"My Dearest,
"You must have been surprised not to see me at Sir Sandy's. I was dressing to come, when a message arrived for me from the Hôtel du Nord; poor Priestley had met with a sad accident to his hand from the bursting of a gun. I have been sitting up with him until now, four o'clock a.m., but I write this to you before I sleep, for you have a right now to my every thought, to know every movement. You dine here today, my fairfiancéealso; but I wish you were coming alone.
"Ever yours only,
"George Marlborough."
Was there any mistake in the letter? Mary Carr had often heard of such.Couldit have been written to Rose? Alas, yes! it was all too plain. The writing was George Marlborough's; the address, "Miss Rose Darling, En Ville," was his; and the seal, "G.M.," was his also. Mary rose, and stood before Eleanor, shielding her from observation, as she beckoned to Anna Marlborough: while Emma Mowbray looked defiant, and asked whether they would believe her next time.
The child was dancing about the courtyard. She was young, and the school made her a sort of plaything: she came dancing up to Miss Carr.
"Now, Anna, I have something to ask you; and if you equivocate by so much as a word, I will acquaint Madame de Nino that there's a letter-carrier in the school; you would be expelled that same hour. Did you bring a note here from your brother this morning?"
"Yes, I did," stammered Anna. "Don't tell of me, please."
"I'll not tell, if you speak the truth. To whom did you bring it?"
"To Miss Darling."
"Did he send it toher?What did he say when he gave it to you?"
"He told me to give it into her own hands when nobody was by, and to give his love with it," answered Anna. "Oh, pray don't tell of me, Miss Carr! It's nothing much more than usual; he often sends his love by me to Miss Darling."
"Wasthisthe letter you brought?" holding out the one she still retained in her hand.
"Yes, it was that. I'll never do it again," continued Anna, growing frightened, and bursting into tears.
Which caused Miss Mowbray to rate her for a "little fool;" and Anna ran away, glad to be released. Close upon that, up dashed Rose in agitation, having discovered the loss of her note. The note had not been declared by Rose to bepro bono public, and Emma Mowbray had dishonourably abstracted it from her apron pocket. Rose got possession of it again, but she was in a great passion with Emma Mowbray: in fact, with them all.
And poor Eleanor Seymour! She was white as marble when Mary turned to her. Sitting there, on the old wooden bench, so outwardly calm and still, she had heard the whole. Clasping Mary Carr's hands with a painful pressure, she burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping, and glided in at the porch-door to gain the staircase. "Make any excuse for me at the dinner-table, Mary," she whispered.
Needyou be told that that letter was really written to Eleanor? The words "fairfiancée" in it alone related to Rose, and Mr. Marlborough had penned them in laughing allusion to the joke in the school. The plot was Emma Mowbray's, a little bit of revenge on Eleanor and Rose, both of whom she envied and disliked. She had made Anna her tool. The child, at her prompting, wrote a letter to Rose, and got her brother to direct and seal it; and Emma Mowbray opened the two envelopes cleverly by means of passing a penknife under the seals, and substituted the one note for the other. Thus Eleanor's letter was conveyed to Rose; the other Emma Mowbray burnt; and she promised a wholecharrettefull of good things to Anna to keep her counsel. Being a mischief-loving little damsel, Miss Anna did so; though she was nearly frightened out of it by Miss Carr.
This may sound very shallow, very weak, but I assure you the circumstances took place just as they are described. Had George Marlborough only put Eleanor'snamein the note, the trick could not have been played. But he did not do so. And neither Rose nor Eleanor suspected for a moment that there was anything about the note not genuine; or that it had not been written to Rose.
They went to dinner at Mrs. Marlborough's--Eleanor with her beating heart of resentment and her outraged love, Rose radiant with happiness and beauty. The evening did not mend matters, but rather added very much to the broil. May the word be forgiven?--I was thinking of the French one. Eleanor, cold, haughty, contemptuous, was almost insulting to Mr. Marlborough; and Rose, it is to be feared, let him see, that evening, where her best love was given. He took more than one opportunity of asking Eleanor how he had offended her, but he could get no answer. If she had only given him a clue to it, how much trouble and misery would have been saved! but the veryaskingon his part seemed to Eleanor only adding insult to injury. You see they were all at cross-purposes, and just for the want of a little word of explanation.
From that hour there was no peace, no mutual understanding between Eleanor and Mr. Marlborough. He repeatedly sought an explanation of the sudden change in her behaviour, sometimes by letter, sometimes in words. She never would give an answer to either. She returned his letters in blank envelopes, or tore them to pieces before the messenger's eyes; she refused to see him if he called; she haughtily held aloof from him when they met. Mrs. Marlborough saw that something was wrong, but as neither of them made her their confidant, she did not interfere, and she supposed it to be only a lovers' quarrel. She had not known Eleanor long, having come to Belport only the week before that Sunday Rose first saw her at church. Rose alone seemed in a state of happiness, of ecstatic delight; and Anna now carried no end of notes and messages to and fro, and kept it secret from the school. Rose had committed one great folly--she had written to Mr. Marlborough after the receipt of that first letter. But then, it must be always remembered that no suspicion had yet crossed her mind that it was notwritten to herand meant for her. Rose fully believed--let it be her excuse--that Mr. Marlborough had transferred his affections from Eleanor to herself: the school believed it. Whether she really hoped she should succeed in supplanting Eleanor in the offer of marriage, in becoming afterwards his wife, cannot be told. The girls thought she did, and they were sharp observers. At any rate, Rose now deemed the field as legitimately open to her, as it was to Eleanor.
The day for awarding the prizes was a great day. The girls were attired in white, with blue sashes and blue neck-ribbons; and the hairdresser arrived very early in the morning to get done in time. A large company arrived by invitation; and just before the hour for going in, some of the girls saw Rose in the garden talking to a gentleman. Madéleine de Gassicourt, usually so short-sighted, espied her out.
"It must be her brodare wid her," cried Madeleine, who was not in the secret. "She will derange her hair before we do go in."
Emma Mowbray peered through the trees. It was no "brodare," but Mr. Marlborough. He was bending down to Rose; she appeared to be crying, and he held her hand in his as he talked to her earnestly. Emma Mowbray glanced round at Eleanor, who was at the window, and saw it all. She was very pale and still, her lips compressed.
But Rose's stolen interview could have lasted only a few fleeting minutes. The hands of the clock were then pointing towards two, and as the hour struck she was amongst them, and they were being marshalled for the entrance to the prize-room. It was a pleasing sight when they went in, making their reverences to the assembled visitors. Two pretty young English girls walked first--sisters; and certainly the two prettiest of the elders walked last; Rose Darling and Adeline de Castella; both beautiful, but so unlike in their beauty. Adeline gained nine prizes; Rose only two. But Rose had been studying for another sort of prize.
The holidays succeeded--dull and quiet. Of the elder girls, Adeline, Rose, and Mary Carr alone remained, and there was, of course, Miss Seymour. Mrs. Marlborough was leaving the town; George was not. Eleanor, who seemed to be visibly declining, would not go out anywhere, so she did not meet him; but Rose, always out, met him constantly.
One afternoon, when Eleanor was growing paler day by day, a bit of folded paper was brought to her in the schoolroom. She opened it, and saw a few words in pencil--
"I am now waiting in the salon. You have been denied to me as usual; yet, Eleanor, let me entreat you to grant me, for this once, an interview. I leave by the boat for London tonight, but if I can see you now, my voyage may not be necessary. By the love we once bore each other, I beseech you, Eleanor, come.--G. M."
Eleanor read it, tore the paper deliberately in two, and handed the pieces to Clotilde. "Give that to the gentleman," she haughtily said. "There is no other answer."
Rose followed the maid from the room. "Clotilde," she whispered, "who is in the salon?"
"The handsome monsieur that was going to marry himself, as people said, with Mademoiselle Seymour," was the servant's rejoinder.
"Give me the answer," said Rose, taking the torn pieces from her hand. "I want to send a message to Madame, his mother, and will deliver this. I say, Clotilde, don't tell Madame that he's here."
The unsuspicious servant went about her business; and Miss Rose tripped to the salon, and stayed as long as she dared.
That same evening Eleanor Seymour was giving Mary Carr a description of Rome; they were seated in a corner of the small class-room; and Adeline de Castella corrected her when she was wrong, forsheknew Rome well. Mademoiselle Josephine (Mam'selle Fifine, the school called her in general), the only teacher remaining, was at her table in front of the window, writing letters. When it grew too dark to see, she closed her desk, turned round, and suddenly, as if surprised not to see her with the others, asked where Rose was.
The young ladies did not know. Rose had been upstairs in the bedroom since the afternoon. She came down for collation, and went up again directly.
Mam'selle Fifine began to scold; she was the crossest of all the teachers, except Mam'selle Clarisse. It was not likely Miss Rose was stopping upstairs in the dark; she must have got a light, which, as Mesdemoiselles knew well, was contrary to rules. And she told Miss Carr to go and desire her to come down.
Mary Carr rose with a yawn; they had been sitting there long, and she felt cramped. "Who will go with me?" she asked.
Both the young ladies responded, and all three stumbled up the dark staircase together. They found no light in the bedrooms, and could see nothing of Rose. Thinking it possible she might have fallen asleep on one of the beds, Adeline ran down and got a candle from one of the servants.
There was no Rose; but on her bed lay a sealed note, addressed to Miss Carr;--
"Dear Mary,
"I know you have been against me for some time. Miss Seymour and I were rivals--equals on a fair ground; you would have helpedheron, though it left me to a broken heart. I believe it has been a neck-and-neck race between us, but I have won. I hope mamma will reconcile herself to the step I am taking; I always longed to make a runaway marriage, it is so romantic; and if Frank flies out about it, I shan't care, for I shan't hear him. When next you see me I shall be
"Rose Marlborough."
"Look to Miss Seymour!" broke from the quivering lips of Adeline de Castella. And it was timely spoken, for Eleanor was fainting. Scarcely had she revived, when Mam'selle Fifine came up, angry at the delay.
The note they did not dare to show; but were obliged to confess to the absence of Rose, saying,tout bonnement, as Adeline called it, that they could not find her.
Rose not to be found! Madame de Nino was dining out, and Mam'selle Fifine was terrified out of her sober senses. In the midst of the hubbub that ensued, Julie, the head fille-de-chambre, put her head in at the door, and said, "The Honourable Mrs. Seymour."
At a time of less commotion they would have burst out laughing. Julie had been nurse in a nobleman's family in England; she had there become familiar with British titles, and was as fond of using them as she was of using her English. One day Ethel Daw's mother came to see her; a very fine lady, all flounces, and feathers, and gold chains. It was Julie's luck to show her to the salon; and she came to the schoolroom afterwards, flung open the door, and called out, "Mrs. Daw, Esquire." Julie did not hear the last of that. The girls called her ever after Squire Daw.
"The Honourable Mrs. Seymour."
With a sharp cry Eleanor started up, and flew into her mother's arms, sobbing convulsively.
"Oh, mamma, take me home! take me home!"
Mrs. Seymour was thunderstruck, not only at Eleanor's cry of pain, but at the change in her appearance. She had just returned from London. Mary Carr disclosed a little of the truth. She thought it best; and, indeed, was unable to evade the keen questioning of Mrs. Seymour. But Rose's note, with the information it contained, was buried in silence still. Mrs. Seymour took her daughter home at once; and there Eleanor told the whole--that Rose had really gone away with Mr. Marlborough. Mrs. Seymour folded her aristocratic hands, and distinctly desired that no further allusion to it should ever pass her daughter's lips, as it would not her own. It was a retribution on them, she said, for having trusted an "iron man."
Meanwhile, Adeline de Castella and Mary Carr kept their own counsel through sheer obligation: as they had not declared all they knew at once, they dared not declare it now. And Madame de Nino verily believed Rose had been spirited away to the skies.
It was three days afterwards. Mrs. Seymour sat in her drawing-room, the green Venetian shutters partially closed, and the blinds down, for Eleanor lay on the sofa quite prostrated. Mrs. Seymour was in a state of as much indignation as was consistent with her high birth and her proclaimed assertion that they were "well rid of him;" for, in spite of the "iron" drawback, she had grown to hug to her heart the prospect of this most desirable establishment for Eleanor.
Suddenly the door opened, and the iron man himself walked in. Eleanor struggled up from the sofa, and Mrs. Seymour rose in hauteur, all the blood of the Loftuses flashing from her light grey eyes. Then ensued a contest; each side struggling for the mastership; Mrs. Seymour refusing to hold commune with him, and Mr. Marlborough insisting upon being heard.
He had gone to England three days ago in search of her, he said; he then found she had left for France, and he had followed her. His object was to request that she would lay her commands on Eleanor to afford him an explanation. Eleanor had been his promised wife; and without offence on his part, without any known cause, her behaviour had suddenly changed to him. In vain he had sought an explanation of her; she would afford him none; and his only resource was to appeal to Mrs. Seymour. If Eleanor refused to fulfil her engagement with him, he could not insist upon it; but he must insist upon knowing the reason for the change: to that he had a right.
"You had better leave the room quietly, sir," said Mrs. Seymour in frigid tones. "It will not be pleasant to you if I call my servants."
"I will not leave it without an explanation," he replied. "Mrs. Seymour, you cannot refuse it; if Eleanor will not give it me in courtesy, I repeat that I must demand it as a right. Eleanor's conduct at the time seemed to imply that there was some cause of complaint against me. What was it? I declare to you solemnly that I was unconscious of it; that I was innocent of offence against her."
His words and manner were painfully earnest and truthful, and Mrs. Seymour hesitated.
"Has there been any mistake, Eleanor?" she hesitated, appealing to her daughter.
"Oh, let me know what it is," he implored, before Eleanor could speak. "Whatever it may be--mistake--cause--reality--let me know it."
"Well, sir," cried Mrs. Seymour, making a sudden resolution, "I will first ask you what you have done with that unfortunate young lady, whom you took away from her sheltering roof and her duties, three days ago?"
"I took no young lady away," replied Mr. Marlborough.
"What have you done with Miss Darling?"
"Not anything."
"You did not induce her to elope with you? You did not take her to London?"
"Indeed, no. I saw Miss Darling on the port the evening I went away, and left her there. She was with her brother. But this is no explanation, Mrs. Seymour. Eleanor," he added, walking up, and standing before her, "I once again appeal to you. What was the cause of your first and sudden coldness?"
"Speak out, Eleanor," said her mother. "I know almost as little as Mr. Marlborough, but I now think the matter should be cleared up, that we may come at the truth. There must be a strange mystery somewhere."
Eleanor pressed her thin hands upon her side in agitation. She could only speak in a whisper, in uneven sentences: and she told of the love-letter written to Rose the day following the dance at Sir Sandy Maxwell's.
"It was written to you, Eleanor," said Mr. Marlborough.
"I read that note," she answered, gasping for breath. "It was written to Rose."
"It was written to you, Eleanor. I have never written a loving note, as that was, to Rose Darling in my life; on my sacred word of honour."
"You have written several notes to Rose!"
"True; since; but never loving ones: they might all have been posted up on the schoolroom walls, and even Madame de Nino herself could not have found fault with them. If this note was given to Rose, Anna must have changed the envelopes. I remember directing one for her to Miss Darling that morning. Eleanor," he gravely said, "I fear you have been running your head against a chimera."
"Rose loves you," she whispered, her heart and voice alike softening.
"No; nonsense!"--but for all his denial there was a glow of consciousness on Mr. Marlborough's countenance. "Eleanor, I honestly believe that you have been listening to the folly talked by those schoolgirls, and taken it for gospel. Rose Darling is very pretty, and likes to be admired; and if I have been thrown a good deal with her, who threw me? You, Eleanor, by your coldness and avoidance of me. I don't deny that I have talked lightly and gaily with Rose, never seriously; I don't deny that----" I have kissed her, he was going to add in his candour, but thought it might be as well to leave that out before Mrs. Seymour. "But my love and my allegiance have never swerved fromyou, Eleanor."
She burst into happy tears. Mrs. Seymour cut them short sternly.
"Eleanor, this note that you talk of, left by Miss Darling on her bed the other night, must have been meant as a hoax upon you and the two credulous young ladies, your companions. I did think it a most strange thing that a young lady of position should be guilty of anything so vulgar as an elopement. Not but that it was excessively bad to make it the subject even of a jest."
"I suppose it must have been," sobbed Eleanor. "And it seemed so earnest!"
Mr. Marlborough could have disclosedhowearnest, had he chosen. In that interview in the salon with Rose, when he told her he was going away, he learnt how much she loved him. In the anguish of parting, Rose dropped words that sufficiently enlightened him--if he had not been enlightened before. He passed it all off as a jest; he said something to the effect that he had better take her with him to Gretna, all in jest, in simple folly: and he spoke in this light manner for Rose's sake: he would not suffer her to think she had betrayed her secret. What, then, was his astonishment when, in coming out of the permit office at night on the port, preparatory to stepping on board the boat, to see Rose!She had taken his words seriously. What he would have done to save the boat in his dilemma--for he must inevitably have lost it while he escorted Rose back to Madame de Nino's--he did not know; but at that moment who should come up but Captain Darling. He gave the young lady into her brother's charge, with a half-word of explanation; and he never supposed but that Rose had been safely lodged at school within the hour. But Mr. Marlborough was a man who could keep his counsel on these particulars, even to Eleanor, and he did keep it.
"Let this be a warning to your wedded life, Eleanor," observed Mrs. Seymour. "Never have any concealments from your husband. Had you frankly spoken to Mr. Marlborough of that first misdirected letter, which seems to have been the primary cause of all the mischief, the affair would have been cleared up at once."
"It's enough to make a man swear he will never use another envelope," exclaimed Mr. Marlborough, with his old happy smile of love. "But you need not have doubted me, Eleanor."
Meanwhile, wherewasRose? Madame de Nino, in the eleventh stage of desperation and perplexity, sent ten times a day to Captain Darling's lodgings; but he had disappeared also. Mam'selle Fifine, who of course came in for the blame, alternately sobbed and scolded aloud; and Adeline and Mary Carr felt sick with the weight of the secret they were keeping. This state of things, stormy within doors as the weather was without, lasted for three days, and then Rose returned, escorted by her brother.
But what a shocking plight she was in! Drenched with rain and sea-water; clothes soaked and clinging round her; quite prostrated with three days' sea-sickness; lying half-dead all that time in a rolling fishing-smack, the wind blowing great guns and she nearly dead with fright; nothing to eat and drink on board but salt herrings and sour beer, even supposing she could have eaten at all!--no wonder Rose forgot her good manners and told her brother he was a brute for taking her. Rose had happened to put on her best things, too: a white chip bonnet and pearl-grey damask dress. You should have seen them when she came in!
So it was quite a mistake. Miss Carr and Adeline found, a trick, no doubt, played them purposely by Rose, and there had been no elopement at all, or thought of one: nothing but a three-days' cruise round the coast with her brother, in the fishing-smack of some honest, rough, hard-working sailors! Captain Darling made a thousand apologies to Madame de Nino when he brought her home--the object that Rose presented upon his handing her out of the coach!--and laid it all to the fault of that treacherous wind; which had kept them at sea three days, when he had only contemplated treating her to a little excursion of an hour for the good of her health.
Madame was appeased at length. But Mam'selle Fifine is sore upon the point to this day. As she justly observed, there must have been something out of the common amiss with that particular fishing-boat. Granted the rough wind; but other boats made the port fast enough, so why not that one? Rose could or would give no explanation, and was as sullen as a bear for a whole month.
And ere that month had well run its course, news came down from Paris of the marriage of George Marlborough and Miss Seymour.
We must go to Castle Wafer. Isaac St. John has his writing-table drawn to the open window this mellow September day, and sits at it. But he is not writing now. He leans back in his padded chair, and the lines of thought--of care--lie on his otherwise serene face. Care for Isaac St. John the recluse? Verily, yes; even for him. If we could live lives of utter isolation from our species, we might escape it; otherwise, never.
Looking at him now, his back buried in the soft chair, his face, so pleasant to the eye, turned rather upwards, and his thin white hands resting listlessly, one on the elbow of the chair, one down on his knee, a stranger would have failed to detect anything amiss with the person of Isaac St. John, or that it was not like other men's. For the first forty years of Isaac St. John's existence, his days had been as one long, ever-present mortification; that disfiguring hump and his sensitiveness doing battle together. Why it should be so, I know not, but it is an indisputable fact, that where any defect of person exists, any deformity--two of the qualities pertaining to our nature exist in the mind in a supereminent degree, sensitiveness and vanity, perhaps for the good of the soul, certainly to the marring of its peace. It has been so since the world began; it will be so to its ending. Isaac St. John was no exception. There never can be an exception; for this seems to be a law of nature. Remember the club-foot of Byron, and what it did for him. This shrinking sensitiveness, far more than his health, had converted Mr. St. John into a hermit. It was terrible to him to go forth unto the gaze of his fellow-men, for--he carried his deformity with him. Now that he was advancing in years, growing onwards to be an old man, the feeling was wearing off; the keen edge of the razor which had cut all ways was becoming somewhat blunt: but it must ever remain with him in a greater or lesser degree.
He was not thinking of it now. It was when he was in the presence of others, or when making up his mind to go into their presence, that the defect was so painfully present to him. As he sat there, his brow knit with its lines, two things were troubling him: the one was a real, tangible care, the other was only a perplexity.
His own mother had lived to bring him up; and how she had cherished and loved her unfortunate son, the only heir to the broad lands of the St. Johns, that son's heart ached even now to think of. At the time she died, he wished he could die also; his happiest thoughts now were spent in her remembrance; his most comforting moments those when he lost himself in the anticipation of the meeting that awaited them hereafter. He was a grown-up man, getting old it almost seemed to his lonely heart, when the little half-brother was born, the only issue of his father's second marriage. How Isaac St. John took to this little baby, loved it, fondled it, played with it, he might have been half ashamed to tell in words. The boy had been his; as his own; since the death of their father, he had been his sole care; and now that boy, grown to manhood, was going the way of the world and bringing trouble into his home. No very great and irremediable trouble yet: but enough to pain and worry the sensitive heart that so loved him.
As if to compensate for the malformation of the one brother, the other was gifted with almost surpassing beauty. The good looks of Frederick St. John had become a proverb in the gay world. But these favoured sons of men are beset by temptations in an unusual degree, and perhaps they may not be much the better for the beauty in the long-run. Had Frederick St. John been less high-principled by nature; or been less carefully andprayerfullytrained by his brother Isaac, things might have been a great deal worse with him than they were. He had not parted with honour, but hehadparted with money; a handsome patrimony which he had succeeded to when he became of age, was mortgaged thick and threefold, and Mr. Frederick was deep in debt and embarrassment.
Mr. St. John glanced towards some letters lying on his table. The letters had brought the trouble to him. It would seem as if Frederick's affairs had in some way come to a sudden crisis, for these letters, three of them, had all arrived in the course of the past week. They were ugly letters from ugly creditors asking him to pay them; and until their reception Mr. St. John had not possessed any knowledge of the state of affairs. He had believed Frederick to be in the habit of getting rid of a great deal more money than he had need to do; but he had not glanced at debt, or embarrassment. It had so completely upset him--a little thing did that in his delicate health--that for a day and a night he was incapable of action; he could only nurse his pain. Then he sent answers to the parties, saying that the matters should be examined into; and he wrote to Frederick, who was in London, to come to him without delay. He was waiting for him; the senses of his ears were opened now, listening for his footsteps: he was growing anxious and weary, for Frederick might have responded to the call on the past day.
That was the trouble. The other care mentioned, the perplexity, regarded his little cousin at Alnwick. He had promised George Carleton St. John (as you may remember) to take means of ascertaining whether Benja was well done by, happy, and cared for by his stepmother; but now that it came to action, Isaac St. John did not quite see how he was to set about it. Something he must do; for the promise lay on his conscience: and he was, of all men, the most conscientious. Mr. Carleton St. John had died in May; it was now September; and Isaac knew little or nothing of the affairs at Alnwick. He had corresponded a little with Mrs. Carleton St. John in the intervals of his own illness--for he had been seriously ill twice this summer; at the time of the death, and for some time after it, and again in July--and he had addressed two letters to Benja, simple letters fit for a child, and desired that that young gentleman would answer him by deputy. Somebody had scrawled these answers, probably the nurse, or guided Benja's fingers to do it. "He was very well, and Brave was very well, and he thanked his gardian, Mr. Saint John, for writeing to him, and he hopped he was very well, and he sent his love." This did not tell Mr. St. John much: and the involuntary thought crossed him that had Benja been her own child Mrs. St. John might herself have helped him with the answers.
He had therefore been making up his mind to go over to Alnwick, much as he disliked to show himself amidst strangers. But for this news concerning Frederick which had so troubled him, and the expected arrival of his brother, he would have been already away; but now he had put it off for a day or two. This was Tuesday; and he thought, if all went well, and Frederick came today, he should go on Thursday. It was not the loss of the money that brought care to Isaac St. John; his coffers were deep; but the great fear that this young man, dear to him as ever son could be to father, might be falling into evil.
He was aroused from thought by the entrance of his attendant, Mr. Brumm. The master of Castle Wafer looked up wistfully: he had thought it might be another entering.
"Will you have luncheon brought in here today, sir, or take it with Mrs. St. John and Lady Anne?"
"Oh, I don't know"--and the sweet voice bore its sound of weariness. "I will take it with them today, I think, Brumm: they say I neglect them. Is it one o'clock?"
"Hard upon it, sir."
Mr. St. John rose. Ah, how changed from the delicate-faced man whose defects of form had been hidden! The hump was all too conspicuous now.
Passing out of the room, he crossed the inner hall, so beautiful with its soft rose-coloured hues, its tesselated pavement, and opened a door on the other side, where luncheon was laid. Two ladies entered almost at the same moment. The one was a tall, fine, still elegant woman, not much older than Mr. St. John himself, though she stood to him in the relation of stepmother; the other was an orphan daughter of the highest branch of the St. John family, the Lady Anne: a nice-looking girl of two or three and twenty, with dark-brown eyes and a pointed chin. Castle Wafer belonged exclusively to Isaac St. John; but his stepmother frequently resided at it. The utmost good-feeling and courtesy existed between them; and Frederick, her only son, and his half-brother, was the link that drew them together. Mrs. St. John never stayed there in the character of visitor: Isaac would not allow it: but as its undisputed mistress. At these times, however, he lived a good deal in his own rooms. She had been there about a month now, and had brought with her this young cousin, Lady Anne. It had been a cherished project in the St. John family, that Lady Anne St. John should become the wife of Frederick. All wished it. The relatives on both sides wished it: they were several degrees removed from each other in relationship, she was an heiress, he would inherit Castle Wafer: altogether it was very suitable. But the parties themselves--were they anxious for the tie? Ah, less was known about that.
Mrs. St. John gave an exclamation of pleasure, for the sight of her stepson amidst them was somewhat rare. He shook hands with her, and then Anne St. John came merrily up to be kissed. She was very fond of Isaac, and he of her. Nearly the only friend he had had in life, as these men of rare minds count friendship, had been the earl, Anne's father.
"Mrs. St. John," he said, as they were at table, Brumm alone being in the room in attendance on his master, for sometimes the merest trifle of exertion, even the lifting of a plate, the filling of a glass, was a trouble to Isaac, "will you believe that I am contemplating a journey?"
"A journey! You, Isaac!" exclaimed Lady Anne. "Is it a drive round the farm in your low carriage?"
"It is a longer journey than that. It will take me five or six hours' hard posting, with good roads and four good horses."
"Oh, Isaac! How can you continue to travel post when you can take the railway?"
"I do not like the railway," said Isaac, quietly.
"Well, I hope you will find relays. I thought all the old posting horses were dead and buried."
"I have not found any difficulty yet, Anne, Brumm sends on to secure them."
"But where are you going, Isaac?" asked Mrs. St. John.
"To Alnwick. I think I ought to go," continued Isaac, speaking in his grave, earnest, thoughtful manner. "Poor George left his boy partly in my charge, as you know; but what with ill-health, and my propensity to shut myself up, which gets harder to break through every year, I have allowed too long a time to elapse without seeing him. It has begun to lie upon my conscience: and whenever a thing does that, I can't rest until I take steps to remedy it."
"The little boy is in his own home with his mother," observed Mrs. St. John. "He is sure to be all right."
"I do not fear that he is not. I should be very much surprised to find that he is not. But that probable fact does not remove from me the responsibility of ascertaining it. I think I shall go on Thursday, and return on Friday."
"How dull we shall be without you," said Lady Anne.
Mr. St. John smiled, and raised his soft dark eyes to hers. The fingers of one thin hand had been wandering amidst the crumbs of his bread, putting them into circles or squares: a habit of his when he talked at table, though perhaps an unconscious one. He did not eat much, and had generally finished long before others.
"I hope, Anne, you and Mrs. St. John will have some one here by Thursday, who will be a more effectual remedy for dulness than I could be at my best. Mrs. St. John, I am expecting Frederick."
"Oh!" The mother's heart leaped within her; the bright flush of expectancy rose to her cheek; a fair and soft cheek still, for all her fifty years. "When?"
"I hope he will be here today. I think he may even have come by this morning's train. I wish to see him on a little matter of business, and have written to him to come down. Are you glad, Anne?"
"I am more glad than I can tell you," was the warm, eager answer. "I wish he could be here always."
Ah, Isaac St. John, why that inward glow of satisfaction at the words? Are you so little skilled in the signs ofloveas not to read them more correctly? Don't you know that if there were any love, of the sort you have been hoping, in that fair girl's heart, she would go by the rules of contrary, and protest that it was a matter of perfect indifference to her whether Mr. Frederick came or not? There is no blush on her cheek; there is no faltering in her tone: why should you deceive yourself?
The surmise was correct: Frederick St. John had come down by the morning's express train. You may see him as he walks out of the station at Lexington: it is that tall, slender, aristocratic man, with dark hair, pale refined features, and eyes of the deepest blue. The people at the station touch their hats to him and smile a greeting, and he smiles and nods at them in return, kindly, genially, as if he really thanked them for their welcome. There was neither heartlessness nor hypocrisy in Frederick St. John: he was a true gentleman at heart.
"Would you like a fly, sir? I don't see any carriage come down for you."
"No, thank you, Williams. I prefer walking such a day as this. Is Mr. St. John well, do you happen to know?"
"As well as usual, I think, sir," was the man's reply, who drove his own fly. "He walked through the fields to church on Sunday. The ladies came in the basket-carriage."
"What a fine harvest you have had!"
"Beautiful, sir. Couldn't be better. My little stock of corn never was finer."
"By the way, Williams. I had a portmanteau somewhere in the train: the guard put it out, I suppose. You can bring it up if you like."
"Thank you, sir."
Frederick St. John walked on. Striking into a path on the left, he continued his way through the fields, and came in due course to the back of the Rectory. From thence the way was through the cultivated grounds, the lovely gardens of Castle Wafer: the whole way being not much more than a mile and a half. By the highway it was a good deal longer.
Seated under a projecting rock, a sketch-book and pencils lying beside her, was one of the fairest girls ever seen. She was reading. Going out to sketch, that mellow day, she had yielded to idleness (as she often did), and was passing the time in reading, instead of working. She was the Dean of Westerbury's niece, Sarah Beauclerc: and the dean was wont to tell her that she should not take a book with her when she went out to sketch. It might come to the same thing, so far as working went, she would answer in her independence: if she did not read, she might only sit and dream. But the dean was not at the Rectory just now: only his wife, daughter, and niece. This young lady's home had been with them since the death of her mother, the Lady Sarah Beauclerc: her father was in India.
The soft bloom mantled in Sarah Beauclerc's cheeks when she saw who had turned the corner and was upon her. His appearance took her by surprise: neither she nor any one else had known that he was coming. She put down her book and was about to rise: but he laid his hand upon her and sat down on the bench beside her. He kept her hand in his; he saw the blushes on her cheeks; and that her eyes fell beneath the gaze of his own.
But the liking between them was not destined to go on to love: though indeed on her part, and perhaps also on his, the feeling had been very like love once. In her behaviour to him she had been a finished coquette:heset it down to caprice, to a want of real affection for him; in reality it grew out of her love. She believed that, come what would, he was to marry Lady Anne St. John; she believed that he accepted the destiny, though he might not be unwilling to amuse himself before he entered on it: and, one moment she had been gentle, tender, yielding, in obedience to her secret love; the next she would be cold, repelling, the very essence of scorn. This had partially worked his cure: but in a meeting like the present, coming suddenly upon her in all her beauty, the old feelings would rise again in his heart. Ah! how different might things have been in this life for one other woman, had Sarah Beauclerc only known the real state of affairs between him and Lady Anne!
But she still retained enough of the past feeling to be confused--confused in manner as in mind. She put questions as to his unexpected appearance, not hearing one syllable of the answers; and Frederick St. John detected the secret joy, and his voice grew more low and tender as he bent over her, and a smile, than which earth could possess nothing sweeter, sat on his lips. Perhaps even now, had he remained at Castle Wafer--but of what use speculating upon what might have been?
"I think you are glad to see me, Sarah."
One flash of answering avowal, and then the lovely consciousness on the face faded, the light of love died out of it; it grew hard, satirical, half angry. That she should so have betrayed herself! She raised her head, and looked out straight before her from the depths of her cold light-blue eyes.
"We are glad to see any one in this lonely desert, where the only gentleman of degree is Mr. St. John. Not but that I would rather see him than many others. Did you leave London this morning?"
Frederick St. John dropped the hand and rose.
"I shall never understand you, Sarah. Yes, I left it this morning. Where's Georgina? She will be glad to welcome me, if you are not."
"There's one will be glad to welcome you at Castle Wafer," she rejoined, laughing now, but the laugh sounded cold and cheerless. "Lady Anne has been wishing for you for some time."
"Yes, I think she has. I must go on now. I shall see you again, no doubt, by-and-by."
He hastened on his way, utterly unconscious that a pair of eyes, more lovely than those he had been gazing on, behind the grove of trees, had been unintentional witnesses to the interview. Georgina Beauclerc had been strolling about when she saw his approach through the trees. She was the dean's daughter--a lithe, active girl of middle height with a pleasing, piquant, rather saucy face, these wide-open grey-blue eyes, light-brown hair, and a healthy blood mantling under the sunburnt skin of the dimpled cheeks--a daring, wild, independent young lady, but one all truth and ingenuousness; and that is saying a very great deal in these days of most detestable artificially. Georgina had no end of faults, but Dr. Beauclerc knew her heart, and he would not have exchanged his daughter for any girl in the world.
She, Georgina Beauclerc, had looked on from between the trees, all her veins throbbing, her pulses beating. A stronger, a purer, a more enduring love never made glad the heart of woman, than this one that filled Georgina Beauclerc's for Frederick St. John. To hear his step was rapture; to touch his hand was as a ray of that unforgiven fire "filched for us from heaven;" to see him thus unexpectedly was as if the whole earth had become suddenly flooded with a brilliant, rose-coloured light. But, even as she watched that other meeting with her cousin, the sharp pain--often enough felt there before--seized her heart, the loving light faded from her face, and her lips paled with anguish. Of keen, discerning faculties,shehad seen all along that it was not from Lady Anne danger was to be feared, but from Sarah herself. A faint, low cry, as of a bird in pain, escaped her as she watched the meeting, and drank in its signs.
Did anything in the world ever run so crookedly asthiscourse of love? Every one--uncles, aunts, guardians--wanted Frederick St. John to wed Lady Anne. Frederick did not want to marry her at all; did not intend to marry her; and she, on her part, hoped to marry some one else. But that was a secret not yet to be breathed to the world; Frederick alone shared it; and if things came to a crisis he intended to take on himself the whole onus of declining the match, and so spare Anne. They understood each other perfectly; and that is more than can be said for any other two actors in our story. Nothing so very crooked there, you will say; but look a little further. Georgina loved Frederick St. John with her whole heart; and he never gave a thought to her. He must have known of her love; there had been things to reveal it to him--trifles in the past; but he passed her by, and felt all too inclined to give his love to her cousin. She, Sarah, could have made him her heart's resting-place, ah! how willingly! but her head was filled ever with Lady Anne, and she met his incipient love with scorn. It was curing him, as I have told you; but if the whole truth could have been laid bare, the lives of some of them would have been widely different.
Georgina was obliged to come forth from her hiding-place, for his path lay through the shrubbery, and he must have seen her. Her colour went and came fitfully as she held out her hand; her bosom heaved beneath the thin summer dress, a flowing robe of muslin, adorned with blue ribbons. Her large straw hat was hanging from her arm; and she began to talk freely and wildly--anything to cover her agitation. Their intercourse was familiar as that of brother and sister, for they had been intimate from childhood.
"Well, Georgie! In the wars as usual, I see, amidst the brambles."
He pointed to her robe, and she caught it up; a long bramble was trailing to it.
"It is your fault, sir. Hearing a strange voice, I came through the thorns to see who might be the intruder. What a strange, flighty way you have got into! Coming down by fits and starts, when no one expects you! We heard you were off to Finland, or some other of those agreeable spots. You'll frighten Castle Wafer into fits."
"Wrong, young lady. Castle Wafer sent for me."
"That's one of your stories," politely returned Georgina. "I was at Castle Wafer after breakfast this morning, and Mrs. St. John was regretting that you did not come down this autumn; some one else also, I think, though she did not say it."
He looked down at her as she spoke. There were times when he thought she divined the truth as regarded himself and Lady Anne St. John.
"Iwonder," she continued, "that you have kept away so long."
"How is the dean?"
"He is not here--only mamma. Tell me; what has brought you down?"
"I have told you. I was sent for."
"By----"
"Isaac. You are as curious as ever, Georgina. But now, can you tell mewhyI am sent for; for that is a puzzle to me. I fear----"
He stopped suddenly. Miss Beauclerc raised her eyes to his face. There was a shade of uneasiness in his tones, as if he were ill at ease.
"I know nothing about it," she answered, earnestly. "I did not even know you were sent for. I would tell you if I did know."
He nodded an acknowledgment, courteously enough, but very abstractedly, as if he thought little of Georgina or of anything she could tell him, and walked on alone, never once looking back. She leaned her forehead against a tree, and gazed after him; her wild love shining forth from her yearning blue eyes; her whole heart longing to call after him ere he should be quite beyond view, and the day's sunshine have gone out in darkness: "Oh, stay with me, my love! stay with me!"
He went on to the house, straight into the presence of Isaac, who was then in his own room, and learnt why he had been summoned. That his embarrassments would, of necessity, become known to his brother some time, he had entertained no shadow of doubt; but he was one of those high-bred, honourable men who look upon debt as little less than crime; and now that the moment had come, it brought him terrible mortification.
"I have no excuse to offer," he said. "But do not think worse of me than you can help. Not one shilling of it has gone in dishonour."
That he spoke the truth Isaac knew, and his heart went out to him--him whom he had ever loved as a son.
"I will set you straight, only be more cautious in future," he said, never speaking, in his generosity, one word of reproach. "And, Frederick, this had better be kept from your mother. It would pain her, and perhaps alarm Anne. Don't you think it is time you married? There's nothing to wait for. I'm sure---- I fancy at least--that Anne is ready."
And Frederick St. John, bound by a promise to Lady Anne, did not speak out openly, as he might have done, but evaded the question.