Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “I do not owe a sixpence.”

  “Good; and Mr. Sheldon, the lady’s stepfather and my client — had you his approval for this hasty marriage?”

  “The marriage took place without Mr. Sheldon’s knowledge or consent.”

  “May I ask your reason for this secrecy?”

  “No, Mr. Greenwood; it is just that one reason that I cannot tell you.

  Accept my assurance that it was an all-powerful reason.”

  “I am compelled to do so, if you decline to confide in my discretion; but as Mr. Sheldon is my client, I am bound to think of his interests as well as those of Miss Halliday — er — Mrs. Hawkehurst. I am somewhat surprised that he has not called upon me since the marriage. He has been made aware of that circumstance, I suppose?”

  “Yes; I wrote to him immediately after the ceremony, enclosing him a copy of the certificate.”

  “The marriage will make a considerable difference to him.”

  “In what manner?”

  “Well, in the event of his stepdaughter’s death. If she had died unmarried and intestate, this fortune would have gone to her mother; besides which, there was the insurance on Miss Halliday’s life.”

  “An insurance!”

  “Yes. Were you not apprised of that fact? Mr. Sheldon, with very natural precaution, insured his stepdaughter’s life for a considerable sum — in point of fact, as I believe, five thousand pounds; so that, in case of her death prior to the recovery of the Haygarth estate, her mother might receive some solatium.”

  “He had insured her life!” said Valentine, under his breath.

  This, then, was the key to the mystery. The Haygarthian inheritance was but a remote contingency, a shadowy prize, which could scarcely have tempted the secret assassin; but the insurance had offered the prospect of immediate gain. The one link wanting to complete the chain of evidence against Philip Sheldon was found. There was no longer a question as to his motive.

  “This man knows of one insurance on her life,” Valentine thought to himself; “there may have been more than one.”

  After a brief silence, in which Mr. Hawkehurst had been lost in thought, the lawyer proceeded to discuss the terms of the post-nuptial settlement necessary for the protection of his client’s interests. In the course of this discussion Valentine explained his position in relation to George Sheldon, and stated the demands of that sharp practitioner.

  Mr. Greenwood was utterly aghast upon hearing Mr. Hawkehurst’s views on this subject.

  “You mean to tell me that this man claims a clear half of the Haygarth estate — fifty thousand pounds — in consideration of his paltry discoveries!”

  “Such is the demand he has made, and which I have pledged myself not to oppose. He certainly does open his mouth very wide; but we are bound to consider that but for these discoveries of his, my wife and my wife’s relatives would in all probability have gone down to their graves in ignorance of their claim to this estate.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Hawkehurst. If Mr. George Sheldon had not made the discovery, some one else would have made it sooner or later, depend upon it. There would have been a little loss of time, that is all. There are plenty of men of George Sheldon’s class always on the look-out for such chances as this — and for very small chances in comparison to this. Why, I know a fellow, a Frenchman, called Fleurus, who will take as much trouble about a few hundred pounds’ worth of unclaimed stock as this man, George Sheldon, has taken about the Haygarth succession. And he has really the impudence to claim fifty thousand pounds from you?”

  “A claim which I have pledged myself not to oppose.”

  “But which you have not pledged yourself to support. My dear Mr. Hawkehurst, this is a business which you must allow me to settle for you, as your wife’s legal adviser. We will consider you quite out of the question, if you please; you will thus come out of your relations to Mr. George Sheldon with perfectly clean hands. You will not oppose his claim; but I shall oppose him in my character of legal adviser to your wife. Why, are you aware that this man executed an agreement with his brother, consenting to receive a fifth share of the estate, and costs out of pocket, in complete acquittance of all claims? I have an abstract of the agreement, amongst Miss Halliday’s — Mrs. Hawkehurst’s papers.”

  After some further discussion, Valentine agreed to leave the whole matter in Mr. Greenwood’s hands. Greek must meet Greek. Gray’s Inn and the Fields must settle this business between themselves.

  “I am only prince consort,” he said, with a smile. “I pretend to no actual interest in my wife’s estate. I doubt, indeed, whether I should not have felt more complete happiness in our marriage if she had not been heiress to so large a fortune.”

  At this Mr. Greenwood laughed outright.

  “Come, come, Mr. Hawkehurst,” he exclaimed, “that really won’t do. I am an old stager, you know — a man of the world; — and you mustn’t ask me to believe that the idea of your wife’s expectations can afford you anything but unqualified satisfaction.”

  “You cannot believe? No, perhaps not,” Valentine answered, thoughtfully. “But you do not know how nearly these expectations have lost me my wife. And even now, when she is mine by virtue of a bond that only death can loosen, it seems to me as if her wealth would make a kind of division between us. There are people who will always consider me a lucky adventurer, and look at my marriage as the result of clever scheming. I cannot advertise to the world the fact that I loved Charlotte Halliday from the first hour in which I saw her, and asked her to be my wife three days before I discovered her claim to John Haygarth’s estate. A man can’t go through the world with his justification pinned upon his breast. I think it will be my fate to be misjudged all my life. A twelvemonth ago I cared very little about the opinions of my fellow-men; but I want to be worthy of my wife in the esteem of mankind, as well as in the depths of my own moral consciousness.”

  “Go and finish your honeymoon,” said the lawyer, digging his client in the ribs with elephantine playfulness; “the moon must be in her first quarter, I should think. Go along with you, and leave me to tackle Mr. George Sheldon.”

  CHAPTER IV.

  ONLY A DREAM.

  “I say, Lenoble,” Captain Paget began abruptly one afternoon when his daughter and his future son-in-law were in attendance upon his sofa, “when are you and Diana to be married? There is nothing to hinder your marriage now, you know.”

  Diana looked at the speaker with a grave countenance.

  “Dear papa, there can be no marriage while you are so ill,” she said gently.

  “And afterwards, when I’m gone, you won’t like to marry within six months of your father’s funeral; and you will be left alone in the world. You can’t hang on to Hawkehurst and his wife. The best thing you can do, Lenoble, is to marry her out of hand, and let me see her by my bedside as Madame Lenoble of Côtenoir. It will be some consolation for me to see that day. I thought to have shared your home, with a run to Paris occasionally just to freshen myself up a little; but that’s all over now. It does seem rather hard to me sometimes; and I think of Moses, and his forty years in the Desert with those ill-conditioned Israelites, who were always getting into some scrape or other — setting up golden calves, and that kind of thing — if he turned his back on them for twenty-four hours. A pack of ungrateful beggars too, always ready for mutiny — regular radicals, begad! And he went through it all: the sand, and the toujours quails, and the ingratitude; and after forty years of it, when he saw the Promised Land stretched before him green and fertile on the other side of the river — he died! I’ve been through my desert, the dreary wanderings over the barren sand, and the ingratitude of men I’ve served. Yes, I’ve gone through it all; and just as I catch a glimpse of Canaan, the curtain drops.”

  On this they comforted him; and sustained him with the promise of a brighter Canaan than Côtenoir.

  “Yes,” he said in a dreamy voice, “I read about it very often. A city with foundations of jasper and cha
lcedony, emerald and sardonyx; gates of pearl, pavements of gold. That’s what St. John the Evangelist saw in his vision; and we’ve only his word for it. But there’s something that I can believe and can understand: ‘In my Father’s house there are many mansions.’ There’s more hope for a sinful man of the world in that promise than in all St. John’s dreams about gates of pearl and foundations of emerald.”

  The Captain was failing fast. He had exchanged his easy-chair for a sofa now; and the time seemed near at hand when he must exchange the sofa for his bed. After that there would remain but one last change, to the contemplation whereof the sick man was becoming daily more reconciled.

  He had read his Gospel more diligently of late, and had taken comfort from those sublime pages. Do they not contain consolation, hope, promise for all — for the weary man of the world as well as for the saint? There is to be found the only creed that can adapt itself to every condition of life, and has a margin wide enough for every weakness of erring humanity. Buddhism may contain a scheme of morality almost as perfect; Mahomet may have expounded hopes that seem well-nigh as divine; but in the Gospel is the only system that will adapt itself at once to the culture of the spiritual man, and the active life of the practical worker in this lower world.

  Gustave Lenoble was only too glad to claim his promised wife a little sooner than he had hoped to claim her. “Thou hast put me off long enough, cruel,” he said; “and now it is thy father’s wish that our marriage should be soon. It shall be this week; I will take no longer thine excuses. We shall be the sooner ready to receive thy friends, thy Charlotte and her Hawkehurst.”

  Diana smiled.

  “Dear Gustave, you are always kind,” she said.

  It was very sweet to her to think that her new home would afford a pleasant haven for that dear friend who had sheltered her. And with Charlotte, the dear adopted sister, would come the man she had once loved, to share whose cares had once been the brightest dream.

  She wondered at her own inconstancy on perceiving how completely the dream had flown. Before the stern realities of life — before sickness and sorrow and the dread shadow of death — that schoolgirl’s vision had utterly melted away. It is just possible that Gustave’s manly outspoken love may have helped to blot from the tablet of her mind the fantastic picture of the life that might have been. She scarcely knew whether this was so; but she did know that a new and happier existence began for her from the hour in which she gave her heart in all truth and loyalty to Gustave Lenoble.

  The wedding was arranged to take place within a week of Captain Paget’s expressly declared wish. It was to be solemnised at a church near Knightsbridge, and again at a Catholic chapel in the neighbourhood of Sloane-street; by which double ceremonial a knot would be tied that no legal quibble could hereafter loosen. Charlotte was just sufficiently recovered to obtain permission to be present at the ceremonial, after some little exercise of her persuasive powers with the medical practitioner to whose care Dr. Jedd had committed her when all danger was past.

  The Captain protested, with an eager insistence, that the wedding breakfast should be eaten at his domicile.

  “And Val,” he said, “be sure Val is with you. I have a secret to tell him — a kind of atonement to make; some news to give him that he won’t quite relish, perhaps. But that’s no fault of mine.”

  “No bad news, I hope, papa; for Charlotte’s sake as well as for

  Valentine’s.”

  “That depends upon how they both take it. Your friend Charlotte is not particularly fond of money, is she?”

  “Fond of money, papa? A baby knows as much of the value of money as Lotta. Except to give to beggars in the streets, or to buy pretty frivolous presents for her friends, she has neither use nor desire for money. She is the most generous, most disinterested of created beings.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it,” said the Captain, drily. “And how about

  Hawkehurst, now? Do you think it was a real love-match, his marriage with

  Miss Halliday? No arrière pensée — no looking out for the main chance at

  the bottom of his romantic attachment, eh, Di?”

  “No, papa. I am sure there was never truer love than his. I saw him under most trying circumstances, and I can pledge myself for the truth of his devotion.”

  “I am very glad to hear it. Be sure you bring Hawkehurst and his wife to my little breakfast. A chicken, a pine, a bottle of sparkling hock, and a fond father’s blessing, are all I shall give you; but the chicken and the hock will be from Gunter, and the blessing from the bottom of a paternal heart.”

  * * * * *

  Bright shone the day that gave Diana to her husband, and very beautiful looked the bride in her simple dress. Gustave Lenoble’s marriage was no less quietly performed than that union which had secured the safety of Charlotte Halliday and the happiness of Valentine Hawkehurst. The shadow of death hovered very near bride and bridegroom; for they knew full well that he who was to preside that day at their simple marriage-feast would soon have tasted that last sacred cup which has no after-flavour of bitterness.

  The breakfast promised by the Captain was arranged with much elegance. Hothouse flowers and fruits; wines with the icedew sparkling on the dark glass; chickens and tongue, idealized by the confectioner’s art, and scarcely recognizable beneath rich glazings and embellishments of jellies and forcemeats; the airiest and least earthly of lobster salads, and a pyramid of coffee-ice, testified to the glory of the Belgravian purveyor. It had been pleasant to Captain Paget to send his orders to Gunter, certain of funds to meet the bill. It was almost a glimpse of that land of milk and honey, that Canaan in Normandy, which he was never to inhabit.

  He was very weak, very ill; but the excitement of the occasion in some measure sustained and revivified him. The man who had been engaged to nurse and wait upon him had attired him with much care in a dressing-gown as elegant as the robe in which he had disported himself, a penniless young cornet, in his luxurious garrison quarters, some fifty years before. His loose white locks were crowned with an embroidered smoking-cap; his patrician instep was set off by a dainty scarlet slipper. He had put away the Gospel, and all thoughts of that dread reckoning which he had really some shadowy desire and hope to settle satisfactorily, by some poor dividend which might discharge his obligations to that merciful Creditor who forgives so many just debts. To-day he was of the world, worldly. It was a kind of ante-mortem lying-in-state — his last levee; and he was equal to the occasion.

  The prettily adorned table was drawn near the sofa where the invalid host reclined, supported by numerous pillows. His daughter and her husband, Valentine, Charlotte, and Georgy, made a little circle about him. His own man, and a clerical-looking person from Gunter’s, assisted at the airy banquet. Very little was eaten by any of the guests, and it was a relief to every one when the clerical personage and Captain Paget’s factotum retired, after serving tea and coffee with funereal solemnity.

  Valentine Hawkehurst was all gentleness and cordiality towards his old taskmaster. The wrong must indeed be dire which is considered in such an hour as this. Valentine remembered only that with this old man he had seen many troubled days; and that for him the end of all earthly wanderings was very near.

  The little banquet was not served in Captain Paget’s ordinary sitting-room. For this distinguished occasion the landlady had lent a dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, just deserted by a fashionable bachelor lodger who had left town at the close of the season. This drawing-room on the ground floor, like the room above, overlooked the Park, and to this apartment the Captain requested his guests to adjourn, with the exception of Mr. Hawkehurst, some little time after the departure of the servants.

  “I want to have a few words with Val in private,” he said; “I have a secret to communicate. Diana, show Mrs. Hawkehurst the Drive. You can see the Bow from my room, but not from these lower windows. There are a good many carriages still, but it is too late for the crême de la crême. I rem
ember when the West End was a desert at this time of year; but I have lived to see the levelling of all distinctions, those of time as well as of class.”

  Charlotte and Diana retired to the adjoining room with Mrs. Sheldon and M. Lenoble. Valentine was at a loss to imagine what manner of confidential communication his late patron and employer could desire to impart to him. The cautious Horatio waited until the rest of the party were quite out of hearing, talking gaily by the open window, beyond which appeared all the fluttering life and motion of summer leaves, all the brightness of summer green below, and deep blue sky above. When they seemed to him to be quite engaged with their own conversation, Captain Paget turned to his old companion.

  “Val,” he said, “we have seen hard times together; we’ve roughed it among strange places and strange people, you know and so on; and I think there is a friendly kind of feeling between us?”

  He held out his poor wasted hand, and Valentine grasped it firmly in his own with prompt cordiality.

  “My dear governor, I have no feeling in my heart that is not friendly to you.”

  This was perfectly true.

  “And even if I had been inclined to bear any grudge against you on account of the old days, when, you know, you were a little apt to be indifferent as to what scrape you left me in, provided you got off scot-free yourself; if I had been inclined to remember that kind of thing (which, on my honour, I am not), your daughter’s noble courage and devotion in the time of my dear wife’s peril should have stood against that old wrong. I cannot tell you how deeply I feel her goodness in that bitter time.”

  “She is a Paget,” murmured the Captain, complacently. “Noblesse oblige.”

  Valentine could scarcely refrain from a smile as he remembered the many occasions upon which the obligations of a noble lineage had weighed very lightly on his aristocratic patron.

  “Yes, Val,” the Captain resumed, in a dreamy tone, “we have seen many strange things together. When I began my travels through this world, in the palmy days of the Regency, I little thought what a weary journey it was to be, and what queer people I was to encounter among my fellow-passengers. However, I’ve come to the last stage of the long journey now, and I thank Providence that it ends so comfortably.”