KEEPING WATCH.
Two pair of jealous eyes kept constant watch upon Eleanor Monckton for
some time after that October afternoon on which the lawyer and Miss
Mason stood side by side, looking at the two figures by the sundial.
Gilbert Monckton was too proud to complain. He laid down the fair hopes
of his manhood in the grave that already held the broken dreams of his
youth. He bowed his head and resigned himself to his fate.
“I was mistaken,” he thought; “it was too preposterous to suppose that
at forty I could win the love of a girl of eighteen. My wife is good
and true, but——”
But what? Could this girl be good and true? Had she not deceived her
lover most cruelly, most deliberately, in her declaration of utter
indifference towards Launcelot Darrell.
Mr. Monckton remembered her very words, her sudden look of
astonishment, her almost shuddering gesture of surprise, as he asked
the important question,
“And you do not love Launcelot Darrell?”
“Love him! oh, no, no, no!”
And in spite of this emphatic denial, Mrs. Monckton had, ever since her
arrival at Tolldale Priory, betrayed an intense, an almost feverish
interest in the young scapegrace artist.
“If she is capable of falsehood,” thought the lawyer, “there must
surely be no truth upon this earth. Shall I trust her and wait
patiently for the solution of the mystery? No; between man and wife
there should be no mystery! She has no right to keep any secret from
me.”
So Mr. Monckton hardened his heart against his beautiful young wife,
and set himself sternly and indefatigably to watch her every look, to
listen to every intonation of her voice, to keep a rigorous guard over
his own honour and dignity.
Poor Eleanor was too innocent to read all these signs aright; she
only thought that her husband was changed; that this stern and gloomy
companion was not the same Gilbert Monckton whom she had known at
Hazlewood; not the patient “guide, philosopher, and friend,” whose
subdued bass voice, eloquent in the dusky evenings long ago—a year is
very long to a girl of eighteen—in Mrs. Darrell’s simple drawing-room,
had seemed a kind of intellectual music to her.
Had she not been absorbed always by that one thought, whose intensity
had reduced the compass of her mind to a monotone, the young wife would
very bitterly have felt this change in her husband. As it was she
looked upon her disappointment as something very far away from her;
something to be considered and regretted by-and-by; by-and-by, when the
grand business of her life was done.
But while the gulf between the young wife and her husband every day
grew wider, this grand business made no progress. Day after day, week
after week passed by, and Eleanor Monckton found herself no nearer the
end.
She had paid several visits to Hazlewood; she had acted her part to
the best of her abilities, which were very mediocre in all matters
where deception is necessary; she had watched and questioned Launcelot
Darrell; but she had obtained no vestige of proof to set before Maurice
de Crespigny when she denounced his niece’s son.
No; whatever secrets were hidden in the young man’s breast, he was
so guarded as to baffle Eleanor Monckton at every point. He was so
thoroughly self-possessed as to avoid betraying himself by so much as a
look or a tone.
He was, however, thrown a good deal in Eleanor’s society, for Mr.
Monckton, with a strange persistence, encouraged the penniless artist’s
attentions to Laura Mason; while Launcelot Darrell, too shallow to
hold long to any infatuation, influenced upon one side by his mother,
and flattered upon the other by Laura’s unconcealed admiration, was
content, by-and-by, to lay down his allegiance at this new shrine, and
to forgive Mrs. Monckton for her desertion.
“Eleanor and my mother were both right, I dare say,” the young man
reflected, contemplating his fate with a feeling of despondent languor.
“They were wiser than I was, I dare say. I ought to marry a rich woman.
I could never drag out an existence of poverty. Bachelor poverty is bad
enough, but, at least, there’s something artistic and Bohemian about
that. Chambertin one day, and vin ordinaire the next; Veuve Clicquot
at the Trois Frères or the Café de Paris to-night, and small beer in
a garret to-morrow morning. But married poverty! Squalid desolation
instead of reckless gaiety; a sick wife and lean hungry children, and
the husband carrying wet canvases to the pawnbroker! Bah! Eleanor was
right; she has done a good thing for herself; and I’d better go in and
win the heiress, and make myself secure against any caprice of my
worthy great-uncle.”
It was thus that Launcelot Darrell became a frequent visitor at
Tolldale Priory, and as, at about this time, Mr. Monckton’s business
became so unimportant as to be easily flung entirely into the hands
of the two junior partners, the lawyer was almost always at home to
receive his guest.
Nothing could have been more antagonistic than the characters of the
two men. There was no possibility of sympathy or assimilation between
them. The weakness of one was rendered more evident by the strength of
the other. The decided character of the lawyer seemed harsh and rigid
when contrasted with the easy-going languid good-nature of the artist.
Eleanor Monckton, perceiving this wide difference between the two men,
admired her husband as much as she despised Launcelot Darrell.
If the lawyer could have known this,—if he could have known that when
his wife’s earnest eyes followed every change of expression in the
young man’s face, when she listened most intently to his careless and
rambling, yet sometimes almost brilliant talk, she read his shallow
nature and its worthlessness better than that nature had ever yet been
read by the closest observer,—if Gilbert Monckton could have understood
these things, what wasted agonies, what futile tortures, might have
been spared him!
“What would have become of me if I had loved this man?” Eleanor
thought, as day by day, with an intellect rendered preternaturally
clear by the intensity of her one desire, she grew more familiar with
Launcelot Darrell’s character.
In the meanwhile, Laura Mason walked along a pathway of roses, whose
only thorns were those jealous twinges which the young lady experienced
on account of Eleanor Monckton.
“He loved her first,” the heiress thought, despondently, “I know he
did, and he made her an offer upon the day the dressmaker brought home
my blue silk, and it was so short-waisted I was obliged to make her
take it back for alteration. And that was why she—I mean Eleanor, not
the dressmaker—left Hazlewood. And it’s not pleasant to think that the
man one idolizes has idolized somebody else not three months before he
proposes to one; and I don’t think it was right of Eleanor to lead him
on.”
It was by this latter very vague phrase that Miss Mason was in the
habit of excusing her lover’s delinquency. Eleanor had led him on;
and he was thereby in a manner justified for that brief infatuation
which had beguiled him from poor Laura. In what this “leading on”
had consisted the young lady did not seek to understand. She wanted
to forgive her lover, and she wanted reasons for her forgiveness;
as weak women do when they deliver themselves up to the bondage of
a sentimental affection for a handsome face. But although Launcelot
Darrell had made his peace with Mr. Monckton’s ward, wooing her with
a great many tender words and pretty stereotyped phrases under the
gloomy shadow of the yew-trees in the old-fashioned priory garden,
and although he had formally demanded her hand, and had been accepted
by her guardian and herself, Laura was not yet quite satisfied. Some
lingering sentiment of distrust still held its place in her breast, and
the jealous twinges, which, as I have said, constituted the thorns upon
her rose-bestrewn pathway, were very sharp and numerous.
Nor was Mr. Monckton wholly free from anxiety on his ward’s account.
He had consented to her engagement with Launcelot Darrell. He had done
even more; he had encouraged the young man’s suit; and now that it was
too late to undo his work, he began to argue with himself as to the
wisdom of his conduct.
He tried to palter with his conscience; but he could not disguise from
himself that the leading motive which had induced him to consent to his
ward’s engagement was his desire to remove Launcelot Darrell out of the
society of his wife. He could not be so blind to his own weakness as to
be unaware of the secret pleasure he felt in being able to demonstrate
to Eleanor the worthlessness of an affection which could be so easily
transferred from one object to another.
Apart from this, Gilbert Monckton tried to believe that he had taken
the best course within his power of choice, for the frivolous girl whom
it was his duty to protect. To have opposed Laura’s attachment would
have been to cause her great unhappiness. The young man was clever and
agreeable. He was the descendant of a race which was almost noble by
right of its origin. His character would grow stronger with time, and
it would be the guardian’s duty to foster all that was good in the
nature of his ward’s husband; and to put him in a fair way of occupying
an honourable position.
“I will try and develope his talent—his genius, perhaps,” Gilbert
Monckton thought; “he shall go to Italy, and study the old masters.”
So it was settled that the marriage should take place early in the
spring, and that Launcelot and his wife should start immediately
afterwards upon a tour through the great art cities of the continent.
It was arranged that they should remain away for at least a
twelvemonth, and that they should spend the winter in Rome.
Eleanor Monckton grew deathly pale when her husband announced to her
the probable date of the marriage.
“So soon!” she said, in a low, half-stifled voice. “So soon! why,
December has already begun—the spring will be here directly.”
Gilbert Monckton watched her face with a thoughtful frown.
“What is there to wait for?” he said.
Eleanor was silent for a few moments. What could she say? Could she
suffer this engagement to continue? Could she allow Launcelot Darrell
to hold his place amongst these people who so ignorantly trusted in
him? She would have spoken, perhaps, and confided at least some part
of her secret to her husband, but she refrained from doing so: for
might not he too laugh at her, as Richard Thornton had done? Might not
he, who had grown lately cold and reserved in his manner towards her,
sometimes even sarcastic and severe—might not he sternly reprobate her
mad desire for vengeance, and in some manner or other frustrate the
great purpose of her life?
She had trusted Richard Thornton, and had implored his help. No
good had ever come of that confidence: nothing but remonstrances,
reproaches, entreaties; even ridicule. Why, then, should she trust any
one else? No, she was resolved henceforward to hold her secret in her
own keeping, and to look to herself alone for victory.
“Why should the marriage be delayed?” Mr. Monckton demanded, rather
sharply, for the second time; “is there any reason for delay?”
“No,” Eleanor faltered, “not if you think Mr. Darrell worthy of Laura’s
confidence; not if you think him a good man.”
“Have you any reason to think otherwise of him?”
Mrs. Monckton evaded a direct answer to this question.
“It was you who first taught me to doubt him,” she said.
“Indeed!” answered her husband; “I had quite forgotten that. I wonder,
Eleanor, that you should appear so much interested in this young man,
since you have so bad an opinion of him.”
Mr. Monckton left the room after launching this dart at the breast
which he believed was guilty of hiding from him a secret regard for
another.
“God help her, poor child!” thought the lawyer, “she married me for my
position; and perhaps thought that it would be an easy thing to conquer
some slight sentimental predilection for Launcelot Darrell. She tries
to do her duty, I believe; and when this young man is safely out of the
way she may learn to love me perhaps.”
Such reflections as these were generally followed by a change in the
lawyer’s manner, and Eleanor’s failing spirits revived in the new
sunshine of his affection. She had respected and admired Gilbert
Monckton from the hour of her meeting with him at the Great Western
terminus; and she was ready to love him truly and cordially whenever
she could succeed in her great purpose, and disengage her mind from its
one absorbing idea.