But Mrs. Bannister was a religious woman, and tried to do her duty in a hard, uncompromising way, in which good works were not beautified by any such flimsy adornments as love and tenderness. So when she heard that her father lived from day to day a wretched hand-to-mouth existence, haunted by the grim phantom of starvation, she was seized with a sudden sense that she had been very wicked to this weak old man, and she agreed to allow him a decent pittance, which would enable him to live about as comfortably as a half-pay officer or a small annuitant. She made this concession sternly enough, and lectured her father so severely that he may be perhaps forgiven if he was not very grateful for his daughter’s bounty, so far as he himself went; but he did make a feeble protestation of his thankfulness when Mrs. Bannister further declared her willingness to pay a certain premium in consideration of which Eleanor Vane might be received in a respectable boarding-school as an apprentice or pupil teacher.
It was thus that the little girl became acquainted with the Misses Bennett of Wilmington House, Brixton; and it was in the household of these ladies that three years of her life had been passed. Three quiet and monotonous years of boarding-school drudgery, which had only been broken by two brief visits to her father, who had taken up his abode in Paris; where he lived secure from the persecution of a few of his latter-day creditors—not the west-end tradesmen who had known him in his prime, they were resigned and patient enough under their losses—but a few small dealers who had trusted him in his decline, and who were not rendered lenient by the memory of former profits.
In Paris, Mr. Vane had very little chance of obtaining any information about his friend Maurice de Crespigny, but he still looked forward confidently to that visionary future in which he was to be master of the Woodlands estate. He had taken care to write a letter, soon after Eleanor’s birth, which had happened to reach his friend, announcing the advent of this youngest child, and dwelling much on his love for her. He cherished some visionary notion that, in the event of his death occurring before that of Maurice de Crespigny, the old man might leave his wealth to Eleanor. The contumely with which he had been treated by the maiden harpies who kept watch over his old friend had been pleasant to him rather than otherwise, for in the anger of these elderly damsels he saw an evidence of their fear.
“If they knew that poor De Crespigny’s money was left to them, they wouldn’t be so savage,” he thought. “It’s evident they’re by no means too confident about the future.”
But there were other relatives of the old man’s, less fortunate than the maiden sisters, who had found their way into the citadel, and planted themselves en permanence at Woodlands. There was a married niece, who had once been a beauty. This lady had been so foolish as to marry against her rich uncle’s wishes, and was now a widow, living in the neighbourhood of Woodlands upon an income of two hundred a year. This lady’s only son, Launcelot Darrel, was heir-at-law to Maurice de Crespigny’s fortune. But the maiden sisters were patient and indefatigable women. No sacred fire was ever watched more carefully by classic vestal than was the ireful flame which burned in Maurice de Crespigny’s heart when he remembered his married niece’s ingratitude and disobedience. The unwearying old maids kept his indignation alive by every feminine subtlety, by every diplomatic device. Heaven knows what they wanted with their uncle’s money, for they were prim damsels who wore stuff shoes and scanty dresses made in the fashion of their youth. They had outlived the very faculty of enjoyment, and their wants were almost as simple as those of the robins that perched upon their window-sills; but for all this they were as eager to become possessors of the old man’s wealth as the most heartless and spend-thrift heir, tormented by Israelitish creditors, and subsisting entirely upon post obits.
MY FIRST RUN.
I may as well say at once that I do not believe “man never is, but always to be blest.” This is a poor, sour sort of philosophy. Better is it to hold that, in this world of ours there is happiness to be harvested, and that the gathering of it depends very much upon ourselves.
It is my conviction, confirmed by recent experiences—some of which I am about to narrate—that an English country-house, at this time of year, affords the constituents of a very respectable paradise. Not many months ago I was a guest at such a one, in Northamptonshire, where neither fog nor rain could damp our spirits nor chill our pleasure. There was sport enough, and sportsmen in sufficient number, to make the days pass quickly, and a due proportion of ladies to render the evenings delightful.
On the second evening of my visit, the piano was giving out, beneath the skilful touch of a certain Miss Morland, the grand notes of one of Beethoven’s sonatas, and the conversation was pretty equally divided between the merits of the great composer, and the fortunes of the day in cover-shooting—with occasional variations touching the past musical season, and the superiority of breech-loaders over the common sporting gun—when I overheard an observation which made me aware that the Pytchley Hounds would meet the next morning within three miles of my friend’s house. The rapidity with which the news spread among the party, to the extinction of every other subject, and even to the silencing of the piano, convinced me that those who were neither hunters nor huntresses formed a very small minority.
In a moment Miss Morland turned on her music-stool right-about-face, and, addressing a pretty fair-haired girl sitting near her, said:
“You go, I hope, dear,—don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” replied the little Lady Caroline, awakening at once from an attitude of demure attention to a Diana-like enthusiasm, and assenting freely, without looking for acquiescence to her mamma—a full-blown wallflower—who was seated on the opposite side of the room, deep in an