“If you’ll be so good as to say these things on ’Change, I can bring an action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. There’s no good in saying them here.”
Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated than his brother, being of a harder nature, and less subject to random impulses of good or evil. He caught his accuser by the collar of his coat, and flung him violently from the doorway. Thus ended his visit to Gray’s Inn.
Boldly as he had borne himself during the interview, he went to his office profoundly depressed and dispirited.
“So I am to have him against me?” he said to himself. “He can do me no real harm; but he can harass and annoy me. If he should drop any hint to Hawkehurst? — but he’ll scarcely do that. Perhaps I’ve ridden him a little too roughly in the past. And yet if I’d been smoother, where would his demands have ended? No; concession in these cases means ruin.”
He shut himself in his office, and sat down to his desk to confront his difficulties. For a long time the bark which was freighted with Philip Sheldon’s fortunes had been sailing in troubled waters. He had been an unconscious disciple of Lord Bacon, inasmuch as the boldness inculcated by that philosopher had been the distinguishing characteristic of his conduct in all the operations of life. As a speculator, his boldness had served him well. Adventures from which timid spirits shrunk appalled had brought golden harvests to this daring gamester. When some rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the valleys of death, — a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of all-devouring Poseidon, — Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the tempest and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon had obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenture of railways that were in bad odour; Unitas Bank shares, immediately after the discovery of gigantic embezzlements by Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the Mole-and-Burrow railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet in the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the shares in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buying sub rosa; — these, and such as these, had employed Mr. Sheldon’s capital; and from the skilful manipulation of capital thus employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled the fortune secured by his alliance with Tom Halliday’s widow.
It had been the stockbroker’s fate to enter the money market at a time when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities. He had seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the harridan’s bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He had made only one mistake — and that he made in common with many of his fellow-players in the great game of speculation always going on eastward of Temple Bar — he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred privileges of “The House” more astounded by the change than Mr. Sheldon.
The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. Sheldon a speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and Amphiaräuses of the Stock Exchange had agreed in declaring that a man who bought into consols at 90 must see his capital increased; and what was true of this chief among securities was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85-1/2; securities less secure sank with a rapidity corresponding with their constitutional weakness. As during the ravages of an epidemic the weaker are first to fall victims to the destroyer, so while this fever raged on ’Change, the feeble enterprises, the “risky” transactions, sank at an appalling rate, some to total expiry. The man who holds a roaring lion by the tail could scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these troublous times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain time might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in which it would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast grows more and more furious, and then to let go and be eaten up alive, is what many men did in that awful crisis.
If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been warned by the first indication that marked the turning of the tide, he would have been a considerable loser; but he would not accept his loss, and he would not be warned by that early indication. He had implicit belief in his own cleverness; and he fancied if every other bark in that tempest-tossed ocean foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across the harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a navigator. It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt away in the payment of contango, that he consented to the inevitable. The mistakes of one year devoured the fruits of nine years’ successful enterprise, and the Philip Sheldon of this present year was no richer than the man who had stood by Tom Halliday’s bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that knows no difference between the threshold of kingly palace or pauper refuge. Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of his existence — to remember which was a dull dead pain even to him — but a man infinitely more heavily burdened. He had made for himself a certain position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall, the utter annihilation of all his chances in life.
The stockbroker’s fitful slumbers at this time began to be haunted by the vision of a black board fixed against the wall of a public resort, a black board on which appeared his own name. In what strange places feverish dreams showed him this hideous square of painted deal! — Now it was on the walls of the rooms he lived in; now on the door of a church, like Luther’s propositions; now at a street-corner, where should have been the name of the street; now inky-black against the fair white headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miserable man, for whom the scraping together of sordid dross was life’s only object, and who, in losing money, lost all!
This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending disgrace was the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool work than by the inner life of her husband; and Charlotte and her lover contemplated existence from their own point of view, and cherished their own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all things, as far away from the moody meditator as if they had been natives of Upper India.
The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was not immediate, but it was not far off; the shadow of it already wrapped him in a twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever and a safe man had left him. He was described now as a daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads as they talked of him.
“One of the next to go will be Sheldon,” said the wiseacres; but in these days of commercial epidemic there was no saying who would be the first to go. It was the end of the world in little. One was taken, and another left. The Gazette overran its customary column like a swollen river, and flooded a whole page of the Times newspaper; and men looked to the lists of names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the trump of archangels sounding the destruction of the universe.
For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted those turbulent waters had been made of paper. This was nothing. Paper boats were the prevailing shipping in those waters; but Captain Sheldon’s bark needed refitting, and the captain feared a scarcity of paper, or, worse still, the awful edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him there should be no more paper.
Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with ruin complete and irredeemable. When
all common expedients had been exhausted, and his embarrassments had become desperate, he had found a desperate expedient, and had extricated himself from those embarrassments. The time had come in which a new means of extrication must be found as desperate as the last, if need were. As Philip Sheldon had faced the situation before, he faced it now — unshrinkingly, though with a gloomy anger against destiny. It was hard for him that such a thing should have to be repeated. If he pitied anybody, he pitied himself; and this kind of compassion is very common with this kind of character. Do not the Casket letters show us — if we may trust them to show us anything — that Mary Stuart was very sorry for herself when she found herself called upon to make an end of Darnley? In Mr. Swinburne’s wonderful study in morbid anatomy, there are perhaps no finer touches than those which reveal the Queen’s selfish compassion for her own heartlessness.
CHAPTER IV.
DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY.
Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father’s wish that she should leave Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained the Captain’s consent to the revelation of her engagement to be married.
“I don’t like to leave them in a mysterious manner, papa,” she said. “I have told Charlotte a good deal already, under a promise of secrecy; but I should like to tell Mrs. Sheldon that there is a real reason for my leaving her.”
“Very well, my love, since you are so amazingly squeam — honourable,” interposed the Captain, remembering how much depended on his daughter’s marriage, and what a very difficult person he had found her. “Yes, my dear, of course; I respect your honourable feeling; and — er — yes — you may tell Mrs. Sheldon — and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the lady is but an inoffensive cipher — that you are about to be married — to a French gentleman of position. You will, of course, be obliged to mention his name, and then will arise the question as to where and how you met him; and, upon my word, it’s confoundedly awkward that you should insist on enlightening these people. You see, my dear girl, what I want to avoid, for the present, is any chance of collision between the Sheldons and Lenoble.”
“Papa!” exclaimed Diana, impatiently, “why must there be all this scheming?”
“O, very well, Miss Paget; tell them what you like!” cried the Captain, aggravated beyond endurance by such inherent perversity. “All I can say is, that a young woman who quarrels with her bread-and-butter is likely to come to dry bread; and very little of that, perhaps. I wash my hands of the business. Tell them what you like.”
“I will not tell them more than I feel to be actually necessary, papa,” the young lady replied calmly. “I do not think Mr. Sheldon will trouble himself about M. Lenoble. He seems very much occupied by his own affairs.”
“Humph! Sheldon seems harassed, anxious, does he?”
“Well, yes, papa; I have thought so for the last few months. If I may venture to judge by the expression of his face, as he sits at home in the evening, reading the paper, or staring at the fire, I am sure he has many anxieties — troubles even. Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte do not appear to notice these things. They are accustomed to see him quiet and reserved, and they don’t perceive the change in him as I do.”
“O, there is a change, is there?”
“Yes, a decided change.”
“Why the deuce couldn’t you tell me this before!”
“Why should I tell you that Mr. Sheldon seems anxious? I should not have told you now, if you had not appeared to dread his interference in our affairs. I can’t help observing these things; but I don’t want to play the part of a spy.”
“No, you’re so infernally punct — so delicate-minded, my love,” said the Captain, pulling himself up suddenly, for the second time. “Forgive me if I was impatient just now. You look at these things from a higher point of view than that of a battered old man of the world like me. But if you should see anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon’s conduct on another occasion, my love, I should be obliged to you if you would be more communicative. He and I have been allied in business, you see, and it is important for me to know these things.”
“I have not seen anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon’s conduct, papa; I have only seen him thoughtful and dispirited. And I suppose anxieties are common to every man of business.”
Georgy received Miss Paget’s announcement with mingled lamentations and congratulations.
“I am sure I am heartily glad for your sake, Diana,” she said; “but what we shall do without you, I don’t know. Who is to see to the drawing-room being dusted every morning, when you are gone? I’m sure I tremble for the glass shades. Don’t imagine I’m not pleased to think you should settle in life advantageously, my love. I’m not so selfish as that; though I will say that there never was a girl with more natural talent for making-up pretty little caps than you. The one I have on has been admired by everybody. Even Ann Woolper this morning, when I was going into the butcher’s book with her — for I insist upon going into the butcher’s book with her weekly, whether she likes it or not; though the way that man puts down the items is so bewildering that I feel myself a perfect baby in her hands, — even Ann admired it, and said how young-looking it is. And then she brought up the time in Fitzgeorge Street, and poor Tom’s illness, and almost upset me for the rest of the day. And now, dear, let me offer you my sincere congratulations. Of course, you know that you would always have had a home with me; but service, or at least companionship, is no inheritance, as the proverb says; and for your own sake I’m very glad to think that you are going to have a house of your own. And now tell me what he is like, Monsieur what’s-his-name?”
Mrs. Sheldon had been told, but had not remembered the name. Her great anxiety, as well as Charlotte’s, was to know what manner of man the affianced lover was. If Diana’s future happiness had been contingent on the shape of her husband’s nose, or the colour of his eyes, these two ladies could not have been more anxious upon the subject.
“Has he long eyelashes, and a dreamy look in his eyes, like Valentine?” asked Charlotte, secretly convinced that her lover had a copyright in these personal graces.
“Does he wear whiskers?” asked Georgy. “I remember, when I was quite a girl, and went to parties at Barlingford, being struck by Mr. Sheldon’s whiskers. And I was quite offended with papa, who was always making sarcastic remarks, for calling them mutton-chop whiskers; but they really were the shape of mutton-cutlets at that time. He wears them differently now.”
Mrs. Sheldon branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have described him to Georgy.
By-and-by she asked permission to leave Bayswater for a fortnight, in order to see her lover’s home and friends.
“I will come back to you, and stay as long as you like, dear Mrs. Sheldon,” she said, “and make you as many caps as you please. And I will make them for you by and by, when I am living abroad, and send them over to you in a bandbox. It will be a great delight to me to be of some little service to a friend who has been so kind. And perhaps you will fancy the caps are prettier when they can boast of being French.”
“You darling generous-minded girl! And you won’t go away for a fortnight and never come back again, will you, dear? I had a cook who did that, and left me with a large dinner-party hanging over my head; and how I got through it — with a strange man-cook, who charged a guinea, and used fresh butter, at twentypence, a pound, as if it had been dirt, and two strange men to wait — I don’t know. It all seemed like a dream. And since then we have generally had everything from the confectioner’s; and I assure you, to feel that you can wash your hands of the whole thing, and sit down at the head of your table with your mind as free from care as if you were a visitor, is worth all the expense.”
Diana promised she would not behave like the cook; and two days after this conversation left the London Bridge terminus with her father and Gustave Lenoble.
Mr. Sheldon troubled himself very little about this departure. He was inform
ed of Miss Paget’s intended marriage; and the information awakened neither surprise nor interest in his heavily-burdened mind.
“A Frenchman, a friend of her father’s!” he said; “some swindling adventurer, no doubt,” he thought. And this was as much consideration as he could afford to bestow upon Miss Paget’s love affairs at this present time.
CHAPTER V.
ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE.
On the day after Miss Paget’s departure Mr. Sheldon came home from the City rather earlier than usual, and found Charlotte alone in the drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume from Mudie of an instructive and edifying character, with a view to making herself clever, in order that she might better understand that prodigy of learning, Mr. Hawkehurst.
She was somewhat inclined to yawn over the big book, which contained a graphic account of recent discoveries of an antiquarian nature. Her mind was not yet attuned to the comprehension of the sublimer elements in such discoveries. She saw only a dry as dust record of futile gropings in desert sand for the traces of perished empires. Her imagination was not cultivated to that point whereat the gift which Mr. Lewes calls “insight” becomes the daily companion, nay, indeed, the ever-haunting and nightmare-bringing influence of the dreamer. For her sands were only sands, the stones were only stones. No splendour of fallen palaces, no glory and pride of perished kings, no clash and clamour of vanished courts, arose from those barren sands, with all their pomp and circumstance, conjured into being by half a word on a broken pillar, or a date upon a Punic monument. Miss Halliday looked up with a sigh of fatigue as her stepfather came into the room. It was not a room that he particularly affected, and she was surprised when he seated himself in the easy-chair opposite her, and poked the fire, as if with the intention of remaining.
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