A BRIEF TRIUMPH.
Eleanor Monckton’s first impulse was to rush into the room and denounce
Launcelot Darrell in the presence of those who would be sure to come in
answer to her call. He would be scarcely likely to find much mercy at
the hands of his aunts: he would stand before them a detected wretch,
capable of any crime, of any treachery, for the furtherance of his own
interest.
But a second impulse, as rapid as the first, restrained the impetuous
girl. She wanted to know the end, she wanted to see what these two
plotters would do next. Under the influence of her desire to rush into
the room, she had moved forward a few paces, rustling the leaves about
her as she stirred. The Frenchman’s acute hearing had detected that
rustling sound.
“Quick, quick,” he whispered; “take the keys back; there is some one in
the garden.”
Launcelot Darrell had risen from his knees. The door between the study
and the dressing-room had been left ajar; the young man pushed it open,
and hurried away with the keys in his hand, Victor Bourdon closed
his lantern, and came to the window. He thrust aside the Venetian
shutters, and stepped out into the garden. Eleanor crouched down with
her back flat against the wall, completely sheltered by the laurels.
The Frenchman commenced his search amongst the bushes on the right of
the window. Eleanor’s hiding-place was on the left. This gave her a
moment’s breathing time.
“The will!” she thought in that one moment; “they have left the genuine
will upon the chair by the cabinet. _If_ I could get that!”
The thought had flashed like lightning through her brain. Reckless in
her excitement, she rose from her crouching position, and slid rapidly
and noiselessly across the threshold of the open window into the study,
before Victor Bourdon had finished his examination of the shrubs on the
right.
Her excitement seemed to intensify every sense. The only light in the
room was a faint ray which came across the small intermediate chamber
from the open door of Maurice de Crespigny’s bedroom. This light was
very little, but the open door was opposite the cabinet, and what light
there was fell upon the very spot towards which Eleanor’s dilated eyes
looked. She could see the outline of the paper on the chair; she could
see the other paper on the floor, faint and grey in the dim glimmer
from the distant candles.
She snatched the will from the chair, and thrust it into the pocket of
her dress; she picked up the other paper from the floor, and placed
it on the chair. Then, with her face and figure obscured in the loose
cloak that shrouded her, she went back into the garden.
As she drew back into the shelter of the laurels she felt a man’s
garments brushing against her own, and a man’s hot breath upon her
cheek. The Frenchman had passed her so closely that it was almost
impossible he could have failed to perceive her presence; and yet he
had seemed utterly unconscious of it.
Launcelot Darrell came back to the study almost the moment after
Eleanor had left it. He was breathing quickly, and stopped to wipe his
forehead once more with his handkerchief.
“Bourdon!” he exclaimed, in a loud whisper. “Bourdon, where are you?”
The Frenchman crossed the threshold of the window as the young man
called to him.
“I have been on the look-out for spies,” he said.
“Have you seen any one?”
“No; I fancy it was a false alarm.”
“Come, then,” said Launcelot Darrell, “we have been luckier than I
thought we should be.”
“Hadn’t you better unlock that door before we leave?” asked Monsieur
Bourdon, pointing to the door which communicated with the other part of
the house. Launcelot had locked it on first entering the study, and had
thus secured himself from any surprise in that direction. The two men
were going away when Monsieur Bourdon stopped suddenly.
“You’ve forgotten something, my friend,” he whispered, laying his hand
on Launcelot’s shoulder.
“What?”
“The will, the genuine will,” answered the Frenchman, pointing to the
chair. “It would be a clever thing to leave that behind, eh!”
Launcelot started, and put his hand to his forehead.
“I must be mad,” he muttered; “this business is too much for my brain.
Why did you lead me into it, Bourdon? Are you the Devil, that you must
always prompt me to some new mischief?”
“You shall ask me that next week, my friend, when you are the master
of this house. Get that paper there, and come away: unless you want to
stop till your maiden aunts make their appearance.”
Launcelot Darrell snatched up the paper which Eleanor had put upon the
chair by the cabinet. He was going to thrust it into his breast-pocket,
when the Frenchman took it away from him.
“You don’t particularly want to keep that document; or to drop it
anywhere about the garden; do you? We’ll burn it, if it’s all the
same to you, and save them all trouble at—what you call your law
court—Common doctors, Proctor’s Commons, eh?”
Monsieur Bourdon had put his bull’s-eye lantern in his coat-pocket,
after looking for spies amongst the evergreens. He now produced a box
of fusees, and setting one of them alight, watched it fizz and sparkle
for a moment, and then held it beneath the corner of the document in
his left hand.
The paper was slow to catch fire, and Monsieur Bourdon had occasion to
light another fusee before he succeeded in doing more than scorching
it. But it blazed up by-and-by, and by the light of the blaze Eleanor
Monckton saw the eager faces of the two men. Launcelot Darrel’s
livid countenance was almost like that of a man who looks on at an
assassination. The commercial traveller watched the slow burning of
the document with a smile upon his face—a smile of triumph, as it
seemed to Eleanor Monckton.
“V’là!” he exclaimed, as the paper dropped, a frail sheet of tinder,
from his hand, and fluttered slowly to the ground. “V’là!” he cried,
stamping upon the feathery grey ashes; “so much for that; and now our
little scheme of to-night is safe, I fancy, my friend.”
Launcelot Darrell drew a long breath.
“Thank God, it’s over,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t go through this
business again for twenty fortunes.”
Eleanor, still crouching upon the damp grass close against the wall,
waited for the two men to go away. She waited, with her hands clasped
upon her heart; thinking of her triumph.
The vengeance had come at last. That which she had said to Richard
Thornton was about to be fulfilled. The law of the land had no power to
punish Launcelot Darrell for the cowardly and treacherous act that had
led to an old man’s most miserable death: but the traitor had by a new
crime placed himself at the mercy of the law.
“The will he has placed in the cabinet is a forgery,” she thought; “and
I have the real will in my pocket. He cannot escape me now,—he cannot
escape me now! His fate is in my hands.”
The two men had walked past the laurels out on to the grass-plat.
Eleanor rose from her crouching position, rustling the branches as she
did so. At the same moment she heard voices in the distance, and saw a
light gleaming through the leaves.
One of the voices that she had heard was her husband’s.
“So much the better,” she thought. “I will tell him what Launcelot
Darrell is. I will tell him to-night.”
The voices and the lights came nearer, and she heard Gilbert Monckton
say:
“Impossible, Miss Sarah. Why should my wife stop here? She must have
gone back to Tolldale; and I have been unlucky enough to miss her on
the way.”
The lawyer had scarcely spoken when, by the light of the lantern which
he held, he saw Launcelot Darrell making off into the shrubbery that
surrounded the grass-plat. The young man had not succeeded in escaping
from the open space into this friendly shelter before Gilbert Monckton
perceived him. Monsieur Bourdon, perhaps better accustomed to take to
his heels, had been more fortunate, and had plunged in amongst the
evergreens at the first sound of the lawyer’s voice.
“Darrell!” cried Mr. Monckton, “what in Heaven’s name brings you here?”
The young man stood for a few moments, irresolute, and sullen-looking.
“I’ve as good a right to be here as any one else, I suppose,” he said.
“I heard of my uncle’s death—and—and—I came to ascertain if there was
any truth in the report.”
“You heard of my beloved uncle’s death!” cried Miss Sarah de
Crespigny, peering sharply at her nephew from under the shadow of a
pent-house-like garden-hood, in which she had invested herself before
venturing into the night air. “How _could_ you have heard of the sad
event? My sister and I gave special orders that no report should go
abroad until to-morrow morning.”
Mr. Darrell did not care to say that one of the Woodlands servants was
in his pay; and that the same servant, being no other than Brooks, the
gardener, had galloped over to Hazlewood, to communicate the tidings of
his master’s death, before starting for Windsor.
“I _did_ hear of it,” Launcelot said, “and that’s enough. I came to
ascertain if it was true.”
“But you were going away from the house when I saw you!” said Mr.
Monckton, rather suspiciously.
“I was not going away from the house, for I had not been to the house,”
Launcelot answered, in the same tone as before.
He spoke in a sulky, grudging manner, because he knew that he was
telling a deliberate lie. He was a man who always did wrong acts under
protest, as being forced to do them by the injustice of the world; and
held society responsible for all his errors.
“Have you seen my wife?” Gilbert asked, still suspiciously.
“No. I have only this moment come. I have not seen anybody.”
“I _must_ have missed her,” muttered the lawyer, with an anxious air.
“I must have missed her between this and Tolldale. Nobody saw her leave
the house. She went out without leaving any message, and I guessed at
once that she had come up here. It’s very odd.”
“It _is_ very odd!” Miss Sarah repeated, with spiteful emphasis.
“I must confess that for my own part I do not see what motive Mrs.
Monckton could have had for rushing up here in the dead of the night.”
The time which Miss Sarah de Crespigny spoke of as the dead of the
night had been something between ten and eleven o’clock. It was now
past eleven.
The lawyer and Miss de Crespigny walked slowly along the gravelled
pathway that led from the grass-plat and shrubbery to the other side
of the house. Launcelot Darrell went with them, lounging by his aunt’s
side, with his head down, and his hands in his pockets, stopping now
and then to kick the pebbles from his pathway.
It was impossible to imagine anything more despicable than, this
young man’s aspect. Hating himself for what he had done; hating the
man who had prompted him to do it; angry against the very workings of
Providence—since by his reasoning it was Providence, or his Destiny, or
some power or other against which he had ample ground for rebellion,
that had caused all the mischief and dishonour of his life—he went
unwillingly to act out the part which he had taken upon himself, and to
do his best to throw Gilbert Monckton off the scent.
His mind was too much disturbed for him to be able clearly to realize
the danger of his position. To have been seen there was ruin—perhaps!
If by-and-by any doubts should arise as to the validity of the will
that would be found in Maurice de Crespigny’s _secrétaire_, would it
not be remembered that he, Launcelot Darrell, had been seen lurking
about the house on the night of the old man’s death, and had been only
able to give a very lame explanation of his motives for being there. He
thought of this as he walked by his aunt’s side. He thought of this,
and began to wonder if it might not be possible to undo what had been
done? No, it was impossible. The crime had been committed. A step had
been taken which could never be retraced, for Victor Bourdon had burned
the real will.
“Curse his officiousness,” thought the young man. “I could have undone
it all but for that.”
As the lawyer and his two companions reached the angle of the house
on their way to the front entrance, whence Mr. Monckton, and Miss de
Crespigny had come into the garden, a dark figure, shrouded in a loose
cloak, emerged from amidst the shrubs by the windows of the dead man’s
apartments, and approached them.
“Who is that?” cried the lawyer, suddenly. His heart began to beat
violently as he asked the question. It was quite a supererogatory
question; for he knew well enough that it was his wife who stood before
him.
“It is I, Gilbert,” Eleanor said, quietly.
“You here, Mrs. Monckton!” exclaimed her husband, in a harsh voice,
that seemed to ring through the air like the vibration of metal that
has been struck—“you here, hiding in this shrubbery!”
“Yes, I came here—how long ago, Miss Sarah? It seems half a century to
me.”
“You came here exactly twenty minutes ago, Mrs. Monckton,” Miss de
Crespigny answered, icily.
“And by a really remarkable coincidence,” cried Gilbert Monckton, in
the same unnatural voice in which he had spoken before, “Mr. Darrell
happens to be here too: only I must do you the justice to say, Mrs.
Monckton, that _you_ appear less discomposed than the gentleman. Ladies
always have the advantage of us; they can carry off these things so
easily; deception seems to come natural to them.”
“Deception!” repeated Eleanor.
What did he mean? Why was he angry with her? She wondered at his manner
as she walked with him to the house. No suspicion of the real nature
of her husband’s feelings entered her mind. The absorbing idea of her
life was the desire to punish her father’s destroyer; and how could she
imagine that her husband was tortured by jealous suspicions of this
man: of this man, who of all the living creatures upon the earth was
most hateful to her? How could she—knowing her own feelings, and taking
it for granted that these feelings were more or less obvious to other
people—how could she imagine the state of Gilbert Monckton’s mind?
She went into the hall with her husband, followed by Miss Sarah
de Crespigny and Launcelot Darrell, and from the hall into the
sitting-room usually occupied by the two ladies. A lamp burned brightly
upon the centre table, and Miss Lavinia de Crespigny sat near it, with
some devotional book in her hand. I think she tried her best to be
devout, and to employ herself with serious reflections upon the dread
event that had so lately happened; but the fatal power of the old man’s
wealth was stronger than any holier influence, and I fear that Miss
Lavinia’s thoughts very often wandered away from the page on which her
eyes were fixed, into sundry intricate calculations of the cumulative
interest upon Exchequer bills, India five per cents., and Great Western
Railway shares.
“I must have an explanation of this business,” Mr. Monckton said: “it
is time that we should all understand each other. There has been too
much mystification, and I am most heartily tired of it.”
He walked to the fireplace and leaned his elbow upon the marble
chimney-piece. From this position he commanded a view of every one in
the room. Launcelot Darrell flung himself into a chair by the table,
nearly opposite his aunt Lavinia. He did not trouble himself to notice
this lady, nor did he bow to Eleanor; he sat with his elbow resting
upon the arm of his chair, his chin in the palm of his hand, and he
employed himself by biting his nails and beating his heel upon the
carpet. He was still thinking, as he had thought in the garden, “If I
could only undo what I have done. If I could only undo the work of the
last quarter of an hour, and stand right with the world again.”
But in this intense desire that had taken possession of Launcelot
Darrell’s mind there was mingled no regretful horror of the wickedness
of what he had done; no remorseful sense of the great injustice which
he had plotted; no wish to atone or to restore. It was selfishness
alone that influenced his every thought. He wanted to put _himself_
right. He hated this new position, which for the last few minutes
he had occupied for the first time in his life; the position of a
deliberate criminal, amenable to the laws by which the commonest felons
are tried, likely to suffer as the commonest felons suffer.
It seemed to him as if his brain had been paralyzed until now; it
seemed to him as if he had acted in a stupor or a dream; and that he
now for the first time comprehended the nature of the deed which he had
done, and was able to foresee the possible consequences of his own act.
“I have committed forgery,” he thought. “If my crime is discovered I
shall be sent to Bermuda to work amongst gangs of murderous ruffians
till I drop down dead. _If_ my crime is discovered! How shall I ever be
safe from discovery, when I am at the mercy of the wretches who helped
me?”
Eleanor threw off her cloak, but she refused to sit down in the chair
which Miss Sarah offered her. She stood divided by the width of
half the room from her husband, with her face fronting his, in the
full glare of the lamplight. Her large grey eyes were bright with
excitement, her cheeks were flushed, her hair fell loosely about her
face, brown in the shadow, and glittering like ruddy gold in the light.
In all the beauty of her girlhood, from the hour in which Gilbert
Monckton had first seen her until to-night, she had never looked so
beautiful as she looked now. The sense that she had triumphed, the
thought that she held the power to avenge her father’s death, lent an
unnatural brilliancy to her loveliness. She was no longer an ordinary
woman, only gifted with the earthly charms of lovely womanhood: she was
a splendid Nemesis, radiant with a supernatural beauty.