ELEANOR’S VICTORY.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “AURORA FLOYD,” “LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” &c.
CHAPTER XXI. ON THE TRACK.
The little pony-carriage drove on to the station; and Eleanor, like some traveller in a dream, saw the castle walls and turrets, the busy street and hurrying people spin past her eyes, and melt into confusion. She did not know how she entered the railway station, or how she came to be walking quietly up and down the platform with Mrs. Darrell. There was a choking sensation in her dry throat, a blinding mist before her eyes, and a confusion that was almost terrible to bear in her brain. She wanted to get away; anywhere, so long as it was away from all the world. In the meantime, she walked up and down the platform with Launcelot Darrell’s mother by her side.
“I am mad,” she thought. “I am mad. It cannot be so!”
Again and again in the course of Eleanor Vane’s brief association with the widow’s son, something, some fancy, some shadowy recollection, vague and impalpable as the faintest clouds in the summer sky above Hazlewood, had flashed across her mind, only to be blotted away before she could even try to define or understand it. But now these passing fancies all culminated in one conviction; Launcelot Darrell was the man whom she had seen lounging on the kerbstone of the Boulevard on the night of her last parting with her father.
In vain she reasoned with herself that she had no justifiable grounds for this conviction—the conviction remained, nevertheless. The only foundation for her belief that Launcelot Darrell, from amongst all other men, was the one man whom she sought to pursue, was a resemblance in his attitude as he stood lounging in the Windsor street, to the attitude of the young man on the Boulevard. Surely this was the slightest, the weakest foundation on which belief ever rested. Eleanor Vane could acknowledge this; but she could not lessen the force of that belief. At the very moment when the memory of her father, and her father’s death, had been furthest from her thoughts, this sudden conviction, rapid and forcible as inspiration, had flashed upon her.
The matter was beyond reason, beyond argument.
The young man loitering listlessly upon the kerbstone of the Windsor street, was the man who had loitered on the Boulevard; waiting, sulkily enough, while his companion tempted George Vane to his destruction.
It seemed as if the girl’s memory, suddenly endowed with a new and subtle power, took her back to that August night in the year ’53, and placed her once more face to face with her father’s enemy. Once more the dark, restless eyes, the pale, cowering face, and moustachioed lip, overshadowed by the slouched hat, flashed upon her for a moment, before the sulky stranger turned away to keep moody silence throughout his companion’s babble. And with that memory of the past, was interlinked the face and figure of Launcelot Darrell; so closely, that do what she would, Eleanor Vane could not disassociate the two images.
And she had suffered this man, of all other men, to tell her that he loved her; she had taken a romantic pleasure in his devotion; day after day, and hour after hour, she had been his companion; sharing his enjoyments, sympathising with his pursuits, admiring and believing him. This day—this very day—he had held her hand, he had looked in her face, and the words she had spoken to Richard Thornton had proved only a vain boast, after all. No instinct in her own heart had revealed to her the presence of her father’s murderer.
Mrs. Darrell looked furtively every now and then at the girl’s face. The iron rigidity of that white face almost startled the widow. Was it the expression of terrible grief restrained by a superhuman effort of will?
“Does this girl love my son, I wonder?” the widow thought; and then the answer, prompted by a mother’s pride, came quickly after the question. “Yes, how could she do otherwise than love him? How could any woman on earth be indifferent to my boy?”
Something, almost akin to pity, stirred faintly in the heart which was so cold to every creature upon earth, except this spoiled and prodigal son; and Mrs. Darrell did her best to comfort the banished girl.
“I am afraid you are ill, my dear Miss Vincent,” the widow said. “The excitement of this sudden departure has been too much for you. Pray, my dear, do not think that I submit to this necessity without very great regret. You have given me perfect satisfaction in everything you have done, ever since you entered my house. No praises I can bestow upon you in recommending you to a new home will go beyond the truth. Forgive me, forgive me, my poor child; I know I must seem very cruel; but I love my son so dearly—I love him so dearly.”
There was real feeling in the tone in which these words were spoken; but the widow’s voice sounded far away to Eleanor Vane, and the words had no meaning. The girl turned her stony face towards the speaker, and made a feeble effort to understand what was said to her; but all power of comprehension seemed lost in the bewilderment of her brain.
“I want to get back to London,” she said. “I want to get away from this place. Will it be long before the train starts, Mrs. Darrell?”
“Not five minutes. I have put up your money in this envelope, my dear, a quarter’s salary, the quarter began in June, you know, and I have paid you up to September. I have paid for your ticket, also, in order that your money might not be broken into by that expense. Your luggage will be sent to you to-morrow. You will get a cab at the station, my dear. Your friends will be very much surprised to see you, no doubt.”
