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Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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




"Yes; of course I remember that case. What of him?"

"Why, people believed in him, you know, and thought him a jolly good
fellow, up to the time when they discovered that he had poisoned a few
of his friends in a quiet gentlemanly way."

Mr. Hawkehurst smiled at the irrelevance of this remark. He could not
perceive the connection of ideas between Palmer the Rugely poisoner,
and Philip Sheldon the stockbroker.

"That was an extreme case," he said.

"Yes; of course that was an extreme case," answered George, carelessly.
"Only it goes far to prove that a man may be gifted with a remarkable
genius for throwing dust in the eyes of his fellow-creatures."

There was no further disputation between the lawyer and Valentine.
George Sheldon began to understand that a secret marriage was not to be
accomplished in the present position of affairs.

"I am half inclined to suspect that Phil knows something about that
money," he said presently, "and is playing some artful game of his
own."

"In that case your better policy would be to take the initiative,"
answered Valentine.

"I have no other course."

"And will Charlotte know--will she know that I have been concerned in
this business?" asked Valentine, growing very pale all of sudden. He
was thinking how mean he must appear in Miss Halliday's eyes, if she
came to understand that he had known her to be John Haygarth's heiress
at the time he won from her the sweet confession of her love. "Will she
ever believe how pure and true my love has been, if she comes to know
this?" he asked himself despairingly, while George Sheldon deliberated
in silence for a few moments.

"She need know nothing until the business comes to a head," replied
George at last. "You see, there may be no resistance on the part of the
Crown lawyers; and, in that case, Miss Halliday will get her rights
after a moderate amount of delay. But if they choose to dispute her
claim, it will be quite another thing--Halliday _versus_ the Queen, and
so on--with no end of swell Q.O.'s against us. In the latter case
you'll have to put all your adventures at Ullerton and Huxter's Cross
into an affidavit, and Miss H. must know everything."

"Yes; and then she will think--ah, no; I do not believe she can
misunderstand me, come what may."

"All doubt and difficulty might be avoided if you would manage a
marriage on the quiet off-hand," said George. "I tell you again that I
cannot do that; and that, even if it were possible, I would not attempt
it."

"So be it. You elect to ride the high horse; take care that magnificent
animal doesn't give you an ugly tumble."

"I can take my chance."

"And I must take my chance against that brother of mine. The winning
cards are all in my own hand this time, and it will be uncommonly hard
if he gets the best of me."

On this the two gentlemen parted. Valentine went to look at a
bachelor's lodging in the neighbourhood of the Edgeware-road, which he
had seen advertised in that morning's Times; and George Sheldon started
for Bayswater, where he was always sure of a dinner and a liberal
allowance of good wine from the hospitality of his prosperous kinsman.




CHAPTER VII.

MR. SHELDON IS PRUDENT.


Valentine found the apartments near the Edgeware-road in every manner
eligible. The situation was midway between his reading-room in Great
Russell-street and the abode of his delight--a half-way house on the
road between business and pleasure. The terms were very moderate, the
rooms airy and pleasant; so he engaged them forthwith, his tenancy to
commence at the end of the following week; and having settled this
matter, he went back to Omega-street, bent on dissolving partnership
with the Captain in a civil but decided manner.

A surprise, and a very agreeable one, awaited him at Chelsea. He found
the sitting-room strewn with Captain Paget's personal property, and the
Captain on his knees before a portmanteau, packing.

"You're just in time to give me a hand, Val," he said in his most
agreeable manner. "I begin to find out my age when I put my poor old
bones into abnormal attitudes. I daresay packing a trunk or two will be
only child's-play to you."

"I'll pack half a dozen trunks if you like," replied Valentine. "But
what is the meaning of this sudden move? I did not know you were going
to leave town."

"Neither did I when you and I breakfasted together. I got an unexpected
offer of a very decent position abroad this morning; a kind of agency,
that will be much better than the hand-to-mouth business I've been
doing lately."

"What kind of agency, and where?"

"Well, so far as I can make out at present, it is something in the
steam navigation way. My head-quarters will be at Rouen." "Rouen! Well,
it's a pleasant lively old city enough, and as mediaeval as one of Sir
Walter's novels, provided they haven't Haussmanised it by this time. I
am very glad to hear you have secured a comfortable berth."

"And I am not sorry to leave England, Yal," answered the Captain, in
rather a mournful tone.

"Why not?"

"Because I think it's time you and I parted company. Our association
begins to be rather disadvantageous to you, Val. We've had our ups and
downs together, and we've got on very pleasantly, take it for all in
all. But now that you're settling down as a literary man, engaged to
that young woman, hand-in-glove with Philip Sheldon, and so on, I think
it's time for me to take myself off. I'm not wanted; and sooner or
later I should begin to feel myself in the way."

The Captain grew quite pathetic as he said this; and little pangs of
remorse shot through Valentine's heart as he remembered how eager he
had been to rid himself of this Old Man of the Mountain. And here was
the poor old creature offering to take himself out of the way of his
own accord.

Influenced by this touch of remorse, Mr. Hawkehurst held out his hand,
and grasped that of his comrade and patron.

"I hope you may do well, in some--comfortable kind of business," he
said heartily. That adjective "comfortable" was a hasty substitute for
the adjective "honest," which had been almost on his lips as he uttered
his friendly wish. He was too well disposed to all the world not to
feel profound pity for this white-headed old man, who for so many years
had eaten the bread of rogues and scoundrels.

"Come," he cried cheerily, "I'll take all the packing off your hands,
Captain; and we'll eat our last dinner and drink our last bottle of
sparkling together at my expense, at any place you please to name."

"Say Blanchard's," replied Horatio Paget. "I like a corner-window,
looking out upon the glare and bustle of Regent-street. It reminds one
just a little of the Maison Doree and the boulevard. We'll drink
Charlotte Halliday's health, Val, in bumpers. She's a charming young
person, and I only wish she were an heiress, for your sake."

The eyes of the two men met as the Captain said this; and there was a
twinkle in the cold gray orbs of that gentleman which had a very
unpleasant effect upon Valentine.

"What treachery is he engaged in now?" he asked himself. "I know that
look in my Horatio's eyes; and I know it always means mischief."

George Sheldon made his appearance at the Lawn five minutes after his
brother came home from the City. He entered the domestic circle in his
usual free-and-easy manner, knowing himself to be endured, rather than
liked, by the two ladies, and to be only tolerated as a necessary evil
by the master of the house.

"I've dropped in to eat a chop with you, Phil," he said, "in order to
get an hour's comfortable talk after dinner. There's no saying half a
dozen consecutive words to you in the City, where your clerks seem to
spend their lives in bouncing in upon you when you don't want them."

There was very little talk during dinner. Charlotte and her stepfather
were thoughtful. Diana was chiefly employed in listening to the _sotto
voce_ inanities of Mrs. Sheldon, for whom the girl showed herself
admirably patient. Her forbearance and gentleness towards Georgy
constituted a kind of penitential sacrifice, by which she hoped to
atone for the dark thoughts and bitter feelings that possessed her mind
during those miserable hours in which she was obliged to witness the
happiness of Charlotte and her lover.

George Sheldon devoted himself chiefly to his dinner and a certain dry
sherry, which he particularly affected. He was a man who would have
dined and enjoyed himself at the table of Judas Iscariot, knowing the
banquet to be provided out of the thirty pieces of silver.

"That's as good a pheasant as I ever ate, Phil," he said, after winding
up with the second leg of the bird in question. "No, Georgy; no
macaroni, thanks. I don't care about kickshaws after a good dinner. Has
Hawkehurst dined with you lately, by the way, Phil?"

Charlotte blushed red as the holly-berries that decorated the
chandelier. It was Christmas-eve, and her own fair hands had helped to
bedeck the rooms with festal garlands of evergreen and holly.

"He dines with us to-morrow," replied the stockbroker. "You'll come, I
suppose, as usual, George?"

"Well, I shall be very glad, if I'm not in the way."

Mrs. Sheldon murmured some conventional protestation of the unfailing
delight afforded to her by George's society.

"Of course we're always glad to see you," said Philip in his most
genial manner; "and now, if you've anything to say to me about
business, the sooner you begin the better.--You and the girls needn't
stay for dessert, Georgy. Almonds and raisins can't be much of a
novelty to you; and as none of you take any wine, there's not much to
stop for. George and I will come in to tea."

The ladies departed, by no means sorry to return to their Berlin-wool
and piano. Diana took up her work with that saintly patience with which
she performed all the duties of her position; and Charlotte seated
herself before the piano, and began to play little bits of waltzes, and
odds and ends of polkas, in a dreamy mood, and with a slurring over of
dominant bass notes, which would have been torture to a musician's ear.

She was wondering whether Valentine would call that evening,
Christmas-eve--a sort of occasion for congratulation of some kind from
her lover, she fancied. It was the first Christmas-eve on which she had
been "engaged." She looked back to the same period last year, and
remembered herself sitting in that very room strumming on that very
piano, and unconscious that there was such a creature as Valentine
Hawkehurst upon this earth. And, strange to say, even in that benighted
state, she had been tolerably happy.

"Now, George," said Mr. Sheldon, when the brothers had filled their
glasses and planted their chairs on the opposite sides of the
hearth-rug, "what's the nature of this business that you want to talk
about?"

"Well, it is a business of considerable importance, in which you are
only indirectly concerned. The actual principal in the affair is your
stepdaughter, Miss Halliday."

"Indeed!"

"Yes. You know how you have always ridiculed my fancy for hunting up
heirs-at-law and all that kind of thing, and you know how I have held
on, hoping against hope, starting on a new scent when the old scent
failed, and so on."

"And you have got a chance at last, eh?"

"I believe that I have, and a tolerably good one; and I think you will
own that it is rather extraordinary that my first lucky hit should
bring luck your way."

"That is to say, to my stepdaughter?" remarked Mr. Sheldon, without any
appearance of astonishment.

"Precisely," said George, somewhat disconcerted by his brother's
coolness. "I have lately discovered that Miss Halliday is entitled to a
certain sum of money, and I pledge myself to put her in possession of
that money--on one condition."

"And that is--"

"That she executes a deed promising to give me half of the amount she
may recover by my agency."

"Suppose she can recover it without your agency?"

"That I defy her to do. She does not even know that she has any claim
to the amount in question."

"Don't be too sure of that. Or even supposing she knows nothing, do you
think her friends are as ignorant as she is? Do you think me such a
very bad man of business as to remain all this time unaware of the fact
that my stepdaughter, Charlotte Halliday, is next of kin to the Rev.
John Haygarth, who died intestate, at Tilford Haven, in Kent, about a
year ago?"

This was a cannon-shot that almost knocked George Sheldon off his
chair; but after that first movement of surprise, he gave a sigh, or
almost a groan, expressive of resignation.

"Egad, Phil Sheldon," he said, "I ought not to be astonished at this.
Knowing you as well as I do, I must have been a confounded fool not to
expect some kind of underhand work from you."

"What do you mean by underhand work?" exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. "The same
newspapers that were open to you were open to me, and I had better
opportunities for tracking my stepdaughter's direct descent from John
Haygarth's father."

"How did you discover Miss Halliday's descent from Matthew Haygarth?"
asked George, very meekly. He was quite crestfallen. He began to feel
that his brother would have the upper hand of him in this business as
in all other business of this world.

"That is my secret," replied Mr. Sheldon, with agreeable tranquillity
of manner. "You have kept your secrets, and I shall keep mine. Your
policy has been the policy of distrust. Mine shall be the same. When
you were starting this affair, I offered to go into it with you--to
advance whatever money you needed, in a friendly manner. You declined
my offer, and chose to go in for the business on your own hook. You
have made a very good thing for yourself, no doubt; but you are not
quite clever enough to keep me altogether in the dark in a matter which
concerns a member of my own family."

"Yes," said George, with a sigh, "that's where you hold the winning
cards. Miss Halliday is your ace of trumps."

"Depend upon it, I shall know how to hold my strength in reserve, and
when to play my leading trump."

"And how to collar my king," muttered George between his set teeth.

"Come," exclaimed Philip presently, "we may as well discuss this matter
in a friendly spirit. What do you mean to propose?"

"I have only one proposition to make," answered the lawyer, with
decision. "I hold every link of the chain of evidence, without which
Miss Halliday might as well be a native of the Fiji islands for any
claim she can assert to John Haygarth's estate. I am prepared to carry
this matter through; but I will only do it on the condition that I
receive half the fortune recovered from the Crown by Miss Halliday."

"A very moderate demand, upon my word!"

"I daresay I shall be able to make my bargain with Miss Halliday."
"Very likely," replied Mr. Sheldon; "and I shall be able to get that
bargain set aside as illegal."

"I doubt that. I have a deed of agreement drawn up here which would
hold water in any court of equity."

And hereupon Mr. Sheldon the younger produced and read aloud one of
those dry as dust documents by which the legal business of life is
carried on. It was a deed to be executed by Charlotte Halliday,
spinster, of Bayswater, on the one part, and George Sheldon, solicitor,
of Gray's Inn, on the other part; and it gave to the said George
Sheldon, as securely as any deed can give anything, one half of any
property, not now in her possession or control, which the said
Charlotte Halliday might obtain by the agency of the above-mentioned
George Sheldon.

"And pray, who is to find the costs for this business?" asked the
stockbroker. "I don't feel by any means disposed to stake my money on
such a hazardous game. Who knows what other descendants of Matthew
Haygarth may be playing at hide-and-seek in the remotest corners of the
earth, ready to spring out upon us when we've wasted a small fortune
upon law-proceedings."

"I shan't ask you to risk your money," replied George, with sullen
dignity. "I have friends who will back me when they see that agreement
executed."

"Very well, then, all you have to do is to alter your half share to
one-fifth, and I will undertake that Miss Halliday shall sign the
agreement before the week is out."

"One-fifth?"

"Yes, my dear George. Twenty thousand pounds will pay you very
handsomely for your trouble. I cannot consent to Miss Halliday ceding
more than a fifth."

"A fig for your consent! The girl is of age, and can act upon her own
hook. I shall go to Miss Halliday herself," exclaimed the indignant
lawyer.

"O no, you won't. You must know the danger of running counter to me in
this business. That agreement is all very well; but there is no kind of
document more easy to upset if one only goes about it in the right way.
Play your own game, and I will upset that agreement, as surely as I
turn this wine-glass bowl downwards."

Mr. Sheldon's action and Mr. Sheldon's look expressed a determination
which George knew how to estimate by the light of past experience.

"It is a hard thing to find you against me, after the manner in which I
have toiled and slaved for your stepdaughter's interests."

"I am bound to hold my stepdaughter's interests paramount over every
consideration." "Yes, paramount over brotherly feeling and all that
sort of thing. I say that it is more than hard that you should be
against me, considering the special circumstances and the manner in
which I have kept my own counsel----"

"You will take a fifth share, or nothing, George," said Mr. Sheldon,
with a threatening contraction of his black brows.

"If I have any difficulty in arranging matters with you, I will go into
this affair myself, and carry it through without your help."

"That I defy you to do."

"You had better not defy me."

"Pray how much do you expect to get out of Miss Halliday's fortune?"
demanded the aggravated George.

"That is my business," answered Philip. "And now we had better go into
the drawing-room for our tea. O, by the bye, George," he added,
carelessly, "as Miss Halliday is quite a child in all business matters,
she had better be treated like a child. I shall tell her that she has a
claim to a certain sum of money; but I shall not tell her what sum. Her
disappointment will be less in the event of a failure, if her
expectations are not large."

"You are always so considerate, my dear Phil," said George, with a
malignant grin. "May I ask how it is you have taken it into your head
to play the benevolent father in the matter of Valentine Hawkehurst and
Miss Halliday ?"

"What can it signify to me whom my stepdaughter marries?" asked Philip,
coolly. "Of course I wish her well; but I will not have the
responsibility of controlling her choice. If this young man suits her,
let her marry him."

"Especially when he happens to suit _you_ so remarkably well. I think I
can understand your tactics, Phil."

"You must understand or misunderstand me, just as you please. And now
come to tea."




CHAPTER VIII.

CHRISTMAS PEACE.


Valentine Hawkehurst did not make his appearance at the Lawn on
Christmas-eve. He devoted that evening to the service of his old ally.
He performed all friendly offices for the departing Captain, dined with
him very pleasantly in Regent-street, and accompanied him to the
London-bridge terminus, where he beheld the voyager comfortably seated
in a second-class carriage of the night-train for Newhaven.

Mr. Hawkehurst had seen the Captain take a through ticket for Rouen,
and he saw the train leave the terminus. This he held to be ocular
demonstration of the fact that Captain Paget was really going to the
Gallic Manchester.

"That sort of customer is so uncommonly slippery," the young man said
to himself as he left the station; "nothing but the evidence of my own
eyes would have convinced me of my friend's departure. How pure and
fresh the London atmosphere seems now that the perfume of Horatio Paget
is out of it! I wonder what he is going to do at Rouen? Very little
good, I daresay. But why should I wonder about him, or trouble myself
about him? He is gone, and I have set myself free from the trammels of
the past."

* * * * *

The next day was Christmas-day. Mr. Hawkehurst recited scraps of
Milton's glorious hymn as he made his morning toilet. He was very
happy. It was the first Christmas morning on which he had ever awakened
with this sense of supreme happiness, or with the consciousness that
the day was brighter, or grander, or more holy than other days. It
seemed to him to-day, more than ever, that he was indeed a regenerate
creature, purified by the influence of a good woman's love.

He looked back at his past existence, and the vision of many
Christmas-days arose before him: a Christmas in Paris, amidst
unutterable rain and mud; a Christmas-night spent in roaming the
Boulevards, and in the consumption of cognac and tobacco at a
third-rate cafe; a Christmas in Germany; more than one Christmas in
the Queen's Bench; one especially dreary Christmas in a long bare ward
at Whitecross-street,--how many varied scenes and changing faces arose
before his mental vision associated with that festive time! And yet
among them all there was not one on which there shone the faintest
glimmer of that holy light which makes the common holiday a sacred
season.

It was a pleasant thing to breakfast without the society of the
brilliant Horatio, whose brilliancy was apt to appear somewhat ghastly
at that early period of the morning. It was pleasant to loiter over the
meal, now meditating on the happy future, now dipping into a tattered
copy of Southey's "Doctor;" with the consciousness that the winds and
waves had by this time wafted Captain Paget to a foreign land.

Valentine was to spend the whole of Christmas-day with Charlotte and
her kindred. He was to accompany them to a fashionable church in the
morning, to walk with them after church, to dine and tell ghost-stories
in the evening. It was to be his first day as a recognised member of
that pleasant family at Bayswater; and in the fulness of his heart he
felt affectionately disposed to all his adopted relations; even to Mr.
Sheldon, whose very noble conduct had impressed him strongly, in spite
of the bitter sneers and covert slanders of George. Charlotte had told
her lover that her stepfather was a very generous and disinterested
person, and that there was a secret which she would have been glad to
tell him, had she not been pledged to hold it inviolate, that would
have gone far to place Mr. Sheldon in a very exalted light before the
eyes of his future son-in-law.

And then Miss Halliday had nodded and smiled, and had informed her
lover, with a joyous little laugh, that he should have a horse to ride,
and an edition of Grote's "Greece" bound in dark-brown calf with
bevelled edges, when they were married; this work being one which the
young author had of late languished to possess.

"Dear foolish Lotta, I fear there will be a new history of Greece,
based on new theories, before that time comes," said the lover.

"O no, indeed; that time will come very soon. See how industriously you
work, and how well you succeed. The magazine people will soon give you
thirty pounds a month. Or who knows that you may not write some book
that will make you suddenly famous, like Byron, or the good-natured fat
little printer who wrote those long, long, long novels that no one
reads nowadays?"

Influenced by Charlotte's hints about her stepfather, Mr. Hawkehurst's
friendly feeling for that gentleman grew stronger, and the sneers and
innuendoes of the lawyer ceased to have the smallest power over him.

"The man is such a thorough-going schemer himself, that he cannot bring
himself to believe in another man's honesty," thought Mr. Hawkehurst,
while meditating upon his experience of the two brothers. "So far as I
have had any dealings with Philip Sheldon, I have found him
straightforward enough. I can imagine no hidden motive for his conduct
in relation to Charlotte. The test of his honesty will be the manner in
which he is acted upon by Charlotte's position as claimant of a great
fortune. Will he throw me overboard, I wonder? or will my dear one
believe me an adventurer and fortune-hunter? Ah, no, no, no; I do not
think in all the complications of life there could come about a state
of events which would cause my Charlotte to doubt me. There is no
clairvoyance so unerring as true love."

Mr. Hawkehurst had need of such philosophy as this to sustain him in
the present crisis of his life. He was blest with a pure delight which
excelled his wildest dreams of happiness; but he was not blest with any
sense of security as to the endurance of that exalted state of bliss.

Mr. Sheldon would learn Charlotte's position, would doubtless extort
from his brother the history of those researches in which Valentine had
been engaged; and then, what then? Alas! hereupon arose incalculable
dangers and perplexities.

Might not the stockbroker, as a man of the world, take a sordid view of
the whole transaction, and consider Valentine in the light of a
shameless adventurer, who had traded on his secret knowledge in the
hope of securing a rich wife? Might he not reveal all to Charlotte, and
attempt to place her lover before her in this most odious aspect? She
would not believe him base; her faith would be unshaken, her love
unchanged; but it was odious, it was horrible, to think that her ears
should be sullied, her tender heart fluttered, by the mere suggestion
of such baseness.

If you think books have dumbed down …
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He wrote it in just three weeks, furiously and loudly tap-tap-tapping away on his typewriter on 12ft long reels of paper so that he did not have to stop, just writing writing writing fuelled only, he said, by coffee…

It became one of the most important American novels of the last century and yesterday the original manuscript - a scroll taped together with eight reels of paper - of Jack Kerouac's On The Road was unfurled in the UK for the first time.
Fifty years after the novel which more or less defined the Beat generation, was published in Britain, the Barber Institute in Birmingham is showing what is now one of the most valuable literary manuscripts in existence as part of its exhibition Jack Kerouac: Back On the Road.

The exhibition's curator Professor Dick Ellis said there had been a lot of competition to get the scroll which is itself spending a lot of time on the move, having toured a string of US cities and hitting the road to Rome once this show is over. "We're very excited indeed," he said. "This is an iconic manuscript. It is a record of the huge effort Kerouac put into composing it. It was 20 days of typing 6,500 words a day, flat out, in spontaneous composition. He wanted to record things with the most possible accuracy using the spontaneous technique. His typewriter became a compositional instrument.

"Truman Capote once accused Kerouac of typing rather than writing, I would say he was learning the ability of using the typewriter like a jazz instrument, like a saxophone. He also had an incredible memory. And he had great speed at typing, he became a lightning typist. He came to be able to use a typewriter in a way that has not been seen before or since. Kerouac said he wrote fast because the road was fast."

About 22 of the scroll's 120ft will be on display in a specially built cabinet and while visitors will have to slightly tilt their heads, Ellis believes they will get a much deeper knowledge of what Kerouac was all about. It comes to Birmingham courtesy of Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, who bought it for $2.4m (£1.6m) in 2001 before agreeing to a tour. Of course, 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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