by Ellen Wood
A bed has been placed on the first-floor for Adeline, in the back drawing-room. This is better; for she can now reach the front drawing-room, where we sit, without being exposed to the cold air of the staircase. And should she be confined to her room at the last, as may be expected, it will be more convenient for the servants; and indeed in all respects.
7th. — Madame de Nino called to-day, bringing two of the elder girls. Adeline asked them innumerable questions about the school, and seemed really awakened to interest. Many other friends have also called; compared with the gloomy solitude of the château, each day since our arrival has been like a levee. The doctors apparently see no impropriety in this, for they don’t forbid it. I think Adeline is better for it: she has not the leisure to brood so entirely over the past. She is still silent on the subject of her misery, never hinting at it. Mr. St. John’s name is not mentioned by any one, and the scenes and events of the last six months might be a dream, for all the allusion ever made to them. Never was she so beautiful as she is now; delicate and fragile of course, but that is a great charm in woman’s loveliness. Her features are more than ever conspicuous for their exquisite contour, her soft brown eyes are of a sweeter sadness, her cheeks glow with a transparent rose colour. Visitors look at her with astonishment, almost question the fact of her late dangerous illness, and say she is getting well. But there is no exertion: listless and inanimate she sits, or lies, her trembling, fevered hands holding one or other of the English journals — looking in them for a name that she never finds.
Yesterday Rose was reading to her in a volume of Shelley, when a letter from England was brought in, its superscription in the handwriting of Mrs. Darling. Adeline looked up, eager and flushed, signing to Rose to open it. Madame de Castella has stared in her ladylike way at this betrayed emotion whenever letters come for Rose. We understand it: and Rose always reads them to her. The Darlings are in London, know people that Mr. St. John knows, and Adeline thinks there may be a chance that his name will be mentioned in these letters. “The letter will keep,” said Rose, glancing cursorily into it; and she laid it down and resumed her book.
“I love, but I believe in love no more,
I feel desire, but hope not. Oh, from Sleep
Most vainly must my weary brain implore
Its long-lost flattery now: I wake to weep,
And sit, the long day, gnawing through the core
Of my bitter heart—”
I looked up at her, involuntarily, it was so applicable; Rose also made a momentary stop, and her glance wandered in the same direction. Adeline’s eyes met ours. It was one of those awkward moments that will happen to all; and the flush on Adeline’s cheek deepened to crimson. It was very applicable:
“I wake to weep,
And sit, the long day, gnawing through the core
Of my bitter heart.”
Alas! alas!
Rose’s letter contained ill news of the Darling family. Her quick sight saw what it was, and she hastened to put the letter up, not caring to speak of it at once to Adeline. Really she is growing more cautious than she used to be! That poor little child, the heir, in whose life was bound up so much of worldly prosperity, is dead: he died more than a week ago. Rose is in a state of what she is pleased to call “dumps.” Firstly, for the child’s own sake: she never saw him but once, this summer at Belport, but took a real liking for the little fellow; secondly, because Rose has orders to put herself into mourning. If Rose hates one thing in this world more than another, it is a black bonnet.
Adeline was standing by the fire to-day when the English physician came in. He was struck with the improvement in her looks. “You are cheating us all,” he said. “We shall have a wedding yet.”
“Or a funeral, doctor,” quietly answered Adeline.
“I speak as I think,” he seriously said. “I do believe that now there is great hope of your recovery. If we could but get you to the South!”
“Adeline,” I exclaimed, as the physician went out, and she and I were alone, “you heard what he said. Those words were worth a king’s ransom.”
“They were not worth a serf’s,” was her reply. “I appreciate his motives. He imagines that the grave must of necessity be a bitter and terrible prospect, and is willing to cheer me with hopes, whether they prove true or false: as all doctors do; it is in their trade. But he knows perfectly well that I must die.”
“How calmly you speak! One would think you coveted the approach of death!”
“Well — I don’t know that I regret it.”
“Has life no longer a charm for you? Oh, that you had never met Frederick St. John!”
“Don’t say so! He came to me in mercy.”
A burst of tears succeeded to the words, startling me nearly out of my senses.
“There! that’s your fault,” she cried, with a wretched attempt at gaiety. “In talking of regret, you made me think of my dear papa and mamma. Their grief will be dreadful.”
“Oh, Adeline, don’t try to turn it off in this way,” I stammered, not knowing what to say, and horribly vexed with myself. “What do you mean — that he came to you in mercy with this wretchedness upon you, the crushed spirit, the breaking heart? I see what you go through day by day, night by night. Is there any cessation to the pain? Is it not as one never-ending anguish?”
Adeline was strangely excited; her eyes glistening, her cheeks a burning crimson, and her white, fragile, feverish hands fastening upon mine.
“It is all you say,” she whispered. “And now he is with another!”
“I can understand the misery that thought brings.”
“No, you can’t. If my heart were laid bare before you, and you saw the wretchedness there as it really is, it would appear to you all as the mania of one insane; and to him as to the rest.”
“And yet you say this has come to you in mercy!’
“It has — it has. I see it all now. How else should I have been reconciled to die? The germs of consumption must have been in me from the first,” she concluded, after a pause. “You schoolgirls used to tell me I inherited all the English characteristics; and consumption, I suppose, made one of them.”
9th. — Miss de Beaufoy is here for a day or two, and we had a quiet little soirée yesterday evening. Aunt Agnes, in the plentitude of her delight at the improvement visible in Adeline, limped down, poor lady, in a splendid canary-coloured silk gown, all standing on end with richness. Who should come in unexpectedly after tea, but Monsieur le Comte le Coq de Monty! (I do love, after the fashion of the good Vicar of Wakefield, to give that whole name — I, not Miss Carr). Business with the Sous-Préfet brought him to Belport. He inquired very mal à propos, whether we had recently seen or heard of Mr. St. John; and while we were opening our mouths, deliberating what to say, Rose, always apt and ready, took upon herself evasively to answer that he was in England, at Castle Wafer. Adeline’s face was turned away, but the rest of the family looked glum enough. De Monty, very unconsciously, but not the less out of time and tune, entered into a flowery oration in praise of Mr. St. John, saying he was the most attractive man he ever came in contact with; which, considering St. John is an Englishman, and de Monty French, was very great praise indeed.
She looked so lovely this morning, as she sat in the great chair, that I could not forbear an exclamation. But it is all the same to her, admiration and indifference; nothing arouses her from that dreamy apathy.
“Ours is a handsome family,” she answered. “See how good-looking papa is! I have inherited his features.”
Not the slightest sign of gratified vanity as she spoke. Alt that had passed away with Frederick St. John.
That Signor de Castella was excessively handsome, I did not deny; but she was much more so.
“The complexion makes a difference,” said Adeline, in answer. “Papa is pale; sallow you may term it, and in complexion I am like mamma. She owes hers, no doubt, to her English origin. You never saw a Frenchwoman with that marvellous complexion, at once bril
liant and delicate.”
I marvelled at her wondrous indifference. “You were formerly sufficiently conscious of your beauty, Adeline; you seem strangely callous to it now.”
“I have outlived many feelings that were once strong within me. Vanity now for me!”
“Outlived? It is a remarkable term for one of your age.”
“It is appropriate,” she rejoined, quickly. “In the last few months I have aged years.”
“Can this be?”
“You have read of hair turning grey in a single night,” she whispered; “it was thus with my feelings. They became grey. I was in a dream so blissful that the earth to me was as one universal paradise; and I awoke to reality. That awaking added the age of a whole life to my heart.”
“I cannot understand this,” I said. And I really can’t.
“I hope you never will. Self-experience alone could enlighten you, nothing else; not all the books and arguments in the world.”
“You allude to the time when Mr. St. John went away in anger.”
“Not so,” she murmured, scarcely above her breath. “When I learnt that he loved another.”
“I think it is fallacy, that idea of yours, Adeline,” I said, determined to dispute it for her own sake. “How could he have cared for Sarah Beauclerc and for you at the same time? He could not love you both.”
“No, he could not,” she said, a vivid, painful flush rising to her cheeks. “But he knew her first, and he is with her now. Can you draw no deduction?”
“We don’t know where he is,” I said. “Was your sister good-looking, Adeline?”
“Maria was beautiful,” she replied. “We were much alike, resembling papa in feature, and mamma in figure and complexion.”
“And she also died of consumption. What an insidious disease it is! How it seems to cling to particular families!”
“What is running in your head now, Mary? Maria died of scarlet fever. She was delicate as a child, and I believe they feared she might become consumptive. I don’t know what grounds they had to judge by: perhaps little other than her fragile loveliness.”
“If consumption is fond of attacking great beauties, perhaps Rose will go off in one.”
“Rose!” answered Adeline — and there was a smile on her lip— “if Rose goes off in anything, it will be in a coach-and-four with white favours.”
And so the days pass on; Adeline, I fear, not really better. To look at her, she is well — well, and very lovely; but so she was before. If they could but get her to the South! But with this winter weather it is impossible: the doctors say she would die on the road. If they had but taken advantage, while they might have done it, of the glorious summer weather! If! — if! — if! These “ifs” follow too many of us through life; as they may henceforth follow the Signor and Madame de Castella.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE LITTLE CHILD GONE.
You have not failed to notice the one item of news in Miss Carr’s diary — the death of a little heir — or to recognize it for the young heir of Alnwick.
Since quitting Belport, Mrs. Carleton St. John had pursued the same course of restless motion until within two or three weeks of the final close. Whether she would have arrested her wandering steps then of her own accord, must be a question; but the sick-nurse, Mrs. Brayford, interfered. “You are taking away every chance for his life, madam,” she said, one day. “If you persist in dragging the child about, I must leave you, for I cannot stay to see it. It will surely prove fatal to him before his time.” —
A sharp cry escaped from Mrs. St. John as she listened. The words seemed to tear the flimsy make-believe veil from her eyes: the end was very near: and who knows how long she had felt the conviction? They had halted this time at Ypres, a city of Belgium, or West Flanders, famous for its manufactures of cloths and serges. Handsome apartments were hastily procured, and George was moved into them. Not very ill yet did the child appear; only so terribly worn and weak. Mrs. St. John’s anguish, who shall tell of it? She loved this child, as you have seen, with a fierce, jealous love. He was the only being in the world who had filled every crevice of her proud and impassioned heart. It was for his sake she had hated Benja; it was by Benja’s death — and she alone knew whether she had in any shape contributed to that death, or whether she was wholly innocent — that he had benefited. That some dread was upon her, apart from the child’s state, was evident — clinging to her like a nightmare.
The disease took a suddenly decisive form the second day after their settling down at Ypres, telling of danger, speaking palpably of the end. He could not have been moved from Ypres now, had it been ever so much wished for. Mrs. St. John called in, one after another, the chief doctors of the town; she summoned over at a great expense two physicians from London; she sent an imperative mandate to Mr. Pym; and not one of them saw the slightest chance of saving the boy’s life. She watched his fair face grow paler; his feverish limbs waste and become weaker. She never shed a tear. For days together she would be almost unnaturally calm; but once or twice a burst of anguish had broken from her, fearful in itself, painful to witness. One of these paroxysms was yielded to in the presence of the child. Yielded to? Poor thing! perhaps she could not help it! George was frightened almost to death. She flung herself about the large old foreign room as one insane, tearing her hair, and calling upon the child to live — to live.
“Mamma, don’t, don’t!” panted the little lad, in his terror. “Don’t be so sorry for me! I am going to heaven, to be with Benja.”
At his first cry she had stopped and fallen on her knees beside him. Up again now; up again at the words, and darting about as if possessed by a demon, her hands to her temples.
“Oh, mamma, don’t frighten me,” shrieked the child. “I shall be glad to go to Benja.”
Cease, Georgy, cease! for every innocent word that you utter seems but renewed torture to your poor mother. Look at her, as she sinks down there on the floor, and groans aloud in her sharp agony.
It was on the day of this outbreak, an hour or two after it, that Mr. Pym arrived. The good man, utterly innocent of French, and not accustomed to foreign travel — or indeed to much travelling of any sort, for he was quite a fixture at Alnwick — had contrived to reach Ypres some two days later than he should have done; having been taken off, perplexity alone knew whither. In the first place, he had called the town “Wypers” — which was not the surest way of getting to Ypres. However, here he was at last, a little ruffled certainly, and confused in mind, but on the whole thankful that he was found, and not lost for good.
George was lying on some pillows when the surgeon entered; a very wan, white, feeble George indeed — a skeleton of a George. But he held out his little transparent hand, with a glad smile of welcome at the home-face.
“I’ve not forgotten you!” he panted, his poor breath very short and laboured now. “Mamma said you were coming; she thought you’d come yesterday.”
“Ay, so did I. But I — lost my way, Georgy.”
Mr. Pym drew a chair close to the boy, and sat looking at him. Perhaps he was thinking that in all his practice he had rarely seen a child’s frame so completely worn. But a few days of life were left in it; perhaps not that. The blue eyes, large and lustrous, were cast up at the surgeon’s face; the hot fragile hand lay passively in the strong firm palm.
“Did you see Benja’s pony?”
“Benja’s pony!” mechanically repeated the doctor, whose thoughts were far away from ponies. “I think it is still in the stable at Alnwick.”
“I was to ride it when I went home. Prance said so. Grandmamma said so. I wanted to go home to ride it; and to see Brave; but I’m not going now.”
“Not just yet,” said the surgeon. “You are not strong enough, are you, Georgy? How is mamma?”
“I’ll tell Mrs. St. John that you are here, sir!” interposed a respectable-looking woman, rising from a chair at the other end of the large room.
It startled Mr. Pym. He had not observed that a
ny one was present. She went out and closed the door.
“Who was that, George?”
“It’s Mrs. Brayford!”
“Oh, ay; Nurse Brayford. I heard of her from Mrs. Darling.”
“Mamma won’t let her be called nurse. She said I did not want a nurse. We call her Brayford. Have you seen Benja?” continued the lad, speaking better, now that the excitement arising from the doctor’s entrance had subsided; but with the last words his voice insensibly dropped to a low tone.
“Seen Benja!” echoed Mr. Pym, in his surprise. “Do you mean Benja’s tomb? It is a very nice one: on rather too large a scale, though, for my taste, considering his age.”
“No,” said George; “I mean Benja.”
“Why, child, how could I see Benja? He is gone away from our eyes; he is safe in heaven.” —
“Mamma sees him.”
“Oh no, she does, not,” said Mr. Pym, after a slight pause.
“But she does,” persisted Georgy. “She sees him in the night, and she lays hold of me and hides her face. She sees the lighted church; it blazes up sometimes.”
There was a curious look of speculation in Mr. Pym’s eyes as he gazed at the unconscious speaker. “Mamma dreams,” he said; “as we all do. Do you remember my old horse Bob, Georgy? Well, he died this summer, poor fellow, of old age. I dream of him some nights, Georgy; I think he’s carrying me along the road at a sharp trot.”
Georgy’s imaginative young mind, quickened by bodily weakness, took hold of the words with interest. “Do you see his saddle and bridle, Mr. Pym?”
“His saddle, and bridle, and stirrups, and all; and his old mane and tail. They had grown so grey, Georgy. He was a faithful, hard-working servant to me: I shall never have his like again.”
“Have you got another horse? Is his name Bob?”
“I have another, and his name’s Jack. He’s not a second Bob, Georgy. When he has to stand before people’s doors in my gig, he gets impatient and begins to dance. One day when I was on him, he tried to throw me, and we had a fight for the mastery: another day, when I wanted him to turn down Bellyard, he wished to walk into the brush-shop, and we had another fight.”
