THE ENTRESOL IN THE RUE DE L’ARCHEVÊQUE.
Mr. Vane took his daughter away from the station in one of those
secondary and cheaper vehicles which are distinguished by the
discriminating Parisian by some mysterious difference of badge. The
close, stifling carriage rattled over the uneven stones of long streets
which were unfamiliar to Eleanor Vane, until it emerged into the full
glory of the lighted Boulevard. The light-hearted school-girl could
not suppress a cry of rapture as she looked once more at the broad
thoroughfare, the dazzling lamps, the crowd, the theatres, the cafés,
the beauty and splendour, although she had spent her summer holiday in
Paris only a year before.
“It seems so beautiful again, papa,” she said, “just as if I’d never
seen it before; and I’m to stop here now, and never, never to leave you
again, to go away for such a cruel distance. You don’t know how unhappy
I’ve been, sometimes, papa dear. I wouldn’t tell you then, for fear of
making you uneasy; but I can tell you now, now that it’s all over.”
“Unhappy!” gasped the old man, clenching his fist; “they’ve not been
unkind to you—they’ve not dared——”
“Oh, no, dearest father. They’ve been very, very good. I was quite
a favourite, papa. Yes, though there were so many rich girls in the
school, and I was only a half-boarder, I was quite a favourite with
Miss Bennett and Miss Sophia; though I know I was careless and lazy
sometimes—not on purpose, you know, papa, for I tried hard to get on
with my education, for your sake, darling. No, everybody was very kind
to me, papa; but I used to think sometimes how far I was from you;
what miles and miles and miles of sea and land there were between as,
and that if you should be ill—I——”
Eleanor Vane broke down, and her father clasped her in his arms, and
cried over her silently. The tears came with very little provocation to
the old man’s handsome blue eyes. He was of that sanguine temperament
which to the last preserves the fondest delusions of youth. At
seventy-five years of age he hoped and dreamed and deluded himself as
foolishly as he had done at seventeen. His sanguine temperament had
been for ever leading him astray for more than sixty years. Severe
judges called George Vane a liar; but perhaps his shallow romances, his
pitiful boasts, were more often highly-coloured and poetical versions
of the truth, than actual falsehood.
It was past twelve o’clock when the carriage drove away from the lights
and splendour into the darkness of a labyrinth of quiet streets behind
the Madeleine. The Rue de l’Archevêque was one of these dingy and
quiet streets, very narrow, very close and stifling in the hot August
midnight. The vehicle stopped abruptly at a corner, before a little
shop, the shutters of which were closed, of course, at this hour.
“It is a butcher’s shop, I am sorry to say, my love,” Mr. Vane said,
apologetically, as he handed his daughter on to the pavement; “but I
find myself very comfortable here, and it is conveniently adjacent to
the Boulevards.”
The old man paid the driver, who had deposited mademoiselle’s box
upon the threshold of the little door beside the butcher’s shop.
The _pourboire_ was not a very large one, but Mr. Vane bestowed it
with the air of a prince. He pushed open the low door, and took his
daughter into a narrow passage. There was no porter or portress, for
the butcher’s shop and the apartments belonging to it were abnormal
altogether; but there was a candle and box of matches on a shelf in a
corner of the steep corkscrew staircase. The driver carried Eleanor’s
box as far as the entresol in consideration of his _pourboire_, but
departed while Mr. Vane was opening the door of an apartment facing the
staircase.
The entresol consisted of three little rooms, opening one out of
another, and so small and low that Miss Vane almost fancied herself
in a doll’s house. Every article of furniture in the stifling little
apartment bore the impress of its nationality. Tawdry curtains of
figured damask, resplendent with dirty tulips and monster roses,
tarnished ormolu mouldings, a gilded clock with a cracked dial and
a broken shade, a pair of rickety bronze candlesticks, a couple of
uncompromising chairs covered with dusty green velvet and relieved
by brass-headed nails, and a square table with a long trailing cover
of the same material as the curtains, completed the adornments of
the sitting-room. The bed-chambers were smaller, closer, and hotter.
Voluminous worsted curtains falling before the narrow windows,
and smothering the little beds, made the stifling atmosphere yet
more stifling. The low ceilings seemed to rest on the top of poor
Eleanor’s head. She had been accustomed to large airy rooms, and broad
uncurtained open windows.
“How hot it is here, papa,” she said, drawing a long breath.
“It always is hot in Paris at this time of year, my dear,” Mr. Vane
answered; “the rooms are small, you see, but convenient. That is to be
your bedroom, my love,” he added, indicating one of the little chambers.
He was evidently habituated to Parisian lodging-houses, and saw no
discomfort in the tawdry grandeur, the shabby splendour, the pitiful
attempt to substitute scraps of gilding and patches of velvet for the
common necessaries and decencies of life.
“And now let me look at you, my dear; let me look at you, Eleanor.”
George Mowbray Vane set the candlestick upon the rusty velvet cover of
the low mantel-piece, and drew his daughter towards him. She had thrown
off her bonnet and loose grey cloak, and stood before her father in her
scanty muslin frock, with all her auburn hair hanging about her face
and shoulders, and glittering in the dim light of that one scrap of wax
candle.
“My pet, how beautiful you have grown, how beautiful!” the old man
said, with an accent of fond tenderness. “We’ll teach Mrs. Bannister a
lesson some of these days, Eleanor. Yes, our turn will come, my love; I
know that I shall die a rich man.”
Miss Vane was accustomed to hear this remark from her father. She
inherited something of his sanguine nature, and she loved him very
dearly, so she may be forgiven if she believed in his vague visions of
future grandeur. She had never seen anything in her life but chaotic
wrecks of departed splendour, confusion, debt, and difficulty. She had
not been called upon to face poverty in the fair hand-to-hand struggle
which ennobles and elevates the sturdy wrestler in the battle of life.
No, she had rather been compelled to play at hide-and-seek with the
grim enemy. She had never gone out into the open, and looked her foe
full in the eyes, hardy, resolute, patient, and steadfast. She was
familiar with all those debasing tricks and pitiful subterfuges whereby
the weak and faint-hearted seek to circumvent the enemy; but she had
never been taught the use of those measures by which he may be honestly
beaten.
The Mrs. Bannister of whom George Vane had spoken, was one of his elder
daughters, who had been very, very ungrateful to him, he declared; and
who now in his old age doled him out the meagre allowance which enabled
him to occupy an entresol over a butcher’s shop, and dine daily at one
of the cheap restaurants in the Palais Royal.
Mr. Vane was wont to lament his daughter’s cruel lack of affection in
very bitter language, freely interspersed with quotations from “King
Lear;” indeed I believe he considered his case entirely parallel with
that of the injured British monarch and father; ignoring the one rather
important fact that, whereas Lear’s folly had been the too generous
division of his own fortune between his recreant daughters, _his_
weakness had been the reckless waste and expenditure of the portions
which his children had inherited from their mother.
Mrs. Bannister, instigated thereto by her husband, had protested some
years before against the several acts of folly and extravagance by
which the fortune which ought to have been hers had been fooled away.
She declined to allow her father more than the pittance alluded to
above; although, as she was now a rich widow, and of course entirely
her own mistress, she might have done much more.
“Yes, my darling,” Mr. Vane said, as he proudly contemplated his
youngest child’s beauty, “we will turn the tables upon Mrs. Bannister
and the rest of them, yet, please God. My Benjamin; my youngest,
brightest darling; we’ll teach them a lesson. They may poke their old
father away in a foreign lodging, and stint him of money for any little
innocent pleasure; but the day will come, my love, the day will come!”
The old man nodded his head two or three times with solemn
significance. The sanguine, impulsive nature, dwarfed and fettered by
the cruel bonds of poverty, was too elastic to be entirely repressed
even by those galling chains; and having hoped all his life, and
having enjoyed such successes and good fortune as fall to the lot of
very few men, he went on hoping in his old age, blindly confident that
some sudden revolution in the wheel of life would lift him out of his
obscurity and set him again on the pinnacle he had once occupied so
proudly.
He had had a host of friends and many children, and he had squandered
more than one fortune, not being any more careful of other people’s
money than of his own; and now, in his poverty and desolation, the
child of his old age was the only one who clung to him, and loved him,
and believed in him; the only one whom he loved, perhaps, truly and
unreservedly, though he wept frequently over the ingratitude of the
others. It may be that Eleanor was the only one whom he could love with
any comfort to himself, because the only one he had never injured.
“But, papa, dear,” this youngest and best loved of the old man’s
children pleaded gently, “Mrs. Bannister, Hortensia, has been very
good—has she not?—in sending the money for my education at Madame
Marly’s, where she was finished herself. That was very generous of her,
wasn’t it, papa?”
Mr. Vane shook his head, and lifted his grey eyebrows with a
deprecating expression.
“Hortensia Bannister cannot perform a generous act in a generous
manner, my dear. You recognize the viper by the reptile’s sting: you
may recognize Hortensia in pretty much the same manner. She gives, but
she insults the recipients of her—ahem—bounty. Shall I read you her
letter, Eleanor?”
“If you please, dear papa.”
The young lady had seated herself, in a somewhat hoydenish manner,
upon the elbow of her father’s chair, and had wound her soft round
arm about his neck. She loved him and believed in him. The world
which had courted and admired him while he had money and could boast
such acquaintance as the Prince and Sheridan, Sir Francis Burdett,
Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Pitt, and the Duke of York, had fallen away
from him of late; and the few old associates who yet remained of that
dead-and-gone cycle were apt to avoid him, influenced perhaps by the
recollection of small loans of an occasional five-pound note, and a
“little silver,” which had not been repaid. Yes, the world had fallen
away from George Mowbray Vandeleur Vane, once of Vandeleur Park,
Cheshire, and Mowbray Castle, near York. The tradesmen who had helped
him to squander his money had let him get very deep in their books
before they closed those cruel ledgers, and stopped all supplies.
He had existed for a long time—he had lived as a gentleman, he said
himself—upon the traditions of the past, the airy memories of the
fortunes he had wasted. But this was all over now, and he had emigrated
to the city in which he had played the Grand Seigneur in those glorious
early days of the Restoration, and where he was compelled to lead a
low and vulgar life, disgracing himself by pettifogging ready-money
dealings, utterly degrading to a gentleman.
He could not bring himself to own that he was better and happier in
this new life, and that it was pleasant to be able to walk erect and
defiant upon the Boulevards, rather than to be compelled to plunge
down dark alleys, and dive into sinuous byways, for the avoidance of
importunate creditors, as he had been in free England.
He took his wealthy daughter’s letter from the breast-pocket of his
coat; a fashionable coat, though shabby now, for it had been made
for him by a sentimental German tailor, who had wept over his late
patron’s altered fortunes, and given him credit for a suit of clothes.
That compassionate German tailor never expected to be paid, and the
clothes were a benefaction, a gift as purely and generously given as
any Christian dole offered in the holy name of charity; but Mr. Vane
was pleased with the fiction of an expected payment, and would have
revolted against the idea of receiving a present from the good-natured
tradesman.
The letter from Hortensia Bannister was not a long one. It was written
in sharp and decisive paragraphs, and in a neat firm hand. Rather a
cruel-looking hand, Eleanor Vane thought.
The old man put a double gold eyeglass over his nose, and began to read.
“_Hyde Park Gardens, August, 1853._
“MY DEAR FATHER,—In compliance with your repeated solicitations I have
determined upon taking measures by which I hope the future welfare of
your youngest daughter may be secured.
“I must, however, remind you that Eleanor Vane and I are the children
of different mothers; that she has, therefore, less claim upon me than
a sister usually has; and I freely confess I never heard of one sister
being called upon to provide for another.
“You must also remember that I never entertained any degree of
friendship or affection for Eleanor’s mother, who was much below you
in station, and whom you married in direct opposition to myself and my
sisters——”
Eleanor started; she was too impetuous to listen quite passively to
this letter. Her father felt the sudden movement of the arm about his
neck.
“Your mother was an angel, my dear,” he said; “and this woman is—never
mind what. My daughters chose to give themselves airs to your poor
mother because she had been their governess, and because her father had
failed as a sugar-broker.”
He went back to the letter, groping nervously for the place at which he
had left off, with the point of his well-shaped finger—
“But you tell me that you have no power to make any provision
whatsoever for your daughter; and that, unless I assist you, this
unhappy girl may, in the event of your death, be flung penniless upon
the world, imperfectly educated, and totally incompetent to get her
living.”
“She speaks of my death very freely,” the old man murmured, “but she’s
right enough. I shan’t trouble anybody long, my dear; I shan’t trouble
anybody long.”
The tender arms wound themselves more closely about George Vane’s neck.
“Papa, darling,” the soft voice whispered, “you have never troubled
_me_. Don’t go on with that horrid letter, papa. _We_ won’t accept any
favours from such a woman.”
“Yes, yes, my love, for your sake; if I stoop, it is for your sake,
Eleanor.”
The old man went on reading.
“Under these circumstances,” the writer continued, “I have come to
the following determination. I will give you a hundred pounds, to be
paid to Madame Marly, who knows you, and has received a great deal of
money from you for my education and that of my sisters, and who will,
therefore, be inclined to receive Eleanor upon advantageous terms.
For this sum of money Madame Marly will, I feel assured, consent to
prepare my half-sister for the situation of governess in a gentleman’s
family; that is, of course, premising that Eleanor has availed herself
conscientiously of the advantages afforded her by her residence with
the Misses Bennett.
“I shall write to Madame Marly by this post, using my best influence
with her for Eleanor’s benefit; and should I receive a favourable
reply to this letter, I will immediately send you an order for a
hundred pounds, to be paid by you to Madame Marly.
“I do this in order that you may not appear to my old instructress—who
remembers you as a rich man—in the position of a pauper; but in thus
attempting to spare your feelings, and perhaps my own, I fear that I
run some risk.
“Let me therefore warn you that this money is the last I will ever pay
for my half-sister’s benefit. Squander or misuse it if you please. You
have robbed me often, and would not perhaps hesitate to do so again.
But bear in mind, that this time it is Eleanor you will rob and not me.
“The only chance she will have of completing her education is
the chance I now give her. Rob her of this and you rob her of
an honourable future. Deprive her of this and you make yourself
answerable for any misfortunes which may befall her when you are dead
and gone.
“Forgive me if I have spoken harshly, or even undutifully; my excuse
lies in your past follies. I have spoken strongly because I wished to
make a strong impression, and I believe that I have acted for the best.
“Once for all, remember that I will attend to no future solicitations
on Eleanor’s behalf. If she makes good use of the help I now
afford her, I may perhaps be tempted to render her further
services—unsolicited—in the future. If she or you make a bad use
of this one chance, I wash my hands of all concern in your future
miseries.
“The money will be made payable at Messrs. Blount’s, Rue de la Paix.
“I trust you attend the Protestant Church in the Rue Rivoli.
“With best wishes for your welfare, temporal and eternal, I remain, my
dear father,
“Your affectionate daughter,
“HORTENSIA BANNISTER.”
George Vane burst into tears as he finished the letter. How cruelly she
had stabbed him, this honourable, conscientious daughter, whom he had
robbed certainly, but in a generous, magnanimous, reckless fashion,
that made robbery rather a princely virtue than a sordid vice. How
cruelly the old heart was lacerated by that bitter letter!
“As if I would touch the money,” cried Mr. Vane, elevating his
trembling hands to the low ceiling with a passionate and tragic
gesture. “Have I been such a wretch to you, Eleanor, that this woman
should accuse me of wishing to snatch the bread from your innocent
lips?”
“Papa, papa!”
“Have I been such an unnatural father, such a traitor, liar, swindler,
and cheat, that my own daughter should say these things to me?”
His voice rose higher with each sentence, and the tears streamed down
his wrinkled cheeks.
Eleanor tried to kiss away those tears; but he pushed her from him with
passionate vehemence.
“Go away from me, my child, I am a wretch, a robber, a scoundrel, a——”
“No, no, no, papa,” cried Eleanor; “you are all that is good; you have
always been good to me, dear, dear papa.”
“By what right, then, does this woman insult me with such a letter as
that?” asked the old man, drying his eyes, and pointing to the crumpled
letter which he had flung upon the ground.
“She has no right, papa,” answered Eleanor. “She is a wicked, cruel
woman. But we’ll send back her money. I’d rather go out into the world
at once, papa, and work for you: I’d rather be a dressmaker. I could
learn soon if I tried very hard. I do know a little about dressmaking.
I made this dress, and it fits very well, only I cut out both the backs
for one side, and both sleeves for one arm, and that wasted the stuff,
you know, and made the skirt a little scanty. I’d rather do anything,
papa, than accept this money,—I would indeed. I don’t want to go to
this grand Parisian school, except to be near you, papa, darling. That
was the only thing I ever cared for. The Miss Bennetts would take me as
a pupil teacher, and give me fifteen pounds a year, and I’d send every
shilling of it to you, papa, and then you needn’t live over a wretched
shop where the meat smells nasty in the warm weather. We won’t take the
money, will we, papa?”
The old man shook his head, and made a motion with his lips and throat,
as if he had been gulping down some bitter draught.
“Yes, my dear,” he said, in a tone of ineffable resignation, “for your
sake I would suffer many humiliations; for your sake I will endure
this. We will take no notice of this woman’s letter; though I could
write her a reply that—but no matter. We will let her insolence pass,
and she shall never know how keenly it has stung me here!”
He tapped his breast as he spoke, and the tears rose again to his eyes.
“We will accept this money, Eleanor,” he continued, “we will accept
her bounty; and the day may come when you will have ample power to
retaliate—ample power, my dear. She has called me a thief, Eleanor,”
exclaimed the old man, suddenly returning to his own wrongs, “a thief!
My own daughter has called me a thief, and accused me of the baseness
of robbing you.”
“Papa, papa, darling.”
“As if your father could rob you of this money, Eleanor; as if I could
touch a penny of it. No, so help me, Heaven! not a penny of it to save
me from starving.”
His head sank forward upon his breast, and he sat for some minutes
muttering to himself in broken sentences, as if almost unconscious
of his daughter’s presence. In that time he looked older than he had
looked at any moment since his daughter had met him at the station.
Watching him now, wistfully and sorrowfully, Eleanor Vane saw that her
father was indeed an old man, vacillating and weak of purpose, and with
ample need of all the compassionate tenderness, the fond affection,
which overflowed her girlish heart as she looked at him. She knelt down
on the slippery oaken floor at his feet, and took his tremulous hand in
both of hers.
He started as she touched him, and looked at her.
“My darling,” he cried, “you’ve had nothing to eat; you’ve been nearly
an hour in the house, and you’ve had nothing to eat. But I’ve not
forgotten you, Nell; you’ll find I’ve not forgotten you.”
He rose from his chair, and went over to a little cupboard in the wall,
from which he took a couple of plates and tumblers, some knives and
forks, and two or three parcels wrapped in white paper, and neatly tied
with narrow red tape. He put these on the table, and going a second
time to the cupboard produced a pint bottle of Burgundy, in a basket;
very dusty and cobwebby; and therefore, no doubt, very choice.
The white paper parcels contained very recherché comestibles. A slender
wedge of truffled turkey, some semi-transparent slices of German
sausage, and an open plum tart, with a great deal of rich ruby-coloured
syrup, and an utterly uneatable crust.
Miss Vane partook very freely of this little collation, praising her
father for his goodness and indulgence as she ate the simple feast
he had prepared for her. But she did not like the Burgundy in the
dusty basket, and preferred to drink some water out of one of the
toilette-bottles.
Her father, however, enjoyed the pint of good wine, and recovered his
equanimity under its generous influence. He had never been a drunkard;
he had indeed one of those excitable natures which cannot endure the
influence of strong drinks, and a very little wine had considerable
effect upon him.
He talked a good deal, therefore, to his daughter, told her some of
his delusive hopes in the future, tried to explain some of the plans
which he had formed for his and her advancement, and was altogether
very happy and social. The look of age, which had been so strong upon
him half an hour before, faded out like a grey morning shadow under
the broadening sunlight. He was a young man again; proud, hopeful,
reckless, handsome; ready to run through three more fortunes, if they
should fall to his lot.
It was past two o’clock when Eleanor Vane lay down, thoroughly
exhausted, but not weary—she had one of those natures which seem never
to grow weary—to fall asleep for the first time in four-and-twenty
hours.
Her father did not quite so quickly fall into a peaceful slumber. He
lay awake for upwards of an hour, tumbling and tossing to and fro upon
the narrow spring mattress, and muttering to himself.
And even in his sleep, though the early summer dawn was grey in the
room when he fell into a fitful and broken slumber, the trouble of his
eldest daughter’s letter was heavy upon him, for every now and then he
muttered, disjointly,—
“Thief—swindler! As if—as if—I would—rob—my own daughter.”