by Ellen Wood
“See whom?” asked Mr. Carlton.
“Papa.”
He looked at her in surprise. “See him? Where?”
“In that train just gone by. He was in one of the carriages.”
Mr. Carlton truly thought she must be wandering; that the disasters of their unpropitious journey had momentarily obscured her intellects.
“Lewis, I tell you he was there — papa. He was in one of the carriages, sitting forward on the seat and talking to some one opposite. The light from the lamp fell full upon his face. It was papa, if I ever saw him.”
That she was clear and rational, that she evidently believed what she asserted, Mr. Carlton saw. And though he could not give credence to so improbable a thing, nevertheless a feeling of uneasiness, lest Captain Chesney should be in pursuit, stole over him. He went to look for the stolid porter, who had disappeared, and found him at length in an outer shed, doing something to an array of tin lanterns. There he inquired about the fast train just gone by, and learnt to his satisfaction that it went whirling on, without stopping, on quite a different line of rail from that on which he and Laura were bound. He went back and told her this, observing that she must have been mistaken.
“Lewis, it is of no use your trying to persuade me out of my own eyesight. I wish I was as sure of forgiveness as I am that it was my father.”
He busied himself in many little cares for her, quite neglecting his own drenched condition. Happening to look down, he perceived that of the two muddy feet she was holding to the fire, one was shoeless.
“Where’s your shoe, Laura?”
“It’s gone.”
“Gone!”
“It came off somewhere in the road as we walked along. Oh, it is all unfortunate together!”
“Came off in the road!” repeated Mr. Carlton. “But, my dear, why did you not speak? We could have found it; the man had the lantern.”
“I was afraid to stop; afraid that we should miss the train. And I don’t think I knew when I first lost it; the mud was up to my ankles.”
Not a very comfortable state of affairs, in truth; and poor Laura shivered and sighed, shivered and sighed, as they waited on for the midnight train. Don’t you ever attempt a similar escapade, my young lady reader, or the same perplexing griefs may fall to you.
CHAPTER XXII.
NEW HONOURS.
JANE CHESNEY’S position was a trying one. In the midst of the grief, it may be said the horror, she felt at the step taken by her sister Laura that eventful night, there was also the perplexity as to what her own course ought to be. She was powerless to prevent it now; in fact every one else was powerless. Mr. Carlton and Laura had gained some hours’ start, and could not be brought back again. Had Jane known of the detention at the station at Lichford, still she could have done nothing. The fleetest horse, ready saddled and bridled at her door, would scarcely have conveyed her, galloping like a second Lady Godiva, along that dark and muddy crosscountry road, in time to catch them before the arrival of the midnight train for which they waited, for it was some time past eleven ere Jane heard of it from Judith.
No; stop the flight she could not. That thought was abandoned as hopeless; and it must be remembered that Jane did not know they were gone to Lichford; she had no clue whatever to the line of route taken. Her chief perplexity lay in the doubt how best to convey the tidings to her father, so as to pain him least. To save him pain in any shape or form, whether mentally or bodily, Jane would have sacrificed her own life. Now and then faint hopes would come over her that their fears were groundless, that they were wholly mistaken, that they were judging Laura wrongfully; and a hundred suppositions as to where Laura could be, arose to her heated fancy. Certainly the fact that Mr. Carlton had left the town for a few days, as reported to Judith by his servants, was not sufficient proof of Laura’s having left it. But, even while these delusive arguments arose, the conviction of the worst lay all the deeper upon her mind.
Perhaps Jane Chesney was nearly the last in the town to hear the positive truth by word of mouth. With morning light there arrived at Mr. Carlton’s house the man whom he had charged to look after the missing horse. It had been found with little trouble, standing still with its nose over a field gateway. Securing him for the night, the man started before dawn to convey him to the address at South Wennock, given him by Mr. Carlton; he had to be back to his own work betimes, at the farmer’s where he was a day labourer. When rung up, just as Judith had rung them up the night before, the servants could scarcely believe their own eyes to see the horse arrive home in that fashion, led by a halter and covered with mud. The man explained, so far as he was cognizant of it, what had happened on the previous night; told his orders as to bringing home the horse, provided he could find him, spoke of where the carriage was lying, and said it had better be looked after.
Whether it was from this circumstance, or whether the report arose in that mysterious manner in which reports do arise, no one knows how or where, certain it was, that when South Wennock sat down to its breakfast-tables on that same morning, half its inhabitants were talking of the elopement of the surgeon with Miss Laura Chesney. Mr. John Grey was the one to convey its certain tidings to Jane.
He was at the house very early — soon after eight o’clock. Called to a distance that day, his only chance of seeing Lucy Chesney’s hands was to pay them a visit before his departure; in fact, he had promised to do so on the previous night.
Jane was ready for him; Jane alone: glad of an excuse to keep the little girl in bed in that house of trouble and perplexity, Jane had told her not to rise to breakfast. Mr. Grey was pained at the look of care on Miss Chesney’s face — let us call her so for a little while longer! — at the too evident marks of the sleepless and miserable night she had passed.
“Do not suffer this untoward event to affect your health!” he involuntarily exclaimed; and his low tone was full of tender concern, of considerate sympathy. “How ill you look!”
Jane was startled. Was it known already? But there was that in Mr. Grey’s earnest face that caused her heart to go out to him there and then, as it might have done to a friend of long-tried years.
“Is it known?” she asked, her life-pulses seeming to stand still.
“It is,” he answered, with a grave face. The town is ringing with it.”
Jane, standing before him with her quiet bearing, gave no mark of pain, except that she raised her hand and laid it for a few moments on her temples.
“I have been hoping — against hope, it is true, but still hoping — that it might not be; that my sister might have taken refuge somewhere from the storm, and would return home this morning. Oh, Mr. Grey, this has come upon me as a thunderbolt. If you knew how different from anything like this she has been brought up to!”
“Yes, I feel sure of that,” he said. “It is, I fear, a most mistaken step that she has taken. Certainly an unwise one.”
“How has it become known?” asked Jane, shading her eyes.
“I cannot tell,” he replied. “For one thing, I heard that Mr. Carlton’s horse had been sent back this morning.”
“His horse?”
“He drove your sister to Lichford, I understand, to take the train there. I met him last night as I left here. He was close to Blister Lane — about to turn into it, and I wondered what patient he could have in that locality to call him out in his carriage at night. I little thought of the expedition on which he was bent; or that he was waiting to be joined by Miss Laura Chesney. I saw her also; she must have been on her way to him.”
Jane lifted her eyes. “Mr. Grey! you saw her, and you did not stop her!”
John Grey slightly shook his head. “It was not possible for me to divine the errand on which she was bent. She was in the garden as I left here, and I said something to her about the inclemency of the night. I understood her to answer me — at least I inferred it — that she was only going to the gate to look at the weather. I know the thought that crossed me was, that she was anxious becau
se her father was out in it. There’s a report that some accident occurred to the horse and carriage when they were nearing Lichford,” continued the surgeon, “and that Mr. Carlton and the lady with him had to go the rest of the way on foot. It is what people are saying; I don’t know any of the particulars.”
“Nothing can be done to recall her now?” said Jane, speaking the words in accordance with her own thoughts, more than as a question.
“Nothing. The start has been too great — a whole night. They are probably married by this time, or will be before the day is over.”
“Mr. Grey — I seem to speak to you as to an old friend,” Jane broke off to say; “a few minutes ago and I had not believed that I could have so spoken of this to any one. How shall I tell my father?”
“Ah,” said Mr. Grey, “it will be sad news for him. My eldest little daughter is only eight years old, but I can fancy what must be the feelings of a father at hearing these tidings. I think — I think—”
“What?” asked Jane.
“Well, it is scarcely the thing to say to you just now, but I think I would rather lose a daughter by death than see her abandon her home in this way,” continued Mr. Grey in his frankness. “My heart would be less wrung by it. Will you allow me to ask whether Mr. Carlton was paying his addresses to her?”
“He had wished to do so, but was peremptorily forbidden by my father. That was the cause of the rupture which led to his dismissal from the house. None of us liked Mr. Carlton, except — I must of course except — my sister Laura.”
That she spoke in pain — that she was in a state of extreme distress, was all too evident; and Mr. Grey felt how useless would be any attempt at consolation. It was a case that did not admit of it. He asked to see Lucy, and Jane went with him to her room. The hands were going on as well as possible, and Mr. Grey said there was not the least necessity for keeping her in bed. Poor Jane felt almost like a deceitful woman, when she reflected how far apart from the cuts had been her motive for keeping Lucy there.
“Can I be of use to you in any way?” he asked of Jane at parting. Jane frankly put her hand into his, and thanked him for his kindness. Ah, she found now, it was not Mr. Carlton’s profession she had so disliked, but Mr. Carlton himself. John Grey was only a surgeon also, a general practitioner: and of him Jane could have made a friend and an equal.
“You are very good,” she said. “Can you tell me the best way by which I can proceed to Pembury?”
“Are you going there?”
“I must go; I think I ought to go. Papa started for Chesney Oaks last night — and — you are aware perhaps that it is as you feared; Lord Oakburn is dead?”
“Yes, I know; his death has been confirmed.”
“Papa left at once for Chesney Oaks; and his absence renders my position in this crisis all the more difficult. But I shall go after him, Mr. Grey; better that he should hear of this from my lips than from a stranger’s. None could soothe it to him as I can.”
Fond Jane! She truly deemed that none in the world could ever be to her father what she, his loving and dutiful daughter, was. How rudely the future would undeceive her, she dreamt not yet. Just to “soothe this terrible news to him,” she had rapidly determined to make the best of her way to Pembury.
Pompey was already preparing to go thither by the earliest train, and Jane started with him, leaving Lucy to the care of Judith. It was a long journey, and she meant to return the same day, but the trouble and fatigue to herself were nothing, if she could only spare ever so little trouble to her father. There was the jolting omnibus to Great Wennock, and there was the railway afterwards — thirty miles of it. It may be questioned whether Jane, in her distress of mind, so much as knew that the omnibus jolted at all.
Arrived at Pembury, Jane felt undecided what to do. She did not much like to go on to Chesney Oaks. It would seem almost as though they wished to seize upon their new possession by storm ere the poor young earl was cold on his bed. Neither did she know whether the imperious old dowager Countess of Oakburn might not be there; and Jane felt that to tell her this disgrace of Laura’s would be a worse task than telling it to her father.
She inquired for an hotel, and was directed to the Oakburn Arms. Then she despatched Pompey to Chesney Oaks.
“You will tell papa, Pompey, that I have come here, and am waiting to see him,” she said. “You must say that I have come all this way on purpose to impart to him something of the utmost moment; something that he must hear without delay — that I could not trust any one else to bring to him, for it is unpleasant news. And Pompey, you must not tell him: take care of that.”
Pompey looked aghast at the bare suggestion. He tell such news to his choleric master!— “I no dare, missee,” was the characteristic answer.
Chesney Oaks, a fine old place, whose park stretched down to the very gates of Pembury, was less than a mile distant. Jane, ever thoughtful, despatched Pompey in a fly, that it might be at hand to bring back her father. She then sat down in the room to which she had been shown, and waited.
The room was on the ground-floor, and she watched eagerly the way leading from Chesney Oaks. There appeared to have been as much rain at Pembury as at South Wennock, to judge by the state of the roads, but it was a balmy spring day, this, and the sun shone out occasionally. It was lighting up Jane’s face as she sat at the open window.
At length she saw the fly coming back again, and the sick feeling at her heart increased, now the moment was at hand when she must meet her father with the dreadful news. But the fly, instead of drawing up to the door of the inn, continued its way past it, and Jane saw that it was empty. It seemed like a welcome respite. She supposed her father had preferred to walk, and she stood looking out for him.
But she looked in vain. There appeared no sign of him, and Jane was beginning seriously to wonder what she should do in the emergency, when a handsome chariot, bearing about it, although in mourning, all the badges of rank and state — the flowing hammer cloth, the earl’s coronet on its panels, the powdered servants, the sparkling silver ornaments on the fine horses — came bowling up to the door. Another moment, and the waiter appeared, showing in the powdered footman, who handed a small bit of twisted paper to Jane.
“For me?” she involuntarily exclaimed.
“Yes, my lady.”
Jane quite started. My lady! Why, yes, she was my lady. But the salutation sounded strange to her ears, and a deep blush arose to her fair face. Opening the paper, she read the following characteristic lines written in pencil.
“I cannot imagine what you have come for, Jane; but you can come on to Chesney Oaks and explain. Pompey’s a fool.”
By which last sentence Jane gathered that poor Pompey must have managed to plunge into hot water with his master, in his efforts not to tell the secret. She also divined that the carriage had been sent for her use.
“You have brought the carriage for me?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady. My lord requested you would go on without delay.”
But Jane hesitated. She thought of the fever. Not for herself did she fear it — at least it was not her own danger that struck her, but she was about to return home to Lucy, and might carry it to her.
“There may be danger in my entering Chesney Oaks,” she said. “I am going home to a young sister, a little girl, and children take disorders so easily.”
“I don’t think there will be much danger, my lady,” returned the man. “My lord is in the left wing of the house, and the — the body of the late earl is lying in the wing at the other extremity, where he died. No one else has taken the fever.”
How strange it was, too, to hear her father called my lord; how strange to spring suddenly into all this pomp and state. Jane did not see that she could hesitate any longer, and passed out of the room.
Gathered in the passage were the landlord of the inn, his wife, the waiter, and a chambermaid, ready to make obeisance to her as she passed. Jane felt rather little as she received the honours; she had on an
old black silk dress, a shabby warm grey shawl, and a straw bonnet trimmed with black, the worse for wear. But Jane need not have feared: she was a lady always, and looked one, dress as she would.
“Who is she?” asked the landlady in a low tone of the footman, arresting him as he was marching past her; for she did not know as yet who the stranger was, except that she was one of the family from which their inn took its sign.
“The Lady Jane Chesney; the new earl’s daughter.”
And the footman stood with his imposing cane, and bowed Jane into the carriage, and the people of the Oakburn Arms bowed again from its entrance; and thus Jane was bowled off in state to Chesney Oaks, the fine old place now her father’s.
Winding through a noble avenue of trees, the park stretching out on either hand, the house was gained. A red-brick mansion, with a wing extending out at either end. The wings were modern, and contained the handsomest rooms; the centre of the house was cramped and old-fashioned. In the wing to the right, as they approached, the poor young earl had lain ill and died; what remained of him was lying there now. Jane found that the carriage did not make for the principal entrance, but turned suddenly off as it approached it, continued its way to the other wing, and stopped there at a small door.
A gentleman in black — he looked really like one — was at the door to receive Jane, evidently expecting her. It was the groom of the chambers. He said nothing, only bowed, and threw open the door of a small sitting-room, where the new earl was standing.
“Lady Jane, my lord.”
It would take Jane some little time to get accustomed to this. Lord Oakburn was in conversation with a grey-haired man who wore spectacles, — the steward, as Jane afterwards found, and books and papers were lying on the table, as though they were being examined.
“So it’s you, Jane, is it?” said the earl, turning round. “And now what on earth has brought you here, and what’s the matter? That idiot says that it’s not Lucy’s hands, and he’ll say no more, but stares and sobs. I’ll discharge him to-night.”
