Miss Carlyle, having resolved upon her course, quitted her own house, and removed to East Lynne with Peter and her handmaidens. In spite of Mr. Dill’s grieved remonstrances, she discharged the servants whom Mr. Carlyle had engaged, all save one man.
On a Friday night, about a month after the wedding, Mr. Carlyle and his wife came home. They were expected, and Miss Carlyle went through the hall to receive them, and stood on the upper steps, between the pillars of the portico. An elegant chariot with four post-horses was drawing up. Miss Carlyle compressed her lips as she scanned it. She was attired in a handsome dark silk dress and a new cap; her anger had had time to cool down in the last month, and her strong common sense told her that the wiser plan would be to make the best of it. Mr. Carlyle came up the steps with Isabel.
“You here, Cornelia! That was kind. How are you? Isabel, this is my sister.”
Lady Isabel put forth her hand, and Miss Carlyle condescended to touch the tips of her fingers. “I hope you are well, ma’am,” she jerked out.
Mr. Carlyle left them together, and went back to search for some trifles which had been left in the carriage. Miss Carlyle led the way to a sitting-room, where the supper-tray was laid. “You would like to go upstairs and take your things off before upper, ma’am?” she said, in the same jerking tone to Lady Isabel.
“Thank you. I will go to my rooms, but I do not require supper. We have dined.”
“Then what would you like to take?” asked Miss Corny.
“Some tea, if you please, I am very thirsty.”
“Tea!” ejaculated Miss Corny. “So late as this! I don’t know that they have boiling water. You’d never sleep a wink all night, ma’am, if you took tea at eleven o’clock.”
“Oh, then, never mind,” replied Lady Isabel. “It is of no consequence. Do not let me give trouble.”
Miss Carlyle whisked out of the room; upon what errand was best known to herself; and in the hall she and Marvel came to an encounter. No words passed, but each eyed the other grimly. Marvel was very stylish, with five flounces to her dress, a veil, and a parasol. Meanwhile, Lady Isabel sat down and burst into bitter tears and sobs. A chill had come over her; it did not seem like coming to East Lynne. Mr. Carlyle entered and witnessed the grief.
“Isabel!” he uttered in amazement, as he hastened up to her. “My darling, what ails you?”
“I am tired, I think,” she gently answered; “and coming into the house again made me think of papa. I should like to go to my rooms, Archibald, but I don’t know which they are.”
Neither did Mr. Carlyle know, but Miss Carlyle came whisking in again, and said: “The best rooms; those next the library. Should she go up with my lady?”
Mr. Carlyle preferred to go himself, and he held out his arm to Isabel. She drew her veil over her face as she passed Miss Carlyle.
The branches were not lighted, and the room looked cold and comfortless. “Things seem all sixes and sevens in the house,” remarked Mr. Carlyle. “I fancy the servants must have misunderstood my letter, and not have expected us until tomorrow night.”
On returning to the sitting-room Mr. Carlyle inquired the cause of the servants’ negligence.
“I sent them away because they were superfluous encumbrances,” hastily replied Miss Carlyle. “We have four in the house, and my lady has brought a fine maid, I see, making five. I have come up here to live.”
Mr. Carlyle felt checkmated. He had always bowed to the will of Miss Corny, but he had an idea that he and his wife should be better without her. “And your house?” he exclaimed.
“I have let it furnished; the people enter today. So you cannot turn me out of East Lynne into the road, or to furnished lodgings, Archibald. There’ll be enough expense without our keeping on two houses; and most people in your place would jump at the prospect of my living here. Your wife will be mistress. I do not intend to take her honors from her; but I will save her a world of trouble in management—be as useful to her as a housekeeper. She will be glad of that, inexperienced as she is. I dare say she never gave a domestic order in her life.”
This was a view of the case, to Mr. Carlyle, so plausibly put, that he began to think it might be all for the best. He had great reverence for his sister’s judgment; force of habit is strong upon all of us. Still he did not know.
“Did you buy that fine piano which has arrived?” angrily asked Miss Carlyle.
“It was my present to Isabel.”
Miss Corny groaned. “What did it cost?”
“The cost is of no consequence. The old piano here was a bad one, and I bought a better.”
“What did it cost?” repeated Miss Carlyle.
“A hundred and twenty guineas,” he answered. Obedience to her will was yet powerful within him.
Miss Corny threw up her hands and eyes. But at that moment Peter entered with some hot water which his master had rung for. Mr. Carlyle rose and looked on the side-board.
“Where is the wine, Peter?”
The servant put it out, port and sherry. Mr. Carlyle drank a glass, and then proceeded to mix some wine and water. “Shall I mix some for you, Cornelia?” he asked.
“I’ll mix for myself if I want any. Who’s that for?”
“Isabel.”
He quitted the room, carrying the wine and water, and entered his wife’s. She was sitting half buried, it seemed, in the arm-chair, her face muffled up. As she raised it, he saw that it was flushed and agitated; that her eyes were bright, and her frame was trembling.
“What is the matter?” he hastily asked.
“I got nervous after Marvel went,” she whispered, laying hold of him, as if for protection from terror. “I came back to the chair and covered my head over, hoping some one would come up.”
“I have been talking to Cornelia. But what made you nervous?”
“Oh! I was very foolish. I kept thinking of frightful things. They would come into my mind. Do not blame me, Archibald. This is the room papa died in.”
“Blame you, my darling,” he uttered with deep feeling.
“I thought of a dreadful story about the bats, that the servants told—I dare say you never heard it; and I kept thinking. ‘Suppose they were at the windows now, behind the blinds.’ And then I was afraid to look at the bed; I fancied I might see—you are laughing!”
Yes, he was smiling; for he knew that these moments of nervous fear are best met jestingly. He made her drink the wine and water, and then he showed her where the bell was, ringing it as he did so. Its position had been changed in some late alterations to the house.
“Your rooms shall be changed tomorrow, Isabel.”
“No, let us remain in these. I shall like to feel that papa was once their occupant. I won’t get nervous again.”
But, even as she spoke, her actions belied her words. Mr. Carlyle had gone to the door and opened it, and she flew close up to him, cowering behind him.
“Shall you be gone very long, Archibald?” she whispered.
“Not more than an hour,” he answered. But he hastily put back one of his hands, and held her tightly in his protecting grasp. Marvel was coming along the corridor in answer to the ring.
“Have the goodness to let Miss Carlyle know that I am not coming down again to-night,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Carlyle shut the door, and then looked at his wife and laughed. “He is very kind to me,” thought Isabel.
With the morning began the perplexities of Lady Isabel Carlyle. But, first of all, just fancy the group at breakfast. Miss Carlyle descended in the startling costume the reader has seen, took her seat at the breakfast-table, and there sat bolt upright. Mr. Carlyle came down next; and then Lady Isabel entered, in an elegant half-mourning dress, with flowing black ribbons.
“Good morning, ma’am. I hope you slept well,” was Miss Carlyle’s salutation.
“Quite well, thank you,” she answered, as she took her seat opposite Miss Carlyle. Miss Carlyle pointed to the top of the table.
“That is your place, ma’am; but I will pour out the coffee, and save you the trouble, if you wish it.”
“I should be glad if you would,” answered Lady Isabel.
So Miss Carlyle proceeded to her duties, very stern and grim. The meal was nearly over, when Peter came in, and said the butcher had come up for orders. Miss Carlyle looked at Lady Isabel, waiting, of course, for her to give them. Isabel was silent with perplexity; she had never given such an order in her life. Totally ignorant was she of the requirements of a household; and did not know whether to suggest a few pounds of meat or a whole cow. It was the presence of that grim Miss Corny which put her out. Alone with her husband she would have said, “What ought I to order, Archibald? Tell me.” Peter waited.
“A——Something to roast and boil, if you please,” stammered Lady Isabel.
She spoke in a low tone. Embarrassment makes cowards of us; and Mr. Carlyle repeated it after her. He knew no more about housekeeping than she did.
“Something to roast and boil, tell the man, Peter.”
Up started Miss Corny; she could not stand that. “Are you aware, Lady Isabel, that an order such as that would only puzzle the butcher? Shall I give the necessary orders for today? The fishmonger will be here presently!”
“Oh, I wish you would!” cried the relieved Lady Isabel. “I have not been accustomed to it, but I must learn. I don’t think I know anything about housekeeping.”
Miss Corny’s answer was to stalk from the room. Isabel rose from her chair, like a bird released from its cage, and stood by his side. “Have you finished, Archibald?”
“I think I have, dear. Oh! Here’s my coffee. There; I have finished now.”
“Let us go around the grounds.”
He rose, laid his hands playfully on her slender waist, and looked at her. “You may as well ask me to take a journey to the moon. It is past nine, and I have not been to the office for a month.”
The tears rose in her eyes. “I wish you would be always with me! East Lynne will not be East Lynne without you.”
“I will be with you as much as ever I can, my dearest,” he whispered. “Come and walk with me through the park.”
She ran for her bonnet, gloves and parasol. Mr. Carlyle waited for her in the hall, and they went out together.
He thought it a good opportunity to speak about his sister. “She wishes to remain with us,” he said. “I do not know what to decide. On the one hand I think she might save you the worry of household management; on the other, I fancy we shall be happier by ourselves.”
Isabel’s heart sank within her at the idea of that stern Miss Corny, mounted over her as resident guard; but, refined and sensitive, almost painfully considerate of the feelings of others, she raised no word of objection. “As you and Miss Carlyle please,” she answered.
“Isabel,” he said, “I wish it to be as you please; I wish matters to be arranged as may best please you: and I will have them so arranged. My chief object in life now is your happiness.”
He spoke in all the sincerity of truth, and Isabel knew it: and the thought came across her that with him by her side, her loving protector, Miss Carlyle could not mar her life’s peace. “Let her stay, Archibald; she will not incommode us.”
“At any rate it can be tried for a month or two, and we shall see how it works,” he musingly observed.
They reached the park gates. “I wish I could go with you and be your clerk,” she cried, unwilling to release his hand. “I should not have all that long way to go back by myself.”
He laughed and shook his head, telling her that she wanted to bribe him into taking her back, but it could not be. And away he went, after saying farewell.
Isabel wandered back, and then wandered through the rooms; they looked lovely; not as they had seemed to look in her father’s time. In her dressing-room knelt Marvel, unpacking. She rose when Lady Isabel entered.
“Can I speak to you a moment, if you please my lady?”
“What is it?”
Then Marvel poured forth her tale. That she feared so small an establishment would not suit her, and if my lady pleased, she would like to leave at once—that day. Anticipating it, she had not unpacked her things.
“There has been some mistake about the servants, Marvel, but it will be remedied as soon as possible. And I told you before I married that Mr. Carlyle’s establishment would be a limited one.”
“My lady perhaps I could put up with that; but I never could stop in the house with—” “that female Guy” had been on the tip of Marvel’s tongue, but she remembered in time of whom she was speaking—“with Miss Carlyle. I fear, my lady, we have both got tempers that would slash, and might be flying at each other. I could not stop, my lady, for untold gold. And if you please to make me forfeit my running month’s salary, why I must do it. So when I have set your ladyship’s things to rights, I hope you’ll allow me to go.”
Lady Isabel would not condescend to ask her to remain, but she wondered how she should manage the inconvenience. She drew her desk toward her. “What is the amount due to you?” she inquired, as she unlocked it.
“Up to the end of the quarter, my lady?” cried Marvel, in a brisk tone.
“No,” coldly answered Lady Isabel. “Up to today.”
“I have not had time to reckon, my lady.”
Lady Isabel took a pencil and paper, made out the account, and laid it down in gold and silver on the table. “It is more than you deserve, Marvel,” she remarked, “and more than you would get in most places. You ought to have given me proper notice.”
Marvel melted into tears, and began a string of excuses. “She should never have wished to leave so kind a lady, but for attendant ill-conveniences, and she hoped my lady would not object to testify to her character.”
Lady Isabel quitted the room in the midst of it; and in the course of the day Marvel took her departure, Joyce telling her that she ought to be ashamed of herself.
“I couldn’t help myself,” retorted Marvel, “and I am sorry to leave her, for she’s a pleasant young lady to serve.”
“Well, I know I’d have helped myself,” was Joyce’s remark. “I would not go off in this unhandsome way from a good mistress.”
“Perhaps you wouldn’t,” loftily returned Marvel, “but my inside feelings are delicate and can’t bear to be trampled upon. The same house is not going to hold me and that tall female image, who’s more fit to be carried about at a foreign carnival than some that they do carry.”
So Marvel left. And when Lady Isabel went to her room to dress for dinner, Joyce entered it.
“I am not much accustomed to a lady’s maid’s duties,” began she, “but Miss Carlyle has sent me, my lady, to do what I can for you, if you will allow me.”
Isabel thought it was kind of Miss Carlyle.
“And if you please to trust me with the keys of your things, I will take charge of them for you, my lady, until you are suited with a maid,” Joyce resumed.
“I don’t know anything about the keys,” answered Isabel; “I never keep them.”
Joyce did her best, and Lady Isabel went down. It was nearly six o’clock, the dinner hour, and she strolled to the park gates, hoping to meet Mr. Carlyle. Taking a few steps out, she looked down the road, but could not see him coming; so she turned in again, and sat down under a shady tree out of view of the road. It was remarkably warm weather for the closing days of May.
Half an hour, and then Mr. Carlyle came pelting up, passed the gates, and turned on to the grass. There he saw his wife. She had fallen asleep, her head leaning against the trunk of a tree. Her bonnet and parasol lay at her feet, her scarf had dropped, and she looked like a lovely child, her lips partly open, her cheeks flushed, and her beautiful hair falling around. It was an exquisite picture, and his heart beat quicker within him as he felt that it was all his own. A smile stole to his lips as he stood looking at her. She opened her eyes, and for a minute could not remember where she was. Then she started up.
“Oh, Archibald! Have I been asleep?”
“Ay; and might have been stolen and carried off. I could not afford that, Isabel.”
“I don’t know how it came about. I was listening for you.”
“What have you been doing all day?” he asked, as he drew her arm within his, and they walked on.
“Oh, I hardly know,” she sighed. “Trying the new piano, and looking at my watch, wishing the time would go quicker, that you might come home. The ponies and carriage have arrived, Archibald.”
“I know they have, my dear. Have you been out of doors much?”
“No, I waited for you.” And then she told him about Marvel. He felt vexed, saying she must replace her with all speed. Isabel said she knew of one, a young woman who had left Lady Mount Severn while she, Isabel, was at Castle Marling; her health was delicate, and Lady Mount Severn’s place too hard for her. She might suit.
“Write to her,” said Mr. Carlyle.
The carriage came round—a beautiful little equipage—and Isabel was ready. As Mr. Carlyle drove slowly down the dusty road, they came upon Miss Corny, striding along in the sun with a great umbrella over her head. She would not turn to look at them.
Once more, as in the year gone by, St. Jude’s Church was in a flutter of expectation. It expected to see a whole paraphernalia of bridal finery, and again it was doomed to disappointment, for Isabel had not put off the mourning for her father. She was in black—a thin gauze dress—and her white bonnet had small black flowers inside and out. For the first time in his life, Mr. Carlyle took possession of the pew belonging to East Lynne, filling the place where the poor earl used to sit. Not so Miss Corny—she sat in her own.
Barbara was there with the Justice and Mrs. Hare. Her face wore a gray, dusky hue, of which she was only too conscious, but could not subdue. Her covetous eyes would wander to that other face, with its singular loveliness and its sweetly earnest eyes, sheltered under the protection of him for whose sheltering protection she had so long yearned. Poor Barbara did not benefit much by the services that day.
Afterward they went across the churchyard to the west corner, where stood the tomb of Lord Mount Severn. Isabel looked at the inscription, her veil shading her face.
“Not here, and now, my darling,” he whispered, pressing her arm to his side, for he felt her silent sobs. “Strive for calmness.”
“It seems but the other day he was at church with me, and now—here!”
Mr. Carlyle suddenly changed their places, so that they stood with their backs to the hedge, and to any staring stragglers who might be lingering on the road.
“There ought to be railings round the tomb,” she presently said, after a successful battle with her emotion.
“I thought so, and I suggested it to Lord Mount Severn but he appeared to think differently. I will have it done.”
“I put you to great expense,” she said, “taking one thing with another.”
Mr. Carlyle glanced quickly at her, a dim fear penetrating his mind that his sister might have been talking in her hearing. “An expense I would not be without for the whole world. You know it, Isabel.”
“And I have nothing to repay you with,” she sighed.
He looked expressively amused, and, gazing into her face, the expression of his eyes made her smile. “Here is John with the carriage,” she exclaimed. “Let us go, Archibald.”
Standing outside the gates, talking to the rector’s family, were several ladies, one of them Barbara Hare. She watched Mr. Carlyle place his wife in the carriage; she watched him drive away. Barbara’s lips were white, as she bowed in return to his greeting.
“The heat is so great!” murmured Barbara, when those around noticed her paleness.
“Ah! You ought to have gone in the phaeton, with Mr. and Mrs. Hare as they desired you.”
“I wished to walk,” returned the unhappy Barbara.
“What a pretty girl that is!” uttered Lady Isabel to her husband. “What is her name?”
“Barbara Hare.”
The county carriages began to pour to East Lynne, to pay the wedding visit, as it is called, to Mr. and Lady Isabel Carlyle. Of course they displayed themselves in their most courtly state. Mr. Carlyle, always a popular man, had gained double his former importance by his marriage with the daughter of the late Earl of Mount Severn. Among the earliest visitors went Justice and Mrs. Hare, with Barbara.
Isabel was in her dressing-gown, attended by Joyce, whom she was just asking to take the place of her late maid, if Miss Carlyle would consent to the transfer.
Joyce’s face lighted up with pleasure at the proposal. “Oh, my lady, you are very kind! I should so like it! I would serve you faithfully to the best of my ability.”
Isabel laughed. “But Miss Carlyle may not be inclined to transfer you.”
“I think she would be, my lady. She said a day or two ago, that I appeared to suit you, and you might have me altogether if you wished, provided I could still make her gowns. I make them to please her, you see, my lady.”
“Do you make her caps also?” demurely asked Lady Isabel.
Joyce smiled. “Yes, my lady; but I am allowed to make them only according to her own pattern.”
“Joyce, if you become my maid, you must wear smarter caps yourself. I do not wish you to be fine like Marvel.”
“Oh, my lady! I shall never be fine,” shuddered Joyce. And Joyce believed she had cause to shudder at finery.
She was about to speak further, when a knock came to the dressing-room door. Joyce went to open it, and saw one of the housemaids, a girl who had recently been engaged, a native of West Lynne. Isabel heard the colloquy,—
“Is my lady there?”
“Yes.”
“Some visitors. Pete ordered me to come and tell you. I say, Joyce, it’s the Hares. And she’s with them. I watched her get out of the carriage.”
“Who?” sharply returned Joyce.
“Why, Miss Barbara. Only fancy her coming to pay the wedding visit here. My lady had better take care that she don’t get a bowl of poison mixed for her. Master’s out or else I’d have given a shilling to see the interview between the three.”
Joyce sent the girl away, shut the door, and turned to her mistress, quite unconscious that the half-whispered conversation had been audible.
“Some visitors are in the drawing-room, my lady, Susan says. Mr. Justice Hare and Mrs. Hare and Miss Barbara.”
Isabel descended, her mind full of the mysterious words spoken by Susan. The justice was in a new flaxen wig, obstinate-looking and pompous; Mrs. Hare, pale, delicate, and lady-like; Barbara beautiful; such was the impression they made upon Isabel.
They paid rather a long visit, Isabel quite falling in love with the gentle and suffering Mrs. Hare, and had risen to leave when Miss Carlyle entered. She wished them to remain longer—had something, she said, to show Barbara. The justice declined; he had a brother justice coming to dine with him at five, and it was then half-past four. Barbara might stop if she liked.
Barbara’s faced turned crimson; but nevertheless she accepted the invitation, immediately proffered her by Miss Carlyle to remain at East Lynne for the rest of the day.
Dinner time approached, and Isabel went to dress for it. Joyce was waiting, and entered upon the subject of the service.
“My lady, I have spoken to Miss Carlyle, and she is willing that I should be transferred to you, but she says I ought first to acquaint you with certain unpleasant facts in my history, and the same thought had occurred to me. Miss Carlyle is not over pleasant in manner, my lady, but she is very upright and just.”
“What facts?” asked Lady Isabel, sitting down to have her hair brushed.
“My lady, I’ll tell you as shortly as it can. My father was a clerk in Mr. Carlyle’s office—of course I mean the late Mr. Carlyle. My mother died when I was eight years old, and my father afterwards married again, a sister of Mr. Kane’s wife—”
“Mr. Kane, the music master?”
“Yes, my lady. She and Mrs. Kane were quite ladies; had been governesses. People said she lowered herself greatly in marrying my father. However, they did marry, and at the end of the year my little sister Afy was born. We lived in a pretty cottage in the wood and were happy. But in twelve months more my step-mother died, and an aunt of hers adopted Afy. I lived with my father, going to school, then to learn dressmaking, and finally going out to work to ladies’ houses. After many years. Afy came home. Her aunt had died and her income with her, but not the vanity and love of finery that Afy had acquired. She did nothing but dress herself and read novels. My father was angry; he said no good could come of it. She had several admirers, Mr. Richard Hare, Miss Barbara’s own brother,” continued Joyce, lowering her voice, “and she flirted with them all. My father used to go out to shoot on fine evenings after office, or to his duties as secretary to the library, and so Afy was generally all alone until I came home at nine o’clock; and was free to flirt with her beaux.”
“Had she any she favored particularly, was it thought?” asked Lady Isabel.
“The chief one, my lady, was Richard Hare. She got acquainted with somebody else, a stranger, who used to ride over from a distance to see her; but I fancy there was nothing in it—Richard was the one. And it went on till—till—he killed her father.”
“Who?” uttered the startled Isabel.
“Richard Hare, my lady. Father had told Afy that Mr. Richard should not come there any longer, for when gentlemen go in secret after poor girls, it’s well known they have not got marriage in their thoughts; father would have interfered more than he did, but that he judged well of Mr. Richard, and did not think he was one to do Afy real harm,—but he did not know how flighty she was. However, one day he heard people talk about it in West Lynne, coupling her name and Mr. Richard’s offensively together, and at night he told Afy, before me, that it should not go on any longer, and she must not encourage him. My lady, the next night Richard Hare shot my father.”
“How very dreadful!”
“Whether it was done on purpose, or that they had a scuffle, and the gun went off accidentally and killed my father, no one can tell. Afy said she had been in the woods at the back of the house, and when she came in, father lay dead, and Mr. Locksley was standing over him. He said he had heard the shot, and come up just in time to see Richard fly from the house, his shoes covered with blood. He has never been heard of since; but there is a judgment of murder out against him; and the fear and shame is killing his mother by inches.”
“And Afy?”
“The worst is to come my lady. Afy followed him directly after the inquest, and nothing has been known since of either of them. I was taken ill, after all these shocks, with nervous fever, and Miss Carlyle took care of me, and I have remained with her ever since. This was what I had to tell you, my lady, before you decided to take me into service; it is not every lady who would like to engage one whose sister has turned out so badly.”
Lady Isabel did not see that it could make any difference, or that it ought to. She said so; and then leaned back in her chair and mused.
“What dress, my lady?”
“Joyce, what was that I heard you and Susan gossiping over at the door?” Lady Isabel suddenly asked. “About Miss Hare giving me a bowl of poison. Something in the dramatic line that would be. You should tell Susan not to make her whispers so loud.”
“It was only a bit of nonsense, my lady. These ignorant servants will talk; and every one at West Lynne knew Miss Barbara was in love with Mr. Carlyle. But I don’t fancy she would have been the one to make him happy with all her love.”
A hot flush passed over the brow of Lady Isabel; a sensation very like jealousy flew to her heart. No woman likes to hear of another’s being, or having been attached to her husband: a doubt always arises whether the feeling may not have been reciprocated.
Lady Isabel descended. She wore a costly black lace dress, its low body and sleeves trimmed with as costly white; and ornaments of jet. She looked inexpressibly beautiful, and Barbara turned from her with a feeling of sinking jealousy, from her beauty, from her attire, even from the fine, soft handkerchief, which displayed the badge of her rank—the coronet of an earl’s daughter. Barbara looked well, too; she was in a light blue silk robe, and her pretty cheeks were damask with her mind’s excitement. On her neck she wore the gold chain given her by Mr. Carlyle—strange that she had not discarded that.
They stood together at the window, looking at Mr. Carlyle as he came up the avenue. He saw them, and nodded. Lady Isabel watched the damask cheeks turn to crimson at sight of him.
“How do you do, Barbara?” he cried, as he shook hands. “Come to pay us a visit at last? You have been rather tardy over it. And how are you, my darling?” he whispered over his wife; but she missed his kiss of greeting. Well, would she have had him give it her in public? No; but she was in the mood to notice the omission.
Dinner over, Miss Carlyle beguiled Barbara out of doors. Barbara would far rather have remained in his presence. Of course they discussed Lady Isabel.
“How do you like her?” abruptly asked Barbara, alluding to Lady Isabel.
“Better than I thought I should,” acknowledged Miss Carlyle. “I had expected airs and graces and pretence, and I must say she is free from them. She seems quite wrapped up in Archibald and watches for his coming home like a cat watches for a mouse. She is dull without him.”
Barbara compelled her manner to indifference. “I suppose it is natural.”
“I suppose it is absurd,” was the retort of Miss Carlyle. “I give them little of my company, especially in an evening. They go strolling out together, or she sings to him, he hanging over her as if she were of gold: to judge by appearances, she is more precious to him than any gold that was ever coined into money. I’ll tell you what I saw last night. Archibald had what he is not often subject to, a severe headache, and he went into the next room after dinner, and lay on the sofa. She carried a cup of tea to him, and never came back, leaving her own on the table till it was perfectly cold. I pushed open the door to tell her so. There was my lady’s cambric handkerchief, soaked in eau-deCologne, lying on his forehead; and there was my lady herself, kneeling down and looking at him, he with his arm thrown around her there. Now I just ask you, Barbara, whether there’s any sense in fadding with a man like that? If ever he did have a headache before he was married, I used to mix him up a good dose of salts and senna, and tell him to go to bed early and sleep the pain off.”
Barbara made no reply, but she turned her face from Miss Carlyle.
On Barbara’s return to the house, she found that Mr. Carlyle and Lady Isabel were in the adjoining room, at the piano, and Barbara had an opportunity of hearing that sweet voice. She did, as Miss Carlyle confessed to have done, pushed open the door between the two rooms, and looked in. It was the twilight hour, almost too dusk to see; but she could distinguish Isabel seated at the piano, and Mr. Carlyle standing behind her. She was singing one of the ballads from the opera of the “Bohemian Girl,” “When other Lips.”
“Why do you like that song so much, Archibald?” she asked when she had finished it.
“I don’t know. I never liked it so much until I heard it from you.”
“I wonder if they are come in. Shall we go into the next room?”
“Just this one first—this translation from the German—’ ’Twere vain to tell thee all I feel.’ There’s real music in that song.”
“Yes, there is. Do you know, Archibald, your taste is just like papa’s. He liked all these quiet, imaginative songs, and so do you. And so do I,” she laughingly added, “if I must speak the truth.”
She ceased and began the song, singing it exquisitely, in a low, sweet, earnest tone, the chords of the accompaniment, at its conclusion, dying off gradually into silence.
“There, Archibald, I am sure I have sung you ten songs at least,” she said, leaning her head back against him, and looking at him from her upturned face. “You ought to pay me.”
He did pay her: holding the dear face to him, and taking from it some impassioned kisses. Barbara turned to the window, a low moan of pain escaping her, as she pressed her forehead on one of its panes, and looked forth at the dusky night. Isabel came in on her husband’s arm.
“Are you here alone, Miss Hare? I really beg your pardon. I supposed you were with Miss Carlyle.”
“Where is Cornelia, Barbara?”
“I have just come in,” was Barbara’s reply. “I dare say she is following me.”
So she was, for she entered a moment after, her voice raised in anger at the gardener, who had disobeyed her orders, and obeyed the wishes of Lady Isabel.
The evening wore on to ten, and as the time-piece struck the hour, Barbara rose from her chair in amazement.
“I did not think it was so late. Surely some one must have come for me.”
“I will inquire,” was Lady Isabel’s answer, and Mr. Carlyle touched the bell. No one had come for Miss Hare.
“Then I fear I must trouble Peter,” cried Barbara. “Mamma may be gone to rest, tired, and papa must have forgotten me. It would never do for me to get locked out,” she gaily added.
“As you were one night before,” said Mr. Carlyle, significantly.
He alluded to the night when Barbara was in the grove of trees with her unfortunate brother, and Mr. Hare was on the point, unconsciously, of locking her out. She had given Mr. Carlyle the history, but its recollection now called up a smart pain, and a change passed over her face.
“Oh! Don’t, Archibald,” she uttered, in the impulse of the moment; “don’t recall it.”
Isabel wondered.
“Can Peter take me?” continued Barbara.
“I had better take you,” said Mr. Carlyle. “It is late.”
Barbara’s heart beat at the words; beat as she put her things on—as she said good-night to Lady Isabel and Miss Carlyle; it beat to throbbing as she went out with him, and took his arm. All just as it used to be-only now that he was the husband of another. Only!
It was a warm, lovely June night, not moonlight, but bright with its summer twilight. They went down the park into the road, which they crossed, and soon came to a stile. From that stile there led a path through the fields which would pass the back of Justice Hare’s. Barbara stopped at it.
“Would you choose the field way to-night, Barbara? The grass will be damp, and this is the longest way.”
“But we shall escape the dust of the road.”
“Oh, very well, if you prefer it. It will not make three minutes’ difference.”
“He is very anxious to get home to her!” mentally exclaimed Barbara. “I shall fly out upon him, presently, or my heart will burst.”
Mr. Carlyle crossed the stile, helped over Barbara, and then gave her his arm again. He had taken her parasol, as he had taken it the last night they had walked together—an elegant little parasol, this, of blue silk and white lace, and he did not switch the hedges with it. That night was present to Barbara now, with all its words and its delusive hopes; terribly present to her was their bitter ending.
There are women of warm, impulsive temperaments who can scarcely help, in certain moments of highly wrought excitement, over-stepping the bounds of nature and decorum, and giving the reins to temper, tongue, and imagination—making a scene, in short. Barbara had been working herself into this state during the whole evening. The affection of Isabel for her husband, her voice, his caresses—seen through the half open doors—had maddened her. She felt it impossible to restrain her excitement.
Mr. Carlyle walked on, utterly unconscious that a storm was brewing. More than that, he was unconscious of having given cause for one, and dashed into an indifferent, common place topic in the most provoking manner.
“When does the justice begin haymaking, Barbara?”
There was no reply. Barbara was swelling and panting, and trying to keep her emotion down. Mr. Carlyle tried again,—
“Barbara, I asked you which day your papa cut his hay.”
Still no reply. Barbara was literally incapable of making one. The steam of excitement was on, nearly to its highest pitch. Her throat was working, the muscles of her mouth began to twitch, and a convulsive sob, or what sounded like it, broke from her. Mr. Carlyle turned his head hastily.
“Barbara! are you ill? What is it?”
On it came, passion, temper, wrongs, and nervousness, all boiling over together. She shrieked, she sobbed, she was in strong hysterics. Mr. Carlyle half-carried, half-dragged her to the second stile, and placed her against it, his arm supporting her; and an old cow and two calves, wondering what the disturbance could mean at that sober time of night, walked up and stared at them.
Barbara struggled with her emotion—struggled manfully—and the sobs and shrieks subsided; not the excitement or the passion. She put away his arm, and stood with her back to the stile, leaning against it. Mr. Carlyle felt inclined to fly to the pond for water, but he had nothing but his hat to get it in.
“Are you better, Barbara? What can have caused it?”
“What can have caused it?” she burst forth, giving full swing to the reins, and forgetting everything. “You can ask me that?”
Mr. Carlyle was struck dumb; but by some inexplicable laws of sympathy, a dim and very unpleasant consciousness of the truth began to steal over him.
“I don’t understand you, Barbara. If I have offended you in any way, I am truly sorry.”
“Truly sorry, no doubt!” was the retort, the sobs and the shrieks alarmingly near. “What do you care for me? If I go under the sod tomorrow,” stamping it with her foot, “you have your wife to care for; what am I?”
“Hush!” he interposed, glancing round, more mindful for her than she was for herself.
“Hush, yes! You would like me to hush; what is my misery to you? I would rather be in my grave, Archibald Carlyle, than endure the life I have led since you married her. My pain is greater than I well know how to bear.”
“I cannot affect to misunderstand you,” he said, feeling more at a nonplus than he had felt for many a day, and heartily wishing the whole female creation, save Isabel, somewhere. “But my dear Barbara. I never gave you cause to think I—that I—cared for you more than I did.”
“Never gave me cause!” she gasped. “When you have been coming to our house constantly, almost like my shadow; when you gave me this” dashing open her mantle, and holding up the locket to his view; “when you have been more intimate with me than a brother.”
“Stay, Barbara. There it is—a brother. I have been nothing else; it never occurred to me to be anything else,” he added, in his straightforward truth.
“Ay, as a brother, nothing else!” and her voice rose once more with her excitement; it seemed that she would not long control it. “What cared you for my feelings? What recked you that you gained my love?”
“Barbara, hush!” he implored: “do be calm and reasonable. If I ever gave you cause to think I regarded you with deeper feelings, I can only express to you my deep regret, my repentance, and assure you it was done unconsciously.”
She was growing calmer. The passion was fading, leaving her face still and white. She lifted it toward Mr. Carlyle.
“You treated me ill in showing signs of love, if you felt it not. Why did you kiss me?”
“I kissed you as I might kiss a sister. Or perhaps as a pretty girl; man likes to do so. The close terms on which our families have lived, excused, if it did not justify, a degree of familiarity that might have been unseemly in-”
“You need not tell me that,” hotly interrupted Barbara. “Had it been a stranger who had won my love and then thrown me from him, do you suppose I would have reproached him as I am now reproaching you? No; I would have died, rather than that he should have suspected it. If she had not come between us, should you have loved me?”
“Do not pursue this unthankful topic,” he besought, almost wishing the staring cow would run away with her.
“I ask you, should you have loved me?” persisted Barbara, passing her handkerchief over her ashy lips.
“I don’t know. How can I know? Do I not say to you, Barbara, that I only thought of you as a friend, a sister? I cannot tell what might have been.”
“I could bear it better, but that it was known,” she murmured. “All West Lynne had coupled us together in their prying gossip, and they have only pity to cast on me now. I would far rather you have killed me, Archibald.”
“I can but express to you my deep regret,” he repeated. “I can only hope you will soon forget it all. Let the remembrance of this conversation pass away with to-night; let us still be to each other as friends—as brother and sister. Believe me,” he concluded, in a deeper tone, “the confession has not lessened you in my estimation.”
He made a movement as though he would get over the stile, but Barbara did not stir; the tears were silently coursing down her pallid face. At that moment there was an interruption.
“Is that you, Miss Barbara?”
Barbara started as if she had been shot. On the other side of the stile stood Wilson, their upper maid. How long might she have been there? She began to explain that Mr. Hare had sent Jasper out, and Mrs. Hare had thought it better to wait no longer for the man’s return, so had dispatched her, Wilson, for Miss Barbara. Mr. Carlyle got over the stile, and handed over Miss Barbara.
“You need not come any further now,” she said to him in a low tone.
“I should see you home,” was his reply, and he held out his arm. Barbara took it.
They walked in silence. Arrived at the back gate of the grove, which gave entrance to the kitchen garden, Wilson went forward. Mr. Carlyle took both Barbara’s hands in his.
“Good-night, Barbara. God bless you.”
She had had time for reflection, and the excitement gone, she saw her outbreak in all its shame and folly. Mr. Carlyle noticed how subdued and white she looked.
“I think I have been mad,” she groaned. “I must have been mad to say what I did. Forget that it was uttered.”
“I told you I would.”
“You will not betray me to—to—your wife?” she panted.
“Barbara!”
“Thank you. Good-night.”
But he still retained her hands. “In a short time, Barbara, I trust you will find one more worthy to receive your love than I have been.”
“Never!” she impulsively answered. “I do not love and forget so lightly. In the years to come, in my old age, I shall still be nothing but Barbara Hare.”
Mr. Carlyle walked away in a fit of musing. The revelation had given him pain, and possibly a little bit of flattery into the bargain, for he was fond of pretty Barbara. Fond in his way—not hers—not with the sort of fondness he felt for his wife. He asked his conscience whether his manner to her in the past days had been a tinge warmer than we bestow upon a sister, and he decided that it might have been, but he most certainly never cast a suspicion to the mischief it was doing.
“I heartily hope she’ll soon find somebody to her liking and forget me,” was his concluding thought. “As to living and dying Barbara Hare, that’s all moonshine, and sentimental rubbish that girls like to—”
“Archibald!”
He was passing the very last tree in the park, the nearest to his house, and the interruption came from a dark form standing under it.
“Is it you, my dearest?”
“I came out to meet you. Have you not been very long?”
“I think I have,” he answered, as he drew his wife to his side, and walked on with her.
“We met one of the servants at the second stile, but I went on all the way.”
“You have been intimate with the Hares?”
“Quite so. Cornelia is related to them.”
“Do you think Barbara pretty?”
“Very.”
“Then—intimate as you were—I wonder you never fell in love with her.”
Mr. Carlyle laughed; a very conscious laugh, considering the recent interview.
“Did you, Archibald?”
The words were spoken in a low tone, almost, or he fancied it, a tone of emotion, and he looked at her in amazement. “Did I what, Isabel?”
“You never loved Barbara Hare?”
“Loved her! What is your head running on, Isabel? I never loved but one; and that one I made my own, my cherished wife.”
Another year came in. Isabel would have been altogether happy but for Miss Carlyle; that lady still inflicted her presence upon East Lynne, and made it the bane of its household. She deferred outwardly to Lady Isabel as the mistress; but the real mistress was herself. Isabel was little more than an automaton. Her impulses were checked, her wishes frustrated, her actions tacitly condemned by the imperiously-willed Miss Carlyle. Poor Isabel, with her refined manners and her timid and sensitive temperament, had no chance against the strong-minded woman, and she was in a state of galling subjection in her own house.
Not a day passed but Miss Carlyle, by dint of hints and innuendoes, contrived to impress upon Lady Isabel the unfortunate blow to his own interests that Mr. Carlyle’s marriage had been, the ruinous expense she had entailed upon the family. It struck a complete chill to Isabel’s heart, and she became painfully impressed with the incubus she must be to Mr. Carlyle—so far as his pocket was concerned. Lord Mount Severn, with his little son, had paid them a short visit at Christmas and Isabel had asked him, apparently with unconcern, whether Mr. Carlyle had put himself very much out to the way to marry her; whether it had entailed on him an expense and a style of living he would not otherwise have deemed himself justified in affording. Lord Mount Severn’s reply was an unfortunate one: his opinion was, that it had, he said; and that Isabel ought to feel grateful to him for his generosity. She sighed as she listened, and from thenceforth determined to put up with Miss Carlyle.
More timid and sensitive by nature than many would believe or can imagine, reared in seclusion more simply and quietly than falls to the general lot of peers’ daughters, completely inexperienced, Isabel was unfit to battle with the world—totally unfit to battle with Miss Carlyle. The penniless state in which she was left at her father’s death, the want of a home save that accorded her at Castle Marling, even the hundred-pound note left in her hand by Mr. Carlyle, all had imbued her with a deep consciousness of humiliation, and, far from rebelling at or despising the small establishment, comparatively speaking, provided for her by Mr. Carlyle, she felt thankful to him for it. But to be told continuously that this was more than he could afford, that she was in fact a blight upon his prospects, was enough to turn her heart to bitterness. Oh, that she had had the courage to speak out openly to her husband, that he might, by a single word of earnest love and assurance, have taken the weight from her heart, and rejoiced it with the truth—that all these miserable complaints were but the phantoms of his narrow-minded sister! But Isabel never did; when Miss Corny lapsed into her grumbling mood, she would hear in silence, or gently bend her aching forehead in her hands, never retorting.
Never before Mr. Carlyle was the lady’s temper vented upon her; plenty fell to his own share, when he and his sister were alone; and he had become so accustomed to the sort of thing all his life—had got used to it, like the eels do to skinning—that it went, as the saying runs, in at one ear and out at the other, making no impression. He never dreamt that Isabel also received her portion.
It was a morning early in April. Joyce sat, in its gray dawn, over a large fire in the dressing-room of Lady Isabel Carlyle, her hands clasped to pain, and the tears coursing down her cheeks. Joyce was frightened; she had had some experience in illness; but illness of this nature she had never witnessed, and she was fervently hoping never to witness it again. In the adjoining room lay Lady Isabel, sick nearly unto death.
The door from the corridor slowly opened, and Miss Carlyle slowly entered. She had probably never walked with so gentle a step in all her life, and she had got a thick-wadded mantle over her head and ears. Down she sat in a chair quite meekly, and Joyce saw that her face looked as gray as the early dawn.
“Joyce,” whispered she, “is there any danger?”
“Oh, ma’am, I trust not! But it’s hard to witness, and it must be awful to bear.”
“It is our common curse, Joyce. You and I may congratulate ourselves that we have not chose to encounter it. Joyce,” she added, after a pause, “I trust there’s no danger; I should not like her to die.”
Miss Carlyle spoke in a low, dread tone. Was she fearing that, if her poor young sister-in-law did die, a weight would rest on her own conscience for all time—a heavy, ever-present weight, whispering that she might have rendered her short year of marriage more happy, had she chosen; and that she had not so chosen, but had deliberately steeled every crevice of her heart against her? Very probably; she looked anxious and apprehensive in the morning’s twilight.
“If there’s any danger, Joyce—”
“Why, do you think there’s danger, ma’am?” interrupted Joyce. “Are other people not as ill as this?”
“It is to be hoped they are not,” rejoined Miss Carlyle. “And why is the express gone to Lynneborough for Dr. Martin?”
Up started Joyce, awe struck. “An express for Dr. Martin! Oh, ma’am! Who sent it? When did it go?”
“All I know is, that’s its gone. Mr. Wainwright went to your master, and he came out of his room and sent John galloping to the telegraph office at West Lynne; where could your ears have been, not to hear the horse tearing off? I heard it, I know that, and a nice fright it put me in. I went to Mr. Carlyle’s room to ask what was amiss, and he said he did not know himself—nothing, he hoped. And then he shut his door again in my face, instead of stopping to speak to me as any other Christian would.”
Joyce did not answer; she was faint with apprehension; and there was a silence, broken only by the sounds from the next room. Miss Carlyle rose, and a fanciful person might have thought she was shivering.
“I can’t stand this, Joyce; I shall go. If they want coffee, or anything of that, it can be sent here. Ask.”
“I will presently, in a few minutes,” answered Joyce, with a real shiver. “You are not going in, are you, ma’am?” she uttered, in apprehension, as Miss Carlyle began to steal on tip-toe to the inner-door, and Joyce had a lively consciousness that her sight would not be an agreeable one to Lady Isabel. “They want the room free; they sent me out.”
“Not I,” answered Miss Corny. “I could do no good; and those who cannot, are better away.”
“Just what Mr. Wainwright said when he dismissed me,” murmured Joyce. And Miss Carlyle finally passed into the corridor and withdrew.
Joyce sat on; it seemed to her an interminable time. And then she heard the arrival of Dr. Martin; heard him go into the next room. By and by Mr. Wainwright came out of it, into the room where Joyce was sitting. Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, and before she could bring out the ominous words, “Is there any danger?” he had passed through it.
Mr. Wainwright was on his way to the apartment where he expected to find Mr. Carlyle. The latter was pacing it; he had so paced it all the night. His pale face flushed as the surgeon entered.
“You have little mercy on my suspense, Wainwright. Dr. Martin has been here this twenty minutes. What does he say?”
“Well, he cannot say any more than I did. The symptoms are critical, but he hopes she will do well. There’s nothing for it but patience.”
Mr. Carlyle resumed his weary walk.
“I come now to suggest that you should send for Little. In these protracted cases—”
The speech was interrupted by a cry from Mr. Carlyle, half horror, half despair. For the Rev. Mr. Little was the incumbent of St. Jude’s, and his apprehensions had flown—he hardly knew to what they had flown.
“Not for your wife,” hastily rejoined the surgeon—“what good should a clergyman do to her? I spoke on the score of the child. Should it not live, it may be satisfactory to you and Lady Isabel to know that it was baptized.”
“I thank you—I thank you,” said Mr. Carlyle grasping his hand, in his inexpressible relief. “Little shall be sent for.”
“You jumped to the conclusion that your wife’s soul was flitting. Please God, she may yet live to bear you other children, if this one does die.”
“Please God!” was the inward aspiration of Mr. Carlyle.
“Carlyle,” added the surgeon, in a musing sort of tone, as he laid his hand on Mr. Carlyle’s shoulder, which his own head scarcely reached, “I am sometimes at death-beds where the clergyman is sent for in this desperate need to the fleeting spirit, and I am tempted to ask myself what good another man, priest though he be, can do at the twelfth hour, where accounts have not been made up previously?”
It was hard upon midday. The Rev. Mr. Little, Mr. Carlyle, and Miss Carlyle were gathered in the dressing-room, round a table, on which stood a rich china bowl, containing water for the baptism. Joyce, her pale face working with emotion, came into the room, carrying what looked like a bundle of flannel. Little cared Mr. Carlyle for the bundle, in comparison with his care for his wife.
“Joyce,” he whispered, “is it well still?”
“I believe so, sir.”
The services commenced. The clergyman took the child. “What name?” he asked.
Mr. Carlyle had never thought about the name. But he replied, pretty promptly.
“William;” for he knew it was a name revered and loved by Lady Isabel.
The minister dipped his fingers in the water. Joyce interrupted in much confusion, looking at her master.
“It is a little girl, sir. I beg your pardon, I’m sure I thought I had said so; but I’m so flurried as I never was before.”
There was a pause, and then the minister spoke again. “Name the child.”
“Isabel Lucy,” said Mr. Carlyle. Upon which a strange sort of resentful sniff was heard from Miss Corny. She had probably thought to hear him mention her own; but he had named it after his wife and his mother.
Mr. Carlyle was not allowed to see his wife until evening. His eyelashes glistened, as he looked down at her. She detected his emotion, and a faint smile parted her lips.
“I fear I bore it badly, Archibald; but let us be thankful that it is over. How thankful, none can know, save those who have gone through it.”
“I think they can,” he murmured. “I never knew what thankfulness was until this day.”
“That the baby is safe?”
“That you are safe, my darling; safe and spared to me, Isabel,” he whispered, hiding his face upon hers. “I never, until today, knew what prayer was—the prayer of a heart in its sore need.”
“Have you written to Lord Mount Severn?” she asked after a while.
“This afternoon,” he replied.
“Why did you give baby my name—Isabel?”
“Do you think I could have given it a prettier one? I don’t.”
“Why do you not bring a chair, and sit down by me?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I wish I might. But they limited my stay with you to four minutes, and Wainwright has posted himself outside the door, with his watch in his hand.”
Quite true. There stood the careful surgeon, and the short interview was over almost as soon as it had begun.
The baby lived, and appeared likely to live, and of course the next thing was to look out for a maid for it. Isabel did not get strong very quickly. Fever and weakness had a struggle with each other and with her. One day, when she was dressing and sitting in her easy chair, Miss Carlyle entered.
“Of all the servants in the neighborhood, who should you suppose is come up after the place of nurse?”
“Indeed, I cannot guess.”
“Why, Wilson, Mrs. Hare’s maid. Three years and five months she has been with them, and now leaves in consequence of a fall out with Barbara. Will you see her?”
“Is she likely to suit? Is she a good servant?”
“She’s not a bad servant, as servants go,” responded Miss Carlyle. “She’s steady and respectable; but she has got a tongue as long as from here to Lynneborough.”
“That won’t hurt baby,” said Lady Isabel. “But if she has lived as lady’s maid, she probably does not understand the care of infants.”
“Yes she does. She was upper servant at Squire Pinner’s before going to Mrs. Hare’s. Five years she lived there.”
“I will see her,” said Lady Isabel.
Miss Carlyle left the room to send the servant in, but came back first alone.
“Mind, Lady Isabel, don’t you engage her. If she is likely to suit you, let her come again for the answer, and meanwhile I will go down to Mrs. Hare’s and learn the ins and outs of her leaving. It is all very plausible for her to put upon Barbara, but that is only one side of the question. Before engaging her, it may be well to hear the other.”
Of course this was but right. Isabel acquiesced, and the servant was introduced; a tall, pleasant-looking woman, with black eyes. Lady Isabel inquired why she was leaving Mrs. Hare’s.
“My lady, it is through Miss Barbara’s temper. Latterly—oh, for this year past, nothing has pleased her; she had grown nearly as imperious as the justice himself. I have threatened many times to leave, and last evening we came to another outbreak, and I left this morning.”
“Left entirely?”
“Yes, my lady. Miss Barbara provoked me so, that I said last night I would leave as soon as breakfast was over. And I did so. I should be very glad to take your situation, my lady, if you would please to try me.”
“You have been the upper maid at Mrs. Hare’s?”
“Oh, yes, my lady.”
“Then possibly this situation might not suit you so well as you imagine. Joyce is the upper servant here, and you would, in a manner, be under her. I have great confidence in Joyce; and in case of my illness or absence, Joyce would superintend the nursery.”
“I should not mind that,” was the applicant’s answer. “We all like Joyce, my lady.”
A few more questions, and then the girl was told to come again in the evening for her answer. Miss Carlyle went to the Grove for the “ins and outs” of the affair, where Mrs. Hare frankly stated that she had nothing to urge against Wilson, save her hasty manner of leaving, and believed the chief blame to be due to Barbara. Wilson, therefore, was engaged, and was to enter upon her new service the following morning.
In the afternoon succeeding to it, Isabel was lying on the sofa in her bedroom, asleep, as was supposed. In point of fact, she was in that state, half asleep, half wakeful delirium, which those who suffer from weakness and fever know only too well. Suddenly she was aroused from it by hearing her own name mentioned in the adjoining room, where sat Joyce and Wilson, the latter holding the sleeping infant on her knee, the former sewing, the door between the rooms being ajar.
“How ill she does look,” observed Wilson.
“Who?” asked Joyce.
“Her ladyship. She looks just as if she’d never get over it.”
“She is getting over it quickly, now,” returned Joyce. “If you had seen her but a week ago, you would not say she was looking ill now, speaking in comparison.”
“My goodness! Would not somebody’s hopes be up again if anything should happen?”
“Nonsense!” crossly rejoined Joyce.
“You may cry out ‘nonsense’ forever, Joyce, but they would,” went on Wilson. “And she would snap him up to a dead certainty; she’d never let him escape her a second time. She is as much in love with him as she ever was!”
“It was all talk and fancy,” said Joyce. “West Lynne must be busy. Mr. Carlyle never cared for her.”
“That’s more than you know. I have seen a little, Joyce; I have seen him kiss her.”
“A pack of rubbish!” remarked Joyce. “That tells nothing.”
“I don’t say it does. There’s not a young man living but what’s fond of a sly kiss in the dark, if he can get it. He gave her that locket and chain she wears.”
“Who wears?” retorted Joyce, determined not graciously to countenance the subject. “I don’t want to hear anything about it.”
“‘Who,’ now! Why, Miss Barbara. She has hardly had it off her neck since, my belief is she wears it in her sleep.”
“More simpleton she,” returned Joyce.
“The night before he left West Lynne to marry Lady Isabel—and didn’t the news come upon us like a thunderclap!—Miss Barbara had been at Miss Carlyle’s and he brought her home. A lovely night it was, the moon rising, and nearly as light as day. He somehow broke her parasol in coming home, and when they got to our gate there was a love scene.”
“Were you a third in it?” sarcastically demanded Joyce.
“Yes—without meaning to be. It was a regular love scene; I could hear enough for that. If ever anybody thought to be Mrs. Carlyle, Barbara did that night.”
“Why, you great baby! You have just said it was the night before he went to get married!”
“I don’t care, she did. After he was gone, I saw her lift up her hands and her face in ecstacy, and say he would never know how much she loved him until she was his wife. Be you very sure, Joyce, many a love-passage had passed between them two; but I suppose when my lady was thrown in his way he couldn’t resist her rank and her beauty, and the old love was cast over. It is in the nature of man to be fickle, specially those that can boast of their own good looks, like Mr. Carlyle.”
“Mr. Carlyle’s not fickle.”
“I can tell you more yet. Two or three days after that, Miss Corny came up to our house with the news of his marriage. I was in mistress’s bedroom, and they were in the room underneath, the windows open, and I heard Miss Corny tell the tale, for I was leaning out. Up came Miss Barbara upon an excuse and flew into her room, and I went into the corridor. A few moments and I heard a noise—it was a sort of wail, or groan—and I opened the door softly, fearing she might be fainting. Joyce, if my heart never ached for anybody before, it ached then. She was lying upon the floor, her hands writhed together, and her poor face all white, like one in mortal agony. I’d have given a quarter’s wages to be able to say a word of comfort to her; but I didn’t dare interfere with such sorrow as that. I came out again and shut the door without her seeing me.”
“How thoroughly stupid she must have been!” uttered Joyce, “to go caring for one who did not care for her.”
“I tell you, Joyce, you don’t know that he did not care. You are as obstinate as the justice, and I wish to goodness you wouldn’t interrupt me. They came up here to pay the wedding visit—master, mistress, and she, came in state in the grand chariot, with the coachman and Jasper. If you have got any memory at all, you can’t fail to recollect it. Miss Barbara remained behind at East Lynne to spend the rest of the day.”
“I remember it.”
“I was sent to fetch her home in the evening, Jasper being out. I came the field way; for the dust by the road was enough to smother one, and by the last stile but one, what do you think I came upon?”
Joyce lifted her eyes. “A snake perhaps.”
“I came upon Miss Barbara and Mr. Carlyle. What had passed, nobody knows but themselves. She was leaning back against the stile, crying; low, soft sobs breaking from her, like one might expect to hear from a breaking heart. It seemed as if she had been reproaching him, as if some explanation had passed, and I heard him say that from henceforth they could only be brother and sister. I spoke soon, for fear they should see me, and Mr. Carlyle got over the stile. Miss Barbara said to him that he need not come any further, but he held out his arm, and came with her to our back gate. I went on then to open the door, and I saw him with his head bent down to her, and her two hands held in his. We don’t know how it is between them, I tell you.”
“At any rate, she is a downright fool to suffer herself to love him still!” uttered Joyce, indignantly.
“So she is, but she does do it. She’ll often steal out to the gate about the time she knows he’ll be passing, and watch him by, not letting him see her. It is nothing but her unhappiness, her jealousy of Lady Isabel, that makes her cross. I assure you, Joyce, in this past year she had so changed that she’s not like the same person. If Mr. Carlyle should ever get tired of my lady, and—”
“Wilson,” harshly interrupted Joyce, “have the goodness to recollect yourself.”
“What have I said not? Nothing but truth. Men are shamefully fickle, husbands worse than sweethearts, and I’m sure I’m not thinking of anything wrong. But to go back to the argument that we began with—I say that if anything happened to my lady, Miss Barbara, as sure as fate, would step into her shoes.”
“Nothing is going to happen to her,” continued Joyce, with composure.
“I hope it is not, now or later—for the sake of this dear little innocent thing upon my lap,” went on the undaunted Wilson. “She would not make a very kind stepmother, for it is certain that where the first wife had been hated, her children won’t be loved. She would turn Mr. Carlyle against them—”
“I tell you what it is, Wilson,” interrupted Joyce, in a firm, unmistakable tone, “if you think to pursue those sort of topics at East Lynne, I shall inform my lady that you are unsuitable for the situation.”
“I dare say!”
“And you know that when I make up my mind to a thing I do it,” continued Joyce. “Miss Carlyle may well say you have the longest tongue in West Lynne; but you might have the grace to know that this subject is one more unsuitable to it than another, whether you are eating Mr. Hare’s bread, or whether you are eating Mr. Carlyle’s. Another word, Wilson; it appears to me that you have been carrying on a prying system in Mrs. Hare’s house—do not attempt such a thing in this.”
“You were always one of the straight-laced sort, Joyce,” cried Wilson, laughing good-humoredly. “But now that I have had my say out, I shall stop; and you need not fear I shall be such a simpleton as to go prattling of this kind of thing to the servants.”
Now just fancy this conversation penetrating to Lady Isabel! She heard every word. It is all very well to oppose the argument, “Who attends to the gossip of the servants?” Let me tell you it depends upon what the subject may be, whether the gossip is attended to or not. It might not, and indeed would not, have made so great an impression upon her had she been in strong health, but she was weak, feverish, and in a state of partial delirium; and she hastily took up the idea that Archibald Carlyle had never loved her, that he had admired her and made her his wife in his ambition, but that his heart had been given to Barbara Hare.
A pretty state of excitement she worked herself into as she lay there, jealousy and fever, ay, and love too, playing pranks with her brain. It was near the dinner hour, and when Mr. Carlyle entered, he was startled to see her; her pallid cheeks were burning with a red hectic glow, and her eyes glistened with fever.
“Isabel, you are worse!” he uttered, as he approached her with a quick step.
She partially rose from the sofa, and clasped hold of him in her emotion. “Oh, Archibald! Archibald!” she uttered, “don’t marry her! I could not rest in my grave.”
Mr. Carlyle, in his puzzled astonishment, believed her to be laboring under some temporary hallucination, the result of weakness. He set himself to soothe her, but it seemed that she could not be soothed. She burst into a storm of tears and began again—wild words.
“She would ill-treat my child; she would draw your love from it, and from my memory. Archibald, you must not marry her!”
“You must be speaking from the influence of a dream, Isabel,” he soothingly said; “you have been asleep and are not yet awake. Be still, and recollection will return to you. There, love; rest upon me.”
“To think of her as your wife brings pain enough to kill me,” she continued to reiterate. “Promise me that you will not marry her; Archibald, promise it!”
“I will promise you anything in reason,” he replied, bewildered with her words, “but I do not know what you mean. There is no possibility of my marrying any one, Isabel; you are my wife.”
“But if I die? I may—you know I may; and many think I shall—do not let her usurp my place.”
“Indeed she shall not—whoever you may be talking of. What have you been dreaming? Who is it that has been troubling your mind?”
“Archibald, do you need to ask? Did you love no one before you married me? Perhaps you have loved her since—perhaps you love her still?”
Mr. Carlyle began to discern “method in her madness.” He changed his cheering tone to one of grave earnestness. “Of whom to you speak, Isabel?”
“Of Barbara Hare.”
He knitted his brow; he was both annoyed and vexed. Whatever had put this bygone nonsense into his wife’s head? He quitted the sofa where he had been supporting her, and stood upright before her, calm, dignified, almost solemn in his seriousness.
“Isabel, what notion can you possibly have picked up about myself and Barbara Hare; I never entertained the faintest shadow of love for her, either before my marriage or since. You must tell me what has given rise to this idea in your mind.”
“But she loved you.”
A moment’s hesitation; for, of course, Mr. Carlyle was conscious that she had; but, taking all the circumstances into consideration, more especially how he learnt the fact, he could not, in honor, acknowledge it to his wife. “If it was so, Isabel, she was more reprehensibly foolish than I should have given Barbara’s good sense could be; for a woman may almost as well lose herself as to suffer herself to love unsought. If she did give her love to me, I can only say, I was entirely unconscious of it. Believe me, you have as much cause to be jealous of Cornelia as you have of Barbara Hare.”
An impulse rose within her that she would tell him all; the few words dropped by Susan and Joyce, twelve months before, the conversation she had just overheard; but in that moment of renewed confidence, it did appear to her that she must have been very foolish to attach importance to it—that a sort of humiliation, in listening to the converse of servants, was reflected on her, and she remained silent.
There never was a passion in this world—there never will be one—so fantastic, so delusive, so powerful as jealousy. Mr. Carlyle dismissed the episode from his thoughts; he believed his wife’s emotion to have been simply from a feverish dream, and never supposed but that, with the dream, its recollection would pass away from her. Not so. Implicitly relying upon her husband’s words at the moment, feeling quite ashamed at her own suspicion, Lady Isabel afterward suffered the unhappy fear to regain its influence; the ill-starred revelations of Wilson reasserted their power, overmastering the denial of Mr. Carlyle. Shakspeare calls jealousy yellow and green; I think it may be called black and white for it most assuredly views white as black, and black as white. The most fanciful surmises wear the aspect of truth, the greatest improbabilities appear as consistent realities. Not another word said Isabel to her husband; and the feeling—you will understand this if you have ever been foolish enough to sun yourself in its delights—only caused her to grow more attached to him, to be more eager for his love. But certain it is that Barbara Hare dwelt on her heart like an incubus.
“Barbara, how fine the day seems!”
“It is a beautiful day mamma.”
“I do think I should be all the better for going out.”
“I am sure you would, mamma,” was Barbara’s answer. “If you went out more, you would find the benefit. Every fine day you ought to do so. I will go and ask papa if he can spare Benjamin and the carriage.” She waltzed gaily out of the room, but returned in a moment.
“Mamma, it is all right. Benjamin is gone to get the carriage ready. You would like a bit of luncheon before you go—I will order the tray.”
“Anything you please, dear,” said the sweet-tempered gentlewoman. “I don’t know why, but I feel glad to go out today; perhaps because it is lovely.”
Benjamin made ready his carriage and himself, and drove out of the yard at the back, and brought the carriage round to the front gate.
The carriage—or phaeton as it was often called—was a somewhat old fashioned concern, as many country things are apt to be. A small box in front for the driver, and a wide seat with a head behind, accommodating Barbara well between them when Mr. and Mrs. Hare both sat in.
Benjamin drew the rug carefully over his mistress’s knees—the servants did not like Mr. Hare, but would have laid down their lives for her—ascended to his box, and drove them to their destination, the linen draper’s. It was an excellent shop, situated a little beyond the office of Mr. Carlyle, and Mrs. Hare and Barbara were soon engaged in that occupation said to possess for all women a fascination. They had been in about an hour, when Mrs. Hare discovered that her bag was missing.
“I must have left it in the carriage, Barbara. Go and bring it, will you, my dear? The pattern of that silk is in it.”
Barbara went out. The carriage and Benjamin and the sleek old horse were all waiting drowsily together. Barbara could not see the bag, and she appealed to the servant.
“Find mamma’s bag, Benjamin. It must be somewhere in the carriage.”
Benjamin got off his box and began to search. Barbara waited, gazing listlessly down the street. The sun was shining brilliantly, and its rays fell upon the large cable chain of a gentleman who was sauntering idly up the pavement, making its gold links and its drooping seal and key glitter, as they crossed his waistcoat. It shone also upon the enameled gold studs of his shirt front, making them glitter; and as he suddenly raised his ungloved hand to stroke his moustache—by which action you know a vain man—a diamond ring he wore gleamed with a light that was positively dazzling. Involuntarily Barbara thought of the description her brother Richard had given of certain dazzling jewels worn by another.
She watched him advance! He was a handsome man of, perhaps, seven or eight and twenty, tall, slender and well made, his eyes and hair black. A very pleasant expression sat upon his countenance; and on the left hand he wore a light buff kid glove, and was swinging its fellow by the fingers. But for the light cast at that moment by the sun, Barbara might not have noticed the jewellery, or connected it in her mind with the other jewellery in that unhappy secret.
“Hallo, Thorn, is that you? Just step over here.”
The speaker was Otway Bethel, who was on the opposite side of the street; the spoken to, the gentleman with the jewellery. But the latter was in a brown study, and did not hear. Bethel called out again, louder.
“Captain Thorn!”
That was heard. Captain Thorn nodded, and turned short off across the street. Barbara stood like one in a dream, her brain, her mind, her fancy all in a confused mass together.
“Here’s the bag, Miss Barbara. It had got among the folds of the rug.”
Benjamin held it out to her, but she took no notice; she was unconscious of all external things save one. That she beheld the real murderer of Hallijohn, she entertained no manner of doubt. In every particular he tallied with the description given by Richard; tall, dark, vain, handsome, delicate hands, jewellery, and—Captain Thorn! Barbara’s cheeks grew white and her heart turned sick.
“The bag, Miss Barbara.”
Away tore Barbara, leaving Benjamin and the bag in wonder. She had caught sight of Mr. Wainwright, the surgeon, at a little distance, and sped toward him.
“Mr. Wainwright,” began she, forgetting ceremony in her agitation, “you see that gentleman talking to Otway Bethel—who is he?”
Mr. Wainwright had to put his glasses across the bridge of his nose before he could answer, for he was short-sighted. “That? Oh, it is a Captain Thorn. He is visiting the Herberts, I believe.”
“Where does he come from? Where does he live?” reiterated Barbara in her eagerness.
“I don’t know anything about him. I saw him this morning with young Smith, and he told me he was a friend of the Herberts. You are not looking well, Miss Barbara.”
She made no answer. Captain Thorn and Mr. Bethel came walking down the street, and the latter saluted her, but she was too much confused to respond to it. Mr. Wainwright then wished her good day, and Barbara walked slowly back. Mrs. Hare was appearing at the shop door.
“My dear, how long you are! Cannot the bag be found?”
“I went to speak to Mr. Wainwright,” answered Barbara, mechanically taking the bag from Benjamin and giving it to her mother, her whole heart and eyes still absorbed with that one object moving away in the distance.
“You look pale, child. Are you well?”
“Oh, yes, quite. Let us get our shopping over, mamma.”
She moved on to their places at the counter as she spoke, eager to “get it over” and be at home, that she might have time for thought. Mrs. Hare wondered what had come to her; the pleased interest displayed in their purchases previously was now gone, and she sat inattentive and absorbed.
“Now, my dear, it is only waiting for you to choose. Which of the two silks will you have?”
“Either—any. Take which you like, mamma.”
“Barbara, what has come to you?”
“I believe I am tired,” said Barbara, with a forced laugh, as she compelled herself to pay some sort of attention. “I don’t like the green; I will take the other.”
They arrived at home. Barbara got just five minutes alone in her chamber before the dinner was on the table. All the conclusion she could come to was, she could do nothing save tell the facts to Archibald Carlyle.
How could she contrive to see him? The business might admit of no delay. She supposed she must go to East Lynne that evening; but where would be her excuse for it at home? Puzzling over it, she went down to dinner. During the meal, Mrs. Hare began talking of some silk she had purchased for a mantle. She should have it made like Miss Carlyle’s new one. When Miss Carlyle was at the grove, the other day, about Wilson’s character, she offered her the pattern, and she, Mrs. Hare, would send one of the servants up for it after dinner.
“Oh, mamma, let me go!” burst forth Barbara, and so vehemently spoke she, that the justice paused in carving, and demanded what ailed her. Barbara made some timid excuse.
“Her eagerness is natural, Richard,” smiled Mrs. Hare. “Barbara thinks she shall get a peep at the baby, I expect. All young folks are fond of babies.”
Barbara’s face flushed crimson, but she did not contradict the opinion. She could not eat her dinner—she was too full of poor Richard; she played with it, and then sent away her plate nearly untouched.
“That’s through the finery she’s been buying,” pronounced Justice Hare. “Her head is stuffed up with it.”
No opposition was offered to Barbara’s going to East Lynne. She reached it just as their dinner was over. It was for Miss Carlyle she asked.
“Miss Carlyle is not at home, miss. She is spending the day out; and my lady does not receive visitors yet.”
It was a sort of checkmate. Barbara was compelled to say she would see Mr. Carlyle. Peter ushered her into the drawing-room, and Mr. Carlyle came to her.
“I am so very sorry to disturb you—to have asked for you,” began Barbara, with a burning face, for, somehow, a certain evening interview of hers with him, twelve months before, was disagreeably present to her. Never, since that evening of agitation, had Barbara suffered herself to betray emotion to Mr. Carlyle; her manner to him had been calm, courteous, and indifferent. And she now more frequently called him “Mr. Carlyle” than “Archibald.”
“Take a seat—take a seat, Barbara.”
“I asked for Miss Carlyle,” she continued, “for mamma is in want of a pattern that she promised to lend her. You remember the Lieutenant Thorn whom Richard spoke of as being the real criminal?”
“Yes.”
“I think he is at West Lynne.”
Mr. Carlyle was aroused to eager interest.
“He! The same Thorn?”
“It can be no other. Mamma and I were shopping today, and I went out for her bag, which she left in the carriage. While Benjamin was getting it, I saw a stranger coming up the street—a tall, good-looking, dark-haired man, with a conspicuous gold chain and studs. The sun was full upon him, causing the ornaments to shine, especially a diamond ring which he wore, for he had one hand raised to his face. The thought flashed over me, ‘That is just like the description Richard gave of the man Thorn.’ Why the idea should have occurred to me in that strange manner, I do not know, but it most assuredly did occur, though I did not really suppose him to be the same. Just then I heard him spoken to by some one on the other side of the street; it was Otway Bethel, and he called him Captain Thorn.”
“This is curious, indeed, Barbara. I did not know any stranger was at West Lynne.”
“I saw Mr. Wainwright, and asked him who it was. He said a Captain Thorn, a friend of the Herberts. A Lieutenant Thorn four or five years ago would probably be Captain Thorn now.”
Mr. Carlyle nodded, and there was a pause.
“What can be done?” asked Barbara.
Mr. Carlyle was passing one hand over his brow; it was a habit of his when in deep thought.
“It is hard to say what is to be done, Barbara. The description you gave of this man certainly tallies with that given by Richard. Did he look like a gentleman?”
“Very much so. A remarkably aristocratic looking man, as it struck me.”
Mr. Carlyle again nodded assentingly. He remembered Richard’s words, when describing the other: “an out-and-out aristocrat.” “Of course, Barbara, the first thing must be to try and ascertain whether it is the same,” he observed. “If we find it is, then we must deliberate upon future measures. I will see what I can pick up and let you know.”
Barbara rose. Mr. Carlyle escorted her across the hall, and then strolled down the park by her side, deep in the subject, and quite unconscious that Lady Isabel’s jealous eyes were watching them from her dressing-room window.
“You say he seemed intimate with Otway Bethel?”
“As to being intimate, I cannot say. Otway Bethel spoke as though he knew him.”
“This must have caused excitement to Mrs. Hare.”
“You forget, Archibald, that mamma was not told anything about Thorn,” was the answer of Barbara. “The uncertainty would have worried her to death. All Richard said to her was, that he was innocent, that it was a stranger who did the deed, and she asked for no particulars; she had implicit faith in Richard’s truth.”
“True; I did forget,” replied Mr. Carlyle. “I wish we could find out some one who knew the other Thorn; to ascertain that they were the same would be a great point gained.”
He went as far as the park gates with Barbara, shook hands and wished her good evening. Scarcely had she departed when Mr. Carlyle saw two gentlemen advancing from the opposite direction, in one of whom he recognized Tom Herbert, and the other—instinct told him—was Captain Thorn. He waited till they came up.
“If this isn’t lucky, seeing you,” cried Mr. Tom Herbert, who was a free-and-easy sort of a gentleman, the second son of a brother justice of Mr. Hare. “I wish to goodness you’d give us a draught of your cider, Carlyle. We went up to Beauchamp’s for a stroll, but found them all out, and I’m awful thirsty. Captain Thorn, Carlyle.”
Mr. Carlyle invited them to his house and ordered in refreshments. Young Herbert coolly threw himself into an arm-chair and lit a cigar. “Come, Thorn,” cried he, “here’s a weed for you.”
Captain Thorn glanced toward Mr. Carlyle; he appeared of a far more gentlemanly nature than Tom Herbert.
“You’ll have one too, Carlyle,” said Herbert, holding out his cigar-case. “Oh, I forgot—you are a muff; don’t smoke one twice a year. I say how’s Lady Isabel?”
“Very ill still.”
“By Jove! Is she, though? Tell her I am sorry to hear it, will you, Carlyle? But—I say! Will she smell the smoke?” asked he, with a mixture of alarm and concern in his face.
Mr. Carlyle reassured him upon the point, and turned to Captain Thorn.
“Are you acquainted with this neighborhood?”
Captain Thorn smiled. “I only reached West Lynne yesterday.”
“You were never here before then?” continued Mr. Carlyle, setting down the last as a probably evasive answer.
“No.”
“He and my brother Jack, you know, are in the same regiment,” put in Tom, with scanty ceremony. “Jack had invited him down for some fishing and that, and Thorn arrives. But he never sent word he was coming, you see; Jack had given him up, and is off on some Irish expedition, the deuce knows where. Precious unlucky that it should have happened so. Thorn says he shall cut short his stay, and go again.”
The conversation turned upon fishing, and in the heat of the argument, the stranger mentioned a certain pond and its famous eels—the “Low Pond.” Mr. Carlyle looked at him, speaking, however in a careless manner.
“Which do you mean? We have two ponds not far apart, each called the ‘Low Pond’”
“I mean the one on an estate about three miles form here—Squire Thorpe’s, unless I am mistaken.”
Mr. Carlyle smiled. “I think you must have been in the neighborhood before, Captain Thorn. Squire Thorpe is dead and the property has passed to his daughter’s husband, and that Low Pond was filled up three years ago.”
“I have heard a friend mention it,” was Captain Thorn’s reply, spoken in an indifferent tone, though he evidently wished not to pursue the subject.
Mr. Carlyle, by easy degrees, turned the conversation upon Swainson, the place where Richard Hare’s Captain Thorn was suspected to have come. The present Captain Thorn said he knew it “a little,” he had once been “staying there a short time.” Mr. Carlyle became nearly convinced that Barbara’s suspicions were correct. The description certainly agreed, so far as he could judge, in the most minute particulars. The man before him wore two rings, a diamond—and a very beautiful diamond too—on the one hand; a seal ring on the other; his hands were delicate to a degree, and his handkerchief, a cambric one of unusually fine texture, was not entirely guiltless of scent. Mr. Carlyle quitted the room for a moment and summoned Joyce to him.
“My lady has been asking for you,” said Joyce.
“Tell her I will be up the moment these gentlemen leave, Joyce,” he added, “find an excuse to come into the room presently; you can bring something or other in; I want you to look at this stranger who is with young Mr. Herbert. Notice him well; I fancy you may have seen him before.”
Mr. Carlyle returned to the room, leaving Joyce surprised. However, she presently followed, taking in some water, and lingered a few minutes, apparently placing the things on the table in better order.
When the two departed Mr. Carlyle called Joyce, before proceeding to his wife’s room. “Well,” he questioned, “did you recognize him?”
“Not at all, sir. He seemed quite strange to me.”
“Cast your thoughts back, Joyce. Did you never see him in days gone by?”
Joyce looked puzzled, and she replied in the negative.
“Is he the man, think you, who used to ride from Swainson to see Afy?”
Joyce’s face flushed crimson. “Oh, sir!” was all she uttered.
“The name is the same—Thorn; I thought it possible the men might be,” observed Mr. Carlyle.
“Sir, I cannot say. I never saw that Captain Thorn but once, and I don’t know, I don’t know—” Joyce spoke slowly and with consideration—“that I should at all know him again. I did not think of him when I looked at this gentleman; but, at any rate, no appearance in this one struck upon my memory as being familiar.”
So from Joyce Mr. Carlyle obtained no clue, one way or the other. The following day he sought out Otway Bethel.
“Are you intimate with that Captain Thorn who is staying with the Herberts?” asked he.
“Yes,” answered Bethel, decisively, “if passing a couple of hours in his company can constitute intimacy. That’s all I have seen of Thorn.”
“Are you sure,” pursued Mr. Carlyle.
“Sure!” returned Bethel; “why, what are you driving at now? I called in at Herbert’s the night before last, and Tom asked me to stay the evening. Thorn had just come. A jolly bout we had; cigars and cold punch.”
“Bethel,” said Mr. Carlyle, dashing to the point, “is it the Thorn who used to go after Afy Hallijohn? Come, you can tell if you like.”
Bethel remained dumb for a moment, apparently with amazement. “What a confounded lie!” uttered he at length. “Why it’s no more that than—What Thorn?” he broke off abruptly.
“You are equivocating, Bethel. The Thorn who is mixed up—or said to be-in the Hallijohn affair. Is this the same man?”
“You are a fool, Carlyle, which is what I never took you to be yet,” was Mr. Bethel’s rejoinder, spoken in a savage tone. “I have told you that I never knew there was any Thorn mixed up with Afy, and I should like to know why my word is not to be believed? I never saw Thorn in my life till I saw him the other night at the Herberts’, and that I would take my oath to, if put to it.”
Bethel quitted Mr. Carlyle with the last word, and the latter gazed after him, revolving points in his brain. The mention of Thorn’s name, the one spoken of by Richard Hare, appeared to excite some feeling in Bethel’s mind, arousing it to irritation. Mr. Carlyle remembered that it had done so previously and now it had done so again, and yet Bethel was an easy-natured man in general, far better tempered than principled. That there was something hidden, some mystery connected with the affair, Mr. Carlyle felt sure; but he could not attempt so much as a guess at what it might be. And this interview with Bethel brought him no nearer the point he wished to find out—whether this Thorn was the same man. In walking back to his office he met Mr. Tom Herbert.
“Does Captain Thorn purpose making a long stay with you?” he stopped him to inquire.
“He’s gone; I have just seen him off by the train,” was the reply of Tom Herbert. “It seemed rather slow with him without Jack, so he docked his visit, and says he’ll pay us one when Jack’s to the fore.”
As Mr. Carlyle went home to dinner that evening, he entered the grove, ostensibly to make a short call on Mrs. Hare. Barbara, on the tenterhooks of impatience, accompanied him outside when he departed, and walked down the path.
“What have you learnt?” she eagerly asked.
“Nothing satisfactory,” was the reply of Mr. Carlyle. “And the man has left again.”
“Left?” uttered Barbara.
Mr. Carlyle explained. He told her how they had come to his house the previous evening after Barbara’s departure, and his encounter with Tom Herbert that day; he mentioned, also, his interview with Bethel.
“Can he have gone on purpose, fearing consequences?” wondered Barbara.
“Scarcely; or why should he have come?”
“You did not suffer any word to escape you last night causing him to suspect for a moment that he was hounded?”
“Not any. You would make a bad lawyer, Barbara.”
“Who or what is he?”
“An officer in her majesty’s service, in John Herbert’s regiment. I ascertained no more. Tom said he was of good family. But I cannot help suspecting it is the same man.”
“Can nothing more be done?”
“Nothing in the present stage of the affair,” continued Mr. Carlyle, as he passed through the gate to continue his way. “We can only wait on again with what patience we may, hoping that time will bring about its own elucidation.”
Barbara pressed her forehead down on the cold iron of the gate as his footsteps died away. “Aye, to wait on,” she murmured, “to wait on in dreary pain; to wait on, perhaps, for years, perhaps forever! And poor Richard—wearing out his days in poverty and exile!”
“I should recommend a complete change of scene altogether, Mr. Carlyle. Say some place on the French or Belgian coast. Sea bathing might do wonders.”
“Should you think it well for her to go so far from home?”
“I should. In these cases of protracted weakness, where you can do nothing but try to coax the strength back again, change of air and scene are of immense benefit.”
“I will propose it to her,” said Mr. Carlyle.
“I have just done so,” replied Dr. Martin, who was the other speaker. “She met it with objection, which I expected, for invalids naturally feel a disinclination to move from home. But it is necessary that she should go.”
The object of their conversation was Lady Isabel. Years had gone on, and there were three children now at East Lynne—Isabel, William, and Archibald—the latter twelve months old. Lady Isabel had, a month or two back, been attacked with illness; she recovered from the disorder; but it had left her in an alarming state of weakness; she seemed to get worse instead of better, and Dr. Martin was summoned from Lynneborough. The best thing he could recommend—as you save seen—was change of air.
Lady Isabel was unwilling to take the advice; more especially to go so far as the “French coast.” And but for a circumstance that seemed to have happened purposely to induce her to decide, would probably never have gone. Mrs. Ducie—the reader may not have forgotten her name—had, in conjunction with her husband, the honorable Augustus, somewhat run out at the elbows, and found it convenient to enter for a time on the less expensive life of the Continent. For eighteen months she had been staying in Paris, the education of her younger daughters being the plea put forth, and a very convenient plea it is, and serves hundreds. Isabel had two or three letters from her during her absence, and she now received another, saying they were going to spend a month or two at Boulogne-sur-Mer. Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Wainwright, and Dr. Martin—in short, everybody—declared this must remove all Lady Isabel’s unwillingness to go from home, for Mrs. Ducie’s society would do away with the loneliness she had anticipated, which had been the ostensible score of her objection.
“Boulogne-sur-Mer, of all places, in the world!” remonstrated Lady Isabel. “It is spoken of as being crowded and vulgar.”
“The more amusing for you, my lady,” cried Dr. Martin, while Mr. Carlyle laughed at her. And finding she had no chance against them all, she consented to go, and plans were hastily decided upon.
“Joyce,” said Lady Isabel to her waiting maid, “I shall leave you at home; I must take Wilson instead.”
“Oh, my lady! What have I done?”
“You have done all that you ought, Joyce, but you must stay with the children. If I may not take them, the next best thing will be to leave them in your charge, not Miss Carlyle’s,” she said, shaking her voice; “if it were Wilson who remained, I could not do that.”
“My lady, I must do whatever you think best. I wish I could attend you and stay with them, but of course I cannot do both.”
“I am sent away to get health and strength, but it may be that I shall die, Joyce. If I never come back, will you promise to remain with my children?”
Joyce felt a creeping sensation in her veins, the sobs rose in her throat, but she swallowed them down and constrained her voice to calmness. “My lady, I hope you will come back to us as well as you used to be. I trust you will hope so too, my lady, and not give way to low spirits.”
“I sincerely hope and trust I shall,” answered Lady Isabel, fervently. “Still, there’s no telling, for I am very ill. Joyce, give me your promise. In case of the worst, you will remain with the children.”
“I will, my lady—as long as I am permitted.”
“And be kind to them and love them, and shield them from—from—any unkindness that may be put upon them,” she added, her head full of Miss Carlyle, “and talk to them sometimes of their poor mother, who is gone?”
“I will, I will—oh my lady, I will!” And Joyce sat down in the rocking-chair as Lady Isabel quitted her, and burst into tears.
Mr. Carlyle and Lady Isabel, with Wilson and Peter in attendance, arrived at Boulogne, and proceeded to the Hotel des Bains. It may be as well to mention that Peter had been transferred from Miss Carlyle’s service to theirs, when the establishment was first formed at East Lynne. Upon entering the hotel they inquired for Mrs. Ducie, and then a disappointment awaited them. A letter was handed them which had arrived that morning from Mrs. Ducie, expressing her regret that certain family arrangements prevented her visiting Boulogne; she was proceeding to some of the baths in Germany instead.
“I might almost have known it,” remarked Isabel. “She was always the most changeable of women.”
Mr. Carlyle went out in search of lodgings, Isabel objecting to remain in the bustling hotel. He succeeded in finding some very desirable ones, situated in the Rue de l’Ecu, near the port, and they moved into them. He thought the journey had done her good, for she looked better, and said she already felt stronger. Mr. Carlyle remained with her three days; he had promised only one, but he was pleased with everything around him, pleased with Isabel’s returning glimpses of health, and amused with the scenes of the busy town.
The tide served at eight o’clock the following morning, and Mr. Carlyle left by the Folkestone boat. Wilson made his breakfast, and after swallowing it in haste, he returned to his wife’s room to say farewell.
“Good-bye, my love,” he said, stooping to kiss her, “take care of yourself.”
“Give my dear love to the darlings, Archibald. And—and——”
“And what?” he asked. “I have not a moment to lose.”
“Do not get making love to Barbara Hare while I am away.”
She spoke in a tone half jest, half serious—could he but have seen how her heart was breaking! Mr. Carlyle took it wholly as a jest, and went away laughing. Had he believed she was serious, he could have been little more surprised had she charged him not to go about the country on a dromedary.
Isabel rose later, and lingered over her breakfast, listless enough. She was wondering how she would make the next few weeks pass; what she should do with her time. She had taken two sea baths since her arrival, but they had appeared not to agree with her, leaving her low and shivering afterwards, so it was not deemed advisable that she should attempt more. It was a lovely morning, and she determined to venture on to the pier, to where they had sat on the previous evening. She had not Mr. Carlyle’s arm, but it was not far, and she could take a good rest at the end of it.
She went, attended by Peter, took her seat, and told him to come for her in an hour. She watched the strollers on the pier as they had done the previous evening; not in crowds now, but stragglers, coming on at intervals. There came a gouty man, in a list shoe, there came three young ladies and their governess, there came two fast puppies in shooting jackets and eye-glasses, which they turned with a broad stare on Lady Isabel; but there was something about her which caused them to drop their glasses and their ill manners together. After an interval, there appeared another, a tall, handsome, gentlemanly man. Her eyes fell upon him; and—what was it that caused every nerve in her frame to vibrate, every pulse to quicken? Whose form was it that was thus advancing and changing the monotony of her mind into tumult? It was that of one whom she was soon to find had never been entirely forgotten.
Captain Levison came slowly on, approaching the pier where she sat. He glanced at her; not with the hardihood displayed by the two young men, but with quite sufficiently evident admiration.
“What a lovely girl!” thought he to himself. “Who can she be, sitting there alone?”
All at once a recollection flashed into his mind; he raised his hat and extended his hand, his fascinating smile in full play.
“I certainly cannot be mistaken. Have I the honor of once more meeting Lady Isabel Vane?”
She rose from the seat, and allowed him to take her hand, answering a few words at random, for her wits seemed wool-gathering.
“I beg your pardon—I should have said Lady Isabel Carlyle. Time has elapsed since we parted, and in the pleasure of seeing you again so unexpectedly, I thought of you as you were then.”
She sat down again, the brilliant flush of emotion dying away upon her cheeks. It was the loveliest face Francis Levison had seen since he saw hers, and he thought so as he gazed at it.
“What can have brought you to this place?” he inquired, taking a seat beside her.
“I have been ill,” she explained, “and am ordered to the sea-side. We should not have come here but for Mrs. Ducie; we expected to meet her. Mr. Carlyle only left me this morning.”
“Mrs. Ducie is off to Ems. I see them occasionally. They have been fixtures in Paris for some time. You do indeed look ill,” he abruptly added, in a tone of sympathy, “alarmingly ill. Is there anything I can do for you?”
She was aware that she looked unusually ill at that moment, for the agitation and surprise of meeting him were fading away, leaving her face an ashy whiteness. Exceedingly vexed and angry with herself did she feel that the meeting should have power to call forth emotion. Until that moment she was unconscious that she retained any sort of feeling for Captain Levison.
“Perhaps I have ventured out too early,” she said, in a tone that would seem to apologize for her looks: “I think I will return. I shall meet my servant, no doubt. Good-morning, Captain Levison.”
“But indeed you do not appear fit to walk alone,” he remonstrated. “You must allow me to see you safely home.”
Drawing her hand within his own quite as a matter of course, as he had done many a time in days gone by, he proceeded to assist her down the pier. Lady Isabel, conscious of her own feelings, felt that it was not quite the thing to walk thus familiarly with him, but he was a sort of relation of the family—a connection, at any rate—and she could find no ready excuse for declining.
“Have you seen Lady Mount Severn lately?” he inquired.
“I saw her when I was in London this spring with Mr. Carlyle. The first time we have met since my marriage; and we do not correspond. Lord Mount Severn had paid us two or three visits at East Lynne. They are in town yet, I believe.”
“For all I know; I have not seen them, or England either, for ten months. I have been staying in Paris, and got here yesterday.”
“A long leave of absence,” she observed.
“Oh, I have left the army. I sold out. The truth is, Lady Isabel—for I don’t mind telling you—things are rather down with me at present. My old uncle has behaved shamefully; he has married again.”
“I heard that Sir Peter had married.”
“He is seventy-three—the old simpleton! Of course this materially alters my prospects, for it is just possible he may have a son of his own now; and my creditors all came down upon me. They allowed me to run into debt with complacency when I was heir to the title and estates, but as soon as Sir Peter’s marriage appeared in the papers, myself and my consequence dropped a hundred per cent; credit was stopped, and I dunned for payment. So I thought I’d cut it altogether, and I sold out and came abroad.”
“Leaving your creditors?”
“What else could I do? My uncle would not pay them, or increase my allowance.”
“What are your prospects then?” resumed Lady Isabel.
“Prospects! Do you see that little ragged boy throwing stones into the harbor?—it is well the police don’t drop upon him,—ask him what his prospects are, and he will stare you in the face, and say, ‘None.’ Mine are on a like par.”
“You may succeed Sir Peter yet.”
“I may, but I may not. When those old idiots get a young wife—”
“Have you quarreled with Sir Peter?” interrupted Lady Isabel.
“I should quarrel with him as he deserves, if it would do any good, but I might get my allowance stopped. Self interest, you see, Lady Isabel, is the order of the day with most of us.”
“Do you propose staying in Boulogne long?”
“I don’t know. As I may find amusement. Paris is a fast capital, with its heated rooms and its late hours, and I came down for the refreshment of a few sea dips. Am I walking too fast for you?”
“You increased your pace alarmingly when you spoke of Sir Peter’s marriage. And I am not sorry for it,” she added, good-naturedly, “for it has proved to me how strong I am getting. A week ago I could not have walked half so fast.”
He interrupted with eager apologies, and soon they reached her home. Captain Levison entered with her—uninvited. He probably deemed between connections great ceremonies might be dispensed with, and he sat a quarter of an hour, chatting to amuse her. When he rose, he inquired what she meant to do with herself in the afternoon.
“To lie down,” replied Isabel. “I am not strong enough to sit up all day.”
“Should you be going out afterwards, you must allow me to take care of you,” he observed. “I am glad that I happened to be here, for I am sure you are not fit to wander out without an arm, and only followed by a servant. When Mr. Carlyle comes, he will thank me for my pains.”
What was she to urge in objection? Simply nothing. He spoke, let us not doubt, from a genuine wish to serve her, in a plain, easy tone, as any acquaintance might speak. Lady Isabel schooled herself severely. If those old feelings were not quite dead within her, why, she must smother them down again as effectually as if they were; the very fact of recognizing such to her own heart, brought a glow of shame to her brow. She would meet Captain Levison, and suffer his companionship, as she would that of the most indifferent stranger.
It was just the wrong way for her to go to work, though.
As the days passed on, Lady Isabel improved wonderfully. She was soon able to go to the sands in the morning and sit there to enjoy the sea air, watching the waves come up to recede with the tide. She made no acquaintance whatever in the place, and when she had a companion it was Captain Levison. He would frequently join her there, sometimes take her, almost always give her his arm home. Of all things, she disliked the having to take his arm, would a thousand times over rather have taken good old Peter’s. A secret prick of the conscience whispered it might be better if she did not. One day she said, in a joking sort of manner—she would not say it in any other—that now she was strong, she had no need of his arm and his escort. He demanded, in evident astonishment, what had arisen that he might not still afford it, seeing her husband was not with her to give her his. She had no answer in reply to this, no excuse to urge, and, in default of one, took his arm, as usual. In the evening he would be ready to take her to the pier, but they sat apart, mixing not with the bustling crowd—he lending to his manner, as he conversed with her, all that he would call up of fascination—and fascination, such as Francis Levison’s, might be dangerous to any ear, in the sweet evening twilight. The walk over, he left her at her own door; she never asked him in in the evening, and he did not intrude without, as he sometimes would of a morning.
Now, where was the help for this? You may say that she should have remained indoors, and not have subjected herself to his companionship. But the remaining indoors would not have brought her health, and it was health that she was staying in Boulogne to acquire, and the sooner it came the better pleased she would be, for she wanted to be at home with her husband and children.
In a fortnight from the period of his departure, Mr. Carlyle was expected in Boulogne. But what a marvellous change had this fortnight wrought in Lady Isabel! She did not dare to analyze her feelings, but she was conscious that all the fresh emotions of her youth had come again. The blue sky seemed as of the sweetest sapphire, the green fields and waving trees were of an emerald brightness, the perfume of the flowers was more fragrant than any perfume had yet seemed. She knew that the sky, that the grassy plains, the leafy trees, the brilliant flowers, were but as they ever had been; she knew that the sunny atmosphere possessed no more of loveliness or power of imparting delight than of old; and she knew that the change, the sensation of ecstacy, was in her own heart. No wonder that she shrank from self-examination.
The change from listless languor to her present feeling brought the hue and contour of health to her face far sooner than anything else could have done. She went down with Captain Levison to meet Mr. Carlyle, the evening he came in, and when Mr. Carlyle saw her behind the cords, as he was going to the custom-house, he scarcely knew her. Her features had lost their sharpness, her cheeks wore a rosy flush, and the light of pleasure at meeting him again shone in her eyes.
“What can you have been doing to yourself, my darling?” he uttered in delight as he emerged from the custom-house and took her hands in his. “You look almost well.”
“Yes, I am much better, Archibald, but I am warm now and flushed. We have waited here some time, and the setting sun was full upon us. How long the boat was in coming in!”
“The wind was against us,” replied Mr. Carlyle, wondering who the exquisite was at his wife’s side. He thought he remembered his face.
“Captain Levison,” said Lady Isabel. “I wrote you word in one of my letters that he was here. Have you forgotten it?” Yes, it had slipped from his memory.
“And I am happy that it happened so,” said that gentleman, interposing, “for it has enabled me to attend Lady Isabel in some of her walks. She is stronger now, but at first she was unfit to venture alone.”
“I feel much indebted to you,” said Mr. Carlyle, warmly.
The following day was Sunday, and Francis Levison was asked to dine with them—the first meal he had been invited to in the house. After dinner, when Lady Isabel left them, he grew confidential over his claret to Mr. Carlyle, laying open all his intricate affairs and his cargo of troubles.
“This compulsory exile abroad is becoming intolerable,” he concluded; “and a Paris life plays the very deuce with one. Do you see any chance of my getting back to England?”
“Not the least,” was the candid answer, “unless you can manage to satisfy or partially satisfy those claims you have been telling me of. Will not Sir Peter assist you?”
“I believe he would, were the case fairly represented to him; but how am I to get over to do it? I have written several letters to him lately, and for some time I got no reply. Then came an epistle from Lady Levison; not short and sweet, but short and sour. It was to the effect that Sir Peter was ill, and could not at present be troubled with business matters.”
“He cannot be very ill,” remarked Mr. Carlyle; “he passed through West Lynne, in his open carriage, a week ago.”
“He ought to help me,” grumbled Captain Levison. “I am his heir, so long as Lady Levison does not give him one. I do not hear that she has expectations.”
“You should contrive to see him.”
“I know I should; but it is not possible under present circumstances. With these thunder-clouds hanging over me, I dare not set foot in England, and run the risk to be dropped upon. I can stand a few things, but I shudder at the bare idea of a prison. Something peculiar in my idiosyncrasy, I take it, for those who have tried it, say that it’s nothing when you’re used to it.”
“Some one might see him for you.”
“Some one—who? I have quarreled with my lawyers, Sharp & Steel, of Lincoln’s Inn.”
“Keen practitioners,” put in Mr. Carlyle.
“Too keen for me. I’d send them over the herring-pond if I could. They have used me shamefully since my uncle’s marriage. If ever I do come into the Levison estates they’ll be ready to eat their ears off; they would like a finger in a pie with such property as that.”
“Shall I see Sir Peter Levison for you?”
“Will you?” returned Captain Levison, his dark eyes lighting up.
“If you like as your friend, you understand; not as your solicitor; that I decline. I have a slight knowledge of Sir Peter; my father was well acquainted with him; and if I can render you any little service, I shall be happy, in return for your kind attention to my wife. I cannot promise to see him for those two or three weeks, though,” resumed Mr. Carlyle, “for we are terribly busy. I never was so driven; but for being so I should stay here with my wife.”
Francis Levison expressed his gratitude, and the prospect, however remote, of being enabled to return to England increased his spirits to exultation. Whilst they continued to converse, Lady Isabel sat at the window in the adjoining room, listlessly looking out on the crowds of French who were crowding to and from the port in their Sunday holiday attire. Looking at them with her eyes, not with her senses—her senses were holding commune with herself, and it was not altogether satisfactory—she was aware that a sensation all too warm, a feeling of attraction toward Francis Levison, was working within her. Not a voluntary one; she could no more repress it than she could repress her own sense of being; and, mixed with it, was the stern voice of conscience, overwhelming her with the most lively terror. She would have given all she possessed to be able to overcome it. She would have given half the years of her future life to separate herself at once and forever from the man.
But do not mistake the word terror, or suppose that Lady Isabel Carlyle applied it here in the vulgar acceptation of the term. She did not fear for herself; none could be more conscious of self-rectitude of principle and conduct; and she would have believed it as impossible for her ever to forsake her duty as a wife, a gentlewoman, and a Christian, as for the sun to turn round from west to east. That was not the fear which possessed her; it had never presented itself to her mind; what she did fear was, that further companionship with Francis Levison might augment the sentiments she entertained for him to a height that her life, for perhaps years to come, would be one of unhappiness, a sort of concealment; and, more than all, she shrank form the consciousness of the bitter wrong that these sentiments cast upon her husband.
“Archibald, I have a favor to ask you,” she said, after Captain Levison’s departure. “Take me back with you.”
“Impossible, my love. The change is doing you so much good; and I took the apartments for six weeks. You must at least remain that time.”
The color flowed painfully into her cheek. “I cannot stay without you, Archibald.”
“Tell me why.”
“I am so dull without you,” was all she could say. He felt that this was not reason enough for altering an arrangement that was so beneficial to her; so he left her the following morning, commending her to the continued care of Captain Levison.
Lady Isabel was seated on one of the benches of the Petit Camp, as it is called, underneath the ramparts of the upper tower. A week or ten days had passed away since the departure of Mr. Carlyle, and in her health there was a further visible improvement.
It was still evening, cool for July; no sound was heard save the hum of the summer insects, and Lady Isabel sat in silence with her companion, her rebellious heart beating with a sense of its own happiness. But for the voice of conscience, strong within her; but for the sense of right and wrong; but for the existing things; in short, but that she was a wife, she might have been content to sit by his side forever, never to wish to move or to break the silence. Did he read her feelings? He told her, months afterward, that he did; but it may have been a vain boast, an excuse.
“Do you remember the evening, Lady Isabel, just such a one as this, that we all passed at Richmond?” he suddenly asked. “Your father, Mrs. Vane, you, I and others?”
“Yes, I remember it. We had spent a pleasant day; the two Miss Challoners were with us. You drove Mrs. Vane home, and I went with papa. You drove recklessly, I recollect, and Mrs. Vane said when we got home that you should never drive her again.”
“Which meant, not until the next time. Of all capricious, vain, exacting women, Emma Vane was the worst; and Emma Mount Severn is no improvement upon it; she’s a systematic flirt, and nothing better. I drove recklessly on purpose to put her in a fright, and pay her off.”
“What had she done?”
“Put me in a rage. She had saddled herself upon me, when I wanted—I wished for another to be my companion.”
“Blanche Challoner.”
“Blanche Challoner!” echoed Captain Levison, in a mocking tone; “what did I care for Blanche Challoner?”
Isabel remembered that he had been supposed in those days to care a great deal for Miss Blanche Challoner—a most lovely girl of seventeen. “Mrs. Vane used to accuse you of caring too much for her,” she said, aloud.
“She accused me of caring for some one else more than for Blanche Challoner,” he significantly returned; “and for once her jealous surmises were not misplaced. No Lady Isabel, it was not Blanche Challoner I had wished to drive home. Could you not have given a better guess than that at the time?” he added, turning to her.
There was no mistaking the tone of his voice or the glance of his eye. Lady Isabel felt a crimson flush rising and she turned her face away.
“The past is gone, and cannot be recalled,” he continued, “but we both played our cards like simpletons. If ever two beings were formed to love each other, you and I were. I sometimes thought you read my feelings—”
Surprise had kept her silent, but she interrupted him now, haughtily enough.
“I must speak, Lady Isabel; it is but a few words, and then I am silent forever. I would have declared myself had I dared, but my uncertain position, my debts, my inability to keep a wife, weighed me down; and, instead of appealing to Sir Peter, as I ought to have done, for the means to assume a position that would justify me in asking Lord Mount Severn’s daughter, I crushed my hopes within me, and suffered you to escape—”
“I will not hear this, Captain Levison,” she cried, rising from her seat in anger.
He touched her arm to place her on it again.
“One single moment yet, I pray you. I have for years wished that you should know why I lost you—a loss that tells upon me yet. I have bitterly worked out my own folly since I knew not how passionately I loved you until you became the wife of another. Isabel, I love you passionately still.”
“How dare you presume so to address me?”
She spoke in a cold, dignified tone of hauteur, as it was her bounden duty to speak; but, nevertheless, she was conscious of an undercurrent of feeling, whispering that, under other auspices, the avowal would have brought to her heart the most intense bliss.
“What I have said can do no hurt now,” resumed Captain Levison; “the time has gone by for it; for neither you nor I are likely to forget that you are a wife. We have each chosen our path in life, and must abide by it; the gulf between us is impassable but the fault was mine. I ought to have avowed my affection, and not have suffered you to throw yourself away upon Mr. Carlyle.”
“Throw myself away!” she indignantly uttered, roused to the retort. “Mr. Carlyle is my dear husband, esteemed, respected, and beloved. I married him of my own free choice, and I have never repented it; I have grown more attached to him day by day. Look at his noble nature, his noble form; what are you by his side? You forget yourself, Francis Levison.”
He bit his lip. “No, I do not.”
“You are talking to me as you have no right to talk!” she exclaimed, in agitation. “Who but you, would so insult me, taking advantage of my momentarily unprotected condition. Would you dare to do it, were Mr. Carlyle within reach! I wish you good-evening, sir.”
She walked away as quickly as her tired frame would permit. Captain Levison strode after her. He took forcible possession of her hand, and placed it within his arm.
“I pray you forgive and forget what has escaped me, Lady Isabel. Suffer me to be, as before, the kind friend, the anxious brother endeavoring to be of service to you in the absence of Mr. Carlyle.”
“It is what I have suffered you to be, looking upon you as, I may say, a relative,” she coldly rejoined, withdrawing her hand from his contact. “Not else should I have permitted your incessant companionship; and this is how you have repaid it! My husband thanked you for your attention to me; could he have read what was in your false heart, he had offered you different sort of thanks, I fancy.”
“I ask your pardon, Lady Isabel; I have acknowledged my fault, and I can do no more. I will not so offend again; but there are moments when our dearest feelings break through the convenances of life and betray themselves, in spite of our sober judgment. Suffer me to support you down this steep hill,” he added, for they were then going over the sharp stones of the Grand Rue; “you are not strong enough to proceed alone, after this evening’s long walk.”
“You should have thought of that before,” she said, with some sarcasm in her tone. “No; I have declined.”
So she had to put his arm back, which he was holding out, as she walked on unsupported, with what strength she had, he continuing by her side. Arriving at her own door, she wished him a cool good-evening, and he turned away in the direction of his hotel.
Lady Isabel brushed past Peter, and flew upstairs, startling Wilson, who had taken possession of the drawing-room to air her smart cap at its windows in the absence of her lady.
“My desk, Wilson, immediately,” cried she, bearing off her gloves, her bonnet, and her shawl. “Tell Peter to be in readiness to take a letter to the post; and he must walk fast, or he will not catch it before the English mail is closed.”
The symptoms of sinful happiness throbbing at her heart while Francis Levison told her of his love, spoke plainly to Lady Isabel of the expediency of withdrawing entirely from his society, and his dangerous sophistries; she would be away from the very place that contained him; put the sea between them. So she dashed off a letter to her husband; an urgent summons that he should come to her without delay for remain away longer she would not. It is probable she would have started alone, not waiting for Mr. Carlyle, but for fear of not having sufficient funds for the journey, after the rent and other things were paid.
Mr. Carlyle, when he received the letter and marked its earnest tone, wondered much. In reply, he stated that he would be with her on the following Saturday, and then her returning, or not, with him could be settled. Fully determined not to meet Captain Levison, Isabel, in the intervening days, only went out in a carriage. He called once, and was shown into the drawing-room; but Lady Isabel, who happened to be in her own chamber, sent out a message, which was delivered by Peter. “My lady’s compliments, but she must decline receiving visitors.”
Sunday morning—it had been impossible for him to get away before—brought Mr. Carlyle. He strongly combatted her wish to return home until six weeks should have expired, he nearly said he would not take her, and she grew earnest over it, almost to agitation.
“Isabel,” he said, “let me know your motive, for it appears to me you have one. The sojourn here is evidently doing you a vast deal of good, and what you urge about ‘being dull,’ sounds very like nonsense. Tell me what it is.”
A sudden impulse flashed over her that she would tell him the truth. Not tell him that she loved Francis Levison, or that he had spoken to her as he did; she valued her husband too greatly to draw him into any unpleasantness whose end could not be seen; but own to him that she had once felt a passing fancy for Francis Levison, and preferred not to be subjected to his companionship now. Oh, that she had done so! Her kind, her noble, her judicious husband! Why did she not? The whole truth, as to her present feelings, it was not expedient that she should tell, but she might have confided to him quite sufficient. He would only have cherished her the more deeply, and sheltered her under his fostering care, safe from harm.
Why did she not? In the impulse of the moment she was about to do so, when Mr. Carlyle, who had been taking a letter from his pocket book put it into her hand. Upon what slight threads the events of life turn! Her thoughts diverted, she remained silent while she opened the letter. It was from Miss Carlyle, who had handed it to her brother in the moment of his departure, to carry to Lady Isabel and save postage. Mr. Carlyle had nearly dropped it into the Folkestone post office.
A letter as stiff as Miss Corny herself. The children were well, and the house was going on well, and she hoped Lady Isabel was better. It filled three sides of note paper, but that was all the news it contained, and it wound up with the following sentence, “I would continue my epistle, but Barbara Hare, who is to spend the day with us, has just arrived.”
Barbara Hare spending the day at East Lynne! That item was quite enough for Lady Isabel, and her heart and her confidence closed to her husband. She must go home to her children, she urged; she could not remain longer away from them; and she urged it at length with tears.
“Nay, Isabel,” said Mr. Carlyle; “if you are so much in earnest as this, you shall certainly go back with me.”
Then she was like a child let loose from school. She laughed, she danced in her excess of content; she showered kisses on her husband, thanking him in her gleeful gratitude. Mr. Carlyle set it down to her love for him; he arrived at the conclusion that, in reiterating that she could not bear to be away from him, she spoke the fond truth.
“Isabel,” he said, smiling tenderly upon her, “do you remember, in the first days of our marriage, you told me you did not yet love me, but that the love would come. I think this is it.”
Her face flushed nearly to tears at the words; a bright, glowing, all too conscious flush. Mr. Carlyle mistook its source, and caught her to his heart.
Lady Isabel had returned home to bodily health, to the delight of meeting her children, to the glad sensation of security. But as the days went on, a miserable feeling of apathy stole over her: a feeling as if all whom she had loved in the world had died, leaving her living and alone.
She did not encourage these reflections; knowing what you do know of her, you may be sure of that, but they thrust themselves continually forward. The form of Francis Levison was ever present to her; not a minute of the day but it gave the coloring to her thoughts, and at night it made the subject of her dreams. Oh, those dreams! They were painful to wake from; painful from the contrasts they presented to reality; and equally painful to her conscience, in its strife after what was right.
Mr. Carlyle mounted his horse one morning and rode over to Levison Park. He asked for Sir Peter, but was shown into the presence of Lady Levison—a young and pretty woman dressed showily. She inquired his business.
“My business, madam, is with Sir Peter.”
“But Sir Peter is not well enough to attend to business; it upsets him—worries him.”
“Nevertheless, I am here by his own appointment. Twelve o’clock he mentioned; and the hour has barely struck.”
Lady Levison bit her lip and bowed coldly; and at that moment a servant appeared to conduct Mr. Carlyle to Sir Peter. The matter which had taken Mr. Carlyle thither was entered upon immediately—Francis Levison, his debts, and his gracelessness. Sir Peter, an old gentleman in a velvet skullcap, particularly enlarged upon the latter.
“I’d pay his debts today and set him upon his legs again, but that I know I should have to do the same thing over and over again to the end of the chapter, as I have done it repeatedly hitherto,” cried Sir Peter. “His grandfather was my only brother, his father my dutiful and beloved nephew; but he is just as bad as they were estimable. He is a worthless fellow and nothing else, Mr. Carlyle.”
“His tale drew forth my compassion, and I promised I would see you and speak for him,” returned Mr. Carlyle. “Of Captain Levison’s personal virtues or vices, I know nothing.”
“And the less you know the better,” growled Sir Peter. “I suppose he wants me to clear him and start him afresh.”
“Something of that sort, I conclude.”
“But how is it to be done? I am at home, and he is over there. His affairs are in a state of confusion, and nobody can come to the bottom of them without an explanation from him. Some liabilities, for which I have furnished the money, the creditors swear have not been liquidated. He must come over if he wants anything done.”
“Where is he to come to? He must be in England sub rosa.”
“He can’t be here,” hastily rejoined Sir Peter. “Lady Levison would not have him for a day.”
“He might be at East Lynne,” good-naturedly observed Mr. Carlyle. “Nobody would think of looking for him there. I think it is a pity that you should not meet, if you do feel inclined to help him.”
“You are a deal more considerate to him than he deserves, Mr. Carlyle. May I ask if you intend to act for him in a professional capacity?”
“I do not.”
A few more words, and it was decided that Captain Levison should be immediately sent for. As Mr. Carlyle left Sir Peter’s presence, he encountered Lady Levison.
“I can scarcely be ignorant that your conference with my husband has reference to his grandnephew,” she observed.
“It has,” replied Mr. Carlyle.
“I have had a very bad opinion of him, Mr. Carlyle; at the same time I do not wish you to carry away a wrong impression of me. Francis Levison is my husband’s nephew, his presumptive heir; it may, therefore, appear strange that I set my face against him. Two or three years ago, previous to my marriage with Sir Peter, in fact before I knew Sir Peter, I was brought into contact with Francis Levison. He got acquainted with some friends of mine, and at their house I met him. He behaved shamefully ill; he repaid their hospitality with gross ingratitude; other details and facts regarding his conduct also became known to me. Altogether I believe him to be a base and despicable man, both by nature and inclination, and that he will remain such to the end of time.”
“I know very little indeed of him,” observed Mr. Carlyle. “May I inquire the nature of his ill-conduct in that instance?”
“He ruined them—he ruined them, Mr. Carlyle. They were simple, unsuspicious country people, understanding neither fraud nor vice, nor the ways of an evil world. Francis Levison got them to put their names to bills, ‘as a matter of form, to accommodate him for a month or so,’ he stated, and so they believed. They were not wealthy; they lived upon their own small estate, with none too much of superfluous money to spare, and when the time came for them to pay—as come it did—it brought ruin, and they had to leave their home. He deliberately did it—knowing what would be the end. And I could tell you of other things. Sir Peter may have informed you that I object to receive him here. I do. My objection is to the man—to his character; not owing, as I hear it has been said, to any jealous paltry feeling touching his being the heir. I must lose my own self-respect before I admit Francis Levison to my house as an inmate. Sir Peter may assist him in welcome—may pay his debt, and get him out of his scrapes as often as he pleases, but I will not have him here.”
“Sir Peter said you declined to receive him. But it is necessary that he should come to England, if his affairs are to be set straight, and also that he should see Sir Peter.”
“Come to England!” interrupted Lady Levison. “How can he come to England under present circumstances, unless, indeed, he comes en cachette?”
“En cachette, of course,” replied Mr. Carlyle. “There is no other way. I have offered to let him stay at East Lynne. He is, you may be aware, a sort of connection of Lady Isabel’s.”
“Take care that he does not repay your hospitality with ingratitude,” warmly returned Lady Levison. “It would only be in accordance with his practice.”
Mr. Carlyle laughed.
“I do not see what harm he could do me, allowing that he had the inclination. He would not scare my clients from me, or beat my children, and I can take care of my pocket. A few days will, no doubt, be the extent of his sojourn.”
Lady Levison smiled too, and shook hands with Mr. Carlyle.
“In your house, perhaps, there may be no field for his vagaries, but rely upon it, where there is one he is sure to be at some mischief or other.”
This visit of Mr. Carlyle’s to Levison Park took place on a Friday morning, and on his return to his office he dispatched an account of it to Captain Levison at Boulogne, telling him he had better come over. But now Mr. Carlyle, like many another man whose mind has its share of work, was sometimes forgetful of trifles, and it entirely slipped his memory to mention the expected arrival at home. The following evening, Saturday, he and Lady Isabel were dining in the neighborhood, when the conversation at table turned upon the Ducies and their embarrassments. The association of ideas led Mr. Carlyle’s thoughts to Boulogne, to Captain Levison and his embarrassments, and it immediately occurred to him that he had not told his wife of the anticipated visit. He kept it in his mind then, and spoke as soon as they were in the chariot returning home.
“Isabel,” began he, “I suppose we have always rooms ready for visitors, because I am expecting one.”
“Oh, yes; or if not, they are soon made ready.”
“Ah, but tomorrow’s Sunday, and I have no doubt that’s the day he will take advantage of to come. I am sorry I forgot to mention it yesterday.”
“Who is coming, then?”
“Captain Levison.”
“Who?” repeated Lady Isabel, in a sharp tone of consternation.
“Captain Levison. Sir Peter consents to see him, with a view to the settlement of his liabilities, but Lady Levison declines to receive him at the Park. So I offered to give him house-room at East Lynne for a few days.”
There is an old saying, “the heart leaping into the mouth;” and Lady Isabel’s leaped into hers. She grew dizzy at the words—her senses seemed momentarily to desert her. Her first sensation was as if the dull earth had opened and shown her a way into Paradise; her second, a lively consciousness that Francis Levison ought not to be suffered to come again into companionship with her. Mr. Carlyle continued to converse of the man’s embarrassments, of his own interview with Sir Peter and Lady Levison; but Isabel was as one who heard not. She was debating the question, how she could prevent his coming?
“Archibald,” she presently said, “I do not wish Francis Levison to stay at East Lynne.”
“It will only be for a few days—perhaps but a day or two. Sir Peter is in the humor to discharge the claims, and, the moment his resolve is known, the excaptain can walk on her majesty’s dominions, an unmolested man, free to go where he will.”
“That may be,” interrupted Lady Isabel, in an accent of impatience; “but why should he come to our house?”
“I proposed it myself. I had no idea you would dislike his coming. Why should you?”
“I don’t like Francis Levison,” she murmured. “That is, I don’t care to have him at East Lynne.”
“My dear, I fear there is no help for it now; he is most likely on his road, and will arrive tomorrow. I cannot turn him out again, after my own voluntary invitation. Had I known it would be disagreeable to you, I would not have proposed it.”
“To-morrow!” she exclaimed, all the words that caught her ear. “Is he coming tomorrow?”
“Being Sunday, a free day, he will be sure to take advantage of it. What has he done that you should object to his coming? You did not say in Boulogne that you disliked him.”
“He had done nothing,” was her faltering answer, feeling that her grounds of opposition must melt under her one by one.
“Lady Levison appears to possess a very ill opinion of him,” resumed Mr. Carlyle. “She says she knew him in years gone by. She mentioned one or two things which, if true, must be bad enough. But possibly she may be prejudiced.”
“She is prejudiced,” said Isabel. “At least Francis Levison told me at Boulogne. There appeared to be no love lost between them.”
“At any rate, his ill doings or well doings cannot affect us for the short period he is likely to remain. You have taken a prejudice against him also, I suppose, Isabel.”
She suffered Mr. Carlyle to remain in the belief, and sat with clasped hands and a despairing spirit feeling that fate was against her.
How could she accomplish her task of forgetting this man, if he was thus to be thrown into her home and her companionship? Suddenly she turned to her husband, and laid her cheek upon his shoulder.
He thought she was tired. He passed his arm round her waist, drew her face to a more comfortable position, and bent his own lovingly upon it. It came to her mind, as she lay there, to tell him a portion of the truth, like it had done once before. It was a strong arm of shelter, that round her—a powerful pillar of protection, him upon whom she leaned; why did she not confide herself to him as trustingly as a little child? Simply because her courage failed. Once, twice, the opening words were upon her lips, but come forth they did not; and then the carriage stopped at East Lynne, and the opportunity was over. Oh! How many a time in her after years did Lady Isabel recall that midnight drive with her husband, and wish, in her vain repentance, that she had opened his eyes to that dangerous man.
On Sunday Captain Levison arrived at East Lynne.