Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “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 kept 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 forebode 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 upon 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 called for 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 then.”

  “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 over them, as the echo of the words died away on the air.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  A TEMPTING BAIT.

  THERE was a crash of carriages at one of the houses in Portland Place; and as the doors were flung open ever and again to the visitors, the glare of many lights, the strains of music, the sweet perfume from the array of hot-house flowers on the staircase, struck dazzlingly to the charmed senses of the beautiful forms, gay as butterflies, fluttering in. The Earl of Oakburn and Lady Jane Chesney were holding an evening reception.

  Their first that season, and their last. And yet, scarcely to be called “that season”; for the season was almost over. In an ordinary year it would have been quite over, for August had come in, and numbers were already on the wing to cooler places, panting from the heat and dust of the close metropolis; but Parliament had sat late, and many lingered still.

  Jane had urged on the earl the necessity (she had put it so) of their giving one of these receptions. She had accepted invitations to a few; the earl to a very few; and she thought they should make a return. But such a thing was very much out of Lord Oakburn’s line — for the matter of that, it was not in Jane’s — and he had held out against it. Quite at the last moment, when three parts of the world had quitted London, the earl surprised Jane one morning by telling her she might “send out and invite the folks,” and then it would be done with.

  They were somewhat more at ease with regard to Clarice. Somewhat. Every possible inquiry that the earl could think of had been set on foot to find her, and the aid of the police had been called in. Day after day, hour after hour, had the old Countess of Oakburn come down to Portland Place, asking if she was found, and worrying the earl well-nigh out of his senses. She threw all the blame upon him; she told him any father but he would have confined her as a lunatic, rather than have suffered her to be out without knowing where; and Jane was grievously reproached for her share, in assuming that Clarice was in the situation in the vicinity of Hyde Park, when it turned out that she had been some twelve months gone from it.

  But still they were more at ease — or tried to feel so. In the course of their researches, which had extended to every likely quarter, they learnt the fact that one of the governess-agencies had procured a situation some ten months previously for a Miss Beauchamp. She had gone out to be governess in an English family of the name of Vaughan, who had settled in Lower Canada. The lady was described as young, nice-looking, and of pleasing manners; and she had told the agent that she had no relatives in England to consult as to her movements; altogether there did seem a probability of its being really Clarice. The Earl of Oakburn, in his impetuous fashion, assumed it to be so without further doubt, and Jane hoped it.

  Then there was a lull in the storm of suspense. Miss Beauchamp — the supposed Clarice — was written to; not only by Jane, but by those who were making official inquiries on Lord Oakburn’s part; they were tolerably at their ease until answers should arrive, and were at liberty to think of other things. It was during this lull that Lord Oakburn told Jane she might hold her reception.

  And this was the night: and the rooms, considering how late was the month, August, were well filled, and Jane was doing her best, in her ever-quiet way, to entertain her guests, wishing heartily, at the same time, that the thing was over.

  In a pretty dress of white crape, a wreath of white flowers confining her flowing curls, sufficient mourning for a child, stood Lucy Chesney, her eyes beaming, her damask cheeks glowing with excitement. Perhaps Jane was not wise in suffering Lucy to appear: some of the people around would have reproached her that it was not “the thing,” had they dared to do so; but Jane, who knew little of fashionable customs, had never once thought of excluding her. One of the rooms had been appropriated to dancing, and Lucy, a remarkably graceful and pretty girl, had found partners hitherto, in spite of her youth. Not a single dance had she missed; and now, after a waltz that had whirled her giddy, she leaned against the wall to regain breath.

  “Just look at that child! How can they let her dance like that?” The words reached Jane’s ears, and she turned to see what child could be meant. Lucy! But she might have divined it, for there was no other child present. Jane went up to her.

  “You are dancing too much, Lucy. I wonder Miss Lethwait is not looking after you. Where is she?”

  “Oh, thank you, Jane, but I don’t want looking after,” was the reply, the child’s whole face sparkling with pleasure. “I never was so happy in my life.”

  “But you may dance too much. Where is Miss Lethwait?”

  “Oh, I have not seen her for ever so long. I think she is with papa in his smoking-room.”

  “With papa in his smoking-room!” echoed Jane.

  “Well, I saw her there once: we have had three dances since that. She was filling papa’s pipe for him!”

  “Lucy!”

  “It is true, Jane. Papa was cross; saying that it was a shame that he could not smoke his pipe because the house was full, and Miss Lethwait said, ‘You shall smoke it, dear Lord Oakburn, and I’ll keep the door;’ and she took off her gloves and began to fill it. I came away then.”

  Jane’s brow darkened. “Had you gone into the room with Miss Lethwait?”

  “No; I was running about from one room to another, and I ran in there and saw them talking. Jane! please don’t keep me! They are beginning another dance, and I am engaged for it.”

  Lord Oakburn’s smoking-room was a small den at the end of a passage. But though small, Jane had deemed it might be found useful to-night, and it had been converted into a reception-room. In it stood the governess, Miss Lethwait. She looked magnificent. Of that remarkably pale complexion which lights up so well, her eyes sparkling, her beautiful hair shining with the purple of a raven’s wing, the plainness of her features — and they were plain — was this
night eclipsed. She wore a low white evening dress trimmed with scarlet, showing to the best advantage her white neck, her drooping shoulders, her rounded arms. Never had she appeared to so great advantage. Taking her altogether, no form in the room could vie with hers. She looked made to adorn a coronet — and perhaps she was herself thinking so.

  Perhaps some one else was thinking so. One, who could think, so far as that opinion went, to more purpose than Miss Lethwait herself — the Earl of Oakburn. The rough old tar stood near her, and his eyes ranged over her with much admiration. He had not lost his liking for a fine woman, although he was verging on his sixtieth year. The smoking interlude was over. Lord Oakburn had enjoyed his pipe, and Miss Lethwait had obligingly kept the door against intruders.

  Was Miss Lethwait laying herself out to entrap the unwary? Had she been doing it all along, ever since her entrance into that house? It was a question upon which she never afterwards could come to any satisfactory conclusion. Certainly the tempting bait had been ever before her mind’s eye, constantly floating in her brain; but she was of sufficiently honourable nature, and to lay herself out deliberately to allure Lord Oakburn was what she had believed herself hitherto to be wholly incapable of doing. Had she seen another guilty of such conduct, her worst scorn would have been cast to the offender. And yet — was she not, on this night, working for it? It is true she did not lure him on by word or look; but she did stand there knowing that the peer’s admiring eyes were bent upon her. She remained in that room with him, conscious that she had no business there; feeling that to be there was not honourable towards Lady Jane, who naturally supposed her to be mixing with the company and keeping an eye upon Lucy. She had taken upon herself to indulge him in his longing for his pipe; had filled it for him; had stayed in the fumes of the smoke while he finished it. In after-life Miss Lethwait never quite reconciled that night with her conscience.

  “Do you admire all this whirl and hubbub?” suddenly asked the earl.

  “No, Lord Oakburn. It dazzles my sight and takes my breath away. But then I am unused to it.”

  “By Jove! I’d sooner be in a hurricane, rounding Cape Horn. I told Jane it would take us out of our soundings to have this crowd here, but she kept bothering about the claims of society.’ I’m sure society may be smothered for all the claim it has upon me!”

  “The pleasantest society is that of our own fireside — those of us who have firesides to enjoy,” returned Miss Lethwait.

  “We have all as much as that, I suppose,” said the earl.

  “Ah, no, Lord Oakburn! Not all. It is not my fortune to have one; and perhaps never will be. But I must not be envious of those who have.” —

  She stood under the gas chandelier, beneath its glittering drops; her head was raised to its own lofty height, but the eyelids drooped until the dark lashes rested on the cheeks — lashes that were moist with tears. She held a sprig of geranium in her white gloves, and her fingers were busy, slowly pulling it to pieces, leaf by leaf, petal from petal. —

  “And why should you not have a fireside?” bluntly asked Lord Oakburn, his sight not losing a single tear, a single movement of the fingers. Keen sight it was, peering from beneath its bushy brows.

  She quite laughed in answer; a scornful laugh, telling of inward pain.

  “You may as well ask, my lord, why one woman is Queen of England, and another the unhappy wretch who sits stitching her fifteen hours daily in a garret, wearing out her heart and her life. Our destinies are unequally marked out in this world, and we must take them as they are sent to us. Sometimes a feeling comes over me — I don’t know whether it be a wrong one — that the harder the lot in this world, the brighter it will be in that which has to come.”

  “Favours and fortune are dealt out unequally, that’s true enough,” said the earl, thinking of his past life of poverty and struggle.

  “They are, they are,” she answered bitterly. “And the worst is, you are so chained down to your lot that you cannot escape from it. As a poor bird entrapped into a cage, beats its wings against the wires, and beats in vain, so we wear out our minds with our never-ending struggle to free ourselves from the thraldom that destiny has forced upon us. I was not made to live out my life in servitude: every hour of the day I feel this. I feel that my mind, my heart, my intellect, were formed for a higher destiny: nevertheless it is the lot that is appointed me, and I must abide by it.”

  “Will you share my lot?” suddenly asked the earl.

  The governess raised her eyes to his, a keen, searching glance darting from them, as if she suspected the words were only a mockery. The peer moved nearer, and laid his hand upon her shoulder.

  “I am a blue jacket of nine and fifty years, Miss Lethwait, but I have some wear in me yet. I never had an earthly thing the matter with me except gout; and if you’ll be Countess of Oakburn and make my fireside yours, I’ll take care of you.”

  It was rather an odd way of making an offer, certainly; gout and marriage, jumbled incongruously together. The earl, however, was not a courtier: he could only speak the genuine thoughts of his heart.

  “What do you say?” he continued, having given her scarcely time to speak.

  She gently removed his hand from her shoulder, and lifted her wet eyes to his. The tears were genuine as the earl’s words: emotion — perhaps gratitude — had called them up.

  “Thank you greatly, Lord Oakburn, but it could not be.”

  “Why not?” asked the earl.

  “It — I — it would never be agreeable to your daughters, my lord. They would never tolerate me as your wife.”

  “What are you talking about now?” cried the offended earl, who never brooked opposition, no matter from whom. “My daughters! What have they to do with it? I am not their husband they’ll be getting husbands of their own.”

  “I am young; younger than Lady Jane,” she said, her lips growing pale with the conflict that was before her. “Lord Oakburn, if you made me your wife it might sow dissension between you and all your daughters, especially between you and Lady Jane. I feel, I feel that it would do so.”

  “By Jupiter! but my girls shall not thwart me!” cried the peer in a heat. “I should like to see them trying it. Laura has chosen for herself, Clarice has gone roaming nobody knows where, Lucy is a child; and as for Jane, do you think she possesses no common sense?”

  The governess made no reply. She seemed to be endeavouring to steady her trembling lips.

  “Look you, Miss Lethwait. The very day I came into the title, I made up my mind to marry: it is incumbent on me to do so. The next heir is a remote fellow, hardly a cousin at all, and he has lived in Nova Scotia or some such outlandish place since he was a boy. A pretty thing it would be to have that figure-head to succeed me! Any one with a grain of gumption in his topsails would have known that I should marry; and, my dear, you’ve a splendid figure, and I needn’t look further, and I like you, and that’s enough. Will you be Lady Oakburn?”

  Miss Lethwait shook excessively, all of emotion that she possessed within her was called up. She had really good and amiable qualities, and she did not like to be the means of sowing ill-feeling between the earl and his children. In that same moment the past grew clear to her, and she was conscious that the possibility of becoming Countess of Oakburn had been suspended before her dazzled vision as the one tempting bait of life. How few, how few have the strength to resist such baits! Do you remember where the Abbot of Glastonbury, walking out in the summer’s noon, overtakes the Red Fisherman plying his trade, and halts to watch him?

  There was turning of keys and creaking of locks

  As he drew forth a bait from his iron box.

  It was a bundle of beautiful things;

  A peacock’s tail and a butterfly’s wings,

  A scarlet slipper, an auburn curl,

  An armlet of silk, and a bracelet of pearl;

  And a packet of letters from whose sweet fold

  Such a stream of delicate odours rolled,

  Tha
t the abbot fell on his face, and fainted,

  And deemed his spirit was half-way sainted.

  For beautiful trifles such as these, woman has before now given up her soul: how much more, then, her hand and heart! Not one but bore charms for the eyes of Miss Lethwait; symbols all of them — the scarlet slipper, the curl, the silk armlet, the bracelet — of that path and pleasure that must beset the future partner of Lord Oakburn’s coronet. These things in prospective wear so plausible a magic! The packet of letters, sickly with their perfume, would hold out to Miss Lethwait the least attraction; love-letters penned by the old peer could savour of little except the ridiculous.

  Would the tempting bait win her? Hear what success followed that, thrown by the Red Fisherman.

  One jerk, and there a lady lay,

  A lady wondrous fair:

  But the rose of her lip had all faded away,

  And her cheek it was white and cold as clay,

  And torn was her raven hair. —

  “Ha! ha!” said the fisher in merry guise,

  “Her gallant was hook’d before!”

  And the abbot heaved some piteous sighs,

  For oft had he bless’d those deep-blue eyes;

  The eyes of Mistress Shore.

  The loving and the lovely, the pure and the sullied, the guilty and the innocent, all have succumbed to the golden visions held out to them. Had Miss Lethwait withstood, she had been more than woman. Lord Oakburn waited for her answer patiently — patiently for him.

  “If you wish to make me yours, my lord, so be it,” she said, and her very lips quivered as she yielded to the temptation. “I will strive to be to you a good and faithful wife.”

  “Then that’s settled,” said the matter-of-fact earl, with more straightforwardness than gallantry. But he laid his hand upon her shoulder again, and bent to take a kiss from her lips.