by Ellen Wood
The bustle over, Mrs. Tritton went back to her own room, shutting the door upon Edy. Nurse Dade had the boy on her knee, talking to him; and Honour, a privileged visitor, came in. Honour’s tongue could be rather a sharp one on occasion; but the unexpected sight of the nurse arrested it for the moment.
“I should not have come up to-day, had I known,” Nurse Dade was -saying to the housekeeper. “It must be a busy day with you.”
“Middling for that: not very. You heard of the marriage, I suppose?”
“I saw it in the newspapers. I had not heard of it till then. I have been away for six months, you see, and news came to me slowly. How well this little fellow gets on, Honour! You have done your part by him, that’s certain.”
Honour gave a sort of ungracious assent to the remark.
“What do you think she wanted with me?” asked she, turning to the housekeeper, alluding to Mrs. Darling. “You know that pretty sketch that master drew of Benja in the straw hat, one day in the garden, and hung it up in his bedroom? Well, she called me in to say she thought it had better be taken down and put elsewhere. I told her I must decline to meddle with my master’s things, and especially with that, though it was done only on the leaf of a copy-book; and I wouldn’t touch it. She first looked at me and then at the sketch; but just then there was a bustle in the hall; she ran down and I came away.”
“And it’s left hanging?”
“It’s left hanging. Ah! “ — and Honour drew a long breath—” Nurse Dade, we have changes here.”
“There’s changes everywhere, I think,” responded the nurse. “But I must say I was surprised when I read it in the papers. So soon! and to recollect what his grief was then! But law! it’s the way of the world.”
Honour took Benja, carried him to the far end of the room, and began amusing him with his horse. They made a considerable amount of noise, almost drowning the voices of the two women by the fire.
“Do you happen to know her?” the housekeeper had asked, and the nurse knew by intuition that she spoke of the bride.
“I’ve known her ever since she was a baby. My mother was nursing at Norris Court, and I went there for a day and a night, and they let me hold the baby on my lap, to say I had had it. I was quite a young woman then; a growing girl, as one may say.”
“I don’t know anything of her, hardly,” said the housekeeper. “I’ve not chosen to ask questions of the servants, and I and Honour, as you are aware, are strangers in the neighbourhood. Her father was a colonel, was he not?”
“A colonel! No; it was Mrs. Norris’s second husband that was a colonel — Colonel Darling. Miss Norris’s father was Mr. Norris of Norris Court. Very grand, rich people they were: but as there was no boy, it nearly all went from the widow when Mr. Norris died. She married Colonel Darling when the first year was out.”
“She must have been very young,” remarked the housekeeper. “She does not look old now.”
“Very young. I remember the first time I saw her in her widow’s cap. I began wondering how I should look in a widow’s cap, for she did not look much older than I was. She was very pretty. People said what a pity it was Mr. Norris should have died so soon and left her.”
“What did Mr. Norris die of?”
“I can’t tell you. I have never known. There was some mystery about it. My mother always said she did not know: and I don’t think she did, she was so curious over it. He was ill about a week or ten days, but nobody was let go near him, except Mr. Pym and the valet, and a man-nurse they had. Some of the servants thought it was some infectious disorder: but nobody knew.”
“And he died?”
“He died. The little baby, Miss Charlotte, as she was named afterwards, was born whilst he lay ill. My mother said Mr. Pym took her in to show her to her father; which was very wrong if it was fever; and when Mr. Pym came out his face was white, as if he had gone through some painful scene.”
The housekeeper, who was by no means one to deal in mysteries, stared at the nurse. She had hushed her voice to that tone we are apt to use when speaking of things that must not be openly discussed. She sat gazing at the fire, as if recalling the past, the black strings of her bonnet hanging down.
“How do you mean, Mrs. Dade?”
“Mean?”
“You speak as if you were scared.”
“Do I? I suppose I caught the tone from mother: she used to speak so when she talked of it. It was her way, when there was any sort of mystery in her places. Whether she came to the bottom of it herself, or whether she didn’t, she always used a tone in speaking of it that partly scared you and partly sent you rampant to know more.”
“But what mystery could there be in regard to Mr. Norris?”
“That’s just what I am unable to tell you. There was a mystery: everybody knew that; but I don’t believe anybody fathomed it. Whether it lay in his illness, or in his death, or in neither, mother never knew. Sometimes she thought it was connected with his wife. They had been a loving couple until one night, when some dispute occurred between them, and there ensued an awful quarrel: one of those dreadful disturbances that terrify a household. Mrs. Norris, a gentle, loving, merry young girl, as she had seemed until then, dashed her hand through a cheval glass in her passion, and cut it terribly. It all took place in their own room. Mr. Pym was fetched; and altogether there was a fine hullabaloo.”
“Were you there?”
“I was not there; nor mother either. It was not for some days afterwards that she was sent for to Mrs. Norris: but the servants told her of it. Mr. Norris had been ill ever since; and three days later he was dead. The butler said — and he no doubt had it from the valet, for they were great friends — that it was that night’s quarrel that killed his master.”
“How could the quarrel kill him?” cried the wondering housekeeper.
Nurse Dade shook Her head. “I don’t know. All sorts of things were said — as things in such cases often are, and perhaps not a word of truth in any of ‘em. At any rate, Mr. Norris died, and nobody knew for certain how he died or what was the matter with him, or what could have given rise to the dreadful quarrel that led to it. There were but two persons who could have told the truth — Mrs. Norris and Mr. Pym.”
“Mr. Pym must have been a young man then,” observed the housekeeper, after a pause.
“About thirty, I suppose. He must be sixty now.”
“Mr. Pym’s not sixty!”
“He is hard upon it. Nobody would take him for it, though, he is so active. Mrs. Norris had to leave the Court when she got well, for the new people to come to it; she went straight to the house she’s in now, which of right belongs to Miss Charlotte — I should say Mrs. St. John.”
“I hope she’s amiable?” observed the housekeeper.
“She is when she likes, I believe. I don’t know much of her myself. She has a temper, they say — but then she has been so much indulged.”
“She is very handsome. But she’s not in the least like Mrs. Darling.”
“She is very much like her father. Mrs. Darling’s fair, Mr. Norris was — :—”
A clear, sonorous voice, calling “Benja,” interrupted the words. Honour heard it, for it penetrated even above the shouts of the boy and the creaking of the steed. It was a call she was accustomed to. Often and often, in passing through the hall, going out or coming in, had Mr. St. John thus summoned his child.
“Not the horse,” said Honour to the boy, as she picked him up. “Papa’s calling. Benja shall come back to the horse by-and-by.”
Mr. St. John was in the hall, waiting. He took the child from Honour, kissed him lovingly many times, and then carried him into the drawing-room. Honour followed. She had not been told to go down, and there was an irrepressible curiosity in her mind to see Mrs. St. John.
She was seated alone, near the window, with a work-box before her and some embroidery in her hand, looking as much at home as though she had always lived there. Her raven hair was partially turned from her forehead, showing
off the finely-cut but very thin features. Turning her head quickly at the opening of the door, she saw her husband enter.
“I have brought you Benja, Charlotte. He must make acquaintance with his mamma.”
She rose with a smile, her dark-blue silk dress gleaming brightly from its ample folds, met them midway in the room, and took Benja. The boy, rather astonished perhaps at the summary proceeding, stared at her from his wide-open great grey eyes.
“You will love mamma, Benja?” she said, kissing him tenderly; and she placed him on her knee and held up to him her shining gold chain, as she had done some two or three months before. “Mamma means to love Benja.”
But Benja was impervious to bribes to-day, and would have nothing to say to the gold chain. Suddenly, in the midst of his prolonged stare, he burst into tears, with a great deal of unnecessary noise.
“I am strange to him,” said Mrs. St. John. “He will know me better in a day or two. See! what have I here for Benja!”
She took up a sweet biscuit from a plate that happened to be on the table. What with the biscuit, and her persuasive words, her kisses, Benja suffered himself to be coaxed, hushed his sobs, and kissed his new mamma.
“Friends from this minute,” she said triumphantly, glancing up at her husband, who had stood by, smiling. “I will try and be a good mother to him, George.”
“I shall like her better than I thought,” decided Honour from the door, who could find no fault, even in her prejudice, with her new mistress. “I shall like her much if she will only love the child.”
And thus the future lady of Alnwick had entered on her home.
CHAPTER V.
ON ST. MARTIN’S EVE.
“AT Alnwick Hall, on St. Martin’s Eve, the wife of George Carleton St. John, Esquire, of a son.”
This was the next announcement in the local papers; some ten months, or a trifle more, having elapsed since the last one. And I hope you will have patience with these notices, and not find fault with their frequency: they are not yet over.
“On St. Martin’s Eve!” Was Mr. Carleton St. John a Roman Catholic, that he should chronicle the birth of his children by the saints’ days? No. And it was not by Mr. St. John’s wish that it had been so worded, but by Mrs. Darling’s.
It was no doubt a somewhat singular coincidence that this second child should have been born on the same day as Benja, the 10th of November. Mrs. Darling, who was temporarily sojourning at Alnwick Hall, and was naturally a little inclined to be superstitious, regarded it as a most ominous event. What, she thought, if the advent of this child should be Succeeded by the dreadful tragedy that had so fatally characterized the last? And it would perhaps hardly be believed, but that some of you may have had opportunities of witnessing these foolish fancies, that she dreaded the announcement being made in the newspapers in the same words as the last.
“I cannot bear it,” she said to Mr. St. John, “I could not look at it without a shudder. Put anything else you like, but don’t put ‘On the 10th of November!’”
Mr. St. John laughed outright; he could not help it. “Charlotte is as well as she can be,” he rejoined.
“I know; but a change might take place at any moment. Pray do not laugh at me, Mr. St. John. Call it folly; superstition; what you will; only don’t word this announcement as you worded the last.”
“But how am I to word it?” he asked. “If the child was born on the tenth, I can’t put it the ninth or the eleventh. I won’t send any notice at all, if you like; I don’t care about it.”
“Not send any notice of Charlotte’s child!” she echoed in displeasure. “That would be a slight indeed.”
“As you please. But you see the little fellow has chosen to come on the tenth, and we can’t send him back again to await a more convenient day.”
“Put ‘On St. Martin’s Eve,’” said Mrs. Darling, after a pause of somewhat blank consideration.
“St. Martin’s Eve!”
“Yes; why not? It is St. Martin’s Eve, you know.”
“Indeed I don’t know,” returned Mr. St. John, very much amused. “I’m not sure that I knew we had a St. Martin at all in the calendar.”
“That comes of your having lived so little out of England. The English pay no attention to the saints’ days. I have been abroad a good deal with my children, and know them all. St Martin’s is a great day in some parts of France. Please let it be so worded, Mr. St. John.”
He took a pen and wrote it as she desired, laughing much. “I should like to see Dr. Graves’s eyes when he reads this,”’ quoth he, as he put it into the envelope.
“A rubbishing old Low Churchman!” slightingly spoke Mrs. Darling. “He’s nobody.”
So the notice was sent off; and in due time returned to the house in the newspapers. Mrs. Darling carried one upstairs proudly to her daughter. “See, Charlotte! How well it looks!”
Mrs. St. John took the paper in her delicate hand and read it in silence; read it twice. “How came George to put it in like that—’ St. Martin’s Eve?’”
“Because I requested it. You are quite well now, darling, as may be said: but I would not have the announcement made to the world in the same words as the last.”
“It never could have been so made, mamma.”
“Yes it could. Were not the two children born on the same day of the year?”
“Oh, that,” coldly returned Mrs. St. John, as if the fact were not worth a thought. “The other had an addition which this must lack. It ran in this way: ‘the wife of George Carleton St. John, of a son and heir?”
Mrs. Darling made no rejoinder. But she cast a keen, stealthy glance at Charlotte from time to time, as she busied herself with some trifle at a distance.
Things had gone on very smoothly at the Hall during the past few months. Mrs. St. John had been at least kind to Benja, sufficiently loving in manner; and Honour liked her new mistress tolerably well. The girl’s feeling towards her may best be described as a negative one; neither like nor dislike. She did not dislike her as she had formerly believed she should do; and she did not very much like her.
Perhaps if there had been a characteristic more prominent than another in the disposition of Charlotte Norris, it was jealousy. Mrs. Darling had been obliged to see this — and to see it exercised, too — during the course of her daughter’s past life; and one of her objections to the master of Alnwick Hall, as a husband for Charlotte, was the fact that he had been once married and his heir was already born. That Charlotte would be desperately jealous of the little Benja, should she bear a son of her own, jealous perhaps to hatred, Mrs. Darling felt sure of: she devoutly hoped there would be no children; and an uncomfortable feeling had been upon her from the hour she learnt of the anticipated arrival. So long as Charlotte was without a son, there could be no very formidable jealousy of Benja. But there might be afterwards.
Certainly, there existed a wide difference between the future of the two-year-old boy, sturdily stamping about the gravel-path underneath, the great St Bernard’s dog, “Brave,” harnessed with tape before him; and that of the young infant lying in the cradle by the fireside. Many a mother, far more gentle and self-forgetting than was Charlotte St. John, might have felt a pang in contemplating the contrast. Benja had a title in prospective; he would be rich amidst the rich. George (by that name the infant was already registered) might count his future income by a few hundreds. The greater portion of the Alnwick estate (not a very large one) was strictly entailed; and the large fortune brought to Mr. St. John by his first wife, was now Benja’s. Mr. St. John would probably have wished to do as well by one child as by the other, but he could not help himself; he could not alter the existing state of things. The settlement he had been enabled to make on Miss Norris was very, very small; but he intended to redeem this by putting by yearly some of his large income for her and her children. Still the contrast was great, and Mrs. Darling knew that Charlotte was dwelling upon it with bitterness, when she laid that emphasis just now on the “son and heir.
”
That Mrs. St. John would inordinately love this child of hers, there was no doubt about — far more so than might be well for herself or for him. Mrs. Darling saw it as she lay there — lay looking with eager, watchful eyes at the little face in the cradle; and Mrs. Darling decided within herself — it may have been from experience — that such love does not bring peace in its wake. “I wish it had been a girl!” thought Mrs. Darling.
Charlotte Norris had all her life been subject to taking likes and dislikes — occasionally violent ones; and she took a strong dislike to the nurse that was now in attendance upon her, barely suffering her in the room, and insisting on Prance’s seeing to the baby instead, for Prance was at the Hall with her mistress. The result was, that when, at the end of a fortnight, Mrs. Darling quitted the Hall, Prance was transferred to Mrs. St. John’s service, and remained as nurse to the infant.
Some months went on, and spring came round. Mr. Carleton St. John, who was in parliament, had to be in London; but his wife remained at Alnwick with her baby, who seemed delicate. Not to have brought to herself all the good in the world, would she have stirred without him. The frail little infant of a few days had become to her the greatest treasure earth ever gave; her love for him was of that wild, impassioned, all-absorbing nature, known, it is hoped, but to few, for it never visits a well-regulated heart.
And in proportion to her love for her own child, grew her jealousy of Benja — nay, not jealousy only, but dislike. Mrs. Darling had foreseen correctly: the jealousy and the dislike had come — the hatred would only too surely follow. Charlotte strove against this feeling. She knew how wrong it was, how disloyal to her husband, how cruel to Benja; and she fought against it well. She would take Benja on her knee and fondle him; and the child grew to love her, to run into her at all moments when he could triumphantly escape from Honour, and she would take him and pretend to hide him, and tell Honour to go into the woods and see if the little wild boy had flown thither. It is true that once or twice, upon some very slight provocation, she had fallen into a storm of passion that literally rendered Honour motionless with alarm, seizing the child somewhat after the manner of a tiger, and beating him furiously. Honour and Benja were alike frightened; even Prance looked on aghast.