Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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She was very sorry that he was going to disappear out of her life for a
time so uncertain, that while on the one hand it might be only a few
weeks, it might on the other hand be for ever. The life of a young
English damsel, in a prim villa at Bayswater, with a very commonplace
mother and a practical stockbroking stepfather, is rather a narrow kind
of existence; and to such a damsel the stranger whose hand lifts the
curtain that shrouds new and brighter worlds is apt to become a very
important personage, especially when the stranger happens to be young
and handsome, and invested with that dash of Bohemianism which to
artless and sentimental girlhood has such a flavour of romance.

Charlotte was very silent as she retraced her steps along the broad
gravel walk. As they drew near the Bayswater-gate she looked at her
watch. It was nearly one o'clock, and she had promised Mrs. Sheldon to
be home at one for luncheon, and afterwards shopping.

"I'm afraid we must hurry home, Di," she said.

"I am quite ready to go," answered Miss Paget promptly. "Good-bye,
Valentine."

"Good-bye, Diana; good-bye, Miss Halliday."

Mr. Hawkehurst shook hands with both young ladies; but shaking hands
with Charlotte was a very slow process compared to the same performance
with Diana.

"Good-bye," he repeated, in a lingering tone; and then, after standing
for some moments silent and irresolute, with his hat in his hand, he
put it on suddenly and hurried away.

The two girls had walked a few steps towards the gate when Charlotte
stopped before a stony-looking alcove, which happened at this
nursery-dinner-hour to be empty.

"I'm so tired, Di," she said, and went into the alcove, where she sat
down to rest. She had a little veil attached to her turban hat--a
little veil which she now drew over her face. The tears gathered slowly
in her eyes and fell through that flimsy morsel of lace with which she
would fain have hidden her childish sorrow. The tears gathered and fell
on her lap as she sat in silence, pretending not to cry. This much rain
at least was there to justify her prediction, uttered in such foolish
gaiety of heart half an hour before.

Miss Halliday's eyes were undimmed by tears? when she went back to the
gothic villa; but she had a feeling that some great sorrow had come
upon her--a vague idea that the last lingering warmth and brightness of
summer had faded all in a moment, and that chill gray winter had closed
in upon Bayswater without any autumnal interval. What was it that she
had lost? Only the occasional society of a young man with a handsome
pale face, a little haggard and wan from the effect of dissipated
habits and a previous acquaintance with care and difficulty--only the
society of a penniless Bohemian who had a certain disreputable
cleverness and a dash of gloomy sentimentality, which the schoolgirl
mistook for genius. But then he was the first man whose eyes had ever
softened with a mysterious tenderness as they looked at her--the first
whose voice had grown faintly tremulous when it syllabled her name.

There was some allusion to Mr. Hawkehurst's departure in the course of
dinner, and Philip Sheldon expressed some surprise.

"Going to leave town?" he said.

"Yes, papa," Charlotte answered; "he is going a long way into the
country,--a hundred and fifty miles, he said."

"Did he tell you where he was going?"

"No; he seemed unwilling to mention the place. He only said something
about a hundred and fifty miles."

CHAPTER IX.

MR. SHELDON ON THE WATCH.

Mr. Sheldon had occasion to see Captain Paget early the following day,
and questioned him closely about his _protege's_ movements. He had
found Valentine a very useful tool in sundry intricate transactions of
the commercial kind, and he expected his tools to be ready for his
service. He was therefore considerably annoyed by Valentine's abrupt
departure.

"I think young Hawkehurst might have told me he was going out of town,"
he said. "What the deuce has taken him off in such a hurry?"

"He is going to see some mysterious old aunt at Dorking, from whom he
seems to expect money," the Captain answered carelessly. "I daresay I
can do what you want, Sheldon."

"Very likely. But how comes that young fellow to have an aunt at
Dorking? I fancy I've heard him say he was without a relative or a
friend in the world--always excepting yourself."

"The aunt may he another exception; some poor old soul that he's half
ashamed to own, I daresay--the inmate of an almshouse, perhaps. Val's
expectations may be limited to a few pounds hoarded in a china teapot."

"I should have thought Hawkehurst the last man in the world to care
about looking after that sort of thing. I could have given him plenty
to do if he had stopped in town. He and my brother George are
uncommonly intimate, by the bye," added Mr. Sheldon meditatively. It
was his habit to be rather distrustful of his brother and of all his
brother's acquaintance. "I suppose you can give me Hawkehurst's
address, in case I should want to write to him?" he said.

"He told me to send my letters to the post-office, Dorking," answered
the Captain, "which really looks as if the aunt's residence were
something in the way of an almshouse."

No more was said about Valentine's departure. Captain Paget concluded
his business with his patron and departed, leaving the stockbroker
leaning forward upon his desk in a thoughtful attitude and scribbling
purposeless figures upon his blotting-paper.

"There's something queer in this young man running away from town;
there's some mystification somewhere," he thought. "He has not gone to
Dorking, or he would scarcely have told Lotta that he was going a
hundred and fifty miles from town. He would be likely to be taken off
his guard by her questions, and would tell the truth. I wonder whether
Paget is in the secret. His manner seemed open enough; but that sort of
man can pretend anything. I've noticed that he and George have been
very confidential lately. I wonder whether there's any underhand game
on the cards between those two."

The game of which Mr. Sheldon thought as he leant over his
blotting-paper was a very different kind of game from that which
really occupied the attention of George and his friend.

"I'll go to his lodgings at once," he said to himself by-and-by, rising
and putting on his hat quickly in his eagerness to act upon his
resolution. "I'll see if he really has left town."

The stockbroker hailed the first empty hansom to be seen in the crowded
thoroughfare from which his shady court diverged. In less than an hour
he alighted before the door of the house in which Captain Paget lodged.

"Is Mr. Hawkehurst in?" he asked of the girl who admitted him.

"No, sir; he's just left to go into the country. He hasn't been gone
ten minutes. You might a'most have met him."

"Do you know where he has gone?"

"I heard say it was Dorking, sir."

"Humph! I should like to have seen him before he went. Did he take much
luggage?"

"One portmanter, sir."

"I suppose you didn't notice where he told the man to drive?"

"Yes, sir; it was Euston-square."

"Ah! Euston-square. I'll go there, then, on the chance of catching
him," said Mr. Sheldon.

He bestowed a donation upon the domestic, reentered his hansom, and
told the man to drive to Euston-square "like a shot."

"So! His destination is Dorking, and he goes from Euston-square!"
muttered Mr. Sheldon, in sombre meditation, as the hansom rattled and
rushed, and jingled and jolted, over the stones. "There's something
under the cards here."

Arrived at the great terminus, the stockbroker made his way to the down
platform. There was a lull in the day's traffic, and only a few
listless wretches lounging disconsolately here and there, with eyes
ever and anon lifted to the clock. Amongst these there was no Valentine
Hawkehurst.

Mr. Sheldon peered into all the waiting-rooms, and surveyed the
refreshment-counter; but there was still no sign of the man he sought.
He went back to the ticket-office; but here again all was desolate, the
shutters of the pigeon-holes hermetically closed, and no vestige of
Valentine Hawkehurst.

The stockbroker was disappointed, but not defeated. He returned to the
platform, looked about him for a few moments, and then addressed
himself to a porter of intelligent aspect.

"What trains have left here within the last half-hour?" he asked.

"Only one, sir; the 2.15 down, for Manchester."

"You didn't happen to notice a dark-eyed, dark-haired young man among
the passengers--second class?" asked Mr. Sheldon.

"No, sir. There are always a good many passengers by that train; I
haven't time to notice their faces."

The stockbroker asked no further questions. He was a man who did not
care to be obliged to others for information which he could obtain for
himself. He walked straight to a place where the time-tables were
pasted on the wall, and ran his finger along the figures till he came
to those he wanted.

The 2.15 train was a fast train, which stopped at only four places--
Rugby, Ullerton, Murford, and Manchester.

"I daresay he has gone to Manchester," thought Mr. Sheldon--"on some
racing business most likely, which he wants to keep dark from his
patron the Captain. What a fool I am to trouble myself about him, as if
he couldn't stir without meaning mischief to me! But I don't understand
the friendship between him and George. My brother George is not likely
to take up any man without some motive."

After these reflections Mr. Sheldon left the station and went back to
his office in another hansom, still extremely thoughtful and somewhat
disquieted.

"What does it matter to me where they go or what they do?" he asked
himself, impatient of some lurking weakness of his own; "what does it
matter to me whether those two are friendly or unfriendly? They can do
me no harm."

There happened to be a kind of lull in the stormy regions of the Stock
Exchange at the time of Valentine Hawkehurst's departure. Stagnation
had descended upon that commercial ocean, which is such a dismal waste
of waters for the professional speculator in its hour of calm. All the
Bulls in the zoological creation would have failed to elevate the
drooping stocks and shares and first-preference bonds and debentures,
which hung their feeble heads and declined day by day, the weaker of
them threatening to fade away and diminish to a vanishing-point, as it
seemed to some dejected holders who read the Stock-Exchange lists and
the money article in the Times with a persistent hopefulness which
struggled against the encroachments of despair. The Bears had been
busy, but were now idle--having burnt their fingers, commercial
gentlemen remarked. So Bulls and Bears alike hung listlessly about a
melancholy market, and conversed together dolefully in corners; and the
burden of all their lamentations was to the effect that there never had
been such times, and things never had been so bad, and it was a
question whether they would ever right themselves. Philip Sheldon
shared in the general depression. His face was gloomy, and his manner
for the time being lost something of its brisk, business-like
cheerfulness. The men who envied his better fortunes watched him
furtively when he showed himself amongst them, and wondered whether
Sheldon, of Jull, Girdlestone, and Sheldon, had been hit by these bad
times.

It was not entirely the pressure of that commercial stagnation which
weighed on the spirits of Philip Sheldon. The stockbroker was tormented
by private doubts and uncertainties which had nothing to do with the
money-market.

On the day after Valentine's journey to Ullerton, Mr. Sheldon the elder
presented himself at his brother's office in Gray's Inn. It was his
habit to throw waifs and strays of business in the attorney's way, and
to make use of him occasionally, though he had steadily refused to lend
or give him money; and it was big habit, as it were, to keep an eye
upon his younger brother--rather a jealous eye, which took note of all
George's doings, and kept suspicious watch upon all George's
associates. Going unannounced into his brother's office on this
particular morning, Philip Sheldon found him bending over an outspread
document--a great sheet of cartridge-paper covered with a net-work of
lines, dotted about with circles, and with little patches of writing in
red and black ink in the neatest possible penmanship. Mr. Sheldon the
elder, whose bright black eyes were as the eyes of the hawk, took note of
this paper, and had caught more than one stray word that stood out in
larger and bolder characters than its neighbours, before his brother could
fold it; for it is not an easy thing for a man to fold an elephantine
sheet of cartridge when he is nervously anxious to fold it quickly, and
is conscious that the eyes of an observant brother are upon him.

Before George had mastered the folding of the elephantine sheet, Philip
had seen and taken note of two words. One of these was the word
INTESTATE, and the other the name HAYGARTH.

"You seem in a great hurry to get that document out of the way," said
Philip, as he seated himself in the client's chair.

"Well, to tell the truth, you rather startled me," answered George. "I
didn't know who it might be, you know; and I was expecting a fellow
who--" And then Mr. Sheldon the younger broke off abruptly, and asked,
with rather a suspicious air, "Why didn't that boy announce you?"

"Because I wouldn't let him. Why should he announce me? One would think
you were carrying on some political conspiracy, George, and had a
modern Thistlewood gang hidden in that cupboard yonder. How thick you
and Hawkehurst are, by the bye!"

In spite of the convenient "by the bye," this last remark of the
stockbroker's sounded rather irrelevant.

"I don't know about being 'thick.' Hawkehurst seems a very decent young
fellow, and he and I get on pretty well together. But I'm not as
'thick' with him as I was with Tom Halliday."

It was to be observed that Mr. Sheldon the younger was very apt to
refer to that friendship with the dead Yorkshireman in the course of
conversation with Philip.

"Hawkehurst has just left town," said Philip indifferently.

"Yes, I know he has."

"When did you hear it?"

"I saw him last night," answered George, taken off his guard by the
carelessness of his brother's manner.

"Did you?" cried Mr. Sheldon. "You make a mistake there. He left town
at two o'clock yesterday."

"How do you happen to know that?" asked George sharply.

"Because I happened to be at the station and saw him take his ticket.
There's something underhand in that journey of his by the way; for
Paget told me he was going to Dorking. I suppose he and Paget have some
game of their own on the cards. I was rather annoyed by the young man's
departure, as I had some work for him. However, I can find plenty of
fellows to do it as well as Hawkehurst could have done."

George was looking into an open drawer in his desk while his brother
said this. He had a habit of opening drawers and peering into them
absently during the progress of an interview, as if looking for some
particular paper, that was never to be found.

After this the conversation became less personal. The brothers talked a
little of the events of the day, the money-article in that morning's
Times, the probability or improbability of a change in the rate of
discount. But this conversation soon flagged, and Mr. Sheldon rose to
depart.

"I suppose that sheet of cartridge-paper which you had so much trouble
to fold is one of your genealogical tables," he said as he was going.
"You needn't try to keep things dark from me, George. I'm not likely to
steal a march upon you; my own business gives me more work than I can
do. But if you have really got a good thing at last, I shouldn't mind
going into it with you, and finding the money for the enterprise."

George Sheldon looked at his elder brother with a malicious flitter in
his eyes.

"On condition that you got the lion's share of the profits," he said.
"O yes; I know how generous you are, Phil. I have asked you for money
before today, and you have refused it."

Mr. Sheldon's face darkened just a little at this point. "Your manner
of asking it was offensive," he said.

"Well, I'm sorry for that," answered George politely. "However, you
refused me money when I did want it; so you needn't offer it me now I
don't want it. There are some people who think I have sacrificed my
life to a senseless theory; and perhaps you are one of them. But there
is one thing you may be certain of, Philip Sheldon: if ever I _do_ get
a good chance, I shall know how to keep it to myself."

There are men skilled in the concealment of their feelings on all
ordinary occasions, who will yet betray themselves in a crisis of
importance. George Sheldon would fain have kept his project hidden from
his elder brother; but in this one unguarded moment he forgot himself,
and allowed the sense of triumph to irradiate his face.

The stockbroker was a reader of men rather than books; and it is a
notable thing what superiority in all worldly wisdom is possessed by
men who eschew books. He was able to translate the meaning of George's
smile--a smile of mingled triumph and malice.

"The fellow _has_ got a good thing," he thought to himself, "and
Hawkehurst is in it. It must be a deuced good thing too, or he wouldn't
refuse my offer of money." Mr. Sheldon was the last man in the world to
reveal any mortification which he might experience from his brother's
conduct.

"Well, you're quite right to stick to your chance, George," he said,
with agreeable frankness. "You've waited long enough for it. As for me,
I've got my fingers in a good many pies just at present; so perhaps I
had better keep them out of yours, whatever plums there may be to be
picked out of it by an enterprising Jack Horner. Pick out your plums
for yourself, old fellow, and I'll be one of the first to call you a
good boy for your pains."

With this Mr. Sheldon slapped his brother's shoulder and departed.

"I think I've had the best of Master Phil for once," muttered George;
and then he thrust his sinewy hands into the depths of his
trousers-pocket, and indulged in a silent laugh, which displayed his
strong square white teeth to perfection. "I flatter myself I took a
rise out of Phil to-day," he muttered.

The sense of a malicious triumph over a social enemy is a very
delightful kind of thing,--so delightful that a man is apt to ignore
the possible cost of the enjoyment. It is like the pleasure of kicking
a man who is down--very delicious in its way; only one never knows how
soon the man may be up again.

George Sheldon, who was tolerably skilled in the science of human
nature, should have known that "taking a rise" out of his brother was
likely to be a rather costly operation. Philip was not the safest man
to deal with at any time; but he was most dangerous when he was
"jolly."

BOOK THE FOURTH.

VALENTINE HAWKEHURST'S RECORD.

CHAPTER I.

THE OLDEST INHABITANT.

Black Swan Inn, Ullerton, October 2nd.

As the work I am now employed in is quite new to me, and I am to keep
Sheldon posted up in this business day by day, I have decided on
jotting down the results of my inquiries in a kind of diary. Instead of
writing my principal a formal letter, I shall send a copy of the
entries in the diary, revised and amended. This will insure exactitude;
and there is just the possibility that the record may be useful to me
hereafter. To remember all I hear and pick up about these departed
Haygarths without the aid of pen and ink would be out of the question;
so I mean to go in for unlimited pen and ink like a hero, not to say a
martyr.

And I am to do all this for twenty shillings a week, and the remote
possibility of three thousand pounds! O genius, genius! in all the
markets of this round world is there no better price for you than that?

How sweetly my Charlotte looked at me yesterday, when I told her I was
going away! If I could have dared to kneel at her feet under those
whispering elms,--unconscious of the children, unconscious of the
nursemaids,--if I could have dared to cry aloud to her, "I am a
penniless reprobate, but I love you; I am a disreputable pauper, but I
adore you! Have pity upon my love and forget my worthlessness!" If I
could have dared to carry her away from her prim suburban home and that
terrible black-whiskered stockbroking stepfather! But how is a man to
carry off the woman he adores when he has not the _de quoi_ for the
first stage of the journey?

With three thousand pounds in my pocket, I think I could dare anything.
Three thousand pounds! One year of splendour and happiness, and then--
the rest is chaos!

I have seen the oldest inhabitant. _Ay de mi_! Sheldon did not
exaggerate the prosiness of that intolerable man. I thought of the
luckless wedding guest in Coleridge's grim ballad as I sat listening to
this modern-ancient mariner. I had to remind myself of all the bright
things to be bought for three thousand pounds, every now and then, in
order to endure with fortitude, if not serenity. And now the day's work
is done, I begin to think it might as well have been left undone. How
am I to disintegrate the mass of prosiness which I have heard this day?
For three mortal hours did I listen to my ancient mariner; and how much
am I the wiser for my patience? Clever as you may fancy yourself, my
friend Hawkehurst, you don't seem to be the man for this business.
You have not the legal mind. Your genius is not the genius of
Scotland-yard, and I begin to fear that in your new line you may prove
yourself a failure.

However, where all is dark to me the astute Sheldon may see daylight,
so I'll observe the letter of my bond, and check off the residuum of
the ancient mariner's prosiness.

By dint of much pumping I obtained from my ancient, first, his father's
recollections of Matthew Haygarth a few years before his death, and
secondly, his grandfather's recollections of Matthew in his wild youth.
It seems that in those last years of his life Matthew was a most sober
and estimable citizen; attended the chapel of a nonconforming sect;
read the works of Baxter, and followed in the footsteps of his departed
father; was a kind husband to a woman who appears to me to have been
rather a pragmatical and icy personage, but who was esteemed a model of
womanly virtue, and who had money. Strange that these respectable and
wealthy citizens should be so eager to increase their store by alliance
with respectable and wealthy citizenesses.

In his later years Matthew Haygarth seems to have imitated his father
in many respects. Like his father, he executed more than one will; and,
like his father, he died intestate. The lawyer who drew up his will on
more than one occasion was a man called Brice--like his client,
eminently respectable.

After his marriage, our esteemed Matthew retired to a modest mansion in
the heart of the country, and some ten or fifteen miles from Ullerton.
The mansion in question is at a place called Dewsdale, and was the
property of the wife, and accrued to him through her.

This house and estate of some thirty acres was afterwards sold by the
rev. intestate, John Haygarth, shortly after his coming of age, and
within a year of his mother's death.

This much and no more could I extort from the oldest inhabitant
relative to the latter days of our Matthew.

Respecting his wild youth I obtained the following crumbs of
enlightenment. In the year 1741-2, being then one-and-twenty years of
age, he left Ullerton. It is my ancient mariner's belief that he ran
away from home, after some desperate quarrel with his father; and it is
also the belief of my ancient that he stayed away, without
intermission, for twenty years,--though on what precise fact that
belief is founded is much more than I can extract from the venerable
proser.

My ancient suggests--always in the haziest and most impracticable
manner--the possibility that Matthew in his wild days lodged somewhere
Clerkenwell way. He has a dim idea that he has heard his grandfather
speak of St. John's-gate, Clerkenwell, in connection with Matthew
Haygarth; but, as my ancient's grandfather seems to have been almost
imbecile at the time he made such remarks, _this_ is not much.

He has another idea--also very vague and impracticable--of having heard
his grandfather say something about an adventure of Matthew Haygarth's,
which was rather a heroic affair in its way--an adventure in which, in
some inexplicable manner, the wild Matthew is mixed up with a
dancing-girl, or player-girl, of Bartholomew Fair, and a nobleman.

This is the sum-total of the information to be extracted in three
mortal hours from my ancient. Altogether the day has been very
unsatisfactory; and I begin to think I'm not up to the sort of work
required of me. _Oct. 3rd._ Another long interview with my ancient. I
dropped in directly after my breakfast, and about an hour after his
dinner. I sat up late last night, occupied till nearly ten in copying
my diary for Sheldon--which was just in time for the London post--and
lingering over my cigar till past midnight, thinking of Charlotte. So I
was late this morning.

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