feeling, she found herself called upon to attend her father once more in the character of a ministering angel. And this time Captain Paget’s illness was something more than gout. It was, according to his doctors–he had on this occasion two medical attendants–a general breaking up of the system. The poor old wanderer,–the weary Odysseus, hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures,–laid himself down to rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned.
He was very ill. Gustave Lenoble, who came back to London, did not conceal from Diana that the illness threatened to end fatally. At his instigation the Captain had been removed from Omega Street to pleasant lodgings at the back of Knightsbridge Road, overlooking Hyde Park. This was nearer Bayswater, and it was very pleasant for the fading old worldling. He could see the stream of fashion flowing past as he sat in his easy-chair, propped up with pillows, with the western sunlight on his face. He pointed out the liveries and armorial bearings; and told many scandalous and entertaining anecdotes of their past and present owners to Gustave Lenoble, who devoted much of his time to the solacement of the invalid. Everything that affection could do to smooth this dreary time was done for the tired Ulysses. Pleasant books were read to him; earnest thoughts were suggested by earnest words; hothouse flowers adorned his cheerful sitting-room; hothouse fruits gladdened his eye by their rich warmth of colour, and invited his parched lips to taste their cool ripeness. Gustave had a piano brought in, so that Diana might sing to her father in the dusky May evenings, when it should please him to hear her. Upon the last feeble footsteps of this old man, whose life had been very selfish and wicked, pity waited with a carefulness so fond and tender that he might well mistake it for love. Was it fair that his last days should be so peaceful and luxurious, when many a good man falls down to die in the streets, worn out with the life-long effort to bear the burden laid upon his weary shoulders? In the traditions of the Rabbins it is written that those are the elect of God who suffer His chastisement in the flesh. For the others, for those who on earth drain the goblet of pleasure, and riot in the raptures of sin, for them comes the dread retribution after death. They are plunged in the fire, and driven before the wind; they take the shape of loathsome reptiles, and ascend by infinitesimal degrees through all the grades of creation, until their storm-tost wearied degraded souls re-enter human semblance once more. But even then their old stand-point is not yet regained; their dread penance not yet performed. As men they are the lowest and worst of men; slaves toiling in the desert; dirt to be trampled under the feet of their prosperous brethren. Inch by inch the wretched soul regains its lost inheritance; cycles must elapse before the awful sentence is fulfilled.
Our Christian faith knows no such horrors. Even for the penitent of the eleventh hour there is promise of pardon. The most earnest desire of Diana’s heart was that her father should enroll himself amongst those late penitents–those last among the last who crowd in to the marriage feast, half afraid to show their shame-darkened faces in that glorious company.
If we forgive all things to old age, so much the more surely do we forgive all injuries to the fading enemy. That she had suffered much cruelty and neglect at the hands of her father, was a fact that Diana could not forget, any more than she could forget the name which he had given her. It was a part of her life not to be put off or done away with. But in these last days, with all her heart she forgave and pitied him. She pitied him for the crooked paths into which his feet had wandered at the very outset of life, and from which so weak a soul could find no issue. She pitied him for that moral blindness which had kept him pleasantly unconscious of the supreme depth of his degradation–a social Laplander, who never having seen a western summer, had no knowledge that his own land was dark and benighted.
Happily for Diana and her generous lover, the Captain was not a difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost the capacity and the need for sin, took very kindly to penitence, as a species of sentimental luxury.
“Yes, my dear,” he said complacently–for even in the hour of his penitence he insisted on regarding himself as a social martyr–“my life has been a very hard one. Fortune has not been kind to me. In the words of the immortal bard, my lines have _not_ been set in pleasant places. I should have been glad if Providence had allowed me to be a better father to you, a better husband to your poor mother–a better Christian, in fact–and had spared me the repeated humiliation of going through the Insolvent Debtors’ Court. It is not always easy to understand the justice of these things: and it has often appeared to me that something of the favouritism which is the bane of our governments on earth must needs obtain at a higher tribunal. One man enters life with an entailed estate worth seventy thousand a-year, while another finds himself in the hands of the Jews before he is twenty years of age. ‘There’s something in this world amiss shall be unriddled by-and-by,’ as the poet observes. The circumstances of my own existence I have ever regarded as dark and enigmatic. And, indeed, the events of this life are altogether inexplicable, my love. There is that fellow Sheldon, now, who began life as a country dentist, a man without family or connections, who–well, I will not repine. If I am spared to behold my daughter mistress of a fine estate, although in a foreign country, I can depart in peace. But you must have a house in town, my dear. Yes, London must be your head-quarters. You must not be buried alive in Normandy. There is no place like London. Take the word of a man who has seen the finest Continental cities, and lived in them–that is the point, my love–lived in them. For a fine afternoon in the beginning of May, an apartment in the Champs Elysees, or the Boulevard, is an earthly paradise; but the Champs Elysees in a wet December–the Boulevard in a sweltering August! London is the only spot upon earth that is never intolerable. And your husband will be a rich man, my dear girl, a really wealthy man; and you must see that he makes a fitting use of his wealth, and does his duty to society. The parable of the Talents, which you were reading to me this afternoon, is a moral lesson your husband must not forget.”
After this fashion did the invalid discourse. Gustave and Diana perceived that he still hoped to have his share in their future life, still looked to pleasant days to come in a world which he had loved, not wisely, but too well. Nor could they find it in their hearts to tell him that his journey was drawing to a close, and that on the very threshold of the peaceful home which his diplomatic arts had helped to secure, he was to abandon life’s weary race.
They indulged his hopes a little, in order to win him the more easily to serious thoughts; but though at times quite ready to abandon himself to a penitential mood that was almost maudlin, there were other times when the old Adam asserted himself, and the Captain resented this intrusion of serious subjects as a kind of impertinence.
“I am not aware that I am at my last gasp, Diana,” he said with dignity, on one of these occasions; “or that I need to be talked to by my own daughter as if I were on my deathbed. I can show you men some years my senior driving their phaetons-and-pairs in that Park. The Gospel is all very well in its place–during Sunday-morning service, and after morning prayers, in your good old county families, where the household is large enough to make a fair show at the end of the dining-room, without bringing in hulking lads who smell of the stables: but I consider that when a man is ill, there is a considerable want of tact in bringing the subject of religion before him in any obtrusive manner.”
Thus the Captain alternated from sentimental penitence to captious worldliness, during may days and weeks. The business of the Haygarthian inheritance was progressing slowly, but surely. Documents were being prepared, attested copies of certificates of marriages, births, baptisms, and burials were being procured, and all was tending towards the grand result. Once, and sometimes twice a week, M. Fleurus came to see Captain Paget, and discussed the great affair with that invalid diplomatist. The Captain had long ago been aware that in entering upon an alliance with that gentleman, he had invoked the aid of a coadjutor likely to prove too strong for him. The event had justified his fears. M. Fleurus had something of Victor Hugo’s famous _Poulpe_ in his nature. Powerful as flexible were the arms he stretched forth to grasp all prizes in the way of heirs-at-law and disputed heritages, unclaimed railway-stock, and forgotten consols. If the Captain had not played his cards very cleverly, and contrived to obtain a personal influence over Gustave Lenoble, he might have found himself thrust entirely out of the business by one of the Frenchman’s gelatinous arms. Happily for his own success, however, the Captain did obtain a strong hold upon Gustave. This enabled him to protect his own interests throughout the negotiation, and to keep the insidious Fleurus at bay.
“My good friend,” he said, in his grand Carlton-House manner, “I am bound to protect the interests of my friend M. Lenoble, in any agreement to be entered upon in this matter. I cannot permit M. Lenoble’s generosity or M. Lenoble’s inexperience to be imposed upon. My own interests are of secondary importance. That I expect to profit by the extraordinary discovery made by me–by ME–alone and unaided, I do not affect to deny. But I will not profit at the expense of a too generous friend.”
“And what recompense am I to have for my work–a work at once painful and impoverishing?” asked the little Frenchman, with an angry and suspicious look. “Do you believe that I do that to amuse me? To run the streets, to go by here, by there, in hunting the papers of that marriage, or this baptism? Believe you that is so agreeable, Monsieur the Captain? No; I desire to be paid for my work. I must have my part in the heritage which I have help to win.”
“It is not won yet. We will talk of your recompense by-and-by.”
“We will talk of it this instant–upon the field. It must that I comprehend where I am in this affair. I will not of mystifications, of prevarications, of lies–“
“M. Fleurus!” cried the Captain, with a hand stretched towards the bell.
“You will sound–you will chase me! Ah, but no!–you cannot afford to chase me yet. I have to find more papers of baptisms and burials. Go, then, we will talk of this affair as friends.”
This friendly talk ended in Captain Paget’s complete victory. M. Fleurus consented to accept his costs out of pocket in the present, and three per cent, of the heritage in the future. It was further agreed that the Captain should select the English attorney who should conduct M. Lenoble’s case in the Court of Chancery.
This conversation occurred at Rouen, and a day or two afterwards the necessary document was drawn up. Gustave pledged himself to pay over a fourth share of the Haygarthian fortune to Horatio Paget, and three per cent, upon the whole amount to Jean Francois Fleurus. The document was very formal, very complete; but whether such an agreement would hold water, if Gustave Lenoble should choose to contest it, was open to question.
The solicitor to whom Horatio Paget introduced M. Lenoble was a Mr. Dashwood, of the firm of Dashwood and Vernon; a man whom the Captain had known in the past, and from whom he had received good service in some of the most difficult crises of his difficult career. To this gentleman he confided the conduct of the case; and explained his apprehensions with regard to the two Sheldons.
“You see, as the case now stands, they think they have the claimant to this money in Miss Halliday–Sheldon’s stepdaughter. But if they got an inkling of Susan Meynell’s marriage–and, in point of fact–the actual state of the case–they might try to get hold of my friend, Gustave Lenoble. They could _not_ get hold of him, mind you, Dashwood, but they would try it on, and I don’t want trying on of that kind.”
“Of course not. I know Sheldon, of Gray’s Inn. He is rather–well, say _shady_. That’s hardly an actionable epithet, and it expresses what I mean. Your friend’s case seems to me tolerably clear. That little Frenchman is useful, but officious. It is not a speculative affair, I suppose? There is money to meet the current expenses of the business?”
“Yes, there is money. Within reasonable limits my friend is prepared to pay for the advancement of his claims.”
After this the Haygarthian business progressed, slowly, quietly. The work was up to this point underground work. There were still papers wanting–final links of the chain to be fitted together; and to the fitting of these links Messrs. Dash and Vernon devoted themselves, in conjunction with M. Fleurus.
This was how matters stood when Captain Paget drooped and languished, and was fain to abandon all active share in the struggle.
CHAPTER II.
FADING.
While the invalid in the pleasant lodgings overlooking Hyde Park grew day by day weaker, there was a change as marked in the bright young creature whose loving spirit had first brought the influence of affection to bear upon Diana Paget’s character. Charlotte Halliday was ill–very ill. It was with everyday increasing anxiety that Diana watched the slow change–slow in its progress, but awfully rapid to look back upon. The pain, the regret, with which she noted her father’s decay were little indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart as she perceived the alteration in this dear friend, the blighting of this fair young flower.
That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but natural, and we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana watched her father’s decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte–with that happy soul for whom life and love wore their brightest smile, before whose light joyous footsteps stretched so fair a pathway!
The illness, whatever it was–and neither Mr. Sheldon nor the portly and venerable physician whom he called in could find a name for it–crept upon the patient with stealthy and insidious steps. Dizziness, trembling, faintness; trembling, faintness, dizziness; the symptoms alternated day by day. Sometimes there was a respite of a few days; and Charlotte–the youthful, the sanguine, the happy–declared that her enemy had left her.
“I am sure mamma is right, Di,” she said on these occasions. “My nerves are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if I could get the better of my nerves, I should be as well as ever. I don’t wonder that the idea of my symptoms makes mamma almost cross. You see, she has been accustomed to have the symptoms all to herself; and for me to plagiarise them, as it were, must seem quite an impertinence. For a strong young thing like me, you know, Di dear–who have only just broken myself of plunging downstairs two and three steps at a time, and plunging upstairs in the same vulgar manner–to intrude on mamma’s shattered nerves, and pirate mamma’s low spirits, is utterly absurd and abominable; so I have resolved to look my nerves straight in the face, and get the better of them.”
“My darling, you will get the better of them if you try,” said Diana, who did at times beguile herself with the hope that her friend’s ailments were mental rather than bodily. “I dare say your monotonous life has something to do with your altered health; you want change of scene, dear.”
“Change of scene, when I have you and Valentine! No, Di. It would certainly be very nice to have the background shifted now and then; to see Capability Brown’s prim gardens melt into Alpine heights or southern vineyards, or even into Russian steppes or Hungarian forests. One does get a little tired of _toujours_ Bayswater; and Mr. Sheldon; and crimped skate; and sirloin of beef, and the inevitable discussion as to whether it is in a cannibal state of rawness or burnt to a cinder; and the glasses of pale sherry; and the red worsted doyleys and blue finger-glasses; and the almonds and raisins, and crisp biscuits, that nobody ever eats; and the dreary, dreary funereal business of dinner, when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma’s peevish complaints about Ann Woolper’s ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr. Sheldon’s perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the evening through; and _such_ papers!–_Money Market Monitor, Stockholder’s Vade-Mecum_, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used never to feel these things an annoyance, you know, dear, till I made the acquaintance of my nerves; but from the moment I allowed my nerves to get the better of me, all these trifles have worried and excruciated me. But I am happy with you, darling; and I am happy with Valentine. Poor Valentine!”
She pronounced his name with a sigh; and then, after a pause, repeated mournfully, “Poor Valentine!”
“Why do you speak of him so sadly, dear?” asked Diana, very pale.
“Because–because we have planned such a happy life together, dear, and–“
“Is that a thing to be sad about, darling?”
“And–if it should happen, after all, that we have to part, and he go on alone, the world may seem so sad and lonely to him.”
“Charlotte!” cried Diana, with a laugh that was almost choked by a sob, “is this looking your nerves in the face? Why, my dear one, this is indeed plagiarism of your mamma’s low spirits. Lotta, you shall have change of air; yes, I am determined on that. The stately physician who came in his carriage the other day, and who looked at your tongue, and said ‘Ah!’ and then felt your pulse and said ‘Ah!’ again, and then called for pen-and-ink and wrote a little prescription, is not the doctor we want for you. We want Dr. Yorkshire; we want the breezes from the Yorkshire moors, and the smell of the farmyard, and our dear Aunt Dorothy’s sillabubs, and our uncle Joe to take us for long walks across his clover-fields.”
“I don’t want to go to Newhall, Di. I couldn’t bear to leave–him.”
“But what is to prevent your meeting _him_ at the white gate this time, as you met him last October? Might not accident take _him_ to Huxter’s Cross again? The archaeological work–of which we have heard no more, by the bye–might necessitate further investigations in that district. If you will go to Newhall, Lotta, I will pledge myself for Mr. Hawkehurst’s speedy appearance at the white gate you have so often described to me.”
“My dearest Di, you are all kindness; but even if I were inclined to go to Newhall, I doubt if mamma or Mr. Sheldon would like me to go.”
“I am sure they would be pleased with any arrangement that was likely to benefit your health. But I will talk to your mamma about it. I have set my heart on your going to Newhall.”
Miss Paget lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took possession of Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new stitch in _tricot_, and succeeded in impressing her with the conviction that change of air was necessary for Charlotte.
“But you don’t think Lotta really ill?” asked Mrs. Sheldon, nervously.
“I trust she is not really ill, dear Mrs. Sheldon; but I am sure she is much changed. In talking to her, I affect to think that her illness is only an affair of the nerves; but I sadly fear that it is something more than that.”
“But what is the matter with her?” exclaimed Georgy, with a, piteous air of perplexity; “that is the question which I am always asking. People can’t be ill, you know, Diana, without having something the matter with them; and that is what I can’t make out in Charlotte’s case. Mr. Sheldon says she wants tone; the physician who came in a carriage and pair, and ought to know what he is talking about, says there is a lack of vigour. But what does that all amount to? I’m sure I’ve wanted tone all my life. Perhaps there never was a creature so devoid of tone as I am; and the internal sinking I feel just before luncheon is something that no one but myself can realize. I dare say Lotta is not so strong as she might be; but I do not see that she can be ill, unless her illness is something definite. My poor first husband’s illness, now, was the kind of thing that any one could understand–bilious fever. The merest child knows what it is to be bilious, and the merest child knows what it is to be feverish. There can be nothing mysterious in bilious fever.”
“But, dear Mrs. Sheldon,” said Diana, gravely, “don’t you think that the weakness of constitution which rendered Charlotte’s father liable to be taken off in the prime of life by a fever is a weakness that Charlotte may possibly have inherited?”
“Good heavens, Diana!” cried Georgy, with sudden terror; “you don’t mean to say that you think my Charlotte is going to die?”
It was but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened fears as it had been to rouse her from absolute apathy.
Change of air–yes, of course–Charlotte must have change of air that instant. Let a cab be sent for immediately to take them to the terminus. Change of air, of course. To Newhall–to Nice–to the Isle of Wight–to Malta; Mrs. Sheldon had heard of people going to Malta. Where should they go? Would Diana advise, and send for a cab, and pack a travelling bag without an instant’s delay? The rest of the things could be sent afterwards. What did luggage matter, when Charlotte’s life was at stake?
At this point a flood of tears happily relieved poor Georgy’s excited feelings, and then common sense and Diana Paget came to the rescue.
“My dear Mrs. Sheldon,” she said, with a quiet cheerful tone that went far to reassure the excited lady, “in the first place we must, above all things, refrain from any appearance of alarm. Her illness may, after all, be only an affair of the nerves; and there is certainly no cause for immediate fear.”
Georgy was tranquillised, and agreed to take matters quietly. She promised to arrange Charlotte’s departure for Newhall, with Mr. Sheldon, that evening.
“Of course, you know, my dear, I like to consult him about everything,” she said, apologetically. “It is a duty which one owes one’s husband, you know, and a duty which, as a young woman about to marry, I cannot too much impress upon you; but in this case it is quite a matter of form: Mr. Sheldon never has objected to Charlotte’s going to Newhall, and he is not likely to object now.”
The event proved Mrs. Sheldon mistaken as to this matter. Georgy proposed the visit to Newhall that evening, while the two girls were strolling listlessly in the dusky garden, and Mr. Sheldon most decidedly rejected the proposition.
“If she wants change of air–and Dr. Doddleson recommended nothing of the kind–Newhall is not the place for her.”
“Why not, dear?”
“It is too cold. Northerly aspect–no shelter–three hundred feet above York minster.”
“But Dorothy Mercer is such a kind motherly creature; she’d delight in nursing Lotta.”
“Yes,” answered Mr. Sheldon, with a laugh, “and in quacking her. I know what those good motherly creatures are when they get an excuse for dosing some unhappy victim with their quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to Newhall, Mrs. Mercer would poi–would make her ten times worse than she is with old woman’s remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is too cold. That is a conclusive argument, I suppose?”
He said this with some impatience of tone and manner. There was a haggard look in his face, a hurried harassed manner pervading him this evening, which had been growing upon him of late. Georgy was too slow of perception to remark this; but Diana Paget had remarked it, and had attributed the change in the stockbroker’s manner to a blending of two anxieties.
“He is anxious about money matters,” she had said to herself, “and he is anxious about Charlotte’s health. His lips, moving in whispered calculations, as he sits brooding by the fire, tell me of the first anxiety; his eyes, wandering furtively to his step-daughter’s face every now and then, tell me of the second.”
This furtive anxiety of Mr. Sheldon’s increased Diana Paget’s anxiety. This man, who had a certain amount of medical knowledge, could no doubt read the diagnostics of that strange insidious illness, which had, as yet, no name, Diana, furtively watching his furtive looks, told herself that he read of danger.
“If Charlotte wants change of air, let her go to Hastings,” he said; “that is the kind of place for an invalid. I want rest myself; and there’s such utter stagnation in the City nowadays that I can very well afford to give myself a holiday. We’ll run down to Hastings, or the immediate neighbourhood of Hastings, for a week or two.”
“O Philip, how kind and considerate you are! I am sure, as I was observing to Miss Paget only today, you–“
“Ah, by the bye, there’s Miss Paget. Is it absolutely necessary that Miss Paget should go to Hastings with us?”
“Well, dear, you see she has so kindly desired to remain with me for the quarter, so as to give me time to turn round, you know, with regard to caps and summer things, and so on–for, really, she has such taste, and does strike out such excellent ideas about turning, and dipping, and dyeing, that I don’t know what will become of me when she leaves us; and it would look so pointed to–“
“Yes; she had better go with us. But why all this fuss about Charlotte? Who put it into your head that she wants change of air?”
Mr. Sheldon evidently considered it an established fact that any idea in his wife’s head must needs have been put there by someone or other.
“Well, you see, Diana and I were talking of Lotta this afternoon, and Diana quite alarmed me.”
“How so?” asked Mr. Sheldon, with a quick frown.
“Why, she said it was evident, by the fact of poor dear Tom’s dying of a fever, that his constitution must have been originally weak. And she said that perhaps Charlotte had inherited Tom’s weak constitution–and frightened me dreadfully.”
“There is no occasion for you to be frightened; Charlotte will get on very well, I dare say, with care. But Miss Paget is a very sensible young woman, and is right in what she says. Charlotte’s constitution is not strong.”
“O Philip!” said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice.
“I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves,” said Mr. Sheldon, with a hard laugh. “Ah, here she is!”
Here she was, coming towards the open window near which her stepfather sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her sauntering walk, dressed in white, and spectral in the gloaming. To the sad eyes of her mother she looked like a ghost. To the eyes of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to poetic fancies, she looked even more ghostlike.
CHAPTER III.
MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS.
Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several people. That her stepfather had his anxieties about her–anxieties which he tried to hide–was obvious to the one person in the Bayswater villa who noted his looks, and tried to read the thoughts they indicated.
Mrs. Sheldon’s alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be lulled to rest. And in Valentine Hawkehurst’s heart there was an aching pain–a dull dead load of care, which had never been lightened from the hour when he first perceived the change in his dear one’s face.
There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater villa, who watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care as unresting as the care of mother or stepfather, bosom friend or plighted lover. This person was Ann Woolper. Mrs. Woolper had come to the villa prepared to find in Miss Halliday a frivolous self-satisfied young person, between whom and an old broken-down woman like herself there could be no sympathy. She had expected to be contemptuously–or, at the best, indifferently–entreated by the prosperous well-placed young lady, whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of as a good girl, as girls go; a vague species of commendation, which, to the mind of Mrs. Woolper, promised very little.
As clearly as Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes with regard to Charlotte Halliday, he had expressed them to Ann Woolper. What he would fain have said, was, “Watch my stepdaughter, and keep me well acquainted with every step she takes.” Thus much he dared not say; but by insinuating that Tom Halliday’s daughter was frivolous and reckless, and that her lover was not to be trusted, he had contrived to put Mrs. Woolper on the _qui vive_.
“Mr. Philip’s afraid she may go and marry this young man on the sly, before he’s got the means to support a wife,” she said to herself, as she meditated upon the meaning of her master’s injunctions; “and well he may be. There’s no knowing what young women are up to nowadays; and the more innocent and inexperienced a young woman is, the more she wants looking after. And Miss Georgy Craddock always was a poor fondy, up to naught but dressing herself fine, and streaming up and down Barlingford High Street with her old schoolfellows. Such as she ain’t fit to be trusted with a daughter; and Mr. Philip knows that. He always was a deep one. But I’m glad he looks after Missy: there’s many men, having got fast hold of th’ father’s brass, would let th’ daughter marry Old Scratch, for the sake of gettin’ rid of her.”
This is how Mrs. Woolper argued the matter. She came of a prudent race; and anything like prudence seemed to her a commendable virtue. She wished to think well of her master; for her he had been a Providence in the hour of calamity and old age. Where else could she look, if not to him? And to suspect him, or think ill of him, was to reject the one refuge offered to her distress. A magnanimous independence of spirit is not an easy virtue for the old and friendless and poor. The drowning wretch will scarcely question the soundness of the plank that sustains him upon the storm-tossed billows; nor was Mrs. Woolper inclined to question the motives of the man to whom she now owed her daily bread.
It is possible that before invoking Mrs. Woolper from the ashes of the past to take her seat by the hearthstone of the present, Mr. Sheldon may have contemplated the question of her return in all its bearings, and may have assured himself that she was his own, by a tie not easily broken–his bond-slave, fettered hand and foot by the bondage of necessity.
“What choice can she have, except the choice between my house and the workhouse?” he may naturally have asked himself; “and is it likely she will quarrel with her bread-and-butter in order to fall back upon dry bread?” Mr. Sheldon, contemplating this and all other questions from his one unchanging standpoint, may reasonably have concluded that Mrs. Woolper would do nothing opposed to her own interests; and that so long as it suited her interest to remain at the Lawn, and to serve him, she would there remain, his docile and unquestioning slave.
The influence of affection, the force of generous impulse, were qualities that did not come into Mr. Sheldon’s calculations upon this subject. His addition and subtraction, division and multiplication, were all based on one system.
That happy and unconscious art by which Charlotte Halliday made herself dear to all who knew her had a speedy effect upon the old housekeeper. The girl’s amiable consideration for her age and infirmities; the pretty affectionate familiarity with which she treated this countrywoman, who had known her father, and who could talk to her of Yorkshire and Yorkshire people, soon made their way to Nancy Woolper’s heart of hearts. For Miss Halliday to come to the housekeeper’s room with some message from her mother, and to linger for a few minutes’ chat, was a delight to Mrs. Woolper. She would have detained the bright young visitant for hours instead of minutes, if she could have found any excuse for so doing. Nor was there any treason against Mr. Sheldon in her growing attachment to his stepdaughter. Whenever Nancy spoke of that master and benefactor, she spoke with unfeigned gratitude and affection.
“I nursed your step-papa as a baby, Miss Halliday,” she said very often on these occasions. “You wouldn’t think, to look at him now, that he ever was _that_, would you? But he was one of the finest babies you could wish to see–tall, and strong, and with eyes that pierced one through, they were so bright and big and black. He was rather stubborn-spirited with his teething; but what baby isn’t trying at such times? I had rare work with him, I can tell you, Miss, walking him about of nights, and jogging him till there wasn’t a jog left in me, as you may say, from sleepiness. I often wonder if he thinks of this now, when I see him looking so grave and stern. But, you see, being jogged doesn’t impress the mind like having to jog; and though I can bring that time back as plain as if it was yesterday, with the very nursery I slept in at Barlingford, and the rushlight in a tall iron cage on the floor, and the shadow of the cage on the bare whitewashed walls–it’s clean gone out of his mind, I dare say.”
“I’m afraid it has, Nancy.”
“But, O, I was fond of him, Miss Halliday; and what I went through with him about his teeth made me only the fonder of him. He was the first baby I ever nursed, you see, and the last; for before Master George came to town I’d taken to the cooking, and Mrs. Sheldon hired another girl as nurse; a regular softy _she_ was, and it isn’t her fault that Master George has got anything christian-like in the way of a back, for the way she carried that blessed child used to make my blood run cold.”
Thus would Mrs. Woolper discourse whenever she had a fair excuse for detaining Miss Halliday in her comfortable apartment. Charlotte did not perceive much interest in these reminiscences of Mr. Sheldon’s infancy, but she was much too kind to bring them abruptly to a close by any show of impatience. When she could get Nancy to talk of Barlingford and Hyley, and the people whom Charlotte herself had known as a child, the conversation was really interesting; and these recollections formed a link between the old woman and the fair young damsel.
When the change arose in Charlotte’s health and spirits, Mrs. Woolper was one of the first to perceive it. She was skilled in those old woman’s remedies which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme contempt, and she would fain have dosed the invalid with nauseous decoctions of hops, or home-brewed quinine. Charlotte appreciated the kindness of the intent, but she rebelled against the home-brewed medicines, and pinned her faith to the more scientific and less obnoxious preparations procured from the chemist’s.
For some time Nancy made light of the girl’s ailments, though she watched her with unfailing attention.
“You ain’t a-done growing yet, miss, I’ll lay,” she said.
“But I’m more than twenty-one, Nancy. People don’t grow after they’re of age, do they?”
“I’ve known them as have, miss; I don’t say it’s common, but it has been done. And then there’s the weakness that comes after you’ve done growing. Girls of your age are apt to be faint and lollopy-like, as you may say; especially when they’re stived up in a smoky place like London. You ought to go to Hyley, miss, where you was born; that’s the place to set you up.”
The time had come when the change was no longer matter for doubt. Day by day Charlotte grew weaker and paler; day by day that bright and joyous creature, whose presence had made an atmosphere of youth and gladness even in that prim dwelling-place, receded farther into the dimness of the past; until to think of what she had been seemed like recalling the image of the dead. Nancy marked the alteration with a strange pain, so sharp, so bitter, that its sharpness and bitterness were a perpetual perplexity to her.
“If the poor dear young thing is meant to go, there’s no need for me to fret about it all day long, and wake up sudden in the night with cold water standing out upon my forehead at the thought of it. I haven’t known her six months; and if she is pretty and sweet-spoken, it’s not my place to give way at the thoughts of losing her. She’s not my own flesh and blood; and I’ve sat by to watch them go, times and often, without feeling as I do when I see the change in her day after day. Why should it seem so dreadful to me?”
Why indeed? This was a question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel. A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday’s illness as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been liable to the suspicion of nocturnal careerings on broomsticks.
“I’m sorry Mr. Philip’s house should be unlucky to that sweet young creature,” she said to herself. “It was unlucky to the father; and now it seems as if it was going to be unlucky to the daughter. And Mr. Philip won’t be any richer for her death. Mrs. Sheldon has told me times and often that all Tom Halliday’s money went to my master when she married him, and he has doubled and trebled it by his cleverness. Miss Charlotte’s death wouldn’t bring him a sixpence.”
This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper’s meditations very often nowadays. But the strange sense of perplexity, the nameless fear, the vague horror, were not to be banished from her mind. A sense of some shapeless presence for ever at her side haunted her by day and night. What was it? What did its presence portend? It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot, was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not turn to meet the horror face to face. Sometimes the phantom hand lifted a corner of the veil, and the shade said, “Look at me! See who and what I am! You have seen me before. I am here again! and this time you shall not refuse to meet me face to face! I am the shadow of the horror you suspected in the past!”
The shadowy fears which oppressed Mrs. Woolper during this period did not in any way lessen her practical usefulness. From the commencement of Charlotte’s slow decline she had shown herself attentive, and even officious, in all matters relating to the invalid. With her own hands she decanted the famous port which Georgy fetched from the particular bin in Mr. Sheldon’s carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called in, and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper who carried the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought back the innocent potion, which might, peradventure, effect some slight good, and was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. Charlotte duly appreciated all this kindness; but she repeatedly assured the housekeeper that her ailments were not worthy of so much care.
It was Mrs. Woolper whom Mr. Sheldon employed to get lodgings for the family, when it had been ultimately decided that a change to the seaside was the best cure for Miss Halliday.
“I am too busy to go to Hastings myself this week,” he said; “but I shall be prepared to spend a fortnight there after next Monday. What I want you to do, Nancy, is to slip down tomorrow, with a second-class return-ticket, and look about for a nice place for us. I don’t care about being in Hastings; there’s too much cockneyism in the place at this time of year. There’s a little village called Harold’s Hill, within a mile or so of St. Leonard’s–a dull, out-of-the-way place, but rustic and picturesque, and all that kind of thing–the sort of place that women like. Now, I’d rather stay at that place than at Hastings. So you can take a fly at the station, drive straight to Harold’s Hill, and secure the best lodgings you can get.”
“You think as the change of air will do Miss Halliday good?” asked Mrs. Woolper anxiously, after she had promised to do all her kind master required of her.
“Do I think it will do her good? Of course I do. Sea-air and sea-bathing will set her up in no time; there’s nothing particular the matter with her.”
“No, Mr. Philip; that’s what bothers me about the whole thing. There’s nothing particular the matter with her; and yet she pines and dwindles, and dwindles and pines, till it makes one’s heart ache to see her.”
Philip Sheldon’s face darkened, and he threw himself back in his chair with an impatient movement. If he had chosen to do so, he could have prevented that darkening of his face; but he did not consider Mrs. Woolper a person of sufficient importance to necessitate the regulation of his countenance. What was she but an ignorant, obstinate old woman, who would most probably perish in the streets if he chose to turn her out of doors? There are men who consider their clerks and retainers such very dirt, that they would continue the forging of a bill of exchange, or complete the final touches of a murder, with a junior clerk putting coals on the fire, or an errand-boy standing cap in hand on the threshold of the door. They cannot realize the fact that dirt such as this is flesh and blood, and may denounce them by-and-by in a witness-box.
Of all contingencies Mr. Sheldon least expected that this old woman could prove troublesome to him–this abject wretch, whose daily bread depended on his will. He could not imagine that there are circumstances under which such abject creatures will renounce their daily bread, and die of hunger, rather than accept the means of life from one hateful hand.
“If you want to know anything about Miss Halliday’s illness,” he said in his hardest voice, and with his hardest look, “you had better apply to Dr. Doddleson, the physician who has prescribed for her. I do not attend her, you see, and I am in no way responsible for her health. When I was attending her father you favoured me by doubting my skill, if I judged rightly as to your tone and manner on one occasion. I don’t want to be brought to book by you, Mrs. Woolper, about Miss Halliday’s altered looks or Miss Halliday’s illness; I have nothing to do with either.”
“How should I think you had, sir? Don’t be angry with me, or hard upon me, Mr. Phil. I nursed you when you was but a baby, and you’re nearer and dearer to me than any other master could be. Why, I have but to shut my eyes now, and I can feel your little hand upon my neck, as it used to lie there, so soft and dear. And then I look down at the hand on the table, strong and dark, and clenched so firm, and I ask myself, Can it be the same? For the sake of that time, Mr. Phil, don’t be hard upon me. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to serve you; there’s nothing you could do that would turn me from you. There’s no man living in this world, sir, that oughtn’t to be glad to know of one person that nothing can turn from him.”
“That’s a very fine sentiment, my good soul,” replied Mr. Sheldon coolly; “but, you see, it’s only an _ex parte_ statement; and as the case stands there is no opportunity for the display of those fine feelings you talk about. You happen to want a home in your old age, and I happen to be able to give you a home. Under such circumstances, your own good sense will show you that all sentimental talk about standing by me, and not turning away from me, is absolute bosh.”
The old woman sighed heavily. She had offered her master a fidelity which involved the abnegation of all impulses of her own heart and mind, and he rejected her love and her service. And then, after the first dreary sense of his coldness, she felt better pleased that it should be so. The man who spoke to her in this harsh uncompromising way could have no cause to fear her. In the mind of such a man there could surely be no secret chamber within which she had, with his knowledge, almost penetrated.
“I won’t trouble you any more, sir,” she said mournfully. “I dare say I’m a foolish old woman.”
“You are, Nancy. We don’t get wiser as we grow older, you see; and when we let our tongues wag, we’re apt to talk nonsense. The quieter you keep your tongue, the better for yourself, in more ways than one. To a useful old woman about the place I’ve no objection; but a chattering old woman I will not have at any price.”
After this everything was settled in the most agreeable manner. Nancy Woolper’s journey to Hastings was fully arranged; and early the next morning she started, brisk and active, in spite of her sixty-eight years of age. She returned at night, having secured very pleasant lodgings at the village of Harold’s Hill.
“And a very sweet place it is, my dear Miss Lotta,” she said to Charlotte the next day, when she described her adventures. “The apartments are at a farmhouse overlooking the sea; and the smell of the cows under your windows, and the sea-breezes blowing across the farmyard, can’t fail to bring the colour back to your pretty cheeks, and the brightness back to your pretty eyes.”
CHAPTER IV.
VALENTINE’S SKELETON.
The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed delightful to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still in town, and who thought it a hard thing that he should be deprived of Diana’s society during an entire fortnight, for the sake of this sickly Miss Halliday.
For the rest, there was hope and gladness in the thought of this change of dwelling. Charlotte languished for fresher breezes and more rustic prospects than the breezes and prospects of Bayswater; Diana looked to the sea-air as the doctor of doctors for her fading friend; and Valentine cherished the same hope.
On Valentine Hawkehurst the burden of an unlooked-for sorrow had weighed very heavily. To see this dear girl, who was the beginning, middle, and end of all his hopes, slowly fading before his eyes, was, of all agonies that could have fallen to his lot, the sharpest and most bitter. Not Ugolino sitting silent amidst his famishing children–not Helen, when she would fain that the tempest had swept her from earth’s surface on that evil day when she was born–not Penelope, when she cried on Diana, the high-priestess of death, to release her from the weariness of her days–not Agamemnon, when the fatal edict had gone forth, and his fair young daughter looked into his face, and asked him if it was true that she was to die–not one of these typical mourners could have suffered a keener torture than that which rent this young man’s heart, as he marked the stealthy steps of the Destroyer drawing nearer and nearer the woman he loved. Of all possible calamities, this was the last he had ever contemplated. Sometimes, in moments of doubt or despondency, he had thought it possible that poverty, the advice of friends, caprice or inconstancy on the part of Charlotte herself, should sever them. But among the possible enemies to his happiness he had never counted Death. What had Death to do with so fair and happy a creature as Charlotte Halliday? she who, until some two months before this time, might have been the divine Hygieia in person–so fresh was her youthful bloom, so buoyant her step, so bright her glances. Valentine’s hardest penance was the necessity for the concealment of his anxiety. The idea that Charlotte’s illness might be–nay, must be–for the greater part an affair of the nerves was always paramount in his mind. He and Diana had talked of the subject together whenever they found an opportunity for so doing, and had comforted themselves with the assurance that the nerves alone were to blame; and they were the more inclined to think this from the conduct of Dr. Doddleson, on that physician’s visits to Miss Halliday. Mrs. Sheldon had been present on each occasion, and to Mrs. Sheldon alone had the physician given utterance to his opinion of the case. That opinion, though expressed with a certain amount of professional dignity, amounted to very little. “Our dear young friend wanted strength; and what we had to do was to give our dear young friend strength–vital power. Yes–er–um, that was the chief point. And what kind of diet might our dear young friend take now? Was it a light diet, a little roast mutton–not too much done, but not underdone? O dear, no. And a light pudding? what he would call–if he might be permitted to have his little joke–a nursery pudding.” And then the old gentleman had indulged in a senile chuckle, and patted Charlotte’s head with his fat old fingers. “And our dear young friend’s room, now, was it a large room?–good! and what was the aspect now, south?–good again! nothing better, unless, perhaps, south-west; but, of course, everyone’s rooms can’t look south-west. A little tonic draught, and gentle daily exercise in that nice garden, will set our dear young friend right again. Our temperament is nervous we are a sensitive plant, and want care.” And then the respectable septuagenarian took his fee, and shuffled off to his carriage. And this was all that Mrs. Sheldon could tell Diana, or Nancy Woolper, both of whom questioned her closely about her interview with the doctor. To Diana and to Valentine there was hope to be gathered from the very vagueness of the physician’s opinion. If there had been anything serious the matter, the medical adviser must needs have spoken more seriously. He came again and again. He found the pulse a little weaker, the patient a little more nervous, with a slight tendency to hysteria, and so on; but he still declared that there were no traces of organic disease, and he still talked of Miss Halliday’s ailments with a cheery easy-going manner that was very reassuring.
In his moments of depression Valentine pinned his faith upon Dr. Doddleson. Without organic disease, he told himself, his darling could not perish. He looked for Dr. Doddleson’s name in the Directory, and took comfort from the fact of that physician’s residence in a fashionable West End square. He took further comfort from the splendour of the doctor’s equipage, as depicted to him by Mrs. Sheldon; and from the doctor’s age and experience, as copiously described by the same lady.
“There is only one fact that I have ever reproached myself with in relation to my poor Tom,” said Georgy, who, in talking to strangers of her first husband, was apt to impress them with the idea that she was talking of a favourite cat; “and that is, the youthfulness of the doctor Mr. Sheldon employed. Of course I am well aware that Mr. Sheldon would not have consulted the young man if he had not thought him clever; but I could lay my head upon my pillow at night with a clearer conscience if poor Tom’s doctor had been an older and more experienced person. Now, that’s what I like about Dr. Doddleson. There’s a gravity–a weight–about a man of that age which inspires one with immediate confidence. I’m sure the serious manner with which he questioned me about Lotta’s diet, and the aspect of her room, was quite delightful.”
In Dr. Doddleson, under Providence, Valentine was fain to put his trust. He did not know that the worthy doctor was one of those harmless inanities who, by the aid of money and powerful connections, are sometimes forced into a position which nature never intended them to occupy. Among the real working men of that great and admirable brotherhood, the medical profession, Dr. Doddleson had no rank; but he was the pet physician of fashionable dowagers suffering from chronic laziness or periodical attacks of ill-humour. For the spleen or the vapours no one was a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. He could afford to waste half an hour upon the asking of questions which the fair patient’s maid might as well have asked, and the suggestions of remedies which any intelligent abigail could as easily have suggested. Elderly ladies believed in him because he was pompous and ponderous, lived in an expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating, declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian angel of their frail lives during the last twenty years.
This was the man who, of all the medical profession resident in London, Mr. Sheldon had selected as his stepdaughter’s medical adviser in a case so beyond common experience, that a man of wide practice and keen perception was especially needed for its treatment.
Dr. Doddleson, accustomed to attribute the fancied ailments of fashionable dowagers to want of tone, and accustomed to prescribe the mildest preparations with satisfaction to his patients and profit to himself dwelt upon the same want of tone, and prescribed the same harmless remedies, in his treatment of Charlotte Halliday. When he found her no better–nay, even worse–after some weeks of this treatment, he was puzzled; and for one harmless remedy he substituted another harmless remedy, and waited another week to see what effect the second harmless remedy might have on this somewhat obstinate young person.
And this was the broken reed to which Valentine clung in the day of his trouble.
Bitter were his days and sleepless were his nights in this dark period of his existence. He went to the Bayswater villa nearly every day now. It was no longer time for etiquette or ceremony. His darling was fading day by day; and it was his right to watch the slow sad change, and, if it were possible, to keep the enemy at arm’s-length. Every day he came to spend one too brief hour with his dear love; every day he greeted her with the same fond smile, and beguiled her with the same hopeful talk. He brought her new books and flowers, and any foolish trifle which he fancied might beguile her thoughts from the contemplation of that mysterious malady which seemed beyond the reach of science and Dr. Doddleson. He sat and talked with her of the future–that future which in their secret thoughts both held to be a sweet sad fable–the hyperborean garden of their dreams. And after spending this too sweet, too bitter hour with his beloved, Mr. Hawkehurst would diplomatise in order to have a little talk with Diana as he left the house. Did Diana think his dear girl better to-day, or worse–surely not worse? He had fancied she had more colour, more of her old gaiety of manner. She had seemed a little feverish; but that might be the excitement of his visit. And so on, and so on, with sad and dreary repetition.
And then, having gone away from that house with an aching heart, the young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and plunged into the dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which was to constitute his monthly contribution to the _Cheapside_ or the _Charing Cross_. Gaiety, movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the _Cheapside_; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for the _Charing Cross_. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the young scribbler tripping! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea there, and the _West End Wasp_ shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional note; or the _Minerva_ published a letter from a correspondent in the Scilly Islands, headed “Another Literary Jack Sheppard,” to say that in his “Imperial Dictionary” he had discovered with profound indignation a whole column of words feloniously and mendaciously appropriated by the writer of such and such an article in the _Cheapside_. While the sunlight of hope had shone upon him, Mr. Hawkehurst had found the hardest work pleasant. Was he not working for _her_ sake? Did not his future union with that dear girl depend upon his present industry? It had seemed to him as if she stood at his elbow while he wrote, as Pallas stood beside Achilles at the council, invisible to all but her favourite. It was that mystic presence which lent swiftness to his pen. When he was tired and depressed, the thought of Charlotte had revived his courage and vanquished his fatigue. Pleasant images crowded upon him when he thought of her. What could be easier than for him to write a love-story? He had but to create a shadowy Charlotte for his heroine, and the stream of foolish lover’s babble flowed from his pen perennial and inexhaustible. To his reading she lent a charm and a grace that made the most perfect poetry still more poetical. It was not Achilles and Helen who met on Mount Ida, but Valentine and Charlotte; it was not Paolo and Francesca who read the fatal book together, but Valentine and Charlotte, in an unregenerate and mediaeval state of mind. The mere coincidence of a name made the “Sorrows of Werter” delightful. The all-pervading presence was everywhere and in everything. His religion was not Pantheism, but Charlottism.
Now all was changed. A brooding care was with him in every moment. The mystic presence was still close to him in every hour of his lonely days and nights; but that image, which had been fair and blooming as the incarnation of youth and spring-time, was now a pale shrouded phantom which he dared not contemplate. He still wrote on–for it is marvellous how the pen will travel and the mind will project itself into the shadow-world of fancy while cankerous care gnaws the weary heart. Nay, it is perhaps at these times that the imagination is most active; for the world of shadows is a kind of refuge for the mind that dare not dwell upon realities. Who can say what dull, leaden, care may have weighed down the heart of William Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of a poet’s grand imaginings, Othello! There is the flavour of racking care in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by a sordid wretch; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable life wrecked for so poor a motive; that sense of the “something in this world amiss,” which the poet, of all other creatures, feels most keenly.
With grief and fear as his constant companions, Valentine Hawkehurst toiled on bravely, patiently. Hope had not deserted him; but between hope and fear the contest was unceasing. Sometimes hope had the best of it for a while, and the toiler comforted himself with the thought that this dark cloud would pass anon from the horizon of his life; and then he counted his gains, and found that the fruit of his labours was increasing monthly, as his name gained rank among the band of young _litterateurs_. The day when he might count upon that income which Mr. Sheldon demanded as his qualification for matrimony did not appear far distant. Given a certain amount of natural ability, and the industrious and indefatigable young writer may speedily emerge from obscurity, and take his place in the great army of those gallant soldiers whose only weapon is the pen. Whatever good fortune had come to Valentine Hawkehurst he had worked for with all honesty of purpose. The critics were not slow to remark that he worked at a white-hot haste, and must needs be a shallow pretender because he was laborious and indefatigable.
Before the beginning of Charlotte’s slow decline he had fancied himself the happiest of men. There were more deposit-receipts in his desk. The nest-egg, about the hatching whereof there had been such cackling and crowing some months ago, was now one of many eggs; for the hard-working scribbler had no leisure in which to be extravagant, had he been so minded. The purchase of a half-circlet of diamonds for his betrothed’s slim finger had been his only folly.
Charlotte had remonstrated with him on the impropriety of such an extravagance, and had exacted from him a promise that this wild and Monte-Christo-like course should be pursued no further; but she was very proud of her half-hoop of diamonds nevertheless, and was wont to press it tenderly to her lips before she laid it aside for the night.
“There must be no more such extravagance, sir,” she said to her lover, when he sat by her side twisting the ring round and round on her pretty finger. Alas, how loose the ring had become since it had first been placed there!
“Consider the future, Valentine,” continued the girl, hopeful of mood while her hand rested in his. “Do you suppose we can furnish our cottage at Wimbledon if we rush into such wild expenses as diamond rings? Do you know that _I_ am saving money, Valentine? Yes, positively. Papa gives me a very good allowance for my dresses, and bonnets, and things, you know, and I used to be extravagant and spend it all. But now I have become the most miserly creature; and I have a little packet of money upstairs which you shall put in the Unitas Bank with the rest of your wealth. Diana and I have been darning, and patching, and cutting, and contriving, in the most praiseworthy manner. Even this silk has been turned. You did not think that, did you, when you admired it so?”
Mr. Hawkehurst looked at his beloved with a tender smile. The exact significance of the operation of turning, as applied to silk dresses, was somewhat beyond his comprehension; but he felt sure that to turn must be a laudable action, else why that air of pride with which Charlotte informed him of the fact?
CHAPTER V.
AT HAROLD’S HILL.
The summer sun shone upon the village of Harold’s Hill when Charlotte arrived there with Mrs. Sheldon and Diana Paget. Mr. Sheldon was to follow them on the same day by a later train; and Valentine was to come two days afterwards to spend the peaceful interval between Saturday and Monday with his betrothed. He had seen the travellers depart from the London Bridge terminus, but Mr. Sheldon had been there also, and there had been no opportunity for confidential communication between the lovers.
Of all Sussex villages Harold’s Hill is perhaps the prettiest. The grey old Saxon church, the scattered farmhouses and pleasant rustic cottages, are built on the slope of a hill, and all the width of ocean lies below the rustic windows. The roses and fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem all the brighter by contrast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh breath of the salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all the homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the blue vault of heaven above the church, and over the blue of the sea the gull skims white in the sunshine. The fisherman and the farm labourer have their cottages side by side, nestling cosily to leeward of the hilly winding road.
This hilly winding road in the July afternoon seemed to Charlotte almost like the way to Paradise.
“It is like going to heaven, Di!” she cried, with her eyes fixed on the square tower of the old grey church. She wondered why sudden tears sprang to Diana’s eyes as she said this. Miss Paget brushed the unbidden tears away with a quick gesture of her hand, and smiled at her friend.
“Yes, dear, the village is very pretty, isn’t it?”
“It looks awfully dull!” said Mrs. Sheldon, with a shudder; “and, Diana, I declare there isn’t a single shop. Where are we to get our provisions? I told Mr. Sheldon St. Leonards would have been a better place for us.”
“O mamma, St. Leonards is the very essence of all that is tame and commonplace, compared to this darling rural village! Look, do look, at that fisherman’s cottage, with the nets hanging out to dry in the sunshine; just like a picture of Hook’s!”
“What’s the use of going on about fishermen’s cottages, Lotta?” Mrs. Sheldon demanded, peevishly. “Fishermen’s cottages won’t provide us with butcher’s meat. Where are we to get your little bit of roast mutton? Dr. Doddleson laid such a stress upon the roast mutton.”
“The sea-air will do me more good than all the mutton that ever was roasted at Eton, mamma. O, dear, is this our farmhouse?” cried Charlotte, as the vehicle drew up at a picturesque gate. “O, what a love of a house! what diamond-paned windows! what sweet white curtains! and a cow staring at me quite in the friendliest way across the gate! O, can we be so happy as to live here?”
“Diana,” cried Mrs. Sheldon, in a solemn voice, “not a single shop have we passed–not so much as a post-office! And as to haberdashery, I’m sure you might be reduced to rags in this place before you could get so much as a yard of glazed lining!”
The farmhouse was one of those ideal homesteads which, to the dweller in cities, seems fair as the sapphire-ceiled chambers of the house of Solomon. Charlotte was enraptured by the idea that this was to be her home for the next fortnight.
“I wish it could be for ever, Di,” she said, as the two girls were inspecting the rustic, dimity-draperied, lavender-and-rose-leaf-perfumed bedchambers. “Who would wish to go back to prim suburban Bayswater after this? Valentine and I could lodge here after our marriage. It is better than Wimbledon. Grand thoughts would come to him with the thunder of the stormy waves; and on calm bright days like this the rippling water would whisper pretty fancies into his ear. Why, to live here would make any one a poet. I think I could write a novel myself, if I lived here long enough.”
After this they arranged the pretty sitting-room, and placed an easy-chair by the window for Charlotte, an arm-chair opposite this for Mrs. Sheldon, and between the two a little table for the fancy work and books and flowers, and all the small necessities of feminine existence. And then–while Mrs. Sheldon prowled about the rooms, and discovered so many faults and made so many objections as to give evidence of a fine faculty for invention unsuspected in her hitherto–Charlotte and Diana explored the garden and peeped at the farmyard, where the friendly cow still stared over the white gate, just as she had stared when the fly came to a stop, as if she had not yet recovered from the astonishment created in her pastoral mind by that phenomenal circumstance. And then Charlotte was suddenly tired, and there came upon her that strange dizziness which was one of her most frequent symptoms. Diana led her immediately back to the house, and established her comfortably in her easy-chair.
“I must be very ill,” she said, plaintively; “for even the novelty of this pretty place cannot make me happy long.”
* * * * *
Mr. Sheldon arrived in the evening, bringing with him a supply of that simple medicine which Charlotte took three times a day. He had remembered that there was no dispensing chemist at Harold’s Hill, and that it would be necessary to send to St. Leonards for the medicine, and had therefore brought with him a double quantity of the mild tonic.
“It was very kind of you to think of it, though I really don’t believe the stuff does me any good,” said Charlotte. “Nancy Woolper used to get it for me at Bayswater. She made quite a point of fetching it from the chemist’s herself.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. “Nancy troubled herself about your medicine, did she?”
“Yes, papa; and about me altogether. If I were her own daughter she could scarcely have seemed more anxious.”
The stockbroker made a mental note of this in the memorandum-book of his brain. Mrs. Woolper was officious, was she, and suspicious?–altogether a troublesome sort of person.
“I think a few weeks of workhouse fare would be wholesome for that old lady,” he said to himself. “There are some people who never know when they are well off.”
Saturday afternoon came in due course, after a long and dreary interval, as it seemed to Charlotte, for whom time travelled very slowly, so painful was the weariness of illness. Now and then a sudden flash of excitement brought the old brightness to her face, the old gaiety to her accents; but the brightness faded very soon, and the languor of illness was very perceptible.
Punctual to the hour at which he was expected, Mr. Hawkehurst appeared, in radiant spirits, laden with new magazines, delighted with the village, enraptured with the garden, enchanted with the sea; full of talk and animation, with all sorts of news to tell his beloved. Such and such a book was a failure, such and such a comedy was a fiasco; Jones’s novel had made a hit; Brown’s picture was the talk of the year; and Charlotte must see the picture that had been talked about, and the play that had been condemned, when she returned to town.
For an hour the lovers sat in the pretty farmhouse parlour talking together thus, the summer sea and the garden flowers before them, and a bird singing high in the calm blue heaven. Charlotte’s talk was somewhat languid, though it was perfect happiness for her to be seated thus, with her betrothed by her side; but Valentine’s gaiety of spirits never flagged; and when Mrs. Sheldon hinted to him that too long a conversation might fatigue the dear invalid, he left the parlour with a smile upon his face, and a cheery promise to return after an hour’s ramble.
He did not ramble far. He went straight to a little wooden summer-house in the remotest corner of the humble garden; and thither Diana Paget followed him. She had learned the language of his face in the time of their daily companionship, and she had seen a look as he left the house which told her of the struggle his cheerfulness had cost him.
“You must not be downhearted, Valentine,” she said, as she went into the summer-house, where he sat in a listless attitude, with his arms lying loosely folded on the rustic table.
He did not answer her.
“You don’t think her worse–much worse–do you, Valentine?”
“Worse? I have seen death in her face to-day!” he cried; and then he let his forehead fall upon his folded arms, and sobbed aloud.
Diana stood by his side watching that outburst of grief. When the passionate storm of tears was past, she comforted him as best she might. The change so visible to him was not so plain to her. He had hoped that the breath of the ocean would have magical power to restore the invalid. He had come to Harold’s Hill full of hope, and instead of the beginning of an improvement he saw the progress of decay.
“Why did not Sheldon send for the doctor,” he asked, indignantly,–“the physician who has attended her? He might have telegraphed to that man.”
“Charlotte is taking Dr. Doddleson’s medicine,” said Diana, “and all his directions are most carefully obeyed.”
“What of that, if she grows worse? The doctor should see her daily, hourly, if necessary. And if he cannot cure her, another doctor should be sent for. Good heavens, Diana! are we to let her fade and sink from us before our eyes? I will go back to London at once, and bring that man Doddleson down by the night mail.”
“Your going back to London would grieve and alarm Charlotte. You can telegraph for the doctor; or, at least, Mr. Sheldon can do so. It would not do for you to interfere without his permission.”
“It would not do!” echoed Valentine, angrily. “Do you think that I am going to stand upon punctilio, or to consider what will do or will not do?”
“Above all things, you must avoid alarming Charlotte,” pleaded Diana.
“Do you think I do not know that? Do you think I did not feel that just now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish about books and plays and pictures, while every stolen glance at my darling’s face was like a dagger thrust into my heart? I will not alarm her. I will consult Mr. Sheldon–will do anything, everything, to save her! To save her! O my God, has it come to that?”
He grew a little calmer presently under Diana’s influence, and went slowly back to the house. He avoided the open window by which Charlotte was sitting. He had not yet schooled himself to meet her questioning looks. He went to the room where they were to dine, a duller and darker apartment than the parlour, and here he found Mr. Sheldon reading a paper, one of the eternal records of the eternal money-market.
The stockbroker had been in and out of the house all day, now sauntering by the sea-shore, now leaning moodily, with folded arms, on the garden gate, meditative and silent as the cow that stared at Charlotte; now pacing the garden walks, with his hands in his pockets and his head bent. Diana, who in her anxiety kept a close watch upon Mr. Sheldon’s movements, had noted his restlessness, and perceived in it the sign of growing anxiety on his part. She knew that he had once called himself surgeon-dentist, and had some medical knowledge, if not so much as he took credit for possessing. He must, therefore, be better able to judge the state of Charlotte’s health than utterly ignorant observers. If he were uneasy, there must be real cause for uneasiness. It was on this account, and on this account only, that Diana watched him.
“He must love her better than I gave him credit for being able to love any one,” Miss Paget said to herself. “Dear girl! The coldest heart is touched by her sweetness.”
Mr. Sheldon looked up from his newspaper as Valentine came into the room, and saluted the visitor with a friendly nod.
“Glad to see you, Hawkehurst,” he said. “_Semper fidelis_, and that kind of thing; the very model of devoted lovers. Why, man alive, how glum you look!”
“I think I have reason to look glum,” answered Valentine, gravely; “I have seen Charlotte.”
“Yes? And don’t you find her improving?–gradually, of course. That constitutional languor is not shaken off in a hurry. But surely you think her improving–brightening–“
“Brightening with the light that never shone on earth or sea. God help me! I–I–am the merest child, the veriest coward, the–” He made a great effort, and stifled the sob that had well-nigh broken his voice. “Mr. Sheldon,” he continued quietly, “I believe your stepdaughter is dying.”
“Dying! Good heavens!–my dear Hawkehurst, this alarm is most–most premature. There is no cause for fear–at present, no cause–I give you my word as a medical man.”
“No cause for alarm at present? That means my darling will not be taken from me to-night, or to-morrow. I shall have a few days breathing-time. Yes, I understand. The doom is upon us. I saw the shadow of death upon her face to-day.”
“My dear Hawkehurst–“
“My dear Sheldon, for pity’s sake don’t treat me as if I were a woman or a child. Let me know my fate. If–if–this, the worst, most bitter of all calamities God’s hand–raised against me in punishment of past sins, sinned lightly and recklessly, in the days when my heart had no stake in the game of destiny–can inflict upon me; if this deadly sorrow is bearing down upon me, let me meet it like a man. Let me die with my eyes uncovered. O, my dearest, my fondest, redeeming angel of my ill-spent life! have you been only a supernal visitant, after all, shining on me for a little while, to depart when your mission of redemption is accomplished?”
“Powers above!” thought Mr. Sheldon, “what nonsense these sentimental magazine-writers can talk!”
He was in nowise melted by the lover’s anguish, though it was very real. Such a grief as this was outside the circle in which his thoughts revolved. This display of grief was unpleasant to him. It grated painfully upon his nerves, as some of poor Tom Halliday’s little speeches had done of old, when the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his deathbed; and the young man’s presence and the young man’s anxiety were alike inconvenient.
“Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon,” Valentine said presently, with suppressed intensity. “Is there any hope for my darling, any hope?”
Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied to this question. He pursed-up his lips and bent his brows with the same air of business-like deliberation that he might have assumed while weighing the relative merits of the first and second debenture bonds of some doubtful railway company.
“You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst,” he said at last. “If you ask me plainly whether I like the turn which Charlotte’s illness has taken within the last few weeks, I must tell you frankly, I do not. There is a persistent want of tone–a visible decay of vital power–which, I must confess, has caused me some uneasiness. You see, the fact is, there is a radical weakness of constitution–as Miss Paget, a very sensible girl and acute observer–herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary weakness; and against this medicine is sometimes unavailing. You need apprehend no neglect on my part, Hawkehurst; all that can possibly be done is being done. Dr. Doddleson’s instructions are carefully obeyed, and–“
“Is this Dr. Doddleson competent to grapple with the case?” asked Valentine; “I never heard of him as a great man.”
“That fact proves how little you know of the medical profession.”
“I know nothing of it; I have had no need for doctors in my life. And you think this Dr. Doddleson really clever?”
“His position is a sufficient answer to that question.”
“Will you let me telegraph for him–this afternoon–immediately?”
“You cannot telegraph from this place.”
“No, but from St. Leonards I can. Do you think I am afraid of a five-mile walk?”
“But why send for Dr. Doddleson? The treatment he prescribed is the treatment we are now following to the letter. To summon him down here would be the merest folly. Our poor Charlotte’s illness is, so far, free from all alarming symptoms.”
“You do not see the change in her that I can see,” cried Valentine piteously. “For mercy’s sake, Mr. Sheldon, let me have my way in this. I cannot stand by and see my dear one fading and do nothing–nothing to save her. Let me send for this man. Let me see him myself, and hear what he says. You can have no objection to his coming, since he is the man you have chosen for Charlotte’s adviser? It can only be a question of expense. Let this particular visit be my affair.”
“I can afford to pay for my stepdaughter’s medical attendance without any help from your purse, Mr. Hawkehurst,” said the stockbroker with offended pride. “There is one element in the case which you appear to ignore.”
“What is that?”
“The alarm which this summoning of a doctor from London must cause in Charlotte’s mind.”
“It need cause no alarm. She can be told that Dr. Doddleson has come to this part of the world for a Sunday’s change of air. The visit can appear to be made _en passant._ It will be easy to arrange that with the doctor before he sees her.”
“As you please, Mr. Hawkehurst,” the stockbroker replied coldly. “I consider such a visit to the last degree unnecessary; but if Dr. Doddleson’s coming can give you any satisfaction, by all means let him come. The expense involved in summoning him is of the smallest consideration to me. My position with regard to my wife’s daughter is one of extreme responsibility, and I am ready to perform all the obligations of that position.”
“You are very good: your conduct in relation to Charlotte and myself has been beyond all praise. It is quite possible that I am over-anxious; but there was a look in that dear face–no–I cannot forget that look; it struck terror to my heart. I will go at once to St. Leonards. I can tell Charlotte that I am obliged to telegraph to the printer about my copy. You will not object to that white lie?”
“Not at all. I think it essential that Charlotte should not be alarmed. You had better stop to dine; there will be time for the telegram after dinner.”
“I will not risk that,” answered Valentine. “I cannot eat or drink till I have done something to lessen this wretched anxiety.”
He went back to the room where Charlotte was sitting by the open window, through which there came the murmur of waves, the humming of drowsy bees, the singing of birds, all the happy voices of happy nature in a harmonious chorus.
“O God, wilt thou take her away from such a beautiful world,” he asked, “and change all the glory of earth to darkness and desolation for me?”
His heart rebelled against the idea of her death. To save her, to win her back to himself from the jaws of death, he was ready to promise anything, to do anything.
“All my days will I give to Thy service, if Thou wilt spare her to me,” in his heart he said to his God. “If Thou dost not, I will be an infidel and a pagan–the vilest and most audacious of sinners. Better to serve Lucifer than the God who could so afflict me.”
And this is where the semi-enlightened Christian betrays the weakness of his faith. While the sun shines, and the sweet gospel story reads to him like some tender Arcadian idyl, all love and promise, he is firm in his allegiance; but when the dark hour comes, he turns his face to the wall, with anger and disappointment in his heart, and will have no further commune with the God who has chastised him. His faith is the faith of the grateful leper, who, being healed, was eager to return and bless his divine benefactor. It is not the faith of Abraham or of Job, of Paul or of Stephen.
Valentine told his story about the printers and the copy for the _Cheapside_ magazine, about which there had arisen some absurd mistake, only to be set right by a telegram.
It was not a very clear account; but Charlotte did not perceive the vagueness of the story; she thought only of the one fact, that Valentine must leave her for some hours.
“The evening will seem so long without you,” she said. “That is the worst part of my illness; the time is so long–so weary. Diana is the dearest and kindest of friends. She is always trying to amuse me, and reads to me for hours, though I know she must often be tired of reading aloud so long. But even the books I was once so fond of do not amuse me. The words seem to float indistinctly in my brain, and all sorts of strange images mix themselves up with the images of the people in the book. Di has been reading “The Bride of Lammermoor” all this morning; but the pain and weariness I feel seemed to be entangled with Lucy and Edgar somehow, and the dear book gave me no pleasure.”
“My darling, you–you are too weak to listen to Diana’s reading. It is very kind of her to try to amuse you; but–but it would be better for you to rest altogether. Any kind of mental exertion may help to retard your recovery.”
He had placed himself behind her chair, and was bending over the pillows to speak to her. Just now he felt himself unequal to the command of his countenance. He bent his head until his lips touched the soft brown hair, and kissed those loose soft tresses passionately. The thought occurred to him that a day might come when he should again kiss that soft brown hair, with a deeper passion, with a sharper pain, and when Charlotte would not know of his kisses, or pity his pain.
“O Valentine!” cried Charlotte, “you are crying; I can see your face in the glass.”
He had forgotten the glass; the little rococo mirror, with an eagle hovering over the top of the frame, which hung above the old-fashioned chiffonier.
“I am not so very ill, dear; I am not indeed,” the girl continued, turning in her chair with an effort, and clasping her lover’s hands; “you must not distress yourself like this, Valentine–dear Valentine! I shall be better by-and-by. I cannot think that I shall be taken from you.”
He had broken down altogether by this time. He buried his face in the pillows, and contrived to stifle the sobs that would come; and then, after a sharp struggle, he lifted his face, and bent over the chair once more to kiss the invalid’s pale upturned forehead.
“My dear one, you shall not, if love can guard and keep you. No, dear, I _cannot_ believe that God will take you from me. Heaven may be your fittest habitation; but such sweet spirits as yours are sorely needed upon earth. I will be brave, dearest one; brave and hopeful in the mercy of Heaven. And now I must go and telegraph to my tiresome printer. _Au revoir_!”
He hurried away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling pace along the pleasant road, with green waving corn on his left, and broad blue ocean on his right.
“I can get a fly to bring me back from St. Leonard’s” he thought; “I should only lose time by hunting for a vehicle here.”
He was at St. Leonards station within an hour after leaving the farm. He despatched the message in Mr. Sheldon’s name, and took care to make it urgent.
CHAPTER VI.
DESPERATE MEASURES.
Fitful and feverish were the slumbers which visited Mr. Hawkehurst on that balmy summer’s night. His waking hours were anxious and unhappy; but his sleeping hours were still more painful. To sleep was to be the feverish fool of vague wild visions, in which Charlotte and Dr. Doddleson, the editor of the _Cheapside_, the officials of the British Museum reading-room, Diana Paget, and the Sheldons, figured amidst inextricable confusion of circumstances and places. Throughout these wretched dreams he had some consciousness of himself and the room in which he was lying, the July moon shining upon him, broad and bright, through the diamond-paned lattice. And O, what torturing visions were those in which Charlotte smiled upon him, radiant with health and happiness; and there had been no such thing as her illness, no such thing as his grief. And then came hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was knocking at the farmhouse door, with the printer of the _Cheapside_. And then he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman amphitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, looking down on the encounter of two other flies, and all the glory of an imperial court only a little spot of purple and gold, gleaming afar in the sunshine. To the dreamer it was no surprise that this unknown theatre of his dreams should be vast as the gladiatorial arena. And then came the deep thunderous music of innumerable bass-viols and bassoons: and some one told him it was the first night of a great tragedy. He felt the breathless hush of expectation; the solemn bass music sank deeper; dark curtains were drawn aside, with a motion slow and solemn, like the waving of mountain pines, and there appeared a measureless stage, revealing a moonlit expanse, thickly studded with the white headstones of unnumbered graves, and on the foremost of these–revealed to him by what power he knew not, since mortal sight could never have reached a point so distant–he read the name of Charlotte Halliday. He awoke with a sharp cry of pain. It was broad day, and the waves were dancing gaily in the morning sunlight. He rose and dressed himself. Sleep, such as he had known that night, was worse than the weariest waking. He went out into the garden by-and-by, and paced slowly up and down the narrow pathways, beside which box of a century’s growth rose dark and high. Pale yellow lights were in the upper windows. He wondered which of those sickly tapers flickered on the face he loved so fondly.
“It is only a year since I first saw her,” he thought: “one year! And to love her has been my ‘liberal education;’ to lose her would be my desolation and despair.”
To lose her! His thoughts approached that dread possibility, but could not realize it; not even yet.
At eight o’clock Diana came to summon him to breakfast.
“Shall I see Charlotte?” he asked.
“No; for some time past she has not come down to breakfast.”
“What kind of night has she had?”
“A very quiet night, she tells me; but I am not quite sure that she tells me the truth, she is so afraid of giving us uneasiness.”
“She tells you. But do you not sleep in her room, now that she is so ill?”
“No. I was anxious to sleep on a sofa at the foot of her bed, and proposed doing so, but Mr. Sheldon objects to my being in the room. He thinks that Charlotte is more quiet entirely alone, and that there is more air in the room with only one sleeper. Her illness is not of a kind to require attention of any sort in the night.”
“Still I should have thought it better for her to have you with her, to cheer and comfort her.
“Believe me, Valentine, I wished to be with her.”
“I am sure of that, dear,” he answered kindly.
“It was only Mr. Sheldon’s authority, as a man of some medical experience, that conquered my wish.”
“Well, I suppose he is right. And now we must go in to breakfast. Ah, the dreary regularity of these breakfasts and dinners, which go on just the same when our hearts are breaking!”
The breakfast was indeed a dreary soul-dispiriting meal. Farmhouse luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home-cured bacon, abounded; but no one had any inclination for these things. Valentine remembered the homestead among the Yorkshire hills, with all the delight that he had known there; and the “sorrow’s crown of sorrow” was very bitter. Mr. Sheldon gave his Sabbath-morning meditations to the study of a Saturday-evening share-list; and Georgy plunged ever and anon into the closely printed pages of a Dissenting preacher’s biography, which she declared to be “comforting.”
Diana and Valentine sat silent and anxious; and after the faintest pretence of eating and drinking, they both left the table, to stroll drearily in the garden. The bells were ringing cheerily from the grey stone tower near at hand; but Valentine had no inclination for church on this particular morning. Were not all his thoughts prayers–humble piteous entreaties–for one priceless boon?
“Will you see the doctor when he comes, and manage matters so as not to alarm Charlotte?” he asked of Mr. Sheldon. That gentleman agreed to do so, and went out into the little front-garden to lie in wait for the great Doddleson–“Dowager Doddleson” as he was surnamed by some irreverent unbelievers.
A St. Leonards fly brought the doctor while the bells were still ringing for morning service. Mr. Sheldon received him at the gate; and explained the motive of his summons.
The doctor was full of pompous solicitude about “our sweet young patient.”
“Really one of the most interesting cases I ever had upon my hands,” the West-end physician said blandly; “as I was remarking to a very charming patient of mine–in point of fact, the amiable and accomplished Countess of Kassel-Kumberterre, only last Tuesday morning. A case so nearly resembling the Countess’s own condition as to be highly interesting to her.”
“I really ought to apologize for bringing you down,” said Mr. Sheldon, as he led the doctor into the house. “I only consented to your being sent for in order to tranquillize this young fellow Hawkehurst, who is engaged to my daughter; a rising man, I believe, in his own particular line, but rather wild and impracticable. There is really no change for the worse, absolutely none; and as we have not been here more than three days, there has been positively no opportunity for testing the effect of change and sea air, and so on.”
This seemed rather like giving the learned physician his cue. And there were those among Dr. Doddleson’s professional rivals who said that the worthy doctor was never slow to take a cue so given, not being prejudiced by any opinions of his own.
Charlotte had by this time been established in her easy-chair by the open window of the sitting-room, and here Dr. Doddleson saw her, in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon; and here Dr. Doddleson went through the usual Abracadabra of his art, and assented to the opinions advanced, with all deference, by Mr. Sheldon.
To Georgy this interview, in which Mr. Sheldon’s opinions were pompously echoed by the West-end physician, proved even more comforting than the benignant career of the Dissenting minister, who was wont to allude to that solemn passing hence of which the ancients spoke in dim suggestive phrase, as “going upstairs.”
Diana and Valentine strolled in the garden while the physician saw his patient. Dr. Doddleson’s ponderous polysyllables floated out upon the summer air like the droning of a humble-bee. It was a relief to Valentine to know that the doctor was with his patient: but he had no intention to let that gentleman depart unquestioned.
“I will take no secondhand information,” he thought; “I will hear this man’s opinion from his own lips.”
He went round to the front of the house directly the droning had ceased, and was in the way when Dr. Doddleson and Mr. Sheldon came out of the rose-hung porch.
“If you have no objection,” he said to Mr. Sheldon, “I should like to ask Dr. Doddleson a few questions.”
“_I_ have no objection,” replied the stockbroker; “but it is really altogether such an unusual thing, and I doubt if Dr. Doddleson will consent to–“
And here he cast a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who should say, “Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand go entirely unwarranted by precedent?”
Dowager Doddleson was eminently good-natured.
“And this is our sweet young friend’s _fiance_,” he said; “dear me–dee-ar me!”
And then he looked at Valentine with bland pale-blue eyes that twinkled behind his gold-framed spectacles; while Valentine was taking his measure, so far as the measure of any man’s moral and intellectual force can be taken by the eyes of another man. “And this is the man who is chosen to snatch my darling from the jaws of death!” he said to himself, with burning rage in his heart, while the amiable physician repeated blandly:
“And this is our sweet young patient’s _fiance_. Dee-ar me, how very interesting!”
The three men strolled round to the garden behind the house, Mr. Sheldon close at the physician’s elbow.
“For God’s sake tell me the truth, Dr. Doddleson!” said Valentine in a low hoarse voice, directly they were beyond ear-shot of the house. “I am a man, and I can steel myself to hear the worst you can tell.”
“But really, Hawkehurst, there is no occasion for this kind of thing,” interjected Philip Sheldon; “Dr. Doddleson agrees with me, that the case is one of extreme languor, and no more.”
“Unquestionably,” said the doctor in a fat voice.
“And Dr. Doddleson also coincides with me in the opinion that all we can do is to wait the reviving influence of sea-air.”
“Undoubtedly,” said the doctor, with a solemn nod.
“And is this all?” asked Valentine hopelessly.
“My dear sir, what else can I say?” said the doctor; “as my good friend Mr. Sheldon has just remarked, there is extreme languor; and as my good friend Mr. Sheldon further observes, we must await the effect of change of air. The–aw–invigorating sea-breezes, the–aw–enlivening influence of new surroundings, and–aw–so forth. Dr. Poseidon, my dear sir, is a very valuable coadjutor.”
“And you think your patient no worse, Dr. Doddleson?”
“The doctor has just left Mrs. Sheldon much comforted by his assurance that her daughter is better,” said the stockbroker.
“No, no!” exclaimed Dr. Doddleson; “no, no! _there_ my good friend Mr. Sheldon somewhat misrepresents me. I said that our patient was not obviously worse. I did not say that our patient was better. There is a dilatation of the pupil of the eye which I don’t quite understand.”
“Mental excitement,” said Mr. Sheldon, somewhat hastily; “Charlotte is nervous to an extreme degree, and your sudden arrival was calculated to shake her nerves.”
“Undoubtedly,” rejoined the doctor; “and it is unquestionable that such a dilatation of the pupil might, under certain circumstances, be occasioned by mental excitement. I am sorry to find that our patient’s attacks of dizziness–“
“Which are purely the effect of fancy,” interjected Mr. Sheldon.
“Which are no doubt, in some measure, attributable to a hypochondriacal condition of mind,” continued the doctor in his fat voice. “I am sorry to find that this periodical dizziness has been somewhat increased of late. But here again we must look to Dr. Poseidon. Tepid sea-baths, if they can be managed, in the patient’s own room; and by-and-by a dip in the waves yonder, may do wonders.”
Valentine asked no further questions; and the physician departed in the St. Leonards fly, to turn his excursion to profitable use by calling on two or three dowagers in Warrior Square and Marina, who would doubtless be glad of an unexpected visit from their pet doctor.
“Well, Hawkehurst,” said Mr. Sheldon, when the fly had driven away, “I hope you are satisfied now?”
“Satisfied!” cried Valentine; “yes, I am satisfied that your stepdaughter is being murdered!”
“Murdered!” echoed the stockbroker, his voice thick and faint; but Valentine did not heed the change in it.
“Yes, murdered–sacrificed to the utter incompetence of that old idiot who has just left us.”
Philip Sheldon drew a long breath.
“What!” he exclaimed; “do you doubt Doddleson’s skill?”
“Do you believe in it? Do you? No; I cannot think that a man of your keen perception in all other matters–half a medical man yourself–can be the dupe of so shallow an impostor. And it is to that man’s judgment my darling’s life has been confided; and it is to that man I have looked, with hope and comfort in the thought of his power to save my treasure! Good God! what a reed on which to rely! And of all the medical men of London, this is the one you have chosen!”
“I must really protest against this rant, Hawkehurst,” said Philip Sheldon. “I hold myself responsible for the selection which I made, and will not have that selection questioned in this violent and outrageous manner by you. Your anxiety for Charlotte’s recovery may excuse a great deal, but it cannot excuse this kind of thing; and if you cannot command yourself better, I must beg you to absent yourself from my house until my stepdaughter’s recovery puts an end to all this fuss.”
“Do you believe in Dr. Doddleson’s skill?” asked Valentine doggedly. He wanted to have that question answered at any cost.
“Most decidedly I do, with the rest of the medical world. My choice of this gentleman as Charlotte’s adviser was governed by his reputation as a safe and conscientious man. His opinions are sound, trustworthy–“
“His opinions!” cried Valentine with a bitter laugh; “what in heaven’s name do you call his opinions? The only opinions I could extract from him to-day were solemn echoes of yours. And the man himself! I took the measure of him before I asked him a question; and physiology is a lie if that man is anything better than an impostor.”
“His position is the answer to that.”
“His position is no answer. He is not the first impostor who has attained position, and is not likely to be the last. You must forgive me, if I speak with some violence, Mr. Sheldon. I feel too deeply to remember the conventionalities of my position. The dear girl yonder, hovering between life and death, is my promised wife. As your stepdaughter she is very dear to you, no doubt, and you are of course anxious to do your duty as her stepfather. But she is all the world to me–my one sweet memory of the past, my sole hope for the future. I will not trust her to the care of Dr. Doddleson; I claim the right to choose another physician–as that man’s coadjutor, if you please. I have no wish to offend the doctor of your choice.”
“This is all sheer nonsense,” said Mr. Sheldon.
“It is nonsense about which you must let me have my own way,” replied Valentine, resolutely. “My stake on this hazard is too heavy for careless play. I shall go back to town at once and seek out a physician.”
“Do you know any great man?”
“No; but I will find one.”
“If you go today, you will inevitably alarm Charlotte.”
“True; and disappoint her into the bargain. I suppose in such a case tomorrow will do as well as to-day?”
“Decidedly.”
“I can go by the first train, and return with my doctor in the afternoon. Yes, I will go tomorrow.”
Mr. Sheldon breathed more freely. There are cases in which to obtain time for thought seems the one essential thing–cases in which a reprieve is as good as a pardon.
“Pray let us consider this business quietly,” he said, with a faint sigh of weariness. “There is no necessity for all this excitement. You can go to town to-morrow, by the first train, as you say. If it is any satisfaction to you to bring down a physician, bring one; bring half a dozen, if you please. But, for the last time, I most emphatically assure you that anything that tends to alarm Charlotte is the one thing of all others most sure to hinder her recovery.”
“I know that. She shall not be frightened; but she shall have a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. And now I will go back to the house. She will wonder at my absence.”
He went to the bright, airy room where Charlotte was seated, her head lying back upon the pillows, her face paler, her glances and tones more languid than on the previous day as it seemed to Valentine. Diana was near her, solicitous and tender; and on the other side of the window sat Mrs. Sheldon, with her Dissenting minister’s biography open on her lap.
All through that day Valentine Hawkehurst played his part bravely: it was a hard and bitter part to play–the part of hope and confidence while unutterable fears were rending his heart. He read the epistle and gospel of the day to his betrothed; and afterwards some chapters of St. John–those profoundly mournful chapters that foreshadow the agonising close. It was Charlotte who selected these chapters, and her lover could find no excuse for disputing her choice.
It was the first time that they had shared any religious exercise, and the hearts of both were deeply touched by the thought of this.
“How frivolous all our talk must have been, Valentine, when it seems so new to us to be reading these beautiful words together?”
Her head was half supported by the pillows, half resting on her lover’s shoulder, and her eyes travelled along the lines as he read, in a calm low voice, which was unbroken to the end.
Early in the evening Charlotte retired, worn out by the day’s physical weariness, in spite of Valentine’s fond companionship. Later, when it was dusk, Diana came downstairs with the news that the invalid was sleeping quietly. Mrs. Sheldon was dozing in her arm-chair, the Dissenting minister having fallen to the ground; and Valentine was leaning, with folded arms, on the broad window-sill looking out into the shadowy garden. Mr. Sheldon had given them very little of his society during that day. He went out immediately after his interview with Valentine, on a sea-coast ramble, which lasted till dinner-time. After dinner he remained in the room where they had dined. He was there now. The light of the candles, by which he read his papers, shone out upon the dusk.
“Will you come for a stroll with me, Diana?” asked Valentine.
Miss Paget assented promptly; and they went out into the garden, beyond the reach of Mr. Sheldon’s ears, had that gentleman been disposed to place himself at his open window in the character of a listener.
“I want to tell you my plans about Charlotte,” Valentine began. “I am going to London to-morrow to search for a greater physician than Dr. Doddleson. I shall find my man in an hour or so; and, if possible, shall return with him in the evening. There is no apparent reason to anticipate any sudden change for the worse; but if such a change should take place, I rely on you, dear, to give me the earliest tidings of it. I suppose you can get a fly here, if you want one?”
“I can get to St. Leonards, if that is what you mean,” Miss Paget answered promptly. “I dare say there is a fly to be had; if not, I can walk there. I am not afraid of a few miles’ walk, by day or night. If there should be a change, Valentine–which God forbid–I will telegraph the tidings of it to you.”
“You had better address the message to me at Rancy’s, Covent Garden; the house where the Ragamuffins have their rooms, you know, dear. That is a more central point than my lodgings, and nearer the terminus. I will call there two or three times in the course of the day.”
“You may trust my vigilance, Valentine. I did not think it was in my nature to love any one as I love Charlotte Halliday.”
Gustave Lenoble’s letters lying unanswered in her desk asserted the all-absorbing nature of Diana’s affection for the fading girl. She _was_ fading. The consciousness of this made all other love sacrilege, as it seemed to Diana. She sat up late that night to answer Gustave’s last letter of piteous complaint.
“She had forgotten him. Ah, that he had been foolish–insensate–to confide himself in her love! Was he not old and grey in comparison to such youth–such freshness–a venerable dotard of thirty-five? What had he with dreams of love and marriage? Fie, then. He humiliated himself in the dust beneath her _mignon_ feet. He invited her to crush him with those cruel feet. But if she did not answer his letters, he would come to Harold’s Hill. He would mock himself of that ferocious Sheldon–of a battalion of Sheldons still more ferocious–of all the world, at last–to be near her.”
“Believe me, dear Gustave, I do not forget,” wrote Diana, in reply to these serio-comic remonstrances. “I was truly sorry to leave town, on your account and on my father’s. But my dear adopted sister is paramount with me now. You will not grudge her my care or my love, for she may not long be with me to claim them. There is nothing but sorrow here in all our hearts; sorrow, and an ever-present dread.”
Book the Eighth.
A FIGHT AGAINST TIME.
CHAPTER I.
A DREAD REVELATION.
The early fast train by which Valentine Hawkehurst travelled brought him into town at a quarter past nine o’clock. During the journey he had been meditating on the way in which he should set to work when he arrived in London. No ignorance could be more profound than his on all points relating to the medical profession. Dimly floating in his brain there were the names of doctors whom he had heard of as celebrated men–one for the chest, another for the liver, another for the skin, another for the eyes; but, among all these famous men, who was the man best able to cope with the mysterious wasting away, the gradual, almost imperceptible ebbing of that one dear life which Valentine wanted to save?
This question must be answered by some one; and Valentine was sorely puzzled as to who that some one must be.
The struggling young writer had but few friends. He had, indeed, worked too hard for the possibility of friendship. The cultivation of the severer Muses is rarely compatible with a wide circle of acquaintances; and Valentine, if not a cultivator of these severe ones, had been a hard