Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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"Yes," he said; "there was a Meynell in this street when I was a young
man--Christian Meynell, a carpet-maker by trade. The business is still
carried on--and a very old business it is, for it was an old business
in Meynell's time; but Meynell died before I married, and his name is
pretty well forgotten in Aldersgate-street by this time."

"Had he no sons?" I asked.

"Well, yes; he had one son, Samuel, a kind of companion of mine. But he
didn't take to the business, and when his father died he let things go
anyhow, as you may say. He was rather wild, and died two or three years
after his father." "Did he die unmarried?"

"Yes. There was some talk of his marrying a Miss Dobberly, whose father
was a cabinet-maker in Jewin-street; but Samuel was too wild for the
Dobberlys, who were steady-going people, and he went abroad, where he
was taken with some kind of fever and died."

"Was this son the only child?"

"No; there were two daughters. The younger of them married; the elder
went to live with her--and died unmarried, I've heard say."

"Do you know whom the younger sister married?" I asked.

"No. She didn't marry in London. She went into the country to visit
some friends, and she married and settled down in those parts--wherever
it might be--and I never heard of her coming back to London again. The
carpet business was sold directly after Samuel Meynell's death. The new
people kept up the name for a good twenty years--'Taylor, late Meynell,
established 1693,' that's what was painted on the board above the
window--but they've dropped the name of Meynell now. People forget old
names, you see, and it's no use keeping to them after they're
forgotten."

Yes, the old names are forgotten, the old people fade off the face of
the earth. The romance of Matthew Haygarth seemed to come to a lame and
impotent conclusion in this dull record of dealers in carpeting.

"You can't remember what part of England it was that Christian
Meynell's daughter went to when she married?"

"No. It wasn't a matter I took much interest in. I don't think I ever
spoke to the young woman above three times in my life, though she lived
in the same street, and though her brother and I often met each other
at the Cat and Salutation, where there used to be a great deal of talk
about the war and Napoleon Bonaparte in those days."

"Have you any idea of the time at which she was married?" I inquired.

"Not as to the exact year. I know it was after I was married; for I
remember my wife and I sitting at our window upstairs one summer Sunday
evening, and seeing Samuel Meynell's sister go by to church. I can
remember it as well as if it was yesterday. She was dressed in a white
gown and a green silk spencer. Yes--and I didn't marry my first wife
till 1814. But as to telling you exactly when Miss Meynell left
Aldersgate-street, I can't."

These reminiscences of the past seemed to exercise rather a mollifying
influence upon the old man's mind, commonplace as they were. He ceased
to look at me with sharp, suspicious glances, and he seemed anxious to
afford me all the help he could. "Was Christian Meynell's father called
William?" I asked, after having paused to make some notes in my
pocket-book.

"That I can't tell you; though, if Christian Meynell was living to-day,
he wouldn't be ten years older than me. His father died when I was
quite a boy; but there must be old books at the warehouse with his name
in them, if they haven't been destroyed."

I determined to make inquiries at the carpet warehouse; but I had
little hope of finding the books of nearly a century gone by. I tried
another question.

"Do you know whether Christian Meynell was an only son, or the only son
who attained manhood?" I asked.

My elderly friend shook his head.

"Christian Meynell never had any brothers that I heard of," he said;
"but the parish register will tell you all about that, supposing that
his father before him lived all his life in Aldersgate-street, as I've
every reason to believe he did."

After this I asked a few questions about the neighbouring churches,
thanked Mr. Grewter for his civility, and departed.

I went back to Omega-street, dined upon nothing particular, and devoted
the rest of my evening to the scrawling of this journal, and a tender
reverie, in which Charlotte Halliday was the central figure.

How bitter poverty and dependence have made Diana Paget! She used to be
a nice girl too.

_Oct. 16th_. To-day's work has been confined to the investigation of
parish registers--a most wearisome business at the best. My labours
were happily not without result. In the fine old church of St. Giles,
Cripplegate, I found registries of the baptism of Oliver Meynell, son
of William and Caroline Mary Meynell, 1768; and of the burial of the
same Oliver in the following year. I found the record of the baptism of
a daughter to the same William and Caroline Mary Meynell, and further
on the burial of the said daughter, at five years of age. I also found
the records of the baptism of Christian Meynell, son of the same
William and Caroline Mary Meynell, in the year 1772, and of William
Meynell's decease in the year 1793. Later appeared the entry of the
burial of Sarah, widow of Christian Meynell. Later still, the baptism
of Samuel Meynell; then the baptism of Susan Meynell; and finally, that
of Charlotte Meynell.

These were all the entries respecting the Meynell family to be found in
the registry. There was no record of the burial of Caroline Mary, wife
of William Meynell, nor of Christian Meynell, nor of Samuel Meynell,
his son; and I knew that all these entries would be necessary to my
astute Sheldon before his case would be complete. After my search of
the registries, I went out into the churchyard to grope for the family
vault of the Meynells, and found a grim square monument, enclosed by a
railing that was almost eaten away by rust, and inscribed with the
names and virtues of that departed house. The burial ground is
interesting by reason of more distinguished company than the Meynells.
John Milton, John Fox, author of the Martyrology, and John Speed, the
chronologer, rest in this City churchyard.

In the hope of getting some clue to the missing data, I ventured to
make a second call upon Mr. Grewter, whom I found rather inclined to be
snappish, as considering the Meynell business unlikely to result in any
profit to himself, and objecting on principle to take any trouble not
likely to result in profit. I believe this is the mercantile manner of
looking at things in a general way.

I asked him if he could tell me where Samuel Meynell was buried.

"I suppose he was buried in foreign parts," replied the old gentleman,
with considerable grumpiness, "since he died in foreign parts."

"O, he died abroad, did he? Can you tell me where?"

"No, sir, I can't," replied Mr. Grewter, with increasing grumpiness; "I
didn't trouble myself about other people's affairs then, and I don't
trouble myself about them now, and I don't particularly care to be
troubled about them by strangers."

I made the meekest possible apology for my intrusion, but the outraged
Grewter was not appeased.

"Your best apology will be not doing it again," he replied. "Those that
know my habits know that I take half an hour's nap after dinner. My
constitution requires it, or I shouldn't take it. If I didn't happen to
have a strange warehouseman on my premises, you wouldn't have been
allowed to disturb me two afternoons running."

Finding Mr. Grewter unappeasable, I left him, and went to seek a more
placable spirit in the shape of Anthony Sparsfield, carver and gilder,
of Barbican.

I found the establishment of Sparsfield and Son, carvers and gilders.
It was a low dark shop, in the window of which were exhibited two or
three handsomely carved frames, very much the worse for flies, and one
oil-painting, of a mysterious and Rembrandtish character. The
old-established air that pervaded almost all the shops in this
neighbourhood was peculiarly apparent in the Sparsfield establishment.

In the shop I found a mild-faced man of about forty engaged in
conversation with a customer. I waited patiently while the customer
finished a minute description of the kind of frame he wanted made for a
set of proof engravings after Landseer; and when the customer had
departed, I asked the mild-faced man if I could see Mr. Sparsfield.

"I am Mr. Sparsfield," he replied politely.

"Not Mr. Anthony Sparsfield?"

"Yes, my name is Anthony."

"I was given to understand that Mr. Anthony Sparsfield was a much older
person."

"O, I suppose you mean my father," replied the mild-faced man. "My
father is advanced in years, and does very little in the business
nowadays; not but what his head is as clear as ever it was, and there
are some of our old customers like to see him when they give an order."

This sounded hopeful. I told Mr. Sparsfield the younger that I was not
a customer, and then proceeded to state the nature of my business. I
found him as courteous as Mr. Grewter had been disobliging.

"Me and father are old-fashioned people," he said; "and we're not above
living over our place of business, which most of the Barbican
tradespeople are nowadays. The old gentleman is taking tea in the
parlour upstairs at this present moment, and if you don't mind stepping
up to him, I'm sure he'll be proud to give you any information he can.
He likes talking of old times."

This was the sort of oldest inhabitant I wanted to meet with--a very
different kind of individual from Mr. Grewter, who doled out every
answer to my questions as grudgingly as if it had been a five-pound
note.

I was conducted to a snug little sitting-room on the first-floor, where
there was a cheerful fire and a comfortable odour of tea and toast. I
was invited to take a cup of tea; and as I perceived that my acceptance
of the invitation would be accounted a kind of favour, I said yes. The
tea was very weak, and very warm, and very sweet; but Mr. Sparsfield
and his son sipped it with as great an air of enjoyment as if it had
been the most inspiring of beverages.

Mr. Sparsfield the elder was more or less rheumatic and asthmatic, but
a cheerful old man withal, and quite ready to prate of old times, when
Barbican and Aldersgate-street were pleasanter places than they are
to-day, or had seemed so to this elderly citizen.

"Meynell!" he exclaimed; "I knew Sam Meynell as well as I knew my own
brother, and I knew old Christian Meynell almost as well as I knew my
own father. There was more sociability in those days, you see, sir. The
world seems to have grown too full to leave any room for friendship.
It's all push and struggle, and struggle and push, as you may say; and
a man will make you a frame for five-and-twenty shillings that will
look more imposing like than what I could turn out for five pound, Only
the gold-leaf will all drop off after a twelvemonth's wear; and that's
the way of the world nowadays. There's a deal of gilding, and things
are made to look uncommon bright; but the gold all drops off 'em before
long."

After allowing the old man to moralise to his heart's content, I
brought him back politely to the subject in which I was interested.

"Samuel Meynell was as good a fellow as ever breathed," he said; "but
he was too fond of the tavern. There were some very nice taverns round
about Aldersgate-street in those days; and you see, sir, the times were
stirring times, and folks liked to get together and talk over the day's
news, with a pipe of tobacco and a glass of their favourite liquor, all
in a sociable way. Poor Sam Meynell took a little too much of his
favourite liquor; and when the young woman that he had been keeping
company with--Miss Dobberly of Jewin-street--jilted him and married a
wholesale butcher in Newgate Market, who was old enough to be her
father, Sam took to drinking, and neglected his business. One day he
came to me and said, 'I've sold the business, Tony,'--for it was Sam
and Tony with us, you see, sir,--'and I'm off to France.' This was soon
after the battle of Waterloo; and many folks had a fancy for going over
to France now that they'd seen the back of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was
generally alluded to in those days by the name of monster or tiger, and
was understood to make his chief diet off frogs. Well, sir, we were all
of us very much surprised at Sam's going to foreign parts; but as he'd
always been wild, it was only looked upon as a part of his wildness,
and we weren't so much surprised to hear a year or two afterwards that
he'd drunk himself to death upon cheap brandy--odyvee as _they_ call
it, poor ignorant creatures--at Calais."

"He died at Calais?"

"Yes," replied the old man; "I forget who brought the news home, but I
remember hearing it. Poor Sam Meynell died and was buried amongst the
Mossoos."

"You are sure he was buried at Calais?"

"Yes, as sure as I can be of anything. Travelling was no easy matter in
those days, and in foreign parts there was nothing but diligences,
which I've heard say were the laziest-going vehicles ever invented.
There was no one to bring poor Sam's remains back to England, for his
mother was dead, and his two sisters were settled somewhere down in
Yorkshire."

In Yorkshire! I am afraid I looked rather sheepish when Mr. Sparsfield
senior mentioned this particular county, for my thoughts took wing and
were with Charlotte Halliday before the word had well escaped his lips.

"Miss Meynell settled in Yorkshire, did she?" I asked.

"Yes, she married some one in the farming way down there. Her mother
was a Yorkshirewoman, and she and her sister went visiting among her
mother's relations, and never came back to London. One of them married,
the other died a spinster."

"Do you remember the name of the man she married?"

"No," replied Mr. Sparsfield, "I can't say that I do."

"Do you remember the name of the place she went to--the town or
village, or whatever it was?"

"I might remember it if I heard it," he responded thoughtfully; "and I
ought to remember it, for I've heard Sam Meynell talk of his sister
Charlotte's home many a time. She was christened Charlotte, you see,
after the Queen. I've a sort of notion that the name of the village was
something ending in Cross, as it might be Charing Cross, or Waltham
Cross."

This was vague, but it was a great deal more than I had been able to
extort from Mr. Grewter. I took a second cup of the sweet warm liquid
which my new friends called tea, in order to have an excuse for
loitering, while I tried to obtain more light from the reminiscences of
the old frame-maker.

No more light came, however. So I was fain to take my leave, reserving
to myself the privilege of calling again on a future occasion.

_Oct. 18th_. I sent Sheldon a statement of my Aldersgate-street
researches the day before yesterday morning. He went carefully through
the information I had collected, and approved my labours.

"You've done uncommonly well, considering the short time you've been at
the work," he said; "and you've reason to congratulate yourself upon
having your ground all laid out for you, as my ground has never been
laid out for me. The Meynell branch seems to be narrowing itself into
the person of Christian Meynell's daughter and her descendants, and our
most important business now will be to find out when, where, and whom
she married, and what issue arose from such marriage. This I think you
ought to be able to do."

I shook my head rather despondingly.

"I don't see any hope of finding out the name of the young woman's
husband," I said, "unless I can come across another oldest inhabitant,
gifted with a better memory for names and places than my obliging
Sparsfield or my surly Grewter."

"There are the almshouses," said Sheldon; "you haven't tried them yet."

"No; I suppose I must go in for the almshouses," I replied, with the
sublime resignation of the pauper, whose poverty must consent to
anything; "though I confess that the prosiness of the almshouse
intellect is almost more than I can endure."

"And how do you know that you mayn't get the name of the place out of
your friend the carver and gilder?" said George Sheldon; "he has given
you some kind of clue in telling you that the name ends in Cross. He
said he should know the name if he heard it; why not try him with it?"

"But in order to do that, I must know the name myself," replied I, "and
in that ease I shouldn't want the aid of my Sparsfield."

"You are not great in expedients," said Sheldon, tilting back his
chair, and taking a shabby folio from a shelf of other shabby folios.
"This is a British gazetteer," he said, turning to the index of the
work before him. "We'll test the ancient Sparsfield's memory with every
Cross in the three Ridings, and if the faintest echo of the name we
want still lingers in his feeble old brain, we'll awaken it." My patron
ran his finger-nail along one of the columns of the index.

"Just take your pencil and write down the names as I call them," he
said. "Here we are--Aylsey Cross; and here we are again--Bowford Cross,
Callindale Cross, Huxter's Cross, Jarnam Cross, Kingborough Cross."
Then, after a careful examination of the column, he exclaimed, "Those
are all the Crosses in the county of York, and it will go hard with us
if you or I can't find the descendants of Christian Meynell's daughter
at one of them. The daughter herself may be alive, for anything we
know."

"And how about the Samuel Meynell who died at Calais? You'll have to
find some record of his death, won't you? I suppose in these cases one
must prove everything."

"Yes, I must prove the demise of Samuel," replied the sanguine
genealogist; "that part of the business I'll see to myself, while you
hunt out the female branch of the Meynells. I want an outing after a
long spell of hard work; so I'll run across to Calais and search for
the register of Samuel's interment. I suppose somebody took the trouble
to bury him, though he was a stranger in the land."

"And if I extort the name we want from poor old Sparsfield's
recollection?"

"In that case you can start at once for the place, and begin your
search on the spot. It can't be above fifty years since this woman
married, and there must be some inhabitant of the place old enough to
remember her. O, by the bye, I suppose you'll be wanting more cash for
expenses," added Mr. Sheldon, with a sigh. He took a five-pound note
from his pocket-book, and gave it to me with a piteous air of
self-sacrifice. I know that he is poor, and that whatever money he does
contrive to earn is extorted from the necessities of his needier
brethren. Some of this money he speculates upon the chances of the
Haygarthian succession, as he his speculated his money on worse chances
in the past. "Three thousand pounds!" he said to me, as he handed me
the poor little five-pound note; "think what a prize you are working
for, and work your hardest. The nearer we get to the end, the slower
our progress seems to me; and yet it has been very rapid progress,
considering all things."

So sentimental have I become, that I thought less of that possible
three thousand pounds than of the fact that I was likely to go to
Yorkshire, the county of Charlotte's birth, the county where she was
now staying. I reminded myself that it was the largest shire in
England, and that of all possible coincidences of time and place, there
could be none more unlikely than the coincidence that would bring about
a meeting between Charlotte Halliday and me.

"I know that for all practical purposes I shall be no nearer to her in
Yorkshire than in London," I said to myself; "but I shall have the
pleasure of fancying myself nearer to her."

Before leaving George Sheldon, I told him of the fragmentary sentences
I had heard uttered by Captain Paget and Philip Sheldon at the Lawn;
but he pooh-poohed my suspicions.

"I'll tell you what it is, Valentine Hawkehurst," he said, fixing those
hard black eyes of his upon me as if he would fain have pierced the
bony covering of my skull to discover the innermost workings of my
brain; "neither Captain Paget nor my brother Phil can know anything of
this business, unless you have turned traitor and sold them my secrets.
And mark me, if you have, you've sold yourself and them into the
bargain: my hand holds the documentary evidence, without which all your
knowledge is worthless."

"I am not a traitor," I told him quietly, for I despise him far too
heartily to put myself into a passion about anything he might please to
say of me; "and I have never uttered a word about this business either
to Captain Paget or to your brother. If you begin to distrust me, it is
high time you should look out for a new coadjutor."

I had my Sheldon, morally speaking, at my feet in a moment.

"Don't be melodramatic, Hawkehurst," he said; "people sell each other
every day of the week, and no one blames the seller, provided he makes
a good bargain. But this is a case in which the bargain would be a very
bad one."

After this I took my leave of Mr. Sheldon. He was to start for Calais
by that night's mail, and return to town directly his investigation was
completed. If he found me absent on his return, he would conclude that
I had obtained the information I required and started for Yorkshire. In
this event he would patiently await the receipt of tidings from that
county.

I went straight from Gray's Inn to Jewin-street. I had spent the
greater part of the day in Sheldon's office, and when I presented
myself before my complacent Sparsfield junior, Sparsfield senior's tea
and toast were already in process of preparation; and I was again
invited to step upstairs to the family sitting-room, and again treated
with that Arcadian simplicity of confidence and friendliness which it
has been my fate to encounter quite as often in the heart of this
sophisticated city as in the most pastoral of villages. With people who
were so frank and cordial I could but be equally frank.

"I am afraid I am making myself a nuisance to you, Mr. Sparsfield," I
said; "but I know you'll forgive me when I tell you that the affair I'm
engaged in is a matter of vital importance to me, and that your help
may do a great deal towards bringing matters to a crisis."

Mr. Sparsfield senior declared himself always ready to assist his
fellow-creatures, and was good enough further to declare that he had
taken a liking to me. So weak had I of late become upon all matters of
sentiment, I thanked Mr. Sparsfield for his good opinion, and then went
on to tell him that I was about to test his memory.

"And it ain't a bad un," he cried, cheerily, clapping his hand upon his
knee by way of emphasis. "It ain't a bad memory, is it, Tony?"

"Few better, father," answered the dutiful Anthony junior. "Your
memory's better than mine, a long way."

"Ah," said the old man, with a chuckle, "folks lived different in my
day. There weren't no gas, and there weren't no railroads, and London
tradespeople was content to live in the same house from year's end to
year's end. But now your tradesman must go on his foreign tours, like a
prince of the royal family, and he must go here and go there; and when
he's been everywhere, he caps it all by going through the Gazette.
Folks stayed at home in my day; but they made their fortunes, and they
kept their health, and their eyesight, and their memory, and their
hearing, and many of 'em have lived to see the next generation make
fools of themselves."

"Why, father," cried Anthony junior, aghast at this flood of eloquence,
"what an oration!"

"And it ain't often I make an oration, is it, Tony?" said the old man,
laughing. "I only mean to say that if my memory's pretty bright, it may
be partly because I haven't frittered it away upon nonsense, as some
folks have. I've stayed at home and minded my own business, and left
other people to mind theirs. And now, sir, if you want the help of my
memory, I'm ready to give it."

"You told me the other day that you could not recall the name of the
place where Christian Meynell's daughter married, but you said you
should remember it if you heard it, and you also said that the name
ended in Cross."

"I'll stick to that," replied my ancient friend. "I'll stick to that."
"Very well then. It is a settled thing that the place was in
Yorkshire?"

"Yes, I'm sure of that too."

"And that the name ended in Cross?"

"It did, as sure as my name is Sparsfield."

"Then in that case, as there are only six towns or villages in the
county of York the names of which end in Cross, it stands to reason
that the place we want must be one of those six."

Having thus premised, I took my list from my pocket and read aloud the
names of the six places, very slowly, for Mr. Sparsfield's edification.

"Aylsey Cross--Bowford Cross--Callindale Cross--Huxter's Cross--Jarnam
Cross--Kingborough Cross."

"That's him!" cried my old friend suddenly.

"Which?" I asked eagerly.

"Huxter's Cross; I remember thinking at the time that it must be a
place where they sold things, because of the name Huxter, you see,
pronounced just the same as if it was spelt with a cks instead of an x.
And I heard afterwards that there'd once been a market held at the
place, but it had been done away with before our time. Huxter's Cross;
yes, that's the name of the place where Christian Meynell's daughter
married and settled. I've heard it many a time from poor Sam, and it
comes back to me as plain as if I'd never forgotten it."

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