RECOGNITION.
“I thought Laura was with you,” Mrs. Darrell said, rather sharply, as
she scrutinized Eleanor’s face with no very friendly eyes.
“She was with us until a few minutes ago,” Launcelot answered,
carelessly; “but she was called away to see a milliner or a dressmaker,
or some such important personage in the feminine decorative art line.
I don’t believe that young lady’s soul ever soars above laces and
ribbons, and all those miscellaneous fripperies which women dignify by
the generic title of their ‘things!’”
Mrs. Darrell frowned at her son’s contemptuous allusion to the heiress.
“Laura Mason is a very amiable and accomplished girl,” she said.
The young man shrugged his shoulders, and took up his palette and
brushes.
“Will you settle yourself once more in the Rosalind attitude, Miss
Vincent?” he said. “I suppose our volatile Celia will be back
presently.”
“Will you go and look for her, Launcelot?” interposed Mrs. Darrell; “I
want to speak to Miss Vincent.”
Launcelot Darrell flung down his brushes, and turned suddenly towards
his mother with a look of angry defiance in his face.
“What have you to say to Miss Vincent that you can’t say before me?” he
asked. “What do you mean, mother, by breaking in upon us like this, and
scowling at us as if we were a couple of conspirators?”
Mrs. Darrell drew herself to her fullest height, and looked half
sternly, half contemptuously at her son. His nature, in every quality
weaker and meaner than her own, prompted him to shrink from any
open contest with her. Dearly as she loved this selfish, handsome
scapegrace, there were times in which her better sense revolted against
the weakness of her affection; and at such times Launcelot Darrell was
afraid of his mother.
“I have a great deal to say to Miss Vincent,” the widow answered,
gravely. “If you refuse to leave us together, I have no doubt Miss
Vincent will have the good taste to come elsewhere with me.”
Eleanor looked up, startled by the suppressed passion in the widow’s
tone.
“I will come with you anywhere, Mrs. Darrell,” she said, “if you wish
to speak to me.”
“Come this way, then.”
Mrs. Darrell swept out of the room, and Eleanor followed her, before
the young man had any opportunity for remonstrance. The widow led the
way to the pretty chamber in which Miss Vane slept, and the two women
went in together, Mrs. Darrell shutting the door behind her.
“Miss Vincent,” she said, taking Eleanor’s hand in her own, “I am
going to appeal to you more frankly than one woman often appeals to
another. I might diplomatize and plot against you, but I am not base
enough for that; though, I dare say, I could stoop to a good deal that
is despicable for the sake of my son. And, again, I have so good an
opinion of you that I think candour will be the wiser policy. My son
has asked you to be his wife.”
“Madam,” stammered Eleanor, looking aghast at the pale face, which had
an almost tragic aspect in its earnestness.
“Yes, I told you just now that I could do despicable things for my
son’s sake. I was passing the door while Launcelot was talking to you.
The door was ajar, you know. I heard a few words, enough to tell me
the subject upon which he was speaking; and I stopped to hear more. I
listened, Miss Vincent. It was very contemptible, was it not?”
Eleanor was silent. She stood before the widow, looking down upon the
ground. The colour came and went in her face; she was agitated and
confused by what had happened; but in all her agitation and confusion
the memory of that sudden fancy that had flashed across her brain while
Launcelot Darrell talked to her was uppermost in her mind.
“You despise me for my conduct, Miss Vincent,” said Mrs. Darrell,
reading the meaning of the girl’s silence; “but the day may come in
which you may experience a mother’s anguish; the brooding care, the
unceasing watchfulness, the feverish, all-devouring anxiety which only
a mother can feel. If that day ever comes, you will be able to forgive
me; to think mercifully of me. I do not complain of my son; I never
have complained of him. But I suffer; I suffer. I see him holding no
place in the world, despised by prosperous and successful men, with a
wasted youth behind him and a blank future before. I love him; but I am
not deceived in him. The day for all deception is past. He will never
be rich or prosperous by any act of his own. There are but two chances
for him: the chance of inheriting my uncle’s fortune, or the chance of
marrying a rich woman. I speak very frankly, you see, Miss Vincent, and
I expect equal candour from you. Do you love my son?”
“Madam—Mrs. Darrell—I——”
“You would not answer him just now; I ask you to answer me. The
prosperity of his future life hangs upon your reply. I know that he
_might_ marry a girl who does love him; and who can bring him a fortune
which will place him in the position he ought to occupy. Be generous,
Miss Vincent. I ask you to tell me the truth. That is the least you can
do. Do you love my son, Launcelot Darrell? Do you love him with your
whole heart and soul, as I love him?”
Eleanor lifted her head suddenly, and looked full in the widow’s face.
“No, madam,” she answered, proudly, “I do not.”
“Thank God for that! Even if you had loved him, I would not have shrunk
from asking you to sacrifice yourself for his happiness. As it is, I
appeal to you without hesitation. Will you leave this place; will you
leave me my son, with the chance of planning his future after my own
fashion?”
“I will, Mrs. Darrell,” Eleanor said, earnestly. “I thought, perhaps,
till to-day—I may have fancied that I—I mean that I was flattered by
your son’s attention, and perhaps believed I loved him a little,”
the girl murmured, shyly; “but I know now that I have been mistaken.
Perhaps it is the truth and intensity of your love that shows me
the shallowness and falsehood of my own. I remember how I loved my
father,”—her eyes filled with tears as she spoke,—“and, looking back at
my feelings for him, I know that I do not love Mr. Darrell. It will be
much better for me to go away. I shall be sorry to leave Laura—sorry to
leave Hazlewood; for I have been very happy here—too happy perhaps. I
will write to your son, and tell him that I leave this place of my own
free will.”
“Thank you, my dear,” the widow said, warmly; “my son would be very
hard with me if he thought that my influence had been the means of
thwarting any whim of his. I know him well enough to know that this
sentiment, like every other sentiment of his, will not endure for ever.
He will be angry, and offended, and wounded by your departure; but he
will not break his heart, Miss Vincent.”
“Let me go away at once, Mrs. Darrell,” said Eleanor; “it will be
better for me to go at once. I can return to my friends in London. I
have saved some money while I have been with you, and I shall not go
back to them penniless.”
“You are a generous and noble-hearted girl! It shall be my care to
provide you with at least as good a home as you have had here. I am not
selfish enough to forget how much I have asked of you.”
“And you will let me go at once. I would rather not see Laura, or say
good-bye to her; we have grown so fond of each other. I never had a
sister—at least never an affectionate sister—and Laura has been like
one to me. Let me go away quietly without seeing her, Mrs. Darrell; I
can write to her from London to say good-bye.”
“You shall do just as you like, my dear,” the widow answered. “I will
drive you over to Windsor in time for the four o’clock train, and you
will get into town before dark. I must go now and see what my son is
doing. If he should suspect——”
“He shall suspect nothing till I am gone,” said Eleanor. “It is past
one o’clock now, Mrs. Darrell, and I must pack all my things. Will you
keep Laura out of my room, please, for if she came here, she’d guess——?”
“Yes, yes, I’ll go and see—I’ll make all arrangements.”
Mrs. Darrell hurried out of the room, leaving Eleanor to contemplate
the sudden change in her position. The girl dragged one of her trunks
out of a recess in the simply-furnished bedchamber, and, sitting down
upon it in a half-despondent attitude, reflected on the unlooked-for
break in her existence. Once more she was called upon to disunite
herself from the past, and begin life anew.
“Am I never to know any rest?” she thought. “I had grown so accustomed
to this place. I shall be glad to see the Signora and Richard once
more; but Laura, Mr. Monckton,—I wonder whether they will be sorry to
lose me?”
* * * * *
By three o’clock in the afternoon all Eleanor’s preparations were
completed—her trunks packed, and handed over to the factotum of the
Hazlewood establishment, who was to see them safely despatched by
luggage-train after the young lady’s departure. At three o’clock
precisely Miss Vincent took her seat beside Mrs. Darrell in the low
basket-carriage.
Circumstances had conspired to favour the girl’s unnoticed departure
from Hazlewood. Laura Mason had been prostrated by the intense strain
upon her faculties caused by an hour’s interview with her dressmaker,
and had flung herself upon the sofa in the drawing-room, after sopping
up half a pint of eau-de-cologne on her flimsy handkerchief. Worn out
by her exertions, and lulled by the summer heat, the young lady had
fallen into a heavy slumber of two or three hours’ duration.
Launcelot Darrell had left the house almost immediately after the scene
in the painting-room, striding out of the hall without leaving any
intimation as to the direction in which he was going or the probable
hour of his return.
Thus it was that the little pony-carriage drove quietly away from the
gates of Hazlewood; and Eleanor left the house in which she had lived
for upwards of a year without any one caring to question her as to the
cause of her departure.
Very few words were said by either Mrs. Darrell or her companion during
the drive to Windsor. Eleanor was absorbed in gloomy thought. She did
not feel any intense grief at leaving Hazlewood; but some sense of
desolation, some despondency, at the thought that she was a wanderer
on the face of the earth, with no real claim upon any one, no actual
right to rest anywhere. They drove into Windsor while she was thinking
thus. They had come through the park, and they entered the town by the
gateway at the bottom of the hill. They had driven up the hill, and
were in the principal street below the castle wall, when Mrs. Darrell
uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“Launcelot!” she said; “and we must pass him to get to the station.
There’s no help for it.”
Eleanor looked up. Yes, before the door of one of the principal hotels
stood Mr. Launcelot Darrell, with two other young men. One of these
men was talking to him, but he was paying very little attention. He
stood upon the edge of the kerbstone, with his back half turned to his
companion, kicking the pebbles on the road with the toe of his boot,
and staring moodily before him.
In that one moment,—in the moment in which the pony-carriage, going at
full speed, passed the young man,—the thought which had flashed, so
vague and indistinct, so transient and intangible, through the mind of
Eleanor Vane that morning, took a new shape, and arose palpable and
vivid in her brain.
This man, Launcelot Darrell, was the sulky stranger who had stood on
the Parisian boulevard, kicking the straws upon the kerbstone, and
waiting to entrap her father to his ruin.