Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Tell me one thing, Karl,” she said as he broke down. “Has this matter had its rise in any dishonour or ill-doing of yours?”

  “No,” was the emphatic rejoinder. “I am as innocent in it, and until a day or two ago, was as unconscious of it as you can be. You need not fear that, Lucy.”

  “Then on your part you need not have doubted me, Karl,” she said, the glad tears rising to her eyes with the intensity of her relief. “It was cruel of you to think of a separation now. I am yours.”

  “Lucy, look fully into the future. At least as fully as these indefinite words of mine will admit of. I hope — I trust — that no further complication may come of it; that it may be never known to the world. But it may, and probably will, be otherwise. A great calamity may fall upon us; in the world’s eyes we should both be dishonoured — dishonoured, Lucy; I through others, you through me.”

  “I am yours; yours for all time,” was the reiterated answer.

  “Very well, Lucy. So be it. But, my darling, if that blow should fall, you may repent of your marriage with me. I know your parents would repent it for you.”

  “Hush, Karl!” she whispered, rising from her seat to the arms opening to receive her. “I repent! That can never be. My dearest friend, my almost husband, I am yours for weal or for woe. Have you forgotten the vows I shall take to you to-morrow in the sight of God! For richer for poorer, for better for worse.”

  “God bless you, Lucy! May God bless and protect us both.” And as Sir Karl held her to him, his frame shook with its own emotion, and a scalding tear fell on her face from an aching heart.

  The second week in March, just as nearly as possible a month after the marriage, Sir Karl Andinnian received at Florence, where he and his wife were staying, a telegram from Hewitt at Foxwood. It stated that Mrs. Andinnian was ill with some kind of fever; it had taken a dangerous turn, and her life might be a question of a few hours.

  As quickly as it was practicable for them to travel, Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian reached Paris. Mrs. Cleeve and Miss Blake were still there; the Colonel was in London. The Cleeves had let their house at Winchester, and could not yet get back to it. Sir Karl left Lucy with her mother: not daring, as he said, to take her on to Foxwood, lest the fever should be infectious. The change in Lucy was wonderful: her cheeks were plump and rosy, her eyes told their own unmistakable tale of happiness. Mrs. Cleeve could do nothing but look at her.

  “We did well to give her to him,” said she to Theresa. But, for answer, Miss Blake only drew in her lips. The sting had not left her.

  “O Karl, my darling, don’t stay long away from me!” whispered Lucy, clinging to him in the moment of his departure. “And be sure take care of yourself, Karl, and do not run any risk, if you can help it, of the fever.”

  With many a sweet word of reassurance, murmured between his farewell kisses of passionate tenderness, Karl answered her. To part with one another, even for this short and temporary space of time, seemed a great trial.

  A change for the better had taken place in Mrs. Andinnian, when Karl arrived at Foxwood. She was in no immediate danger. Mr. Moore, the surgeon at Foxwood, informed him that he must not trust to this improvement. The fever had in a degree subsided, but her state of prostration was so great that he feared she might yet die of the weakness. Karl inquired the nature of the illness: Mr. Moore replied that it was a species of low fever more than anything else, and appeared to have been induced chiefly by the sad state of mind Mrs. Andinnian had been brought into, grieving over the fate of her elder son. Dr. Cavendish of Basham (the neighbouring market town) had attended regularly with Mr. Moore. Sir Karl at once telegraphed to London for a physician of world-wide reputation. When this great doctor arrived, he only confirmed the treatment and opinion of the other two; and said that nothing could well be more uncertain than the recovery of Mrs. Andinnian.

  Karl wrote these various items of information to his wife in Paris, and showed her how impossible it was that he could quit his mother during the uncertainty. Lucy replied by saying she should think very ill of him if he could; but she begged him to allow her to come to Foxwood and help him in the nursing, saying she was not afraid of the fever. She added a pretty and affectionate message to Mrs. Andinnian — that she would find in her a loving daughter. The same post brought Karl a letter from Mrs. Cleeve, who evidently was afraid of the fever. “Do you take precautions for yourself, dear Sir Karl, and do you fumigate all letters before you send them out?” Such was its chief burthen.

  Karl believed there was no danger from the fever: but, alas, he dared not have Lucy. He had reached Foxwood only to find more complication than ever in the unhappy secret disclosed to him by his mother. Only a word or two dropped by her — and in her weak, and sometimes semi-lucid state, he could not be sure she would not drop them — and Lucy might know as much as he did. Besides, there was no establishment at Foxwood sufficient to receive Lady Andinnian.

  Hour after hour, day after day, he sat by his mother’s bedside. When they were alone, she could only whisper of the trouble she had disclosed to him. Karl felt that it was wearing her out. He told her so, and she did not deny it. Never for a moment did she let the subject rest: it filled her mind to the exclusion of everything else in the world.

  Karl felt that death would inevitably end it: and he watched her grow weaker. The strain upon his own mind was great. Brooding over the matter as he did — for, in truth, to think of any other theme was not practicable — he saw what a wrong he had committed in marrying Lucy. Sir Karl’s only interludes of change lay in the visits of the medical men. Dr. Cavendish came once a day; Mr. Moore twice or thrice. The latter was rather brusque in his manner, but kindly, keen, and sensible. He was plain, with a red face and nose that turned up; and brown hair tinged with grey. The more Karl saw of him, the more he liked him: and he felt sure he was clever in his calling.

  “It is a great misfortune that Mrs. Andinnian should have taken poor Sir Adam’s death so much to heart,” Mr. Moore one day observed to Karl, when he found his patient exhausted, restless, in all ways worse. “While she cultivates this unhappy frame of mind, we can do nothing for her.”

  “Her love for my brother was a great love, Mr. Moore; quite passing the ordinary love of mothers.”

  “No doubt of that. Still, Sir Karl, it is not right to let regret for his death kill her.”

  Karl turned the conversation. He knew how wrong - were the surgeon’s premises. Her regret for his brother’s death had been terrible: but it was not that that was killing Mrs. Andinnian.

  The days went on, Mrs. Andinnian growing weaker and weaker. Her mind had regained unfortunately all its activity: unfortunately because she had not strength of body to counterbalance its workings. Karl had a great deal to do for her: consultations to hold with her and letters to write; but even yet he was not admitted to her full confidence. During that night’s interview with her, when he had learned so much, he had enquired who the gentleman was that had called and taken luncheon. Mrs. Andinnian had declined to answer him, further than it was a Mr. Smith who had applied for the agency of Sir Karl’s estate. Hewitt informed him that Mr. Smith had called again the very day succeeding Sir Karl’s departure. He had held a long interview with Mrs. Andinnian, and she had never been well since that hour.

  It was very strange: strange altogether. Karl now found out that Mr. Smith had been appointed the agent, and had had a house side by side with Foxwood Court assigned to him as his residence. The information nearly struck Karl dumb. He felt sure there was more behind, some inexplicable cause for this: but no more satisfactory explanation could he obtain from his mother. “She was ill, he was going to live abroad, therefore it was necessary some responsible person should be on the spot to look after things,” was all she said. And Mr. Smith arrived at Foxwood and took up his abode: and Sir Karl did not dare to forbid it.

  To Karl’s intense surprise, the next letter he had from his wife was dated London. They had left Paris and come over. With his whole heart
Karl hoped they would not be coming to Foxwood; and in his answering letter he talked a good deal about the “fever.”

  As to himself, he was wearing to a shadow. One might surely have thought he had a fever, and a wasting one. In writing to Mrs. Cleeve he admitted he was not well; and she wrote him back four pages full of instructions for fumigation, and beseeching him not to come to them. There is nothing like trouble to wear out a man.

  The event that had been prognosticated by the doctors and feared by Karl took place — Mrs. Andinnian died. In the midst of praying for a few days’ longer life, she died. Only a few days, had run her incessant prayer; a few days! Karl’s anguish, what with the death, and what with the weight of other things, seemed more than he could bear. Mrs. Andinnian’s grave was made close to that of her son Adam: and the funeral was a very quiet one.

  Karl remained at Foxwood, ostensibly fumigating the house and himself preparatory to joining his wife in town. He looked as much like a skeleton as a man. Mr. Moore noticed it, and asked what was coming to him.

  One day Mr. Smith, the agent, called, and was shown in to Sir Karl. The interview lasted about twenty minutes, and then the bell was rung.

  “Is the gentleman going to remain here as your agent, sir?” enquired Hewitt, with the familiarity of an old servant, when he had closed the door on the guest.

  “Why, yes, Hewitt, while I am away. My mother appointed him. She thought it better some one should be here to act for me — and I suppose it is right that it should be so.”

  Freely and lightly spoke Karl. But in good truth Mr. Smith fairly puzzled him. He knew no more who he was or whence he came than he had known before; though he did now know what his business was at Foxwood. Mr. Smith’s conversation during the interview had turned on the Foxwood estate: but he must have been aware Sir Karl saw all the while that his agency was only a blind — a blind to serve as a pretext for his residence at Foxwood. The two were playing a shallow part of pretence with one another. Mrs. Andinnian had fixed the amount of salary he was to receive, and Sir Karl meant to continue the payment of it. Why? — the reader may ask. Because Sir Karl dared not refuse; for the man knew too much of Mrs. Andinnian’s dangerous secret: and it lay in his power to render it more dangerous still.

  At length Sir Karl went up to London to rejoin his wife. Lucy gave a startled cry when she saw him — he was looking so ill; and Mrs. Cleeve accused him of having had the fever. Karl turned it off lightly: it was nothing, he said, but the confinement to his mother’s sick-room.

  But Miss Blake, who was growing very keen in her propensity for making the world better than it is, could not understand two things. Why Karl need have lingered so long at Foxwood, or why he could not have had his wife there.

  CHAPTER XI.

  At the Gate of the Maze.

  A MORE charming place than Foxwood Court presented in the summer months when the rare and sweet flowers by which it was surrounded were in bloom, could not have been found in the Kentish county. The mansion was not very large, but it was exceedingly gay and pretty to look upon; a white building with a goodly number of large windows, those on the lower floor mostly opening to the ground, so that the terrace could be gained from the rooms at will. The terrace — a gravel walk with brilliant flower beds on either side — ran along the front and the two sides of the house. A marble step or two in four places descended to a lower walk, or terrace, and from thence there was spread out the level lawn, a wide expanse, dotted with beds of flowers, and bounded with groves of beautiful trees. The chief entrance to the house was in its centre: a pillared portico, surmounting a flight of steps that led down to the broad walk dividing the lawn. At the end of this walk between the bank of trees were the large iron gates and the lodge; and there were two or three small private gates of egress besides in the iron palisades that enclosed the grounds beyond the trees. If there was a fault to be found with the locality altogether, it perhaps was that it had too many trees about it.

  The iron gates opened upon a broad highway: but one that from circumstances, now to be explained, was not much used, except by visitors to Foxwood Court. To the left of the gates a winding road led round to the village of Foxwood; it lay in front, distant about a quarter of a mile. To the right the road went straight to the little railway station: but as there was also a highway from the village to the station direct, cutting off all the round by Foxwood Court, it will readily be understood why that part of the road was rarely used. In the village of Foxwood there were a few good and a few poor houses; some shops; a church and parsonage, the incumbent an elderly man named Sumnor; Mr Moore, the surgeon; and a solicitor, Mr. St. Henry, who was universally called in the place Lawyer St. Henry. Some good mansions were scattered about in the vicinity; and it was altogether a favoured and attractive neighbourhood.

  In a small but very pretty room of Foxwood Court, at the side of the house that looked towards the railway station, and faced the north, sat Mrs. Cleeve and Miss Blake at breakfast. It was a warm and lovely June morning. The table, set off with beautiful china from the Worcester manufactories, with silver plate, and with a glass of choice flowers, was drawn close to the window, whose doors were wide open. By Mrs. Cleeve’s hand lay a letter just received from her daughter, Lady Andinnian, saying that she and Karl were really commencing their journey home.

  But for interference, how well the world might get on! After Karl Andinnian quitted Foxwood to rejoin his wife in London — as was related previously — Lucy had so far regained her health and strength that there was really no need for her to go, as had been arranged, to another climate. She herself wished not to go, but to take up her abode at once at Foxwood Court, and Colonel and Mrs. Cleeve seeing her so well, said they would prefer that she should remain in England. Karl, however, ruled it otherwise; and to the Continent he went with his wife. Nothing more would have been thought of this, but for Miss Blake. She was very keen-sighted, and she was fond of interference. Somewhat of love still, anger, and jealousy rankled in her heart against Karl Andinnian. Anything she could say against him she did say: and she contrived to impress Mrs. Cleeve with a notion that he, in a sort, had kidnapped Lucy and was taking her abroad for some purposes of his own. She boldly averred that Sir Karl had been keeping his wife away from Foxwood by statements of the fever, and such like, false and plausible: and that he probably meant to hide her away from them in some remote place for ever.

  This served to startle Mrs. Cleeve — though she only half believed it. She wrote to Sir Karl, saying that both herself and the Colonel wished to see Lucy home, and begged of him to return and take up his abode at Foxwood. Karl replied that Foxwood was not ready for them; there was no establishment. Mrs. Cleeve wrote again — urging that she and Theresa should go down and engage two or three servants, just enough to receive himself and Lucy: afterwards they could take on more at will. A few days’ delay and Karl’s second answer came. He thanked Mrs. Cleeve for the trouble she offered to take, and accepted it: specifying a wish that the servants should be natives of the locality — and who had always lived in it.

  “Karl wishes to employ his poor neighbours,” observed Mrs. Cleeve. “He is right, Theresa. You must see how good and thoughtful he is.”

  Theresa could find no cause to confute this much. But she was more and more persuaded that Sir Karl would have kept Lucy away from Foxwood if he could. And we must admit that it looked like it.

  Mrs. Cleeve lost no time in going down with Miss Blake to Foxwood Court. Hewitt, who had been left in charge, with an elderly woman, received them. They thought they had never seen a more respectable or thoroughly efficient retainer than Hewitt. The gardeners were the only other servants employed. They lived out of doors: the chief one, Maclean, inhabiting the lodge with his wife.

  While Miss Blake was looking out for some young women servants, two or three of whom were speedily found and engaged, she made it her business to look also after the village and its inhabitants. That Miss Blake had a peculiar faculty for searching out information,
was indisputable: never a better one for the task than she: and when an individual is gifted with this quality in a remarkable degree, it has to be more or less exercised. Miss Blake might have been a successful police detective: attached to a private inquiry office she would have made its fortune.

  And what she learnt gave her a profound contempt for Foxwood. We are speaking of the village now: not the Court. In the first place, there was no church: or, at least, what Miss Blake chose to consider none. The vicar, Mr. Sumnor, set his face against views of an extreme kind, and that was enough for Miss Blake to wage war with. Old Sumnor, to sum him up in Miss Blake’s words, might be conscientious enough, but he was as slow as a tortoise. She attended his church the first Sunday, and found it unbearably tame.

  There were no candles or flowers or banners or processions: and there was no regular daily service held. Miss Blake thought one might as well be without breakfast and dinner. Foxwood was a benighted place and nothing less.

  Mr. Sumnor’s family consisted of an invalid daughter left him by his first wife; a second wife and two more daughters. Mrs. Sumnor kept him in subjection, and her two daughters were showy and fast young ladies. The surgeon, Mr. Moore, a widower, had four blooming girls, and a sister, Aunt Diana, a kind of strong-minded female, who took care of them. The young ladies were pretty, but common-place. As to the lawyer, St. Henry, he had no children of his own, but had taken to a vast many of his dead brother’s. There were many other young ladies in the vicinity; but it was an absolute fact that there were no gentlemen — husbands and fathers of families excepted; for the few sons that existed were gone out to make their way in the world. Miss Blake considered it not at all a desirable state of things, and accorded it her cool contempt. But the place showed itself friendly, and came flocking in its simple manners and hearty good will to see the Hon. Mrs. Cleeve, Lady Andinnian’s mother, and to ask what it could do for her. So that Miss Blake, whether she liked it or not, soon found herself on terms of sociability with Foxwood.