Chapter X: Mary Jupp's Explosion

A frosty day in December. Time had gone on, winter had come in: the seasons go their round, whatever the world may be doing.

How grew Clara Lake? Better? Well, she did not seem to grow much better; at any rate, she was not well, and the old doctor at Katterley, who had known her constitution from infancy, appeared puzzled. She dressed, as in her days of health, and went about the house: on fine days would go out for a walk in the sunshine: but she remained weak and debilitated, and could not get rid of her cough.

Compared to the dangerous attack she had at Guild, of course her present state seemed to be a vast improvement. On first coming home, the change for the better appeared to be marvellous; and Mr. Lake, never seeing anything but the bright side of things, congratulated himself that she was well again. The improvement did not go on as it ought to have gone; but the falling off was so gradual, the increasing degrees of weakness were so imperceptible, that he neither saw nor suspected either. Had any one told him his wife was in a bad way, he had simply stared in amazement. Latterly the inertness, the seeming debility had certainly made itself apparent to him, but only as a dim idea; so little importance did he attach to it, that he set it all down to apathy on his wife's part, and chided her for not "rousing herself." He did not mean to be unkind; never think that of him; for his wife he would have gone through fire and water, as the saying runs; but he was light, unobservant by nature, and careless.

He was enjoying himself immensely. Chiefly dividing his leisure time between Katterley and Guild. To-day he would be at home with his wife, tomorrow with Lady Ellis; the affectionate husband to the one, saying soft nothings (it must be supposed) to the other. Of course he never went for the sake of seeing my lady; certainly not; there was an excuse ever ready. Mrs. Chester had given him this commission, and he must go and report to her; or Mrs. Chester had given him the other; or she wanted to consult him on her affairs, which were going downwards; or he went over to escort some of the Jupps; or he had business with his tailor; for he had fallen into a freak to employ one who lived at Guild. On one plea or another, a plausible excuse for taking him to Guild never failed.

The fault of this lay partially with Mrs. Chester. Nearly at her wits' end lest Lady Ellis, wearied with the monotony of the house, should leave her; plainly seeing that Mr. Lake's visits were the sole attraction that kept her, Mrs. Chester invented demands upon him to draw him over to Guild. That the confidential footing on which he and Lady Ellis continued was scarcely seemly for a married man, Mrs. Chester completely ignored. She shut her eyes to it; just as she had shut them in the days when Clara was at Guild. I am telling the simple truth of the woman, and things took place exactly as I am relating them. What mattered it to Mrs. Chester whether the wife's feelings were pained, outraged, so long as her own ends were served? Clara was at a safe distance, seeing nothing; and, after all, it was but a bit of passing nonsense between them--there was no real wrong, reasoned Mrs. Chester in her sophistry. "What the eye does not see the heart cannot rue."

"But Mr. Lake ought not to have given way to her," remonstrates the upright reader. Of course he ought not, everybody knows that; but he liked the pastime. Lady Ellis made herself uncommonly attractive to him, and it never occurred to him to see that she ought not to have done so. She was exacting now; saying to him "You must come tomorrow," or "You must come the next day." They rode together and walked together as before; not so much, because it was winter weather; and they strolled out in the wide gardens in the dim afternoons, and sat alone very much in the drawing-room by twilight.

Unfortunately these pleasant arrangements were not kept from Clara. If she had partially forgotten her jealousy upon returning home, her husband's constant visits to Guild, and the whispers reaching her from thence, brought it back in all its unhappy force. She was not told purposely. Of the Jupps, the only one whose eyes were open to the flirtation going on--that is, to a suspicion that it was deeper than it ought to be, considering that Mr. Lake had a wife--was the eldest of them, Mary. She held her tongue. But the others, after a day spent at Guild, would jokingly allude in Clara's hearing to the soft hours spent together by him and Lady Ellis, and tell her she ought to keep her husband in better order. They meant nothing. Had Clara been there she might have thought far less of it than she was doing; incertitude always increases suspicion, just as jealousy makes the food it feeds on. So Mrs. Lake sat at home with her cough, and her increasing weakness, and her miserable torture; conscious of little save one great fact, that her husband was perpetually at Guild. Had he gone more openly, as it were, without framing (as he invariably did) some plausible plea for the journey, she had thought less. What could Clara do? Could she descend to say to him, you shall not go there? No; she suffered in silence; but it was killing her.

A bright December morning, clear and frosty, Mrs. Lake was seated at the window in their comfortable room, making tiny little flannel petticoats. There was a good deal of distress in Katterley, and she was intending to give warm garments to sundry poor half-naked children. Stooping over the work, her cheeks had acquired their hectic tinge, seen frequently now, otherwise the face was pale and thin; the fingers were attenuated. Mr. Lake, who had been looking at the newspaper, reading occasional scraps of news from it to his wife, rose from his chair by the fire and stretched himself.

"How busy you are, little wife! Who on earth are all those small things for?"

"The poor children in the cottages by the brick-fields. They are so badly off, Robert," she added, glancing up, with a pleading look. "I could not help doing something for them."

"All right, my dear; do whatever you like. Only, don't over-work yourself."

"There's no fear of that. Elizabeth will do part of them; and Mary Jupp is coming to help me."

"What a lovely day it is for December!" he added, looking at the sparkling sunlight.

"Very. It almost tempts me to go out."

"I will take you tomorrow, Clara; I must go to Guild today."

Mrs. Lake resumed her work with trembling fingers. "Penelope's watch is at Van Buren's. I promised faithfully to take it to her today."

"Are there no watchmakers at Guild, that Mrs. Chester should send her watch to Katterley?"

"I don't know. I brought it to him at her request a fortnight ago. Van Buren has a great name in his trade, you know."

As he spoke he looked at his own watch; it was time to depart.

"Shall you be home to dinner, Robert?"

"No. But I shall to tea. I shall be in by the seven train. Good-bye, Clary."

She raised her face with its crimson hectic colour, the result of emotion, to receive his farewell kiss. Its loveliness could but strike him.

"How well you are getting to look, my darling," he said, tenderly.

And it would no doubt have astonished Mr. Lake excessively could he have glanced back at his wife through the garden and the walls of the house as he went off, gaily whistling. Dropping her work on the floor, she fell into a storm of sobs in her utter self-abandonment. Miss Jupp came in, and so found her.

"Clara! _Clara!_"

Up she got: but to affect indifference was an impossibility. Mary Jupp, greatly shocked, took the sorrowful face in her sheltering arms.

"Tell me what it is, Clara. Open your poor little heart to me, my dear. I am older than you by many years, and have had trouble myself. Where's your husband?"

"Gone to Guild."

"Oh," said Miss Jupp, shortly, who had her private opinion on many things. "Well, dear, he has got a nice day for it."

Clara dried her eyes and stifled her sobs, and sat down to work again.

"I am so stupid," she said, in a tone of apology. "Since my illness I don't feel strong; it makes me cry sometimes."

Mary Jupp said no more, perhaps wisely. She took her things off and remained the day. And Mr. Lake got home, not by seven at night, but by the last train.

Christmas approached, and Mrs. Lake got thinner and weaker. Still her husband suspected nothing amiss. She rose in the morning, went through her duties, such as they were, and had a bright colour. How was he, an unobservant man by nature and habit, to detect that it was all wrong? Had he suspected the truth, none would have been more anxiously troubled than he.

It was in Clara Lake's nature to conceal what was amiss. With these reticent temperaments, a great grief touching the heart, a grief unto death, never can be spoken of. At the last, perhaps, when hours are numbered, but not always then. _He_ saw no signs of it: the low spirits, the nervous weakness were given way to when alone: never before him. Except that she had grown strangely still and quiet, he saw no alteration. She tried to be cheerful, and succeeded often.

So the days, as I have said, glided on, bringing the end nearer and nearer. Mr. Lake went on his heedless way, and she sat at home and did silent battle with the anguish that was killing her. Her history is drawing to a close. The world, going round in its hard, matter-of-fact reality, is apt to laugh at such stories; but they are taking place, for all that, in some of its nooks and corners.

One day, when it wanted but three or four to Christmas, Mr. Lake tempted his wife into the greenhouse to see his winter plants. She was more cheerful than customary--talked more; an artificial renovation had brought back some of the passing strength.

"Clary, I have promised to spend Christmas-day with Penelope."

A sudden rush of colour to her wasted cheeks, a pause, and a response that came forth faintly.

"Have you?"

"She said how dull it would be for us at home, and would not take a denial. You will be able to go?"

"I go!" She glanced at him in surprise, and shook her head.

"Why not?"

"I am too ill."

Mr. Lake felt annoyed. The proposed expedition had been presenting itself to his mind in a very agreeable light: for his wife to set her face against it, whether on the plea of ill-health or any other plea, would be especially provoking.

"My dear, I tell you what it is," he said in a voice that betrayed his temper, "you will fancy yourself ill and lie-by and stay at home, until it ends in your being ill."

"Do you think I am well?"

"You are not strong; but if you would rouse yourself, and go more out, and shake off fancies, you would soon become so. An illness, such as yours was in the autumn, leaves its weakening effects behind it as a matter of course; but there's no sense in giving way to them."

"I go out sometimes."

"Just for a walk or so; that does little good. What you want is cheerful society; change. You have not been once to Guild since we came home."

"You make up for it, then; you are there often enough."

She could not help the retort; it seemed to slip from her tongue unguided. Mr. Lake kicked out at a broken pot.

"Something or other is always happening to take me there. Mrs. Chester loads me with commissions, and I don't like to refuse to execute them."

They went in. Mr. Lake returned to the charge.

"You will go on Christmas-day, Clary, won't you? Penelope is preparing for us."

"No; I am not well enough. And if I were, I should prefer to be at home. Say no more," she added almost passionately interrupting what he was about to urge. "You ought not to wish me to go there."

A long silence. "I shall go. I must. I can't get off it."

She did not speak.

"What is to be done, Clara? It will never do for me to spend Christmas-day there, and you to spend it at home." And he finished the clause by breaking out, half-singing, half muttering, with the lines of a popular ditty that our childhood was familiar with--

"To-morrow is our wedding-day, and all the world would stare
If wife should dine at Edmonton, and I should dine at Ware."

She sat with her hands folded before her, and did not immediately answer. If _he_ could not tell what was to be done, or what ought to be done, she would not. Mr. Lake looked at her and waited.

"You must do as you think _right_," she said, laying a slight stress upon the word. "I am too unwell to be anywhere but at home on Christmas-day."

Mr. Lake left the room, whistling to hide his anger. Had he possessed the worst wife in the world he had never reproached or quarrelled with her. Some men _cannot_ be actively unkind to women, and he was one. He thought her very obstinate, unreasonably so, and said to himself that he would go to Guild. If Clara did not come to her senses beforehand and accompany him, his going without her would bring her to them after. Not another word was said between them; each seemed to avoid the subject.

Christmas-day dawned, cloudy but tolerably fine. Mr. Lake was going to Guild. Not doing exactly as he thought _right_, for his conscience was giving him a sharp twinge or two, but following the bias of his inclination, which urged him into the sunshine of my Lady Ellis's smiles. Clara felt worse that morning, dreadfully weak and languid, but she put on her things to attend church. Mr. Lake went with her, and they sat out the service together. At its termination he rose to quit the church; she remained.

"Shall you not be too tired with the long service, Clara?" he whispered. "You had better leave it until another opportunity."

"Please don't! let me stay."

There was something in the pleading words--in the pleading up-turned glance of the wan face, that struck upon him as being strange, leaving a momentarily unpleasant impression. He never stayed the sacrament himself, and went out.

She gathered herself into the corner of their high, broad, old-fashioned pew, and knelt down, leaning her arms and head on the seat. An intense weariness was upon her frame and spirit; she did not feel things as keenly as she used--it was as if the world were drifting away from her. Her soul was longing for the comfort of the approaching rite--for its _comfort_. Ah, my friends, we kneel periodically at the altar, and take the bread and wine, and hope that we return comforted and refreshed. Believe me, it is but those from whom the comfort of this world has utterly departed who can indeed realize what that other comfort is, and how great our need of it. Only when earth and its interests fail us, when the silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl broken--in that hour do we desire the rest from travail, as a yearning longing. That hour had come for Clara Lake: she knelt there, feeling that earth had no longer a place for her,--the home above was ready for her,--the Redeemer at hand to welcome her, and take her to God.

She walked home quietly, a dim consciousness upon her that it might be the last time she should partake of the sacrament here. It was not far off two o'clock, and Mr. Lake was walking about, all impatience, for his train started at five minutes past. She had thought he would be gone.

"I waited for you, Clary. _Won't_ you come with me?"

"Indeed I cannot."

"Then it's a case of Johnny Gilpin."

With a farewell to his wife, full of paraded affection, Mr. Lake took himself off to the station, telling his wife to be sure and eat a good dinner and drink everybody's health in champagne, including his and her own.

In spite of the inward peace that was hers, she was feeling terribly dispirited. A fond thought had delusively whispered that, after all, perhaps he might not go. She remembered the epoch of her dream; how he had stayed at home then in tender consideration of her wishes. Things were altered now.

At three o'clock she sat down to dinner, cutting herself a small slice from the turkey placed before her. When the sauces were brought round she simply shook her head. She had no appetite: an oppressive feeling of bitter grief sat on her spirit; the tears dropped on her plate silently, and she could not control them.

Presently she laid down her knife and fork, the little bit of meat only half eaten. Elizabeth ventured to remonstrate.

"I can't swallow it; it is like dry chips in my throat."

"And no wonder, ma'am: the meat's dry by itself. And such delicious bread-sauce and gravy that's here."

Sauce or no sauce, gravy or no gravy, Mrs. Lake could not eat. They brought in the pudding. She cut it, eat a mouthful, and, sent it away again.

Leaving her to her solitary dessert--for her a mere matter of form--the servants sat down to their own dinner. Some short time had elapsed, when Elizabeth thought she heard a noise in the dining-parlour, and went in to see if her mistress wanted anything. A cry of alarm burst from the girl as she opened the door: Mrs. Lake was lying on the carpet.

Whether she had fainted--whether she had been crossing the room and fell over anything--could not then be ascertained. As the servants raised her, a thin stream of blood issued from her mouth. Nearly beside themselves with terror, they laid her on the sofa, and Elizabeth ran for the doctor. She had to pass Mr. Jupp's house, and on her return it occurred to Elizabeth to call and ask to see Miss Jupp. That young lady came out to her from the dining-room, her mouth full of turkey.

"Good gracious!" she exclaimed, half petrified at the news. "Burst a blood-vessel! Dying! Is any one with her besides Mr. Lake?"

"He is not with her--there's nobody with her," answered Elizabeth. "That's why I made bold to disturb you, miss. He is gone off to dine at Mrs. Chester's."

Catching up a garden hat and woollen shawl that hung close at hand, Mary Jupp flung them on without a moment's pause for consideration, and started at a gallop down the street. The worthy shopkeepers, standing at their sitting-room windows, saw the transit with amazement, and thought the eldest Miss Jupp had gone suddenly mad. She was in the house before Dr. Marlow: his old steps were slow at the best--hers fleet. Mrs. Lake had broken a vessel on the chest or lungs.

"There is no immediate danger, as I hope," said the old doctor in Miss Jupp's ear; "but her husband ought to be here." Mary looked at her watch, and found that she had just time to catch a train.

But that Mary Ann Jupp was a strong-minded female, she might not have cared to go a journey on Christmas-day in the guise she presented. It may be questioned if she as much as gave a thought to her attire, except to remember that there was no time to go home and change it. In addition to being strong-minded, she was also an exceedingly upright-minded, right-feeling young woman, and had for a long while past greatly condemned what was going on--the absurd intimacy between Mr. Lake and Lady Ellis, and his consequent neglect of his wife. _Her_ eyes had been open to it if nobody else's had; and Mary Jupp, in her impulsive way, had threatened herself that she should "one day have it out with the lot." That day had come.

Very considerably astonished was Mr. Lake to find himself burst in upon by Mary Jupp. Mrs. Chester and Lady Ellis looked up in amaze. They had dined together, a family party, and Mrs. Chester's children, with Anna and the two Clapperton girls, who were guests that day, had retired to another room to make what noise they pleased, leaving the trio round the comfortable fire, wine and good things on the table behind them. Miss Jupp walked in without notice or ceremony. Her old red woollen shawl had jagged ends and a slit; her brown hat, white once, was vastly disreputable, and had a notch in the brim. Excited and out of breath, having run all the way from Guild station, she walked straight up to Mr. Lake and spoke. "Would you see your wife before she dies?"

He had risen and stood in consternation. Mrs. Chester rose. _She_ sat still, calmly equable, listening and looking. Mr. Lake's lips turned white as he asked Miss Jupp for an explanation.

It was given in a sharp, ringing tone. Mrs. Lake had been found on the floor in her solitary dining-room, and when they lifted her up blood issued from her mouth. A vessel of some sort had given way. Dr. Marlow was with her, and said that Mr. Lake ought to be found. "Will you go to her?" asked the young lady as she finished her recital; "or shall I go back and take word that you will not?"

"Why do you say that to me?" he asked with emotion.

"My dear Miss Jupp!" struck in Mrs. Chester, in a voice of remonstrance.

"Why do I say it to you?" retorted Mary Jupp, in her storm of angry indignation. "It is time some one said it to you. You have been killing her by inches: yes, I speak to all of you," she added, turning about upon them. "You have been killing his wife by inches: you, Angeline Ellis, with your false and subtle snares; and you, Penelope Chester, with your complacent winking at sin. He is weak and foolish--look at him, as he stands there in his littleness!--but he would scarcely have been wicked, had not you drawn him to it. You wonder that I can thus speak out"--drowning some interrupted words of Mrs. Chester's--"is it right for me to be silent, a hypocritical glosser over of crime, when she is dying? I am an English gentlewoman, with a gentlewoman's principles about me, and I hope some Christian ones: it behoves such to speak out sometimes."

"You are mad," gasped Mrs. Chester.

"_You_ have been mad, to allow this conduct in your house--folly, frivolity, much that is bad going on under your very eyes. Had your brother been a single man, it might have been deemed excusable by some: never by me: but he had a fair young wife, and you deliberately set to work to injure her. You did, Penelope Chester: you knew quite well what you were doing: and to encourage ill by winking at it, is the same thing as committing it. I say nothing more to _you_," she added, turning upon Lady Ellis with ineffable scorn. "You may remember certain words you said to me regarding Mr. Lake and his wife, the first afternoon you came here: I did not understand them then; I do now; and I know that, in that first hour of your meeting, you were laying your toils around him to gain his admiration and wean him from his wife. If you retain a spark of feeling, of conscience, the remembrance of Clara Lake, when the grave shall have closed on her, will be as a sharp iron, ever eating into it."

Lady Ellis rose, her jet-black eyes flashing. "Who are you, that you should dare thus insult me?"

Mary Jupp dropped her tone to one of calmness--mockingly calm it was, considering the scorn that mingled with it. "I have told you who I am: an English gentlewoman amidst gentlewomen: and with such I should think you will never henceforth presume to consort."

Mr. Lake had made no further retort, good or bad. While they were speaking, he took out his watch, saw that he had time, too much of it, to catch the next train, and quitted the room. Mary Jupp was following. Up started Mrs. Chester.

"If Clara is in the sad state you describe, Mary Jupp, I ought to go to her."

Mary Jupp turned short round and faced them. "I do not pretend to any right of control over your actions; but, were I you, I would at least allow my brother to be alone with his wife in her last hours. You have come between them enough, as it is, Mrs. Chester. The sight of you cannot be pleasant to her."

She quitted the room, condescending to give no farewell to either of those she left in it, and followed in the steps of Mr. Lake, who was already on his way to the station, buttoning his coat as he went, taking care not to catch him up. On the platform, as the train was dashing in, he spoke to her.

"Your accusations have been harsh, Mary."

"What has your conduct been?" she sharply retorted. "I loved your wife, and I feel her unhappy fate as keenly as though it had fallen on one of my own sisters. The world may spare you; it may flatter and caress you, for it is wonderfully tender to these venial sins of conduct; but you cannot recall to life her whom you vowed before God to love and to cherish."

"Step in. The train is going."

"Not into that carriage--with you. Others are in it, and I might be saying things that they would stare at. My temper is up, today."

"First class, miss?" cried an impatient porter "There's only that there one first-class carriage on."

And Mary Jupp walked away; opened the door of another, which was a third-class, and took her seat in it.

Thus they reached Katterley. Mr. Lake came to the carriage to assist her out, but she simply put his arm away. Her face looked awfully severe as the gaslights fell upon it.

"One moment," he said, arresting her as she was passing. "I do not know what turn your suspicions can have taken; a very free one, as it seems to me. Let me assure you that you are mistaken. On my word of honour as a man there has been nothing; nothing wrong. In justice to Lady Ellis I am bound to say this."

"Justice to Lady Ellis! Don't talk to me about justice to Lady Ellis," was the young lady's retort. Her temper, as she said, was up, that day. "Think of justice to your wife, rather. You are either a fool or a knave, sir."

"Thank you, Miss Jupp."

"Nothing wrong!" she repeated, returning to the charge. "I don't know what you mean. What do you call wrong? You have been tied to that woman's skirts these five months; lavishing your money and your time upon her; and leaving your wife alone to die. If that's not wrong, I should like to know what is."

He made no reply; almost too confounded to do it.

"I don't blame you, Robert Lake, as much as I blame them," she took occasion to say as they were parting. "You are a vain, thoughtless, empty-headed fellow, made so, I believe, by your enforced idleness; and they, those two women, are old and crafty. Mrs. Chester was serving her self-interest; the other her unjustifiable woman's vanity. You yielded yourself a willing prisoner to the birdlime spread under your feet, and now your folly has come home with interest. _I_ saw your wife was dying of the pain, if you did not."

Without another word, whether of adieu or apology, she brushed past him up the street; and Mr. Lake turned to his home, something like a beaten dog that dare not lift its tail from between its legs.