Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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"That is your idea, Charlotte; but, you see, I am very unlike you. I am
fitful and capricious. I used to like Mr. Hawkehurst, and now I dislike
him. As to offence, his whole life has offended me, just as my father's
life has offended me, from first to last. I am not good and amiable and
loving, like you; but I hate deceptions and lies; above all, the lies
that some men traffic in day after day."

"Was Valentine's--was your father's life a very bad one?" Charlotte
asked, trembling palpably, and looking up at Miss Paget's face with
anxious eyes.

"Yes, it was a mean false life,--a life of trick and artifice. I do not
know the details of the schemes by which my father and Valentine earned
their daily bread--and my daily bread; but I know they inflicted loss
upon other people. Whether the wrong done was always done deliberately
and consciously upon Valentine's part, I cannot say. He may have been
only a tool of my father's. I hope he was, for the most part an
unconscious tool."

She said all this in a dreamy way, as if uttering her own thoughts,
rather than seeking to enlighten Charlotte.

"I am sure he was an unconscious tool," cried that young lady, with an
air of conviction; "it is not in his nature to do anything false or
dishonourable."

"Indeed! you know him very well, it seems," said Diana.

Ah, what a tempest was raging in that proud passionate heart! what a
strife between the powers of good and evil! Pitying love for Charlotte;
tender compassion for her rival's childlike helplessness; and
unutterable sense of her own loss.

She had loved him so dearly, and he was taken from her. There had been
a time when he almost loved her--almost! Yes, it was the remembrance of
that which made the trial so bitter. The cup had approached her lips,
only to be dashed away for ever.

"What did I ask in life except his love?" she said to herself. "Of all
the pleasures and triumphs which girls of my age enjoy, is there one
that I ever envied? No, I only sighed for his love. To live in a
lodging-house parlour with him, to sit by and watch him at his work, to
drudge for him, to bear with him--this was my brightest dream of
earthly bliss; and she has broken it!"

It was thus Diana argued with herself, as she sat looking down at the
bright creature who had done her this worst, last wrong which one woman
can do to another. This passionate heart, which ached with such cruel
pain, was prone to evil, and to-day the scorpion Jealousy was digging
his sharp tooth into its very core. It was not possible for Diana Paget
to feel kindly disposed towards the girl whose unconscious hand had
shattered the airy castle of her dreams. Was it not a hard thing that
the bright creature, whom every one was ready to adore, must needs
steal away this one heart?

"It has always been like this," thought Diana. "The story of David and
Nathan is a parable that is perpetually being illustrated. David is so
rich--he is lord of incalculable flocks and herds; but he will not be
content till he has stolen the one little ewe lamb, the poor man's pet
and darling."

"Diana," said Miss Halliday very softly, "you are so difficult to talk
to this morning, and I have so much to say to you."

"About your visit, or about Mr. Hawkehurst?"

"About--Yorkshire," answered Charlotte, with the air of a shy child who
has made her appearance at dessert, and is asked whether she will have
a pear or a peach.

"About Yorkshire!" repeated Miss Paget, with a little sigh of relief.
"I shall be very glad to hear about your Yorkshire friends. Was the
visit a pleasant one?"

"Very, very pleasant!" answered Charlotte, dwelling tenderly on the
words.

"How sentimental you have grown, Lotta! I think you must have found a
forgotten shelf of Minerva Press novels in some cupboard at your
aunt's. You have lost all your vivacity."

"Have I?" murmured Charlotte; "and yet I am happier than I was when I
went away. Whom do you think I met at Newhall, Di?"

"I have not the slightest idea. My notions of Yorkshire are very vague.
I fancy the people amiable savages; just a little in advance of the
ancient Britons whom Julius Caesar came over to conquer. Whom did you
meet there? Some country squire, I suppose, who fell in love with your
bright eyes, and wished you to waste the rest of your existence in
those northern wilds."

Miss Paget was not a woman to bare her wounds for the scrutiny of the
friendliest eyes. Let the tooth of the serpent bite never so keenly,
she could meet her sorrows with a bold front. Was she not accustomed to
suffer--she, the scapegoat of defrauded nurses and indignant
landladies, the dependent and drudge of her kinswoman's gynaeceum, the
despised of her father? The flavour of these waters was very familiar
to her lips. The draught was only a little more acrid, a little deeper,
and habit had enabled her to drain the cup without complaining, if not
in a spirit of resignation. To-day she had been betrayed into a brief
outbreak of passion; but the storm had passed, and a more observant
person than Charlotte might have been deceived by her manner.

"Now you are my own Di again," cried Miss Halliday; somewhat cynical
at the best of times, but always candid and true.

Miss Paget winced ever so little as her friend said this.

"No, dear," continued Charlotte, with the faintest spice of coquetry;
"it was not a Yorkshire squire. It was a person you know very well; a
person we have been talking of this morning. O, Di, you must surely
have understood me when I said I wanted you to like him for my sake!"

"Valentine Hawkehurst!" exclaimed Diana.

"Who else, you dear obtuse Di!"

"He was in Yorkshire?"

"Yes, dear. It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened. He
marched up to Newhall gate one morning in the course of his rambles,
without having the least idea that I was to be found in the
neighbourhood. Wasn't it wonderful?"

"What could have taken him to Yorkshire?"

"He came on business."

"But what business?"

"How do I know? Some business of papa's, or of George Sheldon's,
perhaps. And yet that can't be. He is writing a book, I think, about
geology or archaeology--yes, that's it, archaeology."

"Valentine Hawkehurst writing a book on archaeology!" cried Miss Paget.
"You must be dreaming, Charlotte."

"Why so? He does write, does he not?"

"He has been reporter for a newspaper. But he is the last person to
write about archaeology. I think there must be some mistake."

"Well, dear, it may be so. I didn't pay much attention to what he said
about business. It seemed so strange for him to be there, just as much
at home as if he had been one of the family. O, Di, you can't imagine
how kind aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe were to him! They like him so much
--and they know we are engaged."

Miss Halliday said these last words almost in a whisper.

"What!" exclaimed Diana, "do you mean to say that you have promised to
marry this man, of whom you know nothing but what is unfavourable?"

"What do I know in his disfavour? Ah, Diana, how unkind you are! and
what a dislike you must have for poor Valentine! Of course, I know he
is not what people call a good match. A good match means that one is to
have a pair of horses, whose health is so uncertain that I am sure
their lives must be a burden to them, if we may judge by our horses;
and a great many servants, who are always conducting themselves in the
most awful manner, if poor mamma's experience is any criterion; and a
big expensive house, which nobody can be prevailed on to dust. No, Di!
that is just the kind of life I hate. What I should like is a dear
little cottage at Highgate or Wimbledon, and a tiny, tiny garden, in
which Valentine and I could walk every morning before he began his
day's work, and where we could drink tea together on summer evenings--a
garden just large enough to grow a few rose-bushes. O. Di! do you think
I want to marry a rich man?"

"No, Charlotte; but I should think you would like to marry a good man."

"Valentine is good. No one but a good man could have been so happy as
he seemed at Newhall farm. That simple country life could not have been
happiness for a bad man."

"And was Valentine Hawkehurst really happy at Newhall?"

"Really--really--really! Don't try to shake my faith in him, Diana; it
is not to be shaken. He has told me a little about the past, though I
can see that it pains him very much to speak of it. He has told me of
his friendless youth, spent amongst unprincipled people, and what a
mere waif and stray he was until he met me. And I am to be his
pole-star, dear, to guide him in the right path. Do you know, Di, I
cannot picture to myself anything sweeter than that--to be a good
influence for the person one loves. Valentine says his whole nature has
undergone a change since he has known me. What am I that I should work
so good a change in my dear one? It is very foolish, is it not, Di?"

"Yes, Charlotte," replied the voice of reason from the lips of Miss
Paget; "it is all foolishness from beginning to end, and I can foresee
nothing but trouble as the result of such folly. What will your mamma
say to such an engagement? or what will Mr. Sheldon say?"

"Yes, that is the question," returned Charlotte, very seriously. "Dear
mamma is one of the kindest creatures in the world, and I'm sure she
would consent to anything rather than see me unhappy. And then, you
know, she likes Valentine very much, because he has given her orders
for the theatres, and all that kind of thing. But, whatever mamma
thinks, she will be governed by what Mr. Sheldon thinks; and of course
he will be against our marriage."

"Our marriage!" It was a settled matter, then--a thing that was to be
sooner or later; and there remained only the question as to how and
when it was to be. Diana sat like a statue, enduring her pain. So may
have suffered the Christian martyrs in their death-agony; so suffers a
woman when the one dear hope of her life is reft from her, and she dare
not cry aloud.

"Mr. Sheldon is the last man in the world to permit such a marriage,"
she said presently.

"Perhaps," replied Charlotte; "but I am not going to sacrifice
Valentine for Mr. Sheldon's pleasure. Mr. Sheldon has full power over
mamma and her fortune, but he has no real authority where I am
concerned. I am as free as air, Diana, and I have not a penny in the
world. Is not that delightful?"

The girl asked this question in all good faith, looking up at her
friend with a radiant countenance. What irony there was in the question
for Diana Paget, whose whole existence had been poisoned by the lack of
that sterling coin of the realm which seemed such sordid dross in the
eyes of Charlotte!

"What do you mean, Charlotte?"

"I mean, that even his worst enemies cannot accuse Valentine of any
mercenary feeling. He does not ask me to marry him for the sake of my
fortune."

"Does he know your real position?"

"Most fully. And now, Diana, tell me that you will try to like him, for
my sake, and that you will be kind, and will speak a good word for me
to mamma by-and-by, when I have told her all."

"When do you mean to tell her?"

"Directly--or almost directly. I scarcely know how to set about it. I
am sure it has been hard enough to tell you."

"My poor Charlotte! What an ungrateful wretch I must be!"

"My dear Diana, you have no reason to be grateful. I love you very
dearly, and I could not live in this house without you. It is I who
have reason to be grateful, when I remember how you bear with mamma's
fidgety ways, and with Mr. Sheldon's gloomy temper, and all for love of
me."

"Yes, Lotta, for love of you," Miss Paget answered, with a sigh; "and I
will do more than that for love of you."

She had her arm round her happy rival's beautiful head, and she was
looking down at the sweet upturned face with supreme tenderness. She
felt no anger against this fair enslaver, who had robbed her of her
little lamb. She only felt some touch of anger against the Providence
which had decreed that the lamb should be so taken.

No suspicion of her friend's secret entered Charlotte Halliday's mind.
In all their intercourse Diana had spoken very little of Valentine; and
in the little she had said there had been always the same half-bitter,
half-disdainful tone. Charlotte, in her simple candour, accepted this
tone as the evidence of Miss Paget's aversion to her father's
_protege_.

"Poor Di does not like to see her father give so much of his friendship
to a stranger while she is neglected," thought Miss Halliday; and
having once jumped at this conclusion, she made no further effort to
penetrate the mysteries of Diana's mind.

She was less than ever inclined to speculation about Diana's feelings
now that she was in love, and blest with the sweet consciousness that
her love was returned. Tender and affectionate as she was, she could
not quite escape that taint of egotism which is the ruling vice of
fortunate lovers. Her mind was not wide enough to hold much more than
one image, which demanded so large a space.

CHAPTER II.

MRS. SHELDON ACCEPTS HER DESTINY.

Miss Halliday had an interview with her mother that evening in Mrs.
Sheldon's dressing-room, while that lady was preparing for rest, with
considerable elaboration of detail in the way of hair-brushing, and
putting away of neck-ribbons and collars and trinkets in smart little
boxes and handy little drawers, all more or less odorous from the
presence of dainty satin-covered sachets. The sachets, and the drawers,
and boxes, and trinkets were Mrs. Sheldon's best anchorage in this
world. Such things as these were the things that made life worth
endurance for this poor weak little woman; and they were more real to
her than her daughter, because more easy to realise. The beautiful
light-hearted girl was a being whose existence had been always
something of a problem for Georgina Sheldon. She loved her after her
own feeble fashion, and would have jealously asserted her superiority
over every other daughter in the universe; but the power to understand
her or to sympathise with her had not been given to that narrow mind.
The only way in which Mrs. Sheldon's affection showed itself was
unquestioning indulgence and the bestowal of frivolous gifts, chosen
with no special regard to Charlotte's requirements, but rather because
they happened to catch Mrs. Sheldon's eye as they glittered or sparkled
in the windows of Bayswater repositories.

Mr. Sheldon happened to be dining out on this particular evening. He
was a guest at a great City feast, to which some of the richest men
upon 'Change had been bidden; so Miss Halliday had an excellent
opportunity for making her confession.

Poor Georgy was not a little startled by the avowal.

"My darling Lotta!" she screamed, "do you think your papa would ever
consent to such a thing?"

"I think my dear father would have consented to anything likely to
secure my happiness, mamma," the girl answered sadly.

She was thinking how different this crisis in her life would have
seemed if the father she had loved so dearly had been spared to counsel
her.

"I was not thinking of my poor dear first husband," said Georgy. This
numbering of her husbands was always unpleasant to Charlotte. It seemed
such a very business-like mode of description to be applied to the
father she so deeply regretted. I was thinking of your step-papa,"
continued Mrs. Sheldon.

"He would never consent to your marrying Mr. Hawkehurst, who really
seems to have nothing to recommend him except his good looks and an
obliging disposition with regard to orders for the theatres."

"I am not bound to consult my stepfather's wishes. I only want to
please you, mamma."

"But, my dear, I cannot possibly consent to anything that Mr. Sheldon
disapproves."

"O, mamma, dear kind mamma, do have an opinion of your own for once in
a way! I daresay Mr. Sheldon is the best possible judge of everything
connected with the Stock Exchange and the money-market; but don't let
him choose a husband for me. Let me have your approval, mamma, and I
care for no one else. I don't want to marry against your will. But I am
sure you like Mr. Hawkehurst."

Mrs. Sheldon shook her head despondingly.

"It's all very well to like an agreeable young man as an occasional
visitor," she said, "especially when most of one's visitors are
middle-aged City people. But it is a very different thing when one's
only daughter talks of marrying him. I can't imagine what can have put
such an idea as marriage into your head. It is only a few months since
you came home from school; and I fancied that you would have stopped
with me for years before you thought of settling."

Miss Halliday made a wry face.

"Dear mamma," she said, "I don't want to 'settle.' That is what one's
housemaid says, isn't it, when she talks of leaving service and
marrying some young man from the baker's or the grocer's? Valentine and
I are not in a hurry to be married. I am sure, for my own part, I don't
care how long our engagement lasts. I only wish to be quite candid and
truthful with you, mamma; and I thought it a kind of duty to tell you
that he loves me, and that--I love him--very dearly."

These last words were spoken with extreme shyness.

Mrs. Sheldon laid down her hair-brushes while she contemplated her
daughter's blushing face. Those blushes had become quite a chronic
affection with Miss Halliday of late.

"But, good gracious me, Charlotte," she exclaimed, growing peevish in
her sense of helplessness, "who is to tell Mr. Sheldon?"

"There is no necessity for Mr. Sheldon to be enlightened yet awhile,
mamma. It is to you I owe duty and obedience--not to him. Pray keep my
secret, kindest and most indulgent of mothers, and--and ask Valentine
to come and see you now and then."

"Ask him to come and see me, Charlotte! You must know very well that I
never invite any one to dinner except at Mr. Sheldon's wish. I am sure
I quite tremble at the idea of a dinner. There is such trouble about
the waiting, and such dreadful uncertainty about the cooking. And if
one has it all done by Birch's people, one's cook gives warning next
morning," added poor Georgy, with a dismal recollection of recent
perplexities. "I am sure I often wish myself young again, in the dairy
at Hyley farm, making matrimony cakes for a tea-party, with a ring and
a fourpenny-piece hidden in the middle. I'm sure the Hyley tea-parties
were pleasanter than Mr. Sheldon's dinners, with those solemn City
people, who can't exist without clear turtle and red mullet."

"Ah, mother dear, our lives were altogether happier in those days. I
delight in the Yorkshire tea-parties, and the matrimony cakes, and all
the talk and laughter about the fourpenny-piece and the ring. I
remember getting the fourpenny-piece at Newhall last year. And that
means that one is to die an old maid, you know. And now I am engaged.
As to the dinners, mamma, Mr. Sheldon may keep them all for himself and
his City friends. Valentine is the last person in the world to care for
clear turtle. If you will let him drop in sometimes of an afternoon--
say once a week or so--when you, and I, and Diana are sitting at our
work in the drawing-room, and if you will let him hand us our cups at
our five-o'clock tea, he will be the happiest of men. He adores tea.
You'll let him come, won't you, dear? O, mamma, I feel just like a
servant who asks to be allowed to see her 'young man.' Will you let my
'young man' come to tea once in a way?"

"Well, Charlotte, I'm sure I don't know," said Mrs. Sheldon, with
increasing helplessness. "It's really a very dreadful position for me
to be placed in."

"Quite appalling, is it not, mamma? But then I suppose it is a position
that people afflicted with daughters must come to sooner or later."

"If it were the mere civility of asking him to tea," pursued poor
Georgy, heedless of this flippant interruption, "I'm sure I should be
the last to make any objection. Indeed, I am under a kind of obligation
to Mr. Hawkehurst, for his polite attention has enabled us to go to the
theatres very often when your papa would not have thought of buying
tickets. But then, you see, Lotta, the question in point is not his
coming to our five-o'clock tea--which seems really a perfect mockery to
any one brought up in Yorkshire--but whether you are to be engaged to
him."

"Dear mamma, _that_ is not a question at all, for I am already engaged
to him."

"But, Charlotte--"

"I do not think I could bring myself to disobey you, dear mother,"
continued the girl tenderly; "and if you tell me, of your own free
will, and acting on your conviction, that I am not to marry him, I must
bow my head to your decision, however hard it may seem. But one thing
is quite certain, mamma: I have given my promise to Valentine; and if I
do not marry him, I shall never marry at all; and then the dreadful
augury of the fourpenny-piece will be verified."

Miss Halliday pronounced this determination with a decision of manner
that quite overawed her mother. It had been the habit of Georgy's mind
to make a feeble protest against all the mutations of life, but in the
end to submit very quietly to the inevitable; and since Valentine
Hawkehurst's acceptance as Charlotte's future husband seemed
inevitable, she was fain to submit in this instance also.

Valentine was allowed to call at the Lawn, and was received with a
feeble, half-plaintive graciousness by the lady of the house. He was
invited to stop for the five-o'clock tea, and availed himself
rapturously of this delightful privilege. His instinct told him what
gentle hand had made the meal so dainty and home-like, and for whose
pleasure the phantasmal pieces of bread-and-butter usually supplied by
the trim parlour-maid had given place to a salver loaded with innocent
delicacies in the way of pound-cake and apricot jam.

Mr. Hawkehurst did his uttermost to deserve so much indulgence. He
scoured London in search of free admissions for the theatres, hunting
"Ragamuffins" and members of the Cibber Club, and other privileged
creatures, at all their places of resort. He watched for the advent of
novels adapted to Georgy's capacity--lively records of croquet and
dressing and love-making, from smart young Amazons in the literary
ranks, or deeply interesting romances of the sensation school, with at
least nine deaths in the three volumes, and a comic housemaid, or a
contumacious "Buttons," to relieve the gloom by their playful
waggeries. He read Tennyson or Owen Meredith, or carefully selected
"bits" from the works of a younger and wilder bard, while the ladies
worked industriously at their prie-dieu chairs, or Berlin brioches, or
Shetland couvrepieds, as the case might be. The patroness of a fancy
fair would scarcely have smiled approvingly on the novel effects in
_crochet a tricoter_ produced by Miss Halliday during these pleasant
lectures.

"The rows will come wrong," she said piteously, "and Tennyson's poetry
is so very absorbing!"

Mr. Hawkehurst showed himself to be possessed of honourable, not to say
delicate, feelings in his new position. The gothic villa was his
paradise, and the gates had been freely opened to admit him whensoever
he chose to come. Georgy was just the sort of person from whom people
take ells after having asked for inches; and once having admitted Mr.
Hawkehurst as a privileged guest, she would have found it very
difficult to place any restriction upon the number of his visits.
Happily for this much-perplexed matron, Charlotte and her lover were
strictly honourable. Mr. Hawkehurst never made his appearance at the
villa more than once in the same week, though the "once a week or so"
asked for by Charlotte might have been stretched to a wider
significance.

When Valentine obtained orders for the theatre, he sent them by post,
scrupulously refraining from making them the excuse for a visit.

"That was all very well when I was a freebooter," he said to himself,
"only admitted on sufferance, and liable to have the door shut in my
face any morning. But I am trusted now, and I must prove myself worthy
of my future mother-in-law's confidence. Once a week! One seventh day
of unspeakable happiness--bliss without alloy! The six other days are
very long and dreary. But then they are only the lustreless setting in
which that jewel the seventh shines so gloriously. Now, if I were
Waller, what verses I would sing about my love! Alas, I am only a
commonplace young man, and can find no new words in which to tell the
old sweet story!"

If the orders for stalls and private boxes were not allowed to serve as
an excuse for visits, they at least necessitated the writing of
letters; and no human being, except a lover, would have been able to
understand why such long letters must needs be written about such a
very small business. The letters secured replies; and when the order
sent was for a box, Mr. Hawkehurst was generally invited to occupy a
seat in it. Ah, what did it matter on those happy nights how hackneyed
the plot of the play, how bald the dialogue, how indifferent the
acting! It was all alike delightful to those two spectators: for a
light that shone neither on earth nor sky brightened everything they
looked on when they sat side by side.

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