by Ellen Wood
Matters were not improved by the conduct of the two nurses. If dislike and dissatisfaction had reigned between them when Prance was only an occasional visitor at the house, how much more did it reign now! They did not break frequently into a quarrel, but a perpetual system of what the other servants called “nagging” was kept up between them. Fierce and fiery was the disposition with which each regarded the other; a war of resentment, of antipathy — call it what you will — smouldering ever in their hearts.
It did not want fuel. Honour naturally wished Benja to be regarded as first and foremost in right of his seniority and position as the heir. Prance held up the infant as the chief; and it need not be said that she was tacitly, if not openly, supported by Mrs. St. John. It was doubly unfortunate. The squabbles of the nurses need not have done harm, but their rivalry in regard to the children enhanced the feeling in their mistress. To do Mrs. Darling justice, she absolutely discouraged any difference being made, even in thought, between the children, if such came under her notice in her temporary visits at the Hall; and once, when she heard a sneer given by Prance to Honour and Benja, she had called the woman to her privately, and taken her sharply to task.
Well, the time went on to Easter. On the Thursday in Passion-week Mr. St. John was expected home; and his wife, who loved him much, anticipated his return in a sort of impassioned eagerness, not the less strong because it was controlled under her usual cold and calm demeanour. The pony-carriage went to the station in the afternoon to meet the train; and Alnwick’s mistress took her place at an open window that overlooked the approach, long and long before the carriage could return.
It was a warm, brilliant day; one of those lovely days that sometimes come in spring, presenting so great a contrast with the past winter, and raising many a heart to Heaven. As she sat there, Benja darted in. The door was not firmly closed, and the child pushed it open triumphantly and flew to Mrs. St. John, black as any little tinker: hands, face, dress, a sight to be seen. She wore a charming gown of apple-green figured silk, and a coquettish little lace head-dress, fastened with large gold pins.
“Benja, what have you been doing to yourself?”
Benja laid his little black hands on her gown, and told her a tale not very easy to be understood — his grey eyes laughing, his pretty teeth glistening. Brave had run somewhere, and Benja had run after him, and the two — or perhaps only Benja — had fallen down by the cocks and hens, where it was dirty. And they had stayed down apparently, and rolled about together.
“Then Benja’s a naughty boy to get himself into such a state,” she cried, having quickly interposed her handkerchief between the silk and the dirty hands. “Where’s Honour?”
Benja broke into a merry laugh. He had contrived to double upon Honour and evade her, while she was looking for him.
The child kept his place at her knee, and chattered on in his imperfect language. Mrs. St. John did not give herself further trouble to understand it; she fell into a reverie, her fingers unconsciously rambling amidst the child’s fair curls.
“Oh! so you are here, sir!” exclaimed Honour, looking in. “My goodness! I’ve been all over the house after you.”
“Me wid mamma,” chattered Benja.
“And a fine pickle you are in, to be with your mamma, naughty child!”
“You should not let him get into this state, Honour.”
“It’s not my fault, ma’am; he ran away from me after the dog,”
“Take him into the nursery,” concluded Mrs. St. John, turning her eyes again to the window and the winding road.
Honour carried him away, talking lovingly to him — that he was a sad little boy to make himself so dirty, and dirty little boys never went to heaven, unless they got clean again. And Mrs. Carleton St. John sat on, dreamily watching.
The first thing that aroused her from it was the sound of voices outside. She looked out and saw Honour and Benja. Master Benja was now dressed in a handsome green velvet tunic, and looked as if he had just come out of a bandbox. Honour had her things on for walking.
“Where are you going?” inquired Mrs. St. John.
“Me going to see papa,” responded Benja, before Honour could speak, his eyes bright, and his cheeks glowing.
“I am taking him to meet the carriage, ma’am.”
“But—” Mrs. St. John was beginning, and then suddenly stopped; and Honour was half scared at the blank look and the momentary flash of anger that succeeded each other on her face. “Why should you take him there?” she resumed. “He will see his papa soon enough at home.”
“Why should I not take him, ma’am?” rejoined Honour, quite respectfully, but in a bold spirit.
And Mrs. Carleton St. John could not say why; she had no plea for refusal at hand. Honour waited a minute, but no words came “It’s as well to walk that way as any other, ma’am,” she said, taking Benja’s hand. “His papa might be disappointed, else. When he used to return home last year, and did not meet Master Benja in the avenue, he’d cry out for him before he got well inside the doors.”
“Oh, very well,” said Mrs. St. John. “Keep in this upper part, within view.”
They turned away slowly, Honour secretly rebelling at the mandate; and the mistress of Alnwick looked after them. She had been lost in a reverie, anticipating the moment of her husband’s entrance, when, after her first welcome to him was over, she should summon her child and place it lovingly in his arms. It seemed that another child was to be first in those arms; and she had not bargained for it. One wild, unhealthy longing was ever haunting, half-unconsciously, the mind of Mrs. St. John — that her husband should love her child better than that other one.
She ran upstairs to Prance. She bade Prance hasten to attire the baby, and take him out to meet his papa. The child was asleep. Prance glanced at it as if she would have said so; but her mistress’s tone was imperative, evidently admitting neither contradiction nor delay.
“Oh, so you’ve come!” was Honour’s salutation, not very graciously expressed, when she found herself joined by Prance. “What’s the matter with him?”
The question applied to the crying baby, fractious at being awakened out of its sleep. Prance, who rarely condescended to quarrel in words, went on with her quiet step and supercilious manner, her head in the air.
“I’ve as much right here as you,” she said: “and Master George as the other. Mind your own business, and don’t talk to me.”
Presently the carriage came in view, Mr. St. John driving. He pulled up when he found himself near the children, gave the reins to the groom, and leapt out. Little Benja danced about his papa in an ecstasy of joy, and Mr. St. John clasped him in his arms.
Two minutes at the least elapsed before he remembered Prance, who had stood perfectly still, she and her charge. He turned to the baby to caress it, but his voice and face were strange, and of course it set up a loud cry, the more loud that it had not recovered its temper. Mr. St. John left it and walked across the grass with Benja, his whole attention absorbed by his first-born. The boy was sometimes caught up in his arms for a fresh embrace, sometimes flitting along by his side on the grass, hand in hand, the steel buttons on the child’s green velvet tunic flashing in the sun. He had taken off his cap, throwing it to Honour, and his pretty curls blew away from his brow with every movement, displaying that winning expression of feeling and intelligence of which his features had given promise in his infancy.
Mr. St John waved his hat to his wife at the open window. She had seen it all; the loving meeting with the one child, the neglect of the other. Passion, anger, jealousy, waged war within her. She could no more have controlled them than she could control the wind that was making free with her husband’s hair. All she saw, all she felt, was that he had betrayed his ardent love for Benja, his indifference to her child. In that one moment she was as a mad woman.
What exactly occurred upon his entrance, George St. John could not afterwards remember; he was too much scared, too terrified, it may be said, to rece
ive or retain any correct impression. A strange, wild look on his wife’s face, telling, as it seemed to him, of madness; a wail of reproaches, such as had never been addressed to him from woman’s lips; Benja struck to the ground with a violent blow, and his cheek bleeding from it, passed before his eyes as in a troubled vision. It appeared to last but a moment; but a moment: the next, she had sunk on a sofa; pale, trembling, hysterical.
George St. John collected his scattered senses, and picked up the child. He wiped his poor little outraged face with a handkerchief, laid it on his bosom for an instant to soothe him to composure, and carried him into the hall to Honour. The girl cried out when she saw the cheek, and looked up at her master with inquiring eyes. But his were averted.
“An accident,” he quietly said. “Wash it with a little warm water.”
He returned to the room, closing the door on himself and his wife. He did not reproach her by so much as a word: he did not speak to her: he went to the window and stood there in silence, looking out, his back turned to her, and his forehead pressed against one of the panes.
She began to utter reproaches now, sobbing violently; fond reproaches, that all his affection was lavished upon Benja, leaving none for her child. He replied coldly, without turning round, that his affection was as lively for one child as for the other; he was not conscious of any difference, and hoped he never should be: but an infant of five months old who cried at his approach, could not yet be made the companion to him that Benja was.
“Oh, George, forgive me!” she sobbed, coming close to him, and laying her hand on him caressingly. “I love — I love you; and I could not bear it. He is our child, you know; yours and mine; and it seemed as if he was nothing to you beside Benja. Won’t you forgive me?”
He could not resist the pleading words; he could not throw back the soft hand that was stealing itself into his. “I forgive it; if you think forgiveness lies with me, Charlotte,” he answered, turning round at last, but speaking sadly and quietly.
“You have not kissed me,” she whispered, the tears chasing each other down her cheeks.
He bent to kiss her at once: just in the same cold, quiet manner in which he had spoken; as if his mind were withdrawn from the present. She felt it bitterly; she blamed her “quick feelings” aloud; and when her tears were dried, she ran up to the nursery in a sudden impulse, seized Benja, and sat down with him upon Honour’s rocking-chair.
There she fondled him to her; she pushed his hair from his brow; she laid his hot cheek, clear again under the influence of the warm water, against her own.
“Benja love mamma still?” she murmured softly in his ear. “Mamma did not mean to hurt him.”
And the noble little fellow broke into a loving smile in her face, by way of answer, and kissed her many times with his rosy lips.
“Be very gentle with his poor cheek, Honour,” she said, as she put him down and left the room. “It is only a little bruised, I see,”
“Then it was an accident, as master said,” decided the wondering Honour. “I declare if I did not think at the time she had done it herself!”
Mr. Carleton St. John had not stirred from his place at the window. He stood there still, looking out, but seeing nothing. The entrance of his wife into the room did not arouse him.
“I have been to make my peace with him, George,” she said, almost as inaudibly as she had spoken above. “Dear little Benja! — We are better friends than ever, and he has been giving me a hundred kisses of forgiveness. Oh, George, my husband, I am so sorry! Indeed, indeed, I will strive to subdue my fits of passion. I will not strike him again.”
But George Carleton St. John stood as one who understands not. He did not hear: his thoughts were in the past. The injunction — nay, the prayer — of his dying wife was present to him; the very look on her sweet face as she spoke it; the faint tones of her loving voice, soon to be silent for ever.
“When the months and the years go by, and you think of another wife, oh, choose one that will be a mother to my child. Be not allured by beauty, be not tempted by wealth, be not ensnared by specious deceit; but take one who will be to him the loving mother that I would have been.”
Bitterly, bitterly, the prayer came back to him. How had he fulfilled it? He glanced round at the wife he had chosen, and could have groaned aloud in the anguish of his remorseful heart.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ALNWICK SUPERSTITION.
THE time went on at Alnwick Hall just as it goes on everywhere, and the two boys grew with it. It was autumn weather. Benja was a sturdy gentleman of nearly four, strong and independent; George, a delicate little fellow of nearly two, with fair curls and a bright rose-tint in his cheeks.
Mr. Carleton St. John spent more time in London than was absolutely demanded by his parliamentary duties, frequently remaining there when the House was not sitting; and during his sojournings at the Hall, it seemed that he never wanted an excuse for being away from home. Shooting, fishing, coursing, hunting, riding about the land with his steward, superintending improvements; presiding on the small magisterial bench of Alnwick; going over to the county-town for more important meetings; staying a day or two with bachelor neighbours — with one plea or another, the master of Alnwick Hall was nearly always out. What his wife thought of these frequent absences cannot be told. A dark cloud often sat upon her brow, but things went on smoothly between them, so far as the servants knew. It was whispered that George St. John had not found in Charlotte Norris the angel he had anticipated: how many men have secured angels in marrying for beauty?
It was autumn weather, I say — September; and Mr. St. John was at home. He had thought of taking a walking-tour in Belgium during the month of October; but an illness that attacked Mrs. St. John caused him to be summoned to Alnwick.
A serious if not dangerous illness, and brought on by some unseemly and violent fit of temper. Mr. St. John was growing accustomed to hearing of these violent fits of temper now. Four or five he had heard of during their married life, but the one described in the last chapter was all he had himself witnessed. Some temporary hurt to her child, through the carelessness of a servant, had this time caused it; and the immediate result to herself was disastrous. Mr. St. John -found Mrs. Darling at the Hall, and Mr. Pym was in frequent attendance; but she was already beginning to improve.
Mr. St. John sat on a bench on the grassy slope before the windows, idly revelling in the calm beauty of the September day. The trees were glowing with the warm tints of autumn; and the blue sky, flecked here and there with delicate white clouds, seemed to rise to a wondrous and beautiful height. The two children, attended by their nurses, were gambolling in the park with the favourite dog, Brave: their shouts and Brave’s deep bark reaching the ears of Mr. St. John.
He was plunged in thought, as he sat — rather lazy thought. The children before him, the sick wife upstairs, and the not very comfortable state of affairs altogether, furnishing its chief themes. It had carried him back to his second marriage. Caught by the beauty of Charlotte Norris, he had rushed into the union headlong, giving himself no time for proper deliberation; no time, in fact, to become well acquainted with her. “Marry in haste, and repent at leisure,” he murmured to himself; and just then he became aware of the proximity of Mrs, Darling. She was coming across the park, having walked to her own house that morning, and back again. She was a great walker, enjoying it thoroughly: and she came up with a merry smile on her bright and still pretty face, as she nodded to her son-in-law.
“How idle you look, Mr. Carleton!” she exclaimed, as he made room for her beside him. She generally called him by that name.
“I have felt idle lately, I think. Did you find all well at home?”
“Quite well. Mary Anne has the mumps; but she is subject to them. I told her to lie in bed and rub hartshorn on her face. Is Charlotte up?”
“I don’t know. I have been sitting here these two hours.”
“Mr. Pym said she might get up to-day for a short time, provided s
he lay on the sofa. How those little ones are enjoying themselves.”
She pointed to the park. Mr. St. John was also looking at the children, to all appearance. His right elbow rested on the arm of the bench; his hand supported his chin, and his eyes gazed out straight before him. In reality he neither saw nor heard; he was buried just then in the inward life of thought.
“What causes these illnesses of Charlotte?” he suddenly asked, without altering his position. “This is the second time.”
If ever there was a startled look on a woman’s face, it was on Mrs. Darling’s then. “She is delicate, I think,” was the answer given, after a pause.
“I think not; not naturally so,” dissented Mr. St. John, with emphasis. “I hear of fits of temper, Mrs. Darling, so violent as to suggest the idea of madness for the time being,” he resumed. “That was the source of this illness, I understand. The result was only a natural consequence.”
“Who told you that?” eagerly asked Mrs. Darling. “Mr. Pym?”
“No; Mr. Pym has never spoken a word to me on the subject in his life. I mentioned it to him on the occasion of the other illness, ten months ago; but he would not understand me — turned it off in an unmistakably decisive manner.” Mrs. Darling bit her lips. That she was in some great and annoying perplexity, none could doubt who saw her countenance; but she kept it turned from Mr. Carleton.
“I have witnessed one of these scenes of violence myself,” he resumed. “I declare that I never was so alarmed in my life. I thought Charlotte had suddenly become mad.”
Mrs. Darling’s lips grew white. But the revelation — that he had witnessed this — did not come upon her by surprise: for Prance had told her of it at the time.