Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Judith,” resumed Laura at length, her other questions being exhausted, and she lowered her voice to timidity as she spoke, “was papa very — very furious with me that night?”

  “My lady, you forget that I have said he had gone before it was known that you were missing. It was to tell him of it that Lady Jane went the next day all the way to Chesney Oaks.”

  “True,” murmured Laura. “Does he seem in a terrible way about it, now that he is back again?”

  “Yes, I fear he is,” Judith was obliged to answer.

  “And what did you come here for to-night, Judith? You said you had a message from my sister.”

  Judith explained about the clothes: why it was that so few had been brought, and those at the last moment. The message from Jane, though put into the least offensive words possible, was to the effect that Laura must not venture at present to attempt to hold intercourse in any shape whatever with her family.

  Laura threw back her head with a disdainful gesture. “Does that interdict emanate from my sister herself?” she asked.

  “I think not, Miss Lau — my lady. She cannot go against the wishes of the earl.”

  “I know that she will not,” was Laura’s scornful comment. “Well, Judith, tell Lady Jane from me that it’s no more than I expected, and that I hope they’ll come to their senses some time.”

  “And the little girl whispered to me as I was coming away to give her love, if you please,” concluded Judith.

  “Darling child!” echoed Laura. “She’s worth ten of that cold Jane.”

  Mr. Carlton entered as Judith departed. Laura stood talking with him on the new aspect of affairs, but she was no wiser at the conclusion of the conversation than she had been at the beginning, as to his having known of Lord Oakburn’s death before their flight. He drew her attention to the tea-table, which looked inviting enough with its savoury adjuncts, that Hannah had prepared and laid out.

  “Yes, presently,” she said, “but I will take off my things first. You must please to show me my way about the house, Lewis,” she added, laughing, as she turned at the door and waited. “I don’t know it yet.”

  Mr. Carlton laughed in answer and went with her into the hall. It was a handsomer and more spacious residence than the one she had relinquished, Cedar Lodge, but it was very humble, when placed in comparison with Chesney Oaks. On the opposite side of the hall was a sitting-room, where Mr. Carlton generally received any patients who came to him, and behind that room and at the back were the kitchens. On the opposite side to the kitchens and behind the dining-room a few steps led down to the surgery, which was close to the side entrance of the house, and to a back staircase.

  The principal staircase wound round from the back of the hall. Laura ascended it with Mr. Carlton. There was plenty of space here. A handsome drawing-room and three bedrooms In the front chamber, Laura’s from henceforth, stood Sarah, unpacking the bundle brought by Judith, and ready to attend on her new mistress.

  “Any alteration can be made in these rooms that you wish, Laura,” observed Mr. Carlton. “If you would like one of them converted into a boudoir for yourself—”

  Mr. Carlton’s words were disturbed by a ring at the front door; a ring so loud and violent as to shake the house. He had broken off in vexation.

  “I protest it is too bad!” he exclaimed angrily. “Not a minute in the house yet, and I must be hunted up and fetched out of it. I won’t attend. Go down,” he added to the new maid. “Say I am not at liberty to attend to patients to-night.”

  She obeyed, but came up again instantly.

  “It is not patients, sir. It’s a policeman. I told him you could see no one to-night, but he says he must see you.”

  Mr. Carlton seemed taken aback at the words. “A policeman!” he repeated in a strangely timid, hesitating tone.

  “He was here yesterday and again this morning, asking after you, sir,” returned the girl. “Hannah was very curious to know what he could want, but he wouldn’t say, except that it was something connected with that lady who died in Palace Street.”

  Lady Laura, who had been taking off her bonnet at the toilette glass, turned round and looked at her husband.

  “What can it be, Lewis?”

  Never had Mr. Carlton appeared so vacillating. He took up the candle to descend, went as far as the door, came back and laid it on the drawers again. Again he moved forward without the candle, and again came back.

  “Where is the policeman?” he questioned.

  “He’s standing in the hall, sir.”

  “It is a strange thing people cannot come at proper hours,” he exclaimed, finally taking up the wax-light to descend. “I have a great mind to say I would not see him, and make him come again in the morning.”

  Mr. Carlton recognized the policeman as one who had been busy in the case in Palace Street. He saluted Mr. Carlton respectfully, and the latter took him into the parlour opposite the dining-room.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you at this late hour, sir,” he said, “but there is such a row at our station about this business as never was.”

  “What about? What row?” asked the surgeon.

  “Well, sir, we have a new inspector come on, through the other one being moved elsewhere, and he makes out, or tries to make out, that the affair has been mismanaged, else he says more would have come to light about it. His name’s Medler, and, goodness knows! it seems as if he was going to be a meddler. First of all, sir, he wants to ask you a few particulars, especially as to the man you saw on the stairs.”

  “Does he want to ask me to-night?” sarcastically inquired Mr. Carlton.

  “No, sir, but as soon as ever it is convenient to you in the morning; so I thought I’d just step down and tell you to-night, hearing you had come home.”

  “So he wants to rake it all up again, does he, this new inspector?” remarked Mr. Carlton.

  “It seems so,” replied the policeman.

  “Well, he’s welcome to all I can tell him of the matter. I’ll call in to-morrow.”

  “Thank you, sir. It would be satisfactory, of course, if anything more should be found out; but if it’s not, Mr. Medler will just see what reason he has to reproach us with negligence. Good night, sir.”

  “Good night,” replied Mr. Carlton. And he shut the door on his troublesome and unseasonable visitor.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  THE WEDDING AT ST. MARK’S.

  IN the very heart of South Wennock, standing a little back from the street, nearly opposite the Red Lion Inn, was the old church of St. Mark; and on the morning after the return home of Mr. Carlton and his bride, this church was invaded by more people than could conveniently get into it, for a rumour had gone forth to the town that Mr. Carlton and Lady Laura were to be re-married.

  It was even so. Possibly in deference to Laura’s scruples; possibly that he himself was not willing to trust to the impromptu ceremony in Scotland, which had been of the slightest, and that he would constitute her his own beyond the power of any future quibbles of the law, Mr. Carlton had returned home provided with a licence in all due form. The clergyman was apprised, and nine o’clock saw Mr. Carlton and Laura at the church.

  If, by fixing that early hour, their motive was to avoid spectators, the precaution had utterly failed. How the news got about was a puzzle to Mr. Carlton as long as he lived. He accused the incumbent of St. Mark’s, the Reverend Mr. Jones, of spreading it; he accused the curate, Mr. Lycett, to whom was deputed the duty of marrying them; he accused the clerk, who was charged to have the church open. But these functionaries, one and all, protested that they had not spoken of it. However it might have been, when Mr. Carlton and Laura arrived at the door in a close carriage, precisely one minute before nine, they were horror-struck at finding themselves in the midst of a dense crowd, extending from the street up to the very altar-rails, and through which they had to make their way.

  “Rather a strong expression that,” sneers some genial critic. “Horror-struck!” But it really
did appear to apply to Mr. Carlton. Laura wore the handsome cashmere shawl which he had given her, the light silk dress sent by Jane, and a white bonnet and veil bought somewhere on her travels. She stood at the altar with downcast eyes and blushing cheeks, just as a young bride under the circumstances might be supposed to stand, never once looking at the throng, and apparently not heeding them. Not so Mr. Carlton. He stood with a ghastly face, into which the colour would not come by any effort of will, constantly glancing over his shoulder, not at the offending crowd, whom Mr. Carlton regarded simply with anger, and would have liked to duck wholesale in the nearest pond, but as if impelled by some imaginary fear. Did he dread the intrusion of his wife’s father, Lord Oakburn? that he would, even at that useless and tardy hour, appear and forbid the ceremony? South Wennock, who prided itself upon its discernment, said so.

  The accessories of a groomsman and a bridesmaid had not been provided by Mr. Carlton. The clerk performed the office of the one, and Laura dispensed with the other. The wedding ring was firmly placed upon her finger, and they turned from the altar as securely married as though there had been no previous runaway escapade. The licence had described her as Laura Chesney, otherwise Carlton, and it was so that she signed the book.

  But there occurred an unlucky contretemps. The carriage waited at the church door, and Laura and Mr. Carlton had taken their seats in it on the conclusion of the ceremony, when, just as it was moving off amidst the dense mob of spectators, an open fly came from the opposite direction. It contained Lord Oakburn and his Stick. The earl, on his way back to Chesney Oaks, was now being conveyed to Great Wennock to catch one of the morning trains, Pompey on the box beside the driver, and a great portmanteau between Pompey’s knees.

  Perhaps nearly the only household in South Wennock to which the report of the morning’s intended ceremony had not penetrated was that of Cedar Lodge. Even such newsmongers as milk-women and baker’s boys were chary of telling aught there that concerned its runaway daughter. When, therefore, Lord Oakburn saw the crowd round the church, he looked at it in surprise, wondering what was taking place, and then he caught sight of the inmates of the close carriage about to be driven away from its doors. His daughter’s terrified gaze met his.

  Lord Oakburn’s brow flushed red with passion. In his hot temper, he raised his stick with a menacing gesture, as if he would have struck one of them, bride or bridegroom, perhaps both, had he been near enough; or as if he meant to throw it at the carriage, as he sometimes threw it at Pompey. It did not go, however. He let it drop on the seat again, with a word that was certainly not a blessing; and the fly went on, and the meeting was over.

  There was no fear on Mr. Carlton’s countenance. Triumph now. The unnaturally pale hue which had overspread it during the ceremony had given place to its usual aspect, and he felt more inclined to laugh in Lord Oakburn’s face than to fear him. Even the earl could not part them now.

  Mr. Carlton entered his home with his wife. He snatched a hasty breakfast, and then started on his visits to his patients, who were in a state of rebellion, deeming themselves greatly aggrieved by the past week’s absence. In the course of the morning his way took him past the police-station. Standing at its door was a middle-aged man, with an intelligent face and small snub nose, who looked at Mr. Carlton as he passed with that quiet regard that keen men, curious as to their neighbours’ movements, sometimes display. It was Medler, the new inspector. The surgeon had gone some yards beyond the building, when he, perhaps, recollecting the previous night’s interview, wheeled round and spoke.

  “Can I see the inspector?”

  “You see him now,” was the answer. “I am he.”

  “I am told you want me,” returned the surgeon. “Mr. Carlton,” he added in explanation, finding he was not known.

  “Oh, ah, yes, sir; I beg your pardon,” said the inspector, intelligence replacing the questioning expression of his face. “Be so kind as to step inside.”

  He shut himself into a little bit of a room with Mr. Carlton. The surgeon had been in it once before. It was when he had gone to give what information he could to the previous inspector, relative to the business for which he was now brought there again.

  “I don’t know any more than I did before,” he observed, after alluding to the policeman’s visit to him the previous night. “I gave the police at the time of the death all the information I possessed upon the matter — which was not much.”

  “Yes, sir, it’s not that. I did not suppose you had come into possession of more facts. What I want with you is this — to relate to me quietly all that you know about it, as you did to my predecessor. I fear the affair has been mismanaged.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I am sure it has,” continued Mr. Medler, improving upon his former assertion. “If the thing had been followed up properly, it might have been brought to light at the time. That’s my opinion.”

  “It is not mine,” dissented Mr. Carlton. “I do not see that anything more could be done than was done.”

  “Why, they never unearthed that Mrs. Smith, the woman who came down and took away the child! Never found out anything about her at all!”

  “True,” said Mr. Carlton. “They went to a hundred Mrs. Smiths, or so, in London, without finding the right one. And the conclusion they arrived at was, that Smith was not her name at all, but one she had assumed for the purpose of her visit here.”

  “It was the name by which the sick lady wrote to her on the night of her arrival, at all events,” remarked the officer, with a nod that seemed to say he had made himself master of the whole business.

  “But that may have been only part of a concerted plan. One thing appears to be indisputable — that the lady came down with the determination of remaining unknown. For my part, I am inclined to think that she did not come from London at all; that the woman Smith — if Smith was her name — did not come from London either. I believe that all that was said and done here was done with one motive — to blind us.”

  Mr. Carlton was leaning with his elbow on the narrow table, or counter, that ran along the wall, as he said this, slightly stooping, and making marks with the point of his umbrella on the floor. The inspector, watchful by nature and by habit, became struck with a sudden change in his face. A shiver seemed to pass over it.

  “It is the most miserable business I ever had to do with,” he said, lifting his eyes to the officer’s. “I heartily hope I shall never become personally cognizant of such another. People persisted in mixing me up with it, just because Mrs. Crane was thought to have said that some friends recommended her to me as her medical attendant.”

  “And you cannot find that any one did so recommend you?”

  “I cannot. I wrote to all the friends and acquaintances I possess in town, inquiring if they had recommended any lady to me; but could find out nothing. None of them so much as knew a Mrs. Crane.”

  “I think it is by no means sure that her name was Crane,” remarked Mr. Medler.

  “Just so. Any more than that the other one’s name was Smith. There’s nothing sure about any part of the business, except the death. That, poor thing, is sure enough.”

  “What is your own opinion, Mr. Carlton?” inquired the inspector, his tone becoming confidential. “Your private opinion, you know.”

  “As to what?”

  “The cause of death. Of course we all know it was caused by the sleeping draught,” he rapidly continued. “But I mean as to the fatal drug introduced into that draught — who put it in?”

  “My opinion is — but it is not a pleasant task to have to avow it, even to you — that it was so mixed, inadvertently, by Stephen Grey. It is impossible for me to come to any other conclusion. I cannot imagine how two opinions upon the point can have arisen.” The inspector shook his head, as if he could not agree with Mr. Carlton; but he made no dissent in words. He did not believe the fault to lie with Stephen Grey.

  “What I wished more particularly to ask you, sir, was about the man you sa
w on the stairs,” he presently resumed. “There’s the point that ought to have been followed up.”

  “I saw no man on the stairs,” said Mr. Carlton. “I did fancy I saw a face there, it’s true; but I have come to the conclusion that it was only fancy, and that my sight was deceived by the moonbeams.”

  “Will you swear there was no man there?”

  “Well, no; I should not like to do that. Nevertheless, my firm belief is that there was no man there, no face at all; I think my sight misled me.”

  The inspector lifted his finger and shook it, by way of adding impressiveness to his words. “Rely upon it, sir, there was a man there, and that man is the one who did the mischief. I know — I know what you would say — that the draught smelt of the stuff when it arrived, as you testified; but I don’t care for that. It seems a difficult point enough to get over at first, but I have picked the case to pieces in all its bearings, and I have got over it. I don’t attach an atom of importance to it.”

  “Do you think I should testify to what was not true?” asked Mr. Carlton.

  “Not a bit of it,” returned the inspector, with calm equanimity.

  “You’d be as anxious, naturally, to state the facts correctly, and throw as much light upon them, as we should. But I know how deceiving noses are. You fancied you smelt the poison in the draught, but you didn’t really smell it, for it wasn’t there. The nurse — what’s her name? a fat woman — declares she could not smell anything of the sort; for I have had her before me here. She had been drinking a modicum of strong waters, I know; but they don’t take all smell away in that fashion. Depend upon it her nose was truer than yours.”