Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “That Charlotte — that your sister at the time of the child’s death was mad!” he repeated. “Surely not, Rose!”

  “It was nothing less. How else could she fancy she saw all sorts of visions of the child? Not her child; I don’t mean him: the little heir, Benja. He was always walking before her with the lighted toy, the church; the one that caused his death, you know. She had awful fits of this terror, frightening Georgy nearly to death.”

  Mr. St. John made no reply. His eyes were fixed on Rose, and he was revolving what she said.

  “It was Mrs. Brayford told me this; the nurse who was with Adeline in the spring. You heard that she had gone from Belport with Mrs. Carleton St. John to watch George. But I don’t think the woman told me quite all,” added Rose, casting her thoughts back: “she seemed to reserve something. At least, so it struck me.”

  “It must have been a sort of brain fever,” remarked Mr. St. John. —

  “It must have been downright madness,” returned Rose. “They hold a curious custom, it seems, in one of the towns of France: on St. Martin’s Eve every one turns out at night with horns and lighted paper lanterns, which they parade about the streets for a couple of hours. It happened that Charlotte was there this very night: she had gone to the town to take the steamer for London. The lanterns were of various forms and devices, many of them being churches; and Charlotte was in her room when the show began, and saw it all. She had a sort of fit from terror,” continued Rose in a whisper. “She was quite mad when she came to, fancying it was a thousand Benjas coming after her to torment her. Prance had always locked Brayford out of the room before, when these attacks came on; but she couldn’t do it that night, for Charlotte had to be held; she was raving.”

  “It is very strange,” said Mr. St. John.

  “That is why I asked you whether you “saw anything unusual in her manner, — any excitement. Of course I can’t write and ask; I can’t hint at it. They say Charlotte is well, but if she were not I know they would never tell me, and I like to be at the top and bottom of everything. I’m mamma’s true daughter for that.”

  “Rose, I wish you had not told me this.”

  “Why?” exclaimed Rose, opening her eyes very wide.

  He seemed to have spoken involuntarily. The retort and its surprised tone woke him from his dream, and all his senses were in full play again.

  “It is not pleasant to hear of women suffering. I can’t bear it. Your sister must have gone through a great deal.”

  “Oh, poor thing, yes she must. I’ll not call her hard names again. And I do hope and trust the brain trouble has really left her.”

  “She seemed quite well. I saw no trace whatever of the mind’s being affected. It must have been a sort of temporary fever. Rose, were I you, I think I would never talk of this.”

  “I don’t. I only said it to you. I assure you I wouldn’t say a word of it to mamma to be made Empress to-morrow. She’d box my ears for me, as she used to do when I was a little girl.”

  Mr. St. John rose to leave. “There’s nothing more you have to say, Rose?”

  She knew as well as he that he alluded to Adeline. “There was nothing more, just then,” she answered. “Mary Carr would, no doubt, see him later.”

  He shook hands with Rose and was leaving the room, when Miss Carr came in. She uttered an exclamation of surprise.

  “I thought you had gone,” she said. “Will you come with me and see old Madame de Beaufoy? I was in her room just now, and told her you had been here; she thought I ought to have taken you up to her; and she cried when she said how great a favourite you had been in those happy days, now gone by for ever.”

  With some hesitation — for he did not care to see the family again, especially on that day — Mr. St. John suffered himself to be conducted to her room. The show people were still silently jostling each other on the staircase, passing up and down it.

  Madame de Beaufoy was in her chamber: it is the custom you know to receive visitors in the bed-chambers in France: a handsomely furnished room, the counterpane a blue satin, richly quilted, and the large square pillows, lying on it, of the finest cambric edged with choice Mechlin lace. As she held Mr. St. John’s hand in greeting and drew him to the fire, the tears coursed freely down the fine old face.

  “Ah, my friend, my friend!” she said, speaking in English, “if they had but suffered her to marry you, she might not be lying low this day. A hundred times I have said to Maria, that she should not have been severed from Frederick St. John. But Maria, poor thing, had no hand in it; she is not a dévote; it was the Church that did it. And we must suppose all’s for the best, though it sacrificed her.”

  No tears shone in his eyes, his grief was too deep for that. It could be read in every line of his face, of his rigid features.

  “I wish to Heaven things had been allowed to take a different course,” he answered in low tones. “But they tell me that no care, no amount of happiness could have saved her.”

  “Tush!” returned the old lady. “The greatest mistake they made was in not taking her to a warmer climate while they had the opportunity. Had that been done, and had you been allowed to marry her, she might have enjoyed years of life. I don’t say she could have lived to be old: they insist upon it that she could not: but she would have had some enjoyment of this world, poor child, and not have been cut off from it, as she is now.”

  The thought crossed him — and it came in spite of his regrets, and he could not help it — that all things might still be for the best. Had she lived to bear him children — and to entail upon them her fragility of constitution —

  “You did love her, Mr. St. John.”

  “With my whole heart and soul.”

  “Ay, ay; and she was bound up in you. I don’t see why you should have been parted — and we all liked you. For my part,” continued the tolerant old lady— “but you know it doesn’t do to avow such sentiments to the world — I think one religion is as good as another, provided people do their duty in it. She had as sure a chance of going to heaven as your wife, as she had if she had married that de la Chasse, whom I never liked.”

  “Indeed I trust so.”

  “I became a Roman Catholic to please my husband and his family, but I was just as near to heaven when I was a Protestant. And I say that Adeline need not have been sacrificed. You have been in to see her, I hear.”

  “Yes. Not knowing what I was going to see.”

  “Was ever such a barbarous custom heard of! But Maria would listen to no sort of reason: and Agnes upheld her. I wonder the Signor allowed it. They will not get me in. I shall see the dear lost one in her coffin to-night; but I will not see her the actor in all that mummery.”

  The old lady was interrupted by the entrance of Madame de Castella. She did not know St. John was there; and her first surprised movement was that of retreat. But a different feeling came over her, and she stepped forward sobbing, holding out both her hands.

  A few broken sentences of mutual sorrow, and then the scene became disagreeably painful to Mr. St. John. Madame de Castella’s sobs were loud and hysterical, her mother’s tears rained down quietly. He took his leave almost in silence.

  “Would you like to attend the funeral?” asked the old lady. “It takes place to-morrow.”

  “To-morrow!” he echoed: the haste striking upon his English ideas as unseemly.

  “To-morrow at eleven.”

  “Perhaps Mr. St. John would not like it?” interposed Madame de Castella between her sobs. “The Baron de la Chasse is coming for it.”

  “And what if he is!” cried her mother. “Surely their animosities must have ended now. Be here a quarter before eleven, my friend, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see the last of her.”

  Ah yes, all animosities had ended then, and St. John did not fail to be there. It was one of the grandest funerals ever seen in Belport. Amidst the long line of priests was Father Marc: and he recognized St. John and saluted him courteously and cordially, as if enti
rely oblivious of the past, and of the share he had taken in it. Signor de Castella walked bareheaded after the coffin; de la Chasse and another near friend were next. St. John was lost amid the crowd of followers, and his companion was Monsieur le Comte le Coq de Monty.

  “So happy to have the honour of meeting you again, though it is upon this melancholy occasion!” cried the Comte, who was very fond of talking and had hastened to fasten himself on Mr. St. John. “What a sad thing that consumption is! And de la Chasse is here! How he must feel her loss! the engaging, beautiful demoiselle that she was!”

  The procession moved on. To the church first, and then to the grave. But amidst all its pomp and show, amidst the tall candles, the glittering crucifixes, the banner’s of silver and black, amidst the array of priests and their imposing vestments; through the low murmurs of their soothing chant, lost in the echoes of the streets; even beyond that one dark mass, the cheaf feature of the pageant, borne by eight men with measured tread, through his regrets for what was in it — his buried love — there came something else, totally foreign to all this, and uncalled for by will, floating through the mind of Mr. St. John.

  The curious tale whispered to him by Rose Darling the previous day, touching the fancies of Mrs. Carleton St. John, was connecting itself, in a haunting fashion, with certain words he had heard dropped by Honour at Castle Wafer.

  CHAPTER XXXII.

  SOME MONTHS ONWARDS.

  IT was August weather. The glowing sunlight of the day had faded, and the drawing-rooms were lighted at Castle Wafer. A small group of guests had gathered there; it may almost be said a family group; had been spending there some five or six weeks. Changes have taken place since you met them last. Its master has come into the inheritance so coveted by Mrs. Carleton St. John for her own child: and he is also in stronger health than he has been for years. Look at him as he sits in the remotest corner of the room, his table covered with books and bearing a small shaded reading-lamp. But he is not reading now; he is listening with a fond smile to a charming girl in white evening attire, as she sits close to him and talks in a low voice. Her great eyes, of a blue grey, are raised to his face, and the gold chain glistens on her fair white shoulders as she bends towards him, and she seems to be petitioning some favour; for he keeps shaking his head in the negative, as if to tantalize her; but the kindly look in his eyes, and the sweet smile on his face are very conspicuous. You have met her before: it is Miss Beauclerc, the daughter of the Dean of Westerbury.

  Unpleasantly conspicuous, that smile and that tender look, to one of the distant group. The glittering chandelier — and only one chandelier has been lighted to-night, as is usual on these quiet evenings — is reflected as in a thousand prisms by the wax-lights, and the glitter shines full on the face of this one lady, who sits back in the satin chair unnoticed, her dark eyes disagreeably fierce and eager. Is she a young girl? She really looks like one, in her black silk dress with its low simple body and short sleeves, edged only with a narrow ruching of white crape; looks almost as young as Miss Beauclerc. But she is not young; she has passed her thirtieth year, and more than that; and you have met her before, for she is the widow of George Carleton St. John of Alnwick. They call her here at Castle Wafer Mrs. Carleton, in a general way, as her additional name would interfere with Mrs. St. John’s. We had better do the same. Sometimes they call her Charlotte; and she likes that best, for she hates the name of Carleton, simply because it was the name of her late husband’s first wife.

  Right underneath the chandelier, both of them at some sort of work, sit Mrs. St. John and Mrs. Darling. Mrs. St. John has recovered the accident of a year ago; it left a languor upon her which she is rather too fond of indulging. Isaac St. John is glad that visitors should be staying at Castle Wafer, for they divert his step-mother, whom he greatly esteems and respects, from her own fancied ailments. That accident would seem to have aged her ten years, and you would take her to be nearly sixty. Lastly, talking and laughing at the open glass doors, now halting inside, now stepping forth on the terrace in the balmy summer’s night, are Rose Darling and Frederick St.

  John. Frederick has been but a few days arrived, after an absence of many months, chiefly spent in the Holy Land; the rest have been for six weeks at Castle Wafer.

  Six weeks, and they went for only one! Isaac pressed the visit upon Mrs. Carleton, whose position he much pitied, and politely invited Mrs. Darling to accompany her with any of the Miss Darlings she might like to bring. Mrs. Darling accepted the invitation and brought Rose. The other two were staying with old Mrs. Darling in Berkshire, who was flourishing and seemed likely to live to be a hundred. It almost seemed to Isaac St. John, in his refined sensitiveness, that he had committed a wrong on Charlotte St. John, by succeeding to the property that would have been her husband’s and then her son’s, had they lived. Could he have done it with any sort of delicacy, he had made over to her a handsome yearly income. Indeed, he had hinted at this to Mrs. Darling, but that lady said she felt sure it could not be done with Charlotte’s proud spirit. Isaac hoped still: and meanwhile he pressed Charlotte to stay with them at Castle Wafer, not to run away, as her mother talked of doing. Mrs. Darling had been talking of it this month past; and her departure was now really fixed for the morrow. She was going with Rose to Paris; but Charlotte had accepted the invitation to remain.

  Her fate really deserved sympathy. Bereft of her husband, of her cherished son, bereft not only of the fortune but also of the position she had thought to secure in marrying the master of Alnwick, she had perforce retired into a very humble individual again, who could not keep up much of an establishment of her own. In health she was perfectly well: all that dark time seemed to have passed away as a dream: she was better-looking than ever, and the inward fever that used to consume her and render her a very shadow, did not waste her now. Mrs Darling had spoken to her seriously of what her future plans should be: that lady herself would probably have desired nothing better than to keep her favourite daughter with her always: but her other daughters rose rather rebelliously against it, and some unpleasantness had been the result.

  Rose spoke out freely, as was her custom. If Charlotte did remain with them, she should not stand any domineering; and Mary Anne and Margaret Darling intimated that they should not leave grandmamma until home was free for them. Charlotte had brought this ill-will upon herself by the very line of conduct Rose spoke openly about — domineering. Mrs. Darling was a little perplexed: but she was an easy-tempered woman, and was content to let trifles take their chance. There was no immediate hurry: Charlotte’s visit at Castle Wafer was to be extended, against the wish of Mrs. Darling, and might be continued for an indefinite time. Who knew but that Charlotte might captivate its bachelor master? And who knew but Charlotte herself was entertaining the same possibility? Mrs. Darling feared so; and, in all cases where Charlotte was concerned, she was a keen observer. What, though Isaac St. John had a hump upon his back, he was, apart from that, a lovable man — a man that even an attractive woman might covet for her own.

  Mrs. Darling’s employment this evening was some intricate working of gold beads on canvas. And every time she looked off to take up a bead upon the long needle, she seized the opportunity to glance at Charlotte. How entirely still she was! — leaning back in the armchair; her delicate hands lying motionless on her lap. But for the eyes, directed to one part of the room, and the angry glare beginning now to shine in them, Mrs. Darling had deemed her entirely at rest. She, Mrs. Darling, moved her chair, apparently to get some better light for the beads, and the change of position enabled her to look towards the spot herself.

  Miss Beauclerc, her fair face bending forward in its eagerness, her wide open, fine grey eyes raised to his, had laid her two hands on Isaac St. John’s; and he had playfully made prisoner of them and was keeping them fast. In the stillness of the room their voices were distinctly heard.

  “You will promise it to me, then!”

  Isaac laughed and shook his head. “You don’t kn
ow how incorrigible the man has been, Georgie.”

  “All the more reason for your forgiving him.”

  “If the dean were here, I’m not sure that he would say so. He has had the greatest trouble with him, Georgina.”

  “That’s just why I’m asking you,” cried the girl prettily and saucily. “Papa might refuse me; you must not. You know you can’t?

  “What will you give if I say yes?”

  “I’ll give you—” she dropped her voice and laughed.

  Isaac bent and kissed her crimson cheek. Kissed it as a father might kiss a child; but she drew back shyly, and blushed to her fingers’ ends, half glancing towards the window.

  Something like a faint sound of anger came from Charlotte. It was smothered beneath a sudden cough. No ears heard it save those of the anxious mother; no eyes, save hers, saw the involuntary clenching of the impassive hands. She — Mrs. Darling — sat upright in her chair and turned her eyes in the direction where her daughter’s were fixed.

  “Did you obtain that information to-day, Sir Isaac?”

  Sir Isaac was again laughing — oh, how much better in health was he now than of yore! — and did not hear the question.

  “Are you speaking to me, Mrs. Darling?”

  “That information you said you would obtain for me about the conjunction of the trains. Did you do so?”

  “Brumm did. I thought he had given you the paper. He has all particulars set down, I know, in black and white. Perhaps he gave it to Miss Rose?”

  “Who is taking my name in vain?” cried Rose, looking in, her bright face aglow with mirth.

  Mr. St. John had been standing for the last few minutes inside the room, Rose on the threshold. As he talked to her, his eyes had unconsciously rested on the face of Mrs. Carleton; and the strange expression in hers, their look of fierce anger, had struck him with amazement; even the movement of the hands, telling of suppressed pain, was not wholly hidden from him. With a rush and a whirl there came back to his mind certain facts connected with Mrs. Carleton St. John, which had almost faded out of his remembrance. But what could be the cause of her antipathy to Miss Beauclerc? And there was antipathy in those eyes, if he ever read eyes in this world.