GILBERT MONCKTON.
Eleanor Vane was not to go down to Berkshire alone. The beginning of
her new life, that terrible beginning which she so much dreaded, was to
make her acquainted with new people.
She had received the following communication from Mrs. Darrell:—
“Hazlewood, April 3rd, 1855.
“Madam,—As it would of course be very improper for a young lady of
your age to travel alone, I have provided against that contingency.
“My friend Mr. Monckton has kindly promised to meet you in the
first-class waiting-room at the Great Western Station, at three
o’clock on Monday afternoon. He will drive you here on his way home.
“I am, Madam,
“Yours faithfully,
“ELLEN DARRELL.”
Eliza Picirillo worked harder upon a Monday than on any other day in
the week. She left the Pilasters immediately after an early breakfast,
to go upon a wearisome round amongst her pupils. Richard was in the
thick of the preparations for a new piece, so poor Eleanor was obliged
to go alone to the station, to meet the stranger who had been appointed
as her escort to Hazlewood.
She quite broke down when the time came for bidding farewell to her old
friend. She clung about the Signora, weeping unrestrainedly for the
first time.
“I can’t bear to go away from you,” she sobbed piteously; “I can’t bear
to say good-bye.”
“But, my love,” the music-mistress answered, tenderly, “if you don’t
really wish to go——”
“No, no, it isn’t that. I feel that I must go—that——”
“And I, too, my dear girl. I believe you would do very wrong in
refusing this situation. But, Nelly, my darling, remember that this is
only an experiment. You may not be happy at Hazlewood. In that case you
will not fail to remember that your home is always here; that, come to
it when you may, you will never fail to find a loving welcome; and that
the friends you leave behind you here are friends whom nothing upon
earth can ever estrange from you. Remember this, Eleanor.”
“Yes, yes, dear, dear Signora.”
“If I could have gone with her to the station, I shouldn’t have cared
so much,” Richard murmured, despondingly; “but the laws of Spavin and
Cromshaw are as the laws of Draco. If I don’t get on with the Swiss
châlet and moonlit Alpine peaks, the new piece can’t come out on
Monday.”
So poor Eleanor went to the station alone, and was overcharged by the
cabman who carried the two trunks which Richard had neatly addressed to
Miss Vincent, Hazlewood, Berks.
She was received by a civil porter, who took charge of her luggage
while she went to the waiting-room to look for the stranger who was to
be her escort.
She was no more a coquette than she had been nearly two years before
when she travelled alone between London and Paris, and she was prepared
to accept the services of this stranger quite as frankly as she had
accepted the care and protection of the elderly gentleman who had taken
charge of her upon that occasion.
But how was she to recognize the stranger? She could not walk up to
every gentleman in the waiting-room, to ask him if he were Mr. Monckton.
She had in almost all her wanderings travelled in second-class
carriages, and waited in second-class waiting-rooms. She shrank back,
therefore, rather timidly upon the threshold of the capacious carpeted
saloon, and looked a little nervously at the occupants of that gorgeous
chamber. There was a group of ladies near the fireplace, and there were
three gentlemen in different parts of the room. One of these gentlemen
was a little man with grey hair and a red face; the other was very
young and very sandy; the third was a tall man of about forty, with
close-cut black hair, and a square massive face and head—not exactly a
handsome face, perhaps, but a countenance not easily to be overlooked.
This tall man was standing near one of the windows, reading a
newspaper. He looked up as Eleanor pushed open the swinging door.
“I wonder which of them is Mr. Monckton,” she thought. “Not that
fidgety young man with the red hair, I hope.”
While she still stood doubtfully upon the threshold, hesitating what
to do—she little knew what a pretty picture she made in that timid,
fluttering attitude—the tall man threw down his newspaper upon the sofa
beside him, and walked across the room to where she stood.
“Miss Vincent, I believe?” he said.
Eleanor blushed at the sound of that false name, and then bent her head
in reply to the question. She could not say yes. She could not fall
into this disagreeable falsehood all at once.
“I am Mrs. Darrell’s friend and legal adviser, Mr. Monckton,” the
gentleman said, “and I shall be very happy to perform the duty she has
entrusted to me. We are in very good time, Miss Vincent. I know that
young ladies are generally _ultra_-punctual upon these occasions; and I
came very early in order to anticipate you, if possible.”
Eleanor did not speak. She was looking furtively at the face of Mrs.
Darrell’s friend and legal adviser. A good and wise adviser, Miss
Vane thought: for the face, not strictly handsome, seemed to bear in
its every feature the stamp of three qualities—goodness, wisdom, and
strength.
“I am sure he is very good,” she thought; “but I would not like to
offend him for the world, for though he looks so kind now, I know he
must be terrible when he’s angry.”
She looked almost fearfully at the strongly-marked black eyebrows,
thinking what a stormy darkness must overshadow the massive face when
they contracted over the grave, brown eyes—serious and earnest eyes,
but with a latent fire lurking somewhere in their calm depths, Eleanor
thought.
The girl’s mind rambled on thus while she stood by the stranger’s side
in the sunlit window. Already the blackness of her new life was broken
by this prominent figure standing boldly out upon its very threshold.
Already she was learning to be interested in new people.
“He isn’t a bit like a lawyer,” she thought; “I fancied lawyers were
always shabby old men, with blue bags. The men who used to come to
Chelsea after papa were always nasty disagreeable men, with papers
about the Queen and Richard Roe.”
Mr. Monckton looked thoughtfully down at the girl by his side. There
was a vein of silent poetry, and there were dim glimpses of artistic
feeling hidden somewhere in the nature of this man, very far below
the hard, business-like exterior which he presented to the world. He
felt a quiet pleasure in looking at Eleanor’s young beauty. It was
her youthfulness, perhaps, her almost childlike innocence, which made
her greatest charm. Her face was not that of a common beauty: her
aquiline nose, grey eyes, and firmly-moulded mouth had a certain air of
queenliness very rarely to be seen; but the youth of the soul shining
out of the clear eyes was visible in every glance, in every change of
expression.
“Do you know much of Berkshire, Miss Vincent?” the lawyer asked,
presently.
“Oh, no, I have never been there.”
“You are very young, and I dare say have never left home before?”
Mr. Monckton said. He was wondering that no relative or friend had
accompanied the girl to the station.
“I have been at school,” Eleanor answered; “but I have never been away
from home before—to—to get my own living.”
“I thought not. Your papa and mamma must be very sorry to lose you.”
“I have neither father nor mother.”
“Indeed!” said Mr. Monckton; “that’s strange.”
Then after a pause he said, in a low voice:
“I think the young lady you are going to will like you all the better
for that.”
“Why?” Eleanor asked involuntarily.
“Because she has never known either father or mother.”
“Poor girl!” murmured Eleanor; “they are both dead, then?”
The lawyer did not answer this question. He was so far professional,
even in his conversation with Miss Vane, that he asked a great many
more questions than he answered.
“Do you like going to Hazlewood, Miss Vincent?” he said, by-and-by,
rather abruptly.
“Not very much.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am leaving very dear friends to go to——”
“Strangers, who may ill-treat you, eh?” muttered Mr. Monckton. “You
need have no apprehension of that sort of thing, I assure you. Miss
Vincent. Mrs. Darrell is rather rigid in her ideas of life; she has
had her disappointments, poor soul, and you must be patient with her:
but Laura Mason, the young lady who is to be your companion, is the
gentlest and most affectionate girl in Christendom, I should think.
She is a sort of ward of mine, and her future life is in my hands; a
very heavy responsibility, Miss Vincent; she will have plenty of money
by-and-by—houses, and horses, and carriages, and servants, and all
the outer paraphernalia of happiness: but Heaven knows if she will be
happy, poor girl! She has never known either mother or father. She has
lived with all manner of respectable matrons, who have promised to do
a mother’s duty to her, and have tried to do it, I dare say; but she
has never had a mother, Miss Vincent. I am always sorry for her when I
think of that.”
The lawyer sighed heavily, and his thoughts seemed to wander away from
the young lady in his charge. He still stood at the window, looking out
at the bustle on the platform, but not seeing it, I think, and took no
further notice of Eleanor until the bell rang for the starting of the
train.
“Come, Miss Vincent,” he said, rousing himself suddenly from his
reverie; “I have forgotten all about your ticket. I’ll put you into a
carriage, and then send a porter for it.”
Mr. Monckton scarcely spoke to his companion half-a-dozen times during
the brief journey to Slough. He sat with a newspaper before him, but
Eleanor noticed that he never turned its leaves, and once, when she
caught a glimpse of the lawyer’s face, she saw that it wore the same
gloomy and abstracted expression that she had observed upon it as Mr.
Monckton stood in the window of the waiting-room.
“He must be very fond of his ward,” she thought, “or he could never be
so sorry because she has no mother. I thought lawyers were hard, cruel
men, who cared for nothing in the world. I always used to fancy my
sister Hortensia ought to have been a lawyer.”
By-and-by, as they drew very near to the station, Mr. Monckton dropped
his newspaper with another sigh, and turning to Eleanor, said, in a
low, confidential voice:
“I hope you will be very good to Laura Mason, Miss Vincent. Remember
that she stands quite alone in the world: and that however friendless,
however desolate you may be—I say this because you tell me you are an
orphan—you can never be so friendless or so desolate as she is.”