Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/558

550 each other perfectly. I came here by the back way, because I knew I should be refused admittance at the front door. You keep watch well, Lavinia, and I beg to compliment you upon your patience.”

The widow had approached her uncle’s chair, leaving the rest of the party in the background. Pale and defiant, she did battle with her two sisters, fighting sturdily in the cause of her idolised son; who seemed a great deal too listless and indifferent to look after his own interests.

The ladies in possession glared at their sister’s pale face with spiteful eyes; they were a little daunted by the widow’s air of resolution.

“Who are those people, Ellen Darrell?” asked the younger of the two old maids. “Do you want to kill my uncle, that you bring a crowd of strangers to intrude upon him at a time when his nerves are at their worst?”

“I have not brought a crowd of strangers. One of those people is my son, who has come to pay his respects to his uncle after his return from India.”

“Launcelot Darrell returned!” exclaimed the two ladies, simultaneously.

“Yes, returned to look after his own interests; returned with very grateful feelings towards those who prompted his being sent away from his native country to waste his youth in an unhealthy climate.”

“Some people get on in India,” Miss Lavinia de Crespigny said, spitefully; “but I never thought Launcelot Darrell would do any good there.”

“How kind it was in you to advise his going, then,” Mrs. Darrell answered promptly. Then passing by the astonished Miss Lavinia, she went up to her uncle, and bent over him.

The old man looked up at his niece, but with no glance of recognition in his blue eyes, which had grown pale with age.

“Uncle Maurice,” said Mrs. Darrell, “don’t you know me?”

The invalid nodded his head.

“Yes, yes, yes!” he said; but there was a vacant smile upon his face, and it seemed as if the words were uttered mechanically.

“And are you glad to see me, dear uncle?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the old man answered, in exactly the same tone.

Mrs. Darrell looked up hopelessly.

“Is he always like this?” she asked.

“No,” answered Miss Susan, briskly, “he is only so when he is intruded upon and annoyed. We told you it was one of your uncle’s bad days, Ellen; and yet you are heartless enough to insist on persecuting him.

Mrs. Darrell turned upon her sister with suppressed rage.

“When will the day come in which I shall be welcome to this place, Susan de Crespigny?” she said. “I choose my own time, and seize any chance I can of speaking to my uncle.”

She looked back at the group she had left behind her, and beckoned to her son.

Launcelot Darrell came straight to his uncle’s chair.

“You remember Launcelot, Uncle Maurice,” Mrs. Darrell said, entreatingly; “I’m sure you remember Launcelot.”

The two maiden sisters watched their uncle’s face with eager and jealous glances. It seemed as if the thick clouds were fading away from the old man’s memory, for a faint light kindled in his faded eyes.

“Launcelot!” he said; “yes, I remember Launcelot. In India, poor lad, in India.”

“He went to India, dear uncle, and he has been away some years. You remember how unfortunate he was; the indigo planter to whom he was to have gone failed before he got to Calcutta, so that my poor boy could not even deliver the one letter of introduction which he took with him to a strange country. He was thrown upon his own resources, therefore, and had to get a living as he could. The climate never agreed with him, Uncle Maurice, and he was altogether very unhappy. He stayed as long as he could endure a life that was utterly unsuited to him; and then flung everything up for the sake of returning to England. You must not be angry with my poor boy, dear Uncle Maurice.”

The old man seemed to have brightened up a good deal by this time. He nodded perpetually as his niece talked to him, but there was a look of intelligence in his face now.

“I am not angry with him,” he said; “he was free to go, or free to return. I did the best I could for him; but of course he was free to choose his own career, and is so still. I don’t expect him to defer to me.”

Mrs. Darrell turned pale. This speech appeared to express a renunciation of all interest in her son. She would almost rather that her uncle had been angry and indignant at the young man’s return.

“But Launcelot wishes to please you in all he does, dear uncle,” pleaded the widow. “He will be very, very sorry if he has offended you.”

“He is very good,” the old man answered; “he has not offended me. He is quite free, quite free to act for himself. I did the best I could for him—I did the best; but he is perfectly free.”

The two maiden sisters exchanged a look of triumph. In this hand-to-hand contest for the rich man’s favour, it did not seem as if either Ellen Darrell or her son were gaining any great advantage.

Launcelot bent over his great-uncle’s chair.

“I am very happy to find you alive and well, sir, on my return,” he said, respectfully.

The old man lifted his eyes, and looked earnestly at the handsome face bent over him.

“You are very good, nephew,” he said; “I sometimes think that, because I have a little money to leave behind me, everybody wishes for my death. It’s hard to fancy that every breath one draws is grudged by those who live with us. That’s very hard.”

“Uncle!” cried the maiden nieces, simultaneously, with a little shriek of lady-like horror. “When have you ever fancied that?”

The old man shook his head, with a feeble smile upon his tremulous lips.

“You are very good to me, my dears,” he said; “very good; but sick men have strange fancies. I sometimes think I’ve lived too long for myself and others. But never mind that; never mind