AN INSIDIOUS DEMON.
On a bright September morning a hired carriage took Miss Vane and her
friends to the quiet old church in Hart Street, Bloomsbury. There was a
little crowd assembled about the door of the shoemaker’s dwelling, and
sympathetic spectators were scattered here and there in the mews, for
a marriage is one of those things which the cleverest people can never
contrive to keep a secret.
Miss Eleanor Vane’s pale fawn-coloured silk dress, black mantle, and
simple white bonnet did not form the established costume of a bride,
but the young lady looked so very beautiful in her girlish dress
and virginal innocence, that more than one of the lounging grooms
who came out of the stables to see her go by to her hired carriage,
confidentially remarked to an acquaintance that he only wished he
could get such a young woman for _his_ missus. Richard Thornton was
not in attendance upon the fair young bride. There was a scene to be
painted for Spavin and Cromshaw upon that particular day which was more
important than any scene Dick had ever painted before. So the young
man set out early upon that September bridal morning, after saluting
Eleanor Vane in the most tender and brotherly fashion but I am sorry
to say that instead of going straight to the Royal Phœnix Theatre,
Mr. Thornton walked with a slow and listless gait across Westminster
Bridge, then plunged with a sudden and almost ferocious impetus into
the remotest intricacies of Lambeth, scowling darkly at the street boys
who came in his way, skirting the Archbishop’s palace, glowering at
the desolation of Vauxhall, and hurrying far away into the solitudes
of Battersea Fields, where he spent the better part of the afternoon
in the dreary parlour of an obscure public-house, drinking adulterated
beer, and smoking bad tobacco.
The Signora wore a rustling black silk dress—Eleanor’s present of the
previous Christmas—in honour of her protégée’s wedding; but Eliza
Picirillo’s heart was sadly divided upon this quiet bridal day; half
rejoicing in Miss Vane’s fortune and advancement; half sorrowful for
poor desolate Dick wandering away amongst the swamps by the water-side.
Mr. Monckton and his two partners were waiting for the bride in the
portico of the church. The senior of the two, an old man with white
hair, was to give Eleanor away, and paid her many appropriate though
rather obsolete compliments upon the occasion. Perhaps it was now for
the first time that Miss Vane began to regard the step she was about to
take as one of a somewhat serious and indeed awful nature; perhaps it
was now for the first time that she began to think she had committed a
sin in accepting Gilbert Monckton’s love so lightly.
“If he knew that I did not promise to marry him because I loved him,
but because I wanted to get back to Hazlewood,” she thought.
But presently the grave shadows passed away from her face and a faint
blush rose to her cheek and brow.
“I will love him by-and-by, when I have avenged my father’s death,” she
said to herself.
Some such thought as this was in her mind when she took her place
beside Gilbert Monckton at the altar.
The autumn sunshine streamed in upon them through the great windows
of the church, and wrapped them in yellow light, like the figures of
Joseph and Mary in an old picture. The bride and bridegroom looked
very handsome standing side by side in this yellow sunshine. Gilbert
Monckton’s twenty years’ seniority only dignified and exalted him;
investing the holy marriage promise of love and protection with a
greater solemnity than it could have had when spoken by a stripling of
one or two and twenty.
Everything seemed auspicious upon this wedding morning. The lawyer’s
partners were in the highest spirits, the beadle and pew-opener were
elevated by the idea of prospective donations. The Signora wept quietly
while the marriage service was being read, thinking of her nephew
Richard smoking and drinking desperately, perhaps, in his desolate
painting-room; but when the ceremony was over the good music-mistress
dried her tears, banishing all traces of sorrow before she kissed and
complimented the bride.
“You are to come and see us at the Priory, dear Signora,” Eleanor said,
as she clung about her friend before leaving the vestry; “Gilbert says
so, you know.”
Her voice faltered a little, and she glanced shyly at her husband as
she spoke of him by his Christian name. It seemed as if she had no
right to allude so familiarly to Mr. Monckton, of Tolldale Priory. And
presently Eliza Picirillo stood alone—or attended only by the beadle,
obsequiously attentive in proportion to the liberality of the donation
he had just received—under the portico of the Bloomsbury church,
watching the lawyer’s carriage drive away towards the Great Northern
railway station. Mr. Monckton, in the absence of any preference upon
Eleanor’s part, had chosen a quiet Yorkshire watering-place as the
scene of his honeymoon.
Signora Picirillo sighed as she went down the steps before the church,
and took her seat in the hired vehicle that was to take her back to the
Pilasters.
“So Bloomsbury has seen the last of Eleanor,” she thought, sadly; “we
may go down to see her, perhaps, in her grand new house, but she will
never come back to us. She will never wash the tea-things and make tea
and toast again for a tired-out old music-mistress.”
* * * * *
The dying glory of red and orange in the last sunset of September
sank behind the grey line of the German Ocean, after the closing day
of Gilbert Monckton’s honeymoon. Upon the first of October the lawyer
was to take his young wife to Tolldale Priory. Mr. and Mrs. Monckton
walked upon the broad sands as that low orange light faded out of the
western sky. The lawyer was grave and silent, and every now and then
cast a furtive glance at his companion’s face. Sometimes that glance
was succeeded by a sigh.
Eleanor was paler and more careworn than she had looked since the day
after her visit to the shipbroker’s office. The quiet and seclusion
of the place to which Gilbert Monckton had brought his bride had
given her ample opportunity of brooding on the one idea of her life.
Had he plunged her into a vortex of gaiety, it is possible that she
might have been true to that deep-rooted purpose which she had so
long nursed in her breast; but, on the other hand, there would have
been some hope that the delights of change and novelty, delights to
which youth cannot be indifferent—might have beguiled the bride from
that for-ever-recurring train of thought which separated her from her
husband as effectually as if an ocean had rolled between them.
Yes, Gilbert Monckton had discovered the fatal truth that marriage
is not always union, and that the holiest words that were ever spoken
cannot weave the mystic web which makes two souls indissolubly one,
if there be one inharmonious thread in the magical fabric. Gilbert
Monckton felt this, and knew that there was some dissonant note in the
chord which should have been such a melodious combination.
Again and again, while talking to his wife—carried away, perhaps, by
the theme of which he was speaking, and counting on her sympathy as a
matter of course—he had looked into Eleanor’s face, and seen that her
thoughts had wandered far away from him and his conversation, into
some unknown region. He had no clue by which he could follow those
wanderings; no chance word ever fell from his wife’s lips which might
serve as the traitor silk that guided ruthless Eleanor to Rosamond’s
hiding-place. So thus, before the honeymoon was over, Gilbert Monckton
began to be jealous of his bride, thereby fostering for himself a nest
of scorpions, or a very flock of young vultures, which were henceforth
to make their meals off his entrails.
But it was not the ferocious or Othello-like jealousy. The green-eyed
monster did not appear under his more rugged and uncivilized form,
finding a vent for his passions in pillows, poisons, and poniards. The
monster disguised himself as a smooth and philosophical demon. He hid
his diabolical attributes under the gravity and wisdom of a friendly
sage. In other words, Gilbert Monckton, feeling disappointed at the
result of his marriage, set himself to reason upon the fact; and was
for ever torturing himself with silent arguments and mute conjectures
as to the cause of that indescribable something in his young wife’s
manner, which told him there was no perfect union between them. The
lawyer reproached himself for his weak folly in having built a fairy
palace of hope upon the barren fact of Eleanor’s acceptance of his
hand. Did not girls, situated as George Vane’s daughter had been
situated, marry for money, again and again, in these mercenary days?
Who should know this better than Gilbert Monckton the solicitor, who
had drawn up so many marriage settlements, been concerned in so many
divorces, and assisted at so many matrimonial bargains, whose sordid
motives were as undisguised as in any sale of cattle transacted in the
purlieus of Smithfield? Who should know better than he, that beautiful
and innocent girls every day bartered their beauty and innocence for
certain considerations set down by grave lawyers, and engrossed upon
sheets of parchment at so much per sheet?
He did know this, and in his mad arrogance he had said to himself,
“I—amongst all other men—will be an exception to the common rule. The
girl I marry is poor; but she will give herself to me for no meaner
considerations than my love, and my truth, and my devotion; and those
shall be hers until my dying day.”
Gilbert Monckton had said this; and already a mocking demon had made
a permanent perch for himself upon this wretched man’s shoulders, for
ever whispering insidious doubts into his ear, for ever instilling
shadowy fears into his mind.
Eleanor had not seemed happy during those few honeymoon weeks. She had
grown weary of the broad sands stretching far away, flat and desolate
under the September sky, and weary of the everlasting and unbroken
line that bounded that wide grey sea. This weariness she had displayed
frankly enough; but she had not revealed its hidden source, which
lay in her feverish impatience to go back to the neighbourhood of
Hazlewood, and to make the discovery she wished to make, before Maurice
de Crespigny’s death.
She had sounded her husband upon the subject of the old man’s health.
“Do you think Mr. de Crespigny will live long?” she asked, one day.
“Heaven knows, my dear,” the lawyer answered, carelessly. “He has been
an invalid for nearly twenty years now, and he may go on being an
invalid for twenty years more, perhaps. I fancy that his death will be
very sudden whenever it does happen.”
“And do you think that he will leave his money to Launcelot Darrell?”
Eleanor’s face grew a little paler as she mentioned the young man’s
name. The invisible familiar perched upon Mr. Monckton’s shoulder
directed the lawyer’s attention to that fact.
“I don’t know. Why should you be interested in Mr. Darrell’s welfare?”
“I am not interested in his welfare; I only asked you a question,
Gilbert.”
Even the malice of the familiar could take no objection to the tone in
which Eleanor said this: and Mr. Monckton was ashamed of the passing
twinge which Launcelot Darrell’s name had caused him.
“I dare say De Crespigny will leave his money to young Darrell, my
dear,” he said, in a more cordial voice; “and though I have no very
high opinion of the young man’s character, I think he ought to have the
fortune. The maiden ladies should have annuities, of course. Heaven
knows they have fought hard enough for the prize.”
“How can people act so contemptibly for the sake of money!” cried
Eleanor, with sudden indignation.
The lawyer looked admiringly at her glowing face, which had crimsoned
with the intensity of her feeling. She was thinking of her father’s
death, and of that hundred pounds which had been won from him on the
night of his suicide.
“No,” thought Mr. Monckton, “she cannot be mercenary. That bright
impulsive creature could never be guilty of any deliberate meanness—and
what could be a worse meanness than that of the woman who could marry a
man out of sordid and mercenary motives, beguiling him by a simulated
affection, in order to compass her own advancement?”
“If I have won her heart, in its untainted freshness,” thought Gilbert
Monckton, “I must be content, though that girlish heart may seem cold.
She will love me better by-and-by. She will learn to confide in me; she
will learn to sympathize with me.”
By such arguments as these Mr. Monckton endeavoured to satisfy
himself—and sometimes, indeed, succeeded in doing so—that his young
wife’s absent and thoughtful manner was a matter of course; the
thoughtfulness of a girl unused to her new position, and perhaps a
little bewildered by its strangeness. But on the morning of the first
of October, Gilbert Monckton perceived a change in Eleanor’s manner,
and on that morning the demon familiar took up a permanent station upon
the lawyer’s shoulder.
Mrs. Monckton was no longer grave and listless. A feverish impatience,
a sudden flow of high spirits, seemed to have taken possession of her.
“You observe,” whispered the demon familiar, as Mr. Monckton sat
opposite his wife in a compartment of the express train that was to
take them to London, _en route_ for Berkshire, “you observe the glow in
her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes. You saw her turn pale the other
day when she mentioned Launcelot Darrell’s name. You know what the
young man’s mother told you. You can do the commonest sum in logical
arithmetic, I suppose. You can put two and two together. Your wife has
been wearied to death of the north, and the sea, and the sands—and of
_you_. She is in high spirits to-day, and it is very easy to account
for the change in her manner. She is glad to go back to Berkshire—she
is glad to go back there, because _she will see Launcelot Darrell_.”
Mr. Monckton, with a cambric handkerchief thrown over his face, kept a
covert watch upon his wife from between its artfully adjusted folds,
and enjoyed such converse as this with the spirit he had chosen for his
companion.