Charlotte's Inheritance

by M. E. Braddon

While Georgy was suggesting the loan of almost every portable object in the house as a specific for Captain Paget's gout, Charlotte sent for a cab and made things smooth for her friend's departure. She wrapped her warmly against the February blast, and insisted upon going out to see her seated in the cab, whereby she offered to the pedestrians of that neighbourhood a seraphic vision of loveliness with tumbled hair. Charlotte had been always delightful, but Charlotte engaged to Valentine Hawkehurst was a creature of supernal sweetness and brightness—a radiant ministering angel, hovering lightly above a world too common for her foot to rest upon.

Miss Paget found her father suffering from a by no means severe attack of a respectable family gout, a little peevish from the effects of this affliction, but not at all depressed in mind. He had, indeed, the manner of a man with whom things are going pleasantly. There was a satisfaction in his tone, a placidity in his face, except when distorted for the moment by a twinge of pain, that were new to Diana, who had not been accustomed to behold the brighter side of her father's disposition. He seemed grateful for his daughter's visit, and received her with unwonted kindness of manner.

"You have come very promptly, my dear, and I am gratified by your early compliance with my request," he said with dignified affection, after he had given his daughter the kiss of greeting. "I was a great sufferer last night, Diana, a great sufferer, a prisoner to this chair, and the woman below attempted to send me up a dinner—such a dinner! One would think a very small degree of education necessary for the stewing of a kidney, but the things that woman gave me last night were like morsels of stewed leather. I am not an epicure, Diana; but with such a constitution as mine, good cooking is a vital necessity. Life in lodgings for a man of my age is a sore trial, my dear. I wish you were well married, Diana, and could give your father a humble corner at your fireside."

Diana smiled. It was a somewhat bitter smile; and there was scorn of herself, as well as scorn of her father in that bitterness.

"I am not the sort of person to marry well, papa," she said.

"Who knows? You are handsomer than nine-tenths of the women who marry well."

"No, papa; that is your sanguine manner of looking at your own property. And even if I were married to some one to whom I might give obedience and duty, and all that kind of thing, in exchange for a comfortable home, as they say in the advertisements, would you be content with a peaceful corner by my fireside? Do you think you would never pine for clubs and gaming-tables—nay, even for creditors to—to diplomatize with, and difficulties to surmount?"

"No, my dear. I am an old man; the clubs and gaming-houses have done with me, and I with them. I went to see a man at Arthur's a few months ago. I had written to him on a little matter of business—in fact, to be candid with you, my love, for the loan of a five-pound note—and I called at the club for his reply. I caught sight of my face in a distant glass as I was waiting in the strangers' room, and I thought I was looking at a ghost. There comes a time towards the close of a long troublesome life in which a man begins to feel like a ghost. His friends are gone, and his money is gone, his health is gone, his good looks are gone; and the only mistake seems to be that the man himself should be left behind. I remember an observation of Lord Chesterfield's: 'Lord —— and I have been dead for the last two years, but we don't tell anyone so,' he said; and there are few old men who couldn't say the same. But I am not down-hearted to-day, my dear. No, the habit of hoping has never quite deserted me; and it is only now and then that I take a dismal view of life. Come, my love, lay aside your bonnet and things. Dear me! what a handsome black silk dress, and how well you look in it!"

"It is a present from Charlotte, papa. She has a very liberal allowance of pocket-money, and is generosity itself. I don't like to take so much from her, but I only wound her by a refusal."

"Of course, my dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"—Diana winced as she remembered her shabby hat and threadbare gown at Fôretdechêne—"and I am especially pleased to see you elegantly attired this evening, as I expect a gentleman by-and-by."