MISS CARLYLE--ISABEL UNHAPPY.
Another year came in. Isabel would have been altogether happy but for
Miss Carlyle; that lady still inflicted her presence upon East Lynne,
and made it the bane of its household. She deferred outwardly to Lady
Isabel as the mistress; but the real mistress was herself. Isabel was
little more than an automaton. Her impulses were checked, her wishes
frustrated, her actions tacitly condemned by the imperiously-willed Miss
Carlyle. Poor Isabel, with her refined manners and her timid and
sensitive temperament, had no chance against the strong-minded woman,
and she was in a state of galling subjection in her own house.
Not a day passed but Miss Carlyle, by dint of hints and innuendoes,
contrived to impress upon Lady Isabel the unfortunate blow to his own
interests that Mr. Carlyle’s marriage had been, the ruinous expense she
had entailed upon the family. It struck a complete chill to Isabel’s
heart, and she became painfully impressed with the incubus she must be
to Mr. Carlyle--so far as his pocket was concerned. Lord Mount Severn,
with his little son, had paid them a short visit at Christmas and Isabel
had asked him, apparently with unconcern, whether Mr. Carlyle had put
himself very much out to the way to marry her; whether it had entailed
on him an expense and a style of living he would not otherwise have
deemed himself justified in affording. Lord Mount Severn’s reply was an
unfortunate one: his opinion was, that it had, he said; and that Isabel
ought to feel grateful to him for his generosity. She sighed as she
listened, and from thenceforth determined to put up with Miss Carlyle.
More timid and sensitive by nature than many would believe or can
imagine, reared in seclusion more simply and quietly than falls to the
general lot of peers’ daughters, completely inexperienced, Isabel was
unfit to battle with the world--totally unfit to battle with Miss
Carlyle. The penniless state in which she was left at her father’s
death, the want of a home save that accorded her at Castle Marling, even
the hundred-pound note left in her hand by Mr. Carlyle, all had imbued
her with a deep consciousness of humiliation, and, far from rebelling at
or despising the small establishment, comparatively speaking, provided
for her by Mr. Carlyle, she felt thankful to him for it. But to be told
continuously that this was more than he could afford, that she was in
fact a blight upon his prospects, was enough to turn her heart to
bitterness. Oh, that she had had the courage to speak out openly to her
husband, that he might, by a single word of earnest love and assurance,
have taken the weight from her heart, and rejoiced it with the truth--
that all these miserable complaints were but the phantoms of his narrow-
minded sister! But Isabel never did; when Miss Corny lapsed into her
grumbling mood, she would hear in silence, or gently bend her aching
forehead in her hands, never retorting.
Never before Mr. Carlyle was the lady’s temper vented upon her; plenty
fell to his own share, when he and his sister were alone; and he had
become so accustomed to the sort of thing all his life--had got used to
it, like the eels do to skinning--that it went, as the saying runs, in
at one ear and out at the other, making no impression. He never dreamt
that Isabel also received her portion.
It was a morning early in April. Joyce sat, in its gray dawn, over a
large fire in the dressing-room of Lady Isabel Carlyle, her hands
clasped to pain, and the tears coursing down her cheeks. Joyce was
frightened; she had had some experience in illness; but illness of this
nature she had never witnessed, and she was fervently hoping never to
witness it again. In the adjoining room lay Lady Isabel, sick nearly
unto death.
The door from the corridor slowly opened, and Miss Carlyle slowly
entered. She had probably never walked with so gentle a step in all her
life, and she had got a thick-wadded mantle over her head and ears. Down
she sat in a chair quite meekly, and Joyce saw that her face looked as
gray as the early dawn.
“Joyce,” whispered she, “is there any danger?”
“Oh, ma’am, I trust not! But it’s hard to witness, and it must be awful
to bear.”
“It is our common curse, Joyce. You and I may congratulate ourselves
that we have not chosen to encounter it. Joyce,” she added, after a
pause, “I trust there’s no danger; I should not like her to die.”
Miss Carlyle spoke in a low, dread tone. Was she fearing that, if her
poor young sister-in-law did die, a weight would rest on her own
conscience for all time--a heavy, ever-present weight, whispering that
she might have rendered her short year of marriage more happy, had she
chosen; and that she had not so chosen, but had deliberately steeled
every crevice of her heart against her? Very probably; she looked
anxious and apprehensive in the morning’s twilight.
“If there’s any danger, Joyce--”
“Why, do you think there’s danger, ma’am?” interrupted Joyce. “Are other
people not as ill as this?”
“It is to be hoped they are not,” rejoined Miss Carlyle. “And why is the
express gone to Lynneborough for Dr. Martin?”
Up started Joyce, awe struck. “An express for Dr. Martin! Oh, ma’am! Who
sent it? When did it go?”
“All I know is, that’s its gone. Mr. Wainwright went to your master, and
he came out of his room and sent John galloping to the telegraph office
at West Lynne; where could your ears have been, not to hear the horse
tearing off? I heard it, I know that, and a nice fright it put me in. I
went to Mr. Carlyle’s room to ask what was amiss, and he said he did not
know himself--nothing, he hoped. And then he shut his door again in my
face, instead of stopping to speak to me as any other Christian would.”
Joyce did not answer; she was faint with apprehension; and there was a
silence, broken only by the sounds from the next room. Miss Carlyle
rose, and a fanciful person might have thought she was shivering.
“I can’t stand this, Joyce; I shall go. If they want coffee, or anything
of that, it can be sent here. Ask.”
“I will presently, in a few minutes,” answered Joyce, with a real
shiver. “You are not going in, are you, ma’am?” she uttered, in
apprehension, as Miss Carlyle began to steal on tip-toe to the inner-
door, and Joyce had a lively consciousness that her sight would not be
an agreeable one to Lady Isabel. “They want the room free; they sent me
out.”
“Not I,” answered Miss Corny. “I could do no good; and those who cannot,
are better away.”
“Just what Mr. Wainwright said when he dismissed me,” murmured Joyce.
And Miss Carlyle finally passed into the corridor and withdrew.
Joyce sat on; it seemed to her an interminable time. And then she heard
the arrival of Dr. Martin; heard him go into the next room. By and by
Mr. Wainwright came out of it, into the room where Joyce was sitting.
Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, and before she could bring
out the ominous words, “Is there any danger?” he had passed through it.
Mr. Wainwright was on his way to the apartment where he expected to find
Mr. Carlyle. The latter was pacing it; he had so paced it all the night.
His pale face flushed as the surgeon entered.
“You have little mercy on my suspense, Wainwright. Dr. Martin has been
here this twenty minutes. What does he say?”
“Well, he cannot say any more than I did. The symptoms are critical, but
he hopes she will do well. There’s nothing for it but patience.”
Mr. Carlyle resumed his weary walk.
“I come now to suggest that you should send for Little. In these
protracted cases--”
The speech was interrupted by a cry from Mr. Carlyle, half horror, half
despair. For the Rev. Mr. Little was the incumbent of St. Jude’s, and
his apprehensions had flown--he hardly knew to what they had flown.
“Not for your wife,” hastily rejoined the surgeon--“what good should a
clergyman do to her? I spoke on the score of the child. Should it not
live, it may be satisfactory to you and Lady Isabel to know that it was
baptized.”
“I thank you--I thank you,” said Mr. Carlyle grasping his hand, in his
inexpressible relief. “Little shall be sent for.”
“You jumped to the conclusion that your wife’s soul was flitting. Please
God, she may yet live to bear you other children, if this one does die.”
“Please God!” was the inward aspiration of Mr. Carlyle.
“Carlyle,” added the surgeon, in a musing sort of tone, as he laid his
hand on Mr. Carlyle’s shoulder, which his own head scarcely reached, “I
am sometimes at death-beds where the clergyman is sent for in this
desperate need to the fleeting spirit, and I am tempted to ask myself
what good another man, priest though he be, can do at the twelfth hour,
where accounts have not been made up previously?”
It was hard upon midday. The Rev. Mr. Little, Mr. Carlyle, and Miss
Carlyle were gathered in the dressing-room, round a table, on which
stood a rich china bowl, containing water for the baptism. Joyce, her
pale face working with emotion, came into the room, carrying what looked
like a bundle of flannel. Little cared Mr. Carlyle for the bundle, in
comparison with his care for his wife.
“Joyce,” he whispered, “is it well still?”
“I believe so, sir.”
The services commenced. The clergyman took the child. “What name?” he
asked.
Mr. Carlyle had never thought about the name. But he replied, pretty
promptly.
“William;” for he knew it was a name revered and loved by Lady Isabel.
The minister dipped his fingers in the water. Joyce interrupted in much
confusion, looking at her master.
“It is a little girl, sir. I beg your pardon, I’m sure I thought I had
said so; but I’m so flurried as I never was before.”
There was a pause, and then the minister spoke again. “Name the child.”
“Isabel Lucy,” said Mr. Carlyle. Upon which a strange sort of resentful
sniff was heard from Miss Corny. She had probably thought to hear him
mention her own; but he had named it after his wife and his mother.
Mr. Carlyle was not allowed to see his wife until evening. His eyelashes
glistened, as he looked down at her. She detected his emotion, and a
faint smile parted her lips.
“I fear I bore it badly, Archibald; but let us be thankful that it is
over. How thankful, none can know, save those who have gone through it.”
“I think they can,” he murmured. “I never knew what thankfulness was
until this day.”
“That the baby is safe?”
“That you are safe, my darling; safe and spared to me, Isabel,” he
whispered, hiding his face upon hers. “I never, until to-day, knew what
prayer was--the prayer of a heart in its sore need.”
“Have you written to Lord Mount Severn?” she asked after a while.
“This afternoon,” he replied.
“Why did you give baby my name--Isabel?”
“Do you think I could have given it a prettier one? I don’t.”
“Why do you not bring a chair, and sit down by me?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I wish I might. But they limited my stay
with you to four minutes, and Wainwright has posted himself outside the
door, with his watch in his hand.”
Quite true. There stood the careful surgeon, and the short interview was
over almost as soon as it had begun.
The baby lived, and appeared likely to live, and of course the next
thing was to look out for a maid for it. Isabel did not get strong very
quickly. Fever and weakness had a struggle with each other and with her.
One day, when she was dressing and sitting in her easy chair, Miss
Carlyle entered.
“Of all the servants in the neighborhood, who should you suppose is come
up after the place of nurse?”
“Indeed, I cannot guess.”
“Why, Wilson, Mrs. Hare’s maid. Three years and five months she has been
with them, and now leaves in consequence of a fall out with Barbara.
Will you see her?”
“Is she likely to suit? Is she a good servant?”
“She’s not a bad servant, as servants go,” responded Miss Carlyle.
“She’s steady and respectable; but she has got a tongue as long as from
here to Lynneborough.”
“That won’t hurt baby,” said Lady Isabel. “But if she has lived as
lady’s maid, she probably does not understand the care of infants.”
“Yes she does. She was upper servant at Squire Pinner’s before going to
Mrs. Hare’s. Five years she lived there.”
“I will see her,” said Lady Isabel.
Miss Carlyle left the room to send the servant in, but came back first
alone.
“Mind, Lady Isabel, don’t you engage her. If she is likely to suit you,
let her come again for the answer, and meanwhile I will go down to Mrs.
Hare’s and learn the ins and outs of her leaving. It is all very
plausible for her to put upon Barbara, but that is only one side of the
question. Before engaging her, it may be well to hear the other.”
Of course this was but right. Isabel acquiesced, and the servant was
introduced; a tall, pleasant-looking woman, with black eyes. Lady Isabel
inquired why she was leaving Mrs. Hare’s.
“My lady, it is through Miss Barbara’s temper. Latterly--oh, for this
year past, nothing has pleased her; she had grown nearly as imperious as
the justice himself. I have threatened many times to leave, and last
evening we came to another outbreak, and I left this morning.”
“Left entirely?”
“Yes, my lady. Miss Barbara provoked me so, that I said last night I
would leave as soon as breakfast was over. And I did so. I should be
very glad to take your situation, my lady, if you would please to try
me.”
“You have been the upper maid at Mrs. Hare’s?”
“Oh, yes, my lady.”
“Then possibly this situation might not suit you so well as you imagine.
Joyce is the upper servant here, and you would, in a manner, be under
her. I have great confidence in Joyce; and in case of my illness or
absence, Joyce would superintend the nursery.”
“I should not mind that,” was the applicant’s answer. “We all like
Joyce, my lady.”
A few more questions, and then the girl was told to come again in the
evening for her answer. Miss Carlyle went to the Grove for the “ins and
outs” of the affair, where Mrs. Hare frankly stated that she had nothing
to urge against Wilson, save her hasty manner of leaving, and believed
the chief blame to be due to Barbara. Wilson, therefore, was engaged,
and was to enter upon her new service the following morning.
In the afternoon succeeding to it, Isabel was lying on the sofa in her
bedroom, asleep, as was supposed. In point of fact, she was in that
state, half asleep, half wakeful delirium, which those who suffer from
weakness and fever know only too well. Suddenly she was aroused from it
by hearing her own name mentioned in the adjoining room, where sat Joyce
and Wilson, the latter holding the sleeping infant on her knee, the
former sewing, the door between the rooms being ajar.
“How ill she does look,” observed Wilson.
“Who?” asked Joyce.
“Her ladyship. She looks just as if she’d never get over it.”
“She is getting over it quickly, now,” returned Joyce. “If you had seen
her but a week ago, you would not say she was looking ill now, speaking
in comparison.”
“My goodness! Would not somebody’s hopes be up again if anything should
happen?”
“Nonsense!” crossly rejoined Joyce.
“You may cry out ‘nonsense’ forever, Joyce, but they would,” went on
Wilson. “And she would snap him up to a dead certainty; she’d never let
him escape her a second time. She is as much in love with him as she
ever was!”
“It was all talk and fancy,” said Joyce. “West Lynne must be busy. Mr.
Carlyle never cared for her.”
“That’s more than you know. I have seen a little, Joyce; I have seen him
kiss her.”
“A pack of rubbish!” remarked Joyce. “That tells nothing.”
“I don’t say it does. There’s not a young man living but what’s fond of
a sly kiss in the dark, if he can get it. He gave her that locket and
chain she wears.”
“Who wears?” retorted Joyce, determined not graciously to countenance
the subject. “I don’t want to hear anything about it.”
“‘Who,’ now! Why, Miss Barbara. She has hardly had it off her neck
since, my belief is she wears it in her sleep.”
“More simpleton she,” returned Joyce.
“The night before he left West Lynne to marry Lady Isabel--and didn’t
the news come upon us like a thunderclap!--Miss Barbara had been at Miss
Carlyle’s and he brought her home. A lovely night it was, the moon
rising, and nearly as light as day. He somehow broke her parasol in
coming home, and when they got to our gate there was a love scene.”
“Were you a third in it?” sarcastically demanded Joyce.
“Yes--without meaning to be. It was a regular love scene; I could hear
enough for that. If ever anybody thought to be Mrs. Carlyle, Barbara did
that night.”
“Why, you great baby! You have just said it was the night before he went
to get married!”
“I don’t care, she did. After he was gone, I saw her lift up her hands
and her face in ecstacy, and say he would never know how much she loved
him until she was his wife. Be you very sure, Joyce, many a love-passage
had passed between them two; but I suppose when my lady was thrown in
his way he couldn’t resist her rank and her beauty, and the old love was
cast over. It is in the nature of man to be fickle, specially those that
can boast of their own good looks, like Mr. Carlyle.”
“Mr. Carlyle’s not fickle.”
“I can tell you more yet. Two or three days after that, Miss Corny came
up to our house with the news of his marriage. I was in mistress’s
bedroom, and they were in the room underneath, the windows open, and I
heard Miss Corny tell the tale, for I was leaning out. Up came Miss
Barbara upon an excuse and flew into her room, and I went into the
corridor. A few moments and I heard a noise--it was a sort of wail, or
groan--and I opened the door softly, fearing she might be fainting.
Joyce, if my heart never ached for anybody before, it ached then. She
was lying upon the floor, her hands writhed together, and her poor face
all white, like one in mortal agony. I’d have given a quarter’s wages to
be able to say a word of comfort to her; but I didn’t dare interfere
with such sorrow as that. I came out again and shut the door without her
seeing me.”
“How thoroughly stupid she must have been!” uttered Joyce, “to go caring
for one who did not care for her.”
“I tell you, Joyce, you don’t know that he did not care. You are as
obstinate as the justice, and I wish to goodness you wouldn’t interrupt
me. They came up here to pay the wedding visit--master, mistress, and
she, came in state in the grand chariot, with the coachman and Jasper.
If you have got any memory at all, you can’t fail to recollect it. Miss
Barbara remained behind at East Lynne to spend the rest of the day.”
“I remember it.”
“I was sent to fetch her home in the evening, Jasper being out. I came
the field way; for the dust by the road was enough to smother one, and
by the last stile but one, what do you think I came upon?”
Joyce lifted her eyes. “A snake perhaps.”
“I came upon Miss Barbara and Mr. Carlyle. What had passed, nobody knows
but themselves. She was leaning back against the stile, crying; low,
soft sobs breaking from her, like one might expect to hear from a
breaking heart. It seemed as if she had been reproaching him, as if some
explanation had passed, and I heard him say that from henceforth they
could only be brother and sister. I spoke soon, for fear they should see
me, and Mr. Carlyle got over the stile. Miss Barbara said to him that he
need not come any further, but he held out his arm, and came with her to
our back gate. I went on then to open the door, and I saw him with his
head bent down to her, and her two hands held in his. We don’t know how
it is between them, I tell you.”
“At any rate, she is a downright fool to suffer herself to love him
still!” uttered Joyce, indignantly.
“So she is, but she does do it. She’ll often steal out to the gate about
the time she knows he’ll be passing, and watch him by, not letting him
see her. It is nothing but her unhappiness, her jealousy of Lady Isabel,
that makes her cross. I assure you, Joyce, in this past year she had so
changed that she’s not like the same person. If Mr. Carlyle should ever
get tired of my lady, and--”
“Wilson,” harshly interrupted Joyce, “have the goodness to recollect
yourself.”
“What have I said now? Nothing but truth. Men are shamefully fickle,
husbands worse than sweethearts, and I’m sure I’m not thinking of
anything wrong. But to go back to the argument that we began with--I say
that if anything happened to my lady, Miss Barbara, as sure as fate,
would step into her shoes.”
“Nothing is going to happen to her,” continued Joyce, with composure.
“I hope it is not, now or later--for the sake of this dear little
innocent thing upon my lap,” went on the undaunted Wilson. “She would
not make a very kind stepmother, for it is certain that where the first
wife had been hated, her children won’t be loved. She would turn Mr.
Carlyle against them--”
“I tell you what it is, Wilson,” interrupted Joyce, in a firm,
unmistakable tone, “if you think to pursue those sort of topics at East
Lynne, I shall inform my lady that you are unsuitable for the
situation.”
“I dare say!”
“And you know that when I make up my mind to a thing I do it,” continued
Joyce. “Miss Carlyle may well say you have the longest tongue in West
Lynne; but you might have the grace to know that this subject is one
more unsuitable to it than another, whether you are eating Mr. Hare’s
bread, or whether you are eating Mr. Carlyle’s. Another word, Wilson; it
appears to me that you have been carrying on a prying system in Mrs.
Hare’s house--do not attempt such a thing in this.”
“You were always one of the straight-laced sort, Joyce,” cried Wilson,
laughing good-humoredly. “But now that I have had my say out, I shall
stop; and you need not fear I shall be such a simpleton as to go
prattling of this kind of thing to the servants.”
Now just fancy this conversation penetrating to Lady Isabel! She heard
every word. It is all very well to oppose the argument, “Who attends to
the gossip of the servants?” Let me tell you it depends upon what the
subject may be, whether the gossip is attended to or not. It might not,
and indeed would not, have made so great an impression upon her had she
been in strong health, but she was weak, feverish, and in a state of
partial delirium; and she hastily took up the idea that Archibald
Carlyle had never loved her, that he had admired her and made her his
wife in his ambition, but that his heart had been given to Barbara Hare.
A pretty state of excitement she worked herself into as she lay there,
jealousy and fever, ay, and love too, playing pranks with her brain. It
was near the dinner hour, and when Mr. Carlyle entered, he was startled
to see her; her pallid cheeks were burning with a red hectic glow, and
her eyes glistened with fever.
“Isabel, you are worse!” he uttered, as he approached her with a quick
step.
She partially rose from the sofa, and clasped hold of him in her
emotion. “Oh, Archibald! Archibald!” she uttered, “don’t marry her! I
could not rest in my grave.”
Mr. Carlyle, in his puzzled astonishment, believed her to be laboring
under some temporary hallucination, the result of weakness. He set
himself to soothe her, but it seemed that she could not be soothed. She
burst into a storm of tears and began again--wild words.
“She would ill-treat my child; she would draw your love from it, and
from my memory. Archibald, you must not marry her!”
“You must be speaking from the influence of a dream, Isabel,” he
soothingly said; “you have been asleep and are not yet awake. Be still,
and recollection will return to you. There, love; rest upon me.”
“To think of her as your wife brings pain enough to kill me,” she
continued to reiterate. “Promise me that you will not marry her;
Archibald, promise it!”
“I will promise you anything in reason,” he replied, bewildered with her
words, “but I do not know what you mean. There is no possibility of my
marrying any one, Isabel; you are my wife.”
“But if I die? I may--you know I may; and many think I shall--do not let
her usurp my place.”
“Indeed she shall not--whoever you may be talking of. What have you been
dreaming? Who is it that has been troubling your mind?”
“Archibald, do you need to ask? Did you love no one before you married
me? Perhaps you have loved her since--perhaps you love her still?”
Mr. Carlyle began to discern “method in her madness.” He changed his
cheering tone to one of grave earnestness. “Of whom to you speak,
Isabel?”
“Of Barbara Hare.”
He knitted his brow; he was both annoyed and vexed. Whatever had put
this bygone nonsense into his wife’s head? He quitted the sofa where he
had been supporting her, and stood upright before her, calm, dignified,
almost solemn in his seriousness.
“Isabel, what notion can you possibly have picked up about myself and
Barbara Hare; I never entertained the faintest shadow of love for her,
either before my marriage or since. You must tell me what has given rise
to this idea in your mind.”
“But she loved you.”
A moment’s hesitation; for, of course, Mr. Carlyle was conscious that
she had; but, taking all the circumstances into consideration, more
especially how he learnt the fact, he could not, in honor, acknowledge
it to his wife. “If it was so, Isabel, she was more reprehensibly
foolish than I should have given Barbara’s good sense could be; for a
woman may almost as well lose herself as to suffer herself to love
unsought. If she did give her love to me, I can only say, I was entirely
unconscious of it. Believe me, you have as much cause to be jealous of
Cornelia as you have of Barbara Hare.”
An impulse rose within her that she would tell him all; the few words
dropped by Susan and Joyce, twelve months before, the conversation she
had just overheard; but in that moment of renewed confidence, it did
appear to her that she must have been very foolish to attach importance
to it--that a sort of humiliation, in listening to the converse of
servants, was reflected on her, and she remained silent.
There never was a passion in this world--there never will be one--so
fantastic, so delusive, so powerful as jealousy. Mr. Carlyle dismissed
the episode from his thoughts; he believed his wife’s emotion to have
been simply from a feverish dream, and never supposed but that, with the
dream, its recollection would pass away from her. Not so. Implicitly
relying upon her husband’s words at the moment, feeling quite ashamed at
her own suspicion, Lady Isabel afterward suffered the unhappy fear to
regain its influence; the ill-starred revelations of Wilson reasserted
their power, overmastering the denial of Mr. Carlyle. Shakspeare calls
jealousy yellow and green; I think it may be called black and white for
it most assuredly views white as black, and black as white. The most
fanciful surmises wear the aspect of truth, the greatest improbabilities
appear as consistent realities. Not another word said Isabel to her
husband; and the feeling--you will understand this if you have ever been
foolish enough to sun yourself in its delights--only caused her to grow
more attached to him, to be more eager for his love. But certain it is
that Barbara Hare dwelt on her heart like an incubus.