CHAPTER XXXI.A POWERFUL ALLY.
Richard Thorntonwas not slow to respond to Eleanor’s summons. The same post which carried Mrs. Monckton’s letter to the young man conveyed another letter, addressed to the Signora, urging her to abandon her pupils, for a time at least, and to come at once to Tolldale.
Eleanor had not forgotten the faithful friends who had succoured her in the day of her desolation, but the Signora’s habits of independence were not to be conquered, and Mrs. Monckton found there was very little that Eliza Picirillo would consent to accept from her.
She had insisted upon removing the music-mistress from the eccentric regions of the Pilasters to a comfortable first-floor in Dudley Street. She had furnished this new shelter with easy chairs, and Brussels carpets, an Erard’s piano, and proof impressions of the Signora’s favourite pictures; and in doing thisshe had very nearly exhausted her first year’s income, much to the satisfaction of Gilbert Monckton, who implored her to call upon him freely for any money she might want for her friends.
It pleased him to see her do these things. It was a delight to him to see her thus tenderly grateful to the friends of her adversity.
“A mercenary woman would have cast off these humble associations,” he thought: “this girl must be the noble creature I believed her to be, when I flung down my happiness for the second time at a woman’s feet.”
But although Eleanor would have gladly lavished every shilling she possessed upon Eliza Picirillo and her nephew, she could not persuade either the music-mistress or the scene-painter to work less hard than it had been their wont to do for many wearisome years. The Signora still went from house to house in attendance upon her out-of-door pupils, and still received young ladies bent upon wearing the laurel crown of the lyric drama. Richard still painted snow-clad mountain-tops, and impossible Alpine passes, impracticably prosperous villages, and wide-spreading farm-lands of yellow corn, bounded by fragile white palings, and occupied by husbandmen in linen gaiters and chintz waistcoats. It was in vain, therefore, that Mrs. Monckton had hitherto implored her friends to come to Tolldale, and it was only in consequence of a very serious misunderstanding with Messrs. Spavin and Cromshaw, which for a time threw the scene-painter out of employment, that Richard Thornton was able to respond to Eleanor’s earnest appeal.
A January that had been bleaker and colder than even January is expected to be was drawing to a close, when Signora Picirillo and her nephew arrived at the Priory. The woods round Tolldale were shrouded with snow, the broad lawns before Woodlands were as white as Richard’s Alpine passes, and Maurice de Crespigny had been for many weeks a prisoner to the house. Laura’s wedding-day was appointed for the fifteenth of March, and that young lady, when unoccupied by her lover’s society, was entirely absorbed in the millinery and mantua-making necessary for the preparation of her bridal outfit.
Richard Thornton had considerably modified the eccentric fashion of his beard and had bought a new suit of clothes in honour of his fair young hostess. The scene-painter had not seen Eleanor since the morning on which he had fled away from the Pilasters to hide his sorrows amongst the swamps of Battersea. The meeting, therefore, was a painful one to him; all the more painful, perhaps, because Mrs. Monckton received him with the frankly affectionate welcome which she would have bestowed upon a brother.
“You must help me, Dick,” she said, “for the sake of others,if not for my sake; you cannot now refuse to fathom this mystery. If Launcelot Darrell is the man I believe him to be, he is no fit husband for an affectionate and trusting girl. He has no right to inherit Maurice de Crespigny’s fortune! The marriage between Laura and this man is to take place upon the fifteenth of March. Maurice de Crespigny may die to-morrow. We have very little time before us, Richard.”
So Mr. Thornton was fain to obey the imperious young lady, who had been in the habit of ordering him about ever since the days in which he had kept rabbits and silkworms for her gratification. He set himself to his task very faithfully; and did his best to become acquainted with Launcelot Darrell’s character.
The well-born young artist, who meant to do something very great in the Academy at his earliest convenience, treated the scene-painter with a supercilious good-nature that was by no means agreeable to Mr. Thornton.
Dick had resolvednotto be prejudiced against Eleanor’s fancied enemy, lest that young lady’s vehement impulses should have led her into rather an awkward mistake; but there was something in the insolent assurance of Launcelot Darrell that aroused Richard’s indignation, and it was not without an effort that he contrived to be commonly civil to poor Laura’s affianced husband.
Launcelot dined at Tolldale upon the evening of the arrival of Eleanor’s guests, and it was at the dinner-table that Richard first had an opportunity of observing the man he had been entreated to watch. Mr. Monckton, sitting at the bottom of the table, and looking at his wife athwart a glittering array of glass and silver, became aware of a change in Eleanor’s manner, a change that mystified and bewildered him, but which was not altogether unpleasant to him.
The lawyer’s jealousy had been chiefly aroused by the perpetual uneasiness of Eleanor’s manner when Launcelot Darrell was present; by the furtive yet unregarded watch which she kept upon the young man’s movements. To-night, for the first time, her manner had changed. It was no longer Launcelot Darrell, but Richard Thornton whom she watched.
Following every varying expression of her face, Gilbert Monckton saw that she looked at the scene-painter with an earnest, questioning, appealing glance, that seemed to demand something of him, or urge him on to the performance of something that she wanted done. Looking from his wife to Richard, the lawyer saw that Launcelot Darrell was still watched; but this time the eyes that observed him were those of the Signora’s nephew.
Mr. Monckton felt very much like a spectator who looks on at a drama which is being acted in a language that is unknownto him. Thedramatis personæcome in and go out; they are earnest or vehement, joyous or sorrowful, as the case may be; but not having any clue to the plot, the wretched looker-on can scarcely feel intense delight in the performance.
Eleanor contrived to question her ally in the course of the evening.
“Well, Richard,” she said, “is Launcelot Darrell the man who cheated my father?”
“I don’t know about that, Mrs. Monckton, but——”
“But you think——?”
“I think he is by no means the most delightful, or the best of men. He snubs me because I paint scenery for the Phœnix; and he accepts that silly little girl’s homage with the air of a sultan.”
“Then you don’t like him, Dick!”
Mr. Thornton drew a long breath, as if by some powerful effort of his will he repressed a vehement and unseemly expression of feeling.
“I think he’s—you know what a great tragedian used to call people when they rang down the act-drop three minutes before Lear had finished using bad language to his eldest daughter, or came up in the witches’ cauldron with their backs to the audience—and nervous people have been known to do that, Eleanor:—it isn’t pleasant to stand on a rickety ladder and talk to a quick-tempered tragedian out of a canvas saucepan, with a smell of burning rosin in your nostrils, and another nervous apparition wanting to get you off the ladder before you’ve finished your speech. I think Launcelot Darrell is—aBEAST, Mrs. Monckton; and I have no doubt he would cheat at cards, if he had the chance of doing it with perfect safety and convenience.”
“You think that?” cried Eleanor, seizing upon this latter part of Richard’s speech; “you think that he would cheat a helpless old man? Prove that, Richard; prove it, and I will be as merciless to Launcelot Darrell as he was to my father—his uncle’s friend, too; he knew that.”
“Eleanor Monckton,” Richard said, earnestly, “I have never been serious before upon this matter; I have hoped that you would outlive your girlish resolution; I hoped above all that when you married”—his voice trembled a little here, but he went bravely on—“new duties would make you forget that old promise; and I did my best, Heaven knows, to wean you from the infatuation. But now that I have seen this man, Launcelot Darrell, it seems to me as if there may have been something of inspiration in your sudden recognition of him. I have already seen enough of him to know at least that he is no fit husband for that poor little romantic girl with the primrose-coloured ringlets; and I will do my best to find out where he was, andwhat he was doing, during those years in which he is supposed to have been in India.”
“You will do this, Richard?”
“Yes, Mrs. Monckton.” The young man addressed his old companion by this name, using the unfamiliar appellation as a species of rod by which he kept in order and subdued certain rebellious emotions that would arise as he remembered how utterly the beautiful girl, whose presence had made sunshine in the shabbiest, if not the shadiest of places, was now lost to him. “Yes, Mrs. Monckton, I will try and fathom the mystery. This Launcelot Darrell must be very clever if he can have contrived to do away with every vestige of the years in which he was or was not in India. However softly Time may tread, he leaves his footmarks behind him; and it will be strange if we can’t find some tell-tale impression whereby Mr. Darrell’s secret may be discovered. By the bye, Mrs. Monckton, you have had a good deal of time for observation. What have you done towards investigating the young man’s antecedents?”
Eleanor blushed, and hesitated a little before she answered this very direct question.
“I have watched him very closely,” she said, “and I’ve listened to every word he has ever said——”
“To be sure. In the expectation, no doubt, that he would betray himself by frowns and scowls, and other facial contortions, after the manner of a stage villain; or that he would say, ‘At such a time I was in Paris;’ or ‘At such a time I cheated atécarté.’ You go cleverly to work, Mrs. Monckton, for an amateur detective!”
“What ought I to have done, then?” Eleanor asked, despondently.
“You should have endeavoured to trace up the history of the past by those evidences which the progress of life can scarcely fail to leave behind it. Watch the man’s habits and associations, rather than the man himself. Have you had access to the rooms in which he lives?”
“Yes; I have been with Laura to Hazlewood often since I came here. I have been in Launcelot Darrell’s rooms.”
“And have you seen nothing there? no book, no letter; no scrap of evidence that might make one link in the story of this man’s life?”
“Nothing—nothing particular. He has some French novels on a shelf in one corner of his sitting-room.”
“Yes; but the possession of a few French novels scarcely proves that he was in Paris in the year ’53. Did you look at the titles of the books?”
“No; what could I have gained by seeing them?”
“Something, perhaps. The French are a volatile people.The fashion of one year is not the fashion of another. If you had found some work that made afurorein that particular year, you might have argued that Launcelot Darrell was aflâneurin the Galerie d’Orleans, or on the Boulevard, where the book was newly exhibited in the shop-windows. If the novels were new ones, and not Michel Lévy’s eternal reprints of Sand and Soulié, Balzac and Bernard, you might have learnt something from them. The science of detection, Mrs. Monckton, lies in the observation of insignificant things. It is a species of mental geology. A geologist looks into the gravel pit, and tells you the history of the creation; a clever detective ransacks a man’s carpet-bag, and convicts that man of a murder or a forgery.”
“I know I have been very stupid,” Eleanor murmured, almost piteously.
“Heaven forbid that you should ever be very clever in such a line as this. There must be detective officers; they are the polished bloodhounds of our civilized age, and very noble and estimable animals when they do their duty conscientiously: but fair-haired young ladies should be kept out of thisgalère. Think no more of this business, then, Eleanor. If Launcelot Darrell was the man who playedécartéwith your father on the 11th of August, ’53, I’ll find a proof of his guilt. Trust me to do that.”
“I will trust you, Richard.”
Mrs. Monckton held out her hand with a certain queenliness of gesture, as if she would thereby have ratified a bond between herself and her old friend; and as the flower of bygone chivalry were wont to vow the accomplishment of great deeds on the jewelled hilt of a cross-handled sword, so Richard Thornton, bending his honest head, swore allegiance upon the hand of Gilbert Monckton’s young wife.
“One word more, Mrs. Monckton,” said the scene-painter, “and then we had better leave off talking, or people will begin to wonder why we are so confidential and mysterious. This Mr. Darrell is an artist, I understand. Does he paint much?”
“Oh, yes, a great deal; that is to say, he begins a great many things.”
“Precisely; he does a good many rough sketches, scraps of pencil and crayon, eh?”
“And he fills portfolios with such scrape, and litters his studio with them?”
“Yes.”
“Then I must have a look at his studio, Mrs. Monckton. An artist—yes, even the poorest artist, the furthest away from the sublimity of genius—is sure to be fond of his art. He makes a confidant of it; he betrays a hundred secrets, that he keeps locked from every living creature, in the freedom of hisstudio. His pencil is the outer expression of his mind; and whatever falsehoods he may impose upon his fellow-men, his sketch-book will tell the truth. It will betray him when he is false, and reveal him when he is true. I must have a look at Launcelot Darrell’s studio, Mrs. Monckton. Let me see the man’s pictures; and I may be able to tell you more about the man, himself.”