Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “I think you don’t regard your sister with any great degree of affection, Miss Darling,” Mr. St. John ventured to say, smiling on her still.

  “I don’t, and that’s the truth,” candidly avowed Rose. “If you only knew how mamma has made us bend to Charlotte and her imperious will all our lives, you wouldn’t wonder at me. I was the only one who rebelled; I would not; and to tell you a secret, I believe that’s why mamma sent me to school.”

  The strains of music warned Mr. St. John that he must listen to no more; and, as Rose was herself led away, she saw him dancing with Adeline. He was with her a great deal during the rest of the evening.

  “The play has begun, Adeline,” whispered Rose when she and Mary Carr were leaving.

  “What play?”

  “You are already taken with this new stranger: I can see it in your countenance: and he with you. What think you of the episode of the French marigold? Rely upon it, that man, Frederick St. John, will exercise some powerful influence over your future life.”

  “Oh Rose, Rose!” remonstrated Adeline, her lips parting with merriment, “we are not all so susceptible to ‘influence’, as you.”

  “We must all fall under it once in our lives,” rejoined Rose, unheeding the reproof. “Don’t forget my counsel to you here after, Adeline. Beware of this stranger: the French marigold is an emblem of unhappy love.”

  Adeline de Castella laughed: a slighting, careless, triumphant laugh of disbelief: laughed aloud in her pride and power, as she quitted Rose Darling’s side, on her way to play her brilliant part in the crowd around her. It was spring-time with her then.

  There was a singular fascination attaching to her, this child of many lands. It is no fable to call her such. England, France, Spain, Italy; it was singular that she should be, through her grandparents, a descendant of all. But her nature was essentially English. Her rare beauty of form and feature is seldom found united with brilliancy of complexion, as it was in her, save in the patrician daughters of our own land: and the retiring, modest sweetness of her manners, their graceful self-possession, were English to the core. A stranger could have taken her to belong to no other country, and her perfect knowledge of the language, the absence of all foreign accent, would contribute to the delusion. She had been familiar with it from her infancy: Madame de Castella, speaking it herself as a native, took care of that. She had placed English nurses about her children; and subsequently an English governess, a lady of good birth and breeding but fallen fortunes, had taken charge of them until Maria de Castella’s death. It was from this lady that Adeline especially learnt to appreciate and love the English character; insensibly to herself, her own was formed after the model. In short, Adeline de Castella, in spite of her name and her mixed birth, was an English girl.

  A month or two rolled away. Adeline de Castella paid an occasional visit to her old schoolfellows at Madame de Nino’s; but her time was taken up with a continuous scene of gaiety and visiting. Balls, theatres, soirees — never was she in bed before two or three o’clock in the morning, and sometimes it was later than that. Madame de Castella, still a young woman in every sense of the word, lived but for the world. The schoolgirls noticed that Adeline wore a pale, wearied look, and one afternoon that she came in, she coughed frightfully.

  “That’s like a consumptive cough!” exclaimed Rose, with her usual want of consideration.

  “I have coughed a great deal lately,” observed Adeline; “and coming in from the cold air to the atmosphere of your stifling stove, has brought it on now.”

  No one, however, thought anything serious of the cough, or the weariness. But that time was to come.

  It was Ash-Wednesday: and Mary Carr was invited to spend the day at Signor de Castella’s. Madame de Castella had given a fancy-dress ball the previous Monday night, Lundi gras.

  Rose and Mary had been invited to it, but Madame de Nino refused the invitation for them, point-blank, which nearly drove Rose wild with exasperation. After church, one of the servants attended Miss Carr to Madame de Castella’s — for I suppose you know that in France a young unmarried lady never goes out alone.

  The house seemed to be in some extraordinary commotion. Servants ran hither and thither with a look of consternation on their faces, and Madame de Castella, when Mary reached her presence, was walking about in her dressing-gown, sobbing hysterically, her breakfast cold and untouched at her side, and her maid, Susanne, standing by her.

  “What is the matter?” cried Mary, in terror.

  “Oh, it is dreadful!” ejaculated Susanne, by way of answer. “Unhappy Mademoiselle Adeline!”

  “She is dying!” sobbed Madame de Castella. “My darling child! my only child! She is dying, and I am the cause. Heaven forgive me!”

  “Oh, Susanne!” exclaimed Miss Carr, turning to the maid, “what is it all?”

  Susanne and Madame explained between them, both weeping, the latter violently. —

  They were engaged, on the previous night, Mardi gras, to “assist” at the crowning ball of the Carnival; but when it became time to dress, Adeline felt so ill and weary that she gave up the task in despair. Madame de Castella urged her to exert herself and shake the illness off, but the Signor interfered, and said Adeline had better go to bed. And to bed she went, at nine o’clock. Madame departed at ten for the ball, but came home before twelve, anxious about Adeline. She went into the latter’s bedroom, and found her coughing violently, with every appearance of serious illness upon her. Adeline could say nothing, except that she had coughed like that for many nights. Terror-stricken, the unhappy lady alarmed the household, and the medical attendant was sent for. He came at once, aroused out of his slumbers.

  He thought consumption had set its seal upon Adeline. The seeds of it were, no doubt, inherent in her constitution, though hitherto unsuspected, and the gay scenes she had indulged in, that winter, had brought them forth: the exposures to the night air, to heat and cold, the thin dresses, the fatigue, and the broken rest. He did not say she would not be restored to health; but he wished for a consultation.

  So, when the early hours gave place to day, the faculty were called together, both French and English. They said just what the family doctor had said, and no more.

  “I suppose I may not ask to see Adeline,” said Mary Carr, when she had learnt these particulars.

  “Not for the world,” interposed the lady’s-maid. “Perfect quiet is ordered. Mademoiselle has now a blister on her chest, and a sick-nurse is with her.”

  But, just then, Louise, Adeline’s maid, came into the room, with her young lady’s love to Miss Carr, and an inquiry why she was so long going up to see her.

  “There!” sobbed Madame de Castella, “they have told her you are here. Just go to her for five minutes. I rely upon you not to stay longer.”

  Mary Carr followed Louise into Adeline’s room, and went on tiptoe to her bedside. The tears came into her eyes when she saw her lying there, so pale and wan.

  “So their fears have infected you, Mary!” was her salutation, as she looked up from the pillow, and smiled. “Is it not a ridiculous piece of business altogether? As if no one ever had a cough before! Do you know we had half-a-dozen doctors here to-day?”

  “Susanne said there had been a consultation.”

  “Yes, I could scarcely help laughing. I told them all it was very ridiculous: that beyond the cough, which is nothing, and a little fatigue from the pain in my side, I was no more ill than they were. Dr. Dorré said it was his opinion also, and that I should outlive them all yet.”

  “I hope and trust you will, Adeline! Is that the nurse?”

  “A sick-nurse they have sent in. She is English, and accustomed to the disease. Her name’s Brayford. You know consumption is common enough in your island.”

  Mary Carr thought then — thinks still — that it was a grievous error, their suffering Adeline to know the nature of the disease they dreaded. It was Madame de Castella who betrayed it, in her grief and excitement.

  �
�There is so much more fuss being made than is necessary,” resumed Adeline. “They have put a blister on my chest, and I am to lie in bed, and live upon slops. I dislike slops.”

  “Is your appetite good?” asked Mary.

  “I have not any appetite,” was Adeline’s reply. “But in illness we fancy many things, and Louise would have brought me up anything I asked for. There’s no chance of it, with this nurse here. She seems tiresomely particular, and determined to obey orders to the letter. I asked her, just before you came in, for some wine-and-water, I almost prayed for it, I was so painfully thirsty. I could have coveted that three-sous beer some of the English girls at school are so fond of.”

  “Did she let you have it?”

  “No. She told me she would not give me a drop of wine if I paid her for it in gold. I cried about it, I was so disappointed and thirsty. What with the flurry and excitement there has been all the morning, and, — papa and mamma’s anxiety, my spirits were low, and I actually cried. But she would not give it me. She brought me some toast-and-water, and said she was going to make me something nice, better than wine. There she is, coddling at it over the fire — very nice I dare say it is!”

  Mrs. Brayford came forward, and whispered Miss Carr to take her leave. Talking was bad for Mademoiselle de Castella.

  “Farewell, dearest Adeline! I shall soon come to see you again. I know I shall find you better.”

  She was half-way across the room when Adeline called to her. The nurse, who was again leaning over her saucepan, looked up, a remonstrance in her eye if not on her tongue, but Miss Carr returned.

  “Mary,” she whispered, “go in to mamma, assure her, convince her, that I am not so ill as she fears: that it is her love for me which has magnified the danger.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” cried Rose Darling, slightingly, when Miss Carr carried the tale of Adeline’s illness back to school. “She will soon be well.”

  “Or die,” said Mary Carr.

  “Die! You are as absurd as the French doctors, Mary. As if people died of a little night visiting! I wish they would let me run the risk!”

  “If you had seen the house to-day, and Madame de Castella —— —”

  “I am glad I did not,” interrupted Rose; “such scenes are not to my taste. And nothing at all to judge by. The French are always in extremes — ecstasies or despair. So much the better for them. They feel the less.”

  “That is a harsh remark, if intended to apply to Madame de Castella,” observed Miss Carr. “More intense grief I never care to witness.”

  “No doubt. As intense as it is in her nature to feel; and shown as the French always do show it, in ravings and hysterics. But I can tell you one thing, Mary Carr, that the only grief to be feared, that which eats into the heart, and tells upon it, is borne in silence!”

  What a remark from Rose Darling!

  Adeline de Castella grew gradually better; apparently quite well. But the cold winds and frosts of winter continued that year very late, even to the end of April, and for all that period she was kept a close prisoner to the house. The medical men recommended that she should spend the following winter in a warmer climate. It was therefore decided that the summer should be passed at the Château de Beaufoy, as had been previously agreed upon, and, with the autumn, they would go south.

  A new rumour reached the schoolgirls — that Adeline was about to be married. It was brought to them by Madéleine de Gassicourt, and her friends were intimate with the Castellas.

  That was a singular year, so far as weather went. Frost and snow, drizzling rain, bleak and biting winds, alternated with each other to the beginning of May: there had been no spring; but, with that month, May, there came in summer. It was hotter than it often is in July. And this hot weather lasted for several months.

  It was the second day of this premature summer, and the usual Thursday holiday at Madame de Nino’s. The girls were in the inner court, Rose in a furious state of indignation, and ready to quarrel with every one, because she had not been fetched out, when the roll of carriage-wheels was heard, and they peeped through a slit in the great wooden door so as to get a glimpse of the gate of the outer courtyard.

  Springing down the steps of the carriage, came Adeline de Castella, followed by her mother. A shout of delight arose, excited fingers pushed back the great lock, and a group burst into the outer courtyard. Adeline ran towards them, as delighted as they were. Madame de Castella, with an amused laugh and a pleasant word, passed on to the apartments of Madame de Nino, and Mademoiselle Henriette ordered forth Julie, and had the door double-locked.

  Adeline looked infinitely beautiful: for though the face had little more colour in it than there is in Parian marble, the features retained all their exquisite contour, the flowing hair its silky waves, the dark-brown, lustrous eyes their sweet and sad expression. In the midst of Adeline de Castella’s brilliant loveliness, there was, and always had been, a peculiar expression of sadness pervading her countenance. It never failed to strike on the notice of the beholder, investing such a face as hers with a singular interest, but it was more than usually observable since her illness. Was it that the unearthly part of her, the spirit, conscious of and mourning for what was in store for her, cast its shadow upon her features? The girls crowded round silently to look at Adeline’s teeth, for one day, during the time she lay ill, Charlotte Singleton had said that the transparent teeth of Adeline de Castella were an indication of a consumptive tendency, and the girls could not agree amongst themselves whether they were so very transparent.

  “So I have come to see you at last,” began Adeline, as she sat down with her two friends, Rose and Mary, on the bench outside the schoolroom windows. “What hot weather has come in all at once!”

  “Adeline, how long your illness has been! We heard you were going to Nice.”

  “Not until autumn. And I don’t know whether it will be Nice.”

  “There’s Julie!” cried Rose, springing up. “Julie, who’s fetched?”

  “Pas vous, mademoiselle,” answered the servant, laughing at Rose’s anxiety.

  “Ah bah! Adeline, we have heard something else. Ah! you know what I mean. Is it true?”

  “I believe it is,” she answered, a faint blush upon her face, and a careless smile.

  “Is he handsome?” continued Rose. Of course the first thought that would arise to her.

  “I have never seen him.”

  “Oh, Adeline!” uttered Mary Carr, involuntarily, whilst Rose stared with unqualified amazement.

  “Not yet. He comes from Paris this week to pay us a visit.”

  “Who is he?”

  “The Baron de la Chasse. Do you recollect seeing, on my ball night, an old gentleman who remained most of the evening by the side of papa?”

  “Yes. Well?” answered Rose, impatiently.

  “It seems he made overtures then to papa for my hand, though I did not know it, and—”

  “It is a sin, an unholy thing, to sacrifice you to an old man!” interrupted Mary Carr, starting up in her sharp disappointment. “Why, his sands of life must be well-nigh run out!”

  “A moment, Mary,” rejoined Adeline, calmly laying her hand upon Miss Carr’s arm: “who is hasty now? That old man’s sands are run out. He died soon after he had played his part in that festal night, which he had come down from Paris purposely to join in. He and papa were old and very dear friends; closer friends it would not be possible to conceive, though there was a difference of twenty years in their ages. His nephew inherits his fortune and title, and it is for him they destine me.”

  “How old is he?” inquired Rose.

  “I have not asked,” said Adeline. “Mamma says he is good-looking. It appears that this scheme of uniting the families has been a project of years, though they never told me. Had my sister lived, the honour was to have fallen to her.”

  “I hope you will be happy,” observed Miss Carr.

  “Thank you, Mary. But you speak with hesitation.”

  “N
ot as to the wish. The hope might be more assured if you already knew, and loved, him who is to be your husband. It is a great hazard to promise to marry one whom we have never seen.”

  “It is the way these things are managed in France,” said Adeline. —

  “And the cause that such doubtful felicity condescends to alight on a French menage,” broke forth Rose, who had been temporarily silent. “The wives make it out in their intrigues, though. It is a dangerous game, Adeline. Take care.”

  “I hope you do not consider it necessary to warn me against such danger,” exclaimed Adeline, the crimson flying to her cheeks.

  “No; for you have not a particle of the French nature about you,” fearlessly returned Rose. “To you, strong in right principle, in refinement of feeling, it can bring only suffering — a yearning after what must never be.”

  “Englishwomen do not always marry where they love,” mused Adeline.

  “Seldom or never,” answered Rose. “With them the passion is generally over. They go more into society, have opportunities of mixing freely, as girls, with the other sex, which you have not, and so the years pass, and by the time their marriage comes, the heart is at rest; its life has left it.”

  “Then their marriage, even by your own showing, seems to be much on a par with what mine will be.”

  “Their marriage is, Adeline, but their love is over, yours has to come. There lies the difficulty: and the danger.”

  “Where did you get all these wise ideas from?” inquired Adeline, much amused.

  “I’m not an idiot,” was Rose’s answer. “And I am apt to speak freely when I feel disappointed. I thought you would be sure to marry an Englishman. You have often said so, and you admire the English so much more than you do the French. You remember that handsome Englishman, of French-marigold memory? I set it down in my mind that your destiny and his were to be linked together.”