Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Love took up the glass of Time and turned it in his glowing hands

  Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

  Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all its cords with might;

  Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHANGES.

  LADY JANE CHESNEY sat in her quiet drawing-room in the old house on the Rise. The Rise was an important suburb now; mansions, and villas with two entrance-gates, and dwellings with miniature lodges, and other grandeur, had sprung up. Seven years make changes in a place.

  They had not made much in Jane Chesney. The former care, the disappointment, the trouble had passed; and these later peaceful years of quiet had smoothed her fair countenance instead of ageing it. One source of care alone was hers; and that had grown into a care of the past — the anxiety touching her sister Clarice. Strange as it may seem to have to write it, strange as it was in fact, nothing whatever had been heard of Lady Clarice Chesney. Not so much as a word, a hint, a sign of her had come to Jane in any way during the past seven years. Even Mrs. West — the only link as it had seemed to Lady Jane between Clarice in being and Clarice lost — had disappeared. Not disappeared in the sense that Clarice had disappeared. Mrs. West had given up her house in Gloucester Terrace and gone to reside on the Continent for the benefit of her children’s education. Her husband went with her. A successful man in business, he had realized a competency earlier than most men realize it, and had (perhaps wisely) retired from it altogether. So that Jane had seen nothing of the Wests since that short interview with Mr. West at the period of Lord Oakburn’s death.

  No; Clarice Chesney remained lost; her fate a mystery amidst the many mysteries of life; and time had spread its healing wings over the heart of Jane, and anxiety and sorrow were now all of the past. It is true that moments of dismay would come over Jane, like unto that first waking of ours in the early morning, when all the old horror would return to her; the strange disappearance, the vivid features of the dreaded dream, the wearing suspense when she and the earl were afterwards searching for Clarice: and she would remember how faithfully she had promised her father to make Clarice the one chief object of her life. In these moments she would ask herself — was she doing so? But in truth she saw not anything that could be done, for all sources of inquiry had been exhausted at the time. Should any clue ever turn up, though it were but of the faintest, then Jane would act; act with all her best energy, and strive to unravel it. A voice within her sometimes made itself heard, whispering that that time would come.

  But the seven years had gone on, bringing none; and seven years at Lady Jane Chesney’s age seems a long span in the lease of life. The signs of care had left her face; it was placid and gentle; and existence in a calm, quiet way had yet charms for Jane Chesney.

  Not that little temporary worries never intruded themselves. I do not know any one to whom they do not come. Even this very morning something of the sort is troubling Jane as she sits in her cool and shaded drawing-room, where the sun does not penetrate until high noon. A letter has been delivered to her from Seaford from the Countess of Oakburn, and its contents are perplexing her, as her fair brow bends over it for about the twentieth time.

  Lady Oakburn had written to her some days previously, inviting her to come and stay with them at Seaford. Jane declined it. She did not feel inclined to go from home just then, she wrote; but perhaps, if all went well, she would spend Christmas with them in London. Jane’s former antipathy to the countess had worn away: she truly esteemed her, and they were the best of friends. Her refusal was duly despatched, and a few days passed on. But this morning had brought another letter from the countess, containing a few urgent lines of entreaty. “Do come to me at once, dear Lady Jane. I ask you for Lucy’s sake. She is quite well; but I must have some advice from you respecting her.”

  The words puzzled Jane. Lady Oakburn had written in evident anxiety; in — Jane thought — pain; certainly in haste. Her letters were always so sensible and self-possessed that there could be no doubt something unusual had seriously disturbed her, and that it concerned Lucy.

  “I must go,” decided Jane, as she folded the letter for the last time, and placed it in her pocket. “I do not like suspense, and I shall go to-day. We can get away by the three-o’clock train.”

  She rang for Judith, to give her necessary orders, and in the same moment saw the carriage of her sister Laura stopping at the gate. A grand carriage was Lady Laura’s now, with its bedecked servants and all sorts of show and frippery attached to it, quite after Laura’s own vain heart. Mr. Carlton the elder had quitted the world, and bequeathed his gains to his son; and none in all South Wennock were so grand as Mr and Lady Laura Carlton.

  She came in: the imperious look, which had now grown habitual, very conspicuous on her face; her robe of pale green morning silk rustling and glistening, her white Chantilly veil flung back. Jane could see in a moment that something had crossed her. Something often did cross her now. The sisters were not very intimate. Jane maintained her original resolution, never to enter Mr. Carlton’s house; and her intercourse with her sister was confined to these visits of Laura’s. Laura sat down upon the nearest chair, flinging her dainty lace parasol upon the table.

  “Jane, I wish to goodness you’d let me have Judith!”

  The words were spoken without any superfluous ceremony of greeting. When Laura was put out, she was as sparing of courtesy as ever had been the sailor-earl, her father. Jane looked at her in surprise.

  “Let you have Judith, Laura! I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Stifling has nearly driven me wild this morning with her stupidity,” returned Lady Laura, alluding to her maid; “and if I could only get some one in her place to suit me, she should go this very day. Would you believe, Jane, would you believe, that she has gone and sent that lovely gold-coloured scarf of mine to the dyer’s?”

  “She must have done it in mistake,” observed Jane.

  “But, good gracious who but an idiot would make such a mistake?” retorted Laura. “I told her to send my brown scarf to be dyed, and she says she thought I meant my gold one, and it has come home this morning converted into a wretched black thing! I could have beaten her in my vexation. I wish you’d spare me Judith, Jane. She would suit me, I know, better than any one else.”

  Jane shook her head. Perhaps she admired the coolness of the request. She said very little; but that little was to the effect that she could not spare Judith, and Laura saw she meant it.

  “Don’t part with a maid who suits you in other ways for one single error, Laura,” was her advice. “At any rate, I cannot give you Judith. I am going to take her away with me this very day. I am going to Seaford.”

  “To Seaford!” returned Laura, speaking as crossly as she felt. “Why, it was only last week when I met you in High Street you told me Lady Oakburn had invited you to Seaford, and you had declined to go.”

  “I know I did. But I have had another letter from her this morning, and have altered my mind. I shall go to-day.”

  Laura gave her head a toss in her old fashion. “I wouldn’t be as changeable as you, Jane, for anything. Then you won’t give me Judith?”

  “I am very sorry to refuse you, Laura,” was Jane’s answer, “but I could not do without her.”

  Laura sat tapping the carpet with her foot. “I have a great mind to go with you,” said she at length. “I am sure Lady Oakburn would be glad to see me.”

  “But I shall stay there a month.”

  “What of that?”

  “Mr. Carlton might not like to spare you so long.”

  “Do you suppose I study what he likes?” asked Laura, a bitterly supercilious scowl crossing her face. “But I won’t go: I should miss the races here.”

  For South Wennock was a gay place now, and held its own yearly races, at which few people enjoyed themselves more than Lady Laura Carlton. These races brought to them some of
the good county families, and Laura was in her element, keeping open house. She rose, saying a cold adieu to Jane. She was capricious as the wind, and swept out to her carriage with pouting lips.

  From that one little remark above of my Lady Laura’s, the reader will infer that the sunshine formerly brightening the domestic life of Mr. Carlton and his wife, had not continued to illumine it. Things might have been happier with Laura perhaps had she had children; but since that first infant, which had died at its birth, there had been no signs of any. Happier, in so far as that she would have had occupation; a legitimate interest to fill her thoughts; but it might not have made any difference to the terms on which she now lived with her husband. And the terms were not, on the whole, those of harmony.

  The original fault was his. However haughty, sullen, passionate Laura might have become; however aggravating in her manner to him as she often now was, let it emphatically be repeated that the fault lay originally with him. It was only a repetition of the story too often enacted in real life, though not so often disclosed to the world. Laura had loved Mr. Carlton with impassioned fervour; she had so continued to love him for three or four years; and then she was rudely awakened. Not awakened by the gradual process of disenchantment, but suddenly, violently, at one fell stroke.

  It is the speciality of man to be fickle; it is the speciality of some men to stoop to sin. Perhaps few men living were more inclined by nature to transgress social laws than was Mr. Carlton. He had been lax in his notions of morality all his life; he was lax still. His love for his wife had been wild and passionate as a whirlwind; but these whirlwinds, you know, never last. Certain rumours reflecting on Mr. Carlton were whispered about; escapades now and again, in which there was, it must be confessed, as much truth as scandal, and they unfortunately reached the ears of his wife. The town ignored them of course: was obligingly willing to ignore them; Lady Laura did not do so. She contrived to acquire pretty good proof of their foundation, and they turned her love for her husband into something very like hatred. It has had the same effect, you may be aware, in other lives. Since then she had been unequal in her temper. The first burst of the storm over, the cruel shock in some degree lived down, she had subsided into an indifferent sort of civility: but this calm was occasionally varied by bursts of passionate anger, not in the least agreeable to Mr. Carlton. Personally he was loving and indulgent to Laura still. No open rupture had taken place to cause a nine days’ marvel. Before the world they were as cordial with each other as are most husbands and wives; but Laura Carlton was an unhappy woman, looking upon herself as one miserably outraged, miserably deceived. Little wonder was there at the remark to her sister: “Do you suppose I should study what he likes?”

  Lady Jane, attended by her faithful maid, drove to Great Wennock to take one of the afternoon trains. The road was another thing that had been changed by the hand of Time. The old ruts and hillocks and stones had disappeared, and now all was smooth as a bowling-green. As they entered the waiting-room, the omnibus renowned in this history, which still plied between the two towns, and now boasted of a rather more civil driver, and of new springs and of sundry other embellishments, was drawn up in its place outside, waiting for passengers from the coming train. Had Lady Jane and Judith turned their eyes to it in passing — which they did not do — they might have seen seated in it a remarkably stout lady. It was an old acquaintance of ours, Mrs. Pepperfly. She had been on an errand to Great Wennock, and was taking advantage of the omnibus to return.

  The train came up. It set down those of its passengers who wished to alight, and took up those who wished to go on by it. Amidst the latter were Lady Jane and Judith.

  Mrs. Pepperfly had been enjoying a good dinner, including a liberal supply of beer. The result was, that she felt drowsy. She was alone in the omnibus, and she sat nodding and blinking, when a slight stir at the door aroused her.

  A passenger from the train had come up to take her place in the omnibus. She was a hard-featured, respectable-looking woman, dressed in widow’s mourning, and she had with her a little boy and some luggage. She took her seat opposite Mrs. Pepperfly, and placed the child by her side: a delicate looking lad of perhaps six years, with a fair skin and light flaxen hair. Mrs. Pepperfly, skilled in looks, detected at once that he was not in good health. But he was more restless than are most sickly children, turning his head about from the door to the window incessantly as different objects attracted his attention.

  “Oh, mother, mother, look there!”

  The words were spoken in the most excited manner. Two soldiers in their red coats had come from the station; and these had caused the exclamation. The mother administered a reprimand.

  “There you go again! I never saw such a child! One would think soldiers were a world’s wonder, by the fever you put yourself into at sight of them!”

  “I have knowed some children go a’most wild at sight of a redcoat!” interposed Mrs. Pepperfly without ceremony.

  “Then he’s one of them,” replied the widow. “He’d rather look at a soldier any day than at a penny peep-show.”

  The omnibus started, having waited in vain for other passengers. The little boy, probably seeing nothing in the road, or the fields on either side of it, to attract his admiration, nestled against his mother and was soon asleep. Mrs. Pepperfly had also begun to nod again, when the stranger bent over to her with a question.

  “Do you happen to know a lady living about here of the name of Crane?”

  Mrs. Pepperfly started and opened her eyes, hardly awake yet.

  “Crane?” said she.

  “I want to find the address of a lady of that name. Do you know a Mrs. Crane in South Wennock?”

  “No, mum,” answered Mrs. Pepperfly, her reminiscences of a certain episode of the past aroused, and not pleasantly, at the question. “I never knowed but one lady o’ that name; and that was but for two or three days, eight year and more ago, for she went out of the world promiscous.”

  The widow paused a minute as if she had lost her breath. “How do you mean?” she asked.

  “She was ill, mum, and I was the very nurse that was nursing of her, and she was getting on beautiful when a nasty accident, which haven’t been brought to light yet, put her into her grave in St. Mark’s Churchyard.”

  “Was she hurt?” exclaimed the widow, hastily.

  “No, nothing of that,” answered Mrs. Pepperfly, shaking her head. “The wrong medicine was given to her. It was me myself what poured it out and put it to her dear lips, little thinking I was giving her her death. And I wish my fingers had been cut off first!”

  The stranger stared hard at Mrs. Pepperfly, as if she could not understand the words, or as if she doubted the tale. “Where did this happen?” she said at length. “Was she in lodgings in South Wennock?”

  “She were in lodgings in Palace Street,” was the reply. “She come all sudden to the place, knowing nobody and nobody knowing her, just as one would suppose a strange bird might drop from the skies. And she took the Widow Gould’s rooms in Palace Street, and that very night her illness come on, and it was me that was called in to nurse her.”

  “And is she dead?” repeated the stranger, apparently unable to take in the tidings.

  “She have been lying ever since in a corner of St. Mark’s Churchyard. She died the following Monday night. Leastways she was killed,” added Mrs. Pepperfly.

  The stranger altered the position of the sleeping child, and bent nearer to the nurse. “Tell me about it,” she said.

  “It’s soon told,” was the answer. “The doctor had sent in a composing draught. He had sent one in on the Saturday night and on the Sunday night; she were restless, poor thing, though doing as well as it’s possible for a body to do; but she were young, and she would get laughing and talking, and the doctors they don’t like that — and I’ll not say but there’s cases where it’s dangerous. Well, on the Monday night there was sent in another of these sleeping draughts, as the doctor thought, and as we thought, and I gave
it to her. It turned out to be poison, and her poor innocent soul went out after swallowing it; and mine a’most went out too with the fright.”

  “Poison!”

  “The draught was poisoned, and it killed hen.”

  But how came the doctor to send a poisoned draught?” asked the stranger in passionate tones.

  “Ah, there it is,” returned Mrs. Pepperfly. “He says he didn’t send it so — that it went out from him good wholesome physic. But, as me and the Widow Gould remarked to each other at the time, if he sent it out pure, what should bring the poison in it afterwards?”

  “What was done to the doctor?”

  “Nothing. There was an inquest sat upon her body, as I’ve cause to remember, for they had me up at it: but the jury and the crowner thought the doctor had not made the mistake nor put the poison into the draught — which he had stood to it from the first he hadn’t.”

  “Then who did put it in?”

  “It’s more than I can tell,” replied Mrs. Pepperfly. “I know I didn’t.”

  “And was no stir made about it?” continued the stranger, wiping her face, which was growing heated.

  “Plenty of stir, for that matter, but nothing come of it. The police couldn’t follow it up proper, for they didn’t know where she came from, or even what her crissen name was: and nobody has never come to inquire after her from that day to this.”

  “Who was the doctor that attended her?” was the next question; and it was put abruptly.

  “Mr. Stephen Grey. One might say indeed that two was attending her; him and Mr. Carlton: but Mr. Carlton only saw her once or twice; he was away from the town. She had Mr. Stephen Grey throughout, and it was him that sent the draught.”