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

Charlotte Halliday. In plain words, she was to be a spy, a private detective, so far as this young lady was concerned; but Mr. Sheldon was too wise to put his requirements into plain words, knowing that even in the hour of her extremity Nancy Woolper would have refused to fill such an office had she clearly understood the measure of its infamy.

Upon the day that followed his interview with Mrs. Woolper, the stockbroker came home from the City an hour or two earlier than his custom, and startled Miss Halliday by appearing in the garden where she was walking alone, looking her brightest and prettiest in her dark winter hat and jacket, and pacing briskly to and fro among the bare frost-bound patches of earth that had once been flower-beds.

"I wan't a few minutes' quiet talk with you, Lotta," said Mr. Sheldon. "You'd better come into my study, where we're pretty sure not to be interrupted."

The girl blushed crimson as she acceded to this request, being assured that Mr. Sheldon was going to discuss her matrimonial engagement. Valentine had told her of that very satisfactory interview in the dining-room, and from that time she had been trying to find an opportunity for the acknowledgment of her stepfather's generosity. As yet the occasion had not arisen. She did not know how to frame her thanksgiving, and she shrank shyly from telling Mr. Sheldon how grateful she was to him for the liberality of mind which had distinguished his conduct in this affair.

"I really ought to thank him," she said to herself more than once. "I was quite prepared for his doing his uttermost to prevent my marriage with Valentine; and instead of that, he volunteers his consent, and even promises to give us a fortune. 'I am bound to thank him for such generous kindness."

Perhaps there is no task more difficult than to offer grateful tribute to a person whom one has been apt to think of with a feeling very near akin to dislike. Ever since her mother's second marriage Charlotte had striven against an instinctive distaste for Mr. Sheldon's society, and an innate distrust of Mr. Sheldon's affectionate regard for herself; but now that he had proved his sincerity in this most important crisis of her life, she awoke all at once to the sense of the wrong she had done.

"I am always reading the Sermon on the Mount, and yet in my thoughts about Mr. Sheldon I have never been able to remember those words, 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' His kindness touches me to the very heart, and I feel it all the more keenly because of my injustice."

She followed her stepfather into the prim little study. There was no fire, and the room was colder than a vault on this bleak December day. Charlotte shivered, and drew her jacket more tightly across her chest as she perched herself on one of Mr. Sheldon's shining red morocco chairs. "The room strikes cold," she said; "very, very cold."

After this there was a brief pause, during which Mr. Sheldon took some papers from the pocket of his overcoat, and arranged them on his desk with an absent manner, as if he were rather deliberating upon what he was going to say than thinking of what he was doing. While he loitered thus Charlotte found courage to speak.

"I wish to thank you, Mr. Sheldon--papa," she said, pronouncing the "papa" with some slight appearance of effort, in spite of her desire to be grateful: "I--I have been wishing to thank you for the last day or two; only it seems so difficult sometimes to express one's self about these things."

"I do not deserve or wish for your thanks, my dear. I have only done my duty."

"But, indeed, you do deserve my thanks, and you have them in all sincerity, papa. You have been very, very good to me--about--about Valentine. I thought you would be sure to oppose our marriage on the ground of imprudence, you know, and----"

"I do oppose your marriage in the present on the ground of imprudence, and I am only consentient to it in the future on the condition that Mr. Hawkehurst shall have secured a comfortable income by his literary labours. He seems to be clever, and he promises fairly----"

"O yes indeed, dear papa," cried the girl, pleased by this meed of praise for her lover; "he is more than clever. I am sure you would say so if you had time to read his article on Madame de Sévigné in the _Cheapside_."

"I daresay it's very good, my dear; but I don't care for Madame de Sévigné----"

"Or his sketch of Bossuet's career in the _Charing Cross_."

"My dear child, I do not even know who Bossuet was. All I require from Mr. Hawkehurst is, that he shall earn a good income before he takes you away from this house. You have been accustomed to a certain style of living, and I cannot allow you to encounter a life of poverty."

"But, dear papa, I am not in the least afraid of poverty."

"I daresay not, my dear. You have never been poor," replied Mr. Sheldon, coolly. "I don't suppose I am as much afraid of a rattlesnake as the poor wretches who are accustomed to see one swinging by his tail from the branch of a tree any day in the course of their travels. I have only a vague idea that a cobra de capello is an unpleasant customer; but depend upon it, those foreign fellows feel their blood stagnate and turn to ice at sight of the cold slimy-looking monster. Poverty and I travelled the same road once, and I know what the gentleman is. I don't want to meet him again." Mr. Sheldon lapsed into silence after this. His last words had been spoken to himself rather than to Charlotte, and the thoughts that accompanied them seemed far from pleasant to him.

Charlotte sat opposite her stepfather, patiently awaiting his pleasure. She looked at the gaudily-bound books behind the glass doors, and wondered whether any one had ever opened any of the volumes.

"I should like to read dear Sir Walter's stories once more," she thought; "there never, never was so sweet a romance as the 'Bride of Lammermoor,' and I cannot imagine that one could ever grow weary of reading it. But to ask Mr. Sheldon for the key of that bookcase would be quite impossible. I think his books must be copies of special editions, not meant to be read. I wonder whether they are real books, or only upholsterer's dummies?"

And then her fancies went vagabondising off to that little archetype of a cottage on the heights of Wimbledon-common, in which she and Valentine were to live when they were married. She was always furnishing and refurnishing this cottage, building it up and pulling it down, as the caprice of the moment dictated. Now it had bow-windows and white stuccoed walls--now it was Elizabethan--now the simplest, quaintest, rose-embowered cottager's dwelling, with diamond-paned casements, and deep thatch on the old gray roof. This afternoon she amused herself by collecting a small library for Valentine, while waiting Mr. Sheldon's next observation. He was to have all her favourite books, of course; and they were to be bound in the prettiest, most girlish bindings. She could see the dainty volumes, primly ranged on the little carved oak bookcase, which Valentine was to "pick up" in Wardour-street. She fancied herself walking down that mart of bric-a-brac arm-in-arm with her lover, intent on "picking up." Ah, what happiness! what dear delight in the thought! And O, of all the bright dreams we dream, how few are realised upon this earth! Do they find their fulfilment in heaven, those visions of perfect bliss?

Mr. Sheldon looked up from his desk at last. Miss Halliday remarked to herself that his face was pale and haggard in the chill wintry sunlight; but she knew how hard and self-denying a life he led in his stern devotion to business, and she was in no manner surprised to see him looking ill.

"I want to say a few words to you on a matter of business, Lotta," he began, "and I must ask you to give me all your attention."

"I will do so with pleasure, papa, but I am awfully stupid about business."

"I shall do my best to make matters simple. I suppose you know what money your father left, including the sums his life had been insured for?"

"Yes, I have heard mamma say it was eighteen thousand pounds. I do so hate the idea of those insurances. It seems like the price of a man's life, doesn't it? I daresay that is a very unbusiness-like way of considering the question, but I cannot bear to think that we got money by dear papa's death."

These remarks were too trivial for Mr. Sheldon's notice. He went on with what he had to say in the cold hard voice that was familiar to his clerks and to the buyers and sellers of shares and stock who had dealings with him.

"Your father left eighteen thousand pounds; that amount was left to your mother without reservation. When she married me, without any settlement, that money became mine, in point of law--mine to squander or make away with as I pleased. You know that I have made good use of that money, and that your mother has had no reason to repent her confidence in my honour and honesty. The time has now come in which that honour will be put to a sharper test. You have no legal claim on so much as a shilling of your father's fortune."

"I know that, Mr. Sheldon," cried Charlotte, eagerly, "and Valentine knows also; and, believe me, I do not expect----"

"I have to settle matters with my own conscience as well as with your expectations, my dear Lotta," Mr. Sheldon said, solemnly. "Your father left you unprovided for; but as a man of honour I feel myself bound to take care that you shall not suffer by his want of caution. I have therefore prepared a deed of gift, by which I transfer to you five thousand pounds, now invested in Unitas Bank shares."

"You are going to give me five thousand pounds!" cried Charlotte, astounded.

"Without reservation."

"You mean to say that you will give me this fortune when I marry, papa?" said Charlotte, interrogatively.

"I shall give it to you immediately," replied Mr. Sheldon. "I wish you to be thoroughly independent of me and my pleasure. You will then understand, that if I insist upon the prudence of delay, I do so in your interest and not in my own. I wish you to feel that if I am a hindrance to your immediate marriage, it is not because I wish to delay the disbursement of your dowry."

"O, Mr. Sheldon, O, papa, you are more than generous--you are noble! It is not that I care for the money. O, believe me, there is no one in the world who could care less for that than I do. But your thoughtful kindness, your generosity, touches me to the very heart. O, please let me kiss you, just as if you were my own dear father come back to life to protect and guide me. I have thought you cold and worldly. I have done you so much wrong."

She ran to him, and wound her arms about his neck before he could put her off, and lifted up her pretty rosy mouth to his dry hot lips. Her heart was overflowing with generous emotion, her face