by Ellen Wood
“She has a splendid figure,” remarked the earl, not altogether, as Jane thought, a propos to the point. “And she talks sensibly — for a woman.”
“Well, papa, I don’t like her.”
“Then don’t keep her. You are the best judge of whether she’s fit for her berth, or whether she is not.”
“As governess to Lucy she is entirely fitted. I could not wish to find a more efficient instructress. Her mode of teaching, her training, her companionship, all appear to me to be admirable for a young girl.”
“Let her stop on, then. Lucy’s instruction is the chief point. As to a little pride or pretension, or whatever you may term it, it will do no harm. A wind in the topsails won’t capsize the ship.”
Jane said no more. Of course Lucy’s instruction was of paramount importance, and Jane was not one to merge weighty matters in trifles. Lord Oakburn returned to his newspaper, and a pause ensued. Presently he spoke abruptly.
“When do you intend to see after Clarice?”
Jane’s heart gave a great bound, and she dropped a needle in her consternation. So entirely taken by surprise was she, that she could only look up in silence. At that very moment she was trying to frame an inoffensive way of putting the self-same question — and now he had spoken it! The flush of emotion illumined her face, tingeing even her drooping eyelids.
“Papa! may I see after her? Will you allow it?”
“If you don’t, I shall,” said the earl.
“It is what I have been longing to do,” returned Jane. “Every morning, for this long while past, I have been resolving to speak to you, papa; and every night, when night came, I have reproached myself for not having had the courage to do so. May Clarice come home again?”
“Well, I don’t know what you may deem ship-shape, but in my opinion it is scarcely the thing for Lady Clarice Chesney to be flourishing abroad as a governess.”
“It has been wrong all along; doubly wrong since the change in our position occurred. But, papa, I did mention her name to you at the time of Lord Oakburn’s death,” Jane deprecatingly added, as a reminder, “and you bade me be silent and let Clarice come to her senses.”
“But she doesn’t come to them, my Lady Jane,” retorted the earl, giving a few exasperated raps with his stick to enforce his words, — a plaything he had by no means forgotten the use of. “Here are the weeks and months creeping on, and she never gives token that she has come to them, or that she is coming to them. Obstinate little minx!”
“Papa, it is possible that she may not have heard of the change in our position. It is very unlikely, certainly, that she should not have done so; but still it is just possible.”
“Rubbish! it’s not possible,” cried the earl in his own domineering manner. “It is her pride that stands in the way, Jane; she has been holding a tacit battle with us, you see, waiting for us to give way first.”
“Yes, I have thought that must be it. Clarice was always self-willed, the same as — as — —”
“The same as who?” thundered the earl, believing that Jane was impertinently alluding to himself.
“As Laura, I was going to say, papa. Forgetting that you had forbidden her name to be mentioned before you.”
Jane had indeed forgotten it. The earl’s brow grew hot with anger, and he rose to pace the room, giving Jane a little of his mind, and the floor of his stick, some of his words being more suited to the quarter-deck of his old vessel in Portsmouth Harbour than to his London drawing-room.
“Don’t you talk of Laura before me again, Jane. She has chosen her own home and abandoned mine; let her abide by it. But Clarice’s sin was lighter, look you, and she shall be forgiven. I suppose you know where she is?”
“No, I do not, papa.”
Lord Oakburn stopped in his walk: the denial had evidently surprised him.
“Not know!” he repeated, gazing sternly at Jane. “I was given to understand that you did know. Clarice writes to you.”
“I do not know exactly where she is,” explained Jane. “It is somewhere in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, I believe, and I have no doubt she will be easily found. When I write to her, I send my letters to a library there, by Clarice’s directions, and I should think they can give me her address. Oh, papa, I have so longed to go there and ask for it!”
“You can go now,” bluntly rejoined the earl. “Shall you be an hour getting ready?”
“I shall not be five minutes,” replied Jane, glad tears standing in her eyes, as she laid aside her work. Lord Oakburn rang the bell, and a man came in.
“The carriage for Lady Jane.”
But before the servant could retire, Jane interposed. “Stay an instant, Wilson. Papa, I think I had better not take the carriage. I would rather go on foot quietly.”
“Then you won’t go quietly,” returned the earl. “Do you hear, sir? What do you stand gaping there for? The carriage instantly for Lady Jane.”
Wilson flew off as if he had been shot. The new servants had become accustomed to these explosions of the earl’s; but, with all his hot temper, he was a generous master.
Jane, for once, did not give up her point without a battle. “Do consider it for an instant, papa; will it not be best that, under the circumstances, I should go quietly without the parade of servants and a carriage?”
“What do you mean by ‘under the circumstances’?”
Jane unconsciously dropped her voice. “As Clarice has stooped to take upon herself the office of a governess, I think she should come away from her place in the same manner.”
“No,” said the earl decisively. “She shall come away as Lady Clarice Chesney.”
“There is one thing to be remembered,” observed Jane, feeling that further opposition would be useless. “She may not be able to come away with me. She may have to give warning first — a week or a month’s warning.”
The suggestion angered the earl, and he lifted his stick menacingly.
“Not leave without warning! Let them dare to keep her. Tell the people who she is. Tell them who I am, and that I demand her.”
“Dearest papa,” Jane ventured to remonstrate, “courtesy is due and must be observed towards Clarice’s employers. She has undertaken to perform certain duties in their house; and to abandon them at a moment’s notice may be scarcely practicable. They may concede the point to me as a favour, but it will not do to demand it as a right.”
“But I want her here,” said the earl, who, now that he had broken the ice, was longing for Clarice’s return with all the impatience of a child.
“And so do I want her,” returned Jane; “and I will bring her away with me if I can do so. If not, the period of her return shall be arranged.”
Jane quitted the room. She put on her things, a white bonnet and black mantle trimmed with crape, and then went to the study where sat Lucy and Miss Lethwait: the former wishing that German had never been invented for her especial torment; the latter showing up the faults in a certain exercise in the most uncompromising manner.
“Oh, Jane! are you going out?” came the weary plaint. “You said I was to go with you to-day to the Botanical Gardens.”
“Yes, later; I will not forget you.”
“Lucy says you wish the hour for her walking changed, Lady Jane,” spoke up the governess.
“I think it would be more agreeable to you and to her,” said Jane, “now that the weather has become so hot. Lady Lucy is one who feels the heat much.”
Jane was conscious that her tone was cold, that her words were haughty. Lady Lucy! She could not account for the feeling of reserve that was stealing over her in regard to Miss Lethwait, or why it should be so strong. —
She went down to the carriage, which waited at the door, and was driven away. A grand carriage, resplendent in its coroneted panels, its hammer-cloth, and its servants with their wigs, their powder, their gold-headed canes. Jane quite shrank from the display, considering the errand upon which she was bent.
She had no difficulty whatever
in finding the library she was in search of, and was driven to it. But she had a difficulty in her way of another sort: she knew not by what name to inquire for her sister. Clarice had desired her to address her letters “Miss Chesney,” but told her at the same time that it was not the name by which she was known. Jane went into the shop and the proprietor came forward.
“Can you tell me where a young lady resides of the name of Chesney?” she inquired. “She is governess in a family.”
“Chesney? — Chesney?” was the answer, spoken in consideration. “No, ma’am; I do not know any one of the name.”
Jane paused. “Some letters have been occasionally addressed here for her; for Miss Chesney; and I believe she used to fetch them away herself.”
“Oh yes, that was Miss Beauchamp,” was the answer, the speaker’s face lighting up with remembrance. “I beg your pardon, ma’am; I thought you said Miss Chesney. The letters were addressed to a Miss Chesney, and Miss Beauchamp used to come for them.”
Beauchamp! The problem was solved at once, and Jane wondered at her own stupidity in not solving it before. What more natural than that Clarice should take her second name — Beauchamp? She was named Clarice Beauchamp Chesney. And Jane had strayed amid a whole directory of names over and over again, without the most probable one ever occurring to her mind.
“Thank you, yes,” she said; “Miss Beauchamp. Can you direct me to her residence?”
“No, ma’am, I really cannot,” was the reply. “Miss Beauchamp was governess in two families in succession, both of them residing in Gloucester Terrace, but I do not think she stayed long with either. She was at Mrs. Lorton’s first, and at Mrs. West’s afterwards.”
Jane had not known that; Clarice had never told her of having changed her situation.
“I suppose we must both be speaking of the same person,” she suddenly cried. “Perhaps you will describe her to me?”
“Willingly,” answered the librarian. And the description was so accurate that Jane instantly recognized it for her sister’s.
“Miss Beauchamp disappeared from the neighbourhood suddenly as it seemed to me,” he continued. “At any rate, she ceased coming here. We have two or three letters with the same address waiting still.”
Jane wondered whether they could be those she had sent. She asked to see them, and he brought them forward: three. They were the same.
“I will take them away with me,” said Jane.
The librarian hesitated at this — not unnaturally. “You will pardon me, I am sure, ma’am, if I inquire by what authority you would take them? Miss Beauchamp may call for them yet.”
Jane smiled. “They were written by me,” she said, tearing open one of the letters and showing him the signature. “And,” she added, taking out her card-case and handing him a card, “that will prove that I am Jane Chesney.”
The librarian bowed; and intimated that her ladyship was of course at liberty to do what she pleased with her own letters.
“Upon second thoughts, I will leave this one, the last written, and write upon it our present address,” said Jane. “As you observe, Miss Beauchamp may yet call here.”
Obtaining the address of the two families in which she was told Miss Beauchamp had served, Lady Jane quitted the shop, and walked on to Gloucester Terrace, ordering the carriage to follow her by-and-by. She reached the house occupied by the Lortons first, and inquired of a showy footman whether Mrs. Lorton was at home. The answer was given in the affirmative, but with some hesitation: it was earlier than the orthodox hour for receiving visitors, and the man probably doubted whether his mistress was presentable. Jane was shown into an excessively smart room, and after some delay an excessively smart lady came to her; but neither room nor lady possessed anything of refinement.
Jane had not given her name. “It is of no consequence: I am a stranger,” she said to the servant when he inquired. Mrs. Lorton dropped Jane a swimming curtsey, and sailing to a large velvet ottoman in the middle of the room, took her seat upon it. Jane looked, as she ever did, a lady, and Mrs. Lorton was all smiles and suavity.
“I have called to inquire if you can kindly give me any information as to the present address of a young lady who lived with you as governess,” began Jane. “A Miss Beauchamp.”
Mrs. Lorton’s smiles froze at the question. “I know nothing about Miss Beauchamp,” she answered, somewhat rudely. “She did not behave well in my house, and it was a good riddance when she left it.”
“Not behave well!” echoed Jane.
“No, she did not. She encouraged my son to pay her attention, and when it was all found out she left me at a pinch without a governess. Perhaps you know her?”
“I do,” answered Jane with cold dignity. She knew that Clarice was being traduced. “Miss Beauchamp is my sister.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Lorton; and there was a whole volume of contempt in the tone. The lady before her, who had caused her to dress herself in that inconvenient haste, was after all nothing but a governess’s sister! Mrs. Lorton felt angry and vexed; and the expression her face assumed did not add to its beauty.
“I would not have troubled you,” resumed Lady Jane, “but I do not exactly know where my sister is now, and I am in search of her. I inquired at a library where I know Miss Beauchamp used to deal, and they gave me your address, as one of the situations in which Miss Beauchamp had lived. If you can direct me to her present place of abode, I shall return you sincere thanks.”
“I tell you I know nothing of her,” repeated Mrs. Lorton. “Here, Harriet,” she added, as a young lady as much over-dressed as herself entered the room, “here’s that Miss Beauchamp’s sister come to inquire after her. The idea of our knowing anything about her!”
“The idea!” repeated the young lady pertly to Jane. “When she left us, she took a fresh place a few doors further on. But she didn’t stop there long.”
“She was not suitable for a governess,” said Mrs. Lorton. “She carried her head too high.”
“I scarcely think she was,” remarked Jane. “She was of good birth, and the consciousness of that may have caused her to — as you express it — carry her head high. Though unduly high I do not think she was capable of carrying it. When she quitted her home to become a governess, she made a firm determination to do her duty in her new life and adapt herself to its penalties. Our family was in straitened circumstances at the time; and Clarice — and my sister generously resolved to earn her own living, so that she might no longer be a burden upon it. Others, well born and connected, have done as much before her.”
Mrs. Lorton threw back her head. “That is sure to be the case,” she said in sneering tones of disbelief. “Half the young women on the governess list will assure you that they are of good birth, and only go out through family misfortunes — if they can get anybody to listen to them. What does the one say, that we have now, Harriet?”
Harriet, who was standing at the window, laughed — and there was the same sneering tone in its sound that was so disagreeable in the laugh of her vulgar mother.
“She says that her aunt — Oh, mamma! here are visitors,” broke off the young lady. “The most beautiful carriage has driven up to the door!”
Mrs. Lorton — forgetting her dignity — hastened to the window. Jane rose: it was not a pleasant atmosphere to remain in.
“You can then really not tell me anything as to Miss Beauchamp’s movements?” she asked again of Mrs. Lorton; for somehow, a doubt was upon her whether the lady could not have said more had she chosen to do so.
“Now you have had my answer,” said Mrs. Lorton. “And I think it the height of impertinence in Miss Beauchamp to send people here to my house about any concerns of hers.”
Jane dropped a stately curtsey; her only leave-taking; and was turning to the door when it was thrown open by the footman.
“The Lady Jane Chesney’s carriage!”
Mrs. Lorton was in a flutter of expectation. Could any Lady Jane Chesney be vouchsafing a call on her? Where was
the Lady Jane? Was she coming up? The man was showing her unwelcome visitor downstairs; but his mistress called to him so sharply that Jane had to make her way out of the house alone.
“Has any visitor come in?”
“No, ma’am.”
“No!” repeated Mrs. Lorton. “What did you mean then? Whose carriage is that? You came and announced Lady somebody.”
“I announced the carriage, ma’am, for the lady who was here,” returned the man, wondering at the misapprehension. “The footman said he had called for his lady, the Lady Jane Chesney.”
Mrs. Lorton gave a great gasp. She Lady Jane Chesney! She flew to the window just in time to catch a glimpse of Jane’s black skirts as she took her seat in the carriage. She saw the earl’s coronet on it; she saw the servant step nimbly up behind and lay his gold cane slantwise. Mrs. Lorton had made a horrible mistake.
“Oh, Harriet! what can we do?” she exclaimed in a faint voice.
“Mamma, I thought, I did indeed, that she looked like a lady! Lady Jane Chesney! What will she think of us?”
Mrs. Lorton was unable to say what, and sat down in an agony. Her life, of late years, had been spent in striving to get into “society.” And she had for once had a real live earl’s daughter in her drawingroom, and had insulted her!
“How could poor Clarice have stayed in that family for a day!” thought Jane.
CHAPTER XXIX.
AN OMINOUS SHADOW.
LADY JANE was next driven to the other address, Mrs. West’s. The lady was at home, and Jane found her a very different person from Mrs. Lorton: a kind, cordial, chatty little woman, without pretence or form; a lady too. Mr. West was engaged in some City business, and neither he nor his wife aspired to be greater and grander than they were entitled to be.
“Miss Beauchamp came to us from the Lortons,” she said, when Jane had explained her business. “We liked her very much, and were sorry to lose her, but—”
“I beg your pardon,” interrupted Jane. “Can you tell me why Miss Beauchamp left her situation at the Lortons?”
“Yes,” answered Mrs. West, with a merry laugh. “She had scarcely entered their house when that vulgar son of theirs — and indeed I am not in the habit of backbiting, but he is vulgar — began to push his admiration upon her. She bore with it for some time, repelling him as she best could; but it grew unbearable, and Miss Beauchamp felt compelled to appeal to Mrs. Lorton. Mrs. Lorton did not behave well in it. She took her son’s part, and wished to lay the blame on Miss Beauchamp; Miss Beauchamp was naturally indignant at this, and insisted on quitting the house on the self-same day. Mrs. Lorton then came round, tried to soothe Miss Beauchamp, and offered her an increased salary if she would remain.”
