She was very gloomy and despondent, brooding upon these things; but through every gloomy thought of the present a darker image loomed, far away in the black future. This was the image of her vengeance, the vague and uncertain shadow that had filled her girlish dreams ever since the great sorrow of her father’s death had fallen upon her.
“If I go to Hazlewood,” she thought, “if I spend my life at Mrs. Darrell’s, how can I ever hope to find the murderer of my father?”
CHAPTER XI.
RICHARD THORNTON’S PROMISE.
Eleanor Vane looked very sadly at all the common everyday sights connected with the domestic economy of the Pilasters, when she went back to Bloomsbury after her interview with Mrs. Bannister. She had only lived a year and a half in that humble locality, but it was in her nature to become quickly attached to places as well as persons, and she had grown very fond of the Pilasters. Everybody about the place knew her and loved her. The horses looked out of their open stable-doors as she passed; the dogs came tumbling from their kennels, dragging half-a-dozen yards of rusty iron chain and a heap of straw at their heels, to greet her as she went by; the chimney-sweeps’ children courted her notice; and at all the little shops where she had been wont to give orders and pay bills for the Signora, the simple tradespeople tendered her their admiration and homage. Her beauty was a pride to the worthy citizens of the Pilasters. Could all Bloomsbury, from Dudley Street to the Squares, produce sunnier golden hair, or brighter grey eyes than were to be seen under the shadow of the dilapidated colonnade when Eleanor Vane went by?
In this atmosphere of love and admiration, the girl had been very happy. She had one of those natures in which there lies a wondrous power of assimilation with the manners and habits of others. She was never out of place; she was never in the way. She was not ambitious. Her sunny temperament was the centre of perpetual peace and happiness, only to be disturbed by very terrible thunderclaps of sorrow. She had been very happy with the Signora; and to-day she looked sadly round the little sitting-room, her eyes resting now on the old piano, now on a shelf of tattered books—romances dear to Richard and herself, and not too well treated by either—now on the young man’s flaming magnum opus, the picture she had loved to criticise and abuse in mischievous enjoyment of the painter’s anguish. As she looked at these things, and remembered how soon she must go away from them, the slow tears trickled down her cheeks, and she stood despondent on the gloomy threshold of her new life.
She had found the familiar rooms empty upon her return from Bayswater, for the Signora was away teaching beyond the regions of the New Road, and Richard was hard at work at the Phœnix, where there were always new pieces to be produced and new scenes to be painted. Eleanor had the little sitting-room all to herself; she took off her bonnet and sat down upon the old-fashioned chintz-covered sofa. She buried her head in the cushions and tried to think.
The prospect of a new existence, which would have been delightful to most girls of her age, was utterly distasteful to her. Her nature was adhesive; she would have gone to the farthest end of the world with her father, if he had lived, or with Richard and the Signora, whom she loved only less than she had loved him. But to sever every tie, and go out alone into the world, with nothing between her and desolation, was unspeakably terrible to this affectionate, impulsive girl.
If it had been simply a question of her own advantage, if by the sacrifice of her own advancement, her every prospect in life, she might have stayed with the friends she loved, she would not have hesitated for a moment. But it was not so. Mrs. Bannister had clearly told her that she was a burden upon these generous people, who had sheltered and succoured her in her hour of misery. The cruel word pauperism had been flung in her teeth, and with a racking brain this poor girl set herself to calculate how much her maintenance cost her friends, and how much she was able to contribute out of her own pitiful earnings.
Alas! the balance told against her when the sum was done. Her earnings were very, very small as yet, not because her talent was unappreciated, but because her pupils were poor; and a music-mistress whose address was Bloomsbury Pilasters could scarcely demand high payment for her services, or hope to obtain a very aristocratic connection.
No; Mrs. Bannister—stern, uncompromising, and disagreeable as the truth itself—had no doubt been right. Her duty lay before her, plainly indicated by that unpleasant monitor. She was bound to leave these dear friends, and to go out into the world to fight a lonely battle for herself.