Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 10/Lord Oakburn's daughters - Part 13
LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."
CHAPTER XXV.A FINE LADY.
In the same handsome reception-room in Portland Place, where you saw them a fortnight ago, sat again the Earl of Oakburn and his daughter Jane. Jane was knitting some wrist-mittens for her father, her mind busy with many themes: as Jane’s thoughtful mind was sure to be. She was beginning to doubt whether she should like the governess—who had entered on her new situation some ten days now; and she was deliberating how she should best introduce the subject which she was determined to speak of that morning—Clarice. A whole fortnight had Jane hesitated, but the hesitation must have an end.
The earl read the Times. He was glancing over a short speech of his own, therein reported; for he had risen to his legs the previous night and given the Lords a little of his mind in his own peculiar fashion. A question had arisen in regard to the liberties of seamen in government vessels, and the earl told the assemblage, and especially the Lord Chancellor, that they were all wrong together and knew no more about the matter than a set of ignorant landlubbers could be expected to know.
“Papa,” said Jane, knitting rapidly at the mittens—the old sailor called them muffatees—“does it appear to you that Miss Lethwait will suit?”
“She’ll suit for all I know,” the earl replied. “Why shouldn’t she suit?”
Jane was silent for a moment before making any answer. “I fear she is above her situation, papa: that we shall find her—if I may use the word—too pretentious.”
“Above her situation?” repeated the earl. “How can she be above that?”
“Papa, I allude to her manner. I do not like it. Wishing to treat her with all courtesy as a gentlewoman, I made no arrangements for her sitting apart from us in the evening; but I must say I did not expect her to identify herself so completely with us as she is doing; at least in so short a time. When visitors are here, Miss Lethwait never seems to remember that she is not in all respects their equal; she comports herself entirely as if she were a daughter of the house, taking more upon herself a great deal than I think is seemly. She pushes herself before me, papa; she does indeed.”
“Push her back,” said Lord Oakburn.
“That is easier said than done, with regard to Miss Lethwait,” replied Jane. “I grant that she is in manner naturally imperious, inclined to treat every one de haut en bas———”
“Treat every one how?” was the angry interruption. “Where’s the sense of jabbering that foreign stuff, Jane! I thought you were above it.”
“I beg your pardon, papa,” Jane meekly answered, full of contrition for her fault, which had been spoken in thoughtlessness, for Lord Oakburn understood no language but that of his native land, and had little toleration for those who interlarded it with another. “It is evident that Miss Lethwait is by nature haughty, I was observing; haughty in manner; but I do consider that she forgets her position in this house in a way that is anything but agreeable. But that you are unobservant, papa, you would see that she does.”
“Tell her of it,” said Lord Oakburn, seizing his stick and giving a forcible rap.
“I should not much like to do that,” returned Jane. “What annoys me is, that she does not feel herself what is becoming conduct, and what is not———”
“I don’t see that there’s anything unbecoming in her conduct,” was the interruption.
“She should not stop long with Lucy, I can tell you, if I saw anything of that.”
“No, no, papa, there is nothing unbecoming in one sense; I never meant to imply that. Miss Lethwait is always a lady. She is too much of a lady, if you can understand it; she assumes too much; she never seems to recollect, when in the drawing-room of an evening, that she is not one of ourselves, and a very prominent one. A stranger, coming in, might take her for the mistress of the house, certainly for an elder daughter. And when we are alone, papa, don’t you note how familiar she is with you, conversing with you freely on all kinds of subjects, listening to you, and laughing at your stories of your sea life?”
“She has a splendid figure,” remarked the earl, not altogether, as Jane thought, apropos to the point. “And she talks sensibly—for a woman.”
“Well, papa, I don’t like her.”
“Then don’t keep her. You are the best judge of whether she’s fit for her berth, or whether she is not.”
“As governess to Lucy she is entirely fit. I could not wish to find a more efficient instructress. Her mode of teaching, her training, her companionship, all appear to me to be admirable for a young girl.”
“Let her stop on, then. Lucy’s instruction is the chief point. As to a little pride or pretension, or whatever you may term it, it will do no harm. A wind inflating the sails ahead won’t topple over the ship.”
Jane said no more. Of course Lucy’s instruction was of paramount importance, and Jane was not one to merge weighty matters in trifles. Lord Oakburn returned to his newspaper, and there ensued a silence. Presently he looked up, and spoke abruptly.
“When do you intend to see after Clarice?”
Jane’s heart gave a great bound, and she dropped a needle in her consternation. So entirely taken by surprise was she, that she could only look up in silence. At that very moment she was trying to frame an inoffensive way of putting the selfsame question—and now he had spoken it! The flush of emotion illumined her face, tinging even her drooping eyelids.
“Papa! may I see after her? Will you allow it?”
“If you don’t, I shall,” said the earl.
“It is what I have been longing to do,” returned Jane, “Every morning for this long while past, I have been resolving to speak to you, papa, and every night, when the night came, I have reproached myself for not having had the courage to do so. May Clarice come home again?”
“Well, I don’t know what you may deem ship-shape, but in my opinion it is scarcely the thing for Lady Clarice Chesney to be flourishing abroad as a governess.”
“It has been wrong all along; doubly wrong since the change in our position occurred. But, papa, I did mention her name to you at the time of Lord Oakburn’s death,” Jane deprecatingly added, as a reminder, “and you bade me be silent and let Clarice come to her senses.”
“But she doesn’t come to them, my Lady Jane,” retorted the earl, giving a few exasperated raps with his stick to enforce his words,—a plaything which he had by no means forgotten the use of. “Here are the weeks and months creeping on, and she never gives token that she has come to them, or that she is coming to them. Obstinate little minx!”
“Papa, it is possible that she may not have heard of the change in our position. It is very unlikely, certainly, that she should not; but still it is just possible.”
“Rubbish! it’s not possible,” cried the earl, in his own domineering manner. “It is her pride that stands in the way, Jane; she has been holding a tacit battle with us, you see, waiting for us to give way first.”
“Yes, I have thought that must be it. Clarice was always self-willed, the same as—as———”
“The same as who?” thundered the earl, believing that Jane was impertinently alluding to himself.
“As Laura, I was going to say, papa. Forgetting that you had forbidden her name to be mentioned before you.”
Jane had indeed forgotten it. The earl’s brow grew hot with anger, and he rose to pace the room, giving Jane a little of his mind, and the floor of his stick, some of his words being more suitable to the quarter-deck of his old vessel in Portsmouth Harbour, than to his London drawing-room.
“Don’t you talk of Laura before me again, Jane. She has chosen her own home and abandoned mine; let her abide by it. But Clarice’s sin was lighter, look you, and she shall be forgiven. I suppose you know where she is.”
“No, I do not, papa.”
Lord Oakburn stopped in his walk: the denial had evidently surprised him.
“Not know!” he repeated, gazing sternly at Jane. “I was given to understand that you did know. Clarice writes to you.”
“I do not know exactly where she is,” explained Jane. “It is somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, I believe, and I have no doubt she will be easily found. When I write to her, I send my letters to a library there, by Clarice’s directions, and I should think they can give me her address. Oh papa, I have so longed to go there and ask for it!”
“You can go now,” bluntly rejoined the earl. “Shall you be an hour getting ready?”
“I shall not be five minutes,” replied Jane, the glad tears standing in her eyes, as she laid her work aside. Lord Oakburn rang the bell, and a man came in.
“The carriage for Lady Jane.”
But before the servant could retire, Jane interposed. “Stay an instant, Wilson. Papa, I think I had better not take the carriage. I would rather go on foot, quietly.”
“Then you won’t go quietly,” returned the earl. “Do you hear, sir? What do you stand gaping there for? The carriage instantly for Lady Jane.”
Wilson flew off as if he had been shot. The new servants had become accustomed to these explosions of the earl’s; but, with all his hot temper, he was a generous master.
Jane, for once, did not give up her point without a battle. "Do consider it for an instant, papa; will it not be best that, under the circumstances, I should go quietly without the parade of servants and a carriage?"
"What do you mean by 'under the circumstances'?"
Jane unconsciously dropped her voice. "As Clarice has stooped to take upon herself the office of a governess, I think she should come away from her place as such."
"No," said the earl, decisively. "She shall come away as Lady Clarice Chesney."
"There is one thing to be remembered," observed Jane, feeling that further opposition to the carriage would be useless. "She may not be able to come away with me. She may have to give warning first—a week's or a month's."
The suggestion angered the earl, and he lifted his stick menacingly.
"Not leave without warning! Let them dare to keep her. Tell the people who she is. Tell them who I am, and that I demand her."
"Dearest papa," Jane ventured to remonstrate, "courtesy is due and must be observed to Clarice's employers. She has contracted to perform certain duties in their house; and to quit them at a moment's notice may be scarcely practicable. They may concede the point to me as a favour, but it will not do to demand it as a right."
"But I want her here," said the earl, who, now that he had broken the ice, was longing for Clarice's return with all the impatience of a child.
"And so do I want her," returned Jane; "and I will bring her away with me if I can. If not, the period of her return shall be fixed."
Jane quitted the room. She put on her things, a white bonnet and black mantle trimmed with crape, and then went to the study where sat Lucy and Miss Lethwait: the former wishing that the German language had never been invented for her especial torment; the latter showing up the faults in a certain exercise in the most uncompromising manner.
"Oh Jane! are you going out?" came the weary plaint, "You said I was to go with you to-day to the Botanical Gardens!"
"Yes, later; I will not forget."
"Lucy says you wish the hour for her walking changed, Lady Jane," spoke up the governess.
"I think it would be more agreeable to you and to her," said Jane, "now that the weather has set in so hot. Lady Lucy is one who feels the heat much."
Jane was conscious that her tone was cold, that her words were haughty. Lady Lucy! She could not account for the feeling of reserve that was stealing over her in regard to Miss Lethwait, or why it should be so strong.
She went down to the carriage, which waited at the door, and was driven away. A grand carriage, resplendent in its coroneted panels, its hammer-cloth, and its servants with their wigs, their powder, their gold-headed canes. Jane quite shrank from the display, considering the errand upon which she was bent.
She had no difficulty whatever in finding the library she was in search of, and was driven to it. But she had a difficulty in her way of another sort: she knew not by what name to inquire for her sister. Clarice had desired her to address her letters "Miss Chesney," but told her at the same time that it was not the name by which she was known. Jane went into the shop and the proprietor came forward.
"Can you tell me where a young lady resides of the name of Chesney?" she inquired. "She is a governess in a family."
"Chesney?—Chesney?" was the answer, spoken in consideration, "No, ma'am; I do not know any one of the name."
Jane paused. "Some letters have been occasionally addressed here for her; for Miss Chesney; and I believe she used to fetch them away herself."
"Oh, yes, that was Miss Beauchamp," was the answer, the speaker's face lighting up with awakened remembrance. "I beg your pardon, ma'am; I thought you said Miss Chesney. The letters were addressed to a Miss Chesney, and Miss Beauchamp used to come for them."
Beauchamp! The problem was solved at once, and Jane wondered at her own stupidity in not solving it before. What more natural than that Clarice should take her second name—Beauchamp? She was named Clarice Beauchamp Chesney. And Jane had strayed amid a whole directory of names over and over again, without the most probable one ever occurring to her mind.
"Thank you, yes;" she said; "Miss Beauchamp. Can you direct me to her residence?"
"No, ma'am, I really cannot," was the reply. "Miss Beauchamp was governess in two families in succession, both of them residing in Gloucester Terrace, but I do not think she stayed long at either. She was at Mrs. Lorton's first, and at Mrs. West's afterwards."
Jane had not known that; Clarice had never told her of having changed her situation.
"I suppose we must both be speaking of the same person!" she suddenly cried. "Perhaps you will describe her to me?"
"Willingly," answered the librarian. And the description was so accurate that Jane instantly recognised it for her sister's.
“Miss Beauchamp disappeared from the neighbourhood suddenly—as it seemed to me,” he continued. “At any rate, she ceased coming here. We have two or three letters with the same address waiting still.”
Jane wondered whether they could be those she had sent. She asked to see them, and he brought them forward: three. They were the same.
“I will take them away with me,” said Jane.
The librarian hesitated at this—not unnaturally. “You will pardon me, I am sure, ma'am, if I inquire by what authority you would take them? Miss Beauchamp may call for them yet.”
Jane smiled. “They were written by me,” she said, tearing open one of the letters and showing him the signature. “And,” she added, taking out her card-case and handing him a card, “that will prove that I am Jane Chesney.”
The librarian bowed; and intimated that her ladyship was of course at liberty to do what she pleased with her own letters.
“Upon second thoughts, I will leave this one, the last written, and write upon it our present address,” said Jane. “As you observe, Miss Beauchamp may call yet.”
Obtaining the address of the two families in which she was told Miss Beauchamp had served, Lady Jane quitted the shop, and walked on to Gloucester Terrace, ordering the carriage to follow her by-and-by. She reached the house occupied by the Lortons first, and inquired of a showy footman whether Mrs. Lorton was at home. The answer was given in the affirmative, but with some hesitation: it was earlier than the orthodox hour for receiving visitors, and the man probably doubted whether his mistress was presentable. Jane was shown to an excessively smart room, and after some delay an excessively smart lady came to her; but neither room nor lady possessed aught of refinement.
Jane had not given her name. “It is of no consequence: I am a stranger,” she said to the servant when he inquired. Mrs. Lorton dropped Jane a swimming curtsy, and sailing to a large velvet ottoman in the middle of the room, took her seat upon it. Jane looked, as she ever did, a lady, and Mrs. Lorton was all smiles and suavity.
“I have called to inquire if you can kindly give me any information as to the present address of a young lady who lived with you as governess,” began Jane. “A Miss Beauchamp.”
Mrs. Lorton’s smiles froze at the question. “I know nothing about Miss Beauchamp,” she answered, somewhat rudely. “She did not behave well in my house, and it was a good riddance when she quitted it.”
“Not behave well!” echoed Jane.
“No, she did not. She encouraged my son to pay her attention, and when it was all found out she left me at a pinch without a governess. Perhaps you know her?”
“I do,” answered Jane, with cold dignity. She knew that Clarice was being traduced. “Miss Beauchamp is my sister.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Lorton; and there was a whole volume of contempt in the tone. The lady before her, who had caused her to dress herself in that inconvenient haste, was after all nothing but a governess’s sister! Mrs. Lorton felt angry and vexed; and the expression that her face assumed did not add to its beauty.
“I would not have troubled you,” resumed Lady Jane, but I do not exactly know where my sister is now, and I am in search of her. I inquired at a library where I know Miss Beauchamp used to deal, and they gave me your address, as one of the situations in which Miss Boauchamp had lived. If you can direct me to her present place of abode, I shall return you sincere thanks.”
“I tell you I know nothing of her,” repeated Mrs. Lorton. “Here, Harriet,” she added, as a young lady as much over-dressed as herself entered the room, “here’s that Miss Beauchamp’s sister come to inquire after her. The idea of our knowing anything about her!”
“The idea!” repeated the young lady pertly to Jane. “When she left us, she took a fresh place a few doors further on. But she didn’t stop there long.”
“She was not calculated for a governess,” said Mrs. Lorton. “She carried her head too high.”
“I scarcely think she was calculated for one,” remarked Jane. “She was of good birth, and the consciousness of that may have caused her to—as you express it—carry her head high. Though, unduly high I do not think she was capable of carrying it. When she quitted her home to become a governess, she made a firm determination to do her duty in her new life and adapt herself to its penalties. Our family was in straitened circumstances at the time; and Clarice and my sister generously resolved to get her own living, so that she might no longer be a burden upon it. Others, well born and connected, have done as much before her.”
Mrs. Lorton threw back her head. “That is sure to be the case,” she said, in a sneering tone of disbelief. “Half the young women on the governess’ list will assure you that they are of good birth, and only go out through family misfortunes—if they can get anybody to listen to them. What does the one say that we have now, Harriet?”
Harriet, who was standing at the window, laughed and there was the same sneering tone in its sound that was so disagreable in the vulgar mother.
“She says that her aunt—Oh, mamma! here are visitors,” broke off the young lady. “The most beautiful carriage has driven up to the door!”
Mrs. Lorton—forgetting her dignity—hastened to the window, Jane rose: it was not a pleasant atmosphere to remain in.
“You can then really not tell me anything as to Miss Beauchamp’s movements?” she asked again of Mrs. Lorton; for, somehow, a doubt was upon her whether the lady could not have said more had she chosen.
“Now you have had my answer,” said Mrs. Lorton. “And I think it the height of impertinence in Miss Beauchamp to send people here to my house about any concerns of hers.”
Jane dropped a stately curtsy; her only leave-taking; and was turning to the door when it was thrown open by the footman.
“The Lady Jane Chesney’s carriage.”
Mrs. Lorton was in a flutter of expectation. Could any Lady Jane Chesney be vouchsafing a call on her? Where was the Lady Jane? Was she coming up? The man was showing her unwelcome visitor down stairs; but his mistress called to him so sharply that Jane had to make her way out of the house alone.
“Has any visitor come in?”
“No, ma'am.”
“No!” repeated Mrs. Lorton. “What did you mean then? Whose carriage is that? You came and announced Lady somebody.”
“I announced the carriage, ma'am, for the lady who was here,” returned the man, wondering at the misapprehension. The footman said he had called for his lady, Lady Jane Chesney.”
Mrs. Lorton gave a great gasp. She Lady Jane Chesney! She flew to the window just in time to catch a glimpse of Jane’s black skirts as she took her seat in the carriage. She saw the earl’s coronet on it; she saw the servant step nimbly up behind and lay his gold cane slant-wise. Mrs. Lorton had made a horrible mistake!
“Oh, Harriet! what can we do?” she exclaimed, in a faint voice.
“Mamma, I thought, I did indeed, that she looked like a lady! Lady Jane Chesney! What will she think of us?”
Mrs. Lorton was unable to say what, and sat down in an agony. Her life, of late years, had been spent in striving to get into “society.” And she had for once had a real live earl’s daughter in her drawing-room, and had insulted her!
“How could poor Clarice have stayed in that family for a day?” thought Jane.
CHAPTER XXVI.AN OMINOUS SHADOW.
Lady Jane was next driven to the other address, Mrs. West’s. The lady was at home, and Jane found her a very different person from Mrs. Lorton: a kind, cordial, chatty little woman, without pretence or form; a lady too. Mr. West was engaged in some City business, and neither he nor his wife aspired to be greater and grander than they were entitled to be.
“Miss Beauchamp came to us from the Lortons,” she said, when Jane had explained her business. “We liked her very much, and were sorry to lose her, but———”
“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Jane. “Can you tell me why Miss Beauchamp left her situation at the Lortons?”
“Yes,” answered Mrs. West, with a merry laugh. “She had scarcely entered their house when that vulgar son of theirs—and indeed I am not in the habit of backbiting, but he is vulgar—began to push his admiration upon her. She bore with it for some time, repelling him as she best could; but it grew unbearable, and Miss Beauchamp felt compelled to appeal to Mrs. Lorton. Mrs. Lorton did not behave well in it. She took her son’s part, and wished to lay the blame on Miss Beauchamp; Miss Beauchamp was naturally indignant at this, and insisted on quitting the house on the self-same day. Mrs. Lorton then came round, tried to soothe Miss Beauchamp, and offered her an increase of salary if she would remain.”
“But she did not?”
“Certainly not. Miss Beauchamp came to me, telling me what had occurred, and I was only too glad to engage her at once as governess to my children. We had a little acquaintance with the Lortons, and I had seen Miss Beauchamp several times, and liked her. She came into this house straight from the Lortons when she quitted them, and very pleased we were to secure her.”
A different account, this, from the one given by Mrs. Lorton; but Jane had felt certain the other was not strictly in accordance with truth.
“How long did Miss Beauchamp remain with you?” she inquired.
“But a short time. She had been with us about six months, when she told me she must give warning to leave. I was so surprised; so sorry.”
“Why did she give warning? From what cause?”
“She did not say what, and I could not draw it from her. Miss Beauchamp was invariably reserved as to her private affairs, her family and all that; though open as the day in regard to general matters. All she said was, that she wished to leave; and when I pressed her to state frankly whether there was anything in my house that she disliked or wished altered, she answered that she was perfectly happy in it; and, but for compelling circumstances (I remember the expression still; ‘compelling circumstances'), should not have thought of leaving it.”
“And did she quit it instantly; that day; as she had Mrs. Lorton’s?”
“No no,” said Mrs. West. It was a month’s warning that she gave me, and she remained until its close. Then she left us.”
“Where did she go then?”
“We never knew. There appeared, as it seemed to us, some little mystery connected with it—though in truth that may have been but fancy on our part. Many a governess when quitting her situation does not deem it necessary to proclaim her future movements to those she leaves behind her.”
“In what way did there seem to be a mystery connected with it?” asked Jane.
“Well, I can hardly describe it to you,” was the frank reply. “We fancied it chiefly, I believe, from Miss Beauchamp’s entire silence as to her future proceedings. I told her I should be happy to be referred to; but she replied that she had no intention of taking another situation, and therefore should not require a reference.”
“What was she going to do then?” asked Jane, in amazement.
“I am unable to say. I remember we wondered much at the time. She had never spoken of her family, and we picked up the notion, though it may not have been a correct one, that she was without relatives. An impression arose amongst us that she was going to be married.”
“To be married?” echoed Jane, her pulses quickening.
“We had no real cause to think it,” continued Mrs. West. “I put the question to her, I remember, whether she was about to take up her abode with relatives, and she laughed and said No, she was going to embark in a new way of life altogether.”
“It is very strange!” exclaimed Lady Jane. “Do you not know where she went when she quitted your house?—where she drove to, for instance? Whether she went into the next street—whether she went into the country?—in short, what her immediate movements were?”
“I would tell you in a moment if I knew; but I never have known,” replied Mrs. West. “She went away in a cab with her luggage, not stating where. We thought it strange that she should preserve to us this reticence; we had been so very intimate together. We all liked Miss Beauchamp very much indeed, and had treated her entirely as a friend.”
“Did she seem to be in good spirits when she left you?”
“Quite so; she was as gay as possible, and said she should come back and see us some time. You seem very anxious,” added Mrs. West, noting her visitor’s perplexed brow.
“I am indeed anxious,” was the answer. “How long do you say this was ago?”
“It was last June. Twelve months ago exactly.”
“And you have never since seen her or heard from her?”
“Never at all. We have often wondered what has become of her.”
“I must find her,” exclaimed Jane, in some excitement. “As to her having married, that is most improbable; she would not be likely to enter on so grave a step without the knowledge of her family. At least, I—I—should think she would not,” added Jane, as a remembrance of Laura’s disobedient marriage arose to her mind, rendering her less confident. “I may as well tell you who Miss Beauchamp is,” she resumed; there is no reason why I should not. My father, a gentleman born and highly connected, was very poor. There were four daughters of us at home, and Clarice, the third———”
“Then—I beg your pardon—you are Miss Beauchamp’s sister?” interrupted Mrs. West, quickly.
“Yes. Clarice took a sudden determination to go out as governess. She had been highly educated, and so far was well qualified; but her family were entirely against it. Clarice persisted; she had but one motive to this, the lessening expenses at home: a good one, of course, but my father could not be brought to see it. He said she would disgrace her family name; that he would not have a daughter of his out in the world—a Chesney working for her bread; Clarice replied that no disgrace should accrue to the name through her, and she, in spite of all our opposition, quitted home. She went, I find, to the Lortons first, calling herself Miss Beauchamp; she had been christened Clarice Beauchamp; Clarice, after her great-aunt, the Countess of Oakburn; Beauchamp after her godfather.
“Then she is not Miss Beauchamp?”
“She is Lady Clarice Chesney.”
Mrs. West felt excessively surprised. Like her neighbour Mrs. Lorton, she had not been brought into familiar personal contact with an earl’s daughter—except in waxwork.
“I have the honour then of speaking to—to———”
“Lady Jane Chesney,” quietly replied Jane. “But when Clarice was with you she was only Miss Chesney; it is but recently that my father has come into the title. You will readily imagine that we are most anxious now to have her home, and regret more than before that she ever left it.”
“But—am I to understand that you do not know where she is?—that she has not been home since she left us last June?” exclaimed Mrs. West, in bewilderment.
“We do not know where she is. We do not know now where to look for her.”
“I never heard of such a thing.”
“Until to-day, I took it for granted that she was still in a situation in this neighbourhood,” explained Jane. “My father’s displeasure prevented my seeing personally after Clarice; in fact, he forbade my doing so. When I came out from home to-day I fully expected to take her back with me; or, if that could not be, to fix the time for her return. I never supposed but I should at once find her; and I cannot express to you what I felt when the proprietor of the library, where I used to address my letters to Clarice, told me Miss Beauchamp had left the neighbourhood;—what I feel still. It is not disappointment; it is a great deal worse. I begin to fear I know not what.”
“I’m sure I wish I could help you to find her!” heartily exclaimed Mrs. West. “Where can she be? She surely cannot know the change in her position!”
“I should imagine not,” replied Jane. “Unless—but no, I will not think that,” she broke off, wiping from her forehead the dew which the sudden and unwelcome thought had suddenly sent there. “Unless Clarice should have married very much beneath herself, and fears to let it be known to us,” was what she had been about to say.
“It has occurred to us sometimes that Miss Beauchamp might have taken a situation abroad; or with a family who afterwards took her abroad,” said Mrs. West. “What you say now, Lady Jane, renders it more than ever probable.”
Jane considered. It was certainly the most probable solution of the puzzle. “Yes,” she said aloud, “I think you must be right. It is more than likely that she is abroad in some remote continental city. Thank you for your courtesy in giving me this information,” she added, as she rose and laid a card on the table with her address upon it. “Should you at any time obtain further news, however slight, you will, I am sure, be kind enough to forward it to me.”
Mrs. West gave a promise, and Jane went out to her carriage with a heavy heart. It was a most unsatisfactory story to carry back to Lord Oakburn.
Another carriage, with its hammer-cloth and its coronets and its attendant servants, and above all, its coat of arms, that of the Oakburn family, was at the door in Portland Place when Jane’s drew up. It was Lady Oakburn’s. Jane went into the hall, and sounds as of voices in dispute came from the room where she had left her father in the morning. The earl and his old dowager aunt were enjoying one of their frequent differences of opinion.
Lucy came running down the stairs. “Have you come back to take me out, Jane?”
Jane stooped to kiss her. “My dear, you know that I never willingly break a promise,” she said, “but I almost fear that I must break mine to you to-day. I am not sure that I can go to the botanical fête. I have heard bad news, Lucy; and I shall have to tell it to papa in the best way that I can. But, if I don’t take you to-day, I will take you some other day.”
“What is the bad news?” asked the child with all a child’s open curiosity.
“I cannot tell it you now, Lucy. You go back to Miss Lethwait. How long has Aunt Oakburn been here?”
“Ever so long,” was Lucy’s lucid answer. “She is quarrelling with papa about Clarice.”
“About Clarice!” involuntarily repeated Jane. “What about Clarice?”
“I was in the room with papa and Miss Lethwait when Aunt Oakburn came———”
“What took you and Miss Lethwait to it?” interupted Jane.
“We went in to get those drawings; we did not know papa was there; and he kept us talking, and then Lady Oakburn came in. Jane, she looked so angry with papa, and she never said Good morning to him, or How do you do, or anything, but she asked him whether he was not ashamed of himself to let Clarice be abroad still as a governess; and then they began to quarrel, and Miss Lethwait brought me away.”
“How strange that they should be all suddenly wanting to bring home Clarice when we cannot find her!” thought Jane.
She motioned Lucy up-stairs to the study, and entered the drawing-room. Lord Oakburn stood in the middle of the floor, his tongue and his stick keeping up a duet; and the dowager—her black bonnet all awry, her shawl thrown on a neighbouring chair, and her cheeks in a flame—was talking quite as angrily and more loudly than the earl. They had strayed however from the first point in dispute—Clarice; had entered, in fact, upon at least a dozen others; just now the point of debate was the letting of Chesney Oaks, which had been finally taken by Sir James Marden.
Jane’s entrance put an end to the fray. The earl dropped his voice, and Lady Oakburn pulled her bonnet straight upon her head. These personal encounters were in truth so frequent between the two, that neither retained much animosity afterwards, or indeed much recollection of what the particular grievance had been, or the hard compliments they had mutually paid.
“Well, and where is she?” began the earl to Jane.
Jane knew only too well to whom he alluded. The presence of the dowager made her task all the more difficult; but she might not dare to temporise with her father, or hide the fact that Clarice could not be found. She did not however reply instantly, and the earl spoke again.
“Have you brought her back with you?”
“No, papa. I———”
“Then I’ll have the law of the people!” thundered the earl, working his stick ominously. “Here’s your aunt come down now with her orders about Clarice,”—with a fierce flourish towards the angry old lady. “As if I did not know how to conduct my own affairs as well as any interference can tell me!”
“No, you don’t, Oakburn, You don’t!”
“And as if I should not conduct them as I please without reference to interference,” continued the earl aggravatingly. “She’s my daughter, madam; she’s not yours.”
“Then why didn’t you prevent her going out at all? why didn’t you drag her back with cords?” retorted the dowager, nodding her bonnet at her adversary. “I would; and I have told you so ten times. What does Clarice say for herself?” she added, turning sharply upon Jane. “Why didn’t she come home of her own accord, without waiting to be sent for? She has got the Chesney temper, and that’s an obstinate one. That’s what it is.”
" Aunt,” said Jane, faintly,—“papa,” she said, scarcely knowing which of them to address, or how to frame her news, “I am sorry to say that I cannot find Clarice. She—I—"
They both interrupted her in a breath, turning their anger upon Jane. What did she mean by “not finding” Clarice, when she had said all along that she knew where she was?
Poor Jane had to explain. That she had thought she knew where Clarice was; but that Clarice was gone: she had been gone ever since last June. Bit by bit the whole tale was extracted from Jane; the mystery of Clarice’s leaving Mrs. West’s so suddenly (and it really did look something of a mystery), and her never having been heard of since.
To describe the earl’s dismay would be a difficult task. When he fully comprehended that Clarice was lost—lost, for all that could be seen at present—his temper gave way prodigiously. He stormed, he thumped, he talked, he abused the scape-goat Pompey, who had had nothing in the world to do with it, but who happened unluckily to come into the room with an announcement that luncheon was ready; he abused Lady Oakburn, he abused Jane. For once in her life the dowager let him go on to his heart’s content without retorting in kind: she had in truth her grand-nieces’ welfare at heart, and the news Jane had brought terrified her. Lunch! No; they were in too much perplexity, too much real care, to sit down to a luncheon table.
“I have contained myself as long as I could,” cried the dowager, flinging back the strings of her bonnet, and darting reproachful looks at Lord Oakburn. “Every week since you came to London have I said to myself on the Monday morning, He’ll have her back this week; but that week has gone on like the others, and he has not had her back—you, Oakburn!—and I said to myself, as I sat down to my breakfast this day, I’ll go and ask him what he thinks of himself. And I’m come. Now then, Oakburn!”
Poor Jane, utterly powerless to stem the raging spirits of the two, remembered that Lady Oakburn had been as ready as the earl to leave Clarice to herself: to say that she ought to be left to herself, unsought, until she should “come to her senses.”
“I want Clarice,” continued the dowager, while the earl marched to and fro in the room, brandishing his stick. “I am going away next month to Switzerland, and I’ll take her with me, if she behaves herself and shows proper contrition for what she has done. As to your not finding her, Jane, that must be nonsense; you always were good for nothing, you know.”
“Dear aunt, the case is this,” said Jane, in sadly subdued tone. “Perhaps you do not quite understand it all. I should not think so much of Clarice’s not having been, or sent, to Mrs. West’s since she left them; but what I do think strange is, that she should not have called or sent as usual for my letters. All the letters I have written to her since Christmas, three, were lying at the library still. I have brought two of them away with me, leaving the other, in case she should call yet.”
“What has made her leave the letters there?” cried the dowager.
“It is that which I cannot understand. It is that which—I don’t know why—seems to have struck my heart with fear.”
Lady Oakburn interrupted in an impatient tone. “I don’t understand it at all, Jane. Perhaps you’ll begin at the beginning and enlighten me.”
“What beginning?” asked Jane, uncertain how to take the words.
“What beginning!” echoed the exasperated old lady. “Why, the beginning of it all, when Clarice first went out. I know nothing about the particulars; never did know. What letters did you send to her, and what answers did you get?—and where did she hide herself, and what did she tell you of it? Begin at the beginning, I say.”
“It will be two years next month, July, since Clarice left us,” began Jane, with her customary obedience. “Sometime in the following month, August, I received the first letter from her, telling me she had found a situation in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, and that she would”—Jane hesitated a moment, but went on—“keep her vow.”
“Her vow! What vow?”
“She took a vow before leaving home, that she would never betray our name as connected with her.”
“Oh!” said the countess. “She took it in a passion, I suppose.”
“Yes. She said she hoped the situation would prove a comfortable one, and that if I liked to write to her, I might address my letters ‘Miss Chesney,’ to be kept at a certain library in the neighbourhood, where she would call for them; but she again repeated that she was not known by her own name. I did write to her, three or four letters in the course of the next twelvemonth; and she answered them. She never told me she was not in the same situation, and I concluded she was there. Summer weather had come round then———”
“Get on with your story, Jane. What has summer weather got to do with it?” was the old lady’s angry reprimand. And Lord Oakburn had stopped his restless walk to listen.
“In that summer—I think it was in June—I had another letter from Clarice, telling me not to write until I heard from her again, as she might be going to the seaside. Of course I supposed that the family were going to take her. This, you observe, was the month when, as Mrs. West says, she quitted them. I heard nothing more until the next January, when she wrote to wish us the bonne année, a custom she had learnt in France; and that letter was forwarded to South Wennock from our old home at Plymouth. I———”
“Stop a bit,” said the dowager. “What did she say of herself and her movements in that letter?”
“Really nothing. She did not say a word about the seaside journey, or that she was back in London, or anything about it. She tacitly suffered me to infer—as I did infer—that she was still with the same family. The letter bore the London postmark. She said she was well and happy, and asked after us all; and there was a short postscript to the letter, the words of which I well remember,—'I have maintained my vow.’ I showed this letter to papa, and he———”
“Forbade you to answer it,” interrupted the earl, for Jane had stopped in hesitation. And the old countess nodded her approval—as if she should have forbidden it also.
“So that letter was not answered,” resumed Jane. “But in the next March, I—I—a circumstance occurred to cause me to feel anxious about Clarice, and I wrote to her. In fact, I had a dream, which very much———”
“Had a what?” shrieked the countess.
“I know how foolish you must think me, aunt. But it was a dreadful dream; a significant, strange, fearful dream. It seemed to bode ill to Clarice, to shadow forth her death. I am superstitious with regard to dreams; I cannot help being so; and it made a great impression on me. I wrote then to Clarice, asking for news of her. I told her we had left Plymouth, and gave her the address at South Wennock. No reply came, and I wrote again. I wrote a third time, and still there was no answer. But I did not think much of that. I only thought that Clarice was angry at my not having answered her New Year’s letter, and would not write, to punish me. To-day, upon going to the library, I found those three letters waiting there still: not one of them had been fetched away by Clarice.”
“And the people she was with say Clarice left them last June!—and they don’t know what place she went to, or where she is?” reiterated the earl, while the old dowager only stared in discomposure.
“They know nothing of her whatever, papa, or of her movements since.”
Why, that’s a twelvemonth ago!”
Yes, it was a twelvemonth ago. They, the three, stood looking at each other in silence; and a nameless fear, like a shadow of evil, crept in amidst them, as the echo of the words died away on the air.