Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

M >> M.E. Braddon >> Birds of Prey

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While the chief flourished, the subaltern was comparatively idle. The
patrician appearance and manners of the Captain were a perennial source
of profit to that gentleman; but Valentine Hawkehurst had not a
patrician appearance; and the work which Mr. Sheldon found for him was
of a more uncertain and less profitable character than that which fell
to the share of the elegant Horatio. But Valentine was content. He
shared the Captain's lodging, though he did not partake of the
Captain's dinners or ride in the smart little brougham. He had a roof
to shelter him, and was rarely unprovided with the price of some kind
of dinner; and as this was the highest order of prosperity he had ever
known, he was content. He was more than content; for the first time in
his existence he knew what it was to be happy. A purer joy than life
had ever held for him until now made him careless whether his dinner
cost eighteenpence or eighteen shillings; whether he rode in the most
perfect of broughams or walked in the mud. He took no heed for the
future; he forgot the past, and abandoned himself heart and soul to the
new delights of the present.

Never had Philip Sheldon found so willing a tool, so cheap a drudge.
Valentine was ready to do anything or everything for Charlotte's
stepfather, since his relations with that gentleman enabled him to
spend so much of his life with Charlotte.

But even in this sublimated state of mind Mr. Hawkehurst was not exempt
from the great necessity of Mr. Skimpole and humanity at large. He
wanted pounds. His garments were shabby, and he desired new and elegant
raiment in which to appear to advantage before the eyes of the woman he
loved. It had been his privilege on several occasions to escort Mrs.
Sheldon and the two younger ladies to a theatre; and even this
privilege had cost him money. He wanted pounds to expend upon those new
books and music which served so often as the excuse for a visit to the
Lawn. He wanted pounds for very trivial purposes; but he wanted them
desperately. A lover without pounds is the most helpless and
contemptible of mankind; he is a knight-errant without his armour,
a troubadour without his lute.

In his dilemma Mr. Hawkehurst resorted to that simple method which
civilisation has devised for the relief of pecuniary difficulties of a
temporary nature. He had met George Sheldon several times at the Lawn,
and had become tolerably intimate with that gentleman, whom he now knew
to be "the Sheldon of Gray's Inn," and the ally and agent of certain
bill-discounters. To George he went one morning; and after requesting
that Captain Paget should know nothing of his application, explained
his requirements. It was a very small sum which he asked for, modestly
conscious that the security he had to offer was of the weakest. He only
wanted thirty pounds, and was willing to give a bill at two months for
five-and-thirty.

There was a good deal of hesitation on the part of the lawyer; but
Valentine had expected to meet with some difficulty, and was not
altogether unprepared for a point-blank refusal. He was agreeably
surprised when George Sheldon told him he would manage that "little
matter; only the bill must be for forty." But in proof of the liberal
spirit in which Mr. Hawkehurst was to be treated, the friendly lawyer
informed him that the two months should be extended to three.

Valentine did not stop to consider that by this friendly process he was
to pay at the rate of something over a hundred and thirty per cent per
annum for the use of the money he wanted. He knew that this was his
only chance of getting money; so he shut his eyes to the expensive
nature of the transaction, and thanked Mr. Sheldon for the
accommodation granted to him.

"And now we've settled that little business, I should like to have a
few minutes' private chat with you," said George, "on the understanding
that what passes between you and me is strictly confidential."

"Of course!"

"You seem to have been leading rather an idle life for the last few
months; and it strikes me, Mr. Hawkehurst, you're too clever a fellow
to care about that sort of thing."

"Well, I have been in some measure wasting my sweetness on the desert
air," Valentine answered carelessly. "The governor seems to have
slipped into a good berth by your brother's agency; but I am not
Horatio Nugent Cromie Paget, and the brougham and lavender kids of the
Promoter are not for me."

"There is money to be picked up by better dodges than promoting,"
replied the attorney ambiguously; "but I suppose you wouldn't care for
anything that didn't bring immediate cash? You wouldn't care to
speculate the chances, however well the business might promise?"

"_C'est selon!_ That's as may be," answered Valentine coolly. "You see
those affairs that promise so much are apt to fail when it comes to a
question of performance. I'm not a capitalist; I can't afford to become
a speculator. I've been living from hand to mouth lately by means of
occasional contributions to a sporting weekly, and a little bit of
business which your brother threw in my way. I've been able to be
tolerably useful to him, and he promises to get me something in the way
of a clerkship, foreign correspondence, and that kind of thing."

"Humph!" muttered George Sheldon; "that means eighty pounds a year and
fourteen hours' work a day, letters that must be answered by this mail,
and so on. I don't think that kind of drudgery would ever suit you,
Hawkehurst. You've not served the right apprenticeship for that sort of
thing; you ought to try for some higher game. What should you say to an
affair that might put two or three thousand pounds in your pocket if it
was successful?"

"I should fed very much inclined to fancy it a bubble--one of those
dazzling rainbow-tinted globes which look so bright dancing about in
the sunshine, and explode into nothing directly they encounter any
tangible substance. However, my dear Sheldon, if you really have any
employment to offer to a versatile young man who is not overburdened
with vulgar prejudices, you'd better put the business in plain words."

"I will," answered George; "but it's not an affair that can be
discussed in five minutes. It's rather a serious matter, and involves a
good deal of consideration. I know that you're a man of the world, and
a very clever fellow into the bargain; but there's something more than
that wanted for this business, and that is patience. The hare is a very
fine animal in her way, you know; but a man must have a little of the
tortoise in him if he wants to achieve anything out of the common run
in the way of good luck. I have been working, and waiting, and
speculating the chances for the last fifteen years, and I think I've
got a good chance at last. But there's a good deal of work to be done
before the business is finished; and I find that I must have some one
to help me."

"What sort of business is it?"

"The search for the heir-at-law of a man who has died intestate within
the last ten years."

The two men looked at each other at this juncture; and Valentine
Hawkehurst smiled significantly.

"Within the last ten years?" he said. "That's rather a wide margin."

"Do you think you would be a good hand at hunting up the missing links
in the chain of a family history?" asked Mr. Sheldon. "It's rather
tiresome work, you know, and requires no common amount of patience and
perseverance."

"I can persevere," said Valentine decisively, "if you can show me that
it will be worth my while to do so. You want an heir-at-law, and I'm to
look for him. What am I to get while I'm looking for him? and what is
to be my reward if I find him?"

"I'll give you a pound a week and your travelling expenses while you're
employed in the search; and I'll give you three thousand pounds on the
day the heir gets his rights."

"Humph!" muttered Mr. Hawkehurst, rather doubtfully; "three thousand
pounds is a very respectable haul. But then, you see, I may fail to
discover the heir; and even if I do find him the chances are ten to one
that the business would be thrown into Chancery at the last moment; in
which case I might wait till doomsday for the reward of my labours."

George Sheldon shrugged his shoulders impatiently. He had expected this
penniless adventurer to catch eagerly at the chance he offered. "Three
thousand pounds are not to be picked up in the streets," he said. "If
you don't care to work with me, I can find plenty of clever fellows in
London who'll jump at the business."

"And you want me to begin work--?"

"Immediately."

"And how am I to pay forty pounds in three months out of a pound a
week?"

"Never mind the bill," said Mr. Sheldon, with lofty generosity. "If you
work heart and soul for me, I'll square that little matter for you;
I'll get it renewed for another three months."

"In that case I'm your man. I don't mind a little hard work just now,
and I can live upon a pound a week where another man would starve. So
now for my instructions."

There was a brief pause, during which the lawyer refreshed himself by
walking up and down his office two or three times with his hands in his
pockets. After which relief he seated himself before his desk, took out
a sheet of foolscap, and selected a pen from the inkstand.

"It's just as well to put things in a thoroughly business-like manner,"
he said presently. "I suppose you'd have no objection to signing a
memorandum of agreement--nothing that would be of any use in a court of
law, you know, but a simple understanding between man and man, for our
own satisfaction, as a safeguard against all possibility of
misunderstanding in the future. I've every reason to consider you the
most honourable of men, you know; but honourable men turn round upon
each other sometimes. You might ask me for something more than three
thou' if you succeeded in your search."

"Precisely; or I might make terms with the heir-at-law, and throw you
over. Perhaps that was your idea?"

"Not exactly. The first half of the chain is in my hands, and the
second half will be worth nothing without it. But to prevent all
unpleasantness we may as well put our intentions upon record."

"I've not the least objection," replied Valentine with supreme
indifference. "Draw up whatever memorandum you please, and I'll sign
it. If you don't mind smoke, I should like to console myself with a
cigar while you draw the bond."

The question was a polite formula, the atmosphere of George Sheldon's
office being redolent of stale tobacco.

"Smoke away," said the lawyer; "and if you can drink brandy-and-soda at
this time of day, you'll find the _de quoi_ in that cupboard. Make
yourself at home."

Mr. Hawkehurst declined the brandy-and-soda, and regaled himself only
with a cigar, which he took from his own case. He sat in one of the
second-floor windows smoking, and looking dreamily into the gardens,
while George Sheldon drew up the agreement. He was thinking that any
hazard which took him away from London and Charlotte Halliday might be
a fortunate one.

The lawyer finished his document, which he read aloud for the benefit
of the gentleman who was to sign it. The agreement was in the following
terms:--

"Memorandum of agreement between George Sheldon on the one part, and
Valentine Hawkehurst on the other part, whereby it is this day mutually
agreed by and between the parties hereto as follows:

"1. That, in consideration of a weekly salary of one pound while in
pursuit of certain inquiries, and of the sum of three thousand pounds
to be paid upon the arising of a certain event, namely, the
establishment of an heir-at-law to the estates of the late John
Haygarth, the said Valentine Hawkehurst shall act as agent for the said
George Sheldon, and shall not at any time during the continuance of
this agreement do any act to prejudice the inquiry or the steps now
being taken by the said George Sheldon to discover and establish an
heir-at-law to the estates of the late John Haygarth.

"2. That at no time hereafter shall the said Valentine Hawkehurst be
entitled to a larger recompense than is herein-before provided; nor
shall he be liable to the said George Sheldon for the return of any
moneys which the said George Sheldon may advance on account of the
said inquiries in the event of the same not resulting in the
establishment of an heir to the estates of the late John Haygarth.

"3. That the said Valentine Hawkehurst shall not alter his character of
agent to the said George Sheldon during the prosecution of the said
inquiry; that he shall deliver over to the said George Sheldon all
documents and other forms of evidence that may arise from his, the said
Valentine Hawkehurst's, inquires; and that he shall week by week,
and every week, and as often as may be necessary, report to the said
George Sheldon the result of such inquiries, and that he shall not
on any pretence whatever be at liberty to withhold such fruits of his
researches, nor discover the same to any one else than the said George
Sheldon, under a penalty of ten thousand pounds, to be recovered as
liquidated damages previously agreed between the parties as the measure
of damages payable to the said George Sheldon upon the breach of
this agreement by the said Valentine Hawkehurst.

"In witness whereof the parties hereto have this 20th day of September
1862 set their hands and affixed their seals." "That sounds stiff
enough to hold water in a court of law," said Valentine, when George
Sheldon had recited the contents of the document.

"I don't suppose it would be much good in Chancery-lane," returned the
lawyer carelessly; "though I daresay it sounds rather formidable to
you. When one gets the trick of the legal jargon, it's not easy to draw
the simplest form of agreement without a few superfluous words. I may
as well call in my clerk to witness our signatures, I suppose."

"Call in any one you like."

The clerk was summoned from a sunless and airless den at the back of
his principal's office. The two men appended their signatures to the
document; the clerk added his in witness of the genuine nature of those
signatures. It was an affair of two minutes. The clerk was dismissed.
Mr. Sheldon blotted and folded the memorandum, and laid it aside in one
of the drawers of his desk.

"Come," he said cheerily, "that's a business-like beginning at any
rate. And now you'd better have some brandy-and-soda, for what I've got
to say will take some time in the saying of it."

On this occasion Mr. Hawkehurst accepted the lawyer's hospitality, and
there was some little delay before the conversation proceeded.

It was a very long conversation. Mr. Sheldon produced a bundle of
papers, and exhibited some of them to his agent, beginning with that
advertisement in the _Times_ which had first attracted his notice, but
taking very good care _not_ to show his coadjutor the obituary in the
_Observer_, wherein the amount of the intestate's fortune was stated.
The ready wits which had been sharpened at so many different
grindstones proved keen enough for the occasion. Valentine Hawkehurst
had had little to do with genealogies or baptismal registers during his
past career; but his experiences were of such a manifold nature that he
was not easily to be baffled or mystified by any new experience. He
showed himself almost as quick at tracing up the intricacies of a
family tree as Mr. Sheldon, the astute attorney and practised
genealogist.

"I have traced these Haygarths back to the intestate's great-grandfather,
who was a carpenter and a Puritan in the reign of Charles the First. He
seems to have made money--how I have not been able to discover with any
certainty; but it is more than probable he served in the civil wars, and
came in for some of the plunder those crop-eared, psalm-singing,
pierce-the-brain-of-the-tyrant-with-the-nail-of-Jael scoundrels were
always in the way of, at the sack of Royalist mansions. The man made
money; and his son, the grandfather of the intestate, was a wealthy
citizen in the reigns of Anne and the first George. He was a grocer,
and lived in the market-place of Ullerton in Leicestershire; an
out-of-the-way sleepy place it is now, but was prosperous enough in
those days, I daresay. This man (the grandfather) began the world well
off, and amassed a large fortune before he had done with it. The lucky
beggar lived in the days when free trade and competition were unknown,
when tea was something like sixty shillings a pound, and when a
psalm-singing sleek-haired fellow, with a reputation for wealth and
honesty, might cheat his customers to his heart's content. He had one
son, Matthew, who seems, from what I can gather, to have been a wild sort
of fellow in the early part of his career, and not to have been at any
time on the best possible terms with the sanctimonious dad. This
Matthew married at fifty-three years of age, and died a year after his
marriage, leaving one son, who afterwards became the reverend
intestate; with whom, according to the evidence at present before me,
ends the direct line of the Haygarths." The lawyer paused, turned over
two or three papers, and then resumed his explanation. "The
sanctimonious grocer, Jonathan Haygarth, had one other child besides
the son--a daughter called Ruth, who married a certain Peter Judson,
and became the mother of a string of sons and daughters; and it is
amongst the descendants of these Judsons that we may have to look for
our heir at law, unless we find him nearer home. Now my idea is that we
_shall_ find him nearer home."

"What reason have you for forming that idea?" asked Valentine.

"I will tell you. This Matthew Haygarth is known to have been a wild
fellow. I obtained a good deal of fragmentary information about him
from an old man in some almshouses at Ullerton, whose grandfather was a
schoolfellow of Matthew's. He was a scapegrace, and was always spending
money in London while the respectable psalm-singer was hoarding it in
Ullerton. There used to be desperate quarrels between the two men, and
towards the end of Jonathan Haygarth's life the old man made half a
dozen different wills in favour of half a dozen different people, and
cutting off scapegrace Matthew with a shilling. Fortunately for
scapegrace Matthew, the old man had a habit of quarrelling with his
dearest friends--a fashion not quite exploded in this enlightened
nineteenth century--and the wills were burnt one after another, until
the worthy Jonathan became as helpless and foolish as his great
contemporary and namesake, the Dean of St. Patrick's; and after having
died 'first at top,' did his son the favour to die altogether,
_intestate_, whereby the roisterer and spendthrift of Soho and
Covent-garden came into a very handsome fortune. The old man died in
1766, aged eighty; a very fine specimen of your good old English
tradesman of the Puritanical school. The roisterer, Matthew, was by
this time forty-six years of age, and, I suppose, had grown tired of
roistering. In any case he appears to have settled down very quietly in
the old family house in the Ullerton market-place, where he married a
respectable damsel of the Puritan school, some seven years after, and
in which house, or in the neighbourhood whereof, he departed this life,
with awful suddenness, one year after his marriage, leaving his son and
heir, the reverend intestate. And now, my dear Hawkehurst, you're a
sharp fellow, and I daresay a good hand at guessing social conundrums;
so perhaps you begin to see my idea."

"I can't say I do."

"My notion is, that Matthew Haygarth may possibly have married before
he was fifty-three years of age. Men of his stamp don't often live to
that ripe age without being caught in matrimonial toils somehow or
other. It was in the days of Fleet marriages--in the days when young
men about town were even more reckless and more likely to become the
prey of feminine deception than they are now. The fact that Matthew
Haygarth revealed no such marriage is no conclusive evidence against my
hypothesis. He died very suddenly--intestate, as it seems the habit of
these Haygarths to die; and he had never made any adjustment of his
affairs. According to the oldest inhabitant in Ullerton almshouses,
this Matthew was a very handsome fellow, generous-hearted, open-handed
--a devil-may-care kind of a chap, the type of the rollicking heroes in
old comedies; the very man to fall over head and ears in love before he
was twenty, and to go through fire and water for the sake of the woman
he loved: in short, the very last man upon earth to live a bachelor
until his fifty-fourth year."

"He may--"

"He may have been a profligate, you were going to say, and have had
baser ties than those of Church and State. So he may; but if he was a
scoundrel, tradition flatters him. Of course all the information one
can gather about a man who died in 1774 must needs be of a very
uncertain and fragmentary character. But if I can trust the rather hazy
recollections of my oldest inhabitant about what his father told him
_his_ father had said of wild Mat Haygarth, the young man's wildness
was very free from vice. There is no legend of innocence betrayed or
infamy fostered by Matthew Haygarth. He appears to have enjoyed what
the young men of that day called life--attended cock-fights, beat the
watch, gambled a little, and was intimately acquainted with the
interior of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons. For nearly twenty years
he seems to have lived in London; and during all those years he was
lost sight of by the Ullerton people. My oldest inhabitant's
grandfather was clerk to a merchant in the city of London, and had
therefore some opportunity of knowing his old schoolfellow's
proceedings in the metropolis. But the two townsmen don't seem to have
seen much of each other in the big city. Their meetings were rare, and,
so far as I can make out, for the most part accidental. But, as I said
before, my oldest inhabitant is somewhat hazy, and excruciatingly
prolix; his chaff is in the proportion of some fifty to one of his
wheat. I've given a good deal of time to this case already, you see,
Mr. Hawkehurst; and you'll find _your_ work very smooth sailing
compared to what I've gone through."

"I daresay that sort of investigation is rather tiresome in the earlier
stages."

"You'd say so, with a vengeance, if you had to do it," answered George
Sheldon almost savagely. "You start with the obituary of some old bloke
who was so disgustingly old when he consented to die that there is no
one living who can tell you when he was born, or who were his father
and mother; for, of course, the old idiot takes care not to leave a
blessed document of any kind which can aid a fellow in his researches.
And when you've had the trouble of hunting up half a dozen men of the
same name, and have addled your wretched brains in the attempt to patch
the half dozen men--turning up at different periods and in different
places--into one man, they all tumble to pieces like a child's puzzle,
and you find yourself as far as ever from the man you want. However,
_you_ won't have to do any of that work," added Mr. Sheldon, who was
almost in a passion when he remembered the trouble he had gone through.
"The ground has been all laid out for you, by Jove, as smooth as a
bowling-green; and if you look sharp, you'll pick up your, three thou'
before you know where you are."

"I hope I shall," answered Valentine coolly. He was not the sort of
person to go into raptures about three thousand pounds, though such a
sum must needs have seemed to him the wealth of a small Rothschild. "I
know I want money badly enough, and am ready and willing to work for it
conscientiously, if I get the chance. But to return to this Matthew
Haygarth. Your idea is that there may have been a marriage previous to
the one at Ullerton?"

"Precisely. Of course there may have been no such previous marriage;
but you see it's on the cards; and since it is on the cards, my notion
is that we had better hunt up the history of Matthew Haygarth's life in
London, and try to find our heir-at-law there before we go in for the
Judsons. If you knew how the Judsons have married and multiplied, and
lost themselves among herds of other people, you wouldn't care about
tracing the ramifications of _their_ family tree," said Mr. Sheldon,
with a weary sigh. "So be it," exclaimed Mr. Hawkehurst carelessly;
"we'll leave the Judsons alone, and go in for Matthew Haygarth."

He spoke with the air of an archaeological Hercules, to whom
difficulties were nothing. It seemed as if he would have been quite
ready to "go in" for some sidereal branch of the Plantagenets, or the
female descendants of the Hardicanute family, if George Sheldon had
suggested that the intestate's next of kin was to be found _there_.

"Mat Haygarth, by all means," he said. He was on jolly-good-fellow-ish
terms with the dead-and-gone grocer's son already, and had the tone of
a man who had been his friend and boon companion. "Mat Haygarth is our
man. But how are we to ferret out his doings in London? A man who was
born in 1720 is rather a remote kind of animal."

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