Works of Ellen Wood, page 455
“Thank you,” answered Jane, with a suppressed sob. “You will allow me sufficient to live upon, papa?”
“I’ll see about that,” said the earl testily. “Let me know what you want, and I’ll do what I can.”
“I should like to remain in it, papa: to make it my home for life.”
“Stuff, Jane! Before you have been there six months you’ll be glad to come back to us.”
“You will let me take Lucy, papa?”
“No; I’ll be shot if I do!” returned the earl, raising his voice in choler. “I don’t approve of your decamping off at all, though I give in to it; but I will never permit Lucy to share in such rebellion. You needn’t say more, Jane. If my other daughters leave me, I will keep her.”
Jane sighed as she gave up the thought of Lucy. She moved from the table, and held out her hand.
“Good-bye, papa. I shall go to-day.”
“Short work, my young lady,” was the answer. “You’ll come to see the folly of your whim speedily, I hope.”
He shook hands with her. But, in his vexation and annoyance, he did not offer to kiss her, and he did not say “Good-bye.” Perhaps he felt vexed at himself as much as at Jane.
She went up to her room. Judith was busy at the dressing-table, and a maid was making the bed. Jane motioned to the latter to quit the chamber.
“I am going back to South Wennock, Judith, to live at the old house on the Rise. I leave for it to-day. Would you like to go, and remain with me?”
Judith looked too surprised to speak. She was dusting a glass toilette-bottle at the moment, and she laid it down in wonder. Jane continued.
“If you do not wish to go with me, I suppose you can remain here with Lady Lucy. They will want a maid for her, unless Lady Oakburn’s is to attend upon her. That can be ascertained.”
“I will go with you, my lady,” said Judith.
“I shall be glad if you will. But mine will be a very quiet household. Only you and another, at the most.”
“I would prefer to go with you, my lady.”
“Then, Judith, let us hasten with the preparations. We must be away from this house to-day.”
Scarcely had she spoken when Lucy came dancing in, her cheeks and her eyes glowing.
“Oh, Jane! I hope we shall all be happy together!” she exclaimed. “I think we can be. Lady Oakburn is so kind. She means to get Miss Snow a nice situation, and to teach me herself. She says she will not entrust my education to any one else.”
“I am going away, Lucy,” said Jane, drawing the little girl to her. “I wish — I wish I could have had you with me! But papa will not—”
“Going away?” repeated Lucy. “Where?”
“I am going back to South Wennock to live there.”
“Oh, Jane! And to leave papa! What will he do without you?” A spasm crossed over Jane Chesney’s face. “He has some one else now, Lucy.”
Lucy burst into tears. “And I, Jane! What shall I do? You have never been away from me in all my life!”
A struggle with herself, and then Jane’s tears burst forth. For the first time since the blow had descended. She laid her face on Lucy’s neck, and sobbed aloud.
Only for a few moments did she suffer herself to indulge in grief. “I cannot afford this, child,” she said; “I have neither time nor emotion to spare to-day. You must leave me, or I shall not be ready.” Lucy went down, her face wet with tears. Lady Oakburn, who seemed to be taking to her new home with its duties quite naturally, was sorting some of Lucy’s music in the drawing-room. She looked just as she had looked as Miss Lethwait; but she wore this morning a beautiful dress of lama, shot with blue and gold, and a lace cap of guipure. Lucy’s noisy entrance and noisy grief caused her to turn abruptly.
“My dear child, what is the matter?” —
“Jane is going away,” was the sobbing answer.
“Going away!” echoed the countess, not understanding.
“Yes, she is going back to live at South Wennock, she says. She and Judith are packing up to go to-day.”
Lady Oakburn was as one struck dumb. For a minute she could neither stir nor speak. Self-reproach was taking possession of her.
“Does your papa know of this, Lucy?”
“Oh yes, I think so,” sobbed Lucy. “Jane said she had asked papa to let me go with her, and he would not.”
Lady Oakburn quitted the room and went in search of the earl. He was in the library still, pacing it with his stick now — the stick having just menaced poor Pompey’s head, who had come in with a message.
“Lucy tells me that Lady Jane is about to leave,” began the countess. “Oh, Lord Oakburn, it is as I feared! I would almost rather have died than come here to sow dissension in your house. Can nothing be done?”
“No, it can’t,” said the earl. “When Jane’s determined upon a thing, she is determined. It’s the fault of the family, my lady; as you’ll find when you have been longer in it.”
“But, Lord Oakburn —— —”
“My dear, look here. All the talking in the world won’t alter it, and I’d rather hear no more upon the subject. Jane will go to South Wennock; but I dare say she’ll come to her senses before she has lived there many months.”
Did a recollection cross the earl’s mind of another of his daughters, of whom he had used the self-same words? Clarice! She would come to her senses, he said, if left alone. But it seemed she had not come to them yet.
Lady Oakburn, more grieved, more desolate than can well be imagined, for she was feeling herself a wretched interloper, in her lively consciousness, went up to Jane’s room and knocked at the door. Jane was alone then. She was standing before a chest of drawers, taking out its contents. The countess was agitated, even to tears.
“Oh, Lady Jane, do not inflict this unhappiness upon me! I wish I had never entered the house, if the consequences are to involve your leaving it.”
Jane turned, and stood, calm, impassive, scarcely deigning to raise her haughty eyelids.
“You should have thought of consequences before, madam.”
“If you could know how very far from my thoughts it would be to presume in any way upon my position!” continued the countess imploringly. “If you would consent to be still the mistress of the house, Lady Jane—”
“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Jane in haughty tones of reproof, as if she would recall her to common sense. “My time is very short,” she continued: “may I request to be left alone?”
Lady Oakburn saw there was no help for it — no remedy; and she turned to leave the room with a gesture of grief and pain. “I can only pray that the time may come when you will know me better, Lady Jane. Believe me, I would rather have died than have been the means of turning you from your home.”
Taking leave of none but Lucy and Miss Snow, Lady Jane left the house with Judith in the course of the afternoon. Lord Oakburn had gone out: his wife, Jane would not see. And in that impromptu manner Lady Jane returned to South Wennock, and took up her abode again in the old house, startling the woman who had charge of it.
The next day Jane wrote to her father. Her intention was to live as quietly as possible, she told him, keeping only two maids — Judith, to attend upon her personally, and a general servant — and a very modest sum indeed Jane named as an estimate of what it would cost her to live upon. But Lord Oakburn was more liberal, and exactly doubled it. In his answer he told her, her allowance would be at the rate of five hundred a year.
But the past trouble reacted upon Jane, and she became really ill. Mr. John Grey was called in to her. He found her sickness more of the mind than the body, and knew that time alone could work its cure.’
“My dear lady, if I were to undertake you as a patient I should only be robbing you,” he said to her, at his second interview. “Tonics? Well, you shall have some if you like; but your best tonic will be time.”
She saw that he divined how cruel had been the blow of the earl’s marriage, the news of which had caused quite a commotion in South Wennock. Even this remote allusion to it Jane would have resented in some; but there was that about Mr. Grey that seemed to draw her to him as a friend. She sat at the table in the small square drawing-room — small, as compared with some of the rooms to which she had lately been accustomed — and leaned her cheek upon her hand. Mr. Grey was seated on the other side the hearth, opposite to her. It was growing towards evening, and the red blaze of the fire played on Jane’s pale face.
“Yes,” she acknowledged, “it is time alone that can do much for me, I believe. I feel — I feel that I shall never be happy again. But I should like some tonic medicine, Mr. Grey.”
“You shall have it, Lady Jane. I fancy you are naturally not very strong.”
“Not very strong, perhaps. But I have hitherto enjoyed good health. Are there any changes in South Wennock?” she continued, not sorry to quit the subject of self.
“No, I think not,” he answered; “nothing in particular, that would interest you. A few people have died; a few have married: as is the case in all places.”
“Does Mr. Carlton get much practice?” she asked, overcoming her repugnance to speak of that gentleman in her wish for some information as to how he and Laura were progressing.
“He gets a great deal,” said Mr. Grey. “The fact is, quite a tide has set in against my brother, of which Mr. Carlton reaps the benefit.”
“I do not understand,” said Jane.
“People seem to have taken a dislike to my brother, on account of that unhappy affair in Palace Street,” he explained. “Or rather, I should say, to distrust him. In short, people won’t have Mr. Stephen Grey to attend them any longer. If I can’t go, they run for Mr. Carlton, and thus he has now a great many of our former patients. South Wennock is a terrible place for gossip; every one must interfere with his neighbour’s affairs. Just now,” added Mr. John Grey, with a genial smile, “the town is commenting on Lady Jane Chesney’s having called me in, instead of Mr. Carlton, her sister’s husband.”
Jane shook her head. “I dislike Mr. Carlton personally very much,” she said. “Had he never entered our family to sow dissension in it, I should still have disliked him. But this must be a great trouble to Mr. Stephen Grey.”
“It is a great annoyance. I wonder sometimes that Stephen puts up with it so patiently. ‘It will come round in time,’ is all he says.”
“Has any clue been obtained to the unfortunate lady who died?” asked Jane.
“Not the slightest. She lies, poor thing, in the corner of St. Mark’s Churchyard, unclaimed and unknown.”
“But, has her husband never come forward to inquire after her?” exclaimed Lady Jane, in wonder. “It was said at the time, I remember, that he was travelling abroad. Surely he must have returned?”
“No one whatever has come forward,” was Mr. Grey’s reply. “Neither he nor any one else. In short, Lady Jane, but for that humble grave and the obloquy that has become the property of my brother Stephen, the whole affair might well seem a myth; a something that had only happened in a dream.”
“Does it not strike you as being altogether very singular?” said Lady Jane, after a pause. “The affair itself, I mean.”
“Very much so indeed. It so impressed me at the time of the occurrence; far more than it did my brother.”
“It would almost seem as though — as though the poor young lady had had no husband,” concluded Lady Jane. “If it be not uncharitable to the dead to say so.”
“That is the opinion I incline to,” avowed Mr. John Grey. “My brother, on the contrary, will not entertain it; he feels certain, he says, that in that respect things were as straight as they ought to be. But for one thing, I should adopt my opinion indubitably, and go on, as a natural sequence, to the belief that she herself introduced the fatal drops into the draught.”
“And that one thing — what is it?” asked Jane, interested in spite of her own cares. But indeed the tragedy from the first had borne much interest for her — as it had for every one else in South Wennock.
“The face that was seen on the stairs by Mr. Carlton.”
“But I thought Mr. Carlton maintained afterwards that he had not seen any face there — that it was a misapprehension of his own?”
“Rely upon it, Mr. Carlton did see a face there, Lady Jane. The impression conveyed to his mind at the moment was, that a face — let us say a man’s — was there; and I believe it to have been a right one. The doubt arose to him afterwards with the improbability: and, for one thing, he may wish to believe that there was no one there, and to impress that belief upon others.”
“But why should he wish to do that?” asked Jane.
“Because he must be aware that it was very careless of him not to have put the matter beyond doubt at the time. To see a man hovering in that stealthy manner near a sick lady’s room would be the signal for unearthing him to most medical attendants. It ought to have been so to Mr. Carlton; and he is no doubt secretly blaming himself for not having done it.”
“I thought he did search.”
“Yes, superficially. He carried out a candle and looked around. But he should have remained on the landing, and called to those below to bring lights, so as not to allow a chance of escape. Of course, he had no thought of evil at the time.”
“And you connect that man with the evil?”
“I do,” said Mr. Grey, as he rose to leave. “There’s not a shadow of doubt in my mind that that man was the author of Mrs. Crane’s death,”
CHAPTER XXXIV.
FREDERICK GREY’S “CROTCHET.”
THAT a strong tide, flowing from one end of South Wennock to the other, had set in against Mr. Stephen Grey, was an indisputable fact. Immediately after the inquest on Mrs. Crane, public opinion had gone in his favour; people seemed ashamed of having suspected him of so fatal an error, and they made much of Mr. Stephen Grey. This continued for a week or two, and then the current changed. One insinuated a doubt, another insinuated a doubt; some said Mr. Stephen had been culpably negligent; others said he had taken too much champagne. And the current against the surgeon went flowing on until it threatened to engulf him in its angry torrent.
Another undoubted fact was, that a great inciter to this feeling was Mr. Carlton. It was he who did most towards fanning the flame. This was not generally known, for Mr. Carlton’s work was partially done in secret; but still it did in a measure ooze out, especially to the Greys. That Mr. Carlton’s motive must be that of increasing his own practice, was universally assumed; but it was a dishonest, underhand way of doing it, and it caused young Frederick Grey to boil over with indignation.
On a sofa in the house of Mr. Stephen Grey, lay a lady with a pale face and delicate features. It was Stephen Grey’s wife. She had just returned home after seven or eight months’ absence at the continental spas, whither she had gone with her sister, a wealthy widow, hoping to pick up renewed health; for she, Mrs. Grey suffered always from an affection of the spine.
Frederick was bending over her. The boy loved nothing so much on earth as his mother. He was narrating to her all the wonders, pleasant and unpleasant, that had occurred during her absence: the tragedy which had taken place in Palace Street, and its present consequences to Mr. Stephen Grey, naturally forming a principal topic. This had not been written of to Mrs. Grey. “As well not disturb her with disagreeeble matters,” Mr. Stephen had remarked at the time. She was growing excited over the recital, and she suddenly sat up, looking her son full in the face.
“I cannot understand, Frederick. Either your papa did put the opium into the mixture—”
“Prussic acid, mamma.”
“Prussic acid! What made my thoughts run upon opium? — talking of a sleeping draught, I suppose. Either your papa did put the prussic acid into the mixture, or he did not—”
“Dearest mamma, do I not tell you that he did not? I watched him make it up; I watched every drop of everything he put into it. There was no more poison in that draught than there is in this glass of water at your elbow.”
“My dear, I do not dispute it: I should be excessively astonished to hear that your papa had been careless enough to do such a thing. What I want to know is this — with your testimony and your Uncle John’s combined, with the experience of years that they have had of your father, and with the favourable verdict of the coroner’s jury, why have people taken up this prejudice against him?”
“Because they are fools,” logically answered Frederick. “I don’t suppose there are ten people in the place who would call in papa now. It makes Uncle John so mad!”
“It must give him a great deal of extra work,” observed Mrs. Stephen Grey.
“He is nearly worked off his legs. Some of our patients have gone over altogether to the enemy, Carlton. It is he who is the chief mover against papa. And he does it in such a sneaking, mean way. ‘I am grieved to be called in to take the place of Mr. Stephen Grey,’ he says ‘No man can more highly respect him than I do, or deplore more deeply the lamentable mistake. I cannot but think he will be cautious for the future: still, when the lives of those dear to us, our wives and children, are at stake’”
Mrs. Grey could not avoid an interrupting laugh, Frederick was imitating Mr. Carlton so quaintly.
“How do you know he says this to people?” she asked.
“Plenty of them could bear testimony to the fact, mamma. And it does its work all too well.”
“And what is Mr. Carlton’s motive?”
“To get our patients away from us, of course. Now that he has married an earl’s daughter, he can’t do with a small income. I wrote you word, you know, about his running away with Miss Laura Chesney. They met with a series of disasters in their flight; were pitched out of Mr. Carlton’s carriage into the mud, and Miss Laura lost one of her shoes. She’s Lady Laura now — and was then, for that matter, if they had only known it: it’s said that Mr. Carlton did know it. They were married at Gretna Green, or one of those convenient places; and when they came back to South Wennock were married again. You should have seen St. Mark’s Church. Crowds upon crowds pushed into it.”
