Nancy Woolper had lost little of her activity during the ten years that had gone by since she received her wages from Mr. Sheldon, on his breaking up his establishment in Fitzgeorge-street. Her master had given her the opportunity of remaining in his service, had she so pleased; but Mrs. Woolper was a person of independent, not to say haughty, spirit, and she had preferred to join her small fortunes with those of a nephew who was about to begin business as a chandler and general dealer in a very small way, rather than to submit herself to the sway of that lady whom she insisted on calling Miss Georgy.
“It’s so long since I’ve been used to a missus,” she said, when announcing her decision to Mr. Sheldon, “I doubt if I could do with Miss Georgy’s finnickin ways. I should feel tewed like, if she came into the kitchen, worritin’ and asking questions. I’ve been used to my own ways, and I don’t suppose I could do with hers.”
So Nancy departed, to enter on a career of unpaid drudgery in the household of her kinsman, and to lose the last shilling of her small savings in the futile endeavour to sustain the fortunes of the general dealer. His death, following very speedily upon his insolvency, left the poor soul quite adrift; and in this extremity she had been fain to make her appeal to Mr. Sheldon. His reply came in due course, but not without upwards of a week’s delay; during which time Nancy Woolper’s spirits sank very low, while a dreary vision of a living grave — called a workhouse — loomed more and more darkly upon her poor old eyes. She had well-nigh given up all hope of succour from her old master when the letter came, and she was the more inclined to be grateful for very small help after this interval of suspense. It was not without strong emotion that Mrs. Woolper obeyed her old master’s summons. She had nursed the hard, cold man of the world whom she was going to see once more, after ten years of severance; and though it was more difficult for her to imagine that Philip Sheldon, the stockbroker, was the same Philip she had carried in her stout arms, and hushed upon her breast forty years ago, than it would have been to fancy the dead who had lived in those days restored to life and walking by her side, still, she could not forget that such things had been, and could not refrain from looking at her master with more loving eyes because of that memory.
A strange dark cloud had arisen between her and her master’s image during the latter part of her service in Fitzgeorge-street; but, little by little, the cloud had melted away, leaving the familiar image clear and unshadowed as of old. She had suffered her mind to be filled by a suspicion so monstrous, that for a time it held her as by some fatal spell; but with reflection came the assurance that this thing could not be. Day by day she saw the man whom she had suspected going about the common business of life, coldly serene of aspect, untroubled of manner, confronting fortune with his head erect, living quietly in the house where he had been wont to live, haunted by no dismal shadows, subject to no dark hours of remorse, no sudden access of despair, always equable, business-like, and untroubled; and she told herself that such a man could not be guilty of the unutterable horror she had imagined.
For a year things had gone on thus, and then came the marriage with Mrs. Halliday. Mr. Sheldon went down to Barlingford for the performance of that interesting ceremony; and Nancy Woolper bade farewell to the house in Fitzgeorge-street, and handed the key to the agent, who was to deliver it in due course to Mr. Sheldon’s successor.
To-day, after a lapse of more than ten years, Mrs. Woolper sat in the stockbroker’s study, facing the scrutinising gaze of those bright black eyes, which had been familiar to her of old, and which had lost none of their cold glitter in the wear and tear of life.
“Then you think you can be of some use in the house, as a kind of overlooker of the other servants, eh, Nancy — to prevent waste, and gadding out of doors, and so on?” said Mr. Sheldon, interrogatively.
“Ay, sure, that I can, Mr. Philip,” answered the old woman promptly; “and if I don’t save you more money than I cost you, the sooner you turn me out o’ doors the better. I know what London servants are, and I know their ways; and if Miss Georgy doesn’t take to the housekeeping, I know as how things must be hugger-mugger-like below stairs, however smart and tidy things may be above.”
“Mrs. Sheldon knows about as much of housekeeping as a baby,” replied Philip, with supreme contempt. “She’ll not interfere with you; and if you serve me faithfully —”
“That I allers did, Mr. Philip.”
“Yes, yes; I daresay you did. But I want faithful service in the future as well as in the past. Of course you know that I have a stepdaughter?”
“Tom Halliday’s little girl, as went to school at Scarborough.”
“The same. But poor Tom’s little girl is now a fine young woman, and a source of considerable anxiety to me. I am bound to say she is an excellent girl — amiable, obedient, and all that kind of thing; but she is a girl, and I freely confess that I am not learned in the ways of girls; and I’m very much inclined to be afraid of them.”
“As how, sir?”
“Well, you see, Nancy, they come home from school with their silly heads full of romantic stuff, fit for nothing but to read novels and strum upon the piano; and before you know where you are, they fall over head and ears in love with the first decent-looking young man who pays them a compliment. At least, that’s my experience.”
“Meaning Miss Halliday, sir?” asked Nancy, simply. “Has she fallen in love with some young chap?”
“She has, and with a young chap who is not yet in a position to support a wife. Now, if this girl were my own child, I should decidedly set my face against this marriage; but as she is only my stepdaughter, I wash my hands of all responsibility in the matter. ‘Marry the man you have chosen, my dear,’ say I; ‘all I ask is, that you don’t marry him until he can give you a comfortable home.’ ‘Very well, papa,’ says my young lady in her most dutiful manner, and ‘Very well, sir,’ says my young gentleman; and they both declare themselves agreeable to any amount of delay, provided the marriage comes off some time between this and doomsday.”
“Well, sir?” asked Nancy, rather at a loss to understand why Philip Sheldon, the closest and most reserved of men, should happen to be so confidential to-day.
“Well, Nancy, what I want to prevent is any underhand work. I know what very limited notions of honour young men are apt to entertain nowadays, and how intensely foolish a boarding-school miss can be on occasion. I don’t want these young people to run off to Gretna-green some fine morning, or to steal a march upon me by getting married on the sly at some out-of-the-way church, after having invested their united fortunes in the purchase of a special license. In plain words, I distrust Miss Halliday’s lover, and I distrust Miss Halliday’s common sense; and I want to have a sensible, sharp-eyed person in the house always on the look-out for any kind of danger, and able to protect my stepdaughter’s interests as well as my own.”
“But the young lady’s mamma, sir — she would look after her daughter, I suppose?”
“Her mamma is foolishly indulgent, and about as capable of taking care of her daughter as of sitting in Parliament. You remember pretty Georgy Cradock, and you must know what she was — and what she is. Mrs. Sheldon is the same woman as Georgy Cradock — a little older, and a little more plump and rosy; but just as pretty, and just as useless.”
The interview was prolonged for some little time after this, and it ended in a thorough understanding between Mr. Sheldon and his old servant. Nancy Woolper was to re-enter that gentleman’s service, and over and above all ordinary duties, she was to undertake the duty of keeping a close watch upon all the movements of Charlotte Halliday. In plain words, she was to be a spy, a private detective, so far as this young lady was concerned; but Mr. Sheldon was too wise to put his requirements into plain words, knowing that even in the hour of her extremity Nancy Woolper would have refused to fill such an office had she clearly understood the measure of its infamy.
Upon the day that followed his interview with Mrs. Woolper, the stockbroker came home from the City an hour or two earlier than his custom, and startled Miss Halliday by appearing in the garden where she was walking alone, looking her brightest and prettiest in her dark winter hat and jacket, and pacing briskly to and fro among the bare frost-bound patches of earth that had once been flower-beds.
“I wan’t a few minutes’ quiet talk with you, Lotta,” said Mr. Sheldon. “You’d better come into my study, where we’re pretty sure not to be interrupted.”
The girl blushed crimson as she acceded to this request, being assured that Mr. Sheldon was going to discuss her matrimonial engagement. Valentine had told her of that very satisfactory interview in the dining-room, and from that time she had been trying to find an opportunity for the acknowledgment of her stepfather’s generosity. As yet the occasion had not arisen. She did not know how to frame her thanksgiving, and she shrank shyly from telling Mr. Sheldon how grateful she was to him for the liberality of mind which had distinguished his conduct in this affair.
“I really ought to thank him,” she said to herself more than once. “I was quite prepared for his doing his uttermost to prevent my marriage with Valentine; and instead of that, he volunteers his consent, and even promises to give us a fortune. ‘I am bound to thank him for such generous kindness.”
Perhaps there is no task more difficult than to offer grateful tribute to a person whom one has been apt to think of with a feeling very near akin to dislike. Ever since her mother’s second marriage Charlotte had striven against an instinctive distaste for Mr. Sheldon’s society, and an innate distrust of Mr. Sheldon’s affectionate regard for herself; but now that he had proved his sincerity in this most important crisis of her life, she awoke all at once to the sense of the wrong she had done.
“I am always reading the Sermon on the Mount, and yet in my thoughts about Mr. Sheldon I have never been able to remember those words, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ His kindness touches me to the very heart, and I feel it all the more keenly because of my injustice.”
She followed her stepfather into the prim little study. There was no fire, and the room was colder than a vault on this bleak December day. Charlotte shivered, and drew her jacket more tightly across her chest as she perched herself on one of Mr. Sheldon’s shining red morocco chairs. “The room strikes cold,” she said; “very, very cold.”
After this there was a brief pause, during which Mr. Sheldon took some papers from the pocket of his overcoat, and arranged them on his desk with an absent manner, as if he were rather deliberating upon what he was going to say than thinking of what he was doing. While he loitered thus Charlotte found courage to speak.
“I wish to thank you, Mr. Sheldon — papa,” she said, pronouncing the “papa” with some slight appearance of effort, in spite of her desire to be grateful: “I— I have been wishing to thank you for the last day or two; only it seems so difficult sometimes to express one’s self about these things.”
“I do not deserve or wish for your thanks, my dear. I have only done my duty.”
“But, indeed, you do deserve my thanks, and you have them in all sincerity, papa. You have been very, very good to me — about — about Valentine. I thought you would be sure to oppose our marriage on the ground of imprudence, you know, and ——”
“I do oppose your marriage in the present on the ground of imprudence, and I am only consentient to it in the future on the condition that Mr. Hawkehurst shall have secured a comfortable income by his literary labours. He seems to be clever, and he promises fairly ——”
“O yes indeed, dear papa,” cried the girl, pleased by this meed of praise for her lover; “he is more than clever. I am sure you would say so if you had time to read his article on Madame de Sévigné in the Cheapside.”
“I daresay it’s very good, my dear; but I don’t care for Madame de Sévigné——”
“Or his sketch of Bossuet’s career in the Charing Cross.”
“My dear child, I do not even know who Bossuet was. All I require from Mr. Hawkehurst is, that he shall earn a good income before he takes you away from this house. You have been accustomed to a certain style of living, and I cannot allow you to encounter a life of poverty.”
“But, dear papa, I am not in the least afraid of poverty.”
“I daresay not, my dear. You have never been poor,” replied Mr. Sheldon, coolly. “I don’t suppose I am as much afraid of a rattlesnake as the poor wretches who are accustomed to see one swinging by his tail from the branch of a tree any day in the course of their travels. I have only a vague idea that a cobra de capello is an unpleasant customer; but depend upon it, those foreign fellows feel their blood stagnate and turn to ice at sight of the cold slimy-looking monster. Poverty and I travelled the same road once, and I know what the gentleman is. I don’t want to meet him again.” Mr. Sheldon lapsed into silence after this. His last words had been spoken to himself rather than to Charlotte, and the thoughts that accompanied them seemed far from pleasant to him.
Charlotte sat opposite her stepfather, patiently awaiting his pleasure. She looked at the gaudily-bound books behind the glass doors, and wondered whether any one had ever opened any of the volumes.
“I should like to read dear Sir Walter’s stories once more,” she thought; “there never, never was so sweet a romance as the ‘Bride of Lammermoor,’ and I cannot imagine that one could ever grow weary of reading it. But to ask Mr. Sheldon for the key of that bookcase would be quite impossible. I think his books must be copies of special editions, not meant to be read. I wonder whether they are real books, or only upholsterer’s dummies?”
And then her fancies went vagabondising off to that little archetype of a cottage on the heights of Wimbledon-common, in which she and Valentine were to ............