CHAPTER XLVII.GETTING OVER IT.
Laura Masonwas not dangerously ill. Her malady was by no means of a serious nature. The pink-blossom tint of her cheekswas intensified into vivid carnation; the turquoise-blue eyes shone with a feverish light; the little hands were very hot and dry. It was in vain that the physician from Windsor prescribed composing draughts. His patient would not be quiet or composed. In vain Eleanor tried to soothe the wounded spirit. It would not be at rest.
“It’s no use, Nelly,” the invalid cried, impatiently. “Imusttalk of him; I must talk of my sorrows, unless you want me to go mad. Oh, my poor Launcelot! my own dear Launcelot! how cruel it is to keep me from you!”
This was the worst part of the business. Poor Laura was perpetually entreating to be allowed to see Launcelot. Would they let her go to him; or would they send and ask him to come to her? They were the most cruel and heartless creatures, if they could refuse to let her see him.
But Eleanor did refuse.
“It is impossible, my darling,” she said; “I cannot send for him. It is quite impossible that he and I should ever meet again, except as enemies. The will must be read in a few days. Let us wait till then. If Launcelot Darrell is sorry for what he has done, he will try to undo it. If he is not sorry, and takes possession of the estate upon the strength of a forged will, he must be a villain, unworthy even of your pity, Laura.”
“But Idopity him; and I love him.”
It was strange to see what a hold this unhappy affection had taken upon Laura’s shallow nature. This frivolous girl was as impressionable as she was volatile. The blow was more terrible to her than it would have been to a woman of higher and grander nature; but to such a woman the consequences of the blow would be, perhaps, life-long, while it was scarcely likely that Laura would suffer for ever. She did not try to endure the grief that had fallen upon her. She was entirely without pride; and had no more shame in bemoaning her loss of Launcelot Darrell than she would have had fifteen years before in crying over a broken doll. She did not care who knew her sorrows, and would have made a confidante of the servant who waited upon her if Eleanor had not interfered to prevent her.
“I’m very miserable and wretched, Jane,” she said, while the girl was smoothing her pillows and arranging the tumbled bed-clothes, which had been twisted into mere wisps of linen by the perpetual tossings to and fro of the invalid. “I’m the most miserable creature that ever was born, Jane, and I wish that I was dead. I know it’s wicked, but I do. What’s the good of Dr. Featherstone prescribing for me, when I don’t want to be prescribed for? What’s the good of my taking lime-draughts, when I’d much rather die? What’s the use of those horridopiates, that taste like stale London porter? Opiates won’t give me back Launce——”
She stopped abruptly at this point, checked by a warning look from Eleanor.
“You must not speak of Launcelot Darrell to these people, Laura,” Mrs. Monckton said, when the servant had left the room, “unless you want them to suspect that something strange has happened.”
“But they’ll know it, if my wedding is put off.”
“Your guardian will explain all that, Laura.”
Miss Mason bemoaned her fate even more piteously than before. “It’s hard enough to be miserable,” she cried, “but it’s still worse to be miserable, and not to be allowed to say so.”
“Many people have sorrows to endure that cannot be spoken of,” Eleanor answered, quietly. “I had to bear the sorrow of my father’s death when I dared not speak of it.”
Mrs. Monckton saw very little of her husband during the few days of Laura’s illness. She only saw him, indeed, when he came to the door to make inquiries about his ward; but even in the few brief sentences exchanged by them, she could perceive that his manner was altered towards her. He had been cold and distant for a long time since their marriage; but now his manner had the icy reserve of a man who feels that he has been wronged. Eleanor comprehended this, and was sorry for it; but she had a dull, hopeless feeling that nothing she could do would alter it. The great purpose of her life had failed; and she began to think that nothing but failure could come to any hope of hers.
This feeling separated her completely from her husband. In her ignorance of the suspicions which tortured him, she could of course make no effort to set him right. The girl’s innocence and the man’s pride made a gulf that no power of affection could pass. If Eleanor could have guessed, ever so vaguely, at the cause of her husband’s reserve, a few words from her might have melted the ice: but she had not the faintest notion of the hidden source from which came those bitter waters that had swept away all outward tokens of her husband’s love; and those words remained unspoken. Gilbert Monckton thought that if his wife was not false, she was at least indifferent; and he bowed his head before the gloomy face of his Destiny.
“I am not to be loved,” he said. “Good-bye once more to that dream. And let me try to do my duty, and be in some way useful to my fellow-creatures. Half my life has been swallowed up by egotistical regrets. May God give me grace to use the remnant of it more wisely.”
He had told Eleanor that as soon as Laura was a little better he should take her to the sea-side.
“The poor child cannot remain here,” he said; “every gossip in the neighbourhood will be eager to know why the wedding is postponed; and unless we assign some simple reason for the change in our arrangements, there will be no limit to people’s speculations and conjectures. Laura’s illness will be the best possible excuse; and I will take her to the south of France. She may forget Launcelot Darrell by-and-by, when she finds herself in a strange place, surrounded by new associations.”
Eleanor eagerly assented to this.
“Nothing could be wiser than such an arrangement,” she answered. “I almost think the poor girl would die if she remained here. Everything reminds her of her disappointment.”
“Very well, then, I shall take her to Nice as soon as she is well enough to go. Will you tell her that I mean to do so, and try and make her feel some interest in the idea of the change?”
Eleanor Monckton had a very hard time of it in the sick room. Those frivolous people who feel their misfortunes very acutely for the time being, are apt to throw a heavy share of their burden upon the shoulders of their friends. Laura’s lamentations were very painful and not a little monotonous to hear; and there was a great deal of hard work to be done in the way of going over the same ground again and again, for that young lady’s consolation. She had no idea of turning her face to the wall and suffering in silence. Her manner had none of that artificial calm which often causes uneasiness to those who watch a beloved sufferer through some terrible crisis. Everything reminded her of her grief; and she would not be courageous enough to put away the things that recalled her sorrows. She could not draw a curtain over the bright picture of the past, and turn her face resolutely to the blank future. She was forever looking back, and bewailing the beauty of that vanished hope, and insisting that the dream palace was not utterly ruined; that it might be patched up again somehow or another; not to be what it was before; that was impossible, of course; but to besomething. The broken vase could surely be pieced together, and the scent of the faded roses would hang round it still.
“If he repents, I will marry him, Eleanor,” she said, at the end of almost every argument, “and we will go to Italy and be happy together, and he will be a great painter. Nobody would dare to say he had committed a forgery if he was a great painter like Holman Hunt, or Mr. Millais. We’ll go to Rome together, Nelly, and he shall study the old masters, and sketch peasants from the life; and I won’t mind even if they’re pretty; though it isn’t pleasant to have one’s husband always sketching pretty peasants; and that will divert his mind, you know.”
For four days Laura was ordered to keep to her bed, and during that time Eleanor rarely quitted the invalid’s apartments,only taking brief snatches of rest in an easy-chair by the fire in Laura’s dressing-room. On the fifth day Miss Mason was allowed to get up, and then there were terrible scenes to be gone through; for the young lady insisted upon having her trousseau spread out upon the bed, and the chair, and the sofas, and hung upon every available peg in the two rooms; until both those apartments became a very forest of finery, about which the invalid prowled perpetually, indulging in a separate fit of weeping over each garment.
“Look at this darling parasol, Nelly,” she cried, gazing at the tiny canopy of silk and whalebone with streaming eyes; “isn’t the real point lace over the pale pink silk lovely? And then it’s so becoming to the complexion, too! Oh, how happy I thought I should be when I had this parasol. I thought I should drive on the Corso with Launcelot, andnow——! And the violet satin boots with high heels, Nelly, made on purpose to wear with my violet silk dress; I thought nobodycouldbe unhappy with such things as those, andnow!”
Every speech ended in fresh tears, which sometimes trickled over a shining silken garment, and flecked the lustrous fabric with spots of water that took the brightness out of the splendid hues.
“To think that I should be so miserable as to cry over silk at nine and sixpence a yard, and not to care!” exclaimed Laura Mason; as if, in these words, she described the highest anguish-point that human misery can reach.
She had a few presents given her by Launcelot; they wereveryfew, and by no means valuable; for Mr. Darrell, as we know was essentially selfish, and did not care to spend his small stock of money upon other people; and she sat with these trifles in her lap for hours together, lamenting over them, and talking about them.
“There’s my silver thimble—my dear, darling little silver thimble,” she said, perching the scrap of glistening metal upon her little finger, and kissing it with that degree of rapture which the French vaudevilleists call “explosion!”—“that nasty, spiteful Amelia Shalders said a silver thimble was a vulgar present, just what a carpenter, or any other common man, would have given to his sweetheart, and that Launcelot ought to have given me a ring or a bracelet; as if he could go buying rings and bracelets without any money. And I don’t care whether my thimble’s vulgar or not, and I love it dearly, because he gave it me. And I’d do lots of needlework for the sake of using it, only I never could learn to use a thimble—quite. It always seems so much easier to work without one, though it does make a hole in the top of one’s finger. Then there’s my tablets! Nobody can say that ivory tablets are vulgar. My darling little tablets, with the tiny,tinygold pencil-case,”—the gold pencil-case wasverytiny—“andthe wee mite of a turquoise for a seal. I’ve tried to write ‘Launcelot’ upon every leaf, but I don’t think ivory tablets are the very nicest things to write upon. One’s writing seems to slide about somehow, as if the pencil was tipsy, and the lines won’t come straight. It’s like trying to walk up and down the deck of a steamer; one goes where one doesn’t want to go.”
The bewailings over the trousseau and the presents had a beneficial effect upon the heart-broken invalid. On the evening of the fifth day her spirits began to revive a little; she drank tea with Eleanor at a table by the fire in the dressing-room, and after tea tried on her wedding bonnet and mantle before the cheval glass.
This performance seemed to have a peculiarly consoling effect; and after surveying herself for a long time in the glass, and lamenting the redness of her eyelids, which prevented full justice being done to the beauty of the bonnet, Miss Mason declared that she felt a great deal better, and that she had a presentiment that something would happen, and that everything would come right somehow or other.
As it would have been very cruel to deprive her of this rather vague species of comfort, Eleanor said nothing, and the evening ended almost cheerfully. But the next day was that appointed for Mr. de Crespigny’s funeral and the reading of the will; and Laura’s anxiety was now really greater than it had ever been. She could not help believing Eleanor’s story of the forgery, though she had struggled long against the conviction that had been forced upon her; and her only hope was that her lover would repent, and suffer his aunts to inherit the wealth which had been no doubt bequeathed to them. Frivolous and shallow as this girl was, she could not for a moment contemplate marrying Launcelot under any other circumstances. She could not think of sharing with him a fortune that had been gained by fraud.
“I know he will confess the truth,” she said to Eleanor, upon the morning of the funeral; “he was led into doing wrong by his friend that wicked Frenchman. It was only the impulse of the moment. He has been sorry ever since, I dare say. He will undo what he has done.”
“But if the real will has been destroyed?”
“Then his two aunts and his mother would share the estate between them. My guardian told me so the other day when I asked him some question about the fortune. And he told Launcelot the same thing that night in the library, when they had the conversation about my fortune.”
If Laura was anxious upon this eventful day, Eleanor was anxious too. It was a new crisis in her life. Would Launcelot Darrell attempt to restore himself to the position he had occupiedbefore the night of his uncle’s death, or would he hold to that which he might acquire by his deliberate fraud, and remain a hardened and impenitent criminal, defiant of the law he had outraged?