Birds of Prey, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [ebooks online reader txt] 📗

to go to theatres together very often."

This was a cry of anguish wrung from a bleeding heart; but to the two absorbed egotists it seemed the simplest of casual observations.

"Do you think you could manage to get a box, Mr. Hawkehurst?" asked the irresistible enslaver, putting her head on one side, in a manner which, for the protection of weak mankind, should be made penal.

"I will try my uttermost," answered Valentine.

"O, then I'm sure you will succeed. And we shall be amused by your deliciously bitter criticisms between the acts. One would think you had studied under Douglas Jerrold."

"You do me too much honour. But before the new piece is produced I shall have left London, and shall not have the pleasure of accompanying you to the theatre."

"You are going to leave London?"

"Yes, to-morrow."

"So soon!" cried Charlotte, with undisguised regret; "and for a long time, I suppose?" she added, very mournfully.

Miss Paget gave a little start, and a feverish flush lit up her face for one brief moment.

"I am glad he is going," she thought; "I am very glad he is going."

"Yes," said Valentine, in reply to Charlotte's inquiry, "I am likely to be away for a considerable time; indeed my plans are at present so vague, that I cannot tell when I may come back to town."

He could not resist the temptation to speak of his absence as if it were likely to be the affair of a lifetime. He could not refrain from the delight of sounding the pure depths of that innocent young heart. But when the tender gray eyes looked at him, so sweet in their sudden sadness, his heart melted, and he could trifle with her unconscious love no longer.

"I am going away on a matter of business," he said, "which may or may not occupy some time; but I don't suppose I shall be many weeks away from London."

Charlotte gave a little sigh of relief.

"And are you going very far?" she asked.

"Some distance; yes--a--hundred and fifty miles or so," Valentine answered very lamely. It had been an easy thing to invent an ancient aunt Sarah for the mystification of the astute Horatio; but Valentine Hawkehurst could not bring himself to tell Charlotte Halliday a deliberate falsehood. The girl looked at him wonderingly, as he gave that hesitating answer to her question. She was at a loss to understand why he did not tell her the place to which he was going, and the nature of the business that took him away.

She was very sorry that he was going to disappear out of her life for a time so uncertain, that while on the one hand it might be only a few weeks, it might on the other hand be for ever. The life of a young English damsel, in a prim villa at Bayswater, with a very commonplace mother and a practical stockbroking stepfather, is rather a narrow kind of existence; and to such a damsel the stranger whose hand lifts the curtain that shrouds new and brighter worlds is apt to become a very important personage, especially when the stranger happens to be young and handsome, and invested with that dash of Bohemianism which to artless and sentimental girlhood has such a flavour of romance.

Charlotte was very silent as she retraced her steps along the broad gravel walk. As they drew near the Bayswater-gate she looked at her watch. It was nearly one o'clock, and she had promised Mrs. Sheldon to be home at one for luncheon, and afterwards shopping.

"I'm afraid we must hurry home, Di," she said.

"I am quite ready to go," answered Miss Paget promptly. "Good-bye, Valentine."

"Good-bye, Diana; good-bye, Miss Halliday."

Mr. Hawkehurst shook hands with both young ladies; but shaking hands with Charlotte was a very slow process compared to the same performance with Diana.

"Good-bye," he repeated, in a lingering tone; and then, after standing for some moments silent and irresolute, with his hat in his hand, he put it on suddenly and hurried away.

The two girls had walked a few steps towards the gate when Charlotte stopped before a stony-looking alcove, which happened at this nursery-dinner-hour to be empty.

"I'm so tired, Di," she said, and went into the alcove, where she sat down to rest. She had a little veil attached to her turban hat--a little veil which she now drew over her face. The tears gathered slowly in her eyes and fell through that flimsy morsel of lace with which she would fain have hidden her childish sorrow. The tears gathered and fell on her lap as she sat in silence, pretending not to cry. This much rain at least was there to justify her prediction, uttered in such foolish gaiety of heart half an hour before.

Miss Halliday's eyes were undimmed by tears? when she went back to the gothic villa; but she had a feeling that some great sorrow had come upon her--a vague idea that the last lingering warmth and brightness of summer had faded all in a moment, and that chill gray winter had closed in upon Bayswater without any autumnal interval. What was it that she had lost? Only the occasional society of a young man with a handsome pale face, a little haggard and wan from the effect of dissipated habits and a previous acquaintance with care and difficulty--only the society of a penniless Bohemian who had a certain disreputable cleverness and a dash of gloomy sentimentality, which the schoolgirl mistook for genius. But then he was the first man whose eyes had ever softened with a mysterious tenderness as they looked at her--the first whose voice had grown faintly tremulous when it syllabled her name.

There was some allusion to Mr. Hawkehurst's departure in the course of dinner, and Philip Sheldon expressed some surprise.

"Going to leave town?" he said.

"Yes, papa," Charlotte answered; "he is going a long way into the country,--a hundred and fifty miles, he said."

"Did he tell you where he was going?"

"No; he seemed unwilling to mention the place. He only said something about a hundred and fifty miles."


CHAPTER IX.


MR. SHELDON ON THE WATCH.

Mr. Sheldon had occasion to see Captain Paget early the following day, and questioned him closely about his _protégé's_ movements. He had found Valentine a very useful tool in sundry intricate transactions of the commercial kind, and he expected his tools to be ready for his service. He was therefore considerably annoyed by Valentine's abrupt departure.

"I think young Hawkehurst might have told me he was going out of town," he said. "What the deuce has taken him off in such a hurry?"

"He is going to see some mysterious old aunt at Dorking, from whom he seems to expect money," the Captain answered carelessly. "I daresay I can do what you want, Sheldon."

"Very likely. But how comes that young fellow to have an aunt at Dorking? I fancy I've heard him say he was without a relative or a friend in the world--always excepting yourself."

"The aunt may be another exception; some poor old soul that he's half ashamed to own, I daresay--the inmate of an almshouse, perhaps. Val's expectations may be limited to a few pounds hoarded in a china teapot."

"I should have thought Hawkehurst the last man in the world to care about looking after that sort of thing. I could have given him plenty to do if he had stopped in town. He and my brother George are uncommonly intimate, by the bye," added Mr. Sheldon meditatively. It was his habit to be rather distrustful of his brother and of all his brother's acquaintance. "I suppose you can give me Hawkehurst's address, in case I should want to write to him?" he said.

"He told me to send my letters to the post-office, Dorking," answered the Captain, "which really looks as if the aunt's residence were something in the way of an almshouse."

No more was said about Valentine's departure. Captain Paget concluded his business with his patron and departed, leaving the stockbroker leaning forward upon his desk in a thoughtful attitude and scribbling purposeless figures upon his blotting-paper.

"There's something queer in this young man running away from town; there's some mystification somewhere," he thought. "He has not gone to Dorking, or he would scarcely have told Lotta that he was going a hundred and fifty miles from town. He would be likely to be taken off his guard by her questions, and would tell the truth. I wonder whether Paget is in the secret. His manner seemed open enough; but that sort of man can pretend anything. I've noticed that he and George have been very confidential lately. I wonder whether there's any underhand game on the cards between those two."

The game of which Mr. Sheldon thought as he leant over his blotting-paper was a very different kind of game from that which really occupied the attention of George and his friend.

"I'll go to his lodgings at once," he said to himself by-and-by, rising and putting on his hat quickly in his eagerness to act upon his resolution. "I'll see if he really has left town."

The stockbroker hailed the first empty hansom to be seen in the crowded thoroughfare from which his shady court diverged. In less than an hour he alighted before the door of the house in which Captain Paget lodged.

"Is Mr. Hawkehurst in?" he asked of the girl who admitted him.

"No, sir; he's just left to go into the country. He hasn't been gone ten minutes. You might a'most have met him."

"Do you know where he has gone?"

"I heard say it was Dorking, sir."

"Humph! I should like to have seen him before he went. Did he take much luggage?"

"One portmanter, sir."

"I suppose you didn't notice where he told the man to drive?"

"Yes, sir; it was Euston-square."

"Ah! Euston-square. I'll go there, then, on the chance of catching him," said Mr. Sheldon.

He bestowed a donation upon the domestic, reentered his hansom, and told the man to drive to Euston-square "like a shot."

"So! His destination is Dorking, and he goes from Euston-square!" muttered Mr. Sheldon, in sombre meditation, as the hansom rattled and rushed, and jingled and jolted, over the stones. "There's something under the cards here."

Arrived at the great terminus, the stockbroker made his way to the down platform. There was a lull in the day's traffic, and only a few listless wretches lounging disconsolately here and there, with eyes ever and anon lifted to the clock. Amongst these there was no Valentine Hawkehurst.

Mr. Sheldon peered into all the waiting-rooms, and surveyed the refreshment-counter; but there was still no sign of the man he sought. He went back to the ticket-office; but here again all was desolate, the shutters of the pigeon-holes hermetically closed, and no vestige of Valentine Hawkehurst.

The stockbroker was disappointed, but not defeated. He returned to the platform, looked about him for a few moments, and then addressed himself to a porter of intelligent aspect.

"What trains have left here within the last half-hour?" he asked.

"Only one, sir; the 2.15 down, for Manchester."

"You didn't happen to notice a dark-eyed, dark-haired young man among the passengers--second class?" asked Mr. Sheldon.

"No, sir. There are always a good many passengers by that train; I haven't time to notice their faces."

The stockbroker asked no further questions. He was a