CHAPTER XLIX.DESERTED.
Theletter written by the old man to his three nieces was read aloud by Miss Sarah in the presence of the eager assembly. Amongst all those anxious listeners there was no one who listened more intently than Gilbert Monckton.
Maurice de Crespigny’s letter was not a long one.
“My dear Nieces—Sarah, Lavinia, and Ellen,—“Youwill all three be perhaps much surprised at the manner in which I have disposed of my estate, both real and personal; but believe me that in acting as I have done I have been prompted by no unkind feeling against you; nor am I otherwise than duly grateful for the attention which I have received from you during my declining years.“I think that I have done my duty; but be that as it may, I have done that which it has been my fixed intention to do for the last ten years. I have made several wills, and destroyed one after another, but they have all been in the main point to the same effect; and it has only been an old man’s whimsical fancy that has prompted me to make sundry alterations in minor details. The income of two hundred a year which I have left to each of you will, I know, be more than enough for your simple wants. The three incomes, by the wording of my will, will descend to my nephew, Launcelot Darrell, after your deaths.“I have tried to remember many old friends who have perhaps long ere this forgotten me, or who may laugh at an old man’s foolish bequests.“I do not believe that I have wronged any one; and I trust that you will think kindly of me when I am in my grave, and never speak bitterly of“Your affectionate uncle,“Maurice de Crespigny.“Woodlands, February 20th.”
“My dear Nieces—Sarah, Lavinia, and Ellen,—
“Youwill all three be perhaps much surprised at the manner in which I have disposed of my estate, both real and personal; but believe me that in acting as I have done I have been prompted by no unkind feeling against you; nor am I otherwise than duly grateful for the attention which I have received from you during my declining years.
“I think that I have done my duty; but be that as it may, I have done that which it has been my fixed intention to do for the last ten years. I have made several wills, and destroyed one after another, but they have all been in the main point to the same effect; and it has only been an old man’s whimsical fancy that has prompted me to make sundry alterations in minor details. The income of two hundred a year which I have left to each of you will, I know, be more than enough for your simple wants. The three incomes, by the wording of my will, will descend to my nephew, Launcelot Darrell, after your deaths.
“I have tried to remember many old friends who have perhaps long ere this forgotten me, or who may laugh at an old man’s foolish bequests.
“I do not believe that I have wronged any one; and I trust that you will think kindly of me when I am in my grave, and never speak bitterly of
“Your affectionate uncle,“Maurice de Crespigny.
“Woodlands, February 20th.”
This was the old man’s letter. There was not one syllable of its contents which in any way disagreed with the wording of the will.
Launcelot Darrell drew a long breath; and his mother, sitting close to him, with her hand in his, could feel the clammy coldness of his fingers, and hear the loud thumping of his heart against his breast.
Gilbert Monckton took up his hat and walked out of the room. He did not want to have any explanation with the man whom he fully believed—in spite of all Eleanor had said—to be the fortunate rival who had robbed him of every chance of ever winning his wife’s heart.
He had only one feeling now; and that was the same feeling which had taken possession of him twenty years before—an eager desire to run away, to escape from his troubles and perplexities, to get free of this horrible atmosphere of deceit and bewilderment; to cast every hope, every dream behind; and to go out into the world once more, joyless, unloved, hopeless; but, at any rate, not the dupe of a false woman’s specious pretences.
He went straight back to Tolldale while the crowd at Woodlands slowly dispersed, more or less discontented with the day’s proceedings. He went back to the grand old mansion in which he had never known happiness. He asked whether his wife was with Miss Mason. No, the man told him; Mrs. Monckton was in her own room, lying down.
This was the very thing he wished. He didn’t want to see Eleanor’s beautiful face, framed in shining bands of hazel-brown hair; that irresistible face whose influence he dared not trust. He wanted to see his ward alone.
Laura ran out of her dressing-room at the sound of her guardian’s footstep.
“Well!” she cried, “is it a forgery?”
“Hush, Laura; go back into your room.”
Miss Mason obeyed, and Mr. Monckton followed her into the pretty little apartment, which was a modern bower of shining maplewood and flowery chintz, and flimsy lace and muslin, frivolous and airy as the young lady herself.
“Sit down in a comfortable seat, guardian,” said Laura, offeringthe lawyer a slippery chintz-covered lounging-chair, so low as to bring Mr. Monckton’s knees inconveniently near his chin as he sat in it. “Sit down and tell me all about it, for goodness gracious sake.Isit forged?”
“I don’t know, my dear, whether the will is genuine or not. It would be a very difficult question to decide.”
“But oh! good gracious me,” exclaimed Miss Mason, “how can you be so unkind as to talk about it like that, as if it didn’t matter a bit whether the will is forged or not. If it isn’t forged, Launcelot isn’t bad; and if he isn’t bad, of course I may marry him, and the wedding things won’t be all wasted. I knew that something would happen to make everything come right.”
“Laura,” cried Mr. Monckton, “you must not talk like this. Do you know that you are no longer a child, and that you are dealing with the most solemn business in a woman’s life? I do not know whether the will by which Launcelot Darrell inherits the Woodlands property is genuine or not; I certainly have reason tothinkthat itisgenuine, but I will not take upon myself to speak positively. But however that may be, I know that he is not a good man, and you shall never marry him with my consent.”
The young lady began to cry, and murmured something to the effect that it was cruel to use her so when she was ill, and had been taking oceans of lime-draughts; but Mr. Monckton was inflexible.
“If you were to have a dozen illnesses such as this,” he said, “they would not turn me from my purpose or alter my determination. When I voluntarily took upon myself the custody of your life, Laura, I undertook that charge with the intention of accomplishing it as a sacred duty. I have faltered in that duty; for I suffered you to betroth yourself to a man whom I have never been able to trust. But it is not yet too late to repair that error. You shall never marry Launcelot Darrell.”
“Why not? If he didn’t commit a forgery, as Eleanor says he did, why shouldn’t I marry him?”
“Because he has never truly loved you, Laura. You admit that he was Eleanor’s suitor before he was yours? You admit that, do you not?”
Miss Mason pouted, and sobbed, and choked once or twice before she answered. Gilbert Monckton waited impatiently for her reply. He was about as fit to play the Mentor as the young lady whom he had taken upon himself to lecture. He was blinded and maddened by passionate regret, cruel disappointment, wounded pride, every feeling which is most calculated to paralyze a man’s reasoning power, and transform a Solomon into a fool.
“Yes,” Laura gasped at last; “He did propose to Eleanor first, certainly. But then she led him on.”
“She led him on!” cried Mr. Monckton. “How?”
Laura looked at him with a perplexed expression of countenance, before she replied to this eager question.
“Oh,youknow!” she said, after a pause; “I can’t exactly describehowshe led him on, but shedidlead him on. She walked with him, and she talked to him; they were always talking together and leaving me out of the conversation, which was very rude of them, to say the least, for if I wasn’t intellectual enough for them, and couldn’t quite understand what they were talking about—for Launcelot would talk meta——what’s its name? you know; and whocouldunderstand such conversation as that?—they might have talked about things Idounderstand, such as Byron and Tennyson. And then she took an interest in his pictures, and talked about chiaro—thingembob, and foreshortening, and middle distances, and things just like an artist. And then she used to let him smoke in the breakfast-parlour when she was giving me my music lessons; and I should like to know whocouldplay syncopated passages in time, with the smell of tobacco in their nose, and a fidgety young man reading a crackling newspaper, and killing flies with his pocket-handkerchief against the window. And then she sat for Rosalind in his picture. But, good gracious me, it’s no good going all over it; she led him on.”
Mr. Monckton sighed. There wasn’t much in what his ward had said, but there was quite enough. Eleanor and Launcelot had been happy and confidential together. They had talked of metaphysics, and literature, and poetry, and painting. The young artist had lounged away the summer mornings, smoking and idling in Miss Vane’s society.
There was very little in all this, certainly, but quite as much as there generally is in the history of a modern love affair. The age of romance is gone, with tournaments, and troubadours, and knight errantry; and if a young gentleman now-a-days spends money in the purchase of a private box at Covent Garden, and an extra guinea for a bouquet, or procures tickets for a fashionable flower-show, and is content to pass the better part of his mornings amidst the expensive litter of a drawing-room, watching the white fingers of his beloved in the messy mysteries ofDecalcomanie, he may be supposed to be quite as sincerely devoted as if he were to plant his lady’s point-lace parasol cover in his helmet, and gallop away with a view to having his head split open in her service.
Mr. Monckton hid his face in his hands and pondered over what he had heard. Yes, his ward’s foolish talk revealed to him all the secrets of his wife’s heart. He could see the pretty,sunny morning-room, the young man lounging in the open window, with fluttering rose-leaves all about his handsome head. He could see Eleanor seated at the piano, making believe to listen to her pupil, and glancing back at her lover. He made the prettiest cabinet picture out of these materials for his own torment.
“Do you think Eleanor ever loved Launcelot Darrell?” he asked, by-and-by.
“DoI think so?” cried Miss Mason. “Why, of course I do; and that’s why she tries to persuade me not to marry him. I love her, and she’s very good to me,” Laura added, hastily, half ashamed of having spoken unkindly of the friend who had been so patient with her during the last few days. “I love her very dearly; but if she hadn’t cared for Launcelot Darrell, why did she go against my marrying him?”
Gilbert Monckton groaned aloud. Yes, it must be so. Eleanor had loved Launcelot, and her sudden anger, her violent emotion, had arisen out of her jealousy. She was not a devoted daughter, nursing a dream of vengeance against her dead father’s foe; but a jealous and vindictive woman, bent upon avenging an infidelity against herself.
“Laura,” said Mr. Monckton, “call your maid, and tell her to pack your things without a moment’s delay.”
“But why?”
“I am going to take you abroad, immediately.”
“Oh, good gracious! And Eleanor——”
“Eleanor will stay here. You and I will go to Nice, Laura, and cure ourselves of our follies—if we can. Don’t bring any unnecessary load of luggage. Have your most useful dresses and your linen packed in a couple of portmanteaus, and let all be ready in an hour’s time. We must leave Windsor by the four o’clock train.”
“And my wedding things—what am I to do with them?”
“Pack them up. Burn them, if you like,” answered Gilbert Monckton, leaving his ward to get over her astonishment as she best might.
He encountered her maid in the passage.
“Miss Mason’s portmanteau must be packed in an hour, Jane,” he said. “I am going to take her away at once for change of air.”
Mr. Monckton went down stairs to his study, and shutting himself in, wrote a very long letter, the composition of which seemed to give him a great deal of trouble.
He looked at his watch when this letter was finished, folded, and addressed. It was a quarter past two. He went up stairs once more to Laura’s dressing-room, and found that young lady in the wildest state of confusion, doing all in her power to hinder her maid, under the pretence of assisting her.
“Put on your bonnet and shawl and go down stairs, Laura,” Mr. Monckton said, decisively. “Jane will never succeed in packing those portmanteaus while you are fidgeting her. Go down into the drawing-room, and wait there till the boxes are packed and we’re ready to start.”
“But mustn’t I go and say good-bye to Eleanor?”
“Is she still in her own room?”
“Yes, sir,” the maid answered, looking up from the portmanteau before which she was kneeling. “I peeped into Mrs. Monckton’s room just now, and she was fast asleep. She has had a great deal of fatigue in nursing Miss Mason.”
“Very well, then, she had better not be disturbed.”
“But if I’m going to Nice,” remonstrated Laura, “I can’t go so far away without saying good-bye to Eleanor. She has been very kind to me, you know.”
“I have changed my mind,” Mr. Monckton said; “I’ve been thinking over the matter, and I’ve decided on not taking you to Nice. Torquay will do just as well.”
Miss Mason made a wry face.
“I thought I was to have change of scene,” she said; “Torquay isn’t change of scene, for I went there once when I was a child. I might have forgotten Launcelot in quite a strange place, where people talk bad French and wear wooden shoes, and everything is different; but I shall never forget him at Torquay.”
Gilbert Monckton did not notice his ward’s lamentation.
“Miss Mason will want you with her, Jane,” he said to the girl. “You will get yourself ready, please, as soon as you’ve packed those portmanteaus.”
He went down stairs again, gave his orders about a carriage to take him to the station, and then walked up and down the drawing-room waiting for his ward.
In half-an-hour both she and her maid were ready. The portmanteaus were put into the carriage—the mail phaeton which had brought Eleanor to Hazlewood two years before—and Mr. Monckton drove away from Tolldale Priory without having uttered a word of adieu to his wife.