Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/586

578 rhapsodies about the object of her affection.

“I know it’s very bold and wicked and horrid to fall in love with anybody before they fall in love with one, you know, Eleanor,” the young lady said in not very elegant English; “but he is so handsome and so clever. I don’t think any one in the world could help loving him.

I only ask to love; I ber-rood upon my silent heart,

As on its nest a dove; ”

added Miss Mason, quoting that favourite poet of all desponding lovers, poor L. E. L.

I think Mr. Monckton’s ward rather enjoyed the hopelessness of her attachment. The brooding upon her silent heart was scarcely an accurate exposition of her conduct, as she talked reams of sentiment to Eleanor upon the subject of her unrequited affection. Miss Vane was patient and tender with her, listening to her foolish talk, and dreading the coming of that hour in which the childish young beauty must be rudely awakened from her rose-coloured dream.

“I don’t want to marry him, you know, Eleanor,” the young lady said; “I only want to be allowed to love him. You remember the German story in which the Knight watches the window of his lost love’s convent cell. I could live for ever and ever near him; and be content to see him sometimes; or to hear his voice, even if I did not see him. I should like to wear boy’s clothes, and be his page, like Viola, and tell him my own story, you know, some day.”

Eleanor remembered her promise to Gilbert Monckton, and tried sometimes to check the torrent of sentimental talk.

“I know your love is very poetical, and I dare say it’s very true, my pet,” she said; “but do you think Mr. Darrell is quite worth all this waste of affection? I sometimes think, Laura dear, that we commit a sin when we waste our best feelings. Suppose by-and-bye you should meet some one quite as worthy of your love as Launcelot Darrell; some one who would love you very devotedly; don’t you think you would look back and regret having lavished your best and freshest feelings upon a person who—”

“Who doesn’t care a straw for me,” cried the heiress, half crying. “That’s what you mean, Eleanor Vincent. You mean to insinuate that Launcelot doesn’t care for me. You are a cruel, heartless girl, and you don’t love me a bit.”

And the young lady bemoaned her disappointment, and wept over the hardships of her lot, very much as she might have cried for any new plaything a few years before.

It was upon a burning August morning that Launcelot Darrell declared himself to Eleanor Vane. The two girls had been sitting to him for a picture,—Eleanor as Rosalind, and Laura as Celia,—a pretty feminine group. Rosalind in her womanly robes, and not her forester’s dress of grey and green; for the painter had chosen the scene in which Celia promises to share her cousin’s exile.

This picture was to be exhibited at the Academy, and was to make Mr. Darrell’s fortune. Laura had been called from the room to attend to some important business with a dressmaker from Windsor, and Eleanor and Launcelot were alone.

The young man went on painting for some time, and then, throwing down his brush with a gesture of impatience, went over to the window near which Eleanor sat on a raised platform covered with a shabby drapery of red baize.

“Do you think the picture will be a success, Miss Vincent?” he asked.

“Oh yes, I think so, and hope so; but I am no judge, you know.”

“Your judgment must be as good as the public judgment, I should think,” Launcelot Darrell answered, rather impatiently. “The critics will try to write me down, I dare say, but I don’t look to the critics to buy my picture. They’ll call me crude and meretricious, and hard and cold, and thin and grey, I’ve no doubt; but the best picture, to my mind, is the picture that sells best, eh, Miss Vincent?”

Eleanor lifted her arched eyebrows with a look of surprise; this very low view of the question rather jarred upon her sense of the dignity of art.

“I suppose you think my sentiments very mercenary and contemptible, Miss Vincent,” said the painter, interpreting the expression of her face; “but I have lived out the romance of my life, or one part of that romance, at any rate, and have no very ardent aspiration after greatness in the abstract. I want to earn money. The need of money drives men into almost every folly; further, sometimes: into follies that touch upon the verge of crime.”

The young man’s face darkened suddenly as he spoke, and he was silent for a few moments, not looking at his companion, but away out of the open window into vacancy, as it seemed.

The memory of Gilbert Monckton’s words flashed back upon Eleanor’s mind. “There is a secret in Launcelot Darrell’s life,” the lawyer had said; “a secret connected with his Indian experience.” Was he thinking of that secret now, Eleanor wondered. But the painter’s face brightened almost as suddenly as it had been overshadowed. He flung back his head with an impetuous gesture. It seemed almost as if he had cast some imaginary burden from off his shoulders by the same sudden movement.

“I want to earn money, Miss Vincent,” he said. “Art in the abstract is very grand, no doubt. I quite believe in the man who stabbed his model in order to get the death agony for his picture of the Crucifixion; but I must make art subservient to my own necessities. I must earn money for myself and my wife, Eleanor. I might marry a rich woman, perhaps, but I want to marry a poor one. Do you think the girl I love will listen to me, Eleanor? Do you think she will accept the doubtful future I can offer her? Do you think she will be brave enough to share the fortunes of a struggling man?”

Nothing could be more heroic than the tone in which Launcelot Darrell spoke. He had the air of a man who means to strive, with the sturdy devotion of a martyr, to win the end of his ambition, rather than that of a sanguine but