IN THE SHIPBROKER’S OFFICE.
Eleanor Vane employed the morning after her arrival at the Pilasters
in writing to Laura Mason. She would have written a long letter if
she could, for she knew what grief her sudden departure must have
caused her childish and confiding companion; but she could not write
of anything except the one thought that absorbed her whole brain,
leaving her for the common business of life a purposeless and powerless
creature. The explanation which she gave of her sudden departure
was lame and laboured; her expressions of regard were trite and
meaningless. It was only when she came to that subject which was the
real purpose of her letter; it was only when she came to write of
Launcelot Darrell that there was any vigour or reality in her words.
“I have a favour to ask you, dear Laura,” she wrote; “and I must beg
you to use your best discretion in granting it. I want you to find
out for me the date of Mr. Darrell’s departure for Calcutta, and the
name of the vessel in which he sailed. Do this, Laura, and you will be
serving me—perhaps serving him also.”
“If I find that he really was in India at the date of my father’s
death,” Eleanor thought, “I _must_ cease to suspect him.”
Later in the day, Miss Vane went out with Richard into the streets and
squares in which all their secret conferences had taken place. She told
the scene-painter very simply and briefly of what had happened, and
poor Dick listened to her story with a tender respect, as he would have
listened to anything from her. But he shook his head with a sad smile
when she had finished.
“What do you think now, Richard?” she asked.
“I think that you are the dupe of a foolish fancy, Nelly,” the young
man answered. “You are deceived by some chance resemblance between this
Mr. Darrell and the man you saw upon the boulevard. Any dark pale-faced
man lounging moodily on a kerbstone would have reminded you of the
figure which is so interwoven with the memories of that mournful time
in Paris. Forget it, Nelly, my dear—forget that dark chapter in the
history of your girlhood. Your father’s rest will be none the sweeter
because the brightness of your youth is blighted by these bitter
memories. Do your duty, Eleanor, in the state to which you are called.
You are _not_ called upon to sacrifice the fairest years of your life
to a Quixotic scheme of vengeance.”
“Quixotic!” cried Eleanor, reproachfully; “you would not speak like
this, Richard, if _your_ father had suffered as my father suffered
through the villany of a gambler and cheat. It is no use talking to me,
Dick,” she added, resolutely. “If this conviction, which I cannot get
out of my mind, is a false one, its falsehood must be proved. If it is
true—why, then, it will seem to me as if Providence had flung this man
across my pathway, and that I am appointed to bring punishment upon him
for his wickedness.”
“Perhaps, Eleanor, but this Mr. Darrell is _not_ the man.”
“How do you know he is not?”
“Because, according to your own account, Launcelot was in India in the
year ’53.”
“Yes, they _say_ that he was there.”
“Have you any reason to doubt the fact?” asked Richard.
“Yes,” answered Eleanor. “When Mr. Darrell first returned to Hazlewood,
Laura Mason was very anxious to hear all about what she called his
‘adventures’ in India. She asked him a great many questions, and I
remember—I cannot tell you, Dick, how carelessly I listened at the
time, though every word comes back to me now as vividly as if I had
been a prisoner, on trial for my life, listening breathlessly to the
evidence of the witnesses against me—I remember now how obstinately
Launcelot Darrell avoided all Laura’s questions, telling her at last,
almost rudely, to change the subject. The next day Mr. Monckton came
to us, and he talked about India; and Mr. Darrell again avoided the
question in the same sullen, disagreeable manner. You may think me weak
and foolish, Richard, and I dare say I am so; but Mr. Monckton is a
very clever man. _He_ could not be easily deceived.”
“But what of him?”
“He said, ‘Launcelot Darrell has a secret; and that secret is connected
with his Indian experiences.’ I thought very little of this at the
time, Dick: but I think I understand it now.”
“Indeed! And the young man’s secret——?”
“Is that he never went to India.”
“Eleanor!”
“Yes, Richard, I think and believe this; and you must help me to find
out whether I am right or wrong.”
The scene-painter sighed. He had hoped that his beautiful adopted
sister had long since abandoned or forgotten her utopian scheme of
vengeance in the congenial society of a gay-hearted girl of her own
age. And behold, here she was, vindictive, resolute, as upon that
Sunday evening, a year and a half ago, on which they had walked
together in those dingy London streets.
Eleanor Vane interpreted her companion’s sigh.
“Remember your promise, Richard.” she said. “You promised to serve me,
and you must do so—you _will_ do so, won’t you, Dick?”
The avenging fury had transformed herself into a siren as she spoke,
and looked archly up at her companion’s face, with her head on one
side, and a soft light in her grey eyes.
“You won’t refuse to serve me, will you, Richard?”
“Refuse!” cried the young man. “Oh! Nelly, Nelly, you know very well
there is nothing in the world I could refuse you.”
Miss Vane accepted this assurance with great composure. She had never
been able to dissociate Richard Thornton with those early days in which
she had accompanied him to Covent Garden to buy mulberry leaves for his
silkworms, and had learned to play “God save the Queen” upon the young
musician’s violin. Nothing was farther from her thoughts than the idea
that poor Dick’s feelings could have undergone any change since those
childish days in the King’s Road, Chelsea.
The letter which Eleanor so feverishly awaited from Laura Mason came
by return of post. The young lady’s epistle was very long, and rather
rambling in its nature. Three sheets of note-paper were covered with
Miss Mason’s lamentations for her Eleanor’s absence, reproachful
complainings against her cruelty, and repeated entreaties that she
would come back to Hazlewood.
George Vane’s daughter did not linger over this feminine missive. A few
days ago she would have been touched by Laura’s innocent expressions
of regard; now her eyes hurried along the lines, taking little note of
all those simple words of affection and regret, and looking greedily
forward to that one only passage in the letter which was likely to have
any interest for her.
This passage did not occur until Eleanor had reached the very last of
the twelve pages which Miss Mason had covered with flowing Italian
characters, whose symmetry was here and there disfigured by sundry
blots and erasures. But as her eyes rested upon the last page, Eleanor
Vane’s hand tightened upon the paper in her grasp, and the hot blood
rushed redly to her earnest face.
“And I have found out all you want to know, dear Nell,” wrote Miss
Mason; “though I am puzzled out of my wits to know why you should want
to know it—when I did exercises in composition at Bayswater, they
wouldn’t let me put two ‘knows’ so near together; but you won’t mind
it, will you, dear? Well, darling, I’m not very clever at beating about
the bush or finding out anything in a diplomatic way; so this afternoon
at tea—I am writing to catch the evening post, and Bob is going to take
my letters to the village for sixpence—I asked Launcelot Darrell, who
was not drinking his tea, like a Christian, but lolling in the window,
smoking a cigar: he has been as sulky as a bear ever since you left—oh,
Nelly, Nelly, he isn’t in love with you, is he?—I should break my heart
if I thought he was—I asked him, point-blank, what year and what day he
sailed for India. I suppose the question sounded rather impertinent,
for he coloured up scarlet all in a minute, and shrugged his shoulders
in that dear disdainful way of his that always reminds me of Lara
or the Corsair—L. and the C. were the same person, though, weren’t
they?—and said, ‘I don’t keep a diary, Miss Mason, or I should be happy
to afford you any information you may require as to my antecedents.’ I
thought I should have dropped through the floor, Nelly,—the floor won’t
let one drop through it, or else I am sure I should,—and I couldn’t
have asked another question, even for your sake, dear; when, strange
to say, Mrs. Darrell got me quite out of the difficulty. ‘I am sorry
you should answer Laura so very unkindly, Launcelot,’ she said; ‘there
is nothing strange in her question. _I_ remember the date of your
departure from your native country only too vividly. You left this
house upon the 3rd of October, ’52, and you were to sail from Gravesend
on the 4th, in the _Princess Alice_. I have reason to remember the
date, for it seemed as if my uncle chose the very worst season of the
year for sending you upon a long sea-voyage. But he was prompted, no
doubt, by my sisters. I ought to feel no anger against _him_, poor old
man!’”
Eleanor Vane glanced hurriedly at the concluding words of the letter.
Then, with the last sheet crumpled in her hand, she sat motionless and
absorbed, thinking over its contents.
“If Launcelot Darrell sailed for India upon the 4th of October, ’52,
he is not likely to have been in Paris in ’53. If I can only prove to
myself that he did sail upon that date, I will try and believe that I
have been deluded by some foolish fancy of my own. But why did his face
flush scarlet when Laura questioned him about his voyage?—why did he
pretend to have forgotten the date?”
Eleanor waited impatiently for the arrival of her friend and
counsellor, Richard Thornton. He came in at about three o’clock in the
afternoon, while his aunt was still absent amongst her out-of-door
pupils, and flung himself, jaded and worn out, on the chintz-covered
sofa. But, tired as he was, he aroused himself by an effort to listen
to that portion of Laura Mason’s letter which related to Launcelot
Darrell.
“What do you think now, Dick?” Miss Vane asked, when she had finished
reading.
“Pretty much what I thought before, Nell,” answered Mr. Thornton.
“This young fellow’s objection to talk of his Indian voyage is no
proof that he never went upon that voyage. He may have half-a-dozen
unpleasant recollections connected with that part of his life. I don’t
particularly care about talking of the Phœnix; but I never committed a
murder in the obscurity of the flies, or buried the body of my victim
between the stage and the mezzanine floor. People have their secrets,
Nell; and we have no right to pry into the small mysteries which may
lurk under a change of countenance or an impatient word.”
Eleanor Vane took very little notice of the young man’s argument.
“Can you find out if Launcelot Darrell sailed in the _Princess Alice_,
Dick?” she added.
The scene-painter rubbed his chin reflectively.
“I can _try_ and find out, my dear,” he said, after a pause, “that’s
open to anybody. The _Princess Alice_! She’s one of Ward’s ships, I
think. If the shipbrokers are inclined to be civil, they’ll perhaps
help me; but I have no justification for bothering them upon the
subject, and they _may_ tell me to go about my business. If I could
give them a good reason for my making such an inquiry, I might very
likely find them willing to help me. But what can I tell them—except
that a very beautiful young person with grey eyes and auburn hair has
taken an absurd crotchet into her obstinate head, and that I, her
faithful slave, am compelled to do her bidding?”
“Never mind what they say to you, Richard,” Miss Vane replied,
authoritatively; “they _must_ answer your question if you only go on
asking them long enough.”
Mr. Thornton smiled.
“That’s the true feminine method of obtaining information; isn’t it,
Nell?” he said. “However, I’ll do my best: and if the shipbrokers are
to be ‘got at,’ as sporting gentlemen say, it shall go hard if I don’t
get a list of the passengers who sailed in the _Princess Alice_.”
“Dear, dear Dick!” cried Eleanor, holding out both her hands to her
champion. The young man sighed. Alas! he knew only too well that all
this pretty friendliness was as far away from any latent tenderness
or hidden emotion as the blusterous frozen North is from the splendid
sunny South.
“I wonder whether she knows what love is,” thought the scene-painter;
“I wonder whether her heart has been touched ever so slightly by the
fatal emotion. No; she is a bright virginal creature, all confidence
and candour, and she has yet to learn the mysteries of life. I wish I
could think less of her; and fall in love with Miss Montalembert—her
name is plain Lambert, and she has added the Monta for the sake of
euphony. I wish I could fall in love with Lizzie Lambert, popularly
known as Elise Montalembert, the soubrette at the Phœnix. She is a
good little girl, and earns a salary of four pounds a week. She’s
fond of the Signora, too, and we could leave the Pilasters and go into
housekeeping upon our joint salaries.”
Mr. Thornton’s fancies might have rambled on in this wise for some
time, but he was abruptly aroused from his reverie by Eleanor Vane, who
had been watching him rather impatiently.
“When are you going to the shipbroker’s, Dick?” she asked.
“When am I going?”
“Yes; you’ll go at once, won’t you?”
“Eh! Well, my dear Nell, Cornhill’s a good step from here.”
“But you can take a cab,” cried the young lady. “I’ve plenty of money,
Dick, and do you think I shall grudge it for such a purpose? Go at
once, Richard, dear, and take a cab.”
She pulled a purse from her pocket, and tried to force it into the
young man’s hand; but he shook his head.
“I’m afraid the shipbroker’s office would be closed, Nelly,” he said.
“We’d better wait till to-morrow morning.”
But the young lady would not hear of this. She was sure the
shipbroker’s office wouldn’t close so early, she said, with as much
authority as if she had been intimately acquainted with the habits of
shipbrokers; and she bustled Dick down stairs and out of the house
before he well knew where he was.
He returned in about an hour and a half, very tired and dusty; having
preferred his independence and an omnibus to the cab offered by Eleanor.
“It’s no use, Nelly,” he said despondently, as he threw off his hat,
and ran his dirty fingers through the rumpled shock of dusty brown hair
that had been blown about his face by the hot August wind, “the office
was just closing, and I couldn’t get anything out of the clerks. I was
never so cruelly snubbed in my life.”
Miss Vane looked very much disappointed, and was silent for a minute
or so. Then her face suddenly brightened, and she patted Richard’s
shoulder with a gesture expressive of patronage and encouragement.
“Never mind, Dick,” she said, smilingly, “you shall go again to-morrow
morning early; and I’ll go with you. We’ll see if these shipbroker’s
clerks will snub _me_!”
“Snub you!” cried Richard Thornton, in a rapture of admiration. “I
think that, of all the members of the human family, paid officials are
the most unpleasant and repulsive; but I don’t think there’s a clerk in
Christendom who could snub you, Miss Vane.”
Eleanor smiled. Perhaps for the first time in her life the young lady
was guilty of a spice of that feminine sin called coquetry. Her boxes
had arrived from Hazlewood upon the previous evening. She was armed,
therefore, with all those munitions of war without which a woman can
scarcely commence a siege upon the fortress of man’s indifference.
She rose early the next morning—for she was too much absorbed in the
one great purpose of her life to be able to sleep very long or very
soundly—and arrayed herself for a visit to the shipbroker.
She put on a bonnet of pale blue crape, which was to be the chief
instrument in the siege—a feminine battering-ram or Armstrong gun
before which the stoutest wall must have crumbled—and smoothed her
silken locks, her soft amber-dropping tresses, under this framework of
diaphanous azure. Then she went into the little sitting-room where Mr.
Richard Thornton was loitering over his breakfast, to try the effect of
this piece of milliner’s artillery upon the unhappy young man.
“Will the clerks snub me, Dick?” she asked, archly.
The scene-painter replied with his mouth full of egg and
bread-and-butter, and was more enthusiastic than intelligible.
A four-wheel cab jolted Miss Vane and her companion to Cornhill, and
the young lady contrived to make her way into the sanctum-sanctorum
of the shipbroker himself, in a manner which took Richard Thornton’s
breath away from him, in the fervour of his admiration. Every barrier
gave way before the blue bonnet and glistening auburn hair, the bright
grey eyes and friendly smile. Poor Dick had approached the officials
with that air of suppressed enmity and lurking hate with which the
Englishman generally addresses his brother Englishman; but Eleanor’s
friendliness and familiarity disarmed the stoniest of the clerks, and
she was conducted to the shipbroker’s private room by an usher who
bowed before her as if she had been a queen.
The young lady told her story very simply, She wished to ascertain if a
gentleman called Launcelot Darrell had sailed in the _Princess Alice_
on the 4th of October, ’52.
This was all she said. Richard Thornton stood by, fingering difficult
passages in his last overture on the brim of his hat, out of sheer
perturbation of spirit, while he wondered at and admired Miss Vane’s
placid assurance.
“I shall be extremely obliged if you can give me this information,” she
said in conclusion, “for a great deal depends upon my being able to
ascertain the truth in this matter.”
The shipbroker looked through his spectacles at the earnest face turned
so trustingly towards his own. He was an old man, with granddaughters
as tall as Eleanor, but was nevertheless not utterly dead to the
influence of a beautiful face. The auburn hair and diaphanous bonnet
made a bright spot of colour in the dinginess of his dusty office.
“I should be very ungallant were I to refuse to serve a young lady,”
the old man said, politely.—“Jarvis,” he added, turning to the clerk
who had conducted Eleanor to his apartment, “do you think you could
contrive to look up the list of passengers in the _Princess Alice_,
October 4, ’52?”
Mr. Jarvis, who had told Richard to go about his business upon the day
before, said he had no doubt he could, and went away to perform this
errand.
Eleanor’s breath grew short and quick, and her colour rose as she
waited for the clerk’s return. Richard executed impossible passages on
the brim of his hat. The shipbroker watched the girl’s face, and drew
his own deductions from the flutter of agitation visible in that bright
countenance.
“Aha!” he thought, “a love affair, no doubt. This pretty girl in the
blue bonnet has come here to look after a runaway sweetheart.”
The clerk returned, carrying a ledger, with his thumb between two of
the leaves. He opened the uninteresting-looking volume, and laid it on
the table before his employer, pointing with his spare forefinger to
one particular entry.
“A berth was taken for a Mr. Launcelot Darrell, who was to share his
cabin with a Mr. Thomas Halliday,” the shipbroker said, looking at the
passage to which the clerk pointed.
Eleanor’s face crimsoned. She had wronged the widow’s son, then, after
all.
“But the name was crossed out afterwards,” continued the old man, “and
there’s another entry farther down, dated October 5th. The ship sailed
without Mr. Darrell.”
The crimson flush faded out of Eleanor’s face and left it deadly pale.
She tottered a few paces towards the table, with her hand stretched
out, as if she would have taken the book from the shipbroker and
examined the entry for herself. But midway between the chair she had
left and the table, her strength failed her, and she would have fallen
if Richard Thornton had not dashed his hat upon the ground, and caught
her sinking figure in his outstretched arms.
“Dear me!” exclaimed the shipbroker, “bless my soul: a glass of water,
Jarvis; this is very sad, very sad, indeed. A runaway lover, I suppose,
or a brother, perhaps. These sort of things are always happening. I
assure you, if I had the gift that some of you young people have, I
could write half-a-dozen romances out of the history of this office.”
The clerk came back with the glass of water; it was rather a
murky-looking fluid, but a few drops between Eleanor’s pale lips served
to bring the life back to her.
She lifted her head with the proud resolution of a queen, and looked
at the compassionate shipbroker with a strange smile. She had heard
the old man’s suppositions about lovers and brothers. How far away his
simple fancy led him from the bitter truth!
She held out her hand to him as she rose from her chair, erect and
dauntless as a fair-haired Joan of Arc, ready to gird on the sword in
defence of her king and country.
“I thank you very much, sir,” she said, “for what you have done for me
to-day. My father was an old man—as old or older perhaps than yourself;
and he died a very cruel death. I believe that your kindness of this
day will help me to avenge him.”