BY THE SUNDIAL.
Laura Mason came to live at Tolldale. Gilbert Monckton argued with
himself that his most reasonable motive for marrying Eleanor Vane had
lain in his desire to provide a secure home and suitable companionship
for his ward. The girl was very glad to be with Eleanor; but a little
sorry to leave Hazlewood, now that Mr. Launcelot Darrell’s presence
gave a new charm to the place.
“Not that he is very lively, you know, Nelly,” Miss Mason remarked to
her guardian’s wife in the course of a long discussion of Mr. Darrell’s
merits. “He never seems happy. He’s always roaming about the place,
looking as if he had something upon his mind. It makes him look very
handsome, though, you know; I don’t think he’d look half so handsome if
he hadn’t anything on his mind. He was awfully dull and gloomy after
you went away, Nell; I’m sure he must have been in love with you. Mrs.
Darrell says he wasn’t; and that he admires another person: quite a
different person. Do you think I’m the person, Eleanor dear?” asked
the young lady, blushing and smiling, as she looked shyly up at her
companion’s grave face.
“I don’t know, Laura; but I almost hope not, for I should be very sorry
if you were to marry Launcelot Darrell,” Eleanor said.
“But why should you be sorry, Nelly?”
“Because I don’t think he’s a good man.”
Miss Mason pouted her under lip and shrugged her shoulders, with the
prettiest air of impatience.
“It’s very unkind of you to say so, Nell,” she exclaimed. “I’m sure
he’s good! Or if he isn’t good, I like him all the better for it,” she
added, with charming inconsistency. “I don’t want to marry a good man,
like my guardian, or Mr. Neate, the curate of Hazlewood parish. The
Corsair wasn’t good; but see how fond Gulnare and Medora were of him. I
don’t suppose it was good of the Giaour to kill Hassan; but who could
have had the heart to refuse to marry the Giaour?”
Mrs. Monckton did not attempt to argue with a young lady who expressed
such opinions as these. Laura’s romantic infatuation only made Eleanor
more impatient for the coming of that hour in which she should be able
to denounce Launcelot Darrell as a cheat and a traitor.
“He shall be disappointed in his hope of a fortune, and through me,”
she thought. “He shall be cast off by the woman who has loved him,
and through me. And when he suffers most I will be as pitiless to
his suffering, as he was pitiless to the old man whom he cheated and
abandoned to despair.”
A fortnight passed after Eleanor’s arrival at the Priory before she
had any opportunity of seeing Launcelot Darrell. She had proposed
going to Hazlewood several times, but upon each occasion Mr. Monckton
had contrived to interpose some objection to her visit. She began
to despair of entering upon the silent struggle with her father’s
destroyer. It seemed as if she had come to Tolldale for no purpose. In
her impatience she dreaded that Maurice de Crespigny would die, leaving
his fortune to his nephew. She knew that the old man’s life hung by a
slender thread, which at any moment might be severed.
But at last the opportunity she had so anxiously awaited arrived
unexpectedly, not brought about by any scheming or foresight upon her
part. Laura had been a few days at the Priory, and the two girls were
walking in one of the sheltered pathways of the old-fashioned garden,
waiting for Gilbert Monckton’s arrival, and the clanging summons of the
great dinner-bell.
The October sunshine was bright and pleasant; the autumn flowers
enlivened the dark luxuriance of the garden with their gaudy splendour.
The tall hollyhocks waved in the breeze.
The two girls had walked up and down the smooth gravel path for some
time in silence. Eleanor was absorbed in her own thoughts, and even
Laura could not talk for ever without encouragement.
But presently this latter young lady stopped with a blush and a start,
clasping her hand tightly about her companion’s wrist. At the other
end of the sheltered walk, amongst the flickering patches of sunshine
that trembled on the filbert-trees, she had perceived Launcelot Darrell
advancing towards them.
Eleanor looked up.
“What is the matter, Laura?” she asked.
In the next moment she recognized Mr. Darrell. The chance had come at
last.
The young man advanced to meet Mrs. Monckton and her companion. He was
pale, and had a certain gravity in his face expressive of some hidden
sorrow. He had been in love with Eleanor Vane, after his own fashion,
and was very much disposed to resent her desertion of him. His mother
had told him the reason of that desertion very frankly, after Eleanor’s
marriage.
“I come to offer you my congratulations, Mrs. Monckton,” he said,
in a tone which was intended to wound the young wife to the quick,
but which, like everything else about this young man, had a certain
spuriousness, an air of melodrama that robbed it of all force. “I
should have accompanied my mother when she called on you the other
day—but——”
He paused abruptly, looking at Laura with an air of ill-concealed
vexation.
“Can I speak to you alone, Mrs. Monckton?” he asked; “I have something
particular to say to you.”
“But you can say it before Laura, I suppose?”
“No, not before Laura, or before any one. I must speak to you alone.”
Miss Mason looked at the object of her admiration with a piteous
expression in her childish face.
“How cruel he is to me,” she thought; “I do believe he is in love with
Eleanor. How wicked of him to be in love with my guardian’s wife.”
Mrs. Monckton did not attempt to refuse the privilege which the young
man demanded of her.
“I am quite willing to hear anything you may have to say to me,” she
said.
“Oh, very well!” cried Laura. “I’m sure I’ll go away if you want to
talk about secrets that I mustn’t hear. Only I don’t see how you can
have any secrets. You haven’t known Mr. Darrell a day longer than I
have, Eleanor; and I can’t imagine what he can have to say to you.”
After this protest Miss Mason turned her back upon her companions, and
ran away towards the house. She shed a few silent tears behind the
shelter of a great clump of chrysanthemums.
“He doesn’t care for me a bit,” she muttered, as she dried her eyes:
“Mrs. Darrell is a wicked old story-teller. I feel just as poor Gulnare
must have felt when the Corsair was so rude to her, after she’d
committed a murder for his sake.”
Eleanor and Launcelot left the sheltered pathway, and walked slowly
across the broad lawn towards an old sundial, quaint in shape, and
covered with the moss that had slowly crept over the grey stonework.
Here the young man stopped, lounging against the moss-grown pedestal,
and resting his elbow upon the broken dial.
“I have come here to-day to tell you that you have treated me very ill,
Eleanor Monckton,” he said.
The young wife drew herself up proudly.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean that you jilted me.”
“Jilted you!”
“Yes. You played fast and loose with me. You listened to my declaration
of love. You suffered me to believe that you loved me.”
“Mr. Darrell!”
“You did more, Eleanor,” cried the young man, passionately; “you _did_
love me. This marriage with Gilbert Monckton, a man twenty years your
senior, is a marriage prompted by base and mercenary motives. You loved
me, Eleanor; your silence admitted it that day, if your words did not.
You had no right to be cajoled by my mother; you had no right to leave
Hazlewood without a word of explanation to me. You are false-hearted
and mercenary, Mrs. Monckton; and you have married this man here
because he is the owner of a fine house, and can give you money to
spend upon your womanly caprices—your selfish vanities.”
He pointed scornfully to her silk dress as he spoke, and to the golden
trinkets that guttered at her waist.
She looked at him with a strange expression in her face.
“Think of me as you please,” she said; “think that I was in love with
you, if you like.”
It was as if she had said to him, “Fall into a trap of your own
setting, if you please. I am not base enough to lay such a snare for
you.”
“Yes, Eleanor, you were false and mercenary. You were foolish, perhaps,
as well: for I may be a rich man before very long. I may be master of
the Woodlands property.”
“I don’t think you ever will inherit that fortune,” Eleanor said,
slowly. “You talk of my being base and mercenary; you are at liberty to
think so if you please. But have _you_ never done base things for the
sake of money, Launcelot Darrell?”
The man’s face darkened.
“Nobody is immaculate, I dare say,” he answered. “I have been very
poor, and have been obliged to do what the rest of the world does when
its purse is empty.”
As Eleanor watched his moody face she suddenly remembered that this
was not the way her cards must be played. The task which she had set
herself to perform was not to be accomplished by candour and openness.
This man had betrayed her father, and she must betray him.
She held out her hand to Launcelot Darrell.
“Let us be friends,” she said; “I wish to be friends with you.”
There were two witnesses looking on at this gesture. Laura Mason was
standing by her guardian, watching the group beside the sundial.
Gilbert Monckton had returned from town, and had come into the garden
in search of his wife.
“They sent me away from them,” Laura said, as her guardian looked at
Launcelot and Eleanor. “He had something particular to say to her: so I
wasn’t to hear it, and they sent me away. You’ll ask him to dinner, I
suppose?”
“No,” answered the lawyer, sharply.
Launcelot Darrell held Eleanor’s hand some moments before he released
it.
“I wish to be friends with you, Mr. Darrel!,” she said; “I’ll come to
Hazlewood to-morrow to see your pictures, if you please. I want to see
how the Rosalind and Celia goes on.”
She hated herself for her hypocrisy. Every generous impulse of her soul
revolted against her falsehood. But these things were only a natural
part of the unnatural task which she had set herself to perform.