Eleanor's victory

by M. E. Braddon

The rattle of wheels and the cries of coachmen sounded far off upon the boulevard, and in the Rue de Rivoli, and only made the silence more palpable in the Rue de l’Archevêque. Now and then a carriage came into that quiet corner, and Eleanor Vane looked up from her book, breathless, eager, expectant, fondly hoping that her father might have come back to her in some hired vehicle: but the solitary carriage always rolled away, until the sound of its wheels mixed with the rattle of the distant wheels upon the boulevards.

There were clocks in the distance that struck the quarters. How long those quarters seemed! Paul Féval was very interesting, no doubt. There was an awful mystery in those greasy tattered pages: a ghastly mystery about two drowned young women, treacherously made away with, as it seemed, upon the shore of a dreary river overshadowed by willows. There were villains and rascals paramount throughout this delightful romance; and there was mystery and murder enough for half a dozen novels. But Eleanor’s thoughts wandered away from the page. The dreary river bank and the ghostly pollard-willows, the drowned young women, and the ubiquitous villains, all mingled themselves with her anxious thoughts about her father; and the trouble in the book seemed to become a part of the trouble in her own mind, adding its dismal weight to her anxieties.

There were splotchy engravings scattered here and there through the pages of Monsieur Féval’s romance, and Eleanor fancied by-and-by that the villain in these pictures was like the sulky stranger who had followed her father and the Frenchman away towards the Barrière Saint Antoine.

She fancied this, although she had scarcely seen that silent stranger’s face. He had kept it, as it seemed, purposely averted, and she had only caught one glimpse of the restless black eyes under the shadow of his hat, and the thick moustache that shrouded his mouth. There is always something mysterious and unpleasant in the idea of anything that has been hidden from us, however trivial and insignificant that thing may be. Eleanor Vane, growing more and more nervous as the slow hours crept away, began to worry herself with the vivid recollection of that one brief glimpse in which she had seen the silent stranger’s face.

“He cannot have a good countenance,” she thought, “or the recollection of it would not make me so uncomfortable. How rude he was, too! I did not much like the Frenchman, but at least he was polite. The other man was very disagreeable. I hope he is not a friend of papa’s.” And then she returned to the drowned young women, and the water-side, and the willows; trying in vain to bury herself in the romance, and not to listen so eagerly for the striking of the quarters. Sometimes she thought, “Before I turn over to the next page, papa will be home,” or, “Before I can finish this chapter I shall hear his step upon the stairs.”

Breathless though the night was, there were many sounds that disturbed and mocked this anxious watcher. Sometimes the door below shook—as if by some mysterious agency, there being no wind—and Eleanor fancied that her father’s hand was on the latch. Sometimes the stairs creaked, and she started from her chair, eager to run and receive him, and firmly believing that he was stealing stealthily up to his apartments, anxious not to disturb the sleeping inmates of the house. She had known his cautious footfall sound exactly thus in her old midnight watches.

But all these sounds were only miserable delusions. Quarter after quarter, each quarter longer than the last, hour after hour struck from the clocks distant and near. The rattling of the wheels upon the boulevards had died gradually away, and at last had ceased altogether.

It was long past four, and Eleanor had pushed aside her book. It was daylight,—grey, cold, morning, chill and dismal after the oppressive August night, and she stood now in the window watching the empty street.

But still the quarters chimed from the distant clocks: those distant chimes had become terribly distinct now in the early morning stillness. But the silence was not of long duration. The rumble of waggon wheels sounded far away in the Rue St. Honoré. The rush and clatter of a detachment or cavalry clashed upon the asphalte of the Place de la Concorde. The early sound of a horn called out some wretched recruits to perform their morning exercise in the courtyards of the Louvre. The cheerful voices of workpeople echoed in the streets; dogs were barking, birds singing, the yellow sun mounting in a cloudless heaven.

But there were no signs of the coming of George Vane with the morning sunlight; and as the day grew older and brighter, the anxious face of the pale watcher at the open window only grew paler and more anxious.