CHAPTER XLI.A TERRIBLE SURPRISE.
Withthe chill winds of February blowing in her face, Eleanor Monckton entered the wood between Tolldale and Mr. de Crespigny’s estate.
There were no stars in the blank grey sky above that lonely place; black masses of pine and fir shut in the narrow path upon either side; mysterious noises, caused by the capricious moaning of the winter wind, sounded far away in the dark recesses of the wood, awfully distinct amid the stillness of the night.
It was very long since Eleanor had been out alone after dark, and she had never before been alone in the darkness of such a place as this. She had the courage of a young lioness, but she had also a highly nervous and sensitive nature, an imaginative temperament; and the solemn loneliness of this wood, resonant every now and then with the dismal cries of the night-wind, was very terrible to her. But above and beyond every natural womanly feeling was this girl’s devotion to her dead father; and she walked on with her thick shawl gathered closely round her, and with both her hands pressed against her beating heart.
She walked on through the solitude and the darkness, not indifferently, but devotedly; in sublime self-abnegation; in the heroic grandeur of a soul that is elevated by love; as she would have walked through fire and water, if by the endurance of such an ordeal she could have given fresh proof of her affection for that hapless suicide of the Faubourg Saint Antoine.
“My dear father,” she murmured once, in a low voice, “I have been slow to act, but I have never forgotten. I have never forgotten you, lying far away from me in that cruel foreign grave. I have waited, but I will wait no longer. I will speak to-night.”
I think she believed that George Vane, divided from her by the awful chasm which yawns, mysterious and unfathomable, betwixt life and death, was yet near enough akin to her, in hischanged state of being, to witness her actions and hear her words. She spoke to him as she would have written to him had he been very far away from her, in the belief that her words would reach him, sooner or later.
The walk, which in the daytime seemed only a pleasant ramble, was a weary pilgrimage under the starless winter sky. Eleanor stopped once or twice to look back at the lighted windows of Tolldale, lying low in the hollow behind her; and then hurried on with a quicker step.
“If Gilbert should miss me,” she thought, “what will he do? what will he think?”
She quickened her pace even more as she thought of her husband. What unlooked-for difficulties might she not have to combat if Mr. Monckton should discover her absence, and send or go himself in search of her.
She had reached the outskirts of the wood by this time, and the low gate in the iron fence—the gateway through which she had passed upon the day when, for the first time, she saw her father’s old friend, Maurice de Crespigny.
This gate was very rarely locked or bolted, but to-night, to her surprise, she found it wide open.
She did not stop to wonder at this circumstance, but hurried on. She had grown very familiar with every pathway in the grounds during her walks beside Mr. de Crespigny’s invalid chair, and she knew the nearest way to the house.
This nearest way was across a broad expanse of turf, and through a shrubbery into the garden at the back of the rooms occupied by the old man, who had for many years been unable to go up and down stairs, and who had, for that length of time, inhabited a suite of rooms on the ground-floor, opening with French windows on to a tiny lawn, shut in and sheltered by a thick belt of pine and evergreens. It was in this shrubbery that Eleanor paused for a few moments to recover her breath after hurrying up the hill, and to reassure herself as to the safety of the papers which she carried in the bosom of her dress—Launcelot Darrell’s water-colour sketch, and her father’s letter. The picture and the letter were safe. She reassured herself of this, and was about to hurry on, when she was arrested by a sound near her. The laurel branches close beside her had rustled, as if parted by a man’s strong hand.
Many times in her journey through the wood, Eleanor had been terrified by a rustling amongst the long grass about the trunks of the trees; but each time the sight of a pheasant flying across her pathway, or a frightened hare scudding away into the darkness, had reassured her. But this time there could be no mistake as to what she had heard. There was no game in Mr. de Crespigny’s garden. She was not alone, therefore.There was a man lurking somewhere under the shadow of the evergreens.
She stopped; clutched the documents that she carried in her breast, and then emerged from the shrubbery on to the lawn, ashamed of her fears.
The man whose presence had alarmed her was, no doubt, one of the servants—the gardener, most likely—and he would admit her to the house and save her any encounter with the maiden sisters.
She looked about the garden, but could see no one. Then, in a low voice, she called to the man by name: but there was no answer.
Lights were burning in Mr. de Crespigny’s bedroom, but the windows of the room which the old man called his study, and the windows of his dressing-room, a little apartment between the bed-chamber and the study, were dark.
Eleanor waited a few minutes in the garden, expecting to hear or see one of the servants emerge from the shrubbery; but all was quiet, and she had no alternative except to go round to the principal door of the house, and take her chance of being admitted.
“I am certain that there was some one close to me,” she thought. “It must have been Brooks, the gardener; but how odd that he didn’t hear me when I called to him.”
The principal entrance to Mr. de Crespigny’s house was by a pair of half-glass doors, approached by a double flight of stone steps, either from the right or the left, as might suit the visitor’s convenience. It was a handsome entrance; and the plate glass which formed the upper halves of the doors appeared a very slight barrier between the visitor waiting on the broad stone platform without and the interior of the house. But, for all this, no portcullis of the Middle Ages, no sturdy postern-gate of massive oak studded by ponderous iron nails, was ever more impregnable to the besieger than these transparent doors had been under the despotic sway of the rich bachelor’s maiden nieces. Despairing poor relations, standing hopeless and desperate without those fatal doors, had been well-nigh tempted to smash the plate-glass, and thus make their way into the citadel. But, as this would have scarcely been a likely method by which to ingratiate themselves into the favour of a testy old man, the glass remained undamaged; and the hapless kinsfolk of Maurice de Crespigny were fain to keep at a distance and hope—almost against hope—that he would get tired of his maiden watchers, and revenge himself upon their officiousness by leaving his money away from them.
It was outside these glass doors that Eleanor Monckton stood to-night, with very different feelings in her breast to those which were wont to animate the visitors who came to Woodlands.
She pulled the brass handle of the bell, which was stiff from little usage, and which, after resisting her efforts for a long time, gave way at last with an angry spring that shook the distant clapper with a noisy peal which seemed as if it would have never ceased ringing sharply through the stillness.
But, loud as this peal had been, it was not answered immediately, and Eleanor had time to contemplate the prim furniture of the dimly-lighted hall, the umbrella-stand and barometer, and some marine views of a warlike nature on the walls; pictures in which a De Crespigny of Nelson’s time distinguished himself unpleasantly by the blowing up of some very ugly ships, which exploded in blazes of yellow ochre and vermilion, and the bombardment of some equally ugly fortresses in burnt sienna.
A butler or factotum,—for there was only one male servant in the house, and he was old and unpleasant, and had been cherished by the Misses de Crespigny because of those very qualifications, which were likely to stand in the way of his getting any important legacy,—emerged at last from one of the passages at the back of the hall, and advanced, with indignation and astonishment depicted on his grim features, to the doors before which Eleanor waited, Heaven only knows how impatiently.
“Launcelot Darrell may have come here before me,” she thought; “he may be with his uncle now, and may induce him to alter his will. He must be desperate enough to do anything, if he really knows that he is disinherited.”
The butler opened one of the hall doors a very little way, and suspiciously. He took care to plant himself in the aperture, in such a manner as would have compelled Eleanor to walk through his body before she could enter the hall; and as the butler was the very reverse of Mr. Pepper’s ghost in consistency, Mrs. Monckton could only parley with him in the faint hope of taking the citadel by capitulation. She did not know that the citadel was already taken, and that an awful guest, to whom neither closely guarded doors nor oaken posterns lined with stoutest iron formed obstacle or hindrance, had entered that quiet mansion before her; she did not know this, nor that the butler only kept her at bay out of the sheer force of habit, and perhaps with a spiteful sense of pleasure in doing battle with would-be legatees.
“I want to see Mr. de Crespigny,” Eleanor cried, eagerly; “I want to see him very particularly, if you please. I know that he will see me if you will be so good as to tell him that I am here.”
The butler opened his mouth to speak, but before he could do so a door opened, and Miss Lavinia de Crespigny appeared. She was very pale, and carried a handkerchief in her hand, which she put to her eyes every now and then; but the eyes were quite dry, and she had not been weeping.
“Who is that?” she exclaimed, sharply. “What is the matter,Parker? Why can’t you tell the person that we can see nobody to-night?”
“I was just a-goin’ to tell her so,” the butter answered; “but it’s Mrs. Monckton, and she says she wants to see poor master.”
He moved away from the door, as if his responsibility had ceased on the appearance of his mistress, and Eleanor entered the hall.
“Oh, dear Miss Lavinia,” she cried, almost breathless in her eagerness, “do let me see your uncle. I know he will not refuse to see me. I am a favourite with him, you know. Please let me see him.”
Miss Lavinia de Crespigny applied her handkerchief to her dry eyes before she answered Eleanor’s eager entreaty. Then she said very slowly,—
“My beloved uncle departed this life an hour ago. He breathed his last in my arms.”
“And in mine,” murmured Miss Sarah, who had followed her sister into the hall.
“And I was a-standing by the bedside,” observed the butler, with respectful firmness; “and the last words as my blessed master said before you come into the room, Miss Lavinia, was these: ‘You’ve been a good servant, Parker, and you’ll find you’re not forgotten.’ Yes, miss, ‘You’ll find you’re not forgotten, Parker,’ were his last words.”
The two ladies looked very sharply and rather suspiciously at Mr. Parker, as if they were meditating the possibility of that gentleman having fabricated a will constituting himself sole legatee.
“Idid not hear my dear uncle mention you, Parker,” Miss Sarah said, stiffly; “butweshall not forget any one he wished to have remembered; you may be sure of that.”
Eleanor Monckton stood, silent and aghast, staring straight before her, paralyzed, dumbfounded, by the tidings she had just heard.
“Dead!” she murmured at last. “Dead! dead!—before I could see him, before I could tell him——”
She paused, looking round her with a bewildered expression in her face.
“I do not knowwhyyou should be so eager to see my uncle,” said Miss Lavinia, forgetting her assumption of grief, and becoming very genuine in her spiteful feeling towards Eleanor, as a possible rival, “nor do I knowwhatyou can have had to say to him. But I do know that you have not exhibited very good taste in intruding upon us at such an hour as this, and, above all, in remaining, now that you hear the sad affliction”—the handkerchief went to the eyes again here—“which has befallen us. If you come here,” added Miss Lavinia, suddenly becomingspiteful again, “in the hope of ascertaining how my uncle’s money has been left—and it would be only likesomepeople to do so—I can give younoinformation upon the subject. The gardener has been sent to Windsor to summon Mr. Lawford’s clerk. Mr. Lawford himself started some days ago for New York on business. It’s very unlucky that he should be away at such a time, for we put every confidence in him. However, I suppose the clerk will do as well. He will put seals on my uncle’s effects, I believe, and nothing will be known about the will until the day of the funeral. But I do not thinkyouneed trouble yourself upon the subject, my dear Mrs. Monckton, as I perfectly remember my beloved relative telling you very distinctly that he had no idea of leaving you anything except a picture, or something of that kind. We shall be very happy to see that you get the picture,” concluded the lady, with frigid politeness.
Eleanor Monckton stood with one hand pushing the glossy ripples of auburn hair away from her forehead, and with a look upon her face which the Misses de Crespigny—whose minds had run in one very narrow groove for the last twenty years—could only construe into some disappointment upon the subject of the will. Eleanor recovered her self-command with an effort, as Miss Lavinia finished speaking, and said, very quietly:
“Believe me, I do not want to inherit any of Mr. de Crespigny’s property. I am very, very sorry that he is dead, for there was something that I wanted to tell him before he died; something that I ought to have told him long ago. I have been foolish—cowardly—to wait so long.”
She said the last words not to the two ladies, but to herself; and then, after a pause, she added, slowly:
“I hope your uncle has left his fortune to you and your sister, Miss Lavinia. Heaven grant that he may have left it so!”
Unfortunately the Misses de Crespigny were in the humour to take offence at anything. The terrible torture of suspense which was gnawing at the heart of each of the dead man’s nieces disposed them to be snappish to any one who came in their way. To them, to-night, it seemed as if the earth was peopled by expectant legatees, all eager to dispute for the heritage which by right was theirs.
“We are extremely obliged to you for your good wishes, Mrs. Monckton,” Miss Sarah said, with vinegary politeness, “and we can perfectly appreciate their sincerity.Goodevening.”
On this hint, the butler opened the door with a solemn flourish, and the two ladies bowed Eleanor out of the house. The door closed behind her, and she went slowly down the steps, lingering without purpose, entirely bewildered by the turn that events had taken.
“Dead!” she exclaimed, in a half-whisper, “dead! I never thought that he would die so soon. I waited, and waited, thinking that, whenever the time came for me to speak, he would be alive to hear me; and now he is dead, and I have lost my chance; I have lost my one chance of avenging my father’s death. The law cannot touch Launcelot Darrell; but this old man had the power to punish him, and would have used that power, if he had known the story of his friend’s death. I cannot doubt that. I cannot doubt that Maurice de Crespigny dearly loved my father.”
Eleanor Monckton stopped for a few minutes at the bottom of the steps, trying to collect her senses—trying to think if there was anything more for her to do.
No, there was nothing. The one chance which fortune, by a series of events, not one of which had been of her own contriving, had thrown into her way, was lost. She could do nothing but go quietly home, and wait for the reading of the will, which might, or might not, make Launcelot Darrell the owner of a noble estate.
But then she remembered Richard Thornton’s visit to Windsor, and the inferences he had drawn from the meeting between Launcelot and the lawyer’s clerk. Richard had most firmly believed that the property was left away from the young man; and Launcelot Darrell’s conduct since that day had gone far towards confirming the scene-painter’s assertion. There was very little doubt, then, that the will which had been drawn up by Mr. Lawford and witnessed by Gilbert Monckton, was a will that left Maurice de Crespigny’s fortune away from Launcelot Darrell. The old man had spoken of a duty which he meant to perform. Surely he must have alluded to his two nieces’ devotion, and the recompense which they had earned by their patient attendance upon him. Such untiring watchers generally succeed in reaping the reward of their labours; and why should it be otherwise in this case?
But then, on the other hand, the old man was fretful and capricious. His nerves had been shattered by a long illness. How often, in the watches of the night, he might have lain awake, pondering upon the disposal of his wealth, and doubtful what to do with it in his desire to act for the best! It was known that he had made other wills, and had burned them when the humour seized him. He had had ample opportunity for changing his mind. He had very likely destroyed the will witnessed by Gilbert Monckton, in order to make a new one in Launcelot’s favour.
Eleanor stood at the bottom of the broad flight of steps, with her hand upon the iron railing, thinking of all this. Then, with a regretful sigh, she walked away from the front of the house.