CHAPTER LVIII.THE DAY OF RECKONING.
Launcelot Darrelland his mother had inhabited Woodlands for a little more than a fortnight. The painters, and paper-hangers, and upholsterers had done a great deal to alter the handsome country-house; for Mr. Darrell had no wish to be reminded of his dead uncle; and familiar chairs and tables have an unpleasant faculty of suggesting tiresome thoughts, and recalling faded faces that had better be forgotten. Almost all the old furniture had been swept away, therefore, and the young man had behaved very generously to his maiden aunts, who had furnished a small house in Windsor with the things that Launcelot had banished from Woodlands. These poor disappointed ladies had located themselves in a quiet littlecul-de-sac, squeezed in between the hilly street and the castle, with the idea that the wild dissipations of a town life would enable them to forget their wrongs.
So Launcelot Darrell and his mother reigned at Woodlands instead of the maiden sisters; and Parker, the butler, and Mrs. Jepcott, the housekeeper, waited upon a new master and mistress.
The young man had chafed bitterly at his poverty, and had hated himself and all the world, because of those humiliations to which a man who is too idle to work, and too poor to live withoutwork, is always more or less subject. But, alas! now that by the commission of a crime he had attained the great end of his ambition, he found that the game was not worth the candle; and that in his most fretful moments before Maurice de Crespigny’s death, he had never suffered as much as he now suffered, daily and hourly.
The murderers of the unfortunate Mr. Ware ate a hearty supper of pork chops while their victim lay, scarcely cold, in a pond beside the high road; but it is not everybody who is blessed with the strength of mind possessed by those gentlemen. Launcelot Darrell could not shake off the recollection of what he had done. From morning till night, from night till morning, the same thoughts, the same fears, were perpetually pressing upon him. In the eyes of every servant who looked at him; in the voice of every creature who spoke to him; in the sound of every bell that rang in the roomy country-house, there lurked a something that inspired the miserable terror of detection. It haunted him in every place; it met him at every turn. The knowledge that he was in the power of two bad, unscrupulous men, the lawyer’s clerk and Victor Bourdon, made him the most helpless of slaves. Already he had found what it was to be in the power of a vicious and greedy wretch. The clerk had been easily satisfied by the gift of a round sum of money, and had levanted before his employer returned from America. But Victor Bourdon became insatiable. He was a gamester and a drunkard; and he expected to find in Launcelot Darrell’s purse a gold mine that was never to be exhausted.
He had abandoned himself to the wildest dissipation in the worst haunts of London after Maurice de Crespigny’s death; and had appeared at Woodlands at all times and seasons, demanding enormous sums of his miserable victim. At first terror sealed Launcelot Darrell’s lips, and he acceded to the most extravagant demands of his accomplice; but at last his temper gave way, and he refused that “paltry note for a thousand francs,” to which the Frenchman alluded in his interview with Eleanor. After this refusal there was a desperate quarrel between the two men, at the end of which the commercial traveller received a thrashing, and was turned out of doors by the master of Woodlands.
The young man had been quite reckless of consequences in his passion; but when he grew a little calmer he began to reflect upon the issue of this quarrel.
“I cannot see what harm the man can do me?” he thought: “to accuse me is to accuse himself also. And then who would believe his unsupported testimony? I could laugh at him as a madman.”
Launcelot Darrell had no knowledge of the existence of thereal will. He implicitly believed that it had been burned before his own eyes, and that Eleanor’s assertion to the contrary had been only a woman’s falsehood invented to terrify him.
“If the girl had once had the will in her possession she would never have been such a fool as to lose it,” he argued.
But notwithstanding all this he felt a vague fear, all the more terrible because of its indefinite character. He had placed himself in a false position. The poet is born, and not made; and perhaps the same thing may be said of the criminal. The genius of crime, like the genius of song, may be a capricious blossom, indigenous to such and such a soil, but not to be produced by cultivation. However this may be, Launcelot Darrell was not a great criminal. He had none of the reckless daring, the marvellous power of dissimulation, the blind indifference to the future, which make a Palmer, a Cartouche, a Fauntleroy, or a Roupell. He was wretched because of what he had done; and he allowed everybody to perceive his wretchedness.
Mrs. Darrell saw that her son was miserable in spite of his newly-acquired wealth; and a horrible terror seized upon her. Her sisters had taken good care to describe to her the scene that had occurred at Woodlands upon the night of the old man’s death. She had watched her son, as only mothers can watch the children they love; and she had seen that his dead kinsman’s fortune had brought him no happiness. She had questioned him, but had received only sulky, ungracious answers; and she had not the heart to press him too closely.
The mother and son were alone in the dining-room at Woodlands about a week after the scene in Monsieur Victor Bourdon’s apartment. They had dinedtête-à-tête. The dessert had not been removed, and the young man was sitting at the bottom of the long table, lounging lazily in his comfortable chair, and very often refilling his glass from the claret jug on his right hand. The three long windows were open, and the soft May twilight crept into the room. A tall shaded lamp stood in the centre of the table, making a great spot of yellow light in the dusk. Below the lamp there was a confused shimmer of cut glass, upon which the light trembled like moonbeams upon running water. There were some purple grapes, and a litter of vine leaves in a dessert dish of Sevres china; the spikey crown of a pine-apple; and scarlet strawberries that made splashes of vivid colour amid the sombre green. The pictured face of the dead man hanging upon the wall behind Launcelot Darrell’s chair seemed to look reproachfully out of the shadows. The ruby draperies shading the open windows grew darker with the fading of the light. The faint odour of lilacs and hawthorn blossoms blew in from the garden, and the evening stillness was only broken by thesound of leaves stirred faintly by a slow night wind that crept amongst the trees.
Mrs. Darrell was sitting in the recess of one of the open windows, with some needlework in her lap. She had brought her work into the dining-room after dinner, because she wished to be with her son; and she knew that Launcelot would sit for the best part of the evening brooding over his half-filled glass. The young man was most completely miserable. The great wrong he had done had brought upon him a torture which he was scarcely strong enough to endure. If he could have undone that wrong—if——! No! That way lay such shame and degradation as he could never stoop to endure.
“It was all my great-uncle’s fault,” he repeated to himself, doggedly. “What business had he to make the will of a madman? Whom have I robbed, after all? Only a specious adventuress, the intriguing daughter of a selfish spendthrift.”
Such thoughts as these were for ever rising in the young man’s mind. He was thinking them to-night, while his mother sat in the window, watching her son’s face furtively. He was only roused from his reverie by the sound of wheels upon the gravel drive, the opening of a carriage-door, and a loud ringing of the bell.
The arrival of any unexpected visitor always frightened him; so it was nothing unusual for him to get up from his chair and go to the door of the room to listen for the sound of voices in the hall.
To-night he turned deadly pale, as he recognized a familiar voice; the voice of Gilbert Monckton, whom he had not seen since the reading of the will.
Launcelot Darrell drew back as the servant approached the door, and in another moment the man opened it, and announced Mr. Monckton, Mrs. Monckton, Mr. Thornton, Monsieur Bourdon. He would have announced Mr. John Ketch, I dare say, just as coolly.
Launcelot Darrell planted his back against the low marble chimney-piece, and prepared to meet his fate.Ithad come; the realization of that horrible nightmare which had tormented him ever since the night of Maurice de Crespigny’s death.Ithad come: detection, disgrace, humiliation, despair; no matter by what name it was called; the thing was living death. His heart seemed to melt into water, and then freeze in his breast. He had seen the face of Victor Bourdon lurking behind Gilbert and Eleanor, and he knew that he had been betrayed.
The young man knew this, and determined to make a gallant finish. He was not a coward by nature, though his own wrongdoinghad made him cowardly; he was only an irresolute, vacillating, selfish Sybarite, who had quarrelled with the great schoolmaster Fate, because his life had not been made one long summer’s holiday. Even cowards sometimes grow courageous at the last. Launcelot Darrell was not a coward: he drew himself up to his fullest height, and prepared to confront his accusers.
Eleanor Monckton advanced towards him. Her husband tried to restrain her, but his effort was wasted; she waived him back with her hand, and went on to where the young man stood, with her head lifted and her nostrils quivering.
“At last, Launcelot Darrell,” she cried, “after watching that has wearied me, and failures that have tempted me to despair, at last, I can keep my promise; at last I can be true to the lost father whose death was your cruel work. When last I was in this house, you laughed at me and defied me. I was robbed of the evidence that would have condemned you: all the world seemed leagued together against me. Now, the proof of your crime is in my hands, and the voice of your accomplice has borne witness against you. Cheat, trickster, and forger; there is no escape for you now.”
“No,” exclaimed Monsieur Bourdon, with an unctuous chuckle, “it is now your turn to be chased, my stripling; it is now your turn to be kick out of the door.”
“From first to last, from first to last,” said Eleanor, “you have been false and cruel. You wronged and deceived the friends who sent you to India——”
“Yaase!” interrupted the commercial traveller, who was very pale, and by no means too steady in his nerves, after the attack of delirium tremens. He had dropped into a chair, and sat trembling and grinning at his late patron, with a ghastly jocosity that was far from agreeable to behold. “Yaase, you cheat your mo-thair, you cheat your friends. You make belief to go to the Indias, but you do not go. You what you call—shally shilly, and upon the last moment, when the machine is on the point of depart, you change the mind, you are well in England; there is a handsome career for you, as artist, you say. Then you will not go. But you have fear of your uncle, who was given the money for your—fit-out—and for your passage, and you make believe to do what they wish from you. You have a friend, aconfrère, a Mr., who is to partake your cabin. You write toheem, you getheemto post your letters; you write to your mo-thair, in Clip-a-stone Street, and you say to her, ‘Dear mo-thair, I cannot bear this broil climate; I am broil, I work the night and the day; I am indigo planter;’ and you send your letter to the Indias to be posted; and your poormo-thair belief you; and you are in Paris to enjoy yourself, to lead the life of a student, a little Bohemian, but very gay. You read Balzac, you make the little sketches for the cheap Parisian journals. You are gamester, and win money from a poor old Englishman, the father of that lady there; and you make a catspaw of your friend, Victor Bourdon. You are a villain man, Monsieur Darrell, but it is finished with you.”
“Listen to me, Launcelot Darrell,” Gilbert Monckton said, quietly. “Every falsehood and trick of which you have been guilty, from first to last, is known. There is no help for you. The will which my wife holds in her hand is the genuine will signed by Maurice de Crespigny. This man is prepared to testify that the will by which you took possession of this estate is a forgery, fabricated by you and Henry Lawford’s clerk, who had in his possession a rough draft of the real will which he had written at Mr. de Crespigny’s dictation, and who copied the three different signatures from three letters written by the old man to Henry Lawford. You are prepared to bear witness to this,” added the lawyer, turning to Victor Bourdon.
“But certainly,” exclaimed the Frenchman, “it being well understood that I am not to suffer by this candour. It is understood that I am innocent in this affair.”
“Innocent!” cried Launcelot Darrell, bitterly. “Why, you were the prime mover in this business. It was your suggestion that first induced——”
“It is possible, my friend,” murmured Monsieur Bourdon, complacently; “but is it, then, a crime to make a little suggestion—to try to make oneself useful to a friend? I do not believe it! No matter, I have studied your English law: I do not think it can touch me, since I am only prepared to swear to havingfoundthis real will, and having before thatoverhearda conversation between you and the clerk of the avoué de Vindsor.”
“You use noble tools, Mrs. Monckton,” said Launcelot Darrell; “but I do not know by what right you come into my house, uninvited, and bringing in your train a very respectable transpontine scene-painter with whom I have not the honour to be intimate, and a French commercial traveller, who has chosen to make himself peculiarly obnoxious to me. It is for the Court of Chancery to decide whether I am the rightful owner of this house and all appertaining to it. I shall await the fiat of that court; and in the meantime have the honour to wish you good evening.”
He laid his hand upon the handle of the bell as he spoke, but he did not pull it.
“You defy me, then, Launcelot Darrell?” said Eleanor.
“I do.”
“I am glad that it is so!” exclaimed the girl. “I am glad that you have not prayed to me for mercy. I am glad that Providence has suffered me to avenge my father’s death.”
Eleanor Monckton was moving towards the door.
In all this time Ellen Darrell had not once spoken. She had stood apart in the recess of the window, a dark and melancholy shadow, mourning over the ruin of her life.
I think that she was scarcely surprised at what had happened. We sometimes know the people we love, and know them to be base; but we go on loving them desperately, nevertheless; and love them best when the world is against them, and they have most need of our love. I speak here of maternal love, which is so sublime an affection as to be next in order to the love of God.
The widow came suddenly into the centre of the room, and cast herself on her knees before Eleanor, and wound her arms about the girl’s slender waist, pinning her to the spot upon which she stood, and holding her there. The mother’s arms were stronger than bands of iron, for they were linked about the enemy of her son. It has been demonstrated by practical zoologists that the king of beasts, his majesty the lion, is after all a cowardly creature. It is only the lioness,the mother, whose courage is desperate and indomitable.
“You shall not do this,” Ellen Darrell cried; “you shall not bring disgrace upon my son. Take your due, whatever it is; take your paltry wealth. You have plotted for it, I dare say. Take it, and let us go out of this place penniless. But no disgrace, no humiliation, no punishment,for him!”
“Mother,” cried Launcelot, “get up off your knees. Let her do her worst. I ask no mercy of her.
“Don’t hear him,” gasped the widow, “don’t listen to him. Oh, Eleanor, save him from shame and disgrace! Save him! save him! I was always good to you, was I not? I meant to be so, believe me. If ever I was unkind, it was because I was distracted by regrets and anxieties about him. Oh, Eleanor, forgive him, and be merciful to me! Forgive him. It is my fault that he is what he is. It was my foolish indulgence that ruined his childhood. It was my false pride that taught him to think he had a right to my uncle’s money. From first to last, Eleanor, it is I that am to blame. Remember this, and forgive him, forgive——”
Her throat grew dry, and her voice broke, but her lips still moved, though no sound came from them, and she was still imploring mercy for her son.
“Forgive!” cried Eleanor, bitterly. “Forgive the man whocaused my father’s death! Do you think I have waited and watched for nothing? It seems to me as if all my life had been given up to this one hope. Do you know how that man has defied me?” she exclaimed, pointing to Launcelot Darrell. “Do you know that through him I have been divided from my husband? Bah! why do I speak of my own wrongs? Do you know that my father, a poor, helpless old man, a lonely, friendless old man, a decayed gentleman, killed himself because of your son? Do you expect that I am to forget that? Do you think that I can forgive that man? Do you want me to abandon the settled purpose of my life—the purpose to which I have sacrificed every girlish happiness, every womanly joy—now that the victory is mine, and that I can keep my vow?”
She tried to disengage herself from Ellen Darrell’s arms, but the widow still clung about her, with her head flung back, and her white face convulsed with anguish.
“Forgive him for my sake,” she cried; “give him to me—give him to me! He will suffer enough from the ruin of his hopes. He will suffer enough from the consciousness of having done wrong. Hehassuffered. Yes. I have watched him, and I know. Take everything from him. Leave him a penniless dependant upon the pittance my uncle left to me, but save him from disgrace. Give him to me. God has given him to me. Woman, what right have you to take him from me?”
“He killed my father,” Eleanor answered, in a sombre voice; “my dead father’s letter told me to be revenged upon him.”
“Your father wrote in a moment of desperation. I knew him. I knew George Vane.Hewould have forgiven his worst enemy. He was the last person to be vindictive or revengeful when his first anger was passed. What good end will be gained by my son’s disgrace? You shallnotrefuse to hear me. You are a wife, Eleanor Monckton: you may one day be a mother. If you are pitiless to me now, God will be pitiless to you then. You will think of me then. In every throb of pain your child may suffer; in every childish ailment that makes your heart grow sick with unutterable fear, you will recognize God’s vengeance upon you for this night’s work. Think of this, Eleanor; think of this, and be merciful to me—tome—not to him. Whathewould have to endure would be only a tithe ofmysuffering. I am his mother—his mother!”
“Oh, my God!” cried Eleanor, lifting her clasped hands above her head. “Whatam I to do?”
The hour of her triumph had come; and in this supreme moment doubt and fear took possession of her breast. If this was her victory, it was only half a victory. She had never thought that any innocent creature would suffer more cruelly byher vengeance upon Launcelot Darrell than the man himself would suffer. And now, here was this woman, whose only sin had been an idolatrous love of her son, and to whom his disgrace would be worse than the anguish of death.
The widow’s agony had been too powerful for the girl’s endurance. Eleanor burst into a passion of tears, and turning to her husband, let her head fall upon his breast.
“What am I to do, Gilbert?” she said. “What am I to do?”
“I will not advise you, my dear,” the lawyer answered, in a low voice. “To-night’s business is of your own accomplishing. Your own heart must be your only guide.”
There was silence in the room for a few moments, only broken by Eleanor’s sobbing. Launcelot Darrell had covered his face with his hands. His courage had given way before the power of his mother’s grief. The widow still knelt, still clung about the girl, with her white face fixed now, in an awful stillness.
“Oh, my dear, dead father!” Eleanor sobbed, “you—you did wrong yourself sometimes; and you were always kind and merciful to people. Heaven knows, I have tried to keep my oath; but I cannot—I cannot. It seemed so easy to imagine my revenge when it was far away: but now—it is too hard—it is too hard. Take your son, Mrs. Darrell. I am a poor helpless coward. I cannot carry out the purpose of my life.”
The white uplifted face scarcely changed, and the widow fell back in a heap upon the floor. Her son and Gilbert Monckton lifted her up and carried her to a chair in one of the open windows. Richard Thornton dropped on his knees before Eleanor, and began to kiss her hands witheffusion.
“Don’t be frightened, Nelly,” he exclaimed. “I was very fond of you once, and very unhappy about you, as my poor aunt can bear witness; but I am going to marry Eliza Montalembert, and we’ve got the carpets down at the snuggest little box in all Brixton, and I’ve made it up with Spavin and Cromshaw in consideration of my salary being doubled. Don’t be frightened if I make a fool of myself, Eleanor; but I think I could worship you to-night. This is your victory, my dear. This is the only revenge Providence ever intended for beautiful young women with hazel-brown hair. God bless you!”
Launcelot Darrell, with a greyish pallor spread over his face, like a napkin upon the face of a corpse, came slowly up to Eleanor.
“You have been very generous to me, Mrs. Monckton, though it is a hard thing for me to say as much,” he said; “I have done wicked things, but I have suffered—I have suffered and repented perpetually. I had no thought of the awful consequences which would follow the wrong I did your father. I have hated myselffor that wicked act ever since; I should never have forged the will if that man had not come to me, and fooled me, and played upon my weaknesses. I will thank you for the mercy you have shown me by-and-by, Mrs. Monckton, when I am better worthy of your generosity.”