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Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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




There was an air of conviction about the old man which satisfied me
that he was not deceived. I thanked him heartily for his aid as I took
my leave.

"You may have helped to put a good lump of money in my pocket, Mr.
Sparsfield," I said; "and if you have, I'll get my picture taken, if
it's only for the pleasure of bringing it here to be framed."

With this valedictory address I left my simple citizens of Barbican. My
heart was very light as I wended my way across those metropolitan wilds
that lay between Barbican and Omega-street. I am ashamed of myself when
I remember the foolish cause of this elation of mind. I was going to
Yorkshire, the county of which my Charlotte was now an inhabitant. My
Charlotte! It is a pleasure even to write that delicious possessive
pronoun--the pleasure of poor Alnascher, the crockery-seller, dreaming
his day-dream in the eastern market-place.

Can any one know better than I that I shall be no nearer Charlotte
Halliday in Yorkshire than I am in London? No one. And yet I am glad my
Sheldon's business takes me to the woods and wolds of that wide
northern shire.

Huxter's Cross--some Heaven-forgotten spot, no doubt. I bought a
railway time-table on my way home to-night, and have carefully studied
the bearings of the place amongst whose mouldy records I am to discover
the history of Christian Meynell's daughter and heiress.

I find that Huxter's Cross lies off the railroad, and is to be
approached by an obscure little station--as I divine from the
ignominious type in which its name appears--about sixty miles northward
of Hull. The station is called Hidling; and at Hidling there seems to
be a coach which plies between the station and Huxter's Cross.

Figure to yourself again, my dear, the heir-at-law to a hundred
thousand pounds vegetating in the unknown regions of Huxter's Cross cum
Hidling, unconscious of his heritage!

Shall I find him at the plough-tail, I wonder, this mute inglorious
heir-at-law? or shall I find an heiress with brawny arms meekly
churning butter? or shall I discover the last of the Meynells taking
his rest in some lonely churchyard, not to be awakened by earthly voice
proclaiming the tidings of earthly good fortune?

I am going to Yorkshire--that is enough for me. I languish for the
starting of the train which shall convey me thither. I begin to
understand the nostalgia of the mountain herdsman: I pine for that
northern air, those fresh pure breezes blowing over moor and wold--
though I am not quite clear, by the bye, as to the exact nature of a
wold. I pant, I yearn for Yorkshire. I, the cockney, the child of
Temple Bar, whose cradle-song was boomed by the bells of St. Dunstan's
and St. Clement's Danes.

Is not Yorkshire my Charlotte's birthplace? I want to see the land
whose daughters are so lovely.




CHAPTER III.

ARCADIA.


_November 1st_. This is Huxter's Cross, and I live here. I have lived
here a week. I should like to live here for ever. O, let me be rational
for a few hours, while I write the record of this last blissful week;
let me be reasonable, and business-like, and Sheldon-like for this one
wet afternoon, and then I may be happy and foolish again. Be still,
beating heart! as the heroines of Minerva-press romances were
accustomed to say to themselves on the smallest provocation. Be still,
foolish, fluttering, schoolboy heart, which has taken a new lease of
youth and folly from a fair landlord called Charlotte Halliday.

Drip, drip, drip, O rain! "The day is dark and cold and dreary, and the
vine still clings to the mouldering wall; and with every gust the dead
leaves fall:" but thy sweet sad verse wakes no responsive echo in my
heart, O tender Transatlantic Poet, for my heart is light and glad--
recklessly glad--heedless of to-morrow--forgetful of yesterday--full to
the very brim with the dear delight of to-day.

And now to business. I descend from the supernal realms of fancy to the
dry record of commonplace fact. This day week I arrived at Hidling,
after a tedious journey, which, with stoppages at Derby and Normanton,
and small delays at obscurer stations, had occupied the greater part of
the day. It was dusk when I took my place in the hybrid vehicle, half
coach, half omnibus, which was to convey me from Hidling to Huxter's
Cross. A transient glimpse at Hidling showed me one long straggling
street and a square church-tower. Our road branched off from the
straggling street, and in the autumn dusk I could just discover the dim
outlines of distant hills encircling a broad waste of moor.

I have been so steeped in London that this wild barren scene had a
charm for me which it could scarcely possess for others. Even the gloom
of that dark waste of common land was pleasant to me. I shared the
public vehicle with one old woman, who snored peacefully in the
remotest corner, while I looked out at the little open window and
watched the darkening landscape.

Our drive occupied some hours. We passed two or three little clusters
of cottages and homesteads, where the geese screamed and the cocks
crowed at our approach, and where a few twinkling tapers in upper
windows proclaimed the hour of bed-time. At one of these clusters of
habitation, a little island of humanity in the waste of wold and moor,
we changed horses, with more yo-oh-ing and come-up-ing than would have
attended the operation in a civilised country. At this village I heard
the native tongue for the first time in all its purity; and for any
meaning which it conveyed to my ear I might as well have been listening
to the _patois_ of agricultural Carthage.

After changing horses, we went up hill, with perpetual groanings, and
grumblings, and grindings, and whip-smacking and come-up-ing, for an
indefinite period; and then we came to a cluster of cottages, suspended
high up in the sharp autumn atmosphere as it seemed to me; and the
driver of the vehicle came to my little peephole of a window, and told
me with some slight modification of the Carthaginian _patois_ that I
was "theer."

I alighted, and found myself at the door of a village inn, with the red
light from within shining out upon me where I stood, and a battered old
sign groaning and creaking above my head. For me, who in all my life
had been accustomed to find my warmest welcome at an inn, this was to
be at home. I paid my fare, took up my carpet-bag, and entered the
hostelry.

I found a rosy-faced landlady, clean and trim, though a trifle floury
as to the arms and apron. She had emerged from a kitchen, an
old-fashioned chamber with a floor of red brick; a chamber which was
all in a rosy glow with the firelight, and looked like a Dutch picture,
as I peeped at it through the open doorway. There were the most
picturesque of cakes and loaves heaped on a wooden bench by the hearth,
and the whole aspect of the place was delicious in its homely comfort.

"O," I said to myself, "how much better the northern winds blowing over
these untrodden hills, and the odour of home-made loaves, than the
booming bells of St. Dunstan's, and the greasy steam of tavern chops
and steaks!"

My heart warmed to this Yorkshire and these Yorkshire people. Was it
for Charlotte's sake, I wonder, that I was so ready to open my heart to
everybody and everything in this unknown land?

A very brief parley set me quite at ease with my landlady. Even, the
Carthaginian _patois_ became intelligible to me after a little
experience. I found that I could have a cosy, cleanly chamber, and be
fed and cared for upon terms that seemed absurdly small, even to a
person of my limited means. My cordial hostess brought me a meal which
was positively luxurious; broiled ham and poached eggs, such as one
scarcely hopes to see out of a picture of still life; crisp brown cakes
fresh from that wonderful oven whose door I had seen yawning open in
the Flemish interior below; strong tea and cream--the cream that one
reads of in pastoral stories.

I enjoyed my banquet, and then opened my window and looked out at the
still landscape, dimly visible in the faint starlight.

I was at the top of a hill--the topmost of an ascending range of hills--
and to some minds that alone is rapture. To inhale the fresh night air
was to drink deeply of an ethereal beverage. I had never experienced so
delicious a sensation since I had stood on the grassy battlements of
the Chateau d'Arques, with the orchards and gardens of sunny Normandy
spread like a carpet below my feet.

But this hill was loftier than that on which the feudal castle rears
its crumbling towers, and the landscape below me was wilder than
verdant Normandy.

No words can tell how I rejoiced in this untrodden region--this
severance from the Strand and Temple Bar. I felt as if my old life was
falling away from me--like the scales of the lepers who were cleansed
by the Divine Healer. I felt myself worthier to love, or even to be
loved by, the bright true-hearted girl whose image fills my heart. Ah,
if Heaven gave me that dear angel, I think my old life, my old
recklessness, my old want of principle, would drop away from me
altogether, and the leper would stand forth cleansed and whole. Could I
not be happy with her here, among these forgotten hills, these widely
scattered homesteads? Could I not be happy dissevered eternally from
billiard-room and kursaal, race-ground and dancing-rooms? Yes,
completely and unreservedly happy--happy as a village curate with
seventy pounds a year and a cast-off coat, supplied by the charity of a
land too poor to pay its pastors the wage of a decent butler--happy as
a struggling farmer, though the clay soil of my scanty acres were never
so sour and stubborn, my landlord never so hard about his rent--happy
as a pedlar, with my pack of cheap tawdry wares slung behind me, and my
Charlotte tramping gaily by my side.

I breakfasted next morning in a snug little parlour behind the bar,
where I overheard two carters conversing in the Carthaginian _patois_,
to which I became hourly more accustomed. My brisk cheery landlady came
in and out while I took my meal; and whenever I could detain her long
enough, I tried to engage her in conversation.

I asked her if she had ever heard the name of Meynell; and after
profound consideration she replied in the negative.

"I don't mind hearing aught of folks called Meynell," she said with
more or less of the _patois_, which I was beginning to understand; "but
I haven't got mooch memory for nee-ams. I might have heard o' such
folks, and not minded t' nee-am."

This was rather dispiriting; but I knew that if any record of Christian
Meynell's daughter existed at Huxter's Cross, it was in my power to
discover it.

I asked if there was any official in the way of a registrar to be found
in the village; and found that there was no one more important than an
old man who kept the keys of the church. The registers were kept in the
vestry, my landlady believed, and the old man was called Jonas Gorles,
and lived half a mile off, at the homestead of his son-in-law. But my
landlady said she would send for him immediately, and pledged herself
to produce him in the course of an hour. I told her that I would find
my way to the churchyard in the mean time, whither Mr. Gorles could
follow me as soon as convenient.

The autumnal morning was fresh and bright as spring, and Huxter's Cross
seemed the most delightful place on earth to me, though it is only a
cluster of cottages, relieved by one farmhouse of moderate pretensions,
my hostelry of the Magpie, a general shop, which is also the
post-office, and a fine old Norman church, which lies away from the
village, and bears upon it the traces of better days. Near the church
there is an old granite cross, around which the wild flowers and
grasses grow rank and high. It marks the spot where there was once a
flourishing market-place; but all mortal habitations have vanished,
and the Huxter's Cross of the past has now no other memorial than this
crumbling stone.

The churchyard was unutterably still and solitary. A robin was perched
on the topmost bar of the old wooden gate, singing his joyous carol. As
I approached, he hopped from the gate to the low moss-grown wall, and
went on singing as I passed him. I was in the humour to apostrophise
skylark or donkey, or to be sentimental about anything in creation,
just then; so I told my robin what a pretty creature he was, and that I
would sooner perish than hurt him by so much as the tip of a feather.

Being bound to remember my Sheldon even when most sentimental, I
endeavoured to combine the meditative mood of a Hervey with the
business-like sharpness of a lawyer's clerk; and while musing on the
common lot of man in general, I did not omit to search the mouldering
tombstones for some record of the Meynells in particular.

I found none; and yet, if the daughter of Christian Meynell had been
buried in that churchyard, the name of her father would surely have
been inscribed upon her tombstone. I had read all the epitaphs when the
wooden gate creaked on its hinges, and admitted a wizen little old man
--one of those ancient meanderers who seem to have been created on
purpose to fill the post of sexton.

With this elderly individual I entered the church of Huxter's Cross,
which had the same mouldy atmosphere as the church at Spotswold. The
vestry was an icy little chamber, which had once been a family vault;
but it was not much colder than Miss Judson's best parlour; and I
endured the cold bravely while I searched the registries of the last
sixty years.

I searched in vain. After groping amongst the names of all the
nonentities who had been married at Huxter's Cross since the beginning
of the century, I found myself no nearer the secret of Charlotte
Meynell's marriage. And then I reflected upon all the uncertainties
surrounding that marriage. Miss Meynell had gone to Yorkshire, to visit
her mother's relations, and had married in Yorkshire; and the place
which Anthony Sparsfield remembered having heard of in connection with
that marriage was Huxter's Cross. But it did not by any means follow
that the marriage had taken place at that obscure village. Miss Meynell
might have been married at Hull, or York, or Leeds, or at any of the
principal places of the county. With that citizen class of people
marriage was a grand event, a solemn festivity; and Miss Meynell and
her friends would have been likely to prefer that so festive an
occasion should be celebrated anywhere rather than at that forgotten
old church among the hills. "I shall have to search every register in
Yorkshire till I light upon the record I want," I thought to myself,
"unless Sheldon will consent to advertise for the Meynell marriage
certificate. There could scarcely be danger in such an advertisement,
as the connection between the name of Meynell and the Haygarth estate
is only known to ourselves."

Acting upon this idea, I wrote to George Sheldon by that afternoon's
post, urging him to advertise for descendants of Miss Charlotte
Meynell.

Charlotte! dear name, which is a kind of music for me. It was almost a
pleasure to write that letter, because of the repetition of that
delightful noun.

The next day I devoted to a drive round the neighbourhood, in a smart
little dog-cart, hired on very moderate terms from mine host. I had
acquainted myself with the geography of the surrounding country; and I
contrived to visit every village church within a certain radius of
Huxter's Cross. But my inspection of mildewed old books, and my heroic
endurance of cold and damp in mouldy old churches, resulted in nothing
but disappointment.

I returned to my "Magpie" after dark a little disheartened and
thoroughly tired, but still very well pleased with my rustic quarters
and my adopted county. My landlord's horse had shown himself a very
model of equine perfection.

Candles were lighted and curtains drawn in my cosy little chamber, and
the table creaked beneath one of those luxurious Yorkshire teas which
might wean an alderman from the coarser delights of turtle or
conger-eel soup and venison.

At noon the following day a very primitive kind of postman brought me a
letter from Sheldon. That astute individual told me that he declined to
advertise, or to give any kind of publicity to his requirements.

"If I were not afraid of publicity, I should not be obliged to pay you
a pound a week," he remarked, with pleasing candour, "since
advertisements would get me more information in a week than you may
scrape together in a twelvemonth. But I happen to know the danger of
publicity, and that many a good thing has been snatched out of a man's
hands just as he was working it into shape. I don't say that this could
be done in my case; and you know very well that it could not be done,
as I hold papers which are essential to the very first move in the
business."

I perfectly understand the meaning of these remarks, and I am inclined
to doubt the existence of those important papers. Suspicion is a
fundamental principle in the Sheldon mind. My friend George trusts me
because he is obliged to trust me--and only so far as he is obliged--
and is tormented, more or less, by the idea that I may at any moment
attempt to steal a march upon him.

But to return to his letter:

"I should recommend you to examine the registries of every town or
village within, say, thirty miles of Huxter's Cross. If you find
nothing in such registries, we must fall back upon the larger towns,
beginning with Hull, as being nearest to our starting-point. The work
will, I fear, be slow, and very expensive for me. I need scarcely again
urge upon you the necessity of confining your outlay to the minimum, as
you know that my affairs are desperate. It couldn't well be lower water
than it is with me, in a pecuniary sense; and I expect every day to
find myself aground.

"And now for my news. I have discovered the burial-place of Samuel
Meynell, after no end of trouble, the details of which I needn't bore
you with, since you are now pretty well up in that sort of work. I am
thankful to say I have secured the evidence that settles for Samuel,
and ascertained by tradition that he died unmarried. The _onus
probandi_ would fall upon any one purporting to be descended from the
said Samuel, and we know how uncommonly difficult said person would
find it to prove anything.

"So, having disposed of Samuel, I came back to London by the next mail;
Calais, in the month of November, not being one of those wildly-gay
watering-places which tempt the idler. I arrived just in time to catch
this afternoon's post; and now I look impatiently to your Miss
Charlotte Meynell, of Huxter's Cross.--Yours, &c. G.S."

I obeyed my employer to the letter; hired my landlord's dog-cart for
another day's exploration; and went further afield in search of Miss
Charlotte's marriage-lines. I came home late at night--this time
thoroughly worn out--studied a railway guide with a view to my
departure, and decided on starting for Hull by a train that would leave
Hidling station at four o'clock on the following afternoon.

I went to bed tired in body and depressed in spirit. Why was I so sorry
to leave Huxter's Cross? What subtle instinct of the brain or heart
made me aware that the desert region amongst the hills held earth's
highest felicity for me?

The next morning was bright and clear. I heard the guns of sportsmen
popping merrily in the still air as I breakfasted before an open
window, while a noble sea-coal fire blazed on the hearth opposite me.
There is no stint of fuel at the Magpie. Everything in Yorkshire seems
to be done with a lavish hand. I have heard Yorkshiremen called mean.
As if meanness could exist in the hearts of my Charlotte's countrymen!
My own experience of the county is brief; but I can only say that my
friends of the Magpie are liberality itself, and that a Yorkshire tea
is the very acme of unsophisticated bliss in the way of eating and
drinking. I have dined at Philippe's; I know every dish in the _menu_
of the Maison Doree; but if I am to make my life a burden beneath the
dark sway of the demon dyspepsia, let my destruction arrive in the
shape of the ham and eggs, the crisp golden-brown cakes, and undefiled
honey, of this northern Arcadia.

I told my friendly hostess that I was going to leave her, and she was
sorry. She was sorry for me, the wanderer. I can picture to myself the
countenance of a London landlady if informed thus suddenly of her
lodger's departure, and her suppressed mutterings about the
ill-convenience of such a proceeding.

After breakfast I went out to take my own pleasure. I had done my duty
in the matter of mouldy churches and mildewed registries; and I
considered myself entitled to a holiday during the few hours that must
elapse before the starting of the hybrid vehicle for Hidling.

I sauntered past the little cluster of cottages, admiring their
primitive aspect, the stone-crop on the red-tiled roofs, that had sunk
under the weight of years. All was unspeakably fresh and bright; the
tiny panes of the casement twinkled in the autumn sunlight, birds sang,
and hardy red geraniums bloomed in the cottage windows. What pleasure
or distraction had the good housewives of Huxter's Cross to lure them
from the domestic delights of scrubbing and polishing? I saw young
faces peeping at me from between snow-white muslin curtains, and felt
that I was a personage for once in my life; and it was pleasant to feel
one's self of some importance even in the eyes of Huxter's Cross.

Beyond the cottages and the post-office there were three roads
stretching far away over hill and moorland. With two of those roads I
had made myself thoroughly familiar; but the third remained to be
explored.

"So now for 'fresh fields and pastures new,'" I said to myself as I
quickened my pace, and walked briskly along my unknown road.

Ah, surely there is some meaning in the fluctuations of the mental
barometer. What but an instinctive consciousness of approaching
happiness could have made me so light-hearted that morning? I sang as I
hastened along that undiscovered road. Fragments of old Italian
serenades and barcarolles came back to me as if I had heard them
yesterday for the first time. The perfume of the few lingering
wild-flowers, the odour of burning weeds in the distance, the fresh
autumn breeze, the clear cold blue sky,--all were intensely delicious
to me; and I felt as if this one lonely walk were a kind of renovating
process, from which my soul would emerge cleansed of all its stains.

"I have to thank George Sheldon for a great deal," I said to myself,
"since through him I have been obliged to educate myself in the school
of man's best teacher, Solitude. I do not think I can ever be a
thorough Bohemian again. These lonely wanderings have led me to
discover a vein of seriousness in my nature which I was ignorant of
until now. How thoroughly some men are the creatures of their
surroundings! With Paget I have been a Paget. But a few hours
_tete-a-tete_ with Nature renders one averse from the society of Pagets,
be they never so brilliant."

From moralising thus, I fell into a delicious day-dream. All my dreams
of late had moved to the same music. How happy I could be if Fate gave
me Charlotte and three hundred a year! In sober moods I asked for this
much of worldly wealth, just to furnish a nest for my bird. In my
wilder moments I asked Fate for nothing but Charlotte.

"Give me the bird without the nest," I cried to Fortune; "and we will
take wing to some trackless forest where there are shelter and berries
for nestless birds. We will imitate that delightful bride and
bridegroom of Parisian Bohemia, who married and settled in an attic,
and when their stock of fuel was gone fell foul of the staircase that
led to their bower, and so supplied themselves merrily enough till the
staircase was all consumed, and the poor little bride, peeping out of
her door one morning, found herself upon the verge of an abyss.

"And then came the furious landlord, demanding restitution. But close
behind the landlord came the good fairy of all love-stories, with
Pactolus in her pocket. Ah, yes, there is always a providence for true
lovers."

I had passed away by this time from the barren moor to the regions of
cultivation. The trimly-cut hedges on each side of the way showed me
that my road now lay between farm lands. I was outside the boundary of
some upland farm. I saw sheep cropping trefoil in a field on the other
side of the brown hedgerow, and at a distance I saw the red-tiled roof
of a farm-house.

I looked at my watch, and found that I had still half an hour to spare;
so I went on towards the farm-house, bent upon seeing what sort of
habitation it was. In a solitary landscape like this, every
dwelling-place has a kind of attraction for the wayfarer.

I went on till I came to a white gate, against which a girlish figure
was leaning.

It was a graceful figure, dressed in that semi-picturesque costume
which has been adopted by women of late years. The vivid blue of a
boddice was tempered by the sober gray of a skirt, and a bright-hued
ribbon gleamed among rich tresses of brown hair.

Saba Salman on a living library project showing why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover

The original manuscript of one of the most important American novels of the last century, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, went on display in the UK for the first time yesterday.

Kerouac wrote it in just three weeks, furiously tapping away on his typewriter on 3.6-metre (12ft) reels of paper.

The scroll, of eight reels taped together, was unfurled at the Barber Institute in Birmingham, 50 years after the novel was published in Britain.

"We're very excited," said the exhibition's curator Dick Ellis. He said there had been a lot of competition to get the scroll, which is on something of a world tour. "This is an iconic manuscript. It is a record of the huge effort Kerouac put into composing it."

About six metres of the scroll will be on display in a cabinet and while visitors will have to tilt their heads, Ellis believes they will get a much deeper knowledge of Kerouac.

It comes to Birmingham courtesy of Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts football team, who bought it for $2.4m in 2001. In the published novel, there are paragraph breaks but in the scroll, there are none. Kerouac did not have the time. The exhibition runs until January 28.

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