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Birds of Prey by M.E. Braddon

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




"I don't fancy Mr. Halliday is long for this world."

"Ah, you women are always ravens."

"Unless the strange doctor can do something to cure him. O, pray bring
a clever man who will be able to cure that poor helpless creature
upstairs. Think, Mr. Philip, how you and him used to be friends and
playfellows,--brothers almost,--when you was both bits of boys. Think
how bad it might seem to evil-minded folks if he died under your roof."

The dentist had been standing near the door drinking his tea during
this conversation; and now for the first time he looked at his
housekeeper with an expression of unmitigated astonishment.

"What, in the name of all that's ridiculous, do you mean, Nancy?" he
asked impatiently. "What has my roof to do with Tom Halliday's illness
--or his death, if it came to that? And what on earth can people have to
say about it if he should die here instead of anywhere else?"

"Why, you see, sir, you being his friend, and Miss Georgy's sweetheart
that was, and him having no other doctor, folks might take it into
their heads he wasn't attended properly."

"Because I'm his friend? That's very good logic! I'll tell you what it
is, Mrs. Woolper; if any woman upon earth, except the woman who nursed
me when I was a baby, had presumed to talk to me as you have been
talking to me just this minute, I should open the door yonder and tell
her to walk out of my house. Let that serve as a hint for you, Nancy;
and don't you go out of your way a second time to advise me how I
should treat my friend and my patient."

He handed her the empty cup, and walked out of the house. There had
been no passion in his tone. His accent had been only that of a man who
has occasion to reprove an old and trusted servant for an unwarrantable
impertinence. Nancy Woolper stood at the street-door watching him as he
walked away, and then went slowly back to her duties in the lower
regions of the house.

"It can't be true," she muttered to herself; "it can't be true."

* * * * *

The dentist returned to Fitzgeorge-street in less than an hour,
bringing with him a surgeon from the neighbourhood, who saw the
patient, discussed the treatment, spoke hopefully to Mrs. Halliday, and
departed, after promising to send a saline draught. Poor Georgy's
spirits, which had revived a little under the influence of the
stranger's hopeful words, sank again when she discovered that the
utmost the new doctor could do was to order a saline draught. Her
husband had taken so many saline draughts, and had been getting daily
worse under their influence.

She watched the stranger wistfully as he lingered on the threshold to
say a few words to Mr. Sheldon. He was a very young man, with a frank
boyish face and a rosy colour in his cheeks. He looked like some fresh
young neophyte in the awful mysteries of medical science, and by no
means the sort of man to whom one would have imagined Philip Sheldon
appealing for help, when he found his own skill at fault. But then it
must be remembered that Mr. Sheldon had only summoned the stranger in
compliance with what he considered a womanish whim.

"He looks very young," Georgina said regretfully, after the doctor's
departure.

"So much the better, my dear Mrs. Halliday," answered the dentist
cheerfully; "medical science is eminently progressive, and the youngest
men are the best-educated men."

Poor Georgy did not understand this; but it sounded convincing, and she
was in the habit of believing what people told her; so she accepted Mr.
Sheldon's opinion. How could she doubt that he was wiser than herself
in all matters connected with the medical profession?

"Tom seems a little better this morning," she said presently.

The invalid was asleep, shrouded by the curtain of the heavy
old-fashioned four-post bedstead.

"He is better," answered the dentist; "so much better, that I shall
venture to give him a few business letters that have been waiting for
him some time, as soon as he wakes."

He seated himself by the head of the bed, and waited quietly for the
awakening of the patient.

"Your breakfast is ready for you downstairs, Mrs. Halliday," he said
presently; "hadn't you better go down and take it, while I keep watch
here? It's nearly ten o'clock."

"I don't care about any breakfast," Georgina answered piteously.

"Ah, but you'd better eat something. You'll make yourself an invalid,
if you are not careful; and then you won't be able to attend upon Tom."

This argument prevailed immediately. Georgy went downstairs to the
drawing-room, and tried bravely to eat and drink, in order that she
might be sustained in her attendance upon her husband. She had
forgotten all the throes and tortures of jealousy which she had endured
on his account. She had forgotten his late hours and unholy
roisterings. She had forgotten everything except that he had been very
tender and kind throughout the prosperous years of their married life,
and that he was lying in the darkened room upstairs sick to death.

* * * * *

Mr. Sheldon waited with all outward show of patience for the awakening
of the invalid. But he looked at his watch twice during that half-hour
of waiting; and once he rose and moved softly about the room, searching
for writing materials. He found a little portfolio of Georgina's, and a
frivolous-minded inkstand, after the semblance of an apple, with a gilt
stalk and leaflet. The dentist took the trouble to ascertain that there
was a decent supply of ink in the green-glass apple, and that the pens
were in working order. Then he went quietly back to his seat by the
bedside and waited.

The invalid opened his eyes presently, and recognised his friend with a
feeble smile.

"Well, Tom, old fellow, how do you feel to-day--a little better I hear
from Mrs. H.," said the dentist cheerily.

"Yes, I think I am a shade better. But, you see, the deuce of it is I
never get more than a shade better. It always stops at that. The little
woman can't complain of me now, can she, Sheldon? No more late hours,
or oyster suppers, eh?"

"No, no, not just yet. You'll have to take care of yourself for a week
or two when you get about again." Mr. Halliday smiled faintly as his
friend said this.

"I shall be very careful of myself if I ever do get about again, you
may depend upon it, old fellow. But do you know I sometimes fancy I
have spent my last jolly evening, and eaten my last oyster supper, on
this earth? I'm afraid it's time for me to begin to think seriously of
a good many things. The little woman is all right, thank God. I made my
will upwards of a year ago, and insured my life pretty heavily soon
after my marriage. Old Cradock never let me rest till that was done. So
Georgy will be all safe. But when a man has led a careless, godless
kind of a life,--doing very little harm, perhaps, but doing no
particular good,--he ought to set about making up his account somehow
for a better world, when he feels himself slipping out of this. I asked
Georgy for her Bible yesterday, and the poor dear loving little thing
was frightened out of her wits. 'O, don't talk like that, Tom,' she
cried; 'Mr. Sheldon says you are getting better every hour,'--by which
you may guess what a rare thing it is for me to read my Bible. No,
Phil, old fellow, you've done your best for me, I know; but I'm not
made of a very tough material, and all the physic you can pour down
this poor sore throat of mine won't put any strength into me."

"Nonsense, dear boy; that's just what a man who has not been accustomed
to illness is sure to think directly he is laid up for a day or two."

"I've been laid up for three weeks," murmured Mr. Halliday rather
fretfully.

"Well, well, perhaps this Mr. Burkham will bring you round in three
days, and then you'll say that your friend Sheldon was an ignoramus."

"No, no, I shan't, old fellow; I'm not such a fool as that. I'm not
going to blame you when it's my own constitution that's in fault. As to
that young man you brought here just now, to please Georgy, I don't
suppose he'll be able to do any more for me than you have done."

"We'll contrive to bring you round between us, never fear, Tom,"
answered Philip Sheldon in his most hopeful tone. "Why, you are looking
almost your old self this morning. You are so much improved that I may
venture to talk to you about business. There have been some letters
lying about for the last few days. I didn't like to bore you while you
were so very low. But they look like business letters; and perhaps it
would be as well for you to open them."

The sick man contemplated the little packet which the dentist had taken
from his breast-pocket; and then shook his head wearily.

"I'm not up to the mark, Sheldon," he said; "the letters must keep."
"O, come, come, old fellow! That's giving way, you know. The letters
may be important; and it will do you good if you make an effort to
rouse yourself."

"I tell you it isn't in me to do it, Philip Sheldon. I'm past making
efforts. Can't you see that, man? Open the letters yourself, if you
like."

"No, no, Halliday, I won't do that. Here's one with the seal of the
Alliance Insurance Office. I suppose your premium is all right."

Tom Halliday lifted himself on his elbow for a moment, startled into
new life; but he sank back on the pillows again immediately, with a
feeble groan.

"I don't know about that," he said anxiously; "you'd better look to
that, Phil, for the little woman's sake. A man is apt to think that his
insurance is settled and done with, when he has been pommelled about by
the doctors and approved by the board. He forgets there's that little
matter of the premium. You'd better open the letter, Phil. I never was
a good hand at remembering dates, and this illness has thrown me
altogether out of gear."

Mr. Sheldon tore open that official document, which, in his benevolent
regard for his friend's interest, he had manipulated so cleverly on the
previous evening, and read the letter with all show of deliberation.

"You're right, Tom," he exclaimed presently. "The twenty-one days'
grace expire to-day. You'd better write me a check at once, and I'll
send it on to the office by hand. Where's your check-book?"

"In the pocket of that coat hanging up there."

Philip Sheldon found the check-book, and brought it to his friend, with
Georgy's portfolio, and the frivolous little green-glass inkstand in
the shape of an apple. He adjusted the writing materials for the sick
man's use with womanly gentleness. His arm supported the wasted frame,
as Tom Halliday slowly and laboriously filled in the check; and when
the signature was duly appended to that document, he drew a long
breath, which seemed to express infinite relief of mind.

"You'll be sure it goes on to the Alliance Office, eh, old fellow?"
asked Tom, as he tore out the oblong slip of paper and handed it to his
friend. "It was kind of you to jog my memory about this business. I'm
such a fellow for procrastinating matters. And I'm afraid I've been a
little off my load during the last week."

"Nonsense, Tom; not you."

"O yes, I have. I've had all sorts of queer fancies. Did you come into
this room the night before last, when Georgy was asleep?" Mr. Sheldon
reflected for a moment before answering.

"No," he said, "not the night before last."

"Ah, I thought as much," murmured the invalid. "I was off my head that
night then, Phil, for I fancied I saw you; and I fancied I heard the
bottles and glasses jingling on the little table behind the curtain."

"You were dreaming, perhaps."

"O no, I wasn't dreaming. I was very restless and wakeful that night.
However, that's neither here nor there. I lie in a stupid state
sometimes for hours and hours, and I feel as weak as a rat, bodily and
mentally; so while I have my wits about me, I'd better say what I've
been wanting to say ever so long. You've been a good and kind friend to
me all through this illness, Phil, and I'm not ungrateful for your
kindness. If it does come to the worst with me--as I believe it will--
Georgy shall give you a handsome mourning ring, or fifty pounds to buy
one, if you like it better. And now let me shake hands with you, Philip
Sheldon, and say thank you heartily, old fellow, for once and for
ever."

The invalid stretched out a poor feeble attenuated hand, and, after a
moment's pause, Philip Sheldon clasped it in his own muscular fingers.
He did hesitate for just one instant before taking that hand.

He was no student of the gospel; but when he had left the sick-chamber
there arose before him suddenly, as if written in letters of fire on
the wall opposite to him, one sentence which had been familiar to him
in his school-days at Barlingford:

_And as soon as he was come, he goeth straightway to him, and saith,
Master, master; and kissed him._

* * * * *

The new doctor came twice a day to see his patient. He seemed rather
anxious about the case, and just a little puzzled by the symptoms.
Georgy had sufficient penetration to perceive that this new adviser was
in some manner at fault; and she began to think that Philip Sheldon was
right, and that regular practitioners were very stupid creatures. She
communicated her doubts to Mr. Sheldon, and suggested the expediency of
calling in some grave elderly doctor, to supersede Mr. Burkham. But
against this the dentist protested very strongly.

"You asked me to call in a stranger, Mrs. Halliday, and I have done
so," he said, with the dignity of an offended man. "You must now abide
by his treatment, and content yourself with his advice, unless he
chooses to summon further assistance."

Georgy was fain to submit. She gave a little plaintive sigh, and went
back to her husband's room, where she sat and wept silently behind the
bed-curtains. There was a double watch kept in the sick-chamber now;
for Nancy Woolper rarely left it, and rarely closed her eyes. It was
altogether a sad time in the dentist's house; and Tom Halliday
apologised to his friend more than once for the trouble he had brought
upon him. If he had been familiar with the details of modern history,
he would have quoted Charles Stuart, and begged pardon for being so
long a-dying.

But anon there came a gleam of hope. The patient seemed decidedly
better; and Georgy was prepared to revere Mr. Burkham, the Bloomsbury
surgeon, as the greatest and ablest of men. Those shadows of doubt and
perplexity which had at first obscured Mr. Burkham's brow cleared away,
and he spoke very cheerfully of the invalid.

Unhappily this state of things did not last long. The young surgeon
came one morning, and was obviously alarmed by the appearance of his
patient. He told Philip Sheldon as much; but that gentleman made very
light of his fears. As the two men discussed the case, it was very
evident that the irregular practitioner was quite a match for the
regular one. Mr. Burkham listened deferentially, but departed only half
convinced. He walked briskly away from the house, but came to a dead
stop directly after turning out of Fitzgeorge-street.

"What ought I to do?" he asked himself. "What course ought I to take?
If I am right, I should be a villain to let things go on. If I am
wrong, anything like interference would ruin me for life."

He had finished his morning round, but he did not go straight home. He
lingered at the corners of quiet streets, and walked up and down the
unfrequented side of a gloomy square. Once he turned and retraced his
steps in the direction of Fitzgeorge-street. But after all this
hesitation he walked home, and ate his dinner very thoughtfully,
answering his young wife at random when she talked to him. He was a
struggling man, who had invested his small fortune in the purchase of a
practice which had turned out a very poor one, and he had the battle of
life before him.

"There's something on your mind to-day, I'm sure, Harry," his wife said
before the meal was ended.

"Well, yes, dear," he answered; "I've rather a difficult case in
Fitzgeorge-street, and I'm anxious about it."

The industrious little wife disappeared after dinner, and the young
surgeon walked up and down the room alone, brooding over that difficult
case in Fitzgeorge-street. After spending nearly an hour thus, he
snatched his hat suddenly from the table on which he had set it down,
and hurried from the house.

"I'll have advice and assistance, come what may," he said to himself,
as he walked rapidly in the direction of Mr. Sheldon's house. "The case
may be straight enough--I certainly can't see that the man has any
motive--but I'll have advice."

He looked up at the dentist's spotless dwelling as he crossed the
street. The blinds were all down, and the fact that they were so sent a
sudden chill to his heart. But the April sunshine was full upon that
side of the street, and there might lie no significance in those
closely-drawn blinds. The door was opened by a sleepy-looking boy, and
in the passage Mr. Burkham met Philip Sheldon.

"I have been rather anxious about my patient since this morning, Mr.
Sheldon," said the surgeon; "and I have come to the conclusion that I
ought to confer with a man of higher standing than myself. Do you think
Mrs. Halliday will object to such a course?"

"I am sure she would not have objected to it," the dentist answered
very gravely, "if you had suggested it sooner. I am sorry to say the
suggestion comes too late. My poor friend breathed his last half an
hour ago."





BOOK THE SECOND.


THE TWO MACAIRES.




CHAPTER I.

A GOLDEN TEMPLE.


In the very midst of the Belgian iron country, under the shadow of
tall sheltering ridges of pine-clad mountain-land, nestles the
fashionable little watering-place called Foretdechene. Two or three
handsome hotels; a bright white new pile of building, with vast windows
of shining plate-glass, and a stately quadrangular courtyard; a tiny
street, which looks as if a fragment of English Brighton had been
dropped into this Belgian valley; a stunted semi-classic temple, which
is at once a post-office and a shrine whereat invalids perform their
worship of Hygeia by the consumption of unspeakably disagreeable
mineral waters; a few tall white villas scattered here and there
upon the slopes of pine-clad hills; and a very uncomfortable
railway-station--constitute the chief features Foretdechene. But right
and left of that little cluster of shops and hotels there stretch deep
sombre avenues of oak, that look like sheltered ways to Paradise--and
the deep, deep blue of the August sky, and the pure breath of the warm
soft air, and the tender green of the young pine-woods that clothe the
sandy hills, and the delicious tranquillity that pervades the sleepy
little town and bathes the hot landscape in a languorous mist, are
charms that render Foretdechene a pleasant oasis amid the lurid woods
and mountains of the iron country.

Only at stated intervals the quiet of this sleepy hollow is broken by
the rolling of wheels, the jingling of bells, the cracking of whips,
the ejaculations of drivers, and supplications of touters: only when
the railroad carries away departing visitors, or brings fresh ones, is
there anything like riot or confusion in the little town under the
pine-clad hills--and even then the riot and confusion are of a very
mild order, and create but a transient discord amongst the harmonies of
nature.

And yet, despite the Arcadian tranquillity of the landscape, the drowsy
quiet of the pine-groves, the deep and solemn shade of those dark
avenues, where one might fondly hope to find some Druidess lingering
beneath the shelter of the oaks, there is excitement of no common order
to be found in the miniature watering-place of Foretdechene; and the
reflective and observant traveller, on a modern sentimental journey,
has only to enter the stately white building with the glittering
plate-glass windows in order to behold the master-passions or the human
breast unveiled for his pleasure and edification.

The ignorant traveller, impelled by curiosity, finds no bar to his
entrance. The doors are as wide open as if the mansion were an hotel;
and yet it is not an hotel, though a placard which he passes informs
the traveller that he may have ices and sorbets, if he will; nor is the
bright fresh-looking building a theatre, for another placard informs
the visitor that there are dramatic performances to be witnessed every
evening in a building on one side of the quadrangle, which is a mere
subsidiary attachment to the vast white mansion. The traveller, passing
on his way unhindered, save by a man in livery, who deprives him of his
cane, ascends a splendid staircase and traverses a handsome
antechamber, from which a pair of plate-glass doors open into a
spacious saloon, where, in the warm August sunlight, a circle of men
and women are gathered round a great green table, gambling.

The ignorant traveller, unaccustomed to the amusements of a Continental
watering-place, may perhaps feel a little sense of surprise--a
something almost akin to shame--as he contemplates that silent crowd,
whose occupation seems so much the more strange to him because of their
silence. There is no lively bustle, none of that animation which
generally attends every kind of amusement, none of the clamour of the
betting-ring or the exchange. The gamblers at Foretdechene are terribly
in earnest: and the ignorant visitor unconsciously adapts himself to
the solemn hush of the place, and steps softly as he approaches the
table round which they are clustered--as many sitting as can find room
round the green-cloth-covered board; while behind the sitters there are
people standing two or three rows deep, the hindermost watching the
table over the shoulders of their neighbours. A placard upon the wall
informs visitors that only constant players are permitted to remain
seated at that sacred table. Perhaps a third of the players and a third
of the lookers-on are women. And if there are lips more tightly
contracted than other lips, and eyes with a harder, greedier light in
them than other eyes, those lips and those eyes belong to the women.
The ungloved feminine hands have a claw-like aspect as they scrape the
glittering pieces of silver over the green cloth; the feminine throats
look weird and scraggy as they crane themselves over masculine
shoulders; the feminine eyes have something demoniac in their steely
glare as they keep watch upon the rapid progress of the game.

Half a dozen moderate fortunes seem to be lost and won while the
traveller looks on from the background, unnoticed and unseen; for if
those plate-glass doors swung suddenly open to admit the seven angels
of the Apocalypse, carrying the seven golden vials filled with the
wrath of God, it is doubtful whether the splendour of their awful
glory, or the trumpet-notes that heralded their coming, would have
power to arouse the players from their profound abstraction.

Half a dozen comfortable little patrimonies seem to have changed hands
while the traveller has been looking on; and yet he has only watched
the table for about ten minutes; and this splendid _salon_ is but an
outer chamber, where one may stake as shabby a sum as two francs, if
one is shabby enough to wish to do so, and where playing for half an
hour or so on a pleasant summer morning one could scarcely lose more
than fifty or sixty pounds. Another pair of plate-glass doors open into
an inner chamber, where the silence is still more profound, and where
around a larger table sit one row of players; while only here and there
a little group of outsiders stand behind their chairs. There is more
gilding on the walls and ceiling of this chamber; the frescoes are more
delicate; the crystal chandeliers are adorned with rich clusters of
sparkling drops, that twinkle like diamonds in the sun. This is the
temple of gold; and in this splendid chamber one may hazard no smaller
stake than half a napoleon. There are women here; but not so many women
as in the outer saloon; and the women here are younger and prettier and
more carefully dressed than those who stake only silver.

The prettiest and the youngest woman in this golden chamber on one
particular August afternoon, nine years after the death of Tom
Halliday, was a girl who stood behind the chair of a military-looking
Englishman, an old man whose handsome face was a little disfigured by
those traces which late hours and dissipated habits are supposed to
leave behind them.

The girl held a card in one hand and a pin in the other, and was
occupied in some mysterious process, by which she kept note of the
Englishman's play. She was very young, with a delicate face, in whose
softer lines there was a refined likeness to the features of the man
whose play she watched. But while his eyes were hard and cold and gray,
hers were of that dense black in which there seems such an unfathomable
and mysterious depth. As she was the handsomest, so she was also the
worst-dressed woman in the room. Her flimsy silk mantle had faded from
black to rusty brown; the straw hat which shaded her face was sunburnt;
the ribbons had lost their brightness; but there was an air of
attempted fashion in the puffings and trimmings of her alpaca skirt;
and there was evidence of a struggle with poverty in the tight-fitting
lavender gloves, whose streaky lines bore witness to the imperfection
of the cleaner's art. Elegant Parisians and the select of Brussels
glanced at the military Englishman and his handsome daughter with some
slight touch of supercilious surprise--one has no right to find
shabbily-dressed young women in the golden temple--and it is scarcely
necessary to state that it was from her own countrywomen the young
person in alpaca received the most chilling glances. But those Parthian
arrows shot from feminine eyes had little power to wound their object
just now. The girl looked up from her perforated card very seldom; and
when she raised her eyes, it was always to look in one direction--
towards the great glass doors opening from the outer saloon. Loungers
came and went; the doors swung open and closed again as noiselessly as
it is possible for well-regulated doors to open and shut; footsteps
sounded on the polished floors; and sometimes when the young person in
alpaca lifted her eyes, a passing shadow of disappointment darkened her
face. A modern Laurence Sterne, on a new Sentimental Journey, might
have derived some interest from the study of the girl's countenance;
but the reflective and observant traveller is not to be encountered
very often in this age of excursionists; and Maria and her goat may
roam the highways and byways for a long time before she will find any
dreamy loiterer with a mind attuned to sympathy.

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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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