by Ellen Wood
“Do you think it can be true, Jane — that papa is Earl of Oakburn?”
“I — I think it must be so, Lucy. I cannot see that the coming of these letters here can mean anything else.”
Lucy rose from her low seat by the fire, and was going to the door. “I’ll go and tell Laura,” she said; but Jane drew her back again.
“Not yet, Lucy. Let us be sure that it is true first. Somehow I do not like to speculate upon it. It is so sad, it is so grievously sad for the young earl to have died like this — if he has died.”
Lucy sat down again, disappointed. She had all a child’s love of imparting marvellous news. But Laura would be coming down directly, she supposed, and then Jane would no doubt tell her.
Jane sat on in silence. She was possessed of extreme right feeling; she had no selfishness, was just in her regard for others, and she did not like to dwell upon the probability of this being true — or, as she had phrased it, to speculate upon it. If Lord Oakburn was dead, had been cut off thus early, none would feel more genuine regret for him than Jane. And yet, in spite of this, in spite of herself, certain thoughts intruded themselves and would not be driven back. No more privations, no more pinching, no more care; no more dread of that horrible prison for one whom she so loved, which had been ever present to her mind, a shadow and a dread. Strive as she would, she could not wholly drive these thoughts from her brain; she could not do it; and yet she almost hated and despised herself for their being there.
By-and-by, just as Pompey brought in the lamp, Captain Chesney’s step was heard on the wet gravel. The rain ever since the morning had been incessant, drenching; but it had ceased now.
“I can’t get any news of Oakburn,” said the captain, when he came in. “The omnibus brought no passengers at all to-night. What’s that, Jane? Another letter for him? Well, it’s strange that he should not be here to meet them.”
“Papa,” said Jane, her pulses beating at what she had to say, “I fear we may have been under a mistake in expecting him at all. Mr. Grey has been here since you went out, and he says Lord Oakburn was lying at Chesney Oaks two days ago, dangerously ill of typhus fever; it was feared then that he had not many hours to live. Mr. Grey thinks it certain that these two letters are for you.”
“For me!” repeated the puzzled captain, not having discerned the drift of the argument.
“Yes, papa,” replied Jane, bending her head and speaking in very low tones. “For you, as Earl of Oakburn.”
Captain Chesney stared at Jane, and then made her repeat exactly what Mr. Grey had said. It subdued him greatly. He was as unselfish as Jane, and he thought of the young earl’s fate, not of his own advancement.
“I’ll risk it, Jane, and open one of the letters,” he said. “If — if it should be all right, why, the poor fellow will forgive me; he was always good-natured. I’ll just tell him how it happened, and why I did it. Give me the one that came this morning.”
Jane selected the morning’s letter, and Captain Chesney opened it. He ran his eyes over its contents, standing by the lamp to do so, and then he sat down in a very humble fashion and in deep silence.
“It’s true, Jane,” he presently said, with something very like a sob. “The poor lad is gone, and I am Earl of Oakburn.”
The letter was from the steward at Chesney Oaks. He wrote to acquaint the new earl of his young master’s death, and to request his immediate presence at Chesney Oaks. The earl (as we must henceforth call Captain Chesney) flung it on the table in a momentary access of his customary choler.
“Why didn’t the simpleton write to me in my own name?” he exclaimed. “But that steward always was wanting in common sense. Give me the other letter, Jane.”
The other letter proved to be from the lawyers in London, solicitors for many years to the Oakburn family. They were offering their services to the new peer.
The new peer seemed to have his work cut out for him. Of course the first obvious step was to depart for Chesney Oaks. With his characteristic impulse, he started up to go; then and there; without the loss of a minute.
“I can’t wait, Jane. What do you say? — stop for tea? Tea! What other rubbish would you like me to stop for? If I can get a gig at the Lion, I may catch the cross-train at Great Wennock. Dead! The poor fellow dead, and none of his kith and kin near him!”
“But, papa, you must take a carpet-bag with you? You will want—”
“I shall take nothing with me,” interrupted the earl, catching up his glasses, and buttoning up his coat in a desperate hurry. “You send Pompey after me in the morning to Chesney Oaks with a shirt and my shaving-tackle. There! there! I have not a moment to lose, Jane. One kiss apiece, girls, and then — where’s Laura?”
Lucy rushed out of the room, calling “Laura, Laura!” The captain hastened after her, as well as stiffness left by the gout permitted him. He caught up his hat and cloak as he passed through the hall.
“Never mind her, Lucy, I can’t wait; she’s gone to sleep, I should think. Give her a kiss for me, and ask her how she likes being my Lady Laura.”
It all seemed to pass in a minute, before Jane had time to collect her bewildered senses. She said something to him about the danger there might be of his catching the fever, but he was deaf to it all, and walked down the garden path, fastening his cloak. Jane knew how useless it would be to repeat her words, and she stood at the open door with Lucy, and watched him out at the gate by the light of the moon, which had struggled out from behind the grey clouds.
Lucy ran back to the foot of the stairs and again called to Laura. But there came no response.
“I think she must have gone to sleep, as papa said, Jane. How strange!”
“I will see, my dear. You go back to the drawing-room, Lucy, and ring the bell for tea.”
A disagreeable fear had come over Jane Chesney’s heart that Laura was not upstairs; that she had stolen out again to the garden to meet Mr. Carlton. She looked into Laura’s room and spoke. It was empty.
“Yes! with him again!” she murmured. “I will go after her, for it shall not be.”
She went softly out at the front door, and walked down the wet gravel in her thin home shoes. But nothing came of it. It was evident that her sister was not there; and an idea arose to Jane that Laura must have gone out with Mr. Carlton.
Could it be possible that she had so far forgotten herself as to go out walking with him at night, in the face and eyes of South Wennock? In the bitterness of the conviction that it was so, Jane almost hoped that they might be met by her father, for she was beginning to find that she was not herself strong enough to cope with this.
She asked for a light, went into Laura’s room, and looked for the black cloth mantle and bonnet that she ordinarily wore. They were not in their places: a proof that her suspicions were correct.
Jane stood for a moment, her elbow resting on a chest of drawers, her head pressed upon her hand. She could do nothing, except wait until Laura came in, and then remonstrate with her. “This is the result of my having discovered the meetings in the garden,” thought Jane. “She feared to trust herself there again.”
Jane returned to the drawing-room. The tea-things waited on the table, and Lucy looked up with an air of expectancy.
“Where’s Laura, Jane? Is she coming?”
What was Jane to say to the child? It was very desirable that the fact of Laura’s absence from the house should be concealed from her; indeed, Jane trusted it would not be known beyond herself. She put Lucy off with an evasive answer, and told her she might get out the book of fairy tales again that she had been reading in the afternoon.
“But are you not going to make tea now, Jane?”
“Not just yet dear. Papa’s away, and there’s no hurry. I have a little work that I will do first.”
Of course she spoke hoping Laura would come in. She reached out her work and finished it; very prosy work it was; mending some wristbands of Captain Chesney’s. The rain was pouring down again, and the time went on
until the clock struck nine: Lucy’s bedtime, and the child had not had her tea!
Where could Laura be?
Jane began to feel angry at the suspense, the perplexity altogether. She could not longer delay tea, and then the household and Lucy would inevitably know of Laura’s absence. Just then Judith came in.
“Why, where’s Miss Laura?” she exclaimed, in surprise. “I was in her room a minute ago, and found this on the floor, ma’am. I came in to bring it to her.”
It was Laura’s purse; the one she ordinarily used. Jane supposed Laura had dropped it from her pocket. It was quite empty. Jane had seen her recently making a new one with green silk and steel beads; perhaps she had taken that into use.
“Is Miss Laura out?” asked Judith.
There was no denying it; there could be no smoothing the fact down, no plausible excuse offered for it; and Jane Chesney’s heart ached with its own pain.
“She — she may have stepped out to purchase something in the town that she was in a hurry for, some trifles for her worsted work,” breathed Jane. “She is sure not to be long. I will make the tea, Judith.”
The tea was made and partaken of, and still Laura did not appear. But when the time went on to ten, Jane grew terribly uneasy; not that a suspicion of the dreadful truth — all too dreadful as it would in every sense be to Jane — had yet penetrated to her brain.
She threw a shawl over her head, took an umbrella, and went to the garden gate. There she stood looking up and down the road, as well as the darkness would permit — for the night had become very dark now. Nothing could be seen; nothing heard save the rain as it pattered down.
Judith met her as she returned indoors, divining her uneasiness. “Can I go after her anywhere, Miss Chesney?” She was Lady Jane Chesney now — but let that pass. Jane herself never so much as thought of it.
“You should, if I knew where to send,” replied Jane. “I can only think that she has taken shelter somewhere, perhaps in a shop waiting for the storm to abate. We do not know any one in South Wennock.”
There was nothing for it but to wait; nothing, nothing. And Jane Chesney did wait until it was hard upon eleven. An idea kept intruding itself into Jane’s mind — at first she rejected it as altogether improbable, but it gained ground, redoubling its force with every passing minute — that Laura had been so thoughtless and foolish as to take temporary shelter in Mr. Carlton’s house.
Lucy began to cry; she grew frightened: “Was Laura lost?” she asked. Judith came in with a grave face, and Pompey stood outside the kitchen door and stared in discomfort, the hall lamp lighting up the alarm in his eyes. Such a thing had never happened in all his service, and he was longing to ask whether his favourite Miss Laura could be lost — as Lucy had asked.
“Miss Chesney,” said Judith, apart to her mistress, “I had better go somewhere. Perhaps — perhaps she may have been overtaken by the heaviest of the storm on her way home, and may have stepped into Mr. Carlton’s?”
Jane felt almost thankful for the words; they saved her the embarrassing pain of confessing to Judith that her own thoughts had tended in that direction.
“I cannot think she would do so, Judith; but she is very thoughtless; and — Mr. Carlton’s house may have seemed a welcome shelter from the rain. Perhaps — if you don’t mind going—”
Judith gave no time for the sentence to be finished. Another instant, and she reappeared in her bonnet and cloak, a large umbrella in her hand.
She went splashing down the Rise. To a quick walker, Mr. Carlton’s residence was not more than five minutes’ distance from Captain Chesney’s, for it was all downhill; but in the present sloppy and muddy state of the road, Judith could not get on so fast, and the church clocks were striking a quarter past eleven when she turned in at the gate.
She turned in and felt somewhat embarrassed, for the house appeared dark and silent, as if its inmates had retired for the night. Even the coloured lamp was not burning. It certainly did not look as if the young lady were sheltering within the house; and Judith felt all the awkwardness of ringing them up, with the question — Was Miss Laura Chesney there?
She could only do that, however, or return home as she came; and she knocked at the house door. There was no answer; and presently she rang the night-bell.
Neither was there any answer to that, and Judith rang again and again. At the third ring, a window was heard to open at the top of the house, and Judith stepped from her shelter beneath the portico and looked up.
“What’s the good of your keeping on ringing like that?” cried a woman’s voice in remonstrance — it was, in fact, Hannah’s. “You might have told by seeing the professional lamp unlighted that Mr. Carlton was away from the town.”
“Is he away?” asked Judith.
“He went away suddenly this evening. Leastways, it was sudden to us, for he didn’t tell us of it till he came down from his room with his hat on, and his portmanteau in his hand, and his carriage at the door to take him,” continued the voice, in rather an aggravated tone, as if the sudden departure had not altogether given the speaker pleasure. “He said then he was going out and should not be home for some days.”
“Well,” said Judith, “it’s not Mr. Carlton I want. I came to ask whether one of our young ladies had stepped in here to shelter from the rain.”
“Who is your young ladies?” came the next question.
“The Miss Chesneys. One of them went into the town this evening, and, as she’s not come home again, she must have taken shelter somewhere. We thought perhaps it might be here.”
“No young lady has taken shelter here. There’s been nobody here at all but Mrs. Newberry’s servant, saying her mistress was worse, so I had to send her on to Mr. Grey’s. She was as impudent as could be when she found Mr. Carlton had gone away for some days, wanting to know why he could not have told them of it.”
“My young lady is not here, then?”
“She’s not here, and she has not been here. I’ll make Evan paste a notice on the lamp to-morrow night, ‘Mr. Carlton out of town,”’ pursued the voice wrathfully. “There’s no fun in being rung up for nothing, just as you get into your first sleep.”
“Well, I’m sorry to have done it,” said Judith, “but I couldn’t help myself. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Judith halted at the gate, wondering what should be her next step. As she stood there, a sudden thought, like a ray of light — only not a pleasant ray — flashed upon her, and her mind was suddenly opened to a conviction of the truth. A conviction as sure and certain as though she had seen the night’s drama enacted. Mr. Carlton’s sudden journey and Laura’s disappearance only too fully proved what that drama had been.
She went home with lingering steps: why hasten to impart the news she carried? Her mistress, whose anxious ear had caught the sound of the advancing footsteps, met her at the gate, and saw that she was alone.
“Oh, Judith! have you not found her?”
“No, ma’am. I — I”
“What?” said Jane.
Judith entered upon her task in the best manner that she could, hinting at first very remotely at her fears. Not immediately did the appalling meaning, the truth, become clear to the unhappy listener — that Laura Chesney had abandoned her father’s home.
CHAPTER XXI.
A DELIGHTFUL JAUNT.
SOUTH WENNOCK, as you may readily imagine, was up in arms the following morning. Such a dish of news had not been served up to it since the death of the ill-fated lady in Palace Street. There were two dishes now: the accession of Captain Chesney to the earldom of Oakburn, and the elopement of one of his daughters with Mr. Carlton.
Very cleverly had the getting-away been accomplished; and if some mishaps overtook the bride and bridegroom elect before the close of the night’s journey, why, they did not materially retard the flight.
Mr. Carlton had laid his plans well. He was a clever plotter. The scheme arranged with Laura was that he should be in his open c
arriage at dusk, in a lane leading from the Rise, and that Laura should join him there. This lane, called Blister Lane, and other lanes and by-roads, little frequented, led to a small place named Lichford, where some of the trains stopped for passengers. It was seven miles from South Wennock, and Mr. Carlton knew that his open carriage would skim over the ground as quickly as any other conveyance; and it would have this advantage, that no one but himself would then be cognizant of the departure. He did not dare to appear with Laura at the more frequented station of Great Wennock; a hundred eyes would have recognized them.
Cleverly did he keep the secret. He went about his business that day as usual, seeing his patients; he visited them on foot, that his horse might be fresh for the night journey. He said not a word to any one of his invalids of his proposed absence; it might not have been expedient to do so; he said not a word at home. He dined as usual; afterwards he went up to his room; and when it grew so dark that candles had to be lighted, he rang the bell and ordered the carriage round. Not a minute did he keep it waiting at the door, but came down with a portmanteau in his hand. The woman-servant was in the hall as he crossed it, and looked at the portmanteau.
“I am going out for a few days,” he said.
She was too much surprised to make any reply or ask any question; it seemed so strange that he should be departing in that sudden manner. Mr. Carlton passed out to the gate, where his carriage waited. Evan was at the horse’s head, dressed as usual to accompany his master. It was the same horse which had come to grief that Sunday night; Mr. Carlton had had him in use again about a week; Evan had been well much longer.
“I shall not want you with me to-night, Evan,” said his master, when he had taken the reins to ascend.
Evan, as Hannah had done, wondered where his master was going to; but it was no concern of his, and he was rather pleased to hear that he was spared a drive on that rainy night. He placed the portmanteau under the seat, and Mr. Carlton settled himself comfortably in, under the head of the carriage.
