Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 11/Lord Oakburn's daughters - Part 18
LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."
CHAPTER XXXV.LAURA’S IMPROMPTU VISIT.
It was a somewhat singular coincidence that the Dowager Countess of Oakburn should die the day subsequent to the earl. Such was the fact. She had been ill for several weeks; no immediate danger was apprehended, but in the very hour that she heard news of the earl’s death—the tidings of which were conveyed to her in the morning—she was taken suddenly worse, and expired at three o’clock in the afternoon. Lady Jane went to her house at Kensington and was in time to see her alive, but she had then lost consciousness, and was speechless. One of the old countess’s grand daughters said—it was a dreadfully irreverent thing to say—that they must have gone together to plague each other on the journey, just as they had plagued each other in life.
It was decided that the two funerals should take place at the same time and spot in one of the great London cemeteries. The burial place of the Earls of Oakburn was Chesney Oaks; but he, the old sailor just gone, had expressly desired that no parade or any unnecessary expense should be wasted upon him. The conveying him to Chesney Oaks would involve a considerable outlay; his poor worthless body would not rest any the better for it, he quaintly said; let it be put into the ground in the simplest manner possible, and in the nearest burial-place. The executors of the countess dowager thought it well to observe the same private simplicity with regard to her, and it was arranged that they should be interred together.
Jane and Laura remained in town until the funeral should be over. They would not quit the house while their father lay dead in it; and in the new reconciliation with his widow, there was no necessity for their hurrying away. Laura, impetuous in all her doings, took a violent fancy to the countess, protesting secretly to Jane that she was a far superior woman to what she had imagined; and it would be a convenient house to stay at, she candidly added, when she chose to visit London. Jane was not swayed by any motives so interested; but she could not help acknowledging to herself that the countess won upon her regard day by day.
“She has done her duty by Lucy,” Miss Snow remarked to Lady Jane confidentially. “Ah, never a mother was more anxious for a child’s welfare than Lady Oakburn is for Lucy’s. I made my mind up at first not to stop; but when I found how good she was, how she tried to do her utmost for us all in loving-kindness, I thought I should be foolish to leave. She would not have kept me, though, but for the earl; she told me she should wish to take the child’s education entirely into her own hands, but he would not suffer it. I daresay she will take it now.”
They were busy getting their mourning. Jane ordered hers neat and good, entirely befitting a lady, but plain; Laura chose hers for its magnificence. Jane ventured to give her a caution against the expense, and Laura tossed her head in answer.
“Papa is sure to have remembered me,” she said, “and surely I may spend what is my own.” And she actually appealed to the countess—was it not certain that the earl had left her her share of money?
It was a curious question to put, and perhaps the very fact of asking it proved that Laura was not quite so sure upon the point as she wished to be. Lady Oakburn, however, could tell her nothing. She did not know how the earl had left his affairs. That he had made a recent will, she believed; for in the prospect of a little child’s being born, he had remarked to her that he must settle his affairs in accordance with the prospect, and she thought he had done so; but she did not know any details, for the earl had not mentioned them to her.
“Oh, it was sure to be all right,” Laura remarked with customary unconcern; and she bought every pretty black dress that attracted her eye.
“You will be godmother to the little baby, Lady Jane, when the time comes for christening him?” supplicated the countess with sensible hesitation. “He shall belong as much to you as to me.”
“Yes, willingly,” replied Jane. She did not hesitate; that little frail being in its sheltering cradle seemed to be the one link to life left by her father.
“And—if I may express a wish—will you not call him Francis?”
“Francis, certainly; Francis always. The Earls of Oakburn have mostly been John—but I don’t know that it need be a rule for us. We can name him Francis John; but he must be called Francis.”
On one of the days that intervened between the death and the burial, Jane borrowed the countess’s carriage—her own but one short year before—and went to Gloucester Terrace. Though feeling a conviction that Mrs. West would have sent to her had she heard news of Clarice, it did not seem right to Jane’s anxious mind that she should leave London again without personally inquiring. But when she reached the house she received a disappointment; Mrs. West and her children, she was told, were at the sea-side.
As Jane stood in the door-way in hesitation—as is the manner of many when they meet with an unexpected check—a gentleman put his head out at one of the sitting-rooms, wondering perhaps who might be the visitor, and what the colloquy was about. He was a pleasant-looking man, short and stout, with a red face and bristling hair.
“It’s a good six weeks before my mistress will be at home, ma'am,” the servant was saying. “She only went ten days ago, and———but here’s master,” she broke off, as the gentleman came forward. “Perhaps he can tell more certain nor me.”
Mr. West advanced to Lady Jane. His wife, Mrs. West, was out of town, he observed. Could he answer any questions for her, or convey to her any message?—he should be joining her at Ramsgate on the morrow.
Jane stepped into the sitting-room. He would probably know as much as his wife, was the reflection that crossed her mind. She mentioned the errand that she had come upon, and that she had been there some fifteen months previously on the same.
“Oh yes, yes,” said Mr. West. “I remember my wife spoke of the circumstance to me—Lady Jane Chesney, I presume,” he added with a bow. “I am sorry to say that we have never heard anything of her. Only a short while before my wife left home for Ramsgate, she was talking of Miss Beauchamp and wondering whether her friends had found her.”
Jane sighed heavily, although she had expected nothing else but the disappointment “No,” she said, in a low tone, “we have not heard of her.”
“It is very extraordinary!” exclaimed Mr. West.
“It is more than that,” said Jane, “it is alarming. Until lately we cherished the hope that she had gone abroad with some family, but every month that glides on seems to set the hope more and more at nought. Thank you,” she added, moving to the door, and handing him a card. “That is my address in the country, where I reside; should Mrs. West ever hear of her—though indeed the suggestion sounds a forlorn one—perhaps she will kindly forward me word of it there.”
“I am sure you may rely upon her doing so,” returned Mr. West. “And I only wish I had been able to give your ladyship better news now,” he heartily concluded.
Attending her outside, he stood on the pavement while she stepped into the carriage, and was driven away. Jane sat in it strangely disheartened, considering that she had expected no better. A conviction had latterly been gaining upon her that Clarice was dead, and she seemed only to be able to think of her as such.
But now there was one little item of news regarding Miss Beauchamp that Mrs. West had learnt since she last saw Lady Jane, and which she would certainly have imparted to her had she been at home, though she had not deemed it of sufficient importance to write to her. Mr. West knew it, but he never supposed that it was not known to Lady Jane. After all, it was not much; and would have left the affair in at least equal mystery to that which at present enshrouded it.
Jane went wearily up the stairs on her return, and entered the countess’s bedroom. Lady Oakburn was in an easy chair by the fire: she sat up for several hours a day now, although the nurse with her old-fashioned ideas protested it was “too soon.” Only Laura was with her, and she, Laura, held the little baby on her lap. Quite a mark of condescension for Laura, who was not fond of bringing herself into contact with things so troublesome as babies.
“I wish my own had lived,” she was saying to Lady Oakburn. “It was the sweetest little girl ever seen. But I should not have nursed it, you know; I could not have subjected myself to the tie. I cannot think how you can have undertaken such a task!—you’ll never be able to go out.”
Lady Oakburn smiled. She and Laura were very different. “How long did your child live?” she inquired.
“Only a day and a half. Mr. Carlton saw from the first that it would not live; but he did not tell me, and I wondered why he had it baptised so quickly. When he asked me what the name should be, and said Mr. Lycett was down-stairs and would baptise it, I inquired why he wanted it done, and he said carelessly it was as well, when infants were delicate. I thought nothing of the answer then, but he has told me since.”
“What did you name it?”
“Laura. Mr. Carlton wished it, and I like the name very well. What it Jane sitting in that strange manner for? Like a statue!”
For Jane Chesney on entering had sunk down quietly on the chair nearest the door; disappointment was pressing heavily upon her heart. Laura turned to her in her wonder, and Jane rose and came forward.
“I have had so fruitless a journey,” she said. “Mrs. West, the lady I went to call on, was at Ramsgate, but I saw her husband. They have heard nothing whatever of Clarice. I am sure she will never be found now.”
“I should turn the world topsy-turvy but what I’d find her,” cried impetuous Laura. “She can’t be lost, you know! Such a thing could not happen in these days.”
Jane shook her head in silence. All the likely places she and her father could think of had been turned “topsy-turvy” in one sense, but they had not found Clarice.
“I am sure it was quite a weight upon papa’s mind at the last,” murmured Jane. “Did he talk much of her?” she continued, lifting her eyes to Lady Oakburn.
The countess replied almost eagerly. That some mystery was attaching to one of the earl’s daughters she knew, for in the time of her residence in the house as governess, chance words relating to the Lady Clarice had been dropped in her hearing. But she had heard nothing further. After her marriage she inquired about her of the earl, but he had passed the question over lightly, as if not caring to speak of the subject. This she now told Jane.
“But—do you mean to say, Lady Oakburn, that papa did not acquaint you with the particulars?” asked Jane in some surprise.
“He never did. I am sure he did not like to speak of the subject.”
“I wonder that he did not,” said Jane.
“I don’t wonder at it at all,” dissented Laura. “I don’t like to speak of it. Would you believe, Lady Oakburn, that I have never once spoken of it to my husband? He has not the least idea that we ever had another sister.”
“But why do you not speak of it to him?” returned Lady Oakburn.
“I don’t know,” mused Laura. “I cannot bear to speak of Clarice to any one. It does not sound nice to confess to a sister who went out as a governess in disobedience, and does not come home again. I say I can’t explain the feeling, but there it is within me, very strong. I daresay papa felt the same; we were much alike, he and I. It will be time enough to tell my husband about Clarice when she is found.”
“Did she go in disobedience?” asked Lady Oakburn.
“Yes,” said Laura. “It was very wilful of her. I don’t mind talking of it to you, Lady Oakburn, as you know something of it, and we are upon the subject. For a long, long while papa would not so much as allow her name to be mentioned in the house. By the way, Jane,” she continued, “do you know, a thought has struck me more than once—you remember that scrap of a letter that I brought to you when you first came back to South Wennock?”
“Do I remember it!” repeated Jane. “I am looking at it often. It puzzles me more than I care to say.”
“Well, what has struck me is, that perhaps—it is just possible—papa in his anger opened that letter, although it was addressed to you, and tore it up as soon as opened.”
“No,” said Jane. “So unable was I to find any solution of the matter, that I, like you, fancied it possible papa had opened it, and I wrote to him from South Wennock and put the question.”
“And he said he had not?”
“He wrote to me by return of post. He had never seen or heard of any such letter.”
“Then I think I remember the circumstance—that is, your letter coming to him,” interposed the countess, looking at Jane. “He was reading a letter from you one morning at breakfast, when he grew a little excited, a little angry, and called out he should like to know what Jane could mean. Lucy asked what it was, and he answered that Jane had been writing to know if he had opened one of Clarice’s letters: as if he would have opened any thing from her at that time, he added: he would not have touched one with the end of his stick. I recollect the words quite well,” continued Lady Oakburn. “And I know I longed to inquire what the trouble was, regarding Lady Clarice, but I did not like to.”
Jane sighed. “I feel—I begin to feel that we shall never find Clarice.”
“Then that’s nonsense,” returned Laura. “She is sure to be found, dead or alive.”
“Dead or alive,” repeated Jane, in a low tone. “Yes—perhaps she will. But it will not be alive.”
Laura liked the sunny points of life better than the shady ones, and rarely took a dark view of anything. These unpleasant forebodings sounded as “nonsense” in her ears. Jane turned to Lady Oakburn and related to her the whole history of Clarice from beginning to end. It impressed Lady Oakburn very greatly; she thought she had never heard of anything so singular as this prolonged disappearance.
In telling the story, Jane made a passing allusion to the dream relating to Clarice, which had so disturbed her. Laura, who was putting the sleeping baby then into his little cot, interrupted with a ridiculing word.
“Dreams, indeed! One would suppose you were some old nurse, Jane! How you can dwell upon that absurdity still, and repeat it, I cannot understand. Lady Oakburn is staring at you—and well she may!”
“At any rate we have never heard of Clarice since that dream,” was Jane’s answer, and her low earnest voice told how much the subject affected her. “When Clarice shall be restored to us, safe and well, then I will forget my dream.”
Laura threw up her supercilious head, and turned her back on Jane. “I must put my things on,” she remarked to the countess; “your servants and horses will think I am not coming. I sent orders down to them to wait when they brought back Jane.”
Jane had seen the look of surprise on Lady Oakburn’s face, and spoke after a pause. “I ought to tell you, Lady Oakburn, as a sort of answer to Laura’s ridicule, that in the course of my past life three or four most singular dreams have visited me. They have borne a strange coincidence—to say the least of it—with speedily following events. I am not by nature superstitious; I believe that I was born the reverse of it; but it is impossible but these dreams should have fixed themselves on my mind, as something neither to be accounted for nor understood.”
“And you had one of these singular dreams relating to Lady Clarice?”
“I had. She was not Lady Clarice then. It was a very dreadful dream, and it appeared to shadow forth her death. Hour by hour, day by day, the dream, taken in conjunction with Clarice’s prolonged disappearance, becomes more vivid to my memory. I cannot forget it.
“What was it?” asked Lady Oakburn.
“I would prefer not to tell it you,” replied Jane. “Sometimes I think that if I related it to Laura she would ridicule it less.”
“You have not related it to her?”
“No. To her, of all others, my tongue is tied.”
“But why to her in particular, Lady Jane?”
“Well, the cause is—but it sounds foolish even in my own ears when spoken of, so what must it to a listener? The fact is—and a very curious fact it is, one which I cannot understand—that in this dream Mr. Carlton, Laura’s present husband, was most unpleasantly prominent. The details I say I cannot give you, but I dreamt Clarice was dead—I dreamt that she appeared to me dead, and that she indicated Mr. Carlton as being the cause of her death or in some manner aiding in it.”
The countess’s mind was entirely free from superstition, and in a silent, inwardly polite manner she had been wondering at Lady Jane. But the awe on the latter’s countenance, the hushed voice, the solemnity in Jane’s words, served to impart its own impression to her, and she felt inclined to have a fit of the shivers.
“He was not Laura’s husband then, but I was in the habit of seeing him daily, for he was my father’s medical attendant; and I argue with myself that that fact, the seeing him so frequently, caused him to be mixed up in the dream. I argue that it must have been a purely accidental coincidence; but in spite of this, in spite of myself, my reason, my judgment, I cannot get that sight of Mr. Carlton, as I saw him in the dream, from my mind; and ever since that moment I have felt a sort of horror of Mr. Carlton. I cannot expect you, Lady Oakburn, to excuse this, or to understand it; 1 feel myself that it is very wrong.”
“But did Mr. Carlton know your sister Clarice?" demanded the countess, growing strangely interested.
“Certainly not. And therefore my reason and good sense stand in condemnation against me, while the feeling, the horror, remains. I did once mention this to Laura—that Mr. Carlton was mixed up most unpleasantly in the dream, and that I could not help regarding him with a sort of shrinking dread, but I fancy she has forgotten it. It was before her marriage. At any rate, what with this, and what with Laura’s general ridicule of such things, I never care to allude to the dream in her presence. I never should allude to it but as an explanation of the cause why I grew uneasy and wrote to Clarice those letters, which have never been answered.”
“Won’t you relate me the dream?” asked the countess, in her interest. “I confess I am no believer in the theory some entertain, that dreams are sent as warnings; I fear I ridicule them as heartily as Lady Laura; but I should like to hear this one.”
Jane shook her head. “I have never told it to any one. Pardon me, Lady Oakburn, if I still decline to repeat it to you. Independent of my own unconquerable repugnance, I do not think it would be fair to Mr. Carlton.”
Lady Oakburn could not forbear a smile, and Jane saw it.
“Yes,” she said in answer, “I know how foolish all this must seem to you. It is foolish; and I should be thankful if I could overget the prejudice it has given me against Mr. Carlton, That prejudice is the most foolish of all. I feel how unjustifiable it is, and yet——”
Another dreamer interrupted them: the infant peer in his cradle. He raised his voice with all the power of his little lungs, and Jane hastened to take him up and carry him to the countess.
Laura meanwhile, in Lady Oakburn’s carriage, was being rattled over the stones of London. The carriage took its way to the East-end, to a populous but certainly not fashionable locality. She was about to pay an impromptu visit to her husband’s father, Mr. Carlton.
In a crowded and remote thoroughfare, where riches and poverty, bustle and idleness, industry and guilt seemed to mingle incongruously together, was situated the residence of Mr. Carlton. The carriage drew up before a square red brick house; not large, but sufficiently commodious. It stood a little back from the street, and a paved court led to the entrance. On the door was a brass plate, “Mr. Carlton, Surgeon;” and over the door was a large lamp of flaring yellow and red glass.
Laura stepped out of the carriage, and a man servant opened the door almost the instant that she had rung at it.
“Can I see Mr. Carlton?”
“Not now, ma'am. It is not my master’s hour for receiving patients. In a minute he will have left on his round of visits.”
The servant by a slight gesture indicated a plain-looking brougham in waiting. Laura had not noticed it. The refusal did not please her, and she put on her most imperious manner.
“Your master is at home?”
“He is at home, ma'am, but I cannot admit you. It is the hour for his carriage, and—and there he is going to it,” added the servant, a sort of relief in his tone, for he did not like controversy.
Laura turned quickly; a thin man of sixty had come out of a side door and was crossing the paved court. She stepped up and confronted him.
“Mr. Carlton, I presume?”
She need not have asked. In the slender, spare, gentlemanlike form, in the well shaped features, in the impassive expression of face, she saw her husband over again; her husband as he would be when thirty more years should have passed over his head—if they were destined to pass. In the elder man’s sharp tone, his decisive gesture as he turned and answered to the call, she recognised the very manner of him, so familiar to her. The tone and manner were not discourteous certainly, but short and very uncompromising.
“I am Mr. Carlton. What is your business?”
“I have come to see you, sir. I have come all the way from the West-end to see you.”
Mr. Carlton glanced at the carriage. He saw the earl’s coronet on it; he saw the servants in their handsome livery—for the mourning was not assumed yet for the earl. But Mr. Carlton did not entertain any overdue reverence for earls on the whole, and carriages and servants he only regarded as necessary appendages to comfort to those who could afford them.
“Then I am very sorry you should have come at this hour, young lady, that’s all,” he said. “I cannot see patients at home after the clock strikes three: and it struck two minutes ago; you might have heard it from yonder church. Were I to break the rule once, I might be wanted to break it always. If you will come to-morrow at———”
“I am not a patient,” interrupted Laura.
“Not a patient? What are you, then?”
“I am your son’s wife, sir: Lady Laura Carlton.”
Mr. Carlton betrayed no surprise. He looked at her for a minute or two, his impassive face never changing. Then he held out his arm with civility, and led her to the house. The entrance at the forbidden hour which he would have denied to a patient, however valuable, he accorded to his daughter-in-law.
He handed her into a room on the ground floor, a dining-room evidently; a dark sombre apartment, with heavy crimson velvet curtains, and handsome furniture as sombre as the room. The man-servant was removing the remains of some meal from the table, luncheon or dinner; but his master stopped him with a motion of the hand.
“Lay it again, Gervase.”
“Not for me,” interposed Laura, as she sat down in an arm-chair. “I would prefer not to take anything,” she added, to Mr. Carlton.
Gervase went away with his tray. And Mr. Carlton turned to her. “And so you are the young lady my son has married! I wish you health and happiness!”
“You are very kind,” said Laura, beginning to take a dislike to Mr. Carlton. She knew how useful some of his hoarded gains would be to them; she hated him for his stinginess in not having helped his son; and she had come down in an impulse that morning to pay him court and make friends with him. But there was something in his calm eye and calm bearing that told her her object would be lost, if that object was the getting him to aid their pockets; and Laura intrenched herself within her own pride, and set herself to dislike him—as she always did dislike anybody who thwarted her.
“I am in London for a few days, Mr. Carlton, and I thought I would come and make your acquaintance before I left it. I did not know it would be disagreeable to you.”
“It is not disagreeable to me. I am pleased to see you here. Is Lewis in town with you?”
“As if he would not have come to you if he had been!” retorted Laura. “I was summoned to town on grievous business,” she continued, her eye and voice alike softening. “My father was dying. I did not get up in time to see him alive.”
“Your father? I beg your pardon, I forget who———”
“The Earl of Oakburn,” imperiously answered Laura, feeling excessively offended, and scarcely believing in the forgetfulness.
“The Earl of Oakburn: true. When I read of his death I felt sure that I ought to remember that name by some particular cause, but I forgot that he was the father of my son’s wife. You look angry, my dear; but if you had the work on your hands that I have, you would not wonder at my forgetting things. I and Lewis had but scant correspondence on the subject of his marriage, and I am not sure that your father’s name was mentioned in it more than once. Your own name is Laura.”
“I am Lady Laura,” was the answer, given with a flash of impetuosity.
“And a very pretty name it is! Laura! I had a little sister of that name once, who died. Dear me, it seems ages and ages ago to look back upon! And how is Lewis getting on in South Wennock? He ought to be a skilful practitioner by this time; he has the metal in him if he chooses to put it out.”
“He gets on as well as a doctor can do who has his way to make unassisted,” returned Laura. “Nobody helps him. He ought to keep a close carriage, but he can’t afford it.”
If he had afforded it, his wife would have appropriated it to her own use. Driving down in that coroneted carriage with all the signs of rank and wealth about it, was just the pastime acceptable to Laura in her vanity.
“Ah, Lewis must be content to wait for that,” remarked Mr. Carlton. “I did not keep a close carriage until I had been more years in practice than Lewis has. Tell him from me, my dear, that those who know how to win, generally know how to wait”
“I’ll not tell him,” said Laura, boldly. “I think, sir, you ought to help him.”
“Do you, young lady? What does he get by his practice? Six or seven hundred a year?”
“Well, yes; I think he gets that”
“It’s more than I got at his age. And I would recommend him to make it suffice.”
The peculiar emphasis which accompanied the words, told a tale to Laura: that no help must be expected from Mr. Carlton. Laura threw back her head disdainfully. Only asking it for the sake of him whom she so loved, really careless of money herself, she felt anger rather than disappointment. She rose to leave with a haughty gesture.
“Your husband knows my disposition, Lady Laura: that I never can be badgered into anything—and you must pardon the word. Tell him I have not altered my will; I shall not alter it if he keeps in my good books; but he must look to his own exertions while I live, not to me.”
“I think you are a very unkind father, Mr. Carlton.”
“My dear, you can think so if you please,” was the equable answer, given in all courtesy. “You don’t know your husband’s disposition yet. Shall I tell you what he is? He makes, you say, six or seven hundred a year. If I allowed him from to-day six or seven hundred on to it making twelve or fourteen, by the year’s end he would find that too little, and ask for fourteen hundred more. Lewis is one, safe to spend all his income, no matter from what sources it may be derived; and I don’t care to have my hard-earned money wasted in my lifetime.”
Laura drew her black lace shawl round her with supercilious meaning, and swept from the room, deaf to offers of wine and other good things. Mr. Carlton followed and held out his arm. Had it been anyone but her husband’s father she would have refused it.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“In the house with my dead father,” passionately answered Laura. “I should not have quitted it on any errand but this.”
“I have been glad to see you, my dear. I shall always be glad to see you and Lewis. Come and stay with me, both of you, for a week at any time. Should business or pleasure bring you to London, Lady Laura, and you can reconcile yourself to this end of the town, make my house your home. You shall be heartily welcome.”
He led her out with quite an excess of stately courtesy, bowed her into the waiting carriage, lifted his hat, and stood bareheaded until she had driven away.
“He is a gentleman in manners, with all his meanness,” quoth Laura to herself. “Somehow I had feared he might not be. And I can understand now why he and Lewis have been so antagonistic—they are too much like each other.”
CHAPTER XXXVI.THE FACE AGAIN!
It was the day of the funeral of the Earl of Oakburn. In her dressing-room sat his widow, wearing her deep mourning robes and her white cap, the insignia of her bereft condition. Near to her, in robes of mourning as deep, sat the earl’s daughters, Jane, Laura, and Lucy. Lucy the child cried incessantly; Laura ever and anon gave vent to a frantic burst; Jane was tranquil. Tranquil outwardly; and none, save perhaps the countess, suspected the real inward suffering. What with the loss of him, gone from their sight in this world for ever, and the loss of one they knew not how gone, Jane Chesney’s grief was too bitterly acute for outward signs; it lay deeper than the surface.
The Earl of Oakburn and the dowager countess were left in graves side by side each other in the large cemetery; and the solicitor to the Oakburn family was coming in with the wills. A copy of that made by the countess was to be read, because it was known that legacies were left to some of those ladies sitting there. The lawyer, Mr. Mole, was a thin man with a white shirt-frill, who surreptitiously took snuff every three minutes from under his handkerchief.
He solaced himself with a good pinch outside the dressing-room door and went in bowing, two parchments in his hand. Lady Oakburn was not strong enough to get to the apartments below, and the lawyer was received here, as had been arranged. The will of the earl was the one he retained in his hand to read first. He took his seat and opened it.
Lord Oakburn had it not in his power to bequeath much. The estate was charged with the payment of five hundred a year to his eldest daughter, Jane Chesney, for her life; to his second daughter, Laura Carlton, he left his forgiveness; and to his third and fourth daughters, Clarice Beauchamp, and Lucy Eleanor, the sum of three thousand pounds each. Lucy was left under the personal guardianship of his wife Eliza, Countess of Oakburn, who was charged with her education and maintenance; Clarice, when she was found, was to have her home with the countess, if she pleased, and if she did not so please, he prayed his daughter Jane to afford her one. Should it be ascertained that any untoward fate had overtaken Clarice (so ran the words of the will), that she should no longer be living, then the three thousand pounds were to revert to Jane absolutely. A sum of three hundred pounds was to be equally divided at once between his four daughters, “to provide them with decent mourning,” Clarice’s share to be handed over to Jane, that it might be set aside for her.
Such were the terms of the will, as related to the earl’s daughters; the part of it regarding his wife and son (the latter of whom was not born when it was made, though it provided for the contingency) need not be touched upon, for it does not concern us.
When the will was read, Mr. Mole laid it down, took up the copy of that of the dowager countess, and began to read it with scarcely a breath of interval. The old lady, who had plenty of money in her own right, had bequeathed five thousand pounds each to her grandnieces Jane and Lucy Eleanor Chesney. Jane’s five thousand was to be paid over to her within twelve months, Lucy’s was to be left to accumulate until she should be of age, both principal and interest. Neither Laura nor Clarice was mentioned in her will. Even to the last the old countess could not forgive Clarice for attempting to get her own living; neither had she forgiven Laura’s marriage.
To express the sore feeling, the anger, the resentment of Lady Laura at finding herself passed over both by her father and her aunt, would be difficult. She was of a hasty and passionate temper, something like her father, too apt to give way to it upon trifling occasions, but she did not now. There are some injuries, or what we deem such, which tell so keenly upon the feelings that they bury themselves in silence, and rankle there. This was one. Laura Carlton made no remark, no observation; she expressed not a word of disappointment, or said that it was such. One lightning flash of anger, which nobody saw but the solicitor, and outward demonstration was over.
The lawyer took four parcels of bank-notes from his pocket-book, each to the amount of seventy-five pounds. Two of these parcels he handed to Lady Jane, her own and Clarice’s; one to the countess as the share of Lucy; the other parcel to Lady Laura.
And Laura took the notes without a word. Her indignant fingers trembled to fling them back in Mr. Mole’s face; but she did contrive to restrain herself. “He might have left me better off,” she breathed to Jane in the course of the evening; and then she bit her tongue for having said so much.
Jane also had her disappointment; but she had been prepared for it. Not a disappointment as regarded money matters: she was left as well off as she expected to be, and felt grateful to her father for doing so much, and to her aunt for the handsome legacy. Her disappointment related to Lucy. That the child whom she had loved and tended, whom in her heart she believed herself capable of training into the good Christian, the refined gentlewoman at least as efficiently as the countess, should be left away from her cane, entrusted to another, was indeed a bitter trial. Jane, like Laura, spoke not of her mortification; but unlike Laura, she strove to subdue it. “It is but another cross in my tried life,” she murmured to herself. “I must take it up meekly and pray for help to bear it.”
“You should have her entirely indeed, did the will allow of it,” said the countess to Jane, for she divined the disappointment, and the tears in her eyes proved the genuine fervour with which she spoke. “I love her greatly; but I would not have been so selfish as to keep her from you. She shall visit you as often as you like, Lady Jane; she is more yours than mine.”
Jane caught at the words. “Let me take her home with me for a little change, then. She feels the loss greatly, and change of scene will be good for her. She can stay a week or two with me until you are strong again.”
“Willingly, willingly,” was the answer. “Ask for her when you will, at any time, and she shall go to you. Unless—unless———" Lady Oakburn suddenly stopped.
“Unless what?” asked Jane.
“Oh, I feel that I scarcely dare to mention it,” returned the countess. “I spoke in impulse. Pray pardon me, Lady Jane! My thought was—unless you would come back again and make this your home.”
Jane shook her heed. “No,” she said, “I think I must have a home of my own. I have got used to it, you see. But I will come to you sometimes and be your guest.”
So Lucy went with Jane to South Wennock. They journeyed down on the second day after the funeral. Laura was silent on the way, somewhat resentful, as she brooded bitterly over the ill news she had to carry to her husband. Once she turned round in the carriage and spoke to Jane quite sharply.
“Why did you never tell me you had asked papa about that torn note of Clarice’s? nobody seems to care for me, I think.”
Jane Chesney sighed wearily. “I don’t know why I did not. Somehow I do not like to talk of Clarice; and it only left the mystery where it was.”
They reached Great Wennock in safety. Laura had not apprised her husband of her coming, and there was no carriage in waiting; the disappointment to be inflicted on him had deterred her. The omnibus and one fly stood at the station. Judith was hastening to secure the latter, but was too late. A handsome stripling leaped into it before her. It was Frederick Grey.
“Oh, Master Grey!” she said in an accent of dismay. He looked tall enough now for Mr. Grey; but Judith adhered to the familiar salutation. “You’ll give up the fly, won’t you, sir?”
“I daresay, Judith!” returned the young gentleman, with a laugh. “There’s the omnibus for you.”
“It’s not for me, Master Frederick. The ladies are here.”
He glanced across, caught sight of them, and was out of the fly in an instant, lugging with him a big box which he took to the omnibus, and offered the fly to Lady Jane. He stood with his hat in his hand, a frank smile on his pleasant countenance as he pressed them to take it.
“But it is not right to deprive you of it,” said Jane. “You had it first”
“What, and leave you the omnibus, Lady Jane! What would you think of me? The jolting won’t hurt me; it’s rather fun than otherwise. I should walk, if it were not for the rain.”
“Have you come from London?”
“Oh no. Only from Lichford.”
He helped to place them in the fly, and they were obliged to make room for Judith, for it was raining fast, and Jane would not let her go outside. Lucy gazed at him as he stood there raising his hat when they drove away.
“What a nice face he has!” she exclaimed. “I like him so much, Jane!”
“I declare I forgot to tell him that we saw his father,” said Jane. “I must send for him to call.”
Mr. Carlton’s was first reached. Lady Laura got out, and the fly drove on with the rest towards Cedar Lodge. Mr. Carlton was at home, and he welcomed her with many kisses. It was late, and the tea was on the table; the room, bright with fire, looked cheering after her journey. Mr. Carlton loved her still, and the absence had been felt by him.
“Between Pembury and London you have been away thirteen days, Laura! And I, longing for you all the while, thinking they would never pass!”
“There is no place like home, after all,” said Laura. “And oh, Lewis, there’s nobody like you! We stayed over the funeral, you know, and—to—to hear the will reed.”
“And how are things left?” asked Mr. Carlton. “I suppose you are so rich now, we poor commoners must scarcely dare to touch you with a long pole.”
Laura had been sitting before the fire, her feet on the fender, Mr. Carlton leaning careasingly over her. She suddenly sprang up and turned her back upon him, apparently busying herself with some trifles that lay on a side table; she had an inward conviction that her news would not be palatable.
“Laura, I say, I suppose you inherit ten or twenty thousand pounds? The countess dowager was good to you for ten, I should think.”
“I was deliberating how I should soften things to you, and I can’t do it. I’ll tell you the worst at once,” she cried, flashing round and meeting him face to face. “I am disinherited, Lewis.”
He made no reply: he only looked at her with eager, questioning eyes.
“Papa has not left me a shilling—save a trifle for mourning; it stated in the will that he bequeathed me his forgiveness. My aunt has given ten thousand pounds between Jane and Lucy; nothing to me.”
A bitter word all but escaped the lips of Mr. Carlton; he managed to suppress it before it was spoken.
“Left you nothing?” he repeated. “Neither of them?”
“Seventy-five pounds for mourning—and the ‘forgiveness!’ Oh, Lewis, it is shameful; it is an awful disappointment; a disgraceful injustice; and I feel it more for you than for myself.”
“And Jane?” he asked, after a pause.
“Jane has five hundred a year for life, and five thousand pounds absolutely. And other moneys contingent upon deaths. What shall we do, Lewis?”
“Make the best of it,” replied Mr. Carlton. “There is an old saying, Laura, ‘What can’t be cured must be endured;’ you and I must exemplify it.”
She snatched up her bonnet and quitted the room hastily, as if to avoid saying more, leaving Mr. Carlton alone. A change came over his features then, and a livid look, whether called up by anger, or by memory, or by physical pain, appeared on them. The fire played on his face, rendering it quite clear, although there was no other light in the room. This apartment, if you remember, had two large windows; one looking to the front, one to the side, near the surgery entrance. The front window had been closed for the night; the other had not; possibly Mr. Carlton had a mind to see what patients came at that dusk hour. He stood in one position, opposite this window, buried in thoughts called up by the communication of his wife. His eyes were bent on the ground, his hands fell listlessly on either side of him; he had trusted to this inheritance of Laura’s to clear them from their imprudently contracted debts. Mr. Carlton so stood for some minutes, and then he lifted his eyes.
Lifted his eyes to rest upon—what? Peering into the fire-lighted room, its nose pressed flat against a pane of the window, was that never-forgotten face. The awful face, whether human or hobgoblin, which had so scared him the night of Mrs. Crane’s death, and again the second night in Captain Chesney’s garden.
It scared him still. And Mr. Carlton staggered against the wall, as if he would be out of its sight, his suppressed cry of terror resounding through the room.