Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Her tears began to fall. And she let them fall — in silence. The earl resumed.

  “But for that extraordinary letter, I should have supposed you had been actuated by a mad infatuation for the cur, Levison; its tenor gave the matter a different aspect. To what did you allude when you asserted that your husband had driven you to it?”

  “He knew,” she answered, scarcely above her breath.

  “He did not know,” sternly replied the earl. “A more truthful, honorable man than Carlyle does not exist on the face of the earth. When he told me then, in his agony of grief, that he was unable to form even a suspicion of your meaning, I could have staked my earldom on his veracity. I would stake it still.”

  “I believed,” she began, in a low, nervous voice, for she knew that there was no evading the questions of Lord Mount Severn, when he was resolute in their being answered, and, indeed she was too weak, both in body and spirit, to resist— “I believed that his love was no longer mine; that he had deserted me, for another.”

  The earl stared at her. “What can you mean by ‘deserted!’ He was with you.”

  “There is a desertion of the heart,” was her murmured answer.

  “Desertion of a fiddlestick!” retorted his lordship. “The interpretation we gave to the note, I and Carlyle, was, that you had been actuated by motives of jealousy; had penned it in a jealous mood. I put the question to Carlyle — as between man and man — do you listen, Isabel! — whether he had given you cause; and he answered me, as with God over us, he had never given you cause; he had been faithful to you in thought, word and deed; he had never, so far as he could call to mind, even looked upon another woman with covetous feelings, since the hour that he made you his wife; his whole thoughts had been of you, and of you alone. It is more than many a husband can say,” significantly coughed Lord Mount Severn.

  Her pulses were beating wildly. A powerful conviction that the words were true; that her own blind jealousy had been utterly mistaken and unfounded, was forcing its way to her brain.

  “After that I could only set your letter down as a subterfuge,” resumed the earl— “a false, barefaced plea, put forth to conceal your real motives, and I told Carlyle so. I inquired how it was he had never detected any secret understanding between you and that — that beast, located, as the fellow was, in the house. He replied that no such suspicion had ever occurred to him. He placed the most implicit confidence in you, and would have trusted you with the creature around the world, aye, with any one else.”

  She entwined her hands one within the other, pressing them to pain. It would not deaden the pain at her heart.

  “Carlyle told me he had been unusually occupied during the stay of that man. Besides his customary office work, his time was taken up with some private business for a family in the neighborhood, and he had repeatedly to see them, more particularly the daughter, after office hours. Very old acquaintances of his, he said, relatives of the Carlyle family; and he was as anxious about the secret — a painful one — as they were. This, I observed to him, may have rendered him unobservant to what was passing at home. He told me, I remember, that on the very evening of the — the catastrophe, he ought to have gone with you to a dinner party, but most important circumstances arose, in connection with the affair, which obliged him to meet two gentlemen at his office, and to receive them in secret, unknown to his clerks.”

  “Did he mention the name of the family?” inquired Lady Isabel, with white lips.

  “Yes, he did. I forgot it, though. Rabbit! Rabit! — some such name as that.”

  “Was it Hare?”

  “That was it — Hare. He said you appeared vexed that he did not accompany you to the dinner; and seeing that he intended to go in afterward, but was prevented. When the interview was over in his office, he was again detained at Mrs. Hare’s house, and by business as impossible to avoid as the other.”

  “Important business!” she echoed, giving way for a moment to the bitterness of former feelings. “He was promenading in their garden by moonlight with Barbara — Miss Hare. I saw them as my carriage passed.”

  “And you were jealous that he should be there!” exclaimed Lord Mount Severn, with mocking reproach, as he detected her mood. “Listen!” he whispered, bending his head toward her. “While you may have thought, as your present tone would seem to intimate, that they were pacing there to enjoy each other’s society, know that they — Carlyle, at any rate — was pacing the walk to keep guard. One was within that house — for a short half hour’s interview with his poor mother — one who lives in danger of the scaffold, to which his own father would be the first to deliver him up. They were keeping the path against that father — Carlyle and the young lady. Of all the nights in the previous seven years, that one only saw the unhappy son at home for a half hour’s meeting with his mother and sister. Carlyle, in the grief and excitement caused by your conduct, confided so much to me, when mentioning what kept him from the dinner party.”

  Her face had become crimson — crimson at her past lamentable folly. And there was no redemption!

  “But he was always with Barbara Hare,” she murmured, by way of some faint excuse.

  “I have mentioned so. She had to see him upon this affair, her mother could not, for it was obliged to be kept from the father. And so, you construed business interviews into assignations!” continued Lord Mount Severn with cutting derision. “I had given you credit for better sense. But was this enough to hurl you on the step you took? Surely not. You must have yielded in the persuasions of that wicked man.”

  “It is all over now,” she wailed.

  “Carlyle was true and faithful to you, and to you alone. Few women have the chance of happiness, in their married life, in the degree that you had. He is an upright and good man; one of nature’s gentlemen; one that England may be proud of as having grown upon her soil. The more I see of him, the greater becomes my admiration of him, and of his thorough honor. Do you know what he did in the matter of the damages?”

  She shook her head.

  “He did not wish to proceed for damages, or only for the trifling sum demanded by law; but the jury, feeling for his wrongs, gave unprecedently heavy ones. Since the fellow came into his baronetcy they have been paid. Carlyle immediately handed them over to the county hospital. He holds the apparently obsolete opinion that money cannot wipe out a wife’s dishonor.”

  “Let us close those topics” implored the poor invalid. “I acted wickedly and madly, and have the consequences to bear forever. More I cannot say.”

  “Where do you intend to fix your future residence?” inquired the earl.

  “I am unable to tell. I shall leave this town as soon as I am well enough.”

  “Aye. It cannot be pleasant for you to remain under the eyes of its inhabitants. You were here with him, were you not?”

  “They think I am his wife,” she murmured. “The servants think it.”

  “That’s well, so far. How many servants have you?”

  “Two. I am not strong enough yet to do much myself, so am obliged to keep two,” she continued, as if in apology for the extravagance, under her reduced circumstances. “As soon as ever the baby can walk, I shall manage to do with one.”

  The earl looked confounded. “The baby!” he uttered, in a tone of astonishment and grief painful to her to hear. “Isabel, is there a child?”

  Not less painful was her own emotion as she hid her face. Lord Mount Severn rose and paced the room with striding steps.

  “I did not know it! I did not know it! Wicked, heartless villain! He ought to have married you before its birth. Was the divorce out previously?” he asked stopping short in his strides to put the question.

  “Yes.”

  “Coward! Sneak! May good men shun him from henceforth! May his queen refuse to receive him! You, an earl’s daughter! Oh, Isabel, how utterly you have lost yourself!”

  Lady Isabel started from her chair in a burst of hysterical sobs, her hands extended beseechingly towar
d the earl. “Spare me! Spare me! You have been rending my heart ever since you came; indeed I am too weak to bear it.”

  The earl, in truth, had been betrayed into showing more of his sentiments than he intended. He recalled his recollection.

  “Well, well, sit down again, Isabel,” he said, putting her into her chair. “We shall go to the point I chiefly came here to settle. What sum will it take you to live upon? Quietly; as of course you would now wish to live, but comfortably.”

  “I will not accept anything,” she replied. “I will get my own living.” And the earl’s irascibility again arose at the speech. He spoke in a sharp tone.

  “Absurd, Isabel! Do not add romantic folly to your own mistakes. Get your own living, indeed! As much as is necessary for you to live upon, I shall supply. No remonstrance; I tell you I am acting as for your father. Do you suppose he would have abandoned you to starve or to work?”

  The allusion touched every chord within her bosom, and the tears fell fast. “I thought I could get my living by teaching,” she sobbed.

  “And how much did you anticipate the teaching would bring you in?”

  “Not very much,” she listlessly said. “A hundred a year, perhaps; I am very clever at music and singing. That sum might keep us, I fancy, even if I only went out by the day.”

  “And a fine ‘keep’ it would be! You shall have that sum every quarter!”

  “No, no! no, no! I do not deserve it; I could not accept it; I have forfeited all claim to assistance.”

  “Not to mine. Now, it is of no use to excite yourself, my mind is made up. I never willingly forego a duty, and I look upon this not only as a duty, but as an imperative one. Upon my return, I shall immediately settle four hundred upon you, and you can draw it quarterly.”

  “Then half that sum,” she reflected, knowing how useless it was to contend with Lord Mount Severn when he got upon the stilts of “duty.” “Indeed, two hundred a year will be ample; it will seem like riches to me.”

  “I have named the sum, Isabel, and I shall not make it less. A hundred pounds every three months shall be paid to you, dating from this day. This does not count,” said he, laying down some notes on the table.

  He took her hand within his in token of farewell; turned and was gone.

  And Lady Isabel remained in her chamber alone.

  Alone; alone! Alone for evermore!

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  BARBARA’S MISDOINGS.

  A sunny afternoon in summer. More correctly speaking, it may be said a summer’s evening, for the bright beams were already slanting athwart the substantial garden of Mr. Justice Hare, and the tea hour, seven, was passing. Mr. and Mrs. Hare and Barbara were seated at the meal; somehow, meals always did seem in process at Justice Hare’s; if it was not breakfast, it was luncheon — if it was not luncheon, it was dinner — if it was not dinner, it was tea. Barbara sat in tears, for the justice was giving her a “piece of his mind,” and poor Mrs. Hare deferently agreeing with her husband, as she would have done had he proposed to set the house on fire and burn her up in it, yet sympathizing with Barbara, moved uneasily in her chair.

  “You do it for the purpose; you do it to anger me,” thundered the justice, bringing down his hand on the tea-table and causing the cups to rattle.

  “No I don’t, papa,” sobbed Barbara.

  “Then why do you do it?”

  Barbara was silent.

  “No; you can’t answer; you have nothing to urge. What is the matter, pray, with Major Thorn? Come, I will be answered.”

  “I don’t like him,” faltered Barbara.

  “You do like him; you are telling me an untruth. You have liked him well enough whenever he has been here.”

  “I like him as an acquaintance, papa; not as a husband.”

  “Not as a husband!” repeated the exasperated justice. “Why, bless my heart and body, the girl’s going mad! Not as a husband! Who asked you to like him as a husband before he became such? Did ever you hear that it was necessary or expedient, or becoming for a young lady to act on and begin to ‘like’ a gentleman as ‘her husband?’”

  Barbara felt a little bewildered.

  “Here’s the whole parish saying that Barbara Hare can’t be married, that nobody will have her, on account of — of — of that cursed stain left by —— , I won’t trust myself to name him, I should go too far. Now, don’t you think that’s a pretty disgrace, a fine state of things?”

  “But it is not true,” said Barbara; “people do ask me.”

  “But what’s the use of their asking when you say ‘No?’” raved the justice. “Is that the way to let the parish know that they ask? You are an ungrateful, rebellious, self-willed daughter, and you’ll never be otherwise.”

  Barbara’s tears flowed freely. The justice gave a dash at the bell handle, to order the tea things carried away, and after their removal the subject was renewed, together with Barbara’s grief. That was the worst of Justice Hare. Let him seize hold of a grievance, it was not often he got upon a real one, and he kept on at it, like a blacksmith hammering at his forge. In the midst of a stormy oration, tongue and hands going together, Mr. Carlyle came in.

  Not much altered; not much. A year and three-quarters had gone by and they had served to silver his hair upon the temples. His manner, too, would never again be careless and light as it once had been. He was the same keen man of business, the same pleasant, intelligent companion; the generality of people saw no change in him. Barbara rose to escape.

  “No,” said Justice Hare, planting himself between her and the door; “that’s the way you like to get out of my reach when I am talking to you. You won’t go; so sit down again. I’ll tell you of your ill-conduct before Mr. Carlyle, and see if that will shame you.”

  Barbara resumed her seat, a rush of crimson dyeing her cheeks. And Mr. Carlyle looked inquiringly, seeming to ask an explanation of her distress. The justice continued after his own fashion.

  “You know, Carlyle, that horrible blow that fell upon us, that shameless disgrace. Well, because the parish can’t clack enough about the fact itself, it must begin about Barbara, saying that the disgrace and humiliation are reflected upon her, and that nobody will come near her to ask her to be his wife. One would think, rather than lie under the stigma and afford the parish room to talk, she’d marry the first man that came, if it was the parish beadle — anybody else would. But now, what are the facts? You’ll stare when you know them. She has received a bushel of good offers — a bushel of them,” repeated the justice, dashing his hand down on his knee, “and she says ‘No!’ to all. The last was to-day, from Major Thorn, and, my young lady takes and puts the stopper upon it, as usual, without reference to me or her mother, without saying with your leave or by your leave. She wants to be kept in her room for a week upon bread and water, to bring her to her senses.”

  Mr. Carlyle glanced at Barbara. She was sitting meekly under the infliction, her wet eyelashes falling on her flushed cheeks and shading her eyes. The justice was heated enough, and had pushed his flaxen wig nearly hind-part before, in the warmth of his argument.

  “What did you say to her?” snapped the justice.

  “Matrimony may not have charms for Barbara,” replied Mr. Carlyle half jokingly.

  “Nothing does have charms for her that ought to have,” growled Justice Hare. “She’s one of the contrary ones. By the way, though,” hastily resumed the justice, leaving the objectionable subject, as another flashed across his memory, “they were coupling your name and matrimony together, Carlyle, last night, at the Buck’s Head.”

  A very perceptible tinge of red rose to the face of Mr. Carlyle, telling of inward emotion, but his voice and manner betrayed none.

  “Indeed,” he carelessly said.

  “Ah, you are a sly one; you are, Carlyle. Remember how sly you were over your first — —” marriage, Justice Hare was going to bring out, but it suddenly occurred to him that all circumstances considered, it was not precisely the topic to recall to
Mr. Carlyle. So he stopped himself in the utterance, coughed, and went on again. “There you go, over to see Sir John Dobede, not to see Sir John, but paying court to Miss Dobede.”

  “So the Buck’s Head was amusing itself with that!” good-naturedly observed Mr. Carlyle. “Well, Miss Dobede is going to be married, and I am drawing up the settlements.”

  “It’s not she; she marries young Somerset; everybody knows that. It’s the other one, Louisa. A nice girl, Carlyle.”

  “Very,” responded Mr. Carlyle, and it was all the answer he gave. The justice, tired of sitting indoors, tired, perhaps, of extracting nothing satisfactory from Mr. Carlyle, rose, shook himself, set his wig aright before the chimney-glass, and quitted the house on his customary evening visit to the Buck’s Head. Barbara, who watched him down the path, saw that he encountered someone who happened to be passing the gate. She could not at first distinguish who it might be, nothing but an arm and shoulder cased in velveteen met her view, but as their positions changed in conversation — his and her father’s — she saw that it was Locksley; he had been the chief witness, not a vindictive one; he could not help himself, against her brother Richard, touching the murder of Hallijohn.

  Meanwhile Mrs. Hare had drawn Mr. Carlyle into a chair close by her own.

  “Archibald, will you forgive me if I say a word upon the topic introduced by Mr. Hare?” she said, in a low tone, as she shook his hand. “You know how fondly I have ever regarded you, second only to my poor Richard. Your welfare and happiness are precious to me. I wish I could in any way promote them. It occurs to me, sometimes, that you are not at present so happy as you might be.”

  “I have some sources of happiness,” said Mr. Carlyle. “My children and I have plenty of sources of interest. What do you mean, dear Mrs. Hare?”

  “Your home might be made happier.”

  Mr. Carlyle smiled, nearly laughed. “Cornelia takes care of that, as she did in the old days, you know.”