Launcelot Darrell drew back as the servant approached the door, and in another moment the man opened it, and announced Mr. Monckton, Mrs. Monckton, Mr. Thornton, Monsieur Bourdon. He would have announced Mr. John Ketch, I dare say, just as coolly.
Launcelot Darrell planted his back against the low marble chimneypiece, and prepared to meet his fate. It had come; the realisation of that horrible nightmare which had tormented him ever since the night of Maurice de Crespigny’s death. It had come; detection, disgrace, humiliation, despair; no matter by what name it was called, the thing was living death. His heart seemed to melt into water, and then freeze in his breast. He had seen the face of Victor Bourdon lurking behind Gilbert and Eleanor, and he knew that he had been betrayed.
The young man knew this, and determined to make a gallant finish. He was not a coward by nature, though his own wrong-doing had made him cowardly; he was only an irresolute, vacillating, selfish Sybarite, who had quarrelled with the great schoolmaster Fate, because his life had not been made one long summer’s holiday. Even cowards sometimes grow courageous at the last. Launcelot Darrell was not a coward: he drew himself up to his fullest height, and prepared to confront his accusers.
Eleanor Monckton advanced towards him. Her husband tried to restrain her, but his effort was wasted; she waved him back with her hand, and went on to where the young man stood, with her head lifted and her nostrils quivering.
“At last, Launcelot Darrell,” she cried, “after watching that has wearied me, and failures that have tempted me to despair, at last I can keep my promise; at last I can be true to the lost father whose death was your cruel work. When last I was in this house, you laughed at me and defied me. I was robbed of the evidence that would have condemned you: all the world seemed leagued together against me. Now, the proof of your crime is in my hands, and the voice of your accomplice has borne witness against you. Cheat, trickster, and forger: there is no escape for you now!”
“No,” exclaimed Monsieur Bourdon, with an unctuous chuckle, “it is now your turn to be chased, my stripling; it is now your turn to be kicked out of the door.”
“From first to last, from first to last,” said Eleanor, “you have been false and cruel. You wronged and deceived the friends who sent you to India”
“Yaase,” interrupted the commercial traveller, who was very pale, and by no means too steady in his nerves, after the attack of delirium tremens. He had dropped into a chair, and sat trembling and grinning at his late patron, with a ghastly jocosity that was far from agreeable to behold. “Yaase, you cheat your mo-thair, you cheat your friends. You make belief to go to the Indias, but you do not go. You what you call shally-shilly, and upon the last moment, when the machine is on the point of depart, you change the mind. You are well in England, there is a handsome career for you, as artist, you say. Then you will not go. But you have fear of your uncle, who has given the money for your—fit-out—and for your passage, and you make believe to do what they wish from you. You have a friend, a confrère, a Mr., who is to partake your cabin. You write to heem, you get heem to post your letters; you write to your mo-thair, in Clip-a-stone Street, and you say to her, ‘Dear mo-thair, I cannot bear this broil climate; I am broil, I work the night and the day; I am indigo planter;’ and you send your letter to the Indias to be posted; and your poor mo-thair belief you; and you are in Paris to enjoy yourself, to lead the life of student, a little Bohemian, but very gay. You read Balzac, you make the little sketches for the cheap Parisian journals. You are gamester, and win money from a poor old Englishman, the father of that lady there; and you make a catspaw of your friend, Victor Bourdon. You are a villain man, Monsieur Darrell, but it is finished with you.”
“Listen to me, Launcelot Darrell,” Gilbert Monckton said, quietly. “Every falsehood and trick of which you have been guilty, from first to last, is known. There is no help for you. The will which my wife holds in her hand is the genuine will signed by Maurice de Crespigny. This man is prepared to testify that the will by which you took possession of this estate is a forgery, fabricated by you and Henry Lawford’s clerk, who had in his possession a rough draught of the real will which he had written at Mr. de Crespigny’s dictation, and who copied the three different signatures from three letters written by the old man to Henry Lawford. You are prepared to bear witness to this?” added the lawyer, turning to Victor Bourdon.
“But certainly,” exclaimed the Frenchman, “it being well understood that I am not to suffer by this candour. It is understood that I am innocent in this affair.”
“Innocent!” cried Launcelot Darrell, bitterly. “Why you were the prime mover in this business. It was your suggestion that first induced—”
“It is possible, my friend,” murmured Monsieur Bourdon, complacently; “but is it, then, a crime to make a little suggestion—to try to make oneself useful to a friend! I do not believe it! No matter. I have studied your English law: I do not think it can touch me, since I am only prepared to swear to having found this real will, and having before that overheard a conversation between you and the clerk of the avoué de Vindsor.”
“You use noble tools, Mrs. Monckton,” said Launcelot Darrell, “but I do not know by what right you come into my house, uninvited, and bringing in your train a very respectable transpontine scene-painter, with whom I have not the honour to be intimate, and a French commercial traveller, who has chosen to make himself peculiarly obnoxious to me. It is for the Court of Chancery to decide whether I am the rightful owner of this house and all appertaining to it. I shall await the fiat of that court; and in the meantime I have the honour to wish you good evening.”
