veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old man, soured by his great disappointment, grew sordid and covetous with increasing years, and the lives of the women were hard and hopeless. By little cheats, and petty contrivances, and pitiful falsifications of financial statements, they managed to scrape together a few louis now and then for the struggling exile; and to do this was the sole delight of their patient lives. They contrived also to correspond secretly with Gustave, and were informed of the birth of his son.
“Ah, if thou couldst see how beautiful he is,” wrote the father, “this child of pure and true love, thou wouldst no longer regret my breach of faith with Madelon Frehlter. I knew not until now how like infant children are to angels. I knew not how true to nature are the angels in the pictures of Raffaelle and Murillo. Thou knowest the print of Murillo’s Assumption; the picture is in the Louvre. If thou canst remember that picture, dear mother, thou hast but to recall the face of one of the cherubim about the feet of our Lady, and thou hast the portrait of my boy. He opens his eyes, and looks at me as I write. Ah! that he and I and my Susan were with thee in the little salon at Beaubocage–my sister, Susan, you, and I united round this darling’s cradle. He has been born in poverty, but his birth has made us very happy.”
The sentiment of this letter was no spurious or transient feeling. For this child Gustave Lenoble evinced an unchanging fondness. It was indeed no part of his nature to change. The little one was his comfort in affliction, his joy during every brief interval of prosperity. When the battle was well nigh fought, and he began to feel himself beaten. His chief anxieties, his ever-returning fears, were for his wife and child.
To Susan the thought of parting from him was a despair too deep for tears. She would have been something less than woman if she had not loved her husband with more than common affection. She watched the change that illness brought in the frank face, the stalwart figure; and little by little the awful truth came home to her. The hour was at hand in which she must lose him.
“If you could have rest, Gustave, better medical advice, more comforts, you would soon be strong again, I am sure your father would not refuse to forgive you now. Write to him, dearest. Go back to Beaubocage, and let your mother and sister nurse you. I will stay here with the little one. It shall be forgotten that you have a wife and child.”
“No, dear one; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy back my father’s love. I would rather be here with you than in the pleasantest home without you. But we must face the future, Susan; we must be brave and wise, for the little one’s sake. You are not so strong that you can afford to trust blindly in your power to protect him by-and-by. I have written a letter to my father. He has proved himself a hard man to me, cruel and obdurate beyond all my fears; but I know he is not altogether heartless. When I am dead, you will take the letter in one hand, the child in the other, and go to Beaubocage. I believe he will adopt the boy, and that the little one will give him the comfort and happiness he hoped from me. He must be very lonely; and I cannot doubt that his heart will melt when he sees the child’s face, and hears that he has no longer a son. As for yourself, my poor girl, I see for you no hope except in the old Yorkshire home, and the friends you fear to see again.”
“I no longer fear them,” said his wife, with unwonted energy, “I could not go to them seven years ago; but I can go to them as your wife.”
“Ah, thank God, the poor name is worth something for you.”
“Yes, dear; and I will go back to them–to-morrow.”
“To-morrow!”
“To-morrow, Gustave. I have been selfish and cruel to delay so long. The old dread of seeing my sister’s reproachful face has been strong enough to hold me back, when a little courage might have enabled me to help you. The burden has been all on you, and I have done nothing. O, what a wretch I must have been to sit idly by and see you suffer, and make no effort to help you!”
“But, my darling, you have not been idle. You have been the dearest and most industrious of wives, and have helped me to bear my burden. You have done more, dear–you have made my burden pleasant to me.”
“I will try to lighten it, Gustave,” cried Susan, with excitement. “O, why, why did I never try before! My sister and her husband are well off–rich perhaps. If they are still living, if no cruel changes have come to pass at Newhall, they could help us with a little money. They might even give us a home. I will start for England to-morrow.”
“Nay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far alone. It seems, indeed, a happy thought this of your rich relations; but you must not undertake such a journey. You might write.”
“No, Gustave, I will trust to no letter; I will go. It will be no pain for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go straight to my sister. I know what a tender compassionate heart it is that I shall appeal to.”
There was much discussion; but Susan was resolute. To scrape together the money for the journey she made efforts that were heroic in a nature so weak as hers. She went to the Monte de Piete with the last of her little treasures, that one dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger was at the door–the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed upon her finger before God’s altar–the double symbolic circlet which bore on one side her name, on the other her husband’s. This dearest of all her possessions she surrendered for a few francs, to make up the sum needful for her journey.
What it cost her to do this, what it cost her to tear herself away from her sick husband and her only child, who shall say? There are pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come within no calculation–the infinite of pain. She went. Two kind souls, a labourer and his wife, lodgers in the same garret-story, promised to care for and help the invalid and child. There is no desolation in which a child will not find a friend.
The journey was long and fatiguing; the anguish of her poor aching heart almost too much for endurance–a heart so heavy that even hope could scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, though in the middle of summer. The solitary traveller caught cold on the journey, and arrived in London in a high fever. Ill, faint, and helpless, the great city seemed to her unspeakably dismal–most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to this wretched orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come _via_ Havre. Here she sank prostrate, and had barely sufficient strength to write an incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, of Newhall Farm, near Huxter’s Cross, Yorkshire.
The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great northern road could carry her. There was infinite joy in that honest sisterly heart over this one sinner’s repentance. Fourteen years had gone by since the young city-bred beauty had fled with that falsest of men, and most hardened of profligates, Montague Kingdon; and tidings from Susan were unlooked for and thrilling as a message from the grave.
Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell! The false step of her youth had set her for ever wrong upon life’s highway. When kind Mrs. Halliday came, Gustave Lenoble’s wife was past her help; wandering in her mind; a girl again, but newly run away from her peaceful home; and with no thought save of remorse for her misdeeds.
The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out of her mind. She raved of Montague Kingdon’s baseness, of her own folly, her vain regret, her yearning for pardon; but of the dying husband in the garret at Rouen she uttered no word. And so, with her weary head upon her sister’s breast, she passed away, her story untold, no wedding-ring on her wasted finger to bear witness that she died an honest man’s wife; no letters or papers in her poor little trunk to throw light on the fourteen years in which she had been a castaway.
Mrs. Halliday stayed in London to see the wanderer laid in the quiet city churchyard where her family rested, and where for her was chosen an obscure corner in which she might repose forgotten and unknown.
But not quite nameless. Mrs. Halliday could not leave the grave unmarked by any record of the sister she had loved. The stone above the grave of Gustave’s wife bore her maiden name, and the comforting familiar text about the one sinner who repenteth.
CHAPTER II.
FORGIVEN TOO LATE.
For a week of long days and longer nights there was no step sounded on the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old dilapidated house where he lay languishing on the brink of an open grave, that did not move Gustave Lenoble with a sudden emotion of hope. But the footsteps came and went, the doors were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller so waited, so hoped for did not return.
The boy–the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that was noblest and best in his father’s nature–pined for his mother. The man endured a martyrdom worse than the agony of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre. What had befallen her? That she could desert him or his child was a possibility that never shaped itself in his mind. _That_ drop of poison was happily wanting in his cup; and the bitterness of death was sweet compared to the scorpion-sting of such a supposition.
She did not return. Calamity in some shape had overtaken her–calamity dire as death; for, with life and reason, she could not have failed to send some token, some tidings, to those she loved. The sick man waited a week after the day on which he had begun to expect her return. At the end of that time he rose, with death in his face, and went out to look for her–to look for her in Rouen; for her whom the instinct of his heart told him was far away from that city–as far as death from life. He went to the Cour de Messageries, and loitered and waited amidst the bustle of arriving and departing diligences, with a half-imbecile hope that she would alight from one of them. The travellers came and went, pushing and hustling him in their selfish haste. When night came he went back to his garret. All was quiet. The boy slept with the children of his good neighbour, and was comforted by the warmth of that strange hearth.
Gustave lit his candle, a last remaining morsel.
“You will last my time, friend,” he said, with a wan smile.
He seated himself at the little table, pushed aside the medicine-bottles, searched for a stray sheet of letter-paper, and then began to write.
He wrote to his mother, telling her that death was at hand, and that the time had come in which she must succour her son’s orphan child. With this he enclosed a letter to his father–that letter of which he had spoken to his wife, and which had been written in the early days of his illness. This packet he directed to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There was no longer need for secrecy.
“When those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and past forgiveness,” he thought.
In the morning he was dead.
The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted and protected the child for two days; and then there came a lady, very sad, very quiet, who wept bitterly in the stillness of that attic chamber where Gustave Lenoble lay; and who afterwards, with a gentle calmness of manner that was very sweet to see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but not a mean or ignominious, funeral.
“He was my brother,” she said to the good friends of the neighbouring garret. “We did our best to help him, my mother and I; but we little thought how bitterly he wanted help. The brave heart would not suffer us to know that.”
And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their charity to the dead man; and with these good people she went on foot through the narrow streets of the city to see her brother laid in his grave.
Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his father; for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have some shrine at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already she was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow also, for whose return she looked daily.
For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a home. No one but her mother and this friend, whom she could trust, knew of the business that had brought her from Beaubocage. In seven years the father had never uttered his only son’s name; in all the seven years that name had never been spoken in his hearing.
When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England, all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the neighbours who had known the absent woman.
“She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away,” said the labourer’s wife, “as surely as it was on him that she left. I told her she had no strength for the journey; but she would go: there was no moving her from that. She had rich friends _la-bas_, who might help her husband. It was for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind of fever, and the strength of fever.”
“And there has come no letter–nothing?”
“Nothing, mademoiselle.”
On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. She could not well leave the child longer on the hands of these friendly people, even by paying for his maintenance, which she insisted on doing, though they would fain have shared their humble _pot-a-feu_ and coarse loaf with him unrecompensed. She determined on a desperate step. She would take her brother’s orphan child back with her, and leave the rest to Providence–to the chance of some sudden awakening of natural affection in a heart that had long languished in a kind of torpor that was almost death.
The little fellow pined sadly for those dear familiar faces, those tender soothing voices, that had vanished so suddenly from his life. But the voice of his aunt was very sweet and tender, and had a tone that recalled the father who was gone. With this kind aunt he left Rouen in the lumbering old vehicle that plied daily betwixt that city and Vevinord.
“Thou canst call me Cydalise for a while, my little one,” she said to him; for she did not wish the child to proclaim the relationship between them yet awhile.
Ah, what bitter tears the two women shed over the soft fair curls of that little head, when they had the boy all to themselves in the turret chamber at Beaubocage, on whose white walls the eyes of Cydalise had opened almost every morning of her pure eventless life!
“Why dost thou cry so, madame?” the child asked of his grandmother, as she held him in her arms, kissing and weeping over him; “and what have they done with my father–and mamma too? She went away one day, but she told me that she would come back, so quickly, ah, so quickly! and the days passed, and they shut papa in his room, and would not let me go to him; and mamma did not come, though I asked the Blessed Virgin to send her back to me.”
“Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place than this hard world, where they had so much sorrow,” Madame Lenoble answered, gently.
“Yes, they were often sorry,” murmured the boy thoughtfully. “It was because of money; but then, when there was no money, mamma cried and kissed me, and kissed papa, and the good papa kissed us both, and somehow it always ended in happiness.”
Francois Lenoble was, happily, absent on this day of tribulation. The women took their fill of sorrow, but it was sorrow mingled with a strange bitter sweetness that was almost joy. The seigneur of Beaubocage had gone to dine, as he still often did, with his old friend Baron Frehlter; for the breach of faith which had caused a lifelong disunion of father and son had not divided the two proprietors. Nay, indeed the Baron had been generous enough to plead the cause of the castaway.
“A man cannot dispose at will of his affections, my friend,” he urged; “and it was more generous in your son to break faith with my daughter before marriage than after.”
Mademoiselle Frehlter had not broken her heart on account of her lover’s falsehood. She had been sufficiently indignant on the occasion, and had been more impatient of her mother’s pet priest and pet poodle during the brief period in which she wore the willow. She had recovered her good humour, however, on being wooed by a young subaltern in a cavalry regiment stationed at Vevinord, the offshoot of a grander house than that of Lenoble, and whose good looks and good lineage had ultimately prevailed with the Baron. That gentleman had by no means too good an opinion of the son-in-law thus forced upon him; but peace was the highest good (with unlimited tobacco) to which his Germanic soul aspired; and for the sake of peace in the present he was content to hazard his daughter’s happiness in the future.
“_That_ is very brilliant,” he said of M. Paul de Nerague, the young lieutenant of light cavalry; “but it is not solid, like Gustave. Your son is honest, candid–a brave heart. It is for that I would have given him Madelon. But it is Providence which disposes of us, as our good father St. Velours tells us often; and one must be content. Young Nerague pleases my daughter, and I must swallow him, though for me he smells too strong of the barracks: _ca flaire la caserne, mon ami_.”
That odour of the barracks which distinguished the sub-lieutenant Paul de Nerague became more odious after his marriage with the virtuous Madelon, when he was established–_niche_, as he himself called it–in very comfortable, though somewhat gruesome, apartments at Cotenoir. His riotous deportment, his hospitable disposition (as displayed in the frequent entertainment of his brothers-in-arms at the expense of his father-in-law), his Don Juan-like demeanour in relation to the housemaids and kitchen-wenches of the chateau–innocent enough in the main, but on that account so much the more audacious–struck terror to the hearts of Madame Frehlter and her daughter; and the elder lady was much gratified by that thirst for foreign territory which carried the greater part of the French army and the regiment of the vivacious Paul to the distant wilds of Algeria.
The virtuous Madelon was too stolid to weep for her husband. But even her stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and, waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieutenant de Nerague.
The young officer was yet absent at that period in which Cydalise returned from Rouen with her brother’s child.
The little boy was sleeping peacefully in a cot beside his aunt’s bed (it had been his father’s cot thirty years ago) when Francois Lenoble returned from Cotenoir that night.
It was not till the next day that he saw the child. He had been making his usual morning’s round in the gardens and orchards, when he came into the salon, and saw the little boy seated near his grandmother’s chair, playing with some dominoes. Something–perhaps the likeness to his dead son–the boy’s black clothes, for Cydalise had contrived to dress him in decent mourning–struck suddenly on the old man’s heart. “Who is that boy?” he asked, with a strange earnestness.
“Your son Gustave’s only child,” answered his wife gently,–“his orphan child.”
Francois Lenoble looked at her, and from her to the boy; tried to speak, but could not; beckoned the child, and then dropped heavily into a chair and sobbed aloud. Until this moment no one had ever seen him shed a tear for the son he had put away from his home–and, as it had seemed, from his heart. Not by one sigh, not by one mournful utterance of the familiar name, had he betrayed the depth of that wound which he had endured, silently, obstinately, in all these years.
They suffered him to bemoan his dead son unhindered by stereotyped consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied him in silence. The little boy stared wonderingly, and at last crept up to the sorrow-stricken father. “Why do you cry, poor old man?” he asked. “You have not lost your papa and mamma, as I have lost mine, have you? I want to stay with you and be your little boy, please. She told me to say that,” he added, pointing to Cydalise.–“And I have said it right, haven’t I?” he asked of the same lady.–“I think I shall love you, because you are like my papa, only older and uglier,” the little one concluded, with angelic candour.
The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort. Beaubocage–Cotenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic names seemed to him now that his son’s life had been sacrificed to so paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire! He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed that fair young brow; and it was his own son–the son whom he had disowned–whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles on his rugged chin.
“My child,” he murmured softly, “the fear is that I shall love thee too well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I was wickedly stern to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity than justice.”
This was said to himself rather than to the boy.
“Tell me thy name, little one,” he asked presently, after a few moments’ pensive meditation.
“I have two names, monsieur.”
“Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names?”
“Francois Gustave.”
“I shall call thee Gustave.”
“But papa always called me Francois, and mamma said it was the name of a cruel man; but papa said he loved the name–“
“Ah, no more, little one!” cried the lord of Beaubocage suddenly; “thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost pierce this poor old heart.”
CHAPTER III.
GUSTAVE THE SECOND.
The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may be rich in love’s pure white blossom. The existence of this child seemed all happiness. He brought hope, and a sense of atonement, and all sweet things, to the quiet family at Beaubocage; and as he grew from childhood to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that household as if the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from them. That Orphic fable of Zagreus repeats itself in many households. For the one bright creature lost another is given; and then comes a time when it is almost difficult to separate the image of the missing one from the dear substitute who so nearly fills his place.
Francois Lenoble and his wife enjoyed a green old age, and the affection of their grandson made the cup of life sweet for them to the very dregs. There are, happily, some natures which indulgence cannot injure; some luxuriant flowers which attain strength as well as beauty under the influence of these tropical heats of affection. Gustave the second possessed all the noble qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous, brave, constant, affectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the failing eyes of his kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal Hercules.
Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so passionately desired are apt to be granted when the desire has grown somewhat cold and dead. Thus it was with the ambition of Francois Lenoble. He lived to see the lands of Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his grandson, who married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame de Nerague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Cotenoir; but the sons withered and faded in early boyhood, and even the daughter, though considered a flourishing plant in that poor garden of weakling blossoms, was but a fragile creature.
The old people at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and chatelaine of Cotenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery lieutenant, who fell in Algeria without having attained his captaincy, or added any military renown to the good old name of de Nerague in his own magnificent person.
Francois saw his grandson established at Cotenoir before he died. He expired with his hand in that of Gustave, whom, in the half-consciousness of that last hour, he mistook for the son he had disowned.
“What door was that that shut?” he asked, in an eager whisper. “Who said I turned my son out of doors–my only son? It’s false! I couldn’t have done it! Hark! there’s the door shutting again! It sounds like the door of a tomb.”
After this he dozed a little, and woke with a smile on his face.
“I have been dreaming of thy father, Gustave,” he said calmly. “I thought that I saw him with a light shining in his face, and that he kissed and forgave me.”
This was the end. The faithful wife was not slow to follow her husband to the grave, and there was now only a placid maiden lady at Beaubocage, Mademoiselle Cydalise Lenoble, whom everyone within ten leagues of Vevinord knew and loved,–a lay abbess, a Sister of Mercy in all save the robes; a tender creature, who lived only to do good.
Ten years passed, and M. Lenoble of Cotenoir was a widower with two fair young daughters at a convent school on the outskirts of Vevinord, and a boisterous son at an academy in Rouen. Gustave had never followed any profession; the lands of Beaubocage secured him a competence, so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch flower-garden. He was to live at Cotenoir, and look after his estate, and smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came natural to M. Lenoble. It was not in him to be otherwise than kind to women and children. His invalid wife praised him as a model of marital perfection. It was Gustave who wheeled her sofa from one room to another, Gustave who prepared her medicines, Gustave whose careful hands adjusted curtains and _portieres_. The poor woman lived and died believing herself the happiest of wives. She mistook kindness for love.
M. Lenoble bore his wife’s demise with Christian calmness. He was sorry that the fragile creature should have been taken so early from the pleasant home that was hers by right, but of passionate grief, or dreary sense of irreparable loss, there was none in that manly heart. There were times when the widower reproached himself for this want of feeling; but in very truth Madame Lenoble, _jeune_, had lived and died a nonentity. Her departure left no empty place; even her children scarcely missed her. The father was all-in-all.
Gustave had married at twenty years of age. He was twenty-nine when his wife died. His eldest daughter, Clarice, eight; his second, Madelon, seven; the boy, a spoilt young dog of five, not yet despatched to the great school at Rouen.
But in ’65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness, as the nuns told the master of Cotenoir. The demoiselles of Cotenoir stood high in the estimation of pupils and mistress; they were a kind of noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these young persons with some pride when she described her establishment to a stranger. It was a very comfortable little colony, a small world enclosed by high walls. The good mothers who taught and cherished the children were for the greater part ladies of superior and even exalted station; and there was a gentleness, a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not always to be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, and required a good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher that convent school would have afforded scope for curious study; for it is singular to discover what exceptional vices the youthful mind can develop from its inner consciousness, in homes as pure as this. There were black sheep even in the convent of the Sacre Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that meant “dangerous.”
Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the brightest and the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him no trouble, except when they asked him for a home.
“It seems so dull and dreary at Cotenoir, papa,” they said, “though you are always so kind. It doesn’t seem like home. Beaubocage is more home-like. At Cotenoir, when you are out, there is no one to talk to; and we have no little parties, no excursions into the country, none of those pleasures which the other girls tell us they have during the holidays.”
This was the gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something which was wanting to make Cotenoir a pleasant home. The girls could complain of no restraint, or pine for no indulgence, since their father was always prompt to gratify every whim. But there was some element of happiness wanting, nevertheless; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so. The life at Cotenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual dawdling; a life of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, projects begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, the household angel, order, was wanting in that mansion. There was waste, dirt, destruction of all kinds, in the rambling old chateau; old servants, too weak or too lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right–for the feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power still flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of his lord.
The servants at Cotenoir had gone their own ways with but little interference since the death of Madame de Nerague, which occurred two years before that of her daughter, Clarice Lenoble. Poor invalid Clarice had been quite unable to superintend her household; and since her death Mademoiselle Cydalise had been too feeble of health to assume any authority in her nephew’s establishment, even if the household of Cotenoir would have submitted to interference from Beaubocage, which in all likelihood they would not.
Thus it happened that things had taken their own course at the chateau, and the course had been somewhat erratic. There is nothing so costly as muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late begun to perceive that he had the maximum of expense with the minimum of comfort. Meanwhile the kind old aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father’s house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it is probable that in the mass of documentary evidence which goes before the Great Judge, Mademoiselle Lenoble’s account-book will be placed on the right side.
Book the Third.
THE HORATIAD.
CHAPTER I.
CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE.
Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood, after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London Bridge terminus of the Brighton line. He was setting out upon an adventure wild and impracticable as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts; and this gallant captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous and audacious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If the Fates had allowed the accomplished Horatio to choose his own destiny, he would have elected to live in the immediate neighbourhood of St. James’s Street, from the first day to the last of the London season, and to dine artistically and discreetly at one of those older and more exclusive clubs dear and familiar to him from the bright years of his youth. He was by nature a _flaneur_, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and frivolous pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought himself, but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor did Captain Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal republic, unselfishness and earnestness would have rendered a man rather a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men the diplomatic Horatio was fully competent to deal; but some of his most subtle combinations on the chess-board of life would have been checkmated by an unexpected encounter with intractable virtue.
The necessity of living was the paramount consideration to which this gentleman had given his mind from the time when he found himself a popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts and lying devices.
That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wits, is subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in which his spade turns up nothing but valueless clay, and the end of each day’s work leaves him with no better evidence of his wasted labour than the aching limbs which he drags at nightfall to his dismal shanty.
For some months Captain Paget had found Philip Sheldon a very useful acquaintance. The stockbroker had been the secret inaugurator of two or three joint-stock companies, though figuring to the outer world only as director; and in the getting-up of these companies Horatio had been a useful instrument, and had received liberal payment for his labours. Unhappily, so serene an occupation as promoting cannot go on for ever; or rather, cannot remain for ever in the same hands. The human mind is naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infinitely more audacious than the small larcenies of literature. The joint-stock company market became day by day more crowded. No sooner did Philip Sheldon float the Non-destructive Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which would offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of lime and other destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched a colourable imitation thereof, in the Union-is-Strength Domestic Lavatory Company, with a professor of chemistry specially retained as inspector of wash-tubs. Thus it was that, after the profitable ripening of three such schemes, Mr. Sheldon deemed it advisable to retire from the field, and await a fitter time for the further exercise of his commercial genius.
Captain Paget’s relations with the stockbroker did not, however, terminate with the cessation of his labours as secretary, jack-of-all-trades, and promoter. Having found him, so far, clever, and to all appearance trustworthy–and this was an important point, for no man so much needs honourable service as a rogue–Philip Sheldon determined upon confiding to Horatio the conduct of a more delicate business than anything purely commercial. After that discovery of the telegraphic message sent by his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst, and the further discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed wealth of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the expense of his brother.
“George refused to let me in for a share of chances when I showed myself willing to help him,” thought Philip. “He may discover by-and-by that I have contrived to let myself into his secrets; and that he might have played a better game by consenting to a partnership.”
A life devoted to his own interests, and a consistent habit of selfishness, had rendered Mr. Sheldon, of the Lawn, Bayswater, and Stags Court, City, very quick of apprehension in all matters connected, immediately or remotely, with the making of money. The broken sentences of the telegram betrayed by the blotting-pad told him a great deal. They told him that there was a certain Goodge, in the town of Ullerton, who possessed letters so valuable to George Sheldon, as to be bought by his agent Valentine Hawkehurst. Letters for which Sheldon was willing to give money must needs be of considerable importance, since money was a very scarce commodity with that hunter of unconscious heirs-at-law. Again, a transaction which required the use of so expensive a medium as the electric telegraph rather than the penny post, might be fairly supposed a transaction of some moment. The letters in question might relate to some other estate than that of John Haygarth, for it was quite possible that the schemer of Gray’s Inn had other irons in the fire. But this was a question of no moment to Philip Sheldon.
If the letters–or the information contained therein–were likely to be useful to George, they might be useful to him. If George found it worth his while to employ an agent at Ullerton, why should not he (Philip) have his agent in the same town? The pecuniary risk, which might be a serious affair to George, was child’s play for Philip, who had always plenty of money, or, at any rate, the command of money. The whole business of heir-at-law hunting seemed to the stockbroker a very vague and shadowy piece of work, as compared to the kind of speculation that was familiar to him; but he knew that men had made money in such a manner, and any business by which money could be made, was interesting to him. Beyond this, the notion of cutting the ground from under his brother’s feet had a certain attraction for him. George’s manner to him had been somewhat offensive to him on more than one occasion since–well, since Tom Halliday’s death. Mr. Sheldon had borne that offensiveness in mind, with the determination to “take it out of” his brother on the earliest opportunity.
It seemed as if the opportunity had arrived, and Philip was not one of those men who wait shivering on the shore when Fortune’s tide is at the flood. Mr. Sheldon launched his bark upon the rising waters, and within two hours of his discovery in the telegraph-office was closeted with Horatio Paget in the little parlour in Omega Street, making arrangements for the Captain’s journey to Ullerton.
That Horatio was the right man for the work he wanted done, Mr. Sheldon had been quick to perceive.
“He knows Hawkehurst, and will be able to reckon up any manoeuvres of his better than a stranger; and is, I think, altogether as deep an old gentleman as one could hope to meet with, barring _the_ traditional gentleman who did odd jobs for Dr. Faustus,” the stockbroker said to himself, as his hansom sped along Park Lane on its way to Chelsea. The eagerness with which Captain Paget took up the idea of this business was very agreeable to his patron.
“This is an affair in which success hinges on time,” said Mr. Sheldon; “so, if you mean to go in for the business, you must start for Ullerton by the two o’clock express. You’ll have just time to throw your razors and a clean shirt into a carpet-bag while I talk to you. I’ve got a cab outside, and a good one, that will take you to Euston Square in half an hour.”
The Captain showed himself prompt in action. His bedchamber was a small apartment at the back of the parlour, and here he packed his bag while conversing with his employer.
“If you get upon the ground in time, you may obtain a look at the letters before they are handed over to Hawkehurst, or you may outbid him for them,” said Mr. Sheldon; “but remember, whatever you do must be so done as to keep Hawkehurst and George completely in the dark as to our proceedings. If once they find out we are on their track, our chances will be gone, for they have got the information and we haven’t; and it’s only by following close in their footsteps we can hope to do anything.”
“That is understood,” replied the Captain, stooping over his bag; “I shall keep myself as close as possible, you may depend upon it. And it shan’t be my fault if Valentine sees me or hears of me. I shall want money, by the bye; for one can’t stir a step in this sort of affair without ready cash.”
“I am quite aware of that. I stopped at the West-end branch of the Unitas and cashed a cheque for forty pounds. You can do a good deal in the way of bribery for forty pounds, in such a place as Ullerton. What you have to do is to keep your eye on Hawkehurst, and follow up every channel of information that he opens for you. He has the clue to the labyrinth, remember, the reel of cotton, or whatever it was, that the young woman gave that Roman fellow. All you have to do is to get hold of it, and follow your leader.” continued Philip, with his watch in his hand. “This business of the letters will be sharp work, for the chances are against us here, as it’s more than likely the papers will have changed hands before you can get to Ullerton. But if you can’t buy the letters, you may buy the information contained in them, and that is the next best thing. Your first move will be to ferret out this man Goodge. Everybody knows everybody else in such a place as Ullerton, large and busy as the town is, and you won’t find that difficult. When you see Goodge, you’ll know how to deal with him. The mode and manner of your dealing I leave to yourself. You are a man of the world, and will know how to manipulate the gentleman, whoever he may be. And now lock your bag and cut downstairs as fast as you can. Time’s up. Here’s your money–three tens, two fives. Good day.”
CHAPTER II.
EPISTOLARY.
_From Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.
Royal Hotel, Ullerton, Oct. 7, 186–.
My dear sir,–I arrived here last evening just in time to run against Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a provoking encounter at the outset. He went further north by the same train that brought me from London. This train only stops at three places after Ullerton–Slowport, Black Harbour, and Manchester; and I shall take pains to discover which of these towns was Hawkehurst’s destination. There was one satisfaction in seeing his departure by this train, inasmuch as it assured me that I had the ground clear for my own operations.
I had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of Goodge–_the_ Goodge we want–and at eight o’clock was comfortably seated in that gentleman’s parlour, talking over the affair of the letters. Tolerably quick work, I think you will allow, my dear sir, for a man whose years have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf.
Mr. Goodge is a Methodist parson–a class of person I have always detested. I found him peculiarly amenable to monetary influence. I need scarcely tell you that I was careful to conceal my identity from this person. I made so bold as to borrow the cognomen of an old-established firm of solicitors in the Fields, and took a somewhat high tone throughout the interview. I informed Mr. Goodge that the young man who had called on him with reference to certain letters connected with the affairs of the Haygarth family–and I perceived from Mr. Goodge’s face that we were on the right track–was a person of disreputable character, engaged in an underhand transaction calculated to injure a respected client of our house. I saw that the words “house” and “our” were talismanic in their effect upon the Methodist parson. You see, my dear sir, there is no one can manage this sort of thing so well as a gentleman. It comes natural to him. Your vulgar diplomatist seldom knows how to begin, and never knows when to stop. Here I had this low-bred Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and collective importance after five minutes’ conversation. “But this comes too near the praising of myself; therefore hear other things,” as the bard observes.
A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable. I found that Hawkehurst had approached him in the character of your brother’s articled clerk, but under his own proper name. This is one point gained, since it assures me that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned name; and will enable me to shape my future inquiries about him accordingly. I also ascertained Hawkehurst’s whereabouts when in Ullerton. He stays at a low commercial house called the Black Swan. It appears that the man Goodge possesses a packet of letters written by a certain Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth, wife of one Matthew Haygarth. In what relationship this Matthew may stand to the intestate is to be discovered. It is evident he is an important link in the chain, or your brother would not want the letters. I need not trouble you with our conversation in detail. In gross it amounted to this: Mr. Goodge had pledged himself to hand over Mrs. Haygarth’s letters, forty or so in number, to Hawkehurst in consideration of twenty pounds. They would have been already in Hawkehurst’s possession, if Mr. Goodge had not objected to part with them except for ready money. In consideration of a payment of twenty pounds from me, he was willing to let me read all the letters, and select any ten I pleased to take. This bargain was not arrived at without considerable discussion, but it certainly struck me as a good one.
I opened the packet of papers then and there, and sat up until six o’clock the next morning, reading Mrs. Haygarth’s letters in Mr. Goodge’s parlour. Very fatiguing occupation for a man of my years. Mr. Goodge’s hospitality began and ended in a cup of coffee. Such coffee! and I remember the mocha I used to get at Arthur’s thirty years ago,–a Promethean beverage, that illumined the dullest smoking-room bore with a flash of wit or a glimmer of wisdom.
I enclose the ten letters which I have selected. They appear to me to tell the history of Mrs. Haygarth and her husband pretty plainly; but there is evidently something mysterious lurking behind the commonplace existence of the husband. That is a matter for future consideration. All I have to do in the present is to keep you as well informed as your brother. It may strike you that the letters I forward herewith, which are certainly the cream of the correspondence, and the notes I have made from the remaining letters, are scarcely worth the money paid for them. In reply to such an objection, I can only say that you get more for _your_ money than your brother George will get for his.
The hotel at which I have taken up my quarters is but a few paces from the commoner establishment where Hawkehurst is stopping. He is to call on Goodge for the letters to-day; so his excursion will be of brief duration. I find that the name of Haygarth is not unknown in this town, as there are a family of Judsons, some of whom call themselves Haygarth Judson. I intend inviting my landlord–a very superior person for his station–to discuss a bottle of wine with me after my chop this evening, and hope to obtain some information from him. In the meantime I shall keep myself close. It is of vital consequence that I should remain unseen by Hawkehurst. I do not believe he saw me on the platform last night, though we were as close to each other as we well could be.
Let me know what you think of the letters, and believe me to be, my dear sir, very faithfully yours,
H. N. C. PAGET. PHILIP SHELDON, Esq., &c. &c. &c.
* * * * *
_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_.
Bayswater, Oct. 8,186-.
DEAR PAGET,–The letters are mysterious, and I don’t see my way to getting much good out of them, but heartily approve your management of matters, and give you _carte blanche_ to proceed, according to your own lights.
Yours truly, P.S.
* * * * *
_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.
Royal Hotel, Oct. 9, 186-.
MY DEAR SIR,–The cultivation of my landlord has been very profitable. The house is the oldest in the town, and the business has descended in a direct line from father to son since the time of George the Second. This man’s grandfather entertained the officers of William Duke of Cumberland, honoured by his contemporaries with the soubriquet of Billy the Butcher, during the “forty-five.” I had to listen to and applaud a good many stories about Billy the Butcher before I could lead my landlord round to the subject of the Haygarths. But he was not more prosy than many men I have met at dinner-parties in the days when the highest circles in the land were open to your humble servant.
The Haygarth family, of which the intestate John Haygarth was the last male descendant, were for a long period inhabitants of this town, and obtained their wealth by trading as grocers and general dealers in a shop not three hundred yards from the room in which I write. The building is still standing, and a curious, old-fashioned-looking place it is. The last of the Haygarths who carried on business therein was one Jonathan, whose son Matthew was the father of that Reverend John Haygarth, lately deceased, intestate. You will thus perceive that the letters I sent you are of much importance, as they relate solely to this Matthew, father of our intestate.
My next inquiries related to the Judson family, who are, it appears, descended from the issue of a certain Ruth Haygarth’s marriage with one Peter Judson. This Ruth Haygarth was the only sister of the Matthew alluded to in the letters, and therefore was aunt of the intestate. It would herefrom appear that in this Judson family we must naturally look for the rightful claimant to the fortune of the deceased John Haygarth. Possessed of this conviction, I proceeded to interrogate my landlord very cautiously as to the status, &c. of the Judson family, and amongst other questions, asked him with a complete assumption of indifference, whether he had ever heard that the Judsons expected to inherit property from any branch of the Haygarth family.
This careless interrogatory produced information of, as I imagine, a very valuable character. A certain Theodore Judson, attorney of this town, calls himself heir-at-law to the Haygarth estates; but before he can establish his claim, this Theodore must produce evidence of the demise, without heirs, of one Peter Judson, eldest surviving grandson of Ruth Haygarth’s eldest son, a scamp and ne’er-do-well–if living, supposed to be somewhere in India, where he went, as supercargo to a merchant vessel about, the year ’41–who stands prior to Theodore Judson in the succession. I conclude that the said Theodore, who, as a lawyer, is likely to do things _secundum artem_, is doing his _possible_ to obtain the necessary evidence; but in the meantime he is at a dead lock, and the whole affair appears to be in a charming condition for speculative interference. I opine, therefore, that your brother really has hit upon a good thing this time; and my only wonder is, that instead of allowing his agent, Hawkehurst, to waste his time hunting up old letters of Matthew Haygarth’s (to all appearance valueless as documentary evidence), he does not send Valentine to India to hunt for Peter Judson, who, if living, is the rightful heir to the intestate’s fortune, and who, as a reckless extravagant fellow, would be likely to make very liberal terms with any one who offered to procure him a large lump of money.
I confess that I am quite at a loss to understand why your brother George does not take this very obvious course, and why Valentine potters about in this neighbourhood, when a gold mine is waiting to be _exploite_ on the other side.
I shall be very glad to have your views upon this subject, for at the present moment I am fain to acknowledge that I do not see my way to taking any further steps in this business, unless by commencing a search for the missing Peter.
I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours,
H. N. C. PAGET.
* * * * *
_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_.
Bayswater, Oct. 10, 186–.
DEAR PAGET,–When so old a stager as G. S. does not take the obvious course, the inference is that there is a better course to be taken–_not_ obvious to the uninitiated.
You have done very well so far, but the information you have obtained from your landlord is only such information as any one else may obtain from the current gossip of Ullerton. You haven’t yet got to the _dessous des cartes_. Remember what I told you in London. G. S. _has_ the clue to this labyrinth; and what you have to do is to hold on to the coat-tails (in a figurative sense) of his agent, V. H.
Don’t put your trust in prosy old landlords, but continue to set a watch upon that young man, and follow up his trail as you did in the matter of the letters.
If the Peter Judson who went to India three-and-twenty years ago were the right man to follow, G.S. would scarcely give twenty pounds for the letters of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth. It appears to me that G. must be looking for an heir on the Haygarth side of the house; and if so, rely upon it he has his reasons. Don’t bewilder yourself by trying to theorize, but get to the bottom of G.’s theory.
Yours truly, P. S.
_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.
* * * * *
Royal Hotel, Oct. 12, 186.–
MY DEAR SIR,–Considering the advice contained in your last very good, I lost no time in acting upon it. I need hardly tell you, that to employ the services of a hired spy, and to degrade myself in some sort to the level of a private inquirer, was somewhat revolting to a man, who, in the decadence of his fortunes, has ever striven to place some limit on the outrages which that hard taskmaster, poverty, may have from time to time compelled him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since an unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I submitted to this temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and I trust that when the time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person to play the spy would be that class of man whose existence seems for the most part devoted to the lounging at street corners, the chewing of straw, and that desultory kind of industry known in the _patois_ of this race as “fetching errands.” This is the man, or boy, who starts up from the pavement (as through a trap-door in the flags) whenever one alights from or would enter any kind of vehicle. Unbidden, unrequired, and obnoxious, the creature arises, and opens a door, or lays some rag of his wretched attire on a muddy wheel, and then whines, piteous, for a copper. Such a man, or such a boy, I felt convinced must exist among the hangers-on of the Royal Hotel; nor was I mistaken. On inquiring for a handy lad, capable of attending upon my needs at all hours in the day, and not a servant in the hotel, but a person who would be wholly at my own disposal, I was informed that the Boots had a younger brother who was skilled in the fetching of errands, and who would be happy to wait upon me for a very reasonable remuneration, or in the words of the waiter himself, would be ready to leave it–i.e. the remuneration–to my own generosity. I know that there are no people who expect so much as those who leave the assessment of their claims to your own generosity; but as I wanted good service, I was prepared to pay well. The younger Boots made his appearance in due course–a sharp young fellow enough–and I forthwith made him my slave by the promise of five shillings a day for every day in which I should require his services. I then told him that it was my misfortune to own–with a strong inclination to disown–a reprobate nephew, now an inhabitant of that very town. This nephew, I had reason to believe, was going at a very rapid rate to the dogs; but my affectionate feelings would not allow him to consummate his own destruction without one last effort to reclaim him. I had therefore followed him to Ullerton, whither I believed him to be led by the worst possible motives; and having done so, my next business was to keep myself informed of his whereabouts.
Seeing that the younger Boots accepted these statements with unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad’s intelligence was likely to be equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or complicated position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other mischance. “Do you think you can watch the gentleman without being observed?” I asked. “I’m pretty well sure I can, sir,” answered the boy, who is of an enterprising, and indeed audacious, temper. “Very well,” said I, “you will go to the Black Swan Inn. Hawkehurst is the name by which my nephew is known there, and it will be your duty to find him out.” I gave the boy a minute account of Valentine’s appearance, and other instructions with which I need not trouble you. I further furnished him with money, so that he might be able to follow Hawkehurst by rail, or any other mode of conveyance, if necessary; and then despatched him, with an order to come back to me when he had seen our man safely lodged in the Black Swan after his day’s perambulations. “And if he shouldn’t go out at all?” suggested the lad. “In that case you must stick to your post till nightfall, and pick up all the information you can about my unfortunate nephew from the hangers-on of the hotel,” said I. “I suppose you know some one at the Black Swan?” The boy informed me, in his untutored language, that he knew “a’most all of ’em,” and thereupon departed.
At nine o’clock at night he again appeared before me, big with the importance of his day’s work. He had seen my nephew issue forth from the Black Swan within an hour of leaving my presence, and had followed him, first to Mr. William Judson’s in Ferrygate, where he waited and hung about nearly an hour, keeping himself well out of view round the corner of Chalkin Street, a turning close to Mr. Judson’s house. After leaving this gentleman’s house, my renegade nephew had proceeded–carrying a letter in his hand, and walking as if in very good spirits (but that fellow Hawkehurst would walk to the gallows in good spirits)–to the Lancaster Road, where he was admitted into Lochiel Villa, a house belonging, as my Mercury ascertained from a passing baker’s boy, to Miss Judson, sister of the William Judson of Ferrygate. You will perceive that this town appears to teem with the Judson family. My messenger, with praiseworthy art, contrived to engage in a game of tip-cat (what, I wonder, _is_ a tip-cat?) with some vagrant boys disporting themselves in the roadway, within view of Miss Judson’s house. Hence, after the lapse of more than an hour, Boots-Mercury beheld my recreant relative emerge, and from this point followed him–always with extreme caution–back to the Black Swan. Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close acquaintance with the ostler, until eight o’clock in the evening, no event of the smallest importance occurring during all those hours. But at eight there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss Judson to Mr. Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was sealed with red wax. This was all my Mercury could ascertain respecting it; but this was something.
I at once divined that this packet must needs contain letters. I asked myself whether those letters or papers had been sold to Hawkehurst, or only lent to him, and I immediately concluded that they could only have been lent. It was all very well for Goodge, the Methodist parson, to traffic in the epistles of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth, but it was to the last degree unlikely that a well-to-do maiden lady would part with family letters or papers for any pecuniary consideration whatever. “No,” I said to myself, “the documents have been lent, and will have to be returned;” and thereupon I laid my plans for the next day’s campaign, with a view to obtaining a peep at those letters, by fair means or foul. I told the boy to be at his post in the inn yard early the next morning, and if my nephew did not leave the inn, my agent was to ascertain what he was doing, and to bring me word thereof. “I’ll tell you what it is, Boots,” I said; “I have reason to believe that sadly disposed nephew of mine has some wicked intention with regard to Miss Judson, who is nearly related to a young lady with whom that unprincipled young man is, or pretends to be, in love; and I very much fear that he means to send her some letters, written by this foolish niece of hers to my more foolish nephew, and eminently calculated to wound the good lady’s feelings. Now, in order to prevent this very shameful conduct on his part, I want to intercept any packet or letter which that mistaken youth may send to Miss Judson. Do you feel yourself capable of getting hold of such a packet, on consideration of a bonus of half-a-sovereign in addition to the five shillings per diem already agreed upon?”
This, in more direct and vulgar phraseology, was what I said to the boy; and the boy departed, after pledging himself to bring me any packet which Hawkehurst might despatch from the Swan Inn. The only fear was that Hawkehurst might carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared unpleasantly probable.
Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out. He intrusted Miss Hudson’s packet to his waiter, the waiter confided it to the Boots, the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy Mercury, who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a walk to the Lancaster Road.
At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography; but I remember my own father’s epistolary composition to have been somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati, should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth’s caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It appears to me that these letters relate to some _liaison_ of the gentleman’s youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to discover that, even in a period notorious for looseness of morals, a man should enter into such details in a correspondence with his sister. _Autres temps, autres moeurs_. I have selected my extracts with great care, and hope that you may be able to make more use of them than I can at present imagine possible. I shall post this letter and enclosure with my own hands, though in order to do so I must pass the Black Swan. I shall despatch my messenger to Lochiel Villa, with Miss Judson’s packet, under cover of the darkness.
In much haste, to catch the London mail,
Truly yours, H.N.C.P.
* * * * *
_From Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. City, Oct. 12, 186–
Dear Paget,–Come back to town. You are only wasting money, time, and trouble. Yours, P.S.
CHAPTER III.
TOO CLEVER, FOR A CATSPAW.
Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by that sudden summons from his patron, and eager to know what new aspect of affairs rendered his further presence in Ullerton useless or undesirable.
Horatio arrived in the great city half-a-dozen hours before his sometime protege, and was comfortably installed when Valentine returned to those lodgings in Omega Street, Chelsea, which the two men occupied in common.
Captain Paget went into the City to see Philip Sheldon on the day of his return, but did not succeed in finding the stockbroker. The evening’s post brought him a letter from Philip, appointing an interview at Bayswater, at three o’clock on the following day–the day after Valentine’s return from Ullerton.
Punctual to the moment appointed by this letter, Captain Paget appeared at the Lawn on the following day. He was ushered into Mr. Sheldon’s study, where he found that gentleman awaiting him, grave and meditative of mood, but friendly, and indeed cordial, in his manner to the returning traveller.
“My dear Paget, sit down; I am delighted to see you. Your trip has made you look five years younger, by Jove! I was sorry to find you had called while I was out, and had waited for me upwards of an hour yesterday. I have a good deal of worry on my shoulders just now; commerce is all worry, you know. The Marquis of Lambeth has come into the market and bought up two-thirds of the Astrakhan Grand Trunk debenture bonds, just as our house had speculated for the fall. And since it has got wind that the Marquis is sweet upon the concern, the bonds are going up like a skyrocket. Such is life. I thought we had better have our little talk here; it’s quieter than in the City. Have some sherry and soda; you like that Manzanilla of mine, I know.”
And the hospitable Philip rang the bell, without thinking it necessary to wait for his guest’s answer.
There was a cordiality, a conciliating friendliness about the stockbroker’s manner which Horatio Paget did not like.
“He’s too civil by half,” the Captain said to himself; “he means to do me.”
“And now about this Ullerton business,” Mr. Sheldon began, when the wine and soda-water had been brought, and a tall tumbler of that refreshing compound filled for the Captain; “you have really managed matters admirably. I cannot too much applaud your diplomatic tact. You would have put a what’s-his-name–that fellow of Napoleon’s–to the blush by your management of the whole business. But, unfortunately, when it’s all done it comes to nothing; the whole affair is evidently, from beginning to end, a mare’s-nest. It is one of those wild geese which my brother George has been chasing for the last ten years, and which never have resulted in profit to him or anybody else; and I should be something worse than a fool if I were to lend myself any longer to such a folly.”
“Humph,” muttered the Captain, “here is a change indeed!”
“Well, yes,” Mr. Sheldon answered coolly. “I dare say my conduct does seem rather capricious; but you see George put me out of temper the other day, and I was determined, if he had got a good thing, to cut the ground from under his feet. All your communications from Ullerton tend to show me that he has not got hold of a good thing, and that in any attempt to circumvent him I should only be circumventing myself, wasting your time, and my own money. This Judson family seems numberless; and it is evident to me that the Reverend John Haygarth’s fortune will be a bone of contention amongst the Judsons in the High Court of Chancery for any indefinite number of years between this and the milennium. So I really think, my dear Paget, we’d better consider this transaction finished. I will give you whatever honorarium you think fit to name for your trouble, and we’ll close the affair. I shall find plenty more business as good, or better, for you to do.”
“You are very good,” replied the Captain, in nowise satisfied by this promise. It was all too smooth, too conciliatory. And there was a suddenness in this change of plan that was altogether mysterious. So indeed might a capricious man be expected to drop a speculation he had been eager to inaugurate, but Philip Sheldon was the last of men to be suspected of caprice.
“You must have taken an immense deal of trouble with those extracts, now,” said the stockbroker carelessly, as Horatio rose to depart, offended and angry, but anxious to conceal his anger. “What, are you off so soon? I thought you would stop and take a chop with us.”
“No, thanks; I have an engagement elsewhere. Yes, I took an inordinate trouble with those extracts, and I am sorry to think they should be useless.”
“Well, yes, it is rather provoking to you, I dare say. The extracts would be very interesting from a social point of view, no doubt, to people who care about such things; but in a legal sense they are waste-paper. I can’t understand why Hawkehurst was in Ullerton; for, as you yourself suggested, that Peter Judson who went to India must be the Judson wanted for this case.”
“Your brother may be in league with some other branch of the Judson family. Or what if he is hunting for an heir on the Haygarth side?” asked the Captain, with a very close watch upon Mr. Sheldon’s face. Let the stockbroker be never so skilful a navigator of the high seas of life, there was no undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day’s sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew; but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead the acute Horatio.
“How about the Haygarth side of the house?” he asked again; for it had seemed to him that at his first mention of the name of Haygarth Mr. Sheldon had winced, ever so little. This time, however, he betrayed not the faintest concern; but he was doubtless now on his guard.
“Well, I don’t see how there can be any claimant on that side of the house,” he said carelessly. “You see, according to your old landlord’s statement–which I take to be correct–Jonathan Haygarth had but one son, a certain Matthew, who married one Rebecca So-and-so, and had, in his turn one only son, the intestate John. Now, in that case, where is your heir to come from, except through Matthew’s sister Ruth, who married Peter Judson?”
“Isn’t it just possible that Matthew Haygarth may have married twice, and had other children? Those letters certainly suggest the idea of a secret alliance of some kind on Haygarth’s part, and the existence of a family, to whom he appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this affair was that it must have been a low _liaison_; but I could hardly realize the fact of Matthew’s confiding in his sister under any such circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been. Mrs. Matthew Haygarth’s letters hint at some mystery in her husband’s life. Is it not likely that this hidden family was a legitimate one?”
“I can’t quite see my way to that idea,” Mr. Sheldon answered, in a meditative tone. “It seems very unlikely that any marriage of Haygarth’s could have remained unknown to his townsmen; and even if it were so, I doubt the possibility of our tracing the heirs from such a marriage. No, my dear Paget, I have resolved to wash my hands of the business, and leave my brother George in undisturbed possession of his ground.”
“In that case, perhaps, you will return my notes; they are interesting to me.”
Here again the faintest indication of annoyance in the stockbroker’s face told its tale to Captain Paget. For your accomplished navigator of the unknown seas there is no ocean bird, no floating weed, that has not a language and a significance.
“You can have your notes, if you want them,” answered Mr. Sheldon; “they are at my office. I’ll hunt them up and send them to you; or you had better look in upon me in the City early next week, and I can give you a cheque at the same time.”
“Thanks. I will be sure and do so.”
“You say the orthography of the original letters was queer. I suppose your copies were faithful in all matters except the orthography. And in the names, you of course adhered to the original spelling?”
“Most decidedly,” replied Captain Paget, opening the door to depart, and with a somewhat cynical smile upon his face, which was hidden from Mr. Sheldon.
“I suppose there is no doubt of your accuracy with regard to the name of Meynell, now?”
“Not the least. Good afternoon. Ah, there’s our young friend Hawkehurst!” exclaimed the Captain, in his “society” voice, as he looked out into the hall, where Valentine was parting with Diana.
He came and greeted his young friend, and they left the house together.
This was the occasion upon which Valentine was startled by hearing the name “Meynell” pronounced by the lips of Philip Sheldon.
CHAPTER IV.
CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL.
Horatio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off the scent, in order to follow up the chase alone, for his sole profit and advantage.
“My last letter conveyed some intelligence that altered his whole plan of action,” thought the Captain; “that is perfectly clear. He was somewhat wanting in tact when he recalled me so suddenly. But I suppose he thought it would be easy to throw dust in my poor old eyes. What was the intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question.” Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his meditation was Philip Sheldon.
“Yes,” he murmured at last, “that is it. The charm is in the name of Meynell. Why else should he question me about the orthography of that name? I sent him information about Matthew Haygarth in the wife’s letters, and he took no special notice of that information. It was only when the name of Meynell cropped up that he changed his tactics and tried to throw me over. It seems to me that he must have some knowledge of this Meynell branch, and therefore thinks himself strong enough to act alone, and to throw me over the bridge. To throw me over,” the Captain repeated to himself slowly. “Well, we’ll see about that. We’ll see; yes, we’ll see.”
At noon on the following day Captain Paget presented himself again at the Bayswater villa, where his daughter ate the bread of dependence. He appeared this time in a purely paternal character. He came to call upon his only child. Before paying this visit the Captain had improved the shining hour by a careful study of the current and two or three back volumes of the Post-Office and Trade Directories; but all his researches in those interesting volumes had failed to reveal to him the existence of any metropolitan Meynells.
“The Meynells whom Sheldon knows may be in the heart of the country,” he said to himself, after these futile labours.
It was a fine autumnal morning, and as Miss Paget was at home and disengaged, her affectionate father suggested that she should take a walk with him in Kensington Gardens. Such a promenade had very little attraction for the young lady; but she had a vague idea that she owed a kind of duty to her father not remitted by his neglect of all duties to her; so she assented with a smile, and went out with him, looking very handsome and stylish in her simple but fashionable attire, no part of which had been provided by the parent she accompanied.
The Captain surveyed her with some sense of family pride. “Upon my word, my dear, you do me credit!” he exclaimed, with a somewhat patronising kindness of tone and manner; “indeed any man might be proud of such a daughter. You are every inch a Paget.”
“I hope not, papa,” said the girl involuntarily; but the Captain’s more delicate instincts had been considerably blunted in the press and jostle of life, and he did not feel the sting of this remark.
“Well, perhaps you are right, my love,” he replied blandly; “the Pagets _are_ an unlucky family. Like those Grecian people, the Atri–, what’s-his-name–the man who was killed in his bath, you know. His wife, or the other young person who had come to visit his daughters, made the water too hot, you know–and that kind of thing. I am not quite clear about the story, but it’s one of those farragos of rubbish they make young men learn at public schools. Yes, my dear, I really am amazingly pleased by your improved appearance. Those Sheldon people dress you very nicely; and I consider your residence in that family a very agreeable arrangement for all parties. You confer a favour on the girl by your society, and so on, and the mother provides you with a comfortable home; All I wonder is that your good looks haven’t made their mark before this with some of Sheldon’s rich stockbroking fellows.”
“We see very little of the stockbroking fellows, as you call them, at the Lawn, papa.”
“Indeed! I thought Sheldon kept a great deal of company.”
“O no. He gives a dinner now and then, a gentleman’s dinner usually; and poor Mrs. Sheldon is very anxious that it should all go off well, as she says; but I don’t think he is a person who cares much for society.”
“Really, now?”
“His mind seems completely occupied by his business, you see, papa. That horrible pursuit of gain seems to require all his thoughts, and all his time. He is always reading commercial papers, the _Money Market_ and _On Change_, and the _Stockbrokers’ Vade Mecum_, and publications of that kind. When he is not reading he is thinking; and by his manner one would fancy his thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a miserable, hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that man for all the money in the Bank of England. But it is a kind of treachery to tell these things. Mr. Sheldon is very good to me. He lets me sit at his table and share the comforts of his home, and I must be very ungrateful to speak against him. I do _not_ mean to speak against him, you see, papa–I only mean that a life devoted to money-making is in itself hateful.”
“My dear child, you may be assured that anything you say to _me_ will go no further,” said the Captain, with dignity; “and in whom should you confide, if not in your father? I have a profound respect for Sheldon and his family–yes, my love, a profound respect; and I think that girl Sarah–no, I mean Charlotte–a very charming young person. I need scarcely tell you that the smallest details of your life in that family possess a keen interest for me. I am not without a father’s feelings, Diana, though circumstances have never permitted me to perform a father’s duties.”
And here the solitary tear which the accomplished Horatio could produce at will trembled in his eye. This one tear was always at his command. For the life of him he could not have produced a second; but the single drop never failed him, and he found one tear as effective as a dozen, in giving point and finish to a pathetic speech.
Diana looked at him, and wondered, and doubted. Alas, she knew him only too well! Any other creature in this wide world he might deceive, but not her. She had lived with him; she had tasted the bitterness of dependence upon him–ten times more bitter than dependence on strangers. She had shown him her threadbare garments day after day, and had pleaded for a little money, to be put off with a lying excuse. She could not forget this. She had forgiven him long ago, being of too generous a nature to brood upon past injuries. But she could not forget what manner of man he was, and thank him for pretty speeches which she knew to be meaningless.
They talked a little more of Mr. Sheldon and his family, but Diana did not again permit herself to be betrayed into any vehement expressions of her opinions. She answered all her father’s questions without restraint, for they were very commonplace questions, of a kind that might be answered without any breach of faith.
“Amongst the Sheldons’ acquaintances did you ever hear of any people called Meynell?” Captain Paget asked at length.
“Yes,” Diana replied, after a moment’s thought; “the name is certainly very familiar to me;” and then, after a pause, she exclaimed, “Why, the Meynells were relations of Charlotte’s! Yes, her grandmother was a Miss Meynell; I perfectly remember hearing Mrs. Sheldon talk about the Meynells. But I do not think there are any descendants of that family now living. Why do you ask the question, papa? What interest have you in the Meynells?”
“Well, my dear, I have my reasons, but they in no manner concern Mr. Sheldon or his family; and I must beg you to be careful not to mention the subject in your conversation with those worthy people. I want to know all about this Meynell family. I have come across some people of that name, and I want to ascertain the precise relationship existing between these people and the Sheldons. But the Sheldons must know nothing of this inquiry for the present. The people I speak of are poor and proud, and they would perish rather than press a relationship upon a rich man, unless fully justified by the closeness of family ties. I am sure you understand all this, Diana?”
“Not very clearly, papa.”
“Well, my dear, it is a delicate position, and perhaps somewhat difficult for the comprehension of a third party. All you need understand is the one fact, that any information respecting the Meynell family will be vitally interesting to my friends, and, through them, serviceable to me. There is, in fact, a legacy which these friends of mine could claim, under a certain will, if once assured as to the degree of their relationship to your friend Charlotte’s kindred on the Meynell side of the house. To give them the means of securing this legacy would be to help the ends of justice; and I am sure, Diana, you would wish to do that.”
“Of course, papa, if I can do so without any breach of faith with my employers. Can you promise me that no harm will result to the Sheldons, above all to Charlotte Halliday, from any information I may procure for you respecting the Meynell family?”
“Certainly, Diana, I can promise you that. I repeat most solemnly, that by obtaining such information for me you will be aiding the cause of justice.”
If Horatio Paget might ever be betrayed into the inconsistency of a truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that it was likely to be in this moment. His words sounded like truth; and, on reflection, Diana failed to perceive that she could by any possibility inflict wrong on her friends by obliging her father in this small affair.
“Let me think the matter over, papa,” she said.
“Nonsense, Diana; what thinking over can be wanted about such a trifle? I never before asked you a favour. Surely you cannot refuse to grant so simple a request, after the trouble I have taken to explain my reasons for making it.”
There was some further discussion, which ended in Miss Paget consenting to oblige her father.
“And you will manage matters with tact?” urged the Captain, at parting.
“There is no especial tact required, papa,” replied Diana; “the matter is easy enough. Mrs. Sheldon is very fond of talking about her own affairs. I have only to ask her some leading question about the Meynells, and she will run on for an hour, telling me the minutest details of family history connected with them. I dare say I have heard the whole story before, and have not heeded it: I often find my thoughts wandering when Mrs. Sheldon is talking.”
Three days after this Captain Paget called on Mr. Sheldon in the City, when he received a very handsome recompense for his labours at Ullerton, and became repossessed of the extracts he had made from Matthew Haygarth’s letters, but not of the same Mr. Haygarth’s autograph letter: that document Mr. Sheldon confessed to having mislaid.
“He has mislaid the original letter, and he has had ample leisure for copying my extracts; and he thinks I am such a consummate fool as not to see all that,” thought Horatio, as he left the stockbroker’s office, enriched but not satisfied.
In the course of the same day he received a long letter from Diana containing the whole history of the Meynells, as known to Mrs. Sheldon. Once set talking, Georgy had told all she could tell, delighted to find herself listened to with obvious interest by her companion.
“I trust that you have not deceived me, my dear father,” Diana concluded, after setting forth the Meynell history. “The dear good soul was so candid and confiding, and seemed so pleased by the interest I showed in her family affairs, that I should feel myself the vilest of wretches if any harm could result to her, or those she loves, from the information thus obtained.”
The information was very complete. Mrs. Sheldon had a kindly and amiable nature, but she was not one of those sensitive souls who instinctively shrink from a story of bitter shame or profound sorrow as from a cureless wound. She told Diana, with many lamentations, and much second-hand morality, the sad history of Susan Meynell’s elopement, and of the return, fourteen years afterwards, of the weary wanderer. Even the poor little trunk, with the name of the Rouen trunk-maker, Mrs. Sheldon dwelt upon with graphic insistence. A certain womanly delicacy had prevented her ever telling this story in the presence of her brother-in-law, George Sheldon, whose hard worldly manner in no way invited any sentimental revelation. Thus it happened that George had never heard the name of Meynell in connection with his friend Tom Halliday’s family, or had heard it so seldom as to have entirely forgotten it. To Horatio his daughter’s letter was priceless. It placed him at once in as good a position as Philip Sheldon, or as George Sheldon and his coadjutor, Valentine Hawkehurst. There were thus three different interests involved in the inheritance of the Reverend John Haygarth.
Captain Paget sat late by a comfortable fire, in his own bedchamber, that night, enjoying an excellent cigar, and meditating the following jottings from a pedigree:–
CHARLOTTE MEYNELL, married JAMES HALLIDAY. |
THOMAS HALLIDAY, only son of above, married GEORGINA, now Mrs. SHELDON; | had issue,
CHARLOTTE HALLIDAY.
SUSAN MEYNELL, only and elder sister of the above-named Charlotte, ran away from her home, in Yorkshire, with a Mr. Kingdon, brother to Lord Darnsville. Fate unknown during fourteen years of her life. Died in London, 1835. Buried under her maiden name; but no positive evidence to show that she was unmarried.
CHAPTER V.
THE CAPTAIN’S COADJUTOR.
Once in possession of the connection between the intestate John Haygarth and the Halliday family, Captain Paget’s course was an easy one. He understood now why his investigations had been so suddenly brought to a standstill. Philip Sheldon had discovered the unexpected connection, and was eager to put a stop to researches that might lead to a like discovery on the part of his coadjutor.
“And Sheldon expects to prove his stepdaughter’s claim to this fortune?” thought the Captain. “He will affect ignorance of the whole transaction until his plans are ripe, and then spring them suddenly upon his brother George. I wonder if there is anything to be made out of George by letting him into the secret of his brother’s interference? No; I think not. George is as poor as a church mouse, and Philip must always be the more profitable acquaintance.”
On the broad basis afforded by Diana’s letter Captain Paget was able to build up the whole scheme of the Haygarthian succession. The pedigree of the Meynells was sufficiently simple, if their legitimate descent from Matthew Haygarth could be fairly proved. Charlotte Halliday was heiress-at-law to the fortune of John Haygarth, always provided that her great-aunt Susan died without legitimate issue.
Here was the one chance which appeared to the adventurous mind of Horatio Paget worth some trouble in the way of research. Fourteen years of Susan Meynell’s life had been spent away from all who knew her. It was certainly possible that in that time she might have formed some legitimate alliance.
This was the problem which Horatio set himself to solve. Your adventurer is, of all manner of men, the most sanguine. Sir Walter Raleigh sees visions of gold and glory where grave statesman see only a fool’s paradise of dreams and fancies. To the hopeful mind of the Captain these fourteen unrecorded years of Susan Meynell’s life seemed a very Golconda.
He did not, however, rest satisfied with the information afforded by Diana’s letter.
“I will have the story of these Meynells at first-hand as well as at second-hand,” he said to himself; and he lost no time in presenting himself again at the Villa–this time as a visitor to Mrs. Sheldon.
With Georgy he had been always a favourite. His little stories of the great world–the Prince and Perdita, Brummel and Sheridan–though by no means novel to those acquainted with that glorious period of British history, were very agreeable to Georgy. The Captain’s florid flatteries pleased her; and she contrasted the ceremonious manners of that gentleman with the curt business-like style of her husband, very much to the Captain’s advantage. He came to thank her for her goodness to his child, and this occasion gave him ample opportunity for sentiment. He had asked to see Mrs. Sheldon alone, as his daughter’s presence would have been some hindrance to the carrying out of his design.
“There are things I have to say which I should scarcely care to utter before my daughter, you see, my dear Mrs. Sheldon,” he said, with pathetic earnestness. “I should not wish to remind the dear child of her desolate position; and I need scarcely tell you that position is _very_ desolate. A father who, at his best, cannot provide a fitting home for a delicately nurtured girl, and who at any moment may be snatched away, is but a poor protector. And were it not for your friendship, I know not what my child’s fate might be. The dangers and temptations that beset a handsome young woman are very terrible, my dear Mrs. Sheldon.”
This was intended to lead up to the subject of Susan Meynell, but Georgy did not rise to the bait. She only shook her head plaintively in assent to the Captain’s proposition.
“Yes, madam; beauty, unallied with strength of mind and high principles, is apt to be a fatal dower. In every family there are sad histories,” murmured the sentimental Horatio.
Even this remark did not produce the required result; so the Captain drew upon his invention for a specimen history from the annals of his own house, which was a colourable imitation of Susan Meynell’s story.
“And what was the end of this lovely Belinda Paget’s career, my dear Mrs. Sheldon?” he concluded. “The gentleman was a man of high rank, but a scoundrel and a dastard. Sophia’s brother, a cornet in the First Life Guards, called him out, and there was a meeting on Wimbledon Common, in which Lavinia’s seducer was mortally wounded. There was a trial, and the young captain of Hussars, Amelia’s brother, was sentenced to transportation for life. I need scarcely tell you that the sentence was never carried out. The young man fell gloriously at Waterloo, at the head of his own regiment, the Scotch Fusiliers, and Lavinia–I beg pardon, Amelia; nay, what am I saying? the girl’s name was Belinda–embraced the Roman Catholic faith, and expired from the effects of stigmata inflicted by her own hands in a paroxysm of remorse for her brother’s untimely death at the hands of her seducer.”
This lively little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. Melted by the woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or Amelia, or Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Sheldon was moved to relate a sad event in her husband’s family; and encouraged by the almost tearful sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated every detail of Susan Meynell’s life, as known to her kindred. And as this recital had flowed spontaneously from the good soul’s lips, she would he scarcely likely to allude to it afterwards in conversation with Mr. Sheldon; more especially as that gentleman was not in the habit of wasting much of his valuable time in small-talk with the members of his own household.
Captain Paget had duly calculated this, and every other hazard that menaced the intricate path he had mapped out for himself.
Satisfied by Mrs. Sheldon’s repetition of Susan Meynell’s story, and possessed of all the information he could hope to obtain from that quarter, Horatio set himself to consider what steps must next be taken. Much serious reflection convinced even his sanguine mind that the enterprise was a difficult one, and could scarcely be carried through successfully without help from some skilled genealogist.
“George Sheldon has given his lifetime to this sort of thing, and is a skilled lawyer to boot,” Captain Paget said to himself. “If I hope to go in against him, I must have someone at my elbow as well versed in this sort of business as he is.”
Having once admitted this necessity, the Captain set himself to consider where he was to find the right person. A very brief meditation settled this question. One among the numerous business transactions of Captain Paget’s life had brought him in contact with a very respectable little French gentleman called Fleurus, who had begun his career as a notary, but, finding that profession unprofitable, had become a hunter of pedigrees and heirs-at-law–for the most part to insignificant legacies, unclaimed stock, and all other jetsam and flotsam thrown up on the shadowy shores of the Court of Chancery. M. Fleurus had not often been so fortunate as to put his industrious fingers into any large pie, but he had contrived to make a good deal of money out of small affairs, and had found his clients grateful.
“The man of men,” thought Horatio Paget; and he betook himself to the office of M. Fleurus early next day, provided with all documents relating to the Haygarthian succession.
His interview with the little Frenchman was long and satisfactory. On certain conditions as to future reward, said reward to be contingent on success, M. Fleurus was ready to devote himself heart and soul to the interests of Captain Paget.
“To begin: we must find legal evidence of this Matthew Haygarth’s marriage to the mother of this child C., who came afterwards to marry the man Meynell; and after we will go to Susan Meynell. Her box came from Rouen–that we know. Where her box came from she is likely to have come from. So it is at Rouen, or near Rouen, we must look for her. Let me see: she die in 1835! that is long time. To look for the particulars of her life is like to dive into the ocean for to find the lost cargo of a ship that is gone down to the bottom, no one knows where. But to a man really expert in these things there is nothing of impossible. I will find you your Susan Meynell in less than six months; the evidence of her marriage; if she was married; her children, if she had children.”
In less than six months–the margin seemed a wide one to the impatient Horatio. But he knew that such an investigation must needs be slow, and he left the matters in the hands of his new ally with a sense that he had done the best thing that could be done. Then followed for Horatio Paget two months of patient attendance upon fortune. He was not idle during this time; for Mr. Sheldon, who seemed particularly anxious to conciliate him, threw waifs and strays of business into his way. Before the middle of November M. Fleurus had found the register of Matthew Haygarth’s marriage, as George Sheldon had found it before him, working in the same groove, and with the same order of intelligence. After this important step M. Fleurus departed for his native shores, where he had other business besides the Meynell affair to claim his attention. Meanwhile the astute Horatio kept a close eye upon his young friend Valentine. He knew from Diana that the young man had been in Yorkshire; and he guessed the motive of his visit to Newhall, not for a moment supposing that his presence in that farmhouse could have been accidental. The one turn of affairs that utterly and completely mystified him was Mr. Sheldon’s sanction of the engagement between Valentine and Charlotte. This was a mystery for which he could for some time find no solution.
“Sheldon will try to establish his stepdaughter’s claim to the fortune; that is clear. But why does he allow her to throw herself away on a penniless adventurer like Hawkehurst? If she were to marry him before recovering the Haygarth estate, she would recover it as his wife, and the fortune would be thrown unprotected into his hands.”
More deliberate reflection cast a faint light upon Philip Sheldon’s motives for so quixotic a course.
“The girl had fallen in love with Val. It was too late to prevent that. She is of age, and can marry whom she pleases. By showing himself opposed to her engagement with Val, he might have hurried her into rebellion, and an immediate marriage. By affecting to consent to the engagement, he would, on the contrary, gain time, and the advantage of all those chances that are involved in the lapse of time.”
Within a few days of Christmas came the following letter from M. Fleurus:–
_From Jacques Rousseau Fleurus to Horatio Paget_.
Hotel de la Pucelle, place Jeanne d’Arc, Rouen, 21st December, 186–.
MONSIEUR,–After exertions incalculable, after labours herculean, I come to learn something of your Susan Meynell,–more, I come to learn of her marriage. But I will begin at the beginning of things. The labours, the time, the efforts, the courage, the patience, the–I will say it without to blush–the genius which this enterprise has cost me, I will not enlarge upon. There are things which cannot tell themselves. To commence, I will tell you how I went to Rouen, how I advertised in the journals of Rouen, and asked among the people of Rouen–at shops, at hotels, by the help of my allies, the police, by means which you, in your inexperience of this science of research, could not even figure to yourself–always seeking the trace of this woman Meynell. It was all pain lost. Of this woman Meynell in Rouen there was no trace.
In the end I enraged myself. “Imbecile!” I said to myself, “why seek in this dull commercial city, among this heavy people, for that which thou shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? As the rivers go to the ocean, so flow all the streams of human life to the one great central ocean of humanity–PARIS! It is there the Alpha and the Omega–there the mighty heart through which the blood of all the body must be pumped, and is pumping always,” I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in whose verse I find an echo of my own soul, and whose compositions I flatter myself I could have surpassed, if I had devoted to the Muses the time and the powers which I have squandered on a _vilain_ metier, that demands the genius of a Talleyrand, and rewards with the crust of an artisan.
In Paris, then, I will seek the woman Meynell, and to Paris I go. In my place an inexperienced person would advertise in the most considerable papers; would invite Susan Meynell to hear of something to her advantage; and would bring together a crowd of false Susan Meynells, greedy to obtain the benefice. Me, I do nothing in this style there. On the contrary, in the most obscure little journals of Paris I publish a modest little advertisement as from the brother of Susan Meynell, who implores his sister to visit him on his deathbed.
Here are follies, you will say. Since Susan Meynell is dead it is thirty years, and her brother is dead also. Ah, how you are dull, you insulars, and how impossible for your foggy island to produce a Fouche, a Canler, a genius of police, a Columbus of the subterranean darknesses of your city.
The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead; and who will answer that letter, think you? Some good Christian soul who has pity for the sick man, and who will not permit him to languish in waiting the sister who will come to him never. For us of the Roman Catholic religion the duty of charity is paramount. You of the Anglican faith–bah, how you are cold, how you are hard, how you are unpitiable!
My notice appears once, my notice appears twice, three times, four times, many times. I occupy myself about my other business, and I wait. I do not wait unusefully. In effect, a letter arrives at last at the address of the dying, from a lady who knew Susan Meynell _before her marriage with M. Lenoble._
Think you not that to me this was a moment of triumph? _Before her marriage with M. Lenoble!_ Those words appear under my eyes in the writing of the unknown lady. “It is found!” I cry to myself; and then I hasten myself to reply to the unknown lady. Will she permit me to see her?
With all politeness I make the request; with all politeness it is answered. The lady calls herself Mademoiselle Servin. She resides in the street Grande-Mademoiselle, at the corner of the Place Lauzun. It is of all the streets of Paris the most miserable. One side is already removed. In face of the windows of those houses that still stand they are making a new Boulevard. Behind they are pulling down edifices of all kinds in the formation of a new square. At the side there is a yawning chasm between two tall houses, through which they pierce a new street. One sees the interior of many rooms rising one above another for seven stories. Here the gay hangings of an apartment of little master; there the still gaudier decoration of a boudoir of these ladies. High above these luxurious salons–ah, but how much more near to the skies!–one sees the poor grey paper, blackened and smoky, of a garret of sempstress, or workman, and the hearths black, deserted. These interiors thus exposed tighten me the heart. It is the autopsy of the domestic hearth.
I find the Mademoiselle Servin an old lady, grey and wan. The house where she now resides is the house which she has inhabited five-and-thirty years. They talk of pulling it down, and to her the idea of leaving it is exquisite pain. She is alone, a teacher of music. She has seen proprietors come and go. The _pension_ has changed mistresses many times. Students of law and of medicine have come and passed like the shadows of a magic lantern; but this poor soul has remained still in her little room on the fourth, and has kept always her little old piano.
It was here she knew Susan Meynell, and a young Frenchman who became in love with her, for she was beautiful like the angels, this lady said to me.
Until we meet for all details. Enough that I come to discover where the marriage took place, that I come to obtain a copy of the register, and that I do all things in rule. Enough that the marriage is a good marriage–a regular marriage, and that I have placed myself already in communication with the heir of that marriage, who resides within some few leagues of this city.
My labours, my successes I will not describe. It must that they will be recompensed in the future. I have dispensed much money during these transactions.
Agree, monsieur, that I am your devoted servitor,
JACQUES ROUSSEAU FLEURUS.
* * * * *
It was in consequence of the receipt of this missive that the Captain trusted himself to the winds and waves in the cheerless December weather. He was well pleased to find that M. Fleurus had made discoveries so important; but he had no idea of letting that astute practitioner absorb all the power into his own hands.
“I must see Susan Meynell’s heir,” he said to himself; “I must give him clearly to understand that to me he owes the discovery of his claims, and that in this affair the Frenchman Fleurus is no more than a paid agent.”
Book the Fourth.
GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
HALCYON DAYS.
Once having offered up the fondest desires of her own heart on the shrine of duty, Diana Paget was not a person to repent herself of the pious sacrifice. After that Christmas night on which she had knelt at Charlotte’s feet to confess her sad secret, and to resign all claim to the man she had loved so foolishly, so tenderly, with such a romantic and unselfish devotion, Miss Paget put away all thought of the past from her heart and mind. Heart and mind seemed empty and joyless without those loved tenants, though the tenants had been only fair wraiths of dreams that were dead. There was a sense of something missing in her life–a blank, dull calm, which was at first very painful. But for Charlotte’s sake she was careful to hide all outward token of despondency, and the foolish grief, put down by so strong a hand, was ere long well-nigh stifled.
Those dark days which succeeded Christmas were a period of halcyon peace for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover came to the villa when he pleased, but was still careful not to encroach on the license allowed him. Once a week he permitted himself the delight of five-o’clock tea in Mrs. Sheldon’s drawing-room, on which occasions he brought Charlotte all the news of his small literary world, and a good deal of useful information out of the books he had been reading. When Mr. Sheldon pleased to invite him to dinner on Sunday he gladly accepted the invitation, and this Sunday dinner became in due course an established institution.
“You may as well make this your home on a Sunday,” said Mr. Sheldon one day, with careless cordiality; “I dare say you find Sunday dull in your lodgings.”
“Yes, papa,” cried Charlotte, “he does find it very dull–dreadfully dull–don’t you, Valentine?”
And she regarded him with that pretty, tender, almost motherly look, which young ladies who are engaged are apt to bestow on their affianced lovers.
Miss Halliday was very grateful to her stepfather for his kindness to her landless adorer, and showed her appreciation of his conduct in many pretty little caressing ways, which would have been infinitely bewitching to a person of sentiment.
Unfortunately Mr. Sheldon was not sentimental, and any exhibition of feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte’s as from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear–what was it that showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that strange look was, it departed too quickly for analysis; and the stockbroker thanked his stepdaughter for her little affectionate