Charlotte's Inheritance Part 53

And even now, when she is mine by virtue of a bond that only death can loosen, it seems to me as if her wealth would make a kind of division between us. There are people who will always consider me a lucky adventurer, and look at my marriage as the result of clever scheming. I cannot advertise to the world the fact that I loved Charlotte Halliday from the first hour in which I saw her, and asked her to be my wife three days before I discovered her claim to John Haygarth's estate. A man can't go through the world with his justification pinned upon his breast. I think it will be my fate to be misjudged all my life. A twelvemonth ago I cared very little about the opinions of my fellow-men; but I want to be worthy of my wife in the esteem of mankind, as well as in the depths of my own moral consciousness."

"Go and finish your honeymoon," said the lawyer, digging his client in the ribs with elephantine playfulness; "the moon must be in her first quarter, I should think. Go along with you, and leave me to tackle Mr.

George Sheldon."

CHAPTER IV.

ONLY A DREAM.

"I say, Len.o.ble," Captain Paget began abruptly one afternoon when his daughter and his future son-in-law were in attendance upon his sofa, "when are you and Diana to be married? There is nothing to hinder your marriage now, you know."

Diana looked at the speaker with a grave countenance.

"Dear papa, there can be no marriage while you are so ill," she said gently.

"And afterwards, when I'm gone, you won't like to marry within six months of your father's funeral; and you will be left alone in the world. You can't hang on to Hawkehurst and his wife. The best thing you can do, Len.o.ble, is to marry her out of hand, and let me see her by my bedside as Madame Len.o.ble of Cotenoir. It will be some consolation for me to see that day. I thought to have shared your home, with a run to Paris occasionally just to freshen myself up a little; but that's all over now.

It does seem rather hard to me sometimes; and I think of Moses, and his forty years in the Desert with those ill-conditioned Israelites, who were always getting into some sc.r.a.pe of other--setting up golden calves, and that kind of thing--if he turned his back on them for twenty-four hours.

A pack of ungrateful beggars too, always ready for mutiny--regular radicals, begad! And he went through it all: the sand, and the _toujours_ quails, and the ingrat.i.tude; and after forty years of it, when he saw the Promised Land stretched before him green and fertile on the other side of the river--he died! I've been through my desert, the dreary wanderings over the barren sand, and the ingrat.i.tude of men I've served. Yes, I've gone through it all; and just as I catch a glimpse of Canaan, the curtain drops."

On this they comforted him; and sustained him with the promise of a brighter Canaan than Cotenoir.

"Yes," he said in a dreamy voice, "I read about it very often. A city with foundations of jasper and chalcedony, emerald and sardonyx; gates of pearl, pavements of gold. That's what St. John the Evangelist saw in his vision; and we've only his word for it. But there's something that I can believe and can understand: 'In my Father's house there are many mansions.' There's more hope for a sinful man of the world in that promise than is all St. John's dreams about gates of pearl and foundations of emerald."

The Captain was failing fast. He had exchanged his easy-chair for a sofa now; and the time seemed near at hand when he must exchange the sofa for his bed. After that there would remain but one last change, to the contemplation whereof the sick man was becoming daily more reconciled.

He had read his Gospel more diligently of late, and had taken comfort from those sublime pages. Do they not contain consolation, hope, promise for all--for the weary man of the world as well as for the saint? There is to be found the only creed that can adapt itself to every condition of life, and has a margin wide enough for every weakness of erring humanity. Buddhism may contain a scheme of morality almost as perfect; Mahomet may have expounded hopes that seem well-nigh as divine; but in the Gospel is the only system that will adapt itself at once to the culture of the spiritual man, and the active life of the practical worker in this lower world.

Gustave Len.o.ble was only too glad to claim his promised wife a little sooner than he had hoped to claim her. "Thou hast put me off long enough, cruel," he said; "and now it is thy father's wish that our marriage should be soon. It shall be this week; I will take no longer thine excuses. We shall be the sooner ready to receive thy friends, thy Charlotte and her Hawkehurst."

Diana smiled.

"Dear Gustave, you are always kind," she said.

It was very sweet to her to think that her new home would afford a pleasant haven for that dear friend who had sheltered her. And with Charlotte, the dear adopted sister, would come the man she had once loved, to share whose cares had once been the brightest dream.

She wondered at her own inconstancy on perceiving how completely the dream had flown. Before the stern realities of life--before sickness and sorrow and the dread shadow of death--that schoolgirl's vision had utterly melted away. It is just possible that Gustave's manly outspoken love may have helped to blot from the tablet of her mind the fantastic picture of the life that might have been. She scarcely knew whether this was so; but she did know that a new and happier existence began for her from the hour in which she gave her heart in all truth and loyalty to Gustave Len.o.ble.

The wedding was arranged to take place within a week of Captain Paget's expressly declared wish. It was to be solemnised at a church near Knightsbridge, and again at a Catholic chapel in the neighbourhood of Sloane-street; by which double ceremonial a knot would be tied that no legal quibble could hereafter loosen. Charlotte was just sufficiently recovered to obtain permission to be present at the ceremonial, after some little exercise of her persuasive powers with the medical pract.i.tioner to whose care Dr. Jedd had committed her when all danger was past.

The Captain protested, with an eager insistence, that the wedding breakfast should be eaten at his domicile.

"And Val," he said, "be sure Val is with you. I have a secret to tell him--a kind of atonement to make; some news to give him that he won't quite relish, perhaps. But that's no fault of mine."

"No bad news, I hope, papa; for Charlotte's sake as well as for Valentine's."

"That depends upon how they both take it. Your friend Charlotte is not particularly fond of money, is she?"

"Fond of money, papa? A baby knows as much of the value of money as Lotta. Except to give to beggars in the streets, or to buy pretty frivolous presents for her friends, she has neither use nor desire for money. She is the most generous, most disinterested of created beings."

"I'm very glad to hear it," said the Captain, drily. "And how about Hawkehurst, now? Do you think it was a real love-match, his marriage with Miss Halliday? No _arriere pensee_--no looking out for the main chance at the bottom of his romantic attachment, eh, Di?"

"No, papa. I am sure there was never truer love than his. I saw him under most trying circ.u.mstances, and I can pledge myself for the truth of his devotion."

"I am very glad to hear it. Be sure you bring Hawkehurst and his wife to my little breakfast. A chicken, a pine, a bottle of sparkling hock, and a fond father's blessing, are all I shall give you; but the chicken and the hock will be from Gunter, and the blessing from the bottom of a paternal heart."

Bright shone the day that gave Diana to her husband, and very beautiful looked the bride in her simple dress. Gustave Len.o.ble's marriage was no less quietly performed than that union which had secured the safety of Charlotte Halliday and the happiness of Valentine Hawkehurst. The shadow of death hovered very near bride and bridegroom; for they knew full well that he who was to preside that day at their simple marriage-feast would soon have tasted that last sacred cup which has no after-flavour of bitterness.

The breakfast promised by the Captain was arranged with much elegance.

Hothouse flowers and fruits; wines with the icedew sparkling on the dark gla.s.s; chickens and tongue, idealized by the confectioner's art, and scarcely recognizable beneath rich glazings and embellishments of jellies and forcemeats; the airiest and least earthly of lobster salads, and a pyramid of coffee-ice, testified to the glory of the Belgravian purveyor.

It had been pleasant to Captain Paget to send his orders to Gunter, certain of funds to meet the bill. It was almost a glimpse of that land of milk and honey, that Canaan in Normandy, which he was never to inhabit.

He was very weak, very ill; but the excitement of the occasion in some measure sustained and revivified him. The man who had been engaged to nurse and wait upon him had attired him with much care in a dressing-gown as elegant as the robe in which he had disported himself, a penniless young cornet, in his luxurious garrison quarters, some fifty years before. His loose white locks were crowned with an embroidered smoking-cap; his patrician instep was set off by a dainty scarlet slipper. He had put away the Gospel, and all thoughts of that dread reckoning which he had really some shadowy desire and hope to settle satisfactorily, by some poor dividend which might discharge his obligations to that merciful Creditor who forgives so many just debts.

To-day he was of the world, worldly. It was a kind of _ante-mortem_ lying-in-state--his last levee; and he was equal to the occasion.

The prettily adorned table was drawn near the sofa where the invalid host reclined, supported by numerous pillows. His daughter and her husband, Valentine, Charlotte, and Georgy, made a little circle about him. His own man, and a clerical-looking person from Gunter's, a.s.sisted at the airy banquet. Very little was eaten by any of the guests, and it was a relief to every one when the clerical personage and Captain Paget's factotum retired, after serving tea and coffee with funereal solemnity.

Valentine Hawkehurst was all gentleness and cordiality towards his old taskmaster. The wrong must indeed be dire which is considered in such an hour as this. Valentine remembered only that with this old man he had seen many troubled days; and that for him the end of all earthly wanderings was very near.

The little banquet was not served in Captain Paget's ordinary sitting-room. For this distinguished occasion the landlady had lent a dining-room and drawing-room on the ground floor, just deserted by a fashionable bachelor lodger who had left town at the close of the season.

This drawing-room on the ground floor, like the room above, overlooked the Park, and to this apartment the Captain requested his guests to adjourn, with the exception of Mr. Hawkehurst, some little time after the departure of the servants.

"I want to have a few words with Val in private," he said; "I have a secret to communicate. Diana, show Mrs. Hawkehurst the Drive. You can see the Bow from my room, but not from these lower windows. There are a good many carriages still, but it is too late for the _creme de la creme_. I remember when the West End was a desert at this time of year; but I have lived to see the levelling of all distinctions, those of time as well as of cla.s.s."

Charlotte and Diana retired to the adjoining room with Mrs. Sheldon and M. Len.o.ble. Valentine was at a loss to imagine what manner of confidential communication his late patron and employer could desire to impart to him. The cautious Horatio waited until the rest of the party were quite out of hearing, talking gaily by the open window, beyond which appeared all the fluttering life and motion of summer leaves, all the brightness of summer green below, and deep blue sky above. When they seemed to him to be quite engaged with their own conversation, Captain Paget turned to his old companion.

"Val," he said, "we have seen hard times together we've roughed it among strange places and strange people, you know and so on; and I think there is a friendly kind of feeling between us?"

He held out his poor wasted hand, and Valentine grasped it firmly in his own with prompt cordiality.

"My dear governor, I have no feeling in my heart that is not friendly to you."

This was perfectly true.

"And even if I had been inclined to bear any grudge against you on account of the old days, when, you know, you were a little apt to be indifferent as to what sc.r.a.pe you left me in, provided you got off scot-free yourself; if I had been inclined to remember that kind of thing (which, on my honour, I am not), your daughter's n.o.ble courage and devotion in the time of my dear wife's peril should have stood against that old wrong. I cannot tell you how deeply I feel her goodness in that bitter time."

"She is a Paget," murmured the Captain, complacently. "_n.o.blesse oblige._"

Valentine could scarcely refrain from a smile as he remembered the many occasions upon which the obligations of a n.o.ble lineage had weighed very lightly on his aristocratic patron.

"Yes, Val," the Captain resumed, in a dreamy tone, "we have seen many strange things together. When I began my travels through this world, in the palmy days of the Regency, I little thought what a weary journey it was to be, and what queer people I was to encounter among my fellow-pa.s.sengers. However, I've come to the last stage of the long journey now, and I thank Providence that it ends so comfortably."

To this Valentine a.s.sented kindly, but he was at a loss to understand why Captain Paget should have required the adjournment of the rest of the party before giving utterance to these mild commonplaces.

For some moments the invalid relapsed into thoughtful silence. Then, rousing himself as if with an effort, he took a few sips of a cooling drink that stood by his side, and began with a startling abruptness.