The letters are worth very little. They are prim and measured epistles,

and they relate much more to spiritual matters than to temporal

business. Mrs. Rebecca seems to have been so much concerned for the

health of her soul that she had very little leisure to think of

anything so insignificant as the bodies of other people. The letters

are filled with discourses upon her own state of mind; and the tone of

them reveals not a little of that pride whose character it is to

simulate humility. Mrs. Rebecca is always casting ashes on her head;

but she takes care to let her friend and pastor know what a saintly

head it is notwithstanding.

I have laid aside three of the most secular letters, which I selected

after wading through unnumbered pages of bewailings in the strain of a

Wesleyan Madame Guyon. These throw some little light upon the character

of Matthew Haygarth, but do not afford much information of a tangible

kind. I have transcribed the letters verbatim, adhering even to certain

eccentricities of orthography which were by no means unusual in an age

when the Pretender to the crown of Great Britain wrote of his father as

_Gems_.

The first letter bears the date of August 30th, 1773, one week after

the marriage of the lady to our friend Matthew.

"REVERED FRIEND AND PASTOR,--On Monday sennite we arriv'd in London,

wich seems to me a mighty bigg citty, but of no more meritt or piety

than Babylon of old. My husband, who knows ye towne better than he

knows those things with wich it would more become him to be familiar,

was pleas'd to laugh mightily at that pious aversion wherewith I

regarded some of ye most notable sights in this place. We went t'other

night to a great garden called by some Spring Garden, by others

Vauxhall,--as having been at one time ye residence or estate of that

Arch Fiend and Papistical traitor Vaux, or Faux; but although I felt

obligated to my husband for ye desire to entertain me with a fine

sight, I could not but look with shame upon serious Christians

disporting themselves like children amongst coloured lamps, and

listening as if enraptured to profane music, when, at so much less cost

of money or of health, they might have been assembled together to

improve and edify one another.

"My obliging Mathew would have taken me to other places of the like

character; but inspir'd, as I hope and believe, by ye direction of ye

spirit, I took upon myself to tell him what vain trifling is all such

kind of pleasure. He argu'd with me stoutly, saying that ye King and

Queen, who are both shining examples of goodness and piety, do attend

Vauxhall and Ranelagh, and are to be seen there frequent, to the

delight of their subjects. On which I told him that, much as I esteemed

my sovereign and his respectable consort, I would compleat my existence

without having seen them rather than I would seek to encounter them in

a place of vain and frivolous diversion. He listen'd to my discoorse in

a kind and sober temper, but he was not convinc'd; for by and by he

falls of a sudden to sighing and groaning, and cries out, 'O, I went to

Vauxhall once when ye garden was not many years made, and O, how bright

ye lamps shone, like ye stars of heaven fallen among bushes! and O, how

sweet ye music sounded, like ye hymns of angels in ye dewy evening! but

that was nigh upon twenty years gone by, and all ye world is changed

since then.'

"You will conceive, Reverend Sir, that I was scandalised by such a

foolish rapsodie, and in plain words admonish'd my husband of his

folly. Whereupon he speedily became sober, and asked my pardon; but for

all that night continued of a gloomy countenance, ever and anon falling

to sighing and groning as before. Indeed, honour'd Sir, I have good

need of a patient sperrit in my dealings with him; for altho' at times

I think he is in a fair way to become a Christian, there are other

times when I doubt Satan has still a hold upon him, and that all my

prayers and admonitions have been in vaine.

"You, who know the wildness and wickedness of his past life--so far as

that life was ever known to any but himself, who was ever of a secret

and silent disposition concerning his own doings in this city, tho'

free-spoken and frank in all common matters--you, honour'd sir, know

with how serious an intention I have taken upon myself the burden of

matrimony, hoping thereby to secure the compleat conversion of this

waywarde soul. You are aware how it was ye earnest desire of my late

respected father that Mathew Haygarth and I shou'd be man and wife, his

father and my father haveing bin friends and companions in ye days of

her most gracious majesty Queen Anne. You know how, after being lost to

all decent company for many years, Mathew came back after his father's

death, and lived a sober and serious life, attending amongst our

community, and being seen to shed tears on more than one occasion while

listening to the discourse of our revered and inspired founder. And

you, my dear and honour'd pastor, will feel for me when I tell you how

I am tormented by ye fear of backsliding in this soul which I have

promised to restore to ye fold. It was but yesterday, when walking with

him near St. John's Gate at Clerkenwell, he came to a standstill all of

a sudden, and he cried in that impetuous manner which is even yet

natural to him, 'Look ye now, Becky, wouldst like to see the house in

which the happiest years of my life was spent?' And I making no answer,

as thinking it was but some sudden freak, he points out a black

dirty-looking dwelling-place, with overhanging windows and a wide

gabled roof. 'Yonder it stands, Becky,' he cries; 'number seven

John-street, Clerkenwell; a queer dingy box of four walls, my wench--a

tumble-down kennel, with a staircase that 'twould break your neck to

mount, being strange to it--and half a day's journey from the court-end

of town. But that house was once paradise to me; and to look at it even

now, though 'tis over eighteen years since I saw the inside of it, will

bring the tears into these poor old eyes of mine'. And then he walk'd

on so fast that I could scarce keep pace with him, till we came to

Smithfield; and then he began to tell me about Bartholomew-fair and the

brave sights he had seen; and must needs show me where had stood the

booth of one Fielding--since infamously notorious as the writer of some

trashy novels, the dulness whereof is only surpassed by their

profligacy: and then he talks of Fawkes the conjurer, who made a great

fortune, and of some humble person called 'Tiddy Doll,' a dealer in

gingerbread and such foolish wares. But he could tell me nothing of

those early preachings of our revered founder in Moorfields, which

would have been more pleasant to me than all this vain babble about

drolls and jesters, gingerbread bakers and showmen.

"When we had walked the round of the place, and it was time to take

coach for our lodging at Chelsea--he having brought me thus far to see

St. Paul's and the prison of Newgate, the Mint and Tower--the gloomy

fit came on him again, and all that evening he was dull and sorrowful,

though I read aloud to him from the printed sermons of a rising member

of our community. So you will see, honour'd sir, how difficult it is

for these children of Satan to withdraw themselves from that master

they have once served; since at the sober age of fifty-three yeares my

husband's weak heart yet yearns after profligate faires and foolish

gardens lighted by color'd lampes.

"And now no more, reverend friend, my paper being gone and it being

full time to reflect that y'r patience must be gone also. Service to

Mrs. Goodge. I have no more room but to assure you that y'r gayeties of

this foolish and erring citty have no power to withdraw y'r heart of

her whose chief privilege it is to subscribe herself,

"Your humble follower and servant."

"Rebecca Haygarth."

To my mind there seems just a shadowy hint of some bygone romance in

this letter. Why did the dingy house in John-street bring the tears

into Matthew's eyes? and why did the memory of Vauxhall and Bartholomew

fair seem so sweet to him? And then that sighing and groaning and

dolefulness of visage whenever the thought of the past came back to him?

What did it all mean, I wonder? Was it only his vanished youth, which

poor, sobered, converted, Wesleyanised Matthew regretted? or were there

pensive memories of something even sweeter than youth associated with

the coloured lamps of Vauxhall and the dinginess of Clerkenwell? Who

shall sound the heart of a man who lived a hundred years ago? and where

is the fathom-line which shall plumb its mysteries? I should need a

stack of old letters before I could arrive at the secret of that man's

life.

The two other letters, which I have selected after some deliberation,

relate to the last few weeks of Matthew's existence; and in these again

I fancy I see the trace of some domestic mystery, some sorrowful secret

which this sober citizen kept hidden from his wife, but which he was on

several occasions half inclined to reveal to her.

Perhaps if the lady's piety--which seems to have been thoroughly

sincere and praiseworthy, by the bye--had been a little less cold and

pragmatical in its mode of expression, poor Matthew might have taken

heart of grace and made a clean breast of it.

That there was a secret in the man's life I feel convinced; but that

conviction goes very little way towards proving any one point of the

smallest value to George Sheldon.

I transcribe an extract from each of the two important letters; the

first written a month before Matthew's death, the second a fortnight

after that event.

"And indeed, honour'd sir, I have of late suffered much uneasinesse of

speritt concerning my husband. Those fits of ye mopes of w'h I informed

you some time back have again come upon him. For awhile I did hope that

these melancholic affections were ye fruit put forth by a regenerate

soul; but within this month last past it has been my sorrow to discover

that these gloomy disorders arise rather from ye promptings of the Evil

One. It has pleased Mr. Haygarthe of late to declare that his life is

nigh at an end; and indeed he affects a conviction that his days are

number'd. This profane and impertinent notion I take to be a direct

inspiration of Satan, of a like character to ye sudden and

unaccountable fitts of laughter which have seized upon many pious

Christians in the midst of earnest congregations; whereby much shame

and discomfiture has been brought upon our sect. Nor is there any

justification for this presumptuous certainty entertained by my

husband, inasmuch as his health is much as it has ordinarily been for

ye last ten years. He does acknowledge this with his own lips, and

immediately after cries out that his race is run, and ye hand of death

is upon him; which I cannot but take as ye voice of ye enemy speaking

through that weak mouth of ye flesh.

"On Sunday night last past, ye gloomy fitt being come upon him after

prayers, Mr. Haygarthe began all on a sudden, as it is his habit to do:

"'There is something I would fain tell ye, wench,' he cries out,

'something about those roistering days in London, which it might be

well for thee to know.'

"But I answered him directly, that I had no desire to hear of profane

roisterings, and that it would be better for him to keep his peace, and

listen reverently to the expounding of the Scriptures, which Humphrey

Bagot, our worthy pastor and friend, had promised to explain and

exemplify after supper. We was seated at ye time in ye blue parlour,

the table being spread for supper, and were awaiting our friend from

the village, a man of humble station, being but a poor chapman and

huckster, but of exalted mind and a most holy temper, and sells me the

same growth of Bohea as that drunk by our gracious queen at Windsor.

"After I had thus reproved him--in no unkind speritt--Mr. Haygarthe

fell to sighing; and then cries out all at once:

"'When I am on my death-bed, wife, I will tell thee something: be sure

thou askest me for it; or if death come upon me unawares, thou wouldst

do well to search in the old tulip-leaf bureau for a letter, since I

may tell thee that in a letter which I would not tell with these lips.'

"Before there was time to answer him in comes Mr. Bagot, and we to

supper; after which he did read the sixth chapter of Hebrews and

expound it at much length for our edifying; at the end whereof Satan

had obtained fast hold of Mr. Haygarthe, who was fallen asleep and

snoring heavily."

Here is plain allusion to some secret, which that pragmatical idiot,

Mrs. Rebecca, studiously endeavoured not to hear. The next extract is

from a letter written when the lips that had been fain to speak were

stilled for ever. Ah, Mistress Rebecca, you were but mortal woman,

although you were also a shining light amongst the followers of John

Wesley; and I wonder what you would have given for poor Matthew's

secret _then_.

"Some days being gone after this melancholic event, I bethought me of

that which my husband had said to me before I left Dewsdale for that

excursion to the love-feasts at Kemberton and Kesfield, Broppindean and

Dawnfold, from which I returned but two short weeks before my poor

Matthew's demise. I called to remembrance that discourse about

approaching death which in my poor human judgment I did esteem a

pestilent error of mind, but which I do now recognise as a spiritual

premonition; and I set myself earnestly to look for that letter which

Matthew told me he would leave in the tulip-leaf bureau. But though I

did search with great care and pains, my trouble was wasted, inasmuch

as there was no letter. Nor did I leave off to search until ev'ry nook

and crevvis had been examin'd. But in one of ye secret drawers, hidden

in an old dog's-eared book of prayers, I did find a lock of fair hair,

as if cut from the head of a child, entwin'd curiously with a long

plait of dark hair, which, by reason of ye length thereof, must needs

have been the hair of a woman, and with these the miniature of a girl's

face in a gold frame. I will not stain this paper, which is near come

to an end, by the relation of such suspicions as arose in my mind on

finding these curious treasures; nor will I be of so unchristian a

temper as to speak ill of the dead. My husband was in his latter days

exemplarily sober, and a humble acting Xtian. Ye secrets of his earlier

life will not now be showne to me on this side heaven. I have set aside

ye book, ye picture, and ye plaited hair in my desk for conveniency,

where I will show them to you when I am next rejoic'd by y'r improving

conversation. Until then, in grief or in happiness, in health and

sickness, I trust I shall ever continue, with y'r same sincerity,

"Your humble and obliged Servant and disciple

"REBECCA HAYGARTHE."

Thus end my excerpts from the correspondence of Mrs. Haygarthe. They

are very interesting to me, as containing the vague shadow of a

vanished existence; but whether they will ever be worth setting forth

in an affidavit is extremely uncertain. Doubtless that miniature of an

unknown girl which caused so much consternation in the mind of sober

Mrs. Rebecca was no other than the "Molly" whose gray eyes reminded me

of Charlotte Halliday.

As I copied Mrs. Rebecca's quaint epistles, in the midnight stillness,

the things of which I was writing arose before me like a picture. I

could see the blue parlour that Sunday evening; the sober couple seated

primly opposite to each other; the china monsters on the high

chimneypiece; the blue-and-white Dutch tiles, with queer squat figures

of Flemish citizens on foot and on horseback; the candles burning dimly

on the spindle-legged table--two poor pale flames reflected ghastly in

the dark polished panels of the wainscot; the big open Bible on an

adjacent table; the old silver tankard, and buckhorn-handled knives and

forks set out for supper; the solemn eight-day clock, ticking drearily

in the corner; and amid all that sombre old-fashioned comfort,

gray-haired Matthew sighing and lamenting for his vanished youth.

I have grown strangely romantic since I have fallen in love with

Charlotte Halliday. The time was when I should have felt nothing but a

flippant ignorant contempt for poor Haygarth's feeble sighings and

lamentings; but now I think of him with a sorrowful tenderness, and am

more interested in his poor commonplace life, that picture, and those

two locks of hair, than in the most powerful romance that ever emanated

from mortal genius. It has been truly said, that truth is stranger than

fiction: may it not as justly be said, that truth has a power to touch

the human heart which is lacking in the most sublime flights of a

Shakespeare, or the grandest imaginings of an Aeschylus? One is sorry

for the fate of Agamemnon; but one is infinitely more sorrowful for the

cruel death of that English Richard in the dungeon at Pomfret, who was

a very insignificant person as compared to the king of men and of ships.

CHAPTER III.

HUNTING THE JUDSONS.

_Oct. 10th_. Yesterday and the day before were blank days. On Saturday

I read Mrs. Rebecca's letters a second time after a late breakfast, and

spent a lazy morning in the endeavour to pick up any stray crumbs of

information which I might have overlooked the previous night. There was

nothing to be found, however; and, estimable as I have always

considered the founder of the Wesleyan fraternity, I felt just a little

weary of his virtues and his discourses, his journeyings from place to

place, his love-feasts and his prayer-meetings, before I had finished

with Mrs. Haygarth's correspondence. In the afternoon I strolled about

the town; made inquiries at several inns, with a view to discover

whether Captain Paget was peradventure an inmate thereof; looked in at

the railway-station, and watched the departure of a train; dawdled away

half an hour at the best tobacconist's shop in the town on the chance

of encountering my accomplished patron, who indulges in two of the

choicest obtainable cigars per diem, and might possibly repair thither

to make a purchase, if he were in the place. Whether he is still in

Ullerton or not I cannot tell; but he did not come to the

tobacconist's; and I was fain to go back to my inn, having wasted a

day. Yet I do not think that George Sheldon will have cause to complain

of me, since I have worked very closely for my twenty shillings per

week, and have devoted myself to the business in hand with an amount of

enthusiasm which I did not think it possible for me to

experience--except for----

I went to church on Sunday morning, and was more devoutly inclined than

it has been my habit to feel; for although a man who lives by his wits

must not necessarily be a heathen or an atheist, it is very difficult

for him to be anything like a Christian. Even my devotion yesterday was

not worth much, for my thoughts went vagabondising off to Charlotte

Halliday in the midst of a very sensible practical sermon.

In the afternoon I read the papers, and dozed by the fire in the

coffee-room--two-thirds coke by the way, and alternating from the

fierceness of a furnace to the dreary blackness of an exhausted

coal-mine--still thinking of Charlotte.

Late in the evening I walked the streets of the town, and thought what

a lonely wretch I was. The desert of Sahara is somewhat dismal, I

daresay; but in its dismality there is at least a flavour of romance, a

smack of adventure. O, the hopeless dulness, the unutterable blankness

of a provincial town late on a Sunday night, as it presents itself to

the contemplation of a friendless young man without a sixpence in his

pocket, or one bright hope to tempt him to forgetfulness of the past in

pleasant dreaming of the future!

Complaining again! O pen, which art the voice of my discontent, your

spluttering is like this outburst of unmanly fretfulness and futile

rage! O paper, whose flat surface typifies the dull level of my life,

your greasy unwillingness to receive the ink is emblematic of the

soul's revolt against destiny!

This afternoon brought me a letter from Sheldon, and opened a new

channel for my explorations in that underground territory, the past.

That man has a marvellous aptitude for his work; and has, what is more

than aptitude, the experience of ten years of failure. Such a man must

succeed sooner or later. I wonder whether his success will come while I

am allied to him. I have been used to consider myself an unlucky

wretch, a creature of ill-fortune to others as well as to myself. It is

a foolish superstition, perhaps, to fancy one's self set apart for an

evil destiny; but the Eumenides have been rather hard upon me. Those

"amiable" deities, whom they of Colonae tried so patiently to

conciliate with transparent flatteries, have marked me for their prey

from the cradle--I don't suppose that cradle was paid for, by the bye.

I wonder whether there is an avenging deity whose special province it

is to pursue the insolvent--a Nemesis of the Bankruptcy Court.

My Sheldon's epistle bears the evidence of a very subtle brain, as I

think. It is longer than his previous letters. I transcribe it here, as

I wish this record to be a complete brief of my proceedings in this

Haygarth business.

"Gray's Inn, Sunday night.

"DEAR HAWKEHURST,--The copies of the letters came duly to hand, and I

think you have made your selections with much discretion, always

supposing you have overlooked nothing in the remaining mass of writing.

I will thank you to send me the rest of the letters, by the way. You

can take notes of anything likely to be useful to yourself, and it will

be as well for me to possess the originals.

"I find one very strong point in the first letter of your selection,

viz. the allusion to a house in John-street. It is clear that Matthew

lived in that house, and in that neighbourhood there may even yet

remain some traces of his existence. I shall begin a close

investigation to-morrow within a certain radius of that spot; and if I

have the good luck to fall upon any clear-headed centenarians, I may

pick up something.

"There are some alms-houses hard by Whitecross-street prison, where the

inmates live to ages that savour of the Pentateuch. Perhaps there I may

light upon some impoverished citizen fallen from a good estate who can

remember some contemporary of Matthew's. London was smaller in those

days than it is now, and men lived out their lives in one spot, and had

leisure to be concerned about the affairs of their neighbours. As I

have now something of a clue to Matthew's roistering days, I shall set

to work to follow it up closely; and your provincial researches and my

metropolitan investigations proceeding simultaneously, we may hope to

advance matters considerably ere long. For your own part, I should

advise you forthwith to hunt up the Judson branch. You will remember

that Matthew's only sister was a Mrs. Judson of Ullerton. I want to

find an heir-at-law in a direct line from Matthew; and you know my

theory on that point. But if we fail in that direction, we must of

course fall back upon the Judsons, who are a disgustingly complicated

set of people, and will take half a lifetime to disentangle, to say

nothing of other men who may be working the same business, and who are

pretty sure to have pinned their faith on the female branch of the

Haygarthian tree.

"I want you to ferret out some of the Judson descendants with a view to

picking up further documentary evidence in the shape of old letters,

inscriptions in old books, and so on. That Matthew had a secret is

certain; and that he was very much inclined to reveal that secret in

his later days is also certain. Who shall say that he did not tell it

to his only sister, though he was afraid to tell it to his wife?

"You have acted with so much discretion up to this point, that I do not

care to trouble you with any further hints or suggestions. When money

is wanted, it shall be forthcoming; but I must beg you to manage things

economically, as I have to borrow at a considerable sacrifice; and

should this affair prove a failure, my ruin is inevitable.

"Yours, &c. G.S."

My friend Sheldon is a man who can never have been more than "yours

et-cetera" to any human creature. I suppose what he calls ruin would be

a quiet passage through the Bankruptcy Court, and a new set of

chambers. I should not suppose that sort of ruin would be very terrible

for a man whose sole possessions are a few weak-backed horsehair

chairs, a couple of battered old desks, half a dozen empty japanned

boxes, a file of _Bell's Life_, and a Turkey carpet in which the

progress of corruption is evident to the casual observer.

The hunting-up of the Judsons is a very easy matter as compared to the

task of groping in the dimness of the past in search of some faint

traces of the footsteps of departed Haygarths. Whereas the Haygarth

family seem to be an extinct race, the Judsonian branch have bred and

mustered in the land; and my chief difficulty in starting has been an

_embarras de richesse_, in the shape of half a page of Judsons in the

Ullerton directory.

Whether to seek out Theodore Judson, the attorney, in Nile street East,

or the Rev. James Judson, curate of St. Gamaliel; whether to appeal in

the first instance to Judson & Co., haberdashers and silk mercers, of

the Ferrygate, or to Judson of Judson and Grinder, wadding

manufacturers in Lady-lane--was the grand question. On inquiring of the

landlord as to the antecedents of these Judsons, I found that they were

all supposed to spring from one common stock, and to have the blood of

old Jonathan Haygarth in their veins. The Judsons had been an obscure

family--people of "no account," my landlord told me, until Joseph

Judson, chapman and cloth merchant in a very small way, was so

fortunate as to win the heart of Ruth Haygarth, only daughter of the

wealthy Nonconformist grocer in the market-place. This marriage had

been the starting-point of Joseph Judson's prosperity. Old Haygarth had

helped his industrious and respectable son-in-law along the stony road

that leads to fortune, and had no doubt given him many a lift over the

stones which bestrew that toilsome highway. My landlord's information

was as vague as the information of people in general; but it was easily

to be made out, from his scanty shreds and scraps of information, that

the well-placed Judsons of the present day had almost all profited to

some extent by the hard-earned wealth of Jonathan Haygarth. "They've

nearly all of them got the name of Haygarth mixed up with their other

names somehow," said my landlord. "Judson of Judson and Grinder is

Thomas Haygarth Judson. He's a member of our tradesman's club, and

worth a hundred thousand pounds, if he's worth a sixpence."

I have observed, by the way, that a wealthy tradesman in a country town

is never accredited with less than a hundred thousand; there seems a

natural hankering in the human mind for round numbers.

"There's J.H. Judson of St. Gamaliel," continued my landlord--"he's

James Haygarth Judson; and young Judson the attorney's son puts

'Haygarth Judson' on his card, and gets people to call him Haygarth

Judson when they will--which in a general way they won't, on account of

his giving himself airs, which you may see him any summer evening

walking down Ferrygate as if the place belonged to him, and he didn't

set much value on it. They _do_ say his father's heir-at-law to a

million of money left by the last of the Haygarths, and that he and the

son are trying to work up a claim to the property against the Crown.

But I have heard young Judson deny it in our room when he was spoken to

about it, and I don't suppose there's much ground for people's talk."

I was sorry to discover there was any ground for such talk; Mr. Judson

the lawyer would be no insignificant opponent. I felt that I must give

a very wide berth to Mr. Theodore Judson the attorney, and his stuck-up

son, unless circumstances should so shape themselves as to oblige us to

work with him. In the meanwhile any move I made amongst the other

Judsons would be likely, I thought, to come to the knowledge of these

particular members of the family.

"Are the Judson family very friendly with one another?" I artfully

inquired.

"Well, you see, some of 'em are, and some of 'em ain't. They're most of

'em third and fourth cousins, you see, and that ain't a very near

relationship in a town where there's a good deal of competition, and

interests often clash. Young Theodore--Haygarth Judson as he calls

himself--is very thick with Judson of St. Gamaliel's, they were at

college together, you see: and fine airs they give themselves on the

strength of a couple of years or so at Cambridge. Those two get on very

well together. But Judson of the Lady-lane Mills don't speak to either

of 'em when he meets 'em in the street, and has been known to cut 'em

dead in my room. William Judson of Ferrygate is a dissenter, and keeps

himself to himself very close. The other Judsons are too fast a lot for

him: though what's the harm of a man taking a glass or two of

brandy-and-water of an evening with his friends is more than _I_ can

find out," added mine host, musingly.

It was to William Judson the dissenter, who kept himself to himself,

that I determined to present myself in the first instance. As a

dissenter, he would be likely to have more respect for the memory of

the Nonconformist and Wesleyan Haygarths, and to have preserved any

traditions relating to them with more fidelity than the Anglican and

frivolous members of the Judson family. As an individual who kept

himself to himself, he would be unlikely to communicate my business to

his kindred.

I lost no time in presenting myself at the house of business in

Ferrygate, and after giving the servant George Sheldon's card, and

announcing myself as concerned in a matter of business relating to the

Haygarth family, I was at once ushered into a prim counting-house,

where a dapper little old gentleman in spotless broadcloth, and a

cambric cravat and shirt frill which were soft and snowy as the plumage

of the swan, received me with old-fashioned courtesy. I was delighted

to find him seventy-five years of age at the most moderate computation,

and I should have been all the better pleased if he had been older. I

very quickly discovered that in Mr. Judson the linen draper I had to

deal with a very different person from the Rev. Jonah Goodge. He

questioned me closely as to my motive in seeking information on the

subject of the departed Haygarth, and I had some compunction in

diplomatising with him as I had diplomatised with Mr. Goodge. To

hoodwink the wary Jonah was a triumph--to deceive the confiding linen

draper was a shame. However, as I have before set down, I suppose at

the falsest I am not much farther from the truth than a barrister or a

diplomatist. Mr. Judson accepted my account of myself in all

simplicity, and seemed quite pleased to have an opportunity of talking

about the deceased Haygarths.

"You are not concerned in the endeavour to assert Theodore Judson's

claim to the late John Haygarth's property, eh?" the old man asked me

presently, as if struck by a sudden misgiving.

I assured him that Mr. Theodore Judson's interests and mine were in no

respect identical.

"I am glad of that," answered the draper; "not that I owe Theodore

Judson a grudge, you must understand, though his principles and mine

differ very widely. I have been told that he and his son hope to

establish a claim to that Haygarth property; but they will never

succeed, sir--they will never succeed. There was a young man who went

to India in '41; a scamp and a vagabond, sir, who was always trying to

borrow money in sums ranging from a hundred pounds, to set him up in

business and render him a credit to his family, to a shilling for the

payment of a night's lodging or the purchase of a dinner. But that

young man was the great-grandson of Ruth Haygarth--the eldest surviving

grandson of Ruth Haygarth's eldest son; and if that man is alive, he is

rightful heir to John Haygarth's money. Whether he is alive or dead at

this present moment is more than I can tell, since he has never been

heard of in Ullerton since he left the town; but until Theodore Judson

can obtain legal proof of that man's death he has no more chance of

getting one sixpence of the Haygarth estate than I have of inheriting

the crown of Great Britain."

The old man had worked himself into a little passion before he finished

this speech, and I could see that the Theodore Judsons were as

unpopular in the draper's counting-house as they were at the Swan Inn.

"What was this man's Christian name?" I asked.

"Peter. He was called Peter Judson; and was the great-grandson of my

grandfather, Joseph Judson, who inhabited this very house, sir, more

than a hundred years ago. Let me see: Peter Judson must have been about

five-and-twenty years of age when he left Ullerton; so he is a

middle-aged man by this time if he hasn't killed himself, or if the

climate hasn't killed him long ago. He went as supercargo to a merchant

vessel: he was a clever fellow, and could work hard when it suited him,

in spite of his dissipated life. Theodore Judson is a very good lawyer;

but though he may bring all his ingenuity to bear, he will never

advance a step nearer to the possession of John Haygarth's money till

he obtains evidence of Peter Judson's death; and he's afraid to

advertise for that evidence for fear he might arouse the attention of

other claimants."

Much as I was annoyed to find that there were claimants lying in wait

for the rev. intestate's wealth, I was glad to perceive that Theodore

Judson's unpopularity was calculated to render his kindred agreeably

disposed to any stranger likely to push that gentleman out of the list

of competitors for these great stakes, and I took my cue from this in

my interview with the simple old draper.

"I regret that I am not at liberty to state the nature of my business,"

I said, in a tone that was at once insinuating and confidential; "but I

think I may venture to go so far as to say, without breach of trust to

my employer, that whoever may ultimately succeed to the Rev. John

Haygarth's money, neither Mr. Judson the lawyer nor his son will ever

put a finger on a penny of it."

"I am not sorry to hear it," answered Mr. Judson, enraptured; "not that

I owe the young man a grudge, you must understand, but because he is

particularly undeserving of good fortune. A young man who passes his

own kindred in the streets of his native town without the common

courtesy due to age or respectability; a young man who sneers at the

fortune acquired in an honest and reputable trade; a young man who

calls his cousins counter-jumpers, and his aunts and uncles

'swaddlers'--a vulgar term of contempt applied to the earlier members

of the Wesleyan confraternity--such a young man is not the individual

to impart moral lustre to material wealth; and I am free to confess

that I had rather any one else than Theodore Judson should inherit this

vast fortune. Why, are you aware, my dear sir, that he has been seen to

drive tandem through this very street, as it is; and I should like to

know how many horses he would harness to that gig of his, or how openly

he would insult his relatives, if he had a hundred thousand pounds to

deal with?"

"A hundred thousand pounds!" exclaimed I; "am I to understand that the

fortune left by the Reverend John Haygarth amounts to that sum?"

"To every penny of it, sir; and a nice use Theodore Judson and that

precious son of his would make of it if it fell into their hands."

For a second time Mr. Judson the draper had worked himself into a

little passion, and the conversation had to be discontinued for some

minutes while he cooled down to his ordinary temperament.

"O ho!" said I within myself, while awaiting the completion of this

cooling-down process; "so _this_ is the stake for which my friend

Sheldon is playing!"

"I'll tell you what I will do for you, Mr.--Mr. Hawke-shell,"--Mr.

Judson said at last, making a compound of my own and my employer's

names; "I will give you a line of introduction to my sister. If any one

can help you in hunting up intelligence relating to the past she can.

She is two years my junior--seventy-one years of age, but as bright and

active as a girl. She has lived all her life in Ullerton, and is a

woman who hoards every scrap of paper that comes in her way. If old

letters or old newspapers can assist you, she can show you plenty

amongst her stores."

Upon this the old man wrote a note, which he dried with sand out of a

perforated bottle, as Richard Steele may have dried one of those airy

tender essays which he threw off in tavern parlours for the payment of

a jovial dinner.

Provided with this antique epistle, written on Bath post and sealed

with a great square seal from a bunch of cornelian monstrosities which

the draper carried at his watch-chain, I departed to find Miss

Hephzibah Judson, of Lochiel Villa, Lancaster-road.

CHAPTER IV.

GLIMPSES OF A BYGONE LIFE.

_October 10th_. I found the villa inhabited by Miss Hephzibah Judson

very easily, and found it one of those stiff square dwelling-houses

with brass curtain-rods, prim flower-beds, and vivid green palings,

only to be discovered in full perfection in the choicer suburb of a

country town.

I had heard enough during my brief residence in Ullerton to understand

that to live in the Lancaster-road was to possess a diploma of

respectability not easily vitiated by individual conduct. No

disreputable persons had ever yet set up their unholy Lares and Penates

in one of those new slack-baked villas; and that person must have been

very bold who, conscious of moral unfitness or pecuniary shortcoming,

should have ventured to pitch his tent in that sacred locality.

Miss Hephzibah Judson was one of the individuals whose shining sanctity

of life and comfortable income lent a reflected brightness to the

irreproachable suburb. I was admitted to her abode by an elderly woman

of starched demeanour but agreeable visage, who ushered me into a

spotless parlour, whereof the atmosphere was of that vault-like

coldness peculiar to a room which is only inhabited on state occasions.

Here the starched domestic left me while she carried my letter of

introduction to her mistress. In her absence I had leisure to form some

idea of Miss Judson's character on the mute evidence of Miss Judson's

surroundings. From the fact that there were books of a sentimental and

poetical tenor amongst the religious works ranged at mathematically

correct distances upon the dark green table-cover--from the presence of

three twittering canaries in a large brass cage--from the evidence of a

stuffed Blenheim spaniel, with intensely brown eyes, reclining on a

crimson velvet cushion under a glass shade--I opined that Miss Judson's

piety was pleasantly leavened by sentiment, and that her Wesleyanism

was agreeably tempered by that womanly tenderness which, failing more

legitimate outlets, will waste itself upon twittering canaries and

plethoric spaniels.

I was not mistaken. Miss Judson appeared presently, followed by the

servant bearing a tray of cake and wine. This was the first occasion on

which I had been offered refreshment by any person to whom I had

presented myself. I argued, therefore, that Miss Judson was the weakest

person with whom I had yet had to deal; and I flattered myself with the

hope that from Miss Judson's amiable weakness, sentimentality, and

womanly tenderness, I should obtain better aid than from more

business-like and practical people.

I fancied that with this lady it would be necessary to adopt a certain

air of candour. I therefore did not conceal from her the fact that my

business had something to do with that Haygarthian fortune awaiting a

claimant.

"The person for whom you are concerned is not Mr. Theodore Judson?" she

asked, with some asperity.

I assured her that I had never seen Theodore Judson, and that I was in

no manner interested in his success.

"In that case I shall be happy to assist you as far as lies in my

power; but I can do nothing to advance the interests of Theodore Judson

junior. I venture to hope that I am a Christian; and if Theodore Judson

junior were to come here to me and ask my forgiveness, I should accord

that forgiveness as a Christian; but I cannot and will not lend myself

to the furtherance of Theodore Judson's avaricious designs. I cannot

lend myself to the suppression of truth or the assertion of falsehood.

Theodore Judson senior is not the rightful heir to the late John

Haygarth's fortune, though I am bound to acknowledge that his claim

would be prior to my brother's. There is a man who stands before the

Theodore Judsons, and the Theodore Judsons know it. But were they the

rightful claimants, I should still consider them most unfitted to enjoy

superior fortune. If that dog could speak, he would be able to testify

to ill-usage received from Theodore Judson junior at his own

garden-gate, which would bespeak the character of the man to every

thoughtful mind. A young man who could indulge his spiteful feelings

against an elderly kinswoman at the expense of an unoffending animal is

not the man to make worthy use of fortune."

I expressed my acquiescence with this view of the subject; and I was

glad to perceive that with Miss Judson, as with her brother, the

obnoxious Theodores would stand me in good stead. The lady was only two

years younger than her brother, and even more inclined to be

communicative. I made the most of my opportunity, and sat in the

vault-like parlour listening respectfully to her discourse, and from

time to time hazarding a leading question, as long as it pleased her to

converse; although it seemed to me as if a perennial spring of cold

water were trickling slowly down my back and pervading my system during

the entire period. As the reward of my fortitude I obtained Miss

Judson's promise to send me any letters or papers she might find

amongst her store of old documents relating to the personal history of

Matthew Haygarth.

"I know I have a whole packet of letters in Matthew's own hand amongst

my grandmother's papers," said Miss Judson. "I was a great favourite

with my grandmother, and used to spend a good deal of my time with her

before she died--which she did while I was in pinafores; but young

people wore pinafores much longer in my time than they do now; and I

was getting on for fourteen years of age when my grandmother departed

this life. I've often heard her talk of her brother Matthew, who had

been dead some years when I was born. She was very fond of him, and he

of her, I've heard her say; and she used often to tell me how handsome

he was in his youth; and how well he used to look in a chocolate and

gold-laced riding coat, just after the victory of Culloden, when he

came to Ullerton in secret, to pay her a visit--not being on friendly

terms with his father."

I asked Miss Judson if she had ever read Matthew Haygarth's letters.

"No," she said; "I look at them sometimes when I'm tidying the drawer

in which I keep them, and I have sometimes stopped to read a word here

and there, but no more. I keep them out of respect to the dead; but I

think it would make me unhappy to read them. The thoughts and the

feelings in old letters seem so fresh that they bring our poor

mortality too closely home to us when we remember how little except

those faded letters remains of those who wrote them. It is well for us

to remember that we are only travellers and wayfarers on this earth;

but sometimes it seems just a little hard to think how few traces of

our footsteps we leave behind us when the journey is finished."

The canaries seemed to answer Miss Judson with a feeble twitter of

assent: and I took my leave, with a feeling of compassion in my heart.

I, the scamp--I, Robert Macaire the younger--had pity upon the caged

canaries, and the lonely old woman whose narrow life was drawing to its

close, and who began to feel how very poor a thing it had been after

all.

_Oct. 11th_. I have paid the penalty of my temerity in enduring the

vault-like chilliness of Miss Hephzibah Judson's parlour, and am

suffering to-day from a sharp attack of influenza; that complaint which

of all others tends to render a man a burden to himself, and a nuisance

to his fellow-creatures. Under these circumstances I have ordered a

fire in my own room--a personal indulgence scarcely warranted by

Sheldon's stipend--and I sit by my own fire pondering over the story of

Matthew Haygarth's life.

On the table by my side are scattered more than a hundred letters, all

in Matthew's bold hand; but even yet, after a most careful study of

those letters, the story of the man's existence is far from clear to

me. The letters are full of hints and indications, but they tell so

little plainly. They deal in enigmas, and disguise names under the mask

of initials.

There is much in these letters which relates to the secret history of

Matthew's life. They were written to the only creature amongst his

kindred in whom he fully confided. This fact transpires more than once,

as will be seen anon by the extracts I shall proceed to make; if my

influenza--which causes me to shed involuntary tears that give me the

appearance of a drivelling idiot, and which jerks me nearly out of my

chair every now and then with a convulsive sneeze--will permit me to do

anything rational or useful.

I have sorted and classified the letters, first upon one plan, then

upon another, until I have classified and sorted them into chaos.

Having done this, my only chance is to abandon all idea of

classification, and go quietly through them in consecutive order

according to their dates, jotting down whatever strikes me as

significant. George Sheldon's acumen must do the rest.

Thus I begin my notes, with an extract from the fourth letter in the

series. Mem. I preserve Matthew's own orthography, which is the most

eccentric it was ever my lot to contemplate.

"_December_ 14, '42. Indeed, my dear Ruth, I am ventursom wear you are

concurn'd, and w'd tell you that I w'd taik panes to kepe fromm

another. I saw ye same girl w'h it was my good fortun to saive from ye

molestashun of raketters and mohoks at Smithfelde in September last

past. She is ye derest prittiest creture you ever saw, and as elegant

and genteel in her speche and maner as a Corte lady, or as ye best

bredd person in Ullerton. I mett her in ye nayborood of ye Marchalsee

prison wear her father is at this pressent time a prisener, and had som

pleassant talke with her. She rememberr'd me at once, and seme'd mitily

gladd to see me. Mem. Her pritty blu eys wear fill'd with teares wen

she thank'd me for having studd up to be her champyun at ye Fare. So

you see, Mrs. Ruth, ye brotherr is more thort off in London than with

them which hav ye rite to regard him bestt. If you had scen ye pore

simpel childeish creetur and heeard her tell her arteless tale, I think

y'r kinde hart w'd have bin sore to considder so much unmiritted

misfortun: ye father is in pore helth, a captiv, ye mother has binn

dedd thre yeres, and ye pore orfann girl, Mollie, has to mentane ye

burden of ye sick father, and a yung helples sister. Think of this,

kinde Mrs. Ruth, in y'r welthy home. Mem. Pore Mrs. Mollie is prittier

than ye fineist ladies that wear to be sene at ye opening of ye grand

new roome at Ranellar this spring last past, wear I sor ye too Miss

Gunings and Lady Harvey, wich is alsoe accounted a grate buty."

I think this extract goes very far to prove that my friend Matthew was

considerably smitten by the pretty young woman whose champion he had

been in some row at Bartholomew Fair. This fits into one of the scraps

of information afforded by my ancient inhabitant in Ullerton

Almshouses, who remembers having heard his grandfather talk of Mat

Haygarth's part in some fight or disturbance at the great Smithfield

festival.

My next extract treats again of Mollie, after an interval of four

months. It seems as if Matthew had confided in his sister so far as to

betray his tenderness for the poor player-girl of the London booths;

but I can find no such letter amongst those in my hands. Such an

epistle may have been considered by Mrs. Ruth too dangerous to be kept

where the parental eye might in some evil hour discover it. Matthew's

sister was unmarried at this date, and lived within the range of that

stern paternal eye. Matthew's letter appears to me to have been written

in reply to some solemn warning from Ruth.

"_April_ 12, 1743. Sure, my dear sister cannot think me so baise a

retch as to injoore a pore simpel girl hoo confides in me as ye best

and trooest of mortals, wich for her dere saik I will strive to be. If

so be my sister cou'd think so ill of me it wou'd amost temt me to

think amiss of her, wich cou'd imagen so vile a thort. You tel me that

Mrs. Rebecka Caulfeld is mor than ever estemed by my father; but, Ruth,

I am bounde to say, my father's esteme is nott to be ye rule of my

ackshuns thro' life, for it semes to me their is no worser tyrrannie

than ye wich fathers do striv to impose on there children, and I do

acount that a kind of barbarity wich wou'd compel ye hart of youth to

sute ye proodense of age. I do not dout but Mrs. Rebecka is a mitey

proper and well-natur'd person, tho' taken upp with this new sekt of

methodys, or, as sum do call them in derission, swaddlers and jumpers,

set afoot by ye madbrain'd young man, Wesley, and one that is still

madder, Witfelde. Thear ar I dare sware many men in Ullerton wich wou'd

be gladd to obtane Mrs. Rebecka's hand and fortun; but if ye fortun

wear ten times more, I wou'd not preetend to oferr my harte to herr w'h

can never be its misteress. Now, my deare sister, having gone as farr

towards satisfieing all y'r queerys as my paper wou'd welle permitt, I

will say no more but to begg you to send me all ye knews, and to

believe that none can be more affectionately y'r humble servant than

your brother.

"MATHEW HAYGARTH."

In this extract we have strong ground for supposing that our Matthew

truly loved the player-girl, and meant honestly by his sweetheart.

There is a noble indignation in his repudiation of his sister's doubts,

and a manly determination not to marry Mrs. Rebecca's comfortable

fortune. I begin to think that Sheldon's theory of an early and secret

marriage will turn up a trump card; but Heaven only knows how slow or

how difficult may be the labour of proving such a marriage. And then,

even if we can find documentary evidence of such an event, we shall

have but advanced one step in our obscure path, and should have yet to

discover the issue of that union, and to trace the footsteps of

Matthew's unknown descendants during the period of a century.

I wonder how Sisyphus felt when the stone kept rolling back upon him.

Did he ever look up to the top of the mountain and calculate the

distance he must needs traverse before his task should be done?

The next letter in which I find a passage worth transcribing is of much

later date, and abounds in initials. The postmark is illegible; but I

can just make out the letters PO and L, the two first close together,

the third after an interval; and there is internal evidence to show

that the letter was written from some dull country place. Might not

that place have been Spotswold? the PO and the L of the postmark would

fit very well into the name of that village. Again I leave this

question to the astute Sheldon. The date is March, 1749.

"M. is but porely. Sumtimes I am pain'd to believe this quiett life is

not well suted to herr disposishun, having bin acustumed to so much

livlinesse and nois. I hav reproched her with this, but she tolde me,

with teres in her eys, to be neare mee and M. and C. was to be happie,

and ye it is il helth onlie wich is ye cawse of ye sadnesse. I pray

heaven M.'s helth may be on ye mending hand soone. Little M. grows more

butiful everry day; and indede, my dear sisterr, if you cou'd stele

another visitt this waye, and oblidge yr affectionat brother, you wou'd

considerr him ye moste butifull creetur ever scene. So much enteligence

with sich ingaging temper endeares him to all hartes. Mrs. J. says she

adors him, and is amost afraide to be thort a Paygann for bestoeing so

much affection on a erthly creetur, and this to oure good parson who

cou'd find no reproche for her plesant folly.

"We hav had heavy ranes all ye week last past. Sech wether can but

serve to hinderr M.'s recovery. The fysichion at G., wear I tooke her,

saies she shou'd hav much fresh aire everry day--if not afoot, to be

carrid in a chaire or cotche; but in this wether, and in a plaice wear

neeither chaire nor cotche can be had, she must needs stop in doors. I

hav begg'd her to lett me carry her to G., but she will not, and says

in ye summerr she will be as strong as everr. I pray God she may be so.

Butt theire are times whenn my harte is sore and heavy; and the rane

beeting agenst the winder semes lik dropps of cold worter falling uponn

my pore aking harte. If you cou'd stele a visitt you wou'd see wether

she semes worse than whenn you sor her last ortumm; she is trieing ye

tansy tea; and beggs her service to you, and greatfull thanks for y'r

rememberence of her. I dare to say you here splended acounts of my

doins in London--at cok fites and theaters, dansing at Vorxhall, and

beeting ye wotch in Covin Garden. Does my F. stil use to speke harsh

agenst me, or has he ni forgott their is sech a creetur living? If he

has so, I hope you wil kepe him in sech forgetfullnesse,--and obliage,

"Yr loving brother and obediant servent."

"MATHEW HAYGARTH."

To me this letter is almost conclusive evidence of a marriage. Who can

this little M. be, of whom he writes so tenderly, except a child? Who

can this woman be, whose ill health causes him such anxiety, unless a

wife? Of no one _but_ a wife could he write so freely to his sister.

The place to which he asks her to "steal a visit" must needs be a home

to which a man could invite his sister. I fancy it is thus made very

clear that at this period Matthew Haygarth was secretly married and

living at Spotswold, where his wife and son were afterwards buried, and

whence the body of the son was ultimately removed to Dewsdale to be

laid in that grave which the father felt would soon be his own

resting-place. That allusion to the Ullerton talk of London roisterings

indicates that Matthew's father believed him to be squandering the

paternal substance in the metropolis at the very time when the young

man was leading a simple domestic life within fifty miles of the

paternal abode. No man could do such a thing in these days of rapid

locomotion, when every creature is more or less peripatetic; but in

that benighted century the distance from Ullerton to Spotswold

constituted a day's journey. That Matthew was living in one place while

he was supposed to be in another is made sufficiently clear by several

passages in his letters, all more or less in the strain of the

following:--

"I was yesterday--markett-day--at G., wear I ran suddennly agenst Peter

Browne's eldest ladd. The boy openn'd his eyes wide, stearing like an

owle; butt I gaive him bakk his looke with interrest, and tolde him if

he was curiouse to know my name, I was Simon Lubchick, farmer, at his

servise. The pore simpel ladd arsk'd my pardonn humbly for having

mistook me for a gentelman of Ullerton--a frend of his father; on wich

I gaive him a shillin, and we parted, vastly plesed with eche other;

and this is nott the fust time the site of Ullerton fokes has putt me

into a swett."

Amongst later letters are very sad ones. The little M. is dead. The

father's poor aching heart proclaims its anguish in very simple words:

"_Nov_. 1751. I thank my dear sister kindly for her friendlinesse and

compashin; butt, ah, he is gone, and their semes to be no plesure or

comforte on this erth without him! onlie a littel childe of 6 yeres,

and yett so dere a creetur to this harte that the worlde is emty and

lonely without him. M. droopes sadly, and is more ailing everry day.

Indede, my dere Ruth, I see nothing butt sorrow before me, and I wou'd

be right gladd to lay down at peece in my littel M.'s grave."

I can find no actual announcements of death, only sad allusions here

and there. I fancy the majority of Matthew's letters must have been

lost, for the dates of those confided to my hands are very far apart,

and there is evidence in all of them of other correspondence. After the

letter alluding to little M.'s death, there is a hiatus of eight years.

Then comes a letter with the post-mark London very clear, from which I

transcribe an extract. "_October 4th_, 1759. The toun is very sadd;

everry body, high and low, rich and pore, in morning for Gennerel Wolf:

wot a nobel deth to die, and how much happier than to live, when one

considers the cairs and miseries of this life; and sech has bin the

oppinion of wiser fokes than y'r humble servent. Being in companie on

Thersday sennite with that distingwish'd riter, Dr. Johnson,--whose

admir'd story of _Raselass_ I sent you new from ye press, but who I am

bound to confesse is less admirable as a fine gentlemann than as an

orther, his linning siled and his kravatt twisted ary, and his manners

wot in a more obskure personn wou'd be thort ungenteel,--he made a

remark wich impress'd me much. Some one present, being almost all

gentelmenn of parts and learning, except y'r pore untuter'd brother,

observed that it was a saying with the ainchents that ye happiest of

men was him wich was never born; ye next happy him wich died the

soonest. On wich Dr. Johnson cried out verry loud and angry, 'That was

a Paggann sentyment, sir, and I am asham'd that a Xtian gentelmann

shou'd repete it as a subject for admerashun. Betwene these heathen men

and ye followers of Christ their is all ye differenc betwene a slave

and a servent of a kind Master. Eche bears the same burden; butt ye

servent knows he will recieve just wages for his work, wile ye slave

hopes for nothing, and so conkludes that to escape work is to be

happy!' I could but aknowlege the wisdomm and pyety of this speche;

yett whenn I see ye peopel going bye in their black rayment, I envy the

young Gennerel his gloreous deth, and I wish I was laying amongst the

plane on the hites of Quebeck. I went to look at ye old house in J.

St., but I wou'd not go in to see Mr. F. or ye old roomes; for I think

I shou'd see the aparishions of those that once liv'd in them. C.

thrivs at Higate, wear the aire is fresh and pewer. I go to see her

offen. She is nerely as high as you. Give my servis to Mrs. Rebecka,

sinse you say it will plese my father to do so, and he is now dispos'd

to think more kindly of me. Butt if he thinks I shal everr arske her to

be my wife he is mityly mistaken. You know wear my harte lies--in ye

grave with all that made life dere. Thank my father for the Bill, and

tell him I pass my time in good companie, and neether drink nor play;

and will come to Ullerton to pay him my respeckts when he pleses to bid

me. Butt I hav no desire to leeve London, as I am gladd to be neare C."

Who was C., whom Matthew visited at Highgate, and who was nearly as

tall as Ruth Judson? Was she not most likely the same C. mentioned in

conjunction with the little M. in the earlier letters? and if so, can

there be any doubt that she was the daughter of Matthew Haygarth? Of

whom but of a daughter would he write as in this letter? She was at

Highgate, at school most likely, and he goes to see her. She is nearly

as tall as Mrs. Judson. This height must have been a new thing, or he

would scarcely impart it as a piece of news to his sister. And then he

has no desire to leave London, as he is glad to be near C.

My life upon it, C. is a daughter.

Acting upon this conviction, I have transcribed all passages relating

to C., at whatever distance of time they occur.

* * * * *

Thus, in 1763, I find--"C. has grone very hansome, and Mrs. N. tells me

is much admir'd by a brother of her frend Tabitha. She never stirs

abrorde but with Tabitha, and if a dutchess, cou'd be scarce wated on

more cairfully. Mrs. N. loves her verry tenderly, and considers her the

sweetest and most wel bredd of young women. I hav given her the new

edishun of Sir Charls Grandisson, wich they read alowde in ye evenings,

turn and turn about, to Mrs. N. at her spinning. C. has given me a wool

comforter of her owne worke, and sum stockings wich are two thick to

ware, but I hav not told her so."

Again, in 1764: "Tabitha Meynell's brother goes more than ever to

Higate. He is a clark in his father's wearhouse; very sober and

estimabel, and if it be for ye hapiness of C. to mary him, I wou'd be

ye laste of men to sett my orthoritty agenst her enclinashun. She is

yett but ayteen yeres of age, wich is young to make a change; so I tell

Mrs. N. we will waite. Meanwhile ye young peapel see eche other offen."

Again, in 1765: "Young Meynell is still constant, expressing much love

and admirashun for C. in his discorse with Mrs. N., butt sattisfide to

wait my plesure before spekeing oppenly to C. He semes a most exempelry

young man; his father a cittizen of some repewt in Aldersgait-street,

ware I have din'd since last riting to you, and at hoose tabel I was

paid much considerashun. He, Tomas Meynell ye father, will give his son

five hundred pound, and I prommis a thousand pound with C. and to

furnish a house at Chelsee, a verry plesent and countriefide vilage; so

I make no doubt there will soon be a wedding.

"I am sorrie to here my father is aleing; give him my love and servise,

and will come to Ullerton immediate on receiving his commands. I am

plesed to think Mrs. Rebecka Caulfeld is so dutifull and kind to him,

and has comfortedd him with prairs and discorses. I thank her for this

more than for any frendshipp for my undeserving self. Pray tell her

that I am much at her servise.

"Our new king is lov'd and admir'd by all. His ministers not so; and

wise peopel do entertain themselfs with what I think foollish jokes

a-bout a _Skotch boote_. Perhapps I am not cleverr enuff to see the

funn in this joke."

In this letter I detect a certain softening of feeling towards Mrs.

Rebecca Caulfield. In the next year--'66--according to my notes,

Matthew's father died, and I have no letters bearing the date of that

year, which our Matthew no doubt spent at home. Nor have I any letters

from this time until the year of Matthew's marriage with Rebecca

Caulfield. In the one year of his union with Mrs. Rebecca, and the last

year of his life, there are many letters, a few from London and the

rest from the manor-house at Dewsdale. But in these epistles,

affectionate and confidential as they are, there is little positive

information.

These are the letters of the regenerate and Wesleyanised Matthew; and,

like the more elaborate epistles of his wife Rebecca, deal chiefly with

matters spiritual. In these letters I can perceive the workings of a

weak mind, which in its decline has become a prey to religious terrors;

and though I fully recognise the reforming influence which John Wesley

exercised upon the people of England, I fancy poor Matthew would have

been better in the hands of a woman whose piety was of a less severe

type than that of Wesleyan Rebecca. There is an all-pervading tone of

fear in these letters--a depression which is almost despair. In the

same breath he laments and regrets the lost happiness of his youth, and

regrets and laments his own iniquity in having been so ignorantly and

unthinkingly happy.

Thus in one letter he says,--

"When I think of that inconsideratt foolish time with M., and how to be

nere her semed the highest blisse erth cou'd bistowe or Heven prommis,

I trimbel to think of my pore unawaken'd sole, and of her dome on wich

the tru light never shown. If I cou'd believe she was happy my owne

sorow wou'd be lesse; but I canot, sence all ye worthyest memberrs of

our seck agree that to die thinking onely of erthly frends, and

clingeng with a passhunate regrett to them we luv on erth is to be

lesse than a tru Xtian, and for sech their is but one dome."

And again, in a still later epistle, he writes,--

"On Toosday sennite an awakning discorse fromm a verry young man, until

lately a carppenter, but now imploid piusly in going from toun to toun

and vilage to vilage, preching. He says, that a life of cairlesse

happyness, finding plesure in ye things of this worlde, is--not being

repentied of--irretrevable damnation. This is a maloncally thort! I

fell to mewsing on M., with hoom I injoy'd such compleat happyness, tel

Deth came like a spekter to bannish all comforte. And now I knowe that

our lives wear vainity. I ashure you, dear sister, I am prodidjusly

sadd when I reffleckt upon this truth--ashuredly it is a harde saying."

Anon comes that strange foreknowledge of death--that instinctive sense

of the shadowy hand so soon to lay him at rest; and with that mystic

prescience comes a yearning for the little child M. to be laid where

his father may lay down beside him. There are many passages in the

latter letters which afford a clue to that mysterious midnight burial

at Dewsdale.

"Last nite I drem't of the cherchyarde at S. I satte under the olde

yewe tree, as it semed in my dreme, and hurd a childes voice crying in

a very piteous mannerr. The thort of this dreme has oppress'd my

speritts all day, and Rebecka has enquier'd more than wunce wot ales

me. If little M. but lay nere at hande, in ye graive to wich I fele I

must soone be carrid, I beleive I shou'd be happyer. Reproove me for

this folley if you plese. I am getting olde, and Sattan temts me with

seche fooleish thorts. Wot dose it matter to my sole wear my vile bodie

is laid? and yet I have a fonde fooleish desier to be berrid with

littel M."

And in these latest letters there is ample evidence of that yearning on

Matthew's part to reveal a secret which Rebecca's own correspondence

betrays.

"We tawked of manny things, and she was more than ordinnary kind and

gentel. I had a mind to tell her about M, and aske her frendship for C;

but she seemed not to cair to here my sekrets, and I think wou'd be

offended if she new the trooth. So I cou'd not finde courrage to tell

her. Before I die I shal speek planely for the saik of C. and M. and ye

little one. I shal cum to U. erly nex weak to make my Wille, and this

time shal chainge my umour no more. I have burnt ye laste, not likeing

it."

This passage occurs in the last letter, amongst the packet confided to

me. The letter is dated September 5, 1774. On the fourteenth of the

following month Matthew died, and in all probability the will here

alluded to was never executed. Certain it is that Matthew, whose end

was awfully sudden at the last, died intestate, whereby his son John

inherited the bulk, and ultimately the whole, of his fortune. There are

many allusions to this infant son in the last few letters; but I do not

think the little creature obtained any great hold on the father's

heart. No doubt he was bound and swaddled out of even such small

semblance to humanity as one may reasonably expect in a child of six or

seven weeks old, and by no means an agreeable being. And poor

weak-minded Matthew's heart was with that player-girl wife whom he

never acknowledged, and the little M. And thus ends the story of

Matthew Haygarth, so far as I have been able to trace it in the

unfathomable gloom of the past.

It seems to me that what I have next to do will be to hunt up

information respecting that young man Meynell, whose father lived in

Aldersgate Street, and was a respectable and solid citizen, of that

ilk; able to give a substantial dinner to the father of his son's

sweetheart, and altogether a person considerable enough, I should

imagine, to have left footprints of some kind or other on the sands of

Time. The inscrutable Sheldon will be able to decide in what manner the

hunt of the Meynells must begin. I doubt if there is anything more to

be done in Ullerton.

I have sent Sheldon a fair copy of my extracts from Matthew's

correspondence, and have returned the letters to Miss Judson, carefully

packed in accordance with her request. I now await my Sheldon's next

communication and the abatement of my influenza before making my next

move in the great game of chess called Life.

What is the meaning of Horatio Paget's lengthened abode in this town?

He is still here. He went past this house to-day while I was standing

at my window in that abject state of mind known only to influenza and

despair. I think I was suffering from a touch of both diseases, by the

bye. What is that man doing here? The idea of his presence fills me

with all manner of vague apprehensions. I cannot rid myself of the

absurd notion that the lavender glove I saw lying in Goodge's parlour

had been left there by the Captain. I know the idea _is_ an absurd one,

and I tell myself again and again that Paget _cannot_ have any inkling

of my business here, and therefore _cannot_ attempt to forestall me or

steal my hard-won information. But often as I reiterate this--in that

silent argument which a man is always elaborating in his own mind--I am

still tormented by a nervous apprehension of treachery from that man. I

suppose the boundary line between influenza and idiocy is a very narrow

one. And then Horatio Paget is such a thorough-paced scoundrel. He is

_lié_ with Philip Sheldon too--another thorough-paced scoundrel in a

quiet gentlemanly way, unless my instinct deceives me.

_October 12th_. There is treachery somewhere. Again the Haygarthian

epistles have been tampered with. Early this morning comes an indignant

note from Miss Judson, reminding me that I promised the packet of

letters should be restored to her yesterday at noon, and informing me

that they were not returned until last night at eleven o'clock, when

they were left at her back garden-gate by a dirty boy who rang the bell

as loudly as if he had been giving the alarm of fire, and who thrust

the packet rudely into the hand of the servant and vanished

immediately. So much for the messenger. The packet itself, Miss Judson

informed me, was of a dirty and disgraceful appearance, unworthy the

hands of a gentlewoman, and one of the letters was missing.

Heedless of my influenza, I rushed at once to the lower regions of the

inn, saw the waiter into whose hands I had confided my packet at

half-past ten o'clock yesterday morning, and asked what messenger had

been charged with it. The waiter could not tell me. He did not

remember. I told him plainly that I considered this want of memory very

extraordinary. The waiter laughed me to scorn, with that quiet

insolence which a well-fed waiter feels for a customer who pays twenty

shillings a week for his board and lodging. The packet had been given

to a very respectable messenger, the waiter made no doubt. As to

whether it was the ostler, or one of the boys, or the Boots, or a young

woman in the kitchen who went on errands sometimes, the waiter wouldn't

take upon himself to swear, being a man who would perish rather than

inadvertently perjure himself. As to my packet having been tampered

with, that was ridiculous. What on earth was there in a lump of

letter-paper for any one to steal? Was there money in the parcel? I was

fain to confess there was no money; on which the waiter laughed aloud.

Failing the waiter, I applied myself severally to the ostler, the boys,

the Boots, and the young woman in the kitchen; and then transpired the

curious fact that no one had carried my packet. The ostler was sure he

had not; the Boots could take his Bible oath to the same effect; the

young woman in the kitchen could not call to mind anything respecting a

packet, though she was able to give me a painfully circumstantial

account of the events of the morning--where she went and what she did,

down to the purchase of three-pennyworth of pearl-ash and a pound of

Glenfield starch for the head chambermaid, on which she dwelt with a

persistent fondness.

I now felt assured that there had been treachery here, as in the Goodge

business; and I asked myself to whom could I impute that treachery?

My instinctive suspicion was of Horatio Paget. And yet, was it not more

probable that Theodore Judson, senr. and Theodore Judson, junr. were

involved in this business, and were watching and counterchecking my

actions with a view to frustrating the plans of my principal? This was

one question which I asked myself as I deliberated upon this mysterious

business. Had the Theodore Judsons some knowledge of a secret marriage

on the part of Matthew Haygarth? and did they suspect the existence of

an heir in the descendant of the issue of that marriage? These were

further questions which I asked myself, and which I found it much more

easy to ask than to answer. After having considered these questions, I

went to the Lancaster-road, saw Miss Judson--assured her, on my word as

a gentleman, that the packet had been delivered by my hands into those

of the waiter at eleven o'clock on the previous day, and asked to see

the envelope. There it was--my large blue wire-wove office envelope,

addressed in my own writing. But in these days of adhesive envelopes

there is nothing easier than to tamper with the fastening of a letter.

I registered a mental vow never again to trust any important document

to the protection of a morsel of gummed paper. I counted the letters,

convinced myself that there was a deficiency, and then set to work to

discover which of the letters had been abstracted. Here I failed

utterly. For my own convenience in copying my extracts, I had numbered

the letters from which I intended to transcribe passages before

beginning my work. My pencilled figures in consecutive order were

visible in the corner of the superscription of every document I had

used. Those numbered covers I now found intact, and I could thus assure

myself that the missing document was one from which I had taken no

extract.

This inspired me with a new alarm. Could it be possible that I had

overlooked some scrap of information more important than all that I had

transcribed?

I racked my brains in the endeavour to recall the contents of that one

missing letter; but although I sat in that social tomb, Miss Judson's

best parlour, until I felt my blood becoming of an arctic quality, I

could remember nothing that seemed worth remembering in the letters I

had laid aside as valueless.

I asked Miss Judson if she had any suspicion of the person who had

tampered with the packet. She looked at me with an icy smile, and

answered in ironical accents, which were even more chilling than the

atmosphere of her parlour,--

"Do not ask if I know who has tampered with those letters, Mr.

Hawkehurst. Your affectation of surprise has been remarkably well put

on; but I am not to be deceived a second time. When you came to me in

the first instance, I had my suspicions; but you came furnished with a

note from my brother, and as a Christian I repressed those suspicions.

I know now that I have been the dupe of an impostor, and that in

entrusting those letters to you I entrusted them to an emissary and

tool of THEODORE JUDSON."

I protested that I had never to my knowledge set eyes upon either of

the Theodore Judsons; but the prejudiced kinswoman of those gentlemen

shook her head with a smile whose icy blandness was eminently

exasperating.

"I am not to be deceived a second time," she said. "Who else but

Theodore Judson should have employed you? Who else but Theodore Judson

is interested in the Haygarth fortune? O, it was like him to employ a

stranger where he knew his own efforts would be unavailing; it was like

him to hoodwink me by the agency of a hireling tool."

I had been addressed as a "young man" by the reverend Jonah, and now I

was spoken of as a "hireling tool" by Miss Judson. I scarcely knew

which was most disagreeable, and I began to think that board and

lodging in the present, and a visionary three thousand pounds in the

future, would scarcely compensate me for such an amount of ignominy.

I went back to my inn utterly crestfallen--a creature so abject that

even the degrading influence of influenza could scarcely sink me any

lower in the social scale. I wrote a brief and succinct account of my

proceedings, and despatched the same to George Sheldon, and then I sat

down in my sickness and despair, as deeply humiliated as Ajax when he

found that he had been pitching into sheep instead of Greeks, as

miserable as Job amongst his dust and ashes, but I am happy to say

untormented by the chorus of one or the friends of the other. In that

respect at least I had some advantage over both.

_October 13th_. This morning's post brought me a brief scrawl from

Sheldon.

"Come back to town directly. I have found the registry of Matthew

Haygarth's marriage."

And so I turn my back on Ullerton; with what rejoicing of spirit it is

not in language to express.

BOOK THE SIXTH.

THE HEIRESS OF THE HAYGARTHS.

CHAPTER I.

DISAPPOINTMENT.

Of all places upon this earth, perhaps, there is none more obnoxious to

the civilized mind than London in October; and yet to Valentine

Hawkehurst, newly arrived from Ullerton per North-Western Railway, that

city seemed as an enchanted and paradisiacal region. Were not the

western suburbs of that murky metropolis inhabited by Charlotte

Halliday, and might he not hope to see her?

He did hope for that enjoyment. He had felt something more than hope

while speeding Londonwards by that delightful combination of a liberal

railway management, a fast and yet cheap train. He had beguiled himself

with a delicious certainty. Early the next morning--or at any rate as

early as civilization permitted--he would hie him to Bayswater, and

present himself at the neat iron gate of Philip Sheldon's gothic villa.

_She_ would be there, in the garden most likely, his divine Charlotte,

so bright and radiant a creature that the dull October morning would be

made glorious by her presence--she would be there, and she would

welcome him with that smile which made her the most enchanting of women.

Such thoughts as these had engaged him during his homeward journey; and

compared with the delight of such visions, the perusal of daily papers

and the consumption of sandwiches, whereby other passengers beguiled

their transit, seemed a poor amusement. But, arrived in the dingy

streets, and walking towards Chelsea under a drizzling rain, the bright

picture began to grow dim. Was it not more than likely that Charlotte

would be absent from London at this dismal season? Was it not very

probable that Philip Sheldon would give him the cold shoulder? With

these gloomy contingencies before him, Mr. Hawkehurst tried to shut

Miss Halliday's image altogether out of his mind, and to contemplate

the more practical aspect of his affairs.

"I wonder whether that scoundrel Paget has come back to London?" he

thought. "What am I to say to him if he has? If I own to having seen

him in Ullerton, I shall lay myself open to being questioned by him as

to my own business in that locality. Perhaps my wisest plan would be to

say nothing, and hear his own account of himself. I fully believe he

saw me on the platform that night when we passed each other without

speaking."

Horatio Paget was at home when his _protegé_ arrived. He was seated by

his fireside in all the domestic respectability of a dressing-gown and

slippers, with an evening paper on his knee, a slim smoke-coloured

bottle at his elbow, and the mildest of cigars between his lips, when

the traveller, weary and weather-stained, entered the lodging-house

drawing-room.

Captain Paget received his friend very graciously, only murmuring some

faint deprecation of the young man's reeking overcoat, with just such a

look of gentlemanly alarm as the lamented Brummel may have felt when

ushered into the presence of a "damp stranger."

"And so you've come back at last," said the Captain, "from Dorking?" He

made a little pause here, and looked at his friend with a malicious

sparkle in his eye. "And how was the old aunt? Likely to cut up for any

considerable amount, eh? It could only be with a view to that

cutting-up process that you could consent to isolate yourself in such a

place as Dorking. How did you find things?"

"O, I don't know, I'm sure," Mr. Hawkehurst answered rather impatiently,

for his worst suspicions were confirmed by his patron's manner; "I only

know I found it tiresome work enough."

"Ah, to be sure! elderly people always are tiresome, especially when

they are unacquainted with the world. There is a perennial youth about

men and women of the world. The sentimental twaddle people talk of the

freshness and purity of a mind unsullied by communion with the world is

the shallowest nonsense. Your Madame du Deffand at eighty and your

Horace Walpole at sixty are as lively as a girl and boy. Your

octogenarian Voltaire is the most agreeable creature in existence. But

take Cymon and Daphne from their flocks and herds and pastoral valleys

in their old age, and see what senile bores and quavering imbeciles you

would find them. Yes, I have no doubt you found your Dorking aunt a

nuisance. Take off your wet overcoat and put it out of the room, and

then ring for more hot water. You'll find that cognac very fine. Won't

you have a cigar?"

The Captain extended his russia-leather case with the blandest smile.

It was a very handsome case. Captain Paget was a man who could descend

into some unknown depths of the social ocean in the last stage of

shabbiness, and who, while his acquaintance were congratulating

themselves upon the fact of his permanent disappearance, would start up

suddenly in an unexpected place, provided with every necessity and

luxury of civilized life, from a wardrobe by Poole to the last

fashionable absurdity in the shape of a cigar-case.

Never had Valentine Hawkehurst found his patron more agreeably disposed

than he seemed to be this evening, and never had he felt more inclined

to suspect him.

"And what have you been doing while I have been away?" the young man

asked presently. "Any more promoting work?"

"Well, yes, a little bit of provincial business; a life-and-fire on a

novel principle; a really good thing, if we can only find men with

perception enough to see its merits, and pluck enough to hazard their

capital. But promoting in the provinces is very dull work. I've been to

two or three towns in the Midland districts--Beauport, Mudborough, and

Ullerton--and have found the same stagnation everywhere."

Nothing could be more perfect than the semblance of unconscious

innocence with which the Captain gave this account of himself: whether

he was playing a part, or whether he was telling the entire truth, was

a question which even a cleverer man than Valentine Hawkehurst might

have found himself unable to answer.

The two men sat till late, smoking and talking; but to-night Valentine

found the conversation of his "guide, philosopher, and friend"

strangely distasteful to him. That cynical manner of looking at life,

which not long ago had seemed to him the only manner compatible with

wisdom and experience, now grated harshly upon those finer senses which

had been awakened in the quiet contemplative existence he had of late

been leading. He had been wont to enjoy Captain Paget's savage

bitterness against a world which had not provided him with a house in

Carlton-gardens, and a seat in the Cabinet; but to-night he was

revolted by the noble Horatio's tone and manner. Those malicious sneers

against respectable people and respectable prejudices, with which the

Captain interlarded all his talk, seemed to have a ghastly grimness in

their mirth. It was like the talk of some devil who had once been an

angel, and had lost all hope of ever being restored to his angelic

status.

"To believe in nothing, to respect nothing, to hope for nothing, to

fear nothing, to consider life as so many years in which to scheme and

lie for the sake of good dinners and well-made coats--surely there can

be no state of misery more complete, no degradation more consummate,"

thought the young man, as he sat by the fireside smoking and listening

dreamily to his companion. "Better to be Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth,

narrow-minded and egotistical, but always looking beyond her narrow

life to some dimly-comprehended future."

He was glad to escape at last from the Captain's society, and to retire

to his own small chamber, where he slept soundly enough after the day's

fatigues, and dreamed of the Haygarths and Charlotte Halliday.

He was up early the next morning; but, on descending to the

sitting-room, he found his patron toasting his _Times_ before a

cheerful fire; while his gold hunting-watch stood open on the

breakfast-table, and a couple of new-laid eggs made a pleasant wabbling

noise in a small saucepan upon the hob.

"You don't care for eggs, I know, Val," said the Captain, as he took

the saucepan from the hob.

He had heard the young man object to an egg of French extraction too

long severed from its native land; but he knew very well that for rural

delicacies from a reliable dairyman, at twopence apiece, Mr. Hawkehurst

had no particular antipathy. Even in so small a matter as a new-laid

egg the Captain knew how to protect his own interest.

"There's some of that Italian sausage you're so fond of, dear boy," he

said politely, pointing to a heel of some grayish horny-looking

compound. "Thanks; I'll pour out the coffee; there's a knack in these

things; half the clearness of coffee depends on the way in which it's

poured out, you see."

And with this assurance Captain Paget filled his own large

breakfast-cup with a careful hand and a tender solemnity of

countenance. If he was a trifle less considerate in the pouring out of

the second cup, and if some "grounds" mingled with the second portion,

Valentine Hawkehurst was unconscious of the fact.

"Do try that Italian sausage," said the Captain, as he discussed his

second egg, after peeling the most attractive crusts from the French

rolls, and pushing the crumb to his _protégé_.

"No, thank you; it looks rather like what your shop-people call an old

housekeeper; besides, there's a little too much garlic in those

compositions for my taste."

"Your taste has grown fastidious," said the Captain; "one would think

you were going to call upon some ladies this morning."

"There are not many ladies on my visiting-list. O, by the way, how's

Diana? Have you seen her lately?"

"No," answered the Captain, promptly. "I only returned from my

provincial tour a day or two ago, and have had no time to waste dancing

attendance upon her. She's well enough, I've no doubt; and she's

uncommonly well off in Sheldon's house, and ought to think herself so."

Having skimmed his newspaper, Captain Paget rose and invested himself

in his overcoat. He put on his hat before the glass over the

mantelpiece, adjusting the brim above his brows with the thoughtful

care that distinguished his performance of all those small duties which

he owed to himself.

"And what may _you_ be going to do with yourself to-day, Val?" he asked

of the young man, who sat nursing his own knee and staring absently at

the fire.

"Well, I don't quite know," Mr. Hawkehurst answered, hypocritically; "I

think I may go as far as Gray's Inn, and look in upon George Sheldon."

"You'll dine out of doors, I suppose?"

This was a polite way of telling Mr. Hawkehurst that there would be no

dinner for him at home.

"I suppose I shall. You know I'm not punctilious on the subject of

dinner. Anything you please--from a banquet at the London Tavern to a

ham-sandwich and a glass of ale at fourpence."

"Ah, to be sure; youth is reckless of its gastric juices. I shall find

you at home when I come in to-night, I daresay. I think I may dine in

the city. _Au plaisir_."

"I don't know about the pleasure," muttered Mr. Hawkehurst. "You're a

very delightful person, my friend Horatio; but there comes a crisis in

a man's existence when he begins to feel that he has had enough of you.

Poor Diana! what a father!"

He did not waste much time on further consideration of his patron, but

set off at once on his way to Gray's Inn. It was too early to call at

the Lawn, or he would fain have gone there before seeking George

Sheldon's dingy offices. Nor could he very well present himself at the

gothic villa without some excuse for so doing. He went to Gray's Inn

therefore; but on his way thither called at a tavern near the Strand,

which was the head-quarters of a literary association known as the

Ragamuffins. Here he was fortunate enough to meet with an acquaintance

in the person of a Ragamuffin in the dramatic-author line, who was

reading the morning's criticisms on a rival's piece produced the night

before, with a keen enjoyment of every condemnatory sentence. From this

gentleman Mr. Hawkehurst obtained a box-ticket for a West-end theatre;

and, armed with this mystic document, he felt himself able to present a

bold countenance at Mr. Sheldon's door.

"Will she be glad to see me again?" he asked himself. "Pshaw! I daresay

she has forgotten me by this time. A fortnight is an age with some

women; and I should fancy Charlotte Halliday just one of those bright

impressionable beings who forget easily. I wonder whether she is

_really_ like that 'Molly' whose miniature was found by Mrs. Haygarth

in the tulip-leaf escritoire; or was the resemblance between those two

faces only a silly fancy of mine?"

Mr. Hawkehurst walked the whole distance from Chelsea to Gray's Inn;

and it was midday when he presented himself before George Sheldon, whom

he found seated at his desk with the elephantine pedigree of the

Haygarths open before him, and profoundly absorbed in the contents of a

note-book. He looked up from this note-book as Valentine entered, but

did not leave off chewing the end of his pencil as he mumbled a welcome

to the returning wanderer. It has been seen that neither of the Sheldon

brothers were demonstrative men.

After that unceremonious greeting, the lawyer continued his perusal of

the note-book for some minutes, while Valentine seated himself in a

clumsy leather-covered arm-chair by the fireplace.

"Well, young gentleman," Mr. Sheldon exclaimed, as he closed his book

with a triumphant snap, "I think _you're_ in for a good thing; and you

may thank your lucky stars for having thrown you into my path."

"My stars are not remarkable for their luckiness in a general way,"

answered Mr. Hawkehurst, coolly, for the man had not yet been born from

whom he would accept patronage. "I suppose if I'm in for a good thing,

you're in for a better thing, my dear George; so you needn't come the

benefactor quite so strong for my edification. How did you ferret out

the certificate of gray-eyed Molly's espousals?"

George Sheldon contemplated his coadjutor with an admiring stare. "It

has been my privilege to enjoy the society of cool hands, Mr.

Hawkehurst; and certainly you are about the coolest of the lot--bar

one, as they say in the ring. But that is _ni ci ni là_. I have found

the certificate of Matthew Haygarth's marriage, and to my mind the

Haygarth succession is as good as ours."

"Ah, those birds in the bush have such splendid plumage! but I'd rather

have the modest sparrow in my hand. However, I'm very glad our affairs

are marching. How did you discover the marriage-lines?"

"Not without hard labour, I can tell you. Of course my idea of a secret

marriage was at the best only a plausible hypothesis; and I hardly

dared to hug myself with the hope that it might turn up trumps. My idea

was based upon two or three facts, namely, the character of the young

man, his long residence in London away from the ken of respectable

relatives and friends, and the extraordinary state of the marriage laws

at the period in which our man lived."

"Ah, to be sure! That was a strong point."

"I should rather think it was. I took the trouble to look up the

history of Mayfair marriages and Fleet marriages before you started for

Ullerton, and I examined all the evidence I could get on that subject.

I made myself familiar with the Rev. Alexander Keith of Mayfair, who

helped to bring clandestine marriages into vogue amongst the swells,

and with Dr. Gaynham--agreeably nicknamed Bishop of Hell--and more of

the same calibre; and the result of my investigations convinced me that

in those days a hare-brained young reprobate must have found it rather

more difficult to avoid matrimony than to achieve it. He might be

married when he was tipsy; he might be married when he was comatose

from the effects of a stand-up fight with Mohawks; his name might be

assumed by some sportive Benedick of his acquaintance given to

practical joking, and he might find himself saddled with a wife he

never saw; or if, on the other hand, of an artful and deceptive turn,

he might procure a certificate of a marriage that had never taken

place,--for there were very few friendly offices which the Fleet

parsons refused to perform for their clients--for a consideration."

"But how about the legality of the Fleet marriage?"

"There's the rub. Before the New Marriage Act passed in 1753 a Fleet

marriage was indissoluble. It was an illegal act, and the parties were

punishable; but the Gordian knot was quite as secure as if it had been

tied in the most orthodox manner. The great difficulty to my mind was

the _onus probandi_. The marriage might have taken place; the marriage

be to all intents and purposes a good marriage; but how produce

undeniable proof of such a ceremony, when all ceremonies of the kind

were performed with a manifest recklessness and disregard of law? Even

if I found an apparently good certificate, how was I to prove that it

was not one of those lying certificates of marriages that had never

taken place? Again, what kind of registers could posterity expect from

these parson-adventurers, very few of whom could spell, and most of

whom lived in a chronic state of drunkenness? They married people

sometimes by their Christian names alone--very often under assumed

names. What consideration had they for heirs-at-law in the future, when

under the soothing influence of a gin-bottle in the present? I thought

of all these circumstances, and I was half inclined to despair of

realising my idea of an early marriage. I took it for granted that such

a secret business would be more likely to have taken place in the

precincts of the Fleet than anywhere else; and having no particular

clue, I set to work, in the first place, to examine all available

documents relating to such marriages."

"It must have been slow work."

"It _was_ slow work," answered Mr. Sheldon with a suppressed groan,

that was evoked by the memory of a bygone martyrdom. "I needn't enter

into all the details of the business,--the people I had to apply to for

permission to see this set of papers, and the signing and

counter-signing I had to go through before I could see that set of

papers, and the extent of circumlocution and idiocy I had to encounter

in a general way before I could complete my investigation. The result

was nil; and after working like a galley-slave I found myself no better

off than before I began my search. Your extracts from Matthew's letters

put me on a new track. I concluded therefrom that there had been a

marriage, and that the said marriage had been a deliberate act on the

part of the young man. I therefore set to work to do what I ought to

have done at starting--I hunted in all the parish registers to be found

within a certain radius of such and such localities. I began with

Clerkenwell, in which neighbourhood our friend spent such happy years,

according to that pragmatical epistle of Mrs. Rebecca's; but after

hunting in all the mouldy old churches within a mile of St.

John's-gate, I was no nearer arriving at any record of Matthew

Haygarth's existence. So I turned my back upon Clerkenwell, and went

southward to the neighbourhood of the Marshalsea, where Mistress

Molly's father was at one time immured, and whence I thought it very

probable Mistress Molly had started on her career as a matron. This

time my guess was a lucky one. After hunting the registers of St.

Olave's, St. Saviour's, and St. George's, and after the expenditure of

more shillings in donations to sextons than I care to remember, I at

last lighted on a document which I consider worth three thousand pounds

to you--and--a very decent sum of money to me."

"I wonder what colour our hair will be when we touch that money?" said

Valentine meditatively. "These sort of cases generally find their way

into Chancery-lane, don't they?--that lane which, for some unhappy

travellers, has no turning except the one dismal _via_ which leads to

dusty death. You seem in very good spirits; and I suppose I ought to be

elated too. Three thousand pounds would give me a start in life, and

enable me to set up in the new character of a respectable rate-paying

citizen. But I've a kind of presentiment that this hand of mine will

never touch the prize of the victor; or, in plainer English, that no

good will ever arise to me or mine out of the reverend intestate's

hundred thousand pounds."

"Why, what a dismal-minded croaker you are this morning!" exclaimed

George Sheldon with unmitigated disgust; "a regular raven, by Jove! You

come to a fellow's office just as matters are beginning to look like

success--after ten years' plodding and ten years' disappointment--and

you treat him to maudlin howls about the Court of Chancery. This is a

new line you've struck out, Hawkehurst, and I can tell you it isn't a

pleasant one."

"Well, no, I suppose I oughtn't to say that sort of thing," answered

Valentine in an apologetic tone; "but there are some days in a man's

life when there seems to be a black cloud between him and everything he

looks at. I feel like that today. There's a tightening sensation about

something under my waistcoat--my heart, perhaps--a sense of depression

that may be either physical or mental, that I can't get rid of. If a

man had walked by my side from Chelsea to Holborn whispering

forebodings of evil into my ear at every step, I couldn't have felt

more downhearted than I do."

"What did you eat for breakfast?" asked Mr. Sheldon impatiently. "A

tough beefsteak fried by a lodging-house cook, I daresay--they _will_

fry their steaks. Don't inflict the consequences of your indigestible

diet upon me. To tell me that there's a black cloud between you and

everything you look at, is only a sentimental way of telling me that

you're bilious. Pray be practical, and let us look at things from a

business point of view. Here is Appendix A.--a copy of the registry of

the marriage of Matthew Haygarth, bachelor, of Clerkenwell, in the

county of Middlesex, to Mary Murchison, spinster, of Southwark, in the

county of Surrey. And here is Appendix B.--a copy of the registry of

the marriage between William Meynell, bachelor, of Smithfield, in the

county of Middlesex, to Caroline Mary Haygarth, spinster, of Highgate,

in the same county."

"You have found the entry of a second Haygarthian marriage?"

"I have. The C. of Matthew's letters is the Caroline Mary here

indicated, the daughter and heiress of Matthew Haygarth--doubtless

christened Caroline after her gracious majesty the consort of George

II., and Mary after the Molly whose picture was found in the tulip-leaf

bureau. The Meynell certificate was easy enough to find, since the

letters told me that Miss C.'s suitor had a father who lived in

Aldersgate-street, and a father who approved his son's choice. The

Aldersgate citizen had a house of his own, and a more secure social

status altogether than that poor, weak, surreptitious Matthew. It was

therefore only natural that the marriage should be celebrated in the

Meynell mansion. Having considered this, I had only to ransack the

registers of a certain number of churches round and about

Aldersgate-street in order to find what I wanted; and after about a day

and a half of hard labour, I did find the invaluable document which

places me one generation nearer the present, and on the high-road to

the discovery of my heir-at-law. I searched the same registry for

children of the aforesaid William and Caroline Mary Meynell, but could

find no record of such children nor any further entry of the name of

Meynell. But we must search other registries within access of

Aldersgate-street before we give up the idea of finding such entries in

that neighbourhood."

"And what is to be the next move?"

"The hunting-up of all descendants of this William and Caroline Mary

Meynell, wheresoever such descendants are to be found. We are now

altogether off the Haygarth and Judson scent, and have to beat a new

covert."

"Good!" exclaimed Valentine more cheerfully. "How is the new covert to

be beaten?"

"We must start from Aldersgate-street. Meynell of Aldersgate-street

must have been a responsible man, and it will be hard if there is no

record of him extant in all the old topographical histories of wards,

without and within, which cumber the shelves of your dry-as-dust

libraries. We must hunt up all available books; and when we've got all

the information that books can give us, we can go in upon hearsay

evidence, which is always the most valuable in these cases."

"That means another encounter with ancient mariners--I beg your

pardon--oldest inhabitants," said Valentine with a despondent yawn.

"Well, I suppose that sort of individual is a little less obtuse when

he lives within the roar of the great city's thunder than when he

vegetates in the dismal outskirts of a manufacturing town. Where am I

to find my octogenarian prosers? and when am I to begin my operations

upon them?"

"The sooner you begin the better," replied Mr. Sheldon. "I've taken all

preliminary steps for you already, and you'll find the business

tolerably smooth sailing. I've made a list of certain people who

may be worth seeing."

Mr. Sheldon selected a paper from the numerous documents upon the table.

"Here they are," he said: "John Grewter, wholesale stationer,

Aldersgate-street; Anthony Sparsfield, carver and gilder, in Barbican.

These are, so far as I can ascertain, the two oldest men now trading in

Aldersgate-street; and from these men you ought to be able to find out

something about old Meynell. I don't anticipate any difficulty about

the Meynells, except the possibility that we may find more of them than

we want, and have some trouble in shaking them into their places."

"I'll tackle my friend the stationer to-morrow morning," said Valentine.

"You'd better drop in upon him in the afternoon, when the day's

business may be pretty well over," returned the prudent Sheldon. "And

now all you've got to do, Hawkehurst, is to work with a will, and work

on patiently. If you do as well in London as you did at Ullerton,

neither you nor I will have any cause to complain. Of course I needn't

impress upon you the importance of secrecy."

"No," replied Valentine; "I'm quite alive to that."

He then proceeded to inform George Sheldon of that encounter with

Captain Paget on the platform at Ullerton, and of the suspicion that

had been awakened in his mind by the sight of the glove in Goodge's

parlour.

The lawyer shook his head.

"That idea about the glove was rather far-fetched," he said,

thoughtfully; "but I don't like the look of that meeting at the

station. My brother Philip is capable of anything in the way of

manoeuvring; and I'm not ashamed to confess that I'm no match for him.

He was in here one day when I had the Haygarth pedigree spread out on

the table, and I know he smelt a rat. We must beware of him,

Hawkehurst, and we must work against time if we don't want him to

anticipate us."

"I shan't let the grass grow under my feet," replied Valentine. "I was

really interested in that Haygarthian history: there was a dash of

romance about it, you see. I don't feel the same gusto in the Meynell

chase, but I daresay I shall begin to get up an interest in it as my

investigation proceeds. Shall I call the day after to-morrow and tell

you my adventures?"

"I think you'd better stick to the old plan, and let me have the result

of your work in the form of a diary," answered Sheldon. And with this

the two men parted.

It was now half-past two o'clock; it would be half-past three before

Valentine could present himself at the Lawn--a very seasonable hour at

which to call upon Mrs. Sheldon with his offering of a box for the new

play.

An omnibus conveyed him to Bayswater at a snail's pace, and with more

stoppages than ever mortal omnibus was subjected to before, as it

seemed to that one eager passenger. At last the fading foliage of the

Park appeared between the hats and bonnets of Valentine's opposite

neighbours. Even those orange tawny trees reminded him of Charlotte.

Beneath such umbrage had he parted from her. And now he was going to

see the bright young face once more. He had been away from town about a

fortnight; but taken in relation with Miss Halliday, that fortnight

seemed half a century.

Chrysanthemums and china-asters beautified Mr. Sheldon's neat little

garden, and the plate-glass windows of his house shone with all their

wonted radiance. It was like the houses one sees framed and glazed in

an auctioneer's office--the greenest imaginable grass, the bluest

windows, the reddest bricks, the whitest stone. "It is a house that

would set my teeth on edge, but for the one sweet creature who lives in

it," Valentine thought to himself, as he waited at the florid iron

gate, which was painted a vivid ultramarine and picked out with gold.

He tried in vain to catch a glimpse of some feminine figure in the

small suburban garden. No flutter of scarlet petticoat or flash of

scarlet plume revealed the presence of the divinity.

The prim maid-servant informed him that Mrs. Sheldon was at home, and

asked if he would please to walk into the drawing-room.

Would he please? Would he not have been pleased to walk into a raging

furnace if there had been a chance of meeting Charlotte Halliday amid

the flames? He followed the maid-servant into Mrs. Sheldon's

irreproachable apartment, where the show books upon the show table were

ranged at the usual mathematically correct distances from one another,

and where the speckless looking-glasses and all-pervading French polish

imparted a chilly aspect to the chamber. A newly-lighted fire was

smouldering in the shining steel grate, and a solitary female figure

was seated by the broad Tudor window bending over some needlework.

It was the figure of Diana Paget, and she was quite alone in the room.

Valentine's heart sank a little as he saw the solitary figure, and

perceived that it was not the woman he loved.

Diana looked up from her work and recognised the visitor. Her face

flushed, but the flush faded very quickly, and Valentine was not

conscious of that flattering indication.

"How do you do, Diana?" he said. "Here I am again, you see, like the

proverbial bad shilling. I have brought Mrs. Sheldon an order for the

Princess's."

"You are very kind; but I don't think she'll care to go. She was

complaining of a headache this afternoon."

"O, she'll forget all about her headache if she wants to go to the

play. She's the sort of little woman who is always ready for a theatre

or a concert. Besides, Miss Halliday may like to go, and will easily

persuade her mamma. Whom could she not persuade?" added Mr. Hawkehurst

within himself.

"Miss Halliday is out of town," Diana replied coldly.

The young man felt as if his heart were suddenly transformed into so

much lead, so heavy did it seem to grow. What a foolish thing it seemed

that he should be the victim of this fair enslaver!--he who until

lately had fancied himself incapable of any earnest feeling or deep

emotion.

"Out of town!" he repeated with unconcealed disappointment.

"Yes; she has gone on a visit to some relations in Yorkshire. She

actually has relations; doesn't that sound strange to you and me?"

Valentine did not notice this rather cynical remark.

"She'll be away ever so long, I suppose?" he said.

"I have no idea how long she may stay there. The people idolise her, I

understand. You know it is her privilege to be idolised; and of course

they will persuade her to stay as long as they can. You seem

disappointed at not seeing her."

"I am very much disappointed," Valentine answered frankly; "she is a

sweet girl."

There was a silence after this. Miss Paget resumed her work with rapid

fingers. She was picking up shining little beads one by one on the

point of her needle, and transferring them to the canvas stretched upon

an embroidery frame before her. It was a kind of work exacting extreme

care and precision, and the girl's hand never faltered, though a

tempest of passionate feeling agitated her as she worked.

"I am very sorry not to see her," Valentine said presently, "for the

sight of her is very dear to me. Why should I try to hide my feelings

from you, Diana? We have endured so much misery together that there

must be some bond of union between us. To me you have always seemed

like a sister, and I have no wish to keep any secret from you, though

you receive me so coldly that one would think I had offended you."

"You have not offended me. I thank you for being so frank with me. You

would have gained little by an opposite course. I have long known your

affection for Charlotte."

"You guessed my secret?"

"I saw what any one could have seen who had taken the trouble to watch

you for ten minutes during your visits to this house."

"Was my unhappy state so very conspicuous?" exclaimed Valentine,

laughing. "Was I so obviously spoony? _I_ who have so ridiculed

anything in the way of sentiment. You make me blush for my folly,

Diana. What is that you are dotting with all those beads?--something

very elaborate."

"It is a prie-dieu chair I am working for Mrs. Sheldon. Of course I am

bound to do something for my living."

"And so you wear out your eyesight in the working of chairs. Poor girl!

it seems hard that your beauty and accomplishments should not find a

better market than that. I daresay you will marry some millionaire

friend of Mr. Sheldon's one of these days, and I shall hear of your

house in Park-lane and three-hundred guinea barouche."

"You are very kind to promise me a millionaire. The circumstances of my

existence hitherto have been so peculiarly fortunate that I am

justified in expecting such a suitor. My millionaire shall ask you to

dinner at my house in Park-lane; and you shall play _écarté_ with him,

if you like--papa's kind of _écarté_."

"Don't talk of those things, Di," said Mr. Hawkehurst, with something

that was almost a shudder; "let us forget that we ever led that kind of

life."

"Yes," replied Diana, "let us forget it--if we can."

The bitterness of her tone struck him painfully. He sat for some

minutes watching her silently, and pitying her fate. What a sad fate it

seemed, and how hopeless! For him there was always some chance of

redemption. He could go out into the world, and cut his way through the

forest of difficulty with the axe of the conqueror. But what could a

woman do who found herself in the midst of that dismal forest? She

could only sit at the door of her lonesome hut, looking out with weary

eyes for the prince who was to come and rescue her. And Valentine

remembered how many women there are to whom the prince never comes, and

who must needs die and be buried beneath that gloomy umbrage.

"O! let us have women doctors, women lawyers, women parsons, women

stone-breakers--anything rather than these dependent creatures who sit

in other people's houses working prie-dieu chairs and pining for

freedom," he thought to himself, as he watched the pale stern face in

the chill afternoon light.

"Do leave off working for a few minutes, and talk to me, Di," he said

rather impatiently. "You don't know how painful it is to a man to see a

woman absorbed in some piece of needlework at the very moment when he

wants all her sympathy. I am afraid you are not quite happy. Do confide

in me, dear, as frankly as I confide in you. Are these people kind to

you? Charlotte is, of course. But the elder birds, Mr. and Mrs.

Sheldon, are they kind?"

"They are very kind. Mr. Sheldon is not a demonstrative man, as you

know; but I am not accustomed to have people in a rapturous state of

mind about me and my affairs. He is kinder to me than my father ever

was; and I don't see how I can expect more than that. Mrs. Sheldon

is extremely kind in her way--which is rather a feeble way, as you

know."

"And Charlotte--?"

"You answered for Charlotte yourself just now. Yes, she is very, very,

very good to me; much better than I deserve. I was almost going to

quote the collect, and say 'desire or deserve.'"

"Why should you not desire or deserve her goodness?" asked Valentine.

"Because I am not a loveable kind of person. I am not sympathetic. I

know that Charlotte is very fascinating, very charming; but sometimes

her very fascination repels me. I think the atmosphere of that horrible

swampy district between Lambeth and Battersea, where my childhood was

spent, must have soured my disposition."

"No, Diana; you have only learnt a bitter way of talking. I know your

heart is noble and true. I have seen your suppressed indignation many a

time when your father's meannesses have revolted you. Our lives have

been very hard, dear; but let us hope for brighter days. I think they

must come to us."

"They will never come to me," said Diana.

"You say that with an air of conviction. But why should they not come

to you--brighter and better days?"

"I cannot tell you that. I can only tell you that they will not come.

And do you hope that any good will ever come of your love for Charlotte

Halliday--you, who know Mr. Sheldon?"

"I am ready to hope anything."