CHAPTER XX.RECOGNITION.
“I thoughtLaura was with you,” Mrs. Darrell said, rather sharply, as she scrutinized Eleanor’s face with no very friendly eyes.
“She was with us until a few minutes ago,” Launcelot answered, carelessly; “but she was called away to see a milliner or a dressmaker, or some such important personage in the feminine decorative art line. I don’t believe that young lady’s soul eversoars above laces and ribbons, and all those miscellaneous fripperies which women dignify by the generic title of their ‘things!’”
Mrs. Darrell frowned at her son’s contemptuous allusion to the heiress.
“Laura Mason is a very amiable and accomplished girl,” she said.
The young man shrugged his shoulders, and took up his palette and brushes.
“Will you settle yourself once more in the Rosalind attitude, Miss Vincent?” he said. “I suppose our volatile Celia will be back presently.”
“Will you go and look for her, Launcelot?” interposed Mrs. Darrell; “I want to speak to Miss Vincent.”
Launcelot Darrell flung down his brushes, and turned suddenly towards his mother with a look of angry defiance in his face.
“What have you to say to Miss Vincent that you can’t say before me?” he asked. “What do you mean, mother, by breaking in upon us like this, and scowling at us as if we were a couple of conspirators?”
Mrs. Darrell drew herself to her fullest height, and looked half sternly, half contemptuously at her son. His nature, in every quality weaker and meaner than her own, prompted him to shrink from any open contest with her. Dearly as she loved this selfish, handsome scapegrace, there were times in which her better sense revolted against the weakness of her affection; and at such times Launcelot Darrell was afraid of his mother.
“I have a great deal to say to Miss Vincent,” the widow answered, gravely. “If you refuse to leave us together, I have no doubt Miss Vincent will have the good taste to come elsewhere with me.”
Eleanor looked up, startled by the suppressed passion in the widow’s tone.
“I will come with you anywhere, Mrs. Darrell,” she said, “if you wish to speak to me.”
“Come this way, then.”
Mrs. Darrell swept out of the room, and Eleanor followed her, before the young man had any opportunity for remonstrance. The widow led the way to the pretty chamber in which Miss Vane slept, and the two women went in together, Mrs. Darrell shutting the door behind her.
“Miss Vincent,” she said, taking Eleanor’s hand in her own, “I am going to appeal to you more frankly than one woman often appeals to another. I might diplomatize and plot against you, but I am not base enough for that; though, I dare say, I could stoop to a good deal that is despicable for the sake of myson. And, again, I have so good an opinion of you that I think candour will be the wiser policy. My son has asked you to be his wife.”
“Madam,” stammered Eleanor, looking aghast at the pale face, which had an almost tragic aspect in its earnestness.
“Yes, I told you just now that I could do despicable things for my son’s sake. I was passing the door while Launcelot was talking to you. The door was ajar, you know. I heard a few words, enough to tell me the subject upon which he was speaking; and I stopped to hear more. I listened, Miss Vincent. It was very contemptible, was it not?”
Eleanor was silent. She stood before the widow, looking down upon the ground. The colour came and went in her face; she was agitated and confused by what had happened; but in all her agitation and confusion the memory of that sudden fancy that had flashed across her brain while Launcelot Darrell talked to her was uppermost in her mind.
“You despise me for my conduct, Miss Vincent,” said Mrs. Darrell, reading the meaning of the girl’s silence; “but the day may come in which you may experience a mother’s anguish; the brooding care, the unceasing watchfulness, the feverish, all-devouring anxiety which only a mother can feel. If that day ever comes, you will be able to forgive me; to think mercifully of me. I do not complain of my son; I never have complained of him. But I suffer; I suffer. I see him holding no place in the world, despised by prosperous and successful men, with a wasted youth behind him and a blank future before. I love him; but I am not deceived in him. The day for all deception is past. He will never be rich or prosperous by any act of his own. There are but two chances for him: the chance of inheriting my uncle’s fortune, or the chance of marrying a rich woman. I speak very frankly, you see, Miss Vincent, and I expect equal candour from you. Do you love my son?”
“Madam—Mrs. Darrell—I——”
“You would not answer him just now; I ask you to answer me. The prosperity of his future life hangs upon your reply. I know that hemightmarry a girl who does love him; and who can bring him a fortune which will place him in the position he ought to occupy. Be generous, Miss Vincent. I ask you to tell me the truth. That is the least you can do. Do you love my son, Launcelot Darrell? Do you love him with your whole heart and soul, as I love him?”
Eleanor lifted her head suddenly, and looked full in the widow’s face.
“No, madam,” she answered, proudly, “I do not.”
“Thank God for that! Even if you had loved him, I would not have shrunk from asking you to sacrifice yourself for hishappiness. As it is, I appeal to you without hesitation. Will you leave this place; will you leave me my son, with the chance of planning his future after my own fashion?”
“I will, Mrs. Darrell,” Eleanor said, earnestly. “I thought, perhaps, till to-day—I may have fancied that I—I mean that I was flattered by your son’s attention, and perhaps believed I loved him a little,” the girl murmured, shyly; “but I know now that I have been mistaken. Perhaps it is the truth and intensity of your love that shows me the shallowness and falsehood of my own. I remember how I loved my father,”—her eyes filled with tears as she spoke,—“and, looking back at my feelings for him, I know that I do not love Mr. Darrell. It will be much better for me to go away. I shall be sorry to leave Laura—sorry to leave Hazlewood; for I have been very happy here—too happy perhaps. I will write to your son, and tell him that I leave this place of my own free will.”
“Thank you, my dear,” the widow said, warmly; “my son would be very hard with me if he thought that my influence had been the means of thwarting any whim of his. I know him well enough to know that this sentiment, like every other sentiment of his, will not endure for ever. He will be angry, and offended, and wounded by your departure; but he will not break his heart, Miss Vincent.”
“Let me go away at once, Mrs. Darrell,” said Eleanor; “it will be better for me to go at once. I can return to my friends in London. I have saved some money while I have been with you, and I shall not go back to them penniless.”
“You are a generous and noble-hearted girl! It shall be my care to provide you with at least as good a home as you have had here. I am not selfish enough to forget how much I have asked of you.”
“And you will let me go at once. I would rather not see Laura, or say good-bye to her; we have grown so fond of each other. I never had a sister—at least never an affectionate sister—and Laura has been like one to me. Let me go away quietly without seeing her, Mrs. Darrell; I can write to her from London to say good-bye.”
“You shall do just as you like, my dear,” the widow answered. “I will drive you over to Windsor in time for the four o’clock train, and you will get into town before dark. I must go now and see what my son is doing. If he should suspect——”
“He shall suspect nothing till I am gone,” said Eleanor. “It is past one o’clock now, Mrs. Darrell, and I must pack all my things. Will you keep Laura out of my room, please, for if she came here, she’d guess——?”
“Yes, yes, I’ll go and see—I’ll make all arrangements.”
Mrs. Darrell hurried out of the room, leaving Eleanor to contemplatethe sudden change in her position. The girl dragged one of her trunks out of a recess in the simply-furnished bedchamber, and, sitting down upon it in a half-despondent attitude, reflected on the unlooked-for break in her existence. Once more she was called upon to disunite herself from the past, and begin life anew.
“Am I never to know any rest?” she thought. “I had grown so accustomed to this place. I shall be glad to see the Signora and Richard once more; but Laura, Mr. Monckton,—I wonder whether they will be sorry to lose me?”
By three o’clock in the afternoon all Eleanor’s preparations were completed—her trunks packed, and handed over to the factotum of the Hazlewood establishment, who was to see them safely despatched by luggage-train after the young lady’s departure. At three o’clock precisely Miss Vincent took her seat beside Mrs. Darrell in the low basket-carriage.
Circumstances had conspired to favour the girl’s unnoticed departure from Hazlewood. Laura Mason had been prostrated by the intense strain upon her faculties caused by an hour’s interview with her dressmaker, and had flung herself upon the sofa in the drawing-room, after sopping up half a pint of eau-de-cologne on her flimsy handkerchief. Worn out by her exertions, and lulled by the summer heat, the young lady had fallen into a heavy slumber of two or three hours’ duration.
Launcelot Darrell had left the house almost immediately after the scene in the painting-room, striding out of the hall without leaving any intimation as to the direction in which he was going or the probable hour of his return.
Thus it was that the little pony-carriage drove quietly away from the gates of Hazlewood; and Eleanor left the house in which she had lived for upwards of a year without any one caring to question her as to the cause of her departure.
Very few words were said by either Mrs. Darrell or her companion during the drive to Windsor. Eleanor was absorbed in gloomy thought. She did not feel any intense grief at leaving Hazlewood; but some sense of desolation, some despondency, at the thought that she was a wanderer on the face of the earth, with no real claim upon any one, no actual right to rest anywhere. They drove into Windsor while she was thinking thus. They had come through the park, and they entered the town by the gateway at the bottom of the hill. They had driven up the hill, and were in the principal street below the castle wall, when Mrs. Darrell uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“Launcelot!” she said; “and we must pass him to get to the station. There’s no help for it.”
Eleanor looked up. Yes, before the door of one of the principalhotels stood Mr. Launcelot Darrell, with two other young men. One of these men was talking to him, but he was paying very little attention. He stood upon the edge of the kerbstone, with his back half turned to his companion, kicking the pebbles on the road with the toe of his boot, and staring moodily before him.
In that one moment,—in the moment in which the pony-carriage, going at full speed, passed the young man,—the thought which had flashed, so vague and indistinct, so transient and intangible, through the mind of Eleanor Vane that morning, took a new shape, and arose palpable and vivid in her brain.
This man, Launcelot Darrell, was the sulky stranger who had stood on the Parisian boulevard, kicking the straws upon the kerbstone, and waiting to entrap her father to his ruin.