CHAPTER XXXIX.
LAUNCELOT’S COUNSELLOR.
Mr. Darrell, and his friend the commercial traveller, did not linger long at the garden gate. There was nothing very cordial or conciliatory in Gilbert Monckton’s manner, and he had evidently no wish to cultivate any intimate relations with Monsieur Victor Bourdon.
Nor was Launcelot Darrell by any means anxious that his companion should be invited to stop at Tolldale. He had brought the Frenchman to the Priory, but he had only done so because Monsieur Bourdon was one of those pertinacious gentlemen not easily to be shaken off by the victims who are so unfortunate as to have fallen into their power.
“Well,” said the artist, as the two men walked away from the Priory in the murky dusk, “what do you think of her?”
“Of which _her_? _La belle future_, or the otha-i-r?”
“What do you think of Mrs. Monckton? I don’t want your opinion of my future wife, thank you.”
Monsieur Bourdon looked at his companion with a smile that was half a sneer.
“He is so proud, this dear Monsieur Lan— Darrell,” he said. “You ask of me what I think of Mrs. Monck-a-tonne,” he continued, in English; “shall I tell you what I think without reserve?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I think, then, that she is a woman of a thousand—in all that there is of resolute—in all that there is of impulsive—in all that there is of daring—a woman unapproachable, unsurpassable; beautiful to damn the angels! If in the little business that we came to talk about lately this woman is to be in the way, I say to you, my friend, beware! If there is to be any contest between you and her, beware!”
“Pray don’t go into heroics, Bourdon,” answered Launcelot Darrell, with evident displeasure. Vanity was one of the artist’s strongest vices; and he writhed at the notion of being considered inferior to any one, above all to a woman. “I knew Mrs. Monckton, and I knew that she was a clever, high-spirited girl before to-day. I don’t want you to tell me that. As to any contest between her and me, there’s no chance of that arising. _She_ doesn’t stand in my way.”
“And you refuse to tell to your devoted friend the name of the person who does stand in your way?” murmured Monsieur Bourdon, in his most insinuating tones.
“Because that information cannot be of the least consequence to my devoted friend,” answered Launcelot Darrell, coolly. “If my devoted friend has helped me, he will expect to be paid for his help, I dare say.”
“But, certainly!” cried the Frenchman, with an air of candour; “you will recompense me for my services if we are successful; and above all for the suggestion which first put into your head the idea——”
“The suggestion which prompted me to the commission of a——”
“Hush, my friend, even the trees in this wood may have ears.”
“Yes, Bourdon,” continued Launcelot, bitterly, “I have good reason to thank you, and to reward you. From the hour in which we first met until now, you have contrived to do me some noble services.”
Monsieur Bourdon laughed a dry, mocking laugh, which had something of the diabolically grotesque in its sound.
“Ah, what a noble creation of the poet’s mind is Faust!” he exclaimed; “that excellent, that amiable hero; who would never, of his own will, do any harm; but who is always led into the commission of all manner of wickedness by Mephistopheles. And then, when this noble but unhappy man is steeped to the very lips in sin, he can turn upon that wicked counsellor and say,’Demon, it is for your pleasure these crimes have been committed!’ Of course he forgets, this impulsive Faust, that it was he, and not Mephistopheles, who was in love with poor Gretchen!”
“Don’t be a fool, Bourdon,” muttered the artist, impatiently. “You know what I mean. When I started in life I was too proud to commit a dishonourable action. It is you, and such as you, who have made me what I am.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the Frenchman, snapping his fingers with a gesture of unutterable contempt. “You ask me just now to spare you my heroics; I say the same thing now to you. Do not let us talk to each other like the personages of a drama at the Ambigu. It is your necessities that have made of you what you are, and that will keep you what you are, so long as they exist, and are strong enough to push you to disagreeable courses. Who says it is pleasant to go out of the straight line? Not I, faith of a gentleman, Monsieur Lance! Believe me, it is more pleasant, as well as more proper, to be virtuous than to be wicked. Give me an annuity of a few thousand francs, and I will be the most honourable of men. You are afraid of the work that lies before you, because it is difficult, because it is dangerous; but not because it is dishonourable. Let us speak frankly, and call things by their right names. You want to inherit this old man’s fortune?”
“Yes,” answered Launcelot Darrell. “I have been taught from my babyhood to expect it. I have a right to expect it.”
“Precisely; and you don’t want this other person, whose name you won’t tell me, to get it.”
“No.”
“Very well, then. Do not let us have any further dispute about the matter. Do not abuse poor Mephistopheles because he has shown the desire to help you to gain your own ends, and has already, by decision and promptitude of action, achieved that which you would never have effected by yourself alone. Tell Mephistopheles to go about his business, and he will go. But he will not stay to be made a—what you call—an animal which is turned out into the wilderness with other people’s sins upon his shoulders?—a scapegoat; or a paws-cat, which pull hot chestnuts from the fire, and burn her fingers in the interests of her friend. The chestnuts, in this case, this, are _very_ hot, my friend; but I risk to burn my fingers with the shells in the hope to partake the inside of the nut.”
“I never meant to make a scapegoat of you, nor a cat’s-paw,” said Launcelot Darrell, with some alarm in his tone. “I didn’t mean to offend you, Bourdon. You’re a very good fellow in your way, I know; and if your notions are a little loose upon some subjects, why, as you say, a man’s necessities are apt to get the upper hand of his principles. If Maurice de Crespigny has chosen to make an iniquitous will, for the mere gratification of an old madman’s whim, the consequences of his injustice must rest on his head, not on mine.”
“Most assuredly,” cried the Frenchman, “that argument is not to be answered. Be happy, my friend; we will bring about a posthumous adjustment of the old man’s errors. The wrong done by this deluded testator shall be repaired before his ashes are carried to their resting-place. Have no fear, my friend; all is prepared, as you know, and, let the time come when it may, we are ready to act.”
Launcelot Darrell gave a long sigh, a fretful, discontented inspiration, that was expressive of utter weariness. This young man had in the course of his life committed many questionable and dishonourable actions; but he had always done such wrong as it were under protest, and with the air of a victim, who is innocently disposed but too easily persuaded, and who reluctantly suffers himself to be led away by the counsels of evilminded wretches.
So now he had the air of yielding to the subtle arguments of his friend, the agent for patent mustard.
The two men walked on in silence for some little time. They had left the wood long ago, and were in a broad lane that led towards Hazlewood. Launcelot Darrell strolled silently along, with his head bent and his black eyebrows contracted. His companion’s manner had its usual dapper airiness; but every now and then the Frenchman’s sharp greenish-blue eyes glanced from the pathway before him to the gloomy face of the artist.
“There is one thing that I forgot in speaking of Mrs. Monckton,” Monsieur Bourdon said, presently; “and that is, that I fancy I have seen her somewhere before.”
“Oh, I can account for that,” Launcelot Darrell answered, carelessly. “I was inclined to think the same thing myself when I first saw her. She is like George Vane’s daughter.”
“George Vane’s daughter?”
“Yes, the girl we saw on the Boulevard upon the night——”
The young man stopped abruptly, and gave another of those fretful sighs by which he made a kind of sulky atonement for the errors of his life.
“I do not remember the daughter of George Vane,” murmured the Frenchman, reflectively. “I know that there was a young girl with that wearisome old Englishman—a handsome young person, with bright yellow hair and big eyes; an overgrown child, who was not easily to be shaken off; but I remember no more. Nevertheless, I think I have seen this Mrs. Monckton before to-day.”
“Because, I tell you, Eleanor Monckton is like that girl. I saw the likeness when I first came home, though I only caught one glimpse of the face of George Vane’s daughter on the Boulevard that night. And, if I had not had reason for thinking otherwise, I should have been almost inclined to believe that the old schemer’s daughter had come to Hazlewood to plot against my interests.”
“I do not understand.”
“You remember George Vane’s talk about his friend’s promise, and the fortune that he was to inherit?”
“Yes, perfectly. We used to laugh at the poor hopeful old man.”
“You used to wonder why I took such an interest in the poor old fellow’s talk. Heaven knows I never wished him ill, much less meant him any harm——”
“Except so far as getting hold of his money,” murmured Monsieur Bourdon, in an undertone.
The young man turned impatiently upon his companion.
“Why do you delight in raking up unpleasant memories?” he said, in a half-savage, half-peevish tone. “George Vane was only one amongst many others.”
“Most certainly! Amongst a great many others.”
“And if I happened to play _écarté_ better than most of the men we knew——”
“To say nothing of that pretty little trick with an extra king in the lining of your coat sleeve, which I taught you, my friend.—But about George Vane, about the friend of George Vane, about the promise——”
“George Vane’s friend is my great-uncle, Maurice de Crespigny; and the promise was made when the two were young men at Oxford.”
“And the promise was——”
“A romantic, boyish business, worthy of the Minerva Press. If either of the two friends died unmarried, he was to leave all his possessions to the other.”
“Supposing the other to survive him. But Monsieur de Crespigny cannot leave his money to the dead. George Vane is dead. You need no longer fear him.”
“No, I have no reason to fear _him_!”
“But of whom, then, have you fear?”
Launcelot Darrell shook his head.
“Never you mind that, Bourdon,” he said. “You’re a very clever fellow, and a very good-natured fellow, when you please. But it’s sometimes safest to keep one’s own secrets. You know what we talked about yesterday. Unless I take your advice I’m a ruined man.”
“But you will take it? Having gone so far, and taken so much trouble, and confided so much in strangers, you will surely not recede?” said Monsieur Bourdon, in his most insinuating tones.
“If my great-uncle is dying, the crisis has come, and I must decide one way or the other,” answered Launcelot Darrell, slowly, in a thick voice that was strange to him. “I—I—can’t face ruin, Bourdon. I think I _must_ take your advice.”
“I _knew_ that you would take it, my friend,” the commercial traveller returned, quietly.
The two men turned out of the lane and climbed a rough stile leading into a meadow that lay between them and Hazlewood. The lights burned brightly in the lower windows of Mrs. Darrell’s house, and the clock of the village church slowly struck six as Launcelot and his companion crossed the meadow.
A dark figure was dimly visible, standing at a low wicket-gate that opened from the meadow into the Hazlewood shrubbery.
“There’s my mother,” muttered Launcelot, “watching for me at the gate. She’s heard the news, perhaps. Poor soul, if I didn’t care about the fortune for my own sake, I should for hers. I think a disappointment would almost kill her.”
Again a coward’s argument,—a new loophole by means of which Launcelot Darrell tried to creep out of the responsibility of his own act, and to make another, in a manner, accountable for his sin.