Charlotte's Inheritance

by M. E. Braddon

"Yes, my dear child," he continued with dignity, "it affords me real gratification to know you better. I need scarcely say that when you were the associate of my pilgrimage, you were not of an age to be available as a companion. To a man of the world like myself, a young person who has not done growing must always savour somewhat of the schoolroom and the nursery. I am not going to repeat the Byronic impertinence about bread-and-butter; but the society of a girl of the hobbledehoy age is apt to be insipid. You are now a young woman, and a young woman of whom any father might with justice be proud."

After a few such speeches as these, Diana began to think that it was just possible her father might really experience some novel feeling of regard for her. It might be true that his former coldness had been no more than a prejudice against the awkwardness of girlhood.

"I was shabby and awkward, I daresay, in those days," she thought; "and then I was always asking papa for money to buy new clothes; and that may have set him against me. And now that I am no burden upon him, and can talk to him and amuse him, he may feel more kindly disposed towards me."

There was some foundation for this idea. Captain Paget had felt himself more kindly disposed towards his only child from the moment in which she ceased to be an encumbrance upon him. Her sudden departure from Forêtdechêne had been taken in very good part by him.

"A very spirited thing for her to do, Val," he had said, when informed of the fact by Mr. Hawkehurst; "and by far the best thing she could do, under the circumstances."

From that time his daughter had never asked him for a sixpence, and from that time she had risen steadily in his estimation. But the feeling which he now exhibited was more than placid approval; it was an affection at once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence for his declining years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a sentiment inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical assumption. Diana was, therefore, so much the more likely to be softened and touched by it.

She was softened, deeply touched by this late awakening of feeling. The engagement of Valentine and Charlotte had left her own life very blank, very desolate. It was not alone the man she loved who was lost to her; Charlotte, the friend, the sister, seemed also slipping away from her. As kind, as loving, as tender as of old, this dear friend and adopted sister still might be, but no longer wholly her own. Over the hearts of the purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly when the lamp is shattered.

For Charlotte, Valentine—and for Valentine, Charlotte—made the sum-total of the universe at this time; or, at best, there was but a small balance which included all the other cares and duties, affections and pleasures, of life. Of this balance Diana had the lion's share; but she felt that things had changed since those days of romantic school-girl friendship in which Charlotte had talked of never marrying, and travelling with her dearest friend Diana amongst all the beautiful scenes they had read of, until they found the loveliest spot in the world, where they would establish themselves in an ideal cottage, and live together for the rest of their lives, cultivating their minds and their flower-garden, working berlin-wool chairs for their ideal drawing-room, and doing good to an ideal peasantry, who would be just poor enough to be interesting, and sickly enough to require frequent gifts of calf's-foot jelly and green tea.

Those foolish dreams were done with now; and that other dream, of a life to be spent with the reckless companion of her girlhood, was lost to Diana Paget. There was no point to which she could look forward in the future, no star to lure her onward upon life's journey. Her present position was sufficiently comfortable; and she told herself that she must needs be weak and wicked if she were not content with her lot. But beyond the present she dared not look, so blank was the prospect—a desert, without even the mirage; for her dreams and delusions were gone with her hope.

Possessed by such a sense of loneliness, it is scarcely strange if there seemed to her a gleam of joy, a faint glimmer of hope, in the newly awakened affection of her father. She began to believe him, and to take comfort from the thought that he was drifting to a haven where he might lie moored, with other battered old hulks of pirate and privateer, inglorious and at rest. To work for him and succour him in his declining years seemed a brighter prospect to this hopeless woman of four-and-twenty than a future of lonely independence. "It is the nature of woman to lean," says the masculine philosopher; but is it not rather her nature to support and sustain, or else why to her is entrusted the sublime responsibility of maternity? Diana was pleased to think that a remorseful reprobate might be dependent on her toil, and owe his reformation to her influence. She was indeed a new Antigone, ready to lead him in his moral blindness to an altar of atonement more pure than the ensanguined shrine of the Athenian Eumenides.