Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Horatio Paget accepted the invitation as cordially as it was given. It is astonishing how genial and friendly these men of the world can be at the slightest imaginable notice. One can fancy the striped tigers of Bengal shaking paws in the jungle, the vultures hob-nobbing in a mountain cleft over the torn carcass of a stag, the kites putting their beaks together after dining on a nest of innocent doves.

  “Then we shall expect to see you at sharp six,” said Mr. Sheldon, “and your friend Mr. Hawkehurst with you, of course.”

  After this the two gentlemen departed. Valentine shook hands with Diana, and took a more ceremonious leave of Charlotte. George Sheldon threw away his chewed geranium-stalk in order to bid good evening to the visitors; and the little party walked to the garden-gate together.

  “That Sheldon seems a very clever fellow,” said Captain Paget, as he and Valentine walked towards the Park, which they had to cross on their way to Chelsea, where the Captain had secured a convenient lodging. “I wonder whether he is any relation to the Sheldon who is in with a low set of money-lenders?”

  “What, the Sheldon of Gray’s Inn?” exclaimed Mr. Hawkehurst. “We can easily find that out.”

  * * * * *

  Horatio Paget and Valentine Hawkehurst were frequent visitors at the Lawn after that first evening. Mr. Sheldon found the Captain useful to him in the carrying out of certain business arrangements on more than one occasion, and the relations between the respectable stockbroker and the disreputable adventurer assumed a very friendly character. Diana wondered to see so spotless a citizen as Philip Sheldon hand-and-glove with her father. Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte were delighted with the Captain and his protégé; these two penniless Bohemians were so much more agreeable to the feminine mind than the City men who were wont to sit in the dining-room slowly imbibing Mr. Sheldon’s old port in the long summer evenings, while their wives endured the abomination of desolation with Georgy and Charlotte in the drawing-room. Captain Paget paid Mrs. Sheldon flowery compliments, and told her delightful stories of the aristocracy and all that shining West-end world with which he had once been familiar. Poor simple Georgy regarded him with that reverential awe which a middle-class country-bred woman is prone to feel for a man who bears upon him that ineffaceable stamp of high birth and good breeding, not to be destroyed by half a century of degradation. Nor could Charlotte withhold her admiration from the man whose tone was so infinitely superior to that of all the other men she had encountered. In his darkest hour Captain Paget had found his best friends, or his easiest dupes, among women. It had gone hard with him when his dear friend had withheld the temporary accommodation of a five-pound note; but it had been much harder when his friend’s wife had refused the loan of “a little silver.”

  Valentine Hawkehurst came very often to the Lawn, sometimes with his friend and patron, sometimes alone. He brought the young ladies small offerings in the way of a popular French novel adapted for feminine perusal, or an occasional box for some theatre which had fallen upon evil days, and was liberal in the circulation of “paper.” He met the two girls sometimes in their morning walks in Kensington-gardens, and walked with them in the leafy avenues, and only left them at the gate by which they departed. So much of his life was a listless waiting for the arising of new chances, that he had ample time to waste in feminine society, and he seemed very well inclined to loiter away the leisure hours of existence in the companionship of Diana and her friend.

  And was Miss Paget glad of his coming, and pleased to be in his company? Alas, no! The time had been, and only within a few months, when she had sickened for the sight of his familiar face, and fancied that the most exquisite happiness life could afford her would be to see him once more, anywhere, under any circumstances. She saw him now almost daily, and she was miserable. She saw him; but another woman had come between her and the man she loved: and now, if his voice took a softer tone, or if his eyes assumed a tender earnestness of expression, it might be Charlotte’s influence which wrought the transformation. Who could say that it was not on Charlotte’s account he came so often, and lingered so long? Diana looked at him sometimes with haggard angry eyes, which saw that it was Miss Halliday who absorbed his attention. It was Charlotte — Charlotte, who was so bright and happy a creature that the coldest heart must needs have been moved and melted by her fascination. What was the cold patrician beauty of Miss Paget’s face when compared with the changeful charm of this radiant girl, with the flashing gray eyes and piquant features, and all those artless caprices of manner which made her arch loveliness irresistible? Diana’s heart grew sick and cold as she watched these two day by day, and saw the innocent school-girl’s ascendancy over the adventurer. The attributes which made Charlotte charming were just those very attributes which Valentine Hawkehurst had been least accustomed to discover in the womankind he had hitherto encountered. He had seen beautiful women, elegant and fascinating women, without number; but this frank girlish nature, this happy childlike disposition, was entirely new to him. How should he have met bright childlike creatures in the pathways which he had trodden? For the first time in his life a fresh young heart revealed its treasures of purity and tenderness before his world-weary eyes, and his own heart was melted by the new influence. He had admired Diana; he had been touched by her girlish fancy for him, and had loved her as well as he had believed himself capable of loving any woman. But when Prudence and Honour counselled him to stifle and crush his growing affection for the beautiful companion of his wanderings, the struggle had involved no agony of regret or despair. He had told himself that no good could ever come of his love for Captain Paget’s daughter, and he had put aside that love before it had taken any vital root in his heart. He had been very strong and resolute in this matter — resisting looks of sad surprise which would have melted a softer nature. And he had been proud of his own firmness. “Better for her, and better for me,” he had said to himself: “let her outlive her foolish schoolgirl fancies, and wait patiently till her beauty wins her a rich husband. As for me, I must marry some prosperous tradesman’s widow, if I ever marry at all.”

  The influence of the world in which his life had been spent had degraded Valentine Hawkehurst, and had done much to harden him; and yet he was not altogether hard. He discovered his own weakness very soon after the beginning of his acquaintance with Mr. Sheldon’s stepdaughter. He knew very well that if he had been no fitting lover for Diana Paget, he was still less a fitting lover for Charlotte Halliday. He knew that although it might suit Mr. Sheldon’s purpose to make use of the Captain and himself as handy instruments for the accomplishment of somewhat dirty work, he would be the very last man to accept one of those useful instruments as a husband for his stepdaughter. He knew all this; and knew that, apart from all worldly considerations, there was an impassable gulf between himself and Charlotte. What could there be in common between the unprincipled companion of Horatio Paget and this innocent girl, whose darkest sin had been a neglected lesson or an ill-written exercise? If he could have given her a home and a position, an untarnished name and respectable associations, he would even yet have been unworthy of her affection, unable to assure her happiness.

  “I am a scoundrel and an adventurer,” he said to himself, in his most contemptuous spirit. “If some benevolent fairy were to give me the brightest home that was ever created for man, and Charlotte for my wife, I daresay I should grow tired of my happiness in a week or two, and go out some night to look for a place where I could play billiards and drink beer. Is there any woman upon this earth who could render my existence supportable without billiards and beer?”

  Knowing himself much better than the Grecian philosopher seemed to think it possible for human nature to know itself, Mr. Hawkehurst decided that it was his bounden duty, both for his own sake and that of the young lady in question, to keep clear of the house in which Miss Halliday lived, and the avenue in which she was wont to walk. He told himself this a dozen times a day, and yet he made his appearance at the Lawn whenever he had the
poorest shadow of an excuse for going there; and it seemed as if the whole business of his life lay at the two ends of Charlotte’s favourite avenue, so often did he find himself called upon to perambulate that especial thoroughfare. He knew that he was weak and foolish and dishonourable; he knew that he was sowing the dragon’s teeth from which were to spring up armed demons that would rend and tear him. But Charlotte’s eyes were unspeakably bright and bewitching, and Charlotte’s voice was very sweet and tender. A thrilling consciousness that he was not altogether an indifferent person in Charlotte’s consideration had possessed him of late when he found himself in that young lady’s society, and a happiness which had hitherto been strange to him gave a new zest to his purposeless life.

  He still affected the old indifference of manner, the idle listless tone of a being who has finished with all the joys and sorrows, affections and aspirations, of the world in which he lives. But the pretence had of late become a very shallow one. In Charlotte’s presence he was eager and interested in spite of himself — childishly eager about the veriest trifles which interested her. Love had taken up the glass of Time; and the days and hours were reckoned by a new standard; everything in the world had suffered some wondrous change, which Valentine Hawkehurst tried in vain to understand. The very earth upon which he walked had undergone some mystic process of transformation; the very streets of London were new to him. He had known Kensington-gardens from his boyhood; but not those enchanted avenues of beech and elm in which he walked with Charlotte. In the plainest and most commonplace phraseology, Mr. Hawkehurst had fallen in love. This penniless adventurer, who at eight-and-twenty years of age was steeped to the lips in the worst experiences of a very indifferent world, found himself all at once hanging upon the words and living upon the looks of an ignorant schoolgirl.

  The discovery that he was capable of this tender weakness had an almost overwhelming effect upon Mr. Hawkehurst. He was ashamed of this touch of humanity, this foolish affection which had awakened all that was purest and best in a nature that had been so long abandoned to degrading influences. For some time he fought resolutely against that which he considered his folly; but the training which had made him the master of many a perplexing position had not given him the mastery over his own inclinations; and when he found that Charlotte’s society had become the grand necessity of his life, he abandoned himself to his fate without further resistance. He let himself drift with the tide that was so much stronger than himself; and if there were breakers ahead, or fatal rocks lurking invisible beneath the blue waters, he must take his chance. His frail bark must go to pieces when her time came. In the meanwhile it was so delicious to float upon the summer sea, that a man could afford to forget future possibilities in the way of rocks and quicksands.

  Miss Paget had known very few pleasures in the course of her uncared-for youth; but she hitherto had experienced no such anguish as that which she had now to endure in her daily intercourse with Valentine and Charlotte. She underwent her martyrdom bravely, and no prying eye discovered the sufferings which her proud nature supported in silence. “Who takes any heed of my feelings, or cares whether I am glad or sorry?” she thought; “he does not.”

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE COMPACT OF GRAY’S INN.

  The sand which ran so swiftly in the glass which that bright young urchin Love had wrested from the hand of grim old Time ran with an almost equal swiftness in the hour-glasses of lodging-house keepers and tradespeople, and the necessities of every day demanded perpetual exertion on the part of Mr. Hawkehurst, let Charlotte’s eyes be never so bright, and Charlotte’s society never so dear. For Captain Paget and his protégé there was no such thing as rest; and the ingenious Captain took care that the greater part of the labour should be performed by Valentine, while the lion’s share of the spoil was pounced upon by the ready paw of the noble Horatio. Just now he found his pupil unusually plastic, unusually careless of his own interests, and ready to serve his master with agreeable blindness. Since that awkward little affair at Forêtdechêne, that tiresome entanglement about a King of Spades which had put in an appearance at a moment when no such monarch was to be expected, Captain Paget had obtained the means of existence in a manner which was almost respectable, if not altogether honest; for it is not to be supposed that honesty and respectability are by any means synonymous terms. It was only by the exercise of superhuman address that the Captain had extricated himself from that perplexing predicament at the Belgian watering-place; and it may be that the unpleasant experiences of that particular evening were not without a salutary effect upon the adventurer’s future plans.

  “It was touch-and-go work, Val,” he said to his companion; “and if I hadn’t carried matters with a high hand, and sprung my position as an officer in the English service upon those French ruffians, I don’t know where it would have ended.”

  “It might have come to a metallic ornamentation of the ankle, and some amiable 444, who has murdered his grandmother with a red-hot poker and extenuating circumstances, for your companion,” murmured Valentine. “I wouldn’t try it on with that supererogatory king again on this side of the Channel, if I were you.”

  The Captain bestowed a freezing look on his flippant protégé and then commenced a very grave discussion of future ways and means, which ended in an immediate departure for Paris, where the two men entered upon an unpretentious career in the commercial line as agents and travellers for the patentees of an improved kind of gutta percha, which material was supposed to be applicable to every imaginable purpose, from the sole of an infant’s boot to the roof of a cathedral. There are times when genius must stoop to pick up its daily pittance; and for twelve months the elegant Horatio Paget was content to devote his best energies to the perpetual praise of the Incorrodible and Indestructible and Incombustible India-rubber, in consideration of a very modest percentage on his commercial transactions in that material. To exert the persuasive eloquence of a Burke or a Thurlow in order to induce a man to roof his new warehouses with a fabric which you are aware will be torn into ribbons by the first run of stormy weather, for the sake of obtaining two-and-a-half per cent on his investment, may not be in accordance with the honourable notions of a Bayard, and yet in a commercial sense may be strictly correct. It was only when Captain Paget had made a comfortable little purse out of his percentage upon the Incorrodible and Incombustible that he discovered the extreme degradation of his position as agent and traveller. He determined on returning to the land of his birth. Joint-stock companies were beginning to multiply in the commercial world at this period; and wherever there are many schemes for the investment of public capital there is room for such a man as Horatio Paget — a man who, with the aid of a hired brougham, can inspire confidence in the breast of the least daring speculator.

  The Captain came, accompanied as usual by that plastic tool and subaltern, Valentine Hawkehurst, who, being afflicted with a chronic weariness of everything in life, was always eager to abandon any present pursuit in favour of the vaguest contingency, and to shake off the dust of any given locality from his vagabond feet. Captain Paget and his protégé came to London, where a fortunate combination of circumstances threw them in the way of Mr. Sheldon.

  The alliance which arose between that gentleman and the Captain opened a fair prospect for the latter. Mr. Sheldon was interested in the formation of a certain joint-stock company, but had his own reasons for not wishing to be identified with it. A stalking-horse is by no means a difficult kind of animal to procure in the cattle-fairs of London; but a stalking-horse whose paces are sufficiently showy and imposing — a high-stepper, of thoroughbred appearance, and a mouth sensitively alive to the lightest touch of the curb, easy to ride or drive, warranted neither a kicker nor a bolter — is a quadruped of rare excellence, not to be met with every day. Just such a stalking-horse was Captain Paget; and Mr. Sheldon lost no time in putting him into action. It is scarcely necessary to say that the stockbroker trusted his new acquaintance only so far as it was absolutely
necessary to trust him; or that the Captain and the stockbroker thoroughly understood each other without affecting to do so. For Horatio Paget the sun of prosperity arose in unaccustomed splendour. He was able to pay for his lodgings, and was an eminently respectable person in the eyes of his landlord. He enjoyed the daily use of a neatly-appointed brougham, in which only the most practised eye could discover the taint of the livery stable. He dined sumptuously at fashionable restaurants, and wore the freshest of lavender gloves, the most delicate of waxen heath-blossoms or creamy-tinted exotics in the button-hole of his faultless coat.

  While the chief flourished, the subaltern was comparatively idle. The patrician appearance and manners of the Captain were a perennial source of profit to that gentleman; but Valentine Hawkehurst had not a patrician appearance; and the work which Mr. Sheldon found for him was of a more uncertain and less profitable character than that which fell to the share of the elegant Horatio. But Valentine was content. He shared the Captain’s lodging, though he did not partake of the Captain’s dinners or ride in the smart little brougham. He had a roof to shelter him, and was rarely unprovided with the price of some kind of dinner; and as this was the highest order of prosperity he had ever known, he was content. He was more than content; for the first time in his existence he knew what it was to be happy. A purer joy than life had ever held for him until now made him careless whether his dinner cost eighteenpence or eighteen shillings; whether he rode in the most perfect of broughams or walked in the mud. He took no heed for the future; he forgot the past, and abandoned himself heart and soul to the new delights of the present.

  Never had Philip Sheldon found so willing a tool, so cheap a drudge. Valentine was ready to do anything or everything for Charlotte’s stepfather, since his relations with that gentleman enabled him to spend so much of his life with Charlotte.