by Ellen Wood
“Oh yes. But, Jane, why should care come to everybody?”
“My child, I have just told you it is the will of God. Sometimes we bring it upon ourselves, through our own conduct; but I’ll not, talk to you of that now. You are young and light-hearted, Lucy, and you cannot yet understand the need of care. It comes to wean us from a world that we can stay but a little time in—”
“Oh, Jane! we live to be old men and women!”
Jane Chesney smiled; care and its bitter fruits — bitter to bear, however sweet they may be in the ending — had come to her early, and made her wise.
“The very best of us live but a short time, Lucy — for, you know, we must speak of time by comparison. Threescore years and ten here, and ages upon ages, life without ending, hereafter. Well, dear, care and sorrow and disappointment come to draw our love from this world and to teach us to long for the next — to long for it, and to prepare for it. Care is permitted to come to us by God, and nothing comes from Him but what is good for us.”
“Why do people hide their care?”
“It is our nature to conceal excessive care or joy; they are both too sacred to be exposed to our fellow-mortals; they are hidden away with God. Lucy, dear, you are too young to understand this.”
“I shall look out for the skeleton now, Jane. When I see people who seem a little sad, I shall think, Ah, you have a skeleton in your closet!”
“It exists where no sadness is apparent,” said Miss Chesney. “I remember meeting with a lady — it was before we came to South Wennock — who appeared to possess every requisite to make life happy, and she was light-hearted and cheerful in manner. One day, when I had grown intimate with her, I remarked to her, that if any one ever appeared free from care, it was herself. I shall never forget her answer, or the deep sadness that rose to her face as she spoke it. ‘Few, living, have been so afflicted with anxiety and care as I have been; it has come to me in all ways; and, but for God’s support, I could not have borne it. You must not judge by appearances, Miss Chesney.’ The answer took away my illusion, Lucy; and the tears rose involuntarily to my own eyes, in echo to those which earnestness and remembrance had called up to hers.”
“What had her sorrow been, Jane?”
“She did not say; but that her words and affliction were only too true, I was certain. She appeared to be rich in the world’s ties, having a husband and children, brothers and sisters — having all, in short, apparently, to make life happy. The skeleton exists where we least expect it, Lucy.”
“Suppose it ever comes to me, Jane. Should I die?”
“No, dear,” laughed Jane Chesney, the little girl’s quaint earnestness was so droll. “It does not come to run away with people in that manner; it rather comes to teach them how to live. I will repeat to you a sentence, Lucy, which you must treasure up and remember always. ‘Adversity’ — adversity is only another name for care and sorrow, no matter what their nature,” Jane Chesney broke off to say: “‘Adversity hardens the heart, or opens it to Paradise.’ When it shall come to you, the terrible skeleton of adversity, Lucy, you must let it do the latter.”
“That is a nice saying, Jane; I like it,” repeated Lucy. “‘Adversity hardens the heart, or opens it to Paradise.’”
CHAPTER XV.
CAPTAIN CHESNEY.
LAURA had hastened upstairs at her father’s summons. Captain Chesney was reclining in an easy-chair, his feet extended before him on what is called a rest. Those feet were swathed in bandages, as gouty feet sometimes must be. He was quite helpless, as far as the legs were concerned; but his tongue and hands were the reverse of helpless, — the hands perpetually kept up the noise of the stick, and the tongue its own sound, to the extreme discomfort of the household. He bent his eyes with displeasure upon Laura from beneath their overhanging brows.
“Was that you, playing?”
“Yes, papa.”
“Oh, it was not Lucy?”
“Papa, you know that Lucy could not play like that.”
“A good thing for her,” roared Captain Chesney, as a twinge took him, “for I should have ordered her to be whipped first, and sent to bed afterwards. How dare you annoy me with that noisy tinkling piano? I’ll sell it.”
As a day never passed that Captain Chesney did not give utterance to the same threat, it made little impression upon Laura.
“Where’s Jane?” he went on.
“She’s at those everlasting bills, papa,” was Laura’s reply, who, truth to say, did not regard her father with the excessive reverence and affection that Jane did, and was not always in manner so submissively dutiful.
“Ugh!” retorted the captain. “Let her throw them behind the fire.”
“I should,” put in Laura; but the assenting remark greatly offended him, and for five minutes he kept up an incessant scolding of Laura.
“Is that inquest over?” he resumed.
“I don’t know anything about it, papa.”
“Has Carlton not been up?”
“No,” replied Laura, bending to smooth the pillow under her father’s feet, lest the sudden accession of colour, which she felt rush to her cheeks, should be noticed. In doing this, she unwittingly touched the worst foot in the worst part; and the unhappy captain, one of the most impatient to bear pain that gout ever came to, shrieked, shook his stick, and finally let off some of what Miss Laura was in the habit of calling his quarter-deck language.
“Papa, I am very sorry; my hand slipped,” she deprecatingly said.
“Did you ever have gout, Miss Laura Chesney?”
“No, papa.”
“Then perhaps you’ll exercise a little care when you are about those who do have it, and not let your hand ‘slip.’ Slip, indeed! it’s all you are good for, to agonize suffering people. What do you do here? Why don’t you let Jane come up?”
“Why, papa, you called me up.”
“That cantankering piano! I’ll send for a man to-morrow, and he shall value it, and take it away. What’s the reason that Carlton doesn’t come? He’s getting above his business, is that fellow. He has not been here all day long. I have a great mind to turn him off and call in one of the Greys. I wish I had done so when we first came here; they are attentive. You shall write him a note, and tell him not to put his foot inside my gate any more.”
Laura’s heart turned sick. Sick lest her father should execute his threat.
“He could not be dismissed without being paid,” she said in low tones, hoping the suggestion might have weight; and the captain growled.
“Has Pompey come back?” he began again, while Laura stood submissively before him, not daring to leave unless dismissed.
“Not yet, papa. He has scarcely had time to come back yet.”
“But I say he has had time,” persistently interrupted the captain. “He is loitering over that precious inquest, listening to what’s going on there. One fool makes many. I’ll loiter him with my stick when he returns. Give me that.”
The captain rapped his stick violently on a table in his vicinity, pretty nearly causing the saucer of jelly which stood there to fly off it. Laura handed him the saucer and teaspoon.
“Who made this jelly?” he asked, when he had tasted it.
“I — I dare say it was Jane,” she replied, with some hesitation, for Laura kept herself entirely aloof from domestic duties. She knew no more than the man in the moon how they went on, or who accomplished them, except that it must lie between Jane and the maid-servant.
“Is it made of calves’ feet, or cow-heels, I wonder?” continued the captain, growling and tasting. “If that’s not made of cow-heels, I’m a story-teller,” he decided, in another minute. “What does Jane mean by it? I told her I would not touch jelly that was made of cow-heel. Wretched stuff!”
“Then, papa, I believe you are wrong, for I think Jane ordered some calves’ feet a day or two ago,” protested Laura. But she only so spoke to appease him; and the irascible old sailor, somewhat mollified, resumed his pursuit of the jell
y.
“What did Clarice say?” he asked.
“Clarice?” repeated Laura, opening her eyes in wonder. Not wonder only at the question, but at hearing so much as that name mentioned by her father.
The ex-sailor opened his, and fixed them on his daughter. “I ask you what Clarice said?”
“Said when, papa?”
“When? Why, when Jane heard from her the other morning. Tuesday, wasn’t it?”
“Jane did not hear from Clarice, papa.”
“Jane did, young lady. Why should she tell me she did, if she didn’t? So you want to keep it from me, do you?”
“Indeed, papa,” persisted Laura, “she did not hear from her. I am quite sure that she did not. Had she heard from her, she would have told me.”
A cruel twinge took the captain’s right foot. “You be shot!” he shrieked. “And serve you right for seeking to deceive your father. A pretty puppet I should be in your hands but for Jane! Here, put this down. And now you may go.”
Laura replaced the saucer on the table, and went back to her sisters, thankful to be released.
“Papa is so cross to-night,” she exclaimed. “He is finding fault with everything.”
“Illness does make a person irritable, especially a man,” spoke Jane, soothingly, ever ready to extenuate her father’s faults. “And papa, you know, has been accustomed to implicit obedience in his own ship, just as if he were captain of a little kingdom.”
“I think the sailors must have had a fine time of it,” said Laura; and Jane forbore to inquire in what light she spoke; she could not always be contending. “What was the jelly made of, Jane, — calves’ feet, or cow-heel?”
“Cow-heel.”
“There! papa found it out, or thought he did: though I am sure the nicest palate in the world cannot tell the difference, when it’s flavoured with wine and lemon. He said he wondered at you, Jane, putting him off with cow-heel. I was obliged to tell him it was calves’ foot, just to pacify him.”
Jane Chesney sighed deeply. “Calves’ feet are so very dear!” she said. “I did it for the best. If papa only knew the difficulty I have to go on at all.”
“And any one but you would let him know of the difficulty,” boldly returned Laura. But Jane only shook her head.
“Jane, have you heard from Clarice lately?” resumed Laura.
Miss Chesney lifted her eyes somewhat in surprise. “Had I heard, Laura, I should not be likely to keep the fact from you. Why do you ask that question?”
“Papa says that you heard from her on Tuesday; that you told him so. I said you had not heard, and he immediately accused me of wanting to keep the news from him.”
“Papa says I told him I had heard from Clarice!” repeated Jane Chesney in astonishment.
“He says that you told him you heard from her on Tuesday.”
“Why, what can have caused papa to fancy such a thing? Stay,” she added, as a recollection seemed to come to her: “I know how the mistake must have arisen. I mentioned Clarice’s name to papa, hoping that he might be induced to break the barrier of silence and speak of her. I said I thought we should soon be hearing from her. That was on Tuesday.”
“Why do you think we shall soon be hearing from her?”
“Because — because” — Miss Chesney spoke with marked hesitation—” I had on Monday night so extraordinary a dream. I feel sure we shall hear from her before long.”
Laura Chesney burst into a laugh. “Oh, Jane, you’ll make me die of laughter, some day, with those dreams of yours. Let us hear what it was.”
“No, Laura; you would only ridicule it.”
Lucy Chesney stole up to her eldest sister. “Jane, tell me, do tell me; I shall not ridicule it, and I like to hear dreams.”
Jane shook her head in that decisive manner from which Lucy knew there was no appeal. “It was not a pleasant dream, Lucy, and I shall not tell it. I was thinking very much of Clarice on Tuesday, in consequence of the dream, and I ventured to mention her name before papa. That is how the misapprehension must have occurred.”
“Was the dream about her?” asked Laura; and Jane Chesney did not detect the covert irony of the tone.
“Yes. But I should be sorry to tell it to any one: in fact, I could not. It was a dreadful dream; an awful dream.”
They were interrupted. A maid-servant opened the drawingroom door and put her head in. Rather a surly-looking sort of head.
“Miss Chesney, here’s that coachman come again. He is asking to see the captain.”
“Captain Chesney is ill, and cannot see any one,” imperiously answered Laura, before Jane could speak. “Tell him so, Rhode.”
“It’s of little good my telling him, Miss Laura. He declares that he’ll stop there all night, but what he’ll see the captain, or some of the family. He bade me go in, and not waste my breath over him, for he shouldn’t take an answer from me.”
“I will go to him, Rhode,” said Jane faintly. “Oh, Laura,” she added, sinking into her chair again as the maid retired, “how sick these things make me! I could almost rather die, than see these creditors whom I cannot pay.”
At that moment Captain Chesney’s stick was heard in full play, and his voice with it, shouting for Jane. He brooked no delay when he called, and Jane knew that she must go to him. “He may keep me a long while, Laura; I do not know what it may be for — I do wish he would let me sit with him, to be at hand. Laura, could you, for once, go out to this man?”
“If I must, I must,” replied Laura Chesney; “but I’d rather go a mile the other way. Though, indeed, Jane, I have no more right to be exempt from these unpleasantnesses than you.”
“You could not manage with them as I do; you would grow angry and haughty with them,” returned Jane, as she ran upstairs. “Coming, coming, coming, dear papa,” she called out, for the stick was rapping furiously.
Miss Laura Chesney proceeded down the gravel-walk which swept round the lawn, and looked over the gate. There stood a respectable-looking man in a velveteen dress. He was the proprietor of a fly in the neighbourhood, which Captain Chesney had extensively patronized, being rather given to driving about the country; but the captain had not been found so ready to pay. Apart from his straitened means, Captain Chesney possessed a sailor’s proverbial carelessness with regard to money: it was not so much that he ran wilfully into expense, as that he ran heedlessly into it. It never occurred to the captain, when he ordered the fly for an hour or two’s recreation, and would seat himself in state in it, his legs up on the seat before him, his stick in his hand, and one of his daughters by his side, that the time for settling must come. Very pleasant and sociable would he be with the driver, for there lived not a pleasanter man, when he pleased, than Captain Chesney; and the driver would lean down from his box and touch his hat, and tell about this place they were passing, and the other place.
But settling time had come, was long past; a good deal of money was owing to the man, and he could not get it.’
“Captain Chesney is ill; he cannot be seen,” began Laura, in a haughty, impatient tone. “Can you not take your answer?”
“I’ve took too many such answers, miss,” replied the applicant. “Here I come, day after day, week after week, and there’s always an excuse ready. ‘The captain’s out,’ or ‘the captain’s ill.’ It is time there was a end to it.”
“What do you want?” asked Laura.
“Want! why, my money. Look here, miss. I’m a poor man, with a wife and family to keep, and my wife sick in bed. If I can’t get that money that the captain owes me, it’ll be the ruin of me; and have it I must and will.”
He spoke in a civil but yet in a determined tone. Laura wished from her very heart that she could pay him.
“Here you have been, miss, the captain, and some of you ladies, always driving about in my fly, hindering me from letting it to other customers that would have paid me; and when I come to ask for my just due, nobody’s never at home to me.”
“Is it much?” ask
ed Laura.
“It’s seven pound twelve shillings. Will you pay me, miss?”
She was startled to hear it was so much. “I wish I could pay you,” she involuntarily exclaimed. “I have nothing to pay with.”
“Will you let me in then, to see Captain Chesney?”
“When I tell you he is ill, and cannot see you, I tell you truth,” replied Laura. “You must come when he is better.”
“Look here, miss,” said the man. “You won’t pay me; perhaps it’s true that you can’t; and you won’t let me in to see the captain, who could. So I’ll be obliged to you to give him a message from me. I’m very sorry to annoy any gentleman, tell him; but I must do it in self-defence, and now this is Thursday, and as true as that we two, miss, stand here, if the money is not paid me between this and twelve o’clock on Saturday, I’ll take out a summons against him for the debt.”
The man turned away as he spoke, and walked rapidly down the hill. Laura leaned on the gate, giving way to her vexation. She was not so often brought into contact with this sort of unpleasantness as Jane, and perhaps it was well she was not, for Laura would not have borne it placidly. She felt at that moment as if any asylum, any remote desert, would be a haven of rest, in comparison with her father’s home.
Suddenly she lifted her head, for one was approaching who had become to her dangerously dear, and she recognized the step. A rich damask flushed her cheek, her eyelids fell over her eyes that they might hide their loving light, and her hand trembled as it was taken by Mr. Carlton.
“My darling! were you watching for me?”