LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."
CHAPTER LIII.JUDITH’S STORY.
In the twilight of the winter’s evening, in the drawing-room of Lady Jane’s house, Frederick Grey was sitting with Lucy Chesney. The removal from Mr. Carlton’s that day did not appear to have hurt her, she seemed the stronger for it, and though Judith kept assuring her that she ought to go to her chamber and lie down, Lucy stayed where she was.
The interview was a gloomy one. It was Frederick Grey’s farewell visit, for he was going back to London the following day. But the gloom did not arise from that cause, but from another. Lucy had been telling him something, and he grew hot and angry.
The fact was, Lady Jane, in her perplexity and tribulation at finding the deceased lady, Mrs. Crane, to have been Clarice Chesney, had that morning dropped a word in Lucy’s hearing to the effect that the discovery might be the means of breaking off the contemplated marriage. Of course, Lucy was making herself very miserable, and her lover was indignant.
“On what grounds?” he chafed, for he had rather a hot temper. “On what grounds?”
“Jane thinks it will not be seemly that we should marry, if the mistake that brought Clarice her death was made by Sir Stephen. The medicine, you know.”
“Jane must be getting into her dotage,” he angrily exclaimed. “Sir Stephen never did make the mistake. Lucy, my darling, be at ease: we cannot be parted now.”
Lucy’s tears were dropping fast: she was weak from her recent illness. To marry in opposition to Jane could never be thought of, and Jane was firm when she once took a notion into her head. In the midst of this, Jane came in from her visit to the little dead boy at Tupper’s cottage, and Frederick Grey spoke out his mind somewhat warmly. Judith, who entered the room to take her lady’s bonnet, stood in surprise and concern: her sympathies were wholly with Frederick Grey and Lucy. He had not observed Judith enter.
“Oh, my lady,” she exclaimed, impulsively, “it would not be right to separate them. Should the innocent suffer for the guilty?”
“The guilty? the guilty?” mused Lady Jane. “How are we to know who is guilty?”
Judith stood still, a strange expression of eagerness, blended with indecision, on her white face. She looked at Lady Jane, she looked at Frederick Grey; and she suddenly threw down the bonnet she held, and lifted her hands.
“I’ll speak,” she exclaimed. “I’ll declare what I know. Ever since last night I have been telling myself I ought to do it. And I wish I had done it years ago!”
They looked at her in astonishment. What had come to quiet, sober Judith?
“My lady, you ask who was guilty—how it is to be known? I think I know who it was: I think it was Mr. Carlton. I could almost have proved it at the time.”
“Oh, Judith!” exclaimed Frederick Grey, reproachfully, while Jane dropped her head upon her hand, and Lucy gazed around, wondering if they had all gone scared. “And you have suffered my father to lie under the suspicion all these years!”
“I did not dare to speak,” was Judith’s answer. “Who was I, a poor humble servant, that I should bring an accusation against a gentleman—a gentleman like Mr. Carlton, thought well of in the place? Nobody would have listened to me, sir. Besides, in spite of my doubts, I could not believe he was guilty. I thought I must have made some strange mistake. And I feared that the tables might have been turned upon me, and I accused.”
Whatever she knew, and however long she might have suppressed it, there was no resource but to speak out fully now. She took up her position against the wall, partially hidden by the folds of the crimson curtains from what little light the fire gave. Lucy sat forward on the sofa as one dazed, Lady Jane’s face was still shaded by her hand, Frederick Grey stood with his elbow on the mantel-piece.
“I will not be Mr. Carlton’s accuser,” she began. “No, my lady, I will simply tell what I saw, and let others judge: the impression of his guilt on my mind may have been altogether some great mistake. I—I suppose I must begin at the beginning?”
“You must begin at the beginning and go on to the ending,” interposed Frederick Grey, authoritatively.
“And I’ll do it,” said Judith. “On the Sunday evening when that poor lady, Mrs. Crane, lay ill at the Widow Gould’s, I stepped in between eight and nine to wish her good-night. I had a bad face-ache; it was in pain all over; and I wanted to get to bed. The widow and Nurse Pepperfly were at supper in the kitchen; I saw them as I passed the kitchen window,