Chapter 18

THE STORMY NIGHT AND SUNSHINY MORNING.

Lady Clara found her way into the house unnoticed, and stole back to her own room, weary and heart-sick from the excitement she had passed through.

For more than an hour she sat by her window looking out upon the moonlight which flooded the lawn, and the dense black shadows of the trees beyond.

The stillness gradually hushed her sobs into a sad calm, and, without other light than that which came from the moon, she crept into her bed, and lay there, as if buried in a snow-drift, cold and shivering from exhausting emotions and exposure to the night air.

She could not sleep, but lay thinking of the man who had been driven from the house that night, wondering where he was, and when, upon the earth, she would meet him.

All at once she started up and uttered a faint cry. Some one had passed swiftly through her door, and was approaching the bed. She saw the face, as it crossed the window, and sank to the pillow again.

"Mamma Rachael, is it you?" she gasped.

Lady Hope sat down on the edge of the bed. She seemed deathly cold; but there was a far-off look in her eyes, as the moonlight fell upon them, which seemed unnatural to the girl.

Clara put back the bed-clothes and reached out her arms; for Lady Hope was in her night-dress, and her feet were uncovered.

"Come into bed, mamma Rachael; you shiver so."

Lady Hope took no heed, but arose slowly from the bed, and, going to a dressing-table, poured some water from a ewer that stood there, and began to wash her hands.

Clara could see her in the moonlight, and sat up in the bed, afraid and wondering.

"Mamma, mamma Rachael," she faltered, terrified by the sound of her voice, "why are you staying out in the cold like that?"

Lady Hope shook the drops from her fingers, and leaving the table, began to pace the floor. At last Clara sprang from the bed and took hold of her.

Every nerve in the woman's body seemed to quiver under that touch; she uttered a shrill cry, and clung to the girl to save herself from falling.

"Come to the bed with me, mamma. Your hand is cold; it touches mine like snow. That is right; put your arms around me. Poor, poor mamma! how your heart struggles! There, there; the chill is going off. We will get each other warm; for we love each other, you and I, mamma Rachael; nothing on this earth can change that!"

Rachael allowed herself to be taken to the bed; but she trembled violently.

"You are troubled about Hepworth; but I have promised--I do promise. Papa, nor all the world to help him, could change me. Besides, there is another thing; we both love him; that would make us cling together, if nothing else," said Clara.

"Ah, there it is--there it is! Hepworth is gone, and neither you nor I must ever see him again!" answered Rachael.

"But we will! He loves us. I will marry him some day, if I live."

"Oh, no, no! That can never be! Never! never!"

Rachael was fearfully agitated. Clara tore her form from those clinging arms.

"What! you?--you turned against us--you!" she exclaimed, pushing Rachael back from her pillow, and sitting up in the moonlight. "Has my father driven us all crazy?"

"Hush, child, hush! I have been thinking of that. It seems to me that I am mad already. Be kind; oh, be kind! Do not urge me on. To-night I have had such thoughts!"

The girl was frightened; for Rachael was bending over, and the fire of her great black eyes seemed hot as it was terrible.

"Great Heavens!" she cried, "what has my father done to you?"

Rachael had exhausted herself. She lay down, panting for breath; her lips were apart; the edges of her teeth were visible; she did not answer.

Clara forgot her own cause of offence, and laid her hand over those wide-open, burning eyes.

"Poor mamma Rachael! now try and sleep. I never saw you so nervous before. Did you know it? you were walking in your sleep."

The cool touch of that hand soothed the woman. Clara felt the eyelids close under her palm; but a heavy pulse was beating in the temples, which resisted all her gentle mesmerism for a long time; but, after a while, the worn frame seemed to rest, and Clara sank down in weary sleepiness by her side.

When she awoke again Lady Hope was gone. It was the dark hour of the morning; the moon had disappeared from the heavens; the shadows, in diffusing themselves, spread out into general darkness.

"Ah, I have had a weary dream," she murmured; "I have heard of such things, but never had anything dark upon my sleep before. How real it was! My father home, Hepworth gone, my mother in this bed, trembling, moaning, and, worst of all, against me and him. Ah, it was a terrible dream!"

She turned upon her pillow, full of sleepy thankfulness, and the next instant had deluded herself into a tranquil sleep.

A rapid fall of hoofs upon the avenue shook the stillness. Nearer and nearer they came; then a clang of the great bronze knocker at the principal entrance awoke her thoroughly.

The girl listened; her dream was fast taking shape, and she knew that it was a reality. Had this untimely arrival anything to do with it? A knock at her chamber-door, and her father's voice answered the question.

She was to get up, and prepare for a journey at once; her maid was packing already.

What was it? What had happened? Lord Hope forgot that he had not told her. The old Countess of Carset had sent for her. She must prepare to start at once for Houghton.

Clara sprang up, ready to offer battle to the old countess a second time in behalf of her stepmother.

While she was being dressed, Lord Hope stood in the corridor without, reading the delicate, upright characters in which the old countess clothed her thoughts.

"MY LORD:--Circumstances have happened of late which convince me that I have been hasty and unjust to your wife, and have taken offense too readily from the independence exhibited by your child, my grand-daughter. It is my desire to atone for this, as the men and women of our house have ever atoned for injustice. The infirmities of old age, and more than ordinary ill-health forbid me to visit Oakhurst, which might, perhaps, be properly expected of one who admits herself to have been in the wrong; but, perhaps you and Lady Hope will permit Lady Clara to come to me here a few weeks, in which time, I trust, she will learn to know and love her grandmother.

"Presuming upon your generosity, I have sent my steward and my own maid, that she may have proper protection on her journey. After my grand-daughter has been at Houghton long enough to feel that it is to be her home in the future, I shall expect the pleasure of a visit from you and Lady Hope.

"LOUISA, Countess of Carset."

Never, since the day in which he brought the first Lady Hope home, a bride, had such intense satisfaction filled the earl's heart as this letter brought him.

Involved, as he was, with pecuniary difficulties, harassed about his daughter, humiliated by the silent rejection by which the nobility in the neighborhood had repudiated his wife for so many years, this concession so nobly made by the old countess, was an opening of good fortune which promised a solution of all these difficulties. It had, in truth, lifted a heavy burden from his life.

With the letter in his hand Lord Hope went to his wife's dressing-room, where he found her, hollow-eyed, and so nervous that a faint cry broke from her as he entered the room.

She felt the loss of her brother terribly, notwithstanding what seemed to be a ready concession to the harsh treatment he received, and her sleep, as we know, had been restless and broken in the night.

She was cold and shivering, though the weather was warm, and had wrapped a shawl, full of richly-tinted colors, over her morning-dress, and sat cowering under it like some newly-caught animal.

Lord Hope felt that his inhospitable expulsion of her brother, and the cruel conversation that had followed it, was the cause of this nervous depression, and his heart smote him. With the letter open in his hand he went up to her chair, and bending over it, kissed Rachael on the forehead.

A smile broke over those gloomy features; the heavy eyes lighted up; she lifted her face to his.

"Oh, you do love me--you do love me!"

"My poor Rachael! how can you permit words that sprang out of the gloomy memories which Hepworth brought to trouble you so? Come, smile again, for I have good news for you--for us all."

"Good news! Is Hepworth coming back?"

"Forget Hepworth just now, and read that."

Lady Hope took the letter and read it through. When she gave it back, her face was radiant.

"At last--at last!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Norton, this will lift me to my proper place by your side. Now, now I will make you proud of me! These patricians shall learn that all great gifts do not spring from birth--that genius has a nobility which can match that given by kings."

Rachael started up in her excitement, flung the shawl away, and stood a priestess where she had just cowered like a wounded animal.

"Now we shall be all the world to each other, and walk through this proud life of yours, fairly mated. Great Heavens! after a night like the last, who could have expected such a morning? But Clara, you will let her go?"

"She is preparing to go now."

"My girl--my bright, beautiful girl! She has always been the angel in my path. But for her, this might never have come. But we cannot give her up--not entirely. You will not consent to that?"

"If we do, it will be only for a time, Rachael. The countess is very old."

"Yes, it will not be for long, and we can trust Clara. I will go to her now. She will need my help, and every minute she stays under this roof is a grain of gold which I must not lose. Oh! Norton, this is glorious news that you have brought me! What can have wrought this change in the old countess? I am going to Clara now."

As Lady Hope opened the door, Clara stood upon the threshold, ready for her journey. She knew that this letter was the first that her father had received from Lady Carset for years, and was curious to know its meaning. She could not remember when Lady Carset's name had been spoken in that house without bitterness, and was astonished to hear the cheerful animation with which it was spoken now.

"Am I really to go, papa? Do you wish it? Is mamma Rachael willing? Let me read the letter, please."

Lord Hope gave her the letter, and replied as she was reading it:

"Yes, my child, it is but right. The old lady is your nearest female relative."

Here Clara reached out her hand to Lady Hope, but kept her eyes on the letter, reading and listening at the same time.

"And you think it best, mamma?" inquired Clara, folding the letter. "What a delicate, stately hand the old lady writes! You don't object?"

"Object, Clara! No, no. I long to part with you, for the first time in my life."

"In some things," said Lord Hope, "the old lady has been cruelly dealt by. Say this from me, Clara. The concessions must not rest all on one side."

"Of course, papa; I will tell her, if you desire it. But why did she not ask you and mamma at once? It is awful lonesome going to that grim old castle by myself."

"It is only for a few weeks," answered Rachael, hastily. "But, dear child, you must not let this old lady stand between you and us. She may have more to give, but no one on earth can ever love you like us."

"Don't I know it? Is that the carriage? Dear me, how things are rushed forward this morning! Am I all right, mamma Rachael? Kiss me once more. What! tears in your eyes? I won't go a step if you don't stop crying! What do I care for Lady Carset, a cross old thing, and old as the hills!"

"Clara, I hear the carriage."

"So do I, papa; but what's the use of hurrying?"

"I wish your grandmother to know that I hold no enmity by my promptness in sending you."

"Oh, is that it? Well, good-bye, mamma Rachael. One more kiss--again--again! Now, good-bye in earnest."

Lady Hope left the room to hide her tears. Clara followed her father to the carriage.

"Poor, poor mamma! How pale and ill she was last night! Oh, papa, do kiss her good-bye for me just once again, when you go back."

Lord Hope turned a smiling look upon the girl, and she added, half in excuse:

"It breaks my heart to leave her so."

Lord Hope did not answer, but folded a cloak around his daughter, helped her into the carriage, and took a seat himself.

Margaret was already seated by the coachman.

"I understand well enough that I am not to travel with my young lady on her journey," she said; "but, so far as her way lies toward London, I am going. My sister wants me there, and I do just as lief be in a tomb as stay at Oakhurst when Lady Clara is away. So, as she is willing, I shall just leave her at the junction, and go up to London. That I can do in spite of the crabbed old thing at Houghton, who wants her at first all to herself."

This was said in confidence to the coachman, who muttered something under his breath about feeling uncommonly lonesome when Mistress Margaret was away from Oakhurst.

Directly after this the carriage drew up at the station, where a grim-looking woman of fifty stood ready to receive the young lady from the hands of her father.

It was not often that Lord Hope was known to exhibit any violent emotion; but Clara felt that he gave way a little when she threw her arms around his neck in parting--and Badger, after he opened the gate to let his master pass through, observed to Jules that something out of the common must be going on up yonder, for all night people had been going in and out like ghosts, and the master seemed like another man.