Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37

And during all these pleasant afternoons at the villa, or evenings at
the theatre, Diana Paget had to sit by and witness the happiness which
she had dreamed might some day be hers. It was a part of her duty to be
present on these occasions, and she performed that duty punctiliously.
She might have made excuses for absenting herself, but she was too
proud to make any such excuses.

"Am I such a coward as to tell a lie in order to avoid a little pain
more or less? If I say I have a headache, and stay in my own room while
he is here, will the afternoon seem any more pleasant or any shorter to
me? The utmost difference would be the difference between a dull pain
and a sharp pain; and I think the sharper agony is easier to bear."
Having argued with herself thus, Miss Paget endured her weekly
martyrdom with Spartan fortitude.

"What have I lost?" she said to herself, as she stole a furtive glance
now and then at the familiar face of her old companion. "What is this
treasure, the loss of which makes me seem to myself such an abject
wretch? Only the love of a man who at his best is not worthy of this
girl's pure affection, and at his worst must have been unworthy even of
mine. But then at his worst he is dearer to me than the best man who
ever lived upon this earth."

CHAPTER III.

MR. HAWKEHURST AND MR. GEORGE SHELDON COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING.

There was no such thing as idleness for Valentine Hawkehurst during
these happy days of his courtship. The world was his oyster, and that
oyster was yet unopened. For some years he had been hacking and hewing
the shell thereof with the sword of the freebooter, to very little
advantageous effect. He now set himself seriously to work with the
pickaxe of the steady-going labourer. He was a secessionist from the
great army of adventurers. He wanted to enrol himself in the ranks of
the respectable, the plodders, the ratepayers, the simple citizens who
love their wives and children, and go to their parish church on
Sundays. He had an incentive to steady industry, which had hitherto
been wanting in his life. He was beloved, and any shame that came to
him would be a still more bitter humiliation for the woman who loved
him.

He felt that the very first step in the difficult path of
respectability would be a step that must separate him from Captain
Paget; but just now separation from that gentleman seemed scarcely
advisable. If there was any mischief in that Ullerton expedition, any
collusion between the Captain and the Reverend Goodge, it would
assuredly be well for Valentine to continue a mode of life which
enabled him to be tolerably well informed as to the movements of the
slippery Horatio. In all the outside positions of life expedience must
ever be the governing principle, and expedience forbade any immediate
break with Captain Paget.

"Whatever you do, keep your eye upon the Captain," said George Sheldon,
in one of many interviews, all bearing upon the Haygarth succession.
"If there is any underhand work going on between him and Philip, you
must be uncommonly slow of perception if you can't ferret it out. I'm
very sorry you met Charlotte Halliday in the north, for of course Phil
must have heard of your appearance in Yorkshire, and that will set him
wondering at any rate, especially as lie will no doubt have heard the
Dorking story from Paget. He pretended he saw you leave town the day
you went to Ullerton, but I am half inclined to believe that was only a
trap."

"I don't think Mr. Sheldon has heard of my appearance in Yorkshire
yet."

"Indeed! Miss Charlotte doesn't care to make a confidant of her
stepfather, I suppose. Keep her in that mind, Hawkehurst. If you play
your cards well, you ought to be able to get her to marry you on the
quiet." "I don't think that would be possible. In fact, I am sure
Charlotte would not marry without her mother's consent," answered
Valentine, thoughtfully.

"And of course that means my brother Philip's consent," exclaimed
George Sheldon, with contemptuous impatience. "What a slow, bungling
fellow you are, Hawkehurst! Here is an immense fortune waiting for you,
and a pretty girl in love with you, and you dawdle and deliberate as if
you were going to the dentist's to have a tooth drawn. You've fallen
into a position that any man in London might envy, and you don't seem
to have the smallest capability of appreciating your good luck."

"Well, perhaps I am rather slow to realise the idea of my good
fortune," answered Valentine, still very thoughtfully. "You see, in the
first place, I can't get over a shadowy kind of feeling with regard to
that Haygarthian fortune. It is too far away from my grasp, too large,
too much of the stuff that dreams and novels are made of. And, in the
second place, I love Miss Halliday so fondly and so truly that I don't
like the notion of making my marriage with her any part of the bargain
between you and me."

Mr. Sheldon contemplated his confederate with unmitigated disdain.
"Don't try that sort of thing with me, Hawkehurst," he said; "that
sentimental dodge may answer very well with some men, but I'm about the
last to be taken in by it. You are playing fast-and-loose with me, and
you want to throw me over--as my brother Phil would throw me over, if
he got the chance."

"I am not playing fast-and-loose with you," replied Valentine, too
disdainful of Mr. Sheldon for indignation. "I have worked for you
faithfully, and kept your secret honourably, when I had every
temptation to reveal it. You drove your bargain with me, and I have
performed my share of the bargain to the letter. But if you think I am
going to drive a bargain with you about my marriage with Miss Halliday,
you are very much mistaken. That lady will marry me when she pleases,
but she shall not be entrapped into a clandestine marriage for your
convenience." "O, that's your ultimatum, is it, Mr. Joseph Surface?"
said the lawyer, biting his nails fiercely, and looking askant at his
ally, with angry eyes. "I wonder you don't wind up by saying that the
man who could trade upon a virtuous woman's affection for the
advancement of his fortune, deserves to--get it hot, as our modern
slang has it. Then I am to understand that you decline to precipitate
matters?"

"I most certainly do."

"And the Haygarth business is to remain in abeyance while Miss Halliday
goes through the tedious formula of a sentimental courtship?"

"I suppose so."

"Humph! that's pleasant for me."

"Why should you make the advancement of Miss Halliday's claims
contingent on her marriage? Why not assert her rights at once?"

"Because I will not trust my brother Philip. The day that you show me
the certificate of your marriage with Charlotte Halliday is the day on
which I shall make my first move in this business. I told you the other
day that I would rather make a bargain with you than with my brother."

"And what kind of bargain do you expect to make with me when Miss
Halliday is my wife?"

"I'll tell you, Valentine Hawkehurst," replied the lawyer, squaring his
elbows upon his desk in his favourite attitude, and looking across the
table at his coadjutor; "I like to be open and above-board when I can,
and I'll be plain with you in this matter. I want a clear half of John
Haygarth's fortune, and I think that I've a very fair claim to that
amount. The money can only be obtained by means of the documents in my
possession, and but for me that money might have remained till doomsday
unclaimed and unthought of by the descendant of Matthew Haygarth. Look
at it which way you will, I think you'll allow that my demand is a just
one."

"I don't say that it is unjust, though it certainly seems a little
extortionate," replied Valentine. "However, if Charlotte were my wife,
and were willing to cede half the fortune, I'm not the man to dispute
the amount of your reward. When the time comes for bargain-driving,
you'll not find me a difficult person to deal with.

"And when may I expect your marriage with Miss Halliday?" asked George
Sheldon, rapping his hard finger-nails upon the table with suppressed
impatience. "Since you elect to conduct matters in the grand style, and
must wait for mamma's consent and papa's consent, and goodness knows
what else in the way of absurdity, I suppose the delay will be for an
indefinite space of time." "I don't know about that. I'm not likely to
put off the hour in which I shall call that dear girl my own. I asked
her to be my wife before I knew that she had the blood of Matthew
Haygarth in her veins, and the knowledge of her claim to this fortune
does not make her one whit the dearer to me, penniless adventurer as I
am. If poetry were at all in your line, Mr. Sheldon, you might know
that a man's love for a good woman is generally better than himself. He
may be a knave and a scoundrel, and yet his love for that one perfect
creature may be almost as pure and perfect as herself. That's a
psychological mystery out of the way of Gray's Inn, isn't it?"

"If you'll oblige me by talking common sense for about five minutes,
you may devote your powerful intellect to the consideration of
psychological mysteries for a month at a stretch," exclaimed the
aggravated lawyer.

"O, don't you see how I struggle to be hard-headed and practical!"
cried Valentine; "but a man who is over head and ears in love finds it
rather hard to bring all his ideas to the one infallible grindstone.
You ask me when I am to marry Charlotte Halliday. To-morrow, if our
Fates smile upon us. Mrs. Sheldon knows of our engagement, and consents
to it, but in some manner under protest. I am not to take my dear girl
away from her mother for some time to come. The engagement is to be a
long one. In the mean time I am working hard to gain some kind of
position in literature, for I want to be sure of an income before I
marry, without reference to John Haygarth; and I am a privileged guest
at the villa."

"But my brother Phil has been told nothing?"

"As yet nothing. My visits are paid while he is in the City; and as I
often went to the villa before my engagement, he is not likely to
suspect anything when he happens to hear my name mentioned as a
visitor."

"And do you really think he is in the dark--my brother Philip, who can
turn a man's brains inside out in half an hour's conversation? Mark my
words, Valentine Hawkehurst, that man is only playing with you as a cat
plays with a mouse. He used to see you and Charlotte together before
you went to Yorkshire, and he must have seen the state of the case
quite as plainly as I saw it. He has heard of your visits to the villa
since your return, and has kept a close account of them, and made his
own deductions, depend upon it. And some day, while you and pretty Miss
Charlotte are enjoying your fool's paradise, he will pounce upon you
just as puss pounces on poor mousy."

This was rather alarming, and Valentine felt that it was very likely to
be correct.

"Mr. Sheldon may play the part of puss as he pleases," he replied after
a brief pause for deliberation; "this is a case in which he dare not
show his claws. He has no authority to control Miss Halliday's
actions."

"Perhaps not, but he would find means for preventing her marriage if it
was to his interest to do so. He is not _your_ brother, you see, Mr.
Hawkehurst; but he is mine, and I know a good deal about him. His
interest may not be concerned in hindering his stepdaughter's marriage
with a penniless scapegrace. He may possibly prefer such a bridegroom
as less likely to make himself obnoxious by putting awkward questions
about poor Tom Halliday's money, every sixpence of which he means to
keep, of course. If his cards are packed for that kind of marriage,
he'll welcome you to his arms as a son-in-law, and give you his
benediction as well as his stepdaughter. So I think if you can contrive
to inform him of your engagement, without letting him know of your
visit to Yorkshire, it might be a stroke of diplomacy. He might be glad
to get rid of the girl, and might hasten on the marriage of his own
volition."

"He might be glad to get rid of the girl." In the ears of Valentine
Hawkehurst this sounded rank blasphemy. Could there be any one upon
this earth, even a Sheldon, incapable of appreciating the privilege of
that divine creature's presence?

CHAPTER IV.

MR. SHELDON IS PROPITIOUS

It was not very long before Valentine Hawkehurst had reason to respect
the wisdom of his legal patron. Within a few days of his interview with
George Sheldon he paid his weekly visit to the villa. Things were going
very well with him, and life altogether seemed brighter than he had
ever hoped to find it. He had set himself steadily to work to win some
kind of position in literature. He devoted his days to diligent study
in the reading-room of the British Museum, his nights to writing for
the magazines. His acquaintance with press-men had stood him in good
stead; and already he had secured the prompt acceptance of his work in
more than one direction. The young _litterateur_ of the present day has
not such a very hard fight for a livelihood, if his pen has only a
certain lightness and dash, a rattling vivacity and airy grace. It is
only the marvellous boys who come to London with epic poems, Anglo-Saxon
tragedies, or metaphysical treatises in their portmanteaus, who must
needs perish in their prime, or stoop to the drudgery of office or
counting-house.

Valentine Hawkehurst had no vague yearnings after the fame of a Milton,
no inner consciousness that he had been born to stamp out the
footprints of Shakespeare on the sands of time, no unhealthy hungering
after the gloomy grandeur of Byron. He had been brought up amongst
people who treated literature as a trade as well as an art;--and what
art is not more or less a trade? He knew the state of the market, and
what kind of goods were likely to go off briskly, and it was for the
market he worked. When gray shirtings were in active demand, he set his
loom for gray shirtings; and when the buyers clamoured for fancy goods,
he made haste to produce that class of fabrics. In this he proved
himself a very low-minded and ignominious creature, no doubt; but was
not one Oliver Goldsmith glad to take any order which good Mr. Newberry
might give him, only writing the "Traveller" and the story of Parson
Primrose _pour se distraire_?

Love lent wings to the young essayist's pen. It is to be feared that in
roving among those shelves in Great Russell-street he showed himself
something of a freebooter, taking his "bien" wherever it was to be
found; but did not Moliere frankly acknowledge the same practice? Mr.
Hawkehurst wrote about anything and everything. His brain must needs be
a gigantic storehouse of information, thought the respectful reader. He
skipped from Pericles to Cromwell, from Cleopatra to Mary Stuart, from
Sappho to Madame de Sable; and he wrote of these departed spirits with
such a charming impertinence, with such a delicious affectation of
intimacy, that one would have thought he had sat by Cleopatra as she
melted her pearls, and stood amongst the audience of Pericles when he
pronounced his funeral oration. "With the De Sable and the Chevreuse,
Ninon and Marion, Maintenon and La Valliere, Anne of Austria and the
great Mademoiselle of France, he seemed to have lived in daily
companionship, so amply did he expatiate upon the smallest details of
their existences, so tenderly did he dwell on their vanished beauties,
their unforgotten graces."

The work was light and pleasant; and the monthly cheques from the
proprietors of a couple of rival periodicals promised, to amount to the
income which the adventurer had sighed for as he trod the Yorkshire
moorland. He had asked Destiny to give him Charlotte Halliday and three
hundred a year, and lo! while yet the wish was new, both these
blessings seemed within his grasp. It could scarcely be a matter for
repining it the Fates should choose to throw in an odd fifty thousand
pounds or so.

But was not all this something too much of happiness for a man whose
feet had trodden in evil ways? Were not the Fates mocking this
travel-stained wayfarer with bright glimpses of a paradise whose gates
he was never to pass?

This was the question which Valentine Hawkehurst was fain to ask
himself sometimes; this doubt was the shadow which sometimes made a
sudden darkness that obscured the sunshine.

Happily for Charlotte's true lover, the shadow did not often come
between him and the light of those dear eyes which were his pole-stars.

The December days were shortening as the year drew to its close, and
afternoon tea seemed more than ever delightful to Charlotte and her
betrothed, now that it could be enjoyed in the mysterious half light; a
glimmer of chill gray day looking coldly in at the unshrouded window
like some ghostly watcher envying these mortals their happiness, and
the red glow of the low fire reflected upon every curve and facet of
the shining steel grate.

To sit by the fire at five o'clock in the afternoon, watching the
changeful light upon Charlotte's face, the rosy glow that seemed to
linger caressingly on broad low brow and sweet ripe lips, the deep
shadows that darkened eyes and hair, was bliss unspeakable for Mr.
Hawkehurst. The lovers talked the prettiest nonsense to each other,
while Mrs. Sheldon dozed placidly behind the friendly shelter of a
banner-screen hooked on to the chimney-piece, or conversed with Diana
in a monotonous undertone, solemnly debating the relative wisdom of
dyeing or turning in relation to a faded silk dress.

Upon one special evening Valentine lingered just a little longer than
usual. Christmas was near at hand, and the young man had brought his
liege lady tribute in the shape of a bundle of Christmas literature.
Tennyson had been laid aside in favour of the genial Christmas fare,
which had the one fault, that it came a fortnight before the jovial
season, and in a manner fore-stalled the delights of that time-honoured
period, making the season itself seem flat and dull, and turkey and
plum-pudding the stalest commodities in the world when they did come.
How, indeed, can a man do full justice to his aunt Tabitha's
plum-pudding, or his uncle Joe's renowned rum-punch, if he has quaffed
the steaming-bowl with the "Seven Poor Travellers," or eaten his
Christmas dinner at the "Kiddleawink" a fortnight beforehand? Are not
the chief pleasures of life joys as perishable as the bloom on a peach
or the freshness of a rose?

Valentine had read the ghastliest of ghost-stories, and the most
humorous of word-pictures, for the benefit of the audience in Mrs.
Sheldon's drawing-room; and now, after tea, they sat by the fire
talking of the ghost-story, and discussing that unanswerable question
about the possibility of such spiritual appearances, which seems to
have been debated ever since the world began.

"Dr. Johnson believed in ghosts," said Valentine.

"O, please spare us Dr. Johnson," cried Charlotte, with seriocomic
intensity. "What is it that obliges magazine-writers to be perpetually
talking about Dr. Johnson? If they must dig up persons from the past,
why can't they dig up newer persons than that poor ill-used doctor?"

The door opened with a hoarse groan, and Mr. Sheldon came into the room
while Miss Halliday was making her playful protest. She stopped,
somewhat confused by that sudden entrance.

There is a statue of the Commandant in every house, at whose coming
hearts grow cold and lips are suddenly silent. It was the first time
that the master of the villa had interrupted one of these friendly
afternoon teas, and Mrs. Sheldon and her daughter felt that a domestic
crisis was at hand.

"How's this?" cried the stockbroker's strong hard voice; "you seem all
in the dark."

He took a wax-match from a little gilt stand on the mantelpiece and
lighted two flaring lamps. He was the sort of man who is always eager
to light the gas when people are sitting in the gloaming, meditative
and poetical. He let the broad glare of common sense in upon their
foolish musings, and scared away Robin Goodfellow and the fairies by
means of the Western Gaslight Company's illuminating medium.

The light of those two flaring jets of gas revealed Charlotte Halliday
looking shyly at the roses on the carpet, and trifling nervously with
one of the show-books on the table. The same light revealed Valentine
Hawkehurst standing by the young lady's chair, and looking at Mr.
Sheldon with a boldness of countenance that was almost defiance. Poor
Georgy's face peered out from behind her favourite banner-screen,
looking from one to the other in evident alarm. Diana sat in her
accustomed corner, watchful, expectant, awaiting the domestic storm.

To the surprise of every one except Mr. Sheldon, there was no storm,
not even the lightest breeze that ever blew in domestic hemispheres.
The stockbroker saluted his stepdaughter with a friendly nod, and
greeted her lover with a significant grin.

"How d'ye do, Hawkehurst?" he said, in his pleasantest manner. "It's an
age since I've seen you. You're going in for literature, I hear; and a
very good thing too, if you can make it pay. I understand there are
some fellows who really do make that sort of thing pay. Seen my brother
George lately? Yes, I suppose you and George are quite a Damon and
What's-his-name. You're going to dine here to-night, of course? I
suppose we may go in to dinner at once, eh, Georgy?--it's half-past
six."

Mr. Hawkehurst made some faint pretence of having a particular
engagement elsewhere; for, supposing Sheldon to be unconscious, he
scorned to profit by that gentleman's ignorance. And then, having
faltered his refusal, he looked at Charlotte, and Charlotte's eyes
cried "Stay," as plainly as such lovely eyes can speak. So the end of
it was, that he stayed and partook of the Sheldonian crimped skate, and
the Sheldonian roast-beef and tapioca-pudding, and tasted some especial
Moselle, which, out of the kindliness of his nature, Mr. Sheldon opened
for his stepdaughter's betrothed.

After dinner there were oranges and crisp uncompromising biscuits, that
made an explosive noise like the breaking of windows whenever any one
ventured to tamper with them; item, a decanter of sherry in a silver
stand; item, a decanter of port, which Mr. Sheldon declared to be
something almost too good to be drunk, and to the merits of which
Valentine was supremely indifferent. The young man would fain have
followed his delight when she accompanied her mamma and Diana to the
drawing-room; but Mr. Sheldon detained him.

"I want a few words with you, Hawkehurst," he said; and Charlotte's
cheeks flamed red as peonies at sound of this alarming sentence. "You
shall go after the ladies presently, and they shall torture that poor
little piano to their hearts' delight for your edification. I won't
detain you many minutes. You had really better try that port."

Valentine closed the door upon the departing ladies, and went back to
his seat very submissively. If there were any battle to be fought out
between him and Philip Sheldon, the sooner the trumpet sounded to arms
the better.

"His remarkable civility almost inclines me to think that he does
really want to get rid of that dear girl," Valentine said to himself,
as he filled his glass and gravely awaited Mr. Sheldon's pleasure.

"Now then, my dear Hawkehurst," began that gentleman, squaring himself
in his comfortable arm-chair, and extending his legs before the cheery
fire, "let us have a little friendly chat. I am not given to beating
about the bush, you know, and whatever I have to say I shall say in
very plain words. In the first place, I hope you have not so poor an
opinion of my perceptive faculties as to suppose that I don't see what
is going on between you and Miss Lotta yonder."

"My dear Mr. Sheldon, I--"

"Hear what I have to say first, and make your protestations afterwards.
You needn't be alarmed; you won't find me quite as bad as the
stepmother one reads about in the story-books, who puts her
stepdaughter into a pie, and all that kind of thing. I suppose
stepfathers have been a very estimable class, by the way, as it is the
stepmother who always drops in for it in the story-books. You'll find
mo very easy to deal with, Mr. Hawkehurst, always provided that you
deal in a fair and honourable manner."

"I have no wish to be underhand in my dealings," Valentine said boldly.
And indeed this was the truth. His inclination prompted him to candour,
even with Mr. Sheldon; but that fatal necessity which is the governing
principle of the adventurer's life obliged him to employ the arts of
finesse.

"Good," cried Mr. Sheldon, in the cheery, pleasant tone of an
easy-going man of the world, who is not too worldly to perform a
generous action once in a way. "All I ask is frankness. You and
Charlotte have fallen in love with one another--why, I can't imagine,
except on the hypothesis that a decent-looking young woman and a
decent-looking young man can't meet half a dozen times without beginning
to think of Gretna-green, or St. George's, Hanover-square. Of course a
marriage with you, looked at from a common-sense point of view, would be
about the worst thing that could happen to my wife's daughter. She's a
very fine girl" (a man of the Sheldonian type would call Aphrodite
herself a fine girl), "and might marry some awfully rich City swell with
vineries and pineries and succession-houses at Tulse-hill or Highgate, if
I chose to put her in the way of that sort of thing. But then, you see,
the worst of it is, a man seldom comes to vineries and pineries at
Tulse-hill till he is on the shady side of forty; and as I am not in
favour of mercenary marriages, I don't care to force any of my City
connection upon poor Lotta. In the neighbourhood of the Stock Exchange
there is no sharper man of business than your humble servant; but I
don't care to bring business habits to Bayswater. Long before Lotta
left school, I had made up my mind never to come between her and her
own inclination in the matrimonial line; therefore, if she truly and
honestly loves you, and if you truly and honestly love her, I am not
the man to forbid the bans."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37