Footnote 1: The dream is not fiction: it is but transcribed, even to the minutest particular.
It was certainly a singular dream, well worthy of being recorded. Taken in conjunction with its notable working out, few dreams have been so remarkable. At least, if it may be deemed that subsequent events did work it out. The reader must judge.
Mr. and Mrs. Lake retired to rest as usual, eating no supper. When they had fish or meat with tea, supper was not served. On this evening he drank some wine-and-water before going to bed; she touched nothing. Therefore it cannot be thought she suffered from nightmare.
It was a singular dream; let me repeat the assertion. And it was in the earlier part of the night that it visited her. How soon after she went to sleep, how late, there were no means of knowing.
Part of the evening's doings came to her again in her sleep. She thought that Mrs. Chester called, went on to the Jupps' house, returned to drink tea, and gave the invitation to go to her house at Guild on the Sunday--all just as it had been in reality. Clara also thought that she felt an insuperable objection to go, in spite of having accepted the invitation. Not the vague idea that had presented itself to her awake, the half-wish that she had not made the engagement, but a strong, irrepressible conviction that the going would bring her evil--but accompanied with a conviction, a knowledge, so to say, that she should go, that it was her fate to go, and that she could not avoid it. She dreamt that Mrs. Chester had departed, and that she was discussing the point with her husband They were in a kitchen, a large kitchen quite strange to her, and were standing by a small, round, dark-coloured table in its middle. The fireplace, as Clara stood, was behind her; the window, a wide one, with an ironing board underneath it, was in front; a dresser with shelves was on her left hand; and there were several doors, leading she did not know where. Altogether, the kitchen looked large and bleak, something like those we see in farm-houses: and, seated on a chair to the right, apparently engaged in sewing, and taking no notice of them, Clara suddenly saw Mrs. Chester. She and her husband were discussing earnestly--to go, or not to go. It appeared that both felt some evil was impending, but yet both knew they should go and encounter it, in spite of the hesitation: and yet Clara seemed to feel that her husband could have helped her to remain if he would. "What excuse can we make for declining?" she seemed to say to him, and then they both thought over various pleas, but none appeared to answer, and they came to the final conclusion that go they must; which they both had known throughout would be the conclusion. All the time they spoke, Mrs. Chester was sitting in her chair, listening, but taking no notice; and upon arriving at the decision Clara and her husband parted, he going towards one of the kitchen doors, she towards the window; but so sharp was the conviction that she was rushing upon evil, that she awoke.
Clara thought it a curious dream--curious because it represented what had actually occurred, and the bent of her own feelings; curious also because it was so unusually vivid, so like reality. She got out of bed quietly, not to disturb her husband, struck a wax match, and looked at the hanging watch. It was exactly three o'clock.
But the dream was not yet over. She went to sleep again, taking up the thread almost at the point where she had left it. She remembered all that had passed, both of dream and reality; she remembered that she awoke in the certainty that she could not go beside the dreaded expedition; all that was plain in this, her second sleep, but she now began making strenuous exertions to escape. She did not see her husband again, but Mary Ann and Margaret Jupp had joined Mrs. Chester, and the three seemed to be forcing her to go. Not by force of violence, but of argument, of persuasion; and she still seemed to know that they must prevail, that to withstand at the last would be beyond her power.
The time appeared to change to the morning of departure: or rather, with that inconsistency peculiar to dreams, it appeared to be the morning of the departure without having changed. Still she strove against it; not saying why, not hinting that she feared evil; of that, she had only spoken with her husband; but striving, not to go, by every possible argument, and by passive resistance. And--strange inconsistency!--it appeared that if she could have told them the reason of her reluctance, her dread of evil, all would have been well; but it was precisely to them she must not and dared not tell it.
To any who may fancy the description of the dream unnecessarily spun out, the small details too much dwelt upon, I would say just a word. It is difficult to shorten that real dream of midnight sufficiently for it to be told within reasonable bounds. No pen can trace its particulars as they appeared; no power of language describe them as they were pictured. And now to resume it.
Mrs. Chester and the Miss Jupps urged her to depart; were waiting for her. Clara Lake resisted. "There!" she suddenly exclaimed to them, "we cannot go. It is past ten: we have let the hour go by, and the train is gone." "Oh!" said Mrs. Chester, "we can get a carriage and overtake it." She went out with them--resistance appeared to be over; she felt that it was over, and that she could not help herself--went out to look for a carriage. They ran about, down lanes and in the open fields, and could not see one; but a butcher's cart came up in the lane; one of them said that would do as well as a carriage, and they all got into it. They seemed to fly, going along at a fearful pace, but through a most dreary-looking country, the skies gloomy, the scenery barren, and the road muddy, so muddy that it splashed up upon them as they sat: there were also shallow, dismal ponds through which they drove. All this haste seemed to be to catch the train, but suddenly a noise was heard behind them, and it was known that it was the train: they had gone so fast as to outstrip it. Their cart stopped to wait, and Clara, when the noise came close, looked behind, but could only distinguish something black which whirled by them, turned round, came back, turned again, and pulled up. "Why, it is a hearse!" she screamed out (but in surprise, not fear), to Mrs. Chester. Yes, it was a hearse, all black, and two men sat upon the box. Clara looked out, expecting to see the rest of their party on it, but there was no one but the two men: the one she could not see, for he seemed to hide his face; but she caught, fixed upon her, the strangely black eyes of the driver, the blackest eyes she ever saw in her life: of the rest of his face she remembered nothing. "Come," said he, "there's no time to lose;" and they all four descended from the cart. Clara got on to the hearse first, and was settling her cloak around her, when she heard the cart drive off, taking the road home again; and, seated in it as before, were Mrs. Chester and Mary and Margaret Jupp. "Why don't you come with me?" she called out; "why are you going back?" "No," said Mrs. Chester, "that hearse is for you, not for us;" and they drove off. The hearse also drove off the contrary way, and Mrs. Lake found herself sinking into its interior. She was calm enough for a moment, but suddenly she knew that she had been entrapped into it, and that she was being taken to her burial.
With a dreadful scream she awoke.
The scream awoke Mr. Lake. She was bathed in perspiration, and shaking as in an ague fit. In vain he asked what was the matter, whether she was ill: she could not speak to tell him, and it was several minutes before she was able in any degree to overcome the fright, or relate it to him.
Robert Lake had no belief in dreams; was given to scoff at them; but he had too much regard for his wife to attempt to scoff then, in her extremity of distress and agitation. He got up and lighted a lamp, for though morning was glimmering it could not be said to be yet light.
"I am quite certain that it is sent to me as a warning," she exclaimed; "and I will not go on Sunday to Guild."
"I never knew before that you could believe in dreams," he answered.
"I do not believe in dreams; I have never had any particular dreams to believe in. But you must acknowledge, Robert, that this one is beyond common. I cannot describe to you how vivid, how real everything appeared to me. And it was not one dream; it was two: that at least is unusual. The second dream was a continuation of the first."
"The one induced the other. I dare say you saw a hearse pass yesterday?"
"I have not seen a hearse for ever so long," she answered, still shivering. "But, go to your sister's, I will not. Thank heaven! though the power to refuse was not mine in the dream, it is in reality."
But that it was not the time to do it, he could have laughed outright at the superstitious folly. He spoke pleasant, loving words to her, almost as one would to a frightened child, trying to soothe her back to tranquillity.
"Clara; consider! the very fact of your being able to act as you please, which it seems you could not do in the dream, ought to convince you how void of meaning it was."
"I will not go to Mrs. Chester's," was all she reiterated, with a strange sigh of relief--a sense of thanksgiving that the option was assuredly hers.
"Wait for the morning sun," said he. "You will be in a different mood then."
She did not rise so soon as usual. She had got to sleep again at last, first of all making a firm inward resolution that no persuasion, no ridicule, no "morning sun"--in whose cheery rays things indeed wear a different aspect from what they do in the dark and weird night should suffice to alter her determination. The warning against going she fully believed to have been sent to her, and she would abide by it.
Mr. Lake waited breakfast for his wife. She came down in her delicate muslin dress, looking as pretty as usual. At first she made no allusion to the past night; neither did he--he hoped it was at an end; but when breakfast was about half over, she glanced up at him in her rather shy manner, speaking in a low tone.
"I have a request to beg of you, Robert--that you will not mention this dream to any one. I will make some other excuse for not going to Guild."
"Dream!" cried he, speaking with his mouth full. "Why, Clary, I had already forgotten it. And so will you before the day shall be over."
She shook her head.
"I shall send word to Penelope that I cannot go."
Mr. Lake put down his knife and fork and gazed at her in astonishment. To his sober, practical mind, his careless nature, this in truth savoured of the ridiculous.
"Clara, you will never be so foolish! I gave you credit for better sense. Dreams are all very well in their places--to amuse old women and children--but in these days they should not be allowed to influence actions. You can see the bright sunshine, the busy work-a-day world around you, and yet you can retain remembrance of a ridiculous dream! I thought dreams passed away with the night."
"Of course a great part of the vivid impression has passed with the night," she replied, confessing what was the actual fact; "but I will abide by the night's impression, nevertheless. I look at it in this light--my remaining at home can hurt no one, it cannot bring harm in any way, while my going may bring me harm; we cannot tell. I am fully decided," she continued, in a firm tone; "and do you eat your breakfast and cease staring at me."
"Perhaps you fear the train will come to grief, and pitch us all into coffins made to fit your hearse."
"Well, I don't know," returned Clara. "If I did get into the train on Sunday morning, I should be unusually pleased to find myself safe out of it again."
Mr. Lake said no more; in this frame of mind reasoning was useless. But he felt persuaded the fancy would wear away, and his wife go contentedly enough with the rest of them.
Nothing more was said that day, which was Friday. On the next day, Saturday, two of the Miss Jupps called on Clara, full of the following morning's excursion. A large family was that of the Jupps--six sons and six daughters, all living. The sons were out in the world--one in the army, one in the navy, one in the church, one reading for the bar, one here, one there; Oliver, the youngest of them, was just now at home. The six daughters were all at home, and marrying men seemed to fight shy of so large a host. Social, pleasant, chatty girls were they, the youngest two-and-twenty, the age of the eldest locked up in the church's register. Mr. and Mrs. Jupp were a quiet, inoffensive couple, completely eclipsed by their sons and daughters; not that any were undutiful, but the old people belonged to a bygone age, and were scarcely equal to the innovations of this. Mr. Jupp had once been high sheriff of the county: it was the one great event of the Jupps' life, imparting to them an importance which their pride never quite lost sight of. They lived in a large house abutting on the street of Katterley, about five minutes' walk from Mr. Lake's.
Mary Ann and Margaret Jupp had come to gossip about the proposed Sunday excursion. They were pleasant, voluble girls (to pay them the compliment of still calling them girls), with light hazel eyes and reddish hair. The sisters were all much alike--these two, the eldest; Louisa and Rose, the youngest. They had on flimsy skirts, nankeen-coloured jackets, and straw hats. They sat in the shady room open to the trailing honeysuckles, talking to Clara.
"Our plans are changed," spoke Mary. "Oliver, Louisa, and Rose go tomorrow, returning home to sleep, and I and Margaret go over the next day."
"We think it would be so truly unconscionable to inflict four of us on Mrs. Chester at once, with her few servants, that we have written to tell her we will divide ourselves," interrupted Margaret, who liked to have her share of tongue. "Mamma says she wondered at our thoughtlessness when she heard us making the bargain."
"Mrs. Chester would not have made a trouble of it," answered Clara. "She is not one to put herself out of the way."
"No, she is very good; but it would have been imposing on hospitality," said Mary Jupp. "For that very reason, as mamma observed, we ought to spare her. So Louisa and Rose spend Sunday with her; I and Margaret Monday; Oliver goes both days."
"But you will remain for Tuesday?"
"No. Until she has her house in complete order it would be unfair to trouble her with night guests. You and Mr. Lake of course will remain the whole time. And now to deliver Louisa's message. Shall they call for you here tomorrow morning, or will you be at the train?"
"I am not going," replied Mrs. Lake.
"Not going!" echoed Mary Jupp. "Good gracious! Why not?"
"It is not quite convenient. Mrs. Chester does not expect me."
"But she did expect you!" exclaimed Mary, in wonder. "Oliver saw Mr. Lake that night after he had taken Mrs. Chester to the train, and he told him you were going. Did you not?" she added, appealing to Mr. Lake, who sat perched on a side table doing something to a fishing-line.
"All right," nodded he.
"Yes, we did promise; but since then I have altered my mind, and have written to Mrs. Chester," said Clara. "I shall go later, when she is more settled."
"Well, I never heard of such a thing!" cried Margaret Jupp. "Oliver and the girls will be in a way! I don't think they care to go but for the pleasure of your company. Mr. Lake, why have you changed your minds?"
"Ask Clara," returned he, without looking up. "It's her affair, not mine."
The delicate pink in Clara Lake's cheeks grew a shade brighter as the two ladies looked at her and awaited the explanation. Not choosing to mention the dream, she was at a loss for any sound plea to make.
"I seem to have a prejudice against going tomorrow," she said, feeling how lame were the words. "And--and I wrote to Mrs. Chester, telling her not to expect me."
"How very odd!" cried Margaret Jupp. They were keen-sighted, those girls, and felt sure there was some suppressed reason.
"The truth is, my wife has taken it into her head that Sunday travelling is sinful," cried Mr. Lake, partly to help Clara out of her dilemma, partly in the indulgence of the mocking spirit he liked so well. "If we do venture to go tomorrow, in the teeth of the sin, she thinks the engine will infallibly burst and blow us up."
Mrs. Lake felt vexed. It was precisely the fear her imagination induced her to take. Unable to conceive any other probable danger, she was unconsciously casting doubts on the safe convoy of the train. But she had not confessed it to him.
"Do not talk nonsense," she said to her husband; and Mary and Margaret Jupp looked from one to the other, not knowing what to think.
"My dear Mrs. Lake, they get to Guild for morning service, you know," spoke Margaret. "I don't see any great harm in going just that little way on a Sunday morning."
"Robert is very stupid to say such things," returned Mrs. Lake, driven into a corner. "I did not think anything about its being a sin. The sin is not my objection."
"The train runs whether we passengers go in it or not; so that our staying away is not of the least benefit in a religious point of view," logically argued Mary Jupp. "Do pray go, Mrs. Lake."
"Not tomorrow," Clara gently said, shaking her head.
"Can't you induce her, Mr. Lake?"
"I! I have wasted all my powers of oratory; I have tried persuasion; I have hinted at an illegitimate application of my riding-whip, and all in vain. She's harder than a brickbat."
The young ladies laughed. "Dear Mrs. Lake, you must go, if only to oblige us. Think of the disappointment to Louisa and Rose."
Clara remembered her dream: how Mary Ann and Margaret (the very two of the sisters now present) had striven in it to persuade her. The recollection only served to render her more firm. They began to fear that there would be no prevailing, and felt half inclined to be offended. "And yourself, Mr. Lake? Do you also remain at home?"
"Not I. I don't live in fear of the boiler's treachery."
"Of course I do not wish to prevent my husband's going," said Mrs. Lake, hastily.
"Though you know you would rather I did not," he rejoined.
"Well, of course, if there is to be--as you say, though I don't--a bursting of the boiler, it would be as bad for you to be in it as for me," she said, affecting a light laugh. The truth was, she did wish he would not go; she knew that she should feel more easy; though she would not ask him to remain, lest it might seem selfish. The Miss Jupps rose to leave.
"I hope you will think better of it," said Margaret. "Louisa was saying this morning how glad she was Mrs. Lake was going. She has been counting on you."
"Ah, well--she had better count upon me instead," cried Mr. Lake, as he left his seat to attend them to the gate. "And mind you give my love to Rose, and tell her I shall be a bachelor for the day."
"Don't forget that," put in Clara.
The two ladies walked away, commenting on what had passed. Clara Lake was a poor actor, and her manner had betrayed that the true reason had not been spoken. Margaret said she should put it down to "caprice;" but both acknowledged that they had never known Mrs. Lake capricious before.
Never did a more lovely day dawn than that Sunday in August. Not another word upon the subject had been exchanged between Mr. Lake and his wife since the visit of the Miss Jupps; she shunned it, feeling half ashamed of herself for her persistent folly; he had given the matter up for a bad job. After breakfast they stood together, looking from the open window. The church bells rang out; Mr. Lake's time for departure was drawing near.
"I must not miss the train," he carelessly observed. "'Twould be a pity to lose the excursion such a morning as this."
"It is a most beautiful day," she sighed. "I almost envy you."
"Clara," he said, turning to her with a sudden seriousness of manner, "I ask you to be yourself. Lay aside this folly, and act as a reasonable woman ought. Put on your things and come with us."
She moved closer to him and spoke deprecatingly, "Do not be angry with me, Robert; I believe I am doing right to remain away. I must remain."
"Well, of all the simpletons that ever walked, you are about the worst," was his complimentary rejoinder as he caught up his gloves. "Good-bye, Clary," he added, stooping to kiss her.
"Oh, Robert, I hope you will come back safely!" she said, clinging to him as if she feared he was going away for ever; and the tone of her voice, full of mournful wailing, struck upon the ear of her husband.
Nevertheless he went off laughing, telling her not to fear--that he'd come back with all his legs and wings about him.
On the platform he met Louisa and Rose Jupp under the convoy of their brother. "Then actually Mrs. Lake is not coming!" exclaimed Louisa.
"And I have only come to see you off," was Mr. Lake's response. "I am not going on to Guild."
"Oh, you barbarous deceiver!" quoth Rose. "Where are you going?"
"To church, as a respectable individual of modern society ought."
"I tell you what, Lake," interrupted Oliver Jupp, a dark, short young man, quiet and sensible, "this is not fair. These girls entrapped me into taking them, on the strength that you were to be one of the party, and it's too bad to shuffle off it."
"So it is," returned Mr. Lake. "But you must talk to my wife about it. I am the most hopelessly henpecked husband your worst fancy ever pictured; Caudle was nothing to it."
The train went smoothly off, and Mr. Lake returned home. His wife was leisurely attiring herself for church. She started when she saw him. "Why, Robert, what has happened?"
"Nothing. The boiler has not gone up yet; that calamity is expected to take place midway between here and Guild."
"Why have you come back?"
"I came back because I have got a silly child for my wife," he said, standing in front of her, and speaking half tenderly, half severely. "One who would have worried her foolish heart into a fever, had I gone, believing I should never come back alive."
She wound her arms round him and pulled his face down to hers in her fervent love, her tears falling upon it. "Oh, my darling! my dearest! you don't know how happy you have made me!" she passionately whispered. "How shall I thank you for giving way to my foolishness? I should have been in unhappy suspense all day long."
"I shan't give way to it the next time," cried he, as he kissed away her tears. "And I have told the girls what a henpecked husband I am, the slave of a capricious tyrant. Jupp won't be in a hurry to marry after my warning example before his eyes."
"The next time!" she repeated, with a sad smile. "Robert, there will be no next time. I shall never have such a dream again."
The Jupps went grumbling all the way to Guild. That is, the young ladies grumbled, and their brother listened. The disappointment was really great. Mr. and Mrs. Lake were great favourites with everybody; just those people that make society brighter for their presence.
"Margaret says Clara Lake was taken with a capricious fit."
"Nonsense, Louisa!" spoke Oliver, at length. "She has too much innate good feeling for caprice. Mrs. Chester has been at her domineering ways, I expect, and frightened her poor little sister-in-law."
Guild reached, they found their way to Mrs. Chester's house, which was just outside the town, some ten minutes' walk from the station. It was a pretty place--old-fashioned but commodious; standing in the midst of a productive garden, with windows opening to a large lawn. It used to be called Guild Farm; Mrs. Chester had already changed that, and rechristened it "Guild Lawn." She had it at a cheap rent. There were two houses on the farm, and the farmer who rented the land lived in the other: to let this was so much gain to him. Guild Rectory, where Mrs. Chester had hitherto lived, was at the opposite end of the town.
The Reverend James Chester, her late husband, had been a poor curate for the greater portion of his life. He, his first wife (who was a cousin of the Jupps), and their only child, Anna, had lived on his country curacy of one hundred a year. He had no residence; and none, save themselves, knew the shifts they had been put to--the constant scheming and contriving they had been forced to exercise to live as gentlepeople and keep up appearances out of doors. His wife died; and, close upon it, the bishop gave him the living of St. Thomas, at Guild. Its emoluments were a small house and three hundred a year--great riches, in the eyes of the Reverend James Chester. He next married Penelope Hunter, who had two hundred a year of her own. Three children were subsequently born, Fanny, Thomas, and James. When the girl was ten years old and the youngest boy six, Mr. Chester died; and Mrs. Chester was left with Anna and her own children on her hands, a little good furniture and her two hundred a year to bring them up upon. So--as she told her half-brother--she had to scheme to live: she took this house, and hoped that would help her to do it.
"Well, and now what's the reason that Robert and Clara have not come?" began Mrs. Chester, without any other greeting, as she stood, bonnet and mantle on, to receive her guests. "I should like to know what Clara means by it! I had the coolest letter from her!--just putting off her visit to a future time, without saying with your leave or by your leave."
Fine nuts for the Miss Jupps to crack! They hastily recounted what had passed at their sisters' interview with Mrs. Lake, and her husband's words at the train in the morning. There was no time for more.
"If you ask my opinion," said Louisa Jupp, as they hurried off to the nearest church, "I should say that Mrs. Lake has acquired an objection to Sunday travelling."
"What a crotchet!" concluded Mrs. Chester. "I never quite understood my brother's wife."
It was a fine night, though not unusually light, for there was no moon, and the heavens looked a little misty, as they do sometimes following on a hot August day.
The nine o'clock train dashed into Guild, received its waiting passengers, and dashed on again.
Amidst others, the Miss Jupps and their brother entered it, having finished their day's visit to Mrs. Chester. They took their seats in the middle compartment of a first-class carriage, and happened to have it to themselves. The young ladies sat with their backs to the engine, he with his face to it.
"The Lakes would have had a pleasant day had they come," remarked Louisa. "You may rely upon it her objection lay in its being Sunday. Perhaps she is growing religious."
"What an awful lookout for Lake!" spoke up Mr. Jupp, from his corner.
"Oliver!" reproved the young ladies.
"She'll stop his liberty and his cigars," persisted Mr. Oliver: "there are no such martinets under the sun as your religious wives. Talking about cigars, would it affect your bonnets, girls, if I lighted one now?"
They screamed out together. They would not have their loves of new bonnets poisoned and blackened with cigar smoke; they'd never be fit to go on again. "And you must not smoke in these carriages," added Louisa: "we are near Coombe Dalton station, and the guard would see you."
"Pretty wives you'll make when you are married," remarked Oliver. "Afraid of cigar smoke!"
The caution, or the bonnets, caused Oliver Jupp to keep his cigar-case in his pocket. Coombe Dalton station, an insignificant one, was about midway between Guild and Katterley. The train did not stop at it. Oliver leaned from the window to take a survey of the route.
"We are close to it," said he; "yonder are the lights. Halloa! what's the red light flashing up and down for? That ought to be a green."
"If a red light is waving in the green's place, there must be danger," said Rose, quickly. "Red is the danger signal."
"There's no danger. If the light indicated danger the train would come to a standstill; it is going on at the same speed."
Scarcely had the words quitted Oliver Jupp's mouth when--they scarcely knew what occurred. There was a shriek from the whistle, a shock; and a shriek, not from the whistle, but from human beings in their terror. The train came to a standstill and they with it: they and their carriage were not hurt or inconvenienced; the carriages behind them were not hurt, nor the carriages immediately before them, but the foremost carriages---- What had happened?
Unstopped, and dashing on in its speed and recklessness, the engine had dashed into some obstruction on the line, a little past Coombe Dalton station. It ran up a bank, gave a dance, and was forced back on the line, falling sideways, and the three foremost carriages, next to the break van, were dragged with it. The two first, third-class ones, were greatly injured; the third, a second class, less so. Oliver Jupp, with other male passengers, was speedily out of his carriage, running forward to see what assistance he could render to those, his ill-fated fellow-creatures, some of whom were groaning in the death agony.
What a scene it was! The dark night; the hissing engine, mad instrument of death, but harmless now; the torches brought forward from the station to throw light upon the calamity; the figures, some dead, some dying, lying in the midst of the wreck; the scalded, the wounded, the bleeding; the silent and the still, the moaning and the helpless, the shrieking and the terrified! Not here, gratuitously to harrow feelings and sympathies, will the worst details be given; and, adding no little to the distress and confusion prevailing, was the uncontrollable alarm of the uninjured passengers, escaping from their carriages and running hither and thither, uncertain where to go or what to do. Katterley (as well as other stations) was telegraphed to for medical assistance.
Meanwhile Robert Lake and his wife had spent an exceedingly sober day. With the passing of the chance of danger, Clara's opinion experienced a sort of revulsion; and she began to think--not so much of how foolish she had been, but of how foolish she must appear in the eyes of her practical husband. She said nothing; it was the wisest plan; and he had not alluded to it in any way. Quietly the day dragged on, and they sat down to supper in the evening; the dinner hour on Sunday being two o'clock.
It was at this juncture that Mary Jupp burst in without any ceremony whatever, neither bonnet on her head nor shawl on her shoulders. The news of the accident had spread like wildfire and penetrated to the house of the Jupps. Of course it had lost nothing in carrying; and Mary Jupp fully believed she should never see her sisters or brother again alive.
"Oh, Mr. Lake!--and you to be sitting here quietly at supper! Have you not heard the news?"
They rose up: they saw the state of alarm and agitation she was in. Clara caught the infection, and looked as frightened as her impromptu visitor. Mr. Lake was calm, cool; man in general is so.
"What news?" he asked. "What is it?"
"There has been an awful accident to the train at Coombe Dalton. No particulars positively known, that we can learn, but people are saying half the train's killed and the other half wounded."
"Sit down, sit down," said Mr. Lake, taking her trembling hands. "What train? How did the news come?"
"Why, our train!" returned the excited girl, bursting into tears. "The train that Oliver and Louisa and Rose must be in. Oh, Mrs. Lake! was it true that you had a presentiment of evil happening to it?--was that really your reason for declining to go?"
Clara, deathly pale, had sought the eyes of her husband. She was overwhelmed with astonishment and dismay; with a feeling that she could not describe and had never yet experienced. Had they really escaped danger, accident, perhaps death, from that strangely vivid dream of warning? Her faculties seemed bewildered.
"How has the news reached Katterley?" repeated Mr. Lake, drowning the words about the dream, for he was conscious that a thoughtless slip of his had given the clue to Miss Jupp.
"By telegraph," she answered; "and one of the porters ran up to our house to tell it, knowing Oliver and the girls went to Guild this morning and took return tickets. The station here is already besieged by a crowd. Poor papa is pushing his way through it."
Mr. Lake caught up his hat, when at the same moment who should come in but Oliver Jupp. Mary seized upon him with a cry.
"Now don't smother me," cried he to her. "First of all, we are all right; you see I am, and Rose and Louy are safe and well inside Coombe Dalton Station. My father sent me in to tell you; he said you were here; and he is gone home to reassure them."
"But, Jupp, how did you get to Katterley?" questioned Mr. Lake.
"I came on a stray engine. I thought they would all be in fits together at home, and I took the opportunity offered, of coming on to stop the alarm. The first person who laid hold of me at the station was the poor old governor, pretty nearly in a fit himself. It's an awful accident, though."
"How was it?" "Are many hurt?" "Did the boiler really burst?"
"If you all reiterate questions at me at once, how am I to answer? Very few are hurt, comparatively speaking. The engine went into something, a truck or trucks I believe, and there was a smash. The two first carriages, both third-class, are--nowhere, and the passengers I won't tell you about, Lake, before these two girls, for it would spoil their night's rest. The next carriage, a second-class, was damaged, and its inmates are bruised, but not much, I think."
"And what of the rest of the train?" breathlessly inquired Clara.
"Nothing. The carriages came to a standstill on the line, and we got out of them."
"Are you sure there is no first-class carriage injured?" she continued.
"Certain. So to speak, there has been no accident to the rest of the train, beyond the delay and fright."
Mr. Lake looked at his wife and smiled. "So you would not have been one of the injured, Clary, had you been in the train."
She shook her head. "We have not the full particulars yet. Oliver may be deceived."
"It is exactly as I tell you, Mrs. Lake," said Oliver Jupp. "There is no further damage."
"Are you going back to Coombe Dalton?"
"Yes, as soon as I can. But I thought it well to come on and let you know the best and worst. Lake, will you go with me?"
"Of course," he answered.
The two young men went out together. Mary Jupp ran home, and Clara waited the return of her husband.
It was long past midnight when he came in. They sat up talking over the accident; the details which he had learnt, and seen. Oliver Jupp had been quite correct in his limit of the damage. Mrs. Chester (taking up the suggested notion that Clara Lake had stayed away because it was Sunday) had sent a very pressing invitation for her and her husband to come on the following day, Monday, with the two elder Miss Jupps. Mr. Lake delivered it to her.
"Will you go, Clara?"
"Will they go?" she rejoined. "Will they venture?"
"Venture!"
"After this accident?"
"I do not see why they should not. An accident two days running would be something remarkable. What about your dream?"
"Oh, I will go, Robert. Yes. The dream has done its office and I shall be ever thankful for it."
She spoke the last words reverently. Mr. Lake looked at her with surprise.
"Clara, don't encourage that fancy of yours," he gravely said, his voice taking almost a stern tone. "To be superstitious at all argues a want of common sense; but to be foolishly superstitious is a great deal worse. No reasonable being, wife of mine, would indulge that."
"What do you call being foolishly superstitious?"
"The remark you have just made--that the dream had done its office, and you should ever feel thankful for it--is an illustration. Had you gone to Guild this morning, you know quite well that we were not to have returned until Tuesday, therefore should not have been in the train to-night."
"Something might have occurred to cause us to return," she interrupted.
"Granted--for the sake of the argument. We should have travelled in a first-class carriage, as you know; and there is no first-class carriage injured."
He paused and looked at her. She could not deny anything he said, and kept silence.
"Therefore, what possible bearing that dream could have had upon the accident, or where could be the utility of the warning, which, as you declare, it conveyed to you, not to go to Guild, I cannot see."
Neither, it must be confessed, did Clara herself see it; but she did not lose her faith in the dream. Rather believed in it all the more firmly, in what her husband would have called a manner void of all reason.
The dream, as she looked at it and expressed it, had "done its work;" and she anticipated the excursion on the morrow with renewed pleasure, springing from a sense of relief.
Alas, alas! Poor short-sighted mortals that we are! The working out of the ill, shadowed forth, was only just beginning.
The morning rose brilliantly; rather too much so, taken in conjunction with the heat; and the day, as it wore on, promised to be one of the hottest on record.
Katterley station was in a bustle not often experienced at the quiet little place. People, idlers and others, crowded it, bent on a journey of curiosity to Coombe Dalton. The deaths from the accident now numbered several, and excitement was rife. Report came that the real cause of the calamity was giving rise to dispute: on the one hand it was said that the driver of the train had dashed through Coombe Dalton station, regardless of the warning red light, held up as a signal that he should stop; on the other it was maintained that no red light had so been held.
The twelve o'clock train came steaming into the Katterley station, where it would stay its accustomed three minutes, and those going by it looked alive. A very few passengers got out; a vast many rushed up to take their places. People were flocking to Coombe Dalton en messe; and would be flocking there until public curiosity was sated.
A porter held open the door of a first-class carriage for a party who were struggling on to the platform, one running before another; it consisted of two gentlemen, three ladies, and a maid-servant. The porter knew them well and touched his cap; Mr. and Mrs. Lake, Oliver Jupp, and his two eldest sisters.
"Let us have the compartment to ourselves, if you can manage it, Johnson," said Oliver in an undertone. "The day is too hot for crowding."
"Very well, sir," replied the man. "I dare say I can contrive it."
"But now whereabouts is this carriage?" called out one of the ladies, in a hasty and rather shrieking voice, as she looked to the right and left; "because, if it's not just in the middle, I won't get in. I'll never put myself towards either end of a train again as long as I live."
"Step in, step in," cried Oliver to her. "You are all right."
"Make haste, miss," added the porter. "The time's up."
"Of course it's up," repeated the young lady, who was no other than Mary Ann Jupp; "and I wonder it wasn't up before we reached it. This comes of putting off things till the last moment. I told you all the clocks were slow and we should be late. If there's one thing I hate more than another, it's the being obliged to rush up and catch a train at the last moment! No time to choose your carriage--no time to see or do anything; they may put you in the guard's van if they please, and you not know it until you are off. I dare say we have come without our tickets now. Has anybody thought of them?"
In reply, Oliver Jupp held up the six bits of cardboard for his sister's satisfaction, and the party settled themselves in their seats; the maid-servant, who was Mrs. Lake's, entering last.
"Why, Elizabeth, is that you?" exclaimed Miss Jupp. "I declare I never saw you."
"Didn't you, miss?" replied the girl, who was very tall and thin. "I walked behind you from our house."
"I thought it better to bring Elizabeth," interposed Clara Lake, who was looking unusually lovely in her summer dress--white muslin with a blue sprig upon it. "Mrs. Chester's servants will be glad of help with so many of us to wait upon."
"Mrs. Chester is the best manager of a house I ever saw," cried the Miss Jupps in a breath. They wore alpaca gowns of very light green, and hats trimmed with velvet. "Fancy!" added Margaret, "only two servants, and one of those you may almost call a nurse, for the children require plenty of attending to, and yet things seem to go on smoothly. I can't think how she contrives it."
"Trust to Mrs. Chester for contriving," said Mr. Lake. "She has to do it. Besides, you forget Anna."
The carriage held eight. Elizabeth sat at the farther end, the seat next to her and the seat opposite to her being empty. She kept her head close to the open window, looking out. Railway travelling was rare in her experience. The rest chatted eagerly, giving themselves up to the pleasure of the moment. Something was said about the previous day's sojourn at Guild.
"I hear it was a delightful party," Mrs. Lake remarked to Oliver Jupp.
"We wanted you and Lake to complete it," he answered. "It was too bad, Mrs. Lake, to declare off, after having promised to go. There was an uncommon nice girl spending the day there. She's to be there again today, I fancy."
"Who was that?" inquired Mr. Lake, briskly, who had a propensity for liking "nice girls."
"Don't know who she was, or anything about her," replied Oliver. "Your sister called her Lydia, and I did the same."
"It was a Miss Clapperton," interrupted Margaret Jupp. "Louisa and Rose were telling me about her this morning; they took an immense fancy to her."
"Clapperton?--Clapperton?" repeated Mr. Lake. "Oh, I know; a fresh family who have come lately to Guild. Penelope said she was getting intimate with them. You shall not pick out nice girls for me, Jupp, if you call her one. I saw her once: a young Gorgon in spectacles, with prominent eyes."
"That's Nancy Clapperton, the near-sighted one," corrected Mary Jupp, who was one of those ladies who like to put the world to rights. "It was her sister who was there yesterday, and she is a charming girl. Louy and Rose both say so."
"I hope she'll be there today, then," said Mr. Lake.
"She is to be there; but don't you and Oliver quarrel over her. He monopolized her yesterday, I hear."
"We'll go snacks," said Mr. Lake. "Or else draw lots: which shall it be, Jupp? When does the old Indian Begum make her entry?"
"For shame, Mr. Lake! You do turn everything and everybody into ridicule," exclaimed Margaret. "I'm sure I think she will be a delightful acquisition; so pleasant for your sister to have a visitor."
"Well, when does she come? Nobody says she won't be an acquisition--for those who can stand Begums. I knew one once, and she was awful. She had gold teeth."
Margaret Jupp turned to Clara.
"Why don't you keep your husband in better order? He is incorrigible."
"I fear he is," was the answer, given with a gay smile.
"Very strange!" cried Mr. Lake. "I can't get an answer to my question: I think it's somebody else that's incorrigible. When--does--the--Begum--arrive? I hope that's plain enough."
"Mrs. Chester was talking of her yesterday to me," interposed Oliver Jupp. "The Begum is expected to make her entrance on Wednesday or Thursday."
"When the house shall have been cleared of us sinful people," added Mr. Lake. "We are not good enough for an Indian Begum. What do you know of this one?"
"As good as nothing," answered Margaret Jupp. "That is, of late years. Papa and mamma used to know old Mr. and Mrs. Finch. He was a lawyer somewhere in London, and Angeline was the daughter."
"Angeline!"
"That's her name. Isn't it a fine one?"
"Very," said Mr. Lake. "The baptismal people must have foreseen she was destined to be a Begum."
The arrival at Coombe Dalton interrupted the conversation. Slackening its speed, the train came to a standstill. They inquired of a porter how long it stayed, and understood him to say "ten" minutes. So they got out, and heard almost immediately the train puff on again. The man had said "two." Looking at each other in consternation, a laugh ensued. The next train came up at three o'clock, and they could only wait.
Plenty of time now to examine the scene of the accident. They were not the only spectators. The battered engine, the débris of the carriages were there still--not on the line, but drawn away from it.
"In shunting some trucks on to the other line, one of them broke down, and could not be got off before our train came up," explained Oliver Jupp. "The engine ran into it, and--we were done for."
"But how dreadfully careless of the people at the station to allow your engine to run into it!" exclaimed Margaret. "They ought to have signalled your train to stop."
"They did signal it," interrupted a strange voice at her elbow, and Margaret turned to see the stationmaster, who was known to her brother and Mr. Lake. "The red lights were exhibited at the station, and a switchman waved the red signal light up and down, all to no purpose. You observe that post," he added, pointing to an iron post or pillar close to them, for he perceived she looked as if she scarcely understood him: "that is the night signal-post. When the line is clear, a green light is exhibited on it, as a notice that the trains may pass; but when it is not clear, a red light is substituted, and no train must proceed when the red light is there. Not only was the red light shown there last night, but the switchman, alarmed at the train's coming on so quickly, seized it, and waved it to enforce attention. The driver took no notice, and came dashing on to destruction."
"Was he killed?" inquired one of the bystanders, a knot of whom had gathered round.
"No," replied the stationmaster; "and his escape is regarded as next door to a miracle. He was flung from the engine, lay motionless, and was carried off for dead; but it appears he was only stunned, and is nearly well this morning. He'll have to stand his trial, of course; and a good thing for him if they don't bring it in 'Wilful Murder'--for that's what some of these careless engine-drivers will come to one day."
The official spoke with a good deal of acrimony. If the blame did not lie with the driver, it lay with him, and some hot dispute had been going on already that morning.
"Does the driver deny that the red light was up?" asked Mr. Lake.
"He denies it, and stands to it," said the aggrieved stationmaster. "He says the green lights were up as usual. The man's a fool."
"He had taken something to obscure his vision, possibly?"
"Well, no. I don't think he had done that. He is a sober man. It is a case of carelessness: nothing else. They go driving on, full pelt, never looking at the signals. On these quiet lines of rail, where there's not much traffic, the danger signal is not exhibited for weeks together. They get accustomed to see the other, and it becomes to them so much a matter of course that it must be there, that they forget to look at it at all. That, in my opinion, must have been the cause of last night's work, and I see no other possible way of accounting for it."
He turned back to the station as he spoke, and a gentleman, who had drawn near, held out his hand to greet the Lakes and the Jupps. It was Colonel West, an acquaintance who resided at Coombe Dalton.
"Oh, colonel," exclaimed one of the young ladies, "what a shocking accident this has been!"
"Ay, it has. Seven picked up dead, and four more gone this morning; besides legs, and arms, and backs broken. It is awful to think of."
"And all from one man's recklessness!" added Mr. Lake, with more severity, more feeling, than he generally suffered himself to display. "As the stationmaster says, they'll not be brought to their senses, these drivers, until some of them are convicted of wilful murder. I hope the man who drove the train last night will get his deserts."
The spectators generally, including Oliver Jupp, had strolled off in the wake of the stationmaster, he being the one from whom most news was to be expected, and their curiosity was craving for it. Colonel West, a keen, sensible man of fifty, brought himself to an anchor before Mr. Lake, touching him on the waistcoat to command attention.
"Let me disabuse your mind, at any rate. I hear they are putting the blame on the driver; but he does not deserve it, and they must be doing it to screen themselves. I know nothing of the man; I never saw him in my life until this morning; but I shall stand between him and injustice."
"In what way? what do you mean?" Mr. Lake inquired.
"They say at the station here that they exhibited the danger signal, red, and that the train dashed on regardless of it," said Colonel West. "I went to the inn this morning where some of the wounded are lying, and there I found the driver--as they told me he was--on a mattress on the floor. 'How did this happen?' I said to him. 'I don't know how it happened, sir,' he replied; 'but I declare there was no red signal up to stop me; the green light was up as usual.' That was the first I had heard about the red light," continued the colonel; "but I find the man said true, and that the whole blame is laid upon him. Now it happens that I was in my garden last night when the smash came, just over on the other side of the line, and I can bear the man's assertion out. It was the green light that was up, and not the red."
"Shameful!" exclaimed Mr. Lake, rising up at once against the injustice in his impulsive way. "I hope, colonel, you will stand by the man."
"You may be sure of that. I'd transport a reckless driver for life, if I could, but I would never see an innocent man falsely accused."
Having nothing to do with themselves, they strolled into the village, such as it was, the colonel with them. At the door of the small inn, whose floors had been put into requisition the previous night, on the green bench running under the windows, sat the driver of the engine, his head tied up with a white cloth and his arm in a sling. Colonel West introduced him: "Cooper, the driver." Cooper was a man of notoriety that day.
"Why, Cooper!" cried Mr. Lake in surprise the moment he saw the patient, "was it you who drove the engine last night?"
"Yes, sir, it was me," replied Cooper, standing up to answer, but sinking back at once from giddiness. "And I can only say I wish it had been somebody else, if they are going to persist in accusing me of causing the accident wilfully."
Mr. Lake knew him well. He was a young man, a native of Katterley, of very humble origin, but of good natural intelligence and exemplary character. It was only about a month that he had been promoted to be a driver; before that he was a stoker. "I need not have speculated on whether the driver was overcome by strong liquor, had I known who it was," said Mr. Lake.
"He tells me he never drinks," interposed Colonel West.
"Never, sir," said Cooper. "Water, and tea, and coffee, and those sort of things but nothing stronger. I had a brother, sir, who drank himself to death before he was twenty, and it was a warning for me. This gentleman and these ladies knew him."
Mr. Lake nodded acquiescence. "So they say the red light was up, do they, Cooper, and you would not see it?"
"I hear they are saying so at the station, sir; but it's very wrong. There was no other light up but the one that is generally up, the green. Should I have gone steaming on, risking death to myself and my passengers, if the danger light had been up? No, sir, it's not likely."
"Did you look at the signal light?" inquired Mary Jupp, who was always practical. "Perhaps you--you might, you know, Cooper--have passed it without looking just for once."
"I did look, miss; and I couldn't have been off seeing it last night, for it was being swung about like anything. 'What's up now,' I said to myself, 'that they are swinging the lamp about like that?' and I thought whoever it was doing it, must have had a drop too much."
"But don't you think you might from that very fact have suspected danger?" questioned Mr. Lake.
"No, sir, not from the green lamp. If they had wanted to warn me of danger, they should have swung the red. Any way, I'd rather have given my own life than it should have happened when I was driver."
"Cooper, I saw the green light swung as well as you; and I shall be happy to bear my testimony in your favour at the proper time and place," said Colonel West. "It is quite a providential thing that I happened to be in my garden at the time."
"Thank you, sir," said the man, earnestly, the tears of relief and emotion rising to his eyes.
Whiling away the time in the best way they could, they got back to the station a few minutes before the train for Guild was expected. The accident was the topic of conversation still.
"I have seen the driver," remarked Mr. Lake to the stationmaster. "I know him well, a sober, steady man. He persists still that the red signal was not exhibited; that it was the green."
"Oh, he does, does he?" returned the stationmaster. "He had better prove it. Of course, when they are at their wit's end for an excuse, they invent anything, probable or improbable."
"Cooper is not a man to invent. I am sure he is truthful."
"Let him wait till the inquest," was the significant reply.
The train came in, and they were taken on to Guild station. From thence they found their way to Mrs. Chester's, losing Oliver Jupp on the road.
"You disagreeable, tiresome things! what brings you here at this late hour?" was the greeting of Mrs. Chester, as she stood at the door, in no amiable mood, to receive her guests. "You knew we were to have dined at three o'clock, and taken dessert and tea on the lawn, I have been obliged to order the dinner to be put back."
"It was the train's fault," said Mr. Lake. "It deposited us halfway and left us."
"Of course you must put in your nonsense, Robert, or it wouldn't be you," retorted Mrs. Chester, who could be objectionably cross when put out, especially to him. "Come along with me, girls, and take your things off. Dinner will be on the table in twenty minutes."
She led the way to the staircase with scant ceremony. Mr. Lake touched her arm.
"A moment, Penelope, just to answer me a question. Is Lydia Clapperton here today?"
"Yes," was Mrs. Chester's answer, delivered impatiently. "Why?"
"Where is she?"
"In the garden, I think--or perhaps with the children. What do you want to know for?"
"Only to get the start of Oliver. He monopolized her yesterday, I hear."
"Where is Oliver?" demanded Mrs. Chester, suddenly remembering that he had not come.
"Oh! he went into the town to buy cigars, or something of the sort," responded Mr. Lake, as he turned to the garden, glad perhaps to get out of the reach of his sister's anger. That something besides their late arrival had put out Mrs. Chester was self-evident.
Across lawns, over flower-beds, behind trees, went Robert Lake, in search of the beauty that to him was as yet a vision--Lydia Clapperton. Good chance--or ill chance, just as the reader may deem--took him to a small summer-house at the end of a shady shrubbery, and in it he discerned a lady sitting; young and pretty, he decided in the semi-light. The lattice was trellised with the green leaves of summer flowers; roses and clematis clustered at the door.
He thought, looking at her in the subdued shade, that she must be four or five-and-twenty. Her dress was young--young for daylight. A rich black silk with a low body and short sleeves, edged by a ruche of white crape, a jet chain on her white neck, and jet bracelets. She had very decided aquiline features, thin and compressed lips. Her eyes were such that would have been called beautiful or hideous, according to the taste or fancy of the spectator: they were large, bold, and intensely black. Her hair was beautiful: a smooth purple black, very luxuriant, and disposed in an attractive manner round the head.
Mr. Lake took a private view through the interstices of the green stalks across the lattice.
"It is Lydia Clapperton," he said to himself; "and a fine girl!"
"There she is!" he began aloud, in his free and somewhat saucy manner--a manner that women like, when displayed by an attractive man--as he bared his head to enter the summer-house, and held out his hand with an abandon of all ceremony.
That she was surprised into the putting forth her hand in return, was indisputable. She had been intently bending over some fancy-work, netting; and she lifted her head with a start at the greeting, and let fall the work.
Mr. Lake took her hand; she looked up at him and saw a gay fascinating man, gentlemanly in the midst of his freedom. Drawing back her hand she sat down again, perfectly self-possessed.
"I told Mrs. Chester I should come and look for you," he said, in explanation. "I have the pleasure of knowing your sister, so we need not wait for a formal introduction."
"And you?" cried the lady, looking puzzled.
"You have heard, no doubt, of Mrs. Chester's brother, the scapegrace. She never gives me too good a word. I am out of her books again, through keeping her and the dinner waiting."
It happened that the young lady had never heard of Mr. Lake, as a scapegrace or otherwise. She did not say so, and went on with her netting work.
"Mrs. Chester has been wondering at the non-arrival of some friends she was expecting."
"And fuming at it too," returned Mr. Lake, with a light laugh. "We had an adventure. Getting out at Coombe Dalton in the supposition that there was plenty of time, the train went on without us. I am really sorry, though, for it has delayed your dinner."
"Oh that is nothing," was the answer, spoken in a spirit of politeness. "I would rather not dine at all than dine alone."
Mr. Lake sat down on the bench, took up her scissors, and seemed inclined to make himself at home. She glanced at his bright blue eyes, dancing with light gaiety and with admiration of her fair self.
"I think nothing is more pleasant than a country-house filled with visitors," she observed, tying a sudden break in the silk of her work, and holding out her hand for the scissors to cut the ends off.
"When they can do as they like," added Mr. Lake. "We shall remain until tomorrow night or Wednesday morning, I believe, and must make the most of it. And you--do you remain long?"
"My stay is quite uncertain."
"At least I hope you will be here until Wednesday. After that there'll be nothing to stay for; all the pleasure and the freedom must end; liberty will be replaced by restraint."
His tone had become serious. She paused again in her work, and lifted her eyes to speak.
"What restraint?"
"Mrs. Chester has sold her liberty to a Begum. Surely you must have heard of it! An old Indian Begum, who is coming to stay here, and takes possession the middle of the week. We must all be upon our good behaviour before her. No fun to go on then."
"An Indian Begum!" uttered the young lady, staring at him.
"Nothing less formidable, I assure you. She is expected to make the journey from town on an elephant. I shall draw a sketch of her after dinner for private circulation: shawls, fans, woolly hair, and propriety. She's a widow; the relict of a Sir George Ellis; we must not so much as whisper before her."
The lady laughed.
"Mrs. Chester has laid down rules for our conduct," he went on, in a rattling sort of fashion. "The last time I was at Guild she saw me snatch a kiss from a pretty girl who was staying with her; and a few days ago she appeared at my house with an inquiry of what I supposed my Lady Ellis would think of such conduct. You have no conception what a nightmare this Begum is to me--this old relict of a K.C.B."
"Really I don't wonder. Shawls, fans, woolly hair, and, an elephant! Old and ugly! Did you say ugly?"
"As if a Begum could be anything else! Not that her ugliness or beauty could affect one; but her interfering with the liberty of a fellow--that does it."
"But--according to your version--it is Mrs. Chester who seems to be interfering; not the Begum."
"It is all the same; excepting that, for Mrs. Chester we should not care, and for the Begum, I suppose, we must. I did think of getting a few days' fishing here this charming weather, but that's over now. I shall never stand that Begum--twirling one's thumbs before her; and speaking in measured monosyllables."
The young lady bent over her netting; she had made a long stitch. Glancing up, she saw those attractive eyes fastened on her. "Mrs. Chester seems to wish to keep you in order," she remarked, bending them again.
"She does. It is her vocation. I listen to her pretty dutifully, and when her back's turned have a good laugh over it. Allow me to try and get that knot undone for you; it is giving you trouble."
"Why, what do you know about netting?" she asked, gaily.
"A great deal. I netted a boy's fishing-net once. Those long stitches are the very plague."
"A fishing-net!" she laughed. "Well, perhaps you did; but what do you think you could do to this fine silk: you, with your man's fingers?"
"I can try, so as to save the trouble to you." He bent as he spoke, and attempted gently to draw the work from her. She kept it tight. It really looked as though they had no objection, either of them, to lapse into a flirtation, when at that moment voices were heard, and Mr. Lake looked up. Passing across the shrubbery, by an intersecting walk, was Oliver Jupp, with a young lady by his side. She turned her head, and stood still for a moment, calling out to Mrs. Chester's children, who were behind, so that Mr. Lake had a view of her face.
"Who the deuce has Jupp picked up now?" murmured Mr. Lake, in a half-whisper. "She's an uncommon pretty girl." The lady also looked at them, letting her netting fall on her lap.
"Do you know who that young lady is?" he asked.
She disengaged the string from her foot, got up, and looked from the door. Mrs. Chester's children ran across the shrubbery with fleet feet and noisy tongues, and the sound of their voices faded away in the distance.
"It is a Miss Clapperton. Mrs. Chester introduced her to me by that name. Lydia Clapperton, I think, she called her."
Mr. Lake stared in his surprise. "That Lydia Clapperton!"
"Mrs. Chester certainly called her so."
"Why, then--who are you?"
"I? Oh, I am the Indian Begum; but I did not come on an elephant."
His pulses stood still for a moment. But he thought she was playing a joke upon him.
"You are not--you cannot be--Lady Ellis!"
"I am indeed. The old relict of Colonel Sir George Ellis, K.C.B."
Never in all his life had Robert Lake been so taken to, never had he felt more thoroughly confused and ashamed. The hot crimson mounted to his temples. Lady Ellis had sat down again, and was quietly going on with her work.
"I humbly beg your pardon, Lady Ellis," he said, standing before her as shamefaced as any convicted schoolboy. "I cannot expect you to accord it to me, but I most sincerely beg it."
"I think I must accord it to you," she answered, in a pretty tantalizing sort of manner. "Your offence was not against me, but against some fabled monster of your fancy. You shall sketch her still after dinner for private circulation."
The sound of a gong as she spoke gave notice that dinner was ready. Mr. Lake held out his hand with hesitation.
"Will you ratify your pardon, Lady Ellis? Will you promise to forget as well as forgive? I shall never forget or forgive myself."
She frankly put her hand into his as she rose. "I have forgiven; I will promise to forget. But then, you know, you must not convert me into a nightmare."
"You a nightmare!" he impulsively cried, some of his old lightness returning to him. "If you are, it will be one of a different kind: a nightmare of attraction," he gallantly added, as he offered her his arm. "What did you think of me? Did you take me for a wild animal just arrived from the savage islands?"
"No," said Lady Ellis; "that is what you took the Begum for. I found you were under a mistake as soon as you spoke of my sister. I have no sister. But what about your intention of fishing here? I am sorry that I should frustrate it."
He bit his lip; he could not conceal his annoyance. "I thought you promised to forget," he softly whispered.
"And so I will."
"When did you arrive?"
"Only an hour or so ago. Just in time to dress for dinner."
Leaving Lady Ellis in the drawing-room, he ran upstairs in search of his wife, and found her in the chamber which had been assigned them--a pleasant room, looking towards the lawn. She was at work: making a doll's frock for Fanny Chester.
"How hot you look!" she exclaimed, as her husband entered. "Your face is crimson."
"My brain is also," he replied. "What do you think?--Lady Ellis is here."
"Mrs. Chester told us so. She had a note from her this morning, and she herself arrived at two o'clock."
"Clary, I called her the Begum to her face."
"Oh!"
"I don't know what else I didn't call her: old and ugly, and a nightmare; and said she was coming on an elephant. In short, I did nothing but ridicule her. You see, I took her for that Lydia Clapperton."
Mrs. Lake's face turned red in its turn. She was of a refined, deeply-sensitive temperament, ever considerate of the feelings of others.
"What apology can you possibly offer, Robert? How can you make your peace?"
"I have made it already. She seems thoroughly good-natured, and saw the thing as it was--a misapprehension altogether. I'd rather have given a hundred pounds, though, than it should have happened. Why couldn't Penelope open her mouth and tell me she had come and was in the garden?"
He was splashing away at the water, having turned up his cuffs and his wristbands to wash his hands, evidently not on very good terms with himself. His wife put the doll's frock into her little ornamental basket and stood up to wait, watching him brush his hair. Then they were ready to go down.