Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/612

604 “My friends!” repeated Eleanor, in an absent tone.

“Yes, the good music-mistress and her son. I have your address, Miss Vincent, and you may rely on hearing from me in a few days. I shall take care that you suffer no inconvenience from this sudden change in all our plans. Good-bye, and God bless you, my dear!”

Eleanor had taken her seat in the carriage by this time, and the train was about to move. Mrs. Darrell held out her hand; but the girl drew away from her with a sudden movement of terror. “Oh, please do not shake hands with me!” she cried, “I am very, very unhappy.”

The train moved away before the widow could reply to this strange speech, and the last thing that Eleanor saw, was the pale face of Launcelot Darrell’s mother turned towards her with a look of surprise.

“Poor child,” thought Mrs. Darrell, as she walked slowly back to the station-door, before which her pony-carriage waited. “She feels this very much, but she has acted nobly.”

The widow sighed as she remembered that the worst part of the struggle was yet to come. She would have her son’s indignation to encounter and to endure; not the stormy passion of a strong man, unfairly separated from the woman he loves; but the fretful irritation of a spoiled child who has been robbed of a favourite toy.

It was nearly dark when Eleanor Vane reached the Pilasters. She paid and dismissed the cab in Dudley Street, and made her way on foot under the familiar archway, and into the Colonnade, where the same children seemed to be playing the same games in the dusky light, the same horses peering from the stable-doors, the same cabmen drinking at the oldfashioned public-house at the corner.

The Signora was giving a singing-lesson to a stolid young person with a fat face and freckles, who was being prepared for the lyric drama, and wished to appear at one of the opera houses as Norma, after a dozen lessons or so. Eliza Picirillo was trying her hardest to simplify a difficult passage for this embryo Grisi’s comprehension, when Eleanor Vane opened the door of the little sitting-room, and appeared upon the threshold.

It would have been natural to the girl to have rushed to the piano and flung herself into the arms of the Signora at the risk of upsetting the stolid pupil; and there was something so very unnatural in her manner as she paused in the open doorway,—something so wan and ghost-like in her appearance, that Eliza Picirillo rose in alarm from her music-stool and stared aghast at this unexpected visitor.

“Eleanor!” she exclaimed, “Eleanor!”

“Yes, dear Signora, it is I! I—I know I have come back very unexpectedly; I have a great deal to tell you by-and-by. But I am tired to death. May I sit down, please, while you finish your lesson?”

“May you sit down! My darling Nelly, is that the way you talk in your old home. My dear, dear child, do you think you can ever come so unexpectedly as to fail to find a welcome from Eliza Picirillo. Here, my dear, sit down and make yourself as comfortable as you can, until I’m able to attend to you. Excuse me, Miss Dodson, we’ll go on with the duet directly.”

The music-mistress wheeled forward an old easy-chair, her own favourite seat, and Eleanor dropped wearily into it. Signora Picirillo removed the girl’s bonnet, and tenderly smoothed her tumbled hair, murmuring expressions of welcome and affection, and whispering a promise that the lesson should be very soon finished.

She went back to Norma after seeing Eleanor comfortably ensconced in the arm-chair, and hammered away sturdily and conscientiously at the “Deh, Conte” duet, in which Miss Dodson gave a very mild interpretation of the Italian composer’s meaning, and sang about Pollio, her children, and her wrongs as placidly as if she had been declaiming her wish to be a butterfly, or any other sentiment common to English ballad-singers.

But when Miss Dodson had finished singing, and had put on her bonnet and shawl, which operation occupied a good deal of unnecessary time, and had rolled up her music, and found her gloves, which had fallen off the piano and hidden themselves in an obscure and dusty corner of the room, and had further entered into a detailed and intricate explanation of her engagements and domestic circumstances, before making an appointment for the next lesson, and had been finally hustled out of the room and lighted down the stairs, and fully instructed as to the nearest way from the Pilasters to Camden Town, Eliza Picirillo was able to give her full attention to the pale-faced girl who had returned so suddenly to her old shelter. The music-mistress was almost frightened at the expression of Eleanor Vane’s face. She remembered only too well having seen that look before, upon the September night in Paris; when the girl of fifteen had sworn to be revenged upon her father’s enemies.

“Nelly, my darling,” she said, seating herself beside Eleanor’s chair, “how is it that you come home so suddenly? Nothing could be greater happiness than to have you back, my dear. But I know that something has happened; I can see it in your face, Nelly. Tell me, my dear, what is it?”

“It is nothing to be sorry about, dear Signora; I have come away because—because Mrs. Darrell wished it. Her son—her only son has come home from India, and she wants him to marry a rich woman, and—and—”

“And he has fallen in love with you, eh, Nelly?” asked the Signora. “Well, I’m not surprised to hear that, my dear; and you are honourable enough to beat a retreat, and leave the young man free to make a mercenary marriage at his mother’s bidding. Dear, dear, what strange things people are ready to do for money now-a-days. I’m sure you’ve acted very wisely, my darling; so cheer up, and let me see the bright smile that we’ve been accustomed to. There’s nothing in all this to make you look so pale, Nelly.”

“Do I look pale?”

“Yes, as pale as a ghost weary with a long