# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 10/Lord Oakburn's daughters - Part 2

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LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS. BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."
CHAPTER III.—THE ENCOUNTER AT THE RAILWAY STATION.
“Hark! what hour can that be?”
The question came from Mrs. Crane. She had been dozing, and awoke with a start at the striking of the Widow Gould’s kitchen clock.
“It is eight, ma'am,” replied Judith from her seat near the bed.
“Eight! why, you told me the London train came in at seven.”
“To Great Wennock it does, or, rather, a quarter before it. The omnibus gets here about half-past seven. It is in, I know, ma'am, for I saw it taking a passenger through the town.”
“Then where can she be?—the—the person I sent for yesterday,” returned Mrs. Crane in excitement; “she would get the letter this morning, and might have come off at once. You are sure you posted it in time last night, Judith?”
“Quite sure, ma'am; but there will be another train in late to-night.”
Mrs. Crane lay for a little time in thought. Presently she spoke again: “Judith, do you think my baby will live?”
“I don’t see why it should not, ma'am. It is certainly very little, but it seems quite healthy. I think it would have a better chance if you would nurse it, instead of letting it be brought up by hand.”
“But I have told you I cannot,” said Mrs. Crane, and the tone bore a peremptory sound. “It would not be convenient to me. Mrs. Smith will see all about it when she comes, and it is on his account, poor little fellow, that I am impatient for her. I am so pleased it’s a boy.”
“Ma'am, do you think you ought to talk so much?” asked Judith.
“Why should I not?” quickly returned the invalid. “I am as well as well can be: Mr. Stephen Grey said this afternoon he wished all his patients did as well as I am doing. Judith, I am glad I had Mr. Stephen Grey. What a kind man he is! He did nothing but cheer me up from first to last.”
“I think that is the great secret why all Mr. Stephen’s patients like him so much,” observed Judith.
“I am sure I like him,” was the lady’s answer “Mr. Carlton could not have done better for me than he has done.”
The evening and night passed, bringing not the expected visitor, and the invalid began to display symptoms of restlessness. On the following morning Mrs. Smith arrived, having evidently travelled by the night-train. This was Sunday; the baby having been born early on the Saturday morning. At least, some one arrived; a hard-featured, middle-aged woman, who was supposed by the household to be the Mrs. Smith expected. Mrs. Crane did not say, and caused herself to be shut up with the stranger.
The sitting-room and bed-room, it has been remarked, communicated with each other. Each had also a door opening on to rather a spacious landing, spacious in proportion to the size of the house. At one end of this landing was a large window that looked out on the street; at the other end, opposite, was a closet, and the doors of the two rooms were on one side; the railings of the balustrades were opposite the doors. It is as well to explain this, as you will find later.
Mrs. Pepperfly and Judith sat in the front room, the sitting-room, the stranger being shut up with the invalid. Their voices could be heard in conversation, it almost seemed in dispute. Mrs. Smith’s tones were full of what sounded like a mixture of lamentation, complaint, persuasion, remonstrance; and the sick lady’s were angry and retorting. The nurse was of a constitution to take things coolly, but Judith was apprehensive for the effect of the excitement on the invalid. Neither of them liked to interfere, Mrs. Crane having peremptorily ordered them not to disturb her with her friend. Suddenly the door between the two rooms was thrown open, and this friend appeared.
The nurse was lying back idly in her chair, jogging the infant on her lap with all the might of her two knees, after the approved nurse fashion; Judith sat at the window crimping a little cap border with as silver knife. Mrs. Smith, who had taken off neither bonnet nor shawl, caught up the child, and carrying it to the window, examined its face attentively.
“It is not like her,” she remarked to Judith, jerking her head in the direction Of the bed-room.
“How can you judge yet awhile?” asked Judith. “It’s nothing but a poor little mite at present.”
“Mite? I never saw such a mite! One ​can hardly believe such an atom could be endowed with life.”
“You can’t expect a child born before its time to be a giant,” remarked Mrs. Pepperfly as she passed into the next room.
“Before its time, indeed!” irascibly echoed the stranger; “what business had she to be exposing herself to railway jerks and shaking omnibuses? Nasty dangerous things! The jolts of that omnibus sent me flying up to its top, and what must they have done by a slight young thing such as she is? Now, a mile of ruts to get over; now, a mile of flint stones! I think the commissioners of roads here must be all abed and asleep.”
“People are continually talking of the badness of the road between this and the Great Wennock Station,” observed Judith. “It is said that Mr. Carlton made a complaint to the authorities, telling them it was ruin to his horse and carriage to go over it. Then they had those flint stones laid down, and that has made it worse.”
“Who’s Mr. Carlton?”
“He is one of the medical gentlemen living down here.”
“And why couldn’t they attend to his complaint?”
“I suppose they did attend to it; they put the flint stones down in places afterwards, and they had done nothing to the road for years.”
“What has this child been fed on?” demanded Mrs. Smith, abruptly quitting the unsatisfactory subject of the roads.
“Barley-water and milk, half and half,” replied Judith. “It was a puzzle to Mrs. Pepperfly at first what to give it, as it’s so small.”
“I don’t like the look of her,” curtly returned the stranger, alluding to Mrs. Pepperfly.
“If we were all bought and sold by our looks, some of us would remain on hand, and she’s one,” said Judith. “But she has her wits about her; provided she keeps sober there’s not a better nurse living, and when people know her failing they can guard against it.”
“What are you? another nurse?”
“I am only a neighbour. But the lady took a fancy to me, and I said I would stop with her a few days. My home just now is at the next door, so I can run in and out. I am sure she is a lady,” added Judith.
“She is a lady born and bred, but she took and married as-as I think she ought not to have married. But she won’t hear a word said against him.”
“Will he be coming here?” continued Judith.
“It’s no business of mine whether he comes or not. They’ll do as they please, I suppose. Where’s this infant’s things? They must be made into a bundle; and some food prepared for it.”
“You are not going to take the baby away!” exclaimed Judith, looking all amazement.
“Indeed but I am. The trains don’t run thick on a Sunday; but there’s one leaves the station at seven, and I shall travel by it.”
“And you are thinking to take this little mortal all the way to London? said Judith, breathlesely.
“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t take it away, and there’s a cause why I should,” persisted Mrs. Smith; “whether it’s to London, or whether it’s elsewhere, is my affair, Wrapped in flannel and lying in my arms in a first-class carriage, it will take no more harm than in this room.”
Judith felt that it was not her place to interfere with Mrs. Crane’s arrangements, whatever they might be, or to put prying questions to the stranger before her, and she relapsed into silence.
“You were expected last night, ma'am,” said Mrs. Pepperfly, returning to the room from the inner chamber.
“I dare say,” was the curt answer, “but I couldn’t come. I travelled all night to come as soon as I did.”
“And you’ll travel all night again tonight?” questioned the nurse.
“It won’t kill me.”
At that moment Mr. Stephen Grey’s step was heard on the stairs. He went on at once to the bed-chamber by the direct door, not coming to the sitting—room; Mrs. Crane was flushed and feverish with excitement, and the surgeon saw it with surprise; he had left her so calm and well at his early visit that morning.
“What have you been doing to yourself?” he exclaimed.
“I feel a little hot,” was the answer, given in a half-contrite tone, “it is nothing; it will soon go off. The person I told you of is come, and she—she—" Mrs. Crane paused for a minute and then went on—“she lectured me upon being so imprudent as to travel, and I got angry with her.”
Mr. Stephen Grey looked vexed. “So sure as I have a patient going on unusually well, so sure does she go herself and upset it by some nonsensical folly or other. I will send you a composing draught; and now, my dear, understand me: I positively interdict all talking and excitement whatever for a day or two to come.”
​“Very well,” she answered in a tone of acquiescence. “But let me ask you one thing—can I have the baby baptised?”
“Baptised! why should you wish it baptised? It is not ill.”
“It is going away to-day to be nursed.”
“Have you heard of a fit person to undertake it?” he rejoined, never supposing but the baby was to he sent to some one in the vicinity. “I wish you would nurse it yourself, better for you, and the child too.”
“I told you that circumstances do not permit me to nurse it,” was her answer; “and I am sure my husband would not be pleased if I did. I wish it to he baptised before it goes away; perhaps there is some clergyman or curate in the town who would kindly come in and do it.”
“I can arrange that,” said Mr. Stephen. “Only you keep quiet. What is the young giant’s name to be?”
“I must think of that,” said Mrs. Crane.
However, later in the morning, when church was over, and the Reverend William Lycett, curate of St. Mark’s, called to perform the rite, Judith went down to him and said that the sick lady had changed her mind with regard to having it baptised so soon, and was sorry to have troubled him. So Mr. Lycett, with a kind hope that both the lady and baby were going on satisfactorily, went away again. The event had caused quite a commotion in the little town, and its particulars were known from one end of it to the other.
The omnibus, so often referred to, allowed itself half an hour to start and jolt over the unpromising two miles of road. When ordered to do so, it would call for any passengers in South Wennock who might be going by it, and it was so ordered to call for Mrs. Smith. At a quarter past six,—for it liked to give itself plenty of time,—it drew up at Mrs. Gould’s house in Palace Street, and Mrs. Smith stepped into it with two bundles: one bundle containing the baby, the other the baby’s clothes.
It happened that she was the only passenger that Sunday evening; the omnibus therefore, not having a full load, tore and jolted along to its heart’s content, pretty nearly shaking Mrs. Smith to pieces. In vain, when she dared free a hand for a moment, did she hammer at the windows and the roof; but her hands had full occupation, the one taking care of the breathing bundle, the other clasping hold of the cushions, the woodwork, any part to steady herself. In vain she shriekcd out to the driver that her brains were being shaken out of her, herself battered to atoms; the driver was a phlegmatic man and rarely paid attention to these complaints of his passengers. He knew, shaken or not, they must go by him, unless they had a private conveyance; and the knowledge made him independent. The consequence of all the speed and jolting on this particular evening was, that the omnibus arrived at the Great Wennock station unusually early, twenty minutes before the up-train would start, and five minutes before the down-train was expected in.
Mrs. Smith, vowing vengeance against the driver and the omnibus, declared she would lay a complaint, and bounced out to do so. But the clerk at the station—and there was only one on duty that Sunday evening, and he a very young man—aggravatingly laughed in Mrs. Smith’s face at the account she gave of her bruises, and said the omnibus had nothing to do with him. Mrs. Smith, overflowing with wrath, took herself and her bundles into the first-class waiting-room, and there sat down. The room opened on one side to the platform, and on the other to the road, lately the scene of Mrs. Smith’s unpleasant journey.
Five minutes, and the down-train came steaming in. Some five or six passengers alighted, not more; the English as a nation do not prefer Sundays for making long journeys, and the train went steaming on again. The passengers all dispersed, save one; they belonged to Great Wennock; that one crossed the line when it was clear and came into the waiting-room.
It was Mr. Carlton, the medical gentleman whom the sick lady had wished to employ. He was of middle height, slender, and looking younger than his years, which may have been seven or eight-and-twenty; his hair and complexion were fair, his eyes a light blue, his features regular. It was a well-looking face, but singularly impassive, and there was something in the expression of the thin and closely-compressed lips not pleasing to many an eye. Altogether his appearance was that of a gentleman in rather a remarkable degree.
Discerning some one sitting there in the dusky twilight,—for the station generally neglected to light up its waiting-rooms on a Sunday night,—he lifted his hat momentarily and walked straight across to the door of egress, where he stood gazing down the road. Nothing was to be seen save the omnibus drawn up close, its horses steaming still.
“Taylor,” said Mr. Carlton, as the railway clerk came out whistling and took a general view outside, having probably nothing else to do, “do you know whether my groom has been here with the carriage?”
“No, sir, not that I have seen; but we only opened the station five minutes ago.”
Mr. Carlton retraced his steps indoors, ​glancing keenly at the middle-aged woman seated there. She paid no attention to him; she was allowing her anger to effervesce. It was too dark for either to discern the features of the other; a loss not felt, as they were strangers. He went again to the door, propped himself against its post, and stood peering down the South Wennock road, softly whistling.
“Dobson,” he called out, as the driver of the omnibus came in sight to look after his patient horses, “did you see my servant anywhere as you came along? I sent him orders to be here to meet the train.”
“Naw sir, I didn’t see nothing on him,” was Dobson'e reply. “Like to take advantage of the ‘bus, sir?—it be a-going back empty.”
“No, thank you,” replied Mr. Carlton, some sarcasm in his tone. “You had the chance of bumping me to a jelly once; I don’t intend to give it you a second time.”
“That was afore I knowed who your was, sir. I don’t bump our gentry. I takes care of my driving when I’ve got any of them inside.”
“They may trust you if they will. If my carriage is not here shortly, I shall walk.”
Dobson, seeing no chance of a customer, ascended to his seat, whipped up his horses, and set off home; his hat bobbing upwards with his speed, and his omnibus flying behind him.
By this time it wanted ten minutes to seven: the period, as Mrs. Smith had been informed, when she could get her ticket. She deposited the live bundle at the very back of the wide sofa, and went to procure it. Mr. Carlton turned in at the door again, whistling still, when a faint, feeble cry was heard to proceed from the sofa.
It brought him and his whistling to a standstill. He stood looking at the sofa, wondering whether his ears had deceived him. The cry was repeated.
“Why, bless my heart, if I don’t believe it is a child!” he exclaimed
Approaching the sofa, he dived into the wrappings and flannels, and felt something warm and soft. He could not see; the obscurity was too great, although a distant lamp from the platform shed its rays partially in. Mr. Carlton drew some wax matches from his pocket; struck one, and held its light over the face of the child. He had rarely in his life seen so small a one, and the little thing begun to cry as Mrs. Smith come in.
“So you have woke up, have you!” cried she. “It’s an odd thing to me that you could sleep through the doings of that wicked omnibus. Come along, baby; five minutes yet before we get into the train.”
“I thought magic must be at work, to hear a human cry from what looked like a packet of clothes,” said Mr. Carlton. “I lighted a match to make sure whether it was a child or a rabbit.”
“It is as much like a rabbit as a child yet, poor little thing; I never saw such a baby born.”
“It is not at its full time,” observed Mr. Carlton.
“Full time!” repeated Mrs. Smith, who had by no means recovered the equanimity that had been shaken out of her, and resented the remark as an offence. “Who are you, young men, that you should offer your opinion to me? What do you know of infants, pray?”
“At least as much as you, my good lady,” was the answer, given with unruffled equanimity. “I have brought plenty of them into the world.”
“Oh, then, you are a doctor, I suppose,” she said, somewhat mollified.
“Yes, I am a doctor; and, as a doctor, I will tell you that little specimen of humanity is not fit to travel.”
“I don’t say it is; but necessity has to do many things without reference to fitness.”
“When was it born?”
“Yesterday morning. Sir, have you any influence in this neighbourhood?”
“Why do you ask?” returned Mr. Carlton.
“Because, if you have, I hope you will use it to put down that dangerous omnibus. The way it jolts and rattles over the road is enough to kill anybody who’s inside of it. I went by it to South Wennock this morning, and that was bad enough, as the other passengers could testify; but in coming back by it this evening I did really think I should have lost my life. Jolting one’s head up to the roof, taking one’s feet off the floor, jolting one’s body against the sides and seat! I shall be sore all over for a week to come; and the more I knocked and called, the faster the sinner drove. And I with this baby to protect all the while.”
“It is a shame,” replied Mr. Carlton. “What surprises me is, that South Wennock does not rise against it. There’ll be some serious result one of these days, and then it will be altered.”
“The serious result has come,” wrathfully returned Mrs. Smith. “A young lady, hardly fit to travel in an easy carriage, went in the omnibus to South Wennock last Friday, and, the consequence was the birth of this poor little infant.”
“Indeed! And what of her?”
“Well, she is going on all right, as it happens; but it might have been just the other way, you know.”
​“Mr. Carlton nodded. “One of the Messrs. Grey’s patients, I suppose? Was it young Mrs. Lipscome, of the Rise?”
“No, it was not, sir; and who it was don’t matter. Whether it was a lsdy-in-waiting to Queen Victoria or a poor peasant girl, the injury’s the same. And much that rascally omnibus cares.”
“Now then! Take seats for the up-train,” cried a man, thrusting in his head.
Mrs. Smith gathered her two bundles together, and went out. And Mr. Carlton crossed to the other door, for his ear had caught the sound of carriage wheels in the distance.
CHAPTER IV.AN ACCIDENT.
Dashing up with the speed of the omnibus came an open carriage, driven by a servant in livery. The man was the same who had been so supercilious to Judith Ford at Mr. Carlton’s residence; the carriage, a light, elegant vehicle, was the same spoken of by Mrs. Gould as the “cabrioily.”
Mr. Carlton stepped out of the station as it stopped, and peered at his servant, as well as the dusky night would permit. The man had transgressed against the rules of sobriety once or twice, and his master suspected the delay might have had its rise in the same cause now. But he seemed sober enough as he jumped down.
“What were the orders you received, Evan?”
“I’m very sorry to be late, sir; I can’t in the least make out how it was,” was the deprecating answer. “When I met the umnibus a-coming back, sir, I’m sure you might have knocked me down with a feather. I know I started in time, end-”
“No lie, Evan,” quietly interrupted Mr. Carlton. “You know you did not start in time.”
He motioned the man round to the other aside, ascending himself to the driver’s seat. It was not often Mr. Carlton took the reins; perhaps he still doubted his servant’s perfect sobriety on this night.
“You have not got the lamps lighted.”
“No, sir, I thought they’d not be wanted. And they wouldn’t be, neither, but for them clouds as is obscuring of the moon.”
Mr. Carlton drove off. Not quite with the reckless speed that characterised the omnibus, but pretty fast. The light carriage had good springs; those of the omnibus had probably been gone long ago. There was one smooth bit of road about midway between the two towns, and they had reached this, and were bowling along quickly, when, without any warning, the horse started violently and fell. Mr. Carlton and his man were both thrown out, and the shafts of the carriage were broken.
It was the work of an instant. One moment spinning along the road; the next, lying on it. Mr. Carlton was the first to rise. He was certainly shaken, and one of his legs seemed not quite free from pain; but there was no material damage. What had made the horse start he could not imagine; there was nothing to cause it, so far as he could see. Mr. Carlton went to his head and strove to raise him, but it was more than he could accomplish.
“Evan,” he called out.
There was no reply. Mr. Carlton turned to look for his man, and found him lying without motion on the ground. Evan appeared to be senseless.
“Well, this is a pretty state of things!” cried the surgeon aloud.
“What’s the to-do? What’s up?” exclaimed a voice in the rear. It came from a peasant woman who was approaching a gate that led to a roadside field. And at that moment the moon came out from behind its obscuring clouds, and threw its light upon the scene.
“Are there any men about?” asked Mr. Carlton. “I must have help.”
She shook her head. “There’s nobody about but me: my husband”—pointing to a hut just inside the gate-“is down with fever. Did the horse fall? Why—goodness save us! There’s a man a-lying there!”
“I must have help,” repeated Mr. Carlton. “Neither man nor horse can lie here.”
The woman stooped over the horse. “I don’t think he’s much hurt,” she said, after touching the animal here and there. “Some of them horses be as obstinate as mules after a fall, and won’t get up till it suits ’em to do it. May-be one of his legs be sprained. What caused it, sir?”
“That’s more than I know,” was the surgeon’s answer. “He was always sure-footed until to-night. His falling is to me perfectly inexplicable.”
The woman seemed to muse. She had left the horse, and was now regarding Evan. The man lay quite still, and she raised herself again.
“I don’t like them unaccountable accidents,” she observed in dreamy tone: “them accidents that come; and nobody can tell Why. They bode ill luck.”
“They bring ill luck enough, without boding it,” returned Mr. Carlton.
“They bode it too,” said the woman, with a nod of the head. “Take care, sir, that no ill happens to you in the next few hours or few days.”
“What ill should happen to me?” asked ​Mr. Carlton, smiling inwardly at the woman’s superstition.
“We can none of us tell beforehand, sir, what the ill hanging over us may be, or from what quarter it will come,” was the answer. “Perhaps you were going a journey?—I don’t know, sir, of course—or who you may be; but if you were, I should say halt in it, and turn aside from the road you were bound for.”
“My good woman, I do think you must be out of your mind!” exclaimed Mr. Carlton.
“No, I am not, sir: but perhaps I have observed more and keener than most folks do. I’m certain—I’m convinced by experience, that many of these accidents, these hindrances, are only warnings—if we was but wise enough to take ’em as such. You now, sir, were on your road to some place—"
“To South Wennock, a mile off,” interrupted Mr. Carlton, some satire in his tone.
“South Wennock; so be it, sir. Then what I’d say is, was I you I’d not go on to South Wennock: I’d rather turn myself round and go back whence I come. This may be sent as a warning to stop your journey there.”
But for the untoward and vexatious circumstances around him, the surgeon would have laughed outright. “Why, I live at South Wennock,” he exclaimed, raising his head from his man-servant, over whom it had been again bent. “But the question now is not what luck, good or ill, may be in store for me,” he added, turning to the horse, “but where and how I can get assistance. Here’s a helpless horse, and there’s a helpless man. First of all, can you bring me a little water.”
She went away without a word, and brought a brown pitcher full of it, and a small cup. Mr. Carlton took them from her.
“And now can you go to the Red Lion at South Wennock, and tell them to send the necessary aid?”
“I’m willing, sir. My husband won’t take no harm at being left: though it’s mighty ill he is.”
“Who attends him?”
“I’ve had nobody to him as yet. We poor folks can’t afford a doctor till things come to the very worst with us, and life’s almost on the ebb.”
“Which is unwise policy of you,” remarked Mr. Carlton. “Well, my good woman, you do this little service for me, and I’ll step in us soon as you bring assistance, and see what I can do for your husband.”
“Are you a doctor, sir?”
“I am. Let Mrs. Fitch send an easy carriage: and a couple of men had better come with it. But, I think as you do, that my horse is lying there in temper more than in real hurt.”
“Is he hurt, sir, do you think?” she asked, pointing to the men.
“I think he is only stunned. Make the best of your way for this help, there’s a good soul. Tell Mrs. Fitch it is for Mr. Carlton.”
The woman, strong and sturdy, strode away with a will that Mr. Carlton himself could not have surpassed, and was back again with all requisite aid, in a short space of time. Mr. Carlton had got his horse up then. It appeared to have sprained its leg, but to have received no other damage. Evan was still unconscious. The surgeon snatched a moment to go in and look at the women’s husband, whom he found suffering from low fever. He told her, if she would come to his house the following morning, he would give her certain medicines suitable for him.
Great commotion the damaged procession caused when it made its entry into South Wennock; greater commotion still at the dwelling of Mr. Carlton. The horse was led round to the stable and a veterinary surgeon sent for, and Mr. Carlton himself attended to his man. Evan had recovered consciousness during the journey, and his master found his injuries were but slight.
Mr. Carlton had remembered the value of appearance when he took this house,-one of more pretension than a young surgeon need have entered upon. On either side the entrance was a sitting-room: a rather fine staircase led above to o handsome drawing-room, and to spacious bed-rooms. The drawing-room and some of the bed-rooms were not furnished; but there was plenty of time for that.
Evan attended to, Mr. Carlton went down to the hall, and turned ine front; the other, a large low, bay window, looking on the garden, at the side of the house. Both the windows had the blinds drawn now, and the room was only lighted by fire. Mr. Carlton gave it a vigorous poke to stir it into a blaze, and rang the bell.
It was answered by a maid-servant, a respectable woman of middle age. This woman, Evan the groom, and a boy, comprised the household. The boy’s work was to carry out the medicines, and to stop in the surgery and answer callers at other times.
“I want Ben, Hannah.”
“Yes, sir; I’ll send him in. You’ll take something to eat, won’t you, sir?”
“I should like something; I have had nothing since breakfast this morning. What have you in the house?”
​“There’s cold beef, sir, and there’s———”
“That will do,” interrupted Mr. Carlton; “the cold beef. Send Ben here.”
Ben made his appearance: the same young gentleman who had been insolent to Judith Ford on the Friday evening. He stood before his master the very picture of humility.
“Any messages or letters for me, Ben?”
“There haven’t been any letters, sir,” was Ben’s answer. “Two or three folks have been in to see you, but they went away again when they found you were out. And there came a message yesterday from Captain Chesney, sir, and another from him this morning. He was worser, the black man said, and in a dreadful way at your being away; and he telled the man to say, that if you weren’t with him to day, he should call in Mr. Grey.”
“He may call in the deuce if he likes,” was Mr. Carlton’s answer, spoken in momentary irritation. “Is that all, Ben?”
“It’s all, sir.”
Ben might have said with more correctness all that he remembered. He withdrew, and Mr. Carlton stood a moment in thought. Then he went to the hall and caught up his hat, just as Hannah was coming from the kitchen at the back with a tray in her hand. She looked surprised to see her master going out, thinking he was waiting to take the refreshment.
“When I come back,” he said to her. “You can put it ready.”
He took his way to the Rise, intending to pay a visit to the gentleman who had sent the irritable messages, Captain Chesney. Some doctors might not have been so ready to go off at an inconvenience to a patient, whom they know perfectly well to be in no sort of danger: Mr. Carlton himself would certainly not, for his disposition was more of a haughty than a complaisant one; but he was swayed by a different motive from any connected with his profession.
About three months previously, Captain Chesney, a post-captain on half-pay, had settled at South Wennock, removing to it from the neighbourhood of Plymouth. The house he took was called Cedar Lodge, a small white villa, standing back from the high road amidst a wilderness of a garden. Not that it deserved the name, “wilderness,” from being badly kept, but on account of the thick shrubs and trees that crowded it. It was excellently kept; for the old naval captain was a precise man, and would insist on things being neat and nice about him, however short the money might run that kept them so. Like many another captain in our navy, his means were at all times lamentably low.
The captain had three daughters, Jane, Laura, and Lucy. There was a wide difference in their ages: as is frequently the case when the father of a family serves his country, whether by sea or by land, and his absences from home are of long duration: but there’s no time to notice these young ladies yet, and their turn will come.
Labouring under frequent attacks of gout, Captain Chesney'e naturally hot temper had grown irritable and more irritable. The gout perhaps was the chief cause: certainly the irritability was much more marked when the gout was upon him. Accident had led to his calling in Mr. Carlton. When the captain first arrived at South Wennock, he was suffering, and he sent out his black servant, Pompey, an attached man who had been with him for years, to “bring back a doctor.” Pompey, a stranger to the place, made his inquiries and arrived at the house of Mr. Grey. Mr. Grey and Mr. Stephen were both out; but their assistant promised Pompey that one of them should attend before the day closed; and it was then late in the afternoon. Pompey went back with the message, and it put the captain into one of his fits of irritation. A doctor he wanted at once, and a doctor he’d have: and Pompey was ordered out again to find another. He went direct to Mr. Carlton’s, having noted the plate upon the door in returning from Mr. Grey’s: “Mr. Lewis Carlton, Consulting Surgeon.” Mr. Carlton was at home, and from that hour to this had attended Captain Chesney. The captain during the winter had had attack upon attack, and Mr. Carlton had been in the house most days; had become, so to say, intimate with the family.
Mr. Carlton proceeded up the Rise. Captain Chesney’s house was on the right, about half-way up the hill. Opening the gate, a winding path between the thick trees took him to the house door; and it was only through that path that a glimpse of the road could be caught from the lower windows. Before those windows was a sloping green lawn, to which they opened; and a flower garden lay on the side of the house. It was a pretty place, though small; in every way, save for its size, fitted for the abode of a gentleman.
Mr. Carlton glanced at the sitting-room windows, and saw a faint glimmer of fire. But a bright light burnt in the room above, the chamber of Captain Chesney.
“Not home from church yet,” murmured Mr. Carlton to himself, as he rang the bell. “Miss Chesney generally goes to that late one at the other and of the town. I wonder if—all—are gone?”
The honest black face of Pompey shone with ​delight when he saw who was the visitor. “Massa had been talking, only then, of sending him off for the other doctor, Mr. Grey,” he whispered; and Mr. Carlton with a haughty throw-back of his own head as he heard it,—for, somewhat curious to say, this irritation on the part of his patient tended to render him irritable,—stepped upstairs to the captain’s room.
The captain was in bed. Mr. Carlton had just brought him through one of his worst attacks of gout, and he was really progressing towards convalescence as fast as he possibly could. There was no need whatever for Mr. Carlton or any other doctor to visit him; but it was always during the period of recovery that Captain Chesney was most impatient and irritable. He was a short man, as are most sailors, with a pair of brilliant brown eyes, overhanging grey eyebrows, and grey hair. The daughter who was sitting with him, Laura Chesney, and whom he despatched from the room when he heard the step of the surgeon, had just such eyes, as brilliant and as beautiful.
Mr. Carlton took his seat between the bed and the fire, facing Captain Chesney, and waiting until that gentleman’s explosive anger should be over, before he proceeded to question his patient professionally.
“I could not help myself, Captain Chesney,” he quietly said when there was a lull in the storm; and it may be remarked that in the presence of the captain, Mr. Carlton retained his own personal suavity unruffled, however provoking the captain’s tongue might be. “I received a telegraphic message from my father, desiring me to go to town without a moment’s delay if I wished to see him alive. The hasty note I sent to you explained this.”
“And I might have died!” growled the captain.
“Pardon me, sir. Far from dying, I knew you were not in the least danger. Had you been so in ever so slight a degree, I should have requested one of the Messrs. Grey to attend you for me.”
“Had you not come in to-night I should have sent for them myself,” retorted the captain. “It’s monstrous to suppose I am to lie here in this pain with no doctor to come near me.”
“But, Captain Chesney, I feel sure the pain is nothing like what it has been. Have you not been up to—day?”
“No, I have not been up. And I don’t choose to get up,” added the irritable captain.
“Well, we will have you up tomorrow, and you will be all the better for it,” said the surgeon soothingly.
“Ugh!” grunted the captain. “Did you find your father dead?”
“No. I am glad to say I found him a trifle better than he had been when they telegraphed for me. But his life, I think, cannot be much prolonged. The obligation to attend his summons promptly; to see him, if possible, before death, lay urgently upon me, Captain Chesney; for he and I had been at variance,” continued Mr. Carlton, vouchsafing a piece of confidence into which he was rarely betrayed.
It was nothing to Captain Chesney. His medical attendant was his medical attendant, and nothing else; none less likely than the haughty old man to make of him even a temporary friend.
“He has not been a good father to me,” resumed the surgeon, looking dreamily into the fire. “Anything but that. And I lost my mother when I was an infant. But for that loss I might be different from what I am.”
“Men in this life are mostly what their own actions make them, sir; without reference to their father and mother,” returned the captain in a hard tone.
“Ah,” said Mr. Carlton. “But I meant with regard to happiness. You don’t know what my childhood and youth were—wanting my mother. Had she lived, it would have been so different.”
“Is your father a poor man?” asked the captain, taking a momentary interest in the question.
“Oh dear no. He is a rich one. And I "—Mr. Carlton suddenly laid pointed emphasis on the words—“am his only son, his only child.”
“I think that physic ought to he changed.”
The remark recalled Mr. Carlton to the present. He stood up, reached the medicine bottle pointed to by Captain Chesney, and was the composed professional attendant again. A very few minutes, and the visit ceased.
As Mr. Carlton left the chamber, the captain caught hold of the silken ribbon tied to his bedstead, that communicated with the bell-rope, and rang a peel loud enough to awaken the seven sleepers. It was for Pompey to show the doctor out; and Pompey generally was favoured with this sort of peal.
Mr. Carlton closed the bed-room door, stepped along the corridor, and met a girl, young and beautiful, who appeared at the door of another room. It was Laura Chesney, and her luminous dark eyes were raised to Mr. Carlton as he took her hand, and then were dropped behind the dark lashes which closed on her hot cheek.
A hot cheek then; a cheek like a burning ​rose. That his presence called those blushes none could doubt; and in Mr. Carlton’s low tones, as he addressed her, there was a trembling tenderness which told its own tale. Never man loved woman more passionately than he, the surgeon, had learnt to love Laura Chesney.
“Oh, Laura! I did not expect this. I thought you were out.”
“No. Jane and Lucy went to church, but I stayed with papa. When did you return?” she softly whispered.
“To-night only. Laura!” he continued, his tone one of wild fervour, “to meet you thus, unlooked-for, seems like a sudden glimpse of heaven.”
One lingering pressure of the hands, and then Mr. Carlton was on his way down again, for Pompey had appeared on the scene. Laura listened for the closing of the hall door; for the last echoes of the footfalls on the gravel-path, footfalls that for her ear were as the sweetest music; and when they had died away to silence, she heaved a sobbing sigh, born of intense emotion, and stepped on to her father’s room.
Just as Mr. Carlton had gone through the gate, two ladies came up to it—or, rather, a lady and a little girl. He was passing them with merely a word of salutation, a lift of the hat, when the lady stopped, and addressed him in low and gentle tones.
“You are back then, Mr. Carlton. Have you seen papa?”
“I have been paying him a visit now, Miss Chesney. He is very considerably better. The pain has not gone, but I am sure it is nothing like what it was, even when I left. A day or two, and he will, I hope, be downstairs again.”
The little girl came round to him with a dancing step. “Mr. Carlton, I want you to get papa well soon. He has promised when he is well to take me out for a whole day’s holiday.”
“Very well, Miss Lucy,” answered the surgeon, in a merry tone. “I’ll get him well with all due speed, for the sake of your whole day’s holiday. Good night, young lady; good night, Miss Chesney.”
He held the gate open for them to pass through, lifted his hat again, closed the gate after them, and went on down the road. The moon had grown brilliantly bright, and he glanced up at it. Not in reality to look at it, for he had plunged into deep thought. The few words he had spoken to Captain Chesney had brought vividly before him his past life; its good and ill doings, its discomforts, its recklessness, its sins. His father, who was in the same profession as himself, a surgeon, in large practice in a populous but not desirable quarter of London, lying eastward, had been rather given to sins and recklessness himself, and no good example had our been placed before the boy, Lewis. Had his mother lived, as he remarked to Captain Chesney, things would have been widely different. Allowed to have his own way in childhood, allowed to have it in youth and in early manhood, insomuch as that no control or supervision was exercised over him, no fatherly guidance was extended to him, it was little wonder that he got into various dangers and difficulties; and, as a sequence, into displeasure with his father. When an array of debts was brought home to stare old Mr. Carlton in the face, he flew into a terrible passion, and swore that he would not pay them. A half peace was patched up after a while; the debts were settled, and Mr. Carlton the younger established himself at South Wennock; but the father and son still continued much at variance, no cordiality existing between them. Now the thing was altered. Mr. Carlton senior on a bed of sickness was quite a different man from Mr. Carlton in rude health, and he had allowed himself to be fully reconciled to his son. He had shown him his will, in which he, Lewis, who named sole heir; and he had hinted at the good round sum laid by in bank securities. And Mr. Carlton stepped on now, dreaming a glowing dream; a dream that had become the one wild hope of his life—a marriage with Laura Chesney.
His supper was laid ready when he got home. Before sitting down to it, he drew three or four letters from his pocket, took them from the envelopes, and began to look over them as if for the purpose of sorting.
“I must keep that,” he said to himself, glancing down the writing of the one; “these I suppose may be burnt. Stay, though—I’ll have my supper first.”
He sat down before the tray and cut himself wine meat. Barely had he begun to eat it when Ben came in with a face of contrition, holding a note in his hand.
“What now, boy?” asked Mr. Carlton.
“I’m sorry I forgot it, air, when you asked me. I put it in the letter-rack in the surgery, and it clean slipped my memory. It was brought here, sir, the same night that you went away.”
Mr. Carlton, laying down his knife and fork, opened the note and ran his eyes over its contents. Ben, who had gone away, heard his master shouting to him.—
“Come beck, sir! Who brought this?”
Ben could not tell who brought it: except ​that it was a woman with a big bonnet on; a bonnet as big as a house.
Mr. Carlton read the note again, read it attentively. Then he rose, hastily sorted the letters on the table, putting the one which he wished to preserve into its envelope, and throwing the rest indiscriminately into the fire. "I'll take this down at once and then it will be safe," he said to himself, alluding to the letter he had preserved. "If I don't keep it as a proof, the old man, when he gets well, may be for saying that he never wrote it."
The "old man" thus somewhat irreverently alluded to, was Mr. Carlton's father. Mr. Carlton carried the letter down-stairs to a private safe and locked it up. When he returned to the sitting-room he put his hand in his pocket for the note just brought to him by his servant-boy, and could not find it. It was not in any of his pockets, it was not on the table; and Mr. Carlton came to the conclusion that he had burnt it with the rest.
"How stupid I am!" he exclaimed. "What was the number, now? Thirteen, I think. Thirteen, Palace Street. Yes, that was it."
He passed into the hall without further delay, put on his hat, and left the house. Hannah heard him, and went into the parlour to remove the tray.
"I never see such patients as his!" she exclaimed wrathfully, when she found her master's supper had been interrupted midway. "They can't even let him get his meals in peace."
(To be continued.)