Charlotte's Inheritance Part 16

Those foolish dreams were done with now; and that other dream, of a life to be spent with the reckless companion of her girlhood, was lost to Diana Paget. There was no point to which she could look forward in the future, no star to lure her onward upon life's journey. Her present position was sufficiently comfortable; and she told herself that she must needs be weak and wicked if she were not content with her lot. But beyond the present she dared not look, so blank was the prospect--a desert, without even the mirage; for her dreams and delusions were gone with her hope.

Possessed by such a sense of loneliness, it is scarcely strange if there seemed to her a gleam of joy, a faint glimmer of hope, in the newly awakened affection of her father. She began to believe him, and to take comfort from the thought that he was drifting to a haven where he might lie moored, with other battered old hulks of pirate and privateer, inglorious and at rest. To work for him and succour him in his declining years seemed a brighter prospect to this hopeless woman of four-and-twenty than a future of lonely independence. "It is the nature of woman to lean," says the masculine philosopher; but is it not rather her nature to support and sustain, or else why to her is entrusted the sublime responsibility of maternity? Diana was pleased to think that a remorseful reprobate might be dependent on her toil, and owe his reformation to her influence. She was indeed a new Antigone, ready to lead him in his moral blindness to an altar of atonement more pure than the ensanguined shrine of the Athenian Eumenides.

Her visits to Omega Street were not entirely devoted to _tete-a-tetes_ with her father. By reason of those coincidences which are so common to the lives of some people, it generally happened that M. Len.o.ble dropped in upon his invalid friend on the very day of Miss Paget's visit. M.

Len.o.ble was in London on business, and this business apparently necessitated frequent interviews with Captain Paget. Of course such interviews could not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was wont, therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion of the young lady's visit; and would even, with an inconsistent gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay to its utmost limit.

"It will always be time for my affairs, Miss Paget," he urged, "and I know how your father values your society; and he well may value it. I only hope my daughters will be as good to me, if I have the gout, by-and-by."

Diana had spent nearly a dozen evenings in Omega Street, and on each of those evenings had happened to meet M. Len.o.ble. She liked him better on every occasion of these accidental meetings. He was indeed a person whom it was difficult for any one to dislike, and in the thirty-four years of his life had never made an enemy. She had been pleased with him on the first evening; his bright handsome face, his courteous reverence for her s.e.x--expressed in every word, every tone, every look--his sympathy with all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, were calculated to charm the coldest and most difficult of judges. Diana liked, and even admired him, but it was from an abstract point of view. He seemed a creature as remote from her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and admired in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of her memory to-morrow.

There was only one point in connection with Gustave Len.o.ble which occupied her serious thoughts; and this was the nature of his relations with her father.

This was a subject that sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster--now by one species of falsehood and trickery, now by another--rarely incautious, but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that was spread for him?

The talk of business, the frequent interviews, the evident elation of her father's spirits, combined to a.s.sure her that some great scheme was in progress, some commercial enterprise, perhaps not entirely dishonest--nay even honest, when regarded from the sanguine speculator's point of view, but involving the hazard of Gustave Len.o.ble's fortune.

"It is quite as easy for my father to delude himself as it is for him to delude others. This M. Len.o.ble is ignorant of English commerce, no doubt, and will be ready to believe anything papa tells him. And he is so candid, so trusting, it would be very hard if he were to be a loser through his confidence in papa. His daughters, too; the hazard of his fortune is peril to their future." Such doubts and fears, gradually developed by reflection took stronger hold on Miss Paget's mind after every fresh visit to Omega Street. She saw the Frenchman's light-hearted confidence in all humanity, her father's specious manner and air of quixotic honour. His sanguine tone, his excellent spirits, filled her with intolerable alarm. Alas! when had she ever seen her father in good spirits, except when some gentlemanly villany was in progress?

Miss Paget endured this uneasiness of mind as long as she could, and then determined to warn the supposed victim. She planned the mode of her warning, and arranged for herself a diplomatic form which would reflect the least possible discredit upon her father; and having once come to this resolution, she was not slow to put it into effect.

When her father was about to send for a cab to convey her back to Bayswater, after her next visit to Omega Street, she surprised him by intercepting his order.

"There is a cab-stand in Sloane Square, papa," she said; "and if M.

Len.o.ble will be so kind as to take me there, I--I would rather get the cab from the stand. The man charges more when he is fetched off the rank, I believe."

She could think of no better excuse for seeing Gustave alone than this most sordid pretence. She blushed as she thought how mean a sound it must have in the ears of the man for whose advantage she was plotting. Happily M. Len.o.ble was not among the people who see nothing but meanness in the desire to save sixpence. His aunt Cydalise had shown him the loveliness of poverty; for there are vows of holy poverty that need no spoken formula, and that are performed without the cloister.

"Poor girl!" thought M. Len.o.ble; "I dare say even the cost of her coach is a consideration with her; and one dare not pay the coachman."

This was how Gustave read that blush of shame which for a moment dyed Diana's cheek. Her father's was a very different reading.

"The minx sees my game, and is playing into my hands," thought he. "So demure as she is, too! I should never have supposed her capable of such a clever manoeuvre to secure ten minutes' _tete-a-tete_ with an eligible admirer."

He bade his daughter good night with more than usual effusion. He began to think that she might prove herself worthy of him after all.

The district between Omega Street and Sloane Square is after dusk of all places the most solitary. It is the border-land of Pimlico, or, to borrow from Sidney Smith, the knuckle end of Belgravia. In these regions of desolation and smoke-blackened stucco Diana and her companion were as secure from the interruption of the jostling crowd as they might have been in the primeval forests of Central America.

Miss Paget's task was not a pleasant one. Shape her warning as she might, it must reflect some discredit upon her father. He had of late been kind to her; she felt this keenly to-night, and it seemed that the thing she was about to do was a sort of parricide. Not against her father's life was her cruel hand to be lifted; but her still more cruel tongue was to slay her father's good name.

"This M. Len.o.ble likes him and trusts him," she thought to herself. "What a happiness for that poor broken-down old man to have so kind a friend!

And I am going to interfere in a manner that may put an end to this friends.h.i.+p?"

This is the shape which her thoughts a.s.sumed as she walked silently by Gustave's side, with her hand lying lightly on his arm. He spoke to her two or three times about the dulness of the neighbourhood, the coldness of the night, or some other equally thrilling subject; but, finding by her replies that she was thinking deeply, he made no further attempt at conversation.

"Poor child! she has some trouble on her mind, perhaps," he thought to himself sadly, for his sympathy with this young lady was a very profound feeling. This was the first occasion on which he had ever been alone with her, and he wondered to find what a strange emotion was developed by the novelty of the situation. He had married at twenty years of age, and had never known those brief fancies or foolish pa.s.sions which waste the freshness of mind and heart. He had married a wife whom he never learned to love; but his nature was so essentially a happy one, that he had failed to discover the something wanting in his life. In all relations--as grandson, husband, father, master--he had been "all simply perfect," as Mademoiselle Cydalise p.r.o.nounced him; and in a mind occupied by cares for the welfare and happiness of others, he had never found that blank which needed to be filled in order to make his own life completely happy. Only of late, in his thirty-fourth year, had he come to the knowledge of a feeling deeper than dutiful regard for an invalid wife, or affectionate solicitude for motherless children; only of late had he felt his heart stirred by a more thrilling emotion than that placid resignation to the will of Providence which had distinguished his courts.h.i.+p of Mademoiselle de Nerague.

They had nearly reached Sloane Square before Diana took courage to broach the subject so naturally repugnant to her. She had need to remember that the welfare of M. Len.o.ble and all belonging to him might be dependent on her fort.i.tude.

"M. Len.o.ble," she began at last, "I am going to say something I shall find it most painful to utter, but which I feel it my duty to say to you.

I can only ask you to receive it in a generous spirit."

"But, my dear Miss Paget, I pray you not to say anything that is disagreeable to you. Why should you give yourself pain?--why--"

"Because it is my duty to warn you of a danger which I know only too well, and of which you may be quite ignorant. You are my father's friend, M. Len.o.ble; and he has very few friends. I should be sorry if anything I were to say should rob him of your regard."

"Nothing that you say shall rob him of my friends.h.i.+p. But why should you persist thus to say anything that is painful? What can you tell me that I do not know, or that I cannot guess? Will you tell me that he is poor? But I know it. That he is a broken-down gentleman? And that also I know. What, then, would you tell me? That he has a daughter who is to him a treasure without price? Ah, mademoiselle, what must I be if I did not know that also?--I, who have contemplated that daughter so many times--ah, so many!--when she could not know with what sympathy my eyes watched her dutiful looks, with what profound emotion my heart interpreted her life of affectionate sacrifice."

There was a warmth, a tenderness in his tones which touched Diana's heart as it had not been touched of late. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the full meaning of those tender accents came home to her. The love that she had once dreamed of from the lips of another spoke to her to-night in the words of this stranger. The sympathy for which she had yearned long ago, in the days of her wanderings with Valentine, was given to her to-night without stint or measure. Unhappily it came too late; and it did not come from the only lips which, as it seemed to her to-night, could make sympathy precious or love divine. But to this lonely girl a good man's affection seemed a treasure for which she must needs be deeply grateful.

It was something to discover that she could be loved.

"I too," she said to herself,--"I, of whose presence Valentine is scarcely conscious when he enters a room where Charlotte and I are together; I, whom he greets day after day with the same careless words, the same indifferent look; I, who might fade and waste day by day with some slow disease, until I sank into the grave, before he would be conscious of any change in my face,--is it possible that amongst the same race of beings there can be any creature so widely different from Valentine Hawkehurst as to love _me_?"

This was the bitter complaint of her heart as she compared the tenderness of this stranger with the indifference of the man to whom, for three long years of her girlhood, she had given every dream, every thought, every hope of her existence. She could not put him away from her heart all at once. The weak heart still fondly clung to the dear familiar image. But the more intensely she had felt the cold neglect of Valentine, the more grateful to her seemed the unsought affection of Gustave Len.o.ble.

"You know me as little as you know my father, M. Len.o.ble," she said, after a long pause, during which they had walked to the end of the long dull street, and were close to the square. "Let us go back a little way, please; I have much more to say. I wish you to be my father's friend always, but, if possible, without danger to yourself. My father is one of those sanguine people who are always ready to embark in some new enterprise, and who go on hoping and dreaming, after the failure of a dozen schemes. He has no money, that I know of, to lose himself, and that fact may make him, unconsciously, reckless of other people's money. I have heard him speak of business relations with you, M. Len.o.ble, and it is on that account I venture to speak so plainly. I do not want my poor father to delude you, as he has often deluded himself. If you have already permitted him to involve you in any speculation, I entreat you to try to withdraw from it--to lose a little money, if necessary, rather than to lose all. If you are not yet involved, let my warning save you from any hazard."

"My dear Miss Paget, I thank you a thousand times for your advice, your n.o.ble thoughtfulness for others. But no, there is no hazard. The business in which your father is occupied for me is not a speculation. It involves no risk beyond the expenditure of a few thousand francs, which, happily, I can afford to lose. I am not at liberty to tell you the nature of the business in question, because I have promised your father to keep that a secret. Dear young lady, you need have no fear for me. I am not a rash speculator. The first years of my life were pa.s.sed in extreme poverty--the poverty that is near neighbour to starvation. That is a lesson one cannot forget. How shall I thank you for your concern for me?--so generous, so n.o.ble!"

"It was only my duty to warn you of my poor father's weakness," replied Diana. "If I needed thanks, your kindness to him is the only boon I could ask. He has bitter need of a friend."

"And he shall never lack one while I live, if only for your sake." The last half of the sentence was spoken in lower tones than the first. Diana was conscious of the lurking tenderness of those few words, and the consciousness embarra.s.sed her. Happily they had reached the end of the quiet street by this time, and had emerged into the busier square. No more was said till they reached the cab-stand, when Diana wished her companion good night.

"I am going back to Normandy in a week, Miss Paget; shall I see you again before I leave England?"

"I really don't know; our meetings are generally accidental, you see."

"O yes, of course, always accidental," replied Gustave, smiling.

"I am sorry you are going to leave London--for papa's sake."

"And I, too, am sorry--for my own sake. But, you see, when one has daughters, and a farm, and a chateau, one must be on the spot. I came to England for one week only, and I have stayed six."

"You have found so much to amuse you in London?"

"Nay, mademoiselle, so much to interest me."

"It is almost the same thing, is it not?"

"A thousand times no! To be amused and to be interested--ah, what can be so widely different as those two conditions of mind!"

"Indeed! Good night, Mr. Len.o.ble. Please ask the cabman to drive as fast as he can venture to do with consideration for his horse. I am afraid I shall be late, and my friends will be anxious about me."

"You will be late. You consider your friends at Bayswater, and you consider even the cabman's horse. You are charity itself. Will you not consider me a little also, Miss Paget?"

"But how?"

"Let me see you before I go back to Normandy. Your papa likes to see you twice a week, I know. This is Monday night; will you come to see him on Thursday?"