East Lynne Part 131

"Did she--did she--come back to your house to die?" he blundered. "You never took her in? I don't understand."

Mr. Carlyle explained further; and the earl at length understood. But he did not recover his perplexed astonishment.

"What a mad act to come back here. Madame Vine! How on earth did she escape detection?"

"She did escape it," said Mr. Carlyle. "The strange likeness Madame Vine possessed to my first wife did often strike me as being marvelous, but I never suspected the truth. It was a likeness, and not a likeness, for every part of her face and form was changed except her eyes, and those I never saw but through those disguising gla.s.ses."

The earl wiped his hot face. The news had ruffled him no measured degree. He felt angry with Isabel, dead though she was, and thankful that Mrs. Carlyle was away.

"Will you see her?" whispered Mr. Carlyle as they entered the house.

"Yes."

They went up to the death-chamber, Mr. Carlyle procuring the key. It was the only time that he entered it. Very peaceful she looked now, her pale features so composed under her white cap and hands. Miss Carlyle and Joyce had done all that was necessary; n.o.body else had been suffered to approach her. Lord Mount Severn leaned over her, tracing the former looks of Isabel; and the likeness grew upon him in a wonderful degree.

"What did she die of?" he asked.

"She said a broken heart."

"Ah!" said the earl. "The wonder is that it did not break before. Poor thing! Poor Isabel!" he added, touching her hand, "how she marred her own happiness! Carlyle, I suppose this is your wedding ring?"

Mr. Carlyle cast his eyes upon the ring. "Very probably."

"To think of her never having discarded it!" remarked the earl, releasing the cold hand. "Well, I can hardly believe the tale now."

He turned and quitted the room as he spoke. Mr. Carlyle looked steadfastly at the dead face for a minute or two, his fingers touching the forehead; but what his thoughts or feelings may have been, none can tell. Then he replaced the sheet over her face, and followed the earl.

They descended in silence to the breakfast-room. Miss Carlyle was seated at the table waiting for them. "Where could all your eyes have been?"

exclaimed the earl to her, after a few sentences, referring to the event just pa.s.sed.

"Just where yours would have been," replied Miss Corny, with a touch of her old temper. "You saw Madame Vine as well as we did."

"But not continuously. Only two or three times in all. And I do not remember ever to have seen her without her bonnet and veil. That Carlyle should not have recognized her is almost beyond belief."

"It seems so, to speak of it," said Miss Corny; "but facts are facts.

She was young and gay, active, when she left here, upright as a dart, her dark hair drawn from her open brow, and flowing on her neck, her cheeks like crimson paint, her face altogether beautiful. Madame Vine arrived here a pale, stooping woman, lame of one leg, shorter than Lady Isabel--and her figure stuffed out under those sacks of jackets. Not a bit, scarcely, of her forehead to be seen, for gray velvet and gray bands of hair; her head smothered under a close cap, large, blue, double spectacles hiding the eyes and their sides, and the throat tied up; the chin partially. The mouth was entirely altered in its character, and that upward scar, always so conspicuous, made it almost ugly. Then she had lost some of her front teeth, you know, and she lisped when she spoke. Take her for all in all," summed up Miss Carlyle, "she looked no more like Isabel who went away from here than I look like Adam. Just get your dearest friend damaged and disguised as she was, my lord, and see if you'd recognize him."

The observation came home to Lord Mount Severn. A gentleman whom he knew well, had been so altered by a fearful accident, that little resemblance could be traced to his former self. In fact, his own family could not recognize him: and he used an artificial disguise. It was a case in point; and--reader--I a.s.sure you it was a true one.

"It was the disguise that we ought to have suspected," quietly observed Mr. Carlyle. "The likeness was not sufficiently striking to cause suspicion."

"But she turned the house from that scent as soon as she came into it,"

struck in Miss Corny, "telling of the 'neuralgic pains' that affected her head and face, rendering the guarding them from exposure necessary.

Remember, Lord Mount Severn, that the Ducies had been with her in Germany, and had never suspected her. Remember also another thing, that, however great a likeness we may have detected, we could not and did not speak of it, one to another. Lady Isabel's name is never so much as whispered among us."

"True: all true," nodded the earl. And they sat themselves down to breakfast.

On the Friday, the following letter was dispatched to Mrs. Carlyle.

"MY DEAREST--I find I shall not be able to get to you on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, as I promised, but will leave here by the late train that night. Mind you don't sit up for me. Lord Mount Severn is here for a few days; he sends his regards to you.

"And now, Barbara, prepare for news that will prove a shock. Madame Vine is dead. She grew rapidly worse, they tell me, after our departure, and died on Wednesday night. I am glad you were away.

"Love from the children. Lucy and Archie are still at Cornelia's; Arthur wearing out Sarah's legs in the nursery.

"Ever yours, my dearest,

"ARCHIBALD CARLYLE."

Of course, as Madame Vine, the governess, died at Mr. Carlyle's house, he could not, in courtesy, do less than follow her to the grave. So decided West Lynne, when they found which way the wind was going to blow. Lord Mount Severn followed also, to keep him company, being on a visit to him, and very polite, indeed, of his lordship to do it-- condescending, also! West Lynne remembered another funeral at which those two had been the only mourners--that of the earl. By some curious coincidence the French governess was buried close to the earl's grave.

As good there as anywhere else, quoth West Lynne. There happened to be a vacant spot of ground.

The funeral took place on a Sunday morning. A plain, respectable funeral. A hea.r.s.e and pair, and mourning coach and pair, with a chariot for the Rev. Mr. Little. No pall-bearers or mutes, or anything of that show-off kind; and no plumes on the horses, only on the hea.r.s.e. West Lynne looked on with approbation, and conjectured that the governess had left sufficient money to bury herself; but, of course, that was Mr.

Carlyle's affair, not West Lynne's. Quiet enough lay she in her last resting-place.

They left her in it, the earl and Mr. Carlyle, and entered the mourning- coach, to be conveyed back again to East Lynne.

"Just a little stone of white marble, two feet high by a foot and a half broad," remarked the earl, on their road, pursuing a topic they were speaking upon. "With the initials 'I. V.' and the date of the year.

Nothing more. What do you think?"

"I. M. V.," corrected Mr. Carlyle.

"Yes."

At this moment the bells of another church, not St. Jude's, broke out in a joyous peal, and the earl inclined his ear to listen.

"What can they be ringing for?" he cried.

They were ringing for a wedding. Afy Hallijohn, by the help of two clergymen and six bridesmaids, of which you may be sure Joyce was not one, had just been converted into Mrs. Joe Jiffin. When Afy took a thing into her head, she somehow contrived to carry it through, and to bend even clergymen and bridesmaids to her will. Mr. Jiffin was blest at last.

In the afternoon the earl left East Lynne, and somewhat later Barbara arrived at it. Wilson scarcely gave her mistress time to step into the house before her, and she very nearly left the baby in the fly.

Curiously anxious was Wilson to hear all particulars as to whatever could have took off that French governess. Mr. Carlyle was much surprised at their arrival.

"How could I stay away, Archibald, even until Monday, after the news you sent me?" said Barbara. "What did she die of? It must have been awfully sudden."

"I suppose so," was his dreamy answer. He was debating a question with himself, one he had thought over a good deal since Wednesday night.

Should he, or should he not, tell his wife? He would have preferred not to tell her; and, were the secret confined to his own breast, he would decidedly not have done so. But it was known to three others--to Miss Carlyle, to lord Mount Severn, and to Joyce. All trustworthy and of good intention; but it was impossible for Mr. Carlyle to make sure that not one of them would ever, through any chance and unpremeditated word, let the secret come to the knowledge of Mrs. Carlyle. That would not do, if she must hear it at all, she must hear it from him, and at once. He took his course.

"Are you ill, Archibald?" she asked, noting his face. It wore a pale, worn sort of look.

"I have something to tell you, Barbara," he answered, drawing her hand into his, as they stood together. They were in her dressing-room, where she was taking off her things. "On the Wednesday evening when I got home to dinner Joyce told me that she feared Madame Vine was dying, and I thought it right to see her."

"Certainly," returned Barbara. "Quite right."

"I went into her room, and I found that she was dying. But I found something else, Barbara. She was not Madame Vine."

"Not Madame Vine!" echoed Barbara, believing in good truth that her husband could not know what he was saying.