Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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I had one last brief _tete-a-tete_ with my dear girl while I took the
tracing from the old Bible. She sat watching me, and distracting me
more or less while I worked; and despite the shadow of doubt that has
fallen upon me, I could not be otherwise than happy in her sweet
company.

When I came to the record of Susan Meynell's death, my Charlotte's
manner changed all at once from her accustomed joyousness to a pensive
gravity.

"I was very sorry you spoke of Susan Meynell to uncle Joseph," she
said, thoughtfully.

"But why sorry, my dear?"

I had some vague notion as to the cause of this sorrow; but the
instincts of the chase impelled me to press the subject. Was I not
bound to know every secret in the lives of Matthew Haygarth's
descendants?

"There is a very sad story connected with my aunt Susan--she was my
great-aunt, you know," said Charlotte, with a grave earnest face. "She
went away from home, and there was great sorrow. I cannot talk of the
story, even to you, Valentine, for there seems something sacred in
these painful family secrets. My poor aunt Susan left all her friends,
and died many years afterwards in London."

"She was known to have died unmarried?" I asked. This would be an
important question from George Sheldon's point of sight.

"Yes," Charlotte replied, blushing crimson.

That blush told me a great deal.

"There was some one concerned in this poor lady's sorrow," I said;
"some one to blame for all her unhappiness."

"There was."

"One whom she loved and trusted, perhaps?"

"Whom she loved and trusted only too well. O, Valentine, must not that
be terrible? To confide with all your heart in the person you love, and
to find him base and cruel! If my poor aunt had not believed Montagu
Kingdon to be true and honourable, she would have trusted her friends a
little, instead of trusting so entirely in him. O, Valentine, what am I
telling you? I cannot bear to cast a shadow on the dead."

"My dear love, do you think I cannot pity this injured lady? Do you
think I am likely to play the Pharisee, and be eager to bespatter the
grave of this poor sufferer? I can almost guess the story which you
shrink from telling me--it is one of those sad histories so often
acted, so often told. Your aunt loved a person called Montagu Kingdon--
her superior in station, perhaps?"

I looked at Charlotte as I said this, and her face told me that I had
guessed rightly.

"This Montagu Kingdon admired and loved her," I said. "He seemed eager
to make her his wife, but no doubt imposed secrecy as to his
intentions. She accepted his word as that of a true-hearted lover and a
gentleman, and in the end had bitter reason to repent her confidence.
That is an outline of the story, is it not, Charlotte?"

"I am sure that it was so. I am sure that when she left Newhall she
went away to be married," cried Charlotte, eagerly; "I have seen a
letter that proves it--to me, at least. And yet I have heard even mamma
speak harshly of her--so long dead and gone off the face of this earth--
as if she had deliberately chosen the sad fate which came to her."

"Is it not possible that Mr. Kingdon did marry Miss Meynell, after
all?"

"No," replied Charlotte, very sadly; "there is no hope of that. I have
seen a letter written by my poor aunt years afterwards--a letter that
tells much of the cruel truth; and I have heard that Mr. Kingdon came
back to Yorkshire and married a rich lady during my aunt's lifetime."

"I should like to see that letter," I said, involuntarily.

"Why, Valentine?" asked my darling, looking at me with sorrowful,
wondering eyes, "To me it seems so painful to talk of these things: it
is like reopening an old wound."

"But if the interests of other people require--" I began, in a very
blundering manner.

"Whose interest can be served by my showing you my poor aunt's letter?
It would seem like an act of dishonour to the dead."

What could I say after this--bound hand and foot as I am by my promise
to Sheldon?

After a long talk with my sweet one, I borrowed uncle Joe's dog-cart,
and spun across to Barngrave, where I found the little church, beneath
whose gray old roof Charlotte Meynell plighted her troth to James
Halliday. I took a copy of all entries in the register concerning Mrs.
Meynell Halliday and her children, and then went back to Newhall to
restore the dog-cart, and to take my last Yorkshire tea at the
hospitable old farm-house.

To-morrow I am off to Barlingford, fifteen miles from this village, to
take more copies from registries concerning my sweet young heiress--the
registries of her father's marriage, and her own birth. After that I
think my case will be tolerably complete, and I can present myself to
Sheldon in the guise of a conqueror.

Is it not a great conquest to have made? Is it not almost an act of
chivalry for these prosaic days to go forth into the world as a private
inquirer, and win a hundred thousand pounds for the lady of one's love?
And yet I wish any one rather than my Charlotte were the lineal
descendant of Matthew Haygarth.

_Nov. 10th_. Here I am in London once more, with my Sheldon in
ecstatics, and our affairs progressing marvellously well, as he informs
me; but with that ponderous slowness peculiar to all mortal affairs in
which the authorities of the realm are in any way concerned.

My work is finished. Hawkehurst the genealogist and antiquarian sinks
into Hawkehurst the private individual. I have no more to do but to
mind my own business and await the fruition of time in the shape of my
reward.

Can I accept three thousand pounds for giving my dearest her
birthright? Can I take payment for a service done to her? Surely not:
and, on the other hand, can I continue to woo my sweet one, conscious
that she is the rightful claimant to a great estate? Can I take
advantage of her ignorance, and may it not be said that I traded on my
secret knowledge?

Before leaving Yorkshire, I stole one more day from the Sheldon
business, in order to loiter just a few hours longer in that northern
Arcadia called Newhall farm. What assurance have I that I shall ever
re-enter that pleasant dwelling? What hold have I, a wanderer and
vagabond, on the future which respectable people map out for themselves
with such mathematical precision? And even the respectable people are
sometimes out in their reckoning. To snatch the joys of to-day must
always be the policy of the adventurer. So I took one more happy
afternoon at Newhall. Nor was the afternoon entirely wasted; for, in
the course of my farewell visit, I heard more of poor Susan Meynell's
history from honest uncle Joseph. He told me the story during an
after-dinner walk, in which he took me the round of his pig-styes and
cattle-sheds for the last time, as if he would fain have had them leave
their impress on my heart.

"You may see plenty of cattle in Yorkshire," he remarked, complacently,
"but you won't see many beasts to beat that."

He pointed to a brown and mountainous mass of inert matter, which he
gave me to understand was something in the way of cattle.

"Would you like to see him standing?" he asked, giving the mass a prod
with the handle of his walking-stick, which to my cockney mind seemed
rather cruel, but which, taken from an agricultural point of view, was
no doubt the correct thing. "He _can_ stand. Coom up, Brownie!"

I humbly entreated that the ill-used mass might be allowed to sprawl in
undisturbed misery.

"Thorley!" exclaimed Mr. Mercer, laying his finger significantly
against the side of his unpretending nose.

I had not the faintest comprehension of my revered uncle-in-law's
meaning; but I said, "O, indeed!" with the accents of admiration.

"Thorley's Condiment," said my uncle. "You'll see some fine animate at
the Cattle-show; but if you see a two-year-old ox to beat him, my name
is not Joe Mercer."

After this I had to pay my respects to numerous specimens of the bovine
race, all more or less prostrate under the burden of superabundant
flesh, all seeming to cry aloud for the treatment of some Banting of
the agricultural world.

After we had "done" the cattle-sheds, with heroic resignation on my
part, and with enthusiasm on the part of Mr. Mercer, we went a long way
to see some rarities in the way of mutton, which commodity was to be
found cropping the short grass on a distant upland.

With very little appreciation of the zoological varieties, and with the
consciousness that my dear one was sitting in the farm-house parlour,
wondering at my prolonged absence, this excursion could not be
otherwise than a bore to me. But it was a small thing to sacrifice my
own pleasure for once in a way, when by so doing I might gratify the
kindest of men and of uncles; so I plodded briskly across the fields
with the friendly farmer.

I had my reward; for, in the course of this walk, Mr. Mercer gave me
the history of poor Susan Meynell.

"I didn't care to talk about the story the other night before the young
lass," he said, gravely; "for her heart's so full of pity and
tenderness, pretty dear, that any tale such as that is like to upset
her. But the story's known to almost all the folks in these parts; so
there's no particular reason against my telling it to you. I've heard
my poor mother talk of Susan Meynell many a time. She was a regular
beauty, it seems; prettier than her sister Charlotte, and she was a
pretty woman, as you may guess by looking at _our_ Charlotte, who is
thought the image of her grandmother. But Susan was one of those
beauties that you don't see very often--more like a picture than flesh
and blood. The gentry used to turn round to look at her at Barngrave
church, I've heard my mother say. She was a rare one for dress, too;
for she had a few hundreds left her by her father and mother, who had
both of them been very well-to-do people. The mother was daughter to
William Rand, of Barngrave, a man who farmed above a thousand acres of
his own land; and the father kept a carpet warehouse in
Aldersgate-street."

This information I received with respectful deference, and a
hypocritical assumption of ignorance respecting Miss Meynell's
antecedents.

Mr. Mercer paused to take breath, and then continued the story after
his own rambling fashion.

"Well, my lad, what with her fine dress, and what with her pretty
looks, Susan Meynell seems to have thought a little too much of
herself; so that when Montagu Kingdon, of Kingdon-place, younger
brother to Lord Durnsville, fell in love with her, and courted her--not
exactly openly, but with the knowledge of her sister, Mrs. Halliday--
she thought it no more than natural that he should intend to make her
his wife. Mr. Kingdon was ten years older than Susan, and had served in
Spain, and had not borne too good a character abroad. He had been in a
hard-drinking cavalry regiment, and had spent all his money, and sold
out directly the war was over. There was very little of all this known
down hereabouts, where Mr. Kingdon stood very high, on account of his
being Lord Durnsville's brother. But it was known that he was poor, and
that the Durnsville estates were heavily encumbered into the bargain."

"Then this gentleman would have been no grand match for Miss Meynell,
if--" "If he had married her? No, my lad; and it might have been the
knowledge of his poverty that made Susan and her sister think less of
the difference between his station and the girl's. The two women
favoured him, anyhow; and they kept the secret from James Halliday, who
was a regular upstraight-and-downright kind of fellow, as proud as any
lord in his own way. The secret was kept safe enough for some time, and
Mr. Kingdon was always dropping in at Newhall when Jim was out of the
way; but folks in these parts are very inquisitive, and, lonesome as
our place is, there are plenty of people go by between Monday and
Saturday; so by-and-by it got to be noticed that there was very often a
gentleman's horse standing at Newhall gate, with the bridle tied to one
of the gate-posts; and those that knew anything, knew that the horse
belonged to Montagu Kingdon. A friend of Jim Halliday's told him as
much one day, and warned him that Mr. Kingdon was a scamp, and was said
to have a Spanish wife somewhere beyond seas. This was quite enough for
James Halliday, who flew into a roaring rage at the notion of any man,
most of all Lord Durnsville's brother, going to his house and courting
his sister-in-law in secret. It was at Barngrave he was told this, one
market-day, as he was lounging with his friends in the old yard of the
Black Bull inn, where the corn exchange used to be held in those days.
He called for his horse the next minute, and left the town at a gallop.
When he came to Newhall, he found Montagu Kingdon's chestnut mare tied
to the gate-post, and he found Mr. Kingdon himself, dawdling about the
garden with Miss Meynell."

"And then I suppose there was a scene?" I suggested, with unfeigned
interest in this domestic story.

"Well, I believe there was, my lad. I've heard all about it from my
poor Molly, who had the story from her mother. James Halliday didn't
mince matters; he gave Mr. Kingdon a bit of his mind, in his own rough
outspoken way, and told him it would be the worse for him if he ever
crossed the threshold of Newhall gate again. 'If you meant well by that
foolish girl, you wouldn't come sneaking here behind my back,' he said;
'but you don't mean well by her, and you've a Spanish wife hidden away
somewhere in the Peninsula.' Mr. Kingdon gave the lie to this; but he
said he shouldn't stoop to justify himself to an unmannerly yeoman. 'If
you were a gentleman,' he said, 'you should pay dearly for your
insolence.' 'I'm ready to pay any price you like,' answered James
Halliday, as bold as brass; 'but as you weren't over fond of fighting
abroad, where there was plenty to be got for it, I don't suppose you
want to fight at home, where there's nothing to be got for it.'"

"And did Susan Meynell hear this?" I asked. I could fancy this
ill-fated girl standing by and looking on aghast while hard things
were said to the man she loved, while the silver veil of sweet romance
was plucked so roughly from the countenance of her idol by an angry
rustic's rude hand.

"Well, I don't quite know whether she heard all," answered Mr. Mercer,
thoughtfully. "Of course, James Halliday told his wife all about the
row afterwards. He was very kind to his sister-in-law, in spite of her
having deceived him; and he talked to her very seriously, telling her
all he had heard in Barngrave against Montagu Kingdon. She listened to
him quietly enough, but it was quite clear that she didn't believe a
word he said. 'I know you have heard all that, James,' she said; 'but
the people who said it knew they were not telling the truth. Lord
Durnsville and his brother are not popular in the country, and there
are no falsehoods too cruel for the malice of his enemies.' She
answered him with some such fine speech as that, and when the next
morning came she was gone."

"She eloped with Mr. Kingdon?"

"Yes. She left a letter for her sister, full of romantic stuff about
loving him all the better because people spoke ill of him; regular
woman's talk, you know, bless their poor silly hearts!" murmured Mr.
Mercer, with tender compassion. "She was going to London to be married
to Mr. Kingdon, she wrote. They were to be married at the old church in
the city where she had been christened, and she was going to stay with
an old friend--a young woman who had once been her brother's
sweetheart, and who was married to a butcher in Newgate-market--till
the bans were given out, or the license bought. The butcher's wife had
a country-house out at Edmonton, and it was there Susan was going to
stay."

"All that seemed straightforward enough," said I.

"Yes," replied uncle Joe; "but if Mr. Kingdon had meant fairly by Susan
Meynell, it would have been as easy for him to marry her at Barngrave
as in London. He was as poor as a church mouse, but he was his own
master, and there was no one to prevent him doing just what he pleased.
This is about what James Halliday thought, I suppose; for he tore off
to London, as fast as post-horses could carry him, in pursuit of his
wife's sister and Mr. Kingdon. But though he made inquiries all along
the road he could not hear that they had passed before him, and for the
best of all reasons. He went to the butcher's house at Edmonton; but
there he found no trace of Susan Meynell, except a letter posted in
Yorkshire, on the day of the row between James and Mr. Kingdon, telling
her intention of visiting her old friend within the next few days, and
hinting at an approaching marriage. There was the letter announcing the
visit, but the visitor had not come." "But the existence of that letter
bears witness that Miss Meynell believed in the honesty of her lover's
intentions."

"To be sure it does, poor lass," answered Mr. Mercer pensively. "She
believed in the word of a scoundrel, and she was made to pay dearly for
her simplicity. James Halliday did all he could to find her. He
searched London through, as far as any man can search such a place as
London; but it was no use, and for a very good reason, as I said
before. The end of it was, he was obliged to go back to Newhall no
wiser than when he started."

"And was nothing further ever discovered?" I asked eagerly, for I felt
that this was just one of those family complications from which all
manner of legal difficulties might arise.

"Don't be in a hurry, my lad," answered uncle Joe; "wickedness is sure
to come to light sooner or later. Three years after this poor young
woman ran away there was a drunken groom dismissed from Lord
Durnsville's stable; and what must he needs do but come straight off to
James Halliday, to vent his spite against his master, and perhaps to
curry favour at Newhall. 'You shouldn't have gone to London to look for
the young lady, Muster Halliday,' he said; 'you should have gone the
other way. I know a man as drove Mr. Kingdon and your wife's sister
across country to Hull with two of my lord's own horses, stopping to
bait on the way. They went aboard ship at Hull, Mr. Kingdon and the
young lady--a ship that was bound for foreign parts.' This is what the
groom said; but it was little good knowing it now. There'd been
advertisements in the papers beseeching her to come back; and
everything had been done that could be done, and all to no end. A few
years after this back comes Mr. Kingdon as large as life, married to
some dark-faced, frizzy-haired lady, whose father owned half the
Indies, according to people's talk: but he fought very shy of James
Halliday; but when they did meet one day at the covert side, Jim rode
up to the honourable gentleman and asked him what he had done with
Susan Meynell. Those that saw the meeting say that Montagu Kingdon
turned as white as a ghost when he saw Jim Halliday riding up to him
on his big, raw-boned horse; but nothing came of the quarrel. Mr.
Kingdon did not live many years to enjoy the money his frizzy-haired
West-Indian lady brought him. He died before his brother, Lord
Durnsville, and left neither chick nor child to inherit his money, nor
yet the Durnsville title, which was extinct on the death of the
viscount."

"And what of the poor girl?"

"Ay, poor lass, what of her? It was fourteen years after she left her
home before her sister got so much as a line to say she was in the land
of the living. When a letter did come at last, it was a very melancholy
one. The poor creature wrote to her sister to say she was in London,
alone and penniless, and, as she thought, dying."

"And the sister went to her?"

I remembered that deprecating sentence in the family Bible, written in
a woman's hand.

"That she did, good honest soul, as fast as she could travel, carrying
a full purse along with her. She found poor Susan at an inn near
Aldersgate-street--the old quarter, you see, that she'd known in her
young days. Mrs. Halliday meant to have brought the poor soul back to
Yorkshire, and had settled it all with Jim; but it was too late for
anything of that kind. She found Susan dying, wandering in her mind off
and on, but just able to recognise her sister, and to ask forgiveness
for having trusted to Montagu Kingdon, instead of taking counsel from
those that wished her well."

"Was that all?" I asked presently.

Mr. Mercer made long pauses in the course of his narrative, during
which we walked briskly on; he pondering on those past events, I
languishing for further information.

"Well, lad, that was about all. Where Susan had been in all those
years, or what she had been doing, was more than Mrs. Halliday could
find out. Of late she had been living somewhere abroad. The clothes she
had last worn were of foreign make, very poor and threadbare; and there
was one little box in her room at the inn that had been made at Rouen,
for the name of a Rouen trunkmaker was on the inside of the lid. There
were no letters or papers of any kind in the box; so you see there was
no way of finding out what the poor creature's life had been. All her
sister could do was to stay with her and comfort her to the last, and
to see that she was quietly laid to rest in a decent grave. She was
buried in a quiet little city churchyard, somewhere where there are
green trees among the smoke of the chimney-pots. Montagu Kingdon had
been dead some years when that happened."

"Is that last letter still in existence?" I asked.

"Yes; my first wife kept it with the rest of her family letters and
papers. Dorothy takes care of them now. We country folks set store by
those sort of things, you know."

I would fain have asked Mr. Mercer to let me see this last letter
written by Susan Meynell; but what excuse could I devise for so doing?
I was completely fettered by my promise to George Sheldon, and could
offer no reasonable pretence for my curiosity.

There was one point which I was bound to push home in the interests of
my Sheldon, or, shall I not rather say, of my Charlotte? That
all-important point was the question of marriage or no marriage. "You
feel quite clear as to the fact that Montagu Kingdon never did marry
this young woman?" I said.

"Well, yes," replied uncle Joe; "that was proved beyond doubt, I'm
sorry to say. Mr. Kingdon never could have dared to come back here with
his West-Indian wife in poor Susan Meynell's lifetime if he had really
married her."

"And how about the lady he was said to have married in Spain?"

"I can't say anything about that. It may have been only a scandal, or,
if there was a marriage, it may have been illegal. The Kingdons were
Protestants, and the Spaniards are all papists, I suppose. A marriage
between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic wouldn't be binding."

"Not upon such a man as this Kingdon."

It seems more than probable that the opinion arrived at by this poor
soul's friends must be correct, and that Montagu Kingdon was a
scoundrel. But how about Susan Meynell's after-life?--the fourteen
years in which she was lost sight of? May she not have married some one
else than Mr. Kingdon? and may she not have left heirs who will arise
in the future to dispute my darling's claim?

Is it a good thing to have a great inheritance? The day has been when
such a question as that could not by any possibility have shaped itself
in my mind. Ah! what is this subtle power called love, which worketh
such wondrous changes in the human heart? Surely the miracle of the
cleansed leper is in some manner typical of this transformation. The
emanation of divine purity encircled the leper with its supernal
warmth, and the scales fell away beneath that mysterious influence. And
so from the pure heart of a woman issues a celestial fire which burns
the plague-spot out of the sinner's breast. Ah, how I languish to be at
my darling's feet, thanking her for the cure she has wrought!

I have given my Sheldon the story of Susan Meynell's life, as I had it
from uncle Joseph. He agrees with me as to the importance of Susan's
last letter, but even that astute creature does not see a way to
getting the document in his hands without letting Mr. Mercer more or
less into our secret.

"I might tell this man Mercer some story about a little bit of money
coming to his niece, and get at Susan Meynell's letter that way," he
said; "but whatever I told him would be sure to get round to Philip
somehow or other, and I don't want to put him on the scent."

My Sheldon's legal mind more than ever inclines to caution, now that he
knows the heiress of the Haygarths is so nearly allied to his brother
Philip.

"I'll tell you what it is, Hawkehurst," he said to me, after we had
discussed the business in all its bearings, "there are not many people
I'm afraid of, but I don't mind owning to you that I am afraid of my
brother Phil. He has always walked over my head; partly because he can
wear his shirt-front all through business hours without creasing it,
which I can't, and partly because he's--well--more unscrupulous than I
am."

He paused meditatively, and I too was meditative; for I could not
choose but wonder what it was to be more unscrupulous than George
Sheldon.

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