Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  ‘‘I should turn the world topsy-turvy but 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 places she and her father could think of had been turned “topsy-turvy” in one sense, in the past days: 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 attached 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 upon the subject.”

  “I wonder that he did not tell you,” said Jane.

  “I don’t wonder at it at all,” dissented Laura. “I don’t like to speak about it. Would you believe, Lady Oakburn, that I have never once mentioned it to my husband? He has not the least idea that we ever had another sister.”

  “But why do you not tell 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 it is within me, very strongly. I dare say 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 out 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 about it, and we are upon the subject. For a long, long time, 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 look 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 to the matter, that I, like you, fancied it possible papa had opened it, and I wrote to him from South Wennock and asked him the question.”

  “And he said he had not done so?”

  “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 exclaimed that 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 anything 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 do so.”

  Jane sighed. “I feel — I begin to feel that we shall never find Clarice.”

  “That’s nonsense,” returned Laura. “She is sure to be found some day, living or dead.”

  “Living or dead,” repeated Jane in low tones. “Yes, perhaps so. But it will not be living.”

  Laura preferred the sunny points of life to the shadows, 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 greatly; she thought she had never heard of anything so singular as this prolonged disappearance.

  In narrating 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 her 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 upon Jane. “I must put on my things,” she remarked to the countess. “Your servants and horses will think I am never coming. I sent orders down that they should wait when Jane returned.”

  Jane had seen the look of surprise on Lady Oakburn’s face, and spoke as Laura left the room. “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 events that have speedily followed. I am not by nature superstitious; I believe that I was born the reverse of it; but it is impossible these dreams should not 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 than she does.”

  “You have not related it to her?”

  “No. To her, of all others, I must be silent.”

  “But why to her in particular, Lady Jane?”

  “Well, the cause is — but it sounds foolish even in my own ears when mentioned, so what must it do 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 husband, was most unpleasantly prominent. The details I say I cannot give you, but I dreamt that 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 utterly free from superstition, and in a silent, 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, imparted their own impression to her, and she felt inclined to shiver.

  “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, seeing him so frequently, caused him to be mixed up with my 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. I feel myself that it is wrong.”

  “But did Mr. Carlton know your sister Clarice?” demanded the countess, growing strangely interested.

  “Certainly not. And therefore my reason and good sense rise up 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 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 the dream to me?” 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 towards 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 overcome 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 a large lamp of yellow and red glass.

  Laura stepped from the carriage, and a man-servant opened the door almost the instant that she had rung. —

  “Can I see Mr. Carlton?”

  “Not now, ma’am. It is not my master’s hour for receiving patients. In a moment 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, evidently relieved, 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, 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 so destined to pass. In the elder man’s sharp tone, his decisive gesture as he turned and answered to the call, she recognized 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 mourning was not assumed yet for the earl. But Mr. Carlton did not entertain a very great 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’m very sorry you should have come at this hour, madam,” 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 break it always. If you will call 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 manservant was removing the remains of luncheon from the table; 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.

  The servant 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 to get him to aid them. And Laura entrenched herself within her own pride, and set herself to dislike him — as she always did dislike any one 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 arrive 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 crediting the lapse of memory.

  “The Earl of Oakburn: true. When I read of his death I felt sure that I ought to remember that name for some particular reason, 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 forgetfulness. I and Lewis had very 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 mettle 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. “No one 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 for her own use. Driving down in that coroneted carriage with all the signs of rank and wealth about it, was a pastime most 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 will 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 as much as that.”

  “It’s more than I did at his age. And I would recommend him to make it suffice.”

  The peculiar emphasis which accompanied the words, told a tale to Laura: 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.

  “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 in addition, making twelve or fourteen, by the year’s end he would find that too little, and ask for fourteen hundred more. Lewis is 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 during 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 any one 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, 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 welcomed.”