RESOLVED.
Eleanor Monckton walked slowly back to the house by the side of her
husband, whose eyes never left his wife’s face during that short walk
between the garden-gate and the long French window by which the two
girls had left the drawing-room. Even in the dusk, Gilbert Monckton
could see that his wife’s face was unusually pale.
She spoke to him as they entered the drawing-room, laying her hand upon
his arm as she addressed him, and looking earnestly at him in the red
firelight.
“Is Mr. de Crespigny really dying, Gilbert?” she asked.
“I fear that, from what the medical men say, there is very little doubt
about it. The old man is going fast.”
Eleanor paused for a few moments, with her head bent, and her face
hidden from her husband.
Then, suddenly looking up, she spoke to him again; this time with
intense earnestness.
“Gilbert, I want to see Mr. de Crespigny before he dies; I want to see
him alone—I must see him!”
The lawyer stared at his wife in utter bewilderment. What, in Heaven’s
name, was the meaning of this sudden energy, this intense eagerness,
which blanched the colour in her cheeks, and held her breathless? Her
friendly feeling for the invalid, her womanly pity for an old man’s
infirmities, could never have been powerful enough to cause such
emotion.
“You want to see Maurice de Crespigny, Eleanor?” repeated Mr. Monckton,
in a tone of undisguised wonder. “But why do you want to see him?”
“I have something to tell him—something that he _must_ know before he
dies.”
The lawyer started. A sudden light broke in upon his bewildered mind,—a
light that showed him the woman he loved in very odious colours.
“You want to tell him who you are?”
“To tell him who I am? yes!” Eleanor answered, absently.
“But for what reason?”
Mrs. Monckton was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at her
husband.
“My reason is a secret, Gilbert,” she said; “I cannot even tell it to
you—yet. But I hope to do so very, very soon. Perhaps to-night.”
The lawyer bit his under lip and walked away from his wife with a frown
upon his face. He left Eleanor standing before the fireplace, and took
two or three turns up and down the room, pacing backwards and forwards
in moody silence.
Then, suddenly returning to her, he said, with an air of angry
resolution that chilled her timid confidence in him, and cast her back
upon herself, “Eleanor, there is something in all this that wounds me
to the very quick. There is a mystery between us; a mystery that has
lasted too long. Why did you stipulate that your maiden name should be
kept a secret from Maurice de Crespigny? Why have you paid him court
ever since your coming to this place? And why, now that you hear of his
approaching death, do you want to force yourself into his presence?
Eleanor, Eleanor, there can be put one reason for all this, and that
the most sordid, the most miserable and mercenary of reasons.”
George Vane’s daughter looked at her husband with a stare of blank
dismay, as if she was trying, but trying in vain, to attach some
meaning to his words.
“A sordid reason—a mercenary reason,” she repeated, slowly, in a half
whisper.
“Yes, Eleanor,” answered Gilbert Monckton, passionately. “Why should
you be different from the rest of the world? It has been my error,
my mad delusion, to think you so; as I once thought another woman
who crushed my hopes of happiness as recklessly as a child shatters
a plaything it has got tired of. It has been my folly to trust and
believe in you, forgetful of the past, false to the teaching of
most bitter experience. I have been mistaken—once more—all the more
egregiously, perhaps, because this time I thought I was so deliberate,
so cautious. You are _not_ different to the rest of the world. If other
women are mercenary, you too are mercenary. You are not content with
having sacrificed your inclination for the sake of making what the
world calls an advantageous marriage. You are not satisfied with having
won a wealthy husband, and you seek to inherit Maurice de Crespigny’s
fortune.”
Eleanor Monckton passed both her hands across her forehead, pushing
back the loose masses of her hair, as if she would by that movement
have cleared away some of the clouds that overshadowed her brain.
“_I_ seek to inherit Mr. de Crespigny’s fortune!” she murmured.
“Yes! Your father no doubt educated you in that idea. I have heard how
obstinately he built upon the inheritance of his friend’s wealth. He
taught you to share his hopes: he bequeathed them to you as the only
legacy he had to give——”
“No!” cried Eleanor, suddenly; “the inheritance I received at my
father’s death was no inheritance of hope. Do not say any more to me,
Mr. Monckton. It seems as if my brain had no power to bear all this
to-night. If you can think these base things of me, I must be content
to endure your bad opinion. I know that I have been very forgetful of
you, very neglectful of you, since I have been your wife, and you have
reason to think badly of me. But my mind has been so full of other
things: so full, that it has seemed to me as if all else in life—except
those thoughts, that one hope—slipped by me like the events of a dream.”
Gilbert Monckton looked half-fearfully at his wife as she spoke. There
was something in her manner that he had never seen before. He had seen
her only when her feelings had been held in check by her utmost power
of repression. That power was beginning to wear out now. The strain
upon Eleanor’s intellect had been too great, and her nerves were losing
their power of tension.
“Do not say anything more to me,” she cried, imploringly; “do not say
anything more. It will soon be over now.”
“What will soon be over, Eleanor?”
But Eleanor did not answer. She clasped her hands before her face; a
half-stifled sob broke from her lips, and she hurried from the room
before her husband could repeat his question.
Mr. Monckton looked after her with an expression of unmingled anguish
on his face.
“How can I doubt the truth?” he thought; “her indignant repudiation
of any design on Maurice de Crespigny’s fortune exonerates her at
least from that charge. But her agitation, her tears, her confusion,
all betray the truth. Her heart has never been mine. She married me
with the determination to do her duty to me, and to be true to me. I
believe that. Yes, in spite of all, I will believe that. But her love
is Launcelot Darrell’s. Her love, the one blessing I sought to win,—the
blessing which in my mad folly I was weak enough to hope for,—is given
to Laura’s betrothed husband. What could be plainer than the meaning
of those last broken words she spoke just now: ‘It will soon be over;
it will soon be over?’ What should she moan except that Launcelot
Darrell’s marriage and departure will put an end to the struggle of her
life?”
Mingled with the bitterness of his grief, some feeling akin to pity had
a place in Gilbert Monckton’s heart.
He pitied her—yes, he pitied this girl, whose life it had been his
fate to overshadow. He had come between this bright young creature and
the affection of her innocent girlhood, and, presenting himself before
her in the hour of her desolation, had betrayed her into one of those
mistakes which a lifetime of honest devotion is not always able to
repair.
“She consented to marry me on the impulse of the moment, clinging to me
in her loneliness and helplessness, and blinded to the future by the
sorrow of the present. It was an instinct of confidence, and not love,
that drew her towards me; and now, now that there is no retreat—no
drawing back—nothing but a long vista of dreary years to be spent with
a man she does not love, this poor unhappy girl suffers an agony which
can no longer be concealed, even from me.”
Mr. Monckton paced up and down his spacious drawing-room, thinking of
these things. Once he looked with a sad, bitter smile at the evidences
of wealth that were so lavishly scattered about the handsome chamber.
On every side those evidences met his eyes. The Guido, upon which the
firelight gleamed, kindling the face of a martyr into supernatural
glory, was worth a sum that would have been a fortune to a poor man.
Every here and there, half hidden amongst the larger modern pictures,
lurked some tiny gem of Italian art, a few square inches of painted
canvas, worth full a hundred times its weight of unalloyed gold.
“If my wife were as frivolous as Laura,” thought Mr. Monckton, “I
could make her happy, perhaps. Fine dresses, and jewels, and pictures,
and furniture, would be enough to make happiness for an empty-headed
woman. If Eleanor had been influenced by mercenary feelings when she
married me, she would have surely made more use of my wealth; she would
have paraded the jewellery I have given her, and made herself a lay
figure for the display of milliner’s work; at least while the novelty
of her position lasted. But she has dressed as plainly as a village
tradesman’s wife, and the only money she has spent is that which she
has given to her friend the music-mistress.”
The second dinner-bell rang while Gilbert Monckton was pacing the
empty drawing-room, and he went straight to the dining-room in his
frock-coat, and with no very great appetite for the dishes that were to
be set before him.
Eleanor took her place at the top of the table. She wore a brown
silk dress, a few shades darker than her auburn hair, and her white
shoulders gleamed liked ivory against bronze. She had bathed her head
and face with cold water, and her rippling hair was still wet. She was
very pale, very grave; but all traces of violent emotion had passed
away, and there was a look of quiet determination about her mouth.
Laura Mason came rustling and fluttering into the room, as Mr. and Mrs.
Monckton took their places at the dinner-table.
“It’s my PINK,” said the young lady, alluding to a very elaborate
toilette of blush-rose coloured silk, bedizened with innumerable yards
of lace and ribbon.
“I thought you would like to see my pink, and I want to know how it
looks. It’s the new colour. Launcelot says the new colour is like
strawberry ices, but I like it. It’s one of the dinner dresses in my
trousseau, you know,” she murmured, apologetically, to Mr. Monckton;
“and I wanted to try the effect of it, though of course it’s only to
be worn at a party. The trimmings on the cross set beautifully; don’t
they, Eleanor?”
It was fortunate, perhaps, on this occasion at least, that Miss Mason
possessed the faculty of keeping up a kind of conversational monologue,
for otherwise there must have been a very dreary silence at the
dinner-table upon this particular evening.
Gilbert Monckton only spoke when the business of the meal compelled
him to do so. But there was a certain tenderness of tone in the very
few words he had occasion to address to his wife which was utterly
different to his manner before dinner. It was never Mr. Monckton’s
habit to sit long over the dismal expanse of a dessert-table; but
to-night, when the cloth had been removed and the two women left the
room, he followed them without any delay whatever.
Eleanor seated herself in a low chair by the fireplace. She had looked
at her watch twice during dinner, and now her eyes wandered almost
involuntarily to the dial of the clock upon the chimney-piece.
Her husband crossed the room and leant for a few moments over her chair.
“I am sorry for what I said this afternoon, Eleanor,” he murmured, in a
low voice; “can you forgive me?”
His wife lifted her eyes to his face. Those luminous grey eyes had a
look of mournful sweetness in them.
“Forgive you!” exclaimed Eleanor, “it is you who have so much to
forgive. But I will atone—I will atone—after to-night.”
She said these last words almost in a whisper, rather as if she had
been speaking to herself than to her husband; but Gilbert Monckton
heard those whispered syllables, and drew his own conclusions from
them. Unhappily, every word that Mrs. Monckton uttered tended to
confirm her husband’s doubts and to increase his wretchedness.
He seated himself in a reading-chair upon the opposite side of the
hearth, and, drawing a lamp close to his elbow, buried himself, or
appeared to bury himself, in his newspapers.
But every now and then the upper margin of the “Times,” or the “Post,”
or the “Athenæum,” or the “Saturday,” or whatever journal the lawyer
happened to be perusing—and he took up one after the other with a
fretful restlessness that betokened a mind ill at ease—dropped a little
lower than the level of the reader’s eyes, and Mr. Monckton looked
across the edge of the paper at his wife.
Almost every time he did so he found that Eleanor’s eyes were fixed
upon the clock.
The discovery of this fact speedily became a torture to him. He
followed his wife’s eyes to the slowly moving hands upon the enamelled
dial. He watched the minute hand as it glided from one figure to
another, marking intervals of five minutes that seemed like five hours.
Even when he tried to read, the loud ticking of the wretched timepiece
came between him and the sense of the page upon which his eyes were
fixed, and the monotonous sound seemed to deafen him.
Eleanor sat quite still in her low easy chair. Scraps of fancy-work and
open books lay upon the table beside her, but she made no effort to
beguile the evening by any feminine occupation. Laura Mason, restless
for want of employment and companionship, fluttered about the room
like some discontented butterfly, stopping every now and then before
a looking-glass to contemplate some newly-discovered effect in the
elegant costume which she called her “pink;” but Eleanor took no notice
whatever of her murmured exclamations and appeals for sympathy.
“I don’t know what’s come to you, Nelly, since your marriage,” the
young lady cried at last; after vainly trying to draw Mrs. Monckton’s
attention to the manifold beauties of gauze puffings and floating
streamers of ribbon; “you don’t seem to take any interest in life.
You’re quite a different girl to what you were at Hazlewood—before
Launcelot came home.”
Mr. Monckton threw down the “Athenæum,” and took up “Punch,” at this
juncture. He stared with a stony face at one of Mr. Leech’s most genial
cartoons, and glanced almost vengefully at the familiar double columns
of jokes. Eleanor looked away from the clock to answer her companion’s
peevish complaint.
“I am thinking of Mr. de Crespigny,” she said; “he may be dying while
we are sitting here.”
Mr. Monckton dropped “Punch,” and looked, openly this time, at his
wife’s face.
Could it be, after all, that her abstraction of manner really arose
from no deeper cause than her regret for the loss of this old man,
who was her dead father’s friend, and who had displayed an especial
affection for her?
Could it be so? No! Her words that night had revealed more than a
common sorrow such as this. They had betrayed the secret of a hidden
struggle—a woman’s grief—not easily to be repressed or overcome. There
is no knowing how long the lawyer might have sat brooding over his
troubles under cover of the newspapers, but presently he remembered
some papers which he had brought from London that afternoon, and
which it was his imperative duty—in the interests of a very important
client—to read that night.
He pushed away the lamp, rose from his low chair, and went to the door
of the drawing-room.
“I am going to my study, Eleanor;” he said; “I shall most likely spend
the rest of the evening there, and I may be obliged to be very late.
You won’t sit up for me?”
“Oh, no; not unless you wish it.”
“On no account. Good night. Good night, Laura.”
Even while his wife wished him good night, her eyes wandered uneasily
back to the clock. A quarter to ten.
“And he hasn’t once looked at my pink!” murmured Miss Mason, as her
guardian left the drawing-room.
Scarcely had the door closed when Eleanor Monckton rose from her chair.
Her flushed cheeks flamed with crimson brightness; her eyes were
lighted up as if a fire had burned in her dilated pupils.
“I am going to bed, Laura,” she said, abruptly; “I am very tired. Good
night!”
She took a candle from a table near the door, lit it, and hurried from
the room before Laura could question her or remonstrate with her.
“She doesn’t _look_ tired,” thought Miss Mason; “she looks as if she
were going to a ball; or going to have the scarletina. I think I looked
like that when I was going to have the scarletina; and when Launcelot
proposed to me.”
Five minutes after the stable-clock had struck ten, the great door of
Tolldale Priory was opened by a cautious hand, and Mrs. Monckton stole
out of her house with a woollen cloak wrapped about her, and her head
almost buried in the hood belonging to the thick winter garment. She
closed the door softly; and then, without stopping to look behind her,
hurried down the broad stone steps, across the courtyard, along the
gravelled garden pathway, out at the narrow wooden door in the wall,
and away into the dreary darkness of the wood that lay between the
Priory grounds and the dwelling-place of Maurice de Crespigny.