CHAPTER VII.SUSPENSE.
Eleanor Vaneand the scene-painter stood upon the bridge looking at each other for a few moments after Richard’s cry of mingled terror and astonishment.
Had not Eleanor’s mind been entirely absorbed by one cruel anxiety, she would have wondered at her old friend’s strange greeting. As it was she took no heed of his manner. The shadows of the summer night were gathering over the city and upon the quiet river; the towers of Notre Dame loomed dimly through the twilight.
“Oh, Richard!” Eleanor cried, “I have been so unhappy. Papa didn’t come home all last night, nor yet to-day. I waited for him hour after hour until late in the afternoon; and then the house seemed unbearable; Icouldn’tstay in any longer, and I came out to look for him. I have been far up on the Boulevard where I parted with him last night, and all the way along the crowded streets about there: and then through other streets, till I found myself down here by the water, and I’m so tired! Oh, Dick, Dick, how unkind of papa not to come home! How unkind of my darling father to give me this misery.”
She clasped her hands convulsively upon her companion’s arm, and bending her head, burst into tears. Those tears werethe first which she had shed in all her trouble; the first relief after long hours of agonizing suspense, of weary watching.
“Oh, how can papa treat me so?” she cried, amid her sobbing. “How can he treat me so?”
Then, suddenly raising her head, she looked at Richard Thornton, her clear grey eyes dilated with a wild terror, which gave her face a strange and awful beauty.
“Richard!” she cried, “Richard! you don’t think that there—that there is—anything wrong—that anything has happened to my father?”
She did not wait for him to answer, but cried out directly, as if shrinking in terror from the awful suggestion in her own words:
“What should happen to him? He is so well and strong, poor darling. If he is old, he is notlikean old man, you know. The people of the house in the Rue de l’Archevêque have been very kind to me; they say I’m quite foolish to be frightened, and they told me that papa stopped out all night once last summer. He went to Versailles to see some friends, and stayed away all night without giving any notice that he was going to do so. I know it is very silly of me to be so frightened, Richard. But I always was frightened at Chelsea if he stayed out. I used to fancy all sorts of things. I thought of all kinds of dreadful things last night, Dick, and to-day; until my fancies almost drove me mad.”
During all this time the scene-painter had not spoken. He seemed unable to offer any word of comfort to the poor girl who clung to him in her distress, looking to him for consolation and hope.
She looked wonderingly into his face, puzzled by his silence, which seemed unfeeling; and it was not like Richard to be unfeeling.
“Richard!” she cried, almost impatiently. “Richard, speak to me! You see how much misery I have suffered, and you don’t say a word! You’ll help me to find papa, won’t you?”
The young man looked down at her. Heaven knows she would have seen no lack of tenderness or compassion in his face, if it had not been hidden by the gathering gloom of the August evening. He drew her hand through his arm, and led her away towards the other side of the water, leaving the black roof of the dead-house behind him.
“There is nothing I would not do to help you, Eleanor,” he said, gently. “God knows my heart, my dear; and He knows how faithfully I will try to help you.”
“And you will look for papa, Richard, if he should not come home to-night,—he may be at home now, you know, and he may be angry with me for coming out alone, instead of waiting quietly till he returned; but if he should not come to-night,you’ll look for him, won’t you, Richard? You’ll search all Paris till you find him?”
“I’ll do everything that I could do for you if I were your brother, Eleanor,” the young man answered, gravely; “there are times in our lives when nobody but God can help us, my dear, and when we must turn to Him. It’s in the day of trouble that we want His help, Nelly.”
“Yes, yes, I know. I prayed, last night, again, and again, and again, that papa might come back soon. I have been saying the same prayer all to-day, Richard; even just now, when you found me standing by the parapet of the bridge, I was praying for my dear father. I saw the church towers looking so grand and solemn in the twilight, and the sight of them made me remember how powerful God is, and that He can always grant our prayers.”
“If it seems best and wisest in His sight, Nell.”
“Yes, of course; sometimes we pray for foolish things, but there could be nothing foolish in wishing my darling father to come back to me. Where are you taking me, Dick?”
Eleanor stopped suddenly, and looked at her companion. She had need to ask the question, for Richard Thornton was leading her into a labyrinth of streets in the direction of the Luxembourg, and he seemed to have very little notion whither he was going.
“This is not the way home, Richard,” Eleanor said; “I don’t know where we are, but we seem to be going farther and farther away from home. Will you take me back to the Rue de l’Archevêque, Dick? We must cross the river again, you know, to get there. I want to go home at once. Papa may have come home, and he’ll be angry, perhaps, if he finds me absent. Take me home, Dick.”
“I will, my dear. We’ll cross the water farther on, by the Louvre; and now tell me, Eleanor—I—I can’t very well make inquiries about your father, unless I fully understand the circumstances under which you parted from him last night. How was it, my dear? What happened when Mr. Vane left you upon the Boulevard?”
They were walking in a broad, quiet street in which there were very few passers-by. The houses stood back behind ponderous gates, and were hidden by sheltering walls. The stately mansions between court and garden had rather a decayed aspect, which gave a certain dreariness to their grandeur. The fashionable world seemed to have deserted this quiet quarter for the leafy avenues leading away from the Champs Elysées.
Richard and Eleanor walked slowly along the broad footway. The stillness of the soft summer night had some effect upon the school-girl’s fever of impatience. The grave, compassionatetones of her friend’s voice soothed her. The burst of passionate weeping which had almost convulsed her slight frame half an hour before, had been an unspeakable relief to her. She clung to her companion’s arm confidingly, and walked patiently by his side; without questioning him as to where he was leading her, though she had a vague idea that he was not taking her homewards.
“I will not be foolish about papa,” she said; “I will do as you tell me, Richard; I will trust in God. I am sure my dear father will return to me. We are so fond of each other; you know, Richard, we are all the world to each other; and my poor darling looks so hopefully forward to the day in which he will have Mr. de Crespigny’s fortune. I don’t hope for that quite so much as papa does, Dick; for Mr. de Crespigny may live to be a very, very old man, and it seems so wicked to wish for any one’s death. The day I look forward to is the day when I shall have finished my education, and be able to work for papa. That must be almost better than being rich, I should think, Dick. I can’t imagine any happier fate than to work for those we love.”
Her face brightened as she talked, and she turned to her companion, looking to him for sympathy; but Richard’s head was averted, and he seemed to be staring absently at the houses upon the opposite side of the way.
He was silent for some moments after Eleanor had left off speaking; and then he said, rather abruptly:
“Tell me, my dear, how did you part with your father last night?”
“Why, we had been dining on the Boulevard; and after dinner papa took me for a long walk, ever so far, past all the theatres, and he had promised to take me to the Ambigu or the Porte Saint Martin; but as we were coming back we met two gentlemen, friends of papa’s, who stopped him, and said they had an appointment with him, and persuaded him to go back with them.”
“Back with them! Back where?”
“I mean back towards a big stone gateway we had passed a little time before. I only know they turned that way, but I don’t know where they went. I stood and watched them till they were out of sight.”
“And the two men, what were they like?”
“One of them was a little Frenchman, stout and rosy-faced, with a light moustache and beard like the Emperor’s. He was smartly dressed, and had a cane, which he kept twirling when he talked to papa.”
“Did you hear what he said?”
“No, he spoke in a low voice, and he talked French.”
“But you speak French, Eleanor?”
“Yes, but not as they speak it here. The people seem to talk so fast here, it’s quite difficult to understand them.”
“But the other man, Nell; what was he like?”
“Oh, he was a disagreeable-looking man, and seemed to have a sulky manner, as if he was offended with papa for breaking his appointment, and didn’t care how the matter ended. I scarcely saw his face—at least only for a moment—just long enough to see that he had black eyes, and a thick black moustache. He was tall, and shabbily dressed, and I fancied he was an Englishman, though he never once spoke.”
“He never spoke! It was the Frenchman, then, who persuaded your father to go away with him?”
“Yes.”
“And he seemed very anxious?”
“Oh, yes, very anxious.”
Richard Thornton muttered something between his set teeth, something which sounded like a curse.
“Tell me one thing, Eleanor,” he said. “Your poor father never was too well off, I know. He could not be likely to have much money about him last night. Do you know if he had any?”
“Yes, he had a great deal of money.”
“What do you mean by a great deal? A few pounds, I suppose?”
“Oh, much more than that,” Eleanor answered. “He had a hundred pounds—a hundred pounds in new bank notes—French notes. It was the money my half-sister, Mrs. Bannister, had sent him, to pay for my education at Madame Marly’s.”
“Mrs. Bannister,” said Richard, catching at the name. “Ah, to be sure, I remember now. Mrs. Bannister is your sister. She is very well off, is she not, and has been kind to you? If you were in any trouble, you would go to her, I suppose, Eleanor?”
“Go to her if I were in trouble! Oh, no, no, Dick, not for the world!”
“But why not? She has been kind to you, hasn’t she, Nell?”
“Oh, yes, very kind in paying money for my education, and all that; but you know, Richard, there are some people who seem to do kind things in an unkind manner. If you knew the cruel letter that Mrs. Bannister wrote to papa—the cruel, humiliating things she said only a few days ago, you couldn’t wonder that I don’t like her.”
“But she is your sister, Nell; your nearest relation.”
“Except papa.”
“And she ought to love you, and be kind to you. She lives at Bayswater, I think I’ve heard you say?”
“Yes, in Hyde Park Gardens.”
“To be sure. Mrs. Bannister, Hyde Park Gardens, Bayswater.”
He repeated the name and address, as if he wished to impress them upon his memory.
“I will take you home now, Nell,” he said. “My poor child, you must be tired to death.”
“How can I think about being tired, Richard,” exclaimed Eleanor, “when I am so anxious about papa? Oh, if I only find him at home, what happiness it will be!”
But she hung heavily upon her friend’s arm, and Richard knew that she was very tired. She had been wandering about Paris for several hours, poor child, hither and thither, in the long, unfamiliar streets, following all sorts of unlikely people who looked in the distance something like her father; hoping again and again, only again and again to be disappointed.
They turned into a wider thoroughfare presently, and the scene-painter called the first hackney vehicle which passed him, and lifted Eleanor into it. She was almost fainting with fatigue and exhaustion.
“What have you had to eat to-day, Nell?” he asked.
She hesitated a little, as if she had forgotten what she had eaten, or indeed whether she had eaten at all.
“There was some coffee and a couple of rolls sent for papa this morning. He has his breakfast sent him from atraiteur’s, you know. I had one of the rolls.”
“And you’ve had nothing since?”
“No. How could I eat when I was so wretched about papa?”
Richard shook his head reproachfully.
“My darling Nell!” he said, “you promised me just now that you’d be a good girl, and trust in Providence. I shall take you somewhere and give you some supper, and then you must promise me to go home and get a good night’s rest.”
“I will do whatever you tell me, Richard,” Eleanor answered, submissively, “but let me go home first, please, and see if papa has come back.”
The scene-painter did not for a few moments reply to this request, but he answered presently in an abstracted tone:
“You shall do what you like, Nell.”
He told the coachman to drive to the Rue de l’Archevêque, but he would not let Eleanor alight from the vehicle when they reached the corner of the street and the little butcher’s shop, eager as she was to spring out and run into the house.
“Stay where you are, Nell,” he said authoritatively. “I will make all inquiries.”
Eleanor obeyed him. She was exhausted by a weary night of watching, a long day of agitation and anxiety, and she was too weak to oppose her old friend. She looked hopelessly up at theopen windows on the entresol. They were exactly as she had left them four or five hours ago. No glimmer of light gave friendly token that the rooms were occupied.
Richard Thornton talked to the butcher’s wife for a long time, as it seemed to Eleanor; but he had very little to tell her when he came back to the carriage. Mr. Vane had not returned: that was all he said.
He took his companion to a café near the Madeleine, where he insisted upon her taking a large cup of coffee and a roll. It was all he could persuade her to take, and she begged to be allowed to sit at one of the tables outside the café.
“She might see her father go by,” she said, “on his way to the Rue de l’Archevêque.”
The two friends sat at a little iron table rather apart from the groups of animated loungers sitting at other tables drinking coffee and lemonade. But George Mowbray Vandeleur Vane did not pass that way throughout the half hour during which Eleanor lingered over her cup of coffee.
It was past ten o’clock when Richard Thornton bade her good night at the threshold of the little door beside the butcher’s shop.
“You must promise me not to sit up to-night, Nelly,” he said, as he shook hands with her.
“Yes, Richard.”
“And mind you keep your promise this time. I will come and see you early to-morrow. God bless you, my dear, and good night!”
He pressed her hand tenderly. When she had closed the door behind her, he crossed the narrow street, and waited upon the other side of the way until he saw a light in one of the entresol windows. He watched while Eleanor came to this window and drew a dark curtain across it, and then he walked slowly away.
“God bless her, poor child,” he murmured, in a low, compassionate voice, “poor lonely child!”
The grave thoughtfulness of his expression never changed as he walked homewards to the Hôtel des Deux Mondes. Late as it was when he reached his chamber on the fifth story, he seated himself at the table, and pushing aside his clay pipe and tobacco-pouch, his water-colours and brushes, his broken palettes and scraps of Bristol board, and all the litter of his day’s work, he took a few sheets of foreign letter paper and a bottle of ink from a shabby leather desk, and began to write.
He wrote two letters, both rather long, and folded, sealed, and directed them.
One was addressed to Mrs. Bannister, Hyde Park Gardens, Bayswater; the other to Signora Picirillo, the Pilasters, Dudley Street, Northumberland Square.
Richard Thornton put both these letters in his pocket and went out to post them.
“I think I have acted for the best,” he muttered, as he went back to the hotel near the market-place; “I can do nothing more until to-morrow.”