Eleanor's Victory

Chapter I

cal to have objooted to the shortness of the skirt, which had evidently been outgrown by its wearer. GOING EOME. Then, again, this lonely traveller was not only young, but pretty. In spite of the shortness of her frock and the shabbiness of her straw bonnet, it was impossible for the most spiteful of the British misses to affirm the contrary. She was very pretty — so pretty that it was a pleasure to look at her, in her unconscious innocence, and to think how beautiful she would be by-and-by, when that bright, budding, girlish loveliness bloomed out in its womanly splendor. The craggy cliffs upon the Norman coast looked something like the terraced walls and turreted roofs of a ruined city in the hot afternoon sunshine, as the Empress steamer sped swiftly onward toward Dieppe. At least they looked thus in the eyes of a very young lady, who stood alone on the deck of the steam-packet, with yearning eyes fixed upon that foreign shore.

It was four o'clock upon a burning August after noon in the year 1853. The steamer was fast ap proaching the harbor. Several mnstached gentle men, of various ages, costumes and manners, were busy getting together carpet-bags, railway-rugs, camp-stools, newspapers and umbrellas, preparatory to that eager rush toward the shore by which almost all marine voyagers are apt to testify their contempt for Neptune, when they have no longer need of his service or fear of his vengeance. Two or three English families were collected in groups, holding guard over small mounds or barrows of luggage, having made all preparation for landing at first sight of the Norman shore, dim in the distance ; and, of course, about two hours too soon. • Her skin was fair, but pale — not a sentimental or sickly pallor, but a beautiful alabaster clearness of tint.

Her eyes were grey, large and dark, or ren dered dark by the shadow of long Mack lashes. I would rather not catalogue her other features too minutely ; for, though they were regular, and even beautiful, there is something low and material in all the other features, as compared to the eyes. Her hair was of a soft golden brown, bright and rippling like a sunlit river. The brightness of that luxu riant hair, the light in her grey oyes, and the vivac ity of a very beautiful smile, made her face seem almost luminous as she looked at you. It was dif ficult to imagine that she could ever look unhappy. She seemed an animated, radiant and exuberant creature, who made an atmosphere of brightness and happiness about her. Other girls of her age would have crept to a corner of the deck, perhaps, to hide their loneliness, or would have clung to tbe outer fringe of one of tbe family groups, making believe not to be alone ; but this young lady had taken her stand boldly against the bulwark, choos ing the position from which she might soonest hope to see Dieppe harbor, and apparently quite indiffer ent to observation, though many a furtive glance was cast toward the tall but girlish figure and the handsome profile so sharply defined against a blue back-ground of summer sky.

Several blooming young English damsels, gath ered under maternal wings, were looking forward to sea-bathing in a foreign watering-place. The Etablissement des Bains had not yet been built, and Dieppe was not so popular, perhaps, among English pleasure-seekers as it now is. There were several comfortable-looking British families on board the steamer; but, of all the friendly matrons and pretty daughters assembled on the deck, there seemed ko one in any way connected with that lonely young lady who leaned against the bulwark with a cloak across her arm and a rather shabby carpet-bag at her feet. She was very young — indeed, of that age which in the other sex is generally called the period of hobbledehoyhood. Thore was more ankle to be seen below the hem of her neat muslin frock than is quite consistent with elegance of attire in a young lady of fifteen; hut, as the anklo so revealed was rounded and slender, it would have been bypoeriti- But there was nothing unfeminine in all this — nothing bold or defiant ; it was only the innocent unconsciousness of a light-hearted girl, ignorant of any perils which could assail her loneliness, and fearless in her ignorance.

Throughout the brief sea voyage she had displayed no symptoms of shynes3 or perplexity. She had suffered none ofthe tortures com mon to many travelers in their marine experiences. She had not been sea-sick; and indeed she did not look like a person whocoitW be subject to any of the common ills this weak flesh inherits. You could almost as easily have pictured to yourself the God dess Hygeia suffering from a bilious headache, or Hebe laid up with influenza, as this auburn-haired, grey-eyed young lady under any phase of mortal suffering. Eyes, dim in the paroxysms of sea sickness, had looked almost spilifally toward this happy, radiant creature, as she flitted hither and thither about the deck, courting the balmy ocean breezes that made themselves merry with her rip pling hair. Lips, blue with suffering, had writhed as their owners beheld the sandwiches which this young school-girl devoured, the stale buns, the flat raspberry tarts, the hideous, bilious, revolting three cornered puffs which she produced at different stages of the voyage from her shabby carpet-bag.

She had an odd volume of a novel, and a long dreary desert of crotchet-work, whose white cotton monotony was only broken by occasional dingy oases bearing witness of the worker's dirty hands ; they were such pretty hands, too, that it was a shame they should ever be dirty; and she had a bunch of flabby, faded flowers, sheltered by a great fan-like shield of newspaper; and she had a smell ing-bottle, which sho sniffed at perpetually, though sbe had no need of any such restorative, being as fresh and bright from first to last as the sea-breezes themselves, and as little subject to any marine mal ady as Lurleis, whose waving locks could scarcely have been brighter than her own. pensive school in Paris, to finish my education ; and then — ' She paused here, hesitating and blushing a little. 'And then what?' 'I aoo going to be a governess.

Papa is not rich. He has no fortune now.'. ' Ho has had a fortune, then ?' 'He has had three.' The young lady's gray eyes were lit up wjth a certain look of triumph as she said this. ' Ho has been very extravagant, poor dear,' she continued, apologetically ; 'and he has spent three fortunes, altogetber. But he has been always so courted and admired, you know, that it is not to be wondered at. He knew the Pritice Regent, and Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. Brummcl, and the Duke of York, and — oh, all sorts of people, ever so intimately; and he was a member of the Beef-steak Club, and wore a silver gridiron in his button-hole. and he is the most delightful man in society, oven now, though he is very old.' I think, if tho feminine voyagers on board the Empress were cruel to this solitary young traveler in not making themselves friendly witb her in her loneliness, the unkindness must be put down very much to that unchristian frame of mind in which people who are sea-sick are apt to regard those who are not.

This bouncing, bright-faced girl seemed to have little need of kindness from the miserable sufferers around her; so she was left to wander about the deck, now reading three pages of her novel, now doing half a dozen stitches of her work, now talking to the man at the wheel in spite of all injunctions to the contrary, now making herself ac quainted with stray pet dogs ; always contented, always happy, and no one troubled themselves about her. 'Very old! And you are so young.' The Englishman looked almost incredulously at his animated companion. ' Yes, I am papa's youngest child. He has been married twice. I have no real brothers and sisters. I have only half-brothers and sisters, who don't really and truly care for me, you know. How should they ? They were grown up when I was born, and I have scarcely ever seen them.

I have only papa in all the world.' It was only now, when they were nearing Dieppe, that one of the passengers, an elderly, grey-headed Englishman, spoke to her. 'You are very anxious to arrive,' he said, -smiling at her eager face. 'You have no mother, then '!' 'No, mamma died when I was three years old.' 'Oh yes, very anxious Sir. We are nearly there, are we not ?' The Empress packet was entering the harbor by this time. The gray-headed Englishman went away to look after his portmanteaus and hat-boxes, but he returned presently to the fair-haired school-girl, 'Yes, we shall enter ie > harbor presently. You will have some one to n you there, I suppose?' 'Will you let me help you with your luggage?' he said. ' I will go and look after it if you will tell me for what to inquire.' 'Oh no,' the young !■ y angered, lifting her arched brown eyebrows, 4-uot at D.cppe.

Papa will meet me at Paris; but be could eever come all the way to Dieppe, just to take me b jck to Paris. He could never afford such an expense' as that.' ' You are very kind. I have only one box. It is directed to Miss Vane, Paris.' ' No, to be sure ; and you know no one at Dieppe.' 'Very well, Miss Vane, I will go and find your box. Stay,' he said, taking out his card -case, 'this is my name, and if you will permit me, I will see you safely to Paris.' 'Oh no, I don't know any one in all France ex cept papa.' Her face, bright as it was even in repose, was lit up with a new brightness as she Epoke of her father.' ' Thank you, Sir. You are very kind.' Tbe young lady accepted her new friend's service as frankly as it was offered. He had gray hair, and in that one particular at least resembled her father.

That was almost enough to make her like him. 'You are very fond of your papa, I think,' the Englishman said. ' Oh yes, I love him very, very much. I have not seen him for more than a year. The journey costs so much between England and France, and I have been at school near London, at Brixton; I dare say you know Brixton; but I am going to France now, fbr good.' There was the usual confusion and delay at the custom-house — a little squabbling and a good deal of bribery ; but every thing was managed upon the whole, pretty comfortably. Most of the passengers dropped in at the Hotel de l'Europe, or some of the other hotels upon the stony quay ; a few hurried off to the market-place to stare at the cathedral church ' Indeed ! You seem very young to leave school.' 'But I'm not going to leave school,' the young lady answered, eagerly. ' I am going to a very exsome fantastic village tbat looked like a collection of Swiss toy cottages in the dim summer night.

But, let these matter-of-fact people snore and slumber as they might, there was no such thing as sleep for Eleanor Vane. It would have been utter sacrilege to have slept in the face of all that moon lighted beauty, to have been carried sleeping through that fairy landscape. The eager school girl's watchful eyes drank in the loveliness of every hill and valley, the low scattered woodland, the wandering streams, and that perplexing Seine, which the rumbling carriage crossed so often with a dismal hollow sound in the stillness of the night. of Saint Jacques, or the great statute of Abraham Duquesne, the ragged sea king, with broad-brimmed hat and waving plumes, high boots and flowing hair, and to buy peaches and apricots of the noisy mar ket-women. Others wandered in the slimy and slippery fish-market, fearfully and wonderingly con templative of those hideous conger-eels, dog-fish, and other piscatorial monstrosities which seem peculiar to Dieppe.

Miss Vane and her companion strolled into the dusky church of Saint Jacques by a little wooden door in a shady nook of the edifice. A few solitary women were kneeling here and there, half-hidden behind their high-backed rush chairs. A fisherman was praying upon the steps of a little chapel, in tbe solemn obscurity. No : Miss Vane's bright gray eyes were not cloBed once in that evening journey; and at last, when the train entered the great Parisian station, when all the trouble and confusion of arrival bo gan—that wearisome encounter of difficulty which makes cowardly travelers wish the longest journey longer than it. is — the young lady's head was thrust out of tbe window, and her eager eyes wandered hither and thither among the faces of the crowd. 'I have never been here before,' Miss Vane whispered. ' I came by Dover and Calais the last time ; but this way is so much cheaper, and I don't mind the long sea-voyage a bit.

Thank you for bringing me to see this cathedral." Half an hour after this the two travelers were seated in a first-class carriage, with other railway passengers, French and English, hurrying through the fair Norman landscape. Yes, he was there — her father. That white-haired old man, with the gold-headed cane, and the aristocratic appearance. Sho pointed him out eagerly to her fellow-passenger. Miss Vane looked out at the bright hills and woods, the fruitful orchards, and white-roofed cot tages, so villa-like, fantastical, and beautiful ; and her face brightened with the brightening of the landscape under the hot radiance of the sun. The gray-headed gentleman felt a quiet pleasure in watching that earnest, hopeful, candid face ; the gray eyes illumined with gladness ; the parted lips, almost tremulous with delight, as the sunny pano rama glided by the open window. ' That is papa — you see— the handsome man.

He is coming this way, but he doesn't see us. Oh, let let me out, please ; let me go to him !' She trembled in her eagerness, and her fair face flushed crimson with excitement. She forgot her carpet-bag, her novel, her crochet, her smelling bottle, her cloak, her parasol — all her paraphernalia; and left ber companion to collect them as best he might. She was out of the carriage and in her father's arms she scarcely knew how. The platform seemed deserted all in a moment, for the passengers had rushed away to a great dreary salle d'attente, there to await the inspection of their lug gage. Miss Vane, her fellow-traveler, and her father were almost alone, and she was looking up at the old man's face in the lamplight. The quiet old batchelor's heart had been won by his companion's frank acceptance of his simple ser vice. 'Another girl of her age would have been as frightened of a masculine stranger as of a wild beast,' he thought, 'and would have given herself all manner of niissish airs; but this young damsel smiles in my face, and trusts me with almost infan tile simplicity.

I hope her father is a good man. I don't much like that talk of Sheridan, and Beau Brummel, and the Beef-steak Club. No very good school for fathers that, I should fancy. I wish her mother had been alive, poor child. I hope she is going to a happy home, and a happy future.' ' Papa, dear papa, darling, how well you are looking; as well as ever, as well as ever, I think!' Her father drew himself up proudly. He was past seventy years of age, but he was a very hand some man. His beauty was of that patrician type which loses little by age. He was tall and broad chested, erect as a Grenadier, but not fat. The Prince Regent might become corpulent, and lay himself open to the insolent sneers of his sometime boon companion and friend; but Mr. George Mow bray Vandeleur Vane held himself on his guard against that insidious foe which steals away the graces of so many elderly gentlemen.

Mr. Vane's aristocratic bearing imparted such a stamp to his clothes that it was not easy to see the shabbiness of his garments; but those garments were shabby: carefully as they had beeu brushed, they bore th* The train stopped at Rouen, and Miss Vane accepted a cup of coffee and some brioches from her companion. The red August sunset was melting into gray mistiness by this time, and the first skim mer of the moonlight was silvery on the water as they crossed the Seine and left the lighted city be hind them. The gray-headed Englishman fell asleep soon after this, and before long there was a low chorus of snoring, masculine and feminine, au dible in the comfortable carriage ; only broken now and then, when the train stopped with a jerk at ELEANOP.'S VICTORY. traces of tbat slow decay which is not to be entirely concealed, whatever the art of the wearer.

Chapter II. The

ENTItESOL IS THE RUE l'ARCIIEVKQUE. Miss Vane's traveling companion saw all this. He had been so much interested by the young lady's frank and fearless manner that he would fain have lingered in the hope of learning something of her father's character, but he felt that he had no ex cuse for delaying his departure. Mr. Vane took bis daughter away from the station in one of those secondary and cheaper vehicles which are distinguished by the discriminating Pa risian by some mysterious difference of badge. The close, stifling carriage rattled over the uneven stones of long streets which were unfamiliar to Eleanor Vane, until it emerged into the full glory of the lighted Boulevard. The light hearted school-girl could not suppress a cry of rapture as she looked once more at the broad thoroughfare, the dazzling lamps, the crowd, the theatres, the cafes, the beau ty and splendor, although she had spent her sum mer holiday in Paris only a year before. 'I will wish you good-night, now, Miss Vane,' he said, kindly, ' since you are safely restored to jour papa.' Mr. Vane lifted his gray eyebrows, looked at his daughter interrogatively; rather suspiciously, the traveler thought. ' Oh, papa, dear,' the young lady answered, in re ply to that questioning look, 'this gentleman was ou board the boat with me, and he has been so very kind.' 'It seems so beautiful again, papa,' she said: 'just as if I'd never seen it before ; and I'm to stop here now, and never, never to leave you again, to go away for such a cruel distance.

You don't know how unhappy I've been sometimes, papa dear. I wouldn't tell you then, for fear of making you un easy; but I can tell you now, now that it's all over.' She searched in her pocket for the card which her acquaintance had given her, and produeed that doc ument, rather limp and crumpled. Her father look ed at it, murmured the name inscribed upon it twice or thrice, as if trying to attach some importance thereto, but evidently failed in doing so. ' ' Unhappy !' gasped the old man, clenching his fist ; ' they've not been unkind to you — they've not dared — ' 'I have not the honor of — a — haw — knowing this name, Sir,' he said, lifting his hat stiffly about half a yard from his silvered head ; 'but for your cour tesy and kindness to my child, Thope you will accept my best .thanks. I was prevented by impor tant business of — a — haw — not altogether undiplo matic character — from crossing the Channel to fetch my daughter; and — aw — also — prevented from send ing my servant — by — aw — I thank you for your politeness, Sir. You are a stranger, by-the-way.

Can I do any thing for you in Paris ? Lord Cow ley is my very old friend ; any service that I can render you in that quarter — I — ' ' Oh, no, dearest father ! They've been very, very good. I was quite a favorite, papa. Yes, though there were so many rich girls in the school, and I was only a half-boarder, I was quite a favorite with Miss Bennett and Miss Lavinia ; though I know I was careless and lazy sometimes, not on purpose, you know, papa, for I tried hard to get oa with my education for your sake, darling. No, everybody was very kind to me, papa ; but I used to think sometimes how far I was from you — what miles and miles and miles of sea and land there were between us, and that if you should be ill — I—' The traveler bowed and smiled. ' Thank you very much,' he said, ' I am no stranger in Paris.

I will wish you good-night; good night, Miss Vane." Eleanor Vane broke down, and her father clasped her in his arms, and cried over her silently. The tears came with very little provocation to the old man's handsome blue eyes. He was of tjiat san guine temperament which to the last preserves the fondest delusions of youth. At seventy-five years of age he hoped and dreamed, and deluded him self as foolishly as he had done at seventeen. His sanguine temperament had been forever leading him astray for more than sixty years. Severe judges called George Vane a liar; but perhaps his shallow romances, his pitiful boasts, were very of ten highly-colored versions of the truth, rather than actual falsehood. But Mr. Vane was not going to let his daughter's friend off so easily. He produced his card-case, murmured more pompous assurance of his gratitude, and tended further offers of patronage to the quiet traveler, who found something rather oppressive in Mr. Vane's civility.

But it was all over at last, and the old man led his daughter off to look for the trunk which contained all her worldly pos sessions. The stranger looked wistfully after the father and child. ' I hope she may have a happy future,' he thought, rather despondingly; 'the old man is poor and pompous. He tells lies which bring hot blushes into his daughter's beautiful face. I am very sorry for her.' It was past twelve o'clock when the carriage drove away from the lights and splendor into the darkness of a labyrinth of quiet streets behind the Madeleine. The Rue l'Archeveque was one of these dingy and quiet streets, very narrow, very close and the rusty velvet cover of the low mantlc-piooo, and drew his daughter toward him. Sbe had thrown off her bonnet and loose grey cloak, and stood before her father in her scanty muslin frock, with all her auburn hair hanging about her face and shoulders, ami glittering in the dim light of that one scrap of wax candle. stifling in the hot- August midnight.

The vehicle topped abruptly at a corner, before a little shop, the shutters of which were closed, of course, at this hour. ' It is a butcher's shop, I am sorry to say, my love,' Mr. Vane said, apologetically, as he handed his daughter on to the pavement; 'but I find my self very comfortable here, and it is conveniently adjacent to the Boulevards.' 'My pet, how beautiful you have grown, how beautiful !' the old man said, with an accent of fond tenderness. 'We'll teach Mr?. Bannister a lesson some of these days, Eleanor. Yes, our turn will come, my love ; I know that I sbiill tlie a rich man.' The old man paid the driver, who had deposited mademoiselle's box upon the threshold of the little door beside the butcher's shop. The pour-boire was not a very large one, but Mr. Vane bestowed it with the air of a prince.

He pushed open the low door, and took his daughter into a narrow passage. Thero was no porter or portress, for the butcher's shop and the apartments belonging to it were abnormal alto gether; but there was a candle anel box of matches on a shelf in the corner of the steep cork-screw staircase. The driver carried Eleanor's box as far as the entresol in consideration of his pour-boire, but departed while Mr. Vane was opening the door of an apartment facing the stairoase. Miss Vane was accustomed to hear this remark from her father. Sho inherited something of his sanguine nature, and she loved bim very dearly, so she may be forgiven if she believed in his vague visions of suture grandeur. She had never seen anything in her life but chaotic wrecks of departed splendor, confusion, debt and difficulty, She had not been called upon to face poverty in the fair hand-to-hand struggle which ennobles and elevates the sturdy wrestler in the battle of life.

No, she had, rather, been compelled to play at hide-and seek with the grim enemy. She had never gone out into the open, and looked her foe full in the eyes, hardy, resolute, patient and steadfast. She was familiar with all those debasing tricks and pitiful subterfuges whereby the weak and faint-hearted seek to circumvent the enemy ; but she had never been taught the use of those measures by which he may be honestly beaten. The entresol consisted of three little rooms, opening one out of another, and so small and low that Miss Vane almost fancied herself in a doll's house. Every article of furniture in the stifling little apart ment bore the impress of nationality. Tawdry curtains of figured damask, resplendent with dirty tulips and monster roses, tarnished* ormolu mould ings, a gilded clock with a cracked dial and broken shade, a pair of rickety bronze candlesticks, a couple of uncompromising chairs covered with dusty green velvet and relieved by brass headed nails, and a square table with a long trailing cover of the same material as the curtains, completed the adorn ments of the sitting-room.

The bed-chamber was smaller, closer and hotter. Voluminous worsted curtains falling before the narrow windows, and smothering the little beds, made the stifling atmos phere yet more stifling. The low ceilings seemed to rest on the top of poor Eleanor's head. She had been accustomed to large, airy rooms, and broftd, uncurtained, open windows. The Mrs. Bannister of whom George Vane had spoken was one of his elder daughters, who had boen very, very ungrateful to him, he declared, and who now in his old age doled him out the pitiful al lowance which enabled him to occupy an entresol over a butcher's shop, and dine daily at one of the cheap restaurants in the Palais Royal. Mr. Vane was wont to lament his daughter's cruel lack of affection in very bitter language, freely in terspersed with quotations from ' King Lear;' indeed, I believe he considered his case entirely parallel with that of the injured British monarch and father, ignoring the one rather important fact that whereas Lear's folly had been the toogenerous division of his own fortune between his recreant daughters, his weakness had boen the reckless waste and expenditure of the portions whioh his children had in herited from their mother. 'How hot .it is here, papa !' sho said, drawing a long breath. ' It always is hot in Paris at this time of year, my dear,' Mr. Vane answered. ' The rooms are small, you see, but convenient.

That is to be your bedroom, my love,' he added, indicating one of the little chambers. . Mrs. Bannister, instigated thereto by her husband, had protested some years before against the several acts of folly and extravagance by which tbe fortune which ought to have been hers had been fooled away. She declined to allow her father more than the pittance alluded to above, although. as she was now a rich widow, and of course entire ly her own mistress, she might have done much more. He was evidently habituated to Paris lodging houses, and saw no disbomfort in the tawdry gran deur, the shabby splendor, the pitiful attempt to substitute scraps of gilding and patches of velvet for the common necessaries and decencies of life. 'And now let mo look at you, my dear; let me look at you, Eleanor.' George Mowbray Vane set the candlestick upon 'Yes, my darling,' Mr. Vane said, as he proudly contemplated his youngest child's beauty, ' we will turn the tables upon Mrs. Bannister and the rest of them yet, please God, My Benjamin, my young est, brightest darling, we'll teach them a lesson. — They may poke their old father away in a foreign lodging, and stint him of money for any little in nocent pleasure, but the day will come, my love, the day will come.' had money, and could boast such acquaintance as the Prince and Sheridan, Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Pitt, and the Duke of York, had fallen away from him of late ; and the few old associates who yet remained of that dead-and-gone cycle were apt to avoid him, influenced perhaps by the recollection of small loans of an occasional five pound note and a 'little silver,' which had not been repaid.

Yes, the world had fallen away from George Mowbray Vandeleur Vane, once of Vandeleur Part, Cheshire, and Mowbray Castle, near York. The tradesmen who had helped to squander bis money had let him get very deep into their books before they closed those cruel ledgers, and stopped all sup plies. He had existed for a long time — he hijd lived as a gentleman, he said himself — upon tbe traditions of the past, the airy memories of the for tunes he had wasted. But this was all over now, and he had emigrated to the city in which he had played the Grand Seigneur in those glorious early days of the Restoration, and he was compelled to lead a low and vulgar life, disgracing himself hy pettifogging ready money dealings, utterly degra ding to a gentleman. The old man nodded his head two or three times with solemn significance.