Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “This parcel is not at all heavy,” said Lady Level.

  “I’m sure he is, then, for his size. You should lift, though, what I have to drag along sometimes. Why, yesterday that ever was, I brought a parcel as big as a house to the next door; one that come from Lunnon by the mid-day train just as this’n did; and Mother Snow she never gave me nothing but a jam tart, no bigger nor the round o’ your hand. She were taking a tray on ’em out o’ the oven.”

  “Jam tarts for her delectation!” was the thought that flashed through Lady Level’s mind. “Who was the parcel for, Sam?” she asked aloud.

  “‘Twere directed to Mrs. Snow.”

  “Oh. Not to that lady who is staying there?”

  “What lady be that?” questioned Sam.

  “The one you told me about. The lady with the long gold earrings.”

  Sam’s stolid countenance assumed a look of doubt, as if he did not altogether understand. His eyes grew wider.

  “That un! Her bain’t there now, her bain’t. Her didn’t stop. Her went right away again the next day after she come.”

  “Did she?” exclaimed Lady Level, taken by surprise. “Are you sure?”

  “Be I sure as that’s a newspaper in your hand?” retorted Sam. “In course I be sure. The fly were ordered down here for her the next morning, and she come on to the station in it, Mr. Snow a sitting outside.”

  “She went back to London, then!”

  “She went just t’other way,” contradicted the boy. “Right on by the down-train. Dover her ticket were took for.”

  Lady Level fell into a passing reverie. All the conjectures she had been indulging in lately — whither had they flown? At that moment Mrs. Edwards, having seen the boy from the house, came out to ask what he wanted. Sam put on his best behaviour instantly. The respect he failed to show to the young lady was in full force before Mrs. Edwards.

  “I come to bring this here parcel, please, ma’am, for Lady Level,” said he, touching his old cap.

  “Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Edwards. “I’ll carry it indoors, my lady,” she added, taking it up. “You need not wait, Sam.”

  Lady Level slipped a sixpence into his ready hand, and he went off contented. Mrs. Edwards carried away the parcel.

  Presently Lady Level followed, her mind busy as she went upstairs. She was taking some contrition to herself. What if — if it was all, or a great deal of it, only her imagination — that her husband was not the disloyal man she had deemed him?

  His chamber door was closed; she passed it and went into her own. Then she opened the door separating the rooms and peeped in. He was lying upon the bed, partly dressed, and wrapped in a warm dressing-gown; his face was turned to the pillow, and he was apparently asleep.

  She stole up and stood looking at him. Not a trace of fever lingered in his face now; his fine features looked wan and delicate. Her love for him was making itself heard just then. Cautiously she stooped to imprint a soft, silent kiss upon his cheek; and then another.

  She would have lifted her face then, and found she could not do so. His arm was round her in a trice, holding it there; his beautiful gray eyes had opened and were fixed on hers.

  “So you care for me a little bit yet, Blanche,” he fondly whispered. “Better this than calling me hard names.”

  She burst into tears. “I should care for you always, Archibald, if — if — I were sure you cared for me.”

  “You may be very sure of that,” he emphatically answered. “Let there be peace between us, at any rate, my dear wife. The clouds will pass away in time.”

  On the Monday morning following, Lord and Lady Level departed for London. The peace, patched up between them, being honestly genuine and hopeful on his lordship’s part, but doubtful on that of my lady.

  Still nothing had been said or done to lift the mystery which hung about Marshdale.

  CHAPTER III.

  ONE NIGHT IN ESSEX STREET.

  We go on now to the following year: and I, Charles Strange, take up the narrative again.

  * * * * *

  It has been said that the two rooms on the ground-floor of our house in Essex Street were chiefly given over to the clerks. I had a desk in the front office; the same desk that I had occupied as a boy; and I frequently sat at it now. Mr. Lennard’s desk stood opposite to mine. On the first floor the large front room was furnished as a sitting-room. It was called Mr. Brightman’s room, and there he received his clients. The back room was called my room; but Mr. Brightman had a desk in it, and I had another. His desk stood in the middle of the room before the hearthrug; mine was under the window.

  One fine Saturday afternoon in February, when it was getting near five o’clock, I was writing busily at my desk in this latter room, when Mr. Brightman came in.

  “Rather dark for you, is it not, Charles?” he remarked, as he stirred the fire and sat down in his arm-chair beside it.

  “Yes, sir; but I have almost finished.”

  “What are you going to do with yourself to-morrow?” he presently asked, when I was putting up my parchments.

  “Nothing in particular, sir.” I could not help sometimes retaining my old way of addressing him, as from clerk to master. “Last Sunday I was with my uncle Stillingfar.”

  “Then you may as well come down to Clapham and dine with me. Mrs. Brightman is away for a day or two, and I shall be alone. Come in time for service.”

  I promised, and drew a chair to the fire, ready to talk with Mr. Brightman. He liked a little chat with me at times when the day’s work was over. It turned now on Lord Level, from whom I had heard that morning. We were not his usual solicitors, but were doing a little matter of business for him. He and Blanche had been abroad since the previous November (when they had come up together from Marshdale), and had now been in Paris for about a month.

  “Do they still get on pretty well?” asked Mr. Brightman: for he knew that there had been differences between them.

  “Pretty well,” I answered, rather hesitatingly.

  And, in truth, it was only pretty well, so far as I was able to form a judgment. During this sojourn of theirs in Paris I had spent a few days there with a client, and saw Blanche two or three times. That she was living in a state of haughty resentment against her husband was indisputable. Why or wherefore, I knew not. She dropped a mysterious word to me now and then, of which I could make nothing.

  While Mr. Brightman was saying this, a clerk came in, handed a letter to him and retired.

  “What a nuisance!” cried he, as he read it by fire-light. I looked up at the exclamation.

  “Sir Edmund Clavering’s coming to town this evening, and wants me to be here to see him!” he explained. “I can’t go home to dinner now.”

  “Which train is he coming by?” I asked.

  “One that is due at Euston Square at six o’clock,” replied Mr. Brightman, referring to the letter. “I wanted to be home early this evening.”

  “You are not obliged to wait, sir,” I said. I wished to my heart later — oh, how I wished it! — that he had not waited!

  “I suppose I must, Charles. He is a good client, and easily takes offence. Recollect that breeze we had with him three or four months ago.”

  The clocks struck five as he spoke, and we heard the clerks leaving as usual. I have already stated that no difference was made in the working hours on Saturdays in those days. Afterwards, Mr. Lennard came up to ask whether there was anything more to be done.

  “Not now,” replied Mr. Brightman. “But I tell you what, Lennard,” he added, as a thought seemed to occur to him, “you may as well look in again to-night, about half-past seven or eight, if it won’t inconvenience you. Sir Edmund Clavering is coming up; I conclude it is for something special; and I may have instructions to give for Monday morning.”

  “Very well,” replied Lennard. “I will come.”

  He went out as he spoke; a spare, gentlemanly man, with a fair complexion and thin, careworn face. Edgar Lennard was a man of few words,
but attentive and always at his post, a most efficient superintendent of the office and of the clerks in general.

  He left and Mr. Brightman rose, saying he would go and get some dinner at the Rainbow. I suggested that he should share my modest steak, adding that Leah could as easily send up enough for two as for one: but he preferred to go out. I rang the bell as I heard him close the frontdoor. Watts answered it, and lighted the gas.

  “Tell your wife to prepare my dinner at once,” I said to him; “or as soon as possible: Mr. Brightman is coming back to-night. You are going out, are you not?”

  “Yes, sir, about that business. Mr. Lennard said I had better go as soon as I had had my tea.”

  “All right. It will take you two or three hours to get there and back again. See to the fire in the next room; it is to be kept up. And, Watts, tell Leah not to trouble about vegetables to-day: I can’t wait for them.”

  In about twenty minutes Leah and the steak appeared. I could not help looking at her as she placed the tray on the table and settled the dishes. Thin, haggard, untidy, Leah presented a strange contrast to the trim, well-dressed upper servant I had known at White Littleham Rectory. It was Watts who generally waited upon me. When Leah knew beforehand that she would have to wait, she put herself straight. Today she had not known. My proper sitting-room upstairs was not much used in winter. This one was warm and comfortable, with the large fire kept in it all day, so I generally remained in it. I was not troubled with clients after office hours.

  “I wonder you go such a figure, Leah!” I could not help saying so.

  “It is cleaning-day, Mr. Charles. And I did not know I should have to come up here. Watts has just gone out.”

  “It is a strange thing to me that you cannot get a woman in to help you. I have said so before.”

  “Ah, sir, nobody knows where the shoe pinches but he who wears it.”

  With this remark, unintelligible as apropos to the question, and a deep sigh, Leah withdrew. I had finished dinner, and the tray was taken away before Mr. Brightman returned.

  “Now I hope Sir Edmund will be punctual,” he cried, as we sat together, talking over a glass of sherry. “It is half-past six: time he was here.”

  “And there he is!” I exclaimed, as a ring and a knock that shook the house resounded in our ears. After five o’clock the front door was always closed.

  Watts being out, we heard Leah answer the door in her charming costume. But clients pay little attention to the attire of laundresses in chambers.

  “Good heavens! Can Sir Edmund have taken too much!” uttered Mr. Brightman, halting as he was about to enter the other room to receive him. Loud sounds in a man’s voice arose from the passage; singing, laughing, joking with Leah. “Open the door, Charles.”

  I had already opened it, and saw, not Sir Edmund Clavering, but the young country client, George Coney, the son of a substantial and respectable yeoman in Gloucestershire. He appeared to be in exalted spirits, and had a little exceeded, but was very far from being intoxicated.

  “What, is Mr. Brightman here? I only expected to see you,” cried he, shaking hands with both. “Look here!” holding out a small canvas bag, and rattling it. “What does that sound like?”

  “It sounds like gold,” said Mr. Brightman.

  “Right, Mr. Brightman; thirty golden sovereigns: and I am as delighted with them as if they were thirty hundred,” said he, opening the bag and displaying its contents. “Last week I got swindled out of a horse down at home. Thirty pounds I sold him for, and he and the purchaser disappeared and forgot to pay. My father went on at me, like our old mill clacking; not so much for the loss of the thirty pounds, as at my being done: and all the farmers round about clacked at me, like so many more mills. Pleasant, that, for a fellow, was it not?”

  “Very,” said Mr. Brightman, while I laughed.

  “I did not care to stand it,” went on George Coney. “I obtained a bit of a clue, and the day before yesterday I came up to London — and I have met with luck. This afternoon I dropped across the very chap, where I had waited for him since the morning. He was going into a public-house, and another with him, and I pinned them in the room, with a policeman outside, and he pretty soon shelled out the thirty pounds, rather than be taken. That’s luck, I hope.” He opened the bag as he spoke, and displayed the gold.

  “Remarkable luck, to get the money,” observed Mr. Brightman.

  “I expect they had been in luck themselves,” continued young Coney, “for they had more gold with them, and several notes. They were for paying me in notes, but ‘No, thank ye,’ said I, ‘I know good gold when I see it, and I’ll take it in that.’”

  “I am glad you have been so fortunate,” said Mr. Brightman. “When do you return home?”

  “I did mean to go to-night, and I called to leave with you this small deed that my father said I might as well bring up with me, as I was coming” — producing a thin folded parchment from his capacious pocketbook. “But I began thinking, as I came along, that I might as well have a bit of a spree now I am here, and go down by Monday night’s train,” added the young man, tying up the bag again, and slipping it into his pocket. “I shall go to a theatre to-night.”

  “Not with that bag of gold about you?” said Mr. Brightman.

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Because you would have no trace of it left to-morrow morning.”

  George Coney laughed good-humouredly. “I can take care of myself, sir.”

  “Perhaps so; but you can’t take care of the gold. Come, hand it over to me. Your father will thank me for being determined, and you also, Mr. George, when you have cooled down from the seductions of London.”

  “I may want to spend some of it,” returned George Coney. “Let’s see how much I have,” cried he, turning the loose money out of his pockets. “Four pounds, seven shillings, and a few halfpence,” he concluded, counting it up.

  “A great deal too much to squander or lose in one night,” remarked Mr. Brightman. “Here,” added he, unlocking a deep drawer in his desk, “put your bag in here, and come for it on Monday.”

  George Coney drew the bag from his pocket, but not without a few remonstrative shakes of the head, and put it in the drawer. Mr. Brightman locked it, and restored the bunch of keys to his pocket.

  “You are worse than my father is,” cried George Coney, half in jest, half vexed at having yielded. “I wouldn’t be as close and stingy for anything.”

  “In telling this story twenty years hence, Mr. George, you will say, What a simpleton I should have made of myself, if that cautious old lawyer Brightman had not been close and stingy!”

  George Coney winked at me and laughed. “Perhaps he’s right, after all.”

  “I know I am,” said Mr. Brightman. “Will you take a glass of sherry?”

  “Well; no, I think I had better not. I have had almost enough already, and I want to carry clear eyes with me to the play. What time does it begin?”

  “About seven, I think; but I am not a theatre-goer myself. Strange can tell you.”

  “Then I shall be off,” said he, shaking hands with us, as only a hearty country yeoman knows how to.

  He had scarcely gone when Sir Edmund Clavering’s knock was heard. Mr. Brightman went with him into the front room, and I sat reading the Times. Leah, by the way, had made herself presentable, and looked tidy enough in a clean white cap and apron.

  Sir Edmund did not stay long: he left about seven. I heard Mr. Brightman go back after showing him out, and rake the fire out of the grate — he was always timidly cautious about fire — and then he returned to my room.

  “No wonder Sir Edmund wanted to see me,” cried he. “There’s the deuce of a piece of work down at his place. His cousin wants to dispute the will and to turn him out. They have been serving notices on the tenants not to pay the rent.”

  “What a curious woman she must be!”

  Mr. Brightman smiled slightly, but made no answer.

  “He did not stay long, si
r.”

  “No, he is going out to dinner.”

  As Mr. Brightman spoke, he turned up the gas, drew his chair to the desk and sat down, his back then being towards the fire. “I must look over these letters and copies of notices which Sir Edmund brought with him, and has left with me,” he remarked. “I don’t care to go home directly.”

  The next minute he was absorbed in the papers. I put down the Times, and rose. “You do not want me, I suppose, Mr. Brightman,” I said. “I promised Arthur Lake to go to his chambers for an hour.”

  “I don’t want you, Charles. Mind you are not late in coming down to me to-morrow morning.”

  So I wished him good-night and departed. Arthur Lake, a full-fledged barrister now of the Middle Temple, rented a couple of rooms in one of the courts. His papers were in one room, his bed in the other. He was a steady fellow, as he always had been, working hard and likely to get on. We passed many of our evenings together over a quiet chat and a cigar, I going round to him, or he coming in to me. He had grown up a little, dandified sort of man, good-humouredly insolent as ever when the fit took him: but sterling at heart.

  Lake was sitting at the fire waiting for me, and began to grumble at my being late. I mentioned what had hindered me.

  “And I have forgotten my cigar-case!” I exclaimed as I sat down. “I had filled it, all ready, and left it on the table.”

  “Never mind,” said Lake. “I laid in a parcel to-day.”

  But I did mind, for Lake’s “parcels” were never good. He would buy his cigars so dreadfully strong. Nothing pleased him but those full-flavoured Lopez, whilst I liked mild Cabanas: so, generally speaking, I kept to my own. However, I took one, and we sat, talking and smoking. I smoked it out, abominable though it was, and took another; but I couldn’t stand a second.

  “Lake, I cannot smoke your cigars,” I said, flinging it into the fire. “You know I never can. I must run and fetch my own. There goes eight o’clock.”