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ELEANOR’S VICTORY
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” “AURORA FLOYD”
ETC. ETC.
Stereotyped Edition
LONDON
JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL
4, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET
1878
[_All rights reserved._]
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. GOING HOME 5
II. THE ENTRESOL IN THE RUE DE L’ARCHEVÊQUE 12
III. THE STORY OF THE PAST 21
IV. UPON THE THRESHOLD OF A GREAT SORROW 32
V. WAITING 44
VI. THE BLACK BUILDING BY THE RIVER 53
VII. SUSPENSE 59
VIII. GOOD SAMARITANS 66
IX. LOOKING TO THE FUTURE 78
X. HORTENSIA BANNISTER HOLDS OUT A HELPING HAND 85
XI. RICHARD THORNTON’S PROMISE 95
XII. GILBERT MONCKTON 104
XIII. HAZLEWOOD 109
XIV. THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN 118
XV. LAUNCELOT 124
XVI. THE LAWYER’S SUSPICION 131
XVII. THE SHADOW ON GILBERT MONCKTON’S LIFE 135
XVIII. UNFORGOTTEN 138
XIX. LIKE THE MEMORY OF A DREAM 146
XX. RECOGNITION 154
XXI. ON THE TRACK 159
XXII. IN THE SHIPBROKER’S OFFICE 165
XXIII. RESOLVED 173
XXIV. THE ONE CHANCE 176
XXV. ACCEPTED 186
XXVI. AN INSIDIOUS DEMON 193
XXVII. SLOW FIRES 198
XXVIII. BY THE SUNDIAL 208
XXIX. KEEPING WATCH 212
XXX. AN OLD MAN’S FANCY 217
XXXI. A POWERFUL ALLY 222
XXXII. THE TESTIMONY OF THE SKETCH-BOOK 228
XXXIII. MAURICE DE CRESPIGNY’S WILL 234
XXXIV. RICHARD’S DISCOVERY 240
XXXV. WHAT HAPPENED AT WINDSOR 243
XXXVI. ANOTHER RECOGNITION 248
XXXVII. LAUNCELOT’S TROUBLES 254
XXXVIII. MR. MONCKTON BRINGS GLOOMY TIDINGS FROM WOODLANDS 261
XXXIX. LAUNCELOT’S COUNSELLOR 265
XL. RESOLVED 270
XLI. A TERRIBLE SURPRISE 277
XLII. IN THE PRESENCE OF THE DEAD 284
XLIII. A BRIEF TRIUMPH 289
XLIV. LOST 296
XLV. AT SEA 301
XLVI. LAURA’S TROUBLES 308
XLVII. GETTING OVER IT 314
XLVIII. THE READING OF THE WILL 320
XLIX. DESERTED 326
L. GILBERT’S LETTER 331
LI. MRS. MAJOR LENNARD 339
LII. GOING BACK TO PARIS 345
LIII. MARGARET LENNARD’S DELINQUENCIES 351
LIV. VERY LONELY 363
LV. VICTOR BOURDON GOES OVER TO THE ENEMY 367
LVI. THE HORRORS OF DELIRIUM TREMENS 375
LVII. MAURICE DE CRESPIGNY’S BEQUEST 385
LVIII. THE DAY OF RECKONING 389
LIX. THE LAST 398
ELEANOR’S VICTORY.
CHAPTER I.
GOING HOME.
The craggy cliffs upon the Norman coast looked something like the
terraced walls and turreted roofs of a ruined city in the hot afternoon
sunshine, as the _Empress_ steamer sped swiftly onward toward Dieppe.
At least they looked thus in the eyes of a very young lady, who stood
alone on the deck of the steam-packet, with yearning eyes fixed upon
that foreign shore.
It was four o’clock upon a burning August afternoon in the year 1853.
The steamer was fast approaching the harbour. Several moustachioed
gentlemen, of various ages, costumes, and manners, were busy getting
together carpet-bags, railway-rugs, camp-stools, newspapers, and
umbrellas; preparatory to that eager rush towards the shore by which
marine voyagers are apt to testify their contempt for Neptune, when
they have no longer need of his service or fear of his vengeance. Two
or three English families were collected in groups, holding guard over
small mounds or barrows of luggage, having made all preparation for
landing at first sight of the Norman shore, dim in the distance; and of
course about two hours too soon.
Several blooming young English damsels, gathered under maternal wings,
were looking forward to sea-bathing in a foreign watering-place. The
Établissement des Bains had not yet been built, and Dieppe was not so
popular, perhaps, among English pleasure-seekers as it now is. There
were several comfortable-looking British families on board the steamer,
but of all the friendly matrons and pretty daughters assembled on the
deck, there seemed no one in any way connected with that lonely young
lady who leant against the bulwark with a cloak across her arm and a
rather shabby carpet-bag at her feet.
She was very young—indeed of that age which in the other sex is
generally called the period of hobbledehoyhood. There was more ankle to
be seen below the hem of her neat muslin frock than is quite consistent
with elegance of attire in a young lady of fifteen; but as the ankle
so revealed was rounded and slender, it would have been hypercritical
to have objected to the shortness of the skirt, which had evidently
been outgrown by its wearer.
Then, again, this lonely traveller was not only young but pretty. In
spite of the shortness of her frock and the shabbiness of her straw
bonnet, it was impossible for the most spiteful of the British misses
to affirm the contrary. She was very pretty; so pretty that it was a
pleasure to look at her, in her unconscious innocence, and to think how
beautiful she would be by-and-by, when that bright, budding girlish
loveliness bloomed out in its womanly splendour.
Her skin was fair, but pale—not a sentimental or sickly pallor, but a
beautiful alabaster clearness of tint. Her eyes were grey, large and
dark, or rendered dark by the shadow of long black lashes. I would
rather not catalogue her other features too minutely; for though they
were regular, and even beautiful, there is something low and material
in all the other features as compared to the eyes. Her hair was of
a soft golden brown, bright and rippling like a sunlit river. The
brightness of that luxuriant hair, the light in her grey eyes, and the
vivacity of a very beautiful smile, made her face seem almost luminous
as she looked at you. It was difficult to imagine that she could ever
look unhappy. She seemed an animated, radiant, and exuberant creature,
who made an atmosphere of brightness and happiness about her. Other
girls of her age would have crept to a corner of the deck, perhaps
to hide their loneliness, or would have clung to the outer fringe of
one of the family groups, making believe not to be alone; but this
young lady had taken her stand boldly against the bulwark, choosing
the position from which she might soonest hope to see Dieppe harbour,
and apparently quite indifferent to observation, though many a furtive
glance was cast towards the tall but girlish figure and the handsome
profile so sharply defined against a blue background of summer sky.
But there was nothing unfeminine in all this; nothing bold or defiant;
it was only the innocent unconsciousness of a light-hearted girl,
ignorant of any perils which could assail her loneliness, and fearless
in her ignorance. Throughout the brief sea-voyage she had displayed
no symptoms of shyness or perplexity. She had suffered none of the
tortures common to many travellers in their marine experiences. She
had not been sea-sick; and indeed she did not look like a person who
could be subject to any of the common ills this weak flesh inherits.
You could almost as easily have pictured to yourself the Goddess Hygeia
suffering from a bilious headache, or Hebe laid up with the influenza,
as this auburn-haired, grey-eyed young lady under any phase of mortal
suffering. Eyes dim in the paroxysms of sea-sickness had looked almost
spitefully towards this happy, radiant creature, as she flitted hither
and thither about the deck, courting the balmy ocean breezes that made
themselves merry with her rippling hair. Lips, blue with suffering,
had writhed as their owners beheld the sandwiches which this young
school-girl devoured, the stale buns, the oval raspberry tarts, the
hideous, bilious, revolting three-cornered puffs which she produced at
different stages of the voyage from her shabby carpet-bag.
She had an odd volume of a novel, and a long, dreary desert of
crochet-work, whose white-cotton monotony was only broken by occasional
dingy oases bearing witness of the worker’s dirty hands; they were such
pretty hands, too, that it was a shame they should ever be dirty; and
she had a bunch of flabby, faded flowers, sheltered by a great fan-like
shield of newspaper; and she had a smelling-bottle, which she sniffed
at perpetually, though she had no need of any such restorative, being
as fresh and bright from first to last as the sea breezes themselves,
and as little subject to any marine malady as the Lurleis whose waving
locks could scarcely have been yellower than her own.
I think, if the feminine voyagers on board the _Empress_ were cruel to
this solitary young traveller in not making themselves friendly with
her in her loneliness, the unkindness must be put down very much to
that unchristian frame of mind in which people who are sea-sick are apt
to regard those who are not. This bouncing, bright-faced girl seemed to
have little need of kindness from the miserable sufferers around her.
So she was left to wander about the deck; now reading three pages of
her novel; now doing half-a-dozen stitches of her work; now talking to
the man at the wheel, in spite of all injunctions to the contrary; now
making herself acquainted with stray pet dogs; always contented, always
happy; and no one troubled himself about her.
It was only now, when they were nearing Dieppe, that one of the
passengers, an elderly, grey-headed Englishman, spoke to her.
“You are very anxious to arrive,” he said, smiling at her eager face.
“Oh, yes, very anxious, sir. We are nearly there, are we not?”
“Yes, we shall enter the harbour presently. You will have some one to
meet you there, I suppose?”
“Oh, no,” the young lady answered, lifting her arched brown eyebrows,
“not at Dieppe. Papa will meet me at Paris; but he could never come all
the way to Dieppe, just to take me back to Paris. He could never afford
such an expense as that.”
“No, to be sure; and you know no one at Dieppe?”
“Oh, no; I don’t know any one in all France, except papa.”
Her face, bright as it was even in repose, was lit up with a new
brightness as she spoke of her father.
“You are very fond of your papa, I think,” the Englishman said.
“Oh, yes, I love him very, very much. I have not seen him for more
than a year. The journey costs so much between England and France, and
I have been at school near London, at Brixton; I dare say you know
Brixton; but I am going to France now, for good.”
“Indeed! You seem very young to leave school.”
“But I’m not going to leave school,” the young lady answered, eagerly.
“I am going to a very expensive school in Paris, to finish my
education; and then——”
She paused here, hesitating and blushing a little.
“And then what?”
“I am going to be a governess. Papa is not rich. He has no fortune now.”
“He has had a fortune, then?”
“He has had three.”
The young lady’s grey eyes were lit up with a certain look of triumph
as she said this.
“He has been very extravagant, poor dear,” she continued,
apologetically; “and he has spent three fortunes, altogether. But he
has always been so courted and admired, you know, that it is not to
be wondered at. He knew the Prince Regent, and Mr. Sheridan, and Mr.
Brummel, and the Duke of York, and—oh, all sorts of people, ever so
intimately; and he was a member of the Beefsteak Club, and wore a
silver gridiron in his button-hole, and he is the most delightful man
in society, even now, though he is very old.”
“Very old! And you are so young.”
The Englishman looked almost incredulously at his animated companion.
“Yes, I am papa’s youngest child. He has been married twice. I have no
real brothers and sisters. I have only half-brothers and sisters, who
don’t really and truly care for me, you know. How should they? They
were grown up when I was born, and I have scarcely ever seen them. I
have only papa in all the world.”
“You have no mother, then?”
“No; mamma died when I was three years old.”
The _Empress_ packet was entering the harbour by this time. The
grey-headed Englishman went away to look after his portmanteaus and
hat-boxes, but he returned presently to the fair-haired school-girl.
“Will you let me help you with your luggage?” he said. “I will go and
look after it, if you will tell me for what to inquire.”
“You are very kind. I have only one box. It is directed to Miss Vane,
Paris.”
“Very well, Miss Vane, I will go and find your box. Stay,” he said,
taking out his card-case, “this is my name, and if you will permit me,
I will see you safely to Paris.”
“Thank you, sir. You are very kind.”
The young lady accepted her new friend’s service as frankly as it
was offered. He had grey hair, and in that one particular at least
resembled her father. That was almost enough to make her like him.
There was the usual confusion and delay at the Custom-house—a little
squabbling and a good deal of bribery; but everything was managed,
upon the whole, pretty comfortably. Most of the passengers dropped in
at the Hôtel de l’Europe, or some of the other hotels upon the stony
quay; a few hurried off to the market-place, to stare at the cathedral
church of Saint Jacques, or the great statue of Abraham Duquesne,
the rugged sea-king, with broad-brimmed hat and waving plumes, high
boots and flowing hair, and to buy peaches and apricots of the noisy
market-women. Others wandered in the slimy and slippery fish-market,
fearfully and wonderingly contemplative of those hideous conger-eels,
dog-fish, and other piscatorial monstrosities which seem peculiar to
Dieppe. Miss Vane and her companion strolled into the dusky church of
Saint Jacques by a little wooden door in a shady nook of the edifice.
A few solitary women were kneeling here and there, half-hidden behind
their high-backed rush chairs. A fisherman was praying upon the steps
of a little chapel, in the solemn obscurity.
“I have never been here before,” Miss Vane whispered. “I came by
Dover and Calais, the last time; but this way is so much cheaper, and
I almost think it nicer, for the journey’s so short from London to
Newhaven, and I don’t mind the long sea voyage a bit. Thank you for
bringing me to see this cathedral.”
Half-an-hour after this the two travellers were seated in a first-class
carriage, with other railway passengers, French and English, hurrying
through the fair Norman landscape.
Miss Vane looked out at the bright hills and woods, the fruitful
orchards, and white-roofed cottages, so villa-like, fantastical,
and beautiful; and her face brightened with the brightening of the
landscape under the hot radiance of the sun. The grey-headed gentleman
felt a quiet pleasure in watching that earnest, hopeful, candid face;
the grey eyes, illumined with gladness; the parted lips, almost
tremulous with delight, as the sunny panorama glided by the open window.
The quiet old bachelor’s heart had been won by his companion’s frank
acceptance of his simple service.
“Another girl of her age would have been as frightened of a masculine
stranger as of a wild beast,” he thought, “and would have given herself
all manner of missish airs; but this young damsel smiles in my face,
and trusts me with almost infantile simplicity. I hope her father is
a good man. I don’t much like that talk of Sheridan and Beau Brummel
and the Beefsteak Club. No very good school for fathers that, I should
fancy. I wish her mother had been alive, poor child. I hope she is
going to a happy home, and a happy future.”
The train stopped at Rouen, and Miss Vane accepted a cup of coffee
and some _brioches_ from her companion. The red August sunset was
melting into grey mistiness by this time, and the first shimmer of
the moonlight was silvery on the water as they crossed the Seine and
left the lighted city behind them. The grey-headed Englishman fell
asleep soon after this, and before long there was a low chorus of
snoring, masculine and feminine, audible in the comfortable carriage;
only broken now and then, when the train stopped with a jerk at some
fantastic village that looked Like a collection of Swiss toy cottages
in the dim summer night.
But, let these matter-of-fact people snore and slumber as they might,
there was no such thing as sleep for Eleanor Vane. It would have been
utter sacrilege to have slept in the face of all that moonlighted
beauty, to have been carried sleeping through that fairy landscape. The
eager school-girl’s watchful eyes drank in the loveliness of every hill
and valley; the low scattered woodland; the watering streams; and that
perplexing Seine, which the rumbling carriage crossed so often with a
dismal hollow sound in the stillness of the night.
No; Miss Vane’s bright grey eyes were not closed once in that evening
journey; and at last, when the train entered the great Parisian
station, when all the trouble and confusion of arrival began—that
wearisome encounter of difficulty which makes cowardly travellers wish
the longest journey longer than it is—the young lady’s head was thrust
out of the window, and her eager eyes wandered hither and thither
amongst the faces of the crowd.
Yes, he was there—her father. That white-haired old man, with the
gold-headed cane, and the aristocratic appearance. She pointed him out
eagerly to her fellow-passenger.
“That is papa—you see,—the handsome man. He is coming this way, but he
doesn’t see us. Oh, let me out, please; let me go to him!”
She trembled in her eagerness, and her fair face flushed crimson with
excitement. She forgot her carpet-bag, her novel, her crochet, her
smelling-bottle, her cloak, her parasol—all her paraphernalia: and left
her companion to collect them as best he might. She was out of the
carriage and in her father’s arms she scarcely knew how. The platform
seemed deserted all in a moment, for the passengers had rushed away
to a great dreary _salle d’attente_, there to await the inspection
of their luggage. Miss Vane, her fellow-traveller, and her father,
were almost alone, and she was looking up at the old man’s face in the
lamplight.
“Papa, dear papa, darling, how well you are looking; as well as ever;
better than ever, I think!”
Her father drew himself up proudly. He was past seventy years of age,
but he was a very handsome man. His beauty was of that patrician type
which loses little by age. He was tall and broad-chested, erect as a
Grenadier, but not fat. The Prince Regent might become corpulent, and
lay himself open to the insolent sneers of his sometime boon companion
and friend; but Mr. George Mowbray Vandeleur Vane held himself on his
guard against that insidious foe which steals away the graces of so
many elderly gentlemen. Mr. Vane’s aristocratic bearing imparted such a
stamp to his clothes, that it was not easy to see the shabbiness of his
garments; but those garments were shabby. Carefully as they had been
brushed, they bore the traces of that slow decay which is not to be
entirely concealed, whatever the art of the wearer.
Miss Vane’s travelling companion saw all this. He had been so much
interested by the young lady’s frank and fearless manner, that he would
fain have lingered in the hope of learning something of her father’s
character; but he felt that he had no excuse for delaying his departure.
“I will wish you good night, now, Miss Vane,” he said, kindly, “since
you are safely restored to your papa.”
Mr. Vane lifted his grey eyebrows, looked at his daughter
interrogatively; rather suspiciously, the traveller thought.
“Oh, papa, dear,” the young lady answered, in reply to that questioning
look, “this gentleman was on board the boat with me, and he has been so
very kind.”
She searched in her pocket for the card which her acquaintance had
given her, and produced that document, rather limp and crumpled. Her
father looked at it, murmured the name inscribed upon it twice or
thrice, as if trying to attach some aristocratic association thereto,
but evidently failed in doing so.
“I have not the honour of—a—haw—knowing this name, sir,” he said,
lifting his hat stiffly about half a yard from his silvered head; “but
for your courtesy and kindness to my child, I hope you will accept
my best thanks. I was prevented by important business of—a—haw—not
altogether undiplomatic character—from crossing the Channel to fetch my
daughter; and—aw—also—prevented from sending my servant—by—aw—I thank
you for your politeness, sir. You are a stranger, by the way. Can I
do anything for you in Paris? Lord Cowley is my very old friend; any
service that I can render you in that quarter—I——”
The traveller bowed and smiled.
“Thank you very much,” he said, “I am no stranger in Paris. I will wish
you good night; good night, Miss Vane.”
But Mr. Vane was not going to let his daughter’s friend off so
easily. He produced his card-case, murmured more pompous assurances
of his gratitude, and tendered further offers of patronage to the
quiet traveller, who found something rather oppressive in Mr. Vane’s
civility. But it was all over at last, and the old man led his daughter
off to look for the trunk which contained all her worldly possessions.
The stranger looked wistfully after the father and child.
“I hope she may have a happy future,” he thought, rather despondingly;
“the old man is poor and pompous. He tells lies which bring hot blushes
into his daughter’s beautiful face. I am very sorry for her.”