by Ellen Wood
The morning wore on. Theresa went out again; Karl was shut up and then he went out; Lucy was left in the house alone. It was usually so. She had given her orders, and no earthly thing else remained to do — save let her heart prey upon itself. When she had gone pretty nearly out of her mind, she put her bonnet on, and betook herself to Mrs. Whittle, the widow of the man who had died suddenly at the station in the summer. Passing out at the extreme gate of the Court, Lucy had but to skirt the wood, and in three minutes was at the cottage: one of a row.
She had taken to come here when she was very particularly miserable — as she felt this day. For the lesson it read to her was most salutary, acting as a kind of tonic. That this poor woman was slowly dying, there could not be much doubt of. She had been in ill health before her husband’s death, and the blow struck too severely on the weakened frame. But for Karl and his wife the family must have taken refuge in the workhouse. Lucy went in and sat down on a low wooden stool. Mrs. Whittle, about to-day, was in the easy-chair, sent to her from the Court, her three little girls around her, the eldest eight years of age. Two younger children, boys, played on the floor.
“I am teaching them to sew, ma’am,” she said to Lucy. “Bessy has got her hand pretty well into it; but the other two haven’t. When I lie awake at nights, my lady, and think how little it is they know of any sort of labour yet, and how soon I may be taken from them, and be able to teach no more, my heart fails me. I can only set on to cry, and to pray God to forgive me all my short-comings.”
The tears had come into her eyes, and were falling down her hectic cheeks. She had been very pretty once, but the face was wasted now. Lucy’s eyelashes were wet “But I think you look better, Mrs. Whittle. And as to short-comings — we all might own to those.”
“It seems to me that I could have brought them on better if I’d known what was coming, ma’am. Until that night when my husband was carried home on a shutter, I had not had a thought of death, as being likely to concern any of us at home here. And now the time seems to be coming to an end, and I’m leaving them, and they know nothing.”
“I hope you will get better yet,” said Lucy.
“I don’t think so, ma’am. I should like to if I could. The very distress that is upon me about my children seems as if it kept me back. Nobody can know what it is to leave a family of young children to the world, till they come to it themselves. There’s a dreadful yearning upon me always, my lady, an aching like, at the thought of it. Mr. Sumnor, he is very good and kind, and he comes here, and tells me about heaven, and how free from care I shall be, once I get to it. But oh, ma’am, when I must leave these little ones here, with nobody to say a word to keep them from the world’s bad ways, how do I know that they will ever get to heaven?”
The woman had never spoken out as she was speaking to-day. Generally she had seemed calm and resigned — to get well, or to die. Lucy was intensely sorry for her. She would take herself to task for being so miserable with this real distress close at hand, and for at least the rest of the day allow it to read her a salutary lesson.
Passing in at the small gate again, she made her way to the acacia tree and sat down under it, letting her parasol fall to the ground. Karl, who was at home again, could see her from his window, but he did not attempt to go to her. And so she idled away the morning in weariness.
Theresa appeared at luncheon; but Sir Karl did not. Lucy remembered that a parcel she was expecting from London ought to be at the station (only an autumn mantle) and thought she would go in the pony-chaise for it Anything for a change — for a break in her monotonous life. So the chaise was ordered, and the groom to drive it. It came round, and she was getting in when Karl approached.
“Are you going to drive yourself, Lucy?”
“Oh no. Robert is coming.”
“I will go, then. We shall not want you, Robert.”
“But I was only going to the station,” she said. “To the station?”
“I think my new mantle may be there.”
He drove off, turning towards the station. The mantle was not there: and Karl continued his drive as far as Basham. They said very little to one another. Just a remark on the scenery, or on any object passing: nothing more. Karl pulled up at the saddler’s shop, to give some direction about a set of harness they were making for him. Just as he got into the chaise again, somebody passed and took off his hat, with a “Good afternoon, Sir Karl.”
It was Mr. Tatton. Karl wondered what he was doing in Basham. Of course, the detective might be there for fifty things, totally unconnected with his profession: but nevertheless the sight of him awoke uneasiness in Karl’s mind. When a heavy dread lies upon us, the most trifling event will serve to stir up suspicion and augment fear.
Karl drove home again, and Lucy went up to her little sitting-room. She was owing a letter to Mrs. Cleeve, but held back from writing it. Great though her affection was for her mother, she hated now to write. It was so impossible to fill up a letter — as it seemed to Lucy — and yet guard her secret. She could not say “Karl and I are doing this;” or “Karl and I are doing the other:” and yet if she did not say something of this kind of their home life, or mention his name, her fancy suggested that it would look strange, and might arouse doubt. Conscience makes us cowards. She might have sent a letter that day, saying, “I have just got home from a drive with Karl;” and “Karl and I decided this morning to have that old fir-tree by the rocks dug up;” and it would be quite true: but Lucy in her strict integrity so disliked the deceit the words would imply, that she shrank from writing them.
Footsteps on the gravel below: his footsteps: and she went to the window to glance out. Yes, he was going straight down the gravel walk, and through the large gates. Going where? Her heart beat a little quicker as the question crept in. To the Maze? The query was always suggesting itself now.
He turned that way — and that was all she could tell, for the trees hid the road from her view. He might be going to his agent’s; he might be going to some part or other of his estate; but to Lucy’s jealous mind the probability seemed perfectly clear that his destination was that shut-in house, which she had already begun to hate so much. And yet — she believed that he did not go in by day-time. Lucy wondered whether Fair Rosamund, who had disturbed the peace of her queen, was half as fair as this Rosamund, now turning her own poor heart to sickness.
More footsteps on the gravel: merry tongues, light laughter. Lucy looked out again. Some of the young ladies from the village had called for Theresa, and they were now going on to St. Jerome’s. For laughter such as that, for the real lightness of heart that must be its inevitable accompaniment, Lucy thought she would have bartered a portion of her remaining life.
Aglaé came in, her hands and arms full of clouds of tulle and blue ribbon.
“Look here, my lady — these English modistes have no taste at all. They can’t judge. They send this heavy satin ribbon, saying it is the fashion, and they put it in every part of the beautiful light robe, so that you cannot tell which is robe, the tulle, or the ribbon. My lady is not going to wear that, say I; an English modiste might wear it, but my young lady never. So I take the ribbons off.”
Lucy looked round listlessly. What did all these adornments matter to her? Karl never seemed to see now what she was dressed in: and if he had seen, he would not have cared.
“But what is it you are asking me, Aglaé?”
“I would ask my lady to let me put just a quarter of as much ribbon on: and silk ribbon, not satin. I have some silk in the house, and this satin will come in for a heavier robe.”
“Do whatever you like, Aglaé.”
“That’s well,” said Aglaé. “But I wish my lady would not show herself quite so indifferent,” added the woman to herself as she withdrew. “She could not care less if she were the old grandmother.”
The afternoon passed to its close, Lucy reading a bit and working a bit to beguile the time. Whether the book or the work lay before her, her mind was alike far aw
ay, brooding over the trouble that could never leave it. Then she went down to dinner in her evening dress of silk. No stranger was present: only herself, Karl, and Theresa. It was generally thus: neither she nor he had spirits to bring guests about them often. Theresa told them of a slight accident that had happened at the station that afternoon, and it served for a topic of conversation. Dinner was barely over when Miss Diana Moore called in. She was not given to time her visits ceremoniously; but she was always welcome, for Karl and Lucy both liked her. Miss Diana generally gave them the news of the place, and she began now. In some inexplicable manner the conversation turned on the Maze. At least, something was said that caused the place to be incidentally mentioned, and it served to draw Miss Diana’s thoughts to what they might otherwise not have reverted to. “The senseless geese that people are!” she cried.
“Did you hear of that ghost story that arose about the Maze?”
Karl bit his lip. Lucy looked at Miss Diana: she had heard nothing.
“Mother Jinks told me to my face the other day that there could not be a doubt it was Mr. Throcton’s son haunting it. My brother — Mr. Moore — had seen it, she said, as well as Nurse Chaffen: a gentleman in evening dress, who appeared to them and vanished away again. She believed it, too.”
“I fancy it has been rather more materially accounted for,” put in Miss Blake, not at all sorry of the opportunity to give a side fling at Sir Karl.
“Well, what I hear people have found out now is, that the ghost was only Sir Karl Andinnian, who had called in there after or before his dinner,” said Miss Diana, laughing. “What do you say to it, Sir Karl?”
Sir Karl did not know what to say. On the one hand it was most essential to do away, if possible, with the impression that any strange gentleman had been at the Maze; on the other, he did not care to admit that he paid evening visits there. Of the two evils, however, the last was the least.
“It may have been myself, Miss Diana. I cannot say, I’m sure. I remember I went over one evening, and stayed a few minutes.”
“But it was while Mrs. Grey was ill with fever.”
“Just so. I went to enquire after her.”
“Well, I suppose it was you, then. I asked William about it, but he is as close as wax when he likes, and professed not to know what I was talking of. One thing is clear, that he could not have recognised you, Sir Karl. It was nearly dark, I believe. That little baby at the Maze is very delicate.”
“By the way, Miss Diana, talking of such people, what does Mr. Moore think of poor Whittle’s widow?” asked Sir Karl. “My wife says she is very ill.”
The conversation was turned — Sir Karl’s object in speaking. Miss Diana talked of Mrs. Whittle, and then went on to other subjects.
But it will be readily seen how cruelly these and similar incidents tried Lucy Andinnian. Had an angel come down from heaven to assure her the gentleman in evening attire was not Sir Karl, she would have refused to believe it. Nay, he had, so to say, confessed it — in her presence.
Miss Diana departed. Karl went out with her, and did not come in again. Lucy knew he had gone to the Maze. She went up to her room, and stood there in the dark watching for his return. It was nearly ten when he appeared: he had been spending all that time with her rival!
Even so. Sir Karl had spent it at the Maze. As the autumn evenings grew darker, he could go over earlier and come away earlier. Lucy wondered whether this state of things was to last for ever, and how much longer she could continue to bear and make no sign.
To her weary bed again went she. To the anguish of her outraged heart; to her miserable, sleepless hours, and her still more miserable dreams. Jealousy as utterly mistaken and foundationless has too often inflicted torment lively as this.
It is a “green-eyed monster, which doth make the food it feeds on.”
CHAPTER XI.
Mrs. Chaffen disturbed.
WE have now to return to Mr. Strange. That eminent detective was, to tell the truth, somewhat puzzled by his interview with Sir Karl Andinnian, held in the road; thrown, so to say, slightly on his beam ends. The earnest assurances of Sir Karl — that the individual he had been suspecting was the agent Smith, and that there was not, and could not be, any gentleman residing at the Maze — had made their due impression, for he saw that Sir Karl was a man whose word might be trusted. At the same time he detected, or thought he detected, an undue eagerness on Sir Karl’s part to impress this upon him; an eagerness which the matter itself did not justify, unless Sir Karl had a private and personal motive for it. Musing on this, Mr. Strange had continued to walk about that evening instead of going on to his lodgings; and when Miss Blake surprised him underneath the trees at the Maze gate — or, rather, surprised herself by finding him there — he had not sought the spot to watch the gate, but as a shelter of seclusion while he thought. The stealthy entrance of Sir Karl Andinnian with a key taken from his pocket, and the whispered communication from Miss Blake, threw altogether another light upon the matter, and served to show what Sir Karl’s personal motive might be. According to that lady’s hints, Sir Karl was in the habit of stealing into the Maze, and that it was no one but Sir Karl himself who had been seen by Nurse Chaffen.
Mr. Detective Strange could not conceal from his acute brain that, if this were true, his own case was almost as good as disposed of, and he might prepare to go back to town. Salter, the prey he was patiently searching out, was at the Maze or nowhere — for Mr. Strange had turned the rest of the locality inside out, and knew that it contained no trace of him. If the gentleman in the evening dress, seen by Nurse Chaffen, was Sir Karl Andinnian, it could not have been Philip Salter: and, as his sole motive for suspecting the Maze was that worthy woman’s account of him she had seen, why the grounds of suspicion seemed slipping from under him.
He thought it out well that night. Well and thoroughly. The tale was certainly likely and plausible. Sir Karl Andinnian did not appear to be one who would embark on this kind of private expedition; but, as the detective said to himself, one could not answer for one’s own brother. Put it down as being Sir Karl that the woman saw, why then the mystery of her not having seen him again was at an end: for while she was there Sir Karl would not be likely to go to the Maze and show himself a second time.
The more Mr. Strange thought it out, the further reason he found for suspecting that this must be the true state of the case. It did not please him. Clear the Maze of all suspicion as to Salter, and it would become evident that they had been misled, and that so much valuable time had been wasted. He should have to go back to Scotland Yard and report the failure. Considering that he had latterly been furnishing reports of the prey being found and as good as in his hands, the prospect was mortifying. This would be the second consecutive case in which he had signally failed.
But it was by no means Mr. Strange’s intention to take the failure for granted. He was too wary a detective to do that without seeking for proof, and he had not done with Foxwood yet The first person he must see was Mrs. Chaffen.
Somewhat weary with his night reflections and not feeling quite so refreshed as he ought, for the thing had kept him awake till morning, Mr. Strange sat down to his breakfast languidly. Watchful Mrs. Jinks, who patronized her easy lodger and was allowed to visit his tea, and sugar, and butter, and cheese with impunity, observed this as she whipped off the cover from a dish of mushrooms that looked as though it might tempt an anchorite.
“You’ve got a headache this morning, Mr. Strange, sir. Is it bad?”
“Oh, very bad,” said Mr. Strange, who did not forget to keep up his rôle of delicate health as occasion afforded opportunity.
“What things them headaches are!” deplored Mrs. Jinks. “Nobody knows whence they come nor how to drive ’em away. Betsey Chaffen was nursing a patient in the spring, who’d had bilious fever and rheumatis combined; and to hear what she said about that poor dear old gentleman’s head—”
“By the way, how is Mrs. Chaffen?” interrupted Mr. Strange, wit
h scant ceremony, and no regard to the old gentleman’s head. “I have not seen her lately.”
“She was here a day or two ago, sir; down in my kitchen. As to how she is, she’s as strong as need be: which it’s thanks to you for inquiring. She never has nothing the matter with her,”
“Is she out nursing?”
“Not now. She expects to be called out soon, and is waiting at home for it.”
“Where is her home?”
“Down Foxglove Lane, sir, turning off by Mr. Sumnor’s church. Bull, the stonemason, lives in the end house there, and she have lodged with ’em for years. Bull tells her in joke sometimes that some of ’em ought to be took ill, with such a nurse as her in the house. Which they never are, for it’s as healthy a spot as any in Foxwood.”
Mr. Strange had a knack of politely putting an end to his landlady’s gossip when he pleased, and of sending her away. He did so now: and the widow transferred herself and her attentions to Mr. Cattacomb’s parlour.
People must hold spring and autumn cleanings, or where would their carpets and curtains be? Mrs. Chaffen, though occupying but one humble room (with a choice piece of furniture in it that was called a “bureau” by day, and was a bed by night) was not exempt from the general sanitary obligations. Mrs. Bull considered that she instituted these periodical bouts of scrubbing oftener than there was occasion for: but Betsey Chaffen liked to take care of her furniture — which was her own — and was moreover a cleanly woman.
On this self-same morning she was in the thick of it: her gown turned up about her waist, her hands and arms bare to the elbow, plunged into a bucket of soapsuds, herself on her knees, and the furniture all heaped together on the top of the shut-up bureau in the comer, when one of the young Bulls came in with the astounding news that a gentleman was asking for her.
“Goodness bless me!” cried the poor woman, turning cold all over, “it can’t be that I’m fetched out, can it, Sam? — and me just in the middle of all this mess!”