After that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss Halliday's bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa for two or three days, during which the impulsive Charlotte, being forbidden to talk openly of the change in her friend's position, was fain to give vent to her feelings by furtive embraces and hand-squeezings, sly nods and meaning becks, and mischievous twinkling of her arch grey eyes.
She talked of Valentine more than ever now, feeling herself at liberty to sing what pæans she pleased in praise of her hero, now that her friend had also a fitting subject for pæans.
"And now it's your turn to talk of M. Lenoble, dear," she would say naïvely, when she had entertained Diana with the minute details of her last conversation with her lover, or a lively sketch of the delights of that ideal cottage which she loved to furnish and unfurnish in accordance with the new fancy of the hour.
Diana was pleased to listen to her girlish talk: to hang and rehang the ideal draperies, to fill and refill the ideal bookcase, to plan and replan the arrangements of that ideal existence which was to be all joy and love and harmony; but when her turn came, and she was asked to be rapturous about her own lover, she could say nothing: that which she felt was too deep for words. The thought of her lover was strange to her; the fact of his love was mysterious and wonderful. She could not talk of him with the customary frivolous school-girl talk; and love for him had so newly taken root in her heart that there were as yet no blossoms to be gathered from that magical plant.
"Don't ask me to talk of him, Lotta, dear;" she said. "I am not yet sure that I love him; I only feel that it is sweet to be loved by him. I think Providence must have sent him to me in pity for my desolation."
This was almost the same fancy that had occurred to Susan Meynell five-and-thirty years before this time, when Gustave the first had rescued her from the suicide's unrepentable sin.
That chivalrous turn of mind which was hereditary in the race of Lenoble predisposed these men to pity loneliness and beauty, weakness and sorrow. This pity for helplessness may have been indeed only an element of their exceeding strength. Was not the rescue of weaklings and women an unfailing attribute in the mighty men of old? Who so prompt as Hercules to fly to the rescue of Hesione? Who so swift as Perseus to save Andromeda? And what sea-monster more terrible than loneliness and poverty?
In a few days there came another letter from Captain Paget, containing a fresh summons to Omega Street.
"Lenoble positively returns to Normandy to-morrow," he wrote, "to see his girls, and, no doubt, break the news of his approaching marriage. He much wants to see you, and, as I have forbidden his calling on you at the Lawn, can only meet you here. He is to drink tea with me at the usual time to-morrow evening, and I shall expect to see you early in the afternoon."
This afforded an opportunity for that introduction to which Miss Halliday looked forward with so much interest.
"If Mr. Sheldon and your mamma will let you come with me this afternoon, dear, I shall be very pleased to take you," said Diana; and she felt that she would appear less in the character of a lamb led to the slaughter if she could go to meet her betrothed accompanied by Charlotte.
But in this matter both the young ladies were doomed to disappointment. Mr. Sheldon showed himself a social Draco in all things relating to his stepdaughter. Being forbidden to reveal the existence of Gustave Lenoble, Charlotte could only urge a frivolous desire to accompany her friend in a pilgrimage dictated by filial duty. To the practical mind of Philip Sheldon this desire appeared altogether absurd and unreasonable, and he did not hesitate to express himself to that effect in atête-a-têtewith his stepdaughter.
"What good on earth can you do by going to see a gouty old man, who has his own daughter to dance attendance upon him?" asked Mr. Sheldon. "Really, Charlotte, I am surprised to hear such a proposition from a girl of your good sense. Miss Paget is your companion, not your visitor. It is her duty to indulge your whims, but it is not your place to give way to hers."
"But this is a whim of mine, papa; I should really like to spend the afternoon at Chelsea. It would be a change, you know."
Mr. Sheldon looked at his stepdaughter with a sharp and searching gaze, a gaze in which there was suspicion as well as curiosity.
"It is a very discreditable whim for a young lady in your position," he said sternly; "and I beg that such a proposition may not be made to me again."
This was decisive. Charlotte submitted, and Diana went alone to Omega Street. She found Gustave waiting for her. He proposed a walk, and Captain Paget was enthusiastic upon the subject of fresh air, and the benefits arising therefrom. So the lovers went out in the bleak winter afternoon, and wandered in the dreary Pimlico region as far as St. James's Park—Gustave delighted to have Diana's hand upon his arm, and Diana almost bewildered by a sense of happiness, which seemed unreal by reason of its very novelty.
Gustave was all enthusiasm, full of plans for the future. He would have had the marriage take place immediately, if such a thing had been possible; but Diana showed him that it would not be possible. Her first duty was to the only friends she had ever known. Gustave argued the point resolutely for nearly an hour, during which time they made their way to the very gates of St. James's Park, but Diana was more resolute still.
"What a tyrannical wife I shall have by-and-by!" said Gustave. "I think you care for these Sheldons more than for me, Diane."
"These Sheldons have been so good to me in the past."
"And I mean to be so good to you in the future," answered Gustave. "You shall be the happiest wife in Normandy, if a foolish doting husband's devotion can make you happy."
"What have I done to deserve so much devotion?" Diana murmured wonderingly.
"What have you done? Nothing, less than nothing. You will not even run the hazard of offending your family of Sheldon in order to make me happy. But Fate has said, 'At the feet of that girl with the dark eyes and pale proud face shall poor Lenoble of Côtenoir put down his heart.' Do you know what I said to myself when I saw you first in the little parlour yonder? Ah, no! How should you guess? 'She is there,' said I; 'behold her! It is thy destiny, Lenoble, on which thou gazest!' And thou, love, wert calm and voiceless as Fate. Quiet as the goddess of marble before which the pagans offered their sacrifices, across whose cold knees they laid their rich garments. I put my treasures in your lap, my love; my heart, my hopes,—all the treasures I had to offer."
This was all very sweet, but there was a sting even mingled with that sweetness. Diana told herself that love like this should only be offered on the purest shrine; and when she remembered the many stains upon her father's honour, it seemed to her that a part of the shame must needs cleave to her.
"Gustave," she said presently, after an absent meditative mood, from which her lover had vainly tried to beguile her, "does it not seem to you that there is something foolish in this talk of love and confidence between you and me; and that all your promises have been a little too lightly made? What do you know of me? You see me sitting in my father's room, and because my eyes happen to please you, or for some reason as foolish as that, you ask me to be your wife. I might have been one of the worst of women."
"You might have been?—yes, dear, but you are not. And if you had been, Gustave Lenoble would not have flung his heart into your lap, even if your eyes had been sweeter than they are. We impulsive people are people of quick perceptions, and know what we are doing better than our reflective friends imagine. I did not need to be an hour in your company, dear love, in order to know that you are noble and true. There are tones in the voice, there are expressions of the face, that tell these things better than words can tell them; for, you see, words can lie, while tones and looks are apt to be true. Yes, my angel, I knew you from that first night. My heart leapt across all conventional barriers, and found its way straight to yours."
"I can see that you think much better of me than I deserve; but even supposing you not to be deceived as to myself, I fear you are much deceived as to my surroundings."
"I know that your father is poor, and that the burden of his poverty weighs heavily on you. That is enough for me to know."
"No, M. Lenoble; it is not enough for you to know. If I am to be your wife, I will not enter your family as an impostor. I told you the truth about myself the other day when you questioned me, and I am bound to tell you the truth about my father."
And then she told him, in the plainest frankest language, the story of her father's life. She inflicted no unnecessary shame on Captain Paget; she made no complaint of her neglected childhood and joyless youth; but she told Gustave that her father had been an adventurer, keeping doubtful company, and earning his bread by doubtful means.
"I hope and believe that if a peaceful home could be secured for his declining years, he would live the rest of his life like a gentleman and a Christian; and that, the bitter struggle for existence being ended, he would be sorry for the past. I doubt if the sense of shame ever deserted him when he was living that wretched wandering life, leaving debts and difficulties behind him everywhere—always harassed and hunted by creditors, who had good cause to be angry. Yes, Gustave, I do believe that if it should please Providence to give my father a peaceful home at last, he will be thankful for God's mercy, and will repent the sins of life. And now I have told you the kind of heritage I can bring my husband."
"My dear love, I will accept the heritage, for the sake of her who brings it. I never meant to be less than a son to your father; and if he is not the best of fathers, as regards the past, we will try to make him a decent kind of father as regards the future. I have long understood that Captain Paget is something—ever so little—of an adventurer. It was the pursuit of fortune that brought him to me; and without knowing it, he brought me my fortune in the shape of his daughter."
Diana blushed as she remembered that Captain Paget had not been so innocent of any design in this matter as the Frenchman imagined.
"And you will receive even papa for my sake?" asked Diana.
"With all my heart."
"Ah, you are indeed a generous lover!"
"A lover who is not generous is—bah! there is nothing in creation so mean as the wretch whom love does not render generous. When one sees the woman whom Fate intends for one's wife, is one to stop to inquire the character of her father, her mother, her sister, her cousin?—for there is no stopping when you begin that. A man who loves makes no inquiries. If he finds his jewel in the gutter, he picks it out of the mud and carries it away in his bosom, too proud of his treasure to remember where he found it; always provided that the jewel is no counterfeit, but the real gem, fit for a king's crown. And my diamond is of the purest water. By-and-by we will try to drain the gutter—that is to say, we will try to pay those small debts of which you speak, to lodging-house keepers, and tradesmen who have trusted your father."
"You would pay papa's debts!" cried Diana in amazement.
"But why not? All these little debts, the thought of which is so bitter to you, might be discharged for two or three thousand pounds. Your father tells me I am to be very rich by-and-by."
"My father tells you! Ah, then, you have allowed him to involve you in some kind of speculation!"
"He has involved me in no speculation, and in no risk that two or three hundred pounds will not cover."
"The whole business seems very mysterious, Gustave."
"Perhaps; it has to do with a secret which I am pledged to keep. I will not allow your father to lead me into any quagmire of speculation, believe me, dear one."
After this they went back to Omega Street in the winter gloaming, and Diana loved and admired this man with all her heart and mind. A new life lay before her, very bright and fair. There, where had been only the barren desert, was now a fair landscape, shining in the sunlight of hope.
"Do you think your children will ever love me, Gustave?" she asked, not without some sense of wonder that this impulsive light-hearted lover should be the owner of children. She fancied that a responsibility so grave as paternity must needs have impressed some stamp of solemnity upon the man who bore it.
"Ever love thee!" cried Gustave. "Child, they will adore thee. They ask only some one to love. Their hearts are gardens of flowers; and thou shalt gather the flowers. But wilt thou be happy at Côtenoir, thou? It is somewhat sad, perhaps—the grave old château with the long sombre corridors. But thou shalt choose new furniture, new garnitures at Rouen, and we will make all bright and gay, like the heart of thy affianced. Thou wilt not be dull?"
"Dull, with you and yours! I shall thank God for my happy home day and night, as I never thought to thank Him a few months ago, when I was dissatisfied, wicked, tired of my life."
"And when you thought of that other one? Ah, how he was an imbecile, that other one! But thou wilt never think of him again; it is a dream that is past," said M. Lenoble.
That self-confidence which was an attribute of his sanguine nature rendered the idea of a rival not altogether unpleasant to him. He was gratified by the idea of his own victory, and the base rival's annihilation.
"Diane, I want to show thee the home that is to be thine," he said presently. "Your Sheldon family must give thee at least a holiday, if they refuse to let thee go altogether. Thou wilt come to Normandy with thy father. He is coming for a week or two, now that his gout is better. I want to show thee Côtenoir—and Beaubocage, the place where my father was born. It will seem dreary, perhaps, to thine English eyes; but to me it is very dear."
"Nothing that is dear to you shall appear dreary to me," said Diana.
By this time they had arrived at Omega Street. Again Miss Paget made tea for her lover. Strange to say, the operation seemed to grow more agreeable with every repetition. While taking his tea from the hands of his beloved, Gustave pressed the question of Diana's visit to Normandy.
"About her Sheldon family she is adamant," he said to Captain Paget, who sipped his tea and smiled at the lovers with the air of an aristocratic patriarch. "There is to be no marriage till it pleases Mrs. Sheldon to set her free. I consent to this only as man must consent to the inevitable; but I say to her, can she not come to Normandy for a fortnight—say but one short fortnight—to see her home? She will come with you. She has but to ask a holiday of her friends, and it is done."
"Of course," exclaimed the Captain, "she shall come with me. If necessary, I myself will ask it of Sheldon.—But it will be best not to mention where you are going, Diana. There are reasons, best known to our friend Gustave and myself, which render secrecy advisable just at present. You can say Rouen. That is quite near enough to the mark to come within the limits of truth," added Horatio, with the tone of a man who had never quite outstepped those limits. "Yes, Rouen. And you will come with me."
"With us," said Gustave. "I will put off my journey for a day or two for the sake of going with you. You have to meet Fleurus in Rouen haven't you?"
"Yes; he is to be there on the fifth of March, and this is the last day of February. I had a letter from him this morning. All goes swimmingly."
Diana wondered what it could be which went swimmingly; but she was obliged to content herself with her lover's assurance that he had not allowed her father to involve him in any kind of speculation.
Between Philip Sheldon and his brother there was at this time a state of feeling somewhat akin to the relations between a subjugated country and its conqueror. The vanquished is fain to accept whatever the victor is pleased to give, though discontent and impotent rage may be gnawing his entrails. George Sheldon had been a loser in that game in which the Haygarthian inheritance was the stake. He had held good cards, and had played them with considerable cleverness; but no play could prevail against his antagonist's ace of trumps. The ace of trumps was Charlotte Halliday; and as to his mode and matter of playing this card, Mr. Sheldon was for the present profoundly mysterious.
"I have known a good many inscrutable cards in my time," the solicitor of Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the course of fraternal converse; "but I think for inscrutability you put the topper on the lot. What do you expect to get out of this Haygarth estate? Come, Phil, let us have your figures in plain English. I am to have a fifth—that's all signed and sealed. But how about your share? What agreement have you got from Miss Halliday?"
"None."
"None!"
"What would the world think of me if I extorted money, or the promise of money, from my wife's daughter? Do you think I could enforce any deed between her and me?"
"Ah, I see; you go in for respectability. And you are going to leave the settlement of your claims to your stepdaughter's generosity. You will let her marry Hawkehurst, with her hundred thousand pounds; and then you will say to those two, 'Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst, be so kind as to hand over my share of the plunder.' That is notlikeyou, Phil."
"Perhaps you will be good enough to spare yourself the trouble of speculating about my motives. Go your way, and leave me to go mine."
"But this is a case in which I have an interest. If Charlotte marries Hawkehurst, I don't see how you are to profit, to any extent that you would care about, by the Haygarth fortune. But, on the other hand, if she should die unmarried, without a will, the money would go to your wife. O my God! Philip Sheldon, isTHATwhat you mean?"
The question was so sudden, the tone of horror in which it was spoken so undisguised, that Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker was for one moment thrown off his guard. His breath thickened; he tried to speak, but his dry lips could shape no word. It was only one moment that he faltered. In the next he turned upon his brother angrily, and asked what he meant.
"You've been promisedyourreward," he said; "leave me to look after mine. You'll take those papers round to Greenwood and Greenwood; they want to talk to you about them."
"Yes, I'll take the papers."
Greenwood and Greenwood were Mr. Sheldon's own solicitors—a firm of some distinction, on whose acumen and experience the stockbroker placed implicit reliance. They were men of unblemished respectability, and to them Mr. Sheldon had confided the care of his stepdaughter's interests, always reserving the chief power in his own hands. These gentlemen thought well of the young lady's prospects, and were handling the case in that slow and stately manner which marks the handling of such cases by eminent firms of the slow-and-stately class.
Mr. Sheldon wished his brother good-day, and was about to depart, whenGeorge planted himself suddenly before the door.
"Look you here, Phil," he said, with an intensity of manner that was by no means common to him; "I want to say a few words to you, and I will say them. There was an occasion, ten years ago, on which I ought to have spoken out, and didn't. I have never ceased to regret my cowardice. Yes, by Jove! I hate myself for it; and there are times when I feel as if my share in that wretched business was almost as bad as yours."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Of course not. That's your text, and you'll stick to it. But youdoknow what I mean, and you shall know what I mean, if plain words can tell you. You and I had a friend, Phil. He was a good friend to me, and I liked him as much as a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I had been down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, 'George, here's a cheque for you.'That'smy notion of a friend. And yet I stood by that man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and knew what ailed him, and didn't stretch out my hand to save him."
"Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. Sheldon, livid to the lips with smothered fury, but able to put on a bold front nevertheless. "I didn't come here to listen to rhodomontade of this kind, or to bandy words with you. Get out of my way."
"Not till I've said my say. There shall be no rhodomontade this time. I stood by and saw my best friend murdered—by you. I kept my counsel for your sake, and when you had made your fortune—by his death—I asked you for a little money. You know how much you gave me, and how graciously you gave it. If you had given me twenty times the sum you gained by Tom Halliday's death, I would give it back, and twenty times as much again, to bring him back to life, and to feel that I had never aided and abetted a murderer. Yes, by God, I would! though I'm not straitlaced or over-scrupulous at the best of times. But that's past, and all the money in the Bank of England wouldn't undo what you did in Fitzgeorge Street. But if you try on any such tricks with Tom Halliday's daughter, ifthat'sthe scheme you've hatched for getting hold of this money, as surely as we two live, I'll let in the light upon your doings, and save the girl whose father you murdered. I will, Philip, let come what may. You can't getmeout of the way when it suits you, you see.I know you.That's the best antidote against your medicines."
"If you'll be so good as to say these things on 'Change, I can bring an action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. There's no good in saying them here."
Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated than his brother, being of a harder nature, and less subject to random impulses of good or evil. He caught his accuser by the collar of his coat, and flung him violently from the doorway. Thus ended his visit to Gray's Inn.
Boldly as he had borne himself during the interview, he went to his office profoundly depressed and dispirited.
"So I am to have him against me?" he said to himself. "He can do me no real harm; but he can harass and annoy me. If he should drop any hint to Hawkehurst?—but he'll scarcely do that. Perhaps I've ridden him a little too roughly in the past. And yet if I'd been smoother, where would his demands have ended? No; concession in these cases means ruin."
He shut himself in his office, and sat down to his desk to confront his difficulties. For a long time the bark which was freighted with Philip Sheldon's fortunes had been sailing in troubled waters. He had been an unconscious disciple of Lord Bacon, inasmuch as the boldness inculcated by that philosopher had been the distinguishing characteristic of his conduct in all the operations of life. As a speculator, his boldness had served him well. Adventures from which timid spirits shrunk appalled had brought golden harvests to this daring gamester. When some rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the valleys of death,—a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of all-devouring Poseidon,—Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the tempest and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon had obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenture of railways that were in bad odour; Unitas Bank shares, immediately after the discovery of gigantic embezzlements by Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the Mole-and-Burrow railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet in the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the shares in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buyingsub rosa;—these, and such as these, had employed Mr. Sheldon's capital; and from the skilful manipulation of capital thus employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled the fortune secured by his alliance with Tom Halliday's widow.
It had been the stockbroker's fate to enter the money market at a time when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities. He had seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the harridan's bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He had made only one mistake—and that he made in common with many of his fellow-players in the great game of speculation always going on eastward of Temple Bar—he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred privileges of "The House" more astounded by the change than Mr. Sheldon.
The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. Sheldon a speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and Amphiaräuses of the Stock Exchange had agreed in declaring that a man who bought into consols at 90mustsee his capital increased; and what was true of this chief among securities was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85-1/2; securities less secure sank with a rapidity corresponding with their constitutional weakness. As during the ravages of an epidemic the weaker are first to fall victims to the destroyer, so while this fever raged on 'Change, the feeble enterprises, the "risky" transactions, sank at an appalling rate, some to total expiry. The man who holds a roaring lion by the tail could scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these troublous times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain time might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in which it would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast grows more and more furious, and then to let go and be eaten up alive, is what many men did in that awful crisis.
If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been warned by the first indication that marked the turning of the tide, he would have been a considerable loser; but he would not accept his loss, and he would not be warned by that early indication. He had implicit belief in his own cleverness; and he fancied if every other bark in that tempest-tossed ocean foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across the harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a navigator. It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt away in the payment of contango, that he consented to the inevitable. The mistakes of one year devoured the fruits of nine years' successful enterprise, and the Philip Sheldon of this present year was no richer than the man who had stood by Tom Halliday's bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that knows no difference between the threshold of kingly palace or pauper refuge. Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of his existence—to remember which was a dull dead pain even tohim—but a man infinitely more heavily burdened. He had made for himself a certain position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall, the utter annihilation of all his chances in life.
The stockbroker's fitful slumbers at this time began to be haunted by the vision of a black board fixed against the wall of a public resort, a black board on which appeared his own name. In what strange places feverish dreams showed him this hideous square of painted deal!—Now it was on the walls of the rooms he lived in; now on the door of a church, like Luther's propositions; now at a street-corner, where should have been the name of the street; now inky-black against the fair white headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miserable man, for whom the scraping together of sordid dross was life's only object, and who, in losing money, lost all!
This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending disgrace was the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool work than by the inner life of her husband; and Charlotte and her lover contemplated existence from their own point of view, and cherished their own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all things, as far away from the moody meditator as if they had been natives of Upper India.
The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was not immediate, but it was not far off; the shadow of it already wrapped him in a twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever and a safe man had left him. He was described now as a daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads as they talked of him.
"One of the next to go will be Sheldon," said the wiseacres; but in these days of commercial epidemic there was no saying who would be the first to go. It was the end of the world in little. One was taken, and another left. The Gazette overran its customary column like a swollen river, and flooded a whole page of the Times newspaper; and men looked to the lists of names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the trump of archangels sounding the destruction of the universe.
For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted those turbulent waters had been made of paper. This was nothing. Paper boats were the prevailing shipping in those waters; but Captain Sheldon's bark needed refitting, and the captain feared a scarcity of paper, or, worse still, the awful edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him there should be no more paper.
Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with ruin complete and irredeemable. When all common expedients had been exhausted, and his embarrassments had become desperate, he had found a desperate expedient, and had extricated himself from those embarrassments. The time had come in which a new means of extrication must be found as desperate as the last, if need were. As Philip Sheldon had faced the situation before, he faced it now—unshrinkingly, though with a gloomy anger against destiny. It was hard for him that such a thing should have to be repeated. If he pitied anybody, he pitied himself; and this kind of compassion is very common with this kind of character. Do not the Casket letters show us—if we may trust them to show us anything—that Mary Stuart was very sorry for herself when she found herself called upon to make an end of Darnley? In Mr. Swinburne's wonderful study in morbid anatomy, there are perhaps no finer touches than those which reveal the Queen's selfish compassion for her own heartlessness.
Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father's wish that she should leave Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained the Captain's consent to the revelation of her engagement to be married.
"I don't like to leave them in a mysterious manner, papa," she said. "I have told Charlotte a good deal already, under a promise of secrecy; but I should like to tell Mrs. Sheldon that there is a real reason for my leaving her."
"Very well, my love, since you are so amazingly squeam—honourable," interposed the Captain, remembering how much depended on his daughter's marriage, and what a very difficult person he had found her. "Yes, my dear, of course; I respect your honourable feeling; and—er—yes—you may tell Mrs. Sheldon—and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the lady is but an inoffensive cipher—that you are about to be married—to a French gentleman of position. You will, of course, be obliged to mention his name, and then will arise the question as to where and how you met him; and, upon my word, it's confoundedly awkward that you should insist on enlightening these people. You see, my dear girl, what I want to avoid, for the present, is any chance of collision between the Sheldons and Lenoble."
"Papa!" exclaimed Diana, impatiently, "why must there be all this scheming?"
"O, very well, Miss Paget; tell them what you like!" cried the Captain, aggravated beyond endurance by such inherent perversity. "All I can say is, that a young woman who quarrels with her bread-and-butter is likely to come to dry bread; and very little of that, perhaps. I wash my hands of the business. Tell them what you like."
"I will not tell them more than I feel to be actually necessary, papa," the young lady replied calmly. "I do not think Mr. Sheldon will trouble himself about M. Lenoble. He seems very much occupied by his own affairs."
"Humph! Sheldon seems harassed, anxious, does he?"
"Well, yes, papa; I have thought so for the last few months. If I may venture to judge by the expression of his face, as he sits at home in the evening, reading the paper, or staring at the fire, I am sure he has many anxieties—troubles even. Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte do not appear to notice these things. They are accustomed to see him quiet and reserved, and they don't perceive the change in him as I do."
"O, there is a change, is there?"
"Yes, a decided change."
"Why the deuce couldn't you tell me this before!"
"Why should I tell you that Mr. Sheldon seems anxious? I should not have told you now, if you had not appeared to dread his interference in our affairs. I can't help observing these things; but I don't want to play the part of a spy."
"No, you're so infernally punct—so delicate-minded, my love," said the Captain, pulling himself up suddenly, for the second time. "Forgive me if I was impatient just now. You look at these things from a higher point of view than that of a battered old man of the world like me. But if you should see anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct on another occasion, my love, I should be obliged to you if you would be more communicative. He and I have been allied in business, you see, and it is important for me to know these things."
"I have not seen anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct, papa; I have only seen him thoughtful and dispirited. And I suppose anxieties are common to every man of business."
Georgy received Miss Paget's announcement with mingled lamentations and congratulations.
"I am sure I am heartily glad for your sake, Diana," she said; "but what we shall do without you, I don't know. Who is to see to the drawing-room being dusted every morning, when you are gone? I'm sure I tremble for the glass shades. Don't imagine I'm not pleased to think you should settle in life advantageously, my love. I'm not so selfish as that; though I will say that there never was a girl with more natural talent for making-up pretty little caps than you. The one I have on has been admired by everybody. Even Ann Woolper this morning, when I was going into the butcher's book with her—for I insist upon going into the butcher's book with her weekly, whether she likes it or not; though the way that man puts down the items is so bewildering that I feel myself a perfect baby in her hands,—even Ann admired it, and said how young-looking it is. And then she brought up the time in Fitzgeorge Street, and poor Tom's illness, and almost upset me for the rest of the day. And now, dear, let me offer you my sincere congratulations. Of course, you know that you would always have had a home with me; but service, or at least companionship, is no inheritance, as the proverb says; and for your own sake I'm very glad to think that you are going to have a house of your own. And now tell me what he is like, Monsieur what's-his-name?"
Mrs. Sheldon had been told, but had not remembered the name. Her great anxiety, as well as Charlotte's, was to know what manner of man the affianced lover was. If Diana's future happiness had been contingent on the shape of her husband's nose, or the colour of his eyes, these two ladies could not have been more anxious upon the subject.
"Has he long eyelashes, and a dreamy look in his eyes, like Valentine?" asked Charlotte, secretly convinced that her lover had a copyright in these personal graces.
"Does he wear whiskers?" asked Georgy. "I remember, when I was quite a girl, and went to parties at Barlingford, being struck by Mr. Sheldon's whiskers. And I was quite offended with papa, who was always making sarcastic remarks, for calling them mutton-chop whiskers; but they really were the shape of mutton-cutlets at that time. He wears them differently now."
Mrs. Sheldon branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have described him to Georgy.
By-and-by she asked permission to leave Bayswater for a fortnight, in order to see her lover's home and friends.
"I will come back to you, and stay as long as you like, dear Mrs. Sheldon," she said, "and make you as many caps as you please. And I will make them for you by and by, when I am living abroad, and send them over to you in a bandbox. It will be a great delight to me to be of some little service to a friend who has been so kind. And perhaps you will fancy the caps are prettier when they can boast of being French."
"You darling generous-minded girl! And you won't go away for a fortnight and never come back again, will you, dear? I had a cook who did that, and left me with a large dinner-party hanging over my head; and how I got through it—with a strange man-cook, who charged a guinea, and used fresh butter, at twentypence, a pound, as if it had been dirt, and two strange men to wait—I don't know. It all seemed like a dream. And since then we have generally had everything from the confectioner's; and I assure you, to feel that you can wash your hands of the whole thing, and sit down at the head of your table with your mind as free from care as if you were a visitor, is worth all the expense."
Diana promised she would not behave like the cook; and two days after this conversation left the London Bridge terminus with her father and Gustave Lenoble.
Mr. Sheldon troubled himself very little about this departure. He was informed of Miss Paget's intended marriage; and the information awakened neither surprise nor interest in his heavily-burdened mind.
"A Frenchman, a friend of her father's!" he said; "some swindling adventurer, no doubt," he thought. And this was as much consideration as he could afford to bestow upon Miss Paget's love affairs at this present time.
On the day after Miss Paget's departure Mr. Sheldon came home from the City rather earlier than usual, and found Charlotte alone in the drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume from Mudie of an instructive and edifying character, with a view to making herself clever, in order that she might better understand that prodigy of learning, Mr. Hawkehurst.
She was somewhat inclined to yawn over the big book, which contained a graphic account of recent discoveries of an antiquarian nature. Her mind was not yet attuned to the comprehension of the sublimer elements in such discoveries. She saw only a dry as dust record of futile gropings in desert sand for the traces of perished empires. Her imagination was not cultivated to that point whereat the gift which Mr. Lewes calls "insight" becomes the daily companion, nay, indeed, the ever-haunting and nightmare-bringing influence of the dreamer. For her sands were only sands, the stones were only stones. No splendour of fallen palaces, no glory and pride of perished kings, no clash and clamour of vanished courts, arose from those barren sands, with all their pomp and circumstance, conjured into being by half a word on a broken pillar, or a date upon a Punic monument. Miss Halliday looked up with a sigh of fatigue as her stepfather came into the room. It was not a room that he particularly affected, and she was surprised when he seated himself in the easy-chair opposite her, and poked the fire, as if with the intention of remaining.
"You shouldn't read by firelight, my dear," he said; "it is most destructive to the eyesight."
"I dare say my sight will last my time, papa," the young lady replied carelessly; "but it's very kind of you to think of it, and I won't read any more."
Mr. Sheldon made no reply to this observation. He sat looking at the fire, with that steady gaze which was habitual to him—the gaze of the man who plans and calculates.
"My dear," he said by-and-by, "it seems that this money to which you may or may not be entitled is more than we thought at first; in fact, it appears that the sum is a considerable one. I have been, and still am, particularly anxious to guard against disappointment on your part, as I know the effect that such a disappointment is apt to produce upon a person's life. The harassing slowness of Chancery proceedings is proverbial; I am therefore especially desirous that you should not count upon this money."
"I shall never do that, papa. I should certainly like a fine edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica for Valentine, by-and-by, as he says that is essential for a literary man; and a horse, for people say literary men ought to take horse exercise. But beyond that—"
"We need scarcely go into these details, my dear. I want you to understand the broad facts of the case. While, on the one hand, our success in obtaining the inheritance which we are about to claim for you is uncertain, on the other hand the inheritance is large. Of course, when I presented you with the sum of five thousand pounds, I had no idea of this possible inheritance."
"O, of course not, papa."
"But I now find that there is such a possibility as your becoming a—well—a rich woman."
"O papa!"
"In which case I may conclude that your mother would benefit in some measure from your good fortune."
"Can you doubt that, papa? There should be no measure to her benefit from any money obtained by me."
"I do not doubt that, my dear. And it is with that idea that I wish to make a proposition to you—for your mother's possible advantage."
"I shall be happy to do anything you wish, papa."
"It must be done as a spontaneous act of your own, Charlotte, not in accordance with any wish of mine."
"What is it that I am to do?" asked Charlotte.
"Well, my dear, you see it is agreed between us that if you do get this money, your mother is certain to benefit considerably. But unhappily the proceedings are likely to drag on for an indefinite time; and in the course of that time it comes within the limits of possibility that your decease may precede that of your mother."
"Yes, papa."
"In which case your mother would lose all hope of any such advantage."
"Of course, papa."
Charlotte could not help thinking that there was something sordid in this discussion—this calculation of possible gain or loss contingent on her fresh young life. But she concluded that it was the nature of business men to see everything from a debased standpoint, and that Mr. Sheldon was no more sordid than other men of his class.
"Well, papa?" she asked presently, after some moments of silence, during which she and her stepfather had both been absorbed in the contemplation of the fire.
"Well, my dear," replied Mr. Sheldon slowly, "I have been thinking that the natural and easy way of guarding against all contingencies would be by your effecting an insurance on your life in your mother's favour."
"No, no, papa!" cried Charlotte, with unwonted vehemence; "I would rather do anything than that!"
"What can be your objection to such a very simple arrangement?"
"I dare say my objection seems foolish, childish even, papa; but I really have a horror of life assurances. I always think of papa—my own poor father, whom I loved so dearly. It seemed as if he put a price upon his life for us. He was so anxious to insure his life—I remember hearing him talk of it at Hyley, when I was a child—to make things straight, as he said, for us; and, you see, very soon afterwards he died."
"But you can't suppose the insurance of his life had anything to do with his death?"
"Of course not, I am not so childish as that; only—"
"Only you have a foolish lackadaisical prejudice against the only means by which you can protect your mother against a contingency that is so remote as to be scarcely worth consideration. Let it pass."
There was more anger in the tone than in the words. It was not that angry tone, but the mention of her mother, that impressed Miss Halliday. She began to consider that her objections were both foolish and selfish.
"If you really think I ought to insure my life, I will do so," she said presently. "Papa did as much for those he loved; why should I be less thoughtful of others?"
Having once brought Miss Halliday to this frame of mind, the rest was easy. It was agreed between them that as Valentine Hawkehurst was to be kept in ignorance of his betrothed's claim to certain moneys now in the shadowy under-world of Chancery, so he must be kept in ignorance of the insurance.
It was only one more secret, and Charlotte had learned that it was possible to keep a secret from her lover.
"I suppose before we are married I shall able to tell him everything?" she said.
"Certainly, my dear. All I want is to test his endurance and his prudence. If the course of events proves him worthy of being trusted, I will trust him."
"I am not afraid of that, papa."
"Of course not, my dear. But, you see, I have to protect your interests; and I cannot afford to see this gentleman with your eyes. I am compelled to be prudent."
The stockbroker sighed as he said this—a sigh of utter weariness. Remorse was unknown to him; the finer fibres upon which that chord is struck had not been employed in the fabrication of his heart. But there is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration of spirit—a sickness of heart and mind—a bitter longing to lie down and die—the weariness of a beaten hound rather than of a baffled man.
This was what Mr. Sheldon felt, as the threads of the web which he was weaving multiplied, and grew daily and hourly more difficult of manipulation. Success in the work which he had to do depended on so many contingencies. Afar off glittered the splendid goal—the undisputed possession of the late John Haygarth's hundred thousand pounds; but between the schemer and that chief end and aim of all his plottings what a sea of troubles! He folded his arms behind his head, and looked across the girlish face of his companion into the shadow and the darkness. In those calculations which were for ever working themselves out in this man's brain, Charlotte Halliday was only one among many figures. She had her fixed value in every sum; but her beauty, her youth, her innocence, her love, her trust, made no unit of that fixed figure, nor weighed in the slightest degree with him who added up the sum. Had she been old, ugly, obnoxious, a creature scarcely fit to live, she would have represented exactly the same amount in the calculations of Philip Sheldon. The graces that made her beautiful were graces that he had no power to estimate. He knew she was a pretty woman; but he knew also that there were pretty women to be seen in any London street; and the difference between his stepdaughter and the lowest of womankind who passed him in his daily walks was to him little more than a social prejudice.
The insurance business being once decided on, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in putting it into execution. Although he made a point of secrecy as regarded Mr. Hawkehurst, he went to work in no underhand manner, but managed matters after a highly artistic and superior fashion. He took his stepdaughter to the offices of Greenwood and Greenwood, and explained her wishes to one of those gentlemen in her presence. If he dwelt a little more on Miss Halliday's anxiety for her mother's pecuniary advantage than his previous conversation with Miss Halliday warranted, the young lady was too confiding and too diffident to contradict him. She allowed him to state, or rather to imply, that the proposed insurance was her spontaneous wish, an emanation of her anxious and affectionate heart, the natural result of an almost morbid care for her mother's welfare.
Mr. Hargrave Greenwood, of Greenwood and Greenwood, seemed at first inclined to throw cold water on the proposition, but after some little debate, agreed that extreme caution would certainly counsel such a step.
"I should imagine there was no better life amongst the inhabitants of London," he said, "than Miss Shel—pardon me—Miss Halliday's. But, as the young lady herself suggests, 'in the midst of life we are—'; and, as the young lady herself has observed, these things are—ahem—beyond human foresight. If there were any truth in the aphorisms of poets, I should say Miss Halliday cannot insure too quickly; for the remark of Cowper—or, stay, I believe Pope—'whom the gods love die young,' might very well be supposed to apply to so charming a young lady. Happily, the secretaries of insurance offices know very little about the poets, unless, indeed, Miss Halliday were to go to the Royal Widow's and Orphan's Hope, the secretary of which is the author of dramas that may fairly rank with the works of Knowles and Lytton."
Mr. Greenwood, an elderly gentleman of the ponderous and port-wine school, laughed at his own small jokes, and took things altogether pleasantly. He gave Mr. Sheldon a letter of introduction to the secretary of his pet insurance company, the value of which to that gentleman was considerable. Nor was this the only advantage derived from the interview. The lawyer's approval of the transaction reassured Charlotte; and though she had heard her own views somewhat misrepresented, she felt that an operation which appeared wise in the sight of such a lawyer, standing on such a Turkey hearthrug, commanding such gentlemanly-looking clerks as those who came and went at Mr. Greenwood's bidding, must inevitably be a proceeding at once prudent and proper.
The business of the insurance was not quite so easy as the interview with the lawyer. The doctor to whom Miss Halliday was introduced seemed very well satisfied with that young lady's appearance of health and spirits, but in a subsequent interview with Mr. Sheldon asked several questions, and shook his head gravely when told that her father had died at thirty-seven years of age. But he looked less grave when informed that Mr. Halliday had died of a bilious fever.
"Did Mr. Halliday die in London?" he asked.
"He did."
"I should like—ahem—if it were possible, to see the medical man who attended him. These fevers rarely prove fatal unless there is some predisposing cause."
"In this case there was none."
"You speak rather confidently, Mr. Sheldon, as a non-professional man."
"I speak with a certain amount of professional knowledge. I knew TomHalliday for many years."
Mr. Sheldon forebore to state that Tom Halliday had died in his house, and had been attended by him. It is, perhaps, only natural that Philip Sheldon, the stockbroker of repute, should wish to escape identification with Philip Sheldon, the unsuccessful dentist of Bloomsbury.
After a little more conversational skirmishing, the confidential physician of the Prudential Step Assurance Company agreed to consider that Mr. Halliday's constitution had been in no manner compromised by his early death, and to pass Charlotte's life. The motives for effecting the insurance were briefly touched upon in Mr. Greenwood's letter of introduction, and appeared very proper and feasible in the eyes of the directors; so, after a delay of a few days, the young lady found herself accepted, and Mr. Sheldon put away among his more important papers a large oblong envelope, containing a policy of assurance on his stepdaughter's life for five thousand pounds. He did not, however, stop here, but made assurance doubly sure by effecting a second insurance upon the same young life with the Widow's and Orphan's Hope Society, within a few days of the first transaction.
Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 15, 186—.
My darling Lotta,—As you extorted from me a solemn pledge that I would write you a full and detailed account of my adventures, I seat myself in Mademoiselle Lenoble's pretty little turret-chamber, in the hope of completing the first instalment of my work before papa or Gustave summons me to prepare for a drive and visit to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, which, I believe, has been planned for to-day.
What am I to tell you, dear, and how shall I begin my story? Let me fancy myself sitting at your feet before your bedroom fire, and you looking down at me with that pretty inquisitive look in your dear grey eyes. Do you know that M. Lenoble's eyes are almost the colour of yours, Lotta? You asked me a dozen questions about his eyes the other day, and I could give you no clear description of them; but yesterday, as he stood at the window looking out across the garden, I saw their real colour. It is grey, a deep clear grey, and his lashes are dark, like yours. How shall I begin? That is the grand difficulty! I suppose you will want to know something even about the journey. Everything was very pleasant, in spite of the cold blusterous March weather. Do you know what my last journey was like, Lotta? It was the long dreary journey from Forêtdechêne to St. Katharine's Wharf, when Mr. Hawkehurst advised and arranged my return to England. I had been sitting quite alone in a balcony overlooking the little town. It was after midnight, but the lights were still burning: I can see the lamplit windows shining through the night mist as I write this, and the sense of the hopeless misery of that time comes back to me like the breath of some freezing wind. I can find no words to tell you how desolate I was that night, or how hopeless.
I dared not think of my future life; or of the next day, that was to be the beginning of that hopeless future. I was obliged to bind my thoughts to the present and all its dreariness; and a kind of dull apathetic feeling, which was too dull for despair, took possession of me that night. While I was sitting there Mr. Hawkehurst came to me, and told me that my father had become involved in a quarrel, under circumstances of a very shameful nature, which I need not tell you, darling. He recommended me to leave Forêtdechêne—indeed, almost insisted that I should do so. He wanted to rescue me from that miserable life. Your lover had noble and generous impulses even then, you see, dear; at his worst he was not all bad, and needed only your gentle influence to purify and elevate his character. He gave me all the money he possessed to pay the expenses of my journey. Ah, what a dreary journey! I left Forêtdechêne in the chill daybreak, and travelled third class, with dreadful Belgians who smelt of garlic, to Antwerp. I slept at a very humble inn near the quay, and started for England by the Baron Osy at noon next day. I cannot tell you how lonely I felt on board the steamer. I had travelled uncomfortably before, but never without my father and Valentine—and he had been always kind to me. If we were shabbily dressed, and people thought ill of us, I did not care. The spirit of Bohemianism must have been very strong with me in those days. I remembered how we had sat together on the same boat watching the sleepy shores of Holland, or making fun of our respectable fellow-passengers. Now I was quite alone. People stared at me rudely and unkindly, as I thought. I could not afford to dine or breakfast with the rest; and I was weak enough to feel wounded by the idea that people would guess my motive for shunning the savoury banquets that sent up such horrid odours to the deck where I sat, trying to read a tattered Tauchnitz novel. And the end of my journey? Ah, Charlotte, you can never imagine what it is to travel like that, without knowing whether there is any haven, any shelter for you at the end of your wanderings! I knew that at a certain hour we were to arrive at St. Katharine's Dock, but beyond that I knew nothing. I counted my money. There was just enough to pay for a cab that would carry me to Hyde Lodge. I should land there penniless. And what if my cousin Priscilla should refuse to receive me? For a moment I fancied even that possible; and I pictured myself walking about London, hungry and homeless.
This was my last journey. I have dwelt upon it longer than I need have done; but I want you to understand what it is that makes Gustave Lenoble dear to me. If you could feel the contrast between the past and the present as I felt it when I stood on the deck of the Dover packet with him by my side, you would know why I love him, and am grateful to him. We stood side by side, watching the waves and talking of our future, while my father enjoyed a nap in one of the little deck cabins. To Gustave that future seems very bright and clear; to me it seems unutterably strange that the futurecanbe anything but a dismalterra incognita, from the contemplation of which it is wise to refrain.
Papa stays with Gustave at Côtenoir; but it had been arranged for me to visit Mademoiselle Lenoble, Gustave's aunt, at Beaubocage, and to remain with her during my stay in Normandy. I at once understood the delicate feeling which prompted this arrangement. We dined at Rouen, and came to Vevinord in a coach. At Vevinord a queer little countrified vehicle met us, with a very old man, of the farm-servant class, as coachman. Gustave took the reins from the old man's hand and drove to Beaubocage, where Mademoiselle Lenoble received me with much cordiality. She is a dear old lady, with silvery bands of hair neatly arranged under the prettiest of caps. Her gown is black silk, and her collar and cuffs of snowy whiteness; everything about her exquisitely neat, and of the fashion of twenty, or perhaps thirty, years ago.
And now, I suppose, you will want to know what Beaubocage is like. Well, dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I must confess that her ancestral mansion is neither grand nor pretty. It might have made a very tolerable farmhouse, but has been spoiled by the architect's determination to make it a château. It is a square white building, with two pepper-castor-like turrets, in one of which I write this letter. Between the garden and the high road there is a wall, surmounted with plaster vases. The garden is for the greater part utilitarian; but in front of the salon windows there is a grassplot, bordered by stiff gravel-walks, and relieved by a couple of flower-beds. A row of tall poplars alone screens the house from the dusty high road. At the back of it there is an orchard; on one side a farmyard; behind the orchard lie the fields that compose the farm of Beaubocage and the paternal estate of the Lenoble family. All around the country is very flat. The people seem to be kind and simple, and devotedly attached to "Mademoiselle." There is a rustic peacefulness pervading everything which, for me, stands instead of beauty.
I am hypocrite enough to pretend to be pleased with everything, for I can perceive how anxiously M. Lenoble watches me in order to discover whether I like his native country. He was not born at Beaubocage, but in Paris. Mademoiselle Lenoble told me the story of his childhood, and how she brought him to Beaubocage, when quite a little fellow, from Rouen, where his father died. About his mother there seems to have been some mystery. Mademoiselle told me nothing of this, except that her brother, Gustave the elder, made a love-match, and thereby offended his father. She has the little crib in which her nephew, Gustave the younger, slept on the night of his coming. It had been his father's little bed thirty years before. She shed tears as she told me the story, and how she sat and watched by the little fellow as he cried himself to sleep with his head lying on her arm, and the summer moonlight shining full upon his face.
I was deeply touched by her manner as she told me these things; and I think, if I had not already learned to love M. Lenoble, I should love him for the sake of his aunt. She is charming; a creature so innocent and pure, that one considers one's words in speaking to her, almost as if she were a child. She is about forty years older than I; yet for worlds I would not tell her of the people and the scenes I have beheld at foreign watering-places and gambling-rooms. She has spent the sixty years of her life so completely out of the world, that she has retained the freshness and sweetness of her youth untainted in the least degree. Can there be magical philtre equal to this—a pure unselfish life, far away from the clamour of cities?
The old servant who waits upon me is seventy-five years of age, and remembers Ma'amselle Cydalise from her childhood. She is always singing the praises of her mistress, and she sees that I like to hear them. "Ah, ma'amselle," she said to me, "to marry a Lenoble is to marry one of the angels. I will not say that the old seigneur was not hard towards his son. Ah, yes, but it was a noble heart. And the young monsieur—that one who died in Rouen, the Poor!—ah, that he was kind, that he was gracious! What of tears, what of regrets, when the Old chased him!"
My position is quite recognised. I think the very cowboy in the farmyard—a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured mindless face, and prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes—even the cowboy knows that I am to be Madame Lenoble of Côtenoir. Côtenoir is the Windsor Castle of this district; Beaubocage is only Frogmore. Yes, dear, the bond is signed and sealed. Even if I did not love M. Lenoble, I have bound myself to marry him; but I do love him, and thank him with all my heart for having given a definite end and aim to my life. Don't think I underrate your kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and Valentine will exact all his sweet young wife's love and care.
I have written you a letter which I am sure will require double postage; so I will say no more except goodbye. Take care of yourself, dear one. Practise your part in our favourite duets; remember your morning walk in the garden; and don't wear out your eyes over the big books that Mr. Hawkehurst is obliged to read.
Ever your affectionate
* * * * *
From Charlotte Halliday to Diana Paget.
The dullest house in Christendom, Monday.
EVER DEAREST Di,—Your letter was a welcome relief to the weariness of my existence. How I wish I were with you! But that is too bright a dream. I am sure I should idolise Beaubocage. I should not mind the dismal row of poplars, or the flat landscape, or the dusty road, or anything, so long as it was not like Bayswater. I languish for a change, dear. I have seen so little of the world, except the dear moorland farmhouse at Newhall. I don't think I was ever created to be "cabined, cribbed, confined," in such a narrow life as this, amid such a dull, unchanging round of daily commonplace. Sometimes, when the cold spring moon is shining over the tree-tops in Kensington-Gardens, I think of Switzerland, and the snow-clad mountains and fair Alpine valleys we have read of and talked of, until my heart aches at the thought that I may never see them; and to think that there are people in whom the word 'Savoy' awakes no fairer image than a cabbage! Ah, my poor dear! isn't it almost wicked of me to complain, whenyouhave had such bitter experience of the hard cruel world?
I am quite in love with your dear Mademoiselle Lenoble; almost as deeply as I am in love with your magnanimous, chivalrous, generous, audacious—everything ending inous—Monsieur Lenoble.
How dare you call him M. Lenoble, by the bye? I have counted the occasions on which you write of him in your nice long letter, and for one Gustave there are half a dozen M. Lenobles. It must be Gustave in future to me, remember.
What shall I tell you, dear? I have nothing to tell, really nothing. To say that I wish you were with me is only to confess that I am very selfish; but Idowish for you, dear—my friend and adopted sister, my old school companion, from whom, willingly, I have never concealed one thought.
Valentine called on Tuesday afternoon; but I have nothing to tell you even about him. Mamma dozed in her corner after her cup of tea, and Val and I sat by the fire talking over our future, just like you and M. Lenoble on board the Calais boat. How much engaged people find to say about the future! Is it our love that makes it seem so bright, so different from all that has gone before? I cannot fancy life with Valentine otherwise than happy. I strive to picture trials, and fancy myself in prison with him, the wind blowing in at broken windows, the rain coming through the dilapidated roof and pattering on the carpetless floor; but the most dismal picture I can paint won't seem dismal if his figure is a part of it. We would stop the broken windows with rags and paper, we would wipe up the rain with our pocket-handkerchiefs, and sit side by side and talk of the future, as we do now. Hope could never abandon us while we were together. And then, sometimes, while I am looking at Valentine, the thought that he might die comes to me suddenly, like the touch of an icy hand upon my heart.
I lie awake at night sometimes thinking of this, and of papa's early death. He came home one night with a cold, and from that hour grew worse until he died. Ah, think what misery for a wife to suffer! Happily for mamma, she is not capable of suffering intensely. She was very sorry, and even now when she speaks of papa she cries a little; but the tears don't hurt her. I think, indeed, they give her a kind of pleasure.
See, dear, what a long egotistical letter I have written, after all. I will say no more, except that while I am delighted to think of your pleasure among new friends and new scenes, my selfish heart still longs for the hour that is to bring you back to me.
Pray tell me all you can about your daughters that are to be.
Ever and ever your loving CHARLOTTE.
* * * * *
From Diana Paget to Charlotte Halliday.
Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 30, 186—.
MY DEAR LOTTA,—In three days more I hope to be with you; but I suppose, in the meantime, I must keep my promise, and send you a faithful account of my life here. Everyone here is more kind to me than words can tell; and I have nothing left to wish for, except that you were here to be delighted, as I am sure you would be, with the freshness and the strangeness of everything. If I ever do become Madame Lenoble—and even yet Icannotpicture to myself that such a thing will be—you must come to Côtenoir, you and Valentine. I was taken through every room in the old château the day before yesterday, and I fixed in my own mind upon the rooms I will give you, if these things come to pass. They are very old rooms, and I can fancy what strange people must have lived in them, and died in them perhaps, in the days that are gone. But if you come to them, they shall be made bright and pretty, and we will chase the shadows of the mediæval age away. There are old pictures, old musical instruments, quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, tapestries that crumble as you touch them—the ashes and relics of many generations. Gustave says we will sweep these poor vestiges away, and begin a new life, when I come to Côtenoir; but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace of those dead feet that have come and gone in all the dusky passages of my future home.
And now I must tell you about my daughters that are to be—my daughter that is, I may say of the elder—for I love her so well already that no breach between Gustave and me could rob her of my affection. She is the dearest, most loving of creatures; and she reminds me of you! I dare say you will laugh at this, dear; and, mind, I do not say that Clarice Lenoble is actually like you in complexion or feature—those common attributes which every eye can see; the resemblance is far more subtle. There is a look in this dear girl's face, a smile, an I-know-not-what, which every now and then recalls your own bright countenance. You will say this is mere fancy—and that is what I told myself at the first; but I found afterwards that it is no fancy, but really one of those vague, indefinable, accidental likenesses which one perceives so often. To me it seems a very happy accident; for my first glance at my daughter's face told me that I should love her for your sake.