"I Wonder why I am kept a prisoner here?" exclaimed Georgina Beauclerc.
She stood at the open French window of the Rectory drawing-room as she said it, partly indoors, partly out, and her auditor was Frederick St. John, who was coming along the gravel path, in the twilight of the autumn evening, on his road from Castle Wafer. Georgina had happened to walk over to the Rectory early in the afternoon, and a message followed her from Sir Isaac, that she was not to go back to Castle Wafer until sent for. The young lady was surprised, indignant, and excessively curious. The message had arrived about three o'clock: it was now very nearly dinner-time, and she was not released. The dean, Mrs. Beauclerc, and their guest were at Lexington; consequently, Miss Georgina had passed the hours by herself, and very dull they had been.
He came up, taking off his hat as he approached, as if he were warm from fast walking. Georgina retreated inside the room, but waited for him at the window.
"I have come to release you," he said, in answer to her question. "I am glad you obeyed me, and stayed."
"Obeyed you! I obeyed Sir Isaac."
"It was I who sent the message, Georgina."
"I wish I had known that!" she exclaimed, after a breathless pause. "I never should have stayed."
He laughed. "That's why I used Isaac's name. I thought you might not be obedient to me."
"Obedient to you, indeed, Mr. St. John! I should think not. Things would have come to a pretty pass!"
She tossed back her shapely head, to show her indignation. Mr. St. John only laughed again.
"Are they all out, Georgina?"
"Yes, they are out, and I have been alone all these hours. I wonder you don't take contrition to yourself."
"I wonder at it too."
"I should like to know the reason of my having been kept here? In all the course of my experience I never met with so outrageous a thing."
"Your experience has been so long a one, Georgie!"
"Well, I am not going to be ridiculed. I shall go back to Castle Wafer: perhaps Sir Isaac will be able to enlighten me. You can stay behind here; they'll be home sometime."
She tied her bonnet, fastened her mantle--having stood in them all the afternoon, momentarily expecting to be released, as he had called it--and was hastening through the window. Frederick laid a detaining hand upon her.
"Not yet, Georgina. I have come to stop your return to Castle Wafer."
"I thought you said you had come to release me!"
"I meant release you from suspense--to satisfy your curiosity, which has, I suppose, been on the rack. You are not to come back to Castle Wafer at all: we won't have you."
"You can let things alone," returned Georgina, throwing off her bonnet. "But I think you might have told me before now--keeping me with my things on all these hours!"
"I could not conveniently come before. Well, shall I relieve that curiosity of yours?"
Again she threw up her face petulantly. "That's just as you like. I don't care to hear it."
"You know you do care to hear it," he said. "But indeed, Georgina"--and his half-mocking, half-tender tone changed to seriousness--"it is a subject that I shrink from entering upon. Mrs. Carleton is ill. That is the reason we are banishing you for the present from Castle Wafer."
Georgina's mood changed also: the past one had been all make-believe, not real.
"Ill! I am so sorry. Is it anything infectious?"
"I will tell you what it is, Georgina: it is insanity. That she was not quite sane, I have suspected some little time; but this afternoon she has become very much worse. She locked herself in her room, and Mr. Pym was obliged to burst the door open, and now she is--very excited indeed. Mr. Pym told me he feared some crisis was approaching. This was just after she fastened herself in her room; and I sent that message to you at once. Isaac agrees with me that you had better remain at home tonight: Castle Wafer will not be a very sociable place this evening; and we must respect Mrs. Darling's feelings."
"Oh, I see, I see!" impulsively interrupted Georgina, all her good qualities in full play. "Of course it would not be right for strangers to be there. Poor Mrs. Darling! But is it true, Frederick?Insane!"
"I fear so."
"Perhaps it is some temporary fever that will pass off?"
"Well--we must hope for the best. And now--will you regard this as a confidential communication?"
"Yes, certainly; if you wish it."
"I think it is better to do so. She may recover; and in that case it would be very sad for the report to have been spread abroad. I knew I might trust you; otherwise I should not have spoken. We have had secrets together before."
"Shall you not tell papa?"
"I shall tell him, because he knows of the matter already. No one else. Should her malady be confirmed, of course it will become generally known."
"Do you know, I thought you had bad news when I saw your face," resumed Georgina. "You looked so worn and anxious. But you have looked so for some days past."
"Have I? I've been tired, I suppose, from want of sleep. I have not been in bed for some nights. I have been, watching."
"Watching! Where?"
"In the corridor at home."
Georgina looked at him in surprise. "What were you watching for?"
"Oh--for ghosts."
"Please be serious. Do tell me what you mean. I don't understand you in the least."
"It is so pleasant to share a secret that I think I must tell it you, Georgina. You remember your nightmare?"
"My nightmare? Oh yes, when I fancied some one came into my room. Well?"
"Well--I thought it just possible, that instead of a nightmare it might have been reality. That Mrs. Carleton, in her restlessness, had wandered out of her room. It was not an agreeable thought, so I have watched every night since, lest there should be a repetition of it."
Georgina was as quick as lightning at catching an idea. "You were afraid for me! You watched to take care of me!"
"Something of that sort. Did you lock your door as I desired?"
"Yes: all but one night, when I forgot to do it."
"Just so. Knowing what a forgetful, careless young lady I had to deal with, I concluded that I must depend upon myself, instead of her. A pretty thing, if Mrs. Carleton had run away with you!"
A few bright rays were perceptible in the western horizon, illumining the twilight of the hitherto dull day. Georgina Beauclerc was gazing straight out to them, a very conscious look in her face. Suddenly she turned it to Mr. St. John.
"Will you tell me--had your words to me last evening, warning me not to be abroad, anything to do with this?"
He nodded. "Suspecting Mrs. Carleton's malady, I did not know who might be safe from her, who not: and I saw her in the grounds then."
"Last night?"
"Last night. She was close to you."
A moment's thought, which was a revelation to Georgina, and she drew nearer to him with a start. "I see it all, Frederick. I remember what you said about her jealousy: you have been protecting me."
"Trying to do it."
"How shall I thank you? And I have been so impertinent and cross! Perhaps I owe even my life to you!"
"I have not done it for nothing, I can tell you, young lady. I have been thinking of my repayment all through it."
He put his arm round her before she could get away, and drew her close to him. His voice became low and tender; his face, bent to hers, was radiant with persuasive eloquence.
"I told you last night that I thought I had saved you from a great danger----"
"And you repaid yourself," interrupted Georgina, with a dash of her native sauciness, and a glow on her blushing cheeks.
"No, I did not. I--don't know whether it's this watching after your safety, or what else it may be; but I have arrived at the conviction, that I shall have to take care of you for life. Georgina, we might have known years ago that it would come to this."
"Known that! When you only hated me!"
"If I hated you then--which I did not--I love you now. I cannot part with you. Georgina, my darling, I shall never part with you. I don't think you would like to part with me."
Her heart beat as it had never beaten before in her life; her eyes were blinded with tears. Joy so great as this had never been foreshadowed, except in some rare dream. He kissed the tears away.
"But it cannot be that you love me," she whispered.
"I love you dearly; although I once told a friend of yours that I would not marry Georgina Beauclerc though there were not another English girl extant. He saw into the future, it may be also into my heart, more clearly than I did."
"You said that? To a friend of mine! Who was it?"
"One who lies buried in the cloisters at Westerbury."
Her eyes went far out again to that light in the west. The words carried her back again to those past days,--to the handsome boy who had so loved her.
"You never cared for him, poor fellow!" observed Mr. St. John.
"No; I never cared but for one in my life," she softly whispered.
"I know that. He was the first to tell me of it. Not that I--as I believe now--needed telling. Georgina, they say marriages are made in heaven; I think we might have seen, even then, that we were destined for each other---- What's the matter?"
Georgina darted away from him as if she had been shot. Her ears were quicker than his. The dean's carriage was approaching; was close upon them.
"I suppose I may speak to him, Georgina?"
"Perhaps if I said no, you wouldn't listen to me. You always did contrive to have your own way, and I suppose you will take it still. But I think you are very unfeeling--very cruel; and I am as bad."
"I know what you mean: that we should allow--this--to ensue upon the news I came to tell you. Poor Mrs. Carleton! We shall have time and to spare, I fear, for all our best sympathies. Oh, child! you don't know what my anxiety on your score has been! But it has served to show me, what I was only half convinced of before: my love for you."
The dean came in. Georgina escaped to her mother and Miss Denison. The latter spoke crossly to her. "Ah," thought Georgina, "would she dare to abuse me if she only knew whose wife I am going to be?" and she actually kissed the astonished Miss Denison, in her great happiness.
Mr. St. John spoke to the dean. Of Mrs. Carleton first: and the dean was both shocked and surprised to find the crisis had come on so quickly. He then said that he and Sir Isaac thought it better that Georgina should for the moment quit Castle Wafer.
"Quite right," said the dean. "She ought not to have stayed there so long. Of course she should not, had I been aware of this. The fact is, she would not come home; you heard her; she has a great affection for Castle Wafer."
"Would you very much mind, sir, if she some time came back to it for good?"
"Eh?" said the dean, turning his surprised eyes sharply on Mr. St. John. "Who wants that?"
"I do. I have been asking her if she will do so."
"And what does she say?"
A smile crossed Mr. St. John's lips. "She said I generally contrived to have my own way, and she supposed I should have it now."
"Ah, well; I have thought it might come to that! But I cannot bear to part with her. Frederick St. John"--and the dean spoke with emotion as he wrung his hand--"I would rather you took her from me than any other man in the world."
It was a lovely day in the following spring, and Paris was gay and bright. In a handsome house in one of its best quarters, its drawing-rooms presenting that blended aspect of magnificence and lightness which you rarely see out of the French capital, were a group of three people; two ladies, both brides of a week or two, and a gentleman. Never did eye gaze on two more charming brides, than Madame de la Chasse, that house's mistress, and Mrs. Frederick St. John.
Are you prepared to hear that that mistress was Rose? She sat laughing gaily, throwing back, as was her wont of old, that mass of golden curls. Her marriage had taken many by surprise, Frederick St. John for one; and he was now joking her about it.
"It was quite impossible to believe it, you know, Rose. I thought you would not have condescended to marry a Frenchman."
"I'd rather have married you," freely confessed Rose, and they all laughed. "But he has changed now; he has become presentable, thanks to me; and I don't intend to let him lapse again."
"I am sure you are happy!" said Georgina. "I see it in your face."
"Well, the truth is, I do like him a little bit," answered Rose, with a shy sort of blush, which spoke more plainly than her words. "And then he is so fond and proud of me; and heaps such luxuries upon me. It all arose through my staying at the Castellas' last autumn; he was always coming there."
"You know, Rose"--and Mr. St. John took her hand and spoke in all seriousness,--"that I wish you both, from my very heart, every happiness."
"And I'm sure I wish it to you," she said. "And I think you might have told me when I used to tease you about Sarah Beauclerc, that I was wrong in the Christian name. I suspected it last year when I saw you both together at Castle Wafer."
"Not then," interrupted Georgina; "you could not have seen it then."
"I did, though; I'm clever in that line, Mrs. St. John. I used to see his eyes follow you about, and he would leave me at any moment for you. How is Sir Isaac?"
"Quite well," answered Mr. St. John, "and as happy in my marriage as a child. Our ostensible home, after all, is to be Alnwick; but I dare say we shall spend with him eight months out of every year at Castle Wafer."
"And my ill-fated half-sister, Mrs. Carleton St. John?" asked Rose, a deep shade of sadness clouding her radiant face. "Is therenohope of her restoration?"
"I fear none," he replied.
"I wonder sometimes whether they are quite kind to her in that private asylum?"
"There's no doubt they are. Mr. Pym sees her sometimes; your mamma often. But that of course you know better than I do."
"I wanted mamma to take me to see her before I left England for good; but she would not."
"And so much the better," said Mr. St. John. "It could not be well for you, Madame de la Chasse."
"'Madame de la Chasse!'" she echoed. "Well, it sounds curious to hearyoucall me so. Ah! how strange! that he should have married me; and you--Poor Adeline! Does your wife know about her?" suddenly questioned Rose, in her careless way.
"Yes," spoke up Georgina.
"Old loves go for nothing when we come to be married. We laugh at the past then, and think what love-sick silly children we were. I have settled down into the most sober wife living."
"It looks like it," cried Mr. St. John.
"Ihave," retorted Rose, "whether it looks like it or not. I shall be as good and steady a matron as your wife there, who loves you to her fingers' ends."
Georgina laughed and blushed as they rose to leave, promising plenty of visits to the young Baroness during their stay in Paris.
In going out, they met the Baron. Georgina was surprised to see so good-looking a man; for Mr. St. John had described to her his close-cut hair and his curled moustache. That was altered now; the hair was in light waves; the moustache reduced to propriety: Rose said she had made him presentable.
He was very cordial; had apparently forgotten old scores against Mr. St. John, and pressed the hospitality of his house upon them as long as they were in Paris. Their frequent presence in it, he said, would complete the bliss of himself and his wife.
"Frederick," exclaimed Georgina, thoughtfully, when they had returned to their hotel, "should you think the Baron ever loved Adeline as he does Rose? He is evidently very fond of her."
"Perhaps he did not. His intended marriage with Adeline was acontract; with Rose he had time to fall in love."
"And--perhaps--younever loved her so very, very deeply!" timidly rejoined Georgina, raising to him her grey-blue eyes.
"I must say one thing," he answered, smiling; "that if a certain young lady of my particular acquaintance is not satisfied with her husband's love----"
She did not let him go on; she threw herself into his sheltering arms, the tears of emotion falling from her eyes.
"Oh, my husband, my darling; you know, you know! I think you must have loved me a little all through; even when we used to quarrel at Westerbury."
"I think I did, Georgina. Of one fact you may be very sure, that I would not exchange my wife for any other, living or dead. I hope, I believe, under Heaven's blessing, that I may so love her to the end."
"Amen," softly breathed Georgina.