Birds of Prey Part 49

"Yes," he said, "I have long been aware that Miss Halliday has no legal claim on her father's fortune."

"There you have hit the mark," cried Mr. Sheldon. "She has no claim to a sixpence in law; but to an honourable man that is not the question.

Poor Halliday's money amounted in all to something like eighteen thousand pounds. That sum pa.s.sed into my possession when I married my poor friend's widow, who had too much respect for me to hamper my position as a man of business by any legal restraints that would have hindered my making the wisest use of her money. I have used that money, and I need scarcely tell you that I have employed it with considerable advantage to myself and Georgy. I therefore can afford to be generous, and I mean to be so; but the manner in which I do things must be of my own choosing. My own children are dead, and there is no one belonging to one that stands in Miss Halliday's way. When I die she will inherit a handsome fortune. And if she marries with my approval, I shall present her with a very comfortable dowry. I think you will allow that this is fair enough."

"Nothing could be fairer or more generous," replied Valentine with enthusiasm.

Mr. Sheldon's agreeable candour had entirely subjugated him. Despite of all that George had said to his brother's prejudice, he was ready to believe implicitly in Philip's fair dealing.

"And in return for this I ask something on your part," said Mr.

Sheldon. "I want you to give me your promise that you will take no serious step without my knowledge. You won't steal a march upon me. You won't walk off with Charlotte some fine morning and marry her at a registry-office, or anything of that kind, eh?"

"I will not," answered Valentine resolutely, with a very unpleasant recollection of his dealings with George Sheldon.

"Give me your hand upon that," cried the stockbroker.

Upon this the two men shook hands, and Valentine's fingers were almost crushed in the cold hard grip of Mr. Sheldon's muscular hand. And now there came upon Valentine's ear the sound of one of Mendelssohn's _Lieder ohne Worte_, tenderly played by the gentle hands he knew so well. And the lover began to feel that he could no longer sit sipping the stockbroker's port with a hypocritical pretence of appreciation, and roasting himself before the blazing fire, the heat whereof was multiplied to an insufferable degree by grate and fender of reflecting steel.

Mr. Sheldon was not slow to perceive his guest's impatience, and having made exactly the impression he wanted to make, was quite willing that the interview should come to an end.

"You had better be off to the drawing-room," he said, good naturedly; "I see you are in that stage of the fever in which masculine society is only a bore. You can go and hear Charlotte play, while I read the evening papers and write a few letters. You can let her know that you and I understand each other. Of course we shall see you very often.

You'll eat your Christmas turkey with us, and so on; and I shall trust to your honour for the safe keeping of that promise you made me just now," said Mr. Sheldon.

"And I shall keep an uncommonly close watch upon you and the young lady, my friend," added that gentleman, communing with his own thoughts as he crossed the smart little hall, where two Birmingham iron knights in chain armour bestrode their gallant chargers, on two small tables of sham malachite.

Mr. Sheldon's library was not a very inspiring apartment. His ideas of a _sanctum sanctorum_ did not soar above the commonplace. A decent square room, furnished with plenty of pigeon-holes, a neat bra.s.s scale for the weighing of letters, a copying-press, a waste-paper basket, a stout bra.s.s-mounted office inkstand capable of holding a quart or so of ink, and a Post-office Directory, were all he asked for his hours of leisure and meditation. In a handsome glazed bookcase, opposite his writing-table, appeared a richly-bound edition of the _Waverley_ _Novels_, Knight's _Shakespeare_, Hume and Smollett, Fielding, Goldsmith, and Gibbon; but, except when Georgy dusted the sacred volumes with her own fair hands, the gla.s.s doors of the bookcase were never opened.

Mr. Sheldon turned on the gas, seated himself at his comfortable writing-table, and took up his pen. A quire of office note-paper, with his City address upon it, lay ready beneath his hand; but he did not begin to write immediately. He sat for some time with his elbows on the table, and his chin in his hands, meditating with dark fixed brows.

"Can I trust her?" he asked himself. "Is it safe to have her near me--after--after what she said to me in Fitzgeorge-street? Yes, I think I can trust her, up to a certain point; but beyond that I must be on my guard. She might be more dangerous than a stranger. One thing is quite clear--she must be provided for somehow or other. The question is, whether she is to be provided for in this house or out of it; and whether I can make her serve me as I want to be served?"

This was the gist of Mr. Sheldon's meditations; but they lasted for some time. The question which he had to settle was an important one, and he was too wise a man not to contemplate a subject from every possible point of sight before arriving at his decision. He took a letter-clip from one side of his table, and turned over several open letters in search of some particular doc.u.ment.

He came at last to the letter he wanted. It was written on very common note-paper, with brown-looking ink, and the penmanship was evidently that of an uneducated person; but Mr. Sheldon studied its contents with the air of a man who is dealing with no unimportant missive.

This was the letter which so deeply interested the stockbroker:--

"HONORED SIR--This coms hopping that You and Your Honored ladie are well has it leevs me tho nott so strong has i coud wish wich his nott too bee expect at my time off life my pore neffew was tooke with the tyfus last tewsday weak was giv over on thirsday and we hav berried him at kensil grean Honored Mr. Sheldon I hav now no home my pore neece must go hout into survis. Luckly there har no Childring and the pore gurl can gett hur living as housmade wich she were in survis hat hi gate befor she marrid my pore Joseff Honored sir i ham trewly sorry too trubbel you b.u.t.t i think for hold times you will forgiv the libertey off this letter i would nott hintrewd on you iff i had enny frend to help me in my old aig,

"Your obeddient survent."

"17 Litle Tottles-yarde lambeft."

AN WOOLPER

"No friend to help her in her old age," muttered Mr. Sheldon; "that means that she intends to throw herself upon me for the rest of her life, and to put me to the expense of burying her when she is so obliging as to die. Very pleasant, upon my word! A man has a servant in the days of his poverty, pays her every fraction he owes her in the shape of wages, and wishes her good speed when she goes to settle down among her relations; and one fine morning, when he has got into a decent position, she writes to inform him that her nephew is dead, and that she expects him to provide for her forthwith. That is the gist of Mrs. Woolper's letter; and if it were not for one or two considerations, I should be very much inclined to take a business-like view of the case, and refer the lady to her parish. What are poor-rates intended for, I should like to know, if a man who pays four-and-twopence in the pound is to be pestered in this sort of way?"

And then Mr. Sheldon, having given vent to his vexation by such reflections as these, set himself to examine the matter in another light.

"I must manage to keep sweet with Nancy Woolper somehow or other, that's very clear; for a chattering old woman is about as dangerous an enemy as a man can have. I might provide for her decently enough out of doors for something like a pound a week; and that would be a cheap enough way of paying off all old scores. But I'm not quite clear that it would be a safe way. A life of idleness might develop Mrs. Woolper's latent propensity for gossip--and gossip is what I want to avoid. No, that plan won't do."

For some moments Mr. Sheldon meditated silently, with his brows fixed even more sternly than before. Then he struck his hand suddenly on the morocco-covered table, and uttered his thoughts aloud.

"I'll risk it," he said; "she shall come into the house and serve my interests by keeping a sharp watch upon Charlotte Halliday. There shall be no secret marriage between those two. No, my friend Valentine, you may be a very clever fellow, but you are not quite clever enough to steal a march upon me."

Having arrived at this conclusion, Mr. Sheldon wrote a few lines to Nancy Woolper, telling her to call upon him at the Lawn.

CHAPTER V.

MR. SHELDON IS BENEVOLENT.

Nancy Woolper had lost little of her activity during the ten years that had gone by since she received her wages from Mr. Sheldon, on his breaking up his establishment in Fitzgeorge-street. Her master had given her the opportunity of remaining in his service, had she so pleased; but Mrs. Woolper was a person of independent, not to say haughty, spirit, and she had preferred to join her small fortunes with those of a nephew who was about to begin business as a chandler and general dealer in a very small way, rather than to submit herself to the sway of that lady whom she insisted on calling Miss Georgy.

"It's so long since I've been used to a missus," she said, when announcing her decision to Mr. Sheldon, "I doubt if I could do with Miss Georgy's finnickin ways. I should feel tewed like, if she came into the kitchen, worritin' and asking questions. I've been used to my own ways, and I don't suppose I could do with hers."

So Nancy departed, to enter on a career of unpaid drudgery in the household of her kinsman, and to lose the last shilling of her small savings in the futile endeavour to sustain the fortunes of the general dealer. His death, following very speedily upon his insolvency, left the poor soul quite adrift; and in this extremity she had been fain to make her appeal to Mr. Sheldon. His reply came in due course, but not without upwards of a week's delay; during which time Nancy Woolper's spirits sank very low, while a dreary vision of a living grave--called a workhouse--loomed more and more darkly upon her poor old eyes. She had well-nigh given up all hope of succour from her old master when the letter came, and she was the more inclined to be grateful for very small help after this interval of suspense. It was not without strong emotion that Mrs. Woolper obeyed her old master's summons. She had nursed the hard, cold man of the world whom she was going to see once more, after ten years of severance; and though it was more difficult for her to imagine that Philip Sheldon, the stockbroker, was the same Philip she had carried in her stout arms, and hushed upon her breast forty years ago, than it would have been to fancy the dead who had lived in those days restored to life and walking by her side, still, she could not forget that such things had been, and could not refrain from looking at her master with more loving eyes because of that memory.

A strange dark cloud had arisen between her and her master's image during the latter part of her service in Fitzgeorge-street; but, little by little, the cloud had melted away, leaving the familiar image clear and unshadowed as of old. She had suffered her mind to be filled by a suspicion so monstrous, that for a time it held her as by some fatal spell; but with reflection came the a.s.surance that this thing could not be. Day by day she saw the man whom she had suspected going about the common business of life, coldly serene of aspect, untroubled of manner, confronting fortune with his head erect, living quietly in the house where he had been wont to live, haunted by no dismal shadows, subject to no dark hours of remorse, no sudden access of despair, always equable, business-like, and untroubled; and she told herself that such a man could not be guilty of the unutterable horror she had imagined.

For a year things had gone on thus, and then came the marriage with Mrs. Halliday. Mr. Sheldon went down to Barlingford for the performance of that interesting ceremony; and Nancy Woolper bade farewell to the house in Fitzgeorge-street, and handed the key to the agent, who was to deliver it in due course to Mr. Sheldon's successor.

To-day, after a lapse of more than ten years, Mrs. Woolper sat in the stockbroker's study, facing the scrutinising gaze of those bright black eyes, which had been familiar to her of old, and which had lost none of their cold glitter in the wear and tear of life.

"Then you think you can be of some use in the house, as a kind of overlooker of the other servants, eh, Nancy--to prevent waste, and gadding out of doors, and so on?" said Mr. Sheldon, interrogatively.

"Ay, sure, that I can, Mr. Philip," answered the old woman promptly; "and if I don't save you more money than I cost you, the sooner you turn me out o' doors the better. I know what London servants are, and I know their ways; and if Miss Georgy doesn't take to the housekeeping, I know as how things must be hugger-mugger-like below stairs, however smart and tidy things may be above."

"Mrs. Sheldon knows about as much of housekeeping as a baby," replied Philip, with supreme contempt. "She'll not interfere with you; and if you serve me faithfully--"

"That I allers did, Mr. Philip."

"Yes, yes; I daresay you did. But I want faithful service in the future as well as in the past. Of course you know that I have a stepdaughter?"

"Tom Halliday's little girl, as went to school at Scarborough."

"The same. But poor Tom's little girl is now a fine young woman, and a source of considerable anxiety to me. I am bound to say she is an excellent girl--amiable, obedient, and all that kind of thing; but she is a girl, and I freely confess that I am not learned in the ways of girls; and I'm very much inclined to be afraid of them."

"As how, sir?"

"Well, you see, Nancy, they come home from school with their silly heads full of romantic stuff, fit for nothing but to read novels and strum upon the piano; and before you know where you are, they fall over head and ears in love with the first decent-looking young man who pays them a compliment. At least, that's my experience."

"Meaning Miss Halliday, sir?" asked Nancy, simply. "Has she fallen in love with some young chap?"

"She has, and with a young chap who is not yet in a position to support a wife. Now, if this girl were my own child, I should decidedly set my face against this marriage; but as she is only my stepdaughter, I wash my hands of all responsibility in the matter. 'Marry the man you have chosen, my dear,' say I; 'all I ask is, that you don't marry him until he can give you a comfortable home.' 'Very well, papa,' says my young lady in her most dutiful manner, and 'Very well, sir,' says my young gentleman; and they both declare themselves agreeable to any amount of delay, provided the marriage comes off some time between this and doomsday."