A POWERFUL ALLY.
Richard Thornton was not slow to respond to Eleanor’s summons. The same
post which carried Mrs. Monckton’s letter to the young man conveyed
another letter, addressed to the Signora, urging her to abandon her
pupils, for a time at least, and to come at once to Tolldale.
Eleanor had not forgotten the faithful friends who had succoured her
in the day of her desolation, but the Signora’s habits of independence
were not to be conquered, and Mrs. Monckton found there was very little
that Eliza Picirillo would consent to accept from her.
She had insisted upon removing the music-mistress from the eccentric
regions of the Pilasters to a comfortable first-floor in Dudley Street.
She had furnished this new shelter with easy chairs, and Brussels
carpets, an Erard’s piano, and proof impressions of the Signora’s
favourite pictures; and in doing this she had very nearly exhausted
her first year’s income, much to the satisfaction of Gilbert Monckton,
who implored her to call upon him freely for any money she might want
for her friends.
It pleased him to see her do these things. It was a delight to him to
see her thus tenderly grateful to the friends of her adversity.
“A mercenary woman would have cast off these humble associations,” he
thought: “this girl must be the noble creature I believed her to be,
when I flung down my happiness for the second time at a woman’s feet.”
But although Eleanor would have gladly lavished every shilling
she possessed upon Eliza Picirillo and her nephew, she could not
persuade either the music-mistress or the scene-painter to work less
hard than it had been their wont to do for many wearisome years.
The Signora still went from house to house in attendance upon her
out-of-door pupils, and still received young ladies bent upon wearing
the laurel crown of the lyric drama. Richard still painted snow-clad
mountain-tops, and impossible Alpine passes, impracticably prosperous
villages, and wide-spreading farm-lands of yellow corn, bounded by
fragile white palings, and occupied by husbandmen in linen gaiters and
chintz waistcoats. It was in vain, therefore, that Mrs. Monckton had
hitherto implored her friends to come to Tolldale, and it was only in
consequence of a very serious misunderstanding with Messrs. Spavin and
Cromshaw, which for a time threw the scene-painter out of employment,
that Richard Thornton was able to respond to Eleanor’s earnest appeal.
A January that had been bleaker and colder than even January is
expected to be was drawing to a close, when Signora Picirillo and her
nephew arrived at the Priory. The woods round Tolldale were shrouded
with snow, the broad lawns before Woodlands were as white as Richard’s
Alpine passes, and Maurice de Crespigny had been for many weeks a
prisoner to the house. Laura’s wedding-day was appointed for the
fifteenth of March, and that young lady, when unoccupied by her lover’s
society, was entirely absorbed in the millinery and mantua-making
necessary for the preparation of her bridal outfit.
Richard Thornton had considerably modified the eccentric fashion of his
beard and had bought a new suit of clothes in honour of his fair young
hostess. The scene-painter had not seen Eleanor since the morning on
which he had fled away from the Pilasters to hide his sorrows amongst
the swamps of Battersea. The meeting, therefore, was a painful one to
him; all the more painful, perhaps, because Mrs. Monckton received him
with the frankly affectionate welcome which she would have bestowed
upon a brother.
“You must help me, Dick,” she said, “for the sake of others, if not
for my sake; you cannot now refuse to fathom this mystery. If Launcelot
Darrell is the man I believe him to be, he is no fit husband for an
affectionate and trusting girl. He has no right to inherit Maurice de
Crespigny’s fortune! The marriage between Laura and this man is to
take place upon the fifteenth of March. Maurice de Crespigny may die
to-morrow. We have very little time before us, Richard.”
So Mr. Thornton was fain to obey the imperious young lady, who had been
in the habit of ordering him about ever since the days in which he had
kept rabbits and silkworms for her gratification. He set himself to
his task very faithfully; and did his best to become acquainted with
Launcelot Darrell’s character.
The well-born young artist, who meant to do something very great in the
Academy at his earliest convenience, treated the scene-painter with a
supercilious good-nature that was by no means agreeable to Mr. Thornton.
Dick had resolved _not_ to be prejudiced against Eleanor’s fancied
enemy, lest that young lady’s vehement impulses should have led her
into rather an awkward mistake; but there was something in the insolent
assurance of Launcelot Darrell that aroused Richard’s indignation, and
it was not without an effort that he contrived to be commonly civil to
poor Laura’s affianced husband.
Launcelot dined at Tolldale upon the evening of the arrival of
Eleanor’s guests, and it was at the dinner-table that Richard first had
an opportunity of observing the man he had been entreated to watch.
Mr. Monckton, sitting at the bottom of the table, and looking at his
wife athwart a glittering array of glass and silver, became aware of a
change in Eleanor’s manner, a change that mystified and bewildered him,
but which was not altogether unpleasant to him.
The lawyer’s jealousy had been chiefly aroused by the perpetual
uneasiness of Eleanor’s manner when Launcelot Darrell was present; by
the furtive yet unregarded watch which she kept upon the young man’s
movements. To-night, for the first time, her manner had changed. It was
no longer Launcelot Darrell, but Richard Thornton whom she watched.
Following every varying expression of her face, Gilbert Monckton saw
that she looked at the scene-painter with an earnest, questioning,
appealing glance, that seemed to demand something of him, or urge him
on to the performance of something that she wanted done. Looking from
his wife to Richard, the lawyer saw that Launcelot Darrell was still
watched; but this time the eyes that observed him were those of the
Signora’s nephew.
Mr. Monckton felt very much like a spectator who looks on at a drama
which is being acted in a language that is unknown to him. The
_dramatis personæ_ come in and go out; they are earnest or vehement,
joyous or sorrowful, as the case may be; but not having any clue to the
plot, the wretched looker-on can scarcely feel intense delight in the
performance.
Eleanor contrived to question her ally in the course of the evening.
“Well, Richard,” she said, “is Launcelot Darrell the man who cheated my
father?”
“I don’t know about that, Mrs. Monckton, but——”
“But you think——?”
“I think he is by no means the most delightful, or the best of men. He
snubs me because I paint scenery for the Phœnix; and he accepts that
silly little girl’s homage with the air of a sultan.”
“Then you don’t like him, Dick!”
Mr. Thornton drew a long breath, as if by some powerful effort of his
will he repressed a vehement and unseemly expression of feeling.
“I think he’s—you know what a great tragedian used to call people when
they rang down the act-drop three minutes before Lear had finished
using bad language to his eldest daughter, or came up in the witches’
cauldron with their backs to the audience—and nervous people have been
known to do that, Eleanor:—it isn’t pleasant to stand on a rickety
ladder and talk to a quick-tempered tragedian out of a canvas saucepan,
with a smell of burning rosin in your nostrils, and another nervous
apparition wanting to get you off the ladder before you’ve finished
your speech. I think Launcelot Darrell is—a BEAST, Mrs. Monckton; and I
have no doubt he would cheat at cards, if he had the chance of doing it
with perfect safety and convenience.”
“You think that?” cried Eleanor, seizing upon this latter part of
Richard’s speech; “you think that he would cheat a helpless old man?
Prove that, Richard; prove it, and I will be as merciless to Launcelot
Darrell as he was to my father—his uncle’s friend, too; he knew that.”
“Eleanor Monckton,” Richard said, earnestly, “I have never been
serious before upon this matter; I have hoped that you would outlive
your girlish resolution; I hoped above all that when you married”—his
voice trembled a little here, but he went bravely on—“new duties would
make you forget that old promise; and I did my best, Heaven knows,
to wean you from the infatuation. But now that I have seen this man,
Launcelot Darrell, it seems to me as if there may have been something
of inspiration in your sudden recognition of him. I have already seen
enough of him to know at least that he is no fit husband for that poor
little romantic girl with the primrose-coloured ringlets; and I will do
my best to find out where he was, and what he was doing, during those
years in which he is supposed to have been in India.”
“You will do this, Richard?”
“Yes, Mrs. Monckton.” The young man addressed his old companion by this
name, using the unfamiliar appellation as a species of rod by which he
kept in order and subdued certain rebellious emotions that would arise
as he remembered how utterly the beautiful girl, whose presence had
made sunshine in the shabbiest, if not the shadiest of places, was now
lost to him. “Yes, Mrs. Monckton, I will try and fathom the mystery.
This Launcelot Darrell must be very clever if he can have contrived to
do away with every vestige of the years in which he was or was not in
India. However softly Time may tread, he leaves his footmarks behind
him; and it will be strange if we can’t find some tell-tale impression
whereby Mr. Darrell’s secret may be discovered. By the bye, Mrs.
Monckton, you have had a good deal of time for observation. What have
you done towards investigating the young man’s antecedents?”
Eleanor blushed, and hesitated a little before she answered this very
direct question.
“I have watched him very closely,” she said, “and I’ve listened to
every word he has ever said——”
“To be sure. In the expectation, no doubt, that he would betray himself
by frowns and scowls, and other facial contortions, after the manner of
a stage villain; or that he would say, ‘At such a time I was in Paris;’
or ‘At such a time I cheated at _écarté_.’ You go cleverly to work,
Mrs. Monckton, for an amateur detective!”
“What ought I to have done, then?” Eleanor asked, despondently.
“You should have endeavoured to trace up the history of the past by
those evidences which the progress of life can scarcely fail to leave
behind it. Watch the man’s habits and associations, rather than the man
himself. Have you had access to the rooms in which he lives?”
“Yes; I have been with Laura to Hazlewood often since I came here. I
have been in Launcelot Darrell’s rooms.”
“And have you seen nothing there? no book, no letter; no scrap of
evidence that might make one link in the story of this man’s life?”
“Nothing—nothing particular. He has some French novels on a shelf in
one corner of his sitting-room.”
“Yes; but the possession of a few French novels scarcely proves that he
was in Paris in the year ’53. Did you look at the titles of the books?”
“No; what could I have gained by seeing them?”
“Something, perhaps. The French are a volatile people. The fashion
of one year is not the fashion of another. If you had found some work
that made a _furore_ in that particular year, you might have argued
that Launcelot Darrell was a _flâneur_ in the Galerie d’Orleans, or on
the Boulevard, where the book was newly exhibited in the shop-windows.
If the novels were new ones, and not Michel Lévy’s eternal reprints of
Sand and Soulié, Balzac and Bernard, you might have learnt something
from them. The science of detection, Mrs. Monckton, lies in the
observation of insignificant things. It is a species of mental geology.
A geologist looks into the gravel pit, and tells you the history of the
creation; a clever detective ransacks a man’s carpet-bag, and convicts
that man of a murder or a forgery.”
“I know I have been very stupid,” Eleanor murmured, almost piteously.
“Heaven forbid that you should ever be very clever in such a line
as this. There must be detective officers; they are the polished
bloodhounds of our civilized age, and very noble and estimable animals
when they do their duty conscientiously: but fair-haired young ladies
should be kept out of this _galère_. Think no more of this business,
then, Eleanor. If Launcelot Darrell was the man who played _écarté_
with your father on the 11th of August, ’53, I’ll find a proof of his
guilt. Trust me to do that.”
“I will trust you, Richard.”
Mrs. Monckton held out her hand with a certain queenliness of gesture,
as if she would thereby have ratified a bond between herself and her
old friend; and as the flower of bygone chivalry were wont to vow the
accomplishment of great deeds on the jewelled hilt of a cross-handled
sword, so Richard Thornton, bending his honest head, swore allegiance
upon the hand of Gilbert Monckton’s young wife.
“One word more, Mrs. Monckton,” said the scene-painter, “and then we
had better leave off talking, or people will begin to wonder why we
are so confidential and mysterious. This Mr. Darrell is an artist, I
understand. Does he paint much?”
“Oh, yes, a great deal; that is to say, he begins a great many things.”
“Precisely; he does a good many rough sketches, scraps of pencil and
crayon, eh?”
“And he fills portfolios with such scrape, and litters his studio with
them?”
“Yes.”
“Then I must have a look at his studio, Mrs. Monckton. An artist—yes,
even the poorest artist, the furthest away from the sublimity of
genius—is sure to be fond of his art. He makes a confidant of it; he
betrays a hundred secrets, that he keeps locked from every living
creature, in the freedom of his studio. His pencil is the outer
expression of his mind; and whatever falsehoods he may impose upon his
fellow-men, his sketch-book will tell the truth. It will betray him
when he is false, and reveal him when he is true. I must have a look
at Launcelot Darrell’s studio, Mrs. Monckton. Let me see the man’s
pictures; and I may be able to tell you more about the man, himself.”