Charlotte's Inheritance, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [dar e dil novel online reading .TXT] 📗

we have to part, and he go on alone, the world may seem so sad and lonely to him."

"Charlotte!" cried Diana, with a laugh that was almost choked by a sob, "is this looking your nerves in the face? Why, my dear one, this is indeed plagiarism of your mamma's low spirits. Lotta, you shall have change of air; yes, I am determined on that. The stately physician who came in his carriage the other day, and who looked at your tongue, and said 'Ah!' and then felt your pulse and said 'Ah!' again, and then called for pen-and-ink and wrote a little prescription, is not the doctor we want for you. We want Dr. Yorkshire; we want the breezes from the Yorkshire moors, and the smell of the farmyard, and our dear Aunt Dorothy's sillabubs, and our uncle Joe to take us for long walks across his clover-fields."

"I don't want to go to Newhall, Di. I couldn't bear to leave--him."

"But what is to prevent your meeting _him_ at the white gate this time, as you met him last October? Might not accident take _him_ to Huxter's Cross again? The archaeological work--of which we have heard no more, by the bye--might necessitate further investigations in that district. If you will go to Newhall, Lotta, I will pledge myself for Mr. Hawkehurst's speedy appearance at the white gate you have so often described to me."

"My dearest Di, you are all kindness; but even if I were inclined to go to Newhall, I doubt if mamma or Mr. Sheldon would like me to go."

"I am sure they would be pleased with any arrangement that was likely to benefit your health. But I will talk to your mamma about it. I have set my heart on your going to Newhall."

Miss Paget lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took possession of Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new stitch in _tricot_, and succeeded in impressing her with the conviction that change of air was necessary for Charlotte.

"But you don't think Lotta really ill?" asked Mrs. Sheldon, nervously.

"I trust she is not really ill, dear Mrs. Sheldon; but I am sure she is much changed. In talking to her, I affect to think that her illness is only an affair of the nerves; but I sadly fear that it is something more than that."

"But what is the matter with her?" exclaimed Georgy, with a, piteous air of perplexity; "that is the question which I am always asking. People can't be ill, you know, Diana, without having something the matter with them; and that is what I can't make out in Charlotte's case. Mr. Sheldon says she wants tone; the physician who came in a carriage and pair, and ought to know what he is talking about, says there is a lack of vigour. But what does that all amount to? I'm sure I've wanted tone all my life. Perhaps there never was a creature so devoid of tone as I am; and the internal sinking I feel just before luncheon is something that no one but myself can realize. I dare say Lotta is not so strong as she might be; but I do not see that she can be ill, unless her illness is something definite. My poor first husband's illness, now, was the kind of thing that any one could understand--bilious fever. The merest child knows what it is to be bilious, and the merest child knows what it is to be feverish. There can be nothing mysterious in bilious fever."

"But, dear Mrs. Sheldon," said Diana, gravely, "don't you think that the weakness of constitution which rendered Charlotte's father liable to be taken off in the prime of life by a fever is a weakness that Charlotte may possibly have inherited?"

"Good heavens, Diana!" cried Georgy, with sudden terror; "you don't mean to say that you think my Charlotte is going to die?"

It was but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened fears as it had been to rouse her from absolute apathy.

Change of air--yes, of course--Charlotte must have change of air that instant. Let a cab be sent for immediately to take them to the terminus. Change of air, of course. To Newhall--to Nice--to the Isle of Wight--to Malta; Mrs. Sheldon had heard of people going to Malta. Where should they go? Would Diana advise, and send for a cab, and pack a travelling bag without an instant's delay? The rest of the things could be sent afterwards. What did luggage matter, when Charlotte's life was at stake?

At this point a flood of tears happily relieved poor Georgy's excited feelings, and then common sense and Diana Paget came to the rescue.

"My dear Mrs. Sheldon," she said, with a quiet cheerful tone that went far to reassure the excited lady, "in the first place we must, above all things, refrain from any appearance of alarm. Her illness may, after all, be only an affair of the nerves; and there is certainly no cause for immediate fear."

Georgy was tranquillised, and agreed to take matters quietly. She promised to arrange Charlotte's departure for Newhall, with Mr. Sheldon, that evening.

"Of course, you know, my dear, I like to consult him about everything," she said, apologetically. "It is a duty which one owes one's husband, you know, and a duty which, as a young woman about to marry, I cannot too much impress upon you; but in this case it is quite a matter of form: Mr. Sheldon never has objected to Charlotte's going to Newhall, and he is not likely to object now."

The event proved Mrs. Sheldon mistaken as to this matter. Georgy proposed the visit to Newhall that evening, while the two girls were strolling listlessly in the dusky garden, and Mr. Sheldon most decidedly rejected the proposition.

"If she wants change of air--and Dr. Doddleson recommended nothing of the kind--Newhall is not the place for her."

"Why not, dear?"

"It is too cold. Northerly aspect--no shelter--three hundred feet above York minster."

"But Dorothy Mercer is such a kind motherly creature; she'd delight in nursing Lotta."

"Yes," answered Mr. Sheldon, with a laugh, "and in quacking her. I know what those good motherly creatures are when they get an excuse for dosing some unhappy victim with their quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to Newhall, Mrs. Mercer would poi--would make her ten times worse than she is with old woman's remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is too cold. That is a conclusive argument, I suppose?"

He said this with some impatience of tone and manner. There was a haggard look in his face, a hurried harassed manner pervading him this evening, which had been growing upon him of late. Georgy was too slow of perception to remark this; but Diana Paget had remarked it, and had attributed the change in the stockbroker's manner to a blending of two anxieties.

"He is anxious about money matters," she had said to herself, "and he is anxious about Charlotte's health. His lips, moving in whispered calculations, as he sits brooding by the fire, tell me of the first anxiety; his eyes, wandering furtively to his step-daughter's face every now and then, tell me of the second."

This furtive anxiety of Mr. Sheldon's increased Diana Paget's anxiety. This man, who had a certain amount of medical knowledge, could no doubt read the diagnostics of that strange insidious illness, which had, as yet, no name, Diana, furtively watching his furtive looks, told herself that he read of danger.

"If Charlotte wants change of air, let her go to Hastings," he said; "that is the kind of place for an invalid. I want rest myself; and there's such utter stagnation in the City nowadays that I can very well afford to give myself a holiday. We'll run down to Hastings, or the immediate neighbourhood of Hastings, for a week or two."

"O Philip, how kind and considerate you are! I am sure, as I was observing to Miss Paget only today, you--"

"Ah, by the bye, there's Miss Paget. Is it absolutely necessary that Miss Paget should go to Hastings with us?"

"Well, dear, you see she has so kindly desired to remain with me for the quarter, so as to give me time to turn round, you know, with regard to caps and summer things, and so on--for, really, she has such taste, and does strike out such excellent ideas about turning, and dipping, and dyeing, that I don't know what will become of me when she leaves us; and it would look so pointed to--"

"Yes; she had better go with us. But why all this fuss about Charlotte? Who put it into your head that she wants change of air?"

Mr. Sheldon evidently considered it an established fact that any idea in his wife's head must needs have been put there by someone or other.

"Well, you see, Diana and I were talking of Lotta this afternoon, and Diana quite alarmed me."

"How so?" asked Mr. Sheldon, with a quick frown.

"Why, she said it was evident, by the fact of poor dear Tom's dying of a fever, that his constitution must have been originally weak. And she said that perhaps Charlotte had inherited Tom's weak constitution--and frightened me dreadfully."

"There is no occasion for you to be frightened; Charlotte will get on very well, I dare say, with care. But Miss Paget is a very sensible young woman, and is right in what she says. Charlotte's constitution is not strong."

"O Philip!" said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice.

"I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves," said Mr. Sheldon, with a hard laugh. "Ah, here she is!"

Here she was, coming towards the open window near which her stepfather sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her sauntering walk, dressed in white, and spectral in the gloaming. To the sad eyes of her mother she looked like a ghost. To the eyes of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to poetic fancies, she looked even more ghostlike.


CHAPTER III.


MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS.

Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several people. That her stepfather had his anxieties about her--anxieties which he tried to hide--was obvious to the one person in the Bayswater villa who noted his looks, and tried to read the thoughts they indicated.

Mrs. Sheldon's alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be lulled to rest. And in Valentine Hawkehurst's heart there was an aching pain--a dull dead load of care, which had never been lightened from the hour when he first perceived the change in his dear one's face.

There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater villa, who watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care as unresting as the care of mother or stepfather, bosom friend or plighted lover. This person was Ann Woolper. Mrs. Woolper had come to the villa prepared to find in Miss Halliday a frivolous self-satisfied young person, between whom and an old broken-down woman like herself there could be no sympathy. She had expected to be contemptuously--or, at the best, indifferently--entreated by the prosperous well-placed young lady, whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of as a good girl, as girls go; a vague species of commendation, which, to the mind of Mrs. Woolper, promised very little.

As clearly as Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes with