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

beamed with a happy smile. She was so pleased to find her mother's husband better than she had thought him. But, to her supreme astonishment, he thrust her from him roughly, almost violently, and looking up at his face she saw it darkened by a blacker shadow than she had ever seen upon it before. Anger, terror, pain, remorse, she knew not what, but an expression so horrible that she shrunk from him with a sense of alarm, and went back to her chair, bewildered and trembling.

"You frightened me, Mr. Sheldon," she said faintly.

"Not more than you frightened me," answered the stockbroker, walking to the window and taking his stand there, with his face hidden from Charlotte. "I did not know there was so much feeling in me. For God's sake, let us have no sentiment!"

"Were you angry with me just now?" asked the girl, falteringly, utterly at a loss to comprehend the change in her stepfather's manner.

"No, I was not angry. I am not accustomed to these strong emotions," replied Mr. Sheldon, huskily; "I cannot stand them. Pray let us avoid all sentimental discussion. I am anxious to do my duty in a straightforward, business-like way. I don't want gratitude--or fuss. The five thousand pounds are yours, and I am pleased to find you consider the amount sufficient. And now I have only one small favour to ask of you in return."

"I should be very ungrateful if I refused to do anything you may ask," said Charlotte, who could not help feeling a little chilled and disappointed by Mr. Sheldon's stony rejection of her gratitude.

"The matter is very simple. You are young, and have, in the usual course of things, a long life before you. But--you know there is always a 'but' in these cases--a railway accident--a little carelessness in passing your drawing-room fire some evening when you are dressed in flimsy gauze or muslin--a fever--a cold--any one of the many dangers that lie in wait for all of us, and our best calculations are falsified. If you were to marry and die childless, that money would go to your husband, and neither your mother nor I would ever touch a sixpence of it, Now as the money, practically, belongs to your mother, I consider that this contingency should be provided against--in her interests as well as in mine. In plain words, I want you to make a will leaving that money to me."

"I am quite ready to do so," replied Charlotte.

"Very good, my dear. I felt assured that you would take a sensible view of the matter. If you marry your dear Mr. Hawkehurst, have a family by-and-by, we will throw the old will into the fire and make a new one; but in the mean time it's just as well to be on the safe side. You shall go into the City with me to-morrow morning, and shall execute the will at my office. It will be the simplest document possible--as simple as the will made by old Serjeant Crane, in which he disposed of half a million of money in half a dozen lines--at the rate of five thousand pounds per word. After we've settled that little matter, we can arrange the transfer of the shares. The whole affair won't occupy an hour." "I will do whatever you wish," said Charlotte, meekly. She was not at all elated by the idea of coming suddenly into possession of five thousand pounds; but she was very much impressed by the new view of Mr. Sheldon's character afforded her by his conduct of to-day. And then her thoughts, constant to one point as the needle to the pole, reverted to her lover, and she began to think of the effect her fortune might have upon his prospects. He might go to the bar, he might work and study in pleasant Temple chambers, with wide area windows overlooking the river, and read law-books in the evening at the Wimbledon cottage for a few delightful years, at the end of which he would of course become Lord Chancellor. That he should devote such intellect and consecrate such genius as his to the service of his country's law-courts, and _not_ ultimately seat himself on the Woolsack, was a contingency not to be imagined by Miss Halliday. Ah, what would not five thousand pounds buy for him! The cottage expanded into a mansion, the little case of books developed into a library second only to that of the Duc d'Aumale, a noble steed waited at the glass door of the vestibule to convey Mr. Hawkehurst to the Temple, before the minute-hand of Mr. Sheldon's stern skeleton clock had passed from one figure to another: so great an adept was this young lady in the art of castle-building.

"Am I to tell mamma about this conversation?" asked Charlotte, presently.

"Well, no, I think not," replied Mr. Sheldon, thoughtfully. "These family arrangements cannot be kept too quiet. Your mamma is a talking person, you know, Charlotte; and as we don't want every one in this part of Bayswater to know the precise amount of your fortune, we may as well let matters rest as they are. Of course you would not wish Mr. Hawkehurst to be enlightened?"

"Why not, papa?"

"For several reasons. First and foremost, it must be pleasant to you to be sure that he is thoroughly disinterested I have told him that you will get something as a gift from me; but he may have implied that the something would be little more than a couple of hundreds to furnish a house. Secondly, it must be remembered, that he has been brought up in a bad school, and the best way to make him self-reliant and industrious is to let him think he has nothing but his own industry to depend upon. I have set him a task. When he has accomplished that, he shall have you and your five thousand pounds to boot. Till then I should strongly advise you to keep this business a secret.

"Yes," answered Charlotte, meditatively; "I think you are right. It would have been very nice to tell him of your kindness; but I want to be quite sure that he loves me for myself alone--from first to last--without one thought of money."

"That is wise," said Mr. Sheldon, decisively; and thus ended the interview.

Charlotte accompanied her stepfather to the city early next morning, and filled in the blanks in a lithographed form, prepared for the convenience of such testators as, being about to dispose of their property, do not care to employ the services of a legal adviser.

The will seemed to Charlotte the simplest possible affair. She bequeathed all her property, real and personal, to Philip Sheldon, without reserve. But as her entire fortune consisted of the five thousand pounds just given her by that gentleman, and as her personal property was comprised in a few pretty dresses and trinkets, and desks and workboxes, she could not very well object to such an arrangement.

"Of course, mamma would have all my books and caskets, and boxes and things," she said thoughtfully; "and I should like Diana Paget to have some of my jewellery, please, Mr. Sheldon. Mamma has plenty, you know."

"There is no occasion, to talk of that, Charlotte," replied the stockbroker. "This will is only a matter of form."

Mr. Sheldon omitted to inform his stepdaughter that the instrument just executed would, upon her wedding-day, become so much waste paper, an omission that was not in harmony with the practical and careful habits of that gentleman.

"Yes, I know that it is only a form," replied Charlotte; "but, after making a will, one feels as if one was going to die. At least I do. It seems a kind of preparation for death. I don't wonder people rather dislike doing it.

"It is only foolish people who dislike doing it," said Mr. Sheldon, who was in his most practical mood to-day. "And now we will go and arrange a more agreeable business--the transfer of the shares."

After this, there was a little commercial juggling, in the form of signing and countersigning, which, was quite beyond Charlotte's comprehension: which operation being completed, she was told that she was owner of five thousand pounds in Unitas Bank shares, and that the dividends accruing from time to time on those shares would be hers to dispose of as she pleased.

"The income arising from your capital will be more than you can spend so long as you remain under my roof," said Mr. Sheldon. "I should therefore strongly recommend you to invest your dividends as they arise, and thus increase your capital."

"You are so kind and thoughtful," murmured Charlotte; "I shall always be pleased to take your advice." She was strongly impressed by the kindness of the man her thoughts had wronged.

"How difficult it is to understand these reserved, matter-of-fact people!" she said to herself. Because my stepfather does not talk sentiment, I have fancied him hard and worldly; and yet he has proved himself as capable of doing a noble action as if he were the most poetical of mankind.

Mrs. Sheldon had been told that Charlotte was going into the City to choose a new watch, wherewith to replace the ill-used little Geneva toy that had been her delight as a schoolgirl; and as Charlotte brought home a neat little English-made chronometer from a renowned emporium on Ludgate-hill, the simple matron accepted this explanation in all good faith.

"I'm sure, Lotta, you must confess your stepfather is kindness itself in most matters," said Georgy, after an admiring examination of the new watch. "When I think how kindly he has taken this business about Mr. Hawkehurst, and how disinterested he has proved himself in his ideas about your marriage, I really am inclined to think him the best of men."

Georgy said this with an air of triumph. She could not forget that there were people in Barlingford who had said hard things about Philip Sheldon, and had prophesied unutterable miseries for herself and her daughter as the bitter consequence of the imprudence she had been guilty of in her second marriage.

"He has indeed been very good, mamma," Charlotte replied gravely, "and, believe me, I am truly grateful. He does not like fuss or sentiment; but I hope he knows that I appreciate his kindness."


CHAPTER VI.


RIDING THE HIGH HORSE.

Never, in his brightest dreams, had Valentine Hawkehurst imagined the stream of life so fair and sunny a river as it seemed to him now. Fortune had treated him so scurvily for seven-and-twenty years of his life, only to relent of a sudden and fling all her choicest gifts into his lap.

"I must be the prince in the fairy tale who begins life as a revolting animal of the rhinoceros family, and ends by marrying the prettiest princess in Elfindom," he said to himself gaily, is he paced the broad walks of Kensington-gardens, where the bare trees swung their big black branches in the wintry blast, and the rooks cawed their loudest at close of the brief day.

What, indeed, could this young adventurer demand from benignant Fortune above and beyond the blessings she had given, him? The favoured suitor of the fairest and brightest woman he had ever looked upon, received by her kindred, admitted to her presence, and only bidden to serve a due apprenticeship before he claimed her as his own for ever. What more could he wish? what further boon could he implore from the Fates?

Yes, there was one thing more--one thing for which Mr. Hawkehurst pined, while most thankful for his many blessings. He wanted a