Works of Ellen Wood, page 482
This little incident, the revelation of the name, and Mr. Carlton’s uncalled-for anger, had made a great impression on Mrs. Smith. She had always surmised that Lewis must have been the Christian name of Mrs. Crane’s husband, and her doubts of Mr. Carlton were certainly aroused. She had said to Lady Jane this very morning that she was trying to “put two and two together,” and could not do it. In plain English, had she only spoken out, she would have said she suspected Mr. Carlton, but wanted some clue to turn doubts into facts. After she had made this remark, Lady Jane showed her the letter, and she thought Mrs. Smith would never have done looking at it. When she returned it, it was in silence, without comment.
“Would you mind leaving this note with me for an hour or two, my lady?” she then asked. “I should like to think it over when I am alone.”
Lady Jane saw no reason why she should not leave the note. She still thought it had been written to Mr. Crane. And after her departure from the cottage, Mrs. Smith sat down, note in hand, and deliberated. Not upon whether Mr. Carlton was guilty or not — the letter, which she read correctly, had completely settled that doubt in her own mind — but upon the manner in which she could best bring it home to him. Never for a moment had Mrs. Smith wavered in her intention of bringing Clarice Beauchamp’s destroyer to justice if she succeeded in discovering him, and that she knew she had done now. Lady Jane Chesney in her own home felt not more sure of Mr. Carlton’s guilt, now she had heard Judith’s story, than did Mrs. Smith in her home at Tupper’s cottage, not having heard it.
“What had I better do?” she communed with herself. “See a magistrate at once, and tell my story; or see a lawyer, and get him to act? I have not been much in the way of these things, thank Heaven, and I hardly know the right manner to set about it. But I’ll do one of the two this blessed night.”
When the mind is in this excited, determined state, action is almost imperative, and Mrs. Smith put on her bonnet to go out. But she found her plans frustrated. The young woman-servant, who had been away all the afternoon, and only returned to the cottage when Lady Jane was leaving it, positively declined to be left alone in the house with the little dead boy.
“You great simpleton!” exclaimed Mrs. Smith in her indignation. “You are old enough to know better. What do you suppose that dead baby would do to you?”
The girl could not say what; she had no very defined idea upon the subject; but she wholly refused to remain alone. If Mrs. Smith went out, she’d go out too; she wouldn’t dare to stop.
The difficulty was solved by an arrival; that of Mrs. Pepperfly. Never had the old woman been so welcome to Mrs. Smith, and she consented to stay the evening. In point of fact, it was just the intention she had come with.
“Who are the magistrates here?” asked Mrs. Smith.
“Magistrates?” repeated Mrs. Pepperfly, looking astonished.
“Are there any living about here? I wanted to see one.”
Mrs. Pepperfly could not get over her surprise. Magistrates and their places of domicile were not much in her line, and she really could give no information. “If it’s to register the boy’s death, it ain’t a magistrate you must go to,” she said. “And you’ll want a certificate from Mr. Carlton. Them register men won’t do nothing without one.”
“It’s not to register the death; that’s done; it’s for something else — a little private matter of my own. Perhaps you can recommend me to a clever lawyer? — He might do for me better than a magistrate.”
“The cleverest lawyer I know is Mr. Drone, two doors from the Red Lion,” returned Mrs. Pepperfly. “He haven’t his equal in the place. Let anybody in a bit o’ trouble go to him, and he’s safe to pull ’em through it. He’s what they call the justices’ clerk.”
Accepting the recommendation, Mrs. Smith set forth on her night walk. She passed down the Rise, and through the town as far as the Red Lion. Just beyond, on the door of a private house, she read, “Mr. Drone, Solicitor;” rang the bell, and asked to see him.
Mr. Drone anything but exemplified his name. He was a little man, particularly brisk and active, and came to Mrs. Smith with a red face. He had finished his dinner, and had since been toasting himself over the fire, for it was a very cold night.
The fire in the inner office, a small square room, where Mrs. Smith had been shown, was nearly out, but the lawyer cracked it up, and put on some more coal. They sat down, the table, covered with the lawyer’s papers, between them, and Mrs. Smith told her tale from beginning to end, the little lawyer, in his eagerness, perpetually interrupting her with questions.
The story astonished him beyond expression. Again and again he asked whether there could be any mistake. Mr. Carlton, who stood so well in the good graces of his fellow-townsmen, the destroyer of that poor Mrs. Crane! And Mrs. Crane his wife, and the sister of the Ladies Chesney? Mr. Drone thought he had never heard so improbable a tale in his whole life.
Mrs. Smith, calm, patient, persistent, went over it again. She spoke of Lady Jane’s visit to her that afternoon, she handed him the letter her ladyship had left with her. Mr. Drone began to think there must be something in the story, and he set himself to recall as many particulars as he could of Mrs. Crane’s death. He had been fully cognizant of them at the time.
“Does Lady Jane Chesney suspect Mr. Carlton?” he asked.
“Not she,” replied Mrs. Smith. “She has no idea it was Mr. Carlton who was Mrs. Crane’s husband. She suspects it was a Mr. Crane who married her, but she thinks Mr. Carlton knew of the marriage, for he was a friend of Mr. Crane’s. I’m not sure, but she fears Mr. Carlton knew more about the death than he would like to say; only, however, as Mr. Crane’s friend.”
“But I can’t see why Mr. Carlton should have destroyed this poor young lady — allowing that he did so, as you suspect,” urged Mr. Drone.
“Nor I,” said Mrs. Smith. “Unless any of his plans were put out by her coming down, and he was afraid it would be found out that she was his wife.”
The lawyer pulled at his whiskers, his habit when in thought. “You see there’s no certainty that she was his wife — that she was married at all, in fact.”
“Then there is, for I’d stake my life upon it,” angrily returned Mrs. Smith. “I’m as certain she was married as that I was married myself. You are as bad as my husband, sir; he used to say as much.”
“The chief thing would be to get proof of it,” composedly returned the lawyer. “It would supply a motive, you see. I suppose you never obtained the slightest clue as to where the ceremony took place?”
“N — o,” returned Mrs. Smith hesitatingly. “I remember once, the winter that she was at my house at Islington, we were talking about churches and marriages and such things, and she said, in a laughing sort of way, that Old St. Pancras Church was as good a one to be married in as any. It did not strike me at the time that she meant anything by the remark; but it’s just possible, sir, she was married there.”
Mr. Drone’s brisk eyes twinkled, and he made a memorandum in his pocket-book. He made other memorandums; he asked about five hundred questions more than he had already asked. And when Mrs. Smith departed, he stood at the door to watch her away, and then jumped into the omnibus just starting for Great Wennock station, and sent the following telegram to London: —
“Henry Drone, South Wennock, to John Friar, Bedford Row.
“Search Old St. Pancras register for 1847. Certificate of marriage wanted; Lewis Carlton to Clarice Beauchamp, or perhaps Clarice Chesney. Lose no time. Bribe clerk if necessary, and send special messenger down at once with it, if obtained.”
CHAPTER XXI.
AN INTERRUPTED LUNCHEON.
MRS. SMITH of Tupper’s cottage, and Mr. Henry Drone, solicitor and clerk to the magistrates at South Wennock, were holding a hot argument, almost a fight. With the dawn of the winter’s morning, Mrs. Smith had presented herself at that gentleman’s office, demanding, and obstinately persisting in the demand, that the case should be laid before the magistrates as soon as they met, and a warrant asked for to apprehend Mr. Carlton. Mr. Drone dissented: he saw no reason for being so precipitate.
“Look here,” said he, “if you let this affair get wind before it’s ripe, you may defeat your own ends. I am not sure that the magistrates would grant a warrant as the case stands. It’s a ticklish thing, mind you, to arrest a gentleman of hitherto good repute. Once the case is taken before the court, it will be blazoned from one end of South Wennock to the other, and Mr. Carlton — if he felt so inclined — might find escape easy.”
“That’s just what I want to prevent,” retorted Mrs. Smith. “If the warrant is granted at once, he can’t escape.”
“But we cannot make sure that they will grant a warrant. I don’t know that I would myself, were I one of the bench. I declare I couldn’t sleep last night for thinking of the story, it is so strange a one. Doubt after doubt arose in my mind; and I came to the conclusion, times and again, that there must be some great mistake, and it could not be true.”
“And you don’t mean to go on with it!” resentfully spoke Mrs. Smith. “I would not have told you all I have, if I had thought that.”
“Softly, ma’am,” returned the lawyer; “I have said nothing of the sort. I do mean to go on with it. That is, I’ll lay the case before their worships, and they can do as they please in the matter. What I urge is, don’t strike before the iron’s hot. When the subject of accusation is a man like Mr. Carlton, enjoying the confidence of the town, the husband of a peer’s daughter, the bench won’t grant a warrant lightly; they must have something beyond mere suspicion to go upon.”
“And is there nothing here beyond mere suspicion?” asked Mrs. Smith.
“As you put it — yes. And perhaps the magistrates may consider so. But I say we should be at a great deal more certainty if we could get the copy of the marriage certificate. I tell you I have telegraphed for it: that is, I have telegraphed that the register at Old St. Pancras Church shall be searched. If it’s found, that copy will be down here in the course of the morning.”
“And if it’s not found, sir?” rejoined Mrs. Smith in a blaze of anger. “It’s quite a wild-goose sort of chase to search for it at all, in my opinion. She might just as well have been married at any other church in London as at that. The remark she made might have meant nothing. If it meant anything, I should have seen and suspected it at the time.”
“I think it likely that it did mean something. We lawyers, ma’am, are apt to suspect these remarks. At any rate, we sometimes think it worth while to find out if they have a meaning or not.”
“Then I’m thankful that I am not a lawyer,” was the retort.
Mr. Drone shrugged his shoulders. “It’s as pleasant a life as any, for what I see. All callings have their drawbacks. But what I wished to point out to you was this: that if that certificate comes down and we can produce it to the magistrates, they will have no loophole of excuse; they must grant the warrant of apprehension. And as I expect the certificate (if it is in existence) down this morning, the application had better wait an hour or two.”
“Then, sir, I tell you that I’ll not wait the hour or two. No, nor a minute. As soon as the court doors are open and the magistrates are on the bench, the application shall be made. And if you don’t like to appear and make it, I’ll do it myself in person.”
It was somewhat strange that Mrs. Smith, with her phlegmatic temperament, should put herself into this fever of determined haste. Did she fear that Mr. Carlton would suspect anything, and slip away? It may be, that she was vexed with herself for not having suspected him before, all the months that he had been visiting almost daily, at her house. One thing was certain: so convinced was she that the past guilt was Mr. Carlton’s alone, and so incensed was her feeling against him in consequence, that if she could have conveniently appended the surgeon with one of her silk pocket-handkerchiefs to a beam in her cottage roof, she had hastened to do it, and not waited for the delay and intricacies of the law.
Mr. Drone could make nothing of her. Once set upon a thing, perhaps no woman living was more persistently obstinate in having her own way than Mrs. Smith — and that’s saying a great deal, you know. The lawyer was not the first man who has had to yield, against his better judgment, to a woman’s will; and at eleven o’clock, for the magistrates met late that day, he accompanied her to the court, and requested a private hearing. Their worships granted it, and proceeded to business with closed doors.
Meanwhile Mr. Carlton was going his morning rounds, and chatting amicably with his patients, in complete ignorance of the web that others were tightening round him, utterly unconscious that even then a plot built up by his enemies had begun to work. Oh, if some pitying spirit would but warn us of our peril, in these hours of danger!
No friendly spirit warned Mr. Carlton. He paid his visits, driving from one house to another, and returned home rather earlier than usual. The sickness was abating in South Wennock as quickly as it had come on, and the medical men were, comparatively speaking, at leisure again. Mr. Carlton went into the surgery, looked in the visiting book, dotted down a few orders for medicines for Mr. Jefferson to make up when he came in, and at one o’clock went into the dining-room.
Lady Laura was there. It was the first day she had come downstairs; that is, come regularly to meals. She was just about to sit down to luncheon, and so very unusual a thing was it for her husband to come in and join in that meal, that she looked at him in surprise.
“Ah, Laura! Down to luncheon again! I am glad of it, my dear,”
He spoke in a cheery, hearty, loving tone; very, very rarely did he speak in any other to his wife. The time was to come when Laura would remember those tones with remorse, and think how she had requited them.
“You are home early to-day,” observed Laura, quitting the chair she had been about to take, and drawing nearer the fire while she talked.
“Earlier than I have been lately. Laura, I shall advertise the practice at once now.”
“Advertise the practice!”
“I am beginning to dislike this incessant work. And if I don’t make an effort some time we shall never get away. How early you went to bed last night!” continued Mr. Carlton, passing to a different topic.
“I was tired,” said Laura evasively. In point of fact, she had not been tired the previous evening, but angry at Jane’s unexplained departure, and had gone to rest early.
“You are letting luncheon get cold.”
Laura gave a side glance at the table and slightly tossed her head. She threw her eyes full at her husband, as he stood opposite to her in the light of the front and side windows.
“So that child’s dead, I hear?”
“What child?” repeated Mr. Carlton, really not for the moment comprehending, for he was thinking of other things.
“As if you did not know! The child at Tupper’s cottage.”
“Oh yes; he died yesterday morning, poor little sufferer! The mother takes it dreadfully,” he added, after a pause.
“Will you affirm to me, now that he is lying dead, that the child was nothing to you? You know what I mean.”
“No,” returned Mr. Carlton, with provoking coolness. “I answered you once on the point, and I thought you were satisfied. If you have been bringing up the old fancies again, Laura, you must abide by it; I shall not allow them to trouble me.”
Thought she was satisfied! Little did Mr. Carlton suspect how far from “satisfied” she had been! — what a sea of jealousy her mind had become since! Laura resumed.
“The mother bears it badly, does she?”
“She did yesterday morning. I was up there half-an-hour after the child’s death, and I think I never saw grief so passionate as hers was for the moment. I was astonished. But when these cold, stern natures yield to emotion, it is often strong. I dare say it spent itself long before the day was over.”
“I suppose you soothed it for her?”
Mr. Carlton looked quickly at his wife: was she bringing up this absurdity again? “Laura!”
“Well?”
“What do you mean?”
Lady Laura’s pouting lips and flushed cheeks answered for her, and Mr. Carlton had no need to ask a second time. But the absurdity of the thing, as connected with Mrs. Smith, struck so ludicrously upon Mr. Carlton, that his whole face relaxed into an amused smile.
“Oh, Laura? That hard old woman!”
Had he protested for an hour, it could not have opened her eyes to the real absurdity of her doubts more than did those simple words. She looked shyly up at him, her lip quivering. Mr. Carlton laid his hand fondly on her shoulder.
“Need I affirm it to you again, Laura? — that I never had any acquaintance with the woman, on my sacred word of honour? You cannot surely think it necessary that I should repeat it. What delusion can you have been giving way to?”
In truth, Laura hardly knew; except that it was one that had blinded her judgment and made her miserable. A conviction flashed into her mind that she had been altogether mistaken. And the chief sensation struggling through all the rest was one of shame, mingled with repentance, for having in this instance unjustly wronged him; for having betrayed her jealousy to the world, comprising Lady Jane and Judith; for having secretly visited Mr. Carlton’s hiding-places.
She raised her hand, took his from her shoulder, and left her own within it, the tears trembling on her eyelashes. Mr. Carlton bent his face to hers.
“We will soon begin a new life elsewhere, Laura,” he whispered.
“It shall not be my fault if clouds come between us then.”
Laura dried her eyes and turned to the luncheon-table. Two or three tempting little dishes were laid there. Lady Laura liked good living just as much as the earl had liked it. It was her pleasure not to be waited upon at luncheon, and she took up two of the plates, now nearly cold, and held them to the fire. Mr. Carlton took them from her to hold them there himself.
