Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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

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Heedless of my influenza, I rushed at once to the lower regions of the
inn, saw the waiter into whose hands I had confided my packet at
half-past ten o'clock yesterday morning, and asked what messenger had
been charged with it. The waiter could not tell me. He did not remember.
I told him plainly that I considered this want of memory very
extraordinary. The waiter laughed me to scorn, with that quiet
insolence which a well-fed waiter feels for a customer who pays twenty
shillings a week for his board and lodging. The packet had been given
to a very respectable messenger, the waiter made no doubt. As to
whether it was the ostler, or one of the boys, or the Boots, or a young
woman in the kitchen who went on errands sometimes, the waiter wouldn't
take upon himself to swear, being a man who would perish rather than
inadvertently perjure himself. As to my packet having been tampered
with, that was ridiculous. What on earth was there in a lump of
letter-paper for any one to steal? Was there money in the parcel? I was
fain to confess there was no money; on which the waiter laughed aloud.

Failing the waiter, I applied myself severally to the ostler, the boys,
the Boots, and the young woman in the kitchen; and then transpired the
curious fact that no one had carried my packet. The ostler was sure he
had not; the Boots could take his Bible oath to the same effect; the
young woman in the kitchen could not call to mind anything respecting a
packet, though she was able to give me a painfully circumstantial
account of the events of the morning--where she went and what she did,
down to the purchase of three-pennyworth of pearl-ash and a pound of
Glenfield starch for the head chambermaid, on which she dwelt with a
persistent fondness.

I now felt assured that there had been treachery here, as in the Goodge
business; and I asked myself to whom could I impute that treachery?

My instinctive suspicion was of Horatio Paget. And yet, was it not more
probable that Theodore Judson, senr. and Theodore Judson, junr. were
involved in this business, and were watching and counterchecking my
actions with a view to frustrating the plans of my principal? This was
one question which I asked myself as I deliberated upon this mysterious
business. Had the Theodore Judsons some knowledge of a secret marriage
on the part of Matthew Haygarth? and did they suspect the existence of
an heir in the descendant of the issue of that marriage? These were
further questions which I asked myself, and which I found it much more
easy to ask than to answer. After having considered these questions, I
went to the Lancaster-road, saw Miss Judson--assured her, on my word as
a gentleman, that the packet had been delivered by my hands into those
of the waiter at eleven o'clock on the previous day, and asked to see
the envelope. There it was--my large blue wire-wove office envelope,
addressed in my own writing. But in these days of adhesive envelopes
there is nothing easier than to tamper with the fastening of a letter.
I registered a mental vow never again to trust any important document
to the protection of a morsel of gummed paper. I counted the letters,
convinced myself that there was a deficiency, and then set to work to
discover which of the letters had been abstracted. Here I failed
utterly. For my own convenience in copying my extracts, I had numbered
the letters from which I intended to transcribe passages before
beginning my work. My pencilled figures in consecutive order were
visible in the corner of the superscription of every document I had
used. Those numbered covers I now found intact, and I could thus assure
myself that the missing document was one from which I had taken no
extract.

This inspired me with a new alarm. Could it be possible that I had
overlooked some scrap of information more important than all that I had
transcribed?

I racked my brains in the endeavour to recall the contents of that one
missing letter; but although I sat in that social tomb, Miss Judson's
best parlour, until I felt my blood becoming of an arctic quality, I
could remember nothing that seemed worth remembering in the letters I
had laid aside as valueless.

I asked Miss Judson if she had any suspicion of the person who had
tampered with the packet. She looked at me with an icy smile, and
answered in ironical accents, which were even more chilling than the
atmosphere of her parlour,--

"Do not ask if I know who has tampered with those letters, Mr.
Hawkehurst. Your affectation of surprise has been remarkably well put
on; but I am not to be deceived a second time. When you came to me in
the first instance, I had my suspicions; but you came furnished with a
note from my brother, and as a Christian I repressed those suspicions.
I know now that I have been the dupe of an impostor, and that in
entrusting those letters to you I entrusted them to an emissary and
tool of THEODORE JUDSON."

I protested that I had never to my knowledge set eyes upon either of
the Theodore Judsons; but the prejudiced kinswoman of those gentlemen
shook her head with a smile whose icy blandness was eminently
exasperating.

"I am not to be deceived a second time," she said. "Who else but
Theodore Judson should have employed you? Who else but Theodore Judson
is interested in the Haygarth fortune? O, it was like him to employ a
stranger where he knew his own efforts would be unavailing; it was like
him to hoodwink me by the agency of a hireling tool."

I had been addressed as a "young man" by the reverend Jonah, and now I
was spoken of as a "hireling tool" by Miss Judson. I scarcely knew
which was most disagreeable, and I began to think that board and
lodging in the present, and a visionary three thousand pounds in the
future, would scarcely compensate me for such an amount of ignominy.

I went back to my inn utterly crestfallen--a creature so abject that
even the degrading influence of influenza could scarcely sink me any
lower in the social scale. I wrote a brief and succinct account of my
proceedings, and despatched the same to George Sheldon, and then I sat
down in my sickness and despair, as deeply humiliated as Ajax when he
found that he had been pitching into sheep instead of Greeks, as
miserable as Job amongst his dust and ashes, but I am happy to say
untormented by the chorus of one or the friends of the other. In that
respect at least I had some advantage over both.

_October 13th_. This morning's post brought me a brief scrawl from
Sheldon.

"Come back to town directly. I have found the registry of Matthew
Haygarth's marriage."

And so I turn my back on Ullerton; with what rejoicing of spirit it is
not in language to express.

BOOK THE SIXTH.

THE HEIRESS OF THE HAYGARTHS.

CHAPTER I.

DISAPPOINTMENT.

Of all places upon this earth, perhaps, there is none more obnoxious
to the civilized mind than London in October; and yet to Valentine
Hawkehurst, newly arrived from Ullerton per North-Western Railway, that
city seemed as an enchanted and paradisiacal region. Were not the
western suburbs of that murky metropolis inhabited by Charlotte
Halliday, and might he not hope to see her?

He did hope for that enjoyment. He had felt something more than hope
while speeding Londonwards by that delightful combination of a liberal
railway management, a fast and yet cheap train. He had beguiled himself
with a delicious certainty. Early the next morning--or at any rate as
early as civilization permitted--he would hie him to Bayswater, and
present himself at the neat iron gate of Philip Sheldon's gothic villa.
_She_ would be there, in the garden most likely, his divine Charlotte,
so bright and radiant a creature that the dull October morning would be
made glorious by her presence--she would be there, and she would
welcome him with that smile which made her the most enchanting of
women.

Such thoughts as these had engaged him during his homeward journey; and
compared with the delight of such visions, the perusal of daily papers
and the consumption of sandwiches, whereby other passengers beguiled
their transit, seemed a poor amusement. But, arrived in the dingy
streets, and walking towards Chelsea under a drizzling rain, the bright
picture began to grow dim. Was it not more than likely that Charlotte
would be absent from London at this dismal season? Was it not very
probable that Philip Sheldon would give him the cold shoulder? With
these gloomy contingencies before him, Mr. Hawkehurst tried to shut
Miss Halliday's image altogether out of his mind, and to contemplate
the more practical aspect of his affairs.

"I wonder whether that scoundrel Paget has come back to London?" he
thought. "What am I to say to him if he has? If I own to having seen
him in Ullerton, I shall lay myself open to being questioned by him as
to my own business in that locality. Perhaps my wisest plan would be to
say nothing, and hear his own account of himself. I fully believe he
saw me on the platform that night when we passed each other without
speaking."

Horatio Paget was at home when his _protege_ arrived. He was seated by
his fireside in all the domestic respectability of a dressing-gown and
slippers, with an evening paper on his knee, a slim smoke-coloured
bottle at his elbow, and the mildest of cigars between his lips, when
the traveller, weary and weather-stained, entered the lodging-house
drawing-room.

Captain Paget received his friend very graciously, only murmuring some
faint deprecation of the young man's reeking overcoat, with just such a
look of gentlemanly alarm as the lamented Brummel may have felt when
ushered into the presence of a "damp stranger."

"And so you've come back at last," said the Captain, "from Dorking?" He
made a little pause here, and looked at his friend with a malicious
sparkle in his eye. "And how was the old aunt? Likely to cut up for any
considerable amount, eh? It could only be with a view to that
cutting-up process that you could consent to isolate yourself in such
a place as Dorking. How did you find things?" "O, I don't know, I'm
sure," Mr. Hawkehurst answered rather impatiently, for his worst
suspicions were confirmed by his patron's manner; "I only know I found
it tiresome work enough."

"Ah, to be sure! elderly people always are tiresome, especially when
they are unacquainted with the world. There is a perennial youth about
men and women of the world. The sentimental twaddle people talk of the
freshness and purity of a mind unsullied by communion with the world is
the shallowest nonsense. Your Madame du Deffand at eighty and your
Horace Walpole at sixty are as lively as a girl and boy. Your
octogenarian Voltaire is the most agreeable creature in existence. But
take Cymon and Daphne from their flocks and herds and pastoral valleys
in their old age, and see what senile bores and quavering imbeciles you
would find them. Yes, I have no doubt you found your Dorking aunt a
nuisance. Take off your wet overcoat and put it out of the room, and
then ring for more hot water. You'll find that cognac very fine. Won't
you have a cigar?"

The Captain extended his russia-leather case with the blandest smile.
It was a very handsome case. Captain Paget was a man who could descend
into some unknown depths of the social ocean in the last stage of
shabbiness, and who, while his acquaintance were congratulating
themselves upon the fact of his permanent disappearance, would start up
suddenly in an unexpected place, provided with every necessity and
luxury of civilized life, from a wardrobe by Poole to the last
fashionable absurdity in the shape of a cigar-case.

Never had Valentine Hawkehurst found his patron more agreeably disposed
than he seemed to be this evening, and never had he felt more inclined
to suspect him.

"And what have you been doing while I have been away?" the young man
asked presently. "Any more promoting work?"

"Well, yes, a little bit of provincial business; a life-and-fire on a
novel principle; a really good thing, if we can only find men with
perception enough to see its merits, and pluck enough to hazard their
capital. But promoting in the provinces is very dull work. I've been to
two or three towns in the Midland districts--Beauport, Mudborough, and
Ullerton--and have found the same stagnation everywhere."

Nothing could be more perfect than the semblance of unconscious
innocence with which the Captain gave this account of himself: whether
he was playing a part, or whether he was telling the entire truth, was
a question which even a cleverer man than Valentine Hawkehurst might
have found himself unable to answer.

The two men sat till late, smoking and talking; but to-night Valentine
found the conversation of his "guide, philosopher, and friend"
strangely distasteful to him. That cynical manner of looking at life,
which not long ago had seemed to him the only manner compatible with
wisdom and experience, now grated harshly upon those finer senses which
had been awakened in the quiet contemplative existence he had of late
been leading. He had been wont to enjoy Captain Paget's savage
bitterness against a world which had not provided him with a house in
Carlton-gardens, and a seat in the Cabinet; but to-night he was
revolted by the noble Horatio's tone and manner. Those malicious sneers
against respectable people and respectable prejudices, with which the
Captain interlarded all his talk, seemed to have a ghastly grimness in
their mirth. It was like the talk of some devil who had once been an
angel, and had lost all hope of ever being restored to his angelic
status.

"To believe in nothing, to respect nothing, to hope for nothing, to
fear nothing, to consider life as so many years in which to scheme and
lie for the sake of good dinners and well-made coats--surely there can
be no state of misery more complete, no degradation more consummate,"
thought the young man, as he sat by the fireside smoking and listening
dreamily to his companion. "Better to be Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth,
narrow-minded and egotistical, but always looking beyond her narrow
life to some dimly-comprehended future."

He was glad to escape at last from the Captain's society, and to retire
to his own small chamber, where he slept soundly enough after the day's
fatigues, and dreamed of the Haygarths and Charlotte Halliday.

He was up early the next morning; but, on descending to the
sitting-room, he found his patron toasting his _Times_ before a cheerful
fire; while his gold hunting-watch stood open on the breakfast-table, and
a couple of new-laid eggs made a pleasant wabbling noise in a small
saucepan upon the hob.

"You don't care for eggs, I know, Val," said the Captain, as he took
the saucepan from the hob.

He had heard the young man object to an egg of French extraction too
long severed from its native land; but he knew very well that for rural
delicacies from a reliable dairyman, at twopence apiece, Mr. Hawkehurst
had no particular antipathy. Even in so small a matter as a new-laid
egg the Captain knew how to protect his own interest.

"There's some of that Italian sausage you're so fond of, dear boy," he
said politely, pointing to a heel of some grayish horny-looking
compound. "Thanks; I'll pour out the coffee; there's a knack in these
things; half the clearness of coffee depends on the way in which it's
poured out, you see."

And with this assurance Captain Paget filled his own large breakfast-cup
with a careful hand and a tender solemnity of countenance. If he was a
trifle less considerate in the pouring out of the second cup, and if
some "grounds" mingled with the second portion, Valentine Hawkehurst
was unconscious of the fact.

"Do try that Italian sausage," said the Captain, as he discussed his
second egg, after peeling the most attractive crusts from the French
rolls, and pushing the crumb to his _protege_.

"No, thank you; it looks rather like what your shop-people call an old
housekeeper; besides, there's a little too much garlic in those
compositions for my taste."

"Your taste has grown fastidious," said the Captain; "one would think
you were going to call upon some ladies this morning."

"There are not many ladies on my visiting-list. O, by the way, how's
Diana? Have you seen her lately?"

"No," answered the Captain, promptly. "I only returned from my
provincial tour a day or two ago, and have had no time to waste dancing
attendance upon her. She's well enough, I've no doubt; and she's
uncommonly well off in Sheldon's house, and ought to think herself so."

Having skimmed his newspaper, Captain Paget rose and invested himself
in his overcoat. He put on his hat before the glass over the
mantelpiece, adjusting the brim above his brows with the thoughtful
care that distinguished his performance of all those small duties which
he owed to himself.

"And what may _you_ be going to do with yourself to-day, Val?" he asked
of the young man, who sat nursing his own knee and staring absently at
the fire.

"Well, I don't quite know," Mr. Hawkehurst answered, hypocritically; "I
think I may go as far as Gray's Inn, and look in upon George Sheldon."

"You'll dine out of doors, I suppose?"

This was a polite way of telling Mr. Hawkehurst that there would be no
dinner for him at home.

"I suppose I shall. You know I'm not punctilious on the subject of
dinner. Anything you please--from a banquet at the London Tavern to a
ham-sandwich and a glass of ale at fourpence."

"Ah, to be sure; youth is reckless of its gastric juices. I shall find
you at home when I come in to-night, I daresay. I think I may dine in
the city. _Au plaisir_."

"I don't know about the pleasure," muttered Mr. Hawkehurst. "You're a
very delightful person, my friend Horatio; but there comes a crisis in
a man's existence when he begins to feel that he has had enough of you.
Poor Diana! what a father!"

He did not waste much time on further consideration of his patron, but
set off at once on his way to Gray's Inn. It was too early to call at
the Lawn, or he would fain have gone there before seeking George
Sheldon's dingy offices. Nor could he very well present himself at the
gothic villa without some excuse for so doing. He went to Gray's Inn
therefore; but on his way thither called at a tavern near the Strand,
which was the head-quarters of a literary association known as the
Ragamuffins. Here he was fortunate enough to meet with an acquaintance
in the person of a Ragamuffin in the dramatic-author line, who was
reading the morning's criticisms on a rival's piece produced the night
before, with a keen enjoyment of every condemnatory sentence. From this
gentleman Mr. Hawkehurst obtained a box-ticket for a West-end theatre;
and, armed with this mystic document, he felt himself able to present a
bold countenance at Mr. Sheldon's door.

"Will she be glad to see me again?" he asked himself. "Pshaw! I daresay
she has forgotten me by this time. A fortnight is an age with some
women; and I should fancy Charlotte Halliday just one of those bright
impressionable beings who forget easily. I wonder whether she is
_really_ like that 'Molly' whose miniature was found by Mrs. Haygarth
in the tulip-leaf escritoire; or was the resemblance between those two
faces only a silly fancy of mine?"

Mr. Hawkehurst walked the whole distance from Chelsea to Gray's Inn;
and it was midday when he presented himself before George Sheldon, whom
he found seated at his desk with the elephantine pedigree of the
Haygarths open before him, and profoundly absorbed in the contents of a
note-book. He looked up from this note-book as Valentine entered, but
did not leave off chewing the end of his pencil as he mumbled a welcome
to the returning wanderer. It has been seen that neither of the Sheldon
brothers were demonstrative men.

After that unceremonious greeting, the lawyer continued his perusal of
the note-book for some minutes, while Valentine seated himself in a
clumsy leather-covered arm-chair by the fireplace.

"Well, young gentleman," Mr. Sheldon exclaimed, as he closed his book
with a triumphant snap, "I think _you're_ in for a good thing; and you
may thank your lucky stars for having thrown you into my path."

"My stars are not remarkable for their luckiness in a general way,"
answered Mr. Hawkehurst, coolly, for the man had not yet been born from
whom he would accept patronage. "I suppose if I'm in for a good thing,
you're in for a better thing, my dear George; so you needn't come the
benefactor quite so strong for my edification. How did you ferret out
the certificate of gray-eyed Molly's espousals?"

George Sheldon contemplated his coadjutor with an admiring stare. "It
has been my privilege to enjoy the society of cool hands, Mr.
Hawkehurst; and certainly you are about the coolest of the lot--bar
one, as they say in the ring. But that is _ni ci ni la_. I have found
the certificate of Matthew Haygarth's marriage, and to my mind the
Haygarth succession is as good as ours."

"Ah, those birds in the bush have such splendid plumage! but I'd rather
have the modest sparrow in my hand. However, I'm very glad our affairs
are marching. How did you discover the marriage-lines?"

"Not without hard labour, I can tell you. Of course my idea of a secret
marriage was at the best only a plausible hypothesis; and I hardly
dared to hug myself with the hope that it might turn up trumps. My idea
was based upon two or three facts, namely, the character of the young
man, his long residence in London away from the ken of respectable
relatives and friends, and the extraordinary state of the marriage laws
at the period in which our man lived."

"Ah, to be sure! That was a strong point."

"I should rather think it was. I took the trouble to look up the
history of Mayfair marriages and Fleet marriages before you started for
Ullerton, and I examined all the evidence I could get on that subject.
I made myself familiar with the Rev. Alexander Keith of Mayfair, who
helped to bring clandestine marriages into vogue amongst the swells,
and with Dr. Gaynham--agreeably nicknamed Bishop of Hell--and more of
the same calibre; and the result of my investigations convinced me that
in those days a hare-brained young reprobate must have found it rather
more difficult to avoid matrimony than to achieve it. He might be
married when he was tipsy; he might be married when he was comatose
from the effects of a stand-up fight with Mohawks; his name might be
assumed by some sportive Benedick of his acquaintance given to
practical joking, and he might find himself saddled with a wife he
never saw; or if, on the other hand, of an artful and deceptive turn,
he might procure a certificate of a marriage that had never taken
place,--for there were very few friendly offices which the Fleet
parsons refused to perform for their clients--for a consideration."

"But how about the legality of the Fleet marriage?"

"There's the rub. Before the New Marriage Act passed in 1753 a Fleet
marriage was indissoluble. It was an illegal act, and the parties were
punishable; but the Gordian knot was quite as secure as if it had been
tied in the most orthodox manner. The great difficulty to my mind was
the _onus probandi_. The marriage might have taken place; the marriage
be to all intents and purposes a good marriage; but how produce
undeniable proof of such a ceremony, when all ceremonies of the kind
were performed with a manifest recklessness and disregard of law? Even
if I found an apparently good certificate, how was I to prove that it
was not one of those lying certificates of marriages that had never
taken place? Again, what kind of registers could posterity expect from
these parson-adventurers, very few of whom could spell, and most of
whom lived in a chronic state of drunkenness? They married people
sometimes by their Christian names alone--very often under assumed
names. What consideration had they for heirs-at-law in the future, when
under the soothing influence of a gin-bottle in the present? I thought
of all these circumstances, and I was half inclined to despair of
realising my idea of an early marriage. I took it for granted that such
a secret business would be more likely to have taken place in the
precincts of the Fleet than anywhere else; and having no particular
clue, I set to work, in the first place, to examine all available
documents relating to such marriages."

"It must have been slow work."

"It _was_ slow work," answered Mr. Sheldon with a suppressed groan,
that was evoked by the memory of a bygone martyrdom. "I needn't enter
into all the details of the business,--the people I had to apply to for
permission to see this set of papers, and the signing and
counter-signing I had to go through before I could see that set of
papers, and the extent of circumlocution and idiocy I had to encounter
in a general way before I could complete my investigation. The result
was nil; and after working like a galley-slave I found myself no better
off than before I began my search. Your extracts from Matthew's letters
put me on a new track. I concluded therefrom that there had been a
marriage, and that the said marriage had been a deliberate act on the
part of the young man. I therefore set to work to do what I ought to
have done at starting--I hunted in all the parish registers to be found
within a certain radius of such and such localities. I began with
Clerkenwell, in which neighbourhood our friend spent such happy years,
according to that pragmatical epistle of Mrs. Rebecca's; but after
hunting in all the mouldy old churches within a mile of St. John's-gate,
I was no nearer arriving at any record of Matthew Haygarth's existence.
So I turned my back upon Clerkenwell, and went southward to the
neighbourhood of the Marshalsea, where Mistress Molly's father was at
one time immured, and whence I thought it very probable Mistress Molly
had started on her career as a matron. This time my guess was a lucky
one. After hunting the registers of St. Olave's, St. Saviour's, and St.
George's, and after the expenditure of more shillings in donations to
sextons than I care to remember, I at last lighted on a document which
I consider worth three thousand pounds to you--and--a very decent sum
of money to me."

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