Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/38

25, 1864.] changes at South Wennock?” she continued, not sorry to quit the subject of self for some other.

“No, I think not,” he answered; “nothing in particular, that would interest you. A few people have died; a few have married: as is the case in all places.”

“Does Mr. Carlton get much practice?” she asked, overcoming her repugnance to speak of that gentleman, in her wish for some information as to how he and Laura were progressing.

“He gets a great deal,” said Mr. Grey. “The fact is, quite a tide has set in against my brother, and Mr. Carlton reaps the benefit.”

“I do not understand,” said Jane.

“People seem to have taken a dislike to my brother, on account of that unhappy affair in Palace Street,” he explained. “Or rather, I should say, to distrust him. In short, people won’t have Mr. Stephen Grey to attend them any longer: if I can’t go, they run for Mr. Carlton, and thus he has now a great many of our former patients. South Wennock is a terrible place for gossip; everybody must interfere with his neighbour’s affairs. Just now,” added Mr. John Grey, with a genial smile, “the town is commenting on Lady Jane Chesney’s having called in me, instead of Mr. Carlton, her sister’s husband.”

Jane shook her head. “I dislike Mr. Carlton personally very much,” she said. “Had he never entered our family to sow dissension in it, I should still have disliked him. But this must be a great trouble to Mr. Stephen Grey.”

“It is a great annoyance. I wonder sometimes that Stephen puts up with it so patiently. ‘It will come round with time,’ is all he says.”

“Has any clue been obtained to the unfortunate lady who died?” asked Jane.

“Not the slightest. She lies, poor thing, in the corner of St. Mark’s Churchyard, unclaimed and unknown.”

“But, has her husband never come forward to inquire after her?” exclaimed Lady Jane, in wonder. “It was said at the time, I remember, that he was travelling. Surely he must have returned?”

“No one whatever has come forward,” was Mr. Grey’s reply. “Neither he nor anybody else. In short, Lady Jane, but for that humble grave and the obloquy that has become the property of my brother Stephen, the whole affair might well seem a myth; a something that had only happened in a dream.”

“Does it not strike you as being altogether very singular?” said Lady Jane, after a pause of thought. “The affair itself, I mean.”

“Very much so indeed. It so impressed me at the time of the occurrence; far more than it did my brother.”

“It would almost seem as though—as though the poor young lady had had no husband,” concluded Lady Jane. “If it be not uncharitable to the dead to say so.”

“That is the opinion I incline to,” avowed Mr. John Grey. “My brother, on the contrary, will not entertain it; he feels certain, he says, that in that respect things were as straight as they ought to be. But for one thing, I should adopt my opinion indubitably, and go on, as a natural sequence, to the belief that she herself introduced the fatal drops into the draught.”

“And that one thing—what is it?” asked Jane, interested in spite of her own cares. But indeed the tragedy from the first had borne much interest for her—as it had for everybody else in South Wennock.

“The face that was seen on the stairs by Mr. Carlton.”

“But I thought Mr. Carlton maintained afterwards that he had not seen any face there—that it was a misapprehension of his own?”

“Rely upon it, Mr. Carlton did see a face there, Lady Jane. The impression conveyed to his mind at the moment was, that a face—let us say a man—was there; and I believe it to have been a right one. The doubt arose to him afterwards with the improbability: and, for one thing, he may wish to believe that there was nobody, and to impress that belief upon others.”

“But why should he wish to do that?” asked Jane.

“Because he must be aware that it was very careless of him not to have put the matter beyond doubt at the time. To see a man hovering in that stealthy manner near a sick lady’s room would be the signal for unearthing him to most medical attendants. It ought to have been so to Mr. Carlton; and he is no doubt secretly taking blame to himself for not having done it.”

“I thought he did search.”

“Yes, superficially. He carried out a candle and looked around. But he should have remained on the landing, and called to those below to bring lights, so as not to allow a chance of escape. Of course, he had no thought of evil.”

“And you connect that man with the evil?”

“I do,” said Mr. Grey, as he rose to leave. “There’s not a shadow of doubt on my mind that that man was the author of Mrs. Crane’s death.”