Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  She crossed over” at once to the Continent, hoping there to find relief for the new ailments of Georgy as for her own worn spirits; and Mrs. Darling went back to her cottage in dudgeon, and then took wing to her mother’s to spend Christmas. And servants alone reigned at Alnwick Hall.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  ADELINE DE CASTELLA.

  CHRISTMAS came for other lands, just as surely as it did for England; and the young ladies of Madame de Nino’s finishing establishment at Belport were gathered round the schoolroom stove on that festal morning. Rose Darling taking the best place as usual; and also, as usual, swaying all minds to her own imperious will. Rose was in a vile humour; believing herself to be the worst-used mortal in the world. She had fully reckoned on going home for Christmas — or at least into Berkshire; and Mrs. Darling’s excuses about the uncertainty of her own movements only angered her the more.

  “Don’t bother here about your privileges and advantages!” she wrathfully exclaimed, elbowing the girls away from her, and tossing back her shower of golden curls. “What do the French know about keeping Christmas? France is a hundred years behind England in civilization, just as the French girls are behind us.”

  “Well done, Rose!” cried Adeline de Castella.

  “Adeline excepted, of course,” went on Rose, addressing no one in particular. “Why, the French don’t know as much as the use of the mistletoe! — and our friends send us here to be trained and educated! No Christmas! no holidays — except a month in autumn, which you are not expected to take! It is a pernicious country; an unnatural state of things; and the British government ought to interfere and forbid the schools to receive English girls.”

  “But don’t the French keep Christmas?” asked a new girl, and a very stupid one, Grace Lucas.

  “Bah!” ejaculated Rose. “As if they kept anything except the Jour de l’An!”

  “The what?” timidly asked Grace Lucas.

  “Qu’elle est bête!” cried Rose in her careless manner.

  “Have some consideration, Rose,” spoke Adeline in French.

  “Why, she has heard it fifty times!” retorted Rose in English.

  “Every one is not so apt as you.”

  “Apt at what?” asked Rose fiercely, a glowing colour rising to her face. Since the episode connected with Mr. Marlborough, Rose’s conscience was prone to conjure up hidden sarcasm in every sentence addressed to her.

  “I meant at picking up French,” laughed Adeline. “What else should I mean?”

  “Oh, thank you,” chafed Rose. “I understand.”

  “Don’t be cross, Rose. Have I not elected to spend my Christmas here, with you all? You show me no gratitude.”

  “You can afford to laugh — and to make a merit of stopping here,” retorted Rose. “When in seven days from this you leave for good!”

  “If Rose could only change places with you!” interrupted Mary Carr.

  “Speak for yourself, if you please, Mary Carr,” was Rose’s fiery answer: “who wants to change places with her? But, Adeline, I do envy you the balls and gaiety between now and Carême.”

  The Castella family must not be classed with the ordinary run of people frequenting Belport. Monsieur de Castella — in his own family chiefly called Signor de Castella — was descended from a noble Spanish family on the paternal side; his mother had been a proud and well-born Italian. His usual place of residence was Paris. But some years previous to this present time, symptoms of delicacy became apparent in Adeline; the medical men strongly recommended the seaside, and she was brought to Belport. It appeared to agree with her so well, so establish her health and strength, that Monsieur de Castella took on lease one of the handsomest and largest houses in the town. Sometimes he had to make long absences in Paris, in Spain, and in Italy; Madame de Castella always accompanied him, and Adeline would then be left at Madame de Nino’s. This winter would probably be their last in Belport; the summer was to be spent at the French château of Madame de Castella’s mother, an English lady by birth; and after that they intended to resume their residence in Paris. They were very wealthy, highly connected and considered, and Adeline was their only child. There had been an elder girl, Maria, but she died: and this made Adeline all the more precious to them, As you read on, you will know her better — and love her.

  She was now about to be introduced to the world. New Year’s Day was her birthday, when she would be eighteen; and I dare say you are aware that it is about the greatest fête the French keep, always excepting All Saints’ Day. Madame de Castella had issued cards for an assembly in the evening, and Adeline was to be introduced. The schoolgirls called it Adeline’s inauguration ball.

  Amidst other hidden secrets, sedulously guarded from the teachers, Madame de Nino’s pupils were in possession of a pack of what they called fortune-telling cards. They were not playing cards, but thin, small, transparent squares, made from the leaf of the sensitive-plant. On each square was a carefully painted flower, purporting to be an emblem. Rose, happy love; cross-of-Jerusalem, sorrow; snowdrop, purity; bachelor’s-button, vanity; hyacinth, death; and so on. Three or four of these squares were placed on the palm of the hand, the flowers downwards, so that one square could not be distinguished from another. They would in most cases curl slightly and leap from the hand; but should any one adhere to it, it was deemed a proof of affinity with the owner, a foreshadowing of her fate to come. For instance: if it were the cross-of-Jerusalem that remained, the holder was pronounced to be destined to sorrow; if the bachelor’s-button, the girl’s life was to be passed in vanity. It was at the best but a silly pastime, meet only for those silly girls; but there are of those schoolgirls who, to this hour, would confess to a superstitious belief in them, unexplainable alike to themselves and to any known law of reason. Else why, they would ask, should one particular leaf have clung always to Adeline de Castella, and been so singularly exemplified in her destiny? That it did cling to her is a fact: otherwise, I should never have thought of noticing any pastime so puerile.

  The first time these cards were tried, the girls were in their room, supposed to be in bed. Mam’selle Fifine had gone down with the light, and Rose had lighted one of her large wax tapers, which she kept locked up from prying eyes. Adeline had both her hands stretched out, three squares on each. Five of the squares rolled off quickly, more quickly than usual; the sixth slightly fluttered, and then settled down, quiet and passive on her palm. Janet Duff took it up at length, but dropped it again as one startled.

  “Oh! it is bad!” she said, in a whisper.

  Mary Carr turned the square. It was a French marigold.

  “‘French marigold: unhappy love; its end possible death,’” read Janet Duff from the explanations. “It is about the worst in the pack.”

  Some of the girls shivered — that dortoir was always cold. Adeline laughed merrily. “It is only nonsense,” she said: and she spoke as she thought.

  And the singular part was, that Adeline de Castella had tried those cards since, a dozen times at least; and this ill-omened French marigold had always clung to her whenever it was of those placed on her hand. The hyacinth had been dreaded so much from the first, that Janet Duff took it out of the pack. And the French marigold, so far as was seen, never rested on any other hand than Adeline de Castella’s.

  “It is certainly singular,” mused Adeline, when she tried her fate at the cards for the last time before leaving school, and the French marigold clung to her as usual.

  New Year’s Day came in: and with its evening a clash of many carriages, impatient horses, and quarrelsome coachmen filled the streets, for the gay world of Belport was flocking to the house of Signor de Castella.

  It was a brilliant scene, those reception-rooms, brilliant with their blaze of light and their exotics. Adeline de Castella stood by her mother. The guests had known and thought of her but as a plainly attired, simple schoolgirl, and were not prepared to recognize her as she stood before them in her costly attire and wondrous beauty. Her robes of wh
ite lace, flowing and elegant, sparkled with emeralds; single chains of emeralds encircled her neck, her arms, and confined in their place the waves of her silken hair; lustrous emeralds, heirlooms of the ancient family of de Castella. Her features, pure and regular as if chiselled from marble, were glowing with the crimson flush of excitement, rendering more conspicuous her excessive loveliness.

  “Oh, Adeline,” whispered Mary Carr, when she could steal a few words with her, “how beautiful you are!”

  “What! have you turned flatterer too!”

  “Flattery — to you! How mistaken they were to-night, when they supposed Rose would outshine all! If they could only see you now!”

  Miss Carr brought her words and her breath to a standstill, for, coming in at the door were Mr and Mrs. Marlborough.

  “Yes,” said Adeline, answering her exclamation of astonishment; “mamma met them to-day, just as they arrived from Paris, and made them promise to look in to-night. They are on their road to England. Lord John Seymour is with them.”

  “What will Rose say?” ejaculated Mary Carr.

  Mr and Mrs, Marlborough, Adeline, and others were standing together when Rose came up. Rose was not aware in whose presence she was, till she stood face to face with George Marlborough. A random remark she had been about to make to Adeline died upon her lips, and her face turned white. Eleanor was crimson; and there might have been an awkward pause, but for the readiness of Mr. Marlborough.

  “How do you do, Miss Darling?” he said, with a pleasant smile. “Nearly frozen up with this winter cold? It has been very severe in Paris.”

  Rose recalled her scattered senses, and began to talk with him at random: but she barely exchanged courtesies with Eleanor.

  “Ellen,” whispered Mr. Marlborough to his wife, later in the evening, “may I dance a quadrille with her?”

  “How silly! — to ask me that! I think it is the best thing you can do.” But there was a shy, conscious blush on Mrs. Marlborough’s cheek, as she answered. Her husband saw it, and went off laughing, and the next minute Rose was dancing with him.

  “Which of my presents do you admire most?” asked Adeline of Mary Carr, directing her attention to an extensive display of articles ranged together in the card-room: all offerings to her that day from friends and relatives, according to French custom on New Year’s Day.

  “What a lovely little clock in miniature!” exclaimed Rose, looking over Mary’s shoulder.

  “It is a real clock,” said Adeline, “it plays the chimes at the hours, and those are real diamonds. My grandmamma always said she should give me something worth keeping on my eighteenth birthday, and she sent me this. I am so sorry she was not well enough to come to us for to-night! Stay, I will touch the spring.”

  As Adeline raised her right hand hastily, anxious that Rose and Mary Carr should hear the melodious chimes of this ingenious ornament, the chains of her emerald bracelet caught in the button of a gentleman’s coat, who made one of the group pressing round her. With a slight jerk she disentangled the chain, but it brought away with it a flower he had held in his hand. It was a French marigold!

  The brilliant hue deepened upon Adeline’s cheek as she looked at the flower. She turned and held it out to the owner.

  He was a stranger, a young and most distinguished-looking man, possessing in no common degree that air of true nobility which can neither be concealed nor assumed. His countenance was one of rare beauty, and his eyes were bent with a pleasant earnest expression of admiration upon Adeline. You have met him before, reader, but Adeline had not.

  She addressed an apology to him, as she restored the flower, speaking intuitively in English: it required not an introduction to know that that tall, high-bred man was no Frenchman. He was answering a few words of gallantry, as he received it — that the fair hand it had been in invested the flower with an extrinsic interest — when M. de Castella came into the circle, an aged man by his side, “Adeline,” he said to his daughter, “have you forgotten your old friend, the Baron de la Chasse?”

  With an exclamation of pleasure, Adeline held out her hand. She had been so much with the English, that she had fully acquired their habit of hand-shaking. The old baron did not seem to understand her, but he took her hand and placed it within his arm. They moved away, and there was a general breaking up of the group.

  “Lottie Singleton,” began Rose, “do you know who that handsome man is?”

  “Handsome!” returned Miss Singleton. “Everybody’s handsome with you. I call him old and ugly.”

  “I don’t mean the French baron. That distinguished-looking Englishman with the marigold.”

  “He! I know nothing of him. He came in with the Maxwells. I saw Sir Sandy introduce him to Madame de Castella.”

  “Where could he have found that French marigold at this season of the year?” wondered Rose.

  “Oh, Miss Maxwell has all sorts of odd flowers in that box of hers, four feet square, which she calls her conservatory,” returned the archdeacon’s daughter. “He must have found it there.” — „

  “Lord John,” cried Rose, summarily arresting Lord John Seymour, who was passing, and whom she had never seen but once in her life, and that months before, “who is that handsome man I saw you talking with just now?”

  “It is my cousin’s husband, Miss Darling,” lisped Lord John, who had an impediment in his speech. “Young Marlborough.”

  “I don’t speak of him” cried Rose, impatiently, an association dyeing her cheeks. “A tall, pale man, features very refined.”

  “You must mean St. John.”

  “Who?” repeated Rose.

  “Frederick St. John. Brother to St. John of Castle Wafer.” Rose Darling drew a deep breath in her utter astonishment. “And so that’s Frederick St. John! I have heard of him and his beauty.”

  “He is handsome,” assented Lord John, “and he’s more pleasing than handsome. Fred St. John’s one of the best fellows going. We were together at Christchurch.”

  “Is he staying at Belport?”

  “Only passing through, he tells me. He has been dining at the Maxwells’ and they brought him here this evening.”

  “I wish you’d introduce him to me.”

  (“Well done, Rose,” thought Mary Carr, who was near.) “With pleasure,” replied Lord John: and he offered his arm to Rose.

  “No,” said Rose, in her changeable, capricious, but most attractive manner, withdrawing her own as soon as she had taken it, “I think I’ll go up to him myself. We are relatives, you know.”

  “Indeed!” said Lord John.

  “Connections, at any rate,” concluded Rose.

  She chose a moment when Mr. St. John was alone, and approached him. Beginning the self-introduction by holding out her hand. Mr. St. John looked surprised.

  “You don’t know me,” said Rose, “Lord John Seymour offered to introduce you to me, but I said it was not needed between relatives. I have heard a great deal of Frederick St. John: we are cousins in a degree, you know. I am Rose Darling.”

  The name did not recall any association to Mr. St. John. He stood smiling on the bright girl before him, with her sunny blue eyes and her mass of golden hair.

  “You forget, I see, and I must be more explanatory. My half-sister, Charlotte Norris, married Mr. Carleton St. John. Mamma saw you recently at Alnwick Hall. My brother Frank was there.”

  His answer was to take both Rose’s hands into his, as an apology for his stupidity, and assure her that he was proud and pleased to find such a cousin. Rose remained talking to him.

  “What a dreadful thing it was, that little boy’s death!” she exclaimed. “I had heard of him often; little Benja St. John! And to be burnt to death! — oh, it was terrible! Who was in fault?”

  “The nurse. She left him alone with a paper toy that had a lighted candle within it, and by some means he set himself on fire. It was at his funeral that I met Captain Darling.”

  “So much about the accident, mamma has told me in her letters;
but particulars she has given none,” said Rose. “It is too shocking a thing to write about, she says. Poor little fellow! I wish he had been saved. What do you think of Charlotte?”

  “Of Mrs. Carleton St. John? I never saw her. She did not appear the day of the funeral. The child’s sad death has had a great effect upon her, I hear; both on her health and spirits. She has left the Hall for a time, and is travelling.”

  “I know that,” returned Rose with emphasis, in which there was a world of resentment. “Charlotte has been whirling about from place to place like a troubled spirit. It has kept mamma in a most unsettled state, and prevented her having me over for Christmas. I was so mad when I found I was not to go home! Such a shame, you know, keeping me at school! I shall be nineteen next birthday. We have had to give way to Charlotte all our lives.”

  Mr. St. John smiled on the pretty, pouting, rebellious face. “I fear your sister has been grievously shocked by the death,” he said. “Change of scene may be absolutely requisite for her.”

  “Well then, all I can say is, that it is most unusual, for it is not in Charlotte’s nature to be much affected by any earthly thing. She is apathetic to a degree. Of course, she could not help being shocked and grieved at the death; but I don’t understand its making this lasting impression on her and affecting her health, as mamma says it does. And now that her son is the heir — you are thinking me hard and cruel to say such things, Mr. St. John,” broke off Rose, “but you don’t know Charlotte as I do. I am certain that the succession of her own child, George, has been to her a long day-dream, not the less cherished from its apparent impossibility.”