CHAPTER LII.GOING BACK TO PARIS.
Eleanorwas so completely bewildered by this extraordinary likeness that she remained for some moments staring at Mrs. Major Lennard in silent surprise.
“Goodness me, my dear!” exclaimed the lady, “how astonished you look! I hope I’m not aGUY. Frederick—that’s Major Lennard, you know—never liked this bonnet, and really I’m beginning quite to dislike it myself. I do think it’spokey. But never mind that, my dear Miss—Villars, I think Miss Barkham said,—a very nice person, Miss Barkham, isn’t she? but rather prim. I’ve got all sorts of business to settle between this and eight o’clock, for Fredwilltravel by the night mail, because he sleeps all the way, and of course that makes the journey shorter—in consequence of which I’ve never seen Dover, except in the dark, and I always think of it with the lamps lighted and the pier slippery, and everybody hurrying and pushing, like a place in a dream. But the first question, my dear, that we’ve got to settle, is whether you like me, and think you could make a sister of me?”
This question, asked very eagerly, was really too much for poor Eleanor.
“Oh, please don’t look so surprised,” Mrs. Lennard exclaimed, entreatingly; “you make me fancy I’m a guy, and you see there’s really no time to be lost, and we must decide immediately if you please. I was here all yesterday afternoon, and I saw legions of ladies, but there wasn’t one that I could take a fancy to, and my only motive for engaging a companion is to have somebody that I shall like very much, and always feel at home with; and I want some one who can play the piano and be agreeable and lively, and I’m sure you’re the very person, dear, and if you only think you can like me as well as I’m sure I shall like you, we can settle the business at once.”
“But you know that I can give you no references,” Eleanor said, hesitatingly.
“Of course I do,” answered Mrs. Lennard. “Miss Barkham told me all about it. AsifI thought you’d committed a murder, or done something horrid, just because you can’t pounce upon half-a-dozen people ready to declare you’re an uncanonized saint all in a moment. I like your looks, my dear, and when I like people’s looks at first sight, I generally likethemafterwards. And you play magnificently; I only wish I could; and I used toplay the overture to ‘Semiramide’ before I was married, but as Frederick doesn’t like overtures, and as we’ve been scampering about the world ever since, in the cabins of ships, and in tents, and all sorts of places where you couldn’t have pianos unless you had them made on purpose, without legs, I’ve gone backwards in my music till I can’t play so much as a polka, without skipping the difficult parts.”
Mrs. Lennard went on to say that the matter of salary was a question to be settled between Miss Villars and the Major.
“I always leave money matters to Frederick,” she said, “for though he can’t add up the bills, he looks as if he could, and that’ssomecheck upon people. But you’ll have to wait for your quarter’s money now and then, I dare say, dear, because we’re often a little behind-hand, you know, and if you don’t mind that, it’ll be all the better for you, as Fred’s almost sure to give you a silk dress when your quarter comes due and he can’t pay you; that’s what he calls a sop to Cerberus, and I’m sure the money he spends in keeping people ‘sweet,’ as he calls it, would keep us altogether if we paid ready money. Now, is it a settled thing, Miss Villars? Will you accept the situation?”
Eleanor assented without hesitation. She heard very little of Mrs. Lennard’s good-natured babble. Her whole mind was absorbed by the sense of her defeat, and by the feeling that she had no further chance of victory over Launcelot Darrell. She despaired, but she did not submit. She was only desperate and reckless, ready to go anywhere, and finish the useless remainder of her existence anyhow. She was not prepared to begin a new life upon a new plan, casting the old scheme of her life behind her, as a mistake and a delusion. She was not able to do this yet.
While Mrs. Lennard was gathering together a lot of frivolous-looking little whity-brown paper parcels that seemed to bear a strong family resemblance to herself, Miss Barkham came into the room to ascertain the result of the interview between the two ladies. Mrs. Lennard expressed herself in the most rapturous manner about Eleanor, paid some small fee for the benefit of the institution, and departed, carrying her parcels and taking Eleanor with her.
She allowed her companion to assist her with the parcels, after a little good-natured contention, and at the nearest corner summoned a cab which was dawdling lazily along.
“Of course the man will overcharge us,” Mrs. Lennard said, “but we must be prepared for that, and really I’d rather be overcharged than have a row, as we generally have when I’m with the major, and summonses and counter-summonses, and all sorts of disagreeables; not that I mind that half so much asforeign cabmen, who get excited, and dance upon the pavement and make wild noises if you don’t satisfy them; and I’m sure I don’t know whatwouldsatisfy foreign cabmen.”
Mrs. Lennard took out her watch, which was a pretty little Geneva toy with an enamelled back, ornamented with the holes that had once held diamonds. An anxious and intensely studious expression came over Mrs. Lennard’s face as she looked at this watch, which was overweighted by a heap of incomprehensible charms, amongst which chaotic mass of golden frivolity, a skeleton, a watering-pot, a coffin, and a Dutch oven were distinguishable.
“It’s half-past five byme,” Mrs. Lennard said, after a profound contemplation of the Geneva, “so I should think it must beabouta quarter to three.”
Eleanor took out her own watch and settled the question. It was only half-past two.
“Then I’ve gained another quarter of an hour,” exclaimed Mrs. Lennard: “that’s the worst of pretty watches; they always will go too much, or else stop altogether. Freddy bought me my watch, and he gave me my choice as to whether he should spend the money in purple enamel and diamonds, or works, and I chose the purple enamel. But then, of course I didn’t know the diamonds would drop out directly,” Mrs. Lennard added, thoughtfully.
She drove about to half-a-dozen shops, and collected more whity-brown paper parcels, a band-box, a bird-cage, a new carpet-bag, a dog’s collar, a packet of tea, and other incongruous merchandise, and then ordered the man to drive to the Great Northern Hotel.
“We’re staying at the Great Northern, my dear,” she said, after giving this order. “We very often stay at hotels, for Frederick thinks it’s cheaper to pay fifteen shillings a day for your rooms than to have a house, and servants’ wages, and coals and candles, and lard, and blacklead, and hearthstone, and all those little things that run away with so much money. And I should like the Great Northern very much if the corridors weren’t so long and the waiters so stern. I always think waiters at grand hotelsarestern. They seem to look at one as if they knew one was thinking of the bill, and trying to calculate whether it would be under ten pounds. But, oh, good gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Lennard, suddenly, “what a selfish creature I am; I’ve quite forgotten all this time that of course you’ll want to go home to your mamma and papa, and tell them where you’re going, and get your boxes packed, and all that.”
Eleanor shook her head with a sad smile.
“I have no mother or father to consult,” she said; “I am an orphan.”
“Are you?” cried Mrs. Lennard; “then it must have been our destiny to meet, for I am an orphan, too. Ma died while I was a baby, and poor pa died soon after my marriage. He was disappointed in my marriage, poor dear old thing, though I’m glad to think it wasn’t that, but gout in the stomach, that killed him. But you’ll want to see your friends, Miss Villars, won’t you, before you leave London?”
“No,” Eleanor answered: “I shall write to the only friends I have. I don’t want to see any one; I don’t want any one to know where I am going. I left my portmanteau at an hotel in Norfolk Street, and I shall be glad if you will let me call for it.”
Mrs. Lennard gave the necessary order; the cabman drove to the hotel where Eleanor had left her portmanteau, and thence to the Great Northern, where Mrs. Lennard conducted her new companion to a very handsome apartment on the ground-floor, opening into a palatial bed-chamber, whose splendour was a good deal impaired by the circumstances that the stately Arabian bed, the massive easy-chairs, the sofa, the dressing-table, and even the washhand-stand were loaded with divers articles of male and female attire, which seemed to have been flung here and there by some harmless maniac disporting himself about the room.
In the very centre of all this disorder, upon a great black leather military travelling-case, sat a big broad-chested man of about forty, with a good-natured, sunburnt face, a very fierce auburn moustache, and a thick stubble of crisp, wavy, auburn hair, cut close to his head, in the development of which a disciple of Mr. George Coombe would have scarcely discovered the organs that make a man either a general or a philosopher. This sunburnt, good-humoured looking gentleman had taken off his coat for the better accomplishment of his herculean labours; and, with his arms folded and his legs crossed, with an embroidered slipper balanced upon the extremity of his toes, and a meerschaum pipe in his mouth, he sat resting himself, after taking the initiatory step of dragging everything out of the drawers and wardrobe.
“Oh, youlazyFreddy!” cried Mrs. Lennard, looking in at her lord and master with a reproachful countenance, “is that all you’ve done?”
“Where’s the blue barège with the flounces to go?” roared the major, in the voice of an amiable Stentor. “I couldn’t do anything till I knew that, and I’ve been waiting for you to come home. Have you got a companion?”
“Hush! yes! she’s in the nest room; such a dear, and awfully pretty. If you stare at her much I shall be jealous, Freddy, for you know youarea starer, though you never willconfess it.I’veseen you, in Regent Street, when you’ve thought I’ve been looking at the bonnets,” added the lady, reproachfully.
Upon this the major got up, and, lifting his wife in his arms, gave her such a hug as a well-disposed bear might have bestowed upon the partner of his den. Major Lennard was about six feet one and a half in the embroidered slippers, and was as strong as a gladiator in good training.
“Come and be introduced to her,” exclaimed Mrs. Lennard; and she led her husband, in his shirt-sleeves, nothing abashed, into the adjoining sitting-room.
The major’s conversational powers were not very startling. He made a few remarks about the weather, which were more courteous than original. He asked Eleanor if she was hungry, if she would have luncheon, or wait for a six o’clock dinner, and if she was a good sailor. Then, suddenly coming to a standstill, he demanded soda water and brandy.
It was the habit of this amiable man to require this beverage on every possible occasion. He was by no means a drunkard, though he was one of those good-natured noisy creatures who can never be convivial without getting tipsy; but his existence was one perpetual absorption of soda water and brandy. Why he drank this mixture, which the uninitiated are apt to consider insipid, was a mystery only to be explained by himself. He could not have been perpetually thirsty; and I am inclined to think that this soda water and brandy was the desperate resource of a feeble intellect craving some employment, rather than a physical want.
The major and his wife retired to the bedroom and began their packing. When matters grew very desperate Eleanor was summoned as a forlorn hope, and did her best to reduce the chaos into something like order. This process occupied the time until six o’clock, when the major put on his coat and sat down to dinner.
But even during dinner the packing business was not altogether suspended, for every now and then, when there was a little pause in the banquet, Mrs. Lennard jumped up from the table, and ran into the next room with her workbox, or her desk, or something from the mantelpiece or one of the sofa-tables—sometimes a book, sometimes a paper-knife, a thimble, a pair of scissors, a pen-wiper, or a packet of envelopes,—and then scampered back to her place before the waiter re-entered the room, and tried to look as if she hadn’t left her seat. The major meanwhile worked steadily on with his knife and fork, only looking up from his plate to attend to the wants of Eleanor and his wife.
At last everything was ready. The addresses were fastened to the boxes and portmanteaus. A bewildering canary-bird—which rejoiced in every kind of noise and confusion, and hadbeen excruciatingly loud and shrill all the afternoon—was inducted into the new brass cage which Mrs. Lennard had bought for it. A sharp little black-and-tan terrier, the property of the major, was invested in the new collar, and securely padlocked; Eleanor and Mrs. Lennard put on their shawls and bonnets; the major made himself gigantic by the addition of a rough great-coat, a Scotch plaid, and half-a-dozen yards of woollen comforter to his normal bulk; the bill was paid at the very last moment, while the luggage was being piled up on the top of an extra cab; and Major Lennard and his companions departed at a rattling pace for the London Bridge terminus. There was just time enough for the major to get the tickets and choose a comfortable carriage, before the train started. Away they flew through the darkness of the bleak March night, and Eleanor felt that every throb of the shrieking engine made the step that she had taken more irrevocable.
“There was not a word in Gilbert’s letter that expressed sorrow at parting from me,” she thought. “I had worn out his love, I suppose.”
It was eleven o’clock when they got to Dover. Major Lennard slept all the way, with the lappets of his travelling cap which was a sort of woollen caricature of a Knight Templar’s helmet, drawn closely over his ears. Mrs. Lennard, who was very wide awake all the time, sat opposite to her husband, with the canary bird on her lap. He had grown quiet at last, and had retired from the world under a tent of green baize. The bird’s mistress made up for his silence by talking incessantly throughout the journey; but it only seemed to Eleanor as if she had a second Laura for her companion, and the succession of her own sad thoughts was scarcely broken by Mrs. Lennard’s conversation.
They arrived in Paris the next morning in time for breakfast at the great Hôtel du Palais, a monstrous building, newly erected, and rich in the glitter of gilding and the glow of colour. Here the major took up his abode, after deliberately expounding to his wife and Eleanor the theory that the best and most expensive hotels are always the cheapest—in the end. This moral had been the rule of the major’s life, and had very often brought him alarmingly near the awful abysses of insolvency.
The gorgeous apartments in which Eleanor found herself were very unlike the low-ceilinged little sitting-room in the Rue de l’Archevêque; but her mind went back to that sad time, nevertheless. She spent the morning in the agreeable employment of unpacking Mrs. Lennard’s wardrobe, while the major and his wife sailed out of the great hotel to sun themselves in the Rue Rivoli and on the Boulevards, and to wind up with a drive in the Bois, and a little dinner at Vèfour’s. When shehad completed this most wearisome task, and had arranged all the scraps of lace and ribbons, the gloves and collars, and feminine furbelows, in a buhl chest of drawers and a gorgeous ebony and gold wardrobe, Mrs. Monckton put on her bonnet and shawl, and went out into the busy street.
The tears rushed up to her eyes as she looked at the bright vista before her, and heard the roll of the drum, and the tramp of soldiers’ feet in the courts of the Louvre. Yes, there was the street along which she had walked by her father’s side on the last day of his blighted life. Her hands clenched themselves involuntarily as she remembered that day; and that other bitter day of anguish in which she had knelt upon the ground and sworn to be revenged upon George Vane’s enemy.
How had she kept her oath? She smiled bitterly as she thought of the four years that had passed since then, and the strange chance that had flung Launcelot Darrell in her way.
“I went away from this place while he was here,” she thought. “I come back to it now that he is in England. Is it my destiny, I wonder, always to fail in everything I attempt?”
She went to the Rue de l’Archevêque. Nothing was changed. The same butcher was busy in the shop; the same faded curtains of flowered damask hung behind the windows.