Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/392

382 forgetful of everything except that this last hope had failed her.

“I thought that he might leave Paris, and go back to Launcelot Darrell,” she said, in a broken voice, “but I never thought of anything like this.”

“Sh-sh-sh-sh!” cried Monsieur Bourdon from the bed. “Ftz! Cats, cats! Sh-sh-sh-sh! Chase those cats, somebody! There’s the girl Faust saw upon the Bracken with the little rat running out of her mouth! There, sitting at the table! Go then, Voleuse, Gueuse, Infâme!” screamed the Frenchman, glaring at Eleanor.

The girl took no notice of him. Her sobs grew every moment louder and more hysterical. The major looked at her helplessly.

“Don’t,” he said, “my good creature, don’t now. This is really dreadful, ’pon my soul, now. Come, come, now; cheer up, my dear, cheer up. You won’t do anything by giving way, you know. I always tell Margaret that, when she thinks she can catch the train by sitting on the ground and crying, because her portmanteaus won’t shut. Nobody ever did you know, and if you don’t put your shoulder to the wheel”

The major might have rambled on in this wise for some time; but the sobbing grew louder; and he felt that it was imperatively necessary that something energetic should be done in this crisis. A bright thought flashed upon him as he looked hopelessly round the room, and in another moment he had seized a small white crockery-ware jug from the Frenchman’s toilet table, and launched its contents at Eleanor’s head.

This was a second master-stroke. The girl looked up with her head dripping, but with her courage revived by the shock her senses had received.

She took off her wet bonnet, and pushed the drenched hair from her forehead.

“Oh, major,” she said, “I know I have been very silly. But I was so taken by surprise. It seems so cruel that this should happen. I shall never get the will now.”

“Stuff and nonsense, my dear,” exclaimed Major Lennard. “What’s to prevent your getting it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s to prevent your taking it? We’re not going to stand upon ceremony with such a feller as this, are we, Mrs. Monckton? He stole the will from you, and if you can get the chance, you’ll return the compliment by stealing it from him. Fair play’s a jewel, my dear Mrs. M., and nothing could be fairer than that. So we’ll set to work at once; and I hope you’ll excuse the cold water, which was meant in kindness, I assure you.”

Eleanor smiled, and gave the major her hand.

“I’m sure it was,” she said. “I scarcely liked the idea of your coming with me, major, for fear you should do some mischief by being a little too impetuous. But I don’t know what I should have done without you.”

Major Lennard shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating gesture.

“I might have been useful to you, my dear,” he said, “if the feller had been all right and I could have punched his head; but one can’t get any credit out of a chap when he’s in that state,” added the major, pointing to the commercial traveller, who was taking journeys on his own account into the horrible regions of an intemperate man’s fancy.

“Now the first thing we shall want, Mrs. Monckton,” said the major, “is a candle and a box of lucifers. We must have a light before we can do anything.”

It was not dark yet; but the twilight was growing greyer and greyer, and the shadows were gathering in the corners of the room.

Victor Bourdon lay glaring at his two visitors through the dusk, while the major groped about the mantelpiece for a box of lucifers. He was not long finding what he wanted. He struck a little waxen match against the greasy paper of the wall, and then lighted an end of candle in a tawdry cheap china candlestick.

“Ease her! ease her!” cried the Frenchman; “I see the lights ahead off Normandy, on the side of the wind. She’ll strike upon a rock before we know where we are. What are they about, these English sailors? are they blind, that they don’t see the light?”

Major Lennard, with the candle in his hand, set to work to look for the missing document. He did not look very systematically, but as he pulled out every drawer and opened every cupboard, and shook out the contents of every receptacle, flinging them remorselessly upon the floor, he certainly looked pretty effectually. Eleanor, kneeling on the ground amongst the chaotic heaps of clothes and papers, tattered novels, broken meerscham pipes and stale cigar ends, examined every pocket, every book, and every paper separately, but with no result. The drawers had been ransacked, the cupboards disembowelled, a couple of portmanteaus completely emptied. Every nook and corner of the two small rooms had been most thoroughly searched, first by the major in a slapdash and military manner; afterwards by Eleanor, who did her work with calmness and deliberation, though her heart was beating, and the hot blood surging in her over excited brain. Every possible hiding place in the two rooms had been examined, but the will had not been found.

Every possible hiding place had been examined; except the pockets of Victor Bourdon’s trousers, and the bed upon which he lay.

The major stopped to scratch his head in despair, and stood staring hopelessly at the unhappy victim of his own vices, who was still raving, still remonstrating with invisible demons. But Eleanor aroused her friend from this state of stupefaction.

“He may have the will about him, major,” she said.

“Aha!” cried the soldier, “if he has, I’ll have it out of him. Give it me, you unconscionable blackguard,” he exclaimed, pouncing upon the delirious Frenchman. “I’ll have it out of you, you scoundrel. Tell me where it is directly. Dites-moi où il est, dong! What have you done with it, sir? What have you done with Maurice de Crespigny’s will?”