Charlotte's Inheritance - Mary Elizabeth Braddon (best e book reader for android .TXT) 📗

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 hope 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