Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/640

 632 and it shall be the business of my life to prove that it is so.”

“And what then, Eleanor?” Mr. Thornton asked gravely. “Supposing you can prove this; by such evidences as will be very difficult to get at; by such an investigation as will waste your life, blight your girlhood, warp your nature, unsex your mind, and transform you from a candid and confiding woman into an amateur detective? Suppose you do all this,—and you little guess, my dear, the humiliating falsehoods, the pitiful deceptions, the studied basenesses, you must practise if you are to tread that sinuous pathway,—what then? What good is effected; what end is gained? Are you any nearer to the accomplishment of the vow you uttered in the Rue l’Archevêque?”

“What do you mean, Richard?”

“I mean that to prove this man’s guilt is not to avenge your father’s death. Neither you nor the law have any power to punish him. He may or may not have cheated your poor father. At this distance of time you can prove nothing against him, except that he played écarté in the private room of a café, and that he won all your father’s money. He would only laugh in your face, my poor Nelly, if you were to bring such a charge as this against him.”

“If I can once prove that, which I now believe as firmly as if every mortal proof had demonstrated its truth, I know how to punish Launcelot Darrell,” replied the girl.

“You know how to punish him?”

“Yes. His uncle—that is to say, his great uncle—Maurice de Crespigny, was my father’s firmest friend. I need not tell you that story, Dick, for you have heard it often enough from my poor father’s own lips. Launcelot Darrell expects to inherit the old man’s money, and will do so if Mr. de Crespigny dies without making a will. But if I could prove to the old man that my father died a melancholy and untimely death through his nephew’s treachery, Launcelot Darrell would never inherit a sixpence of that money. I know how eagerly he looks forward to it, though he affects indifference.”

“And you would do this, Eleanor?” asked Richard, staring aghast at his companion; “you would betray the secrets of this young man’s youth to his uncle, and compass his ruin by that revelation?”

“I would do what I swore to do in the Rue l’Archevêque. I would avenge my father’s death. The last words my poor father ever wrote appealed to me to do that. I have never forgotten those words. There may have been a deeper treachery in that night’s work than you or I know of, Richard. Launcelot Darrell knew who my father was—he knew of the friendship between him and Mr. de Crespigny. How do we know that he did not try to goad the poor old man to that last act of his despair; how do we know that he did not plan those losses at cards, in order to remove his uncle’s friend from his pathway? Oh, God! Richard, if I thought that”

The girl rose from her chair in a sudden tumult of passion, with her hands clenched and her eyes flashing.

“If I could think that his treachery went beyond the baseness of cheating my father of his money for the money’s sake, I would take his life for that dear life as freely and as unhesitatingly as I lift my hand up now.”

She raised her clenched hand towards the ceiling as she spoke, as if to register some unuttered vow. Then, turning abruptly to the scene-painter, she said, almost imploringly:

“It can’t be, Richard; he cannot have been so base as that. He held my hand in his only a few days ago. I would cut off that hand if I could think that Launcelot Darrell had planned my father’s death.”

“But you cannot think it, my dear Eleanor,” Richard answered, earnestly. “How should the young man know that your father would take his loss so deeply to heart? We none of us calculate the consequences of our sins, my dear. If this man cheated, he cheated because he wanted money. For Heaven’s sake, Nelly, leave him and his sin in the hands of Providence. The future is not a blank sheet of paper, Nelly, for us to write any story we please upon; but a wonderful chart mapped out by a divine and unerring hand. Launcelot Darrell will not go unpunished, Nelly. ‘My faith is strong in Time,’ as the poet says. Leave the young man to Time—and to Providence.”

Eleanor Vane shook her head, smiling bitterly at her friend’s philosophy. Poor mad Constance’s reply always rose, in some shape or other, to the girl’s lips in answer to Richard’s arguments. The Cardinal reasons with wonderful discretion, but the bereaved mother utters one sentence that is more powerful than all the worthy man’s prim moralities:

“He talks to me, that never had a son!”

“It is no use preaching to me,” Miss Vane said. “If your father had died by this man’s treachery, you would not feel so charitably disposed towards him. I will keep the promise made three years ago. I will prove Launcelot Darrell’s guilt; and that guilt shall stand between him and Maurice de Crespigny’s fortune.”

“You forget one point in this business, Eleanor.”

“What point?”

“It may take you a very long time to obtain the proof you want. Mr. de Crespigny is an old man, and an invalid. He may die before you are in a position to denounce his nephew’s treachery to your poor father.”

Eleanor was silent for a few moments. Her arched brows contracted, and her mouth grew compressed and rigid.

“I must go back to Hazlewood, Dick,” she said, slowly. “Yes, you are right; there is no time to be lost. I must go back to Hazlewood.”

“That is not very practicable, is it, Nell?”

“I must go back. If I go in some disguise—if I go and hide myself in the village, and watch Launcelot Darrell when he least thinks he is observed. I don’t care how I go, Richard, but I must be there. It can only be from the discoveries I make in the present, that I shall be able to trace my way back to the history of the past. I must go there.”