Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Judith scanned the hard features of the stranger, and remembered them, having probably been assisted thereto by the conversation with the nurse. An impulse prompted her to enter the gate and speak. “Good afternoon. I think I have seen you before.”

  The stranger scanned her in turn, but did not recognize her.

  “Possibly,” she quietly replied. “I don’t remember you.”

  “I was the young woman who was so much with that poor lady, Mrs. Crane, during the few days she lay ill.”

  Intelligence, happy intelligence, flashed into the stranger’s face. “I am glad to see you,” she exclaimed. “I wonder you remembered me.”

  “You are Mrs. Smith, who came down and took away the baby.”

  “Yes, I am. But now I’d rather it wasn’t spoken of, if you’d oblige me. If it got about, I should have the whole parish up here, wanting to know what I can’t tell them. And I have another reason besides. Mrs. What’s-her-name, the fat nurse, says nothing has been heard as to who the young lady was, and people would be asking me about her. I could not answer them. I have nothing to say; so I’d rather not be questioned.”

  “Where’s the baby?” inquired Judith, believing as little of this as she chose.

  “Dead.”

  “Is it indeed! Well, it was only a little mite. I thought perhaps this was it.”

  “This is mine,” said Mrs. Smith. “And a great sufferer he is, poor thing. He has always been weakly.”

  “He seems to sleep well,” observed Judith.

  “That’s because he has no sleep at night. Every afternoon he’s dead asleep, so I put him down a mattress in the kitchen or parlour or wherever I may happen to be, for he doesn’t like to go away from me. Why, if that child had lived, he would have been getting on for nine years old. This, you may see, isn’t seven.”

  “I can’t think who he’s like,” remarked Judith, again looking attentively at the child. “He is the very image of somebody; some face that’s familiar to me; but I can’t call to mind whose.”

  “I know nobody he’s like when he’s asleep,” said Mrs. Smith, also regarding the boy. “Asleep and awake, it is not the same face — not a bit; I have often noticed that. It must be the eyes and the expression that make the difference.”

  “Has he light eyes!” inquired Judith.

  “No; dark. But now, do just tell me what you can about that horrible death. Was it a mistake, or was it wilful?”

  “That’s what people are unable to decide,” said Judith.

  “That old nurse is not very explicit. She speaks of one doctor and speaks of another, and mixes the two up together. I want to know who really attended her.”

  “Mr. Stephen Grey had been attending her — he is Sir Stephen Grey now; and Mr. Carlton had seen her once or twice; the night of her death, and the night before it.”

  “Was she ill enough to have two doctors?”

  “Not at all. Mr. Carlton was to have attended her, but when she was taken ill he was away from South Wennock, so the other came for him. Mr. Carlton was to have taken her the next day.”

  “Were they both married men?”

  “Mr. Grey was; had been a long while; and Mr. Carlton married directly after. He married a peer’s daughter. But I can’t stay to talk now.”

  “Oh, do stay! I want you to tell me all that passed: you’ll make it clearer than that woman. Step in and take a cup of tea with us.”

  “You might as well ask me to stay for good,” returned Judith. “My lady will wonder, as it is, what is keeping me. I’ll ask for an hour’s leave, and come up another time.”

  “Just one word before you go, then. I hear of Messrs. Grey and Lycett, and I hear of Mr. Carlton: which would be the most skilful to call in, in case my child gets worse? I am a stranger here, and don’t know their reputations.”

  “I believe they are all clever; all skilful men. I like Mr. Grey best; I am most used to him.”

  “It doesn’t matter much, then, as far as skill goes, which I call in?”

  “As far as skill goes, no,” replied Judith. And she said good afternoon, and left.

  She went home, pondering on the likeness she had traced in the boy’s face; she could not recollect who it was he resembled. Her suspicions had been aroused that it might be the same child, in spite of the apparent difference in the age. But, even allowing that Mrs. Smith had deceived her in saying it was not — and Judith did not see why she should deceive her — the fact would not have helped her, since it was certainly not the deceased lady’s face that the child’s was so like.

  But all in a moment, as Judith was entering the gate of Cedar Lodge, a face flashed on her remembrance, and she saw whose it was that the boy’s resembled. The fact seemed to frighten her; for she started aside amongst the trees as one who has received a blow. And when she at length went indoors, it was with a perplexed gaze and knitted brow.

  CHAPTER V.

  MR. CARLTON’S DREAMS.

  THERE was a sound of revelry at the Red Lion Inn. A dinner given by the townspeople was taking place there in honour of some national rejoicing. Filling the chair — as the newspapers had it the next day — was Lewis Carlton, Esquire; a great man now amidst his fellow-townsmen. People are taken with show and grandeur; and Mr. Carlton displayed both. He was successful as a medical man, he was rather liked socially; and his wife’s rank brought him always a certain consideration. The money he had inherited from his father, together with the proceeds of his own practice, enabled him to live in a style attempted by few in South Wennock. The town talked indeed of undue extravagance; whispers of debt went round: but that was the affair of Mr. Carlton and Lady Laura alone, and was nothing to any one. Certainly there was a wide contrast between the quiet style of living of John Grey and his partner Mr. Lycett, and the costlier style of Mr. Carlton. The partners were prudent men, putting by for their children: Mr. Carlton was not a prudent man as regarded pecuniary matters, and he had no children to put by for. Carriages and horses and servants and entertainments made his house somewhat unlike a medical man’s. But the public, I say, are carried away by all this, and Mr. Carlton was just now the most popular resident in all South Wennock. —

  He had been unanimously selected to take the chair at this very meeting, and had consented to do so. Consented contrary to his usual line of conduct; for Mr. Carlton personally was of a retiring disposition, and declined to be made much of, or to be brought prominently forward. It was the first time he had given a consent to fill any public office whatever. He never would serve as poor-law guardian, or churchwarden, or parish overseer; coroner’s mandates could not draw him on a jury; the stewardship at races, at public balls, had alike been thrust upon him, or was sought to be, all in vain. Mr. Carlton, in spite of the pomp and show of his home (and that perhaps was due to his wife, more than to himself), was a retiring man, and would not be drawn out of his shell.

  He could hardly have said why he had yielded now, and consented to take the chair at this dinner. Having done so, however, he did not shrink from its duties, and he was proving that incapacity was certainly not the cause of his repeated refusals, for never a better chairman graced a table.

  He sat at the head of the board, making his after-dinner speeches, giving out his toasts. His manner was genial, his whole heart seemed in his task, his usually impassive face was lighted up to gaiety. A good-looking man thus, with his well-formed features and gentlemanly figure. Some of the county people were at the table, and nearly all the chief townsmen; one and all applauded him to the skies; and when the chairman’s health was proposed, and applause rent the air, it was taken up by the mob outside the curtained windows: “The health of Mr. Carlton! Health and happiness to Mr. Carlton!”

  The clock was striking eleven, when the chairman, flushed and heated, came forth. Perhaps none of those gentlemen had ever seen him flushed in their lives before. He was always to them a coldly impassive man, whom nothing could excite. It was not the wine that had done so now; Mr. Carlton, invariably abs
temious in that respect, had taken as little as it was possible to take; but the unusual ovation paid to him had warmed his heart and flushed his brow. Several of the guests came out with him, but the greater portion were remaining longer; some of these had to ride home miles, the rest were hastening to their nearer homes. For the most part they were slightly elated, for it had been a very convivial meeting; and they took a demonstrative leave of Mr. Carlton, nearly shaking his hands off, and vowing he was a rare good fellow and must be their chairman always. The crowd of eavesdroppers — ever swayed by the popular feeling of the hour — wound up with a cheer for Mr. Carlton by way of chorus.

  He walked along the street towards his home, the cheer echoing in his ears. Such moments had not been frequent in Mr. Carlton’s life, and he was a little lifted out of his ordinary self. It was a warm night in that genial season hovering between summer and autumn, and Mr. Carlton raised his hat and bared his brow to the cool night air, as he glanced up at the starry heavens. Whatever cares he might have had, whatever sources of trouble or anxiety — and whether he had any or not was best known to himself; but few of us are without some secret skeleton that we have to keep sacred from the world, however innocent in itself it may be — were all cast to the winds. Mr. Carlton forgot the past and the present in the future; and certain vague aspirings lying at the bottom of his heart were allowed to take a more tangible form than they had ever taken before. When the spirit is excited it imbues things with its own hues: and they are apt to be very brilliant.

  “I seem like a god to them,” he laughed, alluding to the extravagant homage recently paid him by the townsfolk. “Jove on Olympus never had a warmer ovation. I have become what I never intended to be — a man of note in the place. Any foolish charge against me — psha! they’d buffet the fellow bringing it. Nevertheless, I shall leave you to your sorrow, my good natives of South Wennock; and I know not why I have remained with you so long. For how many years have I said to myself at waking, morning after morning, that another month should see me take my farewell of the place! And here I am still. Is it that some invisible chain binds me to it — a chain that I cannot break? Why else do I stop? Or is it that some latent voice of caution — tush! I don’t care for those thoughts to-night.”

  He broke off, rubbed his brow with his cambric handkerchief, nodded a salutation in response to one given him by a passer-by, and resumed his musings.

  “My talents were not made to be hidden under a bushel — and what else is it? a general practitioner in a paltry country town! I came here only as a stepping-stone, never intending to remain; and but for circumstances, to which we are all obliged to be slaves, I should not have remained. I think I have been a fool to stay so long, but I’ll leave now. London is the field for me, and I shall go there and take my degree. My reputation will follow me; I shall make use of these county aristocrats to recommend me; I shall aspire to her Majesty’s knightly sword upon my shoulder. I may be enrolled, in time, as a baronet of the United Kingdom, and then my lady cannot carp so much at inequality of rank. A proud set, the Chesneys, and my wife the proudest. Yes, I will go to London, and I may rise to the very highest rank permitted to men of physic. May rise! I will rise; for Lewis Carlton to will a thing is to do it. Look at Stephen Grey! was there ever such luck in this world? And if he could triumph, as he has done, without influential friends to back him, what may I not look to do? I am not sorry that luck has attended Stephen: nay, I am glad that it should be so. I have no enmity towards him; I’d speed him on, myself, if I could. I wish him right well anywhere but in South Wennock — and that he’ll never come back to. But I hate his son. I should like to wring his neck for him. So long, however, as the insolent jackanapes behaves himself and does not cross my path — Why, who are you?”

  The question was addressed to a female, and an exceedingly broad female, who stood in the shadow of Mr. Carlton’s gate, dropping curtsies, just as he was about to turn into it.

  “If it wasn’t for the night, sir, you’d know me well enough,” was the response. “Pepperfly, at your service, sir.”

  “Oh, Nurse Pepperfly,” returned the surgeon blandly; for somehow he was always bland to Mrs. Pepperfly. “You should stand forward, and let your good-looking face be seen.”

  “Well, now, you will have your joke, sir,” remarked the nurse.

  “Says I to the folks wherever I goes, ‘If you want a pleasant, safe, good-hearted gentleman, as can bring you through this vale of sicknesses, just send for Dr. Carlton.’ And I am only proud, sir, when I happens to be in conjunction with you, that’s all; which is not the happy case to-night, though I am here, sir, to ask you to pay a visit perfessionally.

  “Where to?” asked Mr. Carlton. “What case is it?”

  “It’s not a case of life and death, where you need run your legs off in a race again time,” luminously proceeded Mrs. Pepperfly.

  “Whether you goes to-morrow morning, or whether you goes tomorrow afternoon, it’ll come to the same, sir, as may be agreeable.”

  “But where’s it to?” repeated Mr. Carlton, for the lady had stopped.

  “It’s where I’ve been a-staying, sir, for the last few days: a private visit I’ve been on, and not perfessional, and she’s Mrs. Smith. I’m fetched out to-night, sir, to Mrs. Knagg, Knagg’s wife the broker’s, and Mrs. Smith says to me, ‘Call in at Dr. Carlton’s as you passes, and make my dooty to him, and say I’ve heered of his skill, and ask him to step in at his leisure to-morrow to prescribe for my child.’ A white swelling it is in its knee, sir, and t’other knee in the grave, as may be said, for ‘twon’t be long out of it; and me the last few days as I’ve been there, a worrying of her to let me come for Dr. Carlton.” There were sundry additions in the above speech, which, in strict regard to truth, might have been omitted. Mr. Carlton, a shrewd man, took them for as much as they were worth. The name Smith had suggested to him but one woman of that name as likely to have had the lady before him on a visit.

  “Mrs. Smith’s child with a white swelling!” he exclaimed in surprise. “It must have come on pretty quickly. Which of the children is it?”

  “Which of the children, sir?” echoed Nurse Pepperfly. “She’s got but one. Oh, I see; you be thinking of Mrs. Smith, the cow-. keeper’s wife. It’s not her, sir; it’s Mrs. Smith up at Tupper’s cottage in Blister Lane.”

  “I did not know there was a Mrs. Smith at Tupper’s cottage,” he replied.

  “She have not been long in it, sir. She’s come fresh to the place, and she have took a fancy to me, which is very sensible of her. She’d be glad if you’d go up some time to-morrow, sir.”

  “Very well,” said Mr. Carlton. “I won’t forget.”

  “Then it’s good night to you, sir, and wishing you was a-coming to Mrs. Knaggs’s along with me; but it’s Mr. Lycett. Which is a safe gentleman too, and nothing to be said against.”

  She sailed off towards the town, and Mr. Carlton closed his gate, and glanced up at his windows; in some of which lights were visible.

  “I wonder whether I shall find Laura in tantrums to-night,” he said half audibly.

  By which expression the reader must not think that Mr. Carlton was in the habit of visiting those “tantrums” unpleasantly on his wife. If not a strictly faithful husband, he was always — when Laura allowed him to be so — an affectionate one. He loved her still as much as it was in the nature of such a man as Mr. Carlton, disenchanted by time and change of the first fond passion, to love. Had Laura but permitted him, he would have been ever tender to her; and that singular charm which distinguished his manner to all women, where he chose to put it forth, still exercised its spell upon her.

  He opened the door with his latch-key, and a footman came forward into the hall and took his master’s hat. A civil, simple-mannered rustic, in spite of his fine livery.

  “Is Lady Laura in, Jonathan?”

  “My lady has been in this half-hour, sir.”

  Laura was lounging on a sofa in the drawing-room, half asleep. She h
ad very few resources within herself: reading, working, albums, engravings, she was sure to yawn over all; music she had not much cared for of late. To spend half-an-hour alone at night, as she was doing now, was a very penance to Laura Carlton.

  She rose up when her husband entered, and the lace mantle she had worn in the carriage returning home, was still upon her shoulders. It fell from them now; and the rich silk dress she wore was displayed, and the gleaming jewels on her neck and arms flashed in the gaslight. She had been to a dinner-party; made up by a lady, whose husband had some motive for not wishing to attend the public dinner at the Lion.

  “Well, Laura!” he said pleasantly. “Home, I see.”

  “Oh, Lewis, it was so stupid!” she exclaimed. “Only fancy it! — two gentlemen and ten ladies. I went to sleep in the carriage coming home, and I have been asleep here, I think. I am glad you have come in.”

  He sat down on the sofa by her side. She held out her wrist, asking him to unclasp a certain bracelet. Mr. Carlton put the bracelet on the table and kept the hand.

  “I scarcely hoped,” he said, “to find you back so soon.”

  “There was nothing to stay for. What could ten women do for themselves? I was so thankful when the carriage came. They made a fuss at my leaving, but I said my head ached. And so it did, with the stupidity. It’s dreadfully dull in the country at this season of the year. Everybody’s away at the watering-places.”