Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “A town like this is dull at most seasons,” remarked Mr. Carlton. “ At times I regret that I am tied to it.”

  Laura passed over the remark without notice, almost without hearing it. The fact of his being “tied” to it was so indisputable, that comment was unnecessary. “The Goughs are going to Scarborough next week,” she said. “Heigho!”

  The sigh was a weary one. Mr. Carlton turned to her.

  “Laura, you know, if you would like to go to any of those places, you have only to say so. If it would do you good, or give you pleasure—”

  “I don’t think I care about it,” she interrupted. “You would not go with me.”

  “How could I? I am tied here, I say. I wish my practice was a different one!”

  “In what way?”

  “A physician’s — where patients, for the most part, had to come to me. The most wearing life of all is a general practitioner’s; and it is the least profitable. Compare my gains herewith those of a London physician.”

  “Leave it, and set up in London,” said she.

  “I am seriously thinking of doing so.”

  Laura had spoken carelessly, without meaning, and the answer astonished her excessively. Mr. Carlton explained. His talents were buried in South Wennock, he said, and he was really purposing a change. “You would like London, I think, Laura?”

  “Yes, very much,” she answered; her vain head filling itself forthwith with sundry gay visions, popularly supposed to be capable of realization in the metropolis only. “But you would never leave South Wennock,” she resumed, after a pause.

  “Why not?”

  “You have found attractions in the place, if I have not done so.”

  A momentary contraction of the brow, smoothed away as instantly, and Mr. Carlton was himself again. Not perfectly conscience clear, he hated above all things these allusions of his wife’s; he had thought the old trouble was dying away.

  “Laura,” he gravely said, “South Wennock has no attractions for me; but the contrary. Should I leave it, I take its only attraction with me — yourself.”

  She laughed. “It’s all very well for you to tell me so.”

  “I swear it,” he said in an earnest, almost a solemn tone, as he bent and laid his hand impressively on her shoulder. “I have no attraction but yourself; whether in South Wennock or in the wide world.”

  She believed him; she liked him still well enough to wish it. “But, Lewis, it has not always been so, you know.”

  “I thought my wife promised me, when we were last upon this topic, to let bygones be bygones?”

  “Did I? Well, I believe I did; and I will. Tell me about your dinner, Lewis. Was it very successful? How did you get on with your speeches?”

  He gave her a laughing account of it all, and of the homage paid him. For nearly an hour they remained up, in gay, amicable converse; and when Laura went to rest that night, a vision dawned upon her of a future time when full confidence might be restored between them.

  The following day, Mr. Carlton proceeded to keep the appointment at Mrs. Smith’s. He called in about eleven o’clock, after visiting his patients on the Rise. He went straight into the cottage without knocking, and there happened to be no one in the room but the child, who was seated in a little chair with some toy-soldiers on his lap, which he was placing in martial array.

  “Are you the little fellow—”

  So far spoke Mr. Carlton, and there he stopped dead. He had cast his eyes, wondering eyes just then, on the boy’s face, and apparently was confounded, or staggered, or something, by what he saw. Did he trace any likeness, as Judith had done? Certain it was, that he stared at the child in undisguised astonishment, and only seemed to recover self-possession when he saw they were not alone, for Mrs. Smith was peeping in from the staircase door.

  “I thought I heard a strange voice,” quoth she. “Perhaps you are the doctor, who was to call?”

  “I am,” replied Mr. Carlton.

  He eyed her as he spoke almost as keenly as he had done the child. The woman had remarked his earnest gaze at the boy, and feared it was caused by the little one’s sickly look.

  “He does look ill, I’m afraid,” she said. “Is that what you were struck with, sir?”

  “No — no,” returned Mr. Carlton half abstractedly; “he put me in mind of some one, that was all. What is his name?”

  “Smith.”

  “Where does he come from?”

  “Well,” returned the woman, who had a blunt, abrupt way of speaking, the result of natural manner, not of intended incivility: “I don’t see what that has to do with it, or what it is to anybody in this place, which is strange to me and me to it. But if it’s necessary for you to know it, sir, he comes from Scotland, where he has lived all his life. He is my youngest child: the only one I have reared.”

  “Was he born in Scotland?” asked Mr. Carlton, his eyes still riveted on the child.

  “Whether he was born there, or whether he was born in New Zealand doesn’t affect the present question,” returned the woman, with a touch of irascibility, for she thought the surgeon had no right to pry into her affairs. “If you don’t like to attend my boy, sir, unless you first know the top and bottom of everything, there’s no harm done, and I’ll send for Mr. Grey.”

  Mr. Carlton laughed pleasantly at her irritability. He rejoined in courteous tones.

  “It guides us very much sometimes to know what sort of a climate our patients have been living in, and whether they were born in it; and our inquiries are not usually attributed to idle curiosity, Mrs. Smith. But, come, let me see his knee.”

  She undid the wrappings, and Mr. Carlton stooped down for the examination; but still he could not keep his eyes from the boy’s face. And yet there was nothing out of common in the face; unless it was in the eyes. Thin, pale, quiet features, with flaxen hair waving over them, were illumined by a pair of large, rich, soft brown eyes, beautiful to look at.

  “Do I pain you, my little man?” said Mr. Carlton, as he touched the knee.

  “No, sir. This soldier won’t stand,” he added, holding one out to Mr. Carlton, with the freedom of childhood.

  “Won’t it? Let me see what’s the matter. The foot wants cutting level. “There,” he continued, after shaving it with his penknife, “it will stand now.”

  The boy was enraptured. It had been a defaulter, given to tumbling over from the commencement; and the extraordinary delight that suddenly beamed from his eyes sent a thrill through the senses of the surgeon. But for the woman overlooking him, he could have bent his searching gaze into those eyes for the next halfhour, and never removed it.

  “He seems a quiet little fellow.”

  “Indeed, then, he was a regular little tartar till this illness came on,” was Mrs. Smith’s reply. “A great deal too fond of showing that he had a will of his own. This has tamed his spirit. Could you form any idea, sir, what can have brought it on? I’m certain that he never had a fall, or any other hurt. But he has never been strong.”

  “It is a disease that arises from weakness of constitution as well as from injury,” replied Mr. Carlton. “Do you purpose residing permanently at South Wennock?”

  “That depends upon how far I may feel inclined, sir, and how it may agree with the child,” she answered civilly. “I am not tied to any spot.”

  Mr. Carlton, after a few professional directions, took his departure. As he turned from the lane into the high-road, so absorbed was he in thought, that he did not notice the swift passing of Mr. John Grey in his gig, until the latter called out to him. The groom pulled up, and Mr. Carlton advanced to the gig. There was not much intimacy between the surgeons, but they often met professionally.

  “Lycett is with Knagg’s wife,” began Mr. Grey, stooping from his gig to say what he had to say. “By what I hear, it appears not unlikely to be a difficult case; if so, he may want your assistance. Shall you be in the way?”

  “Yes. Or if I go out, I’ll leave word where I may be found.” />
  “That’s all right, then,” returned Mr. Grey, signing to his groom to go on. “I am called in haste to a shocking accident, five miles away; some men injured by an explosion of gunpowder. Good morning.”

  The gig sped on; and Mr. Carlton went towards South Wennock, oblivious to all things save one; and that was the face of the child he had just seen.

  CHAPTER VI.

  A PERPLEXING LIKENESS.

  THAT must have been a remarkable child, for the hold its face seemed to take upon people and the consternation it caused was something amazing.

  On the afternoon of the above day, it chanced that Lady Jane Chesney and her sister Laura were taking a quiet walk together, an unusual circumstance. Their way led down Blister Lane, for Jane wished to leave a book at the door of one of her pensioners; and in passing the gate of Tupper’s cottage, they saw a little boy seated in the garden in a child’s chair, some toys lying in his pinafore. His head had fallen back and his hands had dropped; he had sunk into a doze.

  His face was full in their view; Lady Laura’s glance fell upon it, and she halted.

  “Good Heavens!” she uttered. “What an extraordinary likeness!”

  “Likeness?” repeated Jane. “Likeness to whom? He looks very pale and sickly. I wonder who they are? Judith said the cottage was let.”

  “I never saw such a likeness in my life,” resumed Lady Laura, quite devouring the face with her eyes. “Don’t you see it, Jane?”

  “I do not perceive a likeness to any one. To whom do you allude?”

  “Then if you don’t see it, I will not tell you,” was the answer: “but it is certainly plain enough.”

  They were about to walk on, when a voice was heard within the cottage. “Lewis!”

  “Listen,” whispered Laura, drawing her sister back.

  “Lewis! why, you’ve never gone and dropped off again. Now I won’t have you do it, for you know that if you sleep so much in the day, you can’t sleep at night. Come! wake up.”

  The speaker came forth: a hard-featured woman in a widow’s cap. She noticed the ladies standing there.

  “The little boy seems ill,” remarked Lady Jane.

  “He is very poorly, ma’am,” was the answer. “He will go to sleep in the afternoon, and then there’s good-bye to sleep for the night; and I want to break him of it.”

  “Invalids are generally drowsy in an afternoon, especially if their night’s rest is broken. You are strangers here, I think,” added Lady Jane.

  “Yes. I’ve brought him, hoping the country air will do him good. Come, Lewis, wake up,” she said, tapping the boy on the arm. “Why, there’s all your soldiers running away!”

  What with the talking, the tapping, and the soldiers, the boy was fully aroused. He sat up, and fixed his magnificent dark eyes upon the ladies.

  “Oh, I see it now,” murmured Lady Jane to her sister. “It is an extraordinary likeness; the very self-same eyes.”

  “Nay,” returned Laura in the same low tone, “the eyes are the only feature not like. His eyes were shut when the resemblance struck me.”

  “Look, look! the very expression she used to wear!” whispered Jane, so intent upon the boy as to have paid no attention to her sister’s words.

  “She!” uttered Laura in accents of wonder. “Why, who are you thinking about, Jane?”

  “About Clarice. The boy’s likeness to her is remarkable. Whose little boy is this?” quickly added Lady Jane, turning to the woman. “He is so very like a — a — a — friend of mine, a lady.”

  “He’s mine,” was the short retort.

  Lady Jane gave a sigh of regret, as she always did when she spoke or thought of Clarice; but with the present sigh relief was mingled. She did not ask herself why, though innately conscious of it. “There is no accounting for resemblances,” she remarked to the mother, as she bade her good afternoon, and bent her steps onward. Laura followed her: and she cast a haughty, condemning glance upon the woman at parting.

  “Jane,” began Laura, “I think you are out of your mind. What do you mean by saying the child is like Clarice?”

  “Why, you first spoke of the likeness yourself!”

  “Not to Clarice. He is not in the least like her.”

  “Of whom then did you speak?” was the wondering question.

  “I shan’t say,” unceremoniously answered Lady Laura. “Certainly not of Clarice. He is no more like her than he’s like me.”

  “Laura, excepting that boy’s and Clarice’s, and perhaps Lucy’s; but Lucy’s are softer; I do not believe there are such eyes in the world, so large and brilliant and sweetly tender. Yours are the same in shape and colour, but not in expression. His likeness to what poor Clarice was is wonderful.”

  Laura paused, rather staggered at Jane’s words.

  “I’ll go back and look again,” said she. She wheeled round, retraced her steps, and stood at the gate a minute talking to the boy, but not deigning to notice the woman. Jane stood by her side in silence, looking at him.

  “Well?” said Jane, when they finally turned away.

  “I repeat that I cannot trace any resemblance to Clarice. I do trace a great resemblance to some one else, but not in the eyes; and it is not so striking now he is awake, as it was when he was asleep.”

  “It is very strange!” cried Lady Jane.

  “What is strange?”

  “It is all strange. The likeness to Clarice is strange; your not seeing the likeness is strange; your detecting a likeness to some one else is strange, as you say you do: and your declining to mention to whom, is strange. Is it to any of our own family, Laura?”

  “The Chesneys? Oh no. Jane, you spoke just now of Clarice in the past tense. ‘His likeness to what poor Clarice was;’ it is as though you thought she was no longer living.”

  “What else am I to think?” returned Jane. “All these years, and no trace of her. My father on his death-bed left me to seek her out, but I have no clue to go upon, and can do nothing, and hear nothing.”

  “If you feel so sure of her death, you had better take to yourself the three thousand pounds,” spoke Laura with a touch of acidity. Having been disinherited was a sore point with her still.

  “No,” quietly returned Jane, “I shall never take that money. Until we shall be assured beyond doubt of Clarice’s death — if she be dead — the money will remain out at interest; and then — —”

  “What then?” asked Laura, for her sister had stopped.

  “We shall see when that time comes,” was Jane’s somewhat evasive answer. “But for myself I shall touch none of it; I have enough, as it is.”

  You need not be astonished, my reader, at this difference in the vision of the sisters. It is well known that where one person will see a likeness, another cannot do so. “How greatly that child resembles her father!” will be heard from one; “Nay,” speaks another, “how much she resembles her mother!” And both are right. Some people see likenesses in form, others in expression. Some will be struck with the wonderful resemblance existing between the members of a family, even before knowing that they are related; others cannot see it or trace it in the least — to them there is no resemblance whatever. You must surely have remarked this in your own experience.

  And thus was it with the Ladies Chesney; the one could not see with the eyes of the other. But it was remarkable that both should have detected a resemblance in this strange child, and not to the same person.

  Things, in regard to the sick woman, turned out as Mr. Grey had anticipated. In the afternoon a message came to Mr. Carlton from his brother-practitioner, Mr. Lycett, and he hastened to the broker’s house. There he found Mrs. Pepperfly in all her glory. To give that lady her due, apart from her graces of person and her proneness to a certain failing, she was a skilful woman, equal to an emergency; and nothing brought out her talent like an emergency, and there was nothing she was so fond of. “A spice of danger puts me on my mettle, and shows folks the stuff I’m made of,” was a favourite remark of hers; a
nd Mrs. Pepperfly might thank her stars that it was so, or she would have been allowed to sink into private life long ago.

  It was not so much that a second doctor’s services were then actually required, as that it was expedient one should be at hand, in case of necessity; consequently, while Mr. Lycett chiefly remained with the sick woman, Mr. Carlton had opportunity for a little chat with Mrs. Pepperfly in an adjoining room. This, however, was enjoyed in snatches, for Mrs. Pepperfly was in and out, from one chamber to another, like a dog in a fair.

  “Have you been up there, to Tupper’s cottage, sir?” she asked, between whiles.

  “I went there this morning. Where do they come from?”

  “And ain’t it a bad case, sir?” returned Mrs. Pepperfly, ignoring the question.

  “I don’t think it has been well treated,” remarked Mr. Carlton. “Do you know where they come from, or what brings them to South Wennock?”

  “She comes from — where was it? — Scotland or Ireland, or some of them outlandish places, I think she said. What she wants in South Wennock is another matter,” added Mrs. Pepperfly with a sniff.

  The sniff was peculiar, and Mr. Carlton looked at her.

  “Have you any idea what does bring her here?” he repeated, his tone slightly authoritative.

  “Well, yes, I have my idea, sir, and I may be wrong and I may be right! Though it don’t make no difference to me whether I be or whether I bain’t. And I don’t suppose you’d care, sir, to hear it, neither.”

  “Speak on,” said Mr. Carlton, half eagerly, half carelessly. “What do you suppose her business is at South Wennock?”

  Mrs. Pepperfly dropped her voice to a whisper. “You remember that young lady who came to her death so awful at the Widder Gould’s through Mr. Stephen Grey’s draught — though indeed, sir, what with the heaps of patients you have had since, and the affair fading out of memory, as it were, you might have forgotten her long ago!”

  “What of her?” asked Mr. Carlton, and there was a sound in his voice as though he had lost his breath.

  “Well, sir, my belief is just this — that that there widder up at Tupper’s has appeared at South Wennock to ferret out what she can about the death, and nothing less.”