Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 10/Lord Oakburn's daughters - Part 12
LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “EAST LYNNE.”
CHAPTER XXIII.MISS LETHWAIT.
In a magnificent reception-room of Portland Place sat the Earl of Oakburn and Lady Jane Chesney. It was the middle of June, and the London season was at its height. The whole of May Lord Oakburn and his daughters had stayed at Chesney Oaks; he had now taken this house, furnished, for three months. Chesney Oaks was in the market to let: to let to anybody who would take it and pay rent for it; and the countess dowager had worked herself into a fume and a fret when she first saw the advertisement, and had come down upon the earl in a burst of indignation, demanding to know what he meant by disgracing the family. The earl answered her; he was quite capable of doing it; and a hot war of words waged for some minutes between them, and neither would give way. The earl had reason on his side, though; if his means were not sufficient to keep up Chesney Oaks, better that he should let it than allow it to go to ruin through unoccupation.
So Chesney Oaks was in the hire market, and old Lady Oakburn told her sailor nephew that he deserved to have his ears boxed, that she should never forgive him, and then she withdrew in dudgeon to her house in Kensington Gardens, and the earl devoutly wished she might never come out of it to torment him again.
Indeed there was scarcely a poorer peer on Great Britain’s roll than the new Earl of Oakburn, but to him and to Jane this poverty was as very riches. His net revenue would be little if any more than three thousand per annum; as to the rent he expected to get from the letting of Chesney Oaks, it would nearly if not all go in keeping the place in proper repair. Chesney Oaks had no broad lands attaching to it; the house was good, and the ornamental gardens were good; but these are not the things that yield huge revenues. The furniture of Chesney Oaks was the private property of the late earl, it reverted to his grandmother, the old countess. Had the present earl pleased her—that is, had he not offended her by advertising the place—she would very probably have made him a present of it, for she was capable of being generous when it suited her; but when she found the house was irrevocably to be let, she, in a fit of temper, game orders for it to be taken out, and it was now in, the course of removal. “I’ll not. leave a stick or a stone in the place,” she had said to Lord Oakburn in the stormy interview alluded to above. ”I’d not use them if you did,” retorted the exasperated earl, “and the sooner the things are out, the better.” For one thing, the house was in admirable repair; the young earl having had it put in complete ornamental order twelve months before, on the occasion of his marriage. So the furniture passed out of Lord Oakburn’s hands, when perhaps by a little diplomacy, which he was entirely incapable of exercising, it might have remained his, and the dowager was distributing it amidst her married daughters—who were too well off to care for it.
For a fortnight or more after Chesney Oaks was advertised no applicant had applied for it. Then one came forward. It was Sir James Marden, a gentleman who was returning to Europe after a long sojourn in the East, and who had commissioned his brother, Colonel Marden, to engage for him a suitable residence. It was natural that the colonel should wish to secure one in the vicinity of his own; he lived at Pembury, and Chesney Oaks appeared to be the very thing, of all others; and the negotiations were proceeding satisfactorily.
The earl was talking to Jane about it now. He was no hard bargain dealer. Generous by nature, he could not higgle and haggle, and stand out for pence and shillings and pounds, as so many do. All he did, any transaction he might engage in, was set about in the most simple, straightforward manner imaginable. It would have occurred to most people to employ an agent to conduct this business of the letting; it did not occur to the earl. He wrote the advertisements out with his own hand, and he added to them his own name and address in full, as to where applications might be made. One or two interviews had taken place between him and Colonel Marden, who was staying with his family in town; and on the previous day to this morning on which the earl and his daughter were sitting together, Mrs. Marden had made her first call on Indy Jane, and they had grown in that short call quite intimate. Jane was now telling her father that she had promised to accompany Mrs. Marden to a morning concert that very day.
Jane was attired in mourning; a handsome black dress of a thin gauzy texture, ample and flowing. She was quiet and unpretending as ever, but there was a look of rest in her face now, that told of a heart at peace. The present life was as a very haven to the careworn Jane, nearly tired out, as she had been, with the household contrivings, the economies, and the embarrassments of the former days. All the longing visions of Jane Chesney seemed more than realized; visions which had been indulged for her father, not for herself; and they had been realized in a manner and to a degree that Jane had never dreamt of. He was at ease for the rest of his days, and she had nothing more left to wish for. Into society Jane determined to go very little. To be her father’s constant companion, save when he was at his club or at the House, was her aim; formerly household duties and Lucy’s education called her perpetually from his side: it should not be so now. No attractions of society, of pleasure, of the gay world without, should lure away Jane Chesney: she would remain her dear father’s companion from henceforth, rendering his hours pleasant to him, taking care that things were well ordered in his home. Never perhaps has father been loved and revered as was this one by Jane Chesney; and, as mistress of his plentiful home, as mistress of her own time, which she would dedicate to him, she seemed to have realised her Utopia.
Though talking with her father on the subject of Chesney Oaks and Sir James Marden’s probable tenancy of it, an under-current of ideas was floating in Jane’s mind. She was about engaging a governess for Lucy; that is, she was looking out for one; and on the previous day Mrs. Marden had mentioned a lady to her who was in search of a fresh situation—one whom Jane thought would be likely to suit.
“You are quite sure, papa, that you have overgot your objection to our taking a resident governess?” Jane said to him in a pause of the other subject. For it should be made known that the earl had declared, when Jane had first broached the matter, that he would have no strange ladies in his house, putting him out of his way: and he had very grumblingly conceded the point, upon Jane’s assuring him that no governess should be allowed to do that in the remotest degree.
“Didn’t I say so!” testily returned the earl, who had lost none of his abruptness of manner, “Why do you ask?”
“Because Mrs. Marden mentioned one to me, who is about quitting her present situation. By the description, I thought she appeared to be just the person we want for Lucy. If you have no objection, papa, I will inquire further about her.”
“Lucy would have been just as well at school,” said the earl.
“Oh, papa, no!” and Jane’s tone was one of pain. “I should not like her to be moved from under my supervision. You know I have been as her mother ever since mamma died. Neither do I think you would like to part with her.”
Have it as you will,” said the earl, his voice somewhat more conciliatory.
“If you think the woman will do, let her sign articles.”
Jane smiled. But before she could answer, a servant came into the room and said a lady was waiting to see her.
“Who is it?” asked Jane.
“I thought she said Miss Lethwait, my lady, but I am not sure that I caught the name aright, though I asked twice,” was the man’s answer.
Jane left the room to receive her visitor, “Lethwait?” she repeated to herself, “Lethwait?—surely that was the name of the governess mentioned by Mrs. Marden! I suppose she must have sent her here.”
A tall and very elegant woman of seven or eight-and-twenty rose from her chair as Jane entered. In features she was plain, but there was something really magnificent about her dark eyes and hair, about her manner altogether. Jane bowed; and concluded she had been mistaken in supposing it to be the governess.
But the governess it was, Miss Lethwait. Mrs. Marden had informed her that she had spoken to Lady Jane Chesney on her behalf, and Miss Lethwait had deemed it best to call at once, lest some other applicant should supersede her. She was a clergyman’s daughter, she informed Jane, and had been educated for a governess. Her father had judged it better to give his children an education by which they might make their way in the world, she said, than to put by the money it would cost, to be divided amongst them at his death. It would be but a few hundreds at best, not sufficient to do them much good. Jane inquired why she was leaving her present situation, and was told that it was the amount of work which was driving her away. She had five pupils there, and taught them everything.
“You will require a high salary, probably?”
Jane said, after a few minutes’ pause, during which she had been thinking how much she should like to engage Miss Lethwait.
Miss Lethwait hesitated in her reply. She had been told by Mrs. Marden that Lady Jane had intimated she should not be able to pay a very high one.
“I receive eighty guineas where I am, madam,” she at length answered. “But in consideration of there being only one pupil, I would willingly accept less. Were I to continue to work as I am doing now, I am sure that my health would seriously suffer. I am frequently up until past twelve, correcting exercises which I have not time to do in the day, and I am obliged to rise at six to superintend the practising.”
Jane could with truth assure her that there would be no overworking in her home—if she came into it; and when Miss Lethwait quitted the house, she was engaged, subject to references.
She had barely gone when Mrs. Marden called, a pretty little woman with a profusion of auburn hair. Jane saw her with surprise. An appointment had been made for them to meet at half-past one, but it was yet only half-past twelve. Mrs. Marden had come to tell Jane she would probably receive a visit from Miss Lethwait. Jane replied that she had been already; and grew eloquent in her praise.
“I like her very much indeed,” she said. “She appears to me to be well qualified in every way; an unusually desirable person to fill such a post. Mrs. Marden, I wonder you were not anxious to secure her for your own children!” she added, the idea striking her.
Mrs. Marden laughed. “The governess I have suits me very well,” she answered. “She is not perfection; I don’t know who is; you may not find Miss Lethwait to be so.”
“No, indeed,” said Jane.
“Miss Jones is patient and efficient,” continued Mrs. Marden. “At least she is efficient while my children are at their present ages—scarcely out of the nursery; but she is not a finished linguist and musician, as is Miss Lethwait,”
“I wonder,” cried Jane, the thought striking her, “whether she is a daughter of the Reverend Mr. Jones of South Wennock?”
“No, I am sure she is not. She observes a complete silence as to her relatives: never will speak of them. I once told her I did not believe Jones was her real name,” continued Mrs. Mardon, laughing. “She said it was; but I declare I’d not answer for it. She acknowledged that there were circumstances connected with her family which rendered her unwilling to speak of them: and she never has done so. However, the lady who recommended her to me, a schoolmistress of position, answered for her thorough respectability, and so I am content to let Miss Jones keep her mystery.”
The words had struck on a chord in Jane Chesney’s heart never wholly dormant. Was it possible that this governess could be her sister Clarice? She, as Jane had every reason to suppose, had changed her name when she left her home, and she had repeated to Jane in her letters the assurance—reiterating it, half in anger, half in deprecatory excuse, but wholly in earnest—that never through her should the name of that family be known.
“What sort of a lady is Miss Jones?” asked Jane, all too eagerly. “Is she young?”
“She is young, and very pretty. So pretty that were my sons young men I might think her a dangerous inmate. Why?”
“And how long has she been with you?”
“How long?—nearly two years, I think,” said Mrs. Marden, struck with Lady Jane’s sudden interest, and wondering what could be its cause. “Why do you ask?”
Every word seemed to add to the probability. In a month’s time it would be two years since Clarice quitted her home.
“Can you tell me her Christian name?”
Jane asked, paying no heed to Mrs. Marden’s question.
“Her Christian name?” repeated Mrs. Marden. “Well, now, it never struck me until this minute that I do not remember ever to have heard it. Stay! she signs her receipts for salary ‘C. Jones;’ I remember that. Probably it’s Caroline,”
“Do you suppose it is Clarice?” asked Jane, her lips parted with emotion.
“Clarice? It may be. But that is an uncommon name. May I again inquire, Lady Jane, why you ask? You appear to have some interest in the subject.”
“Yes,” said Jane, recalled to a sense of the present. “I—I knew a young lady who went out as governess nearly two years ago, and I am wishing much to find her. I think—I think it may be the same.”
“Was her name Jones?”
“No, it was not. But I believe that the young lady I mention assumed another name in deference to the prejudices of her family, who did not like that one, bearing theirs, should be known as a governess. Excuse my giving further particulars, Mrs. Marden; should Miss Jones prove to be the same, you shall hear them without reserve. Can you let me see her?”
“Whenever you please,” was Mrs. Marden’s answer. “Now, if you like. My carriage is at the door, and if you will come home with me and take luncheon she will be at the table with the two eldest girls, for they make it their dinner. After that, we will go straight to the concert.”
Jane needed no second invitation, but attired herself without delay. A thought crossed her of whether this would not be incurring the displeasure of her father, who had so positively forbidden her to see after Clarice; but for once in her life Jane risked it. Though she would not disobey him to the length of setting afloat a search in defiance of his expressed command that Clarice should be “let alone until she came to her senses,” Jane was beginning to grow seriously uneasy respecting her wandering sister. It seemed very improbable that Clarice should have remained in ignorance of the change in their position; why, then, did she not communicate with them?
Colonel Marden’s residence in London, a house he had taken for the season, was in one of the terraces near Hyde Park; and Mrs. Marden and Jane were soon driven to it. A few minutes of suspense for Jane, and Mrs. Marden, accompanied by a young lady, came into the drawing-room.
“This is Miss Jones, Lady Jane.”
With a beating heart—with lips that were turning to whiteness in the agitation of expectancy, Jane turned. Turned to behold—disappointment,
It was a very pretty, lady-like young woman, but it was not Clarice Chesney. A few moments elapsed before Jane recovered her calmness.
“I beg your pardon for troubling you, Mrs. Marden,” she said then; “but this is not my friend. I have lost sight of a young lady who went out as governess,” she added, by way of a word of explanation to Miss Jones, in the innate good breeding that never left her, “and I was wondering whether I might find her in you. I wish it had been so.”
The subject was at an end. Poor Jane could not recover herself. She remained as one whose senses are lost.
“You are disappointed, Lady Jane!” exclaimed Mrs. Marden as they took their places in the carriage to be driven to the concert.
“I acknowledge that I am,” was the low-breathed answer.
“You will forget it in the treat that is in store for you,” said Mrs. Marden.
And in truth if musical strains in their greatest perfection, their sweetest harmony, can lure a heart away from its care, it was the music they were about to hear that day. The concert was given by that great master of the harp, Frederick Chatterton; and when they entered nearly every seat was occupied, every nook and corner crammed. One of the most distinguished audiences ever collected within walls had assembled; for harp music, such as that, is not common music,
And Jane was beguiled out of her care. As she listened to the brilliant playing, the finished touch, tho sweet tones elicited from the instrument, she forgot even Clarice. Never had she heard music like unto it. The “Remembranza d’ Italia,” the “Reminiscences of Bellini,” melted Jane to tears, while the finale from “La Felia” half took her breath away. For ordinary music Jane did not care; but music such as this wrought an effect on her that did not pass easily.
“Lucy must learn the harp; Lucy must learn the harp!” were the first words she ejaculated.
“What did you say?” asked Mrs. Marden.
“I—I believe I was unconscious that I spoke aloud. I should like my little sister to learn to play on this instrument.”
“The most graceful instrument there is, and I think the sweetest,” said Mrs. Marden warmly. “I told you you would have a treat.”
“Oh, I cannot tell you what it is to me!” was Jane’s answer. Very rarely indeed was she moved to express herself so eloquently on any subject; but poor Jane had not been in the way of hearing much good music; never such as this.
As they were going out, pressing their way along with the throng, they encountered Miss Lethwait, who was there with her pupils. Jane addressed her, speaking more impulsively than was her wont.
“Do you teach the harp, Miss Lethwait?”
“I could teach it, madam,” replied Miss Lethwait, after a momentary pause. “I learnt it, but have been out of practice for some years.”
“Take my advice, Lady Jane,” whispered Mrs. Marden, when Miss Lethwait was beyond hearing. “If you are thinking of your sister, as I conclude, have her taught by the master you have just heard. It will be money well laid out.”
“I believe you are right,” answered Jane.
She shook hands with Mrs. Marden outside, and proceeded home, alone and on foot. It was not far, once the crossing at the Oxford Circus was accomplished. Those street crossings were the worst interludes as yet in Jane’s London life. As she went on, her brain was busy with many thoughts and themes. Miss Lethwait, the coveted governess for Lucy; the disappointment she had met with in Miss Jones; the doubt whether she should not venture to urge on her father the necessity there seemed to be of their seeking out Clarice: all were floating together in her mind, presenting a thousand phases, as thought will do when the brain is troubled. And mixed up with them in the most incongruous manner were those enchanting harp melodies just heard, the strains of which were yet fresh on Jane Chesney’s ears.
CHAPTER XXIV.THE MISSING SLEEVES.
Mr. Carlton stood before the ornamented summer grate of his handsome drawing-room. He had come in from his round of afternoon visits, and ran up-stairs in the expectation of finding his wife. She was not there, and he rang the bell. It was answered by Sarah, a damsel with rather an insolent face and a very fine cap worn behind instead of before.
“Is your lady not in?”
“Not yet, sir. She went out at three o’clock to pay visits.”
“On foot?”
“Oh no, sir. The carriage was ordered round from Green’s.”
The girl, finding she was not questioned further, retired, and Mr. Carlton walked to the window and stood looking from it, probably for his wife; his hands were in his pockets, and he was softly whistling. A certain sign with Mr, Carlton—the whistling—that he was deep in thought. Possibly the unpleasant idea that had crossed his mind once or twice of late, was crossing it again now—namely, that if he and his wife did not take care they should be outrunning their income. In good truth Laura possessed little more innate notion of the value of money than did her father, and she was extravagant in many ways in her new home from sheer heedlessness, where there was not the slightest necessity that she should be so at all, his very fact of ordering round one of Green’s carriages two or three times a week when she went to pay visits, was a superfluous expense, for Laura could just as well have gone on foot, her visits being generally to friends in the vicinity of home; when she paid them in the country it was with Mr. Carlton. Two, three, four hours, as the case might be, would Laura be out in that carriage, keeping it waiting at different doors for her while she was gossiping; and entailing a cost frequently of six, or eight, or ten shillings.
“Circumstances alter cases,” The trite old saying could not have received a more apt exemplification than in the instance of Mr. Carlton and his wife. It was not the most reputable thing that they had done—the running away to be married without leave or licence. More especially was it not so on the part of the young lady, and South Wennock would no doubt have turned the cold shoulder on her for a time, to show its sense of the irregularity, and vouchsafed her no visits, had she continued to be the obscure daughter of the poor post-captain. But Miss Laura Chesney was one person; the Lady Laura was another. That poor post-captain had become one on the proud list of British peers, and his daughter in right of her rank was the highest lady in all South Wennock. In fact there was no other whose social position in any degree approached to it. And South Wennock went but the common way of the world, when it obligingly shut its eyes to the past escapade, and hastened to pay its court to the earl’s daughter. The widow Gould had given it as her opinion at the inquest, you may remember, that Mr. Carlton’s “cabrioily” was an element in his success; but the probabilities were that Mr. Carlton’s bride would prove a greater one.
All the town—at least as much of it as possessed the right, or fancied they possessed it—flocked to pay court to the Lady Laura Carlton. Many of the county families, really of account, drove in to call upon her and Mr. Carlton; people who would never have dreamt of according him the honour, but that his new wife was a peer’s daughter. Had she been marshalled to church by her father and duly married, converted into a wife with the most orthodox adjuncts—three clergymen and twelve bridesmaids—her new friends could not have treated her with more deferential respect. Such is the world, you know. The Lady Laura Carlton was just now the fashion, and the Lady Laura was nothing loth to be so.
But, to be the fashion, entails usually certain consequences in the shape of expense. Dress and carriages cost something. Laura, with her innate carelessness, ordered both whenever inclination prompted, and Mr. Carlton was beginning to remember that they must be paid for. Passionately attached to his wife, he could not yet bear to give her a word of warning to be more heedful, but he wrote to his father, and solicited money from him. Not a sum of money down: he asked for something to be allowed him annually, a certain fixed sum that he named, hinting that the wife he had married, being an earl’s daughter, would cost him more to maintain suitably than a wife would, taken from an ordinary rank.
To this letter Mr. Carlton was daily expecting an answer. He had duly forwarded an account of his marriage to Mr. Carlton the elder, had written to him once since; but the senior gentleman had been remiss in the laws of good breeding, and had sent not so much as a single congratulation in return. In point of fact, he had not written at all. But Mr. Carlton was confidently expecting a reply to his third letter.
He had not to wait long. As he stood there at the drawing-room window, he saw the postman come up and turn in at the gate, selecting a letter from his bundle. There were two deliveries a-day from London, morning and evening; South Wennock, after a fight with the post-office powers, had succeeded in obtaining the concession at the beginning of the year. Mr. Carlton ran down with a step so fleet that he opened the front door as the postman was about to ring at it.
The letter was from his father; he saw that by the handwriting; and the postman had turned back and was going out at the gate again when Mr. Carlton remembered something he wished to ask, called to him, and followed him to the gate, speaking.
“Rodney, have you made any inquiry about that overcharge in the books sent to me the other morning?”
“We have had to write up about it, sir; it wasn’t the fault of the office here,” was the man’s answer. “The answer will be down most likely to-morrow.”
“I shan’t pay it, you know.”
“Very good, sir. If it’s a wrong charge they’ll take it off.”
The surgeon had turned his attention to the letter, when a sound of carriage wheels was heard, and he stepped outside the gate, thinking it might be his wife, driving up. It was not. The carriage, however, contained two ladies whom Mr. Carlton knew, and he saluted them as they passed. The next moment there came in view the inspector, Medler, walking along with rapid strides. Had he been in pursuit of some runaway forger, he could scarcely have been advancing more eagerly. Catching the eye of Mr. Carlton, he made a sign to him, and increased his pace to a run.
“What now, I wonder?” muttered the surgeon to himself aloud: and the tone of his voice betrayed unconscious irritation.
“Haven’t they had enough of the matter yet?”
Mr. Carlton alluded to the very unsatisfactory matter of the death in Palace Street. Mr. Medler had not provod more clever in pursuing it than the inspector be had superseded, and he was fain to give it up for the present as an unfathomable job. It was a warm day, for summer was in, and the inspector, a stout man, took off his hat to wipe his brows as he reached Mr. Carlton.
“We want you to be so good as make the examination, sir, of a poor woman that’s gone off her head, so as to give the necessary certificate, and Mr. John Grey will sign it with you,” began the inspector, rather incoherent in his haste and heat. “We can’t move her until we’ve got it. It’s the blacksmith’s wife down Great Wennock Road.”
“Very well,” said the surgeon. “What has sent her off her head?”
“It’s an old thing with her, I hear. Mr. Grey tells me she was obliged to be placed in confinement some years ago. Anyway, she’s very violent now. You’ll see her, then, sir, sometime this evening, and we’ll get her moved the first thing in the morning? I ordered one of my men to come down to you before I left the station, but as I’ve seen you myself it’s all the same. What glorious weather this is! "
“Very. We shall have a fine haymaking.”
“By the way, Mr. Carlton, that affair seems completely to baffle us,” resumed the inspector, halting again as he was about to continue his way.
“What affair?” asked Mr. Carlton.
About that Mrs. Crane. I’m afraid it’s going to turn out one of those crimes that are never unearthed—there have been a few such. The fact is, if a thing is not properly followed up at the time of occurrence, it’s not of much use to reopen it afterwards; I have often found it so.”
“I suppose you have given this up, then?”
“Yes, I have. There seemed no use in keeping it open. Not but that in one sense it always is open, for if anything fresh concerning it should come to our ears, we are ready for it. It may come yet, you know, sir.”
Mr. Carlton nodded assent, and the inspector, with all the speed of which his two legs were capable, set off again in pursuit of his errand, whatever that might be. Mr. Carlton went indoors, turned into the dining-room and broke open his letter. A dark frown gathered on his brow as he read it. Let us peep over his shoulder.
"Dear Lewis,—I will thank you not to trouble me with any more begging letters: you know that I never tolerated them. I advised you to marry, you say: true; but I did not advise you to marry a nobleman’s daughter, and I never should have thought you foolish enough to do so. These unequal matches bring dissatisfaction in a hundred ways, as you will find—but that of course is your own and the lady’s look out. It is not my intention to give you any more money at all—and whether I shall leave you any at my death depends upon yourself. I am quite well again and am stronger than I have been for years.
“Sincerely yours,
"London, June, 1848.”"J. Carlton.
Mr. Carlton crushed the letter in his hand with an iron pressure. He knew what that hint of the after inheritance meant—that if he asked for any again he would never touch a farthing of it.
“He has ever been a bad father to me!” he passionately cried; “a bad, cruel father.”
The sight of his wife’s hired carriage at the door interrupted him. He thrust the letter into one of his pockets and hastened out.
“I must manage to get along as well as I can,” he thought, but she shall not suffer. Laura, my dearest, I thought you had run away!” he exclaimed, as she jumped lightly out of the carriage with her beaming face, and caught his smile of welcome.
“Where do you think I have been, Lewis?”
“To half a hundred places.”
“Well, so I have,” she laughed. “But I meant only one of those places. Ah, you’ll never guess. I have been to our old home, Cedar Lodge. I had been paying visits on the Rise, and as I drove back the thought came over me that I would go in to the old house and look at it. The woman in charge did not know me; she took me for a lady really wanting the house. It’s the servant they engaged after I left home, I found; she is to stop in it until the house is let. It is in apple-pie order; all the old tables and chairs in their places, and a few new ones put in to freshen the rooms up. Only fancy, Lewis! the woman gave me a card with the Earl of Oakburn’s town address upon it, and said I could write there, or apply here to Mr. Fisher, the agent, whichever was most agreeable to me.”
Laura laughed merrily as she spoke. She had turned into the dining-room with Mr. Carlton, and was untying the white strings of her bonnet. He was smiling also, and there was nothing in his countenance to betray aught of the checkmate, the real vexation recently brought to him; few faces betrayed emotion, whether of joy or pain, less than the impassive one of Mr. Carlton.
“I wonder the earl should attempt to let the house furnished,” he remarked. “I have wondered so ever since I saw the board up, advertising it.”
“Papa took it on a long lease,” said Laura. “I suppose he could not give it up if he would. Lewis, what else do you think I have done?—accepted an impromptu invitation to go out to-night.”
“Where?”
“To that cross old Mrs. Newberry’s. But she has her nieces staying with her, the most charming girls, and I promised to go up after dinner. Half-a-dozen people are to be there, all invited in the same impromptu manner, and we are going to act charades. Will you come?”
“I will take you, and come for you in the evening. But I have patients to see to-night, that will absorb an hour or two.”
Laura scarcely heard the answer. She had lost none of her vanity, and she eagerly made her way to her dressing-room, her head full of what her attire for the evening should be.
Throwing her bonnet, which she had carried upon her arm by its strings, on the sofa, slipping her shawl from her shoulders, Laura opened her drawers and wardrobe, and turned over dresses and gay attire. She was all excitement. Loving gaiety much, any little unexpected accession to it put her almost in a fever.
“I’ll wear this pearl-grey silk,” she decided at length. “It will be quite sufficient mourning if we manage to put a bit of black ribbon on the point-lace sleeves. Sarah must contrive it somehow. Where are they?”
The “where are they” applied to the sleeves just mentioned. A pair of really beautiful sleeves that had belonged to Mrs. Chesney. Laura pulled open a drawer where her laces and fine muslins were kept, and turned its contents over with her white and nimble fingers.
“Now what has Sarah done with them?” she exclaimed, as the sleeves did not appear to show themselves. “She is as careless as she can be. If those sleeves are lost———”
Laura broke off her words and flew to the bell, ringing it so sharply that it echoed through the house. Laura had inherited her father’s impatient temper, and the girl flew up; she knew that her mistress brooked no delay in having her demands attended to. This girl had been engaged as housemaid, but her mistress kept her pretty well employed about her own person. She entered the room to see drawers open, dresses and laces scattered about in confusion, and their owner watching for her in some excitement.
“Where are my point-lace sleeves?”
“Point-lace sleeves, my lady” repeated Sarah, some doubt in her accent, as if she scarcely understood which were the point-lace sleeves. At least that was how Lady Laura interpreted the tone.
“Those beautiful sleeves of real point, that were mamma’s,” explained Laura, angrily and impatiently. “I told you how valuable they were; I ordered you to be always particularly careful in tacking them into my dresses. Now you know.”
“Yes, I remember, my lady,” replied Sarah.
“They are in the drawer.”
“They are not in the drawer.”
“But they must be, my lady,” persisted the girl, somewhat pertly, for she had as sharp a temper as her mistress, “I never put the laces by in any place but that.”
“Find them, then,” retorted Laura.
The maid advanced to the drawer, and began taking up one thing after another in it, slowly and carefully; too slowly for the impatience of Lady Laura.
“Stand aside, Sarah, you won’t have finished by dinner-time, at that rate,” she cried. And, taking hold of the drawer with her own hands, she pulled it completely out, and turned it upside down on the carpet. The sheet of newspaper laid at the bottom was shaken out with the rest of the contents.
“Now then, put them back,” said Laura.
“You’ll soon see whether I tell you truth, in saying the sleeves are not there.”
Sarah suppressed her passion; she might not give way to it if she cared to keep her place. She snatched up the sheet of paper, gave it a violent shake, which might be set down to either zeal in the cause or anger, as her mistress pleased, and then stooped to pick up the lace articles. Lady Laura stood by watching the process, in anticipation of her own triumph and Sarah’s discomfiture.
“Now, pray, are the sleeves there?” she demanded, when so few things remained on the floor that there could be no doubt upon the point.
“My lady, all I can say is, that I have neither touched nor seen the sleeves. I remember the sleeves, it’s true; but I can’t remember when they were worn last, or what dress they were worn in. If I took them out of the dress after they were used, I should put them nowhere but here.”
“Do you suppose I lost them off my arms?” retorted Lady Laura.
Sarah did not say what she supposed, but she looked as though she would like to say a great deal, and not of the civilest. As she whirled the last article off the floor, which happened to be a black lace scarf, Lady Laura saw what appeared to be a part of a note, that had been lying underneath the things. She caught it up as impatiently as her maid had caught up the scarf, and far more eagerly; the writing on it, seen distinctly, was arousing all the curiosity and amazement that her mind possessed.
She forgot the lost sleeves, she forgot her anger at Sarah, she forgot her excitement; or, rather, the one source of excitement was merged into another, and she sat down with the piece of paper in her hand.
It was the commencement of a letter, written, as Laura believed, to her sister Jane, and was dated from London the 28th of the past February. The lower part of the note had been torn off, only the commencement of the letter and its conclusion on the reverse side being left. Laura knew the handwriting as well as she knew her own: it was that of her sister Clarice.
“I did not think Jane could have been so sly!” she exclaimed at length. “Protesting to me, as she did, that Clarice had not written to her since New Year’s Day. What could be her motive for the denial?”
Laura sat on, the paper in her hand, and lost herself in thought. The affair, trifling as it was, puzzled her excessively; the few words on the note puzzled her, Jane’s conduct in denying that she had heard, puzzled her. She had always deemed her sister the very essence of truth.
“People are sure to get found out,” she exclaimed, with a laugh at her own words.
“Jane little thought when she was packing my things to send to me that she dropped this memento amongst them. I’ll keep it to convict her.”
In turning to reach her desk she was confronted by Sarah, with the missing sleeves in her hand.
“I found them folded in your watered silk gown, my lady, in the deep drawer,” said the girl as pertly as she might venture to speak.
“I did not put them there.”
A sudden conviction came over Laura that she had put them there herself one day when she was in a hurry, and she was generous enough to acknowledge it. She showed the maid where to place certain black ribbons that she wished to have attached to them, and again turned to her desk. As the girl retired, Mr. Carlton’s step was heard upon the stairs. Laura thrust the torn paper within her desk and locked it again, before he should come in, but he only went to the drawing-room.
A feeling, which Laura had never given herself the trouble to analyse, but which had no doubt its rise in pride, had prevented her ever speaking to her husband of her sister Clarice. Naturally proud and haughty, the characteristics of the Chesney family, she had not cared to confess to him, “I have a sister who is out in the world as a governess.”
When they—she and Mr. Carlton—should again be brought into contact with her family, as she supposed they should be sometime, and Mr. Carlton should find that there was another sister, whom he had not seen or heard of, it would be easy to say, “Oh, Clarice was from home during papa’s residence at South Wennock.” It would not be correct to assert that Lady Laura Carlton deliberately planned this little matter, touching upon the future; she did not, but the outline of it floated through her mind in an under current. Thus she never spoke of her sister Clarice, and Mr. Carlton had not the faintest suspicion that she had ever possessed one of that name. Laura supposed that Clarice was back at home with them long before this, and when she looked in the “Morning Post,” or other journal giving space to the announcement of what are called fashionable movements, a momentary surprise would steal over her at not seeing Clarice’s name. Only that very day, she had seen them mentioned as making part of the attendants at some great flower show: “The Earl of Oakburn and the Ladies Jane and Lucy Chesney,” but there was no Lady Clarice. “Papa and Jane are punishing her for her governess escapade, and won’t take her out this season,” thought Laura. “Serve her right! it was a senseless trick of Clarice’s ever to attempt such a thing.”
Sarah, who, whatever her other shortcomings, was apt at the lady’s-maid’s duties imposed upon her by her mistress, soon brought back the dress with the sleeves and black ribbons arranged in it, and Laura hastened to attire herself. Very, very handsome did she look; her beautiful brown hair rested in soft waves on her head, her cheeks were flushed, her fair neck contrasted with the jet chain lying lightly upon it. Laura, vain Laura, all too conscious of her own charms, lingered yet at the glass, and yet again; although perfectly aware that she was keeping the dinner waiting.
She tore herself away at last, a brighter flush of triumph on her cheeks, and ran down to the dining-room. Mr. Carlton was standing on the lower stairs near the surgery door, talking to some applicant, and Laura looked at them as she crossed the hall, and heard a few words that were then being spoken by the man, who was no other than little Wilkes the barber.
“And so, sir, as Mr. John was unable to come, my wife would not have the other; she felt afraid, and said she’d make bold to send for Mr. Carlton. If you’d excuse the being called in at a pinch, like, and attend, sir, we should be very grateful.”
“I’ll be round in half an hour,” was Mr. Carlton’s answer. “She is quite right; it is not pleasant to be attended by one who has made so fatal a mistake; one is apt to feel that there’s no security it may not be made again.”
And Laura knew that they were alluding to Stephen Grey.