LOST SIGHT OF.
A year and a half had passed since the disappearance of Philip Sheldon
from the circle in which he had been considered a person of some
importance. The repudiation of those bills by which he had sustained his
exhausted credit, or rather the discovery that the companies upon which
the bills pretended to be drawn were of all shadows the most shadowy, had
brought consternation upon many, and ruin upon some. Bitter and
unmeasured were the terms in which City men spoke of that Phil Sheldon
with whom they had eaten the sacred bait and quaffed the social moselle
in the taverns of Greenwich and Blackwall.
There is a saying current on the Stock Exchange to the effect that the
man who fails, and disappears from among his fellows behind a curtain of
commercial cloud, is sure to return sooner or later to his old circle,
with a moustache and a brougham. For Philip Sheldon there was, however,
no coming back. The moustache and the brougham of the chastened and
penitent defaulter were not for him. By his deliberate and notorious
dishonour he had shut the door against the possibility of return. It may
be supposed that the defaulter knew this, for he did not come back; and
since he had no lack of moral courage, he would scarcely have refrained
from showing himself once more in his old haunts, if it had been possible
for him to face the difficulties of his position.
Time passed, and there came no tidings of the missing man, though a
detective was despatched to America in search of him by one vengeful
sufferer among the many victims of the fictitious bills-of-exchange. It
was supposed that he must inevitably go to America, and thither went his
pursuer, but with no result except the expenditure of money and the
further exasperation of the vengeful sufferer.
"What will you do with him, if you get him?" asked a philosophical friend
of the sufferer. "He has nothing to surrender. Zabulon had a bill-of-sale
on his furniture."
"Furniture!" cried the infuriated victim; "I don't want his furniture. I
want his flesh and bones. I want to shut him up in Dartmoor Prison, or to
get him twenty years' hard labour at Portland Island."
"That sort of man would get a ticket-of-leave in less than twelve
months," replied the philosophic friend. "I'm afraid you are only
throwing good money after bad."
The event proved this gentleman but too able a seer. In the monster city
of New York Philip Sheldon had disappeared like a single drop of water
flung upon the Atlantic Ocean. There was no trace of him: too intangible
for the grasp of international law, he melted into the mass of humanity,
only one struggler the more in the great army perpetually fighting life's
desperate battle.
From among all those who had known him this man had utterly vanished,
and not one sigh of regret followed him in his unknown wanderings--not
one creature amongst all those who had taken his hand and given him
friendly greeting thought of him kindly, or cared to know whither he
went or how he prospered. He had not left in the house that had
sheltered him for years so much as a dog to whine at his door or listen
for his returning footstep.
This fact, if he had known it or considered it, would have troubled him
very little. He had played his game for a certain stake, and had lost it.
This he felt, and cursed his own too cautious play as the cause of his
defeat. That there were higher stakes for which he might have played an
easier game, was a fact that never occurred to him. In his philosophy
there was indeed nothing higher given to the hopes of man than worldly
success, and a dull, cold, prosperous life spent among prosperous
acquaintance.
He was gone, and those who remembered him most keenly--Valentine
Hawkehurst, Diana Paget, Ann Woolper--remembered him with a shudder. The
old Yorkshirewoman thought of him sometimes as she bent over the little
muslin-bedecked cradle where the hope of the Hawkehursts slumbered, and
looked round fearfully in the gloaming, half expecting to see his dreaded
face glower upon her, dark and threatening, from between the curtains of
the window.
It was a belief of all ancient races, nay indeed, a belief still current
amongst modern nations, that it is not given to man to behold the beings
of another world and live. The Arab who meets a phantom in the desert
goes home to his tent to die. He knows that the hand of doom is upon him.
He has seen that upon which, for mortal eyes, it is fatal to look. And it
is thus in some measure with those who are admitted within the dark
precincts of murder's dread sanctuary. Not swiftly does the curtain fall
which has once been lifted from the hidden horrors of that ghastly
temple. The revelations of an utterly wicked soul leave a lasting impress
upon the mind which unwillingly becomes recipient of those awful secrets.
The circumstances of Tom Halliday's death and of Charlotte's illness were
not to be forgotten by Ann Woolper. The shadow of that dark cruel face,
which had lain upon her bosom forty years before, haunted many a peaceful
hour of her quiet old age. Her ignorance, and that faint tinge of
superstition which generally accompanies ignorance, exaggerated the
terror of those dark memories. The thought that Philip Sheldon still
lived, still had the power to plot and plan evil against the innocent,
was an ever-present source of terror to her. She could not understand
that such an element could exist among the forces of evil without fatal
result to some one. It seemed to her as if a devil were at large, and
there could be neither peace nor security until the evil spirit was
exorcised, the baneful presence laid in nethermost depths of unfathomable
sea.
These feelings and these fears would scarcely have arisen in the old
woman's breast, had she alone been subject to the possible plottings of
that evil nature. For herself she had little fear. Her span of life was
nearly ended; very few were the sands that had yet to run; and, for her
own sake, she would have cared little if some rough hand had spilt them
untimely. But a new interest in life had been given to Mrs. Woolper just
as life drew near its close. That peerless child, the son and heir of the
Hawkehursts, had been intrusted to the old woman's care; and this infant
she loved with an affection much more intense than that which had once
made Philip Sheldon so dear to her.
It was by the cradle of this much-treasured child that Ann Woolper nursed
her fear of her old master. She knew that he had been counter-plotted and
beaten ignominiously in that deadly game which he had played so boldly.
And she asked herself whether he was the man to submit to such utter
defeat without any effort to revenge himself upon those who had helped to
compass his failure.
On that night when Charlotte Halliday had lain between life and death,
suffering on the one hand from the effects of a prolonged and gradual
course of poison, on the other from the violent measures taken to
eliminate that poisonous element from her system,--on that night when the
precious life yet trembled in the balance, Ann Woolper had seen murderous
looks in the face of the man whom she dared boldly to defy, and who knew
in that hour that his ghastly plot was discovered. Even now, secure in a
haven of safety, she could not forget that baneful look in Philip
Sheldon's eyes. She could not find perfect rest while she knew not where
that man might be, or what mischief he might be plotting against those
she loved.
Her fears showed themselves in many ways. When she read of dark and
vengeful deeds in her newspaper, she thought of her old master, and how,
in such or such an act, his fatal hand might reveal itself. He might lie
in wait for Valentine some night on the dark road between Charlottenburgh
and the distant railway-station. She could fancy the young wife's agony
of terror as the night wore on, and her husband did not return; the
unspeakable horror that would come over all that happy household when the
news came that its young master had been found on the lonely road slain
by some unknown hand. Open utterance to her fears she was too wise to
give; but she warned Mr. Hawkehurst of the dangers on that dark road, and
besought him to arm himself with a trusty bludgeon wherewith to meet and
vanquish any chance assailant. Valentine laughed at her anxious warning;
but when Charlotte took up the cry he was fain to content her by the
purchase of a sturdy stick, which he swung cheerily to and fro as he
walked homewards in the gloaming, planning a chapter in his new book, and
composing powerful and eloquent sentences which eluded his mental grasp
when he tried to reduce his evening reverie to pen-and-ink.
"When the air blows fresh across the common, and the distant lights
twinkle, and the bright stars peep out in the pale-yellow sky, my
language flows as it never does when I sit at my desk, Lotta," he said to
his wife. "I feel myself a Swift or a Junius out there; equal to the
tackling of any social question that ever arose upon this earth, from the
Wood halfpence to the policy of American taxation, and triennial
elections. At home I am only Valentine Hawkehurst, with an ever-present
consciousness that so many pages of copy are required from me within a
given time, and that my son-and-heir is cutting his teeth, and making
more fuss about it than I ever made about _my_ teeth; and that the man
about the water-rate is waiting to see me, please, and is desperately
anxious about making-up his books; and that I have the dearest wife in
Christendom, who opens my door, and puts her pretty head into my room
once in half an hour to see how I am getting on, or to ask whether I want
any more coals, or to borrow my ink to make-up her washing-book."
"You mean, sir, that I prevent your becoming a Junius?" cried Charlotte,
with an enchanting _moue_.
"Yes, dear. I begin to understand why Swift kept his poor ill-used wife
at a respectful distance. She would have made him too happy if he had
allowed her to be on the premises. She would have given the cruel
indignation no chance of lacerating his heart; and such writing as
Swift's is only produced by a man whose heart is so lacerated. No, my
darling, I shall never be a Swift or a Junius while your pretty head is
thrust into my room once or twice an hour; but I may hope to be something
better, if bright eyes can inspire bright thoughts, and innocent smiles
give birth to pleasant fancies."
Upon this there was the usual little demonstration of affection between
this young couple; and Charlotte praised her husband as the most
brilliant and admirable of men; after which pleasing flattery she
favoured him with a little interesting information about the baby's last
tooth, and the contumacious behaviour of the new housemaid, between whom
and Mrs. Woolper there had been a species of disagreement, which the
Yorkshirewoman described as a "standfurther."
Thus occupied in simple pleasures and simple cares, the lives of Mr. and
Mrs. Hawkehurst went on, untroubled by any fear of that crime-burdened
wretch whose image haunted the dreams and meditations of Ann Woolper. For
these two Mr. Sheldon was numbered among the dead. To Charlotte the
actual truth had never been revealed; but she had been, in the course of
time, given to understand that her stepfather had committed some
unpardonable sin, which must for ever separate him from herself and her
mother. She had been told as much as this, and had been told that she
must seek to know no more. To this she submitted without questioning.
"I am very sorry for him," she said, "and for mamma."
She concluded that the unpardonable offence must needs have been some sin
against her mother, some long-hidden infidelity brought suddenly to
light, with all the treachery and falsehood involved therein. She never
mentioned her stepfather after this but in her prayers the sinner was not
forgotten.