Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/343

 328 “Did you know that Clarice—that Miss Beauchamp married Mr. Crane?”

“I did not”

“I cannot divest myself of the idea that you know more of this past business than you say,” she rejoined. “I want the clue to it. If you can furnish it, why will you not? You certainly were called in to Mrs. Crane: you gave evidence to that effect at the inquest.”

“We are at cross-purposes, Lady Jane,” was the surgeon’s answer. “I can tell you nothing whatever. The lady I was called to attend in Palace Street was a stranger. As to the supposition you have taken up, that she was your sister, I think you must be wholly mistaken. But, whether or not, my advice to you would be to let it drop. No good can result, investigate it as you will; the poor lady cannot be recalled to life, and it would not be pleasant for you or my wife, to have the matter raked up and spread before the public. Let it drop, Lady Jane.”

“I shall never let it drop,” answered Jane.

“And the unpleasantness—we must put up with that.”

“As you please, of course,” said Mr. Carlton, with indifference. “I can say no more.”

At cross purposes they seemed indeed to be, and at cross-purposes they parted. Jane began to doubt whether she who died really was Miss Beauchamp, but she was resolute in her work of discovery, and she went at once to Tupper’s cottage. Judith told her that Mrs. Smith had confessed to her that the child was Mrs. Crane’s. Generally speaking, the door stood open: the sun streaming in on a bright winter’s day was cheering: but it was shut now. Mrs. Smith came to open it, and Jane said she wished for half an hour’s interview with her, if she was at leisure.

“At too much leisure,” was the woman’s sad reply. “I am but watching the dead.”

“The dead! He is not dead—that little child!”

“He is. He died between nine and ten this morning.”

Jane sank down on a chair in the kitchen. “And I never gave him a kiss for his mother’s sake! I never knew that he belonged to her. Dead! He was—as I believe—my little nephew.”

The woman stared at her. "Your nephew, madam, you are one of the Ladies Chesney.”

“Yes—stay. This little child’s mother died in Palace Street. Who was she? What was her married name?”

“I don’t know. I would give a great deal to know.”

Lady Jane felt sick at heart. Was it to be ever thus? Was obstacle after obstacle ever to be thrust in her way?

“I pray you let us have no more concealment!” she said, in a voice of anguish. “If I cannot come to the bottom of this business by fair entreaty, I must call in the help of the law. Did you never know that young lady’s name before her marriage or after it?”

“I knew it before—at least the one she went by. I knew her first when she was governess at the Lortons’. She was Miss Beauchamp.”

“And my dear sister!” exclaimed Jane, her doubts at rest. “Whom did she marry!”

Mrs. Smith held out her hard hand. “I’d give this to know.”

“Let me see the child,” said Jane. He was lying on the bed up stairs in his white nightgown, a little cambric- bordered cap shading his wan white face. His hands were laid by his side, and some sprigs of geranium were strewn on the sheet.

“He was so fond of flowers in life,” said Mrs. Smith. “Geraniums especially. So was his mother.”

Jane’s tears fell upon the placid little countenance, and she stooped and kissed it. “I did not do it while he lived,” she said. “Why did you not tell me whose child he was then?”

“Nay, my lady, why did you not tell me who his mother was?—how was I to suspect she could be anything to the Ladies Chesney? I only knew her as a governess. Passers-by were always asking me about him out of idle curiosity, just because they saw he was ill, and that we were strangers in the place: I thought you only asked from the same motive.”

“You were attached to his mother,” said Jane, as she gave a short history of her sister Clarice.

“I don’t think I was ever so much attached to anybody,” was Mrs. Smith’s answer; “though it was not for long I knew her.”

“Then I ask you by that attachment to give me every particular you can respecting her.”

“You might have heard all I know long ago, my lady, had I but been aware what you were to her. I knew her first at the Lortons’ in Gloucester Terrace. I and Mrs. Lorton are cousins; yes, she’s a great lady, and lives in style, and tries to make herself out a greater; but she’ll never be one, let her try ever so. We lived in a country town; her father was a pastry-cook, and mine (they were brothers) kept a public-house. She thought the pastry line was more genteel than the public line, and held up her head rather. She married, married well—some London gentleman—and I stopped at home for many years, marrying nobody. In course of time my father and mother died, and