Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “How is Janet, Johnny Ludlow?”

  “Quite well, thank you.”

  “And those two children of hers — are they very troublesome?”

  “Indeed, no; they are the best little things you ever saw. I wanted to bring the boy with me to meet you, but Janet would not let me.”

  “Um!” grunted Cattledon: “showed a little sense for once. What is that building?”

  “That’s the Town Hall. I thought you knew Lefford, Miss Cattledon?”

  “One cannot be expected to retain the buildings of a town in one’s head as if they were photographed there,” returned she in a sharp tone of reproof. Which shut me up.

  “And, pray, how does that young woman continue to conduct herself?” she asked presently.

  “What young woman?” I said, believing she must be irreverently alluding to Janet.

  “Lettice Lane.”

  Had she mentioned the name of some great Indian Begum I could not have been more surprised. That name brought back to memory all the old trouble connected with Miss Deveen’s emeralds, their loss and their finding: which, take it for all in all, was nothing short of a romance. But why did she question me about Lettice Lane. I asked her why.

  “I asked it to be answered, young man,” was Cattledon’s grim retort.

  “Yes, of course,” I said, with deprecation. “But how should I know anything about Lettice Lane?”

  “If there’s one thing I hate more than another, Johnny Ludlow, it is shuffling. I ask you how that young woman is going on; and I request you to answer me.”

  “Indeed, I would if I could. I don’t understand why you should ask me. Is Lettice Lane not living still with you — with Miss Deveen?”

  Cattledon evidently thought I was shuffling, for she looked daggers at me. “Lettice Lane,” she said, “is with Janet Knox.”

  “With Janet Knox! Oh dear, no, she is not.”

  “Don’t you get into a habit of contradicting your elders, Johnny Ludlow. It is very unbecoming in a young man.”

  “But — see here, Miss Cattledon. If Lettice were living with Janet, I must have seen her. I see the servants every day. I assure you Lettice is not one of them.”

  She began to see that I was in earnest, and condescended to explain in her stiff way. “Janet came to town last May to spend a week with us,” she said. “Before that, Lettice Lane had been complaining of not feeling strong: I thought it was nothing but her restlessness; Miss Deveen and the doctor thought she wanted country air — that London did not agree with her. Janet was parting with her nurse at the time; she engaged Lettice to replace her, and brought her down to Lefford. Is the matter clear to you now, young man?”

  “Quite so. But indeed, Miss Cattledon, Lettice is not with Janet now. The nurse is named Harriet, and she is not in the least like Lettice Lane.”

  “Then Lettice Lane must have gone roving again — unless you are mistaken,” said Cattledon, severely. “Wanting country air, forsooth! Change was what she wanted.”

  Handing over Miss Cattledon, when we arrived, to the care of Janet, who took her upstairs, and told me tea would be ready soon, I went into Mr. Tamlyn’s sitting-room. He was in the easy-chair before the fire, dozing, but opened his eyes at my entrance.

  “Visitor come all right, Johnny?”

  “Yes, sir; she is gone to take her cloaks off. Janet says tea is nearly ready.”

  “I am quite ready for it,” he remarked, and shut his eyes again.

  I took up a book I was reading, “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and sat down on the broad window-seat, legs up, to catch the now fading light. The folds of the crimson curtain lay between me and Mr. Tamlyn — and I only hoped Mrs. Gamp would not send me into convulsions and disturb him.

  Presently Dr. Knox came in. He went up to the fire, and stood at the corner of the mantelpiece, his elbow on it, his back to me; and old Tamlyn woke up.

  “Well,” began he, “what was the matter at Cooper’s, Arnold?”

  “Eldest boy fell off a ladder and broke his arm. It is only a simple fracture.”

  “Been very busy to-day, Arnold?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “Hope I shall be out again in a day or two. How did you find Lady Jenkins?”

  “Not at all to my satisfaction. She was in bed, and — and in fact seemed hardly to know me.”

  Tamlyn said nothing to this, and a silence ensued. Dr. Knox broke it. He turned his eyes from the fire on which they had been fixed, and looked full at his partner.

  “Has it ever struck you that there’s not quite fair play going on up there?” he asked in a low tone.

  “Up where?”

  “With Lady Jenkins.”

  “How do you mean, Arnold?”

  “That something is being given to her?”

  Tamlyn sat upright in his chair, pushed back his scanty hair, and stared at Dr. Knox.

  “What do you mean, Knox? What do you suspect?”

  “That she is being habitually drugged; gradually, slowly — —”

  “Merciful goodness!” interrupted Tamlyn, rising to his feet in excitement. “Do you mean slowly poisoned?”

  “Hush! — I hear Janet,” cried Dr. Knox.

  LADY JENKINS. DOUBT.

  I.

  You might have heard a pin drop in the room. They were listening to the footsteps outside the door, but the footsteps did not make the hush and the nameless horror that pervaded it: the words spoken by Dr. Knox had done that. Old Tamlyn stood, a picture of dismay. For myself, sitting in the window-seat, my feet comfortably stretched out before me, and partially sheltered by the red curtains, I could only gaze at them both.

  Janet’s footsteps died away. She appeared to have been crossing the hall to the tea-room. And they began to talk again.

  “I do not say that Lady Jenkins is being poisoned; absolutely, deliberately poisoned,” said Dr. Knox, in the hushed tones to which his voice had dropped; “I do not yet go quite so far as that. But I do think that she is in some way being tampered with.”

  “In what way?” gasped Tamlyn.

  “Drugged.”

  The doctor’s countenance wore a puzzled expression as he spoke; his eyes a far-away look, just as though he did not see his own theory clearly. Mr. Tamlyn’s face changed: the astonishment, the alarm, the dismay depicted on it gave place suddenly to relief.

  “It cannot be, Arnold. Rely upon it you are mistaken. Who would harm her?”

  “No one that I know of; no suspicious person is about her to do it,” replied Dr. Knox. “And there lies the puzzle. I suppose she does not take anything herself? Opium, say?”

  “Good Heavens, no,” warmly spoke old Tamlyn. “No woman living is less likely to do that than Lady Jenkins.”

  “Less likely than she was. But you know yourself how unaccountably she has changed.”

  “She does not take opium or any other drug. I could stake my word upon it, Arnold.”

  “Then it is being given to her — at least, I think so. If not, her state is to me inexplicable. Mind you, Mr. Tamlyn, not a breath of this must transpire beyond our two selves,” urged Dr. Knox, his tone and his gaze at his senior partner alike impressively earnest. “If anything is wrong, it is being wilfully and covertly enacted; and our only chance of tracing it home is to conceal our suspicion of it.”

  “I beg your pardon, Dr. Knox,” I interrupted at this juncture, the notion, suddenly flashing into my mind, that he was unaware of my presence, sending me hot all over; “did you know I was here?”

  They both turned to me, and Dr. Knox’s confused start was a sufficient answer.

  “You heard all I said, Johnny Ludlow?” spoke Dr. Knox.

  “All. I am very sorry.”

  “Well, it cannot be helped now. You will not let it transpire?”

  “That I certainly will not.”

  “We shall have to take you into our confidence — to include you in the plot,” said Arnold Knox, with a smile. “I believe we might have a less trustworthy adherent.�
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  “You could not have one more true.”

  “Right, Johnny,” added Mr. Tamlyn. “But I do hope Dr. Knox is mistaken. I think you must be, Arnold. What are your grounds for this new theory?”

  “I don’t tell you that it is quite new,” replied Dr. Knox. “A faint idea of it has been floating in my mind for some little time. As to grounds, I have no more to go upon than you have had. Lady Jenkins is in a state that we do not understand; neither you nor I can fathom what is amiss with her; and I need not point out that such a condition of things is unsatisfactory to a medical man, and sets him thinking.”

  “I am sure I have not been able to tell what it is that ails her,” concurred old Tamlyn, in a helpless kind of tone. “She seems always to be in a lethargy, more or less; to possess no proper self-will; to have parted, so to say, with all her interest in life.”

  “Just so. And I cannot discover, and do not believe, that she is in any condition of health to cause this. I believe that the evil is being daily induced,” emphatically continued Dr. Knox. “And if she does not herself induce it, by taking improper things, they are being administered to her by others. You will not admit the first theory, Mr. Tamlyn?”

  “No, that I will not. Lady Jenkins no more takes baneful drugs of her own accord than I take them.”

  “Then the other theory must come up. It draws the point to a narrow compass, but to a more startling one.”

  “Look here, Arnold. If I did admit the first theory you would be no nearer the light. Lady Jenkins could not obtain drugs, and be everlastingly swallowing them, without detection. Madame St. Vincent would have found her out in a day.”

  “Yes.”

  “And would have stopped it at once herself, or handed it over to me to be dealt with. She is truly anxious for Lady Jenkins, and spares no pains, no time, no trouble for her.”

  “I believe that,” said Dr. Knox. “Whatsoever is being done, Madame St. Vincent is kept in the dark — just as much as we are. Who else is about her?”

  “No one much but her maid, that I know of,” replied old Tamlyn, after a pause of consideration. “And I should think she was as free from suspicion as madame herself. It seems a strange thing.”

  “It is. But I fear I am right. The question now will be, how are we to set about solving the mystery?”

  “She is not quite always in a lethargic state,” observed Tamlyn, his thoughts going off at a tangent.

  “She is so more or less,” dissented Dr. Knox. “Yesterday morning I was there at eight o’clock; I went early purposely, and she was in a more stupidly lethargic state than I had before seen her. Which of course proves one thing.”

  “What thing? I fail to catch your meaning, Arnold.”

  “That she is being drugged in the night as well as the day.”

  “If she is drugged at all,” corrected Mr. Tamlyn, shaking his head. “But I do not give in to your fancy yet, Arnold. All this must edify you, Johnny!”

  Tamlyn spoke the words in a jesting sense, meaning of course that it had done nothing of the kind. He was wrong, if to edify means to interest. Hardly ever during my life had I been more excited.

  “It is a frightful shame if any one is playing with Lady Jenkins,” I said to them. “She is as good-hearted an old lady as ever lived. And why should they do it? Where’s the motive?”

  “There lies one of the difficulties — the motive,” observed Dr. Knox. “I cannot see any; any end to be obtained by it. No living being that I know of can have an interest in wishing for Lady Jenkins’s death or illness.”

  “How is her money left?”

  “A pertinent question, Johnny. I do not expect any one could answer it, excepting herself and Belford, the lawyer. I suppose her relatives, all the nephews and nieces, will inherit it: and they are not about her, you see, and cannot be dosing her. No; the motive is to me a complete mystery. Meanwhile, Johnny, keep your ears and eyes open when you are up there; there’s no telling what chance word or look may be dropped that might serve to give you a clue: and keep your mouth shut.”

  I laughed.

  “If I could put aside my patients for a week, and invent some excuse for taking up my abode at Jenkins House, I know I should soon find out all the mystery,” went on Dr. Knox.

  “Arnold, why not take Madame St. Vincent into your confidence?”

  Dr. Knox turned quickly round at the words to face his senior partner. He held up his finger warningly.

  “Things are not ripe for it,” he said. “Let me get, or try to get, a little more inkling into matters than I have at present, as touching the domestic economy at Jenkins House. I may have to do as you say, later: but women are only chattering magpies; marplots, often with the best intentions; and Madame St. Vincent may be no exception.”

  “Will you please come to tea?” interrupted Janet, opening the door.

  Miss Cattledon, in a sea-green silk gown that I’m sure I had seen many times before, and the velvet on her thin throat, and a bow of lace on her head, shook hands with Mr. Tamlyn and Dr. Knox, and we sat down to tea. Little Arnold, standing by his mother in his plaid frock and white drawers (for the time to dress little children as men had not come in then by many a year), had a piece of bread-and-butter given to him. While he was eating it, the nurse appeared.

  “Are you ready, Master Arnold? It is quite bedtime.”

  “Yes, he is ready, Harriet; and he has been very good,” spoke Janet. And the little fellow went contentedly off without a word.

  Miss Cattledon, stirring her tea at the moment, put the spoon down to look at the nurse, staring at her as if she had never seen a nurse before.

  “That’s not Lettice Lane,” she observed sententiously, as the door closed on Harriet. “Where is Lettice Lane?”

  “She has left, Aunt Jemima.”

  If a look could have withered Janet, Cattledon’s was severe enough to do it. But the displeasure was meant for Lettice, not for Janet.

  “What business had she to leave? Did she misbehave herself?”

  “She stayed with me only two months,” said Janet. “And she left because she still continued poorly, and the two children were rather too much for her. The baby was cutting her teeth, which disturbed Lettice at night; and I and Arnold both thought we ought to have some one stronger.”

  “Did you give her warning?” asked Cattledon, who was looking her very grimmest at thought of the absent Lettice; “or did she give it you?”

  Janet laughed presently. “I think it was a sort of mutual warning, Aunt Jemima. Lettice acknowledged to me that she was hardly equal to the care of the children; and I told her I thought she was not. We found her another place.”

  “A rolling-stone gathers no moss,” commented Cattledon. “Lettice Lane changes her places too often.”

  “She stayed some time with Miss Deveen, Aunt Jemima. And she likes her present place. She gets very good wages, better than she had with me, and helps to keep her mother.”

  “What may her duties be? Is she housemaid again?”

  “She is lady’s-maid to Lady Jenkins, an old lady who lives up the London Road. Lettice has grown much stronger since she went there. Why, what do you think, Aunt Jemima?” added Janet, laughing, “Lettice has actually been to Paris. Lady Jenkins went there just after engaging Lettice, and took her.”

  Miss Cattledon tossed her head. “Much good that would do Lettice Lane! Only fill her up with worse conceits than ever. I wonder she is not yet off to Australia! She used always to be talking of it.”

  “You don’t appear to like Lettice Lane, ma’am,” smiled old Tamlyn.

  “No, I do not, sir. Lettice Lane first became known to me under unfavourable circumstances, and I have not liked her since.”

  “Indeed! What were they?”

  “Some of Miss Deveen’s jewels disappeared — were stolen; and Lettice Lane was suspected. It turned out later that she was not guilty; but I could not get over my dislike to her. We cannot help our likes and dislikes, which often come to us
without rhyme or reason,” acknowledged Miss Cattledon, “and I admit that I am perhaps too persistent in mine.”

  Not a soul present, myself excepted, had ever heard about the loss of the emeralds: and somehow I felt sorry that Cattledon had spoken of it. Not that she did it in ill-nature — I give her that due. Questions were immediately poured out, and she had to give the full history.

  The story interested them all, Dr. Knox especially.

  “And who did take the jewels?” he asked.

  But Cattledon could not enlighten him, for Miss Deveen had not betrayed Sophie Chalk, even to her.

  “I don’t know who it was,” tartly confessed Cattledon, the point being a sore one with her. “Miss Deveen promised, I believe, to screen the thief; and did so.”

  “Perhaps it was really Lettice Lane?”

  “I believe not. I am sure not. It was a lady, Miss Deveen told me that much. No; of that disgraceful act Lettice Lane was innocent: but I should never be surprised to hear of her falling into trouble. She is capable of it.”

  “Of poisoning somebody, perhaps?” spoke Dr. Knox.

  “Yes,” acquiesced Cattledon, grimly.

  How prejudiced she was against Lettice Lane! But she had given this last answer only in the same jesting spirit in which it appeared to have been put, not really meaning it.

  “To be wrongly suspected, as poor Lettice Lane was, ought to make people all the more considerate to her,” remarked Janet, her thoughts no doubt reverting to the time when she herself was falsely suspected — and accused.

  “True, my dear,” answered old Tamlyn. “Poor Lettice must have had her troubles.”

  “And she has had her faults,” retorted Cattledon.

  But this story had made an impression on Dr. Knox that Cattledon never suspected, never intended. He took up the idea that Lettice Lane was guilty. Going into Mr. Tamlyn’s sitting-room for “Martin Chuzzlewit,” when tea was over, I found his hand on my shoulder. He had silently followed me.

  “Johnny Ludlow,” he said, looking down into my eyes in the dim room, which was only lighted by the dim fire, “I don’t like this that I have heard of Lettice Lane.”