Birds of Prey Part 46

"Really--really--really! Don't try to shake my faith in him, Diana; it is not to be shaken. He has told me a little about the past, though I can see that it pains him very much to speak of it. He has told me of his friendless youth, spent amongst unprincipled people, and what a mere waif and stray he was until he met me. And I am to be his pole-star, dear, to guide him in the right path. Do you know, Di, I cannot picture to myself anything sweeter than that--to be a good influence for the person one loves. Valentine says his whole nature has undergone a change since he has known me. What am I that I should work so good a change in my dear one? It is very foolish, is it not, Di?"

"Yes, Charlotte," replied the voice of reason from the lips of Miss Paget; "it is all foolishness from beginning to end, and I can foresee nothing but trouble as the result of such folly. What will your mamma say to such an engagement? or what will Mr. Sheldon say?"

"Yes, that is the question," returned Charlotte, very seriously. "Dear mamma is one of the kindest creatures in the world, and I'm sure she would consent to anything rather than see me unhappy. And then, you know, she likes Valentine very much, because he has given her orders for the theatres, and all that kind of thing. But, whatever mamma thinks, she will be governed by what Mr. Sheldon thinks; and of course he will be against our marriage."

"Our marriage!" It was a settled matter, then--a thing that was to be sooner or later; and there remained only the question as to how and when it was to be. Diana sat like a statue, enduring her pain. So may have suffered the Christian martyrs in their death-agony; so suffers a woman when the one dear hope of her life is reft from her, and she dare not cry aloud.

"Mr. Sheldon is the last man in the world to permit such a marriage,"

she said presently.

"Perhaps," replied Charlotte; "but I am not going to sacrifice Valentine for Mr. Sheldon's pleasure. Mr. Sheldon has full power over mamma and her fortune, but he has no real authority where I am concerned. I am as free as air, Diana, and I have not a penny in the world. Is not that delightful?"

The girl asked this question in all good faith, looking up at her friend with a radiant countenance. What irony there was in the question for Diana Paget, whose whole existence had been poisoned by the lack of that sterling coin of the realm which seemed such sordid dross in the eyes of Charlotte!

"What do you mean, Charlotte?"

"I mean, that even his worst enemies cannot accuse Valentine of any mercenary feeling. He does not ask me to marry him for the sake of my fortune."

"Does he know your real position?"

"Most fully. And now, Diana, tell me that you will try to like him, for my sake, and that you will be kind, and will speak a good word for me to mamma by-and-by, when I have told her all."

"When do you mean to tell her?"

"Directly--or almost directly. I scarcely know how to set about it. I am sure it has been hard enough to tell you."

"My poor Charlotte! What an ungrateful wretch I must be!"

"My dear Diana, you have no reason to be grateful. I love you very dearly, and I could not live in this house without you. It is I who have reason to be grateful, when I remember how you bear with mamma's fidgety ways, and with Mr. Sheldon's gloomy temper, and all for love of me."

"Yes, Lotta, for love of you," Miss Paget answered, with a sigh; "and I will do more than that for love of you."

She had her arm round her happy rival's beautiful head, and she was looking down at the sweet upturned face with supreme tenderness. She felt no anger against this fair enslaver, who had robbed her of her little lamb. She only felt some touch of anger against the Providence which had decreed that the lamb should be so taken.

No suspicion of her friend's secret entered Charlotte Halliday's mind.

In all their intercourse Diana had spoken very little of Valentine; and in the little she had said there had been always the same half-bitter, half-disdainful tone. Charlotte, in her simple candour, accepted this tone as the evidence of Miss Paget's aversion to her father's _protege_.

"Poor Di does not like to see her father give so much of his friendship to a stranger while she is neglected," thought Miss Halliday; and having once jumped at this conclusion, she made no further effort to penetrate the mysteries of Diana's mind.

She was less than ever inclined to speculation about Diana's feelings now that she was in love, and blest with the sweet consciousness that her love was returned. Tender and affectionate as she was, she could not quite escape that taint of egotism which is the ruling vice of fortunate lovers. Her mind was not wide enough to hold much more than one image, which demanded so large a s.p.a.ce.

CHAPTER II.

MRS. SHELDON ACCEPTS HER DESTINY.

Miss Halliday had an interview with her mother that evening in Mrs.

Sheldon's dressing-room, while that lady was preparing for rest, with considerable elaboration of detail in the way of hair-brushing, and putting away of neck-ribbons and collars and trinkets in smart little boxes and handy little drawers, all more or less odorous from the presence of dainty satin-covered sachets. The sachets, and the drawers, and boxes, and trinkets were Mrs. Sheldon's best anchorage in this world. Such things as these were the things that made life worth endurance for this poor weak little woman; and they were more real to her than her daughter, because more easy to realise. The beautiful light-hearted girl was a being whose existence had been always something of a problem for Georgina Sheldon. She loved her after her own feeble fashion, and would have jealously a.s.serted her superiority over every other daughter in the universe; but the power to understand her or to sympathise with her had not been given to that narrow mind.

The only way in which Mrs. Sheldon's affection showed itself was unquestioning indulgence and the bestowal of frivolous gifts, chosen with no special regard to Charlotte's requirements, but rather because they happened to catch Mrs. Sheldon's eye as they glittered or sparkled in the windows of Bayswater repositories.

Mr. Sheldon happened to be dining out on this particular evening. He was a guest at a great City feast, to which some of the richest men upon 'Change had been bidden; so Miss Halliday had an excellent opportunity for making her confession.

Poor Georgy was not a little startled by the avowal.

"My darling Lotta!" she screamed, "do you think your papa would ever consent to such a thing?"

"I think my dear father would have consented to anything likely to secure my happiness, mamma," the girl answered sadly.

She was thinking how different this crisis in her life would have seemed if the father she had loved so dearly had been spared to counsel her.

"I was not thinking of my poor dear first husband," said Georgy. This numbering of her husbands was always unpleasant to Charlotte. It seemed such a very business-like mode of description to be applied to the father she so deeply regretted. "I was thinking of your step-papa,"

continued Mrs. Sheldon.

"He would never consent to your marrying Mr. Hawkehurst, who really seems to have nothing to recommend him except his good looks and an obliging disposition with regard to orders for the theatres."

"I am not bound to consult my stepfather's wishes. I only want to please you, mamma."

"But, my dear, I cannot possibly consent to anything that Mr. Sheldon disapproves."

"O, mamma, dear kind mamma, do have an opinion of your own for once in a way! I daresay Mr. Sheldon is the best possible judge of everything connected with the Stock Exchange and the money-market; but don't let him choose a husband for me. Let me have your approval, mamma, and I care for no one else. I don't want to marry against your will. But I am sure you like Mr. Hawkehurst."

Mrs. Sheldon shook her head despondingly.

"It's all very well to like an agreeable young man as an occasional visitor," she said, "especially when most of one's visitors are middle-aged City people. But it is a very different thing when one's only daughter talks of marrying him. I can't imagine what can have put such an idea as marriage into your head. It is only a few months since you came home from school; and I fancied that you would have stopped with me for years before you thought of settling."

Miss Halliday made a wry face.

"Dear mamma," she said, "I don't want to 'settle.' That is what one's housemaid says, isn't it, when she talks of leaving service and marrying some young man from the baker's or the grocer's? Valentine and I are not in a hurry to be married. I am sure, for my own part, I don't care how long our engagement lasts. I only wish to be quite candid and truthful with you, mamma; and I thought it a kind of duty to tell you that he loves me, and that--I love him--very dearly."

These last words were spoken with extreme shyness.

Mrs. Sheldon laid down her hair-brushes while she contemplated her daughter's blushing face. Those blushes had become quite a chronic affection with Miss Halliday of late.

"But, good gracious me, Charlotte," she exclaimed, growing peevish in her sense of helplessness, "who is to tell Mr. Sheldon?"

"There is no necessity for Mr. Sheldon to be enlightened yet awhile, mamma. It is to you I owe duty and obedience--not to him. Pray keep my secret, kindest and most indulgent of mothers, and--and ask Valentine to come and see you now and then."

"Ask him to come and see me, Charlotte! You must know very well that I never invite any one to dinner except at Mr. Sheldon's wish. I am sure I quite tremble at the idea of a dinner. There is such trouble about the waiting, and such dreadful uncertainty about the cooking. And if one has it all done by Birch's people, one's cook gives warning next morning," added poor Georgy, with a dismal recollection of recent perplexities. "I am sure I often wish myself young again, in the dairy at Hyley farm, making matrimony cakes for a tea-party, with a ring and a fourpenny-piece hidden in the middle. I'm sure the Hyley tea-parties were pleasanter than Mr. Sheldon's dinners, with those solemn City people, who can't exist without clear turtle and red mullet."

"Ah, mother dear, our lives were altogether happier in those days. I delight in the Yorkshire tea-parties, and the matrimony cakes, and all the talk and laughter about the fourpenny-piece and the ring. I remember getting the fourpenny-piece at Newhall last year. And that means that one is to die an old maid, you know. And now I am engaged.

As to the dinners, mamma, Mr. Sheldon may keep them all for himself and his City friends. Valentine is the last person in the world to care for clear turtle. If you will let him drop in sometimes of an afternoon--say once a week or so--when you, and I, and Diana are sitting at our work in the drawing-room, and if you will let him hand us our cups at our five-o'clock tea, he will be the happiest of men. He adores tea. You'll let him come, won't you, dear? O, mamma, I feel just like a servant who asks to be allowed to see her 'young man.' Will you let my 'young man' come to tea once in a way?"

"Well, Charlotte, I'm sure I don't know," said Mrs. Sheldon, with increasing helplessness. "It's really a very dreadful position for me to be placed in."

"Quite appalling, is it not, mamma? But then I suppose it is a position that people afflicted with daughters must come to sooner or later."