At this moment, Adeline stirred. Louise's tongue stopped as still as if it had been shot through, and the nurse made a quiet rush to the side of the bed. She was awake, and wanted her mouth moistened.
As the nurse was putting down the tea and the teaspoon, Dr. Dorré, who had been talking in the other room, came in to look at Adeline before he quitted the house. She was quite sensible, and said she felt easy. In the bustle of his leaving, the nurse going out to attend him to the staircase, Adeline put out her hand and touched Mary Carr, who was now standing by the bed. Her voice was very faint, and Mary had to lean close to hear.
"I--was not asleep--when Louise said--that. I heard it. Mary! do not let it be done."
Miss Carr felt much distressed. She knew not what to say.
"I--I am sure nothing will be done that you do not wish, Adeline," she stammered. "I think it must have been a misapprehension on the part of Louise. Shall I speak to Madame de Castella?"
"Not now. When I am dead--you will see if they are making preparations--speak to mamma then."
"Do not let this distress you, Adeline," proceeded Mary, wishing Louise had been at the bottom of the sea before she had introduced so unfitting a subject in Adeline's hearing. "Rely upon it, every wish of yours will be sacredly respected."
"It does not distress me," was the feeble reply. "But I would rather be left in peace after death."
Madame de Castella came down, but soon went away to her chamber again, for her hysterical grief disturbed Adeline; Agnes de Beaufoy remained with her sister, endeavouring, by persuasions and remonstrances, to keep her there. Old Madame de Beaufoy was expected; and, a little before five, M. de Castella went to the railway station to receive her. Rose and Mary were in the drawing-room then, drinking some tea, when the old servant, Silva, came in with a letter on a salver.
"Pour qui!" demanded Mary.
"Pour Mademoiselle Rose Darling," responded the old man.
Rose, who was sitting before the fire, her feet on the fender, took the letter, without turning her head to look at it, and threw it on the table.
"That worrying Mary Anne! There's no end to her letters: and they are nothing but prosy lectures of admonition. If they think I am going to answer all she chooses to write, they'll find their mistake. If mamma made it a condition for a double allowance for me, I wouldn't do it."
"It is not your sister's handwriting," observed Mary Carr.
"No?" And Rose condescended languidly to turn her eyes towards the epistle. "Why, I do believe it is from Frank!" she exclaimed, snatching it out of Mary's hand. "What can he have to write about? Perhaps grandmamma's dead, and has left us all a fortune! But it's a red seal."
And, breaking the red seal, she skimmed hastily over it.
"Good Heavens! how singular! Mary! Mary!"
Miss Carr looked at her in wonder. Her countenance, which had been pale all day with anxiety and the previous night's watching, was now glowing with colour and excitement.
"He is coming to Belport. How passing strange! Mary, can it be some unknown sympathy that attracts him hither at this hour?"
"Your brother!"
"He! Do you think his coming here could put me out like this? What a stupid you are, Mary Carr! Do listen:--
"My Dear Rose,
"'Our dear and venerable grandmother, whom may all good angels preserve--though her long life does keep us an unreasonable time out of our own--entrusted me with a mission concerning you upon my coming to London two days ago. She had made, or purchased, or in some way prepared for you, a splendid article, but whether it is intended to represent a purse or a bag, I am unable to say, being, in my uninitiated opinion, too large for the one, and too small for the other. A magnificent affair it is, redolent of silver beads and gleaming silks, and it waslinedwith her usual Christmas present to you. Being in a generous mood myself, I slipped in another lining, knowing your partiality for feathers and laces, and any other sort of trumpery that costs money. Thiscadeau, duly prepared for transportation, and directed for you to the care of Madame de Nino, I brought to town, and was to have handed over to a quondam schoolfellow of yours, Miss Singleton, who was returning to Belport. Now you have frequently honoured me by saying I have a head that can retain nothing, and in this instance certainly the bag and the commission slipped clean out of it. In packing my carpet-bag this morning, preparatory to starting for Ireland, for which delectable spot of the globe I am bound, what should I come upon but this unlucky parcel. What was to be done? I called a hansom, and galloped to Miss Singleton's address, invoking blessings on my forgetfulness all the way. No result. Miss Singleton and the archdeacon had started for Belport. I was walking down Brook Street, on my return, wondering what I should do with the money, and who, amongst my fair friends in Ireland, would come in for the bag, when I nearly ran over Fred St. John, or he over me, coming out of Mivart's.'
"'Why, where have you been buried?' said I.
"'At Castle Wafer, for nearly the last month. And I am off tomorrow for Paris. Any commands?'
"'I should just think I had, if your route lies through Belport.' And forthwith I delivered to him the unlucky parcel and its history.
"So the long and short of it is, Rose, that you may expect to receive your bag safe and sound. Not so sure, though, as to the day, for St. John is proverbially uncertain in his movements.
"I hope your friend Mademoiselle de Castella's health is improving. I would beg my remembrance to her, but have no doubt I have long since gone out of hers. She has my best wishes for her recovery.
"Your affectionate brother, dear Rose,
"F. Darling."
"What news for Adeline! Get out of the way, Mary Carr."
"Rose," said Miss Carr, in a tone of remonstrance, "it will not do to tell her."
"Not tell her!" exclaimed Rose.
"She is resigned and quiet now. Let her die in peace. News of him will only excite and disturb her."
"Don't talk to me! Let me go!" for Mary had laid hold of her dress to detain her.
"Rose, you are doing very wrong. She is almost in the last agony. Earthly hopes and interests have flitted away."
"You don't understand these things," rejoined Rose, with a curl upon her lip--"how should you? Has she not for months been yearning to see him--has not the pain of his cold neglect, his silence, his absence, hastened her to the grave--and, now that he is coming, you would keep it from her? Why, I tell you, Mary Carr, it will soothe her heart in dying."
She broke away impetuously, and went into the bed-chamber. Adeline unclosed her eyes at her approach. What Rose said, as she leaned over her and whispered, Mary Carr could not hear; but even in that last hour, it brought the red hectic to her faded cheek. How wildly and eagerly she looked up!
"But it is too late," she sighed, in a troubled whisper--"it is too late; I shall be gone. If he had but come a day earlier!"
She closed her eyes again, and remained silent. The next words she uttered, some time afterwards, were to Miss Carr.
"Mary--you--that which Louise was saying today----"
"Yes. I understand."
"If mamma wishes it--do not prevent it. I--I--should like him to see me--the wreck I am. And then he could come--you would bring him."
Rose assented eagerly, before Mary Carr could speak.
"And otherwise--if he had not been here--I have been reflecting--that it would answer no end to oppose my mother--what can it matter to me, then? If I--had a child--and she died--it is possible I might wish the same. Don't interfere. But--you will bringhim?"
"Dearest Adeline, YES," cried Rose, "if he is to be found. I promise it to you solemnly."
"And now--dear friends of my girlhood, Rose! Mary!" she breathed, holding out her hands, "I have but to say farewell. All things are growing dim around me. You know not how grateful I have been for your care of me. You will think of me sometimes in after-life."
The pause that ensued was only broken by Rose's sobs. Mary Carr's aching grief was silent.
"Remember--you especially, Rose--that life--will not last for ever--but--there is one beyond it;thatwill. Endeavour to inherit it. Will you not kiss me for the last time?"
They leaned over her, one by one, their aching hearts beating against the counterpane, the tears raining from their eyes.
"You--will--come--to me--in heaven?"
Barely had the words left her lips--and they were the last that either of them heard her utter--when Louise, with a solemn face, full of mighty importance, threw the corridor door wide open, and whispered something which only the nurse caught. She jumped up, thrust her chair behind her, and dropped down upon her knees where she stood.
"What in the world has taken her?" ejaculated Rose.
"Don't you understand?" was Mary's hurried answer, drawing Rose after her, and escaping to the drawing-room.
They saw it through the open door. The line of priests, in their white robes, coming up the stairs; the silver crucifix borne before them; the "Bon Dieu" sacredly covered from observation. Louise sank on her knees in the passage, as the nurse had done in the room, and they swept past her with solemn step, towards Adeline's chamber, looking neither to the right nor left. They had come to bestow absolution, according to the rights of the Roman Catholic faith--to administer to her the Sacrament of the dying.
It was a sad day to describe--that next one. Adeline had died a little before midnight, fully conscious to the last, and quite peaceful; all her relatives, and they only, surrounding her bed.
Not only a sad day to describe, but a strange one; and I hardly know how to do it. You may look upon its chief incident as a disagreeable fiction; but it was sober fact, truthful reality. Perhaps you have never met with the like in your experience? I will transcribe it for you as exactly and faithfully as I can. The anecdotes of the same nature mentioned in the last chapter, were all facts too.
Louise was right: the corpse of Adeline de Castella was to hold a reception.
It was rumoured in the house that Signor de Castella was averse to the exhibition, but yielded the concession to his broken-hearted wife. Old Madame de Beaufoy made no secret of being against it; every English idea within her revolted from it. But Madame de Castella carried her point. There was perhaps a negative soothing to her wild grief in the reflection that before her beautiful and idolized child should be hidden away for all time, the world would once more look upon her, arrayed in all the pomp and splendour of life.
Early in the morning--the printers had been set to work betimes--the black-bordered death-circulars went forth to Belport.
"Monsieur et Madame de Castella; Madame de Beaufoy; Mademoiselle de Beaufoy:
"Ont l'honneur de vous faire part de la perte douloureuse qu'ils viennent de faire en la personne de Mademoiselle Adeline Luisa de Castella, leur fille, petite fille, et nièce; décédée à Belport le 8 Janvier, à l'age de 19 ans.
"Priez pour elle."
The invitations to the reception--or it may be more correct to say the intimations that it was to be held, for no invitations went out--were conveyed privately to the houses of friends by one or other of the Castella servants; by word of mouth, not officially. And I can tell you that it caused a commotion in the town, not forgotten yet.
It was about midday when Silva came to a little boudoir on the ground-floor, tenanted by Rose and Mary only, for the family kept their chambers. He said one of Madame de Nino's maid-servants was asking to see Miss Darling.
"She can come in, Silva," said Rose, getting up from her low chair by the fire, and passing her hand across her heavy eyes.
The woman came in--Julie. She handed a packet to Rose, which the latter divined at once must be the one her brother had written about. "It was left at the school for you this morning, mademoiselle."
"Who left it?" asked Rose.
"A tall handsome Englishman, for I happened to answer the gate myself," responded Julie. "He inquired for you, mademoiselle, and when I said you were not with us now, but visiting in the town, he handed in his card. You'll see it if you turn the parcel, Mademoiselle Rose: I slipped it inside the string for safety, coming along."
Rose scarcely needed to look at the card. She knew it was Frederick St. John's.
"Did he say where he was staying?--at what hotel?"
"He said nothing else, mademoiselle, but just left the parcel and card, with his compliments. Madame charged me to ask you, mesdemoiselles, at what hour it would be best for her to come to see the poor young lady?" continued Julie, dropping her voice.
"It begins at two, Julie. Any time between that hour and five."
"I wish I might come and see her too!" cried Julie. "I think us servants who served her so long at Madame de Nino's, might be allowed it."
"I dare say you might," said Rose. "Of course, you might. Tell Madame I say so."
"Julie," interposed Mary Carr, "I shall see her, of course; it would be looked upon as a slight in the house if I did not; but I can tell you I would rather walk ten miles away from it."
"But think of the beautiful sight it will be, Mademoiselle Carr!" remonstrated Julie. "We hear she is to wear her real wedding-dress--to be adorned with flowers and jewels. Ah, poor, poor thing!" broke off the girl, giving way to her ready tears. "But a few months ago, well and happy, and going to be married; and now, dead."
"Mary," said Rose, when they were alone, "I shall go out and find him, now I know he is in the town. Will you come?"
Mary Carr hesitated. "Would it be a proper thing, Rose, for us to go about to hotels, inquiring after gentlemen? I don't much like it."
"We have to do many things in this life that we 'don't like,'" was Rose's sarcastic answer. "Do you fear the hotels would eat you?"
"It isnotthe thing."
"Not for you, I dare say, so you can stay away: I'm sorry I asked. I promised that poor girl I would bring him to see her, were there any possibility of doing it; and Iwill."
"Then I shall go with you."
"Oh," retorted Rose.
The preparations for the great event were all but completed.The preparations!I feel nearly as ill, now that I am writing it, as I felt then; and some years have gone by. The large salon, next to the room in which she died, was laid out for the visitors, part of the furniture removed, and a barrier placed down the middle--a space being left clear at either end. It was a very long, large room, and so far suitable. She--Adeline--was placed against the wall at the far end, upright, standing, facing the company who were to come in, as if waiting to receive them and give them welcome. I cannot tell you how they fixed and supported her: I never asked then; I would as little ask now; I knew none of the details; the broad facts were enough.
As Mary Carr went creeping upstairs to put on her bonnet, she heard voices in the death-chamber, and looked in. They were dressing Adeline. The French nurse was standing before the upright corpse, supporting it on her shoulder, her own face turned aside from it; and the hairdresser stood behind, dressing the hair. Louise seemed to be helping to hold the dead weight; Susanne handed hair-pins to the man. If ever there was a revolting task on earth, that seemed one; and Mary Carr turned sick as she hastily closed the door again, and leaned against the wall to recover, if that might be, from her faintness.
"What hotel do you mean to try?" she inquired, when she went out with Rose into the broad daylight, a welcome relief from the darkened house and what was being transacted in it.
"I shall try them all in succession, until I find him," returned Rose. "I think he must use the Hôtel des Bains. I know Frank does."
Rose bent her steps towards that renowned hostelry, and turned boldly into the yard. A man came forward with a cloth on his arm, waiter fashion.
"Monsieur de Saint John," she began, "est-il descendu ici?"
The man stammered something in wretched French, "comprenais pas," and Rose found he was a very native Englishman.
Mr. St. John was staying there, but was going on to Paris in the evening. He was out just then.
"Out!" cried Rose, not expecting this check to her impatience. "Where's he gone?"
Of course the waiter could not say where. Rose intimated that her business was of importance; that she must see him. The group stood looking at each other in indecision.
"If you would like to go to his room and wait, ladies, I have the key," suggested the man. "It is only on the first floor."
"What is to be done, Mary Carr?" cried Rose, tapping her foot in pettish annoyance.
"Don't ask me. It is your expedition, not mine."
What Rose would have done, is uncertain. She was looking at the man in hesitation, perhaps thinking of the room and the key, when who should turn into the yard with a light quick step but Mr. St. John himself.
Not changed--not a whit changed. The same high bearing, the same distinguished form and face, the same frank manners, possessing for all so irresistible a fascination.
Rose, in a somewhat confused, anything but an explanatory, greeting--for she would not tell him the truth of what she wanted, lest he should decline it--said she had come to request him to accompany her for a short time. He answered that he was at her service, and in another moment the three were walking down the street together.
"Of all the sticklers for etiquette, I think Mary Carr's the worst," began Rose. "I wonder she does not apply for a post as maid-of-honour at court. The man asked us to go and wait in your rooms, and I should have gone had you not come in. She looked fit to faint at the bare idea."
Mr. St. John laughed; his old low musical laugh.
"Where would have been the harm?" went on Rose. "We are cousins, you know."
"Of course we are," said Mr. St. John. "I thought you both expected to have been in England before this?"
"We shall be there shortly now. At least, I shall. Mary, I believe, is going first to Holland. And you? You are going to Paris, we hear."
"Yes, but not to stay. My old roving love of travel has come upon me, and I think I shall gratify it. A friend of mine leaves Paris next week for a prolonged exploration of the Holy Land, and I feel inclined to accompany him."
"It does not look as though he were on the point of marrying Sarah Beauclerc," thought Rose to herself. For a wonder, she did not put the question.
But not a word of inquiry from him after Adeline! And yet, only a few months before, they had been on the nearest and dearest terms, but a few hours removed from the closest tie that can exist in this world--that of man and wife. Oh, the changes that take place in this transitory world of ours.Shewas dead, sleeping well after life's fitful fever; and he was walking there in all the pomp and pride of existence, haughtily indifferent, never unbending so far as to ask whether she was married to another, whether she was living or dead.
And so they reached the residence of Signor de Castella, and entered the courtyard, St. John unconscious where he was going. He had never gone to the house but once, and then it was at night, and in Sir Sandy Maxwell's carriage. The hall-door was placed wide open. Silva stood on one side of it, bareheaded, another servant opposite to him, and as the various visitors passed between them, they bowed to each group in silence. It was the manner of receiving them. Mr. St. John, talking with Rose, advanced close to the door; but when he caught sight of Silva, he drew back. The old man looked at him with a pleasant look: St. John had always been a favourite with the Castella servants. Mary Carr left them then, and ran upstairs.
"Why have you brought me here?" he demanded of Rose. "This is Signor de Castella's!"
"I have not brought you without a motive, Mr. St. John. Pray come in with me."
"You must excuse me," he said, very coldly.
"I cannot," answered Rose. "Do you think I should go dancing after you to the hotels, shocking Mary Carr and the waiters out of their notions of propriety, without an urgent motive? Pray come along: we are obstructing the entrance."
Mr. St. John indeed saw that a group of several ladies were gathered close behind him, waiting to go in. He stepped inside the hall--he had no other alternative--and so allowed them to pass. They moved noiselessly towards the broad staircase; but he drew aside with Rose.
"Rose, this is beyond a joke," he said. "Why did you bring me here? I will wish you good morning."
"Indeed," she murmured, clasping her agitated hands on his arm, in her fear lest, after all, he should escape her, "this is no joke. Do you suppose Mary Carr would lend herself to one? and she came with me. Pray come upstairs with me, Mr. St. John."
"You forget," he began, in answer more to her evident excitement than to her words, "that--putting aside any objection I may experience--my presence here may not be acceptable to the family."
"You will not see the family. They are not visible today."
"Who are all these people going up the stairs?" he said, looking on in amazement, as more groups were silently bowed in by Silva. "It seems like a reception."
"It is one," said Rose: "nevertheless the family do not hold it. There comes Madame de Nino! She is directing those strict eyes of hers towards us, and I shall catch a sharp lecture for standing whispering with you. Do come, Mr. St. John."
"I cannot understand this, Rose. These visitors, flocking to the house, while, you say, the family are not visible! Why do they come, then? Why do you wish me to go up?"
"There's--there's--a show upstairs today," stammered Rose "That is why they come. And I want you to see it."
"A flower-show?" said Mr. St. John, somewhat mockingly.
"A faded one," murmured Rose, as she took his hand, and drew him towards the staircase.
His manner was hesitating, his step reluctant; and but for the young lady's pertinacity, which he could not resist without downright rudeness, he had certainly retreated. Involuntarily, he could not tell why or wherefore, the remembrance of a past scene came rushing to his mind; when he, Frederick St. John, had in like manner forced a resisting spirit up the stairs and into the room of a college-boy who was dying.
At the head of the stairs they met Mary Carr, who held out a small sealed packet.
"A commission was intrusted to me yesterday, Mr. St. John," she said, "that I would deliver this into your own hands. I have also a message----"
"Which you can give him presently," interrupted Rose.
He glanced at the packet; he glanced at the seal, "A.L. de C.;" he looked at the other side, at the strange, sprawling address.
"Not a very elegant superscription," he observed, carelessly, as he slipped the parcel into the breast-pocket of his coat. "I don't recognize the handwriting."
"Yet you were once familiar with it, Mr. St. John."
"Oh, never!" answered he. "Not, certainly, to my recollection."
They were now at the door of the drawing-room. Rose, feeling a sick terror at the thought of what she was going to behold, laid her hand momentarily on Mr. St. John, as if doubting her own capability to support herself.
"Are you ill?" he inquired, looking at her pale face.
"A slight faintness," she murmured. "It will go off."
It was in front of them, at the other end of the room as they entered.It!But they could not see it distinctly for a moment together, so many persons were pushing on before them. Mr. St. John, who was taller than most persons present, obtained a more distinct view than Rose.
"Who is that--standing yonder--receiving the company?" he asked hastily. "It looks like no; it cannot be.Isit Adeline?"
"Yes, it is Adeline de Castella," replied Rose, under her breath, her teeth chattering. "She is holding her reception."
Adelinede Castella. Did the name strike oddly upon Mr. St. John? But if it did, how then came he not to ask why it was not Adeline de la Chasse?
"You have deceived me, Miss Darling," he said in severe tones; "you assured me the family were not here. What means all this?"
"They are not here," whispered Rose, whose face and lips were now as white as those of the dead.
"Not here! There stands Adeline."
"Yes, true; Adeline," she murmured. "But she will not speak to you. You--you will pass and look at her: as we look at a picture. You can't go back now, if you would: see the throng. Trust me for once," she added, as she seized his arm: "Adeline will not speak to you--she will not, as I live and breathe."
Partly from the extreme difficulty of retreating, for they were in the line of advance, not in that formed for returning according to the arrangements of the room, partly in compliance with Rose Darling's agitated earnestness, and partly yielding to his own curiosity, which was becoming intensely excited, Mr. St. John continued his way, ever and anon catching a glimpse of the rigid form opposite, before which all were filing.
"It cannot be Adeline!" he exclaimed, involuntarily. "And yet it is like her! Who is it?Whatis it? How strange she looks!"
"She has been ill, you see," shivered Rose, "and is much attenuated. But it is Adeline."
They were nearly up with her. Rose, in her faintness, not having yet dared to look at the sight, clung to the arm of Mr. St. John. He was gazing on her--Adeline; and his face, never very rosy, had turned of a yet paler hue than common.
Oh, the rich and flowing robes in which they had decked her! white satin, covered with costly lace; white ribbons, white flowers, everything about her white; the festive attire of a bride adorning the upright dead, and that dead worn and wasted! A narrow band of white satin was passed tightly under the chin, to keep the jaw from falling, but it was partly hidden by the hair and the wreath of flowers, and the veil that floated behind her. Never, in health, had those beautiful ringlets been seen on Adeline as they were set forth now, to shade those hollow cheeks: but all the richness of her dress and the flowing hair, all the flowers and the costly lace, could not conceal the ghastliness of the features, or soften the fixed stare of the glazed eyes. Yet, in the contour of the face, there was something still inexpressibly beautiful. To a stranger entering the room, unsuspecting the truth, as Mr. St. John, she looked like one fearfully ill, fearfully strange: and how was Mr. St. John, who had never heard of the custom, to divine the truth? Did the idea occur to him that Adeline was standing in the very spot where he had first met her, a year before, when the French marigold in his button-hole was accidentally caught by her? Did the strange gloomy silence strike ominously upon him; putting him in mind of a funeral or a lying-in-state, rather than a gay reception?
He went close up, and halted in front of her: Rose by him, shaking from head to foot. Forgetting, probably, what Rose had said, that she would not speak to him, or else obeying the impulse of the moment, he mechanically held out his hand to Adeline: but there was no answering impulse on her part.
He stood rooted to the spot, his eyes running rapidly over her. They glanced down on the flounces of the rich lace dress, they wandered up to her face--it was the first close, full view he had obtained of it. He saw the set, rigid features, the unmistakable stare of the glassy eye; and, with a rushing sensation of sickening awe and terror, the terrible truth burst upon his brain.
That it was not Adeline de Castella, but her CORPSE which stood there.
He was a strong-minded man--a man little given to betray his feelings, or to suffer them to escape beyond his own control: yet he staggered now against the wall by her side, in what seemed a fainting-fit. Rose, alarmed for the consequences of what she had done, burst into tears, knelt down, and began to rub his hands.
"Open the windows--give some air here," called out little Monsieur Durante, who had come all the way from Ostrohove to see the sight. "Here's a gentleman in an attack."
"Nothing of the sort," returned an Englishman, who made one of the company; "he has nearly fainted, that's all. There's no cause for alarm, young lady. I suppose he came in, not knowing what he was going to see, and the shock overpowered him. Itisan odd fashion, this. See: he revives already."
Consciousness came to Mr. St. John. He rose slowly, shook himself out of a shuddering-fit, and with a last wild yearning glance at the dead, fell into the line of the retreaters. But it was Miss Carr who now detained him: Adeline's message had yet to be given.
"The address on the packet was inherhandwriting, Mr. St. John," she whispered; "she wrote it yesterday, only a few hours before she died She charged me to say that everything is there, except the ring, which has never been off her finger since you placed it there, and will be buried with her; and to tell you that she had been ever faithful to you; as in life, so unto death."
Mr. St. John listened, and nodded in reply, with the abstracted air of one who answers what he does not hear, touching unconsciously the breast-pocket of his coat, where lay the packet.
"There was something else," continued she, "but I dare not venture to breathe that here. Later, perhaps?"
Again he nodded with the same look of abstraction, never speaking; and began to follow in the wake of the crowd, who had taken their fill of gazing, and were making their way from the room.
"He is a fine young man, though," exclaimed M. Durante, looking after St. John with eyes of admiration. "But he is very pale: he has scarcely recovered himself."
"To think that he should have dropped at seeing a corpse, just as one might drop a stone, a fine strong man like him!" responded a neighbouring chemist, who had stepped in to have a look at the reception. "Qu'ils sont drôles, ces Anglais-là!"
Rose Darling struggled out of the room with Mr. St. John: not caring to remain in it, possibly, without his sheltering presence. They went downstairs with the crowd--all silent and well-behaved, but still a crowd--and then Rose drew him into the small snug room that had been her abiding place and Mary's for the day.
Mr. St. John sat down, and leaned his head upon his hand. In a shock like this, he could not make believe not to feel it, or to gloss it over; indeed he was an independent man at all times, utterly refusing to give in to the false artificialities of society. Rose slipped away, and brought him a glass of wine; but he shook his head, declining to take it. Mary Carr had not come with them; it turned out afterwards that she thought he had left the house.
"When did she die?" was the first question he presently asked.
"Last night; a few minutes before twelve."
"Just as I was stepping on board the steamer at Folkestone," he murmured to himself. "Why is she--there, Rose?--dressed--in that form? Are they mad?"
"It is a custom they have in France, as it seems; but I had never before heard of it," answered Rose. "Hark at the people passing up still!"
A shiver of remembrance took him, but it was conquered immediately. Rose untied the black string of her straw bonnet, and put it on the table.
"I suppose we are both in mourning for the same person," she remarked, in allusion to the narrow band of crape on his hat: "little George St. John."
"Yes," he shortly answered. "What did she die of?"
"Of consumption: at least, that is what the doctors would tell you. I won't say anything about a broken heart." Mr. St. John made no reply. Rose resumed: "From the moment that blood-vessel burst, there has been, I suppose, no real hope, no possibility of cure. But she rallied so greatly, and seemed so well, that I, for one, believed in it." He looked at Rose; the words seemed to arouse his curiosity. "When did she burst a blood-vessel?"
"It was at Beaufoy. It was--why, yes, it was the very day you were last there, Mr. St. John, almost in your sight. You remember the morning you quitted the house, and never came back again?--did you notice Adeline running down the steps of the colonnade after you, imploring you to stop?--did you notice that she sank down on the grass, as if from fatigue?"
"I think I did," he answered, in allusion to the last question. "I know she followed me down the steps."
"It was then the blood-vessel broke; through emotion, no doubt. Had you but looked back once again, you might have seen what was amiss. I never shall forget the sight. Just at first I had thought her foot slipped and threw her down, next I thought she was kneeling for a joke: but when I reached her, I saw what it was. One minute longer, and you would have seen the whole house gathered round her on the lawn. She was got indoors, and the doctors were sent for. What a house it was! She thought she was dying; and I believe the chiefest wish of her heart then was to see you."
"Why did you not send for me?"
"We did send. I wrote to you, and Louise took the note at once to the Lodge. But you had already gone--turning Madame Baret's brains upside down with the shock."
"You might have sent it after me to England."
"Of course I might--if I had only known you were gone to England. How was I to know it? I might be wishing to get a note to some one in the moon, but not see my way clear to writing the address. It was weeks, and weeks, and weeks, Mr. St. John, before we ever heard a syllable of you, whether you were in England or in any other part of the known world, or whether you were at the bottom of the sea."
"And she never married de la Chasse?"
The words seemed spoken as a remark, not as a question. Rose, who seemed to have a touch of one of her ironical moods coming on, answered it:
"Would you have had her marry him when death had set in? After the doctors had met that day, it was known throughout the house that nothing could save her. At least, they said so. The old malady of the spring had but been lying dormant; it was in her still; and the terrible trouble she went through had brought it forth again. Under the very happiest circumstances, had she married you, even--and I suppose that might have beenheridea of happiness," added Rose, satirically--"she could not have lived long. De la Chasse saw her for a few minutes on the day they were to have been married, and expressed himself very much concerned, and all that, as a matter of course; I don't suppose he broke his heart over it."
"And she has been ill ever since?"
"Ever since. The disease has fluctuated, as you may imagine; some weeks she would be at death's door, some weeks comparatively well; but it has all the while been progressing on gradually to the ending. Frederick St. John"--and Rose stepped up to him in her excitement--"I don't believe you were ever absent for one minute from her mind; by day and by night it was filled with that miserable love for you; and the yearning wish, destined not to be gratified, was ever upon her--that you would come and see her before she died."
"Whydid you not let me know it?--why could you not have written to me?" he asked, in a sharp tone of pain.
"For one thing, I tell you, I did not know where to write. For another, Adeline would not have let me. She had an idea that you did not care to come to her--that you perhaps would not, if summoned. And I"--Rose paused a moment, and angrily compressed her repentant lips--"I could wish my tongue had been bitten out for a share I took in the past. There's not the least doubt that one ingredient in Adeline's cup of bitterness was worse than all the rest--the thought of Sarah Beauclerc."
He uttered an exclamation.
"And of your love for her. And I say I wish Sarah Beauclerc had been smothered, and I with her, if you like, before I had ever breathed her name to Adeline. But for that, but for deeming that she was your true love, and would some time be your wife, Adeline would have sent to the far ends of the earth after you for a parting interview."
He sat, leaning his head upon his fingers, looking into the fire.
"What a miserable business it seems altogether! Nothing but cross-purposes, the one with the other. Sarah Beauclerc!"
"Are you still engaged--perhaps at a moment like this I may be pardoned for asking it--to Sarah Beauclerc?"
"I never was engaged to Sarah Beauclerc. I had once a sort of passing fancy for her; I don't know that it was more. I have had no thought of her, or of any one else, since I parted from Adeline."
"In a letter I had from London, not very long ago," resumed Rose, slowly, "your name was coupled with Miss Sarah Beauclerc's. It said you were her shadow."
"Who said it?"
"Never mind. It was a lady."
"Your correspondent laboured under a mistake, Rose; you may tell her so, for her satisfaction. Sarah Beauclerc will very soon be a wife, but not mine."
"Who is she going to marry?"
"Lord Raynor."
Rose exhausted her surprise in ejaculations. She had thought Sarah Beauclerc would be Frederick St. John's chosen wife; had felt utterly certain of it in her own mind. He sat in silence, never heeding her. Remembrances of the past were crowding upon him. That he had been very near loving Sarah Beauclerc, was indisputable: and but for the meeting with Adeline, this might have come to fruition: there was no knowing now. At Lady Revel's--the evening spoken of to Rose by Miss Mary Anne Darling--he had learnt that she, Sarah, was going to be married to the Viscount Raynor, a man who, as Captain Budd, had been attached to her for years. She herself told him of this. In her calm, cold, cutting manner, she spoke ofhiscontemplated marriage to Mademoiselle de Castella: was any covert reproof intended in this? any secret intimation thatthatjustified her own engagement? However that might be, all chance of their being one in this world, had any such chance ever existed, was at an end; and Frederick St. John had no regret left in regard to it. All his regrets were for another.
"If Adeline had but known it!" murmured Rose, genuine tears of vexation filling her eyes. "Did you not know she was dying, Mr. St. John?"
"No. I knew nothing about her."
"Have you been in England ever since you quitted us that day?"
"I went straight to London from Beaufoy, saw my brother Isaac, explained matters to him, and then accompanied him to Castle Wafer. Subsequently I went to Scotland, deer-stalking; running over once to London from thence, to see my mother. Before Christmas, I was again for a week in London, and then I escorted my mother to Castle Wafer. Now you know what my movements have been, Rose. I heard nothing of Adeline."
"Perhaps you kept yourself out of the way of hearing of her?"
"I did."
"That was your temper!"
"Just so. Our faults generally bring their own punishment."
"We heard you were in an awful passion at Madame Baret's," remarked Rose, who plunged into things irrelevant without mercy.
"I thought I had cause to be. I thought so then. I do not know the reason now why she rejected me."
"Mary Carr will tell you that. Ill-fated Adeline! She would have given her poor life to have been allowed to whisper it to you then, to justify herself in your eyes. The fact is," added Rose, after a pause, "the Church interfered to prevent the marriage, and Adeline was sworn to silence on the crucifix.Idid not know it until today. She thought of you until the last, Mr. St. John, and in her dying moments got permission from her father for the truth to be disclosed to you. Mary was charged with it."
Mr. St. John's eyes blazed up with an angry light. "Then I know that was the work of Father Marc!"
"I dare say it was. He was very fond of Adeline, and no doubt thought her marriage with a heretic would be perdition here and hereafter. I don't see that you can blame him: you would have done the same in his place, had you been true to your creed. Father Marc's one of the best gossipers living. We saw a great deal of him in Adeline's sick-room, after you left. I fell in love with the charming old père."
Would she ever be serious! The question might have crossed Mr. St. John at a less bitter moment.
"And I think his gossip did Adeline good," continued Rose. "It was a sort of break to her misery. How could you have doubted her--have doubted for a single moment, whatever your passionate rage might have been, that her whole love was yours?"
How indeed? But perhaps in his inmost heart he never had doubted it. He sat there now, bearing the bitter weight of remembrance as he best might, his eyes looking back into the past, his delicate lips drawn in to pain.
"They have no portrait of her," went on Rose, not in her mercilessness, but in her giddy, gossiping lightness. "And the one you took of her, you defaced."
"Don't, Rose!"
The words came from him with a wail. His remorse wanted no feeding; it was already as great as he well knew how to bear. Rose was not quite without feeling, and the words and their tone checked her. She sat thinking how unkind she had been, and began flirting the strings of her bonnet about, as it lay near her on the table.
But it was not in her nature to remain silent long. Something, perhaps the black ribbon, took her thoughts to another subject: and in truth she did not like to say more of Adeline.
"Does it not seem like a fatality? All three of them to have died, one after the other!"
Mr. St. John came slowly out of his pain, and looked at her for an explanation. "Three of whom?"
"Oh, I was thinking of Alnwick. Mr. Carleton St. John first and then his two boys. I suppose you have inherited?"
"My brother has. Yes, it is a very sad thing. Quite a fatality, as you say."
"What fortune has Charlotte now? Much?"
"I really do not know. I fear not much."
"She reckoned so surely--I know she did--upon being Lady St. John!"
"That seems to be a chief portion of life's business, I think," he remarked: "the reckoning upon things that never come to pass."
"I suppose you have not seen her since?"
"Mrs. Carleton St. John? Yes, I have. I heard she was staying with Mrs. Darling in town, the week I spent there before Christmas, and I called."
"How was she looking? How did she seem?" asked Rose, rather eagerly.
"She seemed quite well, and she looked well. Very thin: but in good health and spirits."
"There was no--excitement in her manner, was there?"
"On the contrary. She struck me as being one of the calmest, quietest-mannered women I ever saw."
"Did you think her pretty?"
"No. I thought her handsome."
"What did mamma say to you about me?--and Margaret and Mary Anne? No good, I know. They are always abusing me."
"I did not see them. Mrs. Carleton St. John said they had all gone out to call on some old friend."
"You had no loss. Mamma you know; I don't say anything against her, though it was a shame of her to keep me at school so long; but Mary Anne and Margaret are the primmest old creatures you can picture. Why, they are going on for thirty! I sent them over a cap apiece the other day, in return for a little interference of theirs. Lottie Singleton took the parcel. Didn't it make them wild!"
A faint smile parted his lips.
"Where is Charlotte going to live?" resumed Rose. "Have you heard?"
"I have heard nothing. I believe my brother wrote to beg of her to go back to Alnwick, and remain there as long as she chose. But she declined."
"I know one thing--that I hope she'll not live with us," cried Rose, tossing back her golden curls. "Charlotte always was so domineering, and now--especially---- You aresureyou observed no undue excitement of manner?" she broke off, after a pause.
"Why do you ask it? To me she appeared to be almost unnaturally calm."
"I think I'll tell you why," said thoughtless Rose. And forthwith she disclosed to Mr. St. John all she had heard from Nurse Brayford. It was lamentably imprudent of her, without doubt; but she meant no harm. And the notion she herself had gathered from the story was, that the trouble had temporarily touched Charlotte's brain, just as a passing fever will touch it. That was all the real thought of her heart; but her expressions were exaggerated as usual, meaning less than they implied. It had the effect of fully arousing Frederick St. John from his own care: and Rose was surprised to see him make so much of it.
"That Charlotte--that your sister at the time of the child's death wasmad!" 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. TheysayCharlotte 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 tomorrow. 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 tonight; 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 tomorrow."
"Tomorrow!" he echoed: the haste striking upon his English ideas as unseemly.
"Tomorrow 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 entirely 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 banners 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 chief 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.