MARGARET LENNARD’S DELINQUENCIES.
Mrs. Major Lennard was very kind to Eleanor, and if kindness and
friendliness on the part of her employers could have made Mrs. Monckton
comfortable, she might have been entirely so in her new position.
But comfort was a noun substantive whose very meaning must, I think,
have been utterly incomprehensible to Major and Mrs. Lennard. They had
married very young, had started in life all wrong, and had remained
in a perpetual state of muddle, both mental and physical, ever since.
They were like two children who had played at being grown-up people for
twenty years or so; and who were as entirely childish in their play now
as they had been at the very beginning. To live with them was to exist
in an atmosphere of bewilderment and confusion; to have any dealings
whatever with them was to plunge at once into a chaos of disorder,
out of which the clearest intellect could scarcely emerge without
having suffered complete disorganization. The greatest misfortune of
these two people was the likeness they bore to each other. Had Major
Lennard been a man of vigorous intellect and strong will, or had he
been merely possessed of the average allowance of common sense, he
might have ruled his wife, and introduced some element of order
into his existence. On the other hand, if Mrs. Lennard had been a
sensible woman, she would no doubt have henpecked her husband, and
would have rescued the good-natured soldier from a hundred follies, by
a well-timed frown, or a sharp matronly nudge, as the occasion might
demand.
But they were both alike. They were two overgrown children of forty
years of age; and they looked upon the world as great play-room, whose
inhabitants had no better occupation than to find amusement, and shirk
the schoolmaster. They were generous and kind-hearted to a degree that,
in the opinion of their wiser acquaintance, bordered upon foolishness.
They were imposed upon on every side, and had been imposed upon during
twenty years, without acquiring any moral wealth in the way of wisdom,
from their very costly experience. The major had within the last twelve
months left the army on half-pay, on the death of a maiden aunt, who
had left him eight hundred a year. Up to the date of receiving this
welcome legacy, the soldier and his wife had been compelled to exist
upon Major Lennard’s pay, eked out by the help of stray benefactions
which he received from time to time from his rich relatives. The
family to which the ponderous officer belonged was very numerous and
aristocratic, owning as its chief a marquis, who was uncle to the major.
So the two big children had decided upon enjoying themselves very much
for the rest of their days, and as a commencement of this new life of
idleness and enjoyment, Major Lennard had brought his wife to Paris,
whence they were to go to Baden-Baden, to meet some of the major’s
aristocratic cousins.
“He might come in for the title himself, my dear,” Mrs. Lennard told
Eleanor, “if seventeen of his first cousins, and first cousins once
removed, would die. But, as I told poor papa, when he grumbled at my
marrying so badly, you can’t expect seventeen cousins to go off all in
a minute, just to oblige us by making Freddy a marquis.”
Perhaps nothing could have been happier for Eleanor than this life of
confusion, this scrambling and unsettled existence, in which the mind
was kept in a tumult by trifling cares and agitations; for in this
perpetual disorganization of her intellect, the lonely girl had no time
to think of her own troubles, or of the isolated position which she
had chosen for herself. It was only at night, when she went to bed,
in a small apartment very high up in the Hôtel du Palais, and about a
quarter of an hour’s walk from the chamber of the major and his wife,
that she had time to think of Launcelot Darrell’s triumph and her
husband’s unjust suspicions; and even then she could rarely brood very
long upon her troubles, for she was generally exhausted alike in mind
and body by the confusion and excitement of the day, and more likely
to fall asleep and dream of her sorrows than to lie awake and think of
them.
Those dreams were more troublesome to her than all the bewilderment of
the day, for in them she was perpetually renewing the old struggle with
Launcelot Darrell, perpetually upon the eve of victory, but never quite
victorious.
The major lingered in Paris much longer than he had intended, for the
big children found the city of boulevards a most delightful playground,
and frittered away a great deal of money upon expensive dinners at
renowned restaurants, ices, opera tickets, new bonnets, Piver’s gloves,
Lubin’s perfumes, and coach hire.
They stopped at the Hôtel du Palais, still acting on the major’s
theory, that the most expensive hotels are the cheapest—in the end.
They dined occasionally at the table-d’hôte, with two or three hundred
companions, and wasted a good deal of time in the great saloons,
playing at bagatelle, peering into stereoscopes, turning over the daily
papers, reading stray paragraphs here and there, or pouring over a
chapter of a romance in the _feuilleton_, until brought to a standstill
by a disheartening abundance of difficult words.
After breakfast, the major left his wife and her companion, either to
loll in the reading-room, to stroll about the great stone quadrangle,
smoking cigars, and drinking occasional brandy and soda, or to read
the English papers at Galignani’s, or to wait for the post, or to
meet a British acquaintance at Hill’s café, or to stare at the raw
young soldiers exercising in the courtyards of the Louvre, or the
copper-faced Zouaves who had done such wonderful work in the Crimea;
or perhaps to stumble across some hoary-headed veteran who had fought
under Napoleon the First, to make friendly speeches to him in bad
French, with every verb in a bewilderingly impossible tense, and to
treat him to little glasses of pale cognac.
Then Mrs. Lennard brought out her frame and her colour-box, and her
velvets and brushes, and all the rest of her implements, and plunged
at once into the delightful pursuit of painting upon velvet—an
accomplishment which this lady had only newly acquired in six lessons
for a guinea, during her last brief sojourn in London.
“The young person who taught me called herself Madame Ascanio de
Brindisi—but, oh! Miss Villars, if ever there was a Cockney in this
world, I think she was one—and she said in her advertisement, that
anybody could earn five pounds a week easily at this elegant and
delightful occupation; but I am sure I don’t know how _I_ should ever
earn five pounds a week, Miss Villars, for I’ve been nearly a month
at this one sofa cushion, and it has cost five-and-thirty shillings
already, and isn’t finished yet, and the major doesn’t like to see me
work, and I’m obliged to do it while he’s out; just as if it was a
crime to paint upon velvet. If you _would_ mend those gloves, dear,
that are split across the thumb—and really Piver’s gloves at four
francs, five-and-twenty what’s its names? oughtn’t to do so, though the
major says it’s my own fault, because I will buy six-and-a-quarters—I
should be _so_ much obliged,” Mrs. Lennard added, entreatingly, as she
seated herself at her work in one of the long windows. “I shall get on
splendidly,” she exclaimed, “if the Emperor doesn’t go for a drive; but
if he does, I must leave off my work and look at him—he’s such a dear!”
Eleanor was very willing to make herself what the advertisements call
“generally useful,” to the lady who had engaged her. She was a very
high-spirited girl, we know, quick to resent any insult, sensitive and
proud; but she had no false pride. She felt no shame in doing what
she had undertaken to do; and if, for her own convenience, she had
taken the situation of a kitchen-maid, she would have performed the
duties of that situation to the best of her ability. So she mended Mrs.
Lennard’s gloves, and darned that lady’s delicate lace collars, and
tried to infuse something like order into her toilette, and removed
the damp ends of cigars, which it was the major’s habit to leave about
upon every available piece of furniture, and made herself altogether so
useful that Mrs. Lennard declared that she would henceforward be unable
to live without her.
“But I know how it will be, you nasty provoking thing!” the major’s
wife exclaimed; “you’ll go on in this way, and you’ll make us fond of
you, and just as we begin to doat upon you, you’ll go and get married
and leave us, and then I shall have to get another old frump like
Miss Pallister, who lived with me before you, and who never would do
anything for me scarcely, but was always talking about belonging to
a good family, and not being used to a life of dependence. I’m sure
I used to wish she had belonged to a bad family. But I know it’ll be
so; just as we’re most comfortable with you, you’ll go and marry some
horrid creature.”
Eleanor blushed crimson as she shook her head.
“I don’t think that’s very likely,” she said.
“Ah! you say that,” Mrs. Lennard answered, doubtfully, “but you can’t
convince me quite so easily. I know you’ll go and marry; but you don’t
know the troubles you may bring upon yourself if you marry young—as I
did,” added the lady, dropping her brush upon her work, and breathing a
profound sigh.
“Troubles, my dear Mrs. Lennard!” cried Eleanor. “Why, it seems to me
as if you never could have had any sorrow in your life.”
“‘Seems, Hamlet!’” exclaimed Mrs. Lennard, casting up her eyes
tragically; “‘nay, it is; _I_ know not seems,’ as the Queen says to
Hamlet—or perhaps it’s Hamlet says so to the Queen, but that doesn’t
matter. Oh, Miss Villars! my life might have been very happy, perhaps,
but for the blighting influence of my own crime; a crime that I can
never atone for—_nev-arr_!”
Eleanor would have been quite alarmed by this speech, but for the
tone of enjoyment with which Mrs. Lennard gave utterance to it. She
had pushed aside her frame and huddled her brushes together upon the
buhl table—there was nothing but buhl and ormolu, and velvet-pile and
ebony, at the Hôtel du Palais, and an honest mahogany chair, a scrap of
Kidderminster carpet, or a dimity curtain, would have been a relief to
the overstrained intellect—and she sat with her hands clasped upon the
edge of the table, and her light blue eyes fixed in a tragic rapture.
“Crime, Mrs. Lennard!” Eleanor repeated, in that tone of horrified
surprise which was less prompted by actual terror, than by the feeling
that some exclamation of the kind was demanded of her.
“Yes, my dear, ker-rime! ker-rime! is not too harsh a word for the
conduct of a woman who jilts the man that loves her on the very eve of
the day appointed for the wedding, after a most elaborate trousseau has
been prepared at _his_ expense, to say nothing of heaps of gorgeous
presents, and diamonds as plentiful as dirt—and elopes with another
man. Nothing could be more dreadful than that, could it, Miss Villars?”
Eleanor felt that she was called upon to say that nothing _could_ be
more dreadful, and said so accordingly.
“Oh, don’t despise me, then, or hate me, please, Miss Villars,” cried
Mrs. Lennard; “I know you’ll feel inclined to do so; but don’t. I did
it!—I did it, Miss Villars. But I’m not altogether such a wretch as I
may seem to you. It was chiefly for my poor pa’s sake; it was, indeed.”
Eleanor was quite at a loss to know how Mrs. Leonard’s bad conduct to
her affianced husband could have benefited that lady’s father, and she
said something to that effect.
“Why, you see, my dear, in order to explain that, I must go back to the
very beginning, which was when I was at school.”
As Mrs. Lennard evidently derived very great enjoyment from this kind
of conversation, Eleanor was much too good-natured to discourage it; so
the painting upon velvet was abandoned, for that morning at least, and
the major’s wife gave a brief synopsis of her history for the benefit
of Mrs. Monckton.
“You must know, my dear,” Mrs. Lennard began, “my poor pa was a country
gentleman; and he had once been very rich; or at least his family—and
he belonged to a very old family, though not as aristocratic as the
major’s—had once been very rich; but somehow or other, through the
extravagance of one and another, poor pa was dreadfully poor, and his
estate, which was in Berkshire, was heavily—what’s its name?—mortgaged.”
Eleanor gave a slight start at the word “Berkshire,” which did not
escape Mrs. Lennard.
“You know Berkshire?” she said.
“Yes, some part of it.”
“Well, my dear, as I said before, poor papa’s estate was very heavily
mortgaged, and he’d scarcely anything that he could call his own,
except the rambling old country-house in which I was born; and beyond
that he was awfully in debt, and in constant dread of his creditors
sending him to prison, where he might have finished his days, for there
wasn’t the least possibility of his ever paying his debts by anything
short of a miracle. Now, of course all this was very sad. However, I
was too young to know much about it, and papa sent me to a fashionable
school at Bath, where his sisters had gone when they were young, and
where he knew he could get credit for my education to be finished.”
Eleanor, hard at work at the split gloves, listened rather
indifferently to this story at first; but little by little she began to
be interested in it, until at last she let her hands drop into her lap,
and left off working, in order the better to attend to Mrs. Lennard’s
discourse.
“Well, Miss Villars, it was at that school that I met the ruling star
of my fate—that is to say, the major, who was then dreadfully young,
without even the least pretence of whiskers, and always sitting in a
pastrycook’s shop in the fashionable street, eating strawberry ices.
He had only just got his commission, and he was quartered at Bath
with his regiment, and his sister Louisa was my schoolfellow at Miss
Florathorne’s, and he called one morning to see her, and I happened
that very morning to be practising in the drawing-room, the consequence
of which was that we met, and from that hour our destinies were sealed.
“I won’t dwell upon our meetings, which Louisa managed for us, and
which were generally dreadfully inconvenient, for Fred used to clamber
up the garden wall by the toes of his boots—and he has told me since
that the brickwork used to scratch off all the varnish, which of course
made it dreadfully expensive—but what will not love endure?—and hook
himself on as it were; and it was in that position, with nothing of
him visible below his chin, that he made me a most solemn offer of his
hand and heart. I was young and foolish, Miss Villars, and I accepted
him, without one thought of my poor papa, who was the most indulgent of
parents, and who had always let me do everything I liked, and indeed
owed upwards of fifty pounds, at a toyshop in Windsor, for dolls and
things that he bought me before I was grown up.
“Well, from that hour Frederick and I were engaged, and he dropped a
turquoise ring in among the bushes at the bottom of the garden the next
morning, and Louisa and I had upwards of an hour’s work to find it. We
were engaged! But we were not long allowed to bask in the sunshine of
requited affection, for a fortnight after this Frederick’s regiment
was ordered out to Malta, and I was wretched. I will pass over my
wretchedness, which might not be interesting to you, Miss Villars, and
I will only say that, night after night, my pillow was wet with tears,
and that, but for Louisa’s sympathy, I should have broken my heart.
Frederick and I corresponded regularly under cover of Louisa, and that
was my only comfort.
“By-and-by, however, the time for my leaving school came—partly because
I was seventeen years of age, and partly because papa couldn’t settle
Miss Florathorne’s bills—and I went home to the old rambling house in
Berkshire. Here I found everything at sixes and sevens, and poor papa
in dreadfully low spirits. His creditors were all getting horribly
impatient, he had all sorts of writs, and attachments, and judgments,
and contempt of courts, and horrors of that kind, out against him; and
if they could have put him into two prisons at once, I think they would
have done it, for some of them wanted him in Whitecross Street, and
others wanted him in the Queen’s Bench, and it was altogether dreadful.
“Well, papa’s only friend of late years had been a very learned
gentleman, belonging to a grand legal firm in the city, who had managed
all his business matters for him. Now this gentleman had lately died,
and his only son, who had succeeded to a very large fortune upon his
father’s death, was staying with my poor papa when I came home from
school.
“I hope you won’t think me conceited, Miss Villars, but in order to
make my story intelligible, I’m _obliged_ to say that at that time I
was considered a very pretty girl. I had been the belle of the school
at Miss Florathorne’s, and when I went back to Berkshire and mixed
in society, people made a tremendous fuss about me. Of course, you
know, my dear, troubles about money matters, and a wandering life, and
French dinners, which are too much for a weak digestion, have made a
very great difference in me, and I’m not a bit like what I was then.
Well, the young lawyer who was staying with papa—I shall not tell you
his name, because I consider it very dishonourable to tell the name
of a person you’ve jilted, even to a stranger—was very attentive.
However, I took no notice of that—though he was very handsome and
elegant-looking, and awfully clever—for my heart was true to Frederick,
from whom I received the most heart-rending letters under cover to
Louisa, declaring that, what with the mosquitoes and what with the
separation from me, and owing debts of honour to his brother officers,
and not clearly seeing his way to pay them, he was often on the verge
of committing suicide.
“I had not told papa of my engagement, you must know, my dear, because
I felt sure he’d grumble about my engaging myself to a penniless
ensign; though Fred might have been a marquis, for at that time there
were only eleven cousins between him and the title. So one day papa
took me out for a drive with him, while Mr.——while the young lawyer
was out shooting; and he told me that he was sure, from several things
the young lawyer had let drop, that he was desperately in love with
me, and that it would be his salvation—pa’s—if I would marry him, for
he was sure that in that case the young man, who was very generous and
noble-minded, would pay his debts—pa’s—and then he could go on the
continent and end his days in peace.
“Well, my dear Miss Villars, the scene between us was actually
heart-rending. I told papa that I loved another—I dared not say that
I was actually engaged to poor dear Frederick—and pa entreated me to
sacrifice what he called a foolish school-girl’s fancy, and to give
some encouragement to a noble-hearted young man, who would no doubt get
him out of the most abominable trouble, and would make me an excellent
husband.”
“And you consented?”
“Yes, my dear, after a great deal of persuasion, and after shedding
actual oceans of tears, and in compliance with papa’s entreaties, I
began to give the young lawyer—I’m obliged to call him the _young_
lawyer, because one is so apt to associate lawyers with grey hair, and
grumpiness, and blue bags—a little encouragement, and in about a week’s
time he made me an offer, and I accepted it, though my heart was still
true to Frederick, and I was still corresponding with him under cover
of Louisa.”
Eleanor looked very grave at this part of the story, and Mrs. Lennard
interpreted her companion’s serious face as a mute reproach.
“Yes, I know it was very wrong,” she exclaimed; “but then, what in
goodness’ name was I to do, driven to distraction upon one side by pa,
driven to distraction upon the other side by Fred, who vowed that he
would blow out his brains if I didn’t write to him by every mail?
“Well, my dear, the young lawyer, whom I shall call in future my
affianced husband, for short, behaved most nobly. In the first place
he bought pa’s estate—not that he wanted it, but because pa wanted the
money—and then he lent pa enough money, over and above the price of the
estate, to settle with all his creditors, and to buy an annuity, upon
which he could live very comfortably abroad. Of course this was very
generous of him, and he made quite light of it, declaring that my love
would have repaid him for much greater sacrifices. You know he thought
I loved him, and I really did try to love him, and to throw over poor
Frederick, for papa’s sake: but the more I tried to throw Frederick
over, and the more distant and cold I made my letters, the more
heart-rending he became, reminding me of the vows I had uttered in the
garden at Bath, and declaring that if I jilted him, his blood should be
upon my head. So, what with one thing and another, my life was a burden.
“It took papa some time to settle all his debts, even with the
assistance of my affianced husband, but at last everything was
arranged, and we started for a continental tour. My affianced husband
accompanied us, and the marriage was arranged to take place at
Lausanne. I need not say that I was very unhappy all this time; and I
felt that I was a very wicked creature, for I was deceiving one of the
best of men. Perhaps the worst of all was, that my affianced husband
had such perfect confidence in me, that I scarcely think anything I
could have said or done—short of what I did at the very last—could have
shaken his faith. He talked sometimes of my youth, and my childishness,
and my simplicity, until I used to feel a perfect LUCRETIA BORGIA.
Ah! Miss Villars, it was dreadful, and I often felt inclined to throw
myself at his feet and tell him all about poor Frederick; but the
thought of my poor papa, and the recollection of the money for the
estate, which could not be paid back again, sealed my lips, and I went
on day after day deceiving the best of men. You see, I’d gone too far
to recede, and oh, my dear, that is the awful penalty one always pays
for one’s wickedness—if you begin by deceiving any one, you’re obliged
to go on, and on, and on, from one deception to another, until you feel
the basest creature in the world.
“At least that’s how I felt when all the lovely dresses, and jewels,
and things that my affianced husband had ordered arrived from Paris. If
I could have walked upon gold, Miss Villars, I do think that foolish
man—for he was quite foolish about me, though in a general way he was
so very clever—would have thought the purest bullion only fit for
paving stones under my feet. The silks and satins—satin wasn’t _outré_
then, you know—would have stood alone if one had wanted them to do
so; the lace—well, I won’t dwell upon that, because I dare say you
think already that I shall never have done talking, and are getting
dreadfully tired of this long story.”
“No, Mrs. Lennard,” Eleanor answered, gravely, “I am very much
interested in your story. You cannot tell how deeply it interests me.”
The major’s wife was only too glad to receive permission to run on. She
was one of those people who are never happier than when reciting their
own memoirs, or relating remarkable passages in the history of their
lives.
“The very eve of the wedding-day had arrived,” resumed Mrs. Lennard, in
a very solemn, and, indeed, almost awful voice, “when the unlooked-for
crisis of my destiny came upon me like a thunderbolt. Pa and my
affianced husband had gone out together, and I was alone in one of the
apartments which we occupied at Lausanne. It was about an hour before
dinner, and I was dressed in one of the silks that had come from Paris,
and I was tolerably resigned to my fate, and determined to do my best
to make my affianced husband happy, and to prove my gratitude for his
goodness to my father. Imagine my horror, then, when I was told that a
lady wished to see me—an English lady—and before I could decide whether
I was at home or not, in rushed Louisa Lennard, very dusty and tumbled,
for she had only just arrived, and of course there was no railway to
Lausanne from anywhere, at that time.
“Well, my dear Miss Villars, it seems that Frederick’s silence, which
I had taken for resignation, was quite the reverse. Louisa had heard
of my intended marriage, and had written about it to her brother, and
her brother had gone nearly mad, and, being on the eve of obtaining
leave of absence on account of his bad health—the climate had knocked
him up—contrived to get away from Malta immediately. He and his sister
had managed to persuade their rich maiden aunt, who was very fond of
Frederick, and who left him all her money the other day, to take them
both to Switzerland, and there they were, with the rich maiden aunt,
who was very much knocked up by the journey, and who had not the least
shadow of a suspicion that she had been made a catspaw.
“Well, Miss Villars, anybody—even the hardest-hearted of
creatures—would have been touched by such devotion as this, and for
the moment I forgot all about my affianced husband’s generosity, and
I gave that enthusiastic Louisa, who really was the moving spirit of
everything, a solemn promise that I would see Frederick that night, if
only for ten minutes. Of course I didn’t tell her that the next day was
appointed for my wedding, because I was too much afraid of her anger,
as she was devotedly attached to her brother, and had heard my solemn
vows in the garden at Bath; but the people at the hotel told her all
about it, in their nasty gossiping way; the consequence of which was,
that when I met Fred in the porch of the cathedral, while papa and my
affianced husband were taking their wine after dinner, his goings-on
were really awful.
“I can never describe that scene. When I look back at it, it seems
like a dream—all hurry, and noise, and confusion. Frederick declared
that he had come all the way from Malta to claim me as his bride, and
called my affianced husband a baron all covered with jewels and gold,
from the ballad of ‘Alonzo the Brave,’ which he had been in the habit
of reciting at school And, poor dear fellow, now that I saw him again,
my heart, which had always been true to him, seemed more true to him
than ever; and what with Louisa, who was very strong-minded, going on
at me, and calling me mercenary and faithless and deceitful, and what
with Frederick going down upon his knees in that chilly porch, and
getting up suddenly every time the person who showed the cathedral to
strangers happened to look our way, I scarcely knew what I said or did,
and Frederick extorted from me the promise that I would run away with
him and Louisa that very night, and be married to him as soon as ever
we could find anybody that would marry us.
“I can never describe that dreadful night, Miss Villars; suffice it
to say, that I ran away without a bit of luggage, and that Frederick,
Louisa, and I, performed the most awful journey—almost all by
diligence—and were nearly jolted to death between Lausanne and Paris,
where Fred, by the help of some English friends, contrived to get the
ceremony performed by a Protestant clergyman, at the house of the
British Consul, but not without a great deal of difficulty and delay,
during which I expected every day that my affianced husband would come
tearing after me.
“He did nothing of the kind, however. I heard afterwards from papa that
he didn’t show the least disposition to pursue me, and he particularly
requested that no attempt should be made to prevent my doing exactly
as I pleased with regard to Fred. If he had pursued me, Miss Villars,
I have no doubt I should have gone back and married him; for I am very
weak, and it is my nature to do whatever people wish me to do. But
all he did was to walk about very quietly, looking as pale as a ghost
for a day or two, and braving out all the ridicule that attached to
him because of his bride’s running away from him upon the eve of the
wedding-day, and then he parted company with papa, and went away to
Egypt, and went up the Nile, and did all sorts of outlandish things.”
“And have you never seen him since?” Eleanor asked; anxiously.
“Yes, once,” answered Mrs. Lennard, “and that’s the most singular part
of the story. About three years after my marriage I was in London, and
Fred and I were very, very poor, for his aunt hadn’t then forgiven him
for making a catspaw of her at Lausanne, and he had no remittances from
her, and nothing but his pay and an occasional present from Louisa,
who married a rich city man soon after our elopement. I had had one
baby, a little girl, who was then a year and a half old, and who was
christened after Fred’s rich aunt; and Fred’s regiment was ordered out
to India, and I was getting ready to join him at Southampton, and I was
very unhappy at having to take my darling out there, for people said
the climate would kill her. I was in lodgings in the neighbourhood of
Euston Square, and I was altogether very wretched, when one evening, at
dusk, as I was sitting by the fire, with my little girl in my lap, who
should walk into the room but the very man I had jilted.
“I gave a scream when I saw him, but he begged me not to be frightened
of him; and then I asked him if he had forgiven me. He said he had
tried to forgive me. He was very grave and quiet; but though I think
he tried to be gentle, there was a sort of suppressed sternness in his
manner which made me feel afraid of him. He had not very long returned
from the East, he said, and he was very lonely and wretched. He had
heard from my father that I was going to India, and that I had a little
girl, whom I was obliged to take abroad with me for want of the means
of providing her with a comfortable home in England. He proposed to me
to adopt this little girl, and to bring her up as his own daughter,
with my husband’s consent.
“He promised to leave her very well off at his death, and to give her
a fortune if he lived to see her married. He would be most likely,
he said, to leave her all his money; but he made it a condition that
neither I nor her father should have any further claim upon her. We
were to give her up altogether, and were to be satisfied with hearing
of her from time to time, through him.
“‘I am a lonely man, Mrs. Lennard,’ he said; ‘even my wealth is a
burden to me. My life is purposeless and empty. I have no incentive to
labour—nothing to love or to protect. Let me have your little girl; I
shall be a better father to her than your husband can be.’
“At first I thought that I could never, never consent to such a thing;
but little by little he won me over, in a grave, persuasive way, that
convinced me in spite of myself, and I couldn’t afford to engage a
nurse to go out to Calcutta with me, and I’d advertised for an ayah who
wanted to return, and who would go with me for the consideration of
her passage-money, but there had been no answers to my advertisements:
so at last I consented to write to Fred to ask him if he would agree
to our parting with the pet. Fred wrote me the shortest of letters by
return of post; ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the child would be an awful nuisance
on shipboard, and it will be much better for her to stop in England.’ I
sent his letter to the lawyer, and the next day he brought a nurse, a
respectable elderly person, and fetched away my precious darling.
“You see, Miss Villars, neither Fred nor I had _realized_ the idea that
we were parting with her for ever; we only thought of the convenience
of getting her a happy home in England for nothing, while we went to be
broiled to death’s door out in India. But! ah! when years and years
passed by, and the two babies who were born in India died, I began to
grieve dreadfully about my lost pet; and if I hadn’t been what some
people call frivolous, and if Fred and I hadn’t suited each other so
exactly, and been somehow or other always happy together in all our
troubles, I think I should have broken my heart. But I tried to be
resigned,” concluded Mrs. Lennard, with a profound sigh, “and I hear
_of_ my pet once in six months or so, though I never hear from her, and
indeed I doubt if she knows she’s got such a thing as a mamma in the
universe—and I have her portrait, poor darling, and she’s very like
what I was twenty years ago.”
“I know she is,” Eleanor answered, gravely.
“You know she is! You know her, then?”
“Yes, dear Mrs. Lennard. Very strange things happen in this world, and
not the least strange is the circumstance which has brought you and me
together. I know your daughter intimately. Her name is Laura, is it
not?”
“Yes, Laura Mason Lennard, after Fred’s rich aunt, Laura Mason.”
“And your maiden name was Margaret Ravenshaw.”
“Good gracious me, yes!” cried Mrs. Lennard. “Why, you seem to know
everything about me.”
“I know this much,—the man you jilted was Gilbert Monckton, of Tolldale
Priory.”
“Of course! Tolldale was poor papa’s place till he sold it to Mr.
Monckton. Oh, Miss Villars, if you know him, how you must despise me!”
“I only wonder that you could——”
Eleanor stopped abruptly; the termination of her speech would not
have been very complimentary to the good-tempered major. Mrs. Lennard
understood that sudden pause.
“I know what you were going to say, Miss Villars. You were going to say
you wondered how I could prefer Fred to Gilbert Monckton; and I’m not a
bit offended. I know as well as you do that Mr. Monckton is very, VERY,
VERY superior to Frederick in intellect, and dignity, and elegance, and
all manner of things. But then, you see,” added Mrs. Lennard, with a
pleading smile, “Fred _suited me_.”