After this there was much explanation and congratulation. Gustave Lenoble was delighted to claim so fair a kinswoman.
“Thou art like my eldest, my cousin,” he said; “Diana saw the likeness at the Sacré Coeur when she beheld my daughter; and I too saw my eldest’s look in thine eyes when I first met thee. Remember, it was convened between us that Côtenoir should be a home for thee and for Hawkehurst before I knew what link bound thee to the house of Lenoble. Now thou and thy husband will be of our family.”
Diana was bewildered, grieved, indignant with the father who had deceived her by his studious suppression of the truth. She found herself placed in the position of rival to Charlotte, and the whole proceeding seemed to her mean and treacherous.
But it was no time for remonstrance or open expression of indignant feeling. Her father’s days were numbered. She knew this, and she held her peace. Nor did Mrs. Sheldon utter any word of complaint, though the disappointment she experienced upon hearing this revelation was very keen. The idea of the four or five thousand pounds which were to come to Charlotte had been a consolation to her in the midst of that confusion and desolation which had newly come upon her life. She left Knightsbridge that evening somewhat depressed in spirits, and half inclined to be angry with Charlotte and her husband for their gaiety of manner, and evident happiness in each other’s society.
“It seems hard to have to begin the world at my age,” she murmured hopelessly, “after being accustomed to have everything nice about me, as I had at the Lawn; though I own that the trouble and care of the servants was wearing me to the grave.”
“Dear mamma,” exclaimed Charlotte tenderly, “there is no fear of trouble or poverty for you or for us. Valentine has plenty of money, and is on the high road to securing a comfortable income. Authors do not starve in garrets now, you know, as they used to do, poor things, when Doctor Johnson ate his dinner in a cave, or something dreadful of that kind; and when Sir Richard Steele thought it quite a wonderful thing to get a pound of tea for his wife. And Valentine’s heart is in his profession, and he will work for us.”
“As long as I have a hand that can write, and a brain that can guide my pen,” interposed Mr. Hawkehurst, gaily. “I have given hostages to Fortune. I can face the hazard boldly. I feel as confident and as happy as if we lived in the golden age, when there was neither care nor toil for innocent mankind, and all the brightest things of earth were the spontaneous gift of the gods.”
CHAPTER V.
BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE.
Monsieur and Madame Lenoble went to Brighton for their honeymoon. A letter or a telegraphic message would bring them thence swiftly to the bedside of the dying Captain, should the last fatal change set in suddenly. Diana had wished to stay with her father, but Horatio insisted upon the honeymoon trip, and that everything should be done in a correct and gentlemanly manner.
“You can engage rooms at the Albion,” Captain Paget had said to his son-in-law a few days before the quiet wedding. “The house is extremely comfortable; and you will be received by a compatriot. The proprietor is a Frenchman, and a very gentlemanly person, I assure you; the cuisine irreproachable. I remember the old Steyne when Mrs. FitzHerbert lived close by, and received all the best people, in the days when the Cockney had not yet taken possession of Brighthelmstone, and the Chinese dragons and pagodas were bright and fresh in the Pavilion.”
To Brighton, therefore, the bride and bridegroom departed; Diana attended by a maid, an appanage which the Captain had insisted upon. Poor Diana was sorely puzzled as to what she should find for the maid to do when her hair had been dressed early in the morning, and her costume laid out in state for the day.
“I think I must buy some handkerchiefs for her to hem,” she said to Gustave; “it will be quite dreadful for her to have nothing to do all day long.”
The weather was warm and bright. The sea danced and sparkled under the windows. Gustave was always in the same happy frame of mind. An elegant landau had been secured for the period of their visit, and a pair of capital horses carried them out on long and pleasant expeditions to the pretty Sussex villages, or across the broad bare downs, beyond which the sea stretched blue and bright.
In the evening, when the lamp was lighted and the urn hissed gaily, Diana felt that she and her husband were at home. It was the first home she had known — the first time she had been sole mistress and centre of a household. She looked back at all the old desolation, the dreary shifting from lodging to lodging, the degradation, the self-abasement, the dull apathy of despair; and then she looked across at her husband as he lounged in his easy-chair, contemplating her with dreamy adoring eye, in a kind of lazy worship; and she knew that for this man she was the centre of the universe, the very keystone in the arch of life.
She stretched out her hand to him with a smile, and he pressed it fondly to his lips. There were twinkling jewels upon the slender fingers; for the prettiest shop in Brighton — the brightest shop in Brighton — had been ransacked that morning by the fond, frivolous, happy husband, as pleased to bedeck his wife as a child to dress her last new doll.
“How can I ever be worthy of so much affection, Gustave!” she exclaimed, as he kissed the twinkling fingers.
And it did indeed seem to her that for this free gift of love she could never render a sufficient recompense.
“Thou wilt make Côtenoir a home,” he said; “thou knowest not how I have sighed for a home. This room, with the lamplight shining on thy face, and thy white hands moving about the teacups, and thy sweet smile, which greets me every now and then when thou lookest by here, — it is more of home than I have ever known since I left Beaubocage, that modest dwelling where lived those two angels of kindness, my aunt and my grandmother.”
In one of those long pleasant drives to a distant village nestling under the lee of a steep hill, the husband and wife had much serious talk about the position of the former with reference to the Haygarth estate. The result of that conversation was shown in a letter which Charlotte Hawkehurst received the next day from her friend Diana Lenoble.
“Albion Hotel, Brighton.
“EVER DEAR LOTTA, — Gustave and I have discussed the Haygarth business with great satisfaction to ourselves, since it transpired in the course of our conversation that we are both of one mind in the matter. It is agreed between us that, as he is very well off already, and as he never hoped or expected to inherit a fortune from his maternal ancestor, it is only just that he should divide this unlooked-for wealth with his dear cousin, whose claim to that inheritance he recognizes as equal to his own; the mere fact of seniority making only a legal and not a moral difference in the degree of relationship to the Reverend John Haygarth. Do you understand, darling? — you are to have half this money. My husband will not step in between you and good fortune. I cannot tell you how happy this determination of Gustave’s has made me. I felt myself in a manner base and ungrateful when I thought I was to share wealth that might have been yours; but I ought to have better understood the justice of my husband’s mind. And now, dearest, all will be arranged very simply; Gustave will come to London and see his lawyers, and execute some kind of deed, and the whole affair will be settled.
“We have had some charming drive,” &c. &c.
Here the young wife branched off into a description of the simple pleasures of their honeymoon holiday.
This letter was answered by Valentine Hawkehurst in person. He came down to Brighton to thank his friends for their generous desire to enrich his wife, and to decline, on her part, any share in John Haygarth’s wealth.
It was in vain that Gustave and Diana argued the point, Mr. Hawkehurst was fixed as fate.
“Believe me, it is better as it is,” he said. “Charlotte and I have arrived at this conviction with all due thought and deliberation. We are both young, and the world is all before us. There is much in the past that I have to redeem, as Diana well knows. It is better that I should fight the battle of life unaided, and rise from the ranks by right of
my merit as a soldier. If ever we have need of help — if ever I find myself breaking down — you may be sure that it is to you I shall come. By and by, if Providence gives me children to work for, I will refuse no bounty that you may bestow on them. Their future may be rendered secure by your generosity, if you please, Lenoble; they will be your kindred. But for an alien like myself there is no discipline so wholesome as honest hard work. I am as rich as John Milton when he set up a school in St. Bride’s Churchyard.”
To this resolution Mr. Hawkehurst adhered with a gentle firmness.
“Thou art chivalrous like Don Quixote,” said Gustave Lenoble; “but it shall be as thou wouldest. Touch there.”
He offered his hand, which the other grasped with all heartiness.
“I will be godfather to thy little first one, and I will settle on him ten thousand pounds before he cuts his first tooth,” said Gustave decisively.
CHAPTER VI.
BEYOND THE VEIL.
Diana and her husband did not linger long at Brighton; they went back to town in time to see the last of that old wayfarer whose troubled journey came to so peaceful an ending. It was a very calm haven in which this battered old privateer lay at anchor after life’s tempestuous course; but to the Captain himself it seemed a hard thing that he should not have been permitted one brief cruise upon that summer sea which danced so gaily beneath the keel of the Lenobles’ prosperous bark.
“We have shared adversity, my love,” he said sadly, when he talked with his daughter in the last few days; “but your prosperity I am to have no share in. Well, I suppose I have no right to complain. My life has been an erring one; but poverty is the most vicious companion that a man can consort with. If I had come into six or seven thousand a year, I might have been as starch in my notions as a bishop; but I have been obliged to live, Diana — that was the primary necessity, and I learnt to accommodate myself to it.”
That he had erred, the Captain was very ready to acknowledge. That he had sinned deeply, and had much need to repent himself of his iniquity, he was very slow to perceive. But sometimes, in the still watches of the night, when the faint lamplight on the shadowy wall was more gloomy than darkness, when the nurse, hired to assist his own man in these last days, dozed in her comfortable chair, the truth came home to his shallow soul, and Horatio Paget knew that he had been indeed a sinner, and very vile among sinners. Then, for a moment, the veil of self-deception was lifted, and he saw his past life as it had really been, — selfish, dishonourable, cruel beyond measure in reckless injury of others. For a moment the awful book was opened, and the sinner saw the fearful sum set against his name.
“What can wipe out the dread account?” he asked himself. “Is there such a thing as forgiveness for a selfish useless life — a life which is one long offence against God and man?”
In these long wakeful nights the dying man thought much of his wife. The sweet tender face came back to him, with its mournful wondering look. He knew, now, how his falsehoods and dishonours had wounded and oppressed that gentle soul. He remembered how often she had pleaded for the right, and how he had ridiculed her arguments, and set at naught her tender pleadings. He had fancied her in a manner inimical to himself when she urged the cause of some angry creditor or meek deluded landlady. Now, with the light that is not upon earth or sea shining on the picture of his past career, he could see and understand things as he had never seen or understood them before. He knew now that it was for his own sake that faithful and devoted wife had pleaded, his own interest that had been near to her pitying heart, as well as the interest of bakers and butchers, landladies and tailors.
“She might have made a good man of me, if I had let her have her way,” he thought to himself. “I know that she is in heaven. Will she plead for me, I wonder, at the foot of the Great Throne? I used to laugh at her bad English, or fly in a passion with her sometimes, poor soul, when I wanted her to pass for a lady, and she broke down outrageously. But there her voice will be heard when mine appeals in vain. Dear soul! I wonder who taught her to be so pure and unselfish, and trusting and faithful? She was a Christian without knowing it. ‘I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.’”
He thought of his wife’s lonely deathbed, and compared it with his own. For him there was luxury; by him watched a devoted and all-forgiving daughter, a generous friend and son-in-law. All that could be done to soothe the painful descent was done for him. For her there had been nothing but loneliness and sorrow.
“But she might be certain of a speedy welcome in a better home,” thought Horatio; “and I — ? Ah, dear kind creature, there the difference was all in her favour.”
As the closing scene grew nearer, he thought more and more of his gentle low-born wife, whose hold upon him in life had been so slender, whose memory had occupied until now so insignificant a place in his mind. His daughter watched with him unceasingly in the last two days and nights. His mind wandered. On the day of his death he mistook Diana for that long-lost companion.
“I have not been a kind husband, Mary, my dear,” he faltered “but the world has been hard upon me — debts — difficulties — crack regiment — expensive mess — set of gamblers — no pity on a young man without fortune — force of example — tied a millstone round my wretched neck before I was twenty-one years of age.”
Later, when the doctor had felt his pulse for the last time, he cried out suddenly, “I have made a statement of my affairs, the liabilities are numerous — the assets nil; but I rely on the clemency of this court.”
These were his last words. He sank into a kind of stupor betwixt sleeping and waking, and in this he died.
CHAPTER VII.
BETTER THAN GOLD.
The little fleet of paper boats which Mr. Sheldon had pioneered so skilfully over the commercial seas came to grief very soon after the disappearance of the admiral. A bill drawn upon the Honduras Mahogany Company, Limited, was the first to reach maturity. The bill was referred to the drawer — the drawer was not to be found.
“I have not seen Sheldon for the last fortnight,” Mr. Orcott informed the gentleman who brought him the document.
“Out of business for a fortnight?”
“He has not been in business for a month. His stepdaughter has been very ill — at death’s door, and all that kind of thing, and my governor was awfully cut up about it. There used to be a couple of doctors at the house every day, and no end of fuss. I took Sheldon his letters, and managed matters for him here, and so on. And one fine morning my young lady runs off and gets married on the quiet; so I suspect there was a good deal of shamming about the illness — and those old fogies, the doctors, winked at it. Between them all, I fancy Sheldon was completely sold; and he has turned savage and gone off somewhere in the sulks.”
“I wish he had chosen any other time for his sulks,” said the holder of the bill; “my partner and I have discounted several acceptances for him. He gave us liberal terms, and we considered any paper of his as safe as a Bank of England note; and now this confounded bill comes back to us through our bankers, noted, ‘Refer to drawer’ — a most unpleasant thing, you know, and very inconsiderate of Sheldon to leave us in such a fix.”
“He has forgotten the bill, I suppose,” said Mr. Orcott.
“Well, but you see, really now, a business man ought not to forget that kind of thing. And so Miss Halliday has made a runaway match, has she? I remember seeing her when I dined at Bayswater — an uncommonly fine girl. And she has gone and thrown herself away upon some penniless scapegrace, most likely? Now, by the bye, how about this Honduras Company, Mr. Orcott; they don’t seem to have any London offices?”
“I believe not. We’ve some of their prospectuses somewhere about, I think. Would you like to see one?”
“I should, very much.”
Mr. Orcott opened two or three drawers, and after some little trouble produced the required document.
It was a very flourishing prospectus, setting forth the enormous benefits to be derived by shareholders from the profitable dealings of the company. Some good high-sounding names figured in the list of directors, and the chairman was Captain H. N. Cromie Paget. The prospectus looked well enough, but the holder of Mr. Sheldon’s dishonoured bill was not able to derive much comfort from high-sounding phrases and high-sounding names.
“I’ll go down to Bayswater, and see if I can hear anything of your governor,” he said to Mr. Orcott.
“He was not there yesterday when I called, and his servants could tell me nothing of his whereabouts,” the young Yorkshireman said very coolly.
“Indeed!” cried the holder of the dishonoured bill in some alarm. “Now, really, that is not right; a business man ought not to do that kind of thing.”
He called a cab and drove to the Lawn. There was the smart gothic villa, with its pointed gables, and florid chimneys, and oriel windows, and in the Tudor casements of the ground-floor appeared the bills of a West-end auctioneer, announcing in large letters that the lease of this charming mansion, together with the nearly new furniture, linen, books, china, plate, carefully-selected proof-prints after distinguished modern artists, small cellar of choice wines, &c., &c., &c., would be disposed of by auction on the following day.
Mr. Sheldon’s victim went into the house, where he found some men preparing for the forthcoming sale.
“What is the meaning of all this?” he asked, aghast.
“A bill of sale, sir. Messrs. Napthali and Zabulon.”
This was enough. The holder of the bill went back to the City. Another bill came due on the following day, and before the members of the Stock Exchange took their luncheon, it was known that Philip Sheldon’s credit was among the things of the past.
“I always thought he was out of his depth,” said one set of talkers.
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