Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/312

 3, 1864.] rise towards mid-day, cause herself to be attired becomingly, go into her dressing-room, and stop there for the remainder of the day. Lady Jane had to divide her time pretty equally between Laura and Lucy, now that Lucy was getting well, for Laura was jealous and exacting.

Laura’s frame of mind did not altogether tend to advance perfect recovery; at least not if repose were essential to it. That suspicion of hers, connecting her husband with the inmates of Tupper’s cottage, had only grown the fiercer in the condemned seclusion of the last week or two. On Laura Carlton’s heart there was an ever-burning sense of deep humiliation. Lax allegiance in a man’s married life does reflect its humiliation on the wife; and Laura drank deeply of its sting. Unduly conscious of her birth and title, of the place she held amidst the nobodies of the provincial town, remembering how impassioned had been her love for Mr. Carlton, how entirely in the early days of her wedded life she had given this love up to him, it cannot be wondered that she felt the defalcation to her heart’s core. Jealousy, rage, a thirst for redress, were ever at battle within her. She longed to fling back the humiliation on Mr. Carlton: that is, to bring him to self-humiliation. She wished to find something tangible of which to accuse him; proofs that he could neither ignore nor dispute; she cherished a vision of seeing him at her feet, suing for pardon, for reconciliation, abjectly, his head in the dust: or else that she would take a high ground, and say, I leave you, I am your wife no longer.

She was dwelling on all these things now, as she lay back in an easy chair, her feet on a low velvet ottoman in front of the fire, her eyes bent in thought, the tips of her fingers pressed together as her elbows rested on the arms of the chair. Lady Jane was sitting near the window, knitting a pair of the same sort of woollen mittens that she used to knit for her father. These were for Mr. Carlton. He had complained one day in Jane’s hearing of the cold striking to his wrists when he had to go abroad at night; and Jane immediately offered to make him a pair of these soft woollen things. Perfect courtesy—it may indeed be said cordiality—had existed between Mr. Carlton and Lady Jane during this sojourn of hers in the house; but they had not met much, for the unusual sickness prevailing had caused Mr. Carlton to be a great deal from home.

Jane fully intended to ask Mr. Carlton, before she quitted the house, whether he could give her any information of the past, as relating to Clarice. She might have done so before but for this continuous occupation of the surgeon and her own anxiety during Lucy’s danger. Neither had she spoken to Laura, preferring to wait until she, Laura, was convalescent. That time had come now, and Jane took the present quiet moment when they were alone together. It was the day of Frederick Grey’s visit, but subsequent to that event. She began by telling Laura of the late interview with Mrs. West, and of the supposition that Clarice was married.

“Married!” exclaimed Laura, turning her head quickly to her sister.

“By what Mrs. West said—as I have now repeated to you—I think there can be no doubt of it. Indeed, Clarice admitted that it was so when the servant girl met her.”

“Oh, well I think all that is proof enough,” remarked Laura. “So it seems I was not the only one of the family to consult self-inclination—dreadful conduct as you and papa thought it in me! And pray, Jane, who was the gentleman?”

“About that, there is less certainty,” said Jane. “Circumstances point strongly—at least in my opinion—to its having been a brother of Mr. West’s, a young medical man. He was staying there, was very intimate with Clarice, and in the following winter embarked for India. Mrs. West does not think this: she argues that Mr. Tom West was open-hearted, was his own master, and would have married Clarice publicly, had he married her at all. She feels certain that they did not sail together, however it may have been; but it appears to me that Clarice could not have been in a condition of health to embark, and would probably follow him later.”

“Nothing more likely. But why—being safely married—should she not have told us? Had she feared interference to prevent it, she could not have feared interference to separate them when it was done.”

“True,” said Lady Jane.

“I have pondered it all over until I am tired and sick. At all events, this is a little clue, and now I must tell you who may possibly help us in it—Mr. Carlton.”

“How should he help?” asked Laura, in surprise. “I have never spoken to him of Clarice. To confess to a sister who went out to serve as a governess and got lost, is not pleasant—and you have heard me say this before. I have never opened my lips about Clarice to Mr. Carlton.”

Jane explained. That in the old days Mr. Carlton was intimate at Mrs. West’s: was a friend of Tom West’s, of a Mr. Crane, and of other young medical men who visited there. “It is just possible Mr. Carlton might have known something of the marriage, and of their