Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/118

 16, 1864.] infant peer in his cradle. He raised his voice with all the power of his little lungs, and Jane hastened to take him up and carry him to the countess.

Laura meanwhile, in Lady Oakburn’s carriage, was being rattled over the stones of London. The carriage took its way to the East-end, to a populous but certainly not fashionable locality. She was about to pay an impromptu visit to her husband’s father, Mr. Carlton.

In a crowded and remote thoroughfare, where riches and poverty, bustle and idleness, industry and guilt seemed to mingle incongruously together, was situated the residence of Mr. Carlton. The carriage drew up before a square red brick house; not large, but sufficiently commodious. It stood a little back from the street, and a paved court led to the entrance. On the door was a brass plate, “Mr. Carlton, Surgeon;” and over the door was a large lamp of flaring yellow and red glass.

Laura stepped out of the carriage, and a man servant opened the door almost the instant that she had rung at it.

“Can I see Mr. Carlton?”

“Not now, ma'am. It is not my master’s hour for receiving patients. In a minute he will have left on his round of visits.”

The servant by a slight gesture indicated a plain-looking brougham in waiting. Laura had not noticed it. The refusal did not please her, and she put on her most imperious manner.

“Your master is at home?”

“He is at home, ma'am, but I cannot admit you. It is the hour for his carriage, and—and there he is going to it,” added the servant, a sort of relief in his tone, for he did not like controversy.

Laura turned quickly; a thin man of sixty had come out of a side door and was crossing the paved court. She stepped up and confronted him.

“Mr. Carlton, I presume?”

She need not have asked. In the slender, spare, gentlemanlike form, in the well shaped features, in the impassive expression of face, she saw her husband over again; her husband as he would be when thirty more years should have passed over his head—if they were destined to pass. In the elder man’s sharp tone, his decisive gesture as he turned and answered to the call, she recognised the very manner of him, so familiar to her. The tone and manner were not discourteous certainly, but short and very uncompromising.

“I am Mr. Carlton. What is your business?”

“I have come to see you, sir. I have come all the way from the West-end to see you.”

Mr. Carlton glanced at the carriage. He saw the earl’s coronet on it; he saw the servants in their handsome livery—for the mourning was not assumed yet for the earl. But Mr. Carlton did not entertain any overdue reverence for earls on the whole, and carriages and servants he only regarded as necessary appendages to comfort to those who could afford them.

“Then I am very sorry you should have come at this hour, young lady, that’s all,” he said. “I cannot see patients at home after the clock strikes three: and it struck two minutes ago; you might have heard it from yonder church. Were I to break the rule once, I might be wanted to break it always. If you will come to-morrow at”

“I am not a patient,” interrupted Laura.

“Not a patient? What are you, then?”

“I am your son’s wife, sir: Lady Laura Carlton.”

Mr. Carlton betrayed no surprise. He looked at her for a minute or two, his impassive face never changing. Then he held out his arm with civility, and led her to the house. The entrance at the forbidden hour which he would have denied to a patient, however valuable, he accorded to his daughter-in-law.

He handed her into a room on the ground floor, a dining-room evidently; a dark sombre apartment, with heavy crimson velvet curtains, and handsome furniture as sombre as the room. The man-servant was removing the remains of some meal from the table, luncheon or dinner; but his master stopped him with a motion of the hand.

“Lay it again, Gervase.”

“Not for me,” interposed Laura, as she sat down in an arm-chair. “I would prefer not to take anything,” she added, to Mr. Carlton.

Gervase went away with his tray. And Mr. Carlton turned to her. “And so you are the young lady my son has married! I wish you health and happiness!”

“You are very kind,” said Laura, beginning to take a dislike to Mr. Carlton. She knew how useful some of his hoarded gains would be to them; she hated him for his stinginess in not having helped his son; and she had come down in an impulse that morning to pay him court and make friends with him. But there was something in his calm eye and calm bearing that told her her object would be lost, if that object was the getting him to aid their pockets; and Laura intrenched herself within her own pride, and set herself to dislike him—as she always did dislike anybody who thwarted her.

“I am in London for a few days, Mr. Carlton, and I thought I would come and