CHAPTER LIX.THE LAST.
Gilbert Moncktonseconded his wife in all she wished to do. There was no scandal. All legal formalities were gone through very quietly. Those troublesome people who require to be informed as to the business of their neighbours, were told that a codicil had been found, which revoked the chief clause of Mr. de Crespigny’s will. Mr. Peter Sedgewick and Mrs. Bannister were ready to perform all acts required of them; though the lady expressed considerable surprise at her half-sister’s unexpected accession of wealth. Eleanor Monckton entered into possession of the estates. The impulsive girl, having once forgiven her father’s enemy, would fain have surrendered the fortune to him into the bargain—but practical, matter-of-fact people were at hand to prevent her being too generous. Mrs. Darrell and her son went to Italy, and Mrs. Monckton, with her husband’s concurrence, made the young man a very handsome allowance, which enabled him to pursue his career as an artist. He worked very hard and with enthusiasm. The shame of the past gave an impetus to his pencil. His outraged self-esteem stood him his friend, and he toiled valiantly to redeem himself from the disgrace that had fallen upon him.
“If I am a great painter, they will remember nothing against me,” he said to himself; and though it was not in him to become a great painter, he became a popular painter; a great man for the Royal Academy, and the West-End engravers, if only a small man for future generations, who will choose the real gems out of the prodigal wealth of the present. Mr. Darrell’s first success was a picture which he called “The Earl’s Death,” from a poem of Tennyson’s, with the motto, “Oh, the Earl was fair to see,”—a preternaturally ugly man lying at the feet of a preternaturally hideous woman, in a turret chamber lighted by lucifer matches—the blue and green light of the lucifers on the face of the ugly woman, and a pre-Raphaelite cypress seen, through the window; and I am fain to say that although the picture was ugly, there was a strange weird attraction in it, andpeople went to see it again and again, and liked it, and hankered after it, and talked of it perpetually all that season; one faction declaring that the lucifer-match effect was the most delicious moonlight, and the murderess of the Earl the most lovely of womankind, till the faction who thought the very reverse of this became afraid to declare their opinions, and thus everybody was satisfied.
So Launcelot Darrell received a fabulous price for his picture, and, having lived without reproach during three years of probation, came home to marry Laura Mason Lennard, who had been true to him all this time, and who would have rather liked to unite her fortunes with those of a modern Cartouche or Jack Sheppard for the romance of the thing. And although the artist did not become a good man all in a moment, like the repentant villain of a stage play, he did take to heart the lesson of his youth. He was tenderly affectionate to the mother who had suffered so much by reason of his errors; and he made a very tolerable husband to a most devoted little wife.
Monsieur Victor Bourdon was remunerated, and very liberally—for hisservices, and was told to hold his tongue. He departed for Canada soon afterwards, in the interests of the patent mustard, and never reappeared in the neighbourhood of Tolldale Priory.
Eleanor insisted on giving up Woodlands for the use of Mr. Darrell, his wife, and mother. Signora Picirillo lived with her nephew and his merry little wife in the pretty house at Brixton; but she paid very frequent visits to Tolldale Priory, sometimes accompanied by Richard and Mrs. Richard, sometimes alone. Matrimony has a very good effect upon the outward seeming of the scene-painter: for his young wife initiated him in the luxury of shirt-buttons as contrasted with pins; to say nothing of the delights of a shower-bath, and a pair of ivory-backed hair-brushes, presented by Eleanor as a birthday present to her old friend. Richard at first suggested that the ivory-backed brushes should be used as chimney ornaments in the Brixton drawing-room: but afterwards submitted to the popular view of the subject, and brushed his hair. Major and Mrs. Lennard were also visitors at Tolldale, and Laura knew the happiness of paternal and maternal love—the paternal affection evincing itself in the presentation of a great deal of frivolous jewellery, purchased upon credit; the maternal devotion displaying itself in a wild admiration of Launcelot Darrell’s son and heir, a pink-faced baby, who made his appearance in the year 1861, and who was in much better drawing than the “Dying Gladiator,” exhibited by Mr. Darrell in the same year. Little children’s voices sounded by-and-by in the shady pathways of the old-fashionedPriory garden, and in all Berkshire there was not a happier woman than Gilbert Monckton’s beautiful young wife.
And, after all, Eleanor’s Victory was a proper womanly conquest, and not a stern, classical vengeance. The tender woman’s heart triumphed over the girl’s rash vow; and poor George Vane’s enemy was left to the only Judge whose judgments are always righteous.
THE END.
London: Printed byH. Blacklock & Co., Allen Street, Goswell Road, E.C.