UPON THE THRESHOLD OF A GREAT SORROW.
It was nearly noon when Eleanor Vane awoke upon the morning after her
journey; for this young lady was a good sleeper, and was taking her
revenge for four-and-twenty hours of wakefulness. I doubt, indeed, if
she would have opened her eyes when she did, had not her father tapped
at the door of her tiny chamber and told her the hour.
She woke smiling, like a beautiful infant who has always seen loving
eyes watching above its cradle.
“Papa, darling,” she cried, “is it you? I’ve just been dreaming that I
was at Brixton. How delightful to wake and hear your voice! I won’t be
long, papa dear. But you haven’t waited breakfast all this time, have
you?”
“No, my dear. I have a cup of coffee and a roll brought me every
morning at nine from a _traiteur’s_ over the way. I’ve ordered some
breakfast for you, but I wouldn’t wake you till twelve. Dress quickly,
Nell. It’s a lovely morning, and I’ll take you for a walk.”
It was indeed a lovely morning. Eleanor Vane flung back the tawdry
damask curtains, and let the full glory of the August noontide sun
into her little room. Her window had been open all the night through,
and the entresol was so close to the street that she could hear the
conversation of the people upon the pavement below. The foreign jargon
sounded pleasant to her in its novelty. It was altogether different
to the French language as she had been accustomed to hear it at
Brixton; where a young lady forfeited a halfpenny every time she forgot
herself so far as to give utterance to her thoughts or desires in the
commonplace medium of her mother tongue. The merry voices, the barking
of dogs, the rattling of wheels, and ringing of bells in the distance,
mingled in a cheerful clamour.
As Eleanor Vane let in that glorious noontide sunlight, it seemed to
her that she had let in the morning of a new life; a new and happier
existence, brighter and pleasanter than the dull boarding-school
monotony she had had so much of.
Her pure young soul rejoiced in the sunshine, the strange city, the
change, the shadowy hopes that beckoned to her in the future, the
atmosphere of love which her father’s presence always made in the
shabbiest home. She had not been unhappy at Brixton, because it was
her nature to be happy under difficulties, because she was a bright,
spontaneous creature, to whom it was almost impossible to be sorrowful:
but she had looked forward yearningly to this day, in which she was to
join her father in Paris, never perhaps to go far away from him again.
And it had come at last, this long-hoped-for day, the sunny opening of
a new existence. It had come; and even the heavens had sympathy with
her gladness, and wore their fairest aspect in honour of this natal day
of her new life.
She did not linger long over her toilet, though she lost a good deal
of time in unpacking her box—which had not been very neatly packed,
by the way—and had considerable trouble in finding hair-brushes and
combs, cuffs, collars, and ribbons, and all the rest of the small
paraphernalia with which she wished to decorate herself.
But when she emerged at last, radiant and smiling, with her long golden
hair falling in loose curls over her shoulders, and her pale muslin
dress adorned with fluttering blue ribbons, her father was fain to cry
out aloud at the sight of his darling’s beauty. She kissed him a dozen
times, but took very little notice of his admiration—she seemed, in
fact, scarcely conscious that he did admire her—and then ran into the
adjoining room to caress a dog, an eccentric French poodle, which had
been George Vane’s faithful companion during the three years he had
spent in Paris.
“Oh, papa!” Eleanor cried joyously, returning to the sitting-room with
the dingy white animal in her arms, “I am so pleased to find Fido. You
didn’t speak of him in your letters, and I was afraid you had lost him,
perhaps, or that he was dead. But here he is, just as great a darling,
and just as dirty as ever.”
The poodle, who was divided in half, upon that unpleasant principle
common to his species, and who was white and curly in front, and smooth
and pinky behind, reciprocated Miss Vane’s caresses very liberally. He
leaped about her knees when she set him down upon the slippery floor,
and yelped wild outcries of delight. He was not permitted to pass the
night in Mr. Vane’s apartments, but slept in a dismal outhouse behind
the butcher’s shop, and it was thus that Eleanor had not seen him upon
her arrival in the Rue de l’Archevêque.
The young lady was so anxious to go out with her father, so eager
to be away on the broad boulevards with the happy idle people of
that wonderful city in which nobody ever seems to be either busy or
sorrowful, that she made very short work of her roll and coffee,
and then ran back to her little bed-chamber to array herself for a
promenade. She came out five minutes afterwards dressed in a black
silk mantle and a white transparent bonnet, which looked fleecy and
cloud-like against her bright auburn hair. That glorious hair was
suffered to fall from under the bonnet and stream about her shoulders
like golden rain, for she had never yet attained the maturer dignity of
wearing her luxuriant tresses plaited and twisted in a hard knot at
the back of her head.
“Now papa, please, where are we to go?”
“Wherever you like, my darling,” the old man answered; “I mean to give
you a treat to-day. You shall spend the morning how you like, and
we’ll dine on the Boulevard Poissonnier. I’ve received a letter from
Mrs. Bannister. It came before you were up. I am to call in the Rue de
la Paix for a hundred and six pounds. A hundred to be paid to Madame
Marly, and six for me; my monthly allowance, my dear, at the rate of
thirty shillings a week.”
Mr. Vane sighed as he named the sum. It would have been better for this
broken-down old spendthrift if he could have received his pittance
weekly, or even daily; for it was his habit to dine at the Trois
Frères, and wear pale straw-coloured gloves, and a flower in his
button-hole, at the beginning of the month, and to subsist on rolls and
coffee towards its close.
He unfolded the narrow slip of paper upon which his eldest daughter
had written the banker’s address and the amount which Mr. Vane was to
demand, and looked at the magical document fondly, almost proudly.
Any one unfamiliar with his frivolous and sanguine nature, might have
wondered at the change which had taken place in his manner since the
previous night, when he had tearfully bewailed his daughter’s cruelty.
He had been an old man then, degraded, humiliated, broken down by
sorrow and shame: to-day he was young, handsome, gay, defiant, pompous,
prepared to go out into the world and hold his place amongst the
butterflies once more. He rejoiced in the delicious sensation of having
money to spend. Every fresh five-pound note was a new lease of youth
and happiness to George Vane.
The father and daughter went out together, and the butcher neglected
his business in order to stare after Miss Vane; and the butcher’s
youngest child, a tiny damsel in a cambric mob-cap, cried out, “Oh,
la belle demoiselle!” as Eleanor turned the corner of the narrow
street into the sunny thoroughfare beyond. Fido came frisking after
his master’s daughter, and Mr. Vane had some difficulty in driving the
animal back. Eleanor would have liked the dog to go with them in their
noontide ramble through the Parisian streets, but her father pointed
out the utter absurdity of such a proceeding.
Mr. Vane conducted his daughter through a maze of streets behind
the Madeleine. There was no Boulevard Malesherbes in those days, to
throw this part of the city open to the sweep of a park of artillery.
Eleanor’s eyes lit up with gladness as they emerged from the narrower
streets behind the church into the wide boulevard, not as handsome
then as it is to-day, but very broad and airy, gay and lightsome withal.
An involuntary cry of delight broke from Eleanor’s lips.
“Oh, papa,” she said, “it is so different from Brixton. But where are
we going first, papa, dear?”
“Over the way, my dear, to Blount and Co.’s, in the Rue de la Paix.
We’ll get this money at once, Nelly, and we’ll carry it straight to
Madame Marly. They had no occasion to insult us, my dear. We have not
sunk so low, yet. No, no, not quite so low as to rob our own children.”
“Papa, darling, don’t think of that cruel letter. I don’t like to take
the money when I remember that. Don’t think of it, papa.”
Mr. Vane shook his head.
“I _will_ think of it, my dear,” he answered, in a tone of sorrowful
indignation—the indignation of an honourable man, who rebels against a
cruel stigma of dishonour. “I will think of it, Eleanor. I have been
called a thief—a thief, Eleanor. I am not very likely to forget _that_,
I think.”
They were in the Rue de la Paix by this time. George Vane was very
familiar with the banker’s office, for he had been in the habit of
receiving his monthly pension through an order on Messrs. Blount and
Co. He left Eleanor at the foot of the stairs, while he ascended to the
office on the first floor; and he returned five minutes afterwards,
carrying a bundle of notes in one hand, and a delicious little roll of
napoleons in the other. The notes fluttered pleasantly in the summer
air, as he showed them to his daughter.
“We will go at once to Madame Marly, my darling,” he said, gaily, “and
give her these, without a moment’s unnecessary delay. They shall have
no justification in calling me a thief, Eleanor. You will write to your
sister by this afternoon’s post, perhaps, my dear, and tell her that I
did not try to rob you. I think you owe so much as that to your poor
old father.”
George Vane’s daughter clung lovingly to his arm, looking up tenderly
and entreatingly in his face.
“Papa, darling, how can you say such things?” she cried. “I will write
and tell Mrs. Bannister that she has been very cruel, and that her
insulting letter has made me hate to take her paltry money. But, papa,
dearest, how can you talk of robbing _me_? If this money is really
mine, take it; take every penny of it, if—if—you owe it to anybody who
worries you; or if you want it for anything in the world. I can go back
to Brixton and earn my living to-morrow, papa. Miss Bennett and Miss
Sophia told me so before I came away. You don’t know how useful they
began to find me with the little ones. Take the money, papa, dear, if
you want it.”
Mr. Vane turned upon his daughter with almost tragic indignation.
“Eleanor,” he said, “do you know me so little that you dare to insult
me by such a proposition as this? No; if I were starving I would not
take this money. Am I so lost and degraded that even the child I love
turns upon me in my old age?”
The hand which held the bank notes trembled with passionate emotion as
the old man spoke.
“Papa, darling,” Eleanor pleaded, “indeed, indeed, I did not mean to
wound you.”
“Let me hear no more of this, then, Eleanor; let me hear no more of
it,” answered Mr. Vane, drawing himself up with a dignity that would
have become a classic toga, rather than the old man’s fashionable
overcoat. “I am not angry with you, my darling; I was only hurt, I was
only hurt. My children have never known me, Eleanor; they have never
known me. Come, my dear.”
Mr. Vane put aside his tragic air, and plunged into the Rue St. Honoré,
where he called for a packet of gloves that had been cleaned for him.
He put the gloves in his pocket, and then strolled back into the Rue
Castiglione, looking at the vehicles in the roadway as he went. He was
waiting to select the most elegantly appointed of the hackney equipages
crawling slowly past.
“It’s a pity the government insist on putting a painted badge upon
them,” he said, thoughtfully. “When I last called on Madame Marly,
Charles the Tenth was at the Tuileries, and I had my travelling chariot
and pair at Meurice’s, besides a britska for Mrs. Vane.”
He had pitched upon a very new and shining vehicle, with a smart
coachman, by this time, and he made that half hissing, half whistling
noise peculiar to Parisians when they call a hackney carriage.
Eleanor sprang lightly into the vehicle, and spread her flowing muslin
skirts upon the cushions as she seated herself. The passers-by looked
admiringly at the smiling young Anglaise with her white bonnet and
nimbus of glittering hair.
“Au Bois, cocher,” Mr. Vane cried, as he took his place by his daughter.
He had bought a tiny bouquet for his button-hole near the Madeleine,
and he selected a pair of white doeskin gloves, and drew them carefully
on his well-shaped hands. He was as much a dandy to-day as he had been
in those early days when the Prince and Brummel were his exalted models.
The drive across the Place de la Concorde, and along the Champs
Elysées, was an exquisite pleasure to Eleanor Vane; but it was even
yet more exquisite when the light carriage rolled away along one of
the avenues in the Bois de Boulogne, where the shadows of the green
leaves trembled on the grass, and all nature rejoiced beneath the
cloudless August sky. The day was a shade too hot, perhaps, and had
been certainly growing hotter once noon, but Eleanor was too happy to
remember that.
“How nice it is to be with you, papa darling,” she said, “and how
I wish I wasn’t going to this school. I should be so happy in that
dear little lodging over the butcher’s, and I could go out as morning
governess to some French children, couldn’t I? I shouldn’t cost you
much, I know, papa.”
Mr. Vane shook his head.
“No, no, my love. Your education must be completed. Why should you be
less accomplished than your sisters? You shall occupy as brilliant a
position as ever they occupied, my love, or a better one, perhaps. You
have seen me under a cloud, Eleanor; but you shall see the sunshine
yet. You’ll scarcely know your old father, my poor girl, when you see
him in the position he has been used to occupy; yes, used to occupy,
my dear. This lady we are going to see, Madame Marly, _she_ remembers,
my love. She could tell you what sort of a man George Vane was
five-and-twenty years ago.”
The house in which the fashionable schoolmistress who had “finished”
the elder daughters of George Vane still received her pupils, was a
white-walled villa, half-hidden in one of the avenues of the Bois de
Boulogne.
The little hired carriage drew up before a door in the garden wall, and
a portress came out to reply to the coachman’s summons.
Unhappily, the portress said, Madame was not at home. Madame’s
assistants were at home, and would be happy to receive Monsieur and
Mademoiselle. That might be perhaps altogether the same thing, the
portress suggested.
No, Monsieur replied, he must see Madame herself. Ah, but then nothing
could be so unfortunate. Madame, who so seldom quitted the Pension, had
to-day driven into Paris to arrange her affairs, and would not return
until sunset.
Mr. Vane left his card with a few words written upon it in pencil,
to the effect that he would call at two o’clock the next day, in the
charge of the portress: and the carriage drove back towards Paris.
“Bear witness, Eleanor,” said the old man, “bear witness that I tried
to pay this money away immediately after receiving it. You will be good
enough to mention that fact in your letter to my eldest daughter.”
He had carried the notes in his hand all this time, as if eager to
deliver them over to the schoolmistress, but he now put them into
his breast-pocket. I think upon the whole he was rather pleased at
the idea of retaining custody of the money for the next twenty-four
hours. It was not his own, but the mere possession of it gave him a
pleasant sense of importance; and, again, he might very probably have
an opportunity of displaying the bank notes, incidentally, to some of
his associates. Unhappily for this lonely old man, his few Parisian
acquaintances were of a rather shabby and not too reputable a calibre,
and were therefore likely to be somewhat impressed by the sight of a
hundred and twenty-five napoleons, in crisp, new notes upon the Bank of
France.
It was past three when Mr. Vane and his daughter alighted in front of
the Palais Royal, and the coachman claimed payment for two hours and
a-half. The old man had changed the first of his six napoleons at the
glove-cleaner’s, and he had a handful of loose silver in his waistcoat
pocket, so the driver was quickly paid and dismissed, and Eleanor
entered the Palais Royal, that paradise of cheap jewellery and dinners,
hanging on her father’s arm.
Mr. Vane bore patiently with his daughter’s enthusiastic admiration
of the diamonds and the paste, the glittering realities and almost as
glittering shams in the jewellers’ windows. Eleanor wanted to look at
everything, the trinkets, and opera-glasses, and portmanteaus, and
china,—everything was new and beautiful. The fountain was playing;
noisy children were running about, amongst equally noisy nurses and
idle loungers. A band was playing close to the fountain. The chinking
of tea-spoons, and cups and saucers, sounded in the Café de la Rotonde:
people had not begun to dine yet, but the windows and glazed nooks in
the doorways of the restaurants were splendid with their displays of
gigantic melons, and dewy purple grapes, cucumbers, pears, tomatoes,
and peaches. George Vane allowed his daughter to linger a long time
before all the shops. He was rather ashamed of her exuberant delight,
and unrestrained enthusiasm; for so much pleasure in these simple
things was scarcely consistent with that _haut ton_ which the old man
still affected, even in his downfall. But he had not the heart to
interfere with his daughter’s happiness—was it not strange happiness to
_him_ to have this beautiful creature with him, clinging to his arm,
and looking up at him with a face that was glorified by her innocent
joy?
They left the Palais Royal at last, before half its delights were
exhausted, as Eleanor thought, and went through the Rue Richelieu
to the Place de la Bourse, where Mr. Vane’s eager companion looked
wistfully at the doors of the theatre opposite the great Temple of
Commerce.
“Oh, papa,” she said, “how I should like to go to a theatre to-night!”
Miss Vane had seen a good deal of the English drama during her Chelsea
life, for the old man knew some of the London managers, men who
remembered him in his prosperity, and were glad to give him admission
to their boxes now and then, out of pure benevolence. But the Parisian
theatres seemed mysteriously delightful to Eleanor, inasmuch as they
were strange.
“Can you get tickets for the theatres here, papa,” she asked, “as you
used in London?”
Mr. Vane shrugged his shoulders.
“No, my love,” he said, “it’s not quite such an easy matter. I know a
man who writes farces now and then for the Funambules—a very clever
fellow—but he doesn’t get many orders to give away, and that’s not
exactly the theatre I should like to take you to. I’ll tell you what,
though, Eleanor, I’ll take you to the Porte St. Martin to-night—why
should I deny my child an innocent pleasure? I’ll take you to the Porte
St. Martin, unless——”
George Vane paused, and a gloomy shadow crept over his face—a shade
that made him look an old man. His youthfulness of appearance entirely
depended upon the buoyancy of a nature which contended with age. The
moment his spirits sank he looked what he was—an old man.
“Unless what, papa, dearest?” Eleanor asked.
“I—I had an appointment to-night, my love, with—with a couple of
gentlemen who——But I won’t keep it, Eleanor,—no, no, I’ll not keep it.
I’ll take you to the theatre. I can afford you that pleasure.”
“Dear, dear papa, you never refuse me any pleasure; but it would be
so selfish of me to ask you to break your appointment with these two
gentlemen. You had better keep it.”
“No, no, my dear—I’d—it would be better—perhaps. Yes, I’ll take you to
the Porte St. Martin.”
Mr. Vane spoke hesitatingly. The shadow had not yet left his face. Had
his daughter been less occupied by the delights of the Parisian shops,
the novelty and gaiety of the crowd, she must surely have observed the
change in that idolized father.
But she observed nothing, she could remember nothing but her happiness.
This glorious day of reunion and delight seemed, indeed, the beginning
of a new life. She looked back wonderingly at the dull routine of her
boarding-school existence. Could it be possible that it was only a day
or two since she was in the Brixton school-room hearing the little
ones—the obstinate, incorrigible little ones—their hateful lessons:
their odious monotonous repetition of dry facts about William the
Conqueror and Buenos Ayres, the manufacture of tallow candles, and the
nine parts of speech?
They strolled on the boulevard till six o’clock, and then ascended the
shining staircase of a restaurant on the Boulevard Poissonnier, where
Eleanor saw herself reflected in so many mirrors that she was almost
bewildered by the repetition of her own auburn hair and white bonnet.
The long saloons were filled with eager diners, who looked up from
their knives and forks as the English girl went by.
“We dine à la carte here,” her father whispered: “this is a fête day,
and I mean to give you a first-class dinner.”
Mr. Vane found a vacant table in an open window. The house was at
a corner of the boulevard, and this window looked down the crowded
thoroughfare towards the Madeleine. Eleanor exclaimed once more as the
prospect burst upon her, and she saw all the boulevard with its gay
splendour, spread out, as it were, at her feet; but her father was too
busy with the waiter and the _carte_ to observe her manifestation of
delight.
Mr. Vane was an epicure, and prided himself upon his talent for
ordering a dinner. There was a good deal of _finesse_ displayed by
him now-a-days in the arrangement of a repast; for poverty had taught
him all kinds of little diplomatic contrivances whereby he might, as
it were, mingle economy and extravagance. He ordered such and such
dishes for “one,” intending to divide them with his child. A few Ostend
oysters, some soup—_purée crécy_—a little dish of beef and olives,
a _sole normande_, a quarter of a roast chicken, and a _Charlotte
Plombières_.
It was a long time since Eleanor had eaten one of her father’s
epicurean feasts, and she did ample justice to the dinner, even in
spite of the ever recurrent distractions upon the boulevard below.
The dishes followed each other slowly, for the unresting waiters had
many claimants on their attention, and the sun was low in the cloudless
western sky when Mr. Vane and his daughter left the restaurant. It
was nearly night; the lights began to shine out through a hot white
mist, for the heat had grown more and more oppressive as the day
had declined. The Parisians sitting at little marble tables on the
pavement outside the cafés fanned themselves with their newspapers, and
drank effervescing drinks pertinaciously. It was a night upon which
one should have had nothing more laborious to do than to sit outside
Tortoni’s and eat ices.
The noise and clamour, the oppressive heat, the bustle and confusion
of the people rushing to the theatres, made Eleanor’s head ache. One
cannot go on being unutterably happy for ever, and perhaps the day’s
excitement had been almost too much for this young school-girl. She
had walked long distances already upon the burning asphalte of the
wonderful city, and she was beginning to be tired. Mr. Vane never
thought of this: he had been accustomed to walk about day after day,
and sometimes all day—for what should a lonely Englishman do in Paris
but walk about?—and he forgot that the fatigue might be too much for
his daughter. He walked on, therefore, with Eleanor still clinging
to his arm; past the Ambigu, beyond the Barrière St. Antoine; and
still the long lamplit boulevard stretched before them, away into
immeasurable distance, as it appeared to Miss Vane.
The hot, white mist seemed to grow denser as the evening advanced; the
red sun blazed and flashed on every available scrap of crystal; the
gas-lamps, newly illumined, strove against that setting sun. It was
all light, and heat, and noise, and confusion, Eleanor thought, upon
the boulevard. Very splendid, of course, but rather bewildering. She
would have been glad to sit down to rest upon one of the benches on the
edge of the pavement; but, as her father did not seem tired, she still
walked on, patiently and uncomplainingly.
“We’ll go into one of the theatres presently, Nelly,” Mr. Vane said.
He had recovered his spirits under the invigorating influence of a
bottle of Clicquot’s champagne, and the gloomy shadow had quite passed
away from his face.
It was nearly nine o’clock, and quite dark, when they turned towards
the Madeleine again, on the way back to the Porte St. Martin. They had
not gone far when Mr. Vane stopped, suddenly confronted by two young
men who were walking arm-in-arm.
“Hulloa!” one of them cried, in French, “you have served us a handsome
trick, my friend.”
George Vane stammered out an apology. His daughter had returned from
school, he said, and he wished to show her Paris.
“Yes, yes,” the Frenchman answered; “but we were aware of
Mademoiselle’s intended return, and it was arranged in spite of that
that we should meet this evening: was it not so, my friend?”
He asked this question of his companion, who nodded rather sulkily, and
turned away with a half weary, half dissatisfied air.
Eleanor looked at the two young men, wondering what new friends her
father had made in Paris. The Frenchman was short and stout, and had
a fair florid complexion. Eleanor was able to see this, for his face
was turned to the lamplight, as he talked to her father. He was rather
showily dressed, in fashionably cut clothes, that looked glossy and
new, and he twirled a short silver-headed cane in his gloved hands.
The other man was tall and slender, shabbily and untidily dressed in
garments of a rakish cut, that hung loosely about him. His hands were
thrust deep in the pockets of his loose overcoat, and his hat was
slouched over his forehead.
Eleanor Vane only caught one passing glimpse of this man’s face as he
turned sulkily away; but she could see the glimmer of a pair of bright,
restless, black eyes under the shadow of his hat, and the fierce
curve of a very thick black moustache, which completely concealed his
mouth. He had turned, not towards the lighted shop windows, but to the
roadway; and he was amusing himself by kicking a wisp of straw to and
fro upon the sharp edge of the curb-stone, with the toe of his shabby
patent leather boot.
The Frenchman drew George Vane aside, and talked to him for a few
minutes in an undertone, gesticulating after the manner of his nation,
and evidently persuading the old man to do something or other which he
shrank from doing. But Mr. Vane’s resistance seemed of a very feeble
nature, and the Frenchman conquered, for his last shrug was one of
triumph. Eleanor, standing by herself, midway between the sulky young
man upon the curb-stone and her father and the Frenchman, perceived
this. She looked up anxiously as Mr. Vane returned to her.
“My love,” the old man said, hesitatingly, nervously trifling with his
glove as he spoke, “do you think you could find your way back to the
Rue de l’Archevêque?”
“Find my way back? Why, papa?”
“I—I mean, could you find your way back a—alone?”
“Alone!”
She echoed the word with a look of mingled disappointment and alarm.
“Alone, papa?”
But here the Frenchman interposed eagerly.
Nothing was more simple, he said: Mademoiselle had only to walk
straight on to the Rue Neuve des Petits Champs; she would then, and
then——
He ran off into a string of rapid directions, not one of which Eleanor
heard. She was looking at her father, Heaven knows how earnestly, for
she saw in his face, in his nervous hesitating manner, something that
told her there was some sinister influence to be dreaded from this
garrulous, eager Frenchman and his silent companion.
“Papa, dear,” she said, in a low, almost imploring voice, “do you
really wish me to go back alone?”
“Why—why, you see, my dear, I—I don’t exactly wish—but there are
appointments which, as Monsieur remarks, not—not unreasonably, should
not be broken, and——”
“You will stay out late, papa, perhaps, with these gentlemen——”
“No, no, my love, no, no; for an hour or so; not longer.”
Eleanor looked up sorrowfully in the face she loved so dearly. Vague
memories of grief and trouble in the past, mingled with as vague a
presentiment of trouble in the future, filled her mind: she clasped her
hands imploringly upon her father’s arm.
“Come home with me to-night, papa,” she said. “It is my first night at
home. Come back, and we’ll play _écarté_ as we used at Chelsea. You
remember teaching me.”
Mr. Vane started, as if the tender grasp upon his arm had stung into
his flesh.
“I—I can’t come home to-night, Eleanor. At least, not for an hour.
There—there are social laws, my dear, which must be observed; and
when—when a gentleman is asked to give another his revenge, he—can’t
refuse. I’ll put you into a carriage, my darling, if you think you
can’t find your way.”
“Oh, no, papa, dear, it’s not that. I can find my way.”
The Frenchman here interposed for the second time with some
complimentary speech, addressed to Eleanor, who very imperfectly
understood its purport. He had slipped his arm through that of George
Vane, taking possession of him in a manner by that friendly gesture. In
all this time the other man had never stirred from his sulky attitude
upon the edge of the pavement.
Mr. Vane took his daughter’s hand.
“I am sorry I can’t take you to the theatre, my love,” he said, in the
same hesitating manner. “I—I regret that you should be disappointed,
but—good night, my dear, good night. I shall be home by eleven; but
don’t sit up for me; don’t on any account sit up.”
He pressed her hand, held it for a few moments, as if scarcely knowing
what to do with it, and then suddenly dropped it with something of a
guilty manner.
The Frenchman, with his arm still linked in the old man’s, wheeled
sharply round, and walked away towards the Barrière Saint Antoine,
leaving Eleanor standing alone amongst the passers-by, looking
wistfully after her father. The other man looked up as the Frenchman
led Mr. Vane away, and slowly followed them, with his head bent and his
hands in his pockets. Eleanor stood quite still, watching her father’s
erect figure, the short Frenchman, and the tall, sulky stranger
following the other two, until all three were out of sight. Then
turning homewards with a half-repressed sigh, she looked sadly down the
long lamplit vista. It was very beautiful, very gay, brilliant, and
splendid; but all that splendour and gaiety made her feel only the more
lonely, now that her father had left her. The first day, the natal day
of her new life, seemed to end very drearily, after all.