Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  It was Frederick Grey. What had he come out there for? He to see her in the abandonment of her grief!

  “Lucy!” he whispered, and the tone of his voice spoke of love if ever tone spoke it. “Lucy, are you ill?”

  She would have been glad to fling his hand away, to fly from him, to meet his words with scorn; but she could not: for the heart will be true to itself, and the startled agitation unnerved her. She shook like a leaf.

  He gently wound his arms round her, he bent over her and poured forth his tale of love — to be suppressed no longer. He told her how passionately he had hoped to make her his: that if he had been silent, it was because he feared the time to speak had not come. Lucy, in the revulsion of feeling, burst into tears, and yielded herself up to the moment’s fascination.

  “Oh, Lucy, how could you suffer this cloud to come between us?” he whispered. “How could you suspect me of faithlessness? My darling, let me speak plainly. We have loved each other, and we both knew it, though it may be that you scarcely acknowledged the fact to yourself; but here, without witness, — save One, who knows how ardently and loyally I will cherish you, under Him — surely we may lift the veil from our dearest feelings! Lucy, I say, we have loved each other.”

  She did not answer, but she did not lift her face from its shelter on his breast. The moment of rapture, so often shadowed forth in her dreams, had come!

  “I was not conscious until ten minutes ago, that my name had been coupled, as it appears it has been, with Helen Vaughan’s. Lucy,” he resumed, “I swear to you that I have not willingly given cause for it. I swear to you that I have had no love for her, or thought of love. I certainly have been brought much into contact with her, for you have estranged yourself from me since you came here, and the idle hours of this place have hung upon my hands; but I throw my thoughts back and ask how far it has been my fault, and I believe I can truly say” — he paused with a quaint smile— “that I have been more sinned against than sinning. Lucy, when I have been walking by her side, my heart has wished that it was with you: in conversing with her, I have longed for your voice to answer me. Will you forgive me?”

  Forgive him? ay. Her heart answered, if words failed her. He bent his face to hers in the hushed night.

  “Believe me, Lucy, I love you as few men can love. I picture to myself the future, when you shall be mine; my cherished wife, the guiding-star of my home; my whole hopes, my love, my wishes are centred in you. You will not reject me? My darling, you will not reject me!”

  How little likely she was to reject him, he contrived to gather. And the stars shone down upon vows, than which none sweeter or purer had ever been registered.

  “Lucy, you will waltz with me now?”

  She dried her happy tears; and, as she returned to the room to take her place with him in the dance, she almost laughed. The contrast between that time and this was so great! Miss Helen Vaughan and the little viscount whirled past them, and Frederick darted a saucy glance into Lucy’s eyes, It made hers fall on her flushing cheeks, Lady Jane Chesney had arrived when they reached home. After Lucy had retired for the night, Lady Oakburn opened her mind to Jane; she could not rest until she had told her all — how Frederick and Lucy were in love with each other. Jane at first looked very grave: the Chesney pride was rising in rebellion.

  “I could not help it,” bewailed the countess in contrition. “I declare to you, Lady Jane, often as Frederick Grey came to us in Portland Place, that I never for a moment thought or suspected that love was arising between him and Lucy. Our intimacy with the Greys, and Sir Stephen’s attendance as a medical man, must have blinded me to the truth. I would give the world — should this be displeasing to you — to recall the past.”

  “Nay, do not blame yourself,” said Jane kindly. “It is very probable that I should have seen no further than you. Frederick Grey! It is not the match that Lucy should make.”

  “In many respects, of course, it is not so.”

  Jane remained silent, communing with herself, her custom when troubled or perplexed. Presently she looked at Lady Oakburn. “Tell me what your opinion is. What do you think of it all?”

  “May I give it freely?”

  “Indeed I wish you would,” was Jane’s answer. “You have Lucy’s welfare at heart as much as I have.”

  “Her welfare and her happiness,” emphatically pronounced Lady Oakburn. “And the latter I do fear is now bound up in this young man. With regard to himself, as a suitor for her, there are advantages and disadvantages. Personally he is all that can be desired, and his prospects are good. Sir Stephen must be a rich man, and Frederick will some day be a baronet. On the other hand, there’s his profession; and his birth is altogether inferior to Lucy’s. And — forgive me for saying it, Lady Jane — the Chesneys are a proud race.”

  “Tell me what your own decision would be, were it left to you,” repeated Jane.

  “I should let her marry him.”

  Jane paused. “I will sleep upon this, Lady Oakburn, and talk with you further in the morning.”

  And when the morning came, Jane, like a sensible woman, had arrived at a similar decision. The first to run up and greet her as she left her chamber was the little lord. Jane took him upon her knee in the breakfast-room, and turned his face upwards.

  “He does not look ill, Lady Oakburn.”

  “I have no real fears for him,” replied the countess. “In a few years I hope he will have become strong. Frank, tell sister Jane what Sir Stephen says.”

  “Sir Stephen says that mamma and Lucy are too fidgety over me; that if I were a poor little country boy, sent out in the corn-fields all day long, with only brown bread, and milk to eat, I should be all right,” cried Frank, looking up to his sister.

  Jane smiled, and thought it very probable that Sir Stephen was right.

  “Do you know, Jane, what I mean to be when I grow up a big man?” he continued. “I mean to be a sailor.”

  Jane faintly smiled and shook her head.

  “Yes, I do. Mamma says that, if I were the poor little country boy, I might be one; but, as I am Earl of Oakburn, I shall have other duties to perform. But I want to be a sailor. Oh, Jane, I do wish I could be a sailor! When I see the ships here, I long to run through the waves and get to them.”

  “It is surprising what a taste he has for the sea,” murmured the countess to Jane. “He must have inherited it.” And poor Jane sighed with sad reminiscences.

  Lucy came in. Jane took her hand, and smiled as she gazed at the bright and blushing face.

  “And so, Lucy, you have contrived to fall in love without our leave or licence!”

  Lucy coloured to the roots of her hair; her eyelids were cast down, and her fingers trembled in the hand of Lady Jane. All signs of true love, and Jane knew them to be so. The Countess of Oakburn approached Jane.

  “I know you have felt the separation from Lucy,” she said, with emotion. “Had the terms of the will permitted me to have departed from them, Lucy should have been yours. I could not help myself, Lady Jane; but I have tried to make her all you could wish.”

  “All any one could wish,” generously returned Jane, as she took Lady Oakburn’s hand. “You have nobly done your part by her. Do it by the boy, Lady Oakburn, and make him worthy of his father. I know you will.”

  “Helped to do so by a greater Power than mine,” murmured the countess, as her eyes filled with tears.

  And when Mr. Frederick Grey arrived that day and spoke out — as he did do — he was told that Lucy should be his.

  CHAPTER IV.

  A TALE FROM MRS. PEPPERFLY.

  THE afternoon’s sun was shining on South Wennock: shining especially hard and full upon a small cottage standing alone in Blister Lane. More especially did it appear to illumine a stout lady who was seated on a chair, placed halfway down the narrow path leading from the little entrance gate to the cottage door. Her dress was light, as far as it could be seen for snuff, — and so broad was she, taking up the width of the path and a
great deal more, that she looked like a great martello tower, planted there to guard the approach of the cottage against assaulters.

  Judith came down the lane. Three or four weeks had passed since the events recorded in the last chapter, and Lady Jane was at South Wennock again. Jane had some poor pensioners in some of the smaller cottages lower down the lane, and the servant’s errand this afternoon was connected with them. Judith’s eyes fell upon the lady, airing herself in the sun.

  “Is it you, Mother Pepperfly! Why, I have not seen you for an age. Well, you don’t get thinner.”

  “I gets dreadful,” said Mrs. Pepperfly. “They might take me about in a carivan, and show me off as the fat woman from South Wennock. Particularly if they could invent a decent way of exhibiting the legs. Mine’s a sight to be seen, Judith.”

  Mrs. Pepperfly gingerly lifted her petticoats a little, and Judith saw that the ankles were indeed worthy of an exhibition. “I wonder you don’t take exercise,” she said.

  “Me take exercise!” uttered Mrs. Pepperfly resentfully. “What’s the good of talking to a woman of my size about exercise? It a’most kills me to get about when I changes my places. It’s my perfession has brought me to it, Judith; always sitting by a bedside, or dandling a babby upon my knees. I haven’t been able to take exercise, and, of course, now I’m too fat to do it. But I must be thankful it’s no worse, for I retains my appetite, and can eat a famous meal every time it’s set afore me.”

  “I should eat less and leave off beer,” said Judith. “Beer’s very fattening.”

  The tears rushed into Mrs. Pepperfly’s eyes at the cruel suggestion. “Beer’s the very prop and stay of my life,” cried she. “Nobody but a barbarian would tell a poor woman that has to sit up o’ nights, tending others, to leave off her beer. I never shall leave off my beer, Judith, till it leaves off me.”

  Judith thought that likely, and did not contest the point.

  “I suppose you are nursing somebody up here,” she remarked. “Who lives in the cottage? The last time I came by, it wasn’t let.”

  “I ain’t nursing nobody,” returned Mrs. Pepperfly. “I’m here on a visit. I left my place yesterday, and I expects to be fetched to another in a day or two, and I was invited here to spend the time between.”

  “Who’s the cottage let to?” continued Judith, lowering her voice. “It’s a widder. She ain’t at home. She took the opportunity of my being here to get in a store of things she wanted, and she’s gone about it. We haven’t nobody to overhear us that you should set on to whisper. I say, wasn’t it a curious thing,” added Mrs. Pepperfiy, dropping her own voice to a whisper in contradiction to what she had just said to Judith. “She came here, it’s my firm belief, just to find out the rights and the wrongs about the death of that poor young lady.”

  “What young lady?”

  “Why, that poor creature that the poisoned draught was gave to. She—”

  “Who is she? Where does she come from?” interrupted Judith, aroused to interest.

  “I’ll just tell ye about it,” said Mrs. Pepperfly. “But if you go td ask me who she is, and what she is, and where she comes from, I can’t tell; for I don’t know any more nor the babby that has not yet got its life breath into it. My missis that I nursed last didn’t get strong as soon as she ought, so it was settled she should go over to Great Wennock and stop with her relatives, and I went to take her there. It were Mrs. Tupper, the butcher’s wife, and the babby died a week old, which I dare say you heered about. We went over on a Tuesday in the omnibus, nigh upon a month now, and it’s the first time I’d been in the new omnibus or along the new road, for I’m no traveller, as is well known, which it’s beautiful and smooth they both is, and jolts no longer. I took my missis on to her mother’s, carrying her parcel of clothes for her, and I had a good dinner with ’em — a lovely shoulder o’ mutton and onion sauce, and was helped three times to beer. After that, I goes back to the station, which it’s not three minutes’ walk, and sits myself in the omnibus agen it started to come home. It were waiting, you see, for the London train. Well, it came in, and there got into the omnibus a widder and a little boy and some luggage, and that was all. She begun talking to me, asking if I knowed any lady living about here of the name of Crane. ‘No, mum,’ says I, ‘I never knowed but one lady o’ that name, and I didn’t know much of her, for it’s eight year ago, and she died promiscous.” How do you mean?’ says she, snapping me up short, as if she’d lost her breath. Well, Judith, one word led to another, and I told her about the lady’s death in Palace Street, she listening to me all the time as if her eyes were coming out of her head with wonder. I never see a body so eager.”

  “Who is she?” asked Judith.

  “I tell ye I don’t know. I’m sure o’ one thing, though — that she know’d that poor lady, and is come to the place to ferret out what she can about the death.”

  “How is it that she is living in this cottage?” returned Judith, quite absorbed in the tale.

  “I’m coming to it, if you’ll let me,” answered Mrs. Pepperfly. “I never see a body interrupt as you do, Judith. We talked on, the widder and me, till we come to South Wennock, and got out at the Red Lion. With that she looks about her, like a person in a quandary, up the street and down the street, and then she stretches out her hand and points. ‘That’s the way to the house where the lady was lying,’ says she. ‘And you’re right, mum,’ says I, I for it just is.’

  ‘I wonder whether them same lodgings is to let?’ says she; ‘if so, they’d suit me.’ Upon that I telled her, Judith, what everybody knows, that the lodgings was not to let, through the Widder Gould keeping the parlours for herself now, having had a income left her, and the new curate occupying of her drawing-room. Well, then, she asked me did I know of a cottage to let, where there was plenty of fresh air about it, her child being poorly. I cast it over in my mind and thought of this — which belongs, you know, to Tupper his-self, and those be his fields at the back where he keeps his beastesses.”

  “And she took it?”

  “She looked at it that same afternoon, and went straight off to Tupper and took it, paying three-pound-ten down for the first quarter’s rent, for she said she’d not bother him with no references. Then she asked me where she could buy or hire a bit of secondhand furniture, and I took her off to Knagg the broker’s, and she got what she wanted. She invited me to stop with her, but I couldn’t, for I had agreed to be at Tupper’s to look after the children while his wife was away, and the widder said, then come up to her as soon as I was at liberty. Which I was a day ago, through Tupper’s wife returning home hearty. So I come up here, and she has asked me to stop till I’m called out again, which will be in a day or two I expect, and happens to be Knagg’s wife — and I thought it uncommon genteel and perlite of her, Judy. And so here I am, enjoying myself in the country air.”

  “And in the sun also,” said Judith. “You’ll get your face browner than ever.”

  “‘Tain’t often I has the chance of sitting in it out o’ doors, so I thought I’d take advantage of it when I could; and I don’t care whether I’m brown or white.”

  “But why do you think the person has come to find out about the young lady?”

  “Look here,” cried Mother Pepperfly. “I can see as far through a millstone as most folks, and I argue why should she invite me here, a stranger, unless she wanted to get something out of me? Not a blessed minute, Judy, have I been in the cottage, and I got here at two o’clock yesterday, but she has been a questioning me about it. Now it’s the draught, and now it’s the doctors, and now it’s the nurse, and now it’s the inquest, till I declare I’m a’most moithered. She wants to know where she can get a old newspaper with the history of it in, but I can’t tell who keeps ’em unless Mrs. Fitch at the Lion do. ‘You won’t say nothing to nobody, as I’ve asked you these questions about Mrs. Crane; I’ve a reason not,’ says she to me last night. ‘Mum, you may put your faith in me as I won’t,’ says I.”

 
“And you have gone and told me to-day!” retorted Judith.

  “But you are safe, you are, Judy, and won’t repeat it, I know. You were one of us with her, too. I thought to myself this morning, ‘Now, if I could see Judy Ford, I’d tell her this;’ but I wouldn’t open my lips to nobody else: and shan’t, as the widder has asked me not. To that other widder, Gould, I wouldn’t give a hint of it, if it was to save my life. She’s such a magpie, it would be over the town the next hour if she got hold of it.”

  “Does she mean to live here all alone?” returned Judith.

  “I suppose so. She has a woman in to clean, and puts out her washing. The child’s a sickly little fellow; I don’t think he’ll make old bones. Come and see him.”

  Mrs. Pepperfly rose and sailed indoors; Judith followed. Upon a rude sort of bed on the parlour floor: which opened from the kitchen, and that opened from the garden, after the manner of cottages: lay a boy asleep; a fair, quiet-looking child, with light flaxen hair falling about his features. Judith looked at him, and looked again; she was struck with his likeness to some one, but could not for the life of her recollect whom.

  “He has a white swelling in his knee,” said Mrs. Pepperfly. “Leastways, I’m sure it’s coming to one.”

  “A white swelling? Poor little fellow! that’s dangerous.”

  “Kills youngsters nineteen times out of twenty,” returned the nurse with professional equanimity.

  “How thin and white he is,” exclaimed Judith. “How drawn is his forehead! Whenever you see that lined forehead in a child, you may be sure it comes from long-endured pain.”

  “His mother says he has never been strong. Take a wee drop short, Judy,” continued Mrs. Pepperfly insinuatingly, as she produced a small bottle from some unseen receptacle beneath her capacious petticoats.

  “Not I,” answered Judith. “I’d rather pour it into the garden than down my throat. And I must be off, or I don’t know what time I shall get back, and my lady will say I have been gossiping.” Judith proceeded on her way, and executed her commission with Lady Jane’s pensioners. As she returned, she saw a stranger seated in the chair Mrs. Pepperfly had occupied, but which was now drawn closer to the cottage in the shade: a respectable-looking widow woman of fifty years. The child lay in her arms still asleep, and Mrs. Pepperfly had disappeared. Could Judith’s eyes have penetrated within the cottage, she would have seen her comfortably stretched in an arm-chair, overcome either by the sun or by strong Waters, and fast asleep.