Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 10/Lord Oakburn's daughters - Part 7
LORD OAKBURN'S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."
CHAPTER XIII.MISS CHESNEY'S FEAR.
Laura Chesney stood at the window, watching the retreating form of the surgeon, Mr. Carlton, as he passed hastily down the garden path in the growing twilight. A short while and he would be back again as he had promised; and Laura's heart beat at the thought, at the anticipated rapture of seeing him again, and she remained silent, losing herself in dreams of the sweetest delusion.
Only to be rudely awakened. Miss Chesney stepped to Laura's side and spoke, her gentle voice sounding strange in its sternness.
"Laura, could it be that I saw you walk through the garden when Mr. Carlton came, arm-in-arm with him?"
Laura turned her face away from her sister's view, or even in that fading hour Miss Chesney would have seen the red flush that overspread it at the words, dyeing it of a blood-red. She made no answer.
"It was not seemly, Laura. Mr. Carlton is but a surgeon: a man, so far as we know, without connections. And you are a Chesney."
"With connections," retorted Laura, who was growing vexed and angry. "And much good they do me!"
"Laura dear, we are, as may be said, of the noblesse: we may not lose caste."
"I think we have lost caste already, with these wretched, paltry debts hanging over and following us about from place to place like a shadow," was the petulant answer. "They degrade us pretty well."
"You mistake, Laura. If you intend that as a refutation to my argument, you must look at things in a wrong light. In one sense of the word the debts degrade us, because there always is a degredation attaching itself to these petty debts; but they cannot in the slightest degree sully our caste; they cannot detract from our good birth or tarnish it. Do not again allow Mr. Carlton to put himself on a familiar level with you."
Loving him a she did with an impassioned, blind, all-absorbing love, Laura Chesney bitterly in her heart resented this reflection on Mr. Carlton. She was fast falling into that sadly mistaken, unhealthy frame of mind in which every consideration is lost in the one swaying passion—love. Openly she did not dare to dissent from her sister; it might have brought on an explanation for which Laura was not prepared; and Jane, deeming she had said enough, passed to a different topic.
"What did the fly driver say?"
"He insisted on the money's being paid to him between now and twelve o'clock on Saturday; failing it then, he will proceed against papa publicly. June, I am sure the man will carry out his threat. He was not loud and angry, not even uncivil; but he was resolute."
"And how is it to be procured?" moaned Jane, leaning her head upon her hand. "I would almost sell myself," she added, with a burst of feeling, "rather then bring these annoyances before papa? Oh, if I could but take these troubles more effectually off him!"
"Papa can do battle with them a great deal better than you can, Jane," said Laura, who was far from sharing Jane's ultra filial feeling on the point. "And it is more fit that he should."
"It in not more fit," retorted Jane Chesney, whose usually gentle spirit could be roused by any reproach cast on him. "He is my dear dear father, and I ask no better than to devote my life to warding off care from his."
"Would you wish no better?" asked Laura, in a low, wondering tone, as she glanced at the bliss presenting itself for her future life—the spending it with Lewis Carlton.
"Nor with better," replied Jane. And the younger sister gazed at her in compassion and half in disbelief.
"There are other petty cares coming upon us, Laura," returned June, in a different tone. "Rhode has given me warning to leave."
"Rhode has!" quickly echoed Laura in surprise. "What for?"
"To 'better herself,' she said. I suspect the true motive is, that she is tired of the place. There is a great deal to do; and she hinted, somewhat insolently, that she did not like a service where applicants were continually coming for money only to be put off; it 'tried her temper.' I told her the might go the instant I could procure a fresh servant. I do not choose to keep dissatisfied people in the house longer than can he helped. She What is it, Lucy?"
The little girl had come running in, eagerly. "Jane, a young woman wants to see you."
"Another creditor," thought Jane with a sinking heart. "Is it the woman from the fruit shop, Lucy?"
“Oh no. Rhode says it is a young woman come after the place. She has taken her into the kitchen and wished me to ask if you would please to see her.”
Miss Chesney looked as though she scarcely understood. “A young woman come after the place!” she repeated. “Why it is not an hour since Rhode told me she must leave! Ring the bell, Lucy.”
Rhode came in, in answer. Miss Chesney requested an explanation with quiet dignity, and Rhode turned red, and put on a defiant look, as if she could be again insolent if she saw fit.
“I have made up my mind to it some days, Miss Chesney, and I daresay I may have spoken of it abroad. The young woman says Mrs. Fitch at the Lion told her of the place.”
“Show the young woman into the dining room,” said Miss Chesney. And she proceeded thither, encountering Pompey on her way, who informed her of the termination of the inquest, and its result.
In the dining-room stood Judith Ford. She had come straight up as soon as the inquest was over. Neatly dressed in good mourning, steady in demeanour, her face full of sense and thought, Jane Chesney took a fancy to her at the first glance. Judith gave a few particulars as to herself, concluding with observing that she had been informed by Mrs. Fitch it was a housemaid who was required, but the servant Rhode had now told her it was a cook.
“In point of fact, it may be said to be both,” replied Miss Chesney. “We require a servant who can undertake both duties—a maid-of-all-work, as it is called. We are gentlepeople and highly connected,” she hastened to add, not in a spirit of proud, mistaken boasting, but as if it were due to their own dignity to explain so far; “but my father, Captain Chesney, has a very limited income, which obliges us to keep as few servants as possible. Could you take such a place?”
Judith reflected a moment before giving her reply. In her time she had lived in the capacity of cook and was equal to its duties, but it was not the place she would have preferred.
“Should I be the only servant kept, ma'am?” she enquired, feeling, in the midst of her demur, that she should like much the gentle lady before her for a mistress.
“The only maid servant. We keep a man who attends on papa and waits at table; he helps a good deal also in the kitchen, gets in coal, cleans the knives, and such-like; and he answers the door in a general way. I do not think you would find the work too much.”
“I think I might venture upon it,” observed Judith, half in soliloquy. “I once lived sole in a place. It was a gentleman’s family, ma'am, too. I have never served in any other.”
“We could not take a servant from a tradesperson’s family,” returned Miss Chesney, who was deeply intrenched in her aristocratic prejudices. Where is it that you say you are staying?”
“Number fourteen, Palace Street.”
The sound struck on Miss Chesney’s ear.
“Number fourteen, Palace Street! Why! that must be close to the house where that sad tragedy has just taken place!”
“It is next door to it, ma'am,” was Judith’s answer.
All Jane Chesney’s curiosity, all her marvel—and the best of us possess a good share of it—was aroused. “Did you see the young lady?” she inquired, quite breathless in her interest.
“I saw her several times; I was with her,” was Judith’s answer. “Mr. Stephen Grey could not get the nurse for her that he wished, and he was glad that I could be with her; he saw a great deal of me, ma'am, in my last place.”
“It was a terrible thing,” remarked Miss Chesney.
“It was an awful thing,” said Judith, “wherever the blame may lie.”
“That of course lies with Mr. Stephen Grey. There cannot be two opinions upon it.”
“There can, ma'am,” dissented Judith, in an impressive but respectful manner. “The jury—to go no further—were of a different opinion.”
“I can understand their verdict; that is, understand the feeling which prompted them to return it. They did not like to bring in one against their fellow townsman. Mr. Stephen has been so much respected in the town—as I hear; but we are little more than strangers in South Wennock.”
“The case is altogether shrouded in unaccountable mystery,” said Judith, her own voice assuming unconsciously a lower tone as she spoke. “It may come to light some time; I trust it will; whenever it does I am sure it will be found that Mr. Stephen Grey was innocent.”
“Do you think there was no mistake made in the medicine?”
“I feel persuaded there was none; that it was sent out from Mr. Stephen Grey’s pure. That the young lady was murdered,—as deliberately and wickedly murdered as anybody ever was in this world, is my firm belief.”
“By whom?”
“Ah, ma'am, there it all lies. That is the mystery that nobody can fathom.
“Pompey has been saying that the people were talking when they came out of the inquest room about the strange face on the stairs. They said that, but for that, the verdict might have gone against Mr. Stephen Grey.”
This interposition came from Lucy Chesney; she had come silently into the room to look at the young woman who was seeking to live with them. The unfortunate affair in Palace Street with its strange circumstances had excited all her interest—as such affairs will and do excite the interest of children—and every little additional detail was eagerly picked up by Lucy.
“What strange face was seen on the stairs?” exclaimed Jane Chesney, forgetting reproof in her surprise.
“Pompey says that Mr. Carlton saw a man with a strange face by the lady’s bedroom door, just before her death, Jane.”
Jane Chesney recalled her scattered senses. “Lucy, go up to papa,” she said. “You should not have come in here without asking my permission, and you must not listen to all the idle tales brought home by Pompey.”
The little girl went away in obedience, but half reluctantly, and Miss Chesney inquired an explanation of Judith.
“When Mr. Carlton paid a visit to Mrs. Crane the night of the death, he thought, in leaving, that he saw a strange face on the stairs. Mr. Carlton now says he thinks it was only his fancy; but, ma'am, the coroner seemed to attach a great deal of importance to it. It is a pity,” added Judith, again falling into soliloquy, “but all the circumstances could be brought into the full, clear light of day.”
"Seemed to attach—you do not mean to say you were at the inquest!” exclaimed Miss Chesney.
“Yes I was, ma'am. I have now come from it,”
“I never heard of such a thing,” cried Miss Chesney, recovering from her astonishment. It did sound very strange to her that a servant should attend a coroner’s inquest for —as she supposed—pleasure.
“I was anxious to be there,” explained Judith, “and I did not know but I might be called upon also as a witness. Though I had known the young lady but three or four days, ma'am, I had learnt to love her, and since she died I have hardly touched food. I could not have rested without hearing the evidence. And I am very glad I did hear it,” she added, pointedly and emphatically. “My having been at the inquest will not make me the less good servant, ma'am.”
Miss Chesney could not avoid a smile. Of course it would not, she answered; but the admission had sounded strange. However, she was not one to carry on gossip with a servant, and she quitted the subject for the other, which had brought Judith to the house.
The result of the interview was, that Judith’s character was to be inquired into of her late mistress, and she was told to come again in a day or two for a final answer.
Miss Chesney, deep in thought, entered the drawing-room with a quiet step; and a choking sensation of pain, of dread, rushed over her, for she fancied she saw her sister Laura’s face lifted hurriedly from the shoulder of Mr. Carlton. She must have been deceived, she repeated to herself the next moment; yes, she must have been deceived.
But he was certainly standing there; they were standing together in the slight remaining rays of light that came in at the window. Jane Chesney’s eyes suddenly opened to much that had hitherto been obscure—to Laura’s fastidiousness latterly on the subject of her own dress, to the beaming look of radiant happiness sometimes to be seen on her face, to her unaccountable restlessness when they were expecting the daily professional visit of the surgeon. Could it be possible that she was learning to love him?
Crossing the room, she stirred the black fire into a blaze, rang for the lamp, and turned to Laura; speaking sharply.
“Why are you in the dark, Laura?”
“Because Pompey did not bring in the lamp, I suppose,” returned Laura, in a tone breathing somewhat of incipient defiance.
Jane pressed down her anger, her fear, and composed her manner to calmness. “I did not know you had returned, Mr. Carlton,” she said. “Have you been back long?”
“Long enough to talk secrets to Laura,” he laughingly replied, in a bold spirit. “And now I will go up to Captain Chesney.”
He met the black servant carrying the lamp in as he quitted the room. Pompey was getting to be quite an old man now; he had been in Captain Chesney’s service for many years.
“Let the shutters be for the present, Pompey,” said his mistress; “Come in again by-and-by. What is all this, Laura?” she added impatiently, as the man left the room.
Laura Chesney remained at the window, looking out into the darkness, her heart full of rebellion. “What is what?” she asked.
“What did Mr. Carlton mean—that he had been talking secrets to you?”
“It was a foolish remark to make.”
“And he presumingly spoke of you by your Christian name!”
"Did he?"
"Did he! Did you not notice it? Laura, I—I thought—I thought I saw your head leaning upon him," returned Jane, speaking as if the very utterance of the words choked her.
"You are fanciful," answered the younger sister. "You always were."
Were the words spoken in subterfuge? Jane feared so. "Oh Laura!" she exclaimed in agitation, "I have heard of young ladies allowing themselves to be on these familiar terms with men, receiving homage from them in their vanity, caresses even in their love! Surely nothing of the sort is arising between you and Mr. Carlton?"
Laura made no reply.
"Laura," continued Jane, in a sharp, ringing tone of pain, "do you like him? Oh, take care what you are about! You know you could never marry Mr. Carlton."
"I do not tell you that I like him," faltered Laura, some of her courage beginning to forsake her. "But why could I not marry him?"
"Marry him! You! The daughter of Captain Chesney marry a common country apothecary! The niece———"
"There! don't go on, Jane; that's enough,"—and the young lady stamped her foot passionately.
"But I must speak. You are Miss Laura Chesney———"
"I tell you, Jane, I won't listen to it. I am tired of hearing who we are and what we are. What though we have great and grand connections, do they do us any good? Does it bring plenty to our home?—does it bring us the amusement and society we have a right to expect? Jane! I am tired of it all. There are moments when I feel tempted to go and do as Clarice has done."
There was a long pause—a pause of pain; for Laura had alluded to the one painful subject of the Chesneys' later life. Jane at length broke the silence.
"It would be better for you, even that, than marrying Mr. Carlton," she said in a hushed voice. "Laura, were Mr. Carlton our equal, I could not see you marry him."
Laura turned round from the window now, turned in her surprise. "Why?"
"I do not know how it is that I have taken so great a dislike to Mr. Carlton," continued Miss Chesney in a dreamy tone, not so much answering Laura as communing with herself.
"Laura, I cannot bear Mr. Carlton; it seems to me I would rather see you in your grave than united to him, were he the first match in England."
"But I ask you why."
"I cannot explain it. For one thing—but I don't care to speak of that. You have accused me before now, Laura, of taking prejudices without apparent reason; I have taken one against Mr. Carlton."
Laura tossed her head.
"But—in speaking with reference to yourself—we have been supposing for argument's sake that he was your equal," resumed Jane.
"He is not; he never can be; therefore we may let the subject drop."
"What were you going to urge against him, the 'one thing' that you would not speak of?" returned Laura.
"It may be as well not to mention it."
"But I shall be very much obliged to you to mention it, Jane. I think you ought to do so."
"Well then—but you will think me foolish—Mr. Carlton was so mixed up, and unfavourably, with that dreadful dream I had of Clarice on Monday night. I never liked Mr. Carlton, but since that night I seem to have had a horror of him. I cannot help this, Laura; I daresay it is very foolish; but—―we cannot account for these things."
How foolish Laura Chesney thought it, the haughty contempt of her countenance fully told. She would not condescend to answer it; it was altogether beneath her notice; or she deemed it so.
Jane Chesney took her work basket and sat down near the lamp. She was looking at some work, when a violent knocking overhead of Captain Chesney's stick was heard, and Lucy came flying down the stairs and burst into the room.
"Oh Jane!" she exclaimed, "Lady Oakburn's dead."
Jane dropped her work; Laura moved to the table, aroused to excitement.
"Dead!" repeated Jane. "And when she wrote to me last week she was so well!"
"Jane, Jane, you don't understand," said the child.
"It is young Lady Oakburn; not our old aunt the dowager. And a little baby has died with her."
The thumping of the stick overhead had never ceased. Jane, recovering her scared senses, ran up-stairs, the others following her. Captain Chesney was on his couch, all turmoil and impatience, rapping incessantly; and Mr. Carlton sat near him, evidently at a loss to comprehend what caused the tumult. A shaded candle was on the table, but the blaze of the fire fell full on the surgeon's impassive face, curious and inquiring now. It appeared that he had been conversing with his patient when Lucy saw something in the Times newspaper, which was lying partially folded on the table, having only recently been brought in, and she read it out aloud to her father.
Captain Chesney lifted his stick and brought it down on the table after his own fashion, as they entered. “Take up that newspaper, Jane,” he exclaimed, “and see what it is that Lucy has stumbled upon in the deaths.”
Jane Chesney ran her eyes downwards from the top of the column, and caught sight of something in the notice of births which she read aloud.
“On the 12th instant, in South Audley Street, the Countess of Oakburn of a daughter.”
Then in the deaths:
“On the 14th instant, in South Audley Street, aged twenty-one, Maria, the beloved wife of the Earl of Oakburn.”
“On the 14th instant, in South Audley Street, Clarice, the infant child of the Earl of Oakburn.”
Jane’s voice ceased, and the captain brought his stick on the floor with one melancholy thump, as did Uncle Toby his staff, in the colloquy with Corporal Trim.
“Gone!” uttered he. “The young wife gone before the old grandmother!”
“Did you know the parties, sir?” asked Mr. Carlton.
“Know them, sir!” returned the choleric captain, angry at having, as he deemed, so foolish a question put to him, “I ought to know them, for they are my blood relations.”
“I was not aware of it,” said Mr. Carlton.
“No, sir, perhaps you were not aware of it, but it’s true, for all that. My father, sir, was the Honourable Frank Chesney, the second son of the ninth Earl of Oakburn and brother to the tenth earl; and the late earl, eleventh in succession, and father of the present earl, was my own cousin. It’s a shame that it should be true,” continued the captain, his stick noisily enforcing every other word, “a shame that I should be so near the peerage of England, and yet be a poor half-pay navy captain! Merit goes for nothing in this world, and relationship goes for less. If the late earl had chosen to exert himself, I should have been an admiral long ago. There have been Admiral Chesneys who distinguished themselves in their day, and perhaps I should have made no exception,” he concluded, with a violent accession of the stick accompaniment.
“They named the little child ‘Clarice,’ you see, papa,” observed Jane, after a pause.
“As if the old dowager would let them name her anything else!” cried the captain. “You don’t know the Dowager Countess of Oakburn, probably, Mr. Carlton; the present earl’s grandmother?”
“No, sir, I do not.”
“You have no loss. She is his grandmother, and my aunt; and of all the pig-headed, selfish, opinionated old women, she’s the worst. When Jane was born”—nodding towards his daughter—“she says to me, ‘You’ll name her Clarice, Frank.’ ‘No I won’t,’ I said, ‘I shall call her by her mother’s name,'—which was Jane. The same thing over again when Laura was born. ‘You’ll name her Clarice, Frank, and I’ll stand godmother,’ cries the countess. ‘No I won’t,’ I said, ‘I shall name her after my sister Laura'—who had died. And then my lady and I had a lasting quarrel. Her own name’s Clarice, you see. Yes! I am as near as that to the great Oakburns (who are as poor as church mice for their rank, all the whole lot), and I’m a half-pay captain, hard up for a shilling!”
“Are there many standing between you and the title, sir?” asked Mr. Carlton.
“There’s not one between me and the title,” was the answer. “If the earl should die without children, I become Earl of Oakburn. What of that? He is a young man and I am an old one. He’ll soon be marrying again, and getting direct heirs about him.”
“I think if I were as near the British peerage as that, I should be speculating upon reaching it,” said Mr. Carlton, with a genial laugh.
“And prove yourself a fool for your pains,” retorted the blunt sailor. “No; it’s bad enough looking after old men’s dead shoes; but it’s worse looking after young ones’. I thank goodness I have not been idiot enough for that; I never, sir, allowed myself to glance at the possibility of becoming Earl of Oakburn: never. There was also another heir before me, the young earl’s brother, Arthur Chesney, but he died. He got into a boating row at Cambridge a year or two back, and was drowned. Jane, you must see to the mourning.”
Jane’s heart sank with dismay at the prospect of the unexpected cost. “Need we go to the expense, papa?” she faltered.
“Need we go to the expense!” roared the captain, his tongue and his stick going together, “what do you mean? You’d let the young countess go into her grave and not put on mourning for her? You are out of your senses, Miss Chesney.”
Mr. Carlton rose. He buttoned his coat over his slender and very gentlemanly figure, and contrived to whisper a word to Laura as he was departing.
“Be at ease, my darling. You shall be mine. Should they deny you to me, I will steal you from them.”
Her hand was momentarily in his; his breath mingled with hers, so low had he bent to her; and Laura, with a face of crimson and an apprehensive heart, glanced round to see if Jane was watching. But Jane had stooped over the gouty foot, in compliance with some sudden demand of Captain Chesney’s.
CHAPTER XIV.—MR. CARLTON’S DEMAND.
A short while went by, just a week or two, and the excitement caused by Mrs. Crane’s death was beginning in some degree to subside. No discoveries had been made, no tidings obtained as to who she was or what she was; no light whatever had arisen to clear up the mystery of her death. It is just possible the police did not bestir themselves in the search so actively and perseveringly as they might have done: there were no distressed surviving relatives to urge them on; there was no reward offered as a spur to exertion and the poor young lady, who had arrived so strangely at South Wennock, apparently friendless and unknown, seemed likely to remain unknown.
Things were progressing at the house of Captain Chesney. Progressing to an issue that not one of its inmates as yet dreamed of. The Captain himself was not progressing. Through some imprudence of his own he had been thrown back in his recovery, and was still a prisoner to his room. The crape band placed on his hat for the young Countess of Oakburn had not yet been worn, and Jane Chesney was already beginning to be in trouble over the bills sent in for the mourning of herself and sisters. The disagreeable servant Rhode had departed, and Judith Ford had entered the house in her place.
So far, so good. But that was not all.
The relapse of Captain Chesney afforded an excuse for the more frequent visits of Mr. Carlton. The fractious invalid complacently set them down to anxiety for himself, and thought what an attentive doctor he had got. Jane was half in doubt whether the two visits daily—the short one in the morning, snatched while Mr. Carlton was on his round to his other patients; the long, gossiping one in the evening—had their rise in any motive so praiseworthy: but as she saw no further reprehensible signs of intimacy between the surgeon and her sister, she hoped for the best.
Unknown to Jane Chesney, however, Mr. Carlton and Laura did contrive to snatch occasionally sundry stolen moments of interview. In one of these, Mr. Carlton told her that the time had come for his speaking out to Captain Chesney. His father, who had been—he emphatically said it—a bad father to him for years, who had turned a resolutely deaf ear to any mention of his son’s possible marriage, who would never suffer a hint of such a future contingency to be mentioned in his presence, nay, who threatened to invoke all kinds of ill upon his head if he contracted one, had suddenly veered round to the opposite extreme. Nothing brings a bad or careless man to his senses sooner than to find himself struck down with unexpected or desperate sickness, where the grave is seen as a near vista, its portals already opening. Such an illness had overtaken Mr. Carlton the elder, and perhaps had been the means of changing his policy. One thing it certainly effected: a reconciliation with his son. From his residence in the east of London, a handsome house in a bad district, where he lay, as he thought, dying, he sent forth a telegraphic summons to his son at South Wennock, as you have already heard tell of; and though the immediate danger was soon over for the time, some of its penitential effects remained. Mr. Carlton urged marriage upon his son now, telling him it would keep him steady, and he made him a present of a good sum towards the setting up of his house for the reception of a wife.
The money was only too welcome to Lewis Carlton; nobody but himself knew how he had been pushed, how pinched. He paid certain debts with some of it, and the rest he was appropriating to its legitimate purpose—the decorating and embellishing of his house inside. Many articles of new and costly furniture were ordered to come in; and Mr. Carlton spared no pains, no money, to make it comfortable for her whom he loved so passionately—Laura Chesney.
It never occurred to him that he could be eventually refused. A demur at first he thought there might be, for Laura had confessed to him how exacting her family was on the score of birth, and Mr. Carlton had no birth to boast of, hardly knew what the word meant. But if Laura had birth, he had a good home, a rising practice, and the expectation of money at his father’s death; and he may be excused for believing that these advantages would finally weigh with Captain Chesney.
With Mr. Carlton, to determine upon a thing, was to do it. He had no patience, he could not wait and watch his time; what he resolved to have, he must have at once. This acting upon impulse had cost him something in his life, and perhaps would again.
He did as he resolved. He spoke out boldly, and asked Captain Chesney for his daughter Laura. The captain received the offer—well, you had better hear how he received it.
It was proffered at an hour when Jane and Laura were out. Mr. Carlton had an instinctive conviction that Jane Chesney would be against him, and Laura had confirmed him in it; therefore he judged it well to speak when she was out of the way. The captain’s consent gained, he could snap his fingers metaphorically at Miss Chesney. He had paid his morning visit to the captain, and then gone further up the hill to see other patients, but he was not long, and as he was returning he saw the two Miss Chesneys come out of the gate, in their black silk dresses, and go toward the town. They did not see him. A moment’s hesitating pause in his own mind, and Mr. Carlton entered. Lucy came looking from the drawing-room as he entered the hall, and he went into the drawing-room with her, while Pompey went up to inquire if his master would allow Mr. Carlton five minutes’ private conversation.
“Are you drawing?” Mr. Carlton asked, as he saw the signs of employment on the table.
“Yes,” replied Lucy, “I am so fond of drawing, especially landscapes. Jane draws beautifully; she teaches me. Laura likes music best. See, I have to fill in these trees before Jane comes home; she set me the task.”
“You won’t half do it,” said Mr. Carlton, looking down at the cardboard at which Lucy was now working steadily. “You will be wanting to run away to play, long before that’s done.”
“I may want perhaps, but I shall not do it. I would not disobey Jane. Besides, it is my duty to attend to my studies.”
“Do you always do your duty?” inquired the surgeon, with a smile.
“Not always, I’m afraid. But I try to do it. Mr. Carlton, I want to ask you something?”
“Ask away, young lady,” said he.
Lucy Chesney laid down her pencil, and turned her sweetly earnest eyes on Mr. Carlton; they were beaming just now with saddened light.
“Was it really true that that poor sick lady was poisoned wilfully?—that some wicked man put the prussic acid in the draught?”
How his mood changed! The question appeared to excite his ire, and an impatient word escaped him.
“What have I done now?” exclaimed Lucy in excessive wonder. “Ought I not to have asked it?”
“I must beg your pardon, Miss Lucy,” he said, recovering his equanimity. “The fact is, I have not had a moment’s peace since the inquest. South Wennock has done nothing but din these questions into my ears. I think sometimes I shall be turned into prussic acid myself.”
“But was it wilfully done?” persisted Lucy, forgetting the rebuff in her anxious curiosity.
“That question had better be asked of Mr. Stephen Grey: perhaps be can answer it. No, of course it was not wilfully done.”
“And, Mr. Carlton, please tell me, have they found out whose face that was upon the stairs?”
A sudden shade arose to the face of Mr. Carlton, discernible even by Lucy. The child thought it looked like dread.
“That was all nonsense,” said he. “There was no face there.”
“The captain says Misser Doctor go up,” interrupted the black servant, coming in with his broken English. And Mr. Carlton went.
Captain Chesney was a prisoner still, as to his legs; they were raised on the rest. A table was on one side of him, bearing various articles that he might want, and his stick at hand on the other.
“What are you back for?” he asked, with some abruptness.
“I have a petition to make to you, Captain Chesney,” began the surgeon, as he took, uninvited, a chair opposite the invalid, and perhaps for the first time in his life Mr. Carlton may have been conscious of a nervousness of manner quite foreign to him. “I have been hoping to speak to you these many weeks, and the time has at length come when I trust I may do so without great presumption. Before I enter upon my immediate subject, you will allow me a word of explanation as to who I am. My father is a medical man in London, in extensive practice; I am his only child, and expect at his death to inherit something very considerable. I think—I fear—that death will not be long delayed, and then I shall be what may be called a rich man.”
“Sir,” interrupted the plain-spoken sailor, “wherefore tell me this? Were your father Chancellor of the Exchequer, and could endow you with the country’s revenues, it would be no business of mine.”
A flush rose to the brow of Mr. Carlton.
“Permit me a moment yet, Captain Chesney, while I speak of myself. I am well established here; am getting into extensive practice—for the Greys are going down; and down they will go, after that fatal mistake of Mr. Stephen’s. In a little time, sir, I expect to be netting a thousand pounds a year.”
“But what is it all to me?” wondered the captain. “I’m sure you’re welcome to it.”
“Even had I only that in prospect, it would not be so bad an income; but when my father’s money is added to it, I shall hold my own with any one in Wennock. Captain Chesney, I want one to share this with me. I want you to give her to me. Your daughter.”
Mr. Carlton spoke in a low tone of emotion, and it may be doubted whether the captain heard him aright. Certain it is that he made no reply, but stared at Mr. Carlton as if he had become moonstruck.
“I speak of Miss Laura Chesney,” continued the surgeon. “Oh, sir, give her to me! I will make her a loving husband. She shall want for nothing to render her happy that the most anxious care and tenderness can bestow.”
Captain Chesney wondered whether he himself had gone mad, or whether Mr. Carlton had. He had a firm conviction that it must be one or the other. He no more believed it within the range of possibility that any common country practitioner should presume to aspire to an alliance with the aristocratic family of Chesney, than that he, the captain, should dare to aspire to one of the royal princesses. His stick trembled ominously, but did not as yet come down.
"What did you say, sir?” he demanded, with set teeth.
“Sir, I love your daughter; I love Laura Chesney as I have never yet loved, and never shall love another. Will you suffer me to make her my wife?”
Down came the stick in all its thunder, and out roared the captain’s voice as an accompaniment, shouting for Pompey. The black servant flew up, as if impelled by something behind him.
“Was massa ill?”
“Ill!” chafed the captain. "He is!” he added, pointing the stick at Mr. Carlton. “He’s mad, Pompey; gone stark staring mad: you’ve shut me up here with a mad fellow. Get him out of the house, somehow.”
The bewildered Pompey stood in confusion. He knew his choleric master said anything that came uppermost, and he glanced at the calm face, the still, self-possessed bearing of Mr. Carlton; certainly he looked like anything but a madman.
Mr. Carlton rose, his manner haughty, his voice cold. “Captain Chesney, I am a gentleman; and my proposal to you at least required courtesy. Have the kindness to favour me with an intelligible answer.”
“I’ll be shot if you get any other answer from me, You are mad, sir; nobody but a fool or a madman would dream of such a thing as you have now been proposing. Do you know, sir, that my daughter is a Chesney?"
“And I am a Carlton, If the names were to be picked to pieces in the Heralds’ College, the one might prove equal, if not superior to the other.”
“Why—goodness bless my soul!” retorted the amazed captain, “you—you are a common apothecary, sir—a dispenser of medicine! and you would aspire to a union with the family of Chesney?”
“I am a member of the Royal College of Surgeons,” angrily repeated Mr. Carlton, who was beginning to lose his temper.
“If you were the whole College of Surgeons rolled into one,—their head, and their tail, and their middle,—you wouldn’t dare to glance at my daughter, had you any sense of propriety within you. Do you mean to show this gentleman out, you rascal?” added the inflamed captain, menacing with his stick the head of the unhappy Pompey.
“Door open, Misser Doctor,” cried Pompey. But Mr. Carlton motioned him away with a gesture of the hand.
“Captain Chesney, I have told you that I love your daughter; I have told you that my prospects are sufficiently assured to justify me in marrying. Once more I ask you—will you give her to me?”
“No, by Jove!” raved the captain, “I’d see your coffin walk first. Here—stop—listen to me; I’d rather see her in her coffin, than disgraced by contact with you. You wed Laura Chesney? Never, never.”
“What if I tell you that her hopes—her life, I may almost say—are bound up in me?” cried Mr. Carlton in a low tone.
“What if I tell you that you are a bad and wicked man?” shrieked the captain. “How dared you take advantage of your being called into my house professionally, to cast your covetous eye on any of my family? Was that gentlemanly, sir? was it the act of a man of honour? You confounded old idiot, standing there with your great goggle eyes, what possesses you to disobey me? Haven’t I ordered you to show this—this person—to the door!”
The last two sentences, as the reader may divine, were addressed to the bewildered Pompey. Mr. Carlton wore a resolute expression of face just then. He took it with him, and stood before Captain Chesney, folding his arms.
“It is said in Scripture, that a woman shall leave father and mother, and cleave unto her husband. I would ask you a question, Captain Chesney. By what right, her affections being engaged, and my means suitable, do you deny me your daughter?”
“The right of power, sir,” was the sarcastic retort. “And, now that I have answered your question, allow me to ask you one. By what right did you seek her affections? You came into my house with one ostensible object, and clandestinely availed yourself of your footing in it to pursue another! Sir, you had no right to do this, and I tell you that you are a sneak and a coward. Begone, Mr. Surgeon; send me up your bill, when you get home, and never attempt to put your foot inside my door again, or to cast a thought to Miss Laura Chesney."
"That is easier said than done, Captain Chesney," concluded Mr. Carlton, but he did not turn to leave.
"Now, you black villain! the door, I say; and both of you may thank your stars that I am this day powerless, or your skins might learn what it is to beard a quarter-deck commander."
But Mr. Carlton was already out, and Pompey also. A good thing that they were, for the stick of the roused captain came flying through the air after them; whether meant for one or the other, or both, the sender best knew. It struck the door-post and fell clattering on the floor, denting another dent into the gold top, which already had so many dents in it—as the meek Pompey could testify.
Leaning against the door, shivering and sick, was Lucy Chesney. The noise in the chamber had attracted her notice, and she ran up, but stopped at the entrance, too terrified to enter. She touched the arm of Mr. Carlton.
"Oh, tell me what has happened? I heard Laura's name. What has she done?"
Mr. Carlton shook off her hand, and moved forward, buried in thought. Before he had descended above a stair or two, his recollection apparently came to him, and he went back to the child.
"Don't be alarmed, my dear; it is nothing to tremble at. I made a proposition to Captain Chesney, and he forgot his good manners in answering it. It will be all right; mind, I tell you that it will, and you may tell Laura so, from me. Forgive my having passed you rudely, Lucy; at that moment I was not myself."
He quitted the house, turned out at the gate, and there came face to face with the Miss Chesneys. Something that they intended to take to the town with them had been forgotten, and they were returning for it. Mr. Carlton stood before them and raised his hat. Jane wondered at his presumption in stopping them.
"Can I speak a word with you apart" he suddenly demanded of Laura.
She blushed violently, but after a moment's indecision would have stepped aside with him, had not Jane interposed.
"You can have nothing to say in private to Miss Laura Chesney, that may not be said in public, Mr. Carlton. I must beg her to decline your request."
In direct defiance to her sister, Laura could not grant it. Mr. Carlton saw she could not, and his resolution was taken. He addressed Laura, allowing Miss Chesney to hear, but taking no more notice of her than if she was not by.
"I have been speaking to Captain Chesney. I have been asking him to allow me to address you, and he received my proposals as if they were an insult. He would not hear me make them, or listen to any explanation; he treated me as I should think no gentleman was ever treated yet. Laura, I can now only depend upon you."
She stood before him, her whole face glowing; frightened, but happy.
"But Rome was not built in a day," added Mr. Carlton. "Brick was added to brick, stone to stone, mortar to mortar, pillar to pillar. Ill as Captain Chesney has this day received me, I forgive him for your sake, and hope the time may come when he will be induced to listen to us. We must both strive to subdue his prejudices."
Jane moved a stop forward; she knew what her own course would be, had the proposition been made to her, and she had little doubt it must have been her father's.
"Has my father forbidden you the house, sir?"
"He has. But, as I say, I and your sister must hope to subdue his prejudices. Miss Chesney," he added, seizing her unwilling hand, "do not you be against us. I cannot give up Laura."
"You say 'against us,'" returned Jane. "In making use of those words it would almost lead to a belief that my sister has an understanding with you in this matter. Is it so?"
"It is," replied Mr. Carlton, in a deep tone; "the understanding of love. Miss Chesney, it is no child's affection that she and I entertain for each other; it is not one that can be readily put aside, even at the will of Captain Chesney. Will you aid us to overcome his opposition?"
"No," said Jane, in a low but firm tone. "I am deeply grieved, deeply shocked, to hear you say this. What you are thinking of can never be."
"I see," said Mr. Carlton, in a cold accent, "you share Captain Chesney's prejudices against me. Miss Chesney—allow me to say it—they may not yet be unconquerable. I tell you, I tell Laura in your presence, that I will do all I can to subdue them; I will do all I can to win her, for mine she shall be. My darling"—and his voice changed to tenderness—"only be true to me! it is all I ask. not to be admitted again to your house; but I shall see you elsewhere, though it be but a chance road meeting, such as this. Good morning, Miss Chesney."
He passed on towards the town, and a conviction of future trouble arose in Jane Chesney’s heart as she gazed after him. But she never guessed how bitter that trouble was to be.