Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “You do not know how ill she is. I doubt if she could bear the removal.”

  “Anything is better than to remain. That is certain death.”

  “But your brother would surely dispute her removal.”

  “He would, and oppose it inch by inch. We must get him away, before we attempt to remove her.”

  “How?”

  “I will find the means for that. I know something of his business relations, and can invent some false cry for luring him off the trail. We must get him away. The poor girl was not in actual danger when you left her, was she?”

  “No, thank God, there was no appearance of immediate danger. But she was very ill. And that man holds her life in his hand. He knows that I have come to London in search of a doctor. What if—”

  “Keep yourself quiet, Hawkehurst. He will not hasten her death unless he is desperate; for a death occurring immediately after your first expression of alarm would seem sudden. He’ll avoid any appearance of suddenness, if he can, depend upon it. The first thing is to get him away. But the question is, how to do it? There must be a bait. What bait? Don’t talk to me, Hawkehurst. Let me think it out, if I can.”

  The lawyer leaned his elbows on the table, and abandoned himself to profound cogitation, with his forehead supported by his clenched hands. Valentine waited patiently while he thus cogitated.

  “I must go down to Phil’s office,” he said at last, “and ferret out some of his secrets. Nothing but stock-exchange business, of an important character, would induce him to leave Charlotte Halliday. But if I can telegraph such a message as will bring him to town, I’ll do it. Leave all that to me. And now, what about your work?”

  “I am at a loss what to do, if I am not to take Dr. Jedd to Harold’s

  Hill.”

  “Take him to St. Leonards; and if I get my brother out of the way, you can have Charlotte conveyed to an hotel in St. Leonard’s, where she can stop till she picks up strength enough to come to London.”

  “Do you think her mother will consent to her removal?

  “Do I think you will be such an idiot as to ask for her consent?” cried George Sheldon impatiently. “My brother’s wife is so weak a fool, that the chances are she’d insist on her daughter stopping quietly, to be poisoned. No; you must get Mrs. Sheldon out of the way somehow. Send her to look at the shops, or to bathe, or to pick up shells on the beach, or anything else equally inane. She’s easy enough to deal with. There’s that young woman, Paget’s daughter, with them still, I suppose? Yes. Very well, then, you and she can get Charlotte away between you.”

  “But for me to take those two girls to an hotel — the chance of scandal, of wonder, of inquiry? There ought to be some other person — some nurse. Stay, there’s Nancy Woolper — the very woman! My darling has told me of that old woman’s affectionate anxiety about her health — an anxiety which was singularly intense, it seemed to Lotta. Good God! do you think she, Nancy Woolper, could have suspected the cause of Mr. Halliday’s death?”

  “I dare say she did. She was in the house when he died, and nursed him all through his illness. She’s a clever old woman. Yes, you might take her down with you; I think she would be of use in getting Charlotte away.”

  “I’ll take her, if she will go.”

  “I am not sure of that; our north-country folks have stiffish notions about fidelity to old masters, and that kind of thing. Nancy Woolper nursed my brother Phil.”

  “If she knows or suspects the fate of Charlotte’s father, she will try to save Charlotte,” said Valentine, with conviction. “And now, good bye! I trust to you for getting your brother out of the way, George Sheldon; remember that.”

  He held out his hand; the lawyer took it with a muscular grip, which, on this occasion, meant something more than that base coin of jolly good fellowship which so often passes current for friendship’s virgin gold.

  “You may trust me,” George Sheldon said gravely. “Stop a moment, though; I have a proposition to make. If my brother Philip has induced that girl to make a will, as it is my belief he has, we must counter him. Come down with me to Doctors’ Commons. You’ve a cab? Yes; the business won’t take half an hour.”

  “What business?”

  “A special licence for your marriage with Charlotte Halliday.”

  “A marriage?”

  “Yes; her marriage invalidates her will, if she has made one, and does away with Phil’s motive. Come along; we’ll get the licence.”

  “But the delay?”

  “Exactly half an hour. Come!”

  The lawyer dashed out of his office. “At home in an hour,” he shouted to the clerk, and then ran downstairs, followed closely by Valentine, and did not cease running until he was in the King’s Road, where the cab was waiting.

  “Newgate Street and Warwick Lane to Doctors’ Commons!” he cried to the cabman; and Valentine was fain to take his seat in the cab without further remonstrance.

  “I don’t understand—” he began, as the cabman drove away.

  “I do. It’s all right; you’ll put the licence in your pocket, and call at the church nearest which you hang out, Edgware Road way, give notice of the marriage, and so on; and as soon as Charlotte can bear the journey, bring her to London and marry her. I told you your course six months ago. Your obstinacy has caused the hazard of that young woman’s life. Don’t let us have a second edition of it.”

  “I will be governed by your advice,” answered Valentine, submissively.

  “It is the delay that tortures me.”

  The delay was indeed torture to him. Everything and everybody in Doctors’ Commons seemed the very incarnation of slowness. The hansom cab might tear and grind the pavement, the hansom cabman might swear until even monster waggons swerved aside to give him passage; but neither tearing nor swearing could move the incarnate stolidity of Doctors’ Commons. When he left that quaint sanctuary of old usages, he carried with him the Archbishop of Canterbury’s benign permission for his union with Charlotte Halliday. But he knew not whether it was only a morsel of waste paper which he carried in his pocket; and whether there might not ere long be need of a ghastlier certificate, giving leave and licence for the rendering back of “ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.”

  Valentine’s first call, after leaving George Sheldon at the gate of Doctors’ Commons, was at the head-quarters of the Ragamuffins. His heart sank as he ran into the bar of the hostelry to ask for the telegram which might be waiting for him.

  Happily there was no telegram. To find no tidings of a change for the worse seemed to him almost equivalent to hearing of a change for the better. What had he not feared after his interview with the surgeon of Bloomsbury!

  From Covent Garden the hansom bowled swiftly to Burlington Row. Here Valentine found Mr. Burkham, pale and anxious, waiting in a little den of a third room, on the ground-floor — a ghastly little room, hung with anatomical plates, and with some wax preparations in jars, on the mantelpiece, by way of ornament. To them presently came Dr. Jedd, as lively and business-like as if Miss Halliday’s case had been a question of taking out a double-tooth.

  “Very sad!” he said; “these vegetable poisons — hands of unscrupulous man. Very interesting article in the Medical Quarterly — speculative analysis of the science of toxicology as known to the ancients.”

  “You will come down to Harold’s Hill at once, sir?” said Valentine, imploringly.

  “Well, yes; your friend here, Mr. Burkham, has persuaded me to do so, though I need hardly tell you that such a journey will be to the last degree inconvenient.”

  “It is an affair of life and death,” faltered the young man.

  “Of course, my dear sir. But then, you see, I have half-a-dozen other affairs of life and death on my hands at this moment. However, I have promised. My consultations will be over in half an hour; I have a round of visits after that, and by — well, say by the five o’clock express, I will go to St. Leonards.”

  “The delay will be very long,” said Vale
ntine.

  “It cannot be done sooner. I ought to go down to Hertfordshire this evening — most interesting case — carbuncle — three operations in three consecutive weeks — Swain as operator. At five o’clock I shall be at the London Bridge station. Until then, gentlemen, good day. Lawson, the door.”

  Dr. Jedd left his visitors to follow the respectable white-cravatted butler, and darted back to his consulting-room.

  Mr. Burkham and Valentine walked slowly up and down Burlington Row before the latter returned to his cab.

  “I thank you heartily for your help,” said Valentine to the surgeon; “and I believe, with God’s grace, we shall save this dear girl’s life. It was the hand of Providence that guided me to you this morning. I can but believe the same hand will guide me to the end.”

  On this they parted. Valentine told his cabman to drive to the Edgware Road; and in one of the churches of the immediate neighbourhood of that thoroughfare he gave notice of his intention to enter the bonds of holy matrimony. He had some difficulty in arranging matters with the clerk, whom he saw in his private abode and non-official guise. That functionary was scarcely able to grasp the idea of an intending Benedick who would not state positively when he wanted to be married. Happily, however, the administration of half-a-sovereign considerably brightened the clerk’s perceptions.

  “I see what you want,” he said. “Young lady a invalid, which she wants to leave her home as she finds uncomfortable, she being over twenty-one years of age and her own mistress. It’s what you may call a runaway match, although the parties ain’t beholden to any one, in a manner of speaking. I understand. You give me half an hour’s notice any morning within the legal hours, and I’ll have one of our young curates ready for you as soon as you’re ready for them; and have you and the young lady tied up tight enough before you know where you are. We ain’t very long over our marriages, unless it is something out of the common way.”

  The clerk’s familiarity was more good-natured than flattering to the applicant’s self-esteem; but Valentine was in no mood to object to this easy-going treatment of the affair. He promised to give the clerk the required notice; and having arranged everything in strictly legal manner, hurried back to his cab, and directed the man to drive to the Lawn.

  It was now three o’clock. At five he was to meet Dr. Jedd at the station.

  He had two hours for his interview with Nancy Woolper, and his drive from

  Bayswater to London Bridge.

  He had tasted nothing since daybreak; but the necessity to eat and drink never occurred to him. He was dimly conscious of feeling sick and faint, but the reason of this sickness and faintness did not enter into his thoughts. He took off his hat, and leant his head back against the cushion of the hansom as that vehicle rattled across the squares of Paddington. The summer day, the waving of green trees in those suburban squares; the busy life and motion of the world through which he went, mixed themselves into one jarring whirl of light and colour, noise and motion. He found himself wondering how long it was since he left Harold’s Hill. Between the summer morning in which he had walked along the dusty high-road, with fields of ripening corn upon his left, and all the broad blue sea upon his right, and the summer afternoon in which he drove in a jingling cab through the noisy streets and squares of Bayswater, there seemed to him a gulf so wide, that his tried brain shrank from scanning it.

  He struggled with this feeling of helplessness and bewilderment, and overcame it.

  “Let me remember what I have to do,” he said to himself; “and let me keep my wits about me till that is done.”

  CHAPTER II.

  PHOENICIANS ARE RISING.

  While Mr. Hawkehurst arranged his affairs with the clerk of St. Matthias-in-the-fields, in the parish of Marylebone, George Sheldon sat in his brother’s office writing a letter to that distinguished stockbroker. The pretext of writing a letter was the simplest pretext for being alone in his brother’s room; and to be alone in Philip Sheldon’s room was the first step in the business which George had to do.

  The room was distractingly neat, and as handsomely furnished as it is possible for an office to be within the closest official limits. A Spanish mahogany desk with a cylinder cover, and innumerable drawers fitted with invisible Bramah locks, occupied the centre of the room; and four ponderous Spanish mahogany chairs, with padded backs, and seats covered with crimson morocco, were primly ranged against the wall. Upon the mantelpiece ticked a skeleton clock; above which there hung the sternest and grimmest of almanacks, on either whereof were fastened divers lists and calendars of awful character, affected by gentlemen on ’Change.

  Before penetrating to this innermost and sacred chamber, George Sheldon wasted some little time in agreeable gossip with a gentleman whom he found yawning over the Times newspaper in an outer and less richly furnished apartment. This gentleman was Philip Sheldon’s clerk, the younger son of a rich Yorkshire farmer, who had come to London with the intention of making his fortune on the Stock Exchange, and whose father had paid a considerable sum in order to obtain for this young man the privilege of reading the Times in Mr. Sheldon’s office, and picking up whatever knowledge might be obtained from the business transactions of his employer.

  The career of Philip Sheldon had been watched with some interest by his fellow-townsmen of Barlingford. They had seen him leave that town with a few hundreds in his pocket, and they had heard of him twelve years afterwards as a prosperous stockbroker, with a handsome house and a handsome carriage, and the reputation of being one of the sharpest men in the City. The accounts of him that came to Barlingford were all more or less exaggerated; and the men who discussed his cleverness and his good luck were apt to forget that he owed the beginning of his fortunes to Tom Halliday’s eighteen thousand pounds. The one fact that impressed Philip Sheldon’s townsmen was the fact that a Barlingford man had made money on the Stock Exchange; and the one inference they drew therefrom was the inference that other Barlingford men might do the same.

  Thus it had happened that Mr. Stephen Orcott, of Plymley Rise farm, near Barlingford, being at a loss what to do with a somewhat refractory younger son, resolved upon planting his footsteps in the path so victoriously trodden by Philip Sheldon. He wrote to Philip, asking him to receive the young man as clerk, assistant, secretary — anything, with a view to an ultimate junior partnership; and Philip consented, upon certain conditions. The sum he demanded was rather a stiff one, as it seemed to Stephen Orcott, but he opined that such a sum would not have been asked if the advantages had not been proportionately large. The bargain was therefore concluded, and Mr. Frederick Orcott came to London. He was a young man of horsey propensities, gifted with a sublime contempt for any kind of business requiring application or industry, and with a supreme belief in his own merits.

  George Sheldon had known Frederick Orcott as a boy, and had been in his society some half-dozen times since his coming to London. He apprehended no difficulty in obtaining from this young gentleman any information he had the power to afford.

  “How do, Orcott?” he said, with agreeable familiarity. “My brother Phil not come back yet?”

  “No,” replied the other, sulkily. “There have been ever so many people here bothering me about him. Where has he gone? and when will he be back? and so on. I might as well be some d —— d footman, if I’m to sit here answering questions all day. High Wickham races are on to-day, and I wanted to see Barmaid run before I put my money on her for Goodwood. She was bred down our way, you see, and I know she’s like enough to win the cup, if she’s fit. They don’t know much about her this way, either, though she’s own sister to Boots, that won the Chester Cup last year, owing to Topham’s being swindled into letting him off with seven lbs. He ran at the York Spring, you see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the boy that rode him pulled his head half off — I saw him do it — and then he won the Chester, and brought his owners a pot of money.”

  This information was not exactly what George Sheldon wanted, but he p
lanted himself on the hearthrug in an easy attitude, with his back against the mantelpiece, and appeared much interested in Mr. Orcott’s discourse.

  “Anything stirring in the City?” he asked presently.

  “Stirring? No — nothing stirring but stagnation, as some fellow said in a play I saw the other night. Barlingford folks say your brother Philip has made a heap of money on the Stock Exchange; but if he has, he must have done a good deal more business before I came to him than he has done lately. I can’t see how a man is to develop into a Rothschild out of an occasional two-and-sixpence per cent on the transfer of some old woman’s savings from railway stock to consols; and that’s about the only kind of business I’ve seen much of lately. Of course Phil Sheldon has got irons of his own in the fire; for he’s an uncommonly deep card, you see, that brother of yours, and it isn’t to be expected he’ll tell me all he’s up to. I know he’s up to his eyebrows in companies, but I don’t see how he’s to make his fortune out of them, for limited liability now-a-days seems only another name for unlimited crash. However, I don’t care. It pleased my governor to get me into Sheldon’s office, and it suited my book to come to London; but if the author of my being thinks I’m going to addle my blessed brains with the decline and fall of the money market, he’s a greater fool than I took him for — and that’s saying a great deal.”

  And here Mr. Frederick Orcott lapsed into admiring contemplation of his boots, which were the chefs-d’oeuvre of a sporting bootmaker; boots that were of the ring, ringy, and of the corner, cornery.

  “Ah,” said George, “and Phil doesn’t tell you much of his affairs, doesn’t he? That’s rather a bad sign, I should think. Looks as if he was rather down upon his luck, eh?”