Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/27

 27, 1863.] Eleanor contrived to question her ally in the course of the evening.

“Well, Richard,” she said, “is Launcelot Darrell the man who cheated my father?”

“I don’t know about that, Mrs. Monckton, but—”

“But you think—?”

“I think he is by no means the most delightful or the best of men. He snubs me because I paint scenery for the Phoenix; and he accepts that silly little girl’s homage with the air of a sultan.”

“Then you don’t like him, Dick!”

Mr. Thornton drew a long breath, as if by some powerful effort of his will he repressed a vehement and unseemly expression of feeling.

“I think he’s—you know what a great tragedian used to call people when they rang down the act-drop three minutes before Lear had finished using bad language to his eldest daughter, or came up in the witches’ cauldron with their backs to the audience—and nervous people have been known to do that, Eleanor:—it isn’t pleasant to stand on a rickety ladder and talk to a quick-tempered tragedian out of a canvas saucepan, with the smell of burning rosin in your nostrils, and another nervous apparition wanting to get you off the ladder before you’ve finished your speech. I think Launcelot Darrell is—a, Mrs. Monckton; and I have no doubt he would cheat at cards, if he had the chance of doing it with perfect safety and convenience.”

“You think that?” cried Eleanor, seizing upon this latter part of Richard’s speech; “you think that he would cheat a helpless old man. Prove that, Richard, prove it, and I will be as merciless to Launcelot Darrell as he was to my father—his uncle’s friend, too; he knew that.”

“Eleanor Monckton,” Richard said, earnestly, “I have never been serious before upon this matter; I have hoped that you would outlive your girlish resolution; I hoped above all that when you married—” his voice trembled a little here, but he went bravely on—“new duties would make you forget that old promise; and I did my best, Heaven knows, to wean you from the infatuation. But now that I have seen this man, Launcelot Darrell, it seems to me as if there may have been something of inspiration in your sudden recognition of him. I have already seen enough of him to know at least that he is no fit husband for that poor little romantic girl with the primrose-coloured ringlets; and I will do my best to find out where he was, and what he was doing, during those years in which he is supposed to have been in India.”

“You will do this, Richard?”

“Yes, Mrs. Monckton:” the young man addressed his old companion by this name, using the unfamiliar appellation as a species of rod by which he kept in order and subdued certain rebellious emotions that would arise as he remembered how utterly the beautiful girl, whose presence had made sunshine in the shabbiest, if not the shadiest of places, was now lost to him. “Yes, Mrs. Monckton, I will try and fathom the mystery. This Launcelot Darrell must be very clever if he can have contrived to do away with every vestige of the years in which he was or was not in India. However softly Time may tread, he leaves his footmarks behind him, and it will be strange if we can’t find some tell-tale impression whereby Mr. Darrell’s secret may be discovered. By-the-bye, Mrs. Monckton, you have had a good deal of time for observation. What have you done towards investigating the young man’s antecedents?”

Eleanor blushed, and hesitated a little before she answered this very direct questionquestion. [sic]

“I have watched him very closely,” she said, “and I’ve listened to every word he has ever said—”

“To be sure. In the expectation, no doubt, that he would betray himself by frowns and scowls, and other facial contortions, after the manner of a stage villain; or that he would say, ‘At such a time I was in Paris;’ or, ‘At such a time I cheated at cards.’ You go cleverly to work, Mrs. Monckton, for an amateur detective!”

“What ought I to have done, then?” Eleanor asked despondently.

“You should have endeavoured to trace up the history of the past by those evidences which the progress of life can scarcely fail to leave behind it. Watch the man’s habits and associations, rather than the man himself. Have you had access to the rooms in which he lives?”

“Yes; I have been with Laura to Hazlewood often since I came here. I have been in Launcelot Darrell’s rooms.”

“And have you seen nothing there? no book, no letter, no scrap of evidence that might make one link in the story of this man’s life?”

“Nothing—nothing particular. He has some French novels on a shelf in one corner of his sitting-room.”

“Yes; but the possession of a few French novels scarcely proves that he was in Paris in the year ’53. Did you look at the titles of the books?”

“No. What could I have gained by seeing them?”

“Something, perhaps. The French are a volatile people. The fashion of one year is not the fashion of another. If you had found some work that made a furore in that particular year, you might have argued that Launcelot Darrell was a flâneur in the Galerie d’Orleans or on the Boulevard where the book was newly exhibited in the shop-windows. If the novels were new ones, and not Michel Levey’s eternal reprints of Sand and Soulié, Balzac and Bernard, you might have learnt something from them. The science of detection, Mrs. Monckton, lies in the observation of insignificant things. It is a species of mental geology. A geologist looks into a gravel pit, and tells you the history of the creation; a clever detective looks over a man’s carpet-bag, and convicts that man of a murder or a forgery.”

“I know I have been very stupid,” Eleanor murmured almost piteously.

“Heaven forbid that you should ever be very clever in such a line as this. There must be detective officers; they are the polished blood-hounds of our civilised age, and very noble and estimable animals when they do their duty conscientiously; but fair-haired young ladies should be kept out of this galère. Think no more of this business, then, Eleanor. If Launcelot Darrell was