East Lynne Part 117

"Oh, my dear master! Heaven have mercy upon us all!" was the inexplicable answer.

"Joyce I ask you what is this?"

She made no reply. She rose up shaking; and, taking Archie's hand, slowly proceeded toward the upper stairs, low moans breaking from her, and the boy's naked feet pattering on the carpet.

"What can ail her?" whispered Barbara, following Joyce with her eyes.

"What did she mean about a spectre?"

"She must have been reading a ghost-book," said Carlyle. "Wilson's folly has turned the house topsy-turvy. Make your haste, Barbara."

Spring waned. Summer came, and would soon be waning, too, for the hot days of July were now in. What had the months brought forth, since the election of Mr. Carlyle in April? Be you very sure they had not been without their events.

Mr. Justice Hare's illness had turned out to be a stroke of paralysis.

People cannot act with unnatural harshness toward a child, and then discover they have been in the wrong, with impunity. Thus it proved with Mr. Justice Hare. He was recovering, but would never again be the man he had been. The fright, when Jasper had gone to tell of his illness at East Lynne, and was mistaken for fire, had done n.o.body any damage, save William and Joyce. William had caught a cold, which brought increased malady to the lungs; and Joyce seemed to have caught fear. She went about, more like one in a dream than awake, would be buried in a reverie for an hour at a time, and if suddenly spoken to, would start and shiver.

Mr. Carlyle and his wife departed for London immediately that Mr. Hare was p.r.o.nounced out of danger; which was in about a week from the time of his seizure. William accompanied them, partly for the benefit of London advice, partly that Mr. Carlyle would not be parted from him. Joyce went, in attendance with some of the servants.

They found London ringing with the news of Sir Francis Levison's arrest.

London could not understand it; and the most wild and improbable tales were in circulation. The season was at its height; the excitement in proportion; it was more than a nine days' wonder. On the very evening of their arrival a lady, young and beautiful, was shown in to the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. She had declined to give her name, but there arose to Mr. Carlyle's memory, when he looked upon her, one whom he had seen in earlier days as the friend of his first wife--Blanche Challoner.

It was not Blanche, however.

The stranger looked keenly at Mr. Carlyle. He was standing with his hat in his hand, on the point of going out. "Will you pardon this intrusion?" she asked. "I have come to you as one human being in need comes to crave help of another. I am Lady Levison."

Barbara's face flushed. Mr. Carlyle courteously invited the stranger to a chair, remaining standing himself. She sat for a moment, and then rose, evidently in an excess of agitation.

"Yes, I am Lady Levison, forced to call that man husband. That he has been a wicked man, I have long known; but now I hear he is a criminal. I hear it, I say, but I can get the truth from none. I went to Lord Mount Severn; he declined to give me particulars. I heard that Mr. Carlyle would be in town to-day, and I resolved to come and ask them of him."

She delivered the sentences in a jerking, abrupt tone, betraying her inward emotion. Mr. Carlyle, looking somewhat unapproachable, made no immediate reply.

"You and I have both been deeply wronged by him, Mr. Carlyle, but I brought my wrong upon myself, you did not. My sister, Blanche, whom he had cruelly treated--and if I speak of it, I only speak of what is known to the world--warned me against him. Mrs. Levison, his grandmother, that ancient lady who must now be bordering upon ninety, she warned me. The night before my wedding day, she came on purpose to tell me that if I married Francis Levison I should rue it for life. There was yet time to retract she said. Yes; there would have been time; but there was no will. I would not listen to either. I was led away by vanity, by folly, by something worse--the triumphing over my own sister. Poor Blanche! But which has the best of the bargain now, she or I? And I have a child,"

she continued, dropping her voice, "a boy who inherits his father's name. Mr. Carlyle, will they condemn him?"

"Nothing, as yet, is positively proved against him," replied Mr.

Carlyle, compa.s.sionating the unhappy lady.

"If I could but get a divorce!" she pa.s.sionately uttered, apparently losing all self-control. "I might have got one, over and over again, since we married, but there would have been the expose and the scandal.

If I could but change my child's name! Tell me--does any chance of redress remain for me?"

There was none, and Mr. Carlyle did not attempt to speak of any. He offered a few kind words of sympathy, very generally expressed, and then prepared to go out. She moved, and stood in his way.

"You will not leave until you have given me the particulars! I pray you, do not! I came trustingly to you, hoping to know them."

"I am waited for, to keep an important engagement," he answered. "And were my time at liberty, I should decline to tell them to you, on my own account, as well as on yours. Lay not discourtesy to my charge, Lady Levison. Were I to speak of the man, even to you, his name would blister my lips."

"In every word of hate spoken by you I would sympathize; every contemptuous expression of scorn, cast upon him from your heart, I would join in, tenfold."

Barbara was shocked. "He is your husband, after all," she took leave to whisper.

"My husband!" broke forth Lady Levison, in agitation, seemingly. "Yes!

there's the wrong. Why did he, knowing what he was, delude me into becoming his wife? You ought to feel for me, Mrs. Carlyle; and you do feel for me, for you are a wife and mother. How dare these base men marry--take to themselves an innocent, inexperienced girl, vowing, before G.o.d, to love and honor and cherish her? Were not his other sins impediment enough but he must have crime, also, and woo me! He has done me deep and irredeemable wrong, and has entailed upon his child an inheritance of shame. What had he or I done to deserve it, I ask?"

Barbara felt half frightened at her vehemence; and Barbara might be thankful not to understand it. All her native gentleness, all her reticence of feeling, as a wife and a gentlewoman, had been goaded out of her. The process had been going on for some time, but this last revelation was the crowning point; and Alice, Lady Levison, turned round upon the world in her helpless resentment, as any poor wife, working in a garret, might have done. There are certain wrongs which bring out human nature in the high-born, as well as in the low. "Still he is your husband," was all Barbara could, with deprecation, again plead.

"He made himself my husband by deceit, and I will throw him off in the face of day," returned Lady Levison. "There is no moral obligation why I should not. He has worked ill and ruin--ill and ruin upon me and my child, and the world shall never be allowed to think I have borne my share in it. How was it you kept your hands off him, when he reappeared, to brave you, in West Lynne?" she added, in a changed tone, turning to Mr. Carlyle.

"I cannot tell. I was a marvel oftentimes to myself."

He quitted the room as he spoke, adding a few civil words about her with Mrs. Carlyle. Barbara, not possessing the scruples of her husband, yielded to Lady Levison's request, and gave her the outline of the dark tale. Its outline only; and generously suppressing Afy's name beyond the evening of the fatal event. Lady Levison listened without interruption.

"Do you and Mr. Carlyle believe him to have been guilty?"

"Yes; but Mr. Carlyle will not express his opinion to the world. He does not repay wrong with revenge. I have heard him say that if the lifting of his finger would send the man to his punishment, he would tie down his hand rather than lift it."

"Was his first wife, Isabel Vane, mad?" she presently asked.

"Mad!" echoed Barbara, in surprise.

"When she quitted him for the other. It could have been nothing else than madness. I could understand a woman's flying from him for love of Mr. Carlyle; but now that I have seen your husband, I cannot understand the reverse side of the picture. I thank you for your courtesy, Mrs.

Carlyle."

And, without another word, Alice Levison quitted the room as abruptly as she had entered it.

Well, the London visit came to an end. It was of little more than three weeks' duration, for Barbara must be safe at home again. Mr. Carlyle remained for the rest of the season alone, but he varied it with journeys to East Lynne. He had returned home for good now, July, although the session had not quite terminated. There was another baby at East Lynne, a lovely little baby, pretty as Barbara herself had been at a month old. William was fading rapidly. The London physicians had but confirmed the opinion of Dr. Martin, and it was evident to all that the close would not be long protracted.

Somebody else was fading--Lady Isabel. The cross had been too heavy, and she was sinking under its weight. Can you wonder at it?

An intensely hot day it was under the July sun. Afy Hallijohn was sailing up the street in its beams, finer and vainer than ever. She encountered Mr. Carlyle.

"So, Afy, you are really going to be married at last?"

"Jiffin fancies so, sir. I am not sure yet but what I shall change my mind. Jiffin thinks there's n.o.body like me. If I could eat gold and silver, he'd provide it; and he's as fond as fond can be. But then you know, sir, he's half soft."

"Soft as to you, perhaps," laughed Mr. Carlyle. "I consider him a very civil, respectable man, Afy."

"And then, I never did think to marry a shopkeeper," grumbled Afy; "I looked a little higher than that. Only fancy, sir, having a husband who wears a white ap.r.o.n tied round him!"

"Terrible!" responded Mr. Carlyle, with a grave face.

"Not but what it will be a tolerable settlement," rejoined Afy, veering round a point. "He's having his house done up in style, and I shall keep two good servants, and do nothing myself but dress and subscribe to the library. He makes plenty of money."

"A very tolerable settlement, I should say," returned Mr. Carlyle; and Afy's face fell before the glance of his eye, merry though it was. "Take care you don't spend all his money for him, Afy."

"I'll take care of that," nodded Afy, significantly. "Sir," she somewhat abruptly added, "what is it that's the matter with Joyce?"

"I do not know," said Mr. Carlyle, becoming serious. "There does appear to be something the matter with her, for she is much changed."

"I never saw anybody so changed in my life," exclaimed Afy. "I told her the other day that she was just like one who had got some dreadful secret upon their mind."

"It is really more like that than anything else," observed Mr. Carlyle.