THE DAY OF RECKONING.
Launcelot Darrell and his mother had inhabited Woodlands for a
little more than a fortnight. The painters, and paper-hangers, and
upholsterers had done a great deal to alter the handsome country-house;
for Mr. Darrell had no wish to be reminded of his dead uncle; and
familiar chairs and tables have an unpleasant faculty of suggesting
tiresome thoughts, and recalling faded faces that had better be
forgotten. Almost all the old furniture had been swept away, therefore,
and the young man had behaved very generously to his maiden aunts, who
had furnished a small house in Windsor with the things that Launcelot
had banished from Woodlands. These poor disappointed ladies had located
themselves in a quiet little _cul-de-sac_, squeezed in between the
hilly street and the castle, with the idea that the wild dissipations
of a town life would enable them to forget their wrongs.
So Launcelot Darrell and his mother reigned at Woodlands instead of
the maiden sisters; and Parker, the butler, and Mrs. Jepcott, the
housekeeper, waited upon a new master and mistress.
The young man had chafed bitterly at his poverty, and had hated himself
and all the world, because of those humiliations to which a man who is
too idle to work, and too poor to live without work, is always more or
less subject. But, alas! now that by the commission of a crime he had
attained the great end of his ambition, he found that the game was not
worth the candle; and that in his most fretful moments before Maurice
de Crespigny’s death, he had never suffered as much as he now suffered,
daily and hourly.
The murderers of the unfortunate Mr. Ware ate a hearty supper of pork
chops while their victim lay, scarcely cold, in a pond beside the high
road; but it is not everybody who is blessed with the strength of mind
possessed by those gentlemen. Launcelot Darrell could not shake off
the recollection of what he had done. From morning till night, from
night till morning, the same thoughts, the same fears, were perpetually
pressing upon him. In the eyes of every servant who looked at him; in
the voice of every creature who spoke to him; in the sound of every
bell that rang in the roomy country-house, there lurked a something
that inspired the miserable terror of detection. It haunted him in
every place; it met him at every turn. The knowledge that he was in
the power of two bad, unscrupulous men, the lawyer’s clerk and Victor
Bourdon, made him the most helpless of slaves. Already he had found
what it was to be in the power of a vicious and greedy wretch. The
clerk had been easily satisfied by the gift of a round sum of money,
and had levanted before his employer returned from America. But Victor
Bourdon became insatiable. He was a gamester and a drunkard; and he
expected to find in Launcelot Darrell’s purse a gold mine that was
never to be exhausted.
He had abandoned himself to the wildest dissipation in the worst
haunts of London after Maurice de Crespigny’s death; and had appeared
at Woodlands at all times and seasons, demanding enormous sums of his
miserable victim. At first terror sealed Launcelot Darrell’s lips,
and he acceded to the most extravagant demands of his accomplice; but
at last his temper gave way, and he refused that “paltry note for a
thousand francs,” to which the Frenchman alluded in his interview with
Eleanor. After this refusal there was a desperate quarrel between
the two men, at the end of which the commercial traveller received a
thrashing, and was turned out of doors by the master of Woodlands.
The young man had been quite reckless of consequences in his passion;
but when he grew a little calmer he began to reflect upon the issue of
this quarrel.
“I cannot see what harm the man can do me?” he thought: “to accuse me
is to accuse himself also. And then who would believe his unsupported
testimony? I could laugh at him as a madman.”
Launcelot Darrell had no knowledge of the existence of the real will.
He implicitly believed that it had been burned before his own eyes,
and that Eleanor’s assertion to the contrary had been only a woman’s
falsehood invented to terrify him.
“If the girl had once had the will in her possession she would never
have been such a fool as to lose it,” he argued.
But notwithstanding all this he felt a vague fear, all the more
terrible because of its indefinite character. He had placed himself in
a false position. The poet is born, and not made; and perhaps the same
thing may be said of the criminal. The genius of crime, like the genius
of song, may be a capricious blossom, indigenous to such and such a
soil, but not to be produced by cultivation. However this may be,
Launcelot Darrell was not a great criminal. He had none of the reckless
daring, the marvellous power of dissimulation, the blind indifference
to the future, which make a Palmer, a Cartouche, a Fauntleroy, or a
Roupell. He was wretched because of what he had done; and he allowed
everybody to perceive his wretchedness.
Mrs. Darrell saw that her son was miserable in spite of his
newly-acquired wealth; and a horrible terror seized upon her. Her
sisters had taken good care to describe to her the scene that had
occurred at Woodlands upon the night of the old man’s death. She had
watched her son, as only mothers can watch the children they love;
and she had seen that his dead kinsman’s fortune had brought him
no happiness. She had questioned him, but had received only sulky,
ungracious answers; and she had not the heart to press him too closely.
The mother and son were alone in the dining-room at Woodlands about a
week after the scene in Monsieur Victor Bourdon’s apartment. They had
dined _tête-à-tête_. The dessert had not been removed, and the young
man was sitting at the bottom of the long table, lounging lazily in
his comfortable chair, and very often refilling his glass from the
claret jug on his right hand. The three long windows were open, and the
soft May twilight crept into the room. A tall shaded lamp stood in the
centre of the table, making a great spot of yellow light in the dusk.
Below the lamp there was a confused shimmer of cut glass, upon which
the light trembled like moonbeams upon running water. There were some
purple grapes, and a litter of vine leaves in a dessert dish of Sevres
china; the spikey crown of a pine-apple; and scarlet strawberries that
made splashes of vivid colour amid the sombre green. The pictured face
of the dead man hanging upon the wall behind Launcelot Darrell’s chair
seemed to look reproachfully out of the shadows. The ruby draperies
shading the open windows grew darker with the fading of the light. The
faint odour of lilacs and hawthorn blossoms blew in from the garden,
and the evening stillness was only broken by the sound of leaves
stirred faintly by a slow night wind that crept amongst the trees.
Mrs. Darrell was sitting in the recess of one of the open windows,
with some needlework in her lap. She had brought her work into the
dining-room after dinner, because she wished to be with her son; and
she knew that Launcelot would sit for the best part of the evening
brooding over his half-filled glass. The young man was most completely
miserable. The great wrong he had done had brought upon him a torture
which he was scarcely strong enough to endure. If he could have undone
that wrong—if——! No! That way lay such shame and degradation as he
could never stoop to endure.
“It was all my great-uncle’s fault,” he repeated to himself, doggedly.
“What business had he to make the will of a madman? Whom have I robbed,
after all? Only a specious adventuress, the intriguing daughter of a
selfish spendthrift.”
Such thoughts as these were for ever rising in the young man’s mind.
He was thinking them to-night, while his mother sat in the window,
watching her son’s face furtively. He was only roused from his reverie
by the sound of wheels upon the gravel drive, the opening of a
carriage-door, and a loud ringing of the bell.
The arrival of any unexpected visitor always frightened him; so it was
nothing unusual for him to get up from his chair and go to the door of
the room to listen for the sound of voices in the hall.
To-night he turned deadly pale, as he recognized a familiar voice; the
voice of Gilbert Monckton, whom he had not seen since the reading of
the will.
Launcelot Darrell drew back as the servant approached the door, and
in another moment the man opened it, and announced Mr. Monckton, Mrs.
Monckton, Mr. Thornton, Monsieur Bourdon. He would have announced Mr.
John Ketch, I dare say, just as coolly.
Launcelot Darrell planted his back against the low marble
chimney-piece, and prepared to meet his fate. IT had come; the
realization of that horrible nightmare which had tormented him
ever since the night of Maurice de Crespigny’s death. IT had come:
detection, disgrace, humiliation, despair; no matter by what name it
was called; the thing was living death. His heart seemed to melt into
water, and then freeze in his breast. He had seen the face of Victor
Bourdon lurking behind Gilbert and Eleanor, and he knew that he had
been betrayed.
The young man knew this, and determined to make a gallant finish. He
was not a coward by nature, though his own wrongdoing had made him
cowardly; he was only an irresolute, vacillating, selfish Sybarite, who
had quarrelled with the great schoolmaster Fate, because his life had
not been made one long summer’s holiday. Even cowards sometimes grow
courageous at the last. Launcelot Darrell was not a coward: he drew
himself up to his fullest height, and prepared to confront his accusers.
Eleanor Monckton advanced towards him. Her husband tried to restrain
her, but his effort was wasted; she waived him back with her hand, and
went on to where the young man stood, with her head lifted and her
nostrils quivering.
“At last, Launcelot Darrell,” she cried, “after watching that has
wearied me, and failures that have tempted me to despair, at last, I
can keep my promise; at last I can be true to the lost father whose
death was your cruel work. When last I was in this house, you laughed
at me and defied me. I was robbed of the evidence that would have
condemned you: all the world seemed leagued together against me.
Now, the proof of your crime is in my hands, and the voice of your
accomplice has borne witness against you. Cheat, trickster, and forger;
there is no escape for you now.”
“No,” exclaimed Monsieur Bourdon, with an unctuous chuckle, “it is now
your turn to be chased, my stripling; it is now your turn to be kick
out of the door.”
“From first to last, from first to last,” said Eleanor, “you have been
false and cruel. You wronged and deceived the friends who sent you to
India——”
“Yaase!” interrupted the commercial traveller, who was very pale, and
by no means too steady in his nerves, after the attack of delirium
tremens. He had dropped into a chair, and sat trembling and grinning at
his late patron, with a ghastly jocosity that was far from agreeable
to behold. “Yaase, you cheat your mo-thair, you cheat your friends.
You make belief to go to the Indias, but you do not go. You what you
call—shally shilly, and upon the last moment, when the machine is on
the point of depart, you change the mind, you are well in England;
there is a handsome career for you, as artist, you say. Then you will
not go. But you have fear of your uncle, who was given the money for
your—fit-out—and for your passage, and you make believe to do what
they wish from you. You have a friend, a _confrère_, a Mr., who is to
partake your cabin. You write to _heem_, you get _heem_ to post your
letters; you write to your mo-thair, in Clip-a-stone Street, and you
say to her, ‘Dear mo-thair, I cannot bear this broil climate; I am
broil, I work the night and the day; I am indigo planter;’ and you
send your letter to the Indias to be posted; and your poor mo-thair
belief you; and you are in Paris to enjoy yourself, to lead the life of
a student, a little Bohemian, but very gay. You read Balzac, you make
the little sketches for the cheap Parisian journals. You are gamester,
and win money from a poor old Englishman, the father of that lady
there; and you make a catspaw of your friend, Victor Bourdon. You are a
villain man, Monsieur Darrell, but it is finished with you.”
“Listen to me, Launcelot Darrell,” Gilbert Monckton said, quietly.
“Every falsehood and trick of which you have been guilty, from first to
last, is known. There is no help for you. The will which my wife holds
in her hand is the genuine will signed by Maurice de Crespigny. This
man is prepared to testify that the will by which you took possession
of this estate is a forgery, fabricated by you and Henry Lawford’s
clerk, who had in his possession a rough draft of the real will which
he had written at Mr. de Crespigny’s dictation, and who copied the
three different signatures from three letters written by the old man
to Henry Lawford. You are prepared to bear witness to this,” added the
lawyer, turning to Victor Bourdon.
“But certainly,” exclaimed the Frenchman, “it being well understood
that I am not to suffer by this candour. It is understood that I am
innocent in this affair.”
“Innocent!” cried Launcelot Darrell, bitterly. “Why, you were the prime
mover in this business. It was your suggestion that first induced——”
“It is possible, my friend,” murmured Monsieur Bourdon, complacently;
“but is it, then, a crime to make a little suggestion—to try to make
oneself useful to a friend? I do not believe it! No matter, I have
studied your English law: I do not think it can touch me, since I am
only prepared to swear to having _found_ this real will, and having
before that _overheard_ a conversation between you and the clerk of the
avoué de Vindsor.”
“You use noble tools, Mrs. Monckton,” said Launcelot Darrell; “but I do
not know by what right you come into my house, uninvited, and bringing
in your train a very respectable transpontine scene-painter with whom I
have not the honour to be intimate, and a French commercial traveller,
who has chosen to make himself peculiarly obnoxious to me. It is for
the Court of Chancery to decide whether I am the rightful owner of this
house and all appertaining to it. I shall await the fiat of that court;
and in the meantime have the honour to wish you good evening.”
He laid his hand upon the handle of the bell as he spoke, but he did
not pull it.
“You defy me, then, Launcelot Darrell?” said Eleanor.
“I do.”
“I am glad that it is so!” exclaimed the girl. “I am glad that you have
not prayed to me for mercy. I am glad that Providence has suffered me
to avenge my father’s death.”
Eleanor Monckton was moving towards the door.
In all this time Ellen Darrell had not once spoken. She had stood apart
in the recess of the window, a dark and melancholy shadow, mourning
over the ruin of her life.
I think that she was scarcely surprised at what had happened. We
sometimes know the people we love, and know them to be base; but we go
on loving them desperately, nevertheless; and love them best when the
world is against them, and they have most need of our love. I speak
here of maternal love, which is so sublime an affection as to be next
in order to the love of God.
The widow came suddenly into the centre of the room, and cast herself
on her knees before Eleanor, and wound her arms about the girl’s
slender waist, pinning her to the spot upon which she stood, and
holding her there. The mother’s arms were stronger than bands of
iron, for they were linked about the enemy of her son. It has been
demonstrated by practical zoologists that the king of beasts, his
majesty the lion, is after all a cowardly creature. It is only the
lioness, _the mother_, whose courage is desperate and indomitable.
“You shall not do this,” Ellen Darrell cried; “you shall not bring
disgrace upon my son. Take your due, whatever it is; take your paltry
wealth. You have plotted for it, I dare say. Take it, and let us go
out of this place penniless. But no disgrace, no humiliation, no
punishment, _for him_!”
“Mother,” cried Launcelot, “get up off your knees. Let her do her
worst. I ask no mercy of her.
“Don’t hear him,” gasped the widow, “don’t listen to him. Oh, Eleanor,
save him from shame and disgrace! Save him! save him! I was always good
to you, was I not? I meant to be so, believe me. If ever I was unkind,
it was because I was distracted by regrets and anxieties about him.
Oh, Eleanor, forgive him, and be merciful to me! Forgive him. It is my
fault that he is what he is. It was my foolish indulgence that ruined
his childhood. It was my false pride that taught him to think he had a
right to my uncle’s money. From first to last, Eleanor, it is I that am
to blame. Remember this, and forgive him, forgive——”
Her throat grew dry, and her voice broke, but her lips still moved,
though no sound came from them, and she was still imploring mercy for
her son.
“Forgive!” cried Eleanor, bitterly. “Forgive the man who caused my
father’s death! Do you think I have waited and watched for nothing?
It seems to me as if all my life had been given up to this one hope.
Do you know how that man has defied me?” she exclaimed, pointing to
Launcelot Darrell. “Do you know that through him I have been divided
from my husband? Bah! why do I speak of my own wrongs? Do you know that
my father, a poor, helpless old man, a lonely, friendless old man, a
decayed gentleman, killed himself because of your son? Do you expect
that I am to forget that? Do you think that I can forgive that man? Do
you want me to abandon the settled purpose of my life—the purpose to
which I have sacrificed every girlish happiness, every womanly joy—now
that the victory is mine, and that I can keep my vow?”
She tried to disengage herself from Ellen Darrell’s arms, but the widow
still clung about her, with her head flung back, and her white face
convulsed with anguish.
“Forgive him for my sake,” she cried; “give him to me—give him to me!
He will suffer enough from the ruin of his hopes. He will suffer enough
from the consciousness of having done wrong. He _has_ suffered. Yes.
I have watched him, and I know. Take everything from him. Leave him a
penniless dependant upon the pittance my uncle left to me, but save him
from disgrace. Give him to me. God has given him to me. Woman, what
right have you to take him from me?”
“He killed my father,” Eleanor answered, in a sombre voice; “my dead
father’s letter told me to be revenged upon him.”
“Your father wrote in a moment of desperation. I knew him. I knew
George Vane. _He_ would have forgiven his worst enemy. He was the last
person to be vindictive or revengeful when his first anger was passed.
What good end will be gained by my son’s disgrace? You shall _not_
refuse to hear me. You are a wife, Eleanor Monckton: you may one day be
a mother. If you are pitiless to me now, God will be pitiless to you
then. You will think of me then. In every throb of pain your child may
suffer; in every childish ailment that makes your heart grow sick with
unutterable fear, you will recognize God’s vengeance upon you for this
night’s work. Think of this, Eleanor; think of this, and be merciful to
me—to _me_—not to him. What _he_ would have to endure would be only a
tithe of _my_ suffering. I am his mother—his mother!”
“Oh, my God!” cried Eleanor, lifting her clasped hands above her head.
“_What_ am I to do?”
The hour of her triumph had come; and in this supreme moment doubt and
fear took possession of her breast. If this was her victory, it was
only half a victory. She had never thought that any innocent creature
would suffer more cruelly by her vengeance upon Launcelot Darrell than
the man himself would suffer. And now, here was this woman, whose only
sin had been an idolatrous love of her son, and to whom his disgrace
would be worse than the anguish of death.
The widow’s agony had been too powerful for the girl’s endurance.
Eleanor burst into a passion of tears, and turning to her husband, let
her head fall upon his breast.
“What am I to do, Gilbert?” she said. “What am I to do?”
“I will not advise you, my dear,” the lawyer answered, in a low voice.
“To-night’s business is of your own accomplishing. Your own heart must
be your only guide.”
There was silence in the room for a few moments, only broken by
Eleanor’s sobbing. Launcelot Darrell had covered his face with his
hands. His courage had given way before the power of his mother’s
grief. The widow still knelt, still clung about the girl, with her
white face fixed now, in an awful stillness.
“Oh, my dear, dead father!” Eleanor sobbed, “you—you did wrong yourself
sometimes; and you were always kind and merciful to people. Heaven
knows, I have tried to keep my oath; but I cannot—I cannot. It seemed
so easy to imagine my revenge when it was far away: but now—it is too
hard—it is too hard. Take your son, Mrs. Darrell. I am a poor helpless
coward. I cannot carry out the purpose of my life.”
The white uplifted face scarcely changed, and the widow fell back in
a heap upon the floor. Her son and Gilbert Monckton lifted her up and
carried her to a chair in one of the open windows. Richard Thornton
dropped on his knees before Eleanor, and began to kiss her hands with
_effusion_.
“Don’t be frightened, Nelly,” he exclaimed. “I was very fond of you
once, and very unhappy about you, as my poor aunt can bear witness;
but I am going to marry Eliza Montalembert, and we’ve got the carpets
down at the snuggest little box in all Brixton, and I’ve made it up
with Spavin and Cromshaw in consideration of my salary being doubled.
Don’t be frightened if I make a fool of myself, Eleanor; but I think I
could worship you to-night. This is your victory, my dear. This is the
only revenge Providence ever intended for beautiful young women with
hazel-brown hair. God bless you!”
Launcelot Darrell, with a greyish pallor spread over his face, like a
napkin upon the face of a corpse, came slowly up to Eleanor.
“You have been very generous to me, Mrs. Monckton, though it is a hard
thing for me to say as much,” he said; “I have done wicked things,
but I have suffered—I have suffered and repented perpetually. I had
no thought of the awful consequences which would follow the wrong I
did your father. I have hated myself for that wicked act ever since;
I should never have forged the will if that man had not come to me,
and fooled me, and played upon my weaknesses. I will thank you for the
mercy you have shown me by-and-by, Mrs. Monckton, when I am better
worthy of your generosity.”