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

have the smallest power over him.

"The man is such a thorough-going schemer himself, that he cannot bring himself to believe in another man's honesty," thought Mr. Hawkehurst, while meditating upon his experience of the two brothers. "So far as I have had any dealings with Philip Sheldon, I have found him straightforward enough. I can imagine no hidden motive for his conduct in relation to Charlotte. The test of his honesty will be the manner in which he is acted upon by Charlotte's position as claimant of a great fortune. Will he throw me overboard, I wonder? or will my dear one believe me an adventurer and fortune-hunter? Ah, no, no, no; I do not think in all the complications of life there could come about a state of events which would cause my Charlotte to doubt me. There is no clairvoyance so unerring as true love."

Mr. Hawkehurst had need of such philosophy as this to sustain him in the present crisis of his life. He was blest with a pure delight which excelled his wildest dreams of happiness; but he was not blest with any sense of security as to the endurance of that exalted state of bliss.

Mr. Sheldon would learn Charlotte's position, would doubtless extort from his brother the history of those researches in which Valentine had been engaged; and then, what then? Alas! hereupon arose incalculable dangers and perplexities.

Might not the stockbroker, as a man of the world, take a sordid view of the whole transaction, and consider Valentine in the light of a shameless adventurer, who had traded on his secret knowledge in the hope of securing a rich wife? Might he not reveal all to Charlotte, and attempt to place her lover before her in this most odious aspect? She would not believe him base; her faith would be unshaken, her love unchanged; but it was odious, it was horrible, to think that her ears should be sullied, her tender heart fluttered, by the mere suggestion of such baseness.

It was during the Christmas-morning sermon that Mr. Hawkehurst permitted his mind to be disturbed by these reflections. He was sitting next his betrothed, and had the pleasure of contemplating her fair girlish face, with the rosy lips half parted in reverent attention as she looked upward to her pastor. After church there was the walk home to the Lawn: and during this rapturous promenade Valentine put away from him all shadow of doubt and fear, in order to bask in the full sunshine of his Charlotte's presence. Her pretty gloved hand rested confidingly on his arm, and the supreme privilege of carrying a dainty blue-silk umbrella and an ivory-bound church-service was awarded him. With what pride he accepted the duty of convoying his promised wife over the muddy crossings! Those brief journeys seemed to him in a manner typical of their future lives. She was to travel dry-shod over the miry ways of this world, supported by his strong arm. How fondly he surveyed her toilet! and what a sudden interest he felt in the fashions, that had until lately seemed so vulgar and frivolous!

"I will never denounce the absurdity of those little bonnets again, Lotta," he cried; "that conglomeration of black velvet and maiden's-hair fern is divine. Do you know that in some places they call that fern Maria's hair, and hold it sacred to the mother of Him who was born to-day? so you see there is an artistic fitness in your head-dress. Yes, your bonnet is delicious, darling; and though the diminutive size of that velvet jacket would lead me to suppose you had borrowed it from some juvenile sister, it seems the very garment of all garments best calculated to render you just one hair's-breadth nearer perfection than you were made by Nature."

"Valentine, don't be ridiculous!" giggled the young lady.

"How can I help being ridiculous? Your presence acts upon my nerves like laughing-gas. Ah, you do not know what cares and perplexities I have to make me serious. Charlotte," exclaimed the young man, with sudden energy, "do you think you could ever come to distrust me?"

"Valentine! Do I think I shall ever be Queen of England? One thing is quite as likely as the other."

"My dear angel, if you will only believe in me always, there is no power upon earth that can make us unhappy. Suppose you found yourself suddenly possessed of a great fortune, Charlotte; what would you do with it?"

"I would buy you a library as good as that in the British Museum; and then you would not want to spend the whole of your existence in Great Russell-street."

"But if you had a great fortune, Lotta, don't you think you would be very much disposed to leave me to plod on at my desk in Great Russell-street? Possessed of wealth, you would begin to languish for position; and you would allow Mr. Sheldon to bring you some suitor who could give you a name and a rank in society worthy of an angelic creature with a hundred thousand pounds or so."

"I should do nothing of the kind. I do not care for money. Indeed, I should be almost sorry to be very rich."

"Why, dearest?"

"Because, if I were very rich, we could not live in the cottage at Wimbledon, and I could not make lemon cheese-cakes for your dinner."

"My own true-hearted darling!" cried Valentine; "the taint of worldliness can never touch your pure spirit."

They were at the gates of Mr. Sheldon's domain by this time. Diana and Georgy had walked behind the lovers, and had talked a little about the sermon, and a good deal about the bonnets; poor Diana doing her very uttermost to feign an interest in the finery that had attracted Mrs. Sheldon's wandering gaze.

"Well, I should have thought you couldn't fail to see it," said the elder lady, as they approached the gate; "a leghorn, very small, with holly-berries and black ribbon--quite French, you know, and _so_ stylish. I was thinking, if I had my Tuscan cleaned and altered, it might----" And here the conversation became general, as the family party entered the drawing-room, where Mr. Sheldon was reading his paper by a roaring fire.

"Talking about the bonnets, as per usual," said the stockbroker. "What an enormous amount of spiritual benefit you women must derive from church-going!--Consols have fallen another eighth since Tuesday afternoon, George," added Mr. Sheldon, addressing himself to his brother, who was standing on the hearth-rug, with his elbow on the chimney-piece.

"Consols are your 'bonnets,' papa," cried Charlotte, gaily; "I don't think there is a day upon which you do not talk about their having gone up, or gone down, or gone somewhere."

After luncheon the lovers went for a walk in Kensington-gardens, with Diana Paget to play propriety. "You will come with us, won't you, dear Di?" pleaded Charlotte. "You have been looking pale and ill lately, and I am sure a walk will do you good."

Valentine seconded his liege lady's request; and the three spent a couple of hours pacing briskly to and fro in the lonelier parts of the gardens, leaving the broad walks for the cockneys, who mustered strong upon this seasonable Christmas afternoon.

For two out of those three that wintry walk was rapture only too fleeting. For the third it was passive endurance. The agonies that had but lately rent Diana's breast when she had seen those two together no longer tortured her. The scorpion sting was beginning to lose its venomous power. She suffered still, but her suffering was softened by resignation. There is a limit to the capacity for pain in every mind. Diana had borne her share of grief; she had, in Homeric phrase, satiated herself with anguish and tears; and to those sharp throes and bitter torments there had succeeded a passive sense of sorrow that was almost peace.

"I have lost him," she said to herself. "Life can never bring me much joy; but I should be worse than weak if I spent my existence in the indulgence of my sorrow. I should be one of the vilest wretches upon this earth if I could not teach myself to witness the happiness of my friend without repining."

Miss Paget had not arrived at this frame of mind without severe struggles. Many times, in the long wakeful nights, in the slow, joyless days, she had said to herself, "Peace, peace, when there was no peace." But at last the real peace, the true balm of Gilead, was given in answer to her prayers, and the weary soul tasted the sweetness of repose. She had wrestled with, and had vanquished, the demon.

To-day, as she walked beside the lovers, and listened to their happy frivolous talk, she felt like a mother who had seen the man she loved won from her by her own daughter, and who had resigned herself to the ruin of all her hopes for love of her child.

There was more genial laughter and pleasant converse at Mr. Sheldon's dinner-table that evening than was usual at that hospitable board; but the stockbroker himself contributed little to the merriment of the party. He was quiet, and even thoughtful, and let the talk and laughter go by him without any attempt to take part in it. After dinner he went to his own room; while Valentine and the ladies sat round the fire in the orthodox Christmas manner, and after a good deal of discursive conversation, subsided into the telling of ghost-stories.

George Sheldon sat apart from the circle, turning over the books upon the table, or peering into a stereoscope with an evident sense of weariness. This kind of domestic evening was a manner of life which Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn denounced as "slow;" and he submitted himself to the endurance of it this evening only because he did not know where else to bestow his presence.

"I don't think papa cares much about ghost-stories, does he, uncle George?" Charlotte asked, by way of saying something to the gentleman, who seemed so very dreary as he sat yawning over the books and stereoscopes.

"I don't suppose he does, my dear."

"And do you think he believes in ghosts?" the young lady demanded, laughingly.

"No, I am sure he doesn't," replied George, very seriously.

"Why, how seriously you say that!" cried Charlotte, a little startled by George Sheldon's manner, in which there had been an earnestness not quite warranted by the occasion.

"I was thinking of your father--not my brother Phil. He died in Philip's house, you know; and if Phil believed in ghosts, he would scarcely have liked living in that house afterwards, you see, and so on. But he went on living there for a twelvemonth longer. It seemed just as good as any other house to him, I suppose."

Hereupon Georgy dissolved into tears, and told the company how she had fled, heartbroken, from the house in which her first husband had died, immediately after the funeral.

"And I'm sure the gentlemanly manner in which your step-papa behaved during all that dreadful time, Charlotte, is beyond all praise," continued the lady, turning to her daughter; "so thoughtful, so kind, so patient. What I should have done if poor Tom's illness had happened in a strange house, I don't know. And I have no doubt that the new doctor, Mr. Burkham, did his duty, though his manner was not as decided as I should have wished."

"Mr. Burkham!" cried Valentine. "What Burkham is that? We've a member of the Ragamuffins called Burkham, a surgeon, who does a little in the literary line."

"The Mr. Burkham who attended my poor dear