Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37

Complaining again! O pen, which art the voice of my discontent, your
spluttering is like this outburst of unmanly fretfulness and futile
rage! O paper, whose flat surface typifies the dull level of my life,
your greasy unwillingness to receive the ink is emblematic of the
soul's revolt against destiny!

This afternoon brought me a letter from Sheldon, and opened a new
channel for my explorations in that underground territory, the past.
That man has a marvellous aptitude for his work; and has, what is more
than aptitude, the experience of ten years of failure. Such a man must
succeed sooner or later. I wonder whether his success will come while I
am allied to him. I have been used to consider myself an unlucky
wretch, a creature of ill-fortune to others as well as to myself. It is
a foolish superstition, perhaps, to fancy one's self set apart for an
evil destiny; but the Eumenides have been rather hard upon me. Those
"amiable" deities, whom they of Colonae tried so patiently to conciliate
with transparent flatteries, have marked me for their prey from the
cradle--I don't suppose that cradle was paid for, by the bye. I wonder
whether there is an avenging deity whose special province it is to
pursue the insolvent--a Nemesis of the Bankruptcy Court.

My Sheldon's epistle bears the evidence of a very subtle brain, as I
think. It is longer than his previous letters. I transcribe it here, as
I wish this record to be a complete brief of my proceedings in this
Haygarth business.

"Gray's Inn, Sunday night.

"DEAR HAWKEHURST,--The copies of the letters came duly to hand, and I
think you have made your selections with much discretion, always
supposing you have overlooked nothing in the remaining mass of writing.
I will thank you to send me the rest of the letters, by the way. You
can take notes of anything likely to be useful to yourself, and it will
be as well for me to possess the originals.

"I find one very strong point in the first letter of your selection,
viz. the allusion to a house in John-street. It is clear that Matthew
lived in that house, and in that neighbourhood there may even yet
remain some traces of his existence. I shall begin a close
investigation to-morrow within a certain radius of that spot; and if I
have the good luck to fall upon any clear-headed centenarians, I may
pick up something.

"There are some alms-houses hard by Whitecross-street prison, where the
inmates live to ages that savour of the Pentateuch. Perhaps there I may
light upon some impoverished citizen fallen from a good estate who can
remember some contemporary of Matthew's. London was smaller in those
days than it is now, and men lived out their lives in one spot, and had
leisure to be concerned about the affairs of their neighbours. As I
have now something of a clue to Matthew's roistering days, I shall set
to work to follow it up closely; and your provincial researches and my
metropolitan investigations proceeding simultaneously, we may hope to
advance matters considerably ere long. For your own part, I should
advise you forthwith to hunt up the Judson branch. You will remember
that Matthew's only sister was a Mrs. Judson of Ullerton. I want to
find an heir-at-law in a direct line from Matthew; and you know my
theory on that point. But if we fail in that direction, we must of
course fall back upon the Judsons, who are a disgustingly complicated
set of people, and will take half a lifetime to disentangle, to say
nothing of other men who may be working the same business, and who are
pretty sure to have pinned their faith on the female branch of the
Haygarthian tree.

"I want you to ferret out some of the Judson descendants with a view to
picking up further documentary evidence in the shape of old letters,
inscriptions in old books, and so on. That Matthew had a secret is
certain; and that he was very much inclined to reveal that secret in
his later days is also certain. Who shall say that he did not tell it
to his only sister, though he was afraid to tell it to his wife?

"You have acted with so much discretion up to this point, that I do not
care to trouble you with any further hints or suggestions. When money
is wanted, it shall be forthcoming; but I must beg you to manage things
economically, as I have to borrow at a considerable sacrifice; and
should this affair prove a failure, my ruin is inevitable.

"Yours, &c. G.S."

My friend Sheldon is a man who can never have been more than "yours
et-cetera" to any human creature. I suppose what he calls ruin would be
a quiet passage through the Bankruptcy Court, and a new set of chambers.
I should not suppose that sort of ruin would be very terrible for a man
whose sole possessions are a few weak-backed horsehair chairs, a couple
of battered old desks, half a dozen empty japanned boxes, a file of
_Bell's Life_, and a Turkey carpet in which the progress of corruption
is evident to the casual observer.

The hunting-up of the Judsons is a very easy matter as compared to the
task of groping in the dimness of the past in search of some faint
traces of the footsteps of departed Haygarths. Whereas the Haygarth
family seem to be an extinct race, the Judsonian branch have bred and
mustered in the land; and my chief difficulty in starting has been an
_embarras de richesse_, in the shape of half a page of Judsons in the
Ullerton directory.

Whether to seek out Theodore Judson, the attorney, in Nile street East,
or the Rev. James Judson, curate of St. Gamaliel; whether to appeal in
the first instance to Judson & Co., haberdashers and silk mercers, of
the Ferrygate, or to Judson of Judson and Grinder, wadding
manufacturers in Lady-lane--was the grand question. On inquiring of the
landlord as to the antecedents of these Judsons, I found that they were
all supposed to spring from one common stock, and to have the blood of
old Jonathan Haygarth in their veins. The Judsons had been an obscure
family--people of "no account," my landlord told me, until Joseph
Judson, chapman and cloth merchant in a very small way, was so
fortunate as to win the heart of Ruth Haygarth, only daughter of the
wealthy Nonconformist grocer in the market-place. This marriage had
been the starting-point of Joseph Judson's prosperity. Old Haygarth had
helped his industrious and respectable son-in-law along the stony road
that leads to fortune, and had no doubt given him many a lift over the
stones which bestrew that toilsome highway. My landlord's information
was as vague as the information of people in general; but it was easily
to be made out, from his scanty shreds and scraps of information, that
the well-placed Judsons of the present day had almost all profited to
some extent by the hard-earned wealth of Jonathan Haygarth. "They've
nearly all of them got the name of Haygarth mixed up with their other
names somehow," said my landlord. "Judson of Judson and Grinder is
Thomas Haygarth Judson. He's a member of our tradesman's club, and
worth a hundred thousand pounds, if he's worth a sixpence."

I have observed, by the way, that a wealthy tradesman in a country town
is never accredited with less than a hundred thousand; there seems a
natural hankering in the human mind for round numbers.

"There's J.H. Judson of St. Gamaliel," continued my landlord--"he's
James Haygarth Judson; and young Judson the attorney's son puts
'Haygarth Judson' on his card, and gets people to call him Haygarth
Judson when they will--which in a general way they won't, on account of
his giving himself airs, which you may see him any summer evening
walking down Ferrygate as if the place belonged to him, and he didn't
set much value on it. They _do_ say his father's heir-at-law to a
million of money left by the last of the Haygarths, and that he and the
son are trying to work up a claim to the property against the Crown.
But I have heard young Judson deny it in our room when he was spoken to
about it, and I don't suppose there's much ground for people's talk."

I was sorry to discover there was any ground for such talk; Mr. Judson
the lawyer would be no insignificant opponent. I felt that I must give
a very wide berth to Mr. Theodore Judson the attorney, and his stuck-up
son, unless circumstances should so shape themselves as to oblige us to
work with him. In the meanwhile any move I made amongst the other
Judsons would be likely, I thought, to come to the knowledge of these
particular members of the family.

"Are the Judson family very friendly with one another?" I artfully
inquired.

"Well, you see, some of 'em are, and some of 'em ain't. They're most of
'em third and fourth cousins, you see, and that ain't a very near
relationship in a town where there's a good deal of competition, and
interests often clash. Young Theodore--Haygarth Judson as he calls
himself--is very thick with Judson of St. Gamaliel's, they were at
college together, you see: and fine airs they give themselves on the
strength of a couple of years or so at Cambridge. Those two get on very
well together. But Judson of the Lady-lane Mills don't speak to either
of 'em when he meets 'em in the street, and has been known to cut 'em
dead in my room. William Judson of Ferrygate is a dissenter, and keeps
himself to himself very close. The other Judsons are too fast a lot for
him: though what's the harm of a man taking a glass or two of
brandy-and-water of an evening with his friends is more than _I_ can
find out," added mine host, musingly.

It was to William Judson the dissenter, who kept himself to himself,
that I determined to present myself in the first instance. As a
dissenter, he would be likely to have more respect for the memory of
the Nonconformist and Wesleyan Haygarths, and to have preserved any
traditions relating to them with more fidelity than the Anglican and
frivolous members of the Judson family. As an individual who kept
himself to himself, he would be unlikely to communicate my business to
his kindred.

I lost no time in presenting myself at the house of business in
Ferrygate, and after giving the servant George Sheldon's card, and
announcing myself as concerned in a matter of business relating to the
Haygarth family, I was at once ushered into a prim counting-house,
where a dapper little old gentleman in spotless broadcloth, and a
cambric cravat and shirt frill which were soft and snowy as the plumage
of the swan, received me with old-fashioned courtesy. I was delighted
to find him seventy-five years of age at the most moderate computation,
and I should have been all the better pleased if he had been older. I
very quickly discovered that in Mr. Judson the linen draper I had to
deal with a very different person from the Rev. Jonah Goodge. He
questioned me closely as to my motive in seeking information on the
subject of the departed Haygarth, and I had some compunction in
diplomatising with him as I had diplomatised with Mr. Goodge. To
hoodwink the wary Jonah was a triumph--to deceive the confiding
linen draper was a shame. However, as I have before set down, I suppose
at the falsest I am not much farther from the truth than a barrister or
a diplomatist. Mr. Judson accepted my account of myself in all
simplicity, and seemed quite pleased to have an opportunity of talking
about the deceased Haygarths.

"You are not concerned in the endeavour to assert Theodore Judson's
claim to the late John Haygarth's property, eh?" the old man asked me
presently, as if struck by a sudden misgiving.

I assured him that Mr. Theodore Judson's interests and mine were in no
respect identical.

"I am glad of that," answered the draper; "not that I owe Theodore
Judson a grudge, you must understand, though his principles and mine
differ very widely. I have been told that he and his son hope to
establish a claim to that Haygarth property; but they will never
succeed, sir--they will never succeed. There was a young man who went
to India in '41; a scamp and a vagabond, sir, who was always trying to
borrow money in sums ranging from a hundred pounds, to set him up in
business and render him a credit to his family, to a shilling for the
payment of a night's lodging or the purchase of a dinner. But that
young man was the great-grandson of Ruth Haygarth--the eldest surviving
grandson of Ruth Haygarth's eldest son; and if that man is alive, he is
rightful heir to John Haygarth's money. Whether he is alive or dead at
this present moment is more than I can tell, since he has never been
heard of in Ullerton since he left the town; but until Theodore Judson
can obtain legal proof of that man's death he has no more chance of
getting one sixpence of the Haygarth estate than I have of inheriting
the crown of Great Britain."

The old man had worked himself into a little passion before he finished
this speech, and I could see that the Theodore Judsons were as
unpopular in the draper's counting-house as they were at the Swan Inn.

"What was this man's Christian name?" I asked.

"Peter. He was called Peter Judson; and was the great-grandson of my
grandfather, Joseph Judson, who inhabited this very house, sir, more
than a hundred years ago. Let me see: Peter Judson must have been about
five-and-twenty years of age when he left Ullerton; so he is a
middle-aged man by this time if he hasn't killed himself, or if the
climate hasn't killed him long ago. He went as supercargo to a merchant
vessel: he was a clever fellow, and could work hard when it suited him,
in spite of his dissipated life. Theodore Judson is a very good lawyer;
but though he may bring all his ingenuity to bear, he will never
advance a step nearer to the possession of John Haygarth's money till
he obtains evidence of Peter Judson's death; and he's afraid to
advertise for that evidence for fear he might arouse the attention of
other claimants."

Much as I was annoyed to find that there were claimants lying in wait
for the rev. intestate's wealth, I was glad to perceive that Theodore
Judson's unpopularity was calculated to render his kindred agreeably
disposed to any stranger likely to push that gentleman out of the list
of competitors for these great stakes, and I took my cue from this in
my interview with the simple old draper.

"I regret that I am not at liberty to state the nature of my business,"
I said, in a tone that was at once insinuating and confidential; "but I
think I may venture to go so far as to say, without breach of trust to
my employer, that whoever may ultimately succeed to the Rev. John
Haygarth's money, neither Mr. Judson the lawyer nor his son will ever
put a finger on a penny of it."

"I am not sorry to hear it," answered Mr. Judson, enraptured; "not that
I owe the young man a grudge, you must understand, but because he is
particularly undeserving of good fortune. A young man who passes his
own kindred in the streets of his native town without the common
courtesy due to age or respectability; a young man who sneers at the
fortune acquired in an honest and reputable trade; a young man who
calls his cousins counter-jumpers, and his aunts and uncles
'swaddlers'--a vulgar term of contempt applied to the earlier members
of the Wesleyan confraternity--such a young man is not the individual
to impart moral lustre to material wealth; and I am free to confess
that I had rather any one else than Theodore Judson should inherit this
vast fortune. Why, are you aware, my dear sir, that he has been seen to
drive tandem through this very street, as it is; and I should like to
know how many horses he would harness to that gig of his, or how openly
he would insult his relatives, if he had a hundred thousand pounds to
deal with?"

"A hundred thousand pounds!" exclaimed I; "am I to understand that the
fortune left by the Reverend John Haygarth amounts to that sum?"

"To every penny of it, sir; and a nice use Theodore Judson and that
precious son of his would make of it if it fell into their hands."

For a second time Mr. Judson the draper had worked himself into a
little passion, and the conversation had to be discontinued for some
minutes while he cooled down to his ordinary temperament.

"O ho!" said I within myself, while awaiting the completion of this
cooling-down process; "so _this_ is the stake for which my friend
Sheldon is playing!"

"I'll tell you what I will do for you, Mr.--Mr. Hawke-shell,"--Mr.
Judson said at last, making a compound of my own and my employer's
names; "I will give you a line of introduction to my sister. If any one
can help you in hunting up intelligence relating to the past she can.
She is two years my junior--seventy-one years of age, but as bright and
active as a girl. She has lived all her life in Ullerton, and is a
woman who hoards every scrap of paper that comes in her way. If old
letters or old newspapers can assist you, she can show you plenty
amongst her stores."

Upon this the old man wrote a note, which he dried with sand out of a
perforated bottle, as Richard Steele may have dried one of those airy
tender essays which he threw off in tavern parlours for the payment of
a jovial dinner.

Provided with this antique epistle, written on Bath post and sealed
with a great square seal from a bunch of cornelian monstrosities which
the draper carried at his watch-chain, I departed to find Miss
Hephzibah Judson, of Lochiel Villa, Lancaster-road.

CHAPTER IV.

GLIMPSES OF A BYGONE LIFE.

_October 10th_. I found the villa inhabited by Miss Hephzibah Judson
very easily, and found it one of those stiff square dwelling-houses
with brass curtain-rods, prim flower-beds, and vivid green palings,
only to be discovered in full perfection in the choicer suburb of a
country town.

I had heard enough during my brief residence in Ullerton to understand
that to live in the Lancaster-road was to possess a diploma of
respectability not easily vitiated by individual conduct. No
disreputable persons had ever yet set up their unholy Lares and Penates
in one of those new slack-baked villas; and that person must have been
very bold who, conscious of moral unfitness or pecuniary shortcoming,
should have ventured to pitch his tent in that sacred locality.

Miss Hephzibah Judson was one of the individuals whose shining sanctity
of life and comfortable income lent a reflected brightness to the
irreproachable suburb. I was admitted to her abode by an elderly woman
of starched demeanour but agreeable visage, who ushered me into a
spotless parlour, whereof the atmosphere was of that vault-like
coldness peculiar to a room which is only inhabited on state occasions.
Here the starched domestic left me while she carried my letter of
introduction to her mistress. In her absence I had leisure to form some
idea of Miss Judson's character on the mute evidence of Miss Judson's
surroundings. From the fact that there were books of a sentimental and
poetical tenor amongst the religious works ranged at mathematically
correct distances upon the dark green table-cover--from the presence
of three twittering canaries in a large brass cage--from the evidence of
a stuffed Blenheim spaniel, with intensely brown eyes, reclining on a
crimson velvet cushion under a glass shade--I opined that Miss Judson's
piety was pleasantly leavened by sentiment, and that her Wesleyanism
was agreeably tempered by that womanly tenderness which, failing more
legitimate outlets, will waste itself upon twittering canaries and
plethoric spaniels.

I was not mistaken. Miss Judson appeared presently, followed by the
servant bearing a tray of cake and wine. This was the first occasion on
which I had been offered refreshment by any person to whom I had
presented myself. I argued, therefore, that Miss Judson was the weakest
person with whom I had yet had to deal; and I flattered myself with the
hope that from Miss Judson's amiable weakness, sentimentality, and
womanly tenderness, I should obtain better aid than from more
business-like and practical people.

I fancied that with this lady it would be necessary to adopt a certain
air of candour. I therefore did not conceal from her the fact that my
business had something to do with that Haygarthian fortune awaiting a
claimant.

"The person for whom you are concerned is not Mr. Theodore Judson?" she
asked, with some asperity.

I assured her that I had never seen Theodore Judson, and that I was in
no manner interested in his success.

"In that case I shall be happy to assist you as far as lies in my
power; but I can do nothing to advance the interests of Theodore Judson
junior. I venture to hope that I am a Christian; and if Theodore Judson
junior were to come here to me and ask my forgiveness, I should accord
that forgiveness as a Christian; but I cannot and will not lend myself
to the furtherance of Theodore Judson's avaricious designs. I cannot
lend myself to the suppression of truth or the assertion of falsehood.
Theodore Judson senior is not the rightful heir to the late John
Haygarth's fortune, though I am bound to acknowledge that his claim
would be prior to my brother's. There is a man who stands before the
Theodore Judsons, and the Theodore Judsons know it. But were they the
rightful claimants, I should still consider them most unfitted to enjoy
superior fortune. If that dog could speak, he would be able to testify
to ill-usage received from Theodore Judson junior at his own
garden-gate, which would bespeak the character of the man to every
thoughtful mind. A young man who could indulge his spiteful feelings
against an elderly kinswoman at the expense of an unoffending animal
is not the man to make worthy use of fortune."

I expressed my acquiescence with this view of the subject; and I was
glad to perceive that with Miss Judson, as with her brother, the
obnoxious Theodores would stand me in good stead. The lady was only two
years younger than her brother, and even more inclined to be
communicative. I made the most of my opportunity, and sat in the
vault-like parlour listening respectfully to her discourse, and from
time to time hazarding a leading question, as long as it pleased her
to converse; although it seemed to me as if a perennial spring of cold
water were trickling slowly down my back and pervading my system during
the entire period. As the reward of my fortitude I obtained Miss
Judson's promise to send me any letters or papers she might find
amongst her store of old documents relating to the personal history of
Matthew Haygarth.

"I know I have a whole packet of letters in Matthew's own hand amongst
my grandmother's papers," said Miss Judson. "I was a great favourite
with my grandmother, and used to spend a good deal of my time with her
before she died--which she did while I was in pinafores; but young
people wore pinafores much longer in my time than they do now; and I
was getting on for fourteen years of age when my grandmother departed
this life. I've often heard her talk of her brother Matthew, who had
been dead some years when I was born. She was very fond of him, and he
of her, I've heard her say; and she used often to tell me how handsome
he was in his youth; and how well he used to look in a chocolate and
gold-laced riding coat, just after the victory of Culloden, when he
came to Ullerton in secret, to pay her a visit--not being on friendly
terms with his father."

I asked Miss Judson if she had ever read Matthew Haygarth's letters.

"No," she said; "I look at them sometimes when I'm tidying the drawer
in which I keep them, and I have sometimes stopped to read a word here
and there, but no more. I keep them out of respect to the dead; but I
think it would make me unhappy to read them. The thoughts and the
feelings in old letters seem so fresh that they bring our poor
mortality too closely home to us when we remember how little except
those faded letters remains of those who wrote them. It is well for us
to remember that we are only travellers and wayfarers on this earth;
but sometimes it seems just a little hard to think how few traces of
our footsteps we leave behind us when the journey is finished."

The canaries seemed to answer Miss Judson with a feeble twitter of
assent: and I took my leave, with a feeling of compassion in my heart.
I, the scamp--I, Robert Macaire the younger--had pity upon the caged
canaries, and the lonely old woman whose narrow life was drawing to its
close, and who began to feel how very poor a thing it had been after
all.

_Oct. 11th_. I have paid the penalty of my temerity in enduring the
vault-like chilliness of Miss Hephzibah Judson's parlour, and am
suffering to-day from a sharp attack of influenza; that complaint which
of all others tends to render a man a burden to himself, and a nuisance
to his fellow-creatures. Under these circumstances I have ordered a
fire in my own room--a personal indulgence scarcely warranted by
Sheldon's stipend--and I sit by my own fire pondering over the story of
Matthew Haygarth's life.

On the table by my side are scattered more than a hundred letters, all
in Matthew's bold hand; but even yet, after a most careful study of
those letters, the story of the man's existence is far from clear to
me. The letters are full of hints and indications, but they tell so
little plainly. They deal in enigmas, and disguise names under the mask
of initials.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37