to settle +satisfactorily, by some poor dividend which might discharge his +obligations to that merciful Creditor who forgives so many just debts. +To-day he was of the world, worldly. It was a kind of _ante-mortem_ +lying-in-state--his last levee; and he was equal to the occasion. + +The prettily adorned table was drawn near the sofa where the invalid host +reclined, supported by numerous pillows. His daughter and her husband, +Valentine, Charlotte, and Georgy, made a little circle about him. His own +man, and a clerical-looking person from Gunter's, assisted at the airy +banquet. Very little was eaten by any of the guests, and it was a relief +to every one when the clerical personage and Captain Paget's factotum +retired, after serving tea and coffee with funereal solemnity. + +Valentine Hawkehurst was all gentleness and cordiality towards his old +taskmaster. The wrong must indeed be dire which is considered in such an +hour as this. Valentine remembered only that with this old man he had +seen many troubled days; and that for him the end of all earthly +wanderings was very near. + +The little banquet was not served in Captain Paget's ordinary +sitting-room. For this distinguished occasion the landlady had lent a +dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, just deserted by a +fashionable bachelor lodger who had left town at the close of the season. +This drawing-room on the ground floor, like the room above, overlooked +the Park, and to this apartment the Captain requested his guests to +adjourn, with the exception of Mr. Hawkehurst, some little time after the +departure of the servants. + +"I want to have a few words with Val in private," he said; "I have a +secret to communicate. Diana, show Mrs. Hawkehurst the Drive. You can see +the Bow from my room, but not from these lower windows. There are a good +many carriages still, but it is too late for the _creme de la creme_. I +remember when the West End was a desert at this time of year; but I have +lived to see the levelling of all distinctions, those of time as well as +of class." + +Charlotte and Diana retired to the adjoining room with Mrs. Sheldon and +M. Lenoble. Valentine was at a loss to imagine what manner of +confidential communication his late patron and employer could desire to +impart to him. The cautious Horatio waited until the rest of the party +were quite out of hearing, talking gaily by the open window, beyond which +appeared all the fluttering life and motion of summer leaves, all the +brightness of summer green below, and deep blue sky above. When they +seemed to him to be quite engaged with their own conversation, Captain +Paget turned to his old companion. + +"Val," he said, "we have seen hard times together; we've roughed it among +strange places and strange people, you know and so on; and I think there +is a friendly kind of feeling between us?" + +He held out his poor wasted hand, and Valentine grasped it firmly in his +own with prompt cordiality. + +"My dear governor, I have no feeling in my heart that is not friendly to +you." + +This was perfectly true. + +"And even if I had been inclined to bear any grudge against you on +account of the old days, when, you know, you were a little apt to be +indifferent as to what scrape you left me in, provided you got off +scot-free yourself; if I had been inclined to remember that kind of thing +(which, on my honour, I am not), your daughter's noble courage and +devotion in the time of my dear wife's peril should have stood against +that old wrong. I cannot tell you how deeply I feel her goodness in that +bitter time." + +"She is a Paget," murmured the Captain, complacently. "_Noblesse +oblige._" + +Valentine could scarcely refrain from a smile as he remembered the many +occasions upon which the obligations of a noble lineage had weighed very +lightly on his aristocratic patron. + +"Yes, Val," the Captain resumed, in a dreamy tone, "we have seen many +strange things together. When I began my travels through this world, in +the palmy days of the Regency, I little thought what a weary journey it +was to be, and what queer people I was to encounter among my +fellow-passengers. However, I've come to the last stage of the long +journey now, and I thank Providence that it ends so comfortably." + +To this Valentine assented kindly, but he was at a loss to understand why +Captain Paget should have required the adjournment of the rest of the +party before giving utterance to these mild commonplaces. + +For some moments the invalid relapsed into thoughtful silence. Then, +rousing himself as if with an effort, he took a few sips of a cooling +drink that stood by his side, and began with a startling abruptness. + +"You remember your journey to Dorking, Val, last October, when you went +to see that mysterious old aunt of yours, eh?" + +Valentine blushed as the Captain recalled this cunningly-devised fable. + +"Yes," he said gravely; "I remember telling you that I was going to see +an aunt at Dorking." + +"An aunt who had a little bit of money, eh, Val?" asked the Captain, +with a grin. + +"Yes. I may have gone so far as to speak of a little bit of money." + +"And neither the aunt nor the bit of money ever existed, eh, Val? They +were mere figments of the brain; and instead of going to Dorking you went +to Ullerton, eh, Val? You stole a march upon me there. You wanted to +throw your old chum off the scent, eh? You thought you had got hold of a +good thing, and you were afraid your friend and companion might get a +share of it." + +"Well, you see, my friend and companion had a knack of getting the +lion's share. Besides, this good thing was not my own affair. I had to +protect the interest of another person--my employer, in point of fact; +and it was by his suggestion, and in compliance with his request, that +I invented that harmless fiction about Dorking. I don't think there +was any dishonourable dealing in the matter. We were soldiers of +fortune both; and the stratagem with which I protected myself against +you was a very innocent one. You would have employed any stratagem or +invented any fiction under the same circumstances. It was a case of +diamond cut diamond." + +"Precisely; and if the older soldier, if the free lance of many a +campaign, got the best of it in the long run, the younger freebooter +could hardly think himself ill-used--could he now, Val?" + +"Well, no, I suppose not," replied Valentine, puzzled by the significance +in the face of his old companion. That sly twinkle in the Captain's eyes, +that triumphant smile wreathing the Captain's lips, must surely mean +mischief. + +Valentine Hawkehurst remembered the vague suspicion that had flashed into +his mind on that Christmas Eve when Captain Paget and he had dined +together at a West End restaurant, and the Captain had toasted Charlotte +Halliday with a smile of sinister meaning. He began to anticipate some +startling and unpleasant revelation. He began to understand that in some +manner this inscrutible schemer had contrived to overreach him. + +"What are you going to tell me?" he asked. "I see there is some lurking +mischief in your mind. How was it you were at Ullerton when I was there? +I met you on the platform of the station, and I had a vague half +suspicion that you followed me up on more than one occasion. I saw a +glove in a man's parlour--a glove which I could have sworn to as yours. +But when I came back, you were so plausible with your talk of promoting +business, and so on, that I was fool enough to believe you. And I suppose +you cheated and tricked me after all?" + +"Cheated and tricked are hard words, my dear Val," said the Captain, with +delightful blandness. "I had as much right to transact imaginary business +in the promoting line at Ullerton as you had to visit a fictitious aunt +at Dorking. Self-interest was the governing principle in both cases. I do +not think you can have any right to consider yourself injured by me if I +did steal a march upon you, and follow close upon your heels throughout +that Ullerton business. I do not think that you can have, on moral +grounds, any justification for making a complaint against your old ally." + +"Well, I suppose you are right enough in that," said Valentine. + +"Shake hands upon it, then. I have not very long to live, and I want to +feel myself at peace with mankind. You see, if you had come to me in the +first place, in a frank and generous spirit, and had said, 'My dear +friend, here is a good thing; let us go into it together, and see what +there is to be made out of it,' you would have placed the matter on such +a footing that, as a man of honour, I should have been bound to regard +your interests as my own. But when you set up a separate interest, when +you try to throw dust in my eyes, to hoodwink me--me, Horatio Paget, +a man of the world, possessed of some little genius for social +diplomacy--you attempt to do that which no man ever yet succeeded in +doing, and you immediately release me from those obligations which an +honourable man holds sacred. It was my glove which you saw in Mr. +Goodge's parlour. I had a very satisfactory interview with that reverend +person while you were absent from Ullerton on some short excursion, as to +the purpose of which I am still in the dark. On certain terms Mr. Goodge +agreed to give me the privilege of selecting a stated number from the +letters of Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth. I have reason to believe that I made a +judicious choice; for the information thus obtained placed me at once +upon a track which I followed industriously until it led me to a +triumphant result." + +"I do not understand--" began Valentine; but the Captain did not allow +him time to say more. + +"You do not understand that there could be any other genealogical line +than that which you and George Sheldon fitted together so neatly. You +have neither of you the experience of life which alone gives wideness of +vision. You discovered the connections of the Haygarth and the Meynell +families in the past. That was a step in the right direction. The +discovery, so far as it went, was a triumph. You allowed the sense of +that triumph to intoxicate you. In a business which of all businesses +within the range of man's intellect most requires deliberation and +sobriety, you went to work in a fever of haste and excitement. Instead +of searching out _all_ the descendants of Christian Meynell, you pounce +upon the first descendant who comes to hand, and elect her, at your own +pleasure, sole heiress to the estate of the deceased John Haygarth. +You forget that there may be other descendants of the said Christian +Meynell--descendants standing prior to your wife Charlotte in the line of +succession." + +"I can imagine no such descendants existing," said Valentine, with a +puzzled manner. "You seem to have made yourself master of our business; +but there is one point upon which you are mistaken. George Sheldon and I +did not go to work in a fever of haste. We did fully and thoroughly +examine the pedigree of that person whom we--and legal advisers of +considerable standing--believe to be the sole heir-at-law to the Haygarth +estate; and we took good care to convince ourselves that there was no +other claimant in existence." + +"What do you call convincing yourselves?" + +"Christian Meynell had only three children--Samuel, Susan, and Charlotte. +The last, Charlotte, married James Halliday, of Newhall and Hyley farms; +the other two died unmarried." + +"How do you know that? How do you propose to demonstrate that Samuel and +Susan Meynell died unmarried?" + +"Susan was buried in her maiden name. Mrs. Halliday, her sister, was with +her when she died. There was no question of marriage; nor is there the +record of any marriage contracted by Samuel." + +"All that is no proof." + +"Indeed! I should have thought the evidence sufficient. But, in any case, +the _onus probandi_ is not upon us. Can you prove the marriage of the +Samuel Meynell who died at Calais, or of the Susan Meynell who died in +London?" + +"I can. Susan Meynell's legitimate son is in the next room. It's an +unpleasant kind of revelation to make, Val; as he, the son of one sister, +stands prior to your wife, the granddaughter of the other sister, in the +order of succession. AND HE TAKES ALL!" + +"He takes all!" repeated Valentine, bewildered. "He! Susan Meynell's +son?--in the next room? What does all this mean?" + +"It means that when Susan was deserted by the scoundrel who took her away +from her home, she found an honest fellow to marry her. The name of her +husband was Lenoble. Gustave Lenoble yonder, my daughter's husband, is +her only child by that marriage. A perfectly legal marriage, my dear +Val--everything _en regle_, I assure you. The business is in the hands of +Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon of Whitehall--a first-class firm; counsel's +opinion most decided as to Lenoble's position. They have been rather slow +about the preliminary steps; and, _entre nous_, I have not cared to hurry +them, for I wanted to get my daughter's marriage over quietly before we +began our proceedings in Chancery. It comes rather hard upon you, Val, I +allow; but, you see, if you had acted generously, not to say honourably, +towards me in the first instance, you'd have had the advantage of my +experience. As it is, you have been working in the dark. However, things +are not so bad as they might be. You might have married some ugly old +harridan for the sake of this Haygarth estate; you have secured a pretty +and amiable wife, and you mustn't be downhearted if you find yourself, +from a financial point of view, most outrageously sold." + +The Captain could not refrain from a laugh as he contemplated his young +friend's surprise. The laugh degenerated into a fit of coughing, and it +was some little time before the enfeebled Horatio was ready to resume the +interrupted conversation. In this pause Valentine had leisure to face +this new position. There was for the moment a sharp sense of +disappointment. It is not possible for humanity to be quite indifferent +to a hundred thousand pounds. So much of the "light and sweetness" of +life is attainable for that sum,--such pleasures, of the purest and +noblest, are in the power of the possessor. But in this moment Valentine +fully realized the fact that he had never taken the idea of this fortune +into his mind--never made it part and parcel of himself, to be plucked +out of his heart with anguish, and to leave a bleeding wound in the place +where it had grown. It seemed to him as if he had been wakened abruptly +from some bright bewildering dream; but the sharp pang of mercenary +desires disappointed, of sordid hopes suddenly reft, was not for him. + +Beyond this sense of uncertainty, which had made the Haygarthian fortune +seem at best such "stuff as dreams are made of," there had been ever +present in his mind of late the dismal association connected with this +money. For this, and to get power over this through the rights of his +weak wife, had Philip Sheldon plotted against the life of that sweet girl +who was but newly rescued from the jaws of the grave. The bitter memory +of those days and nights of suspense could never have been quite +dissociated from the money that had been the primary cause of all this +slow torture. + +"Do you think I shall love my wife any less because she has no claim to +the Haygarth estate?" he exclaimed presently, looking with +half-contemptuous indignation upon the broken-down Bohemer. "I loved her +long before I knew the name of Haygarth; I should have loved her if I had +found her a beggar in the London streets, a peasant-girl weeding for +sixpence a day in some dismal swamp of agricultural poverty and +ignorance. I am not going to say that this money would not have brought +us pleasure; pictures and gardens, and bright rooms, and books without +number, and intercourse with congenial acquaintance and delightful +journeyings to all the fairest places upon the earth, and the power to do +some good in our generation, and a sense of security for our future, and +by-and-by, perhaps, for the future of dear children, for whose prosperity +we should be more anxious than for our own. Pleasure the money would most +probably have brought for us in abundance; but I doubt if it could buy us +more perfect happiness than we may know in the simplest home that my toil +can support. Ah, Captain, I question if you ever knew the sweetest +sensation life can give--the delight of working for those we love." + +Captain Paget stared at his sometime protege in a kind of rapture of +wonder, not entirely unmingled with admiration. + +"Egad!" he exclaimed, "I have read of this kind of thing in novels; but +in the whole course of my experience I never met with anything equal to +it. My son-in-law, Lenoble yonder, is a generous foo--fellow enough; but +then, since infancy, he has never known the want of money. And generosity +from that kind of man is no more of a virtue than the foolhardiness of a +child who pokes his finger into the candle, not knowing the properties of +the thing he has to deal with. But anything like generosity from you, +from a man reared as you were reared, is, I freely confess, a little +beyond my comprehension." + +"Yes; it is a transformation, is it not? But I don't think I was ever +inordinately fond of money. Your genuine Bohemian rarely is. He is too +well schooled in the art of living without cash, and he asks so little +here below. His pipe, his friend, his dog, his books, his garret, his +billiards, his beer. It is all a question of a few pounds a week. And if, +some day, the divine enchanter Love takes the poor fellow underhis +guidance, and teaches him to do without billiards and beer, your Bohemian +settles down into the purest and best of men. Think what Goldy might have +been if some good woman had taken compassion upon him and married him, +and henpecked him ever afterwards. He might have written as many novels +as Sir Walter Scott, and died master of some Hibernian Abbotsford, some +fair domain among the bright green hills that look down upon broad +Shannon's silvery falls. No, Captain; your intelligence has not +annihilated me. I can face the future boldly with my dear young wife upon +my arm." + +"Upon my soul, Val, you're a very noble fellow!" exclaimed Horatio Paget, +with real enthusiasm; "and I am sorry I have kept you in the dark so +long." + +"You have kept me in the dark? Yes; to be sure. How long have you known +this--about Susan Meynell?" + +"Well, my dear boy, not very long." + +"But how long? A month--two months? Yes; you have known Lenoble's +position ever since you knew him; and Charlotte told me three months ago +of Diana's engagement to Lenoble. Do you know that if Sheldon had +succeeded, Charlotte's blood would have been upon your head? If you had +not concealed the truth, his villany would never have been attempted." + +"But, my dear Val," exclaimed the Captain piteously, "I was not to +know--" + +"No; you were not to know that there could be such a wretch as Philip +Sheldon upon this earth. We will say no more of that. I kept my secret, +you kept yours. Mischief unspeakable well-nigh came of all this underhand +work. But heaven has been merciful to us. We have passed through the +valley of the shadow of death; and if anything could make my wife dearer +to me than she was when first I won her promise to be mine, it would be +the sorrow of the last few months. And now I will go and shake hands with +Lenoble, my wife's kinsman. He is a fine fellow, and well deserves his +good fortune. Stay; one word. Did Diana know this? did she know that her +lover is heir to the Haygarth estate?" + +"She does not know it now. She has never heard the name of Haygarth. And, +between you and me, Val, it cost me a world of trouble to persuade her to +say yes to Lenoble's offer, though he is a very decent match for her, +even without reference to the Haygarth estate." + +"I am glad she knew nothing of this," said Valentine; "I am very glad." + +After this he again shook hands with Captain Paget, at that gentleman's +request, and the Captain expressed himself much relieved by the +conversation, and by his late protege's very generous behaviour. He +called to his daughter and the rest presently, and they came at his +summons. + +"Is your long talk finished, papa?" asked Diana. + +"And is the secret told?" demanded Charlotte of her obedient husband +and slave. + +"Yes, dear, it is told," he answered gravely. + +"I hope it is a pleasant secret." + +"I do not think the knowledge of it will give you much pain, dearest. +You have learnt to think yourself a--a kind of an heiress of late, +have you not?" + +"Papa--Mr. Sheldon--told me that I had a claim to some money; but I have +not thought much about it, except that I should give you Grote and +Macaulay in dark-brown calf, with bevelled boards and red edges, like +that edition you saw at the auctioneer's in Bond Street, and have talked +about ever since; and a horse, perhaps; and a glass porch to our +cottage." + +"Well, darling, the books in dark-brown calf, and the horse, and the +glass porch, may all be ours in the future; but the money was only a +dream--it has melted away, dear." + +"Is that all?" asked Charlotte. "Why, I dare say the day will come when +you will be as rich as Sir Walter Scott." + +"In the meantime I have something to give you instead of the money." + +"Indeed!" + +"Yes; a cousin. Will that do as well, my love?" + +"A cousin? I shall like her very much if she is nice." + +"The cousin I mean is a gentleman." + +"But where is he to come from?" cried Charlotte, laughing. Has he +dropped from the moon? The only relations I have the world are Uncle and +Aunt Mercer. How can you pretend to find me a cousin?" + +"Do you remember telling me of your grandmother's only sister--Susan +Meynell?" + +"Yes," said Charlotte, with a sudden blush; "I remember." + +"That Miss Meynell married a gentleman of Normandy, and left one only +child, a son. His name is Gustave Lenoble, and he is standing by your +side. He is heir-at-law to a very large fortune, which it was once +supposed you could claim. Are you sorry, Lotta, to find a kinsman and +lose a fortune?--and are you contented to begin the world with no hope +except in your husband's patience and courage?" + +"And genius!" cried Charlotte, with enthusiasm. + +The sweet, blinding glamour of love shone upon this young scribbler, and +she believed that he was indeed worthy to take rank among the greatest of +that grand brotherhood of which he was so humble a member. She looked up +at him with the prettiest confidence; her clinging hand clasped his with +love and trust immeasurable. He felt and knew that love like this was a +treasure beside which the Reverend John Haygarth's hoarded thousands must +needs seem but sorry dross. + +After this there was much explanation and congratulation. Gustave Lenoble +was delighted to claim so fair a kinswoman. + +"Thou art like my eldest, my cousin," he said; "Diana saw the likeness at +the Sacre Coeur when she beheld my daughter; and I too saw my eldest's +look in thine eyes when I first met thee. Remember, it was convened +between us that Cotenoir should be a home for thee and for Hawkehurst +before I knew what link bound thee to the house of Lenoble. Now thou and +thy husband will be of our family." + +Diana was bewildered, grieved, indignant with the father who had deceived +her by his studious suppression of the truth. She found herself placed in +the position of rival to Charlotte, and the whole proceeding seemed to +her mean and treacherous. + +But it was no time for remonstrance or open expression of indignant +feeling. Her father's days were numbered. She knew this, and she held her +peace. Nor did Mrs. Sheldon utter any word of complaint, though the +disappointment she experienced upon hearing this revelation was very +keen. The idea of the four or five thousand pounds which were to come to +Charlotte had been a consolation to her in the midst of that confusion +and desolation which had newly come upon her life. She left Knightsbridge +that evening somewhat depressed in spirits, and half inclined to be angry +with Charlotte and her husband for their gaiety of manner, and evident +happiness in each other's society. + +"It seems hard to have to begin the world at my age," she murmured +hopelessly, "after being accustomed to have everything nice about me, as +I had at the Lawn; though I own that the trouble and care of the servants +was wearing me to the grave." + +"Dear mamma," exclaimed Charlotte tenderly, "there is no fear of trouble +or poverty for you or for us. Valentine has plenty of money, and is on +the high road to securing a comfortable income. Authors do not starve in +garrets now, you know, as they used to do, poor things, when Doctor +Johnson ate his dinner in a cave, or something dreadful of that kind; and +when Sir Richard Steele thought it quite a wonderful thing to get a pound +of tea for his wife. And Valentine's heart is in his profession, and he +will work for us." + +"As long as I have a hand that can write, and a brain that can guide my +pen," interposed Mr. Hawkehurst, gaily. "I have given hostages to +Fortune. I can face the hazard boldly. I feel as confident and as happy as +if we lived in the golden age, when there was neither care nor toil for +innocent mankind, and all the brightest things of earth were the +spontaneous gift of the gods." + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE. + +Monsieur and Madame Lenoble went to Brighton for their honeymoon. A +letter or a telegraphic message would bring them thence swiftly to the +bedside of the dying Captain, should the last fatal change set in +suddenly. Diana had wished to stay with her father, but Horatio insisted +upon the honeymoon trip, and that everything should be done in a correct +and gentlemanly manner. + +"You can engage rooms at the Albion," Captain Paget had said to his +son-in-law a few days before the quiet wedding. "The house is extremely +comfortable; and you will be received by a compatriot. The proprietor is +a Frenchman, and a very gentlemanly person, I assure you; the _cuisine_ +irreproachable. I remember the old Steyne when Mrs. FitzHerbert lived +close by, and received all the best people, in the days when the Cockney +had not yet taken possession of Brighthelmstone, and the Chinese dragons +and pagodas were bright and fresh in the Pavilion." + +To Brighton, therefore, the bride and bridegroom departed; Diana attended +by a maid, an appanage which the Captain had insisted upon. Poor Diana +was sorely puzzled as to what she should find for the maid to do when her +hair had been dressed early in the morning, and her costume laid out in +state for the day. + +"I think I must buy some handkerchiefs for her to hem," she said to +Gustave; "it will be quite dreadful for her to have nothing to do all +day long." + +The weather was warm and bright. The sea danced and sparkled under the +windows. Gustave was always in the same happy frame of mind. An elegant +landau had been secured for the period of their visit, and a pair of +capital horses carried them out on long and pleasant expeditions to the +pretty Sussex villages, or across the broad bare downs, beyond which the +sea stretched blue and bright. + +In the evening, when the lamp was lighted and the urn hissed gaily, Diana +felt that she and her husband were at home. It was the first home she had +known--the first time she had been sole mistress and centre of a +household. She looked back at all the old desolation, the dreary shifting +from lodging to lodging, the degradation, the self-abasement, the dull +apathy of despair; and then she looked across at her husband as he +lounged in his easy-chair, contemplating her with dreamy adoring eye, in +a kind of lazy worship; and she knew that for this man she was the centre +of the universe, the very keystone in the arch of life. + +She stretched out her hand to him with a smile, and he pressed it fondly +to his lips. There were twinkling jewels upon the slender fingers; for +the prettiest shop in Brighton--the brightest shop in Brighton--had been +ransacked that morning by the fond, frivolous, happy husband, as pleased +to bedeck his wife as a child to dress her last new doll. + +"How can I ever be worthy of so much affection, Gustave!" she exclaimed, +as he kissed the twinkling fingers. + +And it did indeed seem to her that for this free gift of love she could +never render a sufficient recompense. + +"Thou wilt make Cotenoir a home," he said; "thou knowest not how I have +sighed for a home. This room, with the lamplight shining on thy face, and +thy white hands moving about the teacups, and thy sweet smile, which +greets me every now and then when thou lookest by here,--it is more of +home than I have ever known since I left Beaubocage, that modest dwelling +where lived those two angels of kindness, my aunt and my grandmother." + +In one of those long pleasant drives to a distant village nestling under +the lee of a steep hill, the husband and wife had much serious talk about +the position of the former with reference to the Haygarth estate. The +result of that conversation was shown in a letter which Charlotte +Hawkehurst received the next day from her friend Diana Lenoble. + +"Albion Hotel, Brighton. + +"EVER DEAR LOTTA,--Gustave and I have discussed the Haygarth business +with great satisfaction to ourselves, since it transpired in the course +of our conversation that we are both of one mind in the matter. It is +agreed between us that, as he is very well off already, and as he never +hoped or expected to inherit a fortune from his maternal ancestor, it is +only just that he should divide this unlooked-for wealth with his dear +cousin, whose claim to that inheritance he recognizes as equal to his +own; the mere fact of seniority making only a legal and not a moral +difference in the degree of relationship to the Reverend John Haygarth. +Do you understand, darling?--_you_ are to have half this money. My +husband will not step in between you and good fortune. I cannot tell you +how happy this determination of Gustave's has made me. I felt myself in a +manner base and ungrateful when I thought I was to share wealth that +might have been yours; but I ought to have better understood the justice +of my husband's mind. And now, dearest, all will be arranged very simply; +Gustave will come to London and see his lawyers, and execute some kind of +deed, and the whole affair will be settled. + +"We have had some charming drive," &c. &c. + +Here the young wife branched off into a description of the simple +pleasures of their honeymoon holiday. + +This letter was answered by Valentine Hawkehurst in person. He came down +to Brighton to thank his friends for their generous desire to enrich his +wife, and to decline, on her part, any share in John Haygarth's wealth. + +It was in vain that Gustave and Diana argued the point, Mr. Hawkehurst +was fixed as fate. + +"Believe me, it is better as it is," he said. "Charlotte and I have +arrived at this conviction with all due thought and deliberation. We are +both young, and the world is all before us. There is much in the past +that I have to redeem, as Diana well knows. It is better that I should +fight the battle of life unaided, and rise from the ranks by right of my +merit as a soldier. If ever we have need of help--if ever I find myself +breaking down--you may be sure that it is to you I shall come. By and by, +if Providence gives me children to work for, I will refuse no bounty that +you may bestow on them. Their future may be rendered secure by your +generosity, if you please, Lenoble; they will be your kindred. But for an +alien like myself there is no discipline so wholesome as honest hard +work. I am as rich as John Milton when he set up a school in St. Bride's +Churchyard." + +To this resolution Mr. Hawkehurst adhered with a gentle firmness. + +"Thou art chivalrous like Don Quixote," said Gustave Lenoble; "but it +shall be as thou wouldest. Touch there." + +He offered his hand, which the other grasped with all heartiness. + +"I will be godfather to thy little first one, and I will settle on him +ten thousand pounds before he cuts his first tooth," said Gustave +decisively. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +BEYOND THE VEIL. + +Diana and her husband did not linger long at Brighton; they went back to +town in time to see the last of that old wayfarer whose troubled journey +came to so peaceful an ending. It was a very calm haven in which this +battered old privateer lay at anchor after life's tempestuous course; but +to the Captain himself it seemed a hard thing that he should not have +been permitted one brief cruise upon that summer sea which danced so +gaily beneath the keel of the Lenobles' prosperous bark. + +"We have shared adversity, my love," he said sadly, when he talked with +his daughter in the last few days; "but your prosperity I am to have no +share in. Well, I suppose I have no right to complain. My life has been +an erring one; but poverty is the most vicious companion that a man can +consort with. If I had come into six or seven thousand a year, I might +have been as starch in my notions as a bishop; but I have been obliged to +live, Diana--that was the primary necessity, and I learnt to accommodate +myself to it." + +That he had erred, the Captain was very ready to acknowledge. That he had +sinned deeply, and had much need to repent himself of his iniquity, he +was very slow to perceive. But sometimes, in the still watches of the +night, when the faint lamplight on the shadowy wall was more gloomy than +darkness, when the nurse, hired to assist his own man in these last days, +dozed in her comfortable chair, the truth came home to his shallow soul, +and Horatio Paget knew that he had been indeed a sinner, and very vile +among sinners. Then, for a moment, the veil of self-deception was lifted, +and he saw his past life as it had really been,--selfish, dishonourable, +cruel beyond measure in reckless injury of others. For a moment the awful +book was opened, and the sinner saw the fearful sum set against his name. + +"What can wipe out the dread account?" he asked himself. "Is there such a +thing as forgiveness for a selfish useless life--a life which is one long +offence against God and man?" + +In these long wakeful nights the dying man thought much of his wife. The +sweet tender face came back to him, with its mournful wondering look. He +knew, now, how his falsehoods and dishonours had wounded and oppressed +that gentle soul. He remembered how often she had pleaded for the right, +and how he had ridiculed her arguments, and set at naught her tender +pleadings. He had fancied her in a manner inimical to himself when she +urged the cause of some angry creditor or meek deluded landlady. Now, +with the light that is not upon earth or sea shining on the picture of +his past career, he could see and understand things as he had never seen +or understood them before. He knew now that it was for his own sake that +faithful and devoted wife had pleaded, his own interest that had been +near to her pitying heart, as well as the interest of bakers and +butchers, landladies and tailors. + +"She might have made a good man of me, if I had let her have her way," he +thought to himself. "I know that she is in heaven. Will she plead for me, +I wonder, at the foot of the Great Throne? I used to laugh at her bad +English, or fly in a passion with her sometimes, poor soul, when I wanted +her to pass for a lady, and she broke down outrageously. But there her +voice will be heard when mine appeals in vain. Dear soul! I wonder who +taught her to be so pure and unselfish, and trusting and faithful? She +was a Christian without knowing it. 'I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of +heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and +prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.'" + +He thought of his wife's lonely deathbed, and compared it with his own. +For him there was luxury; by him watched a devoted and all-forgiving +daughter, a generous friend and son-in-law. All that could be done to +soothe the painful descent was done for him. For her there had been +nothing but loneliness and sorrow. + +"But she might be certain of a speedy welcome in a better home," thought +Horatio; "and I--? Ah, dear kind creature, _there_ the difference was all +in her favour." + +As the closing scene grew nearer, he thought more and more of his gentle +low-born wife, whose hold upon him in life had been so slender, whose +memory had occupied until now so insignificant a place in his mind. His +daughter watched with him unceasingly in the last two days and nights. +His mind wandered. On the day of his death he mistook Diana for that +long-lost companion. + +"I have not been a kind husband, Mary, my dear," he faltered "but +the world has been hard upon me--debts--difficulties--crack +regiment--expensive mess--set of gamblers--no pity on a young man without +fortune--force of example--tied a millstone round my wretched neck before +I was twenty-one years of age." + +Later, when the doctor had felt his pulse for the last time, he cried out +suddenly, "I have made a statement of my affairs, the liabilities are +numerous--the assets nil; but I rely on the clemency of this court." + +These were his last words. He sank into a kind of stupor betwixt sleeping +and waking, and in this he died. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +BETTER THAN GOLD. + +The little fleet of paper boats which Mr. Sheldon had pioneered so +skilfully over the commercial seas came to grief very soon after the +disappearance of the admiral. A bill drawn upon the Honduras Mahogany +Company, Limited, was the first to reach maturity. The bill was referred +to the drawer--the drawer was not to be found. + +"I have not seen Sheldon for the last fortnight," Mr. Orcott informed the +gentleman who brought him the document. + +"Out of business for a fortnight?" + +"He has not been in business for a month. His stepdaughter has been very +ill--at death's door, and all that kind of thing, and my governor was +awfully cut up about it. There used to be a couple of doctors at the +house every day, and no end of fuss. I took Sheldon his letters, and +managed matters for him here, and so on. And one fine morning my young +lady runs off and gets married on the quiet; so I suspect there was a +good deal of shamming about the illness--and those old fogies, the +doctors, winked at it. Between them all, I fancy Sheldon was completely +sold; and he has turned savage and gone off somewhere in the sulks." + +"I wish he had chosen any other time for his sulks," said the holder of +the bill; "my partner and I have discounted several acceptances for him. +He gave us liberal terms, and we considered any paper of his as safe as a +Bank of England note; and now this confounded bill comes back to us +through our bankers, noted, 'Refer to drawer'--a most unpleasant thing, +you know, and very inconsiderate of Sheldon to leave us in such a fix." + +"He has forgotten the bill, I suppose," said Mr. Orcott. + +"Well, but you see, really now, a business man ought not to forget that +kind of thing. And so Miss Halliday has made a runaway match, has she? I +remember seeing her when I dined at Bayswater--an uncommonly fine girl. +And she has gone and thrown herself away upon some penniless scapegrace, +most likely? Now, by the bye, how about this Honduras Company, Mr. +Orcott; they don't seem to have any London offices?" + +"I believe not. We've some of their prospectuses somewhere about, I +think. Would you like to see one?" + +"I should, very much." + +Mr. Orcott opened two or three drawers, and after some little trouble +produced the required document. + +It was a very flourishing prospectus, setting forth the enormous +benefits to be derived by shareholders from the profitable dealings of the +company. Some good high-sounding names figured in the list of directors, +and the chairman was Captain H. N. Cromie Paget. The prospectus looked +well enough, but the holder of Mr. Sheldon's dishonoured bill was not +able to derive much comfort from high-sounding phrases and high-sounding +names. + +"I'll go down to Bayswater, and see if I can hear anything of your +governor," he said to Mr. Orcott. + +"He was not there yesterday when I called, and his servants could tell me +nothing of his whereabouts," the young Yorkshireman said very coolly. + +"Indeed!" cried the holder of the dishonoured bill in some alarm. "Now, +really, that is not right; a business man ought not to do that kind of +thing." + +He called a cab and drove to the Lawn. There was the smart gothic villa, +with its pointed gables, and florid chimneys, and oriel windows, and in +the Tudor casements of the ground-floor appeared the bills of a West-end +auctioneer, announcing in large letters that the lease of this charming +mansion, together with the nearly new furniture, linen, books, china, +plate, carefully-selected proof-prints after distinguished modern +artists, small cellar of choice wines, &c., &c., &c., would be disposed +of by auction on the following day. + +Mr. Sheldon's victim went into the house, where he found some men +preparing for the forthcoming sale. + +"What is the meaning of all this?" he asked, aghast. + +"A bill of sale, sir. Messrs. Napthali and Zabulon." + +This was enough. The holder of the bill went back to the City. Another +bill came due on the following day, and before the members of the Stock +Exchange took their luncheon, it was known that Philip Sheldon's credit +was among the things of the past. + +"I always thought he was out of his depth," said one set of talkers. + +"He was the last man I should have expected to see come to grief," said +another set of talkers. + +On settling-day came the awful proclamation--Philip Sheldon had +absconded, and would not meet his differences. + +On the same day came a terrible revelation to Mr. George Sheldon, of +Gray's Inn, solicitor, genealogist, and pedigree hunter. The first +official step in the advancement of Gustave Lenoble's claim against the +Crown was taken by Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon, the solicitors, of +Whitehall; and George Sheldon discovered that between Charlotte +Hawkehurst and the Haygarth estate there stood a prior claimant, whereby +all his toil, trouble, costs out of pocket, and wear and tear of body and +mind, had been wasted. + +"It is enough to make a man go and cut his throat," cried George, in his +first savage sense of utter disappointment. + +He went into his slovenly bedroom, and took out one of his razors, and +felt the corrugated surface of the left side of his neck meditatively. +But the razor was blunt, and the corrugated surface seemed very tough and +unmanageable; so George Sheldon decided that this kind of operation was +an affair which might be deferred. + +He heard the next day that his brother was _non est_, and, in his own +phraseology, that there was a pretty kettle of fish in the City. + +"Upon my word, Phil and I seem to have brought our pigs to a very nice +market," he said. "I dare say, wherever that fellow has gone, he has +carried a well-lined purse with him. But I wouldn't have his conscience +for all the wealth of the Rothschilds. It's bad enough to see Tom +Halliday's face as I see it sometimes. What must it be to _him_?" + +A little more than a year after this, and the yellow corn was waving on +the fertile plains of Normandy, fruit ripening in orchards on hillside +and in valley; merry holiday folks splashing and dabbling in the waves +that wash the yellow sands of Dieppe; horses coming to grief in Norman +steeplechases; desperate gamesters losing their francs and half-francs in +all kinds of frivolous games in the Dieppe _etablissement_; and yonder, +in the heart of Normandy, beyond the tall steeples of Rouen, a happy +family assembled at the Chateau Cotenoir. + +One happy family--two happy families rather, but so closely united by the +bonds of love and friendship as to seem indeed one. Here are Gustave +Lenoble and his young wife Diana, with two tall slender damsels by their +side; and here is Valentine Hawkehurst, the successful young scribbler, +with his fair young wife Charlotte; and out on the terrace yonder are two +nurses walking with two babies, at that early, and, to some minds, +obnoxious stage of babyhood in which a perpetual rocking, and pacing to +and fro, and swaying backwards and forwards in the air, is necessary for +the preservation of anything approaching tranquillity. But to the minds +of the two young mothers and the two proud fathers, these small creatures +in their long white robes seem something too bright for earth. The united +ages of the babies do not amount to six months; but the mothers have +counted every gradual stage of these young lives, and to both it seems as +if there had been no time in which the children were not, with so firm a +hold have they possessed themselves of every thought in the foolish +maternal mind, of every impulse in the weak maternal heart. + +Mrs. Hawkehurst has brought her son to see his aunt Diana; for Diana has +insisted upon assuming that relationship by letters-patent, as it were. +Madame Lenoble's baby is a daughter, and this fact in itself seems to the +two friends to be a special interposition of Providence. + +"Would it not be delightful if they should grow up to love each other and +marry?" exclaimed Diana; and Charlotte agreed with her that such an event +in the future did indeed seem in a manner foreshadowed by the conduct of +the infants in the present. + +"He takes notice of her already!" she exclaimed, looking out at the +little creature in white muslin robes, held up against the warm blue sky; +"see, they are cooing at each other! I am sure that must be cooing." + +And then the two mothers went out upon the sunny terrace-walk and fondly +contemplated these domestic treasures, until the domestic treasures were +seized with some of the inexplicable throes and mysterious agonies of +early babyhood, and had to be borne off shrieking to their nurseries. + +"Dear angel," said Gustave, of his "little last one," "she has the very +shriek of Clarice here, poignant and penetrating, until to drown the +heart. Dost thou figure to thyself that thy voice was penetrating as +that, my beautiful, in the time?" + +He kissed his beautiful, and she ran off to join the procession following +the two babies,--alarmed nurses, distracted mammas, shrieking infants, +anxious damsels. + +"_C'est un vrai tourbillon_," as Gustave remarked to his companion +Valentine Hawkehurst; "these women, how they love their children! What of +saints, what of Madonnas, what of angels!" + +Whereupon he spouted Victor Hugo: + +"Lorsque l'enfant parait, le cercle de famille +Applaudit a grands cris; son doux regard qui brille +Fait briller tous les yeux; +Et les plus tristes fronts, les plus souilles peut-etre, +Se derident soudain a voir l'enfant paraitre, +Innocent et joyeux." + +All things had gone well for M. Lenoble. His direct descent from Matthew +Haygarth, the father of the intestate, had been proved to the +satisfaction of Crown lawyers and High Court of Chancery, and he had been +in due course placed in possession of the reverend intestate's estate, to +the profit and pleasure of his solicitors and M. Fleurus, and to the +unspeakable aggravation of George Sheldon, who washed his hands at once +and for ever of all genealogical research, and fell back in an embittered +and angry spirit upon the smaller profits to be derived from petty +transactions in the bill-discounting line, and a championship of +penniless sufferers of all classes, from a damsel who considered herself +jilted by a fickle swain, in proof of whose inconstancy she could produce +documentary evidence of the "pork-chop and tomato sauce" order, to a +pedestrian who knocked his head against a projecting shutter in the +Strand, and straightway walked home to Holloway to lay himself up for a +twelvemonth in a state of mental and bodily incapacity requiring large +pecuniary redress from the owner of the fatal shutter. To this noble +protection of the rights of the weak did George Sheldon devote his +intellect; and when malicious enemies stigmatized these Quixotic +endeavours as "speculative actions," or when, in the breaking-down of +some oppressed damsel's cause by reason of the slender evidence afforded +by some reticent lover's epistolary effusions, unjust judges told him +that he "ought to be ashamed of himself" for bringing such an action, the +generous attorney no doubt took consolation from an approving conscience, +and went forth from that court, to look for other oppressed damsels or +injured wayfarers, erect and unshaken. + +Some little profit Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn did derive from the Haygarth +estate; for at the request of Gustave Lenoble Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon +sent him a cheque for one thousand pounds, as the price of those early +investigations which had set the artful Captain upon the right track. He +wrote a ceremoniously grateful letter to Gustave Lenoble on receiving +this honorarium. It is always well to be grateful for benefits received +from a rich man; but in the depths of his heart he execrated the +fortunate inheritor of the Haygarthian thousands. + +Mr. Hawkehurst was not quite so vehement in the expression of his +feelings as that lively Celt, Gustave; but deep in his heart there was a +sense of happiness no less pure and exalted. + +Providence had given him more than he had ever dared to hope; not +John Haygarth's thousands; not a life of luxurious idleness, and +dinner-giving, and Derby days, and boxes on the grand tier, and +carriage-horses at five hundred guineas a pair; not a palace in +Belgravia, and a shooting-box in the Highlands, and a villa at Cowes; +not these things, in which he would once have perceived the _summum +bonum_; but a fair price for his labour, a dear young wife, a tranquil +home. + +Nor had his researches among the dusty records of the departed Haygarths +been profitless in a pecuniary sense to himself. Gustave Lenoble insisted +that he should accept that honorarium of three thousand pounds which had +been promised by George Sheldon as the reward of his success. + +"Captain Paget would never have been put on the right track if he had +not filched your secrets from you," said the son and heir of Susan +Meynell. "It is to your researches, in the first place, that I owe +this inheritance; and you cannot refuse to accept the agreed price of +your labour." + +Valentine did not refuse this fairly-earned reward, nor did he oppose the +settlement which Gustave made in favour of Charlotte's infant son. It +seemed to him only just that some share of the heritage should fall to +the descendant of poor Susan's younger sister and faithful friend. + +With this capital of three thousand pounds comfortably invested in +consols, and with the interest of that sum of ten thousand pounds settled +on his infant son, Mr. Hawkehurst began the world, in his new character +of a husband and a father, very pleasantly. + +Of his literary career very little need be said here. He was yet at the +beginning of the long dusty road that leads to the temple of Fame. It is +enough to state that he found the dusty high-road rather difficult +walking, and that he was pelted with more mud, flung by nameless +assailants hidden behind the hedges, than he had anticipated when he set +out upon the first stage of his journey. Happily, he found pleasant +fellow-travellers and kindly encouragement from an indulgent public, and +was thus able to accept the mud which bespattered his garments in a very +placid spirit, and to make light of all obstacles in the great highway. + +The cottage at Wimbledon was no longer a dream. It was a pleasant +reality, the pride and delight of Mrs. Sheldon and Ann Woolper. It was a +picturesque dwelling-place, half cottage, half villa, situated on the +broad high-road from London to Kingston, with all the woodland of +Richmond Park to be seen from the windows at the back. Only a wall +divided Mr. Hawkehurst's gardens from the coverts of the Queen. It was +like a royal demesne, Charlotte said; whereupon her husband insisted that +it should be christened by the name of a royal dwelling, and so called it +Charlottenburgh. + +Mr. Hawkehurst had secured this delightful abode for a considerable term +of years, and upon the furnishing and decoration of the pretty rustic +rooms Charlotte and he lavished unmeasured care. The delicious excitement +of "picking up," or, in more elegant parlance, "collecting," was to these +two happy people an inexhaustible source of pleasure. Every eccentric +little table, every luxurious chair, had its special history, and had +been the subject of negotiation and diplomacy that might have sufficed a +Burleigh in the reorganization of Western Europe. The little Dresden and +Vienna cups and saucers in the maple cabinet had been every one bought +from a different dealer. The figures on the mantelpiece were Old Chelsea, +of a quality that would have excited the envy of a Bernal or a Bonn, and +had only fallen to the proud possessors by a sequence of fortuitous +circumstances, the history of which was almost as thrilling as the +story of Boehmer's diamond-necklace. The curtains in the drawing-room +had draped the _portieres_ of the lovely Lady Blessington, and had been +bought for a song by Valentine Hawkehurst, after passing through the +hands of brokers and dealers innumerable. The tapestry-covered +Louis-Quatorze chairs had belonged to Madame de Sevigne, and had +furnished that dull country house whence she wrote the liveliest letters +extant to her disreputable cousin, Bussy, Count of Babutin. These +inestimable treasures had been picked up by Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst from +a bric-a-brac merchant in a little court at the back of the Rue Vivienne, +whither the young couple had gone arm-in-arm to choose a bonnet on their +first pleasure-trip to Paris. The clock in the modest dining-room had +been secured from the repository of the same merchant, and was warranted +to have sounded the last domestic hours of Maximilian Robespierre in his +humble lodging _chez le Menuisier_. The inkstand into which Mr. +Hawkehurst dipped his rapid pen had served the literary career of +Voltaire; the blotting-book on which he wrote had been used by Balzac. + +To the plausible fictions of the second-hand dealer Mr. and Mrs. +Hawkehurst lent willing ears, and it seemed to them as if these +associations, for which they had paid somewhat dearly, imparted a new +grace to their home. + +The arrangement and superintendence of all these treasures gave poor +Georgy endless pleasure and employment; but in her heart of hearts she +believed in the prim splendours of the dismantled Lawn as much superior +to these second-hand objects of art and upholstery. Nor did Ann Woolper +regard the Chelsea figures and Dresden teacups and old black Albert-Duerer +engravings as anything better than an innocent eccentricity on the part +of the master of the house, for the saving of whose purse she managed and +economized as faithfully as she had done for that lost master whereof the +memory was so bitter. + +It will be seen, therefore, that Mr. Hawkehurst with a wife, a +mother-in-law, and a faithful old servant, was likely to be well taken +care of; a little spoiled perhaps by "much cherishing," but carefully +guarded from all those temptations which are supposed to assail the +bachelor man-of-letters, toiling alone and neglected in Temple chambers. +For him the days passed in a pleasant monotony of constant labour, +lightened always by the thought of those for whom he worked, cheered ever +by the fond hope of future fame. He was no longer a bookmaker. He had +written a book, the proceeds of which had enabled him to furnish the +Wimbledon villa; and he was engaged in writing a second book, the fruits +whereof would secure the needs of the immediate future. He had insured +his life for a considerable amount, and had shown himself in all things +prudent to a degree that verged upon Philistinism. But the policies taken +out on Charlotte's life by Mr. Sheldon had been suffered to lapse. +Valentine would have no money staked on that dear head. + +The steed which Charlotte had desired for her husband's pleasure, the +library which she had catalogued so often, were yet among the delights of +the future; but life has lost half its brightness when there is no +unfulfilled desire left to the dreamer; and the horse which Mr. +Hawkehurst was to ride in time to come, and the noble library which he +was to collect, were the pleasant themes of Charlotte's conversation very +often, as she and her husband walked on the heights of Wimbledon in the +twilight, when his day's work was done. + +These twilight walks were the happy holidays of his life, and a part of +his liberal education. He told his wife everything, every literary +scheme, every fancy, every shadowy outline of future work, every new +discovery in the boundless realms of Bookland. His enthusiasm; his +hero-worship; his setting-up of one favourite and knocking-down of +another; his unchristian pleasure in that awful slating of poor Jones in +this week's _Saturday_, or the flaying alive of Robinson in the _Bond +Street Backbiter_;--in a word, his "shop" never became wearisome to +Charlotte. She listened always with a like rapture and sympathy; she +worshipped his favourites of Bookland; she welcomed his friends and +fellow-workers with unvarying sweetness; she devised and superintended the +fitting-up of a smoking-room that was perfectly paradisaical, a glimpse +of the Alhambra in miniature; and that obnoxious dish, the cold shoulder, +was never served in Mr. Hawkehurst's dwelling. So sweet a wife, so +pleasant a home, popularized the institution of matrimony among the young +writer's bachelor friends; and that much-abused and cruelly maligned +member of the human race, the mother-in-law, was almost rehabilitated by +Mrs. Sheldon's easy good-nature and evident regard for the interests of +her daughter's husband. + +And after all the groping among dry as dust records of a bygone century, +after all the patient following of those faint traces on the sands of +time left by the feet of Matthew Haygarth, _this_ was Charlotte's +Inheritance,--a heart whose innocence and affection made home a kind of +earthly paradise, and gave to life's commonest things a charm that all +the gold ever found in California could not have imparted to them. This +was Charlotte's Inheritance,--the tender, unselfish nature of the +Haygarths and Hallidays; and thus dowered, her husband would not have +exchanged her for the wealthiest heiress whose marriage was ever +chronicled in _Court Circular_ or _Court Journal_. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +LOST SIGHT OF. + +A year and a half had passed since the disappearance of Philip Sheldon +from the circle in which he had been considered a person of some +importance. The repudiation of those bills by which he had sustained his +exhausted credit, or rather the discovery that the companies upon which +the bills pretended to be drawn were of all shadows the most shadowy, had +brought consternation upon many, and ruin upon some. Bitter and +unmeasured were the terms in which City men spoke of that Phil Sheldon +with whom they had eaten the sacred bait and quaffed the social moselle +in the taverns of Greenwich and Blackwall. + +There is a saying current on the Stock Exchange to the effect that the +man who fails, and disappears from among his fellows behind a curtain of +commercial cloud, is sure to return sooner or later to his old circle, +with a moustache and a brougham. For Philip Sheldon there was, however, +no coming back. The moustache and the brougham of the chastened and +penitent defaulter were not for him. By his deliberate and notorious +dishonour he had shut the door against the possibility of return. It may +be supposed that the defaulter knew this, for he did not come back; and +since he had no lack of moral courage, he would scarcely have refrained +from showing himself once more in his old haunts, if it had been possible +for him to face the difficulties of his position. + +Time passed, and there came no tidings of the missing man, though a +detective was despatched to America in search of him by one vengeful +sufferer among the many victims of the fictitious bills-of-exchange. It +was supposed that he must inevitably go to America, and thither went his +pursuer, but with no result except the expenditure of money and the +further exasperation of the vengeful sufferer. + +"What will you do with him, if you get him?" asked a philosophical friend +of the sufferer. "He has nothing to surrender. Zabulon had a bill-of-sale +on his furniture." + +"Furniture!" cried the infuriated victim; "I don't want his furniture. I +want his flesh and bones. I want to shut him up in Dartmoor Prison, or to +get him twenty years' hard labour at Portland Island." + +"That sort of man would get a ticket-of-leave in less than twelve +months," replied the philosophic friend. "I'm afraid you are only +throwing good money after bad." + +The event proved this gentleman but too able a seer. In the monster city +of New York Philip Sheldon had disappeared like a single drop of water +flung upon the Atlantic Ocean. There was no trace of him: too intangible +for the grasp of international law, he melted into the mass of humanity, +only one struggler the more in the great army perpetually fighting life's +desperate battle. + +From among all those who had known him this man had utterly vanished, +and not one sigh of regret followed him in his unknown wanderings--not +one creature amongst all those who had taken his hand and given him +friendly greeting thought of him kindly, or cared to know whither he +went or how he prospered. He had not left in the house that had +sheltered him for years so much as a dog to whine at his door or listen +for his returning footstep. + +This fact, if he had known it or considered it, would have troubled him +very little. He had played his game for a certain stake, and had lost it. +This he felt, and cursed his own too cautious play as the cause of his +defeat. That there were higher stakes for which he might have played an +easier game, was a fact that never occurred to him. In his philosophy +there was indeed nothing higher given to the hopes of man than worldly +success, and a dull, cold, prosperous life spent among prosperous +acquaintance. + +He was gone, and those who remembered him most keenly--Valentine +Hawkehurst, Diana Paget, Ann Woolper--remembered him with a shudder. The +old Yorkshirewoman thought of him sometimes as she bent over the little +muslin-bedecked cradle where the hope of the Hawkehursts slumbered, and +looked round fearfully in the gloaming, half expecting to see his dreaded +face glower upon her, dark and threatening, from between the curtains of +the window. + +It was a belief of all ancient races, nay indeed, a belief still current +amongst modern nations, that it is not given to man to behold the beings +of another world and live. The Arab who meets a phantom in the desert +goes home to his tent to die. He knows that the hand of doom is upon him. +He has seen that upon which, for mortal eyes, it is fatal to look. And it +is thus in some measure with those who are admitted within the dark +precincts of murder's dread sanctuary. Not swiftly does the curtain fall +which has once been lifted from the hidden horrors of that ghastly +temple. The revelations of an utterly wicked soul leave a lasting impress +upon the mind which unwillingly becomes recipient of those awful secrets. + +The circumstances of Tom Halliday's death and of Charlotte's illness were +not to be forgotten by Ann Woolper. The shadow of that dark cruel face, +which had lain upon her bosom forty years before, haunted many a peaceful +hour of her quiet old age. Her ignorance, and that faint tinge of +superstition which generally accompanies ignorance, exaggerated the +terror of those dark memories. The thought that Philip Sheldon still +lived, still had the power to plot and plan evil against the innocent, +was an ever-present source of terror to her. She could not understand +that such an element could exist among the forces of evil without fatal +result to some one. It seemed to her as if a devil were at large, and +there could be neither peace nor security until the evil spirit was +exorcised, the baneful presence laid in nethermost depths of unfathomable +sea. + +These feelings and these fears would scarcely have arisen in the old +woman's breast, had she alone been subject to the possible plottings of +that evil nature. For herself she had little fear. Her span of life was +nearly ended; very few were the sands that had yet to run; and, for her +own sake, she would have cared little if some rough hand had spilt them +untimely. But a new interest in life had been given to Mrs. Woolper just +as life drew near its close. That peerless child, the son and heir of the +Hawkehursts, had been intrusted to the old woman's care; and this infant +she loved with an affection much more intense than that which had once +made Philip Sheldon so dear to her. + +It was by the cradle of this much-treasured child that Ann Woolper nursed +her fear of her old master. She knew that he had been counter-plotted and +beaten ignominiously in that deadly game which he had played so boldly. +And she asked herself whether he was the man to submit to such utter +defeat without any effort to revenge himself upon those who had helped to +compass his failure. + +On that night when Charlotte Halliday had lain between life and death, +suffering on the one hand from the effects of a prolonged and gradual +course of poison, on the other from the violent measures taken to +eliminate that poisonous element from her system,--on that night when the +precious life yet trembled in the balance, Ann Woolper had seen murderous +looks in the face of the man whom she dared boldly to defy, and who knew +in that hour that his ghastly plot was discovered. Even now, secure in a +haven of safety, she could not forget that baneful look in Philip +Sheldon's eyes. She could not find perfect rest while she knew not where +that man might be, or what mischief he might be plotting against those +she loved. + +Her fears showed themselves in many ways. When she read of dark and +vengeful deeds in her newspaper, she thought of her old master, and how, +in such or such an act, his fatal hand might reveal itself. He might lie +in wait for Valentine some night on the dark road between Charlottenburgh +and the distant railway-station. She could fancy the young wife's agony +of terror as the night wore on, and her husband did not return; the +unspeakable horror that would come over all that happy household when the +news came that its young master had been found on the lonely road slain +by some unknown hand. Open utterance to her fears she was too wise to +give; but she warned Mr. Hawkehurst of the dangers on that dark road, and +besought him to arm himself with a trusty bludgeon wherewith to meet and +vanquish any chance assailant. Valentine laughed at her anxious warning; +but when Charlotte took up the cry he was fain to content her by the +purchase of a sturdy stick, which he swung cheerily to and fro as he +walked homewards in the gloaming, planning a chapter in his new book, and +composing powerful and eloquent sentences which eluded his mental grasp +when he tried to reduce his evening reverie to pen-and-ink. + +"When the air blows fresh across the common, and the distant lights +twinkle, and the bright stars peep out in the pale-yellow sky, my +language flows as it never does when I sit at my desk, Lotta," he said to +his wife. "I feel myself a Swift or a Junius out there; equal to the +tackling of any social question that ever arose upon this earth, from the +Wood halfpence to the policy of American taxation, and triennial +elections. At home I am only Valentine Hawkehurst, with an ever-present +consciousness that so many pages of copy are required from me within a +given time, and that my son-and-heir is cutting his teeth, and making +more fuss about it than I ever made about _my_ teeth; and that the man +about the water-rate is waiting to see me, please, and is desperately +anxious about making-up his books; and that I have the dearest wife in +Christendom, who opens my door, and puts her pretty head into my room +once in half an hour to see how I am getting on, or to ask whether I want +any more coals, or to borrow my ink to make-up her washing-book." + +"You mean, sir, that I prevent your becoming a Junius?" cried Charlotte, +with an enchanting _moue_. + +"Yes, dear. I begin to understand why Swift kept his poor ill-used wife +at a respectful distance. She would have made him too happy if he had +allowed her to be on the premises. She would have given the cruel +indignation no chance of lacerating his heart; and such writing as +Swift's is only produced by a man whose heart is so lacerated. No, my +darling, I shall never be a Swift or a Junius while your pretty head is +thrust into my room once or twice an hour; but I may hope to be something +better, if bright eyes can inspire bright thoughts, and innocent smiles +give birth to pleasant fancies." + +Upon this there was the usual little demonstration of affection between +this young couple; and Charlotte praised her husband as the most +brilliant and admirable of men; after which pleasing flattery she +favoured him with a little interesting information about the baby's last +tooth, and the contumacious behaviour of the new housemaid, between whom +and Mrs. Woolper there had been a species of disagreement, which the +Yorkshirewoman described as a "standfurther." + +Thus occupied in simple pleasures and simple cares, the lives of Mr. and +Mrs. Hawkehurst went on, untroubled by any fear of that crime-burdened +wretch whose image haunted the dreams and meditations of Ann Woolper. For +these two Mr. Sheldon was numbered among the dead. To Charlotte the +actual truth had never been revealed; but she had been, in the course of +time, given to understand that her stepfather had committed some +unpardonable sin, which must for ever separate him from herself and her +mother. She had been told as much as this, and had been told that she +must seek to know no more. To this she submitted without questioning. + +"I am very sorry for him," she said, "and for mamma." + +She concluded that the unpardonable offence must needs have been some sin +against her mother, some long-hidden infidelity brought suddenly to +light, with all the treachery and falsehood involved therein. She never +mentioned her stepfather after this but in her prayers the sinner was not +forgotten. + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES. + +George Sheldon went his ways, picking up as good a living as he could +from that chivalrous assertion of the rights of the weak which has been +already described; and the thought of his brother's sin-burdened soul +troubled him very little. He did think of Tom Halliday; for that last +grasp of the honest Yorkshireman's hand, that last look in his old +friend's face, were haunting memories which this sharp practitioner had +found himself powerless to exorcise. If his brother, after an absence of +many years in the remote regions of the East Indies, had come home to his +fatherland with a colossal fortune, and the reputation of having +strangled a few natives during the process of amassing that fortune, +George Sheldon would have welcomed the returning wanderer, and would, in +his own parlance, have "swallowed the natives." A few niggers, more or +less, sent untimely to Gehenna, would have seemed scarcely sufficient +cause for quarrel with a fraternal and liberally-disposed millionaire. +But the circumstances of Tom Halliday's death had brought all the horror +of crime and treachery home to the spectator of that deliberate +assassination, and had produced such an impression as no other +circumstances could on so hard a nature. + +It was some satisfaction to George Sheldon to know that his old friend's +daughter had found a happy home; and he was apt to take some credit from +his own share in his brother's discomfiture. He met Valentine sometimes +in the course of his peregrinations in the neighbourhood of the British +Museum, and the greeting between the two men was sufficiently cordial; +but Mr. Hawkehurst did not invite his old employer to Charlottenburgh, +and George was able to comprehend that to that household no one bearing +the name of Sheldon could be a welcome visitor. + +He jogged on comfortably enough in his own way; living in his chambers, +and consorting with a few chosen friends and kindred spirits of the +jolly-good-fellow class, whom he met at an old-established tavern in the +west-central district, and in whose society, and the society of the +subscription-ground in the Farringdon Road, he found the _summum bonum_ +in the way of social intercourse. He did a little speculation upon the +turf, and discounted the bills of needy bookmakers, or bought up their +bad debts, and thereby gained introductions to the noble patrons of the +humble "scums," and pushed his business into new grooves. He had no idea +that such an existence was in any way ignoble; nay, indeed, when he had +paid his rent, and his clerk, and his laundress, and his tavern score, +and "stood glasses round" amongst his friends, he lighted his cigar, and +thrust his hands into the depths of his pockets, and paced the flags of +Holborn happy in the belief that he had performed the whole duty of man. + +"There are men whose business obliges them to keep up an establishment, +and go to church twice a day, and all that kind of thing," he said; "and +I dare say they find it pay. My clients don't care a doit where I live, +or how I spend my Sundays; and I'd rather have five pounds a week and my +liberty than the best family connection in the Fields." + +The fate of that wretched man, who had dropped out of his old circle +and vanished no one knew whither, in no manner disturbed the peace of +George Sheldon. + +"Take my word for it, that gentleman has fallen on his feet," he said, on +the only occasion when the fate of Philip was discussed by Valentine and +himself. "He's doing well enough, somewhere or other, you may depend; but +I don't think he'll ever be able to show his nose in London after those +bill transactions. There's a very strong feeling against him on Change. +He's looked upon as a discredit to the order, and that sort of thing, you +see. It isn't often a member of the House goes to the bad like that. No, +I don't think Phil will ever show himself in London again; but such a man +as that can always find a platform somewhere--" + +"And go on to the end of his days unpunished, I suppose," remarked Mr. +Hawkehurst, with some bitterness. + +"Well, yes; I don't see what's to touch him in the future. Of course he +could be dropped upon for those bills, if he came in the way of being +dropped upon; but, as I said before, he's too deep a card for that." + +Thus did George Sheldon dismiss the subject. That his brother was an +exile for life from his native land he did not doubt; but he took it for +granted that in whatever distant spot of earth Philip had found a refuge, +he would there contrive to prosper and to show a bold front in the city +of his adoption. + +This belief Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn cherished until one snowy Christmas +Eve, a year and a half after that event, or series of events, which the +lawyer briefly designated "the burst-up at Bayswater." + +Bleak and bitter was that December, a December not long gone by. The +heart of the prosperous British nation melted as the heart of one man. +The columns of the _Zeus_ and the _Diurnal Hermes_, the _Flag_ and the +_Hesper_, overflowed with the record of subscriptions to charity funds; +and the leaders of the morning journals all preached the same kindly +sermon on the same Christian text. Thick lay the snow upon the housetops; +"thick and slab" the greasy slush upon the pavements of crowded +thoroughfares; merry the rogues and ragamuffins of the great city. The +ideal Christmas of our dreams seemed to have come at last, and the heart +of every true Briton rejoiced; while skaters in the parks made merry, and +cabmen demanded fabulous sums of helpless wayfarers; and luckless, +overworked, under-fed horses stumbled and fell at every turn, and the +familiar steep of Holborn was dangerous as Alpine mountain. + +To George Sheldon neither the weather nor the Christmas season made much +difference. The even current of his life was little disturbed by festive +pleasures or dissipations. An extra glass at his tavern, an invitation to +dinner from some friend in the bill-discounting line, were the most +exciting events the season was likely to bring him. He saw the shops +brighten suddenly with semi-supernal glories of crystallized fruits and +gorgeous bonbon-boxes, and he was aware of a kind of movement in the +streets that was brisker and gayer than the plodding hurry of everyday +life. He stood aside and let the mummeries go by him, and was glad when +these Christmas follies were done with, and the law-courts in full swing +once more. In the happiest and most innocent days of his youth, Christmas +had brought him no more than extraordinary indulgences in the way of +eating and drinking, swiftly followed by that dread avenger, the demon of +the bilious. + +Upon this particular occasion Mr. Sheldon had pledged himself to dine +with a horsey publican lately retired from business, and big with all the +pride and glory of a "place" at Hornsey. + +"Come down and see my place, Sheldon," this gentleman had said. "I don't +pretend to do the swell thing; but I force my own pines and grow my own +grapes, and can put as good a dessert on my table as you could buy in +Covent Garden for a five-pun' note. That's my missus's fad, that is, and +I can afford it; so why shouldn't I do it? You come and eat your +Christmas dinner with us, Sheldon. I've got a friend coming that can +sing as good a song as Reeves hisself, and might make a fortune, if he +wasn't above coming out at one of them music-halls. And I'll give you a +bottle of Madeira that you won't match at any nobleman's table, if +noblemen's tables was in your line of business, which you and I know +they ain't, old fellow." + +And then the jolly good fellow dug his fat fingers into George Sheldon's +ribs, and George accepted the invitation; not with any elation of +spirits, but sufficiently pleased to secure a good dinner with a man who +promised to be a profitable client, and whose house was within a +reasonable cab-fare from the west-central district. + +"The cabmen are trying it on, anyhow, just now," thought Mr. Sheldon; +"but I don't think they'll try it on with me. And if they do, there's the +Marylebone stage. I'm not afraid of a five-mile walk." + +Having accepted this invitation, and thus disposed of his Christmas-day, +George Sheldon refrained from the delights of social converse at his +tavern on Christmas-eve, and occupied himself with business. His clerk +left him at the usual hour; but the master sat, long after dark, writing +letters and reading law-papers, while the snow drifted against his +windows and whitened the quiet quadrangle below. + +He had just laid aside his papers and lighted a cigar, when he was +startled by a stealthy knocking at his door. He was not unaccustomed to +late visitors, as he was known to live at his chambers, and to work after +office-hours; but the knocking of to-night was not the loud rollicking +rat-a-tat of his jolly-good-fellow friends or clients. If he had been a +student of light literature, and imbued with the ghostly associations of +the season, he would have gone to his door expecting to behold a weird +figure clothed in the vestments of the last century; or an old woman in +ruff and martingale, whose figure in the flesh had once haunted those +legal precincts; or the ghostly semblance of the Baron of Verulam +himself, revisiting the glimpses of the moon and the avenue of elms that +were planted by his order. + +In George Sheldon's nature there was, however, no lurking dread of fiend +or phantom. His ideas in connection with ghosts were limited to a white +sheet, a broomstick, and a hollow turnip with a lighted candle inside it; +and he would have set down the most awful apparition that ever was +revealed to German ghost-seer, with a scornful grin, as a member of the +sheet and-hollow-turnip confraternity. + +"I know how it's done," he would have said, if the spectral form had +glowered upon him in midnight churchyard or ruined abbey. "You'd better +go and try it on somewhere else, my friend." + + * * * * * + +To a superstitious mind the THING which crept across the dark lobby +and dragged itself into the glare of the gas-lighted office might +have seemed, indeed, some creature too loathsome for humanity. A +plague-stricken corpse galvanized into a spasmodic life could scarcely +have lifted to the light a more awful countenance than that on which +George Sheldon looked with mingled anger and disgust. + +"What do you want here" he asked. "Do you take this for the workhouse?" + +"No," the creature answered, in a faint hoarse voice; "but I take you for +my brother." + +"WHAT!" cried George Sheldon, aghast. + +He bent down and looked at the awful face. Yes, from the cavernous +hollows of those sunken cheeks, beneath the shaggy penthouse of those +bony brows, the fierce black eyes of Philip Sheldon looked out at him +with a savage glare that he had never seen in them before--even when the +savage nature of the man had revealed itself most nakedly--the fierce +glare of fever and starvation. + +This walking horror, this mass of loathsome rags endued with motion, this +living disease, was the sometime prosperous stockbroker, the man whom it +had been impossible to think of except furnished with linen of spotless +whiteness, and the glossy broad-cloth, and well-made boots, and keyless +chronometer, and silk umbrella of commercial success. + +"Good God!" exclaimed George, horror-stricken, "is it you?" + +"Yes, it's I," answered the creature in his strange husky accents; and +the change--nay, indeed, the degradation, of the voice was as complete as +the degradation of the man. "Yes, George, it's I; your brother Phil. +You're surprised to see me fallen so low in the world, I suppose; but you +can't be more surprised than I am myself. I've tried hard enough to hold +my head above water. There's scarcely any trade that mortal man ever +tried to earn his bread by, that I haven't tried--and failed in. It has +been the experience of Fitzgeorge-street over and over again, in every +trade and every profession. I started as doctor in Philadelphia, and was +doing well;--till--till a patient died--and things went against me. I've +been clerk in more offices than you can count on your ten fingers; but +there was always something--my employer levanted, or was bankrupt, or +died, or dismissed me. I've been travelling-dentist, auctioneer, +commission-agent, tout, pedlar, out yonder; but it all came to the same +thing--ruin, starvation, the hospital, or the pauper's ward. I have swept +crossings in the city, and camped out in the wilderness among the bears +and opossums. One day I thought I'd come home. 'There's George,' I said +to myself; 'if I can get money enough to take me across the Atlantic, I +shall be all right. George will give me a lift.' I don't stand alone in +the world. A man's own flesh and blood won't let him starve--can't let +him starve. Blood's thicker than water, you know, George. So I came home. +I got the money; never you mind how. I needn't tell you what it cost me +to scrape half-a-dozen pounds together. When a man's as low down in the +world as I am, there's not a shilling he earns that doesn't cost him a +drop of his heart's blood; there's not a pound he gets together that +isn't bought by the discount of so much of his life. I found money enough +for my passage in an emigrant vessel; and here I am, ready for anything. +I'll work like your bought nigger. I'll do the work your clerk does for a +quarter of his wages. I'll sweep out your office, and run errands for +you. You'll give me something to keep body and soul together, won't you, +George?" + +Nothing could be more utterly abject than the tone of this most abject +wretch. + +This man, who in prosperity had been the very personification of hardness +and insolence, was transformed into a grovelling, cringing supplicant, +ready to lie face downward in the dust beneath the feet of that brother +whose patronage, or charity, he besought. + +Mr. Sheldon the younger contemplated the supplicant with looks of +undisguised gratification. He walked a few paces backward from the spot +where his brother had fallen, in a half-sitting, half-crouching attitude, +and where he remained, hugging himself in his rags, too abject to be +acutely conscious of his degradation. A year ago and he would have held +himself obstinately aloof from all old associations, and would have +declared himself ready to face starvation, rather than accept, still less +supplicate, relief from his younger brother. The events of that one year +had involved alternations and convulsions that change a year into a +cycle. He had faced starvation; he had walked with hunger for his +travelling companion; he had lain down night after night in such lairs +as the tramp can find for his refuge, with sickness and pain for his +bed-fellows. The crucible through which he had passed had left in him no +more of humanity than its outward semblance, and scarcely that; for when +the moral man sinks to the level of the beasts of prey, the physical man +undergoes an assimilative process only less marked than that which +transforms the mental nature. + +For six months this man had lived by fawning upon or threatening his +fellow-men; by violence or craft; by the degradation of the vagrant or +the audacity of the thief. There is no limit to man's capacity for infamy +which he had not touched. Vilest amongst the vile, he had been cast forth +from the haunts of beggars and reprobates, as no fitting company for +honourable thieves or cadgers of good repute. + +George Sheldon seated himself astride upon a chair, and, with his folded +arms resting on the back of it, contemplated this hideous spectacle. It +was a picture that he had never thought to see, and the feeling with +which he surveyed it was not unmingled with pleasure. + +"When you rode me rough-shod, my friend, I used to think how I should +enjoy taking my change out of you," he said; "but I never thought I +should have such an opportunity as this--never, by Jove! I thought you +would ride the high horse to the end of the journey; I didn't think your +steed would land you in the gutter. And so you've tried every move, have +you?--tumbled upon every platform?--and you've found all your cleverness +no go upon the other side of the three thousand miles of everlasting wet, +as my Yankee friends call the Atlantic; and you've come back whining to +me, and I'm to help you, am I, and to give you a fresh start in life, I +suppose, and make you my clerk, or my junior partner, eh?--that would be +better. Messrs. Sheldon and Sheldon wouldn't look bad on my door. That's +about what you mean when you talk of blood being thicker than water, +isn't it?" + +The abject wretch who had once been Philip Sheldon felt that his brother +was trifling with him, savouring to the last drop that cup of triumph +which the chances of fortune had offered to his lips. + +"Don't play the fool with me, George," he said piteously. "I don't ask +you much--a crust of bread, a corner to sleep in, and a cast-off suit of +clothes: that's not much for one brother to ask of another." + +"Perhaps not," replied George Sheldon; "but it's a great deal for you to +ask of me. You've had your turn, Phil; and you made the most of it, and +contrived to keep me at arm's length. My turn has come at last, and you +may depend upon it I shall contrive now to keep _you_ at arm's length." + +The vagrant stared at him aghast. Here he had felt secure of food and +shelter; and he had endured miseries and deprivations that reduce a man +to a state in which food and shelter seem to constitute the supreme good +that can be obtained in this life. + +"You won't refuse to do something for me, George," he whined piteously. + +"I will do nothing for you. Do you hear that, my man? Nothing! You taught +me that blood is not thicker than water twelve years ago, when you +married Tom Halliday's widow, and drew your purse-strings, after flinging +me a beggarly hundred as you'd throw a bone to a dog. You made me +understand that was all I should ever get out of your brotherly love, or +your fear of my telling the world what I knew. You gave me a dinner now +and then, because it suited you to keep your eye upon me; and you had +generally some piece of dirty work on hand that made the advice of a +sharp practitioner like me uncommonly useful to you. I don't believe that +you ever gave me so much as a dinner that you didn't take payment for in +meal or in malt. Don't come howling here now, trying to persuade me that +blood is thicker than water, or that brotherhood means anything more than +the accident of birth. And now I've said all I have to say; and the +sooner you make yourself scarce, the better for both of us." + +"George!" cried the miserable suppliant, clasping his bony hands +convulsively, and whimpering as he had whimpered when he begged his bread +in the streets of New York, "you can't mean to turn me out of doors on +such a night. Look at me. It was as much as I could do to crawl to this +room. I have walked every step of the way from Liverpool; my wretched +limbs have been frost-bitten, and ulcered, and bruised, and racked with +rheumatism, and bent double with cramp. I came over in an emigrant +vessel, with a herd of miserable creatures who had tried their luck on +the other side of the Atlantic, and had failed, like me, and were coming +home to their native workhouses. You don't know what some of your +emigrant ships are, perhaps. People talk about the Black Hole of +Calcutta, and the Middle Passage; but let them try the cabin of an +emigrant vessel, and they'll have a pretty fair idea of what human beings +have to suffer when Poverty drives the ship. I landed in Liverpool with +half-a-dollar in my pocket, and I've had neither decent food nor decent +shelter since I landed. Give me some hole to lie in, George, till you can +get me an order for the nearest hospital. It's a toss-up whether I ever +come out of it." + +"Do you think I'd sleep under the roof that sheltered you?" cried George. + +"Why not?" + +"Why not! Because I'm afraid of you. Because I'd as soon have a cobra +for my companion, or a wolf for my bedfellow. I know you. I've seen what +you can do, and how you can do it. And if you could do those things when +the only pressure upon you was one that you could have cast off by going +through the _Gazette_, what would you _not_ do now when you are as +desperate as a famished wolf, and governed by no better law than that +which governs a wolf--the law of self-preservation? Am I to trust a +tiger because he tells me he is hungry? No, Phil Sheldon; neither will I +trust you." + +"You will give me some money--enough to keep me alive for a week or two." + +"Not one sixpence. I'll establish no precedent; I'll acknowledge no tie +between us. You'd better march. I don't want to send for a policeman; but +if you won't go quietly, you must do the other thing." + +"You mean that?" + +"Most emphatically yes." + +"I didn't think it was in you to be so hard upon me," faltered the +wretch in that faint hoarse voice which had grown fainter and hoarser +during this interview. + +"Did you think that I would trust you?" cried George. "Trust _you_! You +call me hard because I won't give you a corner to lie in. And if I did, +you would creep out of your corner to poison me, or cut my throat. You +would crawl into my room in the dead of the night and put a pillow over +my face, and kneel upon it till you'd done the trick for me; and then +you'd walk off with as much as you could carry, and begin the same kind +of work over again with some one else. I tell you, Mr. Phil Sheldon, I +will hold no intercourse with you. You've escaped hanging, but there's +something that's worse than hanging, to my mind, and that is the state of +a man whom nobody will trust. You've come to that; and if you had a spark +of gentlemanly feeling, you'd have bought two-pennyworth of rope and hung +yourself rather than come cringing to me." + +"Suppose I don't cringe," said the outcast, dropping the fawning tone of +the mendicant for the threatening ferocity of the social wolf; "you'd +better give me a trifle to keep body and soul together for the next few +weeks. I'm a desperate man, George! You and I are alone up here. You are +pretty sure to have ready money about you. And there's your watch; that's +worth something. I didn't come here to go away empty-handed. AND I +WON'T!" + +He sprang to his feet, and in the next moment the lawyer heard the sharp +clicking noise made by the opening of a clasp-knife. + +"O," cried he, "that's what you want, is it!" + +He bent over his desk, with his eyes fixed on those other evil eyes that +still retained some likeness to his own, and with his left arm raised in +a boxer's defensive attitude, to guard his head, while his right hand +groped for something in a drawer. It was a moment's work. Philip had +seized that uplifted left arm, and was hanging on to it like a cat, with +his knife between his teeth, when George clapped the muzzle of a revolver +to his brow. + +"There are plenty of wild beasts in London besides you," he said, "and I +am not such a fool as to be without the means of settling a chance +visitor of your sort. Drop your knife, and march." + +The outcast dropped his knife submissively. He was too weak for anything +more than a spasmodic violence. + +"Take your pistol away from my head," he whined. + +"Certainly, when you are outside my door." + +"You might give me a handful of silver, George. I haven't a week's life +left in me." + +"All the better for society if you hadn't an hour's life in you. Be off. +I'm tired of holding this revolver to your head, and I don't mean to let +it go till you're off my premises." + +Philip saw that there was no hope. Food and shelter were all he had +hoped for; but even these blessings were not for him. He backed out of +the office, closely followed by George, holding the muzzle of the +revolver within an inch or so of the fraternal brains. Upon the +threshold only did he pause. + +"Tell me one thing," he said. "You won't give me sixpence to buy a loaf +of bread or a glass of gin. Give me one scrap of comfort. It need cost +you nothing. Tell me something bad of Valentine Hawkehurst: that he's +gone to the dogs, or drowned himself; that his wife has run away from +him, or his house been burned to the ground. Tell me that he's had a +taste of my luck; and that Ann Woolper has died in a workhouse. It will +be as good as meat and drink to me, and it will cost you nothing." + +"If I told you anything of the kind, I should tell you a lie; Valentine +Hawkehurst is doing uncommonly well, and has got one of the prettiest +little boxes between Wimbledon and Kingston. Ann Woolper lives with them, +and is in better feather than she ever was in your time." + +With this, Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn pushed his brother out on to the +staircase, and shut his door. Philip sat upon the stairs, and drew his +rags together a little, and rubbed his wretched limbs, while the bolts +and chains whereby the lawyer defended his citadel clanked close behind +him. + +"I wonder whether he'll pay Hawkehurst a visit," thought George, as he +bolted his door; and he had a kind of grim satisfaction in the idea that +Valentine's Christmas peace might be disturbed by the advent of that +grisly visitor. + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +"ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS." + +"Between Wimbledon and Kingston," muttered the tramp. "If I can drag +myself as far as that, I'll go there this night." + +He went down stairs and out into the pitiless cold and snow, and made his +way down Fetter Lane, and across Blackfriars Bridge to the Surrey side of +the water, stopping to beg here and there. + +Upon this snowy Christmas night there were plenty of people abroad; +and amongst them Philip Sheldon found pitying matrons, who explored +the depths of their capacious pockets to find him a halfpenny, and +good-natured young men, who flung the "copper" he besought with piteous +professional whine. + +When he had collected the price of a glass of gin, he went into the first +public-house he came to, and spent his money. He was too ill to stay the +cravings of his stomach with substantial food. Gin gave him temporary +warmth and temporary strength, and enabled him to push on vigorously for +a little while; and then came dreary periods of faintness and exhaustion, +in which every step was sheer pain and weariness. + +Something of his old self, some remnant of that hard strength of purpose +which had once characterized him, remained with him still, utterly fallen +and brutalized as he was. As a savage creature of the jungle might pursue +a given course, pushing always onward to that camp or village whence the +scent of human flesh and blood was wafted to his quivering nostrils, so +Philip Sheldon pushed on towards the dwelling-place of that man and that +woman whom of all creatures upon this earth he most savagely hated. + +"There's nothing left for me but to turn housebreaker," he said to +himself; "and the first house I'll try my hand upon shall be Valentine +Hawkehurst's." + +The idea of violence in such a creature was the idea of a madman. Weapon +he had none, nor the physical strength that would have enabled him to +grapple with a boy of twelve years old. Half intoxicated with the spirits +he had consumed on his long tramp, half delirious with fever, he had a +vague notion that he could make an entrance into some ill-defended house +under cover of night, and steal something that should procure him food +and shelter. And let the house be Valentine Hawkehurst's, the man who had +baffled his plans and crushed him! + +If blood must be shed, let the blood be his! Never was man better primed +for murder than the man who tramped across Wimbledon Common at eleven +o'clock this night, with the snow drifting against his face, and his +limbs shaken every now and then by an ague-fit. + +Happily for the interests of society, his hand lacked the power to +execute that iniquity which his heart willed. + +He reached a little wayside inn near the Robin Hood gate of Richmond +Park, just as the shutters were being closed, and asked a man if any one +of the name of Hawkehurst lived in that neighbourhood. + +"What do _you_ want with Mr. Hawkehurst?" asked the man, contemptuously. + +"I've got a letter for him." + +"Have you? A begging letter, I should think, from the look of you." + +"No; it's a business letter. You'd better show me where he lives, if he's +a customer of yours. The business is particular." + +"Is it? You're a queer kind of messenger to trust with particular +business. Mr. Hawkehurst's house is the third you come to on the opposite +side of the way. But I don't suppose you'll find anybody up as late as +this. Their lights are out by eleven, in a general way." + +The third house on the opposite side of the road was half a mile distant +from the little run. Lights shone bright in the lower windows as the +tramp dragged his tired limbs to the stout oaken gate. The gate was +fastened only by a latch, and offered no resistance to the intruder. He +crept with stealthy footsteps along the smooth gravel walk, sheltered by +dark laurels, on which the light flashed cheerily from those bright +windows. Sounds of laughter and of music pealed out upon the wintry air. +Shadows flitted across the blinds of the broad bay windows. Philip +Sheldon crept into a sheltered nook beside the rustic porch, and sank +down exhausted in the shadow of the laurels. + +He sat there in a kind of stupor. He had lost the power of thought, +somehow, on that dreary journey. It seemed almost as if he had left some +portion of his being out yonder in the cold and darkness. He had +difficulty in remembering why he had come to this place, and what that +deed was which he meant to do. + +"Hawkehurst," he muttered to himself--"Hawkehurst, the man who leagued +against me with Jedd! I swore to be even with him if ever I found the +opportunity--if ever! And George refused me a few shillings; my brother, +my only brother, refused to stand my friend!" + +Hawkehurst and George--his only brother--the images of these two men +floated confusedly in his brain: he could scarcely separate them. +Sometimes it seemed to him that he was still sitting outside his +brother's door, on the staircase in Gray's Inn, hugging himself in his +rags, and cursing his unnatural kinsman's cruelty; then in the next +moment he remembered where he was, and breathed bitter curses upon that +unconscious enemy whose laugh pealed out every now and then amid a chorus +of light-hearted laughter. + +There was a little Christmas party at Charlottenburgh. Two flys were +waiting in the laurel-avenue to convey Mr. Hawkehurst's guests to distant +abodes. The door was opened presently, and all the bustle of departure +made itself heard by that wretched wayfarer who found it so difficult to +keep his hold upon the consciousness of these things. + +"What is it?" he said to himself--"a party! Hawkehurst has been giving a +party." + +He had lived through too much degradation, he had descended into too deep +a gulf of wretchedness, to be conscious of the contrast between his +present situation and his position in those days when he had played the +host, and seen handsome carriages bear prosperous guests away from his +door. In that cycle of misery which he had endured, these things and the +memory of them had faded from him as completely as if they had been +obliterated by the passage of a century. The hapless wretch tried to give +sustained attention to all the animated discussion that attended the +departure of the merry guests. Half-a-dozen people seemed to be talking +at once. Valentine was giving his friends counsel about the way home. + +"You will keep to the lower road, you know, Fred. Lawsley's cab can +follow yours. You came a couple of miles out of your way. And tell that +fellow Battersea Bridge is a mistake." + +And then followed Charlotte's friendly questioning about wraps, and +hoods, and comforters, and other feminine gear. + +"And when are you coming to dine at Fulham?" cried one voice. + +"I shall certainly get those quadrilles of Offenbach's," said another. + +"How delightfully Mr. Lawsley sang that song of Santley's!" + +And anon a chorus of "Never enjoyed myself more!" "Most delightful +evening!" "Pray don't come out in the cold." "Thanks; well, yes, yours +are always capital." "No, I won't light up till I'm on the road." "Give +my book a lift in the _D.H._, eh, old fellow?" "Are you _quite_ sure that +shawl is warm enough?" "Take a rug for your feet." "Thanks, no." +"Good-night." "See you on Tuesday." "Don't forget the box for D.L." "All +right, old fellow!" "Lower Road, Roehampton Lane, Putney Bridge. +Good-night." + +Among the confusion of voices Philip Sheldon had recognized more than one +voice that was familiar to him. There were Charlotte's gentle tones, and +Valentine's hearty barytone, and another that he knew. + +Diana Paget! Yes, it was her voice. Diana Paget, whom he had cause to +hate for her interference with his affairs. + +"A beggar," he muttered to himself, "and the daughter of a beggar! She +was a nice young lady to set herself in opposition to the man who gave +her a home." + +The vehicles drove away, but there was still a little group in the rustic +porch. Valentine and Charlotte, with Monsieur and Madame Lenoble, who had +come to spend their Christmas with their English friends. + +"How we have been gay this evening!" cried Gustave. "There is nothing +like your English interior for that which you call the comfortable, the +jolly, you others. Thy friends are the jollity itself, Hawkehurst. And +our acting charades, when that we all talked at once, and with a such +emphasis on the word we would make to know. Was it not that our +spectators were cunning to divine the words? And your friend Lawsley--it +is a mixture of Got and Sanson. It is a true genius. Think, then, Diane, +while we were amusing ourselves, our girls were at the midnight mass at +the Sacre Coeur? Dear pious children, their innocent prayers ascended +towards the heavens for we who are absent. Come, Madame Hawkehurst, +Diane, it makes cold." + +"But we are sheltered here. And the stars are so bright after the snow," +said Charlotte. "Do you remember the Christmas-day you spent at the Lawn, +Valentine, when we walked in Kensington Gardens together, just when we +were first engaged?" the young wife added shyly. + +"Do I not remember? It was the first time the holiness of Christmas came +home to my heart. And now let us go back to the drawing-room, and sit +round the fire, and tell ghost stories. Lenoble shall give us the legends +of Cotenoir." + +"Valentine," murmured Charlotte, "do you know that it is nearly one +o'clock?" + +"And we must put in an appearance at church to-morrow morning. And +Lenoble has to walk to Kingston to early mass. We will postpone our ghost +stories to New-Year's eve. And Lenoble shall read Tennyson's _New Year_, +to demonstrate his improvement in the English language. Lead the way, +Mrs. Hawkehurst; your obedient slave obeys. Mamma is waiting for us in +the drawing-room, marvelling at our delay, no doubt. And Nancy Woolper +stalks ghost-like through the house, oppressed by the awful +responsibility of to-morrow's pudding." + +Anon came a clanking of bolts and bars; and Philip Sheldon, for the +second time that night, heard a door shut against him. As the voices died +away, his consciousness of external things died with him. He fancied +himself on the Gray's-Inn staircase. + +"Don't be so hard upon me, George," he muttered faintly. "If my own kith +and kin turn against me, whom shall I look to?" + +Mrs. Woolper opened the door early next day, when night was yet at odds +with morning. All through the night the silent snow-flakes had been +falling thick and fast; and they had woven the shroud of Philip Sheldon. +The woman who had watched his infant slumbers forty years before, was the +first to look upon him in that deeper sleep, of whose waking we know so +little. It was not until she had looked long and closely at the dead face +that she knew why it was that the aspect of that countenance had affected +her with so strange a pang. She did recognize that altered wretch, and +kept her counsel. + +Before the bells rang for morning service the tramp was lying in the +dead-house of Kingston Union, whither he had been conveyed very quietly +in the early morning, unknown to any one but the constable who +superintended the removal, and the servants of Mr. Hawkehurst's +household. Only the next day did Ann Woolper tell Valentine what had +happened. There was to be an inquest. It would be well that some one +should identify the dead man, and establish the fact of Philip Sheldon's +decease. + +Valentine was able to do this unaided. He attended the inquest, and made +arrangements for the outcast's decent burial; and in due course he gave +Mrs. Sheldon notice of her freedom. Beyond that nameless grave whose +fancy shall dare follow Philip Sheldon? He died and made no sign. And in +the last dread day, when the dead, small and great, from the sea and from +the grave, press together at the foot of the great white Throne, and the +books of doom are opened; when above shines the city whose light is the +glory of God, and below yawns the lake of fire,--what voice shall plead +for Philip Sheldon, what entreating cry shall Pity send forth that +sentence against him may be stayed? + +Surely none; unless it issue from the lips of that one confiding friend, +whose last words upon earth thanked and blessed him, and whose long +agonies he watched with unshaken purpose, conscious that in every +convulsive change in the familiar face, and every pang that shook the +stalwart form, he saw the result of his own work. + +Perhaps at that dread Judgment Day, when every other tongue is silent, +the voice of Tom Halliday may be heard pleading for the man who murdered +him. + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Charlotte's Inheritance, by M. E. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Charlotte's Inheritance + +Author: M. E. Braddon + +Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9259] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on September 15, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan and Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE + + By + + M. E. Braddon + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +Book the First. + +DE PROFUNDIS. + + I. LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE + + II. IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE + + III. PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR + + IV. A DECREE OF BANISHMENT + + +Book the Second. + +DOWNHILL. + + I. THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE + + II. FORGIVEN TOO LATE + + III. GUSTAVE THE SECOND + + +Book the Third. + +THE HORATIAD. + + I. CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE + + II. EPISTOLARY + + III. TOO CLEVER FOR A CATSPAW + + IV. CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL + + V. THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR + + +Book the Fourth. + +GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND. + + I. HALCYON DAYS + + II. CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY + + III. WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I? + + IV. SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH + + +Book the Fifth. + +THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. + + I. TAKEN BY STORM + + II. FIRM AS A ROCK + + III. AGAINST WIND AND TIDE + + IV. DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY + + V. ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE + + +Book the Sixth. + +DIANA IN NORMANDY. + + I. AT COTENOIR + + +Book the Seventh. + +A CLOUD OF FEAR. + + I. THE BEGINNING OF SORROW + + II. FADING + + III. MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS + + IV. VALENTINE'S SKELETON + + V. AT HAROLD'S HILL + + VI. DESPERATE MEASURES + + +Book the Eighth. + +A FIGHT AGAINST TIME. + + I. A DREAD REVELATION + + II. PHOENICIANS ARE RISING + + III. THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE + + +Book the Ninth. + +THROUGH THE FURNACE. + + I. SOMETHING TOO MUCH + + II. DR. JEDD'S OPINION + + III. NON DORMIT JUDAS + + IV. COUNTING THE COST + + V. THE BEGINNING OF THE END + + VI. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED + + VII. THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE + + +Book the Tenth. + +HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS. + + I. OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY + + II. AFTER THE WEDDING + + III. GREEK AGAINST GREEK + + IV. ONLY A DREAM + + V. BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE + + VI. BEYOND THE VEIL + + VII. BETTER THAN GOLD + +VIII. LOST SIGHT OF + + IX. ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES + + X. "ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS." + + + + +CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE + + + +Book the first. + + + +DE PROFUNDIS. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE. + +In the days when the Bourbon reigned over Gaul, before the "simple, +sensuous, passionate" verse of Alfred de Musset had succeeded the +_debonnaire_ Muse of Beranger in the affections of young France,--in days +when the site of the Trocadero was a remote and undiscovered country, and +the word "exposition" unknown in the Academic dictionary, and the Gallic +Augustus destined to rebuild the city yet an exile,--a young law-student +boarded, in common with other students, in a big dreary-looking house at +the corner of the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, abutting on the Place Lauzun, +and within some ten minutes walk of the Luxembourg. It was a very dingy +quarter, though noble gentlemen and lovely ladies had once occupied the +great ghastly mansions, and disported themselves in the gruesome gardens. +But the young students were in nowise oppressed by the ghastliness of +their abode. They sang their Beranger, and they pledged each other in +cheap Bordeaux, and clinked their glasses noisily in their boisterous +good-fellowship, and ate the messes compounded for them in a darksome +cupboard, known as the kitchen, by old Nanon the cook, purblind, +stone-deaf, and all but imbecile, and popularly supposed to be the +venerable mother of Madame Magnotte. The youngsters grumbled to each +other about the messes when they were unusually mysterious; and it must +be owned that there were _vol-au-vents_ and _fricandeaux_ consumed in +that establishment which were awful and wonderful in their nature; but +they ventured on no complaint to the mistress of the mansion. She was a +grim and terrible personage. Her terms were low, and she treated her +boarders _de haute en bas_. If they were not content with her viands, +they might go and find more agreeable viands elsewhere. + +Madame Magnotte was altogether mysterious and inscrutable. Some people +said that she was a countess, and that the wealth and lands of her family +had been confiscated by the committee of public unsafety in '93. Others +declared that she had been a popular actress in a small theatre in the +days of Napoleon. She was tall and thin--nay, of an exceptional +leanness--and her complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the +butter that appeared on her hospitable board; but she had flashing black +eyes, and a certain stateliness of gait and grandeur of manner that +impressed those young Bohemians, her boarders, with a kind of awe. They +talked of her as the "countess," and by that name she was known to all +inmates of the mansion; but in all their dealings with her they treated +her with unfailing respect. + +One of the quietest among the young men who enjoyed the privileges of +Madame Magnotte's abode was a certain Gustave Lenoble, a law-student, the +only son of a very excellent couple who lived on their own estate, near +an obscure village in Normandy. The estate was of the smallest; a +dilapidated old house, known in the immediate neighbourhood as "the +Chateau," and very dear to those who resided therein; a garden, in which +everything seemed to have run to seed; and about forty acres of the +poorest land in Normandy. These possessions constituted the patrimonial +estate of Francois Lenoble, _proprietaire_, of Beaubocage, near +Vevinordin, the department of Eure. + +The people amongst whom the good man lived his simple life called him M. +Lenoble de Beaubocage, but he did not insist upon this distinction; and +on sending out his only son to begin the battle of life in the great +world of Paris, he recommended the young man to call himself Lenoble, +_tout court_. + +The young man had never cherished any other design. He was of all +creatures the least presuming or pretentious. The father was Legitimist +to the very marrow; the son half Buonapartist, half republican. The +father and son had quarrelled about these differences of opinion +sometimes in a pleasantly disputatious manner; but no political +disagreement could lesser the love between these two. Gustave loved +his parents as only a Frenchman can venture to love his father and +mother--with a devotion for the gentleman that bordered on enthusiasm, +with a fond reverence for the lady that was the very essence of chivalry. +There was a sister, who regarded her brother Gustave as the embodiment of +all that is perfect in youthful mankind; and there were a couple of old +house-servants, a very stupid clumsy lad in the stables, and half a dozen +old mongrel dogs, born and bred on the premises, who seemed to share the +young lady's opinions. There was not a little discussion upon the subject +of Gustave Lenoble's future career; and it was not without difficulty +that the father could be persuaded to approve the choice of a profession +which the young man had made. The seigneur of Beaubocage cherished an +exaggerated pride of race little suspected by those who saw his simple +life, and were pleased by his kindly unaffected manners. The house of +Lenoble, at some remote and almost mythical period of history, had +distinguished itself in divers ways; and those bygone grandeurs, vague +and shadowy in the minds of all others, seemed very real to Monsieur +Lenoble. He assured his son that no Lenoble had ever been a lawyer. They +had been always lords of the soil, living on their own lands, which had +once stretched wide and far in that Norman province; a fact proved by +certain maps in M. Lenoble's possession, the paper whereof was worn and +yellow with age. They had stooped to no profession save that of arms. One +seigneur of Beaubocage had fought under Bayard himself; another had +fallen at Pavia, on that great day when all was lost _hormis l'honneur_; +another had followed the white plume of the Bernais; another--but was +there any need to tell of the glories of that house upon which Gustave +was so eager to inflict the disgrace of a learned profession? + +Thus argued the father; but the mother had spent her girlhood amidst the +clamour of the Buonapartist campaigns, and the thought of war was very +terrible to her. The memory of the retreat from Russia was not yet twenty +years old. There were men alive to tell the story, to depict those days +and nights of horror, that mighty march of death. It was she and her +daughter Cydalise who had helped to persuade Gustave that he was born to +distinguish himself in the law. They wanted him to study in Paris--the +young man himself had a wild desire to enjoy the delights of that +wondrous capital--and to return in a few years to set up for himself as +_avocat_ at the town of Vevinord, some half-dozen leagues from the +patrimonial estate. He was created to plead for the innocent, to denounce +the guilty, to be grand and brave and fiery-hot with enthusiasm in +defence of virtuous peasants charged unjustly with the stealing of sheep, +or firing of corn-ricks. It never struck these simple souls that he might +sometimes be called upon to defend the guilty, or to denounce the +innocent. + +It was all settled at last. Gustave was to go to Paris, and enter himself +as a student of law. There were plenty of boarding-houses in the +neighbourhood of the Ecole de Droit where a young man might find a home; +and to one of these Gustave was recommended by a friend of his family. It +was the Pension Magnotte to which they had sent him, the big dreary +house, _entre cour et jardin_, which had once been so grand and noble. A +printer now occupied the lower chambers, and a hand painted on the wall +pointed to the _Pension Magnotte, au premier. Tirez le cordon, s.v.p._ + +Gustave was twenty-one years of age when he came to Paris; tall, +stalwart, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with a fair frank face, +an auburn moustache, candid, kind blue eyes--a physiognomy rather Saxon +than Celtic. He was a man who made friends quickly, and was soon at home +among the students, roaring their favourite songs, and dancing their +favourite dances at the dancing-places of that day, joining with a +pleasant heartiness in all their innocent dissipations. For guilty +dissipation the young provincial had no taste. Did he not carry the +images of two kind and pure women about with him wherever he went, like +two attendant angels ever protecting his steps; and could he leave them +sorrowing on thresholds _they_ could not pass? Ah, no! He was loud and +boisterous and wild of spirits in those early days, but incapable of +meanness or vice. + +"It is a brave heart," Madame Magnotte said of him, "though for the +breaking of glasses a scourge--_un fleau_." + +The ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age +and unattractive appearance--two or three lonely spinsters, eking out +their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious +sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and +a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of +miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame +Magnotte told her gossips--an old woman with two furiously ugly +daughters, who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in +divers boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so many +strange bachelors, husbands for these two solitary ones must at last be +found. + +These, with a pale young lady who gave music lessons in the quarter, were +all the feminine inmates of the mansion; and amongst these Gustave +Lenoble was chief favourite. His tender courtesy for these lonely women +seemed in some manner an evidence of that good old blood whereof the +young man's father boasted. Francis the First, who listened with bent +knee and bare head to his mother's discourse, was not more reverential to +that noble Savoyarde than was Gustave to the shabby-genteel maiden ladies +of the Pension Magnotte. In truth, this young man had a heart pitiful and +tender as the heart of woman. To be unfortunate was to possess a sure +claim upon his pity and regard; to be poor and friendless was the best +appeal to his kindness. He spent his evenings sometimes in the great +dreary desert of a salon, and listened respectfully while Mademoiselle +Servin, the young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Gretry +on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of those +instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the very ghost of +music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour. To +him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young +men. + +"They mock themselves of everything--even the religion!" she exclaimed, +with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent. +But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of +the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I +cannot to them. I, who speak to you--I, too, come of a good old race, and +there is sympathy between we others." + +And then, after babbling to him of her lost station, the lady would +entertain him with some dainty little supper with which she was wont to +indulge herself and her lady boarders, when the students--who were +treated something after the manner of school-boys--were out of doors. + +For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian life--not +altogether idle, but not altogether industrious--amusing himself a great +deal, and learning very little; moderate in his expenditure, when +compared with his fellow-students, but no small drain upon the funds of +the little family at home. In sooth, this good old Norman family had in a +pecuniary sense sunk very low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down +house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful face, and +took things pleasantly. A very humble English farmer would have despised +the income which supported M. Lenoble's household; and it was only the +economy and skill of the matron and her daughter which sustained the +dignity of the small establishment. + +There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple-minded old +father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and that was the hope in the +grand things to be done, in the dim future, by Gustave, the son, the +heir, the pole-star of the household. + +Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad light of honour and +riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student. +On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to be +sustained. To him they looked, of him they thought, in the long dreary +winter evenings during which the mother nodded over her knitting, the +father slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at her +needle-work by her little table of _palissandre_. + +He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of study, +bringing with him life and light and gladness, as it seemed to the two +women who adored him; and now, in the winter of 1828, they expected +another visit. He was to be with them on the first day of the new year. +He was to stay with them till his Mother's fete--the 17th of January. + +The father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety. The +mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she who loved her +brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could be more anxious than +usual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, a dire conspiracy, of which +Gustave was to be the subject and victim, had been concocted beneath that +innocent-seeming roof. Father, mother, and sister, seated round the +family hearth, fatal as some domestic Parcae, had hatched their horrid +scheme, while the helpless lad amused himself yonder in the great city, +happily unconscious of the web that was being woven to enmesh him. + +The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame held, the +needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were employed in the +fabrication of a matrimonial net. These unsophisticated conspirators +were bent upon bringing about the marriage of their victim, a marriage +which should at once elevate and enrich the Lenobles of Beaubocage, in +the person of Gustave. + +Francois Lenoble's best friend and nearest neighbour was a certain Baron +Frehlter, of Germanic origin, but for some generations past naturalised +to the Gallic soil. The Baron was proprietor of an estate which could +show ten acres for one of the lands of Beaubocage. The Baron boasted a +family tree which derived its root from a ramification of the +Hohenzollern pedigree; but, less proud and more prudent than the +Lenobles, the Frehlters had not scorned to intermingle their Prussian +blue blood with less pure streams of commercial France. The _epicier_ +element had prevailed in the fair brides of the house of Frehlter for the +last three or four generations, and the house of Frehlter had +considerably enriched itself by this sacrifice of its family pride. + +The present Baron had married a lady ten years his senior, the widow of a +Rouen merchant, alike wealthy and pious, but famous rather for these +attributes than for any personal charm. One only child, a girl, had +blessed this union. She was now a young person of something under twenty +years of age, newly emerged from her convent, and pining for some share +in the gaieties and delights of a worldly paradise, which had already +been open to many of her schoolfellows. + +Mademoiselle Frehlter's companions had, for the most part, left school to +be married. She had heard of the _corbeille_, the wedding dress, the +wedding festivities, and occasionally a word or two about that secondary +consideration the bridegroom. The young lady was therefore somewhat +inclined to take it ill of her father that he had not secured for her the +_eclat_ of an early marriage. Her departure from the convent of the Sacre +Coeur, at Vevinord, was flat and tame to an extreme degree. The future +lay before her, a dreary desert of home life, to be spent with a father +who gorged himself daily at a greasy and savoury banquet, and who slept +away the greater part of his existence; and with a mother who divided her +affections between a disagreeable poodle and a still more disagreeable +priest--a priest who took upon himself to lecture the demoiselle Frehlter +on the smallest provocation. + +The chateau of the Frehlters was a very grand abode as compared to the +tumble-down house of Beaubocage; but it was cold and stony to a +depressing degree, and the furniture must have been shabby in the days of +the Fronde. Faithful old servants kept the mansion in a state of spotless +purity, and ruled the Baron and his wife with a rod of iron. Mademoiselle +execrated these devoted retainers, and would have welcomed the sauciest +of modern domestics who would have released her from the bondage of these +servants of the old school. + +Mademoiselle had been at home a year--a year of discontent and +ill-humour. She had quarrelled with her father, because he would not take +her to Paris; with her mother, because she would not give her more new +gowns and bonnets and feathers and fur-belows; with the priest, the +poodle, with the autocracy below-stairs, with everybody and everything. +So at last the Baron decided that mademoiselle should marry, whereby he +might be rid of her, and of her complaints, vagaries, ill-tempers, and +general dissatisfaction. + +Having once made up his mind as to the wisdom of a matrimonial +arrangement, Baron Frehlter was not slow to fix upon a bridegroom. He was +a very rich man, and Madelon was his only child, and he was furthermore a +very lazy man; so, instead of looking far afield for a wealthy or +distinguished suitor for his daughter, he was inclined to take the first +that came to hand. It is possible that the Baron, who was of a somewhat +cynical turn of mind, may have cherished no very exalted idea of his +daughter's attractions, either personal or mental. However this might be, +it is certain that when the demoiselle had ill-treated the poodle, and +insulted the priest, and quarrelled with the cook--that high-priestess of +the kitchen who alone, in all Normandy, could concoct those messes which +the Baron loved--the master of Cotenoir decided on marrying his heiress +out of hand. + +He communicated this design to his old crony, Francois Lenoble, one day +when the Beaubocage family dined at Chateau Cotenoir. + +"I think of marrying my daughter," he said to his friend, when the ladies +were safely out of hearing at the other end of the long dreary saloon. +"Now thy son Gustave is a fine fellow--brave, handsome, and of a good +race. It is true he is not as rich as Madelon will be by-and-by; but I am +no huckster, to sell my daughter to the best bidder" ("and I doubt if +there would be many bidders for her, if I were so inclined," thought the +Baron, in parenthesis); "and if thy son should take a fancy to her, and +she to him, it would please me well enough, friend Francois." + +Friend Francois pricked up his ears, and in his old eyes flickered a +feeble light. Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his son +Gustave! Lenoble of Beaubocage and Cotenoir--Lenoble of Cotenoir and +Beaubocage! So splendid a vision had never shone before his eyes in all +the dreams that he had dreamed about the only son of whom he was so +proud. He could not have shaped to himself so bold a project as the union +of those two estates. And here was the Baron offering it to him, with his +snuff-box, _en passant_. + +"It would be a great marriage," he said, "a very great marriage. For +Gustave I can answer without hesitation. He could not but be charmed by +such a union--so amiable a bride would enchant him." + +He looked down the room to the spot where Madelon and Cydalise were +standing, side by side, admiring Madame Frehlter's poodle. Madelon could +afford to be civil to the poodle before company. The contrast between the +two girls was sufficiently striking. Cydalise was fair and +bright-looking--Mademoiselle Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure, +swarthy of complexion, dark of brow. + +"He could not but be charmed," repeated the old man, with feeble +gallantry. + +He was thinking of the joining together of Beaubocage and Cotenoir; and +it seemed a very small thing to him that such a union of estates would +involve the joining of a man and woman, who were to hold to each other +and love each other until death should part them. + +"It shall be no marriage of convenience," said the Baron, in a generous +spirit; "my daughter is somewhat ill-tem--that is to say, my daughter +finds her life somewhat dull with her old father and mother, and I think +she might be happier in the society of a husband. I like your son; and +my wife, too, likes him better than any other young man of our +acquaintance. Madelon has seen a good deal of him when she has been home +from the convent in her holidays, and I have reason to think she does +not dislike him. If he likes her and she likes him, and the idea is +pleasing to you and madame, we will make a match of it. If not, let it +pass; we will say no more." + +Again the seigneur of Beaubocage assured his friend that Gustave would be +enchanted with the proposal; and again it was of Cotenoir that he +thought, and not of the heart or the inclinations of his son. + +This conversation took place late in autumn, and at the new year Gustave +was to come. Nothing was to be said to him about his intended wife until +he arrived; that was a point upon which the Baron insisted. + +"The young man may have fallen in love with some fine young person in +Paris," he said; "and in that case we will say nothing to him of Madelon. +But if we find him with the heart free, and inclined to take to my +daughter, we may give him encouragement." + +This was solemnly agreed between the two fathers. Nor was Mademoiselle +Frehlter to be told of the matrimonial scheme until it ripened. But after +this dinner at Cotenoir the household at Beaubocage talked of little else +than of the union of the two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what +happiness! Gustave the lord of Cotenoir! Poor Cydalise had never seen a +finer mansion than the old chateau, with its sugar-loaf towers and stone +terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient turret chambers, and +long dreary salon and _salle-a-manger_. She could picture to herself +nothing more splendid. For Gustave to be offered the future possession of +Cotenoir was as if he were suddenly to be offered the succession to a +kingdom. She could not bring herself to consider that Madelon was neither +agreeable nor attractive, and that, after all, the wife must count for +something in every marriage contract. She could see nothing, she could +think of nothing, but Cotenoir. The glory and grandeur of that estate +absorbed every other consideration. + +No one of those three conspirators feared any opposition on the part of +their victim. It was just possible that Gustave might have fallen in love +with some Parisian damsel, though his letters gave no hint of any such +calamity. But if such a misfortune had happened, he would, of course, +fall out of love again, return the damsel her troth and obtain the return +of his own, and straightway offer the second-hand commodity to +Mademoiselle Frehlter. + +The object of all these cares and hopes and dreams arrived at last, full +of life and spirits, with plenty to tell about Paris in general, and very +little to tell about himself in particular. The women questioned him +unmercifully. They insisted on a graphic description of every female +inmate of the boarding-house, and would scarcely believe that all except +the little music-mistress were elderly and unattractive. Of the +music-mistress herself they were inclined to be very suspicious, and were +not altogether reassured by Gustave's assertion that she was neither +pretty nor fascinating. + +"She is a dear, good, industrious little thing," he said, "and works +harder than I do. But she is no miracle of beauty; and her life is so +dreary that I often wonder she does not go into a convent. It would be +gayer and pleasanter for her than to live with those old women at the +Pension Magnotte." + +"I suppose there are many beautiful women in Paris?" said Cydalise, bent +upon knowing the worst. + +"Well, I dare say there are," Gustave answered frankly; "but we students +don't see much of them in our quarter. One sees a pretty little +milliner's girl now and then, or a washerwoman. In short, there are a +good many grisettes in our part of the world," added the young man, +blushing, but for no sin of his own. "We get a glimpse of a handsome +woman sometimes, rattling past in her carriage; but in Paris handsome +women do not go on foot. I have seen prettier girls at Vevinord than in +Paris." + +Cydalise was enchanted with this confession. + +"Yes," she exclaimed, "our Normandy is the place for pretty girls. +Madelon Frehlter. for example, is not she a very--amiable girl?" + +"I dare say she's amiable enough," answered Gustave; "but if there were +no prettier girls than Mademoiselle Frehlter in this part of the world, +we should have no cause to boast. But there are prettier girls, Cydalise, +and thou art thyself one of them." + +After this speech the young man bestowed upon his sister a resounding +kiss. Yes; it was clear that he was heart-whole. These noisy, boisterous +good spirits were not characteristic of a lover. Even innocent Cydalise +knew that to be in love was to be miserable. + +From this time mother and sister tormented their victim with the merits +and charms of his predestined bride. Madelon on the piano was miraculous; +Madelon's little songs were enchanting; Madelon's worsted-work was a +thing to worship; Madelon's devotion to her mother and her mother's +poodle was unequalled; Madelon's respectful bearing to the good Abbe St. +Velours--her mother's director--was positively beyond all praise. It was +virtue seraphic, supernal. Such a girl was too good for earth--too good +for anything except Gustave. + +The young man heard and wondered. + +"How you rave about Madelon Frehlter!" he exclaimed. "She seems to me the +most commonplace young person I ever encountered. She has nothing to say +for herself; she never appears to know where to put her elbows. I never +saw such elbows; they are everywhere at once. And her shoulders!--O +heaven, then, her shoulders!--it ought to be forbidden to wear low +dresses when one has such shoulders." + +This was discouraging, but the schemers bore up even against this. The +mother dwelt on the intellectual virtues of Madelon; and what were +shoulders compared to mind, piety, amiability--all the Christian graces? +Cydalise owned that dear Madelon was somewhat _gauche_; Gustave called +her _bete_. The father remonstrated with his son. Was it not frightful to +use a word of the barracks in connection with this charming young lady? + +At last the plot revealed itself. After a dinner at Cotenoir and a dinner +at Beaubocage, on both which occasions Gustave had made himself very +agreeable to the ladies of the Baron's household--since, indeed, it was +not in his nature to be otherwise than kind and courteous to the weaker +sex--the mother told her son of the splendid destiny that had been shaped +for him. It was a matter of surprise and grief to her to find that the +revelation gave Gustave no pleasure. + +"Marriage was the last thing in my thoughts, dear mother," he said, +gravely; "and Madelon Frehlter is the very last woman I should think of +for a wife. Nevertheless, I am gratified by the honour Monsieur le Baron +has done me. That goes without saying." + +"But the two estates!--together they would make you a great proprietor. +You would not surely refuse such fortune?" + +Cydalise gave a little scream of horror. + +"Cotenoir! to refuse Cotenoir! Ah, surely that would be impossible! But +figure to yourself, then, Gustave--" + +"Nay, Cydalise, you forget the young lady goes with the chateau; a +fixture that we cannot dispense with." + +"But she, so amiable, so pious--" + +"So plain, so stupid--" + +"So modest, so charitable--" + +"In short, so admirably adapted for a Sister of Charity," replied +Gustave. "But no, dear Cydalise. Cotenoir is a grand old place; but I +would as soon spend my life at Toulon, dragging a cannon-ball at my +heels, as in that dreary salon where Madame Frehlter nurses her maladies +and her poodle, and where the good-humoured, easy-going old Baron snores +away existence. 'Tis very well for those elderly folks, you see, my +sister, and for Madelon--for hers is an elderly mind in a youthful body; +but for a young man full of hope and gaiety and activity--bah! It would +be of all living deaths the worst. From the galleys there is always the +hope of escaping--an underground passage, burrowed out with one's +finger-nails in the dead of the night--a work lasting twenty years or so, +but with a feeble star of hope always glimmering at the end of the +passage. But from the salon, and mamma, and the poodle, and the good, +unctuous, lazy old director, and papa's apoplectic snoring, and the +plaintive little songs and monotonous embroideries of one's wife, there +would be no escape. Ah, bah!" + +Gustave shuddered, and the two women shuddered as they heard him. The +prospect was by no means promising; but Madame Lenoble and her daughter +did not utterly despair. Gustave's heart was disengaged. That was a great +point; and for the rest, surely persuasion might do much. + +Then came that phenomenon seen very often in this life--a +generous-minded, right-thinking young man talked into a position which of +all others is averse from his own inclinations. The mother persuaded, the +sister pleaded, the father dwelt dismally upon the poverty of Beaubocage, +the wealth of Cotenoir. It was the story of auld Robin Gray reversed. +Gustave perceived that his refusal to avail himself of this splendid +destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people who loved him +so fondly--whom he loved as fondly in return. Must he not be a churl to +disappoint hopes so unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent? And only +because Madelon was not the most attractive or the prettiest of women! + +The young man stood firm against all their arguments, he was unmoved by +all their pleading. It was only when his anxious kindred had given up the +battle for lost that Gustave wavered. Their mute despair moved him more +than the most persuasive eloquence; and the end was submission. He left +Beaubocage the plighted lover of that woman who, of all others, he would +have been the last to choose for his wife. It had all been settled very +pleasantly--the dowry, the union of the two estates, the two names. For +six months Gustave was to enjoy his freedom to finish his studies; and +then he was to return to Normandy for his marriage. + +"I have heard very good accounts of you from Paris," said the Baron. "You +are not like some young men, wild, mad-brained. One can confide in your +honour, your steadiness." + +The good folks of Beaubocage were in ecstacies. They congratulated +Gustave--they congratulated each other. A match so brilliant would be the +redemption of the family. The young man at last began to fancy himself +the favoured of the gods. What if Madelon seemed a little dull--a little +wanting in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous minds? she was +doubtless so much the more profound, so much the more virtuous. If she +was not bright and varied and beautiful as some limpid fountain dancing +in summer sunlight, she was perhaps changeless and steady as a rock; and +who would not rather have the security of a rock than the summer-day +beauty of a fountain? + +Before Gustave departed from his paternal home he had persuaded himself +that he was a very lucky fellow; and he had paid Mademoiselle Frehlter +some pretty little stereotyped compliments, and had listened with sublime +patience to her pretty little stereotyped songs. He left the young lady +profoundly impressed by his merits; he left his own household supremely +happy; and he carried away with him a heart in which Madelon Frehlter's +image had no place. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE. + +Gustave went back to his old life, and was not much disturbed by the +grandeur of his destiny as future seigneur of Cotenoir and Beaubocage. It +sometimes occurred to him that he had a weight upon his mind; and, on +consideration, he found that the weight was Madelon Frehlter. But he +continued to carry that burden very lightly, and his easy-going student +life went on, unbroken by thoughts of the future. He sent polite messages +to the demoiselle Frehlter in his letters to Cydalise; and he received +from Cydalise much information, more graphic than interesting, upon the +subject of the family at Cotenoir; and so his days went on with pleasant +monotony. This was the brief summer of his youth; but, alas, how near at +hand was the dark and dismal winter that was to freeze this honest joyous +heart! That heart, so compassionate for all suffering, so especially +tender for all womankind, was to be attacked upon its weaker side. + +It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the Luxembourg +every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle to the Ecole +de Droit. Sometimes, when he was earlier than usual, he carried a book +with him, and paced one of the more obscure alleys, reading for an odd +half-hour before he went to the daily mill-grinding in the big building +beyond those quiet gardens. + +Walking with his book one morning--it was a volume of Boileau, which +the student knew by heart, and the pages whereof did not altogether +absorb his attention--he passed and repassed a bench on which a lady +sat, pensive and solitary, tracing shapeless figures on the ground with +the point of her parasol. He glanced at her somewhat carelessly the +first time of passing, more curiously on the second occasion, and +the third time with considerable attention. Something in her +attitude--helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all +expressed in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle +characters on the gravel--enlisted the sympathies of Gustave Lenoble. He +had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrated the cavernous depths +of the capacious bonnet of those days; but one glimpse of the pale +plaintive face inspired him with compassion unspeakable. Never had he +seen despair more painfully depicted on the human countenance--a despair +that sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the +outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He +could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her +world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had +gone forth--that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion +of an accursed race there were to be none. + +He put Boileau into his pocket. That glimpse of a suffering human mind, +which had been unconsciously revealed to him, possessed an interest more +absorbing than the grandest flight of poet and satirist. As he passed for +the fifth time, he looked at the mournful lady still more searchingly, +and this time the sad eyes were lifted, and met his pitying looks. The +beautiful lips moved, and murmured something in tones so tremulous as to +be quite unintelligible. + +The student took off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as +knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his liege mistress. + +"In what can I have the happiness to be agreeable to you, madame?" + +"You are very good, monsieur," murmured the lady in very decent French, +but with an accent unmistakably foreign--English, as Gustave opined. +"I--I--am quite a stranger in Paris, and--and--I have heard there are +numerous lodging-houses in this quarter--where one may obtain a +lodging--cheaply. I have asked several nursemaids, and other women, in +the gardens this morning; but they seem very stupid, and can tell me +nothing; and I do not care to ask at the hotel where I am staying." + +Gustave pondered. Yes, there were many lodgings, he informed the lady. +And then he thought of Madame Magnotte. Was it not his duty to secure +this stray lodger for that worthy woman, if possible? + +"If madame has no objection to a boarding-house--" he began. + +Madame shook her head. "A boarding-house would suit me just as well," she +said; "but it must not be expensive. I cannot afford to pay much." + +"I know of a boarding-house very near this place, where madame might find +a comfortable home on very reasonable terms. It is, in point of fact, the +house in which I myself reside," added Gustave, with some timidity. + +"If you will kindly direct me to the house--" said the lady, looking +straight before her with sad unseeing eyes, and evidently supremely +indifferent as to the residence or non-residence of M. Lenoble in the +habitation referred to. + +"Nay, madame, if you will permit me to conduct you there. It is but a +walk of five minutes." + +The stranger accepted the courtesy with a gentle indifference that was +not ingratitude, but rather incapacity for any feeling except that one +great sorrow which seemed to absorb her mind. + +Gustave wondered what calamity could thus overwhelm one so young and +beautiful. + +The lady was quite silent during the little walk from the gardens to the +Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and Gustave observed her attentively as he +walked by her side. She was evidently not more than four-and-twenty years +of age, and she was certainly the prettiest woman he had ever seen. It +was a fair delicate English beauty, a little worn and faded, as if by +care, but idealized and sublimated in the process. At her brightest this +stranger must have been strikingly beautiful; in her sorrow she was +touchingly lovely. It was what Gustave's countrymen call a _beaute +navrante_. + +Gustave watched her, and wondered about her. The dress she wore was +sufficiently elegant, but had lost the gloss of newness. Her shawl, which +she carried as gracefully as a Frenchwoman, was darned. Gustave perceived +the neat careful stitches, and divined the poverty of the wearer. That +she should be poor was no subject for surprise; but that she, so +sorrowful, so lonely, should seek a home in a strange city, was an enigma +not easy to solve. + +To Madame Magnotte Gustave introduced the stranger. She gave just one +look round the dreary saloon; but to Gustave's fancy that one look seemed +eloquent. "Ah me!" it said; "is this the fairest home I am to find upon +this inhospitable earth?" + +"She does not seem to belong to this world," the young man thought, as +he went back to the garden where he had found his fair stranger, having +been very coolly dismissed by Madame Magnotte after his introduction had +been made. + +And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, remembered how a +lady had been found by a student sitting on the lowest steps of the +guillotine, desolate and helpless, at night; and how the student had +taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately +in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had +been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours +before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and +delusive. + +Was this English stranger whom Gustave had found in the gardens of the +Luxembourg twin sister to that ghostly lady of the familiar legend? Her +despair and her beauty seemed to him greater than earthly sorrow or +earthly beauty; and he was half inclined to wonder whether she could be +of the same race as Madelon Frehlter. And from this hour the sense of a +weight upon his mind, before so vague and intermittent, became an +enduring oppression, not to be shaken off by any effort of his will. + +All through that day he found himself thinking more of the unknown +Englishwoman than was consistent with a strict performance of his duties. +He was vexed with himself on account of this foolish distraction of mind. + +"What a frivolous fellow I must be," he said to himself, "to dwell upon +such a trifle! This comes of leading such a monotonous life." + +At dinner he looked for the lady; but she did not appear at the long +table, where the shrill old ladies, the epicurean old bachelors, the +noisy students, daily devoured and grumbled at the four or five courses +which old Nanon developed out of her inner consciousness and a rather +scantily furnished larder. He questioned Madame Magnotte after dinner, +and was told that the lady was in the house, but was too tired to dine +with the other inmates. + +"I have to thank thee for a new boarder, my friend," she said. "Madame +Meynell will not pay largely; but she seems a quiet and respectable +person, and we shall doubtless be well pleased with each other." + +"Madame Meynell!" repeated Gustave, congratulating himself on finding +that the Englishwoman was an inhabitant of the house he lived in. "She is +a widow, I suppose?" + +"Yes, she is a widow. I asked that question, and she answered, yes. +But she told me nothing of her late husband. She is not at all +communicative." + +This was all Gustave could obtain from Madame Magnotte. She was not +communicative. No; she was, indeed, scarcely less silent than that +ghostly lady who had been found sitting at the foot of the guillotine. +There was some kind of mystery involved in her sorrowful face, her silent +apathy. It was possibly the fact of this mystery which interested M. +Lenoble. Certain it is that the young man's interest had been aroused by +this unknown Englishwoman, and that his mind was more occupied by the +image of her whom he had seen but once than by that of his plighted wife. + +He waited anxiously for the next day; but on the next day Madame Meynell +still pleaded fatigue and illness. It was only on the third day that she +appeared at the noisy banquet, pale, silent, absent-minded, sheltering +herself under the wing of Madame Magnotte, who was disposed to be kind to +this helpless stranger. To Gustave the young English widow seemed like a +ghost at that crowded board. He looked at her every now and then from his +distant seat, and saw her always with the same hopeless far-away look in +her sad eyes. He himself was silent and _distrait_. + +"Of what dost thou dream, my droll one?" said his nearest neighbour. +"Thou art positively insupportable." + +M. Lenoble could not become vivacious or entertaining at the behest of +his fellow-student. The consciousness of that strange pale face haunted +and oppressed him. He hoped to have a few minutes' talk with the English +lady after dinner, but she disappeared before the removal of those +recondite preparations which in the Pension Magnotte went by the generic +name of "dessert." + +For more than a week she appeared thus at the dinner-table, eating very +little, speaking not at all, except such monosyllabic replies as the +hostess now and then extorted from her pale lips. A creature at once so +beautiful and so profoundly sad became an object of interest to others +besides Gustave; but in no breast was the sympathy which her sadness and +beauty excited so poignant as in his. Her face haunted him. The familiar +pleasures and amusements became distasteful to him. He spent his evenings +at home in the dismal salon, and was content to listen to the chatter of +the old women, the little music-mistress's dreary sonatas, the monotonous +roll of wheels on the distant quay--anything rather than the hackneyed +round of student-life that had once been agreeable to him. He did not +fail to write his weekly letter to Cydalise; but, for some reason or +other, he refrained from any allusion to the English stranger, although +it was his custom to relate all his adventures for the amusement of the +family at Beaubocage. + +An evening came at last on which Madame Meynell was persuaded to remain +with the other ladies after dinner. + +"It must be very cold and cheerless for you in your bedroom," said +Madame Magnotte; "why not spend your evening with us, in a pleasant and +social manner?" + +"You are very good, madame," murmured the Englishwoman, in the slow timid +accents that had so plaintive a sound to Gustave's ear; "if you wish it, +I will stay." + +She seemed to submit rather from utter weakness and inability to refuse +anything asked of her than from any hope of finding pleasure in the +society of the Magnotte salon. + +It was an evening in March--cold, blustrous, dreary. The east wind blew +clouds of dust athwart the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and the few +foot-passengers in that dull thoroughfare looked pinched and wretched. +The old ladies gathered round the great black stove, and gossipped in the +twilight; the music-mistress went to her feeble piano, and played, +unasked, unheeded; for Gustave, who was wont to turn the leaves, or sit +attentive by the piano, seemed this evening unconscious of the music. +Madame Meynell sat in one of the windows, alone, half-hidden by the faded +yellow damask curtains, looking out into the street. + +Something--some impulse which he tried to resist, but could not--drew +Gustave towards that lonely figure by the window. He went close up to the +strange lady. This evening, as in the gardens of the Luxembourg, she +seemed to him a living statue of despair. Now, as then, he felt an +interest in her sorrow which he was powerless to combat. He had a vague +idea that even this compassionate sympathy was in some manner an offence +against Madelon Frehlter, the woman to whom he belonged, and yet he +yielded to the fatal weakness. + +"Yes, I belong to her," he said to himself; "I belong to Madelon +Frehlter. She is neither pretty nor fascinating; but I have every reason +to believe her very good, very amiable; and she is the only woman, except +those of my own kindred, in whom I have any right to be interested." + +He did not say this in so many words; but this was the shape which his +thoughts assumed as he yielded to the tempter, and walked straight to the +distant window by which Madame Meynell had seated herself. + +She started slightly as he approached her, and then looked up and +recognized him as her acquaintance of the Luxembourg. + +"Good evening, monsieur," she said; "I have to thank you for having +helped me to find a comfortable home." + +Having said this in a low gentle voice, she looked out into the street +once more with her mournful unseeing eyes. It was evident that she had no +more to say to M. Lenoble. + +The student, however, had no idea of leaving the window just yet, +although he knew--yes, knew--that his presence there was a wrong done to +Madelon Frehlter; but a wrong so small, so infinitesimal, that it was +really not worth consideration. + +"I am enchanted to think that I was of some slight service to you, +madame," he said; "but I fear you will find this quarter of Paris +very dull." + +She did not take any notice of this remark until Gustave had repeated it, +and then she spoke as if suddenly awakened from a trance. + +"Dull?" she said. "No, I have not found it dull. I do not care for +gaiety." + +After this M. Lenoble felt that he could say no more. The lady relapsed +into her waking trance. The dust-clouds in the silent street seemed more +interesting to her than M. Lenoble of Beaubocage. He lingered a few +minutes in the neighbourhood of her chair, thoughtfully observant of the +delicate profile, the pale clear tints of a complexion that had lost its +bloom but not its purity, the settled sadness of the perfect mouth, the +dreamy pensiveness of the dark-grey eye, and then was fain to retire. + +After this, the English widow lady spent many evenings in Madame +Magnotte's salon. The old Frenchwoman gossipped and wondered about +her; but the most speculative could fashion no story from a page so +blank as this joyless existence. Even slander could scarcely assail +a creature so unobtrusive as the English boarder. The elderly ladies +shrugged their shoulders and pursed up their lips with solemn +significance. There must needs be something--a secret, a mystery, sorrow, +or wrong-doing--somewhere; but of Madame Meynell herself no one could +suspect any harm. + +Gustave Lenoble heard little of this gossip about the stranger, but she +filled his thoughts nevertheless. The vision of her face came between him +and his work; and when he thought of the future, and of the damsel who +had been allotted to him for a wife, his thoughts were very bitter. + +"Fate is like Laban," he said to himself; "a man works and does his duty +for seven years, and then Fate gives him Leah instead of Rachel. No doubt +Leah is a very good young woman; one has no complaint to make against +her, except that she is not Rachel." + +This was not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the destined +master of Cotenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious folks at +Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief and unsatisfactory. He +no longer gave ample details of his student-life--he no longer wrote in +his accustomed good spirits. His letters seemed stiff and constrained. + +"I am afraid he is studying too much," said the mother. + +"I daresay the rascal is wasting his time in dissipation," suggested +the father. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR." + +Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave +Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the +Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pension Magnotte had grown +accustomed to her presence, to her silence, her settled sadness, and +troubled themselves no further respecting herself or her antecedents. The +lapse of time had brought no improvement to her spirits; indeed, Gustave, +who watched her closely, perceived that she had grown paler and thinner +since that March morning when he met her in the public garden. Her life +must have been painfully monotonous. She very rarely went out of doors, +and on no occasion ventured beyond the gardens of the Luxembourg. No one +visited her. She neither wrote nor received any letters. She was wont to +make a pretence of reading as she sat in her retired corner of the salon; +but Gustave had discovered that she gave little attention to her book. +The open volume in her hand seemed no more than an excuse for brooding +upon her sorrows. + +If people, prompted by curiosity or by compassion, endeavoured to get +into conversation with this lonely lady, the result was always the same. +She would answer their questions in a low gentle voice, with a quiet +politeness; but she never assisted them in the smallest degree to +interchange thoughts with her. It seemed as if she sought neither friend +nor sympathizer, or as if her case was so entirely hopeless as to admit +of neither. She paid for her board and lodging weekly with a punctilious +exactness, though weekly payments were not the rule of the house. + +"My movements are uncertain," she said to Madame Magnotte. "I cannot +tell how long I may be with you. It will therefore be better for me to +pay you weekly." + +She had been in the house two months, dining every day at the public +table, spending all her evenings in the public saloon; and during that +time her settled gloom had never been broken by any outburst of grief or +passion. She might have been a creature of ice, a statue of despair +modelled in snow by a Michael Angelo. But one night the ice melted, the +statue of snow became in a moment a passionate, grief-stricken woman. + +It was one bright evening late in May. Ah, how near at hand was the +appointed date of those nuptials to which the household of Beaubocage +looked forward with supreme happiness! The old ladies of the Pension +Magnotte were for the most part out of doors. The long saloon was almost +empty. There were only Gustave, Madame Magnotte, and the little +music-mistress, who sat at her piano, with the western sunlight shining +full upon her, rosy-hued and glorious, surrounding her with its soft +radiance until she looked like a humble St. Cecilia. + +Madame Meynell had seated herself close to the piano, and was listening +to the music. Gustave hovered near, pretending to be occupied with a limp +little sheet of news published that evening. + +Mademoiselle Servin, the teacher of music, upon this occasion deserted +her favourite masters. She seemed in a somewhat dreamy and sentimental +humour, and played tender little melodies and simple plaintive airs, that +were more agreeable to Gustave than those grand examples of the +mathematics of counter-point which she so loved to interpret. + +"You like this melody of Gretry's," said the music-mistress, as M. +Lenoble seated himself close to the piano. "I do not think you care for +classic sonatas--the great works of Gluck, or Bach, or Beethoven?" + +"No," replied the young man frankly; "I do not care about anything I +can't understand. I like music that goes to one's heart." + +"And you, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" mademoiselle asked +of that lady, who was not wont to come so near the little piano, or to +pay so much attention to Mademoiselle Servin's performance. + +"O yes," murmured the Englishwoman, "I like such music as that." + +"And you, too, think that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive +airs--for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she +spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand, +operas, like _Fidelio_. Have you never heard this by your scientific +Beethoven?" + +Hereupon she played "Hope told a flattering tale," with much tenderness +and delicacy. Her two hearers listened, mute and deeply moved. And then +from that familiar melody she glided softly into another, most musical, +most melancholy, which has been set to some of the sweetest verses that +Thomas Moore ever composed: + +"Those evening bells, those evening bells! +How many a tale their music tells +Of youth and home, and that sweet time +When last I heard their soothing chime!" + +All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those days. The +song was one which the Englishwoman had sung years ago in a happy home. +What recollections, what associations, were evoked by that plaintive +melody, who shall say? The words came back with the music to which they +have been eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces +of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the picture of the +peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music,--all these things arose +before her in a vision too painfully vivid; and the lonely boarder at the +Pension Magnotte covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud. + +The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes, +and rose to leave the room. + +"Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were +about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that +were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see +again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the +happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh, +I pray God I may never hear that melody again." + +There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new to Gustave +Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, and she passed out of +the salon quietly, like a ghost--the ghost of that bright young creature +who had once borne her shape, and been called by her name, in a pleasant +farmhouse among the Yorkshire wolds. + +"Ah, but how that poor soul must have suffered!" cried the sympathetic +Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the Englishwoman. "I did +not think it was in her to feel so deeply. I thought she was stone, and +now I begin to think it must be of such stone as Niobe--the +petrification of despair." + +Upon Gustave Lenoble this scene made a profound impression. He lay awake +during the greater part of that night, thinking of the lonely lady's +tears and anguish. The music of "Those evening bells" pervaded his +dreams. He rose unrefreshed, feverish, forgetful of Cotenoir and Madelon +Frehlter, as if that place and that person had never emerged from the +shapeless substances of chaos. He wanted to see _her_ again, to console +her, if that were possible. Oh, that it might be his privilege to console +her! He pitied her with a compassion so intense, that thus to +compassionate her woes, was himself to suffer a poignant anguish. He +pitied her. Yes, he told himself again and again that this sentiment +which so absorbed his heart and mind was no more than pity. But oh, if +this were pity, what were love? That was a question which also presented +itself to the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, of Beaubocage _in esse_, and +Cotenoir _in posse_. + +Madame Meynell rarely appeared at the common breakfast in the grim +dining-room of the Pension Magnotte. Gustave was therefore in nowise +surprised to miss her on this particular morning. He took a cup of +coffee, and hurried off to his daily duties. There was a fever on him +which he could neither understand nor shake off, and he hastened to the +gardens of the Luxembourg, as if there were some special necessity for +speed. So do men often hasten unconsciously to their predestined doom, +defiant of augury. Soothsayers may menace, and wives may dream dreams; +but when his hour comes, Caesar will go to the appointed spot where the +daggers of his assassins await him. + +In the alley where he had first looked upon her sad face, beneath +the umbrage of young limes and chestnuts just bursting into bloom, +he saw the Englishwoman to-day, seated on the same bench, almost in +the same attitude. + +He went up to her, and bade her good morning; and then, intensely +conscious of his own temerity, seated himself by her side. + +"I did not expect to find you here so early." + +"No, I seldom come out so soon; but this morning I have to make some +inquiries upon a matter of business, and I am only resting here before +going to make them." + +She gave a little weary sigh at the end of this speech. It seemed a +strange manner of transacting business to rest in the Luxembourg gardens, +which were distant but a few hundred yards from her home. Gustave divined +that it was for very forlornness she lingered there, shrinking from some +difficult encounter that lay before her. + +"Can I not make the inquiries for you?" he asked. "Pray command me. It +will be my happiness to be useful to you." + +"You are very good. I cannot trouble you so much." + +"Pray do not talk of trouble. It can be no trouble to me to aid you in +any manner. Ah, madame, you do not know how much I would sacrifice to be +useful to you!" + +She must have been dull indeed had she failed to perceive the earnestness +of his tone. She did perceive it, and was vaguely conscious that in this +student of law she had a friend. + +"I want to know when the diligence for Calais leaves Paris, and from what +office," she said. "I am going back to England." + +She was surprised to see the young man's face blanch as she announced +this simple fact. The young man himself was surprised by the sudden +anguish inflicted by her announcement. It was in this moment that he +first discovered how completely he had given his heart into this strange +woman's keeping. + +"You are really going to leave Paris?--for ever?" he exclaimed. + +"Yes. I have been here too long already. I have no business here. I ought +to have gone back to England that day when I first met you here, but I +put off the day of my return. I can put it off no longer." + +"And you are going back to your friends?" Gustave asked, in a very +mournful tone. + +"I am going back to my friends? Yes!" Her lips quivered a little, and the +unbidden tears came to her eyes. + +Ah, what was the sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely creature? +What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain which consumed her? +Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk +of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day she talked +of going home to her friends: but O the bitterness of expression with +which she had spoken that word "friends!" + +"Are you going alone, Madame Meynell?" he inquired, after a pause. He +could not tear himself from that seat by her side. He could not be manly +or rational where she was concerned. The image of Madelon Frehlter rose +before his mental vision, reproachful, menacing; but a thick fog +intervened to obscure that unwelcome image. His whole life resolved +itself into those thrilling moments in which he sat here, on this common +garden bench, by this stranger's side; the entire universe was contracted +into this leafy walk where they two sat. + +"Yes, I am going alone," madame replied, with a little laugh. "Who should +I have to go with me? I am quite alone in the world. I think I had better +make these inquiries myself, M. Lenoble. There is no reason why I should +give you so much trouble." + +"There is no such thing as trouble. I will bring you all necessary +information to-day at dinner, if that will be soon enough." + +"Quite soon enough, I thank you, monsieur," she answered, with a sigh. "I +must ask you kindly to ascertain for me also the expense of the journey." + +"Most certainly, madame." + +This request set him wondering whether she were poor, and how poor. But +she had evidently no more to say to him; she had again become +impenetrable. He would fain have stayed, though honour and conscience +were clamorous in their demands for his departure. Happily for honour and +conscience, the lady was silent as death, impervious as marble; so M. +Lenoble presently bowed and departed. + +He thought of her all day long. The farce of pity was ended. He knew now +that he loved this Englishwoman with an affection at once foolish and +sinful,--foolish, since he knew not who or what this woman was; sinful, +since the indulgence of this passion involved the forfeiture of his +plighted word, the disappointment of those who loved him. + +"No, no, no," he said to himself; "I cannot do this base and wicked +thing. I must marry Madelon. All the hopes of my mother and father rest +on that marriage; and to disappoint them because this stranger's face has +bewitched me? Ah, no, it cannot be. And even if I were willing to trample +my honour in the dust, how do I know that she would value or accept the +sacrifice?" + +M. Lenoble made all necessary inquiries at the office of the Messageries, +and carried the intelligence to Madame Meynell. He could see that she +winced a little when he told her the cost of the journey, which in those +days was heavy. + +"She must certainly be poor," he said to himself; and it rent his heart +to think that even in this paltry matter he could be of no use to her. +The destined master of Beaubocage and Cotenoir was entirely without ready +money. He had his watch. He put his hand upon that clumsy timekeeper as +he talked to madame. + +"_Je te porterai chez ma tante, mon gars_," he said to himself. But he +doubted whether the high priests of the pious mountain--the Dordona of +Pauperism--would advance much upon this antique specimen of the +watchmaker's art. + +After this evening he looked forward daily, hourly, to the anguish of her +departure. She would vanish out of his life, intangible as a melted +snow-flake, and only memory would stay behind to tell him he had known +and loved her. Why should this be so hard to bear? If she stayed, he +dared not tell her she was dear to him; he dared not stretch forth his +hand to help her. In all the world there was no creature more utterly +apart from him than she, whether she lived in the same house with him or +was distant as the Antipodes. What did it matter, then, since she was +destined to disappear from his life, whether she vanished to-day or a +year hence? He argued with himself that it could be a question of no +moment to him. There was a death-blow that must descend upon him, cruel, +inevitable. Let it come when it would. + +Every day when he came home to dinner, M. Lenoble expected to behold a +vacant place by the side of his hostess; every day he was pleasantly +disappointed. The pale hopeless face was still to be seen, ghost-like, at +that noisy board. The face was more pale, more hopeless, as it seemed to +Gustave, every day he looked upon it. + +He asked Madame Magnotte when the English lady was going to leave, but +she could not tell. + +"She talks of leaving from day to day," said madame; "it will no doubt be +soon. I am sorry to lose her. She is very gentle, and gives no trouble to +any one. But she is sad--ah, how sad she is! She has suffered, monsieur." + +Gustave agreed to this. Yes, she had suffered; but what, and how? + +He watched her closely, but she was always the same. She no longer spent +her evenings in the salon, but in her own apartment. He saw her only at +dinner-time, and had no opportunity of speaking to her. + +At last the day came upon which he missed her at the usual hour. He sat +through the tedious meal without speaking; eating a little, drinking a +little, mechanically, but with no consciousness of what he ate or drank. +There was a mist before his eyes, a confusion of voices in his ears; but +the faculties of sight and hearing seemed suspended. The agony he +suffered during that miserable hour was bitter as death. + +"O, my God, how I love her!" he said to himself, while Raoul's bass roar +brayed in his ear on one side, and Leon's shrill squeal tortured him on +the other. + +He made his way to Madame Magnotte directly after dinner. + +"She is gone?" he exclaimed. + +"But who, my friend? Ah, yes; it is of that poor Madame Meynell you +speak. How you are interested in her! No, she is not gone, poor woman. +She remains always. She has the air of a person who knows not her own +mind. Yet I am sure she thinks of going. To-day, for the first time, she +has been writing letters. Reine came to tell me she had seen her occupied +in her own room for the first time. It is not her habit to occupy +herself." + +Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone; he might see her +again--if it were but a glimpse of her pale face looking out of the +diligence as it drove out of the Cour de Messageries. One look, one +glance; it would be something to carry in his heart all his life. All his +life! He looked forward and shuddered. What a dreary life it must needs +be! Cotenoir, Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to +study dry as dust books. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of +that dreary desert of existence--a life without her. + +She had been writing letters--doubtless letters to her friends to +announce her return. Her departure must be very near at hand. + +Gustave refused to go out that evening. His fellow-students were bent on +a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in vogue, where there would +be twinkling lamps and merry music under the May moon. The lamp-lit +parterres, the joyous waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble. He +haunted the dull salon, dim and dreary in the twilight; for Madame +Magnotte was chary of lamps and candles, and prolonged to its utmost +limits the pensive interval between day and night. He walked softly up +and down the room, unheeded by the ladies clustered in a group by one of +the windows. Restless and unhappy, he could neither go nor stay. She was +not coming down to the salon this evening. He had clung to the faint hope +that she might appear; but the faint hope died away in his breast as the +night deepened. What purpose could be served by his remaining in that +dismal room? He was no nearer her than he would have been in the +remotest wilds of Central America. He would go out--not to the odious +dancing-garden, but to the cool dark streets, where the night wind might +blow this fever from his brain. + +He left the room suddenly, and hurried downstairs. At the bottom of the +staircase he almost stumbled against a woman, who turned and looked at +him in the light of a little oil-lamp that hung over the door of the +portress's lodge. + +It was the Englishwoman, deadly pale, and with a wild look in her face +that Gustave had never seen there before. She gave him no sign of +recognition, but passed out of the courtyard, and walked rapidly away. +That unusual look in her face, the strangeness of the fact that she +should be leaving the house at this hour, inspired him with a vague +terror, and he followed her, not stealthily, without a thought that he +was doing any wrong by such an act--rather, indeed, with the conviction +that he had a right so to follow her. + +She walked very quickly--at a more rapid pace than Gustave would have +supposed possible for so fragile a creature. She chose the lonelier +streets, and Gustave had no difficulty in following her; she never looked +back, but went straight on her course, without pause or slackening of her +pace, as if with a settled purpose. + +"Where can she be going?" Gustave asked himself; and an answer, vague, +hideous, terrible, suggested itself to his mind. The idea that occurred +to him was one that would scarcely have occurred to an Englishman under +the same circumstances, but to a Frenchman it was a very familiar idea. + +It was dark now--the darkness that reigns between early sunset and late +moonrise. As the lonely woman went farther along the dreary streets +parallel with the quay, the dreadful suspicion grew stronger in Gustave's +mind. From that instant he had but one thought; in that moment he put +away from him for ever all sense of obligation to Madelon Frehlter; he +shook off father, mother, sister, old associations, home ties, ambition, +fortune--he lived alone for this woman, and the purpose of his life was +to save her from despair and death. + +They emerged upon the quay at last. The long stretch of pavement was +deserted. Ah, now she looked back--she looked on every side with wild +unseeing eyes--and now there could be little doubt as to the purpose that +brought her here. She crossed the road, and went upon the bridge, Gustave +following close; in the next minute she was standing on the stone bench, +a tremulous, fluttering figure, with arms stretched towards the water; in +a breath she was clasped to Gustave's breast, clasped by arms that meant +to hold her for ever. + +The shock of that surprise utterly unnerved the wretched creature. She +shivered violently, and struggled to free herself from those strong arms. + +"Let me go!" she cried in English. "Let me go!" And then, finding herself +powerless, she turned and looked at her captor. "M. Lenoble! O, why do +you persecute me? Why do you follow me?" + +"Because I want to save you." + +"To save me! To snatch me back when I was going to find rest--an end for +my weary life! O yes, I know that it is a sinful end; but my life has +been all sin." + +"Your life all sin! Foolish one, I will never believe that." + +"It is true," she cried, with passionate self-reproach. "The sin of +selfishness, and pride, and disobedience. There is no fate too hard for +me--but, O, my fate is very hard! Why did you keep me from that river? +You do not know how miserable my life is--you do not know. I paid my +last penny to Madame Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me +back to England, even if I dared go there--and I dare not. I have prayed +for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers have not been +heard; and there is nothing for me but to die. What would be the sin of +my throwing myself into that river! I must die; I shall die of +starvation in the streets." + +"No, no," cried Gustave passionately; "do you think I have dragged you +back from death to give you to loneliness and despair? My dear one, you +are mine--mine by right of this night. These arms that have kept you +from death shall shelter you,--ah, let them shelter you! These hands +shall work for you. My love, my love! you cannot tell how dear you are +to me. If there must be want or trouble for either of us, it shall come +to me first." + +He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and unresisting, and had +seated himself by her side. The fragile figure, shivering still, even in +the mild atmosphere of the spring night, was sustained by his encircling +arm. He felt that she was his, irrevocably and entirely--given to him by +the Providence which would have seemed to have abandoned her, but for the +love it had implanted for her in this one faithful heart. His tone had +all the pleading tenderness of a lover's, but it had something more--an +authority, a sense of possession. + +"Providence sent me here to save you," he said, with that gentle yet +authoritative tone; "I am your providence, am I not, dearest? Fate made +me love you--fondly, hopelessly, as I thought. Yesterday you seemed as +far away from me as those pale stars, shining up yonder--as +incomprehensible as that faint silvery mist above the rising moon--and +to-night you are my own." + +He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had indeed a vague +consciousness that the step which he was now taking would cause a +lifelong breach between himself and his father. But the time had gone by +in which he could count the cost. + +"Let me go back, M. Lenoble," the Englishwoman said presently. The +faintness of terror was passing away, and she spoke almost calmly. "Let +me go back to the house. It is you that have saved me from a dreadful +sin. I promise you that I will not again think of committing that deadly +sin. I will wait for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no, +no; do not detain me! Forget that you have ever known me." + +"That is not in my power. I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte +directly; but you must first promise to be my wife." + +"Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible." + +"Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful gravity. + +"Because I am not worthy of you." + +Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few +words. + +"You are worth all the stars to me. If I had them in my hands, those +lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, to hold you," said the +student passionately. "You cannot understand my love, perhaps. I seem a +stranger to you, and all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is +true as the heaven above us--true as life or death--death that was so +near you just now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March morning +on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees yonder. You held me +from that moment. I was subjugated--possessed--yours at once and for +ever. I would not confess even to myself that my heart had resigned +itself to you; but I know now that it was so from the first. Is there any +hope that you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love?" + +"You love me," the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the words were +almost beyond her comprehension,--"you love _me_, a creature so lost, so +friendless! Ah, but you do not know my wretched story!" + +"I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question--will you be my wife?" + +"You must be mad to offer your name, your honour to me." + +"Yes, I am mad--madly in love. And I am waiting for your answer. You +will be my wife? My angel, you will say yes! It is not much that I offer +you--a life of uncertainty, perhaps even of poverty; but a fond and +constant heart, and a head and hands that will work for you while God +gives them strength. It is better than the river." + +All that was thoughtless and hopeful in his disposition was expressed in +these words. The woman to whom he pleaded was weakened by sorrow, and +the devotion of this brave true heart brought her strength, comfort, +almost hope. + +"Will you be my friend?" she said gently. "Your words seem to bring me +back to life. I wanted to die because I was so wretched, so lonely. I +have friends in England--friends who were once all that is dear and kind; +but I dare not go to them. I think a cruel look from one of those friends +would kill me with a pain more bitter than any other death could give. +And I have no right to hope for kind looks from them. Yours are the only +words of friendship I have heard for a long time." + +"And you will give me the right to work for you--to protect you? You will +be my wife?" + +"I would rather be your servant," she answered, with sad humility. "What +right have I to accept so great a sacrifice? What folly can be so foolish +as your love for me--if it is indeed love, and not a wild fancy of +to-night!" + +"It is a fancy that will last my life." + +"Ah, you do not know how such fancies change." + +"I know nothing except that mine is changeless. Come, my love, it is +growing late and cold. Let me take you home. The portress will wonder. +You must slip past her quietly with your veil down. Did you give old +Margot your key when you came down stairs to-night?" + +"No, it is in my pocket. I was not thinking--I--" + +She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood that shudder; he +also shuddered. She had left her room that night possessed by the +suicide's madness; she had left it to come straight to death. Happily his +strong arm had come between her and that cruel grave by which they were +still lingering. + +They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle under the light of +the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman's wasted hand rested for the first +time on M. Lenoble's arm. She was his--his by the intervention and by the +decree of Providence! That became a conviction in the young man's mind. +He covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, engaging the +portress in conversation while the dark figure glided past in the dim +lamplight. On the staircase he paused to bid her good night. + +"You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow morning, +dearest," he said. "I have so much to say--so much. Until then, adieu!" + +He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her apartment, and +then went to his own humble bachelor's chamber, singing a little drinking +song in his deep manly voice, happy beyond all measure. + +They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The poor +lonely creature whom Gustave had rescued seemed already to look up to him +as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband. +It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it +was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had +subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute--penniless, +helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan +Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter. + +"Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she walked under the +chestnut-trees by her lover's side. "Let me tell you everything. And if, +when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give +me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not +speak to you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an outcast +I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know +how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand--you can +never know what you seem to me." + +And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told +him her story. + +"My father was a tradesman in the city of London," she said. "We were +very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy +such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and +discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the +city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now +and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to +me--my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness--I +feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since +then." + +She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too +profound for any conventional expression. He was listening to the story +of his future wife's youth. That there could be any passage in that +history which would hinder him from claiming this woman as his wife was a +possibility he did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame +involved in the story, as Madame Meynell's manner led him to suppose +there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since the shame must be +his, as she was his. + +"When my father and mother died, I went into Yorkshire to live with my +married sister. I cannot find words to tell you how kind they were to +me--my sister and her husband. I had a little money left me by my father, +and I spent the greater part of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents +to my sister and her children. I was happier in Yorkshire than I had been +in London; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and brighter +than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the brother of a nobleman +who lived in the neighbourhood of my sister's house. We met by accident +in a field on my brother-in-law's farm, where the gentleman was shooting; +and after that he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and +made some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very often, and +before long he asked me to marry him; and I promised to be his wife, with +my sister's knowledge and consent. She loved me so dearly, and was so +proud of me out of her dear love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this +engagement, especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of, +was a younger son, and by no means a rich man." + +Again she stopped, and waited a little before continuing her story. Only +by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand resting on his arm did Gustave +express his sympathy. + +"I cannot tell you, how happy I was in those days--so bright, so brief. I +cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that +time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a +background of darkness, with some strange vivid light shining upon it. It +was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as +soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of +the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville's, and an imprudent +marriage on his brother's part might have prevented the performance of +it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to +confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to +do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my +brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits to the farm. He +came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful +scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in +his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved +Montague Kingdon as you say you love me--foolishly, recklessly. I could +not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our +marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his +debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If +he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should +I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were +truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged +between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who +had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to +write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following +night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to +make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall +I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage +that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull. +From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and +misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I +had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to +be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to +love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was +no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with +debt and difficulty. We lived abroad--not for our pleasure, but because +Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord +Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood +invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his +slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient +drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years, +when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect +me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the +hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me." + +"My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave. "Do not tell +me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which +neglect gave place to desertion." + +"Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the +blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and +nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna +with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to +the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step. +He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorkshire. To go back!--as if +he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum +of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you +first met me here, I had not long received that letter." + +This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared +not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand +clasp hers, and knew that he was still her friend. This was all she asked +of Providence. + +To Gustave Lenoble the story had been unutterably painful. He had hoped +to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the shame was very bitter to +him. This woman whom he loved so fondly was no spotless martyr, the +victim of inevitable fate, beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She +was only a weak vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured +away from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace scoundrel. + +The story was common, the shame was common, but it seemed to M. Lenoble +that the woman by his side was his destiny; and then, prompt to the +rescue of offended pride, of outraged love--tortured to think that she, +so distant and pure a creature to him, should have been trampled in the +dust by another--came the white-winged angel Pity. By her weakness, by +her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity conjured him to +love her so much the more dearly. + +"My darling," he said softly, "it is a very sad story, and you and I will +never speak of it again. We will bury the memory of Montague Kingdon in +the deepest grave that was ever dug for bitter remembrances; and we will +begin a new life together." + +This was the end of M. Lenoble's wooing. He could not speak of his love +any more while the sound of Montague Kingdon's name had but lately died +away on Susan Meynell's lips. He had taken her to himself, with all her +sorrows and sins, in the hour in which he snatched her from death; and +between these two there was no need of passionate protestations or +sentimental rapture. + +M. Lenoble speedily discovered that the law had made no provision for the +necessities of a chivalrous young student eager to unite himself with a +friendless foreign woman, who could not produce so much as one of the +thirty witnesses required to establish her identity. A very little +consideration showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan +Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, and asked her +if she would trust him as she had trusted Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the +marriage might easily be solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to +stay there so long as the English law required for the solemnization of +their union? + +"Why should you take so much trouble about me?" said Susan, in her low +sad voice. "You are too good, too generous. I am not worth so much care +and thought from you." + +"Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susan?" + +"I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of miles from the +rest of mankind--with a happier life than mine. I have no feeling in my +heart but love for you, and faith in you." + +After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one +bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a +fortnight's sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the +bonds of matrimony. + +Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of +religion divided them no more than the difference of country. They came +back to Paris directly after the marriage, and M. Lenoble took a very +modest lodging for himself and his wife in a narrow street near the +Pantheon--a fourth story, very humbly furnished. M. Lenoble had provided +for himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage which +declares that a purse large enough for one is also large enough for two. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +A DECREE OF BANISHMENT. + +After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate +deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice +of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's tempest was raging, whispers grave +counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud, +sublime in the glare of the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face +in the clear, common light of day. + +Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble time and +reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love +which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a +passion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought could +reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very +desperate one. Before him lay an awful necessity--the necessity of going +to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had +been shattered by this deed of his. + +The letters from Cydalise--nay, indeed, more than one letter from his +mother, with whom letter-writing was an exceptional business--had of late +expressed much anxiety. In less than a month the marriage-contract would +be made ready for his signature. Every hour's delay was a new dishonour. +He told his wife that he must go home for a few days; and she prepared +his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to him like +the ministration of an angel. + +"My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the happiness you have brought +me!" he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish figure flitting about +the room, busy with the preparations for his journey. + +And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter--commonplace, stiff, and +unimpressionable--the most conventional of school-girls, heavy in face, +in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had seemed to him, despite his +sister's praises. + +He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of the +brilliant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk which he +ran of offending his father by that rash step. But to-night, when he +thought of Madelon's dulness and commonness, it seemed to him as if Susan +had in manner rescued him from a dreadful fate--as maidens were rescued +from sea-monsters in the days of Perseus and Heracles. + +"Madelon is not unlike a whale," he thought. "They tell us that whales +are of a sagacious and amiable temper,--and Cydalise was always talking +of Madelon's good sense and amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to +believe in the unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled +virtues of Madelon Frehlter." + +His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after a sad and +tender parting from his wife. The journey was a long one in those days, +when no express train had yet thundered across the winding Seine, +cleaving its iron way through the bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M. +Lenoble had ample time for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous +diligence; and his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering +vehicle approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was to make +his way to the paternal mansion as best he might. + +He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who carried his +portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in the quiet summer +evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the heart and perplexity +disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, and his spirits were in +nowise elevated by the walk. + +Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim garden at +Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a little pepper-castor +turret, his sister's room. The thought of their glad welcome smote his +heart. How could he shape the words that must inform them of their +disappointment? And then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the +Parisian lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and +submissive,--the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation, +as it seemed to his pious Catholic mind. The thought of this dear one +gave him courage. + +"I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, "but not the privilege +to sell me for money. The marriage they want to bring about would be a +sordid barter of my heart and my honour." + +In a few minutes after this he was standing in the little salon at +Beaubocage, with his mother and sister hanging about him and caressing +him, his father standing near, less demonstrative, but evidently well +pleased by this unexpected arrival of the son and heir. + +"I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, "and flew down from my +room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one can fly on these occasions. +And how thou art looking well, and how thou art handsome, and how I adore +thee!" cries the damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like +occasion. "Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee? +Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while thou didst +plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see thee again!" + +And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was spoken the dreaded +name of Madelon. She too would be glad--she too had been anxious. The +prodigal made no answer. He could not speak, his heart sank within him, +he grew cold and pale; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a +sharper pain than death. + +"Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest pale--thou +art ill! Look then, Francois, thy son is ill!" + +"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his +mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her +after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the +farewell kiss of her son. + +"I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave. + +The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He +led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some +dusty editions of the French classics, and where the master of Beaubocage +kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines. + +When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the open +windows, waiting for them. Without all was still. Distant lights +glimmered through the summer twilight, the lighted windows of Cotenoir. + +"How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards those +glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to believe that the +demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have +been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her +future sister-in-law. + +The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble +and Cydalise. The two women were curious--nay, indeed, somewhat anxious. + +"I fear he has made debts," said the mother, "and is telling thy father +of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, unless with the dowry +of Madelon, and that would seem a dishonourable use of her money." + +It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of that quiet +house. Twilight had thickened into night, when there came a banging of +doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of the salon was +opened, and M. Lenoble came in alone. At the same moment the outer door +closed heavily. + +M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed the Venetian +shutters. He went from thence to the second window, the shutters whereof +he fastened carefully, while the women stared at him wonderingly, for it +was not his habit to perform this office. + +"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice. + +"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed. + +"He is gone." + +"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?" + +"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English +adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine." + + + + +Book the Second. + + + +DOWNHILL. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +THE FATE OP SUSAN LENOBLE. + +Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which +Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy +five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and +chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a +forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever +known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown +fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only +for her husband and her child. + +The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he +cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years +no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the +prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A +narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with +fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had +been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that +joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against +the offender with a seal not to be broken, even had he come thither to +plead for pardon, which he did not. + +"My father would have sold me as negro slaves are sold _labas_," he said, +on those rare occasions when he opened his old wounds, which were to the +last unhealed: "I am glad that I escaped the contemptible barter." + +He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to him easier to +bear than the dreary prosperity of Cotenoir and a wife he could not have +loved. The distinguishing qualities of this man's mind were courage and +constancy. There are such noble souls born into the world, some to shine +with lustre supernal, many to burn and die in social depths, obscure as +ocean's deepest cavern. + +In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He +worked for her, he endured for her, he hoped against hope for her sake; +and it was only when bodily strength failed that this nameless +foot-soldier began to droop and falter in life's bitter battle. Things +had gone ill with him. He had tried his fate as an advocate in Paris, in +Caen, in Rouen--but clients would not come. He had been a clerk, now in +one counting-house, now in another, and Susan and he had existed somehow +during the seven years of their married life. + +They clung to each other with affection that seemed to grow with every +new sorrow; nor did love exhibit any inclination to spread his wings and +take flight from the window, though poverty came in every day at the +door, and sat by the hearth, a familiar companion and inevitable guest. + +The mother and sister contrived to help this poor castaway with the +veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old man, soured by his +great disappointment, grew sordid and covetous with increasing years, and +the lives of the women were hard and hopeless. By little cheats, and +petty contrivances, and pitiful falsifications of financial statements, +they managed to scrape together a few louis now and then for the +struggling exile; and to do this was the sole delight of their patient +lives. They contrived also to correspond secretly with Gustave, and were +informed of the birth of his son. + +"Ah, if thou couldst see how beautiful he is," wrote the father, "this +child of pure and true love, thou wouldst no longer regret my breach of +faith with Madelon Frehlter. I knew not until now how like infant +children are to angels. I knew not how true to nature are the angels in +the pictures of Raffaelle and Murillo. Thou knowest the print of +Murillo's Assumption; the picture is in the Louvre. If thou canst +remember that picture, dear mother, thou hast but to recall the face of +one of the cherubim about the feet of our Lady, and thou hast the +portrait of my boy. He opens his eyes, and looks at me as I write. Ah! +that he and I and my Susan were with thee in the little salon at +Beaubocage--my sister, Susan, you, and I united round this darling's +cradle. He has been born in poverty, but his birth has made us very +happy." + +The sentiment of this letter was no spurious or transient feeling. For +this child Gustave Lenoble evinced an unchanging fondness. It was indeed +no part of his nature to change. The little one was his comfort in +affliction, his joy during every brief interval of prosperity. When the +battle was well nigh fought, and he began to feel himself beaten. His +chief anxieties, his ever-returning fears, were for his wife and child. + +To Susan the thought of parting from him was a despair too deep for +tears. She would have been something less than woman if she had not loved +her husband with more than common affection. She watched the change that +illness brought in the frank face, the stalwart figure; and little by +little the awful truth came home to her. The hour was at hand in which +she must lose him. + +"If you could have rest, Gustave, better medical advice, more comforts, +you would soon be strong again, I am sure your father would not refuse to +forgive you now. Write to him, dearest. Go back to Beaubocage, and let +your mother and sister nurse you. I will stay here with the little one. +It shall be forgotten that you have a wife and child." + +"No, dear one; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy back my +father's love. I would rather be here with you than in the pleasantest +home without you. But we must face the future, Susan; we must be brave +and wise, for the little one's sake. You are not so strong that you can +afford to trust blindly in your power to protect him by-and-by. I have +written a letter to my father. He has proved himself a hard man to me, +cruel and obdurate beyond all my fears; but I know he is not altogether +heartless. When I am dead, you will take the letter in one hand, the +child in the other, and go to Beaubocage. I believe he will adopt the +boy, and that the little one will give him the comfort and happiness he +hoped from me. He must be very lonely; and I cannot doubt that his heart +will melt when he sees the child's face, and hears that he has no longer +a son. As for yourself, my poor girl, I see for you no hope except in the +old Yorkshire home, and the friends you fear to see again." + +"I no longer fear them," said his wife, with unwonted energy, "I could +not go to them seven years ago; but I can go to them as your wife." + +"Ah, thank God, the poor name is worth something for you." + +"Yes, dear; and I will go back to them--to-morrow." + +"To-morrow!" + +"To-morrow, Gustave. I have been selfish and cruel to delay so long. The +old dread of seeing my sister's reproachful face has been strong enough +to hold me back, when a little courage might have enabled me to help you. +The burden has been all on you, and I have done nothing. O, what a wretch +I must have been to sit idly by and see you suffer, and make no effort to +help you!" + +"But, my darling, you have not been idle. You have been the dearest and +most industrious of wives, and have helped me to bear my burden. You have +done more, dear--you have made my burden pleasant to me." + +"I will try to lighten it, Gustave," cried Susan, with excitement. "O, +why, why did I never try before! My sister and her husband are well +off--rich perhaps. If they are still living, if no cruel changes have +come to pass at Newhall, they could help us with a little money. They +might even give us a home. I will start for England to-morrow." + +"Nay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far alone. It +seems, indeed, a happy thought this of your rich relations; but you must +not undertake such a journey. You might write." + +"No, Gustave, I will trust to no letter; I will go. It will be no pain +for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go straight to my sister. I +know what a tender compassionate heart it is that I shall appeal to." + +There was much discussion; but Susan was resolute. To scrape together the +money for the journey she made efforts that were heroic in a nature so +weak as hers. She went to the Monte de Piete with the last of her little +treasures, that one dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger +was at the door--the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed upon +her finger before God's altar--the double symbolic circlet which bore on +one side her name, on the other her husband's. This dearest of all her +possessions she surrendered for a few francs, to make up the sum needful +for her journey. + +What it cost her to do this, what it cost her to tear herself away +from her sick husband and her only child, who shall say? There are +pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come within no +calculation--the infinite of pain. She went. Two kind souls, a labourer +and his wife, lodgers in the same garret-story, promised to care for +and help the invalid and child. There is no desolation in which a child +will not find a friend. + +The journey was long and fatiguing; the anguish of her poor aching heart +almost too much for endurance--a heart so heavy that even hope could +scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, though in the middle of +summer. The solitary traveller caught cold on the journey, and arrived in +London in a high fever. Ill, faint, and helpless, the great city seemed +to her unspeakably dismal--most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to +this wretched orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn +where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come _via_ Havre. +Here she sank prostrate, and had barely sufficient strength to write an +incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, of Newhall Farm, near +Huxter's Cross, Yorkshire. + +The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great northern road +could carry her. There was infinite joy in that honest sisterly heart +over this one sinner's repentance. Fourteen years had gone by since the +young city-bred beauty had fled with that falsest of men, and most +hardened of profligates, Montague Kingdon; and tidings from Susan were +unlooked for and thrilling as a message from the grave. + +Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell! The false step of her youth +had set her for ever wrong upon life's highway. When kind Mrs. Halliday +came, Gustave Lenoble's wife was past her help; wandering in her mind; a +girl again, but newly run away from her peaceful home; and with no +thought save of remorse for her misdeeds. + +The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out of her mind. +She raved of Montague Kingdon's baseness, of her own folly, her vain +regret, her yearning for pardon; but of the dying husband in the garret +at Rouen she uttered no word. And so, with her weary head upon her +sister's breast, she passed away, her story untold, no wedding-ring on +her wasted finger to bear witness that she died an honest man's wife; no +letters or papers in her poor little trunk to throw light on the fourteen +years in which she had been a castaway. + +Mrs. Halliday stayed in London to see the wanderer laid in the quiet city +churchyard where her family rested, and where for her was chosen an +obscure corner in which she might repose forgotten and unknown. + +But not quite nameless. Mrs. Halliday could not leave the grave unmarked +by any record of the sister she had loved. The stone above the grave of +Gustave's wife bore her maiden name, and the comforting familiar text +about the one sinner who repenteth. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FORGIVEN TOO LATE. + +For a week of long days and longer nights there was no step sounded on +the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old dilapidated house +where he lay languishing on the brink of an open grave, that did not move +Gustave Lenoble with a sudden emotion of hope. But the footsteps came and +went, the doors were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller +so waited, so hoped for did not return. + +The boy--the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that was noblest +and best in his father's nature--pined for his mother. The man endured a +martyrdom worse than the agony of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre. +What had befallen her? That she could desert him or his child was a +possibility that never shaped itself in his mind. _That_ drop of poison +was happily wanting in his cup; and the bitterness of death was sweet +compared to the scorpion-sting of such a supposition. + +She did not return. Calamity in some shape had overtaken her--calamity +dire as death; for, with life and reason, she could not have failed to +send some token, some tidings, to those she loved. The sick man waited a +week after the day on which he had begun to expect her return. At the end +of that time he rose, with death in his face, and went out to look for +her--to look for her in Rouen; for her whom the instinct of his heart +told him was far away from that city--as far as death from life. He went +to the Cour de Messageries, and loitered and waited amidst the bustle of +arriving and departing diligences, with a half-imbecile hope that she +would alight from one of them. The travellers came and went, pushing and +hustling him in their selfish haste. When night came he went back to his +garret. All was quiet. The boy slept with the children of his good +neighbour, and was comforted by the warmth of that strange hearth. + +Gustave lit his candle, a last remaining morsel. + +"You will last my time, friend," he said, with a wan smile. + +He seated himself at the little table, pushed aside the medicine-bottles, +searched for a stray sheet of letter-paper, and then began to write. + +He wrote to his mother, telling her that death was at hand, and that the +time had come in which she must succour her son's orphan child. With this +he enclosed a letter to his father--that letter of which he had spoken to +his wife, and which had been written in the early days of his illness. +This packet he directed to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There was no +longer need for secrecy. + +"When those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and past +forgiveness," he thought. + +In the morning he was dead. + +The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted and protected +the child for two days; and then there came a lady, very sad, very quiet, +who wept bitterly in the stillness of that attic chamber where Gustave +Lenoble lay; and who afterwards, with a gentle calmness of manner that +was very sweet to see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but +not a mean or ignominious, funeral. + +"He was my brother," she said to the good friends of the neighbouring +garret. "We did our best to help him, my mother and I; but we little +thought how bitterly he wanted help. The brave heart would not suffer us +to know that." + +And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their charity to the +dead man; and with these good people she went on foot through the narrow +streets of the city to see her brother laid in his grave. + +Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of +age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport +of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had +been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to +her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his +father; for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have +some shrine at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already she +was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow +also, for whose return she looked daily. + +For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days +after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably +established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a +home. No one but her mother and this friend, whom she could trust, knew +of the business that had brought her from Beaubocage. In seven years the +father had never uttered his only son's name; in all the seven years that +name had never been spoken in his hearing. + +When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England, +all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the +neighbours who had known the absent woman. + +"She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away," said the +labourer's wife, "as surely as it was on him that she left. I told her +she had no strength for the journey; but she would go: there was no +moving her from that. She had rich friends _la-bas_, who might help her +husband. It was for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind +of fever, and the strength of fever." + +"And there has come no letter--nothing?" + +"Nothing, mademoiselle." + +On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. She could not well +leave the child longer on the hands of these friendly people, even by +paying for his maintenance, which she insisted on doing, though they +would fain have shared their humble _pot-a-feu_ and coarse loaf with +him unrecompensed. She determined on a desperate step. She would take +her brother's orphan child back with her, and leave the rest to +Providence--to the chance of some sudden awakening of natural affection +in a heart that had long languished in a kind of torpor that was almost +death. + +The little fellow pined sadly for those dear familiar faces, those tender +soothing voices, that had vanished so suddenly from his life. But the +voice of his aunt was very sweet and tender, and had a tone that recalled +the father who was gone. With this kind aunt he left Rouen in the +lumbering old vehicle that plied daily betwixt that city and Vevinord. + +"Thou canst call me Cydalise for a while, my little one," she said to +him; for she did not wish the child to proclaim the relationship between +them yet awhile. + +Ah, what bitter tears the two women shed over the soft fair curls of that +little head, when they had the boy all to themselves in the turret +chamber at Beaubocage, on whose white walls the eyes of Cydalise had +opened almost every morning of her pure eventless life! + +"Why dost thou cry so, madame?" the child asked of his grandmother, as +she held him in her arms, kissing and weeping over him; "and what have +they done with my father--and mamma too? She went away one day, but she +told me that she would come back, so quickly, ah, so quickly! and the +days passed, and they shut papa in his room, and would not let me go to +him; and mamma did not come, though I asked the Blessed Virgin to send +her back to me." + +"Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place than this hard +world, where they had so much sorrow," Madame Lenoble answered, gently. + +"Yes, they were often sorry," murmured the boy thoughtfully. "It was +because of money; but then, when there was no money, mamma cried and +kissed me, and kissed papa, and the good papa kissed us both, and somehow +it always ended in happiness." + +Francois Lenoble was, happily, absent on this day of tribulation. The +women took their fill of sorrow, but it was sorrow mingled with a strange +bitter sweetness that was almost joy. The seigneur of Beaubocage had gone +to dine, as he still often did, with his old friend Baron Frehlter; for +the breach of faith which had caused a lifelong disunion of father and +son had not divided the two proprietors. Nay, indeed the Baron had been +generous enough to plead the cause of the castaway. + +"A man cannot dispose at will of his affections, my friend," he urged; +"and it was more generous in your son to break faith with my daughter +before marriage than after." + +Mademoiselle Frehlter had not broken her heart on account of her lover's +falsehood. She had been sufficiently indignant on the occasion, and had +been more impatient of her mother's pet priest and pet poodle during the +brief period in which she wore the willow. She had recovered her good +humour, however, on being wooed by a young subaltern in a cavalry +regiment stationed at Vevinord, the offshoot of a grander house than that +of Lenoble, and whose good looks and good lineage had ultimately +prevailed with the Baron. That gentleman had by no means too good an +opinion of the son-in-law thus forced upon him; but peace was the highest +good (with unlimited tobacco) to which his Germanic soul aspired; and for +the sake of peace in the present he was content to hazard his daughter's +happiness in the future. + +"_That_ is very brilliant," he said of M. Paul de Nerague, the young +lieutenant of light cavalry; "but it is not solid, like Gustave. Your son +is honest, candid--a brave heart. It is for that I would have given him +Madelon. But it is Providence which disposes of us, as our good father +St. Velours tells us often; and one must be content. Young Nerague +pleases my daughter, and I must swallow him, though for me he smells too +strong of the barracks: _ca flaire la caserne, mon ami_." + +That odour of the barracks which distinguished the sub-lieutenant Paul de +Nerague became more odious after his marriage with the virtuous Madelon, +when he was established--_niche_, as he himself called it--in very +comfortable, though somewhat gruesome, apartments at Cotenoir. His +riotous deportment, his hospitable disposition (as displayed in the +frequent entertainment of his brothers-in-arms at the expense of his +father-in-law), his Don Juan-like demeanour in relation to the housemaids +and kitchen-wenches of the chateau--innocent enough in the main, but on +that account so much the more audacious--struck terror to the hearts of +Madame Frehlter and her daughter; and the elder lady was much gratified +by that thirst for foreign territory which carried the greater part of +the French army and the regiment of the vivacious Paul to the distant +wilds of Algeria. + +The virtuous Madelon was too stolid to weep for her husband. But even her +stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and, +waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient +assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieutenant de Nerague. + +The young officer was yet absent at that period in which Cydalise +returned from Rouen with her brother's child. + +The little boy was sleeping peacefully in a cot beside his aunt's bed (it +had been his father's cot thirty years ago) when Francois Lenoble +returned from Cotenoir that night. + +It was not till the next day that he saw the child. He had been making +his usual morning's round in the gardens and orchards, when he came into +the salon, and saw the little boy seated near his grandmother's chair, +playing with some dominoes. Something--perhaps the likeness to his dead +son--the boy's black clothes, for Cydalise had contrived to dress him in +decent mourning--struck suddenly on the old man's heart. "Who is that +boy?" he asked, with a strange earnestness. + +"Your son Gustave's only child," answered his wife gently,--"his +orphan child." + +Francois Lenoble looked at her, and from her to the boy; tried to speak, +but could not; beckoned the child, and then dropped heavily into a chair +and sobbed aloud. Until this moment no one had ever seen him shed a tear +for the son he had put away from his home--and, as it had seemed, from +his heart. Not by one sigh, not by one mournful utterance of the familiar +name, had he betrayed the depth of that wound which he had endured, +silently, obstinately, in all these years. + +They suffered him to bemoan his dead son unhindered by stereotyped +consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied him in silence. The +little boy stared wonderingly, and at last crept up to the +sorrow-stricken father. "Why do you cry, poor old man?" he asked. "You +have not lost your papa and mamma, as I have lost mine, have you? I want +to stay with you and be your little boy, please. She told me to say +that," he added, pointing to Cydalise.--"And I have said it right, +haven't I?" he asked of the same lady.--"I think I shall love you, +because you are like my papa, only older and uglier," the little one +concluded, with angelic candour. + +The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort. +Beaubocage--Cotenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic +names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so +paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire! +He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts +bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed +that fair young brow; and it was his own son--the son whom he had +disowned--whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles +on his rugged chin. + +"My child," he murmured softly, "the fear is that I shall love thee too +well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I was wickedly stern +to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity than justice." + +This was said to himself rather than to the boy. + +"Tell me thy name, little one," he asked presently, after a few moments' +pensive meditation. + +"I have two names, monsieur." + +"Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names?" + +"Francois Gustave." + +"I shall call thee Gustave." + +"But papa always called me Francois, and mamma said it was the name of a +cruel man; but papa said he loved the name--" + +"Ah, no more, little one!" cried the lord of Beaubocage suddenly; +"thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost pierce this poor +old heart." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +GUSTAVE THE SECOND. + +The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as +rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may +be rich in love's pure white blossom. The existence of this child seemed +all happiness. He brought hope, and a sense of atonement, and all sweet +things, to the quiet family at Beaubocage; and as he grew from childhood +to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that household as if +the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from them. That +Orphic fable of Zagreus repeats itself in many households. For the one +bright creature lost another is given; and then comes a time when it is +almost difficult to separate the image of the missing one from the dear +substitute who so nearly fills his place. + +Francois Lenoble and his wife enjoyed a green old age, and the affection +of their grandson made the cup of life sweet for them to the very dregs. +There are, happily, some natures which indulgence cannot injure; some +luxuriant flowers which attain strength as well as beauty under the +influence of these tropical heats of affection. Gustave the second +possessed all the noble qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous, +brave, constant, affectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the failing +eyes of his kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal +Hercules. + +Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so passionately +desired are apt to be granted when the desire has grown somewhat cold and +dead. Thus it was with the ambition of Francois Lenoble. He lived to see +the lands of Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his +grandson, who married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame +de Nerague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Cotenoir; but the +sons withered and faded in early boyhood, and even the daughter, though +considered a flourishing plant in that poor garden of weakling blossoms, +was but a fragile creature. + +The old people at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and chatelaine of +Cotenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery lieutenant, who fell +in Algeria without having attained his captaincy, or added any military +renown to the good old name of de Nerague in his own magnificent person. + +Francois saw his grandson established at Cotenoir before he died. He +expired with his hand in that of Gustave, whom, in the half-consciousness +of that last hour, he mistook for the son he had disowned. + +"What door was that that shut?" he asked, in an eager whisper. "Who said +I turned my son out of doors--my only son? It's false! I couldn't have +done it! Hark! there's the door shutting again! It sounds like the door +of a tomb." + +After this he dozed a little, and woke with a smile on his face. + +"I have been dreaming of thy father, Gustave," he said calmly. "I thought +that I saw him with a light shining in his face, and that he kissed and +forgave me." + +This was the end. The faithful wife was not slow to follow her husband to +the grave, and there was now only a placid maiden lady at Beaubocage, +Mademoiselle Cydalise Lenoble, whom everyone within ten leagues of +Vevinord knew and loved,--a lay abbess, a Sister of Mercy in all save the +robes; a tender creature, who lived only to do good. + +Ten years passed, and M. Lenoble of Cotenoir was a widower with two +fair young daughters at a convent school on the outskirts of Vevinord, +and a boisterous son at an academy in Rouen. Gustave had never followed +any profession; the lands of Beaubocage secured him a competence, +so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who +adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of +trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch +flower-garden. He was to live at Cotenoir, and look after his estate, and +smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his +wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came +natural to M. Lenoble. It was not in him to be otherwise than kind to +women and children. His invalid wife praised him as a model of marital +perfection. It was Gustave who wheeled her sofa from one room to another, +Gustave who prepared her medicines, Gustave whose careful hands adjusted +curtains and _portieres_. The poor woman lived and died believing herself +the happiest of wives. She mistook kindness for love. + +M. Lenoble bore his wife's demise with Christian calmness. He was sorry +that the fragile creature should have been taken so early from the +pleasant home that was hers by right, but of passionate grief, or dreary +sense of irreparable loss, there was none in that manly heart. There were +times when the widower reproached himself for this want of feeling; but +in very truth Madame Lenoble, _jeune_, had lived and died a nonentity. +Her departure left no empty place; even her children scarcely missed her. +The father was all-in-all. + +Gustave had married at twenty years of age. He was twenty-nine when his +wife died. His eldest daughter, Clarice, eight; his second, Madelon, +seven; the boy, a spoilt young dog of five, not yet despatched to the +great school at Rouen. + +But in '65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very +charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of +the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was +looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very +pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness, +as the nuns told the master of Cotenoir. The demoiselles of Cotenoir +stood high in the estimation of pupils and mistress; they were a kind of +noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these young persons +with some pride when she described her establishment to a stranger. It +was a very comfortable little colony, a small world enclosed by high +walls. The good mothers who taught and cherished the children were for +the greater part ladies of superior and even exalted station; and there +was a gentleness, a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not +always to be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be +confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, and required a +good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher that convent school +would have afforded scope for curious study; for it is singular to +discover what exceptional vices the youthful mind can develop from its +inner consciousness, in homes as pure as this. There were black sheep +even in the convent of the Sacre Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that +meant "dangerous." + +Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the brightest and +the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him no trouble, except when +they asked him for a home. + +"It seems so dull and dreary at Cotenoir, papa," they said, "though you +are always so kind. It doesn't seem like home. Beaubocage is more +home-like. At Cotenoir, when you are out, there is no one to talk to; and +we have no little parties, no excursions into the country, none of those +pleasures which the other girls tell us they have during the holidays." + +This was the gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and +Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something +which was wanting to make Cotenoir a pleasant home. The girls could +complain of no restraint, or pine for no indulgence, since their father +was always prompt to gratify every whim. But there was some element of +happiness wanting, nevertheless; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so. +The life at Cotenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual +dawdling; a life of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, projects +begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, the household angel, +order, was wanting in that mansion. There was waste, dirt, destruction of +all kinds, in the rambling old chateau; old servants, too weak or too +lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of +imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right--for the +feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power +still flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of his lord. + +The servants at Cotenoir had gone their own ways with but little +interference since the death of Madame de Nerague, which occurred two +years before that of her daughter, Clarice Lenoble. Poor invalid Clarice +had been quite unable to superintend her household; and since her death +Mademoiselle Cydalise had been too feeble of health to assume any +authority in her nephew's establishment, even if the household of +Cotenoir would have submitted to interference from Beaubocage, which in +all likelihood they would not. + +Thus it happened that things had taken their own course at the chateau, +and the course had been somewhat erratic. There is nothing so costly as +muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late begun to perceive that he had the +maximum of expense with the minimum of comfort. Meanwhile the kind old +aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time +when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's +house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard +experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own +memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations +of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her +outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it +is probable that in the mass of documentary evidence which goes before +the Great Judge, Mademoiselle Lenoble's account-book will be placed on +the right side. + + + + +Book the Third. + + + +THE HORATIAD. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE. + +Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood, +after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London +Bridge terminus of the Brighton line. He was setting out upon an +adventure wild and impracticable as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts; +and this gallant captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous +and audacious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager +to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If the +Fates had allowed the accomplished Horatio to choose his own destiny, he +would have elected to live in the immediate neighbourhood of St. James's +Street, from the first day to the last of the London season, and to dine +artistically and discreetly at one of those older and more exclusive +clubs dear and familiar to him from the bright years of his youth. He was +by nature a _flaneur_, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and +frivolous pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought himself, +but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble +principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that +narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him +Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him +all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all +statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor +did Captain Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal +republic, unselfishness and earnestness would have rendered a man rather +a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men the +diplomatic Horatio was fully competent to deal; but some of his most +subtle combinations on the chess-board of life would have been checkmated +by an unexpected encounter with intractable virtue. + +The necessity of living was the paramount consideration to which this +gentleman had given his mind from the time when he found himself a +popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and +good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in +everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end +London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts and +lying devices. + +That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wits, is +subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the +miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his +pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in +which his spade turns up nothing but valueless clay, and the end of each +day's work leaves him with no better evidence of his wasted labour than +the aching limbs which he drags at nightfall to his dismal shanty. + +For some months Captain Paget had found Philip Sheldon a very useful +acquaintance. The stockbroker had been the secret inaugurator of two or +three joint-stock companies, though figuring to the outer world only as +director; and in the getting-up of these companies Horatio had been a +useful instrument, and had received liberal payment for his labours. +Unhappily, so serene an occupation as promoting cannot go on for ever; or +rather, cannot remain for ever in the same hands. The human mind is +naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infinitely more +audacious than the small larcenies of literature. The joint-stock company +market became day by day more crowded. No sooner did Philip Sheldon float +the Non-destructive Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which +would offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of lime and other +destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched a +colourable imitation thereof, in the Union-is-Strength Domestic Lavatory +Company, with a professor of chemistry specially retained as inspector of +wash-tubs. Thus it was that, after the profitable ripening of three such +schemes, Mr. Sheldon deemed it advisable to retire from the field, and +await a fitter time for the further exercise of his commercial genius. + +Captain Paget's relations with the stockbroker did not, however, +terminate with the cessation of his labours as secretary, +jack-of-all-trades, and promoter. Having found him, so far, clever, and +to all appearance trustworthy--and this was an important point, for no +man so much needs honourable service as a rogue--Philip Sheldon +determined upon confiding to Horatio the conduct of a more delicate +business than anything purely commercial. After that discovery of the +telegraphic message sent by his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst, +and the further discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed +wealth of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in +organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the expense of his +brother. + +"George refused to let me in for a share of chances when I showed myself +willing to help him," thought Philip. "He may discover by-and-by that I +have contrived to let myself into his secrets; and that he might have +played a better game by consenting to a partnership." + +A life devoted to his own interests, and a consistent habit of +selfishness, had rendered Mr. Sheldon, of the Lawn, Bayswater, and Stags +Court, City, very quick of apprehension in all matters connected, +immediately or remotely, with the making of money. The broken sentences +of the telegram betrayed by the blotting-pad told him a great deal. They +told him that there was a certain Goodge, in the town of Ullerton, who +possessed letters so valuable to George Sheldon, as to be bought by his +agent Valentine Hawkehurst. Letters for which Sheldon was willing to give +money must needs be of considerable importance, since money was a very +scarce commodity with that hunter of unconscious heirs-at-law. Again, a +transaction which required the use of so expensive a medium as the +electric telegraph rather than the penny post, might be fairly supposed a +transaction of some moment. The letters in question might relate to some +other estate than that of John Haygarth, for it was quite possible that +the schemer of Gray's Inn had other irons in the fire. But this was a +question of no moment to Philip Sheldon. + +If the letters--or the information contained therein--were likely to be +useful to George, they might be useful to him. If George found it worth +his while to employ an agent at Ullerton, why should not he (Philip) have +his agent in the same town? The pecuniary risk, which might be a serious +affair to George, was child's play for Philip, who had always plenty of +money, or, at any rate, the command of money. The whole business of +heir-at-law hunting seemed to the stockbroker a very vague and shadowy +piece of work, as compared to the kind of speculation that was familiar +to him; but he knew that men had made money in such a manner, and any +business by which money could be made, was interesting to him. Beyond +this, the notion of cutting the ground from under his brother's feet had +a certain attraction for him. George's manner to him had been somewhat +offensive to him on more than one occasion since--well, since Tom +Halliday's death. Mr. Sheldon had borne that offensiveness in mind, with +the determination to "take it out of" his brother on the earliest +opportunity. + +It seemed as if the opportunity had arrived, and Philip was not one of +those men who wait shivering on the shore when Fortune's tide is at the +flood. Mr. Sheldon launched his bark upon the rising waters, and within +two hours of his discovery in the telegraph-office was closeted with +Horatio Paget in the little parlour in Omega Street, making arrangements +for the Captain's journey to Ullerton. + +That Horatio was the right man for the work he wanted done, Mr. Sheldon +had been quick to perceive. + +"He knows Hawkehurst, and will be able to reckon up any manoeuvres of his +better than a stranger; and is, I think, altogether as deep an old +gentleman as one could hope to meet with, barring _the_ traditional +gentleman who did odd jobs for Dr. Faustus," the stockbroker said to +himself, as his hansom sped along Park Lane on its way to Chelsea. The +eagerness with which Captain Paget took up the idea of this business was +very agreeable to his patron. + +"This is an affair in which success hinges on time," said Mr. Sheldon; +"so, if you mean to go in for the business, you must start for Ullerton +by the two o'clock express. You'll have just time to throw your razors +and a clean shirt into a carpet-bag while I talk to you. I've got a cab +outside, and a good one, that will take you to Euston Square in half an +hour." + +The Captain showed himself prompt in action. His bedchamber was a small +apartment at the back of the parlour, and here he packed his bag while +conversing with his employer. + +"If you get upon the ground in time, you may obtain a look at the letters +before they are handed over to Hawkehurst, or you may outbid him for +them," said Mr. Sheldon; "but remember, whatever you do must be so done +as to keep Hawkehurst and George completely in the dark as to our +proceedings. If once they find out we are on their track, our chances +will be gone, for they have got the information and we haven't; and it's +only by following close in their footsteps we can hope to do anything." + +"That is understood," replied the Captain, stooping over his bag; "I +shall keep myself as close as possible, you may depend upon it. And it +shan't be my fault if Valentine sees me or hears of me. I shall want +money, by the bye; for one can't stir a step in this sort of affair +without ready cash." + +"I am quite aware of that. I stopped at the West-end branch of the Unitas +and cashed a cheque for forty pounds. You can do a good deal in the way +of bribery for forty pounds, in such a place as Ullerton. What you have +to do is to keep your eye on Hawkehurst, and follow up every channel of +information that he opens for you. He has the clue to the labyrinth, +remember, the reel of cotton, or whatever it was, that the young woman +gave that Roman fellow. All you have to do is to get hold of it, and +follow your leader." continued Philip, with his watch in his hand. "This +business of the letters will be sharp work, for the chances are against +us here, as it's more than likely the papers will have changed hands +before you can get to Ullerton. But if you can't buy the letters, you may +buy the information contained in them, and that is the next best thing. +Your first move will be to ferret out this man Goodge. Everybody knows +everybody else in such a place as Ullerton, large and busy as the town +is, and you won't find that difficult. When you see Goodge, you'll know +how to deal with him. The mode and manner of your dealing I leave to +yourself. You are a man of the world, and will know how to manipulate the +gentleman, whoever he may be. And now lock your bag and cut downstairs as +fast as you can. Time's up. Here's your money--three tens, two fives. +Good day." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +EPISTOLARY. + +_From Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + +Royal Hotel, Ullerton, Oct. 7, 186--. + +My dear sir,--I arrived here last evening just in time to run against +Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a provoking encounter at the +outset. He went further north by the same train that brought me from +London. This train only stops at three places after Ullerton--Slowport, +Black Harbour, and Manchester; and I shall take pains to discover which +of these towns was Hawkehurst's destination. There was one satisfaction +in seeing his departure by this train, inasmuch as it assured me that I +had the ground clear for my own operations. + +I had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of Goodge--_the_ +Goodge we want--and at eight o'clock was comfortably seated in that +gentleman's parlour, talking over the affair of the letters. Tolerably +quick work, I think you will allow, my dear sir, for a man whose years +have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. + +Mr. Goodge is a Methodist parson--a class of person I have always +detested. I found him peculiarly amenable to monetary influence. I need +scarcely tell you that I was careful to conceal my identity from this +person. I made so bold as to borrow the cognomen of an old-established +firm of solicitors in the Fields, and took a somewhat high tone +throughout the interview. I informed Mr. Goodge that the young man who +had called on him with reference to certain letters connected with the +affairs of the Haygarth family--and I perceived from Mr. Goodge's face +that we were on the right track--was a person of disreputable character, +engaged in an underhand transaction calculated to injure a respected +client of our house. I saw that the words "house" and "our" were +talismanic in their effect upon the Methodist parson. You see, my dear +sir, there is no one can manage this sort of thing so well as a +gentleman. It comes natural to him. Your vulgar diplomatist seldom knows +how to begin, and never knows when to stop. Here I had this low-bred +Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and collective +importance after five minutes' conversation. "But this comes too near the +praising of myself; therefore hear other things," as the bard observes. + +A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable. I found +that Hawkehurst had approached him in the character of your brother's +articled clerk, but under his own proper name. This is one point gained, +since it assures me that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned +name; and will enable me to shape my future inquiries about him +accordingly. I also ascertained Hawkehurst's whereabouts when in +Ullerton. He stays at a low commercial house called the Black Swan. It +appears that the man Goodge possesses a packet of letters written by a +certain Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth, wife of one Matthew Haygarth. In what +relationship this Matthew may stand to the intestate is to be discovered. +It is evident he is an important link in the chain, or your brother would +not want the letters. I need not trouble you with our conversation in +detail. In gross it amounted to this: Mr. Goodge had pledged himself to +hand over Mrs. Haygarth's letters, forty or so in number, to Hawkehurst +in consideration of twenty pounds. They would have been already in +Hawkehurst's possession, if Mr. Goodge had not objected to part with them +except for ready money. In consideration of a payment of twenty pounds +from me, he was willing to let me read all the letters, and select any +ten I pleased to take. This bargain was not arrived at without +considerable discussion, but it certainly struck me as a good one. + +I opened the packet of papers then and there, and sat up until six +o'clock the next morning, reading Mrs. Haygarth's letters in Mr. Goodge's +parlour. Very fatiguing occupation for a man of my years. Mr. Goodge's +hospitality began and ended in a cup of coffee. Such coffee! and I +remember the mocha I used to get at Arthur's thirty years ago,--a +Promethean beverage, that illumined the dullest smoking-room bore with a +flash of wit or a glimmer of wisdom. + +I enclose the ten letters which I have selected. They appear to me to +tell the history of Mrs. Haygarth and her husband pretty plainly; but +there is evidently something mysterious lurking behind the commonplace +existence of the husband. That is a matter for future consideration. All +I have to do in the present is to keep you as well informed as your +brother. It may strike you that the letters I forward herewith, which are +certainly the cream of the correspondence, and the notes I have made from +the remaining letters, are scarcely worth the money paid for them. In +reply to such an objection, I can only say that you get more for _your_ +money than your brother George will get for his. + +The hotel at which I have taken up my quarters is but a few paces from +the commoner establishment where Hawkehurst is stopping. He is to call on +Goodge for the letters to-day; so his excursion will be of brief +duration. I find that the name of Haygarth is not unknown in this town, +as there are a family of Judsons, some of whom call themselves Haygarth +Judson. I intend inviting my landlord--a very superior person for his +station--to discuss a bottle of wine with me after my chop this evening, +and hope to obtain some information from him. In the meantime I shall +keep myself close. It is of vital consequence that I should remain unseen +by Hawkehurst. I do not believe he saw me on the platform last night, +though we were as close to each other as we well could be. + +Let me know what you think of the letters, and believe me to be, my +dear sir, very faithfully yours, + +H. N. C. PAGET. PHILIP SHELDON, Esq., +&c. &c. &c. + + * * * * * + +_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. + +Bayswater, Oct. 8,186-. + +DEAR PAGET,--The letters are mysterious, and I don't see my way to +getting much good out of them, but heartily approve your management of +matters, and give you _carte blanche_ to proceed, according to your own +lights. + +Yours truly, P.S. + + * * * * * + +_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + +Royal Hotel, Oct. 9, 186-. + +MY DEAR SIR,--The cultivation of my landlord has been very profitable. +The house is the oldest in the town, and the business has descended in a +direct line from father to son since the time of George the Second. This +man's grandfather entertained the officers of William Duke of Cumberland, +honoured by his contemporaries with the soubriquet of Billy the Butcher, +during the "forty-five." I had to listen to and applaud a good many +stories about Billy the Butcher before I could lead my landlord round to +the subject of the Haygarths. But he was not more prosy than many men I +have met at dinner-parties in the days when the highest circles in the +land were open to your humble servant. + +The Haygarth family, of which the intestate John Haygarth was the last +male descendant, were for a long period inhabitants of this town, and +obtained their wealth by trading as grocers and general dealers in a shop +not three hundred yards from the room in which I write. The building is +still standing, and a curious, old-fashioned-looking place it is. The +last of the Haygarths who carried on business therein was one Jonathan, +whose son Matthew was the father of that Reverend John Haygarth, lately +deceased, intestate. You will thus perceive that the letters I sent you +are of much importance, as they relate solely to this Matthew, father of +our intestate. + +My next inquiries related to the Judson family, who are, it appears, +descended from the issue of a certain Ruth Haygarth's marriage with one +Peter Judson. This Ruth Haygarth was the only sister of the Matthew +alluded to in the letters, and therefore was aunt of the intestate. It +would herefrom appear that in this Judson family we must naturally look +for the rightful claimant to the fortune of the deceased John Haygarth. +Possessed of this conviction, I proceeded to interrogate my landlord very +cautiously as to the status, &c. of the Judson family, and amongst other +questions, asked him with a complete assumption of indifference, whether +he had ever heard that the Judsons expected to inherit property from any +branch of the Haygarth family. + +This careless interrogatory produced information of, as I imagine, a very +valuable character. A certain Theodore Judson, attorney of this town, +calls himself heir-at-law to the Haygarth estates; but before he can +establish his claim, this Theodore must produce evidence of the demise, +without heirs, of one Peter Judson, eldest surviving grandson of Ruth +Haygarth's eldest son, a scamp and ne'er-do-well--if living, supposed to +be somewhere in India, where he went, as supercargo to a merchant vessel +about, the year '41--who stands prior to Theodore Judson in the +succession. I conclude that the said Theodore, who, as a lawyer, is +likely to do things _secundum artem_, is doing his _possible_ to obtain +the necessary evidence; but in the meantime he is at a dead lock, and the +whole affair appears to be in a charming condition for speculative +interference. I opine, therefore, that your brother really has hit upon a +good thing this time; and my only wonder is, that instead of allowing his +agent, Hawkehurst, to waste his time hunting up old letters of Matthew +Haygarth's (to all appearance valueless as documentary evidence), he does +not send Valentine to India to hunt for Peter Judson, who, if living, is +the rightful heir to the intestate's fortune, and who, as a reckless +extravagant fellow, would be likely to make very liberal terms with any +one who offered to procure him a large lump of money. + +I confess that I am quite at a loss to understand why your brother George +does not take this very obvious course, and why Valentine potters about +in this neighbourhood, when a gold mine is waiting to be _exploite_ on +the other side. + +I shall be very glad to have your views upon this subject, for at the +present moment I am fain to acknowledge that I do not see my way to +taking any further steps in this business, unless by commencing a search +for the missing Peter. + +I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours, + +H. N. C. PAGET. + + * * * * * + +_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. + +Bayswater, Oct. 10, 186--. + +DEAR PAGET,--When so old a stager as G. S. does not take the obvious +course, the inference is that there is a better course to be taken--_not_ +obvious to the uninitiated. + +You have done very well so far, but the information you have obtained +from your landlord is only such information as any one else may obtain +from the current gossip of Ullerton. You haven't yet got to the _dessous +des cartes_. Remember what I told you in London. G. S. _has_ the clue to +this labyrinth; and what you have to do is to hold on to the coat-tails +(in a figurative sense) of his agent, V. H. + +Don't put your trust in prosy old landlords, but continue to set a watch +upon that young man, and follow up his trail as you did in the matter of +the letters. + +If the Peter Judson who went to India three-and-twenty years ago were the +right man to follow, G.S. would scarcely give twenty pounds for the +letters of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth. It appears to me that G. must be +looking for an heir on the Haygarth side of the house; and if so, rely +upon it he has his reasons. Don't bewilder yourself by trying to +theorize, but get to the bottom of G.'s theory. + +Yours truly, P. S. + +_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + + * * * * * + +Royal Hotel, Oct. 12, 186.-- + +MY DEAR SIR,--Considering the advice contained in your last very good, I +lost no time in acting upon it. I need hardly tell you, that to employ +the services of a hired spy, and to degrade myself in some sort to the +level of a private inquirer, was somewhat revolting to a man, who, in the +decadence of his fortunes, has ever striven to place some limit on the +outrages which that hard taskmaster, poverty, may have from time to time +compelled him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of +a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since an +unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I submitted to this +temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and I trust that when the +time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which +I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded +self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium +may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you +that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after +duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the +movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person to play the spy +would be that class of man whose existence seems for the most part +devoted to the lounging at street corners, the chewing of straw, and that +desultory kind of industry known in the _patois_ of this race as +"fetching errands." This is the man, or boy, who starts up from the +pavement (as through a trap-door in the flags) whenever one alights from +or would enter any kind of vehicle. Unbidden, unrequired, and obnoxious, +the creature arises, and opens a door, or lays some rag of his wretched +attire on a muddy wheel, and then whines, piteous, for a copper. Such a +man, or such a boy, I felt convinced must exist among the hangers-on of +the Royal Hotel; nor was I mistaken. On inquiring for a handy lad, +capable of attending upon my needs at all hours in the day, and not a +servant in the hotel, but a person who would be wholly at my own +disposal, I was informed that the Boots had a younger brother who was +skilled in the fetching of errands, and who would be happy to wait upon +me for a very reasonable remuneration, or in the words of the waiter +himself, would be ready to leave it--i.e. the remuneration--to my own +generosity. I know that there are no people who expect so much as those +who leave the assessment of their claims to your own generosity; but +as I wanted good service, I was prepared to pay well. The younger Boots +made his appearance in due course--a sharp young fellow enough--and I +forthwith made him my slave by the promise of five shillings a day for +every day in which I should require his services. I then told him that it +was my misfortune to own--with a strong inclination to disown--a +reprobate nephew, now an inhabitant of that very town. This nephew, I had +reason to believe, was going at a very rapid rate to the dogs; but my +affectionate feelings would not allow him to consummate his own +destruction without one last effort to reclaim him. I had therefore +followed him to Ullerton, whither I believed him to be led by the worst +possible motives; and having done so, my next business was to keep myself +informed of his whereabouts. + +Seeing that the younger Boots accepted these statements with +unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal +to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and +watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my +recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the +limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad's intelligence was likely to be +equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or +complicated position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other +mischance. "Do you think you can watch the gentleman without being +observed?" I asked. "I'm pretty well sure I can, sir," answered the boy, +who is of an enterprising, and indeed audacious, temper. "Very well," +said I, "you will go to the Black Swan Inn. Hawkehurst is the name by +which my nephew is known there, and it will be your duty to find him +out." I gave the boy a minute account of Valentine's appearance, and +other instructions with which I need not trouble you. I further furnished +him with money, so that he might be able to follow Hawkehurst by rail, or +any other mode of conveyance, if necessary; and then despatched him, with +an order to come back to me when he had seen our man safely lodged in the +Black Swan after his day's perambulations. "And if he shouldn't go out at +all?" suggested the lad. "In that case you must stick to your post till +nightfall, and pick up all the information you can about my unfortunate +nephew from the hangers-on of the hotel," said I. "I suppose you know +some one at the Black Swan?" The boy informed me, in his untutored +language, that he knew "a'most all of 'em," and thereupon departed. + +At nine o'clock at night he again appeared before me, big with the +importance of his day's work. He had seen my nephew issue forth from the +Black Swan within an hour of leaving my presence, and had followed him, +first to Mr. William Judson's in Ferrygate, where he waited and hung +about nearly an hour, keeping himself well out of view round the corner +of Chalkin Street, a turning close to Mr. Judson's house. After leaving +this gentleman's house, my renegade nephew had proceeded--carrying a +letter in his hand, and walking as if in very good spirits (but that +fellow Hawkehurst would walk to the gallows in good spirits)--to the +Lancaster Road, where he was admitted into Lochiel Villa, a house +belonging, as my Mercury ascertained from a passing baker's boy, to Miss +Judson, sister of the William Judson of Ferrygate. You will perceive that +this town appears to teem with the Judson family. My messenger, with +praiseworthy art, contrived to engage in a game of tip-cat (what, I +wonder, _is_ a tip-cat?) with some vagrant boys disporting themselves in +the roadway, within view of Miss Judson's house. Hence, after the lapse +of more than an hour, Boots-Mercury beheld my recreant relative emerge, +and from this point followed him--always with extreme caution--back to +the Black Swan. Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close +acquaintance with the ostler, until eight o'clock in the evening, no +event of the smallest importance occurring during all those hours. But at +eight there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss Judson to Mr. +Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was sealed with red wax. This was +all my Mercury could ascertain respecting it; but this was something. + +I at once divined that this packet must needs contain letters. I asked +myself whether those letters or papers had been sold to Hawkehurst, or +only lent to him, and I immediately concluded that they could only have +been lent. It was all very well for Goodge, the Methodist parson, to +traffic in the epistles of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth, but it was to the last +degree unlikely that a well-to-do maiden lady would part with family +letters or papers for any pecuniary consideration whatever. "No," I said +to myself, "the documents have been lent, and will have to be returned;" +and thereupon I laid my plans for the next day's campaign, with a view to +obtaining a peep at those letters, by fair means or foul. I told the boy +to be at his post in the inn yard early the next morning, and if my +nephew did not leave the inn, my agent was to ascertain what he was +doing, and to bring me word thereof. "I'll tell you what it is, Boots," I +said; "I have reason to believe that sadly disposed nephew of mine has +some wicked intention with regard to Miss Judson, who is nearly related +to a young lady with whom that unprincipled young man is, or pretends to +be, in love; and I very much fear that he means to send her some letters, +written by this foolish niece of hers to my more foolish nephew, and +eminently calculated to wound the good lady's feelings. Now, in order to +prevent this very shameful conduct on his part, I want to intercept any +packet or letter which that mistaken youth may send to Miss Judson. Do +you feel yourself capable of getting hold of such a packet, on +consideration of a bonus of half-a-sovereign in addition to the five +shillings per diem already agreed upon?" + +This, in more direct and vulgar phraseology, was what I said to the boy; +and the boy departed, after pledging himself to bring me any packet which +Hawkehurst might despatch from the Swan Inn. The only fear was that +Hawkehurst might carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared +unpleasantly probable. + +Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out. He +intrusted Miss Hudson's packet to his waiter, the waiter confided it to +the Boots, the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy +Mercury, who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a +walk to the Lancaster Road. + +At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part +of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written +by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography; +but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been +somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble +citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal +personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would +provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the +crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems +a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of +princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati, +should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I +could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew +Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully +numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to +any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to +retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's +caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It +appears to me that these letters relate to some _liaison_ of the +gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to +discover that, even in a period notorious for looseness of morals, a man +should enter into such details in a correspondence with his sister. +_Autres temps, autres moeurs_. I have selected my extracts with great +care, and hope that you may be able to make more use of them than I can +at present imagine possible. I shall post this letter and enclosure with +my own hands, though in order to do so I must pass the Black Swan. I +shall despatch my messenger to Lochiel Villa, with Miss Judson's packet, +under cover of the darkness. + +In much haste, to catch the London mail, + +Truly yours, H.N.C.P. + + * * * * * + +_From Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. City, Oct. 12, 186-- + +Dear Paget,--Come back to town. You are only wasting money, time, and +trouble. Yours, P.S. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +TOO CLEVER, FOR A CATSPAW. + +Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by that sudden summons from his +patron, and eager to know what new aspect of affairs rendered his further +presence in Ullerton useless or undesirable. + +Horatio arrived in the great city half-a-dozen hours before his sometime +protege, and was comfortably installed when Valentine returned to those +lodgings in Omega Street, Chelsea, which the two men occupied in common. + +Captain Paget went into the City to see Philip Sheldon on the day of his +return, but did not succeed in finding the stockbroker. The evening's +post brought him a letter from Philip, appointing an interview at +Bayswater, at three o'clock on the following day--the day after +Valentine's return from Ullerton. + +Punctual to the moment appointed by this letter, Captain Paget appeared +at the Lawn on the following day. He was ushered into Mr. Sheldon's +study, where he found that gentleman awaiting him, grave and meditative +of mood, but friendly, and indeed cordial, in his manner to the returning +traveller. + +"My dear Paget, sit down; I am delighted to see you. Your trip has made +you look five years younger, by Jove! I was sorry to find you had called +while I was out, and had waited for me upwards of an hour yesterday. I +have a good deal of worry on my shoulders just now; commerce is all +worry, you know. The Marquis of Lambeth has come into the market and +bought up two-thirds of the Astrakhan Grand Trunk debenture bonds, just +as our house had speculated for the fall. And since it has got wind that +the Marquis is sweet upon the concern, the bonds are going up like a +skyrocket. Such is life. I thought we had better have our little talk +here; it's quieter than in the City. Have some sherry and soda; you like +that Manzanilla of mine, I know." + +And the hospitable Philip rang the bell, without thinking it necessary to +wait for his guest's answer. + +There was a cordiality, a conciliating friendliness about the +stockbroker's manner which Horatio Paget did not like. + +"He's too civil by half," the Captain said to himself; "he means to do +me." + +"And now about this Ullerton business," Mr. Sheldon began, when the wine +and soda-water had been brought, and a tall tumbler of that refreshing +compound filled for the Captain; "you have really managed matters +admirably. I cannot too much applaud your diplomatic tact. You would have +put a what's-his-name--that fellow of Napoleon's--to the blush by your +management of the whole business. But, unfortunately, when it's all done +it comes to nothing; the whole affair is evidently, from beginning to +end, a mare's-nest. It is one of those wild geese which my brother George +has been chasing for the last ten years, and which never have resulted in +profit to him or anybody else; and I should be something worse than a +fool if I were to lend myself any longer to such a folly." + +"Humph," muttered the Captain, "here is a change indeed!" + +"Well, yes," Mr. Sheldon answered coolly. "I dare say my conduct does +seem rather capricious; but you see George put me out of temper the other +day, and I was determined, if he had got a good thing, to cut the ground +from under his feet. All your communications from Ullerton tend to show +me that he has not got hold of a good thing, and that in any attempt to +circumvent him I should only be circumventing myself, wasting your time, +and my own money. This Judson family seems numberless; and it is evident +to me that the Reverend John Haygarth's fortune will be a bone of +contention amongst the Judsons in the High Court of Chancery for any +indefinite number of years between this and the milennium. So I really +think, my dear Paget, we'd better consider this transaction finished. I +will give you whatever honorarium you think fit to name for your trouble, +and we'll close the affair. I shall find plenty more business as good, or +better, for you to do." + +"You are very good," replied the Captain, in nowise satisfied by this +promise. It was all too smooth, too conciliatory. And there was a +suddenness in this change of plan that was altogether mysterious. So +indeed might a capricious man be expected to drop a speculation he had +been eager to inaugurate, but Philip Sheldon was the last of men to be +suspected of caprice. + +"You must have taken an immense deal of trouble with those extracts, +now," said the stockbroker carelessly, as Horatio rose to depart, +offended and angry, but anxious to conceal his anger. "What, are you off +so soon? I thought you would stop and take a chop with us." + +"No, thanks; I have an engagement elsewhere. Yes, I took an +inordinate trouble with those extracts, and I am sorry to think they +should be useless." + +"Well, yes, it is rather provoking to you, I dare say. The extracts would +be very interesting from a social point of view, no doubt, to people who +care about such things; but in a legal sense they are waste-paper. I +can't understand why Hawkehurst was in Ullerton; for, as you yourself +suggested, that Peter Judson who went to India must be the Judson wanted +for this case." + +"Your brother may be in league with some other branch of the Judson +family. Or what if he is hunting for an heir on the Haygarth side?" asked +the Captain, with a very close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's face. Let the +stockbroker be never so skilful a navigator of the high seas of life, +there was no undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of +the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was +not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that +wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the +diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's +sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; +but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead the acute Horatio. + +"How about the Haygarth side of the house?" he asked again; for it had +seemed to him that at his first mention of the name of Haygarth Mr. +Sheldon had winced, ever so little. This time, however, he betrayed not +the faintest concern; but he was doubtless now on his guard. + +"Well, I don't see how there can be any claimant on that side of the +house," he said carelessly. "You see, according to your old landlord's +statement--which I take to be correct--Jonathan Haygarth had but one son, +a certain Matthew, who married one Rebecca So-and-so, and had, in his +turn one only son, the intestate John. Now, in that case, where is your +heir to come from, except through Matthew's sister Ruth, who married +Peter Judson?" + +"Isn't it just possible that Matthew Haygarth may have married twice, and +had other children? Those letters certainly suggest the idea of a secret +alliance of some kind on Haygarth's part, and the existence of a family, +to whom he appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this +affair was that it must have been a low _liaison_; but I could hardly +realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under any such +circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been. +Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at some mystery in her husband's +life. Is it not likely that this hidden family was a legitimate one?" + +"I can't quite see my way to that idea," Mr. Sheldon answered, in a +meditative tone. "It seems very unlikely that any marriage of Haygarth's +could have remained unknown to his townsmen; and even if it were so, I +doubt the possibility of our tracing the heirs from such a marriage. No, +my dear Paget, I have resolved to wash my hands of the business, and +leave my brother George in undisturbed possession of his ground." + +"In that case, perhaps, you will return my notes; they are +interesting to me." + +Here again the faintest indication of annoyance in the stockbroker's face +told its tale to Captain Paget. For your accomplished navigator of the +unknown seas there is no ocean bird, no floating weed, that has not a +language and a significance. + +"You can have your notes, if you want them," answered Mr. Sheldon; "they +are at my office. I'll hunt them up and send them to you; or you had +better look in upon me in the City early next week, and I can give you a +cheque at the same time." + +"Thanks. I will be sure and do so." + +"You say the orthography of the original letters was queer. I suppose +your copies were faithful in all matters except the orthography. And in +the names, you of course adhered to the original spelling?" + +"Most decidedly," replied Captain Paget, opening the door to depart, +and with a somewhat cynical smile upon his face, which was hidden from +Mr. Sheldon. + +"I suppose there is no doubt of your accuracy with regard to the name of +Meynell, now?" + +"Not the least. Good afternoon. Ah, there's our young friend Hawkehurst!" +exclaimed the Captain, in his "society" voice, as he looked out into the +hall, where Valentine was parting with Diana. + +He came and greeted his young friend, and they left the house together. + +This was the occasion upon which Valentine was startled by hearing the +name "Meynell" pronounced by the lips of Philip Sheldon. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL. + +Horatio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully +convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off the scent, +in order to follow up the chase alone, for his sole profit and advantage. + +"My last letter conveyed some intelligence that altered his whole plan of +action," thought the Captain; "that is perfectly clear. He was somewhat +wanting in tact when he recalled me so suddenly. But I suppose he thought +it would be easy to throw dust in my poor old eyes. What was the +intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question." +Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined +well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he +was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative +mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his +meditation was Philip Sheldon. + +"Yes," he murmured at last, "that is it. The charm is in the name of +Meynell. Why else should he question me about the orthography of that +name? I sent him information about Matthew Haygarth in the wife's +letters, and he took no special notice of that information. It was only +when the name of Meynell cropped up that he changed his tactics and tried +to throw me over. It seems to me that he must have some knowledge of this +Meynell branch, and therefore thinks himself strong enough to act alone, +and to throw me over the bridge. To throw me over," the Captain repeated +to himself slowly. "Well, we'll see about that. We'll see; yes, we'll +see." + +At noon on the following day Captain Paget presented himself again at the +Bayswater villa, where his daughter ate the bread of dependence. He +appeared this time in a purely paternal character. He came to call upon +his only child. Before paying this visit the Captain had improved the +shining hour by a careful study of the current and two or three back +volumes of the Post-Office and Trade Directories; but all his researches +in those interesting volumes had failed to reveal to him the existence of +any metropolitan Meynells. + +"The Meynells whom Sheldon knows may be in the heart of the country," he +said to himself, after these futile labours. + +It was a fine autumnal morning, and as Miss Paget was at home and +disengaged, her affectionate father suggested that she should take a walk +with him in Kensington Gardens. Such a promenade had very little +attraction for the young lady; but she had a vague idea that she owed a +kind of duty to her father not remitted by his neglect of all duties to +her; so she assented with a smile, and went out with him, looking very +handsome and stylish in her simple but fashionable attire, no part of +which had been provided by the parent she accompanied. + +The Captain surveyed her with some sense of family pride. "Upon my word, +my dear, you do me credit!" he exclaimed, with a somewhat patronising +kindness of tone and manner; "indeed any man might be proud of such a +daughter. You are every inch a Paget." + +"I hope not, papa," said the girl involuntarily; but the Captain's more +delicate instincts had been considerably blunted in the press and jostle +of life, and he did not feel the sting of this remark. + +"Well, perhaps you are right, my love," he replied blandly; "the Pagets +_are_ an unlucky family. Like those Grecian people, the Atri--, +what's-his-name--the man who was killed in his bath, you know. His wife, +or the other young person who had come to visit his daughters, made the +water too hot, you know--and that kind of thing. I am not quite clear +about the story, but it's one of those farragos of rubbish they make +young men learn at public schools. Yes, my dear, I really am amazingly +pleased by your improved appearance. Those Sheldon people dress you very +nicely; and I consider your residence in that family a very agreeable +arrangement for all parties. You confer a favour on the girl by your +society, and so on, and the mother provides you with a comfortable home; +All I wonder is that your good looks haven't made their mark before this +with some of Sheldon's rich stockbroking fellows." + +"We see very little of the stockbroking fellows, as you call them, at the +Lawn, papa." + +"Indeed! I thought Sheldon kept a great deal of company." + +"O no. He gives a dinner now and then, a gentleman's dinner usually; and +poor Mrs. Sheldon is very anxious that it should all go off well, as she +says; but I don't think he is a person who cares much for society." + +"Really, now?" + +"His mind seems completely occupied by his business, you see, papa. That +horrible pursuit of gain seems to require all his thoughts, and all his +time. He is always reading commercial papers, the _Money Market_ and _On +Change_, and the _Stockbrokers' Vade Mecum_, and publications of that +kind. When he is not reading he is thinking; and by his manner one would +fancy his thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a miserable, +hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that man for all the money +in the Bank of England. But it is a kind of treachery to tell these +things. Mr. Sheldon is very good to me. He lets me sit at his table and +share the comforts of his home, and I must be very ungrateful to speak +against him. I do _not_ mean to speak against him, you see, papa--I only +mean that a life devoted to money-making is in itself hateful." + +"My dear child, you may be assured that anything you say to _me_ will go +no further," said the Captain, with dignity; "and in whom should you +confide, if not in your father? I have a profound respect for Sheldon and +his family--yes, my love, a profound respect; and I think that girl +Sarah--no, I mean Charlotte--a very charming young person. I need +scarcely tell you that the smallest details of your life in that family +possess a keen interest for me. I am not without a father's feelings, +Diana, though circumstances have never permitted me to perform a father's +duties." + +And here the solitary tear which the accomplished Horatio could produce +at will trembled in his eye. This one tear was always at his command. For +the life of him he could not have produced a second; but the single drop +never failed him, and he found one tear as effective as a dozen, in +giving point and finish to a pathetic speech. + +Diana looked at him, and wondered, and doubted. Alas, she knew him only +too well! Any other creature in this wide world he might deceive, but not +her. She had lived with him; she had tasted the bitterness of dependence +upon him--ten times more bitter than dependence on strangers. She had +shown him her threadbare garments day after day, and had pleaded for a +little money, to be put off with a lying excuse. She could not forget +this. She had forgiven him long ago, being of too generous a nature to +brood upon past injuries. But she could not forget what manner of man he +was, and thank him for pretty speeches which she knew to be meaningless. + +They talked a little more of Mr. Sheldon and his family, but Diana did +not again permit herself to be betrayed into any vehement expressions of +her opinions. She answered all her father's questions without restraint, +for they were very commonplace questions, of a kind that might be +answered without any breach of faith. + +"Amongst the Sheldons' acquaintances did you ever hear of any people +called Meynell?" Captain Paget asked at length. + +"Yes," Diana replied, after a moment's thought; "the name is certainly +very familiar to me;" and then, after a pause, she exclaimed, "Why, the +Meynells were relations of Charlotte's! Yes, her grandmother was a Miss +Meynell; I perfectly remember hearing Mrs. Sheldon talk about the +Meynells. But I do not think there are any descendants of that family now +living. Why do you ask the question, papa? What interest have you in the +Meynells?" + +"Well, my dear, I have my reasons, but they in no manner concern Mr. +Sheldon or his family; and I must beg you to be careful not to mention +the subject in your conversation with those worthy people. I want to know +all about this Meynell family. I have come across some people of that +name, and I want to ascertain the precise relationship existing between +these people and the Sheldons. But the Sheldons must know nothing of this +inquiry for the present. The people I speak of are poor and proud, and +they would perish rather than press a relationship upon a rich man, +unless fully justified by the closeness of family ties. I am sure you +understand all this, Diana?" + +"Not very clearly, papa." + +"Well, my dear, it is a delicate position, and perhaps somewhat difficult +for the comprehension of a third party. All you need understand is the +one fact, that any information respecting the Meynell family will be +vitally interesting to my friends, and, through them, serviceable to me. +There is, in fact, a legacy which these friends of mine could claim, +under a certain will, if once assured as to the degree of their +relationship to your friend Charlotte's kindred on the Meynell side of +the house. To give them the means of securing this legacy would be to +help the ends of justice; and I am sure, Diana, you would wish to do +that." + +"Of course, papa, if I can do so without any breach of faith with my +employers. Can you promise me that no harm will result to the Sheldons, +above all to Charlotte Halliday, from any information I may procure for +you respecting the Meynell family?" + +"Certainly, Diana, I can promise you that. I repeat most solemnly, +that by obtaining such information for me you will be aiding the cause +of justice." + +If Horatio Paget might ever be betrayed into the inconsistency of a +truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that it was likely to be in +this moment. His words sounded like truth; and, on reflection, Diana +failed to perceive that she could by any possibility inflict wrong on her +friends by obliging her father in this small affair. + +"Let me think the matter over, papa," she said. + +"Nonsense, Diana; what thinking over can be wanted about such a trifle? I +never before asked you a favour. Surely you cannot refuse to grant so +simple a request, after the trouble I have taken to explain my reasons +for making it." + +There was some further discussion, which ended in Miss Paget consenting +to oblige her father. + +"And you will manage matters with tact?" urged the Captain, at parting. + +"There is no especial tact required, papa," replied Diana; "the matter is +easy enough. Mrs. Sheldon is very fond of talking about her own affairs. +I have only to ask her some leading question about the Meynells, and she +will run on for an hour, telling me the minutest details of family +history connected with them. I dare say I have heard the whole story +before, and have not heeded it: I often find my thoughts wandering when +Mrs. Sheldon is talking." + +Three days after this Captain Paget called on Mr. Sheldon in the City, +when he received a very handsome recompense for his labours at Ullerton, +and became repossessed of the extracts he had made from Matthew +Haygarth's letters, but not of the same Mr. Haygarth's autograph letter: +that document Mr. Sheldon confessed to having mislaid. + +"He has mislaid the original letter, and he has had ample leisure for +copying my extracts; and he thinks I am such a consummate fool as not to +see all that," thought Horatio, as he left the stockbroker's office, +enriched but not satisfied. + +In the course of the same day he received a long letter from Diana +containing the whole history of the Meynells, as known to Mrs. Sheldon. +Once set talking, Georgy had told all she could tell, delighted to find +herself listened to with obvious interest by her companion. + +"I trust that you have not deceived me, my dear father," Diana concluded, +after setting forth the Meynell history. "The dear good soul was so +candid and confiding, and seemed so pleased by the interest I showed in +her family affairs, that I should feel myself the vilest of wretches if +any harm could result to her, or those she loves, from the information +thus obtained." + +The information was very complete. Mrs. Sheldon had a kindly and amiable +nature, but she was not one of those sensitive souls who instinctively +shrink from a story of bitter shame or profound sorrow as from a cureless +wound. She told Diana, with many lamentations, and much second-hand +morality, the sad history of Susan Meynell's elopement, and of the +return, fourteen years afterwards, of the weary wanderer. Even the poor +little trunk, with the name of the Rouen trunk-maker, Mrs. Sheldon dwelt +upon with graphic insistence. A certain womanly delicacy had prevented +her ever telling this story in the presence of her brother-in-law, George +Sheldon, whose hard worldly manner in no way invited any sentimental +revelation. Thus it happened that George had never heard the name of +Meynell in connection with his friend Tom Halliday's family, or had heard +it so seldom as to have entirely forgotten it. To Horatio his daughter's +letter was priceless. It placed him at once in as good a position as +Philip Sheldon, or as George Sheldon and his coadjutor, Valentine +Hawkehurst. There were thus three different interests involved in the +inheritance of the Reverend John Haygarth. + +Captain Paget sat late by a comfortable fire, in his own bedchamber, that +night, enjoying an excellent cigar, and meditating the following jottings +from a pedigree:-- + +CHARLOTTE MEYNELL, married JAMES HALLIDAY. + | +THOMAS HALLIDAY, only son of above, married GEORGINA, now Mrs. SHELDON; + | had issue, +CHARLOTTE HALLIDAY. + +SUSAN MEYNELL, only and elder sister of the above-named Charlotte, ran +away from her home, in Yorkshire, with a Mr. Kingdon, brother to Lord +Darnsville. Fate unknown during fourteen years of her life. Died in +London, 1835. Buried under her maiden name; but no positive evidence to +show that she was unmarried. + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR. + +Once in possession of the connection between the intestate John Haygarth +and the Halliday family, Captain Paget's course was an easy one. He +understood now why his investigations had been so suddenly brought to a +standstill. Philip Sheldon had discovered the unexpected connection, and +was eager to put a stop to researches that might lead to a like discovery +on the part of his coadjutor. + +"And Sheldon expects to prove his stepdaughter's claim to this fortune?" +thought the Captain. "He will affect ignorance of the whole transaction +until his plans are ripe, and then spring them suddenly upon his brother +George. I wonder if there is anything to be made out of George by letting +him into the secret of his brother's interference? No; I think not. +George is as poor as a church mouse, and Philip must always be the more +profitable acquaintance." + +On the broad basis afforded by Diana's letter Captain Paget was able to +build up the whole scheme of the Haygarthian succession. The pedigree of +the Meynells was sufficiently simple, if their legitimate descent from +Matthew Haygarth could be fairly proved. Charlotte Halliday was +heiress-at-law to the fortune of John Haygarth, always provided that her +great-aunt Susan died without legitimate issue. + +Here was the one chance which appeared to the adventurous mind of Horatio +Paget worth some trouble in the way of research. Fourteen years of Susan +Meynell's life had been spent away from all who knew her. It was +certainly possible that in that time she might have formed some +legitimate alliance. + +This was the problem which Horatio set himself to solve. Your adventurer +is, of all manner of men, the most sanguine. Sir Walter Raleigh sees +visions of gold and glory where grave statesman see only a fool's +paradise of dreams and fancies. To the hopeful mind of the Captain these +fourteen unrecorded years of Susan Meynell's life seemed a very Golconda. + +He did not, however, rest satisfied with the information afforded by +Diana's letter. + +"I will have the story of these Meynells at first-hand as well as at +second-hand," he said to himself; and he lost no time in presenting +himself again at the Villa--this time as a visitor to Mrs. Sheldon. + +With Georgy he had been always a favourite. His little stories of the +great world--the Prince and Perdita, Brummel and Sheridan--though by no +means novel to those acquainted with that glorious period of British +history, were very agreeable to Georgy. The Captain's florid flatteries +pleased her; and she contrasted the ceremonious manners of that gentleman +with the curt business-like style of her husband, very much to the +Captain's advantage. He came to thank her for her goodness to his child, +and this occasion gave him ample opportunity for sentiment. He had asked +to see Mrs. Sheldon alone, as his daughter's presence would have been +some hindrance to the carrying out of his design. + +"There are things I have to say which I should scarcely care to utter +before my daughter, you see, my dear Mrs. Sheldon," he said, with +pathetic earnestness. "I should not wish to remind the dear child of her +desolate position; and I need scarcely tell you that position is _very_ +desolate. A father who, at his best, cannot provide a fitting home for a +delicately nurtured girl, and who at any moment may be snatched away, is +but a poor protector. And were it not for your friendship, I know not +what my child's fate might be. The dangers and temptations that beset a +handsome young woman are very terrible, my dear Mrs. Sheldon." + +This was intended to lead up to the subject of Susan Meynell, but Georgy +did not rise to the bait. She only shook her head plaintively in assent +to the Captain's proposition. + +"Yes, madam; beauty, unallied with strength of mind and high principles, +is apt to be a fatal dower. In every family there are sad histories," +murmured the sentimental Horatio. + +Even this remark did not produce the required result; so the Captain drew +upon his invention for a specimen history from the annals of his own +house, which was a colourable imitation of Susan Meynell's story. + +"And what was the end of this lovely Belinda Paget's career, my dear Mrs. +Sheldon?" he concluded. "The gentleman was a man of high rank, but a +scoundrel and a dastard. Sophia's brother, a cornet in the First Life +Guards, called him out, and there was a meeting on Wimbledon Common, in +which Lavinia's seducer was mortally wounded. There was a trial, and the +young captain of Hussars, Amelia's brother, was sentenced to +transportation for life. I need scarcely tell you that the sentence was +never carried out. The young man fell gloriously at Waterloo, at the head +of his own regiment, the Scotch Fusiliers, and Lavinia--I beg pardon, +Amelia; nay, what am I saying? the girl's name was Belinda--embraced the +Roman Catholic faith, and expired from the effects of stigmata inflicted +by her own hands in a paroxysm of remorse for her brother's untimely +death at the hands of her seducer." + +This lively little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. Melted by the +woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or Amelia, or Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Sheldon was +moved to relate a sad event in her husband's family; and encouraged by +the almost tearful sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated every +detail of Susan Meynell's life, as known to her kindred. And as this +recital had flowed spontaneously from the good soul's lips, she would he +scarcely likely to allude to it afterwards in conversation with Mr. +Sheldon; more especially as that gentleman was not in the habit of +wasting much of his valuable time in small-talk with the members of his +own household. + +Captain Paget had duly calculated this, and every other hazard that +menaced the intricate path he had mapped out for himself. + +Satisfied by Mrs. Sheldon's repetition of Susan Meynell's story, and +possessed of all the information he could hope to obtain from that +quarter, Horatio set himself to consider what steps must next be taken. +Much serious reflection convinced even his sanguine mind that the +enterprise was a difficult one, and could scarcely be carried through +successfully without help from some skilled genealogist. + +"George Sheldon has given his lifetime to this sort of thing, and is a +skilled lawyer to boot," Captain Paget said to himself. "If I hope to go +in against him, I must have someone at my elbow as well versed in this +sort of business as he is." + +Having once admitted this necessity, the Captain set himself to consider +where he was to find the right person. A very brief meditation settled +this question. One among the numerous business transactions of Captain +Paget's life had brought him in contact with a very respectable little +French gentleman called Fleurus, who had begun his career as a notary, +but, finding that profession unprofitable, had become a hunter of +pedigrees and heirs-at-law--for the most part to insignificant legacies, +unclaimed stock, and all other jetsam and flotsam thrown up on the +shadowy shores of the Court of Chancery. M. Fleurus had not often been so +fortunate as to put his industrious fingers into any large pie, but he +had contrived to make a good deal of money out of small affairs, and had +found his clients grateful. + +"The man of men," thought Horatio Paget; and he betook himself to the +office of M. Fleurus early next day, provided with all documents relating +to the Haygarthian succession. + +His interview with the little Frenchman was long and satisfactory. On +certain conditions as to future reward, said reward to be contingent on +success, M. Fleurus was ready to devote himself heart and soul to the +interests of Captain Paget. + +"To begin: we must find legal evidence of this Matthew Haygarth's +marriage to the mother of this child C., who came afterwards to marry the +man Meynell; and after we will go to Susan Meynell. Her box came from +Rouen--that we know. Where her box came from she is likely to have come +from. So it is at Rouen, or near Rouen, we must look for her. Let me see: +she die in 1835! that is long time. To look for the particulars of her +life is like to dive into the ocean for to find the lost cargo of a ship +that is gone down to the bottom, no one knows where. But to a man really +expert in these things there is nothing of impossible. I will find you +your Susan Meynell in less than six months; the evidence of her marriage; +if she was married; her children, if she had children." + +In less than six months--the margin seemed a wide one to the impatient +Horatio. But he knew that such an investigation must needs be slow, and +he left the matters in the hands of his new ally with a sense that he had +done the best thing that could be done. Then followed for Horatio Paget +two months of patient attendance upon fortune. He was not idle during +this time; for Mr. Sheldon, who seemed particularly anxious to conciliate +him, threw waifs and strays of business into his way. Before the middle +of November M. Fleurus had found the register of Matthew Haygarth's +marriage, as George Sheldon had found it before him, working in the same +groove, and with the same order of intelligence. After this important +step M. Fleurus departed for his native shores, where he had other +business besides the Meynell affair to claim his attention. Meanwhile the +astute Horatio kept a close eye upon his young friend Valentine. He knew +from Diana that the young man had been in Yorkshire; and he guessed the +motive of his visit to Newhall, not for a moment supposing that his +presence in that farmhouse could have been accidental. The one turn of +affairs that utterly and completely mystified him was Mr. Sheldon's +sanction of the engagement between Valentine and Charlotte. This was a +mystery for which he could for some time find no solution. + +"Sheldon will try to establish his stepdaughter's claim to the fortune; +that is clear. But why does he allow her to throw herself away on a +penniless adventurer like Hawkehurst? If she were to marry him before +recovering the Haygarth estate, she would recover it as his wife, and the +fortune would be thrown unprotected into his hands." + +More deliberate reflection cast a faint light upon Philip Sheldon's +motives for so quixotic a course. + +"The girl had fallen in love with Val. It was too late to prevent that. +She is of age, and can marry whom she pleases. By showing himself opposed +to her engagement with Val, he might have hurried her into rebellion, and +an immediate marriage. By affecting to consent to the engagement, he +would, on the contrary, gain time, and the advantage of all those chances +that are involved in the lapse of time." + +Within a few days of Christmas came the following letter from M. +Fleurus:-- + + +_From Jacques Rousseau Fleurus to Horatio Paget_. + +Hotel de la Pucelle, place Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 21st December, 186--. + +MONSIEUR,--After exertions incalculable, after labours herculean, I come +to learn something of your Susan Meynell,--more, I come to learn of her +marriage. But I will begin at the beginning of things. The labours, the +time, the efforts, the courage, the patience, the--I will say it without +to blush--the genius which this enterprise has cost me, I will not +enlarge upon. There are things which cannot tell themselves. To commence, +I will tell you how I went to Rouen, how I advertised in the journals of +Rouen, and asked among the people of Rouen--at shops, at hotels, by the +help of my allies, the police, by means which you, in your inexperience +of this science of research, could not even figure to yourself--always +seeking the trace of this woman Meynell. It was all pain lost. Of this +woman Meynell in Rouen there was no trace. + +In the end I enraged myself. "Imbecile!" I said to myself, "why seek in +this dull commercial city, among this heavy people, for that which thou +shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? As the rivers go to the +ocean, so flow all the streams of human life to the one great central +ocean of humanity--PARIS! It is there the Alpha and the Omega--there the +mighty heart through which the blood of all the body must be pumped, and +is pumping always," I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the +sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in whose verse I find an echo of +my own soul, and whose compositions I flatter myself I could have +surpassed, if I had devoted to the Muses the time and the powers which I +have squandered on a _vilain_ metier, that demands the genius of a +Talleyrand, and rewards with the crust of an artisan. + +In Paris, then, I will seek the woman Meynell, and to Paris I go. In my +place an inexperienced person would advertise in the most considerable +papers; would invite Susan Meynell to hear of something to her +advantage; and would bring together a crowd of false Susan Meynells, +greedy to obtain the benefice. Me, I do nothing in this style there. On +the contrary, in the most obscure little journals of Paris I publish a +modest little advertisement as from the brother of Susan Meynell, who +implores his sister to visit him on his deathbed. + +Here are follies, you will say. Since Susan Meynell is dead it is thirty +years, and her brother is dead also. Ah, how you are dull, you insulars, +and how impossible for your foggy island to produce a Fouche, a Canler, a +genius of police, a Columbus of the subterranean darknesses of your city. + +The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead; and who will answer +that letter, think you? Some good Christian soul who has pity for the +sick man, and who will not permit him to languish in waiting the sister +who will come to him never. For us of the Roman Catholic religion the +duty of charity is paramount. You of the Anglican faith--bah, how you are +cold, how you are hard, how you are unpitiable! + +My notice appears once, my notice appears twice, three times, four times, +many times. I occupy myself about my other business, and I wait. I do not +wait unusefully. In effect, a letter arrives at last at the address of +the dying, from a lady who knew Susan Meynell _before her marriage with +M. Lenoble._ + +Think you not that to me this was a moment of triumph? _Before her +marriage with M. Lenoble!_ Those words appear under my eyes in the +writing of the unknown lady. "It is found!" I cry to myself; and then I +hasten myself to reply to the unknown lady. Will she permit me to see +her? + +With all politeness I make the request; with all politeness it is +answered. The lady calls herself Mademoiselle Servin. She resides in the +street Grande-Mademoiselle, at the corner of the Place Lauzun. It is of +all the streets of Paris the most miserable. One side is already removed. +In face of the windows of those houses that still stand they are making a +new Boulevard. Behind they are pulling down edifices of all kinds in the +formation of a new square. At the side there is a yawning chasm between +two tall houses, through which they pierce a new street. One sees the +interior of many rooms rising one above another for seven stories. Here +the gay hangings of an apartment of little master; there the still +gaudier decoration of a boudoir of these ladies. High above these +luxurious salons--ah, but how much more near to the skies!--one sees the +poor grey paper, blackened and smoky, of a garret of sempstress, or +workman, and the hearths black, deserted. These interiors thus exposed +tighten me the heart. It is the autopsy of the domestic hearth. + +I find the Mademoiselle Servin an old lady, grey and wan. The house where +she now resides is the house which she has inhabited five-and-thirty +years. They talk of pulling it down, and to her the idea of leaving it is +exquisite pain. She is alone, a teacher of music. She has seen +proprietors come and go. The _pension_ has changed mistresses many times. +Students of law and of medicine have come and passed like the shadows of +a magic lantern; but this poor soul has remained still in her little room +on the fourth, and has kept always her little old piano. + +It was here she knew Susan Meynell, and a young Frenchman who became in +love with her, for she was beautiful like the angels, this lady said to +me. + +Until we meet for all details. Enough that I come to discover where the +marriage took place, that I come to obtain a copy of the register, and +that I do all things in rule. Enough that the marriage is a good +marriage--a regular marriage, and that I have placed myself already in +communication with the heir of that marriage, who resides within some few +leagues of this city. + +My labours, my successes I will not describe. It must that they will be +recompensed in the future. I have dispensed much money during these +transactions. + +Agree, monsieur, that I am your devoted servitor, + +JACQUES ROUSSEAU FLEURUS. + + * * * * * + +It was in consequence of the receipt of this missive that the Captain +trusted himself to the winds and waves in the cheerless December weather. +He was well pleased to find that M. Fleurus had made discoveries so +important; but he had no idea of letting that astute practitioner absorb +all the power into his own hands. + +"I must see Susan Meynell's heir," he said to himself; "I must give him +clearly to understand that to me he owes the discovery of his claims, and +that in this affair the Frenchman Fleurus is no more than a paid agent." + + + + +Book the Fourth. + + + +GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +HALCYON DAYS. + +Once having offered up the fondest desires of her own heart on the +shrine of duty, Diana Paget was not a person to repent herself of the +pious sacrifice. After that Christmas night on which she had knelt at +Charlotte's feet to confess her sad secret, and to resign all claim to +the man she had loved so foolishly, so tenderly, with such a romantic +and unselfish devotion, Miss Paget put away all thought of the past from +her heart and mind. Heart and mind seemed empty and joyless without +those loved tenants, though the tenants had been only fair wraiths of +dreams that were dead. There was a sense of something missing in her +life--a blank, dull calm, which was at first very painful. But for +Charlotte's sake she was careful to hide all outward token of +despondency, and the foolish grief, put down by so strong a hand, was +ere long well-nigh stifled. + +Those dark days which succeeded Christmas were a period of halcyon peace +for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover came to the villa when he +pleased, but was still careful not to encroach on the license allowed +him. Once a week he permitted himself the delight of five-o'clock tea in +Mrs. Sheldon's drawing-room, on which occasions he brought Charlotte all +the news of his small literary world, and a good deal of useful +information out of the books he had been reading. When Mr. Sheldon +pleased to invite him to dinner on Sunday he gladly accepted the +invitation, and this Sunday dinner became in due course an established +institution. + +"You may as well make this your home on a Sunday," said Mr. Sheldon one +day, with careless cordiality; "I dare say you find Sunday dull in your +lodgings." + +"Yes, papa," cried Charlotte, "he does find it very dull--dreadfully +dull--don't you, Valentine?" + +And she regarded him with that pretty, tender, almost motherly look, +which young ladies who are engaged are apt to bestow on their affianced +lovers. + +Miss Halliday was very grateful to her stepfather for his kindness to her +landless adorer, and showed her appreciation of his conduct in many +pretty little caressing ways, which would have been infinitely bewitching +to a person of sentiment. + +Unfortunately Mr. Sheldon was not sentimental, and any exhibition of +feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were +times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as +from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear--what was it that +showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that +strange look was, it departed too quickly for analysis; and the +stockbroker thanked his stepdaughter for her little affectionate +demonstration with his wonted smile--the smile he smiled on Change, the +smile which was sometimes on his lips when his mind was a nest of +scorpions. + +To Valentine, in these rosy hours, life seemed full of hope and +brightness. He transferred his goods and chattels from Omega Street, +Chelsea, to the pleasant lodging in the Edgware Road, where he was nearer +Charlotte, and out of the way of his late patron Captain Paget, in the +event of that gentleman's return from the Continent. + +Fortune favoured him. The gaiety of heart which came with his happiness +lent a grace to his pen. Pleasant thoughts and fancies bedecked his +pages. He saw everything in the rosy light of love and beauty, and there +was a buoyant freshness in all he wrote. The Pegasus might be but a +common hackney, but the hack was young and fresh, and galloped gaily as +he scented the dewy morning air. It is not every poet whose Pegasus +clears at a bound a space as wide as all that waste of land and sea the +watchman views from his tall tower on the rock. + +Mr. Hawkehurst's papers on Lauzun, Brummel, Sardanapalus, Rabelais, Lord +Chesterfield, Erasmus, Beau Nash, Apelles, Galileo, and Philip of +Orleans, were in demand, and the reading public wondered at this prodigy +of book-making. He had begun to save money, and had opened a deposit +account at the Unitas Bank. How he gloated over the deposit receipts in +the stillness of the night, when he added a fresh one to his store! When +he had three, for sums amounting in all to forty pounds, he took them to +Charlotte, and she looked at them, and he looked at them, as if the poor +little bits of printed paper had been specimens of virgin ore from some +gold mine newly discovered by Mr. Hawkehurst. And then these foolish +lovers kissed each other, as William Lee and his wife may have embraced +after the penniless young student had perfected his invention of the +stocking-frame. + +"Forty pounds!" exclaimed Miss Halliday, "all won by your pen, and your +poor fingers, and your poor, poor head! How it must ache after a long +day's work! How clever you must be, Valentine!" + +"Yes, dear; amazingly clever. Clever enough to know that you are the +dearest girl in Christendom." + +"Don't talk nonsense, sir! You are not clever enough to have the +privilege of doing that yet awhile. I mean, how learned you must be to +know such lots of things, all about Erasmus, and Galileo, and--" + +"No, my darling, not Erasmus and Galileo. I knew all about Erasmus last +week; but I am working at my paper on Galileo now, an exhaustive review +of all the books that were ever written on the subject, in ten pages. I +don't ask other people to remember what I write, you know, my dear, and I +don't pledge myself to remember it. That sort of thing won't keep. There +is a kind of sediment, no doubt, in one's note-book; but the +effervescence of that vintage goes off rather quickly." + +"I only know that you are a very clever person, and that one obtains an +immensity of information from your writings," said Charlotte. + +"Yes, dearest, there is a kind of wine that must be made into negus for +such pretty little topers as you--the 'Wine of Cyprus,' as Mrs. Browning +called it. It is better for pretty girls to have the negus than to have +nothing, or only weak home-brewed stuff that results in head-ache. My +dearest, Fate has been very good to me, and I love my profession of +letters. I am sure that of all educational processes there is none better +than book-making; and the man who begins by making books must be a dolt, +dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by writing them. So you may yet +hope to see the morning that shall make your Valentine famous--for a +fortnight. What man can hope to be famous for _more_ than a fortnight in +such a railroad age as this?" + +During this halcyon period, in which Mr. Hawkehurst cultivated +alternately the society of the Muses and his mistress, he saw little or +nothing of George Sheldon. He had washed his hands of all share in the +work of establishing Charlotte Halliday's claim to the Reverend John +Haygarth's thousands. Indeed, since that interview in which Philip +Sheldon had made so light of his stepdaughter's chances, and ratified his +consent to her marriage with so humble a literary adventurer as himself, +Mr. Hawkehurst had come to consider the Haygarthian inheritance as +altogether a visionary business. If it were certain, or even probable, +that Charlotte was to inherit a hundred thousand pounds, was it likely +that Mr. Sheldon would encourage such an alliance? This question Mr. +Hawkehurst always answered in the negative; and as days and weeks went +by, and he heard no more of the Haygarth fortune, the idea of Charlotte's +wealth became more and more shadowy. + +If there were anything doing in this matter, the two brothers were now +working together, and George had no further need of Valentine's help. + +The two brothers were not working entirely together. Philip Sheldon had +taken the matter into his own strong hand, and George found it very +difficult to hold an inch of ground against that formidable antagonist. +The papers and information which George had boasted of to Valentine, and +the possession whereof was, as he asserted, the very keystone of the +arch, proved to be of such small account that he ultimately consented to +hand them over to his brother on the payment of expenses out of pocket, +and a bonus of one hundred and fifty pounds, together with a written +undertaking from Miss Halliday to pay him the fifth share of any fortune +recovered by means of those papers. + +This undertaking had been executed in the easiest manner. + +"My brother has taken it into his wise head that there is some unclaimed +stock standing in your grandfather's name which you are entitled to, +Lotta," Mr. Sheldon said one morning; "and he wants to recover the amount +for you, on condition of receiving a clear fifth when the sum is +recovered. Have you any objection to sign such an undertaking?" + +"Dear papa, how can I object?" cried Charlotte gaily. "Why, stocks are +money, are they not? How fortunate we are, and how rich we are getting!" + +"We!" + +"Valentine and I," murmured the girl, blushing. "I cannot help thinking +of him when any windfall of good fortune comes to me. What do you think, +papa? He has saved forty pounds in little more than three months--all +earned by his pen! + +"Behold +The arch-enchanter's wand! Itself a nothing; +But taking sorcery from the master-hand +To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike +The loud earth breathless!" + +And Miss Halliday spouted the glowing lines of the noble dramatist with +charming enthusiasm. She signed the required undertaking without looking +at it, and it was duly witnessed by her stepfather. + +"In your talk with your mother and Valentine, I should advise you to be +as silent about this small business as about your own little fortune," +Mr. Sheldon remarked presently. + +"Mustn't I tell Valentine?" cried Charlotte, making a wry face; "I should +so like to tell him--just about these stocks. I daresay _he_ knows what +stocks are; and it would be such cheering news for him, after he has +worked his poor brain so for that forty pounds. I don't so much care +about telling poor mamma; for she does exclaim and wonder so about +things, that it is quite fatiguing to hear her. But please let me tell +Valentine?" + +Miss Halliday pursed-up her lips and offered her stepfather one of those +kisses which she had of late been prompted to bestow on him out of the +gratitude of a heart overflowing with girlish joy. He took the kiss as he +might have taken a dose of medicine, but did not grant the request +preferred by it. + +"If you want to be a fool, you can tell your lover of this windfall; but +if you wish to prove yourself a sensible girl, you will hold your tongue. +He has saved forty pounds by hard work in the last three months, you say: +do you think he would have saved forty pence if he had known that you had +five thousand pounds at his disposal? I know that class of men; look at +Goldsmith, the man who wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield," and "Rasselas," +and "Clarissa Harlowe," and so on. I have read somewhere that he never +wrote except under coercion--that is to say, want of money." + +Charlotte acknowledged the wisdom of this argument, and submitted. She +was not what was called a strong-minded woman; and, indeed, strength of +mind is not a plant indigenous to the female nature, but an exceptional +growth developed by exceptional circumstances. In Charlotte's life there +had been nothing exceptional, and she was in all things soft and womanly, +ready to acknowledge, and to be guided by, the wisdom of her seniors. So +Valentine heard nothing of the undertaking executed by his lady-love. + +After this, Mr. Sheldon took counsel's opinion, and set to work in real +earnest to recover the estate of the deceased John Haygarth from the +yawning jaws of that tame but all-devouring monster, the Crown. The work +was slow, and the dry as dust details thereof need not be recorded here. +It had but just begun when Horatio Paget suddenly returned from his +Continental expedition, and established himself once more in the Omega +Street lodgings. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY. + +Captain Paget's return was made known to the Sheldon circle by a letter +from the returning wanderer to his daughter. The Captain was laid up with +rheumatic gout, and wrote quite piteously to implore a visit from Diana. +Miss Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her +side, even to this _pere prodigue_, obeyed the summons promptly, with the +full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner. + +"And if you'd like to take your papa a bottle of Mr. Sheldon's old port, +Diana, remember it's at your disposal. I'm sure I've heard people say +that old port is good for the gout--or perhaps, by the bye, what I heard +was that it _wasn't_ good. I know old port and gout seem to run together +in my head somehow. But if there's anything in the house your papa would +like, Diana--wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet off the +spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an evening, or a new +novel--surely one couldn't forfeit one's subscription by lending a book +to a non-subscribing invalid?" + +While Georgy was suggesting the loan of almost every portable object in +the house as a specific for Captain Paget's gout, Charlotte sent for a +cab and made things smooth for her friend's departure. She wrapped her +warmly against the February blast, and insisted upon going out to see her +seated in the cab, whereby she offered to the pedestrians of that +neighbourhood a seraphic vision of loveliness with tumbled hair. +Charlotte had been always delightful, but Charlotte engaged to Valentine +Hawkehurst was a creature of supernal sweetness and brightness--a radiant +ministering angel, hovering lightly above a world too common for her foot +to rest upon. + +Miss Paget found her father suffering from a by no means severe attack of +a respectable family gout, a little peevish from the effects of this +affliction, but not at all depressed in mind. He had, indeed, the manner +of a man with whom things are going pleasantly. There was a satisfaction +in his tone, a placidity in his face, except when distorted for the +moment by a twinge of pain, that were new to Diana, who had not been +accustomed to behold the brighter side of her father's disposition. He +seemed grateful for his daughter's visit, and received her with unwonted +kindness of manner. + +"You have come very promptly, my dear, and I am gratified by your early +compliance with my request," he said with dignified affection, after he +had given his daughter the kiss of greeting. "I was a great sufferer last +night, Diana, a great sufferer, a prisoner to this chair, and the woman +below attempted to send me up a dinner--_such_ a dinner! One would think +a very small degree of education necessary for the stewing of a kidney, +but the things that woman gave me last night were like morsels of stewed +leather. I am not an epicure, Diana; but with such a constitution as +mine, good cooking is a vital necessity. Life in lodgings for a man of my +age is a sore trial, my dear. I wish you were well married, Diana, and +could give your father a humble corner at your fireside." + +Diana smiled. It was a somewhat bitter smile; and there was scorn of +herself, as well as scorn of her father in that bitterness. + +"I am not the sort of person to marry well, papa," she said. + +"Who knows? You are handsomer than nine-tenths of the women who marry +well." + +"No, papa; that is your sanguine manner of looking at your own property. +And even if I were married to some one to whom I might give obedience and +duty, and all that kind of thing, in exchange for a comfortable home, as +they say in the advertisements, would you be content with a peaceful +corner by my fireside? Do you think you would never pine for clubs and +gaming-tables--nay, even for creditors to--to diplomatize with, and +difficulties to surmount?" + +"No, my dear. I am an old man; the clubs and gaming-houses have done with +me, and I with them. I went to see a man at Arthur's a few months ago. I +had written to him on a little matter of business--in fact, to be candid +with you, my love, for the loan of a five-pound note--and I called at the +club for his reply. I caught sight of my face in a distant glass as I was +waiting in the strangers' room, and I thought I was looking at a ghost. +There comes a time towards the close of a long troublesome life in which +a man begins to feel like a ghost. His friends are gone, and his money is +gone, his health is gone, his good looks are gone; and the only mistake +seems to be that the man himself should be left behind. I remember an +observation of Lord Chesterfield's: 'Lord ---- and I have been dead for +the last two years, but we don't tell anyone so,' he said; and there are +few old men who couldn't say the same. But I am not down-hearted to-day, +my dear. No, the habit of hoping has never quite deserted me; and it is +only now and then that I take a dismal view of life. Come, my love, lay +aside your bonnet and things. Dear me! what a handsome black silk dress, +and how well you look in it!" + +"It is a present from Charlotte, papa. She has a very liberal allowance +of pocket-money, and is generosity itself. I don't like to take so much +from her, but I only wound her by a refusal." + +"Of course, my dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no +mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any +booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish +reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always +pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"--Diana winced as she remembered +her shabby hat and threadbare gown at Foretdechene--"and I am especially +pleased to see you elegantly attired this evening, as I expect a +gentleman by-and-by." + +"A gentleman, papa!" exclaimed Miss Paget, with considerable surprise; "I +thought that you had sent for me because you were ill and depressed and +lonely." + +"Well, yes, Diana, I certainly am ill; and I suppose it is scarcely +unnatural that a father should wish to see his only daughter." + +Diana was silent. A father's wish to see his daughter was indeed natural +and common; but that Captain Paget, who in no period of his daughter's +life had evinced for her the common affection of paternity, should be +seized all of a sudden with a yearning for her society, was somewhat +singular. But Diana's nature had been ennobled and fortified by the +mental struggle and the impalpable sacrifice of the last few months, and +she was in nowise disposed to repel any affectionate feeling of her +father's even at this eleventh hour. + +"_He_ tells us the eleventh hour is not too late," she thought. "If it is +not too late in the sight of that Divine Judge, shall it be thought too +late by an erring creature like me?" + +After a few minutes of thoughtful silence, she knelt down by her father's +chair and kissed him. + +"My dear father," she murmured softly, "believe me, I am very pleased to +think you should wish to see me. I will come to you whenever you like to +send for me. I am glad not to be a burden to you; but I should wish to be +a comfort when I can." + +The Captain shed his stock tear. It signified something nearer akin to +real emotion than usual. + +"My dear girl," he said, "this is very pleasing, very pleasing +indeed. The day may come--I cannot just now say when--and events may +arise--which--the nature of which I am not yet in a position to indicate +to you--but the barren fig-tree may not be always fruitless. In its old +age the withered trunk may put forth fresh branches. We will say no more +of this, my love; and I will only remark that you may not go unrequited +for any affection bestowed on your poor old father." + +Diana smiled, and this time it was a pensive rather than a bitter smile. +She had often heard her father talk like this before. She had often heard +these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate +future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a +schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope +and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle +to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since she had known him. + +So she set little value on his hopeful talk of this evening, but was +content to see him in good spirits. He contemplated her admiringly as she +knelt by his easy-chair, and smoothed the shining coils of her dark hair +with a gentle hand, as he looked downward at the thoughtful face--proud +and grave, but not ungentle. + +"You are a very handsome girl, Diana," he murmured, as much to himself as +to his daughter; "yes, very handsome. Egad, I had no idea how handsome!" + +"What has put such a fancy into your head to-night, papa?" asked Diana, +laughing. "I do not believe in the good looks you are so kind as to +attribute to me. When I see my face in the glass I perceive a pale gloomy +countenance that is by no means pleasing." + +"You may be out of spirits when you look in the glass. I hope you are not +unhappy at Bayswater." + +"Why should I be unhappy, papa? No sister was ever kinder or more loving +than Charlotte Halliday is to me. I should he very ungrateful to +Providence as well as to her if I did not appreciate such affection. How +many lonely girls, like me, go through life without picking up a sister?" + +"Yes, you are right, my dear. Those Sheldon people have been very useful +to you. They are not the kind of people I should have wished a daughter +of mine to be _live_ with, if I were in the position my birth entitles me +to occupy; but as I am not in that position, I submit. That black silk +becomes you admirably. And now, my love, be so kind as to ring the bell +for lights and tea." + +They had been sitting in the firelight--the mystic magical capricious +firelight--which made even that tawdry lodging-house parlour seem a +pleasant chamber. The tea-tray was brought, and candles. Diana seated +herself at the table, and made tea with the contents of a little +mahogany caddy. + +"Don't pour out the tea just yet," said the Captain; "I expect a +gentleman. I don't suppose he'll take tea, but it will look more civil to +wait for him." + +"And who is this mysterious gentleman, papa?" + +"A Frenchman; a man I met while I was abroad." + +"_Really_ a gentleman?" + +"Certainly, Diana," replied her father, with offended dignity. + +"Do you think I should admit any person to my friendship who is not a +gentleman? My business relations I am powerless to govern; but friendship +is a different matter. There is no man more exclusive than Horatio Paget. +M. Lenoble is a gentleman of ancient lineage and amiable character." + +"And rich, I suppose, papa?" asked Diana. She thought that her father +would scarcely speak of the gentleman in a tone so profoundly respectful +if he were not rich. + +"Yes, Diana. M. Lenoble is master of a very fair estate, and is likely to +be much richer before he dies." + +"And he has been kind to you, papa?" + +"Yes, he has shown me hospitality during my residence in Normandy. You +need not speak of him to your friends the Sheldons." + +"Not even to Charlotte?" + +"Not even to Charlotte. I do not care to have my affairs discussed by +that class of people." + +"But, dear papa, why make a mystery about so unimportant a matter. + +"I do not make a mystery; but I hate gossip. Mrs. Sheldon is an +incorrigible gossip, and I daresay her daughter is no better." + +"Charlotte is an angel, papa." + +"That is very possible. But I beg that you will refrain from discussing +my friend M. Lenoble in her angelic presence." + +"As you please, papa," said Diana gravely. She felt herself bound to obey +her father in this small matter; but the idea of this mystery and secrecy +was very unwelcome to her. It implied that her father's acquaintance with +this Frenchman was only a part of some new scheme. It was no honest +friendship, which the Captain might be proud to own, glad to show the +world that in these days of decadence he could still point to a friend. +It was only some business alliance, underhand and stealthy; a social +conspiracy, that must needs be conducted in darkness. + +"Why did papa summon me here if he wants his acquaintance with this man +kept secret?" she asked herself; and the question seemed unanswerable. + +She pictured this M. Lenoble to herself--a wizened, sallow-faced +Macchiavellian individual, whose business in England must needs be +connected with conspiracy, treason, commercial fraud, anything or +everything stealthy and criminal. + +"I wish you would let me go back to Bayswater before this gentleman +comes, papa," she said presently. "I heard it strike seven just now, and +I know I shall be expected early. I can come again whenever you like." + +"No, no, my love; you must stop to see my friend. And now tell me a +little about the Sheldons. Has anything been stirring since I saw them +last?" + +"Nothing whatever, papa. Charlotte is very happy; she always had a +happy disposition, but she is gayer than ever since her engagement +with--Valentine." + +"What an absurd infatuation!" muttered the Captain. + +"And he--Valentine--is very good, and works very hard at his literary +profession--and loves her very dearly." + +It cost her an effort to say this even now, even now when she fancied +herself cured of that folly which had once been so sweet to her. To speak +of him like this--to put him away out of her own life, and contemplate +him as an element in the life of another--could not be done without some +touch of the old anguish. + +There was a loud double-knock at the street-door as she said this, and a +step sounded presently in the passage; a quick, firm tread. There was +nothing stealthy about that, at any rate. + +"My friend Lenoble," said the Captain; and in the next instant a +gentleman entered the room, a gentleman who was in every quality the +opposite of the person whom Diana had expected to see. + +These speculative pictures are seldom good portraits. Miss Paget had +expected to find her father's ally small and shrivelled, old and ugly, +dried-up and withered in the fiery atmosphere of fraud and conspiracy; in +outward semblance a monkey, in soul a tiger. And instead of this +obnoxious creature there burst into the room a man of four-and-thirty +years of age, tall, stalwart, with a fair frank face, somewhat browned by +summer suns; thick auburn hair and beard, close trimmed and cropped in +the approved Gallic fashion--clear earnest blue eyes, and a mouth whose +candour and sweetness a moustache could not hide. Henry of Navarre, +before the white lilies of France had dazzled his eyes with their fatal +splendour, before the court of the Medici had taught the Bearnois to +dissemble, before the sometime Protestant champion had put on that +apparel of stainless white in which he went forth to stain his soul with +the sin of a diplomatic apostasy. + +Such a surprise as this makes a kind of crisis in the eventless record of +a woman's life. Diana found herself blushing as the stranger stood near +the door awaiting her father's introduction. She was ashamed to think of +the wrong her imagination had done him. + +"My daughter, Diana Paget--M. Lenoble. I have been telling Diana how much +I owed to your hospitality during my stay in Normandy," continued the +Captain, with his grandest air, "I regret that I can only receive you in +an apartment quite unworthy the seigneur of Cotenoir.--A charming place, +my dear Diana, which I should much like you to see on some future +occasion.--Will you take some tea, Lenoble?--Diana, a cup of tea.--The +Pagets are a fallen race, you see, my dear sir, and a cup of tea in a +lodging-house parlour is the best entertainment I can give to a friend. +The Cromie Pagets of Hertfordshire will give you dinner in gold plate, +with a footman standing behind the chair of every guest; but our branch +is a younger and a poorer one, and I, among others, am paying the price +of youthful follies." + +Gustave Lenoble looked sympathetic, but the glance of sympathy was +directed to Diana, and not to the male representative of the younger +Pagets. To pity the distressed damsel was an attribute of the Lenoble +mind; and Gustave had already begun to pity Miss Paget, and to wonder +what her fate in life would be, with no better protector than a father +who was confessedly a pauper. He saw that the young lady was very +handsome, and he divined, from some indefinable expression of her face, +that she was proud; and as he thought of his own daughters, and their +easy life and assured future, the contrast seemed to him very cruel. + +Chivalrous as the house of Lenoble might be by nature, he could scarcely +have felt so keen an interest in Captain Paget's daughter at the first +glance, if his sympathies had not been already enlisted for her. The +noble Horatio, though slow to act a father's part, had shown himself +quick to make capital out of his daughter's beauty and virtues when the +occasion offered. + +In his intercourse with the seigneur of Cotenoir, which had developed +from a mere business acquaintance into friendship, Captain Paget had +discoursed with much eloquence upon the subject of his motherless +daughter; and M. Lenoble, having daughters of his own, also motherless, +lent him the ear of sympathy. + +"I have heard much of you, Miss Paget," said Gustave presently, "and of +your devotion to your father. He has no more favourite theme than your +goodness." + +Diana blushed, and Diana's father blushed also. That skilled diplomatist +felt the awkwardness of the situation, and was prompt to the rescue. + +"Yes," he said, "my daughter has been a heroine. There are Antigones, +sir, who show their heroic nature by other service than the leading to +and fro of a blind father. From the earliest age my poor child has +striven to stand alone; too proud, too noble to be a burden on a parent +whose love would have given all, but whose means could give but little. +And now she comes to me from her home among strangers, to soothe my hour +of pain and infirmity. I trust your daughters may prove as worthy of your +love, M. Lenoble." + +"They are very dear girls," answered the Frenchman; "but for them life +has been all sunshine. They have never known a sorrow except the death of +their mother. It is the storm that tests the temper of the tree. I wish +they might prove as noble in adversity as Miss Paget has shown herself." + +This was more than Diana could bear without some kind of protest. + +"You must not take papa's praises _au pied de la lettre_, M. Lenoble," +she said; "I have been by no means brave or patient under adversity. +There are troubles which one must bear. I have borne mine somehow; but I +claim no praise for having submitted to the inevitable." + +This was spoken with a certain noble pride which impressed Gustave more +than all the father's florid eloquence had done. After this the +conversation became less personal. M. Lenoble talked of England. It was +not his first visit; but he had only the excursionist's knowledge of the +British Isles. + +"I have been to Scotland," he said. "Your Scotland is grand, +mountainous--all that there is of the most savage and poetic. It is a +Switzerland lined with Brittany. But that which most speaks to the heart +of a stranger is the peaceful beauty of your English landscape." + +"You like England, M. Lenoble?" said Diana. + +"Have I not reason? My mother was English. I was only five years old when +I lost her. She went out of my life like a dream; but I can still recall +a faint shadow of her face--an English face--a countenance of placid +sadness, very sweet and tender. But why do I talk of these things?" + +On this the Frenchman's talk took a gayer turn. This M. Lenoble showed +himself a lively and agreeable companion. He talked of Normandy, his +daughters and their convent, his little son at Rouen, his aunt Cydalise, +the quiet old lady at Beaubocage; his grandfather, his grandmother, the +old servants, and everything familiar and dear to him. He told of his +family history with boyish candour, untainted by egotism, and seemed much +pleased by Diana's apparent interest in his unstudied talk. He was quite +unconscious that the diplomatic Horatio was leading him on to talk of +these things, with a view to making the conversation supremely +interesting to him. That arch diplomatist knew that there is nothing a +man likes better than talking of his own affairs, if he can have a decent +excuse for such discourse. + +The clock struck nine while Diana was listening, really interested. This +glimpse of a life so far apart from her own was a relief, after the +brooding introspective reveries which of late had constituted so large a +portion of her existence. She started up at the sound of the clock. + +"What now, Cinderella?" cried her father. "Have you stopped beyond your +time, and will your fairy godmother be angry?" + +"No one will be angry, papa; but I did not mean to stay so late. I am +sorry your description of Normandy has been so interesting, M. Lenoble." + +"Come and see Vevinord and Cotenoir, and you will judge for yourself. The +town-hall of Vevinord is almost as fine as that of Louvain; and we have a +church that belongs to the time of Dagobert." + +"She shall see them before long," said the Captain; "I shall have +business in Rouen again before the next month is out; and if my daughter +is a good girl, I will take her over there with me." + +Diana stared at her father in utter bewilderment. What could be the +meaning of this sudden display of affection? + +"I should not be free to go with you, papa, even if you were able to take +me," she replied, somewhat coldly; "I have other duties." + +She felt assured that there was some lurking motive, some diplomatic art +at the bottom of the Captain's altered conduct, and she could not +altogether repress her scorn. The astute Horatio saw that he had gone a +little too far, and that his only child was not of the stuff to be +moulded at will by his dexterous hands. + +"You will come and see me again, Diana?" he said in a pleading tone: "I +am likely to be a prisoner in this room for a week or more." + +"Certainly, papa; I will come if you wish it. When shall I come?" + +"Well, let me see--to-day is Thursday; can you come on Monday?" + +"Yes, I will come on Monday." + +A cab was procured, and Miss Paget was conducted to that vehicle by her +new acquaintance, who showed a gallant anxiety for her comfort on the +journey, and was extremely careful about the closing of the windows. She +arrived at Bayswater before ten, but being forbidden to talk of M. +Lenoble, could give but a scanty account of her evening. + +"And was your papa kind, dear?" asked Charlotte, "and did he seem pleased +to see you?" + +"He was much kinder and more affectionate than usual, Lotta dear; so much +so, that he set me wondering. Now, if I were as confiding and eager to +think well of people as you are, I should be quite delighted by this +change. As it is, I am only mystified. I should be very glad if my father +and I could be drawn closer together; very glad if my influence could +bring about an amendment in his life." + +While Miss Paget was discussing her father's affectionate and novel +behaviour, the noble Horatio was meditating, by his solitary hearth, upon +the events of the evening. + +"I'm half-inclined to think he's hit already," mused the Captain. "I must +not allow myself to be deluded by manner. A Frenchman's gallantry rarely +means much; but Lenoble is one of those straightforward fellows whose +thoughts may be read by a child. He certainly seemed pleased with her; +interested and sympathetic, and all that kind of thing. And she is an +uncommonly handsome girl, and might marry any one if she had the +opportunity. I had no idea she was so handsome until to-night. I suppose +I never noticed her by candlelight before. By Jove! I ought to have made +her an actress, or singer, or something of that kind. And so I might, if +I'd known her face would light up as it does. I wish she wasn't so +impracticable--always cutting in with some awkward speech, that makes me +look like a fool, when, if she had an ounce of common sense, she might +see that I'm trying to make her fortune. Yes, egad, and such a fortune as +few girls drop into now-a-days! Some of your straitlaced church-going +people would call me a neglectful father to that girl, I daresay; but I +think if I succeed in making her the wife of Gustave Lenoble, I shall +have done my duty in a way that very few fathers can hope to surpass. +Such a high-principled fellow as Lenoble is too!--and _that_ is a +consideration." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I?" + +After that first summons to Chelsea, Diana went many times--twice and +three times a week--to comfort and tend her invalid father. Captain +Paget's novel regard for his only child seemed to increase with the +familiarity of frequent intercourse. "I have had very great pleasure in +making your acquaintance, my dear Diana," he said one day, in the course +of a _tete-a-tete_ with his daughter; "and I am charmed to find you +everything that a well-born and well-bred young woman ought to be. I am +sure you have excellent reason to be grateful to your cousin, Priscilla +Paget, for the excellent education you received in her abode; and you +have some cause to thank me for the dash and style imparted to your +carriage and manner by our foreign wanderings." + +The Captain said this with the air of a man who had accompanied his +daughter on the grand tour solely with a view to her intellectual +improvement. He really thought she had reason to be grateful to him for +those accidents of his nomadic life which had secured her a good accent +for French and German, and the art of putting on her shawl. + +"Yes, my dear child," he continued with dignity, "it affords me real +gratification to know you better. I need scarcely say that when you were +the associate of my pilgrimage, you were not of an age to be available as +a companion. To a man of the world like myself, a young person who has +not done growing must always savour somewhat of the schoolroom and the +nursery. I am not going to repeat the Byronic impertinence about +bread-and-butter; but the society of a girl of the hobbledehoy age is apt +to be insipid. You are now a young woman, and a young woman of whom any +father might with justice be proud." + +After a few such speeches as these, Diana began to think that it was just +possible her father might really experience some novel feeling of regard +for her. It might be true that his former coldness had been no more than +a prejudice against the awkwardness of girlhood. + +"I was shabby and awkward, I daresay, in those days," she thought; "and +then I was always asking papa for money to buy new clothes; and that may +have set him against me. And now that I am no burden upon him, and can +talk to him and amuse him, he may feel more kindly disposed towards me." + +There was some foundation for this idea. Captain Paget had felt himself +more kindly disposed towards his only child from the moment in which she +ceased to be an encumbrance upon him. Her sudden departure from +Foretdechene had been taken in very good part by him. + +"A very spirited thing for her to do, Val," he had said, when informed of +the fact by Mr. Hawkehurst; "and by far the best thing she could do, +under the circumstances." + +From that time his daughter had never asked him for a sixpence, and from +that time she had risen steadily in his estimation. But the feeling which +he now exhibited was more than placid approval; it was an affection at +once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his +daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence for +his declining years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a +sentiment inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical +assumption. Diana was, therefore, so much the more likely to be softened +and touched by it. + +She was softened, deeply touched by this late awakening of feeling. The +engagement of Valentine and Charlotte had left her own life very blank, +very desolate. It was not alone the man she loved who was lost to her; +Charlotte, the friend, the sister, seemed also slipping away from her. As +kind, as loving, as tender as of old, this dear friend and adopted sister +still might be, but no longer wholly her own. Over the hearts of the +purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt +to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has +descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will +burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's +supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly when the lamp is +shattered. + +For Charlotte, Valentine--and for Valentine, Charlotte--made the +sum-total of the universe at this time; or, at best, there was but a +small balance which included all the other cares and duties, affections +and pleasures, of life. Of this balance Diana had the lion's share; but +she felt that things had changed since those days of romantic school-girl +friendship in which Charlotte had talked of never marrying, and +travelling with her dearest friend Diana amongst all the beautiful scenes +they had read of, until they found the loveliest spot in the world, where +they would establish themselves in an ideal cottage, and live together +for the rest of their lives, cultivating their minds and their +flower-garden, working berlin-wool chairs for their ideal drawing-room, +and doing good to an ideal peasantry, who would be just poor enough to be +interesting, and sickly enough to require frequent gifts of calf's-foot +jelly and green tea. + +Those foolish dreams were done with now; and that other dream, of a life +to be spent with the reckless companion of her girlhood, was lost to +Diana Paget. There was no point to which she could look forward in the +future, no star to lure her onward upon life's journey. Her present +position was sufficiently comfortable; and she told herself that she must +needs be weak and wicked if she were not content with her lot. But beyond +the present she dared not look, so blank was the prospect--a desert, +without even the mirage; for her dreams and delusions were gone with her +hope. + +Possessed by such a sense of loneliness, it is scarcely strange if +there seemed to her a gleam of joy, a faint glimmer of hope, in the +newly awakened affection of her father. She began to believe him, and +to take comfort from the thought that he was drifting to a haven where +he might lie moored, with other battered old hulks of pirate and +privateer, inglorious and at rest. To work for him and succour him in his +declining years seemed a brighter prospect to this hopeless woman of +four-and-twenty than a future of lonely independence. "It is the nature +of woman to lean," says the masculine philosopher; but is it not rather +her nature to support and sustain, or else why to her is entrusted the +sublime responsibility of maternity? Diana was pleased to think that a +remorseful reprobate might be dependent on her toil, and owe his +reformation to her influence. She was indeed a new Antigone, ready to +lead him in his moral blindness to an altar of atonement more pure than +the ensanguined shrine of the Athenian Eumenides. + +Her visits to Omega Street were not entirely devoted to _tete-a-tetes_ +with her father. By reason of those coincidences which are so common to +the lives of some people, it generally happened that M. Lenoble dropped +in upon his invalid friend on the very day of Miss Paget's visit. M. +Lenoble was in London on business, and this business apparently +necessitated frequent interviews with Captain Paget. Of course such +interviews could not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was +wont, therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion +of the young lady's visit; and would even, with an inconsistent +gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay to its utmost limit. + +"It will always be time for my affairs, Miss Paget," he urged, "and I +know how your father values your society; and he well may value it. I +only hope my daughters will be as good to me, if I have the gout, +by-and-by." + +Diana had spent nearly a dozen evenings in Omega Street, and on each of +those evenings had happened to meet M. Lenoble. She liked him better on +every occasion of these accidental meetings. He was indeed a person whom +it was difficult for any one to dislike, and in the thirty-four years of +his life had never made an enemy. She had been pleased with him on the +first evening; his bright handsome face, his courteous reverence for her +sex--expressed in every word, every tone, every look--his sympathy with +all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, were calculated to charm +the coldest and most difficult of judges. Diana liked, and even admired +him, but it was from an abstract point of view. He seemed a creature as +remote from her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and +admired in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of her memory +to-morrow. + +There was only one point in connection with Gustave Lenoble which +occupied her serious thoughts; and this was the nature of his relations +with her father. + +This was a subject that sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the +future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her +father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster--now by one +species of falsehood and trickery, now by another--rarely incautious, +but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy +fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that +was spread for him? + +The talk of business, the frequent interviews, the evident elation of her +father's spirits, combined to assure her that some great scheme was in +progress, some commercial enterprise, perhaps not entirely dishonest--nay +even honest, when regarded from the sanguine speculator's point of view, +but involving the hazard of Gustave Lenoble's fortune. + +"It is quite as easy for my father to delude himself as it is for him to +delude others. This M. Lenoble is ignorant of English commerce, no doubt, +and will be ready to believe anything papa tells him. And he is so +candid, so trusting, it would be very hard if he were to be a loser +through his confidence in papa. His daughters, too; the hazard of his +fortune is peril to their future." Such doubts and fears, gradually +developed by reflection took stronger hold on Miss Paget's mind after +every fresh visit to Omega Street. She saw the Frenchman's light-hearted +confidence in all humanity, her father's specious manner and air of +quixotic honour. His sanguine tone, his excellent spirits, filled her +with intolerable alarm. Alas! when had she ever seen her father in good +spirits, except when some gentlemanly villany was in progress? + +Miss Paget endured this uneasiness of mind as long as she could, and then +determined to warn the supposed victim. She planned the mode of her +warning, and arranged for herself a diplomatic form which would reflect +the least possible discredit upon her father; and having once come to +this resolution, she was not slow to put it into effect. + +When her father was about to send for a cab to convey her back to +Bayswater, after her next visit to Omega Street, she surprised him by +intercepting his order. + +"There is a cab-stand in Sloane Square, papa," she said; "and if M. +Lenoble will be so kind as to take me there, I--I would rather get the +cab from the stand. The man charges more when he is fetched off the rank, +I believe." + +She could think of no better excuse for seeing Gustave alone than this +most sordid pretence. She blushed as she thought how mean a sound it must +have in the ears of the man for whose advantage she was plotting. Happily +M. Lenoble was not among the people who see nothing but meanness in the +desire to save sixpence. His aunt Cydalise had shown him the loveliness +of poverty; for there are vows of holy poverty that need no spoken +formula, and that are performed without the cloister. + +"Poor girl!" thought M. Lenoble; "I dare say even the cost of her coach +is a consideration with her; and one dare not pay the coachman." + +This was how Gustave read that blush of shame which for a moment dyed +Diana's cheek. Her father's was a very different reading. + +"The minx sees my game, and is playing into my hands," thought he. "So +demure as she is, too! I should never have supposed her capable of such +a clever manoeuvre to secure ten minutes' _tete-a-tete_ with an +eligible admirer." + +He bade his daughter good night with more than usual effusion. He began +to think that she might prove herself worthy of him after all. + +The district between Omega Street and Sloane Square is after dusk of all +places the most solitary. It is the border-land of Pimlico, or, to borrow +from Sidney Smith, the knuckle end of Belgravia. In these regions of +desolation and smoke-blackened stucco Diana and her companion were as +secure from the interruption of the jostling crowd as they might have +been in the primeval forests of Central America. + +Miss Paget's task was not a pleasant one. Shape her warning as she might, +it must reflect some discredit upon her father. He had of late been kind +to her; she felt this keenly to-night, and it seemed that the thing she +was about to do was a sort of parricide. Not against her father's life +was her cruel hand to be lifted; but her still more cruel tongue was to +slay her father's good name. + +"This M. Lenoble likes him and trusts him," she thought to herself. "What +a happiness for that poor broken-down old man to have so kind a friend! +And I am going to interfere in a manner that may put an end to this +friendship?" + +This is the shape which her thoughts assumed as she walked silently by +Gustave's side, with her hand lying lightly on his arm. He spoke to her +two or three times about the dulness of the neighbourhood, the coldness +of the night, or some other equally thrilling subject; but, finding by +her replies that she was thinking deeply, he made no further attempt at +conversation. + +"Poor child! she has some trouble on her mind, perhaps," he thought to +himself sadly, for his sympathy with this young lady was a very profound +feeling. This was the first occasion on which he had ever been alone +with her, and he wondered to find what a strange emotion was developed +by the novelty of the situation. He had married at twenty years of age, +and had never known those brief fancies or foolish passions which waste +the freshness of mind and heart. He had married a wife whom he never +learned to love; but his nature was so essentially a happy one, that he +had failed to discover the something wanting in his life. In all +relations--as grandson, husband, father, master--he had been "all simply +perfect," as Mademoiselle Cydalise pronounced him; and in a mind occupied +by cares for the welfare and happiness of others, he had never found that +blank which needed to be filled in order to make his own life completely +happy. Only of late, in his thirty-fourth year, had he come to the +knowledge of a feeling deeper than dutiful regard for an invalid wife, or +affectionate solicitude for motherless children; only of late had he felt +his heart stirred by a more thrilling emotion than that placid +resignation to the will of Providence which had distinguished his +courtship of Mademoiselle de Nerague. + +They had nearly reached Sloane Square before Diana took courage to broach +the subject so naturally repugnant to her. She had need to remember that +the welfare of M. Lenoble and all belonging to him might be dependent on +her fortitude. + +"M. Lenoble," she began at last, "I am going to say something I shall +find it most painful to utter, but which I feel it my duty to say to you. +I can only ask you to receive it in a generous spirit." + +"But, my dear Miss Paget, I pray you not to say anything that is +disagreeable to you. Why should you give yourself pain?--why--" + +"Because it is my duty to warn you of a danger which I know only too +well, and of which you may be quite ignorant. You are my father's friend, +M. Lenoble; and he has very few friends. I should be sorry if anything I +were to say should rob him of your regard." + +"Nothing that you say shall rob him of my friendship. But why should +you persist thus to say anything that is painful? What can you tell me +that I do not know, or that I cannot guess? Will you tell me that he is +poor? But I know it. That he is a broken-down gentleman? And that also +I know. What, then, would you tell me? That he has a daughter who is to +him a treasure without price? Ah, mademoiselle, what must I be if I did +not know that also?--I, who have contemplated that daughter so many +times--ah, so many!--when she could not know with what sympathy my eyes +watched her dutiful looks, with what profound emotion my heart +interpreted her life of affectionate sacrifice." + +There was a warmth, a tenderness in his tones which touched Diana's heart +as it had not been touched of late. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the full +meaning of those tender accents came home to her. The love that she had +once dreamed of from the lips of another spoke to her to-night in the +words of this stranger. The sympathy for which she had yearned long ago, +in the days of her wanderings with Valentine, was given to her to-night +without stint or measure. Unhappily it came too late; and it did not come +from the only lips which, as it seemed to her to-night, could make +sympathy precious or love divine. But to this lonely girl a good man's +affection seemed a treasure for which she must needs be deeply grateful. +It was something to discover that she could be loved. + +"I too," she said to herself,--"I, of whose presence Valentine is +scarcely conscious when he enters a room where Charlotte and I are +together; I, whom he greets day after day with the same careless words, +the same indifferent look; I, who might fade and waste day by day with +some slow disease, until I sank into the grave, before he would be +conscious of any change in my face,--is it possible that amongst the same +race of beings there can be any creature so widely different from +Valentine Hawkehurst as to love _me_?" + +This was the bitter complaint of her heart as she compared the tenderness +of this stranger with the indifference of the man to whom, for three long +years of her girlhood, she had given every dream, every thought, every +hope of her existence. She could not put him away from her heart all at +once. The weak heart still fondly clung to the dear familiar image. But +the more intensely she had felt the cold neglect of Valentine, the more +grateful to her seemed the unsought affection of Gustave Lenoble. + +"You know me as little as you know my father, M. Lenoble," she said, +after a long pause, during which they had walked to the end of the long +dull street, and were close to the square. "Let us go back a little way, +please; I have much more to say. I wish you to be my father's friend +always, but, if possible, without danger to yourself. My father is one of +those sanguine people who are always ready to embark in some new +enterprise, and who go on hoping and dreaming, after the failure of a +dozen schemes. He has no money, that I know of, to lose himself, and that +fact may make him, unconsciously, reckless of other people's money. I +have heard him speak of business relations with you, M. Lenoble, and it +is on that account I venture to speak so plainly. I do not want my poor +father to delude you, as he has often deluded himself. If you have +already permitted him to involve you in any speculation, I entreat you +to try to withdraw from it--to lose a little money, if necessary, rather +than to lose all. If you are not yet involved, let my warning save you +from any hazard." + +"My dear Miss Paget, I thank you a thousand times for your advice, your +noble thoughtfulness for others. But no, there is no hazard. The +business in which your father is occupied for me is not a speculation. It +involves no risk beyond the expenditure of a few thousand francs, which, +happily, I can afford to lose. I am not at liberty to tell you the nature +of the business in question, because I have promised your father to keep +that a secret. Dear young lady, you need have no fear for me. I am not a +rash speculator. The first years of my life were passed in extreme +poverty--the poverty that is near neighbour to starvation. That is a +lesson one cannot forget. How shall I thank you for your concern for +me?--so generous, so noble!" + +"It was only my duty to warn you of my poor father's weakness," replied +Diana. "If I needed thanks, your kindness to him is the only boon I could +ask. He has bitter need of a friend." + +"And he shall never lack one while I live, if only for your sake." The +last half of the sentence was spoken in lower tones than the first. Diana +was conscious of the lurking tenderness of those few words, and the +consciousness embarrassed her. Happily they had reached the end of the +quiet street by this time, and had emerged into the busier square. No +more was said till they reached the cab-stand, when Diana wished her +companion good night. + +"I am going back to Normandy in a week, Miss Paget; shall I see you again +before I leave England?" + +"I really don't know; our meetings are generally accidental, you see." + +"O yes, of course, always accidental," replied Gustave, smiling. + +"I am sorry you are going to leave London--for papa's sake." + +"And I, too, am sorry--for my own sake. But, you see, when one has +daughters, and a farm, and a chateau, one must be on the spot. I came to +England for one week only, and I have stayed six." + +"You have found so much to amuse you in London?" + +"Nay, mademoiselle, so much to interest me." + +"It is almost the same thing, is it not?" + +"A thousand times no! To be amused and to be interested--ah, what can be +so widely different as those two conditions of mind!" + +"Indeed! Good night, Mr. Lenoble. Please ask the cabman to drive as fast +as he can venture to do with consideration for his horse. I am afraid I +shall be late, and my friends will be anxious about me." + +"You will be late. You consider your friends at Bayswater, and you +consider even the cabman's horse. You are charity itself. Will you not +consider me a little also, Miss Paget?" + +"But how?" + +"Let me see you before I go back to Normandy. Your papa likes to see you +twice a week, I know. This is Monday night; will you come to see him on +Thursday?" + +"If he wishes it." + +"He does wish it. Ah, how he wishes it! You will come?" + +"If Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte can spare me." + +"They cannot spare you. No one can spare you. That cannot be. It +is amongst the things that are impossible. But they will have pity +upon--your father, and they will let you come." + +"Please ask the cabman to start. Indeed, I shall be late. Good night, +M. Lenoble." + +"Good night." + +He took her hand in his, and kissed it, with the grace of a Bayard. He +loved her, and took no trouble to conceal his passion. No shadow of doubt +darkened that bright horizon to which M. Lenoble looked with hopeful +eyes. He loved this penniless, motherless girl, as it was in the blood of +the Lenobles to love the poor and the helpless; especially when poverty +and helplessness presented themselves in the guise of youth and beauty. +He loved her, and she would love him. But why not? He was ten years her +senior, but that makes nothing. His auburn hair and beard, in the style +of Henry the Great, could show no streak of grey. His eyes had the +brightness of one-and-twenty; for the eyes of a man whose soul preserves +its youthfulness will keep their clear lustre for half a century. The +tall figure, straight as a dart; the frank handsome face which M. Lenoble +saw in the glass when he made his toilet, were not calculated to +dishearten a hopeful lover; and Gustave, by nature sanguine, enjoyed his +dream of happiness, untroubled by one morbid apprehension. + +He loved her, and he would ask her for his wife. She would accept his +offer; her father would rejoice in so fortunate an alliance; her friends +of Bayswater would felicitate a change so desirable. And when he returned +to Normandy he would take her with him, and say to his children, "Behold +your mother!" And then the great rambling mansion of Cotenoir would +assume a home-like aspect. The ponderous old furniture would be replaced +by lightsome appointments of modern fashion; except, of course, in the +grand drawing-room, where there were tapestries said to be from the +designs of Boucher, and chairs and sofas in the true Louis Quinze style, +of immovable bulkiness. + +There was but one trifling hitch in the whole scheme of happiness--Diana +was a Protestant. Ah, but what then! A creature so sweet, so noble, could +not long remain the slave of Anglican heresy. A little talk with +Cydalise, a week's "retreat" at the Sacre Coeur, and the thing would be +done. The dear girl would renounce her errors, and enter the bosom of the +Mother Church. Pouff! M. Lenoble blew the little difficulty away from his +finger-tips, and then wafted a kiss from the same finger-tips to his +absent beloved. + +"And this noble heart warned me against her own father!" M. Lenoble said +to himself, as he walked towards the hotel at Blackfriars where he had +taken up his abode, quite unconscious that the foot of Blackfriars Bridge +was not the centre of West End London. "How noble, how disinterested! +Poor old man! He is, no doubt, a speculator--something even of an +Adventurer. What then? He shall have an apartment at Cotenoir, his place +at the family table, his _fauteuil_ by the hearth; and there he can do no +harm." + + * * * * * + +There was a strange sentiment in Diana's mind after this evening's +conversation with Gustave Lenoble. To feel herself beloved, to know that +there was some one creature in the wide crowded world interested in, nay, +even attached to her, was a mystery, a surprise, and in some sort a +source of pleasure to her. That Gustave Lenoble could ever be any nearer +to her than he was at the present time did not occur to her as being +within the limits of possibility. She had thrust Valentine from her +heart, but the empty chamber could receive no new tenant. It was not +swept and garnished; nay, indeed, it was sadly littered with the shreds +and patches left by the late occupant. But, while this was so, to know +that she could be loved was in some manner sweet to her. + +"Ah, now I know that the poet is right," she said to herself. "There is +no creature so desolate but some heart responds unto its own. And I have +found the generous responsive heart that can pity and love me because +I seem so sorely to need love and pity. All my life--my blank, empty +life--I will remember and be grateful to him, the first good man who ever +called my father friend; the first of all mankind who thought this poor +hand worthy to be lifted to his lips." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH. + +Having pledged herself to visit Omega Street on Thursday, Diana +considered herself bound to perform that promise. She felt, however, that +there was some touch of absurdity in the position, for to keep a promise +so made was in a manner to keep an appointment with M. Lenoble. + +"I dare say he has a habit of falling in love with every young woman he +meets," she thought, when she considered his conduct from a more prosaic +standpoint than the grateful enthusiasm his generous sympathy had at +first awakened in her mind. "I have heard that it is a Frenchman's +faculty to consider himself irresistible, and to avow his adoration for a +new divinity every week. And I was so foolish as to fancy there was a +depth of feeling in his tone and manner! I am sure he is all that is good +and generous; but the falling in love is no doubt a national failing." + +She remembered the impertinent advances of divers unknown foreigners whom +she had encountered on pier or _digue_, kursaal or beach, in the +frequently unprotected hours of her continental wanderings. + +She had not seen the best side of the foreign mind in her character of +unattended and doubtfully attired English demoiselle. She knew that +Gustave Lenoble was of a very different stamp from those specimens of the +genus tiger whose impertinent admiration had often wounded and distressed +her; but she was inclined to attribute the fault of shallowness to a +nature so frank and buoyant as that of her father's friend. + +She walked from Bayswater to Chelsea on the appointed Thursday, for the +cost of frequent journeys in cabs was more than her purse could supply. +The walk across the Park was pleasant even in the bleak March weather, +and she entered the little parlour in Omega Street with the bloom of +damask roses upon her cheeks. + +"How do you do, papa dear?" she began, as she came into the dusky room; +but the figure sitting in her father's accustomed place was not that of +her father. It was M. Lenoble, who rose to welcome her. + +"Is papa worse?" she asked, surprised by the Captain's absence. + +"On the contrary, he is better, and has gone out in a hired carriage for +a breath of fresh air. I persuaded him to go. He will be back very +shortly." + +"I wrote to tell him I should be here to-day, but I am very glad he has +gone out, for I am sure the air will do him good. Was he well wrapped up, +do you know, M. Lenoble?" + +"Enveloped in railway-rugs and shawls to his very nose. I arranged all +that with my own hands. He looked like an ambassador from all the +Russias." + +"How kind of you to think of such things!" said Diana gratefully. + +"And tell me why should I not think of such things? Do you imagine that +it is not a pleasure to me to wait upon your father--for your sake?" + +There was some amount of awkwardness in this kind of thing. Diana busied +herself with the removal of her hat and jacket, which she laid neatly +upon a stony-hearted horsehair sofa. After doing this she placed herself +near the window, whence she contemplated the dusky street, appearing much +interested in the movements of the lamp lighter. + +"What an admirable way they have of lighting the lamps now," she +remarked, with the conversational brilliance which usually marks this +kind of situation; "how much more convenient it must be than the old +method with the ladder, you know!" + +"Yes, I have no doubt," said Gustave, bringing himself to her side with a +couple of steps, and planting himself deliberately in a chair next to +hers; "but don't you think, as I start for Normandy to-morrow, we might +talk of something more interesting than the lamplighter, Miss Paget?" + +"I am ready to talk of anything you like," replied Miss Paget, with that +charming assumption of unconsciousness which every woman can command on +these occasions. + +"You are very good. Do you know that when I persuaded your father to go +out for an airing, I was prompted by a motive so selfish as to render the +proceeding quite diabolical? Don't be alarmed! The doctor gave his +permission for the airing, or I should not have attempted such a thing. +Hypocrisy I am capable of, but not assassination. You cannot imagine the +diplomacy which I exhibited; and all to what end? Can you imagine that?" + +"No, indeed." + +"That I might secure one half-hour's uninterrupted talk with you; and, +unhappily, you are so late that I expect your father's return every +minute. He was to be back again before dusk, and the appearance of the +lamplighter demonstrates that the dusk has come. I have so much to say, +and so little time to say it; so much, Diane--" + +She started as he called her thus, as if in that moment of surprise she +would have risen from her chair by his side. She knew what was coming, +and having expected nothing so desperate, knew not how to arrest the +confession that she would fain have avoided hearing. M. Lenoble laid his +hand firmly on hers. + +"So much, Diane; and yet so little, that all can be told in three words. +I love you." + +"M. Lenoble!" + +"Ah, you are surprised, you wonder, you look at me with eyes of sweet +amazement! Dear angel, do you think it is possible to see you and not to +love you? To see you once is to respect, to admire, to bow the knee +before beauty and goodness; but to see you many times, as I have done, +the patient consoler of an invalid and somewhat difficult father--ah, my +sweet love, who is there so hard amongst mankind that he should escape +from loving you, seeing all that?" + +The question had a significance that the speaker knew not. Who amongst +mankind? Why, was there not one man for whom she would have been content +to be the veriest slave that ever abnegated every personal delight for +the love of a hard master? And he had passed her by, indifferent, +unseeing. She had worshipped him on her knees, as it seemed to her; and +he had left her kneeling in the dust, while he went on to offer himself, +heart and soul, at another shrine. + +She could not forget these things. The memory and the bitterness of them +came back with renewed poignancy at this moment, when the voice of a +stranger told her she was beloved. + +"My dear one, will you not answer me?" pleaded Gustave, in nowise alarmed +by Diana's silence, which seemed to him only the natural expression of a +maidenly emotion. "Tell me that you will give me measure for measure; +that you will love me as my mother loved my father--with a love that +trouble and poverty could never lessen; with a love that was strongest +when fate was darkest--a star which the dreary night of sorrow could not +obscure. I am ten years older than you by my baptismal register, Diane; +but my heart is young. I never knew what love was until I knew you. And +yet those who know me best will tell you that I was no unkind husband, +and that my poor wife and I lived happily. I shall never know love again, +except for you. The hour comes, I suppose, in every man's life; and the +angel of his life comes in that appointed hour. Mine came when I saw you. +I have spoken to your father, and have his warm approval. He was all +encouragement, and hinted that I might be assured of your love. Had he +sufficient justification for that half-promise, Diane?" + +"He had none," Miss Paget answered gravely, "none except his own wishes. +You have made me hear more than I wished to hear, M. Lenoble, for the +treasure you offer me is one that I cannot accept. With all my heart I +thank you for the love you tell me of. Even if it is, as I can but think +it, a passing fancy, I thank you, nevertheless. It is sweet to win the +love of a good man. I pray you to believe that with all my heart and mind +I honour your generous nature, your noble sympathy with the weak and +friendless. If you can give me your friendship, you shall find how I can +value a good man's regard, but I cannot accept your love." + +"Why not?" asked Gustave, aghast. + +"Because I cannot give you measure for measure, and I will not give you +less." + +"But in time, Diane, in time?" + +"Time cannot show me your character in a nobler light than that in which +I see it now. You do not lack the power to win a woman's heart, but I +have no heart to give. If you will be my friend, time will increase my +affection for you--but time cannot restore the dead." + +"Which means that your heart is dead, Diane?" + +"Yes," she answered, with unutterable sadness. + +"You love some one younger, happier than I?" + +"No, M. Lenoble, no one." + +"But you have loved? Yes!--a scoundrel, perhaps; a villain, who--" + +A spasm of pain contracted his face as he looked at the girl's drooping +head; her face, in that dim light, he could not see. + +"Tell me this, Diane," he said presently, in an altered voice; "there is +no barrier between us--no irrevocable obstacle that must part us for +ever? There is no one who can claim you by any right--" He paused; and +then added, in a lower voice, "by any wrong?" + +"No one," answered Miss Paget, lifting her head, and looking her lover +full in the face. Even in that uncertain light he could see the proud +steady gaze that seemed the fittest answer of all doubts. + +"Thank God!" he whispered. "Ah, how could I fear, even for one moment, +that you could be anything but what you seem--the purest among the pure? +Why, then, do you reject me? You do not love me, but you ask my +friendship; you offer me your friendship, even your affection. Ah, +believe me, if those are but real, time will ripen them into love. Your +heart is dead. Ah, why should that young heart be dead? It is not dead, +Diane; it needs but the fire of true love to warm it into life again. Why +should you reject me, since you tell me that you love me; unless you love +another? What should divide us?" + +"Shadows and memories," Diana replied mournfully,--"vague and foolish; +wicked, perhaps; but they come between you and me, M. Lenoble. And since +I cannot give you a whole heart, I will give you nothing." + +"You have loved some one, some one who did not value your love? Tell me +the truth, Diane; you owe me at least as much as that." + +"I do owe you the truth. Yes; I have been very foolish. For two or three +years of my life there was a person who was our daily companion. He +travelled with us--with my father and me; and we saw many changes and +troubles together. For a long time he was like my brother; and I doubt if +many brothers are as kind to their sisters as he was to me. In his heart +that feeling never changed. He was always equally kind, equally careless. +Once I deluded myself with the fancy that in his looks and tones, and +even in his words, there was some deeper feeling than this careless +brotherly kindness; but it was no more than a delusion. My eyes were +opened rudely enough. I saw his heart bestowed elsewhere. Do not think +that I am so weak, or so wicked, as to abandon myself to despair because +I have been awakened from my foolish dream. I can look the realities of +life in the face, M. Lenoble; and I have taught myself to wish all good +things for the dear girl who has won the heart that I once thought was +mine. The person I am speaking of can boast no superior graces of mind or +person. He is only a very commonplace young man, with a certain amount of +talent, a disposition inclined to good rather than to evil. But he was +the companion of my girlhood; and in losing him it seems to me as if I +had lost a part of my youth itself." + +To Diana's mind this seemed the end of the discussion. She expected M. +Lenoble to bow his head to the inevitable, to utter a friendly farewell, +and depart for his Norman home, convinced, if not satisfied. But the +light-hearted, easy-tempered Gustave was not a lover of the despairing +order, nor an easily answered suppliant. + +"And that is all!" he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of +your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory +of this unspeakable idiot--great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch +have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!--the memory of +this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for +ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel +without knowing it, is to lift its phantasmal hand and thrust me +aside--me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot? Ah, thus we blow him +to the uttermost end of the world!" cried M. Lenoble, blowing an +imaginary rival from the tips of his fingers. "Thus we dismiss him to the +Arctic regions, the torrid zone--to the Caucasus, where await vultures to +gnaw his liver--wherever earth is most remote and uncomfortable--he and +the bread-and-butter miss whom he prefers to my Diane!" + +This manner of taking things was quite unexpected by Diana. It was much +more pleasant than gloomy despair or sullen resentment; but it was, at +the same time, much more difficult to deal with. + +"He is gone!" cried Gustave presently; "he is on the topmost heights of +Caucasus, and the vultures are sharpening their beaks! And now, tell me, +Diane--you will be my wife, will you not? You will be a mother to my +children? You will transform the old chateau of Cotenoir into a pleasant +home? You will cease to live amongst strangers? You will come to those +who will love and cherish you as their own, their dearest and best and +brightest? You will give your poor old father a corner by your fireside? +He is old and needs a home for his last years. For his sake, Diane, for +mine, for my children, let your answer be yes! Ah, not so fast!" he +cried, as she was about to speak. "Why are you so quick to pronounce your +fatal judgment? Think how much depends on your reply--your father's +happiness, my children's, mine!" + +"It is of yours only I must think," Miss Paget answered earnestly. "You +fancy it is so easy for me to say no. Believe me, it would be much easier +to say yes. When you speak of my father's declining years, I, who know +his weary life so well, would be hard of heart indeed if I were not +tempted by the haven you offer. Every word that you say gives me some new +proof of your goodness, your generosity. But I will not wrong you because +you are generous. I shall always be your grateful friend, but you must +seek elsewhere for a wife, M. Lenoble. You will have little difficulty in +finding one worthier than I." + +"I will seek nowhere else for a wife; I will have no wife but you. I have +had a wife of other people's choosing; I will choose one for myself this +time. Let us be friends, Diane, since your decision is as irrevocable as +the laws of Draco. You are stone, you are adamant; but no matter, we can +be friends. Your father will be disappointed. But what then? He is no +doubt accustomed to disappointments. My daughters--for them it is a +profound affliction to be motherless, but they must support it. Cotenoir +must go to wreck and ruin a little longer--a few more rats behind the +panelling, a few more moths in the tapestry, that is all. My children +say, 'Papa, our home is not comfortable; all is upside-down;' and I +reply. 'But what will you, my children? A home without a wife is always +upside down.' And then I take them between my arms, in weeping. It is a +poignant picture to rend the heart. But what does it matter, Miss Paget? +What is that verse of your grand Will?-- + +Blow, blow, thou wintry wind; +And let go weep the stricken land, +While harts ungalled go play. + +Perhaps I have mixed him up somehow; but the meaning is clear." + +A hollow-sounding and somewhat awful cough heralded the approach of +Captain Paget, who entered the room at this juncture. If the Captain had +prolonged his first airing, after six weeks' confinement to the house, +until this late period of the afternoon, he would have committed an +imprudence which might have cost him dearly. Happily, he had done nothing +of the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana and +Gustave were conversing close to the window, having preferred to leave +his fly at the end of the street, rather than to incur the hazard of +interrupting a critical tete-a-tete. The interval that had elapsed since +his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in +the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment +and the parlour. What he had heard had been by no means satisfactory to +him; and if a look could annihilate, Miss Paget might have perished +beneath the Parthian glance which her father shot at her as he came +towards the window, with a stereotyped smile upon his lips and +unspeakable anger in his heart. + +He had heard just enough of the conversation to know that Gustave had +been rejected--Gustave, with Cotenoir and a handsome independence in the +present, and the late John Haygarth's fortune in the future. Rejected by +a penniless young woman, who at any moment might find herself without a +roof to shelter her from the winds of heaven! Was ever folly, madness, +wickedness supreme as this? + +Horatio trembled with rage as he took his daughter's hand. She had the +insolence to extend her hand for the customary salutation. The Captain's +greeting was a grip that made her wince. + +"Good-night, Miss Paget," said Gustave gravely, but with by no means the +despondent tone of a hopeless lover; "I--well, I shall see you again, +perhaps, before I go to Normandy. I doubt if I shall go to-morrow. I +have my own reasons for staying--unreasonable reasons, perhaps, but I +shall stay." + +All this was said in a tone too low to reach Captain Paget's ear. + +"Are you going to leave us, Lenoble?" he asked in a quavering voice. "You +will not stop and let Di give you a cup of tea as usual?" + +"Not to-night, Captain. Good-bye." + +He wrung the old man's hand and departed. Captain Paget dropped heavily +into a chair, and for some minutes there was silence. Diana was the +first to speak. + +"I am glad your doctor considered you well enough to go out for a drive, +papa," she said. + +"Indeed, my dear," answered her father with a groan; "I hope my next +drive may be in a different kind of vehicle--the last journey I shall +ever take, until they cart away my bones for manure. I believe they do +make manure from the bones of paupers in our utilitarian age." + +"Papa, how can you talk so horribly! You are better, are you not? M. +Lenoble said you were better." + +"Yes, I am better, God help me!" answered the old man, too weak alike in +mind and body to hide the passion that possessed, him. "That is one of +the contradictions of the long farce we call life. If I had been a rich +man, with a circle of anxious relations and all the noted men of Savile +Row dancing attendance round my bed, I dare say I should have died; but +as I happen to be a penniless castaway, with only a lodging-house drudge +and a half-starved apothecary to take care of me, and with nothing before +me but a workhouse, I live. It is all very well for a man to take things +easily when he is ill and helpless, too weak even to think. _That_ is not +the trying time. The real trial arrives when a little strength comes back +to him, and his landlady begins to worry him for her rent, and the +lodging-house drudge gets tired of pitying him, and the apothecary sends +in his bill, and the wretched high-road lies bare and broad before him, +and he hears the old order to move on. The moving-on time has come for +me, Di; and the Lord alone knows how little I know where I am to go." + +"Papa, you are not friendless; even I can give you a little help." + +"Yes," answered the Captain with a bitter laugh; "a sovereign once a +quarter--the scrapings of your pittance! That help won't save me from +the workhouse." + +"There is M. Lenoble." + +"Yes, there is M. Lenoble; the man who would have given me a home for my +old age: he told me so to-day--a home fit for a gentleman--for the +position he now occupies is nothing compared to that which he may occupy +a year hence. He would have received me as his father-in-law, without +thought or question of my antecedents; and if I have not lived like a +gentleman, I might have died like one. This is what he would have done +for me. But do you think I can ask anything of him now, after you have +refused him? I know of your refusal to be that man's wife. I heard--I saw +it in his face. You--a beggar, a friendless wretch, dependent on the +patronage of a stockbroker's silly wife--_you_ must needs give yourself +grand airs, and refuse such a man as that! Do you think such men go +begging among young ladies like you, or that they run about the streets, +like the roast pigs in the story, begad, with knives and forks in their +backs, asking to be eaten?" + +The Captain was walking up and down the room in a fever of rage. Diana +looked at him with sad wondering eyes. Yes, it was the old selfish +nature. The leopard cannot change his spots; and the Horatio Paget of the +present was the Horatio Paget of the past. + +"Pray don't be angry with me, papa," said Diana sorrowfully; "I believe +that I have done my duty." + +"Done your fiddlesticks!" cried the Captain, too angry to be careful of +his diction. "Your duty to whom? Did you happen to remember, miss, that +you owe some duty to me, your father, but for whom you wouldn't be +standing there talking of duty like a tragedy queen? By Jove! I suppose +you are too grand a person to consider my trouble in this matter; the +pains I took to get Lenoble over to England; the way I made the most of +my gout even, in order to have you about me; the way I finessed and +diplomatized to bring this affair to a successful issue. And now, when I +have succeeded beyond my hopes, you spoil everything, and then dare to +stand before me and preach about duty. What do you want in a husband, I +should like to know? A rich man? Lenoble is that. A handsome man? Lenoble +is that. A gentleman, with good blood in his veins? Lenoble comes of as +pure a race as any man in that part of France. A good man? Lenoble is one +of the best fellows upon this earth. What is it, then, that you want?" + +"I want to give my heart to the man who gives me his." + +"And what, in the name of all that's preposterous, is to prevent you +giving Gustave Lenoble your heart?" + +"I cannot tell you." + +"No, nor any one else. But let us have no more of this nonsense. If you +call yourself a daughter of mine, you will marry Gustave Lenoble. If +not--" + +The Captain found himself brought to a sudden stop in his unconscious +paraphrase of Signor Capulet's menace to his recalcitrant daughter, +Juliet. With what threat could the noble Horatio terrify his daughter to +obedience? Before you talk of turning your rebellious child out of doors, +you must provide a home from which to cast her. Captain Paget remembered +this, and was for the moment reduced to sudden and ignominious silence. +And yet there must surely be some way of bringing this besotted young +woman to reason. + +He sat for some minutes in silence, with his head leaning on his hand, +his face hidden from Diana. This silence, this attitude, so expressive of +utter despondency, touched her more keenly than his anger. She knew that +he was mean and selfish, that it was of his own loss he thought; and yet +she pitied him. He was old and helpless and miserable; so much the more +pitiable because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic soul +there is always some comfort; but for the grovelling nature suffering +knows no counterbalance. The ills that flesh is heir to seem utterly +bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate the flesh, and soar +triumphant above the regions of earthly pain. Captain Paget's mind, to +him, was not a kingdom. He could not look declining years of poverty in +the face; he was tired of work. The schemes and trickeries of his life +were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out, +and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from +Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance +of John Haygarth's estate. He wanted something more tangible than +this--he wanted immediate security; and his daughter's marriage with +Gustave would have given him that security, and still grander hopes for +the future. He had fancied himself reigning over the vassals of Cotenoir, +a far more important personage than the real master of that chateau. He +had pictured to himself a _pied-a-terre_ in Paris which it might be +agreeable for him to secure, for existence in Normandy might occasionally +prove _canuyeux_. These things were what he meant when he talked of a +haven for his declining years; and against the daughter who, for some +caprice of her own, could hinder his possession of these things, he had +no feeling but anger. + +Diana compassionated this weak old man, to whose lips the cup of +prosperity had seemed so near, from whose lips her hand had thrust it. +He had been promised a home, comfort, respectability, friendship--"all +that should accompany old age"--and she had prevented the fulfilment of +the promise. Heaven knows how pure her motives had been; but as she +watched that drooping head, with its silvered hair, she felt that she +had been cruel. + +"Papa," she began presently, laying her hand caressingly upon her +father's neck; but he pushed aside the timid, caressing hand--"papa, you +think me very unkind, only because I have done what I believe to be +right; indeed it is so, papa dear. In what I said to Gustave Lenoble this +evening, I was governed only by my sense of right." + +"Indeed!" cried the Captain, with a strident laugh; "and where did you +pick up your sense of right, madam, I should like to know? From what +Methodist parson's hypocritical twaddle have you learnt to lay down the +law to your poor old father about the sense of right? 'Honour your father +and your mother, that your days may be long in the land,' miss, _that's_ +what your Bible teaches you; but the Bible has gone out of fashion, I +dare say, since I was a young man; and your model young woman of the +present generation taunts her father with her sense of right. Will your +sense of right be satisfied when you hear of your father rotting in the +old-men's ward of a workhouse, or dying on the London stones?" + +"I am not unfeeling, papa. With all my heart I pity you; but it is cruel +on your part to exaggerate the misery of your position, as I am sure you +must be doing. Why should your means of living fail because I refuse to +marry M. Lenoble? You have lived hitherto without my help, as I have +lived of late without yours. Nothing could give me greater happiness than +to know that you were exempt from care; and if my toil can procure you a +peaceful home in the future--as I believe it can, or education and will +to work must go for nothing--there shall be no lack of industry on my +part. I will work for you, I will indeed, papa--willingly, happily." + +"When your work can give me such a home as Cotenoir--a home that one word +of yours would secure for me--I will thank you." + +"If you will only wait, papa, if you will only have patience--" + +"Patience! Wait! Do you know what you are talking about? Do you prate of +patience, and waiting, and hope in the future to a man who has no +future--to a man whose days are numbered, and who feels the creeping +chills of death stealing over him every day as he sits beside his +wretched hearth, or labours through his daily drudgery? I can live as I +have always lived! Yes; but do you know, or care to know, that with every +day life becomes more difficult for me? Your fine friends at Bayswater +have done with me. I have spent the last sixpence I shall ever see from +Philip Sheldon. Hawkehurst has cut me, like the ungrateful hound he is. +When they have squeezed the orange, they throw away the rind. Didn't +Voltaire say that, when Frederick of Prussia gave him the go-by? Heaven +knows it's true enough; and now you, who by a word might secure yourself +a splendid position--yes, I say splendid for a poor drudge and dependent +like you, and insure a home for me--you, forsooth, must needs favour me +with your high-flown sentiments about your sense of right, and promise me +a home in the future, if I will wait and hope! No, Diana, waiting and +hoping are done with for me, and I can find a home in the bed of the +river without your help." + +"You would not be so wicked as to do that!" cried Diana, aghast. + +"I don't know about the wickedness of the act. But, rely upon it, when my +choice lies between the workhouse and the river, I shall prefer the +river. The modern workhouse is no inviting sanctuary, and I dare say many +a homeless wretch makes the same choice." + +For some minutes there was silence. Diana stood with her elbows resting +on the chimneypiece, her face covered with her hands. + +"O Lord, teach me to do the thing which is right!" she prayed, and in the +next breath acted on the impulse of the moment. + +"What would you have me do?" she asked. + +"What any one but an idiot would do of her own accord--accept the good +fortune that has dropped into your lap. Do you think such luck as yours +goes begging every day?" + +"You would have me accept Gustave Lenoble's offer, no matter what +falsehoods may be involved in my acceptance of it?" + +"I can see no reason for falsehood. Any one but an idiot would honour +such a man; any one but an idiot would thank Providence for such good +fortune." + +"Very well, papa," exclaimed Diana, with a laugh that had no mirthful +music, "I will not be the exceptional idiot. If M. Lenoble does me the +honour to repeat his offer--and I think from his manner he means to do +so--I will accept it." + +"He shall repeat it!" cried the Captain, throwing off his assumption of +the tragic father. The Oedipus Coloneus, the Lear--the venerable victim +of winter winds and men's ingratitude--was transformed in a moment into +an elderly Jeremy Diddler, lined with Lord Foppington. "He shall repeat +it; I will have him at your feet to-morrow. Yes, Di, my love, I pledge +myself to bring that about, without compromise to your maidenly pride or +the dignity of a Paget. My dear child, I ought to have known that +reflection would show you where your duty lies. I fear I have been +somewhat harsh, but you must forgive me, Di; I have set my heart on this +match, for your happiness as well as my own. I could not stand the +disappointment; though I admired, and still admire, the high feeling, +and all that kind of thing, which prompted your refusal. A school-girlish +sentimentality, child, but with something noble in it; not the +sentimentality of a vulgar schoolgirl. The blue blood will show itself, +my love; and now--no, no, don't cry. You will live to thank me for +to-night's work; yes, my child, to thank me, when you look round your +comfortable home by-and-by--when my poor old bones are mouldering in +their unpretending sepulchre--and say to yourself, 'I have my father to +thank for this. Adverse circumstances forbade his doing his duty as +happier fathers are allowed the privilege of doing theirs, but it was his +forethought, his ever-watchful care, which secured me an admirable +husband and a happy home.' Mark my words, the time will come when you +will say this, my dear." + +"I will try to think of you always kindly, papa," Miss Paget answered in +a low sad voice; "and if my marriage can secure your happiness and +Gustave Lenoble's, I am content. I only fear to take too much, and give +too little." + +"My love, you must certainly be the lineal descendant of Don Quixote. Too +much, and too little, forsooth! Let Lenoble find a handsomer woman, or a +more elegant woman, by gad, elsewhere! Such a woman as a duke might be +proud to make his duchess, by Jove! There shall be no sense of obligation +on our side, my love. Gustave Lenoble shall be made to feel that he gets +change for his shilling. Kiss me, child, and tell me you forgive me for +being a little rough with you, just now." + +"Forgive you?--yes, papa. I dare say you are wiser than I. Why should I +refuse M. Lenoble? He is good and kind, and will give us a happy home? +What more can I want? Do I want to be like Charlotte, to whom life seems +all poetry and brightness?" + +"And who is going to throw herself away upon a penny-a-liner, by Jove!" +interjected the Captain. + +"Can I hope to be like that girl, with her happy ignorance of life, her +boundless love and trust! O, no, no, papa; those things are not for me." + +She laid her head upon her father's breast, and sobbed like a child. This +was her second farewell to the man she had loved, the dreams she had +dreamed. The Captain comforted her with a paternal embrace, but was as +powerless to comprehend her emotion as if he had found himself suddenly +called upon to console the sorrows of a Japanese widow. + +"Hysterical," he murmured. "These noble natures are subject to that kind +of thing. And now, my love," he continued, in a more business-like tone, +"let us talk seriously. I think it would be very advisable for you to +leave Bayswater, and take up your abode in these humble lodgings with me +immediately." + +"Why, papa?" + +"The reason is sufficiently obvious, my love. It is not right that you +should continue to eat the bread of dependence. As the future wife of +Gustave Lenoble--and in this case, the word future means immediately--" + +"Papa," cried Diana suddenly, "you will not hurry me into this marriage? +I have consented for your sake. You will not be so ungenerous as to--" + +"As to hurry you? No, my dear, of course not. There shall be no indecent +haste. Your wishes, your delicate and disinterested motives, shall be +consulted before all things; yes, my love," cried the Captain, sorely +afraid of some wavering on the part of his daughter, and painfully +anxious to conciliate her, "all shall be in accordance with your wishes. +But I must urge your immediate removal from Bayswater; first, because M. +Lenoble will naturally wish to see you oftener than he can while you are +residing with people whose acquaintance I do not want him to make; and +secondly, because you have no further need of Mrs. Sheldon's patronage." + +"It has been kindness, affection, papa--never patronage. I could not +leave Mrs. Sheldon or Charlotte abruptly or ungraciously, upon any +consideration. They gave me a home when I most bitterly needed one. +They took me away from the dull round of schoolroom drudgery, that was +fast changing me into a hard hopeless joyless automaton. My first duty +is to them." + +The Captain's angry sniff alone expressed the indignation which this +impious remark inspired. + +"My next shall be to you and M. Lenoble. Let me give Mrs. Sheldon due +notice of the change in our plans." + +"What do you call due notice?" asked Horatio, peevishly. + +"A quarter's notice." + +"O, indeed! Then for three months you are to dance attendance upon Mrs. +Sheldon, while M. Lenoble is waiting to make you his wife." + +"I must consult the wishes of my friends, papa." + +"Very well, my dear," replied the Captain, with a sigh that was next of +kin to a groan; "you must please yourself and your friends, I suppose; +your poor old father is a secondary consideration." And then, timeously +mindful of the skirmish he had just had with his daughter, Captain Paget +made haste to assure her of his regard and submission. + +"All shall be as you please, my love," he murmured. "There, go into my +room, and smooth your hair, and bathe your eyes, while I ring for the +tea." + +Diana obeyed. She found eau-de-cologne and the most delicate of Turkey +sponges on her father's wash-handstand; jockey-club, and ivory-backed +brushes, somewhat yellow with age, but bearing crest and monogram, on his +dressing-table. The workhouse did not seem quite so near at hand as the +Captain had implied; but with these sanguine people it is but a step from +disappointment to despair. + +"What am I to tell Mrs. Sheldon, papa?" she asked, when she was pouring +out her father's tea. + +"Well, I think you had better say nothing, except that my circumstances +have somewhat improved, and that my failing health requires your care." + +"I hate secrets, papa." + +"So do I, my dear; but half-confidences are more disagreeable than +secrets." + +Diana submitted. She secretly reserved to herself the right to tell +Charlotte anything she pleased. From that dear adopted sister she would +hide nothing. + +"If M. Lenoble should repeat his offer, and I should accept it, I will +tell her all," she thought. "It will make that dear girl happy to know +that there is some one who loves me, besides herself." + +And then she thought of the strange difference of fate that gave to +this Charlotte Halliday, with her rich stepfather and comfortable +surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a lover, while to her, +the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, came a wealthy suitor. + +"Will hers be the dinner of herbs, and mine the stalled ox?" she thought. +"Ah, Heaven forbid! Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to +love too well?" + +She remembered the cynical French proverb, "When we can not have what +we love, we must love what we have." But the cynical proverb brought her +no comfort. + +She went back to Bayswater with a strange bewildered feeling; after +having promised her father to go to Omega Street whenever he sent for +her. There was no actual pain in her mind, no passionate desire to recall +her promise, no dread horror of the step to which she had pledged +herself. The feeling that oppressed her was the sense that such a step +should have been the spontaneous election of her grateful heart, proud of +a good man's preference, instead of a weak submission to a father's +helplessness. + + + + +Book the Fifth. + + + +THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +TAKEN BY STORM. + +Two days after her interview with Gustave Lenoble, Miss Paget received a +brief note from her father, summoning her again to Omega Street. + +"He has not gone back to Normandy," wrote the Captain. + +"My child, he positively worships the ground you walk upon. Ah, my love, +_it is something to have a father_! I need scarcely tell you that his +first idea of your excellence was inspired by those glowing descriptions +of your goodness, your beauty, your heroism, which I favoured him with, +_en passant_, during our conversations at Cotenoir, where the happy +accident of a business transaction first introduced me to him. The +interests of my only child have ever been near and dear to me; and where +a duller man would have perceived only a wealthy stranger, my paternal +instincts recognized at a glance the predestined husband of my daughter. +It needed my wide experience of life--and, as I venture to believe, my +subtle knowledge of the human heart--to understand that a man who had +lived for five-and-thirty years buried alive in a French province--a +charming place, my love, and for your refined taste replete with +interest--never seeing a mortal except his immediate neighbours, would be +the man of men to fall in love with the first attractive young woman he +met among strangers. Come to me this afternoon without fail, and come +early.--Yours, + +"H.N.C.P." + +Diana obeyed this summons submissively, but still troubled by that +strange sense of bewilderment which had affected her since her stormy +interview with Captain Paget. She was not quite certain of herself. The +old dreams--the sweet foolish girlish fancies--were not yet put away +altogether from her mind; but she knew that they were foolish, and she +was half-inclined to believe that there had been some wisdom in her +father's scorn. + +"What do I want more?" she asked herself. "He is good and brave and true, +and he loves me. If I were a princess, my marriage would be negotiated +for me by other people, and I should have reason to consider myself very +happy if the man whom the state selected for my husband should prove as +good a man as Gustave Lenoble. And he loves me; me, who have never before +had power over a man's heart!" + +She walked across Hyde Park on this occasion, as on the last; and her +thoughts, though always confused--mere rags and scraps of thought--were +not all unpleasant. There was a smile, half shy, half tender, on her face +as she went into the little sitting-room where Gustave was waiting for +her. She had seen his hat and overcoat in the passage, and knew that he +was there waiting for her. To this poor desolate soul there was something +sweet in the idea of being waited for. + +As she stood but a little within the doorway, blushing, almost trembling +with the sense of her changed position, her lover came across the room +and took her in his arms. The strong brave arms held her to his breast; +and in that one embrace he took her to his heart, and made her his own +for ever. + +In every story of life-long affection, there is one moment in which the +bond is sealed. Diana looked up at the frank tender face, and felt that +she had found her conqueror. Master, friend, protector, husband, adoring +and devoted lover, gallant and fearless champion--he was all; and she +divined his power and his worth as she glanced shyly upward, ashamed to +be so lightly won. + +"M. Lenoble," she faltered, trying to withdraw herself from the strong +encircling arm that held her, as if by right. + +"Gustave, now and for ever, my Diane! There shall be no more Monsieur +Lenoble. And in a few weeks it shall be 'my husband.' Your father has +given me to you. He tells me to laugh at your refusals your scruples; to +assail you like your Shakespeare's Petruchio assails his Katherine--with +audacious insolence that will not be denied. And I shall take his advice. +Look up into my face, dear angel, and defy me to take his advice." + +Happily the dear angel looked only downwards. But M Lenoble was resolved +to have an agreeable response. + +"See, then, thou canst not defy me!" he cried, in the only language he +spoke; and the "_tu_" for the first time sounded very tender, very sweet. +"Thou canst not tell me thou art angry with me. And the other--the +imbecile;--he is gone for ever, is he not? Ah, say yes!" + +"Yes, he is gone," said Diana, almost in a whisper. + +"Is he quite gone? The door of thine heart locked against him, his +luggage thrown out of the window?" + +"He is gone!" she murmured softly. "He could not hold his place against +you--you are so strong--so brave; and he was only a shadow. Yes, he is +gone." + +She said this with a little sigh of relief. It was in all sincerity that +she answered her suitor's question. She felt that a crisis had come in +her life--the first page of a new volume; and the old sad tear-blotted +book might be cast away. + +"Dear angel, wilt thou ever learn to love me?" asked Gustave, in a +half-whisper, bending down his bearded face till his lips almost touched +her cheek. + +"It is impossible not to love you," she answered softly. And indeed it +seemed to her as if this chivalrous Gaul was a creature to command the +love of women, the fear of men; an Achilles _en frac_; a Bayard without +his coat of mail; Don Quixote in his youth, generous, brave, +compassionate, tender, and with a brain not as yet distempered by the +reading of silly romances. + +Captain Paget emerged from his den as the little love scene ended. He +affected a gentlemanly unconsciousness of the poetry involved in the +situation, was pleasantly anxious about the tea-tray, the candles, and +minor details of life; and thus afforded the lovers ample time in which +to recover their composure. The Frenchman was in no wise discomposed; he +was only abnormally gay, with a little air of triumph that was not +unpleasing. Diana was pale; but there was an unwonted light in her eyes, +and she had by no means the appearance of a victim newly offered on the +sacrificial altar of filial duty. In sober truth, Miss Paget was happier +to-night than she had been for a long time. At three-and-twenty she was +girl enough to rejoice in the knowledge that she was truly loved, and +woman enough to value the sense of peace involved in the security of a +prosperous future. + +If she was grateful to her lover--and the affection he had inspired in +her heart had grown out of gratitude--it was no mercenary consideration +as to his income or position that made her grateful. She thanked him for +his love--that treasure which she had never expected to possess; she +thanked him because he had taken her by the hand, and led her out of the +ranks of lonely dependent womanhood, and seated her upon a throne, on the +steps whereof he was content to kneel. Whether the throne were a rushen +chair in some rustic cottage, or a gilded _fauteuil_ in a palace, she +cared very little. It was the subject's devotion that was new and sweet +to her. + +She went to Charlotte's room that night, when Mr. Sheldon's small +household was at rest; as she had gone on Christmas Eve to renounce her +lover and to bless her rival. This time it was a new confession she went +to make, and a confession that involved some shame. There is nothing so +hard to confess as inconstancy; and every woman is not so philosophic as +Rahel Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to love +the same person, but always to love some one. + +Miss Paget seated herself at Charlotte's feet, as she had done on that +previous occasion. The weather was still cold enough to make a fire very +pleasant, though it was more than two months since the Christmas bells +had rung out upon the frosty air. Diana sat on a low hassock, playing +with the tassels of her friend's dressing-gown, anxious to make her +confession, and solely at a loss for words in which to shape so +humiliating an avowal. + +"Charlotte," she began abruptly at last, "have you any idea when you and +Valentine are to be married?" + +Miss Halliday gave a little cry of surprise. + +"Why, of course not, Di! How can you ask such a question? Our marriage +is what uncle George calls a remote contingency. We are not to be married +for ages--not until Valentine has obtained a secure position in +literature, and an income that seems almost impossible. That was the +special condition upon which Mr. Sheldon--papa--gave his consent to our +engagement. Of course it was very proper and prudent of him to think of +these things; and as he has been very kind and liberal-minded in his +conduct to me throughout, I should be a most ungrateful person if I +refused to be guided by his advice." + +"And I suppose that means that your engagement is to be a long one?" + +"The longest of long engagements. And what can be happier than a long +engagement? One gets to know and understand the man one is to marry so +thoroughly. I think I know every turn of thought in Valentine's mind; +every taste, every fancy; and I feel myself every day growing to think +more and more like him. I read the books he reads, so as to be able to +talk to him, you know; but I am not so clever as you, Di, and Valentine's +favourite authors do sometimes seem rather dry to me. But I struggle on, +you know; and the harder I find the struggle, the more I admire my dear +love's cleverness. Think of him, Di--three different articles in three +different magazines last month! The paper on Apollodorus, in the +_Cheapside_, you know; and that story in the Charing Cross--'How I lost +my Gingham Umbrella, and gained the Acquaintance of Mr. Gozzleton.' _So_ +funny! And the exhaustive treatise on the Sources of Light, in the +_Scientific Saturday_. And think of the fuss they make about Homer, a +blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and +wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete +poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a +man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine +accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the reviewers +take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling him that he is +shallow and frivolous, I begin to think that literature must be going to +the dogs." + +And here Charlotte became meditative, absorbed in the contemplation of +Mr. Hawkehurst's genius. Diana had begun the conversation very artfully, +intending to proceed by a gentle transition from Charlotte's love affairs +to her own; but the conversation was drifting away from the subject into +a discussion upon literature, and the brilliant young essayist whose +first adventurous flights seemed grand as the soaring of Theban eagle to +this tender and admiring watcher of his skyward progress. + +"Lotta," said Miss Paget, after a pause, "should you be very sorry if I +were to leave you before your marriage?" + +"Leave me before my marriage, Diana! Is it not arranged that you are to +live with mamma, and be a daughter to her, when I am gone? And you will +come and stay with Valentine and me at our cottage; and you will advise +me about my house-keeping, and teach me how to be a sensible, useful, +economical wife, as well as a devoted one. Leave us, Di! What have I +done, or mamma, or Mr. Sheldon, or anybody, that you should talk of +anything so dreadful?" + +"What have you done, dear girl, dear friend, dear sister? Everything to +win my undying love and gratitude. You have changed me from a hard +disappointed bitter-minded woman--envious, at times, even of you--into +your loving and devoted friend. You have changed me from a miserable +creature into a contented and hopeful one. You have taught me to forget +that my childhood and youth were one long night of wretchedness and +degradation. You have taught me to forgive the father who suffered my +life to be what it was, and made no one poor effort to lift me out of the +slough of despond to which he had sunk. I can say no more, Charlotte. +There are things that cannot be told by words." + +"And you want to leave me!" said Charlotte, in accents half-wondering, +half-reproachful. + +"My father wants me to leave you, Lotta; and some one else--some one whom +you must know and like before I can be sure I like him myself." + +"Him!" cried Charlotte, with a faint shriek of surprise. "Diana, WHAT are +you going to tell me?" + +"A secret, Lotta; something which my father has forbidden me to tell any +one, but which I will not hide from you. My poor father has found a kind +friend--a friend who is almost as good to him as you are to me. How +merciful Heaven is in raising up friends for outcasts! And I have seen a +good deal of this gentleman who is so kind to papa, and the result is +that--chiefly for papa's sake, and because I know that he is generous and +brave and true, I mean papa's friend, M. Lenoble--I have consented to be +his wife." + +"Diana!" cried Charlotte, with a sternness of manner that was alarming in +so gentle a creature, "it shall never be!" + +"What dear?" + +"The sacrifice! No, dear, no! I understand it all. For your cruel +mercenary heartless designing father's sake, you are going to marry a man +whom you can't love. You are going to offer up your poor bruised desolate +heart on the altar of duty. Ah, dear, you can't think I forget what you +told me only two short months ago--though I seem selfish and frivolous, +and am always talking about _him_, and parading my happiness, as it must +seem to you, reckless of the wounds so newly healed in your noble +unselfish heart. But I do not altogether forget, Diana, and such a +sacrifice as this I will not allow. I know you have resigned him to me--I +know you have thrust him from your heart, as you told me that night. But +the hollow aching void that is left in your lonely heart shall be sacred, +Di. No stranger's image shall pollute it. You shall not sacrifice your +own peace to your father's selfishness. No, dear, no! With mamma and me +you will always have a home. You need stoop to no cruel barter such as +this marriage." + +And hereupon Miss Halliday wept over and caressed her friend, as the +confidante of Agamemnon's daughter may have wept over and caressed that +devoted young princess after the divination of Calchas had become common +talk in the royal household. + +"But if I think it my duty to accept M. Lenoble's offer, Lotta?" urged +Miss Paget with some embarrassment of manner. "M. Lenoble is as rich as +he is generous, and my marriage with him will secure a happy home for my +father. The foolish dreams I told you about on Christmas Eve had faded +from my mind before I dared to speak of them. I could only confess my +folly when I knew that I was learning to be wise. Pray do not think that +I am sordid or mercenary. It is not because M. Lenoble is rich that I am +inclined to marry him, it is because--" + +"Because you want to throw yourself away for the advantage of your +selfish heartless father," interjected Charlotte. "He has neglected you +all your life, and now wants to profit by the sacrifice of your +happiness. Be firm, Di, darling; your Charlotte will stand by you, and +find a home for you always, come what may. Who is this M. Lenoble? Some +horrible ugly old creature, I dare say." + +Miss Paget smiled and blushed. The vision of Gustave's frank handsome +face arose before her very vividly as Charlotte said this. + +"No, dear," she replied. "M. Lenoble is not an old +man--five-and-thirty at most." + +"Five-and-thirty!" repeated Charlotte, with a wry face; you don't call +that young? And what is he like?" + +"Well, dear, I think he is the sort of man whom most people would call +handsome. I'm sure you would like him, Lotta. He is so candid, so +animated, so full of strength and courage. The sort of man to whom one +would naturally look in any emergency or danger; the sort of man in whose +company fear would be impossible." + +"Diana," cried Charlotte, suddenly, "you are in love with him!" + +"Lotta!" + +"Yes, dear, you are in love with him," repeated Miss Halliday, embracing +her friend with effusion; "yes, over head and ears in love with him. And +you are ashamed to confess the truth to me; and you are half ashamed to +confess it even to yourself--as if you could deceive an old stager like +me!" cried Charlotte, laughing. "Why, you dear inconstant thing, while I +have felt myself the guiltiest and most selfish creature in the world for +robbing you of Valentine, you have been quietly transferring your +affections to this M. Gustave Lenoble--who is very rich, and brave, and +true, and generous, and what most people would call handsome! Bless you, +a thousand times, my darling! You have made me so happy!" + +"Indeed, Lotta!" + +"Yes, dear. The thought that there was a blank in your life made a dark +cloud in mine. I know I have been very selfish, very thoughtless, but I +could never have been quite free from a sense of self-reproach. But now +there is nothing for me but happiness. O darling, I so long to see your +M. Lenoble!" + +"You shall see him, dear." + +"And in the meantime tell me what he is like." + +Miss Halliday insisted upon a full, true, and particular account of M. +Lenoble's personal appearance. Diana gave it, but not without some sense +of embarrassment. She could not bring herself to be enthusiastic about +Gustave Lenoble, though in her heart there was a warmth of feeling that +surprised her. "What a hypocrite you are, Di!" exclaimed Charlotte +presently. "I know you love this good Frenchman almost as dearly as I +love Valentine, and that the thought of his affection makes you happy; +and yet you speak of him in little measured sentences, and you won't be +enthusiastic even about his good looks." + +"It is difficult to pass from dreams to realities, Lotta. I have lived so +long among dreams, that the waking world seems strange to me." + +"That is only a poetical way of saying that you are ashamed of having +changed your mind. I will tell M. Lenoble what a lukewarm creature you +are, and how unworthy of his love!" + +"You shall tell him what you please. But remember, dear, my engagement +must not be spoken about yet awhile, not even to your mamma. Papa makes a +strong point of this, and I have promised to obey, though I am quite in +the dark as to his reasons." + +Miss Halliday submitted to anything her friend wished; only entreating +that she might be introduced to M. Lenoble. Diana promised her this +privilege; but it speedily transpired that Diana's promise was not all +that was wanted on this occasion. + +For some time past, in fact from the very commencement of Charlotte's +engagement, Mr. Sheldon had shown himself punctilious to an exceeding +degree with regard to his stepdaughter. The places to which she went, and +the people with whom she consorted, appeared to be matters of supreme +importance in his mind. When speaking of these things he gave those about +him to understand that his ideas had been the same from the time of +Charlotte's leaving school; but Diana knew that this was not true. Mr. +Sheldon's theories had been much less strict, and Mr. Sheldon's practice +had been much more careless, prior to Miss Halliday's engagement. + +No stately principal of a school for young ladies could have been more +particular as to the movements of her charges--more apprehensive of +wolf-in-sheep's-clothing in the shape of singing or drawing-master--than +Mr. Sheldon seemed to be in these latter days. Even those pleasant walks +in Kensington Gardens, which had been one of the regular occupations of +the day, were now forbidden. Mr. Sheldon did not like that his daughter +should walk in public with no better protector than Diana Paget. + +"There is something disreputable in two girls marching about those +gardens together according to my ideas," said this ultra-refined +stockbroker, one morning at the family breakfast-table. "I don't like to +see my stepdaughter do anything I should forbid my own daughter to do. +And if I had a daughter, I should most decidedly forbid all lonely +rambles in Kensington Gardens. You see, Lotta, two girls as attractive +as you and Miss Paget can't be too particular where you go, and what you +do. When you want air and exercise, you can get both in the garden; and +when you want change of scene, and a peep at the fashions, you can drive +out with Mrs. Sheldon." + +To this deprivation Charlotte submitted, somewhat unwillingly, but with +no sign of open rebellion. She thought her stepfather foolish and +unreasonable; but she always bore in mind the fact that he had been kind +and disinterested in the matter of her engagement, and she was content to +prove her gratitude by any little sacrifice of this kind. Was not her +lover permitted to spend his Sundays in her society, and to call on her, +at his discretion, during the week? And what were walks in Kensington +Gardens compared with the delight of his dear presence! It is true that +she had sometimes been favoured with Mr. Hawkehurst's society in the +course of her airing; but she knew that he sacrificed his hours of work +or study for the chance of half an hour in her society; and she felt that +there might be gain to him in her loss of liberty. + +She told him, when next they met, that the morning walks were forbidden; +and, so jealous a passion is love, that Mr. Hawkehurst was nowise sorry +to find that his pearl was strictly watched and carefully guarded. + +"Well, it seems very particular of Mr. Sheldon, of course," he said; +"but, upon my word, I think he's right. Such a girl as you oughtn't to go +about with no better protection than Diana can give you. Fellows will +stare so at a pretty girl, you know; and I can't bear to think my pearl +should be stared at by impertinent strangers." + +Mr. Hawkehurst did not, however, find the strict notions of his +lady-love's stepfather quite so agreeable when he wanted to take his +"pearl" to the winter exhibitions of pictures. He was told that Miss +Halliday could go nowhere, except accompanied by her mamma; and as Georgy +did not care about pictures, and found herself unequal to the fatigue of +attending the winter exhibitions, he was obliged to forego the delight of +seeing them with Lotta on his arm. He pronounced Mr. Sheldon on this +occasion to be a narrow-minded idiot; but withdrew the remark in a +contrite spirit when Charlotte reminded him of that gentleman's +generosity. + +"Yes, dear, he has certainly been very kind and very disinterested--more +disinterested than even you think; but, somehow, I can't make him out." + +It was very well for Miss Halliday that she had submitted to this novel +restriction with as good a grace, inasmuch as Mr. Sheldon had prepared +himself for active opposition. He had given orders to his wife, and +further orders to Mrs. Woolper to the effect that his step-daughter +should not be permitted to go out of doors, except in his own or her +mother's company. + +"She is a very good girl, you see, Nancy," he said to the old +housekeeper, "but she's young, and she's giddy; and of course I can't +take upon myself to answer for Miss Paget, who may or may not be a good +girl. She comes of a very bad stock, however; and I am bound to remember +that. Some people think that you can't give a girl too much liberty. My +ideas lean the other way. I think you can't take too much care of a very +pretty girl whom you are bound by duty to protect." + +All this sounded very noble and very conscientious. It sounded thus even +to Mrs. Woolper, who in her intercourse with Philip Sheldon could never +quite divest herself of one appalling memory. That memory was the death +of Tom Halliday, and the horrible thoughts and fears that had for a time +possessed her mind in relation to that death. The shadow of that old +ghastly terror sometimes came between her and Mr. Sheldon, even now, +though she had long ago assured herself that the terror had been alike +groundless and unreasonable. + +"Didn't I see my own nephew carried off by a fever twice as sudden as the +fever that carried off poor Mr. Halliday?" she said to herself; "and am I +to think horrid things of him as I nursed a baby, because a cup of greasy +beef-tea turned my stomach?" + +Convinced by such reasoning as this that she had done her master a +grievous wrong, and grateful for the timely shelter afforded in her old +age, Mrs. Woolper felt that she could not do too much in her benefactor's +service. She had already shown herself a clever managing housekeeper; had +reformed abuses, and introduced a new system of care and economy +below-stairs, to the utter bewilderment of poor Georgy, for whom the +responsibilities of the gothic villa had been an overwhelming burden. +Georgy was not particularly grateful to the energetic old Yorkshirewoman +who had taken this burden off her hands, but she was submissive. + +"I never felt myself much in the house, my dear," she said to Lotta; "but +I am sure since Ann Woolper has been here I have felt myself a cipher." + +Mrs. Woolper, naturally sharp and observant, was not slow to perceive +that Mr. Sheldon was abnormally anxious about his stepdaughter. She +ascribed this anxiety to a suspicious nature, an inherent distrust of +other people on the part of her master, and in some measure to his +ignorance of womankind. + +"He seems to think that she'd run away and get married on the sly, at a +word from that young man; but he doesn't know what a dear innocent soul +she is, and how sorry she'd be to displease any one that's kind to her. I +don't know anything about Miss Paget. She's more stand-offish than our +own Miss, though she is little better than a genteel kind of servant; +but she seems fair-spoken enough. As to our Miss, bless her dear heart! +she want's no watching, I'll lay. But I daresay those City folks, with +their stocks going up and going down, and always bringing about the ruin +of somebody or other, go which way they will, get their poor heads so +muddled with figures that they can't believe there's such a thing as +honesty in the world." + +This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's evening musing in the snug little +housekeeper's room at the Lawn. It was a very comfortable little room, +and held sacred to Mrs. Woolper; the three young females, and the boy in +buttons, who formed Mr. Sheldon's in-door establishment, preferring the +license of the kitchen to the strict etiquette of the housekeeper's room. + +This apartment, as well as every other room in the stockbroker's house, +bore the stamp of prosperity. A comfortable easy-chair reposed the limbs +of Mrs. Woolper; a bright little fire burned in a bright little grate, +and its ruddy light was reflected in a bright little fender. Prints of +the goody class adorned the walls; and a small round table, with a +somewhat gaudy cover, supported Mrs. Woolper's work-box and family Bible, +both of which she made it a point of honour to carry about with her, and +to keep religiously, through good fortune and through evil fortune; +neither of which, however, afforded her much employment. She felt herself +to be much nearer grace with the family Bible by her side than she would +have been without it; she felt, indeed, that the maintenance and due +exhibition of the family Bible was in itself a kind of religion. But that +she should peruse its pages was not in the bond. Her eyes were old and +weak--sharp enough to discover the short-comings of Mr. Sheldon's young +maid-servants, but too feeble even for long-primer. + +As she looked round that snug little chamber of an evening, when her +day's labours were ended, and her own particular Britannia-metal tea-pot +was basking in the fender, her own special round of toast frizzling on +the trivet, she was very grateful to the man to whom she owed these +comforts. + +"What should I be but for him?" she asked herself with a shudder; for +the vision of that darksome abode shut in by high black walls--the +metropolitan workhouse--arose before her. She did not know what +difficulties would have barred her entrance even to that dreary +asylum; she only thought of the horrors of that sanctuary, and she +blessed her master for the benevolence that had accepted the service +of her failing hands. + +This was the servant on whom Philip Sheldon relied. He saw that she was +grateful, and that she was ready to serve him with an almost slavish +devotion. He knew that she had suspected him in the past, and he saw that +she had outlived her suspicion. + +"There is a statute of limitations to these things as well as for debt," +he said to himself. "A man can live down anything, if he knows what he +is about." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FIRM AS A BOOK. + +After that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss Halliday's +bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa for two or three +days, during which the impulsive Charlotte, being forbidden to talk +openly of the change in her friend's position, was fain to give vent to +her feelings by furtive embraces and hand-squeezings, sly nods and +meaning becks, and mischievous twinkling of her arch grey eyes. + +She talked of Valentine more than ever now, feeling herself at liberty to +sing what paeans she pleased in praise of her hero, now that her friend +had also a fitting subject for paeans. + +"And now it's your turn to talk of M. Lenoble, dear," she would say +naively, when she had entertained Diana with the minute details of her +last conversation with her lover, or a lively sketch of the delights of +that ideal cottage which she loved to furnish and unfurnish in accordance +with the new fancy of the hour. + +Diana was pleased to listen to her girlish talk: to hang and rehang the +ideal draperies, to fill and refill the ideal bookcase, to plan and +replan the arrangements of that ideal existence which was to be all joy +and love and harmony; but when her turn came, and she was asked to be +rapturous about her own lover, she could say nothing: that which she felt +was too deep for words. The thought of her lover was strange to her; the +fact of his love was mysterious and wonderful. She could not talk of him +with the customary frivolous school-girl talk; and love for him had so +newly taken root in her heart that there were as yet no blossoms to be +gathered from that magical plant. + +"Don't ask me to talk of him, Lotta, dear;" she said. "I am not yet sure +that I love him; I only feel that it is sweet to be loved by him. I think +Providence must have sent him to me in pity for my desolation." + +This was almost the same fancy that had occurred to Susan Meynell +five-and-thirty years before this time, when Gustave the first had +rescued her from the suicide's unrepentable sin. + +That chivalrous turn of mind which was hereditary in the race of Lenoble +predisposed these men to pity loneliness and beauty, weakness and sorrow. +This pity for helplessness may have been indeed only an element of their +exceeding strength. Was not the rescue of weaklings and women an +unfailing attribute in the mighty men of old? Who so prompt as Hercules +to fly to the rescue of Hesione? Who so swift as Perseus to save +Andromeda? And what sea-monster more terrible than loneliness and +poverty? + +In a few days there came another letter from Captain Paget, containing a +fresh summons to Omega Street. + +"Lenoble positively returns to Normandy to-morrow," he wrote, "to see his +girls, and, no doubt, break the news of his approaching marriage. He much +wants to see you, and, as I have forbidden his calling on you at the +Lawn, can only meet you here. He is to drink tea with me at the usual +time to-morrow evening, and I shall expect to see you early in the +afternoon." + +This afforded an opportunity for that introduction to which Miss Halliday +looked forward with so much interest. + +"If Mr. Sheldon and your mamma will let you come with me this afternoon, +dear, I shall be very pleased to take you," said Diana; and she felt that +she would appear less in the character of a lamb led to the slaughter if +she could go to meet her betrothed accompanied by Charlotte. + +But in this matter both the young ladies were doomed to disappointment. +Mr. Sheldon showed himself a social Draco in all things relating to his +stepdaughter. Being forbidden to reveal the existence of Gustave Lenoble, +Charlotte could only urge a frivolous desire to accompany her friend in a +pilgrimage dictated by filial duty. To the practical mind of Philip +Sheldon this desire appeared altogether absurd and unreasonable, and he +did not hesitate to express himself to that effect in a _tete-a-tete_ +with his stepdaughter. + +"What good on earth can you do by going to see a gouty old man, who has +his own daughter to dance attendance upon him?" asked Mr. Sheldon. +"Really, Charlotte, I am surprised to hear such a proposition from a +girl of your good sense. Miss Paget is your companion, not your visitor. +It is her duty to indulge your whims, but it is not your place to give +way to hers." + +"But this is a whim of mine, papa; I should really like to spend the +afternoon at Chelsea. It would be a change, you know." + +Mr. Sheldon looked at his stepdaughter with a sharp and searching gaze, a +gaze in which there was suspicion as well as curiosity. + +"It is a very discreditable whim for a young lady in your position," +he said sternly; "and I beg that such a proposition may not be made to +me again." + +This was decisive. Charlotte submitted, and Diana went alone to Omega +Street. She found Gustave waiting for her. He proposed a walk, and +Captain Paget was enthusiastic upon the subject of fresh air, and the +benefits arising therefrom. So the lovers went out in the bleak winter +afternoon, and wandered in the dreary Pimlico region as far as St. +James's Park--Gustave delighted to have Diana's hand upon his arm, and +Diana almost bewildered by a sense of happiness, which seemed unreal by +reason of its very novelty. + +Gustave was all enthusiasm, full of plans for the future. He would have +had the marriage take place immediately, if such a thing had been +possible; but Diana showed him that it would not be possible. Her first +duty was to the only friends she had ever known. Gustave argued the point +resolutely for nearly an hour, during which time they made their way to +the very gates of St. James's Park, but Diana was more resolute still. + +"What a tyrannical wife I shall have by-and-by!" said Gustave. "I think +you care for these Sheldons more than for me, Diane." + +"These Sheldons have been so good to me in the past." + +"And I mean to be so good to you in the future," answered Gustave. "You +shall be the happiest wife in Normandy, if a foolish doting husband's +devotion can make you happy." + +"What have I done to deserve so much devotion?" Diana murmured +wonderingly. + +"What have you done? Nothing, less than nothing. You will not even run +the hazard of offending your family of Sheldon in order to make me happy. +But Fate has said, 'At the feet of that girl with the dark eyes and pale +proud face shall poor Lenoble of Cotenoir put down his heart.' Do you +know what I said to myself when I saw you first in the little parlour +yonder? Ah, no! How should you guess? 'She is there,' said I; 'behold +her! It is thy destiny, Lenoble, on which thou gazest!' And thou, love, +wert calm and voiceless as Fate. Quiet as the goddess of marble before +which the pagans offered their sacrifices, across whose cold knees they +laid their rich garments. I put my treasures in your hip, my love; my +heart, my hopes,--all the treasures I had to offer." + +This was all very sweet, but there was a sting even mingled with that +sweetness. Diana told herself that love like this should only be offered +on the purest shrine; and when she remembered the many stains upon her +father's honour, it seemed to her that a part of the shame must needs +cleave to her. + +"Gustave," she said presently, after an absent meditative mood, from +which her lover had vainly tried to beguile her, "does it not seem to you +that there is something foolish in this talk of love and confidence +between you and me; and that all your promises have been a little too +lightly made? What do you know of me? You see me sitting in my father's +room, and because my eyes happen to please you, or for some reason as +foolish as that, you ask me to be your wife. I might have been one of the +worst of women." + +"You might have been?--yes, dear, but you are not. And if you had been, +Gustave Lenoble would not have flung his heart into your lap, even if +your eyes had been sweeter than they are. We impulsive people are people +of quick perceptions, and know what we are doing better than our +reflective friends imagine. I did not need to be an hour in your company, +dear love, in order to know that you are noble and true. There are tones +in the voice, there are expressions of the face, that tell these things +better than words can tell them; for, you see, words can lie, while tones +and looks are apt to be true. Yes, my angel, I knew you from that first +night. My heart leapt across all conventional barriers, and found its way +straight to yours." + +"I can see that you think much better of me than I deserve; but even +supposing you not to be deceived as to myself, I fear you are much +deceived as to my surroundings." + +"I know that your father is poor, and that the burden of his poverty +weighs heavily on you. That is enough for me to know." + +"No, M. Lenoble; it is act enough for you to know. If I am to be your +wife, I will not enter your family as an impostor. I told you the truth +about myself the other day when you questioned me, and I am bound to tell +you the truth about my father." + +And then she told him, in the plainest frankest language, the story of +her father's life. She inflicted no unnecessary shame on Captain Paget; +she made no complaint of her neglected childhood and joyless youth; but +she told Gustave that her father had been an adventurer, keeping doubtful +company, and earning his bread by doubtful means. + +"I hope and believe that if a peaceful home could be secured for his +declining years, he would live the rest of his life like a gentleman and +a Christian; and that, the bitter struggle for existence being ended, he +would be sorry for the past. I doubt if the sense of shame ever deserted +him when he was living that wretched wandering life, leaving debts and +difficulties behind him everywhere--always harassed and hunted by +creditors, who had good cause to be angry. Yes, Gustave, I do believe +that if it should please Providence to give my father a peaceful home at +last, he will be thankful for God's mercy, and will repent the sins of +life. And now I have told you the kind of heritage I can bring my +husband." + +"My dear love, I will accept the heritage, for the sake of her who brings +it. I never meant to be less than a son to your father; and if he is not +the best of fathers, as regards the past, we will try to make him a +decent kind of father as regards the future. I have long understood that +Captain Paget is something--ever so little--of an adventurer. It was the +pursuit of fortune that brought him to me; and without knowing it, he +brought me my fortune in the shape of his daughter." + +Diana blushed as she remembered that Captain Paget had not been so +innocent of any design in this matter as the Frenchman imagined. + +"And you will receive even papa for my sake?" asked Diana. + +"With all my heart." + +"Ah, you are indeed a generous lover!" + +"A lover who is not generous is--bah! there is nothing in creation so +mean as the wretch whom love does not render generous. When one sees the +woman whom Fate intends for one's wife, is one to stop to inquire the +character of her father, her mother, her sister, her cousin?--for there +is no stopping when you begin that. A man who loves makes no inquiries. +If he finds his jewel in the gutter, he picks it out of the mud and +carries it away in his bosom, too proud of his treasure to remember where +he found it; always provided that the jewel is no counterfeit, but the +real gem, fit for a king's crown. And my diamond is of the purest water. +By-and-by we will try to drain the gutter--that is to say, we will try to +pay those small debts of which you speak, to lodging-house keepers, and +tradesmen who have trusted your father." + +"You would pay papa's debts!" cried Diana in amazement. + +"But why not? All these little debts, the thought of which is so bitter +to you, might be discharged for two or three thousand pounds. Your father +tells me I am to be very rich by-and-by." + +"My father tells you! Ah, then, you have allowed him to involve you in +some kind of speculation!" + +"He has involved me in no speculation, and in no risk that two or three +hundred pounds will not cover." + +"The whole business seems very mysterious, Gustave." + +"Perhaps; it has to do with a secret which I am pledged to keep. I will +not allow your father to lead me into any quagmire of speculation, +believe me, dear one." + +After this they went back to Omega Street in the winter gloaming, and +Diana loved and admired this man with all her heart and mind. A new life +lay before her, very bright and fair. There, where had been only the +barren desert, was now a fair landscape, shining in the sunlight of hope. + +"Do you think your children will ever love me, Gustave?" she asked, not +without some sense of wonder that this impulsive light-hearted lover +should be the owner of children. She fancied that a responsibility so +grave as paternity must needs have impressed some stamp of solemnity upon +the man who bore it. + +"Ever love thee!" cried Gustave. "Child, they will adore thee. They ask +only some one to love. Their hearts are gardens of flowers; and thou +shalt gather the flowers. But wilt thou be happy at Cotenoir, thou? It is +somewhat sad, perhaps--the grave old chateau with the long sombre +corridors. But thou shalt choose new furniture, new garnitures at Rouen, +and we will make all bright and gay, like the heart of thy affianced Thou +wilt not be dull?" + +"Dull, with you and yours! I shall thank God for my happy home day and +night, as I never thought to thank Him a few months ago, when I was +dissatisfied, wicked, tired of my life." + +"And when you thought of that other one? Ah, how he was an imbecile, that +other one! But thou wilt never think of him again; it is a dream that is +past," said M. Lenoble. + +That self-confidence which was an attribute of his sanguine nature +rendered the idea of a rival not altogether unpleasant to him. He was +gratified by the idea of his own victory, and the base rival's +annihilation. + +"Diane, I want to show thee the home that is to be thine," he said +presently. "Your Sheldon family must give thee at least a holiday, if +they refuse to let thee go altogether. Thou wilt come to Normandy with +thy father. He is coming for a week or two, now that his gout is better. +I want to show thee Cotenoir--and Beaubocage, the place where my father +was born. It will seem dreary, perhaps, to thine English eyes; but to me +it is very dear." + +"Nothing that is dear to you shall appear dreary to me," said Diana. + +By this time they had arrived at Omega Street. Again Miss Paget made tea +for her lover. Strange to say, the operation seemed to grow more +agreeable with every repetition. While taking his tea from the hands of +his beloved, Gustave pressed the question of Diana's visit to Normandy. + +"About her Sheldon family she is adamant," he said to Captain Paget, who +sipped his tea and smiled at the lovers with the air of an aristocratic +patriarch. "There is to be no marriage till it pleases Mrs. Sheldon to +set her free. I consent to this only as man must consent to the +inevitable; but I say to her, can she not come to Normandy for a +fortnight--say but one short fortnight--to see her home? She will come +with you. She has but to ask a holiday of her friends, and it is done." + +"Of course," exclaimed the Captain, "she shall come with me. If +necessary, I myself will ask it of Sheldon.--But it will be best not to +mention where you are going, Diana. There are reasons, best known to our +friend Gustave and myself, which render secrecy advisable just at +present. You can say Rouen. That is quite near enough to the mark to come +within the limits of truth," added Horatio, with the tone of a man who +had never; quite outstepped those limits. "Yes, Rouen. And you will come +with me." + +"With us," said Gustave. "I will put off my journey for a day or two for +the sake of going with you. You have to meet Fleurus in Rouen haven't +you?" + +"Yes; he is to be there on the fifth of March, and this is the last day +of February. I had a letter from him this morning. All goes swimmingly." + +Diana wondered what it could be which went swimmingly; but she was +obliged to content herself with her lover's assurance that he had not +allowed her father to involve him in any kind of speculation. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. + +Between Philip Sheldon and his brother there was at this time a state of +feeling somewhat akin to the relations between a subjugated country and +its conqueror. The vanquished is fain to accept whatever the victor is +pleased to give, though discontent and impotent rage may be gnawing his +entrails. George Sheldon had been a loser in that game in which the +Haygarthian inheritance was the stake. He had held good cards, and had +played them with considerable cleverness; but no play could prevail +against his antagonist's ace of trumps. The ace of trumps was Charlotte +Halliday; and as to his mode and matter of playing this card, Mr. Sheldon +was for the present profoundly mysterious. + +"I have known a good many inscrutable cards in my time," the solicitor of +Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the course of fraternal +converse; "but I think for inscrutability you put the topper on the lot. +What do you expect to get out of this Haygarth estate? Come, Phil, let us +have your figures in plain English. I am to have a fifth--that's all +signed and sealed. But how about your share? What agreement have you got +from Miss Halliday?" + +"None." + +"None!" + +"What would the world think of me if I extorted money, or the promise of +money, from my wife's daughter? Do you think I could enforce any deed +between her and me?" + +"Ah, I see; you go in for respectability. And you are going to leave the +settlement of your claims to your stepdaughter's generosity. You will let +her marry Hawkehurst, with her hundred thousand pounds; and then you will +say to those two, 'Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst, be so kind as to hand over my +share of the plunder.' That is not _like_ you, Phil." + +"Perhaps you will be good enough to spare yourself the trouble of +speculating about my motives. Go your way, and leave me to go mine." + +"But this is a case in which I have an interest. If Charlotte marries +Hawkehurst, I don't see how you are to profit, to any extent that you +would care about, by the Haygarth fortune. But, on the other hand, if she +should die unmarried, without a will, the money would go to your wife. O +my God! Philip Sheldon, is _THAT_ what you mean?" + +The question was so sudden, the tone of horror in which it was spoken so +undisguised, that Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker was for one moment thrown +off his guard. His breath thickened; he tried to speak, but his dry lips +could shape no word. It was only one moment that he faltered. In the next +he turned upon his brother angrily, and asked what he meant. + +"You've been promised _your_ reward," he said; "leave me to look after +mine. You'll take those papers round to Greenwood and Greenwood; they +want to talk to you about them." + +"Yes, I'll take the papers." + +Greenwood and Greenwood were Mr. Sheldon's own solicitors--a firm of some +distinction, on whose acumen and experience the stockbroker placed +implicit reliance. They were men of unblemished respectability, and to +them Mr. Sheldon had confided the care of his stepdaughter's interests, +always reserving the chief power in his own hands. These gentlemen +thought well of the young lady's prospects, and were handling the case in +that slow and stately manner which marks the handling of such cases by +eminent firms of the slow-and-stately class. + +Mr. Sheldon wished his brother good-day, and was about to depart, when +George planted himself suddenly before the door. + +"Look you here, Phil," he said, with an intensity of manner that was by +no means common to him; "I want to say a few words to you, and I will say +them. There was an occasion, ten years ago, on which I ought to have +spoken out, and didn't. I have never ceased to regret my cowardice. Yes, +by Jove! I hate myself for it; and there are times when I feel as if my +share in that wretched business was almost as bad as yours." + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"Of course not. That's your text, and you'll stick to it. But you _do_ +know what I mean, and you shall know what I mean, if plain words can tell +you. You and I had a friend, Phil. He was a good friend to me, and I +liked him as much as a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I +had been down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to +give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, 'George, here's a +cheque for you.' _That's_ my notion of a friend. And yet I stood by that +man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and knew what ailed him, and didn't +stretch out my hand to save him." + +"Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. Sheldon, livid to +the lips with smothered fury, but able to put on a bold front +nevertheless. "I didn't come here to listen to rhodomontade of this kind, +or to bandy words with you. Get out of my way." + +"Not till I've said my say. There shall be no rhodomontade this time. I +stood by and saw my best friend murdered--by you. I kept my counsel for +your sake, and when you had made your fortune--by his death--I asked you +for a little money. You know how much you gave me, and how graciously you +gave it. If you had given me twenty times the sum you gained by Tom +Halliday's death, I would give it back, and twenty times as much again, +to bring him back to life, and to feel that I had never aided and abetted +a murderer. Yes, by God, I would! though I'm not straitlaced or +over-scrupulous at the best of times. But that's past, and all the money +in the Bank of England wouldn't undo what you did in Fitzgeorge Street. +But if you try on any such tricks with Tom Halliday's daughter, if +_that's_ the scheme you've hatched for getting hold of this money, as +surely as we two live, I'll let in the light upon your doings, and save +the girl whose father you murdered. I will, Philip, let come what may. +You can't get _me_ out of the way when it suits you, you see. _I know +you._ That's the best antidote against your medicines." + +"If you'll be so good as to say these things on 'Change, I can bring an +action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. There's no good in +saying them here." + +Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated than his brother, +being of a harder nature, and less subject to random impulses of good or +evil. He caught his accuser by the collar of his coat, and flung him +violently from the doorway. Thus ended his visit to Gray's Inn. + +Boldly as he had borne himself during the interview, he went to his +office profoundly depressed and dispirited. + +"So I am to have him against me?" he said to himself. "He can do me no +real harm; but he can harass and annoy me. If he should drop any hint to +Hawkehurst?--but he'll scarcely do that. Perhaps I've ridden him a little +too roughly in the past. And yet if I'd been smoother, where would his +demands have ended? No; concession in these cases means ruin." + +He shut himself in his office, and sat down to his desk to confront +his difficulties. For a long time the bark which was freighted with +Philip Sheldon's fortunes had been sailing in troubled waters. He had +been an unconscious disciple of Lord Bacon, inasmuch as the boldness +inculcated by that philosopher had been the distinguishing characteristic +of his conduct in all the operations of life. As a speculator, his +boldness had served him well. Adventures from which timid spirits shrunk +appalled had brought golden harvests to this daring gamester. When some +rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up +signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the +crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the +valleys of death,--a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of +all-devouring Poseidon,--Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of +desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the +tempest and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and +waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon had +obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenture of railways that +were in bad odour; Unitas Bank shares, immediately after the discovery of +gigantic embezzlements by Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the +Mole-and-Burrow railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet +in the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the shares +in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buying _sub rosa_;--these, +and such as these, had employed Mr. Sheldon's capital; and from the +skilful manipulation of capital thus employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled +the fortune secured by his alliance with Tom Halliday's widow. + +It had been the stockbroker's fate to enter the money market at a time +when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the +most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities. He had +seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the +harridan's bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He +had made only one mistake--and that he made in common with many of his +fellow-players in the great game of speculation always going on eastward +of Temple Bar--he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had +imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements +of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was +abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the +transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean +kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred +privileges of "The House" more astounded by the change than Mr. Sheldon. + +The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. Sheldon a +speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and Amphiaraeuses of the Stock +Exchange had agreed in declaring that a man who bought into consols at 90 +_must_ see his capital increased; and what was true of this chief among +securities was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and +from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85-1/2; +securities less secure sank with a rapidity corresponding with their +constitutional weakness. As during the ravages of an epidemic the weaker +are first to fall victims to the destroyer, so while this fever raged on +'Change, the feeble enterprises, the "risky" transactions, sank at an +appalling rate, some to total expiry. The man who holds a roaring lion by +the tail could scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these +troublous times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain +time might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in which it +would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast grows more and +more furious, and then to let go and be eaten up alive, is what many men +did in that awful crisis. + +If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been warned by the +first indication that marked the turning of the tide, he would have been +a considerable loser; but he would not accept his loss, and he would not +be warned by that early indication. He had implicit belief in his own +cleverness; and he fancied if every other bark in that tempest-tossed +ocean foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across the +harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a navigator. +It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt away in the payment of +contango, that he consented to the inevitable. The mistakes of one year +devoured the fruits of nine years' successful enterprise, and the Philip +Sheldon of this present year was no richer than the man who had stood by +Tom Halliday's bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that knows +no difference between the threshold of kingly palace or pauper refuge. +Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of +his existence--to remember which was a dull dead pain even to _him_--but +a man infinitely more heavily burdened. He had made for himself a certain +position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall, +the utter annihilation of all his chances in life. + +The stockbroker's fitful slumbers at this time began to be haunted by the +vision of a black board fixed against the wall of a public resort, a +black board on which appeared his own name. In what strange places +feverish dreams showed him this hideous square of painted deal!--Now it +was on the walls of the rooms he lived in; now on the door of a church, +like Luther's propositions; now at a street-corner, where should have +been the name of the street; now inky-black against the fair white +headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miserable man, for whom the +scraping together of sordid dross was life's only object, and who, in +losing money, lost all! + +This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending disgrace was +the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat +day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence +went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his +hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool +work than by the inner life of her husband; and Charlotte and her lover +contemplated existence from their own point of view, and cherished their +own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all things, as far away from +the moody meditator as if they had been natives of Upper India. + +The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was not immediate, +but it was not far off; the shadow of it already wrapped him in a +twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever and a safe man had left him. +He was described now as a daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads +as they talked of him. + +"One of the next to go will be Sheldon," said the wiseacres; but in these +days of commercial epidemic there was no saying who would be the first to +go. It was the end of the world in little. One was taken, and another +left. The Gazette overran its customary column like a swollen river, and +flooded a whole page of the Times newspaper; and men looked to the lists +of names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the trump of +archangels sounding the destruction of the universe. + +For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted those turbulent +waters had been made of paper. This was nothing. Paper boats were the +prevailing shipping in those waters; but Captain Sheldon's bark needed +refitting, and the captain feared a scarcity of paper, or, worse still, +the awful edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him there +should be no more paper. + +Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with ruin +complete and irredeemable. When all common expedients had been exhausted, +and his embarrassments had become desperate, he had found a desperate +expedient, and had extricated himself from those embarrassments. The time +had come in which a new means of extrication must be found as desperate +as the last, if need were. As Philip Sheldon had faced the situation +before, he faced it now--unshrinkingly, though with a gloomy anger +against destiny. It was hard for him that such a thing should have to be +repeated. If he pitied anybody, he pitied himself; and this kind of +compassion is very common with this kind of character. Do not the Casket +letters show us--if we may trust them to show us anything--that Mary +Stuart was very sorry for herself when she found herself called upon to +make an end of Darnley? In Mr. Swinburne's wonderful study in morbid +anatomy, there are perhaps no finer touches than those which reveal the +Queen's selfish compassion for her own heartlessness. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY. + +Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father's wish that she should leave +Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained the Captain's consent to +the revelation of her engagement to be married. + +"I don't like to leave them in a mysterious manner, papa," she said. "I +have told Charlotte a good deal already, under a promise of secrecy; but +I should like to tell Mrs. Sheldon that there is a real reason for my +leaving her." + +"Very well, my love, since you are so amazingly squeam--honourable," +interposed the Captain, remembering how much depended on his daughter's +marriage, and what a very difficult person he had found her. "Yes, my +dear, of course; I respect your honourable feeling; and--er--yes--you may +tell Mrs. Sheldon--and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the +lady is but an inoffensive cipher--that you are about to be married--to a +French gentleman of position. You will, of course, be obliged to mention +his name, and then will arise the question as to where and how you met +him; and, upon my word, it's confoundedly awkward that you should insist +on enlightening these people. You see, my dear girl, what I want to +avoid, for the present, is any chance of collision between the Sheldons +and Lenoble." + +"Papa!" exclaimed Diana, impatiently, "why must there be all this +scheming?" + +"O, very well, Miss Paget; tell them what you like!" cried the Captain, +aggravated beyond endurance by such inherent perversity. "All I can say +is, that a young woman who quarrels with her bread-and-butter is likely +to come to dry bread; and very little of that, perhaps. I wash my hands +of the business. Tell them what you like." + +"I will not tell them more than I feel to be actually necessary, papa," +the young lady replied calmly. "I do not think Mr. Sheldon will trouble +himself about M. Lenoble. He seems very much occupied by his own +affairs." + +"Humph! Sheldon seems harassed, anxious, does he?" + +"Well, yes, papa; I have thought so for the last few months. If I may +venture to judge by the expression of his face, as he sits at home in the +evening, reading the paper, or staring at the fire, I am sure he has many +anxieties--troubles even. Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte do not appear to +notice these things. They are accustomed to see him quiet and reserved, +and they don't perceive the change in him as I do." + +"O, there is a change, is there?" + +"Yes, a decided change." + +"Why the deuce couldn't you tell me this before!" + +"Why should I tell you that Mr. Sheldon seems anxious? I should not have +told you now, if you had not appeared to dread his interference in our +affairs. I can't help observing these things; but I don't want to play +the part of a spy." + +"No, you're so infernally punct--so delicate-minded, my love," said the +Captain, pulling himself up suddenly, for the second time. "Forgive me if +I was impatient just now. You look at these things from a higher point of +view than that of a battered old man of the world like me. But if you +should see anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct on another +occasion, my love, I should be obliged to you if you would be more +communicative. He and I have been allied in business, you see, and it is +important for me to know these things." + +"I have not seen anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct, papa; I +have only seen him thoughtful and dispirited. And I suppose anxieties are +common to every man of business." + +Georgy received Miss Paget's announcement with mingled lamentations and +congratulations. + +"I am sure I am heartily glad for your sake, Diana," she said; "but what +we shall do without you, I don't know. Who is to see to the drawing-room +being dusted every morning, when you are gone? I'm sure I tremble for the +glass shades. Don't imagine I'm not pleased to think you should settle in +life advantageously, my love. I'm not so selfish as that; though I will +say that there never was a girl with more natural talent for making-up +pretty little caps than you. The one I have on has been admired by +everybody. Even Ann Woolper this morning, when I was going into the +butcher's book with her--for I insist upon going into the butcher's book +with her weekly, whether she likes it or not; though the way that man +puts down the items is so bewildering that I feel myself a perfect baby +in her hands,--even Ann admired it, and said how young-looking it is. And +then she brought up the time in Fitzgeorge Street, and poor Tom's +illness, and almost upset me for the rest of the day. And now, dear, let +me offer you my sincere congratulations. Of course, you know that you +would always have had a home with me; but service, or at least +companionship, is no inheritance, as the proverb says; and for your own +sake I'm very glad to think that you are going to have a house of your +own. And now tell me what he is like, Monsieur what's-his-name?" + +Mrs. Sheldon had been told, but had not remembered the name. Her great +anxiety, as well as Charlotte's, was to know what manner of man the +affianced lover was. If Diana's future happiness had been contingent on +the shape of her husband's nose, or the colour of his eyes, these two +ladies could not have been more anxious upon the subject. + +"Has he long eyelashes, and a dreamy look in his eyes, like Valentine?" +asked Charlotte, secretly convinced that her lover had a copyright in +these personal graces. + +"Does he wear whiskers?" asked Georgy. "I remember, when I was quite a +girl, and went to parties at Barlingford, being struck by Mr. Sheldon's +whiskers. And I was quite offended with papa, who was always making +sarcastic remarks, for calling them mutton-chop whiskers; but they +really were the shape of mutton-cutlets at that time. He wears them +differently now." + +Mrs. Sheldon branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana +escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have +described him to Georgy. + +By-and-by she asked permission to leave Bayswater for a fortnight, in +order to see her lover's home and friends. + +"I will come back to you, and stay as long as you like, dear Mrs. +Sheldon," she said, "and make you as many caps as you please. And I will +make them for you by and by, when I am living abroad, and send them over +to you in a bandbox. It will be a great delight to me to be of some +little service to a friend who has been so kind. And perhaps you will +fancy the caps are prettier when they can boast of being French." + +"You darling generous-minded girl! And you won't go away for a fortnight +and never come back again, will you, dear? I had a cook who did that, and +left me with a large dinner-party hanging over my head; and how I got +through it--with a strange man-cook, who charged a guinea, and used fresh +butter, at twentypence, a pound, as if it had been dirt, and two strange +men to wait--I don't know. It all seemed like a dream. And since then we +have generally had everything from the confectioner's; and I assure you, +to feel that you can wash your hands of the whole thing, and sit down at +the head of your table with your mind as free from care as if you were a +visitor, is worth all the expense." + +Diana promised she would not behave like the cook; and two days after +this conversation left the London Bridge terminus with her father and +Gustave Lenoble. + +Mr. Sheldon troubled himself very little about this departure. He was +informed of Miss Paget's intended marriage; and the information awakened +neither surprise nor interest in his heavily-burdened mind. + +"A Frenchman, a friend of her father's!" he said; "some swindling +adventurer, no doubt," he thought. And this was as much consideration +as he could afford to bestow upon Miss Paget's love affairs at this +present time. + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE. + +On the day after Miss Paget's departure Mr. Sheldon came home from the +City rather earlier than usual, and found Charlotte alone in the +drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume from Mudie of an instructive and +edifying character, with a view to making herself clever, in order that +she might better understand that prodigy of learning, Mr. Hawkehurst. + +She was somewhat inclined to yawn over the big book, which contained a +graphic account of recent discoveries of an antiquarian nature. Her mind +was not yet attuned to the comprehension of the sublimer elements in such +discoveries. She saw only a dry as dust record of futile gropings in +desert sand for the traces of perished empires. Her imagination was not +cultivated to that point whereat the gift which Mr. Lewes calls "insight" +becomes the daily companion, nay, indeed, the ever-haunting and +nightmare-bringing influence of the dreamer. For her sands were only +sands, the stones were only stones. No splendour of fallen palaces, no +glory and pride of perished kings, no clash and clamour of vanished +courts, arose from those barren sands, with all their pomp and +circumstance, conjured into being by half a word on a broken pillar, or a +date upon a Punic monument. Miss Halliday looked up with a sigh of +fatigue as her stepfather came into the room. It was not a room that he +particularly affected, and she was surprised when he seated himself in +the easy-chair opposite her, and poked the fire, as if with the intention +of remaining. + +"You shouldn't read by firelight, my dear," he said; "it is most +destructive to the eyesight." + +"I dare say my sight will last my time, papa," the young lady replied +carelessly; "but it's very kind of you to think of it, and I won't read +any more." + +Mr. Sheldon made no reply to this observation. He sat looking at the +fire, with that steady gaze which was habitual to him--the gaze of the +man who plans and calculates. + +"My dear," he said by-and-by, "it seems that this money to which you may +or may not be entitled is more than we thought at first; in fact, it +appears that the sum is a considerable one. I have been, and still am, +particularly anxious to guard against disappointment on your part, as I +know the effect that such a disappointment is apt to produce upon a +person's life. The harassing slowness of Chancery proceedings is +proverbial; I am therefore especially desirous that you should not count +upon this money." + +"I shall never do that, papa. I should certainly like a fine edition of +the Encyclopaedia Britannica for Valentine, by-and-by, as he says that is +essential for a literary man; and a horse, for people say literary men +ought to take horse exercise. But beyond that--" + +"We need scarcely go into these details, my dear. I want you to +understand the broad facts of the case. While, on the one hand, our +success in obtaining the inheritance which we are about to claim for you +is uncertain, on the other hand the inheritance is large. Of course, when +I presented you with the sum of five thousand pounds, I had no idea of +this possible inheritance." + +"O, of course not, papa." + +"But I now find that there is such a possibility as your becoming +a--well--a rich woman." + +"O papa!" + +"In which case I may conclude that your mother would benefit in some +measure from your good fortune." + +"Can you doubt that, papa? There should be no measure to her benefit from +any money obtained by me." + +"I do not doubt that, my dear. And it is with that idea that I wish to +make a proposition to you--for your mother's possible advantage." + +"I shall be happy to do anything you wish, papa." + +"It must be done as a spontaneous act of your own, Charlotte, not in +accordance with any wish of mine." + +"What is it that I am to do?" asked Charlotte. + +"Well, my dear, you see it is agreed between us that if you do get this +money, your mother is certain to benefit considerably. But unhappily the +proceedings are likely to drag on for an indefinite time; and in the +course of that time it comes within the limits of possibility that your +decease may precede that of your mother." + +"Yes, papa." + +"In which case your mother would lose all hope of any such advantage." + +"Of course, papa." + +Charlotte could not help thinking that there was something sordid in this +discussion--this calculation of possible gain or loss contingent on her +fresh young life. But she concluded that it was the nature of business +men to see everything from a debased standpoint, and that Mr. Sheldon was +no more sordid than other men of his class. + +"Well, papa?" she asked presently, after some moments of silence, during +which she and her stepfather had both been absorbed in the contemplation +of the fire. + +"Well, my dear," replied Mr. Sheldon slowly, "I have been thinking that +the natural and easy way of guarding against all contingencies would be +by your effecting an insurance on your life in your mother's favour." + +"No, no, papa!" cried Charlotte, with unwonted vehemence; "I would rather +do anything than that!" + +"What can be your objection to such a very simple arrangement?" + +"I dare say my objection seems foolish, childish even, papa; but I really +have a horror of life assurances. I always think of papa--my own poor +father, whom I loved so dearly. It seemed as if he put a price upon his +life for us. He was so anxious to insure his life--I remember hearing him +talk of it at Hyley, when I was a child--to make things straight, as he +said, for us; and, you see, very soon afterwards he died." + +"But you can't suppose the insurance of his life had anything to do with +his death?" + +"Of course not, I am not so childish as that; only--" + +"Only you have a foolish lackadaisical prejudice against the only means +by which you can protect your mother against a contingency that is so +remote as to be scarcely worth consideration. Let it pass." + +There was more anger in the tone than in the words. It was not that angry +tone, but the mention of her mother, that impressed Miss Halliday. She +began to consider that her objections were both foolish and selfish. + +"If you really think I ought to insure my life, I will do so," she said +presently. "Papa did as much for those he loved; why should I be less +thoughtful of others?" + +Having once brought Miss Halliday to this frame of mind, the rest was +easy. It was agreed between them that as Valentine Hawkehurst was to be +kept in ignorance of his betrothed's claim to certain moneys now in the +shadowy under-world of Chancery, so he must be kept in ignorance of the +insurance. + +It was only one more secret, and Charlotte had learned that it was +possible to keep a secret from her lover. + +"I suppose before we are married I shall able to tell him everything?" +she said. + +"Certainly, my dear. All I want is to test his endurance and his +prudence. If the course of events proves him worthy of being trusted, I +will trust him." + +"I am not afraid of that, papa." + +"Of course not, my dear. But, you see, I have to protect your interests; +and I cannot afford to see this gentleman with your eyes. I am compelled +to be prudent." + +The stockbroker sighed as he said this--a sigh of utter weariness. +Remorse was unknown to him; the finer fibres upon which that chord is +struck had not been employed in the fabrication of his heart. But there +is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the +anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration +of spirit--a sickness of heart and mind--a bitter longing to lie down and +die--the weariness of a beaten hound rather than of a baffled man. + +This was what Mr. Sheldon felt, as the threads of the web which he was +weaving multiplied, and grew daily and hourly more difficult of +manipulation. Success in the work which he had to do depended on so many +contingencies. Afar off glittered the splendid goal--the undisputed +possession of the late John Haygarth's hundred thousand pounds; but +between the schemer and that chief end and aim of all his plottings what +a sea of troubles! He folded his arms behind his head, and looked across +the girlish face of his companion into the shadow and the darkness. In +those calculations which were for ever working themselves out in this +man's brain, Charlotte Halliday was only one among many figures. She had +her fixed value in every sum; but her beauty, her youth, her innocence, +her love, her trust, made no unit of that fixed figure, nor weighed in +the slightest degree with him who added up the sum. Had she been old, +ugly, obnoxious, a creature scarcely fit to live, she would have +represented exactly the same amount in the calculations of Philip +Sheldon. The graces that made her beautiful were graces that he had no +power to estimate. He knew she was a pretty woman; but he knew also that +there were pretty women to be seen in any London street; and the +difference between his stepdaughter and the lowest of womankind who +passed him in his daily walks was to him little more than a social +prejudice. + +The insurance business being once decided on, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in +putting it into execution. Although he made a point of secrecy as +regarded Mr. Hawkehurst, he went to work in no underhand manner, but +managed matters after a Highly artistic and superior fashion. He took his +stepdaughter to the offices of Greenwood and Greenwood, and explained her +wishes to one of those gentlemen in her presence. If he dwelt a little +more on Miss Halliday's anxiety for her mother's pecuniary advantage than +his previous conversation with Miss Halliday warranted, the young lady +was too confiding and too diffident to contradict him. She allowed him to +state, or rather to imply, that the proposed insurance was her +spontaneous wish, an emanation of her anxious and affectionate heart, the +natural result of an almost morbid care for her mother's welfare. + +Mr. Hargrave Greenwood, of Greenwood and Greenwood, seemed at first +inclined to throw cold water on the proposition, but after some little +debate, agreed that extreme caution would certainly counsel such a step. + +"I should imagine there was no better life amongst the inhabitants of +London," he said, "than Miss Shel--pardon me--Miss Halliday's. But, as +the young lady herself suggests, 'in the midst of life we are--'; and, as +the young lady herself has observed, these things are--ahem--beyond +human foresight. If there were any truth in the aphorisms of poets, I +should say Miss Halliday cannot insure too quickly; for the remark of +Cowper--or, stay, I believe Pope--'whom the gods love die young,' might +very well be supposed to apply to so charming a young lady. Happily, the +secretaries of insurance offices know very little about the poets, +unless, indeed, Miss Halliday were to go to the Royal Widow's and +Orphan's Hope, the secretary of which is the author of dramas that may +fairly rank with the works of Knowles and Lytton." + +Mr. Greenwood, an elderly gentleman of the ponderous and port-wine +school, laughed at his own small jokes, and took things altogether +pleasantly. He gave Mr. Sheldon a letter of introduction to the secretary +of his pet insurance company, the value of which to that gentleman was +considerable. Nor was this the only advantage derived from the interview. +The lawyer's approval of the transaction reassured Charlotte; and though +she had heard her own views somewhat misrepresented, she felt that an +operation which appeared wise in the sight of such a lawyer, standing on +such a Turkey hearthrug, commanding such gentlemanly-looking clerks as +those who came and went at Mr. Greenwood's bidding, must inevitably be a +proceeding at once prudent and proper. + +The business of the insurance was not quite so easy as the interview with +the lawyer. The doctor to whom Miss Halliday was introduced seemed very +well satisfied with that young lady's appearance of health and spirits, +but in a subsequent interview with Mr. Sheldon asked several questions, +and shook his head gravely when told that her father had died at +thirty-seven years of age. But he looked less grave when informed that +Mr. Halliday had died of a bilious fever. + +"Did Mr. Halliday die in London?" he asked. + +"He did." + +"I should like--ahem--if it were possible, to see the medical man who +attended him. These fevers rarely prove fatal unless there is some +predisposing cause." + +"In this case there was none." + +"You speak rather confidently, Mr. Sheldon, as a non-professional man." + +"I speak with a certain amount of professional knowledge. I knew Tom +Halliday for many years." + +Mr. Sheldon forebore to state that Tom Halliday had died in his house, +and had been attended by him. It is, perhaps, only natural that Philip +Sheldon, the stockbroker of repute, should wish to escape identification +with Philip Sheldon, the unsuccessful dentist of Bloomsbury. + +After a little more conversational skirmishing, the confidential +physician of the Prudential Step Assurance Company agreed to consider +that Mr. Halliday's constitution had been in no manner compromised by his +early death, and to pass Charlotte's life. The motives for effecting the +insurance were briefly touched upon in Mr. Greenwood's letter of +introduction, and appeared very proper and feasible in the eyes of the +directors; so, after a delay of a few days, the young lady found herself +accepted, and Mr. Sheldon put away among his more important papers a +large oblong envelope, containing a policy of assurance on his +stepdaughter's life for five thousand pounds. He did not, however, stop +here, but made assurance doubly sure by effecting a second insurance upon +the same young life with the Widow's and Orphan's Hope Society, within a +few days of the first transaction. + + + + +Book the Sixth. + + + +DIANA IN NORMANDY. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +AT COTENOIR. + +Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 15, 186--. + +My darling Lotta,--As you extorted from me a solemn pledge that I would +write you a full and detailed account of my adventures, I seat myself in +Mademoiselle Lenoble's pretty little turret-chamber, in the hope of +completing the first instalment of my work before papa or Gustave summons +me to prepare for a drive and visit to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, +which, I believe, has been planned for to-day. + +What am I to tell you, dear, and how shall I begin my story? Let me +fancy myself sitting at your feet before your bedroom fire, and you +looking down at me with that pretty inquisitive look in your dear grey +eyes. Do you know that M. Lenoble's eyes are almost the colour of yours, +Lotta? You asked me a dozen questions about his eyes the other day, and I +could give you no clear description of them; but yesterday, as he stood +at the window looking out across the garden, I saw their real colour. It +is grey, a deep clear grey, and his lashes are dark, like yours. How +shall I begin? That is the grand difficulty! I suppose you will want to +know something even about the journey. Everything was very pleasant, in +spite of the cold blusterous March weather. Do you know what my last +journey was like, Lotta? It was the long dreary journey from Foretdechene +to St. Katharine's Wharf, when Mr. Hawkehurst advised and arranged my +return to England. I had been sitting quite alone in a balcony +overlooking the little town. It was after midnight, but the lights were +still burning: I can see the lamplit windows shining through the night +mist as I write this, end the sense of the hopeless misery of that time +comes back to me like the breath of some freezing wind. I can find no +words to tell you how desolate I was that night, or how hopeless. + +I dared not think of my future life; or of the next day, that was to be +the beginning of that hopeless future. I was obliged to bind my thoughts +to the present and all its dreariness; and a kind of dull apathetic +feeling, which was too dull for despair, took possession of me that +night. While I was sitting there Mr. Hawkehurst came to me, and told me +that my father had become involved in a quarrel, under circumstances of a +very shameful nature, which I need not tell you, darling. He recommended +me to leave Foretdechene--indeed, almost insisted that I should do so. He +wanted to rescue me from that miserable life. Your lover had noble and +generous impulses even then, you see, dear; at his worst he was not all +bad, and needed only your gentle influence to purify and elevate his +character. He gave me all the money he possessed to pay the expenses of +my journey. Ah, what a dreary journey! I left Foretdechene in the chill +daybreak, and travelled third class, with dreadful Belgians who smelt of +garlic, to Antwerp. I slept at a very humble inn near the quay, and +started for England by the Baron Osy at noon next day. I cannot tell you +how lonely I felt on board the steamer. I had travelled uncomfortably +before, but never without my father and Valentine--and he had been always +kind to me. If we were shabbily dressed, and people thought ill of us, I +did not care. The spirit of Bohemianism must have been very strong with +me in those days. I remembered how we had sat together on the same boat +watching the sleepy shores of Holland, or making fun of our respectable +fellow-passengers. Now I was quite alone. People stared at me rudely and +unkindly, as I thought. I could not afford to dine or breakfast with the +rest; and I was weak enough to feel wounded by the idea that people would +guess my motive for shunning the savoury banquets that sent up such +horrid odours to the deck where I sat, trying to read a tattered +Tauchnitz novel. And the end of my journey? Ah, Charlotte, you can never +imagine what it is to travel like that, without knowing whether there is +any haven, any shelter for you at the end of your wanderings! I knew that +at a certain hour we were to arrive at St. Katharine's Dock, but beyond +that I knew nothing. I counted my money. There was just enough to pay for +a cab that would carry me to Hyde Lodge. I should land there penniless. +And what if my cousin Priscilla should refuse to receive me? For a moment +I fancied even that possible; and I pictured myself walking about London, +hungry and homeless. + +This was my last journey. I have dwelt upon it longer than I need have +done; but I want you to understand what it is that makes Gustave Lenoble +dear to me. If you could feel the contrast between the past and the +present as I felt it when I stood on the deck of the Dover packet with +him by my side, you would know why I love him, and am grateful to him. We +stood side by side, watching the waves and talking of our future, while +my father enjoyed a nap in one of the little deck cabins. To Gustave that +future seems very bright and clear; to me it seems unutterably strange +that the future _can_ be anything but a dismal _terra incognita_, from +the contemplation of which it is wise to refrain. + +Papa stays with Gustave at Cotenoir; but it had been arranged for me to +visit Mademoiselle Lenoble, Gustave's aunt, at Beaubocage, and to remain +with her during my stay in Normandy. I at once understood the delicate +feeling which prompted this arrangement. We dined at Rouen, and came to +Vevinord in a coach. At Vevinord a queer little countrified vehicle met +us, with a very old man, of the farm-servant class, as coachman. Gustave +took the reins from the old man's hand and drove to Beaubocage, where +Mademoiselle Lenoble received me with much cordiality. She is a dear old +lady, with silvery bands of hair neatly arranged under the prettiest of +caps. Her gown is black silk, and her collar and cuffs of snowy +whiteness; everything about her exquisitely neat, and of the fashion of +twenty, or perhaps thirty, years ago. + +And now, I suppose, you will want to know what Beaubocage is like. Well, +dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I must confess that her +ancestral mansion is neither grand nor pretty. It might have made a very +tolerable farmhouse, but has been spoiled by the architect's +determination to make it a chateau. It is a square white building, with +two pepper-castor-like turrets, in one of which I write this letter. +Between the garden and the high road there is a wall, surmounted with +plaster vases. The garden is for the greater part utilitarian; but in +front of the salon windows there is a grassplot, bordered by stiff +gravel-walks, and relieved by a couple of flower-beds. A row of tall +poplars alone screens the house from the dusty high road. At the back of +it there is an orchard; on one side a farmyard; behind the orchard lie +the fields that compose the farm of Beaubocage and the paternal estate of +the Lenoble family. All around the country is very flat. The people seem +to be kind and simple, and devotedly attached to "Mademoiselle." There is +a rustic peacefulness pervading everything which, for me, stands instead +of beauty. + +I am hypocrite enough to pretend to be pleased with everything, for I can +perceive how anxiously M. Lenoble watches me in order to discover whether +I like his native country. He was not born at Beaubocage, but in Paris. +Mademoiselle Lenoble told me the story of his childhood, and how she +brought him to Beaubocage, when quite a little fellow, from Rouen, where +his father died. About his mother there seems to have been some mystery. +Mademoiselle told me nothing of this, except that her brother, Gustave +the elder, made a love-match, and thereby offended his father. She has +the little crib in which her nephew, Gustave the younger, slept on the +night of his coming. It had been his father's little bed thirty years +before. She shed tears as she told me the story, and how she sat and +watched by the little fellow as he cried himself to sleep with his head +lying on her arm, and the summer moonlight shining full upon his face. + +I was deeply touched by her manner as she told me these things; and I +think, if I had not already learned to love M. Lenoble, I should love him +for the sake of his aunt. She is charming; a creature so innocent and +pure, that one considers one's words in speaking to her, almost as if she +were a child. She is about forty years older than I; yet for worlds I +would not tell her of the people and the scenes I have beheld at foreign +watering-places and gambling-rooms. She has spent the sixty years of her +life so completely out of the world, that she has retained the freshness +and sweetness of her youth untainted in the least degree. Can there be +magical philtre equal to this--a pure unselfish life, far away from the +clamour of cities? + +The old servant who waits upon me is seventy-five years of age, and +remembers Ma'amselle Cydalise from her childhood. She is always singing +the praises of her mistress, and she sees that I like to hear them. "Ah, +ma'amselle," she said to me, "to marry a Lenoble is to marry one of the +angels. I will not say that the old seigneur was not hard towards his +son. Ah, yes, but it was a noble heart. And the young monsieur--that one +who died in Rouen, the Poor!--ah, that he was kind, that he was gracious! +What of tears, what of regrets, when the Old chased him!" + +My position is quite recognised. I think the very cowboy in the +farmyard--a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured mindless face, and +prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes--even the cowboy knows that I +am to be Madame Lenoble of Cotenoir. Cotenoir is the Windsor Castle of +this district; Beaubocage is only Frogmore. Yes, dear, the bond is signed +and sealed. Even if I did not love M. Lenoble, I have bound myself to +marry him; but I do love him, and thank him with all my heart for having +given a definite end and aim to my life. Don't think I underrate your +kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could +give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and +Valentine will exact all his sweet young wife's love and care. + +I have written you a letter which I am sure will require double postage; +so I will say no more except goodbye. Take care of yourself, dear one. +Practise your part in our favourite duets; remember your morning walk in +the garden; and don't wear out your eyes over the big books that Mr. +Hawkehurst is obliged to read. + +Ever your affectionate + +DIANA. + + * * * * * + +_From Charlotte Halliday to Diana Paget_. + +The dullest house in Christendom, Monday. + +EVER DEAREST Di,--Your letter was a welcome relief to the weariness +of my existence. How I wish I were with you! But that is too bright a +dream. I am sure I should idolise Beaubocage. I should not mind the +dismal row of poplars, or the flat landscape, or the dusty road, or +anything, so long as it was not like Bayswater. I languish for a change, +dear. I have seen so little of the world, except the dear moorland +farmhouse at Newhall. I don't think I was ever created to be "cabined, +cribbed, confined," in such a narrow life as this, amid such a dull, +unchanging round of daily commonplace. Sometimes, when the cold spring +moon is shining over the tree-tops in Kensington-Gardens, I think of +Switzerland, and the snow-clad mountains and fair Alpine valleys we have +read of and talked of, until my heart aches at the thought that I may +never see them; and to think that there are people in whom the word +'Savoy' awakes no fairer image than a cabbage! Ah, my poor dear! isn't it +almost wicked of me to complain, when _you_ have had such bitter +experience of the hard cruel world? + +I am quite in love with your dear Mademoiselle Lenoble; almost as deeply +as I am in love with your magnanimous, chivalrous, generous, +audacious--everything ending in _ous_--Monsieur Lenoble. + +How dare you call him M. Lenoble, by the bye? I have counted the +occasions on which you write of him in your nice long letter, and for one +Gustave there are half a dozen M. Lenobles. It must be Gustave in future +to me, remember. + +What shall I tell you, dear? I have nothing to tell, really nothing. To +say that I wish you were with me is only to confess that I am very +selfish; but I _do_ wish for you, dear--my friend and adopted sister, +my old school companion, from whom, willingly, I have never concealed +one thought. + +Valentine called on Tuesday afternoon; but I have nothing to tell you +even about him. Mamma dozed in her corner after her cup of tea, and Val +and I sat by the fire talking over our future, just like you and M. +Lenoble on board the Calais boat. How much engaged people find to say +about the future! Is it our love that makes it seem so bright, so +different from all that has gone before? I cannot fancy life with +Valentine otherwise than happy. I strive to picture trials, and fancy +myself in prison with him, the wind blowing in at broken windows, the +rain coming through the dilapidated roof and pattering on the carpetless +floor; but the most dismal picture I can paint won't seem dismal if his +figure is a part of it. We would stop the broken windows with rags and +paper, we would wipe up the rain with our pocket-handkerchiefs, and sit +side by side and talk of the future, as we do now. Hope could never +abandon us while we were together. And then, sometimes, while I am +looking at Valentine, the thought that he might die comes to me suddenly, +like the touch of an icy hand upon my heart. + +I lie awake at night sometimes thinking of this, and of papa's early +death. He came home one night with a cold, and from that hour grew worse +until he died. Ah, think what misery for a wife to suffer! Happily for +mamma, she is not capable of suffering intensely. She was very sorry, and +even now when she speaks of papa she cries a little; but the tears don't +hurt her. I think, indeed, they give her a kind of pleasure. + +See, dear, what a long egotistical letter I have written, after all. I +will say no more, except that while I am delighted to think of your +pleasure among new friends and new scenes, my selfish heart still longs +for the hour that is to bring you back to me. + +Pray tell me all you can about your daughters that are to be. + +Ever and ever your loving CHARLOTTE. + + * * * * * + +_From Diana Paget to Charlotte Halliday_. + +Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 30, 186--. + +MY DEAR LOTTA,--In three days more I hope to be with you; but I suppose, +in the meantime, I must keep my promise, and send you a faithful account +of my life here. Everyone here is more kind to me than words can tell; +and I have nothing left to wish for, except that you were here to be +delighted, as I am sure you would be, with the freshness and the +strangeness of everything. If I ever do become Madame Lenoble--and even +yet I _cannot_ picture to myself that such a thing will be--you must come +to Cotenoir, you and Valentine. I was taken through every room in the old +chateau the day before yesterday, and I fixed in my own mind upon the +rooms I will give you, if these things come to pass. They are very old +rooms, and I can fancy what strange people must have lived in them, and +died in them perhaps, in the days that are gone. But if you come to them, +they shall be made bright and pretty, and we will chase the shadows of +the mediaeval age away. There are old pictures, old musical instruments, +quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, tapestries that crumble as you +touch them--the ashes and relics of many generations. Gustave says we +will sweep these poor vestiges away, and begin a new life, when I come to +Cotenoir; but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace of +those dead feet that have come and gone in all the dusky passages of my +future home. + +And now I must tell you about my daughters that are to be--my daughter +that is, I may say of the elder--for I love her so well already that no +breach between Gustave and me could rob her of my affection. She is the +dearest, most loving of creatures; and she reminds me of you! I dare say +you will laugh at this, dear; and, mind, I do not say that Clarice +Lenoble is actually like you in complexion or feature--those common +attributes which every eye can see; the resemblance is far more subtle. +There is a look in this dear girl's face, a smile, an I-know-not-what, +which every now and then recalls your own bright countenance. You will +say this is mere fancy--and that is what I told myself at the first; but +I found afterwards that it is no fancy, but really one of those vague, +indefinable, accidental likenesses which one perceives so often. To me it +seems a very happy accident; for my first glance at my daughter's face +told me that I should love her for your sake. + +We went to the convent the day before yesterday. It is a curious old +place, and was once a stately chateau, the habitation of a noble family. +A little portress, in the black robes of a lay sister, admitted us, and +conducted us to the parlour, a fine old room, decorated with pictures of +a religious character, painted by members of the sisterhood. Here Gustave +and I were received by the superioress, an elderly woman, with a mild +holy face, and a quiet grace of manner which might become a duchess. She +sent for the demoiselles Lenoble, and after a delay of a quarter of an +hour--you remember the toilet the girls at Hyde Lodge were obliged to +make before they went to the drawing-room, Lotta--Mademoiselle Lenoble +came, a tall, slim, lovely and lovable girl, who reminded me of the +dearest friend I have in this world. She ran to her papa first, and +saluted him with an enthusiastic hug; and then she stood for a moment +looking shyly at me, confused and doubtful. It was only for a moment +she was left in doubt. Gustave bent down to whisper something in her +ear--something for which his letters had in some manner prepared her. The +fair young face brightened, the clear grey eyes looked up at me with a +sweet affectionate gaze, and she came to me and kissed me. "I shall love +you very much," she whispered. "And I love you very much already," I +answered, in the same confidential manner. And I think these few words, +that one pretty confiding look in her innocent eyes, made a tie between +us that it would take much to loosen. Ah, Lotta, what a wide gulf between +the Diana Paget who landed alone at St. Katharine's Wharf, in the dim +cheerless dawn, and uncertain where to find a shelter in all that busy +city, and the same creature redeemed by your affection, and exalted by +the love and trust of Gustave Lenoble! + +After this my second daughter appeared--a pretty young hoyden, with +lovable clinging ways; and then the superioress asked if I would like to +see the garden. Of course I said yes; and we were taken through the long +corridors, out into a fine old garden, where the pupils, who looked like +the Hyde Lodge girls translated into French, were prancing and scampering +about in the usual style. After the garden we went to the chapel, where +there were more pictures, and flower-bedecked altars, and pale twinkling +tapers burning here and there in the chill sunlight. Here there were +damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five years old upwards. They +send even the little ones to meditate, Clarice tells me; and there are +these infants kneeling before the flower-bedecked altars, rapt in +religious contemplation, like so many Thomas a Kempises. The young +meditators glanced shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me +everything of special interest in the pleasant old place, Clarice and +Madelon ran off to dress for walking, in order to accompany us to +Cotenoir, where we were to dine. + +It was quite a family party. Mademoiselle Lenoble was there, and papa. He +arrived at the chateau while Gustave and I were paying our visit to the +convent. He is in the highest spirits, and treats me with an amount of +affection and courtesy I have not been accustomed to receive at his +hands. Of course I know the cause of this change; the future mistress of +Cotenoir is a very different person from that wretched girl who was +nothing to him but a burden and an encumbrance. But even while I despise +him I cannot refuse to pity him. One forgives anything in old age. In +this, at least, it is a second childhood; and my father is very old, +Lotta. I saw the look of age in his face more plainly at Cotenoir, where +he assumed his usual _debonnaire_ man-of-the-world tone and manner, than +I had seen it in London, when he was a professed invalid. He is much +changed since I was with him at Foretdechene. It seems as if he had kept +Time at bay very long, and now at last, the common enemy will be held at +arm's-length no longer. He still braces himself up in the old military +manner, still holds himself more erect than many men of half his age; +but, in spite of all this, I can see that he is very feeble; shaken and +worn by a long life of difficulty. I am glad to think that there will he +a haven for him at last; and if I did not thank Gustave with my whole +heart for giving me a home and a place in the world, I should thank him +for giving a shelter to my father. + +And now, dear, as I hope to be with you so very soon, I shall say no +more. I am to spend a day in Rouen before we come back--papa and I, that +is to say; Gustave stays in Normandy to make some arrangements before he +comes back to England. I cannot comprehend the business relations between +him and papa; but there is some business going on--law business, as it +seems to me--about which papa is very important and elated. + +I am to see the cathedral and churches at Rouen, and I shall contrive to +see the shops, and to bring you something pretty. Papa has given me +money--the first he ever gave me unasked. I have very little doubt it +comes from Gustave; but I have no sense of shame in accepting it. M. +Lenoble's seems to me a royal nature, formed to bestow benefits and +bounties on every side. + +Tell Mrs. Sheldon that I shall bring her the prettiest cap I can find in +Rouen; and, + +with all love, believe me ever your affectionate +DIANA. + + + + +BOOK THE SEVENTH. + + + +A CLOUD OF FEAR. + + +CHAPTER I. + +THE BEGINNING OF SORROW. + +Who heeds the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a broad expanse of +blue ether? The faint, scarce perceptible menace of that one little cloud +is lost in the wide brightness of a summer sky. The traveller jogs on +contented and unthinking, till the hoarse roar of stormy winds, or the +first big drops of the thunder-shower, startle him with a sudden +consciousness of the coming storm. + +It was early May, and the young leaves were green in the avenues of +Kensington Gardens; Bayswater was bright and gay with fashionable people; +and Mrs. Sheldon found herself strong enough to enjoy her afternoon drive +in Hyde Park, where the contemplation of the bonnets afforded her +perennial delight. + +"I think they are actually smaller than ever this year," she remarked +every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did +indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully +less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet +resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but +was obviously tending thitherward. + +Charlotte and Diana accompanied Mrs. Sheldon in her drives. The rapture +of contemplating the bonnets was not complete unless the lady had some +sympathising spirit to share her delight. The two girls were very well +pleased to mingle in that brilliant crowd, and to go back to their own +quiet life when the mystic hour came, and that bright vision of colour +and beauty melted into the twilight loneliness. It had seemed just +lately, however, as if Charlotte was growing a little weary of the +gorgeous spectacle--the ever-changing, ever-splendid diorama of West End +life. She no longer exclaimed at the sight of each exceptional toilette; +she no longer smiled admiringly on the thoroughbred horses champing their +bits in the immediate neighbourhood of her bonnet; she no longer gave a +little cry of delight when the big drags came slowly along the crowded +ranks, the steel bars shining as they swung loosely in the low afternoon +sunlight, the driver, conscious of his glory, grave and tranquil, with +the pride that apes humility. + +"See, Lotta," said Miss Paget, upon an especially bright May evening, as +one of these gorgeous equipages went past Mr. Sheldon's landau, "there's +another drag. Did you see it?" + +"Yes, dear, I saw it." + +"And are you tired of four-in-hands? You used to admire them so much." + +"I admire them as much as ever, dear." + +"And yet you scarcely gave those four splendid roans a glance." + +"No," Charlotte answered, with a faint sigh. + +"Are you tired, Lotta?" Miss Paget asked, rather anxiously. There was +something in Charlotte's manner of late that had inspired her with a +vague sense of anxiety; some change which she could scarcely define--a +change so gradual that it was only by comparing the Charlotte of some +months ago with the Charlotte of the present that she perceived how real +a change it was. The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss +Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual listlessness. +"Are you tired, dear?" she repeated, anxiously; and Mrs. Sheldon looked +round from her contemplation of the bonnets. + +"No, Di, dearest, not tired; but--I don't feel very well this afternoon." + +This was the first confession which Charlotte Halliday made of a sense of +weakness and languor that had been creeping upon her during the last two +months, so slowly, so gradually, that the change seemed too insignificant +for notice. + +"You feel ill, Lotta dear?" Diana asked. + +"Well, no, not exactly ill. I can scarcely call it illness; I feel rather +weak--that is really all." + +At this point Mrs. Sheldon chimed in, with her eyes on a passing bonnet +as she spoke. + +"You see, you are so dreadfully neglectful of your papa's advice, Lotta," +she said, in a complaining tone. "Do _you_ like pink roses with mauve +areophane, Diana? I do not. Look at that primrose tulle, with dead +ivy-leaves and scarlet berries, in the barouche. I dare say you have not +taken your glass of old port this morning, Charlotte, and have only +yourself to thank if you feel weak." + +"I did take a glass of port this morning, mamma. I don't like it; but I +take it every morning." + +"Don't like old tawny port, that your papa bought at the sale of a bishop +of somewhere? It's perfectly absurd of you, Lotta, to talk of not liking +wine that cost fifteen shillings a bottle, and which your papa's friends +declare to be worth five-and-thirty." + +"I am sorry it is so expensive, mamma; but I can't teach myself to think +it nice," answered Charlotte, with a smile that sadly lacked the +brightness of a few weeks ago. "I think one requires to go into the City, +and become a merchant or a stockbroker, before one can like that sort of +wine. What was it Valentine quoted in the _Cheapside_, about some lady +whom somebody loved?--'To love her was a liberal education.' I think to +like old port is a commercial education." + +"I am sure such wine _ought_ to do you good," said Georgy, almost +querulously. She thought this bright blooming creature had no right to be +ill. The headaches, and little weaknesses and languors and ladylike +ailments, were things for which she (Georgy) had taken out a patent; and +this indisposition of her daughter's was an infringement of copyright. + +"I dare say the port will do me good, mamma, in time. No doubt I shall be +as strong as that person who strangled lions and snakes and dogs with +incalculable heads, and all that kind of thing." + +"I really wish you would not talk in that absurd manner, my dear," said +Mrs. Sheldon with offended dignity. "I think you really cannot be too +grateful for your papa's kind thoughtfulness and anxiety about you. I am +sure I myself am not so anxious as he is; but of course his medical +knowledge makes him doubly careful. Six weeks ago he noticed that you +wanted strength--tone is what he calls it. 'Georgina,' he said to me, +'Charlotte wants tone. She is beginning to stoop in a really lamentable +manner: we must make her take port or bark, or something of a +strengthening kind.' And then a day or two afterwards he decided on port, +and gave me the key of the cellar--which is a thing he rarely gives out +of his own hands--and told me the number of the bin from which I was to +take the wine--some old wine that he had laid by on purpose for some +special occasion; and no one is to have it but you, and you are to take a +glass daily at eleven o'clock. Mr. Sheldon is most particular about the +hour. The regularity of the thing is half the battle in these cases, he +says; and I am sure if you do not observe his wishes and mine, Charlotte, +it will be really ungrateful of you." + +"But, dear mamma, I do observe Mr.--papa's wishes. I take my glass of +port every morning at eleven. I go to your cupboard in the breakfast-room +and take out my special decanter, and my special glass, in the most +punctiliously precise manner. I don't like the wine, and I don't like the +trouble involved in the ceremony of drinking it; but I go through it most +religiously, to please you and papa." + +"And do you mean to say that you do not feel stronger after taking that +expensive old port regularly for nearly six weeks. + +"I am sorry to say that I do not, mamma. I think if there is any change, +it is that I am weaker." + +"Dear, dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldon captiously, "you are really a +most extraordinary girl." + +Mrs. Sheldon could almost have found it in her heart to say, a most +ungrateful girl. There did seem a kind of ingratitude in this futile +consumption of old port at fifteen shillings a bottle. + +"I'll tell you what it is, Lotta," she said presently, "I am convinced +that your illness--or your weakness--is all fancy." + +"Why so, mamma?" + +"Because, if it were real weakness, that old port must have made you +stronger. And the fact that the port does you no good, is a proof that +your weakness is only fancy. Girls of your age are so full of fancies. +Look at me, and the martyrdom I go through with my nervous headaches, +which perfectly prostrate me, after the least worry or excitement. The +nerves of my head, after going into the butcher's book, are perfect +agony. When you come to have a house to look after, and find what it is +to have the same saddle of mutton charged for twice over, with the most +daring impudence--or to have capers and currie-powder, that you _know_ +you've never had, staring at you from every page of your grocer's book, +and nothing but your memory between you and utter ruin--you'll discover +what it is to be really ill." + +In this easy manner did Mrs. Sheldon dismiss the subject of her daughters +illness. But it was not so easily dismissed by Diana Paget, who loved her +friend with a profound and pure affection, than which no sister's love +was ever warmer or stronger. Even Valentine's preference for this happy +rival had not lessened Diana's love for her friend and benefactress. She +had been jealous of Charlotte's happier fate: but in the hour when this +jealousy was most bitter there had been no wavering in her attachment to +this one true and generous friend. + +Miss Paget was very silent during the homeward drive. She understood now +what that change had been in her friend which until now had so perplexed +her. It was a decay of physical strength which had robbed Lotta's smile +of its brightness, her laugh of its merry music. It was physical languor +that made her so indifferent to the things which had once awakened her +girlish enthusiasm. The discovery was a very painful one. Diana +remembered her experience of Hyde Lodge: the girls who had grown day by +day more listless, now in the doctor's hands for a day or two, now well +again and toiling at the old treadmill round of study, now sinking into +confirmed invalids; until the bitter hour in which parents are summoned, +and the doctor urges rest, and the fond mother carries her darling home, +assured that home comfort and tenderness will, speedily restore her. Her +schoolfellows cluster round the carriage to bid her "good-bye until next +half," full of hopeful talk about her swift recovery. But when the +vacation is over, and Black Monday comes, she is not amongst the +returning scholars. Has she not gone up to the higher school, and +answered _Adsum_ to the call of the Great Master? + +Diana remembered these old experiences with cruel pain. + +"Girls, as bright and lovable as she is, have drooped and faded away, +just when they seem brightest and happiest," she thought as she watched +Charlotte, and perceived to-day for the first time that the outline of +her fair young cheek had lost its perfect roundness. + +But in such a case love can do nothing except watch and wait. That night, +in the course of that girlish talk in Charlotte's bedroom, which had +become a habit with the two girls, Diana extorted from her friend a full +account of the symptoms which had affected her within the last few weeks. + +"Pray don't look so anxious, dear Di," she said gaily; "it is really +nothing worth talking of; and I knew that if I confessed to feeling ill +you and mamma would straightway begin to worry yourselves about me. I +have felt a little sick and faint sometimes; and now and then a sudden +dizziness has come over me. It is nothing of any consequence, and it +passes away very quickly. Sometimes I have a kind of torpid languid +feeling, which is scarcely unpleasant, only strange, you know. But what +does it all amount to, except that I am nervous?" + +"You must have change of air, Lotta," said Diana resolutely, "and change +of scene. Yes, no doubt you are nervous. You have been kept almost a +prisoner in the house through Mr. Sheldon's punctilious nonsense. You +miss our brisk morning walks in the Gardens, I dare say. If you were to +go to Yorkshire, now, to your friends at Newhall, you would like that +change, dear, wouldn't you?" + +"Yes, I should dearly like to see Aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe; but--" + +"But what, darling?" + +"I should scarcely like being at Newhall, unless--you'll think me very +foolish, Di--unless Valentine was with me. We were so happy there, you +see, dear; and it was there he first told me he loved me. No, Di, I +couldn't bear Newhall without him." + +"Poor Aunt Dorothy, poor uncle Joe! feathers when weighed in the scale +against a young man whom their niece has known less than a twelvemonth!" + +No more was said about Charlotte's illness; Diana was too prudent to +alarm her friend by any expression of uneasiness. She adopted a cheering +tone, and the conversation drifted into other channels. + +While Diana's concern for her friend's altered health was yet a new +feeling, she found herself called upon to attend her father once more +in the character of a ministering angel. And this time Captain Paget's +illness was something more than gout. It was, according to his +doctors--he had on this occasion two medical attendants--a general +breaking up of the system. The poor old wanderer,--the weary Odysseus, +hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures,--laid himself down to +rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned. + +He was very ill. Gustave Lenoble, who came back to London, did not +conceal from Diana that the illness threatened to end fatally. At his +instigation the Captain had been removed from Omega Street to pleasant +lodgings at the back of Knightsbridge Road, overlooking Hyde Park. This +was nearer Bayswater, and it was very pleasant for the fading old +worldling. He could see the stream of fashion flowing past as he sat in +his easy-chair, propped up with pillows, with the western sunlight on his +face. He pointed out the liveries and armorial bearings; and told many +scandalous and entertaining anecdotes of their past and present owners to +Gustave Lenoble, who devoted much of his time to the solacement of the +invalid. Everything that affection could do to smooth this dreary time +was done for the tired Ulysses. Pleasant books were read to him; earnest +thoughts were suggested by earnest words; hothouse flowers adorned his +cheerful sitting-room; hothouse fruits gladdened his eye by their rich +warmth of colour, and invited his parched lips to taste their cool +ripeness. Gustave had a piano brought in, so that Diana might sing to her +father in the dusky May evenings, when it should please him to hear her. +Upon the last feeble footsteps of this old man, whose life had been very +selfish and wicked, pity waited with a carefulness so fond and tender +that he might well mistake it for love. Was it fair that his last days +should be so peaceful and luxurious, when many a good man falls down to +die in the streets, worn out with the life-long effort to bear the burden +laid upon his weary shoulders? In the traditions of the Rabbins it is +written that those are the elect of God who suffer His chastisement in +the flesh. For the others, for those who on earth drain the goblet of +pleasure, and riot in the raptures of sin, for them comes the dread +retribution after death. They are plunged in the fire, and driven before +the wind; they take the shape of loathsome reptiles, and ascend by +infinitesimal degrees through all the grades of creation, until their +storm-tost wearied degraded souls re-enter human semblance once more. But +even then their old stand-point is not yet regained; their dread penance +not yet performed. As men they are the lowest and worst of men; slaves +toiling in the desert; dirt to be trampled under the feet of their +prosperous brethren. Inch by inch the wretched soul regains its lost +inheritance; cycles must elapse before the awful sentence is fulfilled. + +Our Christian faith knows no such horrors. Even for the penitent of the +eleventh hour there is promise of pardon. The most earnest desire of +Diana's heart was that her father should enroll himself amongst those +late penitents--those last among the last who crowd in to the marriage +feast, half afraid to show their shame-darkened faces in that glorious +company. + +If we forgive all things to old age, so much the more surely do we +forgive all injuries to the fading enemy. That she had suffered much +cruelty and neglect at the hands of her father, was a fact that Diana +could not forget, any more than she could forget the name which he had +given her. It was a part of her life not to be put off or done away with. +But in these last days, with all her heart she forgave and pitied him. +She pitied him for the crooked paths into which his feet had wandered at +the very outset of life, and from which so weak a soul could find no +issue. She pitied him for that moral blindness which had kept him +pleasantly unconscious of the supreme depth of his degradation--a social +Laplander, who never having seen a western summer, had no knowledge that +his own land was dark and benighted. + +Happily for Diana and her generous lover, the Captain was not a +difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost the capacity +and the need for sin, took very kindly to penitence, as a species of +sentimental luxury. + +"Yes, my dear," he said complacently--for even in the hour of his +penitence he insisted on regarding himself as a social martyr--"my life +has been a very hard one. Fortune has not been kind to me. In the words +of the immortal bard, my lines have _not_ been set in pleasant places. I +should have been glad if Providence had allowed me to be a better father +to you, a better husband to your poor mother--a better Christian, in +fact--and had spared me the repeated humiliation of going through the +Insolvent Debtors' Court. It is not always easy to understand the justice +of these things: and it has often appeared to me that something of the +favouritism which is the bane of our governments on earth must needs +obtain at a higher tribunal. One man enters life with an entailed estate +worth seventy thousand a-year, while another finds himself in the hands +of the Jews before he is twenty years of age. 'There's something in this +world amiss shall be unriddled by-and-by,' as the poet observes. The +circumstances of my own existence I have ever regarded as dark and +enigmatic. And, indeed, the events of this life are altogether +inexplicable, my love. There is that fellow Sheldon, now, who began +life as a country dentist, a man without family or connections, +who--well, I will not repine. If I am spared to behold my daughter +mistress of a fine estate, although in a foreign country, I can depart in +peace. But you must have a house in town, my dear. Yes, London must be +your head-quarters. You must not be buried alive in Normandy. There is no +place like London. Take the word of a man who has seen the finest +Continental cities, and lived in them--that is the point, my love--lived +in them. For a fine afternoon in the beginning of May, an apartment in +the Champs Elysees, or the Boulevard, is an earthly paradise; but the +Champs Elysees in a wet December--the Boulevard in a sweltering August! +London is the only spot upon earth that is never intolerable. And your +husband will be a rich man, my dear girl, a really wealthy man; and you +must see that he makes a fitting use of his wealth, and does his duty to +society. The parable of the Talents, which you were reading to me this +afternoon, is a moral lesson your husband must not forget." + +After this fashion did the invalid discourse. Gustave and Diana perceived +that he still hoped to have his share in their future life, still looked +to pleasant days to come in a world which he had loved, not wisely, but +too well. Nor could they find it in their hearts to tell him that his +journey was drawing to a close, and that on the very threshold of the +peaceful home which his diplomatic arts had helped to secure, he was to +abandon life's weary race. + +They indulged his hopes a little, in order to win him the more easily to +serious thoughts; but though at times quite ready to abandon himself to a +penitential mood that was almost maudlin, there were other times when the +old Adam asserted himself, and the Captain resented this intrusion of +serious subjects as a kind of impertinence. + +"I am not aware that I am at my last gasp, Diana," he said with dignity, +on one of these occasions; "or that I need to be talked to by my own +daughter as if I were on my deathbed. I can show you men some years my +senior driving their phaetons-and-pairs in that Park. The Gospel is all +very well in its place--during Sunday-morning service, and after morning +prayers, in your good old county families, where the household is large +enough to make a fair show at the end of the dining-room, without +bringing in hulking lads who smell of the stables: but I consider that +when a man is ill, there is a considerable want of tact in bringing the +subject of religion before him in any obtrusive manner." + +Thus the Captain alternated from sentimental penitence to captious +worldliness, during may days and weeks. The business of the Haygarthian +inheritance was progressing slowly, but surely. Documents were being +prepared, attested copies of certificates of marriages, births, baptisms, +and burials were being procured, and all was tending towards the grand +result. Once, and sometimes twice a week, M. Fleurus came to see Captain +Paget, and discussed the great affair with that invalid diplomatist. The +Captain had long ago been aware that in entering upon an alliance with +that gentleman, he had invoked the aid of a coadjutor likely to prove too +strong for him. The event had justified his fears. M. Fleurus had +something of Victor Hugo's famous _Poulpe_ in his nature. Powerful as +flexible were the arms he stretched forth to grasp all prizes in the way +of heirs-at-law and disputed heritages, unclaimed railway-stock, and +forgotten consols. If the Captain had not played his cards very cleverly, +and contrived to obtain a personal influence over Gustave Lenoble, he +might have found himself thrust entirely out of the business by one of +the Frenchman's gelatinous arms. Happily for his own success, however, +the Captain did obtain a strong hold upon Gustave. This enabled him to +protect his own interests throughout the negotiation, and to keep the +insidious Fleurus at bay. + +"My good friend," he said, in his grand Carlton-House manner, "I am bound +to protect the interests of my friend M. Lenoble, in any agreement to be +entered upon in this matter. I cannot permit M. Lenoble's generosity or +M. Lenoble's inexperience to be imposed upon. My own interests are of +secondary importance. That I expect to profit by the extraordinary +discovery made by me--by ME--alone and unaided, I do not affect to deny. +But I will not profit at the expense of a too generous friend." + +"And what recompense am I to have for my work--a work at once painful and +impoverishing?" asked the little Frenchman, with an angry and suspicious +look. "Do you believe that I do that to amuse me? To run the streets, to +go by here, by there, in hunting the papers of that marriage, or this +baptism? Believe you that is so agreeable, Monsieur the Captain? No; I +desire to be paid for my work. I must have my part in the heritage which +I have help to win." + +"It is not won yet. We will talk of your recompense by-and-by." + +"We will talk of it this instant--upon the field. It must that I +comprehend where I am in this affair. I will not of mystifications, of +prevarications, of lies--" + +"M. Fleurus!" cried the Captain, with a hand stretched towards the bell. + +"You will sound--you will chase me! Ah, but no!--you cannot afford to +chase me yet. I have to find more papers of baptisms and burials. Go, +then, we will talk of this affair as friends." + +This friendly talk ended in Captain Paget's complete victory. M. Fleurus +consented to accept his costs out of pocket in the present, and three per +cent, of the heritage in the future. It was further agreed that the +Captain should select the English attorney who should conduct M. +Lenoble's case in the Court of Chancery. + +This conversation occurred at Rouen, and a day or two afterwards the +necessary document was drawn up. Gustave pledged himself to pay over a +fourth share of the Haygarthian fortune to Horatio Paget, and three +per cent, upon the whole amount to Jean Francois Fleurus. The document +was very formal, very complete; but whether such an agreement would +hold water, if Gustave Lenoble should choose to contest it, was open +to question. + +The solicitor to whom Horatio Paget introduced M. Lenoble was a Mr. +Dashwood, of the firm of Dashwood and Vernon; a man whom the Captain had +known in the past, and from whom he had received good service in some of +the most difficult crises of his difficult career. To this gentleman he +confided the conduct of the case; and explained his apprehensions with +regard to the two Sheldons. + +"You see, as the case now stands, they think they have the claimant to +this money in Miss Halliday--Sheldon's stepdaughter. But if they got an +inkling of Susan Meynell's marriage--and, in point of fact--the actual +state of the case--they might try to get hold of my friend, Gustave +Lenoble. They could _not_ get hold of him, mind you, Dashwood, but they +would try it on, and I don't want trying on of that kind." + +"Of course not. I know Sheldon, of Gray's Inn. He is rather--well, say +_shady_. That's hardly an actionable epithet, and it expresses what I +mean. Your friend's case seems to me tolerably clear. That little +Frenchman is useful, but officious. It is not a speculative affair, I +suppose? There is money to meet the current expenses of the business?" + +"Yes, there is money. Within reasonable limits my friend is prepared to +pay for the advancement of his claims." + +After this the Haygarthian business progressed, slowly, quietly. The work +was up to this point underground work. There were still papers +wanting--final links of the chain to be fitted together; and to the +fitting of these links Messrs. Dash and Vernon devoted themselves, in +conjunction with M. Fleurus. + +This was how matters stood when Captain Paget drooped and languished, and +was fain to abandon all active share in the struggle. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FADING. + +While the invalid in the pleasant lodgings overlooking Hyde Park +grew day by day weaker, there was a change as marked in the bright +young creature whose loving spirit had first brought the influence of +affection to bear upon Diana Paget's character. Charlotte Halliday was +ill--very ill. It was with everyday increasing anxiety that Diana watched +the slow change--slow in its progress, but awfully rapid to look back +upon. The pain, the regret, with which she noted her father's decay were +little indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart as she +perceived the alteration in this dear friend, the blighting of this fair +young flower. + +That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but natural, and +we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see +our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in +its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana +watched her father's decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but +there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end +of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte--with +that happy soul for whom life and love wore their brightest smile, before +whose light joyous footsteps stretched so fair a pathway! + +The illness, whatever it was--and neither Mr. Sheldon nor the portly and +venerable physician whom he called in could find a name for it--crept +upon the patient with stealthy and insidious steps. Dizziness, trembling, +faintness; trembling, faintness, dizziness; the symptoms alternated day +by day. Sometimes there was a respite of a few days; and Charlotte--the +youthful, the sanguine, the happy--declared that her enemy had left her. + +"I am sure mamma is right, Di," she said on these occasions. "My nerves +are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if I could get the better +of my nerves, I should be as well as ever. I don't wonder that the idea +of my symptoms makes mamma almost cross. You see, she has been accustomed +to have the symptoms all to herself; and for me to plagiarise them, as it +were, must seem quite an impertinence. For a strong young thing like me, +you know, Di dear--who have only just broken myself of plunging +downstairs two and three steps at a time, and plunging upstairs in the +same vulgar manner--to intrude on mamma's shattered nerves, and pirate +mamma's low spirits, is utterly absurd and abominable; so I have resolved +to look my nerves straight in the face, and get the better of them." + +"My darling, you will get the better of them if you try," said Diana, who +did at times beguile herself with the hope that her friend's ailments +were mental rather than bodily. "I dare say your monotonous life has +something to do with your altered health; you want change of scene, +dear." + +"Change of scene, when I have you and Valentine! No, Di. It would +certainly be very nice to have the background shifted now and then; to +see Capability Brown's prim gardens melt into Alpine heights or +southern vineyards, or even into Russian steppes or Hungarian forests. +One does get a little tired of _toujours_ Bayswater; and Mr. Sheldon; +and crimped skate; and sirloin of beef, and the inevitable discussion as +to whether it is in a cannibal state of rawness or burnt to a cinder; +and the glasses of pale sherry; and the red worsted doyleys and blue +finger-glasses; and the almonds and raisins, and crisp biscuits, that +nobody ever eats; and the dreary, dreary funereal business of dinner, +when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of +the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma's peevish +complaints about Ann Woolper's ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr. +Sheldon's perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the +evening through; and _such_ papers!--_Money Market Monitor, Stockholder's +Vade-Mecum_, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so +much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used never to feel +these things an annoyance, you know, dear, till I made the acquaintance +of my nerves; but from the moment I allowed my nerves to get the better +of me, all these trifles have worried and excruciated me. But I am happy +with you, darling; and I am happy with Valentine. Poor Valentine!" + +She pronounced his name with a sigh; and then, after a pause, repeated +mournfully, "Poor Valentine!" + +"Why do you speak of him so sadly, dear?" asked Diana, very pale. + +"Because--because we have planned such a happy life together, dear, +and--" + +"Is that a thing to be sad about, darling?" + +"And--if it should happen, after all, that we have to part, and he go on +alone, the world may seem so sad and lonely to him." + +"Charlotte!" cried Diana, with a laugh that was almost choked by a sob, +"is this looking your nerves in the face? Why, my dear one, this is +indeed plagiarism of your mamma's low spirits. Lotta, you shall have +change of air; yes, I am determined on that. The stately physician who +came in his carriage the other day, and who looked at your tongue, and +said 'Ah!' and then felt your pulse and said 'Ah!' again, and then called +for pen-and-ink and wrote a little prescription, is not the doctor we +want for you. We want Dr. Yorkshire; we want the breezes from the +Yorkshire moors, and the smell of the farmyard, and our dear Aunt +Dorothy's sillabubs, and our uncle Joe to take us for long walks across +his clover-fields." + +"I don't want to go to Newhall, Di. I couldn't bear to leave--him." + +"But what is to prevent your meeting _him_ at the white gate this time, +as you met him last October? Might not accident take _him_ to Huxter's +Cross again? The archaeological work--of which we have heard no more, by +the bye--might necessitate further investigations in that district. If +you will go to Newhall, Lotta, I will pledge myself for Mr. Hawkehurst's +speedy appearance at the white gate you have so often described to me." + +"My dearest Di, you are all kindness; but even if I were inclined to go +to Newhall, I doubt if mamma or Mr. Sheldon would like me to go." + +"I am sure they would be pleased with any arrangement that was likely to +benefit your health. But I will talk to your mamma about it. I have set +my heart on your going to Newhall." + +Miss Paget lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took possession of +Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new stitch in _tricot_, and +succeeded in impressing her with the conviction that change of air was +necessary for Charlotte. + +"But you don't think Lotta really ill?" asked Mrs. Sheldon, nervously. + +"I trust she is not really ill, dear Mrs. Sheldon; but I am sure she is +much changed. In talking to her, I affect to think that her illness is +only an affair of the nerves; but I sadly fear that it is something more +than that." + +"But what is the matter with her?" exclaimed Georgy, with a, piteous air +of perplexity; "that is the question which I am always asking. People +can't be ill, you know, Diana, without having something the matter with +them; and that is what I can't make out in Charlotte's case. Mr. Sheldon +says she wants tone; the physician who came in a carriage and pair, and +ought to know what he is talking about, says there is a lack of vigour. +But what does that all amount to? I'm sure I've wanted tone all my life. +Perhaps there never was a creature so devoid of tone as I am; and the +internal sinking I feel just before luncheon is something that no one but +myself can realize. I dare say Lotta is not so strong as she might be; +but I do not see that she can be ill, unless her illness is something +definite. My poor first husband's illness, now, was the kind of thing +that any one could understand--bilious fever. The merest child knows what +it is to be bilious, and the merest child knows what it is to be +feverish. There can be nothing mysterious in bilious fever." + +"But, dear Mrs. Sheldon," said Diana, gravely, "don't you think that the +weakness of constitution which rendered Charlotte's father liable to be +taken off in the prime of life by a fever is a weakness that Charlotte +may possibly have inherited?" + +"Good heavens, Diana!" cried Georgy, with sudden terror; "you don't mean +to say that you think my Charlotte is going to die?" + +It was but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic +alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened +fears as it had been to rouse her from absolute apathy. + +Change of air--yes, of course--Charlotte must have change of air that +instant. Let a cab be sent for immediately to take them to the terminus. +Change of air, of course. To Newhall--to Nice--to the Isle of Wight--to +Malta; Mrs. Sheldon had heard of people going to Malta. Where should they +go? Would Diana advise, and send for a cab, and pack a travelling bag +without an instant's delay? The rest of the things could be sent +afterwards. What did luggage matter, when Charlotte's life was at stake? + +At this point a flood of tears happily relieved poor Georgy's excited +feelings, and then common sense and Diana Paget came to the rescue. + +"My dear Mrs. Sheldon," she said, with a quiet cheerful tone that went +far to reassure the excited lady, "in the first place we must, above all +things, refrain from any appearance of alarm. Her illness may, after all, +be only an affair of the nerves; and there is certainly no cause for +immediate fear." + +Georgy was tranquillised, and agreed to take matters quietly. She +promised to arrange Charlotte's departure for Newhall, with Mr. Sheldon, +that evening. + +"Of course, you know, my dear, I like to consult him about everything," +she said, apologetically. "It is a duty which one owes one's husband, you +know, and a duty which, as a young woman about to marry, I cannot too +much impress upon you; but in this case it is quite a matter of form: Mr. +Sheldon never has objected to Charlotte's going to Newhall, and he is not +likely to object now." + +The event proved Mrs. Sheldon mistaken as to this matter. Georgy proposed +the visit to Newhall that evening, while the two girls were strolling +listlessly in the dusky garden, and Mr. Sheldon most decidedly rejected +the proposition. + +"If she wants change of air--and Dr. Doddleson recommended nothing of the +kind--Newhall is not the place for her." + +"Why not, dear?" + +"It is too cold. Northerly aspect--no shelter--three hundred feet above +York minster." + +"But Dorothy Mercer is such a kind motherly creature; she'd delight in +nursing Lotta." + +"Yes," answered Mr. Sheldon, with a laugh, "and in quacking her. I know +what those good motherly creatures are when they get an excuse for dosing +some unhappy victim with their quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to +Newhall, Mrs. Mercer would poi--would make her ten times worse than +she is with old woman's remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is +too cold. That is a conclusive argument, I suppose?" + +He said this with some impatience of tone and manner. There was a haggard +look in his face, a hurried harassed manner pervading him this evening, +which had been growing upon him of late. Georgy was too slow of +perception to remark this; but Diana Paget had remarked it, and had +attributed the change in the stockbroker's manner to a blending of two +anxieties. + +"He is anxious about money matters," she had said to herself, "and he is +anxious about Charlotte's health. His lips, moving in whispered +calculations, as he sits brooding by the fire, tell me of the first +anxiety; his eyes, wandering furtively to his step-daughter's face every +now and then, tell me of the second." + +This furtive anxiety of Mr. Sheldon's increased Diana Paget's anxiety. +This man, who had a certain amount of medical knowledge, could no doubt +read the diagnostics of that strange insidious illness, which had, as +yet, no name, Diana, furtively watching his furtive looks, told herself +that he read of danger. + +"If Charlotte wants change of air, let her go to Hastings," he said; +"that is the kind of place for an invalid. I want rest myself; and +there's such utter stagnation in the City nowadays that I can very well +afford to give myself a holiday. We'll run down to Hastings, or the +immediate neighbourhood of Hastings, for a week or two." + +"O Philip, how kind and considerate you are! I am sure, as I was +observing to Miss Paget only today, you--" + +"Ah, by the bye, there's Miss Paget. Is it absolutely necessary that Miss +Paget should go to Hastings with us?" + +"Well, dear, you see she has so kindly desired to remain with me for the +quarter, so as to give me time to turn round, you know, with regard to +caps and summer things, and so on--for, really, she has such taste, and +does strike out such excellent ideas about turning, and dipping, and +dyeing, that I don't know what will become of me when she leaves us; and +it would look so pointed to--" + +"Yes; she had better go with us. But why all this fuss about Charlotte? +Who put it into your head that she wants change of air?" + +Mr. Sheldon evidently considered it an established fact that any idea in +his wife's head must needs have been put there by someone or other. + +"Well, you see, Diana and I were talking of Lotta this afternoon, and +Diana quite alarmed me." + +"How so?" asked Mr. Sheldon, with a quick frown. + +"Why, she said it was evident, by the fact of poor dear Tom's dying of a +fever, that his constitution must have been originally weak. And she said +that perhaps Charlotte had inherited Tom's weak constitution--and +frightened me dreadfully." + +"There is no occasion for you to be frightened; Charlotte will get on +very well, I dare say, with care. But Miss Paget is a very sensible +young woman, and is right in what she says. Charlotte's constitution is +not strong." + +"O Philip!" said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice. + +"I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves," said Mr. +Sheldon, with a hard laugh. "Ah, here she is!" + +Here she was, coming towards the open window near which her stepfather +sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her sauntering walk, dressed in +white, and spectral in the gloaming. To the sad eyes of her mother she +looked like a ghost. To the eyes of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to +poetic fancies, she looked even more ghostlike. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS. + +Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the +object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several +people. That her stepfather had his anxieties about her--anxieties which +he tried to hide--was obvious to the one person in the Bayswater villa +who noted his looks, and tried to read the thoughts they indicated. + +Mrs. Sheldon's alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be lulled to rest. +And in Valentine Hawkehurst's heart there was an aching pain--a dull dead +load of care, which had never been lightened from the hour when he first +perceived the change in his dear one's face. + +There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater villa, who +watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care as unresting as the +care of mother or stepfather, bosom friend or plighted lover. This person +was Ann Woolper. Mrs. Woolper had come to the villa prepared to find in +Miss Halliday a frivolous self-satisfied young person, between whom and +an old broken-down woman like herself there could be no sympathy. She had +expected to be contemptuously--or, at the best, indifferently--entreated +by the prosperous well-placed young lady, whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of +as a good girl, as girls go; a vague species of commendation, which, to +the mind of Mrs. Woolper, promised very little. + +As clearly as Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes with regard to +Charlotte Halliday, he had expressed them to Ann Woolper. What he would +fain have said, was, "Watch my stepdaughter, and keep me well acquainted +with every step she takes." Thus much he dared not say; but by +insinuating that Tom Halliday's daughter was frivolous and reckless, and +that her lover was not to be trusted, he had contrived to put Mrs. +Woolper on the _qui vive_. + +"Mr. Philip's afraid she may go and marry this young man on the sly, +before he's got the means to support a wife," she said to herself, as she +meditated upon the meaning of her master's injunctions; "and well he may +be. There's no knowing what young women are up to nowadays; and the more +innocent and inexperienced a young woman is, the more she wants looking +after. And Miss Georgy Craddock always was a poor fondy, up to naught but +dressing herself fine, and streaming up and down Barlingford High Street +with her old schoolfellows. Such as she ain't fit to be trusted with a +daughter; and Mr. Philip knows that. He always was a deep one. But I'm +glad he looks after Missy: there's many men, having got fast hold of th' +father's brass, would let th' daughter marry Old Scratch, for the sake of +gettin' rid of her." + +This is how Mrs. Woolper argued the matter. She came of a prudent race; +and anything like prudence seemed to her a commendable virtue. She wished +to think well of her master; for her he had been a Providence in the hour +of calamity and old age. Where else could she look, if not to him? And to +suspect him, or think ill of him, was to reject the one refuge offered to +her distress. A magnanimous independence of spirit is not an easy virtue +for the old and friendless and poor. The drowning wretch will scarcely +question the soundness of the plank that sustains him upon the +storm-tossed billows; nor was Mrs. Woolper inclined to question the +motives of the man to whom she now owed her daily bread. + +It is possible that before invoking Mrs. Woolper from the ashes of the +past to take her seat by the hearthstone of the present, Mr. Sheldon may +have contemplated the question of her return in all its bearings, and +may have assured himself that she was his own, by a tie not easily +broken--his bond-slave, fettered hand and foot by the bondage of +necessity. + +"What choice can she have, except the choice between my house and the +workhouse?" he may naturally have asked himself; "and is it likely she +will quarrel with her bread-and-butter in order to fall back upon dry +bread?" Mr. Sheldon, contemplating this and all other questions from his +one unchanging standpoint, may reasonably have concluded that Mrs. +Woolper would do nothing opposed to her own interests; and that so long +as it suited her interest to remain at the Lawn, and to serve him, she +would there remain, his docile and unquestioning slave. + +The influence of affection, the force of generous impulse, were qualities +that did not come into Mr. Sheldon's calculations upon this subject. His +addition and subtraction, division and multiplication, were all based on +one system. + +That happy and unconscious art by which Charlotte Halliday made herself +dear to all who knew her had a speedy effect upon the old housekeeper. +The girl's amiable consideration for her age and infirmities; the pretty +affectionate familiarity with which she treated this countrywoman, who +had known her father, and who could talk to her of Yorkshire and +Yorkshire people, soon made their way to Nancy Woolper's heart of hearts. +For Miss Halliday to come to the housekeeper's room with some message +from her mother, and to linger for a few minutes' chat, was a delight to +Mrs. Woolper. She would have detained the bright young visitant for hours +instead of minutes, if she could have found any excuse for so doing. Nor +was there any treason against Mr. Sheldon in her growing attachment to +his stepdaughter. Whenever Nancy spoke of that master and benefactor, she +spoke with unfeigned gratitude and affection. + +"I nursed your step-papa as a baby, Miss Halliday," she said very often +on these occasions. "You wouldn't think, to look at him now, that he ever +was _that_, would you? But he was one of the finest babies you could wish +to see--tall, and strong, and with eyes that pierced one through, they +were so bright and big and black. He was rather stubborn-spirited with +his teething; but what baby isn't trying at such times? I had rare work +with him, I can tell you, Miss, walking him about of nights, and jogging +him till there wasn't a jog left in me, as you may say, from sleepiness. +I often wonder if he thinks of this now, when I see him looking so grave +and stern. But, you see, being jogged doesn't impress the mind like +having to jog; and though I can bring that time back as plain as if it +was yesterday, with the very nursery I slept in at Barlingford, and the +rushlight in a tall iron cage on the floor, and the shadow of the cage on +the bare whitewashed walls--it's clean gone out of his mind, I dare say." + +"I'm afraid it has, Nancy." + +"But, O, I was fond of him, Miss Halliday; and what I went through with +him about his teeth made me only the fonder of him. He was the first baby +I ever nursed, you see, and the last; for before Master George came to +town I'd taken to the cooking, and Mrs. Sheldon hired another girl as +nurse; a regular softy _she_ was, and it isn't her fault that Master +George has got anything christian-like in the way of a back, for the way +she carried that blessed child used to make my blood run cold." + +Thus would Mrs. Woolper discourse whenever she had a fair excuse for +detaining Miss Halliday in her comfortable apartment. Charlotte did not +perceive much interest in these reminiscences of Mr. Sheldon's infancy, +but she was much too kind to bring them abruptly to a close by any show +of impatience. When she could get Nancy to talk of Barlingford and Hyley, +and the people whom Charlotte herself had known as a child, the +conversation was really interesting; and these recollections formed a +link between the old woman and the fair young damsel. + +When the change arose in Charlotte's health and spirits, Mrs. Woolper was +one of the first to perceive it. She was skilled in those old woman's +remedies which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme contempt, and she would +fain have dosed the invalid with nauseous decoctions of hops, or +home-brewed quinine. Charlotte appreciated the kindness of the intent, +but she rebelled against the home-brewed medicines, and pinned her faith +to the more scientific and less obnoxious preparations procured from the +chemist's. + +For some time Nancy made light of the girl's ailments, though she watched +her with unfailing attention. + +"You ain't a-done growing yet, miss, I'll lay," she said. + +"But I'm more than twenty-one, Nancy. People don't grow after they're of +age, do they?" + +"I've known them as have, miss; I don't say it's common, but it has been +done. And then there's the weakness that comes after you've done growing. +Girls of your age are apt to be faint and lollopy-like, as you may say; +especially when they're stived up in a smoky place like London. You ought +to go to Hyley, miss, where you was born; that's the place to set you +up." + +The time had come when the change was no longer matter for doubt. Day by +day Charlotte grew weaker and paler; day by day that bright and joyous +creature, whose presence had made an atmosphere of youth and gladness +even in that prim dwelling-place, receded farther into the dimness of +the past; until to think of what she had been seemed like recalling the +image of the dead. Nancy marked the alteration with a strange pain, so +sharp, so bitter, that its sharpness and bitterness were a perpetual +perplexity to her. + +"If the poor dear young thing is meant to go, there's no need for me to +fret about it all day long, and wake up sudden in the night with cold +water standing out upon my forehead at the thought of it. I haven't known +her six months; and if she is pretty and sweet-spoken, it's not my place +to give way at the thoughts of losing her. She's not my own flesh and +blood; and I've sat by to watch them go, times and often, without feeling +as I do when I see the change in her day after day. Why should it seem so +dreadful to me?" + +Why indeed? This was a question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no +answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something +more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel. +A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of +reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness +as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been +liable to the suspicion of nocturnal careerings on broomsticks. + +"I'm sorry Mr. Philip's house should be unlucky to that sweet young +creature," she said to herself. "It was unlucky to the father; and now it +seems as if it was going to be unlucky to the daughter. And Mr. Philip +won't be any richer for her death. Mrs. Sheldon has told me times and +often that all Tom Halliday's money went to my master when she married +him, and he has doubled and trebled it by his cleverness. Miss +Charlotte's death wouldn't bring him a sixpence." + +This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's meditations very often nowadays. But +the strange sense of perplexity, the nameless fear, the vague horror, +were not to be banished from her mind. A sense of some shapeless presence +for ever at her side haunted her by day and night. What was it? What did +its presence portend? It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot, +was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not turn to +meet the horror face to face. Sometimes the phantom hand lifted a corner +of the veil, and the shade said, "Look at me! See who and what I am! You +have seen me before. I am here again! and this time you shall not refuse +to meet me face to face! I am the shadow of the horror you suspected in +the past!" + +The shadowy fears which oppressed Mrs. Woolper during this period did not +in any way lessen her practical usefulness. From the commencement of +Charlotte's slow decline she had shown herself attentive, and even +officious, in all matters relating to the invalid. With her own hands she +decanted the famous port which Georgy fetched from the particular bin in +Mr. Sheldon's carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called +in, and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper who +carried the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought back the +innocent potion, which might, peradventure, effect some slight good, and +was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. Charlotte duly appreciated all +this kindness; but she repeatedly assured the housekeeper that her +ailments were not worthy of so much care. + +It was Mrs. Woolper whom Mr. Sheldon employed to get lodgings for the +family, when it had been ultimately decided that a change to the seaside +was the best cure for Miss Halliday. + +"I am too busy to go to Hastings myself this week," he said; "but I +shall be prepared to spend a fortnight there after next Monday. What I +want you to do, Nancy, is to slip down tomorrow, with a second-class +return-ticket, and look about for a nice place for us. I don't care about +being in Hastings; there's too much cockneyism in the place at this time +of year. There's a little village called Harold's Hill, within a mile or +so of St. Leonard's--a dull, out-of-the-way place, but rustic and +picturesque, and all that kind of thing--the sort of place that women +like. Now, I'd rather stay at that place than at Hastings. So you can +take a fly at the station, drive straight to Harold's Hill, and secure +the best lodgings you can get." + +"You think as the change of air will do Miss Halliday good?" asked Mrs. +Woolper anxiously, after she had promised to do all her kind master +required of her. + +"Do I think it will do her good? Of course I do. Sea-air and +sea-bathing will set her up in no time; there's nothing particular the +matter with her." + +"No, Mr. Philip; that's what bothers me about the whole thing. There's +nothing particular the matter with her; and yet she pines and dwindles, +and dwindles and pines, till it makes one's heart ache to see her." + +Philip Sheldon's face darkened, and he threw himself back in his chair +with an impatient movement. If he had chosen to do so, he could have +prevented that darkening of his face; but he did not consider Mrs. +Woolper a person of sufficient importance to necessitate the regulation +of his countenance. What was she but an ignorant, obstinate old woman, +who would most probably perish in the streets if he chose to turn her out +of doors? There are men who consider their clerks and retainers such very +dirt, that they would continue the forging of a bill of exchange, or +complete the final touches of a murder, with a junior clerk putting coals +on the fire, or an errand-boy standing cap in hand on the threshold of +the door. They cannot realize the fact that dirt such as this is flesh +and blood, and may denounce them by-and-by in a witness-box. + +Of all contingencies Mr. Sheldon least expected that this old woman could +prove troublesome to him--this abject wretch, whose daily bread depended +on his will. He could not imagine that there are circumstances under +which such abject creatures will renounce their daily bread, and die of +hunger, rather than accept the means of life from one hateful hand. + +"If you want to know anything about Miss Halliday's illness," he said in +his hardest voice, and with his hardest look, "you had better apply to +Dr. Doddleson, the physician who has prescribed for her. I do not attend +her, you see, and I am in no way responsible for her health. When I was +attending her father you favoured me by doubting my skill, if I judged +rightly as to your tone and manner on one occasion. I don't want to be +brought to book by you, Mrs. Woolper, about Miss Halliday's altered looks +or Miss Halliday's illness; I have nothing to do with either." + +"How should I think you had, sir? Don't be angry with me, or hard upon +me, Mr. Phil. I nursed you when you was but a baby, and you're nearer and +dearer to me than any other master could be. Why, I have but to shut my +eyes now, and I can feel your little hand upon my neck, as it used to lie +there, so soft and dear. And then I look down at the hand on the table, +strong and dark, and clenched so firm, and I ask myself, Can it be the +same? For the sake of that time, Mr. Phil, don't be hard upon me. There's +nothing I wouldn't do to serve you; there's nothing you could do that +would turn me from you. There's no man living in this world, sir, that +oughtn't to be glad to know of one person that nothing can turn from +him." + +"That's a very fine sentiment, my good soul," replied Mr. Sheldon coolly; +"but, you see, it's only an _ex parte_ statement; and as the case stands +there is no opportunity for the display of those fine feelings you talk +about. You happen to want a home in your old age, and I happen to be able +to give you a home. Under such circumstances, your own good sense will +show you that all sentimental talk about standing by me, and not turning +away from me, is absolute bosh." + +The old woman sighed heavily. She had offered her master a fidelity which +involved the abnegation of all impulses of her own heart and mind, and he +rejected her love and her service. And then, after the first dreary sense +of his coldness, she felt better pleased that it should be so. The man +who spoke to her in this harsh uncompromising way could have no cause to +fear her. In the mind of such a man there could surely be no secret +chamber within which she had, with his knowledge, almost penetrated. + +"I won't trouble you any more, sir," she said mournfully. "I dare say I'm +a foolish old woman." + +"You are, Nancy. We don't get wiser as we grow older, you see; and when +we let our tongues wag, we're apt to talk nonsense. The quieter you keep +your tongue, the better for yourself, in more ways than one. To a useful +old woman about the place I've no objection; but a chattering old woman I +will not have at any price." + +After this everything was settled in the most agreeable manner. Nancy +Woolper's journey to Hastings was fully arranged; and early the next +morning she started, brisk and active, in spite of her sixty-eight years +of age. She returned at night, having secured very pleasant lodgings at +the village of Harold's Hill. + +"And a very sweet place it is, my dear Miss Lotta," she said to Charlotte +the next day, when she described her adventures. "The apartments are at a +farmhouse overlooking the sea; and the smell of the cows under your +windows, and the sea-breezes blowing across the farmyard, can't fail to +bring the colour back to your pretty cheeks, and the brightness back to +your pretty eyes." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +VALENTINE'S SKELETON. + +The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed delightful +to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still in town, and who +thought it a hard thing that he should be deprived of Diana's society +during an entire fortnight, for the sake of this sickly Miss Halliday. + +For the rest, there was hope and gladness in the thought of this change +of dwelling. Charlotte languished for fresher breezes and more rustic +prospects than the breezes and prospects of Bayswater; Diana looked to +the sea-air as the doctor of doctors for her fading friend; and Valentine +cherished the same hope. + +On Valentine Hawkehurst the burden of an unlooked-for sorrow had weighed +very heavily. To see this dear girl, who was the beginning, middle, and +end of all his hopes, slowly fading before his eyes, was, of all agonies +that could have fallen to his lot, the sharpest and most bitter. Not +Ugolino sitting silent amidst his famishing children--not Helen, when she +would fain that the tempest had swept her from earth's surface on that +evil day when she was born--not Penelope, when she cried on Diana, the +high-priestess of death, to release her from the weariness of her +days--not Agamemnon, when the fatal edict had gone forth, and his fair +young daughter looked into his face, and asked him if it was true that +she was to die--not one of these typical mourners could have suffered a +keener torture than that which rent this young man's heart, as he marked +the stealthy steps of the Destroyer drawing nearer and nearer the woman +he loved. Of all possible calamities, this was the last he had ever +contemplated. Sometimes, in moments of doubt or despondency, he had +thought it possible that poverty, the advice of friends, caprice or +inconstancy on the part of Charlotte herself, should sever them. But +among the possible enemies to his happiness he had never counted Death. +What had Death to do with so fair and happy a creature as Charlotte +Halliday? she who, until some two months before this time, might have +been the divine Hygieia in person--so fresh was her youthful bloom, so +buoyant her step, so bright her glances. Valentine's hardest penance was +the necessity for the concealment of his anxiety. The idea that +Charlotte's illness might be--nay, must be--for the greater part an +affair of the nerves was always paramount in his mind. He and Diana had +talked of the subject together whenever they found an opportunity for so +doing, and had comforted themselves with the assurance that the nerves +alone were to blame; and they were the more inclined to think this from +the conduct of Dr. Doddleson, on that physician's visits to Miss +Halliday. Mrs. Sheldon had been present on each occasion, and to Mrs. +Sheldon alone had the physician given utterance to his opinion of the +case. That opinion, though expressed with a certain amount of +professional dignity, amounted to very little. "Our dear young friend +wanted strength; and what we had to do was to give our dear young friend +strength--vital power. Yes--er--um, that was the chief point. And what +kind of diet might our dear young friend take now? Was it a light diet, a +little roast mutton--not too much done, but not underdone? O dear, no. +And a light pudding? what he would call--if he might be permitted to have +his little joke--a nursery pudding." And then the old gentleman had +indulged in a senile chuckle, and patted Charlotte's head with his fat +old fingers. "And our dear young friend's room, now, was it a large +room?--good! and what was the aspect now, south?--good again! nothing +better, unless, perhaps, south-west; but, of course, everyone's +rooms can't look south-west. A little tonic draught, and gentle daily +exercise in that nice garden, will set our dear young friend right again. +Our temperament is nervous we are a sensitive plant, and want care." And +then the respectable septuagenarian took his fee, and shuffled off to his +carriage. And this was all that Mrs. Sheldon could tell Diana, or Nancy +Woolper, both of whom questioned her closely about her interview with the +doctor. To Diana and to Valentine there was hope to be gathered from the +very vagueness of the physician's opinion. If there had been anything +serious the matter, the medical adviser must needs have spoken more +seriously. He came again and again. He found the pulse a little weaker, +the patient a little more nervous, with a slight tendency to hysteria, +and so on; but he still declared that there were no traces of organic +disease, and he still talked of Miss Halliday's ailments with a cheery +easy-going manner that was very reassuring. + +In his moments of depression Valentine pinned his faith upon Dr. +Doddleson. Without organic disease, he told himself, his darling could +not perish. He looked for Dr. Doddleson's name in the Directory, and took +comfort from the fact of that physician's residence in a fashionable West +End square. He took further comfort from the splendour of the doctor's +equipage, as depicted to him by Mrs. Sheldon; and from the doctor's age +and experience, as copiously described by the same lady. + +"There is only one fact that I have ever reproached myself with in +relation to my poor Tom," said Georgy, who, in talking to strangers of +her first husband, was apt to impress them with the idea that she was +talking of a favourite cat; "and that is, the youthfulness of the +doctor Mr. Sheldon employed. Of course I am well aware that Mr. Sheldon +would not have consulted the young man if he had not thought him +clever; but I could lay my head upon my pillow at night with a clearer +conscience if poor Tom's doctor had been an older and more experienced +person. Now, that's what I like about Dr. Doddleson. There's a gravity--a +weight--about a man of that age which inspires one with immediate +confidence. I'm sure the serious manner with which he questioned me about +Lotta's diet, and the aspect of her room, was quite delightful." + +In Dr. Doddleson, under Providence, Valentine was fain to put his trust. +He did not know that the worthy doctor was one of those harmless +inanities who, by the aid of money and powerful connections, are +sometimes forced into a position which nature never intended them to +occupy. Among the real working men of that great and admirable +brotherhood, the medical profession, Dr. Doddleson had no rank; but he +was the pet physician of fashionable dowagers suffering from chronic +laziness or periodical attacks of ill-humour. For the spleen or the +vapours no one was a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. He could afford +to waste half an hour upon the asking of questions which the fair +patient's maid might as well have asked, and the suggestions of remedies +which any intelligent abigail could as easily have suggested. Elderly +ladies believed in him because he was pompous and ponderous, lived in an +expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore +mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the +matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating, +declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian +angel of their frail lives during the last twenty years. + +This was the man who, of all the medical profession resident in London, +Mr. Sheldon had selected as his stepdaughter's medical adviser in a case +so beyond common experience, that a man of wide practice and keen +perception was especially needed for its treatment. + +Dr. Doddleson, accustomed to attribute the fancied ailments of +fashionable dowagers to want of tone, and accustomed to prescribe the +mildest preparations with satisfaction to his patients and profit to +himself dwelt upon the same want of tone, and prescribed the same +harmless remedies, in his treatment of Charlotte Halliday. When he found +her no better--nay, even worse--after some weeks of this treatment, he +was puzzled; and for one harmless remedy he substituted another harmless +remedy, and waited another week to see what effect the second harmless +remedy might have on this somewhat obstinate young person. + +And this was the broken reed to which Valentine clung in the day of +his trouble. + +Bitter were his days and sleepless were his nights in this dark period of +his existence. He went to the Bayswater villa nearly every day now. It +was no longer time for etiquette or ceremony. His darling was fading day +by day; and it was his right to watch the slow sad change, and, if it +were possible, to keep the enemy at arm's-length. Every day he came to +spend one too brief hour with his dear love; every day he greeted her +with the same fond smile, and beguiled her with the same hopeful talk. He +brought her new books and flowers, and any foolish trifle which he +fancied might beguile her thoughts from the contemplation of that +mysterious malady which seemed beyond the reach of science and Dr. +Doddleson. He sat and talked with her of the future--that future which in +their secret thoughts both held to be a sweet sad fable--the hyperborean +garden of their dreams. And after spending this too sweet, too bitter +hour with his beloved, Mr. Hawkehurst would diplomatise in order to have +a little talk with Diana as he left the house. Did Diana think his dear +girl better to-day, or worse--surely not worse? He had fancied she had +more colour, more of her old gaiety of manner. She had seemed a little +feverish; but that might be the excitement of his visit. And so on, and +so on, with sad and dreary repetition. + +And then, having gone away from that house with an aching heart, the +young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and plunged into the +dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which was to constitute his +monthly contribution to the _Cheapside_ or the _Charing Cross_. Gaiety, +movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the +_Cheapside_; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for +the _Charing Cross_. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the +young scribbler tripping! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea there, +and the _West End Wasp_ shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional note; or +the _Minerva_ published a letter from a correspondent in the Scilly +Islands, headed "Another Literary Jack Sheppard," to say that in his +"Imperial Dictionary" he had discovered with profound indignation a whole +column of words feloniously and mendaciously appropriated by the writer +of such and such an article in the _Cheapside_. While the sunlight of +hope had shone upon him, Mr. Hawkehurst had found the hardest work +pleasant. Was he not working for _her_ sake? Did not his future union +with that dear girl depend upon his present industry? It had seemed to +him as if she stood at his elbow while he wrote, as Pallas stood beside +Achilles at the council, invisible to all but her favourite. It was that +mystic presence which lent swiftness to his pen. When he was tired and +depressed, the thought of Charlotte had revived his courage and +vanquished his fatigue. Pleasant images crowded upon him when he thought +of her. What could be easier than for him to write a love-story? He had +but to create a shadowy Charlotte for his heroine, and the stream of +foolish lover's babble flowed from his pen perennial and inexhaustible. +To his reading she lent a charm and a grace that made the most perfect +poetry still more poetical. It was not Achilles and Helen who met on +Mount Ida, but Valentine and Charlotte; it was not Paolo and Francesca +who read the fatal book together, but Valentine and Charlotte, in an +unregenerate and mediaeval state of mind. The mere coincidence of a name +made the "Sorrows of Werter" delightful. The all-pervading presence was +everywhere and in everything. His religion was not Pantheism, but +Charlottism. + +Now all was changed. A brooding care was with him in every moment. The +mystic presence was still close to him in every hour of his lonely days +and nights; but that image, which had been fair and blooming as the +incarnation of youth and spring-time, was now a pale shrouded phantom +which he dared not contemplate. He still wrote on--for it is marvellous +how the pen will travel and the mind will project itself into the +shadow-world of fancy while cankerous care gnaws the weary heart. Nay, it +is perhaps at these times that the imagination is most active; for the +world of shadows is a kind of refuge for the mind that dare not dwell +upon realities. Who can say what dull, leaden, care may have weighed down +the heart of William Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of +a poet's grand imaginings, Othello! There is the flavour of racking care +in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by a sordid +wretch; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable life wrecked for so +poor a motive; that sense of the "something in this world amiss," which +the poet, of all other creatures, feels most keenly. + +With grief and fear as his constant companions, Valentine Hawkehurst +toiled on bravely, patiently. Hope had not deserted him; but between hope +and fear the contest was unceasing. Sometimes hope had the best of it for +a while, and the toiler comforted himself with the thought that this dark +cloud would pass anon from the horizon of his life; and then he counted +his gains, and found that the fruit of his labours was increasing +monthly, as his name gained rank among the band of young _litterateurs_. +The day when he might count upon that income which Mr. Sheldon demanded +as his qualification for matrimony did not appear far distant. Given a +certain amount of natural ability, and the industrious and indefatigable +young writer may speedily emerge from obscurity, and take his place in +the great army of those gallant soldiers whose only weapon is the pen. +Whatever good fortune had come to Valentine Hawkehurst he had worked for +with all honesty of purpose. The critics were not slow to remark that he +worked at a white-hot haste, and must needs be a shallow pretender +because he was laborious and indefatigable. + +Before the beginning of Charlotte's slow decline he had fancied himself +the happiest of men. There were more deposit-receipts in his desk. The +nest-egg, about the hatching whereof there had been such cackling and +crowing some months ago, was now one of many eggs; for the hard-working +scribbler had no leisure in which to be extravagant, had he been so +minded. The purchase of a half-circlet of diamonds for his betrothed's +slim finger had been his only folly. + +Charlotte had remonstrated with him on the impropriety of such an +extravagance, and had exacted from him a promise that this wild and +Monte-Christo-like course should be pursued no further; but she was very +proud of her half-hoop of diamonds nevertheless, and was wont to press it +tenderly to her lips before she laid it aside for the night. + +"There must be no more such extravagance, sir," she said to her lover, +when he sat by her side twisting the ring round and round on her pretty +finger. Alas, how loose the ring had become since it had first been +placed there! + +"Consider the future, Valentine," continued the girl, hopeful of mood +while her hand rested in his. "Do you suppose we can furnish our cottage +at Wimbledon if we rush into such wild expenses as diamond rings? Do you +know that _I_ am saving money, Valentine? Yes, positively. Papa gives me +a very good allowance for my dresses, and bonnets, and things, you know, +and I used to be extravagant and spend it all. But now I have become the +most miserly creature; and I have a little packet of money upstairs which +you shall put in the Unitas Bank with the rest of your wealth. Diana and +I have been darning, and patching, and cutting, and contriving, in the +most praiseworthy manner. Even this silk has been turned. You did not +think that, did you, when you admired it so?" + +Mr. Hawkehurst looked at his beloved with a tender smile. The exact +significance of the operation of turning, as applied to silk dresses, was +somewhat beyond his comprehension; but he felt sure that to turn must be +a laudable action, else why that air of pride with which Charlotte +informed him of the fact? + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +AT HAROLD'S HILL. + +The summer sun shone upon the village of Harold's Hill when Charlotte +arrived there with Mrs. Sheldon and Diana Paget. Mr. Sheldon was to +follow them on the same day by a later train; and Valentine was to come +two days afterwards to spend the peaceful interval between Saturday and +Monday with his betrothed. He had seen the travellers depart from the +London Bridge terminus, but Mr. Sheldon had been there also, and there +had been no opportunity for confidential communication between the +lovers. + +Of all Sussex villages Harold's Hill is perhaps the prettiest. The grey +old Saxon church, the scattered farmhouses and pleasant rustic cottages, +are built on the slope of a hill, and all the width of ocean lies below +the rustic windows. The roses and fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem +all the brighter by contrast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh +breath of the salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all +the homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the blue vault +of heaven above the church, and over the blue of the sea the gull skims +white in the sunshine. The fisherman and the farm labourer have their +cottages side by side, nestling cosily to leeward of the hilly winding +road. + +This hilly winding road in the July afternoon seemed to Charlotte almost +like the way to Paradise. + +"It is like going to heaven, Di!" she cried, with her eyes fixed on the +square tower of the old grey church. She wondered why sudden tears sprang +to Diana's eyes as she said this. Miss Paget brushed the unbidden tears +away with a quick gesture of her hand, and smiled at her friend. + +"Yes, dear, the village is very pretty, isn't it?" + +"It looks awfully dull!" said Mrs. Sheldon, with a shudder; "and, Diana, +I declare there isn't a single shop. Where are we to get our provisions? +I told Mr. Sheldon St. Leonards would have been a better place for us." + +"O mamma, St. Leonards is the very essence of all that is tame and +commonplace, compared to this darling rural village! Look, do look, at +that fisherman's cottage, with the nets hanging out to dry in the +sunshine; just like a picture of Hook's!" + +"What's the use of going on about fishermen's cottages, Lotta?" Mrs. +Sheldon demanded, peevishly. "Fishermen's cottages won't provide us with +butcher's meat. Where are we to get your little bit of roast mutton? Dr. +Doddleson laid such a stress upon the roast mutton." + +"The sea-air will do me more good than all the mutton that ever was +roasted at Eton, mamma. O, dear, is this our farmhouse?" cried Charlotte, +as the vehicle drew up at a picturesque gate. "O, what a love of a house! +what diamond-paned windows! what sweet white curtains! and a cow staring +at me quite in the friendliest way across the gate! O, can we be so happy +as to live here?" + +"Diana," cried Mrs. Sheldon, in a solemn voice, "not a single shop have +we passed--not so much as a post-office! And as to haberdashery, I'm sure +you might be reduced to rags in this place before you could get so much +as a yard of glazed lining!" + +The farmhouse was one of those ideal homesteads which, to the dweller in +cities, seems fair as the sapphire-ceiled chambers of the house of +Solomon. Charlotte was enraptured by the idea that this was to be her +home for the next fortnight. + +"I wish it could be for ever, Di," she said, as the two girls were +inspecting the rustic, dimity-draperied, lavender-and-rose-leaf-perfumed +bedchambers. "Who would wish to go back to prim suburban Bayswater after +this? Valentine and I could lodge here after our marriage. It is better +than Wimbledon. Grand thoughts would come to him with the thunder of the +stormy waves; and on calm bright days like this the rippling water would +whisper pretty fancies into his ear. Why, to live here would make any one +a poet. I think I could write a novel myself, if I lived here long +enough." + +After this they arranged the pretty sitting-room, and placed an +easy-chair by the window for Charlotte, an arm-chair opposite this for +Mrs. Sheldon, and between the two a little table for the fancy work and +books and flowers, and all the small necessities of feminine existence. +And then--while Mrs. Sheldon prowled about the rooms, and discovered so +many faults and made so many objections as to give evidence of a fine +faculty for invention unsuspected in her hitherto--Charlotte and Diana +explored the garden and peeped at the farmyard, where the friendly cow +still stared over the white gate, just as she had stared when the fly +came to a stop, as if she had not yet recovered from the astonishment +created in her pastoral mind by that phenomenal circumstance. And then +Charlotte was suddenly tired, and there came upon her that strange +dizziness which was one of her most frequent symptoms. Diana led her +immediately back to the house, and established her comfortably in her +easy-chair. + +"I must be very ill," she said, plaintively; "for even the novelty of +this pretty place cannot make me happy long." + + * * * * * + +Mr. Sheldon arrived in the evening, bringing with him a supply of that +simple medicine which Charlotte took three times a day. He had remembered +that there was no dispensing chemist at Harold's Hill, and that it would +be necessary to send to St. Leonards for the medicine, and had therefore +brought with him a double quantity of the mild tonic. + +"It was very kind of you to think of it, though I really don't believe +the stuff does me any good," said Charlotte. "Nancy Woolper used to get +it for me at Bayswater. She made quite a point of fetching it from the +chemist's herself." + +"Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. "Nancy troubled herself about your +medicine, did she?" + +"Yes, papa; and about me altogether. If I were her own daughter she could +scarcely have seemed more anxious." + +The stockbroker made a mental note of this in the memorandum-book of his +brain. Mrs. Woolper was officious, was she, and suspicious?--altogether a +troublesome sort of person. + +"I think a few weeks of workhouse fare would be wholesome for that old +lady," he said to himself. "There are some people who never know when +they are well off." + +Saturday afternoon came in due course, after a long and dreary interval, +as it seemed to Charlotte, for whom time travelled very slowly, so +painful was the weariness of illness. Now and then a sudden flash of +excitement brought the old brightness to her face, the old gaiety to her +accents; but the brightness faded very soon, and the languor of illness +was very perceptible. + +Punctual to the hour at which he was expected, Mr. Hawkehurst appeared, +in radiant spirits, laden with new magazines, delighted with the village, +enraptured with the garden, enchanted with the sea; full of talk and +animation, with all sorts of news to tell his beloved. Such and such a +book was a failure, such and such a comedy was a fiasco; Jones's novel +had made a hit; Brown's picture was the talk of the year; and Charlotte +must see the picture that had been talked about, and the play that had +been condemned, when she returned to town. + +For an hour the lovers sat in the pretty farmhouse parlour talking +together thus, the summer sea and the garden flowers before them, and a +bird singing high in the calm blue heaven. Charlotte's talk was somewhat +languid, though it was perfect happiness for her to be seated thus, with +her betrothed by her side; but Valentine's gaiety of spirits never +flagged; and when Mrs. Sheldon hinted to him that too long a conversation +might fatigue the dear invalid, he left the parlour with a smile upon his +face, and a cheery promise to return after an hour's ramble. + +He did not ramble far. He went straight to a little wooden summer-house +in the remotest corner of the humble garden; and thither Diana Paget +followed him. She had learned the language of his face in the time of +their daily companionship, and she had seen a look as he left the house +which told her of the struggle his cheerfulness had cost him. + +"You must not be downhearted, Valentine," she said, as she went into the +summer-house, where he sat in a listless attitude, with his arms lying +loosely folded on the rustic table. + +He did not answer her. + +"You don't think her worse--much worse--do you, Valentine?" + +"Worse? I have seen death in her face to-day!" he cried; and then he let +his forehead fall upon his folded arms, and sobbed aloud. + +Diana stood by his side watching that outburst of grief. When the +passionate storm of tears was past, she comforted him as best she might. +The change so visible to him was not so plain to her. He had hoped that +the breath of the ocean would have magical power to restore the invalid. +He had come to Harold's Hill full of hope, and instead of the beginning +of an improvement he saw the progress of decay. + +"Why did not Sheldon send for the doctor," he asked, indignantly,--"the +physician who has attended her? He might have telegraphed to that man." + +"Charlotte is taking Dr. Doddleson's medicine," said Diana, "and all his +directions are most carefully obeyed." + +"What of that, if she grows worse? The doctor should see her daily, +hourly, if necessary. And if he cannot cure her, another doctor should be +sent for. Good heavens, Diana! are we to let her fade and sink from us +before our eyes? I will go back to London at once, and bring that man +Doddleson down by the night mail." + +"Your going back to London would grieve and alarm Charlotte. You can +telegraph for the doctor; or, at least, Mr. Sheldon can do so. It would +not do for you to interfere without his permission." + +"It would not do!" echoed Valentine, angrily. "Do you think that I +am going to stand upon punctilio, or to consider what will do or +will not do?" + +"Above all things, you must avoid alarming Charlotte," pleaded Diana. + +"Do you think I do not know that? Do you think I did not feel that just +now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish about books and plays +and pictures, while every stolen glance at my darling's face was like a +dagger thrust into my heart? I will not alarm her. I will consult Mr. +Sheldon--will do anything, everything, to save her! To save her! O my +God, has it come to that?" + +He grew a little calmer presently under Diana's influence, and went +slowly back to the house. He avoided the open window by which Charlotte +was sitting. He had not yet schooled himself to meet her questioning +looks. He went to the room where they were to dine, a duller and darker +apartment than the parlour, and here he found Mr. Sheldon reading a +paper, one of the eternal records of the eternal money-market. + +The stockbroker had been in and out of the house all day, now sauntering +by the sea-shore, now leaning moodily, with folded arms, on the garden +gate, meditative and silent as the cow that stared at Charlotte; now +pacing the garden walks, with his hands in his pockets and his head bent. +Diana, who in her anxiety kept a close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's +movements, had noted his restlessness, and perceived in it the sign of +growing anxiety on his part. She knew that he had once called himself +surgeon-dentist, and had some medical knowledge, if not so much as he +took credit for possessing. He must, therefore, be better able to judge +the state of Charlotte's health than utterly ignorant observers. If he +were uneasy, there must be real cause for uneasiness. It was on this +account, and on this account only, that Diana watched him. + +"He must love her better than I gave him credit for being able to love +any one," Miss Paget said to herself. "Dear girl! The coldest heart is +touched by her sweetness." + +Mr. Sheldon looked up from his newspaper as Valentine came into the room, +and saluted the visitor with a friendly nod. + +"Glad to see you, Hawkehurst," he said. "_Semper fidelis_, and that +kind of thing; the very model of devoted lovers. Why, man alive, how +glum you look!" + +"I think I have reason to look glum," answered Valentine, gravely; "I +have seen Charlotte." + +"Yes? And don't you find her improving?--gradually, of course. That +constitutional languor is not shaken off in a hurry. But surely you think +her improving--brightening--" + +"Brightening with the light that never shone on earth or sea. God help +me! I--I--am the merest child, the veriest coward, the--" He made a great +effort, and stifled the sob that had well-nigh broken his voice. "Mr. +Sheldon," he continued quietly, "I believe your stepdaughter is dying." + +"Dying! Good heavens!--my dear Hawkehurst, this alarm is most--most +premature. There is no cause for fear--at present, no cause--I give you +my word as a medical man." + +"No cause for alarm at present? That means my darling will not be taken +from me to-night, or to-morrow. I shall have a few days breathing-time. +Yes, I understand. The doom is upon us. I saw the shadow of death upon +her face to-day." + +"My dear Hawkehurst--" + +"My dear Sheldon, for pity's sake don't treat me as if I were a woman or +a child. Let me know my fate. If--if--this, the worst, most bitter of all +calamities God's hand--raised against me in punishment of past sins, +sinned lightly and recklessly, in the days when my heart had no stake in +the game of destiny--can inflict upon me; if this deadly sorrow is +bearing down upon me, let me meet it like a man. Let me die with my eyes +uncovered. O, my dearest, my fondest, redeeming angel of my ill-spent +life! have you been only a supernal visitant, after all, shining on me +for a little while, to depart when your mission of redemption is +accomplished?" + +"Powers above!" thought Mr. Sheldon, "what nonsense these sentimental +magazine-writers can talk!" + +He was in nowise melted by the lover's anguish, though it was very real. +Such a grief as this was outside the circle in which his thoughts +revolved. This display of grief was unpleasant to him. It grated +painfully upon his nerves, as some of poor Tom Halliday's little speeches +had done of old, when the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his +deathbed; and the young man's presence and the young man's anxiety were +alike inconvenient. + +"Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon," Valentine said presently, with +suppressed intensity. "Is there any hope for my darling, any hope?" + +Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied to this +question. He pursed-up his lips and bent his brows with the same air of +business-like deliberation that he might have assumed while weighing the +relative merits of the first and second debenture bonds of some doubtful +railway company. + +"You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst," he said at last. "If you ask +me plainly whether I like the turn which Charlotte's illness has taken +within the last few weeks, I must tell you frankly, I do not. There is a +persistent want of tone--a visible decay of vital power--which, I must +confess, has caused me some uneasiness. You see, the fact is, there is a +radical weakness of constitution--as Miss Paget, a very sensible girl and +acute observer--herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary weakness; and +against this medicine is sometimes unavailing. You need apprehend no +neglect on my part, Hawkehurst; all that can possibly be done is being +done. Dr. Doddleson's instructions are carefully obeyed, and--" + +"Is this Dr. Doddleson competent to grapple with the case?" asked +Valentine; "I never heard of him as a great man." + +"That fact proves how little you know of the medical profession." + +"I know nothing of it; I have had no need for doctors in my life. And you +think this Dr. Doddleson really clever?" + +"His position is a sufficient answer to that question." + +"Will you let me telegraph for him--this afternoon--immediately?" + +"You cannot telegraph from this place." + +"No, but from St. Leonards I can. Do you think I am afraid of a +five-mile walk?" + +"But why send for Dr. Doddleson? The treatment he prescribed is the +treatment we are now following to the letter. To summon him down here +would be the merest folly. Our poor Charlotte's illness is, so far, free +from all alarming symptoms." + +"You do not see the change in her that I can see," cried Valentine +piteously. "For mercy's sake, Mr. Sheldon, let me have my way in this. I +cannot stand by and see my dear one fading and do nothing--nothing to +save her. Let me send for this man. Let me see him myself, and hear what +he says. You can have no objection to his coming, since he is the man you +have chosen for Charlotte's adviser? It can only be a question of +expense. Let this particular visit be my affair." + +"I can afford to pay for my stepdaughter's medical attendance without any +help from your purse, Mr. Hawkehurst," said the stockbroker with offended +pride. "There is one element in the case which you appear to ignore." + +"What is that?" + +"The alarm which this summoning of a doctor from London must cause in +Charlotte's mind." + +"It need cause no alarm. She can be told that Dr. Doddleson has come to +this part of the world for a Sunday's change of air. The visit can appear +to be made _en passant._ It will be easy to arrange that with the doctor +before he sees her." + +"As you please, Mr. Hawkehurst," the stockbroker replied coldly. "I +consider such a visit to the last degree unnecessary; but if Dr. +Doddleson's coming can give you any satisfaction, by all means let him +come. The expense involved in summoning him is of the smallest +consideration to me. My position with regard to my wife's daughter is one +of extreme responsibility, and I am ready to perform all the obligations +of that position." + +"You are very good: your conduct in relation to Charlotte and myself has +been beyond all praise. It is quite possible that I am over-anxious; but +there was a look in that dear face--no--I cannot forget that look; it +struck terror to my heart. I will go at once to St. Leonards. I can tell +Charlotte that I am obliged to telegraph to the printer about my copy. +You will not object to that white lie?" + +"Not at all. I think it essential that Charlotte should not be alarmed. +You had better stop to dine; there will be time for the telegram after +dinner." + +"I will not risk that," answered Valentine. "I cannot eat or drink till I +have done something to lessen this wretched anxiety." + +He went back to the room where Charlotte was sitting by the open window, +through which there came the murmur of waves, the humming of drowsy bees, +the singing of birds, all the happy voices of happy nature in a +harmonious chorus. + +"O God, wilt thou take her away from such a beautiful world," he asked, +"and change all the glory of earth to darkness and desolation for me?" + +His heart rebelled against the idea of her death. To save her, to win her +back to himself from the jaws of death, he was ready to promise anything, +to do anything. + +"All my days will I give to Thy service, if Thou wilt spare her to me," +in his heart he said to his God. "If Thou dost not, I will be an infidel +and a pagan--the vilest and most audacious of sinners. Better to serve +Lucifer than the God who could so afflict me." + +And this is where the semi-enlightened Christian betrays the weakness of +his faith. While the sun shines, and the sweet gospel story reads to him +like some tender Arcadian idyl, all love and promise, he is firm in his +allegiance; but when the dark hour comes, he turns his face to the wall, +with anger and disappointment in his heart, and will have no further +commune with the God who has chastised him. His faith is the faith of the +grateful leper, who, being healed, was eager to return and bless his +divine benefactor. It is not the faith of Abraham or of Job, of Paul or +of Stephen. + +Valentine told his story about the printers and the copy for the +_Cheapside_ magazine, about which there had arisen some absurd mistake, +only to be set right by a telegram. + +It was not a very clear account; but Charlotte did not perceive the +vagueness of the story; she thought only of the one fact, that Valentine +must leave her for some hours. + +"The evening will seem so long without you," she said. "That is the worst +part of my illness; the time is so long--so weary. Diana is the dearest +and kindest of friends. She is always trying to amuse me, and reads to me +for hours, though I know she must often be tired of reading aloud so +long. But even the books I was once so fond of do not amuse me. The words +seem to float indistinctly in my brain, and all sorts of strange images +mix themselves up with the images of the people in the book. Di has been +reading "The Bride of Lammermoor" all this morning; but the pain and +weariness I feel seemed to be entangled with Lucy and Edgar somehow, and +the dear book gave me no pleasure." + +"My darling, you--you are too weak to listen to Diana's reading. It is +very kind of her to try to amuse you; but--but it would be better for you +to rest altogether. Any kind of mental exertion may help to retard your +recovery." + +He had placed himself behind her chair, and was bending over the pillows +to speak to her. Just now he felt himself unequal to the command of his +countenance. He bent his head until his lips touched the soft brown hair, +and kissed those loose soft tresses passionately. The thought occurred to +him that a day might come when he should again kiss that soft brown hair, +with a deeper passion, with a sharper pain, and when Charlotte would not +know of his kisses, or pity his pain. + +"O Valentine!" cried Charlotte, "you are crying; I can see your face in +the glass." + +He had forgotten the glass; the little rococo mirror, with an eagle +hovering over the top of the frame, which hung above the old-fashioned +chiffonier. + +"I am not so very ill, dear; I am not indeed," the girl continued, +turning in her chair with an effort, and clasping her lover's hands; "you +must not distress yourself like this, Valentine--dear Valentine! I shall +be better by-and-by. I cannot think that I shall be taken from you." + +He had broken down altogether by this time. He buried his face in the +pillows, and contrived to stifle the sobs that would come; and then, +after a sharp struggle, he lifted his face, and bent over the chair once +more to kiss the invalid's pale upturned forehead. + +"My dear one, you shall not, if love can guard and keep you. No, dear, +I _cannot_ believe that God will take you from me. Heaven may be your +fittest habitation; but such sweet spirits as yours are sorely needed +upon earth. I will be brave, dearest one; brave and hopeful in the +mercy of Heaven. And now I must go and telegraph to my tiresome +printer. _Au revoir_!" + +He hurried away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling pace along +the pleasant road, with green waving corn on his left, and broad blue +ocean on his right. + +"I can get a fly to bring me back from St. Leonard's" he thought; "I +should only lose time by hunting for a vehicle here." + +He was at St. Leonards station within an hour after leaving the farm. +He despatched the message in Mr. Sheldon's name, and took care to make +it urgent. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +DESPERATE MEASURES. + +Fitful and feverish were the slumbers which visited Mr. Hawkehurst on +that balmy summer's night. His waking hours were anxious and unhappy; but +his sleeping hours were still more painful. To sleep was to be the +feverish fool of vague wild visions, in which Charlotte and Dr. +Doddleson, the editor of the _Cheapside_, the officials of the British +Museum reading-room, Diana Paget, and the Sheldons, figured amidst +inextricable confusion of circumstances and places. Throughout these +wretched dreams he had some consciousness of himself and the room in +which he was lying, the July moon shining upon him, broad and bright, +through the diamond-paned lattice. And O, what torturing visions were +those in which Charlotte smiled upon him, radiant with health and +happiness; and there had been no such thing as her illness, no such thing +as his grief. And then came hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was +knocking at the farmhouse door, with the printer of the _Cheapside_. And +then he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman +amphitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, looking down +on the encounter of two other flies, and all the glory of an imperial +court only a little spot of purple and gold, gleaming afar in the +sunshine. To the dreamer it was no surprise that this unknown theatre of +his dreams should be vast as the gladiatorial arena. And then came the +deep thunderous music of innumerable bass-viols and bassoons: and some +one told him it was the first night of a great tragedy. He felt the +breathless hush of expectation; the solemn bass music sank deeper; dark +curtains were drawn aside, with a motion slow and solemn, like the waving +of mountain pines, and there appeared a measureless stage, revealing a +moonlit expanse, thickly studded with the white headstones of unnumbered +graves, and on the foremost of these--revealed to him by what power he +knew not, since mortal sight could never have reached a point so +distant--he read the name of Charlotte Halliday. He awoke with a sharp +cry of pain. It was broad day, and the waves were dancing gaily in the +morning sunlight. He rose and dressed himself. Sleep, such as he had +known that night, was worse than the weariest waking. He went out into +the garden by-and-by, and paced slowly up and down the narrow pathways, +beside which box of a century's growth rose dark and high. Pale yellow +lights were in the upper windows. He wondered which of those sickly +tapers flickered on the face he loved so fondly. + +"It is only a year since I first saw her," he thought: "one year! And to +love her has been my 'liberal education;' to lose her would be my +desolation and despair." + +To lose her! His thoughts approached that dread possibility, but could +not realize it; not even yet. + +At eight o'clock Diana came to summon him to breakfast. + +"Shall I see Charlotte?" he asked. + +"No; for some time past she has not come down to breakfast." + +"What kind of night has she had?" + +"A very quiet night, she tells me; but I am not quite sure that she tells +me the truth, she is so afraid of giving us uneasiness." + +"She tells you. But do you not sleep in her room, now that she is so +ill?" + +"No. I was anxious to sleep on a sofa at the foot of her bed, and +proposed doing so, but Mr. Sheldon objects to my being in the room. He +thinks that Charlotte is more quiet entirely alone, and that there is +more air in the room with only one sleeper. Her illness is not of a kind +to require attention of any sort in the night." + +"Still I should have thought it better for her to have you with her, to +cheer and comfort her. + +"Believe me, Valentine, I wished to be with her." + +"I am sure of that, dear," he answered kindly. + +"It was only Mr. Sheldon's authority, as a man of some medical +experience, that conquered my wish." + +"Well, I suppose he is right. And now we must go in to breakfast. Ah, the +dreary regularity of these breakfasts and dinners, which go on just the +same when our hearts are breaking!" + +The breakfast was indeed a dreary soul-dispiriting meal. Farmhouse +luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home-cured bacon, abounded; but +no one had any inclination for these things. Valentine remembered the +homestead among the Yorkshire hills, with all the delight that he had +known there; and the "sorrow's crown of sorrow" was very bitter. Mr. +Sheldon gave his Sabbath-morning meditations to the study of a +Saturday-evening share-list; and Georgy plunged ever and anon into the +closely printed pages of a Dissenting preacher's biography, which she +declared to be "comforting." + +Diana and Valentine sat silent and anxious; and after the faintest +pretence of eating and drinking, they both left the table, to stroll +drearily in the garden. The bells were ringing cheerily from the grey +stone tower near at hand; but Valentine had no inclination for church on +this particular morning. Were not all his thoughts prayers--humble +piteous entreaties--for one priceless boon? + +"Will you see the doctor when he comes, and manage matters so as not to +alarm Charlotte?" he asked of Mr. Sheldon. That gentleman agreed to do +so, and went out into the little front-garden to lie in wait for the +great Doddleson--"Dowager Doddleson" as he was surnamed by some +irreverent unbelievers. + +A St. Leonards fly brought the doctor while the bells were still ringing +for morning service. Mr. Sheldon received him at the gate; and explained +the motive of his summons. + +The doctor was full of pompous solicitude about "our sweet young +patient." + +"Really one of the most interesting cases I ever had upon my hands," +the West-end physician said blandly; "as I was remarking to a very +charming patient of mine--in point of fact, the amiable and +accomplished Countess of Kassel-Kumberterre, only last Tuesday +morning. A case so nearly resembling the Countess's own condition as to +be highly interesting to her." + +"I really ought to apologize for bringing you down," said Mr. Sheldon, as +he led the doctor into the house. "I only consented to your being sent +for in order to tranquillize this young fellow Hawkehurst, who is engaged +to my daughter; a rising man, I believe, in his own particular line, but +rather wild and impracticable. There is really no change for the worse, +absolutely none; and as we have not been here more than three days, there +has been positively no opportunity for testing the effect of change and +sea air, and so on." + +This seemed rather like giving the learned physician his cue. And there +were those among Dr. Doddleson's professional rivals who said that the +worthy doctor was never slow to take a cue so given, not being prejudiced +by any opinions of his own. + +Charlotte had by this time been established in her easy-chair by the open +window of the sitting-room, and here Dr. Doddleson saw her, in the +presence of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon; and here Dr. Doddleson went through the +usual Abracadabra of his art, and assented to the opinions advanced, with +all deference, by Mr. Sheldon. + +To Georgy this interview, in which Mr. Sheldon's opinions were pompously +echoed by the West-end physician, proved even more comforting than the +benignant career of the Dissenting minister, who was wont to allude to +that solemn passing hence of which the ancients spoke in dim suggestive +phrase, as "going upstairs." + +Diana and Valentine strolled in the garden while the physician saw his +patient. Dr. Doddleson's ponderous polysyllables floated out upon the +summer air like the droning of a humble-bee. It was a relief to Valentine +to know that the doctor was with his patient: but he had no intention to +let that gentleman depart unquestioned. + +"I will take no secondhand information," he thought; "I will hear this +man's opinion from his own lips." + +He went round to the front of the house directly the droning had ceased, +and was in the way when Dr. Doddleson and Mr. Sheldon came out of the +rose-hung porch. + +"If you have no objection," he said to Mr. Sheldon, "I should like to ask +Dr. Doddleson a few questions." + +"_I_ have no objection," replied the stockbroker; "but it is really +altogether such an unusual thing, and I doubt if Dr. Doddleson will +consent to--" + +And here he cast a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who should say, +"Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand go entirely unwarranted +by precedent?" + +Dowager Doddleson was eminently good-natured. + +"And this is our sweet young friend's _fiance_," he said; "dear +me--dee-ar me!" + +And then he looked at Valentine with bland pale-blue eyes that twinkled +behind his gold-framed spectacles; while Valentine was taking his +measure, so far as the measure of any man's moral and intellectual force +can be taken by the eyes of another man. "And this is the man who is +chosen to snatch my darling from the jaws of death!" he said to himself, +with burning rage in his heart, while the amiable physician repeated +blandly: + +"And this is our sweet young patient's _fiance_. Dee-ar me, how very +interesting!" + +The three men strolled round to the garden behind the house, Mr. Sheldon +close at the physician's elbow. + +"For God's sake tell me the truth, Dr. Doddleson!" said Valentine in a +low hoarse voice, directly they were beyond ear-shot of the house. "I am +a man, and I can steel myself to hear the worst you can tell." + +"But really, Hawkehurst, there is no occasion for this kind of thing," +interjected Philip Sheldon; "Dr. Doddleson agrees with me, that the case +is one of extreme languor, and no more." + +"Unquestionably," said the doctor in a fat voice. + +"And Dr. Doddleson also coincides with me in the opinion that all we can +do is to wait the reviving influence of sea-air." + +"Undoubtedly," said the doctor, with a solemn nod. + +"And is this all?" asked Valentine hopelessly. + +"My dear sir, what else can I say?" said the doctor; "as my good friend +Mr. Sheldon has just remarked, there is extreme languor; and as my good +friend Mr. Sheldon further observes, we must await the effect of change +of air. The--aw--invigorating sea-breezes, the--aw--enlivening influence +of new surroundings, and--aw--so forth. Dr. Poseidon, my dear sir, is a +very valuable coadjutor." + +"And you think your patient no worse, Dr. Doddleson?" + +"The doctor has just left Mrs. Sheldon much comforted by his assurance +that her daughter is better," said the stockbroker. + +"No, no!" exclaimed Dr. Doddleson; "no, no! _there_ my good friend Mr. +Sheldon somewhat misrepresents me. I said that our patient was not +obviously worse. I did not say that our patient was better. There is a +dilatation of the pupil of the eye which I don't quite understand." + +"Mental excitement," said Mr. Sheldon, somewhat hastily; "Charlotte is +nervous to an extreme degree, and your sudden arrival was calculated to +shake her nerves." + +"Undoubtedly," rejoined the doctor; "and it is unquestionable that such a +dilatation of the pupil might, under certain circumstances, be occasioned +by mental excitement. I am sorry to find that our patient's attacks of +dizziness--" + +"Which are purely the effect of fancy," interjected Mr. Sheldon. + +"Which are no doubt, in some measure, attributable to a hypochondriacal +condition of mind," continued the doctor in his fat voice. "I am sorry to +find that this periodical dizziness has been somewhat increased of late. +But here again we must look to Dr. Poseidon. Tepid sea-baths, if they can +be managed, in the patient's own room; and by-and-by a dip in the waves +yonder, may do wonders." + +Valentine asked no further questions; and the physician departed in the +St. Leonards fly, to turn his excursion to profitable use by calling on +two or three dowagers in Warrior Square and Marina, who would doubtless +be glad of an unexpected visit from their pet doctor. + +"Well, Hawkehurst," said Mr. Sheldon, when the fly had driven away, "I +hope you are satisfied now?" + +"Satisfied!" cried Valentine; "yes, I am satisfied that your stepdaughter +is being murdered!" + +"Murdered!" echoed the stockbroker, his voice thick and faint; but +Valentine did not heed the change in it. + +"Yes, murdered--sacrificed to the utter incompetence of that old idiot +who has just left us." + +Philip Sheldon drew a long breath. + +"What!" he exclaimed; "do you doubt Doddleson's skill?" + +"Do you believe in it? Do you? No; I cannot think that a man of your keen +perception in all other matters--half a medical man yourself--can be the +dupe of so shallow an impostor. And it is to that man's judgment my +darling's life has been confided; and it is to that man I have looked, +with hope and comfort in the thought of his power to save my treasure! +Good God! what a reed on which to rely! And of all the medical men of +London, this is the one you have chosen!" + +"I must really protest against this rant, Hawkehurst," said Philip +Sheldon. "I hold myself responsible for the selection which I made, and +will not have that selection questioned in this violent and outrageous +manner by you. Your anxiety for Charlotte's recovery may excuse a great +deal, but it cannot excuse this kind of thing; and if you cannot command +yourself better, I must beg you to absent yourself from my house until my +stepdaughter's recovery puts an end to all this fuss." + +"Do you believe in Dr. Doddleson's skill?" asked Valentine doggedly. He +wanted to have that question answered at any cost. + +"Most decidedly I do, with the rest of the medical world. My choice of +this gentleman as Charlotte's adviser was governed by his reputation as a +safe and conscientious man. His opinions are sound, trustworthy--" + +"His opinions!" cried Valentine with a bitter laugh; "what in heaven's +name do you call his opinions? The only opinions I could extract from him +to-day were solemn echoes of yours. And the man himself! I took the +measure of him before I asked him a question; and physiology is a lie if +that man is anything better than an impostor." + +"His position is the answer to that." + +"His position is no answer. He is not the first impostor who has attained +position, and is not likely to be the last. You must forgive me, if I +speak with some violence, Mr. Sheldon. I feel too deeply to remember the +conventionalities of my position. The dear girl yonder, hovering between +life and death, is my promised wife. As your stepdaughter she is very +dear to you, no doubt, and you are of course anxious to do your duty as +her stepfather. But she is all the world to me--my one sweet memory of +the past, my sole hope for the future. I will not trust her to the care +of Dr. Doddleson; I claim the right to choose another physician--as that +man's coadjutor, if you please. I have no wish to offend the doctor of +your choice." + +"This is all sheer nonsense," said Mr. Sheldon. + +"It is nonsense about which you must let me have my own way," replied +Valentine, resolutely. "My stake on this hazard is too heavy for careless +play. I shall go back to town at once and seek out a physician." + +"Do you know any great man?" + +"No; but I will find one." + +"If you go today, you will inevitably alarm Charlotte." + +"True; and disappoint her into the bargain. I suppose in such a case +tomorrow will do as well as to-day?" + +"Decidedly." + +"I can go by the first train, and return with my doctor in the afternoon. +Yes, I will go tomorrow." + +Mr. Sheldon breathed more freely. There are cases in which to obtain time +for thought seems the one essential thing--cases in which a reprieve is +as good as a pardon. + +"Pray let us consider this business quietly," he said, with a faint sigh +of weariness. "There is no necessity for all this excitement. You can go +to town to-morrow, by the first train, as you say. If it is any +satisfaction to you to bring down a physician, bring one; bring half a +dozen, if you please. But, for the last time, I most emphatically assure +you that anything that tends to alarm Charlotte is the one thing of all +others most sure to hinder her recovery." + +"I know that. She shall not be frightened; but she shall have a better +adviser than Dr. Doddleson. And now I will go back to the house. She will +wonder at my absence." + +He went to the bright, airy room where Charlotte was seated, her head +lying back upon the pillows, her face paler, her glances and tones more +languid than on the previous day as it seemed to Valentine. Diana was +near her, solicitous and tender; and on the other side of the window sat +Mrs. Sheldon, with her Dissenting minister's biography open on her lap. + +All through that day Valentine Hawkehurst played his part bravely: it was +a hard and bitter part to play--the part of hope and confidence while +unutterable fears were rending his heart. He read the epistle and gospel +of the day to his betrothed; and afterwards some chapters of St. +John--those profoundly mournful chapters that foreshadow the agonising +close. It was Charlotte who selected these chapters, and her lover could +find no excuse for disputing her choice. + +It was the first time that they had shared any religious exercise, and +the hearts of both were deeply touched by the thought of this. + +"How frivolous all our talk must have been, Valentine, when it seems so +new to us to be reading these beautiful words together?" + +Her head was half supported by the pillows, half resting on her lover's +shoulder, and her eyes travelled along the lines as he read, in a calm +low voice, which was unbroken to the end. + +Early in the evening Charlotte retired, worn out by the day's physical +weariness, in spite of Valentine's fond companionship. Later, when it was +dusk, Diana came downstairs with the news that the invalid was sleeping +quietly. Mrs. Sheldon was dozing in her arm-chair, the Dissenting +minister having fallen to the ground; and Valentine was leaning, with +folded arms, on the broad window-sill looking out into the shadowy +garden. Mr. Sheldon had given them very little of his society during that +day. He went out immediately after his interview with Valentine, on a +sea-coast ramble, which lasted till dinner-time. After dinner he remained +in the room where they had dined. He was there now. The light of the +candles, by which he read his papers, shone out upon the dusk. + +"Will you come for a stroll with me, Diana?" asked Valentine. + +Miss Paget assented promptly; and they went out into the garden, beyond +the reach of Mr. Sheldon's ears, had that gentleman been disposed to +place himself at his open window in the character of a listener. + +"I want to tell you my plans about Charlotte," Valentine began. "I am +going to London to-morrow to search for a greater physician than Dr. +Doddleson. I shall find my man in an hour or so; and, if possible, shall +return with him in the evening. There is no apparent reason to anticipate +any sudden change for the worse; but if such a change should take place, +I rely on you, dear, to give me the earliest tidings of it. I suppose you +can get a fly here, if you want one?" + +"I can get to St. Leonards, if that is what you mean," Miss Paget +answered promptly. "I dare say there is a fly to be had; if not, I can +walk there. I am not afraid of a few miles' walk, by day or night. If +there should be a change, Valentine--which God forbid--I will telegraph +the tidings of it to you." + +"You had better address the message to me at Rancy's, Covent Garden; the +house where the Ragamuffins have their rooms, you know, dear. That is a +more central point than my lodgings, and nearer the terminus. I will call +there two or three times in the course of the day." + +"You may trust my vigilance, Valentine. I did not think it was in my +nature to love any one as I love Charlotte Halliday." + +Gustave Lenoble's letters lying unanswered in her desk asserted the +all-absorbing nature of Diana's affection for the fading girl. She _was_ +fading. The consciousness of this made all other love sacrilege, as it +seemed to Diana. She sat up late that night to answer Gustave's last +letter of piteous complaint. + +"She had forgotten him. Ah, that he had been foolish--insensate--to +confide himself in her love! Was he not old and grey in comparison to +such youth--such freshness--a venerable dotard of thirty-five? What had +he with dreams of love and marriage? Fie, then. He humiliated himself in +the dust beneath her _mignon_ feet. He invited her to crush him with +those cruel feet. But if she did not answer his letters, he would come to +Harold's Hill. He would mock himself of that ferocious Sheldon--of a +battalion of Sheldons still more ferocious--of all the world, at +last--to be near her." + +"Believe me, dear Gustave, I do not forget," wrote Diana, in reply to +these serio-comic remonstrances. "I was truly sorry to leave town, on +your account and on my father's. But my dear adopted sister is paramount +with me now. You will not grudge her my care or my love, for she may not +long be with me to claim them. There is nothing but sorrow here in all +our hearts; sorrow, and an ever-present dread." + + + + +Book the Eighth. + + + +A FIGHT AGAINST TIME. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +A DREAD REVELATION. + +The early fast train by which Valentine Hawkehurst travelled brought him +into town at a quarter past nine o'clock. During the journey he had been +meditating on the way in which he should set to work when he arrived in +London. No ignorance could be more profound than his on all points +relating to the medical profession. Dimly floating in his brain there +were the names of doctors whom he had heard of as celebrated men--one for +the chest, another for the liver, another for the skin, another for the +eyes; but, among all these famous men, who was the man best able to cope +with the mysterious wasting away, the gradual, almost imperceptible +ebbing of that one dear life which Valentine wanted to save? + +This question must be answered by some one; and Valentine was sorely +puzzled as to who that some one must be. + +The struggling young writer had but few friends. He had, indeed, worked +too hard for the possibility of friendship. The cultivation of the +severer Muses is rarely compatible with a wide circle of acquaintances; +and Valentine, if not a cultivator of these severe ones, had been a hard +and honest worker during the later reputable portion of his life. His +friendships of the previous portion had been the friendships of the +railway-carriage and the smoking room, the _cafe_ and the gaming-table. +He could count upon his fingers the people to whom he could apply for +counsel in this crisis of his life. There was George Sheldon, a man for +whom he entertained a most profound contempt; Captain Paget, a man who +might or might not be able to give him good advice, but who would +inevitably sacrifice Charlotte Halliday's welfare to self-interest, if +self-interest could be served by the recommendation of an incompetent +adviser. + +"He would send me to some idiot of the Doddleson class, if he thought he +could get a guinea or a dinner by the recommendation," Valentine said to +himself, and decided that to Horatio Paget he would not apply. There were +his employers, the editors and proprietors of the magazines for which he +worked; all busy over-burdened workers in the great mill, spending the +sunny hours of their lives between a pile of unanswered letters and a +waste-paper basket; men who would tell him to look in the Post-office +Directory, without lifting their eyes from the paper over which their +restless pens were speeding. + +No. Amongst these was not the counsellor whom Valentine Hawkehurst needed +in this dire hour of difficulty. + +"There are some very good fellows among the Ragamuffins," he said to +himself, as he thought of the only literary and artistic club of which he +was a member; "fellows who stuck by me when I was down in the world, and +who would do anything to serve me now they know me for an honest worker. +But, unfortunately, farce writers and burlesque writers, and young +meerschaum-smoking painters, are not the sort of men to give good advice: +I want the advice of a medical man." + +Mr. Hawkehurst almost bounded from his seat as he said this. The advice +of a medical man? Yes; and was there not a medical man among the +Ragamuffins? and something more than a medical man? That very doctor, who +of all other men upon this earth could best give him counsel--the doctor +who had stood by the deathbed of Charlotte Halliday's father. + +He remembered the conversation that had occurred at Bayswater, on the +evening of Christmas day, upon this very subject. He remembered how from +the talk about ghosts they had drifted somehow into talking of Tom +Halliday; whereupon Mrs. Sheldon had been melted to tears, and had gone +on to praise Philip Sheldon's conduct to his dying friend, and to speak +of Mr. Burkham, the strange doctor, called in too late to save, or, it +might have been, incapable to save. + +"Sheldon seems to have a genius for calling in incapable doctors," he +thought bitterly. + +Incapable as Mr. Burkham might have been for the exigencies of this +particular case, he would at least be able to inform Valentine who among +the medical celebrities of London would be best adapted to advise in such +an illness as Charlotte Halliday's. + +"And if, as Diana has sometimes suggested, there is any hereditary +disease, this Burkham may be able to throw some light upon the nature of +it," thought Valentine. + +He went straight from the railway terminus to the quiet tavern upon the +first floor of which the Ragamuffins had their place of rendezvous. It +was not an hour for the encounter of many Ragamuffins. A meek-looking +young man, of clerical aspect, who had adapted a Palais Royal farce, and +had awoke in the morning to find himself famous, and eligible for +admission amongst the Ragamuffins, was sipping his sherry and soda-water +while he skimmed the morning papers. Him Mr. Hawkehurst saluted with an +absent nod, and went in search of the steward of the club, from whom he +obtained Mr. Burkham's address, with some little trouble in the way of +hunting through old and obscure documents. + +It was the old address; the old dingy, comfortable, muffin-bell-haunted +street in which Mr. Burkham had lived ten years before, when he was +summoned to attend the sick Yorkshire farmer. + +Mr. Burkham's career had not been brightened by the sunshine of +prosperity. He had managed to live somehow, and to find food and raiment +for his young wife, who, when she considered the lilies of the field, may +have envied their shining robes of pure whiteness, so dingy and dark was +her own apparel. When children came, the young surgeon contrived to find +food and raiment for them also, but not without daily and hourly +struggles with that grim wolf who haunts the thresholds of so many +dwellings, and will not be thrust from the door. Sometimes a little +glimmering ray of light illumined Mr. Burkham's pathway, and he was +humbly grateful to Providence for the brief glimpse of sunshine. But for +a meek fair-faced man, with a nervous desire to do well, a very poor +opinion of his own merits, and a diffident, not to say depressed manner, +the world is apt to be a hard battle-ground. + +Mr. Burkham sometimes found himself well-nigh beaten in the cruel strife; +and at such times, in the dead silence of the night, with mortal agonies, +and writhings as of Pythoness upon tripod, Mr. Burkham gave himself up to +the composition of a farce, adapted, not from the French, but from his +memories of Wright and Bedford in the jovial old student days, when the +pit of the Adelphi Theatre had been the pleasant resort of his evenings. +He could no longer afford the luxury of theatrical entertainments, except +when provided with a free admission. But from the hazy reminiscences +floating in his poor tired brain he concocted little pieces which he +fondly hoped might win him money and fame. + +With much effort and interest he contrived to get himself elected a +Ragamuffin; believing that to be a Ragmuffin was to secure a position as +a dramatic writer. But with one or two fortunate exceptions, his pieces +were refused. The managers would not have the poor little feeble +phantasmagoria of bygone fun, even supported by the whole clan of +Ragamuffins. So Mr. Burkham had gradually melted into the dimness of +Bloomsbury, and haunted the club-room of the Ragamuffins no more. + +A hansom carried Valentine Hawkehurst swiftly to these regions of +Bloomsbury. It was no time for the saving of cab-hire. The soldier +of fortune thought no longer of his nest-eggs--his Unitas Bank +deposit-notes. He was fighting with time and with death; foes dire and +dreadful, against whose encroachments the sturdiest of mortal warriors +can make but a feeble stand. He found the dingy-looking house in the +dingy-looking street; and the humble drudge who opened the door informed +him that Mr. Burkham was at home, and ushered him into a darksome and +dreary surgery at the back of the house, where a phrenological head, +considerably the worse for London smoke, surmounted a dingy bookcase +filled with the dingiest of books. A table, upon which were a +blotting-book and inkstand, and two shabby horsehair chairs, composed the +rest of the furniture. Valentine sent his card to the surgeon, and seated +himself on one of the horsehair chairs, to await that gentleman's +appearance. + +He came after a brief delay, which seemed long to his visitor. He came +from regions in the back of the house, rubbing his hands, which seemed +to have been newly washed, and the odour of senna and aloes hung about +his garments. + +"I doubt if you remember my name, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine; "but you +and I are members of the same club, and that a club among the members of +which considerable good feeling prevails. I come to ask a favour"--Mr. +Burkham winced, for this sounded like genteel begging, and for genteel +beggars this struggling surgeon had no spare cash--"which it will +scarcely cause you a moment's thought to grant. I am in great +distress"--Mr. Burkham winced again, for this sounded still more like +begging--"mental distress"--Mr. Burkham gave a little sigh of +relief--"and I come to you for advice." Mr. Burkham gave a more profound +sigh of relief. + +"I can assure you that my best advice is at your command," he said, +seating himself, and motioning to his visitor to be seated. "I am +beginning to remember your face amongst the members of the club, though +the name on your card did not strike me as familiar. You see, I have +never been able to afford much time for relaxation at the Ragamuffins', +though I assure you I found the agreeable conversation there, the +literary _on dits_, and so on, a very great relief. But my own little +efforts in the dramatic line were not successful, and I found myself +compelled to devote myself more to my profession. And now I have said +quite enough about myself; let me hear how I can be useful to you." + +"In the first place, let me ask you a question. Do you know anything of a +certain Dr. Doddleson?" + +"Of Plantagenet Square?" + +"Yes; of Plantagenet Square." + +"Well, not much. I have heard him called Dowager Doddleson; and I believe +he is very popular among hypochondriac old ladies who have more money +than they know what to do with, and very little common sense to regulate +their disposal of it." + +"Is Dr. Doddleson a man to whom you would intrust the life of your +dearest friend?" + +"Most emphatically no!" cried the surgeon, growing red with excitement. + +"Very well, Mr. Burkham; my dearest friend, a young lady--well, in plain +truth, the woman who was to have been my wife, and whom I love as it is +not the lot of every plighted wife to be loved--this dear girl has been +wasting away for the last two or three months under the influence of an +inscrutable malady, and Dr. Doddleson is the only man called to attend +her in all that time." + +"A mistake!" said Mr. Burkham, gravely; "a very great mistake! Dr. +Doddleson lives in a fine square, and drives a fine carriage, and has a +reputation amongst the class I have spoken of; but he is about the last +man I would consult as to the health of any one dear to me." + +"That is precisely the opinion which I formed after ten minutes' +conversation with him. Now, what I want from you, Mr. Burkham, is the +name and address of the man to whom I can intrust this dear girl's life." + +"Let me see. There are so many men, you know, and great men. Is it a case +of consumption?" + +"No, thank God!" + +"Heart-disease, perhaps?" + +"No; there is no organic disease. It is a languor--a wasting away." + +Mr. Burkham suggested other diseases whereof the outward sign was languor +and wasting. + +"No," replied Valentine; "according to Dr. Doddleson there is actually no +disease--nothing but this extreme prostration--this gradual vanishing of +vital power. And now I come to another point upon which I want your +advice. It has been suggested that this constitutional weakness may be +inherited; and here I think you can help me." + +"How so?" + +"You attended the lady's father." + +"Indeed!" cried Mr. Burkham, delighted. "This is really interesting. In +what year did I attend this gentleman? If you will allow me, I will refer +to some of my old case-books." + +He drew out a clumsy drawer in the clumsy table, in order to hunt for old +memoranda. + +"I am not quite certain as to the year," answered Valentine; "but it was +more than ten years ago. The gentleman died close by here, in Fitzgeorge +Street. His name was Halliday." + +Mr. Burkham had drawn out the drawer to its farthest extent. As Valentine +pronounced this name, he let it drop to the ground with a crash, and sat, +statue-like, staring at the speaker. All other names given to mortal man +he might forget; but this one never. Valentine saw the sudden horror in +his face, before he could recompose his features into something of their +conventional aspect. + +"Yes," he said, looking down at the fallen drawer with its scattered +papers and case-books, "yes, I have some recollection of the name of +Halliday." + +"Some very strange and agitating recollection it would seem by your +manner, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine, at once assured that there was +something more than common in the surgeon's look and gesture; and +determined to fathom the mystery, let it be what it might. + +"O dear no," said the surgeon nervously; "I was not agitated, only +surprised. It was surprising to me to hear the name of a patient so long +forgotten. And so the lady to whom you are engaged is a daughter of Mr. +Halliday's? The wife--Mrs. Halliday--is still living, I suppose?" + +"Yes; but the lady who was then Mrs. Halliday is now Mrs. Sheldon." + +"Of course; he married her," said Mr. Burkham. "Yes; I remember hearing +of the marriage." + +He had tried in vain to recover his old composure. He was white to the +lips, and his hand shook as he tried to arrange his scattered papers. + +"What does it mean?" thought Valentine. "Mrs. Sheldon talked of this +man's inexperience. Can it be that his incompetency lost the life of his +patient, and that he knows it was so?" + +"Mrs. Halliday is now Mrs. Sheldon," repeated the surgeon, in a feeble +manner. "Yes, I remember; and Mr. Sheldon--the dentist, who at that time +resided in Fitzgeorge Street--is he still living?" + +"He is still living. It was he who called in Dr. Doddleson to attend upon +Miss Halliday. As her stepfather, he has some amount of authority, you +see; not legal authority--for my dear girl is of age--but social +authority. He called in Doddleson, and appears to place confidence in +him; and as he is something of a medical man himself, and pretends to +understand Miss Halliday's case thoroughly--" + +"Stop!" cried Mr. Burkham, suddenly abandoning all pretence of calmness. +"Has he--Sheldon--any interest in his stepdaughter's death?" + +"No, certainly not. All her father's money went to him upon his marriage +with her mother. He can gain nothing by her death; on the contrary, he +may lose a good deal, for she is the heir-at-law to a large fortune." + +"And if she dies, that fortune will go--" + +"I really don't know where it will go," Valentine answered carelessly: +he thought the subject was altogether beside the question of Mr. +Burkham's agitation, and it was the cause of that agitation which he was +anxious to discover. + +"If Mr. Sheldon can gain by his stepdaughter's death, fear him!" +exclaimed the surgeon, with sudden passion; "fear him as you would fear +death itself--worse than death, for death is neither so stealthy nor so +treacherous as he is!" + +"What in Heaven's name do you mean?" + +"That which I thought my lips would never utter to mortal hearing--that +which I dare not publicly proclaim, at the hazard of taking the bread out +of the mouths of my wife and children. I have kept this hateful secret +for eleven years--through many a sleepless night and dreary day. I will +tell it to you; for if there is another life in peril, that life shall be +lost through no cowardice of mine." + +"What secret?" cried Valentine. + +"The secret of that poor fellow's death. My God! I can remember the clasp +of his hand, and the friendly look of his eyes, the day before he died. +He was poisoned by Philip Sheldon!" + +"You must be mad!" gasped Valentine, in a faint voice. + +For one moment of astonishment and incredulity he thought this man must +needs be a fool or a lunatic, so wildly improbable did the accusation +seem. But in the next instant the curtain was lifted, and he knew that +Philip Sheldon was a villain, and knew that he had never wholly trusted +him. + +"Never until to-day have I told this secret," said the surgeon; "not even +to my wife." + +"I thank you," answered Valentine, in the same faint voice; "with all my +heart, I thank you." + +Yes, the curtain was lifted. This mysterious illness, this slow silent +decay of bloom and beauty, by a process inscrutable as the devilry of +medieval poisoner or Hecate-serving witch--this was murder. Murder! The +disease, which had hitherto been nameless, had found its name at last. It +was all clear now. Philip Sheldon's anxiety; the selection of an utterly +incompetent adviser; certain looks and tones that had for a moment +mystified him, and had been forgotten in the next, came back to him with +a strange distinctness, with all their hidden meaning made clear and +plain as the broad light of day. + +But the motive? What motive could prompt the slow destruction of that +innocent life? A fortune was at stake, it is true; but that fortune, as +Valentine understood the business, depended on the life of Charlotte +Halliday. Beyond this point he had never looked. In all his consideration +of the circumstances relating to the Haygarthian estate, he had never +thought of what might happen in the event of Charlotte's decease. + +"It is a diabolical mystery," he said to himself. "There can be no +motive--_none_. To destroy Thomas Halliday was to clear his way to +fortune; to destroy Charlotte is to destroy his chance of fortune." + +And then he remembered the dark speeches of George Sheldon. + +"My God! and this was what he meant, as plainly as he dared tell me! He +did tell me that his brother was an unutterable scoundrel; and I turned a +deaf ear to his warning, because it suited my own interest to believe +that villain. For her dear sake I believed him. I would have believed in +Beelzebub, if he had promised me her dear hand. And I let myself be duped +by the lying promise, and left my darling in the power of Beelzebub!" + +Thoughts followed each other swift as lightning through his overwrought +brain. It seemed but a moment that he had been sitting with his +clenched hands pressed against his forehead, when he turned suddenly +upon the surgeon. + +"For God's sake, help me, guide me!" he said. "You have struck a blow +that has numbed my senses. What am I to do? My future wife is in that +man's keeping--dying, as I believe. How am I to save her?" + +"I cannot tell you. You may take the cleverest man in London to see her; +but it is a question if that man will perceive the danger so clearly as +to take prompt measures. In these cases there is always room for doubt; +and a man would rather doubt his own perceptions than believe the hellish +truth. It is by this natural hesitation so many lives are lost. While the +doctor deliberates, the patient dies. And then, if the secret of the +death transpires--by circumstantial evidence, perhaps, which never came +to the doctor's knowledge,--there is a public outcry. The doctor's +practice is ruined, and his heart broken. The outcry would have been +still louder if he had told the truth in time to save the patient, and +had not been able to prove his words. You think me a coward and a +scoundrel because I dared not utter my suspicion when I saw Mr. Halliday +dying. While it was only a suspicion it would have been certain ruin for +me to give utterance to it. The day came when it was almost a conviction. +I went back to that man Sheldon's house, determined to insist upon the +calling in of a physician who would have made that conviction certainty. +My resolution came too late. It is possible that Sheldon had perceived my +suspicions, and had hastened matters. My patient was dead before I +reached the house." + +"How am I to save her?" repeated Valentine, with the same helpless +manner. He could not bring himself to consider Tom Halliday's death. The +subject was too far away from him--remote as the dim shadows of departed +centuries. In all the universe there were but two figures standing out in +lurid brightness against the dense night of chaos--a helpless girl held +in the clutches of a secret assassin; and it was his work to rescue her. + +"What am I to do?" he asked. "Tell me what I am to do." + +"What it may be wisest to do I cannot tell you," answered Mr. Burkham, +almost as helplessly as the other had asked the question. "I can give you +the name of the best man to get to the bottom of such a case--a man who +gave evidence on the Fryar trial--Jedd. You have heard of Jedd, I +daresay. You had better go straight to Jedd, and take him down with you +to Miss Halliday. His very name will frighten Sheldon." + +"I will go at once. Stay--the address! Where am I to find Dr. Jedd?" + +"In Burlington Row. But there is one thing to be considered." + +"What?" + +"The interference of Jedd may only make that man desperate. He may hasten +matters now as he hastened matters before. If you had seen his coolness +at that time; if you had seen him, as I saw him, standing by that poor +fellow's deathbed, comforting him--yes, with friendly speeches--laughing +and joking, watching the agonising pain and the miserable sickness, and +all the dreary wretchedness of such a death, and _never_ swerving from +his work; if you had seen him, you would understand why I am afraid to +advise you. That man was as desperate as he was cool when he murdered his +friend. He will be more reckless this time." + +"Why?" + +"Because he has reached a higher stage in the science of murder. The +symptoms of that poor Yorkshireman were the symptoms of arsenical +poisoning; the symptoms of which you have told me to-day denote a +vegetable poison. _That_ affords very vague diagnosis, and leaves no +trace. That was the agent which enabled the Borgias to decimate Rome. +It is older than classic Greece, and simple as _a b c_, and will remain +so until the medical expert is a recognized officer of the law, the +faithful guardian of the bed over which the suspected poisoner +loiters--past-master of the science in which the murderer is rarely more +than an experimentalist, and protected from all the hazards of plain +speaking by the nature of his office." + +"Great Heaven, how am I to save her?" exclaimed Valentine. He could not +contemplate the subject in its broad social aspect; he could only think +of this one dear life at stake. "To send this Dr. Jedd might be to hasten +her death; to send a less efficient man would be mere childishness. WHAT +shall I do?" + +He looked despairingly at the surgeon, and in that one glance perceived +what a frail reed this was upon which he was leaning. And then, like +the sudden gleam of lightning, a name flashed across his mind,--George +Sheldon, the lawyer, the schemer, the man who of all the world best +knew this vile enemy and assassin against whom he was matched; he it +was of whom counsel should be asked in this crisis. Once perceiving +this, Valentine was prompt to act. It was the first flash of light in +the darkness. + +"You mean to stand by me in this, don't you?" he asked Mr. Burkham. + +"With all my heart and soul." + +"Good. Then you must go to Dr. Jedd instantly. Tell him all you know--Tom +Halliday's death; the symptoms of Charlotte's decline, as you have heard +them from me--_everything_; and let him hold himself in readiness to +start for Hastings directly he hears from or sees me. I am going to a man +who of all men can tell me how to deal with Philip Sheldon. I shall try +to be in Burlington Row in an hour from this time; but in any case you +will wait there till I come. I suppose, in a desperate case like this, +Dr. Jedd will put aside all less urgent work?" + +"No doubt of that." + +"I trust to you to secure his sympathy," said Valentine. + +He was in the darksome entrance-hall by this time. Mr. Burkham followed, +and opened the door for him. + +"Have no fear of me," he said. "Good bye." + +The two men shook hands with a grip significant as masonic sign-manual. +It meant on the one part hearty co-operation, on the other implicit +confidence. In the next moment Valentine sprang into the cab. + +"King's Road--entrance to Gray's Inn, and drive like mad!" he shouted to +the driver. The hansom rattled across the stones, dashed round corners, +struck consternation to scudding children in pinafores, all but +annihilated more than one perambulator, and in less than ten minutes +after leaving Mr. Burkham's door, ground against the kerbstone before the +little gate of Gray's Inn. + +"God grant that George Sheldon may be at home!" Valentine said to +himself, as he hurried towards that gentleman's office. George Sheldon +was at home. In this fight against time, Mr. Hawkehurst had so far found +the odds in his favour. + +"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the lawyer, looking up from his desk, as +Valentine appeared on the threshold of the door, pale and breathless; "to +what do I owe the unusual honour of a visit from Mr. Hawkehurst? I +thought that rising _litterateur_ had cut all old acquaintances, and gone +in for the upper circles." + +"I have come to you on a matter of life and death, George Sheldon," said +Valentine; "this is no time to talk of why I haven't been to you before. +When you and I last met, you advised me to beware of your brother Philip. +It wasn't the first, or the second, or the third time that you so warned +me. And now speak out like an honest man, and tell me what you meant by +that warning? For God's sake, speak plainly this time." + +"I cannot afford to speak more plainly than I have spoken half a dozen +times already. I told you to beware of my brother Phil, and I meant that +warning in its fullest significance. If you had chosen to take my advice, +you would have placed Charlotte Halliday's fortune, and Charlotte +Halliday herself, beyond his power, by an immediate marriage. You didn't +choose to do that, and there was an end of the matter. I have been a +heavy loser by your pigheaded obstinacy; and I dare say before you and +Phil Sheldon have done with each other, you too will find yourself a +loser." + +"God help me, yes!" cried Valentine, with a groan; "I stand to make the +heaviest loss that was ever made by man." + +"What do you mean?" exclaimed George. + +"Shall I tell you what you meant when you warned me against your own +brother? Shall I tell you why you so warned me? You know that Philip +Sheldon murdered Tom Halliday." + +"Great God!" + +"Yes; the secret is out. You knew it; how or when you discovered it I +cannot tell. You knew of that one hellish crime, and would have prevented +the commission of a second murder. You should have spoken more plainly. +To know what you knew, and to confine yourself to cautious hints and +vague suggestions, as you did, was to have part in that devilish work. If +Charlotte Halliday dies, her blood be upon your head--upon yours--as well +as upon his!" + +The young man had risen in his passion, and stood before George Sheldon +with uplifted hands, and eyes that flashed angry lightnings. It seemed +almost as if he would have called down the Divine vengeance upon this +man's head. + +"If Charlotte Halliday dies!" repeated George, in a horror-stricken +whisper; "why should you suggest such a thing?" + +"Because she is dying." + +There was a pause. Valentine flung himself passionately upon the chair +from which he had just risen, with his back to George Sheldon, and his +face bent over the back of the chair. The lawyer sat looking straight +before him, with a ghastly countenance. + +"I told him he meant _this_," he said to himself, in a hoarse whisper. "I +told him in this office not six months ago. Powers of hell, what a +villain he is! And there are people who do not believe there is a devil!" + +For a few moments Valentine gave free vent to his passion of grief. These +tears of rage, of agony the most supreme, were the first he had shed +since he had bent his face over Charlotte's soft brown hair, to hide the +evidence of his sorrow. When he had dashed these bitter drops away from +his burning eyes, he turned to confront George Sheldon, pale as death, +but very calm. And after this he gave way no more to his passion. He was +matched against Time, of all enemies the most pitiless and unrelenting, +and every minute wasted was a point scored by his foe. + +"I want your help, George Sheldon," he said. "If you have ever been sorry +that you made no effort to save Charlotte Halliday's father, prove +yourself his friend by trying to save her." + +"_If_ I have ever been sorry!" echoed the lawyer. "Why, my miserable +dreams have never been free from the horror of that man's face. You don't +know what it is--murder! Nobody knows who hasn't been concerned in it. +You read of murders in your newspapers. A shot B, or C poisoned D, and so +on, all through the letters of the alphabet, with a fresh batch for every +Sunday; but it never comes home to you. You think of the horror of it in +a shadowy kind of way, as you might think of having a snake twisted round +your waist and legs, like that blessed man and boys one never sees the +last of. But if you were to look at that plaster cast all your life, you +couldn't realize ten per cent of the horror you'd feel if the snake was +_there_, alive, crushing your bones, and hissing in your ear. I have been +face to face with murder, Valentine Hawkehurst; and if I were to live a +century, I should never forget what I felt when I stood by Tom Halliday's +deathbed, and it flashed upon me, all at once, that my brother Phil was +poisoning him." + +"And you did not try to save him--your friend?" cried Valentine. + +"Why, you see," replied the other, in a strange slow way, "it was too +late to save him: I knew that, and--I held my tongue. What could I do? +Against my own brother! That sort of thing in a family is ruin for every +one! Do you think anybody would have brought their business to me after +my brother had stood in the Old Bailey dock to take his trial for murder? +No; my only course was to keep my own counsel, and I kept it. Phil made +eighteen thousand pounds by his marriage with poor Tom's widow, and a +paltry hundred or two is all _I_ ever touched of that money." + +"And you _could_ touch that money?" cried Valentine, aghast. + +"Money carries no infection. Did you ever ask any questions about the +money you won at German gaming-tables. I dare say some of your napoleons +and ten-thaler notes could have told queer stories if they had been able +to talk. Taking Phil's money has never weighed upon my conscience. I'm +not very inquisitive about the antecedents of a five-pound note; but I'll +tell you what it is, Hawkehurst, I'd give all I have, and all I ever +hope to have, and would go out and sweep a crossing to-morrow, if I could +get Tom Halliday's face out of my mind, with the look that he turned upon +me the last time I saw him. 'Ah, George,' he said, 'in illness a man +feels the comfort of being among friends!' And he took my hand and +squeezed it, in his old hearty way. We had been boys together, +Hawkehurst, birds-nesting in Hyley Woods; on the same side in our +Barlingford cricket-matches. And I shook his hand, and went away, and +left him to die!" + +And here Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn, the Sheldon who was in with the +money-lenders, sharpest of legal prestigitators, most ruthless of +opponents, most unscrupulous of allies, buried his face in a flaming +bandanna, and fairly sobbed aloud. When the passion had passed, he got up +and walked hastily to the window, more ashamed of this one touch of +honest emotion than of all the falsehoods and chicaneries of his career. + +"I didn't think I could have been such an ass," he muttered sheepishly. + +"I did not hope that you could feel so deeply," answered Valentine. "And +now help me to save the only child of your ill-fated friend. I am sure +that you can help me." + +Without waiting to be questioned, Valentine related the circumstances of +Charlotte's illness, and of his interview with Mr. Burkham. + +"I did not even know that the poor girl was ill," said George Sheldon. "I +have not seen Phil for months. He came here one day, and I gave him a bit +of my mind. I told him if he tried to harm her I'd let the light in upon +him and his doings. And I'll keep my word." + +"But his motive? What, in the name of Heaven, can be his motive for +taking her innocent life? He knows of the Haygarth estate, and must hope +to profit by her fortune if she lives." + +"Yes, and to secure the whole of that fortune if she dies. Her death +would make her mother sole heir to that estate, and the mother is the +merest tool in his hands. He may even have induced Charlotte to make a +will in his favour, so that he himself may stand in her shoes." + +"She would not have made a will without telling me of it." + +"You don't know that. My brother Phil can do anything. It would be as +easy for him to persuade her to maintain secrecy about the transaction as +to persuade her to make the will. Do you suppose _he_ shrinks from +multiplying lies and forgeries and hypocrisies? Do you suppose anything +in that small way comes amiss to the man who has once brought his mind to +murder? Why, look at the Scotch play of that fellow Shakespeare's. At the +beginning, your Macbeth is a respectable trustworthy sort of person, +anxious to get on in life, and so on, and that's all; but no sooner has +he made an end of poor old Duncan, than he lays about him right and +left--Banquo, Fleance, anybody and everybody that happens to be in his +way. It was lucky for that Tartar of a wife of his that _she_ hook'd it, +or he'd soon have put a stop to her sleep-walking. There's no such wide +difference between a man and a tiger, after all. The tiger's a decent +fellow enough till he has tasted human blood; but when once he _has_, +Lord save the country-side from the jaws of the man-eater!" + +"For Heaven's sake let us waste no time in talk!" Valentine cried, +impetuously. "I am to meet Burkham in Burlington Row directly I have got +your advice." + +"What for?" + +"To see Dr. Jedd, and take him down to Hastings, if possible." + +"That won't do." + +"Why not?" + +"Because Jedd's appearance would give Phil the office. Jedd gave evidence +on the Fryar trial, and must be a marked man to him. All Jedd can tell +you is that Charlotte is being poisoned. You know that already. Of course +she'll want medical treatment, and so on, to bring her round; but she +can't get that under my brother's roof. What you have to do is to get her +away from that house." + +"You do not know how ill she is. I doubt if she could bear the removal." + +"Anything is better than to remain. _That_ is certain death." + +"But your brother would surely dispute her removal." + +"He would, and oppose it inch by inch. We must get him away, before we +attempt to remove her." + +"How?" + +"I will find the means for that. I know something of his business +relations, and can invent some false cry for luring him off the trail. We +_must_ get him away. The poor girl was not in actual danger when you left +her, was she?" + +"No, thank God, there was no appearance of immediate danger. But she was +very ill. And that man holds her life in his hand. He knows that I have +come to London in search of a doctor. What if--" + +"Keep yourself quiet, Hawkehurst. He will not hasten her death unless he +is desperate; for a death occurring immediately after your first +expression of alarm would seem sudden. He'll avoid any appearance of +suddenness, if he can, depend upon it. The first thing is to get him +away. But the question is, how to do it? There must be a bait. What bait? +Don't talk to me, Hawkehurst. Let me think it out, if I can." + +The lawyer leaned his elbows on the table, and abandoned himself to +profound cogitation, with his forehead supported by his clenched hands. +Valentine waited patiently while he thus cogitated. + +"I must go down to Phil's office," he said at last, "and ferret out some +of his secrets. Nothing but stock-exchange business, of an important +character, would induce him to leave Charlotte Halliday. But if I can +telegraph such a message as will bring him to town, I'll do it. Leave all +that to me. And now, what about your work?" + +"I am at a loss what to do, if I am not to take Dr. Jedd to Harold's +Hill." + +"Take him to St. Leonards; and if I get my brother out of the way, you +can have Charlotte conveyed to an hotel in St. Leonard's, where she can +stop till she picks up strength enough to come to London." + +"Do you think her mother will consent to her removal? + +"Do I think you will be such an idiot as to ask for her consent?" cried +George Sheldon impatiently. "My brother's wife is so weak a fool, that +the chances are she'd insist on her daughter stopping quietly, to be +poisoned. No; you must get Mrs. Sheldon out of the way somehow. Send her +to look at the shops, or to bathe, or to pick up shells on the beach, or +anything else equally inane. She's easy enough to deal with. There's that +young woman, Paget's daughter, with them still, I suppose? Yes. Very +well, then, you and she can get Charlotte away between you." + +"But for me to take those two girls to an hotel--the chance of scandal, +of wonder, of inquiry? There ought to be some other person--some nurse. +Stay, there's Nancy Woolper--the very woman! My darling has told me of +that old woman's affectionate anxiety about her health--an anxiety which +was singularly intense, it seemed to Lotta. Good God! do you think she, +Nancy Woolper, could have suspected the cause of Mr. Halliday's death?" + +"I dare say she did. She was in the house when he died, and nursed him +all through his illness. She's a clever old woman. Yes, you might take +her down with you; I think she would be of use in getting Charlotte +away." + +"I'll take her, if she will go." + +"I am not sure of that; our north-country folks have stiffish notions +about fidelity to old masters, and that kind of thing. Nancy Woolper +nursed my brother Phil." + +"If she knows or suspects the fate of Charlotte's father, she will try to +save Charlotte," said Valentine, with conviction. "And now, good bye! I +trust to you for getting your brother out of the way, George Sheldon; +remember that." + +He held out his hand; the lawyer took it with a muscular grip, which, on +this occasion, meant something more than that base coin of jolly good +fellowship which so often passes current for friendship's virgin gold. + +"You may trust me," George Sheldon said gravely. "Stop a moment, though; +I have a proposition to make. If my brother Philip has induced that girl +to make a will, as it is my belief he has, we must counter him. Come down +with me to Doctors' Commons. You've a cab? Yes; the business won't take +half an hour." + +"What business?" + +"A special licence for your marriage with Charlotte Halliday." + +"A marriage?" + +"Yes; her marriage invalidates her will, if she has made one, and does +away with Phil's motive. Come along; we'll get the licence." + +"But the delay?" + +"Exactly half an hour. Come!" + +The lawyer dashed out of his office. "At home in an hour," he shouted +to the clerk, and then ran downstairs, followed closely by Valentine, +and did not cease running until he was in the King's Road, where the +cab was waiting. + +"Newgate Street and Warwick Lane to Doctors' Commons!" he cried to the +cabman; and Valentine was fain to take his seat in the cab without +further remonstrance. + +"I don't understand--" he began, as the cabman drove away. + +"I do. It's all right; you'll put the licence in your pocket, and call at +the church nearest which you hang out, Edgware Road way, give notice of +the marriage, and so on; and as soon as Charlotte can bear the journey, +bring her to London and marry her. I told you your course six months ago. +Your obstinacy has caused the hazard of that young woman's life. Don't +let us have a second edition of it." + +"I will be governed by your advice," answered Valentine, submissively. +"It is the delay that tortures me." + +The delay was indeed torture to him. Everything and everybody in Doctors' +Commons seemed the very incarnation of slowness. The hansom cab might +tear and grind the pavement, the hansom cabman might swear until even +monster waggons swerved aside to give him passage; but neither tearing +nor swearing could move the incarnate stolidity of Doctors' Commons. When +he left that quaint sanctuary of old usages, he carried with him the +Archbishop of Canterbury's benign permission for his union with Charlotte +Halliday. But he knew not whether it was only a morsel of waste paper +which he carried in his pocket; and whether there might not ere long be +need of a ghastlier certificate, giving leave and licence for the +rendering back of "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." + +Valentine's first call, after leaving George Sheldon at the gate of +Doctors' Commons, was at the head-quarters of the Ragamuffins. His heart +sank as he ran into the bar of the hostelry to ask for the telegram which +might be waiting for him. + +Happily there was no telegram. To find no tidings of a change for the +worse seemed to him almost equivalent to hearing of a change for the +better. What had he not feared after his interview with the surgeon of +Bloomsbury! + +From Covent Garden the hansom bowled swiftly to Burlington Row. Here +Valentine found Mr. Burkham, pale and anxious, waiting in a little den of +a third room, on the ground-floor--a ghastly little room, hung with +anatomical plates, and with some wax preparations in jars, on the +mantelpiece, by way of ornament. To them presently came Dr. Jedd, as +lively and business-like as if Miss Halliday's case had been a question +of taking out a double-tooth. + +"Very sad!" he said; "these vegetable poisons--hands of unscrupulous man. +Very interesting article in the _Medical Quarterly_--speculative analysis +of the science of toxicology as known to the ancients." + +"You will come down to Harold's Hill at once, sir?" said Valentine, +imploringly. + +"Well, yes; your friend here, Mr. Burkham, has persuaded me to do so, +though I need hardly tell you that such a journey will be to the last +degree inconvenient." + +"It is an affair of life and death," faltered the young man. + +"Of course, my dear sir. But then, you see, I have half-a-dozen other +affairs of life and death on my hands at this moment. However, I have +promised. My consultations will be over in half an hour; I have a round +of visits after that, and by--well, say by the five o'clock express, I +will go to St. Leonards." + +"The delay will be very long," said Valentine. + +"It cannot be done sooner. I ought to go down to Hertfordshire this +evening--most interesting case--carbuncle--three operations in three +consecutive weeks--Swain as operator. At five o'clock I shall be at the +London Bridge station. Until then, gentlemen, good day. Lawson, the +door." + +Dr. Jedd left his visitors to follow the respectable white-cravatted +butler, and darted back to his consulting-room. + +Mr. Burkham and Valentine walked slowly up and down Burlington Row before +the latter returned to his cab. + +"I thank you heartily for your help," said Valentine to the surgeon; "and +I believe, with God's grace, we shall save this dear girl's life. It was +the hand of Providence that guided me to you this morning. I can but +believe the same hand will guide me to the end." + +On this they parted. Valentine told his cabman to drive to the Edgware +Road; and in one of the churches of the immediate neighbourhood of that +thoroughfare he gave notice of his intention to enter the bonds of holy +matrimony. He had some difficulty in arranging matters with the clerk, +whom he saw in his private abode and non-official guise. That functionary +was scarcely able to grasp the idea of an intending Benedick who would +not state positively when he wanted to be married. Happily, however, the +administration of half-a-sovereign considerably brightened the clerk's +perceptions. + +"I see what you want," he said. "Young lady a invalid, which she wants to +leave her home as she finds uncomfortable, she being over twenty-one +years of age and her own mistress. It's what you may call a runaway +match, although the parties ain't beholden to any one, in a manner of +speaking. _I_ understand. You give me half an hour's notice any morning +within the legal hours, and I'll have one of our young curates ready for +you as soon as you're ready for them; and have you and the young lady +tied up tight enough before you know where you are. We ain't very long +over _our_ marriages, unless it is something out of the common way." + +The clerk's familiarity was more good-natured than flattering to the +applicant's self-esteem; but Valentine was in no mood to object to this +easy-going treatment of the affair. He promised to give the clerk the +required notice; and having arranged everything in strictly legal manner, +hurried back to his cab, and directed the man to drive to the Lawn. + +It was now three o'clock. At five he was to meet Dr. Jedd at the station. +He had two hours for his interview with Nancy Woolper, and his drive from +Bayswater to London Bridge. + +He had tasted nothing since daybreak; but the necessity to eat and drink +never occurred to him. He was dimly conscious of feeling sick and faint, +but the reason of this sickness and faintness did not enter into his +thoughts. He took off his hat, and leant his head back against the +cushion of the hansom as that vehicle rattled across the squares of +Paddington. The summer day, the waving of green trees in those suburban +squares; the busy life and motion of the world through which he went, +mixed themselves into one jarring whirl of light and colour, noise and +motion. He found himself wondering how long it was since he left +Harold's Hill. Between the summer morning in which he had walked along +the dusty high-road, with fields of ripening corn upon his left, and all +the broad blue sea upon his right, and the summer afternoon in which he +drove in a jingling cab through the noisy streets and squares of +Bayswater, there seemed to him a gulf so wide, that his tried brain +shrank from scanning it. + +He struggled with this feeling of helplessness and bewilderment, and +overcame it. + +"Let me remember what I have to do," he said to himself; "and let me keep +my wits about me till that is done." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +PHOENICIANS ARE RISING. + +While Mr. Hawkehurst arranged his affairs with the clerk of St. +Matthias-in-the-fields, in the parish of Marylebone, George Sheldon sat +in his brother's office writing a letter to that distinguished +stockbroker. The pretext of writing a letter was the simplest pretext for +being alone in his brother's room; and to be alone in Philip Sheldon's +room was the first step in the business which George had to do. + +The room was distractingly neat, and as handsomely furnished as it is +possible for an office to be within the closest official limits. A +Spanish mahogany desk with a cylinder cover, and innumerable drawers +fitted with invisible Bramah locks, occupied the centre of the room; and +four ponderous Spanish mahogany chairs, with padded backs, and seats +covered with crimson morocco, were primly ranged against the wall. Upon +the mantelpiece ticked a skeleton clock; above which there hung the +sternest and grimmest of almanacks, on either whereof were fastened +divers lists and calendars of awful character, affected by gentlemen on +'Change. + +Before penetrating to this innermost and sacred chamber, George Sheldon +wasted some little time in agreeable gossip with a gentleman whom he +found yawning over the _Times_ newspaper in an outer and less richly +furnished apartment. This gentleman was Philip Sheldon's clerk, the +younger son of a rich Yorkshire farmer, who had come to London with the +intention of making his fortune on the Stock Exchange, and whose father +had paid a considerable sum in order to obtain for this young man the +privilege of reading the Times in Mr. Sheldon's office, and picking up +whatever knowledge might be obtained from the business transactions of +his employer. + +The career of Philip Sheldon had been watched with some interest by his +fellow-townsmen of Barlingford. They had seen him leave that town with a +few hundreds in his pocket, and they had heard of him twelve years +afterwards as a prosperous stockbroker, with a handsome house and a +handsome carriage, and the reputation of being one of the sharpest men in +the City. The accounts of him that came to Barlingford were all more or +less exaggerated; and the men who discussed his cleverness and his good +luck were apt to forget that he owed the beginning of his fortunes to Tom +Halliday's eighteen thousand pounds. The one fact that impressed Philip +Sheldon's townsmen was the fact that a Barlingford man had made money on +the Stock Exchange; and the one inference they drew therefrom was the +inference that other Barlingford men might do the same. + +Thus it had happened that Mr. Stephen Orcott, of Plymley Rise farm, near +Barlingford, being at a loss what to do with a somewhat refractory +younger son, resolved upon planting his footsteps in the path so +victoriously trodden by Philip Sheldon. He wrote to Philip, asking him to +receive the young man as clerk, assistant, secretary--anything, with a +view to an ultimate junior partnership; and Philip consented, upon +certain conditions. The sum he demanded was rather a stiff one, as it +seemed to Stephen Orcott, but he opined that such a sum would not have +been asked if the advantages had not been proportionately large. The +bargain was therefore concluded, and Mr. Frederick Orcott came to London. +He was a young man of horsey propensities, gifted with a sublime contempt +for any kind of business requiring application or industry, and with a +supreme belief in his own merits. + +George Sheldon had known Frederick Orcott as a boy, and had been in his +society some half-dozen times since his coming to London. He apprehended +no difficulty in obtaining from this young gentleman any information he +had the power to afford. + +"How do, Orcott?" he said, with agreeable familiarity. "My brother Phil +not come back yet?" + +"No," replied the other, sulkily. "There have been ever so many people +here bothering me about him. Where has he gone? and when will he be back? +and so on. I might as well be some d----d footman, if I'm to sit here +answering questions all day. High Wickham races are on to-day, and I +wanted to see Barmaid run before I put my money on her for Goodwood. She +was bred down our way, you see, and I know she's like enough to win the +cup, if she's fit. They don't know much about her this way, either, +though she's own sister to Boots, that won the Chester Cup last year, +owing to Topham's being swindled into letting him off with seven lbs. He +ran at the York Spring, you see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the +boy that rode him pulled his head half off--I saw him do it--and then he +won the Chester, and brought his owners a pot of money." + +This information was not exactly what George Sheldon wanted, but he +planted himself on the hearthrug in an easy attitude, with his back +against the mantelpiece, and appeared much interested in Mr. Orcott's +discourse. + +"Anything stirring in the City?" he asked presently. + +"Stirring? No--nothing stirring but stagnation, as some fellow said in a +play I saw the other night. Barlingford folks say your brother Philip has +made a heap of money on the Stock Exchange; but if he has, he must have +done a good deal more business before I came to him than he has done +lately. I can't see how a man is to develop into a Rothschild out of an +occasional two-and-sixpence per cent on the transfer of some old woman's +savings from railway stock to consols; and that's about the only kind of +business I've seen much of lately. Of course Phil Sheldon has got irons +of his own in the fire; for he's an uncommonly deep card, you see, that +brother of yours, and it isn't to be expected he'll tell _me_ all he's up +to. I know he's up to his eyebrows in companies, but I don't see how he's +to make his fortune out of _them_, for limited liability now-a-days seems +only another name for unlimited crash. However, I don't care. It pleased +my governor to get me into Sheldon's office, and it suited my book to +come to London; but if the author of my being thinks I'm going to addle +my blessed brains with the decline and fall of the money market, he's a +greater fool than I took him for--and that's saying a great deal." + +And here Mr. Frederick Orcott lapsed into admiring contemplation of his +boots, which were the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of a sporting bootmaker; boots +that were of the ring, ringy, and of the corner, cornery. + +"Ah," said George, "and Phil doesn't tell you much of his affairs, +doesn't he? That's rather a bad sign, I should think. Looks as if he was +rather down upon his luck, eh?" + +"Well, there's no knowing, you see, with that sort of close fish. He may +have made his book for a great haul, and may be keeping himself quiet +till the event comes off. He may be laying on to something with all his +might, you know, on safe information. But there's one thing I know he +stands to lose by." + +"What's that?" + +"The Phoenician Loan. He speculated in the bonds when they began to go +down; and I'm blessed if they haven't been dropping ever since, an +eighth a day, as regular as the day comes round. He bought them for the +March account, and has been paying contango since then, and holding on in +hopes of a rise. I don't know whether the purchase was a large one, but I +know he's been uncommonly savage about the drop. He bought on the +strength of private information from the other side of the Channel. The +Emperor was putting his own money into the Phoenician business, and it +was the best game out, and so on. But he seems to have been made a fool +of, for once in a way." + +"The bonds may steady themselves." + +"Yes, they _may_; but, on the other hand, they mayn't. There are the +Stock Exchange lists, with Phoenicians ticked off by your brother's own +pen. A steady drop, you see. 'Let me have a telegram if there's a sudden +rise,' said Sheldon to me the day he left London; 'they'll go up with +rush when they do move.' But they've been moving the other way ever +since; and I think if he stayed away till doomsday it would be pretty +much the same." + +"_Phoenicians are rising rapidly. Come back to town._" + +These were the words of the telegraphic despatch which shaped itself in +George Sheldon's brain, as his brother's clerk revealed the secrets of +his employer. + +It was found--the solution of the one great question as to how Philip +Sheldon was to be lured away from the bedside of his unconscious victim. +Here was the bait. + +"I knew I could do it; I knew I could get all I wanted to know out of +this shallow-brained idiot," he said to himself, triumphantly. + +And then he told the shallow-brained idiot that he thought he would write +a line to his brother; and on that pretence went into Philip's office. + +Here, use his eyes as he might, he could discover nothing; he could glean +no stray scrap of information. The secrets that could be guarded by +concealed Bramah locks and iron safes, with mystic words to be learned by +the man who would open them, Philip Sheldon knew how to protect. +Unhappily for himself, he had been compelled to confide some of his +secrets to human receptacles not to be guarded by Bramah locks or mystic +words. + +The lawyer did not waste much time in his brother's office. A very hasty +investigation showed him there was nothing to be learned from those bare +walls and that inviolable cylinder-topped desk. He scribbled a few lines +of commonplace at a table by the window, sealed and addressed his note, +and then departed to despatch his telegram, "Phoenicians are rising +rapidly," he wrote, and that was all. He signed the despatch Frederick +Orcott. + +"Phil and Orcott may settle the business between them," he said to +himself, as he forged the Yorkshireman's name. "What I have to do is to +get Phil away, and give Hawkehurst a chance of saving Tom Halliday's +daughter; and I shan't stand upon trifles in the doing of it." + +After having despatched this telegram, George Sheldon found himself much +too restless and excited for ordinary business. He, so renowned even +amongst cool hands for exceptional coolness, was on this occasion +thoroughly unnerved. He dropped into a City tavern, and refreshed himself +with a dram. But, amidst all the bustle and clatter of a crowded bar, the +face of Tom Halliday, haggard and worn with illness, was before his eyes, +and the sound of Tom Halliday's voice was in his ears. "I can't settle to +anything this afternoon," he said to himself. "I'll run down to +Bayswater, and see whether Hawkehurst has managed matters with Nancy +Woolper." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE. + +While George Sheldon was still in the depths of the City Valentine +Hawkehurst arrived at the gothic villa, where he asked to see Mrs. +Woolper. Of the woman herself he knew very little: he had seen her once +or twice when some special mission brought her to the drawing-room; and +from Charlotte he had heard much of her affectionate solicitude. To have +been kind to his Charlotte was the strongest claim to his regard. + +"This woman's help would be of inestimable service," he thought; "her +age, her experience of sickness, her familiarity with the patient, +especially adapt her for the office she will be required to fill. If Dr. +Jedd should order a nurse to watch by the sick-bed, here is the nurse. If +it should prove possible to remove the dear sufferer, here is the +guardian best calculated to protect and attend her removal." That the +desperate step of an immediate marriage would be a wise step Valentine +could not doubt, since it would at once annihilate Mr. Sheldon's chances, +and destroy his motive. But in contemplating this desperate step +Valentine had to consider the reputation as well as the safety of his +future wife. He was determined that there should be no opportunity for +scandal in the circumstances of his stolen marriage, no scope for future +mischief from the malignity of that baffled villain to whose schemes +their marriage would give the death-blow. He, who from his cradle had +been familiar with the darker side of life, knew how often the innocent +carry a lifelong burden, and perform a perpetual pennance for the sins or +the follies of others. And over his darling's life in the future, should +it please God that he might save her, he would have no shadow cast by +imprudence of his in the present. + +"This sharp-witted, sharp-tongued Yorkshirewoman will be the woman of +women to protect her," he thought, as he seated himself in Mr. Sheldon's +study, whither the prim parlour-maid had ushered him. + +"Mrs. Woolper have just gone upstairs to clean herself," she said; "which +we are a-having the dining-room and droring-room carpets up, while the +family are away. Would you please to wait?" + +Valentine looked at his watch. + +"I cannot wait very long," he said; "and I shall be obliged if you will +tell Mrs. Woolper that I wish to see her on very important business." + +The parlour-maid departed, and Valentine was left to endure the weariness +of waiting until Mrs. Woolper should have "cleaned herself." + +Mr. Sheldon's study at Bayswater did not offer much more to the eye of +the investigator than Mr. Sheldon's office in the City. There were the +handsomely bound books behind the inviolable plate-glass doors, and there +was the neat writing-table with the machine for weighing letters, and the +large business-like looking blotting-pad, and the ponderous brass-rimmed +inkstand, with no nonsense about it; and yonder, on a clumsy little oak +table with thick legs, appeared the copying machine, with a big black +iron lever, and a massive screw with which to screw all the spontaneous +feeling out of every letter that came beneath its crushing influence. + +Up and down this joyless den Valentine Hawkehurst paced, with the demon +of impatience raging in his breast. The July sunshine blazed hot upon the +window, and the voices of croquet-players in adjacent gardens rose shrill +upon the summer air. And there were girls playing croquet while she, his +"rose of the garden, garden of girls," lay sick unto death! O, why could +he not offer a hecatomb of these common creatures as a substitute for +that one fair spirit? + +He looked into the garden--the prim modern garden, but a few years +reclaimed from that abomination of desolation, the "eligible lot of +building land." Across the well-kept lawn there brooded no shadow of +Old-World cedar; no century-old espaliers divided flower and kitchen +ground; no box-edging of the early Hanoverian era bordered the beds of +roses and mignonette. From one boundary-wall to the other there was not a +bush old enough to hang an association upon. The stereotyped bed of +flaming yellow calceolaria balanced the conventional bed of flaming +crimson verbena; the lavender heliotrope faced the scarlet geranium, like +the four corners in a quadrille. The garden was the modern nurserymen's +ideal of suburban horticulture, and no more. But to Valentine this +half-acre of smooth lawn and Wimbledon gravel pathway had seemed fair as +those pleasure gardens of Semiramis, at the foot of the Bagistanos +mountain, the fame whereof tempted Alexander to turn aside from the +direct road, during his march from Chelone to the Nysaic horse pastures. + +To-day the contemplation of that commonplace garden gave him direful +pain. Should he ever walk there again with his dear love, or in any other +garden upon earth? + +And then he thought of fairer gardens, in supernal regions whither his +soul was slow to travel. "Not easy is the journey from earth to the +stars," says the sage; and from this young wanderer the stain of earthly +travel had yet to be washed away. + +"If she is taken from me, shall I ever be pure enough to follow her?" he +asked himself. "Will a life that began in such darkness ever rise to the +light which is her natural element? If she is taken, and I stay behind, +and bear my burden patiently in the hope to follow her, will there not be +a gate closed against me in the skies, beyond which I shall see her, +shining among her kindred spirits, in the white robes of perfect +innocence? Ah, my love, my love, as between, us on this earth must for +ever be a gulf your pure soul cannot pass, so between us in the skies +will rise a barrier to sever me from your sweet company!" + +The thought of probable separation upon earth, of possible separation in +heaven, was too bitter to him. + +"I will not think of these things," he said to himself; "I will not +believe in that possibility of this sacrifice. Ah, no! she will be +saved. Against the bright young life the awful fiat has not gone +forth. Providence has been with me to-day. Providence will go with me +till the end." + +He thought how other men had so stood, as he was standing now, face to +face with the great uncertainty, the crisis, the turning-point--the pivot +on which life itself revolved. The pendulum of the mighty clock swings +solemnly to and fro; with every vibration a moment; with every moment +each man's shrouded fates move another step in their inexorable progress. +And the end? What was the goal towards which those dark relentless shapes +were moving? + +He thought of Rousseau, balancing the awful question of his soul's +salvation--his poor weak soul adrift upon a sea of doubt. + +"Behold yonder tree which faces me, as I sit and meditate the problem of +my destiny--the destiny of me, Jean Jacques Rousseau, self-conscious +genius, and future regenerator of my age. I pick up a pebble, and +poise it between my fingers before taking my aim. In another moment +the question will be answered. If the pebble hits the tree, I, Jean +Jacques, am reserved for salvation. If I miss--O awful, overwhelming +possibility!--my name will blaze upon that dreadful scroll which numbers +the damned." + +Happily the tree is bulky, and within but a few yards of the +speculator; and the great enigma of the Calvinistic church is answered +in favour of Madame de Warenne's protege, whose propensities and +proclivities at that period did not very strongly indicate his claim to +a place among the elect. + +Valentine remembered the _sortes Virgilianae_--the Wesleyan's drawing of +inferences from Bible texts. Ah, could he not find an answer to the +question that was the one thought of his mind? He would find some +answer--a lying oracle, perhaps. It might be a voice from heaven,--some +temporary assuagement of this storm of doubt that raged in his breast. "I +doubt if Mr. Sheldon owns either a Bible or an, 'AEneid,'" he said to +himself, as he stopped in his rapid pacing of the room; "I will open the +first book I can put my hand upon, and from the first line my eye falls +on will draw an augury." + +He looked about the room. Behind the glazed doors of the mahogany +bookcase appeared Hume and Smollett, Scott and Shakespeare; and +conspicuous among these a handsome family Bible. But the glazed doors +were locked. In Mr. Sheldon's study there appeared to be no other books +than these few standard works. Yes, on some obscure little shelves, low +down in one of the recesses formed by the projection of the fireplace and +the chimney, there were three rows of large quarto volumes, in dingy +dark-green cloth cases. + +What these volumes might contain Valentine Hawkehurst knew not; and the +very fact of his ignorance rendered these books all the more suitable for +the purpose of augury. To dip for a sentence into any of these unknown +volumes would be a leap in darkness more profound than he could find in +the Bible or the "AEneid," where his own foreknowledge of the text might +unwittingly influence the oracle. He went over to the recess, bent down, +and ran his hand along the backs of the volumes, with his face turned +away from the books towards the window. + +"The first obstruction that arrests my hand shall determine my choice of +the volume," he said to himself. + +His hand ran easily along the volumes on the upper shelf--easily along +the volumes on the second shelf; and he began to doubt whether this mode +of determining his choice could be persisted in. But in its progress +along the third and lowest range of volumes, his hand was arrested midway +by a book which projected about half an inch beyond its fellows. + +He took this book out and carried it to the table, still without looking +at it. He opened it, or rather let its leaves fall open of their own +accord--still without looking at it; and then, with a strange +superstitious fear--mingled in his mind with the natural shame that +accompanied his conscious folly--he looked at the page before him. The +line on which he fixed his eye was the heading of a letter. It was in +larger type than the rest of the page, and it was very plain to him as he +stood a little way from the table, looking down at the open book. + +The line ran thus: + +"ON THE FALLIBILITY OF COPPER GAUZE AS A TEST FOR THE DETECTION OF +ARSENIC." + +The book was a volume of the _Lancet_; the date twenty years ago. + +"What an oracle!" thought Valentine, with a cynical laugh at his own +folly, and some slight sense of relief. In all feeble tamperings with +powers invisible there lurks a sense of terror in the weak human heart. +He had tempted those invisible ones, and the oracle he only half believed +in might have spoken to his confusion and dismay. He was glad to think +the oracle meant nothing. + +And yet, even in this dry as dust title of a scientific communication +from a distinguished toxicologist there was some sinister significance. +It was the letter of a great chemist, who demonstrated therein the +fallibility of all tests in relation to a certain poison. It was one of +those papers which, while they aid the cause of science, may also further +the dark processes of the poisoner, by showing him the forces he has to +encounter, and the weapons with which he may defend himself from their +power. It is needless to dwell here upon the contents of this letter--one +of a series on the same subject, or range of subjects. Valentine read it +with eager interest. For him it had a terrible importance in its relation +to the past and to the present. + +"I let the book fall open, and it opened at that letter," he thought to +himself. "Will it open there a second time, I wonder?" + +He repeated the experiment, and the book opened in the same place. Again; +and again the book opened as before. Again, many times, and the result +was still the same. + +After this he examined the book, and found that it had been pressed open +at this page, as by a reader leaning on the opened volume. He examined it +still more closely, and found here and there on the page faint +indications of a pencil, which had under-scored certain lines, and the +marks of which had been as far as possible erased. The deduction to be +drawn from these small facts seemed only too clear to Valentine +Hawkehurst. By some one reader the pages had been deliberately and +carefully studied. Could he doubt that reader to have been the man in +whose possession he found the book, the man whom that very day he had +heard plainly denounced as a poisoner? + +He drew out the previous volume, and in this a rapid search revealed to +him a second fact, significant as the last. + +An old envelope marked the place where appeared an article on the +coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain type of low fever and +the diagnostics of a certain class of poisons. Here the volume again +opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the page seemed to indicate that +the open book had been leant upon by a person engaged in making memoranda +of its contents. Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the +place had its own dismal significance. The postmark bore the date of the +year and the month in which Charlotte's father had died. + +While this volume was still open in his hand the door opened suddenly, +and Mrs. Woolper came into the room. + +She had kept Valentine waiting more than half an hour. He had little more +than half an hour at most in which to break the ice of absolute +strangeness, and sound the very depths of this woman's character. If she +had come to him earlier, when his plan of action was clear and definite, +his imagination in abeyance, he would have gone cautiously to work, with +slowness and deliberation. Coming to him now, when his mind, unsettled by +the discovery of fresh evidence against Philip Sheldon, was divided +between the past and the present, she took him off his guard, and he +plunged at once into the subject that absorbed all his thoughts. + +Mrs. Woolper looked from Valentine to the open books on the table with a +vague terror in her face. + +"I am sorry I was so long, sir; but I'd been polishing the grates and +fenders, and such like, and my hands and face were blacker than a +sweep's. I hope there's nothing wrong at the seaside, where Miss--" + +"There is much that's wrong, Mrs. Woolper--hopelessly, irrecoverably +wrong. Miss Halliday is ill, very ill--doomed to die, if she remain in +your master's keeping." + +"Lord help us, Mr. Hawkehurst! what do you mean?" + +The terror in her face was no longer a vague terror. It had taken a form +and substance, and was a terror unutterably hideous, if ever human +countenance gave expression to human thought. + +"I mean that your master is better skilled in the use of the agents that +kill than the agents that cure. Charlotte's father came to Philip +Sheldon's house a hale strong man, in the very prime of manhood. In that +house he sickened of a nameless disease, and died, carefully tended by +his watchful friend. The same careful watcher stands by Charlotte +Halliday's deathbed, and she is dying!" + +"Dying! O, sir, for God's sake, don't say that!" + +"She is dying, as her father died before her, by the hand of Philip +Sheldon." + +"O, sir! Mr. Hawkehurst!" cried the old woman, with clasped hands lifted +in piteous supplication towards her master's denouncer. "It's not true. +It is not true. For God's dear love don't tell me it is true! I nursed +him when he was a baby, sir; and there wasn't a little trouble I had to +bear with him that didn't make him all the dearer to me. I have sat up +all the night through, sir, times and often, when he was ill, and have +heard Barlingford church clock strike every hour of the long night; and +O, if I had known that this could ever come to him, I should have wished +him dead in the little crib where he lay and seemed so innocent. I tell +you, sir, it can't be true! His father and mother had been respected and +looked up to in Barlingford for many a year,--his grandfather and +grandmother before them. There isn't a name that stands better in those +parts than the name of Sheldon. Do you think such a man would poison his +friend?" + +"_I_ said nothing about poison, Mrs. Woolper," said Valentine, sternly. + +This woman had known all, and had held her tongue, like the rest, it +seemed. To Valentine there was unutterable horror in the thought that a +cold-blooded murder could be thus perpetrated in the sight of several +people, and yet no voice be raised to denounce the assassin. + +"And this is our modern civilization!" he said to himself. "Give me the +desert or the jungle. The sons of Bowanee are no worse than Mr. Sheldon, +and one might be on one's guard against them." + +Nancy Woolper looked at him aghast. He had said nothing about poison! +What, then--had she betrayed her master? + +He saw that she had known, or strongly suspected, the worst in the case +of Tom Halliday, and that she would easily be influenced to do all he +wanted of her. + +"Mrs. Woolper, you must help me to save Charlotte," he said, with +intensity. "You made no attempt to save her father, though you suspected +the cause of his death. I have this day seen Mr. Burkham, the doctor who +attended Mr. Halliday, and from his lips I have heard the truth. I want +you to accompany me to Hastings, and to take your place by Charlotte's +bed, as her nurse and guardian. If Mr. Sheldon suspects your knowledge of +the past, and I have little doubt that he does"--a look in the +housekeeper's face told him that he was right--"you are of all people +best fitted to guard that dear girl. Your part will not be a difficult +one. If we dare remove her, we will remove her beyond the reach of that +man's power. If not, your task will be to prevent food or medicine, that +his hand has touched, from approaching her lips. You _can_ do it. It will +only be a question of tact and firmness. We shall have one of the +greatest doctors in London for our guide. Will you come?" + +"I don't believe my master poisoned his friend," said Nancy Woolper, +doggedly; "nor I won't believe it. You can't force me to think bad of him +I loved when he was little and helpless, and I carried him in my arms. +What are you and your fine London doctor, Mr. Burkham--he was but a poor +fondy, as I mind well--that I should take your word against my master? If +that young man thought as Mr. Halliday was being poisoned, why didn't he +speak out, like a man, then? It's a fine piece of work to bring it up +against my master eleven years afterwards. As for young missy, she's as +sweet a young creature as ever lived, and I'd do anything to serve her. +But I won't think, and I can't think, that my master would hurt a hair of +her head. What would he gain by it?" + +"He has settled that with himself. He has gained by the death of Tom +Halliday, and depend upon it he has made his plans to gain by the death +of Tom Halliday's daughter." + +"I won't believe it," the old woman repeated in the same dogged tone. + +For such resistance as this Mr. Hawkehurst was in no manner prepared. He +looked at his watch. The half hour was nearly gone. There was little more +time for argument. + +"Great Heaven!" he said to himself, "what argument can I employ to +influence this woman's obdurate heart?" + +What argument, indeed? He knew of none stronger than those he had used. +He stood for some moments battled and helpless, staring absently at the +face of his watch, and wondering what he was to do next. + +As Valentine Hawkehurst stood thus, there came a loud ringing of the +bell, following quickly on the sound of wheels grinding against the +kerbstone. + +Mrs. Woolper opened the door and looked out into the hall. + +"It's master!" cried one of the maids, emerging from the disorganized +dining-room, "and missus, and Miss Halliday, and Mass Paget--and all the +house topsy-turvy!" + +"Charlotte here!" exclaimed Valentine. "You are dreaming, girl!" + +"And you told me she was dying!" said Mrs. Woolper, with a look of +triumph. "What becomes of your fine story now?" + +"It _is_ Miss Halliday!" cried the housemaid, as she opened the door. +"And O my!" she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, +"how bad she do look!" + +Valentine ran out to the gate. Yes; there were two cabs, one laden with +luggage, the two cabmen busy about the doors of the vehicles, a little +group of stragglers waiting to see the invalid young lady alight. It was +the next best thing to a funeral. + +"O, don't she look white!" cried a shrill girl with a baby in her arms. + +"In a decline, I dessay, pore young thing," said a matron, in an audible +aside to her companion. + +Valentine dashed amongst the group of stragglers. He pushed away the girl +with the baby, the housemaid who had run out behind him, Mr. Sheldon, the +cabman, every one; and in the next moment Charlotte was in his arms, and +he was carrying her into the house. + +He felt as if he had been in a dream; and all that exceptional force +which the dreamer sometimes feels he felt in this crisis. He carried his +dear burden into the study, followed by Mr. Sheldon and Diana Paget. The +face that dropped upon his shoulder showed deadly white against his +dark-blue coat; the hand which he clasped in his, ah, how listless and +feeble! + +"Valentine!" the girl said, in a low drowsy voice, lifting her eyes to +his face, "is this you? I have been so ill, so tired; and they would +bring me away. To be near the doctors, papa says. Do you think any +doctors will be able to cure me?" + +"Yes, dear, with God's help. I am glad he has brought you here. And now +I must run away," he said; when he had placed Charlotte in Mr. Sheldon's +arm-chair, "for a very little while, darling. I have seen a doctor, a +man in whom I have more confidence than I have in Dr. Doddleson. I am +going to fetch him, my dearest," he added tenderly, as he felt the +feeble hand cling to his; "I shall not be long. Do you think I shall not +hurry back to you? My dearest one, when I return, it will be to stay +with you--for ever." + +She was too ill to note the significance of his words; she only knew that +they gave her comfort. He hurried from the room. In less than an hour he +must be at the London Bridge terminus, or in all probability the five +o'clock train would carry Dr. Jedd to St. Leonards; and on Dr. Jedd his +chief hope rested. + +"Do you believe me now?" he asked of Mrs. Woolper as he went out +into the hall. + +"I do," she answered in a whisper; "and I will do what you want." + +She took his hand in her wrinkled horny palm and grasped it firmly. He +felt that in this firm pressure there was a promise sacred as any oath +ever registered on earth. He met Mr. Sheldon on the threshold, and +passed him without a word. The time might come in which he would have to +mask his thoughts, and stoop to the hateful hypocrisy of civility to +this man; but he had not yet schooled himself to do this. At the gate he +met George Sheldon. + +"What's up now?" asked the lawyer. + +"Did you send your message?" + +"Yes; I telegraphed to Phil." + +"It has been trouble wasted. He has brought her home." + +"What does that mean?" + +"Who knows? I pray God that he may have overreached himself. I have set a +watch upon my dear love, and no further harm shall come to her. I am +going to fetch Dr. Jedd." + +"And you are not afraid of Phil's smelling a rat?" + +"I am afraid of nothing that he can do henceforward. If it is not too +late to save her, I will save her." + +He waited for no more, but jumped into the cab. "London Bridge terminus! +You must get me there by a quarter to five," he said to the driver. + +George Sheldon went no further than the gate of his brother's domain. + +"I wonder whether the Harold's Hill people will send that telegram after +him," he thought. "It'll be rather unpleasant for Fred Orcott if they do. +But it's ten to one they won't. The normal condition of every seaside +lodging-house keeper in one degree removed from idiotcy." + + + + +Book the Ninth. + + + +THROUGH THE FURNACE + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +SOMETHING TOO MUCH. + +"Is that young man mad?" asked Philip Sheldon, as he went into his study +immediately after Valentine had passed him in the hall. + +The question was not addressed to any particular individual; and Diana, +who was standing near the door by which Mr. Sheldon entered, took upon +herself to answer it. + +"I think he is very anxious," she said in a half whisper. + +"What brought him here just now? He did not know we were coming home." + +Mrs. Woolper answered this question. + +"He came for something for Miss Charlotte, sir; some books as she'd had +from the library. They'd not been sent back; and he came to see about +their being sent." + +"What books?" murmured Charlotte. But a pressure from Mrs. Woolper's hand +prevented her saying more. + +"I never encountered any one with so little self-command," said Mr. +Sheldon. "If he is going to rush in and out of my house in that manner, I +must really put a stop to his visits altogether. I cannot suffer that +kind of thing. For Charlotte's welfare quiet is indispensable; and if Mr. +Hawkehurst's presence is to bring noise and excitement, Mr. Hawkehurst +must not cross this threshold." + +He spoke with suppressed anger; with such evident effort to restrain his +anger, that it would have seemed as if his indignation against Valentine +was no common wrath. + +Charlotte caught his last words. + +"Dear papa," she pleaded in her faint voice, "pray do not be angry with +Valentine; he is so anxious about me." + +"I am not angry with him; but while you are ill, I will have quiet--at +any price." + +"Then I'm sure you should not have brought Charlotte home," exclaimed +Georgy, in tones of wailing and lamentation; "for of all the miseries in +life, there is nothing worse than coming home in the very midst of a +general cleaning. It was agreed between Ann Woolper and me that there +should be a general cleaning while we were away at the seaside. We were +to be away a fortnight, and everything was to be as neat as a new pin +when we came home. But here we are back in less than a week, and +everything at sixes-and-sevens. Where we are to dine I know not; and as +for the carpets, they are all away at the beating-place, and Ann tells me +they won't be home till Friday." + +"We can exist without carpets," answered Mr. Sheldon, in a hard dry +voice. "I suppose they are seeing to Miss Halliday's room?" he added, +addressing himself to Mrs. Woolper. "Why don't you go and look after +them, Nancy?" + +"Sarah knows what she has to do. The bed-rooms was done first; and +there's not much amiss in Miss Charlotte's room." + +Mr. Sheldon dropped wearily into a chair. He looked pale and haggard. +Throughout the journey he had been unfailing in his attention to the +invalid; but the journey had been fatiguing; for Charlotte Halliday was +very ill--so ill as to be unable to avoid inflicting trouble upon +others. The weariness--the dizziness--the dull intervals of +semi-consciousness--the helpless tottering walk, which was like the +walk of intoxication rather than ordinary weakness--the clouded +sight--all the worst symptoms of this nameless disease, had every hour +grown more alarming. + +Against this journey to London Mrs. Sheldon and Diana had pleaded--Georgy +with as much earnestness as she could command; Diana as forcibly as she +dared argue a question in which her voice had so little weight. + +But upon this point Mr. Sheldon was adamant. + +"She will be better off in London," he said resolutely. "This trip to the +seaside was a whim of my wife's; and, like most other whims of my wife's, +it has entailed trouble and expense upon me. Of course I know that Georgy +did it for the best," he added, in reply to a reproachful "O Philip!" +from Mrs. Sheldon. "But the whole business has been a mistake. No sooner +are we comfortably settled down here, than Hawkehurst takes it into his +head to be outrageously alarmed about Charlotte, and wants to bring +half-a-dozen doctors round the poor girl's bed, to her inevitable peril; +for in an illness which begins and ends in mental depression, all +appearance of alarm is calculated to do mischief." + +Having said this, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in making arrangements for the +journey. A carriage was ordered; all possible preparations were made for +the comfort of the invalid--everything that care or kindness could do was +done; but the cruelty of the removal was not the less obvious. Georgy +wailed piteously about the sixes-and-sevens to which they were being +taken. Diana cared nothing about sixes-and-sevens; but she felt supreme +indignation against Charlotte's stepfather, and she did not attempt to +conceal her feelings. + +Nor was it without an effort to oppose Mr. Sheldon's authority that Miss +Paget succumbed to the force of circumstances. She appealed to his wife. + +"Dear Mrs. Sheldon, I beg you not to suffer Lotta's removal," she said +earnestly. "You do not know how ill she is--nor can Mr. Sheldon know, or +he would not take such a step. As her mother, your authority is superior +to his; you have but to say that she shall not be taken from this house +in her present state of prostration and sickness." + +"I have only to say!" cried Georgy, piteously. "O Diana, how can you say +such a thing? What would be Mr. Sheldon's feelings if I were to stand up +against him, and declare that Charlotte should not be moved? And he so +anxious too, and so clever. I'm sure his conduct about my poor dear Lotta +is positively beautiful. I never saw such anxiety. Why, he has grown ten +years older in his looks since the beginning of her illness. People go on +about stepfather this, and stepfather that, until a poor young widow is +almost frightened to marry again. But I don't believe a real father ever +was more thoughtful or more careful about a real daughter than Philip has +been about Lotta. And what a poor return it would be if I were to oppose +him now, when he says that the removal will be for Charlotte's good, and +that she will be near clever doctors--if she should require clever +doctors! You don't know how experienced he is, and how thoughtful. I +shall never forget his kindness to poor Tom." + +"Yes," exclaimed Miss Paget impatiently, "but Mr. Halliday died." + +"O Diana," whimpered Georgy, "I did not think you could be so unkind as +to remind me of that." + +"I only want to remind you that Mr. Sheldon is not infallible." + +Mr. Sheldon entered the room at this juncture, and Diana left it, +passionately indignant against the poor weak creature, to whom no crisis, +no danger, could give strength of mind or will. + +"A sheep would make some struggle for her lamb," she thought, angrily. +"Mrs. Sheldon is lower than a sheep." + +It was the first time she had thought unkindly of this weak soul, and her +anger soon melted to pity for the powerless nature which Mr. Sheldon held +in such supreme control. She made no further attempt at resistance after +this; but went to Charlotte's room and prepared for the journey. + +"O, why am I to be moved, dear?" the girl asked piteously. "I am too ill +to be moved." + +"It is for your good, darling. Mr. Sheldon wants you to be near the great +physicians, who can give you health and strength." + +"There are no physicians who can do that. Let me stay here, Di. Beg papa +to let me stay here." + +Diana hid her face upon the invalid's shoulder. Her tears choked her. To +repress her grief was agony scarcely endurable. But she did hide all +trace of anger and sorrow, and cheered the helpless traveller throughout +the weariness of the journey. + + * * * * * + +Charlotte was lying on a sofa in her bedroom, with Mrs. Woolper in +attendance upon her, when Dr. Jedd arrived. It was a quarter to six, and +the low western sunshine flooded the room. + +The physician came with Valentine, and did not ask to see Mr. Sheldon +before going to his patient's room. He told the housemaid who admitted +him to show the way to Miss Halliday's room. + +"The nurse is there, I suppose?" he said to the girl. + +"Yes, sir; leastways, Mrs. Woolper." + +"That will do." + +Mr. Sheldon heard the voice in the hall, and came out of the library as +the doctor mounted the step of the stairs. + +"Who is this? What is this?" he asked of Valentine Hawkehurst. + +"I told you I was not satisfied with Dr. Doddleson's opinion," answered +the young man coolly. "This gentleman is here by appointment with me." + +"And pray by what right do you bring a doctor of your own choosing to +visit my stepdaughter without previous consultation with me?" + +"By the right of my love for her. I am not satisfied as to the medical +treatment your stepdaughter has received in this house, Mr. Sheldon, and +I want to be satisfied. Miss Halliday is something more than your, +stepdaughter, remember: she is my promised wife. Dr. Jedd's opinion will +be more assuring to me than the opinion of Dr. Doddleson." + +At the sound of Dr. Jedd's name Mr. Sheldon started slightly. It was a +name he knew only too well--a name he had seen among the medical +witnesses in the great Fryar trial, the record of which had for him +possessed a hideous fascination. He had fancied himself in the poisoner +Fryar's place; and the fancy had sent an icy chill through his veins. But +in the next minute he had said to himself, "I am not such a reckless fool +as that man Fryar was; and have run no such risks as he ran." + +At the name of Jedd the same icy shiver ran through his veins again. His +tone of suppressed anger changed to a tone of civility which was almost +sycophantic. + +"I have the honour to know Dr. Jedd by repute very well indeed, and I +withdraw my objection to your course of proceeding, my dear Hawkehurst; +though I am sure Dr. Jedd will agree with me that such a course is +completely against all professional etiquette, and that Dr. Doddleson +will have the right to consider himself aggrieved." + +"There are cases in which one hardly considers professional etiquette. I +shall be very happy to meet Dr. Doddleson to-morrow morning. But as Mr. +Hawkehurst was very anxious that I should see Miss Halliday to-night, I +consented to waive all ceremony, and come with him on the spot." + +"I cannot blame his anxiety to secure so valuable an opinion. I only +wonder what lucky star guided him to so excellent an adviser." + +Mr. Sheldon looked from Dr. Jedd to Valentine Hawkehurst as he said this. +The physician's face told him no more than he might have learnt from a +blank sheet of paper. Valentine's face was dark and gloomy; but that +gloomy darkness might mean no more than natural grief. + +"I will take you to my stepdaughter's room at once," he said to the +physician. + +"I think it will be better for me to see the young lady alone," the +doctor answered coolly: "that is to say, in the presence of her nurse +only." + +"As you please," Mr. Sheldon replied. + +He went back to his study. Georgy was sitting there, whimpering in a +feeble way at intervals; and near her sat Diana, silent and gloomy. A +settled gloom, as of the grave itself, brooded over the house. Mr. +Sheldon flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He had +sneered at the inconvenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was +beginning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two women +in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as if there was no room +in the house in which he could be alone; and just now he had bitter need +of solitary meditation. + +"Let them arrange the dining-room somehow, carpet or no carpet," he said +to his wife. "We must have some room to dine in; and I can't have you +here, Georgy; I have letters to write." + +Mrs. Sheldon and Diana were not slow to take the hint. + +"I'm sure I don't want to be here, or anywhere," exclaimed Georgy in +piteous accents; "I feel so miserable about Charlotte, that if I could +lie down and die, it would be a comfort to me. And it really seems a +mockery having dinner at such a time. It's just as it was during poor +Tom's illness; there were fowls and all sorts of things cooked, and no +one ever ate them." + +"For God's sake go away!" cried Mr. Sheldon passionately; "your perpetual +clack is torture to me." + +Georgy hurried from the room, followed closely by Diana. + +"Did you ever see any one more anxious?" Mrs. Sheldon asked, with +something like pride. + +"I would rather see Mr. Sheldon less anxious!" Diana answered gravely. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +DR. JEDD'S OPINION. + +Alone, Philip Sheldon breathed more freely. He paced the room, waiting +for the appearance of the doctor; and with almost every turn he looked at +the clock upon the chimneypiece. + +How intolerable seemed the slow progress of the moments! How long that +man Jedd was staying in the sick-room! And yet not long; it was he, +Philip Sheldon, who was losing count of time. Where was Valentine? He +opened the door of the room, and looked out. Yes, there was a figure on +the stairs. The lover was waiting the physician's verdict. + +A door on the landing above opened, and the step of the Doctor sounded on +the upper flight. Mr. Sheldon waited for Dr. Jedd's appearance. + +"I shall be glad to hear your opinion," he said quietly; and the Doctor +followed him into the study. Valentine followed the Doctor, to Mr. +Sheldon's evident surprise. + +"Mr. Hawkehurst is very anxious to hear what I have to say," said Dr. +Jedd; "and I really see no objection to his hearing it." + +"If you have no objection, I can have none," Mr. Sheldon answered. "I +must confess, your course of proceeding appears to me altogether +exceptional, and--" + +"Yes, Mr. Sheldon; but then, you see, the case is altogether an +exceptional case," said the physician, gravely. + +"You think so?" + +"Decidedly. The young lady is in extreme danger. Yes, Mr. Sheldon, in +extreme danger. The mistake involved in her removal to-day is a mistake +which I cannot denounce too strongly. If you had wanted to kill your +stepdaughter, you could scarcely have pursued a more likely course for +the attainment of your object. No doubt you were actuated by the most +amiable motives. I can only regret that you should have acted without +competent advice." + +"I believed myself to be acting for the best," replied Philip Sheldon, in +a strange mechanical way. + +He was trying to estimate the true meaning of the Doctor's address. Was +he merely expressing anger against an error of ignorance or stupidity, or +was there a more fatal significance in his words? + +"You overwhelm me," the stockbroker said presently; "you positively +overwhelm me by your view of my daughter's condition. Dr. Doddleson +apprehended no danger. He saw our dear girl on Sunday morning--yesterday +morning," added Mr. Sheldon, wonder-stricken to find that the interval +was so brief between the time in which he had walked with Valentine and +Dr. Doddleson in the garden at Harold's Hill and the present moment. To +Valentine it seemed still more wonderful. What a bridgeless gulf between +yesterday morning and to-night! All his knowledge of this man Sheldon, +all the horror involved in Tom Halliday's death, had come upon him in +that brief span. + +"I should like to see Dr. Doddleson's prescriptions," said Dr. Jedd, with +grave politeness. + +Mr. Sheldon produced them from his pocket-book with an unshaken hand. No +change of countenance, no tremulous hand, no broken voice, betrayed his +apprehension. The one distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent, +half-mechanical tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than +in the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, he was +at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. "The chances of +defeat, so much; the chances of detection--?" + +A rapid survey of his position told him what those chances were. +Detection by Dr. Jedd? Yes. That had come to him already perhaps. But +would any actual harm to him come of such detection? + +He calculated the chances for and against this--and the result was in his +favour. That Dr. Jedd should form certain opinions of Miss Halliday's +case was one thing; that he should give public utterance to those +opinions was another thing. + +"What can his opinion matter to me?" Mr. Sheldon asked himself; "opinion +cannot touch me in a case where there is no such thing as certainty. He +has seen the dilatation of the pupil--even that old fool Doddleson saw +it--and has taken fright. But no jury in England would hang a man on such +evidence as that; or if a jury could be found to put the rope round a +man's neck, the British public and the British press would be pretty sure +to get the rope taken off again." + +"Chloric aether, spirits of ammonia--hum, ha, hum--yes," muttered Dr. +Jedd, looking at one prescription. "Quinine, yes; aqua pura," he +murmured, looking at another. + +He threw them aside with a half-contemptuous gesture, and then took up a +pen and began to write. + +"My mode of treatment will be quite different from that adopted by Dr. +Doddleson," he said; "but I apprehend no difficulty in bringing that +gentleman round to my view of the case when we meet." + +As he wrote his prescription Philip Sheldon rose and looked over his +shoulder. + +The form of the prescription told him that Dr. Jedd knew--all! He had +suspected this from the first, and the confirmation of this suspicion did +not shake him. He grew firmer, indeed; for now he knew on what ground he +was standing, and what forces were arrayed against him. + +"I really do not understand the basis of your treatment," he said, still +looking over the physician's shoulder. + +Dr. Jedd turned his chair with a sudden movement, and faced him. + +"Am I talking to Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker, or Mr. Sheldon the +surgeon-dentist?" he asked. + +_This_ was a blow. This allusion to the past was a sharper stroke than +any that Philip Sheldon had before received. He looked at Valentine; from +Valentine to the physician. What did it mean, this mention of the past? +That blabbing fool George had talked to his friend of the days in +Fitzgeorge Street, no doubt; and Valentine had blabbed Mr. Sheldon's +antecedents to the physician. + +Was this what it all meant? Or did it mean more than this? Whatever it +might mean, he faced the hidden danger, and met the uncertainties of his +position as calmly as he met its certainties. + +"I have no desire to interfere with your treatment," he said, very +quietly; "but I have some knowledge of the Pharmacopoeia, and I confess +myself quite at a loss to understand your prescription." + +"Dr. Doddleson will understand it when he has heard my opinion. There is +no time to be lost--Mr. Hawkehurst, will you take this to the chemist, +and wait for the medicine? Miss Halliday cannot take it too soon. I shall +be here to-morrow at nine o'clock.--If you wish me to see Dr. Doddleson, +Mr. Sheldon, you will perhaps arrange an appointment with him for that +hour." + +"It is rather an early hour." + +"No hour is too early in a case attended with so much danger. Perhaps it +will be as well for me to call on Dr. Doddleson as I drive home. I shall +make a point of seeing Miss Halliday twice a day. I find your housekeeper +a very sensible person. She will remain in close attendance upon the +sick-room; and I must beg that there is no quackery--no home-made +remedies. I have given your housekeeper all directions as to treatment +and diet, and she has my orders to allow no one but herself in the +invalid's room. There is a marked tendency to delirium, and quiet is +indispensable." + +"I have said as much myself," answered Mr. Sheldon. + +"Mr. Hawkehurst will undertake to see to the making-up of my +prescriptions," continued Dr. Jedd, as he drew on his gloves. "He is very +anxious about the young lady, and it will afford him some relief of mind +to be employed in her service. No, thanks," he said, putting aside Mr. +Sheldon's hand as that gentleman offered him his fee. "I have already +received my honorarium from Mr. Hawkehurst." + +There was no more to be said. The physician wished the two men good +evening, and returned to his carriage, to be driven home to dinner by way +of Plantagenet Square, where he saw Dr. Doddleson, and appointed to meet +him next day, much to the delight of that individual, who was proud to be +engaged in a case with the great Jedd. + +Valentine left the house on the heels of the Doctor. He came back in +about twenty minutes with the medicine. He did not go to the principal +gate, but to a little side gate, near the offices of the gothic villa--a +gate to which butchers and bakers came with their wares in the morning. + +"I want to see Miss Paget," he said to the maid who answered his summons; +"and I want to see her without disturbing Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon. Do you +know where to find her?" + +"Yes, sir; she's in her own room. I took her a cup of tea there ten +minutes ago. She's got a headache with fretting about our poor young +lady, and she won't go down to dinner with master and missus." + +"Will you ask her to step out here and speak to me for a few minutes?" + +"Won't you come indoors and see her, sir?" + +"No; I'd rather see her in the garden." + +It was still daylight here, but it was growing shadowy among the avenues +in Kensington Gardens. The gate near which Valentine waited was not to be +seen from the windows of dining or drawing-room. + +The housemaid ran off to summon Miss Paget; and in less than five minutes +Diana appeared, dressed in her hat and garden jacket. + +"Will you come out into the road with me, dear?" asked Valentine. "I have +something serious to say to you." + +"And I am so anxious to hear what the Doctor has said," answered Diana, +as she took Valentine's arm. + +"The road before the Lawn was very quiet at this hour of the evening, and +here they were safely beyond Mr. Sheldon's ken. + +"Tell me the Doctor's opinion, Valentine," Diana said, eagerly. "Does he +think the case very serious?" + +"He does. It is more serious than you or I could have imagined, if +Providence had not helped me to discover the truth." + +"What do you mean, Valentine?" + +He gave her in brief the story of his day's work. She listened to him +breathlessly, but uttered no exclamation until his story was finished. + +"It is most horrible," she said at last; "but I believe it is most true. +There has been so much in that man's conduct that has mystified me; and +_this_ explains all. But what earthly motive can have prompted this +hideous crime?" + +"He believes that he has a beneficial interest in her death. I cannot +fully understand his motive; but, rely upon it, there is a motive, and a +sufficient one. And I have let that man delude me into belief in his +honesty after I had been warned against him! But there is no time for +regrets. Diana, I look to you to help me in saving my dear love." + +"It is not too late to save her?" + +"Dr. Jedd will commit himself to no positive statement. He tells me she +is in danger, but he does not refuse all hope. Now listen, my dear. In +that house I have only two people to help me--Ann Woolper and yourself. +Ann Woolper I hold only by a feeble bond. I think she will be true to us; +but I am not sure of her. Sheldon's influence over her is a powerful one; +and God knows what concession he might extort from her. She is the +ostensible guardian of Charlotte's room; you must contrive to be the real +guardian. You must keep custody over the custodian. How is your room +situated in relation to Charlotte's room?" + +"The doors of the two rooms are exactly opposite." + +"Providence favours us there. Can you keep watch over Charlotte's door +from your room without making your guardianship too apparent?" + +"I can." + +"Day and night?" + +"Day and night." + +"God bless you, dear! Her life may be saved by your fidelity." + +"I would do as much to render her a smaller service." + +"My dear girl! And now go back to the house. Here is the medicine. You +will give that into Mrs. Woolper's hands; she has received her +instructions from Dr. Jedd, and those instructions leave no room for +doubt. If she permits Sheldon to tamper with the medicine or the food of +her patient, she will be the wilful accomplice of a murderer. I think she +may be trusted." + +"I will watch her." + +"The charge of procuring the medicine is mine. I shall come to this house +many times in the course of every day; but I am bound to prepare myself +for the hour in which Mr. Sheldon may forbid me his house. In that event +I shall come to this gate. I suppose the servants would stand by me if +you pleaded for me?" + +"I am sure they would." + +"And now, dear, go; the medicine is wanted. I shall come back in a few +hours to inquire if there is any change for the better. Go." + +They had returned to the gate ere this. He grasped the hand which she +held out to him, and stood by the little gate watching her till she had +disappeared through the door of the servants' quarters. When the door +closed, he walked slowly away. He had done all that it was possible for +him to do, and now came his worst misery. There was nothing left for him +but to wait the issue of events. + +What was he to do? Go home to his lodgings--eat, drink, sleep? Was it +possible for him to eat or to sleep while that precious life trembled in +the balance? He walked slowly along the endless roads and terraces in a +purposeless way. Careless people pushed against him, or he pushed against +them; children brushed past him as they ran. What a noisy, busy, +clattering world it seemed! And she lay dying! O, the droning, dreary +organs, and the hackneyed, common tunes, how excruciating they were to +him to-night! + +He emerged into the high road by-and-by, in all the bustle and riot of +Netting Hill. The crowded shops, the clamorous people, seemed strange to +him. It was like the clamour of a foreign city. He walked on past the +bustle and riot, by the quieter terraces near Holland Park, and still +held on to Shepherd's Bush, where he went into a little public-house and +called for some brandy. + +There was a bench on one side of the space in front of the bar, and +towards this he pushed his way. + +"Where are you shoving to, my young swell?" growled a sturdy cabman, +indignant at the outrage inflicted by Valentine's elbows; but in the next +moment the sturdy cabman dashed suddenly forward and caught the young +swell in his strong arms. + +"My eye, young un!" he cried; "where do you want to go to? Here, some one +bring a mug of cold water: I'm blest if he ain't in a fit!" + +Happily it was no fit, only a dead faint into which Mr. Hawkehurst had +fallen. He came back to consciousness presently, after a few spoonfuls of +brandy had been forced into his mouth, and looked about him with a +helpless stare. + +"I'm jiggered if I don't believe he's fainted for the want of wittles!" +cried the cabman. "They keeps up till they drop, sometimes, these seedy +swells--walks about, lookin' like so many Dossays, on a hempty stomach. +Here, some one bring a plate o' cold meat, and look sharp about it. I'll +stand sam." + +Valentine looked up with a faint smile. + +"And I'll stand sam for anything you like to order, my friend," he said, +holding out his hand to the good-natured cabman. "I've eaten nothing +since last night; but I haven't fasted for want of money. There are worse +troubles than an empty pocket,--and I'm not unacquainted with _that_." + +"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, sheepishly, very much +ashamed of his benevolence; "but, you see, it ain't the fust time I've +seen a swell come to the pavement with a cropper, in consequence of +having gone it too fast, and cleaned hisself out, in a manner of +speaking." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +NON DORMIT JUDAS. + +The summer darkness closed round the Bayswater villa, but of sleep there +was little for any one in that household during this sad night. Is there +not, in almost every household, a memory of such days and nights--dread +intervals in which the common course of life and time seems to be +suspended, and all the interests of the universe hang upon the fitful +breath of one dear sufferer? + +Lonely were the watchers in Mr. Sheldon's house. Georgy was in her own +room, forbidden to disturb the invalid by her restless presence--now +lying down, now pacing to and fro, now praying a little, now crying a +little--the very ideal of helpless misery. + +In the sick-room there was no one but the invalid and Ann Woolper. In +the room opposite watched Diana Paget, her door ajar, her senses +sharpened by anxiety, quick to hear the faintest sound of footfall on +the stairs, or to feel the slightest vibration from stealthily opened +door on the story below. + +Alone in the study sat Philip Sheldon, at the table where he was +accustomed to write--a blank sheet of paper before him, a pen held +loosely in his outstretched hand, and his eyes fixed in an unseeing gaze +upon the bookcase opposite--the living image of care. Now that the +turmoil of the day was done, and there was silence in the house, he had +set himself to face his position. It was no trifling task which he had to +perform. Not one difficulty, or one set of difficulties, had he to meet +and master. The armed enemies up-springing from the dragon's teeth which +he had sown were not to be set fighting amongst themselves, nor were they +to be smashed by any rocks that he could hurl amongst them. They stood +around him in an awful circle, and turn which way he would, he saw the +same appalling figure, armed to the teeth, and invincible as death. + +What had he to fear? + +Detection of a past crime? No, that was a fool's terror which shook him +at the sound of Tom Halliday's name--a child's fear of the nursery bogie. +Detection in the present was more to be dreaded. The work that he had +done was, according to his belief, work that could not be proved against +him. But there are crimes of which to be accused is to be condemned. +Lawyers may plead, and juries may acquit; but the fiat of public opinion +goes forth against the suspected wretch, and on _his_ forehead for ever +shows the dark brand of Cain. + +For the criminal of almost every shade of colour, save this one dread +hue, society has a sanctuary and earth a refuge. The forger may find a +circle in which the signing of another man's name, under the pressure of +circumstances, is held to be a misfortune rather than an offence. The +swindler has the gentlemanly brotherhood and sisterhood of Macaire for +his family, and need never be lonely. The thief may dance away his jovial +nights among kindred spirits, and be carried to his grave by sorrowing +fellow-artists. The coiner may be jolly in his hiding-place among his +chosen band of brother coiners. But for the murderer there is no such +thing as human sympathy; and, when the blood of Nancy dyes his cruel +hand, Bill Sykes may thank God if he has a dog that will follow him to +his wretched end, for from mankind he can hope nothing. + +Mr. Sheldon did not contemplate his position from any sentimental point +of view; but he told himself that to be suspected of having poisoned his +friend, and to be accused of poisoning, or attempting to poison, his +daughter, would be ruin--ruin social and commercial, ruin complete and +irretrievable. + +And having faced one of these dread armed antagonists, he passed on to +another shadowy enemy. + +What if Charlotte recovered, and he escaped the taint of uttered +suspicion--for Dr. Jedd's private opinion he cared very little--what +then? + +Then the grim antagonist lifted his visor, and showed him the countenance +of Commercial Disgrace. + +Unless within the next few weeks he could command from eight to ten +thousand pounds, his disgrace as a member of the Stock Exchange was +inevitable. Charlotte's death would give him the means of raising as much +upon the policies of assurance obtained by her, and which, by the terms +of her will, he would inherit. The life-insurance people might be +somewhat slow to settle his claims; but he had all possible facilities +for the raising of money upon any tangible security, and he could count +upon immediate cash, in the event of Charlotte's death. + +But what if she should not die? What if this nameless languor, this +mysterious atrophy, taken vigorously in hand by Dr. Jedd, should be +vanquished, and the girl should live? + +What indeed? A sharp spasm contracted the stockbroker's hard cold face as +he pictured to himself the result of failure. + +He saw the crowd of busy faces in the House, and heard the low hum of +many voices, and the dull sound of the big half-glass doors swinging to +and fro, and the constant tread of hurrying feet. He heard the buzz of +voices and the tramp of feet stop as suddenly as if that busy tide of +human life had been arrested by an enchanter's wand. The enchanter is no +other than the head-waiter of the Stock Exchange, who takes his position +by a stand in the midst of that great meeting-place, and removes his hat. + +After that sudden silence comes a faint sound of anxious whisperings; and +then again a second silence, still more profound, prevails in that +assembly. Three times, with wooden hammer sounding dull against the +woodwork of his stand, the waiter raps his awful rap. To some it is the +call of doom. The commercial Nemesis hides her awful countenance. Slow +and solemn sound those three deliberate strokes of the wooden hammer. You +can hear the stertorous breathing of an apoplectic stockbroker, the short +panting respiration of some eager speculator--the rest is silence. And +then the voice of the waiter--proxy for the commercial Nemesis--calmly +enunciates the dread decree. + +"Philip Sheldon begs to inform the members of the House that he cannot +comply with his bargains." + +A sudden flutter of the leaves of many note-books follows that awful +announcement. Voices rise loud in united utterance of surprise or +indignation. The doors swing to and fro, as hurrying members dash in and +out to scan the market and ascertain how far they may be affected by this +unlooked-for failure. + +This was the scene which the watcher pictured to himself; and for him +Fate could wear no aspect more terrible. Respectability, solvency, +success--these were the idols to which he had given worship and tribute +in all the days of his life. To propitiate these inexorable ones he had +sacrificed all the dearest and best blessings which earth and heaven +offer to mankind. Best or happiness, as other men consider these +blessings, he had never known; the sense of triumph in success of the +present, the feverish expectation of success in the future--these had +stood to him in the place of love and hope, pleasure and idlesse, all the +joys and comforts of this lower world, and all the holy dreams of purer +pleasures in a world to come. + +One vague brief thought of all that he had sacrificed flashed across +his brain; and swift upon his track followed the thought of what he +stood to lose. + +Something more than his position upon the Stock Exchange was at stake. He +had done desperate things in the vain hope of sustaining that position +against the destroying sweep of Fortune's turning tide. Bills were afloat +which he must meet, or stand before the world a detected forger,--bills +drawn upon companies that were shadowy as the regions of their supposed +operations. Bills amounting to five thousand pounds, drawn, upon the +Honduras Mahogany Company, Limited; other bills amounting to upwards of +three thousand pounds, against the Pennsylvanian Anthracite Coal +Corporation, Limited. The sum he might raise on the policies of insurance +would about cover these bills; and, simultaneously with their withdrawal, +fresh bills might be floated, and the horse-leech cry of the brokers for +contango might be satisfied until there came a reaction in the City, and +the turning tide should float him into some harbour of safety. Beyond +this harbour shone a splendid beacon, the dead girl's inheritance--his, +to claim by right of the same will that would give him the sum insured +upon her life. + +Without this immediate ready money there was no extraction from the +hideous labyrinth. His position had been already too long sustained by +bills of exchange. There were people in the City who wanted, in vulgar +parlance, to see the colour of his money. He knew this--and knew how +frail the tenure by which he held his position, and how dire the crash +which would hurl him down to ruin. + +After the proclamation of his inability to meet his differences--the +Deluge: and, looking gloomily athwart the flood and tempest, he saw +neither ark nor Ararat. + +Charlotte's death was the one chance of redemption; and to that event he +looked as to a figure in a mathematical proposition. Of this girl +herself, with all her wealth of beauty and goodness, of hope and love, he +had scarcely any definite idea. She had so long been no more to him than +an important figure in the mathematics of his life, that he had lost the +power to behold her in any other light. + +The hardness of his nature was something lower than absolute cruelty of +heart. It was less human than the half-insane ferocity of a Nero. It was +a calm indifference to the waste of human life, which, displayed upon a +larger field of operation, would have made a monster cold and passionless +as Sphinx or Chimaera. + +"I must see Ann Woolper," he said to himself, presently, "she will not +dare to exclude me from that room." + +He listened to the striking of the Bayswater clocks. Two o'clock. Within +and without the house reigned a profound silence. The room immediately +over Mr. Sheldon's study was Charlotte's room, and here there had been +for a long time no sound of life or movement. + +"Asleep, I dare say," muttered Mr. Sheldon, "invalid and nurse both." + +He exchanged his boots for slippers, which he kept in a little cupboard +below the bookshelves, among old newspapers, and went softly from the +room. The gas was burning dimly on the stairs and on the landing above. +He opened the door of the invalid's room softly, and went in. + +Mrs. Woolper was seated beside the bed. She looked up at him with +unwinking eyes. + +"I thought you was abed, sir," she said. + +"No; I am too anxious to sleep." + +"I think every one is anxious, sir," Mrs. Woolper answered, gravely. + +"How is your patient?" + +The pretty white curtains of the little brass Arabian bedstead were +drawn. + +"She is asleep, sir. She sleeps a great deal. The doctor said that was +only natural." + +"She has taken her medicine, I suppose?" said Mr. Sheldon. + +He glanced round the room as he asked this question, but could see no +trace of medicine-bottle or glass. + +"Yes, sir; she has taken it twice, the poor dear." + +"Let me look at the medicine." + +"The strange doctor said as I was to let no one touch it, sir." + +"Very likely; but that direction doesn't apply to me." + +"He said no one, sir." + +"You are an old fool!" muttered Mr. Sheldon, savagely. + +"Ah no, sir," the housekeeper answered, with a profound sigh; "I am wiser +than I was when poor Mr. Halliday died." + +This answer, and the sigh, and the look of solemn sadness which +accompanied it, told him that this woman knew all. She had suspected him +long ago; but against her unsupported suspicion the mere force of his +character had prevailed. She was wiser now; for on this occasion +suspicion was confirmed by the voice of science. + +He stood for a few minutes looking at his old nurse, with a dark moody +face. What could he feel except supreme indignation against this woman, +who dared to oppose him when he had the best right to rely on her +faithful service? She had promised him her fidelity, and at the first +hint from a stranger she coolly deserted him and went over to the enemy. + +"Do you mean to say that you refuse to let me look at the medicine which +you have been giving to my stepdaughter?" he asked. + +"I mean to say that I will obey the orders given me by the strange +doctor," the old woman answered, with a calm sadness of tone, "even if it +turns you against me--you that have given me a comfortable home when +there was nothing before me but the workhouse; you that I carried in my +arms forty years ago. If it was anything less than her dear life that was +in danger, sir, and if I hadn't stood by her father's deathbed, I +couldn't stand against you like this. But knowing what I do, I will stand +firm as a rock between you and her; and think myself all the more truly +your faithful servant because I do not fear to offend you." + +"That's so much arrant humbug, Mrs. Woolper. I suppose you've made your +book with Miss Halliday and Miss Halliday's lover, and think you can +serve your turn best by sticking to them and throwing me over the bridge. +It's only the way of the world. You're genuine Yorkshire, and know how to +pack your cards for winning the trick. But suppose I were to spoil your +game by turning you out of doors neck and crop? What then?" + +"I don't think you'll do that, sir." + +"Why not, pray?" + +"I don't think you dare do it, in the face of that strange doctor." + +"You don't? And so Dr. Jedd is the master of this house, is he?" + +"Yes, sir. Till that poor dear young lady is well again, if ever that day +comes, I think Dr. Jedd will be the real master in this house." + +"By ----! Mrs. Woolper, you're a cool hand, I must say!" + +He could say no more. Of passionate or declamatory language he had no +command. The symbols of thought that obtained in his world were of a +limited and primitive range. + +"You're a cool hand," he repeated, under his breath. And then he turned +and left the room, opening and closing the door less cautiously than on +his entrance. + +The door of the opposite room was opened softly as he came out into +the corridor, and Diana Paget stood before him, dressed as she had +been in the day. + +"What!" he exclaimed, impatiently, "are you up too?" + +"Yes, Mr. Sheldon. I cannot sleep while Lotta is so ill." + +"Humph! I suppose you mean to get yourself on the sick-list, and give us +another invalid to nurse." + +"I will not trouble you to nurse me if I should be ill." + +"Ah!" growled the stockbroker, as he went to his own room, "you are a +pack of silly women altogether; and your fine friend Hawkehurst is more +womanish than the silliest of you. Goodnight." + +He went into his own room, where he found his wife still awake. Her weak +lamentings and bewailings were insupportable to him; and at three o'clock +he went downstairs, put on his boots and a light overcoat, and went out +into the dim regions of Bayswater, whence he saw the sun rise red above +the eastern roofs and chimneys, and where he walked until the first +clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels began to echo through the empty +streets, and, with faint distant cries of sweeps and milk-women, life's +chorus recommenced. + +It was seven o'clock when he went back to his house, and let himself in +softly with his latchkey. He knew that he had been walking a long time, +and that he had seen the sun rise; but what streets or squares he had +been walking in he did not know. He crept upstairs to his dressing-room +with stealthy footsteps, and made an elaborate toilet. At eight o'clock +he was seated at breakfast in the hastily-arranged dining-room, with the +newspapers by the side of his cup and saucer. At nine he went into the +hall to receive Dr. Jedd and Dr. Doddleson, who arrived almost +simultaneously. His carefully-arranged hair and whiskers, his well made +unpretentious clothes, his spotless linen, would have done credit to an +archbishop. Of all the cares and calculations of his long dreary night +there was no trace, except a certain dulness in his eyes, and the dark +half-circles below them. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +COUNTING THE COST. + +For four days and four nights there were fear and watching in Mr. +Sheldon's house; and in all that time the master never quitted it, except +stealthily, in the dead of the night, or at early daybreak, to roam in a +purposeless manner he knew not where. The doctors came and went--Dr. +Doddleson once a day, Dr. Jedd two or three times a day--and every one in +villas adjoining and villas opposite, and even in villas round the +corner, knew that the stockbroker's stepdaughter lay sick unto death; for +the white horses of Dr. Jedd's landau were as the pale horse of the Pale +Rider himself, and where they came was danger or death. Ah, thank God! to +some they have brought hope and blessing; not always the dread answer, +"You have called me in vain." + +Valentine Hawkehurst came many times in the day, but between him and Mr. +Sheldon there could be no safe meeting; and the lover came quietly to the +little gate, where a kindly housemaid gave him a little note from Diana +Paget. Miss Paget wrote half a dozen little notes of this kind in the +course of every day, but she never left her post in the room opposite the +sick-chamber. She complained of headache, or of some vague illness which +prevented her taking her meals in the dining-room, and Mr. Sheldon was +fain to be satisfied with this explanation of her conduct. + +She was on guard; and the wretched master of the house knew that she was +on guard, and that if Ann Woolper could be bought over, or frightened +into compliance with his wishes, this girl would still remain, faithful +as watchdog, by the door of her friend and companion. He asked himself +whether by violent or diplomatic process, he could rid himself of this +second watcher; and the answer was in the negative. The circle around him +was a circle not to be broken. + +His wife, as yet, had been told nothing of the suspicions that reigned in +the breasts of other people. He knew this; for in his wife's face there +was no token of that dark knowledge, and she, of all people, would be +least skilled to deceive his scrutinizing eyes. Nor had the younger +servants of his household any share in the hideous suspicion. He had +watched the countenance of the maid who waited on him, and had convinced +himself of this. + +It was something to know that even these were not yet leagued against +him; but he could not tell at what moment they too might be sworn into +that secret society which was growing up against him in his own house. +Power to carry out his own schemes in the face of these people he felt +that he had none. Upon the dark road which he had travelled until of late +without let or hindrance, there had arisen, all at once, an +insurmountable barrier, with the fatal inscription, Here there is no +Thoroughfare. + +Beyond this barrier he could not pass. Sudden as the dread arrest of +Lot's wife was the mandate which had checked his progress. He was brought +to a dead stop; and there was nothing for him to do but to wait the issue +of Fate. He stood, defiant, unabashed, face to face with the figure of +Nemesis, and calmly awaited the lifting of the veil. + +He hoped that Charlotte Halliday would die. If by her death he could tide +over his difficulties and drift into smooth water, it would be but a very +small thing to him that Dr. Jedd, and Dr. Doddleson enlightened by his +colleague, and Valentine Hawkehurst, and Diana Paget, and a stupid +pig-headed old Yorkshirewoman, should carry in their minds for the +remainder of their lives the suspicion that by his means that fair young +life had been brought to its early close. + +What would it amount to in the future of his own existence? Prudential +considerations would induce these people to lock the secret of this +suspicion in their own breasts. Dr. Jedd would bow to him somewhat +coldly, perhaps, if they met in the streets of London, or possibly might +refuse to make any return to his passing salutation; but the cut direct +from Dr. Jedd would not cast a shadow over his commercial career, or even +weaken his social position. If, by the loud folly of Hawkehurst, some +evil rumour about him should float as far eastward as the Stock Exchange, +who would be found to give credence to the dark report? Men would shrug +their shoulders and shake their heads incredulously; and one of these +wise men of the east would remark that, "A fellow in Sheldon's position +doesn't do that kind of thing, you know;" while another would say, "I +dined with him at Greenwich last summer, and a remarkably good dinner he +gave us. Dawkins, the great shipbuilder, and M'Pherson, of M'Pherson and +Flinders, the Glasgow merchants, were there. Very jolly affair, I assure +you. Deuced gentlemanly fellow, Phil Sheldon." And so the matter would +end. + +Would there be an inquest in the event of his stepdaughter's death? Well, +no. Jedd knew that in such a case all _post-mortem_ inquiry must end in +confusion and perplexity, statement and counter-statement from medical +witnesses, who would contradict one another persistently in the support +of their pet theories, and who would regard the investigation as a very +convenient opportunity for ventilating their own opinions and airing +their own importance. A considerable number of the canine race would be +slaughtered, perhaps, in the process of dilettante experiments; the broad +principles of chemical science would be discussed from every point of +view, in innumerable letters published in the _Zeus,_ and the _Diurnal +Hermes_; and the fact that an amiable and innocent young woman had been +foully murdered would be swept out of the minds of mankind before a +whirlwind of technical debate. Jedd was the last man to stake his +reputation upon such a hazard. No: Mr. Sheldon knew that he had played a +cautious game; and if he should ultimately lose the stake for which he +had ventured, it would be because he had been just a little too cautious. + +"These things are generally done too quickly," he said to himself. "My +mistake has been to make matters too slow." + +Come what might, of after-consequences to himself from Charlotte +Halliday's illness or death he had no apprehension. + +Thus it was that he met Dr. Jedd day after day with a face as calm as the +stony countenance of that distinguished physician himself. Such anxiety +as an affectionate stepfather should feel during the peril of his +stepdaughter Mr. Sheldon took care to express. Greater anxiety than this +by no look or gesture did he betray. He knew that he was watched; and +that the people about him were inimical to himself and to his interests; +and he was never off his guard. + +It had been necessary for him to come to London in order to be within +easy reach of that troubled sea, the money-market. But perilous though +the voyage of his bark across that tempestuous ocean was, he could not +guide the helm in person. He was obliged to confide matters to the care +of Mr. Frederick Orcott, whom he harassed with telegraphic despatches at +all hours of the day, and who at this period seemed to spend his life +between the stockbroker's office and Bayswater. + +It seemed as if Mr. Sheldon meant to hold his ground in that house until +the issue of events was determined. Valentine Hawkehurst and George +Sheldon met at the solicitor's offices, and there was a long and serious +consultation between them. + +"One thing seems pretty clear," said George, conclusively, "and that is, +that my brother Phil isn't to be got off the premises except by some very +deep move. The question is, what move can be deep enough to trap such a +man as he? He's a man who knows the inside of your mind better than you +do yourself; and can reckon you up as easily as the simplest sum in +arithmetic." + +The two men talked together very seriously for some time after this, and +on the same day Valentine lay in wait for Dr. Jedd as he left Philip +Sheldon's house, and was driven back to town in that gentleman's +carriage. On the road there was much serious talk between Miss Halliday's +physician and Miss Halliday's lover. Valentine was still very grave and +very anxious when he took his leave of Dr. Jedd; but he was more hopeful +than he had been for the last few days. + +On the same evening Gustave Lenoble received a brief epistle from his +plighted wife. + +"MY DEAR GUSTAVE,--I regret to find from your letter that the doctors +consider my father weaker than when I was last at Knightsbridge; but, +even knowing this, I cannot come to him just yet. The duty which detains +me here is even more sacred than his claim upon my care. And I know your +goodness to him, and feel that in you he has a better friend and +comforter than I could be to him. I thank you, dear, for your kindness to +this poor broken-down wanderer even more than for your generous devotion +to me. And now I am going to ask you a favour. It is, that you will +afford Mr. Hawkehurst, the person who will give you this letter, the help +of your friendship and counsel in very difficult and critical +circumstances, which he will explain to you. I have spoken to you of him +very little, though his devotion to my dear adopted sister, Charlotte +Halliday, brings him very near to me. Her long, and of late dangerous, +illness has been a bitter time of trial to him, even more than to me; but +the trial has proved him true as steel. I think your counsel may be of +some service to him just now, and I am sure your friendship will help to +support him in a period of acute anxiety. + +"Do not ask to see me, dear Gustave. I _cannot_ leave this house while +Charlotte is in danger; but if it please God to remove that danger, I +shall then be free to go where I please, and my future life shall be at +your disposal. Do not think me cold or ungrateful; I am only faithful to +the first friend I ever knew.--Yours always, with all affection, + +"DIANA PAGET." + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +THE BEGINNING OF THE END. + +Three days elapsed after the delivery of this letter. Upwards of a week +had gone by since the return of Mr. Sheldon and his family from Harold's +Hill: and as yet Philip Sheldon knew not what the issue of events was to +be. Very vague were the oracular sentences which his questioning extorted +from Dr. Jedd, and he had tried in vain to obtain a _tete-a-tete_ +interview with Dr. Doddleson. The physician of Burlington Row took care +that his feeble colleague should not fall alone and defenceless into the +pathway of Philip Sheldon. Of Charlotte's actual condition her +stepfather, therefore, knew very little. He was told that her state was +attended by danger; and the solemn faces which greeted him on every side +implied that the danger was extreme. From her room he was in a manner +excluded. If he went to her door to make some benevolent and paternal +inquiry, he was met on the threshold by Ann Woolper, the sleepless and +unresting. If he hinted a natural desire to see his invalid stepdaughter, +he was told that she had that moment fallen asleep, or that she was too +ill to see him. There was always some plausible reason why he should not +be admitted to her room; and finding that this was so, he did not press +the question. + +He had taken Mrs. Woolper's measure, and had found that she was too +strong for him; doubly strong since she was supported and sustained by +that second sleepless watcher, Diana Paget, whom Mr. Sheldon had long ago +pronounced to be a strong-minded and superior young person. + +From his wife he could obtain no real information--nothing but weepings +and lamentations; weak apprehensions of future woe, weaker retrospective +reflections on the fatal illness and untimely end of her first husband. +Georgy was admitted once or twice a day to the sick-room; but she emerged +therefrom no wiser than she entered it. Sorrow in the present, and the +fear of greater sorrow to come, had utterly prostrated this poor weak +soul. She believed what other people told her to believe, she hoped what +they told her to hope. She was the very incarnation and express image of +helpless misery. + +So, in utter darkness of mind, Mr. Sheldon awaited his destiny. The day +drew very near on which he must find certain sums of ready money, or must +accept the dreary alternative of ruin and disgrace. He had the policies +of assurance in his cash-box, together with the will which made him +Charlotte's sole legatee; he had fixed in his own mind upon the man to +whom he could apply for an advance of four thousand pounds on one of the +two policies, and he relied on getting his banker to lend him money on +the security of the second. But for the one needful event he had yet to +wait. That event was Charlotte Halliday's death. + +Of his dreary wanderings in the early morning the household knew nothing. +The time which he chose for these purposeless rambles was just the time +when no one was astir. The watchers in the two rooms above heard neither +his going out nor his coming in, so stealthy were his movements on every +occasion. But without this intermission from the dreadful concentration +of his life, without this amount of physical exercise and fresh air, +Philip Sheldon could scarcely have lived through this period. The +solitude of shipwrecked mariner cast upon a desolate island could hardly +be more lonely than this man's life had been since his return from +Harold's Hill. From his study to the dining-room, and from the +dining-room back to his study, was the only variety of his dreary days +and nights. He had an iron bedstead put up in his study, and there he lay +in the earlier hours of the night, taking such rest as he could from +fitful dozing that was scarcely sleep, or from brief intervals of heavy +slumber made horrible by torturing dreams. + +In this room he could hear every sudden movement in the hall, every +footstep on the stairs, every opening and shutting of the outer door. +Here, too, he could keep his watch, holding himself ready to counter the +movements of his enemies, should any opportunity arise for action on his +part, defensive or aggressive. + +To this room he stealthily returned one brilliant summer morning as the +clocks were striking six. He had been walking in the Bayswater Road, +amidst all the pleasant stir and bustle of early morning. Waggons coming +in from the country, milkwomen setting forth on their daily rounds, +clamorous young rooks cawing among the topmost branches of the elms, +song-birds chirruping and gurgling their glad morning hymn; and over all +things the glory and the freshness of the summer sunshine. + +But to Philip Sheldon it was as if these things were not. For the last +twelve or fifteen years of his life he had taken no heed of the change +of the seasons, except insomuch as the passage of time affected his +bill-book, or the condition of that commercial world which was the +beginning and end of his life. Now, less than ever, had he an ear for +the carolling of birds, or an eye for the glory of summer sunlight, or +the flickering shadows of summer leaves faintly stirred by the soft +summer wind. + +He re-entered his house with a half-dazed sense of the stir and life that +had been about him in the high road. It was a relief to him to escape +this life and brightness, and to take shelter in the gloom of his study, +where the shutters were closed, and only a faint glimmer of day crept +through a chink in the shrunken woodwork. + +For the first time since the beginning of this dreary period of idleness +and suspense he felt himself thoroughly beaten, and instead of going up +to his dressing-room for his careful morning toilet, as it was his habit +to do at this hour, he flung himself, dressed as he was, upon the low +iron bedstead, and fell into a heavy slumber. + +Yes, there they were--the familiar tortures of his slumbers, the +shadows of busy, eager faces; and upon all one universal expression of +mingled anger and surprise. The sound of a wooden hammer striking three +solemn strokes; the faint tones of Tom Halliday's voice, thanking him for +his friendly care; the dying look in Tom Halliday's face, turned to him +with such depth of trust and affection. And then across the shadowy +realm of dreams there swept the slow solemn progress of a funeral +_cortege_--plumed hearses, blacker than blackest night; innumerable +horses, with funereal trappings and plumed headgear waving in an icy +wind; long trains of shrouded figures stretching on into infinite space, +in spectral procession that knew neither beginning nor end. And in all +the solemn crowd passing perpetually with the same unceasing motion, +there was no sound of human footfall, no tramp of horse's hoof, only that +dismal waving of black plumage in an icy wind, and the deep boom of a +bell tolling for the dead. + +He awoke with a start, and exclaimed, "If this is what it is to sleep, I +will never sleep again!" + +In the next minute he recovered himself. He had been lying on his back. +The endless pageant, the dreadful tolling of the funeral bell, meant no +more than nightmare, the common torment of all humanity. + +"What a fool I must be!" he muttered to himself, as he wiped his +forehead, which had grown cold and damp in the agony of his dream. + +He opened the shutters, and then looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. +To his surprise he found that he had been sleeping three hours. It was +nine o'clock. He went upstairs to dress. There was an unusual stir in the +corridor above. Ann Woolper was standing there, with her hand on the door +of the sick-room, talking to Diana, who covered her face suddenly as he +approached, and disappeared into her own room. + +The beating of his heart quickened suddenly. Something had happened to +disturb the common course of events. Something? What was likely to +happen, except the one dread circumstance for which he hoped and waited +with such horrible eagerness? + +In Ann Woolper's solemn face he read an answer to his thought. For the +first time he was well nigh losing his self-possession. It was with an +effort that he steadied himself sufficiently to ask the usual +conventional question in the usual conventional tone. + +"Is she any better this morning, Ann?" + +"Yes, sir, she is much better," the Yorkshirewoman answered solemnly. +"She is where none can harm her now." + +Yes; it was the usual periphrase of these vulgar people. He knew all +their cant by heart. + +"You mean to say--she--is dead?" + +He no longer tried to conceal his agitation. It was a part of his duty to +be agitated by the news of his stepdaughter's untimely death. + +"O, sir, you may well be sorry," said the Yorkshirewoman, with deep +feeling. "She was the sweetest, most forgiving creature that ever came +into this world; and to the last no hard or cruel word ever passed her +innocent lips. Yes, sir, she is gone; she is beyond the power of any one +to harm her." + +"All that sort of stuff is so much hypocritical twaddle, Mrs. Woolper," +muttered Mr. Sheldon impatiently; "and I recommend you to keep it for the +chaplain of the workhouse in which you are likely to end your days. At +what time--did--did this--sad event--happen? + +"About an hour ago." + +In the very hour when, in his hideous dream, he had beheld the solemn +funeral train winding on for ever through the dim realms of sleep. Was +there some meaning in such foolish shadows, after all? + +"And why was I not sent for?" + +"You were asleep, sir. I came downstairs myself, and looked into your +room. You were fast asleep, and I wouldn't disturb you." + +"That was very wrong; but it was of a piece with the rest of your +conduct, which has been from first to last antagonistic to me. I suppose +I can see my stepdaughter now," Mr. Sheldon added, with a grim smile. +"There is no further excuse--about headache--or sleep." + +"No, sir, you cannot see her yet. In an hour, if you wish to come into +this room, you can come." + +"You are extremely obliging. I begin to doubt whether I am really in my +own house. In an hour, then, I will come. Where is my wife?" + +"In her own room, sir, lying down; asleep, I believe." + +"I will not disturb her. How about the registration, by-the-by? That +must be seen to." + +"Dr. Jedd has promised to attend to that, sir." + +"Has Dr. Jedd been here?" + +"He was here an hour ago." + +"Very good. And he will see to that," muttered Mr. Sheldon thoughtfully. + +The event for which he had been so long waiting seemed at the last a +little sudden. It had shaken his nerves more than he had supposed it +possible that they could be shaken. + +He went to his dressing-room, and on this occasion made a very hasty +toilet. The event had been tardy, and he had no time to lose in +discounting it now that it had come to pass. He went from his +dressing-room back to his study, took the jacket containing the policies +of assurance and the will from the deed-box, and left the house. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED. + +A cab conveyed Mr. Sheldon swiftly to a dingy street in the City--a +street which might have been called the pavement of wasted footsteps, so +many an impecunious wretch tramped to and fro upon those dreary flags in +vain. + +The person whom Mr. Sheldon came to see was a distinguished +bill-discounter, who had served him well in more than one crisis, and on +whose service he fancied he could now rely. + +Mr. Kaye, the bill-discounter, was delighted to see his worthy friend Mr. +Sheldon. He had just come up from his family at Brighton, and had quite a +little court awaiting him in an outer chamber, through which Mr. Sheldon +had been ushered to the inner office. + +"It's rather early for such a visitor as you," Mr. Kaye said, after a few +commonplaces. "I have not been in town half an hour." + +"My business is too important for any consideration about hours," +answered Mr. Sheldon, "or I should not be here at all. I have just come +from the deathbed of my wife's daughter." + +"Indeed!" exclaimed the bill-discounter, looking inexpressibly +shocked. Until that moment he had lived in supreme ignorance of the +fact that Mr. Sheldon had a stepdaughter; but his sorrow-stricken +expression of countenance might have implied that he had known and +esteemed the young lady. + +"Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Sheldon; "and something more than sad for +me. The poor girl had great expectations, and would have come into a very +fine fortune if she had lived a year or two longer." + +"Ha! dear me, how very unfortunate! Poor young lady!" + +"Jedd and Doddleson--you know them by repute, of course--have been +attending her for the last six weeks. There will be no end of expense for +me; and it has been all of no use." + +"Consumption, I suppose?" + +"Well, no; not pulmonary disease. A kind of atrophy. I scarcely know what +to call it. Now, look here, Kaye. This illness has thrown all my affairs +into a muddle. Taken in conjunction with the depressed state of the +money-market, it has been altogether an upset for me. I have been staying +at home looking after this poor girl and my wife--who of course is +dreadfully cut up, and that sort of thing--when I ought to have been in +the City. Luckily for me, and for my wife, in whose interests I acted, I +took the precaution to get her daughter's life insured eight or nine +months ago; in point of fact, immediately after finding she was +heir-at-law to a considerable fortune. The policy is for five thousand +pounds. I want you to give me four thousand immediately upon the strength +of the document and of my stepdaughter's will." + +"Give you four thousand!" exclaimed Mr. Kaye, with a little unctuous +laugh. "Do you suppose I keep such a balance as that at my banker's?" + +"I suppose that you can give me the money if you like." + +"I might be able to get it for you." + +"Yes; that's a kind of humbug a hundred years old. We've heard all about +little Premium and his friend in the City, and so on, from that man who +wrote plays and cut a figure in Parliament. You can give me the money on +the spot if you like, Kaye; and if I didn't want ready money very badly I +shouldn't come to you. The insurance company will give me five thousand +in a month or two. I can give you my bill at two months' date, and +deposit the policy in your hands as collateral security. I might get this +money from other quarters--from my bankers', for instance; but I don't +want to let them know too much." + +Mr. Kaye deliberated. He had assisted Mr. Sheldon's financial operations, +and had profited thereby. Money advanced upon such a security must be as +safe as money invested in Consols, unless there were anything doubtful in +the circumstances of the policy; and that, with a man of Mr. Sheldon's +respectability, was to the last degree unlikely. + +"When do you want this money?" he asked at last. + +"At the beginning of next week. On the twenty-fifth at latest." + +"And this is the twentieth. Sharp work." + +"Not at all. You could give me the money this afternoon, if you pleased." + +"Well, I'll think it over. It's a matter in which I feel myself bound to +take my solicitor's opinion. Suppose you meet him here to-morrow at +twelve o'clock? You can bring the necessary evidence to support the +claim--the doctor's and registrar's certificate, and so on?" + +"Yes," Mr. Sheldon answered, thoughtfully; "I will bring the documentary +evidence. To-morrow at twelve, then." + +Very little more was said. Mr. Sheldon left the will and the policy in +the bill-discounter's possession, and departed. Things had gone as +smoothly as he could fairly expect them to go. From Mr. Kaye's office he +went to the Unitas Bank, where he had a very friendly, but not altogether +satisfactory, interview with the secretary. He wanted the Unitas people +to advance him money on the strength of the second policy of assurance; +but his balance had been very low of late, and the secretary could not +promise compliance with his desires. Those Unitas shares valued at five +thousand pounds, which he had transferred to his beloved stepdaughter, +had been retransferred by the young lady some months before, with a view +to the more profitable investment of the money. + +This money, as well as all else that Philip Sheldon could command, had +gone to the same bottomless pit of unlucky speculation. From the bank the +stockbroker went to his office, where he saw Frederick Orcott, to whom he +announced his stepdaughter's death with all due appearance of sorrow. He +sat for an hour in his office, arranging his affairs for the following +day, then sent for another cab, and drove back to Bayswater. The noonday +press and noise of the City seemed strange to him, almost as they might +have seemed to a man newly returned from lonely wanderings in distant +wildernesses. + +The blinds were down at the Lawn. His own handsome bedchamber and +adjoining dressing-room faced the road, and it was at the windows of +these two rooms he looked. He fancied his weak foolish wife wailing and +lamenting behind those lowered blinds. + +"And I shall have to endure her lamentations," he thought, with a +shudder. "I shall have no further excuse for avoiding her. But, on the +other hand, I shall have the pleasure of giving Mrs. Woolper and Miss +Paget notice to quit." + +He derived a grim satisfaction from this thought. Yes; insolence from +those two women he would endure no longer. The time had come in which he +would assert his right to be master in his own house. The game had been +played against him boldly by Jedd and these people, and had been lost by +them. He was the winner. He could not dismiss doctors, nurse, friend, +lover. Charlotte Halliday's death made him master of the situation. + +He went into his house with the determination to assert his authority at +once. Within all was very quiet. He looked into the dining-room--it was +quite empty; into the study--also empty. He went slowly upstairs, +composing his face into the appropriate expression. At the door of that +chamber which to him should have seemed of all earthly chambers the most +awful, he knocked softly. + +There was no answer. + +He knocked a little louder, but there was still no answer. A little +louder again, and with the same result. + +"Is there no one there?" he asked himself. "No one, except--?" + +He opened the door, and went in, with unshaken nerves, to look upon that +one quiet sleeper whom his summons could not awaken, whom his presence +could not disturb. + +There was no nurse or watcher by the bed. Everything was arranged with +extreme neatness and precision; but it seemed to him that there were +objects missing in the room, objects that had been familiar to him during +the dead girl's illness, and which were associated with her presence,-- +the clock that had stood on the table by her bed, a stand of books, a low +easy-chair, with embroidered cover worked by her mother and Diana Paget. +The room looked blank and empty without these things, and Mr. Sheldon +wondered what officious hand had removed them. + +Yonder stood the pretty little bedstead, shrouded by closely drawn white +curtains. Philip Sheldon walked slowly across the room, and drew aside +one of the curtains. He had looked upon the death-sleep of Charlotte +Halliday's father, why not upon hers? + +She was not there! Those closely drawn curtains shrouded only the bed on +which she had slept in the tranquil slumbers of her careless girlhood. +That cold lifeless form, whose rigid outline Philip Sheldon had steeled +himself to see, had no place here. + +He put his hand to his head, bewildered. "What does it mean?" he asked +himself; "surely she died in this room!" + +He went hurriedly to his wife's room. They had taken Charlotte there, +perhaps, shortly before her death. Some feverish fancy might have +possessed her with the desire to be taken thither. + +He opened the door and went in; but here again all was blank and empty. +The room was arranged after its usual fashion; but of his wife's presence +there was no token. His sense of mystification and bewilderment grew +suddenly into a sense of fear. What did it mean? What hellish fooling had +he been the dupe of? + +He went to Diana's room. That, too, was empty. A trunk and a portmanteau, +covered and strapped as if for removal, occupied the centre of the room. + +There was no other room upon this floor. Above this floor there were only +the rooms of the servants. + +He went downstairs to the dining-room and rang the bell The parlour-maid +came in answer to his summons. + +"Where is your mistress?" he asked. + +"Gone out, sir; she went at eight o'clock this morning. And O, if you +please, sir, Dr. Jedd called, and said I was to give you this--with the +certificate." + +The certificate! Yes, the certificate of Charlotte Halliday's death,--the +certificate which he must produce to-morrow, with other evidence, for the +satisfaction of the bill-discounter and his legal adviser. He stared at +the girl, still possessed by the sense of bewilderment which had come +upon him on seeing those empty rooms upstairs. He took the letter from +her almost mechanically, and tore it open without looking at the address. +The certificate dropped to the ground. He picked it up with a tremulous +hand, and for some moments stood staring at it with dazzled, unseeing +eyes. He could see that it was a document with dates and names written in +a clerkly hand. For some moments he could see no more. And then words and +names shone out of the confusion of letters that spun and whirled, like +motes in the sunshine, before his dazzled eyes. + +"Valentine Hawkehurst, bachelor, author, Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road, +son of Arthur Hawkehurst, journalist; Charlotte Halliday, spinster, of +the Lawn, Bayswater, daughter of Thomas Halliday, farmer." + +He read no more. + +It was a copy of a certificate of marriage--not a certificate of +death--that had been brought to him. + +"You can go," he said to the servant hoarsely. + +He had a vague consciousness that she was staring at him with curious +looks, and that it was not good for him to be watched by any one just +now. + +"About dinner, sir, if you please?" the young woman began timidly. + +"What do I know about dinner?" + +"You will dine at home, sir?" + +"Dine at home? Yes; Mrs. Woolper can give you your orders." + +"Mrs. Woolper has gone out, sir. She has gone for good, I believe, sir; +she took her boxes. And Miss Paget's luggage will be sent for, if you +please, sir. There's a letter, sir, that Mrs. Woolper left for you on the +mantelpiece." + +"She was very good. That will do; you can go." + +The girl departed, bewildered like her fellow-servants by the strangeness +of the day's proceedings, still more bewildered by the strangeness of her +master's manner. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +"THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE." + +When the servant was gone, Mr. Sheldon sat down and examined the document +she had given him. + +Yes, it was in due form. A certified copy of the certificate +of a marriage performed that morning at the church of St. +Matthias-in-the-fields, Paddington, and duly witnessed by the registrar +of that parish. If this document were indeed genuine, as to all +appearance it was, Valentine Hawkehurst and Charlotte Halliday had been +married that morning; and the will and the policy of assurance deposited +with Mr. Kaye the bill-discounter were so much waste-paper. + +And they had fooled him, Philip Sheldon, as easily as this! The furious +rage which he felt against all these people, and, more than against them, +against his own besotted folly for allowing himself to be so fooled, was +a sharper agony than had ever yet rent his cruel heart. He had been a +scoundrel all his life, and had felt some of the pains and penalties of +his position; but to be a defeated scoundrel was a new sensation to him; +and a savage impotent hate and anger against himself and the universe +took possession of his mind. + +He walked up and down the room for some time, abandoned wholly to the +ungovernable rage that consumed him, and with no thought beyond that +blind useless fury. And then there came upon him the feeling that was +almost a part of his mind--the consciousness that something must be done, +and promptly. Whatever his position was, he must face it. His hurried +pacing to and fro came to a sudden stop, and he took the crumpled +document from his packet, and examined it once more. + +There seemed little doubt that it was genuine; and a visit to the church +where the marriage was stated to have been performed would immediately +place the matter beyond all doubt. With the copy of the certificate, he +had taken from his pocket the letter that had enclosed it. He saw now +that the envelope was addressed in Hawkehurst's hand. + +"Favoured by Dr. Jedd," he had written in a corner of the envelope. + +Why should Dr. Jedd "favour" Mr. Hawkehurst's letter? Why, indeed, unless +there had been a conspiracy concocted by these men against his authority +and his interests? + +Valentine's letter was brief and business-like. + +"SIR,--With the full approbation of her mother and only near relation, my +dear Charlotte has this day become my wife. The enclosed attested copy of +the certificate of our marriage will afford you all particulars. I shall +refrain from entering upon any explanation of my conduct; and I believe +such explanation to be wholly unnecessary. You can scarcely fail to +understand why I have acted in this manner, and why I congratulate myself +and my dear wife on her departure from your house as on an escape from +imminent peril. It will be, I fear, little satisfaction to you to hear +that the doctors have pronounced your stepdaughter to be out of danger, +though still in very weak health. She is now comfortably established in a +temporary home, with her mother and Diana Paget; and in all probability +some months must elapse before she and I can begin our new life together. +To afford my darling girl the legal protection of marriage was the object +of this sudden and secret union. You, of all men, will most fully +comprehend how necessary such protection had become to ensure her safety. + +"Should you, however, require farther enlightenment as to the motives +that prompted this step, Dr. Jedd will be the fittest person to give you +such information; and has expressed his willingness to answer any +questions you may please to put to him. + +"For the rest, I beg to assure you that the rights of Mrs. Hawkehurst in +relation to the inheritance of the late John Haygarth's wealth will be as +carefully protected as those of Miss Halliday; nor will the hasty +marriage of this morning hinder the execution of any deed of settlement +calculated to guard her interests in the future. + +"With this assurance, I remain, sir, +Your obedient servant, +VALENTINE HAWKEHURST. +Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road." + +Enclosed with this there was a second letter--from his wife. + +He read it with a countenance that expressed mingled anger and contempt. + +"Fool!" he muttered; "this is about the only service she could do me." + +The letter was long and incoherent; blotted with tears--in places +completely illegible. Mr. Sheldon cared only to master the main facts +contained in it, which were these:--His wife had left him for ever. Dr. +Jedd and Valentine Hawkehurst had told her of something--something that +affected the safety of her darling and only child--and the knowledge of +which must separate her for ever from him. Of the money which she had +brought to him she claimed nothing. Even her jewels, which were in his +keeping, in the iron safe where he kept his papers, she did not attempt +to obtain from him. Valentine would not allow her to starve. The humblest +shelter, the poorest food, would suffice her in the future; but no home +of his providing could she ever inhabit again. + +"What I have suffered in this last few days is only known to myself and +to heaven," she wrote. "O Philip, how could you--how could you even shape +the thought of such a deed as this, which you have been doing, day after +day, for the last two months? I could not have believed what they have +told me, if I had not seen my child fade hour by hour under your care, +slowly, surely--and recover as surely directly you were excluded from any +part in our care of her. If it were possible not to believe these people, +I would disbelieve them, and would cling to you faithfully still; but the +voices against you are too many, the proofs against you are too strong. + +"Do not seek to see me. I am with my poor child, who was but just able to +bear the removal from your house, and to go through the ceremony that was +performed this morning. Little did I ever think my daughter would have +such a wedding. What a mockery all my plans seem now!--and I had chosen +the six bridesmaids, and arranged all the dresses in my own mind. To see +my dear girl dressed anyhow, in her oldest bonnet, standing before the +altar huddled up in a shawl, and given away by a strange doctor, who kept +looking at his watch in a most disrespectful manner during the ceremony, +was very bitter to me." + +Mr. Sheldon flung aside the letter with an oath. He had no time to waste +upon such twaddle as this. He tore open Nancy Woolper's letter. It was a +poor honest scrawl, telling him how faithfully she had served him, how +truly she had loved him in the past, and how she could henceforth serve +him no more. It exhorted him, in humble ill-spelt phrases, to repentance. +It might not yet be too late even for such a sinner as he had been. + +He tore these two epistles into infinitesimal fragments, and flung them +into the fireplace. Valentine Hawkehurst's letter he kept. It was a +document of some legal importance. + +For a moment there had flashed across his brain the thought that he might +punish these people for their interference with his affairs. He might +bring an action against Dr. Jedd for slander, and compel the physician to +prove the charges insinuated against him, or pay the penalty attendant +upon an unjustifiable accusation. He was well assured that Dr. Jedd could +prove very little; and a jury, if properly worked, might award him +exemplary damages. + +But on the other hand, the circumstantial evidence against him was very +strong; and evidence which might be insufficient to prove him guilty in a +trial for his life might be a sufficient defence for his enemies against +an action for slander; if, indeed, the course which Dr. Jedd and +Valentine Hawkehurst had taken did in itself constitute a slanderous and +malicious imputation. Nor could any such action invalidate the marriage +solemnized that morning; and that one fact comprised his utter ruin. +Charlotte's interests were merged in the interests of her husband. No +shadow of claim upon John Haygarth's wealth remained to him. + +His ruin was complete and dire. For a long time his circumstances had +been desperate--no avenue of escape open to him but the one dark way +which he had trodden; and now that last road was closed against him. The +day was very near at hand when his fictitious bills on shadowy companies +must be dishonoured; and with the dishonour of those bills came the end +of all things for him,--a complete revelation of all those dishonest +artifices by which he had kept his piratical bark afloat on the +commercial waters. + +He surveyed his position in every light, calmly and deliberately, and saw +there was no hope. The whole scheme of his existence was reduced to the +question of how much ready-money he could carry out of that house in his +pocket, and in what direction he should betake himself after leaving it. + +His first care must be to ascertain whether the marriage described in the +duplicate certificate had really taken place; his next, to repossess +himself of the papers left with Mr. Kaye. + +Before leaving the house he went to his study, where he examined his +banker's book. Yes, it was as they had told him at the bank. He was +overdrawn. Among the letters lying unopened on his writing-table he found +a letter from one of the officials of the Unitas, calling his attention, +politely and respectfully, to that oversight upon his part. He read the +letter, and crumpled it into his pocket with an angry gesture. + +"I am just about as well off now as I was twelve years ago, before Tom +Halliday came to Fitzgeorge Street," he said to himself; "and I have the +advantage of being twelve years older." + +Yes, this is what it all came to, after all. He had been travelling in a +circle. The discovery was humiliating. Mr. Sheldon began to think that +his line of life had not been a paying one. + +He opened his iron safe, and forced the lock of the jewel-case in which +his wife had kept the few handsome ornaments that he had given her in the +early days of their marriage, as a reward for being good--that is to say, +for allowing her second husband to dispose of her first husband's +patrimony without let or hindrance. The jewels were only a few rings, a +brooch, a pair of earrings, and a bracelet; but they were good of their +kind, and in all worth something like two hundred pounds. + +These, and the gold chronometer which he carried in his waistcoat-pocket, +constituted all the worldly wealth which Mr. Sheldon could command, now +that the volcanic ground upon which his commercial position had been +built began to crumble beneath his feet, and the bubbling of the crater +warned him of his peril. He put the trinkets into his pocket without +compunction, and then went upstairs to his dressing-room, where he +proceeded to pack his clothes in a capacious portmanteau, which in itself +might constitute his credentials among strangers, so eminently +respectable was its appearance. + +In this dread crisis of his life he thought of everything that affected +his own interests. To what was he going? That question was for the moment +unanswerable. In every quarter of the globe there are happy +hunting-grounds for the soldier of fortune. Some plan for the future +would shape itself in his mind by-and-by. His wife's desertion had left +him thoroughly independent. He had no tie to restrain his movements, +nothing to dread except such proceedings as might be taken against him by +the holders of those bills. And such proceedings are slow, while modern +locomotion is swift. + +What was he leaving? That was easily answered. A labyrinth of debt and +difficulty. The fine house, the handsome furniture, were held in the same +bondage of the law as his household goods in Fitzgeorge Street had been. +He had given a bill of sale upon everything he possessed six months +before, to obtain ready-money. The final terrible resource had not been +resorted to until all other means had been exhausted. Let this fact at +least be recorded to his credit. He was like the lady whom the poet +sings, who, + +"tolerably mild, +To make a wash would _hardly_ boil a child:" + +that is to say, she would try all other materials for her cosmetic +preparation first; and if they failed, would at last resort, unwillingly, +to the boiling of children. + +No; he had nothing to lose by flight--of that fact it was easy for him to +assure himself. + +He went downstairs, and rang for the servant. + +"I am going out," he said, "to join my wife and her daughter, and return +with them to the sea-side. There is a portmanteau upstairs in my room, +ready packed. You will give it to the messenger I shall send in the +course of the next day or two. At what time did Mrs. Sheldon and Miss +Halliday leave this morning?" + +"At eight o'clock, sir. Mr. Hawkehurst came to fetch them in a carriage. +They went out by the kitchen passage and the side gate, sir, because you +were asleep, Mrs. Woolper said, and was not to be disturbed." + +"At eight. Yes. And Mrs. Woolper and Miss Paget?" + +"They went a'most directly after you was gone out, sir. There was two +cabs to take Miss Halliday's and Mrs. Sheldon's things, and such +like,--just as there was when you came from Harold's Hill." + +"Yes; I understand." + +He was half inclined to ask the young woman if she had heard the +direction given to the drivers of these two cabs. But he refrained from +doing so. What could it profit him to know where his wife and +stepdaughter were to be found? Whether they were in the next street or at +the antipodes could matter very little to him, except so far as the +knowledge of their place of habitation might guide him in his avoidance +of them. Between him and them there was a gulf wider than all the waters +of the world, and to consider them was only foolish waste of time and +thought. He left the house, which for the last five years of his life had +been the outward and visible sign of his social status, fully conscious +that he left it for ever; and he left it without a sigh. For him the word +home had no tender associations, and the domestic hearth had never +inspired him with any sense of comfort or pleasure with which he might +not have been inspired by the luxurious fireside of a first-class +coffee-room. He was a man who would have chosen to spend his existence in +joint-stock hotels, if there had not been solidity of position to be +acquired from the possession of a handsome house. + +He went to the Paddington church. It was only five o'clock in the +afternoon by the clock of that edifice. The church was closely shut, but +Mr. Sheldon found the clerk, who, in consideration of a handsome +donation, took him to the vestry, and there showed him the register of +marriages--the last entry therein. + +Yes, there was Charlotte Halliday's signature, a little uncertain and +tremulous. + +"I suppose you are one of the young lady's relations, sir," said the +clerk. "It was rather a strange affair; but the young lady's ma was with +her; and the young lady was over age, so, you see, there's nothing to be +said against it." + +Mr. Sheldon had nothing to say against the marriage. If any false +statement of his, however base or cruel, could have invalidated the +ceremonial, he would have spared no pains to devise such a falsehood. If +he had been a citizen of the Southern States, he might have suborned +witnesses to prove that there was black blood in the veins of Valentine +Hawkehurst. If he had not been opposed to so strong an opponent as Dr. +Jedd, he might have tried to get a commission of lunacy to declare +Charlotte Halliday a madwoman, and thus invalidate her marriage. As it +was, he knew that he could do nothing. He had failed. All was said in +those three words. + +He wasted no time at the church, but hurried on to the City, where he was +just in time to catch Mr. Kaye leaving his office. + +"Have you sent those papers to your solicitor?" he asked. + +"No; I was just going to take them round to him. I have been thinking +that it will be necessary to ascertain that there is no will of Miss +Halliday's subsequent to this; and that will be rather difficult to find +out. Women never know when to leave off making wills, if they once begin +making them. They have a positive rage for multiplying documents, you +know. If the testator in that great codicil case had been a woman, a jury +would scarcely have refused to believe in the story of half a dozen +different codicils hidden away in half a dozen different holes and +corners. Women like that sort of thing. Of course, I quite understand +that you bring me the will in all good faith; but I foresee difficulties +in raising money upon such a security." + +"You need give yourself no further trouble about the matter," said Mr. +Sheldon coolly. "I find that I can do without the money, and I've come to +reclaim the papers." + +Mr. Kaye handed them to his client. He was not altogether pleased by this +turn of affairs; for he had expected to profit considerably by Mr. +Sheldon's necessities. That gentleman honoured him with no further +explanations, but put the papers in his pocket, and wished the +bill-discounter good day. + +And this was the last time that Philip Sheldon was ever seen in his +character of a solid and respectable citizen of London. He went from the +bill-discounter's office to a pawnbroker in the City, with whom he +pledged Georgy's trinkets and his own watch for the sum of a hundred and +twenty pounds. From the pawnbroker's he went back to Bayswater for his +portmanteau, and thence to the Euston Hotel, where he dined temperately +in the coffee-room. After dinner he went out into the dull back streets +that lurk behind Euston Square, and found an obscure little barber's +shop, where he had his whiskers shaved off, and his hyacinthine locks +cropped as close as the barber's big scissors could crop them. + +The sacrifice of these hirsute adornments made an extraordinary change +in this man. All the worst characteristics of his countenance came out +with a new force; and the face of Mr. Sheldon, undisguised by the +whiskers that had hidden the corners of his mouth, or the waving locks +that had given height and breadth to his forehead, was a face that no one +would be likely to trust. + +From the Euston Station he departed by the night mail for Liverpool, +under the cover of darkness. In that city he quietly awaited the +departure of the Cunard steamer for New York, and was so fortunate as to +leave England one day before that fatal date on which the first of his +fictitious bills arrival at maturity. + + + + +Book the Tenth. + + + +HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY. + +Not with pomp or with splendour, with rejoicing or strewing of summer +blossoms in the pathway of bride and bridegroom, had the marriage of +Valentine and Charlotte been solemnized. Simple and secret had been the +ceremonial, dark with clouds was the sky above them; and yet it is +doubtful if happier bridegroom ever trod this earth than Valentine +Hawkehurst as he went to his lonely lodging under the starry summer sky, +after leaving his young wife to her mother's care in the new home that +had been found for them. + +He had reason to rejoice; for he had passed through the valley of the +shadow of death. He had seen, very near, that dread presence before which +the angels of faith and love can avail nothing. Fearless as Alcides had +he gone down to the realms of darkness; triumphant and glad as the +demigod he returned from the under-world, bearing his precious burden in +his strong arms. The struggle had been dire, the agony of suspense a +supreme torture; but from the awful contest the man came forth a better +and a wiser man. Whatever strength of principle had been wanting to +complete the work of reformation inaugurated by love, had been gained by +Valentine Hawkehurst during the period of Charlotte's illness. His +promised wife, his redeeming angel, she for whose affection he had first +learned to render thanks to his God, had seemed to be slipping away from +him. In the happiest hour of his prosperous courtship he had known +himself unworthy of her, with no right, no claim, to so fair a prize, +except the right of pure and unselfish love. When the hour of trial came +to him he had said, "Behold the avenger!" and in that hour it seemed to +him that a lurking anticipation of future woe had been ever present with +him in the midst of his happiness,--it seemed so natural, go reasonable +that this treasure should be taken away from him. What had he done, that +he should go unpunished for all the errors and follies of his youth? + +He looked back, and asked himself if he had been so vile a sinner as in +these hours of self-reproach he was inclined to esteem himself? Could his +life have been otherwise? Had he not been set in a groove, his young feet +planted in the crooked ways, before he knew that life's journey might be +travelled by a straighter road? + +Alas, the answer given at the tribunal of conscience went against him! +Other men had come into this world amidst surroundings as bad, nay, +indeed, worse than the surroundings of his cradle. And of these men some +had emerged from their native mire spotless and pure as from newly-fallen +snow. The natural force of character which had saved these men had not +been given to him. His feet had been set in the crooked ways, and he had +travelled on, reckless, defiant, dimly conscious that the road was a bad +one, and that his garments were bespattered with more mud-stains than +would be agreeable to some travellers. + +It was only when the all-powerful influence of love was brought to bear +upon this plastic nature that Valentine Hawkehurst became fully awakened +to the degradation of his position, and possessed with an earnest desire +to emerge from the great dismal swamp of bad company. Then, and then +only, began the transformation which was ultimately to become so complete +a change. Some influence, even beyond that of happy love, was needed to +give force to this man's character; and in the great terror of the last +three months that influence had been found. The very foundations of +Valentine Hawkehurst's life had been shaken, and, come what might, he +could never be again what he had been. + +He had almost lost her. All was said in that. She had been almost taken +from him--she, who to this man was father, mother, wife, household, past, +present, future, glory, ambition, happiness--everything except that God +who ruled above and held her life and his peace in the hollow of His +hand. He had been face to face with death; and never, in all the years to +come--never in the brightest hour of future happiness, could he forget +the peril that had come upon him, and might come again. He had learned to +understand that he held her, not as a free gift, but as a loan--a +treasure to be reclaimed at any moment by the God who lent her. + +The darksome valley was past, and Valentine stood by his darling's side, +safe upon the sunlit uplands. + +The doctors had declared their patient safe. The hour of danger had been +passed in safety, and the mischief worked by the poisoner's slow process +had been well nigh counteracted by medical skill. + +"In six weeks' time you may take your wife for her honeymoon tour, Mr. +Hawkehurst, with her health and spirits thoroughly re-established," +said Dr. Jedd. + +"What is that you say about honeymoon tours?" cried Gustave Lenoble. +"Hawkehurst and his wife will spend their honeymoon at Cotenoir; is it +not, Diana?" + +Diana replied that it was to be, and must be so. + +It was impossible to imagine a happier party than that which met day +after day in those pleasant lodgings at Kilburn, wherein Georgy and Diana +and Charlotte had been established with much devotion and care on the +parts of Valentine and Gustave. Mr. Hawkehurst had chosen the apartments, +and M. Lenoble had spent the day before the wedding in rushing to and fro +between the West End and Kilburn, carrying hot-house flowers, comestibles +of all kinds from Fortnum and Mason's, bonbon boxes, perfumery, new +books, new music, and superintending the delivery of luxurious +easy-chairs, hired from expensive upholsterers, a grand piano, and a +harmonium. + +"We will have music in the evenings," he said to Diana, upon her +expressing surprise on beholding these arrangements, "when we are +assembled here, all. How thou dost open thine eyes on beholding these +nothings! Do you think it has been no pleasure to me to testify my +affection for one who has been so good to thee--thy friend, thine +adopted sister? I wished that all things should look bright around her, +when they brought her here, after that she had come to escape from the +jaws of death. And thou, was it not that thou wert also coming to make +thy home here for some days, until thy day of marriage? Thy father +astonishes himself to hear of such sudden events. Thou wilt go to see +him, soon, is it not?" + +"Yes, dear Gustave. I will go to-morrow." + +She went on the next day, and found Captain Paget much weaker than on her +last visit. + +It was evident that for him the end was very near. He was much changed +and subdued by his long illness; but the spirit of worldliness had not +been altogether exorcised even in this dismal period of self-communion. + +"What does it all mean, Diana?" he asked. "I don't understand being kept +in the dark like this. Here are you suddenly leaving Mr. Sheldon's house +without rhyme or reason, to take up your quarters in lodgings with Mrs. +Sheldon. Here is a mysterious marriage taking place at a time when I have +been given to understand that one of the parties is at death's door; and +here is Lenoble introduced to Valentine Hawkehurst, in express opposition +to my particular request that my future son-in-law should be introduced +to none of the Sheldon set." + +"Valentine is not one of the Sheldon set, papa. I do not think it likely +that he will ever see Philip Sheldon again." + +"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Captain Paget. "There has been something +serious going on, then, surely?" + +After this he insisted on an explanation, and Diana told him the story of +the last two or three weeks: Charlotte's increasing illness--so +mysterious and incurable; the sudden return from Harold's Hill; +Valentine's fears; Dr. Jedd's boldly-expressed opinion that the patient +was the victim of foul play; the systematic exclusion of Philip Sheldon +from the sick-room, followed immediately by symptoms of amelioration, +leading to gradual recovery. + +All this Captain Paget heard with an awe-stricken countenance. The +distance that divides the shedder of blood from all other wrong-doers is +so great, that the minor sinner feels himself a saint when he +contemplates the guilt of the greater criminal. + +"Great God! is this possible?" exclaimed the Captain, with a shudder. +"And I have taken that man's hand!" + +Later in the evening, when Diana had left him, and he had been thinking +seriously of his own career, and those many transactions of his troubled +life which, in the slang denomination of the day, would be called +"shady," he derived some scrap of comfort from one consideration. + +"I never hurt a worm," he murmured to himself, complacently. "No, I can +lay my hand upon my heart and say, I never hurt a worm." + +The Captain did not pause to reflect that some of the merit involved in +this amiable trait of character might have been referable to the fact, +that he had never happened to fall upon a state of society in which a +comfortable living was to be made by the hurting of worms. He thought +only of the story he had heard about Philip Sheldon; and he told himself +that not in the direst necessity of his life could his brain have +fashioned the thought of such a deed as that, in the doing of which this +man had persevered for nearly three months. + +For Charlotte Hawkehurst the summer days which succeeded her marriage +passed very quietly. She had not been told the real motive of that hasty +and stolen marriage which had given her to the man she loved and trusted +so completely. Valentine and Diana had between them contrived to mould +Mrs. Sheldon to their will; and it was at her request that Charlotte had +consented to so strange a step. + +The fable invented to account for this desire on the part of Mrs. Sheldon +was very innocent. The doctors had ordered a milder climate than England +for the dear convalescent--Madeira, Algeria, Malta--or some other equally +remote quarter of the globe. It was impossible that Mr. or Mrs. Sheldon +could take so long a journey; Mr. Sheldon being bound hand and foot to +the mill-wheel of City life, Mrs. Sheldon being the slave and helpmeet of +her husband. Nor could dear Charlotte go to Malta alone, or attended only +by faithful Diana Paget. In short, there was no course so obvious or so +prudent as a hasty marriage, which would enable the invalid to seek a +milder clime, accompanied and guarded by her natural protector--a +husband. + +"Consent, dearest, I entreat you," wrote Valentine, in the little note +which supported Mrs. Sheldon's request, "however strange our wishes may +seem to you. Believe that it is for the best, for your own sake, for the +sake of all who love you, and ask no questions. Say only yes." + +To the prayer in this letter, to the entreaties of her mother and Diana, +Charlotte yielded. She wondered why Mr. Sheldon avoided her, and asked +anxiously, on more than one occasion, why she did not see that gentleman. + +"Is papa ill," she asked, "that he never comes to see how I am?" + +"The doctors have forbidden many people in your room, dear." + +"Yes, a few days ago, when I was so very ill; but now that I am better, +papa might come. I want to thank him for all his anxious care of me, and +to be sure that _he_ consents to this marriage." + +"My darling, be assured the marriage is for the best," pleaded Diana. + +And the marriage took place. + +Charlotte's innocent soul was thus spared the pain of a revelation which +must have cast a dark shadow on the bright beginning of her wedded life. +Georgy pledged herself to keep the fatal secret from her daughter; and +Diana Paget rewarded her discretion by the most patient attention to her +piteous and prosy lamentations upon the iniquity of mankind in general, +and Philip Sheldon in particular. + +Of that hideous secret of the past, lately revealed by Mr. Burkham, Mrs. +Sheldon had been told nothing. No good end could have been served by such +a revelation. The criminal law has its statute of limitations--unwritten, +but not the less existent. A crime which would have been difficult of +proof at the time of its commission must after the lapse of twelve years +have travelled beyond the pale of justice. For three people to come +forward and declare that at the time of Mr. Halliday's death they had +suspected Mr. Sheldon of poisoning him, would be to prove nothing to the +minds of a British jury, except that the three people in question were +libellous and ill-disposed persons. The greater the issue, the wider the +chances of escape given to the accused; and a petty offender will be +condemned for picking a pocket upon much lighter grounds than will be +considered sufficient to prove a man guilty of blowing up the Houses of +Parliament. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +AFTER THE WEDDING. + +The manner in which Mr. Sheldon would act in the future was a matter of +considerable fear to his wife. She had a hazy idea that he would come to +the pleasant Kilburn lodgings to claim her, and insist upon her sharing +his dreary future. + +"If I could only have a divorce," she said piteously, when she discussed +the subject with her son-in-law. "There ought to be divorces for such +dreadful things; but I never heard of one before Sir Creswick, +or the new judge, whose name I can't remember. O Valentine, I cannot live +with him; I cannot sit down to dinner day after day with such a man as +that. And to think that I should have known him when I was the merest +girl, and have danced my very first polka with him when it first came in, +and people wore polka boots and polka jackets, and wrote their notes of +invitation upon polka paper, and sang polka songs, and worked polking +peasants in Berlin wool, and went on altogether in the most absurd +manner. And O Valentine, whom can one trust, if not the man one has known +all one's life!" + +Mr. Hawkehurst pledged himself to protect his mother-in-law from any +attempt at persecution upon the part of her husband. He did not know what +difficulties he might have to encounter in the performance of this +pledge; for, in his ignorance of the stockbroker's desperate +circumstances, he imagined that Philip Sheldon would make some attempt to +right himself in the eyes of the world, by compelling his wife to +reassume her position in his house. + +He went to George Sheldon's office within a few days after his marriage +to take counsel from that astute adviser. He found the lawyer hard at +work, and in very good spirits. It was by his advice the marriage had +been hurried on; Charlotte's stealthy removal from the house while Philip +Sheldon slumbered had been planned by him; and he was triumphant in the +thought that the plot had succeeded so well, and that Philip, the coolest +and deepest of schemers, had been so completely baffled. + +"That Ann Woolper is a treasure," he said; "I didn't think it was in her +to do what she has done. Nothing could be neater than the way she kept +Phil at bay; and nothing could be better than her tact and cleverness in +getting Charlotte and her mother quietly off the other morning while my +precious brother was in the land of nod." + +"Yes, she has been invaluable to us." + +"And that girl Paget, too; she has turned out a regular trump. I used to +think her a very stiff, consequential piece of goods when I saw her at +the Lawn; but, egad, she has shown herself the genuine metal all through +this business. Now that's a young woman I wouldn't mind making Mrs. +George Sheldon any day in the week." + +"You do her too much honour," said Valentine, with an internal shiver. +"Unhappily, a prior engagement will prevent Miss Paget's availing herself +of so excellent an opportunity." + +"It mayn't be such a very bad chance as you seem to think it, my friend," +George replied, with some indignation. "Whenever the Reverend John +Haygarth's estate drops in, I stand to win fifty thousand pounds. And +that's not so bad for a start in life, I suppose you haven't forgotten +that your wife is heir-at-law to a hundred thousand pounds?" + +"No, I have not forgotten her position in relation to the Haygarth +estate." + +"Humph! I should rather think not. People don't generally forget that +kind of thing. But you are uncommonly cool about the business." + +"Yes, I have passed through a fiery furnace in which all the bullion in +the Bank of England will not serve a man. That kind of ordeal upsets +one's old notions as to the value of money. And, again, I have never been +able to contemplate Charlotte's inheritance of that fortune as anything +but a remote contingency; the business is so slow." + +"Yes, but it has been going on. Affidavits have been made; the whole +affair is in progress." + +"I am glad to hear it. Don't think that I pretend not to value the +prospect of wealth; I have only learnt to know that money is not the +be-all and end-all of life. I could be very happy with my dear wife if +there were no prospect of this Haygarthian inheritance; but if it does +come to us, we shall, no doubt, be all the happier. The millionaire sees +the world from a very pleasant point of view. I should like my dear girl +to be the mistress of as fair a home as money can buy for her." + +"Yes, and you'd like to have your name stand high in the statistics of +Government stockholders. Don't be sentimental, Hawkehurst; that kind of +thing won't wash. Thank God, we managed to save poor Tom's daughter from +the fangs of my brother Phil. But you can't suppose that I am going to +shut my eyes to the fact that this affair has been a very good thing for +you, and that you owe your chances of a great fortune entirely to me? You +don't pretend to forget _that_, I suppose?" said George Sheldon, with +some acrimony. + +"Why should I pretend to forget that, or any circumstance of our business +relations? I am perfectly aware that you started the hunt of the +Haygarths, and that to your investigations is to be traced the discovery +that proves my wife a claimant to the estate now held by the Crown." + +"Very good; that's outspoken and honest, at any rate. And now, how about +our agreement? It's only a parole agreement, but an honest man's word is +as good as his bond." + +"Our agreement!" repeated Valentine, with a puzzled expression of +countenance. "Upon my word, I forget." + +"Ah, I thought it would come to that; I thought you would manage to +forget the terms agreed upon by you and me in the event of your marriage +with Charlotte Halliday. My memory is not so short as yours; and I can +swear to a conversation between you and me in this room, in which you +consented to my taking half the Haygarthian estate as the price of my +discovery and the fair reward of my labours." + +"Yes," said Valentine, "I remember that conversation; and I remember +saying that the demand was a stiff one, but that I, as Charlotte's future +husband, would not oppose such a demand." + +"You remember that?" + +"I do; and if my wife is willing to consent to your terms, I will hold to +my promise." + +"Your wife's consent is not wanted. She married you without a settlement, +and her rights are merged in yours. To all intents and purposes, _you_ +are heir-at-law to John Haygarth's estate." + +Valentine laughed aloud; the whole affair seemed a tremendous joke. He, +the homeless, penniless, friendless reprobate of but one year ago--he, +the son and heir of a man who had been always on the verge of social +shipwreck for want of five pounds--he, of all other men upon this earth, +claimant against the Crown for an estate worth one hundred thousand +pounds! + +"The whole affair seems ridiculously improbable," he said. + +"My brother wouldn't have done what he did if the whole thing had seemed +improbable to him. However, we needn't estimate the chances for or +against; all I want is a legal agreement between you and me, securing my +share of the plunder." + +"I am ready to execute any reasonable agreement; but I am bound to +protect my wife's interests, and I must have a solicitor to act for me in +this affair. Greek must meet Greek, you know." + +"Very good. I could have conducted the business myself without the +interference of strangers; but if you are going in for extreme caution, +you'd better leave your wife's affairs in the hands of Messrs. Greenwood +and Greenwood, who have acted for her hitherto, and have all papers +relating to the case in their possession." + +"Greenwood and Greenwood? My dear girl told me she had signed some +document, and had seen some lawyers; but she did not tell me the nature +of the document, or the name of the lawyers. I have forborne to speak to +her on business matters. The treatment that she has undergone has left +her very nervous, and we try to keep all unpleasant subjects out of her +mind." + +"Yes, that's all very well; but business is business, you know. You'd +better see Messrs. Greenwood and Greenwood at once. Tell them of your +marriage. You'll have to keep Phil's conduct dark, of course; that is +understood between us. You must say the marriage was a love-match +against my brother's wish, romantic, sentimental, and so on. They'll +raise no objections when they find you are willing to leave the case in +their hands." + +"You have heard nothing of your brother?" + +"Well, no--nothing, or next to nothing. I called at his office yesterday. +He has not been there since the beginning of Charlotte's illness, and +there has been no letter or message for Orcott since your wedding-day. +Things look rather piscatorial, altogether. Orcott hints that Phil's +affairs are in queer street; but he's a shallow-headed fool, and knows +very little. It seems, by his account, that Phil was a Bull, and that +the fall in every species of stock has been ruin to him. You see, when a +man once goes in for the Bull business, he never by any chance turns +Bear--and _vice versa_. There's a kind of infatuation in the thing, and a +man sticks to his line until he's cleaned out--at least, that's what +stockbrokers have told me--and I believe it's pretty near the truth." + +This was all that Valentine could ascertain about Mr. Sheldon at present. +Every knock fluttered Georgy; every accidental visitor at the Kilburn +villa seemed like the swooping of eagle on dovecote. + +"I cannot get over the feeling that he will come and take me away with +him," she said. "If Sir Wilde Creswick would only do something, so that +my second husband mayn't be able to insist upon my living in that +dreadful, dreadful house, where I suffered such nights and days of agony, +that I am convinced the sight of chintz curtains lined with pink will +make me wretched as long as I live!" + +"My dear Mrs. Sheldon, he shall not come," said Valentine. + +"If I could only go ever so far away from him, and feel that there was +the sea, or something of that kind, between us!" + +"We will take you away--across the British Channel, or further still, if +you like. Diana and M. Lenoble are to be married soon; and directly +Lotta is strong enough for the journey we are to go over to Normandy, to +their chateau." + +"Chateau, indeed!" Mrs. Sheldon exclaimed peevishly. "The idea of Diana +Paget, without a sixpence, and with a regular scamp of a father, marrying +a man with a chateau, while my poor Charlotte--! I don't wish to wound +your feelings, Mr. Hawkehurst, but it really does seem hard." + +"It is hard that Lotta should not have married a prince--all the +grandeurs of a prince in a fairy tale would only be her due; but it +happens fortunately, you see, dear Mrs. Sheldon, that our sweet girl has +simple tastes, and does not languish for jewels or palaces. If she should +ever become rich--" + +"Ah," sighed, Georgy despondently, "I don't expect that. I can't +understand anything about this idea of a fine fortune that Mr. Sheldon +had got into his head. I know that my husband's mother was a Miss +Meynell, the daughter of a carpet-warehouseman in the city, and I can't +see how any grand fortune is to come to Charlotte through her. And as for +the Hallidays--Hyley and Newhall farms were all the property they ever +owned within the memory of man." + +"The fortune for which Charlotte is a claimant comes from the maternal +ancestor of Christian Meynell. I do not count upon her possession of it +as a certain good in the future. If it comes we will be thankful." + +"Is it a very large sum of money?" + +"Well, yes; I believe it is a considerable sum." + +"Twenty thousand pounds, perhaps?" + +"I have been told that it is as much." + +He did not want Georgy's weak mind to become possessed of the idea of +shadowy wealth. He remembered what Philip Sheldon had said to him on the +Christmas night in which they had paced the little Bayswater garden +together, and he felt that there was a substratum of common sense in that +scoundrel's artful warning. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +GREEK AGAINST GREEK. + +Valentine Hawkehurst called upon Mr. Greenwood, of the firm of Greenwood +and Greenwood, within a week of his marriage, and exhibited the +certificate to that gentleman. Mr. Greenwood received the information +with much solemnity, and even severity, of manner. + +"Are you aware that this is a very serious step which you have taken, +Mr. Hawkehurst?" he demanded, sternly. "You entrap--that is to say, +you persuade a lady into a hasty marriage--without consultation with +her legal advisers, without settlements of any kind whatever--while at +the same time you are aware that the lady in question is heir-at-law +to a very large fortune, proceedings for the recovery of which are +now pending. Pardon me if I observe that there is a want of +delicacy--of--a--hem--right-mindedness in the transaction." + +"The imputation contained in your remarks is not a pleasant one, Mr. +Greenwood," Valentine remarked quietly; "but I am quite willing to pardon +any injustice which you may inflict upon me by your desire to protect the +interests of your client. I think you will speedily discover that those +interests are in no way endangered by the lady's marriage with me. There +are social complications which are not to be settled by either law or +equity. Miss Halliday's surroundings of the last few months were of a +very painful nature; so painful, that the legal protection of marriage +became the only means of saving her from imminent peril. I cannot enter +more fully into those painful circumstances. I can only assure you that I +married your client with the consent and approval of her only near +relation, and uninfluenced in the smallest degree by mercenary +considerations. Whatever post-nuptial settlement you please to make for +my wife's protection I shall promptly execute." + +"You express yourself in a very honourable and highly creditable manner, +Mr. Hawkehurst," exclaimed the lawyer, with sudden cordiality; "and I beg +distinctly to withdraw any offensive observations I may have made just +now. Your own affairs are, I conclude, in a sufficiently solvent state?" + +"I do not owe a sixpence." + +"Good; and Mr. Sheldon, the lady's stepfather and my client--had you his +approval for this hasty marriage?" + +"The marriage took place without Mr. Sheldon's knowledge or consent." + +"May I ask your reason for this secrecy?" + +"No, Mr. Greenwood; it is just that one reason that I cannot tell you. +Accept my assurance that it was an all-powerful reason." + +"I am compelled to do so, if you decline to confide in my discretion; but +as Mr. Sheldon is my client, I am bound to think of his interests as well +as those of Miss Halliday--er--Mrs. Hawkehurst. I am somewhat surprised +that he has not called upon me since the marriage. He has been made aware +of that circumstance, I suppose?" + +"Yes; I wrote to him immediately after the ceremony, enclosing him a copy +of the certificate." + +"The marriage will make a considerable difference to him." + +"In what manner?" + +"Well, in the event of his stepdaughter's death. If she had died +unmarried and intestate, this fortune would have gone to her mother; +besides which, there was the insurance on Miss Halliday's life." + +"An insurance!" + +"Yes. Were you not apprised of that fact? Mr. Sheldon, with very natural +precaution, insured his stepdaughter's life for a considerable sum--in +point of fact, as I believe, five thousand pounds; so that, in case of +her death prior to the recovery of the Haygarth estate, her mother might +receive some solatium." + +"He had insured her life!" said Valentine, under his breath. + +This, then, was the key to the mystery. The Haygarthian inheritance was +but a remote contingency, a shadowy prize, which could scarcely have +tempted the secret assassin; but the insurance had offered the prospect +of immediate gain. The one link wanting to complete the chain of evidence +against Philip Sheldon was found. There was no longer a question as to +his motive. + +"This man knows of one insurance on her life," Valentine thought to +himself; "there may have been more than one." + +After a brief silence, in which Mr. Hawkehurst had been lost in thought, +the lawyer proceeded to discuss the terms of the post-nuptial settlement +necessary for the protection of his client's interests. In the course of +this discussion Valentine explained his position in relation to George +Sheldon, and stated the demands of that sharp practitioner. + +Mr. Greenwood was utterly aghast upon hearing Mr. Hawkehurst's views on +this subject. + +"You mean to tell me that this man claims a clear half of the Haygarth +estate--fifty thousand pounds--in consideration of his paltry +discoveries!" + +"Such is the demand he has made, and which I have pledged myself not to +oppose. He certainly does open his mouth very wide; but we are bound to +consider that but for these discoveries of his, my wife and my wife's +relatives would in all probability have gone down to their graves in +ignorance of their claim to this estate." + +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Hawkehurst. If Mr. George Sheldon had not made +the discovery, some one else would have made it sooner or later, depend +upon it. There would have been a little loss of time, that is all. There +are plenty of men of George Sheldon's class always on the look-out for +such chances as this--and for very small chances in comparison to this. +Why, I know a fellow, a Frenchman, called Fleurus, who will take as much +trouble about a few hundred pounds' worth of unclaimed stock as this man, +George Sheldon, has taken about the Haygarth succession. And he has +really the impudence to claim fifty thousand pounds from you?" + +"A claim which I have pledged myself not to oppose." + +"But which you have not pledged yourself to support. My dear Mr. +Hawkehurst, this is a business which you must allow me to settle for you, +as your wife's legal adviser. We will consider you quite out of the +question, if you please; you will thus come out of your relations to Mr. +George Sheldon with perfectly clean hands. You will not oppose his claim; +but I shall oppose him in my character of legal adviser to your wife. +Why, are you aware that this man executed an agreement with his brother, +consenting to receive a fifth share of the estate, and costs out of +pocket, in complete acquittance of all claims? I have an abstract of the +agreement, amongst Miss Halliday's--Mrs. Hawkehurst's papers." + +After some further discussion, Valentine agreed to leave the whole matter +in Mr. Greenwood's hands. Greek must meet Greek. Gray's Inn and the +Fields must settle this business between themselves. + +"I am only prince consort," he said, with a smile. "I pretend to no +actual interest in my wife's estate. I doubt, indeed, whether I should +not have felt more complete happiness in our marriage if she had not been +heiress to so large a fortune." + +At this Mr. Greenwood laughed outright. + +"Come, come, Mr. Hawkehurst," he exclaimed, "that really won't do. I am +an old stager, you know--a man of the world;--and you mustn't ask me to +believe that the idea of your wife's expectations can afford you anything +but unqualified satisfaction." + +"You cannot believe? No, perhaps not," Valentine answered, thoughtfully. +"But you do not know how nearly these expectations have lost me my wife. +And even now, when she is mine by virtue of a bond that only death can +loosen, it seems to me as if her wealth would make a kind of division +between us. There are people who will always consider me a lucky +adventurer, and look at my marriage as the result of clever scheming. I +cannot advertise to the world the fact that I loved Charlotte Halliday +from the first hour in which I saw her, and asked her to be my wife three +days before I discovered her claim to John Haygarth's estate. A man can't +go through the world with his justification pinned upon his breast. I +think it will be my fate to be misjudged all my life. A twelvemonth ago I +cared very little about the opinions of my fellow-men; but I want to be +worthy of my wife in the esteem of mankind, as well as in the depths of +my own moral consciousness." + +"Go and finish your honeymoon," said the lawyer, digging his client in +the ribs with elephantine playfulness; "the moon must be in her first +quarter, I should think. Go along with you, and leave me to tackle Mr. +George Sheldon." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +ONLY A DREAM. + +"I say, Lenoble," Captain Paget began abruptly one afternoon when his +daughter and his future son-in-law were in attendance upon his sofa, +"when are you and Diana to be married? There is nothing to hinder your +marriage now, you know." + +Diana looked at the speaker with a grave countenance. + +"Dear papa, there can be no marriage while you are so ill," she said +gently. + +"And afterwards, when I'm gone, you won't like to marry within six months +of your father's funeral; and you will be left alone in the world. You +can't hang on to Hawkehurst and his wife. The best thing you can do, +Lenoble, is to marry her out of hand, and let me see her by my bedside as +Madame Lenoble of Cotenoir. It will be some consolation for me to see +that day. I thought to have shared your home, with a run to Paris +occasionally just to freshen myself up a little; but that's all over now. +It does seem rather hard to me sometimes; and I think of Moses, and his +forty years in the Desert with those ill-conditioned Israelites, who were +always getting into some scrape of other--setting up golden calves, and +that kind of thing--if he turned his back on them for twenty-four hours. +A pack of ungrateful beggars too, always ready for mutiny--regular +radicals, begad! And he went through it all: the sand, and the _toujours_ +quails, and the ingratitude; and after forty years of it, when he saw the +Promised Land stretched before him green and fertile on the other side of +the river--he died! I've been through my desert, the dreary wanderings +over the barren sand, and the ingratitude of men I've served. Yes, I've +gone through it all; and just as I catch a glimpse of Canaan, the curtain +drops." + +On this they comforted him; and sustained him with the promise of a +brighter Canaan than Cotenoir. + +"Yes," he said in a dreamy voice, "I read about it very often. A city +with foundations of jasper and chalcedony, emerald and sardonyx; gates of +pearl, pavements of gold. That's what St. John the Evangelist saw in his +vision; and we've only his word for it. But there's something that I can +believe and can understand: 'In my Father's house there are many +mansions.' There's more hope for a sinful man of the world in that +promise than is all St. John's dreams about gates of pearl and +foundations of emerald." + +The Captain was failing fast. He had exchanged his easy-chair for a sofa +now; and the time seemed near at hand when he must exchange the sofa for +his bed. After that there would remain but one last change, to the +contemplation whereof the sick man was becoming daily more reconciled. + +He had read his Gospel more diligently of late, and had taken comfort +from those sublime pages. Do they not contain consolation, hope, promise +for all--for the weary man of the world as well as for the saint? There +is to be found the only creed that can adapt itself to every condition +of life, and has a margin wide enough for every weakness of erring +humanity. Buddhism may contain a scheme of morality almost as perfect; +Mahomet may have expounded hopes that seem well-nigh as divine; but in +the Gospel is the only system that will adapt itself at once to the +culture of the spiritual man, and the active life of the practical +worker in this lower world. + +Gustave Lenoble was only too glad to claim his promised wife a little +sooner than he had hoped to claim her. "Thou hast put me off long enough, +cruel," he said; "and now it is thy father's wish that our marriage +should be soon. It shall be this week; I will take no longer thine +excuses. We shall be the sooner ready to receive thy friends, thy +Charlotte and her Hawkehurst." + +Diana smiled. + +"Dear Gustave, you are always kind," she said. + +It was very sweet to her to think that her new home would afford a +pleasant haven for that dear friend who had sheltered her. And with +Charlotte, the dear adopted sister, would come the man she had once +loved, to share whose cares had once been the brightest dream. + +She wondered at her own inconstancy on perceiving how completely the +dream had flown. Before the stern realities of life--before sickness and +sorrow and the dread shadow of death--that schoolgirl's vision had +utterly melted away. It is just possible that Gustave's manly outspoken +love may have helped to blot from the tablet of her mind the fantastic +picture of the life that might have been. She scarcely knew whether this +was so; but she did know that a new and happier existence began for her +from the hour in which she gave her heart in all truth and loyalty to +Gustave Lenoble. + +The wedding was arranged to take place within a week of Captain Paget's +expressly declared wish. It was to be solemnised at a church near +Knightsbridge, and again at a Catholic chapel in the neighbourhood of +Sloane-street; by which double ceremonial a knot would be tied that no +legal quibble could hereafter loosen. Charlotte was just sufficiently +recovered to obtain permission to be present at the ceremonial, after +some little exercise of her persuasive powers with the medical +practitioner to whose care Dr. Jedd had committed her when all danger was +past. + +The Captain protested, with an eager insistence, that the wedding +breakfast should be eaten at his domicile. + +"And Val," he said, "be sure Val is with you. I have a secret to tell +him--a kind of atonement to make; some news to give him that he won't +quite relish, perhaps. But that's no fault of mine." + +"No bad news, I hope, papa; for Charlotte's sake as well as for +Valentine's." + +"That depends upon how they both take it. Your friend Charlotte is not +particularly fond of money, is she?" + +"Fond of money, papa? A baby knows as much of the value of money as +Lotta. Except to give to beggars in the streets, or to buy pretty +frivolous presents for her friends, she has neither use nor desire for +money. She is the most generous, most disinterested of created beings." + +"I'm very glad to hear it," said the Captain, drily. "And how about +Hawkehurst, now? Do you think it was a real love-match, his marriage with +Miss Halliday? No _arriere pensee_--no looking out for the main chance at +the bottom of his romantic attachment, eh, Di?" + +"No, papa. I am sure there was never truer love than his. I saw him under +most trying circumstances, and I can pledge myself for the truth of his +devotion." + +"I am very glad to hear it. Be sure you bring Hawkehurst and his wife to +my little breakfast. A chicken, a pine, a bottle of sparkling hock, and +a fond father's blessing, are all I shall give you; but the chicken and +the hock will be from Gunter, and the blessing from the bottom of a +paternal heart." + + * * * * * + +Bright shone the day that gave Diana to her husband, and very beautiful +looked the bride in her simple dress. Gustave Lenoble's marriage was no +less quietly performed than that union which had secured the safety of +Charlotte Halliday and the happiness of Valentine Hawkehurst. The shadow +of death hovered very near bride and bridegroom; for they knew full well +that he who was to preside that day at their simple marriage-feast would +soon have tasted that last sacred cup which has no after-flavour of +bitterness. + +The breakfast promised by the Captain was arranged with much elegance. +Hothouse flowers and fruits; wines with the icedew sparkling on the dark +glass; chickens and tongue, idealized by the confectioner's art, and +scarcely recognizable beneath rich glazings and embellishments of jellies +and forcemeats; the airiest and least earthly of lobster salads, and a +pyramid of coffee-ice, testified to the glory of the Belgravian purveyor. +It had been pleasant to Captain Paget to send his orders to Gunter, +certain of funds to meet the bill. It was almost a glimpse of that land +of milk and honey, that Canaan in Normandy, which he was never to +inhabit. + +He was very weak, very ill; but the excitement of the occasion in some +measure sustained and revivified him. The man who had been engaged to +nurse and wait upon him had attired him with much care in a dressing-gown +as elegant as the robe in which he had disported himself, a penniless +young cornet, in his luxurious garrison quarters, some fifty years +before. His loose white locks were crowned with an embroidered +smoking-cap; his patrician instep was set off by a dainty scarlet +slipper. He had put away the Gospel, and all thoughts of that dread +reckoning which he had really some shadowy desire and hope to settle +satisfactorily, by some poor dividend which might discharge his +obligations to that merciful Creditor who forgives so many just debts. +To-day he was of the world, worldly. It was a kind of _ante-mortem_ +lying-in-state--his last levee; and he was equal to the occasion. + +The prettily adorned table was drawn near the sofa where the invalid host +reclined, supported by numerous pillows. His daughter and her husband, +Valentine, Charlotte, and Georgy, made a little circle about him. His own +man, and a clerical-looking person from Gunter's, assisted at the airy +banquet. Very little was eaten by any of the guests, and it was a relief +to every one when the clerical personage and Captain Paget's factotum +retired, after serving tea and coffee with funereal solemnity. + +Valentine Hawkehurst was all gentleness and cordiality towards his old +taskmaster. The wrong must indeed be dire which is considered in such an +hour as this. Valentine remembered only that with this old man he had +seen many troubled days; and that for him the end of all earthly +wanderings was very near. + +The little banquet was not served in Captain Paget's ordinary +sitting-room. For this distinguished occasion the landlady had lent a +dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, just deserted by a +fashionable bachelor lodger who had left town at the close of the season. +This drawing-room on the ground floor, like the room above, overlooked +the Park, and to this apartment the Captain requested his guests to +adjourn, with the exception of Mr. Hawkehurst, some little time after the +departure of the servants. + +"I want to have a few words with Val in private," he said; "I have a +secret to communicate. Diana, show Mrs. Hawkehurst the Drive. You can see +the Bow from my room, but not from these lower windows. There are a good +many carriages still, but it is too late for the _creme de la creme_. I +remember when the West End was a desert at this time of year; but I have +lived to see the levelling of all distinctions, those of time as well as +of class." + +Charlotte and Diana retired to the adjoining room with Mrs. Sheldon and +M. Lenoble. Valentine was at a loss to imagine what manner of +confidential communication his late patron and employer could desire to +impart to him. The cautious Horatio waited until the rest of the party +were quite out of hearing, talking gaily by the open window, beyond which +appeared all the fluttering life and motion of summer leaves, all the +brightness of summer green below, and deep blue sky above. When they +seemed to him to be quite engaged with their own conversation, Captain +Paget turned to his old companion. + +"Val," he said, "we have seen hard times together we've roughed it among +strange places and strange people, you know and so on; and I think there +is a friendly kind of feeling between us?" + +He held out his poor wasted hand, and Valentine grasped it firmly in his +own with prompt cordiality. + +"My dear governor, I have no feeling in my heart that is not friendly to +you." + +This was perfectly true. + +"And even if I had been inclined to bear any grudge against you on +account of the old days, when, you know, you were a little apt to be +indifferent as to what scrape you left me in, provided you got off +scot-free yourself; if I had been inclined to remember that kind of thing +(which, on my honour, I am not), your daughter's noble courage and +devotion in the time of my dear wife's peril should have stood against +that old wrong. I cannot tell you how deeply I feel her goodness in that +bitter time." + +"She is a Paget," murmured the Captain, complacently. "_Noblesse +oblige._" + +Valentine could scarcely refrain from a smile as he remembered the many +occasions upon which the obligations of a noble lineage had weighed very +lightly on his aristocratic patron. + +"Yes, Val," the Captain resumed, in a dreamy tone, "we have seen many +strange things together. When I began my travels through this world, in +the palmy days of the Regency, I little thought what a weary journey it +was to be, and what queer people I was to encounter among my +fellow-passengers. However, I've come to the last stage of the long +journey now, and I thank Providence that it ends so comfortably." + +To this Valentine assented kindly, but he was at a loss to understand why +Captain Paget should have required the adjournment of the rest of the +party before giving utterance to these mild commonplaces. + +For some moments the invalid relapsed into thoughtful silence. Then, +rousing himself as if with an effort, he took a few sips of a cooling +drink that stood by his side, and began with a startling abruptness. + +"You remember your journey to Dorking, Val, last October, when you went +to see that mysterious old aunt of yours, eh?" + +Valentine blushed as the Captain recalled this cunningly-devised fable. + +"Yes," he said gravely; "I remember telling you that I was going to see +an aunt at Dorking." + +"An aunt who had a little bit of money, eh, Val?" asked the Captain, +with a grin. + +"Yes. I may have gone so far as to speak of a little bit of money." + +"And neither the aunt nor the bit of money ever existed, eh, Val? They +were mere figments of the brain; and instead of going to Dorking you went +to Ullerton, eh, Val? You stole a march upon me there. You wanted to +throw your old chum off the scent, eh? You thought you had got hold of a +good thing, and you were afraid your friend and companion might get a +share of it." + +"Well, you see, my friend and companion had a knack of getting the +lion's share. Besides, this good thing was not my own affair. I had to +protect the interest of another person--my employer, in point of fact; +and it was by his suggestion, and in compliance with his request, that +I invented that harmless fiction about Dorking. I don't think there +was any dishonourable dealing in the matter. We were soldiers of +fortune both; and the stratagem with which I protected myself against +you was a very innocent one. You would have employed any stratagem or +invented any fiction under the same circumstances. It was a case of +diamond cut diamond." + +"Precisely; and if the older soldier, if the free lance of many a +campaign, got the best of it in the long run, the younger freebooter +could hardly think himself ill-used--could he now, Val?" + +"Well, no, I suppose not," replied Valentine, puzzled by the significance +in the face of his old companion. That sly twinkle in the Captain's eyes, +that triumphant smile wreathing the Captain's lips, must surely mean +mischief. + +Valentine Hawkehurst remembered the vague suspicion that had flashed into +his mind on that Christmas Eve when Captain Paget and he had dined +together at a West End restaurant, and the Captain had toasted Charlotte +Halliday with a smile of sinister meaning. He began to anticipate some +startling and unpleasant revelation. He began to understand that in some +manner this inscrutible schemer had contrived to overreach him. + +"What are you going to tell me?" he asked. "I see there is some lurking +mischief in your mind. How was it you were at Ullerton when I was there? +I met you on the platform of the station, and I had a vague half +suspicion that you followed me up on more than one occasion. I saw a +glove in a man's parlour--a glove which I could have sworn to as yours. +But when I came back, you were so plausible with your talk of promoting +business, and so on, that I was fool enough to believe you. And I suppose +you cheated and tricked me after all?" + +"Cheated and tricked are hard words, my dear Val," said the Captain, with +delightful blandness. "I had as much right to transact imaginary business +in the promoting line at Ullerton as you had to visit a fictitious aunt +at Dorking. Self-interest was the governing principle in both cases. I do +not think you can have any right to consider yourself injured by me if I +did steal a march upon you, and follow close upon your heels throughout +that Ullerton business. I do not think that you can have, on moral +grounds, any justification for making a complaint against your old ally." + +"Well, I suppose you are right enough in that," said Valentine. + +"Shake hands upon it, then. I have not very long to live, and I want to +feel myself at peace with mankind. You see, if you had come to me in the +first place, in a frank and generous spirit, and had said, 'My dear +friend, here is a good thing; let us go into it together, and see what +there is to be made out of it,' you would have placed the matter on such +a footing that, as a man of honour, I should have been bound to regard +your interests as my own. But when you set up a separate interest, when +you try to throw dust in my eyes, to hoodwink me--me, Horatio Paget, +a man of the world, possessed of some little genius for social +diplomacy--you attempt to do that which no man ever yet succeeded in +doing, and you immediately release me from those obligations which an +honourable man holds sacred. It was my glove which you saw in Mr. +Goodge's parlour. I had a very satisfactory interview with that reverend +person while you were absent from Ullerton on some short excursion, as to +the purpose of which I am still in the dark. On certain terms Mr. Goodge +agreed to give me the privilege of selecting a stated number from the +letters of Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth. I have reason to believe that I made a +judicious choice; for the information thus obtained placed me at once +upon a track which I followed industriously until it led me to a +triumphant result." + +"I do not understand--" began Valentine; but the Captain did not allow +him time to say more. + +"You do not understand that there could be any other genealogical line +than that which you and George Sheldon fitted together so neatly. You +have neither of you the experience of life which alone gives wideness of +vision. You discovered the connections of the Haygarth and the Meynell +families in the past. That was a step in the right direction. The +discovery, so far as it went, was a triumph. You allowed the sense of +that triumph to intoxicate you. In a business which of all businesses +within the range of man's intellect most requires deliberation and +sobriety, you went to work in a fever of haste and excitement. Instead +of searching out _all_ the descendants of Christian Meynell, you pounce +upon the first descendant who comes to hand, and elect her, at your own +pleasure, sole heiress to the estate of the deceased John Haygarth. +You forget that there may be other descendants of the said Christian +Meynell--descendants standing prior to your wife Charlotte in the line of +succession." + +"I can imagine no such descendants existing," said Valentine, with a +puzzled manner. "You seem to have made yourself master of our business; +but there is one point upon which you are mistaken. George Sheldon and I +did not go to work in a fever of haste. We did fully and thoroughly +examine the pedigree of that person whom we--and legal advisers of +considerable standing--believe to be the sole heir-at-law to the Haygarth +estate; and we took good care to convince ourselves that there was no +other claimant in existence." + +"What do you call convincing yourselves?" + +"Christian Meynell had only three children--Samuel, Susan, and Charlotte. +The last, Charlotte, married James Halliday, of Newhall and Hyley farms; +the other two died unmarried." + +"How do you know that? How do you propose to demonstrate that Samuel and +Susan Meynell died unmarried?" + +"Susan was buried in her maiden name. Mrs. Halliday, her sister, was with +her when she died. There was no question of marriage; nor is there the +record of any marriage contracted by Samuel." + +"All that is no proof." + +"Indeed! I should have thought the evidence sufficient. But, in any case, +the _onus probandi_ is not upon us. Can you prove the marriage of the +Samuel Meynell who died at Calais, or of the Susan Meynell who died in +London?" + +"I can. Susan Meynell's legitimate son is in the next room. It's an +unpleasant kind of revelation to make, Val; as he, the son of one sister, +stands prior to your wife, the granddaughter of the other sister, in the +order of succession. AND HE TAKES ALL!" + +"He takes all!" repeated Valentine, bewildered. "He! Susan Meynell's +son?--in the next room? What does all this mean?" + +"It means that when Susan was deserted by the scoundrel who took her away +from her home, she found an honest fellow to marry her. The name of her +husband was Lenoble. Gustave Lenoble yonder, my daughter's husband, is +her only child by that marriage. A perfectly legal marriage, my dear +Val--everything _en regle_, I assure you. The business is in the hands of +Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon of Whitehall--a first-class firm; counsel's +opinion most decided as to Lenoble's position. They have been rather slow +about the preliminary steps; and, _entre nous_, I have not cared to hurry +them, for I wanted to get my daughter's marriage over quietly before we +began our proceedings in Chancery. It comes rather hard upon you, Val, I +allow; but, you see, if you had acted generously, not to say honourably, +towards me in the first instance, you'd have had the advantage of my +experience. As it is, you have been working in the dark. However, things +are not so bad as they might be. You might have married some ugly old +harridan for the sake of this Haygarth estate; you have secured a pretty +and amiable wife, and you mustn't be downhearted if you find yourself, +from a financial point of view, most outrageously sold." + +The Captain could not refrain from a laugh as he contemplated his young +friend's surprise. The laugh degenerated into a fit of coughing, and it +was some little time before the enfeebled Horatio was ready to resume the +interrupted conversation. In this pause Valentine had leisure to face +this new position. There was for the moment a sharp sense of +disappointment. It is not possible for humanity to be quite indifferent +to a hundred thousand pounds. So much of the "light and sweetness" of +life is attainable for that sum,--such pleasures, of the purest and +noblest, are in the power of the possessor. But in this moment Valentine +fully realized the fact that he had never taken the idea of this fortune +into his mind--never made it part and parcel of himself, to be plucked +out of his heart with anguish, and to leave a bleeding wound in the place +where it had grown. It seemed to him as if he had been wakened abruptly +from some bright bewildering dream; but the sharp pang of mercenary +desires disappointed, of sordid hopes suddenly reft, was not for him. + +Beyond this sense of uncertainty, which had made the Haygarthian fortune +seem at best such "stuff as dreams are made of," there had been ever +present in his mind of late the dismal association connected with this +money. For this, and to get power over this through the rights of his +weak wife, had Philip Sheldon plotted against the life of that sweet girl +who was but newly rescued from the jaws of the grave. The bitter memory +of those days and nights of suspense could never have been quite +dissociated from the money that had been the primary cause of all this +slow torture. + +"Do you think I shall love my wife any less because she has no claim to +the Haygarth estate?" he exclaimed presently, looking with +half-contemptuous indignation upon the broken-down Bohemer. "I loved her +long before I knew the name of Haygarth; I should have loved her if I had +found her a beggar in the London streets, a peasant-girl weeding for +sixpence a day in some dismal swamp of agricultural poverty and +ignorance. I am not going to say that this money would not have brought +us pleasure; pictures and gardens, and bright rooms, and books without +number, and intercourse with congenial acquaintance and delightful +journeyings to all the fairest places upon the earth, and the power to do +some good in our generation, and a sense of security for our future, and +by-and-by, perhaps, for the future of dear children, for whose prosperity +we should be more anxious than for our own. Pleasure the money would most +probably have brought for us in abundance; but I doubt if it could buy us +more perfect happiness than we may know in the simplest home that my toil +can support. Ah, Captain, I question if you ever knew the sweetest +sensation life can give--the delight of working for those we love." + +Captain Paget stared at his sometime protege in a kind of rapture of +wonder, not entirely unmingled with admiration. + +"Egad!" he exclaimed, "I have read of this kind of thing in novels; but +in the whole course of my experience I never met with anything equal to +it. My son-in-law, Lenoble yonder, is a generous foo--fellow enough; but +then, since infancy, he has never known the want of money. And generosity +from that kind of man is no more of a virtue than the foolhardiness of a +child who pokes his finger into the candle, not knowing the properties of +the thing he has to deal with. But anything like generosity from you, +from a man reared as you were reared, is, I freely confess, a little +beyond my comprehension." + +"Yes; it is a transformation, is it not? But I don't think I was ever +inordinately fond of money. Your genuine Bohemian rarely is. He is too +well schooled in the art of living without cash, and he asks so little +here below. His pipe, his friend, his dog, his books, his garret, his +billiards, his beer. It is all a question of a few pounds a week. And if, +some day, the divine enchanter Love takes the poor fellow underbids +guidance, and teaches him to do without billiards and beer, your Bohemian +settles down into the purest and best of men. Think what Goldy might have +been if some good woman had taken compassion upon him and married him, +and henpecked him ever afterwards. He might have written as many novels +as Sir Walter Scott, and died master of some Hibernian Abbotsford, some +fair domain among the bright green hills that look down upon broad +Shannon's silvery falls. No, Captain; your intelligence has not +annihilated me. I can face the future boldly with my dear young wife upon +my arm." + +"Upon my soul, Val, you're a very noble fellow!" exclaimed Horatio Paget, +with real enthusiasm; "and I am sorry I have kept you in the dark so +long." + +"You have kept me in the dark? Yes; to be sure. How long have you known +this--about Susan Meynell?" + +"Well, my dear boy, not very long." + +"But how long? A month--two months? Yes; you have known Lenoble's +position ever since you knew him; and Charlotte told me three months ago +of Diana's engagement to Lenoble. Do you know that if Sheldon had +succeeded, Charlotte's blood would have been upon your head? If you had +not concealed the truth, his villany would never have been attempted." + +"But, my dear Val," exclaimed the Captain piteously, "I was not to +know--" + +"No; you were not to know that there could be such a wretch as Philip +Sheldon upon this earth. We will say no more of that. I kept my secret, +you kept yours. Mischief unspeakable well-nigh came of all this underhand +work. But heaven has been merciful to us. We have passed through the +valley of the shadow of death; and if anything could make my wife dearer +to me than she was when first I won her promise to be mine, it would be +the sorrow of the last few months. And now I will go and shake hands with +Lenoble, my wife's kinsman. He is a fine fellow, and well deserves his +good fortune. Stay; one word. Did Diana know this? did she know that her +lover is heir to the Haygarth estate?" + +"She does not know it now. She has never heard the name of Haygarth. And, +between you and me, Val, it cost me a world of trouble to persuade her to +say yes to Lenoble's offer, though he is a very decent match for her, +even without reference to the Haygarth estate." + +"I am glad she knew nothing of this," said Valentine; "I am very glad." + +After this he again shook hands with Captain Paget, at that gentleman's +request, and the Captain expressed himself much relieved by the +conversation, and by his late protege's very generous behaviour. He +called to his daughter and the rest presently, and they came at his +summons. + +"Is your long talk finished, papa?" asked Diana. + +"And is the secret told?" demanded Charlotte of her obedient husband +and slave. + +"Yes, dear, it is told," he answered gravely. + +"I hope it is a pleasant secret." + +"I do not think the knowledge of it will give you much pain, dearest. +You have learnt to think yourself a--a kind of an heiress of late, +have you not?" + +"Papa--Mr. Sheldon--told me that I had a claim to some money; but I have +not thought much about it, except that I should give you Grote and +Macaulay in dark-brown calf, with bevelled boards and red edges, like +that edition you saw at the auctioneer's in Bond Street, and have talked +about ever since; and a horse, perhaps; and a glass porch to our +cottage." + +"Well, darling, the books in dark-brown calf, and the horse, and the +glass porch, may all be ours in the future; but the money was only a +dream--it has melted away, dear." + +"Is that all?" asked Charlotte. "Why, I dare say the day will come when +you will be as rich as Sir Walter Scott." + +"In the meantime I have something to give you instead of the money." + +"Indeed!" + +"Yes; a cousin. Will that do as well, my love?" + +"A cousin? I shall like her very much if she is nice." + +"The cousin I mean is a gentleman." + +"But where is he to come from?" cried Charlotte, laughing. Has he +dropped from the moon? The only relations I have the world are Uncle and +Aunt Mercer. How can you pretend to find me a cousin?" + +"Do you remember telling me of your grandmother's only sister--Susan +Meynell?" + +"Yes," said Charlotte, with a sudden blush; "I remember." + +"That Miss Meynell married a gentleman of Normandy, and left one only +child, a son. His name is Gustave Lenoble, and he is standing by your +side. He is heir-at-law to a very large fortune, which it was once +supposed you could claim. Are you sorry, Lotta, to find a kinsman and +lose a fortune?--and are you contented to begin the world with no hope +except in your husband's patience and courage?" + +"And genius!" cried Charlotte, with enthusiasm. + +The sweet, blinding glamour of love shone upon this young scribbler, and +she believed that he was indeed worthy to take rank among the greatest of +that grand brotherhood of which he was so humble a member. She looked up +at him with the prettiest confidence; her clinging hand clasped his with +love and trust immeasurable. He felt and knew that love like this was a +treasure beside which the Reverend John Haygarth's hoarded thousands must +needs seem but sorry dross. + +After this there was much explanation and congratulation. Gustave Lenoble +was delighted to claim so fair a kinswoman. + +"Thou art like my eldest, my cousin," he said; "Diana saw the likeness at +the Sacre Coeur when she beheld my daughter; and I too saw my eldest's +look in thine eyes when I first met thee. Remember, it was convened +between us that Cotenoir should be a home for thee and for Hawkehurst +before I knew what link bound thee to the house of Lenoble. Now thou and +thy husband will be of our family." + +Diana was bewildered, grieved, indignant with the father who had deceived +her by his studious suppression of the truth. She found herself placed in +the position of rival to Charlotte, and the whole proceeding seemed to +her mean and treacherous. + +But it was no time for remonstrance or open expression of indignant +feeling. Her father's days were numbered. She knew this, and she held her +peace. Nor did Mrs. Sheldon utter any word of complaint, though the +disappointment she experienced upon hearing this revelation was very +keen. The idea of the four or five thousand pounds which were to come to +Charlotte had been a consolation to her in the midst of that confusion +and desolation which had newly come upon her life. She left Knightsbridge +that evening somewhat depressed in spirits, and half inclined to be angry +with Charlotte and her husband for their gaiety of manner, and evident +happiness in each other's society. + +"It seems hard to have to begin the world at my age," she murmured +hopelessly, "after being accustomed to have everything nice about me, as +I had at the Lawn; though I own that the trouble and care of the servants +was wearing me to the grave." + +"Dear mamma," exclaimed Charlotte tenderly, "there is no fear of trouble +or poverty for you or for us. Valentine has plenty of money, and is on +the high road to securing a comfortable income. Authors do not starve in +garrets now, you know, as they used to do, poor things, when Doctor +Johnson ate his dinner in a cave, or something dreadful of that kind; and +when Sir Richard Steele thought it quite a wonderful thing to get a pound +of tea for his wife. And Valentine's heart is in his profession, and he +will work for us." + +"As long as I have a hand that can write, and a brain that can guide my +pen," interposed Mr. Hawkehurst, gaily. "I have given hostages to +Fortune. I can face the hazard boldly I feel as confident and as happy as +if we lived in the golden age, when there was neither care nor toil for +innocent mankind, and all the brightest things of earth were the +spontaneous gift of the gods." + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE. + +Monsieur and Madame Lenoble went to Brighton for their honeymoon. A +letter or a telegraphic message would bring them thence swiftly to the +bedside of the dying Captain, should the last fatal change set in +suddenly. Diana had wished to stay with her father, but Horatio insisted +upon the honeymoon trip, and that everything should be done in a correct +and gentlemanly manner. + +"You can engage rooms at the Albion," Captain Paget had said to his +son-in-law a few days before the quiet wedding. "The house is extremely +comfortable; and you will be received by a compatriot. The proprietor is +a Frenchman, and a very gentlemanly person, I assure you; the _cuisine_ +irreproachable. I remember the old Steyne when Mrs. FitzHerbert lived +close by, and received all the best people, in the days when the Cockney +had not yet taken possession of Brighthelmstone, and the Chinese dragons +and pagodas were bright and fresh in the Pavilion." + +To Brighton, therefore, the bride and bridegroom departed; Diana attended +by a maid, an appanage which the Captain had insisted upon. Poor Diana +was sorely puzzled as to what she should find for the maid to do when her +hair had been dressed early in the morning, and her costume laid out in +state for the day. + +"I think I must buy some handkerchiefs for her to hem," she said to +Gustave; "it will be quite dreadful for her to have nothing to do all +day long." + +The weather was warm and bright. The sea danced and sparkled under the +windows. Gustave was always in the same happy frame of mind. An elegant +landau had been secured for the period of their visit, and a pair of +capital horses carried them out on long and pleasant expeditions to the +pretty Sussex villages, or across the broad bare downs, beyond which the +sea stretched blue and bright. + +In the evening, when the lamp was lighted and the urn hissed gaily, Diana +felt that she and her husband were at home. It was the first home she had +known--the first time she had been sole mistress and centre of a +household. She looked back at all the old desolation, the dreary shifting +from lodging to lodging, the degradation, the self-abasement, the dull +apathy of despair; and then she looked across at her husband as he +lounged in his easy-chair, contemplating her with dreamy adoring eye, in +a kind of lazy worship; and she knew that for this man she was the centre +of the universe, the very keystone in the arch of life. + +She stretched out her hand to him with a smile, and he pressed it fondly +to his lips. There were twinkling jewels upon the slender fingers; for +the prettiest shop in Brighton--the brightest shop in Brighton--had been +ransacked that morning by the fond, frivolous, happy husband, as pleased +to bedeck his wife as a child to dress her last new doll. + +"How can I ever be worthy of so much affection, Gustave!" she exclaimed, +as he kissed the twinkling fingers. + +And it did indeed seem to her that for this free gift of love she could +never render a sufficient recompense. + +"Thou wilt make Cotenoir a home," he said; "thou knowest not how I have +sighed for a home. This room, with the lamplight shining on thy face, and +thy white hands moving about the teacups, and thy sweet smile, which +greets me every now and then when thou lookest by here,--it is more of +home than I have ever known since I left Beaubocage, that modest dwelling +where lived those two angels of kindness, my aunt and my grandmother." + +In one of those long pleasant drives to a distant village nestling under +the lee of a steep hill, the husband and wife had much serious talk about +the position of the former with reference to the Haygarth estate. The +result of that conversation was shown in a letter which Charlotte +Hawkehurst received the next day from her friend Diana Lenoble. + +"Albion Hotel, Brighton. + +"EVER DEAR LOTTA,--Gustave and I have discussed the Haygarth business +with great satisfaction to ourselves, since it transpired in the course +of our conversation that we are both of one mind in the matter. It is +agreed between us that, as he is very well off already, and as he never +hoped or expected to inherit a fortune from his maternal ancestor, it is +only just that he should divide this unlooked-for wealth with his dear +cousin, whose claim to that inheritance he recognizes as equal to his +own; the mere fact of seniority making only a legal and not a moral +difference in the degree of relationship to the Reverend John Haygarth. +Do you understand, darling?--_you_ are to have half this money. My +husband will not step in between you and good fortune. I cannot tell you +how happy this determination of Gustave's has made me. I felt myself in a +manner base and ungrateful when I thought I was to share wealth that +might have been yours; but I ought to have better understood the justice +of my husband's mind. And now, dearest, all will be arranged very simply; +Gustave will come to London and see his lawyers, and execute some kind of +deed, and the whole affair will be settled. + +"We have had some charming drive," &c. &c. + +Here the young wife branched off into a description of the simple +pleasures of their honeymoon holiday. + +This letter was answered by Valentine Hawkehurst in person. He came down +to Brighton to thank his friends for their generous desire to enrich his +wife, and to decline, on her part, any share in John Haygarth's wealth. + +It was in vain that Gustave and Diana argued the point, Mr. Hawkehurst +was fixed as fate. + +"Believe me, it is better as it is," he said. "Charlotte and I have +arrived at this conviction with all due thought and deliberation. We are +both young, and the world is all before us. There is much in the past +that I have to redeem, as Diana well knows. It is better that I should +fight the battle of life unaided, and rise from the ranks by right of my +merit as a soldier. If ever we have need of help--if ever I find myself +breaking down--you may be sure that it is to you I shall come. By and by, +if Providence gives me children to work for, I will refuse no bounty that +you may bestow on them. Their future may be rendered secure by your +generosity, if you please, Lenoble; they will be your kindred. But for an +alien like myself there is no discipline so wholesome as honest hard +work. I am as rich as John Milton when he set up a school in St. Bride's +Churchyard." + +To this resolution Mr. Hawkehurst adhered with a gentle firmness. + +"Thou art chivalrous like Don Quixote," said Gustave Lenoble; "but it +shall be as thou wouldest. Touch there." + +He offered his hand, which the other grasped with all heartiness. + +"I will be godfather to thy little first one, and I will settle on him +ten thousand pounds before he cuts his first tooth," said Gustave +decisively. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +BEYOND THE VEIL. + +Diana and her husband did not linger long at Brighton; they went back to +town in time to see the last of that old wayfarer whose troubled journey +came to so peaceful an ending. It was a very calm haven in which this +battered old privateer lay at anchor after life's tempestuous course; but +to the Captain himself it seemed a hard thing that he should not have +been permitted one brief cruise upon that summer sea which danced so +gaily beneath the keel of the Lenobles' prosperous bark. + +"We have shared adversity, my love," he said sadly, when he talked with +his daughter in the last few days; "but your prosperity I am to have no +share in. Well, I suppose I have no right to complain. My life has been +an erring one; but poverty is the most vicious companion that a man can +consort with. If I had come into six or seven thousand a year, I might +have been as starch in my notions as a bishop; but I have been obliged to +live, Diana--that was the primary necessity, and I learnt to accommodate +myself to it." + +That he had erred, the Captain was very ready to acknowledge. That he had +sinned deeply, and had much need to repent himself of his iniquity, he +was very slow to perceive. But sometimes, in the still watches of the +night, when the faint lamplight on the shadowy wall was more gloomy than +darkness, when the nurse, hired to assist his own man in these last days, +dozed in her comfortable chair, the truth came hope to his shallow soul, +and Horatio Paget knew that he had been indeed a sinner, and very vile +among sinners. Then, for a moment, the veil of self-deception was lifted, +and he saw his past life as it had really been,--selfish, dishonourable, +cruel beyond measure in reckless injury of others. For a moment the awful +book was opened, and the sinner saw the fearful sum set against his name. + +"What can wipe out the dread account?" he asked himself. "Is there such a +thing as forgiveness for a selfish useless life--a life which is one long +offence against God and man?" + +In these long wakeful nights the dying man thought much of his wife. The +sweet tender face came back to him, with its mournful wondering look. He +knew, now, how his falsehoods and dishonours had wounded and oppressed +that gentle soul. He remembered how often she had pleaded for the right, +and how he had ridiculed her arguments, and set at naught her tender +pleadings. He had fancied her in a manner inimical to himself when she +urged the cause of some angry creditor or meek deluded landlady. Now, +with the light that is not upon earth or sea shining on the picture of +his past career, he could see and understand things as he had never seen +or understood them before. He knew now that it was for his own sake that +faithful and devoted wife had pleaded, his own interest that had been +near to her pitying heart, as well as the interest of bakers and +butchers, landladies and tailors. + +"She might have made a good man of me, if I had let her have her way," he +thought to himself. "I know that she is in heaven. Will she plead for me, +I wonder, at the foot of the Great Throne? I used to laugh at her bad +English, or fly in a passion with her sometimes, poor soul, when I wanted +her to pass for a lady, and she broke down outrageously. But there her +voice will be heard when mine appeals in vain. Dear soul! I wonder who +taught her to be so pure and unselfish, and trusting and faithful? She +was a Christian without knowing it. 'I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of +heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and +prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.'" + +He thought of his wife's lonely deathbed, and compared it with his own. +For him there was luxury; by him watched a devoted and all-forgiving +daughter, a generous friend and son-in-law. All that could be done to +soothe the painful descent was done for him. For her there had been +nothing but loneliness and sorrow. + +"But she might be certain of a speedy welcome in a better home," thought +Horatio; "and I--? Ah, dear kind creature, _there_ the difference was all +in her favour." + +As the closing scene grew nearer, he thought more and more of his gentle +low-born wife, whose hold upon him in life had been so slender, whose +memory had occupied until now so insignificant a place in his mind. His +daughter watched with him unceasingly in the last two days and nights. +His mind wandered. On the day of his death he mistook Diana for that +long-lost companion. + +"I have not been a kind husband, Mary, my dear," he faltered; "but +the world has been hard upon me--debts--difficulties--crack +regiment--expensive mess--set of gamblers--no pity on a young man without +fortune--force of example--tied a millstone round my wretched neck before +I was twenty-one years of age." + +Later, when the doctor had felt his pulse for the last time, he cried out +suddenly, "I have made a statement of my affairs, the liabilities are +numerous--the assets nil; but I rely on the clemency of this court." + +These were his last words. He sank into a kind of stupor betwixt sleeping +and waking, and in this he died. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +BETTER THAN GOLD. + +The little fleet of paper boats which Mr. Sheldon had pioneered so +skilfully over the commercial seas came to grief very soon after the +disappearance of the admiral. A bill drawn upon the Honduras Mahogany +Company, Limited, was the first to reach maturity. The bill was referred +to the drawer--the drawer was not to be found. + +"I have not seen Sheldon for the last fortnight," Mr. Orcott informed the +gentleman who brought him the document. + +"Out of business for a fortnight?" + +"He has not been in business for a month. His stepdaughter has been very +ill--at death's door, and all that kind of thing, and my governor was +awfully cut up about it. There used to be a couple of doctors at the +house every day, and no end of fuss. I took Sheldon his letters, and +managed matters for him here, and so on. And one fine morning my young +lady runs off and gets married on the quiet; so I suspect there was a +good deal of shamming about the illness--and those old fogies, the +doctors, winked at it. Between them all, I fancy Sheldon was completely +sold; and he has turned savage and gone off somewhere in the sulks." + +"I wish he had chosen any other time for his sulks," said the holder of +the bill; "my partner and I have discounted several acceptances for him. +He gave us liberal terms, and we considered any paper of his as safe as a +Bank of England note; and now this confounded bill comes back to us +through our bankers, noted, 'Refer to drawer'--a most unpleasant thing, +you know, and very inconsiderate of Sheldon to leave us in such a fix." + +"He has forgotten the bill, I suppose," said Mr. Orcott. + +"Well, but you see, really now, a business man ought not to forget that +kind of thing. And so Miss Halliday has made a runaway match, has she? I +remember seeing her when I dined at Bayswater--an uncommonly fine girl. +And she has gone and thrown herself away upon some penniless scapegrace, +most likely? Now, by the bye, how about this Honduras Company, Mr. +Orcott; they don't seem to have any London offices?" + +"I believe not. We've some of their prospectuses somewhere about, I +think. Would you like to see one?" + +"I should, very much." + +Mr. Orcott opened two or three drawers, and after some little trouble +produced the required document. + +It was a very flourishing prospectus, setting forth the enormous +benefits to be derived by shareholders from the profitable dealings of the +company. Some good high-sounding names figured in the list of directors, +and the chairman was Captain H. N. Cromie Paget. The prospectus looked +well enough, but the holder of Mr. Sheldon's dishonoured bill was not +able to derive much comfort from high-sounding phrases and high-sounding +names. + +"I'll go down to Bayswater, and see if I can hear anything of your +governor," he said to Mr. Orcott. + +"He was not there yesterday when I called, and his servants could tell me +nothing of his whereabouts," the young Yorkshireman said very coolly. + +"Indeed!" cried the holder of the dishonoured bill in some alarm. "Now, +really, that is not right; a business man ought not to do that kind of +thing." + +He called a cab and drove to the Lawn. There was the smart gothic villa, +with its pointed gables, and florid chimneys, and oriel windows, and in +the Tudor casements of the ground-floor appeared the bills of a West-end +auctioneer, announcing in large letters that the lease of this charming +mansion, together with the nearly new furniture, linen, books, china, +plate, carefully-selected proof-prints after distinguished modern +artists, small cellar of choice wines, &c., &c., &c., would be disposed +of by auction on the following day. + +Mr. Sheldon's victim went into the house, where he found some men +preparing for the forthcoming sale. + +"What is the meaning of all this?" he asked, aghast. + +"A bill of sale, sir. Messrs. Napthali and Zabulon." + +This was enough. The holder of the bill went back to the City. Another +bill came due on the following day, and before the members of the Stock +Exchange took their luncheon, it was known that Philip Sheldon's credit +was among the things of the past. + +"I always thought he was out of his depth," said one set of talkers. + +"He was the last man I should have expected to see come to grief," said +another set of talkers. + +On settling-day came the awful proclamation--Philip Sheldon had +absconded, and would not meet his differences. + +On the same day came a terrible revelation to Mr. George Sheldon, of +Gray's Inn, solicitor, genealogist, and pedigree hunter. The first +official step in the advancement of Gustave Lenoble's claim against the +Crown was taken by Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon, the solicitors, of +Whitehall; and George Sheldon discovered that between Charlotte +Hawkehurst and the Haygarth estate there stood a prior claimant, whereby +all his toil, trouble, costs out of pocket, and wear and tear of body and +mind, had been wasted. + +"It is enough to make a man go and cut his throat," cried George, in his +first savage sense of utter disappointment. + +He went into his slovenly bedroom, and took out one of his razors, and +felt the corrugated surface of the left side of his neck meditatively. +But the razor was blunt, and the corrugated surface seemed very tough and +unmanageable; so George Sheldon decided that this kind of operation was +an affair which might be deferred. + +He heard the next day that his brother was _non est_, and, in his own +phraseology, that there was a pretty kettle of fish in the City. + +"Upon my word, Phil and I seem to have brought our pigs to a very nice +market," he said. "I dare say, wherever that fellow has gone, he has +carried a well-lined purse with him. But I wouldn't have his conscience +for all the wealth of the Rothschilds. It's bad enough to see Tom +Halliday's face as I see it sometimes. What must it be to _him_?" + +A little more than a year after this, and the yellow corn was waving on +the fertile plains of Normandy, fruit ripening in orchards on hillside +and in valley; merry holiday folks splashing and dabbling in the waves +that wash the yellow sands of Dieppe; horses coming to grief in Norman +steeplechases; desperate gamesters losing their francs and half-francs in +all kinds of frivolous games in the Dieppe _etablissement_; and yonder, +in the heart of Normandy, beyond the tall steeples of Rouen, a happy +family assembled at the Chateau Cotenoir. + +One happy family--two happy families rather, but so closely united by the +bonds of love and friendship as to seem indeed one. Here are Gustave +Lenoble and his young wife Diana, with two tall slender damsels by their +side; and here is Valentine Hawkehurst, the successful young scribbler, +with his fair young wife Charlotte; and out on the terrace yonder are two +nurses walking with two babies, at that early, and, to some minds, +obnoxious stage of babyhood in which a perpetual rocking, and pacing to +and fro, and swaying backwards and forwards in the air, is necessary for +the preservation of anything approaching tranquillity. But to the minds +of the two young mothers and the two proud fathers, these small creatures +in their long white robes seem something too bright for earth. The united +ages of the babies do not amount to six months; but the mothers have +counted every gradual stage of these young lives, and to both it seems as +if there had been no time in which the children were not, with so firm a +hold have they possessed themselves of every thought in the foolish +maternal mind, of every impulse in the weak maternal heart. + +Mrs. Hawkehurst has brought her son to see his aunt Diana; for Diana has +insisted upon assuming that relationship by letters-patent, as it were. +Madame Lenoble's baby is a daughter, and this fact in itself seems to the +two friends to be a special interposition of Providence. + +"Would it not be delightful if they should grow up to love each other and +marry?" exclaimed Diana; and Charlotte agreed with her that such an event +in the future did indeed seem in a manner foreshadowed by the conduct of +the infants in the present. + +"He takes notice of her already!" she exclaimed, looking out at the +little creature in white muslin robes, held up against the warm blue sky; +"see, they are cooing at each other! I am sure that must be cooing." + +And then the two mothers went out upon the sunny terrace-walk and fondly +contemplated these domestic treasures, until the domestic treasures were +seized with some of the inexplicable throes and mysterious agonies of +early babyhood, and had to be borne off shrieking to their nurseries. + +"Dear angel," said Gustave, of his "little last one," "she has the very +shriek of Clarice here, poignant and penetrating, until to drown the +heart. Dost thou figure to thyself that thy voice was penetrating as +that, my beautiful, in the time?" + +He kissed his beautiful, and she ran off to join the procession following +the two babies,--alarmed nurses, distracted mammas, shrieking infants, +anxious damsels. + +"_C'est un vrai tourbillon_," as Gustave remarked to his companion +Valentine Hawkehurst; "these women, how they love their children! What of +saints, what of Madonnas, what of angels!" + +Whereupon he spouted Victor Hugo: + +"Lorsque l'enfant parait, le cercle de famille +Applaudit a grands cris; son doux regard qui brille +Fait briller tous les yeux; +Et les plus tristes fronts, les plus souilles peut-etre, +Se derident soudain a voir l'enfant paraitre, +Innocent et joyeux." + +All things had gone well for M. Lenoble. His direct descent from Matthew +Haygarth, the father of the intestate, had been proved to the +satisfaction of Crown lawyers and High Court of Chancery, and he had been +in due course placed in possession of the reverend intestate's estate, to +the profit and pleasure of his solicitors and M. Fleurus, and to the +unspeakable aggravation of George Sheldon, who washed his hands at once +and for ever of all genealogical research, and fell back in an embittered +and angry spirit upon the smaller profits to be derived from petty +transactions in the bill-discounting line, and a championship of +penniless sufferers of all classes, from a damsel who considered herself +jilted by a fickle swain, in proof of whose inconstancy she could produce +documentary evidence of the "pork-chop and tomato sauce" order, to a +pedestrian who knocked his head against a projecting shutter in the +Strand, and straightway walked home to Holloway to lay himself up for a +twelvemonth in a state of mental and bodily incapacity requiring large +pecuniary redress from the owner of the fatal shutter. To this noble +protection of the rights of the weak did George Sheldon devote his +intellect; and when malicious enemies stigmatized these Quixotic +endeavours as "speculative actions," or when, in the breaking-down of +some oppressed damsel's cause by reason of the slender evidence afforded +by some reticent lover's epistolary effusions, unjust judges told him +that he "ought to be ashamed of himself" for bringing such an action, the +generous attorney no doubt took consolation from an approving conscience, +and went forth from that court, to look for other oppressed damsels or +injured wayfarers, erect and unshaken. + +Some little profit Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn did derive from the Haygarth +estate; for at the request of Gustave Lenoble Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon +sent him a cheque for one thousand pounds, as the price of those early +investigations which had set the artful Captain upon the right track. He +wrote a ceremoniously grateful letter to Gustave Lenoble on receiving +this honorarium. It is always well to be grateful for benefits received +from a rich man; but in the depths of his heart he execrated the +fortunate inheritor of the Haygarthian thousands. + +Mr. Hawkehurst was not quite so vehement in the expression of his +feelings as that lively Celt, Gustave; but deep in his heart there was a +sense of happiness no less pure and exalted. + +Providence had given him more than he had ever dared to hope; not +John Haygarth's thousands; not a life of luxurious idleness, and +dinner-giving, and Derby days, and boxes on the grand tier, and +carriage-horses at five hundred guineas a pair; not a palace in +Belgravia, and a shooting-box in the Highlands, and a villa at Cowes; +not these things, in which he would once have perceived the _summum +bonum_; but a fair price for his labour, a dear young wife, a tranquil +home. + +Nor had his researches among the dusty records of the departed Haygarths +been profitless in a pecuniary sense to himself. Gustave Lenoble insisted +that he should accept that honorarium of three thousand pounds which had +been promised by George Sheldon as the reward of his success. + +"Captain Paget would never have been put on the right track if he had +not filched your secrets from you," said the son and heir of Susan +Meynell. "It is to your researches, in the first place, that I owe +this inheritance; and you cannot refuse to accept the agreed price of +your labour." + +Valentine did not refuse this fairly-earned reward, nor did he oppose the +settlement which Gustave made in favour of Charlotte's infant son. It +seemed to him only just that some share of the heritage should fall to +the descendant of poor Susan's younger sister and faithful friend. + +With this capital of three thousand pounds comfortably invested in +consols, and with the interest of that sum of ten thousand pounds settled +on his infant son, Mr. Hawkehurst began the world, in his new character +of a husband and a father, very pleasantly. + +Of his literary career very little need be said here. He was yet at the +beginning of the long dusty road that leads to the temple of Fame. It is +enough to state that he found the dusty high-road rather difficult +walking, and that he was pelted with more mud, flung by nameless +assailants hidden behind the hedges, than he had anticipated when he set +out upon the first stage of his journey. Happily, he found pleasant +fellow-travellers and kindly encouragement from an indulgent public, and +was thus able to accept the mud which bespattered his garments in a very +placid spirit, and to make light of all obstacles in the great highway. + +The cottage at Wimbledon was no longer a dream. It was a pleasant +reality, the pride and delight of Mrs. Sheldon and Ann Woolper. It was a +picturesque dwelling-place, half cottage, half villa, situated on the +broad high-road from London to Kingston, with all the woodland of +Richmond Park to be seen from the windows at the back. Only a wall +divided Mr. Hawkehurst's gardens from the coverts of the Queen. It was +like a royal demesne, Charlotte said; whereupon her husband insisted that +it should be christened by the name of a royal dwelling, and so called it +Charlottenburgh. + +Mr. Hawkehurst had secured this delightful abode for a considerable term +of years, and upon the furnishing and decoration of the pretty rustic +rooms Charlotte and he lavished unmeasured care. The delicious excitement +of "picking up," or, in more elegant parlance, "collecting," was to these +two happy people an inexhaustible source of pleasure. Every eccentric +little table, every luxurious chair, had its special history, and had +been the subject of negotiation and diplomacy that might have sufficed a +Burleigh in the reorganization of Western Europe. The little Dresden and +Vienna cups and saucers in the maple cabinet had been every one bought +from a different dealer. The figures on the mantelpiece were Old Chelsea, +of a quality that would have excited the envy of a Bernal or a Bonn, and +had only fallen to the proud possessors by a sequence of fortuitous +circumstances, the history of which was almost as thrilling as the +story of Boehmer's diamond-necklace. The curtains in the drawing-room +had draped the _portieres_ of the lovely Lady Blessington, and had been +bought for a song by Valentine Hawkehurst, after passing through the +hands of brokers and dealers innumerable. The tapestry-covered +Louis-Quatorze chairs had belonged to Madame de Sevigne, and had +furnished that dull country house whence she wrote the liveliest letters +extant to her disreputable cousin, Bussy, Count of Babutin. These +inestimable treasures had been picked up by Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst from +a bric-a-brac merchant in a little court at the back of the Rue Vivienne, +whither the young couple had gone arm-in-arm to choose a bonnet on their +first pleasure-trip to Paris. The clock in the modest dining-room had +been secured from the repository of the same merchant, and was warranted +to have sounded the last domestic hours of Maximilian Robespierre in his +humble lodging _chez le Menuisier_. The inkstand into which Mr. +Hawkehurst dipped his rapid pen had served the literary career of +Voltaire; the blotting-book on which he wrote had been used by Balzac. + +To the plausible fictions of the second-hand dealer Mr. and Mrs. +Hawkehurst lent willing ears, and it seemed to them as if these +associations, for which they had paid somewhat dearly, imparted a new +grace to their home. + +The arrangement and superintendence of all these treasures gave poor +Georgy endless pleasure and employment; but in her heart of hearts she +believed in the prim splendours of the dismantled Lawn as much superior +to these second-hand objects of art and upholstery. Nor did Ann Woolper +regard the Chelsea figures and Dresden teacups and old black Albert-Duerer +engravings as anything better than an innocent eccentricity on the part +of the master of the house, for the saving of whose purse she managed and +economized as faithfully as she had done for that lost master whereof the +memory was so bitter. + +It will be seen, therefore, that Mr. Hawkehurst with a wife, a +mother-in-law, and a faithful old servant, was likely to be well taken +care of; a little spoiled perhaps by "much cherishing," but carefully +guarded from all those temptations which are supposed to assail the +bachelor man-of-letters, toiling alone and neglected in Temple chambers. +For him the days passed in a pleasant monotony of constant labour, +lightened always by the thought of those for whom he worked, cheered ever +by the fond hope of future fame. He was no longer a bookmaker. He had +written a book, the proceeds of which had enabled him to furnish the +Wimbledon villa; and he was engaged in writing a second book, the fruits +whereof would secure the needs of the immediate future. He had insured +his life for a considerable amount, and had shown himself in all things +prudent to a degree that verged upon Philistinism. But the policies taken +out on Charlotte's life by Mr. Sheldon had been suffered to lapse. +Valentine would have no money staked on that dear head. + +The steed which Charlotte had desired for her husband's pleasure, the +library which she had catalogued so often, were yet among the delights of +the future; but life has lost half its brightness when there is no +unfulfilled desire left to the dreamer; and the horse which Mr. +Hawkehurst was to ride in time to come, and the noble library which he +was to collect, were the pleasant themes of Charlotte's conversation very +often, as she and her husband walked on the heights of Wimbledon in the +twilight, when his day's work was done. + +These twilight walks were the happy holidays of his life, and a part of +his liberal education. He told his wife everything, every literary +scheme, every fancy, every shadowy outline of future work, every new +discovery in the boundless realms of Bookland. His enthusiasm; his +hero-worship; his setting-up of one favourite and knocking-down of +another; his unchristian pleasure in that awful slating of poor Jones in +this week's _Saturday_, or the flaying alive of Robinson in the _Bond +Street Backbiter_;--in a word, his "shop" never became wearisome to +Charlotte. She listened always with a like rapture and sympathy; she +worshipped his favourites of Bookland; she welcomed his friends and +fellow-workers with unvarying sweetness she devised and superintended the +fitting-up of a smoking-room that was perfectly paradisaical, a glimpse +of the Alhambra in miniature; and that obnoxious dish, the cold shoulder, +was never served in Mr. Hawkehurst's dwelling. So sweet a wife, so +pleasant a home, popularized the institution of matrimony among the young +writer's bachelor friends; and that much-abused and cruelly maligned +member of the human race, the mother-in-law, was almost rehabilitated by +Mrs. Sheldon's easy good-nature and evident regard for the interests of +her daughter's husband. + +And after all the groping among dry as dust records of a bygone century, +after all the patient following of those faint traces on the sands of +time left by the feet of Matthew Haygarth, _this_ was Charlotte's +Inheritance,--a heart whose innocence and affection made home a kind of +earthly paradise, and gave to life's commonest things a charm that all +the gold ever found in California could not have imparted to them. This +was Charlotte's Inheritance,--the tender, unselfish nature of the +Haygarths and Hallidays; and thus dowered, her husband would not have +exchanged her for the wealthiest heiress whose marriage was ever +chronicled in _Court Circular_ or _Court Journal_. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +LOST SIGHT OF. + +A year and a half had passed since the disappearance of Philip Sheldon +from the circle in which he had been considered a person of some +importance. The repudiation of those bills by which he had sustained his +exhausted credit, or rather the discovery that the companies upon which +the bills pretended to be drawn were of all shadows the most shadowy, had +brought consternation upon many, and ruin upon some. Bitter and +unmeasured were the terms in which City men spoke of that Phil Sheldon +with whom they had eaten the sacred bait and quaffed the social moselle +in the taverns of Greenwich and Blackwall. + +There is a saying current on the Stock Exchange to the effect that the +man who fails, and disappears from among his fellows behind a curtain of +commercial cloud, is sure to return sooner or later to his old circle, +with a moustache and a brougham. For Philip Sheldon there was, however, +no coming back. The moustache and the brougham of the chastened and +penitent defaulter were not for him. By his deliberate and notorious +dishonour he had shut the door against the possibility of return. It may +be supposed that the defaulter knew this, for he did not come back; and +since he had no lack of moral courage, he would scarcely have refrained +from showing himself once more in his old haunts, if it had been possible +for him to face the difficulties of his position. + +Time passed, and there came no tidings of the missing man, though a +detective was despatched to America in search of him by one vengeful +sufferer among the many victims of the fictitious bills-of-exchange. It +was supposed that he must inevitably go to America, and thither went his +pursuer, but with no result except the expenditure of money and the +further exasperation of the vengeful sufferer. + +"What will you do with him, if you get him?" asked a philosophical friend +of the sufferer. "He has nothing to surrender. Zabulon had a bill-of-sale +on his furniture." + +"Furniture!" cried the infuriated victim; "I don't want his furniture. I +want his flesh and bones. I want to shut him up in Dartmoor Prison, or to +get him twenty years' hard labour at Portland Island." + +"That sort of man would get a ticket-of-leave in less than twelve +months," replied the philosophic friend. "I'm afraid you are only +throwing good money after bad." + +The event proved this gentleman but too able a seer. In the monster city +of New York Philip Sheldon had disappeared like a single drop of water +flung upon the Atlantic Ocean. There was no trace of him: too intangible +for the grasp of international law, he melted into the mass of humanity, +only one struggler the more in the great army perpetually fighting life's +desperate battle. + +From among all those who had known him this man had utterly vanished, +and not one sigh of regret followed him in his unknown wanderings--not +one creature amongst all those who had taken his hand and given him +friendly greeting thought of him kindly, or cared to know whither he +went or how he prospered. He had not left in the house that had +sheltered him for years so much as a dog to whine at his door or listen +for his returning footstep. + +This fact, if he had known it or considered it, would have troubled him +very little. He had played his game for a certain stake, and had lost it. +This he felt, and cursed his own too cautious play as the cause of his +defeat. That there were higher stakes for which he might have played an +easier game, was a fact that never occurred to him. In his philosophy +there was indeed nothing higher given to the hopes of man than worldly +success, and a dull, cold, prosperous life spent among prosperous +acquaintance. + +He was gone, and those who remembered him most keenly--Valentine +Hawkehurst, Diana Paget, Ann Woolper--remembered him with a shudder. The +old Yorkshirewoman thought of him sometimes as she bent over the little +muslin-bedecked cradle where the hope of the Hawkehursts slumbered, and +looked round fearfully in the gloaming, half expecting to see his dreaded +face glower upon her, dark and threatening, from between the curtains of +the window. + +It was a belief of all ancient races, nay indeed, a belief still current +amongst modern nations, that it is not given to man to behold the beings +of another world and live. The Arab who meets a phantom in the desert +goes home to his tent to die. He knows that the hand of doom is upon him. +He has seen that upon which, for mortal eyes, it is fatal to look. And it +is thus in some measure with those who are admitted within the dark +precincts of murder's dread sanctuary. Not swiftly does the curtain fall +which has once been lifted from the hidden horrors of that ghastly +temple. The revelations of an utterly wicked soul leave a lasting impress +upon the mind which unwillingly becomes recipient of those awful secrets. + +The circumstances of Tom Halliday's death and of Charlotte's illness were +not to be forgotten by Ann Woolper. The shadow of that dark cruel face, +which had lain upon her bosom forty years before, haunted many a peaceful +hour of her quiet old age. Her ignorance, and that faint tinge of +superstition which generally accompanies ignorance, exaggerated the +terror of those dark memories. The thought that Philip Sheldon still +lived, still had the power to plot and plan evil against the innocent, +was an ever-present source of terror to her. She could not understand +that such an element could exist among the forces of evil without fatal +result to some one. It seemed to her as if a devil were at large, and +there could be neither peace nor security until the evil spirit was +exorcised, the baneful presence laid in nethermost depths of unfathomable +sea. + +These feelings and these fears would scarcely have arisen in the old +woman's breast, had she alone been subject to the possible plottings of +that evil nature. For herself she had little fear. Her span of life was +nearly ended; very few were the sands that had yet to run; and, for her +own sake, she would have cared little if some rough hand had spilt them +untimely. But a new interest in life had been given to Mrs. Woolper just +as life drew near its close. That peerless child, the son and heir of the +Hawkehursts, had been intrusted to the old woman's care; and this infant +she loved with an affection much more intense than that which had once +made Philip Sheldon so dear to her. + +It was by the cradle of this much-treasured child that Ann Woolper nursed +her fear of her old master. She knew that he had been counter-plotted and +beaten ignominiously in that deadly game which he had played so boldly. +And she asked herself whether he was the man to submit to such utter +defeat without any effort to revenge himself upon those who had helped to +compass his failure. + +On that night when Charlotte Halliday had lain between life and death, +suffering on the one hand from the effects of a prolonged and gradual +course of poison, on the other from the violent measures taken to +eliminate that poisonous element from her system,--on that night when the +precious life yet trembled in the balance, Ann Woolper had seen murderous +looks in the face of the man whom she dared boldly to defy, and who knew +in that hour that his ghastly plot was discovered. Even now, secure in a +haven of safety, she could not forget that baneful look in Philip +Sheldon's eyes. She could not find perfect rest while she knew not where +that man might be, or what mischief he might be plotting against those +she loved. + +Her fears showed themselves in many ways. When she read of dark and +vengeful deeds in her newspaper, she thought of her old master, and how, +in such or such an act, his fatal hand might reveal itself. He might lie +in wait for Valentine some night on the dark road between Charlottenburgh +and the distant railway-station. She could fancy the young wife's agony +of terror as the night wore on, and her husband did not return; the +unspeakable horror that would come over all that happy household when the +news came that its young master had been found on the lonely road slain +by some unknown hand. Open utterance to her fears she was too wise to +give; but she warned Mr. Hawkehurst of the dangers on that dark road, and +besought him to arm himself with a trusty bludgeon wherewith to meet and +vanquish any chance assailant. Valentine laughed at her anxious warning; +but when Charlotte took up the cry he was fain to content her by the +purchase of a sturdy stick, which he swung cheerily to and fro as he +walked homewards in the gloaming, planning a chapter in his new book, and +composing powerful and eloquent sentences which eluded his mental grasp +when he tried to reduce his evening reverie to pen-and-ink. + +"When the air blows fresh across the common, and the distant lights +twinkle, and the bright stars peep out in the pale-yellow sky, my +language flows as it never does when I sit at my desk, Lotta," he said to +his wife. "I feel myself a Swift or a Junius out there; equal to the +tackling of any social question that ever arose upon this earth, from the +Wood halfpence to the policy of American taxation, and triennial +elections. At home I am only Valentine Hawkehurst, with an ever-present +consciousness that so many pages of copy are required from me within a +given time, and that my son-and-heir is cutting his teeth, and making +more fuss about it than I ever made about _my_ teeth; and that the man +about the water-rate is waiting to see me, please, and is desperately +anxious about making-up his books; and that I have the dearest wife in +Christendom, who opens my door, and puts her pretty head into my room +once in half an hour to see how I am getting on, or to ask whether I want +any more coals, or to borrow my ink to make-up her washing-book." + +"You mean, sir, that I prevent your becoming a Junius?" cried Charlotte, +with an enchanting _moue_. + +"Yes, dear. I begin to understand why Swift kept his poor ill-used wife +at a respectful distance. She would have made him too happy if he had +allowed her to be on the premises. She would have given the cruel +indignation no chance of lacerating his heart; and such writing as +Swift's is only produced by a man whose heart is so lacerated. No, my +darling, I shall never be a Swift or a Junius while your pretty head is +thrust into my room once or twice an hour; but I may hope to be something +better, if bright eyes can inspire bright thoughts, and innocent smiles +give birth to pleasant fancies." + +Upon this there was the usual little demonstration of affection between +this young couple; and Charlotte praised her husband as the most +brilliant and admirable of men; after which pleasing flattery she +favoured him with a little interesting information about the baby's last +tooth, and the contumacious behaviour of the new housemaid, between whom +and Mrs. Woolper there had been a species of disagreement, which the +Yorkshirewoman described as a "standfurther." + +Thus occupied in simple pleasures and simple cares, the lives of Mr. and +Mrs. Hawkehurst went on, untroubled by any fear of that crime-burdened +wretch whose image haunted the dreams and meditations of Ann Woolper. For +these two Mr. Sheldon was numbered among the dead. To Charlotte the +actual truth had never been revealed; but she had been, in the course of +time, given to understand that her stepfather had committed some +unpardonable sin, which must for ever separate him from herself and her +mother. She had been told as much as this, and had been told that she +must seek to know no more. To this she submitted without questioning. + +"I am very sorry for him," she said, "and for mamma." + +She concluded that the unpardonable offence must needs have been some sin +against her mother, some long-hidden infidelity brought suddenly to +light, with all the treachery and falsehood involved therein. She never +mentioned her stepfather after this but in her prayers the sinner was not +forgotten. + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES. + +George Sheldon went his ways, picking up as good a living as he could +from that chivalrous assertion of the rights of the weak which has been +already described; and the thought of his brother's sin-burdened soul +troubled him very little. He did think of Tom Halliday; for that last +grasp of the honest Yorkshireman's hand, that last look in his old +friend's face, were haunting memories which this sharp practitioner had +found himself powerless to exorcise. If his brother, after an absence of +many years in the remote regions of the East Indies, had come home to his +fatherland with a colossal fortune, and the reputation of having +strangled a few natives during the process of amassing that fortune, +George Sheldon would have welcomed the returning wanderer, and would, in +his own parlance, have "swallowed the natives." A few niggers, more or +less, sent untimely to Gehenna, would have seemed scarcely sufficient +cause for quarrel with a fraternal and liberally-disposed millionaire. +But the circumstances of Tom Halliday's death had brought all the horror +of crime and treachery home to the spectator of that deliberate +assassination, and had produced such an impression as no other +circumstances could on so hard a nature. + +It was some satisfaction to George Sheldon to know that his old friend's +daughter had found a happy home; and he was apt to take some credit from +his own share in his brother's discomfiture. He met Valentine sometimes +in the course of his peregrinations in the neighbourhood of the British +Museum, and the greeting between the two men was sufficiently cordial; +but Mr. Hawkehurst did not invite his old employer to Charlottenburgh, +and George was able to comprehend that to that household no one bearing +the name of Sheldon could be a welcome visitor. + +He jogged on comfortably enough in his own way; living in his chambers, +and consorting with a few chosen friends and kindred spirits of the +jolly-good-fellow class, whom he met at an old-established tavern in the +west-central district, and in whose society, and the society of the +subscription-ground in the Farringdon Road, he found the _summum bonum_ +in the way of social intercourse. He did a little speculation upon the +turf, and discounted the bills of needy bookmakers, or bought up their +bad debts, and thereby gained introductions to the noble patrons of the +humble "scums," and pushed his business into new grooves. He had no idea +that such an existence was in any way ignoble; nay, indeed, when he had +paid his rent, and his clerk, and his laundress, and his tavern score, +and "stood glasses round" amongst his friends, he lighted his cigar, and +thrust his hands into the depths of his pockets, and paced the flags of +Holborn happy in the belief that he had performed the whole duty of man. + +"There are men whose business obliges them to keep up an establishment, +and go to church twice a day, and all that kind of thing," he said; "and +I dare say they find it pay. My clients don't care a doit where I live, +or how I spend my Sundays; and I'd rather have five pounds a week and my +liberty than the best family connection in the Fields." + +The fate of that wretched man, who had dropped out of his old circle +and vanished no one knew whither, in no manner disturbed the peace of +George Sheldon. + +"Take my word for it, that gentleman has fallen on his feet," he said, on +the only occasion when the fate of Philip was discussed by Valentine and +himself. "He's doing well enough, somewhere or other, you may depend; but +I don't think he'll ever be able to show his nose in London after those +bill transactions. There's a very strong feeling against him on Change. +He's looked upon as a discredit to the order, and that sort of thing, you +see. It isn't often a member of the House goes to the bad like that. No, +I don't think Phil will ever show himself in London again; but such a man +as that can always find a platform somewhere--" + +"And go on to the end of his days unpunished, I suppose," remarked Mr. +Hawkehurst, with some bitterness. + +"Well, yes; I don't see what's to touch him in the future. Of course he +could be dropped upon for those bills, if he came in the way of being +dropped upon; but, as I said before, he's too deep a card for that." + +Thus did George Sheldon dismiss the subject. That his brother was an +exile for life from his native land he did not doubt; but he took it for +granted that in whatever distant spot of earth Philip had found a refuge, +he would there contrive to prosper and to show a bold front in the city +of his adoption. + +This belief Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn cherished until one snowy Christmas +Eve, a year and a half after that event, or series of events, which the +lawyer briefly designated "the burst-up at Bayswater." + +Bleak and bitter was that December, a December not long gone by. The +heart of the prosperous British nation melted as the heart of one man. +The columns of the _Zeus_ and the _Diurnal Hermes_, the _Flag_ and the +_Hesper_, overflowed with the record of subscriptions to charity funds; +and the leaders of the morning journals all preached the same kindly +sermon on the same Christian text. Thick lay the snow upon the housetops; +"thick and slab" the greasy slush upon the pavements of crowded +thoroughfares; merry the rogues and ragamuffins of the great city. The +ideal Christmas of our dreams seemed to have come at last, and the heart +of every true Briton rejoiced; while skaters in the parks made merry, and +cabmen demanded fabulous sums of helpless wayfarers; and luckless, +overworked, under-fed horses stumbled and fell at every turn, and the +familiar steep of Holborn was dangerous as Alpine mountain. + +To George Sheldon neither the weather nor the Christmas season made much +difference. The even current of his life was little disturbed by festive +pleasures or dissipations. An extra glass at his tavern, an invitation to +dinner from some friend in the bill-discounting line, were the most +exciting events the season was likely to bring him. He saw the shops +brighten suddenly with semi-supernal glories of crystallized fruits and +gorgeous bonbon-boxes, and he was aware of a kind of movement in the +streets that was brisker and gayer than the plodding hurry of everyday +life. He stood aside and let the mummeries go by him, and was glad when +these Christmas follies were done with, and the law-courts in full swing +once more. In the happiest and most innocent days of his youth, Christmas +had brought him no more than extraordinary indulgences in the way of +eating and drinking, swiftly followed by that dread avenger, the demon of +the bilious. + +Upon this particular occasion Mr. Sheldon had pledged himself to dine +with a horsey publican lately retired from business, and big with all the +pride and glory of a "place" at Hornsey. + +"Come down and see my place, Sheldon," this gentleman had said. "I don't +pretend to do the swell thing; but I force my own pines and grow my own +grapes, and can put as good a dessert on my table as you could buy in +Covent Garden for a five-pun' note. That's my missus's fad, that is, and +I can afford it; so why shouldn't I do it? You come and eat your +Christmas dinner with us, Sheldon. I've got a friend coming that can +sing as good a song as Reeves hisself, and might make a fortune, if he +wasn't above coming out at one of them music-halls. And I'll give you a +bottle of Madeira that you won't match at any nobleman's table, if +noblemen's tables was in your line of business, which you and I know +they ain't, old fellow." + +And then the jolly good fellow dug his fat fingers into George Sheldon's +ribs, and George accepted the invitation; not with any elation of +spirits, but sufficiently pleased to secure a good dinner with a man who +promised to be a profitable client, and whose house was within a +reasonable cab-fare from the west-central district. + +"The cabmen are trying it on, anyhow, just now," thought Mr. Sheldon; +"but I don't think they'll try it on with me. And if they do, there's the +Marylebone stage. I'm not afraid of a five-mile walk." + +Having accepted this invitation, and thus disposed of his Christmas-day, +George Sheldon refrained from the delights of social converse at his +tavern on Christmas-eve, and occupied himself with business. His clerk +left him at the usual hour; but the master sat, long after dark, writing +letters and reading law-papers, while the snow drifted against his +windows and whitened the quiet quadrangle below. + +He had just laid aside his papers and lighted a cigar, when he was +startled by a stealthy knocking at his door. He was not unaccustomed to +late visitors, as he was known to live at his chambers, and to work after +office-hours; but the knocking of to-night was not the loud rollicking +rat-a-tat of his jolly-good-fellow friends or clients. If he had been a +student of light literature, and imbued with the ghostly associations of +the season, he would have gone to his door expecting to behold a weird +figure clothed in the vestments of the last century; or an old woman in +ruff and martingale, whose figure in the flesh had once haunted those +legal precincts; or the ghostly semblance of the Baron of Verulam +himself, revisiting the glimpses of the moon and the avenue of elms that +were planted by his order. + +In George Sheldon's nature there was, however, no lurking dread of fiend +or phantom. His ideas in connection with ghosts were limited to a white +sheet, a broomstick, and a hollow turnip with a lighted candle inside it; +and he would have set down the most awful apparition that ever was +revealed to German ghost-seer, with a scornful grin, as a member of the +sheet and-hollow-turnip confraternity. + +"I know how it's done," he would have said, if the spectral form had +glowered upon him in midnight churchyard or ruined abbey. "You'd better +go and try it on somewhere else, my friend." + + * * * * * + +To a superstitious mind the THING which crept across the dark lobby +and dragged itself into the glare of the gas-lighted office might +have seemed, indeed, some, creature too loathsome for humanity. A +plague-stricken corpse galvanized into a spasmodic life could scarcely +have lifted to the light a more awful countenance than that on which +George Sheldon looked with mingled anger and disgust. + +"What do you want here" he asked. "Do you take this for the workhouse?" + +"No," the creature answered, in a faint hoarse voice; "but I take you for +my brother." + +"WHAT!" cried George Sheldon, aghast. + +He bent down and looked at the awful face. Yes, from the cavernous +hollows of those sunken cheeks, beneath the shaggy penthouse of those +bony brows, the fierce black eyes of Philip Sheldon looked out at him +with a savage glare that he had never seen in them before--even when the +savage nature of the man had revealed itself most nakedly--the fierce +glare of fever and starvation. + +This walking horror, this mass of loathsome rags endued with motion, this +living disease, was the sometime prosperous stockbroker, the man whom it +had been impossible to think of except furnished with linen of spotless +whiteness, and the glossy broad-cloth, and well-made boots, and keyless +chronometer, and silk umbrella of commercial success. + +"Good God!" exclaimed George, horror-stricken, "is it you?" + +"Yes, it's I," answered the creature in his strange husky accents; and +the change--nay, indeed, the degradation, of the voice was as complete as +the degradation of the man. "Yes, George, it's I; your brother Phil. +You're surprised to see me fallen so low in the world, I suppose; but you +can't be more surprised than I am myself. I've tried hard enough to hold +my head above water. There's scarcely any trade that mortal man ever +tried to earn his bread by, that I haven't tried--and failed in. It has +been the experience of Fitzgeorge-street over and over again, in every +trade and every profession. I started as doctor in Philadelphia, and was +doing well;--till--till a patient died--and things went against me. I've +been clerk in more offices than you can count on your ten fingers; but +there was always something--my employer levanted, or was bankrupt, or +died, or dismissed me. I've been travelling-dentist, auctioneer, +commission-agent, tout, pedlar, out yonder; but it all came to the same +thing--ruin, starvation, the hospital, or the pauper's ward. I have swept +crossings in the city, and camped out in the wilderness among the bears +and opossums. One day I thought I'd come home. 'There's George,' I said +to myself; 'if I can get money enough to take me across the Atlantic, I +shall be all right. George will give me a lift.' I don't stand alone in +the world. A man's own flesh and blood won't let him starve--can't let +him starve. Blood's thicker than water, you know, George. So I came home. +I got the money; never you mind how. I needn't tell you what it cost me +to scrape half-a-dozen pounds together. When a man's as low down in the +world as I am, there's not a shilling he earns that doesn't cost him a +drop of his heart's blood; there's not a pound he gets together that +isn't bought by the discount of so much of his life. I found money enough +for my passage in an emigrant vessel; and here I am, ready for anything. +I'll work like your bought nigger. I'll do the work your clerk does for a +quarter of his wages. I'll sweep out your office, and run errands for +you. You'll give me something to keep body and soul together, won't you, +George?" + +Nothing could be more utterly abject than the tone of this most abject +wretch. + +This man, who in prosperity had been the very personification of hardness +and insolence, was transformed into a grovelling, cringing supplicant, +ready to lie face downward in the dust beneath the feet of that brother +whose patronage, or charity, he besought. + +Mr. Sheldon the younger contemplated the supplicant with looks of +undisguised gratification. He walked a few paces backward from the spot +where his brother had fallen, in a half-sitting, half-crouching attitude, +and where he remained, hugging himself in his rags, too abject to be +acutely conscious of his degradation. A year ago and he would have held +himself obstinately aloof from all old associations, and would have +declared himself ready to face starvation, rather than accept, still less +supplicate, relief from his younger brother. The events of that one year +had involved alternations and convulsions that change a year into a +cycle. He had faced starvation; he had walked with hunger for his +travelling companion; he had lain down night after night in such lairs +as the tramp can find for his refuge, with sickness and pain for his +bed-fellows. The crucible through which he had passed had left in him no +more of humanity than its outward semblance, and scarcely that; for when +the moral man sinks to the level of the beasts of prey, the physical man +undergoes an assimilative process only less marked than that which +transforms the mental nature. + +For six months this man had lived by fawning upon or threatening his +fellow-men; by violence or craft; by the degradation of the vagrant or +the audacity of the thief. There is no limit to man's capacity for infamy +which he had not touched. Vilest amongst the vile, he had been cast forth +from the haunts of beggars and reprobates, as no fitting company for +honourable thieves or cadgers of good repute. + +George Sheldon seated himself astride upon a chair, and, with his folded +arms resting on the back of it, contemplated this hideous spectacle. It +was a picture that he had never thought to see, and the feeling with +which he surveyed it was not unmingled with pleasure. + +"When you rode me rough-shod, my friend, I used to think how I should +enjoy taking my change out of you," he said; "but I never thought I +should have such an opportunity as this--never, by Jove! I thought you +would ride the high horse to the end of the journey; I didn't think your +steed would land you in the gutter. And so you've tried every move, have +you?--tumbled upon every platform?--and you've found all your cleverness +no go upon the other side of the three thousand miles of everlasting wet, +as my Yankee friends call the Atlantic; and you've come back whining to +me, and I'm to help you, am I, and to give you a fresh start in life, I +suppose, and make you my clerk, or my junior partner, eh?--that would be +better. Messrs. Sheldon and Sheldon wouldn't look bad on my door. That's +about what you mean when you talk of blood being thicker than water, +isn't it?" + +The abject wretch who had once been Philip Sheldon felt that his brother +was trifling with him, savouring to the last drop that cup of triumph +which the chances of fortune had offered to his lips. + +"Don't play the fool with me, George," he said piteously. "I don't ask +you much--a crust of bread, a corner to sleep in, and a cast-off suit of +clothes: that's not much for one brother to ask of another." + +"Perhaps not," replied George Sheldon; "but it's a great deal for you to +ask of me. You've had your turn, Phil; and you made the most of it, and +contrived to keep me at arm's length. My turn has come at last, and you +may depend upon it I shall contrive now to keep _you_ at arm's length." + +The vagrant stared at him aghast. Here he had felt secure of food and +shelter; and he had endured miseries and deprivations that reduce a man +to a state in which food and shelter seem to constitute the supreme good +that can be obtained in this life. + +"You won't refuse to do something for me, George," he whined piteously. + +"I will do nothing for you. Do you hear that, my man? Nothing! You taught +me that blood is not thicker than water twelve years ago, when you +married Tom Halliday's widow, and drew your purse-strings, after flinging +me a beggarly hundred as you'd throw a bone to a dog. You made me +understand that was all I should ever get out of your brotherly love, or +your fear of my telling the world what I knew. You gave me a dinner now +and then, because it suited you to keep your eye upon me; and you had +generally some piece of dirty work on hand that made the advice of a +sharp practitioner like me uncommonly useful to you. I don't believe that +you ever gave me so much as a dinner that you didn't take payment for in +meal or in malt. Don't come howling here now, trying to persuade me that +blood is thicker than water, or that brotherhood means anything more than +the accident of birth. And now I've said all I have to say; and the +sooner you make yourself scarce, the better for both of us." + +"George!" cried the miserable suppliant, clasping his bony hands +convulsively, and whimpering as he had whimpered when he begged his bread +in the streets of New York, "you can't mean to turn me out of doors on +such a night. Look at me. It was as much as I could do to crawl to this +room. I have walked every step of the way from Liverpool; my wretched +limbs have been frost-bitten, and ulcered, and bruised, and racked with +rheumatism, and bent double with cramp. I came over in an emigrant +vessel, with a herd of miserable creatures who had tried their luck on +the other side of the Atlantic, and had failed, like me, and were coming +home to their native workhouses. You don't know what some of your +emigrant ships are, perhaps. People talk about the Black Hole of +Calcutta, and the Middle Passage; but let them try the cabin of an +emigrant vessel, and they'll have a pretty fair idea of what human beings +have to suffer when Poverty drives the ship. I landed in Liverpool with +half-a-dollar in my pocket, and I've had neither decent food nor decent +shelter since I landed. Give me some hole to lie in, George, till you can +get me an order for the nearest hospital. It's a toss-up whether I ever +come out of it." + +"Do you think I'd sleep under the roof that sheltered you?" cried George. + +"Why not?" + +"Why not! Because I'm afraid of you. Because I'd as soon have a cobra +for my companion, or a wolf for my bedfellow. I know you. I've seen what +you can do, and how you can do it. And if you could do those things when +the only pressure upon you was one that you could have cast off by going +through the _Gazette_, what would you _not_ do now when you are as +desperate as a famished wolf, and governed by no better law than that +which governs a wolf--the law of self-preservation? Am I to trust a +tiger because he tells me he is hungry? No, Phil Sheldon; neither will I +trust you." + +"You will give me some money--enough to keep me alive for a week or two." + +"Not one sixpence. I'll establish no precedent; I'll acknowledge no tie +between us. You'd better march. I don't want to send for a policeman; but +if you won't go quietly, you must do the other thing." + +"You mean that?" + +"Most emphatically yes." + +"I didn't think it was in you to be so hard upon me," faltered; the +wretch in that faint hoarse voice which had grown fainter and hoarser +during this interview. + +"Did you think that I would trust you?" cried George. "Trust _you_! You +call me hard because I won't give you a corner to lie in. And if I did, +you would creep out of your corner to poison me, or cut my throat. You +would crawl into my room in the dead of the night and put a pillow over +my face, and kneel upon it till you'd done the trick for me; and then +you'd walk off with as much as you could carry, and begin the same kind +of work over again with some one else. I tell you, Mr. Phil Sheldon, I +will hold no intercourse with you. You've escaped hanging, but there's +something that's worse than hanging, to my mind, and that is the state of +a man whom nobody will trust. You've come to that; and if you had a spark +of gentlemanly feeling, you'd have bought two-pennyworth of rope and hung +yourself rather than come cringing to me." + +"Suppose I don't cringe," said the outcast, dropping the fawning tone of +the mendicant for the threatening ferocity of the social wolf; "you'd +better give me a trifle to keep body and soul together for the next few +weeks. I'm a desperate man, George! You and I are alone up here. You are +pretty sure to have ready money about you. And there's your watch; that's +worth something. I didn't come here to go away empty-handed. AND I +WON'T!" + +He sprang to his feet, and in the next moment the lawyer heard the sharp +clicking noise made by the opening of a clasp-knife. + +"O," cried he, "that's what you want, is it!" + +He bent over his desk, with his eyes fixed on those other evil eyes that +still retained some likeness to his own, and with his left arm raised in +a boxer's defensive attitude, to guard his head, while his right hand +groped for something in a drawer. It was a moment's work. Philip had +seized that uplifted left arm, and was hanging on to it like a cat, with +his knife between his teeth, when George clapped the muzzle of a revolver +to his brow. + +"There are plenty of wild beasts in London besides you," he said, "and I +am not such a fool as to be without the means of settling a chance +visitor of your sort. Drop your knife, and march." + +The outcast dropped his knife submissively. He was too weak for anything +more than a spasmodic violence. + +"Take your pistol away from my head," he whined. + +"Certainly, when you are outside my door." + +"You might give me a handful of silver, George. I haven't a week's life +left in me." + +"All the better for society if you hadn't an hour's life in you. Be off. +I'm tired of holding this revolver to your head, and I don't mean to let +it go till you're off my premises." + +Philip saw that there was no hope. Food and shelter were all he had +hoped for; but even these blessings were not for him. He backed out of +the office, closely followed by George, holding the muzzle of the +revolver within an inch or so of the fraternal brains. Upon the +threshold only did he pause. + +"Tell me one thing," he said. "You won't give me sixpence to buy a loaf +of bread or a glass of gin. Give me one scrap of comfort. It need cost +you nothing. Tell me something bad of Valentine Hawkehurst: that he's +gone to the dogs, or drowned himself; that his wife has run away from +him, or his house been burned to the ground. Tell me that he's had a +taste of my luck; and that Ann Woolper has died in a workhouse. It will +be as good as meat and drink to me, and it will cost you nothing." + +"If I told you anything of the kind, I should tell you a lie; Valentine +Hawkehurst is doing uncommonly well, and has got one of the prettiest +little boxes between Wimbledon and Kingston. Ann Woolper lives with them, +and is in better feather than she ever was in your time." + +With this, Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn pushed his brother out on to the +staircase, and shut his door. Philip sat upon the stairs, and drew his +rags together a little, and rubbed his wretched limbs, while the bolts +and chains whereby the lawyer defended his citadel clanked close behind +him. + +"I wonder whether he'll pay Hawkehurst a visit," thought George, as he +bolted his door; and he had a kind of grim satisfaction in the idea that +Valentine's Christmas peace might be disturbed by the advent of that +grisly visitor. + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +"ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS." + +"Between Wimbledon and Kingston," muttered the tramp. "If I can drag +myself as far as that, I'll go there this night." + +He went down stairs and out into the pitiless cold and snow, and made his +way down Fetter Lane, and across Blackfriars Bridge to the Surrey side of +the water, stopping to beg here and there. + +Upon this snowy Christmas night there were plenty of people abroad; +and amongst them Philip Sheldon found pitying matrons, who explored +the depths of their capacious pockets to find him a halfpenny, and +good-natured young men, who flung the "copper" he besought with piteous +professional whine. + +When he had collected the price of a glass of gin, he went into the first +public-house he came to, and spent his money. He was too ill to stay the +cravings of his stomach with substantial food. Gin gave him temporary +warmth and temporary strength, and enabled him to push on vigorously for +a little while; and then came dreary periods of faintness and exhaustion, +in which every step was sheer pain and weariness. + +Something of his old self, some remnant of that hard strength of purpose +which had once characterized him, remained with him still, utterly fallen +and brutalized as he was. As a savage creature of the jungle might pursue +a given course, pushing always onward to that camp or village whence the +scent of human flesh and blood was wafted to his quivering nostrils, so +Philip Sheldon pushed on towards the dwelling-place of that man and that +woman whom of all creatures upon this earth he most savagely hated. + +"There's nothing left for me but to turn housebreaker," he said to +himself; "and the first house I'll try my hand upon shall be Valentine +Hawkehurst's." + +The idea of violence in such a creature was the idea of a madman. Weapon +he had none, nor the physical strength that would have enabled him to +grapple with a boy of twelve years old. Half intoxicated with the spirits +he had consumed on his long tramp, half delirious with fever, he had a +vague notion that he could make an entrance into some ill-defended house +under cover of night, and steal something that should procure him food +and shelter. And let the house be Valentine Hawkehurst's, the man who had +baffled his plans and crushed him! + +If blood must be shed, let the blood be his! Never was man better primed +for murder than the man who tramped across Wimbledon Common at eleven +o'clock this night, with the snow drifting against his face, and his +limbs shaken every now and then by an ague-fit. + +Happily for the interests of society, his hand lacked the power to +execute that iniquity which his heart willed. + +He reached a little wayside inn near the Robin Hood gate of Richmond +Park, just as the shutters were being closed, and asked a man if any one +of the name of Hawkehurst lived in that neighbourhood. + +"What do _you_ want with Mr. Hawkehurst?" asked the man, contemptuously. + +"I've got a letter for him." + +"Have you? A begging letter, I should think, from the look of you." + +"No; it's a business letter. You'd better show me where he lives, if he's +a customer of yours. The business is particular." + +"Is it? You're a queer kind of messenger to trust with particular +business. Mr. Hawkehurst's house is the third you come to on the opposite +side of the way. But I don't suppose you'll find anybody up as late as +this. Their lights are out by eleven, in a general way." + +The third house on the opposite side of the road was half a mile distant +from the little run. Lights shone bright in the lower windows as the +tramp dragged his tired limbs to the stout oaken gate. The gate was +fastened only by a latch, and offered no resistance to the intruder. He +crept with stealthy footsteps along the smooth gravel walk, sheltered by +dark laurels, on which the light flashed cheerily from those bright +windows. Sounds of laughter and of music pealed out upon the wintry air. +Shadows flitted across the blinds of the broad bay windows. Philip +Sheldon crept into a sheltered nook beside the rustic porch, and sank +down exhausted in the shadow of the laurels. + +He sat there in a kind of stupor. He had lost the power of thought, +somehow, on that dreary journey. It seemed almost as if he had left some +portion of his being out yonder in the cold and darkness. He had +difficulty in remembering why he had come to this place, and what that +deed was which he meant to do. + +"Hawkehurst," he muttered to himself--"Hawkehurst, the man who leagued +against me with Jedd! I swore to be even with him if ever I found the +opportunity--if ever! And George refused me a few shillings; my brother, +my only brother, refused to stand my friend!" + +Hawkehurst and George--big only brother--the images of these two men +floated confusedly in his brain: he could scarcely separate them. +Sometimes it seemed to him that he was still sitting outside his +brother's door, on the staircase in Gray's Inn, hugging himself in his +rags, and cursing his unnatural kinsman's cruelty; then in the next +moment he remembered where he was, and breathed bitter curses upon that +unconscious enemy whose laugh pealed out every now and then amid a chorus +of light-hearted laughter. + +There was a little Christmas party at Charlottenburgh. Two flys were +waiting in the laurel-avenue to convey Mr. Hawkehurst's guests to distant +abodes. The door was opened presently, and all the bustle of departure +made itself heard by that wretched wayfarer who found it so difficult to +keep his hold upon the consciousness of these things. + +"What is it?" he said to himself--"a party! Hawkehurst has been giving a +party." + +He had lived through too much degradation, he had descended into too deep +a gulf of wretchedness, to be conscious of the contrast between his +present situation and his position in those days when he had played the +host, and seen handsome carriages bear prosperous guests away from his +door. In that cycle of misery which he had endured, these things and the +memory of them had faded from him as completely as if they had been +obliterated by the passage of a century. The hapless wretch tried to give +sustained attention to all the animated discussion that attended the +departure of the merry guests. Half-a-dozen people seemed to be talking +at once. Valentine was giving his friends counsel about the way home. + +"You will keep to the lower road, you know, Fred. Lawsley's cab can +follow yours. You came a couple of miles out of your way. And tell that +fellow Battersea Bridge is a mistake." + +And then followed Charlotte's friendly questioning about wraps, and +hoods, and comforters, and other feminine gear. + +"And when are you coming to dine at Fulham?" cried one voice. + +"I shall certainly get those quadrilles of Offenbach's," said another. + +"How delightfully Mr. Lawsley sang that song of Santley's!" + +And anon a chorus of "Never enjoyed myself more!" "Most delightful +evening!" "Pray don't come out in the cold." "Thanks; well, yes, yours +are always capital." "No, I won't light up till I'm on the road." "Give +my book a lift in the _D.H._, eh, old fellow?" "Are you _quite_ sure that +shawl is warm enough?" "Take a rug for your feet." "Thanks, no." +"Good-night." "See you on Tuesday." "Don't forget the box for D.L." "All +right, old fellow!" "Lower Road, Roehampton Lane, Putney Bridge. +Good-night." + +Among the confusion of voices Philip Sheldon had recognized more than one +voice that was familiar to him. There were Charlotte's gentle tones, and +Valentine's hearty barytone, and another that he knew. + +Diana Paget! Yes, it was her voice. Diana Paget, whom he had cause to +hate for her interference with his affairs. + +"A beggar," he muttered to himself, "and the daughter of a beggar! She +was a nice young lady to set herself in opposition to the man who gave +her a home." + +The vehicles drove away, but there was still a little group in the rustic +porch. Valentine and Charlotte, with Monsieur and Madame Lenoble, who had +come to spend their Christmas with their English friends. + +"How we have been gay this evening!" cried Gustave. "There is nothing +like your English interior for that which you call the comfortable, the +jolly, you others. Thy friends are the jollity itself, Hawkehurst. And +our acting charades, when that we all talked at once, and with a such +emphasis on the word we would make to know. Was it not that our +spectators were cunning to divine the words? And your friend Lawsley--it +is a mixture of Got and Sanson. It is a true genius. Think, then, Diane, +while we were amusing ourselves, our girls were at the midnight mass at +the Sacre Coeur? Dear pious children, their innocent prayers ascended +towards the heavens for we who are absent. Come, Madame Hawkehurst, +Diane, it makes cold." + +"But we are sheltered here. And the stars are so bright after the snow," +said Charlotte. "Do you remember the Christmas-day you spent at the Lawn, +Valentine, when we walked in Kensington Gardens together, just when we +were first engaged?" the young wife added shyly. + +"Do I not remember? It was the first time the holiness of Christmas came +home to my heart. And now let us go back to the drawing-room, and sit +round the fire, and tell ghost stories. Lenoble shall give us the legends +of Cotenoir." + +"Valentine," murmured Charlotte, "do you know that it is nearly one +o'clock?" + +"And we must put in an appearance at church to-morrow morning. And +Lenoble has to walk to Kingston to early mass. We will postpone our ghost +stories to New-Year's eve. And Lenoble shall read Tennyson's _New Year_, +to demonstrate his improvement in the English language. Lead the way, +Mrs. Hawkehurst; your obedient slave obeys. Mamma is waiting for us in +the drawing-room, marvelling at our delay, no doubt. And Nancy Woolper +stalks ghost-like through the house, oppressed by the awful +responsibility of to-morrow's pudding." + +Anon came a clanking of bolts and bars; and Philip Sheldon, for the +second time that night, heard a door shut against him. As the voices died +away, his consciousness of external things died with him. He fancied +himself on the Gray's-Inn staircase. + +"Don't be so hard upon me, George," he muttered faintly. "If my own kith +and kin turn against me, whom shall I look to?" + +Mrs. Woolper opened the door early next day, when night was yet at odds +with morning. All through the night the silent snow-flakes had been +falling thick and fast; and they had woven the shroud of Philip Sheldon. +The woman who had watched his infant slumbers forty years before, was the +first to look upon him in that deeper sleep, of whose waking we know so +little. It was not until she had looked long and closely at the dead face +that she knew why it was that the aspect of that countenance had affected +her with so strange a pang. She did recognize that altered wretch, and +kept her counsel. + +Before the bells rang for morning service the tramp was lying in the +dead-house of Kingston Union, whither he had been conveyed very quietly +in the early morning, unknown to any one but the constable who +superintended the removal, and the servants of Mr. Hawkehurst's +household. Only the next day did Ann Woolper tell Valentine what had +happened. There was to be an inquest. It would be well that some one +should identify the dead man, and establish the fact of Philip Sheldon's +decease. + +Valentine was able to do this unaided. He attended the inquest, and made +arrangements for the outcast's decent burial; and in due course he gave +Mrs. Sheldon notice of her freedom. Beyond that nameless grave whose +fancy shall dare follow Philip Sheldon? He died and made no sign. And in +the last dread day, when the dead, small and great, from the sea and from +the grave, press together at the foot of the great white Throne, and the +books of doom are opened; when above shines the city whose light is the +glory of God, and below yawns the lake of fire,--what voice shall plead +for Philip Sheldon, what entreating cry shall Pity send forth that +sentence against him may be stayed? + +Surely none; unless it issue from the lips of that one confiding friend, +whose last words upon earth thanked and blessed him, and whose long +agonies he watched with unshaken purpose, conscious that in every +convulsive change in the familiar face, and every pang that shook the +stalwart form, he saw the result of his own work. + +Perhaps at that dread Judgment Day, when every other tongue is silent, +the voice of Tom Halliday may be heard pleading for the man who murdered +him. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Charlotte's Inheritance, by M. E. 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Braddon + +Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9259] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on September 15, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan and Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE + + By + + M. E. Braddon + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +Book the First. + +DE PROFUNDIS. + + I. LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE + + II. IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE + + III. PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR + + IV. A DECREE OF BANISHMENT + + +Book the Second. + +DOWNHILL. + + I. THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE + + II. FORGIVEN TOO LATE + + III. GUSTAVE THE SECOND + + +Book the Third. + +THE HORATIAD. + + I. CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE + + II. EPISTOLARY + + III. TOO CLEVER FOR A CATSPAW + + IV. CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL + + V. THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR + + +Book the Fourth. + +GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND. + + I. HALCYON DAYS + + II. CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY + + III. WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I? + + IV. SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH + + +Book the Fifth. + +THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. + + I. TAKEN BY STORM + + II. FIRM AS A ROCK + + III. AGAINST WIND AND TIDE + + IV. DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY + + V. ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE + + +Book the Sixth. + +DIANA IN NORMANDY. + + I. AT CÔTENOIR + + +Book the Seventh. + +A CLOUD OF FEAR. + + I. THE BEGINNING OF SORROW + + II. FADING + + III. MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS + + IV. VALENTINE'S SKELETON + + V. AT HAROLD'S HILL + + VI. DESPERATE MEASURES + + +Book the Eighth. + +A FIGHT AGAINST TIME. + + I. A DREAD REVELATION + + II. PHOENICIANS ARE RISING + + III. THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE + + +Book the Ninth. + +THROUGH THE FURNACE. + + I. SOMETHING TOO MUCH + + II. DR. JEDD'S OPINION + + III. NON DORMIT JUDAS + + IV. COUNTING THE COST + + V. THE BEGINNING OF THE END + + VI. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED + + VII. THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE + + +Book the Tenth. + +HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS. + + I. OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY + + II. AFTER THE WEDDING + + III. GREEK AGAINST GREEK + + IV. ONLY A DREAM + + V. BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE + + VI. BEYOND THE VEIL + + VII. BETTER THAN GOLD + +VIII. LOST SIGHT OF + + IX. ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES + + X. "ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS." + + + + +CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE + + + +Book the first. + + + +DE PROFUNDIS. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE. + +In the days when the Bourbon reigned over Gaul, before the "simple, +sensuous, passionate" verse of Alfred de Musset had succeeded the +_débonnaire_ Muse of Béranger in the affections of young France,--in days +when the site of the Trocadero was a remote and undiscovered country, and +the word "exposition" unknown in the Academic dictionary, and the Gallic +Augustus destined to rebuild the city yet an exile,--a young law-student +boarded, in common with other students, in a big dreary-looking house at +the corner of the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, abutting on the Place Lauzun, +and within some ten minutes walk of the Luxembourg. It was a very dingy +quarter, though noble gentlemen and lovely ladies had once occupied the +great ghastly mansions, and disported themselves in the gruesome gardens. +But the young students were in nowise oppressed by the ghastliness of +their abode. They sang their Béranger, and they pledged each other in +cheap Bordeaux, and clinked their glasses noisily in their boisterous +good-fellowship, and ate the messes compounded for them in a darksome +cupboard, known as the kitchen, by old Nanon the cook, purblind, +stone-deaf, and all but imbecile, and popularly supposed to be the +venerable mother of Madame Magnotte. The youngsters grumbled to each +other about the messes when they were unusually mysterious; and it must +be owned that there were _vol-au-vents_ and _fricandeaux_ consumed in +that establishment which were awful and wonderful in their nature; but +they ventured on no complaint to the mistress of the mansion. She was a +grim and terrible personage. Her terms were low, and she treated her +boarders _de haute en bas_. If they were not content with her viands, +they might go and find more agreeable viands elsewhere. + +Madame Magnotte was altogether mysterious and inscrutable. Some people +said that she was a countess, and that the wealth and lands of her family +had been confiscated by the committee of public unsafety in '93. Others +declared that she had been a popular actress in a small theatre in the +days of Napoleon. She was tall and thin--nay, of an exceptional +leanness--and her complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the +butter that appeared on her hospitable board; but she had flashing black +eyes, and a certain stateliness of gait and grandeur of manner that +impressed those young Bohemians, her boarders, with a kind of awe. They +talked of her as the "countess," and by that name she was known to all +inmates of the mansion; but in all their dealings with her they treated +her with unfailing respect. + +One of the quietest among the young men who enjoyed the privileges of +Madame Magnotte's abode was a certain Gustave Lenoble, a law-student, the +only son of a very excellent couple who lived on their own estate, near +an obscure village in Normandy. The estate was of the smallest; a +dilapidated old house, known in the immediate neighbourhood as "the +Château," and very dear to those who resided therein; a garden, in which +everything seemed to have run to seed; and about forty acres of the +poorest land in Normandy. These possessions constituted the patrimonial +estate of Francois Lenoble, _propriétaire_, of Beaubocage, near +Vevinordin, the department of Eure. + +The people amongst whom the good man lived his simple life called him M. +Lenoble de Beaubocage, but he did not insist upon this distinction; and +on sending out his only son to begin the battle of life in the great +world of Paris, he recommended the young man to call himself Lenoble, +_tout court_. + +The young man had never cherished any other design. He was of all +creatures the least presuming or pretentious. The father was Legitimist +to the very marrow; the son half Buonapartist, half republican. The +father and son had quarrelled about these differences of opinion +sometimes in a pleasantly disputatious manner; but no political +disagreement could lesser the love between these two. Gustave loved +his parents as only a Frenchman can venture to love his father and +mother--with a devotion for the gentleman that bordered on enthusiasm, +with a fond reverence for the lady that was the very essence of chivalry. +There was a sister, who regarded her brother Gustave as the embodiment of +all that is perfect in youthful mankind; and there were a couple of old +house-servants, a very stupid clumsy lad in the stables, and half a dozen +old mongrel dogs, born and bred on the premises, who seemed to share the +young lady's opinions. There was not a little discussion upon the subject +of Gustave Lenoble's future career; and it was not without difficulty +that the father could be persuaded to approve the choice of a profession +which the young man had made. The seigneur of Beaubocage cherished an +exaggerated pride of race little suspected by those who saw his simple +life, and were pleased by his kindly unaffected manners. The house of +Lenoble, at some remote and almost mythical period of history, had +distinguished itself in divers ways; and those bygone grandeurs, vague +and shadowy in the minds of all others, seemed very real to Monsieur +Lenoble. He assured his son that no Lenoble had ever been a lawyer. They +had been always lords of the soil, living on their own lands, which had +once stretched wide and far in that Norman province; a fact proved by +certain maps in M. Lenoble's possession, the paper whereof was worn and +yellow with age. They had stooped to no profession save that of arms. One +seigneur of Beaubocage had fought under Bayard himself; another had +fallen at Pavia, on that great day when all was lost _hormis l'honneur_; +another had followed the white plume of the Bernais; another--but was +there any need to tell of the glories of that house upon which Gustave +was so eager to inflict the disgrace of a learned profession? + +Thus argued the father; but the mother had spent her girlhood amidst the +clamour of the Buonapartist campaigns, and the thought of war was very +terrible to her. The memory of the retreat from Russia was not yet twenty +years old. There were men alive to tell the story, to depict those days +and nights of horror, that mighty march of death. It was she and her +daughter Cydalise who had helped to persuade Gustave that he was born to +distinguish himself in the law. They wanted him to study in Paris--the +young man himself had a wild desire to enjoy the delights of that +wondrous capital--and to return in a few years to set up for himself as +_avocat_ at the town of Vevinord, some half-dozen leagues from the +patrimonial estate. He was created to plead for the innocent, to denounce +the guilty, to be grand and brave and fiery-hot with enthusiasm in +defence of virtuous peasants charged unjustly with the stealing of sheep, +or firing of corn-ricks. It never struck these simple souls that he might +sometimes be called upon to defend the guilty, or to denounce the +innocent. + +It was all settled at last. Gustave was to go to Paris, and enter himself +as a student of law. There were plenty of boarding-houses in the +neighbourhood of the Ecole de Droit where a young man might find a home; +and to one of these Gustave was recommended by a friend of his family. It +was the Pension Magnotte to which they had sent him, the big dreary +house, _entre cour et jardin_, which had once been so grand and noble. A +printer now occupied the lower chambers, and a hand painted on the wall +pointed to the _Pension Magnotte, au premier. Tirez le cordon, s.v.p._ + +Gustave was twenty-one years of age when he came to Paris; tall, +stalwart, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with a fair frank face, +an auburn moustache, candid, kind blue eyes--a physiognomy rather Saxon +than Celtic. He was a man who made friends quickly, and was soon at home +among the students, roaring their favourite songs, and dancing their +favourite dances at the dancing-places of that day, joining with a +pleasant heartiness in all their innocent dissipations. For guilty +dissipation the young provincial had no taste. Did he not carry the +images of two kind and pure women about with him wherever he went, like +two attendant angels ever protecting his steps; and could he leave them +sorrowing on thresholds _they_ could not pass? Ah, no! He was loud and +boisterous and wild of spirits in those early days, but incapable of +meanness or vice. + +"It is a brave heart," Madame Magnotte said of him, "though for the +breaking of glasses a scourge--_un fléau_." + +The ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age +and unattractive appearance--two or three lonely spinsters, eking out +their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious +sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and +a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of +miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame +Magnotte told her gossips--an old woman with two furiously ugly +daughters, who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in +divers boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so many +strange bachelors, husbands for these two solitary ones must at last be +found. + +These, with a pale young lady who gave music lessons in the quarter, were +all the feminine inmates of the mansion; and amongst these Gustave +Lenoble was chief favourite. His tender courtesy for these lonely women +seemed in some manner an evidence of that good old blood whereof the +young man's father boasted. Francis the First, who listened with bent +knee and bare head to his mother's discourse, was not more reverential to +that noble Savoyarde than was Gustave to the shabby-genteel maiden ladies +of the Pension Magnotte. In truth, this young man had a heart pitiful and +tender as the heart of woman. To be unfortunate was to possess a sure +claim upon his pity and regard; to be poor and friendless was the best +appeal to his kindness. He spent his evenings sometimes in the great +dreary desert of a salon, and listened respectfully while Mademoiselle +Servin, the young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Grétry +on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of those +instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the very ghost of +music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour. To +him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young +men. + +"They mock themselves of everything--even the religion!" she exclaimed, +with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent. +But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of +the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I +cannot to them. I, who speak to you--I, too, come of a good old race, and +there is sympathy between we others." + +And then, after babbling to him of her lost station, the lady would +entertain him with some dainty little supper with which she was wont to +indulge herself and her lady boarders, when the students--who were +treated something after the manner of school-boys--were out of doors. + +For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian life--not +altogether idle, but not altogether industrious--amusing himself a great +deal, and learning very little; moderate in his expenditure, when +compared with his fellow-students, but no small drain upon the funds of +the little family at home. In sooth, this good old Norman family had in a +pecuniary sense sunk very low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down +house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful face, and +took things pleasantly. A very humble English farmer would have despised +the income which supported M. Lenoble's household; and it was only the +economy and skill of the matron and her daughter which sustained the +dignity of the small establishment. + +There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple-minded old +father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and that was the hope in the +grand things to be done, in the dim future, by Gustave, the son, the +heir, the pole-star of the household. + +Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad light of honour and +riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student. +On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to be +sustained. To him they looked, of him they thought, in the long dreary +winter evenings during which the mother nodded over her knitting, the +father slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at her +needle-work by her little table of _palissandre_. + +He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of study, +bringing with him life and light and gladness, as it seemed to the two +women who adored him; and now, in the winter of 1828, they expected +another visit. He was to be with them on the first day of the new year. +He was to stay with them till his Mother's fete--the 17th of January. + +The father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety. The +mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she who loved her +brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could be more anxious than +usual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, a dire conspiracy, of which +Gustave was to be the subject and victim, had been concocted beneath that +innocent-seeming roof. Father, mother, and sister, seated round the +family hearth, fatal as some domestic Parcae, had hatched their horrid +scheme, while the helpless lad amused himself yonder in the great city, +happily unconscious of the web that was being woven to enmesh him. + +The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame held, the +needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were employed in the +fabrication of a matrimonial net. These unsophisticated conspirators +were bent upon bringing about the marriage of their victim, a marriage +which should at once elevate and enrich the Lenobles of Beaubocage, in +the person of Gustave. + +Francois Lenoble's best friend and nearest neighbour was a certain Baron +Frehlter, of Germanic origin, but for some generations past naturalised +to the Gallic soil. The Baron was proprietor of an estate which could +show ten acres for one of the lands of Beaubocage. The Baron boasted a +family tree which derived its root from a ramification of the +Hohenzollern pedigree; but, less proud and more prudent than the +Lenobles, the Frehlters had not scorned to intermingle their Prussian +blue blood with less pure streams of commercial France. The _épicier_ +element had prevailed in the fair brides of the house of Frehlter for the +last three or four generations, and the house of Frehlter had +considerably enriched itself by this sacrifice of its family pride. + +The present Baron had married a lady ten years his senior, the widow of a +Rouen merchant, alike wealthy and pious, but famous rather for these +attributes than for any personal charm. One only child, a girl, had +blessed this union. She was now a young person of something under twenty +years of age, newly emerged from her convent, and pining for some share +in the gaieties and delights of a worldly paradise, which had already +been open to many of her schoolfellows. + +Mademoiselle Frehlter's companions had, for the most part, left school to +be married. She had heard of the _corbeille_, the wedding dress, the +wedding festivities, and occasionally a word or two about that secondary +consideration the bridegroom. The young lady was therefore somewhat +inclined to take it ill of her father that he had not secured for her the +_éclat_ of an early marriage. Her departure from the convent of the Sacré +Coeur, at Vevinord, was flat and tame to an extreme degree. The future +lay before her, a dreary desert of home life, to be spent with a father +who gorged himself daily at a greasy and savoury banquet, and who slept +away the greater part of his existence; and with a mother who divided her +affections between a disagreeable poodle and a still more disagreeable +priest--a priest who took upon himself to lecture the demoiselle Frehlter +on the smallest provocation. + +The château of the Frehlters was a very grand abode as compared to the +tumble-down house of Beaubocage; but it was cold and stony to a +depressing degree, and the furniture must have been shabby in the days of +the Fronde. Faithful old servants kept the mansion in a state of spotless +purity, and ruled the Baron and his wife with a rod of iron. Mademoiselle +execrated these devoted retainers, and would have welcomed the sauciest +of modern domestics who would have released her from the bondage of these +servants of the old school. + +Mademoiselle had been at home a year--a year of discontent and +ill-humour. She had quarrelled with her father, because he would not take +her to Paris; with her mother, because she would not give her more new +gowns and bonnets and feathers and fur-belows; with the priest, the +poodle, with the autocracy below-stairs, with everybody and everything. +So at last the Baron decided that mademoiselle should marry, whereby he +might be rid of her, and of her complaints, vagaries, ill-tempers, and +general dissatisfaction. + +Having once made up his mind as to the wisdom of a matrimonial +arrangement, Baron Frehlter was not slow to fix upon a bridegroom. He was +a very rich man, and Madelon was his only child, and he was furthermore a +very lazy man; so, instead of looking far afield for a wealthy or +distinguished suitor for his daughter, he was inclined to take the first +that came to hand. It is possible that the Baron, who was of a somewhat +cynical turn of mind, may have cherished no very exalted idea of his +daughter's attractions, either personal or mental. However this might be, +it is certain that when the demoiselle had ill-treated the poodle, and +insulted the priest, and quarrelled with the cook--that high-priestess of +the kitchen who alone, in all Normandy, could concoct those messes which +the Baron loved--the master of Côtenoir decided on marrying his heiress +out of hand. + +He communicated this design to his old crony, François Lenoble, one day +when the Beaubocage family dined at Château Côtenoir. + +"I think of marrying my daughter," he said to his friend, when the ladies +were safely out of hearing at the other end of the long dreary saloon. +"Now thy son Gustave is a fine fellow--brave, handsome, and of a good +race. It is true he is not as rich as Madelon will be by-and-by; but I am +no huckster, to sell my daughter to the best bidder" ("and I doubt if +there would be many bidders for her, if I were so inclined," thought the +Baron, in parenthesis); "and if thy son should take a fancy to her, and +she to him, it would please me well enough, friend François." + +Friend François pricked up his ears, and in his old eyes flickered a +feeble light. Côtenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his son +Gustave! Lenoble of Beaubocage and Côtenoir--Lenoble of Côtenoir and +Beaubocage! So splendid a vision had never shone before his eyes in all +the dreams that he had dreamed about the only son of whom he was so +proud. He could not have shaped to himself so bold a project as the union +of those two estates. And here was the Baron offering it to him, with his +snuff-box, _en passant_. + +"It would be a great marriage," he said, "a very great marriage. For +Gustave I can answer without hesitation. He could not but be charmed by +such a union--so amiable a bride would enchant him." + +He looked down the room to the spot where Madelon and Cydalise were +standing, side by side, admiring Madame Frehlter's poodle. Madelon could +afford to be civil to the poodle before company. The contrast between the +two girls was sufficiently striking. Cydalise was fair and +bright-looking--Mademoiselle Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure, +swarthy of complexion, dark of brow. + +"He could not but be charmed," repeated the old man, with feeble +gallantry. + +He was thinking of the joining together of Beaubocage and Côtenoir; and +it seemed a very small thing to him that such a union of estates would +involve the joining of a man and woman, who were to hold to each other +and love each other until death should part them. + +"It shall be no marriage of convenience," said the Baron, in a generous +spirit; "my daughter is somewhat ill-tem--that is to say, my daughter +finds her life somewhat dull with her old father and mother, and I think +she might be happier in the society of a husband. I like your son; and +my wife, too, likes him better than any other young man of our +acquaintance. Madelon has seen a good deal of him when she has been home +from the convent in her holidays, and I have reason to think she does +not dislike him. If he likes her and she likes him, and the idea is +pleasing to you and madame, we will make a match of it. If not, let it +pass; we will say no more." + +Again the seigneur of Beaubocage assured his friend that Gustave would be +enchanted with the proposal; and again it was of Côtenoir that he +thought, and not of the heart or the inclinations of his son. + +This conversation took place late in autumn, and at the new year Gustave +was to come. Nothing was to be said to him about his intended wife until +he arrived; that was a point upon which the Baron insisted. + +"The young man may have fallen in love with some fine young person in +Paris," he said; "and in that case we will say nothing to him of Madelon. +But if we find him with the heart free, and inclined to take to my +daughter, we may give him encouragement." + +This was solemnly agreed between the two fathers. Nor was Mademoiselle +Frehlter to be told of the matrimonial scheme until it ripened. But after +this dinner at Côtenoir the household at Beaubocage talked of little else +than of the union of the two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what +happiness! Gustave the lord of Côtenoir! Poor Cydalise had never seen a +finer mansion than the old château, with its sugar-loaf towers and stone +terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient turret chambers, and +long dreary salon and _salle-à-manger_. She could picture to herself +nothing more splendid. For Gustave to be offered the future possession of +Côtenoir was as if he were suddenly to be offered the succession to a +kingdom. She could not bring herself to consider that Madelon was neither +agreeable nor attractive, and that, after all, the wife must count for +something in every marriage contract. She could see nothing, she could +think of nothing, but Côtenoir. The glory and grandeur of that estate +absorbed every other consideration. + +No one of those three conspirators feared any opposition on the part of +their victim. It was just possible that Gustave might have fallen in love +with some Parisian damsel, though his letters gave no hint of any such +calamity. But if such a misfortune had happened, he would, of course, +fall out of love again, return the damsel her troth and obtain the return +of his own, and straightway offer the second-hand commodity to +Mademoiselle Frehlter. + +The object of all these cares and hopes and dreams arrived at last, full +of life and spirits, with plenty to tell about Paris in general, and very +little to tell about himself in particular. The women questioned him +unmercifully. They insisted on a graphic description of every female +inmate of the boarding-house, and would scarcely believe that all except +the little music-mistress were elderly and unattractive. Of the +music-mistress herself they were inclined to be very suspicious, and were +not altogether reassured by Gustave's assertion that she was neither +pretty nor fascinating. + +"She is a dear, good, industrious little thing," he said, "and works +harder than I do. But she is no miracle of beauty; and her life is so +dreary that I often wonder she does not go into a convent. It would be +gayer and pleasanter for her than to live with those old women at the +Pension Magnotte." + +"I suppose there are many beautiful women in Paris?" said Cydalise, bent +upon knowing the worst. + +"Well, I dare say there are," Gustave answered frankly; "but we students +don't see much of them in our quarter. One sees a pretty little +milliner's girl now and then, or a washerwoman. In short, there are a +good many grisettes in our part of the world," added the young man, +blushing, but for no sin of his own. "We get a glimpse of a handsome +woman sometimes, rattling past in her carriage; but in Paris handsome +women do not go on foot. I have seen prettier girls at Vevinord than in +Paris." + +Cydalise was enchanted with this confession. + +"Yes," she exclaimed, "our Normandy is the place for pretty girls. +Madelon Frehlter. for example, is not she a very--amiable girl?" + +"I dare say she's amiable enough," answered Gustave; "but if there were +no prettier girls than Mademoiselle Frehlter in this part of the world, +we should have no cause to boast. But there are prettier girls, Cydalise, +and thou art thyself one of them." + +After this speech the young man bestowed upon his sister a resounding +kiss. Yes; it was clear that he was heart-whole. These noisy, boisterous +good spirits were not characteristic of a lover. Even innocent Cydalise +knew that to be in love was to be miserable. + +From this time mother and sister tormented their victim with the merits +and charms of his predestined bride. Madelon on the piano was miraculous; +Madelon's little songs were enchanting; Madelon's worsted-work was a +thing to worship; Madelon's devotion to her mother and her mother's +poodle was unequalled; Madelon's respectful bearing to the good Abbé St. +Velours--her mother's director--was positively beyond all praise. It was +virtue seraphic, supernal. Such a girl was too good for earth--too good +for anything except Gustave. + +The young man heard and wondered. + +"How you rave about Madelon Frehlter!" he exclaimed. "She seems to me the +most commonplace young person I ever encountered. She has nothing to say +for herself; she never appears to know where to put her elbows. I never +saw such elbows; they are everywhere at once. And her shoulders!--O +heaven, then, her shoulders!--it ought to be forbidden to wear low +dresses when one has such shoulders." + +This was discouraging, but the schemers bore up even against this. The +mother dwelt on the intellectual virtues of Madelon; and what were +shoulders compared to mind, piety, amiability--all the Christian graces? +Cydalise owned that dear Madelon was somewhat _gauche_; Gustave called +her _bête_. The father remonstrated with his son. Was it not frightful to +use a word of the barracks in connection with this charming young lady? + +At last the plot revealed itself. After a dinner at Côtenoir and a dinner +at Beaubocage, on both which occasions Gustave had made himself very +agreeable to the ladies of the Baron's household--since, indeed, it was +not in his nature to be otherwise than kind and courteous to the weaker +sex--the mother told her son of the splendid destiny that had been shaped +for him. It was a matter of surprise and grief to her to find that the +revelation gave Gustave no pleasure. + +"Marriage was the last thing in my thoughts, dear mother," he said, +gravely; "and Madelon Frehlter is the very last woman I should think of +for a wife. Nevertheless, I am gratified by the honour Monsieur le Baron +has done me. That goes without saying." + +"But the two estates!--together they would make you a great proprietor. +You would not surely refuse such fortune?" + +Cydalise gave a little scream of horror. + +"Côtenoir! to refuse Côtenoir! Ah, surely that would be impossible! But +figure to yourself, then, Gustave--" + +"Nay, Cydalise, you forget the young lady goes with the château; a +fixture that we cannot dispense with." + +"But she, so amiable, so pious--" + +"So plain, so stupid--" + +"So modest, so charitable--" + +"In short, so admirably adapted for a Sister of Charity," replied +Gustave. "But no, dear Cydalise. Côtenoir is a grand old place; but I +would as soon spend my life at Toulon, dragging a cannon-ball at my +heels, as in that dreary salon where Madame Frehlter nurses her maladies +and her poodle, and where the good-humoured, easy-going old Baron snores +away existence. 'Tis very well for those elderly folks, you see, my +sister, and for Madelon--for hers is an elderly mind in a youthful body; +but for a young man full of hope and gaiety and activity--bah! It would +be of all living deaths the worst. From the galleys there is always the +hope of escaping--an underground passage, burrowed out with one's +finger-nails in the dead of the night--a work lasting twenty years or so, +but with a feeble star of hope always glimmering at the end of the +passage. But from the salon, and mamma, and the poodle, and the good, +unctuous, lazy old director, and papa's apoplectic snoring, and the +plaintive little songs and monotonous embroideries of one's wife, there +would be no escape. Ah, bah!" + +Gustave shuddered, and the two women shuddered as they heard him. The +prospect was by no means promising; but Madame Lenoble and her daughter +did not utterly despair. Gustave's heart was disengaged. That was a great +point; and for the rest, surely persuasion might do much. + +Then came that phenomenon seen very often in this life--a +generous-minded, right-thinking young man talked into a position which of +all others is averse from his own inclinations. The mother persuaded, the +sister pleaded, the father dwelt dismally upon the poverty of Beaubocage, +the wealth of Côtenoir. It was the story of auld Robin Gray reversed. +Gustave perceived that his refusal to avail himself of this splendid +destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people who loved him +so fondly--whom he loved as fondly in return. Must he not be a churl to +disappoint hopes so unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent? And only +because Madelon was not the most attractive or the prettiest of women! + +The young man stood firm against all their arguments, he was unmoved by +all their pleading. It was only when his anxious kindred had given up the +battle for lost that Gustave wavered. Their mute despair moved him more +than the most persuasive eloquence; and the end was submission. He left +Beaubocage the plighted lover of that woman who, of all others, he would +have been the last to choose for his wife. It had all been settled very +pleasantly--the dowry, the union of the two estates, the two names. For +six months Gustave was to enjoy his freedom to finish his studies; and +then he was to return to Normandy for his marriage. + +"I have heard very good accounts of you from Paris," said the Baron. "You +are not like some young men, wild, mad-brained. One can confide in your +honour, your steadiness." + +The good folks of Beaubocage were in ecstacies. They congratulated +Gustave--they congratulated each other. A match so brilliant would be the +redemption of the family. The young man at last began to fancy himself +the favoured of the gods. What if Madelon seemed a little dull--a little +wanting in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous minds? she was +doubtless so much the more profound, so much the more virtuous. If she +was not bright and varied and beautiful as some limpid fountain dancing +in summer sunlight, she was perhaps changeless and steady as a rock; and +who would not rather have the security of a rock than the summer-day +beauty of a fountain? + +Before Gustave departed from his paternal home he had persuaded himself +that he was a very lucky fellow; and he had paid Mademoiselle Frehlter +some pretty little stereotyped compliments, and had listened with sublime +patience to her pretty little stereotyped songs. He left the young lady +profoundly impressed by his merits; he left his own household supremely +happy; and he carried away with him a heart in which Madelon Frehlter's +image had no place. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE. + +Gustave went back to his old life, and was not much disturbed by the +grandeur of his destiny as future seigneur of Côtenoir and Beaubocage. It +sometimes occurred to him that he had a weight upon his mind; and, on +consideration, he found that the weight was Madelon Frehlter. But he +continued to carry that burden very lightly, and his easy-going student +life went on, unbroken by thoughts of the future. He sent polite messages +to the demoiselle Frehlter in his letters to Cydalise; and he received +from Cydalise much information, more graphic than interesting, upon the +subject of the family at Côtenoir; and so his days went on with pleasant +monotony. This was the brief summer of his youth; but, alas, how near at +hand was the dark and dismal winter that was to freeze this honest joyous +heart! That heart, so compassionate for all suffering, so especially +tender for all womankind, was to be attacked upon its weaker side. + +It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the Luxembourg +every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle to the Ecole +de Droit. Sometimes, when he was earlier than usual, he carried a book +with him, and paced one of the more obscure alleys, reading for an odd +half-hour before he went to the daily mill-grinding in the big building +beyond those quiet gardens. + +Walking with his book one morning--it was a volume of Boileau, which +the student knew by heart, and the pages whereof did not altogether +absorb his attention--he passed and repassed a bench on which a lady +sat, pensive and solitary, tracing shapeless figures on the ground with +the point of her parasol. He glanced at her somewhat carelessly the +first time of passing, more curiously on the second occasion, and +the third time with considerable attention. Something in her +attitude--helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all +expressed in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle +characters on the gravel--enlisted the sympathies of Gustave Lenoble. He +had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrated the cavernous depths +of the capacious bonnet of those days; but one glimpse of the pale +plaintive face inspired him with compassion unspeakable. Never had he +seen despair more painfully depicted on the human countenance--a despair +that sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the +outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He +could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her +world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had +gone forth--that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion +of an accursed race there were to be none. + +He put Boileau into his pocket. That glimpse of a suffering human mind, +which had been unconsciously revealed to him, possessed an interest more +absorbing than the grandest flight of poet and satirist. As he passed for +the fifth time, he looked at the mournful lady still more searchingly, +and this time the sad eyes were lifted, and met his pitying looks. The +beautiful lips moved, and murmured something in tones so tremulous as to +be quite unintelligible. + +The student took off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as +knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his liege mistress. + +"In what can I have the happiness to be agreeable to you, madame?" + +"You are very good, monsieur," murmured the lady in very decent French, +but with an accent unmistakably foreign--English, as Gustave opined. +"I--I--am quite a stranger in Paris, and--and--I have heard there are +numerous lodging-houses in this quarter--where one may obtain a +lodging--cheaply. I have asked several nursemaids, and other women, in +the gardens this morning; but they seem very stupid, and can tell me +nothing; and I do not care to ask at the hotel where I am staying." + +Gustave pondered. Yes, there were many lodgings, he informed the lady. +And then he thought of Madame Magnotte. Was it not his duty to secure +this stray lodger for that worthy woman, if possible? + +"If madame has no objection to a boarding-house--" he began. + +Madame shook her head. "A boarding-house would suit me just as well," she +said; "but it must not be expensive. I cannot afford to pay much." + +"I know of a boarding-house very near this place, where madame might find +a comfortable home on very reasonable terms. It is, in point of fact, the +house in which I myself reside," added Gustave, with some timidity. + +"If you will kindly direct me to the house--" said the lady, looking +straight before her with sad unseeing eyes, and evidently supremely +indifferent as to the residence or non-residence of M. Lenoble in the +habitation referred to. + +"Nay, madame, if you will permit me to conduct you there. It is but a +walk of five minutes." + +The stranger accepted the courtesy with a gentle indifference that was +not ingratitude, but rather incapacity for any feeling except that one +great sorrow which seemed to absorb her mind. + +Gustave wondered what calamity could thus overwhelm one so young and +beautiful. + +The lady was quite silent during the little walk from the gardens to the +Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and Gustave observed her attentively as he +walked by her side. She was evidently not more than four-and-twenty years +of age, and she was certainly the prettiest woman he had ever seen. It +was a fair delicate English beauty, a little worn and faded, as if by +care, but idealized and sublimated in the process. At her brightest this +stranger must have been strikingly beautiful; in her sorrow she was +touchingly lovely. It was what Gustave's countrymen call a _beauté +navrante_. + +Gustave watched her, and wondered about her. The dress she wore was +sufficiently elegant, but had lost the gloss of newness. Her shawl, which +she carried as gracefully as a Frenchwoman, was darned. Gustave perceived +the neat careful stitches, and divined the poverty of the wearer. That +she should be poor was no subject for surprise; but that she, so +sorrowful, so lonely, should seek a home in a strange city, was an enigma +not easy to solve. + +To Madame Magnotte Gustave introduced the stranger. She gave just one +look round the dreary saloon; but to Gustave's fancy that one look seemed +eloquent. "Ah me!" it said; "is this the fairest home I am to find upon +this inhospitable earth?" + +"She does not seem to belong to this world," the young man thought, as +he went back to the garden where he had found his fair stranger, having +been very coolly dismissed by Madame Magnotte after his introduction had +been made. + +And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, remembered how a +lady had been found by a student sitting on the lowest steps of the +guillotine, desolate and helpless, at night; and how the student had +taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately +in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had +been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours +before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and +delusive. + +Was this English stranger whom Gustave had found in the gardens of the +Luxembourg twin sister to that ghostly lady of the familiar legend? Her +despair and her beauty seemed to him greater than earthly sorrow or +earthly beauty; and he was half inclined to wonder whether she could be +of the same race as Madelon Frehlter. And from this hour the sense of a +weight upon his mind, before so vague and intermittent, became an +enduring oppression, not to be shaken off by any effort of his will. + +All through that day he found himself thinking more of the unknown +Englishwoman than was consistent with a strict performance of his duties. +He was vexed with himself on account of this foolish distraction of mind. + +"What a frivolous fellow I must be," he said to himself, "to dwell upon +such a trifle! This comes of leading such a monotonous life." + +At dinner he looked for the lady; but she did not appear at the long +table, where the shrill old ladies, the epicurean old bachelors, the +noisy students, daily devoured and grumbled at the four or five courses +which old Nanon developed out of her inner consciousness and a rather +scantily furnished larder. He questioned Madame Magnotte after dinner, +and was told that the lady was in the house, but was too tired to dine +with the other inmates. + +"I have to thank thee for a new boarder, my friend," she said. "Madame +Meynell will not pay largely; but she seems a quiet and respectable +person, and we shall doubtless be well pleased with each other." + +"Madame Meynell!" repeated Gustave, congratulating himself on finding +that the Englishwoman was an inhabitant of the house he lived in. "She is +a widow, I suppose?" + +"Yes, she is a widow. I asked that question, and she answered, yes. +But she told me nothing of her late husband. She is not at all +communicative." + +This was all Gustave could obtain from Madame Magnotte. She was not +communicative. No; she was, indeed, scarcely less silent than that +ghostly lady who had been found sitting at the foot of the guillotine. +There was some kind of mystery involved in her sorrowful face, her silent +apathy. It was possibly the fact of this mystery which interested M. +Lenoble. Certain it is that the young man's interest had been aroused by +this unknown Englishwoman, and that his mind was more occupied by the +image of her whom he had seen but once than by that of his plighted wife. + +He waited anxiously for the next day; but on the next day Madame Meynell +still pleaded fatigue and illness. It was only on the third day that she +appeared at the noisy banquet, pale, silent, absent-minded, sheltering +herself under the wing of Madame Magnotte, who was disposed to be kind to +this helpless stranger. To Gustave the young English widow seemed like a +ghost at that crowded board. He looked at her every now and then from his +distant seat, and saw her always with the same hopeless far-away look in +her sad eyes. He himself was silent and _distrait_. + +"Of what dost thou dream, my droll one?" said his nearest neighbour. +"Thou art positively insupportable." + +M. Lenoble could not become vivacious or entertaining at the behest of +his fellow-student. The consciousness of that strange pale face haunted +and oppressed him. He hoped to have a few minutes' talk with the English +lady after dinner, but she disappeared before the removal of those +recondite preparations which in the Pension Magnotte went by the generic +name of "dessert." + +For more than a week she appeared thus at the dinner-table, eating very +little, speaking not at all, except such monosyllabic replies as the +hostess now and then extorted from her pale lips. A creature at once so +beautiful and so profoundly sad became an object of interest to others +besides Gustave; but in no breast was the sympathy which her sadness and +beauty excited so poignant as in his. Her face haunted him. The familiar +pleasures and amusements became distasteful to him. He spent his evenings +at home in the dismal salon, and was content to listen to the chatter of +the old women, the little music-mistress's dreary sonatas, the monotonous +roll of wheels on the distant quay--anything rather than the hackneyed +round of student-life that had once been agreeable to him. He did not +fail to write his weekly letter to Cydalise; but, for some reason or +other, he refrained from any allusion to the English stranger, although +it was his custom to relate all his adventures for the amusement of the +family at Beaubocage. + +An evening came at last on which Madame Meynell was persuaded to remain +with the other ladies after dinner. + +"It must be very cold and cheerless for you in your bedroom," said +Madame Magnotte; "why not spend your evening with us, in a pleasant and +social manner?" + +"You are very good, madame," murmured the Englishwoman, in the slow timid +accents that had so plaintive a sound to Gustave's ear; "if you wish it, +I will stay." + +She seemed to submit rather from utter weakness and inability to refuse +anything asked of her than from any hope of finding pleasure in the +society of the Magnotte salon. + +It was an evening in March--cold, blustrous, dreary. The east wind blew +clouds of dust athwart the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and the few +foot-passengers in that dull thoroughfare looked pinched and wretched. +The old ladies gathered round the great black stove, and gossipped in the +twilight; the music-mistress went to her feeble piano, and played, +unasked, unheeded; for Gustave, who was wont to turn the leaves, or sit +attentive by the piano, seemed this evening unconscious of the music. +Madame Meynell sat in one of the windows, alone, half-hidden by the faded +yellow damask curtains, looking out into the street. + +Something--some impulse which he tried to resist, but could not--drew +Gustave towards that lonely figure by the window. He went close up to the +strange lady. This evening, as in the gardens of the Luxembourg, she +seemed to him a living statue of despair. Now, as then, he felt an +interest in her sorrow which he was powerless to combat. He had a vague +idea that even this compassionate sympathy was in some manner an offence +against Madelon Frehlter, the woman to whom he belonged, and yet he +yielded to the fatal weakness. + +"Yes, I belong to her," he said to himself; "I belong to Madelon +Frehlter. She is neither pretty nor fascinating; but I have every reason +to believe her very good, very amiable; and she is the only woman, except +those of my own kindred, in whom I have any right to be interested." + +He did not say this in so many words; but this was the shape which his +thoughts assumed as he yielded to the tempter, and walked straight to the +distant window by which Madame Meynell had seated herself. + +She started slightly as he approached her, and then looked up and +recognized him as her acquaintance of the Luxembourg. + +"Good evening, monsieur," she said; "I have to thank you for having +helped me to find a comfortable home." + +Having said this in a low gentle voice, she looked out into the street +once more with her mournful unseeing eyes. It was evident that she had no +more to say to M. Lenoble. + +The student, however, had no idea of leaving the window just yet, +although he knew--yes, knew--that his presence there was a wrong done to +Madelon Frehlter; but a wrong so small, so infinitesimal, that it was +really not worth consideration. + +"I am enchanted to think that I was of some slight service to you, +madame," he said; "but I fear you will find this quarter of Paris +very dull." + +She did not take any notice of this remark until Gustave had repeated it, +and then she spoke as if suddenly awakened from a trance. + +"Dull?" she said. "No, I have not found it dull. I do not care for +gaiety." + +After this M. Lenoble felt that he could say no more. The lady relapsed +into her waking trance. The dust-clouds in the silent street seemed more +interesting to her than M. Lenoble of Beaubocage. He lingered a few +minutes in the neighbourhood of her chair, thoughtfully observant of the +delicate profile, the pale clear tints of a complexion that had lost its +bloom but not its purity, the settled sadness of the perfect mouth, the +dreamy pensiveness of the dark-grey eye, and then was fain to retire. + +After this, the English widow lady spent many evenings in Madame +Magnotte's salon. The old Frenchwoman gossipped and wondered about +her; but the most speculative could fashion no story from a page so +blank as this joyless existence. Even slander could scarcely assail +a creature so unobtrusive as the English boarder. The elderly ladies +shrugged their shoulders and pursed up their lips with solemn +significance. There must needs be something--a secret, a mystery, sorrow, +or wrong-doing--somewhere; but of Madame Meynell herself no one could +suspect any harm. + +Gustave Lenoble heard little of this gossip about the stranger, but she +filled his thoughts nevertheless. The vision of her face came between him +and his work; and when he thought of the future, and of the damsel who +had been allotted to him for a wife, his thoughts were very bitter. + +"Fate is like Laban," he said to himself; "a man works and does his duty +for seven years, and then Fate gives him Leah instead of Rachel. No doubt +Leah is a very good young woman; one has no complaint to make against +her, except that she is not Rachel." + +This was not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the destined +master of Côtenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious folks at +Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief and unsatisfactory. He +no longer gave ample details of his student-life--he no longer wrote in +his accustomed good spirits. His letters seemed stiff and constrained. + +"I am afraid he is studying too much," said the mother. + +"I daresay the rascal is wasting his time in dissipation," suggested +the father. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR." + +Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave +Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the +Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pension Magnotte had grown +accustomed to her presence, to her silence, her settled sadness, and +troubled themselves no further respecting herself or her antecedents. The +lapse of time had brought no improvement to her spirits; indeed, Gustave, +who watched her closely, perceived that she had grown paler and thinner +since that March morning when he met her in the public garden. Her life +must have been painfully monotonous. She very rarely went out of doors, +and on no occasion ventured beyond the gardens of the Luxembourg. No one +visited her. She neither wrote nor received any letters. She was wont to +make a pretence of reading as she sat in her retired corner of the salon; +but Gustave had discovered that she gave little attention to her book. +The open volume in her hand seemed no more than an excuse for brooding +upon her sorrows. + +If people, prompted by curiosity or by compassion, endeavoured to get +into conversation with this lonely lady, the result was always the same. +She would answer their questions in a low gentle voice, with a quiet +politeness; but she never assisted them in the smallest degree to +interchange thoughts with her. It seemed as if she sought neither friend +nor sympathizer, or as if her case was so entirely hopeless as to admit +of neither. She paid for her board and lodging weekly with a punctilious +exactness, though weekly payments were not the rule of the house. + +"My movements are uncertain," she said to Madame Magnotte. "I cannot +tell how long I may be with you. It will therefore be better for me to +pay you weekly." + +She had been in the house two months, dining every day at the public +table, spending all her evenings in the public saloon; and during that +time her settled gloom had never been broken by any outburst of grief or +passion. She might have been a creature of ice, a statue of despair +modelled in snow by a Michael Angelo. But one night the ice melted, the +statue of snow became in a moment a passionate, grief-stricken woman. + +It was one bright evening late in May. Ah, how near at hand was the +appointed date of those nuptials to which the household of Beaubocage +looked forward with supreme happiness! The old ladies of the Pension +Magnotte were for the most part out of doors. The long saloon was almost +empty. There were only Gustave, Madame Magnotte, and the little +music-mistress, who sat at her piano, with the western sunlight shining +full upon her, rosy-hued and glorious, surrounding her with its soft +radiance until she looked like a humble St. Cecilia. + +Madame Meynell had seated herself close to the piano, and was listening +to the music. Gustave hovered near, pretending to be occupied with a limp +little sheet of news published that evening. + +Mademoiselle Servin, the teacher of music, upon this occasion deserted +her favourite masters. She seemed in a somewhat dreamy and sentimental +humour, and played tender little melodies and simple plaintive airs, that +were more agreeable to Gustave than those grand examples of the +mathematics of counter-point which she so loved to interpret. + +"You like this melody of Grétry's," said the music-mistress, as M. +Lenoble seated himself close to the piano. "I do not think you care for +classic sonatas--the great works of Gluck, or Bach, or Beethoven?" + +"No," replied the young man frankly; "I do not care about anything I +can't understand. I like music that goes to one's heart." + +"And you, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" mademoiselle asked +of that lady, who was not wont to come so near the little piano, or to +pay so much attention to Mademoiselle Servin's performance. + +"O yes," murmured the Englishwoman, "I like such music as that." + +"And you, too, think that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive +airs--for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she +spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand, +operas, like _Fidelio_. Have you never heard this by your scientific +Beethoven?" + +Hereupon she played "Hope told a flattering tale," with much tenderness +and delicacy. Her two hearers listened, mute and deeply moved. And then +from that familiar melody she glided softly into another, most musical, +most melancholy, which has been set to some of the sweetest verses that +Thomas Moore ever composed: + +"Those evening bells, those evening bells! +How many a tale their music tells +Of youth and home, and that sweet time +When last I heard their soothing chime!" + +All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those days. The +song was one which the Englishwoman had sung years ago in a happy home. +What recollections, what associations, were evoked by that plaintive +melody, who shall say? The words came back with the music to which they +have been eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces +of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the picture of the +peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music,--all these things arose +before her in a vision too painfully vivid; and the lonely boarder at the +Pension Magnotte covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud. + +The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes, +and rose to leave the room. + +"Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were +about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that +were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see +again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the +happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh, +I pray God I may never hear that melody again." + +There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new to Gustave +Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, and she passed out of +the salon quietly, like a ghost--the ghost of that bright young creature +who had once borne her shape, and been called by her name, in a pleasant +farmhouse among the Yorkshire wolds. + +"Ah, but how that poor soul must have suffered!" cried the sympathetic +Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the Englishwoman. "I did +not think it was in her to feel so deeply. I thought she was stone, and +now I begin to think it must be of such stone as Niobe--the +petrification of despair." + +Upon Gustave Lenoble this scene made a profound impression. He lay awake +during the greater part of that night, thinking of the lonely lady's +tears and anguish. The music of "Those evening bells" pervaded his +dreams. He rose unrefreshed, feverish, forgetful of Côtenoir and Madelon +Frehlter, as if that place and that person had never emerged from the +shapeless substances of chaos. He wanted to see _her_ again, to console +her, if that were possible. Oh, that it might be his privilege to console +her! He pitied her with a compassion so intense, that thus to +compassionate her woes, was himself to suffer a poignant anguish. He +pitied her. Yes, he told himself again and again that this sentiment +which so absorbed his heart and mind was no more than pity. But oh, if +this were pity, what were love? That was a question which also presented +itself to the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, of Beaubocage _in esse_, and +Côtenoir _in posse_. + +Madame Meynell rarely appeared at the common breakfast in the grim +dining-room of the Pension Magnotte. Gustave was therefore in nowise +surprised to miss her on this particular morning. He took a cup of +coffee, and hurried off to his daily duties. There was a fever on him +which he could neither understand nor shake off, and he hastened to the +gardens of the Luxembourg, as if there were some special necessity for +speed. So do men often hasten unconsciously to their predestined doom, +defiant of augury. Soothsayers may menace, and wives may dream dreams; +but when his hour comes, Caesar will go to the appointed spot where the +daggers of his assassins await him. + +In the alley where he had first looked upon her sad face, beneath +the umbrage of young limes and chestnuts just bursting into bloom, +he saw the Englishwoman to-day, seated on the same bench, almost in +the same attitude. + +He went up to her, and bade her good morning; and then, intensely +conscious of his own temerity, seated himself by her side. + +"I did not expect to find you here so early." + +"No, I seldom come out so soon; but this morning I have to make some +inquiries upon a matter of business, and I am only resting here before +going to make them." + +She gave a little weary sigh at the end of this speech. It seemed a +strange manner of transacting business to rest in the Luxembourg gardens, +which were distant but a few hundred yards from her home. Gustave divined +that it was for very forlornness she lingered there, shrinking from some +difficult encounter that lay before her. + +"Can I not make the inquiries for you?" he asked. "Pray command me. It +will be my happiness to be useful to you." + +"You are very good. I cannot trouble you so much." + +"Pray do not talk of trouble. It can be no trouble to me to aid you in +any manner. Ah, madame, you do not know how much I would sacrifice to be +useful to you!" + +She must have been dull indeed had she failed to perceive the earnestness +of his tone. She did perceive it, and was vaguely conscious that in this +student of law she had a friend. + +"I want to know when the diligence for Calais leaves Paris, and from what +office," she said. "I am going back to England." + +She was surprised to see the young man's face blanch as she announced +this simple fact. The young man himself was surprised by the sudden +anguish inflicted by her announcement. It was in this moment that he +first discovered how completely he had given his heart into this strange +woman's keeping. + +"You are really going to leave Paris?--for ever?" he exclaimed. + +"Yes. I have been here too long already. I have no business here. I ought +to have gone back to England that day when I first met you here, but I +put off the day of my return. I can put it off no longer." + +"And you are going back to your friends?" Gustave asked, in a very +mournful tone. + +"I am going back to my friends? Yes!" Her lips quivered a little, and the +unbidden tears came to her eyes. + +Ah, what was the sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely creature? +What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain which consumed her? +Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk +of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day she talked +of going home to her friends: but O the bitterness of expression with +which she had spoken that word "friends!" + +"Are you going alone, Madame Meynell?" he inquired, after a pause. He +could not tear himself from that seat by her side. He could not be manly +or rational where she was concerned. The image of Madelon Frehlter rose +before his mental vision, reproachful, menacing; but a thick fog +intervened to obscure that unwelcome image. His whole life resolved +itself into those thrilling moments in which he sat here, on this common +garden bench, by this stranger's side; the entire universe was contracted +into this leafy walk where they two sat. + +"Yes, I am going alone," madame replied, with a little laugh. "Who should +I have to go with me? I am quite alone in the world. I think I had better +make these inquiries myself, M. Lenoble. There is no reason why I should +give you so much trouble." + +"There is no such thing as trouble. I will bring you all necessary +information to-day at dinner, if that will be soon enough." + +"Quite soon enough, I thank you, monsieur," she answered, with a sigh. "I +must ask you kindly to ascertain for me also the expense of the journey." + +"Most certainly, madame." + +This request set him wondering whether she were poor, and how poor. But +she had evidently no more to say to him; she had again become +impenetrable. He would fain have stayed, though honour and conscience +were clamorous in their demands for his departure. Happily for honour and +conscience, the lady was silent as death, impervious as marble; so M. +Lenoble presently bowed and departed. + +He thought of her all day long. The farce of pity was ended. He knew now +that he loved this Englishwoman with an affection at once foolish and +sinful,--foolish, since he knew not who or what this woman was; sinful, +since the indulgence of this passion involved the forfeiture of his +plighted word, the disappointment of those who loved him. + +"No, no, no," he said to himself; "I cannot do this base and wicked +thing. I must marry Madelon. All the hopes of my mother and father rest +on that marriage; and to disappoint them because this stranger's face has +bewitched me? Ah, no, it cannot be. And even if I were willing to trample +my honour in the dust, how do I know that she would value or accept the +sacrifice?" + +M. Lenoble made all necessary inquiries at the office of the Messageries, +and carried the intelligence to Madame Meynell. He could see that she +winced a little when he told her the cost of the journey, which in those +days was heavy. + +"She must certainly be poor," he said to himself; and it rent his heart +to think that even in this paltry matter he could be of no use to her. +The destined master of Beaubocage and Côtenoir was entirely without ready +money. He had his watch. He put his hand upon that clumsy timekeeper as +he talked to madame. + +"_Je te porterai chez ma tante, mon gars_," he said to himself. But he +doubted whether the high priests of the pious mountain--the Dordona of +Pauperism--would advance much upon this antique specimen of the +watchmaker's art. + +After this evening he looked forward daily, hourly, to the anguish of her +departure. She would vanish out of his life, intangible as a melted +snow-flake, and only memory would stay behind to tell him he had known +and loved her. Why should this be so hard to bear? If she stayed, he +dared not tell her she was dear to him; he dared not stretch forth his +hand to help her. In all the world there was no creature more utterly +apart from him than she, whether she lived in the same house with him or +was distant as the Antipodes. What did it matter, then, since she was +destined to disappear from his life, whether she vanished to-day or a +year hence? He argued with himself that it could be a question of no +moment to him. There was a death-blow that must descend upon him, cruel, +inevitable. Let it come when it would. + +Every day when he came home to dinner, M. Lenoble expected to behold a +vacant place by the side of his hostess; every day he was pleasantly +disappointed. The pale hopeless face was still to be seen, ghost-like, at +that noisy board. The face was more pale, more hopeless, as it seemed to +Gustave, every day he looked upon it. + +He asked Madame Magnotte when the English lady was going to leave, but +she could not tell. + +"She talks of leaving from day to day," said madame; "it will no doubt be +soon. I am sorry to lose her. She is very gentle, and gives no trouble to +any one. But she is sad--ah, how sad she is! She has suffered, monsieur." + +Gustave agreed to this. Yes, she had suffered; but what, and how? + +He watched her closely, but she was always the same. She no longer spent +her evenings in the salon, but in her own apartment. He saw her only at +dinner-time, and had no opportunity of speaking to her. + +At last the day came upon which he missed her at the usual hour. He sat +through the tedious meal without speaking; eating a little, drinking a +little, mechanically, but with no consciousness of what he ate or drank. +There was a mist before his eyes, a confusion of voices in his ears; but +the faculties of sight and hearing seemed suspended. The agony he +suffered during that miserable hour was bitter as death. + +"O, my God, how I love her!" he said to himself, while Raoul's bass roar +brayed in his ear on one side, and Leon's shrill squeal tortured him on +the other. + +He made his way to Madame Magnotte directly after dinner. + +"She is gone?" he exclaimed. + +"But who, my friend? Ah, yes; it is of that poor Madame Meynell you +speak. How you are interested in her! No, she is not gone, poor woman. +She remains always. She has the air of a person who knows not her own +mind. Yet I am sure she thinks of going. To-day, for the first time, she +has been writing letters. Reine came to tell me she had seen her occupied +in her own room for the first time. It is not her habit to occupy +herself." + +Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone; he might see her +again--if it were but a glimpse of her pale face looking out of the +diligence as it drove out of the Cour de Messageries. One look, one +glance; it would be something to carry in his heart all his life. All his +life! He looked forward and shuddered. What a dreary life it must needs +be! Côtenoir, Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to +study dry as dust books. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of +that dreary desert of existence--a life without her. + +She had been writing letters--doubtless letters to her friends to +announce her return. Her departure must be very near at hand. + +Gustave refused to go out that evening. His fellow-students were bent on +a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in vogue, where there would +be twinkling lamps and merry music under the May moon. The lamp-lit +parterres, the joyous waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble. He +haunted the dull salon, dim and dreary in the twilight; for Madame +Magnotte was chary of lamps and candles, and prolonged to its utmost +limits the pensive interval between day and night. He walked softly up +and down the room, unheeded by the ladies clustered in a group by one of +the windows. Restless and unhappy, he could neither go nor stay. She was +not coming down to the salon this evening. He had clung to the faint hope +that she might appear; but the faint hope died away in his breast as the +night deepened. What purpose could be served by his remaining in that +dismal room? He was no nearer her than he would have been in the +remotest wilds of Central America. He would go out--not to the odious +dancing-garden, but to the cool dark streets, where the night wind might +blow this fever from his brain. + +He left the room suddenly, and hurried downstairs. At the bottom of the +staircase he almost stumbled against a woman, who turned and looked at +him in the light of a little oil-lamp that hung over the door of the +portress's lodge. + +It was the Englishwoman, deadly pale, and with a wild look in her face +that Gustave had never seen there before. She gave him no sign of +recognition, but passed out of the courtyard, and walked rapidly away. +That unusual look in her face, the strangeness of the fact that she +should be leaving the house at this hour, inspired him with a vague +terror, and he followed her, not stealthily, without a thought that he +was doing any wrong by such an act--rather, indeed, with the conviction +that he had a right so to follow her. + +She walked very quickly--at a more rapid pace than Gustave would have +supposed possible for so fragile a creature. She chose the lonelier +streets, and Gustave had no difficulty in following her; she never looked +back, but went straight on her course, without pause or slackening of her +pace, as if with a settled purpose. + +"Where can she be going?" Gustave asked himself; and an answer, vague, +hideous, terrible, suggested itself to his mind. The idea that occurred +to him was one that would scarcely have occurred to an Englishman under +the same circumstances, but to a Frenchman it was a very familiar idea. + +It was dark now--the darkness that reigns between early sunset and late +moonrise. As the lonely woman went farther along the dreary streets +parallel with the quay, the dreadful suspicion grew stronger in Gustave's +mind. From that instant he had but one thought; in that moment he put +away from him for ever all sense of obligation to Madelon Frehlter; he +shook off father, mother, sister, old associations, home ties, ambition, +fortune--he lived alone for this woman, and the purpose of his life was +to save her from despair and death. + +They emerged upon the quay at last. The long stretch of pavement was +deserted. Ah, now she looked back--she looked on every side with wild +unseeing eyes--and now there could be little doubt as to the purpose that +brought her here. She crossed the road, and went upon the bridge, Gustave +following close; in the next minute she was standing on the stone bench, +a tremulous, fluttering figure, with arms stretched towards the water; in +a breath she was clasped to Gustave's breast, clasped by arms that meant +to hold her for ever. + +The shock of that surprise utterly unnerved the wretched creature. She +shivered violently, and struggled to free herself from those strong arms. + +"Let me go!" she cried in English. "Let me go!" And then, finding herself +powerless, she turned and looked at her captor. "M. Lenoble! O, why do +you persecute me? Why do you follow me?" + +"Because I want to save you." + +"To save me! To snatch me back when I was going to find rest--an end for +my weary life! O yes, I know that it is a sinful end; but my life has +been all sin." + +"Your life all sin! Foolish one, I will never believe that." + +"It is true," she cried, with passionate self-reproach. "The sin of +selfishness, and pride, and disobedience. There is no fate too hard for +me--but, O, my fate is very hard! Why did you keep me from that river? +You do not know how miserable my life is--you do not know. I paid my +last penny to Madame Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me +back to England, even if I dared go there--and I dare not. I have prayed +for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers have not been +heard; and there is nothing for me but to die. What would be the sin of +my throwing myself into that river! I must die; I shall die of +starvation in the streets." + +"No, no," cried Gustave passionately; "do you think I have dragged you +back from death to give you to loneliness and despair? My dear one, you +are mine--mine by right of this night. These arms that have kept you +from death shall shelter you,--ah, let them shelter you! These hands +shall work for you. My love, my love! you cannot tell how dear you are +to me. If there must be want or trouble for either of us, it shall come +to me first." + +He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and unresisting, and had +seated himself by her side. The fragile figure, shivering still, even in +the mild atmosphere of the spring night, was sustained by his encircling +arm. He felt that she was his, irrevocably and entirely--given to him by +the Providence which would have seemed to have abandoned her, but for the +love it had implanted for her in this one faithful heart. His tone had +all the pleading tenderness of a lover's, but it had something more--an +authority, a sense of possession. + +"Providence sent me here to save you," he said, with that gentle yet +authoritative tone; "I am your providence, am I not, dearest? Fate made +me love you--fondly, hopelessly, as I thought. Yesterday you seemed as +far away from me as those pale stars, shining up yonder--as +incomprehensible as that faint silvery mist above the rising moon--and +to-night you are my own." + +He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had indeed a vague +consciousness that the step which he was now taking would cause a +lifelong breach between himself and his father. But the time had gone by +in which he could count the cost. + +"Let me go back, M. Lenoble," the Englishwoman said presently. The +faintness of terror was passing away, and she spoke almost calmly. "Let +me go back to the house. It is you that have saved me from a dreadful +sin. I promise you that I will not again think of committing that deadly +sin. I will wait for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no, +no; do not detain me! Forget that you have ever known me." + +"That is not in my power. I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte +directly; but you must first promise to be my wife." + +"Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible." + +"Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful gravity. + +"Because I am not worthy of you." + +Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few +words. + +"You are worth all the stars to me. If I had them in my hands, those +lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, to hold you," said the +student passionately. "You cannot understand my love, perhaps. I seem a +stranger to you, and all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is +true as the heaven above us--true as life or death--death that was so +near you just now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March morning +on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees yonder. You held me +from that moment. I was subjugated--possessed--yours at once and for +ever. I would not confess even to myself that my heart had resigned +itself to you; but I know now that it was so from the first. Is there any +hope that you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love?" + +"You love me," the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the words were +almost beyond her comprehension,--"you love _me_, a creature so lost, so +friendless! Ah, but you do not know my wretched story!" + +"I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question--will you be my wife?" + +"You must be mad to offer your name, your honour to me." + +"Yes, I am mad--madly in love. And I am waiting for your answer. You +will be my wife? My angel, you will say yes! It is not much that I offer +you--a life of uncertainty, perhaps even of poverty; but a fond and +constant heart, and a head and hands that will work for you while God +gives them strength. It is better than the river." + +All that was thoughtless and hopeful in his disposition was expressed in +these words. The woman to whom he pleaded was weakened by sorrow, and +the devotion of this brave true heart brought her strength, comfort, +almost hope. + +"Will you be my friend?" she said gently. "Your words seem to bring me +back to life. I wanted to die because I was so wretched, so lonely. I +have friends in England--friends who were once all that is dear and kind; +but I dare not go to them. I think a cruel look from one of those friends +would kill me with a pain more bitter than any other death could give. +And I have no right to hope for kind looks from them. Yours are the only +words of friendship I have heard for a long time." + +"And you will give me the right to work for you--to protect you? You will +be my wife?" + +"I would rather be your servant," she answered, with sad humility. "What +right have I to accept so great a sacrifice? What folly can be so foolish +as your love for me--if it is indeed love, and not a wild fancy of +to-night!" + +"It is a fancy that will last my life." + +"Ah, you do not know how such fancies change." + +"I know nothing except that mine is changeless. Come, my love, it is +growing late and cold. Let me take you home. The portress will wonder. +You must slip past her quietly with your veil down. Did you give old +Margot your key when you came down stairs to-night?" + +"No, it is in my pocket. I was not thinking--I--" + +She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood that shudder; he +also shuddered. She had left her room that night possessed by the +suicide's madness; she had left it to come straight to death. Happily his +strong arm had come between her and that cruel grave by which they were +still lingering. + +They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle under the light of +the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman's wasted hand rested for the first +time on M. Lenoble's arm. She was his--his by the intervention and by the +decree of Providence! That became a conviction in the young man's mind. +He covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, engaging the +portress in conversation while the dark figure glided past in the dim +lamplight. On the staircase he paused to bid her good night. + +"You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow morning, +dearest," he said. "I have so much to say--so much. Until then, adieu!" + +He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her apartment, and +then went to his own humble bachelor's chamber, singing a little drinking +song in his deep manly voice, happy beyond all measure. + +They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The poor +lonely creature whom Gustave had rescued seemed already to look up to him +as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband. +It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it +was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had +subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute--penniless, +helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan +Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter. + +"Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she walked under the +chestnut-trees by her lover's side. "Let me tell you everything. And if, +when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give +me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not +speak to you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an outcast +I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know +how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand--you can +never know what you seem to me." + +And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told +him her story. + +"My father was a tradesman in the city of London," she said. "We were +very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy +such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and +discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the +city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now +and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to +me--my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness--I +feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since +then." + +She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too +profound for any conventional expression. He was listening to the story +of his future wife's youth. That there could be any passage in that +history which would hinder him from claiming this woman as his wife was a +possibility he did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame +involved in the story, as Madame Meynell's manner led him to suppose +there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since the shame must be +his, as she was his. + +"When my father and mother died, I went into Yorkshire to live with my +married sister. I cannot find words to tell you how kind they were to +me--my sister and her husband. I had a little money left me by my father, +and I spent the greater part of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents +to my sister and her children. I was happier in Yorkshire than I had been +in London; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and brighter +than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the brother of a nobleman +who lived in the neighbourhood of my sister's house. We met by accident +in a field on my brother-in-law's farm, where the gentleman was shooting; +and after that he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and +made some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very often, and +before long he asked me to marry him; and I promised to be his wife, with +my sister's knowledge and consent. She loved me so dearly, and was so +proud of me out of her dear love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this +engagement, especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of, +was a younger son, and by no means a rich man." + +Again she stopped, and waited a little before continuing her story. Only +by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand resting on his arm did Gustave +express his sympathy. + +"I cannot tell you, how happy I was in those days--so bright, so brief. I +cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that +time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a +background of darkness, with some strange vivid light shining upon it. It +was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as +soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of +the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville's, and an imprudent +marriage on his brother's part might have prevented the performance of +it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to +confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to +do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my +brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits to the farm. He +came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful +scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in +his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved +Montague Kingdon as you say you love me--foolishly, recklessly. I could +not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our +marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his +debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If +he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should +I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were +truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged +between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who +had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to +write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following +night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to +make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall +I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage +that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull. +From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and +misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I +had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to +be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to +love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was +no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with +debt and difficulty. We lived abroad--not for our pleasure, but because +Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord +Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood +invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his +slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient +drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years, +when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect +me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the +hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me." + +"My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave. "Do not tell +me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which +neglect gave place to desertion." + +"Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the +blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and +nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna +with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to +the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step. +He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorkshire. To go back!--as if +he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum +of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you +first met me here, I had not long received that letter." + +This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared +not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand +clasp hers, and knew that he was still her friend. This was all she asked +of Providence. + +To Gustave Lenoble the story had been unutterably painful. He had hoped +to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the shame was very bitter to +him. This woman whom he loved so fondly was no spotless martyr, the +victim of inevitable fate, beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She +was only a weak vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured +away from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace scoundrel. + +The story was common, the shame was common, but it seemed to M. Lenoble +that the woman by his side was his destiny; and then, prompt to the +rescue of offended pride, of outraged love--tortured to think that she, +so distant and pure a creature to him, should have been trampled in the +dust by another--came the white-winged angel Pity. By her weakness, by +her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity conjured him to +love her so much the more dearly. + +"My darling," he said softly, "it is a very sad story, and you and I will +never speak of it again. We will bury the memory of Montague Kingdon in +the deepest grave that was ever dug for bitter remembrances; and we will +begin a new life together." + +This was the end of M. Lenoble's wooing. He could not speak of his love +any more while the sound of Montague Kingdon's name had but lately died +away on Susan Meynell's lips. He had taken her to himself, with all her +sorrows and sins, in the hour in which he snatched her from death; and +between these two there was no need of passionate protestations or +sentimental rapture. + +M. Lenoble speedily discovered that the law had made no provision for the +necessities of a chivalrous young student eager to unite himself with a +friendless foreign woman, who could not produce so much as one of the +thirty witnesses required to establish her identity. A very little +consideration showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan +Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, and asked her +if she would trust him as she had trusted Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the +marriage might easily be solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to +stay there so long as the English law required for the solemnization of +their union? + +"Why should you take so much trouble about me?" said Susan, in her low +sad voice. "You are too good, too generous. I am not worth so much care +and thought from you." + +"Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susan?" + +"I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of miles from the +rest of mankind--with a happier life than mine. I have no feeling in my +heart but love for you, and faith in you." + +After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one +bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a +fortnight's sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the +bonds of matrimony. + +Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of +religion divided them no more than the difference of country. They came +back to Paris directly after the marriage, and M. Lenoble took a very +modest lodging for himself and his wife in a narrow street near the +Pantheon--a fourth story, very humbly furnished. M. Lenoble had provided +for himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage which +declares that a purse large enough for one is also large enough for two. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +A DECREE OF BANISHMENT. + +After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate +deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice +of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's tempest was raging, whispers grave +counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud, +sublime in the glare of the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face +in the clear, common light of day. + +Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble time and +reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love +which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a +passion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought could +reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very +desperate one. Before him lay an awful necessity--the necessity of going +to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had +been shattered by this deed of his. + +The letters from Cydalise--nay, indeed, more than one letter from his +mother, with whom letter-writing was an exceptional business--had of late +expressed much anxiety. In less than a month the marriage-contract would +be made ready for his signature. Every hour's delay was a new dishonour. +He told his wife that he must go home for a few days; and she prepared +his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to him like +the ministration of an angel. + +"My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the happiness you have brought +me!" he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish figure flitting about +the room, busy with the preparations for his journey. + +And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter--commonplace, stiff, and +unimpressionable--the most conventional of school-girls, heavy in face, +in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had seemed to him, despite his +sister's praises. + +He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of the +brilliant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk which he +ran of offending his father by that rash step. But to-night, when he +thought of Madelon's dulness and commonness, it seemed to him as if Susan +had in manner rescued him from a dreadful fate--as maidens were rescued +from sea-monsters in the days of Perseus and Heracles. + +"Madelon is not unlike a whale," he thought. "They tell us that whales +are of a sagacious and amiable temper,--and Cydalise was always talking +of Madelon's good sense and amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to +believe in the unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled +virtues of Madelon Frehlter." + +His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after a sad and +tender parting from his wife. The journey was a long one in those days, +when no express train had yet thundered across the winding Seine, +cleaving its iron way through the bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M. +Lenoble had ample time for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous +diligence; and his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering +vehicle approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was to make +his way to the paternal mansion as best he might. + +He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who carried his +portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in the quiet summer +evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the heart and perplexity +disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, and his spirits were in +nowise elevated by the walk. + +Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim garden at +Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a little pepper-castor +turret, his sister's room. The thought of their glad welcome smote his +heart. How could he shape the words that must inform them of their +disappointment? And then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the +Parisian lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and +submissive,--the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation, +as it seemed to his pious Catholic mind. The thought of this dear one +gave him courage. + +"I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, "but not the privilege +to sell me for money. The marriage they want to bring about would be a +sordid barter of my heart and my honour." + +In a few minutes after this he was standing in the little salon at +Beaubocage, with his mother and sister hanging about him and caressing +him, his father standing near, less demonstrative, but evidently well +pleased by this unexpected arrival of the son and heir. + +"I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, "and flew down from my +room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one can fly on these occasions. +And how thou art looking well, and how thou art handsome, and how I adore +thee!" cries the damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like +occasion. "Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee? +Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while thou didst +plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see thee again!" + +And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was spoken the dreaded +name of Madelon. She too would be glad--she too had been anxious. The +prodigal made no answer. He could not speak, his heart sank within him, +he grew cold and pale; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a +sharper pain than death. + +"Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest pale--thou +art ill! Look then, François, thy son is ill!" + +"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his +mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her +after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the +farewell kiss of her son. + +"I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave. + +The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He +led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some +dusty editions of the French classics, and where the master of Beaubocage +kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines. + +When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the open +windows, waiting for them. Without all was still. Distant lights +glimmered through the summer twilight, the lighted windows of Côtenoir. + +"How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards those +glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to believe that the +demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have +been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her +future sister-in-law. + +The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble +and Cydalise. The two women were curious--nay, indeed, somewhat anxious. + +"I fear he has made debts," said the mother, "and is telling thy father +of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, unless with the dowry +of Madelon, and that would seem a dishonourable use of her money." + +It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of that quiet +house. Twilight had thickened into night, when there came a banging of +doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of the salon was +opened, and M. Lenoble came in alone. At the same moment the outer door +closed heavily. + +M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed the Venetian +shutters. He went from thence to the second window, the shutters whereof +he fastened carefully, while the women stared at him wonderingly, for it +was not his habit to perform this office. + +"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice. + +"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed. + +"He is gone." + +"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?" + +"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English +adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine." + + + + +Book the Second. + + + +DOWNHILL. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +THE FATE OP SUSAN LENOBLE. + +Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which +Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy +five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and +chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a +forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever +known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown +fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only +for her husband and her child. + +The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he +cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years +no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the +prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A +narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with +fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had +been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that +joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against +the offender with a seal not to be broken, even had he come thither to +plead for pardon, which he did not. + +"My father would have sold me as negro slaves are sold _làbas_," he said, +on those rare occasions when he opened his old wounds, which were to the +last unhealed: "I am glad that I escaped the contemptible barter." + +He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to him easier to +bear than the dreary prosperity of Côtenoir and a wife he could not have +loved. The distinguishing qualities of this man's mind were courage and +constancy. There are such noble souls born into the world, some to shine +with lustre supernal, many to burn and die in social depths, obscure as +ocean's deepest cavern. + +In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He +worked for her, he endured for her, he hoped against hope for her sake; +and it was only when bodily strength failed that this nameless +foot-soldier began to droop and falter in life's bitter battle. Things +had gone ill with him. He had tried his fate as an advocate in Paris, in +Caen, in Rouen--but clients would not come. He had been a clerk, now in +one counting-house, now in another, and Susan and he had existed somehow +during the seven years of their married life. + +They clung to each other with affection that seemed to grow with every +new sorrow; nor did love exhibit any inclination to spread his wings and +take flight from the window, though poverty came in every day at the +door, and sat by the hearth, a familiar companion and inevitable guest. + +The mother and sister contrived to help this poor castaway with the +veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old man, soured by his +great disappointment, grew sordid and covetous with increasing years, and +the lives of the women were hard and hopeless. By little cheats, and +petty contrivances, and pitiful falsifications of financial statements, +they managed to scrape together a few louis now and then for the +struggling exile; and to do this was the sole delight of their patient +lives. They contrived also to correspond secretly with Gustave, and were +informed of the birth of his son. + +"Ah, if thou couldst see how beautiful he is," wrote the father, "this +child of pure and true love, thou wouldst no longer regret my breach of +faith with Madelon Frehlter. I knew not until now how like infant +children are to angels. I knew not how true to nature are the angels in +the pictures of Raffaelle and Murillo. Thou knowest the print of +Murillo's Assumption; the picture is in the Louvre. If thou canst +remember that picture, dear mother, thou hast but to recall the face of +one of the cherubim about the feet of our Lady, and thou hast the +portrait of my boy. He opens his eyes, and looks at me as I write. Ah! +that he and I and my Susan were with thee in the little salon at +Beaubocage--my sister, Susan, you, and I united round this darling's +cradle. He has been born in poverty, but his birth has made us very +happy." + +The sentiment of this letter was no spurious or transient feeling. For +this child Gustave Lenoble evinced an unchanging fondness. It was indeed +no part of his nature to change. The little one was his comfort in +affliction, his joy during every brief interval of prosperity. When the +battle was well nigh fought, and he began to feel himself beaten. His +chief anxieties, his ever-returning fears, were for his wife and child. + +To Susan the thought of parting from him was a despair too deep for +tears. She would have been something less than woman if she had not loved +her husband with more than common affection. She watched the change that +illness brought in the frank face, the stalwart figure; and little by +little the awful truth came home to her. The hour was at hand in which +she must lose him. + +"If you could have rest, Gustave, better medical advice, more comforts, +you would soon be strong again, I am sure your father would not refuse to +forgive you now. Write to him, dearest. Go back to Beaubocage, and let +your mother and sister nurse you. I will stay here with the little one. +It shall be forgotten that you have a wife and child." + +"No, dear one; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy back my +father's love. I would rather be here with you than in the pleasantest +home without you. But we must face the future, Susan; we must be brave +and wise, for the little one's sake. You are not so strong that you can +afford to trust blindly in your power to protect him by-and-by. I have +written a letter to my father. He has proved himself a hard man to me, +cruel and obdurate beyond all my fears; but I know he is not altogether +heartless. When I am dead, you will take the letter in one hand, the +child in the other, and go to Beaubocage. I believe he will adopt the +boy, and that the little one will give him the comfort and happiness he +hoped from me. He must be very lonely; and I cannot doubt that his heart +will melt when he sees the child's face, and hears that he has no longer +a son. As for yourself, my poor girl, I see for you no hope except in the +old Yorkshire home, and the friends you fear to see again." + +"I no longer fear them," said his wife, with unwonted energy, "I could +not go to them seven years ago; but I can go to them as your wife." + +"Ah, thank God, the poor name is worth something for you." + +"Yes, dear; and I will go back to them--to-morrow." + +"To-morrow!" + +"To-morrow, Gustave. I have been selfish and cruel to delay so long. The +old dread of seeing my sister's reproachful face has been strong enough +to hold me back, when a little courage might have enabled me to help you. +The burden has been all on you, and I have done nothing. O, what a wretch +I must have been to sit idly by and see you suffer, and make no effort to +help you!" + +"But, my darling, you have not been idle. You have been the dearest and +most industrious of wives, and have helped me to bear my burden. You have +done more, dear--you have made my burden pleasant to me." + +"I will try to lighten it, Gustave," cried Susan, with excitement. "O, +why, why did I never try before! My sister and her husband are well +off--rich perhaps. If they are still living, if no cruel changes have +come to pass at Newhall, they could help us with a little money. They +might even give us a home. I will start for England to-morrow." + +"Nay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far alone. It +seems, indeed, a happy thought this of your rich relations; but you must +not undertake such a journey. You might write." + +"No, Gustave, I will trust to no letter; I will go. It will be no pain +for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go straight to my sister. I +know what a tender compassionate heart it is that I shall appeal to." + +There was much discussion; but Susan was resolute. To scrape together the +money for the journey she made efforts that were heroic in a nature so +weak as hers. She went to the Monte de Piété with the last of her little +treasures, that one dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger +was at the door--the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed upon +her finger before God's altar--the double symbolic circlet which bore on +one side her name, on the other her husband's. This dearest of all her +possessions she surrendered for a few francs, to make up the sum needful +for her journey. + +What it cost her to do this, what it cost her to tear herself away +from her sick husband and her only child, who shall say? There are +pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come within no +calculation--the infinite of pain. She went. Two kind souls, a labourer +and his wife, lodgers in the same garret-story, promised to care for +and help the invalid and child. There is no desolation in which a child +will not find a friend. + +The journey was long and fatiguing; the anguish of her poor aching heart +almost too much for endurance--a heart so heavy that even hope could +scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, though in the middle of +summer. The solitary traveller caught cold on the journey, and arrived in +London in a high fever. Ill, faint, and helpless, the great city seemed +to her unspeakably dismal--most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to +this wretched orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn +where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come _viâ_ Havre. +Here she sank prostrate, and had barely sufficient strength to write an +incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, of Newhall Farm, near +Huxter's Cross, Yorkshire. + +The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great northern road +could carry her. There was infinite joy in that honest sisterly heart +over this one sinner's repentance. Fourteen years had gone by since the +young city-bred beauty had fled with that falsest of men, and most +hardened of profligates, Montague Kingdon; and tidings from Susan were +unlooked for and thrilling as a message from the grave. + +Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell! The false step of her youth +had set her for ever wrong upon life's highway. When kind Mrs. Halliday +came, Gustave Lenoble's wife was past her help; wandering in her mind; a +girl again, but newly run away from her peaceful home; and with no +thought save of remorse for her misdeeds. + +The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out of her mind. +She raved of Montague Kingdon's baseness, of her own folly, her vain +regret, her yearning for pardon; but of the dying husband in the garret +at Rouen she uttered no word. And so, with her weary head upon her +sister's breast, she passed away, her story untold, no wedding-ring on +her wasted finger to bear witness that she died an honest man's wife; no +letters or papers in her poor little trunk to throw light on the fourteen +years in which she had been a castaway. + +Mrs. Halliday stayed in London to see the wanderer laid in the quiet city +churchyard where her family rested, and where for her was chosen an +obscure corner in which she might repose forgotten and unknown. + +But not quite nameless. Mrs. Halliday could not leave the grave unmarked +by any record of the sister she had loved. The stone above the grave of +Gustave's wife bore her maiden name, and the comforting familiar text +about the one sinner who repenteth. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FORGIVEN TOO LATE. + +For a week of long days and longer nights there was no step sounded on +the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old dilapidated house +where he lay languishing on the brink of an open grave, that did not move +Gustave Lenoble with a sudden emotion of hope. But the footsteps came and +went, the doors were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller +so waited, so hoped for did not return. + +The boy--the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that was noblest +and best in his father's nature--pined for his mother. The man endured a +martyrdom worse than the agony of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre. +What had befallen her? That she could desert him or his child was a +possibility that never shaped itself in his mind. _That_ drop of poison +was happily wanting in his cup; and the bitterness of death was sweet +compared to the scorpion-sting of such a supposition. + +She did not return. Calamity in some shape had overtaken her--calamity +dire as death; for, with life and reason, she could not have failed to +send some token, some tidings, to those she loved. The sick man waited a +week after the day on which he had begun to expect her return. At the end +of that time he rose, with death in his face, and went out to look for +her--to look for her in Rouen; for her whom the instinct of his heart +told him was far away from that city--as far as death from life. He went +to the Cour de Messageries, and loitered and waited amidst the bustle of +arriving and departing diligences, with a half-imbecile hope that she +would alight from one of them. The travellers came and went, pushing and +hustling him in their selfish haste. When night came he went back to his +garret. All was quiet. The boy slept with the children of his good +neighbour, and was comforted by the warmth of that strange hearth. + +Gustave lit his candle, a last remaining morsel. + +"You will last my time, friend," he said, with a wan smile. + +He seated himself at the little table, pushed aside the medicine-bottles, +searched for a stray sheet of letter-paper, and then began to write. + +He wrote to his mother, telling her that death was at hand, and that the +time had come in which she must succour her son's orphan child. With this +he enclosed a letter to his father--that letter of which he had spoken to +his wife, and which had been written in the early days of his illness. +This packet he directed to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There was no +longer need for secrecy. + +"When those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and past +forgiveness," he thought. + +In the morning he was dead. + +The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted and protected +the child for two days; and then there came a lady, very sad, very quiet, +who wept bitterly in the stillness of that attic chamber where Gustave +Lenoble lay; and who afterwards, with a gentle calmness of manner that +was very sweet to see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but +not a mean or ignominious, funeral. + +"He was my brother," she said to the good friends of the neighbouring +garret. "We did our best to help him, my mother and I; but we little +thought how bitterly he wanted help. The brave heart would not suffer us +to know that." + +And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their charity to the +dead man; and with these good people she went on foot through the narrow +streets of the city to see her brother laid in his grave. + +Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of +age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport +of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had +been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to +her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his +father; for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have +some shrine at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already she +was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow +also, for whose return she looked daily. + +For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days +after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably +established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a +home. No one but her mother and this friend, whom she could trust, knew +of the business that had brought her from Beaubocage. In seven years the +father had never uttered his only son's name; in all the seven years that +name had never been spoken in his hearing. + +When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England, +all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the +neighbours who had known the absent woman. + +"She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away," said the +labourer's wife, "as surely as it was on him that she left. I told her +she had no strength for the journey; but she would go: there was no +moving her from that. She had rich friends _là-bas_, who might help her +husband. It was for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind +of fever, and the strength of fever." + +"And there has come no letter--nothing?" + +"Nothing, mademoiselle." + +On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. She could not well +leave the child longer on the hands of these friendly people, even by +paying for his maintenance, which she insisted on doing, though they +would fain have shared their humble _pot-à-feu_ and coarse loaf with +him unrecompensed. She determined on a desperate step. She would take +her brother's orphan child back with her, and leave the rest to +Providence--to the chance of some sudden awakening of natural affection +in a heart that had long languished in a kind of torpor that was almost +death. + +The little fellow pined sadly for those dear familiar faces, those tender +soothing voices, that had vanished so suddenly from his life. But the +voice of his aunt was very sweet and tender, and had a tone that recalled +the father who was gone. With this kind aunt he left Rouen in the +lumbering old vehicle that plied daily betwixt that city and Vevinord. + +"Thou canst call me Cydalise for a while, my little one," she said to +him; for she did not wish the child to proclaim the relationship between +them yet awhile. + +Ah, what bitter tears the two women shed over the soft fair curls of that +little head, when they had the boy all to themselves in the turret +chamber at Beaubocage, on whose white walls the eyes of Cydalise had +opened almost every morning of her pure eventless life! + +"Why dost thou cry so, madame?" the child asked of his grandmother, as +she held him in her arms, kissing and weeping over him; "and what have +they done with my father--and mamma too? She went away one day, but she +told me that she would come back, so quickly, ah, so quickly! and the +days passed, and they shut papa in his room, and would not let me go to +him; and mamma did not come, though I asked the Blessed Virgin to send +her back to me." + +"Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place than this hard +world, where they had so much sorrow," Madame Lenoble answered, gently. + +"Yes, they were often sorry," murmured the boy thoughtfully. "It was +because of money; but then, when there was no money, mamma cried and +kissed me, and kissed papa, and the good papa kissed us both, and somehow +it always ended in happiness." + +François Lenoble was, happily, absent on this day of tribulation. The +women took their fill of sorrow, but it was sorrow mingled with a strange +bitter sweetness that was almost joy. The seigneur of Beaubocage had gone +to dine, as he still often did, with his old friend Baron Frehlter; for +the breach of faith which had caused a lifelong disunion of father and +son had not divided the two proprietors. Nay, indeed the Baron had been +generous enough to plead the cause of the castaway. + +"A man cannot dispose at will of his affections, my friend," he urged; +"and it was more generous in your son to break faith with my daughter +before marriage than after." + +Mademoiselle Frehlter had not broken her heart on account of her lover's +falsehood. She had been sufficiently indignant on the occasion, and had +been more impatient of her mother's pet priest and pet poodle during the +brief period in which she wore the willow. She had recovered her good +humour, however, on being wooed by a young subaltern in a cavalry +regiment stationed at Vevinord, the offshoot of a grander house than that +of Lenoble, and whose good looks and good lineage had ultimately +prevailed with the Baron. That gentleman had by no means too good an +opinion of the son-in-law thus forced upon him; but peace was the highest +good (with unlimited tobacco) to which his Germanic soul aspired; and for +the sake of peace in the present he was content to hazard his daughter's +happiness in the future. + +"_That_ is very brilliant," he said of M. Paul de Nérague, the young +lieutenant of light cavalry; "but it is not solid, like Gustave. Your son +is honest, candid--a brave heart. It is for that I would have given him +Madelon. But it is Providence which disposes of us, as our good father +St. Velours tells us often; and one must be content. Young Nérague +pleases my daughter, and I must swallow him, though for me he smells too +strong of the barracks: _ça flaire la caserne, mon ami_." + +That odour of the barracks which distinguished the sub-lieutenant Paul de +Nérague became more odious after his marriage with the virtuous Madelon, +when he was established--_niché_, as he himself called it--in very +comfortable, though somewhat gruesome, apartments at Côtenoir. His +riotous deportment, his hospitable disposition (as displayed in the +frequent entertainment of his brothers-in-arms at the expense of his +father-in-law), his Don Juan-like demeanour in relation to the housemaids +and kitchen-wenches of the château--innocent enough in the main, but on +that account so much the more audacious--struck terror to the hearts of +Madame Frehlter and her daughter; and the elder lady was much gratified +by that thirst for foreign territory which carried the greater part of +the French army and the regiment of the vivacious Paul to the distant +wilds of Algeria. + +The virtuous Madelon was too stolid to weep for her husband. But even her +stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and, +waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient +assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieutenant de Nérague. + +The young officer was yet absent at that period in which Cydalise +returned from Rouen with her brother's child. + +The little boy was sleeping peacefully in a cot beside his aunt's bed (it +had been his father's cot thirty years ago) when François Lenoble +returned from Côtenoir that night. + +It was not till the next day that he saw the child. He had been making +his usual morning's round in the gardens and orchards, when he came into +the salon, and saw the little boy seated near his grandmother's chair, +playing with some dominoes. Something--perhaps the likeness to his dead +son--the boy's black clothes, for Cydalise had contrived to dress him in +decent mourning--struck suddenly on the old man's heart. "Who is that +boy?" he asked, with a strange earnestness. + +"Your son Gustave's only child," answered his wife gently,--"his +orphan child." + +François Lenoble looked at her, and from her to the boy; tried to speak, +but could not; beckoned the child, and then dropped heavily into a chair +and sobbed aloud. Until this moment no one had ever seen him shed a tear +for the son he had put away from his home--and, as it had seemed, from +his heart. Not by one sigh, not by one mournful utterance of the familiar +name, had he betrayed the depth of that wound which he had endured, +silently, obstinately, in all these years. + +They suffered him to bemoan his dead son unhindered by stereotyped +consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied him in silence. The +little boy stared wonderingly, and at last crept up to the +sorrow-stricken father. "Why do you cry, poor old man?" he asked. "You +have not lost your papa and mamma, as I have lost mine, have you? I want +to stay with you and be your little boy, please. She told me to say +that," he added, pointing to Cydalise.--"And I have said it right, +haven't I?" he asked of the same lady.--"I think I shall love you, +because you are like my papa, only older and uglier," the little one +concluded, with angelic candour. + +The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort. +Beaubocage--Côtenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic +names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so +paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire! +He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts +bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed +that fair young brow; and it was his own son--the son whom he had +disowned--whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles +on his rugged chin. + +"My child," he murmured softly, "the fear is that I shall love thee too +well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I was wickedly stern +to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity than justice." + +This was said to himself rather than to the boy. + +"Tell me thy name, little one," he asked presently, after a few moments' +pensive meditation. + +"I have two names, monsieur." + +"Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names?" + +"François Gustave." + +"I shall call thee Gustave." + +"But papa always called me François, and mamma said it was the name of a +cruel man; but papa said he loved the name--" + +"Ah, no more, little one!" cried the lord of Beaubocage suddenly; +"thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost pierce this poor +old heart." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +GUSTAVE THE SECOND. + +The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as +rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may +be rich in love's pure white blossom. The existence of this child seemed +all happiness. He brought hope, and a sense of atonement, and all sweet +things, to the quiet family at Beaubocage; and as he grew from childhood +to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that household as if +the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from them. That +Orphic fable of Zagreus repeats itself in many households. For the one +bright creature lost another is given; and then comes a time when it is +almost difficult to separate the image of the missing one from the dear +substitute who so nearly fills his place. + +François Lenoble and his wife enjoyed a green old age, and the affection +of their grandson made the cup of life sweet for them to the very dregs. +There are, happily, some natures which indulgence cannot injure; some +luxuriant flowers which attain strength as well as beauty under the +influence of these tropical heats of affection. Gustave the second +possessed all the noble qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous, +brave, constant, affectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the failing +eyes of his kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal +Hercules. + +Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so passionately +desired are apt to be granted when the desire has grown somewhat cold and +dead. Thus it was with the ambition of François Lenoble. He lived to see +the lands of Côtenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his +grandson, who married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame +de Nérague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Côtenoir; but the +sons withered and faded in early boyhood, and even the daughter, though +considered a flourishing plant in that poor garden of weakling blossoms, +was but a fragile creature. + +The old people at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and châtelaine of +Côtenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery lieutenant, who fell +in Algeria without having attained his captaincy, or added any military +renown to the good old name of de Nérague in his own magnificent person. + +François saw his grandson established at Côtenoir before he died. He +expired with his hand in that of Gustave, whom, in the half-consciousness +of that last hour, he mistook for the son he had disowned. + +"What door was that that shut?" he asked, in an eager whisper. "Who said +I turned my son out of doors--my only son? It's false! I couldn't have +done it! Hark! there's the door shutting again! It sounds like the door +of a tomb." + +After this he dozed a little, and woke with a smile on his face. + +"I have been dreaming of thy father, Gustave," he said calmly. "I thought +that I saw him with a light shining in his face, and that he kissed and +forgave me." + +This was the end. The faithful wife was not slow to follow her husband to +the grave, and there was now only a placid maiden lady at Beaubocage, +Mademoiselle Cydalise Lenoble, whom everyone within ten leagues of +Vevinord knew and loved,--a lay abbess, a Sister of Mercy in all save the +robes; a tender creature, who lived only to do good. + +Ten years passed, and M. Lenoble of Côtenoir was a widower with two +fair young daughters at a convent school on the outskirts of Vevinord, +and a boisterous son at an academy in Rouen. Gustave had never followed +any profession; the lands of Beaubocage secured him a competence, +so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who +adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of +trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch +flower-garden. He was to live at Côtenoir, and look after his estate, and +smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his +wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came +natural to M. Lenoble. It was not in him to be otherwise than kind to +women and children. His invalid wife praised him as a model of marital +perfection. It was Gustave who wheeled her sofa from one room to another, +Gustave who prepared her medicines, Gustave whose careful hands adjusted +curtains and _portières_. The poor woman lived and died believing herself +the happiest of wives. She mistook kindness for love. + +M. Lenoble bore his wife's demise with Christian calmness. He was sorry +that the fragile creature should have been taken so early from the +pleasant home that was hers by right, but of passionate grief, or dreary +sense of irreparable loss, there was none in that manly heart. There were +times when the widower reproached himself for this want of feeling; but +in very truth Madame Lenoble, _jeune_, had lived and died a nonentity. +Her departure left no empty place; even her children scarcely missed her. +The father was all-in-all. + +Gustave had married at twenty years of age. He was twenty-nine when his +wife died. His eldest daughter, Clarice, eight; his second, Madelon, +seven; the boy, a spoilt young dog of five, not yet despatched to the +great school at Rouen. + +But in '65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very +charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of +the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was +looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very +pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness, +as the nuns told the master of Côtenoir. The demoiselles of Côtenoir +stood high in the estimation of pupils and mistress; they were a kind of +noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these young persons +with some pride when she described her establishment to a stranger. It +was a very comfortable little colony, a small world enclosed by high +walls. The good mothers who taught and cherished the children were for +the greater part ladies of superior and even exalted station; and there +was a gentleness, a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not +always to be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be +confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, and required a +good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher that convent school +would have afforded scope for curious study; for it is singular to +discover what exceptional vices the youthful mind can develop from its +inner consciousness, in homes as pure as this. There were black sheep +even in the convent of the Sacré Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that +meant "dangerous." + +Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the brightest and +the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him no trouble, except when +they asked him for a home. + +"It seems so dull and dreary at Côtenoir, papa," they said, "though you +are always so kind. It doesn't seem like home. Beaubocage is more +home-like. At Côtenoir, when you are out, there is no one to talk to; and +we have no little parties, no excursions into the country, none of those +pleasures which the other girls tell us they have during the holidays." + +This was the gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and +Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something +which was wanting to make Côtenoir a pleasant home. The girls could +complain of no restraint, or pine for no indulgence, since their father +was always prompt to gratify every whim. But there was some element of +happiness wanting, nevertheless; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so. +The life at Côtenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual +dawdling; a life of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, projects +begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, the household angel, +order, was wanting in that mansion. There was waste, dirt, destruction of +all kinds, in the rambling old château; old servants, too weak or too +lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of +imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right--for the +feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power +still flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of his lord. + +The servants at Côtenoir had gone their own ways with but little +interference since the death of Madame de Nérague, which occurred two +years before that of her daughter, Clarice Lenoble. Poor invalid Clarice +had been quite unable to superintend her household; and since her death +Mademoiselle Cydalise had been too feeble of health to assume any +authority in her nephew's establishment, even if the household of +Côtenoir would have submitted to interference from Beaubocage, which in +all likelihood they would not. + +Thus it happened that things had taken their own course at the château, +and the course had been somewhat erratic. There is nothing so costly as +muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late begun to perceive that he had the +maximum of expense with the minimum of comfort. Meanwhile the kind old +aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time +when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's +house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard +experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own +memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations +of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her +outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it +is probable that in the mass of documentary evidence which goes before +the Great Judge, Mademoiselle Lenoble's account-book will be placed on +the right side. + + + + +Book the Third. + + + +THE HORATIAD. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE. + +Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood, +after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London +Bridge terminus of the Brighton line. He was setting out upon an +adventure wild and impracticable as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts; +and this gallant captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous +and audacious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager +to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If the +Fates had allowed the accomplished Horatio to choose his own destiny, he +would have elected to live in the immediate neighbourhood of St. James's +Street, from the first day to the last of the London season, and to dine +artistically and discreetly at one of those older and more exclusive +clubs dear and familiar to him from the bright years of his youth. He was +by nature a _flâneur_, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and +frivolous pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought himself, +but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble +principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that +narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him +Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him +all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all +statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor +did Captain Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal +republic, unselfishness and earnestness would have rendered a man rather +a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men the +diplomatic Horatio was fully competent to deal; but some of his most +subtle combinations on the chess-board of life would have been checkmated +by an unexpected encounter with intractable virtue. + +The necessity of living was the paramount consideration to which this +gentleman had given his mind from the time when he found himself a +popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and +good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in +everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end +London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts and +lying devices. + +That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wits, is +subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the +miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his +pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in +which his spade turns up nothing but valueless clay, and the end of each +day's work leaves him with no better evidence of his wasted labour than +the aching limbs which he drags at nightfall to his dismal shanty. + +For some months Captain Paget had found Philip Sheldon a very useful +acquaintance. The stockbroker had been the secret inaugurator of two or +three joint-stock companies, though figuring to the outer world only as +director; and in the getting-up of these companies Horatio had been a +useful instrument, and had received liberal payment for his labours. +Unhappily, so serene an occupation as promoting cannot go on for ever; or +rather, cannot remain for ever in the same hands. The human mind is +naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infinitely more +audacious than the small larcenies of literature. The joint-stock company +market became day by day more crowded. No sooner did Philip Sheldon float +the Non-destructive Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which +would offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of lime and other +destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched a +colourable imitation thereof, in the Union-is-Strength Domestic Lavatory +Company, with a professor of chemistry specially retained as inspector of +wash-tubs. Thus it was that, after the profitable ripening of three such +schemes, Mr. Sheldon deemed it advisable to retire from the field, and +await a fitter time for the further exercise of his commercial genius. + +Captain Paget's relations with the stockbroker did not, however, +terminate with the cessation of his labours as secretary, +jack-of-all-trades, and promoter. Having found him, so far, clever, and +to all appearance trustworthy--and this was an important point, for no +man so much needs honourable service as a rogue--Philip Sheldon +determined upon confiding to Horatio the conduct of a more delicate +business than anything purely commercial. After that discovery of the +telegraphic message sent by his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst, +and the further discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed +wealth of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in +organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the expense of his +brother. + +"George refused to let me in for a share of chances when I showed myself +willing to help him," thought Philip. "He may discover by-and-by that I +have contrived to let myself into his secrets; and that he might have +played a better game by consenting to a partnership." + +A life devoted to his own interests, and a consistent habit of +selfishness, had rendered Mr. Sheldon, of the Lawn, Bayswater, and Stags +Court, City, very quick of apprehension in all matters connected, +immediately or remotely, with the making of money. The broken sentences +of the telegram betrayed by the blotting-pad told him a great deal. They +told him that there was a certain Goodge, in the town of Ullerton, who +possessed letters so valuable to George Sheldon, as to be bought by his +agent Valentine Hawkehurst. Letters for which Sheldon was willing to give +money must needs be of considerable importance, since money was a very +scarce commodity with that hunter of unconscious heirs-at-law. Again, a +transaction which required the use of so expensive a medium as the +electric telegraph rather than the penny post, might be fairly supposed a +transaction of some moment. The letters in question might relate to some +other estate than that of John Haygarth, for it was quite possible that +the schemer of Gray's Inn had other irons in the fire. But this was a +question of no moment to Philip Sheldon. + +If the letters--or the information contained therein--were likely to be +useful to George, they might be useful to him. If George found it worth +his while to employ an agent at Ullerton, why should not he (Philip) have +his agent in the same town? The pecuniary risk, which might be a serious +affair to George, was child's play for Philip, who had always plenty of +money, or, at any rate, the command of money. The whole business of +heir-at-law hunting seemed to the stockbroker a very vague and shadowy +piece of work, as compared to the kind of speculation that was familiar +to him; but he knew that men had made money in such a manner, and any +business by which money could be made, was interesting to him. Beyond +this, the notion of cutting the ground from under his brother's feet had +a certain attraction for him. George's manner to him had been somewhat +offensive to him on more than one occasion since--well, since Tom +Halliday's death. Mr. Sheldon had borne that offensiveness in mind, with +the determination to "take it out of" his brother on the earliest +opportunity. + +It seemed as if the opportunity had arrived, and Philip was not one of +those men who wait shivering on the shore when Fortune's tide is at the +flood. Mr. Sheldon launched his bark upon the rising waters, and within +two hours of his discovery in the telegraph-office was closeted with +Horatio Paget in the little parlour in Omega Street, making arrangements +for the Captain's journey to Ullerton. + +That Horatio was the right man for the work he wanted done, Mr. Sheldon +had been quick to perceive. + +"He knows Hawkehurst, and will be able to reckon up any manoeuvres of his +better than a stranger; and is, I think, altogether as deep an old +gentleman as one could hope to meet with, barring _the_ traditional +gentleman who did odd jobs for Dr. Faustus," the stockbroker said to +himself, as his hansom sped along Park Lane on its way to Chelsea. The +eagerness with which Captain Paget took up the idea of this business was +very agreeable to his patron. + +"This is an affair in which success hinges on time," said Mr. Sheldon; +"so, if you mean to go in for the business, you must start for Ullerton +by the two o'clock express. You'll have just time to throw your razors +and a clean shirt into a carpet-bag while I talk to you. I've got a cab +outside, and a good one, that will take you to Euston Square in half an +hour." + +The Captain showed himself prompt in action. His bedchamber was a small +apartment at the back of the parlour, and here he packed his bag while +conversing with his employer. + +"If you get upon the ground in time, you may obtain a look at the letters +before they are handed over to Hawkehurst, or you may outbid him for +them," said Mr. Sheldon; "but remember, whatever you do must be so done +as to keep Hawkehurst and George completely in the dark as to our +proceedings. If once they find out we are on their track, our chances +will be gone, for they have got the information and we haven't; and it's +only by following close in their footsteps we can hope to do anything." + +"That is understood," replied the Captain, stooping over his bag; "I +shall keep myself as close as possible, you may depend upon it. And it +shan't be my fault if Valentine sees me or hears of me. I shall want +money, by the bye; for one can't stir a step in this sort of affair +without ready cash." + +"I am quite aware of that. I stopped at the West-end branch of the Unitas +and cashed a cheque for forty pounds. You can do a good deal in the way +of bribery for forty pounds, in such a place as Ullerton. What you have +to do is to keep your eye on Hawkehurst, and follow up every channel of +information that he opens for you. He has the clue to the labyrinth, +remember, the reel of cotton, or whatever it was, that the young woman +gave that Roman fellow. All you have to do is to get hold of it, and +follow your leader." continued Philip, with his watch in his hand. "This +business of the letters will be sharp work, for the chances are against +us here, as it's more than likely the papers will have changed hands +before you can get to Ullerton. But if you can't buy the letters, you may +buy the information contained in them, and that is the next best thing. +Your first move will be to ferret out this man Goodge. Everybody knows +everybody else in such a place as Ullerton, large and busy as the town +is, and you won't find that difficult. When you see Goodge, you'll know +how to deal with him. The mode and manner of your dealing I leave to +yourself. You are a man of the world, and will know how to manipulate the +gentleman, whoever he may be. And now lock your bag and cut downstairs as +fast as you can. Time's up. Here's your money--three tens, two fives. +Good day." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +EPISTOLARY. + +_From Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + +Royal Hotel, Ullerton, Oct. 7, 186--. + +My dear sir,--I arrived here last evening just in time to run against +Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a provoking encounter at the +outset. He went further north by the same train that brought me from +London. This train only stops at three places after Ullerton--Slowport, +Black Harbour, and Manchester; and I shall take pains to discover which +of these towns was Hawkehurst's destination. There was one satisfaction +in seeing his departure by this train, inasmuch as it assured me that I +had the ground clear for my own operations. + +I had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of Goodge--_the_ +Goodge we want--and at eight o'clock was comfortably seated in that +gentleman's parlour, talking over the affair of the letters. Tolerably +quick work, I think you will allow, my dear sir, for a man whose years +have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. + +Mr. Goodge is a Methodist parson--a class of person I have always +detested. I found him peculiarly amenable to monetary influence. I need +scarcely tell you that I was careful to conceal my identity from this +person. I made so bold as to borrow the cognomen of an old-established +firm of solicitors in the Fields, and took a somewhat high tone +throughout the interview. I informed Mr. Goodge that the young man who +had called on him with reference to certain letters connected with the +affairs of the Haygarth family--and I perceived from Mr. Goodge's face +that we were on the right track--was a person of disreputable character, +engaged in an underhand transaction calculated to injure a respected +client of our house. I saw that the words "house" and "our" were +talismanic in their effect upon the Methodist parson. You see, my dear +sir, there is no one can manage this sort of thing so well as a +gentleman. It comes natural to him. Your vulgar diplomatist seldom knows +how to begin, and never knows when to stop. Here I had this low-bred +Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and collective +importance after five minutes' conversation. "But this comes too near the +praising of myself; therefore hear other things," as the bard observes. + +A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable. I found +that Hawkehurst had approached him in the character of your brother's +articled clerk, but under his own proper name. This is one point gained, +since it assures me that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned +name; and will enable me to shape my future inquiries about him +accordingly. I also ascertained Hawkehurst's whereabouts when in +Ullerton. He stays at a low commercial house called the Black Swan. It +appears that the man Goodge possesses a packet of letters written by a +certain Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth, wife of one Matthew Haygarth. In what +relationship this Matthew may stand to the intestate is to be discovered. +It is evident he is an important link in the chain, or your brother would +not want the letters. I need not trouble you with our conversation in +detail. In gross it amounted to this: Mr. Goodge had pledged himself to +hand over Mrs. Haygarth's letters, forty or so in number, to Hawkehurst +in consideration of twenty pounds. They would have been already in +Hawkehurst's possession, if Mr. Goodge had not objected to part with them +except for ready money. In consideration of a payment of twenty pounds +from me, he was willing to let me read all the letters, and select any +ten I pleased to take. This bargain was not arrived at without +considerable discussion, but it certainly struck me as a good one. + +I opened the packet of papers then and there, and sat up until six +o'clock the next morning, reading Mrs. Haygarth's letters in Mr. Goodge's +parlour. Very fatiguing occupation for a man of my years. Mr. Goodge's +hospitality began and ended in a cup of coffee. Such coffee! and I +remember the mocha I used to get at Arthur's thirty years ago,--a +Promethean beverage, that illumined the dullest smoking-room bore with a +flash of wit or a glimmer of wisdom. + +I enclose the ten letters which I have selected. They appear to me to +tell the history of Mrs. Haygarth and her husband pretty plainly; but +there is evidently something mysterious lurking behind the commonplace +existence of the husband. That is a matter for future consideration. All +I have to do in the present is to keep you as well informed as your +brother. It may strike you that the letters I forward herewith, which are +certainly the cream of the correspondence, and the notes I have made from +the remaining letters, are scarcely worth the money paid for them. In +reply to such an objection, I can only say that you get more for _your_ +money than your brother George will get for his. + +The hotel at which I have taken up my quarters is but a few paces from +the commoner establishment where Hawkehurst is stopping. He is to call on +Goodge for the letters to-day; so his excursion will be of brief +duration. I find that the name of Haygarth is not unknown in this town, +as there are a family of Judsons, some of whom call themselves Haygarth +Judson. I intend inviting my landlord--a very superior person for his +station--to discuss a bottle of wine with me after my chop this evening, +and hope to obtain some information from him. In the meantime I shall +keep myself close. It is of vital consequence that I should remain unseen +by Hawkehurst. I do not believe he saw me on the platform last night, +though we were as close to each other as we well could be. + +Let me know what you think of the letters, and believe me to be, my +dear sir, very faithfully yours, + +H. N. C. PAGET. PHILIP SHELDON, Esq., +&c. &c. &c. + + * * * * * + +_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. + +Bayswater, Oct. 8,186-. + +DEAR PAGET,--The letters are mysterious, and I don't see my way to +getting much good out of them, but heartily approve your management of +matters, and give you _carte blanche_ to proceed, according to your own +lights. + +Yours truly, P.S. + + * * * * * + +_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + +Royal Hotel, Oct. 9, 186-. + +MY DEAR SIR,--The cultivation of my landlord has been very profitable. +The house is the oldest in the town, and the business has descended in a +direct line from father to son since the time of George the Second. This +man's grandfather entertained the officers of William Duke of Cumberland, +honoured by his contemporaries with the soubriquet of Billy the Butcher, +during the "forty-five." I had to listen to and applaud a good many +stories about Billy the Butcher before I could lead my landlord round to +the subject of the Haygarths. But he was not more prosy than many men I +have met at dinner-parties in the days when the highest circles in the +land were open to your humble servant. + +The Haygarth family, of which the intestate John Haygarth was the last +male descendant, were for a long period inhabitants of this town, and +obtained their wealth by trading as grocers and general dealers in a shop +not three hundred yards from the room in which I write. The building is +still standing, and a curious, old-fashioned-looking place it is. The +last of the Haygarths who carried on business therein was one Jonathan, +whose son Matthew was the father of that Reverend John Haygarth, lately +deceased, intestate. You will thus perceive that the letters I sent you +are of much importance, as they relate solely to this Matthew, father of +our intestate. + +My next inquiries related to the Judson family, who are, it appears, +descended from the issue of a certain Ruth Haygarth's marriage with one +Peter Judson. This Ruth Haygarth was the only sister of the Matthew +alluded to in the letters, and therefore was aunt of the intestate. It +would herefrom appear that in this Judson family we must naturally look +for the rightful claimant to the fortune of the deceased John Haygarth. +Possessed of this conviction, I proceeded to interrogate my landlord very +cautiously as to the status, &c. of the Judson family, and amongst other +questions, asked him with a complete assumption of indifference, whether +he had ever heard that the Judsons expected to inherit property from any +branch of the Haygarth family. + +This careless interrogatory produced information of, as I imagine, a very +valuable character. A certain Theodore Judson, attorney of this town, +calls himself heir-at-law to the Haygarth estates; but before he can +establish his claim, this Theodore must produce evidence of the demise, +without heirs, of one Peter Judson, eldest surviving grandson of Ruth +Haygarth's eldest son, a scamp and ne'er-do-well--if living, supposed to +be somewhere in India, where he went, as supercargo to a merchant vessel +about, the year '41--who stands prior to Theodore Judson in the +succession. I conclude that the said Theodore, who, as a lawyer, is +likely to do things _secundum artem_, is doing his _possible_ to obtain +the necessary evidence; but in the meantime he is at a dead lock, and the +whole affair appears to be in a charming condition for speculative +interference. I opine, therefore, that your brother really has hit upon a +good thing this time; and my only wonder is, that instead of allowing his +agent, Hawkehurst, to waste his time hunting up old letters of Matthew +Haygarth's (to all appearance valueless as documentary evidence), he does +not send Valentine to India to hunt for Peter Judson, who, if living, is +the rightful heir to the intestate's fortune, and who, as a reckless +extravagant fellow, would be likely to make very liberal terms with any +one who offered to procure him a large lump of money. + +I confess that I am quite at a loss to understand why your brother George +does not take this very obvious course, and why Valentine potters about +in this neighbourhood, when a gold mine is waiting to be _exploité_ on +the other side. + +I shall be very glad to have your views upon this subject, for at the +present moment I am fain to acknowledge that I do not see my way to +taking any further steps in this business, unless by commencing a search +for the missing Peter. + +I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours, + +H. N. C. PAGET. + + * * * * * + +_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. + +Bayswater, Oct. 10, 186--. + +DEAR PAGET,--When so old a stager as G. S. does not take the obvious +course, the inference is that there is a better course to be taken--_not_ +obvious to the uninitiated. + +You have done very well so far, but the information you have obtained +from your landlord is only such information as any one else may obtain +from the current gossip of Ullerton. You haven't yet got to the _dessous +des cartes_. Remember what I told you in London. G. S. _has_ the clue to +this labyrinth; and what you have to do is to hold on to the coat-tails +(in a figurative sense) of his agent, V. H. + +Don't put your trust in prosy old landlords, but continue to set a watch +upon that young man, and follow up his trail as you did in the matter of +the letters. + +If the Peter Judson who went to India three-and-twenty years ago were the +right man to follow, G.S. would scarcely give twenty pounds for the +letters of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth. It appears to me that G. must be +looking for an heir on the Haygarth side of the house; and if so, rely +upon it he has his reasons. Don't bewilder yourself by trying to +theorize, but get to the bottom of G.'s theory. + +Yours truly, P. S. + +_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_. + + * * * * * + +Royal Hotel, Oct. 12, 186.-- + +MY DEAR SIR,--Considering the advice contained in your last very good, I +lost no time in acting upon it. I need hardly tell you, that to employ +the services of a hired spy, and to degrade myself in some sort to the +level of a private inquirer, was somewhat revolting to a man, who, in the +decadence of his fortunes, has ever striven to place some limit on the +outrages which that hard taskmaster, poverty, may have from time to time +compelled him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of +a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since an +unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I submitted to this +temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and I trust that when the +time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which +I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded +self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium +may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you +that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after +duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the +movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person to play the spy +would be that class of man whose existence seems for the most part +devoted to the lounging at street corners, the chewing of straw, and that +desultory kind of industry known in the _patois_ of this race as +"fetching errands." This is the man, or boy, who starts up from the +pavement (as through a trap-door in the flags) whenever one alights from +or would enter any kind of vehicle. Unbidden, unrequired, and obnoxious, +the creature arises, and opens a door, or lays some rag of his wretched +attire on a muddy wheel, and then whines, piteous, for a copper. Such a +man, or such a boy, I felt convinced must exist among the hangers-on of +the Royal Hotel; nor was I mistaken. On inquiring for a handy lad, +capable of attending upon my needs at all hours in the day, and not a +servant in the hotel, but a person who would be wholly at my own +disposal, I was informed that the Boots had a younger brother who was +skilled in the fetching of errands, and who would be happy to wait upon +me for a very reasonable remuneration, or in the words of the waiter +himself, would be ready to leave it--i.e. the remuneration--to my own +generosity. I know that there are no people who expect so much as those +who leave the assessment of their claims to your own generosity; but +as I wanted good service, I was prepared to pay well. The younger Boots +made his appearance in due course--a sharp young fellow enough--and I +forthwith made him my slave by the promise of five shillings a day for +every day in which I should require his services. I then told him that it +was my misfortune to own--with a strong inclination to disown--a +reprobate nephew, now an inhabitant of that very town. This nephew, I had +reason to believe, was going at a very rapid rate to the dogs; but my +affectionate feelings would not allow him to consummate his own +destruction without one last effort to reclaim him. I had therefore +followed him to Ullerton, whither I believed him to be led by the worst +possible motives; and having done so, my next business was to keep myself +informed of his whereabouts. + +Seeing that the younger Boots accepted these statements with +unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal +to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and +watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my +recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the +limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad's intelligence was likely to be +equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or +complicated position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other +mischance. "Do you think you can watch the gentleman without being +observed?" I asked. "I'm pretty well sure I can, sir," answered the boy, +who is of an enterprising, and indeed audacious, temper. "Very well," +said I, "you will go to the Black Swan Inn. Hawkehurst is the name by +which my nephew is known there, and it will be your duty to find him +out." I gave the boy a minute account of Valentine's appearance, and +other instructions with which I need not trouble you. I further furnished +him with money, so that he might be able to follow Hawkehurst by rail, or +any other mode of conveyance, if necessary; and then despatched him, with +an order to come back to me when he had seen our man safely lodged in the +Black Swan after his day's perambulations. "And if he shouldn't go out at +all?" suggested the lad. "In that case you must stick to your post till +nightfall, and pick up all the information you can about my unfortunate +nephew from the hangers-on of the hotel," said I. "I suppose you know +some one at the Black Swan?" The boy informed me, in his untutored +language, that he knew "a'most all of 'em," and thereupon departed. + +At nine o'clock at night he again appeared before me, big with the +importance of his day's work. He had seen my nephew issue forth from the +Black Swan within an hour of leaving my presence, and had followed him, +first to Mr. William Judson's in Ferrygate, where he waited and hung +about nearly an hour, keeping himself well out of view round the corner +of Chalkin Street, a turning close to Mr. Judson's house. After leaving +this gentleman's house, my renegade nephew had proceeded--carrying a +letter in his hand, and walking as if in very good spirits (but that +fellow Hawkehurst would walk to the gallows in good spirits)--to the +Lancaster Road, where he was admitted into Lochiel Villa, a house +belonging, as my Mercury ascertained from a passing baker's boy, to Miss +Judson, sister of the William Judson of Ferrygate. You will perceive that +this town appears to teem with the Judson family. My messenger, with +praiseworthy art, contrived to engage in a game of tip-cat (what, I +wonder, _is_ a tip-cat?) with some vagrant boys disporting themselves in +the roadway, within view of Miss Judson's house. Hence, after the lapse +of more than an hour, Boots-Mercury beheld my recreant relative emerge, +and from this point followed him--always with extreme caution--back to +the Black Swan. Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close +acquaintance with the ostler, until eight o'clock in the evening, no +event of the smallest importance occurring during all those hours. But at +eight there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss Judson to Mr. +Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was sealed with red wax. This was +all my Mercury could ascertain respecting it; but this was something. + +I at once divined that this packet must needs contain letters. I asked +myself whether those letters or papers had been sold to Hawkehurst, or +only lent to him, and I immediately concluded that they could only have +been lent. It was all very well for Goodge, the Methodist parson, to +traffic in the epistles of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth, but it was to the last +degree unlikely that a well-to-do maiden lady would part with family +letters or papers for any pecuniary consideration whatever. "No," I said +to myself, "the documents have been lent, and will have to be returned;" +and thereupon I laid my plans for the next day's campaign, with a view to +obtaining a peep at those letters, by fair means or foul. I told the boy +to be at his post in the inn yard early the next morning, and if my +nephew did not leave the inn, my agent was to ascertain what he was +doing, and to bring me word thereof. "I'll tell you what it is, Boots," I +said; "I have reason to believe that sadly disposed nephew of mine has +some wicked intention with regard to Miss Judson, who is nearly related +to a young lady with whom that unprincipled young man is, or pretends to +be, in love; and I very much fear that he means to send her some letters, +written by this foolish niece of hers to my more foolish nephew, and +eminently calculated to wound the good lady's feelings. Now, in order to +prevent this very shameful conduct on his part, I want to intercept any +packet or letter which that mistaken youth may send to Miss Judson. Do +you feel yourself capable of getting hold of such a packet, on +consideration of a bonus of half-a-sovereign in addition to the five +shillings per diem already agreed upon?" + +This, in more direct and vulgar phraseology, was what I said to the boy; +and the boy departed, after pledging himself to bring me any packet which +Hawkehurst might despatch from the Swan Inn. The only fear was that +Hawkehurst might carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared +unpleasantly probable. + +Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out. He +intrusted Miss Hudson's packet to his waiter, the waiter confided it to +the Boots, the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy +Mercury, who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a +walk to the Lancaster Road. + +At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part +of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written +by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography; +but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been +somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble +citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal +personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would +provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the +crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems +a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of +princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati, +should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I +could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew +Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully +numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to +any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to +retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's +caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It +appears to me that these letters relate to some _liaison_ of the +gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to +discover that, even in a period notorious for looseness of morals, a man +should enter into such details in a correspondence with his sister. +_Autres temps, autres moeurs_. I have selected my extracts with great +care, and hope that you may be able to make more use of them than I can +at present imagine possible. I shall post this letter and enclosure with +my own hands, though in order to do so I must pass the Black Swan. I +shall despatch my messenger to Lochiel Villa, with Miss Judson's packet, +under cover of the darkness. + +In much haste, to catch the London mail, + +Truly yours, H.N.C.P. + + * * * * * + +_From Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. City, Oct. 12, 186-- + +Dear Paget,--Come back to town. You are only wasting money, time, and +trouble. Yours, P.S. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +TOO CLEVER, FOR A CATSPAW. + +Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by that sudden summons from his +patron, and eager to know what new aspect of affairs rendered his further +presence in Ullerton useless or undesirable. + +Horatio arrived in the great city half-a-dozen hours before his sometime +protégé, and was comfortably installed when Valentine returned to those +lodgings in Omega Street, Chelsea, which the two men occupied in common. + +Captain Paget went into the City to see Philip Sheldon on the day of his +return, but did not succeed in finding the stockbroker. The evening's +post brought him a letter from Philip, appointing an interview at +Bayswater, at three o'clock on the following day--the day after +Valentine's return from Ullerton. + +Punctual to the moment appointed by this letter, Captain Paget appeared +at the Lawn on the following day. He was ushered into Mr. Sheldon's +study, where he found that gentleman awaiting him, grave and meditative +of mood, but friendly, and indeed cordial, in his manner to the returning +traveller. + +"My dear Paget, sit down; I am delighted to see you. Your trip has made +you look five years younger, by Jove! I was sorry to find you had called +while I was out, and had waited for me upwards of an hour yesterday. I +have a good deal of worry on my shoulders just now; commerce is all +worry, you know. The Marquis of Lambeth has come into the market and +bought up two-thirds of the Astrakhan Grand Trunk debenture bonds, just +as our house had speculated for the fall. And since it has got wind that +the Marquis is sweet upon the concern, the bonds are going up like a +skyrocket. Such is life. I thought we had better have our little talk +here; it's quieter than in the City. Have some sherry and soda; you like +that Manzanilla of mine, I know." + +And the hospitable Philip rang the bell, without thinking it necessary to +wait for his guest's answer. + +There was a cordiality, a conciliating friendliness about the +stockbroker's manner which Horatio Paget did not like. + +"He's too civil by half," the Captain said to himself; "he means to do +me." + +"And now about this Ullerton business," Mr. Sheldon began, when the wine +and soda-water had been brought, and a tall tumbler of that refreshing +compound filled for the Captain; "you have really managed matters +admirably. I cannot too much applaud your diplomatic tact. You would have +put a what's-his-name--that fellow of Napoleon's--to the blush by your +management of the whole business. But, unfortunately, when it's all done +it comes to nothing; the whole affair is evidently, from beginning to +end, a mare's-nest. It is one of those wild geese which my brother George +has been chasing for the last ten years, and which never have resulted in +profit to him or anybody else; and I should be something worse than a +fool if I were to lend myself any longer to such a folly." + +"Humph," muttered the Captain, "here is a change indeed!" + +"Well, yes," Mr. Sheldon answered coolly. "I dare say my conduct does +seem rather capricious; but you see George put me out of temper the other +day, and I was determined, if he had got a good thing, to cut the ground +from under his feet. All your communications from Ullerton tend to show +me that he has not got hold of a good thing, and that in any attempt to +circumvent him I should only be circumventing myself, wasting your time, +and my own money. This Judson family seems numberless; and it is evident +to me that the Reverend John Haygarth's fortune will be a bone of +contention amongst the Judsons in the High Court of Chancery for any +indefinite number of years between this and the milennium. So I really +think, my dear Paget, we'd better consider this transaction finished. I +will give you whatever honorarium you think fit to name for your trouble, +and we'll close the affair. I shall find plenty more business as good, or +better, for you to do." + +"You are very good," replied the Captain, in nowise satisfied by this +promise. It was all too smooth, too conciliatory. And there was a +suddenness in this change of plan that was altogether mysterious. So +indeed might a capricious man be expected to drop a speculation he had +been eager to inaugurate, but Philip Sheldon was the last of men to be +suspected of caprice. + +"You must have taken an immense deal of trouble with those extracts, +now," said the stockbroker carelessly, as Horatio rose to depart, +offended and angry, but anxious to conceal his anger. "What, are you off +so soon? I thought you would stop and take a chop with us." + +"No, thanks; I have an engagement elsewhere. Yes, I took an +inordinate trouble with those extracts, and I am sorry to think they +should be useless." + +"Well, yes, it is rather provoking to you, I dare say. The extracts would +be very interesting from a social point of view, no doubt, to people who +care about such things; but in a legal sense they are waste-paper. I +can't understand why Hawkehurst was in Ullerton; for, as you yourself +suggested, that Peter Judson who went to India must be the Judson wanted +for this case." + +"Your brother may be in league with some other branch of the Judson +family. Or what if he is hunting for an heir on the Haygarth side?" asked +the Captain, with a very close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's face. Let the +stockbroker be never so skilful a navigator of the high seas of life, +there was no undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of +the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was +not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that +wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the +diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's +sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; +but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead the acute Horatio. + +"How about the Haygarth side of the house?" he asked again; for it had +seemed to him that at his first mention of the name of Haygarth Mr. +Sheldon had winced, ever so little. This time, however, he betrayed not +the faintest concern; but he was doubtless now on his guard. + +"Well, I don't see how there can be any claimant on that side of the +house," he said carelessly. "You see, according to your old landlord's +statement--which I take to be correct--Jonathan Haygarth had but one son, +a certain Matthew, who married one Rebecca So-and-so, and had, in his +turn one only son, the intestate John. Now, in that case, where is your +heir to come from, except through Matthew's sister Ruth, who married +Peter Judson?" + +"Isn't it just possible that Matthew Haygarth may have married twice, and +had other children? Those letters certainly suggest the idea of a secret +alliance of some kind on Haygarth's part, and the existence of a family, +to whom he appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this +affair was that it must have been a low _liaison_; but I could hardly +realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under any such +circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been. +Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at some mystery in her husband's +life. Is it not likely that this hidden family was a legitimate one?" + +"I can't quite see my way to that idea," Mr. Sheldon answered, in a +meditative tone. "It seems very unlikely that any marriage of Haygarth's +could have remained unknown to his townsmen; and even if it were so, I +doubt the possibility of our tracing the heirs from such a marriage. No, +my dear Paget, I have resolved to wash my hands of the business, and +leave my brother George in undisturbed possession of his ground." + +"In that case, perhaps, you will return my notes; they are +interesting to me." + +Here again the faintest indication of annoyance in the stockbroker's face +told its tale to Captain Paget. For your accomplished navigator of the +unknown seas there is no ocean bird, no floating weed, that has not a +language and a significance. + +"You can have your notes, if you want them," answered Mr. Sheldon; "they +are at my office. I'll hunt them up and send them to you; or you had +better look in upon me in the City early next week, and I can give you a +cheque at the same time." + +"Thanks. I will be sure and do so." + +"You say the orthography of the original letters was queer. I suppose +your copies were faithful in all matters except the orthography. And in +the names, you of course adhered to the original spelling?" + +"Most decidedly," replied Captain Paget, opening the door to depart, +and with a somewhat cynical smile upon his face, which was hidden from +Mr. Sheldon. + +"I suppose there is no doubt of your accuracy with regard to the name of +Meynell, now?" + +"Not the least. Good afternoon. Ah, there's our young friend Hawkehurst!" +exclaimed the Captain, in his "society" voice, as he looked out into the +hall, where Valentine was parting with Diana. + +He came and greeted his young friend, and they left the house together. + +This was the occasion upon which Valentine was startled by hearing the +name "Meynell" pronounced by the lips of Philip Sheldon. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL. + +Horatio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully +convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off the scent, +in order to follow up the chase alone, for his sole profit and advantage. + +"My last letter conveyed some intelligence that altered his whole plan of +action," thought the Captain; "that is perfectly clear. He was somewhat +wanting in tact when he recalled me so suddenly. But I suppose he thought +it would be easy to throw dust in my poor old eyes. What was the +intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question." +Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined +well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he +was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative +mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his +meditation was Philip Sheldon. + +"Yes," he murmured at last, "that is it. The charm is in the name of +Meynell. Why else should he question me about the orthography of that +name? I sent him information about Matthew Haygarth in the wife's +letters, and he took no special notice of that information. It was only +when the name of Meynell cropped up that he changed his tactics and tried +to throw me over. It seems to me that he must have some knowledge of this +Meynell branch, and therefore thinks himself strong enough to act alone, +and to throw me over the bridge. To throw me over," the Captain repeated +to himself slowly. "Well, we'll see about that. We'll see; yes, we'll +see." + +At noon on the following day Captain Paget presented himself again at the +Bayswater villa, where his daughter ate the bread of dependence. He +appeared this time in a purely paternal character. He came to call upon +his only child. Before paying this visit the Captain had improved the +shining hour by a careful study of the current and two or three back +volumes of the Post-Office and Trade Directories; but all his researches +in those interesting volumes had failed to reveal to him the existence of +any metropolitan Meynells. + +"The Meynells whom Sheldon knows may be in the heart of the country," he +said to himself, after these futile labours. + +It was a fine autumnal morning, and as Miss Paget was at home and +disengaged, her affectionate father suggested that she should take a walk +with him in Kensington Gardens. Such a promenade had very little +attraction for the young lady; but she had a vague idea that she owed a +kind of duty to her father not remitted by his neglect of all duties to +her; so she assented with a smile, and went out with him, looking very +handsome and stylish in her simple but fashionable attire, no part of +which had been provided by the parent she accompanied. + +The Captain surveyed her with some sense of family pride. "Upon my word, +my dear, you do me credit!" he exclaimed, with a somewhat patronising +kindness of tone and manner; "indeed any man might be proud of such a +daughter. You are every inch a Paget." + +"I hope not, papa," said the girl involuntarily; but the Captain's more +delicate instincts had been considerably blunted in the press and jostle +of life, and he did not feel the sting of this remark. + +"Well, perhaps you are right, my love," he replied blandly; "the Pagets +_are_ an unlucky family. Like those Grecian people, the Atri--, +what's-his-name--the man who was killed in his bath, you know. His wife, +or the other young person who had come to visit his daughters, made the +water too hot, you know--and that kind of thing. I am not quite clear +about the story, but it's one of those farragos of rubbish they make +young men learn at public schools. Yes, my dear, I really am amazingly +pleased by your improved appearance. Those Sheldon people dress you very +nicely; and I consider your residence in that family a very agreeable +arrangement for all parties. You confer a favour on the girl by your +society, and so on, and the mother provides you with a comfortable home; +All I wonder is that your good looks haven't made their mark before this +with some of Sheldon's rich stockbroking fellows." + +"We see very little of the stockbroking fellows, as you call them, at the +Lawn, papa." + +"Indeed! I thought Sheldon kept a great deal of company." + +"O no. He gives a dinner now and then, a gentleman's dinner usually; and +poor Mrs. Sheldon is very anxious that it should all go off well, as she +says; but I don't think he is a person who cares much for society." + +"Really, now?" + +"His mind seems completely occupied by his business, you see, papa. That +horrible pursuit of gain seems to require all his thoughts, and all his +time. He is always reading commercial papers, the _Money Market_ and _On +Change_, and the _Stockbrokers' Vade Mecum_, and publications of that +kind. When he is not reading he is thinking; and by his manner one would +fancy his thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a miserable, +hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that man for all the money +in the Bank of England. But it is a kind of treachery to tell these +things. Mr. Sheldon is very good to me. He lets me sit at his table and +share the comforts of his home, and I must be very ungrateful to speak +against him. I do _not_ mean to speak against him, you see, papa--I only +mean that a life devoted to money-making is in itself hateful." + +"My dear child, you may be assured that anything you say to _me_ will go +no further," said the Captain, with dignity; "and in whom should you +confide, if not in your father? I have a profound respect for Sheldon and +his family--yes, my love, a profound respect; and I think that girl +Sarah--no, I mean Charlotte--a very charming young person. I need +scarcely tell you that the smallest details of your life in that family +possess a keen interest for me. I am not without a father's feelings, +Diana, though circumstances have never permitted me to perform a father's +duties." + +And here the solitary tear which the accomplished Horatio could produce +at will trembled in his eye. This one tear was always at his command. For +the life of him he could not have produced a second; but the single drop +never failed him, and he found one tear as effective as a dozen, in +giving point and finish to a pathetic speech. + +Diana looked at him, and wondered, and doubted. Alas, she knew him only +too well! Any other creature in this wide world he might deceive, but not +her. She had lived with him; she had tasted the bitterness of dependence +upon him--ten times more bitter than dependence on strangers. She had +shown him her threadbare garments day after day, and had pleaded for a +little money, to be put off with a lying excuse. She could not forget +this. She had forgiven him long ago, being of too generous a nature to +brood upon past injuries. But she could not forget what manner of man he +was, and thank him for pretty speeches which she knew to be meaningless. + +They talked a little more of Mr. Sheldon and his family, but Diana did +not again permit herself to be betrayed into any vehement expressions of +her opinions. She answered all her father's questions without restraint, +for they were very commonplace questions, of a kind that might be +answered without any breach of faith. + +"Amongst the Sheldons' acquaintances did you ever hear of any people +called Meynell?" Captain Paget asked at length. + +"Yes," Diana replied, after a moment's thought; "the name is certainly +very familiar to me;" and then, after a pause, she exclaimed, "Why, the +Meynells were relations of Charlotte's! Yes, her grandmother was a Miss +Meynell; I perfectly remember hearing Mrs. Sheldon talk about the +Meynells. But I do not think there are any descendants of that family now +living. Why do you ask the question, papa? What interest have you in the +Meynells?" + +"Well, my dear, I have my reasons, but they in no manner concern Mr. +Sheldon or his family; and I must beg you to be careful not to mention +the subject in your conversation with those worthy people. I want to know +all about this Meynell family. I have come across some people of that +name, and I want to ascertain the precise relationship existing between +these people and the Sheldons. But the Sheldons must know nothing of this +inquiry for the present. The people I speak of are poor and proud, and +they would perish rather than press a relationship upon a rich man, +unless fully justified by the closeness of family ties. I am sure you +understand all this, Diana?" + +"Not very clearly, papa." + +"Well, my dear, it is a delicate position, and perhaps somewhat difficult +for the comprehension of a third party. All you need understand is the +one fact, that any information respecting the Meynell family will be +vitally interesting to my friends, and, through them, serviceable to me. +There is, in fact, a legacy which these friends of mine could claim, +under a certain will, if once assured as to the degree of their +relationship to your friend Charlotte's kindred on the Meynell side of +the house. To give them the means of securing this legacy would be to +help the ends of justice; and I am sure, Diana, you would wish to do +that." + +"Of course, papa, if I can do so without any breach of faith with my +employers. Can you promise me that no harm will result to the Sheldons, +above all to Charlotte Halliday, from any information I may procure for +you respecting the Meynell family?" + +"Certainly, Diana, I can promise you that. I repeat most solemnly, +that by obtaining such information for me you will be aiding the cause +of justice." + +If Horatio Paget might ever be betrayed into the inconsistency of a +truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that it was likely to be in +this moment. His words sounded like truth; and, on reflection, Diana +failed to perceive that she could by any possibility inflict wrong on her +friends by obliging her father in this small affair. + +"Let me think the matter over, papa," she said. + +"Nonsense, Diana; what thinking over can be wanted about such a trifle? I +never before asked you a favour. Surely you cannot refuse to grant so +simple a request, after the trouble I have taken to explain my reasons +for making it." + +There was some further discussion, which ended in Miss Paget consenting +to oblige her father. + +"And you will manage matters with tact?" urged the Captain, at parting. + +"There is no especial tact required, papa," replied Diana; "the matter is +easy enough. Mrs. Sheldon is very fond of talking about her own affairs. +I have only to ask her some leading question about the Meynells, and she +will run on for an hour, telling me the minutest details of family +history connected with them. I dare say I have heard the whole story +before, and have not heeded it: I often find my thoughts wandering when +Mrs. Sheldon is talking." + +Three days after this Captain Paget called on Mr. Sheldon in the City, +when he received a very handsome recompense for his labours at Ullerton, +and became repossessed of the extracts he had made from Matthew +Haygarth's letters, but not of the same Mr. Haygarth's autograph letter: +that document Mr. Sheldon confessed to having mislaid. + +"He has mislaid the original letter, and he has had ample leisure for +copying my extracts; and he thinks I am such a consummate fool as not to +see all that," thought Horatio, as he left the stockbroker's office, +enriched but not satisfied. + +In the course of the same day he received a long letter from Diana +containing the whole history of the Meynells, as known to Mrs. Sheldon. +Once set talking, Georgy had told all she could tell, delighted to find +herself listened to with obvious interest by her companion. + +"I trust that you have not deceived me, my dear father," Diana concluded, +after setting forth the Meynell history. "The dear good soul was so +candid and confiding, and seemed so pleased by the interest I showed in +her family affairs, that I should feel myself the vilest of wretches if +any harm could result to her, or those she loves, from the information +thus obtained." + +The information was very complete. Mrs. Sheldon had a kindly and amiable +nature, but she was not one of those sensitive souls who instinctively +shrink from a story of bitter shame or profound sorrow as from a cureless +wound. She told Diana, with many lamentations, and much second-hand +morality, the sad history of Susan Meynell's elopement, and of the +return, fourteen years afterwards, of the weary wanderer. Even the poor +little trunk, with the name of the Rouen trunk-maker, Mrs. Sheldon dwelt +upon with graphic insistence. A certain womanly delicacy had prevented +her ever telling this story in the presence of her brother-in-law, George +Sheldon, whose hard worldly manner in no way invited any sentimental +revelation. Thus it happened that George had never heard the name of +Meynell in connection with his friend Tom Halliday's family, or had heard +it so seldom as to have entirely forgotten it. To Horatio his daughter's +letter was priceless. It placed him at once in as good a position as +Philip Sheldon, or as George Sheldon and his coadjutor, Valentine +Hawkehurst. There were thus three different interests involved in the +inheritance of the Reverend John Haygarth. + +Captain Paget sat late by a comfortable fire, in his own bedchamber, that +night, enjoying an excellent cigar, and meditating the following jottings +from a pedigree:-- + +CHARLOTTE MEYNELL, married JAMES HALLIDAY. + | +THOMAS HALLIDAY, only son of above, married GEORGINA, now Mrs. SHELDON; + | had issue, +CHARLOTTE HALLIDAY. + +SUSAN MEYNELL, only and elder sister of the above-named Charlotte, ran +away from her home, in Yorkshire, with a Mr. Kingdon, brother to Lord +Darnsville. Fate unknown during fourteen years of her life. Died in +London, 1835. Buried under her maiden name; but no positive evidence to +show that she was unmarried. + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR. + +Once in possession of the connection between the intestate John Haygarth +and the Halliday family, Captain Paget's course was an easy one. He +understood now why his investigations had been so suddenly brought to a +standstill. Philip Sheldon had discovered the unexpected connection, and +was eager to put a stop to researches that might lead to a like discovery +on the part of his coadjutor. + +"And Sheldon expects to prove his stepdaughter's claim to this fortune?" +thought the Captain. "He will affect ignorance of the whole transaction +until his plans are ripe, and then spring them suddenly upon his brother +George. I wonder if there is anything to be made out of George by letting +him into the secret of his brother's interference? No; I think not. +George is as poor as a church mouse, and Philip must always be the more +profitable acquaintance." + +On the broad basis afforded by Diana's letter Captain Paget was able to +build up the whole scheme of the Haygarthian succession. The pedigree of +the Meynells was sufficiently simple, if their legitimate descent from +Matthew Haygarth could be fairly proved. Charlotte Halliday was +heiress-at-law to the fortune of John Haygarth, always provided that her +great-aunt Susan died without legitimate issue. + +Here was the one chance which appeared to the adventurous mind of Horatio +Paget worth some trouble in the way of research. Fourteen years of Susan +Meynell's life had been spent away from all who knew her. It was +certainly possible that in that time she might have formed some +legitimate alliance. + +This was the problem which Horatio set himself to solve. Your adventurer +is, of all manner of men, the most sanguine. Sir Walter Raleigh sees +visions of gold and glory where grave statesman see only a fool's +paradise of dreams and fancies. To the hopeful mind of the Captain these +fourteen unrecorded years of Susan Meynell's life seemed a very Golconda. + +He did not, however, rest satisfied with the information afforded by +Diana's letter. + +"I will have the story of these Meynells at first-hand as well as at +second-hand," he said to himself; and he lost no time in presenting +himself again at the Villa--this time as a visitor to Mrs. Sheldon. + +With Georgy he had been always a favourite. His little stories of the +great world--the Prince and Perdita, Brummel and Sheridan--though by no +means novel to those acquainted with that glorious period of British +history, were very agreeable to Georgy. The Captain's florid flatteries +pleased her; and she contrasted the ceremonious manners of that gentleman +with the curt business-like style of her husband, very much to the +Captain's advantage. He came to thank her for her goodness to his child, +and this occasion gave him ample opportunity for sentiment. He had asked +to see Mrs. Sheldon alone, as his daughter's presence would have been +some hindrance to the carrying out of his design. + +"There are things I have to say which I should scarcely care to utter +before my daughter, you see, my dear Mrs. Sheldon," he said, with +pathetic earnestness. "I should not wish to remind the dear child of her +desolate position; and I need scarcely tell you that position is _very_ +desolate. A father who, at his best, cannot provide a fitting home for a +delicately nurtured girl, and who at any moment may be snatched away, is +but a poor protector. And were it not for your friendship, I know not +what my child's fate might be. The dangers and temptations that beset a +handsome young woman are very terrible, my dear Mrs. Sheldon." + +This was intended to lead up to the subject of Susan Meynell, but Georgy +did not rise to the bait. She only shook her head plaintively in assent +to the Captain's proposition. + +"Yes, madam; beauty, unallied with strength of mind and high principles, +is apt to be a fatal dower. In every family there are sad histories," +murmured the sentimental Horatio. + +Even this remark did not produce the required result; so the Captain drew +upon his invention for a specimen history from the annals of his own +house, which was a colourable imitation of Susan Meynell's story. + +"And what was the end of this lovely Belinda Paget's career, my dear Mrs. +Sheldon?" he concluded. "The gentleman was a man of high rank, but a +scoundrel and a dastard. Sophia's brother, a cornet in the First Life +Guards, called him out, and there was a meeting on Wimbledon Common, in +which Lavinia's seducer was mortally wounded. There was a trial, and the +young captain of Hussars, Amelia's brother, was sentenced to +transportation for life. I need scarcely tell you that the sentence was +never carried out. The young man fell gloriously at Waterloo, at the head +of his own regiment, the Scotch Fusiliers, and Lavinia--I beg pardon, +Amelia; nay, what am I saying? the girl's name was Belinda--embraced the +Roman Catholic faith, and expired from the effects of stigmata inflicted +by her own hands in a paroxysm of remorse for her brother's untimely +death at the hands of her seducer." + +This lively little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. Melted by the +woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or Amelia, or Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Sheldon was +moved to relate a sad event in her husband's family; and encouraged by +the almost tearful sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated every +detail of Susan Meynell's life, as known to her kindred. And as this +recital had flowed spontaneously from the good soul's lips, she would he +scarcely likely to allude to it afterwards in conversation with Mr. +Sheldon; more especially as that gentleman was not in the habit of +wasting much of his valuable time in small-talk with the members of his +own household. + +Captain Paget had duly calculated this, and every other hazard that +menaced the intricate path he had mapped out for himself. + +Satisfied by Mrs. Sheldon's repetition of Susan Meynell's story, and +possessed of all the information he could hope to obtain from that +quarter, Horatio set himself to consider what steps must next be taken. +Much serious reflection convinced even his sanguine mind that the +enterprise was a difficult one, and could scarcely be carried through +successfully without help from some skilled genealogist. + +"George Sheldon has given his lifetime to this sort of thing, and is a +skilled lawyer to boot," Captain Paget said to himself. "If I hope to go +in against him, I must have someone at my elbow as well versed in this +sort of business as he is." + +Having once admitted this necessity, the Captain set himself to consider +where he was to find the right person. A very brief meditation settled +this question. One among the numerous business transactions of Captain +Paget's life had brought him in contact with a very respectable little +French gentleman called Fleurus, who had begun his career as a notary, +but, finding that profession unprofitable, had become a hunter of +pedigrees and heirs-at-law--for the most part to insignificant legacies, +unclaimed stock, and all other jetsam and flotsam thrown up on the +shadowy shores of the Court of Chancery. M. Fleurus had not often been so +fortunate as to put his industrious fingers into any large pie, but he +had contrived to make a good deal of money out of small affairs, and had +found his clients grateful. + +"The man of men," thought Horatio Paget; and he betook himself to the +office of M. Fleurus early next day, provided with all documents relating +to the Haygarthian succession. + +His interview with the little Frenchman was long and satisfactory. On +certain conditions as to future reward, said reward to be contingent on +success, M. Fleurus was ready to devote himself heart and soul to the +interests of Captain Paget. + +"To begin: we must find legal evidence of this Matthew Haygarth's +marriage to the mother of this child C., who came afterwards to marry the +man Meynell; and after we will go to Susan Meynell. Her box came from +Rouen--that we know. Where her box came from she is likely to have come +from. So it is at Rouen, or near Rouen, we must look for her. Let me see: +she die in 1835! that is long time. To look for the particulars of her +life is like to dive into the ocean for to find the lost cargo of a ship +that is gone down to the bottom, no one knows where. But to a man really +expert in these things there is nothing of impossible. I will find you +your Susan Meynell in less than six months; the evidence of her marriage; +if she was married; her children, if she had children." + +In less than six months--the margin seemed a wide one to the impatient +Horatio. But he knew that such an investigation must needs be slow, and +he left the matters in the hands of his new ally with a sense that he had +done the best thing that could be done. Then followed for Horatio Paget +two months of patient attendance upon fortune. He was not idle during +this time; for Mr. Sheldon, who seemed particularly anxious to conciliate +him, threw waifs and strays of business into his way. Before the middle +of November M. Fleurus had found the register of Matthew Haygarth's +marriage, as George Sheldon had found it before him, working in the same +groove, and with the same order of intelligence. After this important +step M. Fleurus departed for his native shores, where he had other +business besides the Meynell affair to claim his attention. Meanwhile the +astute Horatio kept a close eye upon his young friend Valentine. He knew +from Diana that the young man had been in Yorkshire; and he guessed the +motive of his visit to Newhall, not for a moment supposing that his +presence in that farmhouse could have been accidental. The one turn of +affairs that utterly and completely mystified him was Mr. Sheldon's +sanction of the engagement between Valentine and Charlotte. This was a +mystery for which he could for some time find no solution. + +"Sheldon will try to establish his stepdaughter's claim to the fortune; +that is clear. But why does he allow her to throw herself away on a +penniless adventurer like Hawkehurst? If she were to marry him before +recovering the Haygarth estate, she would recover it as his wife, and the +fortune would be thrown unprotected into his hands." + +More deliberate reflection cast a faint light upon Philip Sheldon's +motives for so quixotic a course. + +"The girl had fallen in love with Val. It was too late to prevent that. +She is of age, and can marry whom she pleases. By showing himself opposed +to her engagement with Val, he might have hurried her into rebellion, and +an immediate marriage. By affecting to consent to the engagement, he +would, on the contrary, gain time, and the advantage of all those chances +that are involved in the lapse of time." + +Within a few days of Christmas came the following letter from M. +Fleurus:-- + + +_From Jacques Rousseau Fleurus to Horatio Paget_. + +Hotel de la Pucelle, place Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 21st December, 186--. + +MONSIEUR,--After exertions incalculable, after labours herculean, I come +to learn something of your Susan Meynell,--more, I come to learn of her +marriage. But I will begin at the beginning of things. The labours, the +time, the efforts, the courage, the patience, the--I will say it without +to blush--the genius which this enterprise has cost me, I will not +enlarge upon. There are things which cannot tell themselves. To commence, +I will tell you how I went to Rouen, how I advertised in the journals of +Rouen, and asked among the people of Rouen--at shops, at hotels, by the +help of my allies, the police, by means which you, in your inexperience +of this science of research, could not even figure to yourself--always +seeking the trace of this woman Meynell. It was all pain lost. Of this +woman Meynell in Rouen there was no trace. + +In the end I enraged myself. "Imbecile!" I said to myself, "why seek in +this dull commercial city, among this heavy people, for that which thou +shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? As the rivers go to the +ocean, so flow all the streams of human life to the one great central +ocean of humanity--PARIS! It is there the Alpha and the Omega--there the +mighty heart through which the blood of all the body must be pumped, and +is pumping always," I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the +sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in whose verse I find an echo of +my own soul, and whose compositions I flatter myself I could have +surpassed, if I had devoted to the Muses the time and the powers which I +have squandered on a _vilain_ metier, that demands the genius of a +Talleyrand, and rewards with the crust of an artisan. + +In Paris, then, I will seek the woman Meynell, and to Paris I go. In my +place an inexperienced person would advertise in the most considerable +papers; would invite Susan Meynell to hear of something to her +advantage; and would bring together a crowd of false Susan Meynells, +greedy to obtain the benefice. Me, I do nothing in this style there. On +the contrary, in the most obscure little journals of Paris I publish a +modest little advertisement as from the brother of Susan Meynell, who +implores his sister to visit him on his deathbed. + +Here are follies, you will say. Since Susan Meynell is dead it is thirty +years, and her brother is dead also. Ah, how you are dull, you insulars, +and how impossible for your foggy island to produce a Fouché, a Canler, a +genius of police, a Columbus of the subterranean darknesses of your city. + +The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead; and who will answer +that letter, think you? Some good Christian soul who has pity for the +sick man, and who will not permit him to languish in waiting the sister +who will come to him never. For us of the Roman Catholic religion the +duty of charity is paramount. You of the Anglican faith--bah, how you are +cold, how you are hard, how you are unpitiable! + +My notice appears once, my notice appears twice, three times, four times, +many times. I occupy myself about my other business, and I wait. I do not +wait unusefully. In effect, a letter arrives at last at the address of +the dying, from a lady who knew Susan Meynell _before her marriage with +M. Lenoble._ + +Think you not that to me this was a moment of triumph? _Before her +marriage with M. Lenoble!_ Those words appear under my eyes in the +writing of the unknown lady. "It is found!" I cry to myself; and then I +hasten myself to reply to the unknown lady. Will she permit me to see +her? + +With all politeness I make the request; with all politeness it is +answered. The lady calls herself Mademoiselle Servin. She resides in the +street Grande-Mademoiselle, at the corner of the Place Lauzun. It is of +all the streets of Paris the most miserable. One side is already removed. +In face of the windows of those houses that still stand they are making a +new Boulevard. Behind they are pulling down edifices of all kinds in the +formation of a new square. At the side there is a yawning chasm between +two tall houses, through which they pierce a new street. One sees the +interior of many rooms rising one above another for seven stories. Here +the gay hangings of an apartment of little master; there the still +gaudier decoration of a boudoir of these ladies. High above these +luxurious salons--ah, but how much more near to the skies!--one sees the +poor grey paper, blackened and smoky, of a garret of sempstress, or +workman, and the hearths black, deserted. These interiors thus exposed +tighten me the heart. It is the autopsy of the domestic hearth. + +I find the Mademoiselle Servin an old lady, grey and wan. The house where +she now resides is the house which she has inhabited five-and-thirty +years. They talk of pulling it down, and to her the idea of leaving it is +exquisite pain. She is alone, a teacher of music. She has seen +proprietors come and go. The _pension_ has changed mistresses many times. +Students of law and of medicine have come and passed like the shadows of +a magic lantern; but this poor soul has remained still in her little room +on the fourth, and has kept always her little old piano. + +It was here she knew Susan Meynell, and a young Frenchman who became in +love with her, for she was beautiful like the angels, this lady said to +me. + +Until we meet for all details. Enough that I come to discover where the +marriage took place, that I come to obtain a copy of the register, and +that I do all things in rule. Enough that the marriage is a good +marriage--a regular marriage, and that I have placed myself already in +communication with the heir of that marriage, who resides within some few +leagues of this city. + +My labours, my successes I will not describe. It must that they will be +recompensed in the future. I have dispensed much money during these +transactions. + +Agree, monsieur, that I am your devoted servitor, + +JACQUES ROUSSEAU FLEURUS. + + * * * * * + +It was in consequence of the receipt of this missive that the Captain +trusted himself to the winds and waves in the cheerless December weather. +He was well pleased to find that M. Fleurus had made discoveries so +important; but he had no idea of letting that astute practitioner absorb +all the power into his own hands. + +"I must see Susan Meynell's heir," he said to himself; "I must give him +clearly to understand that to me he owes the discovery of his claims, and +that in this affair the Frenchman Fleurus is no more than a paid agent." + + + + +Book the Fourth. + + + +GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +HALCYON DAYS. + +Once having offered up the fondest desires of her own heart on the +shrine of duty, Diana Paget was not a person to repent herself of the +pious sacrifice. After that Christmas night on which she had knelt at +Charlotte's feet to confess her sad secret, and to resign all claim to +the man she had loved so foolishly, so tenderly, with such a romantic +and unselfish devotion, Miss Paget put away all thought of the past from +her heart and mind. Heart and mind seemed empty and joyless without +those loved tenants, though the tenants had been only fair wraiths of +dreams that were dead. There was a sense of something missing in her +life--a blank, dull calm, which was at first very painful. But for +Charlotte's sake she was careful to hide all outward token of +despondency, and the foolish grief, put down by so strong a hand, was +ere long well-nigh stifled. + +Those dark days which succeeded Christmas were a period of halcyon peace +for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover came to the villa when he +pleased, but was still careful not to encroach on the license allowed +him. Once a week he permitted himself the delight of five-o'clock tea in +Mrs. Sheldon's drawing-room, on which occasions he brought Charlotte all +the news of his small literary world, and a good deal of useful +information out of the books he had been reading. When Mr. Sheldon +pleased to invite him to dinner on Sunday he gladly accepted the +invitation, and this Sunday dinner became in due course an established +institution. + +"You may as well make this your home on a Sunday," said Mr. Sheldon one +day, with careless cordiality; "I dare say you find Sunday dull in your +lodgings." + +"Yes, papa," cried Charlotte, "he does find it very dull--dreadfully +dull--don't you, Valentine?" + +And she regarded him with that pretty, tender, almost motherly look, +which young ladies who are engaged are apt to bestow on their affianced +lovers. + +Miss Halliday was very grateful to her stepfather for his kindness to her +landless adorer, and showed her appreciation of his conduct in many +pretty little caressing ways, which would have been infinitely bewitching +to a person of sentiment. + +Unfortunately Mr. Sheldon was not sentimental, and any exhibition of +feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were +times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as +from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear--what was it that +showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that +strange look was, it departed too quickly for analysis; and the +stockbroker thanked his stepdaughter for her little affectionate +demonstration with his wonted smile--the smile he smiled on Change, the +smile which was sometimes on his lips when his mind was a nest of +scorpions. + +To Valentine, in these rosy hours, life seemed full of hope and +brightness. He transferred his goods and chattels from Omega Street, +Chelsea, to the pleasant lodging in the Edgware Road, where he was nearer +Charlotte, and out of the way of his late patron Captain Paget, in the +event of that gentleman's return from the Continent. + +Fortune favoured him. The gaiety of heart which came with his happiness +lent a grace to his pen. Pleasant thoughts and fancies bedecked his +pages. He saw everything in the rosy light of love and beauty, and there +was a buoyant freshness in all he wrote. The Pegasus might be but a +common hackney, but the hack was young and fresh, and galloped gaily as +he scented the dewy morning air. It is not every poet whose Pegasus +clears at a bound a space as wide as all that waste of land and sea the +watchman views from his tall tower on the rock. + +Mr. Hawkehurst's papers on Lauzun, Brummel, Sardanapalus, Rabelais, Lord +Chesterfield, Erasmus, Beau Nash, Apelles, Galileo, and Philip of +Orleans, were in demand, and the reading public wondered at this prodigy +of book-making. He had begun to save money, and had opened a deposit +account at the Unitas Bank. How he gloated over the deposit receipts in +the stillness of the night, when he added a fresh one to his store! When +he had three, for sums amounting in all to forty pounds, he took them to +Charlotte, and she looked at them, and he looked at them, as if the poor +little bits of printed paper had been specimens of virgin ore from some +gold mine newly discovered by Mr. Hawkehurst. And then these foolish +lovers kissed each other, as William Lee and his wife may have embraced +after the penniless young student had perfected his invention of the +stocking-frame. + +"Forty pounds!" exclaimed Miss Halliday, "all won by your pen, and your +poor fingers, and your poor, poor head! How it must ache after a long +day's work! How clever you must be, Valentine!" + +"Yes, dear; amazingly clever. Clever enough to know that you are the +dearest girl in Christendom." + +"Don't talk nonsense, sir! You are not clever enough to have the +privilege of doing that yet awhile. I mean, how learned you must be to +know such lots of things, all about Erasmus, and Galileo, and--" + +"No, my darling, not Erasmus and Galileo. I knew all about Erasmus last +week; but I am working at my paper on Galileo now, an exhaustive review +of all the books that were ever written on the subject, in ten pages. I +don't ask other people to remember what I write, you know, my dear, and I +don't pledge myself to remember it. That sort of thing won't keep. There +is a kind of sediment, no doubt, in one's note-book; but the +effervescence of that vintage goes off rather quickly." + +"I only know that you are a very clever person, and that one obtains an +immensity of information from your writings," said Charlotte. + +"Yes, dearest, there is a kind of wine that must be made into negus for +such pretty little topers as you--the 'Wine of Cyprus,' as Mrs. Browning +called it. It is better for pretty girls to have the negus than to have +nothing, or only weak home-brewed stuff that results in head-ache. My +dearest, Fate has been very good to me, and I love my profession of +letters. I am sure that of all educational processes there is none better +than book-making; and the man who begins by making books must be a dolt, +dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by writing them. So you may yet +hope to see the morning that shall make your Valentine famous--for a +fortnight. What man can hope to be famous for _more_ than a fortnight in +such a railroad age as this?" + +During this halcyon period, in which Mr. Hawkehurst cultivated +alternately the society of the Muses and his mistress, he saw little or +nothing of George Sheldon. He had washed his hands of all share in the +work of establishing Charlotte Halliday's claim to the Reverend John +Haygarth's thousands. Indeed, since that interview in which Philip +Sheldon had made so light of his stepdaughter's chances, and ratified his +consent to her marriage with so humble a literary adventurer as himself, +Mr. Hawkehurst had come to consider the Haygarthian inheritance as +altogether a visionary business. If it were certain, or even probable, +that Charlotte was to inherit a hundred thousand pounds, was it likely +that Mr. Sheldon would encourage such an alliance? This question Mr. +Hawkehurst always answered in the negative; and as days and weeks went +by, and he heard no more of the Haygarth fortune, the idea of Charlotte's +wealth became more and more shadowy. + +If there were anything doing in this matter, the two brothers were now +working together, and George had no further need of Valentine's help. + +The two brothers were not working entirely together. Philip Sheldon had +taken the matter into his own strong hand, and George found it very +difficult to hold an inch of ground against that formidable antagonist. +The papers and information which George had boasted of to Valentine, and +the possession whereof was, as he asserted, the very keystone of the +arch, proved to be of such small account that he ultimately consented to +hand them over to his brother on the payment of expenses out of pocket, +and a bonus of one hundred and fifty pounds, together with a written +undertaking from Miss Halliday to pay him the fifth share of any fortune +recovered by means of those papers. + +This undertaking had been executed in the easiest manner. + +"My brother has taken it into his wise head that there is some unclaimed +stock standing in your grandfather's name which you are entitled to, +Lotta," Mr. Sheldon said one morning; "and he wants to recover the amount +for you, on condition of receiving a clear fifth when the sum is +recovered. Have you any objection to sign such an undertaking?" + +"Dear papa, how can I object?" cried Charlotte gaily. "Why, stocks are +money, are they not? How fortunate we are, and how rich we are getting!" + +"We!" + +"Valentine and I," murmured the girl, blushing. "I cannot help thinking +of him when any windfall of good fortune comes to me. What do you think, +papa? He has saved forty pounds in little more than three months--all +earned by his pen! + +"Behold +The arch-enchanter's wand! Itself a nothing; +But taking sorcery from the master-hand +To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike +The loud earth breathless!" + +And Miss Halliday spouted the glowing lines of the noble dramatist with +charming enthusiasm. She signed the required undertaking without looking +at it, and it was duly witnessed by her stepfather. + +"In your talk with your mother and Valentine, I should advise you to be +as silent about this small business as about your own little fortune," +Mr. Sheldon remarked presently. + +"Mustn't I tell Valentine?" cried Charlotte, making a wry face; "I should +so like to tell him--just about these stocks. I daresay _he_ knows what +stocks are; and it would be such cheering news for him, after he has +worked his poor brain so for that forty pounds. I don't so much care +about telling poor mamma; for she does exclaim and wonder so about +things, that it is quite fatiguing to hear her. But please let me tell +Valentine?" + +Miss Halliday pursed-up her lips and offered her stepfather one of those +kisses which she had of late been prompted to bestow on him out of the +gratitude of a heart overflowing with girlish joy. He took the kiss as he +might have taken a dose of medicine, but did not grant the request +preferred by it. + +"If you want to be a fool, you can tell your lover of this windfall; but +if you wish to prove yourself a sensible girl, you will hold your tongue. +He has saved forty pounds by hard work in the last three months, you say: +do you think he would have saved forty pence if he had known that you had +five thousand pounds at his disposal? I know that class of men; look at +Goldsmith, the man who wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield," and "Rasselas," +and "Clarissa Harlowe," and so on. I have read somewhere that he never +wrote except under coercion--that is to say, want of money." + +Charlotte acknowledged the wisdom of this argument, and submitted. She +was not what was called a strong-minded woman; and, indeed, strength of +mind is not a plant indigenous to the female nature, but an exceptional +growth developed by exceptional circumstances. In Charlotte's life there +had been nothing exceptional, and she was in all things soft and womanly, +ready to acknowledge, and to be guided by, the wisdom of her seniors. So +Valentine heard nothing of the undertaking executed by his lady-love. + +After this, Mr. Sheldon took counsel's opinion, and set to work in real +earnest to recover the estate of the deceased John Haygarth from the +yawning jaws of that tame but all-devouring monster, the Crown. The work +was slow, and the dry as dust details thereof need not be recorded here. +It had but just begun when Horatio Paget suddenly returned from his +Continental expedition, and established himself once more in the Omega +Street lodgings. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY. + +Captain Paget's return was made known to the Sheldon circle by a letter +from the returning wanderer to his daughter. The Captain was laid up with +rheumatic gout, and wrote quite piteously to implore a visit from Diana. +Miss Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her +side, even to this _père prodigue_, obeyed the summons promptly, with the +full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner. + +"And if you'd like to take your papa a bottle of Mr. Sheldon's old port, +Diana, remember it's at your disposal. I'm sure I've heard people say +that old port is good for the gout--or perhaps, by the bye, what I heard +was that it _wasn't_ good. I know old port and gout seem to run together +in my head somehow. But if there's anything in the house your papa would +like, Diana--wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet off the +spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an evening, or a new +novel--surely one couldn't forfeit one's subscription by lending a book +to a non-subscribing invalid?" + +While Georgy was suggesting the loan of almost every portable object in +the house as a specific for Captain Paget's gout, Charlotte sent for a +cab and made things smooth for her friend's departure. She wrapped her +warmly against the February blast, and insisted upon going out to see her +seated in the cab, whereby she offered to the pedestrians of that +neighbourhood a seraphic vision of loveliness with tumbled hair. +Charlotte had been always delightful, but Charlotte engaged to Valentine +Hawkehurst was a creature of supernal sweetness and brightness--a radiant +ministering angel, hovering lightly above a world too common for her foot +to rest upon. + +Miss Paget found her father suffering from a by no means severe attack of +a respectable family gout, a little peevish from the effects of this +affliction, but not at all depressed in mind. He had, indeed, the manner +of a man with whom things are going pleasantly. There was a satisfaction +in his tone, a placidity in his face, except when distorted for the +moment by a twinge of pain, that were new to Diana, who had not been +accustomed to behold the brighter side of her father's disposition. He +seemed grateful for his daughter's visit, and received her with unwonted +kindness of manner. + +"You have come very promptly, my dear, and I am gratified by your early +compliance with my request," he said with dignified affection, after he +had given his daughter the kiss of greeting. "I was a great sufferer last +night, Diana, a great sufferer, a prisoner to this chair, and the woman +below attempted to send me up a dinner--_such_ a dinner! One would think +a very small degree of education necessary for the stewing of a kidney, +but the things that woman gave me last night were like morsels of stewed +leather. I am not an epicure, Diana; but with such a constitution as +mine, good cooking is a vital necessity. Life in lodgings for a man of my +age is a sore trial, my dear. I wish you were well married, Diana, and +could give your father a humble corner at your fireside." + +Diana smiled. It was a somewhat bitter smile; and there was scorn of +herself, as well as scorn of her father in that bitterness. + +"I am not the sort of person to marry well, papa," she said. + +"Who knows? You are handsomer than nine-tenths of the women who marry +well." + +"No, papa; that is your sanguine manner of looking at your own property. +And even if I were married to some one to whom I might give obedience and +duty, and all that kind of thing, in exchange for a comfortable home, as +they say in the advertisements, would you be content with a peaceful +corner by my fireside? Do you think you would never pine for clubs and +gaming-tables--nay, even for creditors to--to diplomatize with, and +difficulties to surmount?" + +"No, my dear. I am an old man; the clubs and gaming-houses have done with +me, and I with them. I went to see a man at Arthur's a few months ago. I +had written to him on a little matter of business--in fact, to be candid +with you, my love, for the loan of a five-pound note--and I called at the +club for his reply. I caught sight of my face in a distant glass as I was +waiting in the strangers' room, and I thought I was looking at a ghost. +There comes a time towards the close of a long troublesome life in which +a man begins to feel like a ghost. His friends are gone, and his money is +gone, his health is gone, his good looks are gone; and the only mistake +seems to be that the man himself should be left behind. I remember an +observation of Lord Chesterfield's: 'Lord ---- and I have been dead for +the last two years, but we don't tell anyone so,' he said; and there are +few old men who couldn't say the same. But I am not down-hearted to-day, +my dear. No, the habit of hoping has never quite deserted me; and it is +only now and then that I take a dismal view of life. Come, my love, lay +aside your bonnet and things. Dear me! what a handsome black silk dress, +and how well you look in it!" + +"It is a present from Charlotte, papa. She has a very liberal allowance +of pocket-money, and is generosity itself. I don't like to take so much +from her, but I only wound her by a refusal." + +"Of course, my dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no +mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any +booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish +reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always +pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"--Diana winced as she remembered +her shabby hat and threadbare gown at Fôretdechêne--"and I am especially +pleased to see you elegantly attired this evening, as I expect a +gentleman by-and-by." + +"A gentleman, papa!" exclaimed Miss Paget, with considerable surprise; "I +thought that you had sent for me because you were ill and depressed and +lonely." + +"Well, yes, Diana, I certainly am ill; and I suppose it is scarcely +unnatural that a father should wish to see his only daughter." + +Diana was silent. A father's wish to see his daughter was indeed natural +and common; but that Captain Paget, who in no period of his daughter's +life had evinced for her the common affection of paternity, should be +seized all of a sudden with a yearning for her society, was somewhat +singular. But Diana's nature had been ennobled and fortified by the +mental struggle and the impalpable sacrifice of the last few months, and +she was in nowise disposed to repel any affectionate feeling of her +father's even at this eleventh hour. + +"_He_ tells us the eleventh hour is not too late," she thought. "If it is +not too late in the sight of that Divine Judge, shall it be thought too +late by an erring creature like me?" + +After a few minutes of thoughtful silence, she knelt down by her father's +chair and kissed him. + +"My dear father," she murmured softly, "believe me, I am very pleased to +think you should wish to see me. I will come to you whenever you like to +send for me. I am glad not to be a burden to you; but I should wish to be +a comfort when I can." + +The Captain shed his stock tear. It signified something nearer akin to +real emotion than usual. + +"My dear girl," he said, "this is very pleasing, very pleasing +indeed. The day may come--I cannot just now say when--and events may +arise--which--the nature of which I am not yet in a position to indicate +to you--but the barren fig-tree may not be always fruitless. In its old +age the withered trunk may put forth fresh branches. We will say no more +of this, my love; and I will only remark that you may not go unrequited +for any affection bestowed on your poor old father." + +Diana smiled, and this time it was a pensive rather than a bitter smile. +She had often heard her father talk like this before. She had often heard +these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate +future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a +schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope +and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle +to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since she had known him. + +So she set little value on his hopeful talk of this evening, but was +content to see him in good spirits. He contemplated her admiringly as she +knelt by his easy-chair, and smoothed the shining coils of her dark hair +with a gentle hand, as he looked downward at the thoughtful face--proud +and grave, but not ungentle. + +"You are a very handsome girl, Diana," he murmured, as much to himself as +to his daughter; "yes, very handsome. Egad, I had no idea how handsome!" + +"What has put such a fancy into your head to-night, papa?" asked Diana, +laughing. "I do not believe in the good looks you are so kind as to +attribute to me. When I see my face in the glass I perceive a pale gloomy +countenance that is by no means pleasing." + +"You may be out of spirits when you look in the glass. I hope you are not +unhappy at Bayswater." + +"Why should I be unhappy, papa? No sister was ever kinder or more loving +than Charlotte Halliday is to me. I should he very ungrateful to +Providence as well as to her if I did not appreciate such affection. How +many lonely girls, like me, go through life without picking up a sister?" + +"Yes, you are right, my dear. Those Sheldon people have been very useful +to you. They are not the kind of people I should have wished a daughter +of mine to be _live_ with, if I were in the position my birth entitles me +to occupy; but as I am not in that position, I submit. That black silk +becomes you admirably. And now, my love, be so kind as to ring the bell +for lights and tea." + +They had been sitting in the firelight--the mystic magical capricious +firelight--which made even that tawdry lodging-house parlour seem a +pleasant chamber. The tea-tray was brought, and candles. Diana seated +herself at the table, and made tea with the contents of a little +mahogany caddy. + +"Don't pour out the tea just yet," said the Captain; "I expect a +gentleman. I don't suppose he'll take tea, but it will look more civil to +wait for him." + +"And who is this mysterious gentleman, papa?" + +"A Frenchman; a man I met while I was abroad." + +"_Really_ a gentleman?" + +"Certainly, Diana," replied her father, with offended dignity. + +"Do you think I should admit any person to my friendship who is not a +gentleman? My business relations I am powerless to govern; but friendship +is a different matter. There is no man more exclusive than Horatio Paget. +M. Lenoble is a gentleman of ancient lineage and amiable character." + +"And rich, I suppose, papa?" asked Diana. She thought that her father +would scarcely speak of the gentleman in a tone so profoundly respectful +if he were not rich. + +"Yes, Diana. M. Lenoble is master of a very fair estate, and is likely to +be much richer before he dies." + +"And he has been kind to you, papa?" + +"Yes, he has shown me hospitality during my residence in Normandy. You +need not speak of him to your friends the Sheldons." + +"Not even to Charlotte?" + +"Not even to Charlotte. I do not care to have my affairs discussed by +that class of people." + +"But, dear papa, why make a mystery about so unimportant a matter. + +"I do not make a mystery; but I hate gossip. Mrs. Sheldon is an +incorrigible gossip, and I daresay her daughter is no better." + +"Charlotte is an angel, papa." + +"That is very possible. But I beg that you will refrain from discussing +my friend M. Lenoble in her angelic presence." + +"As you please, papa," said Diana gravely. She felt herself bound to obey +her father in this small matter; but the idea of this mystery and secrecy +was very unwelcome to her. It implied that her father's acquaintance with +this Frenchman was only a part of some new scheme. It was no honest +friendship, which the Captain might be proud to own, glad to show the +world that in these days of decadence he could still point to a friend. +It was only some business alliance, underhand and stealthy; a social +conspiracy, that must needs be conducted in darkness. + +"Why did papa summon me here if he wants his acquaintance with this man +kept secret?" she asked herself; and the question seemed unanswerable. + +She pictured this M. Lenoble to herself--a wizened, sallow-faced +Macchiavellian individual, whose business in England must needs be +connected with conspiracy, treason, commercial fraud, anything or +everything stealthy and criminal. + +"I wish you would let me go back to Bayswater before this gentleman +comes, papa," she said presently. "I heard it strike seven just now, and +I know I shall be expected early. I can come again whenever you like." + +"No, no, my love; you must stop to see my friend. And now tell me a +little about the Sheldons. Has anything been stirring since I saw them +last?" + +"Nothing whatever, papa. Charlotte is very happy; she always had a +happy disposition, but she is gayer than ever since her engagement +with--Valentine." + +"What an absurd infatuation!" muttered the Captain. + +"And he--Valentine--is very good, and works very hard at his literary +profession--and loves her very dearly." + +It cost her an effort to say this even now, even now when she fancied +herself cured of that folly which had once been so sweet to her. To speak +of him like this--to put him away out of her own life, and contemplate +him as an element in the life of another--could not be done without some +touch of the old anguish. + +There was a loud double-knock at the street-door as she said this, and a +step sounded presently in the passage; a quick, firm tread. There was +nothing stealthy about that, at any rate. + +"My friend Lenoble," said the Captain; and in the next instant a +gentleman entered the room, a gentleman who was in every quality the +opposite of the person whom Diana had expected to see. + +These speculative pictures are seldom good portraits. Miss Paget had +expected to find her father's ally small and shrivelled, old and ugly, +dried-up and withered in the fiery atmosphere of fraud and conspiracy; in +outward semblance a monkey, in soul a tiger. And instead of this +obnoxious creature there burst into the room a man of four-and-thirty +years of age, tall, stalwart, with a fair frank face, somewhat browned by +summer suns; thick auburn hair and beard, close trimmed and cropped in +the approved Gallic fashion--clear earnest blue eyes, and a mouth whose +candour and sweetness a moustache could not hide. Henry of Navarre, +before the white lilies of France had dazzled his eyes with their fatal +splendour, before the court of the Medici had taught the Bearnois to +dissemble, before the sometime Protestant champion had put on that +apparel of stainless white in which he went forth to stain his soul with +the sin of a diplomatic apostasy. + +Such a surprise as this makes a kind of crisis in the eventless record of +a woman's life. Diana found herself blushing as the stranger stood near +the door awaiting her father's introduction. She was ashamed to think of +the wrong her imagination had done him. + +"My daughter, Diana Paget--M. Lenoble. I have been telling Diana how much +I owed to your hospitality during my stay in Normandy," continued the +Captain, with his grandest air, "I regret that I can only receive you in +an apartment quite unworthy the seigneur of Côtenoir.--A charming place, +my dear Diana, which I should much like you to see on some future +occasion.--Will you take some tea, Lenoble?--Diana, a cup of tea.--The +Pagets are a fallen race, you see, my dear sir, and a cup of tea in a +lodging-house parlour is the best entertainment I can give to a friend. +The Cromie Pagets of Hertfordshire will give you dinner in gold plate, +with a footman standing behind the chair of every guest; but our branch +is a younger and a poorer one, and I, among others, am paying the price +of youthful follies." + +Gustave Lenoble looked sympathetic, but the glance of sympathy was +directed to Diana, and not to the male representative of the younger +Pagets. To pity the distressed damsel was an attribute of the Lenoble +mind; and Gustave had already begun to pity Miss Paget, and to wonder +what her fate in life would be, with no better protector than a father +who was confessedly a pauper. He saw that the young lady was very +handsome, and he divined, from some indefinable expression of her face, +that she was proud; and as he thought of his own daughters, and their +easy life and assured future, the contrast seemed to him very cruel. + +Chivalrous as the house of Lenoble might be by nature, he could scarcely +have felt so keen an interest in Captain Paget's daughter at the first +glance, if his sympathies had not been already enlisted for her. The +noble Horatio, though slow to act a father's part, had shown himself +quick to make capital out of his daughter's beauty and virtues when the +occasion offered. + +In his intercourse with the seigneur of Côtenoir, which had developed +from a mere business acquaintance into friendship, Captain Paget had +discoursed with much eloquence upon the subject of his motherless +daughter; and M. Lenoble, having daughters of his own, also motherless, +lent him the ear of sympathy. + +"I have heard much of you, Miss Paget," said Gustave presently, "and of +your devotion to your father. He has no more favourite theme than your +goodness." + +Diana blushed, and Diana's father blushed also. That skilled diplomatist +felt the awkwardness of the situation, and was prompt to the rescue. + +"Yes," he said, "my daughter has been a heroine. There are Antigones, +sir, who show their heroic nature by other service than the leading to +and fro of a blind father. From the earliest age my poor child has +striven to stand alone; too proud, too noble to be a burden on a parent +whose love would have given all, but whose means could give but little. +And now she comes to me from her home among strangers, to soothe my hour +of pain and infirmity. I trust your daughters may prove as worthy of your +love, M. Lenoble." + +"They are very dear girls," answered the Frenchman; "but for them life +has been all sunshine. They have never known a sorrow except the death of +their mother. It is the storm that tests the temper of the tree. I wish +they might prove as noble in adversity as Miss Paget has shown herself." + +This was more than Diana could bear without some kind of protest. + +"You must not take papa's praises _au pied de la lettre_, M. Lenoble," +she said; "I have been by no means brave or patient under adversity. +There are troubles which one must bear. I have borne mine somehow; but I +claim no praise for having submitted to the inevitable." + +This was spoken with a certain noble pride which impressed Gustave more +than all the father's florid eloquence had done. After this the +conversation became less personal. M. Lenoble talked of England. It was +not his first visit; but he had only the excursionist's knowledge of the +British Isles. + +"I have been to Scotland," he said. "Your Scotland is grand, +mountainous--all that there is of the most savage and poetic. It is a +Switzerland lined with Brittany. But that which most speaks to the heart +of a stranger is the peaceful beauty of your English landscape." + +"You like England, M. Lenoble?" said Diana. + +"Have I not reason? My mother was English. I was only five years old when +I lost her. She went out of my life like a dream; but I can still recall +a faint shadow of her face--an English face--a countenance of placid +sadness, very sweet and tender. But why do I talk of these things?" + +On this the Frenchman's talk took a gayer turn. This M. Lenoble showed +himself a lively and agreeable companion. He talked of Normandy, his +daughters and their convent, his little son at Rouen, his aunt Cydalise, +the quiet old lady at Beaubocage; his grandfather, his grandmother, the +old servants, and everything familiar and dear to him. He told of his +family history with boyish candour, untainted by egotism, and seemed much +pleased by Diana's apparent interest in his unstudied talk. He was quite +unconscious that the diplomatic Horatio was leading him on to talk of +these things, with a view to making the conversation supremely +interesting to him. That arch diplomatist knew that there is nothing a +man likes better than talking of his own affairs, if he can have a decent +excuse for such discourse. + +The clock struck nine while Diana was listening, really interested. This +glimpse of a life so far apart from her own was a relief, after the +brooding introspective reveries which of late had constituted so large a +portion of her existence. She started up at the sound of the clock. + +"What now, Cinderella?" cried her father. "Have you stopped beyond your +time, and will your fairy godmother be angry?" + +"No one will be angry, papa; but I did not mean to stay so late. I am +sorry your description of Normandy has been so interesting, M. Lenoble." + +"Come and see Vevinord and Côtenoir, and you will judge for yourself. The +town-hall of Vevinord is almost as fine as that of Louvain; and we have a +church that belongs to the time of Dagobert." + +"She shall see them before long," said the Captain; "I shall have +business in Rouen again before the next month is out; and if my daughter +is a good girl, I will take her over there with me." + +Diana stared at her father in utter bewilderment. What could be the +meaning of this sudden display of affection? + +"I should not be free to go with you, papa, even if you were able to take +me," she replied, somewhat coldly; "I have other duties." + +She felt assured that there was some lurking motive, some diplomatic art +at the bottom of the Captain's altered conduct, and she could not +altogether repress her scorn. The astute Horatio saw that he had gone a +little too far, and that his only child was not of the stuff to be +moulded at will by his dexterous hands. + +"You will come and see me again, Diana?" he said in a pleading tone: "I +am likely to be a prisoner in this room for a week or more." + +"Certainly, papa; I will come if you wish it. When shall I come?" + +"Well, let me see--to-day is Thursday; can you come on Monday?" + +"Yes, I will come on Monday." + +A cab was procured, and Miss Paget was conducted to that vehicle by her +new acquaintance, who showed a gallant anxiety for her comfort on the +journey, and was extremely careful about the closing of the windows. She +arrived at Bayswater before ten, but being forbidden to talk of M. +Lenoble, could give but a scanty account of her evening. + +"And was your papa kind, dear?" asked Charlotte, "and did he seem pleased +to see you?" + +"He was much kinder and more affectionate than usual, Lotta dear; so much +so, that he set me wondering. Now, if I were as confiding and eager to +think well of people as you are, I should be quite delighted by this +change. As it is, I am only mystified. I should be very glad if my father +and I could be drawn closer together; very glad if my influence could +bring about an amendment in his life." + +While Miss Paget was discussing her father's affectionate and novel +behaviour, the noble Horatio was meditating, by his solitary hearth, upon +the events of the evening. + +"I'm half-inclined to think he's hit already," mused the Captain. "I must +not allow myself to be deluded by manner. A Frenchman's gallantry rarely +means much; but Lenoble is one of those straightforward fellows whose +thoughts may be read by a child. He certainly seemed pleased with her; +interested and sympathetic, and all that kind of thing. And she is an +uncommonly handsome girl, and might marry any one if she had the +opportunity. I had no idea she was so handsome until to-night. I suppose +I never noticed her by candlelight before. By Jove! I ought to have made +her an actress, or singer, or something of that kind. And so I might, if +I'd known her face would light up as it does. I wish she wasn't so +impracticable--always cutting in with some awkward speech, that makes me +look like a fool, when, if she had an ounce of common sense, she might +see that I'm trying to make her fortune. Yes, egad, and such a fortune as +few girls drop into now-a-days! Some of your straitlaced church-going +people would call me a neglectful father to that girl, I daresay; but I +think if I succeed in making her the wife of Gustave Lenoble, I shall +have done my duty in a way that very few fathers can hope to surpass. +Such a high-principled fellow as Lenoble is too!--and _that_ is a +consideration." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +"WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I?" + +After that first summons to Chelsea, Diana went many times--twice and +three times a week--to comfort and tend her invalid father. Captain +Paget's novel regard for his only child seemed to increase with the +familiarity of frequent intercourse. "I have had very great pleasure in +making your acquaintance, my dear Diana," he said one day, in the course +of a _tête-à-tête_ with his daughter; "and I am charmed to find you +everything that a well-born and well-bred young woman ought to be. I am +sure you have excellent reason to be grateful to your cousin, Priscilla +Paget, for the excellent education you received in her abode; and you +have some cause to thank me for the dash and style imparted to your +carriage and manner by our foreign wanderings." + +The Captain said this with the air of a man who had accompanied his +daughter on the grand tour solely with a view to her intellectual +improvement. He really thought she had reason to be grateful to him for +those accidents of his nomadic life which had secured her a good accent +for French and German, and the art of putting on her shawl. + +"Yes, my dear child," he continued with dignity, "it affords me real +gratification to know you better. I need scarcely say that when you were +the associate of my pilgrimage, you were not of an age to be available as +a companion. To a man of the world like myself, a young person who has +not done growing must always savour somewhat of the schoolroom and the +nursery. I am not going to repeat the Byronic impertinence about +bread-and-butter; but the society of a girl of the hobbledehoy age is apt +to be insipid. You are now a young woman, and a young woman of whom any +father might with justice be proud." + +After a few such speeches as these, Diana began to think that it was just +possible her father might really experience some novel feeling of regard +for her. It might be true that his former coldness had been no more than +a prejudice against the awkwardness of girlhood. + +"I was shabby and awkward, I daresay, in those days," she thought; "and +then I was always asking papa for money to buy new clothes; and that may +have set him against me. And now that I am no burden upon him, and can +talk to him and amuse him, he may feel more kindly disposed towards me." + +There was some foundation for this idea. Captain Paget had felt himself +more kindly disposed towards his only child from the moment in which she +ceased to be an encumbrance upon him. Her sudden departure from +Forêtdechêne had been taken in very good part by him. + +"A very spirited thing for her to do, Val," he had said, when informed of +the fact by Mr. Hawkehurst; "and by far the best thing she could do, +under the circumstances." + +From that time his daughter had never asked him for a sixpence, and from +that time she had risen steadily in his estimation. But the feeling which +he now exhibited was more than placid approval; it was an affection at +once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his +daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence for +his declining years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a +sentiment inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical +assumption. Diana was, therefore, so much the more likely to be softened +and touched by it. + +She was softened, deeply touched by this late awakening of feeling. The +engagement of Valentine and Charlotte had left her own life very blank, +very desolate. It was not alone the man she loved who was lost to her; +Charlotte, the friend, the sister, seemed also slipping away from her. As +kind, as loving, as tender as of old, this dear friend and adopted sister +still might be, but no longer wholly her own. Over the hearts of the +purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt +to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has +descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will +burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's +supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly when the lamp is +shattered. + +For Charlotte, Valentine--and for Valentine, Charlotte--made the +sum-total of the universe at this time; or, at best, there was but a +small balance which included all the other cares and duties, affections +and pleasures, of life. Of this balance Diana had the lion's share; but +she felt that things had changed since those days of romantic school-girl +friendship in which Charlotte had talked of never marrying, and +travelling with her dearest friend Diana amongst all the beautiful scenes +they had read of, until they found the loveliest spot in the world, where +they would establish themselves in an ideal cottage, and live together +for the rest of their lives, cultivating their minds and their +flower-garden, working berlin-wool chairs for their ideal drawing-room, +and doing good to an ideal peasantry, who would be just poor enough to be +interesting, and sickly enough to require frequent gifts of calf's-foot +jelly and green tea. + +Those foolish dreams were done with now; and that other dream, of a life +to be spent with the reckless companion of her girlhood, was lost to +Diana Paget. There was no point to which she could look forward in the +future, no star to lure her onward upon life's journey. Her present +position was sufficiently comfortable; and she told herself that she must +needs be weak and wicked if she were not content with her lot. But beyond +the present she dared not look, so blank was the prospect--a desert, +without even the mirage; for her dreams and delusions were gone with her +hope. + +Possessed by such a sense of loneliness, it is scarcely strange if +there seemed to her a gleam of joy, a faint glimmer of hope, in the +newly awakened affection of her father. She began to believe him, and +to take comfort from the thought that he was drifting to a haven where +he might lie moored, with other battered old hulks of pirate and +privateer, inglorious and at rest. To work for him and succour him in his +declining years seemed a brighter prospect to this hopeless woman of +four-and-twenty than a future of lonely independence. "It is the nature +of woman to lean," says the masculine philosopher; but is it not rather +her nature to support and sustain, or else why to her is entrusted the +sublime responsibility of maternity? Diana was pleased to think that a +remorseful reprobate might be dependent on her toil, and owe his +reformation to her influence. She was indeed a new Antigone, ready to +lead him in his moral blindness to an altar of atonement more pure than +the ensanguined shrine of the Athenian Eumenides. + +Her visits to Omega Street were not entirely devoted to _tête-a-têtes_ +with her father. By reason of those coincidences which are so common to +the lives of some people, it generally happened that M. Lenoble dropped +in upon his invalid friend on the very day of Miss Paget's visit. M. +Lenoble was in London on business, and this business apparently +necessitated frequent interviews with Captain Paget. Of course such +interviews could not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was +wont, therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion +of the young lady's visit; and would even, with an inconsistent +gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay to its utmost limit. + +"It will always be time for my affairs, Miss Paget," he urged, "and I +know how your father values your society; and he well may value it. I +only hope my daughters will be as good to me, if I have the gout, +by-and-by." + +Diana had spent nearly a dozen evenings in Omega Street, and on each of +those evenings had happened to meet M. Lenoble. She liked him better on +every occasion of these accidental meetings. He was indeed a person whom +it was difficult for any one to dislike, and in the thirty-four years of +his life had never made an enemy. She had been pleased with him on the +first evening; his bright handsome face, his courteous reverence for her +sex--expressed in every word, every tone, every look--his sympathy with +all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, were calculated to charm +the coldest and most difficult of judges. Diana liked, and even admired +him, but it was from an abstract point of view. He seemed a creature as +remote from her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and +admired in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of her memory +to-morrow. + +There was only one point in connection with Gustave Lenoble which +occupied her serious thoughts; and this was the nature of his relations +with her father. + +This was a subject that sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the +future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her +father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster--now by one +species of falsehood and trickery, now by another--rarely incautious, +but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy +fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that +was spread for him? + +The talk of business, the frequent interviews, the evident elation of her +father's spirits, combined to assure her that some great scheme was in +progress, some commercial enterprise, perhaps not entirely dishonest--nay +even honest, when regarded from the sanguine speculator's point of view, +but involving the hazard of Gustave Lenoble's fortune. + +"It is quite as easy for my father to delude himself as it is for him to +delude others. This M. Lenoble is ignorant of English commerce, no doubt, +and will be ready to believe anything papa tells him. And he is so +candid, so trusting, it would be very hard if he were to be a loser +through his confidence in papa. His daughters, too; the hazard of his +fortune is peril to their future." Such doubts and fears, gradually +developed by reflection took stronger hold on Miss Paget's mind after +every fresh visit to Omega Street. She saw the Frenchman's light-hearted +confidence in all humanity, her father's specious manner and air of +quixotic honour. His sanguine tone, his excellent spirits, filled her +with intolerable alarm. Alas! when had she ever seen her father in good +spirits, except when some gentlemanly villany was in progress? + +Miss Paget endured this uneasiness of mind as long as she could, and then +determined to warn the supposed victim. She planned the mode of her +warning, and arranged for herself a diplomatic form which would reflect +the least possible discredit upon her father; and having once come to +this resolution, she was not slow to put it into effect. + +When her father was about to send for a cab to convey her back to +Bayswater, after her next visit to Omega Street, she surprised him by +intercepting his order. + +"There is a cab-stand in Sloane Square, papa," she said; "and if M. +Lenoble will be so kind as to take me there, I--I would rather get the +cab from the stand. The man charges more when he is fetched off the rank, +I believe." + +She could think of no better excuse for seeing Gustave alone than this +most sordid pretence. She blushed as she thought how mean a sound it must +have in the ears of the man for whose advantage she was plotting. Happily +M. Lenoble was not among the people who see nothing but meanness in the +desire to save sixpence. His aunt Cydalise had shown him the loveliness +of poverty; for there are vows of holy poverty that need no spoken +formula, and that are performed without the cloister. + +"Poor girl!" thought M. Lenoble; "I dare say even the cost of her coach +is a consideration with her; and one dare not pay the coachman." + +This was how Gustave read that blush of shame which for a moment dyed +Diana's cheek. Her father's was a very different reading. + +"The minx sees my game, and is playing into my hands," thought he. "So +demure as she is, too! I should never have supposed her capable of such +a clever manoeuvre to secure ten minutes' _tête-a-tête_ with an +eligible admirer." + +He bade his daughter good night with more than usual effusion. He began +to think that she might prove herself worthy of him after all. + +The district between Omega Street and Sloane Square is after dusk of all +places the most solitary. It is the border-land of Pimlico, or, to borrow +from Sidney Smith, the knuckle end of Belgravia. In these regions of +desolation and smoke-blackened stucco Diana and her companion were as +secure from the interruption of the jostling crowd as they might have +been in the primeval forests of Central America. + +Miss Paget's task was not a pleasant one. Shape her warning as she might, +it must reflect some discredit upon her father. He had of late been kind +to her; she felt this keenly to-night, and it seemed that the thing she +was about to do was a sort of parricide. Not against her father's life +was her cruel hand to be lifted; but her still more cruel tongue was to +slay her father's good name. + +"This M. Lenoble likes him and trusts him," she thought to herself. "What +a happiness for that poor broken-down old man to have so kind a friend! +And I am going to interfere in a manner that may put an end to this +friendship?" + +This is the shape which her thoughts assumed as she walked silently by +Gustave's side, with her hand lying lightly on his arm. He spoke to her +two or three times about the dulness of the neighbourhood, the coldness +of the night, or some other equally thrilling subject; but, finding by +her replies that she was thinking deeply, he made no further attempt at +conversation. + +"Poor child! she has some trouble on her mind, perhaps," he thought to +himself sadly, for his sympathy with this young lady was a very profound +feeling. This was the first occasion on which he had ever been alone +with her, and he wondered to find what a strange emotion was developed +by the novelty of the situation. He had married at twenty years of age, +and had never known those brief fancies or foolish passions which waste +the freshness of mind and heart. He had married a wife whom he never +learned to love; but his nature was so essentially a happy one, that he +had failed to discover the something wanting in his life. In all +relations--as grandson, husband, father, master--he had been "all simply +perfect," as Mademoiselle Cydalise pronounced him; and in a mind occupied +by cares for the welfare and happiness of others, he had never found that +blank which needed to be filled in order to make his own life completely +happy. Only of late, in his thirty-fourth year, had he come to the +knowledge of a feeling deeper than dutiful regard for an invalid wife, or +affectionate solicitude for motherless children; only of late had he felt +his heart stirred by a more thrilling emotion than that placid +resignation to the will of Providence which had distinguished his +courtship of Mademoiselle de Nérague. + +They had nearly reached Sloane Square before Diana took courage to broach +the subject so naturally repugnant to her. She had need to remember that +the welfare of M. Lenoble and all belonging to him might be dependent on +her fortitude. + +"M. Lenoble," she began at last, "I am going to say something I shall +find it most painful to utter, but which I feel it my duty to say to you. +I can only ask you to receive it in a generous spirit." + +"But, my dear Miss Paget, I pray you not to say anything that is +disagreeable to you. Why should you give yourself pain?--why--" + +"Because it is my duty to warn you of a danger which I know only too +well, and of which you may be quite ignorant. You are my father's friend, +M. Lenoble; and he has very few friends. I should be sorry if anything I +were to say should rob him of your regard." + +"Nothing that you say shall rob him of my friendship. But why should +you persist thus to say anything that is painful? What can you tell me +that I do not know, or that I cannot guess? Will you tell me that he is +poor? But I know it. That he is a broken-down gentleman? And that also +I know. What, then, would you tell me? That he has a daughter who is to +him a treasure without price? Ah, mademoiselle, what must I be if I did +not know that also?--I, who have contemplated that daughter so many +times--ah, so many!--when she could not know with what sympathy my eyes +watched her dutiful looks, with what profound emotion my heart +interpreted her life of affectionate sacrifice." + +There was a warmth, a tenderness in his tones which touched Diana's heart +as it had not been touched of late. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the full +meaning of those tender accents came home to her. The love that she had +once dreamed of from the lips of another spoke to her to-night in the +words of this stranger. The sympathy for which she had yearned long ago, +in the days of her wanderings with Valentine, was given to her to-night +without stint or measure. Unhappily it came too late; and it did not come +from the only lips which, as it seemed to her to-night, could make +sympathy precious or love divine. But to this lonely girl a good man's +affection seemed a treasure for which she must needs be deeply grateful. +It was something to discover that she could be loved. + +"I too," she said to herself,--"I, of whose presence Valentine is +scarcely conscious when he enters a room where Charlotte and I are +together; I, whom he greets day after day with the same careless words, +the same indifferent look; I, who might fade and waste day by day with +some slow disease, until I sank into the grave, before he would be +conscious of any change in my face,--is it possible that amongst the same +race of beings there can be any creature so widely different from +Valentine Hawkehurst as to love _me_?" + +This was the bitter complaint of her heart as she compared the tenderness +of this stranger with the indifference of the man to whom, for three long +years of her girlhood, she had given every dream, every thought, every +hope of her existence. She could not put him away from her heart all at +once. The weak heart still fondly clung to the dear familiar image. But +the more intensely she had felt the cold neglect of Valentine, the more +grateful to her seemed the unsought affection of Gustave Lenoble. + +"You know me as little as you know my father, M. Lenoble," she said, +after a long pause, during which they had walked to the end of the long +dull street, and were close to the square. "Let us go back a little way, +please; I have much more to say. I wish you to be my father's friend +always, but, if possible, without danger to yourself. My father is one of +those sanguine people who are always ready to embark in some new +enterprise, and who go on hoping and dreaming, after the failure of a +dozen schemes. He has no money, that I know of, to lose himself, and that +fact may make him, unconsciously, reckless of other people's money. I +have heard him speak of business relations with you, M. Lenoble, and it +is on that account I venture to speak so plainly. I do not want my poor +father to delude you, as he has often deluded himself. If you have +already permitted him to involve you in any speculation, I entreat you +to try to withdraw from it--to lose a little money, if necessary, rather +than to lose all. If you are not yet involved, let my warning save you +from any hazard." + +"My dear Miss Paget, I thank you a thousand times for your advice, your +noble thoughtfulness for others. But no, there is no hazard. The +business in which your father is occupied for me is not a speculation. It +involves no risk beyond the expenditure of a few thousand francs, which, +happily, I can afford to lose. I am not at liberty to tell you the nature +of the business in question, because I have promised your father to keep +that a secret. Dear young lady, you need have no fear for me. I am not a +rash speculator. The first years of my life were passed in extreme +poverty--the poverty that is near neighbour to starvation. That is a +lesson one cannot forget. How shall I thank you for your concern for +me?--so generous, so noble!" + +"It was only my duty to warn you of my poor father's weakness," replied +Diana. "If I needed thanks, your kindness to him is the only boon I could +ask. He has bitter need of a friend." + +"And he shall never lack one while I live, if only for your sake." The +last half of the sentence was spoken in lower tones than the first. Diana +was conscious of the lurking tenderness of those few words, and the +consciousness embarrassed her. Happily they had reached the end of the +quiet street by this time, and had emerged into the busier square. No +more was said till they reached the cab-stand, when Diana wished her +companion good night. + +"I am going back to Normandy in a week, Miss Paget; shall I see you again +before I leave England?" + +"I really don't know; our meetings are generally accidental, you see." + +"O yes, of course, always accidental," replied Gustave, smiling. + +"I am sorry you are going to leave London--for papa's sake." + +"And I, too, am sorry--for my own sake. But, you see, when one has +daughters, and a farm, and a chateau, one must be on the spot. I came to +England for one week only, and I have stayed six." + +"You have found so much to amuse you in London?" + +"Nay, mademoiselle, so much to interest me." + +"It is almost the same thing, is it not?" + +"A thousand times no! To be amused and to be interested--ah, what can be +so widely different as those two conditions of mind!" + +"Indeed! Good night, Mr. Lenoble. Please ask the cabman to drive as fast +as he can venture to do with consideration for his horse. I am afraid I +shall be late, and my friends will be anxious about me." + +"You will be late. You consider your friends at Bayswater, and you +consider even the cabman's horse. You are charity itself. Will you not +consider me a little also, Miss Paget?" + +"But how?" + +"Let me see you before I go back to Normandy. Your papa likes to see you +twice a week, I know. This is Monday night; will you come to see him on +Thursday?" + +"If he wishes it." + +"He does wish it. Ah, how he wishes it! You will come?" + +"If Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte can spare me." + +"They cannot spare you. No one can spare you. That cannot be. It +is amongst the things that are impossible. But they will have pity +upon--your father, and they will let you come." + +"Please ask the cabman to start. Indeed, I shall be late. Good night, +M. Lenoble." + +"Good night." + +He took her hand in his, and kissed it, with the grace of a Bayard. He +loved her, and took no trouble to conceal his passion. No shadow of doubt +darkened that bright horizon to which M. Lenoble looked with hopeful +eyes. He loved this penniless, motherless girl, as it was in the blood of +the Lenobles to love the poor and the helpless; especially when poverty +and helplessness presented themselves in the guise of youth and beauty. +He loved her, and she would love him. But why not? He was ten years her +senior, but that makes nothing. His auburn hair and beard, in the style +of Henry the Great, could show no streak of grey. His eyes had the +brightness of one-and-twenty; for the eyes of a man whose soul preserves +its youthfulness will keep their clear lustre for half a century. The +tall figure, straight as a dart; the frank handsome face which M. Lenoble +saw in the glass when he made his toilet, were not calculated to +dishearten a hopeful lover; and Gustave, by nature sanguine, enjoyed his +dream of happiness, untroubled by one morbid apprehension. + +He loved her, and he would ask her for his wife. She would accept his +offer; her father would rejoice in so fortunate an alliance; her friends +of Bayswater would felicitate a change so desirable. And when he returned +to Normandy he would take her with him, and say to his children, "Behold +your mother!" And then the great rambling mansion of Côtenoir would +assume a home-like aspect. The ponderous old furniture would be replaced +by lightsome appointments of modern fashion; except, of course, in the +grand drawing-room, where there were tapestries said to be from the +designs of Boucher, and chairs and sofas in the true Louis Quinze style, +of immovable bulkiness. + +There was but one trifling hitch in the whole scheme of happiness--Diana +was a Protestant. Ah, but what then! A creature so sweet, so noble, could +not long remain the slave of Anglican heresy. A little talk with +Cydalise, a week's "retreat" at the Sacré Coeur, and the thing would be +done. The dear girl would renounce her errors, and enter the bosom of the +Mother Church. Pouff! M. Lenoble blew the little difficulty away from his +finger-tips, and then wafted a kiss from the same finger-tips to his +absent beloved. + +"And this noble heart warned me against her own father!" M. Lenoble said +to himself, as he walked towards the hotel at Blackfriars where he had +taken up his abode, quite unconscious that the foot of Blackfriars Bridge +was not the centre of West End London. "How noble, how disinterested! +Poor old man! He is, no doubt, a speculator--something even of an +Adventurer. What then? He shall have an apartment at Côtenoir, his place +at the family table, his _fauteuil_ by the hearth; and there he can do no +harm." + + * * * * * + +There was a strange sentiment in Diana's mind after this evening's +conversation with Gustave Lenoble. To feel herself beloved, to know that +there was some one creature in the wide crowded world interested in, nay, +even attached to her, was a mystery, a surprise, and in some sort a +source of pleasure to her. That Gustave Lenoble could ever be any nearer +to her than he was at the present time did not occur to her as being +within the limits of possibility. She had thrust Valentine from her +heart, but the empty chamber could receive no new tenant. It was not +swept and garnished; nay, indeed, it was sadly littered with the shreds +and patches left by the late occupant. But, while this was so, to know +that she could be loved was in some manner sweet to her. + +"Ah, now I know that the poet is right," she said to herself. "There is +no creature so desolate but some heart responds unto its own. And I have +found the generous responsive heart that can pity and love me because +I seem so sorely to need love and pity. All my life--my blank, empty +life--I will remember and be grateful to him, the first good man who ever +called my father friend; the first of all mankind who thought this poor +hand worthy to be lifted to his lips." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH. + +Having pledged herself to visit Omega Street on Thursday, Diana +considered herself bound to perform that promise. She felt, however, that +there was some touch of absurdity in the position, for to keep a promise +so made was in a manner to keep an appointment with M. Lenoble. + +"I dare say he has a habit of falling in love with every young woman he +meets," she thought, when she considered his conduct from a more prosaic +standpoint than the grateful enthusiasm his generous sympathy had at +first awakened in her mind. "I have heard that it is a Frenchman's +faculty to consider himself irresistible, and to avow his adoration for a +new divinity every week. And I was so foolish as to fancy there was a +depth of feeling in his tone and manner! I am sure he is all that is good +and generous; but the falling in love is no doubt a national failing." + +She remembered the impertinent advances of divers unknown foreigners whom +she had encountered on pier or _digue_, kursaal or beach, in the +frequently unprotected hours of her continental wanderings. + +She had not seen the best side of the foreign mind in her character of +unattended and doubtfully attired English demoiselle. She knew that +Gustave Lenoble was of a very different stamp from those specimens of the +genus tiger whose impertinent admiration had often wounded and distressed +her; but she was inclined to attribute the fault of shallowness to a +nature so frank and buoyant as that of her father's friend. + +She walked from Bayswater to Chelsea on the appointed Thursday, for the +cost of frequent journeys in cabs was more than her purse could supply. +The walk across the Park was pleasant even in the bleak March weather, +and she entered the little parlour in Omega Street with the bloom of +damask roses upon her cheeks. + +"How do you do, papa dear?" she began, as she came into the dusky room; +but the figure sitting in her father's accustomed place was not that of +her father. It was M. Lenoble, who rose to welcome her. + +"Is papa worse?" she asked, surprised by the Captain's absence. + +"On the contrary, he is better, and has gone out in a hired carriage for +a breath of fresh air. I persuaded him to go. He will be back very +shortly." + +"I wrote to tell him I should be here to-day, but I am very glad he has +gone out, for I am sure the air will do him good. Was he well wrapped up, +do you know, M. Lenoble?" + +"Enveloped in railway-rugs and shawls to his very nose. I arranged all +that with my own hands. He looked like an ambassador from all the +Russias." + +"How kind of you to think of such things!" said Diana gratefully. + +"And tell me why should I not think of such things? Do you imagine that +it is not a pleasure to me to wait upon your father--for your sake?" + +There was some amount of awkwardness in this kind of thing. Diana busied +herself with the removal of her hat and jacket, which she laid neatly +upon a stony-hearted horsehair sofa. After doing this she placed herself +near the window, whence she contemplated the dusky street, appearing much +interested in the movements of the lamp lighter. + +"What an admirable way they have of lighting the lamps now," she +remarked, with the conversational brilliance which usually marks this +kind of situation; "how much more convenient it must be than the old +method with the ladder, you know!" + +"Yes, I have no doubt," said Gustave, bringing himself to her side with a +couple of steps, and planting himself deliberately in a chair next to +hers; "but don't you think, as I start for Normandy to-morrow, we might +talk of something more interesting than the lamplighter, Miss Paget?" + +"I am ready to talk of anything you like," replied Miss Paget, with that +charming assumption of unconsciousness which every woman can command on +these occasions. + +"You are very good. Do you know that when I persuaded your father to go +out for an airing, I was prompted by a motive so selfish as to render the +proceeding quite diabolical? Don't be alarmed! The doctor gave his +permission for the airing, or I should not have attempted such a thing. +Hypocrisy I am capable of, but not assassination. You cannot imagine the +diplomacy which I exhibited; and all to what end? Can you imagine that?" + +"No, indeed." + +"That I might secure one half-hour's uninterrupted talk with you; and, +unhappily, you are so late that I expect your father's return every +minute. He was to be back again before dusk, and the appearance of the +lamplighter demonstrates that the dusk has come. I have so much to say, +and so little time to say it; so much, Diane--" + +She started as he called her thus, as if in that moment of surprise she +would have risen from her chair by his side. She knew what was coming, +and having expected nothing so desperate, knew not how to arrest the +confession that she would fain have avoided hearing. M. Lenoble laid his +hand firmly on hers. + +"So much, Diane; and yet so little, that all can be told in three words. +I love you." + +"M. Lenoble!" + +"Ah, you are surprised, you wonder, you look at me with eyes of sweet +amazement! Dear angel, do you think it is possible to see you and not to +love you? To see you once is to respect, to admire, to bow the knee +before beauty and goodness; but to see you many times, as I have done, +the patient consoler of an invalid and somewhat difficult father--ah, my +sweet love, who is there so hard amongst mankind that he should escape +from loving you, seeing all that?" + +The question had a significance that the speaker knew not. Who amongst +mankind? Why, was there not one man for whom she would have been content +to be the veriest slave that ever abnegated every personal delight for +the love of a hard master? And he had passed her by, indifferent, +unseeing. She had worshipped him on her knees, as it seemed to her; and +he had left her kneeling in the dust, while he went on to offer himself, +heart and soul, at another shrine. + +She could not forget these things. The memory and the bitterness of them +came back with renewed poignancy at this moment, when the voice of a +stranger told her she was beloved. + +"My dear one, will you not answer me?" pleaded Gustave, in nowise alarmed +by Diana's silence, which seemed to him only the natural expression of a +maidenly emotion. "Tell me that you will give me measure for measure; +that you will love me as my mother loved my father--with a love that +trouble and poverty could never lessen; with a love that was strongest +when fate was darkest--a star which the dreary night of sorrow could not +obscure. I am ten years older than you by my baptismal register, Diane; +but my heart is young. I never knew what love was until I knew you. And +yet those who know me best will tell you that I was no unkind husband, +and that my poor wife and I lived happily. I shall never know love again, +except for you. The hour comes, I suppose, in every man's life; and the +angel of his life comes in that appointed hour. Mine came when I saw you. +I have spoken to your father, and have his warm approval. He was all +encouragement, and hinted that I might be assured of your love. Had he +sufficient justification for that half-promise, Diane?" + +"He had none," Miss Paget answered gravely, "none except his own wishes. +You have made me hear more than I wished to hear, M. Lenoble, for the +treasure you offer me is one that I cannot accept. With all my heart I +thank you for the love you tell me of. Even if it is, as I can but think +it, a passing fancy, I thank you, nevertheless. It is sweet to win the +love of a good man. I pray you to believe that with all my heart and mind +I honour your generous nature, your noble sympathy with the weak and +friendless. If you can give me your friendship, you shall find how I can +value a good man's regard, but I cannot accept your love." + +"Why not?" asked Gustave, aghast. + +"Because I cannot give you measure for measure, and I will not give you +less." + +"But in time, Diane, in time?" + +"Time cannot show me your character in a nobler light than that in which +I see it now. You do not lack the power to win a woman's heart, but I +have no heart to give. If you will be my friend, time will increase my +affection for you--but time cannot restore the dead." + +"Which means that your heart is dead, Diane?" + +"Yes," she answered, with unutterable sadness. + +"You love some one younger, happier than I?" + +"No, M. Lenoble, no one." + +"But you have loved? Yes!--a scoundrel, perhaps; a villain, who--" + +A spasm of pain contracted his face as he looked at the girl's drooping +head; her face, in that dim light, he could not see. + +"Tell me this, Diane," he said presently, in an altered voice; "there is +no barrier between us--no irrevocable obstacle that must part us for +ever? There is no one who can claim you by any right--" He paused; and +then added, in a lower voice, "by any wrong?" + +"No one," answered Miss Paget, lifting her head, and looking her lover +full in the face. Even in that uncertain light he could see the proud +steady gaze that seemed the fittest answer of all doubts. + +"Thank God!" he whispered. "Ah, how could I fear, even for one moment, +that you could be anything but what you seem--the purest among the pure? +Why, then, do you reject me? You do not love me, but you ask my +friendship; you offer me your friendship, even your affection. Ah, +believe me, if those are but real, time will ripen them into love. Your +heart is dead. Ah, why should that young heart be dead? It is not dead, +Diane; it needs but the fire of true love to warm it into life again. Why +should you reject me, since you tell me that you love me; unless you love +another? What should divide us?" + +"Shadows and memories," Diana replied mournfully,--"vague and foolish; +wicked, perhaps; but they come between you and me, M. Lenoble. And since +I cannot give you a whole heart, I will give you nothing." + +"You have loved some one, some one who did not value your love? Tell me +the truth, Diane; you owe me at least as much as that." + +"I do owe you the truth. Yes; I have been very foolish. For two or three +years of my life there was a person who was our daily companion. He +travelled with us--with my father and me; and we saw many changes and +troubles together. For a long time he was like my brother; and I doubt if +many brothers are as kind to their sisters as he was to me. In his heart +that feeling never changed. He was always equally kind, equally careless. +Once I deluded myself with the fancy that in his looks and tones, and +even in his words, there was some deeper feeling than this careless +brotherly kindness; but it was no more than a delusion. My eyes were +opened rudely enough. I saw his heart bestowed elsewhere. Do not think +that I am so weak, or so wicked, as to abandon myself to despair because +I have been awakened from my foolish dream. I can look the realities of +life in the face, M. Lenoble; and I have taught myself to wish all good +things for the dear girl who has won the heart that I once thought was +mine. The person I am speaking of can boast no superior graces of mind or +person. He is only a very commonplace young man, with a certain amount of +talent, a disposition inclined to good rather than to evil. But he was +the companion of my girlhood; and in losing him it seems to me as if I +had lost a part of my youth itself." + +To Diana's mind this seemed the end of the discussion. She expected M. +Lenoble to bow his head to the inevitable, to utter a friendly farewell, +and depart for his Norman home, convinced, if not satisfied. But the +light-hearted, easy-tempered Gustave was not a lover of the despairing +order, nor an easily answered suppliant. + +"And that is all!" he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of +your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory +of this unspeakable idiot--great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch +have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!--the memory of +this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for +ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel +without knowing it, is to lift its phantasmal hand and thrust me +aside--me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot? Ah, thus we blow him +to the uttermost end of the world!" cried M. Lenoble, blowing an +imaginary rival from the tips of his fingers. "Thus we dismiss him to the +Arctic regions, the torrid zone--to the Caucasus, where await vultures to +gnaw his liver--wherever earth is most remote and uncomfortable--he and +the bread-and-butter miss whom he prefers to my Diane!" + +This manner of taking things was quite unexpected by Diana. It was much +more pleasant than gloomy despair or sullen resentment; but it was, at +the same time, much more difficult to deal with. + +"He is gone!" cried Gustave presently; "he is on the topmost heights of +Caucasus, and the vultures are sharpening their beaks! And now, tell me, +Diane--you will be my wife, will you not? You will be a mother to my +children? You will transform the old chateau of Côtenoir into a pleasant +home? You will cease to live amongst strangers? You will come to those +who will love and cherish you as their own, their dearest and best and +brightest? You will give your poor old father a corner by your fireside? +He is old and needs a home for his last years. For his sake, Diane, for +mine, for my children, let your answer be yes! Ah, not so fast!" he +cried, as she was about to speak. "Why are you so quick to pronounce your +fatal judgment? Think how much depends on your reply--your father's +happiness, my children's, mine!" + +"It is of yours only I must think," Miss Paget answered earnestly. "You +fancy it is so easy for me to say no. Believe me, it would be much easier +to say yes. When you speak of my father's declining years, I, who know +his weary life so well, would be hard of heart indeed if I were not +tempted by the haven you offer. Every word that you say gives me some new +proof of your goodness, your generosity. But I will not wrong you because +you are generous. I shall always be your grateful friend, but you must +seek elsewhere for a wife, M. Lenoble. You will have little difficulty in +finding one worthier than I." + +"I will seek nowhere else for a wife; I will have no wife but you. I have +had a wife of other people's choosing; I will choose one for myself this +time. Let us be friends, Diane, since your decision is as irrevocable as +the laws of Draco. You are stone, you are adamant; but no matter, we can +be friends. Your father will be disappointed. But what then? He is no +doubt accustomed to disappointments. My daughters--for them it is a +profound affliction to be motherless, but they must support it. Côtenoir +must go to wreck and ruin a little longer--a few more rats behind the +panelling, a few more moths in the tapestry, that is all. My children +say, 'Papa, our home is not comfortable; all is upside-down;' and I +reply. 'But what will you, my children? A home without a wife is always +upside down.' And then I take them between my arms, in weeping. It is a +poignant picture to rend the heart. But what does it matter, Miss Paget? +What is that verse of your grand Will?-- + +Blow, blow, thou wintry wind; +And let go weep the stricken land, +While harts ungalled go play. + +Perhaps I have mixed him up somehow; but the meaning is clear." + +A hollow-sounding and somewhat awful cough heralded the approach of +Captain Paget, who entered the room at this juncture. If the Captain had +prolonged his first airing, after six weeks' confinement to the house, +until this late period of the afternoon, he would have committed an +imprudence which might have cost him dearly. Happily, he had done nothing +of the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana and +Gustave were conversing close to the window, having preferred to leave +his fly at the end of the street, rather than to incur the hazard of +interrupting a critical tête-à-tête. The interval that had elapsed since +his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in +the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment +and the parlour. What he had heard had been by no means satisfactory to +him; and if a look could annihilate, Miss Paget might have perished +beneath the Parthian glance which her father shot at her as he came +towards the window, with a stereotyped smile upon his lips and +unspeakable anger in his heart. + +He had heard just enough of the conversation to know that Gustave had +been rejected--Gustave, with Côtenoir and a handsome independence in the +present, and the late John Haygarth's fortune in the future. Rejected by +a penniless young woman, who at any moment might find herself without a +roof to shelter her from the winds of heaven! Was ever folly, madness, +wickedness supreme as this? + +Horatio trembled with rage as he took his daughter's hand. She had the +insolence to extend her hand for the customary salutation. The Captain's +greeting was a grip that made her wince. + +"Good-night, Miss Paget," said Gustave gravely, but with by no means the +despondent tone of a hopeless lover; "I--well, I shall see you again, +perhaps, before I go to Normandy. I doubt if I shall go to-morrow. I +have my own reasons for staying--unreasonable reasons, perhaps, but I +shall stay." + +All this was said in a tone too low to reach Captain Paget's ear. + +"Are you going to leave us, Lenoble?" he asked in a quavering voice. "You +will not stop and let Di give you a cup of tea as usual?" + +"Not to-night, Captain. Good-bye." + +He wrung the old man's hand and departed. Captain Paget dropped heavily +into a chair, and for some minutes there was silence. Diana was the +first to speak. + +"I am glad your doctor considered you well enough to go out for a drive, +papa," she said. + +"Indeed, my dear," answered her father with a groan; "I hope my next +drive may be in a different kind of vehicle--the last journey I shall +ever take, until they cart away my bones for manure. I believe they do +make manure from the bones of paupers in our utilitarian age." + +"Papa, how can you talk so horribly! You are better, are you not? M. +Lenoble said you were better." + +"Yes, I am better, God help me!" answered the old man, too weak alike in +mind and body to hide the passion that possessed, him. "That is one of +the contradictions of the long farce we call life. If I had been a rich +man, with a circle of anxious relations and all the noted men of Savile +Row dancing attendance round my bed, I dare say I should have died; but +as I happen to be a penniless castaway, with only a lodging-house drudge +and a half-starved apothecary to take care of me, and with nothing before +me but a workhouse, I live. It is all very well for a man to take things +easily when he is ill and helpless, too weak even to think. _That_ is not +the trying time. The real trial arrives when a little strength comes back +to him, and his landlady begins to worry him for her rent, and the +lodging-house drudge gets tired of pitying him, and the apothecary sends +in his bill, and the wretched high-road lies bare and broad before him, +and he hears the old order to move on. The moving-on time has come for +me, Di; and the Lord alone knows how little I know where I am to go." + +"Papa, you are not friendless; even I can give you a little help." + +"Yes," answered the Captain with a bitter laugh; "a sovereign once a +quarter--the scrapings of your pittance! That help won't save me from +the workhouse." + +"There is M. Lenoble." + +"Yes, there is M. Lenoble; the man who would have given me a home for my +old age: he told me so to-day--a home fit for a gentleman--for the +position he now occupies is nothing compared to that which he may occupy +a year hence. He would have received me as his father-in-law, without +thought or question of my antecedents; and if I have not lived like a +gentleman, I might have died like one. This is what he would have done +for me. But do you think I can ask anything of him now, after you have +refused him? I know of your refusal to be that man's wife. I heard--I saw +it in his face. You--a beggar, a friendless wretch, dependent on the +patronage of a stockbroker's silly wife--_you_ must needs give yourself +grand airs, and refuse such a man as that! Do you think such men go +begging among young ladies like you, or that they run about the streets, +like the roast pigs in the story, begad, with knives and forks in their +backs, asking to be eaten?" + +The Captain was walking up and down the room in a fever of rage. Diana +looked at him with sad wondering eyes. Yes, it was the old selfish +nature. The leopard cannot change his spots; and the Horatio Paget of the +present was the Horatio Paget of the past. + +"Pray don't be angry with me, papa," said Diana sorrowfully; "I believe +that I have done my duty." + +"Done your fiddlesticks!" cried the Captain, too angry to be careful of +his diction. "Your duty to whom? Did you happen to remember, miss, that +you owe some duty to me, your father, but for whom you wouldn't be +standing there talking of duty like a tragedy queen? By Jove! I suppose +you are too grand a person to consider my trouble in this matter; the +pains I took to get Lenoble over to England; the way I made the most of +my gout even, in order to have you about me; the way I finessed and +diplomatized to bring this affair to a successful issue. And now, when I +have succeeded beyond my hopes, you spoil everything, and then dare to +stand before me and preach about duty. What do you want in a husband, I +should like to know? A rich man? Lenoble is that. A handsome man? Lenoble +is that. A gentleman, with good blood in his veins? Lenoble comes of as +pure a race as any man in that part of France. A good man? Lenoble is one +of the best fellows upon this earth. What is it, then, that you want?" + +"I want to give my heart to the man who gives me his." + +"And what, in the name of all that's preposterous, is to prevent you +giving Gustave Lenoble your heart?" + +"I cannot tell you." + +"No, nor any one else. But let us have no more of this nonsense. If you +call yourself a daughter of mine, you will marry Gustave Lenoble. If +not--" + +The Captain found himself brought to a sudden stop in his unconscious +paraphrase of Signor Capulet's menace to his recalcitrant daughter, +Juliet. With what threat could the noble Horatio terrify his daughter to +obedience? Before you talk of turning your rebellious child out of doors, +you must provide a home from which to cast her. Captain Paget remembered +this, and was for the moment reduced to sudden and ignominious silence. +And yet there must surely be some way of bringing this besotted young +woman to reason. + +He sat for some minutes in silence, with his head leaning on his hand, +his face hidden from Diana. This silence, this attitude, so expressive of +utter despondency, touched her more keenly than his anger. She knew that +he was mean and selfish, that it was of his own loss he thought; and yet +she pitied him. He was old and helpless and miserable; so much the more +pitiable because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic soul +there is always some comfort; but for the grovelling nature suffering +knows no counterbalance. The ills that flesh is heir to seem utterly +bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate the flesh, and soar +triumphant above the regions of earthly pain. Captain Paget's mind, to +him, was not a kingdom. He could not look declining years of poverty in +the face; he was tired of work. The schemes and trickeries of his life +were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out, +and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from +Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance +of John Haygarth's estate. He wanted something more tangible than +this--he wanted immediate security; and his daughter's marriage with +Gustave would have given him that security, and still grander hopes for +the future. He had fancied himself reigning over the vassals of Côtenoir, +a far more important personage than the real master of that château. He +had pictured to himself a _pied-à-terre_ in Paris which it might be +agreeable for him to secure, for existence in Normandy might occasionally +prove _canuyeux_. These things were what he meant when he talked of a +haven for his declining years; and against the daughter who, for some +caprice of her own, could hinder his possession of these things, he had +no feeling but anger. + +Diana compassionated this weak old man, to whose lips the cup of +prosperity had seemed so near, from whose lips her hand had thrust it. +He had been promised a home, comfort, respectability, friendship--"all +that should accompany old age"--and she had prevented the fulfilment of +the promise. Heaven knows how pure her motives had been; but as she +watched that drooping head, with its silvered hair, she felt that she +had been cruel. + +"Papa," she began presently, laying her hand caressingly upon her +father's neck; but he pushed aside the timid, caressing hand--"papa, you +think me very unkind, only because I have done what I believe to be +right; indeed it is so, papa dear. In what I said to Gustave Lenoble this +evening, I was governed only by my sense of right." + +"Indeed!" cried the Captain, with a strident laugh; "and where did you +pick up your sense of right, madam, I should like to know? From what +Methodist parson's hypocritical twaddle have you learnt to lay down the +law to your poor old father about the sense of right? 'Honour your father +and your mother, that your days may be long in the land,' miss, _that's_ +what your Bible teaches you; but the Bible has gone out of fashion, I +dare say, since I was a young man; and your model young woman of the +present generation taunts her father with her sense of right. Will your +sense of right be satisfied when you hear of your father rotting in the +old-men's ward of a workhouse, or dying on the London stones?" + +"I am not unfeeling, papa. With all my heart I pity you; but it is cruel +on your part to exaggerate the misery of your position, as I am sure you +must be doing. Why should your means of living fail because I refuse to +marry M. Lenoble? You have lived hitherto without my help, as I have +lived of late without yours. Nothing could give me greater happiness than +to know that you were exempt from care; and if my toil can procure you a +peaceful home in the future--as I believe it can, or education and will +to work must go for nothing--there shall be no lack of industry on my +part. I will work for you, I will indeed, papa--willingly, happily." + +"When your work can give me such a home as Côtenoir--a home that one word +of yours would secure for me--I will thank you." + +"If you will only wait, papa, if you will only have patience--" + +"Patience! Wait! Do you know what you are talking about? Do you prate of +patience, and waiting, and hope in the future to a man who has no +future--to a man whose days are numbered, and who feels the creeping +chills of death stealing over him every day as he sits beside his +wretched hearth, or labours through his daily drudgery? I can live as I +have always lived! Yes; but do you know, or care to know, that with every +day life becomes more difficult for me? Your fine friends at Bayswater +have done with me. I have spent the last sixpence I shall ever see from +Philip Sheldon. Hawkehurst has cut me, like the ungrateful hound he is. +When they have squeezed the orange, they throw away the rind. Didn't +Voltaire say that, when Frederick of Prussia gave him the go-by? Heaven +knows it's true enough; and now you, who by a word might secure yourself +a splendid position--yes, I say splendid for a poor drudge and dependent +like you, and insure a home for me--you, forsooth, must needs favour me +with your high-flown sentiments about your sense of right, and promise me +a home in the future, if I will wait and hope! No, Diana, waiting and +hoping are done with for me, and I can find a home in the bed of the +river without your help." + +"You would not be so wicked as to do that!" cried Diana, aghast. + +"I don't know about the wickedness of the act. But, rely upon it, when my +choice lies between the workhouse and the river, I shall prefer the +river. The modern workhouse is no inviting sanctuary, and I dare say many +a homeless wretch makes the same choice." + +For some minutes there was silence. Diana stood with her elbows resting +on the chimneypiece, her face covered with her hands. + +"O Lord, teach me to do the thing which is right!" she prayed, and in the +next breath acted on the impulse of the moment. + +"What would you have me do?" she asked. + +"What any one but an idiot would do of her own accord--accept the good +fortune that has dropped into your lap. Do you think such luck as yours +goes begging every day?" + +"You would have me accept Gustave Lenoble's offer, no matter what +falsehoods may be involved in my acceptance of it?" + +"I can see no reason for falsehood. Any one but an idiot would honour +such a man; any one but an idiot would thank Providence for such good +fortune." + +"Very well, papa," exclaimed Diana, with a laugh that had no mirthful +music, "I will not be the exceptional idiot. If M. Lenoble does me the +honour to repeat his offer--and I think from his manner he means to do +so--I will accept it." + +"He shall repeat it!" cried the Captain, throwing off his assumption of +the tragic father. The Oedipus Coloneus, the Lear--the venerable victim +of winter winds and men's ingratitude--was transformed in a moment into +an elderly Jeremy Diddler, lined with Lord Foppington. "He shall repeat +it; I will have him at your feet to-morrow. Yes, Di, my love, I pledge +myself to bring that about, without compromise to your maidenly pride or +the dignity of a Paget. My dear child, I ought to have known that +reflection would show you where your duty lies. I fear I have been +somewhat harsh, but you must forgive me, Di; I have set my heart on this +match, for your happiness as well as my own. I could not stand the +disappointment; though I admired, and still admire, the high feeling, +and all that kind of thing, which prompted your refusal. A school-girlish +sentimentality, child, but with something noble in it; not the +sentimentality of a vulgar schoolgirl. The blue blood will show itself, +my love; and now--no, no, don't cry. You will live to thank me for +to-night's work; yes, my child, to thank me, when you look round your +comfortable home by-and-by--when my poor old bones are mouldering in +their unpretending sepulchre--and say to yourself, 'I have my father to +thank for this. Adverse circumstances forbade his doing his duty as +happier fathers are allowed the privilege of doing theirs, but it was his +forethought, his ever-watchful care, which secured me an admirable +husband and a happy home.' Mark my words, the time will come when you +will say this, my dear." + +"I will try to think of you always kindly, papa," Miss Paget answered in +a low sad voice; "and if my marriage can secure your happiness and +Gustave Lenoble's, I am content. I only fear to take too much, and give +too little." + +"My love, you must certainly be the lineal descendant of Don Quixote. Too +much, and too little, forsooth! Let Lenoble find a handsomer woman, or a +more elegant woman, by gad, elsewhere! Such a woman as a duke might be +proud to make his duchess, by Jove! There shall be no sense of obligation +on our side, my love. Gustave Lenoble shall be made to feel that he gets +change for his shilling. Kiss me, child, and tell me you forgive me for +being a little rough with you, just now." + +"Forgive you?--yes, papa. I dare say you are wiser than I. Why should I +refuse M. Lenoble? He is good and kind, and will give us a happy home? +What more can I want? Do I want to be like Charlotte, to whom life seems +all poetry and brightness?" + +"And who is going to throw herself away upon a penny-a-liner, by Jove!" +interjected the Captain. + +"Can I hope to be like that girl, with her happy ignorance of life, her +boundless love and trust! O, no, no, papa; those things are not for me." + +She laid her head upon her father's breast, and sobbed like a child. This +was her second farewell to the man she had loved, the dreams she had +dreamed. The Captain comforted her with a paternal embrace, but was as +powerless to comprehend her emotion as if he had found himself suddenly +called upon to console the sorrows of a Japanese widow. + +"Hysterical," he murmured. "These noble natures are subject to that kind +of thing. And now, my love," he continued, in a more business-like tone, +"let us talk seriously. I think it would be very advisable for you to +leave Bayswater, and take up your abode in these humble lodgings with me +immediately." + +"Why, papa?" + +"The reason is sufficiently obvious, my love. It is not right that you +should continue to eat the bread of dependence. As the future wife of +Gustave Lenoble--and in this case, the word future means immediately--" + +"Papa," cried Diana suddenly, "you will not hurry me into this marriage? +I have consented for your sake. You will not be so ungenerous as to--" + +"As to hurry you? No, my dear, of course not. There shall be no indecent +haste. Your wishes, your delicate and disinterested motives, shall be +consulted before all things; yes, my love," cried the Captain, sorely +afraid of some wavering on the part of his daughter, and painfully +anxious to conciliate her, "all shall be in accordance with your wishes. +But I must urge your immediate removal from Bayswater; first, because M. +Lenoble will naturally wish to see you oftener than he can while you are +residing with people whose acquaintance I do not want him to make; and +secondly, because you have no further need of Mrs. Sheldon's patronage." + +"It has been kindness, affection, papa--never patronage. I could not +leave Mrs. Sheldon or Charlotte abruptly or ungraciously, upon any +consideration. They gave me a home when I most bitterly needed one. +They took me away from the dull round of schoolroom drudgery, that was +fast changing me into a hard hopeless joyless automaton. My first duty +is to them." + +The Captain's angry sniff alone expressed the indignation which this +impious remark inspired. + +"My next shall be to you and M. Lenoble. Let me give Mrs. Sheldon due +notice of the change in our plans." + +"What do you call due notice?" asked Horatio, peevishly. + +"A quarter's notice." + +"O, indeed! Then for three months you are to dance attendance upon Mrs. +Sheldon, while M. Lenoble is waiting to make you his wife." + +"I must consult the wishes of my friends, papa." + +"Very well, my dear," replied the Captain, with a sigh that was next of +kin to a groan; "you must please yourself and your friends, I suppose; +your poor old father is a secondary consideration." And then, timeously +mindful of the skirmish he had just had with his daughter, Captain Paget +made haste to assure her of his regard and submission. + +"All shall be as you please, my love," he murmured. "There, go into my +room, and smooth your hair, and bathe your eyes, while I ring for the +tea." + +Diana obeyed. She found eau-de-cologne and the most delicate of Turkey +sponges on her father's wash-handstand; jockey-club, and ivory-backed +brushes, somewhat yellow with age, but bearing crest and monogram, on his +dressing-table. The workhouse did not seem quite so near at hand as the +Captain had implied; but with these sanguine people it is but a step from +disappointment to despair. + +"What am I to tell Mrs. Sheldon, papa?" she asked, when she was pouring +out her father's tea. + +"Well, I think you had better say nothing, except that my circumstances +have somewhat improved, and that my failing health requires your care." + +"I hate secrets, papa." + +"So do I, my dear; but half-confidences are more disagreeable than +secrets." + +Diana submitted. She secretly reserved to herself the right to tell +Charlotte anything she pleased. From that dear adopted sister she would +hide nothing. + +"If M. Lenoble should repeat his offer, and I should accept it, I will +tell her all," she thought. "It will make that dear girl happy to know +that there is some one who loves me, besides herself." + +And then she thought of the strange difference of fate that gave to +this Charlotte Halliday, with her rich stepfather and comfortable +surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a lover, while to her, +the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, came a wealthy suitor. + +"Will hers be the dinner of herbs, and mine the stalled ox?" she thought. +"Ah, Heaven forbid! Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to +love too well?" + +She remembered the cynical French proverb, "When we can not have what +we love, we must love what we have." But the cynical proverb brought her +no comfort. + +She went back to Bayswater with a strange bewildered feeling; after +having promised her father to go to Omega Street whenever he sent for +her. There was no actual pain in her mind, no passionate desire to recall +her promise, no dread horror of the step to which she had pledged +herself. The feeling that oppressed her was the sense that such a step +should have been the spontaneous election of her grateful heart, proud of +a good man's preference, instead of a weak submission to a father's +helplessness. + + + + +Book the Fifth. + + + +THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +TAKEN BY STORM. + +Two days after her interview with Gustave Lenoble, Miss Paget received a +brief note from her father, summoning her again to Omega Street. + +"He has not gone back to Normandy," wrote the Captain. + +"My child, he positively worships the ground you walk upon. Ah, my love, +_it is something to have a father_! I need scarcely tell you that his +first idea of your excellence was inspired by those glowing descriptions +of your goodness, your beauty, your heroism, which I favoured him with, +_en passant_, during our conversations at Côtenoir, where the happy +accident of a business transaction first introduced me to him. The +interests of my only child have ever been near and dear to me; and where +a duller man would have perceived only a wealthy stranger, my paternal +instincts recognized at a glance the predestined husband of my daughter. +It needed my wide experience of life--and, as I venture to believe, my +subtle knowledge of the human heart--to understand that a man who had +lived for five-and-thirty years buried alive in a French province--a +charming place, my love, and for your refined taste replete with +interest--never seeing a mortal except his immediate neighbours, would be +the man of men to fall in love with the first attractive young woman he +met among strangers. Come to me this afternoon without fail, and come +early.--Yours, + +"H.N.C.P." + +Diana obeyed this summons submissively, but still troubled by that +strange sense of bewilderment which had affected her since her stormy +interview with Captain Paget. She was not quite certain of herself. The +old dreams--the sweet foolish girlish fancies--were not yet put away +altogether from her mind; but she knew that they were foolish, and she +was half-inclined to believe that there had been some wisdom in her +father's scorn. + +"What do I want more?" she asked herself. "He is good and brave and true, +and he loves me. If I were a princess, my marriage would be negotiated +for me by other people, and I should have reason to consider myself very +happy if the man whom the state selected for my husband should prove as +good a man as Gustave Lenoble. And he loves me; me, who have never before +had power over a man's heart!" + +She walked across Hyde Park on this occasion, as on the last; and her +thoughts, though always confused--mere rags and scraps of thought--were +not all unpleasant. There was a smile, half shy, half tender, on her face +as she went into the little sitting-room where Gustave was waiting for +her. She had seen his hat and overcoat in the passage, and knew that he +was there waiting for her. To this poor desolate soul there was something +sweet in the idea of being waited for. + +As she stood but a little within the doorway, blushing, almost trembling +with the sense of her changed position, her lover came across the room +and took her in his arms. The strong brave arms held her to his breast; +and in that one embrace he took her to his heart, and made her his own +for ever. + +In every story of life-long affection, there is one moment in which the +bond is sealed. Diana looked up at the frank tender face, and felt that +she had found her conqueror. Master, friend, protector, husband, adoring +and devoted lover, gallant and fearless champion--he was all; and she +divined his power and his worth as she glanced shyly upward, ashamed to +be so lightly won. + +"M. Lenoble," she faltered, trying to withdraw herself from the strong +encircling arm that held her, as if by right. + +"Gustave, now and for ever, my Diane! There shall be no more Monsieur +Lenoble. And in a few weeks it shall be 'my husband.' Your father has +given me to you. He tells me to laugh at your refusals your scruples; to +assail you like your Shakespeare's Petruchio assails his Katherine--with +audacious insolence that will not be denied. And I shall take his advice. +Look up into my face, dear angel, and defy me to take his advice." + +Happily the dear angel looked only downwards. But M Lenoble was resolved +to have an agreeable response. + +"See, then, thou canst not defy me!" he cried, in the only language he +spoke; and the "_tu_" for the first time sounded very tender, very sweet. +"Thou canst not tell me thou art angry with me. And the other--the +imbecile;--he is gone for ever, is he not? Ah, say yes!" + +"Yes, he is gone," said Diana, almost in a whisper. + +"Is he quite gone? The door of thine heart locked against him, his +luggage thrown out of the window?" + +"He is gone!" she murmured softly. "He could not hold his place against +you--you are so strong--so brave; and he was only a shadow. Yes, he is +gone." + +She said this with a little sigh of relief. It was in all sincerity that +she answered her suitor's question. She felt that a crisis had come in +her life--the first page of a new volume; and the old sad tear-blotted +book might be cast away. + +"Dear angel, wilt thou ever learn to love me?" asked Gustave, in a +half-whisper, bending down his bearded face till his lips almost touched +her cheek. + +"It is impossible not to love you," she answered softly. And indeed it +seemed to her as if this chivalrous Gaul was a creature to command the +love of women, the fear of men; an Achilles _en frac_; a Bayard without +his coat of mail; Don Quixote in his youth, generous, brave, +compassionate, tender, and with a brain not as yet distempered by the +reading of silly romances. + +Captain Paget emerged from his den as the little love scene ended. He +affected a gentlemanly unconsciousness of the poetry involved in the +situation, was pleasantly anxious about the tea-tray, the candles, and +minor details of life; and thus afforded the lovers ample time in which +to recover their composure. The Frenchman was in no wise discomposed; he +was only abnormally gay, with a little air of triumph that was not +unpleasing. Diana was pale; but there was an unwonted light in her eyes, +and she had by no means the appearance of a victim newly offered on the +sacrificial altar of filial duty. In sober truth, Miss Paget was happier +to-night than she had been for a long time. At three-and-twenty she was +girl enough to rejoice in the knowledge that she was truly loved, and +woman enough to value the sense of peace involved in the security of a +prosperous future. + +If she was grateful to her lover--and the affection he had inspired in +her heart had grown out of gratitude--it was no mercenary consideration +as to his income or position that made her grateful. She thanked him for +his love--that treasure which she had never expected to possess; she +thanked him because he had taken her by the hand, and led her out of the +ranks of lonely dependent womanhood, and seated her upon a throne, on the +steps whereof he was content to kneel. Whether the throne were a rushen +chair in some rustic cottage, or a gilded _fauteuil_ in a palace, she +cared very little. It was the subject's devotion that was new and sweet +to her. + +She went to Charlotte's room that night, when Mr. Sheldon's small +household was at rest; as she had gone on Christmas Eve to renounce her +lover and to bless her rival. This time it was a new confession she went +to make, and a confession that involved some shame. There is nothing so +hard to confess as inconstancy; and every woman is not so philosophic as +Rahel Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to love +the same person, but always to love some one. + +Miss Paget seated herself at Charlotte's feet, as she had done on that +previous occasion. The weather was still cold enough to make a fire very +pleasant, though it was more than two months since the Christmas bells +had rung out upon the frosty air. Diana sat on a low hassock, playing +with the tassels of her friend's dressing-gown, anxious to make her +confession, and solely at a loss for words in which to shape so +humiliating an avowal. + +"Charlotte," she began abruptly at last, "have you any idea when you and +Valentine are to be married?" + +Miss Halliday gave a little cry of surprise. + +"Why, of course not, Di! How can you ask such a question? Our marriage +is what uncle George calls a remote contingency. We are not to be married +for ages--not until Valentine has obtained a secure position in +literature, and an income that seems almost impossible. That was the +special condition upon which Mr. Sheldon--papa--gave his consent to our +engagement. Of course it was very proper and prudent of him to think of +these things; and as he has been very kind and liberal-minded in his +conduct to me throughout, I should be a most ungrateful person if I +refused to be guided by his advice." + +"And I suppose that means that your engagement is to be a long one?" + +"The longest of long engagements. And what can be happier than a long +engagement? One gets to know and understand the man one is to marry so +thoroughly. I think I know every turn of thought in Valentine's mind; +every taste, every fancy; and I feel myself every day growing to think +more and more like him. I read the books he reads, so as to be able to +talk to him, you know; but I am not so clever as you, Di, and Valentine's +favourite authors do sometimes seem rather dry to me. But I struggle on, +you know; and the harder I find the struggle, the more I admire my dear +love's cleverness. Think of him, Di--three different articles in three +different magazines last month! The paper on Apollodorus, in the +_Cheapside_, you know; and that story in the Charing Cross--'How I lost +my Gingham Umbrella, and gained the Acquaintance of Mr. Gozzleton.' _So_ +funny! And the exhaustive treatise on the Sources of Light, in the +_Scientific Saturday_. And think of the fuss they make about Homer, a +blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and +wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete +poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a +man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine +accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the reviewers +take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling him that he is +shallow and frivolous, I begin to think that literature must be going to +the dogs." + +And here Charlotte became meditative, absorbed in the contemplation of +Mr. Hawkehurst's genius. Diana had begun the conversation very artfully, +intending to proceed by a gentle transition from Charlotte's love affairs +to her own; but the conversation was drifting away from the subject into +a discussion upon literature, and the brilliant young essayist whose +first adventurous flights seemed grand as the soaring of Theban eagle to +this tender and admiring watcher of his skyward progress. + +"Lotta," said Miss Paget, after a pause, "should you be very sorry if I +were to leave you before your marriage?" + +"Leave me before my marriage, Diana! Is it not arranged that you are to +live with mamma, and be a daughter to her, when I am gone? And you will +come and stay with Valentine and me at our cottage; and you will advise +me about my house-keeping, and teach me how to be a sensible, useful, +economical wife, as well as a devoted one. Leave us, Di! What have I +done, or mamma, or Mr. Sheldon, or anybody, that you should talk of +anything so dreadful?" + +"What have you done, dear girl, dear friend, dear sister? Everything to +win my undying love and gratitude. You have changed me from a hard +disappointed bitter-minded woman--envious, at times, even of you--into +your loving and devoted friend. You have changed me from a miserable +creature into a contented and hopeful one. You have taught me to forget +that my childhood and youth were one long night of wretchedness and +degradation. You have taught me to forgive the father who suffered my +life to be what it was, and made no one poor effort to lift me out of the +slough of despond to which he had sunk. I can say no more, Charlotte. +There are things that cannot be told by words." + +"And you want to leave me!" said Charlotte, in accents half-wondering, +half-reproachful. + +"My father wants me to leave you, Lotta; and some one else--some one whom +you must know and like before I can be sure I like him myself." + +"Him!" cried Charlotte, with a faint shriek of surprise. "Diana, WHAT are +you going to tell me?" + +"A secret, Lotta; something which my father has forbidden me to tell any +one, but which I will not hide from you. My poor father has found a kind +friend--a friend who is almost as good to him as you are to me. How +merciful Heaven is in raising up friends for outcasts! And I have seen a +good deal of this gentleman who is so kind to papa, and the result is +that--chiefly for papa's sake, and because I know that he is generous and +brave and true, I mean papa's friend, M. Lenoble--I have consented to be +his wife." + +"Diana!" cried Charlotte, with a sternness of manner that was alarming in +so gentle a creature, "it shall never be!" + +"What dear?" + +"The sacrifice! No, dear, no! I understand it all. For your cruel +mercenary heartless designing father's sake, you are going to marry a man +whom you can't love. You are going to offer up your poor bruised desolate +heart on the altar of duty. Ah, dear, you can't think I forget what you +told me only two short months ago--though I seem selfish and frivolous, +and am always talking about _him_, and parading my happiness, as it must +seem to you, reckless of the wounds so newly healed in your noble +unselfish heart. But I do not altogether forget, Diana, and such a +sacrifice as this I will not allow. I know you have resigned him to me--I +know you have thrust him from your heart, as you told me that night. But +the hollow aching void that is left in your lonely heart shall be sacred, +Di. No stranger's image shall pollute it. You shall not sacrifice your +own peace to your father's selfishness. No, dear, no! With mamma and me +you will always have a home. You need stoop to no cruel barter such as +this marriage." + +And hereupon Miss Halliday wept over and caressed her friend, as the +confidante of Agamemnon's daughter may have wept over and caressed that +devoted young princess after the divination of Calchas had become common +talk in the royal household. + +"But if I think it my duty to accept M. Lenoble's offer, Lotta?" urged +Miss Paget with some embarrassment of manner. "M. Lenoble is as rich as +he is generous, and my marriage with him will secure a happy home for my +father. The foolish dreams I told you about on Christmas Eve had faded +from my mind before I dared to speak of them. I could only confess my +folly when I knew that I was learning to be wise. Pray do not think that +I am sordid or mercenary. It is not because M. Lenoble is rich that I am +inclined to marry him, it is because--" + +"Because you want to throw yourself away for the advantage of your +selfish heartless father," interjected Charlotte. "He has neglected you +all your life, and now wants to profit by the sacrifice of your +happiness. Be firm, Di, darling; your Charlotte will stand by you, and +find a home for you always, come what may. Who is this M. Lenoble? Some +horrible ugly old creature, I dare say." + +Miss Paget smiled and blushed. The vision of Gustave's frank handsome +face arose before her very vividly as Charlotte said this. + +"No, dear," she replied. "M. Lenoble is not an old +man--five-and-thirty at most." + +"Five-and-thirty!" repeated Charlotte, with a wry face; you don't call +that young? And what is he like?" + +"Well, dear, I think he is the sort of man whom most people would call +handsome. I'm sure you would like him, Lotta. He is so candid, so +animated, so full of strength and courage. The sort of man to whom one +would naturally look in any emergency or danger; the sort of man in whose +company fear would be impossible." + +"Diana," cried Charlotte, suddenly, "you are in love with him!" + +"Lotta!" + +"Yes, dear, you are in love with him," repeated Miss Halliday, embracing +her friend with effusion; "yes, over head and ears in love with him. And +you are ashamed to confess the truth to me; and you are half ashamed to +confess it even to yourself--as if you could deceive an old stager like +me!" cried Charlotte, laughing. "Why, you dear inconstant thing, while I +have felt myself the guiltiest and most selfish creature in the world for +robbing you of Valentine, you have been quietly transferring your +affections to this M. Gustave Lenoble--who is very rich, and brave, and +true, and generous, and what most people would call handsome! Bless you, +a thousand times, my darling! You have made me so happy!" + +"Indeed, Lotta!" + +"Yes, dear. The thought that there was a blank in your life made a dark +cloud in mine. I know I have been very selfish, very thoughtless, but I +could never have been quite free from a sense of self-reproach. But now +there is nothing for me but happiness. O darling, I so long to see your +M. Lenoble!" + +"You shall see him, dear." + +"And in the meantime tell me what he is like." + +Miss Halliday insisted upon a full, true, and particular account of M. +Lenoble's personal appearance. Diana gave it, but not without some sense +of embarrassment. She could not bring herself to be enthusiastic about +Gustave Lenoble, though in her heart there was a warmth of feeling that +surprised her. "What a hypocrite you are, Di!" exclaimed Charlotte +presently. "I know you love this good Frenchman almost as dearly as I +love Valentine, and that the thought of his affection makes you happy; +and yet you speak of him in little measured sentences, and you won't be +enthusiastic even about his good looks." + +"It is difficult to pass from dreams to realities, Lotta. I have lived so +long among dreams, that the waking world seems strange to me." + +"That is only a poetical way of saying that you are ashamed of having +changed your mind. I will tell M. Lenoble what a lukewarm creature you +are, and how unworthy of his love!" + +"You shall tell him what you please. But remember, dear, my engagement +must not be spoken about yet awhile, not even to your mamma. Papa makes a +strong point of this, and I have promised to obey, though I am quite in +the dark as to his reasons." + +Miss Halliday submitted to anything her friend wished; only entreating +that she might be introduced to M. Lenoble. Diana promised her this +privilege; but it speedily transpired that Diana's promise was not all +that was wanted on this occasion. + +For some time past, in fact from the very commencement of Charlotte's +engagement, Mr. Sheldon had shown himself punctilious to an exceeding +degree with regard to his stepdaughter. The places to which she went, and +the people with whom she consorted, appeared to be matters of supreme +importance in his mind. When speaking of these things he gave those about +him to understand that his ideas had been the same from the time of +Charlotte's leaving school; but Diana knew that this was not true. Mr. +Sheldon's theories had been much less strict, and Mr. Sheldon's practice +had been much more careless, prior to Miss Halliday's engagement. + +No stately principal of a school for young ladies could have been more +particular as to the movements of her charges--more apprehensive of +wolf-in-sheep's-clothing in the shape of singing or drawing-master--than +Mr. Sheldon seemed to be in these latter days. Even those pleasant walks +in Kensington Gardens, which had been one of the regular occupations of +the day, were now forbidden. Mr. Sheldon did not like that his daughter +should walk in public with no better protector than Diana Paget. + +"There is something disreputable in two girls marching about those +gardens together according to my ideas," said this ultra-refined +stockbroker, one morning at the family breakfast-table. "I don't like to +see my stepdaughter do anything I should forbid my own daughter to do. +And if I had a daughter, I should most decidedly forbid all lonely +rambles in Kensington Gardens. You see, Lotta, two girls as attractive +as you and Miss Paget can't be too particular where you go, and what you +do. When you want air and exercise, you can get both in the garden; and +when you want change of scene, and a peep at the fashions, you can drive +out with Mrs. Sheldon." + +To this deprivation Charlotte submitted, somewhat unwillingly, but with +no sign of open rebellion. She thought her stepfather foolish and +unreasonable; but she always bore in mind the fact that he had been kind +and disinterested in the matter of her engagement, and she was content to +prove her gratitude by any little sacrifice of this kind. Was not her +lover permitted to spend his Sundays in her society, and to call on her, +at his discretion, during the week? And what were walks in Kensington +Gardens compared with the delight of his dear presence! It is true that +she had sometimes been favoured with Mr. Hawkehurst's society in the +course of her airing; but she knew that he sacrificed his hours of work +or study for the chance of half an hour in her society; and she felt that +there might be gain to him in her loss of liberty. + +She told him, when next they met, that the morning walks were forbidden; +and, so jealous a passion is love, that Mr. Hawkehurst was nowise sorry +to find that his pearl was strictly watched and carefully guarded. + +"Well, it seems very particular of Mr. Sheldon, of course," he said; +"but, upon my word, I think he's right. Such a girl as you oughtn't to go +about with no better protection than Diana can give you. Fellows will +stare so at a pretty girl, you know; and I can't bear to think my pearl +should be stared at by impertinent strangers." + +Mr. Hawkehurst did not, however, find the strict notions of his +lady-love's stepfather quite so agreeable when he wanted to take his +"pearl" to the winter exhibitions of pictures. He was told that Miss +Halliday could go nowhere, except accompanied by her mamma; and as Georgy +did not care about pictures, and found herself unequal to the fatigue of +attending the winter exhibitions, he was obliged to forego the delight of +seeing them with Lotta on his arm. He pronounced Mr. Sheldon on this +occasion to be a narrow-minded idiot; but withdrew the remark in a +contrite spirit when Charlotte reminded him of that gentleman's +generosity. + +"Yes, dear, he has certainly been very kind and very disinterested--more +disinterested than even you think; but, somehow, I can't make him out." + +It was very well for Miss Halliday that she had submitted to this novel +restriction with as good a grace, inasmuch as Mr. Sheldon had prepared +himself for active opposition. He had given orders to his wife, and +further orders to Mrs. Woolper to the effect that his step-daughter +should not be permitted to go out of doors, except in his own or her +mother's company. + +"She is a very good girl, you see, Nancy," he said to the old +housekeeper, "but she's young, and she's giddy; and of course I can't +take upon myself to answer for Miss Paget, who may or may not be a good +girl. She comes of a very bad stock, however; and I am bound to remember +that. Some people think that you can't give a girl too much liberty. My +ideas lean the other way. I think you can't take too much care of a very +pretty girl whom you are bound by duty to protect." + +All this sounded very noble and very conscientious. It sounded thus even +to Mrs. Woolper, who in her intercourse with Philip Sheldon could never +quite divest herself of one appalling memory. That memory was the death +of Tom Halliday, and the horrible thoughts and fears that had for a time +possessed her mind in relation to that death. The shadow of that old +ghastly terror sometimes came between her and Mr. Sheldon, even now, +though she had long ago assured herself that the terror had been alike +groundless and unreasonable. + +"Didn't I see my own nephew carried off by a fever twice as sudden as the +fever that carried off poor Mr. Halliday?" she said to herself; "and am I +to think horrid things of him as I nursed a baby, because a cup of greasy +beef-tea turned my stomach?" + +Convinced by such reasoning as this that she had done her master a +grievous wrong, and grateful for the timely shelter afforded in her old +age, Mrs. Woolper felt that she could not do too much in her benefactor's +service. She had already shown herself a clever managing housekeeper; had +reformed abuses, and introduced a new system of care and economy +below-stairs, to the utter bewilderment of poor Georgy, for whom the +responsibilities of the gothic villa had been an overwhelming burden. +Georgy was not particularly grateful to the energetic old Yorkshirewoman +who had taken this burden off her hands, but she was submissive. + +"I never felt myself much in the house, my dear," she said to Lotta; "but +I am sure since Ann Woolper has been here I have felt myself a cipher." + +Mrs. Woolper, naturally sharp and observant, was not slow to perceive +that Mr. Sheldon was abnormally anxious about his stepdaughter. She +ascribed this anxiety to a suspicious nature, an inherent distrust of +other people on the part of her master, and in some measure to his +ignorance of womankind. + +"He seems to think that she'd run away and get married on the sly, at a +word from that young man; but he doesn't know what a dear innocent soul +she is, and how sorry she'd be to displease any one that's kind to her. I +don't know anything about Miss Paget. She's more stand-offish than our +own Miss, though she is little better than a genteel kind of servant; +but she seems fair-spoken enough. As to our Miss, bless her dear heart! +she want's no watching, I'll lay. But I daresay those City folks, with +their stocks going up and going down, and always bringing about the ruin +of somebody or other, go which way they will, get their poor heads so +muddled with figures that they can't believe there's such a thing as +honesty in the world." + +This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's evening musing in the snug little +housekeeper's room at the Lawn. It was a very comfortable little room, +and held sacred to Mrs. Woolper; the three young females, and the boy in +buttons, who formed Mr. Sheldon's in-door establishment, preferring the +license of the kitchen to the strict etiquette of the housekeeper's room. + +This apartment, as well as every other room in the stockbroker's house, +bore the stamp of prosperity. A comfortable easy-chair reposed the limbs +of Mrs. Woolper; a bright little fire burned in a bright little grate, +and its ruddy light was reflected in a bright little fender. Prints of +the goody class adorned the walls; and a small round table, with a +somewhat gaudy cover, supported Mrs. Woolper's work-box and family Bible, +both of which she made it a point of honour to carry about with her, and +to keep religiously, through good fortune and through evil fortune; +neither of which, however, afforded her much employment. She felt herself +to be much nearer grace with the family Bible by her side than she would +have been without it; she felt, indeed, that the maintenance and due +exhibition of the family Bible was in itself a kind of religion. But that +she should peruse its pages was not in the bond. Her eyes were old and +weak--sharp enough to discover the short-comings of Mr. Sheldon's young +maid-servants, but too feeble even for long-primer. + +As she looked round that snug little chamber of an evening, when her +day's labours were ended, and her own particular Britannia-metal tea-pot +was basking in the fender, her own special round of toast frizzling on +the trivet, she was very grateful to the man to whom she owed these +comforts. + +"What should I be but for him?" she asked herself with a shudder; for +the vision of that darksome abode shut in by high black walls--the +metropolitan workhouse--arose before her. She did not know what +difficulties would have barred her entrance even to that dreary +asylum; she only thought of the horrors of that sanctuary, and she +blessed her master for the benevolence that had accepted the service +of her failing hands. + +This was the servant on whom Philip Sheldon relied. He saw that she was +grateful, and that she was ready to serve him with an almost slavish +devotion. He knew that she had suspected him in the past, and he saw that +she had outlived her suspicion. + +"There is a statute of limitations to these things as well as for debt," +he said to himself. "A man can live down anything, if he knows what he +is about." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FIRM AS A BOOK. + +After that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss Halliday's +bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa for two or three +days, during which the impulsive Charlotte, being forbidden to talk +openly of the change in her friend's position, was fain to give vent to +her feelings by furtive embraces and hand-squeezings, sly nods and +meaning becks, and mischievous twinkling of her arch grey eyes. + +She talked of Valentine more than ever now, feeling herself at liberty to +sing what paeans she pleased in praise of her hero, now that her friend +had also a fitting subject for paeans. + +"And now it's your turn to talk of M. Lenoble, dear," she would say +naively, when she had entertained Diana with the minute details of her +last conversation with her lover, or a lively sketch of the delights of +that ideal cottage which she loved to furnish and unfurnish in accordance +with the new fancy of the hour. + +Diana was pleased to listen to her girlish talk: to hang and rehang the +ideal draperies, to fill and refill the ideal bookcase, to plan and +replan the arrangements of that ideal existence which was to be all joy +and love and harmony; but when her turn came, and she was asked to be +rapturous about her own lover, she could say nothing: that which she felt +was too deep for words. The thought of her lover was strange to her; the +fact of his love was mysterious and wonderful. She could not talk of him +with the customary frivolous school-girl talk; and love for him had so +newly taken root in her heart that there were as yet no blossoms to be +gathered from that magical plant. + +"Don't ask me to talk of him, Lotta, dear;" she said. "I am not yet sure +that I love him; I only feel that it is sweet to be loved by him. I think +Providence must have sent him to me in pity for my desolation." + +This was almost the same fancy that had occurred to Susan Meynell +five-and-thirty years before this time, when Gustave the first had +rescued her from the suicide's unrepentable sin. + +That chivalrous turn of mind which was hereditary in the race of Lenoble +predisposed these men to pity loneliness and beauty, weakness and sorrow. +This pity for helplessness may have been indeed only an element of their +exceeding strength. Was not the rescue of weaklings and women an +unfailing attribute in the mighty men of old? Who so prompt as Hercules +to fly to the rescue of Hesione? Who so swift as Perseus to save +Andromeda? And what sea-monster more terrible than loneliness and +poverty? + +In a few days there came another letter from Captain Paget, containing a +fresh summons to Omega Street. + +"Lenoble positively returns to Normandy to-morrow," he wrote, "to see his +girls, and, no doubt, break the news of his approaching marriage. He much +wants to see you, and, as I have forbidden his calling on you at the +Lawn, can only meet you here. He is to drink tea with me at the usual +time to-morrow evening, and I shall expect to see you early in the +afternoon." + +This afforded an opportunity for that introduction to which Miss Halliday +looked forward with so much interest. + +"If Mr. Sheldon and your mamma will let you come with me this afternoon, +dear, I shall be very pleased to take you," said Diana; and she felt that +she would appear less in the character of a lamb led to the slaughter if +she could go to meet her betrothed accompanied by Charlotte. + +But in this matter both the young ladies were doomed to disappointment. +Mr. Sheldon showed himself a social Draco in all things relating to his +stepdaughter. Being forbidden to reveal the existence of Gustave Lenoble, +Charlotte could only urge a frivolous desire to accompany her friend in a +pilgrimage dictated by filial duty. To the practical mind of Philip +Sheldon this desire appeared altogether absurd and unreasonable, and he +did not hesitate to express himself to that effect in a _tête-a-tête_ +with his stepdaughter. + +"What good on earth can you do by going to see a gouty old man, who has +his own daughter to dance attendance upon him?" asked Mr. Sheldon. +"Really, Charlotte, I am surprised to hear such a proposition from a +girl of your good sense. Miss Paget is your companion, not your visitor. +It is her duty to indulge your whims, but it is not your place to give +way to hers." + +"But this is a whim of mine, papa; I should really like to spend the +afternoon at Chelsea. It would be a change, you know." + +Mr. Sheldon looked at his stepdaughter with a sharp and searching gaze, a +gaze in which there was suspicion as well as curiosity. + +"It is a very discreditable whim for a young lady in your position," +he said sternly; "and I beg that such a proposition may not be made to +me again." + +This was decisive. Charlotte submitted, and Diana went alone to Omega +Street. She found Gustave waiting for her. He proposed a walk, and +Captain Paget was enthusiastic upon the subject of fresh air, and the +benefits arising therefrom. So the lovers went out in the bleak winter +afternoon, and wandered in the dreary Pimlico region as far as St. +James's Park--Gustave delighted to have Diana's hand upon his arm, and +Diana almost bewildered by a sense of happiness, which seemed unreal by +reason of its very novelty. + +Gustave was all enthusiasm, full of plans for the future. He would have +had the marriage take place immediately, if such a thing had been +possible; but Diana showed him that it would not be possible. Her first +duty was to the only friends she had ever known. Gustave argued the point +resolutely for nearly an hour, during which time they made their way to +the very gates of St. James's Park, but Diana was more resolute still. + +"What a tyrannical wife I shall have by-and-by!" said Gustave. "I think +you care for these Sheldons more than for me, Diane." + +"These Sheldons have been so good to me in the past." + +"And I mean to be so good to you in the future," answered Gustave. "You +shall be the happiest wife in Normandy, if a foolish doting husband's +devotion can make you happy." + +"What have I done to deserve so much devotion?" Diana murmured +wonderingly. + +"What have you done? Nothing, less than nothing. You will not even run +the hazard of offending your family of Sheldon in order to make me happy. +But Fate has said, 'At the feet of that girl with the dark eyes and pale +proud face shall poor Lenoble of Côtenoir put down his heart.' Do you +know what I said to myself when I saw you first in the little parlour +yonder? Ah, no! How should you guess? 'She is there,' said I; 'behold +her! It is thy destiny, Lenoble, on which thou gazest!' And thou, love, +wert calm and voiceless as Fate. Quiet as the goddess of marble before +which the pagans offered their sacrifices, across whose cold knees they +laid their rich garments. I put my treasures in your hip, my love; my +heart, my hopes,--all the treasures I had to offer." + +This was all very sweet, but there was a sting even mingled with that +sweetness. Diana told herself that love like this should only be offered +on the purest shrine; and when she remembered the many stains upon her +father's honour, it seemed to her that a part of the shame must needs +cleave to her. + +"Gustave," she said presently, after an absent meditative mood, from +which her lover had vainly tried to beguile her, "does it not seem to you +that there is something foolish in this talk of love and confidence +between you and me; and that all your promises have been a little too +lightly made? What do you know of me? You see me sitting in my father's +room, and because my eyes happen to please you, or for some reason as +foolish as that, you ask me to be your wife. I might have been one of the +worst of women." + +"You might have been?--yes, dear, but you are not. And if you had been, +Gustave Lenoble would not have flung his heart into your lap, even if +your eyes had been sweeter than they are. We impulsive people are people +of quick perceptions, and know what we are doing better than our +reflective friends imagine. I did not need to be an hour in your company, +dear love, in order to know that you are noble and true. There are tones +in the voice, there are expressions of the face, that tell these things +better than words can tell them; for, you see, words can lie, while tones +and looks are apt to be true. Yes, my angel, I knew you from that first +night. My heart leapt across all conventional barriers, and found its way +straight to yours." + +"I can see that you think much better of me than I deserve; but even +supposing you not to be deceived as to myself, I fear you are much +deceived as to my surroundings." + +"I know that your father is poor, and that the burden of his poverty +weighs heavily on you. That is enough for me to know." + +"No, M. Lenoble; it is act enough for you to know. If I am to be your +wife, I will not enter your family as an impostor. I told you the truth +about myself the other day when you questioned me, and I am bound to tell +you the truth about my father." + +And then she told him, in the plainest frankest language, the story of +her father's life. She inflicted no unnecessary shame on Captain Paget; +she made no complaint of her neglected childhood and joyless youth; but +she told Gustave that her father had been an adventurer, keeping doubtful +company, and earning his bread by doubtful means. + +"I hope and believe that if a peaceful home could be secured for his +declining years, he would live the rest of his life like a gentleman and +a Christian; and that, the bitter struggle for existence being ended, he +would be sorry for the past. I doubt if the sense of shame ever deserted +him when he was living that wretched wandering life, leaving debts and +difficulties behind him everywhere--always harassed and hunted by +creditors, who had good cause to be angry. Yes, Gustave, I do believe +that if it should please Providence to give my father a peaceful home at +last, he will be thankful for God's mercy, and will repent the sins of +life. And now I have told you the kind of heritage I can bring my +husband." + +"My dear love, I will accept the heritage, for the sake of her who brings +it. I never meant to be less than a son to your father; and if he is not +the best of fathers, as regards the past, we will try to make him a +decent kind of father as regards the future. I have long understood that +Captain Paget is something--ever so little--of an adventurer. It was the +pursuit of fortune that brought him to me; and without knowing it, he +brought me my fortune in the shape of his daughter." + +Diana blushed as she remembered that Captain Paget had not been so +innocent of any design in this matter as the Frenchman imagined. + +"And you will receive even papa for my sake?" asked Diana. + +"With all my heart." + +"Ah, you are indeed a generous lover!" + +"A lover who is not generous is--bah! there is nothing in creation so +mean as the wretch whom love does not render generous. When one sees the +woman whom Fate intends for one's wife, is one to stop to inquire the +character of her father, her mother, her sister, her cousin?--for there +is no stopping when you begin that. A man who loves makes no inquiries. +If he finds his jewel in the gutter, he picks it out of the mud and +carries it away in his bosom, too proud of his treasure to remember where +he found it; always provided that the jewel is no counterfeit, but the +real gem, fit for a king's crown. And my diamond is of the purest water. +By-and-by we will try to drain the gutter--that is to say, we will try to +pay those small debts of which you speak, to lodging-house keepers, and +tradesmen who have trusted your father." + +"You would pay papa's debts!" cried Diana in amazement. + +"But why not? All these little debts, the thought of which is so bitter +to you, might be discharged for two or three thousand pounds. Your father +tells me I am to be very rich by-and-by." + +"My father tells you! Ah, then, you have allowed him to involve you in +some kind of speculation!" + +"He has involved me in no speculation, and in no risk that two or three +hundred pounds will not cover." + +"The whole business seems very mysterious, Gustave." + +"Perhaps; it has to do with a secret which I am pledged to keep. I will +not allow your father to lead me into any quagmire of speculation, +believe me, dear one." + +After this they went back to Omega Street in the winter gloaming, and +Diana loved and admired this man with all her heart and mind. A new life +lay before her, very bright and fair. There, where had been only the +barren desert, was now a fair landscape, shining in the sunlight of hope. + +"Do you think your children will ever love me, Gustave?" she asked, not +without some sense of wonder that this impulsive light-hearted lover +should be the owner of children. She fancied that a responsibility so +grave as paternity must needs have impressed some stamp of solemnity upon +the man who bore it. + +"Ever love thee!" cried Gustave. "Child, they will adore thee. They ask +only some one to love. Their hearts are gardens of flowers; and thou +shalt gather the flowers. But wilt thou be happy at Côtenoir, thou? It is +somewhat sad, perhaps--the grave old château with the long sombre +corridors. But thou shalt choose new furniture, new garnitures at Rouen, +and we will make all bright and gay, like the heart of thy affianced Thou +wilt not be dull?" + +"Dull, with you and yours! I shall thank God for my happy home day and +night, as I never thought to thank Him a few months ago, when I was +dissatisfied, wicked, tired of my life." + +"And when you thought of that other one? Ah, how he was an imbecile, that +other one! But thou wilt never think of him again; it is a dream that is +past," said M. Lenoble. + +That self-confidence which was an attribute of his sanguine nature +rendered the idea of a rival not altogether unpleasant to him. He was +gratified by the idea of his own victory, and the base rival's +annihilation. + +"Diane, I want to show thee the home that is to be thine," he said +presently. "Your Sheldon family must give thee at least a holiday, if +they refuse to let thee go altogether. Thou wilt come to Normandy with +thy father. He is coming for a week or two, now that his gout is better. +I want to show thee Côtenoir--and Beaubocage, the place where my father +was born. It will seem dreary, perhaps, to thine English eyes; but to me +it is very dear." + +"Nothing that is dear to you shall appear dreary to me," said Diana. + +By this time they had arrived at Omega Street. Again Miss Paget made tea +for her lover. Strange to say, the operation seemed to grow more +agreeable with every repetition. While taking his tea from the hands of +his beloved, Gustave pressed the question of Diana's visit to Normandy. + +"About her Sheldon family she is adamant," he said to Captain Paget, who +sipped his tea and smiled at the lovers with the air of an aristocratic +patriarch. "There is to be no marriage till it pleases Mrs. Sheldon to +set her free. I consent to this only as man must consent to the +inevitable; but I say to her, can she not come to Normandy for a +fortnight--say but one short fortnight--to see her home? She will come +with you. She has but to ask a holiday of her friends, and it is done." + +"Of course," exclaimed the Captain, "she shall come with me. If +necessary, I myself will ask it of Sheldon.--But it will be best not to +mention where you are going, Diana. There are reasons, best known to our +friend Gustave and myself, which render secrecy advisable just at +present. You can say Rouen. That is quite near enough to the mark to come +within the limits of truth," added Horatio, with the tone of a man who +had never; quite outstepped those limits. "Yes, Rouen. And you will come +with me." + +"With us," said Gustave. "I will put off my journey for a day or two for +the sake of going with you. You have to meet Fleurus in Rouen haven't +you?" + +"Yes; he is to be there on the fifth of March, and this is the last day +of February. I had a letter from him this morning. All goes swimmingly." + +Diana wondered what it could be which went swimmingly; but she was +obliged to content herself with her lover's assurance that he had not +allowed her father to involve him in any kind of speculation. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +AGAINST WIND AND TIDE. + +Between Philip Sheldon and his brother there was at this time a state of +feeling somewhat akin to the relations between a subjugated country and +its conqueror. The vanquished is fain to accept whatever the victor is +pleased to give, though discontent and impotent rage may be gnawing his +entrails. George Sheldon had been a loser in that game in which the +Haygarthian inheritance was the stake. He had held good cards, and had +played them with considerable cleverness; but no play could prevail +against his antagonist's ace of trumps. The ace of trumps was Charlotte +Halliday; and as to his mode and matter of playing this card, Mr. Sheldon +was for the present profoundly mysterious. + +"I have known a good many inscrutable cards in my time," the solicitor of +Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the course of fraternal +converse; "but I think for inscrutability you put the topper on the lot. +What do you expect to get out of this Haygarth estate? Come, Phil, let us +have your figures in plain English. I am to have a fifth--that's all +signed and sealed. But how about your share? What agreement have you got +from Miss Halliday?" + +"None." + +"None!" + +"What would the world think of me if I extorted money, or the promise of +money, from my wife's daughter? Do you think I could enforce any deed +between her and me?" + +"Ah, I see; you go in for respectability. And you are going to leave the +settlement of your claims to your stepdaughter's generosity. You will let +her marry Hawkehurst, with her hundred thousand pounds; and then you will +say to those two, 'Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst, be so kind as to hand over my +share of the plunder.' That is not _like_ you, Phil." + +"Perhaps you will be good enough to spare yourself the trouble of +speculating about my motives. Go your way, and leave me to go mine." + +"But this is a case in which I have an interest. If Charlotte marries +Hawkehurst, I don't see how you are to profit, to any extent that you +would care about, by the Haygarth fortune. But, on the other hand, if she +should die unmarried, without a will, the money would go to your wife. O +my God! Philip Sheldon, is _THAT_ what you mean?" + +The question was so sudden, the tone of horror in which it was spoken so +undisguised, that Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker was for one moment thrown +off his guard. His breath thickened; he tried to speak, but his dry lips +could shape no word. It was only one moment that he faltered. In the next +he turned upon his brother angrily, and asked what he meant. + +"You've been promised _your_ reward," he said; "leave me to look after +mine. You'll take those papers round to Greenwood and Greenwood; they +want to talk to you about them." + +"Yes, I'll take the papers." + +Greenwood and Greenwood were Mr. Sheldon's own solicitors--a firm of some +distinction, on whose acumen and experience the stockbroker placed +implicit reliance. They were men of unblemished respectability, and to +them Mr. Sheldon had confided the care of his stepdaughter's interests, +always reserving the chief power in his own hands. These gentlemen +thought well of the young lady's prospects, and were handling the case in +that slow and stately manner which marks the handling of such cases by +eminent firms of the slow-and-stately class. + +Mr. Sheldon wished his brother good-day, and was about to depart, when +George planted himself suddenly before the door. + +"Look you here, Phil," he said, with an intensity of manner that was by +no means common to him; "I want to say a few words to you, and I will say +them. There was an occasion, ten years ago, on which I ought to have +spoken out, and didn't. I have never ceased to regret my cowardice. Yes, +by Jove! I hate myself for it; and there are times when I feel as if my +share in that wretched business was almost as bad as yours." + +"I don't know what you mean." + +"Of course not. That's your text, and you'll stick to it. But you _do_ +know what I mean, and you shall know what I mean, if plain words can tell +you. You and I had a friend, Phil. He was a good friend to me, and I +liked him as much as a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I +had been down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to +give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, 'George, here's a +cheque for you.' _That's_ my notion of a friend. And yet I stood by that +man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and knew what ailed him, and didn't +stretch out my hand to save him." + +"Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. Sheldon, livid to +the lips with smothered fury, but able to put on a bold front +nevertheless. "I didn't come here to listen to rhodomontade of this kind, +or to bandy words with you. Get out of my way." + +"Not till I've said my say. There shall be no rhodomontade this time. I +stood by and saw my best friend murdered--by you. I kept my counsel for +your sake, and when you had made your fortune--by his death--I asked you +for a little money. You know how much you gave me, and how graciously you +gave it. If you had given me twenty times the sum you gained by Tom +Halliday's death, I would give it back, and twenty times as much again, +to bring him back to life, and to feel that I had never aided and abetted +a murderer. Yes, by God, I would! though I'm not straitlaced or +over-scrupulous at the best of times. But that's past, and all the money +in the Bank of England wouldn't undo what you did in Fitzgeorge Street. +But if you try on any such tricks with Tom Halliday's daughter, if +_that's_ the scheme you've hatched for getting hold of this money, as +surely as we two live, I'll let in the light upon your doings, and save +the girl whose father you murdered. I will, Philip, let come what may. +You can't get _me_ out of the way when it suits you, you see. _I know +you._ That's the best antidote against your medicines." + +"If you'll be so good as to say these things on 'Change, I can bring an +action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. There's no good in +saying them here." + +Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated than his brother, +being of a harder nature, and less subject to random impulses of good or +evil. He caught his accuser by the collar of his coat, and flung him +violently from the doorway. Thus ended his visit to Gray's Inn. + +Boldly as he had borne himself during the interview, he went to his +office profoundly depressed and dispirited. + +"So I am to have him against me?" he said to himself. "He can do me no +real harm; but he can harass and annoy me. If he should drop any hint to +Hawkehurst?--but he'll scarcely do that. Perhaps I've ridden him a little +too roughly in the past. And yet if I'd been smoother, where would his +demands have ended? No; concession in these cases means ruin." + +He shut himself in his office, and sat down to his desk to confront +his difficulties. For a long time the bark which was freighted with +Philip Sheldon's fortunes had been sailing in troubled waters. He had +been an unconscious disciple of Lord Bacon, inasmuch as the boldness +inculcated by that philosopher had been the distinguishing characteristic +of his conduct in all the operations of life. As a speculator, his +boldness had served him well. Adventures from which timid spirits shrunk +appalled had brought golden harvests to this daring gamester. When some +rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up +signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the +crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the +valleys of death,--a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of +all-devouring Poseidon,--Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of +desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the +tempest and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and +waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon had +obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenture of railways that +were in bad odour; Unitas Bank shares, immediately after the discovery of +gigantic embezzlements by Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the +Mole-and-Burrow railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet +in the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the shares +in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buying _sub rosa_;--these, +and such as these, had employed Mr. Sheldon's capital; and from the +skilful manipulation of capital thus employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled +the fortune secured by his alliance with Tom Halliday's widow. + +It had been the stockbroker's fate to enter the money market at a time +when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the +most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities. He had +seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the +harridan's bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He +had made only one mistake--and that he made in common with many of his +fellow-players in the great game of speculation always going on eastward +of Temple Bar--he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had +imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements +of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was +abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the +transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean +kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred +privileges of "The House" more astounded by the change than Mr. Sheldon. + +The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. Sheldon a +speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and Amphiaräuses of the Stock +Exchange had agreed in declaring that a man who bought into consols at 90 +_must_ see his capital increased; and what was true of this chief among +securities was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and +from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85-1/2; +securities less secure sank with a rapidity corresponding with their +constitutional weakness. As during the ravages of an epidemic the weaker +are first to fall victims to the destroyer, so while this fever raged on +'Change, the feeble enterprises, the "risky" transactions, sank at an +appalling rate, some to total expiry. The man who holds a roaring lion by +the tail could scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these +troublous times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain +time might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in which it +would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast grows more and +more furious, and then to let go and be eaten up alive, is what many men +did in that awful crisis. + +If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been warned by the +first indication that marked the turning of the tide, he would have been +a considerable loser; but he would not accept his loss, and he would not +be warned by that early indication. He had implicit belief in his own +cleverness; and he fancied if every other bark in that tempest-tossed +ocean foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across the +harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a navigator. +It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt away in the payment of +contango, that he consented to the inevitable. The mistakes of one year +devoured the fruits of nine years' successful enterprise, and the Philip +Sheldon of this present year was no richer than the man who had stood by +Tom Halliday's bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that knows +no difference between the threshold of kingly palace or pauper refuge. +Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of +his existence--to remember which was a dull dead pain even to _him_--but +a man infinitely more heavily burdened. He had made for himself a certain +position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall, +the utter annihilation of all his chances in life. + +The stockbroker's fitful slumbers at this time began to be haunted by the +vision of a black board fixed against the wall of a public resort, a +black board on which appeared his own name. In what strange places +feverish dreams showed him this hideous square of painted deal!--Now it +was on the walls of the rooms he lived in; now on the door of a church, +like Luther's propositions; now at a street-corner, where should have +been the name of the street; now inky-black against the fair white +headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miserable man, for whom the +scraping together of sordid dross was life's only object, and who, in +losing money, lost all! + +This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending disgrace was +the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat +day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence +went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his +hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool +work than by the inner life of her husband; and Charlotte and her lover +contemplated existence from their own point of view, and cherished their +own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all things, as far away from +the moody meditator as if they had been natives of Upper India. + +The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was not immediate, +but it was not far off; the shadow of it already wrapped him in a +twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever and a safe man had left him. +He was described now as a daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads +as they talked of him. + +"One of the next to go will be Sheldon," said the wiseacres; but in these +days of commercial epidemic there was no saying who would be the first to +go. It was the end of the world in little. One was taken, and another +left. The Gazette overran its customary column like a swollen river, and +flooded a whole page of the Times newspaper; and men looked to the lists +of names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the trump of +archangels sounding the destruction of the universe. + +For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted those turbulent +waters had been made of paper. This was nothing. Paper boats were the +prevailing shipping in those waters; but Captain Sheldon's bark needed +refitting, and the captain feared a scarcity of paper, or, worse still, +the awful edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him there +should be no more paper. + +Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with ruin +complete and irredeemable. When all common expedients had been exhausted, +and his embarrassments had become desperate, he had found a desperate +expedient, and had extricated himself from those embarrassments. The time +had come in which a new means of extrication must be found as desperate +as the last, if need were. As Philip Sheldon had faced the situation +before, he faced it now--unshrinkingly, though with a gloomy anger +against destiny. It was hard for him that such a thing should have to be +repeated. If he pitied anybody, he pitied himself; and this kind of +compassion is very common with this kind of character. Do not the Casket +letters show us--if we may trust them to show us anything--that Mary +Stuart was very sorry for herself when she found herself called upon to +make an end of Darnley? In Mr. Swinburne's wonderful study in morbid +anatomy, there are perhaps no finer touches than those which reveal the +Queen's selfish compassion for her own heartlessness. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY. + +Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father's wish that she should leave +Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained the Captain's consent to +the revelation of her engagement to be married. + +"I don't like to leave them in a mysterious manner, papa," she said. "I +have told Charlotte a good deal already, under a promise of secrecy; but +I should like to tell Mrs. Sheldon that there is a real reason for my +leaving her." + +"Very well, my love, since you are so amazingly squeam--honourable," +interposed the Captain, remembering how much depended on his daughter's +marriage, and what a very difficult person he had found her. "Yes, my +dear, of course; I respect your honourable feeling; and--er--yes--you may +tell Mrs. Sheldon--and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the +lady is but an inoffensive cipher--that you are about to be married--to a +French gentleman of position. You will, of course, be obliged to mention +his name, and then will arise the question as to where and how you met +him; and, upon my word, it's confoundedly awkward that you should insist +on enlightening these people. You see, my dear girl, what I want to +avoid, for the present, is any chance of collision between the Sheldons +and Lenoble." + +"Papa!" exclaimed Diana, impatiently, "why must there be all this +scheming?" + +"O, very well, Miss Paget; tell them what you like!" cried the Captain, +aggravated beyond endurance by such inherent perversity. "All I can say +is, that a young woman who quarrels with her bread-and-butter is likely +to come to dry bread; and very little of that, perhaps. I wash my hands +of the business. Tell them what you like." + +"I will not tell them more than I feel to be actually necessary, papa," +the young lady replied calmly. "I do not think Mr. Sheldon will trouble +himself about M. Lenoble. He seems very much occupied by his own +affairs." + +"Humph! Sheldon seems harassed, anxious, does he?" + +"Well, yes, papa; I have thought so for the last few months. If I may +venture to judge by the expression of his face, as he sits at home in the +evening, reading the paper, or staring at the fire, I am sure he has many +anxieties--troubles even. Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte do not appear to +notice these things. They are accustomed to see him quiet and reserved, +and they don't perceive the change in him as I do." + +"O, there is a change, is there?" + +"Yes, a decided change." + +"Why the deuce couldn't you tell me this before!" + +"Why should I tell you that Mr. Sheldon seems anxious? I should not have +told you now, if you had not appeared to dread his interference in our +affairs. I can't help observing these things; but I don't want to play +the part of a spy." + +"No, you're so infernally punct--so delicate-minded, my love," said the +Captain, pulling himself up suddenly, for the second time. "Forgive me if +I was impatient just now. You look at these things from a higher point of +view than that of a battered old man of the world like me. But if you +should see anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct on another +occasion, my love, I should be obliged to you if you would be more +communicative. He and I have been allied in business, you see, and it is +important for me to know these things." + +"I have not seen anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct, papa; I +have only seen him thoughtful and dispirited. And I suppose anxieties are +common to every man of business." + +Georgy received Miss Paget's announcement with mingled lamentations and +congratulations. + +"I am sure I am heartily glad for your sake, Diana," she said; "but what +we shall do without you, I don't know. Who is to see to the drawing-room +being dusted every morning, when you are gone? I'm sure I tremble for the +glass shades. Don't imagine I'm not pleased to think you should settle in +life advantageously, my love. I'm not so selfish as that; though I will +say that there never was a girl with more natural talent for making-up +pretty little caps than you. The one I have on has been admired by +everybody. Even Ann Woolper this morning, when I was going into the +butcher's book with her--for I insist upon going into the butcher's book +with her weekly, whether she likes it or not; though the way that man +puts down the items is so bewildering that I feel myself a perfect baby +in her hands,--even Ann admired it, and said how young-looking it is. And +then she brought up the time in Fitzgeorge Street, and poor Tom's +illness, and almost upset me for the rest of the day. And now, dear, let +me offer you my sincere congratulations. Of course, you know that you +would always have had a home with me; but service, or at least +companionship, is no inheritance, as the proverb says; and for your own +sake I'm very glad to think that you are going to have a house of your +own. And now tell me what he is like, Monsieur what's-his-name?" + +Mrs. Sheldon had been told, but had not remembered the name. Her great +anxiety, as well as Charlotte's, was to know what manner of man the +affianced lover was. If Diana's future happiness had been contingent on +the shape of her husband's nose, or the colour of his eyes, these two +ladies could not have been more anxious upon the subject. + +"Has he long eyelashes, and a dreamy look in his eyes, like Valentine?" +asked Charlotte, secretly convinced that her lover had a copyright in +these personal graces. + +"Does he wear whiskers?" asked Georgy. "I remember, when I was quite a +girl, and went to parties at Barlingford, being struck by Mr. Sheldon's +whiskers. And I was quite offended with papa, who was always making +sarcastic remarks, for calling them mutton-chop whiskers; but they +really were the shape of mutton-cutlets at that time. He wears them +differently now." + +Mrs. Sheldon branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana +escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have +described him to Georgy. + +By-and-by she asked permission to leave Bayswater for a fortnight, in +order to see her lover's home and friends. + +"I will come back to you, and stay as long as you like, dear Mrs. +Sheldon," she said, "and make you as many caps as you please. And I will +make them for you by and by, when I am living abroad, and send them over +to you in a bandbox. It will be a great delight to me to be of some +little service to a friend who has been so kind. And perhaps you will +fancy the caps are prettier when they can boast of being French." + +"You darling generous-minded girl! And you won't go away for a fortnight +and never come back again, will you, dear? I had a cook who did that, and +left me with a large dinner-party hanging over my head; and how I got +through it--with a strange man-cook, who charged a guinea, and used fresh +butter, at twentypence, a pound, as if it had been dirt, and two strange +men to wait--I don't know. It all seemed like a dream. And since then we +have generally had everything from the confectioner's; and I assure you, +to feel that you can wash your hands of the whole thing, and sit down at +the head of your table with your mind as free from care as if you were a +visitor, is worth all the expense." + +Diana promised she would not behave like the cook; and two days after +this conversation left the London Bridge terminus with her father and +Gustave Lenoble. + +Mr. Sheldon troubled himself very little about this departure. He was +informed of Miss Paget's intended marriage; and the information awakened +neither surprise nor interest in his heavily-burdened mind. + +"A Frenchman, a friend of her father's!" he said; "some swindling +adventurer, no doubt," he thought. And this was as much consideration +as he could afford to bestow upon Miss Paget's love affairs at this +present time. + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE. + +On the day after Miss Paget's departure Mr. Sheldon came home from the +City rather earlier than usual, and found Charlotte alone in the +drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume from Mudie of an instructive and +edifying character, with a view to making herself clever, in order that +she might better understand that prodigy of learning, Mr. Hawkehurst. + +She was somewhat inclined to yawn over the big book, which contained a +graphic account of recent discoveries of an antiquarian nature. Her mind +was not yet attuned to the comprehension of the sublimer elements in such +discoveries. She saw only a dry as dust record of futile gropings in +desert sand for the traces of perished empires. Her imagination was not +cultivated to that point whereat the gift which Mr. Lewes calls "insight" +becomes the daily companion, nay, indeed, the ever-haunting and +nightmare-bringing influence of the dreamer. For her sands were only +sands, the stones were only stones. No splendour of fallen palaces, no +glory and pride of perished kings, no clash and clamour of vanished +courts, arose from those barren sands, with all their pomp and +circumstance, conjured into being by half a word on a broken pillar, or a +date upon a Punic monument. Miss Halliday looked up with a sigh of +fatigue as her stepfather came into the room. It was not a room that he +particularly affected, and she was surprised when he seated himself in +the easy-chair opposite her, and poked the fire, as if with the intention +of remaining. + +"You shouldn't read by firelight, my dear," he said; "it is most +destructive to the eyesight." + +"I dare say my sight will last my time, papa," the young lady replied +carelessly; "but it's very kind of you to think of it, and I won't read +any more." + +Mr. Sheldon made no reply to this observation. He sat looking at the +fire, with that steady gaze which was habitual to him--the gaze of the +man who plans and calculates. + +"My dear," he said by-and-by, "it seems that this money to which you may +or may not be entitled is more than we thought at first; in fact, it +appears that the sum is a considerable one. I have been, and still am, +particularly anxious to guard against disappointment on your part, as I +know the effect that such a disappointment is apt to produce upon a +person's life. The harassing slowness of Chancery proceedings is +proverbial; I am therefore especially desirous that you should not count +upon this money." + +"I shall never do that, papa. I should certainly like a fine edition of +the Encyclopaedia Britannica for Valentine, by-and-by, as he says that is +essential for a literary man; and a horse, for people say literary men +ought to take horse exercise. But beyond that--" + +"We need scarcely go into these details, my dear. I want you to +understand the broad facts of the case. While, on the one hand, our +success in obtaining the inheritance which we are about to claim for you +is uncertain, on the other hand the inheritance is large. Of course, when +I presented you with the sum of five thousand pounds, I had no idea of +this possible inheritance." + +"O, of course not, papa." + +"But I now find that there is such a possibility as your becoming +a--well--a rich woman." + +"O papa!" + +"In which case I may conclude that your mother would benefit in some +measure from your good fortune." + +"Can you doubt that, papa? There should be no measure to her benefit from +any money obtained by me." + +"I do not doubt that, my dear. And it is with that idea that I wish to +make a proposition to you--for your mother's possible advantage." + +"I shall be happy to do anything you wish, papa." + +"It must be done as a spontaneous act of your own, Charlotte, not in +accordance with any wish of mine." + +"What is it that I am to do?" asked Charlotte. + +"Well, my dear, you see it is agreed between us that if you do get this +money, your mother is certain to benefit considerably. But unhappily the +proceedings are likely to drag on for an indefinite time; and in the +course of that time it comes within the limits of possibility that your +decease may precede that of your mother." + +"Yes, papa." + +"In which case your mother would lose all hope of any such advantage." + +"Of course, papa." + +Charlotte could not help thinking that there was something sordid in this +discussion--this calculation of possible gain or loss contingent on her +fresh young life. But she concluded that it was the nature of business +men to see everything from a debased standpoint, and that Mr. Sheldon was +no more sordid than other men of his class. + +"Well, papa?" she asked presently, after some moments of silence, during +which she and her stepfather had both been absorbed in the contemplation +of the fire. + +"Well, my dear," replied Mr. Sheldon slowly, "I have been thinking that +the natural and easy way of guarding against all contingencies would be +by your effecting an insurance on your life in your mother's favour." + +"No, no, papa!" cried Charlotte, with unwonted vehemence; "I would rather +do anything than that!" + +"What can be your objection to such a very simple arrangement?" + +"I dare say my objection seems foolish, childish even, papa; but I really +have a horror of life assurances. I always think of papa--my own poor +father, whom I loved so dearly. It seemed as if he put a price upon his +life for us. He was so anxious to insure his life--I remember hearing him +talk of it at Hyley, when I was a child--to make things straight, as he +said, for us; and, you see, very soon afterwards he died." + +"But you can't suppose the insurance of his life had anything to do with +his death?" + +"Of course not, I am not so childish as that; only--" + +"Only you have a foolish lackadaisical prejudice against the only means +by which you can protect your mother against a contingency that is so +remote as to be scarcely worth consideration. Let it pass." + +There was more anger in the tone than in the words. It was not that angry +tone, but the mention of her mother, that impressed Miss Halliday. She +began to consider that her objections were both foolish and selfish. + +"If you really think I ought to insure my life, I will do so," she said +presently. "Papa did as much for those he loved; why should I be less +thoughtful of others?" + +Having once brought Miss Halliday to this frame of mind, the rest was +easy. It was agreed between them that as Valentine Hawkehurst was to be +kept in ignorance of his betrothed's claim to certain moneys now in the +shadowy under-world of Chancery, so he must be kept in ignorance of the +insurance. + +It was only one more secret, and Charlotte had learned that it was +possible to keep a secret from her lover. + +"I suppose before we are married I shall able to tell him everything?" +she said. + +"Certainly, my dear. All I want is to test his endurance and his +prudence. If the course of events proves him worthy of being trusted, I +will trust him." + +"I am not afraid of that, papa." + +"Of course not, my dear. But, you see, I have to protect your interests; +and I cannot afford to see this gentleman with your eyes. I am compelled +to be prudent." + +The stockbroker sighed as he said this--a sigh of utter weariness. +Remorse was unknown to him; the finer fibres upon which that chord is +struck had not been employed in the fabrication of his heart. But there +is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the +anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration +of spirit--a sickness of heart and mind--a bitter longing to lie down and +die--the weariness of a beaten hound rather than of a baffled man. + +This was what Mr. Sheldon felt, as the threads of the web which he was +weaving multiplied, and grew daily and hourly more difficult of +manipulation. Success in the work which he had to do depended on so many +contingencies. Afar off glittered the splendid goal--the undisputed +possession of the late John Haygarth's hundred thousand pounds; but +between the schemer and that chief end and aim of all his plottings what +a sea of troubles! He folded his arms behind his head, and looked across +the girlish face of his companion into the shadow and the darkness. In +those calculations which were for ever working themselves out in this +man's brain, Charlotte Halliday was only one among many figures. She had +her fixed value in every sum; but her beauty, her youth, her innocence, +her love, her trust, made no unit of that fixed figure, nor weighed in +the slightest degree with him who added up the sum. Had she been old, +ugly, obnoxious, a creature scarcely fit to live, she would have +represented exactly the same amount in the calculations of Philip +Sheldon. The graces that made her beautiful were graces that he had no +power to estimate. He knew she was a pretty woman; but he knew also that +there were pretty women to be seen in any London street; and the +difference between his stepdaughter and the lowest of womankind who +passed him in his daily walks was to him little more than a social +prejudice. + +The insurance business being once decided on, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in +putting it into execution. Although he made a point of secrecy as +regarded Mr. Hawkehurst, he went to work in no underhand manner, but +managed matters after a Highly artistic and superior fashion. He took his +stepdaughter to the offices of Greenwood and Greenwood, and explained her +wishes to one of those gentlemen in her presence. If he dwelt a little +more on Miss Halliday's anxiety for her mother's pecuniary advantage than +his previous conversation with Miss Halliday warranted, the young lady +was too confiding and too diffident to contradict him. She allowed him to +state, or rather to imply, that the proposed insurance was her +spontaneous wish, an emanation of her anxious and affectionate heart, the +natural result of an almost morbid care for her mother's welfare. + +Mr. Hargrave Greenwood, of Greenwood and Greenwood, seemed at first +inclined to throw cold water on the proposition, but after some little +debate, agreed that extreme caution would certainly counsel such a step. + +"I should imagine there was no better life amongst the inhabitants of +London," he said, "than Miss Shel--pardon me--Miss Halliday's. But, as +the young lady herself suggests, 'in the midst of life we are--'; and, as +the young lady herself has observed, these things are--ahem--beyond +human foresight. If there were any truth in the aphorisms of poets, I +should say Miss Halliday cannot insure too quickly; for the remark of +Cowper--or, stay, I believe Pope--'whom the gods love die young,' might +very well be supposed to apply to so charming a young lady. Happily, the +secretaries of insurance offices know very little about the poets, +unless, indeed, Miss Halliday were to go to the Royal Widow's and +Orphan's Hope, the secretary of which is the author of dramas that may +fairly rank with the works of Knowles and Lytton." + +Mr. Greenwood, an elderly gentleman of the ponderous and port-wine +school, laughed at his own small jokes, and took things altogether +pleasantly. He gave Mr. Sheldon a letter of introduction to the secretary +of his pet insurance company, the value of which to that gentleman was +considerable. Nor was this the only advantage derived from the interview. +The lawyer's approval of the transaction reassured Charlotte; and though +she had heard her own views somewhat misrepresented, she felt that an +operation which appeared wise in the sight of such a lawyer, standing on +such a Turkey hearthrug, commanding such gentlemanly-looking clerks as +those who came and went at Mr. Greenwood's bidding, must inevitably be a +proceeding at once prudent and proper. + +The business of the insurance was not quite so easy as the interview with +the lawyer. The doctor to whom Miss Halliday was introduced seemed very +well satisfied with that young lady's appearance of health and spirits, +but in a subsequent interview with Mr. Sheldon asked several questions, +and shook his head gravely when told that her father had died at +thirty-seven years of age. But he looked less grave when informed that +Mr. Halliday had died of a bilious fever. + +"Did Mr. Halliday die in London?" he asked. + +"He did." + +"I should like--ahem--if it were possible, to see the medical man who +attended him. These fevers rarely prove fatal unless there is some +predisposing cause." + +"In this case there was none." + +"You speak rather confidently, Mr. Sheldon, as a non-professional man." + +"I speak with a certain amount of professional knowledge. I knew Tom +Halliday for many years." + +Mr. Sheldon forebore to state that Tom Halliday had died in his house, +and had been attended by him. It is, perhaps, only natural that Philip +Sheldon, the stockbroker of repute, should wish to escape identification +with Philip Sheldon, the unsuccessful dentist of Bloomsbury. + +After a little more conversational skirmishing, the confidential +physician of the Prudential Step Assurance Company agreed to consider +that Mr. Halliday's constitution had been in no manner compromised by his +early death, and to pass Charlotte's life. The motives for effecting the +insurance were briefly touched upon in Mr. Greenwood's letter of +introduction, and appeared very proper and feasible in the eyes of the +directors; so, after a delay of a few days, the young lady found herself +accepted, and Mr. Sheldon put away among his more important papers a +large oblong envelope, containing a policy of assurance on his +stepdaughter's life for five thousand pounds. He did not, however, stop +here, but made assurance doubly sure by effecting a second insurance upon +the same young life with the Widow's and Orphan's Hope Society, within a +few days of the first transaction. + + + + +Book the Sixth. + + + +DIANA IN NORMANDY. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +AT CÔTENOIR. + +Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 15, 186--. + +My darling Lotta,--As you extorted from me a solemn pledge that I would +write you a full and detailed account of my adventures, I seat myself in +Mademoiselle Lenoble's pretty little turret-chamber, in the hope of +completing the first instalment of my work before papa or Gustave summons +me to prepare for a drive and visit to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, +which, I believe, has been planned for to-day. + +What am I to tell you, dear, and how shall I begin my story? Let me +fancy myself sitting at your feet before your bedroom fire, and you +looking down at me with that pretty inquisitive look in your dear grey +eyes. Do you know that M. Lenoble's eyes are almost the colour of yours, +Lotta? You asked me a dozen questions about his eyes the other day, and I +could give you no clear description of them; but yesterday, as he stood +at the window looking out across the garden, I saw their real colour. It +is grey, a deep clear grey, and his lashes are dark, like yours. How +shall I begin? That is the grand difficulty! I suppose you will want to +know something even about the journey. Everything was very pleasant, in +spite of the cold blusterous March weather. Do you know what my last +journey was like, Lotta? It was the long dreary journey from Forêtdechêne +to St. Katharine's Wharf, when Mr. Hawkehurst advised and arranged my +return to England. I had been sitting quite alone in a balcony +overlooking the little town. It was after midnight, but the lights were +still burning: I can see the lamplit windows shining through the night +mist as I write this, end the sense of the hopeless misery of that time +comes back to me like the breath of some freezing wind. I can find no +words to tell you how desolate I was that night, or how hopeless. + +I dared not think of my future life; or of the next day, that was to be +the beginning of that hopeless future. I was obliged to bind my thoughts +to the present and all its dreariness; and a kind of dull apathetic +feeling, which was too dull for despair, took possession of me that +night. While I was sitting there Mr. Hawkehurst came to me, and told me +that my father had become involved in a quarrel, under circumstances of a +very shameful nature, which I need not tell you, darling. He recommended +me to leave Forêtdechêne--indeed, almost insisted that I should do so. He +wanted to rescue me from that miserable life. Your lover had noble and +generous impulses even then, you see, dear; at his worst he was not all +bad, and needed only your gentle influence to purify and elevate his +character. He gave me all the money he possessed to pay the expenses of +my journey. Ah, what a dreary journey! I left Forêtdechêne in the chill +daybreak, and travelled third class, with dreadful Belgians who smelt of +garlic, to Antwerp. I slept at a very humble inn near the quay, and +started for England by the Baron Osy at noon next day. I cannot tell you +how lonely I felt on board the steamer. I had travelled uncomfortably +before, but never without my father and Valentine--and he had been always +kind to me. If we were shabbily dressed, and people thought ill of us, I +did not care. The spirit of Bohemianism must have been very strong with +me in those days. I remembered how we had sat together on the same boat +watching the sleepy shores of Holland, or making fun of our respectable +fellow-passengers. Now I was quite alone. People stared at me rudely and +unkindly, as I thought. I could not afford to dine or breakfast with the +rest; and I was weak enough to feel wounded by the idea that people would +guess my motive for shunning the savoury banquets that sent up such +horrid odours to the deck where I sat, trying to read a tattered +Tauchnitz novel. And the end of my journey? Ah, Charlotte, you can never +imagine what it is to travel like that, without knowing whether there is +any haven, any shelter for you at the end of your wanderings! I knew that +at a certain hour we were to arrive at St. Katharine's Dock, but beyond +that I knew nothing. I counted my money. There was just enough to pay for +a cab that would carry me to Hyde Lodge. I should land there penniless. +And what if my cousin Priscilla should refuse to receive me? For a moment +I fancied even that possible; and I pictured myself walking about London, +hungry and homeless. + +This was my last journey. I have dwelt upon it longer than I need have +done; but I want you to understand what it is that makes Gustave Lenoble +dear to me. If you could feel the contrast between the past and the +present as I felt it when I stood on the deck of the Dover packet with +him by my side, you would know why I love him, and am grateful to him. We +stood side by side, watching the waves and talking of our future, while +my father enjoyed a nap in one of the little deck cabins. To Gustave that +future seems very bright and clear; to me it seems unutterably strange +that the future _can_ be anything but a dismal _terra incognita_, from +the contemplation of which it is wise to refrain. + +Papa stays with Gustave at Côtenoir; but it had been arranged for me to +visit Mademoiselle Lenoble, Gustave's aunt, at Beaubocage, and to remain +with her during my stay in Normandy. I at once understood the delicate +feeling which prompted this arrangement. We dined at Rouen, and came to +Vevinord in a coach. At Vevinord a queer little countrified vehicle met +us, with a very old man, of the farm-servant class, as coachman. Gustave +took the reins from the old man's hand and drove to Beaubocage, where +Mademoiselle Lenoble received me with much cordiality. She is a dear old +lady, with silvery bands of hair neatly arranged under the prettiest of +caps. Her gown is black silk, and her collar and cuffs of snowy +whiteness; everything about her exquisitely neat, and of the fashion of +twenty, or perhaps thirty, years ago. + +And now, I suppose, you will want to know what Beaubocage is like. Well, +dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I must confess that her +ancestral mansion is neither grand nor pretty. It might have made a very +tolerable farmhouse, but has been spoiled by the architect's +determination to make it a château. It is a square white building, with +two pepper-castor-like turrets, in one of which I write this letter. +Between the garden and the high road there is a wall, surmounted with +plaster vases. The garden is for the greater part utilitarian; but in +front of the salon windows there is a grassplot, bordered by stiff +gravel-walks, and relieved by a couple of flower-beds. A row of tall +poplars alone screens the house from the dusty high road. At the back of +it there is an orchard; on one side a farmyard; behind the orchard lie +the fields that compose the farm of Beaubocage and the paternal estate of +the Lenoble family. All around the country is very flat. The people seem +to be kind and simple, and devotedly attached to "Mademoiselle." There is +a rustic peacefulness pervading everything which, for me, stands instead +of beauty. + +I am hypocrite enough to pretend to be pleased with everything, for I can +perceive how anxiously M. Lenoble watches me in order to discover whether +I like his native country. He was not born at Beaubocage, but in Paris. +Mademoiselle Lenoble told me the story of his childhood, and how she +brought him to Beaubocage, when quite a little fellow, from Rouen, where +his father died. About his mother there seems to have been some mystery. +Mademoiselle told me nothing of this, except that her brother, Gustave +the elder, made a love-match, and thereby offended his father. She has +the little crib in which her nephew, Gustave the younger, slept on the +night of his coming. It had been his father's little bed thirty years +before. She shed tears as she told me the story, and how she sat and +watched by the little fellow as he cried himself to sleep with his head +lying on her arm, and the summer moonlight shining full upon his face. + +I was deeply touched by her manner as she told me these things; and I +think, if I had not already learned to love M. Lenoble, I should love him +for the sake of his aunt. She is charming; a creature so innocent and +pure, that one considers one's words in speaking to her, almost as if she +were a child. She is about forty years older than I; yet for worlds I +would not tell her of the people and the scenes I have beheld at foreign +watering-places and gambling-rooms. She has spent the sixty years of her +life so completely out of the world, that she has retained the freshness +and sweetness of her youth untainted in the least degree. Can there be +magical philtre equal to this--a pure unselfish life, far away from the +clamour of cities? + +The old servant who waits upon me is seventy-five years of age, and +remembers Ma'amselle Cydalise from her childhood. She is always singing +the praises of her mistress, and she sees that I like to hear them. "Ah, +ma'amselle," she said to me, "to marry a Lenoble is to marry one of the +angels. I will not say that the old seigneur was not hard towards his +son. Ah, yes, but it was a noble heart. And the young monsieur--that one +who died in Rouen, the Poor!--ah, that he was kind, that he was gracious! +What of tears, what of regrets, when the Old chased him!" + +My position is quite recognised. I think the very cowboy in the +farmyard--a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured mindless face, and +prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes--even the cowboy knows that I +am to be Madame Lenoble of Côtenoir. Côtenoir is the Windsor Castle of +this district; Beaubocage is only Frogmore. Yes, dear, the bond is signed +and sealed. Even if I did not love M. Lenoble, I have bound myself to +marry him; but I do love him, and thank him with all my heart for having +given a definite end and aim to my life. Don't think I underrate your +kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could +give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and +Valentine will exact all his sweet young wife's love and care. + +I have written you a letter which I am sure will require double postage; +so I will say no more except goodbye. Take care of yourself, dear one. +Practise your part in our favourite duets; remember your morning walk in +the garden; and don't wear out your eyes over the big books that Mr. +Hawkehurst is obliged to read. + +Ever your affectionate + +DIANA. + + * * * * * + +_From Charlotte Halliday to Diana Paget_. + +The dullest house in Christendom, Monday. + +EVER DEAREST Di,--Your letter was a welcome relief to the weariness +of my existence. How I wish I were with you! But that is too bright a +dream. I am sure I should idolise Beaubocage. I should not mind the +dismal row of poplars, or the flat landscape, or the dusty road, or +anything, so long as it was not like Bayswater. I languish for a change, +dear. I have seen so little of the world, except the dear moorland +farmhouse at Newhall. I don't think I was ever created to be "cabined, +cribbed, confined," in such a narrow life as this, amid such a dull, +unchanging round of daily commonplace. Sometimes, when the cold spring +moon is shining over the tree-tops in Kensington-Gardens, I think of +Switzerland, and the snow-clad mountains and fair Alpine valleys we have +read of and talked of, until my heart aches at the thought that I may +never see them; and to think that there are people in whom the word +'Savoy' awakes no fairer image than a cabbage! Ah, my poor dear! isn't it +almost wicked of me to complain, when _you_ have had such bitter +experience of the hard cruel world? + +I am quite in love with your dear Mademoiselle Lenoble; almost as deeply +as I am in love with your magnanimous, chivalrous, generous, +audacious--everything ending in _ous_--Monsieur Lenoble. + +How dare you call him M. Lenoble, by the bye? I have counted the +occasions on which you write of him in your nice long letter, and for one +Gustave there are half a dozen M. Lenobles. It must be Gustave in future +to me, remember. + +What shall I tell you, dear? I have nothing to tell, really nothing. To +say that I wish you were with me is only to confess that I am very +selfish; but I _do_ wish for you, dear--my friend and adopted sister, +my old school companion, from whom, willingly, I have never concealed +one thought. + +Valentine called on Tuesday afternoon; but I have nothing to tell you +even about him. Mamma dozed in her corner after her cup of tea, and Val +and I sat by the fire talking over our future, just like you and M. +Lenoble on board the Calais boat. How much engaged people find to say +about the future! Is it our love that makes it seem so bright, so +different from all that has gone before? I cannot fancy life with +Valentine otherwise than happy. I strive to picture trials, and fancy +myself in prison with him, the wind blowing in at broken windows, the +rain coming through the dilapidated roof and pattering on the carpetless +floor; but the most dismal picture I can paint won't seem dismal if his +figure is a part of it. We would stop the broken windows with rags and +paper, we would wipe up the rain with our pocket-handkerchiefs, and sit +side by side and talk of the future, as we do now. Hope could never +abandon us while we were together. And then, sometimes, while I am +looking at Valentine, the thought that he might die comes to me suddenly, +like the touch of an icy hand upon my heart. + +I lie awake at night sometimes thinking of this, and of papa's early +death. He came home one night with a cold, and from that hour grew worse +until he died. Ah, think what misery for a wife to suffer! Happily for +mamma, she is not capable of suffering intensely. She was very sorry, and +even now when she speaks of papa she cries a little; but the tears don't +hurt her. I think, indeed, they give her a kind of pleasure. + +See, dear, what a long egotistical letter I have written, after all. I +will say no more, except that while I am delighted to think of your +pleasure among new friends and new scenes, my selfish heart still longs +for the hour that is to bring you back to me. + +Pray tell me all you can about your daughters that are to be. + +Ever and ever your loving CHARLOTTE. + + * * * * * + +_From Diana Paget to Charlotte Halliday_. + +Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 30, 186--. + +MY DEAR LOTTA,--In three days more I hope to be with you; but I suppose, +in the meantime, I must keep my promise, and send you a faithful account +of my life here. Everyone here is more kind to me than words can tell; +and I have nothing left to wish for, except that you were here to be +delighted, as I am sure you would be, with the freshness and the +strangeness of everything. If I ever do become Madame Lenoble--and even +yet I _cannot_ picture to myself that such a thing will be--you must come +to Côtenoir, you and Valentine. I was taken through every room in the old +château the day before yesterday, and I fixed in my own mind upon the +rooms I will give you, if these things come to pass. They are very old +rooms, and I can fancy what strange people must have lived in them, and +died in them perhaps, in the days that are gone. But if you come to them, +they shall be made bright and pretty, and we will chase the shadows of +the mediaeval age away. There are old pictures, old musical instruments, +quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, tapestries that crumble as you +touch them--the ashes and relics of many generations. Gustave says we +will sweep these poor vestiges away, and begin a new life, when I come to +Côtenoir; but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace of +those dead feet that have come and gone in all the dusky passages of my +future home. + +And now I must tell you about my daughters that are to be--my daughter +that is, I may say of the elder--for I love her so well already that no +breach between Gustave and me could rob her of my affection. She is the +dearest, most loving of creatures; and she reminds me of you! I dare say +you will laugh at this, dear; and, mind, I do not say that Clarice +Lenoble is actually like you in complexion or feature--those common +attributes which every eye can see; the resemblance is far more subtle. +There is a look in this dear girl's face, a smile, an I-know-not-what, +which every now and then recalls your own bright countenance. You will +say this is mere fancy--and that is what I told myself at the first; but +I found afterwards that it is no fancy, but really one of those vague, +indefinable, accidental likenesses which one perceives so often. To me it +seems a very happy accident; for my first glance at my daughter's face +told me that I should love her for your sake. + +We went to the convent the day before yesterday. It is a curious old +place, and was once a stately château, the habitation of a noble family. +A little portress, in the black robes of a lay sister, admitted us, and +conducted us to the parlour, a fine old room, decorated with pictures of +a religious character, painted by members of the sisterhood. Here Gustave +and I were received by the superioress, an elderly woman, with a mild +holy face, and a quiet grace of manner which might become a duchess. She +sent for the demoiselles Lenoble, and after a delay of a quarter of an +hour--you remember the toilet the girls at Hyde Lodge were obliged to +make before they went to the drawing-room, Lotta--Mademoiselle Lenoble +came, a tall, slim, lovely and lovable girl, who reminded me of the +dearest friend I have in this world. She ran to her papa first, and +saluted him with an enthusiastic hug; and then she stood for a moment +looking shyly at me, confused and doubtful. It was only for a moment +she was left in doubt. Gustave bent down to whisper something in her +ear--something for which his letters had in some manner prepared her. The +fair young face brightened, the clear grey eyes looked up at me with a +sweet affectionate gaze, and she came to me and kissed me. "I shall love +you very much," she whispered. "And I love you very much already," I +answered, in the same confidential manner. And I think these few words, +that one pretty confiding look in her innocent eyes, made a tie between +us that it would take much to loosen. Ah, Lotta, what a wide gulf between +the Diana Paget who landed alone at St. Katharine's Wharf, in the dim +cheerless dawn, and uncertain where to find a shelter in all that busy +city, and the same creature redeemed by your affection, and exalted by +the love and trust of Gustave Lenoble! + +After this my second daughter appeared--a pretty young hoyden, with +lovable clinging ways; and then the superioress asked if I would like to +see the garden. Of course I said yes; and we were taken through the long +corridors, out into a fine old garden, where the pupils, who looked like +the Hyde Lodge girls translated into French, were prancing and scampering +about in the usual style. After the garden we went to the chapel, where +there were more pictures, and flower-bedecked altars, and pale twinkling +tapers burning here and there in the chill sunlight. Here there were +damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five years old upwards. They +send even the little ones to meditate, Clarice tells me; and there are +these infants kneeling before the flower-bedecked altars, rapt in +religious contemplation, like so many Thomas à Kempises. The young +meditators glanced shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me +everything of special interest in the pleasant old place, Clarice and +Madelon ran off to dress for walking, in order to accompany us to +Côtenoir, where we were to dine. + +It was quite a family party. Mademoiselle Lenoble was there, and papa. He +arrived at the château while Gustave and I were paying our visit to the +convent. He is in the highest spirits, and treats me with an amount of +affection and courtesy I have not been accustomed to receive at his +hands. Of course I know the cause of this change; the future mistress of +Côtenoir is a very different person from that wretched girl who was +nothing to him but a burden and an encumbrance. But even while I despise +him I cannot refuse to pity him. One forgives anything in old age. In +this, at least, it is a second childhood; and my father is very old, +Lotta. I saw the look of age in his face more plainly at Côtenoir, where +he assumed his usual _debonnaire_ man-of-the-world tone and manner, than +I had seen it in London, when he was a professed invalid. He is much +changed since I was with him at Forêtdechêne. It seems as if he had kept +Time at bay very long, and now at last, the common enemy will be held at +arm's-length no longer. He still braces himself up in the old military +manner, still holds himself more erect than many men of half his age; +but, in spite of all this, I can see that he is very feeble; shaken and +worn by a long life of difficulty. I am glad to think that there will he +a haven for him at last; and if I did not thank Gustave with my whole +heart for giving me a home and a place in the world, I should thank him +for giving a shelter to my father. + +And now, dear, as I hope to be with you so very soon, I shall say no +more. I am to spend a day in Rouen before we come back--papa and I, that +is to say; Gustave stays in Normandy to make some arrangements before he +comes back to England. I cannot comprehend the business relations between +him and papa; but there is some business going on--law business, as it +seems to me--about which papa is very important and elated. + +I am to see the cathedral and churches at Rouen, and I shall contrive to +see the shops, and to bring you something pretty. Papa has given me +money--the first he ever gave me unasked. I have very little doubt it +comes from Gustave; but I have no sense of shame in accepting it. M. +Lenoble's seems to me a royal nature, formed to bestow benefits and +bounties on every side. + +Tell Mrs. Sheldon that I shall bring her the prettiest cap I can find in +Rouen; and, + +with all love, believe me ever your affectionate +DIANA. + + + + +BOOK THE SEVENTH. + + + +A CLOUD OF FEAR. + + +CHAPTER I. + +THE BEGINNING OF SORROW. + +Who heeds the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a broad expanse of +blue ether? The faint, scarce perceptible menace of that one little cloud +is lost in the wide brightness of a summer sky. The traveller jogs on +contented and unthinking, till the hoarse roar of stormy winds, or the +first big drops of the thunder-shower, startle him with a sudden +consciousness of the coming storm. + +It was early May, and the young leaves were green in the avenues of +Kensington Gardens; Bayswater was bright and gay with fashionable people; +and Mrs. Sheldon found herself strong enough to enjoy her afternoon drive +in Hyde Park, where the contemplation of the bonnets afforded her +perennial delight. + +"I think they are actually smaller than ever this year," she remarked +every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did +indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully +less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet +resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but +was obviously tending thitherward. + +Charlotte and Diana accompanied Mrs. Sheldon in her drives. The rapture +of contemplating the bonnets was not complete unless the lady had some +sympathising spirit to share her delight. The two girls were very well +pleased to mingle in that brilliant crowd, and to go back to their own +quiet life when the mystic hour came, and that bright vision of colour +and beauty melted into the twilight loneliness. It had seemed just +lately, however, as if Charlotte was growing a little weary of the +gorgeous spectacle--the ever-changing, ever-splendid diorama of West End +life. She no longer exclaimed at the sight of each exceptional toilette; +she no longer smiled admiringly on the thoroughbred horses champing their +bits in the immediate neighbourhood of her bonnet; she no longer gave a +little cry of delight when the big drags came slowly along the crowded +ranks, the steel bars shining as they swung loosely in the low afternoon +sunlight, the driver, conscious of his glory, grave and tranquil, with +the pride that apes humility. + +"See, Lotta," said Miss Paget, upon an especially bright May evening, as +one of these gorgeous equipages went past Mr. Sheldon's landau, "there's +another drag. Did you see it?" + +"Yes, dear, I saw it." + +"And are you tired of four-in-hands? You used to admire them so much." + +"I admire them as much as ever, dear." + +"And yet you scarcely gave those four splendid roans a glance." + +"No," Charlotte answered, with a faint sigh. + +"Are you tired, Lotta?" Miss Paget asked, rather anxiously. There was +something in Charlotte's manner of late that had inspired her with a +vague sense of anxiety; some change which she could scarcely define--a +change so gradual that it was only by comparing the Charlotte of some +months ago with the Charlotte of the present that she perceived how real +a change it was. The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss +Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual listlessness. +"Are you tired, dear?" she repeated, anxiously; and Mrs. Sheldon looked +round from her contemplation of the bonnets. + +"No, Di, dearest, not tired; but--I don't feel very well this afternoon." + +This was the first confession which Charlotte Halliday made of a sense of +weakness and languor that had been creeping upon her during the last two +months, so slowly, so gradually, that the change seemed too insignificant +for notice. + +"You feel ill, Lotta dear?" Diana asked. + +"Well, no, not exactly ill. I can scarcely call it illness; I feel rather +weak--that is really all." + +At this point Mrs. Sheldon chimed in, with her eyes on a passing bonnet +as she spoke. + +"You see, you are so dreadfully neglectful of your papa's advice, Lotta," +she said, in a complaining tone. "Do _you_ like pink roses with mauve +areophane, Diana? I do not. Look at that primrose tulle, with dead +ivy-leaves and scarlet berries, in the barouche. I dare say you have not +taken your glass of old port this morning, Charlotte, and have only +yourself to thank if you feel weak." + +"I did take a glass of port this morning, mamma. I don't like it; but I +take it every morning." + +"Don't like old tawny port, that your papa bought at the sale of a bishop +of somewhere? It's perfectly absurd of you, Lotta, to talk of not liking +wine that cost fifteen shillings a bottle, and which your papa's friends +declare to be worth five-and-thirty." + +"I am sorry it is so expensive, mamma; but I can't teach myself to think +it nice," answered Charlotte, with a smile that sadly lacked the +brightness of a few weeks ago. "I think one requires to go into the City, +and become a merchant or a stockbroker, before one can like that sort of +wine. What was it Valentine quoted in the _Cheapside_, about some lady +whom somebody loved?--'To love her was a liberal education.' I think to +like old port is a commercial education." + +"I am sure such wine _ought_ to do you good," said Georgy, almost +querulously. She thought this bright blooming creature had no right to be +ill. The headaches, and little weaknesses and languors and ladylike +ailments, were things for which she (Georgy) had taken out a patent; and +this indisposition of her daughter's was an infringement of copyright. + +"I dare say the port will do me good, mamma, in time. No doubt I shall be +as strong as that person who strangled lions and snakes and dogs with +incalculable heads, and all that kind of thing." + +"I really wish you would not talk in that absurd manner, my dear," said +Mrs. Sheldon with offended dignity. "I think you really cannot be too +grateful for your papa's kind thoughtfulness and anxiety about you. I am +sure I myself am not so anxious as he is; but of course his medical +knowledge makes him doubly careful. Six weeks ago he noticed that you +wanted strength--tone is what he calls it. 'Georgina,' he said to me, +'Charlotte wants tone. She is beginning to stoop in a really lamentable +manner: we must make her take port or bark, or something of a +strengthening kind.' And then a day or two afterwards he decided on port, +and gave me the key of the cellar--which is a thing he rarely gives out +of his own hands--and told me the number of the bin from which I was to +take the wine--some old wine that he had laid by on purpose for some +special occasion; and no one is to have it but you, and you are to take a +glass daily at eleven o'clock. Mr. Sheldon is most particular about the +hour. The regularity of the thing is half the battle in these cases, he +says; and I am sure if you do not observe his wishes and mine, Charlotte, +it will be really ungrateful of you." + +"But, dear mamma, I do observe Mr.--papa's wishes. I take my glass of +port every morning at eleven. I go to your cupboard in the breakfast-room +and take out my special decanter, and my special glass, in the most +punctiliously precise manner. I don't like the wine, and I don't like the +trouble involved in the ceremony of drinking it; but I go through it most +religiously, to please you and papa." + +"And do you mean to say that you do not feel stronger after taking that +expensive old port regularly for nearly six weeks. + +"I am sorry to say that I do not, mamma. I think if there is any change, +it is that I am weaker." + +"Dear, dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldon captiously, "you are really a +most extraordinary girl." + +Mrs. Sheldon could almost have found it in her heart to say, a most +ungrateful girl. There did seem a kind of ingratitude in this futile +consumption of old port at fifteen shillings a bottle. + +"I'll tell you what it is, Lotta," she said presently, "I am convinced +that your illness--or your weakness--is all fancy." + +"Why so, mamma?" + +"Because, if it were real weakness, that old port must have made you +stronger. And the fact that the port does you no good, is a proof that +your weakness is only fancy. Girls of your age are so full of fancies. +Look at me, and the martyrdom I go through with my nervous headaches, +which perfectly prostrate me, after the least worry or excitement. The +nerves of my head, after going into the butcher's book, are perfect +agony. When you come to have a house to look after, and find what it is +to have the same saddle of mutton charged for twice over, with the most +daring impudence--or to have capers and currie-powder, that you _know_ +you've never had, staring at you from every page of your grocer's book, +and nothing but your memory between you and utter ruin--you'll discover +what it is to be really ill." + +In this easy manner did Mrs. Sheldon dismiss the subject of her daughters +illness. But it was not so easily dismissed by Diana Paget, who loved her +friend with a profound and pure affection, than which no sister's love +was ever warmer or stronger. Even Valentine's preference for this happy +rival had not lessened Diana's love for her friend and benefactress. She +had been jealous of Charlotte's happier fate: but in the hour when this +jealousy was most bitter there had been no wavering in her attachment to +this one true and generous friend. + +Miss Paget was very silent during the homeward drive. She understood now +what that change had been in her friend which until now had so perplexed +her. It was a decay of physical strength which had robbed Lotta's smile +of its brightness, her laugh of its merry music. It was physical languor +that made her so indifferent to the things which had once awakened her +girlish enthusiasm. The discovery was a very painful one. Diana +remembered her experience of Hyde Lodge: the girls who had grown day by +day more listless, now in the doctor's hands for a day or two, now well +again and toiling at the old treadmill round of study, now sinking into +confirmed invalids; until the bitter hour in which parents are summoned, +and the doctor urges rest, and the fond mother carries her darling home, +assured that home comfort and tenderness will, speedily restore her. Her +schoolfellows cluster round the carriage to bid her "good-bye until next +half," full of hopeful talk about her swift recovery. But when the +vacation is over, and Black Monday comes, she is not amongst the +returning scholars. Has she not gone up to the higher school, and +answered _Adsum_ to the call of the Great Master? + +Diana remembered these old experiences with cruel pain. + +"Girls, as bright and lovable as she is, have drooped and faded away, +just when they seem brightest and happiest," she thought as she watched +Charlotte, and perceived to-day for the first time that the outline of +her fair young cheek had lost its perfect roundness. + +But in such a case love can do nothing except watch and wait. That night, +in the course of that girlish talk in Charlotte's bedroom, which had +become a habit with the two girls, Diana extorted from her friend a full +account of the symptoms which had affected her within the last few weeks. + +"Pray don't look so anxious, dear Di," she said gaily; "it is really +nothing worth talking of; and I knew that if I confessed to feeling ill +you and mamma would straightway begin to worry yourselves about me. I +have felt a little sick and faint sometimes; and now and then a sudden +dizziness has come over me. It is nothing of any consequence, and it +passes away very quickly. Sometimes I have a kind of torpid languid +feeling, which is scarcely unpleasant, only strange, you know. But what +does it all amount to, except that I am nervous?" + +"You must have change of air, Lotta," said Diana resolutely, "and change +of scene. Yes, no doubt you are nervous. You have been kept almost a +prisoner in the house through Mr. Sheldon's punctilious nonsense. You +miss our brisk morning walks in the Gardens, I dare say. If you were to +go to Yorkshire, now, to your friends at Newhall, you would like that +change, dear, wouldn't you?" + +"Yes, I should dearly like to see Aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe; but--" + +"But what, darling?" + +"I should scarcely like being at Newhall, unless--you'll think me very +foolish, Di--unless Valentine was with me. We were so happy there, you +see, dear; and it was there he first told me he loved me. No, Di, I +couldn't bear Newhall without him." + +"Poor Aunt Dorothy, poor uncle Joe! feathers when weighed in the scale +against a young man whom their niece has known less than a twelvemonth!" + +No more was said about Charlotte's illness; Diana was too prudent to +alarm her friend by any expression of uneasiness. She adopted a cheering +tone, and the conversation drifted into other channels. + +While Diana's concern for her friend's altered health was yet a new +feeling, she found herself called upon to attend her father once more +in the character of a ministering angel. And this time Captain Paget's +illness was something more than gout. It was, according to his +doctors--he had on this occasion two medical attendants--a general +breaking up of the system. The poor old wanderer,--the weary Odysseus, +hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures,--laid himself down to +rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned. + +He was very ill. Gustave Lenoble, who came back to London, did not +conceal from Diana that the illness threatened to end fatally. At his +instigation the Captain had been removed from Omega Street to pleasant +lodgings at the back of Knightsbridge Road, overlooking Hyde Park. This +was nearer Bayswater, and it was very pleasant for the fading old +worldling. He could see the stream of fashion flowing past as he sat in +his easy-chair, propped up with pillows, with the western sunlight on his +face. He pointed out the liveries and armorial bearings; and told many +scandalous and entertaining anecdotes of their past and present owners to +Gustave Lenoble, who devoted much of his time to the solacement of the +invalid. Everything that affection could do to smooth this dreary time +was done for the tired Ulysses. Pleasant books were read to him; earnest +thoughts were suggested by earnest words; hothouse flowers adorned his +cheerful sitting-room; hothouse fruits gladdened his eye by their rich +warmth of colour, and invited his parched lips to taste their cool +ripeness. Gustave had a piano brought in, so that Diana might sing to her +father in the dusky May evenings, when it should please him to hear her. +Upon the last feeble footsteps of this old man, whose life had been very +selfish and wicked, pity waited with a carefulness so fond and tender +that he might well mistake it for love. Was it fair that his last days +should be so peaceful and luxurious, when many a good man falls down to +die in the streets, worn out with the life-long effort to bear the burden +laid upon his weary shoulders? In the traditions of the Rabbins it is +written that those are the elect of God who suffer His chastisement in +the flesh. For the others, for those who on earth drain the goblet of +pleasure, and riot in the raptures of sin, for them comes the dread +retribution after death. They are plunged in the fire, and driven before +the wind; they take the shape of loathsome reptiles, and ascend by +infinitesimal degrees through all the grades of creation, until their +storm-tost wearied degraded souls re-enter human semblance once more. But +even then their old stand-point is not yet regained; their dread penance +not yet performed. As men they are the lowest and worst of men; slaves +toiling in the desert; dirt to be trampled under the feet of their +prosperous brethren. Inch by inch the wretched soul regains its lost +inheritance; cycles must elapse before the awful sentence is fulfilled. + +Our Christian faith knows no such horrors. Even for the penitent of the +eleventh hour there is promise of pardon. The most earnest desire of +Diana's heart was that her father should enroll himself amongst those +late penitents--those last among the last who crowd in to the marriage +feast, half afraid to show their shame-darkened faces in that glorious +company. + +If we forgive all things to old age, so much the more surely do we +forgive all injuries to the fading enemy. That she had suffered much +cruelty and neglect at the hands of her father, was a fact that Diana +could not forget, any more than she could forget the name which he had +given her. It was a part of her life not to be put off or done away with. +But in these last days, with all her heart she forgave and pitied him. +She pitied him for the crooked paths into which his feet had wandered at +the very outset of life, and from which so weak a soul could find no +issue. She pitied him for that moral blindness which had kept him +pleasantly unconscious of the supreme depth of his degradation--a social +Laplander, who never having seen a western summer, had no knowledge that +his own land was dark and benighted. + +Happily for Diana and her generous lover, the Captain was not a +difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost the capacity +and the need for sin, took very kindly to penitence, as a species of +sentimental luxury. + +"Yes, my dear," he said complacently--for even in the hour of his +penitence he insisted on regarding himself as a social martyr--"my life +has been a very hard one. Fortune has not been kind to me. In the words +of the immortal bard, my lines have _not_ been set in pleasant places. I +should have been glad if Providence had allowed me to be a better father +to you, a better husband to your poor mother--a better Christian, in +fact--and had spared me the repeated humiliation of going through the +Insolvent Debtors' Court. It is not always easy to understand the justice +of these things: and it has often appeared to me that something of the +favouritism which is the bane of our governments on earth must needs +obtain at a higher tribunal. One man enters life with an entailed estate +worth seventy thousand a-year, while another finds himself in the hands +of the Jews before he is twenty years of age. 'There's something in this +world amiss shall be unriddled by-and-by,' as the poet observes. The +circumstances of my own existence I have ever regarded as dark and +enigmatic. And, indeed, the events of this life are altogether +inexplicable, my love. There is that fellow Sheldon, now, who began +life as a country dentist, a man without family or connections, +who--well, I will not repine. If I am spared to behold my daughter +mistress of a fine estate, although in a foreign country, I can depart in +peace. But you must have a house in town, my dear. Yes, London must be +your head-quarters. You must not be buried alive in Normandy. There is no +place like London. Take the word of a man who has seen the finest +Continental cities, and lived in them--that is the point, my love--lived +in them. For a fine afternoon in the beginning of May, an apartment in +the Champs Elysées, or the Boulevard, is an earthly paradise; but the +Champs Elysées in a wet December--the Boulevard in a sweltering August! +London is the only spot upon earth that is never intolerable. And your +husband will be a rich man, my dear girl, a really wealthy man; and you +must see that he makes a fitting use of his wealth, and does his duty to +society. The parable of the Talents, which you were reading to me this +afternoon, is a moral lesson your husband must not forget." + +After this fashion did the invalid discourse. Gustave and Diana perceived +that he still hoped to have his share in their future life, still looked +to pleasant days to come in a world which he had loved, not wisely, but +too well. Nor could they find it in their hearts to tell him that his +journey was drawing to a close, and that on the very threshold of the +peaceful home which his diplomatic arts had helped to secure, he was to +abandon life's weary race. + +They indulged his hopes a little, in order to win him the more easily to +serious thoughts; but though at times quite ready to abandon himself to a +penitential mood that was almost maudlin, there were other times when the +old Adam asserted himself, and the Captain resented this intrusion of +serious subjects as a kind of impertinence. + +"I am not aware that I am at my last gasp, Diana," he said with dignity, +on one of these occasions; "or that I need to be talked to by my own +daughter as if I were on my deathbed. I can show you men some years my +senior driving their phaetons-and-pairs in that Park. The Gospel is all +very well in its place--during Sunday-morning service, and after morning +prayers, in your good old county families, where the household is large +enough to make a fair show at the end of the dining-room, without +bringing in hulking lads who smell of the stables: but I consider that +when a man is ill, there is a considerable want of tact in bringing the +subject of religion before him in any obtrusive manner." + +Thus the Captain alternated from sentimental penitence to captious +worldliness, during may days and weeks. The business of the Haygarthian +inheritance was progressing slowly, but surely. Documents were being +prepared, attested copies of certificates of marriages, births, baptisms, +and burials were being procured, and all was tending towards the grand +result. Once, and sometimes twice a week, M. Fleurus came to see Captain +Paget, and discussed the great affair with that invalid diplomatist. The +Captain had long ago been aware that in entering upon an alliance with +that gentleman, he had invoked the aid of a coadjutor likely to prove too +strong for him. The event had justified his fears. M. Fleurus had +something of Victor Hugo's famous _Poulpe_ in his nature. Powerful as +flexible were the arms he stretched forth to grasp all prizes in the way +of heirs-at-law and disputed heritages, unclaimed railway-stock, and +forgotten consols. If the Captain had not played his cards very cleverly, +and contrived to obtain a personal influence over Gustave Lenoble, he +might have found himself thrust entirely out of the business by one of +the Frenchman's gelatinous arms. Happily for his own success, however, +the Captain did obtain a strong hold upon Gustave. This enabled him to +protect his own interests throughout the negotiation, and to keep the +insidious Fleurus at bay. + +"My good friend," he said, in his grand Carlton-House manner, "I am bound +to protect the interests of my friend M. Lenoble, in any agreement to be +entered upon in this matter. I cannot permit M. Lenoble's generosity or +M. Lenoble's inexperience to be imposed upon. My own interests are of +secondary importance. That I expect to profit by the extraordinary +discovery made by me--by ME--alone and unaided, I do not affect to deny. +But I will not profit at the expense of a too generous friend." + +"And what recompense am I to have for my work--a work at once painful and +impoverishing?" asked the little Frenchman, with an angry and suspicious +look. "Do you believe that I do that to amuse me? To run the streets, to +go by here, by there, in hunting the papers of that marriage, or this +baptism? Believe you that is so agreeable, Monsieur the Captain? No; I +desire to be paid for my work. I must have my part in the heritage which +I have help to win." + +"It is not won yet. We will talk of your recompense by-and-by." + +"We will talk of it this instant--upon the field. It must that I +comprehend where I am in this affair. I will not of mystifications, of +prevarications, of lies--" + +"M. Fleurus!" cried the Captain, with a hand stretched towards the bell. + +"You will sound--you will chase me! Ah, but no!--you cannot afford to +chase me yet. I have to find more papers of baptisms and burials. Go, +then, we will talk of this affair as friends." + +This friendly talk ended in Captain Paget's complete victory. M. Fleurus +consented to accept his costs out of pocket in the present, and three per +cent, of the heritage in the future. It was further agreed that the +Captain should select the English attorney who should conduct M. +Lenoble's case in the Court of Chancery. + +This conversation occurred at Rouen, and a day or two afterwards the +necessary document was drawn up. Gustave pledged himself to pay over a +fourth share of the Haygarthian fortune to Horatio Paget, and three +per cent, upon the whole amount to Jean François Fleurus. The document +was very formal, very complete; but whether such an agreement would +hold water, if Gustave Lenoble should choose to contest it, was open +to question. + +The solicitor to whom Horatio Paget introduced M. Lenoble was a Mr. +Dashwood, of the firm of Dashwood and Vernon; a man whom the Captain had +known in the past, and from whom he had received good service in some of +the most difficult crises of his difficult career. To this gentleman he +confided the conduct of the case; and explained his apprehensions with +regard to the two Sheldons. + +"You see, as the case now stands, they think they have the claimant to +this money in Miss Halliday--Sheldon's stepdaughter. But if they got an +inkling of Susan Meynell's marriage--and, in point of fact--the actual +state of the case--they might try to get hold of my friend, Gustave +Lenoble. They could _not_ get hold of him, mind you, Dashwood, but they +would try it on, and I don't want trying on of that kind." + +"Of course not. I know Sheldon, of Gray's Inn. He is rather--well, say +_shady_. That's hardly an actionable epithet, and it expresses what I +mean. Your friend's case seems to me tolerably clear. That little +Frenchman is useful, but officious. It is not a speculative affair, I +suppose? There is money to meet the current expenses of the business?" + +"Yes, there is money. Within reasonable limits my friend is prepared to +pay for the advancement of his claims." + +After this the Haygarthian business progressed, slowly, quietly. The work +was up to this point underground work. There were still papers +wanting--final links of the chain to be fitted together; and to the +fitting of these links Messrs. Dash and Vernon devoted themselves, in +conjunction with M. Fleurus. + +This was how matters stood when Captain Paget drooped and languished, and +was fain to abandon all active share in the struggle. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +FADING. + +While the invalid in the pleasant lodgings overlooking Hyde Park +grew day by day weaker, there was a change as marked in the bright +young creature whose loving spirit had first brought the influence of +affection to bear upon Diana Paget's character. Charlotte Halliday was +ill--very ill. It was with everyday increasing anxiety that Diana watched +the slow change--slow in its progress, but awfully rapid to look back +upon. The pain, the regret, with which she noted her father's decay were +little indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart as she +perceived the alteration in this dear friend, the blighting of this fair +young flower. + +That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but natural, and +we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see +our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in +its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana +watched her father's decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but +there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end +of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte--with +that happy soul for whom life and love wore their brightest smile, before +whose light joyous footsteps stretched so fair a pathway! + +The illness, whatever it was--and neither Mr. Sheldon nor the portly and +venerable physician whom he called in could find a name for it--crept +upon the patient with stealthy and insidious steps. Dizziness, trembling, +faintness; trembling, faintness, dizziness; the symptoms alternated day +by day. Sometimes there was a respite of a few days; and Charlotte--the +youthful, the sanguine, the happy--declared that her enemy had left her. + +"I am sure mamma is right, Di," she said on these occasions. "My nerves +are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if I could get the better +of my nerves, I should be as well as ever. I don't wonder that the idea +of my symptoms makes mamma almost cross. You see, she has been accustomed +to have the symptoms all to herself; and for me to plagiarise them, as it +were, must seem quite an impertinence. For a strong young thing like me, +you know, Di dear--who have only just broken myself of plunging +downstairs two and three steps at a time, and plunging upstairs in the +same vulgar manner--to intrude on mamma's shattered nerves, and pirate +mamma's low spirits, is utterly absurd and abominable; so I have resolved +to look my nerves straight in the face, and get the better of them." + +"My darling, you will get the better of them if you try," said Diana, who +did at times beguile herself with the hope that her friend's ailments +were mental rather than bodily. "I dare say your monotonous life has +something to do with your altered health; you want change of scene, +dear." + +"Change of scene, when I have you and Valentine! No, Di. It would +certainly be very nice to have the background shifted now and then; to +see Capability Brown's prim gardens melt into Alpine heights or +southern vineyards, or even into Russian steppes or Hungarian forests. +One does get a little tired of _toujours_ Bayswater; and Mr. Sheldon; +and crimped skate; and sirloin of beef, and the inevitable discussion as +to whether it is in a cannibal state of rawness or burnt to a cinder; +and the glasses of pale sherry; and the red worsted doyleys and blue +finger-glasses; and the almonds and raisins, and crisp biscuits, that +nobody ever eats; and the dreary, dreary funereal business of dinner, +when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of +the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma's peevish +complaints about Ann Woolper's ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr. +Sheldon's perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the +evening through; and _such_ papers!--_Money Market Monitor, Stockholder's +Vade-Mecum_, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so +much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used never to feel +these things an annoyance, you know, dear, till I made the acquaintance +of my nerves; but from the moment I allowed my nerves to get the better +of me, all these trifles have worried and excruciated me. But I am happy +with you, darling; and I am happy with Valentine. Poor Valentine!" + +She pronounced his name with a sigh; and then, after a pause, repeated +mournfully, "Poor Valentine!" + +"Why do you speak of him so sadly, dear?" asked Diana, very pale. + +"Because--because we have planned such a happy life together, dear, +and--" + +"Is that a thing to be sad about, darling?" + +"And--if it should happen, after all, that we have to part, and he go on +alone, the world may seem so sad and lonely to him." + +"Charlotte!" cried Diana, with a laugh that was almost choked by a sob, +"is this looking your nerves in the face? Why, my dear one, this is +indeed plagiarism of your mamma's low spirits. Lotta, you shall have +change of air; yes, I am determined on that. The stately physician who +came in his carriage the other day, and who looked at your tongue, and +said 'Ah!' and then felt your pulse and said 'Ah!' again, and then called +for pen-and-ink and wrote a little prescription, is not the doctor we +want for you. We want Dr. Yorkshire; we want the breezes from the +Yorkshire moors, and the smell of the farmyard, and our dear Aunt +Dorothy's sillabubs, and our uncle Joe to take us for long walks across +his clover-fields." + +"I don't want to go to Newhall, Di. I couldn't bear to leave--him." + +"But what is to prevent your meeting _him_ at the white gate this time, +as you met him last October? Might not accident take _him_ to Huxter's +Cross again? The archaeological work--of which we have heard no more, by +the bye--might necessitate further investigations in that district. If +you will go to Newhall, Lotta, I will pledge myself for Mr. Hawkehurst's +speedy appearance at the white gate you have so often described to me." + +"My dearest Di, you are all kindness; but even if I were inclined to go +to Newhall, I doubt if mamma or Mr. Sheldon would like me to go." + +"I am sure they would be pleased with any arrangement that was likely to +benefit your health. But I will talk to your mamma about it. I have set +my heart on your going to Newhall." + +Miss Paget lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took possession of +Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new stitch in _tricot_, and +succeeded in impressing her with the conviction that change of air was +necessary for Charlotte. + +"But you don't think Lotta really ill?" asked Mrs. Sheldon, nervously. + +"I trust she is not really ill, dear Mrs. Sheldon; but I am sure she is +much changed. In talking to her, I affect to think that her illness is +only an affair of the nerves; but I sadly fear that it is something more +than that." + +"But what is the matter with her?" exclaimed Georgy, with a, piteous air +of perplexity; "that is the question which I am always asking. People +can't be ill, you know, Diana, without having something the matter with +them; and that is what I can't make out in Charlotte's case. Mr. Sheldon +says she wants tone; the physician who came in a carriage and pair, and +ought to know what he is talking about, says there is a lack of vigour. +But what does that all amount to? I'm sure I've wanted tone all my life. +Perhaps there never was a creature so devoid of tone as I am; and the +internal sinking I feel just before luncheon is something that no one but +myself can realize. I dare say Lotta is not so strong as she might be; +but I do not see that she can be ill, unless her illness is something +definite. My poor first husband's illness, now, was the kind of thing +that any one could understand--bilious fever. The merest child knows what +it is to be bilious, and the merest child knows what it is to be +feverish. There can be nothing mysterious in bilious fever." + +"But, dear Mrs. Sheldon," said Diana, gravely, "don't you think that the +weakness of constitution which rendered Charlotte's father liable to be +taken off in the prime of life by a fever is a weakness that Charlotte +may possibly have inherited?" + +"Good heavens, Diana!" cried Georgy, with sudden terror; "you don't mean +to say that you think my Charlotte is going to die?" + +It was but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic +alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened +fears as it had been to rouse her from absolute apathy. + +Change of air--yes, of course--Charlotte must have change of air that +instant. Let a cab be sent for immediately to take them to the terminus. +Change of air, of course. To Newhall--to Nice--to the Isle of Wight--to +Malta; Mrs. Sheldon had heard of people going to Malta. Where should they +go? Would Diana advise, and send for a cab, and pack a travelling bag +without an instant's delay? The rest of the things could be sent +afterwards. What did luggage matter, when Charlotte's life was at stake? + +At this point a flood of tears happily relieved poor Georgy's excited +feelings, and then common sense and Diana Paget came to the rescue. + +"My dear Mrs. Sheldon," she said, with a quiet cheerful tone that went +far to reassure the excited lady, "in the first place we must, above all +things, refrain from any appearance of alarm. Her illness may, after all, +be only an affair of the nerves; and there is certainly no cause for +immediate fear." + +Georgy was tranquillised, and agreed to take matters quietly. She +promised to arrange Charlotte's departure for Newhall, with Mr. Sheldon, +that evening. + +"Of course, you know, my dear, I like to consult him about everything," +she said, apologetically. "It is a duty which one owes one's husband, you +know, and a duty which, as a young woman about to marry, I cannot too +much impress upon you; but in this case it is quite a matter of form: Mr. +Sheldon never has objected to Charlotte's going to Newhall, and he is not +likely to object now." + +The event proved Mrs. Sheldon mistaken as to this matter. Georgy proposed +the visit to Newhall that evening, while the two girls were strolling +listlessly in the dusky garden, and Mr. Sheldon most decidedly rejected +the proposition. + +"If she wants change of air--and Dr. Doddleson recommended nothing of the +kind--Newhall is not the place for her." + +"Why not, dear?" + +"It is too cold. Northerly aspect--no shelter--three hundred feet above +York minster." + +"But Dorothy Mercer is such a kind motherly creature; she'd delight in +nursing Lotta." + +"Yes," answered Mr. Sheldon, with a laugh, "and in quacking her. I know +what those good motherly creatures are when they get an excuse for dosing +some unhappy victim with their quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to +Newhall, Mrs. Mercer would poi--would make her ten times worse than +she is with old woman's remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is +too cold. That is a conclusive argument, I suppose?" + +He said this with some impatience of tone and manner. There was a haggard +look in his face, a hurried harassed manner pervading him this evening, +which had been growing upon him of late. Georgy was too slow of +perception to remark this; but Diana Paget had remarked it, and had +attributed the change in the stockbroker's manner to a blending of two +anxieties. + +"He is anxious about money matters," she had said to herself, "and he is +anxious about Charlotte's health. His lips, moving in whispered +calculations, as he sits brooding by the fire, tell me of the first +anxiety; his eyes, wandering furtively to his step-daughter's face every +now and then, tell me of the second." + +This furtive anxiety of Mr. Sheldon's increased Diana Paget's anxiety. +This man, who had a certain amount of medical knowledge, could no doubt +read the diagnostics of that strange insidious illness, which had, as +yet, no name, Diana, furtively watching his furtive looks, told herself +that he read of danger. + +"If Charlotte wants change of air, let her go to Hastings," he said; +"that is the kind of place for an invalid. I want rest myself; and +there's such utter stagnation in the City nowadays that I can very well +afford to give myself a holiday. We'll run down to Hastings, or the +immediate neighbourhood of Hastings, for a week or two." + +"O Philip, how kind and considerate you are! I am sure, as I was +observing to Miss Paget only today, you--" + +"Ah, by the bye, there's Miss Paget. Is it absolutely necessary that Miss +Paget should go to Hastings with us?" + +"Well, dear, you see she has so kindly desired to remain with me for the +quarter, so as to give me time to turn round, you know, with regard to +caps and summer things, and so on--for, really, she has such taste, and +does strike out such excellent ideas about turning, and dipping, and +dyeing, that I don't know what will become of me when she leaves us; and +it would look so pointed to--" + +"Yes; she had better go with us. But why all this fuss about Charlotte? +Who put it into your head that she wants change of air?" + +Mr. Sheldon evidently considered it an established fact that any idea in +his wife's head must needs have been put there by someone or other. + +"Well, you see, Diana and I were talking of Lotta this afternoon, and +Diana quite alarmed me." + +"How so?" asked Mr. Sheldon, with a quick frown. + +"Why, she said it was evident, by the fact of poor dear Tom's dying of a +fever, that his constitution must have been originally weak. And she said +that perhaps Charlotte had inherited Tom's weak constitution--and +frightened me dreadfully." + +"There is no occasion for you to be frightened; Charlotte will get on +very well, I dare say, with care. But Miss Paget is a very sensible +young woman, and is right in what she says. Charlotte's constitution is +not strong." + +"O Philip!" said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice. + +"I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves," said Mr. +Sheldon, with a hard laugh. "Ah, here she is!" + +Here she was, coming towards the open window near which her stepfather +sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her sauntering walk, dressed in +white, and spectral in the gloaming. To the sad eyes of her mother she +looked like a ghost. To the eyes of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to +poetic fancies, she looked even more ghostlike. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS. + +Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the +object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several +people. That her stepfather had his anxieties about her--anxieties which +he tried to hide--was obvious to the one person in the Bayswater villa +who noted his looks, and tried to read the thoughts they indicated. + +Mrs. Sheldon's alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be lulled to rest. +And in Valentine Hawkehurst's heart there was an aching pain--a dull dead +load of care, which had never been lightened from the hour when he first +perceived the change in his dear one's face. + +There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater villa, who +watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care as unresting as the +care of mother or stepfather, bosom friend or plighted lover. This person +was Ann Woolper. Mrs. Woolper had come to the villa prepared to find in +Miss Halliday a frivolous self-satisfied young person, between whom and +an old broken-down woman like herself there could be no sympathy. She had +expected to be contemptuously--or, at the best, indifferently--entreated +by the prosperous well-placed young lady, whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of +as a good girl, as girls go; a vague species of commendation, which, to +the mind of Mrs. Woolper, promised very little. + +As clearly as Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes with regard to +Charlotte Halliday, he had expressed them to Ann Woolper. What he would +fain have said, was, "Watch my stepdaughter, and keep me well acquainted +with every step she takes." Thus much he dared not say; but by +insinuating that Tom Halliday's daughter was frivolous and reckless, and +that her lover was not to be trusted, he had contrived to put Mrs. +Woolper on the _qui vive_. + +"Mr. Philip's afraid she may go and marry this young man on the sly, +before he's got the means to support a wife," she said to herself, as she +meditated upon the meaning of her master's injunctions; "and well he may +be. There's no knowing what young women are up to nowadays; and the more +innocent and inexperienced a young woman is, the more she wants looking +after. And Miss Georgy Craddock always was a poor fondy, up to naught but +dressing herself fine, and streaming up and down Barlingford High Street +with her old schoolfellows. Such as she ain't fit to be trusted with a +daughter; and Mr. Philip knows that. He always was a deep one. But I'm +glad he looks after Missy: there's many men, having got fast hold of th' +father's brass, would let th' daughter marry Old Scratch, for the sake of +gettin' rid of her." + +This is how Mrs. Woolper argued the matter. She came of a prudent race; +and anything like prudence seemed to her a commendable virtue. She wished +to think well of her master; for her he had been a Providence in the hour +of calamity and old age. Where else could she look, if not to him? And to +suspect him, or think ill of him, was to reject the one refuge offered to +her distress. A magnanimous independence of spirit is not an easy virtue +for the old and friendless and poor. The drowning wretch will scarcely +question the soundness of the plank that sustains him upon the +storm-tossed billows; nor was Mrs. Woolper inclined to question the +motives of the man to whom she now owed her daily bread. + +It is possible that before invoking Mrs. Woolper from the ashes of the +past to take her seat by the hearthstone of the present, Mr. Sheldon may +have contemplated the question of her return in all its bearings, and +may have assured himself that she was his own, by a tie not easily +broken--his bond-slave, fettered hand and foot by the bondage of +necessity. + +"What choice can she have, except the choice between my house and the +workhouse?" he may naturally have asked himself; "and is it likely she +will quarrel with her bread-and-butter in order to fall back upon dry +bread?" Mr. Sheldon, contemplating this and all other questions from his +one unchanging standpoint, may reasonably have concluded that Mrs. +Woolper would do nothing opposed to her own interests; and that so long +as it suited her interest to remain at the Lawn, and to serve him, she +would there remain, his docile and unquestioning slave. + +The influence of affection, the force of generous impulse, were qualities +that did not come into Mr. Sheldon's calculations upon this subject. His +addition and subtraction, division and multiplication, were all based on +one system. + +That happy and unconscious art by which Charlotte Halliday made herself +dear to all who knew her had a speedy effect upon the old housekeeper. +The girl's amiable consideration for her age and infirmities; the pretty +affectionate familiarity with which she treated this countrywoman, who +had known her father, and who could talk to her of Yorkshire and +Yorkshire people, soon made their way to Nancy Woolper's heart of hearts. +For Miss Halliday to come to the housekeeper's room with some message +from her mother, and to linger for a few minutes' chat, was a delight to +Mrs. Woolper. She would have detained the bright young visitant for hours +instead of minutes, if she could have found any excuse for so doing. Nor +was there any treason against Mr. Sheldon in her growing attachment to +his stepdaughter. Whenever Nancy spoke of that master and benefactor, she +spoke with unfeigned gratitude and affection. + +"I nursed your step-papa as a baby, Miss Halliday," she said very often +on these occasions. "You wouldn't think, to look at him now, that he ever +was _that_, would you? But he was one of the finest babies you could wish +to see--tall, and strong, and with eyes that pierced one through, they +were so bright and big and black. He was rather stubborn-spirited with +his teething; but what baby isn't trying at such times? I had rare work +with him, I can tell you, Miss, walking him about of nights, and jogging +him till there wasn't a jog left in me, as you may say, from sleepiness. +I often wonder if he thinks of this now, when I see him looking so grave +and stern. But, you see, being jogged doesn't impress the mind like +having to jog; and though I can bring that time back as plain as if it +was yesterday, with the very nursery I slept in at Barlingford, and the +rushlight in a tall iron cage on the floor, and the shadow of the cage on +the bare whitewashed walls--it's clean gone out of his mind, I dare say." + +"I'm afraid it has, Nancy." + +"But, O, I was fond of him, Miss Halliday; and what I went through with +him about his teeth made me only the fonder of him. He was the first baby +I ever nursed, you see, and the last; for before Master George came to +town I'd taken to the cooking, and Mrs. Sheldon hired another girl as +nurse; a regular softy _she_ was, and it isn't her fault that Master +George has got anything christian-like in the way of a back, for the way +she carried that blessed child used to make my blood run cold." + +Thus would Mrs. Woolper discourse whenever she had a fair excuse for +detaining Miss Halliday in her comfortable apartment. Charlotte did not +perceive much interest in these reminiscences of Mr. Sheldon's infancy, +but she was much too kind to bring them abruptly to a close by any show +of impatience. When she could get Nancy to talk of Barlingford and Hyley, +and the people whom Charlotte herself had known as a child, the +conversation was really interesting; and these recollections formed a +link between the old woman and the fair young damsel. + +When the change arose in Charlotte's health and spirits, Mrs. Woolper was +one of the first to perceive it. She was skilled in those old woman's +remedies which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme contempt, and she would +fain have dosed the invalid with nauseous decoctions of hops, or +home-brewed quinine. Charlotte appreciated the kindness of the intent, +but she rebelled against the home-brewed medicines, and pinned her faith +to the more scientific and less obnoxious preparations procured from the +chemist's. + +For some time Nancy made light of the girl's ailments, though she watched +her with unfailing attention. + +"You ain't a-done growing yet, miss, I'll lay," she said. + +"But I'm more than twenty-one, Nancy. People don't grow after they're of +age, do they?" + +"I've known them as have, miss; I don't say it's common, but it has been +done. And then there's the weakness that comes after you've done growing. +Girls of your age are apt to be faint and lollopy-like, as you may say; +especially when they're stived up in a smoky place like London. You ought +to go to Hyley, miss, where you was born; that's the place to set you +up." + +The time had come when the change was no longer matter for doubt. Day by +day Charlotte grew weaker and paler; day by day that bright and joyous +creature, whose presence had made an atmosphere of youth and gladness +even in that prim dwelling-place, receded farther into the dimness of +the past; until to think of what she had been seemed like recalling the +image of the dead. Nancy marked the alteration with a strange pain, so +sharp, so bitter, that its sharpness and bitterness were a perpetual +perplexity to her. + +"If the poor dear young thing is meant to go, there's no need for me to +fret about it all day long, and wake up sudden in the night with cold +water standing out upon my forehead at the thought of it. I haven't known +her six months; and if she is pretty and sweet-spoken, it's not my place +to give way at the thoughts of losing her. She's not my own flesh and +blood; and I've sat by to watch them go, times and often, without feeling +as I do when I see the change in her day after day. Why should it seem so +dreadful to me?" + +Why indeed? This was a question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no +answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something +more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel. +A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of +reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness +as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been +liable to the suspicion of nocturnal careerings on broomsticks. + +"I'm sorry Mr. Philip's house should be unlucky to that sweet young +creature," she said to herself. "It was unlucky to the father; and now it +seems as if it was going to be unlucky to the daughter. And Mr. Philip +won't be any richer for her death. Mrs. Sheldon has told me times and +often that all Tom Halliday's money went to my master when she married +him, and he has doubled and trebled it by his cleverness. Miss +Charlotte's death wouldn't bring him a sixpence." + +This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's meditations very often nowadays. But +the strange sense of perplexity, the nameless fear, the vague horror, +were not to be banished from her mind. A sense of some shapeless presence +for ever at her side haunted her by day and night. What was it? What did +its presence portend? It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot, +was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not turn to +meet the horror face to face. Sometimes the phantom hand lifted a corner +of the veil, and the shade said, "Look at me! See who and what I am! You +have seen me before. I am here again! and this time you shall not refuse +to meet me face to face! I am the shadow of the horror you suspected in +the past!" + +The shadowy fears which oppressed Mrs. Woolper during this period did not +in any way lessen her practical usefulness. From the commencement of +Charlotte's slow decline she had shown herself attentive, and even +officious, in all matters relating to the invalid. With her own hands she +decanted the famous port which Georgy fetched from the particular bin in +Mr. Sheldon's carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called +in, and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper who +carried the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought back the +innocent potion, which might, peradventure, effect some slight good, and +was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. Charlotte duly appreciated all +this kindness; but she repeatedly assured the housekeeper that her +ailments were not worthy of so much care. + +It was Mrs. Woolper whom Mr. Sheldon employed to get lodgings for the +family, when it had been ultimately decided that a change to the seaside +was the best cure for Miss Halliday. + +"I am too busy to go to Hastings myself this week," he said; "but I +shall be prepared to spend a fortnight there after next Monday. What I +want you to do, Nancy, is to slip down tomorrow, with a second-class +return-ticket, and look about for a nice place for us. I don't care about +being in Hastings; there's too much cockneyism in the place at this time +of year. There's a little village called Harold's Hill, within a mile or +so of St. Leonard's--a dull, out-of-the-way place, but rustic and +picturesque, and all that kind of thing--the sort of place that women +like. Now, I'd rather stay at that place than at Hastings. So you can +take a fly at the station, drive straight to Harold's Hill, and secure +the best lodgings you can get." + +"You think as the change of air will do Miss Halliday good?" asked Mrs. +Woolper anxiously, after she had promised to do all her kind master +required of her. + +"Do I think it will do her good? Of course I do. Sea-air and +sea-bathing will set her up in no time; there's nothing particular the +matter with her." + +"No, Mr. Philip; that's what bothers me about the whole thing. There's +nothing particular the matter with her; and yet she pines and dwindles, +and dwindles and pines, till it makes one's heart ache to see her." + +Philip Sheldon's face darkened, and he threw himself back in his chair +with an impatient movement. If he had chosen to do so, he could have +prevented that darkening of his face; but he did not consider Mrs. +Woolper a person of sufficient importance to necessitate the regulation +of his countenance. What was she but an ignorant, obstinate old woman, +who would most probably perish in the streets if he chose to turn her out +of doors? There are men who consider their clerks and retainers such very +dirt, that they would continue the forging of a bill of exchange, or +complete the final touches of a murder, with a junior clerk putting coals +on the fire, or an errand-boy standing cap in hand on the threshold of +the door. They cannot realize the fact that dirt such as this is flesh +and blood, and may denounce them by-and-by in a witness-box. + +Of all contingencies Mr. Sheldon least expected that this old woman could +prove troublesome to him--this abject wretch, whose daily bread depended +on his will. He could not imagine that there are circumstances under +which such abject creatures will renounce their daily bread, and die of +hunger, rather than accept the means of life from one hateful hand. + +"If you want to know anything about Miss Halliday's illness," he said in +his hardest voice, and with his hardest look, "you had better apply to +Dr. Doddleson, the physician who has prescribed for her. I do not attend +her, you see, and I am in no way responsible for her health. When I was +attending her father you favoured me by doubting my skill, if I judged +rightly as to your tone and manner on one occasion. I don't want to be +brought to book by you, Mrs. Woolper, about Miss Halliday's altered looks +or Miss Halliday's illness; I have nothing to do with either." + +"How should I think you had, sir? Don't be angry with me, or hard upon +me, Mr. Phil. I nursed you when you was but a baby, and you're nearer and +dearer to me than any other master could be. Why, I have but to shut my +eyes now, and I can feel your little hand upon my neck, as it used to lie +there, so soft and dear. And then I look down at the hand on the table, +strong and dark, and clenched so firm, and I ask myself, Can it be the +same? For the sake of that time, Mr. Phil, don't be hard upon me. There's +nothing I wouldn't do to serve you; there's nothing you could do that +would turn me from you. There's no man living in this world, sir, that +oughtn't to be glad to know of one person that nothing can turn from +him." + +"That's a very fine sentiment, my good soul," replied Mr. Sheldon coolly; +"but, you see, it's only an _ex parte_ statement; and as the case stands +there is no opportunity for the display of those fine feelings you talk +about. You happen to want a home in your old age, and I happen to be able +to give you a home. Under such circumstances, your own good sense will +show you that all sentimental talk about standing by me, and not turning +away from me, is absolute bosh." + +The old woman sighed heavily. She had offered her master a fidelity which +involved the abnegation of all impulses of her own heart and mind, and he +rejected her love and her service. And then, after the first dreary sense +of his coldness, she felt better pleased that it should be so. The man +who spoke to her in this harsh uncompromising way could have no cause to +fear her. In the mind of such a man there could surely be no secret +chamber within which she had, with his knowledge, almost penetrated. + +"I won't trouble you any more, sir," she said mournfully. "I dare say I'm +a foolish old woman." + +"You are, Nancy. We don't get wiser as we grow older, you see; and when +we let our tongues wag, we're apt to talk nonsense. The quieter you keep +your tongue, the better for yourself, in more ways than one. To a useful +old woman about the place I've no objection; but a chattering old woman I +will not have at any price." + +After this everything was settled in the most agreeable manner. Nancy +Woolper's journey to Hastings was fully arranged; and early the next +morning she started, brisk and active, in spite of her sixty-eight years +of age. She returned at night, having secured very pleasant lodgings at +the village of Harold's Hill. + +"And a very sweet place it is, my dear Miss Lotta," she said to Charlotte +the next day, when she described her adventures. "The apartments are at a +farmhouse overlooking the sea; and the smell of the cows under your +windows, and the sea-breezes blowing across the farmyard, can't fail to +bring the colour back to your pretty cheeks, and the brightness back to +your pretty eyes." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +VALENTINE'S SKELETON. + +The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed delightful +to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still in town, and who +thought it a hard thing that he should be deprived of Diana's society +during an entire fortnight, for the sake of this sickly Miss Halliday. + +For the rest, there was hope and gladness in the thought of this change +of dwelling. Charlotte languished for fresher breezes and more rustic +prospects than the breezes and prospects of Bayswater; Diana looked to +the sea-air as the doctor of doctors for her fading friend; and Valentine +cherished the same hope. + +On Valentine Hawkehurst the burden of an unlooked-for sorrow had weighed +very heavily. To see this dear girl, who was the beginning, middle, and +end of all his hopes, slowly fading before his eyes, was, of all agonies +that could have fallen to his lot, the sharpest and most bitter. Not +Ugolino sitting silent amidst his famishing children--not Helen, when she +would fain that the tempest had swept her from earth's surface on that +evil day when she was born--not Penelope, when she cried on Diana, the +high-priestess of death, to release her from the weariness of her +days--not Agamemnon, when the fatal edict had gone forth, and his fair +young daughter looked into his face, and asked him if it was true that +she was to die--not one of these typical mourners could have suffered a +keener torture than that which rent this young man's heart, as he marked +the stealthy steps of the Destroyer drawing nearer and nearer the woman +he loved. Of all possible calamities, this was the last he had ever +contemplated. Sometimes, in moments of doubt or despondency, he had +thought it possible that poverty, the advice of friends, caprice or +inconstancy on the part of Charlotte herself, should sever them. But +among the possible enemies to his happiness he had never counted Death. +What had Death to do with so fair and happy a creature as Charlotte +Halliday? she who, until some two months before this time, might have +been the divine Hygieia in person--so fresh was her youthful bloom, so +buoyant her step, so bright her glances. Valentine's hardest penance was +the necessity for the concealment of his anxiety. The idea that +Charlotte's illness might be--nay, must be--for the greater part an +affair of the nerves was always paramount in his mind. He and Diana had +talked of the subject together whenever they found an opportunity for so +doing, and had comforted themselves with the assurance that the nerves +alone were to blame; and they were the more inclined to think this from +the conduct of Dr. Doddleson, on that physician's visits to Miss +Halliday. Mrs. Sheldon had been present on each occasion, and to Mrs. +Sheldon alone had the physician given utterance to his opinion of the +case. That opinion, though expressed with a certain amount of +professional dignity, amounted to very little. "Our dear young friend +wanted strength; and what we had to do was to give our dear young friend +strength--vital power. Yes--er--um, that was the chief point. And what +kind of diet might our dear young friend take now? Was it a light diet, a +little roast mutton--not too much done, but not underdone? O dear, no. +And a light pudding? what he would call--if he might be permitted to have +his little joke--a nursery pudding." And then the old gentleman had +indulged in a senile chuckle, and patted Charlotte's head with his fat +old fingers. "And our dear young friend's room, now, was it a large +room?--good! and what was the aspect now, south?--good again! nothing +better, unless, perhaps, south-west; but, of course, everyone's +rooms can't look south-west. A little tonic draught, and gentle daily +exercise in that nice garden, will set our dear young friend right again. +Our temperament is nervous we are a sensitive plant, and want care." And +then the respectable septuagenarian took his fee, and shuffled off to his +carriage. And this was all that Mrs. Sheldon could tell Diana, or Nancy +Woolper, both of whom questioned her closely about her interview with the +doctor. To Diana and to Valentine there was hope to be gathered from the +very vagueness of the physician's opinion. If there had been anything +serious the matter, the medical adviser must needs have spoken more +seriously. He came again and again. He found the pulse a little weaker, +the patient a little more nervous, with a slight tendency to hysteria, +and so on; but he still declared that there were no traces of organic +disease, and he still talked of Miss Halliday's ailments with a cheery +easy-going manner that was very reassuring. + +In his moments of depression Valentine pinned his faith upon Dr. +Doddleson. Without organic disease, he told himself, his darling could +not perish. He looked for Dr. Doddleson's name in the Directory, and took +comfort from the fact of that physician's residence in a fashionable West +End square. He took further comfort from the splendour of the doctor's +equipage, as depicted to him by Mrs. Sheldon; and from the doctor's age +and experience, as copiously described by the same lady. + +"There is only one fact that I have ever reproached myself with in +relation to my poor Tom," said Georgy, who, in talking to strangers of +her first husband, was apt to impress them with the idea that she was +talking of a favourite cat; "and that is, the youthfulness of the +doctor Mr. Sheldon employed. Of course I am well aware that Mr. Sheldon +would not have consulted the young man if he had not thought him +clever; but I could lay my head upon my pillow at night with a clearer +conscience if poor Tom's doctor had been an older and more experienced +person. Now, that's what I like about Dr. Doddleson. There's a gravity--a +weight--about a man of that age which inspires one with immediate +confidence. I'm sure the serious manner with which he questioned me about +Lotta's diet, and the aspect of her room, was quite delightful." + +In Dr. Doddleson, under Providence, Valentine was fain to put his trust. +He did not know that the worthy doctor was one of those harmless +inanities who, by the aid of money and powerful connections, are +sometimes forced into a position which nature never intended them to +occupy. Among the real working men of that great and admirable +brotherhood, the medical profession, Dr. Doddleson had no rank; but he +was the pet physician of fashionable dowagers suffering from chronic +laziness or periodical attacks of ill-humour. For the spleen or the +vapours no one was a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. He could afford +to waste half an hour upon the asking of questions which the fair +patient's maid might as well have asked, and the suggestions of remedies +which any intelligent abigail could as easily have suggested. Elderly +ladies believed in him because he was pompous and ponderous, lived in an +expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore +mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the +matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating, +declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian +angel of their frail lives during the last twenty years. + +This was the man who, of all the medical profession resident in London, +Mr. Sheldon had selected as his stepdaughter's medical adviser in a case +so beyond common experience, that a man of wide practice and keen +perception was especially needed for its treatment. + +Dr. Doddleson, accustomed to attribute the fancied ailments of +fashionable dowagers to want of tone, and accustomed to prescribe the +mildest preparations with satisfaction to his patients and profit to +himself dwelt upon the same want of tone, and prescribed the same +harmless remedies, in his treatment of Charlotte Halliday. When he found +her no better--nay, even worse--after some weeks of this treatment, he +was puzzled; and for one harmless remedy he substituted another harmless +remedy, and waited another week to see what effect the second harmless +remedy might have on this somewhat obstinate young person. + +And this was the broken reed to which Valentine clung in the day of +his trouble. + +Bitter were his days and sleepless were his nights in this dark period of +his existence. He went to the Bayswater villa nearly every day now. It +was no longer time for etiquette or ceremony. His darling was fading day +by day; and it was his right to watch the slow sad change, and, if it +were possible, to keep the enemy at arm's-length. Every day he came to +spend one too brief hour with his dear love; every day he greeted her +with the same fond smile, and beguiled her with the same hopeful talk. He +brought her new books and flowers, and any foolish trifle which he +fancied might beguile her thoughts from the contemplation of that +mysterious malady which seemed beyond the reach of science and Dr. +Doddleson. He sat and talked with her of the future--that future which in +their secret thoughts both held to be a sweet sad fable--the hyperborean +garden of their dreams. And after spending this too sweet, too bitter +hour with his beloved, Mr. Hawkehurst would diplomatise in order to have +a little talk with Diana as he left the house. Did Diana think his dear +girl better to-day, or worse--surely not worse? He had fancied she had +more colour, more of her old gaiety of manner. She had seemed a little +feverish; but that might be the excitement of his visit. And so on, and +so on, with sad and dreary repetition. + +And then, having gone away from that house with an aching heart, the +young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and plunged into the +dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which was to constitute his +monthly contribution to the _Cheapside_ or the _Charing Cross_. Gaiety, +movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the +_Cheapside_; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for +the _Charing Cross_. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the +young scribbler tripping! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea there, +and the _West End Wasp_ shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional note; or +the _Minerva_ published a letter from a correspondent in the Scilly +Islands, headed "Another Literary Jack Sheppard," to say that in his +"Imperial Dictionary" he had discovered with profound indignation a whole +column of words feloniously and mendaciously appropriated by the writer +of such and such an article in the _Cheapside_. While the sunlight of +hope had shone upon him, Mr. Hawkehurst had found the hardest work +pleasant. Was he not working for _her_ sake? Did not his future union +with that dear girl depend upon his present industry? It had seemed to +him as if she stood at his elbow while he wrote, as Pallas stood beside +Achilles at the council, invisible to all but her favourite. It was that +mystic presence which lent swiftness to his pen. When he was tired and +depressed, the thought of Charlotte had revived his courage and +vanquished his fatigue. Pleasant images crowded upon him when he thought +of her. What could be easier than for him to write a love-story? He had +but to create a shadowy Charlotte for his heroine, and the stream of +foolish lover's babble flowed from his pen perennial and inexhaustible. +To his reading she lent a charm and a grace that made the most perfect +poetry still more poetical. It was not Achilles and Helen who met on +Mount Ida, but Valentine and Charlotte; it was not Paolo and Francesca +who read the fatal book together, but Valentine and Charlotte, in an +unregenerate and mediaeval state of mind. The mere coincidence of a name +made the "Sorrows of Werter" delightful. The all-pervading presence was +everywhere and in everything. His religion was not Pantheism, but +Charlottism. + +Now all was changed. A brooding care was with him in every moment. The +mystic presence was still close to him in every hour of his lonely days +and nights; but that image, which had been fair and blooming as the +incarnation of youth and spring-time, was now a pale shrouded phantom +which he dared not contemplate. He still wrote on--for it is marvellous +how the pen will travel and the mind will project itself into the +shadow-world of fancy while cankerous care gnaws the weary heart. Nay, it +is perhaps at these times that the imagination is most active; for the +world of shadows is a kind of refuge for the mind that dare not dwell +upon realities. Who can say what dull, leaden, care may have weighed down +the heart of William Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of +a poet's grand imaginings, Othello! There is the flavour of racking care +in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by a sordid +wretch; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable life wrecked for so +poor a motive; that sense of the "something in this world amiss," which +the poet, of all other creatures, feels most keenly. + +With grief and fear as his constant companions, Valentine Hawkehurst +toiled on bravely, patiently. Hope had not deserted him; but between hope +and fear the contest was unceasing. Sometimes hope had the best of it for +a while, and the toiler comforted himself with the thought that this dark +cloud would pass anon from the horizon of his life; and then he counted +his gains, and found that the fruit of his labours was increasing +monthly, as his name gained rank among the band of young _littérateurs_. +The day when he might count upon that income which Mr. Sheldon demanded +as his qualification for matrimony did not appear far distant. Given a +certain amount of natural ability, and the industrious and indefatigable +young writer may speedily emerge from obscurity, and take his place in +the great army of those gallant soldiers whose only weapon is the pen. +Whatever good fortune had come to Valentine Hawkehurst he had worked for +with all honesty of purpose. The critics were not slow to remark that he +worked at a white-hot haste, and must needs be a shallow pretender +because he was laborious and indefatigable. + +Before the beginning of Charlotte's slow decline he had fancied himself +the happiest of men. There were more deposit-receipts in his desk. The +nest-egg, about the hatching whereof there had been such cackling and +crowing some months ago, was now one of many eggs; for the hard-working +scribbler had no leisure in which to be extravagant, had he been so +minded. The purchase of a half-circlet of diamonds for his betrothed's +slim finger had been his only folly. + +Charlotte had remonstrated with him on the impropriety of such an +extravagance, and had exacted from him a promise that this wild and +Monte-Christo-like course should be pursued no further; but she was very +proud of her half-hoop of diamonds nevertheless, and was wont to press it +tenderly to her lips before she laid it aside for the night. + +"There must be no more such extravagance, sir," she said to her lover, +when he sat by her side twisting the ring round and round on her pretty +finger. Alas, how loose the ring had become since it had first been +placed there! + +"Consider the future, Valentine," continued the girl, hopeful of mood +while her hand rested in his. "Do you suppose we can furnish our cottage +at Wimbledon if we rush into such wild expenses as diamond rings? Do you +know that _I_ am saving money, Valentine? Yes, positively. Papa gives me +a very good allowance for my dresses, and bonnets, and things, you know, +and I used to be extravagant and spend it all. But now I have become the +most miserly creature; and I have a little packet of money upstairs which +you shall put in the Unitas Bank with the rest of your wealth. Diana and +I have been darning, and patching, and cutting, and contriving, in the +most praiseworthy manner. Even this silk has been turned. You did not +think that, did you, when you admired it so?" + +Mr. Hawkehurst looked at his beloved with a tender smile. The exact +significance of the operation of turning, as applied to silk dresses, was +somewhat beyond his comprehension; but he felt sure that to turn must be +a laudable action, else why that air of pride with which Charlotte +informed him of the fact? + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +AT HAROLD'S HILL. + +The summer sun shone upon the village of Harold's Hill when Charlotte +arrived there with Mrs. Sheldon and Diana Paget. Mr. Sheldon was to +follow them on the same day by a later train; and Valentine was to come +two days afterwards to spend the peaceful interval between Saturday and +Monday with his betrothed. He had seen the travellers depart from the +London Bridge terminus, but Mr. Sheldon had been there also, and there +had been no opportunity for confidential communication between the +lovers. + +Of all Sussex villages Harold's Hill is perhaps the prettiest. The grey +old Saxon church, the scattered farmhouses and pleasant rustic cottages, +are built on the slope of a hill, and all the width of ocean lies below +the rustic windows. The roses and fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem +all the brighter by contrast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh +breath of the salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all +the homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the blue vault +of heaven above the church, and over the blue of the sea the gull skims +white in the sunshine. The fisherman and the farm labourer have their +cottages side by side, nestling cosily to leeward of the hilly winding +road. + +This hilly winding road in the July afternoon seemed to Charlotte almost +like the way to Paradise. + +"It is like going to heaven, Di!" she cried, with her eyes fixed on the +square tower of the old grey church. She wondered why sudden tears sprang +to Diana's eyes as she said this. Miss Paget brushed the unbidden tears +away with a quick gesture of her hand, and smiled at her friend. + +"Yes, dear, the village is very pretty, isn't it?" + +"It looks awfully dull!" said Mrs. Sheldon, with a shudder; "and, Diana, +I declare there isn't a single shop. Where are we to get our provisions? +I told Mr. Sheldon St. Leonards would have been a better place for us." + +"O mamma, St. Leonards is the very essence of all that is tame and +commonplace, compared to this darling rural village! Look, do look, at +that fisherman's cottage, with the nets hanging out to dry in the +sunshine; just like a picture of Hook's!" + +"What's the use of going on about fishermen's cottages, Lotta?" Mrs. +Sheldon demanded, peevishly. "Fishermen's cottages won't provide us with +butcher's meat. Where are we to get your little bit of roast mutton? Dr. +Doddleson laid such a stress upon the roast mutton." + +"The sea-air will do me more good than all the mutton that ever was +roasted at Eton, mamma. O, dear, is this our farmhouse?" cried Charlotte, +as the vehicle drew up at a picturesque gate. "O, what a love of a house! +what diamond-paned windows! what sweet white curtains! and a cow staring +at me quite in the friendliest way across the gate! O, can we be so happy +as to live here?" + +"Diana," cried Mrs. Sheldon, in a solemn voice, "not a single shop have +we passed--not so much as a post-office! And as to haberdashery, I'm sure +you might be reduced to rags in this place before you could get so much +as a yard of glazed lining!" + +The farmhouse was one of those ideal homesteads which, to the dweller in +cities, seems fair as the sapphire-ceiled chambers of the house of +Solomon. Charlotte was enraptured by the idea that this was to be her +home for the next fortnight. + +"I wish it could be for ever, Di," she said, as the two girls were +inspecting the rustic, dimity-draperied, lavender-and-rose-leaf-perfumed +bedchambers. "Who would wish to go back to prim suburban Bayswater after +this? Valentine and I could lodge here after our marriage. It is better +than Wimbledon. Grand thoughts would come to him with the thunder of the +stormy waves; and on calm bright days like this the rippling water would +whisper pretty fancies into his ear. Why, to live here would make any one +a poet. I think I could write a novel myself, if I lived here long +enough." + +After this they arranged the pretty sitting-room, and placed an +easy-chair by the window for Charlotte, an arm-chair opposite this for +Mrs. Sheldon, and between the two a little table for the fancy work and +books and flowers, and all the small necessities of feminine existence. +And then--while Mrs. Sheldon prowled about the rooms, and discovered so +many faults and made so many objections as to give evidence of a fine +faculty for invention unsuspected in her hitherto--Charlotte and Diana +explored the garden and peeped at the farmyard, where the friendly cow +still stared over the white gate, just as she had stared when the fly +came to a stop, as if she had not yet recovered from the astonishment +created in her pastoral mind by that phenomenal circumstance. And then +Charlotte was suddenly tired, and there came upon her that strange +dizziness which was one of her most frequent symptoms. Diana led her +immediately back to the house, and established her comfortably in her +easy-chair. + +"I must be very ill," she said, plaintively; "for even the novelty of +this pretty place cannot make me happy long." + + * * * * * + +Mr. Sheldon arrived in the evening, bringing with him a supply of that +simple medicine which Charlotte took three times a day. He had remembered +that there was no dispensing chemist at Harold's Hill, and that it would +be necessary to send to St. Leonards for the medicine, and had therefore +brought with him a double quantity of the mild tonic. + +"It was very kind of you to think of it, though I really don't believe +the stuff does me any good," said Charlotte. "Nancy Woolper used to get +it for me at Bayswater. She made quite a point of fetching it from the +chemist's herself." + +"Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. "Nancy troubled herself about your +medicine, did she?" + +"Yes, papa; and about me altogether. If I were her own daughter she could +scarcely have seemed more anxious." + +The stockbroker made a mental note of this in the memorandum-book of his +brain. Mrs. Woolper was officious, was she, and suspicious?--altogether a +troublesome sort of person. + +"I think a few weeks of workhouse fare would be wholesome for that old +lady," he said to himself. "There are some people who never know when +they are well off." + +Saturday afternoon came in due course, after a long and dreary interval, +as it seemed to Charlotte, for whom time travelled very slowly, so +painful was the weariness of illness. Now and then a sudden flash of +excitement brought the old brightness to her face, the old gaiety to her +accents; but the brightness faded very soon, and the languor of illness +was very perceptible. + +Punctual to the hour at which he was expected, Mr. Hawkehurst appeared, +in radiant spirits, laden with new magazines, delighted with the village, +enraptured with the garden, enchanted with the sea; full of talk and +animation, with all sorts of news to tell his beloved. Such and such a +book was a failure, such and such a comedy was a fiasco; Jones's novel +had made a hit; Brown's picture was the talk of the year; and Charlotte +must see the picture that had been talked about, and the play that had +been condemned, when she returned to town. + +For an hour the lovers sat in the pretty farmhouse parlour talking +together thus, the summer sea and the garden flowers before them, and a +bird singing high in the calm blue heaven. Charlotte's talk was somewhat +languid, though it was perfect happiness for her to be seated thus, with +her betrothed by her side; but Valentine's gaiety of spirits never +flagged; and when Mrs. Sheldon hinted to him that too long a conversation +might fatigue the dear invalid, he left the parlour with a smile upon his +face, and a cheery promise to return after an hour's ramble. + +He did not ramble far. He went straight to a little wooden summer-house +in the remotest corner of the humble garden; and thither Diana Paget +followed him. She had learned the language of his face in the time of +their daily companionship, and she had seen a look as he left the house +which told her of the struggle his cheerfulness had cost him. + +"You must not be downhearted, Valentine," she said, as she went into the +summer-house, where he sat in a listless attitude, with his arms lying +loosely folded on the rustic table. + +He did not answer her. + +"You don't think her worse--much worse--do you, Valentine?" + +"Worse? I have seen death in her face to-day!" he cried; and then he let +his forehead fall upon his folded arms, and sobbed aloud. + +Diana stood by his side watching that outburst of grief. When the +passionate storm of tears was past, she comforted him as best she might. +The change so visible to him was not so plain to her. He had hoped that +the breath of the ocean would have magical power to restore the invalid. +He had come to Harold's Hill full of hope, and instead of the beginning +of an improvement he saw the progress of decay. + +"Why did not Sheldon send for the doctor," he asked, indignantly,--"the +physician who has attended her? He might have telegraphed to that man." + +"Charlotte is taking Dr. Doddleson's medicine," said Diana, "and all his +directions are most carefully obeyed." + +"What of that, if she grows worse? The doctor should see her daily, +hourly, if necessary. And if he cannot cure her, another doctor should be +sent for. Good heavens, Diana! are we to let her fade and sink from us +before our eyes? I will go back to London at once, and bring that man +Doddleson down by the night mail." + +"Your going back to London would grieve and alarm Charlotte. You can +telegraph for the doctor; or, at least, Mr. Sheldon can do so. It would +not do for you to interfere without his permission." + +"It would not do!" echoed Valentine, angrily. "Do you think that I +am going to stand upon punctilio, or to consider what will do or +will not do?" + +"Above all things, you must avoid alarming Charlotte," pleaded Diana. + +"Do you think I do not know that? Do you think I did not feel that just +now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish about books and plays +and pictures, while every stolen glance at my darling's face was like a +dagger thrust into my heart? I will not alarm her. I will consult Mr. +Sheldon--will do anything, everything, to save her! To save her! O my +God, has it come to that?" + +He grew a little calmer presently under Diana's influence, and went +slowly back to the house. He avoided the open window by which Charlotte +was sitting. He had not yet schooled himself to meet her questioning +looks. He went to the room where they were to dine, a duller and darker +apartment than the parlour, and here he found Mr. Sheldon reading a +paper, one of the eternal records of the eternal money-market. + +The stockbroker had been in and out of the house all day, now sauntering +by the sea-shore, now leaning moodily, with folded arms, on the garden +gate, meditative and silent as the cow that stared at Charlotte; now +pacing the garden walks, with his hands in his pockets and his head bent. +Diana, who in her anxiety kept a close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's +movements, had noted his restlessness, and perceived in it the sign of +growing anxiety on his part. She knew that he had once called himself +surgeon-dentist, and had some medical knowledge, if not so much as he +took credit for possessing. He must, therefore, be better able to judge +the state of Charlotte's health than utterly ignorant observers. If he +were uneasy, there must be real cause for uneasiness. It was on this +account, and on this account only, that Diana watched him. + +"He must love her better than I gave him credit for being able to love +any one," Miss Paget said to herself. "Dear girl! The coldest heart is +touched by her sweetness." + +Mr. Sheldon looked up from his newspaper as Valentine came into the room, +and saluted the visitor with a friendly nod. + +"Glad to see you, Hawkehurst," he said. "_Semper fidelis_, and that +kind of thing; the very model of devoted lovers. Why, man alive, how +glum you look!" + +"I think I have reason to look glum," answered Valentine, gravely; "I +have seen Charlotte." + +"Yes? And don't you find her improving?--gradually, of course. That +constitutional languor is not shaken off in a hurry. But surely you think +her improving--brightening--" + +"Brightening with the light that never shone on earth or sea. God help +me! I--I--am the merest child, the veriest coward, the--" He made a great +effort, and stifled the sob that had well-nigh broken his voice. "Mr. +Sheldon," he continued quietly, "I believe your stepdaughter is dying." + +"Dying! Good heavens!--my dear Hawkehurst, this alarm is most--most +premature. There is no cause for fear--at present, no cause--I give you +my word as a medical man." + +"No cause for alarm at present? That means my darling will not be taken +from me to-night, or to-morrow. I shall have a few days breathing-time. +Yes, I understand. The doom is upon us. I saw the shadow of death upon +her face to-day." + +"My dear Hawkehurst--" + +"My dear Sheldon, for pity's sake don't treat me as if I were a woman or +a child. Let me know my fate. If--if--this, the worst, most bitter of all +calamities God's hand--raised against me in punishment of past sins, +sinned lightly and recklessly, in the days when my heart had no stake in +the game of destiny--can inflict upon me; if this deadly sorrow is +bearing down upon me, let me meet it like a man. Let me die with my eyes +uncovered. O, my dearest, my fondest, redeeming angel of my ill-spent +life! have you been only a supernal visitant, after all, shining on me +for a little while, to depart when your mission of redemption is +accomplished?" + +"Powers above!" thought Mr. Sheldon, "what nonsense these sentimental +magazine-writers can talk!" + +He was in nowise melted by the lover's anguish, though it was very real. +Such a grief as this was outside the circle in which his thoughts +revolved. This display of grief was unpleasant to him. It grated +painfully upon his nerves, as some of poor Tom Halliday's little speeches +had done of old, when the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his +deathbed; and the young man's presence and the young man's anxiety were +alike inconvenient. + +"Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon," Valentine said presently, with +suppressed intensity. "Is there any hope for my darling, any hope?" + +Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied to this +question. He pursed-up his lips and bent his brows with the same air of +business-like deliberation that he might have assumed while weighing the +relative merits of the first and second debenture bonds of some doubtful +railway company. + +"You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst," he said at last. "If you ask +me plainly whether I like the turn which Charlotte's illness has taken +within the last few weeks, I must tell you frankly, I do not. There is a +persistent want of tone--a visible decay of vital power--which, I must +confess, has caused me some uneasiness. You see, the fact is, there is a +radical weakness of constitution--as Miss Paget, a very sensible girl and +acute observer--herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary weakness; and +against this medicine is sometimes unavailing. You need apprehend no +neglect on my part, Hawkehurst; all that can possibly be done is being +done. Dr. Doddleson's instructions are carefully obeyed, and--" + +"Is this Dr. Doddleson competent to grapple with the case?" asked +Valentine; "I never heard of him as a great man." + +"That fact proves how little you know of the medical profession." + +"I know nothing of it; I have had no need for doctors in my life. And you +think this Dr. Doddleson really clever?" + +"His position is a sufficient answer to that question." + +"Will you let me telegraph for him--this afternoon--immediately?" + +"You cannot telegraph from this place." + +"No, but from St. Leonards I can. Do you think I am afraid of a +five-mile walk?" + +"But why send for Dr. Doddleson? The treatment he prescribed is the +treatment we are now following to the letter. To summon him down here +would be the merest folly. Our poor Charlotte's illness is, so far, free +from all alarming symptoms." + +"You do not see the change in her that I can see," cried Valentine +piteously. "For mercy's sake, Mr. Sheldon, let me have my way in this. I +cannot stand by and see my dear one fading and do nothing--nothing to +save her. Let me send for this man. Let me see him myself, and hear what +he says. You can have no objection to his coming, since he is the man you +have chosen for Charlotte's adviser? It can only be a question of +expense. Let this particular visit be my affair." + +"I can afford to pay for my stepdaughter's medical attendance without any +help from your purse, Mr. Hawkehurst," said the stockbroker with offended +pride. "There is one element in the case which you appear to ignore." + +"What is that?" + +"The alarm which this summoning of a doctor from London must cause in +Charlotte's mind." + +"It need cause no alarm. She can be told that Dr. Doddleson has come to +this part of the world for a Sunday's change of air. The visit can appear +to be made _en passant._ It will be easy to arrange that with the doctor +before he sees her." + +"As you please, Mr. Hawkehurst," the stockbroker replied coldly. "I +consider such a visit to the last degree unnecessary; but if Dr. +Doddleson's coming can give you any satisfaction, by all means let him +come. The expense involved in summoning him is of the smallest +consideration to me. My position with regard to my wife's daughter is one +of extreme responsibility, and I am ready to perform all the obligations +of that position." + +"You are very good: your conduct in relation to Charlotte and myself has +been beyond all praise. It is quite possible that I am over-anxious; but +there was a look in that dear face--no--I cannot forget that look; it +struck terror to my heart. I will go at once to St. Leonards. I can tell +Charlotte that I am obliged to telegraph to the printer about my copy. +You will not object to that white lie?" + +"Not at all. I think it essential that Charlotte should not be alarmed. +You had better stop to dine; there will be time for the telegram after +dinner." + +"I will not risk that," answered Valentine. "I cannot eat or drink till I +have done something to lessen this wretched anxiety." + +He went back to the room where Charlotte was sitting by the open window, +through which there came the murmur of waves, the humming of drowsy bees, +the singing of birds, all the happy voices of happy nature in a +harmonious chorus. + +"O God, wilt thou take her away from such a beautiful world," he asked, +"and change all the glory of earth to darkness and desolation for me?" + +His heart rebelled against the idea of her death. To save her, to win her +back to himself from the jaws of death, he was ready to promise anything, +to do anything. + +"All my days will I give to Thy service, if Thou wilt spare her to me," +in his heart he said to his God. "If Thou dost not, I will be an infidel +and a pagan--the vilest and most audacious of sinners. Better to serve +Lucifer than the God who could so afflict me." + +And this is where the semi-enlightened Christian betrays the weakness of +his faith. While the sun shines, and the sweet gospel story reads to him +like some tender Arcadian idyl, all love and promise, he is firm in his +allegiance; but when the dark hour comes, he turns his face to the wall, +with anger and disappointment in his heart, and will have no further +commune with the God who has chastised him. His faith is the faith of the +grateful leper, who, being healed, was eager to return and bless his +divine benefactor. It is not the faith of Abraham or of Job, of Paul or +of Stephen. + +Valentine told his story about the printers and the copy for the +_Cheapside_ magazine, about which there had arisen some absurd mistake, +only to be set right by a telegram. + +It was not a very clear account; but Charlotte did not perceive the +vagueness of the story; she thought only of the one fact, that Valentine +must leave her for some hours. + +"The evening will seem so long without you," she said. "That is the worst +part of my illness; the time is so long--so weary. Diana is the dearest +and kindest of friends. She is always trying to amuse me, and reads to me +for hours, though I know she must often be tired of reading aloud so +long. But even the books I was once so fond of do not amuse me. The words +seem to float indistinctly in my brain, and all sorts of strange images +mix themselves up with the images of the people in the book. Di has been +reading "The Bride of Lammermoor" all this morning; but the pain and +weariness I feel seemed to be entangled with Lucy and Edgar somehow, and +the dear book gave me no pleasure." + +"My darling, you--you are too weak to listen to Diana's reading. It is +very kind of her to try to amuse you; but--but it would be better for you +to rest altogether. Any kind of mental exertion may help to retard your +recovery." + +He had placed himself behind her chair, and was bending over the pillows +to speak to her. Just now he felt himself unequal to the command of his +countenance. He bent his head until his lips touched the soft brown hair, +and kissed those loose soft tresses passionately. The thought occurred to +him that a day might come when he should again kiss that soft brown hair, +with a deeper passion, with a sharper pain, and when Charlotte would not +know of his kisses, or pity his pain. + +"O Valentine!" cried Charlotte, "you are crying; I can see your face in +the glass." + +He had forgotten the glass; the little rococo mirror, with an eagle +hovering over the top of the frame, which hung above the old-fashioned +chiffonier. + +"I am not so very ill, dear; I am not indeed," the girl continued, +turning in her chair with an effort, and clasping her lover's hands; "you +must not distress yourself like this, Valentine--dear Valentine! I shall +be better by-and-by. I cannot think that I shall be taken from you." + +He had broken down altogether by this time. He buried his face in the +pillows, and contrived to stifle the sobs that would come; and then, +after a sharp struggle, he lifted his face, and bent over the chair once +more to kiss the invalid's pale upturned forehead. + +"My dear one, you shall not, if love can guard and keep you. No, dear, +I _cannot_ believe that God will take you from me. Heaven may be your +fittest habitation; but such sweet spirits as yours are sorely needed +upon earth. I will be brave, dearest one; brave and hopeful in the +mercy of Heaven. And now I must go and telegraph to my tiresome +printer. _Au revoir_!" + +He hurried away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling pace along +the pleasant road, with green waving corn on his left, and broad blue +ocean on his right. + +"I can get a fly to bring me back from St. Leonard's" he thought; "I +should only lose time by hunting for a vehicle here." + +He was at St. Leonards station within an hour after leaving the farm. +He despatched the message in Mr. Sheldon's name, and took care to make +it urgent. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +DESPERATE MEASURES. + +Fitful and feverish were the slumbers which visited Mr. Hawkehurst on +that balmy summer's night. His waking hours were anxious and unhappy; but +his sleeping hours were still more painful. To sleep was to be the +feverish fool of vague wild visions, in which Charlotte and Dr. +Doddleson, the editor of the _Cheapside_, the officials of the British +Museum reading-room, Diana Paget, and the Sheldons, figured amidst +inextricable confusion of circumstances and places. Throughout these +wretched dreams he had some consciousness of himself and the room in +which he was lying, the July moon shining upon him, broad and bright, +through the diamond-paned lattice. And O, what torturing visions were +those in which Charlotte smiled upon him, radiant with health and +happiness; and there had been no such thing as her illness, no such thing +as his grief. And then came hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was +knocking at the farmhouse door, with the printer of the _Cheapside_. And +then he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman +amphitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, looking down +on the encounter of two other flies, and all the glory of an imperial +court only a little spot of purple and gold, gleaming afar in the +sunshine. To the dreamer it was no surprise that this unknown theatre of +his dreams should be vast as the gladiatorial arena. And then came the +deep thunderous music of innumerable bass-viols and bassoons: and some +one told him it was the first night of a great tragedy. He felt the +breathless hush of expectation; the solemn bass music sank deeper; dark +curtains were drawn aside, with a motion slow and solemn, like the waving +of mountain pines, and there appeared a measureless stage, revealing a +moonlit expanse, thickly studded with the white headstones of unnumbered +graves, and on the foremost of these--revealed to him by what power he +knew not, since mortal sight could never have reached a point so +distant--he read the name of Charlotte Halliday. He awoke with a sharp +cry of pain. It was broad day, and the waves were dancing gaily in the +morning sunlight. He rose and dressed himself. Sleep, such as he had +known that night, was worse than the weariest waking. He went out into +the garden by-and-by, and paced slowly up and down the narrow pathways, +beside which box of a century's growth rose dark and high. Pale yellow +lights were in the upper windows. He wondered which of those sickly +tapers flickered on the face he loved so fondly. + +"It is only a year since I first saw her," he thought: "one year! And to +love her has been my 'liberal education;' to lose her would be my +desolation and despair." + +To lose her! His thoughts approached that dread possibility, but could +not realize it; not even yet. + +At eight o'clock Diana came to summon him to breakfast. + +"Shall I see Charlotte?" he asked. + +"No; for some time past she has not come down to breakfast." + +"What kind of night has she had?" + +"A very quiet night, she tells me; but I am not quite sure that she tells +me the truth, she is so afraid of giving us uneasiness." + +"She tells you. But do you not sleep in her room, now that she is so +ill?" + +"No. I was anxious to sleep on a sofa at the foot of her bed, and +proposed doing so, but Mr. Sheldon objects to my being in the room. He +thinks that Charlotte is more quiet entirely alone, and that there is +more air in the room with only one sleeper. Her illness is not of a kind +to require attention of any sort in the night." + +"Still I should have thought it better for her to have you with her, to +cheer and comfort her. + +"Believe me, Valentine, I wished to be with her." + +"I am sure of that, dear," he answered kindly. + +"It was only Mr. Sheldon's authority, as a man of some medical +experience, that conquered my wish." + +"Well, I suppose he is right. And now we must go in to breakfast. Ah, the +dreary regularity of these breakfasts and dinners, which go on just the +same when our hearts are breaking!" + +The breakfast was indeed a dreary soul-dispiriting meal. Farmhouse +luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home-cured bacon, abounded; but +no one had any inclination for these things. Valentine remembered the +homestead among the Yorkshire hills, with all the delight that he had +known there; and the "sorrow's crown of sorrow" was very bitter. Mr. +Sheldon gave his Sabbath-morning meditations to the study of a +Saturday-evening share-list; and Georgy plunged ever and anon into the +closely printed pages of a Dissenting preacher's biography, which she +declared to be "comforting." + +Diana and Valentine sat silent and anxious; and after the faintest +pretence of eating and drinking, they both left the table, to stroll +drearily in the garden. The bells were ringing cheerily from the grey +stone tower near at hand; but Valentine had no inclination for church on +this particular morning. Were not all his thoughts prayers--humble +piteous entreaties--for one priceless boon? + +"Will you see the doctor when he comes, and manage matters so as not to +alarm Charlotte?" he asked of Mr. Sheldon. That gentleman agreed to do +so, and went out into the little front-garden to lie in wait for the +great Doddleson--"Dowager Doddleson" as he was surnamed by some +irreverent unbelievers. + +A St. Leonards fly brought the doctor while the bells were still ringing +for morning service. Mr. Sheldon received him at the gate; and explained +the motive of his summons. + +The doctor was full of pompous solicitude about "our sweet young +patient." + +"Really one of the most interesting cases I ever had upon my hands," +the West-end physician said blandly; "as I was remarking to a very +charming patient of mine--in point of fact, the amiable and +accomplished Countess of Kassel-Kumberterre, only last Tuesday +morning. A case so nearly resembling the Countess's own condition as to +be highly interesting to her." + +"I really ought to apologize for bringing you down," said Mr. Sheldon, as +he led the doctor into the house. "I only consented to your being sent +for in order to tranquillize this young fellow Hawkehurst, who is engaged +to my daughter; a rising man, I believe, in his own particular line, but +rather wild and impracticable. There is really no change for the worse, +absolutely none; and as we have not been here more than three days, there +has been positively no opportunity for testing the effect of change and +sea air, and so on." + +This seemed rather like giving the learned physician his cue. And there +were those among Dr. Doddleson's professional rivals who said that the +worthy doctor was never slow to take a cue so given, not being prejudiced +by any opinions of his own. + +Charlotte had by this time been established in her easy-chair by the open +window of the sitting-room, and here Dr. Doddleson saw her, in the +presence of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon; and here Dr. Doddleson went through the +usual Abracadabra of his art, and assented to the opinions advanced, with +all deference, by Mr. Sheldon. + +To Georgy this interview, in which Mr. Sheldon's opinions were pompously +echoed by the West-end physician, proved even more comforting than the +benignant career of the Dissenting minister, who was wont to allude to +that solemn passing hence of which the ancients spoke in dim suggestive +phrase, as "going upstairs." + +Diana and Valentine strolled in the garden while the physician saw his +patient. Dr. Doddleson's ponderous polysyllables floated out upon the +summer air like the droning of a humble-bee. It was a relief to Valentine +to know that the doctor was with his patient: but he had no intention to +let that gentleman depart unquestioned. + +"I will take no secondhand information," he thought; "I will hear this +man's opinion from his own lips." + +He went round to the front of the house directly the droning had ceased, +and was in the way when Dr. Doddleson and Mr. Sheldon came out of the +rose-hung porch. + +"If you have no objection," he said to Mr. Sheldon, "I should like to ask +Dr. Doddleson a few questions." + +"_I_ have no objection," replied the stockbroker; "but it is really +altogether such an unusual thing, and I doubt if Dr. Doddleson will +consent to--" + +And here he cast a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who should say, +"Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand go entirely unwarranted +by precedent?" + +Dowager Doddleson was eminently good-natured. + +"And this is our sweet young friend's _fiancé_," he said; "dear +me--dee-ar me!" + +And then he looked at Valentine with bland pale-blue eyes that twinkled +behind his gold-framed spectacles; while Valentine was taking his +measure, so far as the measure of any man's moral and intellectual force +can be taken by the eyes of another man. "And this is the man who is +chosen to snatch my darling from the jaws of death!" he said to himself, +with burning rage in his heart, while the amiable physician repeated +blandly: + +"And this is our sweet young patient's _fiancé_. Dee-ar me, how very +interesting!" + +The three men strolled round to the garden behind the house, Mr. Sheldon +close at the physician's elbow. + +"For God's sake tell me the truth, Dr. Doddleson!" said Valentine in a +low hoarse voice, directly they were beyond ear-shot of the house. "I am +a man, and I can steel myself to hear the worst you can tell." + +"But really, Hawkehurst, there is no occasion for this kind of thing," +interjected Philip Sheldon; "Dr. Doddleson agrees with me, that the case +is one of extreme languor, and no more." + +"Unquestionably," said the doctor in a fat voice. + +"And Dr. Doddleson also coincides with me in the opinion that all we can +do is to wait the reviving influence of sea-air." + +"Undoubtedly," said the doctor, with a solemn nod. + +"And is this all?" asked Valentine hopelessly. + +"My dear sir, what else can I say?" said the doctor; "as my good friend +Mr. Sheldon has just remarked, there is extreme languor; and as my good +friend Mr. Sheldon further observes, we must await the effect of change +of air. The--aw--invigorating sea-breezes, the--aw--enlivening influence +of new surroundings, and--aw--so forth. Dr. Poseidon, my dear sir, is a +very valuable coadjutor." + +"And you think your patient no worse, Dr. Doddleson?" + +"The doctor has just left Mrs. Sheldon much comforted by his assurance +that her daughter is better," said the stockbroker. + +"No, no!" exclaimed Dr. Doddleson; "no, no! _there_ my good friend Mr. +Sheldon somewhat misrepresents me. I said that our patient was not +obviously worse. I did not say that our patient was better. There is a +dilatation of the pupil of the eye which I don't quite understand." + +"Mental excitement," said Mr. Sheldon, somewhat hastily; "Charlotte is +nervous to an extreme degree, and your sudden arrival was calculated to +shake her nerves." + +"Undoubtedly," rejoined the doctor; "and it is unquestionable that such a +dilatation of the pupil might, under certain circumstances, be occasioned +by mental excitement. I am sorry to find that our patient's attacks of +dizziness--" + +"Which are purely the effect of fancy," interjected Mr. Sheldon. + +"Which are no doubt, in some measure, attributable to a hypochondriacal +condition of mind," continued the doctor in his fat voice. "I am sorry to +find that this periodical dizziness has been somewhat increased of late. +But here again we must look to Dr. Poseidon. Tepid sea-baths, if they can +be managed, in the patient's own room; and by-and-by a dip in the waves +yonder, may do wonders." + +Valentine asked no further questions; and the physician departed in the +St. Leonards fly, to turn his excursion to profitable use by calling on +two or three dowagers in Warrior Square and Marina, who would doubtless +be glad of an unexpected visit from their pet doctor. + +"Well, Hawkehurst," said Mr. Sheldon, when the fly had driven away, "I +hope you are satisfied now?" + +"Satisfied!" cried Valentine; "yes, I am satisfied that your stepdaughter +is being murdered!" + +"Murdered!" echoed the stockbroker, his voice thick and faint; but +Valentine did not heed the change in it. + +"Yes, murdered--sacrificed to the utter incompetence of that old idiot +who has just left us." + +Philip Sheldon drew a long breath. + +"What!" he exclaimed; "do you doubt Doddleson's skill?" + +"Do you believe in it? Do you? No; I cannot think that a man of your keen +perception in all other matters--half a medical man yourself--can be the +dupe of so shallow an impostor. And it is to that man's judgment my +darling's life has been confided; and it is to that man I have looked, +with hope and comfort in the thought of his power to save my treasure! +Good God! what a reed on which to rely! And of all the medical men of +London, this is the one you have chosen!" + +"I must really protest against this rant, Hawkehurst," said Philip +Sheldon. "I hold myself responsible for the selection which I made, and +will not have that selection questioned in this violent and outrageous +manner by you. Your anxiety for Charlotte's recovery may excuse a great +deal, but it cannot excuse this kind of thing; and if you cannot command +yourself better, I must beg you to absent yourself from my house until my +stepdaughter's recovery puts an end to all this fuss." + +"Do you believe in Dr. Doddleson's skill?" asked Valentine doggedly. He +wanted to have that question answered at any cost. + +"Most decidedly I do, with the rest of the medical world. My choice of +this gentleman as Charlotte's adviser was governed by his reputation as a +safe and conscientious man. His opinions are sound, trustworthy--" + +"His opinions!" cried Valentine with a bitter laugh; "what in heaven's +name do you call his opinions? The only opinions I could extract from him +to-day were solemn echoes of yours. And the man himself! I took the +measure of him before I asked him a question; and physiology is a lie if +that man is anything better than an impostor." + +"His position is the answer to that." + +"His position is no answer. He is not the first impostor who has attained +position, and is not likely to be the last. You must forgive me, if I +speak with some violence, Mr. Sheldon. I feel too deeply to remember the +conventionalities of my position. The dear girl yonder, hovering between +life and death, is my promised wife. As your stepdaughter she is very +dear to you, no doubt, and you are of course anxious to do your duty as +her stepfather. But she is all the world to me--my one sweet memory of +the past, my sole hope for the future. I will not trust her to the care +of Dr. Doddleson; I claim the right to choose another physician--as that +man's coadjutor, if you please. I have no wish to offend the doctor of +your choice." + +"This is all sheer nonsense," said Mr. Sheldon. + +"It is nonsense about which you must let me have my own way," replied +Valentine, resolutely. "My stake on this hazard is too heavy for careless +play. I shall go back to town at once and seek out a physician." + +"Do you know any great man?" + +"No; but I will find one." + +"If you go today, you will inevitably alarm Charlotte." + +"True; and disappoint her into the bargain. I suppose in such a case +tomorrow will do as well as to-day?" + +"Decidedly." + +"I can go by the first train, and return with my doctor in the afternoon. +Yes, I will go tomorrow." + +Mr. Sheldon breathed more freely. There are cases in which to obtain time +for thought seems the one essential thing--cases in which a reprieve is +as good as a pardon. + +"Pray let us consider this business quietly," he said, with a faint sigh +of weariness. "There is no necessity for all this excitement. You can go +to town to-morrow, by the first train, as you say. If it is any +satisfaction to you to bring down a physician, bring one; bring half a +dozen, if you please. But, for the last time, I most emphatically assure +you that anything that tends to alarm Charlotte is the one thing of all +others most sure to hinder her recovery." + +"I know that. She shall not be frightened; but she shall have a better +adviser than Dr. Doddleson. And now I will go back to the house. She will +wonder at my absence." + +He went to the bright, airy room where Charlotte was seated, her head +lying back upon the pillows, her face paler, her glances and tones more +languid than on the previous day as it seemed to Valentine. Diana was +near her, solicitous and tender; and on the other side of the window sat +Mrs. Sheldon, with her Dissenting minister's biography open on her lap. + +All through that day Valentine Hawkehurst played his part bravely: it was +a hard and bitter part to play--the part of hope and confidence while +unutterable fears were rending his heart. He read the epistle and gospel +of the day to his betrothed; and afterwards some chapters of St. +John--those profoundly mournful chapters that foreshadow the agonising +close. It was Charlotte who selected these chapters, and her lover could +find no excuse for disputing her choice. + +It was the first time that they had shared any religious exercise, and +the hearts of both were deeply touched by the thought of this. + +"How frivolous all our talk must have been, Valentine, when it seems so +new to us to be reading these beautiful words together?" + +Her head was half supported by the pillows, half resting on her lover's +shoulder, and her eyes travelled along the lines as he read, in a calm +low voice, which was unbroken to the end. + +Early in the evening Charlotte retired, worn out by the day's physical +weariness, in spite of Valentine's fond companionship. Later, when it was +dusk, Diana came downstairs with the news that the invalid was sleeping +quietly. Mrs. Sheldon was dozing in her arm-chair, the Dissenting +minister having fallen to the ground; and Valentine was leaning, with +folded arms, on the broad window-sill looking out into the shadowy +garden. Mr. Sheldon had given them very little of his society during that +day. He went out immediately after his interview with Valentine, on a +sea-coast ramble, which lasted till dinner-time. After dinner he remained +in the room where they had dined. He was there now. The light of the +candles, by which he read his papers, shone out upon the dusk. + +"Will you come for a stroll with me, Diana?" asked Valentine. + +Miss Paget assented promptly; and they went out into the garden, beyond +the reach of Mr. Sheldon's ears, had that gentleman been disposed to +place himself at his open window in the character of a listener. + +"I want to tell you my plans about Charlotte," Valentine began. "I am +going to London to-morrow to search for a greater physician than Dr. +Doddleson. I shall find my man in an hour or so; and, if possible, shall +return with him in the evening. There is no apparent reason to anticipate +any sudden change for the worse; but if such a change should take place, +I rely on you, dear, to give me the earliest tidings of it. I suppose you +can get a fly here, if you want one?" + +"I can get to St. Leonards, if that is what you mean," Miss Paget +answered promptly. "I dare say there is a fly to be had; if not, I can +walk there. I am not afraid of a few miles' walk, by day or night. If +there should be a change, Valentine--which God forbid--I will telegraph +the tidings of it to you." + +"You had better address the message to me at Rancy's, Covent Garden; the +house where the Ragamuffins have their rooms, you know, dear. That is a +more central point than my lodgings, and nearer the terminus. I will call +there two or three times in the course of the day." + +"You may trust my vigilance, Valentine. I did not think it was in my +nature to love any one as I love Charlotte Halliday." + +Gustave Lenoble's letters lying unanswered in her desk asserted the +all-absorbing nature of Diana's affection for the fading girl. She _was_ +fading. The consciousness of this made all other love sacrilege, as it +seemed to Diana. She sat up late that night to answer Gustave's last +letter of piteous complaint. + +"She had forgotten him. Ah, that he had been foolish--insensate--to +confide himself in her love! Was he not old and grey in comparison to +such youth--such freshness--a venerable dotard of thirty-five? What had +he with dreams of love and marriage? Fie, then. He humiliated himself in +the dust beneath her _mignon_ feet. He invited her to crush him with +those cruel feet. But if she did not answer his letters, he would come to +Harold's Hill. He would mock himself of that ferocious Sheldon--of a +battalion of Sheldons still more ferocious--of all the world, at +last--to be near her." + +"Believe me, dear Gustave, I do not forget," wrote Diana, in reply to +these serio-comic remonstrances. "I was truly sorry to leave town, on +your account and on my father's. But my dear adopted sister is paramount +with me now. You will not grudge her my care or my love, for she may not +long be with me to claim them. There is nothing but sorrow here in all +our hearts; sorrow, and an ever-present dread." + + + + +Book the Eighth. + + + +A FIGHT AGAINST TIME. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +A DREAD REVELATION. + +The early fast train by which Valentine Hawkehurst travelled brought him +into town at a quarter past nine o'clock. During the journey he had been +meditating on the way in which he should set to work when he arrived in +London. No ignorance could be more profound than his on all points +relating to the medical profession. Dimly floating in his brain there +were the names of doctors whom he had heard of as celebrated men--one for +the chest, another for the liver, another for the skin, another for the +eyes; but, among all these famous men, who was the man best able to cope +with the mysterious wasting away, the gradual, almost imperceptible +ebbing of that one dear life which Valentine wanted to save? + +This question must be answered by some one; and Valentine was sorely +puzzled as to who that some one must be. + +The struggling young writer had but few friends. He had, indeed, worked +too hard for the possibility of friendship. The cultivation of the +severer Muses is rarely compatible with a wide circle of acquaintances; +and Valentine, if not a cultivator of these severe ones, had been a hard +and honest worker during the later reputable portion of his life. His +friendships of the previous portion had been the friendships of the +railway-carriage and the smoking room, the _café_ and the gaming-table. +He could count upon his fingers the people to whom he could apply for +counsel in this crisis of his life. There was George Sheldon, a man for +whom he entertained a most profound contempt; Captain Paget, a man who +might or might not be able to give him good advice, but who would +inevitably sacrifice Charlotte Halliday's welfare to self-interest, if +self-interest could be served by the recommendation of an incompetent +adviser. + +"He would send me to some idiot of the Doddleson class, if he thought he +could get a guinea or a dinner by the recommendation," Valentine said to +himself, and decided that to Horatio Paget he would not apply. There were +his employers, the editors and proprietors of the magazines for which he +worked; all busy over-burdened workers in the great mill, spending the +sunny hours of their lives between a pile of unanswered letters and a +waste-paper basket; men who would tell him to look in the Post-office +Directory, without lifting their eyes from the paper over which their +restless pens were speeding. + +No. Amongst these was not the counsellor whom Valentine Hawkehurst needed +in this dire hour of difficulty. + +"There are some very good fellows among the Ragamuffins," he said to +himself, as he thought of the only literary and artistic club of which he +was a member; "fellows who stuck by me when I was down in the world, and +who would do anything to serve me now they know me for an honest worker. +But, unfortunately, farce writers and burlesque writers, and young +meerschaum-smoking painters, are not the sort of men to give good advice: +I want the advice of a medical man." + +Mr. Hawkehurst almost bounded from his seat as he said this. The advice +of a medical man? Yes; and was there not a medical man among the +Ragamuffins? and something more than a medical man? That very doctor, who +of all other men upon this earth could best give him counsel--the doctor +who had stood by the deathbed of Charlotte Halliday's father. + +He remembered the conversation that had occurred at Bayswater, on the +evening of Christmas day, upon this very subject. He remembered how from +the talk about ghosts they had drifted somehow into talking of Tom +Halliday; whereupon Mrs. Sheldon had been melted to tears, and had gone +on to praise Philip Sheldon's conduct to his dying friend, and to speak +of Mr. Burkham, the strange doctor, called in too late to save, or, it +might have been, incapable to save. + +"Sheldon seems to have a genius for calling in incapable doctors," he +thought bitterly. + +Incapable as Mr. Burkham might have been for the exigencies of this +particular case, he would at least be able to inform Valentine who among +the medical celebrities of London would be best adapted to advise in such +an illness as Charlotte Halliday's. + +"And if, as Diana has sometimes suggested, there is any hereditary +disease, this Burkham may be able to throw some light upon the nature of +it," thought Valentine. + +He went straight from the railway terminus to the quiet tavern upon the +first floor of which the Ragamuffins had their place of rendezvous. It +was not an hour for the encounter of many Ragamuffins. A meek-looking +young man, of clerical aspect, who had adapted a Palais Royal farce, and +had awoke in the morning to find himself famous, and eligible for +admission amongst the Ragamuffins, was sipping his sherry and soda-water +while he skimmed the morning papers. Him Mr. Hawkehurst saluted with an +absent nod, and went in search of the steward of the club, from whom he +obtained Mr. Burkham's address, with some little trouble in the way of +hunting through old and obscure documents. + +It was the old address; the old dingy, comfortable, muffin-bell-haunted +street in which Mr. Burkham had lived ten years before, when he was +summoned to attend the sick Yorkshire farmer. + +Mr. Burkham's career had not been brightened by the sunshine of +prosperity. He had managed to live somehow, and to find food and raiment +for his young wife, who, when she considered the lilies of the field, may +have envied their shining robes of pure whiteness, so dingy and dark was +her own apparel. When children came, the young surgeon contrived to find +food and raiment for them also, but not without daily and hourly +struggles with that grim wolf who haunts the thresholds of so many +dwellings, and will not be thrust from the door. Sometimes a little +glimmering ray of light illumined Mr. Burkham's pathway, and he was +humbly grateful to Providence for the brief glimpse of sunshine. But for +a meek fair-faced man, with a nervous desire to do well, a very poor +opinion of his own merits, and a diffident, not to say depressed manner, +the world is apt to be a hard battle-ground. + +Mr. Burkham sometimes found himself well-nigh beaten in the cruel strife; +and at such times, in the dead silence of the night, with mortal agonies, +and writhings as of Pythoness upon tripod, Mr. Burkham gave himself up to +the composition of a farce, adapted, not from the French, but from his +memories of Wright and Bedford in the jovial old student days, when the +pit of the Adelphi Theatre had been the pleasant resort of his evenings. +He could no longer afford the luxury of theatrical entertainments, except +when provided with a free admission. But from the hazy reminiscences +floating in his poor tired brain he concocted little pieces which he +fondly hoped might win him money and fame. + +With much effort and interest he contrived to get himself elected a +Ragamuffin; believing that to be a Ragmuffin was to secure a position as +a dramatic writer. But with one or two fortunate exceptions, his pieces +were refused. The managers would not have the poor little feeble +phantasmagoria of bygone fun, even supported by the whole clan of +Ragamuffins. So Mr. Burkham had gradually melted into the dimness of +Bloomsbury, and haunted the club-room of the Ragamuffins no more. + +A hansom carried Valentine Hawkehurst swiftly to these regions of +Bloomsbury. It was no time for the saving of cab-hire. The soldier +of fortune thought no longer of his nest-eggs--his Unitas Bank +deposit-notes. He was fighting with time and with death; foes dire and +dreadful, against whose encroachments the sturdiest of mortal warriors +can make but a feeble stand. He found the dingy-looking house in the +dingy-looking street; and the humble drudge who opened the door informed +him that Mr. Burkham was at home, and ushered him into a darksome and +dreary surgery at the back of the house, where a phrenological head, +considerably the worse for London smoke, surmounted a dingy bookcase +filled with the dingiest of books. A table, upon which were a +blotting-book and inkstand, and two shabby horsehair chairs, composed the +rest of the furniture. Valentine sent his card to the surgeon, and seated +himself on one of the horsehair chairs, to await that gentleman's +appearance. + +He came after a brief delay, which seemed long to his visitor. He came +from regions in the back of the house, rubbing his hands, which seemed +to have been newly washed, and the odour of senna and aloes hung about +his garments. + +"I doubt if you remember my name, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine; "but you +and I are members of the same club, and that a club among the members of +which considerable good feeling prevails. I come to ask a favour"--Mr. +Burkham winced, for this sounded like genteel begging, and for genteel +beggars this struggling surgeon had no spare cash--"which it will +scarcely cause you a moment's thought to grant. I am in great +distress"--Mr. Burkham winced again, for this sounded still more like +begging--"mental distress"--Mr. Burkham gave a little sigh of +relief--"and I come to you for advice." Mr. Burkham gave a more profound +sigh of relief. + +"I can assure you that my best advice is at your command," he said, +seating himself, and motioning to his visitor to be seated. "I am +beginning to remember your face amongst the members of the club, though +the name on your card did not strike me as familiar. You see, I have +never been able to afford much time for relaxation at the Ragamuffins', +though I assure you I found the agreeable conversation there, the +literary _on dits_, and so on, a very great relief. But my own little +efforts in the dramatic line were not successful, and I found myself +compelled to devote myself more to my profession. And now I have said +quite enough about myself; let me hear how I can be useful to you." + +"In the first place, let me ask you a question. Do you know anything of a +certain Dr. Doddleson?" + +"Of Plantagenet Square?" + +"Yes; of Plantagenet Square." + +"Well, not much. I have heard him called Dowager Doddleson; and I believe +he is very popular among hypochondriac old ladies who have more money +than they know what to do with, and very little common sense to regulate +their disposal of it." + +"Is Dr. Doddleson a man to whom you would intrust the life of your +dearest friend?" + +"Most emphatically no!" cried the surgeon, growing red with excitement. + +"Very well, Mr. Burkham; my dearest friend, a young lady--well, in plain +truth, the woman who was to have been my wife, and whom I love as it is +not the lot of every plighted wife to be loved--this dear girl has been +wasting away for the last two or three months under the influence of an +inscrutable malady, and Dr. Doddleson is the only man called to attend +her in all that time." + +"A mistake!" said Mr. Burkham, gravely; "a very great mistake! Dr. +Doddleson lives in a fine square, and drives a fine carriage, and has a +reputation amongst the class I have spoken of; but he is about the last +man I would consult as to the health of any one dear to me." + +"That is precisely the opinion which I formed after ten minutes' +conversation with him. Now, what I want from you, Mr. Burkham, is the +name and address of the man to whom I can intrust this dear girl's life." + +"Let me see. There are so many men, you know, and great men. Is it a case +of consumption?" + +"No, thank God!" + +"Heart-disease, perhaps?" + +"No; there is no organic disease. It is a languor--a wasting away." + +Mr. Burkham suggested other diseases whereof the outward sign was languor +and wasting. + +"No," replied Valentine; "according to Dr. Doddleson there is actually no +disease--nothing but this extreme prostration--this gradual vanishing of +vital power. And now I come to another point upon which I want your +advice. It has been suggested that this constitutional weakness may be +inherited; and here I think you can help me." + +"How so?" + +"You attended the lady's father." + +"Indeed!" cried Mr. Burkham, delighted. "This is really interesting. In +what year did I attend this gentleman? If you will allow me, I will refer +to some of my old case-books." + +He drew out a clumsy drawer in the clumsy table, in order to hunt for old +memoranda. + +"I am not quite certain as to the year," answered Valentine; "but it was +more than ten years ago. The gentleman died close by here, in Fitzgeorge +Street. His name was Halliday." + +Mr. Burkham had drawn out the drawer to its farthest extent. As Valentine +pronounced this name, he let it drop to the ground with a crash, and sat, +statue-like, staring at the speaker. All other names given to mortal man +he might forget; but this one never. Valentine saw the sudden horror in +his face, before he could recompose his features into something of their +conventional aspect. + +"Yes," he said, looking down at the fallen drawer with its scattered +papers and case-books, "yes, I have some recollection of the name of +Halliday." + +"Some very strange and agitating recollection it would seem by your +manner, Mr. Burkham," said Valentine, at once assured that there was +something more than common in the surgeon's look and gesture; and +determined to fathom the mystery, let it be what it might. + +"O dear no," said the surgeon nervously; "I was not agitated, only +surprised. It was surprising to me to hear the name of a patient so long +forgotten. And so the lady to whom you are engaged is a daughter of Mr. +Halliday's? The wife--Mrs. Halliday--is still living, I suppose?" + +"Yes; but the lady who was then Mrs. Halliday is now Mrs. Sheldon." + +"Of course; he married her," said Mr. Burkham. "Yes; I remember hearing +of the marriage." + +He had tried in vain to recover his old composure. He was white to the +lips, and his hand shook as he tried to arrange his scattered papers. + +"What does it mean?" thought Valentine. "Mrs. Sheldon talked of this +man's inexperience. Can it be that his incompetency lost the life of his +patient, and that he knows it was so?" + +"Mrs. Halliday is now Mrs. Sheldon," repeated the surgeon, in a feeble +manner. "Yes, I remember; and Mr. Sheldon--the dentist, who at that time +resided in Fitzgeorge Street--is he still living?" + +"He is still living. It was he who called in Dr. Doddleson to attend upon +Miss Halliday. As her stepfather, he has some amount of authority, you +see; not legal authority--for my dear girl is of age--but social +authority. He called in Doddleson, and appears to place confidence in +him; and as he is something of a medical man himself, and pretends to +understand Miss Halliday's case thoroughly--" + +"Stop!" cried Mr. Burkham, suddenly abandoning all pretence of calmness. +"Has he--Sheldon--any interest in his stepdaughter's death?" + +"No, certainly not. All her father's money went to him upon his marriage +with her mother. He can gain nothing by her death; on the contrary, he +may lose a good deal, for she is the heir-at-law to a large fortune." + +"And if she dies, that fortune will go--" + +"I really don't know where it will go," Valentine answered carelessly: +he thought the subject was altogether beside the question of Mr. +Burkham's agitation, and it was the cause of that agitation which he was +anxious to discover. + +"If Mr. Sheldon can gain by his stepdaughter's death, fear him!" +exclaimed the surgeon, with sudden passion; "fear him as you would fear +death itself--worse than death, for death is neither so stealthy nor so +treacherous as he is!" + +"What in Heaven's name do you mean?" + +"That which I thought my lips would never utter to mortal hearing--that +which I dare not publicly proclaim, at the hazard of taking the bread out +of the mouths of my wife and children. I have kept this hateful secret +for eleven years--through many a sleepless night and dreary day. I will +tell it to you; for if there is another life in peril, that life shall be +lost through no cowardice of mine." + +"What secret?" cried Valentine. + +"The secret of that poor fellow's death. My God! I can remember the clasp +of his hand, and the friendly look of his eyes, the day before he died. +He was poisoned by Philip Sheldon!" + +"You must be mad!" gasped Valentine, in a faint voice. + +For one moment of astonishment and incredulity he thought this man must +needs be a fool or a lunatic, so wildly improbable did the accusation +seem. But in the next instant the curtain was lifted, and he knew that +Philip Sheldon was a villain, and knew that he had never wholly trusted +him. + +"Never until to-day have I told this secret," said the surgeon; "not even +to my wife." + +"I thank you," answered Valentine, in the same faint voice; "with all my +heart, I thank you." + +Yes, the curtain was lifted. This mysterious illness, this slow silent +decay of bloom and beauty, by a process inscrutable as the devilry of +medieval poisoner or Hecate-serving witch--this was murder. Murder! The +disease, which had hitherto been nameless, had found its name at last. It +was all clear now. Philip Sheldon's anxiety; the selection of an utterly +incompetent adviser; certain looks and tones that had for a moment +mystified him, and had been forgotten in the next, came back to him with +a strange distinctness, with all their hidden meaning made clear and +plain as the broad light of day. + +But the motive? What motive could prompt the slow destruction of that +innocent life? A fortune was at stake, it is true; but that fortune, as +Valentine understood the business, depended on the life of Charlotte +Halliday. Beyond this point he had never looked. In all his consideration +of the circumstances relating to the Haygarthian estate, he had never +thought of what might happen in the event of Charlotte's decease. + +"It is a diabolical mystery," he said to himself. "There can be no +motive--_none_. To destroy Thomas Halliday was to clear his way to +fortune; to destroy Charlotte is to destroy his chance of fortune." + +And then he remembered the dark speeches of George Sheldon. + +"My God! and this was what he meant, as plainly as he dared tell me! He +did tell me that his brother was an unutterable scoundrel; and I turned a +deaf ear to his warning, because it suited my own interest to believe +that villain. For her dear sake I believed him. I would have believed in +Beelzebub, if he had promised me her dear hand. And I let myself be duped +by the lying promise, and left my darling in the power of Beelzebub!" + +Thoughts followed each other swift as lightning through his overwrought +brain. It seemed but a moment that he had been sitting with his +clenched hands pressed against his forehead, when he turned suddenly +upon the surgeon. + +"For God's sake, help me, guide me!" he said. "You have struck a blow +that has numbed my senses. What am I to do? My future wife is in that +man's keeping--dying, as I believe. How am I to save her?" + +"I cannot tell you. You may take the cleverest man in London to see her; +but it is a question if that man will perceive the danger so clearly as +to take prompt measures. In these cases there is always room for doubt; +and a man would rather doubt his own perceptions than believe the hellish +truth. It is by this natural hesitation so many lives are lost. While the +doctor deliberates, the patient dies. And then, if the secret of the +death transpires--by circumstantial evidence, perhaps, which never came +to the doctor's knowledge,--there is a public outcry. The doctor's +practice is ruined, and his heart broken. The outcry would have been +still louder if he had told the truth in time to save the patient, and +had not been able to prove his words. You think me a coward and a +scoundrel because I dared not utter my suspicion when I saw Mr. Halliday +dying. While it was only a suspicion it would have been certain ruin for +me to give utterance to it. The day came when it was almost a conviction. +I went back to that man Sheldon's house, determined to insist upon the +calling in of a physician who would have made that conviction certainty. +My resolution came too late. It is possible that Sheldon had perceived my +suspicions, and had hastened matters. My patient was dead before I +reached the house." + +"How am I to save her?" repeated Valentine, with the same helpless +manner. He could not bring himself to consider Tom Halliday's death. The +subject was too far away from him--remote as the dim shadows of departed +centuries. In all the universe there were but two figures standing out in +lurid brightness against the dense night of chaos--a helpless girl held +in the clutches of a secret assassin; and it was his work to rescue her. + +"What am I to do?" he asked. "Tell me what I am to do." + +"What it may be wisest to do I cannot tell you," answered Mr. Burkham, +almost as helplessly as the other had asked the question. "I can give you +the name of the best man to get to the bottom of such a case--a man who +gave evidence on the Fryar trial--Jedd. You have heard of Jedd, I +daresay. You had better go straight to Jedd, and take him down with you +to Miss Halliday. His very name will frighten Sheldon." + +"I will go at once. Stay--the address! Where am I to find Dr. Jedd?" + +"In Burlington Row. But there is one thing to be considered." + +"What?" + +"The interference of Jedd may only make that man desperate. He may hasten +matters now as he hastened matters before. If you had seen his coolness +at that time; if you had seen him, as I saw him, standing by that poor +fellow's deathbed, comforting him--yes, with friendly speeches--laughing +and joking, watching the agonising pain and the miserable sickness, and +all the dreary wretchedness of such a death, and _never_ swerving from +his work; if you had seen him, you would understand why I am afraid to +advise you. That man was as desperate as he was cool when he murdered his +friend. He will be more reckless this time." + +"Why?" + +"Because he has reached a higher stage in the science of murder. The +symptoms of that poor Yorkshireman were the symptoms of arsenical +poisoning; the symptoms of which you have told me to-day denote a +vegetable poison. _That_ affords very vague diagnosis, and leaves no +trace. That was the agent which enabled the Borgias to decimate Rome. +It is older than classic Greece, and simple as _a b c_, and will remain +so until the medical expert is a recognized officer of the law, the +faithful guardian of the bed over which the suspected poisoner +loiters--past-master of the science in which the murderer is rarely more +than an experimentalist, and protected from all the hazards of plain +speaking by the nature of his office." + +"Great Heaven, how am I to save her?" exclaimed Valentine. He could not +contemplate the subject in its broad social aspect; he could only think +of this one dear life at stake. "To send this Dr. Jedd might be to hasten +her death; to send a less efficient man would be mere childishness. WHAT +shall I do?" + +He looked despairingly at the surgeon, and in that one glance perceived +what a frail reed this was upon which he was leaning. And then, like +the sudden gleam of lightning, a name flashed across his mind,--George +Sheldon, the lawyer, the schemer, the man who of all the world best +knew this vile enemy and assassin against whom he was matched; he it +was of whom counsel should be asked in this crisis. Once perceiving +this, Valentine was prompt to act. It was the first flash of light in +the darkness. + +"You mean to stand by me in this, don't you?" he asked Mr. Burkham. + +"With all my heart and soul." + +"Good. Then you must go to Dr. Jedd instantly. Tell him all you know--Tom +Halliday's death; the symptoms of Charlotte's decline, as you have heard +them from me--_everything_; and let him hold himself in readiness to +start for Hastings directly he hears from or sees me. I am going to a man +who of all men can tell me how to deal with Philip Sheldon. I shall try +to be in Burlington Row in an hour from this time; but in any case you +will wait there till I come. I suppose, in a desperate case like this, +Dr. Jedd will put aside all less urgent work?" + +"No doubt of that." + +"I trust to you to secure his sympathy," said Valentine. + +He was in the darksome entrance-hall by this time. Mr. Burkham followed, +and opened the door for him. + +"Have no fear of me," he said. "Good bye." + +The two men shook hands with a grip significant as masonic sign-manual. +It meant on the one part hearty co-operation, on the other implicit +confidence. In the next moment Valentine sprang into the cab. + +"King's Road--entrance to Gray's Inn, and drive like mad!" he shouted to +the driver. The hansom rattled across the stones, dashed round corners, +struck consternation to scudding children in pinafores, all but +annihilated more than one perambulator, and in less than ten minutes +after leaving Mr. Burkham's door, ground against the kerbstone before the +little gate of Gray's Inn. + +"God grant that George Sheldon may be at home!" Valentine said to +himself, as he hurried towards that gentleman's office. George Sheldon +was at home. In this fight against time, Mr. Hawkehurst had so far found +the odds in his favour. + +"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the lawyer, looking up from his desk, as +Valentine appeared on the threshold of the door, pale and breathless; "to +what do I owe the unusual honour of a visit from Mr. Hawkehurst? I +thought that rising _littérateur_ had cut all old acquaintances, and gone +in for the upper circles." + +"I have come to you on a matter of life and death, George Sheldon," said +Valentine; "this is no time to talk of why I haven't been to you before. +When you and I last met, you advised me to beware of your brother Philip. +It wasn't the first, or the second, or the third time that you so warned +me. And now speak out like an honest man, and tell me what you meant by +that warning? For God's sake, speak plainly this time." + +"I cannot afford to speak more plainly than I have spoken half a dozen +times already. I told you to beware of my brother Phil, and I meant that +warning in its fullest significance. If you had chosen to take my advice, +you would have placed Charlotte Halliday's fortune, and Charlotte +Halliday herself, beyond his power, by an immediate marriage. You didn't +choose to do that, and there was an end of the matter. I have been a +heavy loser by your pigheaded obstinacy; and I dare say before you and +Phil Sheldon have done with each other, you too will find yourself a +loser." + +"God help me, yes!" cried Valentine, with a groan; "I stand to make the +heaviest loss that was ever made by man." + +"What do you mean?" exclaimed George. + +"Shall I tell you what you meant when you warned me against your own +brother? Shall I tell you why you so warned me? You know that Philip +Sheldon murdered Tom Halliday." + +"Great God!" + +"Yes; the secret is out. You knew it; how or when you discovered it I +cannot tell. You knew of that one hellish crime, and would have prevented +the commission of a second murder. You should have spoken more plainly. +To know what you knew, and to confine yourself to cautious hints and +vague suggestions, as you did, was to have part in that devilish work. If +Charlotte Halliday dies, her blood be upon your head--upon yours--as well +as upon his!" + +The young man had risen in his passion, and stood before George Sheldon +with uplifted hands, and eyes that flashed angry lightnings. It seemed +almost as if he would have called down the Divine vengeance upon this +man's head. + +"If Charlotte Halliday dies!" repeated George, in a horror-stricken +whisper; "why should you suggest such a thing?" + +"Because she is dying." + +There was a pause. Valentine flung himself passionately upon the chair +from which he had just risen, with his back to George Sheldon, and his +face bent over the back of the chair. The lawyer sat looking straight +before him, with a ghastly countenance. + +"I told him he meant _this_," he said to himself, in a hoarse whisper. "I +told him in this office not six months ago. Powers of hell, what a +villain he is! And there are people who do not believe there is a devil!" + +For a few moments Valentine gave free vent to his passion of grief. These +tears of rage, of agony the most supreme, were the first he had shed +since he had bent his face over Charlotte's soft brown hair, to hide the +evidence of his sorrow. When he had dashed these bitter drops away from +his burning eyes, he turned to confront George Sheldon, pale as death, +but very calm. And after this he gave way no more to his passion. He was +matched against Time, of all enemies the most pitiless and unrelenting, +and every minute wasted was a point scored by his foe. + +"I want your help, George Sheldon," he said. "If you have ever been sorry +that you made no effort to save Charlotte Halliday's father, prove +yourself his friend by trying to save her." + +"_If_ I have ever been sorry!" echoed the lawyer. "Why, my miserable +dreams have never been free from the horror of that man's face. You don't +know what it is--murder! Nobody knows who hasn't been concerned in it. +You read of murders in your newspapers. A shot B, or C poisoned D, and so +on, all through the letters of the alphabet, with a fresh batch for every +Sunday; but it never comes home to you. You think of the horror of it in +a shadowy kind of way, as you might think of having a snake twisted round +your waist and legs, like that blessed man and boys one never sees the +last of. But if you were to look at that plaster cast all your life, you +couldn't realize ten per cent of the horror you'd feel if the snake was +_there_, alive, crushing your bones, and hissing in your ear. I have been +face to face with murder, Valentine Hawkehurst; and if I were to live a +century, I should never forget what I felt when I stood by Tom Halliday's +deathbed, and it flashed upon me, all at once, that my brother Phil was +poisoning him." + +"And you did not try to save him--your friend?" cried Valentine. + +"Why, you see," replied the other, in a strange slow way, "it was too +late to save him: I knew that, and--I held my tongue. What could I do? +Against my own brother! That sort of thing in a family is ruin for every +one! Do you think anybody would have brought their business to me after +my brother had stood in the Old Bailey dock to take his trial for murder? +No; my only course was to keep my own counsel, and I kept it. Phil made +eighteen thousand pounds by his marriage with poor Tom's widow, and a +paltry hundred or two is all _I_ ever touched of that money." + +"And you _could_ touch that money?" cried Valentine, aghast. + +"Money carries no infection. Did you ever ask any questions about the +money you won at German gaming-tables. I dare say some of your napoleons +and ten-thaler notes could have told queer stories if they had been able +to talk. Taking Phil's money has never weighed upon my conscience. I'm +not very inquisitive about the antecedents of a five-pound note; but I'll +tell you what it is, Hawkehurst, I'd give all I have, and all I ever +hope to have, and would go out and sweep a crossing to-morrow, if I could +get Tom Halliday's face out of my mind, with the look that he turned upon +me the last time I saw him. 'Ah, George,' he said, 'in illness a man +feels the comfort of being among friends!' And he took my hand and +squeezed it, in his old hearty way. We had been boys together, +Hawkehurst, birds-nesting in Hyley Woods; on the same side in our +Barlingford cricket-matches. And I shook his hand, and went away, and +left him to die!" + +And here Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn, the Sheldon who was in with the +money-lenders, sharpest of legal prestigitators, most ruthless of +opponents, most unscrupulous of allies, buried his face in a flaming +bandanna, and fairly sobbed aloud. When the passion had passed, he got up +and walked hastily to the window, more ashamed of this one touch of +honest emotion than of all the falsehoods and chicaneries of his career. + +"I didn't think I could have been such an ass," he muttered sheepishly. + +"I did not hope that you could feel so deeply," answered Valentine. "And +now help me to save the only child of your ill-fated friend. I am sure +that you can help me." + +Without waiting to be questioned, Valentine related the circumstances of +Charlotte's illness, and of his interview with Mr. Burkham. + +"I did not even know that the poor girl was ill," said George Sheldon. "I +have not seen Phil for months. He came here one day, and I gave him a bit +of my mind. I told him if he tried to harm her I'd let the light in upon +him and his doings. And I'll keep my word." + +"But his motive? What, in the name of Heaven, can be his motive for +taking her innocent life? He knows of the Haygarth estate, and must hope +to profit by her fortune if she lives." + +"Yes, and to secure the whole of that fortune if she dies. Her death +would make her mother sole heir to that estate, and the mother is the +merest tool in his hands. He may even have induced Charlotte to make a +will in his favour, so that he himself may stand in her shoes." + +"She would not have made a will without telling me of it." + +"You don't know that. My brother Phil can do anything. It would be as +easy for him to persuade her to maintain secrecy about the transaction as +to persuade her to make the will. Do you suppose _he_ shrinks from +multiplying lies and forgeries and hypocrisies? Do you suppose anything +in that small way comes amiss to the man who has once brought his mind to +murder? Why, look at the Scotch play of that fellow Shakespeare's. At the +beginning, your Macbeth is a respectable trustworthy sort of person, +anxious to get on in life, and so on, and that's all; but no sooner has +he made an end of poor old Duncan, than he lays about him right and +left--Banquo, Fleance, anybody and everybody that happens to be in his +way. It was lucky for that Tartar of a wife of his that _she_ hook'd it, +or he'd soon have put a stop to her sleep-walking. There's no such wide +difference between a man and a tiger, after all. The tiger's a decent +fellow enough till he has tasted human blood; but when once he _has_, +Lord save the country-side from the jaws of the man-eater!" + +"For Heaven's sake let us waste no time in talk!" Valentine cried, +impetuously. "I am to meet Burkham in Burlington Row directly I have got +your advice." + +"What for?" + +"To see Dr. Jedd, and take him down to Hastings, if possible." + +"That won't do." + +"Why not?" + +"Because Jedd's appearance would give Phil the office. Jedd gave evidence +on the Fryar trial, and must be a marked man to him. All Jedd can tell +you is that Charlotte is being poisoned. You know that already. Of course +she'll want medical treatment, and so on, to bring her round; but she +can't get that under my brother's roof. What you have to do is to get her +away from that house." + +"You do not know how ill she is. I doubt if she could bear the removal." + +"Anything is better than to remain. _That_ is certain death." + +"But your brother would surely dispute her removal." + +"He would, and oppose it inch by inch. We must get him away, before we +attempt to remove her." + +"How?" + +"I will find the means for that. I know something of his business +relations, and can invent some false cry for luring him off the trail. We +_must_ get him away. The poor girl was not in actual danger when you left +her, was she?" + +"No, thank God, there was no appearance of immediate danger. But she was +very ill. And that man holds her life in his hand. He knows that I have +come to London in search of a doctor. What if--" + +"Keep yourself quiet, Hawkehurst. He will not hasten her death unless he +is desperate; for a death occurring immediately after your first +expression of alarm would seem sudden. He'll avoid any appearance of +suddenness, if he can, depend upon it. The first thing is to get him +away. But the question is, how to do it? There must be a bait. What bait? +Don't talk to me, Hawkehurst. Let me think it out, if I can." + +The lawyer leaned his elbows on the table, and abandoned himself to +profound cogitation, with his forehead supported by his clenched hands. +Valentine waited patiently while he thus cogitated. + +"I must go down to Phil's office," he said at last, "and ferret out some +of his secrets. Nothing but stock-exchange business, of an important +character, would induce him to leave Charlotte Halliday. But if I can +telegraph such a message as will bring him to town, I'll do it. Leave all +that to me. And now, what about your work?" + +"I am at a loss what to do, if I am not to take Dr. Jedd to Harold's +Hill." + +"Take him to St. Leonards; and if I get my brother out of the way, you +can have Charlotte conveyed to an hotel in St. Leonard's, where she can +stop till she picks up strength enough to come to London." + +"Do you think her mother will consent to her removal? + +"Do I think you will be such an idiot as to ask for her consent?" cried +George Sheldon impatiently. "My brother's wife is so weak a fool, that +the chances are she'd insist on her daughter stopping quietly, to be +poisoned. No; you must get Mrs. Sheldon out of the way somehow. Send her +to look at the shops, or to bathe, or to pick up shells on the beach, or +anything else equally inane. She's easy enough to deal with. There's that +young woman, Paget's daughter, with them still, I suppose? Yes. Very +well, then, you and she can get Charlotte away between you." + +"But for me to take those two girls to an hotel--the chance of scandal, +of wonder, of inquiry? There ought to be some other person--some nurse. +Stay, there's Nancy Woolper--the very woman! My darling has told me of +that old woman's affectionate anxiety about her health--an anxiety which +was singularly intense, it seemed to Lotta. Good God! do you think she, +Nancy Woolper, could have suspected the cause of Mr. Halliday's death?" + +"I dare say she did. She was in the house when he died, and nursed him +all through his illness. She's a clever old woman. Yes, you might take +her down with you; I think she would be of use in getting Charlotte +away." + +"I'll take her, if she will go." + +"I am not sure of that; our north-country folks have stiffish notions +about fidelity to old masters, and that kind of thing. Nancy Woolper +nursed my brother Phil." + +"If she knows or suspects the fate of Charlotte's father, she will try to +save Charlotte," said Valentine, with conviction. "And now, good bye! I +trust to you for getting your brother out of the way, George Sheldon; +remember that." + +He held out his hand; the lawyer took it with a muscular grip, which, on +this occasion, meant something more than that base coin of jolly good +fellowship which so often passes current for friendship's virgin gold. + +"You may trust me," George Sheldon said gravely. "Stop a moment, though; +I have a proposition to make. If my brother Philip has induced that girl +to make a will, as it is my belief he has, we must counter him. Come down +with me to Doctors' Commons. You've a cab? Yes; the business won't take +half an hour." + +"What business?" + +"A special licence for your marriage with Charlotte Halliday." + +"A marriage?" + +"Yes; her marriage invalidates her will, if she has made one, and does +away with Phil's motive. Come along; we'll get the licence." + +"But the delay?" + +"Exactly half an hour. Come!" + +The lawyer dashed out of his office. "At home in an hour," he shouted +to the clerk, and then ran downstairs, followed closely by Valentine, +and did not cease running until he was in the King's Road, where the +cab was waiting. + +"Newgate Street and Warwick Lane to Doctors' Commons!" he cried to the +cabman; and Valentine was fain to take his seat in the cab without +further remonstrance. + +"I don't understand--" he began, as the cabman drove away. + +"I do. It's all right; you'll put the licence in your pocket, and call at +the church nearest which you hang out, Edgware Road way, give notice of +the marriage, and so on; and as soon as Charlotte can bear the journey, +bring her to London and marry her. I told you your course six months ago. +Your obstinacy has caused the hazard of that young woman's life. Don't +let us have a second edition of it." + +"I will be governed by your advice," answered Valentine, submissively. +"It is the delay that tortures me." + +The delay was indeed torture to him. Everything and everybody in Doctors' +Commons seemed the very incarnation of slowness. The hansom cab might +tear and grind the pavement, the hansom cabman might swear until even +monster waggons swerved aside to give him passage; but neither tearing +nor swearing could move the incarnate stolidity of Doctors' Commons. When +he left that quaint sanctuary of old usages, he carried with him the +Archbishop of Canterbury's benign permission for his union with Charlotte +Halliday. But he knew not whether it was only a morsel of waste paper +which he carried in his pocket; and whether there might not ere long be +need of a ghastlier certificate, giving leave and licence for the +rendering back of "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." + +Valentine's first call, after leaving George Sheldon at the gate of +Doctors' Commons, was at the head-quarters of the Ragamuffins. His heart +sank as he ran into the bar of the hostelry to ask for the telegram which +might be waiting for him. + +Happily there was no telegram. To find no tidings of a change for the +worse seemed to him almost equivalent to hearing of a change for the +better. What had he not feared after his interview with the surgeon of +Bloomsbury! + +From Covent Garden the hansom bowled swiftly to Burlington Row. Here +Valentine found Mr. Burkham, pale and anxious, waiting in a little den of +a third room, on the ground-floor--a ghastly little room, hung with +anatomical plates, and with some wax preparations in jars, on the +mantelpiece, by way of ornament. To them presently came Dr. Jedd, as +lively and business-like as if Miss Halliday's case had been a question +of taking out a double-tooth. + +"Very sad!" he said; "these vegetable poisons--hands of unscrupulous man. +Very interesting article in the _Medical Quarterly_--speculative analysis +of the science of toxicology as known to the ancients." + +"You will come down to Harold's Hill at once, sir?" said Valentine, +imploringly. + +"Well, yes; your friend here, Mr. Burkham, has persuaded me to do so, +though I need hardly tell you that such a journey will be to the last +degree inconvenient." + +"It is an affair of life and death," faltered the young man. + +"Of course, my dear sir. But then, you see, I have half-a-dozen other +affairs of life and death on my hands at this moment. However, I have +promised. My consultations will be over in half an hour; I have a round +of visits after that, and by--well, say by the five o'clock express, I +will go to St. Leonards." + +"The delay will be very long," said Valentine. + +"It cannot be done sooner. I ought to go down to Hertfordshire this +evening--most interesting case--carbuncle--three operations in three +consecutive weeks--Swain as operator. At five o'clock I shall be at the +London Bridge station. Until then, gentlemen, good day. Lawson, the +door." + +Dr. Jedd left his visitors to follow the respectable white-cravatted +butler, and darted back to his consulting-room. + +Mr. Burkham and Valentine walked slowly up and down Burlington Row before +the latter returned to his cab. + +"I thank you heartily for your help," said Valentine to the surgeon; "and +I believe, with God's grace, we shall save this dear girl's life. It was +the hand of Providence that guided me to you this morning. I can but +believe the same hand will guide me to the end." + +On this they parted. Valentine told his cabman to drive to the Edgware +Road; and in one of the churches of the immediate neighbourhood of that +thoroughfare he gave notice of his intention to enter the bonds of holy +matrimony. He had some difficulty in arranging matters with the clerk, +whom he saw in his private abode and non-official guise. That functionary +was scarcely able to grasp the idea of an intending Benedick who would +not state positively when he wanted to be married. Happily, however, the +administration of half-a-sovereign considerably brightened the clerk's +perceptions. + +"I see what you want," he said. "Young lady a invalid, which she wants to +leave her home as she finds uncomfortable, she being over twenty-one +years of age and her own mistress. It's what you may call a runaway +match, although the parties ain't beholden to any one, in a manner of +speaking. _I_ understand. You give me half an hour's notice any morning +within the legal hours, and I'll have one of our young curates ready for +you as soon as you're ready for them; and have you and the young lady +tied up tight enough before you know where you are. We ain't very long +over _our_ marriages, unless it is something out of the common way." + +The clerk's familiarity was more good-natured than flattering to the +applicant's self-esteem; but Valentine was in no mood to object to this +easy-going treatment of the affair. He promised to give the clerk the +required notice; and having arranged everything in strictly legal manner, +hurried back to his cab, and directed the man to drive to the Lawn. + +It was now three o'clock. At five he was to meet Dr. Jedd at the station. +He had two hours for his interview with Nancy Woolper, and his drive from +Bayswater to London Bridge. + +He had tasted nothing since daybreak; but the necessity to eat and drink +never occurred to him. He was dimly conscious of feeling sick and faint, +but the reason of this sickness and faintness did not enter into his +thoughts. He took off his hat, and leant his head back against the +cushion of the hansom as that vehicle rattled across the squares of +Paddington. The summer day, the waving of green trees in those suburban +squares; the busy life and motion of the world through which he went, +mixed themselves into one jarring whirl of light and colour, noise and +motion. He found himself wondering how long it was since he left +Harold's Hill. Between the summer morning in which he had walked along +the dusty high-road, with fields of ripening corn upon his left, and all +the broad blue sea upon his right, and the summer afternoon in which he +drove in a jingling cab through the noisy streets and squares of +Bayswater, there seemed to him a gulf so wide, that his tried brain +shrank from scanning it. + +He struggled with this feeling of helplessness and bewilderment, and +overcame it. + +"Let me remember what I have to do," he said to himself; "and let me keep +my wits about me till that is done." + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +PHOENICIANS ARE RISING. + +While Mr. Hawkehurst arranged his affairs with the clerk of St. +Matthias-in-the-fields, in the parish of Marylebone, George Sheldon sat +in his brother's office writing a letter to that distinguished +stockbroker. The pretext of writing a letter was the simplest pretext for +being alone in his brother's room; and to be alone in Philip Sheldon's +room was the first step in the business which George had to do. + +The room was distractingly neat, and as handsomely furnished as it is +possible for an office to be within the closest official limits. A +Spanish mahogany desk with a cylinder cover, and innumerable drawers +fitted with invisible Bramah locks, occupied the centre of the room; and +four ponderous Spanish mahogany chairs, with padded backs, and seats +covered with crimson morocco, were primly ranged against the wall. Upon +the mantelpiece ticked a skeleton clock; above which there hung the +sternest and grimmest of almanacks, on either whereof were fastened +divers lists and calendars of awful character, affected by gentlemen on +'Change. + +Before penetrating to this innermost and sacred chamber, George Sheldon +wasted some little time in agreeable gossip with a gentleman whom he +found yawning over the _Times_ newspaper in an outer and less richly +furnished apartment. This gentleman was Philip Sheldon's clerk, the +younger son of a rich Yorkshire farmer, who had come to London with the +intention of making his fortune on the Stock Exchange, and whose father +had paid a considerable sum in order to obtain for this young man the +privilege of reading the Times in Mr. Sheldon's office, and picking up +whatever knowledge might be obtained from the business transactions of +his employer. + +The career of Philip Sheldon had been watched with some interest by his +fellow-townsmen of Barlingford. They had seen him leave that town with a +few hundreds in his pocket, and they had heard of him twelve years +afterwards as a prosperous stockbroker, with a handsome house and a +handsome carriage, and the reputation of being one of the sharpest men in +the City. The accounts of him that came to Barlingford were all more or +less exaggerated; and the men who discussed his cleverness and his good +luck were apt to forget that he owed the beginning of his fortunes to Tom +Halliday's eighteen thousand pounds. The one fact that impressed Philip +Sheldon's townsmen was the fact that a Barlingford man had made money on +the Stock Exchange; and the one inference they drew therefrom was the +inference that other Barlingford men might do the same. + +Thus it had happened that Mr. Stephen Orcott, of Plymley Rise farm, near +Barlingford, being at a loss what to do with a somewhat refractory +younger son, resolved upon planting his footsteps in the path so +victoriously trodden by Philip Sheldon. He wrote to Philip, asking him to +receive the young man as clerk, assistant, secretary--anything, with a +view to an ultimate junior partnership; and Philip consented, upon +certain conditions. The sum he demanded was rather a stiff one, as it +seemed to Stephen Orcott, but he opined that such a sum would not have +been asked if the advantages had not been proportionately large. The +bargain was therefore concluded, and Mr. Frederick Orcott came to London. +He was a young man of horsey propensities, gifted with a sublime contempt +for any kind of business requiring application or industry, and with a +supreme belief in his own merits. + +George Sheldon had known Frederick Orcott as a boy, and had been in his +society some half-dozen times since his coming to London. He apprehended +no difficulty in obtaining from this young gentleman any information he +had the power to afford. + +"How do, Orcott?" he said, with agreeable familiarity. "My brother Phil +not come back yet?" + +"No," replied the other, sulkily. "There have been ever so many people +here bothering me about him. Where has he gone? and when will he be back? +and so on. I might as well be some d----d footman, if I'm to sit here +answering questions all day. High Wickham races are on to-day, and I +wanted to see Barmaid run before I put my money on her for Goodwood. She +was bred down our way, you see, and I know she's like enough to win the +cup, if she's fit. They don't know much about her this way, either, +though she's own sister to Boots, that won the Chester Cup last year, +owing to Topham's being swindled into letting him off with seven lbs. He +ran at the York Spring, you see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the +boy that rode him pulled his head half off--I saw him do it--and then he +won the Chester, and brought his owners a pot of money." + +This information was not exactly what George Sheldon wanted, but he +planted himself on the hearthrug in an easy attitude, with his back +against the mantelpiece, and appeared much interested in Mr. Orcott's +discourse. + +"Anything stirring in the City?" he asked presently. + +"Stirring? No--nothing stirring but stagnation, as some fellow said in a +play I saw the other night. Barlingford folks say your brother Philip has +made a heap of money on the Stock Exchange; but if he has, he must have +done a good deal more business before I came to him than he has done +lately. I can't see how a man is to develop into a Rothschild out of an +occasional two-and-sixpence per cent on the transfer of some old woman's +savings from railway stock to consols; and that's about the only kind of +business I've seen much of lately. Of course Phil Sheldon has got irons +of his own in the fire; for he's an uncommonly deep card, you see, that +brother of yours, and it isn't to be expected he'll tell _me_ all he's up +to. I know he's up to his eyebrows in companies, but I don't see how he's +to make his fortune out of _them_, for limited liability now-a-days seems +only another name for unlimited crash. However, I don't care. It pleased +my governor to get me into Sheldon's office, and it suited my book to +come to London; but if the author of my being thinks I'm going to addle +my blessed brains with the decline and fall of the money market, he's a +greater fool than I took him for--and that's saying a great deal." + +And here Mr. Frederick Orcott lapsed into admiring contemplation of his +boots, which were the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of a sporting bootmaker; boots +that were of the ring, ringy, and of the corner, cornery. + +"Ah," said George, "and Phil doesn't tell you much of his affairs, +doesn't he? That's rather a bad sign, I should think. Looks as if he was +rather down upon his luck, eh?" + +"Well, there's no knowing, you see, with that sort of close fish. He may +have made his book for a great haul, and may be keeping himself quiet +till the event comes off. He may be laying on to something with all his +might, you know, on safe information. But there's one thing I know he +stands to lose by." + +"What's that?" + +"The Phoenician Loan. He speculated in the bonds when they began to go +down; and I'm blessed if they haven't been dropping ever since, an +eighth a day, as regular as the day comes round. He bought them for the +March account, and has been paying contango since then, and holding on in +hopes of a rise. I don't know whether the purchase was a large one, but I +know he's been uncommonly savage about the drop. He bought on the +strength of private information from the other side of the Channel. The +Emperor was putting his own money into the Phoenician business, and it +was the best game out, and so on. But he seems to have been made a fool +of, for once in a way." + +"The bonds may steady themselves." + +"Yes, they _may_; but, on the other hand, they mayn't. There are the +Stock Exchange lists, with Phoenicians ticked off by your brother's own +pen. A steady drop, you see. 'Let me have a telegram if there's a sudden +rise,' said Sheldon to me the day he left London; 'they'll go up with +rush when they do move.' But they've been moving the other way ever +since; and I think if he stayed away till doomsday it would be pretty +much the same." + +"_Phoenicians are rising rapidly. Come back to town._" + +These were the words of the telegraphic despatch which shaped itself in +George Sheldon's brain, as his brother's clerk revealed the secrets of +his employer. + +It was found--the solution of the one great question as to how Philip +Sheldon was to be lured away from the bedside of his unconscious victim. +Here was the bait. + +"I knew I could do it; I knew I could get all I wanted to know out of +this shallow-brained idiot," he said to himself, triumphantly. + +And then he told the shallow-brained idiot that he thought he would write +a line to his brother; and on that pretence went into Philip's office. + +Here, use his eyes as he might, he could discover nothing; he could glean +no stray scrap of information. The secrets that could be guarded by +concealed Bramah locks and iron safes, with mystic words to be learned by +the man who would open them, Philip Sheldon knew how to protect. +Unhappily for himself, he had been compelled to confide some of his +secrets to human receptacles not to be guarded by Bramah locks or mystic +words. + +The lawyer did not waste much time in his brother's office. A very hasty +investigation showed him there was nothing to be learned from those bare +walls and that inviolable cylinder-topped desk. He scribbled a few lines +of commonplace at a table by the window, sealed and addressed his note, +and then departed to despatch his telegram, "Phoenicians are rising +rapidly," he wrote, and that was all. He signed the despatch Frederick +Orcott. + +"Phil and Orcott may settle the business between them," he said to +himself, as he forged the Yorkshireman's name. "What I have to do is to +get Phil away, and give Hawkehurst a chance of saving Tom Halliday's +daughter; and I shan't stand upon trifles in the doing of it." + +After having despatched this telegram, George Sheldon found himself much +too restless and excited for ordinary business. He, so renowned even +amongst cool hands for exceptional coolness, was on this occasion +thoroughly unnerved. He dropped into a City tavern, and refreshed himself +with a dram. But, amidst all the bustle and clatter of a crowded bar, the +face of Tom Halliday, haggard and worn with illness, was before his eyes, +and the sound of Tom Halliday's voice was in his ears. "I can't settle to +anything this afternoon," he said to himself. "I'll run down to +Bayswater, and see whether Hawkehurst has managed matters with Nancy +Woolper." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE. + +While George Sheldon was still in the depths of the City Valentine +Hawkehurst arrived at the gothic villa, where he asked to see Mrs. +Woolper. Of the woman herself he knew very little: he had seen her once +or twice when some special mission brought her to the drawing-room; and +from Charlotte he had heard much of her affectionate solicitude. To have +been kind to his Charlotte was the strongest claim to his regard. + +"This woman's help would be of inestimable service," he thought; "her +age, her experience of sickness, her familiarity with the patient, +especially adapt her for the office she will be required to fill. If Dr. +Jedd should order a nurse to watch by the sick-bed, here is the nurse. If +it should prove possible to remove the dear sufferer, here is the +guardian best calculated to protect and attend her removal." That the +desperate step of an immediate marriage would be a wise step Valentine +could not doubt, since it would at once annihilate Mr. Sheldon's chances, +and destroy his motive. But in contemplating this desperate step +Valentine had to consider the reputation as well as the safety of his +future wife. He was determined that there should be no opportunity for +scandal in the circumstances of his stolen marriage, no scope for future +mischief from the malignity of that baffled villain to whose schemes +their marriage would give the death-blow. He, who from his cradle had +been familiar with the darker side of life, knew how often the innocent +carry a lifelong burden, and perform a perpetual pennance for the sins or +the follies of others. And over his darling's life in the future, should +it please God that he might save her, he would have no shadow cast by +imprudence of his in the present. + +"This sharp-witted, sharp-tongued Yorkshirewoman will be the woman of +women to protect her," he thought, as he seated himself in Mr. Sheldon's +study, whither the prim parlour-maid had ushered him. + +"Mrs. Woolper have just gone upstairs to clean herself," she said; "which +we are a-having the dining-room and droring-room carpets up, while the +family are away. Would you please to wait?" + +Valentine looked at his watch. + +"I cannot wait very long," he said; "and I shall be obliged if you will +tell Mrs. Woolper that I wish to see her on very important business." + +The parlour-maid departed, and Valentine was left to endure the weariness +of waiting until Mrs. Woolper should have "cleaned herself." + +Mr. Sheldon's study at Bayswater did not offer much more to the eye of +the investigator than Mr. Sheldon's office in the City. There were the +handsomely bound books behind the inviolable plate-glass doors, and there +was the neat writing-table with the machine for weighing letters, and the +large business-like looking blotting-pad, and the ponderous brass-rimmed +inkstand, with no nonsense about it; and yonder, on a clumsy little oak +table with thick legs, appeared the copying machine, with a big black +iron lever, and a massive screw with which to screw all the spontaneous +feeling out of every letter that came beneath its crushing influence. + +Up and down this joyless den Valentine Hawkehurst paced, with the demon +of impatience raging in his breast. The July sunshine blazed hot upon the +window, and the voices of croquêt-players in adjacent gardens rose shrill +upon the summer air. And there were girls playing croquêt while she, his +"rose of the garden, garden of girls," lay sick unto death! O, why could +he not offer a hecatomb of these common creatures as a substitute for +that one fair spirit? + +He looked into the garden--the prim modern garden, but a few years +reclaimed from that abomination of desolation, the "eligible lot of +building land." Across the well-kept lawn there brooded no shadow of +Old-World cedar; no century-old espaliers divided flower and kitchen +ground; no box-edging of the early Hanoverian era bordered the beds of +roses and mignonette. From one boundary-wall to the other there was not a +bush old enough to hang an association upon. The stereotyped bed of +flaming yellow calceolaria balanced the conventional bed of flaming +crimson verbena; the lavender heliotrope faced the scarlet geranium, like +the four corners in a quadrille. The garden was the modern nurserymen's +ideal of suburban horticulture, and no more. But to Valentine this +half-acre of smooth lawn and Wimbledon gravel pathway had seemed fair as +those pleasure gardens of Semiramis, at the foot of the Bagistanos +mountain, the fame whereof tempted Alexander to turn aside from the +direct road, during his march from Chelone to the Nysaic horse pastures. + +To-day the contemplation of that commonplace garden gave him direful +pain. Should he ever walk there again with his dear love, or in any other +garden upon earth? + +And then he thought of fairer gardens, in supernal regions whither his +soul was slow to travel. "Not easy is the journey from earth to the +stars," says the sage; and from this young wanderer the stain of earthly +travel had yet to be washed away. + +"If she is taken from me, shall I ever be pure enough to follow her?" he +asked himself. "Will a life that began in such darkness ever rise to the +light which is her natural element? If she is taken, and I stay behind, +and bear my burden patiently in the hope to follow her, will there not be +a gate closed against me in the skies, beyond which I shall see her, +shining among her kindred spirits, in the white robes of perfect +innocence? Ah, my love, my love, as between, us on this earth must for +ever be a gulf your pure soul cannot pass, so between us in the skies +will rise a barrier to sever me from your sweet company!" + +The thought of probable separation upon earth, of possible separation in +heaven, was too bitter to him. + +"I will not think of these things," he said to himself; "I will not +believe in that possibility of this sacrifice. Ah, no! she will be +saved. Against the bright young life the awful fiat has not gone +forth. Providence has been with me to-day. Providence will go with me +till the end." + +He thought how other men had so stood, as he was standing now, face to +face with the great uncertainty, the crisis, the turning-point--the pivot +on which life itself revolved. The pendulum of the mighty clock swings +solemnly to and fro; with every vibration a moment; with every moment +each man's shrouded fates move another step in their inexorable progress. +And the end? What was the goal towards which those dark relentless shapes +were moving? + +He thought of Rousseau, balancing the awful question of his soul's +salvation--his poor weak soul adrift upon a sea of doubt. + +"Behold yonder tree which faces me, as I sit and meditate the problem of +my destiny--the destiny of me, Jean Jacques Rousseau, self-conscious +genius, and future regenerator of my age. I pick up a pebble, and +poise it between my fingers before taking my aim. In another moment +the question will be answered. If the pebble hits the tree, I, Jean +Jacques, am reserved for salvation. If I miss--O awful, overwhelming +possibility!--my name will blaze upon that dreadful scroll which numbers +the damned." + +Happily the tree is bulky, and within but a few yards of the +speculator; and the great enigma of the Calvinistic church is answered +in favour of Madame de Warenne's protégé, whose propensities and +proclivities at that period did not very strongly indicate his claim to +a place among the elect. + +Valentine remembered the _sortes Virgilianae_--the Wesleyan's drawing of +inferences from Bible texts. Ah, could he not find an answer to the +question that was the one thought of his mind? He would find some +answer--a lying oracle, perhaps. It might be a voice from heaven,--some +temporary assuagement of this storm of doubt that raged in his breast. "I +doubt if Mr. Sheldon owns either a Bible or an, 'AEneid,'" he said to +himself, as he stopped in his rapid pacing of the room; "I will open the +first book I can put my hand upon, and from the first line my eye falls +on will draw an augury." + +He looked about the room. Behind the glazed doors of the mahogany +bookcase appeared Hume and Smollett, Scott and Shakespeare; and +conspicuous among these a handsome family Bible. But the glazed doors +were locked. In Mr. Sheldon's study there appeared to be no other books +than these few standard works. Yes, on some obscure little shelves, low +down in one of the recesses formed by the projection of the fireplace and +the chimney, there were three rows of large quarto volumes, in dingy +dark-green cloth cases. + +What these volumes might contain Valentine Hawkehurst knew not; and the +very fact of his ignorance rendered these books all the more suitable for +the purpose of augury. To dip for a sentence into any of these unknown +volumes would be a leap in darkness more profound than he could find in +the Bible or the "AEneid," where his own foreknowledge of the text might +unwittingly influence the oracle. He went over to the recess, bent down, +and ran his hand along the backs of the volumes, with his face turned +away from the books towards the window. + +"The first obstruction that arrests my hand shall determine my choice of +the volume," he said to himself. + +His hand ran easily along the volumes on the upper shelf--easily along +the volumes on the second shelf; and he began to doubt whether this mode +of determining his choice could be persisted in. But in its progress +along the third and lowest range of volumes, his hand was arrested midway +by a book which projected about half an inch beyond its fellows. + +He took this book out and carried it to the table, still without looking +at it. He opened it, or rather let its leaves fall open of their own +accord--still without looking at it; and then, with a strange +superstitious fear--mingled in his mind with the natural shame that +accompanied his conscious folly--he looked at the page before him. The +line on which he fixed his eye was the heading of a letter. It was in +larger type than the rest of the page, and it was very plain to him as he +stood a little way from the table, looking down at the open book. + +The line ran thus: + +"ON THE FALLIBILITY OF COPPER GAUZE AS A TEST FOR THE DETECTION OF +ARSENIC." + +The book was a volume of the _Lancet_; the date twenty years ago. + +"What an oracle!" thought Valentine, with a cynical laugh at his own +folly, and some slight sense of relief. In all feeble tamperings with +powers invisible there lurks a sense of terror in the weak human heart. +He had tempted those invisible ones, and the oracle he only half believed +in might have spoken to his confusion and dismay. He was glad to think +the oracle meant nothing. + +And yet, even in this dry as dust title of a scientific communication +from a distinguished toxicologist there was some sinister significance. +It was the letter of a great chemist, who demonstrated therein the +fallibility of all tests in relation to a certain poison. It was one of +those papers which, while they aid the cause of science, may also further +the dark processes of the poisoner, by showing him the forces he has to +encounter, and the weapons with which he may defend himself from their +power. It is needless to dwell here upon the contents of this letter--one +of a series on the same subject, or range of subjects. Valentine read it +with eager interest. For him it had a terrible importance in its relation +to the past and to the present. + +"I let the book fall open, and it opened at that letter," he thought to +himself. "Will it open there a second time, I wonder?" + +He repeated the experiment, and the book opened in the same place. Again; +and again the book opened as before. Again, many times, and the result +was still the same. + +After this he examined the book, and found that it had been pressed open +at this page, as by a reader leaning on the opened volume. He examined it +still more closely, and found here and there on the page faint +indications of a pencil, which had under-scored certain lines, and the +marks of which had been as far as possible erased. The deduction to be +drawn from these small facts seemed only too clear to Valentine +Hawkehurst. By some one reader the pages had been deliberately and +carefully studied. Could he doubt that reader to have been the man in +whose possession he found the book, the man whom that very day he had +heard plainly denounced as a poisoner? + +He drew out the previous volume, and in this a rapid search revealed to +him a second fact, significant as the last. + +An old envelope marked the place where appeared an article on the +coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain type of low fever and +the diagnostics of a certain class of poisons. Here the volume again +opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the page seemed to indicate that +the open book had been leant upon by a person engaged in making memoranda +of its contents. Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the +place had its own dismal significance. The postmark bore the date of the +year and the month in which Charlotte's father had died. + +While this volume was still open in his hand the door opened suddenly, +and Mrs. Woolper came into the room. + +She had kept Valentine waiting more than half an hour. He had little more +than half an hour at most in which to break the ice of absolute +strangeness, and sound the very depths of this woman's character. If she +had come to him earlier, when his plan of action was clear and definite, +his imagination in abeyance, he would have gone cautiously to work, with +slowness and deliberation. Coming to him now, when his mind, unsettled by +the discovery of fresh evidence against Philip Sheldon, was divided +between the past and the present, she took him off his guard, and he +plunged at once into the subject that absorbed all his thoughts. + +Mrs. Woolper looked from Valentine to the open books on the table with a +vague terror in her face. + +"I am sorry I was so long, sir; but I'd been polishing the grates and +fenders, and such like, and my hands and face were blacker than a +sweep's. I hope there's nothing wrong at the seaside, where Miss--" + +"There is much that's wrong, Mrs. Woolper--hopelessly, irrecoverably +wrong. Miss Halliday is ill, very ill--doomed to die, if she remain in +your master's keeping." + +"Lord help us, Mr. Hawkehurst! what do you mean?" + +The terror in her face was no longer a vague terror. It had taken a form +and substance, and was a terror unutterably hideous, if ever human +countenance gave expression to human thought. + +"I mean that your master is better skilled in the use of the agents that +kill than the agents that cure. Charlotte's father came to Philip +Sheldon's house a hale strong man, in the very prime of manhood. In that +house he sickened of a nameless disease, and died, carefully tended by +his watchful friend. The same careful watcher stands by Charlotte +Halliday's deathbed, and she is dying!" + +"Dying! O, sir, for God's sake, don't say that!" + +"She is dying, as her father died before her, by the hand of Philip +Sheldon." + +"O, sir! Mr. Hawkehurst!" cried the old woman, with clasped hands lifted +in piteous supplication towards her master's denouncer. "It's not true. +It is not true. For God's dear love don't tell me it is true! I nursed +him when he was a baby, sir; and there wasn't a little trouble I had to +bear with him that didn't make him all the dearer to me. I have sat up +all the night through, sir, times and often, when he was ill, and have +heard Barlingford church clock strike every hour of the long night; and +O, if I had known that this could ever come to him, I should have wished +him dead in the little crib where he lay and seemed so innocent. I tell +you, sir, it can't be true! His father and mother had been respected and +looked up to in Barlingford for many a year,--his grandfather and +grandmother before them. There isn't a name that stands better in those +parts than the name of Sheldon. Do you think such a man would poison his +friend?" + +"_I_ said nothing about poison, Mrs. Woolper," said Valentine, sternly. + +This woman had known all, and had held her tongue, like the rest, it +seemed. To Valentine there was unutterable horror in the thought that a +cold-blooded murder could be thus perpetrated in the sight of several +people, and yet no voice be raised to denounce the assassin. + +"And this is our modern civilization!" he said to himself. "Give me the +desert or the jungle. The sons of Bowanee are no worse than Mr. Sheldon, +and one might be on one's guard against them." + +Nancy Woolper looked at him aghast. He had said nothing about poison! +What, then--had she betrayed her master? + +He saw that she had known, or strongly suspected, the worst in the case +of Tom Halliday, and that she would easily be influenced to do all he +wanted of her. + +"Mrs. Woolper, you must help me to save Charlotte," he said, with +intensity. "You made no attempt to save her father, though you suspected +the cause of his death. I have this day seen Mr. Burkham, the doctor who +attended Mr. Halliday, and from his lips I have heard the truth. I want +you to accompany me to Hastings, and to take your place by Charlotte's +bed, as her nurse and guardian. If Mr. Sheldon suspects your knowledge of +the past, and I have little doubt that he does"--a look in the +housekeeper's face told him that he was right--"you are of all people +best fitted to guard that dear girl. Your part will not be a difficult +one. If we dare remove her, we will remove her beyond the reach of that +man's power. If not, your task will be to prevent food or medicine, that +his hand has touched, from approaching her lips. You _can_ do it. It will +only be a question of tact and firmness. We shall have one of the +greatest doctors in London for our guide. Will you come?" + +"I don't believe my master poisoned his friend," said Nancy Woolper, +doggedly; "nor I won't believe it. You can't force me to think bad of him +I loved when he was little and helpless, and I carried him in my arms. +What are you and your fine London doctor, Mr. Burkham--he was but a poor +fondy, as I mind well--that I should take your word against my master? If +that young man thought as Mr. Halliday was being poisoned, why didn't he +speak out, like a man, then? It's a fine piece of work to bring it up +against my master eleven years afterwards. As for young missy, she's as +sweet a young creature as ever lived, and I'd do anything to serve her. +But I won't think, and I can't think, that my master would hurt a hair of +her head. What would he gain by it?" + +"He has settled that with himself. He has gained by the death of Tom +Halliday, and depend upon it he has made his plans to gain by the death +of Tom Halliday's daughter." + +"I won't believe it," the old woman repeated in the same dogged tone. + +For such resistance as this Mr. Hawkehurst was in no manner prepared. He +looked at his watch. The half hour was nearly gone. There was little more +time for argument. + +"Great Heaven!" he said to himself, "what argument can I employ to +influence this woman's obdurate heart?" + +What argument, indeed? He knew of none stronger than those he had used. +He stood for some moments battled and helpless, staring absently at the +face of his watch, and wondering what he was to do next. + +As Valentine Hawkehurst stood thus, there came a loud ringing of the +bell, following quickly on the sound of wheels grinding against the +kerbstone. + +Mrs. Woolper opened the door and looked out into the hall. + +"It's master!" cried one of the maids, emerging from the disorganized +dining-room, "and missus, and Miss Halliday, and Mass Paget--and all the +house topsy-turvy!" + +"Charlotte here!" exclaimed Valentine. "You are dreaming, girl!" + +"And you told me she was dying!" said Mrs. Woolper, with a look of +triumph. "What becomes of your fine story now?" + +"It _is_ Miss Halliday!" cried the housemaid, as she opened the door. +"And O my!" she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, +"how bad she do look!" + +Valentine ran out to the gate. Yes; there were two cabs, one laden with +luggage, the two cabmen busy about the doors of the vehicles, a little +group of stragglers waiting to see the invalid young lady alight. It was +the next best thing to a funeral. + +"O, don't she look white!" cried a shrill girl with a baby in her arms. + +"In a decline, I dessay, pore young thing," said a matron, in an audible +aside to her companion. + +Valentine dashed amongst the group of stragglers. He pushed away the girl +with the baby, the housemaid who had run out behind him, Mr. Sheldon, the +cabman, every one; and in the next moment Charlotte was in his arms, and +he was carrying her into the house. + +He felt as if he had been in a dream; and all that exceptional force +which the dreamer sometimes feels he felt in this crisis. He carried his +dear burden into the study, followed by Mr. Sheldon and Diana Paget. The +face that dropped upon his shoulder showed deadly white against his +dark-blue coat; the hand which he clasped in his, ah, how listless and +feeble! + +"Valentine!" the girl said, in a low drowsy voice, lifting her eyes to +his face, "is this you? I have been so ill, so tired; and they would +bring me away. To be near the doctors, papa says. Do you think any +doctors will be able to cure me?" + +"Yes, dear, with God's help. I am glad he has brought you here. And now +I must run away," he said; when he had placed Charlotte in Mr. Sheldon's +arm-chair, "for a very little while, darling. I have seen a doctor, a +man in whom I have more confidence than I have in Dr. Doddleson. I am +going to fetch him, my dearest," he added tenderly, as he felt the +feeble hand cling to his; "I shall not be long. Do you think I shall not +hurry back to you? My dearest one, when I return, it will be to stay +with you--for ever." + +She was too ill to note the significance of his words; she only knew that +they gave her comfort. He hurried from the room. In less than an hour he +must be at the London Bridge terminus, or in all probability the five +o'clock train would carry Dr. Jedd to St. Leonards; and on Dr. Jedd his +chief hope rested. + +"Do you believe me now?" he asked of Mrs. Woolper as he went out +into the hall. + +"I do," she answered in a whisper; "and I will do what you want." + +She took his hand in her wrinkled horny palm and grasped it firmly. He +felt that in this firm pressure there was a promise sacred as any oath +ever registered on earth. He met Mr. Sheldon on the threshold, and +passed him without a word. The time might come in which he would have to +mask his thoughts, and stoop to the hateful hypocrisy of civility to +this man; but he had not yet schooled himself to do this. At the gate he +met George Sheldon. + +"What's up now?" asked the lawyer. + +"Did you send your message?" + +"Yes; I telegraphed to Phil." + +"It has been trouble wasted. He has brought her home." + +"What does that mean?" + +"Who knows? I pray God that he may have overreached himself. I have set a +watch upon my dear love, and no further harm shall come to her. I am +going to fetch Dr. Jedd." + +"And you are not afraid of Phil's smelling a rat?" + +"I am afraid of nothing that he can do henceforward. If it is not too +late to save her, I will save her." + +He waited for no more, but jumped into the cab. "London Bridge terminus! +You must get me there by a quarter to five," he said to the driver. + +George Sheldon went no further than the gate of his brother's domain. + +"I wonder whether the Harold's Hill people will send that telegram after +him," he thought. "It'll be rather unpleasant for Fred Orcott if they do. +But it's ten to one they won't. The normal condition of every seaside +lodging-house keeper in one degree removed from idiotcy." + + + + +Book the Ninth. + + + +THROUGH THE FURNACE + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +SOMETHING TOO MUCH. + +"Is that young man mad?" asked Philip Sheldon, as he went into his study +immediately after Valentine had passed him in the hall. + +The question was not addressed to any particular individual; and Diana, +who was standing near the door by which Mr. Sheldon entered, took upon +herself to answer it. + +"I think he is very anxious," she said in a half whisper. + +"What brought him here just now? He did not know we were coming home." + +Mrs. Woolper answered this question. + +"He came for something for Miss Charlotte, sir; some books as she'd had +from the library. They'd not been sent back; and he came to see about +their being sent." + +"What books?" murmured Charlotte. But a pressure from Mrs. Woolper's hand +prevented her saying more. + +"I never encountered any one with so little self-command," said Mr. +Sheldon. "If he is going to rush in and out of my house in that manner, I +must really put a stop to his visits altogether. I cannot suffer that +kind of thing. For Charlotte's welfare quiet is indispensable; and if Mr. +Hawkehurst's presence is to bring noise and excitement, Mr. Hawkehurst +must not cross this threshold." + +He spoke with suppressed anger; with such evident effort to restrain his +anger, that it would have seemed as if his indignation against Valentine +was no common wrath. + +Charlotte caught his last words. + +"Dear papa," she pleaded in her faint voice, "pray do not be angry with +Valentine; he is so anxious about me." + +"I am not angry with him; but while you are ill, I will have quiet--at +any price." + +"Then I'm sure you should not have brought Charlotte home," exclaimed +Georgy, in tones of wailing and lamentation; "for of all the miseries in +life, there is nothing worse than coming home in the very midst of a +general cleaning. It was agreed between Ann Woolper and me that there +should be a general cleaning while we were away at the seaside. We were +to be away a fortnight, and everything was to be as neat as a new pin +when we came home. But here we are back in less than a week, and +everything at sixes-and-sevens. Where we are to dine I know not; and as +for the carpets, they are all away at the beating-place, and Ann tells me +they won't be home till Friday." + +"We can exist without carpets," answered Mr. Sheldon, in a hard dry +voice. "I suppose they are seeing to Miss Halliday's room?" he added, +addressing himself to Mrs. Woolper. "Why don't you go and look after +them, Nancy?" + +"Sarah knows what she has to do. The bed-rooms was done first; and +there's not much amiss in Miss Charlotte's room." + +Mr. Sheldon dropped wearily into a chair. He looked pale and haggard. +Throughout the journey he had been unfailing in his attention to the +invalid; but the journey had been fatiguing; for Charlotte Halliday was +very ill--so ill as to be unable to avoid inflicting trouble upon +others. The weariness--the dizziness--the dull intervals of +semi-consciousness--the helpless tottering walk, which was like the +walk of intoxication rather than ordinary weakness--the clouded +sight--all the worst symptoms of this nameless disease, had every hour +grown more alarming. + +Against this journey to London Mrs. Sheldon and Diana had pleaded--Georgy +with as much earnestness as she could command; Diana as forcibly as she +dared argue a question in which her voice had so little weight. + +But upon this point Mr. Sheldon was adamant. + +"She will be better off in London," he said resolutely. "This trip to the +seaside was a whim of my wife's; and, like most other whims of my wife's, +it has entailed trouble and expense upon me. Of course I know that Georgy +did it for the best," he added, in reply to a reproachful "O Philip!" +from Mrs. Sheldon. "But the whole business has been a mistake. No sooner +are we comfortably settled down here, than Hawkehurst takes it into his +head to be outrageously alarmed about Charlotte, and wants to bring +half-a-dozen doctors round the poor girl's bed, to her inevitable peril; +for in an illness which begins and ends in mental depression, all +appearance of alarm is calculated to do mischief." + +Having said this, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in making arrangements for the +journey. A carriage was ordered; all possible preparations were made for +the comfort of the invalid--everything that care or kindness could do was +done; but the cruelty of the removal was not the less obvious. Georgy +wailed piteously about the sixes-and-sevens to which they were being +taken. Diana cared nothing about sixes-and-sevens; but she felt supreme +indignation against Charlotte's stepfather, and she did not attempt to +conceal her feelings. + +Nor was it without an effort to oppose Mr. Sheldon's authority that Miss +Paget succumbed to the force of circumstances. She appealed to his wife. + +"Dear Mrs. Sheldon, I beg you not to suffer Lotta's removal," she said +earnestly. "You do not know how ill she is--nor can Mr. Sheldon know, or +he would not take such a step. As her mother, your authority is superior +to his; you have but to say that she shall not be taken from this house +in her present state of prostration and sickness." + +"I have only to say!" cried Georgy, piteously. "O Diana, how can you say +such a thing? What would be Mr. Sheldon's feelings if I were to stand up +against him, and declare that Charlotte should not be moved? And he so +anxious too, and so clever. I'm sure his conduct about my poor dear Lotta +is positively beautiful. I never saw such anxiety. Why, he has grown ten +years older in his looks since the beginning of her illness. People go on +about stepfather this, and stepfather that, until a poor young widow is +almost frightened to marry again. But I don't believe a real father ever +was more thoughtful or more careful about a real daughter than Philip has +been about Lotta. And what a poor return it would be if I were to oppose +him now, when he says that the removal will be for Charlotte's good, and +that she will be near clever doctors--if she should require clever +doctors! You don't know how experienced he is, and how thoughtful. I +shall never forget his kindness to poor Tom." + +"Yes," exclaimed Miss Paget impatiently, "but Mr. Halliday died." + +"O Diana," whimpered Georgy, "I did not think you could be so unkind as +to remind me of that." + +"I only want to remind you that Mr. Sheldon is not infallible." + +Mr. Sheldon entered the room at this juncture, and Diana left it, +passionately indignant against the poor weak creature, to whom no crisis, +no danger, could give strength of mind or will. + +"A sheep would make some struggle for her lamb," she thought, angrily. +"Mrs. Sheldon is lower than a sheep." + +It was the first time she had thought unkindly of this weak soul, and her +anger soon melted to pity for the powerless nature which Mr. Sheldon held +in such supreme control. She made no further attempt at resistance after +this; but went to Charlotte's room and prepared for the journey. + +"O, why am I to be moved, dear?" the girl asked piteously. "I am too ill +to be moved." + +"It is for your good, darling. Mr. Sheldon wants you to be near the great +physicians, who can give you health and strength." + +"There are no physicians who can do that. Let me stay here, Di. Beg papa +to let me stay here." + +Diana hid her face upon the invalid's shoulder. Her tears choked her. To +repress her grief was agony scarcely endurable. But she did hide all +trace of anger and sorrow, and cheered the helpless traveller throughout +the weariness of the journey. + + * * * * * + +Charlotte was lying on a sofa in her bedroom, with Mrs. Woolper in +attendance upon her, when Dr. Jedd arrived. It was a quarter to six, and +the low western sunshine flooded the room. + +The physician came with Valentine, and did not ask to see Mr. Sheldon +before going to his patient's room. He told the housemaid who admitted +him to show the way to Miss Halliday's room. + +"The nurse is there, I suppose?" he said to the girl. + +"Yes, sir; leastways, Mrs. Woolper." + +"That will do." + +Mr. Sheldon heard the voice in the hall, and came out of the library as +the doctor mounted the step of the stairs. + +"Who is this? What is this?" he asked of Valentine Hawkehurst. + +"I told you I was not satisfied with Dr. Doddleson's opinion," answered +the young man coolly. "This gentleman is here by appointment with me." + +"And pray by what right do you bring a doctor of your own choosing to +visit my stepdaughter without previous consultation with me?" + +"By the right of my love for her. I am not satisfied as to the medical +treatment your stepdaughter has received in this house, Mr. Sheldon, and +I want to be satisfied. Miss Halliday is something more than your, +stepdaughter, remember: she is my promised wife. Dr. Jedd's opinion will +be more assuring to me than the opinion of Dr. Doddleson." + +At the sound of Dr. Jedd's name Mr. Sheldon started slightly. It was a +name he knew only too well--a name he had seen among the medical +witnesses in the great Fryar trial, the record of which had for him +possessed a hideous fascination. He had fancied himself in the poisoner +Fryar's place; and the fancy had sent an icy chill through his veins. But +in the next minute he had said to himself, "I am not such a reckless fool +as that man Fryar was; and have run no such risks as he ran." + +At the name of Jedd the same icy shiver ran through his veins again. His +tone of suppressed anger changed to a tone of civility which was almost +sycophantic. + +"I have the honour to know Dr. Jedd by repute very well indeed, and I +withdraw my objection to your course of proceeding, my dear Hawkehurst; +though I am sure Dr. Jedd will agree with me that such a course is +completely against all professional etiquette, and that Dr. Doddleson +will have the right to consider himself aggrieved." + +"There are cases in which one hardly considers professional etiquette. I +shall be very happy to meet Dr. Doddleson to-morrow morning. But as Mr. +Hawkehurst was very anxious that I should see Miss Halliday to-night, I +consented to waive all ceremony, and come with him on the spot." + +"I cannot blame his anxiety to secure so valuable an opinion. I only +wonder what lucky star guided him to so excellent an adviser." + +Mr. Sheldon looked from Dr. Jedd to Valentine Hawkehurst as he said this. +The physician's face told him no more than he might have learnt from a +blank sheet of paper. Valentine's face was dark and gloomy; but that +gloomy darkness might mean no more than natural grief. + +"I will take you to my stepdaughter's room at once," he said to the +physician. + +"I think it will be better for me to see the young lady alone," the +doctor answered coolly: "that is to say, in the presence of her nurse +only." + +"As you please," Mr. Sheldon replied. + +He went back to his study. Georgy was sitting there, whimpering in a +feeble way at intervals; and near her sat Diana, silent and gloomy. A +settled gloom, as of the grave itself, brooded over the house. Mr. +Sheldon flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He had +sneered at the inconvenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was +beginning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two women +in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as if there was no room +in the house in which he could be alone; and just now he had bitter need +of solitary meditation. + +"Let them arrange the dining-room somehow, carpet or no carpet," he said +to his wife. "We must have some room to dine in; and I can't have you +here, Georgy; I have letters to write." + +Mrs. Sheldon and Diana were not slow to take the hint. + +"I'm sure I don't want to be here, or anywhere," exclaimed Georgy in +piteous accents; "I feel so miserable about Charlotte, that if I could +lie down and die, it would be a comfort to me. And it really seems a +mockery having dinner at such a time. It's just as it was during poor +Tom's illness; there were fowls and all sorts of things cooked, and no +one ever ate them." + +"For God's sake go away!" cried Mr. Sheldon passionately; "your perpetual +clack is torture to me." + +Georgy hurried from the room, followed closely by Diana. + +"Did you ever see any one more anxious?" Mrs. Sheldon asked, with +something like pride. + +"I would rather see Mr. Sheldon less anxious!" Diana answered gravely. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +DR. JEDD'S OPINION. + +Alone, Philip Sheldon breathed more freely. He paced the room, waiting +for the appearance of the doctor; and with almost every turn he looked at +the clock upon the chimneypiece. + +How intolerable seemed the slow progress of the moments! How long that +man Jedd was staying in the sick-room! And yet not long; it was he, +Philip Sheldon, who was losing count of time. Where was Valentine? He +opened the door of the room, and looked out. Yes, there was a figure on +the stairs. The lover was waiting the physician's verdict. + +A door on the landing above opened, and the step of the Doctor sounded on +the upper flight. Mr. Sheldon waited for Dr. Jedd's appearance. + +"I shall be glad to hear your opinion," he said quietly; and the Doctor +followed him into the study. Valentine followed the Doctor, to Mr. +Sheldon's evident surprise. + +"Mr. Hawkehurst is very anxious to hear what I have to say," said Dr. +Jedd; "and I really see no objection to his hearing it." + +"If you have no objection, I can have none," Mr. Sheldon answered. "I +must confess, your course of proceeding appears to me altogether +exceptional, and--" + +"Yes, Mr. Sheldon; but then, you see, the case is altogether an +exceptional case," said the physician, gravely. + +"You think so?" + +"Decidedly. The young lady is in extreme danger. Yes, Mr. Sheldon, in +extreme danger. The mistake involved in her removal to-day is a mistake +which I cannot denounce too strongly. If you had wanted to kill your +stepdaughter, you could scarcely have pursued a more likely course for +the attainment of your object. No doubt you were actuated by the most +amiable motives. I can only regret that you should have acted without +competent advice." + +"I believed myself to be acting for the best," replied Philip Sheldon, in +a strange mechanical way. + +He was trying to estimate the true meaning of the Doctor's address. Was +he merely expressing anger against an error of ignorance or stupidity, or +was there a more fatal significance in his words? + +"You overwhelm me," the stockbroker said presently; "you positively +overwhelm me by your view of my daughter's condition. Dr. Doddleson +apprehended no danger. He saw our dear girl on Sunday morning--yesterday +morning," added Mr. Sheldon, wonder-stricken to find that the interval +was so brief between the time in which he had walked with Valentine and +Dr. Doddleson in the garden at Harold's Hill and the present moment. To +Valentine it seemed still more wonderful. What a bridgeless gulf between +yesterday morning and to-night! All his knowledge of this man Sheldon, +all the horror involved in Tom Halliday's death, had come upon him in +that brief span. + +"I should like to see Dr. Doddleson's prescriptions," said Dr. Jedd, with +grave politeness. + +Mr. Sheldon produced them from his pocket-book with an unshaken hand. No +change of countenance, no tremulous hand, no broken voice, betrayed his +apprehension. The one distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent, +half-mechanical tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than +in the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, he was +at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. "The chances of +defeat, so much; the chances of detection--?" + +A rapid survey of his position told him what those chances were. +Detection by Dr. Jedd? Yes. That had come to him already perhaps. But +would any actual harm to him come of such detection? + +He calculated the chances for and against this--and the result was in his +favour. That Dr. Jedd should form certain opinions of Miss Halliday's +case was one thing; that he should give public utterance to those +opinions was another thing. + +"What can his opinion matter to me?" Mr. Sheldon asked himself; "opinion +cannot touch me in a case where there is no such thing as certainty. He +has seen the dilatation of the pupil--even that old fool Doddleson saw +it--and has taken fright. But no jury in England would hang a man on such +evidence as that; or if a jury could be found to put the rope round a +man's neck, the British public and the British press would be pretty sure +to get the rope taken off again." + +"Chloric aether, spirits of ammonia--hum, ha, hum--yes," muttered Dr. +Jedd, looking at one prescription. "Quinine, yes; aqua pura," he +murmured, looking at another. + +He threw them aside with a half-contemptuous gesture, and then took up a +pen and began to write. + +"My mode of treatment will be quite different from that adopted by Dr. +Doddleson," he said; "but I apprehend no difficulty in bringing that +gentleman round to my view of the case when we meet." + +As he wrote his prescription Philip Sheldon rose and looked over his +shoulder. + +The form of the prescription told him that Dr. Jedd knew--all! He had +suspected this from the first, and the confirmation of this suspicion did +not shake him. He grew firmer, indeed; for now he knew on what ground he +was standing, and what forces were arrayed against him. + +"I really do not understand the basis of your treatment," he said, still +looking over the physician's shoulder. + +Dr. Jedd turned his chair with a sudden movement, and faced him. + +"Am I talking to Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker, or Mr. Sheldon the +surgeon-dentist?" he asked. + +_This_ was a blow. This allusion to the past was a sharper stroke than +any that Philip Sheldon had before received. He looked at Valentine; from +Valentine to the physician. What did it mean, this mention of the past? +That blabbing fool George had talked to his friend of the days in +Fitzgeorge Street, no doubt; and Valentine had blabbed Mr. Sheldon's +antecedents to the physician. + +Was this what it all meant? Or did it mean more than this? Whatever it +might mean, he faced the hidden danger, and met the uncertainties of his +position as calmly as he met its certainties. + +"I have no desire to interfere with your treatment," he said, very +quietly; "but I have some knowledge of the Pharmacopoeia, and I confess +myself quite at a loss to understand your prescription." + +"Dr. Doddleson will understand it when he has heard my opinion. There is +no time to be lost--Mr. Hawkehurst, will you take this to the chemist, +and wait for the medicine? Miss Halliday cannot take it too soon. I shall +be here to-morrow at nine o'clock.--If you wish me to see Dr. Doddleson, +Mr. Sheldon, you will perhaps arrange an appointment with him for that +hour." + +"It is rather an early hour." + +"No hour is too early in a case attended with so much danger. Perhaps it +will be as well for me to call on Dr. Doddleson as I drive home. I shall +make a point of seeing Miss Halliday twice a day. I find your housekeeper +a very sensible person. She will remain in close attendance upon the +sick-room; and I must beg that there is no quackery--no home-made +remedies. I have given your housekeeper all directions as to treatment +and diet, and she has my orders to allow no one but herself in the +invalid's room. There is a marked tendency to delirium, and quiet is +indispensable." + +"I have said as much myself," answered Mr. Sheldon. + +"Mr. Hawkehurst will undertake to see to the making-up of my +prescriptions," continued Dr. Jedd, as he drew on his gloves. "He is very +anxious about the young lady, and it will afford him some relief of mind +to be employed in her service. No, thanks," he said, putting aside Mr. +Sheldon's hand as that gentleman offered him his fee. "I have already +received my honorarium from Mr. Hawkehurst." + +There was no more to be said. The physician wished the two men good +evening, and returned to his carriage, to be driven home to dinner by way +of Plantagenet Square, where he saw Dr. Doddleson, and appointed to meet +him next day, much to the delight of that individual, who was proud to be +engaged in a case with the great Jedd. + +Valentine left the house on the heels of the Doctor. He came back in +about twenty minutes with the medicine. He did not go to the principal +gate, but to a little side gate, near the offices of the gothic villa--a +gate to which butchers and bakers came with their wares in the morning. + +"I want to see Miss Paget," he said to the maid who answered his summons; +"and I want to see her without disturbing Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon. Do you +know where to find her?" + +"Yes, sir; she's in her own room. I took her a cup of tea there ten +minutes ago. She's got a headache with fretting about our poor young +lady, and she won't go down to dinner with master and missus." + +"Will you ask her to step out here and speak to me for a few minutes?" + +"Won't you come indoors and see her, sir?" + +"No; I'd rather see her in the garden." + +It was still daylight here, but it was growing shadowy among the avenues +in Kensington Gardens. The gate near which Valentine waited was not to be +seen from the windows of dining or drawing-room. + +The housemaid ran off to summon Miss Paget; and in less than five minutes +Diana appeared, dressed in her hat and garden jacket. + +"Will you come out into the road with me, dear?" asked Valentine. "I have +something serious to say to you." + +"And I am so anxious to hear what the Doctor has said," answered Diana, +as she took Valentine's arm. + +"The road before the Lawn was very quiet at this hour of the evening, and +here they were safely beyond Mr. Sheldon's ken. + +"Tell me the Doctor's opinion, Valentine," Diana said, eagerly. "Does he +think the case very serious?" + +"He does. It is more serious than you or I could have imagined, if +Providence had not helped me to discover the truth." + +"What do you mean, Valentine?" + +He gave her in brief the story of his day's work. She listened to him +breathlessly, but uttered no exclamation until his story was finished. + +"It is most horrible," she said at last; "but I believe it is most true. +There has been so much in that man's conduct that has mystified me; and +_this_ explains all. But what earthly motive can have prompted this +hideous crime?" + +"He believes that he has a beneficial interest in her death. I cannot +fully understand his motive; but, rely upon it, there is a motive, and a +sufficient one. And I have let that man delude me into belief in his +honesty after I had been warned against him! But there is no time for +regrets. Diana, I look to you to help me in saving my dear love." + +"It is not too late to save her?" + +"Dr. Jedd will commit himself to no positive statement. He tells me she +is in danger, but he does not refuse all hope. Now listen, my dear. In +that house I have only two people to help me--Ann Woolper and yourself. +Ann Woolper I hold only by a feeble bond. I think she will be true to us; +but I am not sure of her. Sheldon's influence over her is a powerful one; +and God knows what concession he might extort from her. She is the +ostensible guardian of Charlotte's room; you must contrive to be the real +guardian. You must keep custody over the custodian. How is your room +situated in relation to Charlotte's room?" + +"The doors of the two rooms are exactly opposite." + +"Providence favours us there. Can you keep watch over Charlotte's door +from your room without making your guardianship too apparent?" + +"I can." + +"Day and night?" + +"Day and night." + +"God bless you, dear! Her life may be saved by your fidelity." + +"I would do as much to render her a smaller service." + +"My dear girl! And now go back to the house. Here is the medicine. You +will give that into Mrs. Woolper's hands; she has received her +instructions from Dr. Jedd, and those instructions leave no room for +doubt. If she permits Sheldon to tamper with the medicine or the food of +her patient, she will be the wilful accomplice of a murderer. I think she +may be trusted." + +"I will watch her." + +"The charge of procuring the medicine is mine. I shall come to this house +many times in the course of every day; but I am bound to prepare myself +for the hour in which Mr. Sheldon may forbid me his house. In that event +I shall come to this gate. I suppose the servants would stand by me if +you pleaded for me?" + +"I am sure they would." + +"And now, dear, go; the medicine is wanted. I shall come back in a few +hours to inquire if there is any change for the better. Go." + +They had returned to the gate ere this. He grasped the hand which she +held out to him, and stood by the little gate watching her till she had +disappeared through the door of the servants' quarters. When the door +closed, he walked slowly away. He had done all that it was possible for +him to do, and now came his worst misery. There was nothing left for him +but to wait the issue of events. + +What was he to do? Go home to his lodgings--eat, drink, sleep? Was it +possible for him to eat or to sleep while that precious life trembled in +the balance? He walked slowly along the endless roads and terraces in a +purposeless way. Careless people pushed against him, or he pushed against +them; children brushed past him as they ran. What a noisy, busy, +clattering world it seemed! And she lay dying! O, the droning, dreary +organs, and the hackneyed, common tunes, how excruciating they were to +him to-night! + +He emerged into the high road by-and-by, in all the bustle and riot of +Netting Hill. The crowded shops, the clamorous people, seemed strange to +him. It was like the clamour of a foreign city. He walked on past the +bustle and riot, by the quieter terraces near Holland Park, and still +held on to Shepherd's Bush, where he went into a little public-house and +called for some brandy. + +There was a bench on one side of the space in front of the bar, and +towards this he pushed his way. + +"Where are you shoving to, my young swell?" growled a sturdy cabman, +indignant at the outrage inflicted by Valentine's elbows; but in the next +moment the sturdy cabman dashed suddenly forward and caught the young +swell in his strong arms. + +"My eye, young un!" he cried; "where do you want to go to? Here, some one +bring a mug of cold water: I'm blest if he ain't in a fit!" + +Happily it was no fit, only a dead faint into which Mr. Hawkehurst had +fallen. He came back to consciousness presently, after a few spoonfuls of +brandy had been forced into his mouth, and looked about him with a +helpless stare. + +"I'm jiggered if I don't believe he's fainted for the want of wittles!" +cried the cabman. "They keeps up till they drop, sometimes, these seedy +swells--walks about, lookin' like so many Dossays, on a hempty stomach. +Here, some one bring a plate o' cold meat, and look sharp about it. I'll +stand sam." + +Valentine looked up with a faint smile. + +"And I'll stand sam for anything you like to order, my friend," he said, +holding out his hand to the good-natured cabman. "I've eaten nothing +since last night; but I haven't fasted for want of money. There are worse +troubles than an empty pocket,--and I'm not unacquainted with _that_." + +"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, sheepishly, very much +ashamed of his benevolence; "but, you see, it ain't the fust time I've +seen a swell come to the pavement with a cropper, in consequence of +having gone it too fast, and cleaned hisself out, in a manner of +speaking." + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +NON DORMIT JUDAS. + +The summer darkness closed round the Bayswater villa, but of sleep there +was little for any one in that household during this sad night. Is there +not, in almost every household, a memory of such days and nights--dread +intervals in which the common course of life and time seems to be +suspended, and all the interests of the universe hang upon the fitful +breath of one dear sufferer? + +Lonely were the watchers in Mr. Sheldon's house. Georgy was in her own +room, forbidden to disturb the invalid by her restless presence--now +lying down, now pacing to and fro, now praying a little, now crying a +little--the very ideal of helpless misery. + +In the sick-room there was no one but the invalid and Ann Woolper. In +the room opposite watched Diana Paget, her door ajar, her senses +sharpened by anxiety, quick to hear the faintest sound of footfall on +the stairs, or to feel the slightest vibration from stealthily opened +door on the story below. + +Alone in the study sat Philip Sheldon, at the table where he was +accustomed to write--a blank sheet of paper before him, a pen held +loosely in his outstretched hand, and his eyes fixed in an unseeing gaze +upon the bookcase opposite--the living image of care. Now that the +turmoil of the day was done, and there was silence in the house, he had +set himself to face his position. It was no trifling task which he had to +perform. Not one difficulty, or one set of difficulties, had he to meet +and master. The armed enemies up-springing from the dragon's teeth which +he had sown were not to be set fighting amongst themselves, nor were they +to be smashed by any rocks that he could hurl amongst them. They stood +around him in an awful circle, and turn which way he would, he saw the +same appalling figure, armed to the teeth, and invincible as death. + +What had he to fear? + +Detection of a past crime? No, that was a fool's terror which shook him +at the sound of Tom Halliday's name--a child's fear of the nursery bogie. +Detection in the present was more to be dreaded. The work that he had +done was, according to his belief, work that could not be proved against +him. But there are crimes of which to be accused is to be condemned. +Lawyers may plead, and juries may acquit; but the fiat of public opinion +goes forth against the suspected wretch, and on _his_ forehead for ever +shows the dark brand of Cain. + +For the criminal of almost every shade of colour, save this one dread +hue, society has a sanctuary and earth a refuge. The forger may find a +circle in which the signing of another man's name, under the pressure of +circumstances, is held to be a misfortune rather than an offence. The +swindler has the gentlemanly brotherhood and sisterhood of Macaire for +his family, and need never be lonely. The thief may dance away his jovial +nights among kindred spirits, and be carried to his grave by sorrowing +fellow-artists. The coiner may be jolly in his hiding-place among his +chosen band of brother coiners. But for the murderer there is no such +thing as human sympathy; and, when the blood of Nancy dyes his cruel +hand, Bill Sykes may thank God if he has a dog that will follow him to +his wretched end, for from mankind he can hope nothing. + +Mr. Sheldon did not contemplate his position from any sentimental point +of view; but he told himself that to be suspected of having poisoned his +friend, and to be accused of poisoning, or attempting to poison, his +daughter, would be ruin--ruin social and commercial, ruin complete and +irretrievable. + +And having faced one of these dread armed antagonists, he passed on to +another shadowy enemy. + +What if Charlotte recovered, and he escaped the taint of uttered +suspicion--for Dr. Jedd's private opinion he cared very little--what +then? + +Then the grim antagonist lifted his visor, and showed him the countenance +of Commercial Disgrace. + +Unless within the next few weeks he could command from eight to ten +thousand pounds, his disgrace as a member of the Stock Exchange was +inevitable. Charlotte's death would give him the means of raising as much +upon the policies of assurance obtained by her, and which, by the terms +of her will, he would inherit. The life-insurance people might be +somewhat slow to settle his claims; but he had all possible facilities +for the raising of money upon any tangible security, and he could count +upon immediate cash, in the event of Charlotte's death. + +But what if she should not die? What if this nameless languor, this +mysterious atrophy, taken vigorously in hand by Dr. Jedd, should be +vanquished, and the girl should live? + +What indeed? A sharp spasm contracted the stockbroker's hard cold face as +he pictured to himself the result of failure. + +He saw the crowd of busy faces in the House, and heard the low hum of +many voices, and the dull sound of the big half-glass doors swinging to +and fro, and the constant tread of hurrying feet. He heard the buzz of +voices and the tramp of feet stop as suddenly as if that busy tide of +human life had been arrested by an enchanter's wand. The enchanter is no +other than the head-waiter of the Stock Exchange, who takes his position +by a stand in the midst of that great meeting-place, and removes his hat. + +After that sudden silence comes a faint sound of anxious whisperings; and +then again a second silence, still more profound, prevails in that +assembly. Three times, with wooden hammer sounding dull against the +woodwork of his stand, the waiter raps his awful rap. To some it is the +call of doom. The commercial Nemesis hides her awful countenance. Slow +and solemn sound those three deliberate strokes of the wooden hammer. You +can hear the stertorous breathing of an apoplectic stockbroker, the short +panting respiration of some eager speculator--the rest is silence. And +then the voice of the waiter--proxy for the commercial Nemesis--calmly +enunciates the dread decree. + +"Philip Sheldon begs to inform the members of the House that he cannot +comply with his bargains." + +A sudden flutter of the leaves of many note-books follows that awful +announcement. Voices rise loud in united utterance of surprise or +indignation. The doors swing to and fro, as hurrying members dash in and +out to scan the market and ascertain how far they may be affected by this +unlooked-for failure. + +This was the scene which the watcher pictured to himself; and for him +Fate could wear no aspect more terrible. Respectability, solvency, +success--these were the idols to which he had given worship and tribute +in all the days of his life. To propitiate these inexorable ones he had +sacrificed all the dearest and best blessings which earth and heaven +offer to mankind. Best or happiness, as other men consider these +blessings, he had never known; the sense of triumph in success of the +present, the feverish expectation of success in the future--these had +stood to him in the place of love and hope, pleasure and idlesse, all the +joys and comforts of this lower world, and all the holy dreams of purer +pleasures in a world to come. + +One vague brief thought of all that he had sacrificed flashed across +his brain; and swift upon his track followed the thought of what he +stood to lose. + +Something more than his position upon the Stock Exchange was at stake. He +had done desperate things in the vain hope of sustaining that position +against the destroying sweep of Fortune's turning tide. Bills were afloat +which he must meet, or stand before the world a detected forger,--bills +drawn upon companies that were shadowy as the regions of their supposed +operations. Bills amounting to five thousand pounds, drawn, upon the +Honduras Mahogany Company, Limited; other bills amounting to upwards of +three thousand pounds, against the Pennsylvanian Anthracite Coal +Corporation, Limited. The sum he might raise on the policies of insurance +would about cover these bills; and, simultaneously with their withdrawal, +fresh bills might be floated, and the horse-leech cry of the brokers for +contango might be satisfied until there came a reaction in the City, and +the turning tide should float him into some harbour of safety. Beyond +this harbour shone a splendid beacon, the dead girl's inheritance--his, +to claim by right of the same will that would give him the sum insured +upon her life. + +Without this immediate ready money there was no extraction from the +hideous labyrinth. His position had been already too long sustained by +bills of exchange. There were people in the City who wanted, in vulgar +parlance, to see the colour of his money. He knew this--and knew how +frail the tenure by which he held his position, and how dire the crash +which would hurl him down to ruin. + +After the proclamation of his inability to meet his differences--the +Deluge: and, looking gloomily athwart the flood and tempest, he saw +neither ark nor Ararat. + +Charlotte's death was the one chance of redemption; and to that event he +looked as to a figure in a mathematical proposition. Of this girl +herself, with all her wealth of beauty and goodness, of hope and love, he +had scarcely any definite idea. She had so long been no more to him than +an important figure in the mathematics of his life, that he had lost the +power to behold her in any other light. + +The hardness of his nature was something lower than absolute cruelty of +heart. It was less human than the half-insane ferocity of a Nero. It was +a calm indifference to the waste of human life, which, displayed upon a +larger field of operation, would have made a monster cold and passionless +as Sphinx or Chimaera. + +"I must see Ann Woolper," he said to himself, presently, "she will not +dare to exclude me from that room." + +He listened to the striking of the Bayswater clocks. Two o'clock. Within +and without the house reigned a profound silence. The room immediately +over Mr. Sheldon's study was Charlotte's room, and here there had been +for a long time no sound of life or movement. + +"Asleep, I dare say," muttered Mr. Sheldon, "invalid and nurse both." + +He exchanged his boots for slippers, which he kept in a little cupboard +below the bookshelves, among old newspapers, and went softly from the +room. The gas was burning dimly on the stairs and on the landing above. +He opened the door of the invalid's room softly, and went in. + +Mrs. Woolper was seated beside the bed. She looked up at him with +unwinking eyes. + +"I thought you was abed, sir," she said. + +"No; I am too anxious to sleep." + +"I think every one is anxious, sir," Mrs. Woolper answered, gravely. + +"How is your patient?" + +The pretty white curtains of the little brass Arabian bedstead were +drawn. + +"She is asleep, sir. She sleeps a great deal. The doctor said that was +only natural." + +"She has taken her medicine, I suppose?" said Mr. Sheldon. + +He glanced round the room as he asked this question, but could see no +trace of medicine-bottle or glass. + +"Yes, sir; she has taken it twice, the poor dear." + +"Let me look at the medicine." + +"The strange doctor said as I was to let no one touch it, sir." + +"Very likely; but that direction doesn't apply to me." + +"He said no one, sir." + +"You are an old fool!" muttered Mr. Sheldon, savagely. + +"Ah no, sir," the housekeeper answered, with a profound sigh; "I am wiser +than I was when poor Mr. Halliday died." + +This answer, and the sigh, and the look of solemn sadness which +accompanied it, told him that this woman knew all. She had suspected him +long ago; but against her unsupported suspicion the mere force of his +character had prevailed. She was wiser now; for on this occasion +suspicion was confirmed by the voice of science. + +He stood for a few minutes looking at his old nurse, with a dark moody +face. What could he feel except supreme indignation against this woman, +who dared to oppose him when he had the best right to rely on her +faithful service? She had promised him her fidelity, and at the first +hint from a stranger she coolly deserted him and went over to the enemy. + +"Do you mean to say that you refuse to let me look at the medicine which +you have been giving to my stepdaughter?" he asked. + +"I mean to say that I will obey the orders given me by the strange +doctor," the old woman answered, with a calm sadness of tone, "even if it +turns you against me--you that have given me a comfortable home when +there was nothing before me but the workhouse; you that I carried in my +arms forty years ago. If it was anything less than her dear life that was +in danger, sir, and if I hadn't stood by her father's deathbed, I +couldn't stand against you like this. But knowing what I do, I will stand +firm as a rock between you and her; and think myself all the more truly +your faithful servant because I do not fear to offend you." + +"That's so much arrant humbug, Mrs. Woolper. I suppose you've made your +book with Miss Halliday and Miss Halliday's lover, and think you can +serve your turn best by sticking to them and throwing me over the bridge. +It's only the way of the world. You're genuine Yorkshire, and know how to +pack your cards for winning the trick. But suppose I were to spoil your +game by turning you out of doors neck and crop? What then?" + +"I don't think you'll do that, sir." + +"Why not, pray?" + +"I don't think you dare do it, in the face of that strange doctor." + +"You don't? And so Dr. Jedd is the master of this house, is he?" + +"Yes, sir. Till that poor dear young lady is well again, if ever that day +comes, I think Dr. Jedd will be the real master in this house." + +"By ----! Mrs. Woolper, you're a cool hand, I must say!" + +He could say no more. Of passionate or declamatory language he had no +command. The symbols of thought that obtained in his world were of a +limited and primitive range. + +"You're a cool hand," he repeated, under his breath. And then he turned +and left the room, opening and closing the door less cautiously than on +his entrance. + +The door of the opposite room was opened softly as he came out into +the corridor, and Diana Paget stood before him, dressed as she had +been in the day. + +"What!" he exclaimed, impatiently, "are you up too?" + +"Yes, Mr. Sheldon. I cannot sleep while Lotta is so ill." + +"Humph! I suppose you mean to get yourself on the sick-list, and give us +another invalid to nurse." + +"I will not trouble you to nurse me if I should be ill." + +"Ah!" growled the stockbroker, as he went to his own room, "you are a +pack of silly women altogether; and your fine friend Hawkehurst is more +womanish than the silliest of you. Goodnight." + +He went into his own room, where he found his wife still awake. Her weak +lamentings and bewailings were insupportable to him; and at three o'clock +he went downstairs, put on his boots and a light overcoat, and went out +into the dim regions of Bayswater, whence he saw the sun rise red above +the eastern roofs and chimneys, and where he walked until the first +clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels began to echo through the empty +streets, and, with faint distant cries of sweeps and milk-women, life's +chorus recommenced. + +It was seven o'clock when he went back to his house, and let himself in +softly with his latchkey. He knew that he had been walking a long time, +and that he had seen the sun rise; but what streets or squares he had +been walking in he did not know. He crept upstairs to his dressing-room +with stealthy footsteps, and made an elaborate toilet. At eight o'clock +he was seated at breakfast in the hastily-arranged dining-room, with the +newspapers by the side of his cup and saucer. At nine he went into the +hall to receive Dr. Jedd and Dr. Doddleson, who arrived almost +simultaneously. His carefully-arranged hair and whiskers, his well made +unpretentious clothes, his spotless linen, would have done credit to an +archbishop. Of all the cares and calculations of his long dreary night +there was no trace, except a certain dulness in his eyes, and the dark +half-circles below them. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +COUNTING THE COST. + +For four days and four nights there were fear and watching in Mr. +Sheldon's house; and in all that time the master never quitted it, except +stealthily, in the dead of the night, or at early daybreak, to roam in a +purposeless manner he knew not where. The doctors came and went--Dr. +Doddleson once a day, Dr. Jedd two or three times a day--and every one in +villas adjoining and villas opposite, and even in villas round the +corner, knew that the stockbroker's stepdaughter lay sick unto death; for +the white horses of Dr. Jedd's landau were as the pale horse of the Pale +Rider himself, and where they came was danger or death. Ah, thank God! to +some they have brought hope and blessing; not always the dread answer, +"You have called me in vain." + +Valentine Hawkehurst came many times in the day, but between him and Mr. +Sheldon there could be no safe meeting; and the lover came quietly to the +little gate, where a kindly housemaid gave him a little note from Diana +Paget. Miss Paget wrote half a dozen little notes of this kind in the +course of every day, but she never left her post in the room opposite the +sick-chamber. She complained of headache, or of some vague illness which +prevented her taking her meals in the dining-room, and Mr. Sheldon was +fain to be satisfied with this explanation of her conduct. + +She was on guard; and the wretched master of the house knew that she was +on guard, and that if Ann Woolper could be bought over, or frightened +into compliance with his wishes, this girl would still remain, faithful +as watchdog, by the door of her friend and companion. He asked himself +whether by violent or diplomatic process, he could rid himself of this +second watcher; and the answer was in the negative. The circle around him +was a circle not to be broken. + +His wife, as yet, had been told nothing of the suspicions that reigned in +the breasts of other people. He knew this; for in his wife's face there +was no token of that dark knowledge, and she, of all people, would be +least skilled to deceive his scrutinizing eyes. Nor had the younger +servants of his household any share in the hideous suspicion. He had +watched the countenance of the maid who waited on him, and had convinced +himself of this. + +It was something to know that even these were not yet leagued against +him; but he could not tell at what moment they too might be sworn into +that secret society which was growing up against him in his own house. +Power to carry out his own schemes in the face of these people he felt +that he had none. Upon the dark road which he had travelled until of late +without let or hindrance, there had arisen, all at once, an +insurmountable barrier, with the fatal inscription, Here there is no +Thoroughfare. + +Beyond this barrier he could not pass. Sudden as the dread arrest of +Lot's wife was the mandate which had checked his progress. He was brought +to a dead stop; and there was nothing for him to do but to wait the issue +of Fate. He stood, defiant, unabashed, face to face with the figure of +Nemesis, and calmly awaited the lifting of the veil. + +He hoped that Charlotte Halliday would die. If by her death he could tide +over his difficulties and drift into smooth water, it would be but a very +small thing to him that Dr. Jedd, and Dr. Doddleson enlightened by his +colleague, and Valentine Hawkehurst, and Diana Paget, and a stupid +pig-headed old Yorkshirewoman, should carry in their minds for the +remainder of their lives the suspicion that by his means that fair young +life had been brought to its early close. + +What would it amount to in the future of his own existence? Prudential +considerations would induce these people to lock the secret of this +suspicion in their own breasts. Dr. Jedd would bow to him somewhat +coldly, perhaps, if they met in the streets of London, or possibly might +refuse to make any return to his passing salutation; but the cut direct +from Dr. Jedd would not cast a shadow over his commercial career, or even +weaken his social position. If, by the loud folly of Hawkehurst, some +evil rumour about him should float as far eastward as the Stock Exchange, +who would be found to give credence to the dark report? Men would shrug +their shoulders and shake their heads incredulously; and one of these +wise men of the east would remark that, "A fellow in Sheldon's position +doesn't do that kind of thing, you know;" while another would say, "I +dined with him at Greenwich last summer, and a remarkably good dinner he +gave us. Dawkins, the great shipbuilder, and M'Pherson, of M'Pherson and +Flinders, the Glasgow merchants, were there. Very jolly affair, I assure +you. Deuced gentlemanly fellow, Phil Sheldon." And so the matter would +end. + +Would there be an inquest in the event of his stepdaughter's death? Well, +no. Jedd knew that in such a case all _post-mortem_ inquiry must end in +confusion and perplexity, statement and counter-statement from medical +witnesses, who would contradict one another persistently in the support +of their pet theories, and who would regard the investigation as a very +convenient opportunity for ventilating their own opinions and airing +their own importance. A considerable number of the canine race would be +slaughtered, perhaps, in the process of dilettante experiments; the broad +principles of chemical science would be discussed from every point of +view, in innumerable letters published in the _Zeus,_ and the _Diurnal +Hermes_; and the fact that an amiable and innocent young woman had been +foully murdered would be swept out of the minds of mankind before a +whirlwind of technical debate. Jedd was the last man to stake his +reputation upon such a hazard. No: Mr. Sheldon knew that he had played a +cautious game; and if he should ultimately lose the stake for which he +had ventured, it would be because he had been just a little too cautious. + +"These things are generally done too quickly," he said to himself. "My +mistake has been to make matters too slow." + +Come what might, of after-consequences to himself from Charlotte +Halliday's illness or death he had no apprehension. + +Thus it was that he met Dr. Jedd day after day with a face as calm as the +stony countenance of that distinguished physician himself. Such anxiety +as an affectionate stepfather should feel during the peril of his +stepdaughter Mr. Sheldon took care to express. Greater anxiety than this +by no look or gesture did he betray. He knew that he was watched; and +that the people about him were inimical to himself and to his interests; +and he was never off his guard. + +It had been necessary for him to come to London in order to be within +easy reach of that troubled sea, the money-market. But perilous though +the voyage of his bark across that tempestuous ocean was, he could not +guide the helm in person. He was obliged to confide matters to the care +of Mr. Frederick Orcott, whom he harassed with telegraphic despatches at +all hours of the day, and who at this period seemed to spend his life +between the stockbroker's office and Bayswater. + +It seemed as if Mr. Sheldon meant to hold his ground in that house until +the issue of events was determined. Valentine Hawkehurst and George +Sheldon met at the solicitor's offices, and there was a long and serious +consultation between them. + +"One thing seems pretty clear," said George, conclusively, "and that is, +that my brother Phil isn't to be got off the premises except by some very +deep move. The question is, what move can be deep enough to trap such a +man as he? He's a man who knows the inside of your mind better than you +do yourself; and can reckon you up as easily as the simplest sum in +arithmetic." + +The two men talked together very seriously for some time after this, and +on the same day Valentine lay in wait for Dr. Jedd as he left Philip +Sheldon's house, and was driven back to town in that gentleman's +carriage. On the road there was much serious talk between Miss Halliday's +physician and Miss Halliday's lover. Valentine was still very grave and +very anxious when he took his leave of Dr. Jedd; but he was more hopeful +than he had been for the last few days. + +On the same evening Gustave Lenoble received a brief epistle from his +plighted wife. + +"MY DEAR GUSTAVE,--I regret to find from your letter that the doctors +consider my father weaker than when I was last at Knightsbridge; but, +even knowing this, I cannot come to him just yet. The duty which detains +me here is even more sacred than his claim upon my care. And I know your +goodness to him, and feel that in you he has a better friend and +comforter than I could be to him. I thank you, dear, for your kindness to +this poor broken-down wanderer even more than for your generous devotion +to me. And now I am going to ask you a favour. It is, that you will +afford Mr. Hawkehurst, the person who will give you this letter, the help +of your friendship and counsel in very difficult and critical +circumstances, which he will explain to you. I have spoken to you of him +very little, though his devotion to my dear adopted sister, Charlotte +Halliday, brings him very near to me. Her long, and of late dangerous, +illness has been a bitter time of trial to him, even more than to me; but +the trial has proved him true as steel. I think your counsel may be of +some service to him just now, and I am sure your friendship will help to +support him in a period of acute anxiety. + +"Do not ask to see me, dear Gustave. I _cannot_ leave this house while +Charlotte is in danger; but if it please God to remove that danger, I +shall then be free to go where I please, and my future life shall be at +your disposal. Do not think me cold or ungrateful; I am only faithful to +the first friend I ever knew.--Yours always, with all affection, + +"DIANA PAGET." + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +THE BEGINNING OF THE END. + +Three days elapsed after the delivery of this letter. Upwards of a week +had gone by since the return of Mr. Sheldon and his family from Harold's +Hill: and as yet Philip Sheldon knew not what the issue of events was to +be. Very vague were the oracular sentences which his questioning extorted +from Dr. Jedd, and he had tried in vain to obtain a _tête-à-tête_ +interview with Dr. Doddleson. The physician of Burlington Row took care +that his feeble colleague should not fall alone and defenceless into the +pathway of Philip Sheldon. Of Charlotte's actual condition her +stepfather, therefore, knew very little. He was told that her state was +attended by danger; and the solemn faces which greeted him on every side +implied that the danger was extreme. From her room he was in a manner +excluded. If he went to her door to make some benevolent and paternal +inquiry, he was met on the threshold by Ann Woolper, the sleepless and +unresting. If he hinted a natural desire to see his invalid stepdaughter, +he was told that she had that moment fallen asleep, or that she was too +ill to see him. There was always some plausible reason why he should not +be admitted to her room; and finding that this was so, he did not press +the question. + +He had taken Mrs. Woolper's measure, and had found that she was too +strong for him; doubly strong since she was supported and sustained by +that second sleepless watcher, Diana Paget, whom Mr. Sheldon had long ago +pronounced to be a strong-minded and superior young person. + +From his wife he could obtain no real information--nothing but weepings +and lamentations; weak apprehensions of future woe, weaker retrospective +reflections on the fatal illness and untimely end of her first husband. +Georgy was admitted once or twice a day to the sick-room; but she emerged +therefrom no wiser than she entered it. Sorrow in the present, and the +fear of greater sorrow to come, had utterly prostrated this poor weak +soul. She believed what other people told her to believe, she hoped what +they told her to hope. She was the very incarnation and express image of +helpless misery. + +So, in utter darkness of mind, Mr. Sheldon awaited his destiny. The day +drew very near on which he must find certain sums of ready money, or must +accept the dreary alternative of ruin and disgrace. He had the policies +of assurance in his cash-box, together with the will which made him +Charlotte's sole legatee; he had fixed in his own mind upon the man to +whom he could apply for an advance of four thousand pounds on one of the +two policies, and he relied on getting his banker to lend him money on +the security of the second. But for the one needful event he had yet to +wait. That event was Charlotte Halliday's death. + +Of his dreary wanderings in the early morning the household knew nothing. +The time which he chose for these purposeless rambles was just the time +when no one was astir. The watchers in the two rooms above heard neither +his going out nor his coming in, so stealthy were his movements on every +occasion. But without this intermission from the dreadful concentration +of his life, without this amount of physical exercise and fresh air, +Philip Sheldon could scarcely have lived through this period. The +solitude of shipwrecked mariner cast upon a desolate island could hardly +be more lonely than this man's life had been since his return from +Harold's Hill. From his study to the dining-room, and from the +dining-room back to his study, was the only variety of his dreary days +and nights. He had an iron bedstead put up in his study, and there he lay +in the earlier hours of the night, taking such rest as he could from +fitful dozing that was scarcely sleep, or from brief intervals of heavy +slumber made horrible by torturing dreams. + +In this room he could hear every sudden movement in the hall, every +footstep on the stairs, every opening and shutting of the outer door. +Here, too, he could keep his watch, holding himself ready to counter the +movements of his enemies, should any opportunity arise for action on his +part, defensive or aggressive. + +To this room he stealthily returned one brilliant summer morning as the +clocks were striking six. He had been walking in the Bayswater Road, +amidst all the pleasant stir and bustle of early morning. Waggons coming +in from the country, milkwomen setting forth on their daily rounds, +clamorous young rooks cawing among the topmost branches of the elms, +song-birds chirruping and gurgling their glad morning hymn; and over all +things the glory and the freshness of the summer sunshine. + +But to Philip Sheldon it was as if these things were not. For the last +twelve or fifteen years of his life he had taken no heed of the change +of the seasons, except insomuch as the passage of time affected his +bill-book, or the condition of that commercial world which was the +beginning and end of his life. Now, less than ever, had he an ear for +the carolling of birds, or an eye for the glory of summer sunlight, or +the flickering shadows of summer leaves faintly stirred by the soft +summer wind. + +He re-entered his house with a half-dazed sense of the stir and life that +had been about him in the high road. It was a relief to him to escape +this life and brightness, and to take shelter in the gloom of his study, +where the shutters were closed, and only a faint glimmer of day crept +through a chink in the shrunken woodwork. + +For the first time since the beginning of this dreary period of idleness +and suspense he felt himself thoroughly beaten, and instead of going up +to his dressing-room for his careful morning toilet, as it was his habit +to do at this hour, he flung himself, dressed as he was, upon the low +iron bedstead, and fell into a heavy slumber. + +Yes, there they were--the familiar tortures of his slumbers, the +shadows of busy, eager faces; and upon all one universal expression of +mingled anger and surprise. The sound of a wooden hammer striking three +solemn strokes; the faint tones of Tom Halliday's voice, thanking him for +his friendly care; the dying look in Tom Halliday's face, turned to him +with such depth of trust and affection. And then across the shadowy +realm of dreams there swept the slow solemn progress of a funeral +_cortege_--plumed hearses, blacker than blackest night; innumerable +horses, with funereal trappings and plumed headgear waving in an icy +wind; long trains of shrouded figures stretching on into infinite space, +in spectral procession that knew neither beginning nor end. And in all +the solemn crowd passing perpetually with the same unceasing motion, +there was no sound of human footfall, no tramp of horse's hoof, only that +dismal waving of black plumage in an icy wind, and the deep boom of a +bell tolling for the dead. + +He awoke with a start, and exclaimed, "If this is what it is to sleep, I +will never sleep again!" + +In the next minute he recovered himself. He had been lying on his back. +The endless pageant, the dreadful tolling of the funeral bell, meant no +more than nightmare, the common torment of all humanity. + +"What a fool I must be!" he muttered to himself, as he wiped his +forehead, which had grown cold and damp in the agony of his dream. + +He opened the shutters, and then looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. +To his surprise he found that he had been sleeping three hours. It was +nine o'clock. He went upstairs to dress. There was an unusual stir in the +corridor above. Ann Woolper was standing there, with her hand on the door +of the sick-room, talking to Diana, who covered her face suddenly as he +approached, and disappeared into her own room. + +The beating of his heart quickened suddenly. Something had happened to +disturb the common course of events. Something? What was likely to +happen, except the one dread circumstance for which he hoped and waited +with such horrible eagerness? + +In Ann Woolper's solemn face he read an answer to his thought. For the +first time he was well nigh losing his self-possession. It was with an +effort that he steadied himself sufficiently to ask the usual +conventional question in the usual conventional tone. + +"Is she any better this morning, Ann?" + +"Yes, sir, she is much better," the Yorkshirewoman answered solemnly. +"She is where none can harm her now." + +Yes; it was the usual periphrase of these vulgar people. He knew all +their cant by heart. + +"You mean to say--she--is dead?" + +He no longer tried to conceal his agitation. It was a part of his duty to +be agitated by the news of his stepdaughter's untimely death. + +"O, sir, you may well be sorry," said the Yorkshirewoman, with deep +feeling. "She was the sweetest, most forgiving creature that ever came +into this world; and to the last no hard or cruel word ever passed her +innocent lips. Yes, sir, she is gone; she is beyond the power of any one +to harm her." + +"All that sort of stuff is so much hypocritical twaddle, Mrs. Woolper," +muttered Mr. Sheldon impatiently; "and I recommend you to keep it for the +chaplain of the workhouse in which you are likely to end your days. At +what time--did--did this--sad event--happen? + +"About an hour ago." + +In the very hour when, in his hideous dream, he had beheld the solemn +funeral train winding on for ever through the dim realms of sleep. Was +there some meaning in such foolish shadows, after all? + +"And why was I not sent for?" + +"You were asleep, sir. I came downstairs myself, and looked into your +room. You were fast asleep, and I wouldn't disturb you." + +"That was very wrong; but it was of a piece with the rest of your +conduct, which has been from first to last antagonistic to me. I suppose +I can see my stepdaughter now," Mr. Sheldon added, with a grim smile. +"There is no further excuse--about headache--or sleep." + +"No, sir, you cannot see her yet. In an hour, if you wish to come into +this room, you can come." + +"You are extremely obliging. I begin to doubt whether I am really in my +own house. In an hour, then, I will come. Where is my wife?" + +"In her own room, sir, lying down; asleep, I believe." + +"I will not disturb her. How about the registration, by-the-by? That +must be seen to." + +"Dr. Jedd has promised to attend to that, sir." + +"Has Dr. Jedd been here?" + +"He was here an hour ago." + +"Very good. And he will see to that," muttered Mr. Sheldon thoughtfully. + +The event for which he had been so long waiting seemed at the last a +little sudden. It had shaken his nerves more than he had supposed it +possible that they could be shaken. + +He went to his dressing-room, and on this occasion made a very hasty +toilet. The event had been tardy, and he had no time to lose in +discounting it now that it had come to pass. He went from his +dressing-room back to his study, took the jacket containing the policies +of assurance and the will from the deed-box, and left the house. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED. + +A cab conveyed Mr. Sheldon swiftly to a dingy street in the City--a +street which might have been called the pavement of wasted footsteps, so +many an impecunious wretch tramped to and fro upon those dreary flags in +vain. + +The person whom Mr. Sheldon came to see was a distinguished +bill-discounter, who had served him well in more than one crisis, and on +whose service he fancied he could now rely. + +Mr. Kaye, the bill-discounter, was delighted to see his worthy friend Mr. +Sheldon. He had just come up from his family at Brighton, and had quite a +little court awaiting him in an outer chamber, through which Mr. Sheldon +had been ushered to the inner office. + +"It's rather early for such a visitor as you," Mr. Kaye said, after a few +commonplaces. "I have not been in town half an hour." + +"My business is too important for any consideration about hours," +answered Mr. Sheldon, "or I should not be here at all. I have just come +from the deathbed of my wife's daughter." + +"Indeed!" exclaimed the bill-discounter, looking inexpressibly +shocked. Until that moment he had lived in supreme ignorance of the +fact that Mr. Sheldon had a stepdaughter; but his sorrow-stricken +expression of countenance might have implied that he had known and +esteemed the young lady. + +"Yes, it's very sad," said Mr. Sheldon; "and something more than sad for +me. The poor girl had great expectations, and would have come into a very +fine fortune if she had lived a year or two longer." + +"Ha! dear me, how very unfortunate! Poor young lady!" + +"Jedd and Doddleson--you know them by repute, of course--have been +attending her for the last six weeks. There will be no end of expense for +me; and it has been all of no use." + +"Consumption, I suppose?" + +"Well, no; not pulmonary disease. A kind of atrophy. I scarcely know what +to call it. Now, look here, Kaye. This illness has thrown all my affairs +into a muddle. Taken in conjunction with the depressed state of the +money-market, it has been altogether an upset for me. I have been staying +at home looking after this poor girl and my wife--who of course is +dreadfully cut up, and that sort of thing--when I ought to have been in +the City. Luckily for me, and for my wife, in whose interests I acted, I +took the precaution to get her daughter's life insured eight or nine +months ago; in point of fact, immediately after finding she was +heir-at-law to a considerable fortune. The policy is for five thousand +pounds. I want you to give me four thousand immediately upon the strength +of the document and of my stepdaughter's will." + +"Give you four thousand!" exclaimed Mr. Kaye, with a little unctuous +laugh. "Do you suppose I keep such a balance as that at my banker's?" + +"I suppose that you can give me the money if you like." + +"I might be able to get it for you." + +"Yes; that's a kind of humbug a hundred years old. We've heard all about +little Premium and his friend in the City, and so on, from that man who +wrote plays and cut a figure in Parliament. You can give me the money on +the spot if you like, Kaye; and if I didn't want ready money very badly I +shouldn't come to you. The insurance company will give me five thousand +in a month or two. I can give you my bill at two months' date, and +deposit the policy in your hands as collateral security. I might get this +money from other quarters--from my bankers', for instance; but I don't +want to let them know too much." + +Mr. Kaye deliberated. He had assisted Mr. Sheldon's financial operations, +and had profited thereby. Money advanced upon such a security must be as +safe as money invested in Consols, unless there were anything doubtful in +the circumstances of the policy; and that, with a man of Mr. Sheldon's +respectability, was to the last degree unlikely. + +"When do you want this money?" he asked at last. + +"At the beginning of next week. On the twenty-fifth at latest." + +"And this is the twentieth. Sharp work." + +"Not at all. You could give me the money this afternoon, if you pleased." + +"Well, I'll think it over. It's a matter in which I feel myself bound to +take my solicitor's opinion. Suppose you meet him here to-morrow at +twelve o'clock? You can bring the necessary evidence to support the +claim--the doctor's and registrar's certificate, and so on?" + +"Yes," Mr. Sheldon answered, thoughtfully; "I will bring the documentary +evidence. To-morrow at twelve, then." + +Very little more was said. Mr. Sheldon left the will and the policy in +the bill-discounter's possession, and departed. Things had gone as +smoothly as he could fairly expect them to go. From Mr. Kaye's office he +went to the Unitas Bank, where he had a very friendly, but not altogether +satisfactory, interview with the secretary. He wanted the Unitas people +to advance him money on the strength of the second policy of assurance; +but his balance had been very low of late, and the secretary could not +promise compliance with his desires. Those Unitas shares valued at five +thousand pounds, which he had transferred to his beloved stepdaughter, +had been retransferred by the young lady some months before, with a view +to the more profitable investment of the money. + +This money, as well as all else that Philip Sheldon could command, had +gone to the same bottomless pit of unlucky speculation. From the bank the +stockbroker went to his office, where he saw Frederick Orcott, to whom he +announced his stepdaughter's death with all due appearance of sorrow. He +sat for an hour in his office, arranging his affairs for the following +day, then sent for another cab, and drove back to Bayswater. The noonday +press and noise of the City seemed strange to him, almost as they might +have seemed to a man newly returned from lonely wanderings in distant +wildernesses. + +The blinds were down at the Lawn. His own handsome bedchamber and +adjoining dressing-room faced the road, and it was at the windows of +these two rooms he looked. He fancied his weak foolish wife wailing and +lamenting behind those lowered blinds. + +"And I shall have to endure her lamentations," he thought, with a +shudder. "I shall have no further excuse for avoiding her. But, on the +other hand, I shall have the pleasure of giving Mrs. Woolper and Miss +Paget notice to quit." + +He derived a grim satisfaction from this thought. Yes; insolence from +those two women he would endure no longer. The time had come in which he +would assert his right to be master in his own house. The game had been +played against him boldly by Jedd and these people, and had been lost by +them. He was the winner. He could not dismiss doctors, nurse, friend, +lover. Charlotte Halliday's death made him master of the situation. + +He went into his house with the determination to assert his authority at +once. Within all was very quiet. He looked into the dining-room--it was +quite empty; into the study--also empty. He went slowly upstairs, +composing his face into the appropriate expression. At the door of that +chamber which to him should have seemed of all earthly chambers the most +awful, he knocked softly. + +There was no answer. + +He knocked a little louder, but there was still no answer. A little +louder again, and with the same result. + +"Is there no one there?" he asked himself. "No one, except--?" + +He opened the door, and went in, with unshaken nerves, to look upon that +one quiet sleeper whom his summons could not awaken, whom his presence +could not disturb. + +There was no nurse or watcher by the bed. Everything was arranged with +extreme neatness and precision; but it seemed to him that there were +objects missing in the room, objects that had been familiar to him during +the dead girl's illness, and which were associated with her presence,-- +the clock that had stood on the table by her bed, a stand of books, a low +easy-chair, with embroidered cover worked by her mother and Diana Paget. +The room looked blank and empty without these things, and Mr. Sheldon +wondered what officious hand had removed them. + +Yonder stood the pretty little bedstead, shrouded by closely drawn white +curtains. Philip Sheldon walked slowly across the room, and drew aside +one of the curtains. He had looked upon the death-sleep of Charlotte +Halliday's father, why not upon hers? + +She was not there! Those closely drawn curtains shrouded only the bed on +which she had slept in the tranquil slumbers of her careless girlhood. +That cold lifeless form, whose rigid outline Philip Sheldon had steeled +himself to see, had no place here. + +He put his hand to his head, bewildered. "What does it mean?" he asked +himself; "surely she died in this room!" + +He went hurriedly to his wife's room. They had taken Charlotte there, +perhaps, shortly before her death. Some feverish fancy might have +possessed her with the desire to be taken thither. + +He opened the door and went in; but here again all was blank and empty. +The room was arranged after its usual fashion; but of his wife's presence +there was no token. His sense of mystification and bewilderment grew +suddenly into a sense of fear. What did it mean? What hellish fooling had +he been the dupe of? + +He went to Diana's room. That, too, was empty. A trunk and a portmanteau, +covered and strapped as if for removal, occupied the centre of the room. + +There was no other room upon this floor. Above this floor there were only +the rooms of the servants. + +He went downstairs to the dining-room and rang the bell The parlour-maid +came in answer to his summons. + +"Where is your mistress?" he asked. + +"Gone out, sir; she went at eight o'clock this morning. And O, if you +please, sir, Dr. Jedd called, and said I was to give you this--with the +certificate." + +The certificate! Yes, the certificate of Charlotte Halliday's death,--the +certificate which he must produce to-morrow, with other evidence, for the +satisfaction of the bill-discounter and his legal adviser. He stared at +the girl, still possessed by the sense of bewilderment which had come +upon him on seeing those empty rooms upstairs. He took the letter from +her almost mechanically, and tore it open without looking at the address. +The certificate dropped to the ground. He picked it up with a tremulous +hand, and for some moments stood staring at it with dazzled, unseeing +eyes. He could see that it was a document with dates and names written in +a clerkly hand. For some moments he could see no more. And then words and +names shone out of the confusion of letters that spun and whirled, like +motes in the sunshine, before his dazzled eyes. + +"Valentine Hawkehurst, bachelor, author, Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road, +son of Arthur Hawkehurst, journalist; Charlotte Halliday, spinster, of +the Lawn, Bayswater, daughter of Thomas Halliday, farmer." + +He read no more. + +It was a copy of a certificate of marriage--not a certificate of +death--that had been brought to him. + +"You can go," he said to the servant hoarsely. + +He had a vague consciousness that she was staring at him with curious +looks, and that it was not good for him to be watched by any one just +now. + +"About dinner, sir, if you please?" the young woman began timidly. + +"What do I know about dinner?" + +"You will dine at home, sir?" + +"Dine at home? Yes; Mrs. Woolper can give you your orders." + +"Mrs. Woolper has gone out, sir. She has gone for good, I believe, sir; +she took her boxes. And Miss Paget's luggage will be sent for, if you +please, sir. There's a letter, sir, that Mrs. Woolper left for you on the +mantelpiece." + +"She was very good. That will do; you can go." + +The girl departed, bewildered like her fellow-servants by the strangeness +of the day's proceedings, still more bewildered by the strangeness of her +master's manner. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +"THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE." + +When the servant was gone, Mr. Sheldon sat down and examined the document +she had given him. + +Yes, it was in due form. A certified copy of the certificate +of a marriage performed that morning at the church of St. +Matthias-in-the-fields, Paddington, and duly witnessed by the registrar +of that parish. If this document were indeed genuine, as to all +appearance it was, Valentine Hawkehurst and Charlotte Halliday had been +married that morning; and the will and the policy of assurance deposited +with Mr. Kaye the bill-discounter were so much waste-paper. + +And they had fooled him, Philip Sheldon, as easily as this! The furious +rage which he felt against all these people, and, more than against them, +against his own besotted folly for allowing himself to be so fooled, was +a sharper agony than had ever yet rent his cruel heart. He had been a +scoundrel all his life, and had felt some of the pains and penalties of +his position; but to be a defeated scoundrel was a new sensation to him; +and a savage impotent hate and anger against himself and the universe +took possession of his mind. + +He walked up and down the room for some time, abandoned wholly to the +ungovernable rage that consumed him, and with no thought beyond that +blind useless fury. And then there came upon him the feeling that was +almost a part of his mind--the consciousness that something must be done, +and promptly. Whatever his position was, he must face it. His hurried +pacing to and fro came to a sudden stop, and he took the crumpled +document from his packet, and examined it once more. + +There seemed little doubt that it was genuine; and a visit to the church +where the marriage was stated to have been performed would immediately +place the matter beyond all doubt. With the copy of the certificate, he +had taken from his pocket the letter that had enclosed it. He saw now +that the envelope was addressed in Hawkehurst's hand. + +"Favoured by Dr. Jedd," he had written in a corner of the envelope. + +Why should Dr. Jedd "favour" Mr. Hawkehurst's letter? Why, indeed, unless +there had been a conspiracy concocted by these men against his authority +and his interests? + +Valentine's letter was brief and business-like. + +"SIR,--With the full approbation of her mother and only near relation, my +dear Charlotte has this day become my wife. The enclosed attested copy of +the certificate of our marriage will afford you all particulars. I shall +refrain from entering upon any explanation of my conduct; and I believe +such explanation to be wholly unnecessary. You can scarcely fail to +understand why I have acted in this manner, and why I congratulate myself +and my dear wife on her departure from your house as on an escape from +imminent peril. It will be, I fear, little satisfaction to you to hear +that the doctors have pronounced your stepdaughter to be out of danger, +though still in very weak health. She is now comfortably established in a +temporary home, with her mother and Diana Paget; and in all probability +some months must elapse before she and I can begin our new life together. +To afford my darling girl the legal protection of marriage was the object +of this sudden and secret union. You, of all men, will most fully +comprehend how necessary such protection had become to ensure her safety. + +"Should you, however, require farther enlightenment as to the motives +that prompted this step, Dr. Jedd will be the fittest person to give you +such information; and has expressed his willingness to answer any +questions you may please to put to him. + +"For the rest, I beg to assure you that the rights of Mrs. Hawkehurst in +relation to the inheritance of the late John Haygarth's wealth will be as +carefully protected as those of Miss Halliday; nor will the hasty +marriage of this morning hinder the execution of any deed of settlement +calculated to guard her interests in the future. + +"With this assurance, I remain, sir, +Your obedient servant, +VALENTINE HAWKEHURST. +Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road." + +Enclosed with this there was a second letter--from his wife. + +He read it with a countenance that expressed mingled anger and contempt. + +"Fool!" he muttered; "this is about the only service she could do me." + +The letter was long and incoherent; blotted with tears--in places +completely illegible. Mr. Sheldon cared only to master the main facts +contained in it, which were these:--His wife had left him for ever. Dr. +Jedd and Valentine Hawkehurst had told her of something--something that +affected the safety of her darling and only child--and the knowledge of +which must separate her for ever from him. Of the money which she had +brought to him she claimed nothing. Even her jewels, which were in his +keeping, in the iron safe where he kept his papers, she did not attempt +to obtain from him. Valentine would not allow her to starve. The humblest +shelter, the poorest food, would suffice her in the future; but no home +of his providing could she ever inhabit again. + +"What I have suffered in this last few days is only known to myself and +to heaven," she wrote. "O Philip, how could you--how could you even shape +the thought of such a deed as this, which you have been doing, day after +day, for the last two months? I could not have believed what they have +told me, if I had not seen my child fade hour by hour under your care, +slowly, surely--and recover as surely directly you were excluded from any +part in our care of her. If it were possible not to believe these people, +I would disbelieve them, and would cling to you faithfully still; but the +voices against you are too many, the proofs against you are too strong. + +"Do not seek to see me. I am with my poor child, who was but just able to +bear the removal from your house, and to go through the ceremony that was +performed this morning. Little did I ever think my daughter would have +such a wedding. What a mockery all my plans seem now!--and I had chosen +the six bridesmaids, and arranged all the dresses in my own mind. To see +my dear girl dressed anyhow, in her oldest bonnet, standing before the +altar huddled up in a shawl, and given away by a strange doctor, who kept +looking at his watch in a most disrespectful manner during the ceremony, +was very bitter to me." + +Mr. Sheldon flung aside the letter with an oath. He had no time to waste +upon such twaddle as this. He tore open Nancy Woolper's letter. It was a +poor honest scrawl, telling him how faithfully she had served him, how +truly she had loved him in the past, and how she could henceforth serve +him no more. It exhorted him, in humble ill-spelt phrases, to repentance. +It might not yet be too late even for such a sinner as he had been. + +He tore these two epistles into infinitesimal fragments, and flung them +into the fireplace. Valentine Hawkehurst's letter he kept. It was a +document of some legal importance. + +For a moment there had flashed across his brain the thought that he might +punish these people for their interference with his affairs. He might +bring an action against Dr. Jedd for slander, and compel the physician to +prove the charges insinuated against him, or pay the penalty attendant +upon an unjustifiable accusation. He was well assured that Dr. Jedd could +prove very little; and a jury, if properly worked, might award him +exemplary damages. + +But on the other hand, the circumstantial evidence against him was very +strong; and evidence which might be insufficient to prove him guilty in a +trial for his life might be a sufficient defence for his enemies against +an action for slander; if, indeed, the course which Dr. Jedd and +Valentine Hawkehurst had taken did in itself constitute a slanderous and +malicious imputation. Nor could any such action invalidate the marriage +solemnized that morning; and that one fact comprised his utter ruin. +Charlotte's interests were merged in the interests of her husband. No +shadow of claim upon John Haygarth's wealth remained to him. + +His ruin was complete and dire. For a long time his circumstances had +been desperate--no avenue of escape open to him but the one dark way +which he had trodden; and now that last road was closed against him. The +day was very near at hand when his fictitious bills on shadowy companies +must be dishonoured; and with the dishonour of those bills came the end +of all things for him,--a complete revelation of all those dishonest +artifices by which he had kept his piratical bark afloat on the +commercial waters. + +He surveyed his position in every light, calmly and deliberately, and saw +there was no hope. The whole scheme of his existence was reduced to the +question of how much ready-money he could carry out of that house in his +pocket, and in what direction he should betake himself after leaving it. + +His first care must be to ascertain whether the marriage described in the +duplicate certificate had really taken place; his next, to repossess +himself of the papers left with Mr. Kaye. + +Before leaving the house he went to his study, where he examined his +banker's book. Yes, it was as they had told him at the bank. He was +overdrawn. Among the letters lying unopened on his writing-table he found +a letter from one of the officials of the Unitas, calling his attention, +politely and respectfully, to that oversight upon his part. He read the +letter, and crumpled it into his pocket with an angry gesture. + +"I am just about as well off now as I was twelve years ago, before Tom +Halliday came to Fitzgeorge Street," he said to himself; "and I have the +advantage of being twelve years older." + +Yes, this is what it all came to, after all. He had been travelling in a +circle. The discovery was humiliating. Mr. Sheldon began to think that +his line of life had not been a paying one. + +He opened his iron safe, and forced the lock of the jewel-case in which +his wife had kept the few handsome ornaments that he had given her in the +early days of their marriage, as a reward for being good--that is to say, +for allowing her second husband to dispose of her first husband's +patrimony without let or hindrance. The jewels were only a few rings, a +brooch, a pair of earrings, and a bracelet; but they were good of their +kind, and in all worth something like two hundred pounds. + +These, and the gold chronometer which he carried in his waistcoat-pocket, +constituted all the worldly wealth which Mr. Sheldon could command, now +that the volcanic ground upon which his commercial position had been +built began to crumble beneath his feet, and the bubbling of the crater +warned him of his peril. He put the trinkets into his pocket without +compunction, and then went upstairs to his dressing-room, where he +proceeded to pack his clothes in a capacious portmanteau, which in itself +might constitute his credentials among strangers, so eminently +respectable was its appearance. + +In this dread crisis of his life he thought of everything that affected +his own interests. To what was he going? That question was for the moment +unanswerable. In every quarter of the globe there are happy +hunting-grounds for the soldier of fortune. Some plan for the future +would shape itself in his mind by-and-by. His wife's desertion had left +him thoroughly independent. He had no tie to restrain his movements, +nothing to dread except such proceedings as might be taken against him by +the holders of those bills. And such proceedings are slow, while modern +locomotion is swift. + +What was he leaving? That was easily answered. A labyrinth of debt and +difficulty. The fine house, the handsome furniture, were held in the same +bondage of the law as his household goods in Fitzgeorge Street had been. +He had given a bill of sale upon everything he possessed six months +before, to obtain ready-money. The final terrible resource had not been +resorted to until all other means had been exhausted. Let this fact at +least be recorded to his credit. He was like the lady whom the poet +sings, who, + +"tolerably mild, +To make a wash would _hardly_ boil a child:" + +that is to say, she would try all other materials for her cosmetic +preparation first; and if they failed, would at last resort, unwillingly, +to the boiling of children. + +No; he had nothing to lose by flight--of that fact it was easy for him to +assure himself. + +He went downstairs, and rang for the servant. + +"I am going out," he said, "to join my wife and her daughter, and return +with them to the sea-side. There is a portmanteau upstairs in my room, +ready packed. You will give it to the messenger I shall send in the +course of the next day or two. At what time did Mrs. Sheldon and Miss +Halliday leave this morning?" + +"At eight o'clock, sir. Mr. Hawkehurst came to fetch them in a carriage. +They went out by the kitchen passage and the side gate, sir, because you +were asleep, Mrs. Woolper said, and was not to be disturbed." + +"At eight. Yes. And Mrs. Woolper and Miss Paget?" + +"They went a'most directly after you was gone out, sir. There was two +cabs to take Miss Halliday's and Mrs. Sheldon's things, and such +like,--just as there was when you came from Harold's Hill." + +"Yes; I understand." + +He was half inclined to ask the young woman if she had heard the +direction given to the drivers of these two cabs. But he refrained from +doing so. What could it profit him to know where his wife and +stepdaughter were to be found? Whether they were in the next street or at +the antipodes could matter very little to him, except so far as the +knowledge of their place of habitation might guide him in his avoidance +of them. Between him and them there was a gulf wider than all the waters +of the world, and to consider them was only foolish waste of time and +thought. He left the house, which for the last five years of his life had +been the outward and visible sign of his social status, fully conscious +that he left it for ever; and he left it without a sigh. For him the word +home had no tender associations, and the domestic hearth had never +inspired him with any sense of comfort or pleasure with which he might +not have been inspired by the luxurious fireside of a first-class +coffee-room. He was a man who would have chosen to spend his existence in +joint-stock hotels, if there had not been solidity of position to be +acquired from the possession of a handsome house. + +He went to the Paddington church. It was only five o'clock in the +afternoon by the clock of that edifice. The church was closely shut, but +Mr. Sheldon found the clerk, who, in consideration of a handsome +donation, took him to the vestry, and there showed him the register of +marriages--the last entry therein. + +Yes, there was Charlotte Halliday's signature, a little uncertain and +tremulous. + +"I suppose you are one of the young lady's relations, sir," said the +clerk. "It was rather a strange affair; but the young lady's ma was with +her; and the young lady was over age, so, you see, there's nothing to be +said against it." + +Mr. Sheldon had nothing to say against the marriage. If any false +statement of his, however base or cruel, could have invalidated the +ceremonial, he would have spared no pains to devise such a falsehood. If +he had been a citizen of the Southern States, he might have suborned +witnesses to prove that there was black blood in the veins of Valentine +Hawkehurst. If he had not been opposed to so strong an opponent as Dr. +Jedd, he might have tried to get a commission of lunacy to declare +Charlotte Halliday a madwoman, and thus invalidate her marriage. As it +was, he knew that he could do nothing. He had failed. All was said in +those three words. + +He wasted no time at the church, but hurried on to the City, where he was +just in time to catch Mr. Kaye leaving his office. + +"Have you sent those papers to your solicitor?" he asked. + +"No; I was just going to take them round to him. I have been thinking +that it will be necessary to ascertain that there is no will of Miss +Halliday's subsequent to this; and that will be rather difficult to find +out. Women never know when to leave off making wills, if they once begin +making them. They have a positive rage for multiplying documents, you +know. If the testator in that great codicil case had been a woman, a jury +would scarcely have refused to believe in the story of half a dozen +different codicils hidden away in half a dozen different holes and +corners. Women like that sort of thing. Of course, I quite understand +that you bring me the will in all good faith; but I foresee difficulties +in raising money upon such a security." + +"You need give yourself no further trouble about the matter," said Mr. +Sheldon coolly. "I find that I can do without the money, and I've come to +reclaim the papers." + +Mr. Kaye handed them to his client. He was not altogether pleased by this +turn of affairs; for he had expected to profit considerably by Mr. +Sheldon's necessities. That gentleman honoured him with no further +explanations, but put the papers in his pocket, and wished the +bill-discounter good day. + +And this was the last time that Philip Sheldon was ever seen in his +character of a solid and respectable citizen of London. He went from the +bill-discounter's office to a pawnbroker in the City, with whom he +pledged Georgy's trinkets and his own watch for the sum of a hundred and +twenty pounds. From the pawnbroker's he went back to Bayswater for his +portmanteau, and thence to the Euston Hotel, where he dined temperately +in the coffee-room. After dinner he went out into the dull back streets +that lurk behind Euston Square, and found an obscure little barber's +shop, where he had his whiskers shaved off, and his hyacinthine locks +cropped as close as the barber's big scissors could crop them. + +The sacrifice of these hirsute adornments made an extraordinary change +in this man. All the worst characteristics of his countenance came out +with a new force; and the face of Mr. Sheldon, undisguised by the +whiskers that had hidden the corners of his mouth, or the waving locks +that had given height and breadth to his forehead, was a face that no one +would be likely to trust. + +From the Euston Station he departed by the night mail for Liverpool, +under the cover of darkness. In that city he quietly awaited the +departure of the Cunard steamer for New York, and was so fortunate as to +leave England one day before that fatal date on which the first of his +fictitious bills arrival at maturity. + + + + +Book the Tenth. + + + +HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS. + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY. + +Not with pomp or with splendour, with rejoicing or strewing of summer +blossoms in the pathway of bride and bridegroom, had the marriage of +Valentine and Charlotte been solemnized. Simple and secret had been the +ceremonial, dark with clouds was the sky above them; and yet it is +doubtful if happier bridegroom ever trod this earth than Valentine +Hawkehurst as he went to his lonely lodging under the starry summer sky, +after leaving his young wife to her mother's care in the new home that +had been found for them. + +He had reason to rejoice; for he had passed through the valley of the +shadow of death. He had seen, very near, that dread presence before which +the angels of faith and love can avail nothing. Fearless as Alcides had +he gone down to the realms of darkness; triumphant and glad as the +demigod he returned from the under-world, bearing his precious burden in +his strong arms. The struggle had been dire, the agony of suspense a +supreme torture; but from the awful contest the man came forth a better +and a wiser man. Whatever strength of principle had been wanting to +complete the work of reformation inaugurated by love, had been gained by +Valentine Hawkehurst during the period of Charlotte's illness. His +promised wife, his redeeming angel, she for whose affection he had first +learned to render thanks to his God, had seemed to be slipping away from +him. In the happiest hour of his prosperous courtship he had known +himself unworthy of her, with no right, no claim, to so fair a prize, +except the right of pure and unselfish love. When the hour of trial came +to him he had said, "Behold the avenger!" and in that hour it seemed to +him that a lurking anticipation of future woe had been ever present with +him in the midst of his happiness,--it seemed so natural, go reasonable +that this treasure should be taken away from him. What had he done, that +he should go unpunished for all the errors and follies of his youth? + +He looked back, and asked himself if he had been so vile a sinner as in +these hours of self-reproach he was inclined to esteem himself? Could his +life have been otherwise? Had he not been set in a groove, his young feet +planted in the crooked ways, before he knew that life's journey might be +travelled by a straighter road? + +Alas, the answer given at the tribunal of conscience went against him! +Other men had come into this world amidst surroundings as bad, nay, +indeed, worse than the surroundings of his cradle. And of these men some +had emerged from their native mire spotless and pure as from newly-fallen +snow. The natural force of character which had saved these men had not +been given to him. His feet had been set in the crooked ways, and he had +travelled on, reckless, defiant, dimly conscious that the road was a bad +one, and that his garments were bespattered with more mud-stains than +would be agreeable to some travellers. + +It was only when the all-powerful influence of love was brought to bear +upon this plastic nature that Valentine Hawkehurst became fully awakened +to the degradation of his position, and possessed with an earnest desire +to emerge from the great dismal swamp of bad company. Then, and then +only, began the transformation which was ultimately to become so complete +a change. Some influence, even beyond that of happy love, was needed to +give force to this man's character; and in the great terror of the last +three months that influence had been found. The very foundations of +Valentine Hawkehurst's life had been shaken, and, come what might, he +could never be again what he had been. + +He had almost lost her. All was said in that. She had been almost taken +from him--she, who to this man was father, mother, wife, household, past, +present, future, glory, ambition, happiness--everything except that God +who ruled above and held her life and his peace in the hollow of His +hand. He had been face to face with death; and never, in all the years to +come--never in the brightest hour of future happiness, could he forget +the peril that had come upon him, and might come again. He had learned to +understand that he held her, not as a free gift, but as a loan--a +treasure to be reclaimed at any moment by the God who lent her. + +The darksome valley was past, and Valentine stood by his darling's side, +safe upon the sunlit uplands. + +The doctors had declared their patient safe. The hour of danger had been +passed in safety, and the mischief worked by the poisoner's slow process +had been well nigh counteracted by medical skill. + +"In six weeks' time you may take your wife for her honeymoon tour, Mr. +Hawkehurst, with her health and spirits thoroughly re-established," +said Dr. Jedd. + +"What is that you say about honeymoon tours?" cried Gustave Lenoble. +"Hawkehurst and his wife will spend their honeymoon at Côtenoir; is it +not, Diana?" + +Diana replied that it was to be, and must be so. + +It was impossible to imagine a happier party than that which met day +after day in those pleasant lodgings at Kilburn, wherein Georgy and Diana +and Charlotte had been established with much devotion and care on the +parts of Valentine and Gustave. Mr. Hawkehurst had chosen the apartments, +and M. Lenoble had spent the day before the wedding in rushing to and fro +between the West End and Kilburn, carrying hot-house flowers, comestibles +of all kinds from Fortnum and Mason's, bonbon boxes, perfumery, new +books, new music, and superintending the delivery of luxurious +easy-chairs, hired from expensive upholsterers, a grand piano, and a +harmonium. + +"We will have music in the evenings," he said to Diana, upon her +expressing surprise on beholding these arrangements, "when we are +assembled here, all. How thou dost open thine eyes on beholding these +nothings! Do you think it has been no pleasure to me to testify my +affection for one who has been so good to thee--thy friend, thine +adopted sister? I wished that all things should look bright around her, +when they brought her here, after that she had come to escape from the +jaws of death. And thou, was it not that thou wert also coming to make +thy home here for some days, until thy day of marriage? Thy father +astonishes himself to hear of such sudden events. Thou wilt go to see +him, soon, is it not?" + +"Yes, dear Gustave. I will go to-morrow." + +She went on the next day, and found Captain Paget much weaker than on her +last visit. + +It was evident that for him the end was very near. He was much changed +and subdued by his long illness; but the spirit of worldliness had not +been altogether exorcised even in this dismal period of self-communion. + +"What does it all mean, Diana?" he asked. "I don't understand being kept +in the dark like this. Here are you suddenly leaving Mr. Sheldon's house +without rhyme or reason, to take up your quarters in lodgings with Mrs. +Sheldon. Here is a mysterious marriage taking place at a time when I have +been given to understand that one of the parties is at death's door; and +here is Lenoble introduced to Valentine Hawkehurst, in express opposition +to my particular request that my future son-in-law should be introduced +to none of the Sheldon set." + +"Valentine is not one of the Sheldon set, papa. I do not think it likely +that he will ever see Philip Sheldon again." + +"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Captain Paget. "There has been something +serious going on, then, surely?" + +After this he insisted on an explanation, and Diana told him the story of +the last two or three weeks: Charlotte's increasing illness--so +mysterious and incurable; the sudden return from Harold's Hill; +Valentine's fears; Dr. Jedd's boldly-expressed opinion that the patient +was the victim of foul play; the systematic exclusion of Philip Sheldon +from the sick-room, followed immediately by symptoms of amelioration, +leading to gradual recovery. + +All this Captain Paget heard with an awe-stricken countenance. The +distance that divides the shedder of blood from all other wrong-doers is +so great, that the minor sinner feels himself a saint when he +contemplates the guilt of the greater criminal. + +"Great God! is this possible?" exclaimed the Captain, with a shudder. +"And I have taken that man's hand!" + +Later in the evening, when Diana had left him, and he had been thinking +seriously of his own career, and those many transactions of his troubled +life which, in the slang denomination of the day, would be called +"shady," he derived some scrap of comfort from one consideration. + +"I never hurt a worm," he murmured to himself, complacently. "No, I can +lay my hand upon my heart and say, I never hurt a worm." + +The Captain did not pause to reflect that some of the merit involved in +this amiable trait of character might have been referable to the fact, +that he had never happened to fall upon a state of society in which a +comfortable living was to be made by the hurting of worms. He thought +only of the story he had heard about Philip Sheldon; and he told himself +that not in the direst necessity of his life could his brain have +fashioned the thought of such a deed as that, in the doing of which this +man had persevered for nearly three months. + +For Charlotte Hawkehurst the summer days which succeeded her marriage +passed very quietly. She had not been told the real motive of that hasty +and stolen marriage which had given her to the man she loved and trusted +so completely. Valentine and Diana had between them contrived to mould +Mrs. Sheldon to their will; and it was at her request that Charlotte had +consented to so strange a step. + +The fable invented to account for this desire on the part of Mrs. Sheldon +was very innocent. The doctors had ordered a milder climate than England +for the dear convalescent--Madeira, Algeria, Malta--or some other equally +remote quarter of the globe. It was impossible that Mr. or Mrs. Sheldon +could take so long a journey; Mr. Sheldon being bound hand and foot to +the mill-wheel of City life, Mrs. Sheldon being the slave and helpmeet of +her husband. Nor could dear Charlotte go to Malta alone, or attended only +by faithful Diana Paget. In short, there was no course so obvious or so +prudent as a hasty marriage, which would enable the invalid to seek a +milder clime, accompanied and guarded by her natural protector--a +husband. + +"Consent, dearest, I entreat you," wrote Valentine, in the little note +which supported Mrs. Sheldon's request, "however strange our wishes may +seem to you. Believe that it is for the best, for your own sake, for the +sake of all who love you, and ask no questions. Say only yes." + +To the prayer in this letter, to the entreaties of her mother and Diana, +Charlotte yielded. She wondered why Mr. Sheldon avoided her, and asked +anxiously, on more than one occasion, why she did not see that gentleman. + +"Is papa ill," she asked, "that he never comes to see how I am?" + +"The doctors have forbidden many people in your room, dear." + +"Yes, a few days ago, when I was so very ill; but now that I am better, +papa might come. I want to thank him for all his anxious care of me, and +to be sure that _he_ consents to this marriage." + +"My darling, be assured the marriage is for the best," pleaded Diana. + +And the marriage took place. + +Charlotte's innocent soul was thus spared the pain of a revelation which +must have cast a dark shadow on the bright beginning of her wedded life. +Georgy pledged herself to keep the fatal secret from her daughter; and +Diana Paget rewarded her discretion by the most patient attention to her +piteous and prosy lamentations upon the iniquity of mankind in general, +and Philip Sheldon in particular. + +Of that hideous secret of the past, lately revealed by Mr. Burkham, Mrs. +Sheldon had been told nothing. No good end could have been served by such +a revelation. The criminal law has its statute of limitations--unwritten, +but not the less existent. A crime which would have been difficult of +proof at the time of its commission must after the lapse of twelve years +have travelled beyond the pale of justice. For three people to come +forward and declare that at the time of Mr. Halliday's death they had +suspected Mr. Sheldon of poisoning him, would be to prove nothing to the +minds of a British jury, except that the three people in question were +libellous and ill-disposed persons. The greater the issue, the wider the +chances of escape given to the accused; and a petty offender will be +condemned for picking a pocket upon much lighter grounds than will be +considered sufficient to prove a man guilty of blowing up the Houses of +Parliament. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +AFTER THE WEDDING. + +The manner in which Mr. Sheldon would act in the future was a matter of +considerable fear to his wife. She had a hazy idea that he would come to +the pleasant Kilburn lodgings to claim her, and insist upon her sharing +his dreary future. + +"If I could only have a divorce," she said piteously, when she discussed +the subject with her son-in-law. "There ought to be divorces for such +dreadful things; but I never heard of one before Sir Creswick, +or the new judge, whose name I can't remember. O Valentine, I cannot live +with him; I cannot sit down to dinner day after day with such a man as +that. And to think that I should have known him when I was the merest +girl, and have danced my very first polka with him when it first came in, +and people wore polka boots and polka jackets, and wrote their notes of +invitation upon polka paper, and sang polka songs, and worked polking +peasants in Berlin wool, and went on altogether in the most absurd +manner. And O Valentine, whom can one trust, if not the man one has known +all one's life!" + +Mr. Hawkehurst pledged himself to protect his mother-in-law from any +attempt at persecution upon the part of her husband. He did not know what +difficulties he might have to encounter in the performance of this +pledge; for, in his ignorance of the stockbroker's desperate +circumstances, he imagined that Philip Sheldon would make some attempt to +right himself in the eyes of the world, by compelling his wife to +reassume her position in his house. + +He went to George Sheldon's office within a few days after his marriage +to take counsel from that astute adviser. He found the lawyer hard at +work, and in very good spirits. It was by his advice the marriage had +been hurried on; Charlotte's stealthy removal from the house while Philip +Sheldon slumbered had been planned by him; and he was triumphant in the +thought that the plot had succeeded so well, and that Philip, the coolest +and deepest of schemers, had been so completely baffled. + +"That Ann Woolper is a treasure," he said; "I didn't think it was in her +to do what she has done. Nothing could be neater than the way she kept +Phil at bay; and nothing could be better than her tact and cleverness in +getting Charlotte and her mother quietly off the other morning while my +precious brother was in the land of nod." + +"Yes, she has been invaluable to us." + +"And that girl Paget, too; she has turned out a regular trump. I used to +think her a very stiff, consequential piece of goods when I saw her at +the Lawn; but, egad, she has shown herself the genuine metal all through +this business. Now that's a young woman I wouldn't mind making Mrs. +George Sheldon any day in the week." + +"You do her too much honour," said Valentine, with an internal shiver. +"Unhappily, a prior engagement will prevent Miss Paget's availing herself +of so excellent an opportunity." + +"It mayn't be such a very bad chance as you seem to think it, my friend," +George replied, with some indignation. "Whenever the Reverend John +Haygarth's estate drops in, I stand to win fifty thousand pounds. And +that's not so bad for a start in life, I suppose you haven't forgotten +that your wife is heir-at-law to a hundred thousand pounds?" + +"No, I have not forgotten her position in relation to the Haygarth +estate." + +"Humph! I should rather think not. People don't generally forget that +kind of thing. But you are uncommonly cool about the business." + +"Yes, I have passed through a fiery furnace in which all the bullion in +the Bank of England will not serve a man. That kind of ordeal upsets +one's old notions as to the value of money. And, again, I have never been +able to contemplate Charlotte's inheritance of that fortune as anything +but a remote contingency; the business is so slow." + +"Yes, but it has been going on. Affidavits have been made; the whole +affair is in progress." + +"I am glad to hear it. Don't think that I pretend not to value the +prospect of wealth; I have only learnt to know that money is not the +be-all and end-all of life. I could be very happy with my dear wife if +there were no prospect of this Haygarthian inheritance; but if it does +come to us, we shall, no doubt, be all the happier. The millionaire sees +the world from a very pleasant point of view. I should like my dear girl +to be the mistress of as fair a home as money can buy for her." + +"Yes, and you'd like to have your name stand high in the statistics of +Government stockholders. Don't be sentimental, Hawkehurst; that kind of +thing won't wash. Thank God, we managed to save poor Tom's daughter from +the fangs of my brother Phil. But you can't suppose that I am going to +shut my eyes to the fact that this affair has been a very good thing for +you, and that you owe your chances of a great fortune entirely to me? You +don't pretend to forget _that_, I suppose?" said George Sheldon, with +some acrimony. + +"Why should I pretend to forget that, or any circumstance of our business +relations? I am perfectly aware that you started the hunt of the +Haygarths, and that to your investigations is to be traced the discovery +that proves my wife a claimant to the estate now held by the Crown." + +"Very good; that's outspoken and honest, at any rate. And now, how about +our agreement? It's only a parole agreement, but an honest man's word is +as good as his bond." + +"Our agreement!" repeated Valentine, with a puzzled expression of +countenance. "Upon my word, I forget." + +"Ah, I thought it would come to that; I thought you would manage to +forget the terms agreed upon by you and me in the event of your marriage +with Charlotte Halliday. My memory is not so short as yours; and I can +swear to a conversation between you and me in this room, in which you +consented to my taking half the Haygarthian estate as the price of my +discovery and the fair reward of my labours." + +"Yes," said Valentine, "I remember that conversation; and I remember +saying that the demand was a stiff one, but that I, as Charlotte's future +husband, would not oppose such a demand." + +"You remember that?" + +"I do; and if my wife is willing to consent to your terms, I will hold to +my promise." + +"Your wife's consent is not wanted. She married you without a settlement, +and her rights are merged in yours. To all intents and purposes, _you_ +are heir-at-law to John Haygarth's estate." + +Valentine laughed aloud; the whole affair seemed a tremendous joke. He, +the homeless, penniless, friendless reprobate of but one year ago--he, +the son and heir of a man who had been always on the verge of social +shipwreck for want of five pounds--he, of all other men upon this earth, +claimant against the Crown for an estate worth one hundred thousand +pounds! + +"The whole affair seems ridiculously improbable," he said. + +"My brother wouldn't have done what he did if the whole thing had seemed +improbable to him. However, we needn't estimate the chances for or +against; all I want is a legal agreement between you and me, securing my +share of the plunder." + +"I am ready to execute any reasonable agreement; but I am bound to +protect my wife's interests, and I must have a solicitor to act for me in +this affair. Greek must meet Greek, you know." + +"Very good. I could have conducted the business myself without the +interference of strangers; but if you are going in for extreme caution, +you'd better leave your wife's affairs in the hands of Messrs. Greenwood +and Greenwood, who have acted for her hitherto, and have all papers +relating to the case in their possession." + +"Greenwood and Greenwood? My dear girl told me she had signed some +document, and had seen some lawyers; but she did not tell me the nature +of the document, or the name of the lawyers. I have forborne to speak to +her on business matters. The treatment that she has undergone has left +her very nervous, and we try to keep all unpleasant subjects out of her +mind." + +"Yes, that's all very well; but business is business, you know. You'd +better see Messrs. Greenwood and Greenwood at once. Tell them of your +marriage. You'll have to keep Phil's conduct dark, of course; that is +understood between us. You must say the marriage was a love-match +against my brother's wish, romantic, sentimental, and so on. They'll +raise no objections when they find you are willing to leave the case in +their hands." + +"You have heard nothing of your brother?" + +"Well, no--nothing, or next to nothing. I called at his office yesterday. +He has not been there since the beginning of Charlotte's illness, and +there has been no letter or message for Orcott since your wedding-day. +Things look rather piscatorial, altogether. Orcott hints that Phil's +affairs are in queer street; but he's a shallow-headed fool, and knows +very little. It seems, by his account, that Phil was a Bull, and that +the fall in every species of stock has been ruin to him. You see, when a +man once goes in for the Bull business, he never by any chance turns +Bear--and _vice versa_. There's a kind of infatuation in the thing, and a +man sticks to his line until he's cleaned out--at least, that's what +stockbrokers have told me--and I believe it's pretty near the truth." + +This was all that Valentine could ascertain about Mr. Sheldon at present. +Every knock fluttered Georgy; every accidental visitor at the Kilburn +villa seemed like the swooping of eagle on dovecote. + +"I cannot get over the feeling that he will come and take me away with +him," she said. "If Sir Wilde Creswick would only do something, so that +my second husband mayn't be able to insist upon my living in that +dreadful, dreadful house, where I suffered such nights and days of agony, +that I am convinced the sight of chintz curtains lined with pink will +make me wretched as long as I live!" + +"My dear Mrs. Sheldon, he shall not come," said Valentine. + +"If I could only go ever so far away from him, and feel that there was +the sea, or something of that kind, between us!" + +"We will take you away--across the British Channel, or further still, if +you like. Diana and M. Lenoble are to be married soon; and directly +Lotta is strong enough for the journey we are to go over to Normandy, to +their chateau." + +"Chateau, indeed!" Mrs. Sheldon exclaimed peevishly. "The idea of Diana +Paget, without a sixpence, and with a regular scamp of a father, marrying +a man with a chateau, while my poor Charlotte--! I don't wish to wound +your feelings, Mr. Hawkehurst, but it really does seem hard." + +"It is hard that Lotta should not have married a prince--all the +grandeurs of a prince in a fairy tale would only be her due; but it +happens fortunately, you see, dear Mrs. Sheldon, that our sweet girl has +simple tastes, and does not languish for jewels or palaces. If she should +ever become rich--" + +"Ah," sighed, Georgy despondently, "I don't expect that. I can't +understand anything about this idea of a fine fortune that Mr. Sheldon +had got into his head. I know that my husband's mother was a Miss +Meynell, the daughter of a carpet-warehouseman in the city, and I can't +see how any grand fortune is to come to Charlotte through her. And as for +the Hallidays--Hyley and Newhall farms were all the property they ever +owned within the memory of man." + +"The fortune for which Charlotte is a claimant comes from the maternal +ancestor of Christian Meynell. I do not count upon her possession of it +as a certain good in the future. If it comes we will be thankful." + +"Is it a very large sum of money?" + +"Well, yes; I believe it is a considerable sum." + +"Twenty thousand pounds, perhaps?" + +"I have been told that it is as much." + +He did not want Georgy's weak mind to become possessed of the idea of +shadowy wealth. He remembered what Philip Sheldon had said to him on the +Christmas night in which they had paced the little Bayswater garden +together, and he felt that there was a substratum of common sense in that +scoundrel's artful warning. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +GREEK AGAINST GREEK. + +Valentine Hawkehurst called upon Mr. Greenwood, of the firm of Greenwood +and Greenwood, within a week of his marriage, and exhibited the +certificate to that gentleman. Mr. Greenwood received the information +with much solemnity, and even severity, of manner. + +"Are you aware that this is a very serious step which you have taken, +Mr. Hawkehurst?" he demanded, sternly. "You entrap--that is to say, +you persuade a lady into a hasty marriage--without consultation with +her legal advisers, without settlements of any kind whatever--while at +the same time you are aware that the lady in question is heir-at-law +to a very large fortune, proceedings for the recovery of which are +now pending. Pardon me if I observe that there is a want of +delicacy--of--a--hem--right-mindedness in the transaction." + +"The imputation contained in your remarks is not a pleasant one, Mr. +Greenwood," Valentine remarked quietly; "but I am quite willing to pardon +any injustice which you may inflict upon me by your desire to protect the +interests of your client. I think you will speedily discover that those +interests are in no way endangered by the lady's marriage with me. There +are social complications which are not to be settled by either law or +equity. Miss Halliday's surroundings of the last few months were of a +very painful nature; so painful, that the legal protection of marriage +became the only means of saving her from imminent peril. I cannot enter +more fully into those painful circumstances. I can only assure you that I +married your client with the consent and approval of her only near +relation, and uninfluenced in the smallest degree by mercenary +considerations. Whatever post-nuptial settlement you please to make for +my wife's protection I shall promptly execute." + +"You express yourself in a very honourable and highly creditable manner, +Mr. Hawkehurst," exclaimed the lawyer, with sudden cordiality; "and I beg +distinctly to withdraw any offensive observations I may have made just +now. Your own affairs are, I conclude, in a sufficiently solvent state?" + +"I do not owe a sixpence." + +"Good; and Mr. Sheldon, the lady's stepfather and my client--had you his +approval for this hasty marriage?" + +"The marriage took place without Mr. Sheldon's knowledge or consent." + +"May I ask your reason for this secrecy?" + +"No, Mr. Greenwood; it is just that one reason that I cannot tell you. +Accept my assurance that it was an all-powerful reason." + +"I am compelled to do so, if you decline to confide in my discretion; but +as Mr. Sheldon is my client, I am bound to think of his interests as well +as those of Miss Halliday--er--Mrs. Hawkehurst. I am somewhat surprised +that he has not called upon me since the marriage. He has been made aware +of that circumstance, I suppose?" + +"Yes; I wrote to him immediately after the ceremony, enclosing him a copy +of the certificate." + +"The marriage will make a considerable difference to him." + +"In what manner?" + +"Well, in the event of his stepdaughter's death. If she had died +unmarried and intestate, this fortune would have gone to her mother; +besides which, there was the insurance on Miss Halliday's life." + +"An insurance!" + +"Yes. Were you not apprised of that fact? Mr. Sheldon, with very natural +precaution, insured his stepdaughter's life for a considerable sum--in +point of fact, as I believe, five thousand pounds; so that, in case of +her death prior to the recovery of the Haygarth estate, her mother might +receive some solatium." + +"He had insured her life!" said Valentine, under his breath. + +This, then, was the key to the mystery. The Haygarthian inheritance was +but a remote contingency, a shadowy prize, which could scarcely have +tempted the secret assassin; but the insurance had offered the prospect +of immediate gain. The one link wanting to complete the chain of evidence +against Philip Sheldon was found. There was no longer a question as to +his motive. + +"This man knows of one insurance on her life," Valentine thought to +himself; "there may have been more than one." + +After a brief silence, in which Mr. Hawkehurst had been lost in thought, +the lawyer proceeded to discuss the terms of the post-nuptial settlement +necessary for the protection of his client's interests. In the course of +this discussion Valentine explained his position in relation to George +Sheldon, and stated the demands of that sharp practitioner. + +Mr. Greenwood was utterly aghast upon hearing Mr. Hawkehurst's views on +this subject. + +"You mean to tell me that this man claims a clear half of the Haygarth +estate--fifty thousand pounds--in consideration of his paltry +discoveries!" + +"Such is the demand he has made, and which I have pledged myself not to +oppose. He certainly does open his mouth very wide; but we are bound to +consider that but for these discoveries of his, my wife and my wife's +relatives would in all probability have gone down to their graves in +ignorance of their claim to this estate." + +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Hawkehurst. If Mr. George Sheldon had not made +the discovery, some one else would have made it sooner or later, depend +upon it. There would have been a little loss of time, that is all. There +are plenty of men of George Sheldon's class always on the look-out for +such chances as this--and for very small chances in comparison to this. +Why, I know a fellow, a Frenchman, called Fleurus, who will take as much +trouble about a few hundred pounds' worth of unclaimed stock as this man, +George Sheldon, has taken about the Haygarth succession. And he has +really the impudence to claim fifty thousand pounds from you?" + +"A claim which I have pledged myself not to oppose." + +"But which you have not pledged yourself to support. My dear Mr. +Hawkehurst, this is a business which you must allow me to settle for you, +as your wife's legal adviser. We will consider you quite out of the +question, if you please; you will thus come out of your relations to Mr. +George Sheldon with perfectly clean hands. You will not oppose his claim; +but I shall oppose him in my character of legal adviser to your wife. +Why, are you aware that this man executed an agreement with his brother, +consenting to receive a fifth share of the estate, and costs out of +pocket, in complete acquittance of all claims? I have an abstract of the +agreement, amongst Miss Halliday's--Mrs. Hawkehurst's papers." + +After some further discussion, Valentine agreed to leave the whole matter +in Mr. Greenwood's hands. Greek must meet Greek. Gray's Inn and the +Fields must settle this business between themselves. + +"I am only prince consort," he said, with a smile. "I pretend to no +actual interest in my wife's estate. I doubt, indeed, whether I should +not have felt more complete happiness in our marriage if she had not been +heiress to so large a fortune." + +At this Mr. Greenwood laughed outright. + +"Come, come, Mr. Hawkehurst," he exclaimed, "that really won't do. I am +an old stager, you know--a man of the world;--and you mustn't ask me to +believe that the idea of your wife's expectations can afford you anything +but unqualified satisfaction." + +"You cannot believe? No, perhaps not," Valentine answered, thoughtfully. +"But you do not know how nearly these expectations have lost me my wife. +And even now, when she is mine by virtue of a bond that only death can +loosen, it seems to me as if her wealth would make a kind of division +between us. There are people who will always consider me a lucky +adventurer, and look at my marriage as the result of clever scheming. I +cannot advertise to the world the fact that I loved Charlotte Halliday +from the first hour in which I saw her, and asked her to be my wife three +days before I discovered her claim to John Haygarth's estate. A man can't +go through the world with his justification pinned upon his breast. I +think it will be my fate to be misjudged all my life. A twelvemonth ago I +cared very little about the opinions of my fellow-men; but I want to be +worthy of my wife in the esteem of mankind, as well as in the depths of +my own moral consciousness." + +"Go and finish your honeymoon," said the lawyer, digging his client in +the ribs with elephantine playfulness; "the moon must be in her first +quarter, I should think. Go along with you, and leave me to tackle Mr. +George Sheldon." + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +ONLY A DREAM. + +"I say, Lenoble," Captain Paget began abruptly one afternoon when his +daughter and his future son-in-law were in attendance upon his sofa, +"when are you and Diana to be married? There is nothing to hinder your +marriage now, you know." + +Diana looked at the speaker with a grave countenance. + +"Dear papa, there can be no marriage while you are so ill," she said +gently. + +"And afterwards, when I'm gone, you won't like to marry within six months +of your father's funeral; and you will be left alone in the world. You +can't hang on to Hawkehurst and his wife. The best thing you can do, +Lenoble, is to marry her out of hand, and let me see her by my bedside as +Madame Lenoble of Côtenoir. It will be some consolation for me to see +that day. I thought to have shared your home, with a run to Paris +occasionally just to freshen myself up a little; but that's all over now. +It does seem rather hard to me sometimes; and I think of Moses, and his +forty years in the Desert with those ill-conditioned Israelites, who were +always getting into some scrape of other--setting up golden calves, and +that kind of thing--if he turned his back on them for twenty-four hours. +A pack of ungrateful beggars too, always ready for mutiny--regular +radicals, begad! And he went through it all: the sand, and the _toujours_ +quails, and the ingratitude; and after forty years of it, when he saw the +Promised Land stretched before him green and fertile on the other side of +the river--he died! I've been through my desert, the dreary wanderings +over the barren sand, and the ingratitude of men I've served. Yes, I've +gone through it all; and just as I catch a glimpse of Canaan, the curtain +drops." + +On this they comforted him; and sustained him with the promise of a +brighter Canaan than Côtenoir. + +"Yes," he said in a dreamy voice, "I read about it very often. A city +with foundations of jasper and chalcedony, emerald and sardonyx; gates of +pearl, pavements of gold. That's what St. John the Evangelist saw in his +vision; and we've only his word for it. But there's something that I can +believe and can understand: 'In my Father's house there are many +mansions.' There's more hope for a sinful man of the world in that +promise than is all St. John's dreams about gates of pearl and +foundations of emerald." + +The Captain was failing fast. He had exchanged his easy-chair for a sofa +now; and the time seemed near at hand when he must exchange the sofa for +his bed. After that there would remain but one last change, to the +contemplation whereof the sick man was becoming daily more reconciled. + +He had read his Gospel more diligently of late, and had taken comfort +from those sublime pages. Do they not contain consolation, hope, promise +for all--for the weary man of the world as well as for the saint? There +is to be found the only creed that can adapt itself to every condition +of life, and has a margin wide enough for every weakness of erring +humanity. Buddhism may contain a scheme of morality almost as perfect; +Mahomet may have expounded hopes that seem well-nigh as divine; but in +the Gospel is the only system that will adapt itself at once to the +culture of the spiritual man, and the active life of the practical +worker in this lower world. + +Gustave Lenoble was only too glad to claim his promised wife a little +sooner than he had hoped to claim her. "Thou hast put me off long enough, +cruel," he said; "and now it is thy father's wish that our marriage +should be soon. It shall be this week; I will take no longer thine +excuses. We shall be the sooner ready to receive thy friends, thy +Charlotte and her Hawkehurst." + +Diana smiled. + +"Dear Gustave, you are always kind," she said. + +It was very sweet to her to think that her new home would afford a +pleasant haven for that dear friend who had sheltered her. And with +Charlotte, the dear adopted sister, would come the man she had once +loved, to share whose cares had once been the brightest dream. + +She wondered at her own inconstancy on perceiving how completely the +dream had flown. Before the stern realities of life--before sickness and +sorrow and the dread shadow of death--that schoolgirl's vision had +utterly melted away. It is just possible that Gustave's manly outspoken +love may have helped to blot from the tablet of her mind the fantastic +picture of the life that might have been. She scarcely knew whether this +was so; but she did know that a new and happier existence began for her +from the hour in which she gave her heart in all truth and loyalty to +Gustave Lenoble. + +The wedding was arranged to take place within a week of Captain Paget's +expressly declared wish. It was to be solemnised at a church near +Knightsbridge, and again at a Catholic chapel in the neighbourhood of +Sloane-street; by which double ceremonial a knot would be tied that no +legal quibble could hereafter loosen. Charlotte was just sufficiently +recovered to obtain permission to be present at the ceremonial, after +some little exercise of her persuasive powers with the medical +practitioner to whose care Dr. Jedd had committed her when all danger was +past. + +The Captain protested, with an eager insistence, that the wedding +breakfast should be eaten at his domicile. + +"And Val," he said, "be sure Val is with you. I have a secret to tell +him--a kind of atonement to make; some news to give him that he won't +quite relish, perhaps. But that's no fault of mine." + +"No bad news, I hope, papa; for Charlotte's sake as well as for +Valentine's." + +"That depends upon how they both take it. Your friend Charlotte is not +particularly fond of money, is she?" + +"Fond of money, papa? A baby knows as much of the value of money as +Lotta. Except to give to beggars in the streets, or to buy pretty +frivolous presents for her friends, she has neither use nor desire for +money. She is the most generous, most disinterested of created beings." + +"I'm very glad to hear it," said the Captain, drily. "And how about +Hawkehurst, now? Do you think it was a real love-match, his marriage with +Miss Halliday? No _arrière pensée_--no looking out for the main chance at +the bottom of his romantic attachment, eh, Di?" + +"No, papa. I am sure there was never truer love than his. I saw him under +most trying circumstances, and I can pledge myself for the truth of his +devotion." + +"I am very glad to hear it. Be sure you bring Hawkehurst and his wife to +my little breakfast. A chicken, a pine, a bottle of sparkling hock, and +a fond father's blessing, are all I shall give you; but the chicken and +the hock will be from Gunter, and the blessing from the bottom of a +paternal heart." + + * * * * * + +Bright shone the day that gave Diana to her husband, and very beautiful +looked the bride in her simple dress. Gustave Lenoble's marriage was no +less quietly performed than that union which had secured the safety of +Charlotte Halliday and the happiness of Valentine Hawkehurst. The shadow +of death hovered very near bride and bridegroom; for they knew full well +that he who was to preside that day at their simple marriage-feast would +soon have tasted that last sacred cup which has no after-flavour of +bitterness. + +The breakfast promised by the Captain was arranged with much elegance. +Hothouse flowers and fruits; wines with the icedew sparkling on the dark +glass; chickens and tongue, idealized by the confectioner's art, and +scarcely recognizable beneath rich glazings and embellishments of jellies +and forcemeats; the airiest and least earthly of lobster salads, and a +pyramid of coffee-ice, testified to the glory of the Belgravian purveyor. +It had been pleasant to Captain Paget to send his orders to Gunter, +certain of funds to meet the bill. It was almost a glimpse of that land +of milk and honey, that Canaan in Normandy, which he was never to +inhabit. + +He was very weak, very ill; but the excitement of the occasion in some +measure sustained and revivified him. The man who had been engaged to +nurse and wait upon him had attired him with much care in a dressing-gown +as elegant as the robe in which he had disported himself, a penniless +young cornet, in his luxurious garrison quarters, some fifty years +before. His loose white locks were crowned with an embroidered +smoking-cap; his patrician instep was set off by a dainty scarlet +slipper. He had put away the Gospel, and all thoughts of that dread +reckoning which he had really some shadowy desire and hope to settle +satisfactorily, by some poor dividend which might discharge his +obligations to that merciful Creditor who forgives so many just debts. +To-day he was of the world, worldly. It was a kind of _ante-mortem_ +lying-in-state--his last levee; and he was equal to the occasion. + +The prettily adorned table was drawn near the sofa where the invalid host +reclined, supported by numerous pillows. His daughter and her husband, +Valentine, Charlotte, and Georgy, made a little circle about him. His own +man, and a clerical-looking person from Gunter's, assisted at the airy +banquet. Very little was eaten by any of the guests, and it was a relief +to every one when the clerical personage and Captain Paget's factotum +retired, after serving tea and coffee with funereal solemnity. + +Valentine Hawkehurst was all gentleness and cordiality towards his old +taskmaster. The wrong must indeed be dire which is considered in such an +hour as this. Valentine remembered only that with this old man he had +seen many troubled days; and that for him the end of all earthly +wanderings was very near. + +The little banquet was not served in Captain Paget's ordinary +sitting-room. For this distinguished occasion the landlady had lent a +dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, just deserted by a +fashionable bachelor lodger who had left town at the close of the season. +This drawing-room on the ground floor, like the room above, overlooked +the Park, and to this apartment the Captain requested his guests to +adjourn, with the exception of Mr. Hawkehurst, some little time after the +departure of the servants. + +"I want to have a few words with Val in private," he said; "I have a +secret to communicate. Diana, show Mrs. Hawkehurst the Drive. You can see +the Bow from my room, but not from these lower windows. There are a good +many carriages still, but it is too late for the _crême de la crême_. I +remember when the West End was a desert at this time of year; but I have +lived to see the levelling of all distinctions, those of time as well as +of class." + +Charlotte and Diana retired to the adjoining room with Mrs. Sheldon and +M. Lenoble. Valentine was at a loss to imagine what manner of +confidential communication his late patron and employer could desire to +impart to him. The cautious Horatio waited until the rest of the party +were quite out of hearing, talking gaily by the open window, beyond which +appeared all the fluttering life and motion of summer leaves, all the +brightness of summer green below, and deep blue sky above. When they +seemed to him to be quite engaged with their own conversation, Captain +Paget turned to his old companion. + +"Val," he said, "we have seen hard times together we've roughed it among +strange places and strange people, you know and so on; and I think there +is a friendly kind of feeling between us?" + +He held out his poor wasted hand, and Valentine grasped it firmly in his +own with prompt cordiality. + +"My dear governor, I have no feeling in my heart that is not friendly to +you." + +This was perfectly true. + +"And even if I had been inclined to bear any grudge against you on +account of the old days, when, you know, you were a little apt to be +indifferent as to what scrape you left me in, provided you got off +scot-free yourself; if I had been inclined to remember that kind of thing +(which, on my honour, I am not), your daughter's noble courage and +devotion in the time of my dear wife's peril should have stood against +that old wrong. I cannot tell you how deeply I feel her goodness in that +bitter time." + +"She is a Paget," murmured the Captain, complacently. "_Noblesse +oblige._" + +Valentine could scarcely refrain from a smile as he remembered the many +occasions upon which the obligations of a noble lineage had weighed very +lightly on his aristocratic patron. + +"Yes, Val," the Captain resumed, in a dreamy tone, "we have seen many +strange things together. When I began my travels through this world, in +the palmy days of the Regency, I little thought what a weary journey it +was to be, and what queer people I was to encounter among my +fellow-passengers. However, I've come to the last stage of the long +journey now, and I thank Providence that it ends so comfortably." + +To this Valentine assented kindly, but he was at a loss to understand why +Captain Paget should have required the adjournment of the rest of the +party before giving utterance to these mild commonplaces. + +For some moments the invalid relapsed into thoughtful silence. Then, +rousing himself as if with an effort, he took a few sips of a cooling +drink that stood by his side, and began with a startling abruptness. + +"You remember your journey to Dorking, Val, last October, when you went +to see that mysterious old aunt of yours, eh?" + +Valentine blushed as the Captain recalled this cunningly-devised fable. + +"Yes," he said gravely; "I remember telling you that I was going to see +an aunt at Dorking." + +"An aunt who had a little bit of money, eh, Val?" asked the Captain, +with a grin. + +"Yes. I may have gone so far as to speak of a little bit of money." + +"And neither the aunt nor the bit of money ever existed, eh, Val? They +were mere figments of the brain; and instead of going to Dorking you went +to Ullerton, eh, Val? You stole a march upon me there. You wanted to +throw your old chum off the scent, eh? You thought you had got hold of a +good thing, and you were afraid your friend and companion might get a +share of it." + +"Well, you see, my friend and companion had a knack of getting the +lion's share. Besides, this good thing was not my own affair. I had to +protect the interest of another person--my employer, in point of fact; +and it was by his suggestion, and in compliance with his request, that +I invented that harmless fiction about Dorking. I don't think there +was any dishonourable dealing in the matter. We were soldiers of +fortune both; and the stratagem with which I protected myself against +you was a very innocent one. You would have employed any stratagem or +invented any fiction under the same circumstances. It was a case of +diamond cut diamond." + +"Precisely; and if the older soldier, if the free lance of many a +campaign, got the best of it in the long run, the younger freebooter +could hardly think himself ill-used--could he now, Val?" + +"Well, no, I suppose not," replied Valentine, puzzled by the significance +in the face of his old companion. That sly twinkle in the Captain's eyes, +that triumphant smile wreathing the Captain's lips, must surely mean +mischief. + +Valentine Hawkehurst remembered the vague suspicion that had flashed into +his mind on that Christmas Eve when Captain Paget and he had dined +together at a West End restaurant, and the Captain had toasted Charlotte +Halliday with a smile of sinister meaning. He began to anticipate some +startling and unpleasant revelation. He began to understand that in some +manner this inscrutible schemer had contrived to overreach him. + +"What are you going to tell me?" he asked. "I see there is some lurking +mischief in your mind. How was it you were at Ullerton when I was there? +I met you on the platform of the station, and I had a vague half +suspicion that you followed me up on more than one occasion. I saw a +glove in a man's parlour--a glove which I could have sworn to as yours. +But when I came back, you were so plausible with your talk of promoting +business, and so on, that I was fool enough to believe you. And I suppose +you cheated and tricked me after all?" + +"Cheated and tricked are hard words, my dear Val," said the Captain, with +delightful blandness. "I had as much right to transact imaginary business +in the promoting line at Ullerton as you had to visit a fictitious aunt +at Dorking. Self-interest was the governing principle in both cases. I do +not think you can have any right to consider yourself injured by me if I +did steal a march upon you, and follow close upon your heels throughout +that Ullerton business. I do not think that you can have, on moral +grounds, any justification for making a complaint against your old ally." + +"Well, I suppose you are right enough in that," said Valentine. + +"Shake hands upon it, then. I have not very long to live, and I want to +feel myself at peace with mankind. You see, if you had come to me in the +first place, in a frank and generous spirit, and had said, 'My dear +friend, here is a good thing; let us go into it together, and see what +there is to be made out of it,' you would have placed the matter on such +a footing that, as a man of honour, I should have been bound to regard +your interests as my own. But when you set up a separate interest, when +you try to throw dust in my eyes, to hoodwink me--me, Horatio Paget, +a man of the world, possessed of some little genius for social +diplomacy--you attempt to do that which no man ever yet succeeded in +doing, and you immediately release me from those obligations which an +honourable man holds sacred. It was my glove which you saw in Mr. +Goodge's parlour. I had a very satisfactory interview with that reverend +person while you were absent from Ullerton on some short excursion, as to +the purpose of which I am still in the dark. On certain terms Mr. Goodge +agreed to give me the privilege of selecting a stated number from the +letters of Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth. I have reason to believe that I made a +judicious choice; for the information thus obtained placed me at once +upon a track which I followed industriously until it led me to a +triumphant result." + +"I do not understand--" began Valentine; but the Captain did not allow +him time to say more. + +"You do not understand that there could be any other genealogical line +than that which you and George Sheldon fitted together so neatly. You +have neither of you the experience of life which alone gives wideness of +vision. You discovered the connections of the Haygarth and the Meynell +families in the past. That was a step in the right direction. The +discovery, so far as it went, was a triumph. You allowed the sense of +that triumph to intoxicate you. In a business which of all businesses +within the range of man's intellect most requires deliberation and +sobriety, you went to work in a fever of haste and excitement. Instead +of searching out _all_ the descendants of Christian Meynell, you pounce +upon the first descendant who comes to hand, and elect her, at your own +pleasure, sole heiress to the estate of the deceased John Haygarth. +You forget that there may be other descendants of the said Christian +Meynell--descendants standing prior to your wife Charlotte in the line of +succession." + +"I can imagine no such descendants existing," said Valentine, with a +puzzled manner. "You seem to have made yourself master of our business; +but there is one point upon which you are mistaken. George Sheldon and I +did not go to work in a fever of haste. We did fully and thoroughly +examine the pedigree of that person whom we--and legal advisers of +considerable standing--believe to be the sole heir-at-law to the Haygarth +estate; and we took good care to convince ourselves that there was no +other claimant in existence." + +"What do you call convincing yourselves?" + +"Christian Meynell had only three children--Samuel, Susan, and Charlotte. +The last, Charlotte, married James Halliday, of Newhall and Hyley farms; +the other two died unmarried." + +"How do you know that? How do you propose to demonstrate that Samuel and +Susan Meynell died unmarried?" + +"Susan was buried in her maiden name. Mrs. Halliday, her sister, was with +her when she died. There was no question of marriage; nor is there the +record of any marriage contracted by Samuel." + +"All that is no proof." + +"Indeed! I should have thought the evidence sufficient. But, in any case, +the _onus probandi_ is not upon us. Can you prove the marriage of the +Samuel Meynell who died at Calais, or of the Susan Meynell who died in +London?" + +"I can. Susan Meynell's legitimate son is in the next room. It's an +unpleasant kind of revelation to make, Val; as he, the son of one sister, +stands prior to your wife, the granddaughter of the other sister, in the +order of succession. AND HE TAKES ALL!" + +"He takes all!" repeated Valentine, bewildered. "He! Susan Meynell's +son?--in the next room? What does all this mean?" + +"It means that when Susan was deserted by the scoundrel who took her away +from her home, she found an honest fellow to marry her. The name of her +husband was Lenoble. Gustave Lenoble yonder, my daughter's husband, is +her only child by that marriage. A perfectly legal marriage, my dear +Val--everything _en regle_, I assure you. The business is in the hands of +Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon of Whitehall--a first-class firm; counsel's +opinion most decided as to Lenoble's position. They have been rather slow +about the preliminary steps; and, _entre nous_, I have not cared to hurry +them, for I wanted to get my daughter's marriage over quietly before we +began our proceedings in Chancery. It comes rather hard upon you, Val, I +allow; but, you see, if you had acted generously, not to say honourably, +towards me in the first instance, you'd have had the advantage of my +experience. As it is, you have been working in the dark. However, things +are not so bad as they might be. You might have married some ugly old +harridan for the sake of this Haygarth estate; you have secured a pretty +and amiable wife, and you mustn't be downhearted if you find yourself, +from a financial point of view, most outrageously sold." + +The Captain could not refrain from a laugh as he contemplated his young +friend's surprise. The laugh degenerated into a fit of coughing, and it +was some little time before the enfeebled Horatio was ready to resume the +interrupted conversation. In this pause Valentine had leisure to face +this new position. There was for the moment a sharp sense of +disappointment. It is not possible for humanity to be quite indifferent +to a hundred thousand pounds. So much of the "light and sweetness" of +life is attainable for that sum,--such pleasures, of the purest and +noblest, are in the power of the possessor. But in this moment Valentine +fully realized the fact that he had never taken the idea of this fortune +into his mind--never made it part and parcel of himself, to be plucked +out of his heart with anguish, and to leave a bleeding wound in the place +where it had grown. It seemed to him as if he had been wakened abruptly +from some bright bewildering dream; but the sharp pang of mercenary +desires disappointed, of sordid hopes suddenly reft, was not for him. + +Beyond this sense of uncertainty, which had made the Haygarthian fortune +seem at best such "stuff as dreams are made of," there had been ever +present in his mind of late the dismal association connected with this +money. For this, and to get power over this through the rights of his +weak wife, had Philip Sheldon plotted against the life of that sweet girl +who was but newly rescued from the jaws of the grave. The bitter memory +of those days and nights of suspense could never have been quite +dissociated from the money that had been the primary cause of all this +slow torture. + +"Do you think I shall love my wife any less because she has no claim to +the Haygarth estate?" he exclaimed presently, looking with +half-contemptuous indignation upon the broken-down Bohemer. "I loved her +long before I knew the name of Haygarth; I should have loved her if I had +found her a beggar in the London streets, a peasant-girl weeding for +sixpence a day in some dismal swamp of agricultural poverty and +ignorance. I am not going to say that this money would not have brought +us pleasure; pictures and gardens, and bright rooms, and books without +number, and intercourse with congenial acquaintance and delightful +journeyings to all the fairest places upon the earth, and the power to do +some good in our generation, and a sense of security for our future, and +by-and-by, perhaps, for the future of dear children, for whose prosperity +we should be more anxious than for our own. Pleasure the money would most +probably have brought for us in abundance; but I doubt if it could buy us +more perfect happiness than we may know in the simplest home that my toil +can support. Ah, Captain, I question if you ever knew the sweetest +sensation life can give--the delight of working for those we love." + +Captain Paget stared at his sometime protege in a kind of rapture of +wonder, not entirely unmingled with admiration. + +"Egad!" he exclaimed, "I have read of this kind of thing in novels; but +in the whole course of my experience I never met with anything equal to +it. My son-in-law, Lenoble yonder, is a generous foo--fellow enough; but +then, since infancy, he has never known the want of money. And generosity +from that kind of man is no more of a virtue than the foolhardiness of a +child who pokes his finger into the candle, not knowing the properties of +the thing he has to deal with. But anything like generosity from you, +from a man reared as you were reared, is, I freely confess, a little +beyond my comprehension." + +"Yes; it is a transformation, is it not? But I don't think I was ever +inordinately fond of money. Your genuine Bohemian rarely is. He is too +well schooled in the art of living without cash, and he asks so little +here below. His pipe, his friend, his dog, his books, his garret, his +billiards, his beer. It is all a question of a few pounds a week. And if, +some day, the divine enchanter Love takes the poor fellow underbids +guidance, and teaches him to do without billiards and beer, your Bohemian +settles down into the purest and best of men. Think what Goldy might have +been if some good woman had taken compassion upon him and married him, +and henpecked him ever afterwards. He might have written as many novels +as Sir Walter Scott, and died master of some Hibernian Abbotsford, some +fair domain among the bright green hills that look down upon broad +Shannon's silvery falls. No, Captain; your intelligence has not +annihilated me. I can face the future boldly with my dear young wife upon +my arm." + +"Upon my soul, Val, you're a very noble fellow!" exclaimed Horatio Paget, +with real enthusiasm; "and I am sorry I have kept you in the dark so +long." + +"You have kept me in the dark? Yes; to be sure. How long have you known +this--about Susan Meynell?" + +"Well, my dear boy, not very long." + +"But how long? A month--two months? Yes; you have known Lenoble's +position ever since you knew him; and Charlotte told me three months ago +of Diana's engagement to Lenoble. Do you know that if Sheldon had +succeeded, Charlotte's blood would have been upon your head? If you had +not concealed the truth, his villany would never have been attempted." + +"But, my dear Val," exclaimed the Captain piteously, "I was not to +know--" + +"No; you were not to know that there could be such a wretch as Philip +Sheldon upon this earth. We will say no more of that. I kept my secret, +you kept yours. Mischief unspeakable well-nigh came of all this underhand +work. But heaven has been merciful to us. We have passed through the +valley of the shadow of death; and if anything could make my wife dearer +to me than she was when first I won her promise to be mine, it would be +the sorrow of the last few months. And now I will go and shake hands with +Lenoble, my wife's kinsman. He is a fine fellow, and well deserves his +good fortune. Stay; one word. Did Diana know this? did she know that her +lover is heir to the Haygarth estate?" + +"She does not know it now. She has never heard the name of Haygarth. And, +between you and me, Val, it cost me a world of trouble to persuade her to +say yes to Lenoble's offer, though he is a very decent match for her, +even without reference to the Haygarth estate." + +"I am glad she knew nothing of this," said Valentine; "I am very glad." + +After this he again shook hands with Captain Paget, at that gentleman's +request, and the Captain expressed himself much relieved by the +conversation, and by his late protégé's very generous behaviour. He +called to his daughter and the rest presently, and they came at his +summons. + +"Is your long talk finished, papa?" asked Diana. + +"And is the secret told?" demanded Charlotte of her obedient husband +and slave. + +"Yes, dear, it is told," he answered gravely. + +"I hope it is a pleasant secret." + +"I do not think the knowledge of it will give you much pain, dearest. +You have learnt to think yourself a--a kind of an heiress of late, +have you not?" + +"Papa--Mr. Sheldon--told me that I had a claim to some money; but I have +not thought much about it, except that I should give you Grote and +Macaulay in dark-brown calf, with bevelled boards and red edges, like +that edition you saw at the auctioneer's in Bond Street, and have talked +about ever since; and a horse, perhaps; and a glass porch to our +cottage." + +"Well, darling, the books in dark-brown calf, and the horse, and the +glass porch, may all be ours in the future; but the money was only a +dream--it has melted away, dear." + +"Is that all?" asked Charlotte. "Why, I dare say the day will come when +you will be as rich as Sir Walter Scott." + +"In the meantime I have something to give you instead of the money." + +"Indeed!" + +"Yes; a cousin. Will that do as well, my love?" + +"A cousin? I shall like her very much if she is nice." + +"The cousin I mean is a gentleman." + +"But where is he to come from?" cried Charlotte, laughing. Has he +dropped from the moon? The only relations I have the world are Uncle and +Aunt Mercer. How can you pretend to find me a cousin?" + +"Do you remember telling me of your grandmother's only sister--Susan +Meynell?" + +"Yes," said Charlotte, with a sudden blush; "I remember." + +"That Miss Meynell married a gentleman of Normandy, and left one only +child, a son. His name is Gustave Lenoble, and he is standing by your +side. He is heir-at-law to a very large fortune, which it was once +supposed you could claim. Are you sorry, Lotta, to find a kinsman and +lose a fortune?--and are you contented to begin the world with no hope +except in your husband's patience and courage?" + +"And genius!" cried Charlotte, with enthusiasm. + +The sweet, blinding glamour of love shone upon this young scribbler, and +she believed that he was indeed worthy to take rank among the greatest of +that grand brotherhood of which he was so humble a member. She looked up +at him with the prettiest confidence; her clinging hand clasped his with +love and trust immeasurable. He felt and knew that love like this was a +treasure beside which the Reverend John Haygarth's hoarded thousands must +needs seem but sorry dross. + +After this there was much explanation and congratulation. Gustave Lenoble +was delighted to claim so fair a kinswoman. + +"Thou art like my eldest, my cousin," he said; "Diana saw the likeness at +the Sacré Coeur when she beheld my daughter; and I too saw my eldest's +look in thine eyes when I first met thee. Remember, it was convened +between us that Côtenoir should be a home for thee and for Hawkehurst +before I knew what link bound thee to the house of Lenoble. Now thou and +thy husband will be of our family." + +Diana was bewildered, grieved, indignant with the father who had deceived +her by his studious suppression of the truth. She found herself placed in +the position of rival to Charlotte, and the whole proceeding seemed to +her mean and treacherous. + +But it was no time for remonstrance or open expression of indignant +feeling. Her father's days were numbered. She knew this, and she held her +peace. Nor did Mrs. Sheldon utter any word of complaint, though the +disappointment she experienced upon hearing this revelation was very +keen. The idea of the four or five thousand pounds which were to come to +Charlotte had been a consolation to her in the midst of that confusion +and desolation which had newly come upon her life. She left Knightsbridge +that evening somewhat depressed in spirits, and half inclined to be angry +with Charlotte and her husband for their gaiety of manner, and evident +happiness in each other's society. + +"It seems hard to have to begin the world at my age," she murmured +hopelessly, "after being accustomed to have everything nice about me, as +I had at the Lawn; though I own that the trouble and care of the servants +was wearing me to the grave." + +"Dear mamma," exclaimed Charlotte tenderly, "there is no fear of trouble +or poverty for you or for us. Valentine has plenty of money, and is on +the high road to securing a comfortable income. Authors do not starve in +garrets now, you know, as they used to do, poor things, when Doctor +Johnson ate his dinner in a cave, or something dreadful of that kind; and +when Sir Richard Steele thought it quite a wonderful thing to get a pound +of tea for his wife. And Valentine's heart is in his profession, and he +will work for us." + +"As long as I have a hand that can write, and a brain that can guide my +pen," interposed Mr. Hawkehurst, gaily. "I have given hostages to +Fortune. I can face the hazard boldly I feel as confident and as happy as +if we lived in the golden age, when there was neither care nor toil for +innocent mankind, and all the brightest things of earth were the +spontaneous gift of the gods." + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE. + +Monsieur and Madame Lenoble went to Brighton for their honeymoon. A +letter or a telegraphic message would bring them thence swiftly to the +bedside of the dying Captain, should the last fatal change set in +suddenly. Diana had wished to stay with her father, but Horatio insisted +upon the honeymoon trip, and that everything should be done in a correct +and gentlemanly manner. + +"You can engage rooms at the Albion," Captain Paget had said to his +son-in-law a few days before the quiet wedding. "The house is extremely +comfortable; and you will be received by a compatriot. The proprietor is +a Frenchman, and a very gentlemanly person, I assure you; the _cuisine_ +irreproachable. I remember the old Steyne when Mrs. FitzHerbert lived +close by, and received all the best people, in the days when the Cockney +had not yet taken possession of Brighthelmstone, and the Chinese dragons +and pagodas were bright and fresh in the Pavilion." + +To Brighton, therefore, the bride and bridegroom departed; Diana attended +by a maid, an appanage which the Captain had insisted upon. Poor Diana +was sorely puzzled as to what she should find for the maid to do when her +hair had been dressed early in the morning, and her costume laid out in +state for the day. + +"I think I must buy some handkerchiefs for her to hem," she said to +Gustave; "it will be quite dreadful for her to have nothing to do all +day long." + +The weather was warm and bright. The sea danced and sparkled under the +windows. Gustave was always in the same happy frame of mind. An elegant +landau had been secured for the period of their visit, and a pair of +capital horses carried them out on long and pleasant expeditions to the +pretty Sussex villages, or across the broad bare downs, beyond which the +sea stretched blue and bright. + +In the evening, when the lamp was lighted and the urn hissed gaily, Diana +felt that she and her husband were at home. It was the first home she had +known--the first time she had been sole mistress and centre of a +household. She looked back at all the old desolation, the dreary shifting +from lodging to lodging, the degradation, the self-abasement, the dull +apathy of despair; and then she looked across at her husband as he +lounged in his easy-chair, contemplating her with dreamy adoring eye, in +a kind of lazy worship; and she knew that for this man she was the centre +of the universe, the very keystone in the arch of life. + +She stretched out her hand to him with a smile, and he pressed it fondly +to his lips. There were twinkling jewels upon the slender fingers; for +the prettiest shop in Brighton--the brightest shop in Brighton--had been +ransacked that morning by the fond, frivolous, happy husband, as pleased +to bedeck his wife as a child to dress her last new doll. + +"How can I ever be worthy of so much affection, Gustave!" she exclaimed, +as he kissed the twinkling fingers. + +And it did indeed seem to her that for this free gift of love she could +never render a sufficient recompense. + +"Thou wilt make Côtenoir a home," he said; "thou knowest not how I have +sighed for a home. This room, with the lamplight shining on thy face, and +thy white hands moving about the teacups, and thy sweet smile, which +greets me every now and then when thou lookest by here,--it is more of +home than I have ever known since I left Beaubocage, that modest dwelling +where lived those two angels of kindness, my aunt and my grandmother." + +In one of those long pleasant drives to a distant village nestling under +the lee of a steep hill, the husband and wife had much serious talk about +the position of the former with reference to the Haygarth estate. The +result of that conversation was shown in a letter which Charlotte +Hawkehurst received the next day from her friend Diana Lenoble. + +"Albion Hotel, Brighton. + +"EVER DEAR LOTTA,--Gustave and I have discussed the Haygarth business +with great satisfaction to ourselves, since it transpired in the course +of our conversation that we are both of one mind in the matter. It is +agreed between us that, as he is very well off already, and as he never +hoped or expected to inherit a fortune from his maternal ancestor, it is +only just that he should divide this unlooked-for wealth with his dear +cousin, whose claim to that inheritance he recognizes as equal to his +own; the mere fact of seniority making only a legal and not a moral +difference in the degree of relationship to the Reverend John Haygarth. +Do you understand, darling?--_you_ are to have half this money. My +husband will not step in between you and good fortune. I cannot tell you +how happy this determination of Gustave's has made me. I felt myself in a +manner base and ungrateful when I thought I was to share wealth that +might have been yours; but I ought to have better understood the justice +of my husband's mind. And now, dearest, all will be arranged very simply; +Gustave will come to London and see his lawyers, and execute some kind of +deed, and the whole affair will be settled. + +"We have had some charming drive," &c. &c. + +Here the young wife branched off into a description of the simple +pleasures of their honeymoon holiday. + +This letter was answered by Valentine Hawkehurst in person. He came down +to Brighton to thank his friends for their generous desire to enrich his +wife, and to decline, on her part, any share in John Haygarth's wealth. + +It was in vain that Gustave and Diana argued the point, Mr. Hawkehurst +was fixed as fate. + +"Believe me, it is better as it is," he said. "Charlotte and I have +arrived at this conviction with all due thought and deliberation. We are +both young, and the world is all before us. There is much in the past +that I have to redeem, as Diana well knows. It is better that I should +fight the battle of life unaided, and rise from the ranks by right of my +merit as a soldier. If ever we have need of help--if ever I find myself +breaking down--you may be sure that it is to you I shall come. By and by, +if Providence gives me children to work for, I will refuse no bounty that +you may bestow on them. Their future may be rendered secure by your +generosity, if you please, Lenoble; they will be your kindred. But for an +alien like myself there is no discipline so wholesome as honest hard +work. I am as rich as John Milton when he set up a school in St. Bride's +Churchyard." + +To this resolution Mr. Hawkehurst adhered with a gentle firmness. + +"Thou art chivalrous like Don Quixote," said Gustave Lenoble; "but it +shall be as thou wouldest. Touch there." + +He offered his hand, which the other grasped with all heartiness. + +"I will be godfather to thy little first one, and I will settle on him +ten thousand pounds before he cuts his first tooth," said Gustave +decisively. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +BEYOND THE VEIL. + +Diana and her husband did not linger long at Brighton; they went back to +town in time to see the last of that old wayfarer whose troubled journey +came to so peaceful an ending. It was a very calm haven in which this +battered old privateer lay at anchor after life's tempestuous course; but +to the Captain himself it seemed a hard thing that he should not have +been permitted one brief cruise upon that summer sea which danced so +gaily beneath the keel of the Lenobles' prosperous bark. + +"We have shared adversity, my love," he said sadly, when he talked with +his daughter in the last few days; "but your prosperity I am to have no +share in. Well, I suppose I have no right to complain. My life has been +an erring one; but poverty is the most vicious companion that a man can +consort with. If I had come into six or seven thousand a year, I might +have been as starch in my notions as a bishop; but I have been obliged to +live, Diana--that was the primary necessity, and I learnt to accommodate +myself to it." + +That he had erred, the Captain was very ready to acknowledge. That he had +sinned deeply, and had much need to repent himself of his iniquity, he +was very slow to perceive. But sometimes, in the still watches of the +night, when the faint lamplight on the shadowy wall was more gloomy than +darkness, when the nurse, hired to assist his own man in these last days, +dozed in her comfortable chair, the truth came hope to his shallow soul, +and Horatio Paget knew that he had been indeed a sinner, and very vile +among sinners. Then, for a moment, the veil of self-deception was lifted, +and he saw his past life as it had really been,--selfish, dishonourable, +cruel beyond measure in reckless injury of others. For a moment the awful +book was opened, and the sinner saw the fearful sum set against his name. + +"What can wipe out the dread account?" he asked himself. "Is there such a +thing as forgiveness for a selfish useless life--a life which is one long +offence against God and man?" + +In these long wakeful nights the dying man thought much of his wife. The +sweet tender face came back to him, with its mournful wondering look. He +knew, now, how his falsehoods and dishonours had wounded and oppressed +that gentle soul. He remembered how often she had pleaded for the right, +and how he had ridiculed her arguments, and set at naught her tender +pleadings. He had fancied her in a manner inimical to himself when she +urged the cause of some angry creditor or meek deluded landlady. Now, +with the light that is not upon earth or sea shining on the picture of +his past career, he could see and understand things as he had never seen +or understood them before. He knew now that it was for his own sake that +faithful and devoted wife had pleaded, his own interest that had been +near to her pitying heart, as well as the interest of bakers and +butchers, landladies and tailors. + +"She might have made a good man of me, if I had let her have her way," he +thought to himself. "I know that she is in heaven. Will she plead for me, +I wonder, at the foot of the Great Throne? I used to laugh at her bad +English, or fly in a passion with her sometimes, poor soul, when I wanted +her to pass for a lady, and she broke down outrageously. But there her +voice will be heard when mine appeals in vain. Dear soul! I wonder who +taught her to be so pure and unselfish, and trusting and faithful? She +was a Christian without knowing it. 'I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of +heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and +prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.'" + +He thought of his wife's lonely deathbed, and compared it with his own. +For him there was luxury; by him watched a devoted and all-forgiving +daughter, a generous friend and son-in-law. All that could be done to +soothe the painful descent was done for him. For her there had been +nothing but loneliness and sorrow. + +"But she might be certain of a speedy welcome in a better home," thought +Horatio; "and I--? Ah, dear kind creature, _there_ the difference was all +in her favour." + +As the closing scene grew nearer, he thought more and more of his gentle +low-born wife, whose hold upon him in life had been so slender, whose +memory had occupied until now so insignificant a place in his mind. His +daughter watched with him unceasingly in the last two days and nights. +His mind wandered. On the day of his death he mistook Diana for that +long-lost companion. + +"I have not been a kind husband, Mary, my dear," he faltered; "but +the world has been hard upon me--debts--difficulties--crack +regiment--expensive mess--set of gamblers--no pity on a young man without +fortune--force of example--tied a millstone round my wretched neck before +I was twenty-one years of age." + +Later, when the doctor had felt his pulse for the last time, he cried out +suddenly, "I have made a statement of my affairs, the liabilities are +numerous--the assets nil; but I rely on the clemency of this court." + +These were his last words. He sank into a kind of stupor betwixt sleeping +and waking, and in this he died. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +BETTER THAN GOLD. + +The little fleet of paper boats which Mr. Sheldon had pioneered so +skilfully over the commercial seas came to grief very soon after the +disappearance of the admiral. A bill drawn upon the Honduras Mahogany +Company, Limited, was the first to reach maturity. The bill was referred +to the drawer--the drawer was not to be found. + +"I have not seen Sheldon for the last fortnight," Mr. Orcott informed the +gentleman who brought him the document. + +"Out of business for a fortnight?" + +"He has not been in business for a month. His stepdaughter has been very +ill--at death's door, and all that kind of thing, and my governor was +awfully cut up about it. There used to be a couple of doctors at the +house every day, and no end of fuss. I took Sheldon his letters, and +managed matters for him here, and so on. And one fine morning my young +lady runs off and gets married on the quiet; so I suspect there was a +good deal of shamming about the illness--and those old fogies, the +doctors, winked at it. Between them all, I fancy Sheldon was completely +sold; and he has turned savage and gone off somewhere in the sulks." + +"I wish he had chosen any other time for his sulks," said the holder of +the bill; "my partner and I have discounted several acceptances for him. +He gave us liberal terms, and we considered any paper of his as safe as a +Bank of England note; and now this confounded bill comes back to us +through our bankers, noted, 'Refer to drawer'--a most unpleasant thing, +you know, and very inconsiderate of Sheldon to leave us in such a fix." + +"He has forgotten the bill, I suppose," said Mr. Orcott. + +"Well, but you see, really now, a business man ought not to forget that +kind of thing. And so Miss Halliday has made a runaway match, has she? I +remember seeing her when I dined at Bayswater--an uncommonly fine girl. +And she has gone and thrown herself away upon some penniless scapegrace, +most likely? Now, by the bye, how about this Honduras Company, Mr. +Orcott; they don't seem to have any London offices?" + +"I believe not. We've some of their prospectuses somewhere about, I +think. Would you like to see one?" + +"I should, very much." + +Mr. Orcott opened two or three drawers, and after some little trouble +produced the required document. + +It was a very flourishing prospectus, setting forth the enormous +benefits to be derived by shareholders from the profitable dealings of the +company. Some good high-sounding names figured in the list of directors, +and the chairman was Captain H. N. Cromie Paget. The prospectus looked +well enough, but the holder of Mr. Sheldon's dishonoured bill was not +able to derive much comfort from high-sounding phrases and high-sounding +names. + +"I'll go down to Bayswater, and see if I can hear anything of your +governor," he said to Mr. Orcott. + +"He was not there yesterday when I called, and his servants could tell me +nothing of his whereabouts," the young Yorkshireman said very coolly. + +"Indeed!" cried the holder of the dishonoured bill in some alarm. "Now, +really, that is not right; a business man ought not to do that kind of +thing." + +He called a cab and drove to the Lawn. There was the smart gothic villa, +with its pointed gables, and florid chimneys, and oriel windows, and in +the Tudor casements of the ground-floor appeared the bills of a West-end +auctioneer, announcing in large letters that the lease of this charming +mansion, together with the nearly new furniture, linen, books, china, +plate, carefully-selected proof-prints after distinguished modern +artists, small cellar of choice wines, &c., &c., &c., would be disposed +of by auction on the following day. + +Mr. Sheldon's victim went into the house, where he found some men +preparing for the forthcoming sale. + +"What is the meaning of all this?" he asked, aghast. + +"A bill of sale, sir. Messrs. Napthali and Zabulon." + +This was enough. The holder of the bill went back to the City. Another +bill came due on the following day, and before the members of the Stock +Exchange took their luncheon, it was known that Philip Sheldon's credit +was among the things of the past. + +"I always thought he was out of his depth," said one set of talkers. + +"He was the last man I should have expected to see come to grief," said +another set of talkers. + +On settling-day came the awful proclamation--Philip Sheldon had +absconded, and would not meet his differences. + +On the same day came a terrible revelation to Mr. George Sheldon, of +Gray's Inn, solicitor, genealogist, and pedigree hunter. The first +official step in the advancement of Gustave Lenoble's claim against the +Crown was taken by Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon, the solicitors, of +Whitehall; and George Sheldon discovered that between Charlotte +Hawkehurst and the Haygarth estate there stood a prior claimant, whereby +all his toil, trouble, costs out of pocket, and wear and tear of body and +mind, had been wasted. + +"It is enough to make a man go and cut his throat," cried George, in his +first savage sense of utter disappointment. + +He went into his slovenly bedroom, and took out one of his razors, and +felt the corrugated surface of the left side of his neck meditatively. +But the razor was blunt, and the corrugated surface seemed very tough and +unmanageable; so George Sheldon decided that this kind of operation was +an affair which might be deferred. + +He heard the next day that his brother was _non est_, and, in his own +phraseology, that there was a pretty kettle of fish in the City. + +"Upon my word, Phil and I seem to have brought our pigs to a very nice +market," he said. "I dare say, wherever that fellow has gone, he has +carried a well-lined purse with him. But I wouldn't have his conscience +for all the wealth of the Rothschilds. It's bad enough to see Tom +Halliday's face as I see it sometimes. What must it be to _him_?" + +A little more than a year after this, and the yellow corn was waving on +the fertile plains of Normandy, fruit ripening in orchards on hillside +and in valley; merry holiday folks splashing and dabbling in the waves +that wash the yellow sands of Dieppe; horses coming to grief in Norman +steeplechases; desperate gamesters losing their francs and half-francs in +all kinds of frivolous games in the Dieppe _établissement_; and yonder, +in the heart of Normandy, beyond the tall steeples of Rouen, a happy +family assembled at the Chateau Côtenoir. + +One happy family--two happy families rather, but so closely united by the +bonds of love and friendship as to seem indeed one. Here are Gustave +Lenoble and his young wife Diana, with two tall slender damsels by their +side; and here is Valentine Hawkehurst, the successful young scribbler, +with his fair young wife Charlotte; and out on the terrace yonder are two +nurses walking with two babies, at that early, and, to some minds, +obnoxious stage of babyhood in which a perpetual rocking, and pacing to +and fro, and swaying backwards and forwards in the air, is necessary for +the preservation of anything approaching tranquillity. But to the minds +of the two young mothers and the two proud fathers, these small creatures +in their long white robes seem something too bright for earth. The united +ages of the babies do not amount to six months; but the mothers have +counted every gradual stage of these young lives, and to both it seems as +if there had been no time in which the children were not, with so firm a +hold have they possessed themselves of every thought in the foolish +maternal mind, of every impulse in the weak maternal heart. + +Mrs. Hawkehurst has brought her son to see his aunt Diana; for Diana has +insisted upon assuming that relationship by letters-patent, as it were. +Madame Lenoble's baby is a daughter, and this fact in itself seems to the +two friends to be a special interposition of Providence. + +"Would it not be delightful if they should grow up to love each other and +marry?" exclaimed Diana; and Charlotte agreed with her that such an event +in the future did indeed seem in a manner foreshadowed by the conduct of +the infants in the present. + +"He takes notice of her already!" she exclaimed, looking out at the +little creature in white muslin robes, held up against the warm blue sky; +"see, they are cooing at each other! I am sure that must be cooing." + +And then the two mothers went out upon the sunny terrace-walk and fondly +contemplated these domestic treasures, until the domestic treasures were +seized with some of the inexplicable throes and mysterious agonies of +early babyhood, and had to be borne off shrieking to their nurseries. + +"Dear angel," said Gustave, of his "little last one," "she has the very +shriek of Clarice here, poignant and penetrating, until to drown the +heart. Dost thou figure to thyself that thy voice was penetrating as +that, my beautiful, in the time?" + +He kissed his beautiful, and she ran off to join the procession following +the two babies,--alarmed nurses, distracted mammas, shrieking infants, +anxious damsels. + +"_C'est un vrai tourbillon_," as Gustave remarked to his companion +Valentine Hawkehurst; "these women, how they love their children! What of +saints, what of Madonnas, what of angels!" + +Whereupon he spouted Victor Hugo: + +"Lorsque l'enfant paraît, le cercle de famille +Applaudit à grands cris; son doux regard qui brille +Fait briller tous les yeux; +Et les plus tristes fronts, les plus souillés peut-être, +Se dérident soudain à voir l'enfant paraître, +Innocent et joyeux." + +All things had gone well for M. Lenoble. His direct descent from Matthew +Haygarth, the father of the intestate, had been proved to the +satisfaction of Crown lawyers and High Court of Chancery, and he had been +in due course placed in possession of the reverend intestate's estate, to +the profit and pleasure of his solicitors and M. Fleurus, and to the +unspeakable aggravation of George Sheldon, who washed his hands at once +and for ever of all genealogical research, and fell back in an embittered +and angry spirit upon the smaller profits to be derived from petty +transactions in the bill-discounting line, and a championship of +penniless sufferers of all classes, from a damsel who considered herself +jilted by a fickle swain, in proof of whose inconstancy she could produce +documentary evidence of the "pork-chop and tomato sauce" order, to a +pedestrian who knocked his head against a projecting shutter in the +Strand, and straightway walked home to Holloway to lay himself up for a +twelvemonth in a state of mental and bodily incapacity requiring large +pecuniary redress from the owner of the fatal shutter. To this noble +protection of the rights of the weak did George Sheldon devote his +intellect; and when malicious enemies stigmatized these Quixotic +endeavours as "speculative actions," or when, in the breaking-down of +some oppressed damsel's cause by reason of the slender evidence afforded +by some reticent lover's epistolary effusions, unjust judges told him +that he "ought to be ashamed of himself" for bringing such an action, the +generous attorney no doubt took consolation from an approving conscience, +and went forth from that court, to look for other oppressed damsels or +injured wayfarers, erect and unshaken. + +Some little profit Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn did derive from the Haygarth +estate; for at the request of Gustave Lenoble Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon +sent him a cheque for one thousand pounds, as the price of those early +investigations which had set the artful Captain upon the right track. He +wrote a ceremoniously grateful letter to Gustave Lenoble on receiving +this honorarium. It is always well to be grateful for benefits received +from a rich man; but in the depths of his heart he execrated the +fortunate inheritor of the Haygarthian thousands. + +Mr. Hawkehurst was not quite so vehement in the expression of his +feelings as that lively Celt, Gustave; but deep in his heart there was a +sense of happiness no less pure and exalted. + +Providence had given him more than he had ever dared to hope; not +John Haygarth's thousands; not a life of luxurious idleness, and +dinner-giving, and Derby days, and boxes on the grand tier, and +carriage-horses at five hundred guineas a pair; not a palace in +Belgravia, and a shooting-box in the Highlands, and a villa at Cowes; +not these things, in which he would once have perceived the _summum +bonum_; but a fair price for his labour, a dear young wife, a tranquil +home. + +Nor had his researches among the dusty records of the departed Haygarths +been profitless in a pecuniary sense to himself. Gustave Lenoble insisted +that he should accept that honorarium of three thousand pounds which had +been promised by George Sheldon as the reward of his success. + +"Captain Paget would never have been put on the right track if he had +not filched your secrets from you," said the son and heir of Susan +Meynell. "It is to your researches, in the first place, that I owe +this inheritance; and you cannot refuse to accept the agreed price of +your labour." + +Valentine did not refuse this fairly-earned reward, nor did he oppose the +settlement which Gustave made in favour of Charlotte's infant son. It +seemed to him only just that some share of the heritage should fall to +the descendant of poor Susan's younger sister and faithful friend. + +With this capital of three thousand pounds comfortably invested in +consols, and with the interest of that sum of ten thousand pounds settled +on his infant son, Mr. Hawkehurst began the world, in his new character +of a husband and a father, very pleasantly. + +Of his literary career very little need be said here. He was yet at the +beginning of the long dusty road that leads to the temple of Fame. It is +enough to state that he found the dusty high-road rather difficult +walking, and that he was pelted with more mud, flung by nameless +assailants hidden behind the hedges, than he had anticipated when he set +out upon the first stage of his journey. Happily, he found pleasant +fellow-travellers and kindly encouragement from an indulgent public, and +was thus able to accept the mud which bespattered his garments in a very +placid spirit, and to make light of all obstacles in the great highway. + +The cottage at Wimbledon was no longer a dream. It was a pleasant +reality, the pride and delight of Mrs. Sheldon and Ann Woolper. It was a +picturesque dwelling-place, half cottage, half villa, situated on the +broad high-road from London to Kingston, with all the woodland of +Richmond Park to be seen from the windows at the back. Only a wall +divided Mr. Hawkehurst's gardens from the coverts of the Queen. It was +like a royal demesne, Charlotte said; whereupon her husband insisted that +it should be christened by the name of a royal dwelling, and so called it +Charlottenburgh. + +Mr. Hawkehurst had secured this delightful abode for a considerable term +of years, and upon the furnishing and decoration of the pretty rustic +rooms Charlotte and he lavished unmeasured care. The delicious excitement +of "picking up," or, in more elegant parlance, "collecting," was to these +two happy people an inexhaustible source of pleasure. Every eccentric +little table, every luxurious chair, had its special history, and had +been the subject of negotiation and diplomacy that might have sufficed a +Burleigh in the reorganization of Western Europe. The little Dresden and +Vienna cups and saucers in the maple cabinet had been every one bought +from a different dealer. The figures on the mantelpiece were Old Chelsea, +of a quality that would have excited the envy of a Bernal or a Bonn, and +had only fallen to the proud possessors by a sequence of fortuitous +circumstances, the history of which was almost as thrilling as the +story of Boehmer's diamond-necklace. The curtains in the drawing-room +had draped the _portières_ of the lovely Lady Blessington, and had been +bought for a song by Valentine Hawkehurst, after passing through the +hands of brokers and dealers innumerable. The tapestry-covered +Louis-Quatorze chairs had belonged to Madame de Sévigné, and had +furnished that dull country house whence she wrote the liveliest letters +extant to her disreputable cousin, Bussy, Count of Babutin. These +inestimable treasures had been picked up by Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst from +a bric-à-brac merchant in a little court at the back of the Rue Vivienne, +whither the young couple had gone arm-in-arm to choose a bonnet on their +first pleasure-trip to Paris. The clock in the modest dining-room had +been secured from the repository of the same merchant, and was warranted +to have sounded the last domestic hours of Maximilian Robespierre in his +humble lodging _chez le Menuisier_. The inkstand into which Mr. +Hawkehurst dipped his rapid pen had served the literary career of +Voltaire; the blotting-book on which he wrote had been used by Balzac. + +To the plausible fictions of the second-hand dealer Mr. and Mrs. +Hawkehurst lent willing ears, and it seemed to them as if these +associations, for which they had paid somewhat dearly, imparted a new +grace to their home. + +The arrangement and superintendence of all these treasures gave poor +Georgy endless pleasure and employment; but in her heart of hearts she +believed in the prim splendours of the dismantled Lawn as much superior +to these second-hand objects of art and upholstery. Nor did Ann Woolper +regard the Chelsea figures and Dresden teacups and old black Albert-Dürer +engravings as anything better than an innocent eccentricity on the part +of the master of the house, for the saving of whose purse she managed and +economized as faithfully as she had done for that lost master whereof the +memory was so bitter. + +It will be seen, therefore, that Mr. Hawkehurst with a wife, a +mother-in-law, and a faithful old servant, was likely to be well taken +care of; a little spoiled perhaps by "much cherishing," but carefully +guarded from all those temptations which are supposed to assail the +bachelor man-of-letters, toiling alone and neglected in Temple chambers. +For him the days passed in a pleasant monotony of constant labour, +lightened always by the thought of those for whom he worked, cheered ever +by the fond hope of future fame. He was no longer a bookmaker. He had +written a book, the proceeds of which had enabled him to furnish the +Wimbledon villa; and he was engaged in writing a second book, the fruits +whereof would secure the needs of the immediate future. He had insured +his life for a considerable amount, and had shown himself in all things +prudent to a degree that verged upon Philistinism. But the policies taken +out on Charlotte's life by Mr. Sheldon had been suffered to lapse. +Valentine would have no money staked on that dear head. + +The steed which Charlotte had desired for her husband's pleasure, the +library which she had catalogued so often, were yet among the delights of +the future; but life has lost half its brightness when there is no +unfulfilled desire left to the dreamer; and the horse which Mr. +Hawkehurst was to ride in time to come, and the noble library which he +was to collect, were the pleasant themes of Charlotte's conversation very +often, as she and her husband walked on the heights of Wimbledon in the +twilight, when his day's work was done. + +These twilight walks were the happy holidays of his life, and a part of +his liberal education. He told his wife everything, every literary +scheme, every fancy, every shadowy outline of future work, every new +discovery in the boundless realms of Bookland. His enthusiasm; his +hero-worship; his setting-up of one favourite and knocking-down of +another; his unchristian pleasure in that awful slating of poor Jones in +this week's _Saturday_, or the flaying alive of Robinson in the _Bond +Street Backbiter_;--in a word, his "shop" never became wearisome to +Charlotte. She listened always with a like rapture and sympathy; she +worshipped his favourites of Bookland; she welcomed his friends and +fellow-workers with unvarying sweetness she devised and superintended the +fitting-up of a smoking-room that was perfectly paradisaical, a glimpse +of the Alhambra in miniature; and that obnoxious dish, the cold shoulder, +was never served in Mr. Hawkehurst's dwelling. So sweet a wife, so +pleasant a home, popularized the institution of matrimony among the young +writer's bachelor friends; and that much-abused and cruelly maligned +member of the human race, the mother-in-law, was almost rehabilitated by +Mrs. Sheldon's easy good-nature and evident regard for the interests of +her daughter's husband. + +And after all the groping among dry as dust records of a bygone century, +after all the patient following of those faint traces on the sands of +time left by the feet of Matthew Haygarth, _this_ was Charlotte's +Inheritance,--a heart whose innocence and affection made home a kind of +earthly paradise, and gave to life's commonest things a charm that all +the gold ever found in California could not have imparted to them. This +was Charlotte's Inheritance,--the tender, unselfish nature of the +Haygarths and Hallidays; and thus dowered, her husband would not have +exchanged her for the wealthiest heiress whose marriage was ever +chronicled in _Court Circular_ or _Court Journal_. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +LOST SIGHT OF. + +A year and a half had passed since the disappearance of Philip Sheldon +from the circle in which he had been considered a person of some +importance. The repudiation of those bills by which he had sustained his +exhausted credit, or rather the discovery that the companies upon which +the bills pretended to be drawn were of all shadows the most shadowy, had +brought consternation upon many, and ruin upon some. Bitter and +unmeasured were the terms in which City men spoke of that Phil Sheldon +with whom they had eaten the sacred bait and quaffed the social moselle +in the taverns of Greenwich and Blackwall. + +There is a saying current on the Stock Exchange to the effect that the +man who fails, and disappears from among his fellows behind a curtain of +commercial cloud, is sure to return sooner or later to his old circle, +with a moustache and a brougham. For Philip Sheldon there was, however, +no coming back. The moustache and the brougham of the chastened and +penitent defaulter were not for him. By his deliberate and notorious +dishonour he had shut the door against the possibility of return. It may +be supposed that the defaulter knew this, for he did not come back; and +since he had no lack of moral courage, he would scarcely have refrained +from showing himself once more in his old haunts, if it had been possible +for him to face the difficulties of his position. + +Time passed, and there came no tidings of the missing man, though a +detective was despatched to America in search of him by one vengeful +sufferer among the many victims of the fictitious bills-of-exchange. It +was supposed that he must inevitably go to America, and thither went his +pursuer, but with no result except the expenditure of money and the +further exasperation of the vengeful sufferer. + +"What will you do with him, if you get him?" asked a philosophical friend +of the sufferer. "He has nothing to surrender. Zabulon had a bill-of-sale +on his furniture." + +"Furniture!" cried the infuriated victim; "I don't want his furniture. I +want his flesh and bones. I want to shut him up in Dartmoor Prison, or to +get him twenty years' hard labour at Portland Island." + +"That sort of man would get a ticket-of-leave in less than twelve +months," replied the philosophic friend. "I'm afraid you are only +throwing good money after bad." + +The event proved this gentleman but too able a seer. In the monster city +of New York Philip Sheldon had disappeared like a single drop of water +flung upon the Atlantic Ocean. There was no trace of him: too intangible +for the grasp of international law, he melted into the mass of humanity, +only one struggler the more in the great army perpetually fighting life's +desperate battle. + +From among all those who had known him this man had utterly vanished, +and not one sigh of regret followed him in his unknown wanderings--not +one creature amongst all those who had taken his hand and given him +friendly greeting thought of him kindly, or cared to know whither he +went or how he prospered. He had not left in the house that had +sheltered him for years so much as a dog to whine at his door or listen +for his returning footstep. + +This fact, if he had known it or considered it, would have troubled him +very little. He had played his game for a certain stake, and had lost it. +This he felt, and cursed his own too cautious play as the cause of his +defeat. That there were higher stakes for which he might have played an +easier game, was a fact that never occurred to him. In his philosophy +there was indeed nothing higher given to the hopes of man than worldly +success, and a dull, cold, prosperous life spent among prosperous +acquaintance. + +He was gone, and those who remembered him most keenly--Valentine +Hawkehurst, Diana Paget, Ann Woolper--remembered him with a shudder. The +old Yorkshirewoman thought of him sometimes as she bent over the little +muslin-bedecked cradle where the hope of the Hawkehursts slumbered, and +looked round fearfully in the gloaming, half expecting to see his dreaded +face glower upon her, dark and threatening, from between the curtains of +the window. + +It was a belief of all ancient races, nay indeed, a belief still current +amongst modern nations, that it is not given to man to behold the beings +of another world and live. The Arab who meets a phantom in the desert +goes home to his tent to die. He knows that the hand of doom is upon him. +He has seen that upon which, for mortal eyes, it is fatal to look. And it +is thus in some measure with those who are admitted within the dark +precincts of murder's dread sanctuary. Not swiftly does the curtain fall +which has once been lifted from the hidden horrors of that ghastly +temple. The revelations of an utterly wicked soul leave a lasting impress +upon the mind which unwillingly becomes recipient of those awful secrets. + +The circumstances of Tom Halliday's death and of Charlotte's illness were +not to be forgotten by Ann Woolper. The shadow of that dark cruel face, +which had lain upon her bosom forty years before, haunted many a peaceful +hour of her quiet old age. Her ignorance, and that faint tinge of +superstition which generally accompanies ignorance, exaggerated the +terror of those dark memories. The thought that Philip Sheldon still +lived, still had the power to plot and plan evil against the innocent, +was an ever-present source of terror to her. She could not understand +that such an element could exist among the forces of evil without fatal +result to some one. It seemed to her as if a devil were at large, and +there could be neither peace nor security until the evil spirit was +exorcised, the baneful presence laid in nethermost depths of unfathomable +sea. + +These feelings and these fears would scarcely have arisen in the old +woman's breast, had she alone been subject to the possible plottings of +that evil nature. For herself she had little fear. Her span of life was +nearly ended; very few were the sands that had yet to run; and, for her +own sake, she would have cared little if some rough hand had spilt them +untimely. But a new interest in life had been given to Mrs. Woolper just +as life drew near its close. That peerless child, the son and heir of the +Hawkehursts, had been intrusted to the old woman's care; and this infant +she loved with an affection much more intense than that which had once +made Philip Sheldon so dear to her. + +It was by the cradle of this much-treasured child that Ann Woolper nursed +her fear of her old master. She knew that he had been counter-plotted and +beaten ignominiously in that deadly game which he had played so boldly. +And she asked herself whether he was the man to submit to such utter +defeat without any effort to revenge himself upon those who had helped to +compass his failure. + +On that night when Charlotte Halliday had lain between life and death, +suffering on the one hand from the effects of a prolonged and gradual +course of poison, on the other from the violent measures taken to +eliminate that poisonous element from her system,--on that night when the +precious life yet trembled in the balance, Ann Woolper had seen murderous +looks in the face of the man whom she dared boldly to defy, and who knew +in that hour that his ghastly plot was discovered. Even now, secure in a +haven of safety, she could not forget that baneful look in Philip +Sheldon's eyes. She could not find perfect rest while she knew not where +that man might be, or what mischief he might be plotting against those +she loved. + +Her fears showed themselves in many ways. When she read of dark and +vengeful deeds in her newspaper, she thought of her old master, and how, +in such or such an act, his fatal hand might reveal itself. He might lie +in wait for Valentine some night on the dark road between Charlottenburgh +and the distant railway-station. She could fancy the young wife's agony +of terror as the night wore on, and her husband did not return; the +unspeakable horror that would come over all that happy household when the +news came that its young master had been found on the lonely road slain +by some unknown hand. Open utterance to her fears she was too wise to +give; but she warned Mr. Hawkehurst of the dangers on that dark road, and +besought him to arm himself with a trusty bludgeon wherewith to meet and +vanquish any chance assailant. Valentine laughed at her anxious warning; +but when Charlotte took up the cry he was fain to content her by the +purchase of a sturdy stick, which he swung cheerily to and fro as he +walked homewards in the gloaming, planning a chapter in his new book, and +composing powerful and eloquent sentences which eluded his mental grasp +when he tried to reduce his evening reverie to pen-and-ink. + +"When the air blows fresh across the common, and the distant lights +twinkle, and the bright stars peep out in the pale-yellow sky, my +language flows as it never does when I sit at my desk, Lotta," he said to +his wife. "I feel myself a Swift or a Junius out there; equal to the +tackling of any social question that ever arose upon this earth, from the +Wood halfpence to the policy of American taxation, and triennial +elections. At home I am only Valentine Hawkehurst, with an ever-present +consciousness that so many pages of copy are required from me within a +given time, and that my son-and-heir is cutting his teeth, and making +more fuss about it than I ever made about _my_ teeth; and that the man +about the water-rate is waiting to see me, please, and is desperately +anxious about making-up his books; and that I have the dearest wife in +Christendom, who opens my door, and puts her pretty head into my room +once in half an hour to see how I am getting on, or to ask whether I want +any more coals, or to borrow my ink to make-up her washing-book." + +"You mean, sir, that I prevent your becoming a Junius?" cried Charlotte, +with an enchanting _moue_. + +"Yes, dear. I begin to understand why Swift kept his poor ill-used wife +at a respectful distance. She would have made him too happy if he had +allowed her to be on the premises. She would have given the cruel +indignation no chance of lacerating his heart; and such writing as +Swift's is only produced by a man whose heart is so lacerated. No, my +darling, I shall never be a Swift or a Junius while your pretty head is +thrust into my room once or twice an hour; but I may hope to be something +better, if bright eyes can inspire bright thoughts, and innocent smiles +give birth to pleasant fancies." + +Upon this there was the usual little demonstration of affection between +this young couple; and Charlotte praised her husband as the most +brilliant and admirable of men; after which pleasing flattery she +favoured him with a little interesting information about the baby's last +tooth, and the contumacious behaviour of the new housemaid, between whom +and Mrs. Woolper there had been a species of disagreement, which the +Yorkshirewoman described as a "standfurther." + +Thus occupied in simple pleasures and simple cares, the lives of Mr. and +Mrs. Hawkehurst went on, untroubled by any fear of that crime-burdened +wretch whose image haunted the dreams and meditations of Ann Woolper. For +these two Mr. Sheldon was numbered among the dead. To Charlotte the +actual truth had never been revealed; but she had been, in the course of +time, given to understand that her stepfather had committed some +unpardonable sin, which must for ever separate him from herself and her +mother. She had been told as much as this, and had been told that she +must seek to know no more. To this she submitted without questioning. + +"I am very sorry for him," she said, "and for mamma." + +She concluded that the unpardonable offence must needs have been some sin +against her mother, some long-hidden infidelity brought suddenly to +light, with all the treachery and falsehood involved therein. She never +mentioned her stepfather after this but in her prayers the sinner was not +forgotten. + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES. + +George Sheldon went his ways, picking up as good a living as he could +from that chivalrous assertion of the rights of the weak which has been +already described; and the thought of his brother's sin-burdened soul +troubled him very little. He did think of Tom Halliday; for that last +grasp of the honest Yorkshireman's hand, that last look in his old +friend's face, were haunting memories which this sharp practitioner had +found himself powerless to exorcise. If his brother, after an absence of +many years in the remote regions of the East Indies, had come home to his +fatherland with a colossal fortune, and the reputation of having +strangled a few natives during the process of amassing that fortune, +George Sheldon would have welcomed the returning wanderer, and would, in +his own parlance, have "swallowed the natives." A few niggers, more or +less, sent untimely to Gehenna, would have seemed scarcely sufficient +cause for quarrel with a fraternal and liberally-disposed millionaire. +But the circumstances of Tom Halliday's death had brought all the horror +of crime and treachery home to the spectator of that deliberate +assassination, and had produced such an impression as no other +circumstances could on so hard a nature. + +It was some satisfaction to George Sheldon to know that his old friend's +daughter had found a happy home; and he was apt to take some credit from +his own share in his brother's discomfiture. He met Valentine sometimes +in the course of his peregrinations in the neighbourhood of the British +Museum, and the greeting between the two men was sufficiently cordial; +but Mr. Hawkehurst did not invite his old employer to Charlottenburgh, +and George was able to comprehend that to that household no one bearing +the name of Sheldon could be a welcome visitor. + +He jogged on comfortably enough in his own way; living in his chambers, +and consorting with a few chosen friends and kindred spirits of the +jolly-good-fellow class, whom he met at an old-established tavern in the +west-central district, and in whose society, and the society of the +subscription-ground in the Farringdon Road, he found the _summum bonum_ +in the way of social intercourse. He did a little speculation upon the +turf, and discounted the bills of needy bookmakers, or bought up their +bad debts, and thereby gained introductions to the noble patrons of the +humble "scums," and pushed his business into new grooves. He had no idea +that such an existence was in any way ignoble; nay, indeed, when he had +paid his rent, and his clerk, and his laundress, and his tavern score, +and "stood glasses round" amongst his friends, he lighted his cigar, and +thrust his hands into the depths of his pockets, and paced the flags of +Holborn happy in the belief that he had performed the whole duty of man. + +"There are men whose business obliges them to keep up an establishment, +and go to church twice a day, and all that kind of thing," he said; "and +I dare say they find it pay. My clients don't care a doit where I live, +or how I spend my Sundays; and I'd rather have five pounds a week and my +liberty than the best family connection in the Fields." + +The fate of that wretched man, who had dropped out of his old circle +and vanished no one knew whither, in no manner disturbed the peace of +George Sheldon. + +"Take my word for it, that gentleman has fallen on his feet," he said, on +the only occasion when the fate of Philip was discussed by Valentine and +himself. "He's doing well enough, somewhere or other, you may depend; but +I don't think he'll ever be able to show his nose in London after those +bill transactions. There's a very strong feeling against him on Change. +He's looked upon as a discredit to the order, and that sort of thing, you +see. It isn't often a member of the House goes to the bad like that. No, +I don't think Phil will ever show himself in London again; but such a man +as that can always find a platform somewhere--" + +"And go on to the end of his days unpunished, I suppose," remarked Mr. +Hawkehurst, with some bitterness. + +"Well, yes; I don't see what's to touch him in the future. Of course he +could be dropped upon for those bills, if he came in the way of being +dropped upon; but, as I said before, he's too deep a card for that." + +Thus did George Sheldon dismiss the subject. That his brother was an +exile for life from his native land he did not doubt; but he took it for +granted that in whatever distant spot of earth Philip had found a refuge, +he would there contrive to prosper and to show a bold front in the city +of his adoption. + +This belief Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn cherished until one snowy Christmas +Eve, a year and a half after that event, or series of events, which the +lawyer briefly designated "the burst-up at Bayswater." + +Bleak and bitter was that December, a December not long gone by. The +heart of the prosperous British nation melted as the heart of one man. +The columns of the _Zeus_ and the _Diurnal Hermes_, the _Flag_ and the +_Hesper_, overflowed with the record of subscriptions to charity funds; +and the leaders of the morning journals all preached the same kindly +sermon on the same Christian text. Thick lay the snow upon the housetops; +"thick and slab" the greasy slush upon the pavements of crowded +thoroughfares; merry the rogues and ragamuffins of the great city. The +ideal Christmas of our dreams seemed to have come at last, and the heart +of every true Briton rejoiced; while skaters in the parks made merry, and +cabmen demanded fabulous sums of helpless wayfarers; and luckless, +overworked, under-fed horses stumbled and fell at every turn, and the +familiar steep of Holborn was dangerous as Alpine mountain. + +To George Sheldon neither the weather nor the Christmas season made much +difference. The even current of his life was little disturbed by festive +pleasures or dissipations. An extra glass at his tavern, an invitation to +dinner from some friend in the bill-discounting line, were the most +exciting events the season was likely to bring him. He saw the shops +brighten suddenly with semi-supernal glories of crystallized fruits and +gorgeous bonbon-boxes, and he was aware of a kind of movement in the +streets that was brisker and gayer than the plodding hurry of everyday +life. He stood aside and let the mummeries go by him, and was glad when +these Christmas follies were done with, and the law-courts in full swing +once more. In the happiest and most innocent days of his youth, Christmas +had brought him no more than extraordinary indulgences in the way of +eating and drinking, swiftly followed by that dread avenger, the demon of +the bilious. + +Upon this particular occasion Mr. Sheldon had pledged himself to dine +with a horsey publican lately retired from business, and big with all the +pride and glory of a "place" at Hornsey. + +"Come down and see my place, Sheldon," this gentleman had said. "I don't +pretend to do the swell thing; but I force my own pines and grow my own +grapes, and can put as good a dessert on my table as you could buy in +Covent Garden for a five-pun' note. That's my missus's fad, that is, and +I can afford it; so why shouldn't I do it? You come and eat your +Christmas dinner with us, Sheldon. I've got a friend coming that can +sing as good a song as Reeves hisself, and might make a fortune, if he +wasn't above coming out at one of them music-halls. And I'll give you a +bottle of Madeira that you won't match at any nobleman's table, if +noblemen's tables was in your line of business, which you and I know +they ain't, old fellow." + +And then the jolly good fellow dug his fat fingers into George Sheldon's +ribs, and George accepted the invitation; not with any elation of +spirits, but sufficiently pleased to secure a good dinner with a man who +promised to be a profitable client, and whose house was within a +reasonable cab-fare from the west-central district. + +"The cabmen are trying it on, anyhow, just now," thought Mr. Sheldon; +"but I don't think they'll try it on with me. And if they do, there's the +Marylebone stage. I'm not afraid of a five-mile walk." + +Having accepted this invitation, and thus disposed of his Christmas-day, +George Sheldon refrained from the delights of social converse at his +tavern on Christmas-eve, and occupied himself with business. His clerk +left him at the usual hour; but the master sat, long after dark, writing +letters and reading law-papers, while the snow drifted against his +windows and whitened the quiet quadrangle below. + +He had just laid aside his papers and lighted a cigar, when he was +startled by a stealthy knocking at his door. He was not unaccustomed to +late visitors, as he was known to live at his chambers, and to work after +office-hours; but the knocking of to-night was not the loud rollicking +rat-a-tat of his jolly-good-fellow friends or clients. If he had been a +student of light literature, and imbued with the ghostly associations of +the season, he would have gone to his door expecting to behold a weird +figure clothed in the vestments of the last century; or an old woman in +ruff and martingale, whose figure in the flesh had once haunted those +legal precincts; or the ghostly semblance of the Baron of Verulam +himself, revisiting the glimpses of the moon and the avenue of elms that +were planted by his order. + +In George Sheldon's nature there was, however, no lurking dread of fiend +or phantom. His ideas in connection with ghosts were limited to a white +sheet, a broomstick, and a hollow turnip with a lighted candle inside it; +and he would have set down the most awful apparition that ever was +revealed to German ghost-seer, with a scornful grin, as a member of the +sheet and-hollow-turnip confraternity. + +"I know how it's done," he would have said, if the spectral form had +glowered upon him in midnight churchyard or ruined abbey. "You'd better +go and try it on somewhere else, my friend." + + * * * * * + +To a superstitious mind the THING which crept across the dark lobby +and dragged itself into the glare of the gas-lighted office might +have seemed, indeed, some, creature too loathsome for humanity. A +plague-stricken corpse galvanized into a spasmodic life could scarcely +have lifted to the light a more awful countenance than that on which +George Sheldon looked with mingled anger and disgust. + +"What do you want here" he asked. "Do you take this for the workhouse?" + +"No," the creature answered, in a faint hoarse voice; "but I take you for +my brother." + +"WHAT!" cried George Sheldon, aghast. + +He bent down and looked at the awful face. Yes, from the cavernous +hollows of those sunken cheeks, beneath the shaggy penthouse of those +bony brows, the fierce black eyes of Philip Sheldon looked out at him +with a savage glare that he had never seen in them before--even when the +savage nature of the man had revealed itself most nakedly--the fierce +glare of fever and starvation. + +This walking horror, this mass of loathsome rags endued with motion, this +living disease, was the sometime prosperous stockbroker, the man whom it +had been impossible to think of except furnished with linen of spotless +whiteness, and the glossy broad-cloth, and well-made boots, and keyless +chronometer, and silk umbrella of commercial success. + +"Good God!" exclaimed George, horror-stricken, "is it you?" + +"Yes, it's I," answered the creature in his strange husky accents; and +the change--nay, indeed, the degradation, of the voice was as complete as +the degradation of the man. "Yes, George, it's I; your brother Phil. +You're surprised to see me fallen so low in the world, I suppose; but you +can't be more surprised than I am myself. I've tried hard enough to hold +my head above water. There's scarcely any trade that mortal man ever +tried to earn his bread by, that I haven't tried--and failed in. It has +been the experience of Fitzgeorge-street over and over again, in every +trade and every profession. I started as doctor in Philadelphia, and was +doing well;--till--till a patient died--and things went against me. I've +been clerk in more offices than you can count on your ten fingers; but +there was always something--my employer levanted, or was bankrupt, or +died, or dismissed me. I've been travelling-dentist, auctioneer, +commission-agent, tout, pedlar, out yonder; but it all came to the same +thing--ruin, starvation, the hospital, or the pauper's ward. I have swept +crossings in the city, and camped out in the wilderness among the bears +and opossums. One day I thought I'd come home. 'There's George,' I said +to myself; 'if I can get money enough to take me across the Atlantic, I +shall be all right. George will give me a lift.' I don't stand alone in +the world. A man's own flesh and blood won't let him starve--can't let +him starve. Blood's thicker than water, you know, George. So I came home. +I got the money; never you mind how. I needn't tell you what it cost me +to scrape half-a-dozen pounds together. When a man's as low down in the +world as I am, there's not a shilling he earns that doesn't cost him a +drop of his heart's blood; there's not a pound he gets together that +isn't bought by the discount of so much of his life. I found money enough +for my passage in an emigrant vessel; and here I am, ready for anything. +I'll work like your bought nigger. I'll do the work your clerk does for a +quarter of his wages. I'll sweep out your office, and run errands for +you. You'll give me something to keep body and soul together, won't you, +George?" + +Nothing could be more utterly abject than the tone of this most abject +wretch. + +This man, who in prosperity had been the very personification of hardness +and insolence, was transformed into a grovelling, cringing supplicant, +ready to lie face downward in the dust beneath the feet of that brother +whose patronage, or charity, he besought. + +Mr. Sheldon the younger contemplated the supplicant with looks of +undisguised gratification. He walked a few paces backward from the spot +where his brother had fallen, in a half-sitting, half-crouching attitude, +and where he remained, hugging himself in his rags, too abject to be +acutely conscious of his degradation. A year ago and he would have held +himself obstinately aloof from all old associations, and would have +declared himself ready to face starvation, rather than accept, still less +supplicate, relief from his younger brother. The events of that one year +had involved alternations and convulsions that change a year into a +cycle. He had faced starvation; he had walked with hunger for his +travelling companion; he had lain down night after night in such lairs +as the tramp can find for his refuge, with sickness and pain for his +bed-fellows. The crucible through which he had passed had left in him no +more of humanity than its outward semblance, and scarcely that; for when +the moral man sinks to the level of the beasts of prey, the physical man +undergoes an assimilative process only less marked than that which +transforms the mental nature. + +For six months this man had lived by fawning upon or threatening his +fellow-men; by violence or craft; by the degradation of the vagrant or +the audacity of the thief. There is no limit to man's capacity for infamy +which he had not touched. Vilest amongst the vile, he had been cast forth +from the haunts of beggars and reprobates, as no fitting company for +honourable thieves or cadgers of good repute. + +George Sheldon seated himself astride upon a chair, and, with his folded +arms resting on the back of it, contemplated this hideous spectacle. It +was a picture that he had never thought to see, and the feeling with +which he surveyed it was not unmingled with pleasure. + +"When you rode me rough-shod, my friend, I used to think how I should +enjoy taking my change out of you," he said; "but I never thought I +should have such an opportunity as this--never, by Jove! I thought you +would ride the high horse to the end of the journey; I didn't think your +steed would land you in the gutter. And so you've tried every move, have +you?--tumbled upon every platform?--and you've found all your cleverness +no go upon the other side of the three thousand miles of everlasting wet, +as my Yankee friends call the Atlantic; and you've come back whining to +me, and I'm to help you, am I, and to give you a fresh start in life, I +suppose, and make you my clerk, or my junior partner, eh?--that would be +better. Messrs. Sheldon and Sheldon wouldn't look bad on my door. That's +about what you mean when you talk of blood being thicker than water, +isn't it?" + +The abject wretch who had once been Philip Sheldon felt that his brother +was trifling with him, savouring to the last drop that cup of triumph +which the chances of fortune had offered to his lips. + +"Don't play the fool with me, George," he said piteously. "I don't ask +you much--a crust of bread, a corner to sleep in, and a cast-off suit of +clothes: that's not much for one brother to ask of another." + +"Perhaps not," replied George Sheldon; "but it's a great deal for you to +ask of me. You've had your turn, Phil; and you made the most of it, and +contrived to keep me at arm's length. My turn has come at last, and you +may depend upon it I shall contrive now to keep _you_ at arm's length." + +The vagrant stared at him aghast. Here he had felt secure of food and +shelter; and he had endured miseries and deprivations that reduce a man +to a state in which food and shelter seem to constitute the supreme good +that can be obtained in this life. + +"You won't refuse to do something for me, George," he whined piteously. + +"I will do nothing for you. Do you hear that, my man? Nothing! You taught +me that blood is not thicker than water twelve years ago, when you +married Tom Halliday's widow, and drew your purse-strings, after flinging +me a beggarly hundred as you'd throw a bone to a dog. You made me +understand that was all I should ever get out of your brotherly love, or +your fear of my telling the world what I knew. You gave me a dinner now +and then, because it suited you to keep your eye upon me; and you had +generally some piece of dirty work on hand that made the advice of a +sharp practitioner like me uncommonly useful to you. I don't believe that +you ever gave me so much as a dinner that you didn't take payment for in +meal or in malt. Don't come howling here now, trying to persuade me that +blood is thicker than water, or that brotherhood means anything more than +the accident of birth. And now I've said all I have to say; and the +sooner you make yourself scarce, the better for both of us." + +"George!" cried the miserable suppliant, clasping his bony hands +convulsively, and whimpering as he had whimpered when he begged his bread +in the streets of New York, "you can't mean to turn me out of doors on +such a night. Look at me. It was as much as I could do to crawl to this +room. I have walked every step of the way from Liverpool; my wretched +limbs have been frost-bitten, and ulcered, and bruised, and racked with +rheumatism, and bent double with cramp. I came over in an emigrant +vessel, with a herd of miserable creatures who had tried their luck on +the other side of the Atlantic, and had failed, like me, and were coming +home to their native workhouses. You don't know what some of your +emigrant ships are, perhaps. People talk about the Black Hole of +Calcutta, and the Middle Passage; but let them try the cabin of an +emigrant vessel, and they'll have a pretty fair idea of what human beings +have to suffer when Poverty drives the ship. I landed in Liverpool with +half-a-dollar in my pocket, and I've had neither decent food nor decent +shelter since I landed. Give me some hole to lie in, George, till you can +get me an order for the nearest hospital. It's a toss-up whether I ever +come out of it." + +"Do you think I'd sleep under the roof that sheltered you?" cried George. + +"Why not?" + +"Why not! Because I'm afraid of you. Because I'd as soon have a cobra +for my companion, or a wolf for my bedfellow. I know you. I've seen what +you can do, and how you can do it. And if you could do those things when +the only pressure upon you was one that you could have cast off by going +through the _Gazette_, what would you _not_ do now when you are as +desperate as a famished wolf, and governed by no better law than that +which governs a wolf--the law of self-preservation? Am I to trust a +tiger because he tells me he is hungry? No, Phil Sheldon; neither will I +trust you." + +"You will give me some money--enough to keep me alive for a week or two." + +"Not one sixpence. I'll establish no precedent; I'll acknowledge no tie +between us. You'd better march. I don't want to send for a policeman; but +if you won't go quietly, you must do the other thing." + +"You mean that?" + +"Most emphatically yes." + +"I didn't think it was in you to be so hard upon me," faltered; the +wretch in that faint hoarse voice which had grown fainter and hoarser +during this interview. + +"Did you think that I would trust you?" cried George. "Trust _you_! You +call me hard because I won't give you a corner to lie in. And if I did, +you would creep out of your corner to poison me, or cut my throat. You +would crawl into my room in the dead of the night and put a pillow over +my face, and kneel upon it till you'd done the trick for me; and then +you'd walk off with as much as you could carry, and begin the same kind +of work over again with some one else. I tell you, Mr. Phil Sheldon, I +will hold no intercourse with you. You've escaped hanging, but there's +something that's worse than hanging, to my mind, and that is the state of +a man whom nobody will trust. You've come to that; and if you had a spark +of gentlemanly feeling, you'd have bought two-pennyworth of rope and hung +yourself rather than come cringing to me." + +"Suppose I don't cringe," said the outcast, dropping the fawning tone of +the mendicant for the threatening ferocity of the social wolf; "you'd +better give me a trifle to keep body and soul together for the next few +weeks. I'm a desperate man, George! You and I are alone up here. You are +pretty sure to have ready money about you. And there's your watch; that's +worth something. I didn't come here to go away empty-handed. AND I +WON'T!" + +He sprang to his feet, and in the next moment the lawyer heard the sharp +clicking noise made by the opening of a clasp-knife. + +"O," cried he, "that's what you want, is it!" + +He bent over his desk, with his eyes fixed on those other evil eyes that +still retained some likeness to his own, and with his left arm raised in +a boxer's defensive attitude, to guard his head, while his right hand +groped for something in a drawer. It was a moment's work. Philip had +seized that uplifted left arm, and was hanging on to it like a cat, with +his knife between his teeth, when George clapped the muzzle of a revolver +to his brow. + +"There are plenty of wild beasts in London besides you," he said, "and I +am not such a fool as to be without the means of settling a chance +visitor of your sort. Drop your knife, and march." + +The outcast dropped his knife submissively. He was too weak for anything +more than a spasmodic violence. + +"Take your pistol away from my head," he whined. + +"Certainly, when you are outside my door." + +"You might give me a handful of silver, George. I haven't a week's life +left in me." + +"All the better for society if you hadn't an hour's life in you. Be off. +I'm tired of holding this revolver to your head, and I don't mean to let +it go till you're off my premises." + +Philip saw that there was no hope. Food and shelter were all he had +hoped for; but even these blessings were not for him. He backed out of +the office, closely followed by George, holding the muzzle of the +revolver within an inch or so of the fraternal brains. Upon the +threshold only did he pause. + +"Tell me one thing," he said. "You won't give me sixpence to buy a loaf +of bread or a glass of gin. Give me one scrap of comfort. It need cost +you nothing. Tell me something bad of Valentine Hawkehurst: that he's +gone to the dogs, or drowned himself; that his wife has run away from +him, or his house been burned to the ground. Tell me that he's had a +taste of my luck; and that Ann Woolper has died in a workhouse. It will +be as good as meat and drink to me, and it will cost you nothing." + +"If I told you anything of the kind, I should tell you a lie; Valentine +Hawkehurst is doing uncommonly well, and has got one of the prettiest +little boxes between Wimbledon and Kingston. Ann Woolper lives with them, +and is in better feather than she ever was in your time." + +With this, Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn pushed his brother out on to the +staircase, and shut his door. Philip sat upon the stairs, and drew his +rags together a little, and rubbed his wretched limbs, while the bolts +and chains whereby the lawyer defended his citadel clanked close behind +him. + +"I wonder whether he'll pay Hawkehurst a visit," thought George, as he +bolted his door; and he had a kind of grim satisfaction in the idea that +Valentine's Christmas peace might be disturbed by the advent of that +grisly visitor. + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +"ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS." + +"Between Wimbledon and Kingston," muttered the tramp. "If I can drag +myself as far as that, I'll go there this night." + +He went down stairs and out into the pitiless cold and snow, and made his +way down Fetter Lane, and across Blackfriars Bridge to the Surrey side of +the water, stopping to beg here and there. + +Upon this snowy Christmas night there were plenty of people abroad; +and amongst them Philip Sheldon found pitying matrons, who explored +the depths of their capacious pockets to find him a halfpenny, and +good-natured young men, who flung the "copper" he besought with piteous +professional whine. + +When he had collected the price of a glass of gin, he went into the first +public-house he came to, and spent his money. He was too ill to stay the +cravings of his stomach with substantial food. Gin gave him temporary +warmth and temporary strength, and enabled him to push on vigorously for +a little while; and then came dreary periods of faintness and exhaustion, +in which every step was sheer pain and weariness. + +Something of his old self, some remnant of that hard strength of purpose +which had once characterized him, remained with him still, utterly fallen +and brutalized as he was. As a savage creature of the jungle might pursue +a given course, pushing always onward to that camp or village whence the +scent of human flesh and blood was wafted to his quivering nostrils, so +Philip Sheldon pushed on towards the dwelling-place of that man and that +woman whom of all creatures upon this earth he most savagely hated. + +"There's nothing left for me but to turn housebreaker," he said to +himself; "and the first house I'll try my hand upon shall be Valentine +Hawkehurst's." + +The idea of violence in such a creature was the idea of a madman. Weapon +he had none, nor the physical strength that would have enabled him to +grapple with a boy of twelve years old. Half intoxicated with the spirits +he had consumed on his long tramp, half delirious with fever, he had a +vague notion that he could make an entrance into some ill-defended house +under cover of night, and steal something that should procure him food +and shelter. And let the house be Valentine Hawkehurst's, the man who had +baffled his plans and crushed him! + +If blood must be shed, let the blood be his! Never was man better primed +for murder than the man who tramped across Wimbledon Common at eleven +o'clock this night, with the snow drifting against his face, and his +limbs shaken every now and then by an ague-fit. + +Happily for the interests of society, his hand lacked the power to +execute that iniquity which his heart willed. + +He reached a little wayside inn near the Robin Hood gate of Richmond +Park, just as the shutters were being closed, and asked a man if any one +of the name of Hawkehurst lived in that neighbourhood. + +"What do _you_ want with Mr. Hawkehurst?" asked the man, contemptuously. + +"I've got a letter for him." + +"Have you? A begging letter, I should think, from the look of you." + +"No; it's a business letter. You'd better show me where he lives, if he's +a customer of yours. The business is particular." + +"Is it? You're a queer kind of messenger to trust with particular +business. Mr. Hawkehurst's house is the third you come to on the opposite +side of the way. But I don't suppose you'll find anybody up as late as +this. Their lights are out by eleven, in a general way." + +The third house on the opposite side of the road was half a mile distant +from the little run. Lights shone bright in the lower windows as the +tramp dragged his tired limbs to the stout oaken gate. The gate was +fastened only by a latch, and offered no resistance to the intruder. He +crept with stealthy footsteps along the smooth gravel walk, sheltered by +dark laurels, on which the light flashed cheerily from those bright +windows. Sounds of laughter and of music pealed out upon the wintry air. +Shadows flitted across the blinds of the broad bay windows. Philip +Sheldon crept into a sheltered nook beside the rustic porch, and sank +down exhausted in the shadow of the laurels. + +He sat there in a kind of stupor. He had lost the power of thought, +somehow, on that dreary journey. It seemed almost as if he had left some +portion of his being out yonder in the cold and darkness. He had +difficulty in remembering why he had come to this place, and what that +deed was which he meant to do. + +"Hawkehurst," he muttered to himself--"Hawkehurst, the man who leagued +against me with Jedd! I swore to be even with him if ever I found the +opportunity--if ever! And George refused me a few shillings; my brother, +my only brother, refused to stand my friend!" + +Hawkehurst and George--big only brother--the images of these two men +floated confusedly in his brain: he could scarcely separate them. +Sometimes it seemed to him that he was still sitting outside his +brother's door, on the staircase in Gray's Inn, hugging himself in his +rags, and cursing his unnatural kinsman's cruelty; then in the next +moment he remembered where he was, and breathed bitter curses upon that +unconscious enemy whose laugh pealed out every now and then amid a chorus +of light-hearted laughter. + +There was a little Christmas party at Charlottenburgh. Two flys were +waiting in the laurel-avenue to convey Mr. Hawkehurst's guests to distant +abodes. The door was opened presently, and all the bustle of departure +made itself heard by that wretched wayfarer who found it so difficult to +keep his hold upon the consciousness of these things. + +"What is it?" he said to himself--"a party! Hawkehurst has been giving a +party." + +He had lived through too much degradation, he had descended into too deep +a gulf of wretchedness, to be conscious of the contrast between his +present situation and his position in those days when he had played the +host, and seen handsome carriages bear prosperous guests away from his +door. In that cycle of misery which he had endured, these things and the +memory of them had faded from him as completely as if they had been +obliterated by the passage of a century. The hapless wretch tried to give +sustained attention to all the animated discussion that attended the +departure of the merry guests. Half-a-dozen people seemed to be talking +at once. Valentine was giving his friends counsel about the way home. + +"You will keep to the lower road, you know, Fred. Lawsley's cab can +follow yours. You came a couple of miles out of your way. And tell that +fellow Battersea Bridge is a mistake." + +And then followed Charlotte's friendly questioning about wraps, and +hoods, and comforters, and other feminine gear. + +"And when are you coming to dine at Fulham?" cried one voice. + +"I shall certainly get those quadrilles of Offenbach's," said another. + +"How delightfully Mr. Lawsley sang that song of Santley's!" + +And anon a chorus of "Never enjoyed myself more!" "Most delightful +evening!" "Pray don't come out in the cold." "Thanks; well, yes, yours +are always capital." "No, I won't light up till I'm on the road." "Give +my book a lift in the _D.H._, eh, old fellow?" "Are you _quite_ sure that +shawl is warm enough?" "Take a rug for your feet." "Thanks, no." +"Good-night." "See you on Tuesday." "Don't forget the box for D.L." "All +right, old fellow!" "Lower Road, Roehampton Lane, Putney Bridge. +Good-night." + +Among the confusion of voices Philip Sheldon had recognized more than one +voice that was familiar to him. There were Charlotte's gentle tones, and +Valentine's hearty barytone, and another that he knew. + +Diana Paget! Yes, it was her voice. Diana Paget, whom he had cause to +hate for her interference with his affairs. + +"A beggar," he muttered to himself, "and the daughter of a beggar! She +was a nice young lady to set herself in opposition to the man who gave +her a home." + +The vehicles drove away, but there was still a little group in the rustic +porch. Valentine and Charlotte, with Monsieur and Madame Lenoble, who had +come to spend their Christmas with their English friends. + +"How we have been gay this evening!" cried Gustave. "There is nothing +like your English interior for that which you call the comfortable, the +jolly, you others. Thy friends are the jollity itself, Hawkehurst. And +our acting charades, when that we all talked at once, and with a such +emphasis on the word we would make to know. Was it not that our +spectators were cunning to divine the words? And your friend Lawsley--it +is a mixture of Got and Sanson. It is a true genius. Think, then, Diane, +while we were amusing ourselves, our girls were at the midnight mass at +the Sacré Coeur? Dear pious children, their innocent prayers ascended +towards the heavens for we who are absent. Come, Madame Hawkehurst, +Diane, it makes cold." + +"But we are sheltered here. And the stars are so bright after the snow," +said Charlotte. "Do you remember the Christmas-day you spent at the Lawn, +Valentine, when we walked in Kensington Gardens together, just when we +were first engaged?" the young wife added shyly. + +"Do I not remember? It was the first time the holiness of Christmas came +home to my heart. And now let us go back to the drawing-room, and sit +round the fire, and tell ghost stories. Lenoble shall give us the legends +of Côtenoir." + +"Valentine," murmured Charlotte, "do you know that it is nearly one +o'clock?" + +"And we must put in an appearance at church to-morrow morning. And +Lenoble has to walk to Kingston to early mass. We will postpone our ghost +stories to New-Year's eve. And Lenoble shall read Tennyson's _New Year_, +to demonstrate his improvement in the English language. Lead the way, +Mrs. Hawkehurst; your obedient slave obeys. Mamma is waiting for us in +the drawing-room, marvelling at our delay, no doubt. And Nancy Woolper +stalks ghost-like through the house, oppressed by the awful +responsibility of to-morrow's pudding." + +Anon came a clanking of bolts and bars; and Philip Sheldon, for the +second time that night, heard a door shut against him. As the voices died +away, his consciousness of external things died with him. He fancied +himself on the Gray's-Inn staircase. + +"Don't be so hard upon me, George," he muttered faintly. "If my own kith +and kin turn against me, whom shall I look to?" + +Mrs. Woolper opened the door early next day, when night was yet at odds +with morning. All through the night the silent snow-flakes had been +falling thick and fast; and they had woven the shroud of Philip Sheldon. +The woman who had watched his infant slumbers forty years before, was the +first to look upon him in that deeper sleep, of whose waking we know so +little. It was not until she had looked long and closely at the dead face +that she knew why it was that the aspect of that countenance had affected +her with so strange a pang. She did recognize that altered wretch, and +kept her counsel. + +Before the bells rang for morning service the tramp was lying in the +dead-house of Kingston Union, whither he had been conveyed very quietly +in the early morning, unknown to any one but the constable who +superintended the removal, and the servants of Mr. Hawkehurst's +household. Only the next day did Ann Woolper tell Valentine what had +happened. There was to be an inquest. It would be well that some one +should identify the dead man, and establish the fact of Philip Sheldon's +decease. + +Valentine was able to do this unaided. He attended the inquest, and made +arrangements for the outcast's decent burial; and in due course he gave +Mrs. Sheldon notice of her freedom. Beyond that nameless grave whose +fancy shall dare follow Philip Sheldon? He died and made no sign. And in +the last dread day, when the dead, small and great, from the sea and from +the grave, press together at the foot of the great white Throne, and the +books of doom are opened; when above shines the city whose light is the +glory of God, and below yawns the lake of fire,--what voice shall plead +for Philip Sheldon, what entreating cry shall Pity send forth that +sentence against him may be stayed? + +Surely none; unless it issue from the lips of that one confiding friend, +whose last words upon earth thanked and blessed him, and whose long +agonies he watched with unshaken purpose, conscious that in every +convulsive change in the familiar face, and every pang that shook the +stalwart form, he saw the result of his own work. + +Perhaps at that dread Judgment Day, when every other tongue is silent, +the voice of Tom Halliday may be heard pleading for the man who murdered +him. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Charlotte's Inheritance, by M. E. 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