Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Oh, Mrs. Ashton!”

  “A little sooner or a little later, what does it matter, I try to ask myself; but parting is parting, and my heart aches sometimes. One of my aches will be leaving you.”

  “A very minor one then,” he said, with deprecation; but tears shone in his dark blue eyes.

  “Not a minor one. I have loved you as a son. I never loved you more, Percival, than when that letter of yours came to me at Cannes.”

  It was the first time she had alluded to it: the letter written the evening of his marriage. Val’s face turned red, for his perfidy rose up before him in its full extent of shame.

  “I don’t care to speak of that,” he whispered. “If you only knew what my humiliation has been!”

  “Not of that, no; I don’t know why I mentioned it. But I want you to speak of something else, Val. Over and over again has it been on my lips to ask it. What secret trouble is weighing you down?”

  A far greater change, than the one called up by recollection and its shame, came over his face now. He did not speak; and Mrs. Ashton continued. She held his hands as he bent towards her.

  “I have seen it all along. At first — I don’t mind confessing it — I took it for granted that you were on bad terms with yourself on account of the past. I feared there was something wrong between you and your wife, and that you were regretting Anne. But I soon put that idea from me, to replace it with a graver one.”

  “What graver one?” he asked.

  “Nay, I know not. I want you to tell me. Will you do so?”

  He shook his head with an unmistakable gesture, unconsciously pressing her hands to pain.

  “Why not?”

  “You have just said I am dear to you,” he whispered; “I believe I am so.”

  “As dear, almost, as my own children.”

  “Then do not even wish to know it. It is an awful secret; and I must bear it without sympathy of any sort, alone and in silence. It has been upon me for some years now, taking the sweetness out of my daily bread; and it will, I suppose, go with me to my grave. Not scarcely to lift it off my shoulders, would I impart it to you.”

  She sighed deeply; and thought it must be connected with some of his youthful follies. But she loved him still; she had faith in him; she believed that he went wrong from misfortune more than from fault.

  “Courage, Val,” she whispered. “There is a better world than this, where sorrow and sighing cannot enter. Patience — and hope — and trust in God! — always bearing onwards. In time we shall attain to it.”

  Lord Hartledon gently drew his hands away, and turned to the window for a moment’s respite. His eyes were greeted with the sight of one of his own servants, approaching the Rectory at full speed, some half-dozen idlers behind him.

  With a prevision that something was wrong, he said a word of adieu to Mrs. Ashton, went down, and met the man outside. Dr. Ashton, who had seen the approach, also hurried out.

  There had been some accident in the Park, the man said. The pony had swerved and thrown little Lord Elster: thrown him right under the other pony’s feet, as it seemed. The servant made rather a bungle over his news, but this was its substance.

  “And the result? Is he much hurt?” asked Lord Hartledon, constraining his voice to calmness.

  “Well, no; not hurt at all, my lord. He was up again soon, saying he’d lash the pony for throwing him. He don’t seem hurt a bit.”

  “Then why need you have alarmed us so?” interrupted Dr. Ashton, reprovingly.

  “Well, sir, it’s her ladyship seems hurt — or something,” cried the man.

  Lord Hartledon looked at him.

  “What have you come to tell, Richard? Speak out.”

  Apparently Richard could not speak out. His lady had been frightened and fainted, and did not come to again. And Lord Hartledon waited to hear no more.

  The people, standing about in the park here and there — for even this slight accident had gathered its idlers together — seemed to look at Lord Hartledon curiously as he passed them. Close to the house he met Ralph the groom. The boy was crying.

  “’Twasn’t no fault of anybody’s, my lord; and there ain’t any damage to the ponies,” he began, hastening to excuse himself. “The little lord only slid off, and they stood as quiet as quiet. There wasn’t no cause for my lady’s fear.”

  “Is she fainting still?”

  “They say she’s — dead.”

  Lord Hartledon pressed onwards, and met Mr. Hillary at the hall-door. The surgeon took his arm and drew him into an empty room.

  “Hillary! is it true?”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  Lord Hartledon felt his sight failing. For a moment he was a man groping in the dark. Steadying himself against the wall, he learned the details.

  The child’s pony had swerved. Ralph could not tell at what, and Lady Hartledon did not survive to tell. She was looking at him at the time, and saw him flung under the feet of the other pony, and she rose up in the carriage with a scream, and then fell back into the seat again. Ralph jumped out and picked up the child, who was not hurt at all; but when he hastened to tell her this, he saw that she seemed to have no life in her. One of the servants, Richard, happened to be going through the Park, within sight; others soon came up; and whilst Lady Hartledon was being driven home Richard ran for Mr. Hillary, and then sought his master, whom he found at the Rectory. The surgeon had found her dead.

  “It must have been instantaneous,” he observed in low tones as he concluded these particulars. “One great consolation is, that she was spared all suffering.”

  “And its cause?” breathed Lord Hartledon.

  “The heart. I don’t entertain the least doubt about it.”

  “You said she had no heart disease. Others said it.”

  “I said, if she had it, it was not developed. Sudden death from it is not at all uncommon where disease has never been suspected.”

  And this was all the conclusion come to in the case of Lady Hartledon. Examination proved the surgeon’s surmise to be correct; and in answer to a certain question put by Lord Hartledon, he said the death was entirely irrespective of any trouble, or care, or annoyance she might have had in the past; irrespective even of any shock, except the shock at the moment of death, caused by seeing the child thrown. That, and that alone, had been the fatal cause. Lord Hartledon listened to this, and went away to his lonely chamber and fell on his knees in devout thankfulness to Heaven that he was so far innocent.

  “If she had not given way to the child!” he bitterly aspirated in the first moments of sorrow.

  That the countess-dowager should come down post-haste and invade Hartledon, was of course only natural; and Lord Hartledon strove not to rebel against it. But she made herself so intensely and disagreeably officious that his patience was sorely tried. Her first act was to insist on a stately funeral. He had given orders for one plain and quiet in every way; but she would have her wish carried out, and raved about the house, abusing him for his meanness and want of respect to his dead wife. For peace’ sake, he was fain to give her her way; and the funeral was made as costly as she pleased. Thomas Carr came down to it; and the countess-dowager was barely civil to him.

  Her next care was to assume the entire management of the two children, putting Lord Hartledon’s authority over them at virtual, if not actual, defiance. The death of her daughter was in truth a severe blow to the dowager; not from love, for she really possessed no natural affection at all, but from fear that she should lose her footing in the house which was so desirable a refuge. As a preliminary step against this, she began to endeavour to make it more firm and secure. Altogether she was rendering Hartledon unbearable; and Val would often escape from it, his boy in his hand, and take refuge with Mrs. Ashton.

  That Lord Hartledon’s love for his children was intense there could be no question about; but it was nevertheless of a peculiarly reticent nature. He had rarely, if ever, been seen to caress them. The boy told tales of how papa
would kiss him, even weep over him, in solitude; but he would not give him so much as an endearing name in the presence of others. Poor Maude had called him all the pet names in a fond mother’s vocabulary; Lord Hartledon always called him Edward, and nothing more.

  A few evenings after the funeral had taken place, Mirrable, who had been into Calne, was hurrying back in the twilight. As she passed Jabez Gum’s gate, the clerk’s wife was standing at it, talking to Mrs. Jones. The two were laughing: Mrs. Gum seemed in a less depressed state than usual, and the other less snappish.

  “Is it you!” exclaimed Mrs. Jones, as Mirrable stopped. “I was just saying I’d not set eyes on you in your new mourning.”

  “And laughing over it,” returned Mirrable.

  “No!” was Mrs. Jones’s retort. “I’d been telling of a trick I served Jones, and Nance was laughing at that. Silk and crêpe! It’s fine to be you, Mrs. Mirrable!”

  “How’s Jabez, Nancy?” asked Mirrable, passing over Mrs. Jones’s criticism.

  “He’s gone to Garchester,” replied Mrs. Gum, who was given to indirect answers. “I thought I was never going to see you again, Mary.”

  “You could not expect to see me whilst the house was in its recent state,” answered Mirrable. “We have been in a bustle, as you may suppose.”

  “You’ve not had many staying there.”

  “Only Mr. Carr; and he left to-day. We’ve got the old countess-dowager still.”

  “And likely to have her, if all’s true that’s said,” put in Mrs. Jones.

  Mirrable tacitly admitted the probability. Her private opinion was that nothing short of a miracle could ever remove the Dowager Kirton from the house again. Had any one told Mirrable, as she stood there, that her ladyship would be leaving of her own accord that night, she had simply said it was impossible.

  “Mary,” cried the weak voice of poor timid Mrs. Gum, “how was it none of the brothers came to the funeral? Jabez was wondering. She had a lot, I’ve heard.”

  “It was not convenient to them, I suppose,” replied Mirrable. “The one in the Isle of Wight had gone cruising in somebody’s yacht, or he’d have come with the dowager; and Lord Kirton telegraphed from Ireland that he was prevented coming. I know nothing about the rest.”

  “It was an awful death!” shivered Mrs. Gum. “And without cause too; for the child was not hurt after all. Isn’t my lord dreadfully cut up, Mary?”

  “I think so; he’s very quiet and subdued. But he has seemed full of sorrow for a long while, as if he had some dreadful care upon him. I don’t think he and his wife were very happy together,” added Mirrable. “My lord’s likely to make Hartledon his chief residence now, I fancy, for — My gracious! what’s that?”

  A crash as if a whole battery of crockery had come down inside the house. A moment of staring consternation ensued, and nervous Mrs. Gum looked ready to faint. The two women disappeared indoors, and Mirrable turned homewards at a brisk pace. But she was not to go on without an interruption. Pike’s head suddenly appeared above the hurdles, and he began inquiring after her health. “Toothache gone?” asked he.

  “Yes,” she said, answering straightforwardly in her surprise. “How did you know I had toothache?” It was not the first time by several he had thus accosted her; and to give her her due, she was always civil to him. Perhaps she feared to be otherwise.

  “I heard of it. And so my Lord Hartledon’s like a man with some dreadful care upon him!” he went on. “What is the care?”

  “You have been eavesdropping!” she angrily exclaimed.

  “Not a bit of it. I was seated under the hedge with my pipe, and you three women began talking. I didn’t tell you to. Well, what’s his lordship’s care?”

  “Just mind your own business, and his lordship will mind his,” she retorted. “You’ll get interfered with in a way you won’t like, Pike, one of these days, unless you mend your manners.”

  “A great care on him,” nodded Pike to himself, looking after her, as she walked off in her anger. “A great care! I know. One of these fine days, my lord, I may be asking you questions about it on my own score. I might long before this, but for—”

  The sentence broke off abruptly, and ended with a growl at things in general. Mr. Pike was evidently not in a genial mood.

  Mirrable reached home to find the countess-dowager in a state more easily imagined than described. Some sprite, favourable to the peace of Hartledon, had been writing confidentially from Ireland regarding Kirton and his doings. That her eldest son was about to steal a march on her and marry again seemed almost indisputably clear; and the miserable dowager, dancing her war-dance and uttering reproaches, was repacking her boxes in haste. Those boxes, which she had fondly hoped would never again leave Hartledon, unless it might be for sojourns in Park Lane! She was going back to Ireland to mount guard, and prevent any such escapade. Only in September had she quitted him — and then had been as nearly ejected as a son could eject his mother with any decency — and had taken the Isle of Wight on her way to Hartledon. The son who lived in the Isle of Wight had espoused a widow twice his own age, with eleven hundred a year, and a house and carriage; so that he had a home: which the countess-dowager sometimes remembered.

  Lord Hartledon was liberal. He gave her a handsome sum for her journey, and a cheque besides; most devoutly praying that she might keep guard over Kirton for ever. He escorted her to the station himself in a closed carriage, an omnibus having gone before them with a mountain of boxes, at which all Calne came out to stare.

  And the same week, confiding his children to the joint care of Mirrable and their nurse — an efficient, kind, and judicious woman — Lord Hartledon departed from home and England for a sojourn on the Continent, long or short, as inclination might lead him, feeling as a bird released from its cage.

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  COMING HOME.

  Some eighteen months after the event recorded in the last chapter, a travelling carriage dashed up to a house in Park Lane one wet evening in spring. It contained Lord Hartledon and his second wife. They were expected, and the servants were assembled in the hall.

  Lord Hartledon led her into their midst, proudly, affectionately; as he had never in his life led any other. Ah, you need not ask who she was; he had contrived to win her, to win over Dr. Ashton; and his heart had at length found rest. Her fair countenance, her thoughtful eyes and sweet smile were turned on the servants, thanking them for their greeting.

  “All well, Hedges?” asked Lord Hartledon.

  “Quite well, my lord. But we are not alone.”

  “No!” said Val, stopping in his progress. “Who’s here?”

  “The Countess-Dowager of Kirton, my lord,” replied Hedges, glancing at Lady Hartledon in momentary hesitation.

  “Oh, indeed!” said Val, as if not enjoying the information. “Just see, Hedges, that the things inside the carriage are all taken out. Don’t come up, Mrs. Ball; I will take Lady Hartledon to her rooms.”

  It was the light-hearted Val of the old, old days; his face free from care, his voice gay. He did not turn into any of the reception-rooms, but led his wife at once to her chamber. It was nearly dinner-time, and he knew she was tired.

  “Welcome home, my darling!” he whispered tenderly ere releasing her. “A thousand welcomes to you, my dear, dear wife!”

  Tears rose to his eyes with the fervour of the wish. Heaven alone knew what the past had been; the contrast between that time and this.

  “I will dress at once, Percival,” she said, after a few moments’ pause. “I must see your children before dinner. Heaven helping me, I shall love them and always act by them as if they were my own.”

  “I am so sorry she is here, Anne — that terrible old woman. You heard Hedges say Lady Kirton had arrived. Her visit is ill-timed.”

  “I shall be glad to welcome her, Val.”

  “It is more than I shall be,” replied Val, as his wife’s maid came into the room, and he quitted it. “I’ll bring the children to you, An
ne.”

  They had been married nearly five weeks. Anne had not seen the children for several months. The little child, Edward, had shown symptoms of delicacy, and for nearly a year the children had sojourned at the seaside, having been brought to the town-house just before their father’s marriage.

  The nursery was empty, and Lord Hartledon went down. In the passage outside the drawing-room was Hedges, evidently waiting for his master, and with a budget to unfold.

  “When did she come, Hedges?”

  “My lord, it was only a few days after your marriage,” replied Hedges. “She arrived in the most outrageous tantrum — if I shall not offend your lordship by saying so — and has been here ever since, completely upsetting everything.”

  “What was her tantrum about?”

  “On account of your having married again, my lord. She stood in the hall for five minutes when she got here, saying the most audacious things against your lordship and Miss Ashton — I mean my lady,” corrected Hedges.

  “The old hag!” muttered Lord Hartledon.

  “I think she’s insane at times, my lord; I really do. The fits of passion she flies into are quite bad enough for insanity. The housekeeper told me this morning she feared she would be capable of striking my lady, when she first saw her. I’m afraid, too, she has been schooling the children.”

  Lord Hartledon strode into the drawing-room. There, as large as life — and a great deal larger than most lives — was the dowager-countess. Fortunately she had not heard the arrival: in fact, she had dropped into a doze whilst waiting for it; and she started up when Val entered.

  “How are you, ma’am?” asked he. “You have taken me by surprise.”

  “Not half as much as your wicked letter took me,” screamed the old dowager. “Oh, you vile man! to marry again in this haste! You — you — I can’t find words that I should not be ashamed of; but Hamlet’s mother, in the play, was nothing to it.”