Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/84

74 treacherous boy, and had he been to some party that he hadn’t told his poor Laura about, drinking champagne, and flirting with girls, and dancing, and all that? Or had he been working too much at his Rosalind and Celia?

With such questions as these did the young lady harass and torment her lover throughout that uncomfortable February morning; until at last Mr. Darrell turned upon her in a rage, declaring that his head was nearly split asunder, and plainly telling her to hold her tongue.

Indeed, Mr. Launcelot Darrell made very little effort to disguise his feelings, but sat over the fire in a low easy chair, with his elbows resting on his knees and his handsome dark eyes bent moodily upon the blaze. He roused himself now and then from a fit of gloomy thought to snatch up the polished-steel poker, and plunge it savagely amongst the coals, as if it was some relief to him to punish even them. Another man might have feared the inferences which spectators might draw from his conduct, but the principle upon which Launcelot Darrell’s life had been based involved an utter contempt for almost every living creature except himself, and he apprehended no danger from the watchfulness of the inferior beings about him.

Laura Mason, sitting on a low ottoman at his feet, and employed in working a pair of embroidered slippers—the third pair she had begun for the use of her future lord and master—thought him more like the Corsair to-day than ever; but thought at the same time that some periods of Medora’s existence must have been rather dreary. No doubt it was Conrad’s habit to sit and stare at the coals, and to poke the fire savagely when things went amiss with him; when his favourite barque was scuttled by a mutinous crew, or his cargo confiscated by the minions of the law.

Launcelot Darrell was engaged to dine at the Priory upon this 16th of February. Mr. Monckton had invited him, in order that some matters connected with Laura’s fortune might be discussed.

“It is time we should fully understand each other, Darrell,” the lawyer said; “so I shall expect you to give me a couple of hours in my study this evening after dinner, if you’ve no objection.”

Of course Mr. Darrell had no objection, but he had an almost spiteful manner that day in his intercourse with poor Laura, who was bewildered by the change in him.

“You think it’s strange that I should dislike all this ceremony about settlements and allowance. Yes, Laura, that’s a pleasant word, isn’t it? Your guardian honoured me by telling me he should make us a handsome allowance for the first few years of our married life. You think I ought to take kindly to this sort of thing, I dare say, and drop quietly into my position of genteel pauperism, dependent upon my pencil, or my wife, for the dinner I eat and the coat I wear. No, Laura,” cried the young man, passionately, “I don’t take kindly to it; I can’t stand it. The thought of my position enrages me against myself, against you, against everybody and everything in the world.”

Launcelot Darrell talked thus to his betrothed while Richard and Eleanor were both in the room; the scene-painter sitting in a window making furtive sketches with a fat little stump of lead pencil upon the backs of divers letters; Mrs. Monckton standing at another window looking out at the leafless trees, the black flowerless garden beds, the rain-drops hanging on the dingy firs and evergreens.

Mr. Darrell knew that he was overheard; but he had no wish that it should be otherwise. He did not care to keep his grievances a secret. The egotism of his nature exhibited itself in this. He gave himself the airs of a victim, and made a show of despising the benefits he was about to accept from his confiding betrothed. He in a manner proclaimed himself injured by the existence of his future wife’s fortune; and he forced her to apologise to him for the prosperity which she was about to bestow upon him.

“As if it was being a pauper to take my money,” cried Miss Mason, with great tenderness, albeit in rather obscure English; “as if I grudged you the horrid money, Launcelot. Why, I don’t even know how much I’m to have. It may be fifty pounds a-year—that’s what I’ve had to buy my dresses and things since I was fifteen—or it may be fifty thousand. I don’t want to know how much it is. If it is fifty thousand a-year, you’re welcome to it, Launcelot, darling.”

“Launcelot darling” shrugged his shoulders with a peevish gesture which exhibited him as rather a discontented darling.

“You talk like a baby, Laura,” he said, contemptuously; “I suppose the ‘handsome allowance’ Mr. Monckton promises will be about two or three hundred a-year, or so; something that I’m to eke out by my industry. Heaven knows he has preached to me enough about the necessity of being industrious. One would think that an artist was a bricklayer or a stonemason, to hear him talk.”

Eleanor turned away from the window as Launcelot Darrell said this; she could not suffer her husband to be undefended while she was by.

“I have no doubt whatever Gilbert said was right, Mr. Darrell,” she exclaimed, lifting her head proudly, as if in defiance of any voice that should gainsay her husband’s merits.

“No doubt, Mrs. Monckton; but there’s a certain sledge-hammer-like way of propounding that which is right that isn’t always pleasant. I don’t want to be reminded that an artist’s calling is a trade, and that when the Graces bless me with a happy thought, I must work like a slave until I’ve hammered it out upon canvas and sent it into the market for sale.”

“Some people think the Graces are propitiated by hard labour,” Richard Thornton said, quietly, without raising his eyes from his rapid pencil, “and that the happiest thoughts are apt to come when a man has his brush in his hand, rather than when he’s lying on a sofa reading French novels; and I’ve known artists who preferred that method of waiting for inspiration. For my own part, I believe in the inspiration that grows out of patient labour.”

“Yes,” Mr. Darrell answered, with an air of