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

have been a confounded fool not to expect some kind of underhand work from you."

"What do you mean by underhand work?" exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. "The same newspapers that were open to you were open to me, and I had better opportunities for tracking my stepdaughter's direct descent from John Haygarth's father."

"How did you discover Miss Halliday's descent from Matthew Haygarth?" asked George, very meekly. He was quite crestfallen. He began to feel that his brother would have the upper hand of him in this business as in all other business of this world.

"That is my secret," replied Mr. Sheldon, with agreeable tranquillity of manner. "You have kept your secrets, and I shall keep mine. Your policy has been the policy of distrust. Mine shall be the same. When you were starting this affair, I offered to go into it with you--to advance whatever money you needed, in a friendly manner. You declined my offer, and chose to go in for the business on your own hook. You have made a very good thing for yourself, no doubt; but you are not quite clever enough to keep me altogether in the dark in a matter which concerns a member of my own family."

"Yes," said George, with a sigh, "that's where you hold the winning cards. Miss Halliday is your ace of trumps."

"Depend upon it, I shall know how to hold my strength in reserve, and when to play my leading trump."

"And how to collar my king," muttered George between his set teeth.

"Come," exclaimed Philip presently, "we may as well discuss this matter in a friendly spirit. What do you mean to propose?"

"I have only one proposition to make," answered the lawyer, with decision. "I hold every link of the chain of evidence, without which Miss Halliday might as well be a native of the Fiji islands for any claim she can assert to John Haygarth's estate. I am prepared to carry this matter through; but I will only do it on the condition that I receive half the fortune recovered from the Crown by Miss Halliday."

"A very moderate demand, upon my word!"

"I daresay I shall be able to make my bargain with Miss Halliday." "Very likely," replied Mr. Sheldon; "and I shall be able to get that bargain set aside as illegal."

"I doubt that. I have a deed of agreement drawn up here which would hold water in any court of equity."

And hereupon Mr. Sheldon the younger produced and read aloud one of those dry as dust documents by which the legal business of life is carried on. It was a deed to be executed by Charlotte Halliday, spinster, of Bayswater, on the one part, and George Sheldon, solicitor, of Gray's Inn, on the other part; and it gave to the said George Sheldon, as securely as any deed can give anything, one half of any property, not now in her possession or control, which the said Charlotte Halliday might obtain by the agency of the above-mentioned George Sheldon.

"And pray, who is to find the costs for this business?" asked the stockbroker. "I don't feel by any means disposed to stake my money on such a hazardous game. Who knows what other descendants of Matthew Haygarth may be playing at hide-and-seek in the remotest corners of the earth, ready to spring out upon us when we've wasted a small fortune upon law-proceedings."

"I shan't ask you to risk your money," replied George, with sullen dignity. "I have friends who will back me when they see that agreement executed."

"Very well, then, all you have to do is to alter your half share to one-fifth, and I will undertake that Miss Halliday shall sign the agreement before the week is out."

"One-fifth?"

"Yes, my dear George. Twenty thousand pounds will pay you very handsomely for your trouble. I cannot consent to Miss Halliday ceding more than a fifth."

"A fig for your consent! The girl is of age, and can act upon her own hook. I shall go to Miss Halliday herself," exclaimed the indignant lawyer.

"O no, you won't. You must know the danger of running counter to me in this business. That agreement is all very well; but there is no kind of document more easy to upset if one only goes about it in the right way. Play your own game, and I will upset that agreement, as surely as I turn this wine-glass bowl downwards."

Mr. Sheldon's action and Mr. Sheldon's look expressed a determination which George knew how to estimate by the light of past experience.

"It is a hard thing to find you against me, after the manner in which I have toiled and slaved for your stepdaughter's interests."

"I am bound to hold my stepdaughter's interests paramount over every consideration." "Yes, paramount over brotherly feeling and all that sort of thing. I say that it is more than hard that you should be against me, considering the special circumstances and the manner in which I have kept my own counsel----"

"You will take a fifth share, or nothing, George," said Mr. Sheldon, with a threatening contraction of his black brows.

"If I have any difficulty in arranging matters with you, I will go into this affair myself, and carry it through without your help."

"That I defy you to do."

"You had better not defy me."

"Pray how much do you expect to get out of Miss Halliday's fortune?" demanded the aggravated George.

"That is my business," answered Philip. "And now we had better go into the drawing-room for our tea. O, by the bye, George," he added, carelessly, "as Miss Halliday is quite a child in all business matters, she had better be treated like a child. I shall tell her that she has a claim to a certain sum of money; but I shall not tell her what sum. Her disappointment will be less in the event of a failure, if her expectations are not large."

"You are always so considerate, my dear Phil," said George, with a malignant grin. "May I ask how it is you have taken it into your head to play the benevolent father in the matter of Valentine Hawkehurst and Miss Halliday?"

"What can it signify to me whom my stepdaughter marries?" asked Philip, coolly. "Of course I wish her well; but I will not have the responsibility of controlling her choice. If this young man suits her, let her marry him."

"Especially when he happens to suit _you_ so remarkably well. I think I can understand your tactics, Phil."

"You must understand or misunderstand me, just as you please. And now come to tea."


CHAPTER VIII.


CHRISTMAS PEACE.

Valentine Hawkehurst did not make his appearance at the Lawn on Christmas-eve. He devoted that evening to the service of his old ally. He performed all friendly offices for the departing Captain, dined with him very pleasantly in Regent-street, and accompanied him to the London-bridge terminus, where he beheld the voyager comfortably seated in a second-class carriage of the night-train for Newhaven.

Mr. Hawkehurst had seen the Captain take a through ticket for Rouen, and he saw the train leave the terminus. This he held to be ocular demonstration of the fact that Captain Paget was really going to the Gallic Manchester.

"That sort of customer is so uncommonly slippery," the young man said to himself as he left the station; "nothing but the evidence of my own eyes would have convinced me of my friend's departure. How pure and fresh the London atmosphere seems now that the perfume of Horatio Paget is out of it! I wonder what he is going to do at Rouen? Very little good, I daresay. But why should I wonder about him, or trouble myself about him? He is gone, and I have set myself free from the trammels of the past."

* * * * *


The next day was Christmas-day. Mr. Hawkehurst recited scraps of Milton's glorious hymn as he made his morning toilet. He was very happy. It was the first Christmas morning on which he had ever awakened with this sense of supreme happiness, or with the consciousness that the day was brighter, or grander, or more holy than other days. It seemed to him to-day, more than ever, that he was indeed a regenerate creature, purified by the influence of a good woman's love.

He looked back at his past existence, and the vision of many Christmas-days arose before him: a Christmas in Paris, amidst unutterable rain and mud; a Christmas-night spent in roaming the Boulevards, and in the consumption of cognac and tobacco at a third-rate café; a Christmas in Germany; more than one Christmas in the Queen's Bench; one especially dreary Christmas in a long bare ward at Whitecross-street,--how many varied scenes and changing faces arose before his mental vision associated with that festive time! And yet among them all there was not one on which there shone the faintest glimmer of that holy light which makes the common holiday a sacred season.

It was a pleasant thing to breakfast without the society of the brilliant Horatio, whose brilliancy was apt to appear somewhat ghastly at that early period of the morning. It was pleasant to loiter over the meal, now meditating on the happy future, now dipping into a tattered copy of Southey's "Doctor;" with the consciousness that the winds and waves had by this time wafted Captain Paget to a foreign land.

Valentine was to spend the whole of Christmas-day with Charlotte and her kindred. He was to accompany them to a fashionable church in the morning, to walk with them after church, to dine and tell ghost-stories in the evening. It was to be his first day as a recognised member of that pleasant family at Bayswater; and in the fulness of his heart he felt affectionately disposed to all his adopted relations; even to Mr. Sheldon, whose very noble conduct had impressed him strongly, in spite of the bitter sneers and covert slanders of George. Charlotte had told her lover that her stepfather was a very generous and disinterested person, and that there was a secret which she would have been glad to tell him, had she not been pledged to hold it inviolate, that would have gone far to place Mr. Sheldon in a very exalted light before the eyes of his future son-in-law.

And then Miss Halliday had nodded and smiled, and had informed her lover, with a joyous little laugh, that he should have a horse to ride, and an edition of Grote's "Greece" bound in dark-brown calf with bevelled edges, when they were married; this work being one which the young author had of late languished to possess.

"Dear foolish Lotta, I fear there will be a new history of Greece, based on new theories, before that time comes," said the lover.

"O no, indeed; that time will come very soon. See how industriously you work, and how well you succeed. The magazine people will soon give you thirty pounds a month. Or who knows that you may not write some book that will make you suddenly famous, like Byron, or the good-natured fat little printer who wrote those long, long, long novels that no one reads nowadays?"

Influenced by Charlotte's hints about her stepfather, Mr. Hawkehurst's friendly feeling for that gentleman grew stronger, and the sneers and innuendoes of the lawyer ceased to