# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 10/Lord Oakburn's daughters - Part 6

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LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS. BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."
CHAPTER XI.THE TORN NOTE.
The whole inquest-room, speaking metaphorically, was on its legs—coroner, jury, spectators—as the rushing tide of eager faces surged into it. What were the tidings they had brought?—what new evidence had come to light? Nothing very great, after all.
It was only a part of a letter. In the pocket of the dress which the unhappy lady had worn on the Friday, the day of her arrival at South Wennock, had just been found a half sheet of note paper, with some lines of writing on it and a great blot. “It was a somewhat remarkable fact that this dress, hanging up the whole of the time behind the bed-room door, had been overlooked both by the police and by Mr. Carlton, and was not searched by either. The coroner smoothed the crumpled sheet of writing, read it aloud for the information of the jury, and then passed it round for their inspection. It ran as follows:—
“13, Palace Street, South Wennock,
Friday Evening, March 10, 1848.
“My dearest Husband,—You will be surprised to hear of my journey, and that I am safe at South Wennock. I know you will be angry, but I cannot help it, and we will talk over things when we meet. I have asked the people here about a medical man, and they strongly recommend one of the Messrs. Grey, but I tell them I would prefer Mr. Carlton. What do you say? I must ask him to come and see me this evening, for the railway omnibus shook me dreadfully, and I feel anything but———”
In that abrupt manner ended the writing. There was nothing more, except the great blot referred to. Whether she had been suddenly interrupted, or whether the accident of the blot caused her to begin a fresh letter, could not be told; and perhaps would now never be known.
But with all the excitement, the noise, and the expectation, it positively threw no light whatever upon the mystery—of the mystery of who she was, of her arrival, or the worse mystery of her death. The coroner sat, after the letter had been passed back to him, mechanically smoothing the creased sheet with his fingers, while he thought.
“Call Mr. Carlton,” he suddenly said.
Mr. Carlton was found in the yard of the inn, talking to some of the many outside idlers whom the proceedings had gathered together there. After the rebuff administered to him by the coroner, as to his having gone away before, he was determined not so to offend a second time, but waited within call.
“Wanted again!” he exclaimed, when the officer come to him. “I hope the jury will have enough of me.”
“There’s something fresh turned up, sir. You might have heard here the noise they made, bringing it up the street.”
“Something fresh!” the surgeon eagerly repeated. “What is it? Not about the face?” he added, a strange dread mingling with his whispered tones.
“I don’t rightly know what it is, sir. The crowd jammed into the room so that I couldn’t hear.”
“Mr. Carlton, look at this, will you,” said the coroner, handing him the torn note, when he appeared. “Can you tell me if it is in the handwriting of the deceased?”
Mr. Carlton took the sheet, glanced at it, clutched it in his hand and strode to a distant window. There he stood reading it, with his back to the room. He read it twice; he turned it over and looked at the other side; ho turned it back and read it again. Then he returned to the table where sat the coroner and jury, who had followed his movements in eager expectation.
“How can I tell, Mr. Coroner, whether it is in her handwriting or not?”
“You received a note from her. Can you not remember what the writing was like?”
Mr. Carlton paused a moment and then slowly shook his head. “I did not take particular notice of the handwriting. If we had the two together we might compare them. By the way,” he added, “I may perhaps mention that I searched for the note in question when I went home just now, and could not find it. There’s no doubt I threw it into the fire at the time.”
Perfectly true. As soon as Mr. Carlton had got home from his examination-in-chief, he had set himself to search for the note. His conviction at the time was that he must have burnt it with the loose letters and envelopes lying on the table, those which he had thrown on the fire in a heap; it had been his conviction ever since; nevertheless he did institute a search on going home from the inquest. He ​emptied some card-racks which stood on the mantelpiece; he opened the drawers of the sideboard; he went up-stairs to his bed-room, and searched the pockets of the clothes he had worn that night; he looked in every likely place he could think of. It seemed rather a superfluous task to do it, and it brought forth no results; but Mr. Carlton wished to feel quite sure upon the point.
“Then you cannot speak to this handwriting?” asked the coroner.
“Not with any certainty,” was the reply of the witness. “This writing, I fancy, looks not dissimilar to the other, so far as my remembrance of it carries me; but that’s a very slight one. All ladies write alike now-a-days.”
“Few ladies write so good a hand as this,” remarked the coroner, giving the torn sheet a jerk upwards to intimate it. “Are you near-sighted, Mr. Carlton, that you took it to the window?”
Mr. Carlton threw his eyes full in the face of the coroner, incipient defiance in their expression.
“I am not near-sighted. But the rain makes the room dark, and the evening is coming on. I thought, too, it must be a document of importance, throwing some great elucidation upon the case, by the commotion that was made over it.”
“Ay,” responded one of the jury, “we were all taken in.”
There was nothing more to be done; no further evidence to be taken. The coroner charged the jury, and he ordered the room to be cleared while they deliberated. Among the crowds filing out of it in obedience to the mandate, went Judith Ford. Judith had gone to the inquest partly to gratify her own pardonable curiosity—though her intense feeling of interest in the proceedings might be characterised by a better name than that; partly to be in readiness in case she should be called to bear testimony, as one of the attendants who had helped to nurse the lady through her illness.
She was not called, however. Her absence from the house at the time of the taking the medicine, and of the death, rendered her of no avail in a judicial point of view, and her name was not so much as mentioned during the day. She had found a seat in a quiet but convenient corner, and remained there undisturbed, watching the proceedings with the most absorbed interest. Never once from the witnesses, and their demeanour, as their separate evidence was given, were her eyes taken. Judith could not overget the dreadful death; she could not fathom the circumstances attending it.
In groups of fives, of tens, of twenties, the mob, gentry and draggletails, stood about, after their compulsory exit from the inquest-room, conversing eagerly, waiting impatiently. Stephen Grey and his brother, Mr. Brooklyn, Mr. Carlton, and a few more gentlemen collected together, deeply anxious for the verdict, as may be readily imagined; whether or not it would be manslaughter against Stephen Grey,
Judith meanwhile found her way to Mrs. Fitch. She was sitting in her bar-parlour—at least, when any odd moment gave her an opportunity to sit; but Mrs. Fitch could not remember many days of her busy life so full of bustle as this had been. She was however knitting when Judith in her deep mourning appeared at the door, and she started from her seat.
“Is it you, Judith? Is it over? What’s the verdict?”
“It is not over,” said Judith. “We are sent out while they deliberate. I don’t think,” she added, some pain in her tone, “they can bring it in against Mr. Stephen Grey.”
“I don’t think they ought, after that evidence about the cobwebs,” returned the landlady. “Anyway, though, it’s odd how the poison could have got there. And I say, Judith, what tale’s this about a face on the stairs?”
“Well, I—don’t know, ma'am. Mr. Carlton says now he thinks it was all his fancy.”
“It has got a curious sound about it, to my mind. I know this—if the poor young lady was anything to me, I should have it followed up. You don’t look well, Judith.”
“I can’t say but it has altogether been a great shock and puzzle to me,” acknowledged Judith, “and thinking and worrying over a thing does not help one’s looks. What with my face having been bad—but it’s better now—and what with this trouble, I have eaten nothing solid for days.”
“I’ll give you a drop of cherry brandy———”
“No, ma'am, thank you, I couldn’t take it,” interposed Judith, more vehemently than the kind-hearted offer seemed to warrant. “I can neither eat nor drink to-day.”
“Nonsense, Judith! you are just going the way to lay yourself up. It is a very dreadful thing, there’s no doubt of that, but still she was a stranger to us, and there’s no cause for its throwing us off our proper meals.”
Judith silently passed from the topic, “I am anxious to get a place now,” she said; “I shouldn’t think of all this so much if I had something to do; besides, I don’t like to impose too long on Mrs. Jenkinson’s kindness. I suppose you don’t happen to have heard of a place, Mrs. Fitch?”
​“I heard to-day that there was a servant wanted at that house on the Rise—where the new folks live. Their housemaid’s going to leave.”
“What new folks?” asked Judith.
“Those fresh people that came from a distance. What’s the name?—Chesney, isn’t it? The Chesneys. I mean Cedar Lodge. It might suit you. Coming! coming!” shrieked out Mrs. Fitch, in answer to a succession of calls.
“Yes, it might suit me,” murmured Judith to herself. “They look nice people. I’ll go and see after it.”
The words were interrupted by a movement, a hubbub, and Judith hastened outside to ascertain its cause. Could the deliberation of the jury be already over? Yes, it was even so. The door of the inquest-room had been been thrown open, and the eager crowd were pressing on to it. A few minutes more, and the decree was spoken; was running like wildfire to every part of the expectant town.
“We find that the deceased, whose married name appears to have been Crane, but to whose Christian name we have no clue, came by her death through swallowing prussic acid mixed in a composing draught; but by whom it was thus mixed in the draught, or whether by mistake or intentionally, we deem there is not sufficient evidence to show.”
So Stephen Grey was yet a free man. His friends pressed up to him and shook him warmly by the hand. While young Frederick, with a check of emotion, now white, now crimson, galloped home through the mud and shut himself in his bed-room, there to hide his thankfulness and his agitation.
Wretched as the weather had been with its wind and its rain, the sun showed itself just before its setting, and broke forth with a glowing red gleam, as if it would, in compassion, accord a glimpse of warmth and brightness to the passing day which had been longing for it.
Its slanting beams fell on that pleasant white house on the Rise, the residence of Captain Chesney, glimmering through the trees and dancing on the carpet in the drawing-room. The large French window opening to the ground looked bright and clear with those welcome rays, and one of the inmates of the room turned to them with a glad expression; an expression that told of some expectant hope.
Seated at the table was the eldest daughter, Jane Chesney; a peculiarly quiet-looking, lady-like young woman of thirty years, with drooping eyelids and fair hair. She had some bits of paper before her that were wonderfully like bills, and an open account-book lay beside them. There was a patient, wearied expression in her face, that seemed to say her life was not free from care.
Touching the keys of the piano with a masterly hand, but softly, as if she would subdue its sound, her brilliant brown eyes flashing with a radiant light, and her exquisite features unusually beautiful, sat Laura Chesney. Three-and-twenty years of age, she yet looked younger than she was; of middle height, slight and graceful, with the charm of an unusually youthful manner, Laura never was taken for her real age. She was one of the vainest girls living; though none detected it. Girls are naturally vain; beautiful girls very vain; but it has rarely entered into the heart of woman to conceive of vanity so intense as that which tarnished the heart of Laura Chesney. It had been the one passion of her life—the great passion which overpowered other implanted seeds whether for good or for evil, rendering them partially dormant. Not that vanity was her only failing; far from it; she had others less negative: self-will, obstinancy, and a rebellious spirit.
Latterly another passion had taken possession of her; one which seemed to change her very nature, and to which even her vanity became subservient—love for Mr. Carlton. It is her eyes which are turning to this bright sunshine; it is her heart which is whispering he will be sure to come! She was dressed in a handsome robe of glittering silk, hanging sleeves of costly lace shading her small white arms, on which were golden bracelets. Jane wore a violet merino, somewhat faded, a white collar, and small white cuffs on the closed sleeves its only ornament. The one looked fit to be the denizen of a palace; the other, with her plain attire and gentle manner, fit only for a quiet home life.
And, standing near the window, softly dancing to the time of Laura’s music and humming in concert, was the little girl, Lucy. Her frock was of similar material to Jane’s, violet merino, but far more faded, the frills of her white drawers just peeping below its short skirt. She was a graceful child of eleven, very pretty, her eyes dark and luminous as Laura’s, but shining with a far sweeter and softer light, and there was a repose in her whole bearing and manner, the counterpart of that which distinguished her eldest sister.
In the room above was the naval half-pay captain, unusually fierce and choleric to-night, as was sure to be the case when getting well from his gouty attacks. Far more noisy and impatient was he at these times than even when the gout was full upon him. The means of the family were grievously straitened, the ​captain having nothing but his half-pay—and what is that to live upon? They were encumbered by debt. Life had long been rendered miserable by it. And in truth, how can these poor straitened men, gentlemen of connections as they often are, keep debt from their door? Captain Chesney was, to use a familiar expression, over head and ears in it. He had quitted the neighbourhood of Plymouth, where they had lived for so many years, simply because the place grew too hot to hold him, his creditors too pressing to be borne with, South Wennock was becoming the same, and people were growing troublesome.
It was Jane who bore the brunt of it all. Perhaps no father had ever been loved with a more yearning, ardent, dutiful love than was Captain Chesney by his daughter Jane. To save him one care she would have forfeited her existence; if by walking through a sea of fire—and this is not speaking metaphorically—she could have eased him of a minute’s pain, Jane Chesney would have stepped lovingly to the sacrifice. Not upon him, not upon the others, had fallen the daily pains and penalties inseparable from a state of debt, but upon Jane. The petty hourly cares and crosses, the putting-off of creditors, the scheming how to make their ten shillings go as far as other people’s twenty, the anxiety for the present, the sickening dread of the future, and what might be the climax———Jane bore it all meekly, patiently. But it was wearing her out.
She sat now over the last week’s bills, leaning her aching head—aching with care more than pain—upon her hand, and adding them up. Jane was not a good accountant; few women are; they are not trained to be so; and she had to go over the columns more than once. It was not the work which wearied and damped her; it was the dread glance at the sums total, and the knowledge that these bills could only be put away with those of many many weeks back, unpaid. She pushed them from her, but with a gentle action-there was gentleness in every movement of Jane Chesney—and leaned back in her chair with a sobbing sigh.
“Lucy, child, I wish you would not dance so. It puts me out.”
The little girl looked half surprised. “I am not making a noise, Jane.”
“But the movement as you wave about makes my head worse.”
“Have you the headache, Jane?”
“Yes. At least—my head is so perplexed that it seems to ache.”
Laura turned round, her eyes flashing.
“You are worrying your brains over those wretched bills, Jane! I wonder you will get them about! I should just let things go on as they can, and not torment myself.”
“Let things go as they can!” echoed Jane, in a tone of pain. “Oh, Laura!”
“What good can you do by worrying and fretting over them? What good do you do?”
“Somebody must worry and fret over them, Laura. If I were not to do it, papa must.”
“Well, he is more fit to battle with such troubles than you are. And it is his own imprudence which has brought it all on. But for the extravagance of bygone years, papa would not have reduced himself to his half-pay———"
“Be silent, Laura!” interrupted Jane, her tone one of stern authority. “How dare you presume to cast a reflection on my dear father?”
Laura’s face fell, partly in submission to the reproof, partly in angry rebellion. Laura, of them of all, most bitterly resented the petty annoyances brought by their straitened life.
“Papa is as dear to me as he is to you, Jane,” she presently said, in a tone of apology for her words. But I am not a stick or a stone, and I can’t help feeling the difference there is between ourselves and other young ladies in the same rank of life. Our days are nothing but pinching and perplexity; theirs are all flowers and sunshine.”
“There is a skeleton in every closet, Laura; and no one can judge of another’s sorrows,” was the quiet answer of Jane. “The lives that look to us all flowers and sunshine—as you term it—may have their inward darkness just as ours have. Recollect the Italian proverb, ‘Non v’ è rosa senza spina.’”
“You are going altogether from the point,” returned Laura. “What other young lady—in saying a young lady I mean an unmarried one, still sheltered from the world’s cares in her father’s home—has to encounter the trouble and anxiety that you have?”
“Many a one, I dare say,” was the reply of Jane. “For myself, if I do but save the trouble and anxiety to my dear father, I think myself amply repaid.”
Too true; it was all that was thought of by Jane; the one great care of her life—the saving annoyance to her father. In the long night watches, when a dread of what these debts might result in for Captain Chesney would press upon her brain, Jane Chesney would lay her hand on her burning brow and wish that England’s laws could be altered, and permit a daughter to be arrested in the place of her father. Laura resumed:—
“And who, save us, have to live as we live? barred up-it’s no better-in a house like so many hermits; not daring to visit or be ​visited, lest such visiting might increase by a few shillings the weekly liabilities? It’s a shame!”
“Hush, Laura! If we take to repining, that will be the worst of all. It is our lot, and we must bear it patiently.”
Laura Chesney did not appear inclined to bear it very patiently just then. She struck the keys of the instrument loudly and. passionately, playing so for a few moments, as if finding a vent for her anger. The little girl had leaned against the window in silence, listening to her sisters, and turning her sweet brown eyes from one to the other. Suddenly there came a sound on the floor above as if a heavy walking-stick was being thumped upon it.
“There, Laura! that’s because you played out so loudly!” cried the child. “To-day, when I was practising, I forgot myself and took my foot off the soft pedal, and down came papa’s stick as if he would have knocked the floor through.”
Laura Chesney rose, closed the piano, not quite so gently as she might have done, and wont to the window. As she stood there looking out, her soft brown hair acquired quite a golden tinge in the light of the setting sun.
Thump! thump! thump! came the stick again. Jane sprang from her seat. “1t is not the piano: papa must want something,”
A voice loud and imperative interrupted her as she was hastening from the room, “Laura! Laura!”
Jane drew back. “It is for you, Laura. Make haste up.”
And Laura Chesney, as she hastened to obey, caught up a small black mantle which lay on a chair and threw it over her white shoulders. It served to conceal her rich silk dress and the golden bracelets that glittered on her wrists.
CHAPTER XII.CAPTAIN CHESNEY’S HOME.
Lucy Chesney remained a few minutes in thought as her sister left the room. Things were puzzling her.
“Jane, why does Laura put that black mantle on to go up to papa? It must be to hide her dress. But if she thinks that papa would be angry with her for wearing that best dress and mamma’s golden bracelets every evening why does she wear them?”
A somewhat difficult question for Jane Chesney to answer—to answer to a young mind which was being moulded for good or for ill.
“Laura is fond of dress, Lucy. Perhaps the fancies papa is less fond of it.”
“Papa is less fond of it,” returned the child, “I don’t think he would care if we wore these old merinos—oh, until next winter.”
Jane sighed. “Dress is expensive, Lucy, and you know———”
“Yes, I know, Jane,” said the little girl, filling up the pause, for Jane had stopped.
“But, Jane, why should Laura put that best dress on at all? She had not used to put it on.”
Now, in truth, this was a question which had likewise occurred to Miss Chesney. More than once of late, when Laura had appeared dressed for the evening, Jane wondered why she had so dressed. Not a suspicion of the cause—the unhappy cause which was to bring ere long a great trouble upon them—had yet dawned on the mind of Jane Chesney.
“And I want to ask you something else, Jane. What did you mean by saying there was a skeleton in every closet?”
“Come hither, Lucy.” She held out her hand, and the child came forward and placed herself on a stool at Jane’s feet. Jane held the hand in hers, and Lucy sat looking upwards into her sister’s calm, placid face.
“If mamma had lived, Lucy, perhaps you might not have needed to ask me this, for she would have taught you and trained you more efficiently than I have done———”
“I’m sure, Jane,” interrupted the child, her large eyes filling with tears, “you are as good to me as mamma could have been, and you teach me well.”
“As we pass through life, Lucy, darling, troubles come upon us; cares, more or less heavy———”
“Do they come to us all, Jane! To everybody in the world?”
“They come to us all, my dear; it is the will of God. I do not suppose that anybody is without them. We know what our own cares are; but sometimes we cannot see what others can have—we cannot see that they have any, and can scarcely believe in it. We see them prosperous, with pleasant and plentiful homes; nay, with wealth and luxury; they possess, so far as we can tell, health and strength; they are, so far as we can see, a happy and united family. Yet it often happens that these very people, who seem to us to be so fortunate as to be objects of envy, do possess some secret care, so great that it may be hastening them to the grave before their time, and all the greater because it has to be concealed from the world. Then we call that care a skeleton in the closet, because it is unsuspected by others, hidden from others’ eyes, Do you understand now, Lucy?”
“Oh, yes. But, Jane, why should care come to everybody?”
​“My child, I have just told you it is the will of God. Sometimes we bring it upon ourselves, through our own conduct; but I’ll not talk to you of that now. You are young and light-hearted, Lucy, and you cannot yet understand the need of care. It comes to wean us from a world that we can stay but a little time in———”
“Oh, Jane! we live to be old men and women!”
Jane Chesney smiled; care and its bitter fruits—bitter to bear, however sweet they may be in the ending—had come to her early, and made her wise.
“The very best of us live but a short time, Lucy—for you know we must speak of time by comparison. Threescore years and ten here, and ages upon ages, life without ending, hereafter. Well, dear, care and sorrow and disappointment come to draw our love from this world and to teach us to long for the next— to long for it, and to prepare for it. Care is permitted to come to us by God, and nothing comes from Him but what is good for us.”
“Why do people hide their care?”
“It is our nature to hide excessive care or joy; they are both too sacred to be exposed to our fellow-mortals; they are hidden away with God. Lucy, dear, you are too young to understand this.”
“I shall look out for the skeleton now, Jane. When I see people who seem a little dull, I shall think, Ah, you have a skeleton in your closet!”
“It exists where no dulness is apparent,” said Miss Chesney. “I remember meeting with a lady—it was before we came to South Wennock—who appeared to possess every requisite to make life happy, and she was light-hearted and cheerful in manner. One day, when I had grown intimate with her, I remarked to her, that if any one ever appeared free from care, it was herself. I shall never forget her answer, or the deep sadness that rose to her face as she spoke it. ‘Few living have been so afflicted with anxiety and care as I have been; it has come to me in all ways; and, but for God’s support, I could not have borne it. You must not judge by appearances, Miss Chesney.’ The answer took away my illusion, Lucy; and the tears rose involuntarily to my own eyes, in echo to those which earnestness and remembrance had called up to hers.”
“What had her sorrow been, Jane?”
“She did not say; but that her words and affliction were only too true, I was certain. She appeared to be rich in the world’s ties, having a husband and children, brothers and sisters—having all, in short, apparently, to make life happy. The skeleton exists where we least expect it, Lucy.”
“Suppose it ever comes to me, Jane. Should I die?”
“No, dear,” laughed Jane Chesney, the little girl’s quaint earnestness was so droll. “It does not come to run away with people after that fashion; it rather comes to teach them how to live, I will repeat to you a sentence, Lucy, which you must treasure up and remember always, ‘Adversity'—adversity is but another name for care and sorrow, no matter what their nature,” Jane Chesney broke off to say, "'Adversity hardens the heart, or it opens it to Paradise.’ When it shall come to you, the great ugly skeleton of adversity, Lucy, you must let it do the latter.”
“Adversity hardens the heart, or it opens it to Paradise,” repeated Lucy. “That is a nice saying, Jane; I like it.”
But we ought to have followed Laura, who had hastened up-stairs at her father’s summons. Captain Chesney was reclining in an easy-chair, his feet extended out before him on what is called a rest. The feet were swathed in bandages, as gouty feet sometimes must be. He was quite helpless, so far as the legs were concerned; but his tongue and hands were the reverse of helpless,—the hands kept up the noise of the stick perpetually, and the tongue its own noise, to the extreme discomfort of the household. Now that he was sitting up, it might be seen that he was a short man, as sailors mostly are. He bent his eyes with displeasure upon Laura from beneath their overhanging brows.
“Was that you playing?”
“Yes, papa.”
“Oh, it was not Lucy?”
“Papa, you know that Lucy could not play like that.”
“A good thing for her,” roared Captain Chesney, as a twinge took him, “for I should have ordered her to be whipped first, and sent to bed afterwards. How dare you annoy me with that noisy squeaking piano? I’ll sell it.”
As a day never passed but Captain Chesney gave utterance to the same threat, it made but little impression upon Laura.
“Where’s Jane?” he went on.
“She’s at those everlasting bills, papa,” was Laura’s reply, who, truth to say, did not regard her father with the excessive reverence and affection that Jane did, and was not always in manner so submissively dutiful.
“Ugh!” retorted the captain. “Let her throw them behind the fire.”
"I should,” put in Laura; but the assenting remark greatly offended him, and for five ​minutes he kept up an incessant scolding of Laura.
“Is that inquest over?” he resumed.
“I don’t know anything about it, papa.”
“Has Carlton not been up?”
“No,” replied Laura, bending to smooth the pillow under her father’s feet, lest the sudden accession of colour, which she felt rush to her cheeks, should be noticed. In doing this, she unwittingly touched the worst foot in the worst part; and the unhappy captain, one of the most impatient to bear pain that the gout ever came to, shrieked, shook his stick, and finally let off some of what Miss Laura was in the habit of calling his quarter-deck language.
“Papa, I am very sorry; my hand slipped,” she deprecatingly said.
“Did you ever have the gout, Miss Laura Chesney?”
“No, papa.”
“Then perhaps you’ll exercise a little care when you are about those who do have it, and not let your hand ‘slip.’ Slip, indeed! it’s all you are good for, to agonise suffering people. What do you do here? Why don’t you let Jane come up?”
“Why, papa, you called me up.”
“That cantankering piano! I’ll send for a man to-morrow, and he shall value it, and take it away. What’s the reason that Carlton doesn’t come? He’s getting above his business, is that fellow. He has not been here all day long. I have a great mind to turn him off, and call in one of the Greys. I wish I had done so when we first came here; they are attentive. You shall write him a note, and tell him not to put his foot inside my gate any more.”
Laura’s heart turned sick. Sick lest her father should execute his threat.
“He could not be dismissed without being paid,” she said, in a low tone, hoping the suggestion might have weight; and the captain growled.
“Has Pompey come back?” he began again, while Laura stood submissively before him, not daring to leave unless dismissed.
“Not yet, papa. He has scarcely had time to come back yet.”
“But I say he has had time,” persistently interrupted the captain. “He is stopping loitering over that precious inquest, listening to what’s going on there. One fool makes many. I’ll loiter him with my stick when he returns. Give me that.”
The captain rapped his stick violently on a table in his vicinity, pretty nearly causing the saucer of jelly which stood there to fly off it. Laura handed him the saucer and teaspoon.
“Who made this jelly?” he asked, when he had tasted it.
“I—I dare say it was Jane,” she replied, with some hesitation, for Laura kept herself entirely aloof from domestic duties. She knew no more than the man in the moon how they went on, or who accomplished them, except that it must lie between Jane and the maidservant.
“Is it made of calves’ feet, or cow-heels, I wonder?” continued the captain, growling and tasting. “If that’s not made of cow-heels, I’m a story-teller,” he decided, in another minute. “What does Jane mean by it? I told her I would not touch jelly that was made of cow-heel. Wretched stuff!”
“Then, papa, I believe you are wrong, for I think Jane ordered some calves’ feet a day or two ago,” protested Laura. But she only so spoke to appease him; and the irascible old sailor, somewhat mollified, resumed his pursuit of the jelly.
“What did Clarice say?” he asked.
“Clarice?” repeated Laura, opening her eyes in wonder. Not wonder only at the question, but at hearing so much as that name mentioned by her father.
The ex-sailor opened his, and fixed them on his daughter. “I ask you what Clarice said?”
“Said when, papa?”
“When? Why, when Jane heard from her the other morning. Tuesday, wasn’t it?”
“Jane did not hear from Clarice, papa.”
“Jane did, young lady. Why should she tell me she did, if she didn’t? So you want to keep it from me, do you?”
“Indeed, papa,” persisted Laura, “she did not hear from her. I am quite sure that she did not. Had she heard from her she would have told me.”
A cruel twinge took the captain’s right foot.
“You be shot!” he shrieked. “And serve you right for seeking to deceive your father. A pretty puppet I should be in your hands but for Jane! Here, put this down. And now you may go.”
Laura replaced the saucer on the table, and went back to her sisters, thankful for the release.
“Papa is so cross to-night,” she exclaimed.
“He is finding fault with everything.”
“Illness does make a person irritable, especially a man,” spoke Jane, soothingly, ever ready to extenuate her father. “And papa, you know, has been accustomed to exact implicit obedience in his own ship, just as if he were captain of a little kingdom.”
“I think the sailors must have had a fine time of it,” said Laura; and Jane forbore to inquire in what light she spoke it; she could ​not always be contending. “What was the jelly made of, Jane, calves’ feet, or cow-heel?”
“Cow-heel.”
“There! papa found it out, or thought he did though I am sure the nicest palate in the world cannot tell the difference, when it’s well flavoured with wine and lemon. He said he wondered at you, Jane, putting him off with cow-heel. I was obliged to tell him it was calves’ foot, just to pacify him.”
Jane Chesney sighed deeply. “Calves’ feet are so very dear!” she said. “I did it for the best. If papa only knew the difficulty I have to go on at all.”
“And any one but you would let him know of the difficulty,” boldly returned Laura. But Jane only shook her head.
“Jane, have you heard from Clarice lately?” resumed Laura.
Miss Chesney lifted her eyes, somewhat in surprise. “Had I heard, Laura, I should not be likely to keep the fact from you. Why do you ask that question?”
“Papa says that you heard from her on Tuesday: that you told him so. I said you had not heard, and he immediately accused me of wanting to hide the news from him.”
“Papa says I told him I had heard from Clarice!” repeated Jane Chesney in astonishment.
“He says that you told him you heard on Tuesday.”
“Why, what can have caused papa to fancy such a thing? Stay,” she added, as a recollection seemed to come to her, “I know how the mistake must have arisen, I mentioned Clarice’s name to papa, hoping that he might be induced to break the barrier of silence and speak of her. I said I thought we should soon be hearing from her. That was on Tuesday.”
“Why do you think we shall soon be hearing from her?”
“Because—because”—Miss Chesney spoke with marked hesitation—“I had on Monday night so extraordinary a dream. I feel sure we shall hear from her before long.”
Laura Chesney burst into a laugh. “Oh, Jane, you’ll make me die of laughter some day, with those dreams of yours. Let us hear what it was.”
“No, Laura; you would only ridicule it.”
Lucy Chesney stole up to her eldest sister.
“Jane, tell me, do tell me; I shall not ridicule it, and I like to hear dreams.”
Jane shook her head in that decisive manner from which Lucy knew there was no appeal.
“It was not a pleasant dream, Lucy, and I shall not tell it. I was thinking very much of Clarice on Tuesday, in consequence of the dream, and I mentioned her name before papa. That is how the misapprehension must have occurred.”
“Was the dream about her?” asked Laura; and Jane Chesney did not detect the covert irony of the tone.
“Yes. But I should be sorry to tell it to any one: in fact, I could not. It was a dreadful dream; an awful dream.”
They were interrupted. A maid-servant opened the drawing-room door and put her head in. Rather a surly-looking sort of head.
“Miss Chesney, here’s that coachman come again. He is asking to see the captain.”
“Captain Chesney is ill, and cannot see any one,” imperiously answered Laura before Jane could speak. “Tell him so, Rhode.”
“It’s of little good my telling him, Miss Laura. He declares that he’ll stop there all night, but what he’ll see the captain, or some of the family. He bade me go in, and not waste my breath over him, for he shouldn’t take an answer from me.”
“I will go to him, Rhode,” said Jane, in a faint voice. “O Laura,” she added, sinking into her chair again as the maid retired, “how sick these things make me! I could almost rather die, than see these creditors whom I cannot pay.”
At that moment Captain Chesney’s stick was heard in full play, and his voice with it, shouting for Jane. He brooked no delay when he called, and Jane knew that she must run to him. “He may keep me a long while, Laura; I do not know what it may be for—I do wish he would let me sit with him, to be at hand. Laura, could you, for once, go out to this man?”
“If I must, I must,” replied Laura Chesney; “but I’d rather go a mile the other way. Though indeed, Jane, I have no more right to be exempt from these unpleasantnesses than you.”
“You could not manage with them as I do; you would grow angry and haughty with them,” returned Jane, as she ran up-stairs.
“Coming, coming, coming, dear papa,” she called out, for the stick was clattering furiously.
Miss Laura Chesney proceeded down the gravel walk which swept round the lawn, and looked over the gate. There stood a respectable-looking man in a velveteen dress. He was the proprietor of a fly in the neighbourhood, which Captain Chesney had extensively patronised, being rather given to driving about the country; but the captain had not been found so ready to pay. Apart from his straitened means, Captain Chesney possessed a sailor’s proverbial carelessness with regard to money it was not so much that he ran ​wilfully into expense, as that he ran heedlessly into it. It never occurred to the captain, when he ordered the fly for an hour or two’s recreation, and would seat himself in state in it, his legs up on the seat before him, his stick in his hand, and one of his daughters by his side, that the time of settling must come. Very pleasant and sociable would he be with the driver, for there lived not a pleasanter man, when he pleased, than Captain Chesney; and the driver would lean down from his box and touch his hat, and tell about this place they were passing, and the other place. But the time of settling had come, was long past; a good deal of money was owing to the man, and he could not get it.
“Captain Chesney is ill; he cannot be seen,” began Laura, in a haughty, impatient tone, “Can you not take your answer?”
“I’ve took too many such answers, miss,” replied the applicant. “Here I come, day after day, week after week, and there’s always an excuse ready. ‘The captain’s out,’ or ‘the captain’s ill.’ It is time there was a end to it.”
“What do you want?” asked Laura.
“Want! why, my money. Look here, miss. I’m a poor man, with a wife and family to keep, and my wife sick a-bed. If I can’t get that money that the captain owes me, it’ll be the ruin of me; and have it I must and will.”
He spoke in a civil but yet in a determined tone. Laura wished from her very heart that she could pay him.
“Here you have been, miss, the captain and some of you ladies, always a-riding about in my fly, a-hindering me from letting it to other customers that would have paid me; and when I come to ask for my just due, nobody’s never at home to me.”
“Is it much?” asked Laura.
“It’s seven pound twelve shillings. Will you pay me, miss?”
She was startled to hear it was so much.
“I wish I could pay you,” she involuntarily exclaimed. "I have nothing to pay with.”
“Will you let me in then, to see Captain Chesney?”
“When I tell you he is ill, and cannot see you, I tell you truth,” replied Laura. “You must come when he is better.”
“Look here, miss,” said the man. “You won’t pay me; perhaps it’s true that you can’t; and you won’t let me in to see the captain, who could. So I’ll be obliged to you to give him a message from me. I’m very sorry to annoy any gentleman, tell him; but I must do it in self-defence; and now this is Thursday, and as true as that we two, miss, stand here, if the money is not paid me between this and twelve o’clock on Saturday, I’ll take out a summons against him for the debt.”
The man turned away as he spoke, and walked rapidly down the hill. Laura leaned on the gate, giving way to her vexation. She was not so often brought into contact with this sort of unpleasantness as Jane, and perhaps it was well she was not, for Laura would not have borne it placidly. She felt at that moment as if any asylum, any remote desert, would be a haven of rest, in comparison with her father’s home.
Suddenly she lifted her head, for one was approaching who had become to her dangerously dear, and she recognised the step. A rich damask flushed her cheek, her eyelids fell over her eyes that they might hide their loving light, and her hand trembled as it was taken by Mr. Carlton.
“My darling! were you watching for me?”
She neither said yes nor no; the bliss of meeting him, of being in his presence, of feeling her hand in contact with his, was all sufficient; rendering her far too confused to answer rationally.
And did Mr. Carlton love her? Yes, it has boen said so—loved her with a powerful and impassioned love. He had been a man of wayward passions, stopping at little which could promote their gratification, and perhaps there were some passages in his bygone life which he did not care to glance back at; but his heart had never been awakened to love—to pure, spiritualised love—until he knew Laura Chesney. For some little time now it had been his ardent desire, his purpose, to make her his wife; and for Mr. Carlton to will a thing was to do it. Laura anticipated strong objection from her father and her family. Mr. Carlton cared no more for such objection than for the idle wind.
“Papa has been so impatient for you, Lewis,” she murmured.
“Is he worse to-night?”
“Oh, no. But he is very irritable.”
“I did not intend to come in now,” remarked Mr. Carlton. “I have a call to make a little higher up, at Mrs. Newberry’s, and I thought I would take Captain Chesney on my return. I could remain longer by coming afterwards.”
“I think you had better just come in to papa first, if only for a few moments,” said Laura. “Perhaps,” she timidly added, “you can come in again when you have been to Mrs. Newberry’s?”
She touched the spring by which the gate was opened, a spring unknown to troublesome customers, and Mr. Carlton entered. He held out his arm to escort her to the house.
​“No, no,” she whispered, with a deep blush. “Jane is at the window.”
“So much the better, my dearest. Yes, Laura, I will have you take it,” he said with firmness, placing her hand within his arm. “You tell me you prefer that they should become acquainted with this by degrees, rather than that I should speak at once to Captain Chesney. But, Laura, I promise you one thing,—that I shall speak to him ere much more time has passed over our heads.”
Jane, who had merely been wanted for a minute by her father, was in the drawing-room again, and standing at the window with Lucy, when Laura advanced, leaning on the arm of Mr. Carlton. Jane’s face expressed its astonished disapprobation, and even the little girl was conscious that—according to the notions of the family—it ought not to have been.
“Jane, do you see Laura?”
“Laura is thoughtless, my dear. She forgets herself.”
Mr. Carlton went up-stairs at once to Captain Chesney. He did not stay; and in coming down stepped in at the open door of the drawing-room, Lucy ran from it as he entered, and Laura had evidently but that moment gone in. Miss Chesney returned his salutation coldly.
“You have made but a short visit to papa, Mr. Carlton,” she remarked.
“I am coming in again after I have seen a patient higher up,” he replied. “What an unfavourable day it has been!”
“Yes, it has. Do you know whether the inquest is over?” continued Jane, her reserve merging in her curiosity.
“It is only just over. And that is why my visit to Captain Chesney is so late this evening. They had me before them three or four times.”
“What is the verdict, Mr. Carlton?” asked Laura; and the reader may remark that while she had called him by his Christian name, had spoken familiarly, when they were alone, she was formal enough with him now, in the presence of her sister. Deceit! deceit! it never yet brought forth good fruit.
“Nothing satisfactory,” was the surgeon’s answer. “They found that the cause of death was the prussic acid in the draught; but how it got into it they deemed that there was no evidence to show.”
What should you have called “satisfactory?” asked Miss Chesney.
Mr. Carlton smiled, “When I say not satisfactory, I mean that the whole affair still lies in uncertainty.”
“Do you suspect any one yourself, Mr. Carlton?”
“Not of wilfully causing the death. But,” he added, in a more hesitating tone, “I have, of course, my own opinion.”
“That it occurred through the careless mistake of Mr. Stephen Grey?”
The surgeon nodded his head. “Through some mistake, undoubtedly; and it is impossible to look to any other quarter for it. But I should not care to express so much in public. It is not agreeable for a medical man to find himself obliged to cast reflection on a brother practitioner.”
“I do not see that there can be the slightest shade of doubt upon the point,” remarked Miss Chesney. “The medicine was taken straight from Mr. Stephen Grey’s hands to the sick room, therefore how else could it have got in? And your having smelt the prussic acid when the draught was brought up, is a sure proof that it must have been done in the mixing. Has anything come out about the poor young lady’s connections? who she was, or where she came from?”
“Not any thing,” replied Mr. Carlton, “They cannot even discover her Christian name.”
“And have you not found out who it was who recommended her to you, Mr. Carlton?” inquired Laura.
“I cannot find out at all. I wrote on Tuesday to the various friends in London whom I thought at all likely to have mentioned me, and have had answers from some of them to-day; but they deny all knowledge of Mrs. Crane. You see, there is great uncertainty in every way; for we are not even sure that she did come from London.”
Laura resumed. “It is said she was very beautiful. Was she so, Mr. Carlton?”
Mr. Carlton paused ere he gave his answer. “In health, and up and dressed, she may have been so; but I did not see her dressed, you know. I saw her only in bed, and by candlelight.”
He spoke the last final words as he crossed the hall to depart, for he was in haste to pay his visit to the house higher on the Rise.
(To be continued.)