HORTENSIA BANNISTER HOLDS OUT A HELPING HAND.
Signora Picirillo was very well contented with her morning’s work. She
had obtained Eleanor’s consent to a speedy departure from Paris; that
was the grand point. Once away from the scene of George Vane’s death,
the young girl’s sunshiny nature would reassert itself, and little by
little the great grief would be forgotten.
In all this dreary period of sickness and misery the good
music-mistress had grown to love Mr. Vane’s daughter even more than
she had loved her long ago, when Eleanor’s childish fingers had first
stumbled slowly over the keys of the pianoforte, in a feeble endeavour
to master the grand difficulties of Haydn’s “Surprise.”
The widow’s life had been a very sorrowful one. Perhaps its most
tranquil period had come within the last ten years. It was ten years
since, her Italian husband and her children having one by one died,
she had found herself alone in the world, with a gaunt, long-legged
hobbledehoy of eighteen, her dead sister’s orphan son, for her sole
protector.
This long-legged hobbledehoy was Richard Thornton, the only child of
the Signora’s pretty younger sister and a dashing cavalry officer, who
had married a penniless and obscure girl for the love of her pretty
face, and had died within a couple of years of his marriage, leaving
his widow to drag out the remnant of a fretful, helpless life in
dependence upon her sister. The Signora had been used to carrying other
people’s burthens from a very early age. She was the eldest child of
a clever violinist, for twenty years leader of the orchestra in one
of the principal London theatres; and from babyhood she had been a
brave-hearted self-reliant creature. When her sister died, therefore,
and, with the last words upon her pale, tremulous lips, prayed the
Signora to protect the helpless boy, Richard Thornton, Eliza Picirillo
freely accepted the charge, and promised to perform it faithfully. The
poor faded beauty died with a smile upon her face, and when Signor
Picirillo—who was a teacher of languages at a few suburban schools,
and a lazy good-tempered nonentity—came home that evening, he found
that there was to be another member of his domestic circle, and another
mouth to be fed henceforth.
The Signora’s cruse of oil held out bravely, in spite of the demands
upon it; and by-and-by, when the honest-hearted music-mistress would
otherwise have been terribly desolate, there was Richard, a tall lad,
ready to stand by her sturdily in the battle of life, and as devoted to
her as the most affectionate of sons. The boy had shown considerable
talent at a very early age, but it was a versatile kind of talent,
which did not promise ever to burst forth into the grander gift of
genius. His aunt taught him music, and he taught himself painting,
intending to be something in the way of Maclise or Turner, by-and-by,
and scraping together some of the shillings he earned with his violin
in order to attend a dingy academy somewhere in Bloomsbury.
But the great historical subjects after Maclise—“The Death of the
Bloody Boar at Bosworth,” a grand battle scene, with a lurid sunset
in the background, and Richmond’s face and armour all ablaze with
crimson, lake and gamboge, from the flaming reflection of the skies,
was the _magnum opus_ which poor Dick fondly hoped to see in the Royal
Academy—were not very saleable; and the Turneresque landscapes, nymphs
and ruins, dryads and satyrs, dimly visible through yellow mist and
rose-coloured fog, cost a great deal of time and money to produce, and
were not easily convertible into ready cash. So when Richard had gone
the usual weary round amongst the picture-dealers, and had endured
the usual heart-burnings and agonies which wait upon ambitious youth,
he was glad to accept the brush flung aside by a scene-painter at the
Phœnix, where Dick received a scanty salary as second violinist; a
salary which was doubled when the young man practised the double duty
of second violin and assistant scene-painter.
These simple people were the only friends of Eleanor Vane’s childhood.
They were ready to accept the responsibility of her future welfare now,
when her rich sister would have sent her into the world, lonely and
helpless, to sink to the abject drudgery which well-to-do people speak
so complacently of, when they recommend their poor relations to get an
honest living and trouble them no longer.
Richard Thornton was enraptured at the idea of taking this beautiful
younger sister home with him, although that idea involved the necessity
of working for her till she was able to do something for herself.
“Nothing could be better for us than all this sad business, aunty,”
the scene-painter said, when he called in the Rue de l’Archevêque, and
found his aunt alone in the little sitting-room. Eleanor was lying down
after the morning’s excitement, while her friend packed her slender
wardrobe and made all preparations for departure. “Nothing could be
better for us,” the young man said. “Why, Nell’s golden hair will light
up the Pilasters with perpetual sunshine, and I shall always have a
model for my subject-pictures. Then what a companion she’ll be for
you in the long dreary nights, when I am away at the Phœnix, and how
capitally she’ll be able to help you with your pupils; for, of course,
she plays and sings like anything by this time.”
“But she wants to go back to the people at the Brixton school, Dick.”
“But, Lord bless you, aunty, we won’t let her go,” cried Mr. Thornton;
“we’ll make a prima donna or a leading tragedy-actress, or something of
that kind, of her. We’ll teach her to make a hundred pounds a week out
of her white arms, and her flashing grey eyes. How beautiful she looked
last night when she was on her knees, vowing vengeance against that
scoundrel who won her father’s money. How splendid she looked, with her
yellow hair all streaming over her shoulders, and her eyes flashing
sparks of fire! Wouldn’t she bring the house down, if she did that at
the Phœnix? She’s a wonderful girl, aunty; the sort of girl to set
all London in a blaze some day, somehow or other. Miss Bennett’s and
Brixton, indeed!” cried Richard, snapping his fingers contemptuously;
“you could no more chain that girl down to a governess’s drudgery,
than you could make a flash of forked lightning do duty for a farthing
candle.”
So Eleanor Vane went back to England with her friends. They chose the
Dieppe and Newhaven route for its economy; and over the same sunlit
landscape upon which she had gazed so rapturously less than a month
ago, Eleanor’s eyes wandered now wearily and sadly, seeing nothing but
desolation wherever they looked. She recognized swelling hills and
broad patches of low verdure, winding glimpses of the river, far-away
villages glimmering whitely in the distance, and she wondered at the
change in herself which made all these things so different to her. What
a child she had been a month ago; what a reckless, happy child, looking
forward in foolish certainty to a long life with her father; ignorant
of all sorrows except the petty troubles she had shared with him; ready
to hope for anything in the boundless future; with a whole fairyland of
pleasure and delight spreading out before her eager feet!
Now she was a woman, alone in a horrible desert, over whose dreary
sands she must toil slowly to the end she hoped to reach.
She sat back in a corner of the second-class carriage, with her face
hidden in a veil, and with the dog Fido curled up in her lap. Her
father had been fond of the faithful creature, she remembered.
It was early in the grey bleakness of a September morning when the cab,
carrying Eleanor and her friends, rattled under an archway leading
out of Dudley Street, Bloomsbury, into the queer little retreat
called the Pilasters. The grooms were already at work in the mews,
and the neighbourhood was enlivened by that hissing noise with which
horses are generally beguiled during the trials of the equine toilet.
The chimney-sweep had left his abode and was whooping dismally in
Northumberland Square. Life began early in the Pilasters, and already
the inmates of many houses were astir, and the sharp voices of mothers
clamoured denunciations on the elder daughters who acted as unsalaried
nursemaids to the younger branches of the family.
The place popularly known as the Pilasters is one of the queerest nooks
in London. It consists of a row of tumble-down houses, fronted by a
dilapidated colonnade, and filled with busy life from cellar to attic.
But I do not believe that the inhabitants of the Pilasters are guilty
of nefarious practices, or that vice and crime find a hiding-place in
the cellars below the colonnade. The retreat stands by itself, hidden
between two highly respectable middle-class streets, whose inhabitants
would scarcely tolerate Alsatian habits or Field Lane proclivities in
their near neighbours. Small tradesmen find a home in the Pilasters,
and emerge thence to work for the best families in Dudley Street and
“the Squares.”
Here, amongst small tailors and mantua-makers, cheap eating-houses,
shabby beer-shops, chimney-sweeps and mangles, Signora Picirillo had
taken up her abode, bringing her faded goods and chattels, the remnants
of brighter times, to furnish the first-floor over a shoemaker’s shop.
I am afraid the shoemaker was oftener employed in mending old shoes
than in making new ones, but the Signora was fain to ignore that fact,
and to be contented with her good fortune in having found a very cheap
lodging in a central neighbourhood.
This was a shabbier place than any that Eleanor Vane had ever lived in,
but she showed no distaste for its simple arrangements. The Signora’s
hopes were realized by-and-by. At first the girl sat all day in a
despondent attitude, with the French poodle in her lap, her head
drooping on her breast, her eyes fixed on vacancy, her whole manner
giving evidence of an all-absorbing grief which was nearly akin to
despair. She went to Brixton very soon after her return to England;
but here a cruel disappointment awaited her. The Misses Bennett heard
her sorrowful story with pitiful murmurs of regret and compassion; but
they had engaged a young person as junior teacher, and could do nothing
to help her. She returned to the Pilasters, looking the image of pale
despair; but the Signora and Richard both declared to her that nothing
could be happier for them than her consenting to remain with them.
So it seemed very much as if the Pilasters was to be Eleanor Vane’s
permanent abode. The neighbours had stared at her a great deal at
first, admiring her pale face and flowing hair, and pitying her because
of her black frock; but they were familiar with her now, and gave her
good day in a friendly manner as she passed under the shadow of the
colonnade on her way out or in.
Little by little the air of dull despondency gave way before this young
woman’s earnest desire to be of use to the people who were so kind to
her. She played remarkably well, for she had had plenty of the drudgery
of pianoforte-playing at the Brixton school, and she was able to take
some of the Signora’s pupils off her hands. She sang, too, in a rich
contralto, which promised to be powerful and beautiful by-and-by; and
she practised the ballads in the old operas which the Signora kept,
neatly bound, but yellow with age, in her feeble music-stand.
As her friends had hoped, her sunshiny nature reasserted itself. The
outer evidences of her great sorrow gradually passed away, though the
memory of her loss still filled her mind; the image of her father, and
the thought of that father’s unhappy death, were still for ever present
with her. It was not in her nature to be long reserved or unsocial; and
by-and-by, when she had been nearly six months in her new home, and the
London sparrows were chirping in the bright spring sunshine about the
mews and under the colonnade, Miss Vane began to sing at her work as
she flitted to and fro in the low rooms, dusting the grand pianoforte
and the old china—touching up the frame of Richard’s unsaleable
picture, the flaring battle of Bosworth, which illuminated one side of
the room. Wherever she went the faithful French poodle ran frisking by
her side; whatever sunshine could find its way into the dusky London
chamber seemed to concentrate itself about her golden head. Gaiety,
life, and brightness went with her up and down the dark staircase—in
and out of the dingy rooms. Her youth and beauty turned the shabby
lodgings into a fairy palace, as it seemed to Richard and his aunt.
When she sat down and ran her agile fingers over the piano, dashing
into fantasias and scenas, sparkling and rippling with joyous treble
meanderings among the upper notes, the old Clementi grew young again
beneath her touch, the worn-out strings were revivified by the wondrous
magnetism of her youth and vitality. The flute-like treble trills and
triplets seemed like the joyous chirpings of a hundred birds. The
music-mistress and the scene-painter used to sit and watch her as she
played; their admiring eyes followed her as she flitted to and fro, and
they wondered at her grace and beauty.
She had her father’s aristocratic elegance, her father’s power of
fascination. All the dangerous gifts which had been so fatal to George
Vane, were inherited by his youngest daughter. Like him, a creature
of impulse, spontaneous, sanguine, volatile, she influenced other
people by the force of her own superabundant vitality. In her bright
hopefulness she made an atmosphere of hope in which other people grew
hopeful. The dullest rejoiced in her joyous vivacity, her unconscious
loveliness. Yes, perhaps Eleanor Vane’s greatest charm lay in her
utter ignorance of the fact that she was charming. In the three years’
drudgery of a boarding-school she had never learned the power of her
own fascination. She knew that people loved her, and she was grateful
to them for their affection; but she had never discovered that it was
by some wondrous magnetic attraction inherent in herself that she
obtained so much love and devotion.
Nobody had ever taken the trouble to tell her that she was beautiful.
She had generally worn shabby frocks, and the rippling golden hair had
not very often been smooth; so perhaps the school-girls at Brixton
scarcely knew how lovely their companion was. The delicate aquiline
profile, the flashing grey eyes, pale face, red lips, and amber hair,
were counterbalanced by the silk dresses and lace furbelows of young
ladies, whose wealthy fathers paid full price for their education.
Poverty learns its place in the little world of a young ladies’
boarding-school quite as surely as in the larger world beyond the
garden wall which bounds that establishment. But Eleanor had held
her own at the Misses Bennett’s seminary, by some mysterious power
against which her richer companions had in vain rebelled. Her frank
acknowledgment of her poverty, coupled with the fact of her father’s
former wealth and grandeur, perhaps enabled her to do this. If she
wore shabby frocks, she looked more aristocratic in her shabbiness
than the other young ladies in their stiff silks and prim finery. They
recognized this fact, they acknowledged something in their playfellow
which lifted her above themselves, and the half-boarder dealt out
patronage and regal condescensions to the most remunerative pupils in
the school. She reigned by reason of her unacknowledged beauty, and
that divine something, dimly recognized by all about her, but as yet
wholly undeveloped. The school-girl was clever, brilliant, fascinating,
but it was yet to be discovered what the woman would be. It was yet
to be discovered whether these budding qualities would develope into
the many flowers of a bright and versatile mind, or burst forth
suddenly and mysteriously into that rare tropical blossom, that mental
once-in-a-century-flourishing aloe, which men call Genius. The good
music-mistress watched her young protégée with love and wonder, not
unalloyed by fear. What was she to do with this strange and beautiful
bird which she had brought home to her nest? Would it be right to
fetter this bright spirit for ever? Was it fair to immure all this
joyous loveliness in that shabby lodging; to stifle such superabundant
vitality in the close atmosphere of a dull and monotonous existence?
The faithful creature had been accustomed to consider others, and she
thought of this seriously and constantly. Eleanor was contented and
happy. She was earning money now by giving lessons here and there, and
she contributed to the family purse. The days slipped by very rapidly,
as it seemed, in that peaceful monotony. Miss Vane’s frocks appeared
to grow shorter and shorter as the young lady sprang up into bright
womanhood. She was nearly seventeen now, and had been more than a year
and a half living under the shadow of the Bloomsbury Pilasters. Richard
and his aunt consulted together as to what her future life ought to be;
but they never came nearer to any conclusion.
“It’s all very well to talk of her going away from us, you know,
aunty,” the scene-painter said; “but what are we to do without her?
All the sunshine and poetry of our lives will go away with her when
she leaves us! Besides! what is she to be? A governess? Bah! who would
doom her to that ladylike imagery? An actress? No, aunty carissima, I
should never like to see that bright young beauty behind the glare of
the foot-lights. I think I’d rather she should live here for ever and
ever, than that her nature should ever be vulgarized by contact with
the world. Let us keep her, aunty; she doesn’t want to leave us. Those
who have any actual claim upon her have abandoned her. She came across
my pathway like some wandering homeless angel. I shall never forget her
face when I first saw it on the lamplit boulevard, and recognized the
little girl I had known three years before in the fair-haired young
beauty of fifteen. She doesn’t want to go away. Why should you talk of
her leaving us, aunty dear?”
Signora Picirillo shrugged her shoulders with a sigh.
“Heaven knows I have no wish to part with her, Dick,” she said; “but
we ought to do what’s right for her sake. This is no place for George
Vane’s daughter.”
But while the music-mistress and her nephew were speculating and
theorizing upon the future of their protégée, practical Mrs.
Bannister was contemplating the infliction of a death-blow which was
to shatter the happiness of the humble Bloomsbury circle with one
merciless stroke. Early in the bleak March of 1855, Eleanor received
a coldly-worded epistle from her half-sister, to the effect that an
opportunity had now arisen for her advancement in life; and that if
she wished ever to attain a _respectable_ position—the adjective was
mercilessly underlined—she would do well to avail herself of it. For
further information and advice she was to call early the next morning
in Hyde Park Gardens. Miss Vane would fain have left this letter
unanswered, and at first stoutly refused to obey Mrs. Bannister’s
summons.
“What do I want with her condescension and patronage?” she said,
indignantly. “Does she think that I forget the cruel letter she wrote
to my father; or that I forgive her for its heartless insolence?
Let her keep her favours for those who solicit them. I want nothing
from her. I only want to be left in peace with the friends I love.
Do you wish to get rid of me, Signora, that you persuade me to dance
attendance upon Mrs. Bannister?”
It was very hard for poor Signora Picirillo to be compelled to urge
the child’s acceptance of the hand so coldly extended to her, but
the good creature felt that it was her duty to do so, and Miss Vane
loved her protectress far too dearly to persist in opposing her.
She went, therefore, early the next morning to her half-sister’s
house at Bayswater, where the spacious rooms seemed doubly spacious
when compared with the little sitting-room over the colonnade,
the sitting-room which was more than half filled by Clementi’s
old-fashioned piano. Here the gorgeous Erard’s grand, in a case of
carved walnut wood and ebony, and with all manner of newfangled
improvements, was only an oasis upon the great desert of velvet piles.
Hortensia Bannister was pleased to be very gracious to her half-sister.
Perhaps she was all the more so because Eleanor made no pretence of
affection for her. This cold, hard-natured woman would have been
suspicious of mercenary motives lurking beneath any demonstration of
sisterly love.
“I am glad to hear you have been learning to get your own living,
Eleanor,” she said, “and above all, that you have been cultivating
your talent for the piano. I have not forgotten you, you will find.
The people with whom you have been living sent me their address
when they brought you from Paris, and I knew where to find you when
any opportunity should present itself for your advancement. This
opportunity has now presented itself. My old acquaintance, Mrs.
Darrell, the niece of your father’s friend, Maurice de Crespigny,
who is still living, though very old and infirm, has written to me
saying that she requires a young person who would act as companion and
musical governess to a lady who lives with her. This young lady is no
relation of Mrs. Darrell’s, but is a kind of ward or pupil, I believe.
Your youth, in this instance, Eleanor, happens to be an advantage, as
the young lady requires a companion of her own age. You will receive
a moderate salary, and will be treated as a member of the family. Let
me hear you play, by the bye, in order that I may be able to speak
positively as to your qualifications.”
Eleanor Vane sat down to the piano. The strings of the Erard vibrated
under her touch. She was almost frightened at the grand tones that came
out of the instrument as she dashed over the keys. She played very
brilliantly, however, and her sister condescended to say so.
“I think I may conscientiously give a good account of your playing,”
she said. “You sing, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Very well, then; I think you may consider the engagement a settled
thing. There is only one question to arrange. Of course you must be
aware that the position which your father occupied was once a very
elevated one. Mrs. Darrell and her sisters knew your father in his most
prosperous days, and lost sight of him before he became poor. They know
nothing of his second marriage, or of your birth. His most intimate
friend was Mr. de Crespigny, the uncle of the lady whose house I wish
you to enter. Under these circumstances you cannot wonder when I tell
you that I should strongly object to Mrs. Darrell’s knowing who you
really are.”
“How do you mean, Hortensia?”
“I mean that I shall recommend you as a young person in whose career I
feel interested. If you go to Hazlewood at all, you must go under an
assumed name.”
“Hortensia!”
“Well!” cried Mrs. Bannister, lifting her handsome black eyebrows.
“I don’t want this situation, and I should hate to take a false name. I
would rather stay with my friends, please. I love them very dearly, and
am very happy with them.”
“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Mrs. Bannister, “what is the use of trying
to do some people a service? Here have I been scheming as to how I
could manage to avail myself of this chance, and now this ungrateful
girl turns round and tells me she doesn’t want the situation. Do you
know what you are refusing, Eleanor Vane? Have you learnt your father’s
habit of pauperism, that you prefer to be a burden upon this penniless
music-teacher and her son, or nephew, or whatever he is, rather than
make an honest effort to get your own living?”
Eleanor started up from the piano: she had been sitting before it until
now, softly fingering the keys, and admiring the beauty of the tones.
She started up, looking at her sister, and blushing indignantly to the
very roots of her auburn hair.
Could this be true? Could she be indeed a burden to the friends she
loved so dearly?
“If you think that, Hortensia,” she said, “if you think I am any burden
to the dear Signora, or Richard, I will take any situation you like,
however hard. I’ll toil night and day, and work my fingers to the bone,
rather than be a trouble or a burden to them any longer.”
She remembered how little she earned by her few pupils. Yes, Hortensia
was no doubt right. She was a burden to those good people who had taken
her to their home in her hour of desolation and misery.
“I’ll take the situation, Hortensia,” she cried. “I’ll take a false
name. I’ll do anything in the world rather than impose upon the
goodness of my friends.”
“Very well,” answered Mrs. Bannister, coldly. “Pray do not let us have
any heroics about it. The situation is a very good one, I can assure
you; and there are many girls who would be glad to snap at such a
chance. I will write to my friend, Mrs. Darrell, and recommend you to
her notice. I can do no more. I cannot, of course, ensure you success;
but Ellen Darrell and I were great friends some years since, and I know
that I have considerable influence with her. I’ll write and tell you
the result of my recommendation.”
Eleanor left Hyde Park Gardens after taking two or three sips of some
pale sherry which her half-sister gave her. The wine seemed of a sorry
vintage, and tasted very much as if the grapes of which it was made had
never seen the sun. Miss Vane was glad to set down her wine-glass and
escape from the cold splendour of her half-sister’s drawing-room.
She walked slowly and sorrowfully back to Bloomsbury. She was to leave
her dear friends there—leave the shabby rooms in which she had been
so happy, and to go out into the bleak world a dependant upon grand
people, so low and humiliated that even her own name must be abandoned
by her before she could enter upon the state of dependence. The
Bohemian sociality of the Pilasters was to be exchanged for the dreary
splendour of a household in which she was to be something a little
above the servants.
But it would be cowardly and selfish to refuse this situation, for no
doubt cruel Mrs. Bannister had spoken the truth. Eleanor began to think
that she had been a burden upon her poor friends.
She was very gloomy and despondent, brooding upon these things; but
through every gloomy thought of the present a darker image loomed,
far away in the black future. This was the image of her vengeance, the
vague and uncertain shadow that had filled her girlish dreams ever
since the great sorrow of her father’s death had fallen upon her.
“If I go to Hazlewood,” she thought, “if I spend my life at Mrs.
Darrell’s, how can I ever hope to find the murderer of my father?”