Charlotte's Inheritance by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (best beach reads .txt) 📖

a homeless wretch makes the same choice."

For some minutes there was silence. Diana stood with her elbows resting on the chimneypiece, her face covered with her hands.

"O Lord, teach me to do the thing which is right!" she prayed, and in the next breath acted on the impulse of the moment.

"What would you have me do?" she asked.

"What any one but an idiot would do of her own accord--accept the good fortune that has dropped into your lap. Do you think such luck as yours goes begging every day?"

"You would have me accept Gustave Lenoble's offer, no matter what falsehoods may be involved in my acceptance of it?"

"I can see no reason for falsehood. Any one but an idiot would honour such a man; any one but an idiot would thank Providence for such good fortune."

"Very well, papa," exclaimed Diana, with a laugh that had no mirthful music, "I will not be the exceptional idiot. If M. Lenoble does me the honour to repeat his offer--and I think from his manner he means to do so--I will accept it."

"He shall repeat it!" cried the Captain, throwing off his assumption of the tragic father. The Oedipus Coloneus, the Lear--the venerable victim of winter winds and men's ingratitude--was transformed in a moment into an elderly Jeremy Diddler, lined with Lord Foppington. "He shall repeat it; I will have him at your feet to-morrow. Yes, Di, my love, I pledge myself to bring that about, without compromise to your maidenly pride or the dignity of a Paget. My dear child, I ought to have known that reflection would show you where your duty lies. I fear I have been somewhat harsh, but you must forgive me, Di; I have set my heart on this match, for your happiness as well as my own. I could not stand the disappointment; though I admired, and still admire, the high feeling, and all that kind of thing, which prompted your refusal. A school-girlish sentimentality, child, but with something noble in it; not the sentimentality of a vulgar schoolgirl. The blue blood will show itself, my love; and now--no, no, don't cry. You will live to thank me for to-night's work; yes, my child, to thank me, when you look round your comfortable home by-and-by--when my poor old bones are mouldering in their unpretending sepulchre--and say to yourself, 'I have my father to thank for this. Adverse circumstances forbade his doing his duty as happier fathers are allowed the privilege of doing theirs, but it was his forethought, his ever-watchful care, which secured me an admirable husband and a happy home.' Mark my words, the time will come when you will say this, my dear."

"I will try to think of you always kindly, papa," Miss Paget answered in a low sad voice; "and if my marriage can secure your happiness and Gustave Lenoble's, I am content. I only fear to take too much, and give too little."

"My love, you must certainly be the lineal descendant of Don Quixote. Too much, and too little, forsooth! Let Lenoble find a handsomer woman, or a more elegant woman, by gad, elsewhere! Such a woman as a duke might be proud to make his duchess, by Jove! There shall be no sense of obligation on our side, my love. Gustave Lenoble shall be made to feel that he gets change for his shilling. Kiss me, child, and tell me you forgive me for being a little rough with you, just now."

"Forgive you?--yes, papa. I dare say you are wiser than I. Why should I refuse M. Lenoble? He is good and kind, and will give us a happy home? What more can I want? Do I want to be like Charlotte, to whom life seems all poetry and brightness?"

"And who is going to throw herself away upon a penny-a-liner, by Jove!" interjected the Captain.

"Can I hope to be like that girl, with her happy ignorance of life, her boundless love and trust! O, no, no, papa; those things are not for me."

She laid her head upon her father's breast, and sobbed like a child. This was her second farewell to the man she had loved, the dreams she had dreamed. The Captain comforted her with a paternal embrace, but was as powerless to comprehend her emotion as if he had found himself suddenly called upon to console the sorrows of a Japanese widow.

"Hysterical," he murmured. "These noble natures are subject to that kind of thing. And now, my love," he continued, in a more business-like tone, "let us talk seriously. I think it would be very advisable for you to leave Bayswater, and take up your abode in these humble lodgings with me immediately."

"Why, papa?"

"The reason is sufficiently obvious, my love. It is not right that you should continue to eat the bread of dependence. As the future wife of Gustave Lenoble--and in this case, the word future means immediately--"

"Papa," cried Diana suddenly, "you will not hurry me into this marriage? I have consented for your sake. You will not be so ungenerous as to--"

"As to hurry you? No, my dear, of course not. There shall be no indecent haste. Your wishes, your delicate and disinterested motives, shall be consulted before all things; yes, my love," cried the Captain, sorely afraid of some wavering on the part of his daughter, and painfully anxious to conciliate her, "all shall be in accordance with your wishes. But I must urge your immediate removal from Bayswater; first, because M. Lenoble will naturally wish to see you oftener than he can while you are residing with people whose acquaintance I do not want him to make; and secondly, because you have no further need of Mrs. Sheldon's patronage."

"It has been kindness, affection, papa--never patronage. I could not leave Mrs. Sheldon or Charlotte abruptly or ungraciously, upon any consideration. They gave me a home when I most bitterly needed one. They took me away from the dull round of schoolroom drudgery, that was fast changing me into a hard hopeless joyless automaton. My first duty is to them."

The Captain's angry sniff alone expressed the indignation which this impious remark inspired.

"My next shall be to you and M. Lenoble. Let me give Mrs. Sheldon due notice of the change in our plans."

"What do you call due notice?" asked Horatio, peevishly.

"A quarter's notice."

"O, indeed! Then for three months you are to dance attendance upon Mrs. Sheldon, while M. Lenoble is waiting to make you his wife."

"I must consult the wishes of my friends, papa."

"Very well, my dear," replied the Captain, with a sigh that was next of kin to a groan; "you must please yourself and your friends, I suppose; your poor old father is a secondary consideration." And then, timeously mindful of the skirmish he had just had with his daughter, Captain Paget made haste to assure her of his regard and submission.

"All shall be as you please, my love," he murmured. "There, go into my room, and smooth your hair, and bathe your eyes, while I ring for the tea."

Diana obeyed. She found eau-de-cologne and the most delicate of Turkey sponges on her father's wash-handstand; jockey-club, and ivory-backed brushes, somewhat yellow with age, but bearing crest and monogram, on his dressing-table. The workhouse did not seem quite so near at hand as the Captain had implied; but with these sanguine people it is but a step from disappointment to despair.

"What am I to tell Mrs. Sheldon, papa?" she asked, when she was pouring out her father's tea.

"Well, I think you had better say nothing, except that my circumstances have somewhat improved, and that my failing health requires your care."

"I hate secrets, papa."

"So do I, my dear; but half-confidences are more disagreeable than secrets."

Diana submitted. She secretly reserved to herself the right to tell Charlotte anything she pleased. From that dear adopted sister she would hide nothing.

"If M. Lenoble should repeat his offer, and I should accept it, I will tell her all," she thought. "It will make that dear girl happy to know that there is some one who loves me, besides herself."

And then she thought of the strange difference of fate that gave to this Charlotte Halliday, with her rich stepfather and comfortable surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a lover, while to her, the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, came a wealthy suitor.

"Will hers be the dinner of herbs, and mine the stalled ox?" she thought. "Ah, Heaven forbid! Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to love too well?"

She remembered the cynical French proverb, "When we can not have what we love, we must love what we have." But the cynical proverb brought her no comfort.

She went back to Bayswater with a strange bewildered feeling; after having promised her father to go to Omega Street whenever he sent for her. There was no actual pain in her mind, no passionate desire to recall her promise, no dread horror of the step to which she had pledged herself. The feeling that oppressed her was the sense that such a step should have been the spontaneous election of her grateful heart, proud of a good man's preference, instead of a weak submission to a father's helplessness.



Book the Fifth.


THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA.

CHAPTER I.


TAKEN BY STORM.

Two days after her interview with Gustave Lenoble, Miss Paget received a brief note from her father, summoning her again to Omega Street.

"He has not gone back to Normandy," wrote the Captain.

"My child, he positively worships the ground you walk upon. Ah, my love, _it is something to have a father_! I need scarcely tell you that his first idea of your excellence was inspired by those glowing descriptions of your goodness, your beauty, your heroism, which I favoured him with, _en passant_, during our conversations at Côtenoir, where the happy accident of a business transaction first introduced me to him. The interests of my only child have ever been near and dear to me; and where a duller man would have perceived only a wealthy stranger, my paternal instincts recognized at a glance the predestined husband of my daughter. It needed my wide experience of life--and, as I venture to believe, my subtle knowledge of the human heart--to understand that a man who had lived for five-and-thirty years buried alive in a French province--a charming place, my love, and for your refined taste replete with interest--never seeing a mortal except his immediate neighbours, would be the man of men to fall in love with the first attractive young woman he met among strangers. Come to me this afternoon without fail, and come early.--Yours,

"H.N.C.P."

Diana obeyed this summons submissively, but still troubled by that strange sense of bewilderment which had affected her since her stormy interview with Captain Paget. She was not quite certain of herself. The old dreams--the sweet foolish girlish fancies--were not yet put away altogether from her mind; but she knew that they were foolish, and she was half-inclined to believe that there had been some wisdom in her father's scorn.

"What do I want more?" she asked herself. "He is good and brave and true, and he loves me. If I were a princess, my marriage would be negotiated for me by other people, and I should have reason to consider myself very happy if the man whom the state selected for my husband should prove as good a man